Libidinal economy, the housekeeping of the ego, the ordering of the self as a well-kept abode, implies individuation – the development of the self in a given direction. French philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, combines the idea of individuation with the foucauldian notion of a ‘writing of the self”. This implies the relation of the subject to a textual fragment as virtual, ethical other, whereby an ethos is incorporated by the subject. Borrowing from Plutarch, Foucauld calls this the ethopoetic relation.
This ethopoetic incorporation is the writing of a corpus, the body with which you meet your peers, so that they can see your spiritual genealogy. Since this demonstration of the construction of the self by fragments is forcibly a negotiation of what is right or wrong, good or bad, and thus constitutive of a doxa (the community of values), we propose to call this relation of the ethical incorporation to the others a doxopoetic relation.
And now we get to the problem of saying I. The doxopoetic relation is a way of showing yourself as a textual corpus, and as Levinas was kind enough to remind os, to show yourself in a meaningful way is to speak. Let’s return to housekeeping for a moment. The ordering of the self as a well-kept abode is to a wide extent a doxopoetic relation. Of course, you yourself can appreciate nice furniture, a clean floor, art on the walls and a good espresso machine but when this becomes constitutive of who you are, the fragments that make up your public face or body, there is trouble. When the well kept abode of the self, whether an actual abode or an actual self, is no longer a function of your way of life, your life form, your personal praxis, but a means to the end of saying I, so that the others will see your “I” and raise you one more, then the I will condemn itself to an eternal existence as not-I.
We’ll get there eventually, don’t you worry. To be continued…
Tags: advertising, Branding, desire, Housekeeping, it, libidinal economy, subject
