Monthly Archives: August 2013

Zizek: “How to Read Lacan”

4. Troubles With the Real: Lacan as a Viewer of Alien

Let’ start with some simple “word-math”:

Man + Omlet = Manlet

Or in Lacan’s world ‘lamella’, that mythical creature of pure surface and no volume, belonging to the realm of the un-dead, that does not exist but rather insists (on always being there, never going away), an organ that is not of the body even though it should have been and survives without it, like the grin of the Chesire Cat suspended in midair when the rest of the cat disappears.

In less mythican terms, Lacan associates it with what Feud referred to as the’partial object’ and its never-ending insistence is the libido, Freud’s ‘death drive’ that persists (insists!) on urging us to repeat painful previous experiences, as if ignoring all human limitations… Like Ridley Scotts Alien, it is indestructible, it is immortal and it can suck you in before you even realize what is happening! In all its monstrosity it resides in the realm of the Imaginary, just touching the limits of unrepresentable, representing the most terrifying imaginary dimension of the Real…

Imaginary———————–LAMELLA———————Real

Let us now explore Lacan’s take on the scientific mode of the Real and the relationship of the lamella with that… For Lacan, there is a scientific Real but we completely lack it, we are apart, it is too complex for us to fully perceive. The question then becomes:

What makes the real Real inaccessible to humans???

Is it the Imaginary with its illusions and misconceptions? NO!

Is it the Symbolic with its wall of language? NO!

Is it another Real??? YEEES!!!

It is the Real that for Lacan is at the core of human sexuality: the notion that “there is no sexual relationship” there is no mutual agreement, no common denominator and enjoyment only comes in comparison to a fundamental loss… We enjoy not because it is pure gain, but because it is ‘not loss’. The lamella then, baseon Freud characterization of this loss as ‘castration’, becomes the positive to the negative of castration, that which is left un-castrated when a living being enters the realm of sexual difference.

Taking into additional consideration Freud’s ‘latent thought’ expressed through his dream of Irma, we are caught between two “Reals”: that of the lamella, initiating from the Imaginary an image so horrific that it cancels imagery itself and the scientific Real, initiating from the Symbolic, an expression of nature’s automatic function. Lacan however adds a third Real, the je ne sais quoi or objet petit that goes beyond being the object of desire to being the cause of desire. Having said that, a new understanding of the word ‘melancolic’ as one “not mourning the loss of his object of desire but rather mourning the loss of his desire for the object he has come to posess”.

***

On a personal critical note I have to say here that expectations of what the object of our desire is and what it means to us lead us frequently to be disappointed in it when we finally acquire it, to become melancholic. And, as I recently replied to a comment on my previous post : “Fulfilling my desire IS potentially my truest nightmare because if my desire, my motivational force is accomplished what then is there left for me??? It is like Ithaca… It is the trip that matters not the destination, the process not the product… So if “all my life” I chase after a desire, if my actions, thoughts and feelings are driven or created by that desire, what is left for me when that desire is no longer there? What is left when I actually have it? My nightmare is that there will be nothing left! And then what?”

***

So now we can finally define the status of this object/cause of desire; it is that of an anamorphosis, something that can only be seen, let alone have meaning, only from a certain point of view, only when looked at form a certain angle. In the Lacanian universe (“wink-wink” J ) this is referred to as “object a” and is simply the “the inscription of the subject itself in the field of objects”, visible only when part of this field is anamorphically distorted by the subject’s desire.

Passing on from desire to shame (two concepts that actually go hand in hand considering how often desires are not expressed because we are ashamed to admit them!!!) we have the lamella as shame at its purest form, as an intruding organ that is not supposed to be inside my body and brings me face to face with all that is excess within me. SO then the Real becomes de-substantialized, is no longer something external but resides in the tiny cracks within the Symbolic network…As a result we have a reversal in causality where trauma is concerned, just like Einstein’s general theory of relativity reverses the state of causality provided by his special theory of relativity! Look for example at Freud’s “Wolf-man” and what that says about trauma: it is something that comes from outside and results in the disturbance of our psychic balance; but look now at what happens to that theory when later it is turned on its head: a symbolic deadend is reached within our psychic existence and to explain/resolve it an experience stored away in memory is recalled and labeled traumatic. As Lacan nicely sums it up the Real/the Thing is not the cause of inconsistencies in the Symbolic, but an effect of these inconsistencies. So even though natural objects know and automatically obey the laws of the Real, the same does not apply to humans as in their case laws may be forgotten or ignored…

