Dear Ruth,
Thanks for the feedback. That clarifies quite a bit of what sort of things
might be at stake here, I think -
>D and G argue that fort da is a refrain (amongst other refrains) and i can
>go along with it on this basis and as one mode of producing proximity and
>distance amongst other modes.
I find this easy to buy. Apart from the fact that the fort da games I have
witnessed were not "here"/there" but rather things like peep-a-boo, placing
the obj in and out of the basket, etc. Hide&Seek, it is the child who hides.
The games share the present/absent play, which is why I said fort da,
tentatively.
i don't really know Chomsky that well but
>could, at a stretch, go as far as to say that fort/da might be a symptom
>of
>tree like grammatical habits and that exclusive focus on this gesture is
>part of this linguistic archeology.
Yes. That's what WK and me have been thinking about.
But can I also mention Hegel's discussion of "here" and "there" towards
beginning of "Sense Certainty" in Phenomenology of Spirit where the words
that the realist proposes to stipulate the reality of objects actually turn
out to be empty abstractions enganed in infinite deferral of the reality of
the obj (deferred because not unexchangeable, that is alienable,
representable, etc.)? It really is a marvellous passage. Worth returning to.
Following Hegel might rob fort da of some of the traits I have been
ascribing to UG: the formation of a "reality" composed of fundamental
objects, mediated by presence/absence? It would mean fort da is more of a
language game or "refrain"?
so, in this sense, fort/da might be a
>binding gesture of a partial ontology, the kind of ontology that needs
>universal/particular pretensions, i.e 'The Molar 'Man' of ATP.
Perhaps, following Hegel, the fort da is a game that *mediates*
universal/particular? Apologies up-front for returning to my dialectical
penchant.
i want to
>stress, however, that i see this 'Man' as having very little to do with the
>n sexes of most men that i know but that does not resolve the residual
>problems of thinking about molarity and molecularity as a gendered
>distinction.
I follow.
i am not altogether sure that aligning molarity to 'Man' as the
>major subject par excellence requires fort/da in anything other than
>Irigaray's claim that nature is already sexed.
Mmmm. Might we not also, to that fact, have to add some sort of +/- charge?
I mean could there not be a semiosis where female(+)/male(-)? Or where
(+/+), as is common, at least overtly, today ... as I tell XX when she asks,
affirming the goodness of the female repordictive organs without making the
male organs pay for that affirmation (or vice versa). Doubleplusgood. But in
any case, the biological fact seems to me insufficient to the case of the
omnipresent Phallus vs. the invisible fem/other? If we say there is some
ground to that. Contingently. Irigaray flips "2+n(+) not 2+n(-) as the
patriarchs have been telling us"? Solid hook up to D&Ger prejudice:
molecularity(+)/molarity(-) there.
nevertheless, if at the level
>of habitual constructivism, this is the case then the refrain of fort/da
>underlies the inverted image of the dialectic, D and G oppose.
Yeah. Inverted, esp. if we follow Hegel? But what's in a dialectic between
spatial algebra units f & d? Graph it:
f/d d/f (+)
--- vs. ---
d/f f/d (-)
For a double articulated game where the object never really "appears" at
all, but "falls" away into an abstract spatiotemporality? And what do we say
about that non-appearance? + or - ?
Anyway the dialectic does seem to correspond to: have/give vs give/have
which might be found in Freud's understanding of fort da anyway.
as you
>already know, 'is it or isn't' is precisely the refrain which
>mis(recognition) needs to invert perspectival images into the thin channel
>of infinite negation/sublation and which needs to code the 'elsewhere'
>ontology of the mother as 'absence' to make this refrain.
Yep. That would fit the graph (above)?
Irigaray's
>position can't function without also positing a fundamental relation of
>sons
>to mothers as absence and suggesting that this is different for girls.
Yeah. Because if we flip the graph upside-down the obj still does not
appear. :) What is this authentic presence of mommy for girl?
>it never ceases to amaze me just how banal this argument is. as you observe
>from the play of your daughters, they negotiate all sorts of proximites and
>distance and in many kinds of assemblages.
