Where to Start 1: The Psychoanalytic Theorists

Thanks for joining us on Why Theory. In this episode, Todd and I give a few recommendations on where to start and where not to start introductory readings from six psychoanalytic theorists, Freud, Lecon, Slavoy Gisek, Joan Koptzek, Alekazoo Pansik, and Marie Rudy. This is the first iteration of what will hopefully be a mini-series on where to start and where not to start with different thinkers. We both think this is a fine start to that mini-series, but who are we to judge? Thanks for listening. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation. [Music] Okay. Hello. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Why Theory. As always, I am joined by Todd McGowan. How are you doing, Todd? Hi, Ryan. I'm good. Very good. So, this is a new format episode for us. We're very excited about this. So, this is called Where to Start and Where Not to Start. We're going to go through as many philosophers and theorists that we can get to in an hour. And talk about where the invested scholar might start to come to grips with a number of different thinkers. I mean, this came out of questions that your students have asked you. Is that right? That's right. I mean, also, where the non-invested thinker would start. So, someone that you don't know about at all and you're thinking like, "What would be the best?" Students are constantly asking me, "What should I read first by Littlebot?" And so, I thought it would be fun. We thought together it would be fun to kind of go through a large, pretty large number of thinkers we came up with. That would, and sort of give the best answer. And then I thought also, oftentimes when I'm teaching certain people that I don't want students to like, I will intentionally start with a text that's maybe not their best. It's still representative, so I'm not cheating or doing something. No, no, it's just, it's smart. Kind of guiding. Kind of. Kind of. Kind of. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah, it's a destructive Tomahawk missile into some other person's type. Yeah, that's fine. That's good. It's unfair teaching. But it's unfair. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, I would say that unfair, the un is in parentheses. So, I would definitely say that's fair. That's good. And we're not to be met in Pond on the title of this episode, but where do you want to start with this? Why do we start with Freud since he's one of our basic kind of touch-dons and then sort of go psychoanalytic to philosophy? Would be fantastic. Yeah, fantastic. So my start, you want me to say? You have an interesting take on this. I do. Yeah, so my, my where to start is a little, is a little bit of a deep cut, I think. And I think that the invested student, scholar, person who has heard about Freud, not read about Freud, because I do think that Freud is one of these, one of these thinkers that is in, not, I mean, probably not for people who are necessarily listening to this podcast, but in general is someone who is more read about than read. You know, like I think, like I mean, I put him in a category with like Gertrude Stein, I think is another one of these people who's read about and not read. And so anyway, where would you go if you want to read something that is not as long as the interpretation of dreams? And I think that place is a note upon the mystic writing pad, which, great. It's a great sort of out of nowhere, choice. It is, well, it's, and why, why I like it, why I think it's a great place to start is you, get a lot of core concepts from Freud, you get a very concrete example of how he thinks the unconscious works. You get also the notion of memory from him, which is, you know, which is a trace, basically. And I mean, this is something that I think, you know, if we come to talk about Derrida later, I mean, Derrida does talk about this text. Yeah. And I think, I'd say it's maybe the key text. The key text for Derrida. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's, and I also think like, I'm not sure, I mean, you tell me if I'm wrong about this, but how many, how many text of Freud is he explicitly writing about technology? And I know this is a choice. Well, I think in, but I, civilization for sure, for sure, this contents for sure, but maybe only those, only those. Yeah, I think they're not, it's not that common for sure. And it's interesting to me, like, there's this book I read somewhat recently that if anybody is interested in technology, this guy, Matt Kirschenbaum, who typically does digital humanity stuff, he has this book on computer storage. It's called mechanism. It's about, it's like, it's about the hard drive on a computer. And how he writes about it is, I mean, he never, he never, at one point, references Freud, but the way that he writes about the hard drive is, to me, almost exactly the way that Freud writes about the mystic writing pad, like, he makes this point about how you can never really delete something on physical storage. Like you can delete it and then you can degouse it and you can have like the FBI can do it, but there is still a physical trace of what was there. And it's, I mean, this is exactly Freud's point, which is that like, well, it's a really nice interplay between form and content, right? Like even if the content is missing, the form has left a mark. I mean, I think that that's like a very provocative notion of the unconscious. I also think that this is, yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I think that that's maybe why the essay is so pivotal is because it does point to Freud's concern with form as such. And I think that's really what distinguishes him as a thinker, right? Yeah, yeah. And then this is, I mean, she check makes this point a number of times. And I think, I think Joan cop check those two and, well, a number of people that when we're talking about dreams, it's not like, it's not how I think is, is received in like, in popular culture where it's like, oh, what did it mean? What did that symbol mean? And it's, it's usually, oh, I dropped about my girlfriend, but oh, she's really standing for my mother, right? Yeah, right. Like, that's not it. So let's just say like, you know, the meaning oftentimes is quite obvious. The only thing that's interesting is why did it take that form? Right. And that upturns what you think the naive meaning might be. Right. And that's, like, often emphasizes that the dream work is the formal shift itself, not the new, it's not like the dream work is neither the latent content nor the manifest content of the dream. Like, what was, what's lying behind the dream or what is the dream itself? It's the distance between the two. It's the one becoming the other. That's what Freud means by dream work. And I think that's such a fascinating point about the, you know, about this formal mechanism of distortion, right? Like, that's where desire enters into the, into dreaming and creating that distortion. And I think that's evident in the mystic writing pad essay too. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I think, so that is my, that is my vote for, that's a great one. I think I'm going to kind of, I mean, I was originally going to say civilization's discontent and I'm teaching that in the fall in an introductory class. So I'm going to stick with that. But I often teach and I think this is, this is tied to your answer. I think that like a series of essays is the way to go. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, I take your point about mystic writing pad, but I would want to have it be a little more well. Like, I think, yeah, where else would you go? Well, I, I mean, I love the, it's a very, it's like three pages, a short little essay negation. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's just a stunningly important essay about the way that the unconscious operates, you know, and so that would be one. And then I think the essay on the unconscious important, I think fetishism is crucial. Yeah. That's exactly what I think. That's absolutely. So I think maybe those, I was, I was sort of saying to you earlier that I feel like the most important book is beyond the pleasure principle, but I also feel like that's, it's very hard to kind of navigate that book unless you, I mean, because so much of it is him sort of trying something out and not fully getting it. And so you've got to sort of have that in mind. So I think it's not really a great introductory. It's, it's interesting. Like you have to already, you have to already know where he goes and you have to, and not even where Freud goes, but you have to know how that text has been received by Blacan and, you know, and Slavoy even I would argue. Yeah, like I think it's not right to say that Lacan has a certain vision of death drive that then G. Jack just sort of takes up. I think like, I think Slavoy really kind of reinterpret the Freudian death drive in his own sort of unique way and that everybody has kind of glombed onto that and then sort of retroactively said, oh, that's what Lacan kind of meant. I'm not quite sure that Lacan meant that actually, but maybe did. But nonetheless, I think that you have to have that whole sort of history after that. Right. And that's how, that's how Pleasure Principle makes sense if you know all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But also, I mean, this is what I think is so stunning about Freud is that he's, you see him in the work actually exploring possibilities that are wrong. I mean, who else does that? No, no. To me, that's an amazing kind of just the, the, like, I don't know. like the modesty of putting out even a no one essentially it's right with modesty. (laughing) But I think it is like you're pointing, like you'd like display your flaws for everyone to not only do display them, you publish them. - Yeah, we were talking about this in the pre-show yesterday that like how do we know about Dora? He published it. It's not like, you know, he tried to hide evidence of like bad analysis and then it came out like after he died or whatever. - Like did a terrible job. - Yes. - And then he published about it. - He published, right. - Yeah. - Like who does that? Those people like how do I hide the fact that I just totally screwed up this woman's life? What do I mean? - Right. - How do I hide it? - Yeah, exactly, exactly. - He says, "Oh, I think I'll publish a book about it." I mean, I don't know. To me that's part of his greatness. But yeah. - Yeah, 'cause well, just like for a point on that is like, because to him, and I mean