SEXUATED TOPOLOGY AND THE
SUSPENSION OF MEANING
A NON-HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL
APPROACH TO TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
WILLIAM J. URBAN
NOTES
1 St Thomas Aquinas, quoted in Herbert Thurston, S.J. and Norah Leeson, The Lives of the Saints, Vol. III (March), originally compiled by the Rev. Alban Butler, eds. Herbert Thurston, S.J. and Norah Leeson (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1942), 107.
2 Peter Szondi, Introduction to Literary Hermeneutics, trans. Martha Woodmansee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 [1975 posth.]), 13.
3 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2003), 165.
4 Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969)
5 Lawrence K. Schmidt, Understanding Hermeneutics (Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2006), 6.
6 Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, 34.
7 For a recent study endeavoring to be historically comprehensive, see M. A. R. Habib, A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005)
8 In so doing we proceed largely in agreement with contemporary literature on the history of hermeneutics which equally finds value, though for differing reasons, in sketching out and locating the origins of modern thinking on textual interpretation just prior to the Reformation. An exception is Szondi with whom one can agree sympathetically when he questions his proficiency with the material but whose range of focus nevertheless seems too limited:
'Not only practical considerations, of time and competence, but also the logic of the matter at hand dictate that we restrict ourselves to the hermeneutics of those eras which still condition our own: the Enlightenment, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In what follows we shall therefore ignore the theories of interpretation of ancient and medieval times as well as the hermeneutics of Humanism and of the Reformation, the main work of which is the Clavis scripturae sacrae of Flacius (1567).' Szondi, Introduction to Literary Hermeneutics, 13.
9 Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, "Introduction: Language, Mind, and Artifact: An Outline of Hermeneutic Theory Since the Enlightenment" in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2006), 3. His fourfold distinction of forms of legal exegesis was the corrective, the extensive, the restrictive and the declarative.
10 Mueller-Vollmer, "Introduction," 3.
11 John Bowker (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 425.
12 Generally repudiated today, it still retains a modern counterpart in typology, a method of exegesis whereby Scripture is said to harbor symbolic or anticipatory references in addition to any apparent historical meanings. See Section 1.2 below for a discussion of Boeckh's difficulty with interpretation specifically aiming at the allegorical level of meaning in a text.
13 Quoted in Palmer, Hermeneutics, 35.
14 Bowker (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, 988.
15 Mueller-Vollmer, "Introduction," 2.
16 See, for example, Josef Bleicher, "The Rise of Classical Hermeneutics," in Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 12. Bleicher further notes how Dilthey regarded this 'formal deficiency' as overcome by later scholars who also succeed in excising all other remaining dogmatic tendencies, thereby preparing the way to the final incorporation of biblical hermeneutics into a general hermeneutics.
17 Wilhelm Dilthey, The Rise of Hermeneutics in Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume IV, eds. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, trans. Fredric R. Jameson and Rudolf A. Makkreel, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 238.
18 And indeed back to him, as is evident by many 20th century hermeneuts working in the shadow cast by Heidegger who can often be seen as taking their measure from his work. See Section 1.3 below.
19 Szondi, Introduction to Literary Hermeneutics, 5.
20 Szondi, Introduction to Literary Hermeneutics, 8.
21 Johann Martin Chladenius, "On the Concept of Interpretation" and "On the Interpretation of Historical Books and Accounts" from Introduction to the Correct Interpretation of Reasonable Discourses and Writings, trans. Carrie Asman-Schneider in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, pp. 55–71 (New York: Continuum, 2006)
22 Maurizio Ferraris, History of Hermeneutics, trans. Luca Somigli (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996), 64.
23 Chladenius, "On the Concept of Interpretation," 60–4.
24 Chladenius, "On the Concept of Interpretation," 58, 55.
25 Chladenius, "On the Interpretation of Historical Books and Accounts," 65ff.
26 Despite the fact that no serious scholar in the Humanities or historical sciences would openly endorse Chladenius today, much preferring to espouse some version of a relativist approach, is this not our spontaneous dispositional attitude toward our research objects, admitted perhaps only as a pre-conscious thought of the type: 'Now, something really did happen yet all that is available to piece it together are these fragmented perspectives scattered here and there,' a thought which also functions as the motivating force for that research?
