5/21/2025

"the gulf war did not take place" is piece of contemporary philosophy. a collection of essays (a book, in other words) with a witty and post-modern title. the book itself is great, it contains some new angles with which we can view media and phenomena, utilizing and expanding, perhaps perfecting, baudrillard's earlier concepts, such as hyperreality and simulacra. the term "gulf war", however, refers to something; it refers to more than gibberish refers to. it may not be as "marked" as referring to someone by their full name or social security number, but there is a common consensus of events, news broadcasts, tombstones, history books, etc. surrounding what we (or at least one group) would refer to as "the gulf war". it would be silly to think baudrillard was a complete denier of the gulf war, but similar questions of belief regarding philosophers and their philosophies have been risen for centuries, and understanding the nuance of philosophical positions helps us understand the intentions of writers.

Jacques Lacan was an extremely influential psychoanalyst. the work of lacan is best viewed as a tangled mess of ropes bundled on the ground. no single concrete definition of any of his invented terms exist, as lacan didn't view language as a simple word-to-object connection. additionally, lacan is one of the most idiosyncratic writers one will see in their readings, and his writings often feel, to the new reader, like gertrude stein (i think where i am not therefore i am where i do not think). however, lacan's ideas forged entire new ways of thinking in the clinic, giving a pragmatic angle to his theories. one of lacan's largest ideas surrounds child development, his famous Mirror Stage. to lacan, the mirror stage occurs when a child notices themselves in the mirror for the first time, and realizes that all of them, both flesh and desire, are one unit perceivable and callable by others. lacan uses this simple realization as a grounding point for his web of ideas, such as all orders of the Borromean Knot, the split subject, and the "libidinal relationship" of body-image and ego. With each new term or stage that lacan ties back to the Mirror Stage, he legitimizes it. in an almost cartesian sense, lacan's theories appear perfect in this way, for they rely less on empiricism or previous theories and instead rely on themself. this creates for us a huge problem.

remember that Lacan often focuses on the clinic, he has an "end" to his theorizing. for most, this would imply that lacan truly believes in the existence of his concepts, such as the borromean knot, outside of the mind of any individual. there is something existing before we are all born called the borromean knot and it will exist after we all die. in our lives we can see or feel it, and our psychological afflictions can be explained by their relation to the different parts of the knot. in a physical sense, its the same as an abstract such as "matter" exists before and after us, and non-physically, how an abstract such as shapes exist before and after us. the other assumption here would be that lacan does not truly believe in his concepts, but somehow uses them to explain behaviour anyway.

in a similar sense, there is a classic philosophical question: "did the ancient greeks really believe in their gods?" Usually asked in a half-joking sense, followed by a sentiment such as "why did no one think to climb mount olympus and check?", the question of the greek belief in zeus is almost a useless question. despite the fact that stories of the gods were known to be written by famous poets and writers, the actions of the gods in these stories contained history and moral rulings. hesiod may have written theogeny, but in theogeny, it was zeus who overthrew cronus! this leaves the reader is a strange state of suspended "double" belief. there is always the popular pragmatist angle, namely that following the rulings and examples of the gods still leads to a good life. perhaps the origin of the stories is much less important, or alternatively, perhaps the fact that living by them leads to a good life proves some divine or righteous guidance of the author. but this relation between author and work doesn't seem to fit lacan's clinic, for no one lives their life in constant reference or reverence to the borromean knot. utilizing lacan is much more indirect.

one of the largest problems that lacan faced with his mirror stage was its lack of empirical evidence. it didn't hold up when scientists attempted to "prove" it through tests and studies. lacan actually changed how he viewed the mirror stage throughout his life, and about 20 years after initially speaking on it, it became abstracted to a point that it had very little to do with the study of child development, or arguably real children. this throws our original hypotheses on their heads; is lacan speaking for its own sake? some intellectuals after lacan, such as chomsky, say that lacan writes to be obscure and simply to create "jargon". but it is precisely here that a new form of pragmatism opens up. lacan's theories, as opposed to greek writings of the gods, all regard things in the world without describing them. we can see this in how lacan never wrote about any patients, as opposed to freud, who kept detailed case studies. however, lacan's theories were still used in psychoanalysis during and after his time. how can he write for the clinic without writing about it? lacan's theories focus more on creating the mental architecture necessary for understanding complex behaviors without any particular answers or ontologically true descriptions of those involved. lacan's writtings can therefore never be used, rather, they must be internalized. they speak only about the patient, but are applicable only to the psychologist.

