{"id":5837,"date":"2010-10-16T14:00:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T18:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=5837"},"modified":"2010-10-21T12:11:30","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T16:11:30","slug":"5837","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/10\/16\/5837\/","title":{"rendered":"libidinal surplus and signifier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vighi, Fabio. On \u017di\u017eek\u2019s Dialectics. <\/em>New York: Continuum, 2010.<\/p>\n

consubstantial<\/strong>: Of the same substance, nature, or essence … Christian theol\u00a0 (esp of the three persons of the Trinity) regarded as identical in substance or essence<\/p>\n

Entropy<\/strong>:\u00a0 a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed system<\/p>\n

It is Lacan’s notion of the signifier that discloses the intrinsic limitation of Marx’s discovery:<\/p>\n

the unpaid labour-power responsible for the creation of surplus-value is ultimately nothing but the constitutive, non-symbolizable libidinal surplus that accompanies any intervention of the signifier, that is to say of any knowledge. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why? Because knowledge by definition strikes on the wall of its lack<\/em> (of knowledge), its limit, thereby secreting an entropic addendum<\/em><\/strong>, i.e. a measure of libidinal energy which is not available to perform work.<\/em> This is surplus<\/strong>-jouissance<\/strong><\/em>, whose presence proves that an unconscious knowledge is, literally, at work.<\/p>\n

Everything hinges on the dialectic of knowledge and jouissance, <\/em>for the surplus of jouissance<\/em> (qua lack) is correlated to the arrival on the scene of the signifier<\/strong>.\u00a0 Language therefore ‘institutes the order of discourse’ but simultaneously ‘it does bring us something extra’.\u00a0 When Lacan claims that knowledge is a means of jouissance<\/em> he explains that when at work, knowledge produces entropy<\/strong>, a point of loss, which is the ‘the sole regular point at which we have access to the nature of jouissance<\/em>. \u00a0 (44).<\/p>\n

Insofar as it overlaps with entropy<\/strong>, surplus-jouissance<\/em> has no use-value: it is waste, a quantity of libido that is both produced by and lost to any working activity, <\/em>for we cannot gain control over it \u2014 it remains other. (45)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We must clarify that, strictly speaking, we do not have jouissance<\/em> in addition to the signifier, but as the very impasse consubstantial with the signifier: ‘Anything that is language only obtains jouissance<\/em> by insisting to the point of producing the loss whereby surplus jouissance<\/em> takes body’.\u00a0 Jouissance<\/em> per se is a mythical entity, while surplus-jouissance<\/em> is the libido materializing the loss that emerges from this myth \u2014 which means that whenever we speak of jouissance<\/em> we refer to a surplus that can only be given as entropy<\/strong>, a plus that, as it were, coincides with a minus; and that for this reason it cannot perform any work.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vighi, Fabio. On \u017di\u017eek\u2019s Dialectics. New York: Continuum, 2010. consubstantial: Of the same substance, nature, or essence … Christian theol\u00a0 (esp of the three persons of the Trinity) regarded as identical in substance or essence Entropy:\u00a0 a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed system It is Lacan’s notion of the signifier that discloses … Continue reading “libidinal surplus and signifier”<\/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":[21,24,72,15,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jouissance","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-subjectivity","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837","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=5837"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5860,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837\/revisions\/5860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}