Adam Kotsko has written an interesting post over at An und fur sich on God, the big Other, and Calvinism. There is much that is commendable and of value in this post, however I disagree with Adam’s claim that the big Other cannot be treated as God. God is one way in which the symbolic manifests itself in the thought of human subjects. Yet, since he has banned me from the site I will instead outline my reasons here as this point is important from the standpoint of how psychoanalysis conceives structuration of the subject. Adam writes:
A common misconception in the early stages of learning Lacanian theory is to assume that “the big Other” is God. In point of fact, this is not the case. The big Other refers to the realm of officiality and quasi-officiality, and the use of the word “big” rather than, say, “grand” in translating this concept testifies to a fundamental silliness. We all know objectively that the social order is impersonal, but we act like there’s a person out there — not like all the other others, but a really big Other — whose recognition we need and who, in some cases, must be kept in the dark.
This is not quite accurate. Adam is right to argue that the symbolic refers to the realm of officiality and the impersonal world of the social. However, there are social and individual instances where God is experienced as serving this function as an element in a structure. God can be one instance of the big Other. The most compelling proof of this comes from the masculine side of the graphs of sexuation. This side of the graphs of sexuation represent symbolic castration or the manner in which subjects are subordinated to the symbolic. You’ll note that the lower portion of the graph reads “all subjects are subject to symbolic castration” whereas the upper portion reads “there is at least one subject that is not subject to the law of symbolic castration”.
It is this upper portion of the graph of sexuation that is here of interest. Lacan’s analysis of masculine sexuation closely follows the logic of Freud’s Totem and Taboo. Many of you will recall that there myth tells the story of the primal father who had exclusive rights to the enjoyment of all women (i.e., he’s bound by no symbolic law and therefore there’s no limit to his enjoyment). Frustrated, the brothers band together and kill the primal father so that they might regain their enjoyment. However, out of a combination of guilt towards what they have done (they also admired the primal father) and practical necessity (they don’t want a repeat of this situation), they agree to institute a limitation to their jouissance, such that it is forbidden for each of the members to enjoy his own mother or sister.
Here then we have a myth of how the symbolic is born or how these prohibitions come to emerge. Lacan’s point is that the symbolic always has a supplement or a fantasmatic shadow that grounds the symbolic and prevents it from sliding all over the place. This limit point is the idea of a being– a fantasmatic idea –that is not castrated or limited or bound by the symbolic. The point, then, is that we have a structure here that can be filled out in many different ways. To understand the concept of structure, we have to think in terms of functionalist mathematics. In a mathematical function you have something of the form F(x), such that for any value of the variable x you get an output. The point is that the function remains the same regardless of whatever is put in the place of the variable. Identity is thus not detemined by the variable or entity in the x position, but rather by the function. The function remains the same across variations.
The Lacanian thesis is thus that any symbolic structure necessarily has an element that fills the place of the upper portion of the graph of sexuation. One example of this is the primal father. Another example of this– from Hegel –is the sovereign king that occupies by his position by nature, thereby functioning as an exception to all other law that is determined by convention. Yet another example of this is how students think of definitions. Some students, when writing papers, begin with something like “According to Webster’s” and then cite a definition. The underlying, unconscious thought process is that language is based on the authority of a grand dictionaire that knows the true meaning of all terms. The point here is that at the level of the lived experience of language we’re all a bit confused about meaning and uncertain of what words mean, and meaning is a product of our collective activities that is always in flux. Nonetheless, we project a figure that does know, a figure that is not “castrated” by this uncertainty, as a fiction of someone that knows the true meaning. This, for instance, is the underlying fantasy of the anti-gay marriage movement that perpetually brays “marriage, by definition is between a man and a woman”. When they claim this they are implicitly claiming that there is an eternal dictionary floating about in Platonic heaven somewhere that isn’t the product of how collectivities or assemblages define terms. Another example would be those social formations that make reference to God as what founds or establishes the law. Thus, for instance, you have Mosaic law as articulated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy on the one hand, and then the supplement that grounds this senseless set of stipulations. Descartes’ third meditation also follows this logic, where God serves the function of grounding the realm of natural law, thereby allowing us to posit an order behind the apparent chaos of our experience. In short, a masculine subject is a subject that believes in God, transcendence, or some functional equivalent.
Yet another example of this structure would be Freud’s analysis of church and military in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. There Freud examines group formations where the leader functions as a necessary principle. It is interesting that for Freud an ideal can serve a similar role, thereby underlining that what is being talked about is a structural function, not a concrete thing (Lacan will make much of this in his account of the unary trait and master-signifier, starting with Seminar 9: L’identification. It could be said that a good deal of psychoanalysis has consisted in the exploration of how alternative social formations without this structure might be possible. Thus, when Lacan denounces the Oedipus in Seminar 17, he is denouncing this structure. Similarly, Lacan’s various attempts to form a psychoanalytic school revolved around the question of how it’s possible to form a social organization that isn’t organized around a master or belief in the big Other, but which squarely recognizes the “hole” in the Other, it’s non-existence.
Finally, it’s important to note the close tie that both Lacan and Freud observe between obsessional neurosis and religious belief. For Lacan, obsessional neurosis is closely connectioned to masculine sexuation (subjects that are biologically male or biologically female can nonetheless be sexuated in a masculine way). This close tie has to do with how obsessionals relate to the symbolic and the fantasmatic supplement they project into the symbolic in the form of a “god-function”.
All of this casts light on Lacan’s claim that psychoanalysis is the only true atheistic discourse (I’m not sure I agree) and what he means when he claims that psychoanalysis is an “atheology”. Lacan defines the end of analysis as traversing the fantasy and overcoming belief in the big Other. No longer believing in the big Other does not mean giving up the symbolic, but relating to the symbolic in a new way. Lacan develops this theme beginning with Seminar 22: RSI, where he distinguishes between believing in the symptom and identifying with the symptom. A subject that believes in the symptom is one that believes there’s a final interpretant out there that would finally unlock the secret of the unconscious process. That is, it presupposes a God function or that the Other is complete. In this regard, many theologies are symptomatic. A subject that identifies with the symptom is a subject that identifies with the unconscious process– not unlike Deleuze and Guattari’s schizophrenic as a process –and draws jouissance from the endless play of the symptom. More needs to be said about this, but I am here merely pointing to it. Rather than supplementing the big Other with the fiction of an uncastrated figure that floats behind it and guarantees order behind the apparent chaos of our social interactions, one no longer believes that there is a true order behind this chaos. In short, one moves to the feminine side of the graphs where encounters with others are evaluated on a subject by subject basis. Joyce, for Lacan, is an instance of a relation to the symbolic that is no longer premised on the belief in the big Other. This is why psychoanalysis is, for both Freud and Lacan, contrary to most monotheistic forms of religiosity… At least as commonly understood. In a nutshell, these formations are, for Lacan, fetishes (recall that a fetish is designed to hide or disavow castration). For Lacan fantasy is designed to cover over castration, and the first of these fantasies is the belief that the big Other exists… That somewhere, somehow, there is an Other that both enjoys and that knows its own desire. God can be one example of this fantasy (I allow that there might be sophisticated theologies that avoid this criticism). I suspect that this is the reason that Adam was compelled to argue that God is not an instance of the symbolic, as Adam’s religious commitments certainly disallow the claim that God is a fetish. Moreover, I find Adam’s rhetoric in the paragraph cited below very interesting. He refers to the “beginning student of Lacan” which has perjorative connotations and functions as an unsupported enthymeme, correcting the wayward and unexperienced student. The problem is that there are numerous places in the seminar where Lacan actually treats God in this way. It is fine that Adam rejects the thesis that God is a fetish or a symptom. There are arguments to be made. But one cannot simultaneously be a Lacanian and advocate a position where God is conceived as transcendent, unlimited, all knowing, outside the flux and bustle of the world, etc. Zizek goes some of the way towards developing a theology that wouldn’t be subject to these criticisms by staunchly treating Jesus as a man and by arguing that Christianity is premised on the impotence of God the father. I suspect that this understanding of Christianity where Christianity becomes a materialism and God is understood as impotent wouldn’t be endorsed by many Christians but would in fact be a heresy. I cannot, however, say this with certainty.