***

Arriving thus to Heisenberg and his theory on quantum physics there seems to be and inconsistency between that theory and Einstein’s… That is however solved if we note that while one theory neatly applies to the microcosm (Heisenberg’s), the other just as neatly applies to the macrocosm (Einstein’s) and the theory of superstrings unites them sooo… PROBLEM SOLVED! It is the same with Lacan’s approach to linking Freud’s: he speaks of le sinthome as a micro-unit of enjoyment reconciling psychoanalysis with the natural sciences

So many links so little time!!!

Slavoj Žižek. On Melancholy. 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNXY-JY9I-M

Slavoj Žižek. Object a and The Function of Ideology. 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq1F06J_HXo

Trauma Testimony Discourses/The Literary Sinthome as Testimonial of Trauma: The Case of(..)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HStv6I3R8hU

The Milgram Obedience Experiment

http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm –> Where the trauma lies…

And on a lighter note…

The Missing Piece

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gEjCJOzqXc –> Melancholy,when we aquire the object of desire and it disapoints us… When we lose the desire…

RoadRunner Psychological Gravity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZ3-IOlhIw –> when the natural laws of the Real meet Wile e Coyote…!

In the Artist’s World…

En Route Project – Sinthome (album preview)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djTTGcaOgGQ –> Lacan inspires music!

3D street art! What we see from the right and what from the wrong angle… Anamorphosis 😉

Anamorphosis – Snail

3D-Optical-Illusions-Pictures-Mind-Games

Anamorphosis – Living Room

One big question and a bunch of little ones…

What is it that keeps us attached to a place? What is it that makes us afraid to leave? Is it fear of not being able to come back? Is it the fear of losing all that we love in that place? OR is it actually the fear of losing the desire of wanting to come back, of losing the feelings we have that when we are in that place once we are far away for them to fade out? Andwhat is then in our best interest as evlolving human beings but also as artist?

This first set of questions has been bugging me for quite a while now, as to where I want to live and why that choice has proven to be so hard for me to make… I guess since ” I am an artist and my craft is calling” I’ll just go wherever that craft drags me!

On the other hand:

How can such fears and insecurities be expressed and dealt with through art?

Can the tools given to us by technology facilitate a more universal creative art life?

Is a contemporary artist’s responsibility to help hold on to the desire or to show ways of letting go and finding new ones?

Is it an artis’s job to create desire? –> DOESN’T HE ANYWAY IN A WAY??

Is it an artis’s job to play with the boundaries of the Real? –> BY ALL MEANS I BELIEVE IT IS…

I, as an artist, actually enjoy messing around with other people’s desires… I enjoy provoking them and making them question what they believe to be acceptably do-able or true… Even if I that is simply done by the faintest notion of subtext… I know I am not being very clear, but that’s perhaps the fun of it… When one is not clear, one can support any contradictory set of options, one can shift and change, one can adapt and never have to explain how or why, one can sipmly say “that was the plan all along” 😉

ZIZEK “HOW TO READ LACAN” – CHAPTER 3

4 Replies

3. From Che Vuoi? to Fantasy: Lacan With Eyes Wide Shut

Starting out, Zizek points out the shift from the early Lacan to the later Lacan, from phenomenology (intersubjective dialectic of recognition) to structuralism (mechanism that regulates interaction of subjects). Language and desire are the main focus of this chapter and concept of the subjectivised Other is introduced. On the topic of desire Lacan suggests that “man’s desire is the Other’s desire”, that man desires as Other, a statement that can be translated in two ways.

On the one hand what I desire is not decided by me but exists within the symbolic space and is determined beforehand by the big Other; even transgressive desires, those not ‘normaly’ expected, are rooted in the nature of that which they seek to transgress. Human rights are presented as the right to break the laws of the 10 Commandments (and in this I find a very to the point example of desire stemming from that which is forbidden). On the other hand man’s desire being the other’s desire can be seen in a different light: that of the subject desiring what and when he/she feels the Other desire. I am then brought face to face with anOther’s desire, bewildered perhaps of what actually constitutes my own desire.

