Dream account: from beetle to butterfly

Ok Freud, figure this out. I just had another weird dream. I am in my room tidying up. I lift up something, forgetting that there is a beetle which I caught earlier. It starts scurrying all over the place until it comes to my  bedside lamp. It stops on the vertical neck and opens up its shell. what then happens is a conversion into a rainbow coloured butterfly gradually but in a compressed timeframe. I rush to open the window. Then I grab to pieces of card. I gently toss the beetle-butterfly towards open window. But I am a bad shot and it gets caught on window frame and slices in two. Top half goes out, bottom half needs my help to do so.

if u know anything about psychoanalysis, what does this dream mean? Answers in comments please.

My conscious mind is already seeing the life and death instinct, with a final breakdown. Perhaps its the writing, cutting, rewriting of my PhD thesis. But it also reflects how I am shaping the plasticity and it is shaping me. it started of as something small, insignificant yet fascinating. Then one day it starts opening up to reveal something beautiful. I am in a rush now to finish and submit, but the thesis will always need me to develop it.

NCIS and the Oedipus Complex

I woke up this morning with the strangest dream in my head. Somehow, I developed a final ever episode to the TV series, NCIS. Sort of. This episode, which involved Jethro Gibbs leading his final investigation, “answered” the key “question” that has persisted throughout the series: Why does Gibbs have a particularly special relationship with Abby, the forensic specialist, the most un-Gibbs person ever?

I have always thought that Gibbs saw Abby as a substitute for his daughter Kelly, who was killed as a child. Well, in my mind’s final episode of NCIS, it turns out that Abby actually is Kelly. In my head, obviously, Gibbs’ wife  got a divorce and moved with Kelly to Wiltshire, England. (Why Wiltshire, I don’t know – the only reason is that it came up in a conversation with someone else about something else a few days ago.). Gibbs is so distraught that he feels as if he has lost his wife and daughter for good, as if they have been killed. He obviously tried to fill the whole by continually remarrying and divorcing but it was never quite right. [It is interesting that in one particular case, he says to the murderer who killed his wife for cheating that if there's problem with your wife, you divorce her, don't kill her.] Somehow, Kelly, as a child, saw some pictures of a crime scene and decided that she wanted to work in forensics. Along the way, she changed her name to Abby and became a goth and, completely by coincidence, ended up working at NCIS.

Which begs the question, if Gibbs’ wife and daughter were never actually killed, then who did Gibbs’ kill? The back story to the series, mainly seen through Gibbs’ flashbacks, is that they were killed by a major drugs cartel based in Mexico in revenge for the younger marine Gibbs taking out someone in the cartel. Unfortunately, I woke up before my mind could reconcile my fantasy version of NCIS with the actually script. I do like the notion of Abby as Gibbs’ daughter but I think its more likely that she is a substitute for his daughter.

I have always believed, and neuroscience supports this, that the subconscious processes data after the conscious has given up on it. But the last time I saw NCIS was Wednesday night, I had the dream on Friday night/Saturday morning. I have noticed in the last few weeks of episodes that there seems to be a progression towards a points of moving on, as if we are coming towards the end of the series for good. Or maybe it is just the thoughts of coming to the end of my thesis that are predominant in my conscious mind and trying to tie all the loose ends together and answer the questions. In the process, it tried to answer the ‘Gibbs/Abby’ question in NCIS.

The connection with my phd is that my theoretical framework is based on a psychoanalytic reading of Hegel, where Freud’s Oedipus Complex – or at least my critique on it – plays an important part. In the Oedipus story, Oedipus fulfilled a prophesy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Freud takes the Oedipus story as a metaphor for the development of a child, in Freud’s case the boy. When the boy is born, its closest relationship is with the mother. It has to separate itself from the mother – be abandoned – in order for it to grow independently. After disidentifying with the mother, it makes up for the loss eventually by identifying with the father. In Freud’s theory, the boy desires to replace the father but it can only do so by killing him, something which, like Oedipus, it shies away from (the incest taboo). Because the mother is inaccessible, the male seeks a relationship with another female. Freud deals with the development of the male but the feminist critique of his theory is that it applies the female as well. In my NCIS dream, Kelly is separated from her father and Gibbs desires another female to fill the hole left by his wife. Of course, none of the women he subsequently marries can match up to his wife – they don’t even have the same hair colour as her. Well, except perhaps Colonel Mann. Is they only person who can fill it a substitute daughter? Perhaps, in the process of pulling the threads together, my brain was remaking the Oedipus Complex with modern-day TV characters.

