Merlin Coverley's 'Hauntology'

 

Merlin Coverley's latest book - Hauntology: Ghosts of Futures Past - has just been published by Oldcastle Books (2020), and I am lucky enough to have a review copy. This isn't going to be a 'traditional' review. Rather more, in providing some extracts and discussion, I am going to highlight a couple of my favourite theories from the book. If you would like a straightforward review, you can go to The Indiependent or Horrified Magazine, but I will also include the blurb from the back cover, so that you get an overview of this non-fiction text and can see where the theories I will be discussing fit into the overall book. I just want to add, though, that despite the fact I am looking at two of the key theories elucidated in the book, this is a book for anyone interested in: the past, the occult, psychogeographical literature, popular culture, ghost stories, folk horror, nostalgia, and so on, and not just for academics:

Ghosts and spectres, the eerie and the occult. Why is contemporary culture so preoccupied by the supernatural, so captivated by the revenants of an earlier age, so haunted? The concept of Hauntology has evolved since first emerging in the 1990s, and has now entered the cultural mainstream as a shorthand for our new-found obsession with the recent past. But where does this term come from and what exactly does it mean?

This book seeks to answer these questions by examining the history of our fascination with the uncanny from the golden age of the Victorian ghost story to the present day. From Dickens to Derrida, MR James to Mark Fisher; from the rise of Spiritualism to the folk horror revival, Hauntology traces our continuing engagement with these esoteric ideas. Moving between the literary and the theoretical, the visual and the political, Hauntology explores our nostalgia for the cultural artefacts of a past from which we seem unable to break free.

DERRIDA'S HAUNTOLOGY: Utopian Futures and Enduring Spirits

Coverley's opening launches with a proposed answer to the question above in regard to our fascination with the past. He says that our "preoccup[ation]...can be found through the examination of what one critic has described recently as 'perhaps the most important, political-philosophical concept we have right now': hauntology''. Quoting Thomas Wyman, here, Coverley then leads us to the inventor of that theory, Jacques Derrida, explaining its explication through Derrida's text The Spectres of Marx (1993). While the theory of hauntology was formulated by Derrida as a way of examining the enduring nature of Marx's work, today it has become common parlance in certain circles and is about how the past constantly reappears in our present through its various cultural manifestations, but also in regard to the political ramifications of the past and how they come back to haunt us. A perfect contemporary example of this is the populist political figurehead and the current draw, amongst many, towards more authoritarian political stances. On this point, I like the way Coverley highlights the utopian aspect of hauntology when he states: "Derrida used hauntology, his science of ghosts, to demonstrate that...the spectre of Marx, like all ghosts which have yet to be laid to rest, would return, repeatedly, disrupting the present and continuing to remind us of another possible future". Something we should all hope for after the 2020 we have had, which has both politically and medically invoked the ghosts of the past!

Coverley also evokes - actually under the rubric of hauntology, he rather invokes - Mark Fisher's work (see Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology & Lost Futures) in regard to his discussion on "temporal currents". For Fisher, hauntology operates when phenomenon that is "not yet" present "haunts the present from the future". It is also the case that something that "no longer" exists "haunts the present from the past". Both these spectres are evident in the present via "repetition or anticipation". Coverley explains that this "ghost...comes from the past to manifest itself in the present and yet...belongs to neither". This is where Derrida's interest in the ghost as a deconstructive mechanism becomes apparent, the spectre being both "absent and present". Later in the book, Coverley revisits Derrida's hauntology in more depth by examining the paradox functioning in these types of binary oppositions - e.g. absence/presence - that intrigued Derrida so much. Coverley says the ghost is "both inside and outside of time, both beyond and of history" and one of the themes that recurs in his discussion of Derrida's hauntology is 'the return', which leads me neatly on to a discussion of the uncanny in regard to Coverley's book.

FREUD'S UNCANNY: The Return of the Father

For Freud the uncanny (The Uncanny 1899) is something which - to put very simply - is both familiar and unfamiliar, homely and unhomely (heimlich and unheimlich in the German). Because of its definition, it is clear why Derrida was so interested in Freud's uncanny: there is a contradiction at the heart of its very being. For Coverley (and he does allude to the knottiness of the term), the uncanny is used in the sense that it represents for Freud "death, dead bodies, revenants, spirits and ghosts" (Freud's words). Coverley explains that Freud is uncomfortable with using the language of the spectre due to his academic standing. However, we can see how the ghost (in the form of the returning 'thing', the repressed) is actually a fundamental part of psychoanalysis, as both a phenomena located in the unconscious and in terms of the psychoanalytic process itself: returning, repeating, and so on. Whether it is the compulsion to repeat (the returning trauma) or the revisiting of that trauma within the consulting room of the psychoanalyst. Coverley explains: "the repetition and doubling [are] to be found at the heart of Freud's concept [and] are replayed through the returns the re-enactments of the historical past". 

The section that follows the above in Coverley's book takes a look at Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Derrida 1995), in relation to literature. For those literature boffins who read this blog, Coverley discusses M R James, Robert McFarlane and H P Lovecraft in this section. I think this is a neat inclusion of Archive Fever here by Coverley, where he examines the death drive in relation to the literature he discusses. But I would also like to add to that the ghosts that appear at the outset of Archive Fever, Derrida's inspiration for the book, and there are two. In Archive Fever Derrida writes of how the private event of Freud’s circumcision becomes public when its trace becomes part of the archive which is the Freud Museum. An inscription appears in the archive in the form of a bible that Freud’s father has re-covered in new leather and re-gifts to him. Freud's father presents it to his son on his birthday. For Derrida this private inscription is both the note from Freud’s father, and Freud’s circumcision. I would argue, too, that both these (in their ghostly manifestation) are ever-present, ever-absent...spectres...the haunting of which appear in the trace that is left by what was...

