Daily Archives: October 4, 2010

Self ‘Splanin’

“What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?” Lacan

I’m not qualified to be dog catcher, but if I ever threw my hat in the ring, I’d have a ton of explaining to do. As it is, I polish my pebbles, such as they are. Part of me can relate to the hapless Christine O’Donnell, erstwhile serial political candidate. She’s led a life of grand experimentation. Isn’t this time-honored?

I give her credit for making the journey from dionysian dalliances to arch catholic prudery in one incarnation. She’s offsetting all those who did it the other way around!

Yet, her’s is a lonely cry. I’d fit her appeal, (this–in both directions,) to the Gen-X paradox: fragile sense of new age entitlement born by the cultural contradictions given by desiccated capitalism.

This television ad, with it’s kiss of a tag, “I am you.” is delightful and reflexive and thoroughly post-modern. It’s political kitsch too. In the USA, as a matter of common and public practice, we don’t usually psychologize, let alone psychoanalyze, our politics. (This is something the French do, oui?) But, with even a minimum sensitivity to the inner contexts, it’s simple enough to see the political appeal resting hopes on collective urges and demiurges and wish and phantasy. Magical participation and projection tell almost the entire story of why we collectively tend to reward parental self-help and self-efficacy over complex experience and wisdom.

Ms. O’Donnell beckons here. Much more than Sarah Palin, she wants it both ways, to argue on behalf of the saintly main street commonsense, and against the pointy-headed, credentialed elites. Yet, her mendacious reconfiguring of her vitae reflects an almost lusty desire to be recognized and loved by those same elites.
Minor goddess Lamia
Lamia (‘Devourer’). A beautiful Libyan woman loved by ZEUS. Every time she gave birth to a child, it was murdered by Zeus’ jealous wife HERA, until at last Lamia went mad with grief. In despair, and deeply envying the happiness of every mother more fortunate than herself, she took to snatching and eating their children. She turned into a monster with a hideous face, which had the added peculiarity of removable eyes that she took out whenever she wanted to go to sleep. Lamia became a nursery bogey-woman, a child-eating ogress used by Greek mothers and nurses as a threat to encourage good behaviour in children. (Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology}

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