Avital Ronell. Stormy Weather: Blues in Winter.

Avital Ronell. "Stormy Weather: Blues in Winter." in: The New York Times. February 2, 2013. ( n!lish".
I have been trying to get a grip on my winter blues. Philosophy has a long history of handling the experience of distressed states. The ancients were concerned with stand-out types of psychic debilitation; Descartes, ant, and !iet"sche probed, each in his own way, into the dar# side of mood and temperament; ier#egaard passed the mic to fear and trembling; $eidegger based his existential analyses on anxiety; and %artre drilled down on sheer nothingness. Philosophers wondered whether it was possible to feel athome in the world, given our basic homelessness & a predicament that many of them saw as the uprooted nature of our dwelling on this earth. I count on these abyss-ga"ers to land me safely, without much illusion, and somehow to #eep me going, even if the tre# is bound to be mournful. 'rom childhood on, I have been trained to clear really scary and voided chasms, dense existential passageways. (y education does not come with an )-*Pass. +i#e nearly everyone else who isn,t entirely sociopathic, I continue to falter and #now defeat. )ver on the alert, philosophy offers some emergency supplies of meaning when I feel especially exposed and vulnerable, when I lie fallow on wintered grounds. -ery often, when the chips are down, philosophers can be a welcoming crew&well, not all of them. .ne has to sift and sort, find the byways, pass the arrogant #now-it-all types, overta#e the misogynists and leave in the dust those who claim to have a firm hold on truth. !ot many are left standing, but they are the worthy ones.They stay close to poetry and music and let themselves be instructed by literature,s astonishing comfortableness off the cognitive grid. There are things that we simply cannot #now or understand. +iterature lives with that sublime stall, and fires off extravagant hypotheses, bas#ing in transgression and feats of rhetorical frontier-crossing. /hen philosophy becomes accomplice to such stretches of imagination and frees itself up from a certain number of constraints, it can turn in exhilarating and life-affirming performances. It can deliver even when you are seriously in the dumps, ready to call it a wrap. .f course, people used to say to me that it was the study itself of philosophy that brought me down, a charge that cannot be altogether denied. 0et, upon reflection, I have to thin# it,s the other way round. I consider philosophy my survival #it. In any case philosophy does the groundwor# and comes face to face with my basic repertory of distress1 forlornness, the sha#es, and other signs of world-weary discomfort. Thud, thud. Today,s blues seem very specific, however. (aybe I can summon the master thin#ers to help me get a handle on my internal downturn, my current sense of loss. !early every philosophy I have #nown has built a sanctuary, however remote and uncharted, for the experience of mourning. %ometimes a philosopher accidentally or furtively mentions the pull of loss, even when trying, li#e !iet"sche, to affirm all of

life,s tragic edges and the necessity of mourning lost friendship or the destructive operations 2and operas3 of love. (y teacher, 4ac5ues Derrida, considered various forms of mourning disorder & the difficulty we have in letting go of a beloved ob6ect or libidinal position. 'reud says that we go into mourning over lost ideals or figures, which include persons or even your country when it lets you down. +oss that cannot be assimilated or dealt with creates poc#ets of resistance in the psyche. .ne may incorporate a phantom other, #eeping the other both alive and dead, or one may fall into states of melancholy, unable to move on, trapped in the energies of an ever-shrin#ing world. (any of the themes in films give expression to failed mourning, a relation to death that invents the population of the undead & vampires, "ombies, trolls, real housewives of 7everly $ills. In 8merica, we are often encouraged to 9let go,: 9move on,: 9get over it,: even to 9get a life,: locutions that indicate a national intolerance for prolonged states of mourning. 0et the 5uic#ened pace of letting go may well mean that we have not let go, that we are haunted and hounded by unmetaboli"ed aspects of loss. In 'reud,s wor#, the timer is set for two years of appropriate mourning. /hen $amlet tries to extend that deadline, the whole house threatens to fall apart, and he is admonished by ;laudius to get over himself, man up. The inability to mourn or let go is sometimes called melancholy. (any of us have slipped into states of melancholic depression for one reason or another, for one unreason or another&one cannot always nail the ob6ect that has been lost or causes pain. 'or Derrida, melancholy implies an ethical stance, a relation to loss in the mode of vigilance and constant re-attunement. 0ou do not have to #now or understand the meaning of a loss and the full range of its disruptive conse5uences, but you somehow stand by it, leaning into a depleting emptiness. It ta#es courage to resist the temptation to bail or distract oneself. )ntire industries stand ready to distract the inconsolable mourner. +et,s see if I can try to stay focused. (aybe it is possible to get an aerial view of my own cluster of blues. I actually thin# that I, li#e many !ew 0or#ers, am having a delayed response to $urricane %andy. .r that, continually flooding my psyche, it #eeps on returning. I see no off-switch to the effects of %andy, some of which remain very real to neighboring areas. %o. I am slowly climbing out of the inundation of <=>< li#e the %wamp Thing. In order to dry off and reflect on what happened this past autumn in !ew 0or#, I had to remove myself from the premises, surrender to a stance of meditation from another urban site. .ff-center and beat, I decided to go to Paris to watch the year turn. (y intention was to see my friends and colleagues and reboot myself, preparing the newest year,s anticipated yield of pro6ects, loo#ing forward and bac#ward in a mood of self-gathering. 8nd so I arrived in Paris, to welcome our newest baby year. Drip, drip.;oming in to ;harles De ?aulle a few days before ;hristmas, I had a roc#y landing & emotionally spea#ing. It wasn,t due merely to the weather &though weather, the dis6unctive edge of climate, seemed implacably poised to compromise this grrrl. 7ut it wasn,t the dismal