You can order Coverley's book here!

I have also written about the uncanny on this blog before (in relation to psychogeography), so if you are interested, click on the following:

Taking an Urban Walk With Freud

Uncanny Effects and Perambulatory Weirdness

The Cult of Guilty Pleasures: A Freudian Analysis of the Music Genre (part 2)

Please click here for part 1 of the blog: The Cult of Guilty Pleasures (part 1)

This somewhat circuitous route has been necessary in terms of my proposal that the underlying dynamic of Guilty Pleasures is better described as a form of narcissism. I would like to propose that the subject’s temporary identification with this music is actually an identification with a past self. So, what may appear to be the subject’s superficial connection with a cultural object, located outside of her/himself, is in fact a connection with a her/himself of yesterday: a recognition of a past self in the present. Not only is the subject caught in a temporality that is not the present, but by bringing the past into the present, s/he is misidentifying the self s/he sees in her/his mind’s eye. The self in the past-cum-present is not the self as it is known today: “He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of […] remembering it as something belonging to the past.” (Freud 1995b, p.602). Therefore, this is a narcissistic pleasure. The nostalgic ‘guilty pleasure’ is a pleasure in the self-of-the-past, a recognition of an ‘I’ situated in the past: a misrecognition. I would also like to suggest that this act of concretising a past ‘I’ in the present, is a method of materialising a past self that is certain and ‘known’, unlike the present self which is never certain, a la Lacan, Benveniste, etc.

The act of listening to nostalgic music has a particular effect on the mind that we are all aware of: one feels temporarily transported back to that time because of the various emotional associations one has with the music. The temporal effect produced by the music has, in a sense, collapsed time: upon listening to the music one has invited the past self into the present, the past has been returned by bringing the object into oneself. This can be compared to Freud’s “fort da” game whereby the child throws away a small toy announcing “fort” (gone) and then upon retrieving it exclaims “da” (there) (1995b, p.599). Freud goes on to explain that the child then transfers this same process to his mother’s departure and return, thus it becomes a “cultural achievement” in that he allows his mother to go away without showing distress (1995b, p.600). Listening to Guilty Pleasures could have the effect of producing a “da” moment: allowing the music to be absent for a time will heighten the pleasure when it does return. Eagleton says the “fort-da” game symbolises the child’s first attempt at narrative and because narrative has a consolatory effect (as demonstrated in the return of the lost object) it provides pleasure (1983, p.185). Listening to Guilty Pleasures may also provide this particular form of pleasure in that it provides a narrative of the past which is returned to the individual.

In The Dilemma of Narcissus Louis Lavelle explains that Narcissus’ main preoccupation is with his search for himself in the world around him: “the sign of this sign, and the image of this image” (1993, p.33). He goes on to say: “On leaving himself, he hopes to find himself, and to return again within himself” (ibid.). This is similar to Freud’s “fort da” game and also demonstrates that the act of listening to Guilty Pleasures might not only be a search for a past pleasure, but also the desire for a pleasure that was located in a past self. Therefore the pleasure is not located in the cultural object, as such, but is displaced into that past self.

In his essay ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ Freud not only explains the origins of narcissism as being a stage within childhood development but he also provides examples of it in terms of a pathology in adulthood. In addition he offers up what he calls “narcissistic attitudes” which are not necessarily problematic but are rather “the libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation” (1995a, p.546). A number of definitions of narcissism arise in his essay and refer to different aspects of his theory on this subject. In the young child, Freud sees narcissistic pleasure existing prior to the differentiation of ego (as discussed above with regards the child’s self-fascination with his/her body and the pleasures it can bring with auto-erotic excitation). This is what Freud describes as “primary narcissism”. Once the ego comes into play this narcissistic pleasure is displaced onto the world around him/her, into what Freud calls “object-cathexes”, whereby the child forms an emotional investment in people and objects around him. Freud also describes a form of narcissism which arises from a “drawing in of object-cathexes” (ibid.). This means that the ego has made some sort of choice in terms of withdrawing something it had once offered to the rest of the world: what Freud distinguishes as “secondary narcissism”. Lavelle describes an individual suffering from an extreme form of this type of narcissism: “He shuts himself up, alone with himself, to keep company with himself: but in this total self-sufficiency on which he pins his hopes, he discovers his own impotence.” (1993, p.34). This self-love described by Lavelle is an attachment to what Freud describes as an “ego ideal” (or “ideal object”) which is set up by an individual who cannot accept the loss of the narcissism experienced in childhood (1995a, p.558).

Lavelle also explains that the pathogenesis of narcissism is related to the past and death (1993, p.29). He explains how an obsession with the self prevents the individual from living in the present or future at all, he/she is always consigned to the past: “I cannot see myself in any other way than by turning around and contemplating my past, but that is to contemplate something I have already ceased to be.” (ibid.). Guilty Pleasures, because of its nostalgic focus, is a turning back to the past. But, is this necessarily the negative act that narcissism so eloquently describes? R. D. Laing says that providing fantasy is meaningful to the individual, they are not dissociated from it and it has value to them (1973, p.27). In line with Lavelle’s description of the narcissist, above, Freud describes the narcissistic adult as having withdrawn “his libido from things and people in the external world, without replacing them by others in phantasy” (1995a, p.546). If we choose to use this description by Freud, then it does throw into question the listening to Guilty Pleasures as a narcissistic act.

