back in business

I stopped posting on this blog because school started, and I became another boring law student. Law students really are pretty boring. And all the things that are interesting about their jobs, they can't even tell you because of attorney-client privilege. So, here we are, stuck with a blog, and nothing but, "Oh, I saw so-and-so in the elevator up to copyright today," and "Did you hear, they're installing new vending machines in the cafeteria." Are you at the edge of your seats yet? This is my life, on the day-to-day.

I can say that I had an interesting class on the topic of freud and legal interpretation: my prof spent the entire two hours trying to say the work "sex" as much as possible, also really homing in on the idea that our primal selves seek to "kill the father, have SEX with the mother." I could feel the tension gathering in the seminar room as people tried not to look too intently at him, but not look like they were trying not to look at him. And the nervous laughter beautifully illustrated the theory that humor is a defensive act. Well, that was how I felt, anyway. I can empirically point to the fact that students started putting away their things and placing their backpacks on the desk, poised for escape, fully 15 minutes before the end of class. I mean, when he said, "What do you see in me, the professor? I am the Father," I feel like he really covered everything.

We ended the class doing a freudian analysis of an English unlawful conversion case from some time ago concerning the exchange of and payment for 250 cambric handkerchiefs. X thought he was selling them to Y, but Y was defrauding him and never paid, but before disappearing, sold the handkerchiefs to Z. Now, between two innocent parties, X and Z, who should pay? Total toss-up, no? Yet, the opinion overwhelmingly found for X. Reason: now, freud said that the answer to the riddle lies in the incidental. So, what seems incidental to this story? These handkerchiefs. They could have been sardines, for all the opinion seemed to care. But what are handkerchiefs? They are signs of the feminine, the virginal white. Or the lust for the mother. Or even a flag-- a phallic image, of course. But where must these lost handkerchiefs go? They must go back to the Father, they must return from whence they came. In this case, that was the manufacturerer, X. They must succumb to the power of their origins, and the law is the handmaiden. As Lacan said, "Law is speech in the name of the father."

What disturbed/delighted me about this interpretation of the case was how readily I bought it, well, once it had been thoroughly explained to me. It made just as much (or little) sense as any other analysis by any other professor in contracts, torts, criminal procedure, wherever. I guess I believe that sex is just as strong an impulse in legal disputes as is capital. Or not. I could be wrong.