this is I think it's lost is that like analysis was it for him. Like that was the most important thing. Like so that's why you put out the stuff that doesn't work is because you think the method is more important than you are. - Than you are, right. - So all of his attempts to have psychoanalysis survive him, everyone wants to attribute that to his egoism. But it's really, I mean, to me it's the opposite. It's like I just, I'm committed to the idea surviving and so whatever I can do to help that happen, I'll try to help that happen. And then the sort of, of course he gets pleasure from being like Sigmund Freud inventor of psychoanalysis, but that's like kind of a side pleasure. - Yeah. - The real thing driving him is to get the idea to survive. I think. - Mm-hmm. - Anyway, so if someone out there wants to make people not like Freud. (laughing) - Right. - Can we say this out loud that you had someone try to do that to you? - Yeah, yeah. - I'd like to cloak at which institution that I've been at where that happened, but yeah, I was in a room. - It was me actually at the beginning. - It was you, no. - Yeah, sure. - Right, right. You were doing like a real fluxus kind of experiment of trying to get people to hate Freud. - Yeah, no. Yeah, I was in a room where the text of Freud's that we read, we read civilization actually I should say. - Oh, so okay. - Yes, but that was kind of, I don't know, it was like a perfunctory to what it turned out, the point was because then the text we read was why war. And that is, if you want to, well for one, I mean, Jacqueline Rose has by all accounts like the book on this text. - Yeah, right. - Yeah, so it's not really great. - And she's great. Yeah, so it's not to say that like this text is irredeemable or like it's objectively, you will hate Freud if you read this. It is only the only way for this text to function as something that completely destroys Freud is if you do it in the way that I had seen it performed in class, which is removed of all context. Because why war is a letter basically, public letter that he wrote to Albert Einstein. - Yeah. - And Freud is trying to explain the forces, the psychic forces that determine this kind of, this I don't either want to say instinct or drive toward, but like this impulse toward war and this kind of violence. And in it, he says some things about how there should be a, I don't know if he used the word cabinet, but I'm going to use it like a cabinet of intellectual elites who make decisions to avoid conflicts such as this. And you can read that and be like, boy, that is like, it's elitist, right? It's like, and it's very important. - Freudarian, it's a authoritarian democratic. - Right, right. And of course it's men, right? So it's also misogynistic. And you can do all of that with that text. And you can do all of that with that text and more, especially if you remove from it any discussion of Sigmund Freud being a Jewish man writing this when his people were being like ritualistically exterminated. By an evil very close to him. And that was not, that context was not brought up in the class where I had this text taught. And I was kind of stunned. And it's like, so if you want to have a hit piece, that would be a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, just. - Okay, I was thinking. - I was thinking and this is, I would think like either femininity or female sexuality. Like I think those would be good ones to kind of, because if you take what he says about feminine sexuality, it can sound pretty bad. - If you take it literally, 'cause he says that women are the problem. - Yeah, I think he says that. - Yeah, I mean, there's just tons of stuff you could get out of that. And then again, without the subsequent kind of, I mean, even castration as a concept. Like if you take castration and it's interesting because I think if you don't, like if you don't take it through the universalist gloss that LeCon gives to it, then I think it is a problem. So I think there are ways that you have to read Freud through the people who have subsequently read him, right? - LePlanche, do you know this? He LePlanche has a good text on that lecture on femininity. And he points out that Freud writes, well, I mean, I guess he speaks, but he gives a formula for a woman that would actually, almost the word for word, be what Simone de Beauvoir would write in the second sex, which is because he says in there that, we are not here to talk about a woman is. Like that's a task we could scarcely perform. We're merely gonna set about how she, I don't know that he says, come into being, but that's basically what he says. And that's one who's not born a woman in other words. - Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, which is something that he writes. So it's interesting, but I mean, I think that that's almost like, 'cause you are, you're right, I think, to point that text out as like, if you read this without the context of people who have read Freud, then like it comes off is very, very misogynistic. - I mean, all I know is I taught the new introductory lectures and one of those not femininity, I think female sexuality is in there, right? And the students were all kind of, it was towards the end of the class, class totally on Freud and they were all with him and then like half the class sort of turned against him. - That's interesting. - Yeah. - And then I sort of did my best kind of triage, but yeah, so I don't know. So I think that those are good. Any time he's talking about feminine sexual, I once heard, I once was in a job interview, I wasn't being interviewed, I was the interviewer. And someone said, I think Freud, this is a person who was not totally hostile of Freud, that I think Freud has only something to say about male sexuality and nothing to say about female sexuality. And I said, God, I'm tempted to almost reverse that. (laughing) That's interesting. - Because his whole point is, all of male sexuality is this kind of fantasmatic response to the trauma of feminine sexuality, right? I think that's, to me, that's almost self-evident. And so I thought it was interesting that this, and all the other people I was with in the interview, were like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. - Of course. - And of course, because it's the interview, you can't be too critical. And so I'm like, I don't know, but I couldn't, I mean, I probably should have, I got into a little back and forth, but then I kinda, back off. - Yeah, you went back off, but the situation. - I'm just a slight little, the ocean of madness. So that guy, subsequently, I realized he was totally perverse because we presented him with the classes that we wanted him to teach, and he said, well, I just wouldn't teach a class like that. That's a poor way to organize a class. And then we're like, yeah, yeah, but, it is the class that we have, so how would you teach it? He's like, no, I understand, but I just wouldn't teach it. I wouldn't have a teacher in a class like that. - All right, so, so I said, say, he did not, I was, didn't want to get the on-campus interview and he did not get it. That's really fun anyway. - So let's just go to the pool. - Can I just, I wonder, one thing on that, I heard a Joan Cop Trek say once that someone said to her, like, why do you like Freud? He says that he doesn't understand women, and she said, she said her response was that, I would much rather, someone, a man say that, he doesn't understand women than to say that he does. Like that, she said that's far more obnoxious. - So it's something like that. I'm not quoting her exactly, but like that. But it's, I don't know, like I think that those texts that I think that maybe what we'll come to, I mean, for some of these thinkers, but it's interesting, in the texts where not to start, there is a productive kind of contradiction that I think is worth, like for the invested person, like that is worth grappling with, because there are, if you want it, like you have to be able to, I think one is convinced by Freud and psychoanalysis, one should not immediately dismiss, like the claims, the sexist and misstage, just the claims, you need to be able to answer those. - Absolutely, absolutely. - I do just wanna say, and finally I think myself about for right. I mean, the ideal thing to start with would be interpretation of dreams. - Of course, just to not put too fine a point on it, but it's 600 pages and it's long, but I do think it is kind of this, I mean, I think for he thought it was the starting point and I think it, yeah. So it's not, we're sort of giving shortcuts and not end stuff, but I don't you agree that that way. - Yeah, yeah, no, that's the long cut. Yeah, that should be the long cut. - That's the real, maybe we should do that. So for every single one is the, is this where you start, this where you not start, and then this is like, this is really where you should start. - It's really where you start, but you can't do it. - You can't, yeah, yeah. That's great, okay. We're two next. - Let's go to LeCon, I think, right? - Perfect, okay. - Cool. Okay, so we were talking about this yesterday. - I think this is the easiest one. - The easiest one, it's seminar 11. - I think that's-- - Like that's more fundamental concepts psychoanalysis. - Yeah. - It sort of lays out all the basic claims of the mid period LeCon, which is, I think you both agree, the most important period. There's just everything there, you know, there's already the real is sort of developed in a way that it's not in the early seminars. Even though, I think arguably the early seminars are more readable, like one, two, and three are more readable than 11, but 11's not too hard. - I don't think so. And then, you know, it's not, like, I think you get into the higher ones, like 17 would be another, maybe possibility with the four discourses. - Right, right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And that's a popular one now. - Yeah, it's popular now, but again, that's kind of a little, it's not, you know, you're not getting the central ideas. I think the other thing is that seminar 11 really is the most, the one most dedicated to the development of obje, as a concept, and it's really me. I mean, other than 13 a little bit, it's the only place where he talks about gazed in an extended way, which is key, obviously. - It's rarely, I mean, I don't think we're going to have in the list of thinkers that we're gonna go through. We will not have another text where the person announces how literally fundamental it is to their understanding in their