dum-dum occultism
Music: Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd: The Moon and the Melodies (1986)
Here's part three of the Freemasonry essay as I plug right along. I regret I cannot write the conclusion today; I need to read Jodi Dean's book first, and it still hasn't shipped! Our library has a copy that's checked-out (I HATE my university library anyway, about which more perhaps one day). Doncha just get your panties in a wad when you're on a writing roll and have to stop because you don't have what you need? Panty-wadism during productivity sucks green donkey dicks.
Oh well, I need to clean the condo anyway. Must wash the cat.
No secrets here, just bitching and moaning about my fellow brethren:
The Perils of Publicity, or, Dumbing Down the Mystery
The conflict between secrecy and democracy would appear to be a recurrent phenomenon in our national history. Indeed, since the flowering of the modern secret society in the eighteenth century, antisecretism as a state of mind has been an enduring fiber in the patter of Western culture.
--Leland M. Griffin[i]
In his classic study of the rhetorical structure of the Anti-Masonic movement, Leland Griffin carefully traces how the murder of an anti-Mason, allegedly committed by a gang of Masons (which known in the Masonic literature as the "Morgan Affair)," sparked an anti-Masonic social movement that culminated in the development of a political party and "the first Antimasonic candidate for the Presidency" in 1831. [ii] According to Griffin's account,
in the fall of 1826 rumor was circulated among Freemasons of western New York to the effect that a former member of the lodge at Batavia, a bricklayer named William Morgan, was planning to publish the secret signs, grips, passwords, and ritual of Ancient Craft [Blue Lodge] Masonry. The anger of the Masons was soon translated into those actions that were to initiate the [Antimasonic] movement. . . . Morgan . . . was imprisoned on a false charge and shortly thereafter, abducted from his cell by a small band of Masons and driven in a closed carriage more than one hundred miles to Rochester; from there he was taken to the abandoned fort above Niagara Falls. . . . Morgan was locked in the castle of the fort--where, from that moment, all historical trace of him vanishes.[iii]
After Morgan's death, his book was published and became an instant bestseller, and an Anti-Masonic uproar led to twenty-one indictments and a trial for six, none of whom charged with murder (it turns out the prosecutor and a number of jurors were Freemasons). After the trial, over a hundred Anti-Masonic newspapers sprung up and, as Hodapp puts it, helped to generate a "hysteria" that was "so bad that for nearly two decades, a toddler couldn't get sick in the United States without someone claiming the Masons had poisoned the kid's porridge."[iv]
From a rhetorical vantage, what is particularly interesting to Griffin is the way in which the Anti-Masons created a "fund" of public argument via various channels of media circulation (newspapers, tracts, public lectures, sermons, and so on), and the rhetorical strategies of Masons in response to the many accusations against them: it was claimed that the Masons killed Morgan as a part of their bloodthirsty rituals; that they were conspiring to take over the newly established and united republic; that the Masons were in cahoots with the Devil, and so on.
The first strategy the Masons used, which Griffin speculates may in part rely on common beliefs about persuasion at the time (e.g., the work of George Campbell), was to attack
The character and motives of Antimasons . . . . [Masons] charged that [Antimasons] were merely trying to 'raise an excitement,' and declared that the 'blessed spirit' [viz., grace claimed by Anti-Masons] was rather an inquisitorial spirit, a product of delusion as the Salem witchcraft trials had been.[v]
Apparently the counter-attack strategy was a disaster. Griffin argues that it led the Anti-Mason's to extend their agenda to the complete destruction of Freemasonry itself, and later, "the destruction of all secret orders then existing in the country."[vi]
Griffin argues that the second rhetorical response of Masons was no more effective, at least for the next decade as Masonic supporters or "Mason Jacks" stopped defending the fraternity. In 1830, under the "tacit leadership of President Jackson" (also a Mason), the Secretary of State Edward Livingston gave a speech to a number of Masons in which he urged "'dignified silence' in the face of the opposition's attack."vii After this talk was circulated among Masons, Griffin notes that "the Masons became, in fact, virtually mute."[viii] Meanwhile,
States began to pass laws against extrajuridical oaths, legislation which was intended to emasculate the secret order; lodge charters were surrendered, sometimes under legal compulsion but often voluntarily; Phi Beta Kappa abandoned its oaths of secrecy; Masonic and Odd Fellows' lodges began to file bankruptcy petitions; and membership rolls in the various orders began to dwindle to the vanishing point. [ix]
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the fraternity began to recover and slowly increased in numbers. Membership steadily increased for decade after decade until it ballooned to four million members in the modern heyday of contemporary civic engagement in the post World War II United States.[x] Nevertheless, the rhetorical strategy of absolute silence in response to questions regarding Masonry--and especially in response to attacks--would persist until relatively recently. Hence, the tight-lipped response of an uncle or grandfather when questioned about the teachings of Freemasonry are not only a consequence of misunderstanding (e.g., that there really are no secrets anymore) or the consequence of revolutionary politics, but also a defensive impulse rooted in the Fraternity's response to the Anti-Masonic crisis of the 1830s.