The impenetrability of the other human being was first tackled by Judaism and the notion of loving my neighbor as my mirror-image, only to be followed by Lacan and Freud pointing out the Otherness of my neighbor and the fact that I cannot be sure of what I really know about him. In contrast to this Jung brings the New Age approach of the neighbor being just a mirror-image, just a means to my own self-realization and finally just aspects of my own personality of which I am in denial. Because of this, Lacan’s ‘what do you want?’ becomes more a question of ‘what part of you afraid of and cannot control?’. So finally Emmanuel Levinas comes along to propose that “the ultimate function of the Law is not to keep us from forgetting the neighbor, but to keep the neighbor at a safe distance, to shield us from the monstrosity” (that is to say the potential evil hidden within the neighbor).

***

Skipping a bit ahead we come to the Theory of Performatives: “speech acts that accomplish in the very act of their enunciation the state of affairs that they declare”. SAY=DO. Declaring love then has the potential of being a traumatic experience for the subject on the receiving end of that declaration seeing as it may be forcing one to acknowledge intimate issues kept dormant inside. Lacan takes this notion a step further adding that by telling someone they are something to me I instantly attach to them the quality of that something and force both of us to treat each other in a particular way, abiding to that characterization. My confrontation of the other is not just referring then to my mirror-image but to the absolute Other, stepping between me and my neighbor to facilitate our relations.

***

Althusser meats Lacan:

As a protection mechanism Louis Althusser proposed an approach of practical humanism and theoretical anti-humanism, that is ‘be nice to humans, treat them with respect but keep in mind that humanism is ideology and humans are parts of a structure that follows its own laws’. Lacan however proposes practical anti-humanism, confronting in this way the inhuman core of humanity. To better understand this, consider Kant’s distinction between ‘not’ and ‘non’ the two forms of negating the same positive notion (i.e. when one is dead it is clear that he is dead, but negating this it is one thing to be ‘not dead’-that is alive- and another to be ‘undead’ –that is neither one or the other but a hazy inbetween state). The concept of ‘non’ brings us too close to the positive for something that is not positive, that is Other and that is traumatic. Fantasy (in the sense of why I desire what I do and not of imagining I something I desire but don’t have) is Lacan’s cure for this, for coping with our encounter with the Other and the Other’s desire. The desire created in fantasy is not the subject’s desire but the other’s. It is through fantasy that the subject attempts to form an identity that will satisfy the Other and make the subject the object of the Other’s desire.

In that sense sexual relations are real and in order to survive need to be seen through a degree of fantasy. In art, the need to filter out the Real of the sexual act and rid me of the burden of its presence is an issue has been frequently the chosen option, achieved either by directing the focus on other things at the same time or through audiovisual metaphors. The reasoning behind this is that contrary to psychoanalysis that states that sexuality is hidden within everything, the real sex itself in order to be digested needs to be camouflaged. Fantasy then falls into the category of the Objectively Subjective, that of how things actually seem to us even if we ourselves are not aware of it.

In that realm of unknown knowns I, as subject, am robbed of my innermost subjective experience as I can never fully acknowledge what it is that brings on those thoughts and feelings and so I can never experience them in full consciousness; I am an empty subject. Paradoxical phenomenology without the subject (what appears to a subject but isn’t of the subject) leads to ‘aphanisis’, “the self-obliteration as a result of the subject getting too close to the phantasmic kernel of its being”. It has become the duty of the contemporary artist to bring us face to face with staged fantasies that are radically desujectivised, that can never be enacted by the subject. Frequent reminders that what takes place is fiction but also events that point out the reality of the stage should be perceived as escapes from the Real rather than versions of alienation, in the sense that at the end of the day what we have been taught to believe is turned on its head and ‘Reality’ is actually fantast while in ‘Dreams’ we encounter the traumatic REAL.

