{"id":7677,"date":"2011-04-23T19:44:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T00:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7677"},"modified":"2013-06-07T11:09:52","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:09:52","slug":"over-proximity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/04\/23\/over-proximity\/","title":{"rendered":"over-proximity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tutt, Daniel. The Object of Proximity: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis in \u017di\u017eek and Santner via Lacan<\/a>.<\/em> American University Also available here<\/a> danielp.tutt(at)gmail.com<\/p>\n

The Psychotheology of Over-Proximity<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ethical problem of proximity to the neighbor introduces a number of ethical implications for ethics, and the ethical relation to the Other in Eric Santner\u2019s work, The Psychotheology of Everyday Life<\/em>. For Santner, the ultimate problem of the neighbor is based on the whether the subject accepts the Other (or neighbor) in their jouissance, or REAL excess, and in so doing, how they come to handle this over-proximity. Santner characterizes the Freudian \u201cmental excess\u201d (what Lacan would later deem jouissance) as an \u201cexcess of validity over meaning,\u201d as the \u201cundeadness of biopolitical life,\u201d and his primary ethical concern is in how to convert the excess into a \u201cblessings of more life.\u201d[25] This mental excess that the subject inhabits, or what Santner refers to as \u201cundeadness\u201d colors everyday life as \u201ca paradoxical kind of mental excess that constrains by means of excess.\u201d[26] Santner develops a slightly different type of Otherness than that of Lacan, based on Jean Laplanche\u2019s psychoanalytic theory of \u201cseduction. \u201d Laplanche was an intimate student and colleague of Lacan, and in his conception of the Other, or the \u201cenigmatic signifier\u201d the traumatic encounter with the Other\u2019s desire becomes constitutive of the inner strangeness we call the unconscious itself. Therefore, unlike the Lacanian Other, Santner\u2019s Other is stripped of its material properties, a position that evokes Derrida\u2019s notion of the spectral aura of the Other:<\/p>\n

\u201cthe other is not reducible to its actual predicates, to what one might define or thematize about it, anymore than the I is. It is naked. Bared of every property, and this nudity is also its infinitely exposed vulnerability: its skin. This absence of determinable properties, of concrete predicates, of empirical visibility, is not doubt what gives to the face of the other a spectral aura.\u201d [Derrida, Adieu. To Emmanuel Levinas<\/em>, pg. 111]<\/p>\n

The subject is placed in a relationship with the enigma of the Other\u2019s desire not through language (as in Lacan) but through an unconscious transmission that is neither simply enlivening nor simply deadening but rather \u201cundeadening\u201d \u2013 the encounter with the Other produces an internal alienness that has a sort of vitality, and yet belongs to no life at all. This \u201cundeadness\u201d creates an encounter with legitimation, or what Freud referred to as the death drive, a \u201ctoo much-ness\u201d of pressure and the build of an urge to put an end to it.<\/p>\n

Santner\u2019s ethics at this point, in light of the crisis of symbolic identity is concerned with whether we ought to assume our identity in the social body based on the symbolic mandates that determine our identity, or whether the subject ought to break with this system. The two poles of ethical action he develops are the \u201csciences of symbolic identity,\u201d and the \u201cethics of singularity.\u201d The strength of Santner\u2019s ethical position is that only when we \u201ctruly inhabit the midst of life\u201d are we able to \u201cloosen the fantasy\u201d that structures everyday life.<\/p>\n

Thus, similar to what we see in Lacan, to own one\u2019s fantasy is to really live as a free subject, aiming at the truly ethical question that Lacan poses: \u201chave you acted in conformity with the desire which inhabits you?\u201d for it is desire that aims at the real<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Crisis of Symbolic Investiture<\/strong><\/p>\n

How the subject in Santner\u2019s the Psychotheology, as well as Lacan\u2019s ethical subject deals with \u201cthe crisis of symbolic investiture\u201d are a matter of ethics, which we will explore below.<\/p>\n

For both Lacan and Santner, ethics requires a confrontation with the Other to free oneself of the Other and then surrender to the real<\/span>, or everyday life.<\/span> The confrontation with everyday life, or the Lacanian real<\/span> is a collapse of the subject\u2019s symbolic constructed identity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The symbolic identity crisis<\/strong> that Lacan and Santner refer to can be more clearly understood through Santner\u2019s reading of the book Soul Murder, and Lacan\u2019s theory of the Name of the Father<\/strong>. Soul Murder and Name of the Father<\/strong> are instructive to understanding how \u201cthe crisis of symbolic investiture\u201d<\/span> operates through psychoanalytic theory. \u00a0 Both Lacan and Santner refer to the crisis of symbolic identity<\/span> when discussing the infamous case of the Judge Daniel Schreber<\/strong>, who upon receiving the symbolic authority in society as a Judge experienced a total psychotic breakdown<\/span> where his very ability to assume a symbolic identity rooted in authority became penetrated with \u201ca kernel of invasiveness, which introduced the subject into too much reality.\u201d What is it about this \u201ctoo much reality\u201d that created the conditions for the \u201cthe crisis of symbolic investiture?\u201d<\/span> To fully understand this crisis, a reading of Lacan\u2019s late capitalist \u201cuniversity discourse<\/strong>\u201d and the complex insertion of the Name of the Father<\/strong> bring the crisis into more clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tutt, Daniel. The Object of Proximity: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis in \u017di\u017eek and Santner via Lacan. American University Also available here danielp.tutt(at)gmail.com The Psychotheology of Over-Proximity The ethical problem of proximity to the neighbor introduces a number of ethical implications for ethics, and the ethical relation to the Other in Eric Santner\u2019s work, The Psychotheology … Continue reading “over-proximity”<\/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":[45,125,38,21,24,40,72,15,118,106,41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badiou","category-drive","category-ethics","category-jouissance","category-lacan","category-lack","category-objet-a","category-subjectivity","category-symbolic","category-the-act","category-the-real","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7677","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=7677"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11213,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7677\/revisions\/11213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}