As I’ve often suggested on this blog, I think that one of the greatest moments in the history of philosophy was Hume’s declaration, in the introduction to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, that the abstruse language and questions of the schoolmen is just an elaborate defense of superstition dressed up in pretty clothing to mislead the ignorant. In other words, there is very little point in taking the intricacies of these positions seriously, delving into their myriad distinctions and arguments, because they are already pigs with lipstick. Their bristling language, distinctions, terminology, arguments, etc., might appear to be saying something convincing, yet at the end of the day it’s just the same old tired superstitition.
Nowhere is this more relevant than in a recent quasi-interview with Radical Orthodoxy giant John Milbank (via An und Fur Sich). As Milbank remarks:
He urged the movement’s followers to “grasp the hands of labour unions, feminists, gay and lesbian activists”, and warned that “if they remain content, as I fear some of them do, to carp and posture before gatherings of the anointed, then the movement will become at best a beloved clique and at worst another academic vaudeville show”.
The groups mentioned may not want to shake Milbank’s hand: he opposes gay marriage (“I don’t want to get into the situation where we deny there is something special about being attracted to the opposite sex”).
He says he is concerned about working-class women being left to raise children alone, “in part – alongside economic factors – because of the collapse of the male ethos of supporting the woman”, and has written most stridently in opposition to in vitro fertilisation treatment for single women.
“By supporting the total disjuncture of sex and procreation, the Left is really supporting a new mode of fascism,” Milbank says.
I am not sure what else should have been expected from a movement that refers to itself as “Radical Orthodoxy”. Clearly, at the end of the day, this position simply becomes an apologia for a particular sort of social order at odds with freedom, gender equality, and equality of sexual orientations. That is, it becomes an apologia for the reigning positions of the church. Why listen to the arguments behind this position at all given that we already know what it is ultimately arguing for?
Larval Subjects . 
April 27, 2009 at 7:11 pm
You haven’t really provided any argument against why, say, at the theoretical level, “Radical Orthodox” thinkers like Milbank might be led to support such claims, or whether Milbank’s claims are even in congruence with “Radical Orthodox” thought (whatever that might be). Yet that is a far cry from claiming that theology itself is a dressed up form of fundamentalist ideology.
It seems that if the “speculative realists” were to get their way with framing this “debate,” then the correlationist/anti-correlationist deadlock really boils down to “science vs. religion,” with correlationism just being a negative defense of fundamentalism (“making room for faith” qua thing-in-itself). If that’s the case, then perhaps it explains the inanity of the entire spectacle.
April 27, 2009 at 8:08 pm
An an ardent critic of everything Milbankian, I find his admiration for Meillassoux’s work perplexing. To me, RO seems to perfectly fit the bill of the “unfounded speculative absolutism” that QM labels “fanaticism”. I get that he likes SR’s return to metaphysics, but QM’s critique criticizes his metaphysics as much as anything else.
April 27, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Bryan,
I see no reason to even seriously entertain the claims of radical orthodoxy, that’s all.
April 27, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Troy,
I find that odd as well. The only thing I can figure is that he admires Meillassoux for returning metaphysical debates front in center in philosophy, not that he shares Meillassoux’s position.
April 27, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Bryan,
One more point. You write:
I really don’t think this is what the debate is about, though the debate does touch on this issue. Rather, I think one orientation among the SR’s revolves around contesting the thesis that the human-world relation lies at the heart of all philosophical questioning. This would especially be the case with Graham’s realism, where he heavily challenges human centered or anthropocentric thought. From this perspective, the two main trends of contemporary Continental philosophy are both centered around the human-world relation, regardless of whether or not these positions refer to themselves as “anti-humanisms”. On the one hand, you have the phenomenological orientation where cogito, Dasein, lived body, etc., are situated at the heart of all philosophical discussions. On the other hand, you have those coming largely out of French post-structuralism where cultural formations such as the signifier are placed at the center of all discussions. From this perspective, the thesis would be Shakespearean: “There’s more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.” What would be contested would be the idea that all philosophical questions should be situated in this human-world relation. On the other hand, other variants of SR seem to be wondering about the place of the sciences in contemporary philosophy. This would be the case, for example, with Brassier who is keen on the work of the Churchland’s, biology, physics, etc., and which he seems to think has been indefensibly excluded from philosophical discussion among Continental thinkers (at least, philosophical discussion in any significant or fundamental sense). This would also be part of my interest and, it looks to me, Nick’s. All SR’s, I think, are agreed that there something deeply problematic in human-centered metaphysics, but there are big differences between the positions of Graham, Meillassoux, Brassier, and I.A. Grant.
