Giorgione did a fine Venus in 1510 (believed to be the first prominent work of the reclining nudes kind), but it was painted not because he wanted the viewer to enjoy the controversial personality of the goddess. It was about her body. A nude woman has always been painted to appeal to men standing in front of the picture. Kings would boast of their lovers to their friends. Noble gentlemen would catch up by exhibiting their hunting trophies: girls they’d bedded and deer they’d killed. If you’ve visited medieval castles, did you notice that “reclining nudes” are often exhibited alongside the stuffed heads  of animals?

If the 15th century saw the rise of allegory as justification for painting nude women (of which we remember Botticelli’s Venus and Spring best of all), the 16th century witnessed a tidal wave of Venuses, Dianas, and Paris Judgements. I’ll skip the rest of the…

There are many names for beings:  tode ti, thing, object, primary substance, system, process, body, “this”, machine, event, etc.  I’m sure there are others yet.  In a certain sense, all of these terms are synonyms of one another.  They all denote a “this”, an individual being, something that exists.  In another sense, they denote different approaches to things or primary substances or things.  In discussing things as events, we emphasize their durational nature or the manner in which they unfold in time.  In approaching them as machines, we approach them in terms of the outputs they produce in response to inputs.  In approaching them as systems, we explore the processes they engage in to maintain their organization and the interdependence of their parts.

Things or bodies are split between their virtual proper being and their local manifestations; their powers and their qualities.  It is not qualities or properties…

I have been fighting a brutal cold for the last week, so I apologize for the disjointed nature of this post…

In an enigmatic passage from Seminar 11, Lacan remarks that “…the gods belong to the field of the real” (45).  This passage is all the more enigmatic in that later Lacan declares that “…the true formula of atheism is not God is dead –even by basing the origin of the function of the father upon his murder, Freud protects the father –the true formula of atheism is God is unconscious” (59).  I’ve provided commentary on these two passages elsewhere, so I won’t repeat them in detail here.  In referring to the real, of course, Lacan is not referring to “reality”, but to the impossible.  As is so often the case in his thought, Lacan will speak of the real in a number of senses.  However here he…