Archive for the 'Theory' Category

Pleasure, Interpretation, and Resistance

Published on October 24, 2008 in Theory. Comments Tags: , , , , , .

One of the conclusions that I have come to as a result of pleasure theoretical thinking is that resistance — or change — is the result of displeasure. Once you hear it it will seem obvious to you — but, if people are happy, then they will not make any efforts to change the current state of things, and if they are unhappy, then they will seek change.1 In turn, when I consider change, or resistance, I understand this either to mean social, material, or interpretive change.

I raise this issue because it is one that I look for everywhere, to test it and either confirm or disconfirm its validity. Here is an example from Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, or a review at least, that supports my claim:

Among her insights are that “happy” people in “settled” times avoid examining cultural meanings or challenging them even if they don’t actually believe them. Conversely, in “unsettled” times (adolescence, divorce, political unrest), people question the culture more actively, Swidler contends, to search for answers or solutions to issues, problems or unhappiness.

On the basis of this review, it seems that the author argues that this effect of happiness is a property of cultural meanings. However, this focus on meaning is a disembodied way of looking at things. Instead, I argue that the interpretive phenomena she observes should be understood as an extension of the embodied and phenomenological experience of pleasure.

Via Scatterplot.

1 I don’t typically speak about pleasure in terms of happiness, but in this case it seemed to fit. I almost changed it, but then left it, to leave a trace of what originally came to mind, and as an ironic reference to the recent turn to happiness as a theoretical landscape that seems to be taking place.

Mis-interpellation.

Published on October 10, 2008 in Theory. Comments Tags: .

“Hey you!”
(Turns.)
“Oh, sorry. Thought you were someone else…”

Pleasure, Phenomenology, and Physical and Mental Events

Published on July 1, 2008 in Theory. Comments Tags: , , , .

One way in which my re-engagement with phenomenology has been productive is in thinking about pleasure. In particular, it has helped to shift my emphasis away from motivational hedonism and the assertion that we are perpetually seeking to optimize our experience of pleasure (though I do still believe this to be the case), towards an emphasis on the way in which consciousness is primarily a hedonic experience in addition to being an “intentional experience.” In other words, my concern with pleasure is rooted in the fact that we engage with hedonic concerns on a continual basis — such as every time we shift in our chair for a better position, stop to adjust the temperature, reach for a snack, try to decide how much longer we can continue to work, or reflect on how we feel about what we are reading. It is my hope that framing my interest in pleasure in terms of phenomenological experience rather than motivational hedonism will serve to appease some of the resistance that I have encountered towards considering human actions through this lens.

Another point of resonance that I have found between my engagement with pleasure and phenomenology is the attention that is given to a distinction between physical and mental events. Husserl (in Moran and Mooney 2002:90-92) derives this distinction from the psychologist Brentano, and uses it to argue that the pleasure to be found from certain objects, such as “a battle of centaurs, seen in a picture or framed in fancy,” is not located in the objects themselves but is derived from an intentional experience of said objects. Husserl does recognize, however, that not all experiences are intentional, such as being burned by fire, such that he also implicitly recognizes the existence of non-intentional experiences of pleasure. Thus, Husserl (implicitly) distinguishes between the intentional experience of pleasure as a mental “feeling” versus the non-intentional experience of pleasure as a physical “sensation.”

In my own engagement with pleasure I have relied upon semiotics to think through this distinction between physical and mental pleasure. For example, among the three major types of signs that were identified by Pierce, icons, indexes, and symbols, I use indexes and symbols to talk about physical and mental pleasure respectively. (I do also use icons to distinguish a particular experience of pleasure, but that is not relevant here.) Just as an index refers to a sign that has a spatiotemporal relationship with that to which it refers, physical pleasure also has a spatiotemporal relationship with its cause, such as the pleasure that is derived by scratching an itch; and just as a symbol refers to a sign that has a contingent relationship with that to which it refers, mental pleasure also has a contingent relationship with its cause, such as the pleasure that is derived by completing a puzzle. Thus, indexical pleasure, which I also refer to as biological pleasure, is the same as the non-intentional experience of pleasure as a physical “sensation,” and symbolic pleasure, which I also refer to as cultural pleasure, is the same as the intentional experience of pleasure as a mental “feeling.”

In itself, this is not particularly remarkable. I raise this parallel in part out of my own pleasure (no pun intended) at finding this resonance between conclusions I have arrived at in my own thoughts and concerns present in the early beginnings of phenomenology. It is also helpful to find support for this distinction I had already been making (which, I realize, is also not particularly remarkable in itself) in an existing theoretical framework.

However, one terribly important point this distinction between biological and cultural pleasure does raise is the issue of the “anarchic body,” which “can multiply, distort, and overflow the meanings, definitions, and classifications attached to experiences, and in this sense … is capable of discursively undefined and unintelligible pleasures” (Oksala 2004:112). Poststructuralists are quick to point out the way in which all of our experiences are culturally mediated. What is left out of this assessment, though, is the way in which all of our experiences are also biologically mediated.

