Here be theory! Here be Lacanian Theory. A dangerous journey in its own right. In this text The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan offers us a model for which he talks about psychoanalysis that we can utilize to talk about Electracy. I think it's important to understand that Electracy is not exactly psychoanalysis, but that the foundation and formulation and the structure and scaffolding is similar, so that psychoanalysis might allow us to see a kind of blue print for what Electracy could be.
Check them out:
1. Gap
2. Repetition Re Petition Repeat tion
3. Lack/Unreal
4. Termination/Brushstrokes/Keystrokes
5. Gaze - The Libido For the Eyes
EMAIL 2 [Lacan Email 1] - The Circuitry of Language
EMAIL 3 [Lacan Email 2] - Boomerang
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Gap (Lacan Instructions 1)
In the gap is the non-realized. In Lacan's text The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, he talks a lot about the space in between the things that we can see. It is that that is the crux of a lot of his arguments, that limbo space. The space between the lines that's a chasm of understanding, as long as we can see, or attempt to see, what's there. The idea of something that is not realized is hopeful, because it denotes a hopefulness: It is not realized yet. It has a potential, even if it never is realized. In the gap, Lacan states, something is oscillating. The moon causes the tide, but what is it... where is that chain that pulls the water that leads to the moon?
For Lacan, the Unconscious is the place where we can see the gap. It is a door that leads to the gap. But if neurosis fills the room where the gap is, out of it comes a scarring of the unconscious. To continue with my metaphor: the door becomes rusted, sometimes even rusted shut. For Lacan, the psychoanalysts who were coming after Freud wanted to sew the gap away, to stitch it shut instead of trying to understand it. The refusal is what allowed for the scar to happen, a scar that has made it difficult and often detrimental to open back up, and so we have forgotten about the gap that the unconscious leads to.
I think the gap is an interesting place to think about Electracy because so much of what we do in Electracy is comparable to the moon pulling the ocean, there is a line that we don't see that allows what we do to be translated to the screen. That is something that's amazing, I think, and I think it's important to maybe try to see where the gap is here and what it does.
So much of what we see is the cause and the effect, but the steps towards something could, perhaps, open up that door just a little bit so that we can see the place where the gap is in terms of Electracy.
Instruction: Try to find the string that's pulling the ocean, so to speak. Think about the steps that it takes for something to appear from a keyboard to the screen. If you can, document the steps it takes for something to happen. For instance, if you're uploading a video, for instance, how does that happen - can you screencap the steps that it takes to get there. What about your drafts, save every draft of something that you're doing and them compare the drafts. Can you see where the gaps are? Why do you think you saved there and not some other place?
Think, also, about your Mystory: Where are the gaps there, and what does that tell you.... what can you see in the gap, if you can see anything at all.
For Lacan, the Unconscious is the place where we can see the gap. It is a door that leads to the gap. But if neurosis fills the room where the gap is, out of it comes a scarring of the unconscious. To continue with my metaphor: the door becomes rusted, sometimes even rusted shut. For Lacan, the psychoanalysts who were coming after Freud wanted to sew the gap away, to stitch it shut instead of trying to understand it. The refusal is what allowed for the scar to happen, a scar that has made it difficult and often detrimental to open back up, and so we have forgotten about the gap that the unconscious leads to.
I think the gap is an interesting place to think about Electracy because so much of what we do in Electracy is comparable to the moon pulling the ocean, there is a line that we don't see that allows what we do to be translated to the screen. That is something that's amazing, I think, and I think it's important to maybe try to see where the gap is here and what it does.
So much of what we see is the cause and the effect, but the steps towards something could, perhaps, open up that door just a little bit so that we can see the place where the gap is in terms of Electracy.
Instruction: Try to find the string that's pulling the ocean, so to speak. Think about the steps that it takes for something to appear from a keyboard to the screen. If you can, document the steps it takes for something to happen. For instance, if you're uploading a video, for instance, how does that happen - can you screencap the steps that it takes to get there. What about your drafts, save every draft of something that you're doing and them compare the drafts. Can you see where the gaps are? Why do you think you saved there and not some other place?
