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Random Six - De File
Does Collecting Make You Feel Dirty?
09:17 pm November 28th, 2006
cbertsch
cbertsch
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Random Six
Since I like benlinus a lot and also owe him one -- or two -- I am responding to his tag by doing the "six random facts about yourself" meme, though I normally steer clear of herd behavior on LJ:
• I badly wanted to be in the Air Force when I was in elementary school
• I have a hard time believing that Sigmund Freud had it all wrong, since my own psyche fits his theories like a kid glove
• I really love a good chicken-fried steak. I've had very few, the best being at a 24-hour diner in Mitchell, South Dakota -- home of the Corn Palace -- that was simply packed with locals at 2am
• I have shivered uncontrollably when confronted with the prospect of blissful transgression
• I learned a lot about driving by playing Pole Position, even though my mother insisted that it would not help me in the real world
•I actually do know what I'm doing, even if I pretend otherwise
Well, there you have it. I'm supposed to tag six people, which seems a little too aggressive for my taste. I think I'll just invite some LJ friends to share: zokah, tommix, xmoonbunnyx, siyeh,xxxpunkxgrrlxxx, and pewter_surfer.

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Comments
Thread started by Lavra
elf_owl From: elf_owl Date: November 29th, 2006 05:35 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I saw the Blue Angels fly when I was 5. I may not have been 5, but somewhere around there. My memory has assigned it to 5. Anyway, after that I badly wanted to be a fighter pilot, even though I didn't make the connection that meant I'd have to drop bombs on people. I can never be a pilot, which I understood around, oh, 7 or so. By then I knew about bombs, anyway.
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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: November 29th, 2006 05:44 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Alas, I sort of wanted to drop bombs. I didn't want to kill anyone in particular. But I fantasized about making raids over our Pennsylvania woods. I could even picture the landscape from the air, which reminds me that I have something to write about the view from above. You know, I just realized as I was writing this that the Eric Burdon song "Sky Pilot" did more to uproot my dream of flight than anything else. I guess it worked the way it was supposed to in my case.
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elf_owl From: elf_owl Date: November 29th, 2006 06:00 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I just wanted to do the fancy flying maneuvers. But, you know, girls often tend to have less instinct to do war-like things.
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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: November 29th, 2006 02:49 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I suppose they do. I lost the desire by the time I was in junior high. I suspect that my ending up with someoen who had been in the Air Force and then gotten out represents a way for me to reconcile my early dreams with my later principles.
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Thread started by xx
From: hipsandquips Date: November 29th, 2006 07:45 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
oh i see how it is :P no love for carleigh.
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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: November 29th, 2006 02:47 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Now, now. I was just thinking of sending you some music. . .
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From: hipsandquips Date: November 29th, 2006 02:57 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
haha i guess you'd better or i'll feel horribly neglected. i posted a mix recently of 5 songs on my blog, i'm going to try to do it once a week.
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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: November 29th, 2006 03:24 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
The politics of tagging are complex and vexing. I should use YouSendIt?
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From: hipsandquips Date: November 29th, 2006 03:40 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
indeed =)
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Thread started by Bob Gamboa
From: bobo_amargo Date: November 29th, 2006 06:54 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

The Pooh-Bah Pooh-pooh Perplex
It strikes me that our best conversational moments in grad school turned on our shared refusal to condescend to Freud—rare, indeed, in a department in which the ruling elite were given to snickering superciliously at public talks at which he was in some way approvingly mentioned. If it hadn't been for you and FD, I would have been the only person in (my) sight benighted enough to be occupied by an unconscious.

Though there are other (stronger) arguments demonstrating the continuing availability of a number of Freud's theories (together with Thomas Nagel and Donald Davidson, Jonathan Lear and Richard Wollheim are compelling proponents), your suggestion that one test them against one's own (psychic) experience is, for my money, a good place to start, a good place to establish at least prima facie conviction. Of course, such testing requires a minimal level of candor and self-reflection, and then a good deal of further reflection and philosophical grounding. Genuine relevance is a horse of a different color from the straw man reductionism.

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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: November 29th, 2006 07:07 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

Re: The Pooh-Bah Pooh-pooh Perplex
That sort of public honesty is in short supply in academia, which also explains the disdain directed at personal blogging. You know, I had much better luck in Rhetoric. Butler takes Freud seriously and Silverman, though sometimes a bit rigid in what she permits, is fully in favor of psychoanalysis.
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From: bobo_amargo Date: November 29th, 2006 07:18 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

Kaja folles
I could've cited a number of continental figures who are hugely influenced by Freud (Butler among them), but I take it that, to those who believe that theorizing in the Freudian manner is invalid because nonfalsifiable, doing so would be considered begging the question. Butler has acknowledged some of Wollheim's work on Freud as influential on her own.
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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: November 29th, 2006 07:33 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

Re: Kaja folles
The shadow of the leather-beclad, motorcycle-driving Fred Crews covered most of Wheeler Hall. I want to read Jonathan Lear. I've only seen a few short pieces. Adam Phillips is someone I like as well, though his prose sometimes tries too hard for lightness of touch.
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From: bobo_amargo Date: November 29th, 2006 07:47 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)

Crews Control
But, like Socrates vis-à-vis the old man at the beginning of The Republic (i.e., allowing him to leave unscathed by "new" radicalities), I was less angry with the Fredster than with the likes of Gallagher and Greenblatt, the true éminences grises of Wheeler. (I'll grant that you lived under Fred's iron fist longer than I did.)

I'm not familiar with Adam Phillips; I'll have to look him up.

On a related note, I would reductively claim that one way to understand Cavell's major discovery about philosophical skepticism is to peruse Freud's little essay on negation.
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PROFILE
Charlie Bertsch
User: cbertsch
Name: Charlie Bertsch
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ABOUT DE FILE
You're looking at content from my Live Journal, which I have been keeping since 2003. I consider it a personal blog, though it lacks stream-of-consciousness revelations that typify that genre.

That said, if you manage to discern the confessional mode within entries that are superficially tight-lipped, I will reward you handsomely. Or at least pretend to do so.

In addition to reflections, however mediated, on my daily activities, De File features periodic excavations of material from my "files," a revelation sure to disturb anyone who has seen my garage. It's an experiment in integrating past and present, perhaps with a little redemption along the way.

Politics is always on my mind, but rarely explicit here. I’m working on a theory about what personal writing like this does to literary identification and why some people resist its pull so powerfully. But my goal is to make that theory dissolve in my practice, a density in liquid.

You'll note that I have links to blogs not on LiveJournal directly above, as well as assorted websites of note. The blogs I read regularly on LiveJournal itself fall under "FRIENDS" at the top, for those of you unfamiliar with LJ’s workings.

You can write me. I'm "cbertsch" before the circle-a and "comcast.net" after it.
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