weather, the droplets of rain, that depressed me, but an accumulation of all sorts of internali"ed weather systems and pressure "ones that I would need to understand. 0es, maybe I could install my own weather-prophet to read off the mists of mind,s droopiness. I used to study weather and the scandalous beginnings of weather forecasting. Do you #now who set up the first meteorological prediction center@ (y main man, ?oethe. 8t the time, in the >Ath-century, the very idea of grasping weather competed with the prerogatives of the gods. (ortals should not have access to such clusters of immateriality, it was thought. .nly gods and poets should try to divine weather conditions. +i#e much of the weather, my mood proved unpredictable. )xhausted and sha#en following a semester of overload, I crawled around Paris for days, waiting for some sign of surviving the holidays. It was long in coming. (y pangs were suspended when I would meet my friends and alternative families. 7ut the minute they unleashed me, after a lunch or afternoon stroll, I spun on my own, in considerable agony, my stomach falling out1 9(erry, merry, merry ;hristmas.: I,m not the only one, I #now, for who does not come with a crash cushion for family holidays, and so I sputter. This year was different in terms of seasonal despair, which ma#es me wonder why. It seems far away. 7ut %andy continues to return, to rage in my stomach & site of anxiety, where events show up as severe and unyielding. I #now that greater parts of our world regularly live on the subthreshhold of calamity, awaiting the next trial, the next move commissioned by an unfathomable enmity & I thin# of friends in $aiti and (alaysia, those who try to #eep it together in areas that are rarely disaster-free or earth5ua#e-proof1 I will never forget the day in the fall of >BAB at 7er#eley when Philippe +acoue-+abarthe and 4ean-+uc !ancy taught their first seminar together and the building rattled, the earth shoo#, our complexions showed different shades of green. I was strangely steady as things and people started crumbling around me. I prided myself on being a strong warrior, able to hold still as things fall apart, leaning into anguish, whether externally pitched or internally churning. I was earth5ua#e-proof, I told myself. In the 7ay 8rea a building is earth5ua#e proof when it has built-in fissures and intentional crevices. !ormed solidity or, rather, rigidity is a sure #iller, because if you,re too rigid you will be cut down, toppled. +i#e the /orld Trade ;enter & too massive, too strong architecturally spea#ing.. /hen wea#ness is part of the concept of the building,s stance, it can sway and shift around as part of its very own survival mechanism. This 9architecture of pain,: as psychoanalyst 4ac5ues +acan says in another context altogether, was my model for a long while, a model that I am trying to reconstruct today, with ample allowance for punctuated lacerations and wea# points meant to bolster part of my psychic suppleness. .ne of the aspects of the earth5ua#e in 7er#eley was that you could not tell if it was happening inside or outside. The staccato outbrea# started out as if it had originated in one,s body. .nly when one loo#ed out the window and saw the sway of buildings, did the sense of collapse spread to the outside. The fitful spurts and earth-lunges functioned li#e 'reud,s endopsychic perception1 /as this merely a pro6ection of inner turmoil or

