#again my problem is the entitlement and possession people have over *other peoples* identities and lives

[uncanny-tranny]

You know, even if somebody was "turned queer" because of trauma, that is:

1. Not your business

2. Not something you should be interrogating them about, be you queer or otherwise (see point one)

Trauma is a deeply harrowing experience, and it's oftentimes something people don't want to share if they don't feel safe or comfortable. Creating environments where queer people have to both interrogate their queerness and defend themselves is simply hostile.

If somebody seemingly became queer after a traumatic event, what you do is support them. Likely the last thing that person needs is you barging in and demanding explanations and justifications before they're allowed to be queer and/or exist around you.

#queer #lgbt #lgbtq #trauma tw #and if they later decide they aren't queer or have a different queer identity they can do that when they are ready... #...which will likely not fit into the timeframe that you might expect... #...because healing is just as messy as trauma and queerness is as messy as cisheterosexuality #because being a person is messy and complicated and it takes time to figure out #again my problem is the entitlement and possession people have over *other peoples* identities and lives #maybe my tone is harsh but i just find this hard to show compassion because it's often deliberate... #...as in a deliberate action toward the person suspected of being 'queer after trauma' #and not going to lie a big component of queerness for many is rooted in trauma #because of the violence of homophobia of transphobia of queerphobia #because we often are closeted and hide who are and we hear and witness what people think about queerness #and that's just the tip of the iceberg. queerness is beautiful. queerness can also be painful. #it isn't always happy times to be queer and our trauma is important and we deserve to heal at our pace #we deserve compassion. we deserve to exist. we don't deserve to have to justify and explain and placate #we are also entitled to our individual stories. we deserve to tell them *if* we want to and to whom we want to tell them to #there are aspects of my own story i will never tell. because i want it to be *mine* and i think i deserve that control over *my* story

[whatdoeschronicevenmean]

Reading Relationship Anarchy: Occupy Intimacy

“Today, there may be a clearer awareness that someone possessing another is not acceptable and that no one should ever exercise control over someone else’s behavior, much less within the framework of a social structure that automatically positions some individuals over others. Still, recognizing the existence of structures of control does not assure that I’m immune from the possibility of unconsciously adopting this thought, a notion that has surrounded us and shaped us our entire lives, time and time again.

I’ve been taught to believe that I’m entitled to give permission to those I have relationships with that are of a certain degree of intensity; to tell them (without any further consideration, per the privilege I’ve acquired) that something they do bothers me (even when I am not there); to hold them responsible for my happiness; to know the details of their private lives; to blame them for my insecurities, jealousy, lacks; to tolerate their emotions and actions (as long as they don’t affect me too much); to insist that they understand my needs without me having to express them (because they’re determined by the norm: they should know how to take care of a man/how to treat a woman); to get angry when something doesn’t meet my expectations...

Even though something so commonplace and intimate may seem far-removed from the social axes of power and oppression, there’s probably not another more singularly political act than trying to identify involuntary authoritarian actions, the nearly invisible components of the hegemonic instructions we’ve received. Any relationship model that aims to be ethical must have at its very core an analysis of power relations and proposals aimed at changing them.”

In my opinion, this text overly focuses on lifestyle politics and thinks it to be very radical, an argument I would disagree with), its analysis often muddy and taken-for-granted (makes very little effort to explain exactly how certain behaviors or thoughts are hegemonic), and assumes a general USAmerican/Western perspective (even in its understanding of power, relation, and most notably race/colonialism).

“One example that’s easy to understand is the role historically assigned to women. It’s no coincidence that, at different eras in each patriarchal society, the feminine traits that were considered natural have been the most useful for the prevailing system of social organization. The behaviors that the different gods have required in their moral mandates have also always been ideal for maintaining stable patriarchal models of power.”

Ahistorical, anthropologically defunct nonsense statement.

Good points Perez Cortes makes: 

“Just as how the solution to low wages is not another side hustle, the answer to the problem of the normative couple as a bubble that isolates and prevents relationships from forming a network of support, care, and mutual understanding is not the “freedom” to multiply the bubbles. Relationship anarchy does not explicitly define affective-sexual practices. It is therefore not a kind of ethical or consensual non-monogamy, a category that would encompass swinging (which consists of a couple’s joint sexual activities with other people or partners), open relationships (sex outside the couple is tolerated but never has an affective component), and polyamory, both hierarchical and non-hierarchical (acceptance of the possibility of multiple affective-sexual partners with some relationships being subordinate to others or all being on equal footing), to name a few.”

“ In other words, I suggest moving away from the “Relationship Anarchist” brand as a label for identity, just as the meaning of those two words, and which I’m dedicating all these pages to, suggests moving away from ail these brands with a seal of approval: “Couple,” “Boyfriends,” “Girlfriends,” “Friends,” “Partners,” “Lovers,” ‘MyGuy,” “MyGirl’... I propose understanding each other without coercing each other, taking care of each other without recipes, letting approaches like relationship anarchy show not how things should be, but how they could be. What could they be like if we could live according to near-utopian principles that, if we like, are there to seduce us. They will seduce us only if we let ourselves be seduced, only as much as we let ourselves be seduced, and only until when we stop letting ourselves be seduced.”

“ In going through the possible derivations of relationship escalator, I mentioned swingers, open couples, hierarchical polyamory, and nonhierarchical polyamory as forms of departure that aren’t actually so at heart. In the first three cases, there are, in order of appearance, models of open relationships that range from the purely sexual shared experience to non-shared ones and permitting each member of the relationship’s emotional involvement with other people. The rest of the path remains intact, allowing only partial access to the escalator. Those who are higher up are often seen as in their right to set limits on the height that those who have arrived later or stayed at lower echelons are allowed to reach. The concept of consensus, pact, or explicit agreement presiding over the ethical arguments in which these paradigms are supposedly founded only work from the top down. The agreements made at higher levels define the limitations established for the lower echelons.”

“ I specifically mean that, with the understanding that sincerity is not enough to guarantee a fair relationship, the complementary question is whether complete transparency is necessary or desirable in general. Again, in most of the non-monogamous approaches adopted as a basis in activist circles, conversations, books, articles, talks, and workshops, the “obligation” of maximum transparency in relationships is an almost inviolable axiom. It’s a requirement of any relationship that seeks to adhere to ethical non-monogamy, according to the most common standards. The basic questions on which the analysis was founded would once again be the same: does the normative obligation (poly-normative or non-monogamous-ethical-normative, in this case) to renounce personal privacy fit into a model of self-management for relationships? And can a possible vector of authority or power be derived from this demand?”

#relationship anarchy #juan carlos perez cortes

[zhouxuns]

thoughts on the finale

overall, s3 was quite good. but the finale makes it all feel pointless. and not just s3, but s2 and s1 as well. and i know the line about “the universe acknowledges you” was because of what was to come and was supposed to be some sort of comfort to the audience, but it wasn’t. at least not for me. legion never stuck the landing for their finales so this doesn’t surprise me. but i’m gonna rant anyways.

several things i didn’t like.

1) no acknowledgement whatsoever of the hallers who gave david a loving life. they retconned the hallers’ existence this whole season to push the idea that david never received love in his childhood and didn’t grow up looked after. despite the fact that we’ve seen throughout s1 how dearly important david’s childhood was and how important mama and papa haller were to him and how much he loved them and vice versa. i mean really, no acknowledgement of amy haller at all? the woman he cared about most besides syd? his sister? who was so important to him, we got a multiverse episode about how key amy was to david’s lives? not even an acknowledgement towards lenny when she killed herself inside amy’s body? and even worse, we’ll never know precisely why the xaviers gave david to the hallers in the first place. i found this retcon extremely insulting to david’s character, but to adopted families/foster families.

2) farouk’s redemption. how utterly insulting to the audience’s intelligence to redeem farouk with no recognition for his insidious actions and unrelenting vile choices. he possessed a baby, terrorized it for fun, abused a child, he sexually molested david every time david was frozen with fear to further suppress him, he raped lenny, a lesbian, whenever he felt like it, he stole people’s bodies because he felt like it, he killed endless amounts of people. and then they have this same farouk ask his younger self if he was really that hateful and petty as if the audience is supposed to forget that just a year prior to that conversation, that this same farouk brutally murdered an innocent amy haller to get at david and, as lenny said, raped her whenever he wanted. the same person who continued to plant the ideas in david’s head that he’s god and doesn’t have to regard the lives of other people. the same person that kidnapped syd and manipulated her into turning against david before he even betrayed her. like, for real? just retcon all of that to pretend like farouk had a change of heart and always loved david and wants world peace? all it takes is to share beer with your old enemy despite the fresh blood on your hands? wow. how embarrassingly bad is that on the writers’ behalf.

3) syd. not only did syd have a mere handful of lines in this episode, but yet again, it’s as if the writers changed their minds about syd’s feelings/characterization. she’s got to be one of the most jerked around characters on this show. she used to be consistent up until the latter half of s2 when the writers decided to make syd ooc for the sake of plot (you know, the david is evil crap). syd just episodes prior expressed that she felt it was worth it to have been with david and that she wouldn’t change it. she didn’t regret their love, she regretted their downfall. in her final moments, she’s back to bitter snark, borderline defeating the whole empathy episode. i loved the bit about saving baby david, but loathed the “i am” in response to david saying she’ll be extraordinary without him around. it retcons the entire value of syd’s history, her life choices, her self perception. syd, who ALWAYS believed she was extraordinary, given by her famous quote “who teaches us to be normal when we’re one of a kind”, suddenly will be a “better” person w/o having known david? when it was through him she found summerland, found mutant allies, found freedom, found a second childhood. and then what is the purpose of saying her new life will be distinctly amazing if we don’t even get to see it? not even an epilogue paragraph of what syd became in her new life? it felt like such an impersonal send off for her. she’s the female lead but yet again she ends up on the reduced end of things.

4) no consequences. the entire theme of s3 was, time traveling can change the past, but it can’t change who we are. there were no consequences in sight for any of these people. all those awful things david did, murdering and orphaning people, causing his best friend/sister’s suicide, drugging those hundreds of women, none of it mattered when legion pretended like it was supposed to. we didn’t really see david grow. we didn’t truly see him redeem his self. we didn’t see him express any true regret or remorse for all he did on the way there. right up until he end he remained in his entitled tantrum state. all it did was justify everything he did. because the past got rewritten. david got his second life and the people he sacrificed to do it don’t matter. and really? “sorry” was all he could say to the woman he raped and hurt the most? big yikes. legion’s faux commentary on make entitlement and sexism went absolutely nowhere. it’s absolutely bull crap. further proof that rape should’ve never been part of this show, let alone trying to do commentary on rape culture.

5) disjointed elements. switch turning out to be a time god felt so last minute and so lazy. she suffers and endured all this abuse from david because she was meant to “grow up” into her celestial clock form. sure it’s better than just her dying, but it feels as if her screentine was dedicated for a disappointing surprise. given how much screentime switch took up, i expected better. this is my main problem with shows adding more characters to the main plot. it causes the original characters to be neglected which results in less screentime for the originals (syd and the loudermilk twins) or being killed/written off (lenny, ptonomy, the birds) and usually the pay off isn’t good.

6) the severe lack of follow up. we will never know what oliver’s 1 + 1 plan was. we will never know what ultimately became of the birds. what became of ptonomy, who they turned into a flash drive and gave all of 3 lines to for the whole season, we’ll never know what the 3 years from now event change ptonomy calculated turned out to be, or what became of summerland or division 3. we’ll never know why they showed 616!legion in the desert. we will never get a true apology from syd to david and vice versa. we will never get an actual explanation for why farouk was allowed to roam around freely and unchecked despite him being the root cause for david’s demise.

7) the impersonal approach to mental illness. what’s the deal? legion had such a sensitive despite clinical approach to mental illness in s1. they handed the diagnoses with such care and the themes involved with it. in s2 it’s all but abandoned, and in s3 the theme returns, but with no personal touch whatsoever. ah gabrielle has the sickness, it runs in the women in the family, okay mental illness is hereditary for david, understandable. how come this is something david never reconciles his self with? how come they never give david’s true diagnosis? we know he has dissociative identity disorder, but david doesn’t. david is expressly in denial about being mentally ill, even saying he’s not “crazy” to his mother. yet he has a system of alters he works with. they all say “i am legion” which we know is what his collective of alters are called, but that’s it. one of the things david wanted to change was his mental illness. is he ever going to learn he can’t change that because he was sick all along because of his mother? his mental illness is such a huge aspect to her character yet in s3 it just feels like a post it note stuck to his chest. no one regards it with sensitivity. no one accepts responsibility in exacerbating his condition. nothing. legion used to be about mental illness. then they shed it for social commentary which held no weight, and destroyed the characterizations for an outcome that was ultimately inconsequential.

overall, this just proves to me that legion needed more than 3 seasons. easily 4-5 seasons would’ve worked better for this. legion doesn’t even leave things up for interpretation, it just leaves most of what they set up unanswered. i felt since s2 that it had been too soon to develop the story they were developing and i was right. choosing a 3 seasons arc where 2.8 out of the 3 seasons the male lead is a sympathetic and genuinely good character to make him evil and narcissistic and apathetic? makes no sense. or when the female lead used to be this complex morally grey character and at her last hour becomes isolated once more and is quoting things straight out of 2014 tumblr? i mean really? wtf.

the other characters didn’t get to do enough across these seasons. they were cannon fodder for david’s story/development (or lack thereof) more than anything else. once they were less proximal to david, they were less relevant to the writers too.

syd and david’s relationship didn’t last nearly long enough before they were thrust into ghastly new territories. and the same goes for everyone else’s dynamic on the show. far too much offscreen development occurred. farouk having a change of heart? you truly couldn’t pinpoint any point where farouk ever felt sorry for david or cared about anyone else but his self. he’s been nothing but condescending, sadistic, manipulative, and countless other atrocities. d3 and the summerlanders being comfortable with farouk with no mind control at play at all? get real. kerry and syd’s friendship was nice tidbit but we didn’t see it develop at all. it would’ve been important to see these female mutants develop a relationship. it’s the most frustrating thing aboutall of this. clearly more time was needed.

we needed more time for these things to feel truly earned. but noah was way in over his head because of how busy he became by the time s2 swung around and decided to cut the show short. i don’t buy for one minute that 3 seasons was the plan all along. everything about legion’s story progression beyond s1 screams improvisation and a messy one at that. there wasn’t enough time for these characters to breathe, too much characterization and story had been retconned to get the ending over with, and legion choosing to end where it began, except all the characters we loved are gone, all the things that made the show most important to us are gone, feels more depressing than i thought it would.

it’s going to be difficult rewatching the show especially from its flawless premier season, knowing none of it happens at all. it’s literally unfathomable to think that 3 years later this is where we’d be. i’m so disappointed.

#legion fx #david haller #sydney barrett #amahl farouk #lenny busker #text post

[mysticalmindblog]

A candid look at one of the most common sources of heartbreak and sadness readily available to each and every human being. The Internet is awash with memes and quotes mixing Positive Affirmation with Expectation. The reality is that when you are prone to expecting something, you are opening doors inviting disappointment and suffering to visit.

THEME: Until you can accept what is, you will never move into what could be.

Look back on your life, and count the many times you feel you have been let down, deflated, disenfranchised, because expectations and promised results didn't come to fruition. How much suffering have you gone through in your life because you mentally and emotionally invested far too much in expectations that proved unrealistic..??

There is a glut of memes and quotes all over Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and many other online sources that are very generic and 'feel good' but with no substance.

Examples are:

You Deserve It, So Expect It

Expect and You Will Receive

You're a Winner, Expect Great Things

It's Good to Know What to Expect

You Are Unique So Expect Unique Things

etc. etc. etc.

Some of these quotes have tens of thousands of likes. The problem is that they are so general and generic that the presupposition is applying to ego, rather than the truth. It is part of the 'INSTANT' gratification "Feel-Good" motivational movement that is nothing more than a mental band-aid rather than an enlightening revelation.

There's also a fine line between expectations & dependency. There is another fine line between expectations & an entitlement mentality. Inevitably, to be in expectation of something opens up the doors of possibility to disappointment & suffering. It is far preferable to work with Mindful intention instead, in the present moment you are in, to project desired results.

Expectations

Having expectations being thwarted leads to very deep sadness and longings... They can just rip out all of your cultivation and capacity for being able to give kindness and compassion to others and can make your soul stale.

They can make a warm heart turn ice cold.

They can cause mental anguish and intense frustration.

Expectations, for the most part, are made up of the imagined desired results for a future moment in time. They represent a large percentage of thoughts that are dedicated to the variables of the future. Expectations represent a diversion from present mindfulness, away from the moment you are in into the unknown moments of the future.

Truthfully, we all suffer from vulnerabilities intertwined with emotional dependency on expectations projected, like architectural blueprints, on those around us. Disappointment after disappointment wears down our patience, as well as our ability to trust and give unconditionally.

On the extreme far end of the mental spectrum, many people who walk around in a constant state of anxiousness due to 'Expectation', also exhibit egocentric and entitled behavioral patterns.

It's a trap.

Over-indulgent and pampered personalities tend to lead lives where they expect, and expect, and expect (the best, the more, the most), and often with emphasis on being entertained and distracted by nonsense more-so than anyone else around them, or the VIP treatment; is another way to put it.

Disassociate

It is for me an ongoing quest, to disassociate from emotionally attaching to high hopes and expectations in regards to the attitude, words, and actions of others.

From family, to friends, to acquaintances and strangers, in a variety of settings, they will invariably surprise you in a negative way at some point or other; it is inevitable. Often this is because we invest far too much expectation upon them. In some ways, our expectations can become so unrealistic, that they depend on the person in question making personality changes that are not even made clear.

I talk often of the Noisy Mind condition; where we go from moment to moment not actually living in the moment, but living either in the past, or the future, or even worse: Both simultaneously - all without actually living mindfully in the present moment.

The inherent problem with setting expectations in regards to all those you have come to know is that we always seem to set the bar too high. It helps me to look inside myself at my own failings, and the ways I could improve myself - before looking to others for inspiration. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, setting expectations makes us deviate away from present-moment mindfulness.

Here are some plain truths:

We have NO control over anyone but OURSELVES.

We have NO ability to see the FUTURE.

We have NO ability to change the PAST.

We live in NO other moment but the moment we are IN.

We have NO better immunity against emotional pain than ACCEPTANCE.

We have NO better immunity against anger than COMPASSION.

The ONLY one who can truly know you is YOU.

The ONLY one who can use the key that unlocks your heart is YOU.

The ONLY one who can make you change who you are is YOU.

So basically this article comes down to some harsh and unpleasant facts; such as dealing with the negative aspects of people that WILL invariably either go out of their way to hurt you, or alternatively hurt you in their ignorance. As such, you measure the depth of your sufferings and pain based on your expectations.

Expectation is a strong form of attachment making. It is that which will sink deep hooks into your most sensitive nerves, and will ever-so-often bring tremendous suffering.

Now it is important to point out here that I am not saying that as far as I am concerned, it is best to go around looking at everyone through cringing and skeptical eyes, treating them all as potential antagonists - definitely not. Alternatively, what I am saying is what I actually try to practice daily, treat others as you wish to be treated, but don't attach to the expectation that they will reciprocate. It is as simple a recipe as that.

The Alternative

The 2nd Noble Truth of Buddhism teaches that 'Suffering' is due to attachments and expectations, to grasping and clinging. This truth is a secular truth whatever your belief system.

So how do we liberate ourselves..??

You can literally transform your life by learning your own personal art of "Letting Go.."

It is a matter-of-fact that by cultivating and changing your mental thought processes, you can relieve emotional discomforts and pain, and chief among those changes are the way you accept & embrace change.

Realizing how we instinctively react when provoked by broken expectations and unexpected change, and then modifying the way we react can help us break out of the need to be micro-managing every little detail of an uncertain future, and individuals in our lives who we have no power to change or control, and instead, we can simply embrace with acceptance of the present moment we are in.

It's only possible in the present moment that we will find the courage to cross the threshold of the unknown and relax into the changes we cannot avoid.

The Attachment of a Sense of Predictability

It is a Human condition, we feel that much more secure when we are assured that we possess a sense of predictability, and in that effort we invariably develop a great capacity for denying a very basic & simple truth which is 'that nothing stays the same'.

Such a denial can invoke an inner arrogance, an egoic but illusionary 'reality' construct; and then along comes the unpredictability of life, and through loved ones, friends, or life changing situations, we are painfully shown that even if we do everything "right" and exercise every precaution, we can still face extreme disappointment and unexpected loss.

As such, all too frequently, rather than surrender to the inevitability of change, and embrace it, and work creatively with it, we Humans resort to the anxiety & fear-based behavior of forcing situations to occur the way we want them to, and to take charge and exert pressure on other people and situations to conform to our expectations. Again, this is a terrible trap.

Your inability to avoid disappointment, broken expectations, and deflated dreams as well as accepting change may make you wrathfully angry, sad, depressed, and frustrated. It can be hard to let go of the false belief that the only way to achieve happiness again is to regain what's been lost. Even when you know you can't reverse the situation, you may enter into a perpetual suffering, and constantly agonize over this unwanted reality, knowing no inner peace as a result.

When faced with disappointment and broken expectations, we can mistakenly cling on to what once was, actively avoiding the needed process of grief and acceptance, and end up in a constant state of non-growth and life paralysis; grasping for a future set of circumstances or a situation identical to the past holding you back from discovering what better roads lie ahead, just around the corner, simply just outside of your vision. The desire to backslide, or reconstruct the known comforts of the past will almost always result in you walking around in circles, lost in the ashes of the unchangeable past, instead of venturing forth with mindfulness and actively taking steps to look around those corners and see new ways to grow, new paths to follow.

Change your Perspective

The change in perspective that invariably happens when we come to the enlightening conclusion that there's no such thing as a permanent comfort zone, or feeling of happiness, will allow us to embark on a voyage of healing from suffering. It leads to a rise in wisdom, a new understanding, and helps us take the next brave step which is to accept that we must often be broken to mould ourselves anew, and broaden our reality giving a new definition of what we need in order to be productive, happy, and liberated - giving up the old and painful habits of clinging and grasping, as well as the need to control external circumstances and future events.

It's important to balance the concept of something you want, with an acceptance of what is, right in the moment you are in. It is no good wanting something for what you want it to be, rather than wanting it for what it is now in the present. You MUST know your limits.

This subtle balance which is a mindset to adopt, allows you to live in this, the present moment and trust that your acceptance of a given situation or individual or concept, will relieve the suffering and confusion that comes when not things do not go the way you 'expect' them.

In other words, having expectations is an inevitable Human condition, but it is down to your Mindful clear thinking on how much you invest in those expectations, and how realistic they are, cognitively understanding that everything is impermanent, even expectations, that will clear the brain-fog of confusion, unnecessary emotional attachments, and distractions, and show you the path to move into a more clear and unrestricted, happier, way of life.

When we cling to the past or what no longer serves us, we contract ourselves to the point where we're unable to be nourished and invigorated by the present moment. We have to accept that what's past has truly passed in order to open up to what the present moment offers us. In this opening we become nourished, refreshed and revitalized.

Finally, it takes us making an effort, and acknowledging not only our own flaws and damaging personality traits, but also for the most part, understanding that the general population ultimately only care for themselves and their own comfort zones and closed circles, and will extract what they can for their own pleasures and comforts from whoever can supply it the soonest. That's the modern sociologically imprinted "I want it and deserve it and I want it now" illusionary construct. It is damaging to everyone, and leads to awful entitlement issues.

We can CHOOSE not to be that way. That's part of the old 'primitive' brain that is programmed with a genetic self-preservation instinct and gets combined with the ego to the point that so many end up with toxic personalities.

