{"id":3681,"date":"2010-09-25T23:09:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T06:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2010-09-25T23:09:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T06:09:10","slug":"eschatology-please-just-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/09\/25\/eschatology-please-just-say-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Eschatology? Please just say no."},"content":{"rendered":"

Had coffee with Elisa Yon<\/a> this afternoon. We talked about a bunch of things, including her great experiences so far at Emily Carr University of Art & Design<\/a>. As we talked about individualism and society (among other things), I tried (but failed) to remember the name of a French psychoanalyst whose book had impressed me mightily a couple of decades ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I got home and – googling to the rescue – found the information I sought: I was recalling Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel. The book I read was Creativity and Perversion<\/a>. I liked it.<\/p>\n

Usually, I’d link to the Wikipedia page of someone like Chasseguet-Smirgel, but her page is such a hatchet job that I won’t bother. Seriously, Wiki people? You think her biggest accomplishment was pissing off leftist Lacanians and intellectual anarchists? Oh, come on…<\/p>\n

Every once in a while, I lull myself into believing that we’re beyond that sort of bullying. But then I turn around and realize, “nuh-uh, we’re not.” The bullying I refer to is the Left vs. Right nonsense that partisan diehards like to dish out.<\/p>\n

It seems Chasseguet-Smirgel called bullshit on masturbatory anarchism (or self-indulgent anarchism, choose your label), and for this Deleuze and Guattari of Anti-Oedipus<\/a> fame gave her a smack-down. (Ok, here’s a link to her Wikipedia page<\/a>.) Yes, I’m being harsh – but eschatologists who think that liberation lies in anarchy, or people who are so damn sure of the telos<\/em> that they actually believe they know just what the future holds (excuse me while I gag): these people drive me crazy, and I include anyone of any political stripe in my no-go zone.<\/p>\n

Co-incidentally, I happened to watch Steven Pinker<\/a>‘s brilliant talk, A History of Violence<\/a> (don’t have a direct-direct link – just click through on the second link and look for Pinker in the line-up: he’s the handsome curly-gray-haired guy with the bright green tie).<\/p>\n

And somehow, what he had to say made me think that Anti-Oedipists and anarchists were off on a tangent and Chasseguet-Smirgel was more on track all along.<\/p>\n

(To be continued.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had coffee with Elisa Yon this afternoon. We talked about a bunch of things, including her great experiences so far at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. As we talked about individualism and society (among other things), I tried (but failed) to remember the name of a French psychoanalyst whose book had impressed me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1652,1071,678],"tags":[20148],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authenticity","category-creativity","category-ideas","tag-janine_chasseguet_smirgel"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3688,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/3688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}