Assignment #8

Michel Serres, Statues. Bloomsbury.

1. What does Serres compare to the 1986 explosion of the rocket Challenger?

He is comparing these accidents and explosions to the human sacrifices of the Ancients. PG. 2-5.

2. What do the hideous statue and its inhuman form of worship have to do with us?

Because if we simply ignore than, then we are risking being no different than the Ancients were in terms of sacrifice. PG 14.

3. What word does ‘victim’ share a lineage with?

“Vicar” or “vicaious” which means substitute or replacement. PG. 10.

4. Which comes first, according to Serres, language or statues? Where do our Ideas come from?

States came before languages. Our ideas come to us like idols or ghosts from the past and out language itself admits that. PG. 32-33.

5. How does Serres interpret the name “Peter”?

He interprets the name “Peter” to be related to statues and the creation of life into sign. PG 42.

6. What happened to gyges?

Gyges dies and went into a place where she could see a bronze statue of a horse. H ewas the excluded third that would still more around in his tomb. PG 83.

7. Who painted four Mary Magdalenes? How does Serres interpret them? Respond to Serres’s points with a claim about Caravaggio’s Repentant Magdalen in the Galleria Doria Pamphili.

La Tour painted four Mary Magdalenes. Caravaggio’s Repentant Magdalen is the same as the three that La Tour painted which have the visit on the left. Almost every detail that Serres describes you see in Caravaggio’s.

Freud, “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis.”

8. What does Freud say has been the aim of his ‘scientific work’ in a Disturbance of Memory?

Freud says that the aim of his scientific work was to shine light on unusual behaviors of the mind and to indicate where those might come from. PG 239.

9. What experience of Freud have upon seeing the Acropolis of Athens?

Fred claims that he thought t himself that the place actually exists like he learned in school. PG 241.

10. What explains his behavior in Trieste?

Freud claims the his behavior in Trieste is explained by someone’s inability to believe something that seems to good to be true, like winning a prize. This could also be caused by someone’s refusal to be happy. People do not think they are worth the happiness that this has brought into their life. PG 242.

11. Two general characteristics of the phenomena of derealization:

The first characteristic is that it is trying to keep something away from the ego. The second is that they rely on your memories and past situations which were distressing. PG 245-6.

12. What does Freud conclude interfered with he and his brother’s enjoyment of the journey to Athens?

Freud concludes that it is this feeling of guilt that they had in Trieste that began to interfere with their enjoyment of the trip. PG 247.

Civilization and its Discontents. Pp. 11- 20. https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FreudS-CIVILIZATION-AND-ITS-DISCONTENTS-text-final.pdf

13. What does he conclude when Freud suggests, “now let us, by a flight of imagination, suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past”?

“The Moses of Michelangelo.”

14. In Freud’s option what is it that grips us so powerfully in great works of art?

Freud says that it is the artist’s intention and his ability to convey his thoughts and messages to us that grips us in powerful works of art. And his ability to get us to understand his intentions. PG. 212.

15. Why does he call this statue ‘inscrutable’?

Freud calls the statue ‘inscrutable’ when comparing it to Hamlet. Much like this play, the statue could have many different interpretations on what the intentions behind it might have been. PG. 213.

16. How does he interpret the state of Moses in the statue?

Freud describes the statue to appear to be anger and in fear. He says the statue is in a frozen position after he has overcome his fury and will remain in his pained state. PG 229-30. More concisely Freud agrees with the words of Thode, who says that the statue is in between the emotions of wrath, pain, and contempt. PG. 214.