So, it appears, listening to Guilty Pleasures, in terms of whether it is pathological narcissism, may be a function of the individuals’ subjective experience. Lavelle does consider it to be problematic if the past is pursued at the cost of the present (1993, p.118). However, Freud, upon his analysis of the origins of instinct, believes instincts can all be traced back to “a need to restore an earlier state of things.” (1995b, p.622). So it may well be that, as individuals our need to fight the nostalgic pursuit of past experiences is an uphill struggle against a biological instinct. Roger Horrocks believes that humans are selective in their use of memory and some memories are useful in maintaining a sense of self (2001, p.60). Philip Rieff also explains that, for Freud, memory is not passive but involves “acceptances and rejections” (1979, p.38). So, if that is the case, the individual could be considered to choose to indulge in the narcissistic ‘guilty pleasure’ or not, and is not in fact a slave to it due to an instinctual drive or a neurotic pathology. However Horrocks does go on to say that Freud is not a supporter of nostalgia: “the past, for him, is condemned as impermanency, burden, neurosis.” (ibid.). So, perhaps, even with a thorough analysis of Freud’s work we will never be able to surmise his thoughts on the partaking of the music of Guilty Pleasures.

In conclusion I would like to suggest that Guilty Pleasures may be considered an attempt at closing the gap that exists at the subject’s centre because of his/her place in the Symbolic Order. Emile Benveniste explains that this problem derives from the fact that “each speaker sets himself up as a subject by referring to himself as an I in his discourse” (1971, p.225). At the point the enunciating subject utters ‘I’, and concretising him/herself in the present, he/she is also becoming the subject of the enounced, the subject of the past. Eagleton describes this as “a radical split between these two levels of being” (1983, p.169). Lavelle’s discussion on how Narcissus is constantly searching for his own image is extremely pertinent here: I cannot see myself in any other way than by turning round and contemplating my past, but that is to contemplate something that has already ceased to be. To live is to create my own being by turning my will towards a future in which I do not yet exist, and which will not become an object until I have not only reached it, but have gone beyond it. (1993, p.29). The listener of Guilty Pleasures attempts to mark out a present for her/himself that is a certainty in a world of sliding signifiers and lack, an identification with a self of the past in the present.

Bibliography:
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics (Miami: University of Miami Press). Billig, Michael. 1999. Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Freud, Sigmund. 1976. ‘The Sexual Life of Human Beings’, Sigmund Freud: 1. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth: Penguin) pp. 344-361.
Freud, Sigmund. 1995a. Extracts from ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay (London: Vintage) pp. 545-562.
Freud, Sigmund. 1995b. Extracts from ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay (London: Vintage) pp. 594-627.
Freud, Sigmund. 2004. Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. by David McLinktock (London: Penguin Books).
Horrocks, Roger. 2001. Freud Revisited (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave).
Lacan, Jacques. 2004. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York, London: W W Norton and Company).
Laing, R. D. 1973. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Lavelle, Louis. 1993. The Dilemma of Narcissus, trans. by William Gairdner (New York: Larson Publications).
Oppenheimer, Paul. 1997. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Guilt (London: Gerald Duckworth).
Rieff, Philip. 1979. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

The Cult of Guilty Pleasures: A Freudian Analysis of the Music Genre (part 1)

The Guilty Pleasures music albums represent a nostalgic reflection of the music of the primarily male singer-songwriter of the seventies and early eighties from the retrospective position of the 21st century. The compilations of mostly British music have been compiled by the Radio 1 DJ Sean Rowley. The first album in the series was published in 2004 and was extremely popular. Reviews and articles appeared not only in the popular music press but also in the broadsheets. The music caught the attention of the public. Its promoters subsequently dedicated a website to the cult of Guilty Pleasures at www.guiltypleasures.co.uk which has also spawned a club night.

The Guilty Pleasures music genre has been described as ‘naff’ or ‘cheesy’ by some critics and by those who may not be clear of the philosophy behind it. However, it is designed to represent what may have been considered in its day to be ‘uncool’, but what people secretly enjoyed and perhaps did not openly admit to delighting in. Because many of the songs are by singer-songwriters, the musicianship is considered to be of a high quality even if, at the time, the songs themselves were considered overly romantic, sentimental or quirky, and dismissed for those reasons. It is important to state that Guilty Pleasures is a retrospective and this means that it represents the past and therefore has a high degree of nostalgia attached to it.

It is apparent on a superficial analysis how Sigmund Freud’s theories around ‘guilt’ and ‘pleasure’ would create a convenient reading of Guilty Pleasures. However, after briefly explaining how ‘guilt’ and ‘pleasure’ could fit the genre, I would like to propose ‘narcissism’ as the primary Freudian model that should be applied: “where the libido is concerned, man has here again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed.” (Freud 1995a, p.558).

