The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII
... Lacan may have an answer for us: "In an even more fundamental way than through the connection to the Oedipus complex, tragedy is at the root of our experience, as the key word 'catharsis' implies." [1] Although Lacan's "our experience" refers to the "experience of the psychoanalyst", his analysis of Antigone actually points to the isomorphism between the subject and tragedy, i.e., the problems reflected in tragedy and the subject's existential situation are consistent. The spiritual problems and phenomena faced by the subject find their counterparts in tragedy. ...
... Antigone perpetuates, eternalizes, immortalizes that Atè. " [1] Where is the support for this split subject? In Lacan's view it is illusion.In ...
... Lacan states, "Its practice is only a preliminary to moral action as such -the so-called action being the one through which we enter the real. " [1] This is the process of sublimation, i.e., through moral action, not only does one confirm one's own presence, but also gives a new meaning to the original symbolic order, elevating an ordinary object of everyday life to the position of the ineffable object a. Here Lacan and Kant strike a wonderful alliance, in that the realm of the real becomes empty after man enters the symbolic order, the symbolic overrides the real, and the identity with which the subject can identify is constructed entirely by the symbolic order (you are a man or you are a Chinese, etc.). ...
This paper analyses the Lacanian sublime resulting from the encounter between the ?a).While the sublime in tragedy has been interpreted by several philosophers throughout the ages, in Lacan s view the inevitable destiny that tragedy presents stems from the inner structure of the subject, which demonstrates the subject s split and incompleteness.Whether it is Antigone or Hamlet, they are often confronted with an ambivalent structure within the subject, which they try to find relief from, but ultimately find it difficult to escape the impasse.The subject is unable to fully unify the contradiction between the unconscious and the ego; it moves towards a split. This split subject is bound to fail when it encounters the object a, which is the Lacanian sublime. The Lacanian sublime embodies a kind of impossibility, and the subject, facing it, suffers an "absolute failure". But precisely because of the sublime, the subject s failure is precisely what brings it into contact with new possibilities, with a real revolution.
... The question that underlies the present study concerns the relationship between ethics and identity, which from a Lacanian perspective may be more accurately described as exploring how ethics is constituted in the very process of constructing identities (Lacan, 1992). What has been referred to as "the ethics of the Real" (Contu, 2008, p. 367) is an understanding of human beings as subjects in relation to what Lacan calls the real (Lacan, 1977), the irreducible kernel of reality that we lack access to and around which all our desires and motivations revolve. ...
... What has been referred to as "the ethics of the Real" (Contu, 2008, p. 367) is an understanding of human beings as subjects in relation to what Lacan calls the real (Lacan, 1977), the irreducible kernel of reality that we lack access to and around which all our desires and motivations revolve. As I will explain further below, it is in how we position ourselves in relation to this lack of connection to the real that we become ethical subjects (Lacan, 1992). I now introduce key concepts illustrating the Lacanian framework, which is not a simple undertaking as Lacanian ideas are notoriously difficult to pin down (Benvenuto & Kennedy, 1986). ...
The study examines how identities in general and moral identities in particular are related to ethical behavior in organizations and what aspects of such identities might drive actual ethical conduct versus only the appearance of such conduct. The study develops a psychoanalytic, specifically Lacanian, framework with which to explore such dynamics and illustrates this empirically by analyzing how employees from a range of organizations narrate their identities as good organizational citizens. The findings reveal that how individuals position themselves regarding common struggles with self and desire affects how much they are confined to appearing to be ethical rather than to act ethically. The study discusses the implications of these findings offering new avenues for understanding organizational citizenship behavior, how ethical conduct in organizations can be explored from an identity perspective and how psychoanalysis may be foundational for the study of ethics.
The article examines the problem of the technological end of the world from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The most general phantasmic frames of the apocalyptic scenario are outlined, supporting the correlation between the figure of the „chain reaction“ and the master signifier in the atomic bomb discourse. The research focus falls on famous speeches and utterances of George Robert Oppenheimer, which acquired an almost post-Kantian sense of categorical imperatives, making his case a typical example of the self-instrumentalization of bureaucratic science. Examining the perverse structure that enables such an inverted presentation technologies of the end as a universal good, the article insists on the role of the researcher as subject and his participation in the constitution of the moral law itself, and hence in the constitution of the universal.
