On Tue, 23 Jul 1996, Thomas E. Bedwell wrote:
> I'm intersted in knowing what W's "sceptical paradox" is.
>
> T: First of all, nice trap.
I see you have adopted W's strategy of scepticism. :) The book
I am reading is "For They Know Not What They Do," and I assure you I was
not just trying to get you involved in the list if that is what you mean
by a trap. What happened was that i became entangled in
Zizek's--he has an amusing popular style and seemed quite pleased with
his own refreences to W., which refrence reminded me of your post. So,
since things are kind of slow on the list right now...I thought I would
just ask...(and it shall be given.)
Actually since I posted, I have read further in the book and
Zizek has a short section based largely on W.'s ideas that is incredible
intersting. He refer to several of W's texts...which would be the best to
begin with...once I get my exams out of the way.
Explaining Wittgenstein's sceptical paradox in
> this forum could be difficult. Here is a shot: Wittgenstein is getting at
> the notion of certainty, or rather, uncertainty. But you have to understand
> that his ideas on certainty are presented in the context of playing games,
> through language, in which we, as individuals, and collectively, constitute
> the rules and structure of the very game(s) we play.
[text deleted]
This is the point that Zizek was making about the monarch.
Basically, it doesn't matter what kind of a person he is because all he
has to do is personify the government for the people and sign the bills.
Later Zizek says, "the monarch is the actuality of his own notion.
> T: Do you know any International Relations Theory on the concept of
> Sovereignty?
>
Not by that name anyway.
> >Later Zizek talks about the "Wittgensteinian definition of identity,"
> >and I'd like to know more about that, also. I suspect that it is
> >quite similar to Hegel's just by the way Zizek writes about it.
>
> T: Wittgenstein could never offer a "definition of identity." The very
> notion is ludicrous.
>
> Well, here is the complete sentence which makes sense now...
The very identity-with-itself of a re-mark embodies negativity,
auto-fissure, inherent to all marks, in so far as this identity consists
in the impossible coincidence of an element with the empty place of its
inscription...
> T: Never heard Irigary, thank god.
>
Luce Irigaray is a modern French philosopher concerned among
other things with Marxist paradigms implicated in the dominant
monosexual symbolic order in such a way that women's difference cannot be
thought within them. Her multiplicity of strategies obviously owes some
debt to Foucault as does her view that language may have material effects,
although I have found no place where she mentions him. (I haven't read
even close to everything she has written.)
Irigaray understands the importance of women's fight for equal
rights, but she is concerned that after the battles are won, the war
will have been lost becuase sexual difference will have been
eliminated. And, after all, we do need two sexes just to survive...
She writes often about the importance of issues relating to the body and
sexuality to in the conceptualization of ethics, not in the sense of taboos,
but in the sense that the symbolic division of labor prevents women from
becoming for-themselves, as she expressesit. She agrees with Foucault
that female sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of
masculine parameters or as Foucault says, the discourse of sex is the locus
of the male subject's subjection.
She notices that in the discourse of science and knowledge(per
Foucault) apparently no one is responsible and the male subject of
enunciation is hidden behind third person statements. In psychoanalysis,
though, this apparently neutral third person discourse is more visible.
And, says Irigary, the woman's movement has become a kind of social
psychoanalysis.
She's a treat to read because she has read all the philosophers
and Greek (and other) mythology, and she is a psychoanalyst (trained in
Lacan's institute, she got thrown out after her dissertation questioning
his dictums) plus she has a wonderful subtle sense of humor.
Darlene Sybert
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
University of Missouri, Columbia (English)
*****************************************************************************
...feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love... -Wm Wordsworth
"LINES Composed A Few Miles Above Tinturn Abbey,
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye [River]
During a Tour, July 11, 1798"
******************************************************************************
> I'm intersted in knowing what W's "sceptical paradox" is.
>
> T: First of all, nice trap.
I see you have adopted W's strategy of scepticism. :) The book
I am reading is "For They Know Not What They Do," and I assure you I was
not just trying to get you involved in the list if that is what you mean
by a trap. What happened was that i became entangled in
Zizek's--he has an amusing popular style and seemed quite pleased with
his own refreences to W., which refrence reminded me of your post. So,
since things are kind of slow on the list right now...I thought I would
just ask...(and it shall be given.)
Actually since I posted, I have read further in the book and
Zizek has a short section based largely on W.'s ideas that is incredible
intersting. He refer to several of W's texts...which would be the best to
begin with...once I get my exams out of the way.
Explaining Wittgenstein's sceptical paradox in
> this forum could be difficult. Here is a shot: Wittgenstein is getting at
> the notion of certainty, or rather, uncertainty. But you have to understand
> that his ideas on certainty are presented in the context of playing games,
> through language, in which we, as individuals, and collectively, constitute
> the rules and structure of the very game(s) we play.
[text deleted]
This is the point that Zizek was making about the monarch.
Basically, it doesn't matter what kind of a person he is because all he
has to do is personify the government for the people and sign the bills.
Later Zizek says, "the monarch is the actuality of his own notion.
> T: Do you know any International Relations Theory on the concept of
> Sovereignty?
>
Not by that name anyway.
> >Later Zizek talks about the "Wittgensteinian definition of identity,"
> >and I'd like to know more about that, also. I suspect that it is
> >quite similar to Hegel's just by the way Zizek writes about it.
>
> T: Wittgenstein could never offer a "definition of identity." The very
> notion is ludicrous.
>
> Well, here is the complete sentence which makes sense now...
The very identity-with-itself of a re-mark embodies negativity,
auto-fissure, inherent to all marks, in so far as this identity consists
in the impossible coincidence of an element with the empty place of its
inscription...
> T: Never heard Irigary, thank god.
>
Luce Irigaray is a modern French philosopher concerned among
other things with Marxist paradigms implicated in the dominant
monosexual symbolic order in such a way that women's difference cannot be
thought within them. Her multiplicity of strategies obviously owes some
debt to Foucault as does her view that language may have material effects,
although I have found no place where she mentions him. (I haven't read
even close to everything she has written.)
Irigaray understands the importance of women's fight for equal
rights, but she is concerned that after the battles are won, the war
will have been lost becuase sexual difference will have been
eliminated. And, after all, we do need two sexes just to survive...
She writes often about the importance of issues relating to the body and
sexuality to in the conceptualization of ethics, not in the sense of taboos,
but in the sense that the symbolic division of labor prevents women from
becoming for-themselves, as she expressesit. She agrees with Foucault
that female sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of
masculine parameters or as Foucault says, the discourse of sex is the locus
of the male subject's subjection.
She notices that in the discourse of science and knowledge(per
Foucault) apparently no one is responsible and the male subject of
enunciation is hidden behind third person statements. In psychoanalysis,
though, this apparently neutral third person discourse is more visible.
And, says Irigary, the woman's movement has become a kind of social
psychoanalysis.
She's a treat to read because she has read all the philosophers
and Greek (and other) mythology, and she is a psychoanalyst (trained in
Lacan's institute, she got thrown out after her dissertation questioning
his dictums) plus she has a wonderful subtle sense of humor.
Darlene Sybert
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
University of Missouri, Columbia (English)
*****************************************************************************
...feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love... -Wm Wordsworth
"LINES Composed A Few Miles Above Tinturn Abbey,
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye [River]
During a Tour, July 11, 1798"
******************************************************************************