Agencies of Repetition

According to Lacan, the basis of Freudian psychoanalytic theory rests on the calling forth of the Cartesian subject out of the “structural necessities” of signification. This “recollection,” as he terms it, occurs at our “lowest encounter” with language and is constituted by the very structural constraints it seeks to escape (47). For Freud, It is the “Wiederkehr” (recurrence) of this moment that initiates the gap of the unconscious. It is the encounter between the thinking subject and the lacuna of the real. Lacan writes, “An adequate thought, qua thought. always avoids...the same thing. Here, the real is that which always comes back to the same place-to the place where the subject in so far as he thinks...does not meet it” (49). Thinking is the subject’s search for the thing (the real) whose very refutation makes it (cogito) possible.

I talked in my last post about refutation as the “essential function” of the unconscious, so I’m not going to go into that here. Rather, I want to focus on the function of distributed agency in Lacan’s theory of repetition.

In formulating his theory of repetition, Lacan bridges off of Freud by focusing on the importance of the “human act” occurring in a structure disconnected from the real, and he references ritual suicide as a paradigmatic example (50). Here, Lacan seems to be pointing towards a notion of the human defined by its degree of agency within a field of possible actions

However, Lacan sums up his lecture with what at first seems like a peculiar detour through traumatic repetition in dreams which he posits as the very thing that problematizes the notion of human agency presented above in the way that it de-centers the subject “into a certain number of agencies” (51). Lacan claims that distributed agency is the only means through which the subject can approach a traumatic encounter, a claim that would seem to run counter to the popular notion of traumatic repetition as “mastery.” Which leads Lacan to formulate his question: “Why speak so hastily when we do not know precisely where to situate the agency that would undertake this operation of mastery?”.

Lacan concludes his lecture by noting that repetition can be characterized as the search for the moment in which an event “seems to be under an obligation to yield itself” (i.e. the real, “original” encounter) (51). He then further defines this process rather enigmatically as “the resistance of the subject,” which could presumably be read both as “the subject’s act of resistance” and as “resisting the subject.” In sum, it seems that Lacan is saying that a subject’s attempt to grasp the real (the “human act”) is in an inverse relationship to the “totalizing, synthesizing psyche” that initiates this act in the first place.

Perhaps the instruction to be drawn from this section would be to avoid approaches to the real through consciousness. This is the logic of literacy,which is fine for scientific pursuits, but inadequate for our purposes in electracy which sublates the true/false binary on which such pursuits depend. Similar to my last instruction, our repetitive approach to the real will have “always already” occurred, it is simply a matter of locating this approach retrospectively in the various agencies through which it occurred. Which perhaps leads to another instruction: when mapping the subject’s network of signifiers, look for distributed agencies not a unified agency.

The Subject as Movement of Signifiers

In his lecture “Of the Network of Signifiers” Lacan provides a more detailed description of the constitutive relationship between signifier and subject. Of course, like most of Lacan’s theoretical points, this description is inseparable from a discussion of the unconscious.

First, Lacan creates an “inaugural” link between the unconscious and the “Unbegriff” (incomprehensible or nonconceptual) which he then reduces to simply “the cut,” claiming that it is also in “a constituent relation to the signifier itself” (43). Importantly, Lacan clarifies in the next paragraph that “all this [cut, unconscious, signifier] happens in the same place,” namely, the subject. In this way, it is is difficult to distinguish Lacan’s subject from the various movements of signification that move through it. Explaining the function of this “cut” in more detail, Lacan writes that it is the thing that gives the unconscious its “pulsative function” and its tendency to “disappear that somehow seems inherent to it.”  

Lacan then notes that this propensity of disappearance inherent to the unconscious is connected to Freud’s discovery that the unconscious is not an extension of consciousness but rather its essential refutations. Furthermore, these refutations of the unconscious (although presumably still “structured like a language”) take the form of “thoughts” that are inseparable from their coincidence with the thinking Cartesian subject. Thus “I think” manifests its certainty only insofar as it is inseparable from the essential refutation in the unconscious of “I doubt.”

Moving on to the implications of this insight, Lacan posits (via Freud) that dreams are the site where the subject is “at home.” In highly cartographic language, Lacan emphasises the importance of mapping “the network” in order to locate the existence of the subject: “One goes back and forth over one’s ground, one crosses one’s path, one cross checks it” (45). As an analogy for the spatial characteristics of this site, Lacan describes the way a beam of light is refracted as it moves from one layer to another. He writes that “this is the locus where the affair of the subject of the unconscious is played out” (45). Due to its location “between perception and consciousness” this site is necessarily non-spatial and non-anatomical, refusing the boundaries initiated by Descartes’ cogito.

