{"id":11905,"date":"2013-09-15T16:32:31","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T21:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11905"},"modified":"2013-09-15T17:13:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T22:13:56","slug":"mcgowan-2004-on-traversing-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/09\/15\/mcgowan-2004-on-traversing-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"McGowan 2004 on traversing fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have just read a 2004 article by Todd McGowan “Fighting Our Fantasies: Dark City and the Politics of Psychoanalysis” from his edited book on Lacan and Cinema<\/em>.\u00a0 Now that I’ve read McGowan in 2013, I see that he’s moved a bit from this position on fantasy.\u00a0 Not a lot mind you, but instead of fantasy as concealing a truer reality, or a real, I think McGowan now would subscribe to the theory that fantasy is necessary, that it provides us with an opportunity to transcend the symbolic, and in expounding on this he cites the fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin.\u00a0 I don’t think McGowan is so big on the “traversing the fantasy” stuff anymore.<\/p>\n

Psychoanalytic interpretation allows individuals to recognize functioning of ideology and role private fantasies play does nothing to help individuals act \u201cpolitically as part of a larger group.\u201d \u017di\u017eek here stakes his position on the identity of psychoanalysis and politics by claiming that psychoanalysis demands the political Act \u2013 the traversal of fantasy because for \u017di\u017eek fantasy \u201ckeeps the subjects within the hold of ideology.\u201d But for McGowan this answer is very individualistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraversing the fantasy\u2014the end of analysis\u2014seems to be something that occurs only on the level of the individual. It may provide freedom for the individual, but this freedom exists, according to Marxism, within the larger unfreedom of capitalist society. Historically, this has been the problem with psychoanalysis for Marxism: it works for the satisfaction of the individual, not the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strength of what I get from McGowans 2004 article is his discussion of objet a as something that even authority, Big Daddy in this case, desires, over and above their demands. For example he cites the play\/movie Cat On a Hot Tin Roof and the patriarchal father desires his son that fucks up and rebels and is homosexual, over the one that becomes a lawyer, has a family, gives him grandchildren etc. McGowan\u2019s explanation is as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more Brick acts against Big Daddy’s demand, the more Big Daddy desires him. Brick’s resistance to Big Daddy’s authority attracts Big Daddy’s desire because it indicates the presence of the objet petit a <\/span><\/strong>\u2014 something that absolutely resists assimilation to the demands of authority. Big Daddy, like the Strangers, seeks out this object that seems to hold the secret of jouissance that always remains just outside the reach of those in power. Symbolic authority’s lack constitutes a political opening for the subject, which is why the subject must constantly remain aware of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s McGowan\u2019s last sentence that doesn\u2019t convince me. Yes there is lack in the Other, but how does the subject remain constantly aware of it? In what sense? How does the lack in the Other manifest itself politically?<\/p>\n

“Often, the strongest barrier to overcome in the political act is the belief that symbolic authority is without fissure, that there is no opening in which the act can occur. By showing the Strangers’ desperate search for the jouissance of the subject, the film shatters this belief. Rather than embodying an invariable mastery that thwarts all challenges to it, the Strangers betray the inconsistency of mastery, its lack. And because even symbolic authority lacks, we need not succumb to its demands. Symbolic authority’s lack creates the space at which we can oppose it, and taking up this opposition is what it means to act politically. But the primary barrier to such an act is our investment in the fantasy that fills in symbolic authority’s lack.<\/p>\n

Because symbolic authority is lacking or split, ideological control is not absolute<\/strong>. This means that it needs a fantasmatic support in order to entice subjects to buy into it. If ideology simply demands submission, subjects will be reluctant to buy into it. But fantasy fills in this lacuna, offering a reward (an image of the ultimate jouissance) that ideology offers in exchange for submission.<\/p>\n

Hence, far from subverting ideological control, fantasy perpetuates it and follows from it. The Strangers provide the inhabitants of the city with fantasies\u2014images of an experience beyond ideological control\u2014and these fantasies assist in rendering the people docile. In the case of Murdoch, we see clearly how ideological control depends on a fundamental fantasy. For Murdoch, this fantasy is that of Shell Beach, a place of warmth and light in contrast to the dark, dreary city. Shell Beach occupies this important place in Murdoch’s psychic economy because it represents his point of origin\u2014home. He believes that if he can return to this point, he will find the answers to all of his questions about his identity and gain a sense of completion.\u201d 160<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a subject traverses the fantasy, he or she moves from desire (continually seeking the object) to drive (circling around an objectless void). One resists this transition because it entails the loss of any hope for escape. Desire promises a transcendent future, a future beyond present constraints. But the drive makes no promises; it involves only a perpetual circling. Murdoch is not the only character in the film to pass from desire to drive. 164-165<\/p>\n

Traversing the fantasy doesn’t allow us to escape the limits of our present situation; instead, it allows us to see that there is nothing beyond those limits, that the image of the beyond is the product of the limits themselves. That is to say, fantasy doesn’t conceal the “real world” (however bleak), but instead works to convince us that such a place exists, just beyond our reach. Traversing the fantasy<\/strong> involves the recognition that there is no beyond\u2014or, rather, that the beyond exists within the present world. 167<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have just read a 2004 article by Todd McGowan “Fighting Our Fantasies: Dark City and the Politics of Psychoanalysis” from his edited book on Lacan and Cinema.\u00a0 Now that I’ve read McGowan in 2013, I see that he’s moved a bit from this position on fantasy.\u00a0 Not a lot mind you, but instead of … Continue reading “McGowan 2004 on traversing fantasy”<\/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":[111,125,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-drive","category-jouissance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11905","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=11905"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11910,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11905\/revisions\/11910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}