reparation

Music: Arab Strap: The Red Thread I have been reading the work of Melanie Klein, and work about the work of Melanie Klein, all day—in between phone calls and chat sessions, that beloved and bemoaned labor of love (and Klein is appropriate here, as there is some attempt to render and restore my relation to my mother and my girlfriend, in the same day, via the mediation of the gadget). I have only known Klein from the sound bashing she gets from Lacan, and so I was somewhat excited to read this material with "an open mind." I must admit it's fascinating reading, not only because her ideas are plausible (her vision of the traumatic and barren, somewhat Hobbsian state of nature that is infantile fantasy is as captivating as it is abhorrent, and abhorrent because it rings of truth), but because so much ideological work is being done through the vehicle of theory, presumably in the name of pragmatics. Klein, known for pioneering (along with her enemy Anna Freud) psychoanalytic work with children, also marshaled somewhat of a proto- or pre-feminist scholarly front against the boys club that was psychoanalysis in Vienna and Berlin—at the level of ideas, of course, but also at the level of writerly style

I don't know why I'm posting, because I don't have much to say yet—-I have to process this material. But I guess I'm just excited to learn this stuff, and cannot wait until class tomorrow to talk about it. Not that there is any danger in me becoming a Kleinian—I’m much too wed to the ontological dualism of Lacan, and I find Klein's essentialism bothersome. I guess it's just exciting to finally get a chance to read this stuff and get the "whole story," to read the stuff that I never got a chance to read in grad school because of this or that silly ideological prohibition. It's been over a year since I've taught a grad seminar, but this afternoon, as I was reading and writing notes and what not, I re-discovered why I love my job: learning is fun! Sounds cliché, but this is what I signed up for . . . new preps are a lot of work, granted, but if the payoff is a kind of satisfaction that I discovered something; my head now has new pieces of furniture. If I can somehow convey that excitement to the other seminarians, I think this is going to be an awesome and transformative class. I know that sounds all Pollyanna like, but it's the truth (to me).

I'm also thinking now that, by necessity, I'm going to have to teach a new prep every couple of years or I will lose this feeling and excitement about ideas. I can remember taking classes when it was obvious the teacher hadn't revised or revamped the material for many years. New preps are a lot of work, as I said, but they also give me a chance to take a class myself . . . I'm not done with this class and I'm already fantasizing about all the stuff I want to take/teach. I suppose I will have to wait until I get tenure before I teach my seminar on "Shit and the Western Anal Economy."