Owing to its commitment to tradition and ritual precedent, as well as the emphasis placed on scholarship and the study of its symbols and history, many Freemasons are aware of the history of Anti-Masonry and at least tacitly inculcated with the rhetorical habits of the fraternity. Shaking the defensive response of the past when confronting popular publicity has been a long process. Because of the recent, positive portrayals of the fraternity in contemporary popular media, however, a number of prominent Masonic leaders, perhaps taking lessons from the past, have adopted a newer strategy: (seemingly) a complete openness about the fraternity, its histories, its rituals, and its symbols. As the membership numbers plummeted in the mid-nineteenth century, effectively threatening the survival of the fraternity, the Masons chose to continue their charity and ritual work behind the closed doors of the lodge without a word. Today, as the fraternity faces a similar, though less dramatic, decline, a number of Masonic leaders have chosen to embrace recent publicity as an opportunity to stress the non-mysterious aspects of the Order.
One reason that contemporary Masons have decided to appear more open to public curiosity is the recognition that publics--and their habits of information gathering--have changed dramatically in the twentieth century. Pierre G. Normand, editor of Plumbline, the newsletter of one of the largest Masonic scholarly societies, the Scottish Rite Research Society , writes:
I suppose the big news in the Masonic world of late is the onslaught of mixed blessings attendant to the release of The Da Vinci Code movie. [It] . . . mentions Freemasonry, however briefly and inaccurately, and, as a result, everyone's interested in the fraternity again. . . . We live in a world of tabloid journalism and conspiracy theories where the average American learns everything, not in the history section of the local library or bookshop, but at the checkout counter of the local grocery story [sic], or the movie theatre.[xi]
Apparently mindful of this attitude, Masonic officials made a number of strategic choices when ABC television network approached the Scottish Rite headquarters and requested a live broadcast. Decisions were made to downplay the mystery-effects of Masonic symbolism as well as the spiritual teaching occult practices of Masonry. "Secrecy" was deliberately re-coded as "private," disarticulating the fraternity from the long history of clandestine clubs in the language of publicity (e.g., the right to keep some "private" things from public scrutiny, and so on). For example, when Richard E. Fletcher, Executive Secretary of the dominant Masonic PR association, spoke with the reporter Charles Gibson on national television, he flatly denied the label "secret society":
Charles Gibson: . . . Do you accept this idea it's [Freemasonry] a secret society?
Richard E. Fletcher: No, sir.
Gibson: Not secret?
Fletcher: It isn't.
Gibson: Then why the secret handshakes and the secret rites, etcetera, that go on?
Fletcher: Well, the handshakes--if you want to go in that direction--the handshakes are a throwback to our early days when Freemasonry was related to the actual builders in stone.
Fletcher then explains the function of handshakes and passwords in medieval masonic guilds, but Gibson was determined:
Gibson: But you know secret societies today raise suspicions. Now, you say it's not secret. But there are parts about it that we don't know.
Fletcher: There are parts that are private. Now, if you're talking about what goes on behind closed doors and all those secret things. They're not secret. They're private. What we are doing is taking an individual man, bringing him into the fraternity through a series of degrees, and in those degrees, he is going to be challenged to look at such things as honesty, honor, integrity, how to make oneself a better person . . . . [xii]
The mere fact that the top leaders of the Scottish Rite allowed a popular morning news program to film inside the House of the Temple in Washington D.C., of course, betokens a very different approach to and attitude toward publicity than in its almost three-hundred year history.
