The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with David Metzger about his book The Lost Cause of Rhetoric: The Relation of Rhetoric and Geometry in Aristotle and Lacan beginning September 10th, 1996.
From: Diane Davis
Hey David and everyone.
Interesting post, David, about how you would characterize what Lyotard's
doing. I'm not sure I follow all of what you were getting at, but I
really like Hogan's Heroes >:> And I'm nodding with you-cum-Lyotard in
a big way that we ought to be about bearing witness to differends and
finding idioms for them.
So, a redirect. You read Derrida across Lacan in The Lost Cause. IMHO,
you offer an interesting and vigorous read of Derrida that I found
fascinating. But, again, I'm still suggesting that this read has
silenced an important part of what Derrida's up to...b/c his work calls
into question the very rules of cognition you've judged him by. That, in
itself, is not a problem for me at all. But *stopping there* seems a bit
of a problem. What I asked you to do in my last post to you was to flip
it, to read Lacan across Derrida to see what you come up with. But I
realize that this is a majorly busy time...the semester's in full swing.
So it may be unfair of me to ask such a time-consuming thang of you
right now. (I know *I* would balk and/or squawk if it landed on my
doorstep.)
And/but I'm still really interested in this question. So lemme open it
up s'mo.
_____Would anyone care to offer a read of Lacan across Derrida?
Specifically, (the royal-)we are interested in Derrida's third position,
his search for third terms and for ways out of the negative. Would
anyone care to start with Derrida on this idea and give a read of what
Lacan's up to across it?
Feel free to pelt me with spit wads if this is just not what we should
be talking about here. And please don't direct this huge, difficult, and
majorly annoying question back to ME. I'll squawk, I swear... ;]
ddd
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
David,
_____How much is your book on Aristotle and Lacan (especially the latter)
indebted to Zizek's description of Lacan?
_____If not similar, where are and in what ways are your takeS on Lacan
different?
_____Do you have any sympathy (identify with) Zizek's reading of
"Lacanian theory [as] perhaps the most radical contemporary version of
the Enlightenment"? (_Sublime Object_ 7)
_____If so or not, then, why and how?
Marshall et al., if you have anything to say in relation to these
questions, please jump in.
victor
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Marshall, when I read your article in RR, some time ago, which was
directed to Jim Berlin (after the event), I generally nodded in agreement
with the argument, but not necessarily the outcome. Everytime that I
discussed the issues that you raise in that article with JB--and we did so
obviously way before the article was available, and we did so in a
Lacanian context on occasion but more so in a Lyotardian context--Jim
would raise the question of, Are you not sounding neoconservative? (I'm
not sure whether or not the label is primarily from Habermas's thinking,
but it's definitely out there in 4Cs land. And it means that the argument
of taking people through the fantasy over and over is at bottom only an
alibi for getting "them" to accept the status quo and not to hope and plan
for a better ethical and political world for "themselves" and for those
who have nothing.)
The proposition based on the word "neoconservative" is one that has been
tossed my way on countless occasions, and I generally know how to handle
it in the individual case.
_____How would you handle it theoretically and/or practically? My sense is
that an answer does not at all lie in the Lacanian universe of discourse,
that is, an answer that would satisfy the audience based on socialist
(social-epistemic) thinking.
Your or others' thoughts?
Victor
From: Marshall Alcorn
Victor,
You have asked a number of good questions. I, too, need time to try to
think through the intricate ideas and relationships we have muddled
into. I would, though, like to try to respond to your questions with a
few arguments.
I would dispute your claim------
"the argument of taking people through the fantasy over and over is at
bottom only an alibi for getting "them" to accept the status quo and not
to hope and plan for a better ethical and political world for
"themselves" and for those
who have nothing.)"
I, of course, can not control how other people might use my argument.
Attention to fantasy can be used as an alibi of the sort you suggest.
But such a use of fantasy is not at all what I want to advocate.
Here, then, is a five part response:
*Claim 1*
*Claim 2 *
*Claim 3*
Fantasies are montages of different kinds of elements and structures.
They need to be understood in terms of enjoyment, embodiment,
identification, defense, and a host of other terms that are now being
given careful attention by many critics. Lacanian theory is one approach
among many others that may be helpful in making sense of fantasy,
politics, and ethics. I personally have learned a great deal from Lacan
and Zizek and others, but I am not comfortable with any kind of master
discourse or master theory.
*Claim 4*
*Claim 5*
help,
Marshall Alcorn
From: hijinks@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
I originally put the question below to VV, but it has been suggested that
it would be a good question to throw out on the list in general. Also,
as I am only beginning to study Lacan, I would be interested in hearing
in general some of the main points on which Zizek departs from Lacan, and
specifically those points that have to deal with sorting out the question
below.
Thomas Rickert
Are you wondering if I've asked a question yet? :)
_______ Basically, its a) can we read Zizek as having characteristics
that can be aligned with those of a tragic affirmation, and b) does Zizek
have faith in grammar (the symbolic)?
questioningly,
From: Greg Ulmer
Hello ddd, D, and all those trying to unsub,
As a moderator of a list myself, I can vouch for the fact that a good
way to sweep out the lurkers that have been too lazy to unsub is to get a
conversation going.
about ddd's request about reading Lacan-Derrida across one another (I
forget which directions were involved)
I attempted to do something like that in the preface I wrote for the
translation of __Glas__, published in __Glassary__ Ed. John Leavey, U of
Nebraska press. title *Sounding the Unconscious*. Trying to describe the
role of psychoanalysis in differAnce. The idea was to show how Derrida
used the insights into disturbed communication to deconstruct the
phenomeological account of self-presence, as in hearing oneself speak.
Derrida's account of the subject in this deconstructed phenomenology
takes its point of departure from the subject hearing a statement
otherwise, other than intended, beyond communication. Also after
psychoanalysis, Derrida pushes this dimension of listening into the
reading of philosophy (and writing). It is easy to break binary
oppositions when you are riting with puns.
best
From: tcr200z@barbados.cc.odu.edu (Timothy C. Richardson)
Dear listers,
My question isn't specifically for David, so if anyone is at all interested,
please jump in.
_________As there has been much made here of " third position" whatevers, I
wonder what such a notion might have to say about art?
