Angie found a great (though short) video of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama who suffers from a Depersonalization disorder. While we have at some points touched upon the interest in certain movements of the 20th century in mental disorders (Surrealism especially), we haven’t really looked at it concretely. This would be an example of how they might have viewed the link between the creation of art and the ‘disorders’ that artists either suffer from or attempt to channel. That is, to explore another reality which opposes the notion of a unified and singular sense of Self. Yayoi Kusama’s disorder sounds eerily familiar to something we saw in Clarice Lispector’s short story. Thanks, Angie!

You can find the video here (hopefully it works, I couldn’t find an independent link):

https://www.facebook.com/playgroundenglish/videos/vb.259754044357933/373177613015575/?type=2&theater

And here is a Wikipedia entry on the disorder she suffers from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

In Simon Critchley’s ABC of Impossibility some important concepts he discusses are existence, reality and appearances. Critchley urges us to learn how to see people’s appearances “not as some deeper, but veiled reality but as real appearances”. He makes the argument that it is hard for us to see true appearances because our vision is obscured by our habits and routine. Critchley refers to this mechanic behavior as “sickness of the eyes”, which is what happens when we do not think before seeing acting and we ultimately act in a mechanic behavior.

The sickness of the eyes that Simon Critchley discusses in his work is relatable to the main character in Daydreams of a Drunk Woman. All day she talks to herself, sings to herself and looks at herself in the mirror in an attempt to mask her true feelings about her appearance as a traditional housewife. She is forced into this traditional role causing her to be unhappy and spending her days drinking. When the drunk woman is drinking until she is tipsy and hazy and singing while looking in the mirror it draws parallels to Critchley’s argument about real appearances and allows us to ask the question of what Critchley would argue the dunk woman saw when she looked into the mirror. Was it a real appearance or an appearance of a deeper veiled reality?

The drunk woman continues her days in a daze finding it hard to remember simple things she does on a daily basis like what her husband had for breakfast that morning. These mundane every day tasks that the drunk woman is forgetting are those tasks that would fall under the “sickness of the eyes”. Critchley would attribute   the mechanic behavior of the drunk woman to why she could not recall what she had made her husband for breakfast. Since making her husband breakfast became an uninspiring daily routine overlooked its significance because like Critchley says we often overlook what is right under our noses.

The Day Dream of a Drunk Women and The Mirror Stage shared similar characteristics. The Mirror stage severed as reasoning behind the Drunk Women text.  Lispector’s explains that the women in bar is watching another women and is criticizing her beauty.  The women in my opinion is criticizing the person she wanted to be in her daydream. The Mirror Stage states, ” the important point is that this form situates the agency of the ego before its social determination in a fictional direction with will always irreducible for the individual alone”. The author is saying that a person people form in their in mind is their alter ego and who they want to be. With the information provided by The Mirror Stage  you can conclude that The women in the daydream is who she wants to be and thats why she is judging her so harshly. In addition to this The Mirror Stage says, “This fragmented body which them i have also introduced into our systems of theoretical references usually manifests itself in a dream”. The author is suggesting that peoples insecurities appear in their subconscious. Lispector description of the women body and the reference of  her beauty constantly suggest that her day dream is composed of her insecurities . Furthermore you can conclude that both text explain what happens in the subconscious.

Simon Critchley’s message in Surfaciality tries to convey that poets through poetry “return us to familiarity with things through de-familiarization…”. Rather than relying on the repetitive facts or statements that are handed to us, Critchley states that poets unravel the basic meaning of things that have been determined or defined by humans. The author portrays the poets as children or people who are going through a rebirth, making them immune to the “sickness” that the habit of familiarity gives us. They make an attempt to discover the “mystical” or “other-worldly” things that have always been in front of us without much realization of such things. We decide to have things the way they are because it would be more beneficial for us to keep them this way rather than leaving them in the dark. Even though it provides “lucidity”, we are not able to acquire our own knowledge through our senses and experiences.