work. - Yeah. - It's like, it's called the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. - Right. - And the other thing is that he was giving, like it's the first sort of more open seminar he gave. So he had to make it, you know, or he didn't have to, but he decided to make it more accessible to the public, like to the public at large, not just to analysts. So it's a real turn in that sense too. And we wouldn't have it if he didn't, he got locked, he was doing a seminar on the names of the father. - Oh, right, yeah. - And then he got, he got, that's about the time he got, or it is the time, he got thrown out of the IPA, the International Psychological Association, for his use of the short session. And then he just, and then he got thrown out of where he was doing his seminar. And then he just, he started, Altersair gave him a space to do it. And then he just changed the topic. He had this idea that like, you know, once one is ended, you can't just go, you can't resume it, you just have to, it's like, it's actually a kind of the, there's a short session, right? - Yeah, right, right. - You just, you take the break and then you do something else. - You do something else. And so we wouldn't have it if it wasn't for that. And I think it's, I think you're right, you're, as you're saying, like he's sort of saying, these are the fundamentals. - Well, yeah, I mean, he's into position. Like that, I don't think I knew all of that biographical context, but it's great because he's thrown into a position where, so now he's been thrown out of, like literally thrown out of the IPA, like he needs to assert, okay, well, what am I? If I'm out of this thing, what is what I'm saying? Like what is the substance here? Where do I diverge from what is emerging as orthodoxy? - That's a great point. And it's interesting because a lot of people, I think Elizabeth Rudinesco among them sort of take seminar 11 as the turning point away from Freud. Like it's no longer is he using the seminars to explain Freudian texts or concepts, but he's like, he becomes a lecanian. Yeah, yeah. Although he would say, he marks, he famously said, I'm, this is very late, he said, it's up to you to be lecanians, permoigis, we Freudian. Like I'm still a Freudian. So, yeah, I don't know, I just think he heard Mark said that and then he thought it'd be cool. - It would be cool. - Yeah, right, we're gonna come to that, I think, what about Mark's saying? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Anyway, so I think that's a no-brainer. The only thing I would, and then I, and then the question is like from there where to go and I think that's an interesting question. Like do you go back to the, like there's some early ones that are interesting, right? Like I wouldn't do seminar one 'cause that's more about technique. seminar two has the post stuff that you really like is in there. - Yeah. - And it has some good stuff about the, struck about the symbolic order and how that functions. I mean, that's really, it's really a seminar about the symbolic order, even though it's called the psychosis. - It's the ego in it. - No, okay, no, it's not psychosis is three. - That's three. - So it's a seminar in the ego. But psychosis is also interesting. And then seminar seven is pretty great and very readable and has a lot of great lines. The problem with seminar seven, which is ethics of psychoanalysis, is that it's, I feel like it's so anomalous. It's a, it's a Habax as it is, right? - Yeah, it really is a Habax. I think that's exactly right. Like he can't, like he never again says, this is funny because so many people think of this as the like, like, canian position. He never again says don't go ground relative to your desire. - Yeah, right. - Only appears in seminar seven. Whereas every other thing, all of these other little sayings, they're all like everywhere. - Right, right. - Sires the desire of the other unconscious. - There is something like a language. There's no big other. - Other does not exist. - Yeah, yeah. - You know, when does not exist, there's no sexual relation. All those, they're just like, he repeats them again and again and again, but that famous thing from seminar seven just appears in seminar seven. So that's the interesting thing. - Yeah, I think, I think. - Well, that's fine. So what do you, oh, go ahead, please. - I'm just gonna say, it seems like, I wouldn't necessarily direct someone to read that seminar. I would say instead, if you like what you see in seminar 11, I would read the anxiety seminar, which is right here for. And then the problem is, I love the next two seminars, but they're not translated. And they're actually not even published in French, which is, I have my idea is that it's a jockele and malaria conspiracy to not allow these like most important seminars, but I'm like, God, so seminar 12, 13, 14, and 15, all do not even exist in front. - I think I said to you yesterday that, like, he must have this idea that if like, his vitality is tied to these things not being published. And if they are, he will disappear. - Yeah, I think that could be, I could just be that he's crazy. I mean, he had this, I don't know, a year or two ago, he had this whole public spat with that dude, in which I read his response, and I'm like, wait a minute, did I all of a sudden forget French? 'Cause this doesn't make any sense to me. And then, and then I read, I'm like, God, he's just really, he's kind of lost his mind. So I'm not, I mean, I think we're safe that jockele and malaria is not gonna listen to this podcast, but you don't know that. - We have some listeners in places that I was surprised about. So he could be one. Well, that would be, I hopefully, he will not take this as an official diagnosis, but, well, hey, if he, if, listen, that'd be great press for us though. I mean, if he said something about this. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't want press. - People are friends, that's right, yeah. - So I think, I feel like he, I don't know, I think your theory is probably right, that like as long as the seminars aren't released, 'cause you know, about eight years ago, he wrote to all these people and said, I finished them all. And then since then, none of, basically none, one came out, seminar six, the desire and instant arbitration came out in French, but that was like five years ago. 2012, I think, so six years ago. So 19 is coming out from polity, but in English, right. - But in English, right, right. - Oop here, yeah. - Yeah, I would not, I think anything, like 20 seminar and feminine sexuality or encore is interesting, I think. - That was what I was gonna ask him actually about, because that's the, the encore is seven, right? Like that's what the idea is that he said he would return to the ethics. - To the ethics, yeah. And so, I mean, but again, does not repeat that formula. So, like-- - I don't, I mean, I understand that seminar 20 is really important for a lot of people. I just, I don't know. I mean, it does have the formulas of sexualation, which are important, but I just, if I was like, I think that's a later, and the discourses from seminar 17, I think all think that's later. I think the great philosophical breakthrough comes with Abjai, which is why we're gonna devote a upcoming episode, I think, to Abjai. - Right, yes, yeah, yeah. - Which he, which he start, I mean, I think the answer like to where do you go from 11? I would double down with you and say, I think anxiety, I mean, 'cause he doesn't like that. - 'Cause that's where it really is invented. - Yeah, that's where, I mean, there's a whole debate about when does Abjai really, is it in seminar eight, the transference when he talks about Socrates and the Egollma, or is it seminar five, where he does use the term Abjai, but it's not clear that, distinct from the little other of the imaginatively. So it's only in seminar 10 that you definitely get obje aw as it's mature forms. So that's why I think-- and also, his treatment of anxiety is just stunningly-- It's great. It's so original. I mean, I feel like-- for everybody else, both Freud and Heidegger share this formulation. Like, fear has an object. Anxiety has an object. Has no object. And then his famous form-- he doesn't say anxiety has an object. He says anxiety is not what's not an object. Which is, you know, God. It's just-- All of a sudden, the way you think about anxiety totally undergoes his shift. Yeah. It's so-- I mean, we talked about this with Hugh in the last podcast. Like, it's such-- like, the idea of the lack of lack, like, you know, and then the crocodile mother, like, all these kinds of things that come out in that seminar are very-- I wish-- I wish-- nine. I mean, I haven't read nine. But it just feels like the break that 11 is going to be-- you start to feel like someone is at the top of their game to make a very long, lame sports. Other break between the nine. And 10. Like, nine is on identification. And so the basic point of nine is identification always has this symbolic-- it's never just this purely imaginary identification. So basically, all film theorists should have read seven or nine. All psychoanalytic film theorists from the '70s. Any should have read seven or nine. But basically, it's still-- it's not really concerned with the real-- and in the way that seminar 10, all of a sudden, like that-- because that's the encounter with the real that you're telling that in anxiety. So I feel like that's interesting that you talked about that. Because I do feel like-- I didn't think about it before, but I feel like that's the big break, and again, which makes the argument for going starting with 11 and then reading 10. Do you want to talk about what not to? Well, I mean, this is-- How do you make someone hate LaCon? This is a-- I'm going to lob this beach ball over the plate for you, and I think what not to start with is the mirror stage. Absolutely. But I think this is totally-- I don't know if you agree. This is my little hobby horse. It's also a very much a minority report, right? I mean, I think even-- I gave this talk at some-- and it wasn't just at a normal conference. It was at a psychoanalysis. It was at a LaCon conference, I think, probably. Right, OK. Some kind of psychoanalysis, maybe not specifically. And the organizers of the conference came up to me afterward, and she said, you know, I had some people say they liked your paper, but then a couple other people said, I think Todd was really off his game today. And so I thought, OK, that was nice. I mean, I actually preferred-- To the