On Mon, 19 Aug 1996, M.Eldred_artefact wrote:
>
> Cologne, 19 August 1996
>
> To follow up a bit on patricide and Iain's Vorstoss, especially concerning the
> necessity of doing violence to the father in the passing of the generations,
> I've been wondering whether Oedipus' downfall lay in fact in NOT having done
> violence to the father. For he never 'killed' the father AS father, but a
> stranger blocking his way on the road. This absence of having it out with the
> father, the very lack of resistance was perhaps his downfall, leading him to re-
> and uncovering the father? If this is at all plausible, then the parallels to
> Plato's doing violence to father Parmenides do not hold up, for Plato's
> "violence" is a loving violence. (Just as Heidegger's violence against
> Husserl is a loving violence.) Taking the father seriously in having it out
> with him seems to be part of the downward compatible love between the
> generations in the West.
This seems well put. This was my first reaction to Oedipus (which I
confess not having reread for this discussion) when I read it, and it has
always been my reaction. It seems a classic "differend", but what else?
What is happening in this scene in which the man unknowingly "kills his
father", then realizing, cuts out his own eyes? The *tragedy* of it? And
what is involved in Freud's use of it in his psychology? Is it, for Freud,
simply a useful tag to generate the themes of father, son and murder,
rather than an attempt to model parricidal impulses on that tragedy
specifically, to the point even that the play itself would have to be
psychoanalyzed, or perhaps the *reception* of and *attraction* to it?
But in any event, what seems to be in play is rather a *juoissance* of
tragedy which stops short of thought/analysis, since, after all, if he
didn't know, he would surely recognize a difference between that state of
affairs and a knowing, premeditated murder. One might see this as "low
tragedy", even "gutter tragedy". But he cuts out his own eyes. (Gee, I
hope I remember the story right!) Oh the humanity! It *is* an horrific
unfolding of events, true. The sense of the ending is: yes, and we would
all do the same; the moral being pray you don't indavertently kill a loved
one!
Pray you don't inadvertently kill a loved one, or take special care that
those whom you kill are not actually loved ones? There is an oprea that
has such a structure (probably derived from some story), is it Rigoletto?
In the end, the sad court jester finds that the body he is carrying in the
sack, a procedure he's undertaking as revenge for his daughter's
abduction, is his daughter and not the "women are fickle" Duke. The end
leaves us with his anguished cries. He doesn't cut out his eyes. It's just
horrible, that's all.
"Now you have to cut out your own eyes, because *you killed your father*,
and the law says, killing your father is a bad, bad thing."
And...Life moves on so quickly, there is no stopping things, no stopping
*physis* (though perhaps it is herein that the *tragedy of physis
unfolds*), no stopping the *chorus* who speaks for the They, perhaps, what
is done, without really examining it. Life of the spectacle, let the show
go on, there's meat for the having, let those who have meat before them
eat it and let the bloody eyes of Oedipus be your sauce. Something like
that.
Straight out violence, really, some logics of rape, too. But its Greek.
Who are we to question the Greeks, let alone a *Greek Classic*? A manly
man plays his role in Dasein, whose moods, after all, are inexplicable,
and he need only play his part *authentically*, or be his guilt
authentically, that's all Dasein asks. Authentic Dasein can cut out its
own eyes for bad reasons, who's to really consider reasons? A *lawyer*? A
*faggot*?
*Meat tastes good*, and that's the thing. A testament to fate? An exercize
of the logics of violence? The Dasein of violence? The Greeks have been
questioned, as for example in a little book called _Truth and Torture_,
*by some woman* (I speak ironically/sarcastically, and mock,
anti-polemically, not the woman but a certain understanding, let me be
clear) in which the choicest morsels of truth, for the Greeks, are
reported to arise in torture. Here the circumstances themselves torture.
Torture is a given, it is accepted. Violence is accepted as a fact of
life. That's when physis was good. (That's when and probably why physis
was *dying*!)
Violence as a fact of life. How does this stand in relation to *ordinary*
nonviolence, such as the case of Diana Oritz, a victim of torture who had
to work quite hard and with the help of many activists to get the US
government to recognize her having been tortured, having had cigarette
butts put out on her, her repeated rapes, etc.? To which "existentialism"
might well respond, "well, that's the 'existential reality'" Cast in an
Oedipal setting -- a setting which I am claiming has little if anything to
do with parricide as such -- the chorus would simply sing: and you were a
peace worker and were taken in by theives and scoundrels, and this is your
fate: you were tortured. (Pass the A1 sauce...)
"We" don't accept this, though "we" scarcely understand what the
implications of this non-acceptance are, it seems to me, and one can hear
a faint sigh eminating from a certain Heidegger of one's collective
memory, if one listens right. "Those were the days. All this justice has
ruined Dasein!" Diana was raped, deal with it, let's get back to the real
polemos: US and the Bad Guys in Central America. Look, look at the pretty
colors!
And that's the real meaning of Oedipus, Charley Brown...
