the seminar on anxiety

andy pinkster, tulips, louisiana —

from incoherence to disenchantment —

lazy sunday, two cups of coffee, both lukewarm, blueberries, tested out the new floor lamp — flaccid and erect, or perhaps just a curved penis in its ambient obscenity — i had ordered the transference seminar, per masculine nick's advice, apparently it was released back in september by polity, but i hadn't bothered to notice it, will wait for it from amazon, maybe wednesday it will arrive. expecting, i turned to seminar eight on anxiety this morning, i had finished about a hundred pages, month ago — managed to gleam that anxiety is a matter of stages, involving not insignificantly embarrassment, which i see as crucial, too, and i have picked it up again, this sunday, to peruse with pen, though how it could become central to the capital project, which is flailing and untouched for a week, i am not yet sure. there should be a link between anxiety (and its management of desire) and capital, but i will have to suss that out and work on it in order to make such a claim in the book. as for transference and plato's symposium, i think this will be an easier bond to forge, as knowledge (ideology) is key to the system of science and economics under capitalism. both the transference and anxiety seminars engage the question of love — which in my book i link to praxis and revolution — and i'm tempted by a concept of 'capitalist love' or 'capitalist desire' that could be historicized and socialized such that an idiosyncratic concept of love emerges under a particular historical mode of production — here, late capitalism in the west. a central tenet of marx — and perhaps his most important insight — is that all 'superstructural' phenomena, even affect, such as anxiety or love, are profoundly structured by the 'base' or economic organization of labor. i think historicizing — capitalizing — lacan's version of anxiety or love, by way of the transference, might be an interesting project for the capital book, or at least a broader project, with specification, of an elaboration of structuralist psychoanalysis from a marxist perspective — perhaps analyzing psychoanalysis and its own interpretations as a superstructural functional effect of the economic base of the mode of production; there is a project here, and to use the recently translated seminars on anxiety and transference as the foundation for a psychoanalysis of capital and a marxist interpretation of psychoanalysis may be a fruitful exercise for the book; such a project would also limit me from an exegesis of dry and factical historical evidence, which i am probably ultimately too lazy to perform.

i should talk to trevor this afternoon, which will be nice. dave and i had a good time yesterday, and i will keep him posted on the progress of the design of the book this week, hopefully it will move toward interior design; i will be annoyed if i don't get the proofs back by mid-july, and as i told dave yesterday, i'm limiting our revisions of the proofs to a week; i want to make sure the book is out by the end of august so that i can assign it for the fall classes. i put $69 as a price for the paperback (only) of the book, and though this is high, the book is long and it includes 103 full-page sketches, and i think it deserves a high price tag; and, in turn, i'm not sure anyone chooses against the purchase of a book for monetary reasons and, perhaps, a high retail price is a kind of reverse enticement to the purchase of the book, don't know. in any case, we should be moving along on that front and the flock of visitors to the site — which is already pretty impressive given limited available propaganda for the site outside of the book — should exponentially increase, and i will have to add some form of call and response technology to further engage readers; as it stands now, i'm a bit hampered in my efforts to respond to folks who write.

will watch 'zero patience' — a musical about aids — this afternoon and see if it is right for the gay class, after trevor, and then i have a bit of prep to do for my evaluation tomorrow. i must say: i do lament mondays, for teaching all day, and am quite happy to be done for my coming 6 days of vacation. chance of beach after the 4th — may go to lake in new hampshire for american's holiday, not sure yet.

re nick and masculinity: i told dave yesterday that i think the issue is not that i am 'feminine' but that i am neither masculine nor feminine and that i simply don't perform gender as such. i think it's pretty obvious that i'm gay — but it's not a specifically feminized gay but a gayness that gestures toward a transcendence of the masculine imperative rather than a mimicry of a feminine ideal. but i can see that this might be a threat to nick — or at least unsexy to him — because it erases the most coherent trait of the object of desire for gay men: namely, men. the question — which i've thought a bit about — is: what do gay men desire when they desire other men? i am always tempted to respond with the abject sublimity of the penis, but obviously more is at stake — in trait, in kind — than the penis in gay male desire. certainly, some gay men respond to masculinity — whether it is 'straight masculinity' or 'gay masculinity' — but i am not one of those gay men, so i am piqued in my interest as to the object of my desire, if not masculinity. in any case, i think i probably perform a 'gay masculinity' — which has its own relationship to femininity — but i think nick was seeking 'straight masculinity' of which i was unable to embody. i had to reinstall grindr last night — my iphone is all fucked up, recently — and i unblocked nick, who i didn't find on last night, but perhaps we will engage further in the future, presumably as friends with common intellectual interests. for those who have followed the fact sheet from its inception, i found groovy douchebag on grindr last, he was accidentally unblocked, but he didn't contact me — i assume he still works at the bakery off comm and catches sight of me on my walk to work on the days that i walk. i refused to go to paradise last night because i have a massive cyst in the middle of my face, though dave didn't notice it, or was kind.

this is a time to make amends quietly to yourself, and to keep it in the darkness of the cave —

andy p you and me