Laplanche Afterwardness
Image courtesy of L.J. Whitsitt
It seems, at times, that our world bombards us with one way broadcasting. Everyone seems to be broadcasting out. It took no small amount of effort on my part to talk myself into joining the cacophony. My most strenuous wrestling match was with my own super-ego. Why should I join the chorus? I cannot bring the cultural brio of James Wollcott, the wonkish brilliance of Ezra Klein or Nate Silver, the skewering wit of Charles Pierce or the professional competence and rigor of Brad de Long. But – I told myself – in the aggregate, the advantages of the democratization of “intellectual” discourse should outweigh the putative disadvantages (i.e., if everyone is a movie critic, there is no room for a Pauline Kael) Plus – I told myself – writing the blog would help me discover what I think (until we make our thoughts objective and observable through mouth or pen, our own thoughts are not fully known to us). So – I told myself – it didn’t matter if my blog went unread.
But the recent comments posted on my blogs have brought me back around to acknowledge the truth. (Here my philosophical slip starts to show…) I am not an encapsulated self, a social atom in a Newtonian social universe where we all bump into each other like billiard balls. We live immersed in a world of socially constructed meaning; a world created by Ourselves with Others. Every communication is performative, we put our thoughts into some kind of action (verbal, somatic or written) and play them out in a social theatre intended for some audience. Every communication is an action within a relationship.
I have had 177 spam comments and 4 comments from very important people in my life. It really does matter who reads my musings because, really, I write them to you. Thank you for reading and taking the time to think back with me.
Thank you so much for the brief pause from wringing the polysemy out (sp?) of “zombies”. I for one am exhausted. I do enjoy reading your pieces, however, when I think back, I’m mostly reminded why I didn’t get into Prinkston. D
I ran into the same thing when I first started blogging. I wrote hard and fast and then collapsed and couldn’t do it anymore for months. I’m pretty good at convincing myself that my blog is a small hut lost in the mountains, but if no one ever came, I’m not sure I’d be okay with that either.
One of my first experiences was running into a blog written by an expectant mother to her unborn child (“My Mystery Baby”) We got into an email exchange, discussing angels and such and I asked her one day, because her blog didn’t specify, “Where are you in the world anyway?” She replied she was at the end of the power lines someplace in a desert in Iran. It was then I got really hooked.
You can call cyberspace an anonymous place and even write anonymously, but I find it also sometimes, magically, can be like finding The Little Prince among so many separate planets.
Perhaps it is all delusion, but it wouldn’t be the first time, given the nature of “inter-experience,” as Mr. Laing used to say.
Thanks for writing, Mylor. You have a wonderful voice.
Dan