So, too, is "privacy" the replacement of "secrecy" in a number of the books written for the express purpose of popularizing the fraternity since the Da Vinci Code catalyzed popular curiosity. "Masons like to say that Freemasonry is not a secret society," reports Christopher Hodapp in his Freemasons for Dummies, "rather, it is a society with secrets. A better way to put this is that what goes on in a lodge room during its ceremonies is private."[xiii] Like Fletcher, Hodapp similarly downplays the centrality and function of mystery central to Masonic philosophy. For Hodapp, although "it is tempting to believe that there are hidden mysteries and even magic contained in" Masonic symbols, "in fact, they're used to simply imprint on the mind the lessons of the fraternity."xiv In the same spirit of simplicity, Hodapp not only downplays the drama of Masonic ritual as a "throwback," but--and surprisingly so--dismisses the entire body of modern Masonic philosophy. In an offset blurb box titled "Mysticism, magic, and Masonic mumbo-jumbo," Hodepp writes:
If you read enough about Freemasonry, you'll soon come across the writings of Albert Mackey, Manley Hall, Arthur Edward Waite, and Albert Pike. These men and many others have filled reams of paper with scholarly observations of Freemasonry. They eloquently linked the Craft to the ancient Mystery Schools of Egypt and elsewhere. They wrote that Masonry was directly descended from pagan rites and ancient religions. . . . The works of these men were filled with fabulous tales and beliefs and cultures and cryptic theories of the deepest and earliest origins of Freemasonry. In short, they wrote a lot of crap.[xv]
Hodapp continues by denying Masonry has any relation to the occult, and that writers like "Pike, Mackey, and Hall" wrote "big, thick books" that created all sorts of problems since "Freemasons [now] have to explain all over again to their relatives and ministers that, no, they aren't . . . making pagan sacrifices to Lucifer." Hodapp concludes, "let's just say their [Pike et al.] vision of the history of modern-day Freemasonry is not accurate and leave it at that."[xvi] Either Hodapp does not understand the internal function of Masonic rhetoric, or he has deliberately chosen to mischaracterize the fraternity.
That Hodapp can be so dismissive of Masonic philosophy is, in fact, protected by the organizational structure of the fraternity. As previously discussed, all Masonic authority is invested in a given region's Grand Lodge, and lodge officials are the ones who determine what is and is not properly "Masonic." Combined with the general commitment to the right of each individual to interpret Masonic symbolism for himself, the tribal structure of Masonic authority has contributed to a general tolerance of freethinking and polite disagreement among Masons in the United States. Unquestionably, that a Master Mason from a California jurisdiction could publish something titled Freemasons for Dummies is a testament to this ideology.
Although decidedly more serious and less anti-intellectual, a number of recent Masonic publications reflect a downplaying of the mystical and occult teachings of the Craft. For example, Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris' Is it True What They Say About Freemasonry? downplays Pike's Morals and Dogma as a product of its time: "Just because Albert Pike was a brilliant ritualist, an able administrator, and a well-respected Mason doesn't mean all his opinions are right in light of today's knowledge."[xvii] Such an observation is certainly true, however, it is made in the absence of any explanation of Pike's commitment to the Ancient Mysteries and the central function of Masonic symbolism, which comprised Pike's fundamental teaching in Morals and Dogma. Despite the fact that each is hundreds of pages long, similar publications like Morris' The Complete Idiot's Guide to Freemasonry and The Everything Freemasonry Book (the latter by non-Masons) also downplay the occult origins of the fraternity and as well as the dramatic and mysterious aspects. Although tone of the latter books is much more respectful of Masonic tradition and philosophy than Hodapp's, they join Freemasonry for Dummies in presenting the fraternity as the antithesis of the mystery-effect of the strange symbol. As Walter Benjamin might say, each book attempts to evaporate the aura of mystery that surrounds the Craft in the language of transparency and contemporary argot.[xviii] Given the Anti-Masonic movements of the past, it is understandable why this third strategy was adopted. And yet, when viewed from the perspective of ritual drama and mystery-effect, this rhetorical trend is, not surprisingly, ironically deceptive: not only does it seem to divest the fraternity--at least for the outsider--of one of its two major practices (no one disowns charity, of course), the strategy is more commonly known as "lying." In our age of surveillance and publicity, lying may prove to be the absolute worst strategy of all.
