I didn't think it was such a profound observation. I can think of an example, in Latin this time, where Vergil uses the phrase "Mars rages" as a metaphor for the many evils in the world. I don't think he actually thought that there was a literal god, Mars, that was responsible for those evils.

"Here indeed right has been turned around and also wrong; (there are) so many wars throughout the world, so many aspects of evils, (there is) not any honor worthy of the plow, the fields are neglected (with) the settlers having been led off, and the curved sickles are forged into a rigid sword. Here the Euphrates, there Germany, stirs up war; after laws have been broken among themselves, neighboring cities bear arms; unholy Mars rages over the whole world, just as when four-horse chariots have poured themselves forth from the starting gates, they add up (speed) lap after lap, and the charioteer holding the reins in vain is borne by his horses, and his chariot does not respond to the reins."

(Vergil, Georgics, I.505-51)

Just so were on the same page, Vico, in "New Science," proposed four primary poetic tropes:

1) Metaphor--a figurative expression in which a word which ordinarily means one thing is applied to another thing, implying a likeness between the two;

2) Metonymy--a figure of speech that consists in substituting for the name of a thing an attribute of it or something which it naturally suggests;

3) Synedoche--a figure by which a more comprehensive term is used for a less comprehensive or vice versa--a part for a whole or a whole for a part; and

4) Irony--a figure in which the ordinary meanings of the words are opposite of the thought conveyed.

At the risk of sounding like a knucklehead, I memorized a phrase that helps me to remember three of the four poetic tropes summarized by Vico:

Fifty keels ploughed the deep

Keels = synedoche
Ploughed = metaphor
Deep = metonym

Regards,
fred

ven. 2003/08/29 22:04
[akhnaton] What I've been reading

Dear Fellow List Members,

Did anyone happen to catch the movie, "The Life of David Gale?" Kevin Spacey plays a professor of philosophy at some university in Texas who is also an activist opposing the death penalty, and at the beginning of the movie he is shown concluding a lecture to his students on Lacan. He is standing in front of a blackboard with various Lacanian terms and schema drawn on it. I guess the Lacan stuff was meant to show that he was some type of Harvard educated cutting edge intellectual.

Lately I've been looking at Couliano ("Eros and Magic in the Renaissance") again, in anticipation of William returning to his reading of it. But I also went to Borders and picked up Lacan's "Écrits," and "Lacan: The Absolute Master" by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, so I've been kind of reading them simultaneously. I was struck by Couliano's comment, when he quotes Ficino ("Amore," VI, 6), "The lover carves into his soul the model of the beloved. In that way, the soul of the lover becomes the mirror in which the image of the loved one is reflected." Couliano says this anticipates the analytic psychology of Jung, but to me, it seems closer to Lacan. Couiliano goes on to say that in this complex dialectic that Ficino sees heterosexual love as a form of narcissism. I know William has made the observation before, of the close ties between psychoanalysis and the Renaissance magician, nothing new here, but it just confirms it for me. In fact, I got to a part in "Écrits." "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious" where Lacan is discussing tropes, metaphor and metonym, when he mentions Quintilian in a humorous aside,

"The properly signifying function thus depicted in language has a name. We learned this name in some grammar of our childhood, on the last page, where the shade of Quintilian, relegated to some phantom chapter concerning 'final considerations on style,' seemed suddenly to speed up his voice in an attempt to get in all he had to say before the end."

Well, as we all know, from reading Yates' "The Art of Memory," that the "Institutio oratoria" of Quintilian was a major source of rules for the "ars memoriae," along with Cicero and the false Cicero of the Second Rhetoric, as well as the linguistic concerns about the poetic tropes. Although Quintilian was not as enthusiastic a supporter of the art as Cicero was, I would still guess that Lacan had an interest in it. Especially when elsewhere he also mentions one of the most well known of the practitioners of the art of memory G. Bruno, and his book "The Heroic Frenzies," which is an obscure work that Lacan must have read in the original Latin. So this convinces me that Lacan was well versed in this Renaissance art.

I am still trying to puzzle out Lacan's definitions, where metonym is "word-to-word," and metaphor is "one word for another," which differ from the Classical definitions. In fact he uses the example of "sails" for "ships" for metonym, which I thought should more properly be called a synedoche, but I read one critic say that metonym and synedoche are so closely related, that there really is no point in differentiating between the two.

I'll talk a little bit more about the role of magic in Lacan's theories according to my reading of Jacobsen in my next message.

mar. 2003/09/02 19:14
[akhnaton] What I've been reading, Part 2

Dear Fellow List Members,

So in "The Absolute Master," Jacobsen attempts to put Lacan's thought into a philosophical context. The main influence on the early Lacan is Hegel, e.g., the resolution of the Oedipus conflict is seen in terms of a dialectical process. The later Lacan is linked to Heidegger, with little bit of Fichte and Schelling thrown in. Without discussing the relative merits of either philosopher, I find this odd for the following reason: Lacan, like some philosophers who advocated a "return to Plato," was advocating a "return to Freud." Freud was greatly influenced in his conception of the Unconscious by Schopenhauer's conception of the Will, but Schopenhauer thought that Hegel, and the other post-Kantians (Schelling and Fichte), were "absurd."