Think, also, about your Mystory: Where are the gaps there, and what does that tell you.... what can you see in the gap, if you can see anything at all.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Repetition Re petition Repeate tion (Lacan Instructions 2)
"Repetition demands the new," Lacan declares (61). Seemingly, this sentence is a paradox, since repetition is inherently the Not New. But this sentence also speaks of a desire, a lack for something new. What then, keeps us in a process of repetition? What is holding us back from that shift to something new?
How does this all relate to Electracy?
I think that, with the advent of Electracy, the idea of repetition is something that is both less thought about and also more, for lack of a better word, repeated. Let's think about the keyboard, for instance, where we have a few repeated keystrokes that allow us to "copy/paste" the same text over and over again. There is a complication here because there are two things that are repeating: The action of pressing ctrl+c/ctrl+v and the act of whatever it is that's being copy/pasted being repeated. There is a double repetition here that I find interesting because it complicates the idea of repetition. Even more interesting is the concept of a mistake, something that often happens in the copy/paste function. "Whatever, in repetition, is varied, modulated, is merely alienation of its meaning," Lacan states (61). This need, this demand, for the new is also interesting because Lacan also states that repetition is related to memory, so even as we demand the new, we also need the memory to be there.
But repetition does something else, a consequence, a side effect, that we might not be aware of when we first start to repeat. It imposes newness on its own. Even if there are no alterations to that which we are repeating, the meaning of that repeated practice, word, image, starts to get lost, starts to change.
In an episode of Grey's Anatomy there was a woman who had lost her ability to speak: Her speaking went into her blog where other people who were diagnosed with silence were. But the interesting thing is what her husband said. In order to communicate with him, she made post-its with the most commonly used phrases (thank you, yes, no, I love you, etc...). Her husband, when asked about this process, asked to relate how awesome it was, says that when things like "I love you" are flashed at you they start to lose their meaning. I think here is the crux of repetition: It always washes itself of meaning and starts imposing its own self on us. A meaninglessness, perhaps.
Try it: Say a phrase over and over and over again. You'll start to hear it become different if you say it out loud.
Instruction: Go online and keep doing the same thing over and over again. Whether that's always clicking the same numbered link or watching a video over and over again (I would recommend that one, especially a video that's short and perhaps funny). As soon as it loses its meaning stop watching it. How long did it take? Was it a gradual loss? Did you become annoyed, relaxed, etc...? Using a funny video helps because when you stop being amused, or when you've had enough, is usually a great indicator.
How does this all relate to Electracy?
I think that, with the advent of Electracy, the idea of repetition is something that is both less thought about and also more, for lack of a better word, repeated. Let's think about the keyboard, for instance, where we have a few repeated keystrokes that allow us to "copy/paste" the same text over and over again. There is a complication here because there are two things that are repeating: The action of pressing ctrl+c/ctrl+v and the act of whatever it is that's being copy/pasted being repeated. There is a double repetition here that I find interesting because it complicates the idea of repetition. Even more interesting is the concept of a mistake, something that often happens in the copy/paste function. "Whatever, in repetition, is varied, modulated, is merely alienation of its meaning," Lacan states (61). This need, this demand, for the new is also interesting because Lacan also states that repetition is related to memory, so even as we demand the new, we also need the memory to be there.
But repetition does something else, a consequence, a side effect, that we might not be aware of when we first start to repeat. It imposes newness on its own. Even if there are no alterations to that which we are repeating, the meaning of that repeated practice, word, image, starts to get lost, starts to change.
In an episode of Grey's Anatomy there was a woman who had lost her ability to speak: Her speaking went into her blog where other people who were diagnosed with silence were. But the interesting thing is what her husband said. In order to communicate with him, she made post-its with the most commonly used phrases (thank you, yes, no, I love you, etc...). Her husband, when asked about this process, asked to relate how awesome it was, says that when things like "I love you" are flashed at you they start to lose their meaning. I think here is the crux of repetition: It always washes itself of meaning and starts imposing its own self on us. A meaninglessness, perhaps.
Try it: Say a phrase over and over and over again. You'll start to hear it become different if you say it out loud.