Another distinction that is rarely made apparent is the degree to which an experience is culturally mediated. A good example of this is the constant concern I have observed, among Americans at least, with whether or not one is ill. Individuals will sit and reflect on the sensations they are experiencing in an attempt to discern whether they are ill or not, and what illness they are stricken with if they conclude that they are ill. These sensations are certainly mediated by culture at all points, but my goal here is to call attention to the degree of cultural mediation that takes place at the point when one considers whether or not they are ill versus the point at which they are diagnosed with a particular illness, either by themself or by someone in the medical profession. I argue that there is a marked difference between the level of direct cultural mediation that occurs at the outset, when one is working through the process of semiosis to interpret the experience that they are having and this mediation is weak, versus the level of direct cultural mediation that occurs once a diagnosis has been made, and this mediation is strong. A similar process can be found with the respect to the shift in the degree of cultural mediation that comes to bear upon us before and after we discover the “meaning” of a curse word, as well as the process that many go through when they shift from the initial discovery of how pleasurable it is to stimulate their genitals to the meaning this experience is imbued with once it is understood to be “masturbation.”

Thus, the distinction between indexical/biological pleasure and symbolic/cultural pleasure, or physical and mental experiences more generally, is a site to explore the way in which experiences are both biologically and culturally mediated, or bioculturally mediated, which, as of yet, appears to be underinterrogated and undertheorized. What is at stake here is a nuanced and robust consideration of the way in which the body comes to bear upon our negotiated experience of culture. For instance, this distinction between biological and cultural pleasure allows for a consideration as such of the disconnect that some individuals experience when they have come to accept the dominant hedonic discourse on the pleasurability of sexual relations with the opposite sex, yet find that their body does not produce the expected pleasurable sensations, which in turn calls for a reassessment of the hedonic discourse that this individual has come to accept. This distinction also allows for a consideration of the mutual experience of pleasure at both a biological and cultural level, such as when an individual has a pleasurable sexual experience, where it is not only the “actual” sex that is pleasurable but also the idea of having sex that is pleasurable.

Husserl, Edmund. 2002. “Consciousness as Intentional Experience.” In The Phenomenology Reader. Dermot Moran and Timothy Mooney, eds. London: Routledge.

Oksala, Johanna. 2004. Anarchic Bodies: Foucault and the Feminist Question of Experience. Hypatia 19(4): 97-119.

My Re-Encounter With Phenomenology

Published on July 1, 2008 in Diary and Theory. Comments Tags: , , , .

I am glad to have re-discovered phenomenology. It appears that my theoretical and intellectual stance was informed more by phenomenology than I had initially realized. Though, given the implicit influence of phenomenology on prevailing French theorists such as Foucault and Bourdieu, it is unsurprising that I could fall in line with phenomenology without it being identified by name. (I did, however, have a course in phenomenology and existentialism as an undergraduate, so that is where I was initially influenced by the perspective, and I have implicitly recognized it as part of my theoretical and intellectual stance.)

In particular, I now understand that my concern with sensations, feelings, experience, embodiment, affect and emotion can be rooted in phenomenology as a foundation, starting point, and overarching umbrella for these concerns.

I can also now see how my interest in micro-logical phenomenological experiences has made it difficult for me to connect my work to “larger” theoretical concerns. For me this phenomenological plane has nearly comprised the entirety of the grounds for my theoretical concerns, and it has been satisfying simply to consider subjectivity in terms of the experiences that make up a particular subject position in an attempt to capture “what it feels like” to occupy and live through that position.

This is partially what has motivated my concern with developments in communications technology, where individuals’ lived experiences change into something new as these technologies become attached to them as subjects and come to bear on their experience of the world. A simple example of this can be found in the anxiety many individuals experience when they forget their cell phone at home and feel as if they are missing a piece of themself. Another example that is harder to place and substantiate is the ubiquitous appearance of search capabilities, captured best by Google, and the way it generates frustrations with existing technologies, such as printed books, because they do not offer the same search functionality. Yet more difficult to place is the effect, if any, that these search capabilities and other information management technologies have on the relations we have with others. For example, just as we hunt through pages of search results and refine our search terms only to settle on one of the results, while believing that there is still a better result out there, does this same logic come to bear on contemporary romantic endeavors, where the right person can be found if only we search harder and better without ever being satisfied with what we find because there must be something better out there?

I do understand now, however, that this phenomenological plane alone is not enough in itself to sustain a project, and so, one of my goals is to figure out how to bridge my phenomenological concerns into a “broader” project. This will be assisted by identifying examples where this has already been achieved so I can draw upon them as a model for my own work.