[Seems to
be another feminist way to escape Lacan on the
essentially phallic nature of the symbolic by
discovering some presymbolic level of
communication, which, happily, is feminine.
Badly in need of a good reading of Mead on
symbolic interaction (partial subjects = roles ,
com/passion and wit(h)nessing = taking the role
of the other, emergence mutual intersubjectivity
= Peirce’s thirdness). OK SI at the symbolic
level but not necessarily the explicit. Both
camps assume nice friendly encounters like
looking at paitings or doing psychoanalysis,
where the only point is to try to really
understand the other. Both also privilege face
to face communication as ‘authentic’?]
The
lecture is about the matrixial as a
dimension where the subsubjective as in Deleuze
and Guattari meets the transubjective.This
dimension exceeds the boundaries of the
conventional subject and is multidimensional
with many coordinations [coordinates?].It is
not just the intersubjective realm.It is
a transgressive encounter between the ‘I’ and an
‘uncognised yet intimate non – I’.The
non I here is the partial subject or partial
object.It
is transgressive because it exceeds the normal
identity.It
is not grasped cognitively necessarily.It
offers a potential poiesis in the sense of an
emergent quality, classically, in Varela,
operating within a closed system.This
notion influenced Guattari as well.She
insists it must be copoiesis in the
matrixial, webs of transconnectivity between
individuals which can take an aesthetic or an
ethical dimension, the latter referring to
issues of responsibility, compassion and care.She
wants to move beyond the psychoanalytic notion
of human passions directed towards objects, and
focus on links to the other subject.This
helps the developer language of border links,
border spaces, strings and threads.It is
a matter of operating at the phantasmic level to
develop imaginative links between the I and the
non I.None
of this actually need to get fixed as a matter
of mental objects.
The talk
of unconscious transmission because the
copoietic is not verbal, not intentional and not
a matter of intersubjective relations.In
aesthetic terms we’re talking about how the
artist transforms the encounter event into a
matrixial screen and gaze (these are Lacanian
terms, where the screen is the scene of fantasy
involving negotiating fantastic relations with
others, and the gaze is a matter of desiring to
be looked at by others, one of the relations to
be negotiated: this is the basic source of
lack).
The
matrixial is already a matter of presence and
absence rather than lack.Matrixial
relations leave mental traces inscribed in the
self and others, and may be a source of
transgenerational memory, or the power of art to
allude to wider experience beyond the subjective
[the social!].It involves a com/passionate hospitality
and fascinance, matters relating to
ethics and aesthetics respectively.We can
trace out the link with hospitality by thinking
of the origin of the term matrix to mean womb.In
both metaphorical and real wombs, we see the
origins of the subject drawing upon the capacity
of the female body to create beginnings,
elemental I and non I relationships which are
prelinguistic.It is a matter of phantasms again.The
matrixial is a development outside this
mother-baby link involving the general sharing
of different levels, a general psychic capacity
which persists among us outside the womb.It is
not sensible or provable, and the state is
vulnerable to the inroads of adult subjectivity
such as that based on the phallic system.It is
a capacity for men as well as women.
So
encounter -events are like pregnancies, they
involve a sharing stripped of the usual
defensive subject tactics.It is
better understood as involving a partial
subjectivity—I as a partial subject meets a non
I, who meets another non I and so on.Such
meetings develop their own partial ‘resonance
field’ located in other fields of resonance.However,
this does not lead to the endless fragmentation
or multiplicity as in Deleuze and Guattari.These
are limited fields generated around intimate
encounters [sounds like the old privilege of the
face to face again—can you have them online?].They
are meetings with/in the other, with each
layering revealing several clusters.We are
describing the whole of time space of the
intimate.It
is inherently several and transgressive [going
beyond individuals]. It is limited to the
several rather than to the infinite.It is
not a multiplicity, nor is it the endless
duplication of the one.
The
encounter is not symbiotic in the classic sense,
as in the encounter of two people where a third
one is required to separate and regulate, as in
Oedipus: these involve some relation between the
two parties as in castration.Matrixial
sharing is already differentiated.If
there are three parties, this does not
automatically recreate a hierarchy [she clings
to the idealist and the nicest throughout—this
may be so for philosophically defined
encounters, but what about real ones?]
Similarly, com/passion, which she
prefers to empathy creates differences without
hierarchies.There is no lack. Unlike Kristeva,
pregnancy is not likened to psychosis but is
much nicer.The third person also co-emerges as an I
or non I [every normal word has to have a co or
a / or a bracket in it?] [This also looks
remarkably like thirdness in Peirce] in the
encounter—event.
Knowledge
of each other is gained at the sub symbolic
level, not yet cognised.It is
the relation between partial subjects via erotic
borderlinking, a force of life which
unites.Eros
is normally associated with the sexual body and
libidinal energy, but borderlinking assumes a
feminine eroticness [by definition really—all
this is painfully elaborated tautology].It is
empathic, intuitive, erotic investment through
sharing of fields of resonance and influence, as
in Deleuze—there are shared wavelengths
transmitted by the mind [actually the brain for
Deleuze].These
take the form of phantasmatic streams.
