Recall in the earlier chapter we encountered how an ethical act is not necessarily an act which is in accord with duty, even were the subject to be it's author. For an act to be ethical according to Kant, its motivating force must be the act of duty itself, or perhaps it's explication. Yet, Jaques Allain Miller, also notices something akin to the divided subject in Kant's logic, from his Critique of Practical Reason - a dichotomy appears between the subject who acknowledges the good life, and the pleasures which come with it, in other words, everything which our contemporary arrangement is capable of pathologizing, and on the other side what was defined earlier in the terms of a moral good. The recognition of this as a moral good would of course lie in its ability to redeem the pathos of the former culture, or rather capable of articulating that which is unsaid or perhaps cannot be said in adhering to the psychopathology which characterizes the relations with that which are required to persist that make a 'life of pleasure' possible.
Recall also our earlier consideration of the drive in psychoanalysis, which Freud recognized as beyond the pleasure principle proper. We do find something of a reflection of this in Kant's position that the relation between the principles of happiness and morality, in practical reason are not antinomies inasmuch as a matter of indifference. This is so because in the course of duty, it may so be that happiness is not a consideration. This position, however, left in these terms is where our investigation into interpellation and the formation of selfhood; of what the self may be conscious of in themselves, as they do what they believe they must - becomes all the more vital.
In the chapter, I also read a mingling of the critique of mourning as a position capable of furthering or indeed articulating a genuine ethical position. To quote Miller, 'the subject is divided by the fact that he has to choose between his pathos and his division.' I again, highlight the importance of our understanding of the mechanisms of interpellation we believe we are called to in any such commitment or indeed creation of divisions as such, for in fact it could be said that the discipline of critical theory rose to prominence proper, precisely in response to an uncritical acceptance of interpretative models such as certain forms of bureaucracy and government which were witnessed during WWII. To place this concisely, in the author's words 'The alternative to pathological subjectivity is not pure or immaculate ethical subjectivity, but freedom or autonomy." And, indeed the observance of the split subject as recognized in psychoanalysis may be an account of the discreteness, nay - the very rarity of genuine ethical actions. This may require some explaining, as the notion of duty proffered by Kant is one where submission to an authority in the act of obedience remains key, even as this cooperation permits for an extent of interrogation or questioning.
There is a sense in which the advertisement to discover our authentic selves marketed by all sorts of self-help gurus has worn off since at least the first decade of the 21st century. Yet if the drive to discover ourselves was ever a part of contemporary ideology, then by the same token we would have to acknowledge the pathological commitments they, or rather it has often led us to. In fact, as the author attests, it is Kant's proposition that our 'deepest' convictions are radically pathological.
If one were to consider what a free act could be from within these terms, it does appear that such an act would be free, principally from the subject's own tendencies, constituting as it were a break or rupture, in this sense - heteronomous. However, how are we to consider the persistence of a conviction or hypothesis often necessary for the carrying forth of any experiment or procedure, not to mention the faculty of memory in which whatever sense of our personhood inheres? And would not such a tarrying with the negative be the properly ethical act?
We find ourselves presented with a dichotomy here between ethics as a rupture, break or liberation from one's own nature, and ethics as a persistence, of hypothesis or conviction, and this is not easy to reconcile. What may be common to both of these aspects of Kantian ethics, however, observed by professor Alenka, is that they both are alienating. In the sense that in one case we break free from that which we may have once harboured as 'most truly ours' and in the other by submitting ourselves to an abstract principle that often does not take our person into account. If this accounts for in some manner to the kind of subject we have been speaking about, what may be the nature of freedom in question, which such a subject may exercise?
What may it mean for instance, to speak of freedom as a fact? To articulate a causality through freedom - as the author hazards to do? With some formal invention, we are presented with an answer - the presentation of these positions here takes the guise of the assumption of guilt. And here, I do use the word assumption deliberately as it may be postural, and in this sense - formal in its presentation, perhaps not without foresight into how such an appeal to beneficence may be received. Indeed, the possibility of such a gesture to be assumed by a subject marks/ inscribes - no, rather performs an inkling of the nature of subjection which may be operating in a contemporary ideology.
