Now I might really be over Reeducation, which was that in part because it involved not only becoming a professor in the United States and coming to live in the East. Today there are Mexicans working next door. Their voices sound like home. I realize once again how unheimlich it still is to me never to hear Spanish or Cantonese.
Part of Reeducation involved joining “Western Civilization,” which is rather brash and not particularly meditative. As it recedes from me I realize more and more sharply how deep I was, even if fragile, before Reeducation started. Naturally, I sent some key parts of this depth far away some time ago so that Reeducation could not reach them. It has not been easy to get them back.
Moria is quite right that self has to be made, not merely contacted. But Reeducation was about un-making self, destroying it, bracketing it at best. That is why I used to dream I was recording myself on cassette tapes and freezing them for future use. Before Reeducation one meditated and studied and grew one’s being. Reeducation said all of that amounted to creating a false voice. This was not true.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
To work into this post or another, as it is important: all of this leads of course to my article on the procrastination and block I suffered during that time and have to one degree or another since, and to my questions about whether or not I would really like to be an academic, whether I am in the right field, what it would take, what I could reasonably sacrifice, why I am not willing to sacrifice so much as some, and so on, and so forth.
It is a conclusion to which I also came years ago as the reason to leave academia — it had become a place of abuse for me. I had to leave the scene of the crime and go where I could safely be myself, or where I could have a safe self, or some version of that.
But the issue is: being abused in academia, sometimes precisely for being academically oriented; being abused in Reeducation for those things; learning in Reeducation to abuse myself for those reasons.
Therefore hiding my deeper self from harm, so I could only go through the motions. Having my shell self get very worn. And so on. Trying to have this shell self function as it could if it could also include deeper layers. Being angry at self that it could not. And so on.
But of course if you are trying to destroy and/or hide the self that produces, you have a raging battle that cannot be won. And so on.
So what I was procrastinating about back then was about bringing that self out to where it could really be destroyed. And I did not like to start writing because that was when I could hear the verbal abuse start around my head. And I had trouble making way because the verbal abuse so grew.
That is how I became an expert in the art of the abstract and other very short forms … I could finish and get out before the pounding of all that verbal abuse really started.
Also: one of the sadder things for me to realize is that a lot of the advice, instruction, and guidance I have received from people like parents, dissertation directors, and that Reeducator was not serious. I have verified this because I asked them later. They said no, I did not mean that as policy, I meant that as an emergency stopgap measure.
What?! An emergency stopgap measure?! That means I was not taken seriously. It means serious questions from me were taken as toddler squalls or girl anxiety attacks. It means I sought words of wisdom in the the fragments of drunken rambles, and so on. And here I struggle for years with these mysterious dicta, try to figure out how to apply them, seek meaning in them, and so on.
I have only realized all of this quite recently.
That is truly a shame. For me, the insincerity of much of Western culture was felt almost from the start — although not quite from the start. Initially, it just seemed that ppl were very cynical and glib, and yet somehow also too sensitive.
I didn’t start experiencing it fully until I was about 30, that is, once the Reagan Revolution had really taken hold. I think these things may be interrelated. It’s not that far away in time from your own departure from Zim. So in a way you and I got shocked by meeting an era, as well as by entering Australia (you) and the full on United States (me).
Good that you got the CD. Do me a favour and just listen to the very last section of it. I think it is divided into ten sections. There you will hear Marechera reading from Mindblast. It is very autobiographical.
Yes. There is something to do with a wave of culture, probably, because the 1950s rural culture that Mike grew up in sounds rather like the 1970s culture in which I grew up. Of course, there were also some differences no doubt. Anyway, my next task, whether or not I choose to accept it, is to navigate some way around this rot.
OK, in a second I will do this.
Meantime, capturing things re post — there was the mental fog. I had fog at the edges of my mind, covering something like the Horror, and this is why I sought Reeducation. But it was only at the edges of my mind before Reeducation grew it. Eventually I had full on fog all the time, although I learned to manage it well enough to function at a minimal level. That was why I used to say I had gone through the looking glass and could not find my way back although I could see the regular world perfectly well.
Initially I thought I was over Reeducation when I became able to access patches without fog. Actually you have to have it much clearer to say Reeducation is actually gone. The meaning of it is not having to spend so much of each day clearing fog away! 😉
[Yes, I know they’ll say that’s “depression” but I am not convinced it’s the same as that. I’ve tried to fit that paradigm too. Hmmm.]
That was why I used to say I had gone through the looking glass and could not find my way back although I could see the regular world perfectly well.
This reminds me of Eric Rhode’s writing on the pre-Oedipal self.
Nonetheless I wouldn’t be surprised if it was stress induced and it was a lot of people’s condition. Perhaps it is even infectious?
—
Anyway, I think a lot of the mental fog that hangs around the place has to do with the way ppl treat each other. It seems that there is only one correct way of thinking/acting/doing and if anybody departs from that nobody knows what to do about it. It’s panic stations! (This could account for the way you were treated by your supervisors.)
