Reading Eric Packer Through Baudrillard and the Double

Of all the prostheses that punctuate the history of the body, the double is doubtless the most ancient. The double, however, is not properly speaking a prosthesis at all. Rather it is an imaginary figure, like the soul, the shadow or the mirror image, which haunts the subject as his 'other', causing him to be himself while at the same time never seeming like himself. The double haunts the subject like a subtle death, a death forever being conjured away. Things are not always like this, however - for then the double materializes, when it becomes visible, it signifies imminent death. (The Transparency of Evil 113)

... the historical advent of the "soul" ... gives rise to another figure of the double, wending its diabolical way just beneath the surface of Western reason. Once again this figure has everything to do with the Western figure of alienation, and nothing to do with the primitive double. The telescoping of the two under the sign of psychology (conscious or unconscious) is only a misleading rewriting....Historically then, alienation begins with the internalization of the Master by the emancipated slave: there is no alienation as long as  the duel-relation of the master and slave lasts.

And this is where Eric Packer is when he didn't know what he wanted. Fretting over the yen and unable to sleep, Packer has internalized the Master and now Master and slave are one. This is the state most of us are in in our relation with the will.  Willing and resistance to willing.

The primitive has a non-alienated duel-relation with his double. He really can trade....with his shadow as with some original, living thing, in order to converse, protect and conciliate this...hostile shadow....it has a full part to play, and consequently is not an "alienated" part of the subject, but one of the figures of exchange. (Symbolic Exchange And Death 140-141)


The status of the double...in primitive society is therefore the inverse of our alienation...

With the internalization of the "soul" and consciousness... the subject undergoes a real confinement.... It is at this point that the primitive thought of the double  as continuity and exchange is lost, and the haunting double comes to the fore...." Whoever sees his double, sees his death." ...the double begins to prefigure the subject's death, haunting him in the very midst of his life. This is Dostoievsky's double,....Our entire culture is full of this haunting of the separated double, even in its most subtle form, as Freud gave it in "Das Unheimliche" ("The Uncanny: Disturbing Strangeness or Disturbing Familiarity"): the anxiety that wells up around the most familiar things. Here the "vertigo of separation" builds up to its greatest intensity, since this is its simplest form. There comes a moment in fact, when the things closest to us, such as our own bodies, the body itself, our voice and appearance, are separated from us to the precise extent that we internalize the soul.

By a final ruse of spirituality, this internalization also "psychologises" doubles. In fact it is interpretation in terms of an archaic "psychical apparatus" that is the very last form of the "Verteufelung", the demonic corruption and elimination of the primitive double:...(SEAD 142)


Much more to come.

The Problem of the Will: He Didn't Know What He Wanted.

Hannah Arendt On Revolution

The Origins of Totalitarianism

On Violence

He was reading the Special Theory tonight, in English and German, but put the book aside, finally, and lay completely still, trying to summon the will to speak the single word that would turn off the lights. (C 6)

Our first indication of Eric Packer's problem with the will. His will.

He didn't know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut. (c 7)

Arendt discusses the will in On Revolution, I believe. (All her books are to be read by anyone wanting to understand philosophy, politics and the human condition so here they are linked to amazon.com.)  In her writing on the will she clarifies the will, as she does everything she writes about. When you will something or anything, immediately the resistance to acting comes into existence, into play, into awareness. All smokers who have ever thought about quitting understand this right away. This is why it is so difficult to quit. You enter into conflict with yourself.

Eric Packer cannot even will the word to turn off the lights. He doesn't know what he wants. Then after seeing into the gull, focussing and really seeing into it, he knows what he wants. He wants a haircut. Desire does not exist for Packer as he does not experience lack. Wanting the haircut feels more than just a yen.  ( my blog on Lacan) And following Lacan, desire/lack are always coupled. Eric Packer lacks nothing. He has everything in excess as Marc Schuster indicates in his book, which is the most accessible of all the books on Baudrillard and DeLillo, as he reads through each author to illuminate the other, back and forth, back and forth. What I constantly do.

Marc Schuster - at Amazon

Jean Baudrillard tackles the problem of the will in his always singular fashion. He turns it on its head.

The point is - above and beyond all the categories of willing, knowing and believing - to discover a parting of destinies and a strategy of otherness, whether in this plurality of collusive, parallel universes or in any form which alters the individual being which displaces, metabolizes, metamorphoses or captivates him. On this tack, one may, paradoxically, simply let things happen: let the other will, know, decide or desire. This is not a form of defeating desire, but of sidestepping or outwitting it, of ironically investing the other. A more seductive, more effective stratagem than that of the will. A more powerful strategy than that of desire: playing with desire.

Impossible Exchange at Amazon

In this way one can offload one's will, one's desire, on to someone else and, in return, become free to take on responsibility for someone else's life. A symbolic circulation of affects and destinies is created, a cycle of alterity - beyond alienation and all the individual psychology in which we are trapped. There is in this symbolic circulation, in this sharing of destinies, the essence of a subtler freedom than the individual liberty to make up one's mind according to one's conscience - a liberty which ultimately we do not know what to do with, and which it is, in fact, better to slough off right away, in order to recover the impersonal concatenation of signs, events, affects and passions.

....by a straight transference on to the desire or will of another. ( Impossible Exchange 84-85 )

To make a pact with chance is not to speculate on random events, but to attune oneself to the world, to explore its secret connections and concatenations; it is, in a sense, to be initiated.

Nothing is accidental anymore, since, from the point when the world thinks us, things follow in a sure progression. Nor is anything intentional, a matter of will, since, in a sense, everything has already been willed.  ( IE 87-88 )

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  He didn't wonder who Nancy Babich was and he didn't think that Torval's choice of code humanized the man or required delayed regret. Torval was his enemy, a threat to his self-regard. When you pay a man to keep you alive, he gains a psychic edge. It was a function of the credible threat and the loss of his company and personal fortune that Eric could express himself this way. Torval's passing cleared the night for deeper confrontation.

  (C 147)
  
  Leave everything and follow me He said. Where your treasure is, there is your heart.
  
  Eric is no longer a hostage. Now the world can will and think him.

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  He tossed his weapon in the bushes because he wanted whatever would happen to happen. Guns were small practical things. He wanted to trust the power of predetermined events. The act was done, the gun should go.(C 147)
  
  The world is willing Eric Packer. He is choosing the Order of Seduction, destiny.

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As the ancient Chinese sage said: It isn't the man who drinks the tea, it's the tea which drinks the man. 
( IE 89 from Ceronetti )

And hasn't Rob Pattinson done exactly this.

It's Kristen who chose me.
It's the elephant who chose me.
It's Cronenberg who chose me.


And hasn't he taken responsibility for many of his friends and their careers? And hasn't he taken on responsibility for the life of Bear? And now that abuse of Tai has come out, his affection for her is weighing in on her abuse.