{"id":7616,"date":"2011-04-17T16:30:45","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T21:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7616"},"modified":"2011-04-17T17:20:29","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T22:20:29","slug":"calum-on-z-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/04\/17\/calum-on-z-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"calum on \u017d part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

A \u2018truth\u2019 which is clearly, then, not \u2018true\u2019 in the Platonic sense of corresponding to some perpetual higher order but is rather \u2018true\u2019 in the sense of the moment of a pure creation which would \u2018expose\u2019 the conventions of knowledge to be inadequate and force their reconfiguration. For \u017di\u017eek, the act would be such a truth insofar as the act
\nwould be that which would resist and refuse recuperation to the preexistent symbolic matrix.<\/p>\n

Where something like a speech act would, by definition, rely \u2018for its performative power on the pre-established set of symbolic rules and\/or norms\u2019, the \u017di\u017eekian act would signal a break with any preestablished or given order.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(quoting from The Ticklish Subject<\/em>)…\u00a0 \u017di\u017eek emphasises Antigone\u2019s willingness to risk her \u2018entire social existence\u2019, her defiance of the \u2018social-symbolic power of the City embodied in the ruler (Creon)\u2019. Through so doing, Antigone could be understood to have entered the realm of \u2018symbolic death\u2019<\/strong>, that is to say, she can be understood to have situated herself outside the symbolic space of what was, previously, her society.<\/span> For \u017di\u017eek, such a moment of self-expulsion is tantamount to a \u2018suspension of the big Other\u2019<\/span>, a radical break with and from the Symbolic order.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek and Butler<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In order to emphasise and clarify this radical character of the act, the fact that the act should be radically divorced from the Symbolic, that it should be envisaged as irrecuperable to the Symbolic, \u017di\u017eek contrasts it with what he terms the performative \u2018staging\u2019 of revolt, or \u2018performative reconfiguration\u2019 39 of the Symbolic order<\/span>. Such performative reconfiguration would be exemplified in the position taken by Judith Butler in The Psychic Life of Power<\/em><\/strong> where she discusses the possibilities of subjective \u2018resistance to given forms of social reality\u2019.\u00a0 In The Ticklish Subject<\/em> \u017di\u017eek responds to Butler\u2019s advocation of forms of resistance which would successfully reconfigure and thus, contingently at least, offer the potential of ameliorating one\u2019s social condition(s), warning against the illusion of assuming to have successfully challenged from within that which is always already in a position to recuperate any such challenge. The distinction here, for \u017di\u017eek, is that between a reconfiguration which would maintain the terms of the Symbolic and a reconfiguration which would transform the very contours of the Symbolic<\/span> and thus the terms in which the reconfiguration might be understood.41<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek\u2019s point can perhaps be illustrated in the common-place notion of reverse discrimination where the very points of discrimination are precisely upheld in the process of their supposedly politically correct reversal. Some negative aspects of discrimination against \u2018the disabled\u2019, for example, may be addressed through the implementation of quotas for the employment of a certain percentage of \u2018disabled\u2019 workers but such regulation cannot but uphold the demarcation of certain people as \u2018disabled\u2019 and potentially stigmatised and maintain the significance of factors otherwise deemed \u2018irrelevant\u2019 to the criteria of employment or ability to \u2018do the job\u2019.<\/p>\n

A position like Butler\u2019s entails, for \u017di\u017eek, both an overestimation of the effectivity of \u2018performative reconfiguration\u2019 and an underestimation of the potential for the more thoroughgoing revolt which would be exemplified in the character and act of Antigone.<\/p>\n

For \u017di\u017eek, it seems, it is this thoroughgoing rupturing status of the act with regard to the Symbolic, the impossibility of situating the act in or recuperating the act to the Symbolic which renders it ethical<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

What, however, are we to make of \u017di\u017eek\u2019s insistence on the act as irrecuperable to the Symbolic?<\/span> In the distinction that he puts forward between performative reconfiguration and absolute reconfiguration, one might be justified in asking how the latter might be possible. Clearly here \u017di\u017eek is not suggesting that everything of the Symbolic is razed. He is not suggesting, for example, that the Greek spoken in Thebes would cease to be spoken after Antigone\u2019s act. He appears, rather, to be suggesting that the meaning of the symbolic or social edifice is unavoidably altered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neill, Calum. \u201cAn Idiotic Act: On the Non-Example of Antigone.\u201d The Letter , 34, 2005, 1-28. A \u2018truth\u2019 which is clearly, then, not \u2018true\u2019 in the Platonic sense of corresponding to some perpetual higher order but is rather \u2018true\u2019 in the sense of the moment of a pure creation which would \u2018expose\u2019 the conventions of … Continue reading “calum on \u017d part 4”<\/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":[38,24,90,15,118,106,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-lacan","category-resistance","category-subjectivity","category-symbolic","category-the-act","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616","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=7616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7618,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions\/7618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}