In the introduction to this text by Alenka Zupancic, we find in the foreword by the other member of the troika - Zizek, an assertion that is worth raising up. Namely - "Lacan's thesis that the Freudian decentred subject of the unconscious is none other than the Cartesian cogito, further radicalized in the Kantian transcendental subject." This is an angle of inquiry, which is perhaps not precedented in the history of philosophy. It is also characteristic of the kind of reading, or perhaps reading strategies which the Slovenian School of Psychoanalysis has offered us, and I hope to be able to say something about this in the course of this review.
A way in which we may frame this issue is in terms of extentionality and what we believe our experience of the self is. Language for example is a tool for thought - we think through language and it allows us to connect ideas. The written word is a physical manifestation of that tool and is a way in which I can externalise a part of my psyche, say my thoughts about a stale ice cream cone to another. A pen may allow you to draw an object you have never seen, a computer may allow you to make a program that can visualize such drawings with geometrical precision. Yet apart from these rather generic examples, our feelings are often a function of such extentionalities.
When I read a gripping novel for instance, the sense of suspece I feel is externalized and embodied in the formulation of the plot in question. When I sit on a motorcycle zipping down the highway - exhiliration is a function of me on a that motorcycle and the speed at which we are travelling. This, in a sense is how we may read the Lacanian concept of the decentred subject; the 'I' which is constitutive of myself is always in some way outside of myself. Better yet, it may be a bricolage of several different externalities, the way a painting may be of a vase, with a notebook by a window looking out into a cool Autumn evening. The Hegelian formulation of this is worth noting. He posits that a plant is an animal with its intestines outside of its body, in the form of roots.
Put algebraicly, the symbolic order is the thing which the human animal uses as their spiritual intestine. The means via which we locate ourselves in the world, and via which we make sense of the world. The line of argument which Zizek would like to make here is that both, the decentred subject, and the Kantian transcendental subject are hence substantially empty. To quote Kant from the Critique of Pure Reason, 'In the pure thought of myself, I am the being itself, yet no part of this being is given to me thereby for my thought.' The void in which such a subject is produced, is for Lacan - the Freudian subject of desire.
We are introduced to the project of this book as a focus on this assertion of modern subjectivity, which consequently creates a rift between ethics proper and the domain of the Good. A provocative formulation is positted, with Lacan siding with Kant, against the utilitarians and Christian ethics. It is necessary to recognize in this a provocative introduction, as Kant's categorical imperative is not a utilitarian argument, however Lacan is also the person who saw Sade as the truth of Kant. In this sense the utilitarian arguments which led to, among other disciplines - that of political economy which would come to dominate much of early modern English history for example, were in their most sophisticated inceptions, such as in the work of Bernard de Mandeville's 'Fable of the Bees' - acutely aware of precisely a calculus of desires in operation. If you recall, the subtitle of that text being 'Private Vices, Public Benefitts'. Indeed mercantile capital, apon whose basis modern trade found its footing was built apon the belief that private indulgences may create the oppurtunity for public gain, via the trade of commodities, and among the aristocracy - alliances, commitments etc.
Zizek would expand this register to include our communion with God, in asserting that it pays to be moral - for even if we suffer in life, we will be rewarded for it after our death.
A conceptual point is explicated, regarding the Lacanian formulation of desire as one whose account is never finally settled, whose circle is never squared as it were - for the remainder of any circuit of desire is not asmuch its result as what allowed the initiation of that drive in the first place. This cause is said to be non-pathological, and apriori, assertions which may perhaps be challenged - yet the name which Lacan gives to this factor is the object cause of desire, or the object petit a.
An example of this is deemed to be the primordial gift, whose act of giving cannot be accounted for in future exchanges; and is in this sense outside or perhaps apriori to their transactions. This leads to, perhaps paradoxically - an important injunction which resembles almost an imperative. That the ethical act proper cannot be reduced to the law of the public good, even if it were to coincide with the ego-ideal, and that it has to be distinguished from an injunction by the superego, which functions effectively as the obscene supplement of the ego-ideal in many cynical social regimes.
An analogical scenario is not diffucult to frame. In India for instance, to participate in the politics of the party often entails a certain distance kept by an individual to the party line. To take the position of the organization too literally would entail a critique of the doctrine in question, if for no other reason than bringing it to the forefront as what directs the understanding. This is evidenced in the largescale political horse trading which has become commonplace even among ministers.
Another example, perhaps more rooted in history is also a critique of the right to difference so celebrated by certain post-colonials. When for instance the colonized are expected to become like the imperialist/colonizing oppresors - there is often the supplemental assertion made, by sections in the know, that in some way they are irreducibly other - that they would never be able to succeed. Here, we must assert the right to sameness as the only principle which can unite a universalist politics.
Any prefiguration of sameness however hides a prehistory. Regarding the Bosnian war, the movie Welcome to Sarajevo is cited, where a mother relinquishes her bond with her child in noticing that she might be happier in her new life in England. The child seals this pact when in her last phone call, she pretends not to understand Bosnian. The critique of the western humanist intervention here is a sharp one, for it appreciates that even in their effort at saving the children, via relocation and care - effectively the journalist and aid agencies help the Serbs in the project of ethnic cleansing.
In its ability to present the coordinates which such arguments locate, within an orthodox Lacanian register - Zizek acknowledges the insight which such a text by Alenka Zupancic is capable of presenting. And with this we should conclude the introduction.
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