rob ford satire

8/13/2019 Rob Ford Satire

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We lack words for all the small essential parts of sex: nibbling

diagonally, mouthing earlobes, the way a moist tongue leaves a

track across a soft expanse of flesh. We have only rude, coarse,

short, ugly words, the language of Joyce, Hemingway, Mailer,

Jong: !rick, cock, screw, balls, bust, bang, suck, lick . .. the list is

endless, and endlessly uninteresting.

""a former football kid, ethiopian ... pass me more in#era $$

doug ford, slice of life as drug dealer, ry drifters or we %% the neo na&i's cancome in too drug dealers #ust want to move to calgary to become dentists ...

((((

)oug, like *ob, fre+uently promotes the ord family as a type of brand - one

that started with their late fathers four(year tenure as an M!! in the

government of former /ntario premier Mike Harris. )oug ord is fond of

invoking his familys contributions to the community. 0hrough his

involvement with the *otary 1lub of 2tobicoke, he has helped to organi&e

events like the 2tobicoke all air. He fre+uently mentions the many sports

teams that the ord family business, )eco 3abels and 0ags, has sponsoredover the years. He also cites the many football teams his younger brother has

coached, and the hordes of people - he puts the figure at 45,666 - the ords

have entertained at their annual backyard barbecue.

7n recent years, the ord family home has become known for the annual

barbecue, attended by hundreds of neighbours and a Whos Who of

1onservative luminaries - including !rime Minister 8tephen Harper and

federal inance Minister Jim laherty. 9ut in the ;0om,? who

also supplied street(level dealers and has a long criminal record, said his

girlfriend at the time would complain, whenever he was arrested, that he

needed to be more calculating >like )oug.?

the helm heel of the family sailboat - 0he *aymoni -


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8ince he arrived at 1ity Hall, the mayors office has said almost nothing about

what Mr. !rice, called director of logistics and operations, is there to do.

1oncerning the hiring of Mr. !rice, )oug ord told @lobe and Mail city hall

reporter 2li&abeth 1hurch that >you cant teach loyalty.?

Mr. !rice first appeared in the office mere days after 0he 0oronto 8tarrevealed that the mayor had been asked to leave a military benefit gala by

1ouncillor !aul =inslie allegedly because he appeared intoxicated.

= few months before Mr. !rice became a public official, he was approached by

a 8tar reporter covering a football game being played by the high(school

team coached by Mr. ord. 0he reporter +uoted Mr. !rice as saying that he

had coached the mayor in high school, and ever since he has been described

in media reports as *ob ords former football coach turned aide.

However, four former dealers who spoke with 0he @lobe described Mr. !rice

as a participant in )oug ords hash business in the ;7ts like a folk tale,? he said.

olklore Bor loreC consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, #okes,

popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the

traditions of a culture, subculture, or group.

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

His call appeared to have been prompted by a brief interview 0he @lobe had

conducted that day, when a reporter asked a former associate about the *A

)rifters - a group that he said never existed. >7ts like a folk tale,? he said.

(( globe and mail

7D the reign of Eing =rthur, there lived in the county of 1ornwall, near the3and's 2nd of 2ngland, a wealthy farmer who had one only son called Jack. He

was brisk and of a ready lively wit, so that whatever he could not perform by

force and strength he completed by ingenious wit and policy. Dever was any

person heard of that could worst him, and he very often even baffled the

learned by his sharp and ready invention.

he sold magic seeds.


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round up the crew.

*A )rifters

evil government, evil taxes.

"""falstaff ian$$$ %% robin hood %%

(((((((((((((((

for fun this weekend, my computer and i will be doing a succession of

downloaders and uploaders

((((((((((((((((

8alvador Minuchin's family therapy or *.). 3aing's anti(psychiatry

((((((((((((((

a screen is inherently less beautiful and calming and adaptive to a human

compared to a tree. but a screen is a tool, it is full of human codes, it can giverise to our dreams, a place to make them, whereas a tree can only be a sign

in our dreams, or, if &en, a beacon that speaks to the totality of our peace at

a moment. """we adapted to look at trees$$$

everything i said above is stupid, because it treats a tree like a screen for

events. a tree can have very interesting events. but it's not about that. it's

cool though to use trees as screens everyone once in a while, a tree has a

good movie : ants crawling, weird lines, etc

((((((((((((((


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We still teach !lato in schools and uni for christakes. 7t takes a long time for

ideas to take hold of culture and set in.