27 While a close examination of the influence of German Idealism on Romanticism is ruled out in the present work, it should at least be noted that with the Kantian transcendental subject, the possibility of taking responsibility for the manner in which a text is grasped – an implicit possibility from Flacius to Chladenius – opens up in a way which fully breaks from all previous thinking. The Romantic thinkers examined here have read Kant and thus recognize his Copernican revolution which cautions us against conceiving an independently existing object whereby our knowledge of it requires appropriately conforming our thinking to it; rather, it is the object itself that must now be seen as conforming to our thinking. Thus with this new notion of modern subjectivity comes a paradoxical shift toward recognizing how it is in fact the object itself which resists comprehension. The historical trajectory of Part I is very much an account of the increasing recognition of this resisting textual 'object.'
28 Friedrich Ast, Basic Elements of Grammar, Hermeneutics and Criticism (§§69–93), trans. Dora Van Vranken, in The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 39–56 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 42. All citations in this dissertation with italic script represent the author’s original emphasis.
29 Ast, Basic Elements of Grammar, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 43.
30 Ast, Basic Elements of Grammar, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 51–2; 49–50.
31 See Ast, Basic Elements of Grammar, Hermeneutics and Criticism, 44, for one of the many places Ast articulates the circle in this text.
32 The difficulty of succinctly discussing Schleiermacher's thoughts on hermeneutics is only compounded by the fact that this work is published posthumously multiple times based on lecture notes from different periods of his teaching career which spanned across three decades. This complex publication history is interesting in itself, but more so for allowing one to link the reception he has had with particular thinkers to the version of Schleiermacher they have read. Briefly the publication history is as follows: four years after his death in 1834 Friedrich Lücke publishes a work from his own student notes on the papers Schleiermacher delivered during his late-lectures; this forms the basis of Dilthey's biography of Schleiermacher, as well as for Heidegger's and Gadamer's assessment. In 1959 Heinz Kimmerle, a student of Gadamer, publishes a work expunged from Schleiermacher's early-lecture notes. In polemic with Kimmerle, Frank publishes a new edition of the Lücke edition in 1977. The importance of choosing to focus on early- or late-Schleiermacher will be clarified below.
33 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Andrew Bowie, pp. 1–224 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 5.
34 Bleicher, "The Rise of Classical Hermeneutics ," 14.
35 Ferraris, History of Hermeneutics, 87–8. This seems quite reasonable given Schleiermacher's study of Fichte and the latter's doctrine of Anstoß, an ambiguous object said to primordially disturb the self-identity of the I. For a discussion of Žižek’s thesis on how the Anstoß is an element formally homologous to the Lacanian objet a, the latter of which will be discussed below, see William J. Urban, "Giving Fichte a Chance: A Žižekian Defense of the I," International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3. (2011). http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/323
36 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 3. As his translator rightly suggests, Schleiermacher is influenced by the new aesthetic notion associated with Kant's Critique of Judgment and thus employs the term art to refer to any activity which relies on rules for the subsumption of particulars under universals while simultaneously recognizing the absence of rules for the application of those rules – a conception which thus recognizes the groundless freedom of the subject in its spontaneous act of judging.
37 Schmidt, Understanding Hermeneutics, 11. As well, he was considered an authority on Scriptural texts and the practical assessment of their authenticity, the demonstration of which forms the smaller 'Criticism' part of the title of his work. Although hermeneutics and criticism presuppose each other, the former ranks first since the latter has a natural endpoint. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 4.
38 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 8.
39 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 94.
40 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 8.
41 Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 10.
42 For a discussion of this split favorable to the early Schleiermacher, see Palmer, Hermeneutics, 91–4.
43 Schleiermacher,Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 23.
44 Gadamer traces this expression back to similar expressions in the texts of two giants in the German Idealist tradition who champion the subject: Fichte and Kant. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 194.
45 Interestingly, Schleiermacher also expresses these notions via sexual difference. Our empathetic 'receptivity for all other people' is characterized as the female strength and this 'divinatory method' is contrasted to the masculine capacity for judging particular objects under universals, called the 'comparative method.' Again the two cannot be separated, for divination without confirmatory comparison is fanciful, while the masculine method alone provides no unity without the feminine approach. See Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 92–3.