Clarice Lispector implements Critchley’s ideology in The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman. The woman in the short story depicts the repetitive facts or statements that we already know while the drunk woman depicts the rawness of reality— things that we have uncovered. When the woman is sober, she portrays a person who follows the traditional values who leaves behind their true identity in order to become a house wife to maintain a family. While sober, it seems that she is satisfied of the person she has become because she was able to find shelter by relying on her husband and it is perceived that she was made to fit that role. Although, this may seem to be the norm, it is something that doesn’t represents her. When she is drunk, she unravels her reality which is the dissatisfaction with the person she has become. She is no longer able to do what interests her. Through the rediscover of her identity and her place in the world, this gives her the opportunity to compromise the way she lives her life.

Simon Critchley was a very interesting read. The excerpt Surfaciality from his ABC of Impossibility gave me two explicit feels. In the beginning he spoke about poetry explicitly the poet. He described the poet as someone who redefines things, ideas, concepts for us. He is an interpreter of what is already known, but covered up. As Critchley said, “we already understand but have not made explicit.” The poet de-familiarizes what we think we know or understand and uses a simplistic approach to reexamine it. While reading this part the first thing I could think of was Percy Shelly’s statement that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the wold.” It sounds as if Critchley would agree with Shelly in this sense and embraces the role of poets across the world. The second feel I got from this piece was a looking away from science and reasoning. Looking at the world in a simple way, just at the surface if you will, allows for unlearning which he then says leads to learning. He wants to look at the real appearance and nothing more. He then goes on to describe the nastiness of reason and says why it hinders rather than helps in the way of looking at the world. We overlook the obvious and by doing so miss what is right under our noses. When looking at Clarice Lispector’s Daydreams of a Drunk Woman through this simplistic I thought of it two ways, through the drunken eye and through someone observing the drunk person. Because the drunken vision and way of thinking is obstructed, it would get a blurred view of reality and most likely couldn’t think deeper about much if it tried, however being the observer of a drunk woman could definitely work into what Critchley talks about. By just observing, not knowing someone is drunk or thinking deeper about it, we may be able to review some thinks that we though to be understood and look through it in a new lens.

Clarice Lispector’s The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman and Simon Critchley’s ABC of Impossibility were both similar as they shared the idea about truth and reality. Lispector talked about how Maria was able to see her true self through her drunken dreams. When she was sober, she seemed happy about herself. But once she was drunk, it was only then she realizes her true emotional problems and how she really views herself: miserable, lazy, and that she doesn’t love her husband. This is similar to Critchley and his idea of “unlearning.” According to him, we need to unlearn “in order to learn to see and not to think” and to “see those appearances and nothing more.” Sometimes we overthink which could make us to oversee things and lead us into a whole different idea. Maria is an example where she has to be drunk in order to see reality and her true self. Her sober self wasn’t able to see how unhappy she was because her vision was altered. To see reality, as what Critchley says to be the veiled at first, is to give up our habits. According to him, we overlook things that are obvious and familiar even though it’s simple, plain, and we see it daily. We have to give up the “skeptical and metaphysical impulses” that disrupts our visions of the world. It seems that we fail to notice these things because it is so obvious. A question that I had while reading was how do we know if we unlearned our habits and that the world we see is the real reality? Maria was able to see her true self through alcohol, which allowed her to see the obvious. Sometimes when you’re drunk, you tend to be more truthful without giving any thought as to what it is you’re thinking or saying.

Simon Critchley believes that a poet is able to strip the world of everything leaving it in its “simplest” form. The ability to do so removes all the false and meaningless aspects that have been applied to it by us. We have applied these aspects to make it easier for ourselves, I like to think of it and compare it to a safety blanket. It makes life easier allowing us cope with the vast ambiguity of the world. It’s like Professor Rickenbach said, when we begin to think of things that are bigger than us, like the infinite universe, we tend to be thrown off. It’s too vast of an idea and our safety blanket no longer does the job because we’re not accustomed to the idea. However, Critchley states that it goes a lot deeper than understanding hard facts. It is the ability to allow yourself to feel, and then being able to put it down in words. Poets possess this ability, they allow emotions to drive them and find ways to empty it out onto their work. In addition, this has to do with “the sickness of the eyes” and how we overlook everything because we have become so used to it. Poets do not suffer from this “sickness” because they find value in everything. Granting them the ability to get to the core or the ideal meaning (capital M).