Actually humanity used to know how to deal with spontaneous deviation, without viewing it as a threat. Did you know that in Psychology 100, we learned that mice will often spontaneously deviate in selecting a path through a maze? Apparently it’s a biologically inbuilt tendency, at this level of life. Yet if humans do something that wasn’t already scripted, everybody freaks out.
Pre-Oedipal self — or just the dark side? (not in the sense of those pantheist red satanists, but the actual dark side)
Mice, yes, I know, funny how we don’t allow that to humans.
I don’t fully understand it myself, but let me quote from the book:
“Consider, as Wr Bion invites us to do, the observer who looks through a piece of glass on the other side of which Picasso paints. The observer might be looking through a window or into a mirror. Fearing his own self-envy, he fails to realize that the “Picasso” in the mirror is his own potentialitym speaking a language of signs whose dimensions he canont be in touch with.
“The observer and Picasso are reciprocals, isomorphs, binary functions. An unknowable code as mediator activates theminto some possible exchange of meaning. In this case, the mediator is the “invisible” piece of glass– which in certain circumstances is fragmented. The theme of this book is: “What happens when the glass breaks?
“The tension between the mediator and reciprocals is such that either the mediator is destroyed, like a meteor entering the atmosphere; or the space-time conditions disappear in which the reciprocals take on being. In order to sustain ghe conditions of space-time, the mediator (as god or priest-king) has to be correlated with some act of sacrifice. The mediator has to be dismembered and become inaccessible to those to whom the concept of eternity (or existence without extension) is unthinkable. The mediator cannot continue to exist in space-time. He vanishes into light. But conversely the reciprocals cannot exist outside of space-time; and possibly they cannot see the strangeness of their condition.”
Wow — important to look at the whole thing. I don’t *think* this is what I’m talking about (I’m just talking about getting imprisoned in the backward way of thinking about the world and of *being thought about* that we’ve discussed elsewhere) but … it’s interesting for other reasons.
Not what you are talking about, I think. I’m getting that it’s about the normative relationship of oneself to one’s potential, which somehow becomes the victim of a kind of mechanistic immanence, that can only be redeemed by some kind of sacrifice by some parent figure — representing some kind of archetype of something whole, that will give the shattered person something to hold onto.
OK – my mind is not wrapped around it yet, but…
I posted it here more because it crossed my mind to look at it again, rather than because it relates to you in particular.
I think it has something to do with Donald Meltzer’s idea of the claustrum — that one part of the brain mirrors the other part in the sense that perhaps what is unconscious in its essence nonetheless provides accumulated information that represents us to ourselves in a more meaningful sense. Two sides to the brain = two sides to the mirror. But maybe there is a disconnect between the relatively rational self-interpretation and the accumulated information side of things? I guess one can be unable to relate to one’s own unconscious material, due to the clarifying side of the mind (the ego side) not being strong enough. So there is a shattering, and there is a broken ego.
I would still have to really wrap my mind around it (I don’t have enough expertise in psychoanalytic theory to just get it). I do remember having a strong ego and being able to relate to Ucs material because of it, and I realize this was unusual…
Apparently it IS unusual, but I’m not sure why that is. I’m currently reading about the surrealists and how the TRIED to invoke states of paranoia in themselves and in their audiences.
They were trying to shake up the bourgeoisie and now I think I understand better than before why invoking states of paranoia.
Why it’s unusual to use strong ego to relate to Ucs material — well I remember seriously working on developing different faculties and being aware at different levels as a preschooler, comparing/ contrasting them, bringing them to bear upon one another, bringing them into concert or bringing one to the foreground. I see now that it was a strong but not egotistical ego, that didn’t blot out the rest of it, that Reeducation thought had to be destroyed (R. called that “too much thinking” which it meant had to be rationalization not reasoning). But it was that ego. I don’t think everyone gets the chance to try to develop themselves in that way early on.
I’m starting to do a lot of yoga and get off a lot of substances like too much coffee and industrially produced meat because I think I’ll then start getting really deep dreams again, and hone these skills. PreOedipal field and everything not yet organized into words is huge, there’s a gold mine of information in there, you have to not cut it off.
I have no idea whether this makes any sense as I have not studied it technically at all. But to me it makes sense.
The preoedipal field is interesting, because, from what I can tell, it deals with the mental processing of ontology — ie. what is means for the individual to BE, which is always vis-a-vis otherness. But I think what Rhode is talking about is intrasubjectivity rather than intersubjectivity. So the “otherness” in this instance is part of the self. Anyway, poetically, what he is saying reminds me of Yeats’s widening gyre: The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Kind of collapse into a lack of will and the need for redemption.
Mike gave me a blood nose in sparring today.
I don’t think everyone gets the chance to try to develop themselves in that way early on.
I didn’t. But I did develop a very rugged independence of mind. Not one that was very introspective.