In his lecture ‘The Sexual Life of Human Beings’ Freud describes how the child once removed from its mother’s breast can become attached to sucking his own thumb or tongue, making himself “independent of the consent of the external world as regards gaining pleasure” (1976, p.356). According to Freud the young child moves through three stages in terms of attachment to erotogenetic zones: oral, anal and genital. But, despite the fact that stimulation of these zones results in an enjoyable sensation the child will eventually have to “exchange pleasure for social respectability” (Freud 1976, p.357). In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ Freud explains how, in order to regulate the pleasure principle an individual will pursue an end which will lessen an “unpleasurable tension” and either produce a degree of pleasure or a cessation of the unpleasure (1995b, p.595). He goes on to explain that the main aim of the pleasure principle is to maintain a certain level of constancy within a given period, rather than to produce major peaks of excitation (ibid.). The pleasure principle eventually works in tandem with the reality principle, delaying gratification and helping the mature individual function in a social world (ibid.).

With regards to guilt, in simple terms Freud describes it as “fear of the super-ego” (2004, p.93). Being the regulator of the id (the instinctual drives) the super-ego acts as a social conscience. As Jacques Lacan explains (although he uses a different term to Freud) the super-ego “superimposes the reign of culture over the reign of nature” (2004, p.66). When the individual fails to act upon the rules imposed by the super-ego, the individual will feel a sense of guilt which is manifest in a feeling of anxiety because certain acts derived from the libidinal drives are prohibited and considered taboo. To keep these drives in check, civilisation, via the super-ego, sublimates particular desires. Indulgence in the guilty pleasure may provide short-term gain to the individual, nevertheless society instils in us from an early age the rule of deferred gratification.

Following that brief analysis of these Freudian concepts it is apparent how the Guilty Pleasures music genre has received its name, even if it is a tongue-in-cheek label. A somewhat marginalised type of music, considered to represent a lack of taste, is, in a sense, forbidden. Any indulgence in it by an individual would, theoretically, create a sense of guilt because it is outside of what society would deem aesthetically credible (hence, not desirable). In fact Freud even goes as far as saying that the desire alone would cause a sense of guilt, regardless of the fulfilment of the act (2004, p.77). In his book An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Guilt Paul Oppenheimer offers an alternative to Freud’s definition of ‘desire’ that may be more fitting to Guilty Pleasures. He does not see desires as simply being appetites but part of the human imagination (1997, p.90). Oppenheimer believes that a large part of desire is attached to abstract language and features “fantasy, dreaming, anticipating, wishing and visualizing.” (ibid.): the qualities that are considered by many to differentiate humans from ‘lower’ animals. Guilty Pleasures could be described as a method of fantasising about a past time, a wishing one was back in a time where life was more happy/carefree/romantic. And it is certainly true of music that if it has meaning to the individual it is accompanied with strong visual cues in the mind’s eye.

Michael Billig discusses how late capitalism brings about a different emotional dynamic for the postmodern individual from that existing in Freud’s time. He offers Zygmunt Bauman’s example of “seduction rather than repression” as a model for consumer society (1999, p.256). In this case we could say that the socio-economic system actually encourages the fulfilment of desire providing it furthers consumerism. Terry Eagleton explains that Freud’s definition of ‘sublimation’ means directing desires “towards a more socially valued end.” (1983, p.152), therefore this may simply be a matter of semantics rather than any threat to Freud’s theory of ‘repression’: because consumerism is socially valuable the desire to consume is not placed within the category of the forbidden, hence there is no repression in the first place.

Guilty Pleasures certainly represents a postmodern product in that it reflects the element of nostalgia associated with postmodernism (Frederic Jameson, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1984). It also highlights postmodernity’s appropriation of a past style into a new format, thus creating a new narrative. When looking at cultural objects as texts, language, as a theory for the constitution of the subject can be offered as an alternative to Freud’s model which is grounded in the sexual. Billig challenges Freud’s belief that desire originates in biology. He says: “Because we speak, we have desires which must be repressed.” (1999, p.71). Billig sees our desires as being evoked by language, and if desires are not repressed then “the moral order, would be threatened.” (1999, p.72). Later he explains how using a model of language to represent repression enables us not to dismiss an ideological function constituted by societal change (1999, p.258). Therefore, using the language formulae of the psyche proposed by some of the Neo-Freudians may be a more useful interpretation of a cultural object if we decided to analyse it in narrative form.

In his essay ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’ Lacan explains how upon seeing its reflection in the mirror for the first time the small child is transformed by this identification in which he delights (2004, p.4). This transformation takes place because prior to this the child was not differentiated in terms of itself as opposed to ‘other’. The “ideal-I” that the child sees before it in the form of an image, is what constitutes the initial development of its ego. However, Lacan states, this moment will also be problematic in that is sets a future framework for the individual’s identification in regards to its place in the world which will always only allude to reality because it implies a type of permanence which does not exist (2004, pp.4-5).

Eagleton explains how the child and the image of the child in the mirror are analogous to the ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ of Ferdinand de Sausurre (1983, p.166). This represents Lacan’s “Imaginary Order” in that “objects ceaselessly reflect themselves in a sealed circuit” (ibid.). The child when viewing his image for the first time has a sense of completeness. However, the disunity inherent in the Symbolic Order, the phase which the child later moves into when he discovers language (the equivalent stage to Freud's Oedipal Phase), has not yet taken place. The child is still embedded in the imaginary, which is the unconscious, a place that Lacan sees as being structured rather like signifiers, with no stable meanings. Eagleton says that for the child: “No gap has yet opened up between signifier and signified, subject and world.” (ibid.). How desire fits into Lacan’s model is by the virtue of the lack inscribed in language. The lack of a ‘transcendental signified’, as defined by Lacan (Ecrits, 1966) and Derrida (Writing and Difference, 1967), results in a desire for a fixed meaning and for a fulfilment which cannot be attained in the symbolic.