suppressed rage@ .r had we regressed to biblical law, under penalty for a collective wrongdoing@ %ince one of my personalities is that of teacher, I usually want to prepare something to say to students when a so-called natural disaster brea#s. 8t the time of the earth5ua#e I turned to ant and traced what happened to and in philosophy, from the outposts of literature, as a conse5uence of the earth5ua#e of +isbon in >CDD. )veryone was sha#en, and in many ways we never stopped 5ua#ing. In ?oethe, !ature became irreversibly maimed1 demonic and glaciali"ed with indifference to the human manifestation of being, !ature became an unbeatable adversary. 'or the inundation of !ew 0or#, I went to 'reud and primitive attitudes toward violent weather events, trying to ma#e sense of that which sei"es you and throws you against a new wall of experience. 'irst, I needed to critically dismantle any idea of a 9natural: disaster in our day, in our way of trampling on the planet, carbon footprint by carbon footprint. I do not believe in 9natural: disasters, but only in the effects of man,s failed custodianship, primed by the incessant prod of pollution, planetary exploitation and spoilage1 the usual menu of historical rec#lessness. .n a more local and personal plane, I needed to reflect on my own sorry failures1 I was sha#en by my fearfulness and the collapse I observed of my warrior self when during the worst of the storm I lost any sense of social responsibility and 6ust caved, became isolated, felt unsheltered. I stayed at the level of acute worry about electronic disconnection. 8ll I could do was spread around my own sense of unprotectedness. 'rom now on, I said to myself, I will follow ?andhi,s directive1 be what you want the world to be. Eather than crumbling and trembling, isolating, waiting for %omeone to rescue me, I will be the one to arrive on the scene, a 9first responder,: prepared to ta#e charge, stage street theater, chec# in on my isolated neighbors, ma#e and deliver creative meals. %ometimes you have to turn yourself into an animal in order to be brave and reassuring, to leap with cheer or still yourself. Thus, lately, ?olden Eetrievers and +abradors have been called upon to visit trauma sites and bring soothing steadiness, messages from another realm. (any people continue to be affected by the storm and its invisible after-tremors. They were and remain stuc#, and I was psychically not flowing, unable either to surrender or act, energy-trapped. 'or seven days or so lower (anhattan earned the designation, according to our resident philosopher 4on %tewart, of 9+ittle !orth orea.: /e were stunned to have lost our sense of 9!ew 0or#, !ew 0or#,: to witness the powering down of its habitual tra6ectories and hard-edged rhythms. /hen 'reud reviews the attitude of so-called primitive peoples to calamities missileguided by !ature or gods, he points to these peoples, felt failure. !atural disruption, which puts into play and unleashes something li#e the supernatural, appears to be sent our way as a message from above. (ost often, it represents a form of reactivity, an accusation. The super-natural 2%andy was so often called a super-storm3 is something that human#ind has called upon itself in response to stinging acts of frivolity. 'reud,s examples involve failed mourning&of the enemy. The so-called primitives believed

that storms mar# down those who have neglected to honor or properly bury their enemies. I try to review our recent wars, whether mapped on 8fghanistan or in ghetto streets and surrounding precarious clinics. I try to gauge the implication, however remote, of every citi"en, in the waging of these and other aggressions. This seems far-fetched & perhaps closer to science fiction than to science. Is there a way in which radically disrupted weather systems tell us, maybe merely on an unconscious register, that we are involved in world-class wrongdoing@ In a %ha#espearean way, I #eep on punctuating such observations by the refrain1 9!o, such a reproach cannot be addressed to us.: I am also of the scientific epoch and understand the repercussions of global warming. %till, could the super-storm have been a call from elsewhere@ 8 reminder of the stripped-down disposal of enemy troops or tropes, our graceless menu of aggressions brought home to us, the world-class homeless@ I may or may not have my finger on the pulse of $egel,s Weltgeist, the guiding world-spirit, but something about my very private and idiomatic blues comes from the pressure of a sustained in6ustice, a dishonoring that occurs in my name and that may affect all 8mericans on one level of consciousness or another.