{"id":15005,"date":"2021-06-04T19:40:40","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T23:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=15005"},"modified":"2021-06-04T19:55:12","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T23:55:12","slug":"zupancic-interview-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2021\/06\/04\/zupancic-interview-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Zupan\u010di\u010d Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

European Journal of Psychoanalysis<\/a> no date<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as Lacan put it somewhere – \u201cpsychoanalysis is not psychology\u201d. For me this means that psychoanalysis is not a regional science of human being<\/strong>, but concerns, and has something to say about, the very constitution of subjectivity<\/span><\/strong>, also in its profound philosophical sense. Lacan\u2019s \u201creturn to Freud\u201d involved an extremely serious engagement with philosophy, the whole history of philosophy, as a means of showing and conceptualizing what is so new, or different about Freud. Psychoanalysis is not simply a move \u201cbeyond\u201d philosophy; in many ways, philosophy itself has always been a move beyond (previous) philosophy\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My main interest in psychoanalysis relates to the way in which it allowed us to rethink and maintain the notion of the subject at the very moment when contemporary philosophy was ready to discard this concept as belonging to its metaphysical past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of joining this adage, Lacan revolutionized the notion of the subject …  Subject is not simply an autonomous, free agent, but it is also not simply a mere effect of the structure as fully consistent in itself. It is rather <\/span>an effect of the gap in this structure, of its inherent inconsistency or incompleteness<\/span><\/strong>.  And this has important philosophical, ontological, as well as political consequences.  For example, it is my strong conviction that there can be no (philosophical) materialism without the concept of the subject. <\/strong> This is also related to what is probably Lacan\u2019s most genuine and important conceptual invention, namely that of the \u201cobject small a<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/strong>: a singular kind of object, which is not the opposite of the subject, but rather the \u201cextimate\u201d<\/span><\/strong> kernel of the subject herself, something in the subject more than subject<\/span>, something that the subject cannot recognize herself in\u2026<\/strong>.  These concepts are absolutely relevant for philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The subject is an effect of the gap in this structure, of its inherent inconsistency or incompleteness. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Question: From its start, psychoanalysis\u2014including Fenichel, Bernfeld, Reich, Fromm, and others\u2014developed a Freudian-Marxist current among both analysts and philosophers, which still flourishes today. How should we view today the relation amongst Marx, Marxists, and psychoanalysis? <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Zupan\u010di\u010d: This is a very interesting and complex question.  Freudo-Marxism (or \u201csexo-leftism\u201d, as Lacan used to call it) basically saw Marxism and psychoanalysis as supplementing (or complementing) each other, with psychoanalysis explaining, and eventually taking care of, the psychological causes of the perpetuation of power, exploitation and subordination.  Its basic scheme is that oppression causes repression (in the sense of Vedr\u00e4ngung<\/em>), which then causes further (social) oppression, and that one of the culturally, or socially, most acute site of oppression is sexuality.  If we liberate it (also institutionally), we can interrupt this causality and bring about a more general social liberation.  I\u2019m simplifying, but that\u2019s the basic presupposition nevertheless.  Yet what Freud already saw, and Lacan made explicit, is that there is something wrong with this presupposition, so far as it maintains that all the \u201ctrouble with sex\u201d come from outside it and are the result of oppression (regulation) imposed on<\/em> sexuality.  Instead, they claimed that there was something in sex which was inherently problematic, disrupting it from within, preventing a full or non-problematic satisfaction.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project of Freudian psychoanalysis is not sexual liberation, as leading to a vaster social liberation.  The unconscious is also not simply about all the things we repress (and why), but about how a certain dimension of repression is built in and comes with the <\/span>symbolic order<\/span> as such.<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why in psychoanalysis liberation does not simply mean liberation from oppression, but also the ability to handle and confront the points of structural impasse<\/span>, which are also the main sources of oppression and further repression. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, if sex is repressed and regulated in many ways, it is not because it brings in a threat of some possibly [unbridled?] enjoyment, but because it brings in and perpetuates a structural impasse\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This does of course not exhaust the question of the relation between Marx and Freud, which certainly exists and is most interesting.  For example, and as Louis Althusser argued in his powerful essay \u201cOn Marx and Freud,\u201d one of the things Marxism and psychoanalysis have in common is that they are both conflictual sciences.  They are both situated within the conflict<\/strong> that they theorize; they are themselves part of the very reality that they recognize as conflictual and antagonistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such a case the criterion of scientific objectivity is not a supposed neutrality, which is nothing other than a dissimulation (and hence the perpetuation) of the given antagonism, or of the point of real exploitation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In any social conflict, a \u201cneutral\u201d position is always and necessarily the position of the ruling class: it seems \u201cneutral\u201d because it has achieved the status of the dominant ideology, which always strikes us as self-evident.