My reasoning follows along the lines of Collette Soler's, insofar as writing
qua art (literature specifically) might be considered something like the
symptom (something heretofore unsignifiable). Might not such a creature as
the differend (or any third position rhetoric) be pointing toward that which
by definition cannot be spoken? We might call this death, but regardless,
this is an accounting nothing like that of psychosis (where all is accounted
for within the Other-which-is-somehow-with/in-me). Or put another way, is
it possible that *art* indicates a possible end to discourse, insofar as it
posits an end to the subject? If such is the case, then, far beyond the
*play* in which any significant work is involved, there is the possibility
of rupture, of laughter, sneeze, orgasm, of knowing (of) a Real third
position and of speaking (of) what by definition we cannot say?
I wonder if any of this has made sense. Please let me know.
Regards,
From: Diane Davis
Hi, Greg.
Thanks tons for pointing me to your preface. I have _Glas_, but I've
never gotten my hands on _Glassary_. I'll try again to find it now.
Sounds just like what I'm looking for.
Thanks,
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Gee, I unjust looked at the AmHeritage dictionary after it fell from my
desk to the floor and what did I see!!?? You are not going to believe
this but it fell open to the page with tags "pretended|Priam." And as eye
glanced down the page I came upon ...
========
Yup, that be us. By(e) way of the tippy tappy (rude) fingers of delurkers
come 'truths' of a sort(ID) type.
Yup, those have been the bestest post(e)s so far!!
VVe Sophistic Rhetors ... that become(s) us.
VVictor
From: rhosa@uts.cc.utexas.edu (Rosa A. Eberly)
tres bon, beektor, et Al!
onward through the turd sophistic!
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Thomas, your description(s) & question(s) are exceptionally well put for me
as a reader. And they invite a careful response. So I will take a few of
your points and respond. And then put a general statement at a newer
beginning.
Tom writes:
As David might say, or as many of us might say, RHETORIC is 1, 2, some
more, or is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas Plato's Socrates sees this string of
apparent singularities as violating the basic principles of Diaeresis
(dividing practices according to the basic rules of species-genus
analytics), we, un/Pre/Tentious string of mamaless, papaless, famililess
ones, just keep on to infinity. Gosh, we just don't NO any better.
But that's how that is all done by way of the negative! And quite flemishly
I for one do not want to start with the sign of the lack. I spend, in this
restrictive economy, far too much of my time there.
I would start thinking about a Table the way that D&G's carpenter/painter
begins to think about a table, adding, adding, and adding some more
until... (_AO_). I've written all about this stuff, 450pages worthless, and
it will hit the pulpstands this novena, I mean, nobember, uh, yesvember.
To writes:
VVell, yes, Tom he is affirming it. I hope that this does not turn out,
however, to be a road to reading Z as a youthful Nietzschean ... as in
_Birth of Tragedy_. By which I mean a leap to reading affirmation of
negation as a "joyful pessimism." Zizek especially sees Lacan (and I
suspect himself! Why not himself?) as continuing in the tradition of the
Enlightenment. Ricoeur and his notion of the hermeneutics of suspicion, as
I read him, says the same for not only Freud and Marx but also Nietzsche. I
don't read the latter in that manner at all. My interests are elsewhere
momentarily and have been for some time. Therefore, I would not make that
particular linkage between Z and N.
Tom writes:
I read Z's _SO..._ and _Tarrying..._ the way I read Freud's _Beyond the
Pleasure Principle_. I read him in _Sublime Object..._ as being very
negative, pessimistic. (Others may not.) Freud apparently had his happy
moments (e.g., all that happy talk about how the Logos was going to save
Western thought, etc., at the end of _Snivelization and Its Discontents_
[?]). I mean thank the gods that there are jokes in Z as the primary
exempla. And prey tell, What purpose yokes? Is it to keep things moving
from "D"ad to Worse? I mean ... very bad puns have their proper place, too.
Our last defense.
Tom writes:
If NO means Yes!, I would say (politically) No to your question. Please
forgive me, but I think that you NO why I have to answer in this (Ill)
manner. I would rather, momentarily, sing of radical sing-ularities.
Have you wondered if I've answered your question yet? Put simply, Yes. Put
with difficulty, Yes. Put pre/tentiously, Yes.
I think that there is a fundamental shift in the way that Z takes ahold of
the negative and how I would denegate it. Momentarily, From Aion to Chronos.
You see, now I understand: Pre/Tense=Aion (future/past). This is what the
delurkers were saying. Yes.Yes.Yes. I will have felt better.
It's Z strategy to take people through the fantasy so that they will not
try to Real-ize the great, good place (ethical, political, love, e-mail
relationships), for attempts to Real-ize such places (topoi/eutopoi) end in
absolute slaughter. This has been explained all over the place from Adorno
(_Neg. Dialectics_) through Lyotard ("What is Postmodernism?")
When I talk about denegating the negative, I am not promising at all (as
Lyo says) "the White terror of truth" (totality of unified subjects) but
"the red cruelity of singularities" (a radical string of singularities)
(_Lib. Econ._). And what is the latter? Everything that has been excluded
gets put back in. Let's call it Advanced Multiculturalism 5301. And I have
limited the discussion, the attempt, solely to writing hysteries/schizories
of rhetorics. But you gotta kNOw that I am going eventually to extend it
across the economy making it as general as I can.
Therefore, I agree with Z that there is no peaceable kingdom, but some
(much) more.
Tom, you deserve a more responsible answer than I have given, but I do have
to be irresponsible now as before.
Rotciv
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Tom, here are some thoughts from Z about questions and ... from me about
non-cooperation ....
Beginning on p. 178 (_SOI_), Z (Zizek, not Zarathustra) writes:
Why do I not like to be questioned? Why do I dislike asking questions?
Why is re/inter/view better as a chat room and not a hot-seat questioning
(inTerrorgating) room? Oh, such guilty self-questioning! Hints, I would
be irresponsible.
Some more later,
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Matthew:
Thanks for the question! I'm very interested in pedagogical issues.
___________So, how does your work with *The Lost Cause* and after
relate to teaching? I've written two essays that might be of help:
1)"Writing as Symptom and Desire: A Lacanian Perspective on the
Emergence of Popular Culture in the Classroom" *The Writing
Instructor* (13.3): 101-110; 2)*Teaching as a Test of Knowledge* in
*Rhetoric in An Anti-Foundational World* ed. by Michael Bernard-Danals
and Richard Glejzer, Yale, forthcoming in Spring 97.
My principal concern is that *teaching* and *analysis* should not be
confused. For one thing, such analogies position *teaching* as
"keeping up with the analysts" or "we could do that, if we wanted." I
criticize a similar positioning of *rhetoric* in chapter four of *The
Lost Cause.* For another, *analysis* cannot be compulsory and
*teaching/learning* often is.