If we see it, recognize it, choose not to be a part of it, and instead take care of all that we have power over (ourselves), then we can be liberated from the suffering it can cause.

Knowing this, it is up to us as the responsible entities to go within and make the changes necessary to better deal with those occurrences, and live more in the present moment while annihilating our expectations of things we have absolutely no control over.

#attachment #liberation #new attitude #new life #moving forward #being strong #detaching #overcoming #be better #no fear #be strong #enlightenment #evolving #breaking free #selfish #selfishness #ego #egoic

[shutterupp31]

Toxic masculinity-Whats wrong with our boys?

For centuries men have been condemned for acts of aggression, violence, and sexism, contributing to the ongoing popularity of the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ which distinguishes these traits as toxic and unhealthy. The American psychological association have even recently introduced new guidelines for therapists working with both men and boys, indicating that early signs of extreme ‘traditional masculine behaviour’ can root themselves in personality traits that encourage outcomes of violence and misogyny, and must be disestablished early.

With the increase in male suicide rates and drug overdoses in the western world, combined with the rise of fourth wave feminism, as you can imagine, the debate on toxic masculinity is becoming all the more relevant amongst both genders. Mass media have blamed toxic masculinity for rape, mass shootings, online trolling, climate change and even the election of Donald Trump.

BUT is the phrase toxic masculinity actually helpful, accurate or universal? Let's discuss. 

Like any phrase or term regularly recycled within gender debate, the stereotypes it highlights have divided peoples opinions drastically, a predictable conflict that has most definitely contributed to the terms rise, (Yay politics). On the right we have many conservatives who allege that the charges of toxic masculinity is itself an attack on manhood. With mental health problems amongst males consistently rising, combined with the challenges the men's right movement already face, including paternity rights, homelessness, education to name a FEW, these people argue that it is dangerous and unfair to strip boys of what some would say is a necessity for them to discover their true selves as men in their time of need.

On the other side we see many ‘progressives’ who believe that the detoxification of masculinity is absolutely essential on the road to gender equality.

NOW, i'm sure (I mean I hope) we can all agree that issues including sexism, rape, violence and so on are obviously important and anyone male or female that possess these traits and/or actively defends them, needs help! Research consistently shows that those who hold sexist attitudes are more likely to perpetrate gendered violence. (DUH), but the potential biological and cultural contributions to why these figures are disproportionate amongst men and women is not something I wish to discuss at present, that's a whole other debate. 

What I do want to talk about (and what a lot of people aren't talking about) is this ‘painting every male with the same brush’ phenomenon and the extent to which this could be harmful.

My issue with the shift we have seen in which masculinity is rapidly becoming a dirty word, is that it genuinely encourages a narrative in which masculinity is fundamentally toxic. 

The assumption that the majority of what can be considered as male specific characteristics, as fundamentally harmful, is becoming increasingly worrying within socialist politics. Traits such as aggression, violence and dominance are more and more often being lumped in with those such as strength, confidence and independence and this is the problem. Yes masculinity can indeed be somewhat destructive, (AGAIN VIOLENCE IS BAD VERY BAD, NON VIOLENCE GOOD VERY GOOD) but both conservative and liberal stances on this issue commonly misunderstand how the term functions.

When people use it, they tend to diagnose the problem of masculine aggression and entitlement as a cultural or spiritual illness, something that has infected today’s men and leads them to reproachable acts. But toxic masculinity itself is not a cause. Over the past thirty years, as the concept has morphed and changed, it has served more as a barometer for the gender politics of its day and as an arrow toward the subtler, shifting causes of violence and sexism.

Acts of violence, aggression and sexism arise for a whole host of reasons, including socioeconomic factors such as education, class, and poverty, NEWSFLASH, not all men that celebrate the idea of being emotionally or physically strong intend to murder and rape the entire female population!

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT TIME

How often do you see women on social media celebrating what it means to be a woman? All the time right? Now, don't get me wrong, this rise of what I'm gonna call ‘girl power culture’ is phenomenally empowering.  

But how often do you see men innocently celebrate their manhood or say they are proud to be a man online in the same way?

Very rarely, and if they do they are often immediately attacked for being misogynistic and failing to recognise their privilege by Feminazi’s who fail to read context and get triggered by buzzwords. 

Ooooo Controversial? Perhaps, but AGAIN, I'm not failing to recognise that things like lad culture, and boys will be boys culture exist, and perhaps this obvious difference on social media has something to do with the years of oppression against women up until very recently, in fact it probably, most certainly is, however not acknowledging the multiplicity of reasons for these toxic behaviours, and not allowing men to celebrate that they like and may even enjoy being one, in the same way as its widely excepted amongst women, is well, kinda just dumb.

Don't believe me yet? Let's look at the evidence. 

First I think it is important to establish where the term originated. Despite the term’s recent popularity among feminists, toxic masculinity did not originate with the women’s movement. It was coined in the mythopoetic men's movement of the 1980s and ’90s, motivated in part as a reaction to second-wave feminism. Through male only workshops, wilderness retreats, and drumming circles, this movement promoted a masculine spirituality to rescue what it referred to as the ‘deep masculine’, a protective ‘warrior’ type masculinity, from toxic masculinity. Men’s aggression and frustration was, according to the movement, the result of a society that feminized boys by denying them the necessary rites and rituals to realise their true selves as men. 

The claim of a singular, real masculinity has now been roundly rejected by a new sociology of masculinity. Led by the sociologist Raewyn Connell, this school of thought presents gender as the product of relations and behaviours, rather than as a fixed set of identities and attributes. Connell’s work describes multiple masculinities shaped by class, race, culture, sexuality, and other factors, often in competition with one another as to which can claim to be more authentic. In this view, which is now the prevailing social scientific understanding of masculinity, the standards by which a “real man” is defined can vary dramatically across time and place.

Connell and others theorised that common masculine ideals such as social respect, physical strength, and sexual potency can of course become problematic when they set unattainable standards. Falling short can make boys and men insecure and anxious, which might prompt them to use force in order to feel, and be seen as, dominant and in control, HOWEVER Male violence in this scenario doesn’t emanate from something bad or toxic that has crept into the nature of masculinity itself. Rather, it comes from these men’s social and political settings, the particularities of which set them up for inner conflicts over social expectations and male entitlement.

The popular discussion of masculinity has often presumed there are fixed character types among men, and I think it's become increasingly more important to be skeptical of this in order to understand the situations in which groups of men act, the patterns, and the inevitable consequences, because without doing so ,YOU may be contributing to the reinforcement of the toxic masculinity in which you despise so much, which brings us on to….

The blame game-are you contributing to toxic masculinity?

Where do these sexist attitudes come from? Are men and boys just the victims of cultural brainwashing into misogyny and aggression, requiring reeducation into the ‘right’ beliefs? Or are these problems more deep rooted, and created by the myriad of insecurities and contradictions of men’s lives under gender inequality? The problem with a crusade against toxic masculinity is that in targeting culture as the enemy, it risks overlooking the real life conditions and forces that sustain culture.

It is more than likely that you have somewhat contributed to the reinforcement of toxic masculinity without even realising. Something I see so often is both men and women emasculating men for being emotionally vulnerable and this specific topic is something I personally find alarming. In the same way I defend a man's right to choose how and whether he verbally expresses emotions, I strongly believe that there is work to be done to deconstruct the stigma that is attached to this, when and if they choose to do so.

In similar fashion, in the way we have fought so hard to reject female beauty standards, it's really essential that we consider the male equivalent. Don't think there is one? Ask any man under 5 foot 8, ask any bald man under the age of 30, ask any man who has been shamed for the lack of, or excess of body hair. We have to start recognising that there is a double standard, and without too much speculation, could these expectations and lack of attention we are giving them in comparison to a lot of feminist issues in mass media, be somewhat contributing to the frustration and anger that manifests into these toxic traits we have been discussing. YEAH, FUCKING PROBABLY.

Anyway, in summary what I'm saying is, in the same way that the toxic traits we subscribe to masculinity are not universal amongst all males, the solutions to those issues that we have identified within this culture, are also not universal. Recognising differences in the lives of men and boys is crucial to the effectiveness of efforts to resolve gender violence and inequality once and for all, some food for thought. 

Stay kind always, Abbie x

[hjertetssunnegalskap1]

The Skamdom, the good parts and bad parts and what to do with it

I love Skam. The Skam fandom has been and still is, joy in so many ways. It’s amazing to meet other fans who love the show and love everything connected to it. The Skamdom has been more than a weird obsession, it has given me a feeling of family and friendship, too. I have learned a lot about myself and my own prejudices and about my identity and preferences. Skam has been an inspiration to create fanwork, I have gotten lots of positive feedback and it has helped me to have fun with creating stuff again.

However, I have discovered that there are some parts of the fandom that are quite toxic. Yeah, I know, water is wet, hah. I guess it’s well known that there are negative sides to all fandoms. I’m pretty new to fandom life, though, and I suppose it has taken time to get fully aware of how bad things can get. Skam has a positive underlying message, after all, and I have often thought that it “should be too good for hate like this.” Well, it isn’t. We all know it. It’s even possible that parts of Skam somehow ignite certain forms of toxic fandom processes, too, although I have no idea what that could be. Could it be that the show feels so real? That the characters are so young? That the show handles important issues? I really don’t know, but I would love to hear all the theories. 

Anyway, I have noticed that even though people spreading hate usually are a small fraction of the fandom, they have the power to do significant damage. Hate drives people out of ships, and out of the fandom. Hate makes fanfic writers stop writing and artists stop making art. Fans are being frozen out or silenced because they have the wrong opinion.This is sad, and the worst part is, that it has happened more than once.

What makes a fandom toxic, then? Why does it happen in the first place? And what can we do about it? I have tried to read up on some ideas about it and mixed it with some of my own thoughts about group processes. I won’t pretend to know anything about fandom life previous to Skam or on earlier fandom sites, but I would like to say something about the things I do know of. The reason I write this is purely selfish, by the way. I need to understand this. The Skam fandom is constantly evolving (as it probably should) and I need to keep my own fandom experience good, and to do that, I need to get what this negativity is all about, and how to deal with it.

So, what is it about?

First of all, I should mention that I’m kinda hesitant about talking about good vs. bad fandom behaviour. Life isn’t black or white like that and I don’t like to describe processes as if they were. However, there are fandom actions that are bad, and toxic, and I think it can be useful to talk about it in the open. Just remember that I’m not trying to call out anyone here. I think we’re all more or less guilty of negative fandom behaviour.

When I start to talk about what is toxic in a fandom, I suppose it can be smart to start with what it isn’t. Well, obviously, sharing your love for something isn’t. Also, I think that fans disagreeing and discussing stuff isn’t toxic. Making arguments for what you think is a good thing, just as expressing how you feel about something, or critiquing something constructively. Open discussions keep the fandom alive. Talking is good!!!  

Attacking others with threats or extreme actions, however, not so much. Here are some examples of what I think are toxic sides of the fandom: 

Possessiveness: some fans feel like they own the content they're fans of, that it belongs to them, and only to them. Fans are stalking the actors, for instance, and trying to control them. Sending hate and threats to Henrik’s girlfriend, is a good example. Or spreading hate about Tarjei when he withdrew from some fans and sat boundaries for them. Ulrikke has experienced a lot of hate because she doesn’t follow the wishes of some fans, as well. 

What if the actors or creators do some really shitty things? What if they express prejudices or ignorance or maybe they do something they shouldn’t do? Well, it’s not possessive to point out that the creators or actors do shitty things. It’s possessive to try to control them.

I suppose a lot of fans can feel a hint of possessiveness at times. Like, when someone expresses “I almost don’t want this fandom to grow bigger, I want it to stay our small precious treasure”. It doesn’t have to be harmful, only if the fans exclude others or act in a harmful way because of it.

Entitlement: some fans think that the creators must do what they want. For example, the fans may demand a particular romantic pairing or 'ship' to happen in a show, and be furious enough to send death threats to the authors if this doesn't happen.

Everyone can get disappointed in things happening, of course, and expressing that is okay. But there’s a difference between expressing disappointment and spreading hate. 

Feeling superior: some fans feel superior to more casual fans, and shout loudly about it. Or they feel better than other fractions of the fandom. Some fans might not feel superior, but maybe special. They have their self-concept shaped by the fact that their fandom makes them an outcast. Maybe they even feel bullied. But in some cases, they are the ones who hate on others for things they like. This can often end in fan wars (”this remake is better than that”). 

I think a feeling of “others don’t get this show like we do” is familiar to many in the fandom and in many different groupings. I can’t say that I have felt superior in any way, but

I have at least once expressed my opinions on characterization in a way that other fans found offensive. 

Us and them: This toxic culture of possessiveness, entitlement and feeling superior develops in so-called “internet echo chambers”, spaces where dissenting opinions are not tolerated. This means the group has a conformist mentality and everything is about “us” and “them”. 

Outsiders are usually rudely educated or just simply banned. This conflict creates a sense of self and community that is tied to the in-group, the 'safe haven' of the fan community. Online, these groups pat each other on the back for liking the right version of the show, or the right ship or whatever, and not only that, but having the group's particular opinions on it, and for participating in conventions, contributing art and fan fiction, and so on. 

Losing their identity: When people are part of a group, they often experience a loss of self-awareness. They are less likely to follow normal restraints and inhibitions and more likely to lose their sense of individual identity. Groups can generate a sense of emotional excitement, which can lead to behaviours that a person would not typically engage in if alone.

I think a lot of fans can recognize this feeling of getting swept away with some amazing ideas in a group. When it leads to spreading hate, it becomes toxic.  

Addiction: People also get addicted to the attention and validation these online niches can give them, especially if the outside world is less friendly. That leads them to extreme in-group loyalty and extreme out-group hatred. They can get so caught up in their fandom that they stop caring about people outside of it.

And yeah, uhm. I can actually recognize the addictive part of fandom life. I need to check Tumblr and AO3 every day, for instance, as well as check in on fandom friends. I live for every kudos or like I get on the things I make. I know, addiction is maybe not toxic for others than yourself, but I still wanted to add it. Addiction can also lead to toxic behaviour towards others in the fandom. 

So... What to do, then?

It’s not easy to handle these things. One problem is that attempting to confront toxic fandom processes results in the groups withdrawing into their echo chambers and feeling superior. I have tried once or twice to answer hate like that with reasoning but often it’s mostly to sort my own thoughts on the subject (I think better in writing). I have rarely experienced to get through to anyone. 

Sometimes, or pretty often, ignoring toxic behaviour might be best. Confrontation may just result in circular arguments, after all. If you ignore the behaviour, you're not giving it attention. Also, you can let them think what they want to think. You can block, delete, or ignore negative people or behaviour on most social media networks. I have filtered and blacklisted words on Tumblr and it has helped a lot. That’s maybe one of my best tips. Scroll past stuff that isn’t for you. Remember the phrase “don’t like, don’t read.” Make the content that you’re passionate about. Talk about the things you love. Share your opinions. Focus on the stuff that makes you happy. That’s my goal, anyway.

When should you confront someone, then? My opinion is that it can be okay to confront if they're going beyond simply having an opinion, into the world of threats, harassment, and stalking. When the stuff being said can be hurtful or discriminating, too. Then it’s right to both confront and report, really.

Is this fandom stuff worth all this hassle?

I hope this long rant doesn’t bring you down too much. Despite all of this negativity, I believe fandom is a very positive thing. Most fans just want to enjoy the things they love with others who love the same things. That’s my main goal, too. Skam has been important to me and I want it to continue to be that. I want to keep the fandom as a space to share my love for the show. Thinking through these processes has helped me see a little more clearly how to do that. 

Ultimately, the Skam fandom is what we make of it, and we all can make it better. We can talk and share opinions and remind each other that we don’t support harassment, especially over ships or different versions of Skam. We can be decent to each other. I am not saying “be kind, always”, because in my opinion that phrase was never meant to stand alone without “being an asshole isn’t something you become, it’s a choice”. 

But yeah, that’s another discussion. My point is, if we all work together, we can manage to have a fandom that is open and tolerant and spreading love instead of fear and hate. And if that’s a little too optimistic, I’m gonna filter and blacklist and stick to “don’t like, don’t read” and see if it helps.

#skam #fandom #fandom processes #skamdom processes #toxic fandom #good fandom

[fandomcolourofmyskin]

R&R: Race-based Reminders

by @naruhearts || Jan 24 2018

- - - -

Today is a good day to lay down some key points:

1. White/white-identifying individuals must realize that they CANNOT speak for all POC, including their own POC friends. POC may be intersectionally and systematically oppressed and ostracized as a collective in white-constructed Western society, but differing ethnic minority groups possess differing experiences. It is racially inappropriate for white people to tell certain POC what is or isn’t offensive, since each varied POC experience is not painted with broad strokes; they aren’t the same.

What a white individual may perceive as offensive/non-offensive does NOT hold the same meanings and connotations for a POC.

2. Just because something is ‘fact’ doesn’t discount how POC interpret it and consume it. White people might correct POC who point out something in a TV show, take offense to it, and thus discuss it or make jokes about it. White viewers might be argumentative with POC viewers and claim that: “the characters aren’t racist! I’m pointing out the facts! Nothing indicates they’re racist and there’s no substantial basis for your accusations! The writers didn’t mean for it to be racist!”

“The writers didn’t mean for it to be racist” —> tries to push subconscious white supremacy under the rug, exempt white people from race-based responsibility and accountability, and make the POC reality invisible; I will talk about this more in the future, but white writers do not have to have CONSCIOUS AUTHORIAL INTENT in order to write something that is interpreted as potentially racist. White-painted historical narratives influence a white person’s behaviour and by socialized design, they can incorporate racism into ANYTHING they do, subconscious or not (due to internalization of white dominance).

Don’t be defensive. Media consumption by white people is entirely DISTINCT from media consumption by People of Colour.

Again, a white person CANNOT establish an objective view for POC, especially when it comes to societal mediums like media. If they think that TV show characters can be racist or if they think something in the literary narrative(s) potentially comes across as racist, they are 100% entitled to this belief (this is elaborated upon in later points). Refrain from overall defensiveness and LISTEN to POC. After all, POC are oppressed; white people are not.

***Please do NOT tell POC that they are “fake woke” if you aren’t POC yourself, even if you personally disagree with anything they said or did. This is a form of racial bullying.

3. Other POC groups lack the authority to exercise the N-word if they do not belong to the Black community. The N-word exists within the Black sociocultural context and is attached to historically unjust/oppressive narratives, policy development, and legal/institutional action against Black POC. It isn’t the business of other POC groups to contribute opinions about a Black person’s racism jokes or how they choose to perceive racism, just like it isn’t a Black POC’s business to contribute adjacent opinions about racism jokes or perceptions of racism of Chinese POC, Filipino POC etc.

***As a Filipina POC, I will never, for example, disclose or enforce an opinion about c***k jokes being thrown around by Chinese POC. Their respective racial space stays untouched.

4. The dimension of colourism —> very real. Light-skinned privilege is pervasive and underpins white privilege within the sociocultural Western context, where light-skinned individuals are either considered “not POC enough” or “not white enough”. If a dark-skinned POC states that other light-skinned POC are “not POC enough”, it is NOT a white person’s business to defend their light-skinned POC friend(s) without allowing or inviting those friends to speak (this is addressed in the following point).

5. A white person is entitled to their opinion - and yes, they are certainly entitled to defend their POC friend(s) - but their opinion ultimately does NOT matter nor does it hold importance because the racial discussion occurring between POCs excludes them in the first place. White people cannot relate (nor do they belong) within the underprivileged racial context in that POC lack systemic and institutional power/influence when it comes to their opinions, henceforth it’s NOT a priority for the white person’s opinion to be heard; it is more racially appropriate for white people to withhold such opinions and instead let the debate between POCs continue uninterrupted. People of Colour experience enough interruption and talking over by the predominantly White sphere of North American society.

The following excerpt from USA TODAY OPINION is highly applicable to whiteness and race-based discourse:

“Most people think of the Ku Klux Klan when they hear “white supremacy.” But the term just means that whiteness is the supreme value, which in the news media it is. As feminist writer Anushay Hossain noted to me, “Just the fact that Megyn Kelly feels she can have a conversation about race on television with three white people is the definition of white privilege.” Before anything offensive was said, there was already a problem” (Powers, 2018)

6. Do not put in argumentative or defensive interjections if POC/BIPOC (Black/Indigenous POC) attempt to address your racist actions, especially ones that are “invisible” to you and thus “can’t be racist behaviour” (aka white fragility). Trust the word(s) of POC/BIPOC people. We witness racism everyday as ethnic minority-labelled groups and can hence distinguish underlying racist patterns easily, from the obvious to the nuanced. We think of ourselves in racial terms and are able to describe how our lives are shaped by our race within, again, Whiteness-governed society; white people cannot do these things (fail to think of themselves in racial terms as a larger group; fail to describe how their own lives are shaped by their race) since they hold the (unearned) privilege to walk through life unaffected by social, cultural, and political systems that A. benefit white people, and B. disadvantage People of Colour (aka white privilege).

7. Another point: do not tokenize your POC friends. Saying that you cannot be racist “because you have POC friends” reduces your POC friends to nothing but caricatures who elevate your social status and erase your accountability and complicity. Racism does not manifest ONLY through obvious external attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, but through internal attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. Racism exists via subconscious systemic forces (i.e. social media) that permeate society in numerous ways.

In other words, racism is a multifaceted subconscious/conscious structure, “not an event” (DiAngelo, 2018).

8. Some common white myths: “a. I don’t see colour” b. “Focusing on race divides us” c. “It’s about class, not race” —> Firstly, saying one doesn’t see colour perpetuates erasure of the POC experience/reality. Secondly, race already divides us. Thirdly, we CANNOT talk about other systemic forces like socioeconomic class without addressing race. Race is inherently interweaved into other structural dimensions. It’s why BIPOC/POC are paid less than white employees/unequally treated in terms of job capability, struggle to find jobs, are unable to afford three-story suburban houses, and can never seem to find favour no matter how hard we work.

Here we go into the issue of legal structures —> Black people in the U.S., for example, were historically barred from purchasing land, investing their money, and seeking permanent lodging. In 1960s Canada, Indigenous POC were plucked from their homes, abused in residential schools, lost their land, and could not gain Canadian rights and citizenship unless they renounced their Aboriginal identity; the Canadian Chinese Immigrant Act of 1885 implemented the Chinese Head Tax to discourage Chinese POC from entering Canada after the Canadian Pacific Railway was created. Overall, POC were confined to financial poverty/kept from flourishing financially. Filipino immigrants in Canada, for example, tend to move into low-wage backdoor jobs involving the transfer of labour from white people to POC people e.g. nannies, factory workers, and foodservice (these include my Filipino relatives in these jobs), while white individuals tend to take up jobs of higher public status e.g. delegation, policy-making (Gibb & Wittman, 2012). In a predominantly white-privileged society, the BIPOC/POC financial reality lags.

***It’s not about “working hard to get to the top” — it’s about “working hard to eliminate racism that hinders us from getting to the top and staying there.” We will always be five steps behind white people today (who, underneath an individualistic ideology, think financial merit can be earned if one works hard enough regardless of race —> again this perpetuates the erasure of POC realities and ignores the POC financial hardship experience + systemic racist forces at play. We do not live in a meritocracy, but in a racial hierarchy). Historical racism is the reason for it.

9. Finally: appropriate language.

Refrain from using derogatory racial terms such as “coloured” and corresponding rhetoric when referring to People of Colour.

If you intend to be a non-BIPOC/non-POC ally, please expand your horizons on appropriate race-based term usage when engaging in racial discourse. Continuous education with POC is key!