This essay discusses activist burnout through a Lacanian perspective, focusing on the struggle to heal burnout experienced by activists. It argues that activists find it difficult to heal burnout because of their attachment to the practices that induce burnout, imbued with unconscious desires and enjoyment that help shape their way of life. To illustrate, this essay discusses the fantasy of self-sacrifice and the fantasy of constant action. Drawing on the concepts of traversing the fantasy and drive, the struggle to heal burnout can potentially lead the subject to embrace the satisfaction of struggling to create social change, hence, drive.
Increasing technologization has augmented interest in the construction, consolidation, and failure of posthuman subjects in utopian/dystopian narratives. While recent scholarship has focused on investigating the ideologies that produce these subject positions, the role of desire vis-à-vis the posthuman has not been sufficiently examined. Through a close reading of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian classic We (1924), this article analyzes the formation and faltering of the posthuman subject in the novel where desire is evoked as the irreducible force that resists hegemonic appropriation. Studying the mechanisms of subject-formation from Althusserian, Lacanian, and Foucauldian perspectives, the article examines how desire, in and as writing, undermines and exceeds technocratic structures. This reading suggests, following Judith Butler, that it is this elusive nature of desire that triggers the dictatorial regime, anxious for control, to create in the citizen a suffocating sense of guilt, so that he willingly subjects himself to numbing automation. Desire, however, erupts out of the interpellated body of the subject and infects the body politic of the state, for it remains, as the article contends, the unaccountable error in the algorithmic construction of the posthuman subject, lingering, persisting, perpetuating itself as the enigma that confounds the line between the human and the other-than-human.
In this article we consider the question of homeostasis and memory from the perspectives of neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Our aim is to describe a link between homeostasis/dyshomeostasis, memory/language, and violent acting out. Our study is based on clinical observations concerning two groups of persons: those who were incarcerated for perpetrating non-premeditated murder and those who were victimized by violent trauma in their lives. The clinical findings, combined with the analysis of the relevant literature and research, demonstrate that the dyshomeostatic state, through a positive homeostasis, can drive the person to restore the balance by their usual coping mechanisms and thereby generate negative homeostasis. These acts—all violent, non-premeditated, and forms of desubjectivized acting out—stem from being outside language on account of two pathological extremes of memory, its absence or its excess. Aided by neuroscience and the results of our clinical findings, we support the practice of recalling and strengthening memory traces of trauma in psychotherapy.
This article attempts to explore the concept of beauty using Greek and Chinese etymology. In Greek, the word 'tragedy' means 'song of the male goat'. In Chinese, the word 'beauty' means 'big goat'. Why is the goat so important? Is there a reason for the presence of this animal in the definition of aesthetics of two completely different cultures? The article hypothesizes that there may be an archetypical reason: beauty and tragedy are related not only to aesthetics but also to a hidden code.
In his 2,304 page autobiographical work Journal sexuel d’un garçon d’aujourd’hui, the young author Arthur Dreyfus gives an account of his intense sexual life. This is a life that not only leads to his ‘overdose on sex’, but also propels him into chemsex – a practice that has spread considerably in recent years within the gay community. This article focuses on the singular narrative of this young man, who tells the reader of his ‘frenetic quest for flesh’ and his furious desire to enjoy, which seems principally encouraged by dating apps. Here, I discuss the subject’s relationship to the drive based on current social data, in such a way as to highlight how contemporary setups appear to encourage a frantic search for an unattainable object and an alienating surplus enjoyment (plus-de-jouir). The question of the transgenerational transmission of trauma is considered, bringing to light the deathly fantasies that assail Arthur and lead him to offer himself up to the other’s jouissance. Also discussed is the concept of sexual alienation versus sexual addiction. Finally, I consider how sublimation as an outcome, in so far as it is an alternative to compulsive repetition, can foster the process of resubjectivation through language and the work of analysis.
