phallogocentricism

[hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

On Fri, 14 Feb 1997, Diana York Blaine wrote:
>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.

Hmmm, more often than not I feel more relaxed & less unsure when operating
in Other English than in my "mother" tongue. While it well could be said
here that the Finnish language really is just my primary phallic symbolic
order, couldn't this also be tracked down to "the cold mother", which --
not the father -- Deleuze notoriously sees as the source of all masochism?

What I tried to say was that people who generalize Lacan's symbolic to
define the nature and workings of the social sphere as a whole are in my
view guilty (sic) of psychologistic reductionism. JL did psychologistically 
reduce, too. When it comes to Pynchon criticism, this socio-Lacanism affects 
e.g. the Lacanian old-timer Leo Bersani's essay on _GR_. Which I do not mean 
is not a smart essay.

>happy Valentines Day!

(You Empress with your whip, there high over me, do I, naughty boy, 
r-really have to wish it in Finnish, too?....orrghhhhhh....stop....
I ask you....stop....I'llbeagoodboynow:)

H-HYVA"A" VALENTINEN PA"IVA"A"!  

h-heikki