phrase. To the phrase. Yeah, but I did think it was interesting that it kind of-- so I think I could be wrong. I could be-- you know, I think there are other people that are really smart, like Molly Rothenberg. She has this great reading of Mirror Stage, and she reads the real into it. And I think that's true. And so she starts with it, and I think that's terrific. I think for one thing, most people don't do that. Right, that is true. I mean, that's your-- I mean, just to crystallize very, very, very simplistically, your argument against it, that's your-- the real is so important to understanding LaCon. And it's not totally evident there. And to come away from that as like the-- I mean, that's the canonical-- that's the Norton text of LaCon's. Right. It's just a sin. It's a sin. Yeah. Like, it would be like making why wore the canonical text before I'd-- which is sure-- Sure. --be absurd, right? Right. So I mean, the other thing-- how do most people read it? Like, oh, there's this fragmentary body. The person looks in the mirror. And then sees the imaginary wholeness. And so subjectivity-- this is how the person LaCon doesn't say something-- but subjectivity is formed through this mistaken belief in an imaginary wholeness that anticipates something, a kind of mastery that I don't really have. Yeah. And that's-- so the mirror stage becomes this-- I'm not going to-- I hate this word-- but this poststructuralist-- Part of this poststructuralist deconstruction of subjectivity. Right. That's very-- That's very absurd. One thing poststructuralist doesn't exist. So that's one thing we-- we should never use that word. But I only use it to say we should never use it. But it's just absurd. It's absurd. I mean, if anyone, if any contemporary thinker insists on subjectivity, it's LaCon. So to think of him is like this deconstructor of the subject. And so I think that essay has played just a pivotal role in that. And then it's played such a crucial role in the total disaster of psychoanalytic film theory. So I feel like that just-- I think he should never have written it. The other thing is he wrote it-- he basically wrote it in the mid-30s. So-- Yeah, that's true. That's right. Good. Like 30 years before he-- if we say seminar 11 is when he becomes LaCon, then he's to be wrote that 30 years before he became LaCon. Yeah. So that's like-- I mean, that would be like someone taking paper I wrote in college as a representative of what I think now. And they're like, what? I think you could make the argument that he agrees with you slightly. We were just talking about anxiety. And he makes this great point in-- I'm not sure which chapter of the book or which lecture-- but he makes this point about-- I think he's trying to-- do you know this phrase from TV? Like they call it retroactive continuity. They call it like retconning. I do know what it is. You do know-- OK, retcon. So I think he tries to retcon mirror stage a little bit and anxiety and what he says is that-- she says that this thing that he's about to say it's totally there, but no one really comments on it, which is that for the child, the only way that the child sees this wholeness, this imaginary wholeness that you're talking about is to look back at the parent. And so that it's in this whole thing is the need for validation from the big other. And this is like-- And that's a really nice point. I think it's a great point. And it's interesting that he comes to that later, but in seminar-- it's a seminar one or two, I think it's two. He said-- right at the beginning of the seminar, he's like, everyone's referencing the mirror stage. And he goes, it's not a magic formula. And he goes, and actually, it's already a bit dated. So he's like, that's real awful. Then I think you're right. Once he's becoming Jacques Lecon, it's a dangerous thing to ever become yourself. And I think he has to retrofit-- what's the term I'd like to forget? Recon. He has to retcon. Recon. He has to do that to the mirror stage, which is fine, because I think that does make a lot of sense of it. But I don't think that's present. No. I actually wrote it. And I think that requires a very creative reading of the text, which great. I'm happy Molly Rothenberg, who's a brilliant psychoanaly-- I hate that use of that word, but I-- I'm sorry for her. Yeah, of course. Psychoanaly-- not just for her, but her, maybe one or two other people. Psychoanect theorist that she's able to make it so evident within the text that the students are like, oh, yeah, that's obvious. But I think the just the rap, the widespread dissemination of that text and being taught by people who-- I mean, look, even if they have the best intentions, which most of the time I don't think they do, it's going to turn people against Lecon. I just don't think. Or give them the totally the wrong idea. Yeah. I mean, it's worth-- it's only worth-- I mean, I think it's only worth contending with in the way that Molly does and the way-- or to emphasize, I've also heard this idea, which I think is really interesting, is what is important in the mirror stage is the child beginning to understand motor functions. So there's actually motion and movement in this. It's not just the state thing. And that actually brings-- if you want to take this, that actually brings the mirror stage into conversation with what someone like Brian Misumi talks about with Afek, with motion and movement being the most important thing. And then I'm forgetting-- I mean, I wish I remember her name. But she writes about the book, "Lakanian Afax," and then she talks about-- Oh, "Coluts Slyar." "Coluts Slyar." Thank you so much. Yeah, she writes about anxiety as like this is-- I mean, this is Lecon's "Afek Seminar," which is like-- I mean, he only designates one. Right? I mean, there's only one Afek-- Yeah, he's interesting about that because he does say-- and I think that I kind of accept everything. He says, I think this is pretty right on. He says, anxiety is the one Afek that doesn't lie. Doesn't lie. Yeah, it's so great. I kind of think that's right. Because I think a lot of other Af-- all the other Afeks do. Like, you know, happiness, that's sort of the definition of a lying Afek. Yeah. Well, because anxiety for him is really an encounter. for which the thing that happens to you, it's like a little, I mean, it's a little against you. - Right, like it cuts against what you want. - Well, it's interesting because isn't it like, it's a little bit like Hagel's idea that the subject is only free when it recognizes itself in absolute otherness? And I feel like that's a little bit what anxiety is. So you get this thing that to you is absolutely other and then you're like, oh my God, no, like my desire is actually contained in that thing that I wanted to see as absolutely other. - That's, you know what's funny? You just made me realize that is how Sart defines the group infusion in critique of dialectical reason, is that everyone, everyone, oh God, what is this formula? It's like, everyone is, like, I don't know if it's like, it's not everyone is someone, but like everyone is a subject only and so far as like he is other to himself, or like everyone is other to each other. I think it's everyone else. - He's a higelian thinker. So I think that that's probably right, that that's the most important. The other thing I would just say about Lecon, and where to turn people off is I almost think any of the A-Cree are a good way to like, to make people not like him, you know? 'Cause he, I think he intentionally wrote them to be not understood, to be hard. And I think he has said this in many other people's set it, that you can only understand the A-Cree after you've read all the seminars. - Yeah. - And I think that's true. I just think it's true. Like I just think, and look, some are interesting. I think the subversion of the subject is interesting, but again, I think you need to have, you know, I think Con of Exod is, there's something there. - But, you know. - Well, it's like you have to know, like it's almost like you have to have, you can't read it for the first time. - Almost. - Right. - Like you have to already, you have to already be on your second reading. - Right. - There's so much, look, so many of those, earlier A-Cree though, are just attempts to establish the importance of the symbolic against, you know, ego versus ego dynamics. Like he's, there are like polemics against the psychoanalytic establishment, to say, look, we've gotta think about the importance of the third party, you know, the, - Yeah. - And it's never just a one-on-one intersubjective. Like that's other thing. He's constant diatribes against the notion of intersubjectivity because, of course, for him it's always the other because you're always relating to the other through the big other, through the symbolic structure that, and not that they're the same, but through some symbolic structure and it's big other. So I feel like there's no, you know, I don't think there's that. I mean, I think for someone who is thoroughly familiar with many of the seminars, you can go back. And like, I know that you personally are finding something really helpful in the, - Yeah. - The whole point, letter, letter. - Yeah, yeah. - And I, you know, I think Slavoy and Con of Exod, I think he finds a lot. - That's right. - Although, my God, it's a pretty creative reading of that, of that, a creative, like, I mean, his point is, - But that's the, yeah, go ahead. - No, no, no, no. - And get to his point, but it's, yeah. - It requires this kind of like, you know, really creative kind of. - I'm gonna say there's probably a listener who is like, no, I wanna hear what Todd was gonna say, what is point, so what is, what is, - Well, no, his point is that, like, I think LeCon thought when he was writing that, that I'm gonna show that the Kantian ethic cannot, like, it necessarily is stained by this Sadi and experience. - Right. - Like, you could apply equally the Kantian ethic to this Sadi and experience. And so, it's like, look, Kant can't save us from Sadi. And I think, so which is what a Dorn Owen horror camera, sort of, say, in dialect of enlightenment. And Slavoy's point is, no, actually, LeCon's point is, it's the other way. It's like, elevating Sadi, in some sense, to the dignity of the-- - The dignity, yeah. And, of course, I like Sadi, we're reading a lot better, but I mean, if you read that text pretty carefully, yet, maybe that's slightly there, but I don't think that it's, I think it's a lot Slavoy and a little bit LeCon. But, you know, maybe that's not