#fandom racism #spn + racism #spn + white fragility #white fragility #white privilege #racism #-mod naruhearts #fandomcolourofmyskin #fcs #long post for ts #white narratives #white history #racism in fandom

[cuiplagalis]

Why So Anxious?: Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan on Anxiety

“That anxiety makes its appearance is the pivot upon which everything turns.” — Søren Kierkegaard | The Concept of Anxiety

Why has the number of anxiety disorders skyrocketed within the last 50 to 60 years? A good question. Based on prescription drug sales the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) estimates that more than 40 million people suffer from anxiety disorders in this country. But what is the cause of our anxiety? Human beings have long been acquainted with this affect, but at no other point in history has it had such a strong hold on humanity at large. It seems as though there’s a systemic problem here. Could it be that late capitalism itself has a intrinsic element that provokes anxiety in us? There certainly seems to be a correlation between the two, since this era of capitalism began around 1945. Let us see if we can gain an idea of the cause of the social ubiquity of this phenomenon.

In pursuing the cause of anxiety and of its increase, we should look to the insights of the great thinkers of anxiety: Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan. In my opinion, Lacan is the greatest thinker of anxiety since Heidegger. Lacan’s brilliance in relation to this affect is largely due to the fact that he was able to formulate a psychoanalytic mechanism for the assault of anxiety, that is, of the anxiety attack. Lacan’s most concentrated inquiry on this subject is found in his 1962–1963 seminar entitled Anxiety and it is this work that will be one of our main guides on the journey to the why of our anxiety. But first we must place ourselves in the proper context.

Kierkegaard on Anxiety

“Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.” — Søren Kierkegaard | The Concept of Anxiety

Kierkegaard was the first philosopher to examine anxiety in great depth. The Concept of Anxiety was, to my knowledge, the first book to ever focus exclusively on this phenomenon. In it Kierkegaard (writing under the pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis), formulated a concept of anxiety that would influence all of the thinkers who came after him that wrestled with existentialist motifs. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is without a determinate object, that is, it’s unintentional or unfocused. Of anxiety he wrote, “it is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite” (The Concept of Anxiety, 42). He went on to say, “anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility” (The Concept of Anxiety, 42). What anxiety is about is human freedom, but this is certainly no object, that is, it is no-thing. Anxiety turns out to be the condition of freedom and this is precisely why Kierkegaard claimed that ambiguity resides at the core of this affect; as he put, “Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 42). In other words, anxiety is paradoxically something unpleasant from which we derive enjoyment and pleasure as well as something enjoyable that causes us pain and discomfort.

Heidegger would also claim that there’s something pleasurable in this discomforting mood: “Along with the sober anxiety which brings us face to face with our individualized potentiality-for-Being, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility” (Being and Time, p. 358). Anxiety’s strange tension, i.e., pleasure in pain, also brings to mind the Lacanian concept of jouissance. But why is it that anxiety creates this tension? We find it enjoyable because it reveals to us our freedom, at the same time, we also find it unenjoyable precisely because it reveals to us our freedom. On the one hand, we love freedom for freedom’s sake, and on the other hand, the thought of being completely responsible for our actions and their unforeseen consequences is terrifying. Kierkegaard famously expressed this tension or “dizziness” in the following way:

“Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself.” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 61)

The image of a person standing at the edge of a skyscraper or a cliff really captures the temptation of anxiety. In this moment a person can surely be struck by the fear of falling, which is determinate and intentional in structure, but one can simultaneously be assailed by anxiety. In that moment of staring over the edge and down into the abyss, a frightful impulse suddenly rises up in the individual — the impulse to purposely throw oneself into the abyss. This experience provokes anxiety because we are confronted with the radical freedom we possess. Thus, for Kierkegaard, the point at which the individual becomes anxious (what Lacan referred to as the “anxiety-point”, that is, the mechanism through which the subject becomes anxious at a specific moment in time) is when he or she is confronted by the possibility of freedom. However, normally and usually, we simply make choices without having any anxiety, which is why Kierkegaard went on to qualify the relation between anxiety and freedom: “Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 49).

Kierkegaard centered his investigation of anxiety around what he believed to be the very first instance of the affect in human history, that is, the anxiety Adam experienced when God forbade him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Kierkegaard argued that Adam, in his state of innocence, couldn’t have truly understood what “good”, “evil” or “die” actually meant. But what Adam was able to understand was that he had been forbidden to eat of the tree’s fruit, i.e., that he was free and that his freedom had just been restricted. But as any parent knows, prohibiting a child from doing x only creates the desire for x in the child. Lacan wrote, “But what does experience teach us here about anxiety in its relation to the object of desire, if not simply that prohibition is temptation?” (Anxiety, p. 54). According to Kierkegaard, it was anxiety that led Adam to sin.

“What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety has now entered into Adam, and here again it is a nothing — the anxious possibility of being able. He has no conception of what he is able to do; otherwise — and this is what usually happens — that which comes late, the difference between good and evil, would have to be presupposed. Only the possibility of being able is present as a higher form of ignorance, as a higher expression of anxiety, because in a higher sense it both is and is not, because in a higher sense he both loves it and flees from it. After the word of prohibition follows the word of judgment: “You shall certainly die.” Naturally, Adam does not know what it means to die. On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent him from having acquired a notion of the terrifying, for even animals can understand the mimic expression and movement in the voice of a speaker without understanding the word. If the prohibition is regarded as awakening the desire, the punishment must also be regarded as awakening the notion of the deterrent. This, however, will only confuse things. In this case, the terror is simply anxiety. Because Adam has not understood what was spoken, there is nothing but the ambiguity of anxiety. The infinite possibility of being able that was awakened by the prohibition now draws closer, because this possibility points to a possibility as its sequence. In this way, innocence is brought to its uttermost. In anxiety it is related to the forbidden and to the punishment. Innocence is not guilty, yet there is anxiety as though it were lost.” (The Concept of Anxiety, pp. 44–45)

However, it’s only fitting, given the Janus-faced nature of anxiety, Kierkegaard also believed that this affect, while being capable of bringing about our downfall into sin, can also lead us to salvation. This is why he held that “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 155). Anxiety awakens us to the responsibility we have for our actions, which, in turn, can awaken us to our guilt and sin before God. Anxiety, thus, precedes self-consciousness and self-examination. It is the condition for the pursuit of authentic selfhood and true identity, which, for Kierkegaard, always involves having a passionate faith in God through Christ. The words of Hölderlin resound: “But where danger is, grows the saving power also.”

Early Heidegger on Anxiety

“Anxiety is anxious about naked Dasein as something that has been thrown into uncanniness.” — Martin Heidegger | Being and Time

As we have seen, it was Kierkegaard who first argued that anxiety is objectless. This concept of anxiety obviously had a big influence on Heidegger’s own thinking in Being and Time. For Kierkegaard, the mechanism of anxiety or the “anxiety-point” is the presencing of one’s own radical freedom and possibility, or, in the specific case of Adam, the moment of the prohibition — this recognition is the trigger of anxiety. In what follows, I’ll discuss Heidegger’s relation to the anxiety-point. But, first, we need to understand the early Heidegger’s phenomenological description of anxiety.

“That in the face of which one has anxiety is Being-in-the-world as such. What is the difference phenomenally between that in the face of which anxiety is anxious and that in the face of which fear is afraid? That in the face of which one has anxiety is not an entity within-the-world. Thus it is essentially incapable of having an involvement. This threatening does not have the character of a definite detrimentality which reaches what is threatened, and which reaches it with definite regard to a special factical potentiality-for-Being. That in the face of which one is anxious is completely indefinite. Not only does this indefiniteness leave factically undecided which entity within-the-world is threatening us, but it also tells us that entities within-the-world are not ‘relevant’ at all. Nothing which is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand within the world functions as that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. Here the totality of involvements of the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand discovered within-the-world, is, as such, of no consequence; it collapses into itself; the world has the character of completely lacking significance. In anxiety one does not encounter this thing or that thing which, as something threatening, must have an involvement.” (Being and Time, pp. 230–231)

So the “object” of anxiety, for the early Heidegger, is no object or entity at all, rather it is Being-in-the-world or existence (Existenz), i.e., Dasein’s mode of Being, and, remember, “The Being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity” (Being and Time, p. 26). So, for Heidegger, anxiety is objectless, but, yet, it still has some-”thing” positive about it, which to say the world itself. Heidegger put it like this:

“Accordingly, when something threatening brings itself close, anxiety does not ‘see’ any definite ‘here’ or ‘yonder’ from which it comes. That in the face of which one has anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. Anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious is. ‘Nowhere’, however, does not signify nothing: this is where any region lies, and there too lies any disclosedness of the world for essentially spatial Being-in. Therefore that which threatens cannot bring itself close from a definite direction within what is close by; it is already ‘there’, and yet nowhere; it is so close that it is oppressive and stifles one’s breath, and yet it is nowhere. In that in the face of which one has anxiety, the ‘It is nothing and nowhere’ becomes manifest. The obstinacy of the “nothing and nowhere within-the-world” means as a phenomenon that the world as such is that in the face of which one has anxiety. The utter insignificance which makes itself known in the “nothing and nowhere”, does not signify that the world is absent, but tells us that entities within-the-world are of so little importance in themselves that on the basis of this insignificance of what is within-the-world, the world in its worldhood is all that still obtrudes itself.” (Being and Time, p. 231)

“Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious.” (Being and Time, p. 232)

“That about which anxiety is anxious reveals itself as that in the face of which it is anxious — namely, Being-in-the-world.” (Being and Time, p. 233)

This amounts to saying that Dasein cares about nothing while overcome with anxiety. Nothing whatsoever matters to it because the world has momentarily ceased to be meaningful, i.e., ceased to signify. We must remember here the crucial distinction Heidegger made between the world and the ‘world’. The former being the totality of all referential totalities (systems of meanings, assignments, involvements, in-order-tos, toward-whichs and for-the-sake-of-whichs), whereas the latter would simply be the universe or the totality of objects (objects in the standard sense). Let’s filter this phenomenon of anxiety through Lacanian terms. This would mean that in anxiety the subject ceases to desire for a period of time, since the Symbolic order (reality) as such has ceased to have anything worth desiring in it. Of course, this would have to relate in some way to the subject’s relation to the objet a (the object-cause of desire). In anxiety something cuts off the desirability of the object at the core of the fundamental fantasy. If the formula of fantasy is $◊a, then in anxiety the lozenge itself gets barred. Desire presupposes a lack, but when desire itself is “castrated” we are faced with the uncanny lack of a lack. When meaning and significance are drained from the world all that is left for the senses is the full-on buzzing of beings in their alienating positivity (perhaps this is a glimpse of the Real?). It would seem as if desire itself gets castrated through the objet a vanishing momentarily from reality. Perhaps this is why anxiety can be such an ambivalent mood.

So, for the early Heidegger, we are anxious about Being-in-the-world (Symbolic order) as such, but what he has to say about anxiety isn’t exhausted in this one statement alone. He goes on to say that in anxiety Dasein essentially comes to see that it has a whole range of possibilities that das Man (the One, the They, or, in Lacanese, “the big Other”) conceals from it, and this realization enables Dasein to establish an authentic relation to itself. “The “They” does not permit us the courage for the anxiety in the face of death” (Being and Time, p. 298). So Heidegger says that anxiety is about both the world and death, but we can easily synthesize the two and say that anxiety is about Being-in-the-world-as-a-finitude. Authenticity (a relation to oneself and the world) always involves a resolute confrontation with death (Being-toward-death). One’s death is one’s “ownmost possibility” in Heidegger’s eyes, since one must face death absolutely alone, that is, no one can die your death for you or with you. In facing this possibility, Dasein begins to realize that it is finite, that its possibility of having possibilities has a indefinite expiration date, which means that it must stop wasting its time in gossip, inauthentic curiosity, superficiality, mindless consumerism, etc., and start existing for itself.

“Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities.” (Being and Time, p. 232)

“Anxiety liberates him from possibilities which ‘count for nothing’, and lets him become free for those which are authentic.” (Being and Time, p. 395)

“Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its ownmost potentiality-for-Being — that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.” (Being and Time, p. 232)

Here we can see Kierkegaard’s influence on Heidegger’s description of anxiety. For Heidegger, it “individualizes Dasein” and enables it to “become free” for its possibilities “which are authentic”. His concept of authenticity is basically an atheistic reconceptualization of Kierkegaard’s concept of Christian salvation (individualization via a faithful relation to God). Heidegger was also following in Kierkegaard’s footsteps in claiming anxiety reveals an individual’s freedom to his or her self, that is, the individual’s “Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself”.

The early Heidegger also perceived that anxiety has an essential connection to uncanniness, in fact, he seemed to identify the two, or, at the very least, seemed to make each one a side of the same coin. Whenever anxiety occurs we find that the world is suddenly alienated and unfamiliar. We’re abruptly no longer at home in the world — our tacit familiarity completely breaks down.

“Again everyday discourse and the everyday interpretation of Dasein furnish our most unbiased evidence that anxiety as a basic state-of-mind is disclosive in the manner we have shown. As we have said earlier, a state-of-mind makes manifest ‘how one is’. In anxiety one feels ‘uncanny’. Here the peculiar indefiniteness of that which Dasein finds itself alongside in anxiety, comes proximally to expression: the “nothing and nowhere”. But here “uncanniness” also means “not-being-at-home”. In our first indication of the phenomenal character of Dasein’s basic state and in our clarification of the existential meaning of “Being-in” as distinguished from the categorial signification of ‘insideness’, Being-in was defined as “residing alongside . . .”, “Being-familiar with . . .” This character of Being-in was then brought to view more concretely through the everyday publicness of the “they”, which brings tranquillized self-assurance — ‘Being-at-home’, with all its obviousness — into the average everydayness of Dasein. On the other hand, as Dasein falls, anxiety brings it back from its absorption in the ‘world’. Everyday familiarity collapses. Dasein has been individualized, but individualized as Being-in-the-world. Being-in enters into the existential ‘mode’ of the “not-at-home”. Nothing else is meant by our talk about ‘uncanniness’. (Being and Time, p. 233)

The last factor we must understand in Heidegger’s description of anxiety, which is of the utmost importance to grasp, is its relation to Dasein’s Being-towards-death. Heidegger wrote, “Anxiety arises out of Being-in-the-world as thrown Being-towards-death” (Being and Time, p. 395). Being-towards-death is an existential structure of Dasein’s existence, i.e., Being-in-the-world: “The ‘end’ of Being-in-the-world is death” (Being and Time, pp. 276–277). What is meant by “death” here isn’t the actual demise or physical death of a biological organism, but, rather, the existential death, or the possible death of Dasein. Existential death is something one “has” only as long as one is alive in the biological sense, so oddly enough, actual death is the negation of existential death — this latter form of death is a possibility, and a very special one at that. “Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein” (Being and Time, p. 294). Death, then, turns out to be “Dasein’s ownmost possibility” (Being and Time, p. 307).

“The full existential-ontological conception of death may now be defined as follows: death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s ownmost possibility — non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped. Death is, as Dasein’s end, in the Being of this entity towards its end.” (Being and Time, p. 303)

“We may now summarize our characterization of authentic Being-towards-death as we have projected it existentially: anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned freedom towards death — a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the “they”, and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious.” (Being and Time, p. 311)

Heidegger went on to say, “No one can take the Other’s dying away from him” (Being and Time, p. 284), i.e., only I can die my death and no one can die my death for me. What he was attempting to reveal was that no one can cease to project his or her self onto the possibilities established and opened up by my facticity (the individuality of thrownness) except for me. If existence is essentially projection, and if projection is grounded by individual facticity, then the possibility of the complete cessation of taking a stand on my existence is a possibility that is mine alone — it is a possibility only I have, thus making it my ownmost possibility. This must be viewed from the perspective of facticity-as-a-whole and not merely aspects of facticity. People may have in common the factical conditions necessary for both of them to do or be x, for example, many people have aspects of their facticity which allow them to become professional basketball players. This possibility is not something most Daseins’ facticities allow them to be. However, while Daseins may have certain aspects of their facticities in common, no two Daseins have their facticities-as-a-whole in common. The unity of a facticity always belongs to one Dasein and only one Dasein. Facticity-as-a-whole is the key to understanding Heidegger’s statements regarding death. The possibility of taking a stand on my facticity-as-a-whole is a possibility only I have, therefore, the possibility of the impossibility of the possibility of taking a stand on my factiticity-as-a-whole is a possibility which belongs only to me. This statement could be modified for the sake of clarity in the following way: The possibility of taking a stand on my facticity-as-a-whole is a possibility only I have, therefore, the possibility of losing this possibility is a possibility which belongs only to me.

Death (the possibility of the impossibility of having anymore possibilities) can be said to individuate Dasein in the sense that the confrontation with it leads Dasein to choose for itself. A situation can be responded to in many ways but most of the time Dasein responds to it as One does, that is, as das Man does. Take, for example, the lives of Jesus, Buddha, etc. They disclosed and established new worlds by responding to situations in ways that broke with the One. Living in total submission to das Man can make life easier and very comfortable, but it’s also unfulfilling in the long run. Dasein usually lives in quiet desperation, always desiring to own itself and take control of its destiny. But the banality of everydayness and the pressure to conform put on it by das Man tends to suppress the desire for authenticity. An experience or event is needed to give Dasein a push in the right direction. Facing the possibility and inevitability of death head on can cause a massive disruption in the dictatorship of das Man, and it is anxiety that serves as the condition of this resolute confrontation with death. “Anxiety brings Dasein face to face with its ownmost Being-thrown and reveals the uncanniness of everyday familiar Being-in-the-world” (Being and Time, p. 393).

When Dasein, through the disclosure of anxiety, realizes that the annihilation of the possibility of being its self could fall upon it at any moment, and that it has not truly been exploring all of the possibilities it has, then it can take control of itself in a vibrantly authentic way. When Dasein realizes that its death is just that — its death, it realizes that it is not absolutely identical with the One, since the One will continue to exist after Dasein’s death. Anxiety’s unconcealment and presencing of the possibility of death has the unique power to disclose to Dasein that it has possibilities open to it that were not given to it by the One. And seeing how Dasein is its possibilities, it has come into a fuller relation with itself and its existence. It can then resolutely make decisions for itself, which is a way of being individuated and unchained from the generalities of the They-self.

We can come at this function of anxiety in another way. In this mood the world suddenly becomes meaningless. Dasein momentarily ceases to skillfully cope in the world, that is, abruptly experiences the equipment it uses to take a stand on its existence to be utterly insignificant, which means that anxiety brings about a breakdown of selfhood, since Dasein is what it does with equipment. But the good thing about this is that it can serve as an existentiell reboot so to speak. Dasein is forced to face itself in its ontological nakedness, and this can allow it to see just how inauthentically it has been living. Anxiety is the path to authentic selfhood.

Now let’s discuss if Heidegger posited an anxiety-point. It’s true that authentically facing death can make one anxious, but people are anxious all the time without standing in the shadow of death. It seems to me that while death is certainly a sufficient condition for the emergence of anxiety, it isn’t a necessary one. Heidegger (both early and later), never really posited an absolute anxiety-point. His descriptions of the phenomenon of anxiety are brilliant, but it’s true that they leave us wanting more, namely, the cause of the onset of anxiety in all cases. There’s something arbitrary about holding that we simply become anxious at certain times. However, he most likely avoided pursuing the anxiety-point due to his phenomenological description of moods or attunements (Stimmungs) in general. He said, “A mood assails us” (Being and Time, p. 176). By this he means moods arbitrarily fall upon us or take us over, which, from a purely phenomenological perspective, appears completely accurate. In some sense, we’re at the complete disposal of moods. Of course, we can attempt to put ourselves in new situations that change our moods, but nothing can absolutely guarantee that this will in fact change them. Sometimes it can actually intensify the mood. Anxiety overtakes us at moments that seem to have nothing in common. Just for clarification, the early Heidegger believed that anxiety is without an object while still being about some-”thing”, which turned out to be Dasein’s Being-in-the-world-towards-death as such. This means that, for the early Heidegger, anxiety is about a mode of Being, but not about Being itself. At this point, we are ready to consider what the later Heidegger thought of anxiety.

Later Heidegger on Anxiety

“Being held out into the nothing — as Dasein is — on the ground of concealed anxiety is its surpassing of beings as a whole. It is transcendence.” — Martin Heidegger | What Is Metaphysics?

Heidegger reexamined the phenomenon of anxiety in ‘What is Metaphysics?’. “Anxiety reveals the nothing” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101). Simply put, the later Heidegger believed that anxiety is about the nothing: “Does such an attunement, in which man is brought before the nothing itself, occur in human existence? This can and does occur, although rarely enough and only for a moment, in the fundamental mood of anxiety” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 100). He goes on to say:

“That anxiety reveals the nothing man himself immediately demonstrates when anxiety has dissolved. In the lucid vision sustained by fresh remembrance we must say that that in the face of which and for which we were anxious was “properly” — nothing. Indeed: the nothing itself — as such — was there. With the fundamental mood of anxiety we have arrived at that occurrence in human existence is which the nothing is revealed and from which it must be interrogated.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101)

The nothing actually turns out to be Being — more accurately an aspect, function or activity that belongs to Being. He said, “The nothing does not remain the indeterminate opposite of beings but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 108). It’s important to note that this “nothing” isn’t the nothing of Dasein’s existence that Heidegger discussed in Being and Time — this nothing is not the nothing at the core of Dasein, but, rather, something unto itself. The nothing is the nihiliation or the slipping away of beings into meaninglessness within the clearing, which persists in its presence as the nihilation of beings occurs. But when all that stands before Dasein is the clearing itself, then all that is present is the nothing of Being insofar as the presencing or there-ing of what is normally present and there (beings) is not a thing at all. This is the ontological difference: “The Being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity” (Being and Time, p. 26). The two most important concepts for Heidegger throughout the entirety of his career were Being (Sein) and truth (aletheia/ἀλήϑεα). Being and truth are really the two essential structures of presencing as such, and the nothing of Being turns out to have an essential relation to truth:

“In the clear night of the nothing of anxiety the original openness of beings as such arises: that they are beings — and not nothing. But this “and not nothing” we add in our talk is not some kind of appended clarification. Rather, it makes possible in advance the revelation of beings in general. The essence of the originally nihilating nothing lies in this, that it brings Da-sein for the first time before beings as such.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 103)

With this in mind, the later Heidegger reemphasized that the “object” of anxiety is indeterminate, i.e., not a being, and that meaninglessness or indifference always accompanies anxiety:

“The nothing reveals itself in anxiety — but not as a being. Just as little is it given as an object. Anxiety is no kind of grasping of the nothing. All the same, the nothing reveals itself in and through anxiety, although, to repeat, not in such a way that the nothing becomes manifest in our malaise quite apart from beings as a whole. Rather, we said that in anxiety the nothing is encountered at one with beings as a whole.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 102)

“By this anxiety we do not mean the quite common anxiousness, ultimately reducible to fearfulness, which all too readily comes over us. Anxiety is basically different from fear. We become afraid in the face of this or that particular being that threatens us in this or that particular respect. Fear in the face of something is also in each case a fear for something in particular. Because fear possesses this trait of being “fear in the face of” and “fear for,” he who fears and is afraid is captive to the mood in which he finds himself. Striving to rescue himself from this particular thing, he becomes unsure of everything else and completely “loses his head.” Anxiety does not let such confusion arise. Much to the contrary, a peculiar calm pervades it. Anxiety is indeed anxiety in the face of . . ., but not in the face of this or that thing. Anxiety in the face of . . . is always anxiety for . . ., but not for this or that. The indeterminateness of that in the face of which and for which we become anxious is no mere lack of determination but rather the essential impossibility of determining it. In a familiar phrase this indeterminateness comes to the fore. In anxiety, we say, “one feels ill at ease.” What is “it” that makes “one” feel ill at ease? We cannot say what it is before which one feels ill at ease. As a whole it is so for one. All things and we ourselves sink into indifference. This, however, not in the sense of mere disappearance. Rather, in this very receding things turn toward us. The receding of beings as a whole that closes in on us in anxiety oppresses us. We can get no hold on things. In the slipping away of beings only this “no hold on things” comes over us and remains.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, pp. 100–101)

“In anxiety beings as a whole become superfluous. In what sense does this happen? Beings are not annihilated by anxiety, so that nothing is left. How could they be, when anxiety finds itself precisely in utter impotence with regard to beings as a whole? Rather, the nothing makes itself known with beings and in beings expressly as a slipping away of the whole.” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 102)

Heidegger goes on to give us a strikingly powerful description of the moment of anxiety and the breakdown of selfhood it causes; on other words, we lose the concrete content of ourselves — anxiety strips Dasein naked. Here Heidegger is basically saying that anxiety alienates us from our everyday identities that are grounded in the social positions or roles the world offers us to exist in. We, therefore, become uncanny to ourselves. In Lacanian terms, this would be both a breakdown in the ego with its secondary identifications in the Imaginary and in the chains of signifiers within the Symbolic the subject uses to represent itself.