Adam might respond by pointing out that Lacan also says God(s) is the real. Yes he does, but the “also” is important here. On the one hand, Lacan formulates claims in a variety of ways throughout the seminar, so we can’t reduce his claims to just one. On the other hand, this statement entails that God(s) are the impossible or the constitutive deadlock and antagonism that inhabits the heart of any symbolic system. The point is that we place the Gods in the place of these antagonisms as a way of covering them over or hiding them, thereby giving the symbolic some minimal consistency. This aphorism thus returns us to the symbolic function of the God-fetish.
Larval Subjects . 
May 1, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Perhaps you are right about God being one instance of the big Other.
Your diagnosis of why I failed to get this right is pretty crazy, however.
May 1, 2007 at 11:40 pm
It’s possible that, for Calvin, God inhabits the Real as much or more than he does the role of the big Other. Since God is something of an empty signifier (perhaps the very model of the empty signifier), the psychological deployment of God, the church, and other phenomena can vary between religions and even within a single religion.
What appears to be Lacan’s inconsistent treatment of the subject is really differences between symptoms and their systems, their theologies.
Where does Zizek describe the Christian God as impotent, and how does he seek to justify his reading?
May 2, 2007 at 12:29 am
Zizek also throws pot-shots at what he never clearly identifies as (Western) Buddhism. In “On Belief,” he identifies a fetishistic relationship to something (he says “Western Buddhism,” though he never really says what it is), which allows the Western (Capitalist) Buddhist to be at ease with the dizzying pace of and contradictions within Capitalism. He comes back to this again in “The Puppet and the Dwarf,” “The Parallax View,” and an essay (available online) “Revenge of Global Finance.” He mentions Buddhism in the first part of an essay found in “Interrogating the Real,” the “Author’s Afterword: Why Hegel is a Lacanian.”The funny thing is that Lacan was quite fond of the Zen tradition of Buddhism, particularly for the uniquely analytic situation of the Master and his student(s). A quick read of D.T. Suzuki’s “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism,” which is full of many traditional stories and koans, reveals why Zen would appeal to Lacan: it refuses to acknowledge the Symbolic order as perfectly whole and consistent, much less by virtue of a Big Other. Specifically, the Zen master would ask of his students seemingly impossible questions and demand an answer, though usually making the stipulation that to get the point they must neither affirm nor deny in their response. I have speculated that Buddhism in its most traditional forms threatens Zizek’s masculine jouissance, because in its focus on the impermanent (annica) and insubstantial (anatta) and unsatisfactory (dukkha) Buddhism forces us to confront precisely the fact of our castration and how that isn’t the end of the world.
May 2, 2007 at 2:10 am
Thinking about Lacan’s formulas of sexuation in relation to some of the things that you say in your post, it strikes me that there might be some highly circumstantial sociological support for them to be found amongst the ‘population’ of analytic philosophers. For, amongst analytic moral philosophy, the turn away from a law-based conception of morality — one that privileges the deontic proprieties of obligation and permission — has been disproportionately spearheaded by female academics, especially once we consider the relatively few numbers of women within analytic philosophy in senior academic positions. Elizabeth’s Anscombe’s paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ in 1958 was largely responsible for revitalising Aristotelianism again outside of theology (at least for analytic philosophy anyway), and can be seen as inaugurating a whole new neo-Aristotelian movement. And there are a substantial number of respected female philosophers who have contributed to this tradition (Foot, Murdoch, Hursthouse, Wolf, Nussbaum). Perhaps it is no accident that a central feature of such an approach has been a rejection of law-like ‘generalism’ for a ‘particular ism’ that would very much endorse the sentiment you express in connection with the feminine side of the graphs: “encounters with others are [to be] evaluated on a subject by subject basis.” Of course, such a hypothesis hinges upon being able to map female sexuation onto women to some degree, amongst other things. Nonetheless, it strikes me as a possible explanation for the phenomena.
May 2, 2007 at 3:09 am
What appears to be Lacan’s inconsistent treatment of the subject is really differences between symptoms and their systems, their theologies.
Joseph, I feel this is an exceptionally important point. It’s worth emphasizing that there’s an “empirical” (I need a better word) to psychoanalytic work such that we have to look at the specificity or singularity of various formations and their organizations. This might tie in nicely with Calvin as well. I wanted to shy away from this because God appearing in the real resonates in my mind with psychosis. That is, what is foreclosed in the symbolic returns in the real. This can be very clearly seen in Schreber’s relationship to God. Here a whole can of worms is opened vis a vis traditional accounts of God appearing as well. How do we distinguish between Abraham and someone like the woman here in the States who cut the arms off her children because God commanded her to or the other woman who drowned her children for the same reason?
Where does Zizek describe the Christian God as impotent, and how does he seek to justify his reading?
Zizek’s various writings on Christianity bleed together in my mind. If memory serves me correctly, he develops this reading in The Puppet and the Dwarf. He pursues this thesis through a reading of Job and Jesus’ death. In both cases the lament to God goes unanswered. Zizek concludes that this should be taken to indicate not simply that God refuses to respond but that God cannot respond. The real lesson, then, of Jesus’s death, according to Zizek, is that the reigns are in our hands and that we must take hold of our collective destinies. Or something like that.
May 2, 2007 at 3:16 am
PDX, this is a provocative thesis that I’d enjoy seeing you develop more thoroughly. Zizek makes a number of gestures towards adopting the stance of feminine sexuation, but it’s not clear that he really accomplishes this transition. As I recall he does cite Suzuki in a couple of places to ground his critique, claiming that for Suzuki the Zen subject is the perfect capitalist subject (not that this is Suzuki’s claim, but that it follows as an implication of what he has to say about Zen and military drills). The practice of simplifying and ignoring texts is nothing new for Zizek. In his readings of Christianity he suggests that we can ignore what Jesus says altogether and treat Paul as the real event. A theologian/philosopher friend of mine is developing a very interesting reading of Jesus as Lacanian analyst, based on Christ’s use of enigmatic parables and his perpetual refusal to identify himself. This, perhaps, would be in contrast to Paul where you get dogmatic determination of identity of a sort that is in some respects the opposite of the clinical position of the analyst and what is aimed at with regard to the liberation of desire in analysis (a perpetually mobile desire or drive that never fixates on one object or identification).