For me the relationship between psychoanalysis and teaching boils down
to this: can teaching (whose chief instrument is the presumption of
the Other/The Text/The Content/The Author/The Project/The
Discipline/The Reading/The Class Time/The Assignment) be informed by
Lacanian psychoanalysis (whose chief instrument is the object a, which
takes the place of a non-existent Other)? Yes, I think so. Lacanian
psychoanalysis presumes that there is no common language--but that a
person might learn, under certain circumstances, the particular
language of another person. I find this very helpful. It reminds me
to ask, "What's holding this word to this word to this word? And I've
typically discovered two answers to that question.
First off, I discover that the student is trying to do something that
is extremely difficult to do--for example, knowing that something is
always what it appears to be, or feeling someone else's pain, or
saying something that requires no further explanation. And I've found
that students do not mind, nor do I feel that I've intruded, when I
point out that their writing is carrying a tremendous epistemological
burden.
Second off, I discover that what I often call "the student's
perspective" is, for the student, an everything (work schedules,
families, availability of parking, death in the families, my dog ate
the home work) that insists she/he continue to know and not to know as
he or she has previously. That is, everything, from the student's
point of view, insists that the student pick up her/his
epistemological burden if the student has laid it down momentarily. At
this point, the student will want to change whatever it is that he/she
says she/he's been doing in the class so far. The student may want to
change topics or read something else or surf the net. Helping the
student to learn more means intervening at this point. I do not
suggest trying to cajole, persuade, force, or otherwise educate the
student in how not to pick up the burden. The student eventually will
always pick up the burden--even if it means destroying everything done
so far and starting *all* over. But it is possible to help the
student choose (and the student will make the choice) to rebundle the
burden (or use simple tools in order to so), so that he or she need
not give up the desire to do something very difficult or the joy of
not doing it. All the while, in *the interval* between desire and
enjoyment, the student may actually discover something new, that the
burden need not be.
Best Regards, David
________________I wonder if the concern about our speaking at cross
purposes or from different planets might have something to do with
these underlying assumptions about how learning gets learned and how
teaching gets taught. Are we (mis)understanding at/in the interval?
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Thomas and Victor:
_________In both your questions and responses you move quickly from
speaking about *negation* to speaking about *lack.* Do you think they
are the same thing? Grounding the discussion of *negation* in Burke
is helpful, so what is the grounding for your use of the term *lack*?
And how do you make the transference from your use of the term to
Lacan's, Zizek's?
David
From: Richard Glejzer
David,
Your last post on teaching has compelled me to de-lurk from this
discussion. I'm really interested in the way in which your last few posts
overlap (bearing witness, technology as producing a *we* and pedagogy).
In particular, I am struck by the relation between bearing witness and
your point that the emergence of writing comes out of the question *where
does a we come from?* I wonder if bearing witness to the holocaust is
precisely recognizing the loss at the center of grounding such a *we*,
where there is no signifier capable of establishing such a knowledge. In
your example of teaching as an intervention within a student's movement
from desire to enjoyment, I wonder if such an intervention is a moment of
fracturing the *we* that has been generated, where the field of the Other
is put in question rather than codified. If this is the case -- if we as
teachers are about cutting into students' identifications with the Other
- -- how is teaching that different from psychoanalysis? Put another way,
how is the desire of the teacher, the desire that is in question in the
intervention itself, not the desire of the analyst? Are you asking
students to *bear witness* to a particular foundationalism?
Richard Glejzer
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
David, your question is a good one and it needs to be clarified, but you
know that I will not--except to say: *lack* is the absence of the
conditions for representing the Thing. There is, of course, the power of
such an absence itself to represent everything. And then there is
Lyotard's (neo-Kantian) take on representing the unrepresentable. And for
political reasons. But such a power is not the unkind of excess that I
refer to by way of a general economy. I am preparing a response to
Marshall's carefully worked out series of claims, and in that post will
try to speak to the issue.
But it will be a while before I can post that one ... two classes tonight
are awaiting me.
The term *lack* serves many master discourses; hence, the confusion. One
way of responding to me is to say, "V, you are possibily conflating the
two terms, negative(negation) and lack." My counterresponse would be
nes/yo. I will exploit(e) every opportunity to get what I can from
productive confusion.
some more later, V
From: Greg Sturgeon
On Mon, 23 Sep 1996, DAVID D. METZGER wrote:
> Second off, I discover that what I often call "the student's
> perspective" is, for the student, an everything (work schedules,
> families, availability of parking, death in the families, my dog ate
> the home work) that insists she/he continue to know and not to know as
> he or she has previously. That is, everything, from the student's
> point of view, insists that the student pick up her/his
> epistemological burden if the student has laid it down momentarily. At
> this point, the student will want to change whatever it is that he/she
> says she/he's been doing in the class so far.
Is it possible, then, to represent a "discourse of the student" using
Lacan's mathemes? I tried taking this issue on in a seminar, and got
absolutely nowhere. But the concept still intrigues me, since it seems
that in moving students from their "everything" to the possibility of
recognizing an(O)ther's discourse, they pass through a weird structure
that I can't identify. Having some time back thrown my arms in the air on
this matter, I await their fall back to earth.
Greg Sturgeon
From: TheVoidBoy@AOL.COM
Since my last post seemed to precipitate a wheat-from-chaf movement, and
exile of the Delurkers from out of Egypt (where is *their* holy land, I
wonder?), I thought I would post again, perhaps to continue the process and
throw the chaff into the fire.
I am quite thankful of Richard's rather insightful question, since it seems
immediately apparent to me (but that, admittedly, isn't saying much):
1) The way David writes/speaks of teaching, he certainly seems to fall easily
into the role of the master Anal-yst, which is an occupational hazard
(unfortunately not one eligible for worker's comp). This is not meant to be
a persunal slam, since for all I know, David is a "good" Anal-yst/teacher and
his student "learn" much. It does, however, make me ponder the relationship
between all this (ha!) RHETORIC of theorizing and its pragmatic/programmatic
function in the class(ist)room. I have enjoyed David's writings, but wonder,
as I wonder/ponder/punder mySelf, just what all this stuff is supposed to
*do* for "us". I keep looking for someone to engage, not theoretically, with
the limit experiences and drive in that wedge in unitary academented
discourse(s) and make a "real" change toward "freedom" (on *whatever*
theoretical basis, and in the name of any God-father you want to
worship-study (so much Talmud, so little time)).
2) I may be reading Marshall very wrongly, which is alright by me, but I
can't help finding lurking beneath all this 'fantasy' stuff, esp. in the
con/text of psychoanalysis, one more desire to write a 'self-help' book. It
seems way to *individual*, way too *subject*-centered. When can, if ever,
psychoanalysis break out of the anthropological and humonist project and
start looking at systemic habits, projects, irruptions, consolidations, etc.?