April 27, 2009 at 10:53 pm
There was a time when I did take this particular strand of thought seriously precisely because it seemed to be trying to do something Left-wing and within the theological tradition in a creative manner. The conservative turn of the movement was likely there from the beginning, but has only now become so pernicious and revealed. That said, there was, at one time, some interesting things going on in it with regard to questions of the secular and the question of theology’s potentiality.
As for the shared pomposity of Hume w/r/t all theological writing I can only respond with an annoyed shrug and move on.
April 28, 2009 at 12:52 am
Levi, there is no misunderstanding here, although since I didn’t make that absolutely clear in my last post, I suppose it’s through no fault of your own for assuming otherwise. I understand what the “true” crux of the debate is about, I was merely suggesting that, like those amazing “Shakespeare Made Easy” books, the terrifyingly stupid mainstream media obsession with science vs. religion debates could be a useful way of reading this debate. While there has certainly been a lot of high-level conceptual/theoretical/philosophical discussion going on, this seems to be what it really is about at a kind of absurd level. I mean, the whole critique of the “anthropocentric” world-view really began in full swing as a reaction to the Aristotelian/medieval Christian conception of the universe. Which is all to say that, for me, speculative realism does not bring much to the table. Its a Faustian bargain with the hard/empirical sciences–and I’m using that manner of speech with great delight here!
April 28, 2009 at 1:19 am
Perhaps there’s something to your critique here, Bryan, but your suggestion here seems implausible given that the vast majority of Continental philosophy remains tied to such an anthropocentric perspective despite Galileo and the collapse of that worldview. Yet again, I note the red herring at work in such a charge in the first place. Rather than actually addressing the arguments and claims, you instead elect to change the subject. I wonder why that is.
April 28, 2009 at 1:31 am
Why wonder when you can know!
April 28, 2009 at 1:35 am
Well seriously, Bryan. Why is nearly all Continental philosophy (with the significant exception of Deleuze and Guattari) anthropocentric? If this is such a commonplace, why do we conduct philosophy in this way? Why don’t we take Freud’s three narcissistic wounds seriously?
April 28, 2009 at 1:58 am
First, the question “Why is nearly all Continental philosophy (with the significant exception of Deleuze and Guattari) anthropocentric?” is entirely contentious and more than a little self-congratulatory. I could just as well ask you why it is that all thinkers except Kant are susceptible to sliding outside of the domain of criticism, either towards skepticism or metaphysics. But that would be no less ridiculous.
The critique of anthropocentrism does not seem to me to be much different from the critique of eurocentrism (multiculturalism). The fatal flaw is that something like multiculturalism really is just a Western ideology that tries to efface the position of enunciation from the enunciated, to try to make it seem as if it can speak from a neutral/universal standpoint. Kant, as far as I can tell, would be opposed to this, precisely because the transcendental stance involves a critique of introspection by way of doubting both one’s own viewpoint as well as the [multicultural] other’s. In my view, the critique of anthropocentrism *doesn’t go far enough* in encountering radical alterity: it’s just the “other” side to anthropocentrism, but it doesn’t get back to the position of antinomy. This is where Kant’s transcendental critique is located, it just doesn’t appear that way on the surface. That’s how I read Kant anyhow.
April 28, 2009 at 2:03 am
I could go quote mining to prove that case, but it would probably be more suited to book-length form than a blog conversation. And also a position that I’m only just beginning to hammer out through my encounter with Kant’s work, not unlike your own with speculative realism.
April 28, 2009 at 2:14 am
Bryan,
I think the first problem here is that the argument “this is just a Western ideology” is not, as I argued in my post on the Normative Fallacy, an argument at all. It maybe be an ideological position, it may not be an ideological position, but regardless of whether or not it is ideological, there’s still the question of truth. In other words, being ideological does not entail that something is false. Here I cannot recommend Bruno Latour’s short– and beautifully written book —We Have Never Been Modern enough. The reason that Latour’s analysis is so relevant here is that he compellingly makes the case that we must think in terms of hybrids where we simultaneously draw on the positions of naturalism, political critique, and semiotic critique without reducing any of the others to one of these three. I’ll try to throw a post up on this in the next couple of days as I think it goes straight to the heart of these debates.