May 2, 2007 at 3:25 am
Bomb, it might not be accidental that this emerges in analytic philosophy either. Beginning with seminar 12, Lacan begins to focus heavily on analytic philosophy in his seminar, commonly referencing figures such as Russell, Carnap, Cantor, Quine, Davidson, Goedel, Wittgenstein and others (I can’t recall if there are references to Kripke or not). In these discussions he gravitates towards formal paradoxes and deadlocks of formalization (these later become Lacan’s definition of the real). Around seminar 18 this culminates in the discussions of sexuation where Lacan begins to argue that these formalizations allow us to encircle a specifically feminine form of jouissance that isn’t the phallic jouissance of masculine economies (jouissance attached to various symbolic functions surrounding having the phallus, i.e., symbolic prestige, enjoyment drawn from doing ones duty, little thefts of enjoyment stolen behind the master’s back, etc), but is rather a form of jouissance that falls outside the symbolic but is immanent to the symbolic. This jouissance, for instance, might be an enjoyment in the sheer materiality of language– not its signification –or the act of speaking about nothing in particular at all (think of modernist literature and poetry where meaning/signification becomes secondary to the text as a matter). This wouldn’t be the only form of feminine jouissance, just one readily recognizable example. What seems crucial here is the event of the encounter rather than whatever the encounter might be about (think of two friends or lovers speaking late into the night about nothing in particular at all). All of this, of course, strays from your point.
May 2, 2007 at 6:19 am
But dr. Sinthome, when Christianity tells us that Jesus was a man like any other, isn´t Christianity telling us to give up on the Big Other? He was like us, a man like any other. And when Christianity says that only those who give up on life shall find it, isn´t Christianity describing ´´traversing the fantasy´´. And what about ´´the grass is always greener on th other side of fence´´, that is to say, le petit objet a. Finally, doesn´t Christianity emphasize a personal relationship with God, the fact that He speaks to you personally, on a case by case basis? You pray in the darkness of you room. And what came in the beginning? Logos. The Word.
May 2, 2007 at 6:24 am
And Christian Orthodoxy for example believes that that hell, though often described in metaphor as punishment, is not inflicted by God, but rather is the soul’s inability to participate in God’s infinite love which is rained down on everyone.
May 2, 2007 at 6:29 am
In fact the paradox ´´Mangod´´ is perfectly describable in your terms – believing in the symptom, and identifying with it.
May 2, 2007 at 6:59 am
Dejan, this would be the point of Zizek’s reading, yes. The problem is that we would have to reject any discussion of miracles or resurrection in order for this thesis to hold, else Christ is not really a man. You’ve suggested a couple of times now that Christianity is a form of belief that’s premised on traversing the fantasy and related concepts. In a previous comment on another post you focused on subjective destitution. However, while this is certainly an important element, subjective destitution isn’t sufficient so long as one continues to think of an all seeing eye or a god figure. I think that so long as one continues to maintain a belief in that voice that responds to prayer the Lacanian requirement hasn’t been met. This would hold for your comments about hell as well. It is not recognition of one’s own limitation that’s important here, but rather the castration of the Other that’s central.
May 2, 2007 at 7:07 am
There is, incidentally, a good deal more to the concept of objet a than the “grass is greener on the other side”. This confuses object a as cause of desire with objet a as object or aim of desire. I’ve written a good deal about this here on this blog so I won’t repeat it here. But objet a is not the idea of the object that would complete me, nor is it even an object that I desire. A good example of this is Freud’s case of the young female homosexual that jumps on the train tracks when her father stares at her with contempt when seeing her with the prostitute. She jumps because she’s lost the cause of her desire, the gaze. But this gaze is not the object of her desire. The prostitute is. When that gaze collapses she ceases, in her psychic economy, to be a subject. We tend to be pretty clear as to what the object of our desire is and this is part of the problem. What we’re unclear of is the point from which we desire or the cause of our desire. This is why the analyst occupies the position of objet a in the discourse of the analyst. The analyst occupies the blind-spot, the remainder, what the psychic economy excludes to constitute itself as a subject. Far more needs to be said about this.
May 2, 2007 at 7:31 am
The problem is that we would have to reject any discussion of miracles or resurrection in order for this thesis to hold, else Christ is not really a man
This is confusing dr. Sinthome, for in Lacan´s teaching as well, man is not really a man, if here you are invoking some humanist definition of man? What IS a man… And the account of the decentered subject´s ontology is nearly mystical in the structural and structuring role it ascribes to language, I think language is divine in Lacan´s system, or plays a role equivalent to God in a religious system.
This confuses object a as cause of desire with objet a as object or aim of desire
I had in mind dr. Zizek´s definition “[The] MacGuffin is objet petit a pure and simple: the lack, the remainder of the real that sets in motion the symbolic movement of interpretation, a hole at the center of the symbolic order, the mere appearance of some secret to be explained, interpreted, etc.”
and I think this is reflected in the proverb about the green grass, as well as in the story of the Prodigal son, in that the Prodigal son was chasing after the ´´remainder of the real´´ which in fact only disguises a hole, as he realizes at the end of his ´´anamorphotic´´ adventure, prompting his return to home. That the story emphasizes how the other son, who didn´t have the guts ´´to traverse the fantasy´´, won´t inherit the father´s assets, only reaffirms the link with the psychoanalytic process.
May 2, 2007 at 7:38 am
It’s not a humanist definition of man, just a simple observation that no other subjects are resurrected from the dead. For Lacan, like Heidegger, death is the “absolute master”. Zizek often flies fast and loose when he talks about objet a and vascillated wildly between objet a in the proper clinical sense of object-cause and the object of desire. He’s not an analyst.
May 2, 2007 at 7:50 am
It’s not a humanist definition of man, just a simple observation that no other subjects are resurrected from the dead.
however in this context you have to remember that religions vastly differ in the importance they ascribe to supernatural phenomena like the Apocalypse. Greek Orhodoxy for example doesn´t believe that the future, or the Apocalypse is any of our business in our earthly life, and encourages us to treat this life as the only one we have. Also, you are never told that you should seek God for the sake of being resurrected, rewarded with eternity for your efforts. Communism, on the other hand, promises Paradise on Earth, and as a result has caused far more murder and mayhem in Serbia than the Orthodox church ever did. So even purely sociologically speaking, in this instance, the Church (or the Christian belief) is not to blame for the particularisms, fundamentalisms and feuds that tore the country apart.
May 2, 2007 at 8:02 am
A point that can’t be repeated enough is that the fantasy is a fantasy about the completness of the Other, not the subject. There’s plenty to attest to the fact that the subject is more than happy to take incompleteness on himself. For instance, many cultures historically have taken unusual events such as the appearance of comets as signs that they have done something wrong. The real trauma is the idea that the Other doesn’t know, is castrated, is divided. This is what I was objecting to. You were placing the fantasy on the side of the subjects lack, not on the side of the Other. You do this with your remarks on resurrection to. These are not the issues from a psychoanalytic perspective.
I wasn’t speaking of the resurrection of followers, but the resurrection of Christ. Does Orthodox Christianity believe that Christ was resurrected, that he turned water into wine, that the Red Sea was parted, etc? Miracles are treated as evidence for religious belief. Each religion has its miracles. For instance, Daphne turning into an olive tree in Greek mythology.
May 2, 2007 at 8:12 am
the fantasy is a fantasy about the completness of the Other, not the subject
yes but how is this relevant to the DYNAMIC of a story like the Prodigal Son where the fantasy of completeness (regardless of how you designate it, as belonging to the Prodigal Son as subject, or the foreign country as the Other) is broken, much like the analytic subject gives up on the Big Other?
