Connecting to People

Van Morrison is the soundtrack for this blog entry. Shannon created a Van Morrison collection for me, nabbing songs from two albums: The Philosopher's Stone and Moondance. I've only ever heard what the radio plays from Mr. Morrison, and last week, when I was just beginning to settle into this sad funk I'm currently attending, I asked her to compile a CD of "sad Van Morrison songs you think I'd like."

I'm thinking less, though, about the songs, the man, or even the lyrics, which I know is what I'm supposed to be thinking of. Instead, I'm thinking of what it says about Shannon that she grooves to this kind of music -- the same thing I've been trying to figure out with Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan,, and, to a lesser extent, Ryan Adams. I've sort of been sold on Ryan Adams anyway, and Bob Dylan was a relatively easy sell, considering he's a lyrical genius and poet... I could get used to the voice and have even come to appreciate it at times, particularly early Bob. But I've never gotten there with Elvis Costello, even after I listened to the ones she's most talked about. I'm sort of feeling the same way about Van Morrison; there's something... unleashed? a playing about the edges of control?... that I don't appreciate about them. There's a deliberate roughness, and imperfection that doesn't please me the same way listening to the flawless voices of, say, Amos Lee, Beyonce, or Sarah McLachlan does.

And then a song about flamingos? Am I hallucinating?

The quest most recently has been for music to listen to while I'm reading. I go to this coffee shop to read because it has great coffee and free wifi -- great ambiance most of the time, although this morning, in my 4th hour of intense focus at my happy study spot, a group of emo highschool types ascended the stairs from both ends of the building, wielding "gamer" cards in fancy carrying cases, preparing for then launching an intense game of Magic or Dungeons and Dragons or something. Black tee shirts, black long shorts with chains, premature beards? I had to leave.

But before I left, the music that put me in a 3-hour zone was a new playlist I'm sculpting on Pandora around the artist called Lajaari. It's New Age music that provides just the right amount of ambient noise to keep other noises out. It worked well until the Hobbits stomped from booth to booth, the moist perspiration from having just slain a dragon humidifying our small space with the stench of Middle Earth.

But I digress... Lajaari. Try it and see what you think.

Pleasure (list in progress)

Pleasurable:

• reading escapist/fantasy fiction (ie Twilight, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia)
• drinking, then dancing
• smelling roses (or most things that smell good, such as cake, good cologne/perfume)
  
• feeling accomplished
• doing some drugs
• drinking good, dry, red wine
• engaging in intellectually-stimulating conversation
• having conversations that make me laugh
• processing a really good philosophy/theory article
• sleeping, sometimes
• feeling loved
• self-loving
• having just ran (not the actual act of running, although I hope to add that soon)
• smelling-while-folding clean, warm laundry
• communicating on Facebook, sometimes
• connecting with people, sometimes
• being just-from-the-shower shaved and clean
• flirting/being flirted with
• watching good movies/TV shows (ie House, LOST, and of course, Twilight)
• having intense conversations/interactions with intelligent (and attractive) people
• writing, sometimes
• finishing a task, sometimes (not finishing a good book, which brings me sadness)
• riding my bike across campus
• teaching, sometimes
• learning, sometimes
• shopping, sometimes (when I have money, but when I don't, it brings me sadness and stress)
• cleaning, sometimes
• texting
• checking things off a to-do list
• having an 'up' day (as opposed to a bipolar-like downswing)
• driving, sometimes
• warm, autumn days (or spring, or summer... but not hot, hot days)
• waking up in a good mood
• feeling like I'm working toward a good, healthy, happy goal
• seeing others accomplish their goals
• receiving stuff from friends/family in the mail
• making good choices and seeing their results
• being pain-free for a while
• getting a massage
• getting a haircut and eyebrow waxing

Rationalizing Denial

Denial:

1. the act of refusing to comply (as with a request); "it resulted in a complete denial of his privileges";
   
2. the act of asserting that something alleged is not true;
3. (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that denies painful thoughts;
4. abnegation: renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others; and/or
5. defense: a defendant's answer or plea denying the truth of the charges against him; "he gave evidence for the defense."(Courtesy of wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)

I'm mostly concerned with numbers 2, 3, and 4 here. Firstly, "the act of asserting that something alleged is not true" implies two people or two parts of the same person: if two people, one would allege and the other would deny; if one person, some part of the person (monads!) would allege while some other part would deny. It might also occur that denial of this sort in one person emerges from one part alleging and the same part denying. Maybe. This type of denial is inter- or innersubjective, depending. (By "innersubjective," I mean occurring between two or more parts within the person; by "subjective," I mean the subject speaking as some type of make-believe unified subject, either because the subject is too ignorant of h/h self to recognize PostMo and PostStruc at work within h/h myriad selves or else s/h has recognized it... and worked h/h self back into a unified whole. I'm really not sure the latter exists, but that's only because I haven't experienced it.)