The second problem I see with your position here is that it ignores the manner in which Kant ignores the Copernican revolution. Regardless of what Kant argues in his antinomies, the fact remains that these antinomies still remain thoroughly anthropocentric because he’s placed the transcendental subject and mind at the heart of his argument. Therein lies the problem from the Galilean perspective. From my perspective, your “radical alterity” doesn’t go far enough because it’s a radical alterity that is still squarely centered in the human Other. In order to get a real hair raising, spine chilling, truly radical alterity you need something like Brassier’s radical nihilism, not the Kantian antinomies that still allow us to preserve all of our tender pieties about human freedom and faith.
April 28, 2009 at 2:21 am
Well, first I wouldn’t necessarily attribute the predicate “Western ideology” to anthropocentrism. That’s more a very particular criticism of multiculturalism. The more general claim was that of enunciation/enunciated in relation to both…
Second, I don’t think it’s at all obvious what “transcendental subjectivity” really means here, and I imagine I would have a much different interpretation of it than you would, relating back to the above point about enunciation/enunciated.
No offense, but I don’t find speculative realism (or what has been said of it here and elsewhere) to be spine-chilling (but maybe I will read Brassier/Latour anyhow)–to the extent that I don’t find science to be spine-chilling. Not that I reject science, it’s just a widely accepted way of understanding the world, which is why there are so many popular magazines devoted to making it understandable. The same, in our day, might not be said of Descartes…
April 28, 2009 at 2:22 am
In retrospect, this game of one-upping each other over who is more alienating doesn’t seem like an effective way of arguing.
April 28, 2009 at 2:22 am
*Critique of anthropocentrism….
April 28, 2009 at 2:39 am
Bryan,
I guess I’m just unclear as to why the issue of whether multiculturism is a particular ideology is of relevance here or in these discussions. As for what is spine-chilling, I get your point about popular science magazines and whatnot, but I certainly know that when I really contemplate the sheer magnitude of these time-scales and extents of space, when I think about the nature of my brain that has no “internal homunculus” but is a bunch of synapses firing and constantly reorganizing themselves, when I think about what a small blip we are in geological history and what an even smaller blip our largely 2500 year old culture is, I have an experience of the terrifying sublime that I never encountered with respect to phenomenology, the variations of the Continental linguistic turn, or these various critiques of ideology. For me, in many respects, these modes of inquiry seemed like defense formations or ways of rendering the world “heimlich” rather than genuine encounters with the “unheimlich”. To each their own.
April 28, 2009 at 2:43 am
See, I think that last line applies well to Spinozism: heimlich in the unheimlich. That’s what you end up with when you jettison the problematic of subjectivity (whether it be on multicultural or so-called “anti-correlationist” grounds).
April 28, 2009 at 2:50 am
Perhaps Bryan, but why do you see the realist position as “jettisoning” subjectivity? While I certainly don’t accept the Kantian position on subjectivity– for a variety of reasons –I don’t see how this amounts to the rejection of subjectivity. My position “hystericizes” my relation to my subjectivity no less than the Kantian position as it still leaves us in the position of asking the quintessential question of the hysteric: “what the hell am I?” This is why I don’t reject much of psychoanalysis– while also having come to believe that in many instances it proceeds in the wrong way –because the brain being plastic and all that, the question of meaning and all the rest still persists. The realist position– in my variant –doesn’t jettison subjectivity but just argues that it is not the case that all philosophical questions and issues are matters of the relation between subject and object; or, in set theoretical terms, that the human subject isn’t “included” in all relations. As I’ve observed in a number of posts, I remain a correlationist on a number of issues.
April 28, 2009 at 3:02 am
>My position “hystericizes” my relation to my subjectivity no less than the Kantian position as it still leaves us in the position of asking the quintessential question of the hysteric: “what the hell am I?”
Not to nit-pick, but wouldn’t that be obsessional (related to being)–hysteric being related to sexuality? Neurotic all the same…
>or, in set theoretical terms, that the human subject isn’t “included” in all relations.
Is it not the case that Kant argues that the transcendental subject is neither phenomenal nor noumenal… It’s a far cry from anthropocentrism, and from “obsessing” over subject/object relations. I mean, Kant even identifies the transcendental subject with the transcendental object!