Notes
i Leland M. Griffin, "The Rhetorical Structure of the Antimasonic Movement." Readings in Rhetorical Criticism, ed. Carl R. Burgchardt (State College, PA: Strata Publishing, 1995), 371.
ii Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, sv. "Morgan Affair."
iii Griffin, "Antimasonic Movement," 373. Of course, many Masons have disputed this account stressing that no one knows what really happened to Morgon; see Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Morgan Affair," as well as Hodapp, Dummies, 45-47.
iv Hodapp, Dummies, 46.
v Griffin, "Antimasonic Movement," 374.
vi Griffin, "Antimasonic Movement," 374.
vii Griffin, "Antimasonic Movement," 377.
viii Griffin, "Antimasonic Movement," 378.
ix Griffin, "Antimasonic Movement," 377-378.
x Holly Lebowitz Rossi, "Masonic Membership is Declining." Detroit Free Press (15 July 2006): available http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060715/FEATURES01/607150329/1026 accessed 10 August 2006. Also Cite something here from Bowling Alone, perhaps a Masonic factoid.
xi Pierre G. "Pete" Normand, "SRRS Bulletin Notes." The Plumbline: The Quarterly Bulletin of the Scottish Rite Research Society 14 (2006): 2.
xii Cited in Morris, "Good Morning, America, paras. 7-15.
xiii Hodapp, Dummies, 17.
xiv Hodapp, Dummies, 132.
xv Hodapp, Dummies, 61.
xvi Hodapp, Dummies, 61.
xvii De Hoyos and Morris, Is it True, 26.
xviii See Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," second version. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935-1938, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, and Others (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2002), 101-133.
As civic republicanism was eventually--and violently--instituted in the United States, the stress on the clandestine nature of the fraternity's governance and teachings has gradually weakened. The characteristically tight-lipped grandfather or uncle who refused to say anything about Masonry to family members and friends is partly a consequence of the dynamics revolutionary America, but is also simply a misunderstanding about what Masons are allowed to say about themselves to non-Masons.1 In fact, most of the so-called secrets of the Craft are well known and widely published, such as its ceremonies and the over-loaded significations of many of its symbols (about which more below). The actual secrets of the Craft concern certain parts and aspects of the ceremonies, and a number of secret "words" (such as the "Master Mason's word"), passwords, and handshakes.2 These secrets, however, are also not difficult to find in a number of books and by a simple Google search of the Internet. Today, the primary reason Masons do not talk about these not-so-secret secrets is that it, well, spoils the fun for new Masons receiving their degrees; learning a "secret handshake" is much less enjoyable, perhaps even boring, when you already know what it is. Aside from its remarkable ability to raise money for charity,3 the real secret of Masonry has always been in plain sight: if one starts looking for the principal symbol of Freemasonry in one's community, which is the square and compasses encircling a capital "G" (see fig. 2), she will start to notice it is everywhere--on buildings, on car bumpers, in books and frequently in films, on rings and jewelry, and so on. The secret of Masonry lies in the effects of this symbol on the viewer, not the meaning it signifies. The function of secrecy in Masonry concerns this symbol's seemingly recalcitrant strangeness, its enthymematic mystery, which is thought to provoke curiosity in the viewer.4 Masonry purports to have a route to Enlightenment, moral uplift, and spiritual awareness that is rooted in the mystery-effects of odd or strange language and symbols. In other words, Masonry claims to have a privileged practice and teaching that I would characterize as a Platonic rhetorical theory, or an occult rhetoric.
For the Masonic candidate, the meaning of the beehive as symbolic of the human soul as well as the industry and the product of its labor (honey), is not "revealed" until the Master Mason's degree--if at all. Henry Wilson Coil reports that mention of the beehive is omitted in the lectures of the degree today, although it's the symbol is ubiquitous in Masonic literature and in the decorations, furniture, and architecture of lodges across the United States (see fig 3). What is important about the beehive, however, is not its basic meaning to Masons as "industry." What is important is what the aspirant himself makes of it, or how the image causes him to reflect on the mysteries of Masonry; or the complexities of human industry and social organization; or the role of the feminine (e.g., the queen) in structuring society; or the division of labor in contemporary basic arrangements in society; or the mysteries of an ordered universe and its relation to his own spirituality; and so on. In short: the symbol of the beehive is a kind of ruse. Another way to put this is that the true secret of Freemasonry is that there are no secrets!