And here, we are led - unavoidably to the question; whom if not what is this subject, that is capable of assuming such a gesture? The ethical act here, and its relation to freedom are unavoidable. For if an act is to be lawful, would mean a recognition that it was performed not only in accord with the law, but only for the sake of duty, that is as a moral law that one recognizes - then before a judge or a jury, the defendant who may speak on our subject's behalf cannot but recognize in such acts, the possession of the faculty of freedom.
I think Sartre speaks of this elsewhere when he mentions that even when I may identify, not merely with my act, but also with the purpose for which it may be done - I would still require a degree of self-consciousness, a knowingness I think is the word he uses, for me to recognize such acts as my product, an assumption of the position of their author as it were.
The reference to Sartre here is not a mere aside, as the author of the text before our consideration - Alenka Zupancic, also seeks to present a philosophically motivated critique of psychological freedom, in the order of it being just another kind of causality. Here, this serves not merely as an act of demarcation, but a step - perhaps even necessary for the subject to assume or realize her autonomy. The study of Kant persisted with, in this text here begins to show its applications. Where an individual usually believes that they harbour the most freedom, in the domain of their psychology - Kant insists on the primacy of the pathological, perhaps in the form of a senseless repetition.
The subject of freedom here is internalized, or expressed if you prefer only when the order which serves to circumscribe a subject, is sublated - that is understood to be one among other orders whose purposes and inconsistencies form a possibility. Put differently, were a subject to grasp the contingency of the law to which they see themselves bound, they may recognize in this formation the possibility of remaking their bonds.
It is instructive here to remind our possible onlookers regarding the position of the Other in Lacan's discourse. In our experience of freedom, our possibility of expressing it hinges upon a symbolic order that we think through. Here, the Other is effectively a break in the consistency of our symbolic universe, an interruption as it were, yet one which may also alert us to another way of inhabiting such a symbolic order, and here we may be compelled to admit that in this regard the other is not really other to us, but perhaps experienced as a subversion to synchrony which by its very homogeneity had been invisible earlier.
The Other, however, to be truly Other, could not be a mere interruption in the coherent ordering of our universe. The Other, to be truly Other would have to also be a causal order beyond our control. This in fact would be the only mark, the only proof we may have of their autonomy. And it is very easy to make too much of this point, however necessary it may be for the constitution of a subject.
There is a sense in which we mediate our relations with the Other, via the engagement of the symbolic order by our discourse. And it is important to recognize that this engagement is also a mediation, a way we may have of introducing the Other to ourselves, our preferences, dislikes, predispositions and practices. It opens these out for scrutiny and provides common terms via which we may understand each other. Such an understanding is never absolute, however, inasmuch as the experience of the Other is mediated by the symbolic order as well. We think through language, our relations are mediated by institutions and custom. Often, we are most unfree when we lack the very terms via which to express our bondage, as Zizek once argued.
In reading her text, particularly her presentation of Kant's use of the category of the Other, I cannot but discern a degree of faith which our author posits in Kant to or rather for the Other, and indeed this would hold true for the three members of the troika concerned who have led the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis - Zizek, Dollar, and Zupancic - following Lacan, would insist on reading Sade and that pathological kernel which has to persist in a given epoch as the truth of Kant. And yet, it must be said that this testament to perversion if you will has allowed for unique possibilities in terms of how we may influence a subject, at the price however of veering dangerously close to rhetoric. Allow me to present a quote - "In other words, where the subject believes herself autonomous, Kant insists on the irreducibility of the Other, a causal order beyond her control. But where the subject becomes aware of her dependence on the Other (such and such laws, inclinations, hidden motives . . .) and is ready to give up, saying to herself: 'This isn't worth the trouble', Kant indicates a 'crack' in the Other, a crack in which he situates the autonomy and freedom of the subject." And here, perhaps prematurely - I must indicate to onlookers and over-hearers that this does appear to be an agential reading of the Other, and in this rendering perhaps the whisper of an invocation to some Bachus like playfulness, satyrical - jouissance, and other such rhapsodies which may perhaps have once led an old Greek to call this discipline the dear delight.