I think there is a chance that it *can*, but it would mean the
reconstitution of the whole disciplinary discursive landscape.
VoidBoy
From: Marshall Alcorn
Just a short note here about:
When can, if ever, psychoanalysis break out of the anthropological and
humonist project and start looking at systemic habits, projects,
irruptions, consolidations, etc.? I think there is a chance that it
*can*, but it would mean the reconstitution of the whole disciplinary
discursive landscape.
I think that this is what Zizek's work promises, the analysis of an
ideology. But while the *Sublime Object of Ideology* is good, I think it
is also a frustrating book in many ways. I like *Looking Awry* for a more
vivid sense of what it means to see into and beyond a way of seeing, a
way of moving, persuading that is a kind of psychoanalytic teaching.
Zizek, as I read and see him is an accomplished hysteric. I don't really
understand victor's suspicion.
My own writing though, does support a teaching that lingers with the
particularity of individual subjects. I think that defenses are located
there, and so the individual subject need to be addressed in her own
desire. This violates many but not all socialist agendas. But I try not
to let categories restrict what I think.
There is a good deal to be said yet about the symbolic in all this,
teaching, poetry, negation, subjectivity. Maybe David will address this
later.
Marshall
From: levy@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
(what follows is a lengthy post. if you don't like long email messages i
apologize.....)
David,
But seriously folks: As you say, David, pedagogy is not analysis,
because pedagogy is very rarely an uncoerced relationship. It is an
interesting (instructive?) question:
_____Under what circumstances does the kind of relation one would be willing to dub
'analysis' occur? Because it seems to me that the teaching that works,
in your conception, DOES sound an awful lot like analysis. In inviting
students to consider the ideological formations that produce their
language, teachers ask students to risk change. (Take a chance on
pedagogical transference!) The path from desire to enjoyment begins with
desire. If a student brings more to the classroom than the desire for
the kinds of power that a degree can offer, than we have to be talking
about a transferential relationship (if we remain within a Lacanian
paradigm).... Would you agree?
_____Without claiming that pedagogy and analysis are one and the same,
would you say that teaching and therapy share the goal of dissolving
transference?
The next problem that occurs for me in this train of thought
is that the student who is not a student at all (S/he places no faith in the
power of the classroom and does not look upon the teacher as one who knows...)
has no transference to dissolve. Or rather the fantasies that we must
assume s/he needs to work through (those projected on relations and
objects outside the classroom) must be displaced with a pedagogical
fantasy. This fantasy, being supposedly more transcribed and less
complicated than those it displaces, may offer a space for working
through.
At this point, should we introduce the question of
self-interest? That is, the self-interest of the teacher?
_____To what degree does the classroom (the students' working through
space) equally represent the teacher's fantasy? Maybe it is all
fantasy--a result, more than anything else, of the teachers' own
misrecognized subjectivity--the need for disciples! Or perhaps it is
better to see the classroom as ALL working-through space (for the
teacher as well?); but this requires a relinquishment of power that is
very difficult, if not impossible, given the power-relations in the
institutions we work in....
I am a stranger on this Lacanian soil. Any criticisms of THIS
working-through space of mine would be greatly appreciated.... When I
return to teaching, my main interest will be finding ways to create that
later situation (a very old problem, indeed)... I'm not sure it can be
accomplished within a hermeneutic or methodology that assumes pathology
to be uniformly shared by students (and somehow less so by teachers,
which explains their authority).
While 'fantasy' is an incredibly productive trope, I don't find
it extremely useful (in the 'end') b/c I cannot yet locate in it any
AESTHETIC tools for EVALUATING our fantasies. While we can allude
(within language!) to the REAL world (or the THING or the petit objet a
or whatever), all we have (within THIS Lacanian framework) are fantasies,
and no analyst can tell us which fantasy is best (Unless we are willing
to submit to his/her for some personal or political reason. The decision
whether to do so will NOT be 'rational' in any enlightenment sense of the
word).
It may be that this conundrum I have gotten myselves into is a product
of my misreadings.... I look forward to hearing any or all opinions....
m(atthew)al
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Richard:
Thanks for your question! Yes, I was trying to develop an extended
argument in the last couple of posts: 1)concerns about teaching
(understood principally as a form of dialectic) have historically
emerged as questions about *new* writing technologies; 2)rhetoric and
poetics have responded to those concerns about teaching by
substantifying the *you*; 3)the internet, hypertext, and multimedia
(ANA: a new apparatus) also substantify the *you*; that is, ANA has
become rhetoric/poetics (born-again pragmatics or performativities).
__________Now, you're asking how psychoanalysis fits into that little
story. Is psychoanalysis an ANA? Or, is psychoanalysis a challenge
to teaching qua dialectic? Or, is psychoanalysis itself a teaching or
a rhetoric? Or, does psychoanalysis substantify the *you.*
Good Questions. But I'm only going to focus on one of them because it's a
concern of CheVoi(d)Boy and Matthew as well. You're right to
point out that even though I say that teaching is not psychoanalysis,
teaching sounds rather like psychoanalysis when I talk about it. I
think the point of confusion is this: I think that both analysis and
teaching are discourse structures. Both analysis and teaching are
ways of speaking grounded on the separation of the epistemological
burden (the Other) and the I who substantializes/enjoys this burden
through a series of essentializing gestures a.k.a. "everyday life."
But there's a crucial difference between teaching and psychoanalysis.
And it's a difference that Judith Butler and others before and after
her will point out every time a psychoanalytically-informed
cultural-something-or-the-other rolls out of the theory showroom:
"Enjoy your Other" is a pedagogical imperative; "Enjoy your Symptom"
is a psychoanalytic imperative. And what's the imperative of cultural
criticism? "Enjoy your (Other) Symptom." (This is another way of
saying that I don't think *the end of an analysis* substantializes a *you* but
I could be wrong about that; we'll need to talk more).
So, yes, I think teaching can bear witness to a *foundationalism,* and
I think bearing witness to a foundationalism is important because
people need to see to what Other they have sacrificed so much.
Teaching encounters a great difficulty at this point, and so teachers
want to become psycho-teachers even though becoming a
hyper-hermeneutical is probably the pedagogical (as opposed to
analytical) option.
What is this great difficulty? . . .those students who are eager to
make the sacrifice (by denial) because they know the Other; those
students who have made the sacrifice because they know the Other (by
delusion). In fact, a good deal of psycho-pedagogy, I suspect,
concerns itself with denying the existence of these students.