When understood in relation to the ceremonial and ritual performance that occurs in Masonic lodges, the four functions of occult rhetoric exemplified by Masonry are unquestionably Platonic, and by extension, mark Freemasonry as the modern counterpart to the Ancient Mysteries. In the Cratylus, the Phaedrus, and the Republic, Plato argued that language taken literally could not express universal, spiritual truths. Only indirect allegory (mythoi) and dialectical speech--in other words, talking aloud to others back-and-forth indirectly through myth--could ever inspire one to intuit ultimately reality (and even then, only partially).18 From this perspective, the speech-only "esoteric work" of memorization to learn the Masonic catechism of each degree is not only a device for secrecy, but wedded to a faith in the spirituality of presentism.19
Whether or not one can trace Freemasonry as a direct descendent of The Mysteries is not as important as reckoning with their common cause in the important function of secrecy as a route to spiritual knowledge. In one of the largest and most difficult works of Masonic philosophy, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, which is a collection of "lectures" about both the Blue Lodge and Scottish Rite degrees, Albert Pike stresses the function of secrecy in The Mysteries was to create spiritual and intellectual curiosity, as well as respect for the teachings of the organizations:
Curiosity was excited by secrecy, by the difficulty experienced in gaining admission, and by the test to be undergone. The candidate was amused by the variety of the scenery, the pomp and decorations . . . . Respect was inspired by the gravity and dignity of the actors and the majesty of the ceremonial; and fear and hope, sadness and delight, were in turns excited.22
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Contrary to what is often reported in the popular press (e.g., in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code), there are only three degrees in Masonry proper, and once one has been granted the degree of Master Mason, he can go no "higher" in the fraternity. Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris explain: 
As Freemasonry evolved since the 1700s, a number of "appendant bodies" have developed that significantly complicate the Masonic organizational structure and often lead to confusion about degrees both inside and outside the fraternity. Some appendant bodies are not recognized by all the Grand Lodges of the world, but there are a number that are. De Hoyos and Morris explain that the largest and most universally recognized by state Grand Lodges is the Scottish Rite, an American system that expands Masonic ritual by 29 degrees to the 32°. There is a 33°, however, this degree is typically only conferred by the governing "Supreme Council" to longstanding Masons with an outstanding, lifetime record of service to Masonry. Nevertheless, Scottish Rite Masonry is often confused with the Blue Lodge: if a given Mason is said to be of the 33°, he is also a Mason of the Blue Lodge, but not necessarily vice versa.
Like the degrees in the Blue Lodge, the Scottish Rite degrees are represented by rituals that are performed for initiates. The principle difference, however, is that after the degrees were re-written in the nineteenth century, a majority of them were transformed into less-Parliamentary-style "plays" that are presented in a theatre (hence, most older Scottish Rite temples have or are theatres, such as the Austin Scottish Rite Theatre pictured on the right). Other famous Masonic bodies and systems include: The York Rite, the higher degrees of which require a belief in the divinity of Jesus; the Order of the Eastern Star, which is open to and largely administered by women; and the Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, or the "Shriners," most known for their charity work with children, which explains why they are often remembered for their fez hats, public clowning, and teensy go-carts, which they drive around in at local parades to help promote their charity work.
To date, Freemasons are predominately white, and in the United States the issue of minority membership remains quite controversial among them. Masonry developed in this country concurrently with the union, and consequently, its history has a segregated, colonial past that is reflected in the establishment of Prince Hall Masonry, an African American fraternity that dates back to the American revolution. Prince Hall, the "Father of Black Masonry" in the United States, was granted a charter for a lodge by the Grand Lodge of England in 1787. In the eighteenth century, and even shortly after the War of Independence, the Grand Lodge of England emerged (after many squabbles with others) as the supreme authority of Freemasonry approved charters for Grand Lodges in other parts of the world (who would then oversee local lodges, and so on). Since the North American colonies were not yet united as an autonomous sovereign, states began establishing their own Grand Lodges (and sometimes without approval from the Brits).13 Consequently, some Grand Lodges recognize Prince Hall Masonry (e.g., California) and allow any man to petition a lodge for membership, while others (e.g., Louisiana) do not. The states of the failed confederacy remain those whose members seem the most reluctant to recognize Prince Hall Masonry, although this situation continues to change rapidly as older, more bigoted generations of Masons pass away.[14]
