On 7/27/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Libido is essential, not optional, in politics. What turns them on? You have to have a feel for that. Otherwise, you don't get it, even if you have all the facts at your disposal.
I see what you're getting at, Yoshie, but I don't think libido is the right term for it. I would suggest, rather, that it is an eroticized spiritual longing that is essential in politics. To be more specific about the historical antecedents, I would call attention to Arabic chivalrous poetry of the late middle ages and it's subsequent translation into the courtly love poetry of the Provencal troubadors. It seems to me that a large part of the dilemma of secular liberalism (of which socialism is an offshoot) has to do with the unstated and probably unthought of assumption that the mysticism, along with its martial-aristocratic spin, has been somehow wrung out of the linguistic forms. Experience doesn't bear this out. Benjamin hints at this in his cryptic story about the chess-playing automaton called "historical materialism". Only Benjamin claims that the puppet "can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology," which is absurd. The puppet cannot "enlist the services" of the puppet master. It is the other way around. -- Sandwichman