But let us return to our subject as it were, which within the purview of this review of the second chapter of Alenka Zupancic's book - is freedom. I have indicated as to what may be considered a criterion for the acceptance of this, if that is all that freedom is to be. Yet, as with any declaration or maxim - the grime appears in the form in which it presents itself, and how we recognize it. The author realizes this and chooses to explain the situation via the Lacanian maxim, 'There is no Other of the Other'. What does this mean? To quote - "In other words, the Other itself is inconsistent, marked by a certain lack. What Kant is saying is that there is no Cause of the cause, this is precisely what allows for the subject's autonomy and freedom." And while this may have been touched on earlier, I would like you to notice the formulation - 'there is no cause of the cause'. Here, there is a certain kind of singularity insisted on. A singularity which perhaps is not dissimilar to the interpretative moment which our study began with, in Judith Butler's tracks as she took up this old and unfashionable Althusserian concept, itself perhaps nothing more than a religiously infused mask for Sartre's example of a child peeking through a keyhole, which too - like so much in this world is a borrowing.
The subject which the author would like to present before us, however, is that of freedom. And when she says here, that 'there is no cause of the cause' it must be read in the light of the fierce debates and the reaction against various individuals, creators, artists, and the labor movement in general - by that strategy which we now know to be subsumption, which they are compelled to resist and this is an issue which we will return to.
The perplexity of the position held by Kant, that freedom presupposes morality is brought forth to a degree by the author in her depiction of the relation of the subject to their freedom, as expressed in acts. This is done via the question of the morality of these acts, and whether the subject acts as their agential author, that is one who is self-conscious of them in their undertaking. There may be an extent for instance, via which the subject is not truly free in any act, being compelled by duty, obligation or n number of bondages. And yet, for the act to take place - the necessity of the subject remains, and in this sense ultimate responsibility does rest with them, it may appear.
The other way in which the subject is conceived is via its relation to causality. However, the author would highlight that in Kant, the subject is never a mere product of causal determination, leaving them inert or merely a result. Rather the subject is that which makes the relation between cause and effect possible.
The axis of this text remains a reading of ethics via Kant and Lacan, and the depiction of the subject provided above is likened to a similar move by Lacan, in his break from structuralism. If, within the structuralist tradition - the subject is likened to the structure, and in psychoanalytic discourse - our very utterance is ultimately addressed to the Other, the Lacanian intervention here is to introduce the subject as not the Other itself, unmediated as it were and appealed to perhaps in prayer or invocation, but as correlative to a gap in the Other. A gap, which may perhaps be discernible in the symbolic order itself. The author puts it as 'the point where the structure fails to fully close in upon itself, and here I would say that the Lacanian formulation of the pass, as a possible end of psychoanalysis may be of some interest to readers.
The critique against psychologisation of the subject, its de-psychologisation as the author puts it is indeed a radical one, which takes up conceptual arsenal against the more traditionally conceived notion of the ego - however useful it may be to personhood. The psychoanalytic notion of the divided subject is incompatible with such an understanding. Zupancic here, like Zizek in 'The Most Sublime Hysteric', following Lacan - define the subject as the relation of the I to the act of enunciation. A seal as it were, that would ward the psychoanalytic discipline against any potential act of usurpation via a cult of personality as it were - to bring forth the possibility of the analyses of a discourse via an appreciation of the role of the parties who constitute it.
You will notice, that it is impossible to construct the subject as such if the pole of authorship, originator, creator etc. is emphasised as the only determining authority of the meaning of a discourse as it were - as would be the case in the discourse of the master. The discourse of psychoanalysis is a discourse which is diagnostic in this sense, and is hence a discourse of the analyst. We may return to the characterisation of the four discourses, of the master, analyst, university and hysteric at a later date.