So for Lacan, the goal is ‘true awakening’ not simply from sleep but from fantasy, imposed by the Other and directing us as puppets even when we are awake…

ΑΦΥΠΝΗΣΗ ΟΧΙ ΑΠΛΑ ΞΥΠΝΗΜΑ

Potentially related links:

Jacques Lacan the Gaze and the Split: Seminar XI Chapter 6; psychosis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lg0IX-UmXo

Eyes Wide Shut = NEUROTIC view of the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n-ojOnrfYk

ΟΤΙ ΒΛΕΠΟΥΜΕ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΨΕΜΑ / WHAT WE SEE IS A LIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQtfMR-UKd0 –> an interesting illustration of what is reality and what Real based on perspective…

HOW TO MANUFACTURE DESIRE: AN INTRO TO THE DESIRE ENGINE

http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/03/how-to-manufacture-desire.html –> how theories concerning desire are put to use as ‘marketing strataties’

Eating the Other:Desire and Resistance

http://www.scribd.com/doc/118302450/Eating-the-Other-bell-Hooks –> in a way flirting is creating desire in the other through our desire in them. In this case the other is the subject and I am the Other (far fetched, I know but as my blog is called ‘Food for Thought’ I figure why not???)

How to Get the Guy You Want – Flirting Advice for Women

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HrPuUWS_8E

In the “Aritsts’ World”…

Performance conducted for Art Degree (DNAP) at the Marseille-Mediterranean College of Art and Design (ESADMM).

Referring to the idea of the discovery or rediscovery of self in relation to others. A form of recall crossing the theory of the mirror stage developed by Lacan, the notion of faciality and the relationship of the self to otherness that is essential for perception of his own image.

https://vimeo.com/67881776

Α.Μ.Α.Ν-ΜΟΥ ΦΑΓΑΝ ΤΟ ΜΠΙΦΤΕΚΙ ΜΟΥ / THEY ATE MY BURGER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhY9-d0L8Wo –> averyclear and humourous approach to the notion of a subject’s desire being the Other’s desire, to the concept that we only desire something when we experience it as being desireable throught the Other, from Greek comedians AMAN.

Inception – the movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpXngRB-VTw&list=PL4C321FF5688D3581 –> collection of videos from the movie ‘Inception’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/) that is for me a mind boggling approach to what reality/Real is at the end of the day… A dream within a dream, a reality within a reality spiraling in and out and never knowing for sure what is Real.

Eudora Welty, On Writing

“Making reality real is art’s responsibility. It is a practical assignment, then, a self-assignment: to achieve, by a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving impressions, a lonely, unremitting, unaided, unaidable vision, and transferring this vision without distortion to it onto the pages of a novel, where, if the reader is so persuaded, it will turn into the reader’s illusion.”

Augmented Reality art (ARt) in about a minute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmompggXLkU

Augmented Reality art (ARt) gallery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE4CxNxQxxk

RON ATHEY – HUMAN PRINTING PRESS – 1994

Small incisions were made in a pattern on Darryl Carlton’s back, and Ron Athey used surgical paper to make prints from the cuts. The prints were clipped to a washing-line pulley rigged above the audience so that they would pass above the heads of some members of the audience. Though no blood dripped down onto the audience, and though the performer who was cut was HIV negative, Athey’s own HIV positive status led one audience member to claim that the crowd had been spattered with HIV-positive blood resulting in spectators franticly trying to leave the premises.

A very clear portayal of how assosiations can cause us to not know the difference between reality and the Real; the particular audience member experienced a different reality and through him it was trasferred to others as well…

QUESTIONS… QUESTIONS??? HMM…

There are many thoughts in my mind especially concerning the matter of the ‘Unknown known’ but they are not clear enought yet to be articulated… All I can say is that I am very much intrigued by all the knowledge we potentially have but have not (yet) unlocked…

For me meditation, reiki and other such practices have been part of my life lately and I feel that perhaps they are a way to get to know I know some of those unknown knowns…

ZIZEK “HOW TO READ LACAN” – CHAPTER 2

1 Reply

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tssat9FgAW0

soundtrack for reading this entry…

2. The Interpassive Subject: Lacan Turns a Prayer Wheel

The Chorus, from the ancient Greek tragedies, put there to feel emotions for us, to take over and experience on our behalf while we freely and guiltlessly occupy ourselves with the more practical, the routine; weepers, canned laughter, prayer wheels.

A better understanding of this can be achieved by looking at the double concepts of interactivity and interpassivity. As far as interactivity is concerned, interaction is slowly taking the place of passive witnessing of a work of art. Cyberspace provides us with the means not only to participate in another’s work but even to manipulate the rules of that artwork. On the other hand we have interpassivity, a situation where I no longer interact with the artwork (the object) but the object itself takes my place in relishing the artwork and I no longer have to bother doing so. This object, like a VCR recording all the shows I cannot see and in a way seeing them for me, represents in this case the big Other, the ‘medium of symbolic registration’. Taking interpassivity further we come upon the function of the “Oops!” something uttered in embarrassing circumstances as an enactment of the symbolic registration of said embarrassing circumstance and inform the big Other about it. Having the big Other know something we can no longer keep on acting as if we are unaware, we are forced to acknowledge.

