Some thoughts about Lacan

[Christophe]

As an introduction and starting point for debate, I'll post an obituary on Jacques Lacan by Alain Badiou, published in 1981, shortly after Lacan's death in the Journal 'Le Perrouquet'. Taken from the 'Pocket Pantheon', Verso Books 2009.

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)

The man who has just died was all the greater in that greatness is becoming rare - very rare - in our uncertain lands. The media let him see that very clearly, as their goal is always to align that which exists with the transient and limited prose of journalism. They all asked his sworn enemies and those who go through the dustbins to say something about him.
Forr not even death can silence envy, it really is a sign of just how barbaric our societies are. All those psycholanalytic dwarves, all those gossip columnists amplifiying the mean cry of 'He was standing in my way, and now he's dead at last. Now pay some attention to ME!'.
It is a fact that Lacan was on a warpath right from the start, denouncing the illusory consistency of the 'Ego', rejecting the American psychoanalysis of the 1950s which proposed to 'reinforce the ego' and thereby adapt people to the social consensus and arguing that, because it is symbolically determined by language, the subject is irreducibly the subject of desire, and as such cannot be adapted to reality, except perhaps in the imaginary.
Lacan in effect established that the cause of desire is an object that has been lost, that is lacking, and that, being articulated under the symbolic law, desire has no substance and no nature. It has only a truth.
He made money out of this particularly bleak vision of psychoanalysis, in which it is the truth and not happiness that is in play, thanks to the practice of what were sometimes very short sessions. The crucial and non-existent role of psychoanalysts in the plural is to let shine - with a searingly subjective brightness - the signifier of a break that lets slip the truth of desire, whilst the individual psychoanalyst must, ultimately, reconcile himself to be nothing more that what is left at the end of the analysis and when that work is done.
The practice of short sessions polarized a real hatred of the truth against Lacan. A a result, he was literally excommunicated by the psychoanalytical International. The need to organize the transmission of his thought, and to train anaylsts who would act in accordance with what he believed to be the ethics of psychoanalytic pratice, led him to found his own school. But even there, the splits and dissolutions were testimony to a stubborn reluctance to hold the severe position he promoted to the end.
It had become good form to state that the ageing Lacan was no longer transmitting anything worthwhile from the 1970s onwards. In my view, it is quite the opposite. Having lamented the theory of the subject's subservience to the signifiyng rule, Lacan made one final effort to pursue his investigation into its relationship with the real as far as he could. The rules of the signifier were no longer enough. What was needed was some kind of geometry of the unconscious, a new way of representing the three agencies (symbolic, imaginary, real) in which the subject-effect is deployed. Lacan's recourse to topology was an internal requirement born of this new stage in his thinking, and it brought out his underlying materialism.
Lacan held that politics has no effect on the real. He used to say that 'the social is always a wound'. And yet it so happens that even a Marxism in crisis cannot avoid making reference to the dialectic of the subject the he outlines. It is in effect clear that the fiasco of the Party-States that emerged from the Third International opens up radical questions about the essence of the political subject. Now, neither the subject-as-consciousness (Sartre's thesis) nor the subject-as-natural substance will do. The at once divided and errant subject theorized by Lacan in his own realm does offer us a way out of that impasse. For such a subject is a product of a break, and not of the idea that it represents a reality, not even that of the working class. For today's French Marxists, the function of Lacan is the function that Hegel served for the German revolutionaries of the 1840s.
Given the trite situation in which we find ourselves, marked by platitudes and relative self-abasement of our intellectuals, the death of Lacan, coming so soon after that of Sartre, does nothing to improve matters. We were anxious to hear what he might still have to say. Quite aside from the content of his teaching, he developed an ethics of thought that is now highly unusual.
Le Perroquet will of course come back to almost incalculable import of that ethics. For the moment, the important thing is, without any restrictions or any presumption, to pay tribute to one who is no longer with us.

[Christophe]

I just came back from seeing Christopher Nolan's Inception. Despite some minor sound problems in the crowded theater, it was a joyful experience. It's a mindtwisting, innovative action movie, exploring the depth of the unconscious in its many imaginary dreamworlds in several different layers. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was real and what was simulation/dream, and it was then when the film had its best moments, when the confusion became palpable in the audience and something real was shining through from the silver screen. Recommendation!