The creativity of the oppressed

What happens when your subjectivity is denied? where does it go? it is redirected. sometimes this is a good thing, such as a piece of creative expression like a blog post or PhD thesis.

But sometimes a denied subject will lash out  because they feel trapped. How much creativity comes from anger? But it could be worse. Hegel argues that crime and violence are cries for help rooted in denial of subjectivity and responsibility.

One wonders whether the supposed openness in celebrity and social media is as much about a suppressed self wanting to be heard.

It is interesting that, according to Hegel, the dialectic between self and other is plastic, i.e. forms and resists deformation. He took it from the art world. Catherine malabou says in “what should we do with the brain?” that the tendency of the neoliberal state to force us to be flexible for the sake of the economy ignores our subjectivity and plasticity. The only way to fight is creativity or
disobedience.

What did Hegel do on Valentine's Day?

Thank God Valentine’s Day is over. Dont get me wrong, I don’t hate Valentine’s Day. I am pleased that there are plenty of people who can celebrate it and I hope to join them some day. I just haven’t found anyone whose into, er, group activities. Just kidding.

Even Hegel, the 18th Century German philosopher and father of the modern state, believed that love is fundamental basis of the world, it’s what makes the world go round, because it cannot be broken down any further into its constituent parts. (He also called it Recognition.) In his “Philosophy of Right”, he wrote: ‘Love is in general the consciousness of the unity of myself with another. I am not separate and isolated, but win my self-consciousness only by renouncing my independent existence, and by knowing myself as unity of myself with another and of another with me. But love is a feeling, that is to say, the ethical form of nature…The first element of love is that I will to be no longer an independent self-sufficing person, and that, if I were such a person, I should feel myself lacking and incomplete. The second element is that I gain myself in another person, in whom I am recognised, as he again is in me. Hence love is the most tremendous contradiction, incapable of being solved by the understanding. Nothing is more obstinate than this scrupulosity of self-consciousness, which, though negated, I yet insist upon as something positive. Love is both the source and the solution of this contradiction. As a solution, it is an ethical union.’

Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone to celebrate Valentine’s Day with. Well, no-one real anyway….oh wait, I have plenty of people to celebrate it with, they just don’t want to celebrate it with me.

Remember My Name, Occupy

I was only 6 when the move “Fame” came out and I have never seen it, although I love the theme song by Irene Cara. I somehow stumbled upon the video for the song on Youtube very recently.

Maybe it’s the times we are living in but I could not help watching it and thinking that it would make a great song for a protest.

One the one hand, there’s the busy American street being occupied by dancers. It also happens outside a dance school, which ties with in the cuts and reforms to higher education and student protests. But the song itself has an air of resistance to a future which says that there is no alternative. Instead, the song says to jump, despite the risk.

St Paul’s: what happened to true religion?

In a nutshell, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, Right Reverand Graeme Knowles, really does need to question his priorities.

The Dean claims that the Church stands “alongside those seeking equality and financial probity”. He says that “the debate about a more just society is at the heart of much of our work at St Paul’s and indeed we hope to contribute to the wider debate in the very near future through a Report from the St Paul’s Institution”.

And yet, he blames the need to close the Church on the ‘health and safety concerns’ arising from the camp of protestors. He says that it is “simply not possible to fulfil our day to day obligations to worshippers, visitors and pilgrims”.

Now, I don’t want to accuse a minister of a big church of forgetting what the Bible actually says. I am no expert either. But I am pretty sure that biblical worship is not something that’s confined to what goes on in church. No, worship takes place 24/7 in all areas of one’s life.

In fact, the biblical definition of true religion is standing up for and looking after the vulnerable in society.

Instead of interfering with worship, the #Occupy London Stock Exchange protestors are closer to what worship is all about. Maybe there are “health and safety issues” but what the Dean should have done is close St Paul’s to show solidarity with the protestors. Or, even better, opened up St Paul’s to the protestors as a very big tent.

 

 

 

Not a student, not quite staff

Being a PhD student sometimes feels like being in limbo (or, purgatory, if you are Catholic). Technically, we are students, in the sense that we pay tuition fees (unless you are lucky enough to receive a studentship) and we come out with a qualification at the end of it. But there the similarity between PhD students and the rest of the student body ends.

