{"id":7687,"date":"2011-04-23T20:04:47","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T01:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7687"},"modified":"2013-06-07T11:09:52","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:09:52","slug":"7687","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/04\/23\/7687\/","title":{"rendered":"lack in the other"},"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

For Lacan, symbolic identity inhabits an empty place, or the \u201cpoint de capiton<\/span>,\u201d which occurs when the subject functions as a signifier embodying a function beyond its own concreteness. The subject is emptied of its particular signification in point de capiton<\/span>, in order to represent fullness in general. Point de capiton<\/span> operates in national, religious, political, or ethnic signifiers such as \u201cthe nation\u201d or \u201ccommunism\u201d or even religious identity groupings such as \u201cChristian\u201d or \u201cMuslim,\u201d yet they function as pure negativity, and represent what has to be excluded or negated.<\/p>\n

As Yannis Stavrakakis points out in the Lacanian Left<\/em>, the Name of the Father<\/strong> functions as an insertion into point de capiton<\/span>, as an operation tied to power relations in late capitalism. Lacan\u2019s Seminar on the Four Discourses<\/strong> introduces the \u201cuniversity discourse\u201d as arising in the wake of the chaotic revolutionary protests of May 1968 in France, and across Europe. The university discourse<\/strong> is a mode of discourse that incorporates scientific discourse to legitimize relations of power. The subject in university discourse becomes equivalent with the social totality, and is situated in the particular historical and late capitalist symbolic space, where the movement occurs, mainly apart from the Master\u2019s discourse, and into university discourse.<\/p>\n

An excellent example that reveals the procedure of Name of the Father filing in the point de capiton<\/span> into empty symbolic identity are the popular \u201cculture jamming\u201d Yes Men. The Yes Men are a group of activists who inhabit false symbolic authority by assuming the identity of powerful businessmen, activists, and politicians. They deliver totally ludicrous presentations that are in actuality totally empty of legitimate content. What they have discovered through these presentations to power holders is that their audiences end up listening attentively to their presentations, and more importantly, they end up taking their statements for total fact without question and most often end up agreeing with their absurd findings.<\/p>\n

What this indicates more than anything is that symbolic identity construction functions as an empty gesture of symbolic power supported by a fantasmatic supplement, and both unite to form reality. What the Yes Men and the case of Schreber both indicate is that the commands of identity, deployed from the level of fantasy will always be filled up as an empty vessel. The \u201ccrisis of investiture\u201d <\/strong>for both Schreber and the Yes Men occur when \u201cthe kernel of invasiveness of too much reality\u201d functions on the side of symbolic identity as an empty space that can be filled in with an inherent negativity. This crisis of identity problematizes attempts to adequately symbolize oneself in everyday reality. \ud83d\ude42 His use of Yes Men here is confusing.<\/p>\n

Lack and Desire in the real<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Ethics of Psychoanalysis<\/strong>, the mediating force of the Other is desire<\/span>. Desire<\/span> is posited as universal,\u00a0 \u201call desire is desire of the Other,\u201d<\/span> since all desire<\/span> is structured around a missing jouissance, around a lack; it is important to understand the way that lack of the Other structures symbolic identities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lack<\/strong> … <\/span> is always introduced through an act of exclusion, an exclusion in part responsible for the fundamental disequilibrium between integrating the Other into the symbolic realm<\/strong>, yet we find that there is something that does fill in the symbolic: fantasy<\/span><\/p>\n

The imposition of fantasy<\/span> arises precisely when the desire for filling in, or covering over lack arises. On a structural level, fantasy<\/span> stimulates and promises to cover over the lack in the Other created by the loss of jouissance. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Since fantasy<\/span> is also an effect of symbolic castration, it is also a defense mechanism against the fear of symbolic castration. Symbolic castration is defined by Lacan as, \u201ca symbolic lack of an imaginary object,\u201d and symbolic castration is the subject\u2019s first perception of the Other<\/strong>, as not complete, but lacking.<\/p>\n

Lacan argues that the subject can only maintain psychic normality by accepting this inherent lack of the other; hence symbolic castration plays a normalizing effect on the subject.<\/p>\n

Fantasy<\/span> then becomes crucial to understanding the role of the \u201cI-Other\u201d relationship and to determining how the Other serves as a support that fills in the void for the lack in the Other, in the realm of the symbolic. The illusory nature of fantasy<\/span>serves as the central support for the desire to identify, which is inherently impossible in the real, as discussed above.<\/p>\n

The Other of fantasy takes on the role of an object, or das Ding to sustains desire itself, and since the Other appears as a remainder, the Other is in an almost mythological status to the subject. The Other promises to provide what the subject lacks and thus unify both as subjects.<\/p>\n

The other takes on the role of the object that can potentially unify both the split psyche (of the subject) and of unifying the split social field itself.<\/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 For Lacan, symbolic identity inhabits an empty place, or the \u201cpoint de capiton,\u201d which occurs when the subject functions as a signifier embodying a function beyond its own concreteness. The subject is emptied … Continue reading “lack in the other”<\/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":[124,38,12,21,24,40,72,15,118,106,41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-discourses","category-ethics","category-fantasy","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\/7687","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=7687"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7689,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7687\/revisions\/7689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}