46 It is interesting to note Schleiermacher's implicit recognition of how the poetic form embodies an object particularly resistant to the hermeneutical task as he defines it. For it does not have the easily recognizable coordination and subordination of individual parts to an overall guiding idea as does (especially scientific) prose which lends to those parts their meaning. With poetry the parts struggle to assert their specific value independent of their mere semantic relation to the whole context and leading idea. One can almost sense Schleiermacher's discomfort in having to rely almost exclusively on psychological interpretation to deal with the unbounded nature of such cases, as he does not have the option of excluding them from consideration due to their non-rational nature as Chladenius did. See Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, 64–7.
47 Wilhelm von Humboldt, "On the Task of the Historian," trans. Linda Gail DeMichiel in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2006), 106.
48 Leaving aside his notion of language to be examined below, this recourse to the synthetic power of imagination alone helps explain Heidegger's positive nod towards Humboldt. Generally critiquing Kant, Heidegger celebrates this faculty introduced in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) which encouragingly opened up a traumatic abyss of spontaneous freedom from which Kant unfortunately 'shrunk back' from that point onward. See Part Three in Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
49 Humboldt, "On the Task of the Historian," 108–9.
50 Humboldt, "On the Task of the Historian," 111–2.
51 Humboldt, "On the Task of the Historian," 115.
52 Humboldt, "On the Task of the Historian," 117.
53 Johann Gustav Droysen, "History and the Historical Method" from Outline, trans. E. Benjamin Andrews, in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2006), 120. Kant's 'Transcendental Aesthetic' which opens his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) equally deals with sensible objects with respect to time and space.
54 Droysen, "History and the Historical Method," 122.
55 Droysen, "History and the Historical Method," 123.
56 Johann Gustav Droysen, "The Investigation of Origins" and "The Modes of Interpretation" from Historik, trans. Carrie Asman-Schneider in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2006), 124.
57 Droysen, "The Investigation of Origins" and "The Modes of Interpretation," 126.
58 See Droysen, "The Investigation of Origins" and "The Modes of Interpretation," 128–31.
59 Wilhelm von Humboldt, "The Nature and Conformation of Language" from Introduction to the Kawi Language, trans. George C. Buck and Frithjof A. Raven in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2006), 100–1.
60 Humboldt, "The Nature and Conformation of Language," 104.
61 Humboldt, "The Nature and Conformation of Language," 105.
62 Philip August Boeckh, "Formal Theory of Philology," "Theory of Hermeneutics" and "Theory of Criticism" from On Interpretation and Criticism, trans. John Paul Pritchard, in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2006), 133–4.
63 Boeckh, "Formal Theory of Philology," "Theory of Hermeneutics" and "Theory of Criticism," 147. When such a separation does exist, as it did in the medieval period which lacked criticism, 'all historical truth founders' (143). As the etymological meaning of kreinein is analysis and separation, a determination of the definite relation between two objects in a judgment (142), it is no wonder the judgments cast during the medieval period are questioned today. For without criticism, one half of the hermeneutical circle is missing: 'Obviously, criticism shares in the logical circle which arises in the interpretive task: the single part must be judged on the basis of the including whole, and this whole in turn on the basis of the single part' (144). The medieval period thus confirms what might be considered Boeckh's motto: 'The true critic will accordingly be always a good interpreter. The reverse is not always the case.' (145) Yet for all that, criticism should not be overvalued so as to stand alone, for 'criticism must everywhere presuppose the interpretative activity, the explanation of separate items, in order to proceed thence to solve its specific problem, which is to comprehend into an inclusive whole the relation of these details. One cannot judge without understanding the thing in itself; criticism accordingly presupposes the interpretative problem to have been solved.' (147) Again and again Boeckh stresses the interdependence of interpretation and criticism. His analysis of interpretation is more closely examined below.
64 Boeckh, "Formal Theory of Philology," "Theory of Hermeneutics" and "Theory of Criticism," 136.
65 Boeckh, "Formal Theory of Philology," "Theory of Hermeneutics" and "Theory of Criticism," 142.
66 'In the great circle of reasoning which the relation of interpretation to criticism presents, there lie then new and ever new circles, since every kind of interpretation and criticism presupposes the completion of all the other interpretative and critical problems.' Boeckh, "Formal Theory of Philology," "Theory of Hermeneutics" and "Theory of Criticism," 147.
