Category: badiou

zupancic the real

Zupančič Realism in Psychoanalysis
ICI Conference Berlin 2011 Lecture on the second day, 29 March 2011

The absolutely crucial point of this ‘psychoanalytic realism’ is that the real is not a substance or being, but precisely its limit.

That is to say, the real is that which traditional ontology had to cut off in order to be able to speak of ‘being qua being’.

We only arrive at being qua being by subtracting something from it – and this something is precisely the ‘hole’, that which it lacks in order to be fully constituted as being;

the zone of the real is the interval within being itself, on account of which no being is ‘being qua being’, but can only be by being something else than it is.

One can ask, of course, how can it matter if one cuts off something that is not there to begin with?

It matters very much not only because it becomes something when it is cut off, but also since the something it becomes is the very object of psychoanalysis.

zupancic materialism and real

Zupančič Realism in Psychoanalysis

Conference ICI Berlin
One Divides Into Two: Dialectics, Negativity & Clinamen
Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič, and Mladen Dolar
March  2011

One of the great merits of Meillassoux’s book is that it has (re)opened, not so much the question of the relationship between philosophy and science, as the question of whether they are speaking about the same world.

I emphasize … another dimension of his [Meillassoux’s] gesture, a dimension enthusiastically embraced by our Zeitgeist, even though it has little philosophical (or scientific) value, and is based on free associations related to some more or less obscure feelings of the present Unbehagen in der Kultur. Let us call it its psychological dimension, which can be summed up by the following story:

After Descartes we have lost the great outdoors, the absolute outside, the Real, and have become prisoners of our own subjective or discursive cage. The only outside we are dealing with is the outside posited or constituted by ourselves or different discursive practices. And there is a growing discomfort, claustrophobia in this imprisonment, this constant obsession with ourselves, this impossibility to ever get out of the external inside that we have thus constructed.

There is also a political discomfort that is put into play here, that feeling of frustrating impotence, of the impossibility of really changing anything, of soaking in small and big disappointments of recent and not so recent history. Hence a certain additional redemptive charm of a project that promises again to break out into the great Outside, to reinstitute the Real in its absolute dimension, and to ontologically ground the possibility of radical change.

One should insist, however, that the crucial aspect of Meillassoux lies entirely elsewhere than in this story which has found in him (perhaps not all together without his complicity) the support of a certain fantasy, namely and precisely the fantasy of the ‘great Outside’ which will save us – from what, finally?…

it is a fantasy in the strict psychoanalytic sense: a screen that covers up the fact that the discursive reality is itself leaking, contradictory, and entangled with the Real as its irreducible other side. That is to say: the great Outside is the fantasy that covers up the Real that is already right here.

In Lacan we find a whole series of such, very strong statements, for example: ‘Energy is not a substance…, it’s a numerical constant that a physicist has to find in his calculations, so as to be able to work’.

The fact that science speaks about this or that law of nature and about the universe does not mean that it preserves the perspective of the great Outside (as not discursively constituted in any way), rather the opposite is the case. Modern science starts when it produces its object.

This is not to be understood in the Kantian sense of the transcendental constitution of phenomena, but in a slightly different, and stronger sense.

Modern science literally creates a new real(ity); it is not that the object of science is ‘mediated’ by its formulas, rather, it is indistinguishable from them; it does not exist outside them, yet it is real.

It has real consequences or consequences in the real. More precisely: the new real that emerges with the Galilean scientific revolution (the complete mathematisation of science) is a real in which – and this is decisive – (the scientific) discourse has consequences.

Such as, for example, landing on the moon. For, the fact that this discourse has consequences in the real does not hold for nature in the broad and lax sense of the word, it only holds for nature as physics or for physical nature.

At stake is a key dimension of a possible definition of materialism, which one could formulate as follows: materialism is not guaranteed by any matter. It is not the reference to matter as the ultimate substance from which all emerges (and which, in this conceptual perspective, is often highly spiritualized), that leads to true materialism.

The true materialism, which – as Lacan puts is with a stunning directness in another significant passage – can only be a dialectical materialism, is not grounded in the primacy of matter nor in matter as first principle, but in the notion of conflict, of split, and of the ‘parallax of the real’ produced in it.

In other words, the fundamental axiom of materialism is not ‘matter is all’ or ‘matter is primary’, but relates rather to the primacy of a cut. And, of course, this is not without consequences for the kind of realism that pertains to this materialism.

dolar 1 into 2 pt1

Dolar, Mladen “One Divides into Two.” e-flux journal #33 March 2012.

This was an old Maoist slogan from the 1960s. Despite its air of universal truth it has become dated, and I fully realize the danger of appearing dated myself by starting in this way. Nowadays, one can recite this slogan in front of a class full of students and none will have ever heard it or have any inkling as to its bearing or its author — it’s almost like speaking Chinese.