Does Orthodox Christianity believe that Christ was resurrected, that he turned water into wine, that the Red Sea was parted, etc
Yes and in a similar way Lacan believes that language magically structures the subject
May 2, 2007 at 8:18 am
Or to put it somewhat differently and simplistically, what you seem to be saying is that the Other (in this case, the Other as God) has the answer. But you know very well that the final hurdle to be jumped in analysis– the hurdle that must be jumped for an analysis to be complete –is the belief that the Other (in the analytic context, the analyst) has the answer or has some special knowledge. You keep placing everything on the side of the subject in your remarks. But the real issue is on the side of the Other and the subject’s belief that the Other has some secret or answer or is an all knowing gaze. It is in this regard that analytic praxis is inconsistent with what you’re asserting. If there is a subjective destitution that accompanies the traversal of the fantasy, then this is because in traversing the fantasy the Other as “keeper of the secret” collapses and disappears from the subjective economy and is therefore no longer a project place from which the subject can guarantee its identity. Once again, Descartes’ third meditation is relevant here. Descartes there argues that the very existence of the cogitio in time is dependent on God. Ergo, if God ceases to be the cogito ceases to be. Treating Descartes discussion of God as a fetish or what Hume calls a “dressed up superstition in nice linguistic finery” (a tramp is still a tramp when dressed in a tuxedo), we can nonetheless say there’s a psychological structure at work here. The dissipation of belief in the Other is thus accompanied by the guarantee of the subject’s identity. If belief in the orderliness and lawlikeness of social institutions collapses (or God), then the subject no longer has the symbolic guarantee through which s/he maintained and understood his identity. It may be that I’m simply reading you incorrectly, though all your remarks are on the subject side of the equation. The point not to be forgotten is that the subject is in and through the locus of the Other.
May 2, 2007 at 8:25 am
Or to put it somewhat differently and simplistically, what you seem to be saying is that the Other (in this case, the Other as God) has the answer. But you know very well that the final hurdle to be jumped in analysis– the hurdle that must be jumped for an analysis to be complete –is the belief that the Other (in the analytic context, the analyst) has the answer or has some special knowledge.
In the Prodigal Son narrative, the son believes that THE OTHER (the perfect ´´abroad´´, the country of limitless opportunities) has the answer to his existential situation. What he learns is that isn´t the case, he is thus subjectively destituted and returns home. The lesson Jesus taught him in this case is that the Big Other doesn´t exist. He is rewarded, though, for traversing the fantasy.
I think also when you say the green grass OVER the fence that implies Otherness, a fantasy of completeness in the OTHER.
May 2, 2007 at 8:28 am
You’d have to work out the details of the Prodigal Son example for me to understand what you’re getting at.
To suggest that the linguistic structuration of the subject is “magical” is a gross comparison to a miracle and sloppy thinking. An individual is perpetually changing. So how does it maintain identity through time? The signifier serves this function. The eleven o’clock train is always the eleven o’clock train regardless of whether it comes at eleven ten or ten fifty. Moreover, it is still the eleven o’clock train if it is materially or physically an entirely different train than it was yesterday. This is by virtue of the signifier that names the train as belonging to that slot. There’s nothing magical about this. Similarly, the naming of the individual and the individuals institution into the symbolic gives it a persistence and identity in time despite the fact that it’s thoughts and body are perpetually changing. For instance, the parents of that child behave towards it as the same subject even though it has changed dramatically from one day to the next in both behavior and thoughts. Again, the signifier.
Now, you’re welcome to argue that there are shortcomings in Lacan’s understanding of language and the inferences he makes from these claims; but it is both dishonest and sloppy to suggest that claiming language structures the subject is identical to being resurrected from the dead which violates every known law of nature. The former still admits of causal and physical explainations, whereas the latter do not. These physical and causal explanations may be mistaken, at which point we’d search about for another account of the subject, but they don’t resort to a denial of causality.
May 2, 2007 at 8:37 am
but it is both dishonest and sloppy to suggest that claiming language structures the subject is identical to being resurrected from the dead which violates every known law of nature.
what do you mean, language per se violates every known ´´law of nature´´ (do please tell me which nature you´re talking about, though / a rationalist view of nature?) already in METAPHOR and furthermore does Lacan ever explain HOW it came to be that the signifier lends persistence and identity? The explanation of language´s origins in this system are no less realistic than the account of the Resurrection.
May 2, 2007 at 8:38 am
Dejan, in your example of the Prodigal Son, does Jesus and God have the answers? Do they have perfect knowledge? The Other is not an Other place, but the locus of address… That to which we address ourselves. The Prodigal Son example doesn’t work here as you’re talking about a geography. The Other in this example would be Jesus.
I think also when you say the green grass OVER the fence that implies Otherness, a fantasy of completeness in the OTHER.
No, this is not entailed. The idea is that the Other has perfect knowledge or the answer. Recall that transference is based on the subject we believe or suppose to know. This is what must disappear over the course of analysis.
May 2, 2007 at 8:40 am
what do you mean, language per se violates every known ´´law of nature´´ (do please tell me which nature you´re talking about, though / a rationalist view of nature?) already in METAPHOR and furthermore does Lacan ever explain HOW it came to be that the signifier lends persistence and identity? The explanation of language´s origins in this system are no less realistic than the account of the Resurrection.
You’re grasping here. Study some linguistics.
May 2, 2007 at 8:42 am
Next you’ll be telling me that there’s no more reason to believe in evolution than creationism. Your arguments here are identical. You religious folk are a hoot in the lengths you’ll go in distorting things to try making your case.
May 2, 2007 at 8:45 am
The Other is not an Other place, but the locus of address
This is a bit of a wordplay, I think. The Prodigal Son addresses the structural locus of the Other Country as being complete – a land of plenitude. Why would the locus of address have to be a person? And actually Jesus in the Prodigal Son does not have the answers, rather, he teaches the Prodigal Son that there are no answers. Like Dorothy returning from Oz to realize there´s no Big Wizard pulling the strings.
May 2, 2007 at 8:49 am
This is a bit of a wordplay, I think. The Prodigal Son addresses the structural locus of the Other Country as being complete – a land of plenitude. Why would the locus of address have to be a person? And actually Jesus in the Prodigal Son does not have the answers, rather, he teaches the Prodigal Son that there are no answers. Like Dorothy returning from Oz to realize there´s no Big Wizard pulling the strings.
So in your theology God doesn’t have perfect knowledge? I’m perfectly happy to accept the thesis that Jesus was a perfectly ordinary man that was a Lacanian analysis before his time so long as the resurrection thesis or all the tall tales are dropped and are treated by embellishments of subsequented well meaning followers that sought to embellish his image so as to underline his importance. Under this reading, Jesus would be no different than Socrates. Of course, the wise person would do well to stick to Socrates as the gullible are so quick to believe the tall tales about Jesus where Socrates’ good name isn’t similarly soiled by such tabloid magician stories.
May 2, 2007 at 8:51 am
You’re grasping here. Study some linguistics.
I studied linguistics. De Saussire said that the signifier lends persistence and identity on the basis of a social contract. Still, he didn´t really explain the origins of language. For all I know, language comes from God.
May 2, 2007 at 8:58 am
So in your theology God doesn’t have perfect knowledge?
