Understanding the Inner Self Through Madness and Art | Plus...Current Events and Updates
with the help of Julia Kristeva and Jorge Luis Borges
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So…let’s enter the labyrinth.
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I want to start covering some current events within the labyrinth…but do not worry! I will definitely keep it locked in on the analysis of ideology.
A Twitter clip I found interesting…
However, I want to express my support for Ukraine, let me make that clear! Yet, I find it curious how the racism—that we might not have been consciously aware of—begins coming out in times of conflict.
Ukraine faces the heartbreaking reality of their country becoming decimated by war. The West, and especially the United States, should also refelct on how they’ve played a role in destablizing and destroying the Middle East.
What I'm reading? I'm doing a deep dive on Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
What I'm working on? A fantasy novel that will have a personal story of finding yourself in a confusing world, with the backdrop of realism themes (global conflicts). I'd like to have it become an exploration of the self and our relationship with the global conflicts we find ourselves in.
I'm also researching Aleksandr Dugin, as he is the problematic and dangerous figure that has been called "Putin's Brain." I'll relate this into how Dugin has a problematic understanding of culture, the self, and ideology.
Understanding the Inner Self Through Madness and Art
“The work of art insures the rebirth of its author and its reader or viewer in the artificial language it puts forward (new style, new composition, surprising imagination) and the unnamed agitations of a self that ordinary social and linguistic usage always leave somewhat orphaned. Hence such a fiction, if it isn’t an antidepressant, is at least a survival, a resurrection.” — Julia Kristeva
The artwork becomes the expression — or the attempt — of an artist to place their sense of self into the world. This becomes the transference of an internal sense of self, where we place that internal sense into an external object for the external world to consume. The artwork, in many ways, becomes a means for self-understanding, in which the artist attempts to attain both conscious and subconscious understanding by externalizing their internal sense of self.
Thus, artwork and creativity become a defense mechanism to fend off an inner feeling of isolation, as we wish to express ourselves in order to find a relationship with the external world. Through our expression and creativity, we hope to find ourselves a tether to maintain our sanity. When we feel alone, isolated, lost within our minds, and unable to interact with the world around us, the act of expression enables us to maintain that which is most human about ourselves.
So, our creativity and expression become necessary maintenance of the self.
This maintenance maintains the necessary fiction of our inner world, keeping us out of the grasp — from the chasm of the real (Lacan Concept).
Through creation, our madness has an outlet of transference, and that becomes something that is given life — placating it upon an object to be understood. This understanding does not come purely from the creator!
The symbolic object of creation becomes a transference for those consuming it! The external selves all around us, with their own inner worlds, create a transference of madness from their interpretation of the creation.
This is true for me! My realization is that although I write to understand myself, I still seek validation from others: the recognition that I’ve successfully shown you what I see. If I fail at showing this, I feel as though I’ve failed you.
“Artistic style imposes itself as a means of countervailing the loss of other and of meaning: a means more powerful than any other because it is more autonomous… for it fills the same psychic need to confront separation, emptiness, death. Isn’t the artist’s life considered, by himself to start with, to be a work of art?” — Julia Kristeva
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” —Jorge Luis Borges
“There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.” — Jorge Luis Borges
With love…
Until next time,
Brenden
Now get out of my labyrinth.
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