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Thursday, November 08, 2018

Reading Irigaray's SPECULUM and THIS SEX WHICH IS NOT ONE through LeCarre's LOOKING GLASS WAR

This is the most readable and accessible one.
WORDS WRITTEN IN BLOOD ARE NOT TO BE READ BUT LEARNT BY HEART. -NIETZSCHE
This is difficult and deconstructs Freud's Oedipus Complex for little girls.
Some Examples of What Irigaray Says
All page numbers are from the Octopus Edition of 5 novels.

They never talked about Sarah. It was as if they shared a single relationship to Avery's wife, like children who are able to share a toy they no longer care for. Leclerc said, "Well, she's got that son of yours to keep her company......Leclerc was proud of knowing it was a son and not a a daughter. 
(p. 398)

She left the room, Woodford watching her. He took his pipe from his mouth and grinned. Avery knew he was going to say something about sleeping with Carol and suddenly he'd had enough.

Did your wife make that cup, Bruce? he asked quickly. I hear she's quite a potter.
Made the saucer as well, he said. He began talking about the classes she went to, the amusing way it had caught on in Wimbledon, how his wife was tickled to death. (p. 411)

It is a place of old faces and young bodies; of young faces and old bodies; where voices are raised to drown the silence, and glasses to drown the loneliness; it is the place where the searchers meet, finding no one but each other and the comfort of a shared pain; where the tired watchful eyes have no horizon to observe. It is their battlefield still; if there is love, they find it here in one another, shyly like adolescents, thinking all the time of other people. (p.445)

Avery was already familiar, during his short association with the department, with the phenomenon of organic motivation; with operations which had no discernible genesis and no conclusion, which formed part of an unending pattern of activity until they ceased to have any further identity; with that progress of fruitless courtships which, in the aggregate, passed for an active love life. (479)

He liked to talk to Avery. He talked about his women or the war. He assumed - it was irritating for Avery, but nothing more - -that a man in his middle thirties, whether married or not, led an intense and varied love life. Later in the evening when the two of them had put on their coats and hurried to the pub at the end of the road, he would lean his elbows on the small table, thrust his bright face forward and relate the smallest detail of his exploits, his hand beside his chin, his slim fingertips rapidly parting and closing in unconscious imitation of his mouth. It was not vanity which made him thus but friendship. These betrayals and confessions, whether truth or fantasy, were the simple coinage of their intimacy....

Avery came to know Leiser's face with an accuracy no longer related to memory. (Here we have the MALE GAZE Lacan discusses)He noticed how its features seemed structurally to alter shape according to his mood, how when he was tired or depressed at the end of a long day the skin on his cheekbones was drawn upwards rather than down, and the corners of his eyes and mouth rose tautly so that his expression was at once more Slav and less familiar. (p. 493)

I wouldn't mind a bit of what Fred's having, Johnson said with a snigger. He played a shot; a white ball dropped dutifully into its hold. Poles are dead randy. Go up anything, a Pole will. Specially Fred, he's a real terror. He's got the walk.
Are you that way, Jack?
When I'm in the mood. I wouldn't mind a little bit now, as a matter of fact.
They played a couple of shots, each lost in an alcoholic euphoria of erotic fancy. 

...Here's to Fred, Avery said.
To Fred. On the nest. And bloody good luck to him....
I dont know how he'll manage the B2, Johnson murmured. He's got a long way to go....
Fred. He's a lovely boy. Here: do you know this bloke Woodford, the one who picked me up?
Of course. He'll be coming down next week.
Met his wife at all, Babs? She was a girl, she was; give it to anyone.....
They drank ; that joke went astray. 
She used to go with the amin bloke, Jimmy Gorton..... (p. 499)

Is he getting frisky? Sometimes they want a girl about now. (p. 506)

