Ashley Shelden: Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Thank you Ashley for being a "guest blogger" this week on the Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I feel that your overall break down of meaning and language, the Mirror Stage, and the death drive was very insightful. The affects of the death drive is of course is the shattering of the self and even all sign of reality as well. I think this can be seen in the first part of Mantissa first and foremost from the fact of Miles having a severe case of amnesia. This than leads to a very powerful and sexual fantasy dream he has with the female characters in the book. This is when the death drive through an orgasm is shown. Both characters are portrayed as have gone "beside themselves" and evidently there is a lost of reality and self for all. When MIles is subjected to "memory-restoring" sex therapy form the female doctor and nurse, his inability to comply with the act of mind-over-matter as the "assault" is in progress, is a representation of a mind/body split. The death drive has "destabilized the self and has threatened to undo all structures within which we try to make meaning of the world." According to Lacan, and shown in the book, this process is continuous since we are never able to actually grasp and have a fixed meaning. It is a continuos and everlasting search.

As far as evaluating the Lacanian psychoanalysis, i found  the mention of the metonymic chain very interesting and very relevant to everyday life. As far as the movement of desire is concerned, we as people/humans are continuously  craving or searching for something to fulfill a void that we have. It may be a new job, good grades in school, a lover, etc. If we are lucky enough to obtain whatever desire we are searching for, most of the time we find ourselves dissatisfied and then eventually searching for a different and new desire. This goes back to the concept of never finding a fixed meaning. It is always a search for something. Desire can not end because it can never be satisfied. I guess it goes back to the concept of always wanting what we don't have. We are always searching and looking for the new "thing". Something to fill that void that always seems to be present no matter what we do in life. Trying find that "self" and "who we are". An everlasting search of a "fictional identity", eventually realizing its illusion.

Baudrillard:Simulation:Matrix

First and foremost, I would like to thank Ken Rufo for contributing to our class blog and giving us an in-depth analysis of Baudrillard's work. Baudrillard is obviously a difficult thinker, which is the cause for the many interpretations of his work. He introduces to us the term simulation and the concept of representing a reality. I found it interesting how Rufo spoke about and related this topic back to Marxism and how capitalism in a way created a form of simulation for people by how it creates this false reality based on different ideologies and classifying or molding certain individuals into a certain part of society, leading them to believe that the class or "reality" way of living that society has set up for them is the real reality and the only possible reality they can have. He states how "wealth and materialistic objects" make lower class people "simulate" living like people in upper class.

Applying this to the Matrix, Neo has been living in a false reality all his life and Morpheus is the one who shows him the way; reality. The real world appears to be Zion which is where they are trying to go once they are able to escape from the false reality of the Matrix, which is a computer generated dream world. Now, I have seen this movie about fifty times and I am still unsure which world Neo was existing in before, but I know it wasn't the real. One time in the movie, once Neo goes through the process of being "re-born", he asks Morpheus "why do my eyes hurt?" and he replies "because you've never used them before". This is just emphasis on the fact that he has been blinded all this time and sheltered from reality and he is finally seeing the truth.

This is a perfect example of how our world works as well; just not as extreme and without all the costumes. The media is a perfect example or form of simulation.  It speeds up, copies, and makes "artificial things appear real." A lot of television is an advertisement trying to sell you something or persuade you to think in a certain way. It usually portray people to be jolly and always smiling. Food advertisements always have their food laid out perfect, with no spills and everyone is satisfied. It also tends to have a particular portrayal of different social and/or ethnic classes in a certain way as well. Most of us aren't able to have first-hand access to everything in the world, so the media is our only portal to see what goes on. So the way that the media portrays everything, leads us to believe that that is the reality of things. Now if w can differentiate between what is real and what is only an imitation, that's great, but then we are left with deciding how and who is liable to decide what can be defined as real, as our own reality.