From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: HAB: Nonconscious vs. Unconscious
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 10:08:30 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 09:33:45 -0800 (PST) Gary D <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca wrote (re: Balancing practicality
> and self formativity, 12 Jan):

> > ...what if repression far from simply blocking the verbalization of
> conscious discourse...

> G: As distinguished from *unconscious* discourse? Of course not; there's no 
such thing. So, you must mean consciousness (since discourse is a highly 
derived construction, far from mere verbalization of anything)

One of Lacan's famous phrases is this: "the unconscious is structured like a 
langauge." This seems to express the idea that the unconscious is language, 
which could not be further from the truth. The unconscious can only be 
apprehended in language - discourse - but this is not identical with the 
unconscious. For Lacan, bringing the unconscious into speech is a painful 
process whereby part of the unconscious is torn into language, it is a 
distortion from the beginning (since the unconscious isn't language). This, in 
fact, changes the unconscious, of which we know so little. We might best say 
that "it" remembers (the repression)... but we are by no means in a position to 
say what "it" is - let alone claim that "it" is dissolved or reversed.

> K:...[repression] is also [consciousness's] indispensable precondition? 

> G: Respectfully, I say this is nonsense. (And it's a domesticated version of 
your earlier claim to me that *trauma* is unavoidable, which I associated with 
infant abuse, not an essential aspect of the psyche).

Ok, I'm going to stop using the word "trauma" and remain consistent with 
Lacan's terms: jouissance. I subsituted trauma to illustrate a point and now it 
has made things unclear. The idea of repression being the condition of 
consciousness has to do with the way in which we acquire language. Without 
going into a summary of Lacan's mirror phase (the imaginary identification with 
a fiction) - basically Lacan's thesis is this: when we learn a language it is 
imposed on us by the Other. It is, literally, foreign to us. Even if we 
possess a genetic predisposition to learning language, this is not coordinated 
through a specific language. Language, then, imprints or carves itself on our 
psyche. This forces "something" out so that language can take "its" place. 
Something (jouissance) must be repressed in order for us to "learn" anything. 
Hegel's understanding of experience is no different: we have a 'new' experience 
whenever an 'old' experience is negated, contradicted. Repression, in other 
words, is the condition of learning. We can't keep everything in our heads all 
at once. In truth, I was actually surprised when you called this nonsense, 
since I had thought it obvious... (although I'm glad that you aren't mincing 
your words here).

> K: > This would render any kind of "undistorted speech situation" a
> conceptual impossibility....

> G: In fact though, an undistorted situation is *quite* conceivable (in a 
phrase: enough openness during enough time) ; you must mean practical 
impossibility or unrealizable possibility. But this is invalid, since the 
definition of undistorted speech implies a condition that is, in principle, 
quite *practically* accessible (given education and experience): analytic 
*skills* to question at all relevant levels that concern a person, 
*opportunity* to question and work through to understanding with local others, 
*openness* to radically different views (that are credible); and so on (in 
accord with JH's formal definition, which could be re-posted).

As far as I can tell, Habermas's positing of undistorted speech is little 
different from the status of Kant's postulations. Kant postulates the 
immortality of the soul as a result of our practical reasoning. As has been 
analyzed by Alenka Zupancic (Ethics of the Real), Kant's postulation is a 
fantasy structure - most transcendental schemas are. Undistorted speech has the 
precise status of being the fantasy of a democratizing and pragmatic approach 
to language. Habermas's claim, however, is stronger than Kant's. Habermas draws 
on the presupposition of undistorted speech as a normative ground.

Here I think it is helpful to read Hegel's logic of essence as a theory of 
ideology (see Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative). As is well known, Habemas 
argues that modernity cannot and will not borrow its normativity from another 
age: "it has to create its normativity out of itself" (PDM). This is a vicious 
circle in and of itself. But Habermas's claim is not merely tautological: his 
argument takes the position that modernity has to constitute itself litearlly 
by presupposing itself in its exteriority, in its external conditions in 
earlier periods. The return to external conditions must coincide with the 
return of the foundation, to this very normativity itself. The external 
relation of presupposing ground is surpassed by means of which normativity 
presupposes itself. This tautological gesture is empty in the precise sense 
that it does not contribute anything new - the normativity in quesiton is 
already present in its conditions. The normativity of the modern age 'discovers 
itself' as already present in tradition. The only way in which to adequately 
deal with this paradox is to invoke a transcendental synthesis which changes 
this 'essence' into an object of experience (this is Habermas's pragmatism). 
The 'transcendence within' which is felt on the level of practical reasoning is 
the result of the subject's spontaneous synthetic activity: the establishment 
of the absolute (which is why Habermas then moves into his argument about 
performative contradictions). Here, we have a ontic background of a 'not-yet' 
to an 'always already.' The idea of communicative freedom, then, realizes 
itself through a series of failures, every particular attempt to realize it may 
fail - freedom remains an empty possibility, bt the very continuous striving of 
freedom to realize itself bears witness to its 'actuality' (in the Hegelians 
sense). What is interesting about this logic here is that the the possibility 
of communicative freedom exerts actual effects, which disappear as soon as it 
actualizes itself ('approximated in discourse'). This short circuit between 
possibility and actuality. The actuality of communicative freedom arrives to us 
as a 'threat' - the more communicatively free we are, the more worried we 
become of not being communicatively free. The hegemonic, then, enters when 
possibility is manipulated into assuming an authoritative voice (fooled by the 
'threat' of actuality). This is precisely what happens in Habermas's razor 
sharp distinction between the good and the just. The authoritative voice, 
demanding consensus, imprints itself on the discourse itself. This matrix leads 
to a strange dialectic: that some 'transgressions' of communicative freedom 
become permissable if 'communicative freedom' is to be preserved (ie. the 
church condones 'small infringements if they stablized the marriage). To say 
this in Lacanian terms: universal communicative inclusion becomes a fetish, a 
substitution for 'the real thing' - which is, by necessity, exclusive (what is 
excluded is the universal which now appears as the particular - student 
movements, women's movements, environmental movements... and so on)...

'nuff said (for now),
ken




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