Musicals, Marxism, Messianism

Sooooooooooo. Hi!

I feel like my brain was fixed. Haven't thought about this stuff for a minute. Been writing fiction, like real actual fiction, plus reading books (lately: The Political Theology of Paul, Revolutionary Suicide, The Time That Remains, and Assata). Baking cookies and brownies. Drinking and dancing.

Let me talk about writing first because it's completely consumed my brain. I finally started writing the story I've imagined for years and years. Not as a tabletop system, not even as a tabletop adventure, but as honest fiction. It's prose rather than verse poetry but, if I really change my mind, I'll have this as basis. And it's not too shabby by itself! It's about an evangelical Christian conspiracy to deploy the apocalypse, and someone who sacrifices herself for selfish reasons which then throws the whole thing into confusion and disarray. It's an exploration of Christ versus Antichrist (and what difference it makes), the relationship between time and history, and the struggle of women to recognize themselves beyond men.

For some reason, what finally broke me was re-listening to two musicals I have cherished since childhood: Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera. I have been meaning to write about which songs or albums I felt like irreversibly changed me, and these two works are up there. I always listen to the original Broadway cast recording of Les Misérables, since the operatic approach just elevates the production and communicates so much about the characters and their many... miseries. For Phantom on the other hand, I prefer the 2004 film version because I remember every frame and I love each and every performance given. It's a very enchanting (and sexually confusing) film to watch as a child. Emmy Rossum is just gorgeous and her co-stars—well, you can tell the director likes men. Again, very sexually confusing as a child, and even better now. Both musicals speak directly to my emotional core.

Books. Books books books. I've been on a real strange kick somewhere in the intersection of Marxism and Messianism. My friend Ènziramire shared with me this mind-blowing, beautiful paper called "The Party of God: Angelic Materialism and its Enemies". I've already discussed my reading of Paul as a proto-materialist following Pamela Eisenbalm's reading in Paul Was Not a Christian, and how this provides a certain interface between Marx's critique of value and Paul's notion of idolatry as a social dynamis rather than a matter of personal belief (see also Ian Wright's "Marx on Capital as a Real God"). This is a register of analysis that seems very fruitful, for how it exposes the religious underpinnings of social organization as well as the social underpinnings of religion, and provides a common language for both. Dialectics!

I say this often in conversation with Ènziramire, copying from my previous article on Paul in reference to Black churches and Islamist organizations: "If belief isn't a conscious choice but an outcome of inhabiting a society that generates it, how does that shape what social movements emerge, and how are their demands articulated or filtered through their belief?" The Leninist or Maoist Party, despite its political anti-theism, is a social organism and ideological machine for which the best historical analogy is the Church. When we consider how every social paradigm shift in Europe was precipitated by the formation of a new Church, does this not identify the social-discursive function of the Party with that of the Church? Are these Assemblies none other than the seeds of destruction which lie dormant in every civilization, simultaneously the seeds of the world that follows?

There's another touch-point with Lacan, especially the linguistrickery Lacan as opposed to the orthodox Freudian Lacan with whom I've been more interested lately (although they're, really and obviously, the same). He identifies the discursive function of the analyst with the functions of gospel and revolution. The analyst takes the position of the objet petit a, the symbolic-structural unity of the subject's lack and the objects desired by the subject with respect to their pure desirability. The objet a is the product of S2, the system of all signifiers positioned relative to S1 (the subject's "master signifier"), and it addresses directly the split subject $.

There's two readings here: either that the objet a mediates the existential gap between the symbolic system and the master signifier via the subject (meaning the connection between S1 and S2 is tenuous and gravitates towards collapse, as shown); or that the objet a generates the subject's master signifier by representing the symbolic totality in which the subject exists. Of course, Lacan is dialectical, so both readings are true. The function of the analyst, like the other three functions, is not an isolated moment of discourse but a constant discursive movement of collapse and creation.

Analysis, gospel, revolution: symbolic-discursive movements which generate new modes of being. How does this relate to the characters of the Analyst, the Messiah, the Party? Are the flesh-and-blood contents of such figures less significant than their symbolic functions as such? Lacan suggests so, at least in the context of analysis. I wonder what this means.

Going to go back to being a real person now. Ramadan Mubarak to all y'all who celebrate!