However much we count, however many ones we add to the first one, we cannot count to the two of the Other. The progression of counting extends the initial one into a homogeneous and uniform process, while the Other presents a dimension that would be precisely “other” in relation to this uniformity.

In a nutshell, the otherness of the Other, if it can be conceived, is a dimension that cannot be accounted for in terms of One. If the Other exists, then we have some hope of escaping from the circle, or the ban, of One.

The dimension of the Other might present a two that would really make a difference, not merely a difference between one and another, that is, ultimately, between the one and itself, the count based on the internal splitting of one, but rather another difference altogether, beyond the delightful oxymoronic phrase “same difference.”

One can immediately appreciate the high philosophical stakes here. A large part of modern philosophy, if not all of it, has aligned under the banner of the Other, in one way or another, whatever particular names have been used to designate it, and if philosophy has thus espoused the slogan of the Other it has done so in order to establish a dimension that would beable to break the spell of One, in particular its complicity with totality, with forming a whole.

There is a hidden propensity of One to form a whole, to encompass multiplicity and heterogeneity within a single first principle. That program was pronounced at the dawn of philosophy, spelled out by Parmenides in three simple words, the slogan hen kai pan, one and all

So if the Other exists, if it can be conceived in terms other than the terms of one, it would permit us to get out of this ban and this circle.

Indeed, the task of modern philosophy, if I may take the liberty of using this grossly simplified and massive language, was to think the Other that would not be complicit in collusion with the One of hen kai pan, and thus, ultimately, the task to think the two, to conceive the Other that wouldn’t fall into the register of the One

***

I will invoke Freud and now I will take the tricky path of conceiving the two in terms of the Other in psychoanalysis, the Other being a key psychoanalytic term

I said above “If the Other exists …” and this brings me to a very basic asset that lies at the heart of psychoanalysis and the work of Jacques Lacan. There is something like a spectacular antinomy at the foundation of psychoanalytic theory,

an antinomy worthy of Kantian antinomies, and Kant has brought the notion of antinomy to a pinnacle  where reason, as a striving for unity, runs into an irremediable two, an opposition that cannot be reduced.

This Lacanian antinomy of the two pertains to the nature of the Other.

One can pose it as the antinomy of two massively opposing statements:

1.  There is the Other, which is the essential dimension that psychoanalysis has to deal with. Notoriously, Freud spoke of the unconscious as “ein anderer Schauplatz,” the other scene, another stage, a stage inherently other in relation to the one of consciousness, to its count and to what it can account for. It defies the count of consciousness, which is ultimately the homogeneous count providing sense as a unitary prospect

So there is the Other of the unconscious. … “The unconscious is the discourse of the Other.”

And another of his formulas runs: “Desire is the desire of the Other”

There is an Other that agitates our desires and prevents us from assuming them simply our own. These two short statements, in no uncertain terms, place the unconscious and desire under the banner of the Other.

There is the unconscious, and there is desire only insofar as each intimately pertains to the Other, they are “of the Other,” and the Other is what stirs their intimacy.

There is the Other at the heart of all entities that psychoanalysis has to deal with, … the Other of a qualitatively different nature in relation to the realm of One.

2. The second part of this antinomy, in stark contradiction to the first, states bluntly: The Other lacks.

There is a lack in the Other, the Other is haunted by a lack, or to extend it a bit further: The Other doesn’t exist.

“There is the Other” vs. “The Other doesn’t exist.”

How can the very dimension on which psychoanalysis is ultimately premised not exist?

What is the status of this Other that is emphatically there, permeating the very notion of the unconscious, of desire, and so forth, and that yet at the same time emphatically lacks?

Can the two statements be reconciled in their glaring contradiction?

Is this a case of a Kantian antinomy, exceeding the limits of knowledge and unitary reasoning?

And how can one posit the Other as the very notion surpassing the boundaries and the framework of One while maintaining that it lacks?

Is this an exhaustive alternative?

johnston harman interview pt 6

Graham – Two full chapters of the book are dedicated to your ongoing friendly dispute with the prominent young Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund of Yale University. Having seen the two of you debate in person on one occasion (in New York in 2012), I can say that it does seem to be an unusually fruitful dialogue between friends. What is the major philosophical difference between you and Hägglund? Is there any way it can be resolved, or does it ultimately boil down to two “irreducible and competing intuitions,” as the phrase goes? Continue reading “johnston harman interview pt 6”

johnston harman interview pt 5

Graham – The third chapter of your book targets what you call “neo-Spinozism.” Where can we find this philosophy today, and why is it not the path we ought to pursue?

As I describe it therein, neo-Spinozism is a big tent today, especially in Continental philosophical circles. Amongst Continentalists, much of this is to be attributed to the lasting influences of Althusser and Deleuze.