Instruction: Go online and keep doing the same thing over and over again. Whether that's always clicking the same numbered link or watching a video over and over again (I would recommend that one, especially a video that's short and perhaps funny). As soon as it loses its meaning stop watching it. How long did it take? Was it a gradual loss? Did you become annoyed, relaxed, etc...? Using a funny video helps because when you stop being amused, or when you've had enough, is usually a great indicator.
Lack/Unreal (Lacan Instructions 3)
"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?
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?
Termination/Brushstrokes/Keystrokes (Lacan Instructions 4)
Lacan relates the story of Matisse's reaction to a film that was taken of him painting. He says that it was a "strange slow-motion film in which one sees Matisse painting. The important point is that Matisse himself was overwhelmed by the film. Maurice Merleau-Ponty draws attention to the paradox of this gesture which, enlarged by the distension of time, enables us to imagine the most perfect deliberation in each of these brush strokes. This is an illusion ... what occurs as these strokes, which go to make up the miracle of the picture, fall like rain from the painter's brush is not choice, but something else" (114). As a person who paints, I know that brushstrokes are not always the choice of the painter. There is a randomness (which perhaps isn't random at all) to how the painting comes about. Sometimes it has to do with the size of the brush, sometimes with the contours of the subjects on the canvas. But to think about the slowed down brushstrokes of a Matisse painting is interesting because watching people paint seems to have the opposite effect these days. These days, on youtube, people's brushstrokes are sped up so that the viewer can get to the end of the painting as quick as possible. There is no hyper slowing down of the film production of a person painting. I think that would be fascinating. It is especially fascinating when one considers something that Matisse said and my art teacher related that has always stuck with me: "I don't paint things," he said, "I only paint the difference between things." The unsettled way that he feels, I think, points to that. He is watching himself paint the in between, the limbo, and watching himself bring something back out of that limbo.
Lacan says, "Let us not forget that the painter's brushstroke is something in which a movement is terminated. We are faced here with something that gives a new and different meaning to the term regression---we are faced with the element of motive in the sense of response" (114). This termination and regression allows us to see things that we may not have otherwise. Perhaps that is why art historians study the great painter's brushstrokes, why people who can detect reproduced paintings can somehow tell that a masterpiece is real or just a fake copy. I think this is an interesting process to think about, also, when trying to understand Electracy. Instead of brushstrokes, we have people's methods of scrolling, and people's keystrokes. In fact, one can figure out someone's identity by understanding their specific type of keystrokes (at least this is what I've heard), something that's always present: "This terminal moment is that which enables us to distinguish between a gesture and an act. It is by means of a gesture that the brushstroke is applied to the canvas ... the gesture is always present ... All action represented in a picture appears to us as a battle scene, something theatrical, necessarily created for the gesture" (114-5).
Instructions: Take a video of yourself typing and using your mouse. Try painting on a simple program like MS Paint, and record your painting's progression and the way that you move your fingers on your track pad or use your mouse. What happens when you misspell a word? Do you delete the whole word or do you actually use the mouse to go to the problem area? How slow do you type? Fast? How often do you stall as you're typing up a word or sentence? Remember to slow down your video. Do you feel strange watching yourself type?
Lacan says, "Let us not forget that the painter's brushstroke is something in which a movement is terminated. We are faced here with something that gives a new and different meaning to the term regression---we are faced with the element of motive in the sense of response" (114). This termination and regression allows us to see things that we may not have otherwise. Perhaps that is why art historians study the great painter's brushstrokes, why people who can detect reproduced paintings can somehow tell that a masterpiece is real or just a fake copy. I think this is an interesting process to think about, also, when trying to understand Electracy. Instead of brushstrokes, we have people's methods of scrolling, and people's keystrokes. In fact, one can figure out someone's identity by understanding their specific type of keystrokes (at least this is what I've heard), something that's always present: "This terminal moment is that which enables us to distinguish between a gesture and an act. It is by means of a gesture that the brushstroke is applied to the canvas ... the gesture is always present ... All action represented in a picture appears to us as a battle scene, something theatrical, necessarily created for the gesture" (114-5).
Instructions: Take a video of yourself typing and using your mouse. Try painting on a simple program like MS Paint, and record your painting's progression and the way that you move your fingers on your track pad or use your mouse. What happens when you misspell a word? Do you delete the whole word or do you actually use the mouse to go to the problem area? How slow do you type? Fast? How often do you stall as you're typing up a word or sentence? Remember to slow down your video. Do you feel strange watching yourself type?