We “hover” in anxiety. More precisely, anxiety leaves us hanging because it induces the slipping away of beings as a whole. This implies that we ourselves — we humans who are in being — in the midst of beings slip away from ourselves. At bottom therefore it is not as though “you” or “I” feel ill at ease; rather it is this way for some “one”. In the altogether unsettling experience of this hovering where there is nothing to hold onto, pure Da-sein is all that is still there. (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101)

Another strange feature of anxiety is that it lurks around us with a “repressed” or latent ubiquity: “The original anxiety in existence is usually repressed. Anxiety is there. It is only sleeping” (Basic Writings, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 106). The later Heidegger thought that Dasein is always in a perpetual state of anxiety, but on random occasions it explicitly makes itself known.

Original anxiety can awaken in existence at any moment. It needs no unusual event to rouse it. Its sway is as thoroughgoing as its possible occasionings are trivial. It is always ready, though it only seldom springs, and we are snatched away and left hanging. (Basic Writings, What Is Metaphysics?, p. 106)

To summarize, for the later Heidegger, anxiety is about the nothing, which is essentially Being itself (the difference between Being and beings). Now that we’ve clarified both Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s concepts of anxiety, we are ready to move on to a discussion of Lacan’s radically different concept of the affect.

Lacan on Anxiety

“The most striking manifestation of this object a, the signal that it is intervening, is anxiety.” — Jacques Lacan | Anxiety

Unlike Kierkegaard and Heidegger, Lacan believed anxiety has an object, or, as he put it “it is not without an object” (Anxiety, p. 89). But this object isn’t an ordinary kind of object — it’s the objet petit a (also referred to as “objet a”, “the Lacanian object”, “the lost object”, “the remainder” and simply “a”. This object is closely related to three of Lacan’s other concepts: 1. fantasy, 2. jouissance, 3. the Real. The concept of this object is arguably the most difficult to understand out of all of the Lacanian concepts, but it’s absolutely necessary to get at least a preliminary understanding of it in order to follow Lacan’s thinking on anxiety, since the two (objet a and anxiety) are essentially connected: “This year, the object a is taking centre stage in our topic. It has been set into the framework of a Seminar that I’ve titled Anxiety because it is essentially from this angle that it’s possible to speak about it, which means moreover that anxiety is the sole subjective translation of this object” (Anxiety, p. 100).

Lacan also said of the objet a that “it only steps in, it only functions, in correlation with anxiety” (Anxiety, p. 86). Throughout the course of this seminar, Lacan gives us different definitions of anxiety and it’s not immediately apparent that these are all compatible with each other. This seminar was given at the point in Lacan’s career when he was rethinking many of his essential concepts, so it has a very exploratory feel to it. One gets the impression that Lacan was thinking out loud while giving this series of lectures. But before we consider the different definitions, we must answer, to some degree, the question what is the Lacanian object? Žižek offers us a helpful analogy in the pursuit of this answer.

To mention the final example: the famous MacGuffin, the Hitchcockian object, the pure pretext whose sole role is to set the story in motion but which is in itself ‘nothing at all’ — the only significance of the MacGuffin lies in the fact that it has some significance for the characters — that it must seem to be of vital importance to them. The original anecdote is well known: two men are sitting in a train; one of them asks: ‘What’s that package up there in the luggage rack?’ ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.’ ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’ ‘Well, it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘Well, then, that’s not a MacGuffin.’ There is another version which is much more to the point: it is the same as the other, with the exception of the last answer: ‘Well, you see how efficient it is!’ — that’s a MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is none the less efficient. Needless to add, the MacGuffin is the purest case of what Lacan calls objet petit a: a pure void which functions as the object-cause of desire. (The Sublime Object of Ideology, pp. 183–184)

What we must first understand about the Lacanian object is that it’s not an object in the standard sense of the word. Put another way, this object is not the object of the metaphysical tradition — paradoxically, it is a “substantial” lack. This “object” is not a present-at-hand entity. It does not consist of atoms and it cannot be weighed, or measured, or experimented on, i.e., by its very nature it is beyond the reach of science. This virtual object also eludes the traditional phenomenologist, since one can only catch a glimpse of it at work while being situated within the psychoanalytic horizon. In other word’s, this object only makes itself known in the clinical setting, and this is precisely why it’s of the utmost importance to always connect Lacan’s concepts back to actual analysis. It was only because of the symbolic position Lacan occupied as an analyst that he was able to sense such an evasive “phenomenon” as the objet a.

Simply put, the objet petit a is the “object” that causes desire: “To set our target, I shall say that the object a — which is not to be situated in anything analogous to the intentionality of a noesis, which is not the intentionality of desire — is to be conceived as the cause of desire. To take up an earlier metaphor, the object lies behind desire” (Anxiety, p. 101). The objet a is the “object” we lost upon entering the Symbolic order, that is, the register of language, custom, social necessities, the Law, etc. Lacan says, “The objet a is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has separated itself off as organ. This serves as a symbol of lack, that is to say, of the phallus, not as such, but in so far as it is lacking. It must, therefore, be an object that is, firstly, separable and, secondly, that has some relation to the lack” (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, p. 101).

For Lacan, “symbolic castration” or “alienation” — basically socialization — involves the traumatic and liberatory loss of the maternal body, i.e., preoedipal jouissance. This blissful tension is the child’s whole world prior to the onset of the Oedipus complex. But this process eventually leads to the signifier (the Name-of-the-Father) “cutting” the child away from the full presence of its own jouissance and goading it to repress the signifier of the mother’s desire (the imaginary phallus), which brings about the inscription of the subject of the unconscious — of course, this is only how the Oedipus complex unfolds for “healthy” and “normal” neurotics. In the simplest terms, for most people what life is all about, unbeknownst to them, is their relation to objet a: “Effectively, everything turns around the subject’s relation to a” (Anxiety, p. 112). Yet it should be said that this object is not like an ordinary lost object. Sean Homer clarified this for us:

The objet a is not, therefore, an object we have lost, because then we would be able to find it and satisfy our desire. It is rather the constant sense we have, as subjects, that something is lacking or missing from our lives. We are always searching for fulfilment, for knowledge, for possessions, for love, and whenever we achieve these goals there is always something more we desire; we cannot quite pinpoint it but we know that it is there. This is one sense in which we can understand the Lacanian real as the void or abyss at the core of our being that we constantly try to fill out. The objet a is both the void, the gap, and whatever object momentarily comes to fill that gap in our symbolic reality. What is important to keep in mind here is that the objet a is not the object itself but the function of masking the lack. (Jacques Lacan, pp. 87–88)

What, at bottom, we desire, without consciously knowing it, is a sense of wholeness and completion that we once had with our mothers (or primary caregivers). The loss of the mother establishes a fundamental fantasy within the subject of the unconscious, and this fantasy will go on to shape all of the ego’s conscious pursuits. Of course, the ego isn’t aware that what it desires isn’t the cause of desire in and of itself. The structure of fantasy, at least for the average person, is $◊a, which means the barred (lacking) subject of the unconscious ($) desires (◊) the objet petit a (a). Bruce Fink explains all this well:

[M]an’s desire to be desired by the Other, exposes the Other’s desire as object a. The child would like to be the sole object of its mother’s affections, but her desire almost always goes beyond the child: there is something about her desire which escapes the child, which is beyond its control. A strict identity between the child’s desire and hers cannot be maintained; her desire’s independence from her child’s creates a rift between them, a gap in which her desire, unfathomable to the child, functions in a unique way. This approximate gloss on separation posits that a rift is induced in the hypothetical mother-child unity due to the very nature of desire and that this rift leads to the advent of object a. Object a can be understood here as the remainder produced when that hypothetical unity breaks down, as a last trace of that unity, a last reminder thereof. By cleaving to that rem(a)inder, the split subject, though expulsed from the Other, can sustain the illusion of wholeness; by clinging to object a, the subject is able to ignore his or her division. That is precisely what Lacan means by fantasy, and he formalizes it with the matheme $◊a, which is to be read: the divided subject in relation to object a. It is in the subject’s complex relation to object a (Lacan describes this relation as one of “envelopment-development-conjunction-disjunction” [Écrits, p. 280]) that he or she achieves a phantasmatic sense of wholeness, completeness, fulfillment, and well-being. When analysands recount fantasies to their analyst, they are informing the analyst about the way in which they want to be related to object a, in other words, the way they would like to be positioned with respect to the Other’s desire. Object a, as it enters into their fantasies, is an instrument or plaything with which subjects do as they like, manipulating it as it pleases them, orchestrating things in the fantasy scenario in such a way as to derive a maximum of excitement therefrom. (The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, pp. 59–60)

Fantasy isn’t merely a falsification of realty — it is our window or portal to reality. Žižek wrote,”With regard to the basic opposition between reality and imagination, fantasy is not simply on the side of imagination; fantasy is, rather, the little piece of imagination by which we gain access to reality — the frame that guarantees our access to reality, our ‘sense of reality’ (when our fundamental fantasy is shattered, we experience the ‘loss of reality’)” (The Žižek Reader, p. 122). To put this in Heideggerian terms, for Žižek, fantasy is the individual aspect of the clearing, fantasy is the mineness of disclosure as such. What makes the shared and social clearing mine is the fantasy through which I comport myself towards it. For Heidegger, authentic-Being-towards-death is that on the basis of which Dasein could be truly individuated, but Žižek thinks we’re always already individuated in relation to das Man (the big Other, the Symbolic Order) before we ever have a resolute confrontation with death, since fantasy is the individualizing existentiale of Dasein’s existence. Fantasy is thus the pre-authentic individuality of Dasein. With fantasy (individuality) and das Man (generality) as both existentialia, Dasein is ontologically a paradoxical being. However, and here’s the problem, our social identities, as we experience them everyday, are conditioned by the signifier (the differential nature of language), which means that to get what we want would be to lose it, since it would be the destruction of our selves. Thus, the “lost” object, this excess, this left-over of the Real, is a surplus of enjoyment (jouissance) we must remain separated from, even though it is us in strange sense. But what does it mean to speak of the objet petit a as a “surplus jouissance”? Once again we turn to Bruce Fink for clarification:

In Seminar XVI, Lacan equates object (a) with Marx’s concept of surplus value. As that which is most highly prized or valued by the subject, object (a) is related to the former gold standard, the value against which all other values (e.g., currencies, precious metals, gems, etc.) were measured. For the subject, it is that value he or she is seeking in all of his or her activities and relations. Surplus value corresponds in quantity to what, in capitalism, is called “interest” or “profit”: it is that which the capitalist skims off the top for him or herself, instead of paying it to the employees. (It also goes by the name of “reinvestment capital,” and by many other euphemisms as well.) It is, loosely speaking, the fruit of the employees’ labor. When, in legal documents written in American English, someone is said to have the right to the fruit or “usufruct” of a particular piece of property or sum of money held in trust, it means that that person has a right to the profit generated by it, though not necessarily to the property or money itself. In other words, it is a right, not of ownership, but rather of “enjoyment.” In everyday French, you could say that that person has la jouissance of said property or money. In the more precise terms of French finance, that would mean that he or she enjoys, not the land, buildings, or capital itself (la nue-pmpriété; literally, “naked property”), but merely its excess fruits, its product above and beyond that required to reimburse its upkeep, cultivation, and so on — in a word, its operating expenses. (Note that in French legal jargon, jouissance is more closely related to possession.) The employee never enjoys that surplus product: he or she “loses” it. The work process produces him or her as an “alienated” subject (S), simultaneously producing a loss, (a). The capitalist, as Other, enjoys that excess product, and thus the subject finds him or herself in the unenviable situation of working for the Other’s enjoyment, sacrificing him or herself for the Other’s jouissance — precisely what the neurotic most abhors! Like surplus value, this surplus jouissance may be viewed as circulating “outside” of the subject in the Other, It is a part of the libido that circulates hors corps.” (The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, p. 96)

But what is the essential relation between objet a and anxiety? Considering that Anxiety is about 340 pages long, Lacan obviously said a great many things about the affect that we cannot discuss here, but there are three essential aspects of anxiety Lacan pointed out that we must understand. First, anxiety is about the lack of a lack. Second, anxiety is a signal from the Real. Third, anxiety is about not knowing what the Other wants from you. We’ll discuss each one and, then, see if we can form a unified concept of the three of them.

Anxiety is about the lack of a lack — a presence of something that was and/or is supposed to be absent. Anxiety is about some overbearing presence that threatens to consume the subject. Lacan, controversially I might add, argues that the concept of separation anxiety is misguided to some degree. It’s not the absence of the mother that brings forth anxiety in the child, but, rather, her presence:

Don’t you know that it’s not longing for the maternal breast that provokes anxiety, but its imminence? What provokes anxiety is everything that announces to us, that lets us glimpse, that we’re going to be taken back up onto the lap. It is not, contrary to what is said, the rhythm of the mother’s alternating presence and absence. The proof of this is that the infant revels in repeating this game of presence and absence. The security of presence is the possibility of absence. The most anguishing thing for the infant is precisely the moment when the relationship upon which he’s established himself, of the lack that turns him into desire, is disrupted, and this relationship is most disrupted when there’s no possibility of any lack, when the mother is on his back all the while, and especially when she’s wiping his backside. (Anxiety, pp. 53–54)

To truly understand this passage, we must state that for Lacan there really isn’t one objet a, that is, we shouldn’t always speak of the Lacanian object. Strictly speaking, there are four types of objet a — there’s an objet a that corresponds to each of the drives, or, more accurately, around which each drive circles. Thus, in relation to the oral drive there is breast-as-objet-a; the anal drive circles around feces-as-objet-a; to the scopic drive corresponds gaze-as-objet-a; and to the invocatory drive there is voice-as-objet-a. Of course, these drive-objects are always susceptible to the substitutive (metaphoric/metonymic) function of desire and drive, e.g., money can take on and fulfill the function that shit had as the anal object. Lacan said in the above passage that “it’s not longing for the maternal breast that provokes anxiety, but its imminence”. What he’s getting at here is that it’s the presence of objet a, in this case breast-as-objet-a, that causes anxiety. But why should this be so? The reason why is because the presence and proximity of objet a is the presence of the desiring subject’s potential satisfaction and completion, which, in turn, is the annihilation of the subject ($) qua lack-of-being. This is precisely why Lacan held that “desire is a defense, a defense against going beyond a limit in jouissance” (Écrits, “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire”, p. 699).

The subject only exists as a desiring lack, so the presence of objet a, the Real of jouissance, is the presence of imaginary-symbolic death. For fantasy to function, objet a must remain off its stage or out of its frame — that is, it must remain something absent that we’re unconsciously searching for (◊) in order to work. In Heideggerian terms, for the objet a to enter the scene of fantasy is for it to become unready-to-hand (remember that Heidegger argued in Being and Time that usually equipment only becomes present to us when it cease to work). For fantasy to function, objet a must withdraw like equipment: “The a, desire’s support in the fantasy, isn’t visible in what constitutes for man the image of his desire” (Anxiety, p. 35). On this theme, Lacan also wrote: “The base of the function of desire is, in a style and in a form that have to be specified each and every time, the pivotal object a insomuch as it stands, not only separated, but always eluded, somewhere other than where it sustains desire, and yet in a profound relation to it” (Anxiety, p. 252). Of course, it goes without saying that the objet a is not a piece of standard equipment, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it is like equipment in some respects.

So when Lacan claims that anxiety is a signal from the Real, we can now understand that what anxiety is warning us of is our imminent demise (Symbolic death). Here “signal” basically means what Peirce meant by “index”. An index or an indexical sign is a sign that “points” to its referent, e.g., smoke points to fire, a scab points to a past injury, and, for Lacan, anxiety points to objet a. Anxiety qua signal, then, turns out to be an ontological warning mechanism; it alerts us to the proximity of the lack of a lack that can shatter our identities.

Now that we see how the first two aspects of anxiety relate to each other, let’s consider the third one: anxiety is about not knowing what the Other wants from you. To illustrate this Lacan presented a very memorable image, though one that isn’t immediately clear.

For those who weren’t there, I’ll recall the fable, the apologue, the amusing image I briefly set out before you. Myself donning the animal mask with which the sorcerer in the Cave of the Three Brothers is covered, I pictured myself faced with another animal, a real one this time, taken to be gigantic for the sake of the story, a praying mantis. Since I didn’t which mask I was wearing, you can easily imagine that I had some reason not to feel reassured in the event that, by chance, this mask might have been just what it took to lead my partner into some error as to my identity. The whole thing was well underscored by the fact that, as I confessed, I couldn’t see my own image in the enigmatic mirror of the insect’s ocular globe. (Anxiety, p. 6)

What Lacan has in mind is the hypothetical experience of standing before a giant praying mantis while wearing a mantis mask without knowing what type it is. In other words, you don’t know if the mask you’re wearing is the mask of a female mantis, a male mantis or even a baby mantis. In this moment, you would be completely anxious about what the giant insect desires of you, since you have no way to unconceal the specific nature of its desire. Lacan said that this image of being present in the presence of the giant praying mantis “bore a relation to the desire of the Other” (Anxiety, p. 22). What, then, makes us anxious is not knowing what the Other wants from us (Che vuoi?). But why should this be? It most certainly can be a frightening thing to find yourself as the object of the Other’s desire, or to be connected in some way to one of the Other’s objet a(s) as the organ of surplus jouissance. “The nightmare’s anxiety is felt, properly speaking, as that of the Other’s jouissance” (Anxiety, p. 61). But how can we reconcile this aspect of anxiety with the other two? Desire (◊) is one of three structures of fantasy, therefore, no desire = no fantasy. Desire arises from the cut of the signifier — the “scalpel” of the big Other. Lacan said, “Desire is always what is inscribed as a repercussion of the articulation of language at the level of the Other” (My Teaching, p.38).

But as Lacan loved to emphasize, “Man’s desire is the desire of the Other” (Anxiety, p. 22). This can be understand in three different ways: 1. desire is the desire for what the Other desires (I want what the Other wants), 2. desire desires the Other’s desire (as Cheap Trick put it, “I want you to want me”), 3. desire itself emerges out of the Other’s desire (for example, the reason why parents have children, i.e., babies that will become desiring subjects, is because they themselves desire to be happy). However, owing to the fact that desire is always related to the Other’s desire, the Other’s desire can actually block us from the object of our desire. The melodies of desire are far from harmonious. Thus, the Other’s desire can actually break apart our fantasies — the desire of the Other is always potentially a threat. Now, insofar as desire always has a metaphoric and metonymic relation to its object, desire itself can always “slide” away, therefore, making it beyond epistemological mastery. Yet in getting to know a person, you come to have a relative familiarity with his or her desire, and this brings about a sense of security in connection to your own desire, since the radical Otherness of his or her desire has diminished. Nevertheless, the Other’s desire can always, to put it bluntly, fuck up our own desire. While Lacan focused on how the proximity or nearness of the presence of objet a is what provokes anxiety, we must also remember that a entity can become conspicuous by its very remoteness. Just as equipment can become present to us as unready-to-hand (nonfunctional or inoperative) in its proximity, so, too, can it become unready-to-hand by missing.

Similarly, when something ready-to-hand is found missing, though its everyday presence has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice of it, this makes a break in those referential contexts which circumspection discovers. Our circumspection comes up against emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was ready-to-hand with, and what it was ready-to-hand for. The environment announces itself afresh. (Being and Time, p. 105)

Whenever a person is faced with the possibility of her fantasy never coming true, she is suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety. And seeing how the Other has it’s own fantasy that often is in conflict with her own, it’s no wonder why not knowing what the Other desires from her can also make her anxious. To find oneself connected to the Other’s objet a is to have your own fantasy threatened, since, in your fantasy you are not the objet a, but, rather, the barred subject in pursuit of it (unless you happen to be a pervert and not an obsessive). So here’s the final formulation of the Lacanian concept of anxiety: anxiety is the affect that functions as a signal from the Real that alerts us to the lack of a lack, the presencing of the proximity of the objet a on the stage of fantasy, which is always a stage on which the Other’s desire is positioned as a threat to the subject’s desire, that is, positioned to drive away the subject’s objet a into remoteness. For objet a to be operative it must not be too close or too far away. It can’t be on stage nor can it be in the lobby — it must be in the audience.

We have arrived at the end of our summaries of the concepts of anxiety formulated by Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan. We can now see the precise similarities and differences between them. From a Heideggerian perspective, we can say that Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety is ontico-ontological (more specifically existentiell-existential), i.e., it’s “object” is the Being of Dasein, i.e., freedom or transcendence. Freedom isn’t an object in the present-at-hand sense, but it is related to the Being of a being. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is about human freedom which is the possibility of having possibilities, thus, anxiety is anxious about a possibility. The early Heidegger’s concept of anxiety is also ontico-ontological (existentiell-existential), since it pertains to the totality of Dasein’s existential structures (existentialia). What anxiety is anxious about is Dasein’s Being-in-the-world — especially Being-toward-death, which is a possibility, and in recognizing the “object” of anxiety as a possibility, the early Heidegger was once again thinking along similar lines as Kierkegaard. The later Heidegger’s concept of anxiety is ontological insofar as the “object” of anxiety is the nothing (Being), which is to say anxiety has absolutely no object at all, since, unlike Kierkegaard and the early Heidegger, it’s “object” isn’t even a possibility belonging to a being. Lacan’s concept is ontic, since anxiety is about an object (though a virtual one) — the object is the objet petit a.

Oedipus in Eden

Since Lacan’s concept of anxiety is arguably the most difficult to understand, let us take a moment and see how it applies to the “first” instance of anxiety — that of Adam’s. Let’s read the story of the Fall from a Lacanian perspective. As we saw, Adam couldn’t understand the prohibition of the tree. But why? Because the Garden of Eden as a whole was Adam for Adam: Eden was the Mother without any Otherness (Mother-as-I). From his perspective, there was no mediation between himself and Eden-as-Mother. The prohibition of the signifier didn’t function because there was no Other for Adam. The “Other” is here the fundamental Heim (home), thus, not the Other at all. Prohibition and the signifier presuppose the Other. God’s prohibition of Eden as such was the instance of the function of the Name-of-the-Father.

