Was Paul M's Eagleton tidbit on THE UNCONSCIOUS - Burke

[Matthew Cissell]

 Try Gramsci/ Burke/ Cassirer - I dunno how profitable it'll be, but it should make your head buzz.

Nice to see someone mention the pentad.

ciao
 mc otis


________________________________
 From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
To: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> 
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org 
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2012 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: Was Paul M's Eagleton tidbit on THE UNCONSCIOUS
 

Recently read an article (Guardian? BBC?) suggesting all creativity is proximate to mental illness. The argument was poorly structured and unrevealing, ultimately claiming that the most creative people, the creative genii, generate their work either resultant of direct efforts to manage illness or to deal with proximate illness in others in a manageable context. (My summary, of course, and unreliable.) It didn't seem to me news enough to pay much attention to. Artists are crazy? No shit? Gee, who'd a-thunk it? It's a thin line between madness and genius? Wow. 


The Freud / (Jung) / Burke / Jameson link seems much more profitable. What is Eagleton's title? I'd like to read it. He occasionally rings true, if difficult.

Burke's pentad often proves useful.


On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:

On 10/17/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>Can't find the email but if I remember, Paul said that Terry Eagleton 
>>has written that it may be THE UNCONSCIOUS that is the creativeness
>>that unites writers. Been thinkin' on that.
>
Actually I kind of misrepresented the great Terry E and left out his final point.
>
>The unconscious was a first stab at tying things together. It works
    well for psychoanalytic theory of course, also political theory
    (meaning Marxist), structuralism, post structuralism, and semiotics.
>
>However he next goes on to develop sort of a theory of everything
    and comes to the conclusion that in ALL literary work, in a certain
    sense, the text doesn't merely represent proper action, but also
    that action is perfectly realized because the reality to which it is
    faithful is no other than the one it creates itself.  
>
>The above depends on the idea of textuality--writers don't go to
    work on raw reality but rather on the always already textualized.
    Very French although the authors he relies on are Kenneth Burke and
    Frederic Jameson.
>
>The route to his conclusion involves a style of thinking some people
    might not find persuasive.  But it's all very interesting.
>
>
>P
>
>
>
> 
>>While I read a good esssay on Kenneth Burke since he was mentioned
>>(by Monte and Wayne Booth, I believe). Burke seemed to believe that
>>all great writers (in recent centuries anyway) can be seen as articulating 
>>values somehow---almost by definition---different from the prevailing, largely tacit, structural
>> values of a society. That is their necessary tension (or else they are just PR-like journalists).
>>this summary is obviously mine, fyi.
>> 
>>Anyway, Burke's pattern-finding leads one--me--to thoughts of the countervailing
>>symbols in TRP, from W.A.S.T.E/Trystero to CounterForce, etc...
>> 
>>and how with a tight but wide understanding of 'the prevailing ideas of a society'
>>almost any tension and insight might have to come from an Unconsciousness outside of 
>>it. And, to loop TRP back in, we know he has some Freudian-Jungian notions about history
>>and the societies that make that history.
>
>


-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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