... so it's interesting to think about how Marx, reud, Heidegger ... how their

ideas are 80733 taking hold of us, still becoming real, still transforming

society, and we cant see it yet """#ust like !lato would never have guessed hisideas are in practice today.$$$

1ontemporary 2uropean !hilosophy has revolutioni&ed the way in which

we think about ourselves. /ver the last two hundred years, such thinkers

as Martin Heidegger, 8igmund reud, Earl Marx, and Jean(!aul 8artre

have challenged all of our most cherished and traditional views about

what a person is and about what the world is. 0hey have introduced

powerful and compelling alternatives that have for the Frst time allowed

us to resolve some of our longest(standing philosophical debates and

have given us rich resources for solving the personal and social problems

that plague our daily lives. 0hese insights, however, are still only beginning

to transform our ways of thinking and acting, are still only beginning to

have a place in the shaping of our social institutions.

rom Hegel 7 have taken the idea that forms of experience inherently involve

standards for their own evaluation, and that experiences transform

themselves in light of these values.

0hroughout the book,

7 have tried to be guided by this notion of the inherent tension and

dynamism within the different forms of human experience, and 7 have

especially tried to connect it with a central notion that 7 take from

Merleau(!onty, namely, the way the body by its nature reaches beyond

itself. 7 have tried to unite these two thoughts in my description of what


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7 have called the >self(transcending? character of experience. rom Hegel

7 have also taken the focus on the forms of interpersonal and social life,

and the diagnosis of the central tensions and demands of these forms in

terms of the notion of interpersonal recognition B=nerkennungC. 7 haveendeavored to link this with Heideggers notion of Mitsein, that is, the way in

which we are inherently >with? others, rather than being fundamentally

>by ourselves.? =lso from Heidegger 7 have drawn my focus on the inherent

temporality within experience, and upon the irreducibility of the >moody?

character of our experience. 7 have tried to integrate these themes with

Merleau(!ontys focus on the intentionality of the body, and especially his

emphasis on the way in which we live out of the habitual patterns we have

developed for engaging with the world.

My work is also substantially informed by another side of 1ontemporary

2uropean !hilosophy that is most powerfully articulated in the works

of Earl Marx, 8igmund reud, and @illes )eleu&e and elix @uattari.

2ach of these Fgures has produced intricate and compelling analyses of

the primitive motors of experience, and each has emphasi&ed Bthough in

different waysC the bodily foundations of the developed meanings in our

lives. 7n many ways, it is the analyses of desire, politics, and knowledge

that these thinkers have produced that have most shaped my understanding

of the speciFcs of human reality. 7ndeed, my own emphasis on

mental illness Band its social and political contextC is primarily inspired

by these thinkers. 0hese thinkers, however, do not provide the primary

philosophical matrix for this work because of an orientation that they

share, and that differs from an orientation shared by Hegel, Heidegger,

and Merleau(!onty. Marx, reud, and )eleu&e and @uattari all develop

their analyses of the primitive motors of experience in such a fashion as

to undermine the claims to autonomy made on behalf of the more developed


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forms of human experience, whereas Hegel, Heidegger, and Merleau!onty,

while acknowledging the originariness of these primitive motors,

also acknowledge the integrity of the emergent, >higher? forms of meaning.

0here is a fundamental way, in other words, that the philosophies of

Marx, reud, and )eleu&e and @uattari, despite their profound insights

into the dynamic and developing character of experience, are ultimately

reductive in their understandings of the most deFnitive spheres of human

experience. 0herefore, while 7 have drawn substantially on the insights of

these thinkers in this book, 7 also intend my argument to be a defense of

the autonomy of the developed forms of human experienceGof the >self,?

of >truth,? and so onGand thus, in part, a challenge to what 7 see as thereductive tendency within this side of 1ontemporary 2uropean !hilosophy. 7

have also written this book with an eye to possible resonances with

a number of other prominent Fgures within the history of philosophy. 7n

particular, 7 have structured this work in response to Johann @ottlieb

ichtes undamental !rinciples of the 2ntire 8cience of Enowledge and

*en )escartess Meditations on irst !hilosophy. My division of the work

into three sectionsG>orm,? >8ubstance,? and >!rocess?Gis intended as

an allusion to ichtes three fundamental principles Bthe ego positing

itself, the ego opposing a not(self to itself, and the mutual limitation of

Fnite self and Fnite otherC. 7n place of ichtes self(positing ego, 7 propose the

interpretive, temporal body as the Frst principle and absolute

form of all meaning. My analysis of the way in which we exist as split

into ourselves and our dealings with other people, and as split within

ourselves in neurotic dissociation engages the domain of ichtes second

principle, the self s opposing of a not(self to itself, and identiFes that

with which we meaningfully contend in our lives, that is, the substance

of human experience. inally 7 offer the self(transformative practice of


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learning as the fundamental process of human experience, in place of

ichtes third principle of the mutual limitation of self and other as the

dynamic ground of development and reconciliation within experience.

