Having reread Buchanan’s take on the movie Jaws with a new recognition of how he did it in terms of an illegitimate synthesis of connection, and now seeing how much of a departure I engaged in as concerns my perhaps clumsy attempt at the same thing, I would like to indulge in the illusion of redemption by re-attempting an approach to the three passive syntheses as Buchanan summarizes them on page 54:
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the connective synthesis which mobilizes the Libido as withdrawal energy
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the disjunctive synthesis which mobilizes the Numen [the spirit or divine spirit presiding over a thing or place] as detachment energy
and 3. the conjunctive synthesis which mobilizes Voluptas [Pleasure or bliss, or consummation as it is also described] as residual energy
First of all (and perhaps to my disadvantage: I still can’t help but read Hegel’s dialectic into it as described (and revised from the philosophy 101 triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (in my audio book: that process of breaking a given phenomenon down to its individual components, articulating on them, then putting them back together in new and novel ways.
But, at the risk of meandering into yet an even clumsier hermeneutic, I can’t help but read Lacan’s concept of Jouissance into this (that articulated on by Zizek. In fact, one could easily read into this the process involved in sex. There would first be the connective process of two individuals getting to know each other, of connecting the various aspects of the other that leads to the desire to have sex with them. And maybe this is my personal preference; but I can’t help but feel that the disjunctive synthesis is starting to enter into the process since my tastes tend to adhere to Robert Herrick’s Delight in Disorder. As compared to the sleek and perfected offerings of Playboy (expressions of Capitalistic values (I find that the other stimulates more exchanges of energy when there is a complex interaction of perfection and imperfection involving both physical and mental properties. As Deleuze says: until they know your madness, they cannot be your friend.
Disjunction is the full expression of Jouissance. As Lacan points out: when it comes to pleasure, we experience it at a conscious level while experiencing discomfort at subconscious level. And if you think about it, sex is a process of trying to reach a threshold that will take you out of a place you are really enjoying at the time. (And to possibly to apply this to D & G, he does go on to point out that hysteria is the reverse of this process in that the hysteric experiences discomfort at a conscious level while experiencing pleasure at a subconscious level. I mean why else would we repeat behaviors that give us discomfort if we didn’t, at some deeper level, get pleasure from it?) Disjunction, as I understand it, suggests that kind of push/pull relationship (Jouissance (we tend to experience with reality.
Conjunction, of course, can be associated with sexual climax: Consummation as Buchanan puts it. But let’s not think of this as the utopian synthesis that Hegel would. Let’s, rather, think of it in terms of awkward pillow talk: two people caught up in the mutual desire to come up with words (some semiotic (that will represent or stand up to the previous experience.