Thankt you for your elaboratee-mail, but what is your body trying to
say? What kind of organical process led to this outburst of words? ;-)
Besides, it all looks a bit reductionistic. See, the interesting thing
with our consciousness is that it lives on feedback. It couldn't survive
in a monocausal world. The body has noncorporal meaning and meaning has
a bodyish component, none can be reduced to the other.
erik
PsycheCulture@xxxxxx wrote:
> Whereas Foucault focuses on how the physical organism is shaped and
> molded by discourse, I theorize that discourse functions as the
> vehicle for the externalization, projection and articulation of the
> experience of the human body into the external world.
>
> I study the images and metaphors in the writings and speeches of
> political leaders. My research supports and extends the research of
> linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who conclude, "Structures of
> our bodily experience work their way up into abstract meanings and
> structures of thought."
>
> Lakoff speaks of "metaphorical mapping"--whereby slots in the "source
> domain schema" get mapped into the "target domain." I study the manner
> in which the source domain--the human body--gets mapped into the
> target domain--the "nation" or body political.
>
> Freud stated that the "ego is first and foremost a body ego." Nations
> are created as a means toward recreating the idea and ideal of an
> omnipotent ego. The narcissistic self is externalized into
> "territories."
>
> The fundamental metaphor that generated the Final Solution was that of
> the Jew as a "disease within the body of the people." Hitler stated
> early on that he was not one of those politicians who "doctored around
> on the circumference of the distress." He said that it was necessary
> to discover and remove the "cause of the inflammation" in order to
> achieve a cure.
>
> On February 22, 1942, when the Final Solution was in full swing,
> Hitler expounded his conviction that the discovery of the Jewish virus
> was one of the "greatest revolutions that has taken place in the
> world." The battle in which he was engaged, he said, was of the same
> sort as the "battle waged by Pasteur and Koch." Himmler stated that
> Germany had the "moral right to destroy this people that wanted to
> destroy us. We do not want to be infected by a bacillus and to die."
>
> Genocide arose as the acting out of an immunological fantasy. It was
> necessary to kill the source of the disease-the infectious agent-- in
> order to save the nation.
>
> Contemplating genocide Hitler said, "One must act radically. When one
> pulls out a tooth one does it with a single tug and the pain quickly
> goes away. The Jew must clear out of Europe."
>
> Hitler was not "using" discourse in the name of doing something that
> he wanted to do for other reasons. Rather, the meaning and purpose of
> Nazism and genocide is revealed by the metaphors and images contained
> within the ideology. Hitler propagated his ideology because he had a
> profound need to do so.
>
> Genocide grew out of Hitler's experience of the Jew as a diseased body
> lodged within his own body (politic). Nazism was "mass-hysteria." The
> Jew was a conversion symptom on the German body politic, pointing to a
> disease within Hitler and the German people.
>
> Mind cannot be separated from body. Thought cannot be detached from
> the organism that thinks. The effort to conceptualize the world as
> "discourse" represents a form of intellectualization, designed to
> "split off" painful ideas (the burden of the Other inside the self).
> Symbolization provides tremendous benefits, but also can be the source
> of tremendous destruction.
>
> Just as dreams and slips of the tongue are meaningful productions of
> the human mind, so are the collective materializations that we call
> culture. Culture is not separate from human motivation. We can say
> that culture is a social construction, but constructed based on what?
>
> Discourse externalizes and shapes shared fantasies to create culture.
> Ideology is manifest structure that contains and expresses latent
> content. Metaphorical language reveals the bodily or psychosomatic
> source of fantasy.
>
> Hitler spoke of the "increasingly rapidly falling to pieces of the
> organic structure of the nation." As a response to this danger, it was
> necessarily that millions of people be "fused into a unity" in order
> to effect the "inner welding together of the body of our people."
>
> Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "effort for disunion" that threatened to
> "divide and destroy the Union," break the nation into "hostile fractions."
>
> Sri Aurobindo called India a "place in which you all meet and that is
> your common Mother. That is not merely a division of land but it is a
> living thing. It is the Mother in whom you move and have your being."
>
> Having separated from the body of one's mother, one seeks connection
> with another omnipotent body. One's nation is the "mother and child
> reunion" (Simon & Garfunkle).
>
> Collective forms of violence are undertaken when it seems that the
> "perfect union" is about to fall apart. Lincoln said, "We cannot
> separate. A husband and wife may be divorced, but different parts of
> our country cannot do this."
>
> The fear that one will separate from one's nation is the fear that one
> will become a "man without a country." One will lose one's anchor to
> reality--the omnipotent body that had been bound to one's own body.
