ON SAINTS AND SNUFF

An interview with Sue Golding aka Johnny de Philo
By Ana Peraica, 5 December 2007

What do you think of the concept of the institutional ‘role of victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ...’ suggested in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir on saints?

The role of the saint in de Beauvoir’s work is, of course, complex and useful for this discussion – but I think not clarified as much as it could be, given the expansive growth of what constitutes ‘media/technology’ as both logic and structure/system, and what has shaped the political mass movements (around sexism, homophobias, ethnicities, religions etc.) Depending on a variety of factors, economic in the widest sense of the word: economy (to include libidinal, assemblages and not only ‘exchange’ – but also exchange, of course), the lens by which information is gathered, and ‘kept alive’ in the papers, radio and TV, not to mention the net, have their own ‘lifespans’. Take for example the story of Madeleine McCann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_McCann: who’s the victimIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ...? The child? The parents? The ‘tapas 9’, Murat and his girlfriend? The Portuguese police? This modern (or postmodern) tale shape-shifts the victimIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ...-hood role on a continual basis. I am working on this kind of ‘institutional sexism’ or ‘institutional racism’ and how it controls/infiltrates the media – so I could speak on that…

By which maneuver it happens that victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... turn out to be heroes?

There is no ‘one’ maneuver, but there is a rhizmatic ‘plane of immanence’, which flip-flops (in more than binaric ways, i.e. more than just ‘hero/victimIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context .../sadistic/accomplice’. Again, this could be discussed in detail.

Somewhere there is a power-principle in the ‘politics of self-victimisationSee dependence projective identification ...’ of saints’ own decision to finish something that has no meaning (life) by giving a meaning, making it meta-physical?

Not sure I understand this remark – but if you're suggesting that people ‘need’ to make sense of their own life, I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment. My guess is that people may or may not need to make sense of their life, but they absolutely need to be in environments that are not soul-destroying. This means there are certain kinds of ethics/morals and ‘honours’ that must be in place, otherwise a person will go mad (this theme is developed a lot in my long essay/book: ‘Honour’).

What makes those victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... more important than ones getting killed daily?

Nothing. Everything. Have you read Heinrich Bӧll’s ‘portrait of a lady’ where he asks a similar question, though more crudely: ‘what makes a vagina more expensive than any other one?’ The imperative ‘do not forget’ seems to me not functioning, as the meaning of a history lesson, which it suggests as the same events are re-appearing sid-by-side even today.

What is the role of a maxima ‘do not forget’? Is it a ground for an inscribed revengeFrom a developmental perspective, desires for revenge may have important adaptive functions in order to help the patient contain anxieties associated with developmental tasks that have not been mastered ... in culture, rather than a teaching of ‘the lesson’?

The battle-cry ‘never forgot’ is usually best placed as a rallying point for the present problems rather than an actual attempt at remembering. I am thinking of Shoa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust, and also of the excellent work of Jean-François Lyotard in this regard in his ‘Heidegger and the jews’ where the word ‘jews’ is lower-cased to mark the utter ‘forgetablity’ of the situation (called genocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group ...).

If historical victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... are discussed, there is a field mined with horror and warnings of ‘de-secration of victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ...’ obviously making them taboos. Still, it is not a taboo to report on victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... of today in distant places in manners that are not giving them enough of respect? What are you thinking about this discussion?

There is an online (web) network that shows 24/7 the beheading of people by various religious sects – with no horror or warning labels attached, and certainly no taboo. Are you pointing to the ‘established’ networks then? Like the New York Times? Or outwardly mercenary ones (I mean the ones that actually take pride in being mercenary)? My thinking is that people never give up power willingly, and certainly not if they are ‘proved’ to be racist/sexist/nationalist etc.

Power corrupts, as the old saying goes, whereas absolute power is kinda nice (slight shift in the motto). When discourses create forms of legitimacy as though there is no problem (or never was one, etc.) it has less to do with manners and a whole lot more to do with the way in which power as common sense gets established and reproduced.