File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9902, message 219


From: Ariosto Raggo <df803-AT-freenet.carleton.ca>
Subject: Re: $
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 16:59:41 -0500 (EST)


> 
> 
> >> What I find fascinating in the dialogue Lacan puts forth between Caillois'
> >> _Méduse et compagnie_ and Merleau-Ponty's _Le Visible et l'invisible_, or
> >> at least 'The Chiasm', is how it seems to converge to produce the 'stain'
> >> in Lacan's text.
> >
> >  We could open up the texts and look closer to see how this in fact
> >occurs. On page 74 of _FFCP_ L calls the stain a "function" which is
> >"recognized in its autonomy and identified with that of the gaze" (p.
> >74). As threads, tracks, traces, the function of the stain and the gaze
> >governs the gaze secretly, Lacan writes, and eludes that form of vision
> >only imagined in consciousness. There is 'something' that is always
> >sliping away, withdrawing, and yet if not lending itself to conscious
> >appropriation, it does draw interest which is how it is related to
> >seduction and isn't also much like the objet petit a?
> 
> The stain is the place that the gaze 'shows'--itself, and that it is a
> nothing that is something. I am not saying the stain is nothing. It can be
> the _objet a_ or the _minus-phi_, not to confuse the two.

  You are scaring me Ashley, my goodness, you are becoming more
impressive by the second. I am obssesed by music too, I think I will
put some on right now (Yo La Tengo _Genius + Love_)...

 But you did confuse them, what is the _minus-phi_? I ask these
question completely in the interest of learning, I have no pre-text
about where all this is going...

 Perceiving the
> stain can produce a satisfaction of the scopic drive, or it can enduce an
> anxiety on the part of the subject, or even terror. 

  It does both which is what makes it resonate with the sublime perhaps
something like this is what Lyotard is getting at although, certainly,
he would not consider himself a 'Lacanian.'

>The stain I would say
> can only be said to be a 'thread' in that a thread runs through it--that
> is, that it is perceived as sitting at a point of light, or a series of
> points. Lacan's example is well chosen. Holbein's _The Ambassadors_. It
> adorns the cover of the latest Editions du Seuil addition of the seminar.
> He discusses it in the third part of Anamorphosis, pages 99-103 in the
> French.
  
  So what you are saying is that an-(a)mor-phosis is an 'example' of the
stain. Perhaps fleshing this out would give us all a good reading of
the stain or sublime?

>   To refer the concept to Merleau-Ponty and Caillois, I would start by
> pointing out that the 'stain', at least if we impose this concept to his
> work, is not a meeting between the invisible and the visible as much as it
> is a point where the visible can be seen to come from what he calls the
> 'flesh'. Lacan points this out. The flesh is approximately like the
> Lacanian real. It could be somewhat compared to Spinoza's substance... but
> I shan't venture further than silly name-dropping there. As for Caillois,
> the idea of _ocelli_ are the best place to look. In English, Merleau-Ponty:
> _The Primacy of Perception_, Northwestern UP, 1964, particularly 'Eye and
> Mind'; and _The Visible and the Invisible_, same press, 1968. Caillois:
> _The Mask of Medusa_, translation of _Méduse et compagnie_ (Gallimard:
> 1960, also called 'Méduse et Cie') by George Ordish, published by Clarkson
> N Potter, Inc in New York, 1964.
> 
  Okay, i will be doing homework on this. Thanks.