However, this is not to say that a psychoanalytically-informed
teaching can't help us to see *more* of these students rather than
jailing or drugging them. __________So, in this, Marshall, I hope we
are able to agree. What do you think?
___________Richard, sorry I wasn't able to address everything you
wanted me to. Do you think I've made a start?
__________VoidBoy and Matthew. I haven't taken the psycho-teacher
stance, since I don't think it's possible to. Is it possible
for someone to be just another philanthropic aggressive wearing the
uniform of psycho-teacher? Sure, UBetcha! If you're really interested in
how I go about teaching, I can get some of my students on the line to
chat. Their remarks, along with mine, might give you some idea of
METZGER (you're reading the book, now see the movie or at least have
it described to you in breath-taking detail).
And, to everyone--I hope *you*
find hanging onto this discussion as much fun as I do.
David
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Victor,
I agree with a good deal of what you say about Zizek. I think you are
right to relate Zizek to Burke; i.e., there's a reason Zizek's work
has been so popular among and so helpful to cultural theorists:
cultural theory is fundamentally rhetorical/focused-on-discourse
(Burkean? in character). For this reason, Zizek seems to provide us
with a method--a process for discovering what's it (the it that enjoys
at our expense) thereby resuscitating "self-interest" (the I that
enjoys) as a theoretical entity (the not-it that enjoys at our
expense); Bakhtin seemed to say the same thing (the two bodies of
enjoyment argument) at the end of *Rabelais and His World,* and
Bakhtin was very much in vogue for awhile and for the very same
reason, I think. ( By the way, I predict Bakhtin is going to make a
come back.)
Let's face it (which it? the-academic-I-that-enjoys). Cultural analysis sells;
it's the Volvo of theories. That is, academics need not be ashamed of
their privilege and social status when they drive around the academic
block in their slightly used cultural theory because no one would
suspect how much it costs.
A more specific gripe: Many of Zizek's social critiques appear to be
logical exercises--that is, one does not need to consider the
historical specificity of what is being talked about in order to
construct a reasonable model of group formation in terms of the Other.
And it is quite possible that some people will then believe that such
psychoanalytical descriptions are representative of some
"structuralist fallacy" (Butler simply says that such approaches are
anti-historical, and I think she has a point).
But Lacan's retort (and I think this is one way Zizek and Lacan part
ways) is that history is not the Other; it's not even the symbolic, so
why do people (I think Zizek may be one of them) keep treating
history as if it were? :{) History is not about
the formation of groups in terms of the (in)existence of the Other;
history is a particular part of the symbolic that is real. So, Lacan
helps me to form some more questions:
____________Why do people treat history (particularly histories of the
formation of groups) as if they were "all or nothing in the realm of
the signifier"?
__________________Or, more particularly, what is it about the way
people form themselves in groups that lends itself to the logic of the
"all or nothing in the realm of the signifier" and, in turn, to the
logic of sexuation? (Yes! Victor and Diane. It's a Lacanian question, made by Lacanians for
Lacanians! Saaaaaaaaaaaluute!)
______________*Marshall,* are you at all working along these lines, or
working with/around these concerns/questions? By the way, I got your book in
the mail today. I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks. Have you
received mine yet?
David | :{)
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 10:47:51 -0700
David, Victor, et al,
I'm sort of reasking my earlier question (in slightly different terms, I hope).
____________Victor writes (in "Commentary" JAC) that "writing, drawn from
many sources (Jensen, Kleist, Freud, Kafka, Poe, Joyce, Lispector, Gen*t,
and others) is a pastiche effect of third bodies of literature." Is such an
*art* discourse at all, or is it surplus, symptom, something else. Is it
possible to treat/understand art outside of an economy of force (politics),
outside of history, outside pedagogy?
Marshall's recent post at least nods toward poetry. I was wondering if
someone could, at some point, at least mention (suggest, question) the place
of *art* in/as discourse. I'm actually interested in what may come up.
Tim R
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 14:35:13 -0500 (CDT)
Marshall, again, thanks for the note. Perhaps we have met along the road of
a misunderstanding. In any case, since it's been a long time since you
posted your questions/claims, I have included them in my response.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a very long response. Hence, if others of you do not
like longgggg, very pre-tensous responses, then, suppress.
Marshall, You write:
"the argument of taking people through the fantasy over and over is at
bottom only an alibi for getting "them" to accept the status quo and not
to hope and plan for a better ethical and political world for
"themselves" and for those who have nothing.)"
Marhsall, I was presenting this claim as a report of what is usually said
against people who take a poststructuralist, pomo, or in your and my case a
Lacanian approach. I have argued, redescribed at length, the strategy of
going through the fantasy in my own published open letters to colleagues in
rhetoric. So I have had no problems, from time to time, identifying with
this line of thinking. I can do it for *a moment.*
(Remember how Schneiderman's book ends?)
My point in the last post was that I get responded to *myself*--when I use
Lacan's notion of going through the fantasy--as being "neo-conservative." I
mean the response makes sense to a person, of course, if s/he buys into the
notion of redeeming the past (justice as an alibi for desiring to punish
others) through, say, socialism as it is Real-ized in the social-epistemic
court (most broadly defined). Or by way of any of the other Enlightenment
viruses.
Having said all of this ... I am ... like you ...,
no, I obviously have not been like you in this discussion. And I can't be
like "you" (i.e., can't be your ethos/logos) for reasons of having to
negate your thinking by way of the negative.
Call it an Xperiment:
I give much to the idea that thinking by way of the negative is reactionary
thinking. However, if you are hearing Heidegger here, I am not
saying-Heidegger. Who writes:
"...[T]hat we are still not thinking stems from the fact that the thing
itself that must be thought about turns away from man, has turned away long
ago" _What Is Called Thinking?._ (7). ...
Is it true that Lacan met the master (Heidegger), but was so disappointed
that Heidegger had not read any of his (Lacan's) work? ...
This "thing" (Ding) that gets defined by way of the negative (Being
withdraws) is not what I am thinking about at all. Am I contradicting
myself? I never said that I would not use the negative. I certainly will
use it against thinking that is indebted to the conditions of the
possibilities purchased by way of the negative. (And I say this to my
credit. Believe-ability.)
Yea, I know that in Lecture III (in _What Is Called..._), Heidegger says
there is no "lack," but such a lack ("dark, threatening, and gloomy") is
not what I am talking about. Ah, yes, "the wasteland grows...". If anything
is or needs to withdraw it's Nothing! Have we not yet reached an
accomplished Nihilism? Out of the impossible (lost values) comes the
possible?!
