Indecent exposure (of the jugular vein)

[Paul Mackin]

Thanks to Parke Muth for the input but I feel it's WAAAY over my head for the most part. Does suggest to me a big missing link in the perplexity I expressed is Oedipa herself. Must reread. Thanks to all for putting her in focus again and maybe especially to Diana, in spite of her faults. 

				P.
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From: 	Phillip P. Muth[SMTP:ppm at poe.acc.virginia.edu]
Sent: 	Wednesday, March 05, 1997 11:23 AM
To: 	Paul Mackin
Cc: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	Re: Indecent exposure (of the jugular vein)

"It may seem that we have simply trotted out the most common
prejudices about female depression--the notion of woman who can
be aroued only by man's stimuli.  There is, however, another
way to consider the issue:  the elementary structure of
subjectivity turns on how not-all of the suject is determined
by the causal chain.  The subject 'is' this very gap that
separates the causes from its effect; it emerges precisely in
so far as the relationship between cause and effect becomes
"unaccountable.' In other words, what is this feminine
depression that suspends the causal link, the causal connection
between our acts and exernal stimuli, if not the founding
gesture of subjectivity, the primordial act of freedom, of
refusing our insertion into the nexus of causes and effects?
the philosophical name for the "depression' is absolute
negativity--what Hegel called the "night of the world', the
subject;s withdrawal into itself.  In short, woman, not man is
the subject par excellence.  And the link between theis
depression and the indestructable life-substance is also
clear:  depression ,withdrawal into self, is the primordial
act of retreat, of maintaining a distance towards the
indestructible life-substance, making it appear as a repulsive
scintillation"  Zizek "The Metastases of Enjoyment"

For more on the three stages of Lacan's reading of the death
drive see p.131-2 Sublime Object of Ideology or less
interestingly Raglands chapter "Lacan's concept of the Death
Drive" in "Essays on the Pleasure of Death".  

In other words, Lacan uses the death drive in different ways at
different stages of his teaching. Each of them can be applied
to ol TP.

Parke Muth