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Ascolo Parodites
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Eros and Cinyras
Or,
On perversion and desire in an extra-psychological sense.
I. The spirit of distinctions.
Thus does man answer himself with regard to the riddle of vengeance, which is really the element of degeneration, destruction, etc. "As it has accorded unto me," he says to himself, "so must it accord unto everyone in whom distinction seeks to embody itself and to claim in this world the worth to make beloveds and enemies." The secret power and necessity of this anagnorisis will operate in and upon the destined individual like a furor uterninus 1 and tantillum cupidus via vorabit- [Paulus Mellisus Schedius.] long before he has had the distinction itself in view and have known its name. No, but revenge is not so worthy! It is regarded, alterius tepida colluvione bibam, a draught to our beard, let alone Anacharis's fouth glass. Let us therefor rename the spirit of revenge the spirit of distinctions. And what is its surname? Thanatos.
1. Fury of the uterus.
2. A trifle that leads to worse things.
3. How can you tell the strength of the wine? Because he seems to have dedicated his second glass to his beard.
4. Anacharis says we devote our first glass to our good health, the second to our friends, the third to our country, and the fourth glass to madness.
II. Basic concepts.
The ID is not actually at work anywhere. What a mistake to have announced the Id! For it transcends the ego: its transcendence is already the repetition of the drive. There is only one psychological affect that is analogous to desire- Eros properly, denoted in its metaphysical tradition: and that is boredom. For, like boredom, desire knows neither past nor future; hope on the other hand is essentially antithetical in nature, and by virtue of the consistency of its opposition to the present, unbearable reality, propels itself into the future. Most significantly, revenge seems to be equally antithetical by nature. Desire, on the other hand, is pure immanence, whereas genuine repetition is, according to Kierkegaard, transcendence.
Socrates says that thought begins with a contradictory experience. Like differance, which designates the impossible origin of difference in differing, the unconscious is a nonoriginary origin which Freud calls primary repression, in which the unconscious both initiates the first repression and is constituted as repression. Yet if desire is truly immanent, as opposed to an imaginary lack, in the classical theory- how does this change our model of the unconscious, which is the fundament of and repression, neurosis, etc. and consequently the element of repetition itself? The most profound formulation of the unconscious may be deduced from Kierkegaard: ".. transcendence is a necessary feature of any account of real movement." (drive?) The formula for the integrated desire (no longer lacking self or penia) is in the recognition that it is grounded transparently in the transcendence in which it recognizes itself as something posited. The presuppositional basis of consciousness is, as it were, a transcendence which is already repetition. The unconscious is the musical key to the conscious, but is, through the drive, continually being raised, but within each key the same melody is repeated.
Besides differing from Freud in suggesting that each key is applied to, and cannot be derived from experience, the thinking here is that this repititional account also differs from Freud's recollective theories in retaining the previous experiences in some sense intact, rather than pathologically exaggerated or fragmented; in Freud one aspect of the Oedipal triangle swallows another but not in the way in which one stage of life swallows another, with each still keeping its validity. This is the essential logic of his unconscious.
Yet everywhere thus unconscious is musical keys: keys raised into higher keys, the melodies created by these keys, with all the necessary harmonies and tones [drives]. A musical key at the organic level is raised into a key at a higher level: the one produces a tone that the other intervenes upon and interrupts. The lungs are a musical key that takes in air, and the mouth is a key into which it is raised. The mouth of the asthmatic develops through several tones. Thus its possessor is certain that it is a musical key at the level of eating, at the level of speaking, breathing. Yet the asthma attack is an experience at the basest most key simply raised into a higher, more energetic one, to produce a new tone in which the key is repeated.