Please click here for part 2 of the blog.

Freud Related Posts:
Taking an Urban Walk With Freud
Space/Place, Culture and Time: Sigmund Freud

Bibliography:
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics (Miami: University of Miami Press). Billig, Michael. 1999. Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Freud, Sigmund. 1976. ‘The Sexual Life of Human Beings’, Sigmund Freud: 1. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth: Penguin) pp. 344-361.
Freud, Sigmund. 1995a. Extracts from ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay (London: Vintage) pp. 545-562.
Freud, Sigmund. 1995b. Extracts from ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay (London: Vintage) pp. 594-627.
Freud, Sigmund. 2004. Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. by David McLinktock (London: Penguin Books).
Horrocks, Roger. 2001. Freud Revisited (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave).
Lacan, Jacques. 2004. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York, London: W W Norton and Company).
Laing, R. D. 1973. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Lavelle, Louis. 1993. The Dilemma of Narcissus, trans. by William Gairdner (New York: Larson Publications).
Oppenheimer, Paul. 1997. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Guilt (London: Gerald Duckworth).
Rieff, Philip. 1979. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Relational Aesthetics & Chaosmosis: Nicolas Bourriaud's preference for an ethico-aesthetic analysis of relational art (part 2)

Please click here for Part 1

Before I turn to what I think might be the main thrust of Bourriaud's predilection for Guattari, I would like to briefly discuss the concept of 'partial objects' because Bourriaud makes direct reference to this concept in relation to Guattari. The work that Deleuze and Guattari did in A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus is anti-Lacanian, so little reference is made to 'partial objects' a term coined by Melanie Klein to describe objects that have at one time been connected to the child, for example, the mother's breast, and also the faeces. Jacques Lacan developed this notion further into his own concept, the 'objet petit a', the imaginary part object which can never be totally separated from the body and is a remainder from a time when the child had not become distinguished as an individual: a residual of a prior state, before language took them up as a subject.

While Deleuze does not use the term much (it is barely used in his Cinema series of books, and on the occasion it is it is only used in criticism), Guattari is happy to talk about it in Chaosmosis. He demonstrates how the partial object becomes the “partial enunciator” enabling the artist to “detach and deterritorialise a segment of the real”, and offer both sense to the participator, while posing the notion of alterity (1995: 131). Bourriaud offers almost a page to his discussion on the partial object from a Guattarian perspective, the “partial enunciator”, explaining how it becomes a “semiotic segment” which then can work autonomously within art production through such activities as “sampling of pictures and data, recycling now socialised and historicized forms [and the] invention of collective identities” (2002: 100). It is possible that Guattari's lack of rejection of the “partial object” - despite the fact that in the capitalism and schizophrenia series Freudian and neo-Freudian models of self are rejected by the two writers - is because of his psychoanalytical background.

What I would now like to look at is what might appear initially as a surface manifestation of style between Guattari and Deleuze, but is also one of content and theory: chaos versus order. Guattari and Deleuze would not be happy with the binary distinctions I have imposed on their work in order to set up a contrast between them, but I am choosing this because it is the only point where Bourriaud makes direct reference to a preference between them, my previous analyses being only perceived differences that have come about through some detective work. I believe it is this chaotic (chaosmotic) aspect that can also be related to his introduction of Althusser's aleatory materialism and philosophy of the encounter, what Bourriaud refers to as “random materialism” (2002: 18).

Althusser developed this idea from his study of Machiavelli, Spinoza and Epicurus and lays it out in 'The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter', where he develops Spinoza's and Machiavelli's notion of the void and how it evacuates first causes. This void is full of possibilities because it allows for the potential of emergence. How things emerge is through chance encounters. Althusser has based this part of his theory on Epicurus’ atomism, where atoms move through empty space in parallel trajectories and do not touch. However, Althusser takes this notion of the void and looks at the event which arises from a chance encounter (a swerve of the atom). How he ties this in with Machiavelli is that this event can become a place of leverage, and of power. It is this aspect of Althusser that Bourriaud appears to be attracted to rather than his more rigid and structural ideas of subjectivity, and he makes reference to this when he explains that Guattari's method “consists in bringing to the boil the structures fixed by Lacan, Althusser and Lėvi-Strauss” (2002: 89-90). What Bourriaud is attracted to in Althusser are the elements that converge with Guattari: history has innumerable possible outcomes which are never fixed (there is no telos); subjectivity as ever-changing and being formed through social relations; and events occurring in singular moments that cannot be totally anticipated (chance encounters).

On page eighty-seven of Relational Aesthetics, Bourriaud states his preference for Guattari's 'chaos' over Deleuze's 'order': “[Guattari's] phrasing is thoroughly oral, chaotic, 'wild and outrageous' (dėlirant), off-the-cuff and littered with deceptive short-cuts, quite unlike the conceptual order that presides over the writings of accomplice and fellow Gilles Deleuze.” (2002: 87). It is because of this clear statement for a preference for Guattari's 'chaotic' orientation as opposed to Deleuze's more ordered approach that I shall now look at this difference. I will do this by looking at the references that Bourriaud makes to Chaosmosis and contrast this to Deleuze's The Logic of Sense (1969), not because Bourriaud makes any reference to The Logic of Sense in his book, but because of the formalised format of the book and because the book is concerned with making sense out of non-sense (one could say: creating order out of chaos). For Deleuze nonsense is not the opposite of sense but actually gives value to it.