April 28, 2009 at 3:05 am
Bryan,
I’m not sure I understand your question about the obsessional versus the hysteric. With respect to your point about Kant, so long as these questions continue to be posed in terms of a subject at all, they remain, in my view, anthropocentric. You’ll find my account of why I believe this is the case in my third post on Meillassoux. In a nutshell, I do not think that any correlationist position can conceive a subject that is not embodied or attached to a human body, and therefore, whatever bells and whistles you add to the transcendental subject you’re still implicitly advocating a human centered world.
April 28, 2009 at 3:09 am
Ah, I think I better understand what you’re claiming. As I understand it, the key unconscious question of the obsessional is “am I alive or am I dead”. This has to do with the fact that the obsessional finds her being completely in the order of the signifier. By contrast, the key question of the hysteric is “am I a man or am I a woman”. But this hysteric question arises because there isn’t a signifier for woman and that therefore woman takes on her identity with respect to the Other in terms of the question “che vuoui?” or “what am I for you?” which is a question of ‘what the hell am I?” Freud and Lacan, of course, argue that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies of the genus of hysteria which is the basic structure of all neurotic subjectivity, i.e., all subjects are ultimately hysteric at their core.
April 28, 2009 at 3:24 am
>With respect to your point about Kant, so long as these questions continue to be posed in terms of a subject at all, they remain, in my view, anthropocentric. You’ll find my account of why I believe this is the case in my third post on Meillassoux.
Which is why my original point about your (Spinozist) view on subjectivity still stands, and why I would just as soon reject it.
>In a nutshell, I do not think that any correlationist position can conceive a subject that is not embodied or attached to a human body, and therefore, whatever bells and whistles you add to the transcendental subject you’re still implicitly advocating a human centered world.
A human body is empirical, not transcendental (just as the “soul” is metaphysical, and not transcendental). No matter how much you shout “anthropocentrism” at Kant, it does not make it so. All that can be said of the transcendental subject is that it is an I or he or it that thinks. It’s just an “X”–not, of course, as an unfathomable noumena (just another way of asserting the possibility of a soul), but as something that can’t even fit into the phenomena/noumena divide. The same is true of the transcendental object=X.
On your second point, maybe I’m not as familiar with Freud/Lacan, but Bruce Fink argues that hysteria and obsessional neurosis are subspecies of neurosis, rather than obsessional neurosis being a subspecies of hysteria. I take Fink to be a fairly reliable source on this (cf. his Clinical Introduction to Lacan, unless you’ve already [likely] read it).
April 28, 2009 at 3:29 am
I’d say you need to go back and read Bruce Fink carefully again… Especially his Clinical Introduction.
Yes, yes, I’m familiar with the transcendental/empirical argument. You can find the counter-argument in my third post on Meillassoux, which is conveniently linked to in my most recent post on this blog.
April 28, 2009 at 3:45 am
Fortunately, Levi, I happen to have a copy of his *Clinical Introduction* on me at this very moment. But before continuing, here is what you write:
>Freud and Lacan, of course, argue that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies of the genus of hysteria which is the basic structure of all neurotic subjectivity, i.e., all subjects are ultimately hysteric at their core.
Let’s see what Fink says:
>”For example, the subcategories of neurosis are hysteria, obsession, and phobia–these are the three neuroses.” (p. 77).
On page 116, Fink makes a chart that depicts the following, which are even reflected in his chapter organization:
|| Main categories: || Neurosis || Psychosis || Perversion ||
|| Subcategories: || Hysteria Obsession Phobia || ||
Fink even draws important conclusions from this division, such as:
>”In his early work, Freud makes a number of attempts to define obsession and hysteria on the basis of the highly specific way in which people react to early (primal) sexual experiences; one of the most striking of the definitions he proposes is that obsessives react with guilt and aversion, whereas hysterics react with disgust or revulsion.” (p. 117)
>”The obsessive and the hysteric come to grips with the question of being in different ways, for the question is modulated differently in hysteria and obsession. The hysteric’s primary question related to being is “Am I a man or a woman?” whereas the obsessive’s is “Am I dead or alive?” (p. 122).
He also notes that they are defined by two totally different structures apropos the fundamental fantasy: obsessives are defined as S A, whereas hysterics are defined as a A.
But anyhow, to go back to your other original quote:
>My position “hystericizes” my relation to my subjectivity no less than the Kantian position as it still leaves us in the position of asking the quintessential question of the hysteric: “what the hell am I?”
According to Fink, the correct answer wasn’t even obsessional, but neurotic:
>”Lacan views the fundamental question involved in neurosis as the question of being: ‘What am I?'”
