Horner's Corner » psychoanalysis http://www.chrishorner.net My virtual world, and welcome to it. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:40:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Lacan’s Borromean Knot http://www.chrishorner.net/2010/02/21/lacans-borromean-knot/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2010/02/21/lacans-borromean-knot/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:38:03 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=5244 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> image0047

1. The Imaginary: the gaze, the fantasy, the mirror, ideal-ego and ego-ideal.

2. The Symbolic: signifiers, codes, language, law

3. The Real: the unsymbolisable, the gap in representation.

As Zizek argues, its best to take the three orders, not as one Lacanian system, but as part of a developing work -with the Real becoming the focus of interest in the later seminars.

See here for a real life illustration involving Zizek and me!


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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2010/02/21/lacans-borromean-knot/feed/ 0 Sydney Smith: Never Give Way to Melancholy http://www.chrishorner.net/2010/02/17/syney-smith-never-give-way-to-melancholy/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2010/02/17/syney-smith-never-give-way-to-melancholy/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:17:32 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=5175 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>

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Never give way to melancholy. Nothing encroaches more. I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now ? Are you likely to remain so till tomorrow or next month, or next year ? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery which may never come at all, or you may never live to see ? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and many of them shadows of your own making.

Sydney Smith

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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2010/02/17/syney-smith-never-give-way-to-melancholy/feed/ 0 Durer: Melencolia http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/11/15/durer-melencolia/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/11/15/durer-melencolia/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:26:45 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=4020 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> melencolia_i1

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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/11/15/durer-melencolia/feed/ 0 Goya: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/11/15/goya-the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/11/15/goya-the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:18:17 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=4015 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> 2006918121642535

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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/11/15/goya-the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters/feed/ 0 Zizek http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/12/zizek/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/12/zizek/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:49:26 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=3749 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Fast Tube
Fast Tube by Casper">watch?v=TUwsHReqci4]

zizek225

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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/12/zizek/feed/ 0 Slavoj Žižek: New Website http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/11/slavoj-zizek-new-website/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/11/slavoj-zizek-new-website/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:26:39 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=3723 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Zizek’s new website

I’m not sure exactly who is running it – not the man himself I suspect – but it’s the hub for Zizek related matters, with a US emphasis, I assume.

Slavoj Žižek —.

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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/11/slavoj-zizek-new-website/feed/ 2 You Are the Woman of the Other and I Desire You http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/04/you-are-the-woman-of-the-other-and-i-desire-you/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/04/you-are-the-woman-of-the-other-and-i-desire-you/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:52:01 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=3608 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>
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Lacan


Jacques-Alain Miller

Eve and Adam, the first “crush” in human history. We actually have data to say that there was a crush on the part of Adam at first sight, but we do not know if there was one with Eve, perhaps she had her first crush with the snake. This introduces a certain asymmetry. I give my version of the story of Adam and Eve, accepting however other possible interpretations….

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Adam and Eve expelled from Eden (Dore: illustration for Milton's 'Paradise Lost')


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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/10/04/you-are-the-woman-of-the-other-and-i-desire-you/feed/ 0 Adam Curtis, The Trap, The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self and others… http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/08/24/adam-curtis-the-trap-the-power-of-nightmares-the-century-of-the-self-and-others/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/08/24/adam-curtis-the-trap-the-power-of-nightmares-the-century-of-the-self-and-others/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:23:34 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=3177 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>

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Adam Curtis Films here:

Adam Curtis, The Trap, The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self and others….

(You might need to scroll down a little to find them)

horencenturyoftheself

powerofnightmares

All on Rewtube.

31196_it_felt_like_a_kiss

you can see his new film It felt like a kiss on his blog, here.

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Adam Curtis


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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/08/24/adam-curtis-the-trap-the-power-of-nightmares-the-century-of-the-self-and-others/feed/ 0 Z and I: A True Story http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/08/12/z-and-i-a-true-story/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/08/12/z-and-i-a-true-story/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:17:55 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=3048 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>  

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Zizek (Photo by CH)

Earlier this summer I was making my way home on the Piccadilly line, reading something by Zizek. I got off at Russell Square, thinking about some dialectical reversal or dirty joke of his I’d just read, and picturing the man himself, baggy T-shirt, beard etc.

 

Leaving the tube, I cut through the little lane that connects Bernard Street to Guilford street, looked up and saw: Zizek, in baggy T shirt etc, stood outside the President hotel, waving goodbye to someone in a car. I’d gone from reading, thinking about and now suddenly encountering him in the street.

So, Lacanians: we have the Symbolic (reading his stuff), the Imaginary (me picturing him as I’d seen him last on Youtube or at a conference), and then the encounter. If I understand it correctly the Real wasn’t the empirical Zizek stood in my street there, it was the disorientation/mild trauma  experienced in the disruption of the other modes of representation when I suddenly saw him, big and hairy, looming right in front of me.

jacques-lacan3More on Lacan’s Borromean knot here.


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]]> http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/08/12/z-and-i-a-true-story/feed/ 4 Happy Like God http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/06/03/happy-like-god/ http://www.chrishorner.net/2009/06/03/happy-like-god/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:05:27 +0000 Chris http://www.chrishorner.net/?p=1325 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]>

Continuing our series of discussions about the nature of happiness, here is a contribution from a philosopher. I’d say the happiness he describes here is only one of the varieties (and I don’t agree that the type described below was  Aristotle’s only idea about what happiness is – but it certainly gets my vote).

What is happiness? How does one get a grip on this most elusive, intractable and perhaps unanswerable of questions?

I teach philosophy for a living, so let me begin with a philosophical answer. For the philosophers of Antiquity, notably Aristotle, it was assumed that the goal of the philosophical life — the good life, moreover — was happiness and that the latter could be defined as the bios theoretikos, the solitary life of contemplation. Today, few people would seem to subscribe to this view. Our lives are filled with the endless distractions of cell phones, car alarms, commuter woes and the traffic in Bangalore. The rhythm of modern life is punctuated by beeps, bleeps and a generalized attention deficit disorder.

But is the idea of happiness as an experience of contemplation really so ridiculous? Might there not be something in it? I am reminded of the following extraordinary passage from Rousseau’s final book and his third (count them — he still beats Obama 3-to-2) autobiography, “Reveries of a Solitary Walker”:

If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. (emphases mine)

This is as close to a description of happiness as I can imagine. Rousseau is describing the experience of floating in a little rowing boat on the Lake of Bienne close to Neuchâtel in his native Switzerland. He particularly loved visiting the Île Saint Pierre, where he used to enjoy going for exploratory walks when the weather was fine and he could indulge in the great passion of his last years: botany. He would walk with a copy of Linneaus under his arm, happily identifying plants in areas of the deserted island that he had divided for this purpose into small squares.

Read more  here: Happy Like God – Happy Days Blog – NYTimes.com.

 -Simon Critchley

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