Tom B.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
> Cologne, 19 August 1996
>
> To follow up a bit on patricide and Iain's Vorstoss, especially concerning the
> necessity of doing violence to the father in the passing of the generations,
> I've been wondering whether Oedipus' downfall lay in fact in NOT having done
> violence to the father. For he never 'killed' the father AS father, but a
> stranger blocking his way on the road. This absence of having it out with the
> father, the very lack of resistance was perhaps his downfall, leading him to re-
> and uncovering the father? If this is at all plausible, then the parallels to
> Plato's doing violence to father Parmenides do not hold up, for Plato's
> "violence" is a loving violence. (Just as Heidegger's violence against
> Husserl is a loving violence.) Taking the father seriously in having it out
> with him seems to be part of the downward compatible love between the
> generations in the West.
This seems well put. This was my first reaction to Oedipus (which I
confess not having reread for this discussion) when I read it, and it has
always been my reaction. It seems a classic "differend", but what else?
What is happening in this scene in which the man unknowingly "kills his
father", then realizing, cuts out his own eyes? The *tragedy* of it? And
what is involved in Freud's use of it in his psychology? Is it, for Freud,
simply a useful tag to generate the themes of father, son and murder,
rather than an attempt to model parricidal impulses on that tragedy
specifically, to the point even that the play itself would have to be
psychoanalyzed, or perhaps the *reception* of and *attraction* to it?
But in any event, what seems to be in play is rather a *juoissance* of
tragedy which stops short of thought/analysis, since, after all, if he
didn't know, he would surely recognize a difference between that state of
affairs and a knowing, premeditated murder. One might see this as "low
tragedy", even "gutter tragedy". But he cuts out his own eyes. (Gee, I
hope I remember the story right!) Oh the humanity! It *is* an horrific
unfolding of events, true. The sense of the ending is: yes, and we would
all do the same; the moral being pray you don't indavertently kill a loved
one!
Pray you don't inadvertently kill a loved one, or take special care that
those whom you kill are not actually loved ones? There is an oprea that
has such a structure (probably derived from some story), is it Rigoletto?
In the end, the sad court jester finds that the body he is carrying in the
sack, a procedure he's undertaking as revenge for his daughter's
abduction, is his daughter and not the "women are fickle" Duke. The end
leaves us with his anguished cries. He doesn't cut out his eyes. It's just
horrible, that's all.
"Now you have to cut out your own eyes, because *you killed your father*,
and the law says, killing your father is a bad, bad thing."
And...Life moves on so quickly, there is no stopping things, no stopping
*physis* (though perhaps it is herein that the *tragedy of physis
unfolds*), no stopping the *chorus* who speaks for the They, perhaps, what
is done, without really examining it. Life of the spectacle, let the show
go on, there's meat for the having, let those who have meat before them
eat it and let the bloody eyes of Oedipus be your sauce. Something like
that.
Straight out violence, really, some logics of rape, too. But its Greek.
Who are we to question the Greeks, let alone a *Greek Classic*? A manly
man plays his role in Dasein, whose moods, after all, are inexplicable,
and he need only play his part *authentically*, or be his guilt
authentically, that's all Dasein asks. Authentic Dasein can cut out its
own eyes for bad reasons, who's to really consider reasons? A *lawyer*? A
*faggot*?
*Meat tastes good*, and that's the thing. A testament to fate? An exercize
of the logics of violence? The Dasein of violence? The Greeks have been
questioned, as for example in a little book called _Truth and Torture_,
*by some woman* (I speak ironically/sarcastically, and mock,
anti-polemically, not the woman but a certain understanding, let me be
clear) in which the choicest morsels of truth, for the Greeks, are
reported to arise in torture. Here the circumstances themselves torture.
Torture is a given, it is accepted. Violence is accepted as a fact of
life. That's when physis was good. (That's when and probably why physis
was *dying*!)
Violence as a fact of life. How does this stand in relation to *ordinary*
nonviolence, such as the case of Diana Oritz, a victim of torture who had
to work quite hard and with the help of many activists to get the US
government to recognize her having been tortured, having had cigarette
butts put out on her, her repeated rapes, etc.? To which "existentialism"
might well respond, "well, that's the 'existential reality'" Cast in an
Oedipal setting -- a setting which I am claiming has little if anything to
do with parricide as such -- the chorus would simply sing: and you were a
peace worker and were taken in by theives and scoundrels, and this is your
fate: you were tortured. (Pass the A1 sauce...)
"We" don't accept this, though "we" scarcely understand what the
implications of this non-acceptance are, it seems to me, and one can hear
a faint sigh eminating from a certain Heidegger of one's collective
memory, if one listens right. "Those were the days. All this justice has
ruined Dasein!" Diana was raped, deal with it, let's get back to the real
polemos: US and the Bad Guys in Central America. Look, look at the pretty
colors!
And that's the real meaning of Oedipus, Charley Brown...
Tom B.
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---