phallogocentricism

[Diana York Blaine]

Quizzical Heikki asks puckishly "and why do I always forget to take my
Finnish-English dictionary into this computer lab with me anyway?"

Simple, my dear lad.  Anxiety about entrance into the symbolic!  In
exchange for mastery the nascent subject submits to the violence of the
sign, sacrificing the pleasure of the mother's body for the (illusion) of
control offered under the Law. (Here complicated by your need to move
between "mother" tongue and Other English).  The price, perhaps too dear,
prevents our Oedipa from completely entering the realm of the
law-of-the-father either, hence her fascination with mirrors.  Inability
to cathect with the agape of an Imaginary loving Third party, she caroms
back and forth between complete subversion of her own identity in an other
(Arnold Snarb e.g.) and the desire for phallogocentric mastery as promised
by comprehension of the Word (see our list's recent fascination
with/fetishization of same). Conflict synthesized?  Hardly.  See the
famously ambiguous ending.  So you're in good company dear Heikki.

And happy Valentines Day to all loving and unloved (that would be you mr.
hate at atheist) p-listers everywhere!

Diana