A while ago, before the publication of volume I of A Certain Gesture: Evnine’s Batman Meme Project and Its Parerga! (Dec 2022), I joked on Facebook that I would certainly be referring to work by the psychoanalyst Joseph Slap! Unfortunately, as it turned out, the good Dr. Slap did not make it into volume I. He will have to wait his turn until volume II.
I also, somehow, failed until yesterday (can you believe it?) to hit on the phrase “a Freudian slap,” which failure, given the importance of the connection between the slap and my psychoanalysis, must itself be a parapraxis. This wonderful coinage, too, will have to await the next volume.
These missed opportunities bring to the front of my mind the question of what volume II will be like. When I decided to publish what I had already written (commentaries on slightly fewer than half the memes I had planned to discuss) as volume I, I simply assumed that volume II would proceed in the same manner, making the two volumes together a homogeneous unity. And there are certainly some memes among the remainder that I would like to comment on in a manner similar to the commentaries in volume I. For example, these two:
It has recently occurred to me, however, that I could make volume II very different in style and/or format from volume I. Not to do so seems like it would be another missed opportunity. As of yet, I have no idea at all of what it might look like, should I decide to let go of the goal of homogeneity. Although I find myself in a state of uncertainty, I am not anxious. As I said some years ago on this blog, I know the answer will get to me somehow. (Looking back on that earlier post, after I had written the preceding sentence, I saw that I used there the word “anxious” precisely to describe how I was feeling then!)
If I were to miswrite the orthodox psychoanalyst’s name as “Joseph Slip,” that would imply both the presence and absence of a Freudian Slap!
Simon J. Evnine 