> >  You are talking about the masked Lacanian Phantom. I haven't a clue
> >what S1 - > S2 means, you are going to have to define the operation of
> >the formulas as you go along 'cause my brain hurts when you just assume
> >I know what all these strange and esoteric ways of putting things mean.
> >I would like to be more systematic and slow in fleshing out terms and
> >how they connect, change, and so on... if that is not too demanding of
> >your ability and time. Really, I am a virgin when it comes to Lacan,
> >especially compared to you it seems. Seriously, can you teach me a
> >little? Che Vuoie couldn't do it, assumed too much for all of us and so
> >after a while, everybody lost interest.
> 
> S1 is what Lacan calls the master signifier from his 17th seminar, I
> believe. S2 refers to knowledge. S1 -> S2 means that _unsre
> geistvolle_--excuse me, _geistliche_--_Vatti_ teaches us through his
> masterful assertions. S1 corresponds somewhat with what Lacan called the
> 'point de capiton' around the third seminar, and also with the
> 'Name-of-the-Father' around the time just before Seminar XI. The very
> noteworthy difference between the 'point de capiton' and S1 is that the
> 'point de capiton' refers necessarily to the 'anchoring' of imaginary
> signifiers into a symbolic system. This is typical of the
> over-determination the symbolic basically receives up until Seminar XI,
> where one can perceive a great lessening in its emphasis. I would say that
> the only way to lose your virginity is to just jump in and let him fuck
> you, if you'll excuse the French, so to speak. Any other perception you can
> gain from Zizek, Copjec, Grosz, Fink, Rose, Gallop, Mitchell, etc. etc.
> etc., will just make it more difficult, for you if you really want to read
> Lacan. In any case it will give you more _méconnaissance_ than Lacan's own
> text.
> 
  I am such a virgin in so many things, I feel so inadequate. But Zizek
from whom I get a lot of my Lacan, he puts the emphasis on the last
Lacan who drops the symbolic in favor of the objet petit a. A move I
wouldn't mind retracing to get a better (mis)understanding.

  You are such a name droper, I demand more! 

> >> The split between the eye and the gaze and the conscious and unconscious is
> >> similar, but the relation (to the subject) is mediated differently. I will
> >> leave this to _ces maîtres présents_.
> >>
> >  This makes sense. In my lingo, the... let's say interruption of the
> >'object' of the gaze draws attention and pulls out and cuts off
> >propositional discourse, thereby making the mind quiet if absorbed by
> >that which eludes it.
> 
> I think it is difficult to understand the gaze unless looked at through the
> subject... the gaze has no object but all around the subject. It is all
> bound up  in the subject's self-perception, the removal of the eye from
> where the subject perceives.
> 
  The gaze comes from the outside.

> >  You are so right, we should bow down before his mastery of Lacan.
> >Where do you want to go from here? I guess you don't listen to music, eh?
> >You lead, I suggested we stick to chapter six and build *slowly* from
> >there but maybe you have other ideas about what you would to make of
> >this thread? I know I do.
> 
> I never intended to go anywhere. Music and Lacan don't go well together as
> ideas, unless you're Didier Anzieu or Guy Rosolato. I do listen to music,
> rather obsessively really. Just trying to regain the _jouissance_ of the
> womb.

  I am not going anywhere now either, I think I am going to hung out
here in my cell of circumstances a good while longer. How does music
help to regain the jouissance of the womb? 

>   And really, I would say, in order to understand the second section of the
> book you have to situate it after the first, and the first after what
> Miller terms the excommunication séance.
> 
  I am trying, so much to read.

> >  One last remark on the gaze to move things along. Lacan describes it
> >as a "strange contingency" and "as the thrust of our experience,
> >namely, the lack that constitutes castration anxiety." How does this
> >apply to you btw? that was page 72-73. So here is how it starts to slip
> >into Bataille with its proximity to a chance encounter.
> 
> The relation to Bataille's ideas of chance is there from the third
> _séance_. Lacan's concept of _Wiederholung_ smacks of it. The gaze is lack.
> It is the grand field of nothing. The subject perceives in the stain 'his
> own failures', i.e., his own castration and thus feels anxiety. What is the
> object of anxiety but the _objet a_? Confer Seminar 10 and 'Introduction to
> the Names-of-the-Father' in Television. I don't know if that applies to me
> at all, but that is what I have to say about it before I go eat lunch in
> any case.
> 
  wow, sounds interesting. Looking forward to reading this cloth....

Bye,
Ariosto

> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.tc.umn.edu/~whit0580/
> 
> 
> 
> 



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