{"id":12732,"date":"2014-04-14T18:50:25","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T22:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=12732"},"modified":"2014-04-19T19:39:45","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T23:39:45","slug":"zupancic-why-p-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2014\/04\/14\/zupancic-why-p-2\/","title":{"rendered":"zupan\u010di\u010d why P? 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zupan\u010di\u010d Zupan\u010di\u010d, Alenka. Why Psychoanalysis: 3 interventions.<\/em> Aarhus University Press 2008.<\/p>\n

It is in this sense that we should understand a crucial Lacanian thesis concerning the issue of the cause<\/span><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIl n\u2019y a de cause que de ce qui cloche\u201d\u00a0<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

There is but the cause of that which does not work, or which does not add up. 24<\/p>\n

(pssst … check out Dolar’s interpretation here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

There are (at least) two important ideas behind this proposition.<\/p>\n

1. the non-immediate character of the causal relationship, which has its classic philosophical articulation in the Hume \u2013 Kant debate. The connection between cause and effect involves an irreducible gap<\/strong>, or leap, on account of which Hume wanted to dismiss the very notion of the cause, and which led Kant to propose rational subjectivity as the transcendental constitutive background against which the leap involved in the passage from a cause to its effect remained possible without the causal structure simple falling apart. 24<\/p>\n

2. the other important idea involved in Lacan\u2019s account of causality<\/strong><\/span>: something appears in this hole, in this interval, in this gap, in this structural split of causality, and it is for this something that psychoanalysis reserves the name of the cause in the strict sense of the term (the cause of object a<\/strong><\/span>, the objet as the distortional cause of itself). 25<\/p>\n

The elements exposed above could be related to yet another discussion of causes in psychoanalysis: to the already mentioned two aspects of the question of the cause (the question of the unconscious causes<\/strong>, and the question of the unconscious as cause<\/strong>) we can add a third one, which seems even more fundamental and concerns<\/p>\n

3. the very cause of the constitution of the unconscious<\/strong>. This is a debate developed in a very intriguing way by Jean Laplanche in answer to the deadlocks of the Freudian theory of sexual seduction (of children). 25\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Jean Laplanche<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

Let me briefly recall the principal stakes of the debate. Freud first posited the sexual seduction of children by adults as real, that is to say, as a factual\/empirical event in the child\u2019s history, which is then repressed and can become the ground or cause of different symptoms and neurotic disturbances.<\/p>\n

Later on, he abandoned this theory in favour of the theory of the fantasy of seduction: generally speaking, seduction is not an event that takes place in empirical reality, but a fantasy constructed later on, in the period of our sexual awareness, and it only exists in the psychical reality of the subject.<\/p>\n

If approached with the tool of the distinction between material reality and psychical reality (fantasy), the question of sexual seduction leads either to the claim that everything is material seduction (for how exactly are we to isolate and define the latter: does the touching of the baby\u2019s lips, for example, or its bottom, qualify as a seduction?), or else it leads to the conclusion that seduction is entirely fantasmatic, mediated by the psychical reality of the one who \u2018feels seduced.\u2019<\/p>\n

Laplanche\u2019s answer to this conflict between raw materialism and psychological idealism is profoundly materialistic in the sense that he recognizes a properly material cause, yet a cause that cannot be reduced to (or deduced from) what has empirically happened in the interaction between the child and the adult.<\/p>\n

In other words, according to Laplanches, the true trigger of the subsequent constitution of the unconscious lies neither in the raw material reality nor in the ideal reality of fantasy,<\/strong> but is the very materiality of a third reality, which is transversal to the other two and which Laplanches calls the material reality of the enigmatic message<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Simply put: in their interaction with adults, children keep receiving messages that are always partly enigmatic, ridden with the unconscious of the other (which is also to say, by his or her sexuality).<\/p>\n

This means that these kinds of messages are enigmatic not only for those who receive them but also for those from whom they come \u2014 they do not, properly speaking, \u2018understand\u2019 them themselves, or know exactly what they are conveying.<\/p>\n

These messages (which, of course, do not need to be verbal, they can be gestures, different ways of nursing the child, etc.) have their own material reality, they are not fantasies or a posterior constructions, yet they are also not a direct sexual seduction.<\/p>\n

The child interprets these messages, and organizes synthesizes them in a more or less coherent, meaningful story<\/strong>. However the interpretation, explanation, understanding of these messages always has its other, back side: places where this explanation does not work,<\/span><\/strong> places that are left out of the interpretation, places where we are dealing with a leftover which is repressed<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That is to say, we are dealing here with the constitution of the unconscious as the refuse (d\u00e9chet) of this interpretations of enigmatic messages<\/strong>. 26<\/p>\n

