Watch and discuss

I've heard that the first step to dealing with addiction is admitting one has a problem. Here it goes.

I don't quite remember when we started. It might have been New Year's Day, sort of a New Year's fun thing or way of prolonging the holiday. And it was fun, so we wanted more. We never expected it to become a habit.

Habits, though, don't have to be bad habits. Like, wine with dinner is perfectly fine and pleasant, a custom in many places. This was the same, just something we did in the evenings. I thought about blogging about it, but have been ashamed. Some things are better left unsaid, unannounced, perhaps even private.

Then we started to egg each other on. I'd taunt or push Paul a bit; he'd encourage me. It's been something we do together. Later and later at night. Sometimes in the morning. Of course we talk about it. Constantly. It's an experience we can write about, we say. It provides insight into whatever being, networks of global capital, commodification. It will let us better understand our students. Somehow it seems that there is nothing that isn't enhanced by what is actually more than a nasty habit, actually an addiction. All this so-called theorization is just an excuse, a way to avoid facing what is really going on.

The super modelthon on VH1. All week. All nine cycles of America's Next Top Model.

Comments

[Adrian]

I went to a seminar this year on "The Subject of Addiction" by the Lacanian anayalst Rik Loose. He described addiction as a lack of dictation (a-dictation). The addicted personality strives for a pure jouissance of the body (smoking, sex etc) that bypasses any need for language or desire (the Other in effect).

[Jvhn Hutnyk]

Ahh, the old 'sociological interest' alibi for watching crap tv. Often go that way myself:

http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/2006/08/fantasy.html

is my offering to the same Godz.

Happy New Year and all that. J

[patrick j. mullins]

"The super modelthon on VH1. All week. All nine cycles of America's Next Top Model."

Aha! But as we all know, this is only one of several such shows you love. Oh well, I read about every one of Britney's new visits to demand time with the kids followed by hospitalization, but I do stop short of TMZ. If you ever admit to chatting on TMZ, then you're in serious ca-ca.

The trick to addiction is that when you de-tox it should be a form of TOX in fact. That's what I did in Los Angeles this year, but I can't recommend it, because enormous indulgence falls off completely for me when I come back, I don't want a single cigarette or bottle of wine (there are other appetites that continue, but they're not dangerous if you're sober), but I can't guarantee that most people can then wait another year or two before enjoying falling off the wagon and getting right back on it. It's the only way to beat Cigarette Patches and Alcoholics Anonymous, though, for me...

[Dejan]

The addicted personality strives for a pure jouissance of the body (smoking, sex etc) that bypasses any need for language or desire (the Other in effect).

What about the academic personality which bypasses any pure jouissances of the body for an addiction to the LANGUAGE of desire, where the tongue assumes the function of the academic's genital organ?

[IndieFaith]

OK. But, more importantly who has been your favourite? Yoanna (with Danielle as a close second) was a personal fav . . . I feel your pain.

[joel]

it's only funny because it's so true. oh how harmless these things start out.

and by the way, my rat's name is Ms. J.

[jdean]

we overheard my 9 year old daughter and her friend talking about and emulating Miss J.

fav: the one with Asbergers and the twins

Adrian--what about addiction less as jouissance (Dejan's rendering is close to feminine jouissance, I think) and less one of becoming object? that is, I'm wondering if there is a way that addiction (particularly if it not to drugs or alcohol) can also be understood as a relinguishing of subjectivity, a turning (in)to the the object.

[Adrian]

I'm not sure Jodi. I think addiction is conceptually difficult to locate within the field of the subject/object or mind/body. Addiction may involve an object that has a particular addictive affect on the real body producing a certain toxicomania, while in some respect it can be manifest within particular personality structures (neurotic, psychotic, perverse). In both cases, it seems to involve an externalisation of some psychic-corporeal discontent through objects.

[Dejan]

(Dejan's rendering is close to feminine jouissance, I think)

Not exactly, Jodianne. The academic jouissance is more that of a tranny bottom in that it fantasies ABOUT the female jouissance in an attempt to understand the Phallic Law that passed him(her) by. It is a kind of an ambivalent simulation or a parody of female jouissance, but which every now and then flips over into resentment and penis envy.

[patrick j. mullins]

My colleague is correct on this one. I went through the whole process Bottom to Top, this is because when I was 7 Hula Hoops were popular, and I was the only one who could start the Hula Hoop BELOW the knee and get it all the way up to my neck. I did not, however, win the Hula Hoop Contest at the 2nd Grade Halloween Carnival, because ambitious mothers pulled strings for their own children, and my mother didn't think it was butch enough to bother with...

"The academic jouissance is more that of a tranny bottom in that it fantasies ABOUT the female jouissance in an attempt to understand the Phallic Law that passed him(her) by. It is a kind of an ambivalent simulation or a parody of female jouissance, but which every now and then flips over into resentment and penis envy.