Alenka Zupančič Seminar: The End

Repetition:

If one wants to efface a change they should act as though the change has already taken place. The question then becomes how does one behave this way, as though the change has already taken place, to embody the potentiality: regarding escaping the repetition of possibility that one does not wish to repeat.

Freedom is the realization - action - of the possibilities of the situation.

The limit (end) we are endlessly approaching, but always already structuring the repetition we are functioning within. The unattainability is the precondition of the economy of repetition.

The end (of smoking) is redoubled alongside the end of something else (the month, the year). This will be my last cigarette, the ultimate cigarette. Why can't every cigarette be the last, and hence the best? One must believe it - becoming a neurotic, delusional. An infinite repetition of the end, enjoyed against ones will. But isn't every activity the last time, until it occurs again? Implies a linear conception of time > a real end would imply a shift of the formal constraints of beginnings and endings, of origins altogether, of linearity and inherent additive progression of activity = circular time is definitively without end.

Yet infinite repetition implies no end: structural paradox of this argument. = end implies closure, repetition concerns return back to a beginning. The apocalypse itself spawns from a distorted linear progressive temporal structure. A true end of the eternal return demands a different temporality.

Hegel's death of art describes an infinite repetition of its own end, so that it cannot really die.

The ultimate depression stems from ultimate freedom of choice: contemporary ennui. Can this be called suffering? Certainly is bound in privilege. Abolishing freedom (of choice) frees us from the debilitation/depression of excessive freedom.

We must say no to the abstraction conception, to move towards a concrete freedom: to reject the false choice between smoking and not smoking. The imperative to smoke and the imperative to quote comes from the same source, the source must be dismantled, the real place of difficulty. The problem of abstract freedom must be tackled at the level of imperative.

The past only ever becomes the real when it is acted out (articulated) in the present: the temporal bias of psychoanalysis. Matters of authenticity are the wrong perspective, only through repetition may we access the contents of the neurosis. The role of the psychoanalyst introduces a new sickness, transplanting/replacing the original repetitive sickness: the enactment of the obsession of wanting to stop smoking.

Acting out: behaving under duress of obsession/sickness without realizing themselves.

The articulation of the most radical end serves to structure an understanding of our present reality, to analyze ourselves, what must end in order to allow this end to come about: to instill this potential catastrophe. It's easier for most people to imagine catastrophic apocalypse than it is to articulate a transformative scenario of our contemporary predicament. The result: an ambivalence toward the end, catastrophe, extinction, or any emancipation.

What if even total apocalyptic scenario is not radical enough to articulate a "way out"?

Our impotence is real, more than laziness. It is structural. We cannot remove the structure for fear of losing perspective over "what is going on." Going too far, not because it's too radical but for lose of perspective.

Paul & Patricia Churchland: eliminative materialism

Sensory Motors Psychotherapy: 12 character archetypes

The teacher as the analyst: asking a question and remaining silent until there is a response. Contemporary education lacks patience.

The teacher as maintaining parental responsibility.

End of day recounting, walking through the forest, remember to remember!

Soft subtle malleable ambassador conductor . Perpetual movement, flux, but not always dissonance and disruption. Pause, restraint, absorption. Gathering and collating without yet critically editing > no removal. Later, a process of filtering, cutting down towards essential elements while refraining from essence or elementalism. For now, a state of and/or, either/or, aether/ore : ore oral orientation. The inspiration is there, now always and already, and merely needs to be followed. Stay moving and keep collecting. Listen to the botanical, conduct and choreograph, release control over systems. Above all else, stay affirmed in the prowess of my individual will: freedom must be lived, not just ruminated upon! Change must be effaced as though it has already taken place! A practice of restraint: I'm not here for others I'm working for myself above all else. Stay true to my own process.

A solution to the temporal dilemma: either quantum physics or subjective proprioception. Fiercely defend the integrity of ones own experience... no psychoanalytic voice can lay claim to my own existential territory.

Who is it that I choose to acknowledge, as real or truth or otherwise? What is important is how I formulate the question, more than how I can reiterate the answers spawning from others.

Articulation of the Era-Area-Aria: enunciation of temporal-spatial context continuity. Under this rubric, a series of projects that may serve as studies for the larger operatic ecology. Daily exercises, or at least correlated to modulating states of awareness (time), physical flux (area), and compositional techné (aria).

Begin ruminating upon the prospect of a becoming-thesis, thesis of becoming, an orchestration of the text.

Post traumatic slave syndrome: genetic memory.

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