Modern physics, with its exploration of the quantum realm and the cosmos, has pushed the boundaries of human understanding. However, along with its groundbreaking discoveries, it has also introduced profound philosophical questions. One such question concerns the nature of reality itself. While physics has traditionally sought to describe the real world objectively, certain interpretations and theoretical frameworks have led to a departure from this realist perspective. This paper examines the emergence of a hyperrealist-antirealist tendency within modern physics, drawing inspiration from Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality. Hyperreality, as described by Baudrillard, is a condition in which the simulation of reality becomes more real than reality itself. In the context of physics, this can be observed in the increasing reliance on mathematical models and abstract concepts, which often overshadow the underlying physical reality. We argue that certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, and the pursuit of theories of everything, such as string theory, exhibit characteristics of a hyperreal state. These interpretations and theories often involve counterintuitive and seemingly paradoxical concepts, which can lead to a loss of touch with the tangible world. The focus on mathematical elegance and theoretical consistency, while essential for scientific progress, can sometimes overshadow the need for empirical verification and a clear connection to observable phenomena. This paper delves into the philosophical implications of modern physics, particularly theoretical physics, and its tendency towards hyperrealism-antirealism. Inspired by Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, we argue that certain aspects of contemporary physics, such as the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the pursuit of theories of everything, exhibit characteristics of a hyperreal state. (published: Multicriteria Algo. Appl. Vol. 5 (2024) 52–58)
When one is invited, by the narrative structure of a Hollywood 'rom-com', to perceive similarities between the film in question and one of Charles Dickens's tales, namely A Christmas Carol (2006), it seems somewhat of a stretch of the imagination, until one realises that what imparts similarity to these unlikely bedfellows-apart from narrative isomorphism-is their resonance with the discipline of psychoanalysis, however counter-intuitive it might seem. The film is question is Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), the plot of which revolves around Connor Mead, photographer and womaniser, who attends his brother's wedding, where he angers everyone-including Jenny, the only girl he ever loved-by his open rejection of marriage. He is visited by the ghost of his uncle, Wayne, who taught him the art of seduction, and announces the imminent visits of three more ghosts, who would guide Connor through his past, present and future relationships with women. What they reveal, and is confirmed by Wayne, is that a life of philandering leads to ultimate loneliness and lack of fulfilment, and this lays the basis for his romantic reconciliation with Jenny. This narrative structure is indebted to Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, where the miserly Scrooge receives visits from ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, respectively, to reveal to him the past roots as well as (potentially) dire future consequences of his heartless actions towards erstwhile friends and family. This has a therapeutic, conscientising effect on him and leads to his personal transformation. Against the backdrop of these narratives dealing with the reconstruction of personal histories, the practice of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis is scrutinised regarding the function of the analysand's verbal reconstruction of his or her personal history (anamnesis), which is crucially supplemented by the analyst eliciting the
unconscious, repressed memories (the forgotten chapter) that escape the
analysand’s conscious reconstruction. It is these formerly unconscious
memories that comprise the basis for the analysand’s possible emancipation,
just as the repressed memories to which Connor and Scrooge are introduced by
their respective spectral escorts function as the keys to their emancipation from
practices precluding their own fulfilment as human subjects. This
interpretation is supplemented by drawing on Lacan’s theory of ‘the four
discourses’ to demonstrate how both fictional characters may be understood as
being governed by a specific ‘master’s discourse, which is subverted by the
doubt of the ‘hysteric’s discourse’ and mediated by the transforming ‘analyst’s
discourse’, to be able to arrive at a newly relativised master’s discourse.
