re: name dropping & the fiction of subjectivity

The recent conversation on names has given me some ground to bring up the
more reactive (nihilistic) and productive applicaitons of Deleuze. I think
dropping names is on the face of it a bad idea. It is exactly what I objected
to before in the mysticism, which occurs on several levels on this list. I
equate it with both a return to the untroublesome (right!) relation to the
fully fulfilling mother (i.e. total retreat to fantasy) and the order
(totally outside of political contention) of the pre-symbolic. See the first
section of Nietzsche's Will to Power for a more detailed explanation of the
Morality-Nihilism trap.
The idea is not however without merit, there must be a break with moral
thinking within the symbolic, Nietzsche even notes that the Nihilist is a
preliminary to his revaluation. So where does this leave us? Not in denying
subjectivity, but in actively producing its ficiton. We must not exist below
the symbolic, but behind it, not as the servants of the code, but as the
producers, which society has always been.
Now, certainly our names have been handed down to us. We have only a certain
moral obligation to our families to use them. It rather reminds me of my
sophmore drawing class. I refused to sign my drawings and it frustrated the
teacher who felt he could not grade them because he didn't know which ones
were mine. I told him if he could not recognize how much better my drawings
were than the rest of the class, if he could not identify my "hand" in the
drawing that I had failed and he should fail me. I think this might be a
better way to think of posts, while a name may serve to give coherency to a
certain position, or to help you recognize someone at a conference despite
the disembodied voice... the post itself should be your signature, the field
of production of thought where you produce a fiction of self. One can
speculate on how the net might aid in such a project.

[][][] Seamus [][][]

(p.s. I got an "A" in drawing 201)



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