I think not this way. But there is an extended, well-plotted out argument
for you and others in GVattimo's _The End of Modernity_ (19-30). Why don't
I want to think in this reactionary way? My dear friend, I am not Italian,
but Sicilian. The topos ... out of the impossible comes the possible ... is
so convenient, right? So Italian. And how it has swept the continent! But I
will simply have nothing to do with it. And I will not make a flying leap
into Aetna, though I will listen to the howling wind passing across its
surface.
So my claim, like my reading of Nietzsche's, is that thinking is
reactionary. (What is not so surprising to me anymore is that Heidegger
forgets all about Nietzsche half way through the lectures. That forgetting
cost him and others for too much.)
You write (and I am going to include all 5 claims here ... they are
exceptionally well phrased, even though they are not mine, and they bear
repeating and rereading) ... You write:
============
*Claim 1*
*Claim 2*
*Claim 3*
Fantasies are montages of different kinds of elements and structures.
They need to be understood in terms of enjoyment, embodiment,
identification, defense, and a host of other terms that are now being
given careful attention by many critics. Lacanian theory is one approach
among many others that may be helpful in making sense of fantasy,
politics, and ethics. I personally have learned a great deal from Lacan
and Zizek and others, but I am not comfortable with any kind of master
discourse or master theory.
*Claim 4*
*Claim 5*
This is all so well put! and it's very reasonable.
If I buy into your notion of fantasy, in the first claim, then, I
capitulate all my subsequent thinking and acting to the other claims and
their overall mode of expected CO-OPeration. (If I accept, then,
"progressive politics" only becomes regressive politics.) Look, if I
surrender to the first claim and its keywords, we can probably have a
'nice' conversation about working through the problems of the world, or at
least our little part of it in space and time. But such a conversation will
be only an academik one. And I don't consider myself an academik. I am not
a conversationalist. I am a dissoi-paralogist as exemplified in these
following exclamations and visual paragraphs:
Let's say, however, that we have the fantasy that, some how or other/s in
one particular *incompossible world*, we were able to take the world's
resources and equally distribute them to every single person dead, alive,
and to be born. We would probably agree that there would still be conflict,
as you suggest. But why? Because of the Symbolic, which is predicated on
lack, shortage, absence, etc. Or I'd rather say as Bataille says ...
Because of the accursed share. Or the necessity for expenditure. Or as he
puts it: "Life is essentially extravagant, drawing on its forces and
reserves unchecked"; and yet, man says NO to nature. Ooops! And And And
Excess is the middle/muddle that our reactionary thinking would attempt to
exclude. And yet, the excluded middle (muddle) returns. This return,
however, is not necessarily a Freudian/Lacanian return of the repressed.
It's extra/vag(r)ance. ("There is in nature and there subsists in man a
movement which always exceeds the bounds, that can never be anything but
partially reduced to order" (...all these quotes in the first paralogy are
from _Erotism_.) And so here is some more E-Rot:
I mean the philousefers and analysts can converse until they bore us to
death about how wonderful things are now because we have reached the end of
values (as Bataille says, "philosophy is such an easy lay"!), we have
reached the impossible ... and wow, let's affirm this, and make the world
into what we want. We are limited only by our imaginations in disrepect to
our fantasies. Well, just as Reason gave us cynicism, Imagination, founded
on the impossible, can give us only more cynicism. Philosophy mirrors
philosophy and we get no where but deeper into the impossible. No, I will
not jump into Aetna, but would become its surface, which is the
t/ruthfullness of Aetna.
And now my turn:
I would not 'converse' about Nietzsche (accomplished nihilism) or 'subvert'
Nietsche (or, more so, subvert readings of Nietzsche's accomplished
nihilism), I would 'pervert' it beyond recognition. Topologically
redescribe it:
Which means that I would, as Bataille in _Erotism_ & _Accursed Share_, make
that non-primitivistic return to thinking excess.
*And place it all across the surface. There would be only surface.* (Why
bother with hard *kernels*? as a source of inventio!? Ha!)
No heights, no depths.
In relation to Hegel where all this thinking about the impossible gets
reinvigored: I would accept abstract Negation, which is a negating of
determinate negation. (It's kind of horror-fying, n'est pas?)
MY practice: I would stuff, stuff, stuff the Symbolic so full of what it
has, by necessity, excluded, I would make it so hyper-hyper-hyperbolic,
that it would *explode.*
There would be no depth to the Symbolic anymore. It would be ... in the
condition of ... all surface.
Deleuze tells us:
"This depth [hermeneutics of suspicion, ideology, unconscious (home/'cause'
of fantasies about _das Ding_) etc.] acts in an original [i.e.,
inventional] way, ...
[Greg, r u reading this .)>= ]
... by means of its power to organ[-]ize surfaces and to envelop itself
within surfaces. This pulsation sometimes acts through the formation of a
minimum amount of surface, for a maximum amount of matter (thus the
spherical form), and sometimes through the growth of surfaces and their
multiplication in accordance with diverse processes (stretching,
fragmenting, crushing, drying and moistening, absorbing, foaming,
emulsifying, etc.)" (_LofS_, 124)
My gods, it's here ... a theory/spectacle of How scarcity/lack/depth is
created. And how we are manipulated by *loss of access to (all) surface.*
An announcement: All those held captive by the depths, the netherworlds
... RETURN TO THE SURFACE! RECLAIM THE SURFACE. It is Yours!
It does not matter if das Ding is up in the clouds where Plato puts it
(conversion) or down in the depths (where Ricoueur puts Nietzsche) or down,
down, down into depthlessness (where Deleuze provisionally puts
Nietizsche), it all comes to Nothing, to a condition of thinking the
possibility of ... out of fantasy of high and low (lowest of most lowest)
comes the possible.
Deleuze goes on to talk about something more 'interesting' to me (Yes, now
here, Marshall, are my interests):
From Plato to Nietzsche, Deleuze goes back to the Cynics and Stoics. (Which
of course, Nietzsche much inhabited superficially). Deleuze writes:
And therein ... all along the surface ... like the Cynics and Stoics!! Ah,
at last, it's okay to be superficial again!! hahahahaha.
VVell, there is with the Kynics a new thought that there is no height and
depth. No such hermeneutical principles worth valuing! But what does this
mean?
Marshall, you gave an anecdote about the Filipino student. For Deleuze (as
for Bataille, and Rorty and KB ... and Sloterdijk), it's a matter of
checking out people's anecdotes.