Gaze - The Libido for the Eyes (Lacan Instructions 5)
The gaze that Lacan talks about is very similar to the concept of libido. This is why I think it works in an analogical statement. Libido is to genital organs like gaze is to ocular organs. It's important, I posit, to understand the idea of desire that stems from the implications of that statement.
I think it's also important to note the power that the gaze has over the one being gazed at. For instance, the gaze has the power of transference. There is always something colonizing about being gazed at because that person is imposing themselves on your without you knowing.
The gaze reduces and annihilates the subject. But if the gaze is the underside of consciousness, how can we try and imagine it since it's always eluding us in some way. How can we think about the gaze when we think about Electracy? What is the underside of the consciousness here, is the layer between them the screen?
And if someone sees the eye that is gazing at them then the gaze disappears. What happens, though, if someone sees themselves seeing them self? There is a past tense in Lacan's statement that allows for a shift in time, for a measurement to be made. There is here too an annihilation. But is it the annihilation of the gaze or the annihilation of the gazed at gazing back? How can we think about the camera or the telephone or just the simple act of Googling something? Lacan talks about the stain of the gaze. He says, "If the function of the stain is recognized in its autonomy and identified with that of the gaze, we can seek its track, its thread, its trace ... We will then realize that the function of the stain and of the gaze is both that which governs the gaze most secretly and that which always escapes from the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with itself in imagining itself as consciousness" (74). There is then an invisibility of the gazer gazing or staining in this situation. I want to ask, finally, the same question that Lacan asks: if "the gaze is that underside of consciousness, how shall we try to imagine it" (83).
The instructions for this blog is either easy or difficult, depending on how far the experimenter is trying to capture the gaze, but the implication that Sartre states is important to it: "In so far as I am under the gaze, Sartre writes, I no longer see the eye that looks at me and, if I see the eye, the gaze disappears" (84).
Instruction 1: Take a picture of yourself projected on your screen. This can be your phone screen too if that is where you spend most of your time.
Instruction 2: Think about non-reflective surfaces (like the Kindle Paperwhite edition), and how a gaze might be discerned from that.
Instruction 3: Construct a series of Google poems, these can be Haiku or not. Who is writing these poems, you or the person/thing that is gazing at you through the screen?
I think it's also important to note the power that the gaze has over the one being gazed at. For instance, the gaze has the power of transference. There is always something colonizing about being gazed at because that person is imposing themselves on your without you knowing.
The gaze reduces and annihilates the subject. But if the gaze is the underside of consciousness, how can we try and imagine it since it's always eluding us in some way. How can we think about the gaze when we think about Electracy? What is the underside of the consciousness here, is the layer between them the screen?
And if someone sees the eye that is gazing at them then the gaze disappears. What happens, though, if someone sees themselves seeing them self? There is a past tense in Lacan's statement that allows for a shift in time, for a measurement to be made. There is here too an annihilation. But is it the annihilation of the gaze or the annihilation of the gazed at gazing back? How can we think about the camera or the telephone or just the simple act of Googling something? Lacan talks about the stain of the gaze. He says, "If the function of the stain is recognized in its autonomy and identified with that of the gaze, we can seek its track, its thread, its trace ... We will then realize that the function of the stain and of the gaze is both that which governs the gaze most secretly and that which always escapes from the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with itself in imagining itself as consciousness" (74). There is then an invisibility of the gazer gazing or staining in this situation. I want to ask, finally, the same question that Lacan asks: if "the gaze is that underside of consciousness, how shall we try to imagine it" (83).
The instructions for this blog is either easy or difficult, depending on how far the experimenter is trying to capture the gaze, but the implication that Sartre states is important to it: "In so far as I am under the gaze, Sartre writes, I no longer see the eye that looks at me and, if I see the eye, the gaze disappears" (84).
Instruction 1: Take a picture of yourself projected on your screen. This can be your phone screen too if that is where you spend most of your time.
Instruction 2: Think about non-reflective surfaces (like the Kindle Paperwhite edition), and how a gaze might be discerned from that.