7n a similar fashion, 7 have written chapters and 4 as a rough parallel to

)escartess Frst two meditations, in which he pioneered something like a

phenomenological method, albeit inade+uately. 0he substantial differences

between my position and )escartess demand that this study follow

a divergent path after chapter 4, but the subse+uent chapters are meant

as a continuing re#oinder to )escartes, offering in comparison to his

philosophy a new sense of the ego, a new sense of the body, and a new

sense

of rationality. 7n more subtle ways, 7 also intend the work to resonate

with various works of ancient philosophy. /ne could think of my attempt to

articulate the inherent dynamism within human life as a resurrection of

something like =ristotles notion of phusis, put to play,

however, not within the realm of ob#ective nature but within the realm

of human experienceI further, the section headings >orm,? >8ubstance,?

and >!rocess? are intended to allude to progressively richer senses of

=ristotles notion of ousia, here the human ousia. inally, my reference

to the >elements? of everyday life is meant in loose parallel to !roclus

8toiceiosis 0heologike, such that this work might be thought of as, perhaps,

a 8toiceiosis =nthropologike.

When we reect on ourselves, we typically start by recogni&ing ourselves as

discrete agents facing a world about which we must make

choices. 0he world is made up, it seems, of things with discrete identities

that are present to us, right here, right now. /n this familiar view, then,

reality is a kind of aggregate, a bunch of distinct, separately existing

things, one of whichGmeGfaces those others and must self(consciously

orchestrate her dealings with those things. 0hese last few sentences, it


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seems to me, sum up the very core of almost all of our thinking experience of

ourselves. 0hough +uite simple, they nonetheless express the

>theory? of reality with which we typically operate. 0he signiFcance of

these familiar views for our lives is immense. >=nd why notK? one might

ask, since, >after all, those sentences describe how things really are, so

they should be the foundation for everything we think.? 7ndeed, this

view seems so compelling as to be indubitable. 7t is, in fact, a standard

way to mock philosophers to claim that they do doubt these ideas, wondering

whether chairs exist, or whether they themselves really exist:

these claims, in other words, seem so obvious that one would have to be

a fool to entertain doubt about them.

Whether or not the philosophers should be mocked, it remains true

that this cartoon of philosophical activity does in an important way

describe the real work of philosophy. 7ndeed, it seems to me that the

history of philosophy in general, and twentieth(century thought in particular,

has taught us to be wary of the vision of the world described in

my Frst sentences. =s suggested above, the signiFcance of these views is

indeed immense, but not because they are true. *ather, their signiFcance

comes from the extent to which our lives are crippled by too readily

accepting this >theory? of things and of ourselves.

7n the twentieth century, opposition to these views has come from

many +uarters. 7n recent years, ecologists have done a great deal to show

us that our identities cannot be easily severed from the natural environments

in which we live. !sychologists, for one hundred years at least,

have investigated a wide range of experiences in which people do not

seem to be free agents with full possession of the power of choice.

8ociologists and anthropologists have shown how the way in which we see

the

world is largely reective of cultural pre#udices, so the identities of the


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ob#ects we encounter are not clearly separable from our own social identities.

=ll of these insights challenge the easy separation of sub#ect and

ob#ect upon which our familiar view is based.

!robably the single most important aspect of the criti+ue of this familiar view

is found in the recognition that our experience is always interpretive:

whatever perception we have of the world is shaped by our

efforts to organi&e and integrate all of the dimensions of our experience

into a coherent whole. How we go about this will be dictated by the level

of our education, by our expectations, and by our desires, and so the vision

we have will always be as much a reection of ourselves and our

pre#udices as it is a discovery of >how things really are.? 7n other words,

the very way that we see things reveals secrets about us: what we see

reveals what we are looking for, what we are interested in. 0his is as true

of our vision of things that we take to be outside us as it is of our vision of

ourselves.

ocusing on the interpretive dimension to all experience allows us to

shift away from the typical perspective we have upon ourselves on one

side and the world on the other. We can now turn to our experience of

the world and ask, >What do we reveal about ourselves through the way

we experienceK? or, >Who do we reveal ourselves to be by the way in

which we see ourselves and our worldK?