Now, I am going by my own experience at University of Westminster and my conversations with my colleagues, so I apologise if I am assuming too much. Unless you are assisting with teaching, it is unlikely that we will interact with undergraduate or other postgraduate students. Indeed, we will interact mostly with other PhD students or academics or researchers, the latter being paid. We are not required to attend classes or lectures as such, except for perhaps a few methodology seminars in the first year which might help us decide on a theoretical framework.

We don’t get “personal tutors”, we get supervisors – but we are not employees. Of course, it is our responsibility to manage that relationship. We perhaps have one formal deadline a year – registration in the 1st year, transfer in ideally the second year and final submission – but these dates are as fluid as the writing of our thesis. That’s not to say that those deadlines aren’t important, not least because it helps to crystallise the research done so far and to shape your ideas.

The Research Office at Westminster has often emphasised how we are more than just students, we are in fact trainee researchers who may or may not work in academia afterwards. PhDs are regarded as academic qualifications, but perhaps they ought to be seen as professional qualifications because they are effectively the minimum criteria one needs to be an academic researcher or lecturer. In that case, there is an argument that doing a PhD is akin to a training contract that might be done  by someone hoping to qualify as a solicitor or barrister or accountant or a company trainee scheme.

Perhaps universities do subconsciously recognise that a PhD student is not quite a student by the provision of studentships in exchange for limited teaching work. This almost sounds like a contract of employment. Unfortunately, there are not available to everyone. But the payment is for teaching work, not for being a researcher.

An alternative, unstudentlike name for a PhD Student would be Doctoral Researcher and this sounds like a good job title. Or one could go for the more professional-sounding Trainee Researcher. Either way, there is a case for making PhD Students into university employees, with a salary (that is comparable to a trainee solicitors).

But there are disadvantages to PhD Students as employees. Employees are agents of their employer, so the university could hold any intellectual property rights to research, unless a clause was written into the contract. Why would they do that?

Furthermore, being an employee would increase the financial and legal obligations of the university. Studentships are already hard to come by and they are offered within a particular research area. Surely offering Trainee Researchships would simply narrow the sort of PhD research done to what the university is interested in. It would most likely lead to the exclusion of people who currently have a greater degree of freedom over their research.  After all, why should university pay people to do whatever they want?

Plus, as employees, we would probably come under all the usual targets and the bureaucracy that one could reasonably expect. And this would no doubt undermine the current freedom that PhD students do have.

As much as I would love to be paid trainee researcher, on balance, I realise that being a PhD Student is also completely different to being an employee.

 

 

 

Public sector cuts, rioting and the Oedipus Complex

The recent riots in England were the result of the violation of incest taboo, in the form of the government’s public sector cuts.

A sizeable proportion of the cuts directly affect young people, who made up a sizeable proportion of the rioters. Writing in the Guardian, Polly Toynbee wrote:

Let’s reprise where cuts have fallen hardest. Nearly a million young unemployed, a shocking one in five out of work, rises to more than 30% in places like Middlesbrough. The young will suffer for it all their lives, as research shows most never regain their footing, destined to a life in and out of low-paid work. Connexions, the service that picks up the lost and gives careers advice to all is cut to shreds: over 30% cut already, professionals replaced with cheaper staff. Just when young people most need help on what school subjects to take, on BTecs, HNDs and apprenticeships, the government is replacing careers advice with an online service, with no one to question their choices and prod them forwards. The disastrous abolition of the educational maintenance allowance will make many wrongly opt out altogether. Add in the future trouble stored up in the cuts to Sure Start, teen pregnancy prevention, anti-gang or other early interventions and prospects look bleaker still.

In what Ucas calls “the most competitive year ever”, remember how 20 years ago anyone who could scrape together a couple of passes found a place on some university course somewhere, with little to pay. Once students pay the whole cost, the value of that degree needs to be cashable. Creeping credentialism means anyone without a degree competes at a disadvantage with graduates for jobs that never needed a degree before. Serious apprenticeships may look like a good alternative, but more people apply for precious BAE or Rolls-Royce places than for Oxbridge.“

It is ironic that one of the government ministers forcing through these cuts is David Willetts, the Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills, as the one responsible for universities. In his book, ‘The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children’s Future’, he writes how the baby boomers have so concentrated wealth, adopted a hegemonic position over national culture and so failed to meet the future generations’ needs that they have broken the “intergenerational contract”. The baby boomers, represented by the current and recent governments, have acted like Oedipus’ father, Laius, who, when given a prophecy that his baby son would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother, arranged for him to be abandoned to die. Rather than live up to his parental responsibilities and protect the future, he chose to cling on to power by killing his child.

