If you could convene a dream panel of famous Pynchomanes...

[Anville Azote]

On 9/24/06, mikebailey at speakeasy.net <mikebailey at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> Jacques Lacan's "möbial . . . surface of human reality" and the various
> reality-games in Pynchon become precisely figured as three psychological
> forces: "the real (id), the imaginary (ego) and the symbolic (superego)" (44).
>
> Reading Berressem, one needs already to know and care a great deal not only
> about Pynchon but about Lacan and chaos- and catastrophe-theory."
>

"What should we make of Lacan's mathematics?  Commentators disagree
about Lacan's intentions:  to what extent was he aiming to
'mathematicize' psychoanalysis?  We are unable to give any definitive
answer to this question -- which, in any case, does not matter much,
since Lacan's 'mathematics' are so bizarre that they cannot play a
fruitful role in any serious psychological analysis.

"To be sure, Lacan does have a vague idea of the mathematics he
invokes (but not much more).  It is not from him that a student will
learn what a natural number or a compact set is, but his statements,
when they are understandable, are not always false.  On the other
hand, he excels (if we may use this word) at the second type of abuse
listed in our introduction:  his analogies between psychoanalysis and
mathematics are the most arbitrary imaginable, and he gives absolutely
no empirical or conceptual justification for them (neither here nor
elsewhere in his work).  Finally, as for showing off a superficial
erudition and manipulating meaningless sentences, the texts quoted
above surely speak for themselves.

"The most striking aspect of Lacan and his disciples is probably their
attitude towards science, and the extreme privilege they accord to
'theory' (in actual fact, to formalism and wordplay) at the expense of
observations and experiments.  After all, psychoanalysis, assuming
that it has a scientific basis, is a rather young science.  Before
launching into vast theoretical generalizations, it might be prudent
to check the empirical adequacy of at least some of its propositions.
But, in Lacan's writings, one finds mainly quotations and analyses of
texts and concepts.

"Lacan's defenders (as well as those of the other authors discusse
dhere) tend to respond to these criticisms by resorting to a strategy
we shall call 'neither/nor':  these writings should be evaluated
neither as science, nor as philosophy, nor as poetry, nor ... One is
then faced with what could be called a 'secular mysticism': mysticism
because the discourse aims at producing mental effects that are not
purely aesthetic, but without addressing itself to reason; secular
because the cultural references (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud,
mathematics, contemporary literature) have nothing to dow ith
traditional religions and are attractive to the modern reader."

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont (2003). Intellectual Impostures, 2nd
edition.  London: Profile Books.  ISBN 1-86197-631-3.  p. 34.

"Some purported 'applications' of chaos theory -- for example, to
business management or literary analysis -- border on the absurd.
And, to make things worse, chaos theory -- which is well-developed
mathematically -- is often confused with the still-emerging theories
of complexity and self-organization.

"Another major confusion is caused by mixing the mathematical theory
of chaos with the popular wisdom that small causes can have large
effects:  'if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter', or the story of the
missing nail that led to the collapse of an empire.  One constantly
hears claims of chaos theory being 'applied' to history or society.
But human societies are complicated systems involving a vast number of
variables for which one is unable (at least at present) to write down
any sensible equations.  To speak of chaos for these systems does not
take us much further than the intuition already contained in the
popular wisdom.

"Yet another abuse arises from confusing (intentionally or not) the
numerous distinct meanings of the highly evocative word 'chaos':  its
technical meaning in the mathematical theory of nonlinear dynamics --
where it is roughly (though not exactly) synonymous with 'sensitive
dependence upon initial conditions' -- and its wider senes in
sociology, politics, history and theology, where it is frequently
taken as a synonym for disorder."

Sokal and Bricmont, p. 136.

-A. A.