It is worth stopping here for a moment and asking the following question: Is Laplanche not moving a little too fast in identifying two rather different things and thus reducing the tripartite structure, which he himself has put such emphasis on, to a simpler binary structure?<\/strong> 26<\/p>\n

For in the account presented above, we end up with two elements: on the one side, we have<\/p>\n

1. the conscious, manifest content or interpretative narration and<\/p>\n

2. on the other side, the unconscious as the non-digested\/non-digestible pieces of the other\u2019s message, the piece that has not been integrated into the given interpretation.<\/p>\n

What we lose by putting things this way (and what otherwise clearly follows from some other aspects of Laplanche\u2019s theory) is that the unconscious itself is also always-already an interpretation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

we should not simply identify the refuse, the indivisible remainder of the interpretation (of the enigmatic message) with the unconscious. 26<\/p>\n

Rather, we should say that the unconscious<\/strong> (the work of the unconscious, as well as its \u2018formations\u2019) is precisely the interpretation which strives to incorporate this piece<\/strong>, this \u2014 to use Lacan\u2019s notion \u2014 object into its narrative<\/strong>. 26<\/p>\n

The unconscious interprets by taking this leftover into account, it interprets with respect to it. 26<\/p>\n

If the constitution of the unconscious does in fact coincide with a certain (\u2018conscious\u2019) interpretation taking place, i.e. with a certain solution that is given to the enigmatic message of the other,<\/span> this does not mean that the unconscious is simply what is left outside (and is not included in our interpretation); rather, the unconscious is that which continues to interpret (after the conscious interpretation is done)<\/strong>. 27<\/p>\n

Even more precisely: it is that which only starts to interpret after some understanding of the enigmatic message is produced<\/span>. For what it interprets is, to put it bluntly, precisely the relationship between the given interpretation and its leftover.<\/strong> 27<\/p>\n

And it interprets from the point of view of this leftover. Which is also the reason why the unconscious formations are by definition \u2018compromise formations.\u2019<\/p>\n

We should perhaps add that that which compromises them is precisely that which brings them closer to the real<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The fact that the unconscious interprets from the point of view of the leftover is the very reason why this particular interpretation is not simply an interpretation of interpretation, with all the relativism implied in this formulation, but is inscribed instead in the dimension of truth<\/span><\/strong>. And this is precisely what psychoanalysis puts its stakes on when taking the unconscious formations seriously.\u00a027<\/p>\n

We are thus dealing with three elements:<\/p>\n

1. a specific subjective figure related to the formations of the unconscious,<\/p>\n

and two kinds of causes:<\/p>\n

2. One kind consists of elements (words, gestures, gazes, etc.) that constitute what Laplanches calls \u2018enigmatic messages\u2019 circulating in the Other,<\/p>\n

3. and the other is this objective (or object-like) surplus\/leftover of the interpretation<\/strong><\/span> of these messages. I would further add that this leftover is not simply some element of the \u2018message\u2019 ( a word, a gesture, a gaze) which was left outside the interpretation, but it is rather something like an \u2018objectivities\u2019 of a certain quality that these elements can have in relation to the interpreting subject.<\/p>\n

Laplanche calls this quality \u2018enigmatic\u2019; for reasons which will be given below; I would rather call it \u2018problematic.\u2019 It refers to the fact that there is always \u201cquelque chose qui chloche,\u201d<\/em> <\/strong><\/span>something that does not add up in the relationship between the subject and the Other,<\/strong> in the relationship between the (subject\u2019s) being and meaning \u2013 this relationship is built on an irreducible inner difficulty. 27<\/p>\n

For our present purposes, we could simply say that the objective leftover<\/strong> (of the interpretation) is the mode in which this difficulty materially exists, exists as object<\/strong>. Neither the subject nor the Other have his object, although it is related, linked to both. More precisely: it is what relates or binds the two in their very heterogeneity, in the inexistence of their common denominator<\/strong>. 27<\/p>\n

Let us now try to explain why this is worth reconsidering before accepting Laplanche\u2019s definition of the problematic character of the relationship between the subject and the other in terms of the \u2018enigmatic message\u2019. Do we not miss, by putting things in theses terms, a crucial step in the constitution of the unconscious? 28<\/p>\n

