Fowels and Lacan

I would like to thank Ashley Shelde for a great post. It really helped me to undestand Lacan bettter then I did before. I feel that throughout this class Lacan has been the thing that I have grasped the least. His theory that nothing is ever signified sends my brain in loops just trying to think about that concept. One thing that I would like to talk about is the idea is the "death drive". What Lacan says is hat the only way to get rid of our deisires is to come to the death drive also know as an orgasim. In french and Orgasim means "little death". Something that hit me when I was reading this blog was from the book Mantissa. When the main character was having sex with the docter she kept asking him to avoid his orgasim for as long as he can. Looking back on it have come the conclusion that she was telling him to hold on to his desires. Is it possible that she knew that if he reached his orgasim that she would disappare becasue she is his desire? She is what he really desires the most. And if what Lacain said about forgetting about your desires when you orgasim is true wouldnt that mean that when he is having his orgasim she is not really there anymore. It sounds very complicated in my mind and I hope that you can understand that becasue I am not even sure if i really do. Therefore I think that Fowels is agreeing with what Lacan says. I feel that the docters statement to the patient about waiting as long as he can to reach his orgasim was in important Lacanian statement because it expresses his ideas about the little death. I am truly glad that I got to read this guest lecture becasue I would not have been able to relize the signifcance of the orgaim statement without it.

Mantissa

Ok so I think that I like this book. It definalty kept me reading for a good 100 pages or so. When I as reading it all I could think was wow what would Freud say? So I am going to give this reading a Freud analaysis. One part that I found to be interesting was when he was telling her to stop she responeded with if you wanted me to stop you would have pushed me off. SHe told him he was not in fact druged at all and was stronger then both of the women who were performing sexual acts on him. Perhaps Freud would say that his subconscious was coming out. Meaning that he did not want to stop because without him knowing it he wanted to have sex with this docter and nurse. Lacan on the other hand would say that he is always living in the subconscious and that there is nothing but that. Something that I also found very interesting is that they also used some Freudian terms such as the "I" and the Id. They told him that basically that these sexualy acts will cause him to remember what these things are. It will help him to regain his lost memory. This book is definalty intersting so far. I was not really sure where they were going with it at first. I don't really understand it completly so far and I cannot really tell if this book is about Feminism or not yet. I do not think i have read far enough to come to that decision. The women in the book are definatly very intersting characters and I look forward to reading the rest of the book.