Seeking to frame the debate around academic freedom in terms of freedom of thought, this article begins with an exploration of the hazards of fascist ideology and the psychodynamics of persuadability. Attention is paid to the perverse lure of certainty and the apparent willingness of many people to accede to an instrumentalized unconscious. Through the writings of Butler and Athanasiou, an antithesis to the dispossession of an instrumentalized unconscious is explored in terms of radical performativity and critical relationality, modalities which have the potential to undo what Elizabeth Povinelli termed “the cunning of recognition.” The limitations of psychoanalysis due to its historical antecedents in colonialism and racialized capitalism are explored, and an argument for a genealogically and sociohistorically constituted psychoanalysis is entertained. Following Derrida’s imagining of the university as truth-seeker, aspects of the history of U.S. higher education are explored to illustrate the continuous struggle between sovereign power and capitalist logic and the possibility of education as the practice of freedom. The essay concludes with an exploration of the intersection between psychoanalysis and critical pedagogy, posing the question of whether analytic institutes and universities might become vehicles for an encounter with alterity that could potentially sow the seeds for a revolutionary unconscious.
In order to think Art in its difference from the arts, I argue, requires that we take seriously its lack of sense. This lack is symptomatic of a historical rupture with the sense of art as technē (know-how), a sense that remains at play when one speaks of the arts. However, if art is not an art, then what is it? In this essay, I argue that art is a thing that makes sense absent. To specify art’s absent sense, its absense, requires both a historical analysis of art’s rupture with technē and the mastery it implies, and an ontological determination of the manner in which it makes of this loss a thing that serves to dumbfound. Art is thus inseparable from stupidity. Through an engagement with the work of Aristotle and Heidegger, Bataille and Balzac, Baudelaire, and Lacan, I suggest that art marks the extimate place of absense.
This article uses the surge of recent AI-generated simulations of Kafka’s writing as an opportunity to reflect upon both what AI can teach us about Kafka’s writing and what Kafka’s writing can teach us about the age of artificial intelligence. Under the heading “Kafkaesque Algorithms”, this article explores three distinct but related questions that emerge at the intersection of stylistics, poetics, and media theory. First, do AI simulations of Kafka’s writing adequately capture Kafka’s style, and if not, why not? Second, is there perhaps something inherently algorithmic about Kafka’s poetics, in ways that might both tempt and resist simulation by AI? And third, is the notion of outsourcing low-level repetitive labor to machines—a common promotional strategy for contemporary AI writing aids—truly novel, or would it instead have already been familiar to Kafka himself?
Insofar as the caesura of tragic temporality and the movement of “tragic transport’” are said to be shaped by a tendency toward the “eccentric sphere of the dead” in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Remarks on Oedipus”, the privileged position of this sphere within Hölderlin’s “Remarks” solicits further analysis of what this topos signifies within both Hölderlin’s poetological writings and his translation of Oedipus the King. How does the “eccentric sphere of the dead” relate to Hölderlin’s formal descriptions of the caesura that lends tragic succession a certain equilibrium, and what is implied in the qualification of this region as an “eccentric sphere”? How does the “eccentric sphere of the dead” register in the language of Sophocles’ tragedy? And conversely, what does the language of Oedipus the King indicate concerning the constitution and parameters of the “spheres” of the living and the dead? These are the questions that will be pursued in this essay, beginning with the broader resonance of the terms to which Hölderlin takes recourse in his “Remarks”, and proceeding to the ways in which the limits of life and death are articulated in Sophocles’ drama and Hölderlin’s translation. Those elaborations of the “eccentric sphere of the dead” will, in turn, allow for a reinterpretation of the more formal determinations of “tragic transport” that Hölderlin offers.
The musical career of David Bowie displays a longstanding fascination with suicide, as both a theme that recurs in his lyrics and as a visually enacted motif in his stage and media performances. This essay focuses on how the artist responded to the death of Bowie’s half-brother Terry Burns by suicide in 1985. Close attention is given to the lyrics of, and music video for, “Jump They Say” (1993), both of which are interpreted as acts of mourning. The essay engages with theories of mourning and trauma to suggest that Bowie’s response to Burns’s suicide is a complex one. Bowie is shown to try to rationalise his reaction, via psychoanalysis, as an ordered working through that leads to the freeing of the ego. With the help of Derrida, it is here argued that the process is, in fact, a protracted and open-ended one. The analysis connects Bowie’s mourning with important earlier songs such as “Rock’n Roll Suicide”, “All the Madmen” and “The Bewlay Brothers”, and also demonstrates how “I Can’t Read” and “Goodbye Mr. Ed” can be interpreted as predecessors for “Jump They Say”. It is argued that Bowie’s mourning process later becomes more occluded, but persists to the very end of his career, including the ending of his musical Lazarus (2016).
