Category: lacan

stavrakakis post democracy

PostDemocracy Yannis Stavrakakis

The term “postdemocracy” has recently emerged in sociology and political theory as part of an effort to conceptually grasp and critically mark the late modern pathologies of liberal democracy, especially in relation to late capitalist conditions.

In premodern societies religious imagination was the predominant discursive horizon for the inscription and administration of negativity. Following the dislocation of this horizon, it seems that political modernity has oscillated between (at least) three responses vis-à-vis negativity: utopian, democratic, and postdemocratic. Continue reading “stavrakakis post democracy”

zupančič not-mother pt 2

Zupančič, Alenka. Not-Mother: On Freud’s Verneinung. E-flux Journal 2012

What is at stake in the Freudian discovery that, when dealing with the unconscious, the alternative “mother/not mother” is not exhaustive (negation of negation doesn’t bring us to the supposedly original affirmation)… It is not a “more or less mother,” nor is it a difference in intensity with regard to two extremes, or absolutes; it is a  paradoxical entity of  “with-without.”

The third term (or third possibility), which is included rather then excluded, is nothing other than the very point of the (onto)logical impossibility of the third.

In other words, what is included as something (as an entity) receives the very logical impossibility on which the alternative mother/not-mother is based.

The fact that it is included doesn’t mean that the impossible now becomes possible (one of the possibilities, as in the intuitionist logic); rather, it is included in its very onto-logical impossibility — hence its spectral character: as included in reality, the impossible-real can only be a specter.

This is then where a first cut is produced, the split between in and out, which also and immediately coincides with the dividing lines between good and bad, foreign, or alien, and familiar.

[In the] original pleasure-ego, these dividing lines simply coincide: the inner — the good — the familiar, on the one side, and the outer — the bad — the alien on the other. But already in the next step things become more complicated and these dividing lines fall out of joint.

 but of whether something which is in the ego as a presentation can be rediscovered in perception (reality) as well

In other words, what is at stake here is the famous reality check, or “reality testing,” based on the presupposition of an original loss of pleasure.

The crucial aspect of which is the loss of immediacy: From now on, all pleasure will be a found-again-pleasure.

The same goes for all objects of reality: As objects of reality (which is thus constituted as objective reality, that is, constituted through the opposition subjective-objective) they are never simply found, but always refound, found again,

“The first and immediate aim, therefore, of reality testing is not to find an object in real
perception which corresponds to the one presented, but to refind such an object, to
convince oneself that it is still there.”

So the moment we begin dealing with thinking and with certain relation to reality, both our pleasure and the existence of things are no longer immediate, but bear the mark of repetition and of the gap the latter implies.

The second repartition of the dividing lines doesn’t simply replace the first, however, but adds to it with a twist, resulting in a gap, or a third dimension, that haunts from then on the very consistency of the distinction between inner and outer, and blurs the subject-object division and relation.

We could also recapitulate the movement described by Freud like this. The first mythical difference between inside and outside is not yet a real difference, but a process of differentiating the indifferent, or the indistinct, led by the primary process of the pleasure

zupančič not-mother pt 1

Zupančič, Alenka. Not-Mother: On Freud’s Verneinung. E-flux Journal 2012

The negation itself is negated (we could say that we now get something like, “this is not not-mother”), yet something of it persists — the repression, the symptoms persist beyond becoming conscious of the repressed.

Here, we come across one of the crucial (and constitutive) discoveries of psychoanalysis, without which the latter would be little more than a hermeneutics of the unconscious, depending entirely on the (correct) interpretation, or translation, of the text deformed by the unconscious into its full and nondeformed version.