A certain hilarity infected the briefing that morning. Johnson made a joke about not photographing the Oxford Constabulary by mistake; Leiser laughed richly and even Haldane allowed himself a wan smile. It was the end of of term; the boys were going home.
The exercise was a success. Johnson was pleased; Avery enthusiastic; Leiser manifestly delighted. They had made two faultless transmissions, ....at eight o'clock they assembled for dinner wearing their best suits. a special menu had been arranged. Haldane had presented the rest of his burgundy; toasts were made; there was talk of an annual reunion in years to come.  Leiser looked very smart in a dark blue suit and a pale tie of watered silk. (p. 507)

Too many sweets on the plane, that's your trouble, that's your trouble. Johnson winked at Avery. I saw you giving that air hostess a look. You shouldn't do it, Fred, you know, you'll break her heart.  He frowned round the table in mock disapproval. He really looked her over, you know. a proper tip-to-toe job. (p. 518)

Leiser smiled. It was the best ever, that week, John. It's funny, isn't it: we spend all our time chasing girls, and it's the men that matter; just the men.

You're one of us, Fred. You always were; all the time your card was there, you were one of us. We dont forget. (p. 530) 

When we met him he was a man without love. Do you know what love is? I'll tel you; it is whatever you can still betray. We ourselves live without it in our profession. We dont force people to do things for us. We let them discover love. And, of course leiser did, didn't he? He married us for money, so to speak, and left us for love.
Avery said quickly, What do you mean for money? 
I mean whatever we gave to him, Love is what he gave to us.

When he saw those letters, drawn out in Jack's neat, post-office hand, tears of gratitude started to his eyes. He never told me, he thought, he never told me he'd done it. Jack was all right, after all. Jack, the captain and young John; what a team to work for, he thought; a man could go through life and never meet a set of blokes like that. (p.546)

That Budapest thing, Leclerc continued, raising his voice, partly in enthusiasm and partly to dispel the atmosphere of intimacy which suddenly threatened them... (p. 558)

Avery spoke for the first time. You cant leave him out there all alone.His voice was flat. (p. 562)

Love. Yes, love! Not yours, Haldane, mine. Smiley's right! You made me do it for you, made me love him! It wasn't in you anymore! I brought him to you, I kept him in your house, made him dance to the music of your bloody war! i piped for him, but there's no breath in me now. He's Peter Pan's last victim, Haldane, the last one, the last love; the last music gone.

Avery had buried his face in his hands.(p. 563)

Avery was sobbing like a child. No one heeded him. (p.564)


_______________________________________________________________________________
ZIZEK tells us that the future is already here. It comes in fragments and we can embrace that which we want to preserve or ignore at our peril what we do not wish to come about. The LGW was published in 1963 soon after LeCarre wrote The Spy Who Came In From the Cold gave Carre the financial success he needed to quit M15 or whatever it was called then. He himself was vulnerable at this time, an alcoholic and a marriage tottering. He was writing in words of blood. 

Irigaray tells this to us. That male homosexual erotic power rules the world. Why the fact that gay men cannot be tolerated to upset this applecart of world rule. And heterosexual sex is the MASK that conceals it. Gay men are hated because they have broken the rule and have become commodities up for sexual exchange. Just like women. Men unconscious of their homosexuality are masking it with macho behavior and heterosexual sexual preferences. In this case they denigrate women when they are together talking about women. This is misogyny that we recognize without understanding it. Women are excluded but now have been invited in on the periphery of the limit, but they will never really be part of the good ol' boys clubs. It is clear that Carre knows very well what is going on among them erotically, but tells us very subtly. He is implying. When I get to Bolano the subtle telling disappears.

Irigaray also is writing in BLOOD. With the 1974 publication of SPECULUM the Lacanians kicked her out of psychoanalytic practice, expelled her from The Freud School and banished her from her teaching at the University of Vincennes which she helped to found. Three Lacanians were on the board evaluating her proposal for classes the following semester. This is how you get MURDERED in the academic profession. Clearly she was seen as VERY DANGEROUS. They were correct by the way. She is.