I Zizek writes in The Ticklish Subject that the “key point is thus that the passage from ‘nature’ to ‘culture’ is not direct, that one cannot account for it within a continuous evolutionary narrative: something has to intervene between the two, a kind of ‘vanishing mediator’, which is neither Nature nor Culture – this In-between is silently presupposed in all evolutionary narratives” (Zizek, 1999). My interest in this seemingly innocent moment of passing commentary is not only that it leads to a questionable series of presuppositions regarding the earliest stages of human history, but it also offers a fabulous glimpse into Zizek’s theory of the subject, both in terms of genesis and validity, as it rests in ignoring an increasing amount of anthropological evidence that contradicts an overly rigid view of the transition between “nature” and “culture”. In this particular section of The Ticklish Subject, Zizek is right to suggest that “Freud’s name for the In-between .../ is the death drive” and that there is an interesting tendency in philosophy as whole to “presuppose such a moment in (pre)history when (what will become) man is no longer a mere animal and simultaneously not yet a ‘being of language’, bound by symbolic law; a moment of thoroughly ‘perverted’, ‘denaturalised’, ‘derailed’ nature which is not yet culture” (Ibid). But, for all that, I would challenge the unquestioned impulse in both Zizek and philosophy as whole (the latter defined according to an Adornian critique) to perceive the ‘In-between’ so assuredly as though it exists unquestionably and thus, too, coincides so neatly with a concrete anthropological model. Conversely, what I mean by these last few statements is that there is a certain point where history becomes too distant from the present situation for the application of a fundamental philosophical framework. If there was ever a lesson of hermeneutics: it is that there’s a point when trying to analyse (pre)history with the intent of deriving fundamental philosophical foundations, where one tends to impose a framework upon that history and ends up doing more injustice to that specific historical context than not. Adorno was right, moreover, that when philosophy attempts to capture an analysis of history at its utmost zero point, it mainly becomes a narrative reduced to the scope of abstract postulation. Prima philosophia, to put it differently, precipitates thought into reification. In the field of anthropology coupled with recent studies in self-psychology (4th wave psychoanalysis after Kohut), on the other hand, it could be argued that there is no purely philosophical (or psychoanalytical for that matter) account of (pre)history and, indeed, of early subjective development, which doesn’t make claim to the ‘In-between’ without succumbing to identity and effectively freezing relations of domination. My interest here, to be clear, is what underlies Zizek’s analysis - a certain fundamental presupposition that, for me, lacks normative engagement with concrete phases of subjective development: that fundamental presupposition is the existence of the Lacanian split/barred subject. More to the point, it is my intention to argue in this paper that the Lacanian notion of the subject is highly questionable outside of theory, and it’s formulation of the ‘In-between’ with regards to the transition between “Nature” and “Culture” is misled. Similar to what Jeanne Willette observed in her four-part series on Lacan, from a development standpoint, rooted in a normative engagement with infant development and self-psychology, one must reject both Lacan’s enterprise and his conclusions. But from a purely intellectual, theoretical perspective, Lacan’s position makes perfect sense. However, in a day where abstract theory is not the call of the hour and instead what’s needed is a normatively engaged critical theory, I will suggest a comparative analysis of the earliest stages of subjective development as based on a holistic approach. In turn, I intend to claim that rather than the process of self-differentiation beginning with the intervening of the father, which is intrinsic to the Lacanian theory of the preoedipal phase, we should look to a notion of the subject formulated according to the concrete, normative and phenomenologically rooted research based development models of self-psychology, which direclty contradict Lacan’s theory by observing that the infant already begins the self-differentiation phase almost directly after the zero-point of birth. I will then couple this fourth generation psychoanalytic theory with Adorno’s own theory of the subject and recent studies in the cognitive sciences and existential-phenomenology, arguing for a more radical notion of political subjectivity based on an account of the efficacious subject: i.e., a theory of the “mediating subject” (a la Sherman, 2007). II For the Lacanian theory of the subject, wherein sublimation is linked with the death drive: the death drive acts, as Lacan suggests, as a nostalgia for a lost harmony that is situated at the preoedipal stage – in other words, the preoedipal union or synthesis between infant and the mother’s breast, which, when during the weaning process, the loss of this union is more or less marked on the psyche (Lacan, 1938). This preoedipal process is important with regards to the Lacanian formation of the subject, wherein the imaginary triangle of mother, child and phallus emerges when the infant perceives a lack in mother. In other words, the child realises that the mother is not completely satisfied with him alone, because the mother desires the phallus. Therefore the child, realising this, seeks to be the phallus for the mother, luring her in a period where