In the
encounter – event, the I and non I can leave
psychic traces in each other, as crossprinting.These
transform the shared sphere is something beyond
the limits of individual bodies.We
feel waves and vibrations affecting others.Sharing
like this needs some relinquishing of self,
becoming fragile, an awareness of joining.This
can be good or bad, and people can be hurt.However,
it is usually therapeutic [she assumes— it is if
the neurotic or psychotic parties are cut off
from alterity as in Guattari].The
parties inspire each other, and the result is a
single shared transsubjectivity, influenced by
these earlier traces.This
is mutual subjectivism, copoiesis in a shared
web [as if elaborating the bullshit makes itself
referential and watertight—she apologizes for
this obscure poetic language, but says there is
no alternative—well straightforward speech would
be useful, but not as glamorous or important?].It is
a fluid severality, but also a stable
one over time.It involves mutual attunement as in
pregnancy.
The
problem for psychoanalysis has always been to
explain sharing [they ought to have read a bit
of symbolic interactionism].The
matrixial solves this problem.For
example an artist cannot but share and witness
the other.There is a guaranteed sharing [among
those with shared tastes].This
can be denied, but this would be irresponsible.Relationships
can also be abandoned which can be traumatic [I
had a sudden image of Spock having to break off
the mind meld with aliens and reeling about in
pain].
There is wit(h)nessing,
describing how we become a partial subject of a
larger subjectivity.Artists
embrace the fragility which ensues, and enjoy
mutual vibration [sorry, Freudian slip there].These
take the shape of virtual and real strings.The
idea of the virtual comes from Deleuze and the
notion of object X.An
artist she likes—Eva Hesse?—Illustrates with her
drawings.The
virtual is real as in Deleuze.
[Then more
rephrasing—sensitivities are reattuned,
crossprints cross inspire beyond personal
subjectivities].Vibrations produce shareable threads—she
uses the term string to refer to real
vibrations, threads as traces of those
vibrations in the imaginary or symbolic.Traces
are brought to the surface and discussed only in
the matrix.This limits the infinite multiplicity.It can
offer a form of resistance since it also
precedes ‘organised society’: the matrix is
beyond conventional laws [especially Lacanian
ones].It
should not be seen as negativity, just as
difference.It is not a move in the phallic game [she
hopes—it’s really another take on the idea of
authentic communication or artistic
communication as its major representative].
The matrix
combines the erotic and the transgressive in the
same space. Participants become partial because
of their reattunement [that is they discover
their former self is inadequate].The
matrix is the location of affects such as
com/passion.This is a primary affect, involving a
sensitive apprehension before the linguistic
stage.It
is to be imagined.This is unlike Freud and Kristeva who say
that the first relation with the other is one of
hate or lack or abjection [so does Ettinger have
any clinical evidence to match Freud’s?].Com/passion
is not always pleasurable, however as in the
Biblical example of Isaac and Abraham who had no
empathy, no need to forgive each other, but
shared com/passion.This
can be misused [in what circumstances?]
So there
are affective liminal vibrations in a virtual
field and traces of them accumulate in threads.This
performs a transformation into some continuity,
producing a psyche of the other.Only
at certain levels and moments, though.This
form is important in art, and explains why it
transforms us [!], and also appears in
psychoanalysis in the form of matrixial
transference.This is what is going on at some levels
when we care for others.The
latter is particularly useful in sharing
responsibility between patient and therapists
[all in Guattari]
for generating inspiring moments.This
example shows that even though there is
reciprocity, there are still differences and
responsibilities.
Psychoanalysis
these days is already intersubjective and
dialogic, and the concept of the matrix helps us
to understand these interventions which is
shared and co-emergent.The
focus is on the present not just about
recapturing memories.
The
threads and strings participate in other worlds
through border linking.Together
these processes form metramorphosis.This
includes all the stuff about co-emergent and
copoiesis at the virtual and actual levels.This
too alludes to the feminine.
Given that
all of us borderlink to the female body when we
are the foetuses, sexual difference should not
be defined in terms of conventional male-female
splits but in terms of matrixial femaleness and
maleness.This
involves different ways of border linking to the
same or different bodies, female to female, or
female to male.This was discussed further with Massumi
and Pollock.The idea again is to developed the notion
of the femininity before and beyond the question
of genders.It also has implications for the work of
Levinas.
The matrix
is a symbol and an image, it produces
transgressive developments of partial
subjectivity, and features a specific eros.There
is mutual but not symmetrical exchanges of
subjectivation, and a potential for co
creativity.This can also involve trauma—set to
become artistic in a way of which we are not
always aware, we need specific intentions and
erotic extensions, to develop artistic or
analytical generosity.So
there is this a residual ethical dilemma
especially in psychoanalysis.We
need to develop compassion and generosity, to
develop from the aesthetic to ethical
sensibility.
The matrix
has its own time zones as well as its own
spaces.It
features hybrid objects and links
[haecceities?], but these should not be confused
with the objects in psychoanalysis.Links
represent the ‘conductable capacity of our
minds’.Ettinger
prefers the term psyche to cover all the links
and traces, including traumatic events and
jouissances.As an aside, trauma and psychoanalysis
has a general connotation to cover any real
event which exceeds the imaginary or symbolic
tools of the subject, not just nasty ones.Such
events are usually grasped in phantasy as a
first step, so phantasy is primary (in history)
and immediate (describing what goes on in
present encounters).
[Some
rather long winded questions compliments and
answers ensued, I had a quick look and it seemed
to be mostly repetition of the lecture]