Of the Filthy, Sturdy, Unkillable Infants of the Very Poor

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

When talking about the supposed universality of Freud's theories on the repressed surfacing in sleep, Wittgenstein made reference to the inherent problem of semiology and dreams; whereas he agrees that dreams leave the unmistakable mark of decipherable signifiers in our consciousness, he disagrees that any "fluency" in this "language" is possible. His hypothetical example involves a man who claims fluency in French, but can only translate from French into English and lacks any and all ability to translate in the reverse direction. In other words, Freud fails (by his own standards of universality) at any claim to translate dreams.

Now, Wittgenstein is a crafty fellow, and many people are quick to point out his tendency towards ironic dialectic synthesis. He himself has said that the key to his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus is "what is not in it." The argument could be made that Wittgenstein only came up with a somewhat misleading hypothetical in order not to discredit Freud but instead to lend credence to his theories. Colleagues have claimed that Wittgenstein stated that he found the "Viennese fellow" compelling and "very interesting."

Did you realize this guy went to school with Hitler? No shit!

But what if we take the emphasis of Wittgenstein's hypothetical off of the relationship to psychoanalysis? What if we ask Wittgenstein a question (since Wittgenstein himself seems fond of asking Wittgenstein questions)? What if we say, but Herr Wittgenstein, isn't there someone who can translate truth into dreams?

Hegel says, "The soul is a bone." I say, "I am a private East Coast university." For years I defined myself against what I perceived as an imaginary line drawn between the elite world of academia and myself in the (pejoratively) public state university. Well, unfortunately for both my definition of myself as the stain on the otherwise rosy fall landscape on the metaphoric brochure photograph of academia and my bank account, I'm on the other side of the line. And what I've discovered about this line is that it does not belong to the realm of the imaginary. It is both of the Real and a prescient bit of reality. While the former may be a little more obvious, the latter was a shock to me. Every single building on campus is protected as though we are surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Lack of identification guarantees that you will not be allowed in anywhere, even to a classroom, without contacting the central identification office. The real benefit of crossing the line, I suppose, is that I am now of the "community" that can safely take a shit on a clean toilet. Before, I would have had to shit my pants on the subway like anyone else.

My own private hell/haven

Of course, my contempt for the world of private elitist universities was a rouse behind which I hid my true desire to be a part of that world. As always, my desire being realized is not a source of satisfaction, but instead a troubling sensation reminiscent of Freud's notion of the uncanny. Like in a nightmare, reality is changed only slightly--the result of which is more troubling than the complete suspension of recognizable reality. In this way, I feel that my original (waking) dream has been translated into reality, yet is intractably perceived as a dream, as something that demands interpretation. Only my familiarity with the illusion makes it seem any less uncomfortable and indecipherable than it is.

It's for this reason I stand by my question to Wittgenstein. True genius is not manifest in the discovery of truth, but in the domination of this truth qua transference to the realm of signification; in other words, into a dream.