In reference Simon's comment, I suppose I should have offered clarity as to what I meant rather than the sloppy generalization I offered previously. I meant to associate the term with an expression of ego. Not so much that it is the first word. But it is a word that seems to require extensive testing. No is a word which tends to cascade very quickly into a multitude of applications, and that it is at once differential and referential. It establishes the presence of the self and the other in one moment. It's so hard to tell what children mean when they are being contrary, except that, perhaps, they mean to say, "Whatever it is you want, I can want something, too." Which, once again, is a pretty ham-handed characterization of ego formation. But I do think that these moments where the self is realized as individual, it is also realized in connection with an external will. And it is the experience of desire, as something you yourself hold, alongside the realization that desire might not be shared, is what takes us into the realization that we aren't the center of all things (and that is not only OK, but kind of thrilling).
> The word "no" as linguistic naissance, as individuated ontology, evokes an > Aristotlean apprehension of identity and creativity, a > proto-Platonic/Christian view that assumes a duality of the human and > nature, the individual and the collective. Are we to be fixed as light and > shadow? We are not black and white photographs...although the Lacanian > evocations here are seductive (many artists played with this theoretical > rhetoric in the 1970's and 80's). But I think you get at the perils of my comment in your comments above. I would be reluctant to say that this "no" is all there is to human subjectivty. But I also think that there is something critical to this point of realization.... even if it is only a stepping stone to other moments in the formation of the self. And, I guess, I'd like to wonder at the productivity of the dualism.... not as contrary poles.... but as partners entangled in a fecund relationship. Particlarly against the backdrop of contemporary US culture where individual and collective are pitted against each other in a perpetual cold war, I am tempted to grasp for models that affirm the necessity of a society that is more than just a gaggle of selfish monads. Davin _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