5/19/2025

writing is hard, primarily, because it is not speaking. the greeks had it figured out: writing is worse than speaking. speaking comes naturally, speaking includes 1 subject and one or more finite and present listeners. poetry was some mystic voodoo that explained to common folk how the gods were doing or what occurred in a battle across the sea, but speaking was the mortal body of ideas. the issue, for me, always occurred exactly there. words die in the air, and if unfortunately remembered, they die in the mind years later. writing doesn't. even if every man's ultimate death is the last time he is remembered, the mere physical existence of a writing immortalizes it. it would take an active effort, by man or God, to destroy a piece of writing. this is why its so hard to write something, you are fighting both man and God.

man, interestingly, works in a similar way. when he lives his life, every action he does passes and fades. words, loving or hurtful, do the same. but when he dies, all of those actions and words are immediately immortalized. none of his actions are any longer a "precursor to the man he is today", because there is no man he is today. when he dies, all parts of his subconscious: fears, desires, reasonings, entirely disappear, and his life, once breathing, flowing, in motion, becomes stone. you can still speak of him, however, you can still use his name, refer to his actions and thoughts, you can look at papers he wrote on or pictures he was in, and in these sorts of things, it doesn't even matter that he has died. this is because exactly half of him has died: the living, breathing, flowing subconscious.

the act of writing, paradoxically, works in the exact opposite way. whereas the written we personify as immortal (as if any person is), the act of writing itself is the most fleeting thing imaginable. a book can be, and should be, written in 5-10 years. research papers should be written as fast as possible. writing is neither empirical or theoretical, the writer is a constant victim of what needs to be written on the page. we've seen, for decades, professors complain that new writers don't read, they want only to "wear the hat of a writer" and should instead learn to fall in love with the medium. that's romantic, almost, but perhaps falls short of the mindset these ambitious youth really need. i've heard that academics are voluntary hermits, they stay away from the intoxicating public, on the edges of society, not so that they can take pride in their inability to socialize, but rather as a necessity for their work. imagine the famous author who writes a book and then goes to promote it on various talk or radio shows. he is as much of a product as the book. every action and word of his on those talk shows is not only an advertisement for the book, but an extension of it, similar to the hook of the first chapter. if you don't like the style, you put the book down, and the same goes with the character of the author. but imagine now some nietzschean figure, one who lives in the countryside whose work seems to appear in academic circles without warning or announcement, as if it itself climbed across the mountains and arrived in the town square tattered, dirty, and thin. for some reason, this work is more appealing to me, it speaks for itself, it is disconnected from any marketing character, it doesn't continue in the intoxication of mainstream opinion and is free to agree with it, attack it, or ignore its influence altogether. it is a written work with no writer. in another sense, the writer is the victim of the work. the writer isn't precisely the "author", he only physicalizes what the book needed to say: a fleeting decade-long task.

this is romantic, almost, but completely impossible. nietzsche was a popular professor and then a popular philosopher until he went crazy and died. additionally, it would be wrong to say that the book speaks for itself without an author. beethoven's fifth is my favorite example of this, you know it, dun dun dun dun. it was written during an extremely volatile political time in europe. napoleon was waging some war and sacked vienna, where beethoven lived. this can be felt in the extreme tension and drama of the music. beethoven was in a deep depression and contemplating suicide since he was going deaf. this can be felt in the extreme tension and drama of the music. if you only care for the political influence, you could say that the either 1) beethoven was expressing his personal anxiety about the political air or 2) the political situation of europe spoke itself through beethoven. the difference lies only in subjectivity. if the political situation speaks itself through beethoven, it objectifies him to physicalize itself. if beethoven wrote the piece to express his own depression, he is the subject who objectifies all of us listeners to hear his sadness. if beethoven was expressing his personal anxiety about the political situation, perhaps all listeners see themselves in the music, a common subject. this is an unsolvable headache and by all means a problem which we inflicted upon ourselves, which makes it so easy to view the symphony as an autonomous creature in which beethoven had no part in making. in taking such a view, we deny beethoven his agency and place ourselves above him in deciding his relation to the work he undoubtedly had a larger hand in creating than we did. its only if beethoven himself decides to take this view that we onlookers can rejoice in having been absolved of this problem, i.e.: "i see the angel in the marble and i set him free." beethoven, now having been gifted his own agency, is free to change his mind and perhaps take all the credit for his symphony, which seriously undermines our conundrum. can the truth of artist/influence relationship really shift by beethoven's whims? does it exist, perhaps, outside of his mind? in the same way that sound exists even when beethoven doesn't hear it?