Yet what does psychoanalysis diagnose in a discourse? This would be pathology; senseless ticks, mindless repetitions, slips of tongue - and other similarly produced discrepancies via which something of the unconscious is glimpsed through the mask of everyday social interaction. This is not to say these masks themselves are not pathological, indeed - one of the points of presenting the divided subject in the manner we have done above is to suggest the possibility that there is nothing constitutively ours beneath the mask - unless you were to refer to some raw pulsating gamut of drives. Our sense of self begins when we learn how to present what we are to another, often retroactively forming a notion of how we may be recognised in this or that situation, and ultimately within the symbolic order.
There is indeed something to be said about the attachment to a certain mask, the repetition of a determined role, in the hope perhaps for a kind fo recognition which may in some way complete the division which the subject feels themselves compelled to perform. An analyses of the presentation of such a subject, socially, in their discourses, and perhaps even in their dreams - for these hangups if you will, which have been characterised here as pathological repetitions is where the diagnostic element of psychoanalysis begins.
Alenka Zupancic however would like to assess whether our conceptual apparatus is adequate to such a task, by pointing out what may appear to be a contradiction. This presents itself in this chapter in the form of a question. Can the subject choose herself as a divided subject without an experience of her own pathology, or that point in her discourse where she chooses as it were to misrecognize herself?
The question, or rather the issue if you prefer - of freedom must be broached here. The dilemma we are confronted by is this, will the subject ever come to choose the divided self, via which she may identify the beginnings and ends of a discourse in the relation that a subject has to it, without ever coming to face the problem of a hard logical determinism? The author puts it thus, and I hope a reader may discern here that sometimes a pass is not a neat and world opening syllogism. "The subject cannot choose herself as subject without first having arrived at the point which is not a forced choice but an excluded or impossible choice" (my emphasis). This would mark the assumption of the subject of her own position determined by its exposure to the Other via the symbolic order, 'with all its unfreedom or radical subordination.' The Kantian formulation of this problem comes down to how can an act be necessary and free at the same time? Seemingly the ultimate structuralist problematic.
The Kantian addressal of this problem is one which today, to a reader after Althusser will ring of what we may recognise to be an early postulate of interpellation. " the freedom of the will (Wilkur) is of a wholly unique nature in that an incentive (Triebfeder) can determine the will to an action only so far as an individual has incorporated it into his maxim (has made it the general rule in accordance with which he will conduct himself); only thus can an incentive, whatever it may be, co-exist with the absolute spontaneity of the will (ie. freedom)." - Religion within the limits of Reason Alone
In engaging the subject, we may discover that the motives, indeed the reasons, even when self attested - may fail at accounting for the subject's actions, forcing us to reassess them. And yet this becomes tangible against the background as it were of a discourse which at least the two of us agree is mutually intelligible and in this sense common. The unpredictability of an action, as this text presents - will never be able to account for the capacity for freedom, simply because it lies as a testament to our ignorance. Freedom, for it to be recognised, can only be done so from the paradoxical perspective of law and necessity, including I might add subjective necessity, or what a subject may feel compelled to do - not discounting the possibility of other motives, and even pathological interests which may have been compelling her.
There is an account of the subject in this text which seeks to posit a relation with the unconscious, which we perhaps have already noticed. Yet, to what extent does a subject choose their unconscious, so to speak? Or, would it help to consider the subject as the subject of the unconscious? For if the later were to be the case, then we would be compelled to consider the fact that the subject may have already incorporated a certain association with an object as their maxim, or Triebfeder as Kant may have put it. We may very easily imagine how this may take the form of something as mundane as a sugar addiction for instance, and how very easily a conscious association may flee were a subject to perhaps be engaged elsewhere.
