Re: violence/therapy/DG PRT 2

27 JUNE 97

Tom Maria Blancato wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 24 Jun 1997, andrew favell wrote:
> 
> > So ... I don't get what you're saying then. It appears that on the one hand
> > you disagree w/ the utility of contracts and then go on to agree w/ the
> > utility of contracts provided of course that you can extend the 'original
> > contract' backwards in time, like some original causative factor. To me the
> > ideas of an original 'failed contract' doesn't matter.
> 
> This excess of the contract is "copresent" or co-constitutive or
> something. It's another space, a broader space, a shared history. It is a
> bit more mysterious, mysterious like love, sorry to say. At least, it's
> going to have to be, because I have to go do stuff all day and won't have
> time to carry through with this response. But it's a space of history, of
> shared history, and of a certain transcendence: in that the people in
> love, or in friendship, etc., occupy this space. Yes, transcendence. You
> take transcendence always and only as a space of a "coup" and of
> violence. Since I can think violence more directly, I can admit that
> there is transcencence (any sort of "trans" plus a "cendence"), there are
> all sorts of them, though I prefer a sense of *enscendence* which
> includes a possibility of a "trans" but generally prefers an "in and
> through" tendency, which gets "there" by being "here" more, more
> carefully, with more fruition, etc. Anyhow, if you grasp this space, then
> you may see what I'm talking about. I call this space "rainforest", for
> want of a better term. It is the opposit of "abyss", and its experiential
> correlates are not "anxiety" but rather a certain being overwhelmed by
> multiplicity, by fecund vitality, etc. It is an alternative abyss which
> bears within itself the abyssal. It is as "inaccessible" as abyss, not
> for its *lack*, but for its being replete, overwhelming, etc.
> 
> The ideas of
> > contracts assists me in framing the situation in terms of expectations
> > (explicit or otherwise) of both parties, such as for the man (eg) that he
> > assumes/expects that his wife is always going to have dinner ready for him,
> > or that she will always be ready to have sex w/ him whenever *he* wants.
> > These are expectations that can be discussed in terms of whether this is a
> > contract that she (a) is aware of and (b) has consented to, and (c) if she
> > has the right to not consent and to renegotiate.
> 
> Right. But what if the whole *paradigm* of a given expectation is
> problematic? Isn't that more often what the problem is? Again, the
> opening to the metaparadigmatic takes us out of paradigm, out of
> contract, per se, but not in the manner of simple transcendence, going
> beyond, etc., *since the cendence will have in part been based on a given
> contract*, but rather in enscendence: for *what* is there the contract in
> the first place? It's not a simple matter of priority, though.
> 
> >
> > The ideas of objectivity have I hope been dispensed with. As for 'imposing'
> > my definition of contract on persons--no I don't think I 'impose' it, but
> > *offer* it as a possible point of reference for conversation, as in whether
> > or not it fits with their thinking and whether it serves any use for them. I
> > would be reluctant to impose something deliberately without negotiation,
> > when what I am talking of here and in session is the idea of negotiation and
> > the construction of political spaces that are 'supportive' of
> > (re)negotiating realities and contracts.
> 
> Well, when I say "impose", I don't mean violent imposition, but yes, you
> are coming from a certain framework and stressing that, and that
> prefigures directions from the start. It is a kind of *preferable*
> prefiguring: "If I'm going to prefigure anything, given how violent
> prefigurig has shown itself to be (though you don't say violence per se,
> yet), I'd rather prefigure a kind of negotiational space that starts with
> their expectations and views, rather than simply assuming things and
> rushing ahead, imposing values, and what not." Which can be fine, but the
> whole "operation" has some problems with it, that I'm trying to make
> clear. IMO.
> >
> > I think that you know that I am in agreement with this and it is this from
> > which I speak--the impersonal (your 'prepersonal) aspect of breach that is a
> > violation, a crossing of a border or threshold, sensory or contractual.
> > Hence a violent thunderstorm and a violent human act both refer to the
> > notions of something being crossed, which w/ the storm may be simply the
> > sensory thresholds, but w/ the human act may be sensory as well as
> > socio-political (for want of a better phrase).
> 
> Nope, I'd rather say a powerful and destructive thunderstorm, but not, in
> the main, a violent one. And I think in the idea of "crossing
> thresholds", sensory threshholds, you're leaving ou too much, and
> particularly, the business of *rupture*, which is more than simply a
> crossing of thresholds. It's a *ripping of what which makes any threshold
> possible*. It's not that violence refers only to rippings per se, though
> there are rippings even simpliy when pain is delivered at a high level.
> Though *what* is ripped is another matter. Trust, perhaps, for example,
> or intimate sharing, deeper knowledge of each other, etc.
> 
> >
> >  A hit in the face may be suffered immediately, and
> > >even bear no lasting damage or strong pain, yet the rupture to the
> > >contract -- may one say "trust" here? -- is what constitutes the site of
> > >the real damage.
> >
> > Trust arises from the idea of a contract in place and in terms of that which
> > the contract serves, an arrangement of political spaces. And again Tom, I
> > don't think that we are actually divergent in this poin
> 
> Well, I think trust arises from trust. I don't think it arises from the
> idea of the contract. You're shifting dependency onto the ordered-ness of
> the contract as a plan for the future, but then a certain "standing in
> history and making history together", its enscendence, etc., plays a role
> and goes into to constituting the contract as such. But at that point,
> the language of "contract" simply doesn't say enough, I think.
>
well, my friends, this whole business with "conracts/negotiations is not
as arbitrary as Tom seems to suggest, but essential, quite essential for
what's going on on this list. in fact it's a matter of putting
rhizomatics as an allegedly new model of communication to a practical
test. unfortunately, however hard you try, the oedipal scenario of
appropriation/submission retains the upper hand. consider the trouble
people have with my interventions. Liano was the first to point out that
i impose myself on him, that i impute smth to his speech which isn't
there, attribute intentions which are not his. okay, i agree and
apologize. BUT the problem is that if rhizome was actually that which it
is believed to be , i.e. unrestricted connectivity, neither Liano nor of
late Andrew SHOULD not have had any problems with relating to my posts,
however drastic/violent a misreading those might happen to be.
Ironically, if rhizome was actually this hyperconnection, then it would
have been an effective means of submission to the reality principle:
your expectations (re: e.g. that i am a D/Gean believer) would have been
thwarted, ergo: you would have been disappointed, and yet brave enough
to cope with it, to bear it (who is this vadim, anyway, to dwell a bit
more on his clumsy scribllings? ). the pleasure of recognizing another
kindred spirit would have been rectified by the principle of reality:
the patently Freudian procedure,eh? - on the other hand, if your
expectations were not thwarted, then the principle of pleasure would
have triumphed. that 'd be fine, were it not for the implied forgetting
of derrida's attack on the PP as the the principle of the Pere/Papa.
meaning that either you, my friends, are not sufficiently rhizomatic
(sigh), or else, more likely, that rhizome/ schiz.analysis is STILL
Freudian, all too fruedian (a long succesiaon of sighhs). 
little hans