I have trouble imagining what it would be like not to be introspective, but I am starting to see how few people are.
Falcon/falconer, I am beginning to see.
Bloody nose, that’s funny.
I think that the rest of them are dragging us down when we want to speak introspectively with someone. People just don’t expect it. Also there is something about the Freudian paradigm, in a lot of cases, that precludes the very idea that ppl can speak introspectively and accurately at the same time.
This seems to be true — it is assumed that what people say about themselves must be false, and that is why it is assumed we must find ourselves in a universal model. That won’t be perfect, but at least it will make us more objective.
I think I am already quite objective, and getting moreso all the time. Trying to fit one of these models just clouds reason.
My tendency is to accept that this assumption (that one has no access to oneself) is a cultural one. That being the case, I have to really switch on to be alert to it, as it is profoundly counterintuitive. Also I find that ppl who make this assumption are very dangerous, because ultimately there is nothing you can say to them to dissuade them from any path of action, once they have decided to adopt some idea or action. A normal person would be able to say to another normal person: “Hey, that action hurts me. Please don’t do it.” But somebody who either has no access to self or assumed that you have no access to self (aren’t they often the same thing?) will somehow assume that “hurt” is not objectively relevant to the situation, or to the communication.
So really you have no choice but to treat them as a zombie and make them keep their distance.
But of course they’ve developed that parasitic adaptation to life, of trying to find a host to suck from, so they seem (and merely seem) to have a preternatural cleverness about them.
But ultimately, the key is just to keep your distance.
Just a thought– but it seems like maybe the reason some ppl can’t access the self is because they don’t like themselves. There’s a core of self-hostility that prevents them from introspecting. Really, that’s quite interesting to consider, because it must be behind a lot of the Freudian approach, which denies that ppl can actually KNOW their unconscious. I think there’s an attribution of self hatred — probably this attribution was quite accurate a ways back when sexuality was considered very negatively. But nowadays such self-hostility does not make as much sense — unless it comes originally from parental hostilities, and has been internalised quite strongly.
I am sure this is true. During Reeducation I would tell people straight out that I could not access myself because I had contracted self hatred, and that this was why I was depressed. Simple. They didn’t get it, though.
Also true about the seemingly preternatural cleverness of those with the “parasitic adaptation.”
This is very interesting: “People who make this assumption are very dangerous, because ultimately there is nothing you can say to them to dissuade them from any path of action, once they have decided to adopt some idea or action.”
The connection between lack of access to self and fixating on some idea/action.
Also I think it explains how surprised and deeply distrubed/offended I was when addressed this way in a number of consecutive workplaces. Because ppl assumed I was hard of hearing and had no access to self, they boomed their message through megaphones about 1 cm from my ear. And actually, I can’t respond to anything in human terms with that kind of amplification. If they are telling me to do or stop doing something, I can no longer make sense of the overall picture of anything if I am boomed at.
It is *really* disturbing. Although it occurs to me that one of my ex department chairs may have experienced me as I do the Blackguard. The situation isn’t parallel, and yet I can see it.
*
A problem I have had several times. 1. Being mistreated at work / in the world because I was trained at home to accept this. 2. Having people at home sincerely upset about this, but also glad because it diverts attention from what is going on at home — the real abuser is elsewhere. 3. People at home, in guise of supportiveness, pressure me to either do nothing at work and mourn, or to go after abusers at work / in world in ways I consider unwise, ways different than those I know will work. 4. Cowed, I try to be either more submissive or more aggressive than my own better judgment advises. 5. I get stepped on more.
I refuse to go through this cycle one more time — ever! And don’t think I have to, either.
Also, Jennifer – re all your recent comments about people doing things instinctively for good or ill.
What I don’t like about being a professor, in a nutshell: my distinct impression that it is not about the work but about fitting in with those impulses that come from people, which are often malevolent.
I don’t think my impression is far off the mark, and I don’t think it’s the same in all workplaces.
I do think one has more power to counteract or circumvent it than I have used so far, however.
My impression of teaching was that it was quite a masochistic profession, if you are female, for you are expected to cater to the students’ needs to abuse a mummy figure, and gender roles were reinforced in that workplace. I think any workplace would be relatively free in which gender roles were not reinforced.
That corresponds to lower school teaching — remember being a professor is only part teaching and usually that is in the major / graduate students — you have T.A.s and lecturers covering the first two years.
Still, the general workplace attitude in my experience is not what you’d refer to as noble … it’s kind of filthy, actually!
Ah, well, at least one is at last aware and can appreciate the patches which are not.
(But I am still amazed at the mental filth in which so many seem enmired generally.)
I see.
It’s not to be discounted, though, as a serious problem in the first two years, in certain kinds of programs and schools at least.
For me, though, the alcoholic type atmosphere is more problematic / less manageable (alcoholics pontificating in Spanish are insufferable to me), and I don’t like French cultural combination of chaos / authoritarianism / immaturity.