The focus of this article is a symbolic image often found in world mythology – a giant snake or a dragon biting its own tail. This image is usually denoted by the Greek word “ouroboros” (οὐροβόρος), which means literally “eating its own tail.” This essay is devoted to an interpretation of this symbol, which the author sees as leading to the much broader topic of human unfreedom and the forms that this unfreedom takes. The first section deals with the unique features of Gnosticism which have made it appealing in extremely varied times and situations. Gnosticism will be the basis for my considerations about ouroboros. The author’s reflections start from understanding the Gnostic worldview as an expression of apprehensiveness about the radical otherworldliness of the human spirit and its alienation from the universe. The second section deals with the symbolism of the ouroboros and its place in Gnostic conceptual schemes as a reference to the closed cycle of nature that enslaves the human spirit. The third section attempts to decipher layer by layer the Gnostic conceptions associated with the ouroboros. Various levels of interpretation are identified: literal, mythological–magical, psychological-ascetic, and sociopolitical. In the fourth section, the author connects Gnostic ideas with Christianity by interpreting St. Paul’s Epistles, particularly his ideas concerning rulers and authorities. The place occupied by the ouroboros in the Christian universe is analyzed. The last section relies on the ideas of René Girard, Jacques Lacan, and Alain Badiou to illustrate the manifestations of the ouroboros in different dimensions of human existence, both individual and collective, with special emphasis on human desire and its futile circlings.
In this chapter, a meta-analysis of narrative method, I examine how narrative inquiry embodies a strategy of containment by which the ideological structure of music and music education history is repressed by its confinement within a form, the narrative research product, constructed by historically available symbolic and structural categories. This containment leads to an ideological obfuscation of the lived contradictions brought forth by postmodern, late-capitalist society. Employing American literary critic, philosopher, and political theorist Fredric Jameson’s concept of the political unconscious, I demonstrate how the researcher’s unconscious libidinal investment in both the research topic and participants generates an unconscious authorial wish-fulfillment through a particular narrative construction. I argue for, following Jameson, the priority of the political interpretation of texts, as I consider the products of narrative inquiry as such texts. I analyze a narrative study in music education to exemplify these theoretical musings. I conclude by offering that a dialectical concept of narrative as allegory allows for a reconciliation with contradiction while connecting the local to the global, preserving the individual narrative.
‘Aşk nedir?’ sorusu, binlerce yıldır şairleri ve filozofları meşgul etmiştir. Aşkı yalnızca erdemlerini yücelterek övülen bir mucize olarak görmek mi, yoksa ardından çekilen acıyı ve çaresizliği dile getirerek acımasızlığını ve yanılsamalarını ifşa etmek mi? Aşk’ın ‘ne’liğine dair bu sorulara yanıt arayan bazı psikanalistler de ozanların ve felsefecilerin izinden gitmişlerdir. Lacan, aşkı ayrıntılı bir biçimde ele aldığı Seminer VIII’de (Transference -1960-1961), bu sorulara yanıt aramak için Platon’un Sempozyum (Συμπόσιον) metnini seçmiştir. Lacan, bu metni seçme sebebini açıklarken analitik pratiğin başlangıcında aşk olduğunu hatırlatır. Bu nedenle de Lacan Sempozyum’u (Şölen) bir tür psikanaliz seansı olarak ele alır ve aktarımı aşk gibi bir şey olarak tanımlar. Aktarım, aşkı sorgulayan bir şeydir; analitik düşüncenin bakış açısından, aşkın temel bir boyutu olarak ‘ikirciklilik’ olarak bilinen şeyi ortaya çıkaracak kadar derinlemesine sorgular. Bu tam da Sempozyum’da yer alan diyaloglarda gerçekleştirilen şeydir. Diyaloglardaki aşk tartışmasının biçimi, esasen aşkın özüyle yakından bağlantılıdır; ‘aşk’ adeta diyaloglardaki geçişlerden, iniş-çıkışlardan ve paradokslardan oluşur. Bu makale, Platon’un Sempozyum’unu Lacan’la birlikte okuyarak ve Sempozyum’daki tüm konuşmacıları sırasıyla ele alarak aşkın farklı yüzlerini ortaya koymakta, aşkın doğası ve ne olduğu meselesini psikanalitik teoriyle tartışmaktadır.
