{"id":6561,"date":"2011-02-12T16:53:54","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T21:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6561"},"modified":"2011-02-12T17:01:59","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T22:01:59","slug":"belsey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/02\/12\/belsey\/","title":{"rendered":"culture and the real"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real: Theorizing Cultural Criticism<\/em>. N ew York: Routledge, 2005.<\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s real is not to be confused with reality, which is what we do know, because culture defines it for us. The real<\/strong> is what is there, but undefined, unaccountable, perhaps, within the frameworks of our knowledge. It is there as such, but not there-for-a-subject. In Lacan\u2019s account, the meanings that give us our sense of reality are always acquired from outside. We learn to mean from other people, from a language that exists before we are born into it or, in Lacan\u2019s terms, from the irreducible Otherness of the symbolic order. As the subjects we become by means of our subjection to the symbolic order, we gain access to social reality, but we leave behind the real of the human organism in its continuity with its surroundings. From now on language will always come between us and direct contact with the real. But the loss will be made good in the end: we shall rejoin the real in death, which we can name, but not know. Death separates us decisively from subjectivity and its experience, including the experience of reality.<\/p>\n

Because it cannot normally be brought within the symbolic order of language and culture, the real<\/strong> is there, but precisely not there-for-a-subject, not accessible to human beings who are subject to the intervention of language. Psychoanalysis, however, can bring to light the missed encounter with a real so unbearable that it cannot be named. Freud recounts the case of a father who, in Lacan\u2019s interpretation, woke up rather than continue to dream the appeal of his dead son, \u2018Father, can\u2019t you see I\u2019m burning?\u2019 (Lacan 1979: 58\u2013 60). The dead child in this appalling (\u2018atrocious\u2019) vision \u2018designates\u2019 a realm beyond reality, which is one of cruel loss (Lacan 1973a: 58). This loss is real, organic, but language cannot do it justice. Lacan comments that no one can say what it is to lose a child, unless the father as<\/em> father, in the bond with his child that he cannot name as a conscious being in the symbolic order, in culture, in the reality we (think we) know. The dream comes close, but even there the real is evaded.<\/p>\n

Culture is the element we inhabit as speaking beings; it is what makes us subjects. Culture consists of a society\u2019s entire range of signifying practices <\/strong>\u2013 rituals, stories, forms of entertainment, lifestyles, sports, norms, beliefs, prohibitions and values. In our own globalized society it includes art and opera, fashion, film, television, travel and computer games. Culture resides in the meanings of those practices, the meanings we learn. The subject is what speaks, or, more precisely, what signifies, and subjects learn in culture to reproduce or to challenge the meanings inscribed in the signifying practices of the society that shapes them. If subjectivity is an effect of culture, of the inscription of culture in signifying practice, there is no place for human beings outside culture. Culture, therefore, is all we know. In that sense, we are always in culture \u2013 always in the game. And if so, there is nothing we can be sure of, even when it\u2019s vital. Culture is what we know \u2013 or think we do. In practice, we can never be certain of it, because it is known in language\u00a0 9<\/p>\n

\n

Knowledge exists at the level of the symbol, and there is no way of showing that any specific set of symbols maps the world accurately. Our mastery of the world depends on our ability to map it, to recognize the difference between fact and fiction, but we cannot do so with absolute confidence. 10<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If anything resists the sovereignty of the symbolic order, we always risk the uncanny possibility of an encounter that exceeds what culture permits us to define.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real: Theorizing Cultural Criticism. N ew York: Routledge, 2005. Lacan\u2019s real is not to be confused with reality, which is what we do know, because culture defines it for us. The real is what is there, but undefined, unaccountable, perhaps, within the frameworks of our knowledge. It is there as … Continue reading “culture and the real”<\/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":[24,118,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lacan","category-symbolic","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561","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=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6565,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions\/6565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}