Soon after his early enthusiasm that things might indeed work this way, Freud came up against the problem that they actually don’t, that the right interpretation (and its acceptance) doesn’t yet eliminate the symptom, and that the real kernel of the unconscious is not to be situated — in the case of dreams, for example — in the latent content, as opposed to the manifest content, and as “deciphered” from it. Continue reading “zupančič not-mother pt 1”

Il n’y a de cause que de ce qui cloche

Excerpt from Mladen Dolar interviewed by Aaron Schuster in 2009 in Metropolis Magazine

Zupančič deals with this Lacanianism: Il n’y a de cause que de ce qui cloche. Right here

Schuster: What is the new conception of freedom you see in the wake of Kafka and Freud?

Dolar: ‘Lacan was notoriously a man of extremely difficult style, but this arduous side was as if counterbalanced by his great talent to produce a number of short and striking slogans (like “The Woman doesn’t exist” or “There is no sexual relationship”).

And one of these slogans is Il n’y a de cause que de ce qui cloche: “There is a cause only in something that doesn’t work”, or “There is a cause only in what limps”.

The line is paradoxical and I suppose counterintuitive. For it would seem that causality is what works in a network of causes and effects which constitute the basis of regularity and law, and so that which doesn’t work or doesn’t add up would appear to be a breach of causality, a crack in the causal chain. Continue reading “Il n’y a de cause que de ce qui cloche”

zupančič why P? 3

Zupančič, Alenka. Why Psychoanalysis: 3 interventions. Aarhus University Press 2008.

First let us situate on the same line the two elements that we arrived at in our discussion following different paths.

First, the surplus (of) distortion,

which at the same time disturbs and carries the relationship between the manifest and the latent content.

Second, the falloff, the leftover of the conscious interpretation,

which is not simply unconscious, but propels the work of the unconscious interpretation and is present in the unconscious formations as their ‘formal’ aspect (and not as a particular content), as the form of the distortion itself, its ‘grammatical structure.’

To these two, we can add in the same line a third element, namely what psychoanalysis conceptualised with the notion of the drive.

The drive … embodies a fundamental inner split of all satisfaction, the non-relationship between demand and satisfaction, leading to the possibility of another, supplemental satisfaction. This has the effect of de-centring not so much the subject as the Other, and the de-centring at stake could be best formulated as follows: 31

the subject never finds the satisfaction directly in the Other, yet he can only find it through the detour of the Other. This detour is irreducible. 32

The drive is something other than the supposed solipsistic enjoyment, and one should conceptually distinguish between the two. 32 Continue reading “zupančič why P? 3”

zupančič why P? 2

Zupančič Zupančič, Alenka. Why Psychoanalysis: 3 interventions. Aarhus University Press 2008.

It is in this sense that we should understand a crucial Lacanian thesis concerning the issue of the cause:

“Il n’y a de cause que de ce qui cloche” 

There is but the cause of that which does not work, or which does not add up. 24

(pssst … check out Dolar’s interpretation here)

There are (at least) two important ideas behind this proposition.

1. the non-immediate character of the causal relationship, which has its classic philosophical articulation in the Hume – Kant debate. The connection between cause and effect involves an irreducible gap, or leap, on account of which Hume wanted to dismiss the very notion of the cause, and which led Kant to propose rational subjectivity as the transcendental constitutive background against which the leap involved in the passage from a cause to its effect remained possible without the causal structure simple falling apart. 24

2. the other important idea involved in Lacan’s account of causality: something appears in this hole, in this interval, in this gap, in this structural split of causality, and it is for this something that psychoanalysis reserves the name of the cause in the strict sense of the term (the cause of object a, the objet as the distortional cause of itself). 25

The elements exposed above could be related to yet another discussion of causes in psychoanalysis: to the already mentioned two aspects of the question of the cause (the question of the unconscious causes, and the question of the unconscious as cause) we can add a third one, which seems even more fundamental and concerns

3. the very cause of the constitution of the unconscious. This is a debate developed in a very intriguing way by Jean Laplanche in answer to the deadlocks of the Freudian theory of sexual seduction (of children). 25  Continue reading “zupančič why P? 2”

zupančič Why P? 2008 1

Zupančič, Alenka. Why Psychoanalysis: 3 interventions Aarhus University Press 2008.