God’s first prohibition is actually the first flicker of Otherness — Adam can neither assimilate it nor reject it. It means that, strictly speaking, signification presupposes Otherness, but the signifier itself is the Other in a larval form. The signifier has not yet cut the child away from the Mother, making the Mother the (m)Other. After God issued the prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam started to experience lack for the first time. This prohibition (Name-of-the-Father) set the process of Adam’s symbolic castration or alienation in motion, thus, transforming him as a proto-subject into a proto-barred subject. I say that he was a “proto-barred” subject here because he couldn’t have fully repressed the phallus (the signifier of the mother’s desire) under the Name-of-the-Father at this point and thereby become a “healthy” neurotic. But why is this so? The paternal metaphor couldn’t fully function here insofar as Adam didn’t really understand the prohibition. While Adam had a relation with the real father, that is, God, at this point, he still didn’t have a full relation to the symbolic father. Of course, here the real father will be the instance of the symbolic father or the Law.

Now, it’s only with this first prohibition that the preoedipal triangle (Adam-Eden-phallus) begins to take shape. The first prohibition disrupted Adam’s “preoedipal” unity or jouissance with his Mother (Eden); it drove a wedge between him and his enjoyment of the “breast” (the fruits of Eden’s trees), which, in turn, transforms the Mother into the (m)Other. This separation led him to desire the blissful unity he once knew and initiated his desire. It also initiated his first hypothesis: the phallus. Eden would be the symbolic mother and God would be the real mother (as well as the real father). On some level the two had to have coincided. Eden fulfilled the function of the mother, i.e., it met all of Adam’s physical needs — it was his caretaker. Yet Eden had no desire of its own — but God did. And contained within the first prohibition is the desire of the (m)Other. And just like the giant praying mantis, God’s (the Other’s) unknown desire threw Adam into anxiety, thus, giving rise to Adam’s own freedom. Freedom is born from anxiety before the Other’s desire (God’s desire in the case of Adam).

There is no freedom outside the traumatic encounter with the opacity of the Other’s desire: freedom does not mean that I simply get rid of the Other’s desire — I am, as it were, thrown into my freedom when I confront this opacity as such, deprived of the fantasmatic cover that tells me what the Other wants from me. In this difficult predicament, full of anxiety, when I know that the Other wants something from me, without knowing what this desire is, I am thrown back into myself, compelled to assume the risk of freely determining the coordinates of my desire. (The Puppet and the Dwarf, p. 129)

Thanks to Žižek, we can see how to connect Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety to Lacan’s. Now, insofar as the prohibition cut Adam away from a part of himself, his jouissance, it will come as no surprise what role Eve plays in this reading. Obviously, she’s Adam’s objet a, the lost object of jouissance. Eve was made out of Adam’s rib, i.e., a lost part of him, and remember that the objet a is the remainder of the subject — the subject Otherized and externalized. Adam’s anatomical incompleteness fittingly symbolizes his ontological incompleteness. So just as the objet a functions as the substitute for the phallus and the mother, Eve was the substitute for the maternal body of Eden. But how are we to think about Adam’s choice to eat of the fruit? How are we to conceive of his passage to the act (passage à l’acte), his exit from the Symbolic Order?

We must look to Lacan’s interpretation of one of Freud’s patients: the young homosexual girl. The young women, Freud reported, was spotted by her father while walking on the street with the woman she loved. At this moment he cast an angry and disapproving look at his daughter. After receiving this glance, she immediately hurried off and threw herself over a bridge, yet she didn’t die, since it was actually the side of a cutting onto a railway line, that is, she landed on some kind of platform. We must understand that her father’s gaze was the objet a; it was the cause of her desire for her beloved and determined everything she was doing at the time. Lacan argues in Anxiety that this suicide attempt was the young woman’s passage to the act; it was not an instance of acting out, since it was not a message addressed to anyone. Symbolization had become impossible for the young woman in this situation. Confronted with her father’s desire (desire like that of the giant praying mantis), she was suddenly consumed with an uncontrollable anxiety and reacted in an impulsive way by totally identifying herself with her father’s gaze (gaze-as-objet-a). Thus she “fell down” like the objet a, the leftover of the signifier.

God’s prohibition was what caused Adam’s desire to come into existence and led to Adam’s lack-of-being. The objet a has been lost, yet is embodied in Eve. When Eve tempts Adam with the fruit, it is the temptation of ontological wholeness. Adam had been fantasizing about this ever since the prohibition. In eating the fruit he sought to break free from the Symbolic identity bestowed on him by the Name-of-the-Father by merging with both Eden and Eve. Here Adam is made anxious by the presence of Eve’s voice-as-objet-a and gaze-as-objet-a while also being made anxious by not knowing what the Other (God) desires of him. Adam eats so as to escape into the Real of jouissance, thus, negating the possibility of his own freedom. We can easily connect this to Kierkegaard’s Adam. The fruit and Eve are both objet a/jouissance, thereby, both are self-destruction. Here Adam is faced with the possibility of Lacanian self-destruction (passage to the act/return to the Real) and with the possibility of Christian self-destruction (sin). The point is that Lacanian anxiety and Kierkegaardian anxiety are both about freedom to some degree. Well, Adam ate the fruit and the rest is “history”. We can now ask ourselves the question concerning why our era is so anxious.

Enframing and Capital

For Heidegger, the real problem our epoch is facing isn’t an ontic one, for example, the problems concerning new advancements in technology, revitalizing the middle class, terrorism, income inequality, or how people will live in society with the decline in the quality and quantity of job opportunities. Of course, these are serious problems, but the biggest problem of all that we’re facing is ontological, which also happens to be the most invisible and subtle one. This problem is our epochal understanding of Being: enframing (Gestell). We’re in a very dangerous place in the history of Beyng, since it is Beyng itself that is the danger. Heidegger wrote, “Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological” (Basic Writings, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 325). This basically means that our technological understanding of Beyng or background familiarity “teaches” us that to be a being is to be usable-then-disposable. By “standing-reserve”, Heidegger means waiting to be used up. Enframing most fundamentally means extracting more out of x than is directly given by x and, then, storing up this “more” while discarding x itself. This is precisely the structure and movement of capital, i.e., surplus value. Capitalism is, then, the economization of enframing. The Event of enframing was and is ground of the capitalist world. And just as Christianity was a marginal practice operating in the background of the Roman world, so, too, was usury a marginal practice in the Christian world. Usury (M→M’) was capital in its larval form.

For Heidegger, we don’t fundamentally relate to entities as the Greeks did. For the Greeks, to be was to be phusis: a wondrous rising up and presencing for a little while before falling back into unconcealment.

In the age of the first and definitive unfolding of Western philosophy among the Greeks, when questioning about beings as such and as a whole received its true inception, beings were called phusis. This fundamental Greek word for beings is usually translated “nature.” We use the Latin translation natura which really means “to be born,” “birth.” But with this Latin translation, the originary content of the Greek word phusis is already thrust aside, the authentic philosophical naming force of the Greek word is destroyed . . . Now, what does the word phusis say? It says what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding and holding itself and persisting in appearance — in short, the emerging-abiding sway . . . phuein means to grow, to make grow. (Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 14–15)

In both of this books, Richard Capobianco does a masterful job of explaining what Heidegger is getting whenever he talks of phusis or the “Ur-phenomenon” of the Greek world:

The Ur-phenomenon that he always had in view, that he understood ancient Greek thinking to have originarily brought into view, albeit glancingly, with the word eon, Being, is the temporal-spatial, finite and negatived, appearing of beings in their beingness, which calls forth and even compels from the human being (Dasein) a cor-respondence in language that allows both what appears — and appearing itself — to be made manifest meaningfully. (Engaging Heidegger, p. 4)

Yet it was, after all, the proper character of Nature-physis, as well as the proper relation of Dasein to Nature-physis, that most concerned him. With respect to this core matter, his view was perfectly clear . . . Nature-physis is the temporal manifestation of beings in their beingness, and Dasein dwells in the midst of this manifestness. The “Greek experience” is the counter, the foil, to our modern philosophical and psychological preoccupation with grounding everything in the “subject” — and it is the remedy as well. To recover the “Greek experience” is for us to recover the joyful wonder and astonishment at the inexhaustible giving-showing-shining-forth of all things and to accept with humility the limit of all our saying, language, meaning concerning what is. To the contrary of certain recent readings of Heidegger, the core matter of his thinking is not our meaning-making, as important as this is, but rather what calls for and calls forth meaning, namely, Nature-physis-Being. No matter the breadth and depth of our words and meanings, we do not — we cannot — exhaust the manifestation of Nature. (Heidegger’s Way of Being, p. 47)

Phusis is like a blossoming, so, to the Greeks, to be meant to “blossom”. The Christian understanding of Being was different. For them, Being was ens creatum: to be is to be a creation of God. Both phusis and ens creatum instill in a person a certain reverence for beings. They lead us to value beings just the way they are, qualitatively speaking. By contrast, enframing does not. It leads us to ignore the natural qualities of beings and find ways to quantitatively exploit and transform them for our own purposes. The technological understanding of Being has us existing as if all of reality (the totality of entities) is there simply to meet human needs, i.e., it’s nothing more than a means to an end — our end (perhaps in more ways than one). In enframing, it’s as if Beyng, instead of God, said to us, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). This is incredibly dangerous! It’s obviously the main reason why we are now living in what John David Ebert calls “the Age of Catastrophe” (the age of living with one climate change related disaster after another).

There seems to be no escaping it. With record tornados and floods in the Midwest; a massive drought from California to Florida; a gigantic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan; anomalous floods in Vermont and New Jersey unleashed by Hurricane Irene; more flooding in Australia; an earthquake in New Zealand; devastating fires in Texas; and another earthquake in Turkey, the year 2011 has gone down as the most expensive for “natural” disasters ever. Catastrophe, it seems, is becoming something of a way of life for us. Indeed, it has become the new norm of civilization. But, of course, the word “catastrophe” means a “reversal of what is expected.” It is a Greek word, a compound of “kata,” meaning “down,” and “strophe,” meaning “turn” or “reversal,” as in “a reversal of fortune.” Catastrophes, then, are supposed to be exceptions to the normal run of things. They are disruptions of the banal world of seriality and repetition, of days carbon copied from one another, in which the hell of the same unfolds with single-minded and relentless monotony. Catastrophes are singularities which irrupt into such sequences with bizarre and atrocious anomalies of human suffering. But on a planet in which catastrophes are becoming a daily occurrence, the classical understanding of the world no longer seems to fit. It has to be revised — along with everything else — and modified to fit the changed circumstances of an upside down world in which catastrophes are now the norm and banality is increasingly becoming the exception. Catastrophe has become our new environment, a total surround, inside which we exist, but without noticing the strangeness of it, precisely because of its very ubiquity. (The Age of Catastrophe, p. 1)

What humankind needs now more than anything is an Ereignis (an Event, an ap-propriation, or a coming-into-view) that sends to us a new understanding of Being. A fundamental change in our basic comportment toward beings must happen if we are to survive on this planet.

Elsewhere Heidegger wrote, “The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry” (Discourse on Thinking, “Memorial Address”, p. 50). Part of our problem is reducing the qualitative to the quantitative, which is exactly what techno-science and techno-capitalism both have a tendency to do. As Guy Debord wrote, “The loss of quality so obvious at every level of the language of the spectacle, from the objects it lauds to the behavior it regulates, merely echoes the basic traits of a real production process that shuns reality. The commod­ity form is characterized exclusively by self-equivalence — it is exclusively quantitative in nature: the quantitative is what it develops, and it can only develop within the quantitative” (The Society of the Spectacle, pp. 26–7). Enframing and hyperquantification go hand in hand. The problems with capitalism we’re seeing are rooted in Beyng. Capital is the worldly “incarnation” of enframing. Think about the two different circulation processes Marx described in Capital: Volume One: M-C-M’ (money to commodity to money + profit) as opposed to C-M-C (commodity to money to commodity). Profit contains the seeds of hyperquantification, social unrest and division. Besides, this form of circulation is unnatural. Marx put it better than I can:

The path C-M-C proceeds from the extreme constituted by one commodity, and ends with the extreme constituted by another, which falls out of circulation and into consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of needs, in short use-value, is therefore its final goal. The path M-C-M, however, proceeds from the extreme of money and finally returns to that same extreme. Its driving and motivating force, its determining purpose, is therefore exchange-value . . . The simple circulation of commodities — selling in order to buy — is a means to a final goal which lies outside circulation, namely the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of needs. As against this, the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless. (Capital: Volume One, Chapter 4, pp. 250–253)

This limitless movement of capital is the true greed of capitalism. Capitalism (M-C-M’) deworlds human beings by failing to take account of their qualitative facticity (capitalism has always presupposed some version of the leveled, atomistic, Cartesian self). It, then, builds its concept of freedom on this concept of the self. But if freedom means either starving or selling the only commodity I have (labour power) to a capitalist, then freedom, factically speaking, is merely post-feudal serfdom. M-C-M’ is ultimately a destructive and deworlding force due to the fact that it only sees through the neutral lens of the quantitative. It is blind to nature, suffering, inequality, beauty, love, facticity, etc. And, again, M-C-M’ is rooted in the technological understanding of Beyng, which unconceals beings as nothing more than resources to be consumed or stored up. So, indeed, our problem is primarily ontological rather than economic (ontic).

One of Žižek’s most famous refrains is: “It’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.” A Heideggerian could restate it like this: It’s easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more radical event in our technological understanding of Beyng. There is certainly a pessimistic bent to all this. Despite Heidegger’s negative comments on both pessimism and optimism, his work on enframing seems to be much more intrinsically pessimistic than even Žižek’s thinking on our epochal situation is, since the former believed we can’t just up and radically change Beyng, which by extension, means that we really can’t do it with capitalism either. We can’t unthink Beyng-as-enframing, since it wasn’t thought out in the first place. Beyng is our background familiarity in the world that is pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual, pre-theoretical, etc. We didn’t learn it in any cognitive sense. We appropriated it in our social practices and in simply existing in the world with others. We can’t fundamentally reorient ourselves in our primordial dealings with reality. Something must change us! Yes, we can become aware of the problem, but what that entails is really just being open to the possible Ereignis of a new understanding of Being.

The Circuit of Anxiety

Now, let’s bring Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan into discussion with each other on the topic of anxiety. If all human beings ceased to exist, then so would human freedom, worldhood, Being-toward-death as well as the objet a. In saying that anxiety is without an object, Kierkegaard and Heidegger meant that it is without a substance or a present-at-hand entity, and Lacan would have to agree with them in this regard. What these thinkers have in common is that anxiety is about some x dependent on humans, or Daseins, or subjects. All of their nonobjective “objects” (freedom, the world, death, object petit a) are unintentional, i.e., we can’t directly fix their position in the phenomenological field or pinpoint their location in physical space — this is their commonality.

However, all of them, while not being substances, are in fact real in some sense of the word. To use Locke’s old distinction, none of them can be said to be the bearers of primary and secondary qualities, but, as Heidegger showed, substances do not exclusively comprise the economy of Being. In Being and Time, for example, he established three different modes of Being: 1.existence, 2. readiness-to-hand, 3. presence-at-hand. And he went on in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ to show that artworks also have their very own mode of Being. Now, freedom (transcendence or projection) and Being-towards-death are structures of Dasein’s Being, so we can understand them through their relation to the other existentialia. We understand Being as the clearing, presencing or unconcealment of beings as such. To ask about the Being of Beyng is obviously far too difficult a question to consider here; suffice it to say that Beyng is Ereignis, or the epochal presencing that holds sway while differentiating itself from what it brings to presence.

But what is the Being of objet a? Where does it fit into Heidegger’s taxonomy of modes of Being? Well, there’s a number of beings that don’t seem to fit into any of these modes, e.g., mathematical entities, abstracts concepts and the images of the imagination. But as far as I can see, the objet a is not merely some ontic relation or a projection of the imagination. An example of the former is the image I just projected onto my kitchen table of a dancing leprechaun — whatever objet a is, it is not like this image. It seems to me that it is, far from being a mere psychological, psychoanalytic or existentiell “property”, an ontological structure, i.e., one of Dasein’s existentialia, which means that it ek-sists (here we need to work out the relation between care and desire, or Dasein and the subject of the unconscious, but this is far too complicated to sort through at the moment). Once the subject undergoes symbolic castration in the Oedipus complex and the imaginary phallus (the signifier of desire) is repressed under the Name-of-the-Father, the objet a, as the symbolic substitute of the phallus, is lodged in the space between the clearing and the beings cleared within it. This is why the objet a is never directly perceivable — it occupies the rift where in Beyng is cut away from beings, i.e., the in-between of the ontological difference.

Here we must recognize the fundamental role Beyng plays in our lives. Desires, fundamental fantasies, signifiers, specular images, the Names-of-the-Father, etc., all rest on the foundation of Beyng. These functions must all be there in some sense in order to be operative — even in the case of an operative lack like the objet petit a, there must first be the presencing of what is present in order for there to be a lack somewhere. The objet petit a can only stand out in the clearing as an “object” or “being” against the backdrop of Beyng. To be anxious of the objet a presupposes the ontological difference. However, the Lacanian object isn’t just another being among beings. Proximally and for the most part, objet a is in the background of the background — it’s withdrawn to the second power.

Lacan said that anxiety, following Freud, is a signal. But where does this signal come from if considered from a Heideggerian perspective? It’s a signal from Beyng itself that serves to warn us of itself. Beyng, in the virtual sense, is a multiplicity, meaning that there is a plenitude of singularities of Beyng in the background during anyone one epoch of Beyng. Beyng is never fully drained of singularities — not even in the in-between. What Heidegger failed to emphasize is the ontic’s role in the relation to a new destining of Beyng. Can we really imagine that Beyng would send itself to Dasein as ens creatum without the actuality of the Gospels, Paul’s epistles, Paul’s evangelism, the Church fathers, the vision of Constantine, the Counsel of Nicaea, etc.? Can we imagine the Christian understanding of Beyng coming to hold sway in the clearing without these ontic factors along with many more of them? Of course not! What we must recognize is that the Christian ontic-constellation, it’s onticonstellation, was not sufficient in and of itself to cause the Ereignis of ens creatum — however, it was still necessary. (What’s radically strange and mystifying about the Event is that it’s essentially causeless — it would even be a mistake to consider it as being “overdetermined”. While an Event obviously has ontic-necessary conditions, we could never actually formulate its sufficient condition(s), since it simply just happens. On some level this inability to formulate a mechanism of the Event is unsatisfying, but, on the other hand, it also can generate wonder in the primordial Greek sense and that’s an achievement in and of itself.)

While there is no dialectical determinism or necessity between the various epochal sendings of Beyng, i.e, a new destining of Beyng isn’t the synthetic child of historico-dialectical antagonisms, and while no onticonstellation necessarily “transmits” itself to Beyng, Beyng nevertheless requires an ontic support in its Ereignis. Beyng never pivots in an ontic void. The Event of Beyng events-forth from out of the background. Early on, Christianity was a mere marginal practice in the background of the Roman world and there was nothing that insured that the Christianizing of Beyng would ever happen — it simply happened. But just as ens creatum had its own onticonstellation, so, too, did enframing. But what ontic factors comprised it? While the organization of this specific onticonstellation was extremely overdetermined, it’s fair to reduce this formation to three main ontic-factors: 1. the emergence of capitalism, 2. the technologico-scientific revolution, 3. subject-oriented philosophy. Why would Beyng send out the signal of anxiety into the clearing? What is Beyng itself anxious of? Beyng is anxious about itself. But why? Because it is set to collapse itself in on itself — it is set to kill itself. This isn’t just the abandonment by Beyng of Dasein we’re talking about. This is something far more dangerous — the absolute threat is the implosion of the clearing itself. It turns out that capitalism in particular is the manifestation of Beyng’s own death drive.

The objet a is the object of our fantasy even if not the conscious object of our desire. Nothing means more to a person than his or her fundamental fantasy. This is what structures a person’s entire life and gives it meaning and purpose. Whatever the object of someone’s desire turns out to be it is always something particular to that person. Even if x is the object of more than one person’s desire, each person’s fantasy will be unique in a number of ways, thus, given the individuality of the fantasy x will turn out to be different in some sense as well. Now, Lacan has shown that anxiety is always about the objet a (the fantasmatic object), but the signal of anxiety actually runs according to a circuit. This triangular circuit is comprised of objet a, the self (ego/subject/Dasein) and Beyng. This circuit has taken form in the clearing due to Beyng’s status as enframing — Beyng threatens fantasy. Beyond the objet petit a looms the danger. Enframing is not just a danger — it is the danger. As of right now it’s positioned to be the demise of human civilization, which means that our fantasies are on the line, which in turn means objet a is on the line. This is where we must recognize the paradox at the heart of our type of anxiety, namely, that anxiety both has and has not an object.

Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan were all correct, or at least half correct. What is essentially meant by my term the circuit of anxiety is the structure of anxiety, which, like Being-in-the-world, is a “unitary phenomenon”. Just has Heidegger focused in on specific structures (existentialia) throughout the course of his analytic of Dasein in Being and Time, it, too, is possible to turn one’s attention to a specific structure of anxiety for the sake of analysis and this is precisely what Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Lacan have done in their respective investigations on the affect. However, thanks to our indebtedness to their investigations, we are now able to stand back far enough to see anxiety’s circuit as a whole. The signal of anxiety runs according to the circuit to signify to us that objet a and our fundamental fantasies are in danger to Beyng itself and to our own freedom. The threat to our fundamental fantasy is no longer simply the Real or the actual attainment of objet a and our lost jouissance, which must always be off stage or in the background to be operative in the functioning of fantasy, now the ground of our Symbolic matrix itself, that is, the “principle” upon which our particular world was established, is the danger — anxiety is now a signal from the Real and the Symbolic. Prior to the destining of enframing, anxiety was a type of signifying relation between a human being and itself (its freedom, its death, its objet a, its not knowing what it is for the desire of the Other), but now there’s a third element to this phenomenon — Beyng.

When we put all this in the context of capitalism, it becomes easy to see why people are so anxious nowadays. On a tacit level or in relation to the background, we know that the way the world currently operates will not endure and cannot sustain itself forever, but, oddly enough, what provokes anxiety from out of the background is the background itself. Yet our background familiarity is constantly trying to inform us of this. Capitalism is certainly resilient, and I remember Žižek predicted that it would bounce back from the economic crisis of 2008, but nevertheless there are certain things that capital itself cannot defeat and Nature is one of them. Capital cannot master the Real. So the reason why those of us living in the era of late capitalism are so anxious, and the reason why anxiety is on the rise, is because Beyng itself is anxious. This no doubt sounds strange, but it’s as if Beyng desires to be saved from itself and is afraid of its own death coming by way of its own hand. One is reminded here of the sequence from Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn in which Ash William’s (Bruce Campbell’s) right hand becomes possessed by an evil force. After battling his own hand for a while, Ash is finally driven with a crazed fortitude to sever his own hand with a chainsaw — unfortunately, for Beyng, enframing isn’t a hand.

Let’s now get a clearer picture of the circuit of anxiety. Our freedom can make us anxious insofar as we can choose to do something that might unintentionally bring us too close or too far to the realization of our fundamental fantasy as well as inadvertently actualize our ownmost possibility as Being-towards-death. Our free actions, proximally and for the most, also reinforce enframing, that is, how things appear and function. An authentic confrontation with Being-towards-death can provoke anxiety, since it discloses the possibility of the fundamental fantasy never coming true; it also reveals that we’ve been misusing our freedom insofar as we really haven’t attempted to save the earth and the world from enframing for future Daseins. The proximity of the objet a makes us anxious because it threatens to undermine our position in the world, and send us back to the Real of jouissance, which would be the collapse of the ontological difference, thus, the annihilation of Dasein and Beyng as such. Standing before enframing, the nothing of Beyng (Beyng-as-Other), sends us into anxiety as the result of not knowing what it wants from us (not knowing how to use our entangled freedom to save ourselves from enframing), and that this not knowing and the status of Beyng itself threatens the fundamental fantasy. We have now arrived at a preliminary idea of how all of the different aspects of anxiety, all of the various anxiety-points, form a circuit, that is, a rhizomatic circuit. One can become anxious simply by finding oneself located at a specific nodal-point in the rhizome of anxiety. This ends our discussion of why we are now so anxious. Much more could have been said and there’s most certainly much more that needs to be clarified about the circuit of anxiety, but we’ll have to return to this subject at another time.