Instruction 3: Construct a series of Google poems, these can be Haiku or not. Who is writing these poems, you or the person/thing that is gazing at you through the screen?
The Circuitry of Language (Email 2//Lacan1)
Hello everyone,
Before I even started reading Lacan's The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, I had already imposed a filter on the text: a kind of excavatory reading that would help me determine how to uncover the
[T]heory needed for our Electracy project. While doing so, I of course wanted to continue to think about Jullien's The Propensity of Things,
since one cannot have a CATTt without the C or a T. But before I delve
into a discussion about that, I want to
first think about the start of Lacan's text and how it allowed me to
relate what he's talking about with what we're trying to construct as a
class.
The initial epiphany occurred
right at the start of the book, when Lacan is relating the reason why
he's in the situation he is, why he's writing and how he came to lecture
in front of this particular audience. When
I was reading it, I felt a parallel experience - a sense of deja vu - to
the experience I felt not when I was working on my own Mystory, but
when I was listening to everyone else present their Mystories to the
class. It was the combination of relating something personal
-- on different levels of personal and intimate -- and connecting it to
academic work (the Career portion of the Mystory is what I saw happening
with Lacan's text). In a way, it was as if Lacan was constructing his
Mystory, letting us know why he was doing
the things he was doing. What his world view about the psychoanalytic
organization was when he started his lectures.
He begins with a conversation
about excommunication. Apart from the religious implications of the
word, I think it's important to think about the more literal meaning of
the word. Ex/communication is realized through
the removal of a communication link from one person to another. This
definition, for me, highlights an essential necessity of language: it it
"pointless" to create a language if you are the only person on the
planet since the linguistic system is a system of
connections between at least two points. Excommunication is meant as a
warning issue: a cease-and-desist from thinking in a particular kind of
way. Lacan was unable to communicate in his home venue, so that is why
he lectures in the present venue. Because of
this warning, excommunication makes an object out of a subject and
elucidates the system of human deals. It is in his explanation -- one
that he denotes as very relevant to his text, that he's not
just rambling on -- that we are able to understand his world
view. Lacan's world view is that of excommunication, betrayal (he
states that "There was nothing particularly exceptional, then, about my
situation, except that being traded by those whom I referred to just now
as colleagues, and even pupils, is sometimes,
if seen from the outside, called by a different name" -- it is
important, then, that he utilizes ex-communication and doesn't even
denote that other name), and elusive stability of subjectivity or truth
(Lacan 5). These are things that not even the master can
avoid.
It is the act of
communication, or language, that I think really allowed me to think
outside the realm of psychoanalysis and into the realm of Electracy. I
find the link between language and psychoanalysis to be a
fascinating technique that one can use in order to gleam, at least a
little, of what Electracy is all about. My understanding of language as
it paralleled psychoanalysis started right away from the beginning of
the text, as I think Lacan intended for it to.
Lacan says, "When the space of a lapsus no longer carries any meaning
(or interpretation), then only is one sure that one is in the
unconscious. One knows. But only has only to be aware of the fact
to find oneself outside it. There is no friendship there,
in that space that supports this unconscious. All I can do is tell the
truth. No, that isn't so--- I have missed it. There is no truth that, in
passing through awareness, does not lie. But one runs after it all the
same" (Lacan vii). It is here that the elusive
system of semiotics is illustrated.
Langauge systems exist, at
least in Western thought, always as symbolic (up for interpretation) and
always as a path towards something Real: the Real meaning. This divine
Real greatly mirrors that religious, teleological
Real or End or Infinity that one aspires to but can never achieve. As
with psychoanalysis, then, it is somewhat more simplistic to attribute
language with a kind of religion than with a science. This question of
the science of language or of linguistic systems
is something that I would like to think about in the future, but for now
I think the first step would be to think about the religious-like
characteristics of Electracy. That also poses two inquries. I do not
want to dismiss what art means in language systems
(Statues as representatives of Greek deities come to mind). I also wish
to think about what Jullien presented for our Contrast: in the Chinese
system of art/calligraphy/writing, there is no Real because the elusive
structure is already built into the system.
The idea that one can never hold on to truth is truth itself, in a way.
So how can we think about all of these together and make use of them for
our understanding of Electracy?
