Re: Oedipus & Generationality

Dear Chris,
I love the rigour which posting stuff here demands. I'm such a slob. I have
to rethink my little indulgences. Does the world of good. Which brings me to:

>But in way what else is philosophy for? That's the hubris of it. de Sade
was a good logician?

I gotta say, I think it's primarily a wank. Don't get me wrong. I love a
good spurt. And I have produced sensations of virtue and righteousness in
myself through philosophical wanking. But I think it would be hubris to see
to as anything more.

>I just think it might be better to experiment with BwOs (and BwOs are
>experiments, not laws) in another way. O. needs to be a subject too. O.
>needs some Oedipus, some State, some striation, regulation, educattion,
>conscientous eternalised indebting. Does't mean we have to overdo it
>though, turn into Mr Judge, your honor, completely. If this is proFreudian
>and anti-antiOedipal, well .....

These are crucial issues. Its the litre of milk again. In following lines
of flight, trying to do things a little differently from what I've been
trained to do I have found it at times all too easy cowardly to implode.
The scariest thing about jail is how easy it is to settle into the routine.
A roof over your head. In seeking to avoid institutionalisation, it is very
easy to find succour in other institutionalisations. I don't think messrs
d&g were suggesting we should all fly straight into the sun.

>To unleesh I would say, well, I'd like to hear about child lib. Is it
>pateralistic/materalistic? Does it speak for the child? This is troubling. 

It's been years since I looked at it. I only started on this as an example
of something that I thought was a bit more fun than the old feminist tennis
match. A good starting point is Paedophilia - The Radical Case by Tom
O'Carroll (1980). I found it in the UTS library, so it must be pretty easy
to get a hold of. It contains a wide variety of sources and references
including detailed run-downs of the rise and fall of the groups involved,
reports from people who had had childhood sexual experiences  with adults
when they were children, manifestoes from the children's liberation
organizations, results of studies conducted in Holland with participants in
paedophilic relationships, writings of paedophiles, newspaper articles and
a whole bunch of other stuff. I seem to remember a bit of a paternalistic
tone, but it would be hard to imagine it otherwise. Although there was a
slant on learning/unlearning through contact with kids.
 
>Like Foucault said: death to the sex king! And I think Jung, if not Freud,
>would have agreed with him - hence the famous split?
>Big lynching - castration, anaphansis, disempowerment, death. Big. But
>that't not your querie. Obviously Oedipus-as-we-know-him is
>determined/codetermined by the mode of production, the history of the
>oikos, (pop)psychology, the media. I don't think the taboo is ineluctable,
>just old, and very very deadly. 

I gotta say I love reading your stuff.

>And its not clear that decoding taboos produces happiness. What we have is
>a lot of evidence for the untold sufferings of abuse survivours.
>
>It would be idiotic to say, well pappa Freud is a fascist and wrong. I'm
>gonna actualise a transgressive two-part deterritorialisation despite his
>warnings, now, wouldn't it.

Yes?

>I'm very troubled by this. it really takes us to the real question Re:
>Antioedipality - no law, no castration, no privatisation of the subject,
>no ego, no taboos.
>If the response to this line is any indication, then the answer is
>obvious: you can't. Probably should not. By which I mean it is clearly
>wrong to question the taboos of one's own soc., and so the question has to
>be shunted onto anthropology. Whereas it is clearly right to advance the
>notion that are taboos would be best for everybody.

But it's too easy and too sad to just turn away from it. Some of the scorn
in the recent feminism thread directed towards the notion that it was
possible to take a few scary faltering steps outside into a bit of clean
air, a bit of different hygiene, made me so sad. If we can think no law no
castration no subject no ego etc doesn't mean we just go abracadabra and
it's gone, but I'm a big enough self-deluded fuckwit to believe that these
thoughts are actual events/actions that do stuff in the world. And I just
love the fact that that's a complete contradiction of my previous line
about wankery. Or is it?

>> The big question is. What is a child?
>
>Sorry, that one's too big for me. Do you mean:
>1/ Biologically?
>2/ Psychologically?
>3/ In postmodern media discourse?
>4/ Legally?
>5/ Historically?
>6/ Teleologically?
>7/ As a kind of becoming?
>Or all (or none) of the above?

All. And.

Ethically. What is innocence. What is consent. Playground politics.
Protection from themselves. (See Fluxis on Chocolate Ice-cream). If mummy
doesn't let daddy in and baby goes psychotic does that mean that the
closest thing we ever get to natural is a type of pre-given psychosis that
we aren't released from. (Gradient, Anybody).

Stuart

>- Chris
>
>
Life is Full and Rich and Sweet and Beautiful