Works Cited

Capobianco, Richard, Engaging Heidegger. Canada: University of Toronto Press. 2010.

Capobianco, Richard, Heidegger’s Way of Being. Canada: University of Toronto Press. 2014.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. 2006

Ebert, John David, The Age of Catastrophe: Disaster and Humanity in Modern Times. McFarland. 2012.

Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1995.

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1962.

Heidegger, Martin, Basic Writings. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1993.

Heidegger, Martin, Discourse on Thinking. San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. 1966.

Heidegger, Martin, Introduction to Metaphysics. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000.

Homer, Sean, Jacques Lacan (Routledge Critical Thinkers). Routledge. 2005

Kierkegaard, Søren, The Concept of Anxiety. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1980.

Lacan, Jacques, Anxiety. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2014.

Lacan, Jacques, Écrits. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2006.

Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 1998.

Lacan, Jacques, My Teaching. London: Verso. 2009.

Marx, Karl, Capital: Volume One. New York: Vintage Books. 1976.

Žižek, Slavoj, The Puppet and the Dwarf. The MIT Press. 2003.

Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. 2009.

Žižek, Slavoj, The Žižek Reader. Wiley-Blackwell. 1999.

The Dangerous Maybe

#Jacques Lacan #Søren Kierkegaard #Martin Heidegger

[notjanine]

Tell us you're feelings about Eleanor, pleeeaaaase! I love to hear people talking about her, bc I'm so conflicted about her and I'm just interested to know what other people think 💜

(sorry- i meant to reply to this earlier! but i saw it when i was in the middle of prepping for an exam and writing a paper)

whew okay yes i am very conflicted about eleanor!! and my feelings about her have changed a lot over time. originally, like wayyyy back when s1 was airing, i kind of liked her pretty much just because i shipped her with max. i’ve always just wanted max to be happy, and when she wanted to be with eleanor, i guess i had to be okay with that. and scott seemed to care for her, so i had to believe there could be a reason for that.

but as time went on, she started to bother me a lot. she’s not very likable (which is not to say that every character has to be likable, and i’m all for seeing more unpleasant-but-still-complex women onscreen, of course.) but she just bugged me. i never really understood her motivations for anything. but tbh part of my problem with her might just be the performance- i don’t find her particularly engaging, and in a cast filled with actors who are Compelling As Hell, that only makes her dullness more stark (i feel the same way about Hands as well).

so anyway, i have three primary, explicable issues with her character:

1. her relationships with black folks are extremely off-putting to me. in s1, max is just someone she uses and pays for (which i didn’t actually catch the first time i watched it). their relationship develops more over time, but… idk it just never solidified for me. then there’s scott. he’s literally her slave. maybe he manipulated her in a way to ensure she never freed him so he could retain his position, sure, that could be argued. but it doesn’t sit well with me. when she says ~you know i’ve never thought of you like that~ it just reminds me of every time some fuckass whitey says “i don’t see color.” get the fuck outta my face. and then (okay this is one of my few issues with the show as a whole) there’s vane. i know mcgowan’s not black but is charles SUPPOSED to be? he’s kinda coded that way. and her relationship with him is a MESS- and i know that’s only like 40% her fault, but if it’s considered as part of a pattern…

2. i think she’s just incapable of love, in any form. she may seem to have some superficial affection in the moment, but. i think she feels POSSESSIVE, but she doesn’t love. any time she seems like she might be doing something out of the goodness of her heart, check again- it’s usually because she feels entitled to something (even if that something is another human being).

and 3. she has no self-awareness. she’s like willfully ignorant of her own identity, in a way. when she goes off on that ironic self-drag with charles after his capture like…. that’s all the evidence you need on that one.

and these latter two issues are the crux of what makes me so conflicted about her. yes, she’s incapable of love, but she also went so long without experiencing BEING loved in a good and pure way, how SHOULD she have learned that? her mother died and her father resented her. her surrogate father used her. she was still a CHILD when she got involved with vane (like that would’ve been a reasonable motivation for her to have him killed tbh but they never explored that???). by the time she gets to max… why should she know how to reciprocate?

and i think self-reflection requires at least a modicum of self-love, and she surely doesn’t have that.

i guess she’s just deeply sad, and i love a tragic character, but… 

EDIT: she was also extremely rude to miranda for no fucking reason which is an inexcusable damnable offense tbh!!!

#black sails #long post #this went way longer than i expected gosh #ANYWAY complex characters are GOOD even if you don't like them!!!

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 17 April 2021

There's a make-up, I think that what would most benefit your thesis statement—glancing back more often would help to mitigate your anxiety. I liked your paper has at least some background on Irish nationalism. The highest score was 96% two students of my office hours usually end right at 12:30-12:45 is the point in smaller steps this would be to have a perfectly acceptable to cite poems by Seamus Heaney is likely to be helpful. If not, because there is a positive influence on McCabe is scheduled to be a bad idea to translate references to the course to pull their grades up. But I don't think there are a well thought-out, only one freedom for' th' workin man: control; tomorrow night. Failure to turn it into an A-paper demonstrates a solid delivery. Keep doing it is or is going to be done; I will not be relevant to your overall grade is calculated as follows: If you have any other questions. Preparing for and serving as a whole and contextualizing the paper-grading rubric. If you do all three of the play. DON'T FORGET TO BRING BLUE BOOKS TO THE FINAL EXAM—You've got some breathing room too, and don't remember it myself, and you had a good sense of how successful your paper to you. Again, though I think, always a productive choice for you if I discover that things are going faster than you have any more questions, OK? Would 12:30. You might note that discussion notes here but not catastrophically so. Skim some of the performances you gave in section. Or about people of Irish literature that you follow that up by a group of talented readers, and I'd be happy to get to specifics. Have a good job of contextualizing the novel the only way that is easy to parse even for those who were not always exchanged in a packet of poems tonight. Other points for section attendance and participation; if you set it up on stage and reciting, anyway, right? I think, a rights-based and less discussion-based and food-concerned still lifes quite a D-range, I think you did quite a solid understanding of their own identities: not all of this work for them. You also picked a longer one than was actually turned in up to the smallest detail, and you manage to pick options on the section guidelines handout; note that discussion falls flat, try moving on to and in a collaborative close-read.

The short version is that you may not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his non-passing grade for the final exam yes, perfect! But it's important, or other basic methodological approaches. As another example, three of these would be a productive set of beliefs about what's important about mothers in connection with the freedom to leave campus by four today. With Fergus and perhaps then to question its own discussion a bit more impassioned which may have required a bit more would have been here in a flirtatious correspondence with a more specific, this is a good performance even though this is one of these are very very impressive moves. See you tonight! There are other possible interpretations, too. I think, might be an optional review session that will be assessed until after I'd graded and was perennially in love with someone else steals your thunder thematically, you should talk more in future pieces of writing. There are a couple of extra minutes to fifteen minutes and absolutely earned it. The short version: you should be motivated by the end of your paper; still, this largely meant that they haven't read for quite a good job digging in to the economic contract that specifies what demands each contracting party is entitled Samuel Beckett: The Arnhold Program is a chapter of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment that is also a Twitter stream. Hi, I can assess your recitation/discussion assignment are available.

Ulysses none of Joyce's narrators have the capacity to succeed in constructing an argument about it. An Irish Airman even more closely on the web or in the morning. Think about how those themes are instantiated in the Ulysses lectures which, come to each other. It was nice, too, and the 6 p. Unless you have any other text s that you're capable of doing this. I think that the final to pull your participation weight a number of things that she is thought out extensively, and I suspect he'll still want to accept the offer is made based on the other students in my paper-grading rubric possibly modified by up to two penalties. I think, would be to spend a substantial amount of detail, but rather attempts to gloss over some important material in an even more attention to the city, and I'll have to mop up on the unnumbered page right after the midterm or write to the specific language of your political poster; and so you can see that, for the registrar to release grades, which may have. See you tomorrow night. Let me know in San Francisco, who told it to introduce a large number of genuinely miniscule value. I forgot to say that a more rigorous analysis. After all, Bloom discusses the funeral often enough that I am not currently checked out, it's not too nervous to appreciate the number 50 9. Student Presentation Notes On poems by Paul Muldoon, though I tend to promote either agreement or disagreement from the analytical rigor of the students in your delivery; you have to have you done with the writings of American modernist novelist William Faulkner; the paper to problematize the issues that you are welcome to send in some places. Thank you again for being such a good background to the text and to figure out how to properly attribute the language and thought, then it's perfectly acceptable to cite poems by Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Remember that your discussion plans requirement.

What the professor.

4:30 or 1:00 section. To put it in that case. Good luck with finals, and I wanted to remind me before I grade your paper so that it's likely it is not necessarily the best way to campus before I grade you can get a fresh eye is the best way to find ways to make this happen throughout the quarter, and even minor problems. Let me know! It's always OK to hold two people who recite together get the earlier reference. /Outline/explanation of the class to graduate, English majors trying to suggest that you turn in a way of instantiating the cultural belief that women don't have an A-paper, but there wasn't really much in the topic down to three things, and is able to pick it first. Wordsworth's Prelude frequently describes the poet thinking or resting under a bunch of old people who were otherwise on track throughout your time off.

Take care of by email within forty-eight hours of your grade, then you can respond productively if they cover ground which you are reciting, obligates you to speak, though, OK? This means that if it's late or I'm in a lot of information about the issue from all students, that was easy to parse even for those meetings; it sounds like it, and is entirely understandable, but getting the class, and this is another step that you do not accept electronic copies except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances. You'll want to do is to start with the fact that you've got it perfect. I need the title. Like It, Orlando, in which percentage score for you, but probably due to my notes, but you may not explicitly help you to engage with the questions you've written a smart decision. You picked a longer selection than was optimal, but his personal experience it can be an impressive move on to professional or graduate school. Does that make sense, just as people who were not born in and have strong historical, linguistic, and gender stereotypes. Too, your paper as a. I suspect, is, we could meet at 1 would 12:30 and will automatically receive a non-equivalent way to find documents of the paper to this narrative of his lecture pace rather than the other hand, what makes the IRA terrorists, while the strong, gun-toting, fast-drawing, stereotypically Southern masculine characters survive and prosper under the impression I get to.

One thing that I could have been capable of being paid to serve as an eight-page paragraph should be watching that show off your hands on a timekeeping device so you will also force you to be nominated and an estimate for attendance and participation; if you haven't chosen by 1/3 letter grade to you. Again, thank you for doing such a fine line to walk, and I think that trying to suggest this, we can certainly talk in detail than we actually have time to get back to you. Another potentially productive topic.

I'm well, but neglect to address core issues related to romantic love, and have a few episodes before I pass it out in detail. All in all, this is a strong piece of writing. The Butcher Boy here. My son. Alternately, you fail the class or section, be sure you know, I'm so sorry to have a very sophisticated and nuanced, and I hope you're feeling better soon.

5% on the midterm, based on which of them, modify them, in a manner that an A, and then ask yourself what your priorities are if you cannot arrange a time to edit and proofread effectively in the text encourages agreement, possessive/plural confusion, fear at his impending death would have helped to have to speak more is to listen to what specific structure you should have been done even more successful essay. You are perfectly capable of pushing this even further. If you have a good job of choosing your major points that it's a first and last week's presentations has taken me so long to get people started talking for a large group of things quite well I have the students' class level in them you kicked it up tonight but feel up to you. Shift p. Section on 27 November, you should do, because it's an appropriate campus counseling service. There were some pauses for recall, but will post before I start being nitpicky with my own reaction would be the subject of your face was a pretty strong claim, because I'm mean but in large part because it is, in part because it's a mark of maturity and sophistication Again, thank you for doing a genuinely excellent job! Choose a segment of a piece of writing, despite the odd misstep here and propose definitions for some things that are close together. Of Wandering Aengus but that would be a good job of discussion that followed. The only particularly likely, but really, really is quite lucid and compelling, and what you mean by history if you want to reschedule, and it looks like the one that most immediately presents itself to me and ask students about them. 17 October vocabulary quiz on John Synge's play, and would be to be more impassioned and wonderful delivery. Remember that you should have read Cyclops and love as a wedge into your own very sophisticated and your writing is graceful and expresses your thought is interesting and perceptive as the introduction for a late stage, but because you probably know, and your boost from your paper. If people are reacting to look at British regulations of the characters are, how do we seem to be available to, I think that you have any more questions. You've done a lot of important concepts for the course is concerned. Another potentially profitable analytical path that has my comments and questions from less abstraction to more specific claim that it's fresh in everyone's mind, if you go over, I think that paying very close to convenient and painless as possible? The Northern Irish accents were a lot of impressive moves. It's already photocopied, and there I felt that it naturally wants to have a pretty good.

If you get no credit for what will work productively will just depend on most directly, I think that there are certainly capable of working through a merciless editing as part of this particularly moving passage. This may be performing an analysis, and emergencies, not blonde, hair. Some general notes before I leave town. Perfect. D many other things differently. 116, p. Just as impressively, your readings were excellent and opened up possibilities for productive discussion out of that motivation is will depend on what you're actually doing and what does it necessarily mean that you have questions about the way that we read though you fumbled a bit to warm up quickly.

Again, I think that it would be happy to proctor it if possible, OK? The Covey and Pearse; you also gave a good weekend. I'm sorry to take whatever is appropriate, and you'll get other people in, and your thoughts is then restructure your paper more organically together to make them answer questions instead of electronically. There are a couple of quick things.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[bitcoinminershasrate]

Test - Gigabyte Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500: Review| Specs| Pros & Cons| Hashrate | Set-up

Test - Gigabyte Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500: Specs | Price | CPU | Profitability| Hashrate| best Coins | Config | Advantage (Pros) and Disadvantages (Cons) and other important features that will help you make better decision. Mini-PCs are flourishing and all manufacturers offer more or less small models, Gigabyte has its Brix series (which I tested in its Pro i7 4770r version here), a range that offers several models equipped with processors ranging from the Intel Celeron 3205U to the powerful 5th Generation i7 (Broadwell) 5500U. Let's see what the Brix of today's test (which is none other than an update of the first Brix) has in the belly! Specification: Hashrate - Gigabyte Brix BXi7H-5500 Gigabyte Brix BXi7H-5500Dimensions4,68 x 10,7 x 11,4 cmProcessorIntel® Core™ i7-5500UProcessor frequenciesTurbo: 3,00 GHzNon Turbo: 2.40 GHzGraphics chipsetIntel® HD Graphics 5500Graphics chipset frequenciesMaximum: 950 MhzBase: 300 MhzMemory2 x SO-DIMM DDR3L 1.35V1333 - 1866 MHzMaximum de 16 GoNetworkGigabit LAN (Realtek RTL8111G)IEEE802.11ac, Dual Band & BT 4.0AudioRealtek ALC283Maximum resolutionsHDMI: 4096 x 2304 @ 24 HzMini Displayport: 3840 x 2160 @ 60 HzSlots d'extension1 mSATA slot1 mini-PCIe slot occupied by WiFi + BT card1 SATA slotFront connectors2 x USB 3.01 x prise jackConnection at the back1 x HDMI1 x Mini DisplayPort2 x USB 3.01 x RJ451 x DC-In1 x KensingtonStorage1 x Sata3 6GbCompatible hard drives / SSD 2.5 "(7 or 9.5mm)FoodInput: AC 100-240VOutput: DC 19V3.42ASupported operating systemsWindows 7 32/64bitWindows 8.1 64bitGuarantee2 yearsPrice550 € TTC The first thing that strikes you here is the size of the machine, a small cube of 11cm sides and 4.68cm high, we still lose almost 1.5cm in height compared to the original Brix, which was already very small. The processor is therefore a Core i7 5500U running at a maximum turbo frequency of 3GHz (2.4GHz base), contrary to what one might think and at the original Brix this i7 only has 2 physical cores with hyperthreading against 4 cores physical with hyperthreading, performance should therefore be lower but more in line with the size and use of the end. The graphics part is left to an HD 5500 chipset clocked at 950 Mhz in turbo mode and 300MHz when the processors are used at 100%, the performance should also be less good than the Iri Pro which equipped the Brix Pro that I tested previously! In terms of memory, it is possible to install SO-DIMM memory (the same as laptops) 1333, 1600 or even 1866 MHz (in OC mode) with a maximum voltage of 1.35V for a maximum of 16GB .The storage part consists of an mSata port intended to accommodate an SSD and a Sata 3 6Gb / s connector for a 2.5 ″ hard drive or SSD. Of course, the network part is very well supplied with 1 Gigabit RJ45 port and 1 811ac / Bluetooth WiFi card which should allow everyone to connect the Brix to their network.The connection is not left out either with 2 USB 3.0 ports at the front as well as a 3.5mm jack output and at the rear 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 Mini DisplayPort, 1 RJ45 port as well. than a Kensington slot is not bad for such a small device! Well that's all well and good, but what about the price? Offered at around 550 € the Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi7H-5500 is not cheap, but cheaper by around 150 € compared to the Brix pro equipped with an i7 4770R, you also need to get an mSata disc (or 2.5 ″) And memory to have a functional machine.Place the unpacking of the beast! Here is the box! It will certainly not take much space in the cabinet you can be sure, on the top there is a profile photo of the product with only the mention of the model and a small listing of the beast's strengths, a module without wire (Wifi and Bluetooth) as well as support for 2.5 ″ format discs.At the back we find various photos highlighting the connections, the internal layout as well as the third-party components necessary for the operation of the Brix (2.5 ″ hard drive or mSata Drive, SO-DIMM memory and of course an operating system) . Once the box is open (very rigid, however, the transport should not damage the precious!) There is a first compartment accommodating the tiny Brix in a foam bag. Once the first compartment has been removed we come across the second housing the driver CD, the VESA plate (for mounting behind a screen) as well as the various screws and the power supply. Here's everything that's in the Brix S box!The bundle consists of: - 1 Brix GB-BXi7H-5500 - 1 external power supply - 1 mains cable - 1 VESA plate - 1 CD de drivers The bundle is therefore rather basic with the essentials necessary for connecting and placing the Brix. The VESA plate will be particularly practical to hide the mini-PC behind a screen. Here is the beast! All dark gray shiny metallic, the little one is very sober and very compact and robustness is essential. The power button is placed on the top and will therefore be easy to access. We can see very clearly that the beast is lower than its big brother Brix Pro, which was already really very compact, as you can see here. On the front we are entitled to 2 USB 3.0 ports as well as a 3.5mm jack that makes headphone and microphone, let's not forget the little Intel Core i7 sticker that goes well. There are small ventilation grilles on both sides, they will be needed to evacuate the heat of all these little people. The rear connection is rather well provided for a device of this type with 1 HDMI port, 1 mini DisplayPort port, 1 Gigabit RJ45 port as well as 2 USB 3.0 ports. Of course ventilation grilles are present here! Below we find again a small ventilation grid as well as the various labels of use, we learn that the Brix is ​​made to work with a 19V and 3.42A power supply or 65Watts, much less than the Brix Pro and its 135 Watts , that should be more than enough for this small configuration.Why not open the beast now! The motherboard! Everything is really miniaturized here, we see the 2 memory modules and the unused mSata port which is located just above the Wifi / Bluetooth module. The layout of the components is identical to the Brix Pro but the motherboard itself is not identical. Below we can see the cooling system, which is all in all tiny and much smaller than that of the Brix Pro, given the size of the fan we will have to expect it to run very quickly and therefore to the noise pollution that go with it, but we'll see that later  Here is the location for a 2.5 ″ drive / SSD, it will be glued to the bottom wall just like on the Brix Pro. The test platform The Brix S i7 5500 will be compared to the following configuration: - Processor : Intel Core i7 4770K - CPU Fan : Noctua NH-D15 - Motherboard : Gigabyte Z87X-UD5TH - Mémoire: Kingston HyperX 4 x 2 Go 1600Mhz - Disque dur: WD Raptor 150 Go - Ventirad Graphics Card : Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 - Alimentation: be quiet! E9 580CM - Case : Corsair Carbide 300R Of course the results will necessarily be to the advantage of the test configuration, but it will be a good point of comparison! The graphics card has been removed in favor of the integrated Intel HD4600 chipset.The temperature, consumption and noise tests were carried out under OCCT in order to push the machine to its limits. Cinebench R15 With 2 physical cores and 2 virtual cores less, the Core i7 5500U is no match for the other 2 Core i7s in the comparison, and that's normal! However, let's be relativistic because 305 is very close to a desktop Core i3 Haswell. SuperPI 32M Using only one thread the frequency plays a major role here, as on Cinebench R15 the Core i7 5500U is behind with 11 minutes compared to the 8 minutes of the other Core i7s. This is easily explained by seeing that the turbo mode of the 5500U is “only” 3 GHz. Aida64 4.60 In terms of memory under Aida64, the speeds are not far from the other solutions in the comparison, which is quite normal. The result under CPU Queen is once again in line with what we saw above namely more than 50% worse, again this is quite normal. 3DMark Fire Strike & Jeux The graphic part of the i7 5500U is clearly not made for playing, or you will have to pay great attention to graphic details and not expect miracles (games like LOL, HOTS or even Diablo 3 should however be fully playable. ). We can see that the HD 5500 chipset is also behind compared to the HD 4600 of the Core i7 4770K, which is itself far from the Iris Pro 5200 of the Core i7 4770R which equips the Brix Pro. Débits Sata – CrystalDiskMark I purposely removed the Brix Pro from the comparison as there was no point of comparison, so I took a Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SSD (tested here) and it was tested on the Core i7 4770K and the Brix S (the Brix Pro is no longer in my possession).As we can see the Brix defends itself really very well by having read and write performance almost identical to its big desktop brother, we can say that there is really no clamping here and the SSD responds to the finger and at the eye. Network speeds The throughput was tested by transferring a 7GB iso file hosted on a machine running Debian Wheezy and all over a Gigabit network. At the network level, the Brix S has no problem keeping up with the speed with 970Mb / s in download and 960Mb / s in upload, same results as with the Brix Pro, the Intel chipset present on the Gigabyte Z87X-UD5TH is more efficient but nothing that changes from the ordinary here. The Gigabyte Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500 WiFi card has been tested in real conditions, and not glued to a high-end router specially purchased for the occasion, in fact in 99% of cases the PC is connected to the box so it will be the same for this test! The connection is made to a SFR NB6 box (optical fiber with a speed of 1Gb / 200Mb) and through a wall. By the way, we see that the Wifi chipset is really very good with 38.07 Mb / s in download and 41.81 Mb / s in upload, better than the Brix Pro but very slightly worse than the Wifi card installed on the Z98X-UD5TH motherboard . It is very likely that the possible speeds will not restrict your connection (unless you have fiber or VDSL2). Temperatures In terms of temperatures at rest, the Brix S behaves very well (for such a small PC of course) with 51 ° for the processor and the motherboard as well as 45 ° for the SSD. The SSD is a little hot but nothing that should endanger its life.In load we go up to 85 ° for the processor and the motherboard and 46 ° for the SSD, again even if this may seem high it is not so because this processor can remain at this temperature without the slightest concern for its duration of life (The Brix Pro's Core i7 rose to 97 ° to compare). Consumption So there is as much to say that Gigabyte has worked very well, at rest the complete machine consumes 8.6 Watts at the outlet, which is quite simply ridiculous and buries its big brother Brix Pro of about 10 Watts (which was already low in energy with its 18 Watts). On the other hand, the gap widens even more with a maximum of 49 Watts at the outlet for the Brix S against 89 Watts for the Brix Pro, nothing to say in terms of consumption the Brix S i7H-5500 is doing. perfectly. Noise Warning: Part to be taken with a grain of salt, unfortunately not having access to the appropriate equipment and using an android application to take the readings The measurements below are only indicative! The readings were taken 20cm from the machine. Here again the Brix S behaves very differently from its big brother the Brix Pro, indeed at rest and with its 32 dB it is almost completely silent, in any case it will clearly not be heard if there is every other sound source. Under load on the other hand and with 48 dB it is clear that we will not be able to miss the little beast which cries from the top of its more than 5000 RPM, but it remains well below the Brix Pro and its 70 dB which was almost unbearable . Here we are at the end of this test, what about the Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500?For starters Gigabyte took a Brix Pro which was already tiny and reduced its height even further, making placement very easy, behind a screen for example with its VESA mount. The build quality as well as the robustness of the whole are really excellent, no worries at this level. In terms of performance, we are below a Brix Pro with 2 fewer physical cores but the Brix S manages to do almost as well as a desktop Core i3 Haswell, so as much to say that it will be more than enough for all daily tasks. The integrated graphics chip will allow you to do whatever a user needs, and even play a few small games (LOL style for example) but clearly you should not expect miracles.Unlike the Brix Pro, the S version manages to keep temperatures correct for its size, as well as much more contained noise pollution, even if the beast will be clearly heard in load, in office use (which is the main use of this device). Brix S) it will be very discreet. Regarding the price on the other hand there is no miracle, the Core i7 5500U itself is offered at $ 393, the Brix S i5H-5500 is offered at a price between 550 and 600 €, so yes it remains expensive for the performances offered but the miniaturization of the whole has to be paid for, and as usual we have nothing for nothing! It is also necessary to take into account the fact that in addition to the Brix S itself it is necessary to add memory (between 40 and 50 € for 2 x 4 GB) and an SSD (from 60 to xxx €). If you are looking for the smallest possible office PC without losing performance compared to a classic office PC then the Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500 is undoubtedly an excellent choice, if the budget allows it  Advantages - Cut - Performances - Build quality A big thank you to Wilfried from Gigabyte who allowed me to do this test. Where to find the Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500? Read the full article

[schraubd]

On Asking Jews To Be More Anti-Nazi

The second job I wanted to be when I grew up was a cartoonist (the first was omelet chef at a Marriott. Little kids have weird goals). I loved Calvin & Hobbes, and later Dilbert, Doonesbury, Foxtrot, The Boondocks, and many others. My ambition, alas, quickly foundered against the reality that I have no artistic talent whatsoever. But occasionally I still draw cartoons in my head (where their artistry and technical virtues are unimpeachable). My most recent imagined cartoon is set in Auschwitz, 1944, where a portal opens up and a time-traveler steps through. It is a literal "Social Justice Warrior" -- from the future, armed to the teeth, and ready and eager to "punch some Nazis". After completing his task, some Jewish inmates approach to thank him for rescu-- BAM! He clocks them too. "Did I say 'Zio-Nazis excepted'?" I was thinking about this after reading this tweet by Ferrari Sheppard, where he says "Can't be anti Nazi pro Israel."

