coincidence of opposites, object small a, superego, fantasy and act That is the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the threat, the destructive plot, against which it is fighting. The neat aspect of this solution -- and the ultimate condemnation of [James Jesus] Angletons paranoia -- is that it doesnt matter if Angleton was merely sincerely duped by the idea of a Monster Plot, or if he was in fact the mole: in both cases, the result is exactly the same. What, then, constituted the deception? Our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion, that is, to put the very idea of suspicion under suspicion -- and this short circuit, this coincidence of opposites, is the point of Hegelian self-relating negativity. This logic of self-relating negativity, in which the genus encounters itself in one of its own species, also explains why it is so difficult to overcome the Original Sin of the capitalist libidinal economy -- in short, to convert a miser. With other sins of excess, conversion comes relatively easily -- one simply has to moderate the sin in question, transforming it into a virtue, that is, conferring on it the form of a virtue (you overcome gluttony by eating moderately, etc.); the problem with avarice, however, in contrast to other sins, is that it already takes the form of a virtue (does not thrift demand from the subject an attitude of renunciation, discipline and hard work?). The difference between avarice and (the virtue of) prudence is that, in Kantian terms, prudence is good in so far as it remains pathological, serving our well-being; while, paradoxically, it turns into a sin the moment it is elevated to the properly ethical level, the moment it assumes the form of an end-in-itself to be pursued independently of all pathological considerations. This paradox of elevating a vice into a virtue, of conferring on it the form of a virtue, provides the elementary formula of capitalisms incredible self-propelling dynamic, in which opposites coincide: not only is the vice of thrift (accumulation) the highest virtue; consumption itself is turned into the mode of appearance of its opposite, thrift. How, then, are we to break out of this vicious cycle? There is no return to the previous innocence -- no easy way out by means of generosity, by returning to the premodern potlatch logic à la Bataille, or, on the contrary, by returning to some kind of balanced limited economy. Here, however, Lacans statements on psychoanalysis and money, and on the anticapitalist nature of psychoanalysis, are to be taken seriously. Consider Jacques-Alain Millers joke about how, in psychoanalytic treatment, exploitation works even better than it does in capitalism: in capitalism, the capitalist pays the worker who works for him, and thus produces profit; while in psychoanalysis, the patient pays the analyst in order to be able to work himself... In psychoanalysis, therefore, we have an intersubjective money relationship in which all parameters of exchange break down. The key point is: why does the patient pay the analyst? The standard answer (so that the analyst stays outside the libidinal circuit, uninvolved in the imbroglio of passions) is correct, but insufficient. We should definitely exclude goodness: if the psychoanalyst is perceived as good, as doing the patient a favour, everything is bound to go wrong. We should, however, tackle a further question: how does the patient subjectivize his paying? This is where the logic of exchange breaks down: if we remain within the parameters of tit for tat (so much for an interpretation of a dream, so much for the dissolution of a symptom), we get nowhere. Paying the price for services rendered contains the analysis within the limits of avarice (it is easy to imagine a further acceleration of this logic: pay for two interpretations, and get a third one free...). What is bound to happen sooner or later is that the analysis gets caught in the paradigmatic obsessional economy in which the patient is paying the analyst so that nothing will happen -- so that the analyst will tolerate the patients babbling without any subjective consequences. On the other hand, there is nothing more catastrophic than a psychoanalyst acting out of charity (goodness) to help the patient; if anything, this is the most effective way of turning a normal neurotic into a paranoiac psychotic. Is the answer to be found, then, in the shift from having to being, along the lines of Lacans definition of love as an act in which one gives not what one has, but what one doesnt have -- that is to say, what one IS? The gesture of giving ones being can also be a false (megalomaniac or suicidal) one -- witness Nietzsches final megalomaniac madness, whose structure is strictly homologous to the suicidal passage à lacte: in both cases, the subject offers himself (his being) as the object that fills, in the Real, the constitutive gap of the symbolic order -- that is, the lack of the big Other. That is to say, the key enigma of Nietzsches final madness is: why did Nietzsche have to resort to what cannot fail to appear to us as ridiculous self-aggrandizing (recall the chapters titles in his Ecce homo: Why I am so wise, Why I am so bright, up to Why I am a destiny)? This is an inherent philosophical deadlock, which has nothing whatsoever to do with any private pathology: his inability to accept the nonexistence of the big Other. Within these co-ordinates, suicide occurs when the subject perceives that the megalomaniac solution does not work. As Lacan emphasized, one cannot analyse the rich, for whom paying does not matter. So there has to be payment, a price paid -- it must hurt. What, however, does one get for it? The analysis proper begins when one accepts the payment as a purely arbitrary expenditure. By paying for nothing, by engaging in pure expenditure, the patient gets back that for which there is no price -- the objet petit a, the cause of desire, that which can emerge only as a pure excess of Grace. The vicious circle of thrift is thus doubly broken: the patient does something totally meaningless within the horizon of the capitalist logic of consumption/accumulation, and receives in exchange the pure surplus itself. The Lacanian name for this gesture of breaking the vicious cycle of the superego is ACT, and the lack of a clear elaboration of the notion of act in its relation to fantasy is perhaps the key failing of [Zizek’s first English book] The Sublime Object. Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, Verso, 2008 (second edition), pp.xxxvii-xl
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:24:30 +0000
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