{"id":10093,"date":"2012-12-11T10:41:45","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T15:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=10093"},"modified":"2012-12-11T10:50:08","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T15:50:08","slug":"moment-of-madness-between-nature-and-culture-death-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/12\/11\/moment-of-madness-between-nature-and-culture-death-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"moment of madness between nature and culture death drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Karlsen The Grace of Materialism Theology with Alain Badiou and Slavoj \u017di\u017eek.<\/em> K\u00f8benhavns Universitet 2010.<\/p>\n

Freud formulated his thesis on the death drive<\/span> precisely in response to phenomena which could not be explained on the basis of the \u2018pleasure principle\u2019, phenomena that were \u2018beyond the pleasure principle\u2019, and its directive of self-preservation. In \u017di\u017eek\u2019s (CWZ 61) words:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn trying to explain the functioning of the human psyche in terms of the pleasure principle, reality principle and so on, Freud became increasingly aware of a radical non-functional element, a basic destructiveness and excess of negativity, that couldn\u2019t be accounted for. And thatis why Freud posed the hypothesis of death drive<\/span>.”<\/p>\n

How did man go from being a mere animal to a being of language bound by the symbolic order? How was the passage from a natural into a civil or cultural state brought about?<\/strong> The answer given by classical Political Philosophy is of course the famous narrative of the \u2018social contract\u2019.<\/p>\n

But in \u017di\u017eek\u2019s (FTKN 205) view this is an inconsistent explanation insofar that \u201c[\u2026] the fiction of a \u2018social contract\u2019 presupposes in advancewhat is or should be its result, its final outcome \u2013 the\u00a0 presence of individuals who act according to rules of a civilized rational order [\u2026].\u201d According to \u017di\u017eek (TTS 36; FTKN 206), the passage from a natural to a cultural state cannot be accounted for in terms of a smooth continuous transition, something has to intervene between these two states.<\/strong> What the evolutionary narratives of social contract silently presuppose is, according to\u00a0 \u017di\u017eek (TTS 36), a kind of \u2018vanishing mediator\u2019 which is neither nature nor culture. So, what is this vanishing mediator? 193<\/p>\n

Man did not become what he is through a \u201c[\u2026] spark of logos magically conferred on Homo sapiens[\u2026].\u201d Instead, \u017di\u017eek\u2019s (CWZ 80) claim is that the transition from nature to culture is enabled by a \u2018malfunction\u2019, a failure, in nature itself. As he (CWZ 65) puts it in one of his conversations with Glyn Daly: \u201cWe cannot pass directly from nature to culture. Something goes terribly wrong innature: nature produces an unnatural monstrosity and I claim that it is in order to cope with, to domesticate, this monstrosity that we symbolize.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As the last part of the quote suggests, and as \u017di\u017eek (TTS 37) explicitly underlines in his discussion in The Ticklish Subject<\/em>, the symbolic order of law (culture) is thus not, as it is usually asserted, aimed at controlling our natural instincts and inclination (nature) but, rather directed against something in us which is not natural, namely this moment of thoroughly derailed, malfunctioning, denaturalized \u2018nature\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed in the effort to domesticate this malfunctioning (de)nature \u201c[\u2026] man\u2019s natural propensities are, rather, on the side of moral law against the excess of \u2018unruliness\u2019 that threatens his well-being\u201d (TTS 37). As \u017di\u017eek (TTS 289) emphasizes later in the same book, one should never forget that the law is ultimately in the service of the \u2018pleasure principle\u2019 which dictates our daily functioning in accordance with the upholding of our welfare; that is to say, the law is not opposed to our natural instincts<\/span> as it is claimed in the standard story of \u2018nature versus culture\u2019, rather the law and the natural instincts are united in their attempt to constrain the derailed (de)nature of man endangering his self-preservation.<\/span><\/p>\n

This mediating moment of malfunction, this intersection between nature and culture,<\/span> which made possible the transition between these two states, only to \u2018vanish\u2019 under the domesticating reign of symbolic law and the \u2018pleasure principle\u2019, is, according to \u017di\u017eek (TTS 36; FTKN 207; CWZ 65), nothing less than the emergence of the (death) drive<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Karlsen The Grace of Materialism Theology with Alain Badiou and Slavoj \u017di\u017eek. K\u00f8benhavns Universitet 2010. Freud formulated his thesis on the death drive precisely in response to phenomena which could not be explained on the basis of the \u2018pleasure principle\u2019, phenomena that were \u2018beyond the pleasure principle\u2019, and its directive of self-preservation. In \u017di\u017eek\u2019s … Continue reading “moment of madness between nature and culture death drive”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,65,125,76,15,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badiou","category-dia-mat","category-drive","category-sub-destitute","category-subjectivity","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10093"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10095,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10093\/revisions\/10095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}