Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 16:38:11 +0000 From: Dave Wilson <Dave-AT-zizek.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: Lacan, Wes & Dave Apologies for the delay, I've been away/busy for a few days. First, thanks for the Goux details, Gene. Of course, almost immediately after reading them I read a reference to him in Luce Irigaray's 'je tu, nous' when rereading an essay which had first read a few days earlier. Jean-Joseph Goux was then merely a citation which I overlooked, now his name has significance for me. This is a (trivial) example of the kind of process to which I thought Wes was alluding when discussing historical materialism and linguistically constructed subjectivity. One something has become recognised (mis-recognised) then it is as if it has always been the case, hence it appears to be trans-historical. Now the only way in which I can find Lacan (and hence psychoanalysis) plausible is to read it historically in this way. The particular symbolic code within which I am embedded necessarily seems to be the symbolic code. But this awareness might enable me to do something about it. It seems to me that this is what D&G, and others such as Irigaray are doing.Incidentally, I found your comments on D&G's Anti-Oedipus helpful. I am of course misreading Lacan. This is where I find Lacan irritating - he seems so slippery! It is as if there is an answer available, within Lacan's work, to every objection by a well-chosen (mis)reading. But perhaps that is the point. It is interesting that in your response you have(?) to add parenthetical references such as 'until lacan perhaps' and 'lacan's later de-centered symbolic order ..) which run counter to your main psychoanalytic critique, as if this same process is going on for you! Anything of any value in the above has come from my musings on my reading of Zizek, and a little of Lacan himself. Now, I don't have enough expertise to enter a detailed discussion about historical materialism; so a question instead. You wrote, >Back to Wes' comments: not historical materialism, I would think, >but rather *capitalism* not might but *has* "brought about a >massive shift in subjectivity" but we experience this shift as >*subjects* only in representation (inevitably distorted), whereas >the real formative processes are market-driven rather than >"symbolic" (in Lacan's linguistic sense). > OK, capitalism has brought about a massive shift in subjectivity, but I'm afraid that I don't understand the distinction in the second part, and in particular 'real formative processes are market-driven rather than symbolic'. Could you elaborate? Zizek's "Sublime Object .." is a lengthy musing on subjectivity, and brings us back to Althusser of course. His use of Lacan leads him to say that we can produce a critique of an ideology such as capitalism, but that we also need to go further and identify what its 'kernel of enjoyment', how it captures our desire. Why is it that, despite the majority in the UK showing concern for social and health issues and professing to be happy to pay for them in taxes, that we keep voting into power a party radically opposed to this? regards, Dave Dave Wilson | A letter always arrives at its destination (Dave-AT-zizek.demon.co.uk) | Jacques Lacan (http://s13a.math.aca.mmu.ac.uk) ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005