Josephine Anstey Five Seminar AH 563
First of all I would like to point out that no-body asked you to push me over to the side and make comments on the things I found interesting in the readings.
None of your points really resonated for me anyway, I'm quite happy to simply bring up my own thoughts in parallel.
OK. This week I'm focused on three points. I am interested in the ideas of the historical construction of a "sovereign subject," an individual celebrated in p[ortraits and autobiography with a chair of its own, a room of its own and an interior whose dramas were acted out in theatres, monitored in the confessional and late in psycoanalysis. Allucquere Rosanne Stone writes:
The development of a sense of individuality seems to be accompanied by a corresponding withdrawal of portions of a person's attention and energy from the public arena and their nourishment and concentration within the new arena of social interaction called the self. p 19

Rather like a black hole, the cyberself, as currently fantasised, sucks everything into itself. Cyberspace then becomes the reconstruction of what used to be exterior and public - relationships, communication, reality - in the interior of the self.

Exterior/Interior and Public/Private are no longer synonymous dualities.

Perhaps this is related to the growth of gated communities - building all the necessary amenities inside and anxious to keep the dangerous outside out, with more and more security at the gates. As the walls of the individual get higher, direct relationship or communication with another is increasingly threatening, so we are trying to bring all those benefits inside.

 And what if we propose that the brain is at some level not very good at telling the difference between the real and the imaginary?

It, or part of it, functions simply as a story-teller pulling some kind of narrative or conceptual framework out of any collection of facts/events that are presented to it. And it doesn't care very much if those facts/events are from a dream or from scientific data. Stone writes:

Later, while writing a critique of some aspect of scientific research I absentmindedly quoted from one of the papers I'd dreamed about .... Sometime later, while trying to attribute page and line, I realized that the paper I'd cited was in physical terms non existent.

Let us therefore also suppose that our story-teller notices discrepancies in the stories we tell and retell, and alters course accordingly.

aLthough it also seems apparent that completely erroneous story/explanations can dwell in our minds unquestioned. For example, many of the pigeons in London have littled gnarled balls where their feet should be. And for years I assumed that it was because their feet had been run over. And I only realized I'd been carrying this ludicrous explanation around in my head when I verbalized it to someone else and instantly realized how bogus it was.

It might be interesting to place this idea of the story-telling brain next to Stone's discussion of multiple selves:

Ross assers that the Osiris complex more clearly describes what happens in the etiology of MPD than the Oedipus or Elektra complex can .... p 57
Redefining the self in the virtual age Stone talks of :
... a coupling between the phantasmic space that the location technology calls into being and the physcial space of pain and pleasure that the human body inhabits. p40

I refer to the production and maintenance of this link betwenn a discursive space and a physical space as warranting. p 40

Either there is a body backing up the virtual self or something is wrong which reminds me very much of the way paper money is guaranteed or backed by silver or gold. In England bank notes say - "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ..."

So, if there is no body someone is being cheated - either financially (the creation of virtual people for payroll) or emotionally. Although with more sophistication we have an habitiat Oracle saying:

Other characters even whle recognising that A-san equals B-san, will go ahead and treat him[sic] like a different person.
The Osiris myth tells how,Osiris is killed, cut to pieces and scattered throughout the Nile valley by his brother Set. Isis gathers up the fragments, reassembles him and makes him king of the Netherlands. They have a son, Horus, who defeats Set to become king of the world.

The story-teller seems to become very confused in a fragmented brain. One of the symptoms of MPD is the sense of losing time. The main self cannot account for hours or days or returns suddenly into an unfamiliar situation. As the story-teller tells and retells its stories of the self it is confronted by disturbing inconsistencies.

Loss of time and loss of self dog this root self. I'm wondering whether the alters feel equally confused - or do they they hide behind the root self and know everything she knows, just popping out when necessary to avoid the root self being subject to some kind of situation/knowledge that ties back to the initial trauma. What is the relationship of the alters to story-teller? What is ...
Expect the future to bring us unwarranted selves, in the same way that paper money is digital money not really backed by anything!
Eek! What are you doing? You're on my side. Go back!
No! Why should I. You shouldn't even be writing in here. You're bogus! You saw how I read the book and excerpted passages I was interested in and then constructed my thoughtsd around them. So you went through and picked out passages arbitarily and now you're trying to construct some sort of story by the person who would have been attracted to those passages. Even if you can find some links or arguments - they're really just my thoughts - the connections I would have seen. You're not separate at all, so why should I give you room?
Moan, groan whine! What a baby! I think you're jealous because my thoughts are more interesting than yours!

Except it. A historical process has started here. It wasn't you who picked those quotes and constructed those thoughts. It was me. And in so doing I've constructed myself. I've forked off from you. Why should you be so quick to lay claim not just to primacy but to a unitary-ness.

Tough it out. Get used to it. I'm not going to dispappear.