fair, and maybe it's, you know. I just have more personal affection for Slavoy than I do for LeCon. So, I tend to give him more of the benefit of the doubt than I do. - Yeah. - Not just because he's alive and we can talk to him, but just, I don't know. I mean, I didn't meet LeCon, but it just seems like he's a better guy. (laughing) - That's really funny. You know, I hope he's a great guy. He's not listening, but if he was, he would call in an object to this characterization and there's a good guy. He's like, "No, no, no, I'm a prick." That's what anyone to come up to be. I hate students, never let them see me. I don't want to talk to anyone. I hate everyone. - I mean, but, you know, that's what he would say. So, but he's a totally untree, the great guy. (laughing) So, you know, I told you this thing where I was once at this conference and, and I don't know, Joan Cobbcheck and some other professor and I were sitting at a table and Slavo, he comes into the room and he says, "Dinner." He's like, "I'm not sitting with you. "I'm going to sit with a graduate student." And I thought, "It's the best." Like, he's just like, you know, he got invited this thing at Harvard and the person said, "I can get you, "I can have like Stephen Pinker "and some people come out and meet you." And he's like, "I don't want to meet them. "I just want to have dinner with you." You know, like, he's just, "Yeah, yeah." He just doesn't care. And that's, I think it's, it's refreshing. This is not true of La Con. Like, it's just not true. Like, he thought, like, in fact, I was just listening to something on Franz Kultur and I think as Rudin Esker said this, that he even thought that he should get an audience with the Pope and he sent someone there to say, like, "Don't you want to meet with a jocke like a monk?" Oh my God. It's like, "No." (laughing) So I just thought that was, to me, that was the contrast between that. Like, Jijat goes to Harvard, says, "I don't want to meet with anybody, "who's anybody except maybe some student or something." And then La Con who thinks, "Give me an audience with the Pope." So, no, no, no, no, the Pope. That's a long digression. The Pope needs to have an audience with me, I think, is the way that that story, yeah. Yeah, that's great. All right, so should we break, we're almost running out of time and I feel like, let's talk about Slavoy, I guess, and then Joan and Alenke, and then we'll just have to finish with only psychoanalysis. Oh, it's not the worst, I don't think. No, it's the worst. It could be the worst. Yeah, yeah, so for Slavoy, I think, you know, we were talking earlier, I said that I would have probably said a sublime object, but I've been thinking it over. You're revising. I'm revising. It's like, would you not say-- It's supposed to be clear a sublime object because it's his first book in English. So that's first book in English. Yeah. And it's excellent. And I mean, that's a stupid thing to say. That's like saying, the Beatles are good. Are you like pizza? Yeah. But it's, you know, it lays out, I think, very clearly, in an analogous way to sound our 11, like what are the fundamentals of like, Jejeckian thought? Yeah. You know, like he's going to write in a dial electrical way and he's going to be bringing Hagle and LeCon together and he's going to use this to proper sort of his own thing. And I think that that's-- and also, like you have the trademark things where, like, he's also bringing together high and low culture. Like that's a certain-- That's a thing that he does. All those kinds of trademarks are there. I think that the only thing that's really not there is what would become-- like the religion, like, kind of, I don't want to say critique, but just like the way that he-- It's almost not a critique. It's almost a critique. It's not a critique of Christianity. Yeah, it's an embrace of Christianity from-- Almost. It is an embrace. It is from this idea that there's like an atheistic core to it. Like that's the idea. By the way, are mutual friend Rick Boothby thinks that he protests too much about the atheistic core? Is that right? Nah, he thinks that-- and I kind of think he might be right. He thinks Slavoy really is-- like, he has some-- I mean, obviously, it's not God in the traditional sense, but there's some kind of sense of atheism. Anyway, that's interesting. That's a nice topic for another podcast, I think. So what I was going to say was, is, like, I was going to offer, and instead, I think, looking a rye. OK. And it's-- Because it does have that stuff on Chesterton, right? And belief, right? Yeah. And it also has, I think, it's more approachable, which is this is sort of-- and it's not that long either. And so we were looking at-- I mean, summer or 11 is not that long, but it is a whole seminar. I mean, we're talking with Freud. We were talking about essays. And I think looking a rye is a series of essays that he put together as a book. He put together as a book, and that they have this-- they have something that a reader who is trying to come to grips with him, I think, can really sink into. I think he develops-- I think it's in there where he does a great example of the real from, oh, man, am I going to blow this about the book? Oh, I'm-- - I know what you're talking about. It's an unpleasant profession of Jonathan Hogue. - Thank you. - I'm a timeline. - It's a Heinlein book. Right, and he gives a great example of the character that he finds out this thing about the world, like, isn't real. It's like it's being fixed by aliens or watched over. But he has to leave, and he's going over, I don't know, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the only thing they have to do. - They say don't roll down your window. - The only thing you don't do is don't roll down the window. And then he just does it a little bit, and just the whole world is this like unspeakable void and blackness, right? And it seems to be coming into the car, and then he rolls it up and it's fine. - Yeah, right, that's-- - Okay, everything looks fine through the window. I think that's a great choice looking around. And there's great discussions of Hitchcock and Kafka in their kitchen. - Yeah, yeah. - Pornography, I think there's a little bit. - And he makes a lot of the quilting point, which LeCon doesn't make enough of. - Which, so that's not really true. That only appears in seminar three, this I call it seminar, and then it just disappears, which is so strange. Because I mean, there's a whole, we should also talk sometime about disappearing concepts and look on like dust-dang. - Yeah, dust-dang, yeah. - Point of capitan or quilting point. - Yeah, so that's-- - How often does he say, this is one of my favorites, but how often does he say the non-duped air? Is that just-- - That's late only. - That's late only? - Yeah, he has a seminar 21 is late non-duped air. - Okay, all right. Which is interesting because it's a pun, you know this, right? - Yeah, from the name French. - From the name French, because it's-- If you say, "L'anondoup-père," it also sounds like, okay, the non-duped air, but in French, it also says the names of the father. - The names of the father, right? - Sounds exactly the same. Okay, so I love your looking arise choice. I'm gonna go a little, in the same vein, and say, "Plegue of fantasies," which I saw a couple times. And I think the only reason I think, it's a little longer than looking around, which is a negative, but I think it has one thing that looking around doesn't-- He hadn't yet developed this notion of the obscene underside of ideology, and that gets a nice articulation in "Plegue of fantasies." - That's true. - That's why I would choose that. And it's accessible, I think, undergrads can read it. - It's also, I love his discussion of why, his discussion of Don't Ask Don't Tell is excellent. - Yeah. - It is the masculine fantasy to use, not in a second-minute way, of the military that has to be upheld, and because it is homoerotic. It's the same, I don't know if I've said it on this podcast, but to me, the same reason why Michael Sam couldn't really be an NFL player is because, it's all homerotic. Like, absolutely true. - Yeah, absolutely true. - To have an openly gay player on the field, it like every straight person has to like, we're watching these like muscle-bound men and really enjoying it, and they're really enjoying it, and they're like, you get confronted by that core. I remember one time, I was like, - I ain't even a half of it. Like, in the locker room, I told you about this. - Yeah, yeah, of course. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Oh yeah, yeah, God, I was in a college football locker room, the amount of homoerotic-- I mean, it's not even homoerotic, it's just like openly homosexual. - Yeah. - Activity was incredible. Like, guys rubbing their cocks together, like ramming up the other guy's ass as a joke, when he'd been over dancing naked together in the show. I mean, just like, incredible. And I had, it's interesting that, like, isn't the best example this the way Hitler had to kill Ernstrum, the leader of the essay, and the essay, 'cause the essay was this kind of, like, they brought the homo, like, they were openly homosexual. They brought that, like, dimension of the Nazi bond to the fore, and to the fore, and that's why I had to, they had to be killed. - In the night of Long Knives in 1934, they had to be killed. So, I think that's the great, but anyway, so yeah, you're right, that he does a great job with that. I do wanna just say, the one, the book that I would, I think you probably agree with me, that, like, the great hit, though, is the greatest book, is the long one. - Oh yeah, less than nothing. - Absolutely. Yeah. - That's the long cut, like the long cut. I think we both agree on that, but can you think of one that, to turn people off to him? - To turn people off. It would be one of the political ones. - I guess so, like, as on violence, I don't know, I know some people don't, that's one that a lot of people like, right. - Yeah, maybe the violence one taught in the right kind of malicious way to really get people, 'cause that's where, is that where he says, like, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler? - Yeah, I think so. - For the problem that Hitler was he wasn't violent enough. - Yeah. - Right, right, and it's like to misunderstand it. But yeah, I think one of the political ones, like the, oh, maybe just one of the lesser ones. - I was gonna say the same thing, the one where it seems to be, like, he's not saying as