Importantly, Lacan notes that the relation of the unconscious to the primary processes is “not only a network formed by random and contiguous associations” but must also “have a relation with causality” (46). Fueled by metaphor, the signifier’s diachronic self-movement across the terrain of the unconscious coincides with its synchronic emergence in the “pre-conscious.”

With this (somewhat) clearer presentation of the relationship between subject and signifier, I think I can posit an instruction to help our search for an electrate metaphysics. In locating the “thoughts” of the unconscious, focus on those moments of subjective “refraction” since these moments point to the cuts in the unconscious that can guide you through the network of signifiers that constitute your subjectivity.However, this mapping can only be done retrospectively, outside of the unconscious. A quote from the preface seems to elucidate this point further: “when the space of a lapsus [slip of the tongue] no longer carries any meaning (or interpretation) then only is one sure that one is in the unconscious. One knows. But one has only to be aware of the fact to find oneself outside it….There is no truth that, in passing through awareness, does not lie.” (vii).

Locating Desire(s)

In his lecture on painting, Lacan spends a few moments regressing on the “value of artistic creation.” Starting from Freud, Lacan mentions the impossibility of locating an objective substance that undergirds art or even a criteria through which such value could be tracked down. When analyzing a painting, Freud focused on “the function that the original artist’s phantasy played in his creation,” a rather concise definition of the typical role that psychoanalysis plays in film and literary theory, and which Lacan notes “always produces a shocked reaction on the part of the listener” (109). Conversely, Lacan wants to approach art less in terms of its subjective relationship to the individual creator/viewer and more in terms of its collective relationship within a social structure.

As discussed in my last post, this is a move from essence (which I read here as intention) to function (relations). In prefacing his main claim, Lacan is quick to note the analytical difficulty in locating causal links within an area of culture as overwrought as artistic production. He writes, “If one considers all the modulations imposed on painting by the variations of the subjectifying structure that have occurred in history, it is clear that no formula can possibly embrace those aims, those ruses, those infinitely varied tricks” (109). Furthermore, Lacan’s purpose in focusing on art (or, more accurately, “pictures”) in this lecture is not a synchronic historicity (“the function of painting at a particular moment, for a particular author, at a particular time”) but merely “the radical principle of [its] function” (110).

Integral to this function of art and its relationship to society is the notion of “sublimation,” which I think is related to what Lacan refers to as “dompte-regard,” or the taming of the gaze that occurs in artistic consumption. Extrapolating this notion, Lacan refers to the way in which art “has something profitable for society” in the way that it “calms people, comforts them.” However, this “comfort” is a very specific kind of comfort. It is comforting to the viewer because it shows her a circumstance in which another is “living from the exploitation of their desire” (111). This is an interesting point because Lacan seems to be arguing that the “satisfaction” of artistic consumption is accompanied by a simultaneous introjection of the other’s (the artist’s) desire in artistic production. This is the way in which the gaze is “tamed” through the subject’s contemplation of desire as it arrives paradoxically  from the other within the subject.

Lacan continues by describing how this circulation of desire between/within subject and other is tied to “the painting of a veil” which is less important ontologically (a thing/substance it might conceal) than it is relationally: the veil is what provokes the viewer “to ask what is behind it [the painting]” (112). This “other thing” is the “petit a” which, as Ulmer claims, is an “ambassador of desire.”

In formulating an instruction from the theoretical material gathered in this post, I am reminded of our discussion about the importance of position within Julien’s text and how a knowledge and recognition of the implications of one’s position in a system can increase an agent’s ability to increase efficacious alignments with the events in the system. Relating Julien’s position-efficacy correlation to Lacan’s ideas regarding the social functions of art might allow us to rethink our position(s) as viewers/consumers of art by drawing attention to the vacillation of desire between viewer and artist, subject and other.

With this in mind, here is an instruction: As you consume art/media, ask yourself “where is my desire coming from?” I think this instruction might also be related to the “mood” section of the metaphysics, morality, and mood criteria established in Internet Invention in the way that it asks the subject to respond to an experience (desiring) that has already taken place.

