{"id":12914,"date":"2014-06-25T13:09:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T17:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=12914"},"modified":"2017-07-02T20:30:28","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T00:30:28","slug":"dolar-1-into-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2014\/06\/25\/dolar-1-into-2\/","title":{"rendered":"dolar 1 into 2 pt1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dolar, Mladen “One Divides into Two.” e-flux journal #33 March 2012.<\/a><\/p>\n

This was an old Maoist slogan from the 1960s. Despite its air of universal truth it has become dated, and I fully realize the danger of appearing dated myself by starting in this way. Nowadays, one can recite this slogan in front of a class full of students and none will have ever heard it or have any inkling as to its bearing or its author \u2014 it’s almost like speaking Chinese.<\/p>\n

However much we count, however many ones we add to the first one, we cannot count to the two of the Other. The progression of counting extends the initial one into a homogeneous and uniform process<\/strong>, while the Other presents a dimension that would be precisely “other” in relation to this uniformity<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, the otherness of the Other<\/span>, if it can be conceived, is a dimension that cannot be accounted for in terms of<\/strong> One<\/strong><\/span>. If the Other exists, then we have some hope of escaping from the circle, or the ban, of One.<\/p>\n

The dimension of the Other might present a two that would really make a difference<\/span>, not merely a difference between one and another, that is, ultimately, between the one and itself, the count based on the internal splitting of one, but rather another difference altogether, beyond the delightful oxymoronic phrase “same difference.”<\/p>\n

One can immediately appreciate the high philosophical stakes here. A large part of modern philosophy, if not all of it, has aligned under the banner of the Other<\/strong>, in one way or another, whatever particular names have been used to designate it, and if philosophy has thus espoused the slogan of the Other it has done so in order to establish a dimension that would beable to break the spell of One, in particular its complicity with totality, with forming a whole.<\/p>\n

There is a hidden propensity of One to form a whole, to encompass multiplicity and heterogeneity within a single first principle.<\/strong> That program was pronounced at the dawn of philosophy, spelled out by Parmenides in three simple words, the slogan hen kai pan<\/span><\/em><\/strong>, one and all<\/strong><\/p>\n

So if the Other exists, if it can be conceived in terms other than the terms of one, it would permit us to get out of this ban and this circle.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the task of modern philosophy, if I may take the liberty of using this grossly simplified and massive language, was to think the Other that would not be complicit in collusion with the One of hen kai pan, and thus, ultimately, the task to think the two, to conceive the Other that wouldn’t fall into the register of the One<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I will invoke Freud and now I will take the tricky path of conceiving the two in terms of the Other in psychoanalysis, the Other being a key psychoanalytic term<\/strong><\/p>\n

I said above “If the Other exists …” and this brings me to a very basic asset that lies at the heart of psychoanalysis and the work of Jacques Lacan. There is something like a spectacular antinomy at the foundation of psychoanalytic theory<\/strong>,<\/p>\n

an antinomy worthy of Kantian antinomies, and Kant has brought the notion of antinomy to a pinnacle\u00a0 where reason, as a striving for unity, runs into an irremediable two, an opposition that cannot be reduced.<\/p>\n

This Lacanian antinomy of the two pertains to the nature of the Other<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One can pose it as the antinomy<\/span><\/strong> of two massively opposing statements:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 There is the Other, which is the essential dimension that psychoanalysis has to deal with. Notoriously, Freud spoke of the unconscious<\/span><\/strong> as “ein anderer Schauplatz<\/em>,” the other scene, another stage,<\/strong> a stage inherently other in relation to the one of consciousness, to its count and to what it can account for. It defies the count of consciousness, which is ultimately the homogeneous count providing sense as a unitary prospect<\/p>\n

So there is the Other of the unconscious<\/span><\/strong>. … “The unconscious is the discourse of the Other<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

And another of his formulas runs: “Desire is the desire of the Other”<\/p>\n

There is an Other that agitates our desires and prevents us from assuming them simply our own. These two short statements, in no uncertain terms, place the unconscious and desire<\/span> <\/strong>under the banner of the Other.<\/p>\n

There is the unconscious, and there is desire only insofar as each intimately pertains to the Other, they are “of the Other,” and the Other is what stirs their intimacy.<\/p>\n

There is the Other at the heart of all entities that psychoanalysis has to deal with, … the Other of a qualitatively different nature in relation to the realm of One.<\/p>\n

2. The second part of this antinomy<\/strong>, in stark contradiction to the first, states bluntly: The Other lacks.<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a lack in the Other, the Other is haunted by a lack, or to extend it a bit further: The Other doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n

“There is the Other”<\/span><\/strong> vs. “The Other doesn’t exist.”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

How can the very dimension on which psychoanalysis is ultimately premised not exist?<\/p>\n

What is the status of this Other that is emphatically there, permeating the very notion\u00a0of the unconscious, of desire, and so forth, and that yet at the same time emphatically lacks?<\/p>\n

Can the two statements be reconciled in their glaring contradiction?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Is this a case of a Kantian antinomy, exceeding the limits of knowledge and unitary reasoning?<\/p>\n

And how can one posit the Other as the very notion surpassing the boundaries and the framework of One while maintaining that it lacks<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Is this an exhaustive alternative?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dolar, Mladen “One Divides into Two.” e-flux journal #33 March 2012. This was an old Maoist slogan from the 1960s. Despite its air of universal truth it has become dated, and I fully realize the danger of appearing dated myself by starting in this way. Nowadays, one can recite this slogan in front of a … Continue reading “dolar 1 into 2 pt1”<\/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":[65,72,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dia-mat","category-objet-a","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12914","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=12914"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13496,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12914\/revisions\/13496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}