What have I learned from Alberg’s slim volume?

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau constructed symbolic orders that turned hearts to stone.

Dante pointed to the symbolic order of the Christ.

Jesus, along with the prophets, constructed the first symbolic order from the perspective of the victim.

Flannery O’Connor wrote from the point of view of the victim; that is, the corpse.  In doing so, she portrayed the Nothing at the heart of symbolic orders manufactured after the Fall.

Each symbolic order relies on mimesis^constrained_.

Mimesis^{unconstrained} re-enacts mimesis^constrained in scandalous and problematic ways.

If “scandal” fascinates on the surface and blocks the path to deeper understanding, then “scandal” it is.  If “forgiveness” removes the block of “scandal”, then “forgiveness” it must be.

Discovery is located where scandals lurk.

That brings me to the last author examined by Alberg.

Flannery O’Connor, unlike all the other authors, wrote with a dead hand.

Everything in her books and stories rings with the voice of a corpse, telling of the social construction that destroyed her, and revealing almost nothing about the symbolic order that supported the sinful social construction.

She forces the reader to say, “You do not make sense. Could you explain to me what you are writing in my own symbolic order?”, before realizing that she is only a corpse, a person who could never hold your symbolic order, because if she did, your symbolic order would construct a bureaucratic machine that would kill her.

She will never explain her writing in your symbolic order.

Consequently, many readers want to strangle her.

In our evolutionary history, the “object that brought everyone into relation” existed in the realm of possibility, the realm where contradictions are allowed, the realm where everyone could both compete and get along.

Now, as soon as someone puts a formulation, some key component of a symbolic order, into the hollow space of “where the object is supposed to go”, the “object” becomes like a “thing” that we can want because we sense that others want it as well.

What a powerful and alluring thing this “object” is.  We expect that others are willing to sacrifice everything for this “object”.  We can back up that expectation with sovereign power.  Sovereign power creates the corpse.

And sovereign power is scandalized by its mute testimonial.

All the planners and all the king’s ‘men’ posit the “subject” as the “one who is willing to sacrifice everything for the ‘object’ that brings everyone (in the realm) into organization”.

Does this not sound like mimesis^constrained in its formulation and like mimesis^{unconstrained} in its misrecognition of the “object”?

Is anything more hurtful than someone criticizing your worldview – your symbolic order – without explaining her critique in terms of your symbolic order?

You can only sputter, “You do not make sense.”  Not in my Lebenswelt, that is.  And in that sputter, comes some spittle, a scattering spray of defensive thoughts, claiming that the critical utterer is informed by a twisted ideology and inspired by demonic motives.

If you are lucky, someone has already organized your thoughts, so all you have to do is act shocked and deny the critique.

The accusing corpse has already been refuted by the symbolic order, even though the accuser is dead.

Corpses cannot explain themselves properly, because as victims, they never held the symbolic order animating the social construction that killed them.

Consequently, the corpse is a scandal.

History is littered with the invisible, now undetectable, or maybe, incomprehensible, remains of discarded relational – or perhaps, organizational – objects.

Where were they?  Look for the corpses.  The victims will tell you where they were.  But they cannot tell you what they were.

The corpses are testimonials to the social construction that brought about their demise.  But they cannot tell you about the symbolic order that generated the social construction, because that symbolic order was never theirs to hold.  It was never theirs to rule, to use, to use to exclude, to use to kill.

Each social construction lasts only so long.  And when it passes, “the symbolic order that held it in actuality” also slips back into the realm of possibility, like the gold of the golden calf, turning from an object of worship back into jewelry.

Anyone can see that infantile mimetic rivalry, mimesis^{unconstrained}, is everywhere in our world.

Mimesis^constrained is also everywhere, but tragically, or maybe, stupidly, as any reasonable person will tell you.

Why?

We do not have immediate, experiential access to “the unifying object that brings each one of us into relation”.  Instead, we have diverse symbolic orders, different specialized languages, interpellating us, each saying: “Within me is the object worth (competitively) sacrificing yourself for.”

“Within me is the object that will bring you into organization.”