When anecdotes change ... (and Deleuze counts three major changes in the
history of philosophy, and just stopped counting at that point. When you
get to three, it might as well be three billion!) ...
when anecdotes ... (don't appropriate this as a fantasy structure, for if
you do, you will miss this whole thing by manipulating the surface
structure turning it into an abyss, and thereby rigidifying it from the
depths!!) ...
when anecdotes change they have effects ... in this case ... I am going to
say that the new anecdotes are of the effects of the surface. When I say
'effects' I am not talking about the classical topos 'effect,' which
implies the corresponding topos 'cause.' (Look at your surfaces. Look at
the anecdotes in Diogenes's _Lives of the Philosphers_, especially on D of
Sinope; or look at the anecdotes in Sloterdijk's _Critique...._! Roll up
your sleeves and look at the anecdotes lying all across the surface of your
arms and hands! But don't get a magnifying glass, unless it is to look at
the surface of the pores and folly-cles. Look until you find the purloined
antidotes!)
... However, your anecdote about the Filipino student!
How is one to read it? As manifest? As latent? As seduction? As superficial
(appearance)? You offered it as a means of turning us back to the deeper
(latent, seductive) order? where we would but find Nothing? and spin out
our fan-tasy of ... what? "Progressive [regressive] politics"?
My "help" is to say: ...been there, seen and done that! zzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZ.
Another beginning paralogy, which I take from, yes, Baudrillard:
Great Denial=out of the impossible comes the possible. G*D=Negation!
And, Ah, Yes, yes, yes, pre-tensually yours,
>>help,
>>Marshall Alcorn
huh? VVell, roll up your sleeves and ...
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being given.
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1996 13:09:57 -0400
Subject: ddd-->dm, again
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 1996 15:46:58 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>dm: Z's take on Lacan
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 12:29:03 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>ma: neoconservative??
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 15:13:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: fantasy
The present world of social injustice, exploitation, hopelessness,
cynicism, etc, is one grounded, not in some simple raw materialism or
competition for resources, but in a certain kind of fantasy. People with
sufficient raw resources will kill each other, exploit each other, and
generally treat each other like dirt in competition for status. Status
is not some real entity; it is a fantasy, an imaginary belief manipulated
by a variety of signifying structures. Both real people and real
material objects are exploited for fantasy purposes.
If claim 1 is right, this means that working through this fantasy, rather
than a deflection from politics, is a necessary form of progressive
politics (and ethics, also, I would argue).
Fantasies are complex mechanisms. They are not simple linguistic
representations. You do not give a person a fantasy, or take away their
fantasy in some controlled manner by simply speaking a sentence that
"contains" an alleged fantasy or counter-fantasy.
Fantasies are not natural, unavoidable, and inescapable. Also, they are
not just out there, in the enemy. They are in us. We must work through
our own fantasies to work effectively with others. Working through our
own fantasy is not a alibi that turns our aggression inward on ourselves
rather than outward toward the enemy; it is a mechanism that encourages
us to discriminate wisely among those enemies with whom we fight and
those enemies with whom we form provisional alliances. (Should I tell a
few specific stories about various radical groups that discover, with
disastrous results, impurity within their members? The most recent
version of this story was one I heard from a young Filipino. Every young
radical in her age group at the university, she said, (why did I believe
her, another fantasy? why does anybody believe anything when there is
never enough good evidence for proof?) became the victim of an
assassination ordered by the revolutionary group.)
If this is my fantasy. How can I be helped? If the opposite of my
fantasy is your fantasy, how do we know or work toward a common good?
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 18:24:07 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: tjr->zizek (fwd)
- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 15:54:38 CDT
From: hijinks@utarlg.uta.edu
To: sophist@utarlg.uta.edu
Subject: Re: tjr->zizek
VV,
Hmm... my question was poorly put forward. Or perhaps I am not yet sure
what I am driving at. I have heard you speak many times of your desire
to negate the negative. OK. Zizek is working out of the negative. Ok,
too. Yet Zizek sets up the negative (as I am reading him) as the
productive condition of all possibility -- that it is lack itself that
has ontologic priority -- but that that "lack" is itself produced by the
symbolic. So, lack could be read as a retroactive effect of the symbolic
made to appear prior to it. But -- and I think this is my question --
isn't Zizek affirming this situtation? Isn't the attempt to get at the
point to efface contradiction, control excess, precisely the temptation
to totalitariansim? Thus, just as you often confound people with your
refusal to play the proper game by means of various affirmative
deconstructive strategies, so too they turn around and place you back
under negation. And, as I understand it, you affirm this, and in this
affirmation avoid being ensnared in bipolar opposition. Nor do you have
any faith in the symbolic to rectify this... But does Zizek? He may be
coming out of the negative, but its a strange flavor of the negative that
isn't like most of the others I have read. Granted, its not derived from
Niet. Bat. Lyo. D&G -- but some commonalities are there among the great
differences, no?
Thomas
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 19:43:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: ddd-->dm, again
greg ulmer
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 07:47:15 -0700
Subject: 3rd art
Tim R
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 20:33:25 -0400
Subject: Re: ddd-->dm, again
ddd
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 20:21:30 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv: My dictionary fell and opened to...
pre-tense 1. The act of pretending; a false appearance or action intended
to deceive. 2. A false or studied show; affectation. 3. A false reason or
excuse; pretext. 4. Something imagined or pretended; make-believe. 5. A
mere show without reality; outward appearance. 6. A right asserted with
or without foundation; claim. 7. Ostentation; pretentiousness. [ME
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 21:18:15 -0500
Subject: fallen books: a pretense
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 21:44:02 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv->tjr: zizek
[...] Zizek sets up the negative (as I am reading him) as the
productive condition of all possibility -- that it is lack itself that
has ontologic priority -- but that that "lack" is itself produced by the
symbolic.
Yes, I read Z this way also. His use of the negative (like KB's) is a
paradox of substance, which gives Z both his theory of stasis and his
Method of Invention. You can never say what a TABLE is but you can continue
to say what *it is not.* (Cf. KB, _LASA_). To be sure there are some
differences between how Z and KB employ the negative, but that's another
issue.
So, lack could be read as a retroactive effect of the symbolic
made to appear prior to it. But -- and I think this is my question --
isn't Zizek affirming this situtation? Isn't the attempt to get at the
point to efface contradiction, control excess, precisely the temptation
to totalitariansim?
Thus, just as you often confound people with your
refusal to play the proper game by means of various affirmative
deconstructive strategies, so too they turn around and place you back
under negation. And, as I understand it, you affirm this, and in this
affirmation avoid being ensnared in bipolar opposition. Nor do you have
any faith in the symbolic to rectify this... But does Zizek?
