Political Therapy (PT)
Treating politicians (LOL)
I went to a talk by Camille Robcis last week at the ICI , who outlined some of her work on the history Institutional Psychotherapy in the post-war period: https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/camille-robcis/ She focused on François Tosquelles at St Alban in France, and also touched on Fanon and Guattari. One of the ideas that seems consistent in all the ideas of PT that I have encountered is an aversion to finding a ‘cure’ and rather practitioners seem more concerned, in varying degrees, with socialising identified problems, and understanding these ‘conditions’ as being symptoms of systemic issues. ‘Disalienation’: https://www.ici-berlin.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ICI_Programme_Radical-Psychiatry.pdf
Arguably some parallels to the ‘conscious raising’ exercises of Plan C and potential of Fisher’s ‘Acid Communism’— which is funnily enough supposedly about the plasticity of reality realized through the psychedelic experimentation of the 1960s.
Also interesting to note, although I’m not quite sure how it fits in here, but Guattari is supposed to have abandoned the idea of the individual, coming to understand it as a ‘fiction of psychoanalysis’ (cited in Preciadio?). Deleuze goes on to to propose the idea of the ’dividual at the onset of information society. Alienation becomes atomisation, a development that is arguably intensified in the current epoch of socialised surveillance and data-capitalism.
Draw parallels between the psychotherapeutic break(down) from the individual to the biological sciences, for eg moving towards notions of the ‘human biome’—an ‘array of bodies’ (Bennett)— and as Povinelli, Bennett, Thacker discuss how we cannot consider ourselves ‘closed systems.’ Also can think here with N. Katherine Hayles’ ‘cognitive worlds’ (Unthought).
Leans towards D&G’s assemblage and event.
Power
Operating in fields of power / power = performance + propaganda
Undoing power (Valentina?)
Rituals
What washes up on the shore? Gifts from the sea!
‘Churning of the Milky Ocean’ a tug-o-war between the devas and Asuras in Hinduism
‘Churning of the Plastic Ocean!’ LOL
Tea ceremonies / meditations
Singing
I’ve been thinking about singing as a rhetorical device for the SF presentation I’m to do at Be.Bop. (partly in response to seeing Kodwo use the same device of word deviation, word play for several years and trying to think of another way around it). I just came across this on a Karrabing blog post by Povinelli:
The ancestors of the Karrabing were renowned song-men, who composed songs about their country, many of which Karrabing members still compose and sing. But it isn’t merely the content of the song—its lyrical or musical composition—that is key to its ethical nature. It is act of singing. In hearing people sing the land feels recognized—attended to.
https://open.abc.net.au/explore/29831
Masks
http://africanah.org/dancing-kabra-mask/
Possession
What calls to you.
Re PT, what ‘forces’ your symptoms indicate. What you are open to and what comes into you.
Hospitality, Care, Tourism