tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post117975424634949632..comments2023-09-29T02:49:02.989-07:00Comments on An Emphatic Umph: Nothing is SubjectiveDaniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-87611391401354317562012-06-05T06:24:00.695-07:002012-06-05T06:24:00.695-07:00I keep coming back to this panopticon Flesh dialec...I keep coming back to this panopticon Flesh dialectic, isn’t it such an odd conception of Subjectivity.<br /><br />What is the panopticon that "is not matter, (but is) the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body"?<br /><br />Is it some weird idea of self-control, or something else?<br /><br />How is such a thing possible?<br /><br />How is such a thing as imposable as a Cogito?<br /><br />How does it fall apart?<br /><br />How does this conception betray both Foucault and Merolow-Ponty?<br /><br />What does this do to related terms?<br /><br />Is this all to deterministic and calculated?dustygravelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01877215902611486889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-4744605791904069622012-06-05T04:25:47.859-07:002012-06-05T04:25:47.859-07:00I really like that! "Affect is the ahuman wit...I really like that! "Affect is the ahuman within the human" for D&G as well as for SK, I'm going to remember that. <br /><br />What does it mean that SK doesn't see the relationship between the human and the ahuman as chiasmus? <br /><br />Also: if the subject is always predated by experience, then way do so many of these guys oppose it as, well, some kind of essentialism?<br /><br />And in my above comment when I contrasted the perspectival as point-of-view with the subject as a study, I was trying to make some room between the two terms in order to form a new concept for the discussion. It's an experiment; what if Cartesian subjectivity could be conceived as a study, study being one of the definitions of subject. This would be yet another relationship between the subject and perspective. I think there for I exist, constitutes a perspective or study, that we call subjectivity, but perspective and study are not the same here, their two different modes, maybe the perspective is doubt in this case and the study, or topic is thought.<br /><br />I don't know, I'm just be ezzing.<br />Not tryin' to waste time, but just trying to cause friction between these ideas. Get some energy out of them. I guess what I'm trying to do is find a destination between the subjective and the perspectival that doesn't assume that the subjective is solipsistic, a 3ed option that would make subjectivity distinct from both the perspectival and the solipsistic. But you know, I think you did that when you said, something like, the subjective is the untouched core, the remainder or residue of the (ahuman) affect, I think that makes sense. But also I'm trying to develop a style that holds terms lightly enough to run through these different thinkers without conflating them, and without privileging any of the definitions the terms might have, while at the same time revealing the different definitions, and producing something new, just an experiment. I want the Subject to shift with the thinker, without collapsing either of them. It’s like I said earlier can the subject be both the flash and the panopticon, and what is the subject that can only be one or the other? That’s the alterity of each definition, opposing signifieds that collapse into each other and then separate again. Ones again, I think you answered this question, when you said that the subject can leap like SK and dancing like D&G.dustygravelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01877215902611486889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-47817246280976873362012-06-03T12:26:30.877-07:002012-06-03T12:26:30.877-07:00Ah, yes, now I get your question, sorry: Is there ...Ah, yes, now I get your question, sorry: Is there a subject that predates experience? I am saying no — we are how we go, from the get go. We are little engines, as D&G say, taking in this and that and playing back this and that. This way of taking in and playing back IS who we are. There is no self that is not part of this process, constituted in and through this process.<br /><br />I think, for SK, he is interested in the way the subject partakes of both the human (the social) and the ahuman — or, in his terms, the finite and the infinite. As D&G say, affect is the ahuman within the human. I think this is so for Sk, too, although he does not see the relationship between the two as either a chiasmus or a fold. The lines or harder for SK — leaps and bounds, not dancing and stuttering and sliding.Daniel Coffeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-44464781252886968892012-06-01T01:46:57.912-07:002012-06-01T01:46:57.912-07:00No no, that’s right on. What I mean is, when readi...No no, that’s right on. What I mean is, when reading someone who has this "trans personal" or ahumen idea of the subject, like Merolow-Ponty, do you contrast that Subjective to the perspectival or do you conflate them? <br /><br />I think what you said about Kierkegaard’s subject being solipsistic and ahumen is an answer to this question. I can see how the expansionistic, “madness” of Kierkegaard, could be a panopticon, all that anxiety, and while we’re talking about madness Guattari’s schizoid fits in pretty nicely as well. But is there something deconstructive about seeing the "post-subject" as a prison?<br /><br />Certainly as you said the perspectival refers to the way one can be defined by their vantage-point, but is the subject always a study?.. Is the panopticon ever anything more than a study? "I think there for.." <br /><br />Maybe the question is: when, when Kierkegaard makes the subject the site of fear and trembling, is he in any way standing in opposition to the perspectival, or when Merolow-Ponty carves out the flesh is there any remaining distinction between the perspectival and the subject? And is there a sense in which Foucault's panopticon is perspectival, in this fleshy way? I mean it is a perspective sitin’ up there in that ivory tower, isn't it. (the perspective of a supposed higher self) What about Sartre? Does existence precede essence for the ahuman, or the panopticon? I think it does, well in a way. <br /><br />Or does this kind of comparative analysis dissolve the alterity of each of these thinkers? I mean, there’s not really a panopticon in the Flesh for Merolow-Ponty or Foucault, is there? Oh my! That’s frightening!dustygravelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01877215902611486889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-49776181112068483222012-05-31T20:34:41.124-07:002012-05-31T20:34:41.124-07:00Actually, this has been one of my main points for ...Actually, this has been one of my main points for ages. I think I even lectured on it but I can't remember.<br /><br />Kierkegaard's subjectivity is peculiar. On the one hand, yes, it's solipsistic. But there's something ahuman about it, too: it marks the madness that exceeds "you" but is you. Despite Adorno's critique, I think SK's subject is anti-bourgeois.<br /><br />And I think most writers I love share the suspicion of the subject — Foucault, of course, who connects it with the panopticon; Deleuze and Guattari are post-subjective; Derrida, too, of course for whom the very terms of the subject is his undoing, etc.<br /><br />Or are you referring to something else?Daniel Coffeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-81564825042949709852012-05-31T05:19:51.316-07:002012-05-31T05:19:51.316-07:00This contrasting of subjectivity with the perspect...This contrasting of subjectivity with the perspectival is quite compelling. Is this a new development in your thinking? Or is it something you’ve always had in mind. Listening to your old lectures I get the impression that you are quite comfortable with subjectivity, as a concept, as a state, even as a being. <br /><br />Most of the thinkers you write about seem to take for granted subjectivity, if not privileging it flat out. How do you distinguish your view of the perspectival from the subjective in the writing of say Merleau-Ponty? I understand that this view of the perspectival comes impart from him. What happens to Kierkegaard’s Subjectivity when you think of the perspectival? Does he become more solipsistic, or does his hero give way to the demand placed upon him from the other?<br /><br />Do you ever find yourself annoyed when you read the word "subjective" in any of these writers?dustygravelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01877215902611486889noreply@blogger.com