>
> With regards,
>
> Richard Koenigsberg
>
>
> Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
> Director, Library of Social Science
say? What kind of organical process led to this outburst of words? ;-)
Besides, it all looks a bit reductionistic. See, the interesting thing
with our consciousness is that it lives on feedback. It couldn't survive
in a monocausal world. The body has noncorporal meaning and meaning has
a bodyish component, none can be reduced to the other.
erik
PsycheCulture@xxxxxx wrote:
> Whereas Foucault focuses on how the physical organism is shaped and
> molded by discourse, I theorize that discourse functions as the
> vehicle for the externalization, projection and articulation of the
> experience of the human body into the external world.
>
> I study the images and metaphors in the writings and speeches of
> political leaders. My research supports and extends the research of
> linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who conclude, "Structures of
> our bodily experience work their way up into abstract meanings and
> structures of thought."
>
> Lakoff speaks of "metaphorical mapping"--whereby slots in the "source
> domain schema" get mapped into the "target domain." I study the manner
> in which the source domain--the human body--gets mapped into the
> target domain--the "nation" or body political.
>
> Freud stated that the "ego is first and foremost a body ego." Nations
> are created as a means toward recreating the idea and ideal of an
> omnipotent ego. The narcissistic self is externalized into
> "territories."
>
> The fundamental metaphor that generated the Final Solution was that of
> the Jew as a "disease within the body of the people." Hitler stated
> early on that he was not one of those politicians who "doctored around
> on the circumference of the distress." He said that it was necessary
> to discover and remove the "cause of the inflammation" in order to
> achieve a cure.
>
> On February 22, 1942, when the Final Solution was in full swing,
> Hitler expounded his conviction that the discovery of the Jewish virus
> was one of the "greatest revolutions that has taken place in the
> world." The battle in which he was engaged, he said, was of the same
> sort as the "battle waged by Pasteur and Koch." Himmler stated that
> Germany had the "moral right to destroy this people that wanted to
> destroy us. We do not want to be infected by a bacillus and to die."
>
> Genocide arose as the acting out of an immunological fantasy. It was
> necessary to kill the source of the disease-the infectious agent-- in
> order to save the nation.
>
> Contemplating genocide Hitler said, "One must act radically. When one
> pulls out a tooth one does it with a single tug and the pain quickly
> goes away. The Jew must clear out of Europe."
>
> Hitler was not "using" discourse in the name of doing something that
> he wanted to do for other reasons. Rather, the meaning and purpose of
> Nazism and genocide is revealed by the metaphors and images contained
> within the ideology. Hitler propagated his ideology because he had a
> profound need to do so.
>
> Genocide grew out of Hitler's experience of the Jew as a diseased body
> lodged within his own body (politic). Nazism was "mass-hysteria." The
> Jew was a conversion symptom on the German body politic, pointing to a
> disease within Hitler and the German people.
>
> Mind cannot be separated from body. Thought cannot be detached from
> the organism that thinks. The effort to conceptualize the world as
> "discourse" represents a form of intellectualization, designed to
> "split off" painful ideas (the burden of the Other inside the self).
> Symbolization provides tremendous benefits, but also can be the source
> of tremendous destruction.
>
> Just as dreams and slips of the tongue are meaningful productions of
> the human mind, so are the collective materializations that we call
> culture. Culture is not separate from human motivation. We can say
> that culture is a social construction, but constructed based on what?
>
> Discourse externalizes and shapes shared fantasies to create culture.
> Ideology is manifest structure that contains and expresses latent
> content. Metaphorical language reveals the bodily or psychosomatic
> source of fantasy.
>
> Hitler spoke of the "increasingly rapidly falling to pieces of the
> organic structure of the nation." As a response to this danger, it was
> necessarily that millions of people be "fused into a unity" in order
> to effect the "inner welding together of the body of our people."
>
> Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "effort for disunion" that threatened to
> "divide and destroy the Union," break the nation into "hostile fractions."
>
> Sri Aurobindo called India a "place in which you all meet and that is
> your common Mother. That is not merely a division of land but it is a
> living thing. It is the Mother in whom you move and have your being."
>
> Having separated from the body of one's mother, one seeks connection
> with another omnipotent body. One's nation is the "mother and child
> reunion" (Simon & Garfunkle).
>
> Collective forms of violence are undertaken when it seems that the
> "perfect union" is about to fall apart. Lincoln said, "We cannot
> separate. A husband and wife may be divorced, but different parts of
> our country cannot do this."
>
> The fear that one will separate from one's nation is the fear that one
> will become a "man without a country." One will lose one's anchor to
> reality--the omnipotent body that had been bound to one's own body.
>
> With regards,
>
> Richard Koenigsberg
>
>
> Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
> Director, Library of Social Science