{"id":11357,"date":"2013-06-23T07:59:03","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T12:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11357"},"modified":"2021-07-23T10:11:33","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T14:11:33","slug":"kant-phenomenal-noumenal-split-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/06\/23\/kant-phenomenal-noumenal-split-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"Kant phenomenal noumenal split subject Johnston"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Johnston, Adrian.\u00a0\u017di\u017eek<\/em>‘s\u00a0Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity<\/em>. Northwestern University Press, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is to say, if psychoanalysis is indeed correct to maintain that the subject ontogenetically emerges through and comes to constitute itself by a sort of radical, primordial gesture of negating rejection (whether as Freud’s primal\/primary repression as original Verwerfung <\/em>or Verneinung<\/em>, Lacan’s “cut” of symbolic castration, or Julia Kristeva’s abjection) , then feelings of revulsion toward the corporeal substratum of the mortal body essentially are indicative of the presence of a form of subjectivity resistant to being collapsed back into its material foundation<\/strong>. (Johnston \u017dO 25)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subject is inherently barred from any form of phenomenal self-acquaintance in which it would know itself as finite in the ontological-material sense<\/strong><\/span>. The nothingness fled from, the void<\/span><\/strong> that Kant allegedly labors so hard to avoid, is nothing other than the very absence of the subject itself<\/strong>, the negation of the insurmountable “transcendental illusion” of its apparent immortality. (31)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The split within the structure of the subject that Zizek credits Kant with having discovered is that between the phenomenal and noumenal dimensions<\/strong> of subjectivity, namely, between the subject as it appears to itself in an experiential fashion (i.e., through conceptual and spatio-temporal mediation) and the subject as it exists\/subsists “in itself.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The subject an sich<\/em> that makes experience possible cannot itself fall, as a discrete experiential, representational element, within the frame of the field it opens up and sustains (a point already grasped by Descartes in his second meditation). Hence, Kant famously speaks of “this lor he or it (the thing) that thinks”. The noumenal subject is just as much of a permanently shrouded mystery as things-in-themselves. The entire thrust of the first Critique (particularly the “Dialectic of Pure Reason”) is to establish the epistemological grounds for forbidding any and every philosophical reference to the noumenal realm beyond the familiar limits of possible experience. (Johnston \u017dO 30)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Zizek’s heterodox juxtaposition of Kant and Lacan, the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy<\/strong><\/span> has direct relevance to this splitting of subjectivity between, on the one hand, the noumenal subject of (unconscious) enunciation<\/span><\/strong> and, on the other hand, the phenomenal subject of utterances<\/span><\/strong> (as determinate signifier-predicates). [\u017dO 32]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If… one bears in mind the fact that, according to Lacan, the ego is an object<\/em>, a substantial “res,” one can easily grasp the ultimate sense of Kant’s transcendental turn: it desubstantializes the subject<\/strong> (which, with Descartes, still remained “res cogitans<\/em>,” i.e., a substantial “piece of reality”)\u2014and it is this very desubstantialization which opens up the empty space (the “blank surface”) onto which fantasies are projected, where monsters emerge<\/em><\/strong><\/span>. To put it in Kantian terms: because of the inaccessibility of the Thing in itself<\/span>, there is always a gaping hole in (constituted, phenomenal) reality, reality is never “all,”<\/strong><\/span> its circle is never closed, and this void of the inaccessible Thing is filled out with phantasmagorias through which the trans-phenomenal Thing<\/span> enters the stage of phenomenal presence\u2014in short, prior to the Kantian turn, there can be no black hulk at the background of the stage. (Zizek Enjoy Your Symptom 1992, 136) [Johnston \u017dO 32]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere Zizek draws out the consequences of this, maintaining that every mediated identity, all signifier-predicates appended to the original nothingness of subjectivity in its raw negativity, are “supplements” aiming to “fill out this void”:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lacan’s point here is that an unsurmountable gap forever separates what I am “in the real” from the symbolic mandate that procures my social identity: the primordial ontological fact is the void, the abyss on account of which I am inaccessible to myself in my capacity as a real substance \u2014 or, to quote Kant’s unique formulation from his Critique of Pure Reason, on account of which I never get to know what I am as “I or he or it (the thing) which thinks [Ich, oder Er, oder Es (das Ding), welches denkt]”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every symbolic identity I acquire is ultimately nothing but a supplementary feature whose function is to fill out this void.<\/span> This pure void of subjectivity<\/span>, this empty form of “transcendental apperception,” has to be distinguished from the Cartesian Cogito which remains a res cogitans<\/em>, a little piece of substantial reality miraculously saved from the destructive force of universal doubt: it was only with Kant that the distinction was made between the empty form of “I think” and the thinking substance, the “thing which thinks.” <\/strong> (Zizek Metastases of Enjoyment 1994, 144) Johnston \u017dO 32-33<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the entire range of significations and images proposed by the subject to itself in response to the question of self-identity (“Who or what am I?”)<\/strong> falls under the heading of transcendental illusion. That is to say, these fantasmatic productions striving to seal this crack in reality are semblances.<\/strong><\/span> And yet they are the inevitable results of a structurally determined dynamic rooted in subjectivity’s internal division<\/strong>: “The subject is this emergence which, just before, as subject, was nothing, but which, having scarcely appeared, solidifies into a signifier” (SXH99).  \u017dO 33<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johnston, Adrian.\u00a0\u017di\u017eek‘s\u00a0Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity. Northwestern University Press, 2008. That is to say, if psychoanalysis is indeed correct to maintain that the subject ontogenetically emerges through and comes to constitute itself by a sort of radical, primordial gesture of negating rejection (whether as Freud’s primal\/primary repression as original Verwerfung or Verneinung, Lacan’s … Continue reading “Kant phenomenal noumenal split subject Johnston”<\/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":[142,76,15,41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nightworld","category-sub-destitute","category-subjectivity","category-the-real","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357","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=11357"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15123,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357\/revisions\/15123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}