The Electrate Unconscious

I am still caught up with Lacan’s extrapolation of the unconscious from his earlier lectures. Perhaps my attraction (or repulsion?) to the unconscious comes from my own preconceptions of this term.

To begin I just want describe my preconception of “the unconscious” and then juxtapose my preconceptions with a specific description of the unconscious from Lacan.

Like many people (I assume), I tend to conceive of the unconscious as synonymous with some kind subliminal, or covert, cognitive state that is essentially identical with a conscious cognitive state but operating at a level just out of my immediate (i.e. “conscious”) grasp. I also think of the unconscious as playing a decisive role in structuring my conscious acts and desires.

Furthermore, my conception of the unconscious also seems to carry two key characteristics: self-identity and spatiality. When I say “self-identity” I mean it in both senses  of the term. My unconscious is in some way identical/constitutive to my-self  and it is also identical to it-self as a thing or substance that is locatable or classifiable in some way, which leads to the second characteristic. Because I conceive of the unconscious as a self-identical substance, I also presuppose its ability to inhabit a particular space, and not only that (if I am being entirely honest), I tend to isolate this space almost exclusively in the brain, an organ that Lacan seems to have very little interest in (at least in this seminar).

Unsurprisingly, I can conclude from this description that my notion of the unconscious has been colored by my encounters with it in various contexts, and because the unconscious is such an important term for psychoanalysis (“being the most essential” as Lacan puts it), it seems important to revise these (mis)conceptions in accordance with Lacan’s descriptions (29).

In his lecture “On the Subject of Certainty” (as well as throughout his entire seminar), Lacan posits a variety of descriptors in conjunction with the unconscious. He refers to it as a “gap,” “pre-ontological,” the “unrealized,” and often moves switches imperceptibly from his description of the unconscious to “desire.”

However, Lacan eventually settles on a clear articulation of three aspects (albeit negative ones) of the unconscious. Lacan writes, “what happens there is inaccessible to contradiction, to spatio-temporal location and also to the function of time” (31).

Lacan’s first quality of the unconscious as “inaccessible to contradiction” seems to complicate my initial formulation of the unconscious as a cognitive state roughly equivalent to the function of consciousness. For it seems that contradiction is one of the foundational principles of conscious subjectivity, its presence granting our rational minds the authority to reject, and thus settle on, particular concepts or claims about the world and ourselves.

In addition, if the unconscious is separate from the constraints of space and time, this would run counter to not only my conception of its presence in the brain but its presence anywhere, even in the body. Although difficult for me to grasp at the moment, the unconscious does not function according the presence/absence binary that I apply to most entities.

When I first approached this text, I assumed that Lacan would present a very clear definition of what exactly the unconscious is. However, since it doesn’t seem like this is going to happen, I will have to trust Lacan and assume that understanding a precise definition of the properties of the unconscious are not as important as understanding how the unconscious functions within his analytic system.

After some feedback from Ulmer, it seems that the instruction to be drawn from this section would be to suspend the conscious processes of induction and deduction in favor of the “primary processes” of conduction and inference in formulating the role of the unconscious in our electrate metaphysics.

The New Language of the Unconscious

Lacan claims that “the unconscious is structured like a language” relations to his notions of the subject and counting (20). Besides the fact that this is one of the phrases for which Lacan is most well known, it also resonates with me at a formal level simply due to its axiomatic brevity. It seems to demand attention, especially considering that Lacan in in the process of explaining “the unconscious,” one of his four fundamental concepts.

First, and as Lacan is quick to note, the phrase is indebted to the structuralism of Claude Levi Strauss, from whom Lacan derives his notion of the “relations that have already been determined” before the establishment of societal or human relations. Lacan writes that these structures “are taken from whatever nature may offer as supports, supports that are arranged in themes of opposition. Nature provides-I must use the word-signifiers, and these signifiers organize human relations in a creative way, providing them with structures and shaping them” (20). Lacan then continues by noting that the most significant aspect of this pre-structuring is how it attunes psychoanalysis to the way in which subject formation occurs at “the level at which there is counting, things are counted, and in this counting he who counts is already included” (20).

Looking again at the way that Lacan structures his argument formally (“I must use the word”), it seems that he wants us to pay attention to the importance of the term “signifiers” in his structuralist account of the unconscious. With this in mind, it seems that Lacan’s phrase, “the unconscious is structured like a language,” might be interpreted as follows: the material signifiers through which meaning arises in language is analogous to the material signifiers through which the unconscious arises in the subject. In addition, these “material signifiers” in the unconscious come from “nature” and thus are not necessarily limited to the signifiers that constitute a language.

