Deracination

Walter A. Davis

Description

Through a critique of history—as a reality, a discipline, and a way of writing—Deracination challenges the basic theoretical tenets of both humanism and postmodernism. As a discipline, history is currently undergoing what Heidegger would call a productive "crisis," and a number of thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Hayden White, Paul Ricoeur, and Stephen Greenblatt, have begun to reexamine the cognitive assumptions and narrative paradigms that inform the discipline. This book radicalizes such developments in order to construct both a new theory of history as well as a new concept of how histories should be written. To make the interrogation concrete, the book focuses on Hiroshima and the ways in which the trauma of that event has been repressed by the discourses that historians have fashioned in order to "explain" what happened on August 6, 1945.
(Abridged)

Acknowledgments
Preface

1. THE WAY TO HIROSHIMA

I. Only Connect: Trauma in/and History
II. The Concept of Crisis and a Hermeneutics of Engagement
III. Only Connect: Why Hiroshima?
IV. On Psychoanalytic Method: No "Return to Freud"
V. Engaging the Audience: Agonistic Intersubjectivity
VI. Only Connect: Immanence--The Existentializing Process

2. CUTTING BACK INTO LIFE

I. History as Hermeneutic of Engagement
II. Internalization and Bad Faith: The Disorder Called the Ego
III. Authentic Internalization: The Birth of Psyche
IV. Internalization and History
V. Language, Discourse (-Communities), the Problem of Style
VI. Horror, as Exemplar
VII. A Modest Proposal

3. THE SUBLIME AND THE KANTIAN RATIO, OR, HOW THE WHITE MAN THINKS

THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE

I. Affect and Attunement
II. Deracination as Concrete Deconstruction

READING AS INTERROGATIN-KANT'S CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, SECTIONS 23-29

I. Beyond the Beautiful: From Pleasure to Desire
II. Frameworks: Opposed
III. Purposiveness: And the Contrapurpose
IV. Affect and Attunement in Depth: Inwardness versus the Ratio
V. From Ambivalence toward the Object to Intimations of the Bomb
VI. The Psyche in/and History
VII. The Scientific Imagination: Kant as Romantic Poet
VIII. Reason and the Bomb
IX. The Imagination's Re-education: Reason as Sublime Self-Reference
X. The Dynamic Sublime and the Inner World
XI. Sublimity and Theology: The Superego ... and the Bomb
XII. Coda: Crypt

4. THE PSYCHE THAT DROPPED THE BOMB

OVERTURE: THE EGO AND ITS PLEASURE

THE EGO'S CRYPT: THE INNER STRUCTURE OF AN ANTI-DIALECTIC

I. The Psyche's Founding Condition
II. The Manic Defense against Depression
III. The Fractured Mirror and the Psychotic Core
IV. Soul-Murder Perfected: Death-Work as Self-Reference
V. The Law of the Son
VI. Intersubjectivity: "Concrete Relations with Others" as Mutual Deadening
VII. The Trauma Is the Real: The Postmodern Condition Attained
VIII. Epiphany: The Eroticization of Thanatos

THANATOS AS SPIRIT IN AND FOR ITSELF

I. Rethinking Freud: Concrete versus Abstract Dialectics
II. Humanizing Thanatos: A Phenomenological Description
III. Death-Work versus the Death-Drive
IV. Experience and Existence
V. A New Theory of the Unconcious
VI. The Dialectic at the Core: The System UCS Redefined
VII. The Last Word: Thanatos in Reply

5. FROM ENTHUSIASM TO MELANCHOLIA AS SIGN OF HISTORY: OR, REFLECTION FROM KANT TO HAMLET

THE HISTORICAL VALIDITY OF AESTHETIC CATEGORIES

I. Poetic Thinking as Ontological Regression
II. Kant's Theory of History: Enthusiasm, Progress, and the Sensus Communis

HISTORY AND "VIGOROUS MELANCHOLY"

I. Aesthetic Reeducation
II. The Tragic Register
III. The Aufhebung of Anxiety
IV. The Aufhebung of Thinking
V. Melancholia and the Tragic Historian

HAMLET, THE CONTEMPORARY OF THE FUTURE

I. First Soliloquy: Toward Subject as Who/Why
II. Second Soliloquy: The Life of Questioning--Reflection as Interrogation and Self-Mediation
III. Third Soliloquy: Thinking as the Cutting Edge of Passion
IV. Fourth Soliloquy: Thinking as the Movement from Mind to Psyche
V. Fifth Solilquy: Melancholia versus Catharsis

6. THOSE IMAGES THAT YET FRESH IMAGES BEGET

TOWARD A THEORY OF THE DIALECTICAL IMAGE

I. Images as Sctivity
II. Image as Affect
III. Image as Per

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Historiography

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 15 février 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791491294
• Langue: English

Extrait

Deracination

SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture Henry Sussman, editor

Deracination

Historiocity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative

Walter A. Davis

State University of New York Press

Cover illustration:detail ofHiroshima, mixed media, 1999, by Breck J. Hapner, courtesy of Breck J. Hapner, Imagescape Design, Columbus, Ohio

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2001 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or trans- mitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, New York 12207

Production by Dana Foote Marketing by Patrick Durocher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Walter A., 1942– Deracination : historiocity, Hiroshima, and the tragic imperative / Walter A. Davis. p. cm. — (SUNY series in psychoanalysis and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–7914–4833–9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–4834–7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Social sciences and psychoanalysis. 2. Political psychology. 3. History—Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series.