Yes he does but that knowedge is unattainable to humans, just as humans can never control language, dr. Sinthome.
long as the resurrection thesis or all the tall tales are dropped and are treated by embellishments of subsequented well meaning followers that sought to embellish his image so as to underline his importance
but as I said before, if you suspend the super/or supranaturality of the resurrection, it operates quite like Lacanian psychoanalysis: you only find life after you give up on it.
May 2, 2007 at 9:30 am
from PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ONTOLOGY by Petar Jevremovic, Serbian professor of Lacanian analysis at the U of Belgrade:
the experience of the transcendent is no psychoanalytic matter. Psychoanalysis is no religion. Still, psychoanalysis can help a person in his search for transcendence. It can teach him courage in overcoming his powerlessness. Courage is not the absence of fear – it is the acknowledgment and overcoming of fear. The same fears that have to be deeply experienced, and then transcended. A mature attitude to death is not denial (or oblivion) because such a thing is simply impossible. Death (of a loved one, and of one´s narcissistic self-image) must be lived through. Only in this way can it become the seed of a new, now richer life. A life that is always born on some new Golgotha. The goal of any psychoanalyst must be to help man recognize his own Golgotha, or in other words, to not miss the opportunity of his lifetime, then escort him to Golgotha´s ends, after which he can leave the client over to life. Or more accurately, leave life over to the client.
May 2, 2007 at 12:53 pm
So in your theology God doesn’t have perfect knowledge?
Yes he does but that knowedge is unattainable to humans, just as humas can never control language, dr. Sinthome.
It’s the belief that such knowledge exists that’s the issue, not whether or not humans can attain it. So long as this belief persists the fantasy hasn’t been traversed. An example would be the person who believes that God has a plan for them. This person can very well agree that they do not know the plan of creation and that they can never know the plan of creation. Nonetheless, the belief that God does have such a plan functions as a fantasy frame for everything they do and a support of their desire. A person who still had beliefs such as this when leaving analysis would not have completed their analysis as they would not have worked through the transference insofar as they still retain belief in a subject supposed to know.
As for what you say about language, the disanalogy is that in principle such an explanation of origins is possible within the constraints of immanent, materialistic explanation. Moreover, it’s sufficient for the Lacanian that the existence of language is a fact. One can begin from this point and trace the consequences with regard to the infants encounter with language, investigating the difference between feral children raised outside of language and children raised in language. We have no such material fact in the case of Christianity. It’s notable that you’ve shifted the goalposts by changing the subject from that of the impact of language on the biological individual to the question of the origins of language. In fact linguistics has gone a long way in these researches in recent years. By contrast, resurrection is not possible without some sort of power or intervention outside of nature.
May 2, 2007 at 1:25 pm
continued from the book:
perhaps for some Lacan was not a good Catholic, but one thing is indisputable – he was a Jesuit pupil. His knowledge of theology was discreet (more precisely, he never brought it to the foreground) but not superficial. His serious playing with the basic structures of the Catholic Tryad is only the most obvious confirmation of my viewpoint. Lacan was no theologist, but theological discourse was not alien to him. To the contrary. In his encounter with Joyce, Ulysses, this will become visible. The relation Father-Son will be placed here in its (not orthodox, but still triadic) frame. This is why I believe that for Lacan’s persona you can use Thomas’s EST RELATIO. In other words, I believe he and Thomas share the same position. There are differences in nuances. The essence, however, is indisputable. The persona is the effect of a relationship – between $ and A and $ and a. Up until this point the structure of thinking is crypto-Thomasian. But Lacan goes one step further than Thomas. His speculative psychoanalytic triadology will in the end be transformed into a mystical apophatics. Someting ELSE, something entirely different will be introduced into the game. The sign o will simultaneously signify the place of death, and the Abgrund of Schwabic mystics – the place of birth. In the case of Theresa d’Anville this will mark the topos of her ultimate mystical experience. (to be continued)
May 2, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I wonder how mystics, such as those chronicled by Karen Armstrong in her book “A History of God,” who assert that it makes more sense to say/think God does not exist than to give Him any positive existence, are relating to their fantasy. The non-knowledge that Agamben invokes at the end of “The Open” is up this alley too. Could it be that perfect knowledge can only be a kind of non-knowledge? In this sense, it would make more sense to say that perfect knowledge does not exist.
May 2, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I find the passages from the book you cite interesting as this sort of fallacious reasoning comes up so often among religious readers of Lacan. I regularly teach Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in my philosophy classes. Philosophically I’m influenced by some aspects of Thomism. Does this mean that I share Thomas’ religious beliefs? No. Deleuze is influenced by Duns Scotus’ account of univocity. Does this mean he shares Scotus’ religious beliefs? Again no. Lacan studied theology extensively. He studied Zen buddhism extensively. He studied a number of things extensively. Suppose a psychoanalyst studies Nazi ideology extensively and from this discovers some basic structures of how jouissance and group relations are organized. Does this mean the psychoanalyst now endorses Nazi ideology. It simply means that Nazi ideology is one formation of subjectivity that needs to be accounted for within the constraints of psychoanalytic theory. It should be fairly obvious that this is Lacan’s motivation in studying Christian theology. Lacan contended that every psychoanalyst should study theology. The reason for this is obvious, theology provides a good deal of insight into the nature of transference, the subject supposed to know, fantasies of completeness, the way in which the subject relates to the law, structures of desire borne of prohibition and so on. This doesn’t change the fact that Lacan, like Freud, believed that religion is a fetish or a distortion of the real desiring mechanisms that animate it. Some religiously minded people seem to have a tremendously difficult time distinguishing between understanding something and believing something to be true.
May 2, 2007 at 1:46 pm
But, there is also Antigona. Without her, the story of Theresa is incomplete. Antigona goes to the grave saying ”…innocent and wanted by noone, in the prison of the grave I go, in the unseen darkness of the hole. Ah woe is me, woe, not with living, not with the dead, I will be.”
Not with the living, not with the dead – Antigona takes Lacan to this PLACE. The psychoanalyst finds himself on the edge of a grave. But the story continues. From the background, another woman comes to the foreground, Theresa d’Anville. The story acquires new tonalities. Antigona’s pregnant misery is replaced by the exstatic eroticism of Theresa. Truly, Lacan spoke much more of Bernini’s sculpture, than of Theresa herself. He said much more, as we know, of Antigona. Whatsmore, he analyzed her in detail. Still, let us not be fooled, Theresa’s words are the unspoken truth of Lacan’ own words. Antigona is the one who leads to Theresa, not the other way round.
”Living without life,
I await the glory of eternal life,
and die because I do not die.”
Her vision of mystical love towards the Big Other, towards God, implies a step outside of the Phallic order. On the one hand, there is ecastasy, on the other hand, there is the mythical fading of the border between life and death – I die because I do not die.