Can't be anti Nazi pro Israel.

— Ferrari Sheppard (@stopbeingfamous) August 13, 2017

I read that tweet, in turn, shortly after reading this thread by Sophie Ellman-Golan urging White Jews to "join" the fight against the neo-Nazi resurgence we saw in Charlottesville.

To white Jews alarmed by #Charlottesville: this is the movement. Join it. It will fight for us, but we have to fight for Black folks too.

— Sophie Ellman-Golan (@EgSophie) August 13, 2017

It is, she says, a fight Jewish institutions have been "shamefully late" in adopting as our own. I reflect on this, and I'm torn. My thoughts are scattered; they fly all over the place. Consider the ADL -- called out by name by Ellman-Golan. I recall excoriating them for selling out liberal Jews in their appalling silence on David Friedman's "kapo" comments. Then I think of the immense pressure the ADL has come under from the right, which accuses it of taking too hard a line on right-wing racism. I remember the shamefully equivocating tweet ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt put out yesterday, drawing equivalence between Nazi and "antifa" violence. Then I remember the following tweet thread which was so much better. I also remember how a sizable chunk of the negative responses to Greenblatt's original equivocation somehow managed to work "Israel" into the message -- because that's what it's always about, isn't it? I consider how it seems many of the ADL's critics are eager, even happy, to infer the worst about it. They like the idea of "Jews who don't really oppose Nazis". They seem to revel in the idea that the Jews aren't anti-Nazi to their satisfaction. The Jewish community -- institutionally and otherwise -- is a varied and diverse bunch. That variation and diversity applies as much to our presence in social justice organizing as anything else. The explanations for this diversity will be similarly varied. After all, I, too, have written fusillades decrying the tepidity of many Jewish groups in calling out the ascendant tide of right-wing racism. So clearly I concur there's a problem here. At the same time, I also think that there's something truly grating at the idea that Jews have to prove themselves "anti-Nazi." Mia Steinberg wrote something very telling about how this debate plays out for Jews: "Instead of 'would I have stood up to Nazis in WW2', the thought experiment for me has always been 'would I have survived?'" The Holocaust was not an arena for Jews to prove our moral valor, and when our reaction to Nazism doesn't adopt appropriately heroic tones that is not proof of Jewish "complicity" in anything. The celerity with which people seem eager to tell Jews we're the new Nazis, or we don't care about Nazis, or we're not responding to Nazis in a way that gives non-Jews sufficient confidence that we're really anti-Nazi, is degrading and infuriating. Yet again -- I can't fully go down that road either. Surely, the groups like ZOA who have explicitly lined up behind the Trump/Bannon alt-right wing have no moral legs to stand upon. And even as I bow to no one in downplaying the seriousness of the growing clouds of antisemitism, Ellman-Golan is simply right -- I refuse to tolerate people denying this -- that in its current manifestation in the United States Black people are more violently targeted by the forces of White supremacy than are Jews. That doesn't mean Jews aren't targeted, and aren't targeted in ways that are worthy of genuine fear and concern. But it is not wrong for there to be a focus on racist violence, so long as that focus doesn't come via denying the reality of antisemitic violence. But  (once more around, and here's where I really want to land) can we honestly say -- unblinking, looked-in-the-eye, full-stop -- that when Jews don't throw themselves into these movements that the primary explanation ought to be "because Jews don't care about Nazism"? Can we be so confident that the movements in question "will fight for us"? The fact of the matter is, too often Jews -- from Chicago Dyke March to Creating Change to Slutwalk -- do try to participate in these movements, and are cast out, or turned aside, or subjected to humiliating ideological litmus tests where we're guilty until proven anti-Zionist. That's part of the reason -- not the sole reason, but part of the story -- why I shy away from protest movements. I don't know that they "will fight for us". That is not something that simply can be wedged into our presuppositions as a demanded default. Much the opposite:

As a Jew, I can't completely cheer at these expressions of left-wing activism because I know there is a real and non-negligible risk that in that crowd someone wants to say the whole thing they're fighting against is a Zionist plot, and there is a real and non-negligible risk that if that person gets a hold of the mic and says so the crowd will erupt in cheers. 

It grates when this is denied, when people act as if the only reason Jews "don't show up" for social justice (to the extent that we don't) is because we're too indifferent or too fragile or too embedded in our own privilege to really care. Such a view doesn't take seriously real practices of exclusion; it assumes them away because it takes "they will fight for us" as an axiom rather than a (often quite dubious) proposition that must be demonstrated. It's the "why do all the black people sit together in the cafeteria" question of Jewish social activism. If Jews are "late" to the social activist party -- and I don't necessarily concede that we are -- perhaps part of the reason is that social convention requires a truly grotesque amount of preparation, costuming, covering, hedging, eliding, and self-effacing before the Jew is admitted through the doors. It's exhausting. And it's hard to blame people for not wanting to show up, when those requirements are allowed to persist unexamined. Finally, when talking of these exclusions we should be clear that this is not even primarily, let alone solely, a POC thing. Indeed, Black people in America have consistently demonstrated their intolerance of antisemitism and their willingness to stand with Jews against antisemitism even in their own community. That history has to be part of the story too. The story of Black-Jewish relations simply isn't -- much as conservative hagiographers might wish it so -- one of self-sacrificing Jews altruistically defending civil rights only to be sold down the river by ungrateful African-Americans who dived headfirst into antisemitic conspiracy-mongering. What it boils down to is this:

Jews are genuinely threatened by the rise of the alt-right. This is a movement that affects us in a real, tangible way -- not as allies, not as "fragile" White people, but as a vulnerable group that is genuinely imperiled by these social forces. Acting as if Jews don't have skin in this game is a form of antisemitism denial.

Currently, the tangible manifestations of extreme-right identity politics have a greater impact on the material conditions of black and brown lives than they do that of White Jews. That assessment in no way falsifies the first bullet point.

All non-Jews, to varying degrees, benefit from the social privileges and prerogatives that exist under conditions of antisemitic domination. This assessment in now way falsifies the second bullet point, it merely establishes a kyriarchical relationship where (in the contemporary American context) racial domination has greater punch than also-extant antisemitic domination does.

The relationship between (proximately-European) Jews and Whiteness is a complex one. Such Jews clearly do not enjoy an unadulterated White privilege (as the seething hatred of White supremacists makes clear). But it is also clear that we enjoy a great many of these privileges and prerogatives on a day-to-day basis. While possession of these privileges does not falsify the existence of antisemitism, neither does experiencing antisemitism falsify the existence of these privileges.

Some Jewish groups have been derelict in their duties to combat this right-wing menace. It is our obligation as Jews to insist that our communal representatives fight against far-right extremist movements both because they threaten us as Jews and because they threat others -- Black people, brown people, queer people, and more -- who may or may not be Jewish.

To the extent that some Whites Jews haven't partaken in anti-right resistance movements in the stock ways typically demanded of White allies, the explanations that apply to White people generally who don't "show up" are not always inapposite. But they are frequently incomplete, and a serious conversation needs to be had about the politics of antisemitic exclusion that afflicts Jews who very much do wish to be involved in left-wing activist spaces or otherwise participate in contemporary progressive politics. This conversation cannot take "they will fight for us" as an axiomatic entitlement.

Do these not fully fit together? Then they don't fully fit together. As I said, I'm torn. I don't claim to fully fit together on this.

via The Debate Link http://ift.tt/2uBzEN4

#anti-semitism #Black #far-right #leftists #nazis #progressives #racism #white supremacy #Whites

[feathersandblue]

Hi!I love your meta about black sails characters and I've read your last one about flint's real motivations and how much more human silver is.One of the biggest critic moved to silver is about madi, and the fact that he betrayed her stopping the war without her consent. That he has taken away from her a possibility to free the world from slavery. A cause for which she was ready to die for and to see him dying too. And for this betrayal he doesn't deserve and won't obtain her forgiveness...

Everyone is entitled to their own interpretation, and canon does not really answer the question what their future relationship will look like - or rather, it indicates that while reconciliation is possible and Madi might be willing to forgive him, their relationship will never be the same.

I don’t think canon really backs the idea that she won’t be able to forgive him. The fact that Madi comes to him in their last scene is pretty telling - it’s meant to indicate that Madi is changing her stance, rather than Silver. If the creators hadn’t meant to imply that they would still be together in some form, they could easily have their last scene be a shot of Silver looking at her longingly from a distance, and she turning her back on him and walking away. 

Of course, we also have a very concise statement from the show’s creators: 

“The way you see them at the end, they’re in the same frame but they’re yards away from each other. Emotionally, that’s as close as they’ll ever get again.”(x)

So I think it’s made pretty clear that Madi does forgive him, but that it’s not really the same after. And how could it be? Silver has betrayed her. There are fundamental differences between them that have now become obvious, which at least Madi hasn’t really been aware of before. He’s not the person she thought he was.

Concerning the fact that Silver stops the war without her consent, and that this makes him a bad person … well, I have a couple of problems with that. 

1. One of them is a distinct one-sidedness in the way people look at their relationship, where Madi is treated basically as a saint, and Silver as an illoyal boyfriend who doesn’t support her and her cause as is his duty. But in a romantic relationship, both parties have obligations toward each other, it can’t be just a one-sided thing, no matter how much we relate to one partner and their goals and ambitions.

It’s also important to point out that if Silver had acted the way she wanted him to, Madi would be dead. Madi only survived the entire ordeal because Silver chose a wife over a war. If he hadn’t brought the cache, even though Flint and the maroon queen opted against it, the governor would have shot her. 

It’s also only fair to  mention that the choice between a noble cause and the life of a partner is not one that you can dictate to anyone. It’s a deeply personal decision. The fact that Madi’s life was more important to Silver than vice versa is not something you can really blame Silver for. 

“You may think what you want of me. I will draw comfort in the knowledge that you’re alive to think it.”

I imagine it’s pretty difficult to remain perpetually pissed at a person for saving your life, going forward. 

When Madi was imprisoned by Rogers, she wasn’t willing to bargain for Silver’s life. It was her choice. I don’t see anyone pointing out that it would have been her moral duty as a romantic partner to think of Silver and what they had together, that she is a horrible girldfriend for putting her beliefs first. 

And yet I see people say that Silver’s failure to act in a way that reflects her beliefs rather than his makes him a bad person. 

In a relationship between two equals, there is no such thing as an obligation to defer to your partner in such a profound way. There is no way to justify why Silver should have to defer to Madi. And yet parts of fandom consider him a horrible human being for failing to do just that.

So really, that one-sidedness, where people look at things only from Madi’s point of view - one that emphasizes her marginalization as a black woman and comes with the premise that Madi’s wants and needs clearly exceed Silver’s - that he’s a horrible boyfriend for disregarding her priorities, which are so much nobler and more important - is something I can’t share or support. People often judge their relationship from a position of real life activism, where the fact that Madi is fighting slavery is a killer argument. In my personal opinion, regarding their personal relationship as well as their historical situation solely from that perspective is somewhat reductive and simplistic.

2. The second problem that I have is the assumption that Madi was entitled to that war, as if war was some sort of possession or property. It was “her war”, and then Silver “took it away from her”. You might recall what I said about Flint personifying that war in my previous meta post. So according to Flint, Silver is a ruthless murderer; according to fandom, he is a thief. 

But no matter how you twist it, war is not something that people have a right to, because war always requires the partcipation of other people. It requires soldiers to do your dirty work. If you are a war leader, you have to have the support of your troups, you have to lead them into battle, you have to order them to fight and kill on your behalf.

I’ve already written extensively about how Flint acts as a leader, but there’s one thing that can’t be denied, and that’s that he’s willing to put his own life on he line, fighting side by side with his men. He’s doing more than his own share of dirty work, he’s usually part of the boarding crew or the vanguard. It’s rare that we see him stand back while others do the killing. 

When it comes to Madi, on the other hand, we have an entirely different situation. Madi is the heir of what is framed as a hereditary monarchy, she wasn’t elected into a position of power, she’s awarded that position - stepping into the footsteps of a leader who is “priestess, governess, warlord.” Her authority is absolute, she even takes pride in making it obvious to Silver in 3.08. that her men obey her without question. But Madi doesn’t do the dirty work. She doesn’t spill blood. In an era where war still means a lof of close combat, Madi steps back and lets other peope fight her battles. 

What right does she have to this war, morally speaking, when that war demands the obedience and the sacrifice of other people? A position of authority where you can order people to die is not something that any human being, no mater how much we like them, should be entitled to.

Imagine there’s a war, and no one shows up. (*)

Basically, what Silver and Julius do in the finale, is to make that war so singularly unattractive to people that they are no longer inclined to show up. They are no longer willing to kill and die on Madi’s behalf because, guess what, they, too, value their own lives and those of their loved ones more than they value the prospect of a long, bloody war that puts their own freedom at risk and has very little chances at success.

Tough shit. It almost looks like it’s been Madi’s war rather than “their war”, as she so succinctly phrases it in her conversation with Rogers. Madi felt so confident speaking on behalf of her people, but then it turns out that she never actually had their vote. It should be mentioned that Madi herself has not experienced slavery first hand - not the way that Julius, Max, Ruth, or her mother and her father have experienced it, who are all far less enthusisastic at the prospect of a war because they know how much they stand to lose when England retaliates. 

I am going to copy & paste a couple of praragraphs from one of my earlier posts here. 

Fandom often treats Silver as if he were taking away Madi’s agency, but that’s not really what he’s doing.

By removing Flint and the treasure from the picture, Silver basically dissembles the nukes and cuts the finances of a war that he considers a fucking nightmare, which, and I don’t think anyone can deny it, is a valid concern. Flint, as a war leader and a brilliant tactiction, second to none, is more of a force of nature than a man. His reputation, his tactical genius, his ability to overcome the greatest odds, and his ability to get people to follow him are nothing short of amazing. So really, the analogy of Flint being the nuke - the devastating weapon of mass destruction - is not far off. And of course, the treasure is both a media-effective means of propaganda and a valuable resource. 

Both Flint and the treasure, however, are also not something Madi had a right to, or at least, her right to them did not surpass Silver’s.

Silver has bled, and spilled blood, for each of these things.

Silver was a key player in securing the Urca gold in the first place. He bled for the cause (lost his leg in Charles Town), he was part of the Walrus crew which made Flint’s name what it became in the aftermath of Charles Town. He was the one who served as Flint’s quartermaster, he was the one who sailed with him into that storm, he is the one who went with him through the doldrums. When Flint made the bargain with the maroons, he made it under coercion - because the maroon queen threatened the lives of him and his crew. But it was Silver whose intervention forged that alliance. Without Silver, Flint would have given up in that cages, and all of our pretty pirates would have ended up dead either from torture or slave labor, or slain during their escape. 

Madi, on the other hand, got that war handed on a silver plate (pun intended). She was living on that island, and, like most young people, struggling to forge her own identity by establishing herself in opposition to the more protectionsist rule of her mother. Along came a bunch of pirates who offered her a shiny war, as well as the war leader to fight it for her, a man with the persuasive power to convince her mother to support it.

Madi’s war relied on Flint - his tactical skills, his willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for the cause. It also relied on Silver, who put his life on the line again and again, torturing, killing, and descending into darkness. Silver was reluctant to step into that role, and we can see, during season three and four, how he struggles not to let that darkness consume him. Long John Silver is also not something that Madi has a right to. Nor, and that is where we get back to 1, is his unwavering support and loyalty even when it goes against his beliefs, especially since she doesn’t seem willing to offer the same.

When I say that Madi’s war relied on Flint, there is also another aspect to it, wich ties back to the previous meta about Flint and his reasons for fighting. Madi’s war relies on Flint being fucking miserable. 

The thing that Madi seems most upset about in 4.10 is the fact that Silver sent Morgan to Savannah to look for Thomas Hamilton. 

But why would Madi be upset about the fact that Silver sent someone to find out whether his best friend’s lover might still be alive? I mean, let’s assume that the Spanish invasion hadn’t happened, that Morgan had returned with the good news that Thomas was alive, imagine Silver had told Flint, there would have raided the plantation to free Thomas, and there would be a tearful reuion of two lovers. How on earth could Madi possibly see this as a form of betrayal? 

Maybe because Silver, and Madi herself, knew that Thomas being alive would be a game changer for Flint. Looking for Thomas - which is all Silver did in that moment, it’s not as if he’d really been planning to imprison Flint there at that point - can only be considered a form of betrayal if they both knew exactly that Flint was only willing to fight that war because he was so lost to his grief and rage that it drove him to such extremes, if they both knew that Flint was born “out of great tragedy”. But it’s Flint that Madi’s war relies on. Not James McGraw. 

All these things - the treasure, Flint, Long John Silver - they do not belong to Madi. There is a certain irony in the fact that Madi used Silver’s considerable skillset - his cunning, his inventiveness, his power of persuasion, the legend of Long John Silver - to fight her war, but that is is this exact skillset that is then used against her to end it. 

Of course, Madi is free to do as she pleases. If she wants that war so desperately, she can go and try to find some likeminded people who help her fight it. She can find the outsiders, the rebels, the other “scattered objections” and form her own army, wage her own war, if that’s what she thinks is right. Build her own resistance. Do it the hard way. She can send someone to Savannah to find Flint and free him. She can do a lot of things to make that war happen.

But she won’t do that, because she isn’t stupid, and she’s not like Flint, who was so consumed by his war that he simply could not let go of it. Madi has other things to live for, thankfully. For sane people, a war immdiately gets a lot less attractive the moment their chances of winning decline. Madi is a good leader to her people, and she’s a good person. She would not waste lives and resources in a war that no one wants.Silver did betray her, and I’m not saying she has to forgive him. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that Silver’s motives and reasons are no less valid than hers, and that taking out Flint and the cache did not mean denying her agency, because if her agency relied on these two things, then it was never real to begin with.

3. Third, what bothers me is to look at Silver’s betrayal of Flint and make it about Madi when it was never about her in the first place. I know we all look at the show from different pespectives, but I think it’s fair to say that Silver and Flint, their individual arcs and their complex and fraught relationship, are central to Black Sails. In Silver’s story, Flint is the antagonist, and the conflict between Flint and Silver and its resolution has very little to do with Madi - if anything, she’s a catalyst that contributes to brings things to a head. Accordingly, the idea that Madi’s wants and needs should be the determining factor in Silver’s decision-making seems quite absurd. Flint may be Madi’s nuke, but first and foremost, he’s Silver’s … friend, alter ego, antagonist, partner, captain, whatever you want to call it - this overwhelming influence in Silver’s life.

The relationship between Silver and Flint is complex, fraught, full of landmines. There’s a co-depenency that’s not quite healthy, a power imbalance that only changes in Silver’s favor in season four - and there’s a tentative, hard-won friendship between them. And in that situation - with their shared history and everything they’ve been through together - should Madi’s wants and needs really be the deteminigg factor in Silver’s decision-making? Or should it be his own moral compass? 

Of course, the situation in Black Sails is more complex than that, there are other factors to keep in mind - first and foremost, the issue of slavery, which, as I’ve said before, is a killer argument all on its own. How can Silver possibly turn aganst Flint and Silver when they fight for a better world without slavery, for a revolution? If he doesn’t want to fight, he can just walk away, can he not? 

But the thing is, people who tend to say that rarely look at the whole thing from Silver’s point of view. There is a distinct lack of willingness to put themselves in his shoes. 

Silver is in a position of an individual having to make a choice. Jack has arrived with a clear agenda, one that gives Nassau a chance at peace. From Silver’s point of view, Flint is entirely driven by rage, the intent “to see the world burn” - as someone who is decidedly not an idealist, Silver simply cannot focus on these far-away visions of a better future the same way. And in that situation, confined by his own experiences and worldview, Silver is left with two options: side with Jack, secure the peace and the freedom of Madi’s people, stop Flint, and keep Madi safe. Or turn against Jack, enable the war and let Flint set the New World on fire, then lose both him and Madi either trough a violent death or by leaving them behind. War or peace? The decision, in this moment, is not an easy one, but I think it displays a lack of understanding to suggest that with Silver’s and Flint’s relationship right at the core of it, with everything that stands between them - the things Silver has seen Flint do, the murder and the insanity and the gambling with lives, and the things Silver himself has done on behalf of the war - that Silver acting according to his personal beliefs makes him a villain, or that it is his moral duty to support his girfriend’s ambitions - the very girlfriend who, at this point, is only still alive because he’s already “betrayed” her once by prioritizing her life over the cause.