He may be
coming out of the negative, but its a strange flavor of the negative that
isn't like most of the others I have read. Granted, its not derived from
Niet. Bat. Lyo. D&G -- but some commonalities are there among the great
differences, no?
Are you wondering if I've asked a question yet? :)
_______ Basically, its a) can we read Zizek as having characteristics
that can be aligned with those of a tragic affirmation, and b) does Zizek
have faith in grammar (the symbolic)?
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 10:28:07 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>tr: questions and non-cooperation
"...the subject is subject of a question.... [...] To explain this, let us
refer to an interesting book by Aron Bodenheimer: _Why? On the Obscenity
of Questioning_ (Bodenheimer, 1984). Its fundamental thesis is that there
is something obscene in the very act of asking a question, without regard
to its content. It is the form of the question as such which is obscene:
the question lays open, exposes, denudes its addressee, it invades his
sphere of intimacy; this is why the basic, elementary reaction to a
question is shame on the bodily level, blushing and lowering our eyes,
like a child whom we ask 'What were you doing?' It is clear in our
everyday experience, that such a questioning of children is a priori
incriminating, provoking a sensation of guilt: 'What were you doing?
Where were you? What does this white spot mean?' Even if I can offer an
answer which is objectively true and at the same time delivers me from
guilt ('I was studying with my friend', for example), the guilt is
already admitted on the level of desire; every answer is an excuse. With
a prompt answer like 'I was studying with my friend' I am confirming
precisely that I did not really _want_ to do so, that my desire was to
stroll about, or something of that nature....
Questioning is the basic procedure of the totalitarian intersubjective
relationship...."
V
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 11:28:43 EST
Subject: Re: pedagogy and rhet/comp/geom/lacan-discipleship
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 14:44:49 EST
Subject: Re: vjv->tjr: zizek
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 13:14:32 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: pedagogy and witnessing
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 15:01:59 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv->ddm: lack
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 16:16:54 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: pedagogy and rhet/comp/geom/lacan-discipleship
c647679@showme.missouri.edu
http://www.missouri.edu/~c647679
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 17:35:11 -0400
Subject: voidboy->MA, RG
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 20:22:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: psychoanalysis breaks out
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 23:25:38 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: mal: lacanian pedagogy
Thank you for taking on my question @ teaching... Shifting from
abstract theoretical language to discussions of practices (what could be
more abstract than geometry?) can be very trying.... I find that writers
who express a certain "incredulity to metanarratives," as you have in
different language (while all the while remaining aligned with 'a petit
Lacan') are often reticent to speak so directly about their attitude
toward teaching. This is in contrast to those (optimists) who are very
eager to reflect aloud about their theories of pedagogy, but cannot
critically reflect on the epistemological substance that supposedly
proveds a foundation for their methodologies. The engaging quality of
this discussion so far led me to believe that MORE could be said here,
and I have not been disappointed. For this reason, Victor, I would like
to be unsubscribed from this list.
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 15:31:35 EST
Subject: Re: pedagogy and witnessing
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 16:00:23 EST
Subject: Re: Zizek and Lacan
From: tcr200z@barbados.cc.odu.edu (Timothy C. Richardson)
Subject: question
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: vjv>ma: claims disclaimed
======
I would dispute your claim------
======
Here, then, is a five part response:
The present world of social injustice, exploitation, hopelessness,
cynicism, etc, is one grounded, not in some simple raw materialism or
competition for resources, but in a certain kind of fantasy. People with
sufficient raw resources will kill each other, exploit each other, and
generally treat each other like dirt in competition for status. Status
is not some real entity; it is a fantasy, an imaginary belief manipulated
by a variety of signifying structures. Both real people and real
material objects are exploited for fantasy purposes.
If claim 1 is right, this means that working through this fantasy, rather
than a deflection from politics, is a necessary form of progressive
politics (and ethics, also, I would argue).
Fantasies are complex mechanisms. They are not simple linguistic
representations. You do not give a person a fantasy, or take away their
fantasy in some controlled manner by simply speaking a sentence that
"contains" an alleged fantasy or counter-fantasy.
Fantasies are not natural, unavoidable, and inescapable. Also, they are
not just out there, in the enemy. They are in us. We must work through
our own fantasies to work effectively with others. Working through our
own fantasy is not a alibi that turns our aggression inward on ourselves
rather than outward toward the enemy; it is a mechanism that encourages
us to discriminate wisely among those enemies with whom we fight and
those enemies with whom we form provisional alliances. (Should I tell a
few specific stories about various radical groups that discover, with
disastrous results, impurity within their members? The most recent
version of this story was one I heard from a young Filipino. Every young
radical in her age group at the university, she said, (why did I believe
her, another fantasy? why does anybody believe anything when there is
never enough good evidence for proof?) became the victim of an
assassination ordered by the revolutionary group.)
If this is my fantasy. How can I be helped? If the opposite of my
fantasy is your fantasy, how do we know or work toward a common good?
==================================
"Nietzsche was able to rediscover depth only after conquering the surfaces.
But he did not remain at the surface, for the surface struck him as that
which had to be assessed from the renewed perspective of an eye peering out
from the depths. Nietzsche takes little interest in what happened after
Plato, maintaining that it was necessarily the continuation of a long
decadence. We have the impression, however, that there arises, in
conformity to this method, a third image of philosophers. In relation to
them, Nietzsche's pronouncement is particularly apt: how profound these
Greeks were as a consequence of their being superficial!" (_LofS_, 129).
"The seduction of Lacanianism is, no doubt, an imposture [What did Zizek
say about impostures?]; but in its own way it corrects, rectifies and
atones for the original imposture of Freud himself, that of the foreclosure
of the form/seduction to the advantage of a would-be science. The Lacanian
discourse, which generalizes the seductive practices of psychoanalysis,
avenges this foreclosed seduction, but in a manner that is itself
contaminated by psychanalysis. That is to say, the vengenance always occurs
within the terms of the Law (of the symbolic), resulting in an insidious
seduction exercised in terms of the law and (of the effigy) of a Master who
rules by the Word over hysterical masses unfit for pleasure... [...]
Nevertheless, with Lacan it is still a matter of the death of
psychoanalysis, of a death due to the triumphant but posthumous reemergence
of what at the beginning was denied. Isn't this the fulfillment of a
destiny? At least psychoanalysis will have had the opportunity to end with
a GREAT IMPOSTOR after having begun with a GREAT DENIAL." (_Seduction_,
57-58; caps mine).
e-Rotciv.
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