Yes. Bags of assemblages. Most tantrums: "You broke my flow!" Even the
"Oedipal" ones: "I want mommy!"?
E.g. the "exchange game". Child gives obj to parent (apparently
sontaneously?), parent gives back to child. Yeh! Repeat. Design your own
domestic pacifica (cultural development). Add in new object for swap
elaboration. Question arises, who gives first, but not automatically as "I
want both" (capitalism). Just as often, "I want empty hands" (potlatch). Add
in new sib for kula elaboration. Distress from Sib1 as object passes to
Sib2, dispersed into yeh when Sib2 learns to give to Sib1. Do three objects
at a time. Try it with balls on the floor.
sticking with maternal separation
>for now, when when J was small one of the games which made him laugh was to
>cover my face with a blanket and discover it again by feellng my nose and
>mouth through the cover and then pull the cover away. distance and
>proximity
>are learned just as well through this kind of play but which operates on
>s/he ( the other player does not have to be 'The Mother') going elsewhere
>but remaining residually tactile. this kind of subjectivity, Irigary
>suggests is not available to boys but i think this dreadfully reductionist-
Right on. :)
>sure J cannot know in that kind of game 'what he is looking at even'
>because
>while my face is hidden he is knowing/learning me through other senses and
>his scopic sense, as one of these senses, is occupied with other
>ingrediaents that make up this fairly limited machinic assembalge, the
>blanket, my hair strangely growing out of its edge, an expanse of
>softnesses, pillow, quilt, milk smell, relative hardness of feeling my nose
>and brow bones under the cover and so on.
Repeat. Joy.
>D and G are very careful about how they use the term 'like' ( see
>Becoming-Intense plataeu).
Rightly so. I try to be very aware of this when observing my daughters ...
but I cannot help *imposing* the theory ... or the theory seems to impose
itself? In any case, the main benefit is not finding e.g. to bear out
theory, but getting some sort of concretization while exploring the theory?
No doubt I am *warping their frasgile little minds.
:) Chris
_________________________________________________________________________
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Thanks for the feedback. That clarifies quite a bit of what sort of things
might be at stake here, I think -
>D and G argue that fort da is a refrain (amongst other refrains) and i can
>go along with it on this basis and as one mode of producing proximity and
>distance amongst other modes.
I find this easy to buy. Apart from the fact that the fort da games I have
witnessed were not "here"/there" but rather things like peep-a-boo, placing
the obj in and out of the basket, etc. Hide&Seek, it is the child who hides.
The games share the present/absent play, which is why I said fort da,
tentatively.
i don't really know Chomsky that well but
>could, at a stretch, go as far as to say that fort/da might be a symptom
>of
>tree like grammatical habits and that exclusive focus on this gesture is
>part of this linguistic archeology.
Yes. That's what WK and me have been thinking about.
But can I also mention Hegel's discussion of "here" and "there" towards
beginning of "Sense Certainty" in Phenomenology of Spirit where the words
that the realist proposes to stipulate the reality of objects actually turn
out to be empty abstractions enganed in infinite deferral of the reality of
the obj (deferred because not unexchangeable, that is alienable,
representable, etc.)? It really is a marvellous passage. Worth returning to.
Following Hegel might rob fort da of some of the traits I have been
ascribing to UG: the formation of a "reality" composed of fundamental
objects, mediated by presence/absence? It would mean fort da is more of a
language game or "refrain"?
so, in this sense, fort/da might be a
>binding gesture of a partial ontology, the kind of ontology that needs
>universal/particular pretensions, i.e 'The Molar 'Man' of ATP.
Perhaps, following Hegel, the fort da is a game that *mediates*
universal/particular? Apologies up-front for returning to my dialectical
penchant.
i want to
>stress, however, that i see this 'Man' as having very little to do with the
>n sexes of most men that i know but that does not resolve the residual
>problems of thinking about molarity and molecularity as a gendered
>distinction.
I follow.
i am not altogether sure that aligning molarity to 'Man' as the
>major subject par excellence requires fort/da in anything other than
>Irigaray's claim that nature is already sexed.
