{"id":11735,"date":"2013-08-17T20:53:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-18T01:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11735"},"modified":"2013-08-17T21:18:57","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T02:18:57","slug":"mcgowan-death-drive-subject-of-loss-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/08\/17\/mcgowan-death-drive-subject-of-loss-2\/","title":{"rendered":"mcgowan death drive subject of loss 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis<\/em>. 2013.<\/p>\n

There is no system of pure life. In order to advocate a turn to life, one must take a detour through death. The philosophers of life [Deleuze, Hardt] conceive of the signifier as an evil that might be overcome. This conception of the signifier fails to account for the inseparability of negation and production.<\/p>\n

The signifier does in fact kill; it does mortify the body. But this mortification is itself a productive act<\/strong><\/span>. Prior to the mortification of the body, the body is not vital and productive; it is simply stupid.<\/p>\n

The signifier writes itself on top of this stupid body and transofmrs it into a signifiying body. But this transformation is not complete: there are points at which the body resists its signification, where it refuses to speak. The troubled passage from the living body to the signifiying body reveals the antagonism between the subject and the social order that leads to the formation of psychoanalysis.<\/p>\n

Hysterics originally came to Freud and Breuer because of the disjunctive relationship between the body and the world of signification. Part of the hysteric\u2019s body refuses to speak, to accept it integration into the symbolic order, and this refusal is symptomatic.<\/p>\n

The signifier deadens the entire body in order to make it signify, but part of the body resists the deadening process and becomes mute. This occurs literally in the case of aphasia, though every hysterical ailment follows the same pattern the muteness of part of the subject\u2019s body is the form that resistance to symbolization necessarily takes.<\/p>\n

One affirms one\u2019s subjectivity not though proclaiming it but through a certain mode of keeping silent. 239<\/p>\n

The psychoanalytic project involves helping the subject to recognize its symptom \u2013 the part of the body that resists full integration into the symbolic order<\/strong> \u2013 as the source of its enjoyment and its freedom<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The part of the body that gives us trouble, that refuses integration, is the expression of our subjectivity<\/span>, the kernel that negates or refuses what has been imposed on it. By identifying ourselves with our mute body part, we take up the death drive and affirm a value that transcends pure life.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The source of our enjoyment and the source of whatever value we find in existence is neither life nor death. It is a product of the collision between death and life, between the signifier and the body.<\/p>\n

The signifier\u2019s deadening of the body<\/span> opens up the space for a part of the body that resists this deadening.<\/span> It creates value not directly but through the bodily remainder that escapes its power. This remainder is not a present force but<\/strong> an object<\/span> irretrievably lost for the subject. <\/strong>239<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis. 2013. There is no system of pure life. In order to advocate a turn to life, one must take a detour through death. The philosophers of life [Deleuze, Hardt] conceive of the signifier as an evil that might be overcome. This conception of … Continue reading “mcgowan death drive subject of loss 2”<\/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":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735","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=11735"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11737,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735\/revisions\/11737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}