Negative empathy is a destabilizing aesthetic experience which consists in empathizing with immoral and seductive characters portrayed in a fascinating, yet disturbing fashion. Drawing from cognitive, philosophical and narrative theories, this paper identifies the protective distance provided by aesthetic representation as a prerequisite for the conversion of the tragic or unsettling emotions stirred by negative empathy into aesthetic enjoyment. As a result, I argue that the cathartic potential enabled by literary negative empathy with fictional characters or atmospheres allows for the aesthetization and consequent sublimation of the otherwise repressed major taboos described by Freud in Totem and Taboo. Through analysis of some excerpts from Ágota Kristóf’s The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie and Angela Carter’s short story “The Snow Child,” the paper shows how narratives involving parricide and incest possibly allow readers to confront repression, and how the literary presentation of these narratives contributes to readers’ emotional engagement and aesthetic enjoyment of what would otherwise be deeply disturbing subject matter.
During the last decade, we can observe rising support for right-wing leaders who produce a discourse of semblance of strength. These leaders, the new masters of politics, concentrate on the performance of political charisma and manifest a disregard for the norms of the contemporary public sphere. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of discourses, this article argues that there is a structural relation between the discontents in neoliberal forms of power and the success of these leaders performing the theatre of charisma and political dominance. The key to understanding the rise of the new masters of politics is the relation between the discourse of the master and that of the university. The political prominence of the new masters of politics can be interpreted as a precise reaction to the form of power dominant in neoliberalism – bureaucracy operating according to the norms of economic rationality. The main aim of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed interpretation of discourses of semblance of strength in the broader frame of the historical moment of a crisis of neoliberal form of power.
In this essay, I explore the notion of the encounter as a challenge to the second-person perspective. I do so by turning to Jacques Derrida’s account of the encounter with the associated notions of address, second-person perspective, otherness, and the secret involved in the understanding of the encounter. My argument is not only that such a dynamic can be seen in Derrida’s deliberation, but also that drawing the connection between encounter and Derrida’s account highlights the complex way in which the second-person perspective is involved in the dialogical situation.
This paper examines Michel Foucault's interpretation of Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas (1656) which he uses to illustrate shifts in épistémès throughout history. After analyzing Foucault's interpretation, I extended his approach by employing an interdisciplinary perspective to relativize some of his concepts. The study incorporates various interdisciplinary methods, demonstrating that these approaches lead to a more profound understanding of the ontological, aesthetic, technical, psychological, and sociological dimensions of Velázquez's painting. This strategy demonstrates that artistic creations are dynamic and surpass simplistic dualistic frameworks, methodological relativism, and determinism. As a result, Las Meninas emerges as a self – referential artefact, continuously evolving in meaning through different epistemological and social frameworks.
If readers of Lacan had taken Joan Copjec seriously in 1996, they would have understood Lacan through topology and become aware of the logical and historical priority of projective geometry over Euclidian space and its Cartesian manifestations. Copjec’s critique of Jonathan Crary’s Techniques of the Observer is under-appreciated, because most Lacanians still do not accept the contention by Lacan and Copjec, that the topology of psychoanalysis began with Pappus of Alexandria (300 CE) and Girard Desargues (1591–1661), and continued through the works of Möbius, Klein, Gauss, and other nineteenth-century mathematicians. Under-appreciation of Lacan’s visualizations has delayed a productive merger of projective geometry and ethnology. Stonehenge, the Egyptian obelisks and pyramids, Mayan ritual centers, and the projections of solar images on floors described in Chinese texts, teach us that “smart architecture” dates back at least to the eleventh century BCE. John Dee’s horologium of 1583 shows how the Renaisssance tempietto drew on this tradition and restated the principles of projective geometry. It is up to a new generation of Lacanian theorists to rise to the proven standards of the past. Here, Copjec’s thesis rings most clearly. The progressivist thesis of Positivism, whose worst ideas have been mind-body dualism and the staircase of “eras” improved by technology, is utterly false. Rather than denounce the false, however, we should promote the truth, whenever it can be found.