67 Friedrich Nietzsche, "Interpretation" in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 47–8.
68 Nietzsche, "Interpretation," 53.
69 Nietzsche, "Interpretation," 44.
70 Nietzsche, "Interpretation," 56.
71 Nietzsche, "Interpretation," 55.
72 Wilhelm Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences in Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume III, Parts II–IV, eds. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, trans. Rudolf A. Makkreel and John Scanlon (Part II), Rudolf A. Makkreel and William H. Oman (Parts III, IV),(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 101.
73 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 108. The talk of objectified spirit bears the obvious mark of Hegel. Besides his keen interest in Schleiermacher, it is also Kant who must be counted amongst his greatest influences, as will be seen below.
74 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 140.
75 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 252–3.
76 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 160–1.
77 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 216.
78 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 226–8. The other two classes
include ideas and actions. Ideas (concepts, judgments, larger thought formations) form a class of
expression and are constituents of science. They are the most 'detached from the lived experience in
which they arose.' For Dilthey, the human sciences are an endeavor where 'life grasps life.' In reasoning
which harkens back to Humboldt and Droysen, the human being is thoroughly historical and thus the
investigator of history is the same one who makes history. This means abstract propositions which are
logically independent from their subject (e.g., 296–8) can be formulated, but fail to grasp history properly.
As he writes, 'the subject who experiences is not the same as the one who observes' (302). Yet note that
like Schleiermacher, the subject is not simply a dupe of history. One of the reasons Dilthey champions the
textual matter of biography and especially autobiography as documents embodying 'the highest and most
instructive form of the understanding of life' (cf., e.g., 221–3) is that they show the individual to be a point
of intersection which experiences (or is subject to) the force of life while also exerting (or is the subject of)
this force (e.g., 268). This prospect of an autonomous subjectivity capable of spontaneous action (which
he gets in large part from Kant and especially Fichte for whom he frequently discusses, cf., e.g., 353ff),
partially explains his often stated rejection of the teleological view of the world and life (e.g., 311) in
accordance with Droysen. In general terms, teleology is suspect at the very presuppositional level of
historical understanding which finds that each historical moment (or part) has meaning only with respect
to the (whole) historical process, the latter of which in turn acquires its sense from those parts. Detached
as well from lived experience, actions form a second class of expression yet fare somewhat better in
expressing the human spirit and are thus readily more understandable.
In general, expressions are a key component to Dilthey's hermeneutical formula. Whether an
idea or action, '[e]xpression adds stability to lived experience. Something created from its content comes
to stand over against the lived experience as external, independent, and enduring. All attitudes allow of
expression: thus expression seizes the stuff of reality in order to find in it a medium for understanding'
(349). In a word, understanding aims for the meaning embedded in the objectifications of these formed
expressions of the past. Hence the triad of lived experience, expression and understanding is deeply
related structurally.
79 Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 281.
80 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University Press, 1996)
81 Rudolf Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” in Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann, ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden, pp. 289–96, 314–15 (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1965)
82 Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” 290.
83 Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” 289.
84 Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” 291–2.
85 Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” 293–4.
86 Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” 295.
87 Bultmann, “Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?” 296.
88 Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957)
89 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 150.
90 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 43.
91 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 46.
92 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 109. The reference to Idealism is of the Kantian variety to which Bultmann often favorably mentions. Along the lines of man's responsibility, consider his positive assessment of Kant's categorical imperative, 'a law which is valid without condition, a law which is the expression of practical reason, a law to which man assents because it is the self-determination of the rational will.' (101)
93 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 141–2.
94 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 122. See also p. 138 for Bultmann's recognition of the lack of exceptional points for historians to occupy, the non-existence of privileged stances 'outside history' which could offer them a bird's eye view of the entire historical process.
95 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 151–2.
96 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 155.
97 Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 143–4.
98 Gerhard Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” trans. James W. Leitch, in New Frontiers in Theology: Discussions Among Continental and American Theologians. Volume II: The New Hermeneutic, eds. James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr., pp. 78–110 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964)
99 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 80. Ebeling's conception of his article as being the inheritance of the Reformation is laid down in no uncertain terms in its opening sentence: 'The subject "Word of God and Hermeneutic" combines two concepts which are perhaps more representative than any others of the approach that has determined theological thinking in the last four decades, and that still determines it today and also must determine it in order to be faithful to the Reformation.' (78)
100 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 86.
101 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 93.
102 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 98.