Freud discovered human sexuality as a problem (in need of explanation), and not as something with which one could eventually explain every (other) problem. He ‘discovered’ sexuality as intrinsically meaningless, and not as the ultimate horizon of all humanly produced meaning.

Three Essay on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) remains a major text in this respect. If one needed to sum up its argument in a single sentence, the following would come close enough to the mark: (human) sexuality is a paradox-ridden deviation from a norm that does not exist. Continue reading “zupančič Why P? 2008 1”

zupančič April 2014 Toronto

philosophical ontological implications of psychoanalytic notions of sexuality and unconscious. Something happened to philosophy when this thing started to get articulated. One needs to think through this consequences of this unprecedented articulation. The concept of unconscious in its intrinsic link with sexuality is not simply concept of some newly discovered entity, of being. No.

It is not exactly an entity, it is not simply being nor non-being. Sexuality is constitutively unconscious. Fundamental negativity, non-being or gap implied in sexuality.

When Freud discovered sexuality what did this imply? He insisted against Jung, there is NO natural or pre-established place for human sexuality, it is constitutively out of its place. It is fragmented, dispersed.

3 Essays on Sexuality: Sexuality is nothing other than this out-of-placeness of its satisfaction. The sexual for Freud was not a substance to be properly described and circumscribed but rather the impossibility of its own circumscription and the limitation.

Sexual is NOT a separate domain of human activity or human life. Sexuality is something that exists in-itself only as something other. Sexuality is the very out-of-itselfness of being. Continue reading “zupančič April 2014 Toronto”

zupančič sexual difference pt 4

e-flux journal #32 February 2012 Alenka Zupančič.  Sexual Difference and Ontology

Continued from part 3

The fact that “sexual difference” is not a differential difference (which might explain why Lacan actually never uses the term “sexual difference”) can explain why Lacan’s famous formulas of sexuation are not differential in any common sense: They don’t imply a difference between two kinds of being(s) — there is no contradiction (antagonism) that exists between M and F positions.

On the contrary, contradiction, or antagonism, is what the two positions have in common. It is what they share, the very thing that binds them. It is the very point that accounts for speaking about “men” and “women” under the same heading.

Succinctly put, the indivisible that binds them, their irreducible sameness, is not that of being, but that of contradiction or out-of-beingness of being. Continue reading “zupančič sexual difference pt 4”

zupančič notes

Present work

Reduces difference to difference between different entitites. What is lost is precisely sexual difference to gender difference what is lost is this negativity

Epistemological Ontological

2:00 New Materialism, Object Oriented Ontology: Treat real as something we need to reach and make objectively present. Real make objectively present. They misread psychoanalysis, because it is about more than simply subjective experience. Never get out of the cage of discursive deconstructed reality, but setting it up this way is false.

3:40 Trying to think about something of epistemological order that is already at work on the ontological level

4:00 KANT

Went back to Kant through this perspective of how to think of it in relationship to this, ontological negativity and ethical imperative is all about, what it strives to articulate, a holder for this very negativity. So definitely the attempt to articulate this, this thing is definitely there …

5:15 Absolute Necessity and Freedom

This is the crucial point:

This kind of opposition which brings us back to materialist discussions, they try to re-read as if there is an Absolute guarantee or principal to guarantee what is out there.

But the Absolute precisely is what is not out there

7:00 Hegel: Absolute is precisely there when there is no higher ground, it cannot simply be thought independently of subjectivity but at the same time it is precisely not subjective, the subject is kind of an answer to this, an entity in this sense correlative to the Absolute.

8:00 Absolute Necessity is precisely the point when there is no higher reason

KANT: DUTY

Everything is already laid out for you, as part of reality and you just have to figure out what is right and the CI can help you.

No, it is rather something that opens up or introduces something that is not already there, in this way it introduces a new element [?]

