My sense of things - without prejudice to the situated forms of care that must be articulated against a backdrop of agonistic tensions - is that wellness cannot be had as such, since 'life' itself is unwell. This paradigmatic unwellness is the very condition of life's vitality, its spontaneity, its corrosive awkwardness. – Bayo Akomolafe
alienation like intimacy is the problem and the solution
its the distance to self identification
its about lack
its the basis for any kind of transcendence
you cannot solve it. an internal foreigness all the time. i am more this internal foreigness than the conscious parts.
we are unconsciously free because the unconscious has the ability to interupt our defined paths alienation as a positive thing instead
alienation is empancipation without a completness of self-identity thinking lack without reference to wholeness
instead to overcome, we might want to argue we should redeem alienation as an existential political program
subject != symbolic identity the inability to be those identities
even as symbolic identity is an attempt to flee from subjectivity, symbolic identity is unavoidable
the trauma of subjectivity
we can relate to an indentity from the distance IF we recognize it's always alien to us its a political act: acting becond the confines of one's symbolic universe there is no political act that does not try to do that
(emancipatory) politics begins with "loss of identity" – Alenka Zupancic What is Sex?, page 26
all identity is conformist only when this loss of identity occours emancipatory politic beings
symbolic identity is always seeking someone's approval its appealing because it offers this path to escape subjectivity
the search of an symbolic identity that fully cooresponds to who we are is just the attempt to cure alienation. often projects that seem political have this promise attached to them.
but my recognizing every identity is a failure allows us to remain within the question of subjectivity.
alienation counters the determining pressure of external forces
the signifier of identity reveals the gap between identity and subjectivity
alienation is homeless but not nomadic its a fundamental displacement or uprooting
theory of revolution: read Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
displacement is not nomadic, it's a fundamental internal self-disjunction you reject the image of place that means to give belonging
empancipation requires recognizing the appeal of displacement rather than longing for an non-alienateted home that one never had.
the idea of an unalienated future is what makes alienation unbearable
the lure of overcoming alienation of getting out of this problems, entraps subjects in the false possibility that deforms their perspective on existence. (fabricated-options)
existence becomes the struggle to transcend the obstacle of achieving happiness. unhappyness becomes a state to fee rather than the normal state of existence.
so we are burdened by the image of unalienated future/past and that causes us fleeing from existence itself. in such a position there is no possibility of finding satisfaction in everyday variations of one's life.
so people do not become harmful because of alienation but because of the believe they should become unalienated and their failure to do that. the danger comes in overcoming alienation not alienation itself.
capitalism is based on the image of a future unalienated society
if people nurish the hope of getting out of their alienated subjectivity what happens? if there really thing there is hope they resort to whatever is necesssary. it licenses them/justifies them to do things that would otherwise politically or ethical not accepted.
this image of a life free of alienation authorizes the violence that would bring that possibility into existence. in contrast accepting that alienation as constitutive of one's subjectivity is a way of struggling agains this violence.
it's not a way of accepting at all accepting oppression as inevitable
oppression stems from the attempt to overcome alienation
there are many indicates that there is no escape from alienation and the attempt to do so produces cruelty, horrors, oppression and ultematiely genesize.
the project of emancipation if we take it seriously tries to reconcile us to our alienation. to see alienation itself as freedom.
the embrase of alienation is the way to fight agains these oppressions.
we then produce a society around Public instead of private community.
All the psychoanalysis can do is to transform one's "hysterical misery into common unhappiness." – Freud, Studies on Hysteria, page 205
embrase common unhappiness or embrase of alienation is the foundation of egalitarian living and an egalitarian society.
at their best social changes are attempts to fight against the escape from alienation that creates an oppressive world.
self-identical society is a politicla lure
avoiding this danger requires us to get intimate with alienation.
belonging to any identity is always a trap that would steal freedom and would make genuine solidarity impossible.
No matter how radical an identity becomes, it imagines itself, it ultimately seeks someone's approval.
Symbolic identity as a refuge. To escape subjectivity. This is not about having no views but to not rely only on identity for them.
it's only as alienated beings that:
we (or our unconscious) self-sabotage because while alienation (or our body) is our true home, the malware keeps nudging our behavior so to keep intimacy with alienation outside of our perception. we normalize this with psychology-terms and maybe just maybe this is the truest thing we can pathologize. in this way self-sabotage is our soul/unconcious/alienation/geworfenheit trying to unveil the refuges of the ego. making this more salient we may find a reframe of this phenomenon from self-sabotage to creativity more accurate.
On redeeming alienation
..what disrupts our self-identity is not a problem that we must try to vercome but the basis for our freedom, our equality, our solidarity, and our creativity. Without alienation, we are beings reducible t o ou social context, imprisoned in our given form of identity. In such a situation, what is given would be completely determinative. By redeeming alienation as a force for emancipation, we can reevaluate our political struggle. The point is to recognize alinenation as an attractive alternative rather than as a condition that we try to escape without any prospect of success.
On alienation does not impose oppression.
Even though thi is how we often think of it, oppression cannot be equivalent to the experience of alienation, since alienation is universal. Those whoe are oppressed are not fated to be alientated subjects with no possibility of overcoming their alienation. The forces of oppression do not thrust oppressed groups into an unrelenting alienation. Instead, oppresion sets both the oppressing and the oppressed groups into their symbolic identities, so that everyone ahs a proper place. The lure of an oppressive system for the oppressor is that is will provide a definte social location for everyone, with the illusory promise that no one will continue to experience alienation. The oppressor and the oppressed become nothing more than their symbolic identities. The aim of opression is the transform all subjectivity into self-identical entity. That said, an oppressive society is not magically compsed of self-idential baings