{"id":9841,"date":"2012-11-19T00:29:25","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T05:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9841"},"modified":"2012-11-20T20:44:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T01:44:03","slug":"147-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/19\/147-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"147 the face ultimate fetish shame Jerry Lewis"},"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

The face is thus the ultimate fetish, the object which fills in (obfuscates) the big Other\u2019s \u201ccastration\u201d (inconsistency, lack), the abyss of its circularity.<\/span> At a different level, this fetishization\u2014 or, rather, fetishist disavowal<\/span> \u2014 is discernible also in our daily relating to another person\u2019s face. This disavowal does not primarily concern the raw reality of flesh (\u201cI know very well that beneath the face there is just the Real<\/span> of the raw flesh, bones, and blood, but I nonetheless act as if the face is a window into the mysterious interiority on the soul\u201d),<\/p>\n

but rather, at a more radical level, the abyss\/void of the Other: the human face \u201cgentrifies\u201d the terrifying Thing that is the ultimate reality of our neighbor<\/span>.<\/p>\n

And insofar as the void called \u201cthe subject of the signifier\u201d ($)<\/span>\u00a0 is strictly correlative to this inconsistency (lack) of the Other<\/strong>, subject and face are to be opposed: the Event of encountering the other\u2019s face is not the experience of the abyss of the other\u2019s subjectivity<\/span> \u2014 the only way to arrive at this experience is through defacement in all its dimensions, from a simple tic or grimace that disfigures the face (in this sense, Lacan claims that the Real<\/span> is \u201cthe grimace of reality\u201d) up to the monstrosity of the total loss of face.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the key moment in Jerry Lewis\u2019s<\/strong> films occurs when the idiot he plays is compelled to become aware of the havoc his behavior has caused: at this moment, when he is stared at by all the people around him, unable to sustain their gaze, he engages in his unique mode of making faces, of ridiculously disfiguring his facial expression, combined with twisting his hands and rolling his eyes. This desperate attempt of the ashamed subject to efface his presence, to erase himself from others\u2019 view, combined with the endeavor to assume a new face more acceptable to the environs, is subjectivization at its purest<\/span>.<\/p>\n

However, Lacan\u2019s counterargument is here that shame<\/span> by definition concerns fantasy. Shame<\/span> is not simply passivity, but an actively assumed passivity:if I am raped, I have nothing to be ashamed of; but if I enjoy being raped, then I deserve to feel ashamed. Actively assuming passivity thus means, in Lacanian terms, finding jouissance<\/span> in the passive situation in which one is caught. And since the coordinates of jouissance<\/span> are ultimately those of the fundamental fantasy<\/strong>, which is the fantasy of (finding jouissance<\/span> in) being put in the passive position (like the Freudian \u201cMy father is beating me\u201d), what exposes the subject to shame<\/span> is not the disclosure of how he is put in the passive position, treated only as the body. Shame<\/span> emerges only when such a passive position in social reality touches upon the (disavowed intimate) fantasy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Let us take two women, the first, liberated and assertive, active; the other, secretly daydreaming about being brutally handled by her partner, even raped. The crucial point is that, if both of them are raped, the rape will be much more traumatic for the second one, on account of the fact that it will realize in \u201cexternal\u201d social reality the \u201cstuff of her dreams.\u201d Why? <\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a gap which forever separates the fantasmatic kernel of the subject\u2019s being from the more \u201csuperficial\u201d modes of his or her symbolic and \/or imaginary identifications \u2014 it is never possible for me to fully assume (in the sense of symbolic integration) the fantasmatic kernel of my being.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I approach it too closely, what occurs is the aphanisis of the subject<\/strong>: the subject loses his or her symbolic consistency, it disintegrates<\/strong>. And the forced actualization in social reality itself of the fantasmatic kernel of my being is, perhaps, the worst, most humiliating kind of violence, a violence which undermines the very basis of my identity (of my \u201cself-image\u201d) by exposing me to an unbearable shame.<\/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. The face is thus the ultimate fetish, the object which fills in (obfuscates) the big Other\u2019s \u201ccastration\u201d (inconsistency, lack), the abyss of its circularity. At a different … Continue reading “147 the face ultimate fetish shame Jerry Lewis”<\/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":[78,138,76,15,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-butlerethics","category-sub-destitute","category-subjectivity","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841","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=9841"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9873,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions\/9873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}