Secondly, #3's psychiatric denotation, "a defense mechanism that denies painful thoughts," is either subjective or innersubjective, unless the painful thoughts were placed there by a second person, in which case the cause would lie outside the subject but the effects would lie within (pun intended). Interiority is the locus of denial in this sense, but what remains unclear with only this broad definition is whether the subject denies (the existence of) painful thoughts, denies (to others ever having) painful thoughts, or denies (the entry into h/h psychic interiority of) painful thoughts. What part of the body is doing this denying? The mind? The body? Some mediating force between the mind/body? And if the mind denies, doesn't the body sometimes accept, as is the case for physical conditions resulting from mental states? What or who teaches us to deny painful thoughts? Did primitive man deny painful thoughts? If pain can be experienced as pleasure, then couldn't intrusive painful thoughts be a turn on?

Lastly, #4: "abnegation: renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others." This sort of self-denial for the sake of others -- being yourself-for-others, or what I call being a people-pleaser -- is insidious because, when done well, it's subtle, and it controls subject and other in interesting ways: People pleasing

• forbids others from distinguishing the core from the rind -- and from perceiving the core at all.
  
• implies that the subject knows better than the other what is best for the other; implies a sense of superiority in that the subject is making choices of what to reveal and what to hide -- what to do and what not to do -- based on h/h constructed perspective of the other (countertransference).
  
• conveys an element of underhandedness or covertness -- a subject who hides (from) h/h authentic self in order to placate another or a larger group (ie cultures, nations, nations within nations).
  
• might suggest multiple senses of "denial" operating within the subject, namely the other two senses I've mentioned here. If the subject is "asserting that something alleged is not true," she might form her identity around people-pleasing rather than the "something alleged" by her authentic self that she asserts "is not true." She's denying her authentic self, wearing the guise of whomever the other wants her to be. If the subject is experiencing denial as "a defense mechanism that denies painful thoughts," the people-pleasing personality is the defense mechanism, and the painful thoughts are those parts of herself she's deemed "not true" because too painful to accept and reveal to herself and others.
  

I'm going off on a tangent here, I know... but that's the rough sketch of my thoughts on denial. The first definition above also applies here, as in "the act of refusing to comply" with one's own core self. The subject, when in full denial, denies what is within her both to herself and to the outside world. Not only is she refusing to know what is being denied, but in that refusal, she's denying the other access to "her," sequestering her real self to her deepest interiority, a place of multifaceted denial.

Could it be said, according to my ramble, that in denying that innermost sanctum of authentic identity, she renders it inconceivable? Resigns it to it's most natural place within a cultured society: Nature as other? Might it be said, in another model, that she relegates her core self to the position of the unsignifiable? By refusing to deny it's "truth," is she looking to the other to define truth for her, relying on an other's truth to guide her life? I imagine the core self to be faceted like a diamond, each face a wall, of sorts, to keep self and other outside of it. A border, a boundary. In this conception, it's no wonder I seek to penetrate the core self (Phallic woman!), to push the boundary, to transgress that which was meant to keep me an outsider to my own authenticity. When I get there, I will love what is there, because what is there is Me, and denying that denies myself and other(s) the privilege of knowing and loving Me.

Monads & Gonads

The relationship of sexual desire to consciousness.

Consciousness is our attempt to organize our experiences, to make sense of multiple streams of experiences as we are having them by arranging them into structures, ones that are both predetermined by culture & evolution and reshaped by ourselves as we gain empirical knowledges about, through, and from the world, our bodies, and our selves.

Sexual desire is a part of consciousness while also subtending it. The rubric through which we view phenomena can be more or less sexualized depending on the person (and so many things about the person), but as sexed (and, subsequently, gendered) persons, we "see" (think, feel, smell, and taste) phenomena through desire that is always sexed and sexualized. We think in terms of libido, just as we feel, smell, and taste by way of libido. Our desire is inseparable from our consciousness, but within consciousness, we can choose to classify things more or less according to the... power? severity? drive?... of our libidos.