Of course, the pro-cuts lobby (whether Labour or Conservative) put forward the argument that spending has got way out of control and we need to sort our debts out, just like any household do. That sounds logical. But, surely, when households make cuts, the parents will first look to impose restrain on themselves before they even begin to think about reducing provision for the children. (Or am I just too middle class?)

But, the prophecy given to Laius did come true. Oedipus – against his wishes – did grow up to, first kill his father – in an argument in the street – and then marry his mother. Off course, he didn’t know they were his biological parents. But it was the father who had breached the intergenerational contract and focused on their own needs in the present. So, in keeping with contract law, the child is entitled to revoke it. If the present generation is going to think about its own interests more than future generations, why should the next generations not think about its own present interests too. After all, when you lose hope in the future, all you have is the present.  What the rioters did through their looting was to take what the baby boomer generation. just Oedipus took possession of his father’s wife.

The solution? Somehow the generational difference between the present and future generations need to be reinstituted. I would argue that only the present, baby boomer generation, who are in power at the moment, can do that. The problem is that it would involve a major redistribution from them to the younger generation. Will they finally take their parental responsibilities seriously?

The markets – parental discipline or just neurotic?

The downgrading of the US by Standard & Poor this weekend has very much been a result of market sentiments. In a previous post, I have suggested that the market is one manifestation of a parental society, reacting to the behaviour of a child state. In the case of the US, we’re talking about squabbling children, and society, represented by the market, step in to try and take control.

But, as I said, parents aren’t always right. Yes, they have a lot of experience, which is valuable, but experience isn’t perfect. Indeed, in keeping with all investment advertising, past success is not a measure for future performance.

Once the US government and Congress had come to some kind of agreement allowing the debt ceiling to be raised, it seemed that the problem had been resolved. But, then, two days later, questions were being asked about Italy. Then France was suddenly in the spotlight. Already, the market has reacted negatively to Greece and there’s been worries about Spain, Portugal and Ireland. The issues in the US seemed to come out of nowhere. It just seems like the market is looking for the slightest crack, which it can wedge open and make a big deal about. It’s bit like Autoglass talking about the chip in your car windscreen.

In other words, the markets are acting like a neurotic parent.  And neurotic parents are never a good thing for the development of children. Maybe, this is proof that the market just doesn’t work and Marx was right after all.

I am starting to think that, in the issue of national debt management, it might just been a good idea for states to ignore societal pressures, including the market, and just do what it wants, what it thinks is right and face the consequences. Greece should default, the US should borrow more, Germany should veto any bailout deal, the UK should screw everyone and the Irish should screw the Pope. At the end of the day, I honestly don’t think that anyone really knows what the right course of action is.

After all, it’s not the child’s job to please the parent. Sometimes, you just have to do what you believe is right, without worrying what the parent thinks.

Giving voice to the dark

So the sequel to the Human Centipede, the catchily-titled Human Centipede 2, will not be shown in the UK because the British Board of Film Classification decided that it could not give the film an 18 certificate like the first one.

Now, I didn’t even know there was a film called The Human Centipede, which is about a mad doctor’s attempt to sow three kidnapped human beings together to create the centipede. The sequel, however, is about a man who gets sexually turned by a DVD of the first film and decides to recreate the human centipede for his own sexual pleasure.

But I believe that the BBFC’s decision totally violates the whole point of art (I use the term loosely). The first film was given a certificate because it was “relatively traditional and conventional horror film” that presents the centipede idea as “a revolting medical experimant, with the focus on whether the victims will be able to escape”.  The second film, on the other hand, is completely from the perspective of the protaganist and thus presents the centipede idea as his “sexual fantasy” and his victims are mere objects to be brutalised.

Now, this whole centipede idea is pretty sick if someone were to do it in real life but surely it is the job of art to explore life from different persepectives and push the boundaries of human imagination. Just because someone is interested in the thinking of such a sick person doesn’t mean that they condone what he or she does. After all, isn’t that what psychologists do. One particular real-life application would be serial killers and paedophiles – in my experience, people generally believe that what these guys have done is so beyond the pale that they don’t deserve being treated like human beings and being understood. Maybe they are right. But surely, if society were willing to think about why people do the worst things one can think off, then maybe we can use the knowledge to help others not to go down that route.