Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 13:41:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Gary D <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: HAB: No, Re: Lacan and Habermas: understanding as control? 



The Spoons software is evidently not working well with quotation
marks in its outgoing mode (while working well incoming, as the HAB
archive copy of postings shows). But quotation marks are vital to the
kind of writing we're doing here. So, "if this phrase" is missing its
quotation marks, the Spoons software is still experiencing
indigestion. (And I hope the list owner knows this)

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--- kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca wrote (14 Jan, " Lacan and
Habermas: understanding as control?"):

K: Habermas's reading of Freud is informed by Hegel - so my comments
regarding Hegel are not out of place.

G: Habermas' readings are informed by lots of influences; but you
weren't talking about Freud yesterday (nor JH's reading of
Freud--which, by the way, isn't Hegelian); you were talking about
Habermas' sense of idealized communication (first off) and going your
own way in Hegelian terms--invalidly, with respect to language
acquisition, emancipatory reflection, and development (all the themes
that were relevant to your and my interaction). 

K: I don't have the time or energy to run through it all.

G: Excuse ME. But I suppose you'd like me to more than "run through"
your long passages on Lacan. Or maybe not.

---------------------------------------

What time I put into Lacan years back (displaced by interest in
Derrida) was enough to cause me to feel now that you're reading Lacan
fairly; but, though you're not reading Habermas facilely, you're not
reading Habermas fairly. So, maybe you're misreading Lacan, too.
Anyway, I'm not going respond to Lacan (or your Lacan), but confine
my response to what you say about Habermas.
....

K: ....The unconscious as radically intersubjective. .... Lacan
argues that it is exterior, Habermas argues that it is interior. 

G: The unconscious is an interiorization of external engagements;
both externality and internality apply to understanding the
unconscious; so the distinction is infelicitous for comparing Lacan
and Habermas. 

K: The aim for Habermas is to resymbolize what has been repressed or
distorted (theoretically guided self-reflection), the aim for Lacan
is not necessarily to 'cure' the analysand, rather, to express truth
(which is why Lacan sees psychoanalysis as a science). 

G: Habermas talks about validity, of course, rather than simply
truth. There are various kinds of "truth" claims. To associate truth
with science is to reduce truth or validity to empirical-analytic
validity. The emancipatory efficacy of self-reflection serves the
validity interest of a restored genuineness to one's relations:
*with* others and "with" oneself. This restoration opens one to their
own developmental potential for participating in communicative
lifeworld projects normally associated with social activity. A reader
of Habermas should not miss the role that emancipatory processes have
in the greater project of fostering *democratic* life, in the most
local, even intimate, sense of genuine openness and constructiveness.


K: For Habermas, so it would seem, Lacan is guilty of an objectivist
fallacy. 

G: Bingo.

K: ....For Habermas, understanding always implies control.

G: To claim this, you'd have to claim that instrumental action
prevails over the practical interest of understanding, which applies
to the situation of living under distortion (which the emancipatory
interest addresses), not the character of understanding itself.
Understanding implies control inasmuch as the ego is under the
invisible sway of the unconscious (repression)--which is not
invisible to the analyst. 

K.... Whitebook takes Habermas to task in his essay on Nature and
Habermas....

G: Bad, bad Juergen. (Whitebook is not the issue here. You want to
focus on Whitebook in some specific sense? Then focus on Whitebook in
some specific sense.)

K:...For Habermas, the power of reflection, linked through the
illocutionary dimensions of language, necessarily entail a merger
between understanding and self-control. 

G: The *character* of reflection relies upon all of the dimensions of
language; the *power* of reflection is what it ordinarily seems to
be: articulative distantiation, articulative re-framing. A merger
between understanding and self-control is applicable to the condition
of distortion and dependence (oppression <--> repression). 

K: If we understand the genesis of a symptom, we can control it. 

G: No: If we understand a symptom, it dissolves as symptom and
becomes an element in an explanation of the cause of the symptom. If
we understand the genesis of a symptom, we understand the cause of
the symptom. 

K:  If we understand the source of a communicative disturbance, then
we can act differently. 

G: Yes.

K: ....For Habermas, 'therapy' ends up with a 'cure' - it links truth
with the intersubjective coordination of action. For Lacan, truth is
must be separated from praxis. 

G: See, if Lacan weren't operating (by your light) with a objectivist
sense of truth, there wouldn't be the need for separating truth from
praxis (which is counterproductive). Habermas' "cure" (??)---a
restored subjective truthfulness or genuineness---involves a
(re)initiated constructiveness of lifeworld relations, not just
instrumental "coordination of action" (which, by the way, serves
non-instrumental practical interests grounded in normative
validities).