The fate of the analytic subject is analogous to the dialectic resultant of the fates of Antigona and Theresa. These two women metaphorically represent the nodes of his living. It is hard to say this more directly: the subject is neither with the living, for he’s always dying somewhere, nor with the dead, for somewhere he is always alive. Lacan was convinced of this through the notion of APHANASIS. A certain discreet complementarity is noticeable between Antigona and Theresa, where one lives the other dies. It is important to stress that Lacan is here only an observer. He just listens, silently. He even begins to BELIEVE (”Among other things, you will naturally think that I believe in God. I believe in the jouissance of the woman, la jouissance de la femme, that it is something more, on condition that you accept this something more, until I properly explain it.” Encore, Seminaire Livre XX, Seuil. Paris 1975, page 71)
May 2, 2007 at 1:48 pm
find the passages from the book you cite interesting as this sort of fallacious reasoning comes up so often among religious
let me finish the translation first there’s one more passage to go
May 2, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Put differently, Dejan, Lacan does with theology what Freud does with religion in Civilization and its Discontents. You’ll recall that there Freud shows how belief in God is really a carryover from early childhood yearning for the father. Belief in God is just a disguised version of Oedipal relations for Freud. This is what Lacan is doing as well, in a more disguised way. It’s really odd that given all the textual evidence to the contrary you still believe Lacan is a fellow traveller and friend of religion. You should really read his biography.
May 2, 2007 at 2:10 pm
This book might be of interest to this discussion when it comes out: http://www.theologyphilosophycentre.co.uk/images/Veritas/Veritas_TheologyPsychoanalysisTrauma.jpg
May 2, 2007 at 2:15 pm
(…) Antigona’s death is eternal because the judgement that comes, comes from the place of the Other. She is condemned to be alive amongst the dead. Theresa takes the same road, but in another direction. Her jouissance is above all HERS. Besides her nobody (Lacan included) can participate in it. This is of course the experience of stepping from life into death, but this takes place in the name of a new (simultaneously mythical and erotic) dimension of life. Just as Antigona’s death is MUTE, so Theresa’s mythical experience will be beyond words. Lacan knew this, so he didn’t tie himself to the words. He followed the pulse of the body. In the case of both Antigona and Theresa we’re dealing with silence; with the absolute absence of logos, that is to say Phallus. Phallocentrism is defeated. This would in short be the meaning of the place o. For Antigona, it is the place of death, for Theresa, it is the groundless tenement of all being. Urgrund understood as Abgrund.
(…)
For Lacan, the mysticism of Theresa (her apophaticism and her eroticism) remain only a silent indicator of a distant promised land. He never got there himself. According to his own confession, Lacan was the witness that saw nothing. (Encore, Le seminaire livre XX) Hence the paradoxical claim that La Femme doesn’t exist. To his male, phallocentric existence the existence of the woman can only be unveiled as unexistence, as something absolutely other. Psychoanalytic apophatics turns into psychoanalytic eschatology. Into waiting… The very nucleus of its professional identity is significantly shifted. Lacan does not follow Theresa, or Antigona, through,. He is always somewhere IN BETWEEN. Theresa’s experience, there is no doubt about it, does not belong in the psychoanalytic frame. Lacan knew this well. She is an authentic mystic, he is not. A psychoanalyst cannot be a mystic. One cancels out the other. To be a mystic is entirely beyond the reach of a consciousness determined by its own Phallic function – the function given in advance by the transferrential situation. For a psychoanalytic to become a mysic, he first needs to stop being an analyst. He has to step out of the transferrential situation, his position of the subject supposed to know, and then things become (for him as for everybody else) unfathomable, unspeakable and unpredictable.
Here the psychoanalyst becomes a common man, who like any other mkan looks for the absolute object of desire. For jouissance situated ”somewhere else”, outside of the phallocentric order. He will look for the Big Other who will finally reveal himself as God: the impossible signifier.
Lacan, at this point an old and very tired man, called this jouissance de la femme.
May 2, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Put differently, Dejan, Lacan does with theology what Freud does with religion in Civilization and its Discontents. You’ll recall that there Freud shows how belief in God is really a carryover from early childhood yearning for the father
I did not try to counter that. I will only add that as you know this belief is necessary, the fantasy must be traversed, which is what Christianity teaches as well. What happens AFTER THAT differs in the analytic versus religious account, but this shows that psychoanalysis can be the door to belief, and in this sense they are not in an argument. That is to say I don’t think Lacan was wary or suspicious or dismissive of religion.
May 2, 2007 at 2:38 pm
This person can very well agree that they do not know the plan of creation and that they can never know the plan of creation. Nonetheless, the belief that God does have such a plan functions as a fantasy frame for everything they do and a support of their desire
Hm, but on the other hand, the client in analysis begins with the idea that the analyst knows, that he is God, only to end up realizing that they they don’t , at which point as you suggest the client will presumably experience the jouissance of the woman, a world of infinite potentialities, not mediated by the Phallus, uninterrupted bliss, which in the end isn’t all that different from the Christian or Buddhist idea of a God, as the Serbian article indicates.
May 2, 2007 at 3:01 pm
…although I’m sure there are many Christian believers who still nevertheless see God as the Big Daddy; that’s indisputable. But there also also you know many Nazis in the world,…
May 2, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Hm, but on the other hand, the client in analysis begins with the idea that the analyst knows, that he is God, only to end up realizing that they they don’t
Yes, this is my entire point. Analysis is the traversal of this way of thinking.
at which point as you suggest the client will presumably experience the jouissance of the woman, a world of infinite potentialities, not mediated by the Phallus, uninterrupted bliss,
Not uninterrupted bliss. If psychoanalysis claimed to produce this, then it would be one more instance of the snake oil salesman. Psychoanalysis is a tragic discourse. As Lacan liked to say, there is no cure for the human condition. As Freud liked to say, “psychoanalysis transforms unbearable neurotic suffering into ordinary human misery.”
which in the end isn’t all that different from the Christian or Buddhist idea of a God, as the Serbian article indicates.
But it is nonetheless different. Psychoanalysis falls into the tradition of naturalistic critique. The naturalist doesn’t deny that people experience things in a certain way, but does argue that these beliefs don’t refer to any sort of transcendence but are the result of naturalistic processes. Thus, the easier example, is Freud where our thoughts about God are really just elaborated and exaggerated projections of our father as experienced in infancy, continuing in adult life when confronted with things that are beyond our control and that fill us with anxiety. In other words, there is no god, only a certain psychological fiction. Lacan doesn something similar, but far more sophisticated with the signifier, his knowledge of ethnography, etc.
At this point I’ve made my arguments and we’re largely going around in circles. I’ve made the case that your remarks about Lacan and religion violate the internal logic of psychoanalysis and working through the transference. I have also made the case that there isn’t textual support for what you’re claiming about Lacan and religion (that he’s a believer), but exactly the contrary. Finally, as a consequence of your claims the Lacanian theorist would be led to conclude that Lacan believes that Schreber’s delusion is true insofar as he talks about it and draws theoretical inspiration from him. As an additional point, an examination of Lacan’s biography shows that he was not a believer. There’s really not more I can say to convince you without engaging in the tiresome exercise of pulling out copius quotations for you from his seminar which I have neither the time nor inclination to do.
May 2, 2007 at 3:12 pm
have also made the case that there isn’t textual support for what you’re claiming about Lacan and religion (that he’s a believer), but exactly the contrary
I did NOT claim that Lacan was a believer, and I just translated an article which clearly supports that point. I claimed that there are ANALOGIES between the psychoanalytic process, and what the process OPENS UP as a possibility, and faith. This because you got so worked up about the negative influence of religion in the world, for which you used psychoanalytic arguments, while I never read anything of Lacan where he’d gotten worked up in the same way.
that these beliefs don’t refer to any sort of transcendence but are the result of naturalistic processes
nevertheless, liberation from the Master Discourse implies a world of infinite possibilities, which if you only replace ”pessimism” with ”optimism” and ”tragedy” with ”comedy” can also be exactly the idea of the Christian God – freedom to enjoy!