"… my writing bears the stamp of honesty so distinctly on its face, that it is thus in glaring contrast to that of the three notorious sophists of the post-Kantian period. I am always to be found at the standpoint of 'reflection,' in other words, of rational deliberation and honest information, never at that of 'inspiration,' called intellectual intuition or even absolute thought; its correct names would be humbug (Fichte and Schelling) and charlatanism (Hegel).
Therefore, working in this spirit, and meanwhile constantly seeing the false and the bad held in general acceptance, indeed humbug and charlatanism in the highest admiration, I long ago renounced the approbation of my contemporaries. It is impossible that an age which for twenty years has extolled a Hegel, that intellectual Caliban, as the greatest of philosophers so loudly that the echo was heard throughout Europe, could the man who looked at this be eager for its approbation. No longer has it any crowns of honor to bestow; its applause is prostituted, its censure signifies nothing."
(Schopenhauer, preface to the second edition of "The World as Will and Representation")

In fact Schopenhauer would often schedule his lectures to conflict with Hegel's lectures, but of course, Hegel's were better attended. Perhaps this is why the later Lacan, with his return to Freud, would distance himself more and more from Hegel. Returning to Freud would imply a return also to the philosopher who most influenced Freud, Schopenhauer, and possibly inheriting Schopenhauer's distaste for Hegel. The way I see it, the crux of the difference between Schopenhauer and the Kantians is this: They both saw the ego as an external object, but for the Kantians the "thing-in-itself" is basically unknowable, whereas Schopenhauer identified the "thing-in itself" with the Will, which was the source of all desire.

I got sidetracked talking about Hegel. I was supposed to be talking about the role of magic in Lacan, according to Jacobsen, so I'll get back to that in my next message.

jeu. 2003/09/04 21:48
[akhnaton] What I've been reading, Part 3

Dear Fellow List Members,

Anyway, according to Jacobsen, in Freud's 1922 article, "Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality," there is also a dialectical process of repression, conversion, and transformation, which leads to the "birth of the social instincts." The dialectical process bears a strong resemblance to "magic," as Hegel remarked in "The Phenomenology of the Spirit:" "This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being."

I don't think this is the same thing that we normally think of as magic. Generally when we speak of magic in our little group, aren't we thinking more along the lines of the Renaissance magus who manipulates symbols in order to effect some goal in others? Jacobsen then discusses something that I think is more in line with this definition of magic.

"Why were the hysterics whom Breuer and Freud treated cured of their symptoms, often in such a spectacular manner? Breuer and Freud, as we know, attributed the cure to the bringing to consciousness of an actual 'traumatic event' - or, more precisely, to its spoken recollection in a hypnotic trance induced by the doctor. But, as Freud quickly realized, these traumatic events were often phantasies, with no basis in reality. Thus, real cures were effected through perfectly fictive 'reminiscences.' This explains Freud's constant embarrassment on this question, since in the absence of any 'reality' in the memory, analysis seemed actually to be reduced once more to a technique of suggestion - indeed, it seemed to flirt dangerously with magic. But, Lacan concludes, to say this is to completely mistake the power of speech and misunderstand its exclusively symbolic nature. What matters is not that hysterics become conscious of anything (since, as Lacan notes, they 'vaticinate' under hypnosis), but only that they 'recount' and 'verbalize' the 'epos' of their individual myths, getting these recognized by the collectivity incarnated in the doctor. Consequently, in this speech of the oracle or rhapsode there is nothing real but the magic efficacy of the pact of truth sealed in the shared fiction."

So what this amounts to is that that analyst's cure is much like the shaman who effects a cure by a manipulation of symbols, the shaman who by sleight of hand produces the bloody tissue that was causing the patient's illness, is kin to the analyst who brings the traumatic event to light. The analysts cure is a manipulation of the symbols of speech, and the shaman and analyst both cure by a form of trickery. I sometimes wonder about the efficacy of ancient physician's cures. I wonder if the ancient physicians were just as successful as modern physicians because the patient believed in the power of the symbols used, just as we believe in the efficacy of the modern techniques employed by our own doctors. It is not a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, there are modern scientific methods in use here.

"In a word, the mysterious ritual formula of the shaman is to the 'affliction' to be cured what the mathematician's 'x' is to the unknown term of the equation; pure play of words or writing, all the more effective and performative for being perfectly void, conventional, and arbitrary. Therefore, it is useless to resonate with the harmonies of the sacred in order to understand it, as did Durkheim and Mauss and, even more gravely, those 'sorcerer's apprentices' Caillois and Bataille. The magician is simply a mathematician who does not know it, just as, inversely, the mathematician is a sort of magician in the pure state (who nevertheless only 'partially controls' the 'floating signifier'). As for psychoanalysis, Lévi-Strauss, quite to the point, concludes that it is nothing more than 'a modern version of shamanistic technique' and is thus indebted to the same theory."

-----Message d'origine-----
De : TextRelease [mailto:info@textrelease.com]
Envoyé : vendredi 12 septembre 2003 22:46
À : William Théaux
Objet : RE: To DJ Farace / Théaux

Dear William,

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, when I left MCB/GreyNet in 2000, I was
unable to make any further claims to the information in the databases or to
the published works. This means that when GreyNet restarted this year, it
was without the earlier resources. I personally do not have any contact with
MCB.

I have one resource that may be of interest to you, this I can mail to your
postal address. Will you please send me your postal mailing address at your
earliest convenience.

With kind regards,
Dominic

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-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: William Théaux [mailto:williamtheaux@gmail.com]
Verzonden: vrijdag 12 september 2003 10:48
Aan: TextRelease
Onderwerp: RE: To DJ Farace / Théaux

OK Dominic,

I had misenderstood the meaning of 'presentation'. Translation will not
be a prob I'm sure.

At that point I am also wondering how and how much archive from previous
texts, mettings, congresses can be accessed. Browsing this stuff would be
quite usefull in order to sharper present writings.
For the WE I can only logg with a slow type of Internet access - soon
I'll connect again through ADSL and I'll visit more of the grey net ; yet
I'd benefit from all kind of clues and addresses that I could explore in
grey net and GL conferences.

All the best,
William