"Sexuality is established," Lacan posits, "in the field of the subject by a way that is that of lack" (204). I know that sexuality is not something that is very obviously relatable to Electracy, but I think that this phrase speaks to that process too. If we can think about Electracy as established through a desire brought on by lack, I think it produces interesting results. For instance, Lacan further iterates his ideas about a lack by talking about Aristophanes and how he "substituted the myth intended to embody the missing part, which I called the myth of the lamella. This is new and its important because it designates the libido not as a field of forces, but as an organ ... This organ is unreal. Unreal is not imaginary. The unreal is defined by articulating itself on the real in a way that eludes us" (205).
I want to think further about what this lack means in correlation with an unreal organ. If we can impose an Electrical filter to Lacan's position on lack, I believe that it will produce interesting results. For instance, understanding what Aristophanes has to do with Lacan's argument about lack can help us to understand. The basic premise of the argument is this: Aristophanes' fable relates the fact that the human was at first created, by the gods, as a doubled being. This means that every person had two heads, to bodies, to appendages, two (different) sexual organs, all stuck together. But the gods grew jealous of their creations' completeness, so they separated the one doubled being into two singled beings. This is where the initial lack comes from, the idea that we are essentially missing half of ourselves. We seek this other half through sexual reproduction, apparently, through coupling. We wax poetic about finding our other half, as if we are constantly searching for that part of us that was split.
This is a creationist myth that I think is interesting with respect to places - like China - where creation myths, according to Jullien, don't exist. But putting that aside for a second, putting aside the idea that perhaps a creation myth also doesn't exist for Electracy, I still want to try and work out what is unreal about it. What is unreal but that we still feel as real and that is why it feels unreal. And many people feel this way, they feel like they have to find their second half, and many fill that "lack" with something else. Lacan states that "one of the most ancient forms in which this unreal organ is incarnated in the body, is tattooing, scarification" (205-6). I posit that it is in the area of tattoos of scarifciation where we can really get somewhere. If we can just find the scar, or denote in some way, that we are missing something by making it physical, making it painful, putting that scar or that artwork on our skin to somehow pay homage to the separation between the two bodies, or even somehow pointing the way to that other body that we're missing, I think that that pain might be, perhaps, easier to deal with.
Let us move towards our other halves in Electracy. To do so, I will use an example that makes it easier to connect the two: Tattoo QR codes. Many people these days are doing them. Tattooing the codes that not only signify a lack, but that lead to where that lack is articulated in ways that can't be attached, prosthesis-like, to our bodies. QR codes are similar to fingerprints. Electracal style fingerprints. But what the QR codes are really leading to is our virtual selves. And herein lies my point: If we can have virtual selves, can these selves function as our other halves? Essentially, that would mean that not only are we filling in the void that the lack has created by getting that other half, it also means having the ability to create that other half. Have we found a way to not have a lack at all?
Instruction: I'm not sure if you have any tattoos or not, but think about a tattoo that you might get that would somehow signify that lack that everyone is supposed to feel, that unreal organ of the libido that one has, and then articulate it in some virtually Electrical way that doesn't have to do with your actual body. How would you go about doing this?
No comments:
Post a Comment