Becoming and Relationality:
A Dialectical essay on Relational Ontology
A Dialectical essay on Relational Ontology
CONCLUSION:
In the pursuit of being-historical, we have constructed Relational Ontology and Dialectical Psychoanalysis; well, we’ve at least tried. Our attempt was to use the late Sartre’s conceptual system, dialectical reason, to reassess and amalgamate the theories of the existentialist Sartre and the psychoanalytical Freud. This was always already only a subjective process aiming towards the level of a historical post-philosophical system; we had hoped to gain some validity for this aim by taking the dialectical materialism of the late Sartre seriously. The question, then, is would the late Sartre generally agree or disagree with our endeavors here?
Throughout the essay, we have tried to springboard off of Sartre; either through negating him along lines he himself follows (i.e. negating his analytical thinking and making it dialectical), or finding original insights by following down lanes he himself opened up. We feel as though we have written very little original; most of our ideas are Sartrean in one form or another. For example, the Dialectical Psychoanalytic conception of freedom and authenticity is straightforwardly that of the late Sartre. Where we arrived at seemingly original ideas, even those that seem contrary to the published ideas of Sartre, it seems that the divergence relates to our central endeavor of relating the existentialist Sartre to the historical materialist Sartre, and both of these to a dialectical reading of Freud.
Relationtology views existence as a grand Becoming swimming in a sea of Relationality. There are no objects or phenomenon that have an essential identity; existence is evolution, entropy, action, and difference from Others, and these laws destroy the ‘is-ness,’ or being, of all existents. Even the Present where such objects might appear as-if-is is connected and related to History, such that every Present is itself becoming, and all events which occur in the Present must themselves be becoming. Relationtology understands humen and humen society as historical and ecological i.e. always already related to all Others in the ecology of humen society. Finally, Relationtology sees the psyche-in-society as becoming and relational, and thus leads to Dialectical Psychoanalysis.
Dialectical Psychoanalysis seeks to understand the unseen forces that condition the psyche-in-society, as well as the existential events/experiences that affect the functioning of the psyche-in-society. Forces such as need, which was found to provide impetus for the further development of the ego, its world-concept, and its thought and praxis, gain ontological importance to the psyche-in-society. As does the concept of the Other, and the relationship of withdrawal (a form of separation and alienation) which forever plagues and conditions the psyche-in-society and life.
Dialectical Psychoanalysis understands the importance of the Pcs.Ego (the preconscious ego; the portions of the Ego which can become conscious if given attention; the site of meaning, thought, langauge, and fantasy), placing it at the center of the being-becoming that is the psyche-in-society. The Pcs.Ego becomes the symbol of Becoming in the psyche, and Cs. (consciousness, the conscious ego |Cs.Ego|, or the Pcs.Ego becoming-conscious) becomes the symbol of Relationality. Only what the Pcs.Ego gives attention to by being-conscious of an-Other is given space in the world-concept or Reality of the psyche-in-society; the Pcs.Ego is central to the construction of the world-concepts of both the internal and external Other that is Reality, and this insight causes us to find a dialectical, and not analytical and empirical, relationship between the psyche-in-society and its Reality. Lastly, Dialectical Psychoanalysis understands that authentic praxis, as direct activity by a fused group against an-Other (either seriality, negative force, practico-inert, humen and social others, or limits to possibilities), is the highest form of authenticity and freedom that the psyche-in-society can attain.
Relationtology and Dialectical Psychoanalysis, just as Becoming and Relationality, come with each other or they do not come at all. Despite our attempts, our loosest concepts, even Relationality, are only constructions and projections of our psyches, and as such the insights of Relationtology can only be grasped if the insights of Dialectical Psychoanalysis are grasped, and vice-versa. If our treatise on these two truly forwards a system, it is a system that has as of yet been only unsatisfactorily elucidated and explicated. It is up to history, and humen as history, and you the reader as an ‘enlightened’ and related humen, to carry forth the systematization of Relationtology and Dialectical Psychoanalysis.
This Day, Too, Will Come
The people,
united,
grimaces on taut faces,
sweat runs south as anger comes out to play
on the faces of millions of clothed mammals,
hands held tight and raised,
eyes watching power’s last dance.
Men, women, child democrats
voting through shouts and knowledge
the general will:
the end of now’s Elitism.
The people united,
will never
re-shackle chains for the body,
never unbend bent bars on the mind’s cage,
never fold to old synthetic sleep with
constructed, plastic dreams of hegemony,
never unthink thoughts thought till now
only in shaded parts of patrolled Red wood forests
of the enslaved psyche; thoughts of freedom
that now rise to the height of green above brown branches
dancing to the strong wind rhythm of unstoppable change.
The people united will never
be defeated
by the gravity of sloped hills of complicit laws,
by the armed stones tumbling down in uniform,
aiming their weaponry only at themselves.
Never be defeated by the threats of thin air at the top,
by the lies of the steepness of this ragged hill,
of the weakness of feet, legs, toes, working hand’s man,
by the lies of the privileging grit
of those white and gray select few madmen
who perch at the peak and rule all beneath.
No, no.
Neither lies nor truth nor arms nor boots.
No not now nor later nor satan nor savior.
Neither guns nor bread nor heads nor dregs,
will do to do what seems to have been done
once humans see freedom in their being One.
Never
will the people
united be defeated.
Come, will this day too?
This day, too, will come.
The people,
united,
grimaces on taut faces,
sweat runs south as anger comes out to play
on the faces of millions of clothed mammals,
hands held tight and raised,
eyes watching power’s last dance.
Men, women, child democrats
voting through shouts and knowledge
the general will:
the end of now’s Elitism.
The people united,
will never
re-shackle chains for the body,
never unbend bent bars on the mind’s cage,
never fold to old synthetic sleep with
constructed, plastic dreams of hegemony,
never unthink thoughts thought till now
only in shaded parts of patrolled Red wood forests
of the enslaved psyche; thoughts of freedom
that now rise to the height of green above brown branches
dancing to the strong wind rhythm of unstoppable change.
The people united will never
be defeated
by the gravity of sloped hills of complicit laws,
by the armed stones tumbling down in uniform,
aiming their weaponry only at themselves.
Never be defeated by the threats of thin air at the top,
by the lies of the steepness of this ragged hill,
of the weakness of feet, legs, toes, working hand’s man,
by the lies of the privileging grit
of those white and gray select few madmen
who perch at the peak and rule all beneath.
No, no.
Neither lies nor truth nor arms nor boots.
No not now nor later nor satan nor savior.
Neither guns nor bread nor heads nor dregs,
will do to do what seems to have been done
once humans see freedom in their being One.
Never
will the people
united be defeated.
Come, will this day too?
This day, too, will come.