9:30 One could rethink Kant in this way, a kind of formula that tries to capture this non-realized dimension that is negativity, and is not so much what you must do in order to act …

10:00 This Kant where the CI is a kind of recipe this is not the best Kant, obsessive preoccupation, did you really act truly without pathological.

If one reduces Kant to this one loses an important dimension

I used the term Non-realized, I just used it by way of association, Lacan actually uses this term is Seminar 11. When he speaks about Unconscious pertains to the order of the non-realized … he uses this term he uses it in the same sense, non-realized not as something which is waiting to be realized but precisely as a negative underpinning of everything that happens.  It is not something not yet born but will be born once you’re in analysis.  Something happens ontologically, before something is being.

Its not that now we’ll make it be, but we need to somehow circumscribe or think the very negativity that is very much involved in structuring the positive order of being, that there is this not really causality but relation with this negativity and what is articulated around it as positive order of being, there is some kind of logic of appearance related to this.

13:00 BADIOU

The biggest problem of Badiou’s ontology is not really how does the Event happen or take place, no the real question is how does this inconsistent being appear … why does it appear as it appears?  What makes this inconsistent being appear?  Why does it appear so as it appears? At a certain level again you are really faced with the question of the relationship between ontology and epistemology. Appearance is not just subjective constitution of reality, but there is also something in the very reality that kind of through subjectivity dictates this kind of constitution, as if there is something on the ontological level that is involved in the very way being appears.

17:00  Subjective Destitution: Discontinuity in the subject

The subject emerges in this ethical dimension. It is precisely this figure of Synge de Coufontaine  it was crucial to think this through …

Badiou’s Subject:

18:15 For Badiou it is simply conceptualized as something subsequent to the Event.  Inscribing it into the everyday reality by practicing, and this is a notion of subject that is fundamentally different form that in Lacan.  One thing is that first of all for Lacan subjectivity is not simply this post-evental thing, but is also related to reality as such as point of its symptomatic impasses.

First you have in Badiou this banal reality where nothing really interesting, human animal existence, nothing happens and then with Lacan you get a very different picture of reality, what is crucial, this is for Lacan, this banal reality is already traversed by all kinds of antagonisms, by all kinds of impasses.

Social reality is antagonistic and there are rifts and divisions, and subject is not simply a kind of pathological subjective response, but is also a symptomatic point where this antagonism be it social or familial, is actually present as a subjective figure with its own symptoms, the symptoms psychoanalysis works with thinks certain antagonisms that structure the field of being in general

Not simply some kind of subjective pathology, but always as a subject has this objective dimension … an antagonism that is constitutive of the historical moment

Synce de Coufontaien or Antigone, they behave not simply subjectively, embody a certain kind of significant impasse or antagonism that structures,

So there is a subjectivity, if you take any hysterical subject that Freud started to work with, he doesn’t simply take this, and Lacan is explicit that this is the best in Freud, as some kind of personal problem that these woman have, but as a symptomatic subjective figure, something at stake in the reality of their existence.

23:00 There is this notion of subject that can’t be reduced to the figure of human animals because what it carries is this link to this negativity or madness, is there or suppressed for things to function

It is obvious for Lacan, when you speak of everyday reality and its problems: internal antagonisms, struggles etc, we can’t think of this without the notion of subject in the stronger sense of the word, it is not just subjective response to injustice, but the way this injustice exists for the reality within which it appears.

24:30 For Lacan one could say that there is a certain dimension of the subject that is similar to Badiou’s there are things that happen endure this shift, this transformation, there is the subject there before, it is not that this subject is the same as after, Event Rupture appears, there is this idea that yes, Subjective Destitution is induced by some kind of event, and it is out of this, that some kind of dimension of something which was simply not part of the configuration before, if you go back to our previous discussion, it was not simply a choice, there is another choice that becomes possible that was not there before.

28:25 Something happens and then doesn’t change things so much … Occupy Wall St. but it would not move to next stage, where this could be articulated …

31:00 Gesture of NO!