Sexual desire has been derided as a basal or fundamental drive that we ought to gain control of (so that society can be controlled by its legislation), but we are never encouraged to think through our sexual desire, and by that I mean two things: getting to the bottom of our own sexual desire, and interpreting the world through our sexual desire. I have felt, in my lifetime, discouraged from exploring the facets of my sexual desire in an attempt to understand them, and I have been discouraged from interpreting phenomena in the world as a sex(ualiz)ed being (in my case, a sexualized woman, both sexual and sexed). Other members of my culture have not rewarded me their approval when I wanted the topic of our analytical conversation to be sex, sexuality, or even gender. But I do not know if it was my cultural cohort or Me who discouraged a libidinal, eroticized, sexually-affirmed me from emerging, from interpreting the world via my own sexual desires, from acting out my existence from a place of sexual desire. All this time, I've thought it must be the society around me who forbade me to think through my sexual desire in these two ways, but has it been, and more importantly, is it now?

I have half a mind to think it's the religious indoctrination I received in my formative years. There's a level of "decency" I've been taught to maintain through a series of rewards and punishments such that I no longer consciously consider what I do or do not omit from conversation based on a definition of virtue given to me by my Southern Baptist faith, my parents, and the church. However, inspiring this blog entry is a recent realization I have had: what I choose to engage or leave out in discourse makes overt the parameters my subconscious puts on thinking through my sexual desire. Objectifying for the purpose of analysis my own conversation -- both the apparent and the gaps -- reveals what I am silencing in myself and what I am allowing my self to convey; it renders obvious the structures upon which my "decency" is built by rewarding through langauge that which I consider virtuous in myself and in others and punishing through silence those phenomena I find deviant and subversive.

Speaking through my sexual desire is one thing: I'm putting into language the aspects I'm willing to reward in my own sexual desire. But thinking through it requires discovering messages from both mind and body, an articulation of both psyche and soma. Thinking sexed and being sexed is lingual and antelingual; it is both thinking the mind's language and discerning the body's natural "language" as well. Thus, it is psychosomaticanalysis that lays the groundwork for thinking through our sexual desire.

The Object(ive) of My Desire(s)

My intentions during sex and masturbation have never been to enact fantasies, encounter the moments of my own sexualities and pleasures, or graciously attend to the overwhelming desires that have stirred up within me. They've been about orgasm, for him, for her, or for me. When I'm with another body or alone with my own, my thoughts are wrapped so tightly around the tip of my clitoris that it's no wonder there's no blood getting to it. I'm terrified that I won't get off, so I usually don't, or if I do, it's stilted... numbed... scared or perhaps unaware of what will happen if it just lets (me let) go.

I suppose this metonymic substitution of clitoris-for-body arises from my opinion that no one could possibly enjoy my body... a countertransference I justify with the fact that I don't enjoy anyone else's body (therefore, how could anyone enjoy any body?). My pleasure is autoerotic; my desire is for myself. That's not to say I'm selfish, though I may be, or that I don't love and care about people, because I do. But there's something within me that doesn't want to give someone else sexual pleasure though it doesn't mind giving myself limited, controlled pleasure. I think I don't want to give others pleasure because their pleasure does not appeal to me. Thinking about people -- myself included -- in the throws of sexual passion is not a turn-on for me. I don't know what it is doing since it's not turning me on... it doesn't turn me off, it just doesn't do the work of foreplay; when I think of being and agent for someone else's pleasure, I'm... something besides turned on. I'll work on coming up with this adjective.

Perhaps I'm sadomasochistic. My mind distributes pleasure in measured sums to my body. My mind has strangled my body, nearly severing the connection between my intellect and the body that contains it. If you know me, you've seen me try myself to strangle me, to twist my head off my body -- to decapitate myself so as to separate my mind from the body that it feels bound by, and that for this same reason, it binds. My mind has sought to master my body, but my body's stubborn desires undermine the master's ability to completely enslave my body. I'm sadomasochistic because my body sends my desires to my mind in waves of pain; my body, in a last-ditch effort to communicate its needs to my mind, communicates in pain the degree to which it's been denied pleasure. Just beneath this pain my mind can't control are desires my mind can't control; I suppose my mind is doing the smarter thing: allowing the pain to remain because at least my my mind can continue to search for methods of controlling the pain... trigger-point injections, acupuncture, muscle relaxers, deep tissue massages... yes... there must be a way out there to control this thing once and for all. Given free and natural reign, however, my libido wouldn't be so decent and culturally appropriate. I'm allowing myself a safe because manageable pain to prevent a possibly unsafe and unmanageable sexuality; I fear loosing my sexual desires because I might not like what's unloosed.