8hifting our focus to the interpretive dimension of experience opens

up for us a new Feld of in+uiry, a new ob#ect of study, namely, the Feld of

our interpretive acts, the Feld of those acts through which we reveal the

forms and limits of our powers of interpretation. 7nstead of accepting our

immediate view of ourselves as obviously being discrete agents facing a

world of present things about which we must make choices, we are now

led to Fnd our own identities to be a problem, a +uestion. 0he same


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holds true for the things of the world. We are led to ask what the principles

are behind the interpretive acts that give to us an integrated vision

of ourselves and our world, who or what the agency is that enacts those

interpretive principles, whether those principles are right, what conse+uences

this structure of interpretation has, and so on. We are left, in

short, with a task of discerning and evaluating the acts of interpretation

that make our experience appear the way it does.

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7t is as though the sound of a hunting horn reverberating everywhere

through its echo, made the tiniest leaf, the tiniest wisp of moss shudder in a

common movement and transformed the whole forest, filling it to its limits,

into a vibrating, sonorous world ( 2ugene Minkowski, prominent

phenomenologist, 'Lers une 1osmo logie', ;N.

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0he experience of

listening to music is well(described by Jean(!aul 8artre in his novel

3e Dause:

=t the moment, #a&& is playingI there is no melody, #ust notes, a

myriad of little +uiverings. 0hey dont know any rest, an inexible

order gives birth to them and destroys them, without even giving

them the chance to recover, to exist for themselves. 0hey run,

they rush, they strike me in passing with a sharp blow, and they

annihilate themselves. 7d really like to hold onto them, but 7


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know that if 7 managed to stop one of them, there would be nothing left

between my Fngers but a roguish, languid sound. 7 must

accept their death, indeed 7 must will it. Bp. N, my translationC

=s this example makes clear, listening to music is an experience built out

of the relations between and among the notes, and it is an active experience

in the sense that it re+uires a well(prepared and engaged listener. =s this

example makes clear, listening to music is an experience built out

of the relations between and among the notes, and it is an active experience

in the sense that it re+uires a well(prepared and engaged listener.

0he notes of a #a&& tune y past, and in so doing they carve out a space

that one can inhabit with ones imagination in concentrated attention

or with ones swinging body in dance. 9ut this musical reality cannot be

fro&en and graspedGit only exists in its temporal passing. = particular

note, so exciting or moving when heard at the climax of some passage in

the song, has none if its force if separated out and heard in isolation. 0he

other notes that contextuali&e the note we are now hearing are both past

and future, and these temporal determinations are not contingent features,

but are deFnitive formal features of the music, that is, the temporal

order is essential: to play the same notes in a different order would be to

play a different piece of music. Music, then, only exists for a being that

can >tell time,? so to speak. 0he music can only be heard by one who attends

to the music in the integrity of its ow, who hears the sense of the

music passed on from one note to the next. 0he listener must come to

inhabit the music, #oin with it in anticipating its further development,

and hear the notes that present themselves in the context of what has

already sounded. 8ometimes we cannot hear this integration and sense

within the sounds, when we hear styles of music with which we are not

familiar, and it can take a great deal of time and effort on our part.

0his power to comprehend an inherently temporal, varied, single experience


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we can call Bfollowing the practice of 7mmanuel Eant in his

1riti+ue of !ure *easonC, >synthesis,? meaning the ability to recogni&e

things in their togetherness. 0he particular synthetic power of maintaining as

deFnitive of the present that which is not in itself present Bi.e., in

our example, the past and future musicC, has traditionally been called

>imagination,? that is, the ability to entertain in consciousness that

which is not currently present. 8uch imaginative synthesis is the precondition,

the conditio sine +ua non, of our experience of temporally meaningful,

intrinsically varied unities. 0his means, in fact, that such imaginative

synthesis is the condition of our experience simpliciter, for all experiences

are temporal and intrinsically varied: all our experiences carry on something

like this melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ow whereby one moment seems

to grow out of the last and to melt into the next in a way

that >keeps the tune going,? so to speak, while developing it into a new

richness.