Although Critchley specifically mentions poets, in my opinion this ability and immunity to the sickness is not just something they possess. There have been multiple texts we have read thus far that try and accomplish the same thing. Clarice Lispector’s reading, “The Daydreams of a Drunk Women” attempts to do just that. Within this reading, the drunk women is used to compare the ideal meaning of her existence to the meaning that she gives herself. The ideal meaning at the time was to be a mother and wife, cleaning, cooking, and making sure everything at home was perfect. However, in her eyes this was not her personal meaning. This drunk women believed that she was meant to do more in life, she was an artist and held more value than the regular wife/mother. There are many emotions within her that caused her to suffer and yet she still finds comfort for herself when she looks at her own applied meaning. With this in mind my question would be, if one is able to possess such skill then what should one make of it? Should we stick with the ideal meaning that essential a higher power imposed on us or should we go with our own meaning? That’s where this concept begins to confuse me and leaves me at a “so what?” point.

I found a relation between Critchley’s ABC of Impossibility and Clarice Lispector’s The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman in regards to the lack of inherent meaning. According to Critchley, humans suffer from “a sickness of the eyes” due to habit and a contempt of familiarity. Due to this habit and contempt, only the surface of things are recognized by people. The underlying meaning behind language becomes lost and must be rediscovered through a process of “unlearning”. To push away familiarity and re-discover language and its emotional variations. Poetry is what helps returns people back to the state of “openedness” or “unjudging”. The meanings that people have previously accepted because of tradition will be rejected.

The idea of meaning can be found in Lispector’s short story. The housewife has trouble creating a meaning for her life. She accepts the meaning that he inherited which requires her to be a housewife. This lack of meaning is evident when she looks at the mirror. The mirror is a tool that reflects an image. That image is not always accurate, it is biased because of lighting, angles and positioning. This creates a fluid self-identity when someone looks at their own mirror image. The mirror allows one to create a false image of themselves.

One mirror image she sees revealed the intersected breasts of several woman. This shows her fluid self-identity. Even though she is one person, she sees multiples of herself in the mirror. If self identity is fluid, one can “unlearn” themselves. Break away from what people considered one to be and redefine their own meanings in life. I guess this is the frustration of the housewife. She sees all the different person she could be but she is stuck with the identity that was forced upon her. Her escape from that identity is alcohol and daydreams. There is no longer one way to live life because that is what living means. People have multiple selves that should be accepted. Or else, they are trapped into one identity that is not fulfilling.

Read through the two handouts (Critchley, Lacan) and think about how one (or both) might relate to our reading of Clarice Lispector. These are both rather difficult pieces to get a grasp on, but try to raise some questions regarding the main points of the readings. Min 300 words. Due Tuesday midnight.

In Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Beckett questions the importance and the knowledge we have of the world. He questions the meaning of living considering we will all die regardless of what we are able to acquire in our lifetime. The two main characters, Hamm and his servant, Clov, show us how confined we are and how we lack control of what we have. Hamm and Clov live with hardships, Ham is blind and is confined in a chair while Clov can’t sit down. Throughout the play they fail to demonstrate any connection by constantly bickering yet having no choice but to rely on each other. The additional characters, Nell and Nagg, who are Hamm’s parents, stay put in ashbins, also lacking mobility.

At first it may be confusing to determine what is the purpose of the play and that is what Beckett is trying to portray about life. He is trying to convey that there is no objective to living. He starts off by naming the play Endgame. This term is used in chess when there are few pieces left on the board, this may represent how we don’t have a lot of mobility. He does this by having the play take place in a room that does not have much other than two windows, two ashbins, a chair and a picture. The setting gives the impression of  emptiness, making the representation of Nihilism and giving the reader the perspective of isolation between humans and the world. Hamm asks Clov if he’s had “enough of this”– meaning his life, Clov answers saying “It may end. [Pause.] All life long the same questions, the same answers” (Botton pg. 768/ top pg. 669). In other words, Beckett informs us that there is constant repetition, yet we decide to follow the flow of how things are, just like there is no purpose of Clov staying around for Hamm. In addition, the language used in the play also contributes to nihilism. Beckett’s wording and form is fragmented, broken, giving the reader the idea that life may not always be filled will fulfillment. Nevertheless, even though it may seem that we can’t control of our lives– meaning we will eventually die, we can decide how we want to live it.