K: Simply because one understands, and even if one is motivated to
change, it does not mean that they can operate autonomously. 

G: Agreed. A restored subjective genuineness leads to a (re)initiated
development *toward*  autonomy. 

K: Habermas makes this connection: between communicative freedom and
communicative action. 

G: Indeed.

K: Lacan does not. 

G: TOO bad.

K: This is CRUCIAL, absolutely crucial for understanding the
differences between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Habermasian social
theory.

G: Got it. 

K: A point not to be missed here is this: through the traversing of
fantasy an actor can change their actions and coordinate their
activity in a more harmonious manner - but not necessarily.

G: Hey, I'm about ready to check out of here. 

K: Naturally, the Habermasian response would be this: either the
analysand has not 'properly' understood the problem, or, Lacan is
guilty of failing to make adequate connections between
linguistification and communicative action. 

G: How about: AND--both.

K: And a Lacanian rejoinder might bet his: ...

G: I like that. 

K: ...traversing the fantasy / identification with the sinthome leads
to the recognition of the way in which someone enjoys (the truth of
their desire). 

G: Well, let me tell you: I do enjoy the truth of my desire. 

K: But this, in and of itself, is not a guarantee of 'autonomy' -...

G: Tell me about it. 

K: ... it simply means that the person in question is, in principle,
capable of articulating their interests - is able to give reasons for
and so on. But this does not mean that their desire enters into
communicative harmony with others because the linguistification of
desire does not reduce / return desire to the public sphere - rather
- points to the unique way in which the 
individual relates to their jouissance - which is radically singular.


G: Agreed. This is why the emancipatory interest is not considered
apart from other interests, in KHI; and why Habermas writes so much
about developmental learning. 

K: This, it seems to me, is congruent with Maeve Cooke's argument
that communicative and instrumental reason are born of the same
moment, the idea that instrumental action isn't simply parasitical on
communication action (as Habermas argues on the first page of his
essay "What is Universal Pragmatics?").

G: Oh! Another specific reference (but how specific?). H: "Thus I
start from the assumption (without undertaking to demonstrate it
here) that other forms of social action--for example, conflict,
competition, strategic action in general--are derivatives of action
oriented toward reaching understanding. Furthermore, since language
is the specific medium of reaching understanding at the sociocultural
stage of evolution, I want to go a step further and single out
explicit speech actions from other forms of communicative action...."

K: ....I don't think I've misunderstood Habermas here. Clearly, for
Habermas, rationality and communication are linked through the
illocutionary dimension of language. 

G: You have misunderstood Habermas "here" (in your presentation, as
well as in your recollection of Habermas' point). Rationality and
communication are linked through the *entire* VALIDITY BASIS of
speech, which involves all dimensions of language and hinges on
cognitive world relations which are subjective, intersubjective, and
objectivating. 

---------------------------------------------

G [yesterday}> A semiotic notion of language (like Lacans) cannot
capture the illocutionary or actional character of the unconscious
INTERacting like (*analogously* to how) language goes.

K: It isn't that Lacan fails to capture the illocutionary aspect of
language. 

G: Apparently (going on your account), this is indeed the case.

K:.... I'm not going to dispute the binding/bonding power of
communicative utterances. My point is that this is only an ideal case
- because communication isn't limited to communicative action -

G: The relational dimension of communicative utterances is inherent
to linguistic cognition; the binding/bonding power (as you want to
call it) is not a "case" of communication at all, let alone an ideal
one. Communication is made of relations, and these relations may be
other than linguistic. And the relational aspect of communicative
action may be tacit or non-thematic (in instrumental communications,
for example, which are dependent upon preceding contexts of
interaction which instrumental actions serve). *Language* isn't
limited to communicative action, but this another matter (apart from
your claims about Habermas' sense of communicative action). 

K: ...and if we do not take communicative action to be primary, then
Lacan's explanation is plausible - even within the general confines
of Habermas's general framework.

G: This is ridiculous. To say that L isn't limited to C is not to say
that non-C is primary. There is no plausibility here at all, let
alone tenability. 

------------------------------

> K: Ok, I'm going to stop using the word "trauma" and remain
consistent with 
Lacan's terms: jouissance. 

> G: I thought this was a Habermas list.

K: The more I get into this - the closer Habermas and Lacan seem to
get. That's part of my trouble here.

G: With all due respect, I'm going to leave you to your troubles at
this point. 

Best regards, truly,


Gary



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