the child "is never really there at the place where he is, and is never completely absent from the place where he is not" (Lacan, 1991). What marks the end of the preoedipal stage is an intervening anxiety. The child is almost satisfyingly luring the mother until the introduction the Lacanian “drive” which manifests in infantile masturbation which, of course, puts the child in a precarious position in trying to undertake the impossible task of satisfying the desire of mother. Hitherto the father’s intervention, who claims possession of the phallus and saves the child from this ‘deadly game’, introducing in the process the notion of ‘symbolic law’ (i.e., order and culture). The Symbolic order plays a constitutive role in the Imaginary, for Lacan, because in that matrix or web of signification and language from which Lacan’s ‘subject’ emerges – this order is already pre-established before a child’s birth. Thus, one might say that the Lacanian zero-point in terms of infant development is precisely at the point of introduction to the symbolic order by the father. The pre-constructed and already extant Symbolic order represents a sort of structural field that is the phallic signifier. In other words, the Symbolic order represents that which is the Name-of-the-Father. It appears to the child as the ‘In-between’ in the transition from “nature” to “culture”, because the Symbolic order introduced by the father represents the immediacy of signifiers, codes, language, and law. As Lacan writes: “It is in the name of the father that we must recognize the support of the symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of the law .../ as distinct from Imaginary, narcissistic relations, or even from the real relations, that the subject sustains with the image and action of the person who embodies it” (Lacan, 1985). This last point is most crucial and is precisely where I would like to pick up on in my critique of the Lacanian theory of the subject; because for Lacan, as we have seen, it is the intervention of the father that ultimately represents the earliest stages of subjective development insofar that this intervention marks the beginning of the process of self differentiation. While this theory is perhaps most in line with the ‘second wave’ of psychoanalytic theory, I will now turn my attention toward the idea that Lacan’s theory of subjective development can be refuted according to the fourth and most historically recent wave of psychoanalytic theory (i.e., self-psychology), especially that which is best formulated in the work of Daniel Stern who specialised in infant development and helped conceptualise a bridge between psychoanalysis and research-based developmental models (not to mention the works of Robert D. Stolorow, George E. Atwood, Johanna T. Tabin, Morton and Estelle Shane, Mary Gales, Frank M. Lachmann, and Bernard Brandchaft). Finally coupling the fourth wave of psychoanalysis with Frankfurt School critical theory and recent studies in the cognitive sciences and existential phenomenology, I will offer an introductory glimpse into an alternative theory of the subject, which theorises both on the back of the translucency of the bodily nature of consciousness and thus also a “mediating subjectivity”, as opposed to a split/barred subject. In other words, I argue that what’s needed most today is not some overly theoretical (in the abstract) notion of the split subject, based on the ontological claim that the unconscious constitutes a hidden realm of the mind, which is at odds with the phenomenology of consciousness as unitary and translucent (Sartre), whilst, too, keeping alive a theory of different degrees of (experiential) awareness. My intention will be to argue for a notion of the subject as free-flourishing, efficacious, active and mediated, who is able to make choices and impact on present socio-historical conditions. In this way, I will therefore challenge Lacan’s notion of the subject and, therefore, too, Zizek’s theory of the subject, arguing for a more holistic understanding of subjectivity and subjective development – one which can foster an even more potent theory of political subjectivity. III Furthermore, Lacan’s theory of the subject essentially consists of a hollowed out and almost void notion of the subject, wherein: “having gone through the boot camp of the Oedipal Order, the socialized (non)person emerges as an emotional cripple who will spend the rest of her life lying prone on a Freudian couch .../ Whatever shards of primal authenticity that might have been present at birth have been pummeled and buried under the threats of the Law of the Father who has Forbidden all manner of delights to a child who is stunned into submission. What is left behind after what appears to be two years of indoctrination, is not a shell, not a shadow of a former self, but a false impression of something called “ego,” a presumption to which one clings. It was the prime directive of Jacques Lacan to expose the false notion of the Cartesian self and to reveal the empty mask of a masquerading persona.” According to the Lacanian notion of the subject, which underpins much of Zizek’s political philosophy, the subject is defined by a lack. In other words, the human subject is split between a conscious side, which represents a part of the psyche that is accessible, and an unconscious psyche. This unconscious psyche represents a continuous series of drives and forces which.. Read the full article here: heathwoodpress/ticklish-subject-excerpts-critique-lacanian-subject-zizeks-notion-political-subjectivity-emphasis-alternative/
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 05:00:12 +0000
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