Donald Keene (1922-2019)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Keene

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%94%90%E7%BA%B3%E5%BE%B7%C2%B7%E5%9F%BA%E6%81%A9

Soon after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Keene retired from Columbia and moved to Japan with the intention of living out the remainder of his life there. He acquired Japanese citizenship, adopting the legal name Kīn Donarudo (キーン ドナルド). This required him to relinquish his American citizenship, as Japan does not permit dual citizenship.^[3]

鬼怒鳴門

van life 手記

需要儀式，在兩個，疲憊，之間，

有趣的是，即使儀式，疲憊仍然，是疲憊，

更有趣的是，即使知道，儀式無用，依然儀式，

你要理解，儀式是，一種分割，空間時間，的行為，

比如說，前幾年，每周往返，竹北，三趟，

五楊高架，楊梅湖口，分為兩段，各二十公里，

意思是說，儀式，遂發生在，楊梅，

葉元之差兩千馬文君差一千習包子差六四

https://youtu.be/H3r44rphGqY?si=RBSAkDaquaKi84Hx

What are the main points of “Why Psychoanalysis: Three Interventions” (Alenka Zupancic, 2008)? (ChatGPT, 2025-4-30) (自體的心理學）（車行哲學）

 Alenka Zupančič’s short but dense text “Why Psychoanalysis: Three Interventions” (2008) is a brilliant Lacanian reflection on the necessity of psychoanalysis in contemporary thought, particularly in a time when both psychology and philosophy are either turning away from or trying to assimilate psychoanalytic insights into softer, more digestible frameworks. The essay presents three key interventions—or arguments—each challenging common critiques or misunderstandings of psychoanalysis.

Here are the main points and interventions:

1. Against the Critique of Pathologization: Psychoanalysis Is Not Normative

• Main Point: One common critique of psychoanalysis is that it “pathologizes” the subject—that it reduces human behavior to dysfunction or trauma.
• Zupančič’s Response:
  Psychoanalysis does not pathologize the subject—it radicalizes subjectivity. It begins not from the premise of a “healthy” subject but from the split or division constitutive of subjectivity itself.
  
• The subject is not a coherent, harmonious whole to begin with.
• Psychoanalysis does not seek to normalize but to uncover the subject’s truth, which may involve traversing what appears as pathology.
• Key Lacanian idea: The subject is structured around a lack (manque), and desire is not about need or adaptation but about this structural gap.

2. Against the Ideal of Communication: Misunderstanding Is the Norm

• Main Point: Contemporary culture idolizes communication, empathy, and transparent understanding as social ideals. Psychoanalysis is seen as outdated because it centers around failure, repression, and miscommunication.
• Zupančič’s Response:
  Psychoanalysis recognizes that misunderstanding is structural to human discourse. The subject speaks not to communicate efficiently, but because there is a constitutive excess in language—what Lacan calls the Real.
  
• True speech (parole pleine) is rare.
• The unconscious is structured like a language precisely because language doesn’t work smoothly.
• Insight: The aim of psychoanalysis is not communication in the therapeutic sense, but interpretation and truth production in the face of structural misrecognition.

3. Against the Fantasy of Wholeness: Embrace the Symptom

• Main Point: There is a cultural tendency to aim for integration, healing, and “wholeness” of the self—either through wellness culture, positive psychology, or even some therapeutic models.
• Zupančič’s Response:
  Psychoanalysis works not to erase the symptom but to make it legible—to traverse fantasy, not fulfill it. The symptom is not the enemy; it is the singular inscription of the subject’s truth.
  
• The psychoanalytic process is not about making the subject whole, but about making the subject assume their division.
• Lacanian idea: The goal is not harmony, but subjectivization of the symptom—a creative reworking of the inconsistency at the heart of the self.

Conclusion: Why Psychoanalysis?

Zupančič ultimately argues that psychoanalysis remains crucial because it resists the dominant ideological tendencies of our time:

• The demand for harmony, transparency, and emotional adaptation.
• The neoliberal narrative of self-regulation and positivity.
• The technological reduction of the mind to information processing.

Instead, psychoanalysis insists on lack, division, desire, and the symptom as essential to being human. It doesn’t offer comfort but truth—often uncomfortable, often paradoxical, and always politically potent.

Would you like me to draw connections between this text and her broader philosophical project, or to relate it to other psychoanalytic theorists (like Žižek, Laplanche, or Fink)?