much. - Yeah, because I, how about the totalitarianism book? I think that's not very good. - Oh, yeah, more to, yeah, what is it? Like, totalitarianism, please, or, I don't know, something like that. - Something, I don't know. - Yeah, but it's, I've repressed the name of that. - That's very funny. - Does somebody say totalitarianism? - That's the one, yeah, yeah, there it is. But it's funny, 'cause a lot of his, I was, I didn't tell him that I didn't like it, but a lot of his, I remember him saying this, a lot of my friends did just a terrible book, and I think it's one of my best, he didn't really think that, because, you know, he now, you ask him, what's the list of your, he never puts that. - Never puts that in. - Yeah. - But it's just kind of confused, and then I only have a point, in the chapters don't flow together in any way, and so, yeah, maybe that one would be a good. - You know, it's interesting, I'm wondering, like so for another accessible one, and I think that it's so accessible, it's out of print, is the "Fried of Real Tears." - Yeah. - I think it's a great book though, like for someone who wants to really get into film theory, that's a great, and it's funny that it's out of print, you're right. Like, I think it's maybe his only book out of print, right? - That's his only book out of print. - Yeah, I think "Peralax View" is great, I'm just looking at that one right now. - Yeah, that's a great book. - Yeah, that's a really good one. - I would put that right after less than nothing to read. Like, he has it, I just remember, there's like three pages on the difference between phenomenology and dialectics in "Peralax View," and it's just stunningly good. And also, it has a long critique of like, cognitive brain science and evolution. - Oh yeah, that's right, that's right. - It's good. - Yeah, yeah, that's a great text. - Yeah, we don't have as many. I think, I don't know, that one, what was the one, one of the later political ones where he says, it's published by Versailles. - The Desert of the Real? - Trouble with strangers, is that it? - Oh, oh, you don't hear trouble with neighbors now. - Trouble with, well, it's Trouble Paradise. - Trouble Paradise, yeah. - Yeah, I thought, you could probably turn people off with that. - I mean, any of these political ones, I think, where you get him saying things. - Yeah, oh, trying to be provocative. - Like against, what is it against the double bind, I think? - Against the double black male, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, that's the one. Yeah, because it's very easy to lose. Like, it's, I mean, this is why he's read, I think, in some circles, as like, I mean, like Simon Crisley, column authoritarian, or something. - Yeah, like authoritarian, sure. - Yeah, that is, you can read against the double black male and think, oh, this guy doesn't like immigrants. - Right, absolutely. - And if you're not reading it, well, if you're not reading it sympathetically, and if you're not reading it to see that, what the point is is that what he's against, is he's against the structure, and he's against with engaging the structure, and that's the point. And I mean, I do think that he, it rates this clearly, even there, but-- - It's pretty clear, yeah. - Yeah, I mean, you gotta really be a malicious reader to not see that, yeah. - But many, many do, so, you know, so, I don't know. All right, let's go to Alenca, Joan, and Mari, maybe, and then, could you say that? - Yeah, that's great, that's a great way to end it. With Alenca, I think, my pick is gonna be, it's gonna be the odd one in. - Yeah, I thought you would say that. - Yeah, you thought I would say that. - Yeah. - It's such a, and I think she's so, I think, like Joan, like I would call, I think that they're just elegant thinkers, like, and I think, like, the way, like, it's very, like, the pros is rich and dense, and you can, it's sort of like, like, the nudities, like, a bike oven, I think, oh my god, I think that that's like, it's like a beautiful text to read. I think it's elegantly written and thought through. But, like, yeah, so the odd one in, what I think, one of the things that, I don't know that Alenca, that Alenca is complemented enough for this is that all of her books, all of them, ethics of the real, you know, even the new one, yeah, what a sex, although, you know what, I haven't read the short of "Set Shadow", I don't know if I can say this about that, but it all gives you an introduction to psychoanalysis, like, if you need one, if you build a shadow, doesn't, but yeah, but you're right about all the other ones. That's a great point. They all, they all introduce us now. Like, it's so, it's so stunningly good, either, that she just, you know, Hillary Nironi, my sauce, one of the things that I'm going to do, said that it's like she starts again from the beginning every time she introduces any concept and that is so helpful to the reader like it's just absolutely but not in a redone never in a state of way never never simplistic it's all complex but it's just like I found in I I'm tempted to agree with you but I do think odd one in is the is the proper beginning point although I think ethics of the real is the superior book which is I think that's our best book which is I would be test of someone said that about my first book was my best I think it's true about we were not talking about bad due today but I think theory the subject which is first major book is this best and I think that's pretty depressing I mean it's a little bit like I mean not totally because like citizen Kane was well as well as well as well as well I mean it's a great felt like you you have what is it you could very easily say like you know I mean better to have like the the one great thing or like your great thing to your first thing than to be like I don't know and I mean in some ways yeah I mean I think ethics of the real I prefer I think the insight is just unparalleled into Kant but I do think in terms of accessibility and I love just speaks directly to your point about the like reintroduction of the psychoanelitic basic concepts yeah like her discussion of fallace and the accusation against psychoanalysis that it's phallocentric is just yeah it's like whoever was making if they were in a fight with her they would have to call the fight like it's over you can't that charge can never be made again if you had one in because her pull point is the essence of psychoanalysis is to show that the fallace is a fraud right that's the whole the whole point the whole point so it's not like oh we need a feminist corrective we can use Freud a little bit but we have to have this feminist critique of him included she's like no no no no that's the like from the beginning Freud's whole point is the fallace is a fraud right that's a feminist point yeah so he's a he's look it's not that he understands the women but but he understands the patriarchal structure in the nature of the of how the fallace functions as as as fake as fraud so I feel like that's like I I I love that book for that reason it's great it's a great it's a great argument too for like why like for why psychoanalysis is centered around this thing is that like it's I mean it didn't go back to that really famous Juliet Mitchell line that it's psychoanalysis is not a endorsement of a of a phallocentric society but you know but an analysis of one or a diagnosis of one yeah you know yeah and like if you if you don't if we don't talk about it then like it it gives that thing seeming like salinity and it seems to give it value and seems to like it it does seem to like endorse it in a way if you go away from it you don't you don't you don't confront it yeah I've always found that funny that the idea that not talking about like that oftentimes students someone said in the class I recently taught that might the chair of I mean he's like well someone said one student said that you were a racist and so whoa I'm a little curious about that and I said well you know talking about racism you know that I guess that I guess that qualify I mean so I think a lot I think there's a sense that if you represent a thing yeah you are endorsing that that's true I was just like to me crazy because yeah seems like much more I mean that's how we get this idea that like Black Lives Matter is the racist organization like that because they're bringing up they're bringing up bringing up your you know I mean isn't Freud great on this where he says it's something that's in the Clark lectures the I forget what the how they're trans but it's a title of him but is it just called five lectures on psychoanalysis maybe I think so yeah yeah he says he says look the the an idea is more powerful when it's unconscious like making it conscious what psychoanalysis doing is not it's not like we're unleashing the demons of right subjectivity it's like yeah we're giving it we're like letting that be letting it be known you know so I feel like that's true about all these things you know like yeah well that's like that term I mean like to go back to to to your example that's like race baiting quote you know is like to bring up that something's racist is to show how to show structural racism to make you aware of it is is race bait like racist yeah right you're yeah it's like oh you're the yeah who's the real racist and when you're in and that's just like a kind of and I don't think that this is one of those things where like nobody who says this is is thoughtful enough to to realize is what they're doing but this is what they're doing is like they're making it so that you're engaged in an absolutely unwinnable conversation because now you're in the structure of trying to prove you're you're taking their point which is like no I'm not the racist you're the racist you're missing my point and then they're saying like no I'm not I'm you're the racist you're bringing up and we're like now we're out we're out it is impossible to prove that you're not a racist right like I said yeah I said this you know what I did I was talking about this to my students and I said I was like brought up this idea of like proving a negative right it's like I said listen I was like if any of you are losing an argument to somebody and you really don't want to be asked them to prove they're not a pedophile and things will turn around for you it's great it's much like you know the unconscious you can know that they're no way they're gonna be all the way there's no way like if they'll stumble over their words and it'll just like if you say anything if they say like I can't