This notion of interpassivity opposes Hegel’s notion of being active through the Other, that is having an intermediary do my work for me. Here I am passive through the Other, I engage in false activity by leaving the activity at hand to the ‘Chorus’ while I take the time to busy myself with other tasks. I do not act to achieve something but rather to prevent something, as is the case of the obsessional neurotic who in his effort to prevent a situation from occurring, becomes overactive. In the same line of thought, taking into account today’s seemingly progressive politics, we encounter the concept of pseudo-activity, of always engaging in something in order to prevent the stillness that would perhaps bring the change.

Continuing Lacan proposes that the big Other cannot only act for us but also believe and know for us, stating as an example the religious concept of predestination, of our fate already fixed beforehand and we simply act in order to prevent said fate from being altered. As a result we come across the subject supposed to know, the case in which the result is known and thus of no interest and the actual interest lies in the process (of reaching that result). The preconceived notion of first believing in something is exactly that which makes us prone to seeing the proof of that which we believe. In the same way, the psychoanalyst functions on the basis that the patient believes from the start that his therapist already knows what the problem is. Being so, the psychoanalyst guides the patient into discovering himself the meaning of his symptoms. Lacan then, contrary to Freud’s approach of ‘psychic dynamics of transference’, draws from transferential phenomena ‘the formal structure of the presupposed meaning’. In general, by returning to something we in effect invent it.

The subject supposed to know is however superficial compared to the fundamental subject supposed to believe of the symbolic order… In order to believe in something, to accept the knowledge of its existence, we first need to believe in a subject outside ourselves that believes in said something. The actual existence of this subject is irrelevant; so long as we are convinced it exists, it serves its purpose. And form this stems the meaning of ‘culture’, that which we practice without actually believing in it, simply on account of someone, somewhere, believing at some point (contrary to fundamentalist believers who actually take their beliefs seriously). As Blaise Pascal said ‘act as if you believe and belief will come’ a statement that has been turned on its head to state that by acting we rid ourselves of the burden of believing and objectify our belief in the act.

Continuing Zizek notes the non-psychological nature of the symbolic order. By believing through another (the Other?) we refrain from really engaging our inner feelings/states. Politeness falls into the realm of the symbolic order in the sense that somethings are said/done simply because it is expected and are not to be taken literally but as a symbol (!!) of something silently and generally agreed upon. In the symbolic order the mask, the attitude we adopt, is usually more real/honest than our assumed reality, that which we believe we feel inside. This is clear in situations where we have to deal with a ‘corrupt’ individual who’s position however is a respected one and our show of respect isn’t towards the individual but towards that which he represents (i.e. a judge the law). This is where cynics fall into Lacan’s phrase ‘those in the know are in error’ as by believing only the hard facts that they see they e they miss out on the ‘efficiency of the symbolic fiction’ the ability to see the good in what one represents and not in what one is.

We here come to what Lacan calls ‘symbolic castration’ – ‘the gap between my direct psychological identity and my symbolic identity’. He uses the phallus as a symbol, signifying any object that symbolizes power and stating that symbolic castration, the occurrence of a divide between what I am and what the ‘phalus’ signifies I am, is exactly that which gives me my actual power. I do not have power because of who I am as an individual but because of the position given to me through holding the ‘phalus’ and so my actions cannot deprive me of that power… That brings us however to the question of what remains when I am striped of my title? To answer that Lacan first suggests distinguishing between what one is/ what he desires and what others see him to be/what others desire in him and then notes that one desires a) the other, b) to be desired by the other, c) what the other desires. In this sense Lacan along with Nietzsche and Freud support the notion that considering justice as equality is based on envy, on wanting to possess/enjoy what the other does. Seeing as that is not possible in most cases equality is then found in equal prohibition and perhaps leading to asceticism.

That is why, in closing Jenny Holzer says ‘protect me from what I want’ rather than ‘protect me from what I am’ because, after all isn’t what we are in truth what we want?

