{"id":7607,"date":"2011-04-17T15:52:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T20:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7607"},"modified":"2011-04-17T20:23:25","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T01:23:25","slug":"calum-on-z-the-act-part-3-derrida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/04\/17\/calum-on-z-the-act-part-3-derrida\/","title":{"rendered":"calum on \u017d the act derrida part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Knowledge, for Derrida, is an indispensable prerequisite for the decision and, subsequently, for the assumption of responsibility but the decision cannot itself be reduced to knowledge without this rendering it \u2018less\u2019 than decisive, rendering it, that is, in the realm of pure calculation. On the other hand, without knowledge, there remains no possibility of responsibility<\/span> insofar as responsibility would entail a context, a conception of that for and towards which one would be responsible and how.<\/p>\n

Responsibility thus figures and can only arise between the closed automaticity of the system of knowledge and the \u2018meaninglessness\u2019 that would be beyond any systematisation. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Without exceeding knowledge, the decision is but a part of knowledge and thus not of the subject. Without returning to knowledge, the decision has no sense; it is purely arbitrary.<\/p>\n

Is not this notion of the decision commensurate with the notion of the ethical in Lacan<\/span>, with the notion of the ethical act<\/span> as that which can appeal to no guarantor in the Other<\/span>, as that which by definition takes place at the limits of the Symbolic order<\/strong>, as that which cannot be reduced to the law and yet, at the same time, must be inscribed in the Symbolic order<\/strong>? Is this not commensurate with the notion of the ethical as a pulsational moment which emerges from but must also assume a place in the Symbolic?<\/span><\/p>\n

Neill’s Argument <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Contra \u017di\u017eek\u2019s notion of the act which must be located absolutely beyond the Symbolic order<\/span>, both Derrida\u2019s \u2018decision\u2019 and Lacan\u2019s \u2018act\u2019 are such that, in order to be understood as ethical, they must entail a moment of (re)inscription in the order of the comprehensible, or, for Derrida, knowledge, and for Lacan, the Symbolic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That is to say, in insisting on the exclusivity of what he terms identification with the \u2018Other-Thing\u2019 as the defining moment of the act, \u017di\u017eek might be understood to precisely
\nocclude the ethical potential from the act.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

R<\/span>eturning to Antigone<\/strong>, if, in \u017di\u017eek\u2019s terms, her act is possible because of \u2018the direct identification of her particular\/determinate decision with the Other\u2019s (Thing\u2019s) injunction\/call<\/em>\u2019, 26 then it is difficult to see in what sense such an act might be considered ethical.<\/p>\n

It is, however, for \u017di\u017eek, precisely this exclusivity, the radical suspension of the Other without recourse to a further moment of reinscription which does render the act ethical.<\/span><\/p>\n

Antigone figures here, as we have noted, as the paramount example of the act as a moment of absolute suspension. Antigone, for \u017di\u017eek, \u2018does not merely relate to the Other-Thing, she – for a brief, passing moment of, precisely, decision – directly is the Thing, thus excluding herself from the community regulated by the intermediate agency of symbolic regulations\u2019.27<\/p>\n

It is in so excluding herself from the community, in situating herself beyond the regulations of the Symbolic order, that Antigone can be understood, for \u017di\u017eek, to have engaged in a proper act, precisely because the act, for \u017di\u017eek, is not simply \u2018beyond the reality principle\u2019 in the sense that it would be the engagement of a performative reconfiguration of reality, of, that is, the Symbolic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather, the act is that which would \u2018change the very co-ordinates of the \u201creality principle\u2019\u2019.<\/span> This is not to suggest that for \u017di\u017eek the act entails performing the impossible.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek\u2019s point concerns the very structuration of what would be considered (im)possible in the first place. The radical character of the act lies in the fact that it would be that which alters the very contours of what would be considered possible.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or in moral terms, it would not be that which would challenge the received notion of the good but rather it would be that which would redefine what might be considered as good<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neill, Calum. \u201cAn Idiotic Act: On the Non-Example of Antigone.\u201d The Letter , 34, 2005, 1-28. Knowledge, for Derrida, is an indispensable prerequisite for the decision and, subsequently, for the assumption of responsibility but the decision cannot itself be reduced to knowledge without this rendering it \u2018less\u2019 than decisive, rendering it, that is, in the … Continue reading “calum on \u017d the act derrida part 3”<\/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":[83,38,24,55,90,15,106,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agency","category-ethics","category-lacan","category-normative","category-resistance","category-subjectivity","category-the-act","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7607","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=7607"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7647,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7607\/revisions\/7647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}