I haven’t really found anything that says that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies of hysteria. If that were the case, the two diagnostic categories would be conflated, it seems. That would also lead to some rather mystifying analytic practices I imagine…
April 28, 2009 at 3:46 am
Also, the crux of my argument had less to do with the empirical/transcendental split, then the fact that transcendental subject = X cannot be identified with either phenomena or noumena. This is the more salient point apropos the “anti-anthropocentric” critique of Kant.
April 28, 2009 at 3:49 am
Bah, my little mathemes didn’t get outputed correctly… not that it matters what they are exactly, just that they are pretty radically different according to Fink.
April 28, 2009 at 3:51 am
Sighs. Bryan, are you really going to make me go digging to provide textual evidence on this point from Freud, Lacan, Zizek, and Fink? The hysterical question par excellence is the question “what am I?”. In the discourse of the hysteric necessary for the analytic process at all, this is the first step: hystericizing the subject. The subject must shift from the position of experiencing their self as something they know to a question in relation to the Other. This is why the analyst occupies the position he occupies, refusing to make an explicit demand to the analysand. Btw, I did my analysis with Fink, trained with him and Dany Nobus, and am pretty extensively steeped in this secondary literature. I remember the terror I experienced in my early sessions with Fink. I’d ask him how he was doing and he wouldn’t respond at all. This brought to the forefront the question “what am I for him?” allowing me to situate him in my field of fantasy covering over the hysteric’s question of what I was for the Other.
April 28, 2009 at 4:14 am
All I’m doing is quoting Fink here–why not refute Fink? And arguments from experience are just as equally fallacious (I know you’re fond of these) as red herrings, by the way.
You’re confusing hysteria with neurosis. Fink, Freud, Zizek, Lacan, et. al. argue that neurosis is constitutive of being, not hysteria, which has a very particular form of organization. And even if this weren’t the case for Freud, Zizek, Lacan, etc., my original argument was “This is the case for Fink,” and I couched my entire argument in terms of “According to Fink,” so don’t pull the “read your Freud/Lacan” rhetoric.
Also, it just so happens that the structure of the fundamental fantasy in neurosis, as you very well know, is $ a–in other words, the relation (etc.) between the transcendental subject=X to the transcendental object=X (cf. Zizek’s opening to *Tarrying with the Negative*). Just to bring things back full circle. The ultimate Spinozist fantasy resides elsewhere, however…
April 28, 2009 at 4:23 am
* Arguments from authority
April 28, 2009 at 5:24 am
Bryan,
Honestly this is really exhausting. First– and I do not like citing Zizek on these issues as I do not think he is an authority where Freud and Lacan are concerned as he’s doing his own thing, which isn’t to say that thing isn’t very interesting in its own right –you’ll find the reference to obsession as a subspecies of hysteria in The Sublime Object of Ideology. As Zizek writes, “This gap between the way I see myself and the point from which I am being observed to appear likeable to myself is crucial for grasping hysteria (and obsessional neurosis as its subspecies [my italics])– for so-called hysterical theatre: when we take the hysterical woman in the act of such a theatrical outburst, it is of course clear that she is doing this to offer herself to the Other as the object of its desire, but concrete analysis has to discover who– which subject –embodies for her the Other” (106). Sadly Zizek often plays fast and loose with textual references and I do not have the energy to track this down in Freud. He is drawing here from either the Rat Man or Wolf Man case study. Somewhere Lacan makes a lot of this point about obsession as a subspecies of hysteria as well, but I am unable to track down the reference at present because Lacan’s unpublished seminars do not have indexes and because the indexes in the other seminars aren’t great. I thought the reference was in “Subversion of the Subject” but I couldn’t find it there. Other important references in this connection can be found on page 113 of Sublime Object, 180 – 181, and page 191. This last is especially important: “At the same time this reference to obsessional neurosis (not as a clinical entity, of course, but as a subjective position, as what Hegel would call ‘the position of thought towards objectivity’) enables us to locate properly the Lacanian observation that Hegel is ‘the most sublime of all hysterics’. By determining the passage from Kant to Hegel as the hystericization of the obsessionals position, we are already in the midst of the properly Hegelian relation between genus and its species: hysteria and obsessional neurosis are not two species of neurosis as a neutral-universal genus; their relation is a dialectical one– it was Freud himself who noted that obsessional neurosis is a kind of ‘dialect of hysteria’: hysteria as a fundamental determination of a neurotic position contains two species, obsessional neurosis and itself as its own species” (SO, 191).
