The theme of the class is a swinging pendulum between Meaning to Presence.
Levinas - French jew who spent time in a concentration camp...
When someone perceives that they know someone 100% they can reach a point where they summate everything about them into one label. "You are a jew, say no more, I know..." And at that point of totality, humans are then able to harm other humans. The tool of war is totality. label them as something that stops the questions and allows you to destroy them: Enemy, Killer of Jews, Murderer, Terrorist, etc.
Levinas encourages a different mind set where we realize that each person has an infinite amount of responses and can never be known 100%. Above all is ethics, how we treat people.
Lacon - French philosopher...
Lacon says that everyone is born without any language ability. Everything about those early moments is emotion, drive, instinct--The Real. But then at some point the infant finds a mirror and sees their reflection. At that point they realize that they are, something... Language allows us to name and categorize everything by assigning symbols to represent and communicate them--The Symbolic.
(1) You can't really go back to The Real--because once we catch a glimpse of it, we label it! And then we're right back to The Symbolic! (2) Take for instance, a father holding his new born baby with unspoken emotion. As soon as he mutters, "I love you", that unspoken feeling is redefined because it is now filed away in the love category. (3) Every once in awhile our symbols are shattered for a brief moment. Two planes slammed into the twin towers of NYC. There was a moment of sheer emotion, without words... Then certain definitions were reevaluated, such as the word safe. What does it mean to be safe anymore? What--or who--is the United States of America anymore?
Further connections associate The Real with mother and water, and The Symbolic with father and language.
Lacon encourages us to suspend the symbolic, to feel the emotions. Because once you label that emotion it is no longer as, 'words cannot describe." Think of Christ after the death of Lazarus--with all power to raise his dear friend from the dead--taking the time to weep with his friends instead of commanding Lazarus to rise. The Nephites weren't able to repeat the words uttered by Christ in the Americas. I wonder if was because it was a pure communication of the spirit, which in our words, can't be described.
Romantasicm is all about presence - feelings, emotions.
Revolutionary art reduces complexity and pushes a strong message.
No comments:
Post a Comment