Boštjan Nedoh

https://zrc-sazu.academia.edu/Bo%C5%A1tjanNedoh

https://fi2.zrc-sazu.si/en/sodelavci/bostjan-nedoh-en

https://subversivefestival.com/en/sf24/bostjan-nedoh-tigers-leap-into-the-past-benjamins-historical-materialism-or-how-to-end-the-end-of-capitalism/

What’s the relationship between Spain and Portugal, historically, culturally, economically, militarily speaking? How did Portugal become a distinct country from Spain? （ChatGPT, 2025-4-30)

 The relationship between Spain and Portugal is long, intertwined, and deeply complex—marked by geographic proximity, shared Iberian roots, fierce rivalry, and moments of union. Let me walk you through their relationship in four dimensions: historical, cultural, economic, and military, and explain how Portugal became distinct from Spain.

1. 

Historical Relationship: From Unity of Origin to Divergence

Shared Beginnings:

• Both Spain and Portugal originated from the Christian Reconquista against Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492).
• After the fall of the Visigothic kingdom in the early 8th century, the Christian north began slowly reclaiming land, eventually forming several small kingdoms.

The Birth of Portugal (12th Century):

• Portugal began as the County of Portugal, a fief under the Kingdom of León (later part of modern Spain).
• Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, declared himself king after a military victory at the Battle of Ourique (1139).
• After years of tension, Portugal’s independence was formally recognized by León in 1143, and by the Pope in 1179 with the bull Manifestis Probatum.

Tensions and Union:

• Despite cultural and religious similarities, Portugal remained politically separate.
• In 1580, after the Portuguese King Sebastian died without an heir, Spain’s King Philip II annexed Portugal—this led to the Iberian Union (1580–1640).
• The Portuguese restored independence in 1640 through a nationalist uprising and the establishment of the House of Braganza.

2. 

Cultural Relationship: Siblings, Not Twins

• Languages: Portuguese and Spanish are both Romance languages with Latin roots, but they are mutually unintelligible in many forms, especially phonetically. Portuguese preserves more Galician and Celtic elements, and is phonetically more “closed” than Spanish.
• Religions: Both are historically Catholic and heavily shaped by the Counter-Reformation.
• Identities: Portugal has always emphasized its maritime distinctiveness, a culture facing the Atlantic, with heroes like Vasco da Gama and Prince Henry the Navigator. Spain, especially Castile, emphasized empire-building on land and later global domination.
• Literature & Arts: Portuguese culture developed distinct aesthetic movements, such as fado (melancholic music) and a literary tradition deeply inflected by saudade (longing). Spain’s golden age literature (Cervantes, Lope de Vega) was more imperial and theatrical in tone.

3. 

Economic Relationship: Competition and Dependency

• During the Age of Discovery, Portugal and Spain rivaled each other fiercely.
  
• The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided the non-European world between them.
• Portugal colonized Brazil, parts of Africa, and Asia; Spain focused on the Americas.
• 
  
• In modern times, especially after joining the EU (Portugal in 1986), economic integration deepened.
  
• Spain is now Portugal’s largest trading partner.
• However, Portugal maintains a smaller, less industrialized economy, with more dependency on services, agriculture, and tourism.
• 
  

4. 

Military Relationship: War, Alliance, and Autonomy

• Throughout history, Spain and Portugal fought several wars, often over succession or territorial issues (e.g. War of the Portuguese Succession 1580, Restoration War 1640–1668).
• Portugal historically relied on alliances with England (e.g., the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, the oldest alliance still in force today), to counterbalance Spain.
• In the 20th and 21st centuries, both are NATO members and do not see each other as military threats.

Summary: 

How Did Portugal Remain Distinct?

• Geography helped: Portugal’s natural western boundary along the Atlantic made separation easier.
• Political assertion: Afonso Henriques’ early independence declaration and the Braganza Restoration in 1640 were pivotal.
• Cultural differentiation: Language, literature, and self-conception shaped a separate Portuguese identity.
• Strategic alliances: Particularly with England, helped Portugal maintain autonomy against Spanish pressures.
• Refusal of Iberian federalism: Even in modern times, Portugal rejects ideas of Iberian unification, holding fast to its Atlantic and global (especially Lusophone) identity.

Would you like a visual timeline or map showing this historical divergence between Portugal and Spain?