prove that they'll be like all right see you know like anything use anything you say like I think that's like the anyway yeah but to go back to to to a blanket I mean I think that this is something that she does like to go back to the idea of like her work always being this like this reintroduction I think that you put it that way and that's the that's the right this reintroduction to psychoanalysis is like there are many many many texts that are like introduction or like you know like an idiot's guide like this kind of thing yeah and it's not that at all my god it's not that at all no never and that like so their her texts are the most like for someone who'd never read anything but you know I was interested in this at like you know like a upper undergraduate or graduate level I mean like I say like you you get into one of her her works and like you start to to like I think I think what is sex is is great and for a lot of different reasons but it also does this like you know she she goes she delves into oh you know she begins with I'm surprised that she brings up she has that quote from LeCan about how he's not he's not talking right he's not fucking right now he's talking but he can have the same that's some seminar 11 to seminar 11 speaks the importance of that seminar yes you know what I thought about was that the word intercourse also me I mean no one would use that word to mean conversation but that's the definition of that word yeah you know and you know and I think anyway it's a great so like one of your little I should write that down yeah definitely but I but again I mean I never thought about that word not for the like his book you know and whatever and so like it's really good stunningly good so this actually brings us to a problem with the link it's hard to think of a bad play like if you want to turn people off to the like yes the Nietzsche book I mean it's still really good but it does it does give you I mean it's less it's like a kind of an attempt to reclaim Nietzsche for the sort of Higgellian, Likinian tradition so I think she falls out of our structure I think that there's not a bad I don't not even the why psychoanalysis that's so good I think that's it's all it's good because and I think it's because of the way that she writes it's because of this like this like elegant like like reintroduction that is never it's never reductive that it always like what is that like the well what do you think about this idea that I think we're gonna run into the same problem with the next person we talk about and I feel like it's because they're both that's Joan Copcich I think they're both they they're not they're sort of the opposite of Freud Likin and Giac that is they don't well Likinian didn't publish the things so yeah necessarily true of him but he did it I just prolific in terms of producing seminars right that they don't really they just are they they take their time in what they yeah put out you know it's exact it is it's exact yeah I mean there's not a greater example I mean like it maybe this is maybe we could talk about good segue yeah yeah like I mean there's not a better example than from you read my desire the youth in nation youth in Asia of reason sex in the youth in Asia yeah yeah it like there is you know Joan writes this this counter butler argument that is it's perfect it's it is it is as they say when a a free kick is struck into the corner of the of the goal and soccer it is inch perfect it is not like there's no there's no room for butler to I mean she's never responded to it there's no I think it's true that she has never once mentioned Joan Cop Jack's name in public yeah I know that that's true I don't have I've never I haven't heard every public word she's out there sure and I haven't read every single one of her books but I think that that's true I mean I think his Joan is exact I once was talking to her about this and she said she said I wanted to write the essay that just Butler wouldn't be able to say anything in response. And I think that's sort of the ideal that she-- I mean, I think she did that too. And these are the two things. I mean, she has only two books. So we recommend both of them, I think. Oh, yeah. You're starting places. But I think from read my desire, if you just wanted to read-- I think that's the better book than imagine there's no woman. Although I think imagine there is a woman as phenomenal. The read my desire has so many incredible things in it. But I would say that the first essay that Ortho Psychic Subject and the last one, Sex and the Ethanasia Reason, are great places to begin. Although that whole book, yeah. It's just really interesting. I mean, the Ortho Psychic Subject, like with Mulvey and Screen Theory as the implicit target-- Mulvey never referenced by name. But the way-- Read it interestingly. When Joan wrote that, she had been a student of Mulvey's. I knew that. I did know that. Yeah, I did know that. No. I mean, that's just-- how do you-- it's a kind of-- sometimes when I-- I was-- OK, so Jonathan Crary in 24/7 has this-- which is one of these books where the-- like some of the core ideas I find that I really agree with about, yes, sleep is being treated as something that is-- it's non-productive and it's anti-capitalistic. And where we're losing sleep, sleep's being mon-- I totally with him on this. And then he just, for somehow-- somehow, I don't know, there's some negative things about Freud about how he's supporting the bourgeois notion-- of sleep and dreams and it's making money off of it. It's kind of a bad take. And then there's an even worse take about television causing autism based on this 2006 Cornell study that was conducted by economists, not like scientists or biologists or brains or whatever. And like, it's hard for me-- so I was writing about the note about this because he also mentioned, sorry, I'm writing a note about this in my dissertation. And my god, is it so hard for me not to be petty about this. And for Joan to have such a strong take against-- War of Ovi or a teacher-- and all this field that grew out of a misreading of seminar 11 and the idea that one-- like, where's master? I think it's-- I think it's more out of mirror stage. Mirror stage right to go back to the period of magic. Yeah, I think seminar 11 was nowhere in those people's minds although my theory is that screen theory so influenced the translation of seminar 11 that it created this crazy mis-translation of the way the gaze functions. Yeah, you had that thing about Alan Sheridan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, please talk about it. OK, so in seminar 11, I forget which session it is, but it's one of the sort of break points of the session. Like Khan says, my eye is in the picture. No, how does he say it? Oh, he goes, of course, the picture is in my eye, but my eye is in the picture. And then-- but Sheridan says, but my eye is not in the picture. Right. Of course, the whole point of the gaze is that I am in the picture. You're in the picture in the picture. You're implicated in the field. You can't-- right. Because in that Sheridan translation, it's like you can somehow be outside. You're outside? And it's like, I read seminar 11 first before I had even new French. So then I thought I was teaching at the subject of going, oh, I should read in French just to have read in French. And I'm reading it. I'm like, oh, my god. He just invented the word not. He just-- there's no not. It comes from the butt. Like, that must be it, right? Right. Because it would make sense. Because it is me, the German word for-- I mean, German, the French word for-- But there's no-- so you think there's going to be a contrast. But there's not necessarily-- I mean, there is some kind of a contrast. Well, the contrast is that you're in the picture. Like, that's the contrast. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so god, so that, I think that-- but my point would be that that is actually a result of screen theory not vice versa. Because it's-- the timing doesn't work. Like, you can't say, oh, this-- for one thing, they all knew French and screen theory really originated of these like Joan Louis Bodry and Christian Mats and Remembeleur, which is-- there's a kind of interesting thing. So Joan gives this-- I've written about this in my book on Rules of the Game, but Joan gives this-- she generously gave me this incredible letter from Remembeleur to her. So she gives at a talk, she gives ortho-psychic subject, which is basically this critique of film theory focused on the mirror stage. And wants to introduce the real into film studies. And she says that film theory is basically-- Psychodynamic film theory is basically performed a futbolization of Lecon. And so she gives this talk. And Beauur is supposed to be her respondent in the published-- they're publishing the proceedings. And he writes a letter which is published, I think it's published. And it says, I can't even respond to this because she was violated-- she was supposed to talk about Lecanean film theory. And she's just violated the rules of the game. That's amazing. That's amazing. So funny. Like, she just totally-- And so I think that's another perfect-- kind of whole perfect essay. I mean, this goes back to-- I mean, this goes back to-- I couldn't even-- sorry, he just couldn't even respond. Couldn't even respond. Couldn't articulate a response. I mean, this goes back to this thing we were just talking about about the getting involved and trying to show how someone saying that someone is race baiting is wrong. It's like, that's not how you do it. You have to find-- I mean, and this is Hagel's universal-- you have to find the thing that utterly cuts the debate in half. You find the particular that changes all particulars. You find the thing that changes the rules of the game. That's what you have to-- And Joan does-- She does it beautifully. Yeah. And so in either of those-- I mean, like, so her-- what is it? Her formula and sex in the use of the nature of reason is that for Butler, sex is incomplete. And then Joan reverses it, which is that-- it's sex shows the incompleteness of sexual relation, of being of subjectivity. It's not that sex is incomplete. And then we have a multitude of particularities emerge from that. And it's this field that is ever flowing or whatever. It's like, no, no, no, no. Sex is where you see the cut of the subject. And you see the non-completeness of-- and it's perfect. Right? Absolutely. And I mean, I think there are essays of hers that are not as perfect. But I don't think