Before I further examine Deleuze and Guattari, from a Bourriaudian perspective, I would like to briefly introduce the two books from the perspective of form, before proceeding to a more in-depth analysis of the differences in content and theory. Not least because form and content are oppositions which are challenged in relational art, but also because Bourriaud makes direct reference to the style of articulation in the above quote when commenting on Guattari's mode of approach.

The Logic of Sense consists of a thirty-four short chapters on what Deleuze calls “series”. These series are paradoxes which Deleuze examines in order to 'make sense' out of them: he looks at what appear to be nonsensical situations or words (this book is all about language) and demonstrates how sense can be made from them. Examples he uses are the portmanteau words of Lewis Carroll, and the thought and speech of the schizophrenic. Deleuze looks at how meaning and meaninglessness converge and at this point sense arises; he provides an extremely elaborate, complex and logical analysis of how this occurs. Each chapter is structured in a very similar way and can almost be read in isolation in relation to their specific subject (chapters are oriented around subjects, for example: paradoxes, games, language and nonsense), although there is a subtle building up of theory as you move through the book. In each chapter Deleuze firstly introduces his own sample and his problem: for example, how the cause/effect duality is really the body/language problem (to eat or to speak, as in Alice in Wonderland). He discusses these issues in the light of other philosophers, such as Plato or one of the Stoics, appearing to go along with their argument in the initial stages but actually using it to challenge them or as a foil to propagate his thesis. He then returns to his own example and either provides an answer (often partial), or offers enough information and enough of a solution, to point the reader towards a direction he will move in in a later chapter. This style is not unique to The Logic of Sense and can also be seen in Difference and Repetition.

In Chaosmosis Guattari's chapters, whilst connected in their concentration on subjectivity, could almost be read in any order: it is even the case that two chapters that appear to be related are not together in the book ('Machinic Heterogenesis' and 'Machinic Orality and Virtual Ecology'). The text reads like a 'stream of consciousness'. Guattari's style is rather more one of commentary, and it is possible that the reader may get a sense that there is less space between themselves and the author than there is when reading Deleuze. While it may appear that this could be the opposite situation to one that usually arises when a psychoanalyst writes - clear divisions being set up between analyst and analysand in traditional psychotherapy - this might reflect Guattari's revolutionary approach to therapy: while at La Borde, one of Guattari's challenges to conventional therapy was to break down these classical boundaries. Bourriaud describes Guattari's style as a “scriptorial flow” and he particularly likes how Guattari produces images out of his work by using physical phenomena to promulgate his theory (2002: 86).

What I shall now look at his how 'making sense' of something could be argued to be a totalising effect and could be contrary to a notion whereby a work is concerned with the “modelling of possible universes” (Bourriaud 2002: 13); even if this is only a function of approach and style and not a reflection of philosophical orientation. It is important to state that I do not believe that Guattari and Bourriaud negate the idea of 'making sense'. However, there is a finality offered in Deleuze's model of providing a means for making sense, and the resolution provided in that move. I would like to emphasise that I do not see Deleuze's theory as being totalising, rather more his choice of subject-matter and his demonstration of how language operates. For example, here he is discussing the totalising nature of knowledge and how language organises it: “And whatever totalizations knowledge may perform, they remain asymptotic to the virtual totality of langue or language. The signifying series organizes a preliminary totality, whereas the signified series arranges the produced totalities.” (2004b: 58).

While I think Deleuze's analytical approach is an extremely valuable tool useful in helping to understand the problems of paradoxes or, what might appear as, gobbledegook, it could be considered to be contrary to Guattari's open-ended orientation. This can be seen in Guattari's chapter in Chaosmosis 'The New Aesthetic Paradigm' where he states: “The metabolism of the infinite, proper to each assemblage, is not fixed once and for all.” (1995: 101). It is also the case that Deleuze's resolution of the paradox is synonymous with his resolution of binary oppositions: in showing how the paradox is resolved he is also revealing how oppositions can be reconciled: which is a kind of deconstructive move. But, the effect of that 'deconstruction' does not open up possibilities but, rather, by bringing confusion to an end also brings with it closure.

To demonstrate where I see this totalising versus open-ended difference between Deleuze and Guattari taking place, I shall now look at Deleuze's resolution of the paradox in The Logic of Sense, while contrasting this to Bourriaud's references to Guattari that hinge around the articulation of worlds, differentness, heterogeneity and aesthetic fluidity. I think it is this aspect of relational art that Bourriaud believes Guattari's theories reveal; and while this cannot be separated from a discussion of subjectivity, which is what Chaosmosis is about, I think it is important to talk about what it is that Bourriaud sees relational art as 'doing'. This is clarified when Bourriaud discusses how, for Guattari, production and subjectivity are implicit. Here Bourriaud is commenting on Guattari's explanation that the activities of the individual bring about a production of subjectivity, which enables a relationship with the world, allowing them to grow:

A definition that ideally applies to the practices of contemporary artists: by creating and staging devices of existence including working methods and ways of being, instead of concrete objects which hitherto bounded the realm of art, they use time as a material. (2002: 103).