That is what I am trying to figure out, and what we are all trying to figure out, I think.
But I fear I have gone on for
much too long. I will close this email with an additional piece of the
puzzle; this is a discussion that Lacan had about a blind man and the
light that he could not see. He says, "the
blind man would be able to follow all our demonstrations ... We would
get him, for example, to finger an object ... We would teach him to
distinguish, by the sense of touch in his finger-ends, on a surface, a
certain configuration that reproduces the mapping
of the images" (93). Although I may be understanding his point in a
different way than he intended, because of the filter I have on my
comprehension, I think the utilization of the blind man is in a way
reminiscent of the bat analogy in the beginning of the
text (page 3). We have a person who is able to use various other senses
to determine meaning; however, the meaning he receives, though the
circuitry of his position, through the connection of one point to
another, and through the vibrational resonance he collects
is always already in the past. He is never in a present moment of truth,
which is exactly what light provides: a truth removed from its position
in reality. How can we think not only about the circuitry of the
language system, but about the circuitry of the
Electracal system so that we can better understand what exactly
Electracy means and how we can utilize it to create?
See you guys soon,
Asmaa
------------------------------------------------------------------Response
The discussion of how the blind experience space
and light connects
with fundamental metaphysical questions, having to do with the relation
of people to world: space, time, causality as three of the most
important themes. Did we review the history of conceptual categories?
The Greeks assumed the categories were in the real
proper, discovered at work there, in the outside given conditions.
Kant's "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy was to shift the relation
to argue that the categories are not in the actual external given world
but are functions of human capacity that make
experience possible. That is why it is not possible in Kant's view to
access "things themselves" -- one knowls only by apprehension,
phenomenal only. Epistemology and ontology merge in that version.
With Lacan, as noted, the relation of sensorium to apprehension
-- epistemology and ontology -- is approached through the erogenous
zones, the correlations among the organs directed by desire and
sexuality. The blind experience gaze in the same way as the sighted,
since it is distinct from the eye.
In any case, the posts this round gave much attention to the opening
of the Seminar. This attention perhaps is justified, though certainly
not the most useful material for our project. One important fact
related to it is that psychoanalysis is precisely
an institution, with the various administrative, bureaucratic
"discipline" that goes with it. This institutional setting apart and
constituting, invention and authorizing of a practice, is relevant to
apparatus theory, marking a part of philosophy most useful
for the new apparatus, while leaving behind the baggage of the
tradition.Boomerang (Email 3//Lacan2)
Hello,
I'd
like to think about the line that Lacan highlights in his discussion
about the Desire and circuits (and perhaps in doing so, to connect this
email to my last one): "The bow is given the name of life ... and its
work is death" (177). This line was an important one for me in trying to
think about the stopped course of the circuit as an element that
somewhat connects Lacan and Jullien, as a kind of altered understanding
of Jullien's process.
Jullien, as I'm sure we all
remember, utilizes the symbol and literal of the bow in its importance
to the Chinese culture (because it demonstrates Shi and the potential
born from its propensity). I want to think about
the bow in this situation as Lacan does. actually as a cut-off
potential, as the death drive of reproduction operates.
In Electracy. this desire might not be the same; the limbo space that is
filled with anxiety has to become altered. I'm thinking, actually,
of a the last bow that Katniss fires in the movie adaptation of Catching Fire.
In this (sorry for the spoilers) scene Katniss takes an actual circuit,
wraps it around her arrow, and shoots the arrow at the false reality of
the arena. I think of this
example simply because it combines the idea of a circuit with the quote
about the bow. But if we think about it in the way that Lacan does, I
think it's interesting to note that something interesting happens with
this electric current: It gets shot through
the false reality's sky in the form of a lightning bolt, goes through a
tree with copper wire wrapped around it, is transferred to Katniss's
electric wire and goes right back up to the sky that created it in the
first place. But something else also happens
that allows for the circuit not have that complete-circle rotation that
would make this example a failed one. What happens is that the electric
circuit not only travels from one point of the sky and back to that same
point, a residual electric current simultaneously
travels into Katniss's body, leaving her prostrate on the ground.