Mmmm. Might we not also, to that fact, have to add some sort of +/- charge?
I mean could there not be a semiosis where female(+)/male(-)? Or where
(+/+), as is common, at least overtly, today ... as I tell XX when she asks,
affirming the goodness of the female repordictive organs without making the
male organs pay for that affirmation (or vice versa). Doubleplusgood. But in
any case, the biological fact seems to me insufficient to the case of the
omnipresent Phallus vs. the invisible fem/other? If we say there is some
ground to that. Contingently. Irigaray flips "2+n(+) not 2+n(-) as the
patriarchs have been telling us"? Solid hook up to D&Ger prejudice:
molecularity(+)/molarity(-) there.
nevertheless, if at the level
>of habitual constructivism, this is the case then the refrain of fort/da
>underlies the inverted image of the dialectic, D and G oppose.
Yeah. Inverted, esp. if we follow Hegel? But what's in a dialectic between
spatial algebra units f & d? Graph it:
f/d d/f (+)
--- vs. ---
d/f f/d (-)
For a double articulated game where the object never really "appears" at
all, but "falls" away into an abstract spatiotemporality? And what do we say
about that non-appearance? + or - ?
Anyway the dialectic does seem to correspond to: have/give vs give/have
which might be found in Freud's understanding of fort da anyway.
as you
>already know, 'is it or isn't' is precisely the refrain which
>mis(recognition) needs to invert perspectival images into the thin channel
>of infinite negation/sublation and which needs to code the 'elsewhere'
>ontology of the mother as 'absence' to make this refrain.
Yep. That would fit the graph (above)?
Irigaray's
>position can't function without also positing a fundamental relation of
>sons
>to mothers as absence and suggesting that this is different for girls.
Yeah. Because if we flip the graph upside-down the obj still does not
appear. :) What is this authentic presence of mommy for girl?
>it never ceases to amaze me just how banal this argument is. as you observe
>from the play of your daughters, they negotiate all sorts of proximites and
>distance and in many kinds of assemblages.
Yes. Bags of assemblages. Most tantrums: "You broke my flow!" Even the
"Oedipal" ones: "I want mommy!"?
E.g. the "exchange game". Child gives obj to parent (apparently
sontaneously?), parent gives back to child. Yeh! Repeat. Design your own
domestic pacifica (cultural development). Add in new object for swap
elaboration. Question arises, who gives first, but not automatically as "I
want both" (capitalism). Just as often, "I want empty hands" (potlatch). Add
in new sib for kula elaboration. Distress from Sib1 as object passes to
Sib2, dispersed into yeh when Sib2 learns to give to Sib1. Do three objects
at a time. Try it with balls on the floor.
sticking with maternal separation
>for now, when when J was small one of the games which made him laugh was to
>cover my face with a blanket and discover it again by feellng my nose and
>mouth through the cover and then pull the cover away. distance and
>proximity
>are learned just as well through this kind of play but which operates on
>s/he ( the other player does not have to be 'The Mother') going elsewhere
>but remaining residually tactile. this kind of subjectivity, Irigary
>suggests is not available to boys but i think this dreadfully reductionist-
Right on. :)
>sure J cannot know in that kind of game 'what he is looking at even'
>because
>while my face is hidden he is knowing/learning me through other senses and
>his scopic sense, as one of these senses, is occupied with other
>ingrediaents that make up this fairly limited machinic assembalge, the
>blanket, my hair strangely growing out of its edge, an expanse of
>softnesses, pillow, quilt, milk smell, relative hardness of feeling my nose
>and brow bones under the cover and so on.
Repeat. Joy.
>D and G are very careful about how they use the term 'like' ( see
>Becoming-Intense plataeu).
Rightly so. I try to be very aware of this when observing my daughters ...
but I cannot help *imposing* the theory ... or the theory seems to impose
itself? In any case, the main benefit is not finding e.g. to bear out
theory, but getting some sort of concretization while exploring the theory?
No doubt I am *warping their frasgile little minds.
:) Chris
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.