Elements of this book, Oblation: Essays, Parables, Paradoxes, defy reason. They do so for good reason. Much of what we do, much of what we think, is oblation: sacrifice, offering, to something or someone. The root of “oblation” is “to draw near” or “to dwell in.” It refers to what is brought unto the altar, literal or proverbial — the profoundest oblation being what binds us together, our very souls, our dearest loves, indistinguishable from ourselves, our Isaacs on our Mount Moriahs.
The natures of our oblations characterize our relationships to objects great and small, e.g., Lords and loved ones, groups and masses of signifiers. Oblative transactions promise meaning, yet we are full of uncertainty. What is it that cries out for oblation? How do we hear its voice? Are we, in fact, called, or do we, on the contrary, offer every bit gratuit? Why, as Albert Camus famously remarked, do “the stage sets collapse” as we offer ourselves to life’s routine?
In Oblation, M.H. Bowker considers these questions in a series of essays touching upon figures such as Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Baron van Münchhausen, and Jacques Lacan, unraveling themes of loss, hatred, and the Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Interspersed with brief parables and paradoxes, Bowker's essays push us to wonder who or what we are offering ourselves and others to – and how we get away with this.
Rad se bavi izgradnjom teorijskog okvira radi razumevanja fenomena neoliberalizma. Za konceptualizaciju neoliberalizma koristi se konceptualni okvir teorije upravljanja (governmentality theory), pre svega oslanjajući se na shvatanje ove teorije u radu Mišela Fukoa. Kako bi se bolje razumeo proces interpelacije subjekata u neoliberalizmu, taj okvir ćemo dopuniti konceptima iz Lakanove psihoanalize. Integracija ova dva pristupa omogućava bolje razumevanje načina na koji neoliberalni režimi mobilizuju pojedince na usvajanje određenih modela subjektivnosti. Ovaj teorijski okvir ćemo primeniti na konceptualizaciju odnosa subjektivnosti i depresije kao psihičkog oboljenja za čiju incidencu je primećeno da raste zajedno s procesom uspostavljanja neoliberalizma
Авторка статті ставить за мету дослідження функцій та завдань сміху в контексті життя сучасної людини та труднощів, які виникають у сьогоденні, зокрема стресів та пошуків ідентичності. Авторка обґрунтовує свою тезу, спростовуючи дві поширені позиції, що існують в академічному просторі: 1) розуміння сміху як засобу руйнування ієрархії або трансгресивної сили, яка має потенціал викриття соціальних вад; 2) заразливість сміху. На думку авторки, ці позиції не здатні повністю описати та пояснити явища, які існують у сучасному світі. Замість розуміння сміху як трансгресії за межі соціальних ролей авторка пропонує трактувати його як засіб демаркації, який не руйнує соціальні ролі, а навпаки, утверджує їх. Згода із цінностями, закладеними у жарт, дає змогу людині ідентифікуватися з певною групою людей. Авторка протиставляє інтерпасивність сміху його заразливості. Функція інтерпасивності виникла через потребу сучасної людини у заміщенні власних емоцій. Проаналізувавши відведені для сміху місця, анекдоти та сучасні комедійні жанри, авторка дійшла висновку, що історичний розвиток суспільства створює нові виклики для людини, які сучасний індивід має подолати. У зв’язку з цим сміх у наш час набуває нових функцій, зокрема описаних вище.
Here, I develop my central argument: jouissance corresponds to surplus affective consciousness, to surplus (prioritized) free energy. I detail how Solms’s neuropsychoanalytic integration of affective neuroscience and the free energy principle can be interpreted through Lacan’s extimate topology of jouissance. I then discuss several implications from this Lacanian neuropsychoanalytic integration: differentiating drive (and jouissance) from instinct (and affect), Ariane Bazan’s work situating the signifier as a motoric element, and articulating predictions as signifiers.
