The Cultural Logic of Late Critical Rhetoric

[Mark Kohut]

Maybe Lacan is just ...funnier to use?.... Satirizes "New Age" all the way up ( intellectually) ?

Sent from my iPad

> On Jul 27, 2014, at 5:10 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> Obviously this is to refer to Lacan and his influence on cinema theory in the last third of the 20th century. These "post-postmodern days" it's not that hot anymore, but never mind: It definitely belongs here, since Pynchon is picturing Shawn's fascination for Lacanian psychoanalysis in "Bleeding Edge".  After he's been starting to see his new therapist, who came from Buenos Aires which indeed was the global hotspot for this kind of thing at the turn of the century, Shawn says to Maxine: "... And after a while I began to see how much Lacanian is like Zen.'/'Huh?'/'Total bogosity of the ego, basically. Who you think you are isn't who you are at all. Which is much less, and at the same time---'/'Much more, yes, thanks for clearing that up, Shawn.'" (BE, p. 245). Of course, there is satire in this, but I'm not sure that this is all. I mean, there's no shortage of adventurous New Age theories and therapies that would fit Shawn's Californian roots, but Pynchon gave him Lacan. Why? Like in the case of the Deleuze/Guattari mention in Vineland this is not quite clear to me. It's a fact, though, that Pynchon now has articulated in his novels a certain interest in poststructuralist French philosophy twice.  Lacan founded his particular brand of psychoanalysis by blending the structural linguistics of Saussure with the philosophy of Heidegger; the Zen aspect comes from the latter one.   
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> When Heidegger met Lacan (photo):
> http://progressivegeographies.com/2013/01/11/when-heidegger-met-lacan/
> Heidegger and Zen:
> http://books.google.de/books/about/Heidegger_und_Zen.html?id=vR28AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y
> Japan and Heidegger:
> http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2385389?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21104399133987
> 
> "Ever since Tanabe Hajime visited Heidegger in 1923, Japanese proponents of Zen and the Kyoto School have been interested in his philosophy, and have maintained close personal relationship with Heidegger and his German followers. On the other hand, Heidegger and his disciples felt attracted by Zen and the Kyoto School. This mutual sympathy resulted from philosophical affinities such as their common belief in the importance of ontology, especially the notion of nothingness, and the shared metaphysical aversion towards modern technology."  
> 
> 
>> On 26.07.2014 14:59, Monte Davis wrote:
>> Noted in "Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone," a science-fiction short story by Damien Broderick and Barbara Lamar. The narrator wakes from an unplanned nap.
>> 
>> "I'd drooled on the interdisciplinary dissertation I was meant to be assessing. Psychoanalytic cinema theory, always such fun these post-postmodern days. Ob(Stet)Rick's: A/ob[gyn]jection, Blood and Blocked de(Sire) in Casa[blank]a. I closed my eyes again, feeling ill."
> 
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