Das Ding
I hate writing these things.
I hate writing these things because they
require something impossible. They require one — you, me, anyone — to reduce the barely
ruminated reflections of
the self, of (cough) my self, to something packagable, saleable, digestible — indeed, something
which need not be ruminated. Something like cud blended on high. You just grab it on your way out the door. And chug it
down quick. No time for savor or thought.1
The loathing I feel for this now-ubiquitious practice of blending and branding has led me to wonder,
in self-defeating bewilderment, "what's my thing?"
My. Thing.
Already, the question entails something possessive, something which is mine. But what is this "thing"
which is mine? Or yours for that matter? Das ding, in the psychoanalytic tradition, reveals the contradiction
at the heart of the question.
Das ding2 is something in me more than myself. It is, by definition,
something which escapes the grasp of the self. And while we might always search after the thing, clutching our
way through the dark, smiling the days away toward ruin, we can never truly possess it.
In closing, I propose one final corollary: the fantasy of self must be traversed, which is to say, there's
another life out there, and we're already living it. I wanna live it with you.
Yours, always,
Sean
1. The thing about putting your cud in the blender is that, in doing so, you're claiming your independence
over and above the microbiota which make rumination possible. You're saying, "I don't need anyone else; I can
digest it all on my own." Please bear with this clumsy analogy, despite its limits. Note, as an aside, that we do, in point of fact, rely on a universe of bugs and microscopic critters to break down
nutrients and fight disease. [Back]
2. See Lacan's Seminar VII for a strange and circuitous explanation of Das Ding.
The following passage bears quoting:
The world of our experience, the Freudian world, assumes that it is this object, das Ding,
as the absolute Other of the subject, that one is supposed to find again. It is to be found at the most
as something missed. One doesn't find it, but only its pleasurable associations. It is in this state of
wishing for it and waiting for it that, in the name of the pleasure principle, the optimum tension will
be sought; below that there is neither perception nor effort.
In the end, in the absence of something
which hallucinates it in the form of a system of references, a world of perception cannot be organized
in a valid way, cannot be constituted in a human way. The world of perception is represented by Freud
as dependent on that fundamental hallucination without which there would be no attention available.
[Back]
I hate writing these things.
I hate writing these things because they require something impossible. They require one — you, me, anyone — to reduce the barely ruminated reflections of the self, of (cough) my self, to something packagable, saleable, digestible — indeed, something which need not be ruminated. Something like cud blended on high. You just grab it on your way out the door. And chug it down quick. No time for savor or thought.1
The loathing I feel for this now-ubiquitious practice of blending and branding has led me to wonder, in self-defeating bewilderment, "what's my thing?"
My. Thing.
Already, the question entails something possessive, something which is mine. But what is this "thing" which is mine? Or yours for that matter? Das ding, in the psychoanalytic tradition, reveals the contradiction at the heart of the question.
Das ding2 is something in me more than myself. It is, by definition, something which escapes the grasp of the self. And while we might always search after the thing, clutching our way through the dark, smiling the days away toward ruin, we can never truly possess it.
In closing, I propose one final corollary: the fantasy of self must be traversed, which is to say, there's another life out there, and we're already living it. I wanna live it with you.
Yours, always,
Sean
1. The thing about putting your cud in the blender is that, in doing so, you're claiming your independence over and above the microbiota which make rumination possible. You're saying, "I don't need anyone else; I can digest it all on my own." Please bear with this clumsy analogy, despite its limits. Note, as an aside, that we do, in point of fact, rely on a universe of bugs and microscopic critters to break down nutrients and fight disease. [Back]
2. See Lacan's Seminar VII for a strange and circuitous explanation of Das Ding. The following passage bears quoting:
The world of our experience, the Freudian world, assumes that it is this object, das Ding, as the absolute Other of the subject, that one is supposed to find again. It is to be found at the most as something missed. One doesn't find it, but only its pleasurable associations. It is in this state of wishing for it and waiting for it that, in the name of the pleasure principle, the optimum tension will be sought; below that there is neither perception nor effort.
In the end, in the absence of something which hallucinates it in the form of a system of references, a world of perception cannot be organized in a valid way, cannot be constituted in a human way. The world of perception is represented by Freud as dependent on that fundamental hallucination without which there would be no attention available. [Back]