Re: "speaking as if castration doesn't exist!"


> > i agree with most of this, but i still hold that there is such thing as
> > molecular identity, as fuzzy as it is. a multiplicity is this kind of
> > identity. you used the example of the mouth-breast machine, but what is
> > this except the identificatory grouping of thousands of nerve endings
>and
> > milk molecules? in the same way, partial objects on the mother's body
>will
> > eventually group together in proximity to form a territorial assemblage
>that
> > we can call the mother. a fuzzy aggregate. this is a natural process
>as
> > opposed to the phallic intervention which will impose molar identities.
>
>what is unnatural about molar identities? there is surely no connection
>between the pair molar/molecular and the pair natural/unnatural??

you're right, no connection. the natural/unnatural pair is ambiguous in
itself anyway.

> > lol, psychoanalysis has no status in N. America! (at least i hope not).
> > anyway, i'll take the example of d&g's 'becoming-woman' to show how the
> > phallus illuminates things. d&g contrast becomings to an 'empty
>standard'.
> > the empty standard, the majority, really isn't anybody, it's a nobody.
>this
> > empty standard is the phallus. now, becoming-woman, that's the
> > infant-mother assemblage. becomings-woman/mother, multiple
> > differenciations/repititions of this important assemblage. why is it so
> > important? because you need a background territory to deterritorialize
>off
> > of, a home to become strong enough...or else you're dead, a dead baby.
> > scary nightmare stuff. d&g sometimes say that you have to become woman
> > 'first', before reaching the other becomings. both men and women have
>to
> > become woman in order to escape the empty standard of the phallus.
>
>what does calling it the phallus add, exactly? seems to me you can do this
>analysis with just the concept of the empty standard. calling it "the
>phallus" introduces anthropomorphic representational elements that inject
>oedipus...

the empty standard isn't exactly the phallus, but the phallus makes it
possible. the phallic intervention does a number of things: 1) it
distributes lack, presence/absence, through separation of child and mother
2) establishes the child as a slave, who views the phallus as the
upside-down image of the master, with all the nietzschean implications.
the upside-down image of the master is imprinted in the child's memory as
the form of the empty standard, the transcendent model that the child feels
necessary to imitate in order to identitfy with the phallus/master and
regain rights to the mother, now horrificably distorted.
this situation wouldn't be all that bad, because identifying with the
phallus is sometimes very easy to do, and it makes people happy, to be this
or that... some people might call it 'self-esteem'; i said earlier that it's
good stuff, that phallic energy. acting as the phallus, it makes people
happy.
but things get bad when castration comes a second time and the child feels
ashamed to be the phallus, to be happy, bad conscience. this is where
oedipus becomes a complex, if i'm reading AO correctly.
i'll have to disagree with Chris, though, and say that this has nothing to
do with penises. the phallus is alligned on the penis at some point or
another, but i'm not sure if the organ itself ever plays an active role. in
the same way, oedipus isn't necessarily familial. the father doesn't always
play the castrating role. i think this is what you mean, dan, by objecting
to making the empty standard equal the phallus: it reduces the analysis to
the family, to oedipus. but really it's a matter of avoiding the reduction
of oedipus to the family; there's plenty of other ways to enter into the
symbolic and be oedipalized besides the familial entrance, a very diverse
number of things which can be brought under the form of the phallus/empty
standard.

:) bobo
>dan

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