Hence, desire, in its very own immanent character, implies legitimacy, coherence- tonality. There can be no such thing as perverse desires. The sexual proclivities of a person are a key at the level of self-identification and fantasy, whereas in the case of the rape victim this key is raised into a higher key, a more energetic one,, wherein the proclivity becomes its opposite; no longer an intellectual elaboration of the sexual identity, but a deep seeded pathological condition which retards the maturation of the sexual identity and thus forces it to potentiate the tone in which the higher key came to rest. Thus, a great majority of rape victims, or generally victims of molestation, themselves become rapists and molesters.
These pathological conditions may be characterized more or less as interruptions in the 'integration-expotentiation' synthesis, in which repetition, the unconscious, lies. Because desire must recognize itself as posited by the transcendence which is already repetition, in the first step of the synthesis which is integration, an interruption, even if it is brief, of this repetition, can be catastrophic, and result in the failure of desire to realize itself as something posited, in Deleuze's language, as a desiring-production. There can afterwards be come completion of the synthesis. It effectively blurs the boundary between conscious and unconscious. Desire is then not recognized as immanent and is consequently interpreted as transcendent:, as in Freud as a lack that cannot truly accomplish its object. In this case, desire itself becomes transcendent, and accomplishes the drive. The pathological condition, ever strikingly, seems to be an implication of the meaning of Freudian logic. It is even as inevitable as the transcendental deduction! "Beyond the magic circle of identitarian philosophy, the transcendental subject can be deciphered as Eros, as desire reduced to this transcendence, that is already the repetition of the drive; desire thereby fulfills itself in the modus of a transcendental deduction from the lived states of the ego, body consciousness." Thus Adorno says that pleasure and displeasure are not just facts of the empirical ego, but are themselves invaded by a physical moment. From first to last, the Freudian logic, the psychological mother-tongue, is essentially erotic.
III. It is clear that revenge, insofar as it owes itself to mythos, is the form of repetition of mythic violence, is the intensity; that revenge is the true character or form of that which is, or individually existing being, as opposed to being in general. Even though Apollo gave to him the deed, he cannot save Orestes from madness. Revenge possesses no identity, since it is a difference in itself, and it only appears through disguise, via incognita: as beloved and enemy, truth and lie. We perceive good and evil, matter and form. etc. as distinct categories, but these are only the products of individuation, the incognita in which the pre-individual, metastable differences appear to us.
Intensities necessarily explicate themselves in quantitative and extensive quantities, but even when they are explicated, they become differentia incognita. Thus the intensity, the potential energy of metastable states, the force of individuation, only reveals itself to the empirical experience of common sense as a masked difference, as a mythos, and reveals itself in the disjunctive use of the faculties as implicated difference, difference in itself, difference for itself. The intensity, however, is only a part of the mythos, and if the form of that which is, or the individual being, is the intensity, the form of being, is the mythos as a whole, in complete moral and legal explication. Revenge, the form of repetition of mythic violence, is the intensity, is an implicate difference which explicates itself as a perservating mythos, but an implicate order exists within the mythos itself, the singular points of the mythos/differentia being explications of the law itself, which should be viewed as a perplication of singular points. Further, all laws communicate with one another and may be said to be explications of a single differentia or question. That is the moral question which was connected with the Decalogue.
All mythos/differentia, therefor, coexist in a single moral realm, an informal and groundless Chaos. The moral is a chaos which impinges upon us as an imperative (the violence of mythos as a provocation to morality) in the form of a question. Laws, mythos, the differentia and the imperative must all be thought in terms of musical keys: the singular points are on the key; the questionings are the keys themselves; the imperative is the tone of the key. Philosophico-moral law is a problematic combination which results from the keys.
The intensity, however, is only a part of the mythos, and if the form of that which is, or the individual being, is the intentisity, the form of being, is the mythos as a whole, morally and legally explicated. The intentsity is an implicate difference which explicates itself in the perservating mythos, but an implicate order exists within the mythos itself, the singular points of the mythos/differentia being explications of the law itself, which should be viewed as a perplication of singular points. Further, all laws communicate with one another and may be said to be explications of a single question, a moral question. That is the essence of the Decalogue's unity.
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