Concepts 2 Flashcards
(103 cards)
reason should be taught to both men and women (Wollstonecraft)
because it is the special faculty granted to all of humanity and constitutes all humans’ path to improvement and perfection
- especially under Rousseau’s model, women are instead educated to learn sensibility, obedience, and appeal for marriage; they are taught to be dependent emotional companions (dealing with intermediate means) for independent rational men (who deal rationally with final ends)
- because of this, women’s pleasures can only be ephemeral (based on fading beauty rather than eternal virtue), and the only power they acquire is manipulative, tyrannical power (based on cunning rather than wisdom)
Eros and Ananke
are the two bases of civilization- Eros is the libidinal drive to secure a love object; ultimately, civilization was founded in order to protect, via the power of the community, the individual’s pursuit of Eros from the aggression of the death instinct- Ananke, or civilization or the super-ego, imposes ideal demands (laws) which force individuals to repress Eros (even though civilization’s ultimate, impossible goal is to promote Eros)- the super-ego is the aggression of the death instinct turned inwards (while one originally fears society’s law, they come to identify with it and internalize its aggression) producing eternal guilt and unhappiness- there is a cultural super-ego that functions similarly to the individual super-ego- when an instinct is repressed, its libidinal (Eros-linked) elements become symptoms and its aggressive (death drive-linked) elements become guilt
analytic and synthetic judgements
analytic judgements follow from the definition of the concept itself, belongs to and is contained in the subject. Can also be thought of as clarification. In the example “All bodies are extended” the concept of body itself contains the meaning of extension. Synthetic judgements affirm something in the predicate that is not contained in the subject. Connected but outside, without identity, can also be thought of as amplification, or as adding something to the concept. “All bodies are heavy” for example, says something about bodies that the concept of body does not contain. COPR tries to show how a priori synthetic judgements are possible.
institutional ethnography
rather than classifying behaviours according to the broad norms of accountability imposed by the bureaucratic ruling apparatus, understands institutions (intersections of modes of the ruling apparatus) in an ideological dialectic with everyday work processes that sustain these institutions
- everyday competence, practical reasoning, and work processes are Smith’s “points d’appui” or marshalling points–the goal is to emphasize the (often feminized) work that makes institutionalized understandings viable, and to understanding that we are always enmeshed in institutions and must “begin where we are” rather than taking an indifferent totalizing perspective
totalitarianism (Arendt)
totalitarianism is the employment of utilitarian organization without a real-world collective interest (e.g. class, race, or national interest); while classes want particular victories with real implications, fanatical totalitarian masses (the mob) only want abstract victory as such
- totalitarianism appeals to the masses by gathering up everything excluded from public discourse into a fantasy world that replaces reality with the image of a total, consistent conspiracy
- Arendt stresses that, unlike other parties’ propaganda, totalitarian propaganda does not persuade but rather organizes: it produces a living structure that cannot be challenged without the whole actualized structure of life collapsing
- front organizations have a double function: they insulate party initiates from the sharp contrast of totalitarian fantasy and reality, and shield the masses from the movement’s full intensity
- totalitarian elites acknowledge no distinction of fact and fiction: every statement of fact should be taken as a statement of purpose, and anything is possible (human omnipotence) if organization centred on an infallible leader is maintained
- the downfall of totalitarian movements is their underestimation of stable factuality, which is preserved and mobilized by the non-totalitarian world
spectrality/hauntology
hauntology invokes the ‘other side’ of the text and life (the other announced by differance)
- spectral asymmetry/the visor effect: the spectre sees us but we cannot see it, so it infects us with an injunction or an inheritance which is beyond logical knowledge (think Hamlet’s dad’s ghost)
- “one always inherits from a secret,” since to know something fully would be to embody it
and not to inherit it; inheritance in this sense is the condition of our finitude
- the spectre is “plus d’une,” the dispersed multiple which is both more and less than one, without gathering itself together–it does not take an identifiable shape in our logical order
- see Irigaray, this sex which is not one
- the spectre is a revenant: it “comes back in advance” from an absolutely deferred future
- the spectre makes time ‘out of joint’ or causes the “non-contemporaneity with itself of the present,” through which we are affected by the absolute future/other
- the spectre invokes a peaceful justice based on the future-to-come or messianic (eschatology), as opposed to the law, which renders justice based on restitutive calculation (teleology)
- again, see Benjamin
- capitalism is “spectropoetic”: it produces commodities as spectres–Marx is a ghostbuster
“lips speaking together”
women must form a community and discourse apart from phallocratic logic
- characteristics of this community: against likeness (relations and sameness without simulacra and originals), against countability and oneness, wholeness without totality, life- and self-giving exchange and sharing without calculable transactions between individuals, openness and movement without end, flattening out of relationships rather than vertical structuring, body rather than memory, against moralization and judgment, simultaneity of plurality
- Irigaray proposes to emphasize traditional feminine “weakness” (i.e. suppleness, inconstancy, lack of resistance) and embody it outside of its patriarchal marking
being-with (mitsein, with-being)
refers to the fact that the world Dasein is being-in is essentially inhabited and defined by other Daseins–thus Dasein is Dasein-with (mitDasein), primordially determined in itself by its being-with others
the unconscious is pre-ontological
neither being nor non-being but the unrealized–for this reason, Lacan can view all systematic philosophy as an attempt to repress the unconscious
- Freud’s method is not based in truth, but in certainty (that conscious observations are traces of the unconscious, in which the Real always repeats itself via the drive, Trieb)
the gaze (Lacan)
is the objet petit a in the scopic field–as something that is mine, and which constantly misses the real (centred on a lack), my gaze constitutes me as a subject (ego distinct from unconscious)
- the gaze depends on the eternal “vascillation” by which the unconscious supports the subject, whose constant slippage is elided in the fantasy of “seeing myself seeing myself” (mirror stage), or imagining the gaze in the field of the (little o) other