If for instance the object in question were to already be incorporated into the drives of the subject, unconscious as it were - then "I can't help it, ...it was beyond my control, ...I can't resist it" etc. as predispositions quoted by the author may be possible responses when the subject is questioned regarding their association with the object. Such a position of course reveals the proximity of the positions of the fetishist and an addict, whether hysterical or not. Yet, the author however does present the subject, as subject of the unconscious as one who in the last resort may have chosen it, and this does appear to be paradoxical. If the unconscious were to be truly unconscious - it could not be a choice, unless we are saying that it may have initially been a choice and then perhaps receded to the unconscious - in which case this would not be an unconscious which is alive to the present, the symbolic order and the Other, but one which may have simply been already determined in the past, and by the force of that very determination - a memory, and not simply unconscious. Yet, this is not delved upon in this text.
I would also like to state that the account or rather the principle of individuation that is presented in this chapter may not be very carefully constructed. To quote "We have said above that we can understand the subject as the Other of the Other." Here, the first Other is used to identify the interpolated agent who identifies with a given symbolic order, and while this construction has the advantage of being generic - and hence provide the framework of a properly analytic point of view, it would leave ambiguous, incomplete or forgotten any reference to the singularity of the relation between this two, which is what any understanding of the subject would be constitutive of, proper. This particular conundrum does make a review of the question of individuation and its relation to interpellation interesting, not to mention a far more thorough engagement with such a Lacanian construction as in Badiou's Theory of the Subject.
Yet, the author - Alenka Zupancic does also offer us another definition of the 'Other of the Other' - as the object cause of desire, and this does seem to posit it independently of the subject, which may indeed identify this object petit a in the symbolic order.
What kind of a subject are we now left with, and how would we be capable of identifying an ethic here? Some insights are provided; "The ethical subject springs from the coincidence of two lacks; a lack in the subject and a lack in the Other." The first may be the moment of the forced choice, when we are compelled etc. the second may be that to whom we address our discourse, of perhaps by what we are compelled.
There are some matters which are unclear to me however. When the author insists that Kant's postulate of de-psychologising is the postulate of determinism, there isn't adequate evidence in the text for us to follow this corollary. It also lays the stage as it were, for the rather blustering pronouncement that the subject is forced to confront herself as "the mere object of the will of the Other, as an instrument at the hands of mechanical and psychological causality."
More interesting however, though perhaps slightly myopic is the grasp of the subject as the effect of a cause which cannot be located in the Other, and here we may be inclined to return to Badiou who actually does temporalise this sequence - for any matter of insight to be shareable, that is common, we would have to be able to locate or represent it in some way via recourse to the symbolic order - which becomes the the medium as it were via which an appeal, command or even declaration to the Other is made. In this sense the author freezes a temporal moment prior to the representation of the subject, by emphasising that its cause will never be identifiable in the symbolic order itself, even as it serves as a medium of its transference. And here, I would cease to follow this argument, on two counts 1. A letter which arrives at its address, may first have travelled to another destination - only to be informed that the addressee was no longer at the location, and hence been re-addressed. In this case the symbolic order itself does seem to be the determining principle, which even plays a causative role in the delivery of the subject. 2. There may be modes of transference which have themselves yet to be formalized into any symbolic order, indeed inventions, encryptions, codes etc. exist as it were seemingly to do nothing other than to resist a symbolic order. To this, I might add, sounds, practices and perhaps consequently even symptoms, that beautifully universal word so decisively deployed by psychoanalysts in the quest to identify the mode of its, or should I say their production.
And with this, I should break my considerations and present any onlookers who may have followed us this far with a choice I too am confronted by. The engagement with Kant in this text, draws upon him extensively enough to warrant an examination of the primary material, and The Critique of Practical Reason is a text that I had picked up earlier. Yet, if we did arrive at Zupancic's Ethics of the Real to in some ways account for that which compels the subject, an ethics as it were, rather than delving into models of failed identification vis-a-vis gender, interpellative for certain yet also a marker of resistance - than has our reading thus far been able to account for this, should we perhaps withdraw to a less expressionistic philosophy in that great other reader of Kant, that is Schopenhauer in his efforts at accounting for drives, and the place of the will in its capacity to represent any possible rendering of our experience? This is a choice that will be answered in the coming video and text, as it may require some thought on my part.
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