Lacanian psychoanalysis is largely, and notoriously, anti-naturalist. There are special challenges in attempting to formulate a specifically Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis. Many Lacanians have criticized neuropsychoanalysis for bio-reductionism, ethical normalization, and an inability to capture the formal contradictions of subjectivity articulated in Lacan’s meta-psychology. This chapter summarizes the arguments behind these criticisms, to contextualize this book in the larger field of controversies over (Lacanian) neuropsychoanalysis. These criticisms will be addressed over the course of this book.
This chapter introduces the Lacanian concepts of the Other and the fundamental fantasy, alongside the notion of shared generative models in the Free Energy Principle. This allows me to sketch how the real, imaginary, and symbolic registers are knotted in dynamic predictive processes across the brain’s different memory systems. I also develop how the Lacanian symptom can be situated in the brain as deeply automatized motoric predictions soldered to the innate contradictions of affective consciousness.
If jouissance arises from the point of antagonism within the symbolic, and I claim that jouissance corresponds to (prioritized) surplus affective consciousness, then is it possible to formulate antagonism within the brain? Here, I demonstrate how antagonism is not only immanent to the brain’s inherited structure; it is also necessary for affective consciousness. Consciousness depends on antagonism (the real) immanent to a brain organized as a differential system (the symbolic). This allows me to situate the Lacanian split subject ($), objet a, and das Ding—as well as develop the notion of an emotional system operating in the logic of jouissance: J(E).
Psychoanalysis often speaks of the power of putting feelings into words. However, this notion retains a differentiation between language and emotion. I propose that affects not only push to be connected to signifiers; affects themselves are organized like signifiers. Panksepp’s basic emotional systems are structured like a language. Here, I demonstrate how affects can undergo linguistic-symbolic operations like displacement, condensation, and substitution through the prioritization function of the midbrain decision triangle. I further propose that the fundamental fantasy (as an abstract cognitive control hierarchy) organizes these chains of affect through predictions of precision.
This chapter develops the Lacanian concept of jouissance—a traumatic excess of enjoyment which may not be felt as such—in relation to the real, imaginary, and symbolic registers. I demonstrate how Lacan extracts these concepts (and others, such as das Ding, objet a, $, S1, S2) from some of Freud’s major texts. I also discuss how the Lacanian real is an antagonism immanent to the symbolic, the symbolic’s own structural inconsistency. This conceptualization will be central to my subsequent integrations with neuroscience.
This study aims to analyze the death drive in McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin while investigating the functions of self-defense, self-destruction, and self-abasement in the film. The proposed questions include: What is the function of death drive in the subjectivity of an individual destructing himself? What are the possible socio-cultural implications of death drive as suggested in the movie? To answer these questions, the study makes frequent use of key terms associated with self-defense mechanism, death drive in particular, as well as masochistic and sadistic elements to prove different features of self-destruction in various forms. The present research shows that death drive projects itself as masochistic self-defense reaction, which is more often than not characterized with resentment and antagonism.
Psychoanalysis has been able to assert historically that it is not a closed branch of science to other disciplines. Its contribution to literature and culture makes it able to flexibly explain the dilemma of subject formation both in literature and culture. Freud, the founding father of psychology owes a debt to the Oedipus Rex story that anchors his entire thought. Acrobatically, Freud's thought was then continued by Lacan in order to explain cultural events that were born like language structure events. Language, literature, and culture then have a meeting point where the cultural process that is never final is precisely a signal that the subject always tries to overcome the shortcomings in himself when slaughtered by language. Language is unable to express itself fully, so literature and culture as products are nothing, but an extension of the subject who continues to feel lack. Zizek as the latest thinker from the previous two generations makes a foothold that the back and forth between the author and his work as an attempt to overcome the logic of deficiency or symptoms embodying the self and the fictional world in order to achieve wholeness exactly like the experience of returning to the mother's body or the real.
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