Traumatic events by definition elude immediate first-person embodied experience, and they tend not to stay within their chronological and spatial contexts. As Cathy Caruth has remarked, trauma is 'locatable not in the simple violent or original event in an individual's past, but rather in the way that it's very unassimilated nature - the way it was precisely not known in the first instance - returns to haunt the survivor later on' (Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4). A traumatic event, in other words, is so overpowering that it cannot be experienced while it is happening. Instead it is reexperienced in delayed, repetitive form - through flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive hallucinations, bodiless memories of missing subjectivity.
As a phenomenon whereby 'the most direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute inability to know it' (Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 91- 92), trauma constitutes a paradox. How is it possible for the 'most direct' knowledge of an event to occur as that event's 'absolute' unknowability? The difficulty of resolving this paradox is evidenced in nonfiction accounts of trauma by a persistent recourse to figurative language: trauma is (figuratively) an 'out-of-body experience in which the victim (figuratively) 'relives' the event that caused the psychic wound or the survivor inhabits a reality that is (figuratively) 'otherworldly. (153)" - Chu, Seo-Young. Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?: A Science Fictional Theory of Representation. Harvard University Press, 2010.
In the forests of South America, hunters sleep faceup so the jaguar will see them as beings capable of looking back at him, and leave them alone. If they sleep facedown, the jaguar will mistake them for helpless prey and attack them.
We must understand not only how we organize and perceive the world, but how the world sees us. We must understand how the world around is truly structured, and how we are perceived by the other selves which inhabit it.
If we are to communicate with a sentience that has gained language skills like the ones we have, everything will rely on how sensitive we can be to how that alien mind perceives our actions. Everything (189). -- Dr. Ha Nguyen in Nayler, Ray. The Mountain in the Sea. Picador, 2022.
Mythological images are the images by which the consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious. That’s what they are. When you don’t have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part. I think that’s the purpose of a mythology that we can live by. We have to find the one that we are in fact living by and know what it is so that we can direct our craft with competence. - Joseph Campbell (from Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation)
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Duffy, Katherine E., et al. "The World’s Most Beautiful Bird Lives in Yellowstone National Park: Behold the Peregrine Falcon." Literary Hub (October 12, 2023) ["Evolution honed peregrine falcons to be unparalleled speed machines. They have long, pointed wings, enabling them to swoop and dive in flight at mind-boggling speeds as they pursue avian prey, from small birds to shorebirds to ducks, that they capture in midair. Their bodies are tightly cloaked in sleek feathers that contribute to their streamlined aerodynamic efficiency—no fluffy owl feathers on a peregrine. Their nasal openings have a post that baffles air so that peregrines can continue to breathe as they dive. Being struck by a diving peregrine often kills prey instantly, but if it does not, the peregrine inserts the upper part of its bill, with projections called tomial teeth, between the prey’s neck vertebrae. With a quick twist, the peregrine instantly severs the spinal cord of its prey. As it flies with prey held by tightly clenched feet, each toe ending in a sharp piercing talon, the peregrine might even eat on the wing."]
Larson, Rob. "As Much Power As the President: How Billionaires Became More Influential than World Leaders." Literary Hub (August 29, 2024) ["This is why class is a useful concept; as researcher Katie Quan has said, “Not to think in terms of class is unfortunate, since no matter what our ideological persuasion may be, class analysis gives us a way of viewing the world that identifies power relationships. It clarifies who has power." This is an excerpt from Rob Larson's book Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More]
Longworth, Karina. "Crash and David Cronenberg (Erotic 90’s, Part 16)." You Must Remember This (September 18, 2023) ["One of the only high-profile NC-17 releases post-Showgirls, David Cronenberg’s Crash was the kind of dark adult art film that the rating was supposedly created to support. We’ll talk about how Crash fits into Cronenberg’s filmography, why it was controversial when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and when it was released in the US in 1997, how it played into the UK general election of 1997, how it functioned as an early warning against charismatic billionaires, and how it embodied a post-Prozac and pre-Viagara moment."]
O'Connor, Anahand. "How the Food Industry is Influencing Your TikTok Feed." On the Media (September 20, 2023) ["In July, the World Health Organization issues a report indicating that aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in many low calorie sodas and snacks, was "possibly carcinogenic to humans." The new statement on a widely utilized artificial sweetener led to controversy in the medical community, with the Federal Drug Administration saying they saw no concern over aspartame consumption. Some dietitians even took to social media to voice their contradicting opinions. Anahad O’Connor, a health columnist at The Washington Post, the response to the announcement on social media smelled a bit fishy. In a report released earlier this month with colleagues Caitlin Gilbert and Sasha Chavkin, O’Connor found that dozens of registered dietitians, some with more than 2 million followers each, were paid to counter the WHO’s announcement. He and his colleagues followed the money back to industry groups like American Beverage, which represents companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. This week, OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger sits down O'Connor to learn more about the growing trend of influencer dietitians and the long history of food and beverage lobbies attempting to influence our eating habits."]
