The Insatiable Infant — relief that recreates need (the addiction structure)
echoes
From: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
- Early text: "the promise to sate the part of me that always and
only WANTS—is the central fantasy the brochure is selling"; "the real
fantasy here isn’t that this promise will be kept, but that such a promise
is keepable at all"; "But the Infantile part of me is insatiable—in fact its
whole essence or dasein or whatever lies in its a priori insatiability";
"the Insatiable Infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward
until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible
dissatisfaction." [sec. 12, with [fn 87]: "It may well be the Big One, come to
think of it."]
- IJ echo: IJ's Substance/Entertainment isomorphism — the addiction logic
that relief only deepens the need it relieves ("E Unibus Pluram"'s malignant
addiction: a thing that "offers itself as relief from the very problems it
causes"). The samizdat is this run to its asymptote: gratification so
complete it recreates nothing but the need for itself. Erdedy's quit/binge
loop, the attaché's death-loop, and the entertainment-casualties are the
dramatized versions.
- Weight: prefiguration