{"id":1050,"date":"2009-04-05T23:02:23","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T04:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/05\/from-lacan-to-soil-neurophysiology-happiness\/"},"modified":"2009-04-05T23:02:23","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T04:02:23","slug":"from-lacan-to-soil-neurophysiology-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/05\/from-lacan-to-soil-neurophysiology-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"from Lacan to soil, neurophysiology, & happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been impressed and even moved by a few recent posts over at Larval Subjects<\/a>. “Electro-Chemical Signifiers”<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

In “Gardening”<\/a>, 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 <\/em> (which I just ordered) and Susan Oyama’s Ontogeny of Information <\/em> (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).<\/p>\n

In the (ex-)Lacanian confessional he writes:<\/p>\n

“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\u2026 A highly complex ecological, networked model.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977],"tags":[4443,229,376,4454],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","tag-ecotheory","tag-guattari","tag-lacan","tag-neuropolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-gW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13090,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2023\/01\/06\/zizeks-belated-reply\/","url_meta":{"origin":1050,"position":0},"title":"\u017di\u017eek’s belated reply","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 6, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Slavoj \u017di\u017eek has \"belatedly\" replied, in The Philosophical Salon, to some things I wrote in 2009 about his Lacanianism and his understanding (some would say misunderstanding) of Buddhism, and to other critiques of the latter. In his reply, he later mistakes another author -- of the blog And Now For\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2023\/01\/c7fabf9bedd0226bc5a75ba8dee670f4_230__2.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1026,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/02\/06\/on-ground-and-groundlessness-jamesonian-marxism-v-derridean-deconstruction-v-buddhist-onto-phenomenalism-w-guest-appearances-by-lacan-and-freud-spiked-all-the-way-through-with-ecology\/","url_meta":{"origin":1050,"position":1},"title":"On ground and groundlessness: Jamesonian Marxism v. Derridean deconstruction v. Buddhist onto-phenomenalism (w\/ guest appearances by Lacan and Freud, spiked all the way through with ecology)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Or, Toward an eco-Buddhist-processualist cultural criticism Note: This is work in progress and probably won\u2019t be published for a while, and not in this form in any case. 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The Imperfect Buddha Podcast has an interview with me in which host Matthew O'Connor (of\u00a0Post-Traditional Buddhism) and I talk at length about Buddhism, process-relational metaphysics,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Process-relational thought"","block_context":{"text":"Process-relational thought","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/process-relational-thought\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1164,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/12\/07\/subjectivity-impermanence-dark-flow\/","url_meta":{"origin":1050,"position":3},"title":"subjectivity, impermanence, & dark flow","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I think the idea and image of dark flow streaming out of our universe has also been resonating with me because of the work I've been doing using Vipassana teacher Shinzen Young's system of mindfulness training. 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Somewhere in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1230,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/06\/space-junk-the-relational-real\/","url_meta":{"origin":1050,"position":5},"title":"space junk & the (relational) Real","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wzUYiOV2-kE?fs=1&hl=en_US (This post spun off from the last, where I concluded by noting the increasing amount of debris out in the upper atmosphere. Somehow I couldn't resist pulling that image into the vortex of ecopolitics and the objects-relations debate, which is carrying on at hyper tiling, Object-Oriented Philosophy, Larval Subjects,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/wzUYiOV2-kE\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}