May 2, 2007 at 3:31 pm
“As Freud liked to say, ‘psychoanalysis transforms unbearable neurotic suffering into ordinary human misery.'”
This distinction reminds me of one that often appears in the Buddha’s rhetoric. I’m not precisely sure about the exact words translated, but a distinction between suffering and difficulty is sometimes made. The most interesting is in a parable where the Buddha is approached by a farmer with all kinds of issues– nagging wife, failing crops, disobedient children, etc. He heard of the Buddha and his great teachings, and thought the Buddha could help. The Buddha listens patiently and silently to the farmer, and then tells the him that he can’t help him; that everybody has problems – 83 different kinds of problems – and the Buddha’s teachings won’t help them. The farmer, obviously upset, screams what good is his teachings then? The Buddha replies that they might help him with the 84th problem, namely not wanting anymore problems.
The point of this story, and those that seem to echo it, is that the point of practice is not to gain some positive thing (phallic wholeness), but to realize that the positive thing (the phallus) isn’t really there. Does this mean that life is hunky-doory, and you can deflect bullets? Not really, though some Buddhists would argue otherwise. It means relating to the inconsistency of experience in a different way. It means being content with uncontentment, I think; being at ease with (what Nietzsche identified in the last section of the Genealogy) the meaninglessness of suffering.
May 2, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I did NOT claim that Lacan was a believer, and I just translated an article which clearly supports that point. I claimed that there are ANALOGIES between the psychoanalytic process, and what the process OPENS UP as a possibility, and faith. This because you got so worked up about the negative influence of religion in the world, for which you used psychoanalytic arguments, while I never read anything of Lacan where he’d gotten worked up in the same way.
We don’t have a disagreement then. I’ve never denied that there are analogies, I’ve only denied the existence of any sort of transcendence and pointed out for Lacan psychoanalysis must reject religious belief because of its continued transferential attachment to a subject supposed to know. You are inflating the nature of my critique of religion when you claim “I get all worked up about the influence of religion around the world.” Clearly I’m not suggesting that each and every aspect of religion is negative or that there aren’t aspects of religious practices that refer to real psychological experiences of human beings. The fact that you’ve gone to all this trouble to show me these obvious analogies entails that you must believe that I’m advocating some absurdly untenable position that a secular and naturalistic position is absolutely different than anything to be found in religion and shares absolutely nothing in common with religion whatsoever. A grape contains traces of all the elements that are in the surrounding environment in which it emerges (the other plants, the minerals, the air, the light). Clearly cultural formations have these properties as well. It would be impossible for any cultural formation to not share features in common of the social environment in which it emerges. Such a formation would have to be formed in a vacuum. Your implication that you believe I advocate such an untenable position indicates a highly uncharitable way of reading on your part.
May 2, 2007 at 4:19 pm
It means being content with uncontentment, I think; being at ease with (what Nietzsche identified in the last section of the Genealogy) the meaninglessness of suffering.
Pdx, it’s debatable what exactly it means, because you can become anything you want once you’re free to become, a Christian, a Marxist, a Nihilist or… what I was trying to bring into view is that 1) with its emphasis on suffering Christianity makes a statement similar to Freud’s (Paradise cannot be attained in THIS life, in THIS dimension) and 2) that one of the most important attributes of God in Christianity is free will, free will being the prerequisite of any faith, and I think psychoanalysis lends you freedom (at least, from neurotic suffering) as well. I don’t find the issue of what exactly happens afterwards terribly important, for God said that there are many doors to salvation.
May 2, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Dr. Sinthome, you soft-spoken clever Lacanian kitten, let me be more concrete: I believe you did say, although since I’m really not libidinally invested in PROVING anything, and I;m no going to dig into the old discussions to that end, that there’s also something intrinsic about religion, such as its allowing the possibility of God’s supernatural intervention, the belief in the Big Other, that if not directly causing, then certainly FOSTERS and FORMENTS the ground for Christian fundamentalism. You are consistently bewildered by all the Christian fundamentalists popping up like mushrooms in America. I then proceeded to point you in the direction of dr. Zizek’s new article on the Christian fundamentalist/fascist film 300 by Zack Snyder, where dr. Zizek sides with this very fundamentalist, patriarchal, heteronormative, gawdawful representation of SPARTANS and even calls it Communist (!). The article is currently causing a lot of brouhaha on mine, Shaviro’s, Antigram’s and many other blogs. Since according to global consensus on your side of the waters, dr. Zizek is a Leftian, this clearly means that Christian fundamentalism can also be a Left (secular!) phenomenon, and then also carried by agents other than rightist Christian fundamentalists. I stress that Dr. Zizek in this article is not calling on God, the Big Other, rather the idea that Christian fundamentalism (of the Spartans) would be the proper answer to the decline of symbolic efficacy (a psychoanalytic concept). Ergo, in this instance, it is PSYCHOANALYSIS that is fundamentalist.
May 2, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I then proceeded to point you in the direction of dr. Zizek’s new article on the Christian fundamentalist/fascist film 300 by Zack Snyder, where dr. Zizek sides with this very fundamentalist, patriarchal, heteronormative, gawdawful representation of SPARTANS and even calls it Communist (!). The article is currently causing a lot of brouhaha on mine, Shaviro’s, Antigram’s and many other blogs. Since according to global consensus on your side of the waters, dr. Zizek is a Leftian, this clearly means that Christian fundamentalism can also be a Left (secular!) phenomenon, and then also carried by agents other than rightist Christian fundamentalists. I stress that Dr. Zizek in this article is not calling on God, the Big Other, rather the idea that Christian fundamentalism (of the Spartans) would be the proper answer to the decline of symbolic efficacy (a psychoanalytic concept). Ergo, in this instance, it is PSYCHOANALYSIS that is fundamentalist.
Zizek, as you probably know, has been arguing along these lines for a while now. He begins to develop this thesis in The Ticklish Subject and it snowballs from Who Said Totalitarianism. I think Zizek’s motivation is discontent with liberal democracy which he sees as having lost its emancipatory edge and as enabling capitalist formations. Zizek’s solution is for us to become secular fundamentalist militants and to take strong stands without looking for compromise. I quite agree with you that this is not a good solution. As I’ve tried to argue on a number of occasions, I dislike heirarchical, authoritarian structures generally. There can be secular forms of such structures as well as religious forms. Some thumbnail general features of these structures are the presence of a leader of some sort, strong and inflexible attachment to a body of dogma, and in-group/out-group relations where you’re either a part of the team or you’re the enemy (the friend/enemy distinction). Certain forms of religion invite these types of social formations when they demand unconditional devotion to a God and inflexible commitment to a body of belief. In my view, this has historically been common in Christianity, but there are also Christian movements that have avoided this. I think you’re attributing claims to me that I’m not making and failing to recognize that I’m more than happy to agree that these sorts of structures can occur in a wide variety of social formations, both religious and atheist.
