{"id":13150,"date":"2014-09-13T19:59:43","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T23:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=13150"},"modified":"2014-09-15T18:05:47","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T22:05:47","slug":"johnston-objet-a-seminar-1965-66-pt2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2014\/09\/13\/johnston-objet-a-seminar-1965-66-pt2\/","title":{"rendered":"johnston objet a seminar 1965-66 pt2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johnston, A. (2013).The object in the mirror of genetic transcendentalism: Lacan\u2019s objet petit a between visibility and invisibility<\/strong> Continental Philosophy Review. 46:251\u2013269\u00a0 Here is Part 1<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Ur<\/em>-event of identification, the primal scene of mirroring, the child\u2019s entranced enchantment by the power-and-salvation-promising image in the shiny surface leaves him\/her blind to the surrounding framing functions \u2014 these functions include the looks, gestures, speech, and various expressions of interest in the body of the child by its supporting big(ger) Others \u2014 responsible for constituting (invisibly off-stage, as it were) this visuallymediated experience as what it appears to be. Lacan\u2019s list of spatio-temporally incarnate instances of object a<\/span><\/em><\/strong> (again, breast, feces, phallus, gaze, and voice) makes a
\nlot of sense in this connection.<\/p>\n

These specular, body-related libidinal coordinates are the visible placeholders, the objective representational inscriptions, of the impossible-to-pin-down, non-objectifiable (hence non-specularizable) desire of the Other(s), a desire setting in motion and decisively influencing the temporally-elongated takingshape of the ego as initially rooted in reference to a visual register. All of this is compactly conveyed by the abbreviation i(a)<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

and this insofar as objet petit a, Lacan\u2019s central analytic \u2018\u2018discovery,\u2019\u2019 is both transcendental qua<\/em> non-specular(izable), as the fantasy-constellation(s) \u2018\u2018causing\u2019\u2019 desire, and empirical qua<\/em> specular(izable), as the concatenation of tangible spatio-temporal object-choices \u2018\u2018caused\u2019\u2019 by desire and its fantasies.<\/p>\n

So, the libidinal center of gravity that is the ego-object as a(utre), whose
\nmatheme, as seen earlier in connection with the thirteenth seminar, is i(a), is
\nestablished against \u2018\u2018a background of organic disturbance and discord.\u2019\u201963 What\u2019s
\nmore, this ground-zero absence of organic harmony is a contingent material
\ncondition of possibility, as a necessary but not sufficient condition, for the eventual
\n(although far from guaranteed qua predestined) ontogenetic emergence of the moi
\nand its dialectical relations with subjectivity-beyond-the-ego (as per the mirror
\nstage).<\/p>\n

the yawning discrepancy (i.e., \u2018\u2018tension\u2019\u2019) between, on one side of the mirror, the phenomenology of the embodied and affective experience of the body-in-pieces (corps morcele\u00b4) in its biologicallydetermined prematurational Hilflosigkeit (i.e., \u2018\u2018tendencies which are experienced\u2026 as disconnected, discordant, in pieces\u2019\u2019), and, on the other side of the mirror, the unreachable (i.e., \u2018\u2018there\u2019s always something of that that remains\u2019\u2019) donkey\u2019s carrot of coordinated integrity as the elusive and illusory vanishing-point of coherent, unified wholeness reflected back to the consciousness of the gazing subject \u00e1 venir<\/em> as an infuriatingly impossible ideal;<\/p>\n

this ideal of one-ified selfhood<\/span><\/strong>, represented by the imago-Gestalt<\/em>, as never-to-be-attained but nonetheless determinative of the subject\u2019s desire thereafter until death\u00a0 (in this vein, the hybrid Imaginary-Symbolic structures of ego-level identities, infused with the enigmatic desires of Real Others, are objects-causes of desire \u00e1 la<\/em> Lacan\u2019s objet petit a<\/span><\/strong> as a Borromean knotting of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic).<\/p>\n

the nature of Lacanian \u2018\u2018human nature\u2019\u2019 is naturally inclined toward the dominance
\nof nurture over nature, that is, hard-wired\/pre-programmed to be (socio-symbolically)
\nre-wired\/programmed (as per the preceding quotation, \u2018\u2018his own milieu is grafted onto him, i.e., the society of his fellow men\u2019\u2019\u2014 or, as per the canonical \u00c9crits-<\/em>version of the mirror stage, a socio-symbolically-mediated \u2018\u2018gestalt may have formative effects on an organism\u2019\u2019 for a denaturalization-destined human animal caught within \u2018\u2018this intersection of nature and culture\u2019\u2019).<\/p>\n

Such a radical reconceptualization of nature is integral to a transcendental theory of subjectivity \u2014 this would be a meta\/ultra-transcendentalism in that it focuses on the possibility conditions for subjects<\/span> <\/strong>rather than on subjects themselves as ensembles
\nof always-already-in-place possibility conditions \u2014 that is nevertheless simultaneously
\ngenetic and materialist (by contrast with Kant\u2019s static and idealist transcendentalism).<\/p>\n

One of this theory\u2019s tasks is responsibly to integrate evidence from the life sciences into a dual philosophical and psychoanalytic explanatory framework bearing upon the emergent subject<\/strong>. 265<\/p>\n

I likewise am convinced that, despite long-prevailing opinion to the contrary, the distinction between Nature (Natur) and Spirit (Geist), for Hegel, is a distinction internal to Nature itself (and not one internal to Spirit instead).<\/p>\n

Put differently, the non-natural history of Geist<\/em> is itself the unfolding of a self-sundering, auto-denaturalizing Natur<\/em><\/strong>; the spiritual crises giving rise to new forms of mindedness and like-mindedness (such as those witnessed throughout the Phenomenology<\/em>) are modified, sublimated repetitions of the Ur<\/em><\/strong>-crisis of nature\u2019s groundless ground<\/strong> out of which more-than-natural monstrosities<\/span> (i.e., human subjects)<\/span><\/strong> surface and with which they rebelliously break.<\/p>\n

This Hegelian-Lacanian \u2018\u2018dehiscence from natural harmony\u2019\u2019<\/strong> manifestly on display in multiple guises at various moments in both thinkers\u2019 bodies of work, is something in nature more than nature itself. Such conflict, discord, and tension helps to make possible humanity\u2019s distinctive existence-over-essence<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Circling back to the title of Lacan\u2019s thirteenth seminar and this seminar\u2019s treatment of objet petit a<\/span><\/em><\/strong> as glossed herein, I can say that one of my guiding agendas is to explore the invisible negativity behind the visible \u2018\u2018object of psychoanalysis\u2019\u2019 with the resources furnished by a hybrid Hegelian-Lacanian materialism operative at the crossroads of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the sciences. 267<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johnston, A. (2013).The object in the mirror of genetic transcendentalism: Lacan\u2019s objet petit a between visibility and invisibility Continental Philosophy Review. 46:251\u2013269\u00a0 Here is Part 1 In the Ur-event of identification, the primal scene of mirroring, the child\u2019s entranced enchantment by the power-and-salvation-promising image in the shiny surface leaves him\/her blind to the surrounding framing … Continue reading “johnston objet a seminar 1965-66 pt2”<\/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":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-objet-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150","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=13150"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13157,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150\/revisions\/13157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}