It also seems important that Lacan describes these signifiers as coming together “in a creative way,” implying that the unconscious structure which results does not function on a logic that is confined to the physical or “natural” limitations from which its signifiers arose. The connections among the signifiers in the unconscious are akin to the connections we made in the felt section of our mystories.

One instruction to be gleaned from this analysis might be to expand our understanding of language beyond its phonemic emphasis in literacy. We might also consider returning to semiotic/structuralist theory such as Levi-Strauss, Greimas, and Barthes as we attempt to represent signifer relations in our electrate metaphysics. How does the proliferation of image, video, audio, and text initiate a new semiotics?

Taxonomies of Electracy

In his analysis of the shi in ancient Chinese poetry, Julien reproduces a taxonomy of poetic forms created by an 8th century literary critic. Julien writes, “Wang Changling, the author of another list of strategic dispositions in poetry, this one written more than a century earlier, resisted the temptation to be so cryptic; his catalog is easier for us to learn from. In this list we are not distracted by external examples of gesture and posture; the text itself says everything, and we need only interpret it. It might be worth pausing to study it” (118).

An instruction that could be developed from Julien’s focus on the taxonomy of 8th century Chinese poetry in his extrapolation of shi is to locate and “interpret” electrate taxonomies. Important to remember in this instruction is not so much the individual categorizations themselves, but rather the method of categorizing employed by the author.

To do so, we must also partner with Julien in moving away from the dismissive stance that the taxonomy is nothing more than a “desultory, whimsical rumination” and consider the possibility that there may be “discreet and subtle links beneath the apparent disorder” (123).

Possible areas to explore might the sudden proliferation of “list” articles that is currently bombarding social media (buzzfeed in particular comes to mind). Following Julien, it might be more accurate to focus on lists whose subject matter would be inherently difficult to categorize in a rigorous or exhaustive manner (such as poetry). What can the connections initiated through analysis of these categorizations tell us about an electrate metaphysics?

Contrast: Playing Nice with Jullien

In addition to his general contrast between Western and Eastern metaphysics, Jullien presents a series of more specific contrasts between various Western and Eastern cultural entities (theorists, aesthetics, strategy). For this post, I want to focus on Part Two, or the section on art and aesthetics, which I believe most explicitly outlines the role and importance of Contrast within the notion of shi.

In his first section "Absence of Mimesis: Art Conceived as the Actualization of Universal Dynamism," Jullien explores the Chinese emergence of “an autonomous aesthetic mindset” following the disintegration of the unified empire at the close of the second century A.D. Contrasting this Eastern artistry with the West’s propensity for mimesis or representation, Jullien describes a Chinese aesthetic that simultaneously captures universality and particularity rather than merely depicting universality or particularity. He writes, “artistic activity was seen as a process of actualization, which produced a particular configuration of reality….The particular disposition that receives form can potentially express the universal dynamism” (75). In this way, the painting is not an replication of the dynamism within reality but is itself a new dynamic moment of reality. Shi innovates rather than recapitulates. Possible instruction: MOVE AWAY FROM REPETITION AND TOWARD INNOVATION. This is an instruction we know well by now, even if we do not always heed it.

As he moves to a more specific example of aesthetic shi (poetry and literature), Jullien complicates this notion of contrast as I have been presenting it as a movement from one place to another (away from X and toward Y). Instead, Jullien argues, one should “exploit the potentials of both those contrary qualities” in order to adequately reveal their essences which can only be grasped through their differences. Jullien warns, however, not to confuse this  contrast that promotes originality with the “contrariness, contradiction, and quasi-mechanical subversion” that leads to mere novelty (87). Contrast, as opposed to contradiction, strikes a balance between a subtle “tension” and an overt “saturation that permeates the tension and brings about relaxation and enjoyment.”

The important thing to glean from this example in thinking about our instructions for Contrast is to keep in mind that contrast maintains, rather than “moves away from,” differences, and not only that, but it maintains differences only to the extent to which the false resolution toward which tension inherently gravitates is forestalled by the “harmonious saturation” that makes the tension tolerable. An instruction: PUT YOUR CONTRASTS TOGETHER, BUT MAKE THEM PLAY NICE.