103 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 98. It seems we have here an expression of the Kantian aesthetic notion mentioned above when discussing Schleiermacher, that while there are rules for the subsumption of particulars under universals, there is the recognition that there are no rules for the application of those rules – in Bultmann's terms, our preunderstanding may indicate which questions to pose but its mysterious ground and its ultimate limits nevertheless requires a decision on our part on just how to proceed. Yet reading further the radical nature of this subjective decision is tamed for Ebeling does find a ground for the understanding in a theological beyond.
104 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 101.
105 Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” 107.
106 Gadamer, Truth and Method, xxi–xxii. This implies that it is, strictly speaking, improper to refer to anyone that holds to hermeneutical phenomenology has having a methodology; hence from its first articulation by Heidegger, through Bultmann and Ebeling, to Gadamer and his adherents, it would be more accurate to say these men hold to a particular approach informed by a unique hermeneutical disposition. Their 'method' is thus really a self-styled and conscious lack of one, easily contrasted with those dissenters who actively seek to reestablish a sound methodological basis in the wake of the hermeneutical phenomenological approach to textual meaning.
107 The very fact of these debates which all involved Gadamer should have been enough to relieve him of his often repeated worry that Truth and Method had come 'too late' and was thus superfluous in its theoretical attempts. In retrospect it appears to have arrived just in time. See, e.g., Gadamer, Truth and Method, 551.
108 While Gadamer generally celebrates Schleiermacher's project of a universal hermeneutics, he does have serious reservations. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 184–97 for his most focused and sustained discussion. For instance and perhaps predictably, Gadamer argues that 'however universal the hermeneutics that Schleiermacher evolved, it was a universality with very perceptible limits... since the interest that motivated Schleiermacher's methodological abstraction was not that of the historian but the theologian.' Simply said, Schleiermacher's hermeneutics concerned texts whose authority was undisputed (197). Gadamer correctly discerns the same limitation with Bultmann in concurrence with our findings above: despite the latter professing how the interpretation of Scripture is subject to the same conditions as any literature, a closer look reveals how '[t]he existential fore-understanding [preunderstanding] from which Bultmann starts can only be a Christian one' (332). Gadamer's more serious criticism of Schleiermacher involves a claim that the latter excessively relied on psychological interpretation. Yet this criticism is more important for revealing the consequences of Gadamer's choice to focus on Schleiermacher's late-work than with any careful reading of him. Now, Gadamer certainly understands how Schleiermacher's '[h]ermeneutics includes grammatical and psychological interpretation.' Yet he further writes that 'Schleiermacher's particular contribution is psychological interpretation. It is ultimately a divinatory process, a placing of oneself within the whole framework of the author, an apprehension of the "inner origin" of the composition of the work, a re-creation of the creative act. Thus understanding is a reproduction of the original production.' (187) Gadamer thus quite consciously chooses to 'pass over Schleiermacher's brilliant comments on grammatical interpretation' (186) and does so in the face of his own student's (Kimmerle's) publication of Schleiermacher's early-work which emphasized grammatical over psychological interpretation – a publication which Gadamer himself oversaw. We are told this move is legitimate because psychological interpretation came to dominate his thought later in life and became the main influence on Boeckh, Dilthey and others (who are also accordingly critiqued by Gadamer). Yet in doing so it seems Gadamer makes the same mistake as these later scholars in misreading Schleiermacher. As we saw above in the discussion of Schleiermacher, there is little reason to believe he felt one could fully escape the hermeneutical circle through psychological-divinatory transposition so that understanding would be 'complete,' as Gadamer seems to suggest (190–1). Rather, the evidence suggests that even in his late-work grammatical interpretation was equal to psychological interpretation, each making up an aspect of the hermeneutical circle which stands as the condition of the understanding. Against Gadamer, we should argue that Schleiermacher did not conceive psychological interpretation as an extraneous technique to realize understanding and thereby break the hermeneutical circle. This thesis of Gadamer's permits him to argue how he follows instead Heidegger's notion that if the hermeneutical circle is inescapable, one should not so much seek to escape it but rather seek to properly orientate oneself towards it; this thesis only works if Gadamer ignores how even in Schleiermacher's work such a notion was also present, although of course not explicitly articulated as such.
109 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 231.
110 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 237.
111 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 241.
112 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 258–9.
113 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 264.
114 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 277.
115 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 279.
116 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 281.
117 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 290.
118 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 291.
119 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 293–4.
120 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 301.
