Repression and Responsibility

In Doug's lecture last week, he referenced Derrida, who had drawn a very interesting connection between the history of religion and the history of responsibility.  In both, he says, mystery is never destroyed--it is only repressed.  Doug links this repression to the forensic analysis of contemporary crime dramas, in which graphic illustrations create the illusion that government surveillance is widespread and infallible.  Humans are reduced to DNA evidence, and if you commit a crime, they will find you.

Heinous crimes are rampant, so surveillance is justified; our government doesn't make mistakes, and DNA doesn't lie, so if you have something to fear, then you must have done something wrong.

*Cue black-bag whipped over character's head from behind.  Character screams, and the scene changes to a cheerful outdoor environment.  Scream echoes, then fades into the background.*

It's a great cultural analysis, and you could probably take Doug's analysis down a Marxist road if you so inclined.  However, I'm more interested in the idea that we can never really destroy mystery.

The word "mystery" means "that which remains unknown."  It's funny how the meaning of this word is changing.  Now, we tend to take it to mean something like "riddle": something solvable, or with a clear answer.  Hence the title show "Unsolved Mysteries," which should just make any English major's head explode.  If it's a mystery, then isn't the idea that it's unsolved redundant?  If it's unsolved, then shouldn't we be spending less time filming it, and more time solving it?  If we can't solve it, then what makes us think there's even a clear answer to the matter?  If there's no clear answer, then why are we still watching?

And I think that's the key.  I think that as a society, we tend to believe that everything can be reduced to a clear explanation.

Of course, that doesn't mean that thing is a correct explanation, or even a coherent one.  It only has to contain the illusion of clarity.  It has to "make sense"; not "make fact."  There's a difference.*

Along these lines though, the various branches (with some overlap, of course) are remarkably quick to claims of reduction when pressed hard enough.  Christians will tell you everything is reducible to God.  Sociologists will tell you everything is reducible to human interaction.  Psychologists will tell you everything is reducible to internal mental states.  Chemists will tell you everything is reducible to chemical events.  Physicists will tell you everything is reducible to physics.  Mathematicians will tell you everything is reducible to mathematical axioms.

Sidenote: it's not clear that any one of these approaches is correct (though physicists are usually the most adamant about telling us otherwise).  The "reductionism versus holism" debate is a lot more controversial than it's commonly made out to be.

But in any case, those are our explanations.  All of them are defenses against the unknown; all of them are an attempt to make sense of things.  That doesn't mean that they're wrong, but it's important to understand the motivations underlying them.

Literary theory isn't an exception.  It's trying to make sense of something that will never be--and perhaps should never be--fully comprehended.  We do not solve mysteries, but merely repress them.  We look at things like genre, literary devices, and psychology and come away thinking that we understand a work, when in reality all we've done is comfort ourselves with the thought that the infinite unknown before us, around us, and inside of us has somehow been diminished...suppressed...repressed.

John Locke conceived of what he called nominal essences, in compared to real essences.  Nominal essences are simple ideas that have been assembled and given names.  They're arbitrary constructions based on wordplay, and they exist in the mind alone.  Real essences, like Kant's noumenal essences, represent the elusive reality of which our faculties can never quite grasp.

Every time we create structure, we create something nominal and external.  Every time we read a book, or observe a painting, or listen to music, we create something nominal and external.  Every time we philosophize about nominal and real essences, we create something nominal and external.

In a way, repression is a bit like crime in CSI.  If you commit it, they will find you.  I think that's why I find intellectual history so fascinating: every great movement--every single one--has committed some thought-crime and shooed it under the rug.  And inevitably, the forerunner of the next great movement will then--with sadistic glee, usually--unveil the problem for all to see, all the while repressing their own, and the revolution is set...until the next one, that is.

I'm not sure what to type anymore.  I think that's because I don't think there's a clear answer to what I'm trying to argue.  But that's my point.  There are lots of answers, and there are lots of explanations.  But what is clear is that the complex ones cannot be equated to, or reduced, to simple ones based on the idea of composition alone.  And yet, we nevertheless accept the idea that a person can be reduced to a collection of chemical states.  Or a collection of mental states (Freud).  Or a collection of feelings (Romantics).  Or a collection of Ideas (Plato).

It doesn't seem to matter whether they're right.  What seems to matter is that they've made sense--that they're repressed the mystery.  At least for now.

 

*I am indebted to Dr. David Wang, my aesthetics professor, on this point.