Badiou/Deleuze … subject needs to be related to something affirmative … either a formation of the event … negativity is bad. NO but then what?  The answer is the negativity we are talking about and striving to articulate… is a negativity which as such is the underpinning of something it is not as if first we get rid of something… it is through this radical negativity that something appears. It is not a choice either you are negative you say no, or you are affirmative you say yes. This is a bad way of putting it.  The drive is not simply negative or simply positive.

Death Drive it is not simply negative or positive it can only appear or take place through this radical negativity, one can’t separate the two

Radical Negativity:  When one speaks about this, they take it as if you start with a subject and then you have a whole movement to destitute it and then you’re left with what?

33:00 Destitution of subject PRECEDES subjectivity. You don’t start with subject and let us dismantle the subject. It is not this, whatever subjectivity is there is there on behalf of the destitution.  We are persons and then we have to destitute ourselves. The notion of the subject is related to this radical negativity but it isn’t as if we have to destitute the subject

It is a SURPLUS that came out of this negativity.  It is precisely the very point through which some newness emerges through this destitution

That thing that emerged as a new possibility as a new something through this destitution

Political reproach one gets this criticism ok but what do we do with this? But it’s not supposed to be a recipe.

35:00 Destitution of the subject is not a recipe, it’s not ok let’s now destitute the subject. It is always aprés coup it’s always afterwards when you see the trace of the subject you follow it, because you can be sure that something already happened there

Otherwise people get image of a kind of notion of the political level worshipping of the ultimate sacrifice that one can make of oneself.  The temporality of it is twisted, one should precisely not take this as a kind of recipe or prescription but a picturing of what happens when something happens.

37:00 This whole questions of ethics and politics, Slavoj wrote about it, this whole talk about the ethics, pushed from the discussion the concept of politics.

38:00 Tolerating the Other, being open to otherness, Levinasian … the whole discussion, responsibility to the Other

I agree with Badiou and Slavoj, this is not ethics.

39:00 The Neighbour Kicking the cat

Slavoj’s reading of Hegel is not intersubjective dialectic, recognition

Precisely this is not about recognition, this is about getting to a point of something in the other that one can’t recognize, identify with and this is the point which transforms the very relationship I can have with the Other

The dimension which is more real, it precisely breaks out of this imaginary game of recognition.

42:00 Hegel is aware of this, he uses other terms and concepts, there is precisely something that slips away in recognition, or produced as a surplus.  So this recognition reading is Kojeve’s reading which unfortunately influenced Lacan’s reading to some extent.

43:00 Agota Kristoff: This sense Levinas caused damage, it is a way of avoiding the Real, sort of say.  [Alenka much prefers Butler in her Gender Trouble phase.]

45:00 An ethics that cannot simply be separated from the political you cannot have one or the other.  Take Antigone it is a political issue that is at stake there, not just issues with her brother, but connected to how the political landscape is structured.

Badiou’s quarrel, is situated on this level, recognized ethical discourse is way of avoiding to think ethical on more political terms

zupančič Kant non-realized

Villanova Philosophy Conference: Alenka Zupančič and Mladen Dolar April 2013 Notes to the talk given by Zupančič: Tarrying with the Imperative

The Rift in Being

[The sense of apocalypse today is this sense that if we don’t do or stop doing something, a catastrophe will take place, founds the neceessity of doing something on being or non-being of something else]

Do something that is Absolutely necessary on its own grounds. Act so that the maxim of your will can always hold at the same time as the principle giving universal law. It does not tell me what to do, universalizability in the maxim of my conduct. PINCHES us: alerts us to something, incites us DO YOUR DUTY!

Exercise a strategic pressure on Kant, this thing that he is pursuing and then provide a conceptualization of it. A READING OF THE categorical imperative that builds on his fundamental matrix in a different direction. Continue reading “zupančič Kant non-realized”