Protect Me From What I Want (2009) Trailer | Dominic Leclerc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNW6vtwoDU4

Supporting Links…

Taiwan’s most famous professional mourner

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21479399

COLUMBO (Short documentary: Interviews and clips)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQp69krLoFM –> check out around 2.00

THE FUTURE OF GAMING — IT MAY ALL BE IN YOUR HEAD

http://singularityhub.com/2013/05/12/the-future-of-gaming-it-may-all-be-in-your-head/

Later Lacan: neurosis vs. psychosis vs. obsessional; symptom, sinthome, fantasy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EgNhTgM_Yg

Artist that fit the description:

Greek comic strip artis ARKAS is famous for his strips about two cats. A perpetually horny female Lucretia and a castrated male Castrato. Aside from showing a caustic sense of humor, I see his work in connection to Lacan’s theory about symbolic castration. Lucretia wants Castrato to satisfy her needs because that is the role of the male cat but he cannot and more importantly, he does not want to. There is a gap between his identity and his presupposed role and that becomes obvious when he is stripped of the phallus (in this case litteraly).

Obsessive Compulsive Figure Finding Disorder, Video Piece, Oct 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y3ZVLsD1og

Obsessive Compulsive Figure Finding Disorder 2, Video Piece, Nov 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1jeaCTByYY

Rat Man: A Case of Obsessional Neurosis

http://www.insitutheatre.co.uk/media/rat-man-a-case-of-obsessional-neurosis/ –> I could not find the actual project but if I do I will post, it seems very interesting!

‘Still Life’ – Neurotic Artist – Sims 3 Machinima

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSVRpXRwnOQ

Pondering upon…

To what extent can an audience be manipulated? To what extent can an artist lead his audienc on a predetermined path?

What means can I use to enable audience-performer interaction? How much can I allow an audience to create the rules of a performanc and still manage to maintain whatever initial concept I had in mind?

How can cyberspace or any from of safe diestance/detachment affect such a performance?

These are all questions addressed in my ongoing project “Puppets”. (see other blog http://projectpuppets.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk )

I am currently experimenting with the difference between live audience instructing the perfromers and distant audience doing the same thing, whether distance means simply away, or also out of sight…

An idea that came to mind through this chapter and its approach on questions that had already been bugging me, is to create a vague storyboard, with specific landmarks but with freedom as to how to go from one to the other. The performers need (???) to pass from all of them but it is up to the audience to determine how that will happen. And what happens when the audience knows all the landmarks from the start and what changes when they are kept in the dark and can only see one step ahead?

ZiZek: “How to Read Lacan” – Chapter 1

1 Reply

1. Empty Gestures and Performatives: Lacan Confronts the CIA Plot

Starting out with the phrase “Timeo Danaos, et dano ferentes” Zizek eases us into Lacan’s principle of the Symbolic Order. Language, as gifts that are given simply as a pact, an agreement of sorts and not for utility purposes, is a symbol signifying what it does each not by its mere existence but through the conditions and unwritten rules surrounding it. Lacan’s “Big Other” is introduced through this Symbolic Order as a “puppet master” pulling the strings and discretely defining and directing our actions, leaving us under the false impression that we are the masters of ourselves.

Zizek goes on to explain Lacan’s reality of human beings and presents the three levels, not completely separate from each other and interrelated but still discernible, providing an association to chess (which I found very clear and usefull):

The Symbolic (the rules; each piece defined by what it can do)
The Imaginary (the names; each piece defined by what it is called)
The Real (any conditions that have impact on the course of the game)

The symbolic space is where the big Other resides, the space where the rules exist and where interaction with others is actually “filtered” by a vast set of presuppositions and is actually happening through the big Other. Two types of rules are described: those I am aware of on some level and abide to consciously or unconsciously and those I actually know but must not openly acknowledge.

The big Other however is not powerful on its own, it exists and gains strength through subjects believing in its existence and acting accordingly. Like Freud’s ‘symptom’, that is an externalization of my inner needs/desires but can only have meaning when deciphered by the proper specialist, so the symbolic order exists because of the existence of individuals acting as if it exists.

The symbolic order and the basic form of symbolic exchange is found in the “empty gesture”, the offer made to be refused, the gift valued not because of its practical usability but because of the message/meaning it conveys. The link created between two parties through such an exchange belongs to the symbolic order; nothing changes but everyone wins and that is the role of symbolic exchanges in society. And continuing on this train of thought, to belong in a society requires the paradox that we embrace on our own volition that which is already imposed upon us. In this context sociopath is defined as one who simply uses language, simply does an action remaining all the while oblivious to the performative side of its nature.