Sedrick told me the other day on the phone that I'm thinking about this too much. :) Maybe I need to be strangled a little... for real.

Jane Gallop's Thinking Through the Body

I found a great "definition" of the body in Jane Gallop's Thinking Through the Body:

The body is "all that in the organism which exceeds and antedates consciousness or reason or interpretation. By 'body' I mean here: perceivable givens that the human being knows as 'hers' without knowing their significance to her." (13) Any knowledge of the body, then, is partial: a knowing without knowing.

Then... Gallop goes on to discuss the ways in which we come to "know" our own bodies: "One way to make sense of, rationalize, aestheticize our bodily givens, our embarrassing shapes and insistent tastes is to transform them into a consistent style. [Roland] Barthes theorizes this opposition between consistent style and the insistent. In the preface to Sade, Fourier, Loyola [which I'll be reading later this semester if you're interested :)] he specifies that, as opposed to the 'consistency' implied by style, 'writing, to borrow Lacanian terminology, knows only insistances.' An 'insistance' is a 'symptom,' an unconscious message that persists in manifesting itself despite its nonsense or inconsistency" (13). When we seek to know the body, then, we're actually "writing" the body -- not reading it. Reading implies a taking in of knowledge while writing implies the creation of it. Thus, if, as Gallop via Barthes via Lacan insists that it's writing that recognizes insistances, when we think we're only "reading" the body, we're actually writing it -- creating it from repetitions we observe emanating from it.

So -- the way that we (and by "we," I mean our intellection) come to know our bodies is through the body's persistent repetitions. We hear our body scream "I WANT CHOCOLATE" enough times, we start to define our selves as people who like chocolate. Thus, it's through compulsion, habit, and repetition that the body makes itself known to the mind -- it's through repeating itself that it communicates its desires to the mind. From those repetitions, we glean consistency, patterns, rhythms... and those repeated patterns and rhythms become who we think we are.

But Gallop doesn't believe that this is who we are, she -- via Barthes -- believes that the system we conjure to make sense of the senseless repetitions and patterns is "a guess at the puzzle, a response to the inscrutable given. A taste for women, or men, little children, decrepit invalids: a predilection for legs, breasts, asses, hands, feet, panties; a repulsion for spiders, worms, blood; we can (and do) theorize endlessly about the peculiarities of individual taste/distaste. But the theorizing is precisely endless, an eternal reading of the 'body' as authorless text, full of tempting, persuasive significance, but lacking a final guarantee of intended meaning." (13) Whereas Gallop sees our understanding of our body as a reading process, Barthes implies it's a writing process that manifests a cohesive understanding of the body. It's basic Composition pedagogy: writing to learn. Writing as process. And here, writing as product.

She and Barthes, then, call our constructed sense of embodied self "the bodily enigma." The thing we cannot figure out... the entity that lacks referentiality, primarily because of the mind/body split that fails, philosophically, to be reconciled. Gallop says that it's the recognition of the split between the mind and body -- and the consequent desire to connect them -- that leads structuralists like Barthes and Foucault toward the invention of poststructuralism. Whereas structuralism takes on a "scientific stance," Gallop describes the shift into poststructuralism as a "push out of objective, scholarly discourse into something more embodied"... "into something that seemed softer, more subjective, more bodily" (11).

So if the move from structuralism to poststructuralism is a movement from the immanent to the material... a movement from the mind to the body... from object to subject... from other to self... from biography to autobiography... and if understanding of the latter words in these pairs is really an interpretation of repetition, then would it be fair to say that any knowledge of the body and therefore poststructural knowledge is a knowledge of the non-present... a knowledge of that which is latent within us? that a knowledge of the body is a knowledge not of origins but of shadows, redundancies, repeated episodes? Is knowledge of the body really knowledge of the body at all?? Is it a recognition of imitation, reenactment, performativity? Does the bodily enigma allow us to examine and "know" the rind but never reach the core, to use Andrew Bird's metaphor?

Seeking a knowledge of the body, to me, seems like foreplay. It's the cyclical experience women have just before they orgasm... the feeling of the waves of pleasure "coming back around" -- repeating. Naturally, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that repetition compulsions are the basis of trauma theory -- and the idea that we know something only through it's delayed repetition and never through the actual originary experiencing of it is traumatic at its core. Ergo, could I say that any knowledge of the body is a traumatized knowledge, without origin -- an awareness and interpretation of repetitions without original referents? A reading of the signifiers without access to their signifieds?

Just sayin'. :)