At the moment when philosophy was just about ready to abandon some of its key central notions as belonging to its own metaphysical past, from which it was eager to escape, along came Lacan, and taught us an invaluable lesson: it is not these notions themselves that are problematic; what can be problematic in some ways of doing philosophy is the disavowal or effacement of the inherent contradiction, even antagonism, that these notions imply, and are part of. That is why, by simply abandoning these notions (like subject, truth, the real\u2026), we are abandoning the battlefield, rather than winning any significant battles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Clinic should not be considered as a kind of holy grail providing the practitioners with automatic superiority when it comes to working theoretically, with psychoanalytic concepts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Psychoanalysis is not a science, or \u201cscientific\u201d in the usual sense of this term, because it insists on a dimension of truth which is irreducible to \u201caccuracy\u201d or to simple opposition true\/false.<\/strong> At the same time the whole point of Lacan is that this insistence doesn\u2019t simply make it unscientific (unverifiable, without any firm criteria…), but calls for a different kind of formalization and situates psychoanalysis in a singular position in the context of science. And here philosophy, which is also not a science in the usual sense of the term, can and should be its ally, even partner. They are obviously not the same, but their often very critical dialogue shouldn\u2019t obfuscate the fact that there are also \u201csisters in arms\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMy claim is that the Freudian notion of sexuality is above all a concept, a conceptual invention, and not simply a name for certain empirical \u201cactivities\u201d that exist out there and that Freud refers to when talking about sexuality. As such, this concept is also genuinely \u201cphilosophical\u201d. It links together, in a complex and most interesting way, language and the drives, it compels us to think a singular ontological form of negativity, to reconsider the simplistic human\/animal divide, and so on\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the fundamental claims of my book is that there is something
about sexuality that is inherently problematic, \u201cimpossible\u201d, and is not
such simply because of external obstacles and prohibitions. What we have
been witnessing over more than half a century has been a systematic obliteration, effacement, repression of this negativity inherent to sexuality<\/span><\/strong>
\u2013 and not simply repression of sexuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI\u2019m not interested in sexuality as a case of \u201clocal ontology,\u201d but as possibly providing some key conceptual elements for the ontological interrogation as such.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
What we have been witnessing over more than half a century has been a systematic obliteration, effacement, repression of this negativity inherent to sexuality \u2013 and not simply repression of sexuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sexuality has been, and still is, systematically reduced, yes, reduced, to a self-evident phenomenon consisting simply of some positive features, and problematic only because caught in the standard ideological warfare: shall we \u201cliberally\u201d show and admit everything, or \u201cconservatively\u201d hide and prohibit most of it? But show or prohibit what exactly, what is this \u201cit\u201d that we try to regulate when we regulate sexuality? This is what the title of my book tries to ask: What IS this sex that we are talking about? Is it really there, anywhere, as a simply positive entity to be regulated in this or that way? No, it is not. And this is precisely why we are \u201cobsessed\u201d with it, in one way or another, also when we want to get rid of it altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
this is probably the most daring philosophical proposition of the book. Namely, that sexuality is the point of a short circuit between ontology and epistemology. If there is a limit to what I can know, what is the status of this limit? Does it only tell us something about our subjective limitations on account of which we can never fully grasp being such as it is in itself? Or is there a constellation in which this not-knowing possibly tells us something about being itself, its own \u201clapse of being\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is, I believe; it is the constellation that Freud conceptualized under the name of the unconscious. Sexuality is not simply the content<\/strong><\/em> of the unconscious, understood as a container of repressed thoughts. The relationship between sex and the unconscious is not that between a content and its container. Or that between some primary, raw being, and repression (and other operations) performed on it. The unconscious is a thought process, and it is \u201csexualized\u201d from within, so to say. The unconscious is not sexual because of the dirty thoughts it may contain or hide, but because of how it works.<\/strong> If I keep emphasizing that I\u2019m interested in the psychoanalytical concept<\/span><\/strong><\/em> of sexuality, and not simply in sexuality, it is because of the fundamental link between sexuality and the unconscious<\/strong><\/em> discovered by Freud. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSexuality enters the Freudian perspective strictly speaking only in so far as it is \u201cunconscious sexuality\u201d. Yet \u201cunconscious<\/em><\/strong> sexuality\u201d does not simply mean that we are not aware of it, while it constitutes a hidden truth of most of our actions. <\/p>\n\n\n\nUnconsciousness does not mean the opposite of consciousness<\/strong>, it refers to an active and ongoing process, the work of censorship, substitution, condensation\u2026, and this work is itself \u201csexual\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/em>, implied in desire, intrinsic to sexuality, rather than simply performed in relation to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philosophy or Psychoanalysis? Yes, please!Agon Hamza & Frank Ruda Crisis and Critique Volume 7 Issue 1. Here is a talk by Zupan\u010di\u010d at Freud Museum June 2019 Download here At the moment when philosophy was just about ready to abandon some of its key central notions as belonging to its own metaphysical past, from which … Continue reading “Interview with Alenka Zupan\u010di\u010d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,72,114,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-sexuation","category-unconscious"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14289","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=14289"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14428,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14289\/revisions\/14428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}