[Christophe]

btw LindaHollier did a interesting review of 'Inception' over at IL.

Back to Lacan:

Alain Badiou said: Lacan in effect established that the cause of desire is an object that has been lost, that is lacking, and that, being articulated under the symbolic law, desire has no substance and no nature. It has only a truth.

So indeed from the very beginning the 'good object' is perveived as lost and lacking (see also Melanie Klein's depressive position in the child). The Result is unpleasure and the urge to regain what was lost (called Object a in Lacanese). In order to deal with the drive tension, the subject addresses the first other for an answer (usually the mother, but any available human being will do) who will interpret the expression of unpleasure according to its own experiences with desire. Eventually, the subject identifies with the desire of the (M)other. E.g. if the Mother thinks the crying baby is hungry and feeds it until it is satisfied,then the child will internally connect the relief from unpleasure with food. Hence Lacan's phrase that the unconscious is the discourse of the other. Notice the integral dialogical element in this model of subject formation.

At some point, it becomes obvious to the subject that the first other itself has a lack, that it cannot ultimately answer the persisting and recurring drive. It is then when the second other (usually the father, but any human being will do) enters the stage. The subject understands that the first other is turning towards the second other to get its desire fulfilled, thus the second other must possess the answer. By identifying with the phallus-who-knows-the-answer, the subject-child has reached the oedipal triangulation stage, and we all know how this story ends.

An interesting point is that with the second other, the imaginary and symbolic realms open up. The Father is imagined to be all-mighty and all-powerful, and the symbolic law is enacted, whith which the subject can orient itself in the family and the surrounding social world.
It is only in the later psychic development when the subject discovers that no symbol or signifier can fully and for all times embody the real. It discovers that there is no Master Signifier, and Daddy cannot fly through the air like Superman. This disenchantment is called symbolic castration.

Ouch.

[Christophe]

ahaha

in Sophokles' original story, Oedipus cuts his eyes out when he realizes what he's done and lives in misery and pain ever after. :-(

But he is not only a tragic character. He also managed to solve the riddle of the sphinx which is a metaphor for the conditio humana - In the long run, we're all dead. So, after all, when he blinded himself, Oedipus taught us the ability of 'Not Wanting To Know'. This is a very important human capability that distinguishes us from animals.

So for most of us who don't suffer from severe psychopatholgies, we were able to solve the riddle of the sphinx to a satisfying degree, and we were left only with some blind spots of 'Not-Wanting-To-Know'. So all in all, we are able to function in the world, to work and to love, except that we don't like our boss and the little red-haired girl won't talk to us on the bus.

Okay so far my little intro on Lacan. I must say Verhaegen's book that I mentioned earlier really explained Lacanian psychology to me in a way that I could understand, which is rather atypical for Monsieur Lacan. With the help of that book, I groked a little more.

I am open for any questions or comments. Thanks.

[Christophe]

Postscriptum

From Badiou: Politics of truth: Lecture in Lubljana (1992)

"Lacan never stopped to study and think about the philosophers. Let's introduce some reference points:

Lacan translated Heidegger's text about Logos in french, a text about Heraklit. It's about escorting philosophy in a medtation about language.

Lacan based his seminar about transference on Platon's Symposion. It's a meditation about Love.

He approached the question of causation from Aritotle's Physics. Meditation about the object.

Lacan compared the aftermath of the super-ego with Kant's categoric Imperative. Meditation about the Law.

He based his thoughts about Identification and Aggression on the perspective of the Master-Slave Dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenolgy of Spirit.

He analyzed Repetition and fear based on Kierkegaard's texts. Meditation about Otherness.

He described the subject of psychoanalysis from the perspective of science as Descartes has formulated it. Meditation about the Subject.

Platon, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Heidegger: at least seven great philosphers - summoned to think the key points of Lacan's docrine. And still he declares himself an "anti#philosoph". How to understand this peculiar dialectic?

It's about Lacan having serious doubts about the purpose of philosophy. These doubts present themselves in twofold manner:

1) Philosophy takes the place of the master's discourse. Which also means that philosophy doesn't want to know about desire.
2) Philosophy offers an imaginary totality. Which also means that it doesn't know about the radical heterogenity of the real object.

Or:

1) Philosophy covers up the paradox of desire, it's entanglement with the unsymbolizable object.

2) Philosophy forgets about gender difference and castration.

[...]

"
finis