0ypically, when we think of imagination we think of fantasi&ing or

engaging in some kind of fanciful and self(conscious extrapolation beyond

what is real. 7n referring to imagination here, however, we must not

think simply of what we explicitly do when we daydream. *ather, the

imagining under consideration here is an activity we never do without.

0o feel in some situation that we have >arrived? is to experience that

moment in light of the context set up by what preceded it: the present is

here experienced in light of the no(longer(present. =gain, a sudden feeling of

fear or comfort in some setting is the experience of that present in

light of what is not(yet(present, what threatens. We can also imagine

countless examples of richer ways in which our daily experience evinces

a harmonic and rhythmic ow that allows the experience of a certain

melodic unity, a certain sense. = conversation with a colleague over dinner,

the passing of the workday, the recognition of my friends familiar


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footsteps on the stairs, the ability to drive a carGsteer, accelerate, shift

gears, turn off the windshield wipers, watch the road, read the signs, listen

to the radio, smoke, talk with my passenger, stop and go with the trafFc

lightGthese are so many synthetic experiences, experiences dependent onour power of imagination, integrated experiences of a uniFed sense

being manifested through a complex and temporally varied diversity.

0hat power we are familiar with in our self(conscious daydreaming is

rather a luxurious use of this most basic power we have to hold togetherGto

synthesi&eGwhat is present with what is not present, the

power that underlies all of our experience. =s experiencers, then, we

simply are synthetic processes of imaginative interpretation.

Just as we can be misled by the term imagination, so can we be similarly

misled by the description of our experience as interpretive or synthetic.

0ypically, we think of interpretation as an activity we perform

upon an already ac+uired ob#ect, and synthesis, similarly might typically

suggest binding together two pieces that are already present. 0his typical

model of an action performed upon an already ac+uired material is not,

however, the proper model for understanding the interpretive character

of experience. 2xperience is not a two(stage process in which we Frst get

data and then construct an interpretation. /n the contrary, it is only as

already shaped by our interpretive orientation that our experience ever

begins. 7n other words, the way we immediately notice the new moments

of our experience is always in terms of the meaningful contexts we have

already been developing.

/b#ects are not indifferent and alien,

and they do not passively receive our explicit choices. 0hey draw us

forward like magnets, without our self(conscious control.


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1ontrary to our traditional assumptions, then, this is the form that

experience typically takes: we are imaginative, interpretive, synthetic

sub#ects for whom ob#ects are meaningful calls to action that direct our

life without our self(conscious intervention. /b#ects as they Fgure within

our experience are not discrete and alien, but, like notes in a melody,

they are embedded in contexts with other ob#ects with which they mutually

interpenetrate, and they already penetrate and impinge upon us. We,

in turn, Fnd ourselves already committed to various situations such that

we Fnd our choices made for us, rather than being self(contained

choosers who stand aloof from things.

Dotice that this description, by showing that we are not the alienated,

autonomous choosers we typically take ourselves to be, also shows

that our familiar assumption that we can easily know ourselves through

simple introspection is mistaken. We cannot immediately know ourselves

through simple introspection, because the view that introspection

gives is the very view we have #ust critici&ed. 8elf(knowledge, that is,

does not come through the easy reection upon ourselves that we typically

rely upon, but, on the contrary, will only come through a study of

the determinate forms of interpretive synthesis that can be discerned

within the character of ob#ective calls to action B>ob#ective? in the sense

of, >pertaining to the nature of the ob#ect?C: the terms in which we experience

the ob#ect as calling upon us reect the values and pro#ects

through which we experience the world. /ur preliminary results have

shown that such a study of the implicit signiFcance of the forms of our

ob#ects, by revealing the temporal, synthetic character of experience,

will be a criti+ue of the familiar view of the self as immediately present to

itself as a chooser amid present, discrete ob#ects. """Warhol, going to choose

underwear reveals more$$$$


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/ur talk of interpretation could be recast to say that it is our pre#udices that

