{"id":9836,"date":"2012-11-19T00:21:25","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T05:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9836"},"modified":"2012-11-20T22:19:27","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T03:19:27","slug":"142-3-4-neighbor-real-thing-and-its-symbolic-gentrification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/19\/142-3-4-neighbor-real-thing-and-its-symbolic-gentrification\/","title":{"rendered":"142-4 neighbor real thing and its symbolic gentrification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slavoj, \u017di\u017eek, “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology<\/em> Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard. 2006. 134-190.<\/p>\n

Smashing the Neighbor\u2019s Face<\/strong>
\nHow does subjectivity relate to transcendence?\u00a0 There seem to be two basic modes exemplified by the names of Jean-Paul Sartre and Levinas.<\/p>\n

(1) The \u201ctranscendence of the ego\u201d (Sartre), in other words, the notion of subject as the force of negativity<\/strong>, self-transcending, never a positive entity identical to itself.<\/p>\n

(2) The existence of the subject as grounded in its openness to an irreducible -unfathomable- transcendent Otherness \u2014 there is a subject only insofar as it is not absolute and self-grounded but remains in a tension with an impenetrable Other<\/strong>; there is freedom only through the reference to a gap which makes the Other unfathomable …<\/p>\n

As expected, Hegel offers a kind of \u201cmediation\u201d between these two extremes, asserting their ultimate identity. It is not only that the core of subjectivity is inaccessible to the subject, that the subject is decentered with regard to itself, that it cannot assume the abyss in its very center;<\/p>\n

it is also not that the first mode is the \u201ctruth\u201d of the second (in a reflexive twist, the subject has to acknowledge that the transcendent power which resists it is really its own, the power of subject itself), or vice versa (the subject emerges only as confronted with the abyss of the Other).<\/p>\n

This seems to be the lesson of Hegel\u2019s intersubjectivity \u2014 I am a free subject only through encountering another free subject\u2014 and the usual counterargument is here that, for Hegel, this dependence on the Other is just a mediating step\/detour on the way toward full recognition of the subject in its Other, the full appropriation of the Other.<\/p>\n

But are things so simple? What if the Hegelian \u201crecognition\u201d means that I have to recognize in the impenetrable Other which appears as the obstacle to my freedom its positive-enabling ground and condition<\/strong>?\u00a0 What if it is only in this sense is that the Other is \u201csublated\u201d?<\/p>\n

143:<\/p>\n

The topic of the \u201cother\u201d is to be submitted to a kind of spectral analysis that renders visible its imaginary, symbolic, and real<\/em> aspects<\/span> \u2014 it provides perhaps the ultimate case of the Lacanian notion of the \u201cBorromean knot\u201d that unites these three dimensions.<\/p>\n

First, there is the imaginary other<\/strong> \u2014 other people \u201clike me,\u201d my fellow human beings with whom I am engaged in the mirrorlike relationships of competition, mutual recognition, and so forth.<\/p>\n

Then, there is the symbolic \u201cbig Other\u201d<\/strong>\u2014 the \u201csubstance\u201d of our social existence, the impersonal set of rules that coordinate our coexistence.<\/p>\n

Finally, there is the Other qua Real, the impossible Thing,<\/span> the \u201cinhuman partner,\u201d the Other with whom no symmetrical dialogue, mediated by the symbolic Order, is possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it is crucial to perceive how these three dimensions are hooked up.<\/span> The neighbor (Nebenmensch) as the Thing<\/span> means that, beneath the neighbor as my semblant, my mirror image, there always lurks the unfathomable abyss of radical Otherness, of a monstrous Thing that cannot be \u201cgentrified.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In his seminar 3, Lacan already indicates this dimension:<\/p>\n

And why \u201cthe Other\u201d with a capital O? For a no doubt mad reason, in the same way as it is madness every time we are obliged to bring in signs supplementary to those given by language. Here the mad reason is the following. You are my wife \u2014 after all, what do you know about it? You are my master \u2014 in reality, are you so sure of that?\u00a0 What creates the founding value of those words is that what is aimed at in the message, as well as what is manifest in the pretence, is that the other is there qua absolute Other. Absolute, that is to say he is recognized, but is not known. In the same way, what constitutes pretence is that, in the end, you don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s a pretence or not. Essentially it is this unknown element in the alterity of the other which charac-terizes the speech relation on the level on which it is spoken to the other.\u00a0 [Jacques Lacan, Le s\u00e9minaire, livre 3: Les psychoses (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 48.]<\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s notion, from the early 1950s, of the \u201cfounding word,\u201d of the statement which confers on you a symbolic title and thus makes you what you are (wife, master), is usually perceived as an echo of the theory of performative speech acts<\/strong> …<\/p>\n

However, it is clear from the above quote that Lacan aims at something more<\/strong>: we need the recourse to performativity, to the symbolic engagement, precisely and only insofar as the other whom we encounter is not only the imaginary semblant, but also the elusive absolute Other of the<\/span> Real Thing<\/span> with whom no reciprocal exchange is possible<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In order to render our coexistence with the Thing minimally bearable, the symbolic order qua<\/strong> Third<\/span>, the pacifying mediator, has to intervene: the \u201cgentrification\u201d<\/strong> of the Other-Thing<\/span> into a \u201cnormal human fellow\u201d<\/strong> cannot occur through our direct interaction, but presupposes the third<\/span> agency to which we both submit ourselves \u2014 there is no intersubjectivity (no symmetrical, shared, relation between humans) without the impersonal symbolic Order<\/span>.<\/p>\n

So no axis between the two terms can subsist without the third one<\/span> one: if the functioning of the big Other is suspended, the friendly neighbor coincides with the monstrous Thing (Antigone);<\/span><\/p>\n

if there is no neighbor to whom I can relate as a human partner<\/strong>, the symbolic Order itself turns into the monstrous Thing<\/span> which directly parasitizes upon me (like Daniel Paul Schreber\u2019s God who directly controls me, penetrating me with the rays of jouissance).<\/p>\n

If there is no Thing<\/span> to underpin our everyday symbolically regulated exchange<\/strong> with others, we find ourselves in a Habermasian \u201cflat,\u201d aseptic universe<\/strong> in which subjects are deprived of their hubris of excessive passion, reduced to lifeless pawns in the regulated game of communication.<\/p>\n

We can clearly see, now, how far psychoanalysis is from any defense of the dignity of the human face. Is the psychoanalytic treatment not the experience of rendering public (to the analyst, who stands for the big Other) one\u2019s most intimate fantasies and thus the experience of losing one\u2019s face in the most radical sense of the term? This is already the lesson of the very material dispositif of the psychoanalytic treatment: no face-to-face between the subject-patient and the analyst<\/strong>; instead, the subject lying and the analyst sitting behind him, both staring into the same void in front of them. There is no \u201cintersubjectivity\u201d here<\/span>, only the two without face-to-face, the First and the<\/strong> Third<\/span>.\u00a0 148<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slavoj, \u017di\u017eek, “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard. 2006. 134-190. Smashing the Neighbor\u2019s Face How does subjectivity relate to transcendence?\u00a0 There seem to be two basic modes exemplified by the names of Jean-Paul Sartre and Levinas. (1) … Continue reading “142-4 neighbor real thing and its symbolic gentrification”<\/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":[78,138,38,15,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-butlerethics","category-ethics","category-subjectivity","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836","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=9836"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9843,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9836\/revisions\/9843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}