The politics of membership in a Masonic body also concerns religion, although this politics is largely a consequence of its long association with, and commitment to, popular democracy. It is sometimes erroneously reported, for example, that Masonry is a "religion," or that Masonry discriminates against Catholics and Jews, or that it is part of a conspiracy to take over governments--all of which Masons deny. The fraternity was and remains, however, a strong proponent of republicanism and democracy, and maintains a principled commitment to the separation of church and state, which drew fire from the Roman Catholic church. Although we heard it countless times in high school civics class, the norms of democracy and republicanism that contemporary U.S. citizens take for granted were not always popular. For example, Margaret C. Jacob reports that in 
As civic republicanism was eventually--and violently--instituted in the United States, the stress on the clandestine nature of the fraternity's governance and teachings has gradually weakened. The characteristically tight-lipped grandfather or uncle who refused to say anything about Masonry to family members and friends is partly due to the dynamics of American revolutionary history, but is also simply a misunderstanding about what Masons are allowed to say about themselves to non-Masons. In fact, most of the so-called secrets of the Craft are well-known and widely published, such as its ceremonies and the over-loaded significations of many of its symbols (about which more below). The actual secrets of the Craft concern certain parts and aspects of the ceremonies, and a number of secret "words" (such as the "Master Mason's word"), passwords, and handshakes.[20] These secrets, however, are also not difficult to find in a number of books and by a simple Google search of the Internet. The real secret of Masonry has always been in plain sight: Masonry purports to have a route to Enlightenment, moral uplift, and spiritual awareness. In other words, Masonry claims to have a privileged practice and teaching that members call its "philosophy," but which readers might more readily characterize as its "rhetoric." It is to the unique occult rhetoric and symbolism of Freemasonry that I now turn.
Finished are: a short essay on glossolalia; a co-authored thing on the i-pod. I've yet to get to my and Tom's thing on the Da Vinci Code, but that's next. I just couldn't wait to start my project on Freemasonry as I keep reading this 
To this I would only add that art is a similar intoxicant, and perhaps in ways that better amplify the less conscious content of one's "basic personality." With The Passion of the Christ film's tacit promotion of Christian rage (and violence, and homophobia, oh, and antisemitism), we can only wonder what other "basic personality" traits would have been aired with Gibson's now defunct mini-series of the Jewish Holocaust. Apparently, Gibson was in cahoots with Disney/ABC for some years on the project, which was to bring 
Reencountering iPod discourse as a series of mirror stages, understood both as (1) a place where the drama of identity is enacted and (2) an intersection of the imago and the voice of the Other, we can begin to see why it has resonated so deeply with consumers. iPod print advertisements are uncannily homologous to the development of subjectivity in the sense that the centrality of the image is an homage to the primacy of the sonorous; it is a representation of someone "losing themselves" in music yet remaining (visually at least) independent. In figure 2, for example, a thin woman with a pony tail seems to be either looking blankly to her right or closing her eyes, her iPod held up and close to her face, as it were a microphone and she is about to sing. Her left hand is held out beside her with the palm open, signifying movement. Either the woman is dancing, or, the open-palm held aloft is urging someone to leave her alone (the gesture brings to mind the currently youthful statement of leave-me-alone-ness, "talk to the hand"). Whether the woman is dancing or fending off someone who threatens to disturb her listening pleasure, her body language signifies both independence and musical enjoyment. Similarly, iPod television commercials re-stage the archaic site of mirrors, both acoustically and visually, in a kind of identitarian double-whammy that jubilantly celebrates the primal discovery of independence and a pre-subjective state of oceanic harmony and one-ness through the use of upbeat music and bright, hypnotic color schemes. Each silhouetted figure is "empty" of features because she enthymematically represents the spectator. In short, the mirror-work of iPod discourse is an attempt to represent the sonorous envelope, an advertising campaign that appeals to an unconscious desire to return to a pre-given, harmonious state of existence while, nevertheless, maintaining a presumed autonomy.
