ontologyoftheaccident

"In the usual order of things, lives run their course like rivers."

A river (the idea of a river) flows in one continuous

direction, eventually meeting the ocean. A river

consists of water, dirt, rocks, fish, algae, and other

biological ingredients. When these ingredients meet the

ocean, they seamlessly become part of the ocean and

cease to exist as a river. A river’s movements, health,

trajectory, lifespan, ingredients, etc. are all influenced and

caused by environmental factors.

LIVETWEETING THE ONTOLOGY OF THE ACCIDENT

As a result of serious trauma, or sometimes for no reason at all, the path splits
and a new, unprecedented persona comes to live with the
former person, and eventually takes up all the room.

"After all, it is only the external form of
the being that changes, never its nature." (7)

the external form being the persona presented to the world(?). the mind continues to have the same range of personality and ability, but the part that comes to the surface is what is externalized.

pages 12-13 have me thinking about aspects of my identity that were formed through my trauma and moments of my life that changed who i am. i already know in depth about how i was transformed into someone living with a personality disorder. however, this section also has me thinking about gender identity. i know i was not comfortable identifying as a girl from a very young age, but i cant know if i felt this way from birth. i might have experienced a transformation through my trauma which was inflicted by my mother and therefore gave me a desperate aversion to ever becoming like her. this is not an invalidation of my gender identity, which is very real, but it is interesting to consider that i could have undergone negative plasticity which contributed to the formation of my gender identity. can gender be influenced by trauma? in people with dissociative identity disorder (not something i experience), alters are formed through trauma at a very young age and often have varying gender identities based on the circumstances of the trauma.

"Forms of post-traumatic subjectivity, as Zizek calls it; new figures of the void or of identitarian abandonment who elude most therapies, especially psychoanalysis." (14)

leaving this for followup research

If we manage to produce active affections, our passive affections will be correspondingly reduced. And as far as we still have passive affections, our power of action will be correspondingly “inhibited.” In short, for a given essence, for a given capacity to be affected, the power of suffering and that of acting should be open to variation in inverse proportion one to the other. Both together,
in their varying proportions, constitute the capacity to be affected. (35)

"For Freud no experience is forgotten. The
trace is indelible. The trace can be modified, deformed, reformed—but never erased." (43)

I used to be troubled by the idea of repressed childhood trauma. there is no possible way to know if one has blocked out horrific memories, and the knowledge of this phenomenon causes anxiety.
knowing that, whether something happened or not, i am still in the same situation, i eventually realized it really doesnt matter. this moment in the text speaks to the fact that there will be forgotten trauma living in our bodies even if we have a highly detailed memory. childhood is generally a time at least visited by trauma and its something we all experience. in my work i try to represent trauma as a natural part of human life through humorous representations of bodies and interactions. in my current project, i am taking the most archetypally tender and loving relationship unit - mother and child - and creating a narrative filled with bodily horror and absurdity.

"An excellent example of the plasticity of mental life is
afforded by the state of sleep, which is our goal every
night. Since we have learnt to interpret even absurd and
confused dreams, we know that whenever we go to sleep
we throw off our hard-won morality like a garment, and
put it on again next morning." (44)

this is why i use dreams so much as the subject of my work. we spend our days trying to be the people we want to be or need to be and are able to keep some things secret from ourselves. in dreams, the mind has no secrets and in fact tries to reveal hidden truths to the self. pleasure and discomfort can become convoluted and reveal feelings and fantasies that might not surface during the day. i love to use dreams as tools for discussing the ineffable in my work. some people might be reluctant to relate to strange sexual/violent fantasies, but when presented in the form of a dream, it suddenly becomes eai

"The plasticity of the libido is
related to its mobility {Bewegtheit), in other words, its
ability to change its object, not to remain fixed, the
capacity to change its investments. Sexual and amorous
energy invest an object, but do not oblige the subject to
hang on to the object forever" (45)

I wonder if this intersects with my research on cannibalism. in the cannibalistic fantasy, the subject's obsession with the object is so strong that it causes ingestion of the object in order to hold on to it forever and exist as one. a cannibalistic fantasy might result from limited plasticity of the libido and free cathexis in the id.

"the subject must retain a
degree of suppleness, plasticity, in order to be able to
attach itself to another object, in other words, to remain
free." (45)
this is just a lovely sentiment, the key to a healthy relationship, and some cool dating advice!
personal tangent: now i am also thinking about monogamy. i don't believe in monogamy as a natural phenomenon, i think it is a valid action/way of life but not a natural inclination. the feeling of attraction toward someone new is unlike the feeling of being in a long term relationship and has entirely different factors. as individuals, my partner and i do not necessarily enjoy dating much or hooking up, but we are non-monogamous on the basis of ideology. in our three year relationship neither of us have had any flings, but we talk about our crushes and hot people that we see because its natural. also i used to love freud and then i realized i hated him and now i kind of secretly love him again.