Due to this performative dimension of things and based on Lacan and Lukacs the following simplified reasoning can be brought forth:

I say I am something (declaration / utterance)=> I become said something (subjective transformation) => I act accordingly.

Elaborating a bit on the matter, examples of two triads are provided through Claude Levi – Strauss (food for thought: raw – nature, baked – culture, boiled – the in between space) and Hegel (geographic: German, French and English).

Taking a step back to the declarative aspect of the symbolic order we come once again to its performativity from another perspective, that of declaring something as opposed to that of simply doing it. Declaration is in itself performative, changing the meaning and the severity of that which it declares. It is often questioned, especially in circumstances where a silent agreement has been made, is presupposed to exist and is taken for granted and thus declaring its existence seems overabundant and may lead to further assumptions. The same applies to the negative version of declaration, that of purposely concealing something and as a result giving it excess meaning or making the ‘wrong’ connotations.

Finishing up, the paranoiac stance is mentioned where in effect the idea of an existing plot is the very plot against which one fights. And that for me is the clearest performative aspect of the symbolic order as what one believes to exist actually comes to existence whether it originally existed or not, simply on account of said individual’s belief.

RELATED SOURCES:

“Slavoj Zizek: The Reality of the Virtual”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnTQhIRcrno

“Jacques Lacan in 1 minute”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwlirZQLAAg

“The Iliad, Illustrated (part one)”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onIapU0z0aQ

“The Iliad, Illustrated (part two)”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCClHnf199Q

“The Iliad, Illustrated (part three)”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8QKD9aVTpM

“A Story from Lacan’s Practice”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA-SXCGwLvY –> This particular link is interesting to me because it illustrates the interrelation between the symbolic and the imaginary. The woman has associated a particular word with a memory causing her to have nightmares. The word ‘Gestapo’ (name – imaginary) has a particular meaning, it does a certain thing (picks up Jews from their homes) (symbolic). Lacan takes the sound Ge-sta-po and turns it into ‘Geste a peaux’ at the same time caressing the woman’s cheak. He thus creates an alternative meaning/action (symbolic) to fit the particular sound/name (imaginary).

“Timeo danaos et dano ferentes”

http://www.naqt.com/YouGottaKnow/trojan-war-heroes.html –> History lesson

Freud’s symptom

http://www.bartleby.com/283/17.html

Lacanticles

http://www.lacanticles.com/category/symptom/ –> visualisation

OTHER ARTISTS

Christopher Roth inspired by Zizek and the fact that the truth is out and not in.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/13055/1/christopher-roth –> What we perceive or believe to be true isn’t always what is actually true. What we are shown and what we see are usually not one and the same… So the truth ( I guess!) is in what we are shown and not what we see. (But doesn’t believing we see something bring into existance and therefore make it true?????)

Ana Mendieta

Rape Scene 1973 –> By staging and depicting a version of an actual event that was already in the past to spectators not knowing what they where to witness, the impact her action perhaps has on them is that of the witnessing of the actual event. By declaring that she has been raped she becomes raped in the eyes of the witnesses.

Artist Deb Sokolow makes conspiracy theories come alive in graphic style

http://www.wbez.org/content/artist-deb-sokolow-makes-conspiracy-theories-come-alive-graphic-style –> I am very much intregued by the phrase “it is itself the destructive plot against which it is fighting”…

MY QUESTIONS

1. I have an obsession with Fibonacci and spirals. With plot, within a plot, dream within a dream etc. Of things that start small and then spin and feed on themselves, all the while increasing entropy. How far can I take that before creating chaos? And for that matter what defines chaos?

2. The idea of the big Other as puppet master along with the inside story of mexican soaps fits neatly into my current project “Puppets”. In what ways can performers be given instrucions as to how to procede during a performance? Who makes the final choise and who is actually responsible for the final product?

3. Is it possible to clearly potray all three dimensions of the reality of human beings (in a performance)?

It seems very soon for me to have a clear response to these questions… I think that they are constantly at the back part of my mind lately and through trial and error experimental processes/ perfromances they may be little by little addressed and cleared up…

Irene's Food for Thought