The Shadows of Totalization, Part XVI
The blessing and damnation of this blog: to stumble through, wander around in, explore, but also rush forward in stone-headed idiocy over the ANDs we encounter: of “la gaya” AND “la scienza”, (or is it “le scienza”?) of “Enlightenment” AND “Underground”, of “consciousness” AND “unconsciousness.”
This last item, “consciousness” AND “unconscious”: we are not alone in either stumbling and bumbling around INSIDE either term, OR rushing headlong like fools through their AND—we have a great deal of company. My opinion is we have for company all of our contemporaries and most of our recently-departed benefactors, dating back to the time of Freud.
This question remains: after the discovery of the unconscious, is there philosophy?
Can there be a philosophy which utilizes, acknowledges, and affirms the unconscious—not a philosophy of the unconscious, but an unconscious philosophy? “Unconscious philosophy”—is this nutty or not? The valiant attempts to address the question are often treated as dead letter… Why? Is it because that’s the best option, the only option, or because the question is too threatening to too many people, too many interests?
A philosophy which proceeds forward as if it had no requirement towards the unconscious suffers a self-inflicted amputation, a truncation. It no longer deals with mind, thought—it isn’t philosophy, or maybe it is “technical” philosophy, assuming there is such a thing. On the other hand, philosophies which try to draw upon the unconscious, or even try to draw upon what we know (consciously) about the unconscious, relinquish too many of the tools of critique, the power of critique—and this also is a severe self-inflicted injury to philosophy. (Rather than an amputation, perhaps this can be likened to an ingestion of poison.)
This last item, “consciousness” AND “unconscious”: we are not alone in either stumbling and bumbling around INSIDE either term, OR rushing headlong like fools through their AND—we have a great deal of company. My opinion is we have for company all of our contemporaries and most of our recently-departed benefactors, dating back to the time of Freud.
This question remains: after the discovery of the unconscious, is there philosophy?
Can there be a philosophy which utilizes, acknowledges, and affirms the unconscious—not a philosophy of the unconscious, but an unconscious philosophy? “Unconscious philosophy”—is this nutty or not? The valiant attempts to address the question are often treated as dead letter… Why? Is it because that’s the best option, the only option, or because the question is too threatening to too many people, too many interests?
A philosophy which proceeds forward as if it had no requirement towards the unconscious suffers a self-inflicted amputation, a truncation. It no longer deals with mind, thought—it isn’t philosophy, or maybe it is “technical” philosophy, assuming there is such a thing. On the other hand, philosophies which try to draw upon the unconscious, or even try to draw upon what we know (consciously) about the unconscious, relinquish too many of the tools of critique, the power of critique—and this also is a severe self-inflicted injury to philosophy. (Rather than an amputation, perhaps this can be likened to an ingestion of poison.)
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 2:01 PM
3 Comments:
Hi Yusef,
That's indeed a very interesting concept creation "Unconscious Philosophy". It is certainly not "nutty"!
I don't have much time the next couple of days, but would like to think about how to develop this line of thinking.
Doesn't this lead to a re-thinking of the whole category of "the unconscious"? It is certainly about time after a century of the Freudian hegemony.
It would be very helpful to transcend the conscious-unconscious dualism that long ago left the hospital, moved into the clinic, later entered the public domain, and sank into ordinary language making everybody speak Freudanese.
Orla
"It would be very helpful to transcend the conscious-unconscious dualism"
Do you ever get bored with repeating this over and over? Yes, it would be very helpful, but how?
I think the awareness of dualisms is useful, and I believe it moves the discussion some small distance, but I begin to despair when this small distance of movement becomes an even more severe barrier to any further movement.
The awareness of dualism gets tied up in the knots of an incessesant insistence--an anti-dualistic dualism. And there it deadends, forevermore. At this stage, Orla, you've got an anti-dualistic dualism, a reterritorialization, a severe,unwavering, deadened one.
that long ago left the hospital, moved into the clinic, later entered the public domain, and sank into ordinary language making everybody speak Freudanese.
Speaking Deleuzanese, that is.
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