BF175.4 S65 D38 2001 901—dc21 00–049238

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 4 3 2 1

TO Sensei Bill Evans (1947–1998) who led me to the inner readiness AND Stephen Lacey (1943–2000) who taught me how to write

This page intentionally left blank.

Acknowledgments Preface

C

o

n

One THE WAY TO HIROSHIMA

te

n

ts

I. Only Connect: Trauma in/and History II. The Concept of Crisis and a Hermeneutics of Engagement III. Only Connect: Why Hiroshima? A. Fact-Document B. Explanation C. Subjectivity and History D. Disciplinarity E. Inhumanity Has No/A History: Basil II Bulgaroktonos Vivant IV. On Psychoanalytic Method: No “Return to Freud” V. Engaging the Audience: Agonistic Intersubjectivity VI. Only Connect: Immanence—The Existentializing Process

Two CUTTING BACK INTO LIFE

I. History as Hermeneutic of Engagement II. Internalization and Bad Faith: The Disorder Called the Ego III. Authentic Internalization: The Birth of Psyche IV. Internalization and History V. Language, Discourse(-Communities), the Problem of Style VI. Horror, as Exemplar VII. A Modest Proposal

vii

xiii xv

1

1 7

9 10 11 12 12 14

1

5

1

2

6

0

2

5

25 27

30 36 40

43 45

viii

Contents

Three THE SUBLIME AND THE KANTIAN RATIO, OR, HOW THE WHITE MAN THINKS

THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE

I. Affect and Attunement II. Deracination as Concrete Deconstruction

READING AS INTERROGATION—KANT’S CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, SECTIONS 23–29

I. Beyond the Beautiful: From Pleasure to Desire II. Frameworks: Opposed III. Purposiveness: And the Contrapurposive IV. Affect and Attunement in Depth: Inwardness versus the Ratio V. From Ambivalence toward the Object to Intimations of the Bomb VI. The Psyche in/and History VII. The Scientific Imagination: Kant as Romantic Poet VIII. Reason and the Bomb A. The Collective Subject of History and the Scientific Imagination B. The Triumph of Mathematics C. Toward the Dynamic Sublime: The Defeat of Mathematics IX. The Imagination’s Re-education: Reason as Sublime Self-Reference A.Achtung/Respect B. Agitation C. Reason as Narcissistic Mania X. The Dynamic Sublime and the Inner World A. From Unspeakable Horror to Absolute Mastery B. Agonistic Subjectivity XI. Sublimity and Theology: The Superego . . . and the Bomb XII. Coda: Crypt

4

7

47

51 55

5

7

57 61 62 64

6

8

71 72

75 75

76 78

7

9

80 81 82 84 84

90 93

9

6

Contents

Four THE PSYCHE THAT DROPPED THE BOMB

OVERTURE: THE EGO AND ITS PLEASURE

THE EGO’S CRYPT: THE INNER STRUCTURE OF AN ANTI-DIALECTIC

I. The Psyche’s Founding Condition A. Catastrophic Anxiety B. Exorcism through Evacuation C. The Contradiction: The Sublime—From the Crypt II. The Manic Defense against Depression A. Triumph, Contempt, and Dismissal: The Manic Triad B. From Wakeful Anguish to the Big Sleep III. The Fractured Mirror and the Psychotic Core A. Narcissistic Grandiosity B. Expelling Psychosis: The Schizoid Condition IV. Soul-Murder Perfected: Death-Work as Self- Reference A. Psyche’s Inner Structure as Anti-Agon 1. Abjection reversed 2. Blockage overcome 3. Aggression unbound B. Thanatos Takes a Bow 1. Ego as culture of death-work 2. More die of heartbreak: a phenomenological description 3. Intimation—Revelation I: Over Hiroshima—the voice in the clouds V. The Law of the Son A. The Phallic Ego and the Attainment of (Phallic) Identity B. The Little Lower Layer: Phallic Identity as the Perfect Incest C. Intimation—Revelation II: Tibbets’ Agonistes VI. Intersubjectivity: “Concrete Relations with Others” as Mutual Deadening A. Group Psychology American Style

ix

9

9

99

102

103 103 104 105

108 108

111 112 112 113

114

114 114 115 116 116 117 119

120

121 121

124

125

126

126