are reected in the way we experience the world. /ur study so

far was itself already designed to challenge some of our most basic

pre#udices. !erhaps the general pre#udice that most informs our experience,

and of which the various pre#udices we studied are species, could be

called the pre#udice of >presence.? We typically treat reality as if the

truth of things is in their immediate presence, and as if it is by being

7nterpretation Oimmediately present to something that we get its truth. 0hus

we take

ourselves to be able to be immediately present to ourselves through

introspection, we take things to be present to us as ob#ects confronting our

perception, we trust the >reporter? who was >present? at the event over

the >interpreter? who appraises the event by evidence collected by others,

we treat things as if their reality is present in them and in them

alone, and so on. /ur study of the synthetic, temporal, interpretive form

of experience has already shown us how this privileging of presence is a

signiFcant misrepresentation, inasmuch as the sub#ect is not immediately

present to introspection, neither the ob#ect nor the sub#ect holds its

identity simply present within itself alone, and all experience is inherently

mediated by interpretation and time. /ur description of the basic form that

experience takes has begun to

show us the inade+uacies of the pre#udice in favor of presence, and this

criti+ue can be developed further. *ather than recogni&ing presence as

the ultimate ground of reality, the full(edged description of experienceG

the philosophical approach called >phenomenology?Gwould show negativity,

difference, deferral, absence, distance, ambiguity, duplicity, and concealment

to be the primary terms in which the motor and substance of our world is

to be articulated rather than simply the positivity, self(sameness, immediacy,

presence, proximity,clarity, univocity, and obviousness that our pre#udice

insists on. *ather than looking to some supposedly independent ob#ect in


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order to Fnd out its intrinsic sense, phenomenology will consider how it

is that the ob#ects of our experience are meaningful only in light of their

contextuali&ation within the structures of memory and expectation that

deFne a particular perspective. We can begin to see this inversion oftraditional values if we look once more at the experience of listening to a

melody. """chopped and screwed music$$$

0his is the ama&ing fact of experience, of

>being(there? B>)asein?C, as Martin Heidegger says: we are aware of, we

are affected by, others, and we retain our identity by being absorbed in the

identities of our surroundings. =s we have seen, then, awareness, cognition,

or knowledge is of the essence of embodiment, for knowledge #ust is this

recogni&ingGthis measuring up toGthe determinacyGthe demandsGof

what is other

=s we have seen, then, awareness, cognition,

or knowledge is of the essence of embodiment, for knowledge #ust is this

recogni&ingGthis measuring up toGthe determinacyGthe demandsGof

what is other.

We will see later that the values of aesthetic, moral, and intellectual

life are #ust the more sophisticated developments of this fundamental

capacity, this fundamental >7 can?: >7 can care about what others care

about.? 0o interpret is to see something assomething, to bodily engage with

something in terms of some accessible determinacy, and to see something

not #ust idiosyncratically but in its universal signiFcanceGthe issue behind

truthGis to see it as it is open to another perspective that 7, or


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another body like me, can adopt. 0he demands for ob#ectivity and

universality that are the core of our moral, artistic, and scientiFc values are

#ust the demands to respond to things as they can matter to others and

not #ust as they happen to matter to me according to my singular whims.

0he ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness are the ideals to which we can

aspire because of our fundamental bodily capacity to care. 0hese ideals

are implicit in the very notion of care, and our artistic, moral, and intellectual

life is #ust the explicit taking up of these values to which we can

respond by virtue of being sensitive. 9y virtue of being the activity of

making contact, the body is the activity of sub#ecting itself to an other to

which it must answer, and the speciFc ob#ects we encounter in ourengagement with the >absolute? values of truth, beauty, and goodness are

simply the revelation of way in which we as sophisticated, habituated

bodies have come to develop our capacity to encounter the inherent

richness of the determinateness >other.?

=ll of these signiFcances that populate my consciousness are +uite

speciFc, which means that at any time there are only certain particular

determinations with which 7 am explicitly engaged. 0his is precisely

what it means to say that 7 am located, namely, that 7 am here and not

there, that this and not that is what 7 am experiencing. 0o be an experiencer,

to be a bodyGa bodily sub#ect(ob#ectGis always to be determinate, speciFc,

particular. 0his inherent speciFcity, this locatedness, is

well(articulated in such novels as Plysses by James Joyce or 0he 8ound

and the ury by William aulkner, which build their narrative from a

description of the determinate ow of experience as it is lived by the

experiencing sub#ect. 7n these novels, the narrative is not told from the

perspective of some all(seeing observer, but is articulated as the multiplicity

of local, personally meaningful engagements that constitute the


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ongoing development of experience. 7ndeed, 7 can never be a >consciousness

in general,? as if 7 were an omniscient narrator of my own world, but

7 am always a speciFc assemblage of determinate engagements that are

presently underway. =nd, while it is true, as we saw at the end of chapter

, that 7 can be engaged with my world in terms of its universal signiF(

cance Bi.e., its signiFcance for the other points of view that a person

could adopt but that 7 am not in fact adoptingC, 7 can never vacate the

particularity of my location. 7n other words, the very body that lets me

be with others also demands that 7 always be this uni+ue and speciFc

one, this one from whom other possible stances are actually excluded.

