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

[Ian Livingston]

I'll have to look up Gramsci. The Burke  / Cassirer connect rings true
enough. The dramatism / linguistics / ethics link connects in both. It's
too early on a Sunday morning for me to pull my brain out and recollect why
and how, but I think it's likely that once I flip open A Grammar of Motives
and the first couple volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms it'll all
come clear to me. That'll have to wait until after I paint my deck. Any
suggestions from Gramsci?

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 2:51 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

>   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
>
>
>


-- 
"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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20121021/739411d5/attachment.html>