The long and short is that hysteria constitutes the core of all neurotic subjectivity, which comes as no surprise as the neurotic is beset by the conflict of demand and desire, not knowing what he is for the Other and seeking an idealized father or master that would be capable of answering this question of what they are for the Other (insofar as there is no signifier for them in the symbolic). This is the sine qua non of hysteria. The one book to read on this whole issue is Verhaeghe’s Does the Woman Exist… And generally I’ve found it’s a good rule of thumb to read works by clinicians when seeking to understand Lacan, not theorists.
I, of course, disagree with your mapping of Lacan on to German idealism in terms of transcendental subjectivity for a variety of reasons. I simply don’t think it meshes with the Lacan and Freud I’ve read, though I do think it’s an interesting form of crypto-existentialism in its own rights. When given the choice between clinically informed material and a guy that only spent a couple of weeks in analysis, I side with the former for, I think, obvious reasons where psychoanalysis is concerned.
I am unable to find, at the moment, where Fink discusses obsession as a subspecies of neurosis, but I’m fairly convinced I’ve come across it, especially given that this is such an elementary point and non-controversial thesis in Lacanian circles. Please don’t ask me to hunt down citations again, it’s snotty.
April 28, 2009 at 5:55 am
And, incidentally, I think you’re misconstruing what counts as the fallacy of an “argument from authority” here. The argument from authority pertains to arguments from misplaced authority. For example, Einstein famously said that we only use 10% of our brains and people believe this because Einstein was both a genius and a great scientist. But citing Einstein on this particular issue is a fallacy because Einstein was a physicist and a mathematician, not a neurologist or a psychologist, and was thus not in the position to decide on these issues (although any thinking person knows he meant something else by this claim). I think what you’re groping for is not a fallacy, but what in rhetoric is called a “proof surrogate”. A proof surrogate has the form, for example, “studies have shown” without actually citing those studies or referencing where they can be found. That said, arguments from authority are perfectly legitimate when, well, the person has authority in that particular area of knowledge. You might disagree, but I think I’ve more than earned my lumps where Lacanian thought and practice is concerned, which isn’t to say I’m infallible in these matters, but I have a pretty sound grasp of that theory.
April 28, 2009 at 6:10 am
Well, the division between hysteria and obsession is not a controversial thesis in Lacanian circles, but the idea that obsession is a subspecies of hysteria IS. Fink is about as clear as it can be about the fact that the two are vastly different, and that hysteria cannot be identified directly with neurosis. If it could, then it would be awfully difficult to square away all of the distinctions Fink makes between hysteria and obsession.
As for Zizek, his argument seems to be more nuanced than simply supporting your claim or rejecting mine. I’ll quote your excerpt:
>By determining the passage from Kant to Hegel as the hystericization of the obsessionals position, we are already in the midst of the properly Hegelian relation between genus and its species: hysteria and obsessional neurosis are not two species of neurosis as a neutral-universal genus; their relation is a dialectical one– it was Freud himself who noted that obsessional neurosis is a kind of ‘dialect of hysteria’: hysteria as a fundamental determination of a neurotic position contains two species, obsessional neurosis and itself as its own species” (SO, 191).
Zizek seems to be saying that neurosis has two sub-species: hysteria and obsession. The added twist is that neurosis is fundamentally determined by hysteria, which means that it includes itself as its own species. In that sense, it functions as both species and sub-species–or dialectically. It’s likely the case that Zizek is following a trail led by a series of ambiguities found in Freud’s work (I’ll just take him at his word here rather than bothering to track them down).
So basically the non-controversial part of this argument is that neurosis contains hysteria and obsession as its species (here we’re at the really simple genus/species dichotomy). Zizek is refuting this simple dichotomy by introducing the ambiguity of how neurosis can be read as fundamentally determined by hysteria (this itself is a peculiar qualification, since he doesn’t directly identify neurosis with hysteria… just that it “fundamentally determines” it) in order to make a Hegelian assertion about reading Freud, which I would understand to be highly controversial.
Hence, what I was asserting (neurosis containing as its species hysteria and obsession) is a non-controversial point, while your assertion (neurosis fundamentally determined by hysteria with obsession, at the very least, as its species) seems to be controversial–even more controversial would be to simply ‘excise’ hysteria from the subspecies of neurosis–a move even Zizek refuses. This may also explain why my point has so much textual support in Fink.