The third chapter you ask about is set up by the second chapter of Adventures in Transcendental Materialism (“For a Thoughtful Ontology: Hegel’s Immanent Critique of Spinoza”). I revisit Hegel’s various interrelated criticisms of Spinoza (and of those, such as Schelling at certain moments, who fail to maintain sufficient distance from Spinozism) with an eye to their enduring relevance. Continue reading “johnston harman interview pt 5”

johnston harman interview pt 4

Graham – Along with Žižek you have worked closely with another leading European philosopher, Catherine Malabou. What has been Malabou’s significance for you, and what is the most important thing present-day philosophy can learn from her?

Žižek was responsible for first drawing my attention to Malabou’s work— specifically, her groundbreaking 2004 text Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do with our Brain?). It was around 2006 that I read this book, which was a real experience that compelled me promptly to devour the rest of her published writings then available. Continue reading “johnston harman interview pt 4”

johnston harman interview pt 3

In short, my immanent critique consists in pitting Žižek’s dialectical/transcendental materialism against his glosses on quantum physics.

In terms of a contemporary materialist interfacing with the natural sciences, I favor biology generally and neurobiology particularly for several reasons. Continue reading “johnston harman interview pt 3”

johnston harman interview pt 2

Adrian Johnston is interviewed by Graham Harman about his new book out in May 2014, Adventures in Transcendental Materialism Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers.

Having said all of the above, I nonetheless deliberately preserve and play upon certain senses of the (apparent) tension between the terms “transcendental” and “materialism.”

As the preceding already reveals, transcendental materialism fundamentally is preoccupied with two of the biggest of big issues in the history of philosophy, ones closely interrelated: the freedom-determinism dispute and the mind-body problem. Continue reading “johnston harman interview pt 2”

johnston harman interview pt 1

Adrian Johnston is interviewed by Graham Harman about his new book out in May 2014, Adventures in Transcendental Materialism Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers.

Here are some important excerpts

Graham – Your title contains the phrase “transcendental materialism.” There is a tension between these two words that in some sense drives all of your intellectual work. “Transcendental” generally refers to a sort of philosophy, like Kant’s, that asks about our conditions of knowing the world rather than about the world itself. Meanwhile, “materialism” has always been a philosophy that turns in the most hardnosed fashion towards the world itself, viewing humans as a material thing just like everything else. Stated briefly, how does one reconcile the transcendental and materialist standpoints? Continue reading “johnston harman interview pt 1”

toscano on Badiou

Marxism Expatriated – Alberto Toscano on Alain Badiou

the echoes of a common “post-structuralist” theoretical conjuncture, and a critique of (or separation from) “thick” Hegelian-Marxist versions of dialectics and social ontology, might make one suspect that “the theoretical edifices of Laclau and Badiou are united by a deep homology”.4 This “deep homology”, which Zizek identifies in the notion of a contingent, subjective rupture of ontological closure, is nevertheless offset, still according to Zizek, by a fundamental divergence, inasmuch as, in the last instance, Badiou’s “post-Marxism” has nothing whatsoever to do with the fashionable deconstructionist dismissal of the alleged Marxist “essentialism”; on the contrary, he is unique in radically rejecting the deconstructionist doxa as a new form of pseudo-thought, as a contemporary version of sophism”.5 Rather than either homology, or frontal opposition, it might be more precise to argue that Badiou’s post-Maoism and the post-Marxism of Laclau et al. intersect in manners that generate, from the peculiar perspective of contemporary radical thought, a kind of “family resemblance” effect, but that, when push comes to shove, they are really indifferent to one another, born of divergent assessments of the end or crisis of Marxism. To a certain extent, they connect the same dots but the resulting pictures differ radically.

badiou declaration

Badiou, Alain. “A present defaults – unless the crowd declares itself”: Alain Badiou on Ukraine, Egypt and finitude. 23 April 2014.

I will say once again that I think that the fundamental figure of contemporary oppression is finitude … the imposition of finitude, that is to say, the exclusion of the infinite from humanity’s possible set of horizons. … As such, each of these things can be encapsulated in terms of the general oppressive vision of finitude.

Today I would like to take the example of Ukraine, the way in which the historic events in Ukraine … What strikes me about the Ukrainian situation, considering what we learn reading the press, listening to the radio etc., is that it is captured and understood according to an operation that I would call the complete stagnation of the contemporary world.

The commonplace narrative is to say that Ukraine wants to join free Europe, breaking with Putin’s despotism. There is a democratic and liberal uprising whose goal is to join our beloved Europe – the motherland of the freedom in question – while the sordid, archaic manoeuvres of the Kremlin’s man, the terrible Putin, are directed against this natural desire. Continue reading “badiou declaration”