The culturally resonant, psychoanalytic power of iPod discourse as a site of double mirroring is perhaps no more obvious than in the many parodies and spoofs of the silhouettes. Shortly after the silhouette campaign debuted in the fall of 2003, Photoshop spoofs of the ad began flooding webpages across the Internet. One of the more controversial spoofs is artist and video game producer Tim Hall's CrucIpod, a stencil-art representation of the crucifixion of Jesus, iPod in hand (see figure 3). "[I]f you look at most advertising geared towards that 20 something market," says Hall, "you will see that they borrow a lot from the graffiti/screen printing [art] scene. . . . Big corporations are taking inspiration from 'indie' artists to sell their products--why not take their campaign and subvert it?"5 If the silhouette figure represents the consumer, then what is particularly subversive about Hall's piece is the way in which it calls into question the relationship between the oceanic (in this case, rendered as spirituality) and the radical brand of personal independence promised by the iPod. Here the two mirrors are reflected in two ways. First, individual autonomy is re-figured as deity, which marks a critique of the feelings of omnipotence having "1,000 songs in your pocket" inspires in some consumers. "One iPod enthusiast spoke of his device in tones one usually reserves for a powerful deity," reports Christine Rosen. "'It's with me anywhere, anytime . . . . It's there all the time. It's instant gratification for music . . . . It's God's own jukebox."[6] Second, the dis/pleasure of the drives or the curiously painful pleasure of jouissance is represented here, of course, as the passion of the Christ.[7] Yoking together two of the most fetishized objects of our time--Jesus and the iPod--Hall holds up another mirror to Western culture that reckons with the unconscious infantilism and selfish fantasies of omnipotence that new drive technologies are frequently said to promote.
Although psychoanalytic theorists have argued that the drives derive from hard-wired "instincts" (Trieb is sometimes translated as "instinct"), Jacques Lacan distinguished the drives from the instincts for reasons that afford a central role to representation and, by extension, rhetoric. First, unlike other animals, humans are born with partial and incomplete "instincts" and must resort to symbolic resources, such as crying, to satisfy their needs. This is why Lacan insists on the drive's primary construction through symbolic processes; simply put, biology is not enough because self-consciousness requires human beings to be "symbol-using [and symbol-used] animals." Although the drives are facilitated by neuronal pathways that re/trace more basic, incomplete, preservative instincts, the drive represents a culturally-mediated state of "lack." For example, the clichéd object of the oral drive for the classic, heterosexual male is the woman's breast. When making love to a woman, like a hungry infant, a "tit-man" man will ultimately end up putting the woman's breast in his salivating mouth. One knows the oral drive is in play because the man does not want to "get" or "possess" the breast as the object of his desire, but precisely the opposite. In other words, the point is not to own or have the breast, but to prolong sexual excitement by reckoning with the impossibility of ever getting the breast--of lacking the object even though may be in one's mouth.
As a privileged discourse, music allows listeners to (seemingly) circumvent external reality and directly access their unconscious drives. Since the mid-1970s, psychoanalytic research, coupled with film theory, has concentrated on the underlying connection of music to the maternal body. A number of French theorists, such as Dider Anzieu, Guy Rosolato, and Claude Baliblé, have stressed the role of sound in a child's developing subjectivity within the womb. They argue that the perception of the mother's body--her heartbeat, breathing, voice, and bodily movements--is a primal experience in which the child feels itself enclosed within an envelope of sound or a "sonorous envelope." "Music finds it roots and its nostalgia in [this] original [infantile] atmosphere," argues Rosolato, "which might be called a sonorous womb, a murmuring house, or music of the spheres."xix This intrauterine experience suggests an undifferentiated and oceanic expansiveness; it is analogous to the all-around pleasure of listening to music. From this vantage, for example, the contemporary, five-speaker stereo system in living rooms across the country represents a classically infantile attempt to recreate the sonorous envelope in "surround sound."
Currently on the docket is a co-authored essay with Mirko on drive theory and the i-pod, or rather, the "rhetoric of the i-pod," and by that I mean, how the ipod musical experience is represented in print and image. The argument is twofold: first, that the psychoanalysis of music involves two economies, one somatic/kinetic, the other, symbolic/rhetorical, and that both inform each other. Second, understanding the kinetic in terms of the drives helps to explain the sexual/cathartic/passionate represenation of musical enjoyment in everthing from rave posters to children's lunch boxes (usually the body dancing). As a demonstration, we're going to examine the advertising campaign of the ipod, which is a gadget, and all gadgets are objects that are typically inserted directly into the drive. The ear-pods of the ipod, of course, insert directly into the ear. The analysis will lead up to variations of this image on the left, the iGod or iChrist: the passion of the Christ is represented by an insular activation of in the invocatory drive. Of course, this image is overdetermined, but it also links two of the most libindinally invested objects of our time, Jesus and the ipod. Is it any wonder the question has been asked, "is the ipod more popular than Jesus?" 
I haven't the slightest clue if the music I've recommended to y'all has ever influenced a music purchase, but, here's another that I think most folks who share my love of melancholic sounds will really dig. Stuart A. Staples' new release 