>Please don’t ask me to hunt down citations again, it’s snotty.
I won’t, but that last remark is rather arrogant. I already qualified my original remark about confusing obsession and hysteria as “nit-picking,” because I didn’t think it was entirely relevant to the argument at hand, but it really is pretty self-evident, at least in Fink (and all I’m talking about is what I’ve read in *Clinical Introduction*, I don’t claim to be a master analyst or a Lacan scholar here). But yeah, you’re right, it is non-controversial, at least what I’m asserting. If we wanted to be really stupid about it, I could even just quote NoSubject.com’s “Lacan dictionary” (about the lowest level understanding of Lacan at non-controversial levels):
>The two forms of neurosis — hysteria and obsessional neurosis — are distinguished by the content of the question. The question of the hysteric (“Am I a man or a woman?”) relates to one’s sex, whereas the question of the obsessional neurosis (“To be or not to be?”) relates to the contingency of one’s own existence. These two questions (the hysterical question about sexual identity, and the obsessional question about death/existence) “are as it happens the two ultimate questions that have precisely no solution in the signifier. This is what gives neurotics this existential value.”
So…. yeah.
April 28, 2009 at 6:38 am
Bryan,
Fink is talking at a different level of metapsychology in his discussion of hysteria and obsession. The non-controversial thesis is that all neurotic structures are ultimately hysterical in their core because they all are formations relative to the desire of the Other, i.e., they acknowledge the Other as desiring, whereas perversion disavows the Other’s desire purporting to have a knowledge of what the Other really wants and where the psychotic forecloses the Other altogether. On the one hand we have Hysteria prime (I wish I knew how to do subscripts), but on the other hand we have clinical hysteria. Diagnostically, clinical hysteria and obsession are distinguished by virtue of how they relate to the analyst. In the latter case, (and this is only a thumbnail sketch), the obsessional seeks to reduce the analyst to a specific demand and to perfectly carry out that demand so as to efface the desire of the Other altogether. In the case of a hysteric patient, by contrast, the patient is perpetually trying to subvert the analyst’s mastery by revealing all sorts of contradictions in his position, calling into question psychoanalysis, seducing the analyst, etc. That is, the hysteric as a clinical entity tries to create desire and demand so that she might both offer herself as the solution to that desire and thwart it. However, hysteria as a metapsychological category characteristic of both hysteria as a clinical entity and obsession has the same structure: the painful experience of one’s status as a split subject and the attempt to repress the non-existence of the Other through the fundamental fantasy. This is just the ABC’s of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Paul Verheaghe has a particularly good analysis of this in Dany Nobus’ edited collection Key Concepts in Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I’m not sure why you argue this point so vehemently apart from the fact that it is already textually evident from your remarks here on my blog that you’re massively situated in the dimension of the imaginary or a sense of wholeness, where the concession of any point on your end is experienced as revealing your split or castration, to be repressed at all costs. This came out clearly, for example, in your responses to my post on Malabou, their rhetorical structure, their shifting of goal posts, and their name calling, where any breach of your particular position was experienced on your end as an encounter with the non-existence of the Other (your particular theoretical matrix) and therefore your own identity. It reveals itself here again where you engage in a silly and really irrelevant debate and your subsequent shifting of goal posts. While you might certainly speak a good game about split subjects and whatnot, you certainly have not learned the lessons that your particular theory dictates and therefore remain in the grips of a fantasy structure where some Other subject can function as the Other for you. Let it go Bryan.
April 28, 2009 at 4:16 pm
This is perhaps the most astounding example of thread-drift I’ve ever seen.
April 28, 2009 at 4:21 pm
No doubt, the subsequent comments got even worse so I just went ahead and deleted them. I know I’m often an ass in my own ways of responding to others, but I’m getting really sick of this petty crap when it has nothing to do with anything and is just about scoring points.
April 28, 2009 at 8:42 pm
I fully support other people being dicks, because that dilutes my reputation as being a huge dick in internautical discussion.
April 29, 2009 at 6:14 am
Yeah, that got a little off the rails.
What sucks for me is that I am against, intellectually, both your position and that of Radical Orthodoxy (and fuck they have a new reader that is for teaching in courses that really terrifies me), even if on social issues I’m pretty much with you (though I think there can be an important secular or non-ecclesially bound theological thinking of those social issues – something I realize you aren’t interested in).