I’ve been impressed and even moved by a few recent posts over at Larval Subjects. “Electro-Chemical Signifiers” describes the author’s transformation from full-fledged Lacanian (both theorist and analyst) to something that seems much broader and welcoming of the world. Not, of course, that Lacanians cannot be broad and welcoming of the world; I’m only judging LS’s movement based on his own narrative. That narrative concerns depression and a cure (not a talking cure) as well as, it seems, gardening.
In “Gardening”, LS mixes soil, happiness (the author’s, at watching spinach, romaine, and cucumbers “poke up from the earth”), science, and Alberto Toscano’s Theatre of Production (which I just ordered) and Susan Oyama’s Ontogeny of Information (which I found mesmerizing when I read it years ago and am now happy to hear referred to more & more as she belatedly finds a well-deserved audience).
In the (ex-)Lacanian confessional he writes:
“I think Guattari had the right idea in proposing a model in which we strove to think the intersection of regimes of signs, the biological body, economics, nature, etc… A highly complex ecological, networked model.”
Not only is Guattari wandering in this intersective middle-earth of bodies, neurons, cultures, politics, and economies, but so, I would add, are Deleuze, William Connolly, Francesco Varela, Eve Sedgwick, JK Gibson-Graham, Antonio Damasio (in some respects), and many others who’ve been inspiring my thoughts on this blog and in my writing. Thanks, LS, for your courage.