Please click here for Part 3

References:
Althusser, Louis. 2006. 'The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter', The Philosophy of the Encounter, trans. by G. M. Goshgarian (London and New York: Verso) pp. 163-207.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics, trans. by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Dijon: Le presses du réel).
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2007. Postproduction, trans. by Jeanine Herman (New York: Lukas and Sternberg).
Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘Altermodern Tate Triennial’, Tate Britain, (2009), [accessed 24 March 2009]
Deleuze, Gilles. 2004a. Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (London and New York: Continuum).
Deleuze, Gilles. 2004b. The Logic of Sense, trans. by Mark Lester (London and New York: Continuum).
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 2007. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi (London and New York: Continuum).
Genosko, Gary. 2002. Félix Guattari: An Abberrant Introduction (London and New York: Continuum).
Genosko, Gary. 2008. 'The Life and Work of Félix Guattari', The Three Ecologies, trans. by Ian Pinder and Paul Sutton (London and New York: Continuum) pp. 46-78.
Guattari, Félix. 1995. Chaosmosis: an ethico-aesthetic paradigm, trans. by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).
Guattari, Félix. 1996a. 'The Postmodern Impasse', The Guattari Reader, ed. by Gary Genosko (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers) pp. 109-113.
Guattari, Félix. 1996b. 'Toward a New perspective on Identity', The Guattari Reader, ed. by Gary Genosko (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers) pp. 215-217.
Guattari, Félix. 2008. The Three Ecologies, trans. by Ian Pinder and Paul Sutton (London and New York: Continuum).

Once Upon a Time: A Lacanian Analysis of Clockwork Orange

This blog is the second in a series of film studies blogs that I wrote during my own Cultural Studies BA at the University of Leeds. I have loaded them here as a teaching aid.

Please click here to see the other blogs:
Framing the Russian Ark
Apocalypse Now: The Vietnam War on Perception

Abstract:
This essay offers a Lacanian analysis of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange. Using Jacques Lacan's theory on the symbolic order - in particular his themes of lack, the unconscious, the phallus, the signifier/signified and speech - I use a scene in the film to explicate his theory of sexual difference. The essay is written as a story which utilises the style of a fairy tale in order to draw attention to the different voices in the film, to allude to the original myth of Oedipus and to make reference to the forgotten episode of our own enculturation via the Oedipal trajectory.

Extract:
Alex knows the cat lady doesn’t have the phallus. Women just feature in his life as objects to be done to. But, Alex is under the misapprehension that he does have the phallus. He doesn’t realise that no-one has the phallus. He believes the phallus represents potency, it signifies the life-force. He thinks he is one with his penis, and that the penis-sculpture he holds to his groin is this unity writ large. He actually believes he is the phallus. However, he does not realise that he is not seamless with the phallus: not only does the phallus exist in a space he cannot gain entry to, but his body is a fragmented one, he is a divided self, due to his prior misidentification at the mirror stage.

Click here for a full downloadable pdf of the essay: Once Upon a Time

Space/Place, Culture and Time (Part 2): Sigmund Freud

In part 1 of the blog I discussed Michel De Certeau's definition of the terms 'space' and 'place' from The Practice of Everyday Life, one of the main differences between the two being that place prohibits the superimposition of particular phenomenon, while space is able to cope with the contradictions of multiple and differing actors/actions, systems, agendas, etc.

Here I shall be providing an interesting spatial reference by Freud from Civilization and its Discontents which is offered as a kind of thought experiment for his readers in order to help explain how the ego operates on a developing sense of self in the individual. Freud explains that our initial sense of self - as a baby - is of an oceanic nature. It is connected to the vastness of the world, with no clearly defined subject/object boundaries. As we develop, the ego separates off from the outside world and becomes removed from this 'oneness'. However, Freud says, there is still a trace of this oceanic moment in our memory, as with those subsequent developmental phases that we seem to also forget on a conscious level (e.g. the Oedipal stages). This eloquent analogy by Freud, below, demonstrates that nothing is ever totally lost in internal space - the mind. But from the perspective of place and space, as it is for De Certeau, it offers up an example of external space, replete with its ambiguities, oppositions and negations - and how that space might be, if it weren't for place:

"Now let us make the fantastic assumption that Rome in not a place where people live, but a psychical entity with a similarly long, rich past, in which nothing that ever took shape has passed away, and in which all previous phases of development exist beside the most recent. For Rome this would mean that on the Palatine hill the imperial palaces and the Septizonium of Septimus Severus still rose to their original height, that the castle of San Angelo still bore on its battlements the fine statues that adorned it until the Gothic siege. Moreover, the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus wuld once more stand on the site of the Palazzo Caffarelli, withought there being any need to dismantle the latter structure, and indeed the temple would be seen not only in its later form, which is assumed during the imperial age, but also in its earliest, when it still had Etruscan elements and was decorated with terracotta antefixes. And where the Coliseo now stands we could admire the vanished Domus Aurea of Nero; on the Piazza of the Pantheon we should find not only the present Pantheon, bequeathed by Hadrian, but the original structure of M. Agrippa; indeed, occupying the same ground would be the church of Maria sopra Minerva and the ancient temple over which it is built. And the observer would perhaps need only to shift his gaze or his position in order to see the one or the other.