"""facebook is our Pllysses$$$"""facebook is my Pllysses$$$.

1hapter 5, >Deurosis,? brings together the different materials from

the earlier chaptersGinterpretation, embodiment, memory, mood, and

other peopleGto show how the tensions, demands, powers, and needs of

the bodily sub#ect are lived as a personality. 7n particular, this chapter

focuses on the disparity between the ideal of >normalcy? that our social

relations pro#ect, and the dissociative, compulsive, neurotic character

into which a personality naturally develops. 1hapter 5 ends with what is

in many ways the >point? or the climax of the book, in a discussion of

the bodily roots of the developed forms of human meaningful experience,

and why these are naturally neurotic situations.

"""and his comment about the fundamentally moody character of all life$$$

Mood


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seem electric, and charged with possibility. When 7 feel amorous, the

world seems enchanted, precious, and welcoming. 7n each case, to

experience the moodGto be >in? the moodGis to have ob#ects in a certain

way. 0he mood is how the world gathers itself up and shows itself to me.

0o experience the world as having a certain avor Band 7 think it is

noteworthy that vocabularies of taste and touch tend to be among our

richest resources when we want to describe how things feel to us in different

moodsC, is to have certain paths of action more or less ready.

Moods open certain paths and close others, or, better, they clear certain

paths and obscure others. 7n anger, it is hard to see how the world can be

trusted, or how it can be something with which one can cooperate, or

even that one can tolerate. 7n sadness, it is hard to see how various tasks

can be worth doing. 7n love, it is hard to see how this other person could

ever be someone of whom to be critical. 7n tran+uillity, it is hard to see

how the world could ever warrant an unbalanced response. Moods are

the way in which whole paths of action are closer or farther from us, not

in a geometrically measurable sense, but in a >felt? sense, that is, in the

sense of being real possibilities for our existence. 7n moods it is not

impossible to go down the obscure routes, #ust as it is not impossible to be a

musician with only three Fngers, to make a Fst in a pink room, or to keep

writing even when one needs to sleep, but the general tone of things directs

us elsewhere. 7t is not impossible to take the obscure routes, but

everything in the world speaks against it, and it re+uires work, and perhaps

practice, to be able to follow these paths. 7ndeed, actually following

these difFcult paths may result in a change of mood, when opening the

unexpected dimensions of the situation results in the situation feeling

different. Moods open up the situation as a wholeGgive a avor to the

worldGand offer paths for uncoveringGadvancing intoGthe more precise

determinations and articulations that are the things within this


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world.

We often try also to overpower other people. We order them around.

We yell at them. We try to manipulate them by playing on their sympathy or

fear. We humiliate them. 7t is interesting that we typically do not

take up these latter strategies in our efforts to overpower nonhuman

things.

7n

our different moods, we are, in a basic way, like different selves.

8uch dissociation is our original mode of being in a world, and is not

a falling away from a prior state of self(unity. 7t is original, in that it is the

condition from which we start, and it is >originary,? in that this condition is

what makes available to us a determinate contact with the world:

it is our creative >reach,? our initial capacity for self(transcendence. 7t is

as thus dissociated, as >moody,? that we enact any embodied contact, any

disporting with signiFcance. /ur moods are our ways into meaning, into

developing a meaningful situation

0he childs situation is characteri&ed by Fnding himself cast into a

universe which he has not helped to establish, which has been

fashioned without him, and which appears to him as an absolute

to which he can only submit. 7n his eyes, human inventions,

words, customs and values are given facts, as inevitable as the sky

and the trees. . . . 0he real world is that of the adults where one is

allowed only to respect and obey. Bp. 5C

0he childs contact with the world is fundamentally a demand to conform


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to the authority of its already established ways, its independent reality.