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The criterion of objectivity in such a case is thus not neutrality, but the capacity of theory to occupy a singular, specific point of view within the situation.  In this sense, the objectivity is linked here to the very capacity of being \u201cpartial\u201d or \u201cpartisan.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Althusser puts it: when dealing with a conflictual reality (which is the case for both Marxism and psychoanalysis) one cannot see everything from everywhere (on ne peut pas tout voir de partout<\/em>); some positions dissimulate this conflict, and some reveal it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One can thus discover the essence of this conflictual reality only by occupying certain positions, and not others, in this very conflict.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now my claim would be that that sex, or the sexual<\/strong>, is precisely such a \u201cposition,\u201d or point of view, in psychoanalysis.  This is very different from saying that psychoanalysis takes sex to be the ultimate reality or truth of everything; no, sex is a privileged entry to the contradictions (antagonisms) which it forces us to see, to think, and to engage with<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question: Do you believe that psychoanalysis can be a useful tool for interpreting political and social phenomena and customs today? And especially for interpreting gender issues and sexual orientations debate? And if yes, in what way? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zupan\u010di\u010d:  To say to people that they are \u201cfree to choose\u201d their sexuality and create their sexual identity is a very dubious line.  For one thing is to question the pre-allocated symbolic roles and their cultural meanings and enforcement, and something else is to refuse to see the problematic core of sexuality as such.  In other words: normative heterosexual sexuality is itself problematic and struggling with an impasse, which is precisely why it can feel so threatened by, say homosexuality.<\/strong> There is no sexuality that is simply non-problematic.  Which is why the idea of \u201cliberation of sexuality\u201d is nowadays often replaced by the idea of \u201cliberation from sexuality\u201d.  Social discrimination and persecution (which certainly exist) of some forms of sexual orientation need to be understood against the background of the problematic character of sexuality as such<\/strong>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ideology of the free market of sexual orientations covers up and perpetuates antagonisms involved in sexuality, and allows for their further exploitation.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sex is a matter of \u201cchoice\u201d on a very different level \u2013 say on the level that Kant would call the \u201ctranscendental choice of character\u201d, or that Lacan (after Freud) called the \u201cchoice of neurosis\u201d.  It is not a choice that we make as (autonomous) subjects, but the choice through which we become <\/strong>subjects, as fundamentally subjects of this \u201cchoice\u201d, of this particular answer to the structural impasse<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, psychoanalysis can intervene in these debates in a productive way.  Not at all so as to preach the traditional family ways and values, but also not so as to promote sexual orientation as a simple question of choice within liberal system of values.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To say to people that they are \u201cfree to choose\u201d their sexuality and create their sexual identity is a very dubious line.  For one thing is to question the pre-allocated symbolic roles and their cultural meanings and enforcement, and something else is to refuse to see the problematic core of sexuality as such<\/strong>.  In other words: normative heterosexual sexuality is itself problematic and struggling with an impasse<\/span><\/strong>, which is precisely why it can feel so threatened by, say homosexuality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reason itself is structured around an \u201cirrational\u201d core; there is something \u201cirrational\u201d at the very heart of reason<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The unconscious is far from disappearing, it is produced on a massive scale, although it takes some new forms.  Psychoanalysis \u2013 at least in the way I understand and appreciate it –  doesn\u2019t claim that besides<\/em> reason and rationality we also possess other dimensions which need to be taken into account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its fundamental and most revolutionary claim was that the reason itself is structured around an \u201cirrational\u201d core; that there is something \u201cirrational\u201d at the very heart of reason<\/strong> \u2013 which doesn\u2019t make it any less reason. The thesis about the unconscious concerns our very rationality<\/span><\/strong>, and not something else besides, or on top of it. There are some scientific theories which resonate with this, or point in a similar direction, but there is also a lot of rather na\u00efve scientism going on, supplementing itself with various forms of mysticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

European Journal of Psychoanalysis no date as Lacan put it somewhere – \u201cpsychoanalysis is not psychology\u201d. For me this means that psychoanalysis is not a regional science of human being, but concerns, and has something to say about, the very constitution of subjectivity, also in its profound philosophical sense. Lacan\u2019s \u201creturn to Freud\u201d involved an … Continue reading “Zupan\u010di\u010d Interview”<\/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":[24,72,15,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-subjectivity","category-unconscious"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15005","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=15005"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15015,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15005\/revisions\/15015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}