tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post4057976142254962379..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: death in the eyesRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-79903250662886167072007-05-14T08:49:00.000+02:002007-05-14T08:49:00.000+02:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-72654189610750942062007-05-12T06:38:00.000+02:002007-05-12T06:38:00.000+02:00ps - one other thing about Foucault which I've tho...ps - one other thing about Foucault which I've thought about, which is related to my above comment. Often, as in the Scull review, one reads that Foucault romanticized insanity, and this is why he pisses people off. I don't believe that. I believe he pisses people off because he refuses to romanticize sanity. He refuses the unspoken agreement, among men of good will, that we are all sane here. He refuses to see the dreadful networks of death and destruction, the dreadful vacuous boredom that consists of fear of boredom on the one side and the prisons on the other, as collectively sane, and you just don't make those noises in the club. The biggest and most consistant romanticizers are, after all, those who find the position they live in, all the amenities, the distant violence and the vicarious pleasures, the whole goddamn ball of wax, as something completely normal. What a crock that is. Foucault had an unrelenting grip on that thing.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-41333183959025410192007-05-12T04:29:00.000+02:002007-05-12T04:29:00.000+02:00I didn't know that about the exception of women in...I didn't know that about the exception of women in the polis, Amie. Hmm. <BR/><BR/>You know, I was thinking that madness is, on the one hand, a very plain thing - I go into the library, some poor bugeyed soul approaches me to tell me what he's been hearing, and I go: you are mad. On the other hand, all of it is also at large as the sanest behavior. The Greeks with their slaves and their incredible tortures and deaths. The whole early modern period, where the sane got jobs as, say, slave traders. In Saint Domingue, in the eighteenth century, a slave could be punished for having eaten some sugarcane by being forced to work with a metal cage fastened to his head - an ingenious torture for a hot climate, among bugs. Now, a sane craftsman made the cage, a sane overseer puts it on the man's head, a sane plantation manager made the rules, a sane owner gets the money. I believe they were sane. But what good was all that sanity?<BR/><BR/>So, re the exclusion/confinement change. Edward Shorter, who hates Foucault, made an interesting suggestion about confinement in his History of Psychiatry - that households got too 'sensitive' for the insane. As the household members get softer towards each other - a big theme of Shorter's - as the moeurs, so to speak, amolisse - the irritability increases, too. I think women, who always get the short end of the stick, were the caregivers for the mad kept at home. I can't remember - did Rochester have a servant to take care of his wife? <BR/><BR/>Which doesn't answer the question about the greeks. The more I read about the status of women in Greek culture, the more uncertain I am that I exactly understand it. But I think you are right about the economics.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-4345851853238888642007-05-12T03:31:00.000+02:002007-05-12T03:31:00.000+02:00LI, yes, the supplement of "the" origin would be t...LI, yes, the supplement of "the" origin would be the question, to say nothing of the prosthesis, so hey maybe you could reconsider and get to Page Dubois' essay on dildos in Ancient Greece.<BR/><BR/>But today I was thinking about this with reference to Foucault. (Btw, let me just say, I appreciated your post on Mr.Scull's review of Histoire de la Folie. It was a lesson to me in terms of doing a little research into the expertise of soi-disant experts. Why doesn't one, rather than bowing to their authority?)<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I was thinking of Foucault's noting the difference between the "treatment" of "dangerous others" in antiquity and modernity. (To be honest, I haven't gone looking for all the references yet, but if memory serves, he notes this more than once and not only in Histoire.)<BR/><BR/>The difference is almost too apparent and clear-cut: "externement' in ancient societies, "internement" or "enfermement" in the modern.