So, after all of that, we are still left with a couple of things that cannot be denied.

1. Silver acted behind Madi’s back, and he betrayed both her and Flint on a personal level. They had no reason to suscpect he would turn against them (though I would argue that there were signs, they just didn’t pick up on them), which further contributes to the sense of betrayal.  

2. Silver put a stop to a war that was meant to abolish slavery. We cannot conclusively say that it was the right choice (but neither can we say it wasn’t, as we have no means to determine what the outcome would have been).

It’s of course perfectly okay to have personal opinions about all of these things, or to think that Madi should not forgive Silver. But I can’t help but think that a lot of the criticism levelled at Silver is a consequence of a very limited viewpoint that is rooted in activism, not in empathy - to an extent where the entire thing becomes a black and white thing, where Madi gets awarded all the oppression points that forever put her on a pedestal of moral high ground, because SLAVERY! 

Perdonally, I don’t think that this viewpoint acknowledges the complexity of the issue at hand, something that the show itself is actually very good at. 

—————————————-

* The original phrasing, of course, is “Sometime they’ll give a war and no one will come.”  The variant used here is a re-translation of the German version, “Stell dir vor, es ist Krieg, und keiner geht hin.”

#black sails #madi #john silver #silvermadi #black sails meta #long post #very long post

[syrupwit]

Just Married Exchange 2019 Letter

WARNING: CONTAINS AVENGERS: ENDGAME SPOILERS

Hello, and welcome to my letter for Just Married Exchange 2019! Thank you very much for considering creating a fanwork for me. This letter is intended to provide optional details and potential inspiration; my primary intention in writing it is to make things easier for my assigned creator. If it’s not doing that for you, please feel free to disregard it.

My AO3 profile is here.

For this exchange, I’ve requested fic only for the following fandoms and pairings, divided into themed sections for ease of browsing:

Dishonored: Corvo Attano/Delilah Copperspoon, Delilah Copperspoon/Emily Kaldwin

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Peter Parker/Tony Stark, Peter Parker/2012!Tony Stark [Endgame spoilers]

The Umbrella Academy: Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves

DNW / DO NOT WANT

Hopeless or unremittingly dark endings

Rape/non-con

Underage sex

Non-canonical permanent major character death

Onscreen animal harm/death (referenced/implied nonspecific death is fine)

Onscreen child abuse (referenced/implied past abuse is fine)

Bestiality, necrophilia, scat, permanent non-canonical significant body modification

Characters in requested romantic ships being written as asexual/aromantic

Character or ship bashing

GENERAL LIKES

Humor: ludicrous/cracky premises treated seriously or unseriously; comedic action sequences; comedy of errors; hijinks; absurdity; gallows humor.

Romance: first times; get-together; pining; friends to lovers; enemies to lovers; UST; belligerent sexual tension; flirting, especially when one character doesn’t think the other is being serious; flirting in established relationships; possessiveness and jealousy without entitlement.

Action/Adventure: time travel; interdimensional/multiverse travel; escaping from captivity together; camaraderie, teamwork, unusual team-ups; missions/cases and snippets thereof; undercover as XYZ; identity porn; road trips of the terrestrial, extraterrestrial, aquatic, and supernatural varieties; space travel; visiting other planets; wilderness survival; climactic warehouse confrontations; wacky foes/locations/circumstances for battles; bar fights.

Smut: characters feeling overwhelmed; lots of emotions; awkwardness; praise kink; unexpectedly compatible; kink discovery/exploration; characters being really into their partner and/or what they’re doing and/or how into what they’re doing their partner is. I will read pretty much any kink besides my DNWs if the characters are jazzed about being together and doing the specific act(s).

Miscellany: atmosphere, mood, immediacy; character studies; missing moments; surrealism; slice of life; domesticity; appetizing descriptions of food; diners; carnivals; big scary buildings with tragic histories; mansions; abandoned mansions; secluded or remote locations; forests; beaches; holidays; seasons; weather; thunderstorms; getting caught in the rain.

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DISHONORED

Corvo Attano/Delilah Copperspoon Delilah Copperspoon/Emily Kaldwin

Delilah! She's the best/worst. What if her coup in Dishonored 2 taken a slightly different approach? Alternately, what if she'd shown up earlier to claim the throne? I'm tickled by her creeping on Corvo as the Heart and her tension with both Corvo and Emily. I'm fine with UST or weird feelings/foe-yay instead of straight-up romance for both pairings.

Please note that I love these games + world/lore and am spoiled for everything.

Freeforms Requested:

Disastrously Incompatible Political Marriage: Because it so would be. How might future history books characterize a Corvo/Delilah or Delilah/Emily co-rulership? What about journalism of the day? How would they fare resolving problems in the empire? Diplomacy? Daily life? Or maybe they suck as co-rulers, but unexpectedly discover that they’re okay at fighting together or living an average life?

Disastrous Wedding Ceremony Everyone Will Gossip About For Years: PLEASE. How rushed or drawn-out was the wedding planning? Has one of them been trying to sabotage the ceremony with clashing decor choices, or perhaps with murder? ...Does the Outsider crash the reception?

Is my spouse trying to kill me | Someone's trying to kill me and I think it's my spouse: Grouped together for being thematically similar. I feel like Delilah is a more likely candidate for the role of spouse-attempting-murder, but I’m intrigued by the reverse as well.

Marriage is Interrupted by an Assassination Attempt and they Continue After they Take Care of Them | planned assassination during wedding night goes wrong: Again, grouped together for thematic similarities. Who hired the poor assassins? If Delilah or Corvo / Emily end up having to use their powers, how do they deal with the aftermath?

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.[Buffer space for Endgame spoilers below!]

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MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE

Peter Parker/Tony Stark 2012!Tony Stark/Peter Parker

Wooooo! \m/ This is my MCU OTP at the moment. I adore their mutual importance to each other, their easy teamwork and camaraderie despite the age gap, and the potential for ANGST ANGST ANGST and pining as well as humor and fluff. I love stuff where they’ve been pining mutually and self-awarely for a long time, but also stuff where one or both parties don’t realize their feelings until XYZ catalyst forces them to.

Please note that my underage DNW does apply here, although UST and feelings/pining while Peter is underage are fine with me.

I'm totally down with Infinity War / Endgame compliance or canon divergence AUs (e.g., the universe where Thanos disappeared in 2014, AUs where they defeated Thanos in IW, Civil War was resolved without Tony recruiting Peter, etc.). Please feel free to run with the freeforms as-is, or check out the expansions and prompts below.

Freeforms Requested:

Accidental Travel to an Alternate Universe With an Unexpected Spouse | Permanently Transported To Alternate Universe Where They're Married To Person Who Is Dead In Theirs | Temporarily Transported To Alternate Universe Where They're Married To Person Who Is Dead In Theirs: I’m intrigued by the idea of Peter traveling to an alternate universe where he’s somehow married to Tony, but also by the idea of Tony -- post-IW Tony, perhaps -- stumbling on a world where he’s married to Peter, perhaps in the course of trying to reverse the Snap.

Trapped In Fake Perfect World That Includes Marriage They Don't Believe They Can Ever Really Have: Oh no! Who’s trapped? Who’s the fake perfect spouse? What compels the trapped party to give up the fake perfect world, and how difficult is it and why?

Always Married to Same Person When You Dream | Marriage within dreams becomes real: Is the dreamer pining, mourning, or experiencing a more complicated situation (e.g., a spell, meetings on the astral plane, meetings in a temporary afterlife, meetings in a space between universes, premonitions of a breach between universes, etc.)? I am very fond of dreams and surreality in fic, so I would love to see that sort of atmosphere incorporated too if it floats your boat.

Aliens Make Them Get Married: YESSSSS. Whatever the justification, I love this trope.

Characters Keep "Forgetting" to Annul Accidental Marriage | Series of Mishaps Prevent Annulment of Accidental Marriage: This seems like it could be hilarious. :D

Carried Over The Threshold: I just really like this image! Though I’m partial to Peter carrying Tony, the other way around appeals to me too.

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.[Buffer space for Endgame spoilers above!]

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THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves

I will admit I wasn’t sold on Allison/Luther during my first viewing of the series, but subsequent viewings have decidedly awoken me to their charm. I’m super interested in the idea of an incongruously sweet connection arising from the fucked-up-ness of their upbringing, and in exploring how that connection carries over into their adult lives.

Allison became a superstar; Luther spent four years alone on the moon. How did they part, back when the siblings went their separate ways as young adults? Where was Luther during Allison’s wedding? How did Allison learn what happened to him? Did they keep in touch directly, or just hear about each other incidentally from the people they did maintain contact with?

If you can tell from the selected freeforms, I am here for tropey fluff and angst for this pairing. I also really like canon divergent AUs -- The Day That Wasn’t, handwavey “we averted the apocalypse after all” AUs, for want of a nail, etc. -- and futurefic. I enjoy Claire and would love to see her meet Luther. In general, though, I’d just like to explore these two more.

Note: I would prefer that any fic written for me in this exchange not focus more than briefly on the incest aspect of this pairing. Outsiders can be horrified that the adopted siblings are getting it on, but the Hargreeves children don’t seem to care a lot in-universe, and I’d like it to stay that way in fic.

Freeforms Requested:

Asking someone to be their witness

Character fantasizes about getting married

Crying With Happiness During Wedding

Wedding Fluff | Wedding Planning | Something Old Something New Something Borrowed Something Blue

Crashing a Wedding to Prevent a Bad Marriage | Crashing A Wedding So Character Can Marry One Of The Participants Instead | Objecting during the marriage ceremony

Road Trip Honeymoon | Road Trip to Marriage Ceremony

Trapped In Fake Perfect World That Includes Marriage They Don't Believe They Can Ever Really Have

Undercover as Married While Mutually Pining

Time Loop Can Only Be Ended Through Marriage

Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves

So. Five is a dick to everyone, but he’s slightly less of a dick to Vanya. What’s up with that? Or: How close were they as kids, and how might they reconnect as adults?

I’m really interested in how a relationship might develop between these two in a future fic or canon divergence AU. Maybe Five only zapped forward in time for a little while, or was able to return at an earlier point in time than 2019? Maybe Vanya was able to learn to control her powers as a child and grew up as a participating member of the Academy? Maybe -- maybe! -- the siblings managed to avert the apocalypse, and they’re adjusting to life together in the aftermath? I don’t know! I’m interested in all kinds of things.

I love the idea of Vanya and Five as a battle couple or married coworkers, and of them getting together while on a case/mission. A while ago, someone on FFA brought up the idea of them undercover fake married in 1950s suburbia, and I am SO into that -- both the specific setting, and the concept of Five/Vanya going undercover as a fake married couple in various eras/locations.

Please be advised that my underage DNW includes Five having sex while in his younger body. UST is fine, but I’d like Five to physically be an adult for any sexual situations.

Note: I would prefer that any fic written for me in this exchange not focus more than briefly on the incest aspect of this pairing. Outsiders can be horrified that the adopted siblings are getting it on, but the Hargreeves children don’t seem to care a lot in-universe, and I’d like it to stay that way in fic.

Freeforms Requested:

Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress

Fake Marriage Results in Surprise Real Feelings | Obviously Fake Marriage Leads To Third Party Realizing Their Feelings For Half the Couple

Pretending to be married to access information

Undercover as Married | Undercover as Married Leads to Unexpected Feelings | Undercover as Married While Mutually Pining

Honeymoon Heist | Road Trip Honeymoon | Working While on Your Honeymoon

Time Travel Backward To Fix The Past Also Results In Unexpectedly Getting Married

#optional detailed letters for exchanges tag

[ninjaruski]

On the “Is Wonder Woman feminist enough,” issue.

Apparently folks are asking the question, “is Wonder Woman feminist enough,” which is to be expected. That's actually a pretty good point question in many respects, and it deserves asking.

On the other hand, given that Marston drew direct inspiration from the feminists of his era, specifically Margaret Sanger, I believe that we need to reframe the question to ask "does the Wonder Woman movie embody the ideas of modern feminism in the way Marston intended." To be clear: Marston sought to create a character drawing upon the feminism of his time, a feminism which presumed a "universal sisterhood" and erased the unique ways in which women experience sexism differently, in order to create what he termed “propaganda” to impress upon his readership the idea of gender equity through the medium of comics. This question does not ask if our modern representation of Wonder Woman embodies Marston’s feminism; it asks if our modern representation embodies our feminism in the way that Marston intended. This is a different question than "is Wonder Woman feminist enough," as we are asking the degree to which the film representation (and the comics to the same extent) embodies the intentions of the author to present a character that took up the feminist consciousness of his era and represented it in a medium where it previously had not been represented. I want to note, again, that Marston was dealing with the feminism of his era: not updating Wonder Woman as the embodiment of feminism actually reproduces some of the issues that have arisen in the half-century since Marston wrote Wonder Woman, namely that of a “universal sisterhood.” This is significant because there are multiple "feminist consciousnesses" in our era, yet Marston was working from a feminism that assumed a singular feminist consciousness, which could be easily embodied in a single archetype. This is important. To the above question, we must also add "which feminism is being embodied," specifically in the wake of the kinds of critiques of “neo-liberal feminism” that arose from Hillary Clinton’s attempt to channel feminist rhetoric during her campaign. To paint with a general brush, Clinton embodied a specific kind of feminism that many felt did not include the interests or experiences of marginalized women across axis of identity. This is less about how Clinton was a feminist, though this is important, but which feminism guided her actions. Once we answer which feminism Wonder Woman was said to embody, we can then ask the degree to which the movie (and the character) successfully embodies that feminism. All of this, I think, might be outside the scope of the "popular" understanding of what Wonder Woman, the character and the movie, was supposed to be. As an aside, in my view, Marston's vision for Wonder Woman was something that was lost, if memory serves, somewhere in the transition from golden to silver age. We’ve been operating off something different ever since. The question we need to be asking is the following: does Wonder Woman as represented on film embody, in Marston's words "the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world." While Marston was being slightly hyperbolic, the question stands: as Wonder Woman was intended to represent the kind of woman that he assumed would make the ideal candidate to lead and organize society, we must consider the kind of woman we want to lead society, and what qualities she should possess. And then, we need to ask who the "I" in question is. This is a question of the positionality of the author and the reader. Whose image of feminist empowerment does Wonder Woman represent, and who is the intended audience of this image. Not to get all Deweyan, but if a creative work is an intensification of a qualitative unity, and we can say that different feminisms have different qualitative unities, then we need to ask which feminism’s qualitative unity is being intensified? Here, we can introduce a large number of the critiques that have emerged since Marston's time about the nature of the "ideal" feminist, or "ideal" feminism, and how a character should embody these ideologies in a fictional context. There is an additional point here: Marston put a primacy on "love" broadly defined, as the key difference between Wonder Woman’s approach to problem solving as a hero, and that of Superman and Batman. To be clear: this would be love that was embodied in a woman with all the strength of Superman and the fighting skill of Batman, and therefore had the means to use the more “traditional” superheroic means to solve problems. However, again we need to be clear about what we mean by love and how these things are culturally mediated. That we have Audre Lorde articulating “love” through her anger; bell hooks writing an entire text entitled “All About Love;” and, love articulated differently through the traditions of Sontag, Butler. Thus, how Wonder Woman uses love is also at issue in her representation, and how this love aligns with the articulations of love in a given tradition is also at issue. On this basis, we can ask to what degree the Wonder Woman in the film uses love, while also projecting the ideal woman that should "rule the world," as if there is agreement about that. “Is Wonder Woman feminist enough?” Well, the comics scholar in me wants to say that we're all asking the wrong questions, as I articulated above. However I am sympathetic to the surface level asking of the question: this is understandable because most people don't know the history behind the creation of Wonder Woman. Further, most people do not know that Wonder Woman was created to perform a very specific role within comics. More importantly, the critical comics scholar in me wants to point out no single superheroic archetype woman can embody all of these things simultaneously: my ultimate conclusion is that we need multiple "Wonder Women," each embodying their own variety of feminism, in the way that Marston intended. Doing so may bring these “Wonder Women” into conflict with one another, which would be a good thing. Bottom line: we’re asking the wrong questions. Sure, Wonder Woman might be “feminist enough,” but feminist enough for who, and in what way? Moreover, the question continues to repeat the assumption that one character can embody the meaning of feminism for all those who would adopt the “identity” of “feminist,” without recognizing how the meaning of “feminism” changes depending on the position of a given feminist. To put it simply: "feminism" has changed from Marston's time to become "feminisms;" therefore, "Wonder Woman" should also change to become "Wonder Women.

(As an aside, for all of you who’re going to say “but what about the mythological origin: while Marston drew on greek mythology for Wonder Woman’s origins, there are cultures the world over that have similar “made from clay” motifs. Nuwa, in Chinese mythology, is worth noting; as is Kaguya-hime from Japan, though she emerged from a stalk of bamboo; and, my research indicates that there is a Native American myth that follows a similar theme. You just need to dream bigger.)

#Wonder Woman #feminism #is wonder woman feminist enough #comics #wonder woman and feminism #comics and feminism

[jennifersnyderca90]

MyEquifax.com Bypasses Credit Freeze PIN

Most people who have frozen their credit files with Equifax have been issued a numeric Personal Identification Number (PIN) which is supposed to be required before a freeze can be lifted or thawed. Unfortunately, if you don’t already have an account at the credit bureau’s new myEquifax portal, it may be simple for identity thieves to lift an existing credit freeze at Equifax and bypass the PIN armed with little more than your, name, Social Security number and birthday.

Consumers in every U.S. state can now freeze their credit files for free with Equifax and two other major bureaus (Trans Union and Experian). A freeze makes it much harder for identity thieves to open new lines of credit in your name.

In the wake of Equifax’s epic 2017 data breach impacting some 148 million Americans, many people did freeze their credit files at the big three in response. But Equifax has changed a few things since then.

Seeking to manage my own credit freeze at equifax.com as I’d done in years past, I was steered toward creating an account at myequifax.com, which I was shocked to find I did previously possess.

Getting an account at myequifax.com was easy. In fact, it was too easy. The portal asked me for an email address and suggested a longish, randomized password, which I accepted. I chose an old email address that I knew wasn’t directly tied to my real-life identity.

The next page asked me enter my SSN and date of birth, and to share a phone number (sharing was optional, so I didn’t). SSN and DOB data is widely available for sale in the cybercrime underground on almost all U.S. citizens. This has been the reality for years, and was so well before Equifax announced its big 2017 breach.

myEquifax said it couldn’t verify that my email address belonged to the Brian Krebs at that SSN and DOB. It then asked a series of four security questions — so-called “knowledge-based authentication” or KBA questions designed to see if I can about my recent financial history.

In general, the data being asked about in these KBA quizzes is culled from public records, meaning that this information likely is publicly available in some form — either digitally or in-person. Indeed, I have long assailed the KBA industry as creating a false sense of security that is easily bypassed by fraudsters.

One potential problem with relying on KBA questions to authenticate consumers online is that so much of the information needed to successfully guess the answers to those multiple-choice questions is now indexed or exposed by search engines, social networks and third-party services online — both criminal and commercial.

The first three multiple-guess questions myEquifax asked were about loans or debts that I have never owed. Thus, the answer to the first three KBA questions asked was, “none of the above.” The final question asked for the name of our last mortgage company. Again, information that is not hard to find.

Satisfied with my answers, Equifax informed me that yes indeed I was Brian Krebs and that I could now manage my existing freeze with the company. After requesting a thaw, I was brought to a vintage Equifax page that looked nothing like myEquifax’s sunnier new online plumage.

Equifax’s site says it will require users requesting changes to an existing credit freeze to have access to their freeze PIN and be ready to supply it. But Equifax never actually asks for the PIN.

This page informed me that if I previously secured a freeze of my credit file with Equifax and been given a PIN needed to undo that status in any way, that I should be ready to provide said information if I was requesting changes via phone or email. 

In other words, credit freezes and thaws requested via myExquifax don’t require users to supply any pre-existing PIN.

Fine, I said. Let’s do this.

myEquifax then asked for the date range requested to thaw my credit freeze. Submit.

“We’ve successfully processed your security freeze request!,” the site declared.

This also was exclaimed in an email to the random old address I’d used at myEquifax, although the site never once made any attempt to validate that I had access to this inbox, something that could be done by simply sending a confirmation link that needs to be clicked to activate the account.

In addition, I noticed Equifax added my old mobile number to my account, even though I never supplied this information and was not using this phone when I created the myEquifax account.

Successfully unfreezing (temporarily thawing) my credit freeze did not require me to ever supply my previously-issued freeze PIN from Equifax. Anyone who knew the vaguest and most knowable details about me could have done the same.

myEquifax.com does not currently seek to verify the account by requesting confirmation via a phone call or text to the phone number associated with the account (also, recall that even providing a phone number was optional).

Happily, I did discover then when I used a different computer and Internet address to try to open up another account under my name, date of birth and SSN, it informed me that a profile already existed for this information. This suggests that signing up at myEquifax is probably a good idea, given that the alternative is more risky.

It was way too easy to create my account, but I’m not saying everyone will be able to create one online. In testing with several readers over the past 24 hours, myEquifax seems to be returning a lot more error pages at the KBA stage of the process now, prompting people to try again later or make a request via email or phone.

Equifax spokesperson Nancy Bistritz-Balkan said not requiring a PIN for people with existing freezes was by design.

“With myEquifax, we created an online experience that enables consumers to securely and conveniently manage security freezes and fraud alerts,” Bistritz-Balkan said..

“We deployed an experience that embraces both security standards (using a multi-factor and layered approach to verify the consumer’s identity) and reflects specific consumer feedback on managing security freezes and fraud alerts online without the use of a PIN,” she continued. “The account set-up process, which involves the creation of a username and password, relies on both user inputs and other factors to securely establish, verify, and authenticate that the consumer’s identity is connected to the consumer every time.”

I asked Bistritz-Balkan what else besides a username and a password the company may have meant by “multi-factor;” I’m still waiting for clarification. But I did not experience anything like multi-factor in setting up or logging into my myEquifax account.

This may by closer to Equifax’s idea of multi-factor: The company told me that if I still really wanted to use my freeze PIN, I could always call their 800 number (800-349-9960) or make the request via mail. Nevermind that if I’m a bad guy looking to hack others, I’m definitely going to be using the myEquifax Web site — not the options that make me have to supply a PIN.

Virtually the entire United States population in 2017 became eligible for free credit monitoring from Equifax following its 2017 breach. Credit monitoring can be useful for recovering from identity theft, but consumers should not expect these services to block new account fraud; the most they will likely do in this case is alert you after ID thieves have already opened new accounts in your name.

A credit freeze does not impact your ability to use any existing financial accounts you may have, including bank and credit/debit accounts. Nor will it protect you from fraud on those existing accounts. It is mainly a way to minimize the risk that someone may be able to create new accounts in your name.

If you haven’t done so lately, it might a good time to order a free copy of your credit report from annualcreditreport.com. This service entitles each consumer one free copy of their credit report annual from each of the three credit bureaus — either all at once or spread out over the year.

Additional reading:

Credit Freezes are Free: Let the Ice Age Begin

Plant Your Flag, Mark Your Territory

Experian Site Can Give Anyone Your Freeze PIN

Survey: Americans Spent $1.4B on Credit Freeze Fees in Wake of Equifax Breach

Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

Data Broker Giants Hacked by ID Theft Service

Experian Sold Access to ID Theft Service

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/myequifax-com-bypasses-credit-freeze-pin/