- the gaze is desire: it catches objects in its desire (it acts as a lure) and distorts them based on anamorphis (the visual effect of a flat image’s distortion based on the geometral focal point)
- but the gaze, since it is based on a lack, does not completely belong to or emanate from the subject–the subject is also caught in the gaze and distorted by anamorphis
- hence, desire is the desire of the Other, the unconscious is the Other’s discourse
- paintings contain the gaze, and thus produce a calming, Apollonian by forcing the viewer to lay down or abandon their own gaze
The Cheerful Robot
replacing the free Renaissance man) is alienated man in bureaucratic society
- the point is that, while liberalism and socialism (Enlightenment ideas) both assumed reason and freedom would accompany one another, bureaucratic society is rational but does not allow for the individual use of reason (which is freedom)
individuality (Stuart Mill)
drives both individual and societal development: people should be encouraged to be eccentric (for example, because it is necessary for genius) and society should be diverse
property (J. S. Mill)
(including one’s life) is the most important right enshrined by natural law
- property is created when what is held in common (created by God) is mixed with one’s labour
- it is against natural law to take more from what is held in common than one can use; however, money is a conventionally agreed upon way for someone to own more than they can use (because it is actually useless and cannot spoil)
intellectual craftsmanship (Mills)
Mills devotes a whole chapter to “intellectual craftsmanship,” intended to guide students of sociology: among other things , he suggests keeping a journal and file of ideas, staging playful interactions and reorganizations between theoretical structuring and empirical facts (keeping the former at the forefront of research), and avoiding academic jargon
substance (spinoza)
“By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself.. that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed” p 1 of ethics-only one substance, monism-God is the only substance-Everything that exists is God or a mode of God (mode = modification), and the parts of God are an infinite number of attributes expressing eternal essences-Natura naturans: God, or nature, is the cause of itself(see diagram in Evernote)
the unconscious is structured like a language
signifiers precede and determine the subject
- the unconscious (or primary process) is situated in the gap or lack (cut) between the signified subject and the real (unspeakability, indeterminateness, Freud’s unanalyzable “navel” of the dream); this gap is the locus of the law of the signifier (its arbitrariness in relation to the signified) experienced as a surprising loss or forgetting–thus the unconscious also structures the bar (in S/s, signifier/signified) or (Freudian) censor which distinguishes the ego by effacing the unconscious, and it structures desire (want-to-be, unconscious-driven cathexis based on the subject’s lack)
- we may say, then, that there are significant similarities and/or mirrorings between the unconscious (linked back to the Real) and the symbolic order or superego: both function as signifying chains (big O Other) that signify the subject and their double as (little o) other; however, while the symbolic law is an ideal known and recognized by the subject, the law of the unconscious is the law of the signifier (the Real), which is unknowable
specularity
is a founding principle of phallogocentrism which women have privileged access to
- the sexualization of discourse combats phallogocentrism by revealing how the “scenography” of discourse is made possible by the linguistic and grammatical silences of feminine specularity
- this is accomplished through mimcry–by working back through the specular (mirroring, reflective, reduction to the same) logic of phallogocentrism, women can prove their true selves are elsewhere, not reducible to the ‘matter’ of phallocratic discourse
world history (Hegel)
is Spirit’s actually working out (through Reason) the potentiality/Notion of its self- consciousness of its own Freedom as Spirit
commodity fetishism has been replaced by production fetishism and fetishism of the consumer (Bauman)
- production fetishism fetishizes the localized process of production and masks the reality of increasingly transnational relations of production
- fetishism of the consumer depicts the consumer as a sign of agency while real agential power is located in the relations of production
immortality and eternity (Arendt)
in the ancient Greek bios politikos or via activa, mortal humans achieve immortality/divinity through lasting deeds (actions or words) that become significant to the deathless cycles of life and existence
- eternity, however, the “unspeakable” underpinning of theoria/contemplation/metaphysics, is absence from the world akin to death
expression and meanings (Husserl)
are positive, unified identities (ideas) with a universal existence distinct from their means of conveyance and their objects–the science of logic deals with pure meanings and underpins any science (sciences develop the theoretical unity of meanings)
- meanings are communicated by expressions, which are signs accompanied by intentionality (while indications are signs without intentionality)
- speech is expressive (meaningful) and indicative (it intimates an inner experience to a listener); internal monologue is expressive but not indicative (because the correlated object is already believed); scientific data are merely indicative
- expressions do not contain pure meanings, but meaning-intentions (meanings mixed with the actions required to convey meaning) which may or may not be fulfilled (received by a listener; actualized in an objective correlate)
- however, meaning itself is the same regardless of the context of its expression - our consciousness is naturally consciousness of meanings and not of signs
virtu and fortuna
virtu is talent/skill/expertise, a flexible tactical disposition ranging from good to evil
- virtu is the ability to respond to fortuna–when fortune clears the way, human actions are integral; one should act with the spirit of the times
fortuna or luck is wanton, reckless, unpredictable (feminine)–the natural inevitability of disaster
Godhead
the superior part of God is absolute freedom or spirit, not attributable to contradiction
- the Godhead has no being except in relation to its Other, the nature/necessity of God, which is subordinate to it and takes on the figure of the past
- all consciousness is an expression of this relationship to a subordinate pastness
- that nature subordinate to the Godhead yearns for freedom creates an actual elevation wherein the elements of the contradiction are separated out, in space, into higher (unity) and lower (negation)
tuche (Lacan)
the encounter with the real–it is the missed encounter that repeats behind repetition in act, i.e. ego repetition that resists the sameness of the real by producing and identifying unique subjective experiences