[Xmca-l] Re: Althusser's ideas of consciousness

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi Paul,

Yes, OK. I do hear you about ideas, something about a good idea resonates as good, that's what appeals. Just like I might be a terrible guitar player, but make great collard greens, and you like my collard greens but can find me to be a terrible musician. But I'd like to go a little further.

What I'm wondering and I'm sticking my neck out here, and I know that, but does it mean that we all carry around a kind of double-consciousness of being while not being, or not being while being? (Take your pick)

That we can posses a theory by which we think we can live, but in practice we fail miserably? 

(Isn't this Cartesian?)

Forgive me if I'm misconstruing the definition of Dubois's DC, but does the contradiction of wanting to fight for freedom against an English King and justifying slave ownership (and subjecting women to being a different kind of possession) create the same kind of splits that "looking at one's self through the eyes of others" does? I'm just asking.

In other words, is it looking at one's self through the eyes of one's other internal self, that is, the non-integrated self as two (or more) selves. Aren't the consequences identical from being split?

And wouldn't freedom, then, be a removal of that split? In both cases? Of having integrity of self? To perceive the world as it is, instead of how I think it is? True self-awareness? 

Because I'd think that having an unresolved mental split of this kind could not ever be liberating, as I see it. No matter how much pursuing of happiness one gets out of life. One would always remain conflicted with oneself for those inner self-contradictions. 

If a theory is crafted with split consciousness (not to warp the meaning of double consciousness out of respect to the original meaning), does something of that theory inherit an inherent contradiction?

Is it possible to take the cream off the top of the milk bottle without understanding how to feed or nurture the cow?

Just thinking out loud. Thanks for listening...

Kind regards,

Annalisa