{"id":11743,"date":"2013-08-17T21:44:04","date_gmt":"2013-08-18T02:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11743"},"modified":"2013-08-17T21:52:42","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T02:52:42","slug":"mcgowan-death-drive-subject-of-loss-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/08\/17\/mcgowan-death-drive-subject-of-loss-3\/","title":{"rendered":"mcgowan death drive subject of loss 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

If we locate the origin of the subject in the act where it loses nothing<\/strong>, this promises to revolutionize our thinking about the struggle between life and death or between Left and Right.<\/p>\n

Privileging an originary loss<\/span> allows us to see how death, rather than acting as an external limit, inheres in life itself for the subject.<\/p>\n

There is no life for the subject that does not have its origin in death.<\/p>\n

The subject begins its life with a death \u2013 a loss<\/span> of what is most valuable to it \u2013 and no subsequent loss<\/span> or death will ever be the equal of this originary one (which occurs only structurally, not empirically).<\/p>\n

We do not have to seek out death in order to render life valuable; death is always already present within our lives and providing us value. We don\u2019t recognize it because we resist the notion that we originate as subjects through<\/strong> loss<\/span> and that loss<\/span> is the only vehicle through which we can enjoy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We can only give up the pursuit of death when we realize that we have already found it \u2013 or that it has found us at the moment of our emergence as subjects. 240<\/p>\n

We embrace loss<\/span> itself as the key to our freedom<\/strong> and our enjoyment rather than trying to flee the experience of loss<\/span> through having. Recognizing the creative power of loss<\/span> for us as subjects would imply a political transformation as well.<\/p>\n

We cannot trace a through-line from the evolutionary development of animals to the emergence of subjectivity.<\/p>\n

Subjectivity emerges through a break, through a moment in which death is injected into life and thereby throws life off its course<\/span>. But in order for this disruption to be possible, a fundamental gap in the evolutionary process must have already been there. That is to say, if the evolutionary process moved forward without a hitch, there would have been no space for the emergence of language and subjectivity.<\/p>\n

The very existence of a subject of the death drive<\/span> \u2013 a being that doesn\u2019t desire its own good \u2013 testifies to a profound lacuna within evolutionary theory. This reveals that even the movement of life in the natural world has an unnatural dimension to it, or else the death drive<\/span> as such could never emerge. The natural world harbors death within it as an excess that permanently disrupts its forward movement. 241<\/p>\n

[Subjectivity] persists only as long as it sustains the experience of loss<\/span> and continues to return to this originary experience.<\/p>\n

To recognize the excessive presence of death in life would result in a fundamental transformation of the social order. It would create neither the pure productivity of the Marxist utopia nor the strict prohibitions (and resulting ultimate enjoyment) of the fundamentalist\u2019s dreams.<\/p>\n

The world in which recognized death in life would contain at once more suffering and more enjoyment. We would see the trauma of loss<\/span> as our only destiny, but we would also see loss<\/span> as the site of our enjoyment. 242<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis. 2013. If we locate the origin of the subject in the act where it loses nothing, this promises to revolutionize our thinking about the struggle between life and death or between Left and Right. Privileging an originary loss allows us to see how … Continue reading “mcgowan death drive subject of loss 3”<\/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":[125,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11743","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=11743"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11745,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11743\/revisions\/11745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}