{"id":11313,"date":"2013-06-21T07:20:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11313"},"modified":"2013-06-21T07:25:36","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:25:36","slug":"11313","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/06\/21\/11313\/","title":{"rendered":"subject designates that X"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cnegation of negation<\/span><\/strong>\u201d is not a kind of existential sleight of hand by means of which the subject pretends to put everything at stake, but effectively sacrifices only the inessential; rather, it stands for the horrifying experience which occurs when, after sacrificing everything considered \u201cinessential\u201d, I suddenly realize that the very essential dimension for the sake of which I sacrificed the inessential is already lost.<\/p>\n

The subject does save his skin, he survives the ordeal, but the price he has to pay is the loss of his very substance, of the most precious kernel of his individuality<\/strong>. More precisely: prior to this \u201ctransubstantiation\u201d the subject is not a subject at all, since \u201csubject\u201d is ultimately the name for this very \u201ctransubstantiation\u201d of substance<\/em><\/strong><\/span> which, after its dissemination, \u201creturns to itself\u201d, but not as \u201cthe same\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is all too easy, therefore, to be misled by Hegel’s notorious propositions concerning Spirit as the power of \u201ctarrying with the negative\u201d<\/strong><\/span>, that is, of resurrecting after its own death: in the ordeal of absolute negativity, the Spirit in its particular selfhood effectively dies, is over and done with, so that Spirit which \u201cresurrects\u201d is not the Spirit which previously expired<\/em><\/strong>. The same goes for the Resurrection: Hegel emphasizes again and again that Christ dies on the Cross for real – he returns as the Spirit of the community of believers, not in person. So, again, when, in what is perhaps the most famous single passage from his Phenomenology, Hegel asserts that the Spirit is capable of \u201ctarrying with the negative<\/strong><\/span>\u201d, of enduring the power the negative, this does not mean that in the ordeal of negativity the subject has merely to clench his teeth and hold out – true, he will lose a few feathers, but, magically, everything will somehow turn out OK. … Hegel’s whole point is that the subject does NOT survive<\/em><\/strong> the ordeal of negativity: he effectively<\/strong><\/em> loses his very essence, and passes over into his Other.<\/p>\n

One is tempted to evoke here the science-fiction theme of changed identity, when a subject biologically survives, but is no longer the same person – this is what the Hegelian transubstantiation is about, and of course, it is this very transubstantiation which distinguishes Subject from Substance<\/strong>: \u201csubject\u201d designates that X which is able to survive the loss of its very substantial identity, and to continue to live as the \u201cempty shell of its former self\u201d<\/strong><\/span>. [Indivisible Remainder 1996 226-27]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cnegation of negation\u201d is not a kind of existential sleight of hand by means of which the subject pretends to put everything at stake, but effectively sacrifices only the inessential; rather, it stands for the horrifying experience which occurs when, after sacrificing everything considered \u201cinessential\u201d, I suddenly realize that the very essential dimension for … Continue reading “subject designates that X”<\/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":[142,76,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nightworld","category-sub-destitute","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11313","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=11313"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11318,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11313\/revisions\/11318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}