0his original familial situation of being challenged to establish

>proper? identities for ourselves and others is described by @illes )eleu&e

and lix @uattari in =nti(/edipus:

0he inscription performed by the family follows the pattern of its

triangle, by distinguishing what belongs to the family from what

O< Human 2xperiencedoes not. 7t also cuts inwardly, along the lines of

differentiation

that form global persons: theres daddy, theres mommy, there you

are, and then theres your sister. 1ut into the ow of milk here, its

your brothers turn, dont take a crap there, cut into the stream of

shit over there. *etention is the primary function of the family: it is

a matter of learning what elements of desiring(production the family is going

to re#ect, what it is going to retain. . . . 0he child feels

the task re+uired of him. 9ut what is to be put into the triangle,

how are the selections to be madeK 0he fathers nose or the

mothers earGwill that do, can that be retained, will that constitute

a good /edipal incisionK =nd the bicycle hornK What is part of the

familyK Bp. 45C

0he stoic is the person who has made a virtue out of renouncing the

immediacy of contact, of vulnerability, and has come to deFne herself as a

locus of self(control and choice that holds itself in reserve from embodiment

and living engagement. 0he stoic has sealed herself off from

others with a defensive wall of silence and refusal. 0his defensive sealing

up of oneselfGthis withdrawal from others, from emotion, and from

embodimentGis #ust the extreme end of the ideal of normalcy, for the

values of stoicism and the values of normalcy are at root the same.


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Walking is one of our most basic ways of expressing or enacting our

posture as independent agents. We are not born walking, but must learn

how to control and coordinate our bodies in separation from, but in

cooperation with, the larger environment. """"u forget that, in the city, out all

day ... whitman crawling around on the floor ... and in a few years, running to

the shipyards ... or the supermarket to meet ginsberg or me $$$

3ike sleeping, eating draws attention to the bodys inherent vulnerability, its

dependency upon its environment for its continued existence.

2ating is a more active practice than sleeping, inasmuch as in eating the

successful response to this >weakness? of the body is not reali&ed

involuntarily, but re+uires the agency of foraging, chewing, swallowing, and

so

on: eating does not #ust >come over us? as does sleep. 2ating re+uires a

greater effort, and also a more determinate interaction with the surrounding

environment than does sleep. !sychoanalysis has drawn attention to the

complicated issues of dependency and trust that are

associated with the childs early experiences of breast(feeding, and we

can see how such issues are elaborated in many of the typical patterns of

continuing family life.

Meals are often charged sites for speciFcally familial interactions,

whether at the breakfast table or at the 0hanksgiving dinner. 7n human

cultures generally, and especially in modern Western family life, eating is

a heavily organi&ed and rituali&ed process.

"""eating as vulnerablility$$$


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0he dinner table can thus be a primary site for the production or reproduction

of family order. =s a ritual of family membership, eating dinner becomes the

space in which one is deFned as doing well or poorly as

a family member, and, inasmuch as our familial involvements are our

primary initiation into the human, intersub#ective sphere, eating can

become the privileged space for determining whether one is doing well

or poorly as a person. 2ating, thus, can take on the meaning of being the,

or at least a, primary mode of intersub#ective action. 3et us consider what

eating can mean, that is, how it can be an interpretation, a memorial

gesture, and a transformative human action, and how, therefore, it can

assume a neurotic shape. """ D/ M/*2 0LQQ 7nventive talkingQQQ 7 need to

learn to be challenged and engaged with your presence$$$

0hese neurotic compulsions cannot be removed. 0hey are the very

schemata for meaning, the developed forms by which we sense. 9ut,

though they cannot be removed, these schemata, like all bodily phenomena,

are self(transcending. /ur neuroses Fgure our contact, but they

Fgure it in a way that always invites transformation and development.

0he >cure? for neurosis is not the removal of these Fgurings, but the

development of the potentials implied within the contact these bodily

comportments offer us. 7t is this development that we should understand

by the term therapy.

9ecause >being neurotic? does not mark out the character of a speciFc set of

people, but characteri&es, rather, the essential human condition, we cannot

think of >therapy? as a special practice that is geared

only to the abnormal demands of select individuals.


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((((((((((((((((((((((((

((((

modulate me "music$

((((((((((((((((((

there's simply less social capital in words, esp philosophy .... i look at my art

school friends' walls: visual images .... an economy of expression

((((((((((((((((((

a crippled sense of reality

((((((((((((((((

those pictures of me in the backyard by the pool, wearing tommy hilfiger.

hate knowing i was there, emmeshed in that blandness

but in those same pictures also a microscope nearby...

(((((((((((((((((((((

for me, part of the 'dirtyness' or 'uncouthness' of sex (( the bareness of your

desires ((( holding someone else down with your body and making them feel

you, leting them feel you, wanting them to feel you, they feel you. u feel

them, all these same steps too.

((((((((((((((((((

unmoney


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rob ford satire

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