May 2, 2007 at 5:18 pm
And just to emphasize once again, I really just don’t find Zizek to be a very profound or viable political thinker. He blusters quite a bit, and gives us little or no insight into how to organize or what specifically is to be done. I get the sense that he’s romanticizing a macho image of the revolutionary. The problem is that there’s very little concrete content between this macho image, and he’s spawning followers that get seduced by this image and use it as an apologetics to behave atrociously while accomplishing, as far as I can see, little or nothing. I’ve always read Zizek as someone who can be a perspicuous and illuminating reader of Lacan. For instance, Zizek’s reading of Lacan’s graph of desire in The Sublime Object of Ideology was one of the first texts that really allowed me to begin understanding what Lacan was up to in his work during the 50s in seminars 4-6. I am grateful for things like this as Lacan is certainly no picnic.
I think you’ve interpreted my relative lack of interest in your criticisms of Zizek’s engagement in Eastern European politics as blind devotion to his political positions and the adoration of a master who can never be wrong. This isn’t the case. Rather, I’ve never assumed that Zizek is a particularly trustworthy source where political matters are concerned (I think he gets carried away with his own dialectical tricks) and because I simply do not know enough about the intricacies of your political situation there to responsibly take up a position.
May 2, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I think Zizek’s motivation is discontent with liberal democracy which he sees as having lost its emancipatory edge and as enabling capitalist formations
No. Zizek’s true motivation, his perverse core, is the same one he had in the time of the Yugoslav war. To support Slovenian nationalism. Remember he wanted to be a social-democratic President, because that would enable Slovenia to join the European Union in the long run. Slovenian nationalism at the time was pitted against Serbian-led Yugoslav federalism in much the same way the Spartans are pitted against the Persians in Zizek’s interpretation better to say role reversal. He then used the dialectic operation to transfer the nationalism to the Serbian side, joining America and Western Europe in the Iraq-style demonization campaign of Serbia. He is THRIVING on his own observation that Neoliberalism and Neoconservativism form a Moebius loop; that so called liberalism of liberal democracy is just the other face of racist nationalism.
The scenario is now being replayed, in Iraq, maybe in Iran, and Zizek occupies the same structural position.
Certain forms of religion invite these types of social formations when they demand unconditional devotion to a God and inflexible commitment to a body of belief.
Well in any case certain forms of Marxism invite these types of social formations when they demand unconditional devotion to Marx and inflexible commitment to Orthodox Marxianism or armed Bolshevism. Why worry about Christianity per se?
May 2, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Our messages crossed.
I think you’ve interpreted my relative lack of interest in your criticisms of Zizek’s engagement in Eastern European politics as blind devotion to his political positions and the adoration of a master who can never be wrong
Actually I didn’t even try to interpret it. I liked your blog because your writing is CLEAR instead of OBFUSCATORY (my biggest problem with both Lacan and Zizek) and because I previously liked Bruce Fink, who seems to have been your mentor. I wanted to simply cause subjective destitution because you know dr. Zizek being the intellectual criminal that he is, his is a falling not shooting star, and I think it will be more profitable for you to write about coming stars, for one thing.
As for not being informed about the proceedings in Yugoslavia, I think you should ask yourself why so many Americans are thrown into this sollipsistic cultural fortress thinking that only what happens there is important. Politically Yugoslavia is far more important than whatever happens inside the States.
May 2, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Well in any case certain forms of Marxism invite these types of social formations when they demand unconditional devotion to Marx and inflexible commitment to Orthodox Marxianism or armed Bolshevism. Why worry about Christianity per se?
Yes, you’re absolute right, certain forms of Marxism do and I intensely dislike these forms of Marxism. My reasons for focusing on Christianity from time to time and not these other things are entirely contingent. I happen to live in the state of Texas in the United States where these sorts of religious groups are ubiquitous and I encounter phenomena relating to these groups on a day to day basis. If I lived in an environment filled with authoritarian variants of Marxism you can bet that I’d be grinding my axe about that.
You remark about the focus of my writing, but I think it’s odd that you seem to think I write solely on Zizek. I write on his work infrequently here. You seem to miss that the bulk of my work is in dialogue with Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan of course, Badiou, and a variety of classical thinkers from both antiquity and the 17th century and Hegel.
As for not being informed about the proceedings in Yugoslavia, I think you should ask yourself why so many Americans are thrown into this sollipsistic cultural fortress thinking that only what happens there is important. Politically Yugoslavia is far more important than whatever happens inside the States.
There’s no good excuse for this and again my reasons are contingent. I don’t think its simply American solipsism, though perhaps. I have about 150 students a semester and teach five classes each term. This means that daily I have a significant amount of marking and a good deal of class preparation. In addition to this, I am heavily involved in campus organizations such as faculty council, planning events, attending events, organizing faculty, etc. On top of all this I pursue my own research and writing. Then finally there are the ordinary things of life: friends, love, eating, etc. I can’t be up on everything. Were you from China you might be denouncing me for my lack of knowledge of Chinese politics. Were you from Australia you might be after me for not knowing more about Australian politics. I just don’t think it’s very fair to level this sort of criticism.
Thanks for the kind words about the blog though. I did indeed do my analysis with Fink.
May 2, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Look, it will only take 3 hours – which you can do in bits and fragments – this documentary:
http://parodycentrum.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/the-avoidable-war/
NOTE: the documentary was made by Serbs, and it has a propaganda function mainly, to destabilize the demonization campaign. But it almost completely does not err on facts, and aside from some biased interviews, won’t distort reality much. Especially important is the story on Slovenia, which is where dr. Zizek comes from.
This is not interesting as a history of Serbia, but because THE SAME THING IS NOW DONE BY THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AGAINST NOT ONLY IRAQ, BUT AMERICAN PEOPLE INSIDE AMERICA
May 2, 2007 at 6:16 pm
As a sort of evidence that the documentary is not biased propaganda, I included a very positive review from the New York Times
March 11, 2010 at 12:39 am
Would it be incorrect, in your opinion, to read Presocratic ideas (particularly Plotinus) of the One (similar to Plato’s Good, or the Divine) – i.e. the highest hypostasis of Being – as another fantasy/fetish symptomatic of castration?
It’s thought of as the “absolute ineffable and transcendent; it is the simplest non-composite and unified prior principle that generates all composite and multiple posteriors.”
The whole point of Plotinus’ aesthetics is that through Beauty and beautifying onself both internally and externally, one cultivates the soul; thereby teaching it how to see. Once you are able to ‘see’ (mind’s eye – intuitive), then you might be lucky to ascend and perceive the divine One – complete wholeness; purity; simplicity; perfection; pure intellect and perfect self-relation & self-mastery; the Good; God — i.e. pure form/fantasy.
i was particularly struck by:
“Finally, it’s important to note the close tie that both Lacan and Freud observe between obsessional neurosis and religious belief. For Lacan, obsessional neurosis is closely connectioned to masculine sexuation (subjects that are biologically male or biologically female can nonetheless be sexuated in a masculine way). This close tie has to do with how obsessionals relate to the symbolic and the fantasmatic supplement they project into the symbolic in the form of a “god-function”.”
and obviously:
“Lacan’s point is that the symbolic always has a supplement or a fantasmatic shadow that grounds the symbolic and prevents it from sliding all over the place. This limit point is the idea of a being– a fantasmatic idea –that is not castrated or limited or bound by the symbolic. The point, then, is that we have a structure here that can be filled out in many different ways. To understand the concept of structure, we have to think in terms of functionalist mathematics. In a mathematical function you have something of the form F(x), such that for any value of the variable x you get an output. The point is that the function remains the same regardless of whatever is put in the place of the variable. Identity is thus not detemined by the variable or entity in the x position, but rather by the function. The function remains the same across variations.”