The expression \u2018enigmatic message\u2019 seems to suggest that original\/traumatic thrust is caused by some mystery of meaning. The subject (we could say the subject-in-becoming) does not know what exactly it is that the Other \u2018wants to say,\u2019 the conduct of the Other strikes him as enigmatic, and he strives to make some sense of it.<\/p>\n

It all starts with an enigma, that is to say, with the presupposition that what is going on in this interaction might become coherent, or simply less oppressive, if its meaning were properly established.<\/p>\n

Laplanche rightly insists that there is no pre-established meaning behind this enigma, waiting to be uncovered and properly understood (the enigmatic message of the Other are enigmatic for the Other as well). This is also related to his thesis according to which \u2018psychical reality\u2019 is not created by me, but is essentially invasive, it comes, it invades us from the outside,<\/strong> where it is already constituted (as the unconscious of others).<\/p>\n

However, in all its elegance, this deduction omits a crucial element<\/strong>, which is not so much chronological as it is structured.<\/p>\n

Even if we accept, as we gladly do, that the structure of the unconscious is something that the subject encounters in the outside reality, something that he encounters in the form of the inconsistency of this reality, there is nevertheless something else that needs to take place between this point and the point where he takes this incoherence to constitute an enigma, which he then tries to solve.<\/p>\n

An enigma can only emerge together with the presupposition of meaning and everything that this presupposition implies \u2013 for example, the belief that this meaning exists in the Other. In other words, Laplanche successfully explains why the enigmatic message is enigmatic for the Other, but he does not explain why it appears as enigmatic (and not simply utterly meaningless, or beyond any question of meaning) to the subject.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is not enough that the subject encounters something that comes from the Other and is enigmatic in itself \u2014 in order for this something to appear to him as an enigma, the subject must have had already \u2018chosen\u2019 meaning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This way we come back to the Lacanian theme of forced choice<\/strong>: the subject (of the unconscious) is what emerges<\/strong> when, in choosing between being and meaning, he can only choose meaning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is the necessary other side of the fact that we take what is going on in our interaction with others to constitute an \u2018enigmatic message.\u2019 28<\/p>\n

This is to say that to understand this difficulty in our interaction with others in terms of an enigmatic message already presupposes the unconscious (and cannot be its cause.)<\/span> <\/strong>30<\/p>\n

The constitution of the unconscious<\/strong> coincides with the presupposition of meaning, with the forced choice of meaning<\/strong> (which only makes the interpretation possible), and not simply with the repression of the first representation that eludes his interpretation. 30<\/p>\n

What Laplanche calls the leftover of the interpretation, the piece of the message that remained outside meaning<\/strong>, failing to be integrated into it, and was thus repressed, already presupposes the unconscious<\/strong> and in a way embodies the real <\/strong>of its constitution, that is, the very non-relationship originally rendered in the structure of a forced choice<\/strong>.<\/span> 30<\/p>\n

The repression is only possible against the background of this force choice<\/strong> which is the Lacanian rendering of what Freud called \u2018primal repression\u2019 (Urverdr\u00e4ngung<\/em>), and which strictly speaking coincides with the constitution of the unconscious<\/strong>. 29<\/p>\n

Our hypothesis, introducing slightly different emphases than Laplanches, would thus be that in the interaction between the child and the adult, the enigma, the enigmatic message, is not there, for the former (the child), on account of the fact that the Other is present (also) with his unconscious.<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Rather, it is always-already an answer, an answer to a deadlock, an impasse, a pressure that could be formalized in terms of the forced choice.<\/p>\n

The enigma is not the beginning, it is already \u2018secondary.\u2019<\/p>\n

It emerges against the background of a forced choice of meaning. 29<\/p>\n

It is only against this background that the whole story of enigmatic messages (of the Other) can take off, of searching for meaning, of desire for understanding.<\/p>\n

Another way of defining this \u2018background that coincides with the constitution of the unconscious, would be to present it in terms of presupposition that the symbolic reality of the field of the Other is coherent, that the Other knows<\/span>, that he wants something, knows what he wants, that there must be a reason for him to say and do what he is saying and doing. 29<\/p>\n

Regardless of what the other says, wants to say, knows he is saying or does not know he is saying, the subject has to himself make this turning-point assumption or presupposition: this means something<\/span><\/strong>. Before trying to figure out what it means, there must be a subjective positing of the fact that \u2018it means.\u2019<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>29<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The object of freedom<\/strong><\/span>
\nNow what exactly is the \u2018it\u2019 that \u2018means,\u2019 that triggers off the machinery of meaning? We must be very precise in answering this. It is not simply all the words, gestures, gazes and thousand other things that take place in my interaction with the other. It is, once again, ce qui cloche<\/strong><\/span>, that which does not work in this interaction.<\/p>\n