<BR/><BR/>As you know, the singular exception of the "mad" is that even when the "economic" pressures of work and productivity meant that many of the "dangerous others" were released from prisons to be cogs in the treadmill of production, the mad were not. They were a limit-test for the treadmill of production, and treated as such by the "doctors". <BR/>The Greeks may not have been big on prisons but they had no prob in banishing and exiling, but there was an exception: women. And this "privilige" is because the economy and generation of the 'warrior-race" would have a damn prob (re)producing itself without . So women are this dangerous other, the strange, the foreign, the impure supplement in the very intimacy of the interior, of the proper. Which is pretty much what happens today...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-53148886325180513642007-05-11T06:43:00.000+02:002007-05-11T06:43:00.000+02:00Oops - what was I trying to say there? That was a ...Oops - what was I trying to say there? That was a string of nonsequitors! Sorry, Amie. I think I'm a little burnt out today. I got up too early!<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I think my point was about gender separation - re the story of Haphaestos - that nevertheless has to supplement itself (Hop and Rousseau, man) with the fantasy, at least, of sexual non-separation. But that overall point got lost somewhere in the brief space of four or five sentences! There's nothing worse for a writer than absent mindedly losing the topic...<BR/>Oh well, and so to bed...Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-14842294102600160542007-05-11T06:18:00.000+02:002007-05-11T06:18:00.000+02:00Amie, you remind me of this bit in that New Yorker...Amie, you remind me of this bit in that New Yorker article, The Interpreter, about the Piraha language, which was thrown out in passing:<BR/><BR/>"Also confounding was the tonal nature of the language: the meanings of words depend on changes in pitch. (The words for "friend" and "enemy" differ only in the pitch of a single syllable.) The Heinrichses' task was further complicated because Pirahã, like a few other Amazonian tongues, has male and female versions: the women use one fewer consonant than the men do."<BR/><BR/>I found that pretty wild, especially thinking of song culture, with its strong division between the pitches of men and women. I mean, one wonders what the women of athens, gathered together at one of Demeter's festivals, said about stories like that of Hephaistos - but then again, gathered together at Christmas, we swallow the virgin birth and the difficulty, to say the least, of Mary's hymen being perforated from inside out without really thinking about it. <BR/>Speaking of semen - I was going to continue this series with a consideration of Page Dubois' essay on dildos in Ancient Greece, but... I decided I wouldn't go there.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-25134858923025801622007-05-11T04:43:00.000+02:002007-05-11T04:43:00.000+02:00LI, very suggestive posts! one of the threads that...LI, very suggestive posts! one of the threads that seems well worth unraveling is that of mimesis, music, and the feminine (the maternal), but I'm certainly not up <BR/>to trying to do so in a comment!<BR/><BR/>But re the mask: is not the question whether peeling off the masks, and there is always more than one, reveals a full presence -- ever. Or rather (un)covers a gap: the open mouth (in laughter), the female sex...<BR/><BR/>In other words, there is no undivided pure origin, there is (only!) the myth of origin, the origin is (a) myth.<BR/><BR/>The origin/myth of Athens - that cradle of civilization and of western man - is quite edifying.<BR/><BR/>Hephaistos has the hots for Athena who prefers to be a virgin (parthenos), but hey this don't stop the good Hep (in the latin tradition the dude is known as Vulcan and is the God of forges, the instruments of war, and ugly to boot), who when refused by her can't contain himself and ejaculates, his sperm falling on her leg, which she wipes off and throws to the earth. And lo! from this unconsummated act is born Erichthonios, from whom the Athenians trace their origin. The Athenians as such are auto-chtone, literally "born from the earth", without needing women for this birth. Well, not all Athenians, only the males. Another "genesis" will be necessary for the "race of women" (genos gunaikon). This happens with Pandora...<BR/>Pandora whose name means "who receives all the gifts" or "who is a gift for everyone". But what a gift eh, as she is the one who opens the "box" and is thus the "divine punishment" on men by the Gods.<BR/>And then there is the question of naming the City. The guys prefer Poseidon, the gals Athens, and with the deciding 'vote' of Athena the gals get their way, the city will be called Athens, but one in which the women are not citizens and cannot vote...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com