there are any that are like, oh, here, you can really sink your teeth into a critique of her. And we can really expose-- No, we can't. I think it's the same problem with the-- Lincoln. --with the like, there's not really-- if you want to turn people off to Joan Cobbjack, you're going to have trouble, I think. Yeah. You would only-- it would only be if someone really-- Butler was very important to them. And they felt that what Joan wrote was an attack on them personally. Yeah, but how did you do it from that time? You give your students that essay. I mean, where in that essay do you-- It's because she's not petty. Like, it's hard for me to not be petty. Right. It's like, that's the same thing. She's never rubbing-- Judith Butler's nose in it. She's just saying, look, let's follow the logic out. Let's play this out to the end. It's very logical. And objective, almost, you would say. Right? It doesn't have this pathological dimension too. Which is hard to avoid, I think, like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah, too. I mean, it's just so interesting to oppose these two thinkers, like, and Joan, against the three that the voluminous thinkers we mentioned previously about, like, this difference between-- it's like, you know, you get-- like, the idea is important. So you get the ideas out there, like as quickly as you can, as much as you can. And then it's like, well, how you relate the idea is important. So this-- some precision is called for. It's exactly-- Let's just end quickly with Mari Rudy, because I think she is a nice kind of-- She's a sort of-- In a-- In between? But-- Yeah, kind of synthesis of the old sad and galley in the way. Yeah, of course. That's not what Higel-- He never hears the terms that this is blah, blah, blah, blah. OK. But because she published a lot, right? Yeah, that's right. She's probably got, what, 11, 12-- I don't know how many books. A lot of books. And she's perfectly willing to be misunderstood. And-- And not that she's not precise, but she's willing to throw things out there that are in a kind of Slavois way. This is kind of half baked. I'm kind of working on it. And-- Sure. Yeah. You know, we saw her both-- we both saw her give a talk where she's like, I'm just kind of working through these ideas. And I don't really know what I think. And I thought it was just-- I mean, it was-- It's a lot of confidence to say something like that. I don't think I-- I don't think I have the confidence to do that. And then she had to take it. It wasn't like she was takeless. So-- Yes, right. That was fine. And I thought, she's great. And there's a way she does bring both of those together. together, right? Like she's, yeah, she's both voluminous like Slavoie is and she's, she does have some of, you know, Jones, I think she, I don't think she goes as far as Slavoie in terms of like, nah, I'll put it out there and just sort of, I mean, I think her, her virtue is a thing that, um, like the call of character is the book. Yeah, that's the one you want to say, right? That's the one I want to say is the is a word to start with with Marie Rudy is, um, and she, she writes several times and well more, more in the introduction and eventually, like, she stops saying this, but like there's, um, yeah, I don't want to go so far as to say it's an apology, but like it's, she writes several times about how like this is not like strictly an academic book. This is, this is meant for a wider readership. However, it's also not just for general readers, there will be things in here that will appeal to, you know, to scholars and it's, it's, it's like this is her, her virtue. And I think that it's, um, it is a testament to how, um, there are either academic books or there are popular books and never the Twain show meet, like that she feels that she needs to write this one. That is like, I think that is, uh, and I think the call of character more so than the case for falling in love, like, falling in love, like, really much more popular, much more popular, but it really nails how one can be theoretical and one can be read, um, popularly, like, and, and, and, and, I mean, and I think like what's so great about her is like, these are like, those two books are like non-self-help, self-help books. Yeah. And, and that's, and I think that, um, she's, I don't know, to me, like, I think that she's like mastering a genre that, uh, but outside of her, I'm not really sure exists, like, I don't know who else is doing it. I think that's probably right. I think that's probably, you once said to me, I want to write an essay that's, um, a perfectly situated between Giac and Paul Krugman. Right. Not like politically, but like, no, no, yeah. But in terms of style and, you know, spirituality, in audience, and I think she kind of does that. I think so too. I absolutely do. I feel that's her thing. And I think that's pretty, I mean, I'm not to say that her more, like, academic books don't aren't, like, rigorous and serious, which I think they are. And I think, I think that you could make the argument for, like, one of the more, one of those being the, the one, like, I don't know, like, ethics of opting out, I think, is a great introduction to queer fear. Oh, yeah. Care is reading that now. She loves it. Yeah. It's a great, it's just a great book. And I think, you know, the book on, um, I think Call of Characters' excellent. What's the book on Levy Nosson? Look on. Oh, geez. Um, yeah. I don't like the title, but I think I'm done. But I think that's also a really good one. So I think there are a lot of places to start. I was thinking the only one where you could, like, I think you could use the popularity again, like, if you wanted to turn, I don't know why anyone would want to turn someone off against Mari, because she's terrific. But, um, if you did, like, I think case for falling in love, like, I taught that to undergrad and they loved it. And then she came and talked and basically gave a talk about that. And they were just, they thought it was the best thing they had ever heard. And she also gave the talk without any notes at all, which, well, I found a little stunning. Like, I thought that was pretty impressive. Like, I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I think I know certain subjects pretty well, but I, I don't, I would never feel comfortable enough to just just talk, you know. Yeah. You got to have something. Yeah, I just have something if you get lost. I have to have some fallus. Right. Some fell. But she didn't. And, and, uh, I was really great. And, but they just, they, they just thought the undergrad thought that's the bet. But I could see someone kind of turning the, like, in a grad class, if you, but I just, you wouldn't use it for. Well, I mean, that's why she, like, I think, I, I take your point. Like, I think that's why she has those notes where it's like, look, this is the audience of this book. Yeah. So don't, like, don't use the audience of the book against the book. Don't fuck me, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But, but you're right. Like, so you, someone could, like, someone could very easily, like, that could be someone's take. And I mean, and, I've, she's a kind of a fern to mine one said, I don't understand why she writes these books. That's, I guess, disappointing. Yeah. And I thought, well, maybe, but, you know, like, his point was, she's so smart, she should be, like, totally devoting herself to, like, the other kind of books. Yeah. But it's, but there is something to be said to, like, making, you know, like extending the audience beyond a few people, you know? Yeah. I mean, like, that's, I mean, like, that's like one of the virtues of, of Slavoy, I think, the, I mean, the problem there is that, like, and I think that, that Mari does this in a better way. I think Mari does this in a more precise way that, like, sometimes, you know, you get people who know Slavoy's thoughts strictly from YouTube. And that's like, that, I don't think almost entirely misses the theoretical angle. And it's, it's just, well, they're political. Right. And I also think they get a lot of Jouisons. They're usually leftist young guys who get a lot of Jouisons from his critique of political correctness. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. And they take the wrong lesson from it. Yeah. Which is, you know, like, I always say, like, look, I'm not against the basic issues that they're fighting for. So, and that never gets sort of, yeah. Anyway. So Mari, I feel like Mari is, is, I almost think she's a kind of like, platonic ideal for, for the theorist because she really is so engaged in making, you know, like, a real difference in people's lives. And then she's at the same, yeah. And plus her a bit like, she's like, she's willing, constantly to undergo revolutions in her thought. You know, even in her 50s, which is pretty impressive, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's phenomenal. Yeah. No, it's, I don't think there's a good book to attack. Like so she, so it's, we have a gender split. So it's three guys, they're all books you can, you can really, if you want to really undermine people, people's affection for them, you can do. But with the three women, we both agree that you're kind of, I don't think there's a way. Yeah. I do it. Yeah. I think which, which is, they'll just have to rely on sexism. You have to rely on sexism to do it. Well, I mean, you know what? I mean, I think there's probably a thing here where like, like, there is a, I think this is probably, this is probably true. Like, there is, I don't know, there's a higher burden put on women. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, for, for, for, for not, for, for being precise. So, so that's interesting that Mari is more willing to kind of, you know, put herself out there. Yeah. Even as a woman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but I think that's, I think you're right. Like in some sense, the fact that we could do it this way is itself, that is the sex, that shows the sex. That shows the sex. Yeah. Like, I mean, so that like could, I mean, I guess the question is, like, um, could Mari Rudy publish the Slavoy's violence book, right? Like, isn't that the, isn't that the idea? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about that. That's a good question. Let's leave it with that question. We've only way over time. Way over time. Way over time. Way too long. Okay. So, to the one person who's still listening, say Ryan over and out. Over and out. Okay. Thanks so much. [Music] [Music]