{"id":7599,"date":"2011-04-17T14:46:45","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T19:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2011-04-17T15:32:43","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T20:32:43","slug":"calum-on-z-the-act-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/04\/17\/calum-on-z-the-act-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"calum on \u017d the act part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neill, Calum. \u201cAn Idiotic Act: On the Non-Example of Antigone.\u201d<\/a> The Letter , 34, 2005, 1-28.<\/p>\n

Calum says an act needs to be inscribed it in the Symbolic:<\/h4>\n

The judgement to act, that it is necessary or desirable to act, necessarily entails the judgement that acting in this way is preferable to acting in another way; for example, by doing nothing. In so judging, the subject is by necessity creating a new norm, regardless of how contingent or particular such a norm may be. In judging, then, the subject must both inscribe its judgement, its choice, in the Symbolic and assume utterly the weight of this judgement or choice. That is to say, the act, insofar as it is to be considered ethical, necessarily entails the assumption of responsibility in the field of the Other.<\/p>\n

Yo Derrida<\/h4>\n

Politics of Friendship<\/em>
\nIn this sense, Derrida\u2019s notion of \u2018the other\u2019s decision in me<\/em>\u2019 is actually closer to Lacan\u2019s act than \u017di\u017eek would have us believe. [cites Stavrakakis 2003 in Umbra)<\/em><\/p>\n

In Derrida\u2019s discussion of the decision in Politics of Friendship<\/em>, the emphasis is on the incommensurability of the decision to any traditional notion of subjective agency and the related notion of responsibility.<\/p>\n

Derrida\u2019s point is that a decision<\/strong>, in the classical sense of d\u00eacaed\u00eare<\/em>, a cut, a break, and thus an absolute decision as opposed to a mere calculation<\/strong> which would unfurl on the basis of a prescription, is still necessarily understood in a context<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is precisely not to say that the decision is reducible to its context, which would be to rejoin to the logic of a calculation. The decision must, rather, be seen as breaking from the context which would precede it and be reinscribed in a context which would then be distinct from that which preceded it. It is the moment of responsibility here which would render the decision ethical and distinct from a mere occurrence or behaviour.<\/p>\n

It is the reinscription of the decision in the realm of comprehension which allows the subject to assume responsibility.<\/p>\n

In contrast to a traditional notion of subjective agency, a subjectivity which, in Derrida\u2019s understanding, would be closed in on itself and thus incapable of responsibility, \u2018a subject to whom nothing can happen, not even the singular event for which he believes to have taken and kept the initiative\u2019, Derrida posits the notion of the decision as signifying \u2018in me the other who decides and rends<\/em>\u2019.21<\/p>\n

The passive decision, condition of the event, is always in me, structurally, another event, a rending decision as the decision of the other. Of the absolute other in me, the other as the absolute that decides on me in me. Absolutely singular in principle, according to its most traditional concept, the decision is not only always exceptional, it makes an exception for\/of me. In me. I decide, I make up my mind in all sovereignty – this would mean: the other than myself, the me as other and other than myself, he makes or I make an exception of the same. This normal exception, the supposed norm of all decision, exonerates from no responsibility. Responsible for myself before the other, I am first of all and also responsible for the other before the other.22<\/em><\/p>\n

We might understand Derrida here as indicating that there is that in the subject which is irrecuperable to any sense of self-identity, that which would escape the \u2018monadology\u2019 of the ego; the subject, that is, as inadequate to itself. The decision reduced to a moment of self-sufficiency of the subject would not be a decision in the traditional sense at all but would rather be contained as a moment of calculation, inextricable from the \u2018calculable permanence (which would) make every decision an accident which leaves the subject unchanged and indifferent<\/em>‘.23 It is in contrast to this that the notion of the other\u2019s decision in me figures as the impossibility of self-identity, the rupture in the subject which can neither be contained nor recuperated. It is precisely from such a notion that Derrida adduces the possibility of responsibility.<\/p>\n

Responsibility cannot remain responsibility when it is immersed in the pre-given. If subjectivity is closed upon itself, then responsibility cannot lie with the subject. The weight of the occurrence would rather remain with that system or field of understanding of which the calculation would be a moment. It is in response to the other, to \u2018the other in me\u2019 that responsibility becomes a possibility precisely because such a response cannot be contained within a pre-given system of knowledge.<\/p>\n

To give in the name of, to give to the name of, the other is what frees responsibility from knowledge – that is, what brings responsibility unto itself, if there ever is such a thing.<\/em>24<\/p>\n

This is not, for Derrida, to separate responsibility in any absolute sense from knowledge, it is not to say that responsibility has nothing to do with knowledge. It is rather to point to the fact that, in the decision, as an ethical possibility, responsibility is impossible if the decision is reduced without remainder to knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u2026one must certainly know, one must know it, knowledge is necessary if one is to assume responsibility, but the decisive or deciding moment of responsibility supposes a leap by which an act takes off, ceasing in that instant to follow the consequence of what is – that is, of that which can be determined by science or consciousness – and thereby frees itself (this is what is called freedom), by the act of its act, of what is therefore heterogeneous to it, that is, knowledge.<\/p>\n

In sum, a decision is unconscious.25<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neill, Calum. \u201cAn Idiotic Act: On the Non-Example of Antigone.\u201d The Letter , 34, 2005, 1-28. Calum says an act needs to be inscribed it in the Symbolic: The judgement to act, that it is necessary or desirable to act, necessarily entails the judgement that acting in this way is preferable to acting in another … Continue reading “calum on \u017d the act part 2”<\/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":[38,24,106,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-lacan","category-the-act","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","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=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7605,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions\/7605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}