Tolentino, Jia. "On Children, Meaning, Media, and Psychedelics." The Ezra Klein Show (September 3, 2024) ["I feel that there’s something important missing in our debate over screen time and kids — and even screen time and adults. In the realm of kids and teenagers, there’s so much focus on what studies show or don’t show: How does screen time affect school grades and behavior? Does it carry an increased risk of anxiety or depression? And while the debate over those questions rages on, a feeling has kept nagging me. What if the problem with screen time isn’t something we can measure? In June, Jia Tolentino published a great piece in The New Yorker about the blockbuster children’s YouTube channel CoComelon, which seemed as if it was wrestling with the same question. So I invited her on the show, and our conversation ended up going places I never expected. Among other things, we talk about how the decision to have kids relates to doing psychedelics, what kinds of pleasure to seek if you want a good life and how much the debate over screen time and kids might just be adults projecting our own discomfort with our own screen time."]
Seaford, Richard. "On the Origins of the Soul." The Secret History of Western Esotericism #4 (September 13, 2017) ["In some of the earliest documents we possess from Indo-European cultures – the Rg Veda and the Homeric poems – the human beings depicted do not have ‘souls’. That is to say, they have organs of what we might call different types of consciousness, but there is no indication that there is a unifying principle which knits all the different organs together. Then, at the beginning of the sixth century BCE, something rather startling happens: in both Indian texts (the Brahmanas, Upanishads, and others) and in Greece (in the movement known as Pre-Socratic philosophy) the notion arises that there is indeed a unifying, bounded, and possibly immortal soul. Richard Seaford has a provocative theory, based in a sociological / anthropological approach, as to why this new and revolutionary idea comes into being at just this time in just these places. Whether you agree with him or not, you will not want to miss Professor Seaford’s masterful survey of the Greek and Sanskritic evidence for the first appearance of that most essential entity, the soul. Other fascinating themes touched on: What is the ‘Axial Age’, and what makes it so ‘axial’? The problems of dating the Homeric poems and the Rg Veda. The origins of the concept of the incorporeal in Greece and India. What money and private property have to do with the rise of the soul."]
Valis, Karen. "On Magic and Artificial Intelligence." The Secret History of Western Esotericism (November 8, 2023) ["We are delighted to speak with Karin Valis, machine-learning engineer and esoteric explorer, on the vast subject of how the fields of artificial intelligence and magic overlap, intertwine, and inform each other. We discuss:The uncanny oracular effects and synchronistic weirdnesses exhibited by large language models, Conversations with ChatGPT considered as invocation, AI as the fulfilment of the dream of the homonculus (with the attendant ethical problems which arise), AI as the fulfilment of esoteric alphanumeric cosmologies (and maybe, like the Sepher Yetsirah, this isn’t so esoteric after all; maybe it’s just science)."]
West, Stephen. "Resistance, Love, and the importance of Failure. (Zizek, Byung Chul Han)." Philosophize This! #201 (May 6, 2024) ["Today we talk about a potential way to find meaning for someone prone to postmodern subjectivity. We talk about surplus enjoyment. Zizek's alcohol use, or lack thereof. Resisting surface level consumption. Love. And failure."]
---. "The truth is in the process. Zizek Pt. 3 (Ideology, Dialectics)." Philosophize This! #198 (March 25, 2024) ["Key Takeaways - Ideology's Function and Risks: Ideology simplifies complex realities, aiding decision-making and action, but its uncritical acceptance can perpetuate systemic flaws. Žižek's Critique of Ideological Frameworks: Žižek examines how ideologies, especially within global capitalism, shape societal norms and individual actions, often obscuring deeper systemic issues. Dialectical Understanding of Reality: The dialectical method reveals the continuous and dynamic process of change and contradiction in societal and ideological structures. Necessity of Ideology in Human Experience: Ideology is essential for making sense of the complex world, serving as both a simplifying tool and a psychological coping mechanism. Recommended Reading: The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek: In this foundational work, Žižek explores the mechanisms of ideology, offering a complex analysis of how individuals interact with and are influenced by their ideological constructs. Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek: Žižek examines the global capitalist system and its crises, arguing that we are living in the end times of capitalism and facing an urgent need for radical change."]
Zhao, Ben and Heather Zheng. "Fighting Back Against AI Piracy." Hidden Brain (August 8, 2024) ["If you’ve spent any time playing with modern AI image generators, it can seem like an almost magical experience; but the truth is these programs are more like a magic trick than magic. Without the human-generated art of hundreds of thousands of people, these programs wouldn’t work. But those artists are not getting compensated, in fact many of them are being put out of business by the very programs their work helped create. Now, two computer scientists from the University of Chicago, Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng, are fighting back. They’ve developed two programs, called Glaze and Nightshade, which create a type of “poison pill” to help protect against generative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E, helping artists protect their copyrighted, original work. Their work may also revolutionize all of our relationships to these systems."]
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