Erþe toc of erþe

Here is just an amazing Middle English poem I had to put up. Copied in c. 1307, dating assuredly from earlier, I'm writing on its resonance with Heidegger and repetition--I'll post that too once I'm done with it.

Erþe toc of erþe erþe wyþ woh,
Erþe oþer erþe to þe erþe droh,
Erþe leyde erþe in erþene þroh,
Þo heude erþe of erþe erþe ynoh.
-MS. Harleian

Translation:

Earth took of earth earth with woe,
Earth drew [other?] earth over [to?] the earth,
Earth laid earth in an earthen pit,
Then earth of earth had earth enough.

However, there are many other ways to interpret it, since the poem avoids being clear about its prepositions: "oþer" means both beyond or other as well as over, while "Þo" can mean then or at that time as well as though, however, etc. The use of "þroh" is odd too, and it can mean pretty much anything: it is a pit that is like a tomb but is a pit in the earth not distinct from the earth, like a trough, or a ditch.

Questioning after [nach] technology

Questioning nach der Technik, after technology, questioning once technology has come on the scene, after the history of technology's coming-on-the-scene, the historical questioning of technology, questioning the historicality of technology, the history of technology after it has been surmounted, the mourning of technology. All these are connected. If this is true, someone should read Heidegger's reflections on technology together with Freud. Or rather, Heidegger's idea of history as a enowning destining of Being together with Freud's diachronic structures of the mind, like the pleasure-principle, trauma, and mourning. The destining of being would parallel the destining of the cathexis, the Besetzung. Just looking at the following quote from Heidegger's "The Turning," should suggest something of the sort is possible:

...the essence of technology cannot be led into the change of its destining without the cooperation of the essence of man. Through this cooperation, however, technology will not be overcome by men. On the contrary, the essence of technology will be surmounted in a way that restores it to its yet concealed truth. This restoring surmounting is similar to what happens when, in the human realm, one gets over grief or pain. [my italics, mj]
-"The Turning" from The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Writings.

Pleasure and the two Freuds (Derrida's, Lacan's)

Perhaps the most fundamental contribution of psychoanalysis to metaphysics is that it argues that pleasure is always a deferred pleasure. In other words, pleasure is never the experience of a moment, of a present. This is seen most clearly when Freud describes orgasm: it is precisely in order to point out that the highest experience of pleasure we know is already a function of a system that constitutes pleasure as the releasing of tension--that is, is a function of an economy of pleasure that is larger, wider, of a greater span (the pleasure principle) and thus cannot be reduced to that point (present) of experience.
This might back up a little what I was saying in my post on Heidegger, Zizek and Nazism (below). For at its base, this is a Derridian thesis which cannot be reduced to a Lacanian framework. Why? Because as soon as we think of this realm of non-present pleasure (the unconscious) as anything less than a movement of deferring itself; as soon as we say that it is a similar point on the other side of presence, i.e. a non-presence, we lose the deferring structure that is crucial for this deferral to be thought. The whole point is that this wider economy of pleasure exceeds not just the present, but also the non-present (as a present thought negatively). In simpler terms, Derrida simply thinks that Freud is a thinker who focuses on the movement from the presence of pleasure (consciousness) back to the deferred pleasure (the unconscious), while Lacan (for Derrida) is a thinker who tries to structure the (unconscious) realm of deferred pleasure (i.e. remove and reify that which defers into things like "the symbolic," "the real," etc.) such that it can explain the present. I'm not saying that this Derridian understanding is right compared to the Lacanian one, but Zizek often makes it seem sometimes as if he is integrating a Derridian reading of Freud into his Lacanian understanding of things: perhaps one should push against him and insist on a distinction and a difference between these two Freuds.
Let me be clear in a postscript to this: what is at stake here is an interpretation of consciousness as 1) merely the effect of alterity, an alterity that can be structured so as to account for the present, or, 2) consciousness as inseperable from an alterity, within a relationship to alterity that demands that the relationship of the present to alterity be thought more rigorously. The first interpretation of consciousness is Lacanian, the second is Derridian. Alterity becomes formulatable with Lacan--if only because alterity itself is not as much of a concern as living with alterity--or able to be rendered commensurate with an economy (or symbolism, or, if this is Badiou, an ontology). Alterity for Derrida still remains a problem, irreducible to this (or any "restricted") economy. Zizek (like Badiou, though more cautiously, thank God--and this shows that whatever anyone says of him he is an immensely more rigorous thinker) claims that 1 is the same as 2. This I think is wrong.
How can we account for the appearance of two different focuses in the writings of Derrida and Lacan on Freud--that is, two different Freuds? Only by attempting to think this difference--never by covering it over. The Freud of Lacan works out problems of desire, drive, the symbolic, the letter, the real, the Other. The Freud of Derrida works out problems of Besetzung, investment, economy, writing, pleasure principles, alterity. To claim that the symbolic in Lacan and writing in Derrida function the same way--as many teachers of Lacan do , and Zizek seems to constantly be suggesting in his writings, is to cover over an immense difference. This is what lies behind many statements on Lacan by Derrida, like this one from Writing and Difference:

If the Freudian breakthrough has an historical originality, this originality is no due to its peaceful coexistence of theoretical complicity with... linguistics, at least in its congenital phonologism.
-"Freud and the Scene of Writing" in Writing and Difference, 199.

Freud for Derrida is not original in how the symbolic functions like language, the object of linguistics--because language functions like writing for Derrida. In other words, we can't simply say that Derrida is not just opposing Lacan here, asserting that Lacan is wrong. We must understand this comment presupposes a totally different Freud for Derrida and Lacan, and a functioning of language and writing that is completely different. What I am claiming here is that questions of presence and alterity function in the same way with respect to this difference: if they are asserted to be effectively the same in Derrida and Lacan, or if one is said to incorporate the Freud of the other (isn't this the presupposition that makes Badiou's work possible in the first place?), something is really being covered up. We should be suspicious--especially in the American academy, where "the other" is nearly always seen as the same thing in both Derrida and Lacan.