It is here that I can begin
to envision the idea of an Electrate desire, and not a psychoanalytic
one. Katniss is the glitch in the system, so that changes things a
little bit, as glitches do in our thinking of Lacan's
desire. But it is actually precisely because of she is the glitch that I
want to focus on her. The glitch is that which gives us that duel
feeling of anxiety/desire -- we are anxious about Katniss in general,
but we also want to be her. She becomes the "hollow
object" of our gaze (180). But this, still, is psychoanalytic. However,
I think it can be looked at as Electrate if we think not about Katniss
but about the arena. To think about that which kisses itself, which
closes its mouth so that its desires can't be arrows
that bring a simultaneous life-death to those desires.
The arena is a closed
circuit, something that we talked about during our last class as an
element that we would need when we thought about Electracy. It itself is
a bow, a manifestation of the desire of the Capitol
that is supposed to continue the life of the political system in place,
but it in fact helps to destroy it because it has become a somewhat
closed system (and for all intents and purposes, I want to think about
it this way). If that is the case, then I want
to think about the arena not as the head of an arrow, but as a
Boomerang. A boomerang is unlike an arrow because it ends were it
starts, in the hand of the thrower (theoretically, at least). In this
way, it is like a circuit that has not been stopped in the
middle of it's current. It kills, and then it comes back, kills and
comes back. It is a regenerative object in this way, at the same time
that it is an object of constant-death. It has achieved what arrows
can't because of its potential for infinity.
Electracly, where is the
equivalent almost-closed-circuit? I can think of two examples: the chain
letter and the viral video. But these example depend on he open system
within the closed system of the internet to thrive,
to infect and to kill (if one does not pass the chain letter on). The
system is even more closed when one thinks about Tumblr's posts. These
are reproductive, though, which nullifies the auto-erotic circuit we're
looking for. Can we think about, for instance,
a blog full of private posts, of desires, that are sustained by their
fantasy? Moreover, how can desire thrive if it is constantly
internalized, how can it sustain itself without eventual annihilation?
Perhaps a clue is Lacan's
section on soda-masochism, when he states that "at the moment when the
loop is closed, when it is from one pole to the other that there has
been a reversal, when the other has come into play,
when the subject has taken himself as the end, the terminus of the
drive" (183). Could it be here where Katniss would again reassert
herself into the narrative: when the electric current runs through her,
does she become, for an instant, a part of the system
that she's destroying? At least a part of this is true: District 12, her
home, the place where she became what she was, is itself annihilated.
Katniss can never be the same again. How can we think about this in
terms of an instruction that will increase our
hermeneutic and theoretical understanding of Electracy?
Until next time,
Asmaa
------------------------------------------------------------Response
You have the feel for Lacanian style (and its
Chinese cousin) in working through a theoretical issue by means of an
art (or other materialized) example. Potentiality is the central issue
as we know, with the Unconscious
located in an interval gap of Limbo between Potential and Actual
(central and fundamental theme of metaphysics). Relevant to the lessons
of your case example is Lacan's description of the Unconscious as an
alternating current, or at as a fish net that opens
and closes, a "trap" in this respect, whose rhythms one must learn to
notice. In his famous talk given at the Johns Hopkins Symposium that
kicked off poststructuralism in America, Lacan evoked the Unconscious as
a figure, as Baltimore in the early morning,
before sunrise, with the neon lights of the city blinking on and off. I
appropriated that image to develop a version of conduction that I
characterized as "reasoneon." We may recognize the Tai Chi symbol
referencing the alternating rhythm of yin-yang, closed
and broken lines stacking up into sets of 6, a hexagram as two trigrams,
moments of time flowing constantly, frame grabs of process, positions
as we know--of Shi. It is the 0/1 F/T off/on switch constitutive of
computing (the invention streams converging.
Leibniz who developed the binomial number system was shocked when he
learned about the I Ching from a Jesuit friend returning from mission
work in China. He saw that the 64 hexagram configured the first 64
numbers in a binomial system. Finally, Lacan made
the connection with Electracy explicit when he explained this operation
of the Unconscious with reference to electricity itself, and the physics
of an electric light (having to do with the properties of current).
But all of that , as in your case also, is to understand this Real,
known as the Unconscious, in order to be able to live with it and thrive
in that rhythm.
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