It is clearly pointless to spin out this fantasy any further: the result would be unimaginable, indeed absurd. If we wish to represent a historical sequence in spatial terms, we can do so only by juxtaposition in space, for the same space cannot accommodate two different things. Our attempt to do otherwise seems like an idle game; its sole justification is to show how far we are from being able to illustrate the peculiarities of mental life by visual means."

Space/Place, Culture and Time (Part 1): Michel De Certeau

Taking an Urban Walk With Freud (part 2): The Red Light District

This is the second part of my Freud-as-psychogeographer-blog. For the first part, please click here: Gradiva's Gait

Before I introduce Freud's urban wanderings in a "small Italian town", I would like to say a little about the complex term 'uncanny' as it appears in Freud's essay The Uncanny. Freud takes the word from the German unheimlich which means the opposite of what one might find familiar (heimlich meaning familiar - homely, but be careful here, because for Freud the two terms become conflated in what he means by 'uncanny'). So, the uncanny has the qualities of both the familiar and the unfamiliar at the same time. I would describe it as producing a strange kind of affective dissonance, which is disturbing. It throws you into this spaceless space in between the two binary oppositions (recognisable/unrecognisable, understandable/incomprehensible). Sometimes, the thing recognised is known, but is out of place and this decontextualisation can create the feeling of the uncanny.

Freud uses a super example in E.T.A Hoffman's story The Sandman to tease out what uncanny means. Although the term can appear somewhat contradictory, mysterious and hard to pin down, this is not because Freud does not do a good job in explaining it, but rather because of its unconscious origins in the person feeling this subjective reaction. Once you have started to explore the uncanny, you will understand it by comparing it to some experiences you will have likely had yourself.

Freud spends many pages analysing the term from a number of sources. Here is a definition he provides which I particularly like, and I include it here because it is a useful springboard for me to take you into Freud's walk in Italy:

"Uncanny is what one calls everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden and has come into the open."

So...Freud uses a moment when he accidentally walks into the red light district of this town in Italy, to provide his own example of the uncanny. Basically it goes thus (quotation marks are when I am using his own terms):

Freud strolls through "unfamiliar" streets in the town and stumbles upon the red light district. He quickly attempts to move out of this area and walks for a while down a few different streets. After a while he suddenly finds himself back in the same district and realises people were looking at him. He then attempts to leave again, but ends up there for the third time. At this point he gets the uncanny feeling. Freud describes this as "the unintentional return", which then enables him to talk about one of his well-known, and most fascinating theories, the "compulsion to repeat".

What I find interesting about Freud's example here is his lack of analysis (of himself) of why he might have ended up there three times. Freud would not have let his own analysand 'off the hook' if this story had been regaled to him, so I am sure he has his own theory about how his unconscious took him there three times, (well at least twice, let's say). So, in regards to the quote above: is what was meant to "remain secret and hidden" the overt buying/selling of sex by men/women on the streets of Italy, or is it some desire Freud had to witness this - what would be for him as an analyst - fascinating transaction?

Taking an Urban Walk With Freud (part 1): Gradiva's Gait

You may not be aware of Freud's text 'Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva'. In this essay, in his usual microscopic style, Freud analyses Wilhelm Jensen's 1903 novel Gradiva, trying to tease out the latency inherent in the text-as-dream.

Being quite familiar with Freud, I hadn't considered him from a psychogeographical perspective until this essay was referred to me by one of my thesis supervisors. Here Freud psychoanalyses the behaviour of the protagonist of Jensen's fiction, Hanold. Perhaps his interest in the novel was sparked by a relief he had of Gradiva in his office (latin translation: the woman who walks), which you can see in my picture above. I have placed an image of the relief next to a photograph of an artists' mannequin that I have attempted to stand in the same position as Gradiva.

I haven't read the original novel (but it is on order now), only Freud's translation and specifically the references to walking, the gait and the footprints, which were of particular interest to me as a psychogeographer. Here are a few extracts by Freud, commenting on the protagonist in the story:

"But now he found himself confronted by an ostensibly scientific problem which called for a solution. It was a question of his arriving at a crucial judgement as to 'whether Gradiva's gait as she stepped along had been reproduced by the sculptor in a life-like manner'. He found that he himself was not capable of imitating it, and in his quest for the 'reality' of this gait he was led 'to make observations of his own from life in order to clear this matter up.'" (page 8)

"When they reached the Herculean Gate [...] Norbert Hanold paused and asked the girl to go ahead of him. She understood him, 'and, pulling up her dress a little with her left hand, Zoe Bergang, Gradiva rediviva, walked past, held in his eyes, which seemed to gaze as though in a dream; so, with her quietly tripping gait, she stepped through the sunlight over the stepping-stones to the other side of the street.' With the triumph of love, what was beautiful and precious in the delusion found recognition as well." (page 12)

Freud is fascinating. He always reveals so much of himself when analysing others. The projections (obsessions) of Hanold's he comments on in this essay, could likely be compared to Freud's own. Freud saw the original Gradiva in Rome, had a copy of the relief in his Hampstead office and then wrote an essay about Jensen's novel.

My second part of this blog will look at another 'psychogeographical' reference by Freud in The Uncanny. I will be providing my own analysis of Freud in this upcoming blog.

Links
Taking an Urban Walk with Freud (part 2): The Red Light District

References:
The extracts of Freud's text are from Crossing Aesthetics edited by Werner Hamacher and David E. Wellbery (Stanford University Press 1997).