It is the free-floating radical, the object that circulates in the relationship between the subject and the other, embodying the very quandary of this relationship.<\/p>\n

And it is not that we interpret this object, we interpret everything else (words, gestures, gases, etc.), yet this object is, properly speaking, the motor of the interpretation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, in order for it to function as such, something else must take place \u2013 precisely what I described before as the subject making the supposition that there is an (enigmatic) meaning to be established here.<\/p>\n

What happens with the introduction of this supposition is \u2013 if we try to describe it in purely structural terms \u2013 that the subject places, situates the object in the Other<\/strong>, within its field of gravity, so to say. The Other that has the object is the enigmatic Other<\/strong>, which is not only to say that we are not sure what its messages mean, but also that we are sure they have a meaning. <\/strong>30<\/p>\n

This has a very important consequence. It implies that the constitution of the subject of the unconscious strictly speaking coincides with the exclusion of the unconscious (on the side) of the other.<\/p>\n

The Other knows, and is coherent.<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Here, I believe, resides the apple of discord between Laplanche and Lacan. According to Laplanche, in the Lacanian perspective – when it comes to the interaction between, say, a child and his parents \u2013 the adults appear as if they had no unconscious, they appear as monolithic, purely \u2018symbolic\u2019 functions that can be found nowhere in reality (which in fact is full of adults ridden with their own unconscious).<\/p>\n

As reasonable as this objection might seem, it misses a crucial point. If we radicalize Laplanche\u2019s own statements \u2013 as I tried to do here \u2013 then the Lacanian conception does very much hold water to the extent in which the interaction child \u2013 adult is not only asymmetrical (as Laplanche suggests, with the unconscious already constituted on the one side, while only being is constituted on the other), but involves a more fundamental \u2018missed encounter\u2019: the unconscious of the other<\/span> is \u2018sacrificed\u2019 (expelled, urverdr\u00e4ngt) in the constitution of the subject\u2019s own unconscious.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is here, at this point, that the other emerges as the (big) Other.<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

The emergence of the subject of the unconscious and the emergence of the Other are correlative.<\/p>\n

The Other guarantees the consistency of the field of meaning. The Other knows everything except that it \u201cdoes not exist\u201d (that it is inconsistent, that it does not know). 30<\/p>\n

And so far as the subject can believe that the Other does not know that, he can maintain his own repressions – even if he \u2018knows\u2019 about them and is perfectly capable of discussing them. For what protects them is precisely the ignorance of the Other at this singular point which enables the presupposition that the Other knows<\/strong>. 30<\/p>\n

It is this singular ignorance of the Other<\/strong> that makes possible the well-known disavowals of the kind. \u201cI know very well (that X does not exist), but I nevertheless behave as if it does.<\/span><\/strong>\u201d 31<\/p>\n

An amusing illustration of this configuration can be found in the following joke, to which I like to refer:<\/p>\n

A man believes that he is a grain of seed.<\/strong> He is taken to a mental institute, where the doctors do their best finally to convince him that he is not a grain, but a man. No sooner has he left the hospital than he comes back, very scared, claiming that there is a chicken outside the door, and that he is afraid that it will eat him.<\/p>\n

\u201cDear fellow,\u201d says his doctor, \u201cyou know very well that you are not a grain of seed, but a man.\u201d \u2013 \u201cOf course I know that,\u201d replies the patient, \u201cbut does the chicken?\u201d 31<\/p>\n

There is a very important materialistic lesson to be drawn from this joke: If something is to be changed in our unconscious, it has to be changed in the structure that supports it.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

This is also why psychoanalysis is profoundly materialistic: it claims and demonstrates that the safeguard of our unconscious beliefs<\/span> does not lie somewhere in the depths of our intimacy, but exists out there (in the Other)<\/span>. But what exactly is the element through which a real shift can occur here? 31<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zupan\u010di\u010d Zupan\u010di\u010d, Alenka. Why Psychoanalysis: 3 interventions. Aarhus University Press 2008. It is in this sense that we should understand a crucial Lacanian thesis concerning the issue of the cause: \u201cIl n\u2019y a de cause que de ce qui cloche\u201d\u00a0 There is but the cause of that which does not work, or which does not … Continue reading “zupan\u010di\u010d why P? 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":[79,72,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics_real","category-objet-a","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732","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=12732"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12790,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732\/revisions\/12790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}