121 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 307. It should also be noted that three pages early Gadamer reiterates how tradition is not a permanent precondition which exists by itself. True it can be conceived as a mega-horizon within which the interpreter's own horizon plays its part; yet again because the interpreter's movement participates in co-determining tradition, the whole of tradition itself is always in motion as well. What we have here is a hermeneutical circle at the level of history itself which far exceeds the complexity of similar circles conceived by the Romantic theorists of history.
122 Emilio Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," trans. Joself Bleicher, in The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 159–97 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)
123 Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," 177.
124 Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," 164.
125 Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," 168.
126 Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," 181–2.
127 Betti also formulates the failure of Gadamer by referencing Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and its distinction between quaestio facti and quaestio juris: where Gadamer's concern is purely descriptive, wanting to ascertain 'what actually happens in the activity of thought apparent in interpretation,' Betti holds that hermeneutics should provide a solution to the quaestio juris, that is, 'what one should aim for in the task of interpretation, what methods to use and what guidelines to follow in the correct execution of this task.' Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," 187.
128 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 308.
129 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 328.
130 Betti, “Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften," 187.
131 E. D. Hirsch Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967) In many respects a modern-day philological hermeneut, Hirsch might also be roughly characterized as a more empirically scientific and less philosophically sophisticated version of Betti, that 'most eminent recent theorist in what may broadly be called the tradition of Schleiermacher' (112), who is often mentioned in this work in such favorable light.
132 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 247.
133 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 249.
134 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 256–8.
135 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 1.
136 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 11. One of the causes Hirsch cites 'can be traced to the influence of a vigorous essay, "The Intentional Fallacy"' (11ff). See William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy” in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry by W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., pp. 3–18 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954). This classic essay in American literary criticism is interesting since it presents the exact opposite argument of Hirsch and yet levels the same accusation of relativism if one chooses to ignore its admonishments. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, 'the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art' (Wimsatt and Beardsley, 3; all subsequent citations in this endnote will be taken from The Verbal Icon). The reason behind this is rather simple: although an author may have a desire to communicate a particular meaning with his text, this does not necessarily mean he succeeds in doing so. Given this, we do better to focus on his actual public accomplishment in assessing the meaning of his text. Thus they argue that a poem should be considered neither the critic's own nor the author's but a detached object which can be objectively critiqued (5). The meaning of a text is then a public affair (10). This stance is brought out more clearly by contrasting it with their follow up work, 'The Affective Fallacy.' See William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Affective Fallacy” in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry by W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., pp. 21–39 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954). The first page of this work contains a concise summary of the two fallacies:
'The Intentional Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its origins... It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism. The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does)... It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. The outcome of either Fallacy, the Intentional or the Affective, is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear.' (21)
Hirsch would ultimately argue that what Wimsatt and Beardsley choose to focus on is not the text's meaning at all but rather the text's significance. See below for a discussion of this distinction.
137 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 25.
138 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 238.
139 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 127.
140 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 77.
141 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 210–1. Hirsch tells us that this distinction was first made by Frege in an article discussed below in Chapter 2.
142 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, 173–4. As Hirsch himself notes, he is thus following the economist John Maynard Keynes whose work on probability theory led the latter to conclude that probabilities can also be qualitative rather than just quantitative. So passage X from a particular text can be placed in a probability judgment involving vague concepts like 'more,' 'less,' 'very,' and 'slightly' to assign their probable meaning. Elsewhere, Hirsch suggests Schleiermacher implicitly recognized this logic since his divinatory-comparative function distinction in effect replicates what occurs when probability judgments are cast: where the feminine function provides 'the productive guess or hypothesis for which no rules can be formulated... [t]he critical, masculine function, on the other hand, cannot bring forth, but it can judge and test.' This latter function is comparative precisely because the divinatory guesses are tested by making comparisons, i.e., by subsuming them under classes of similar instances. But while Schleiermacher recognized how the two functions go together, he overlooked how the feminine function which brings forth the ideas is prior to the masculine function which then makes comparisons, either accepting or rejecting them (204–5).
143 Karl-Otto Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” trans. Linda Gail DeMichiel, in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, pp. 321–45 (New York: Continuum, 2006)
144 Because of this shift in focus to empirical-materialist conditions which changes the very nature of the object of hermeneutics, a slight change in terminology is desirable. Although not originally intended to register the difference between Betti-Hirsch and Apel-Habermas, it is desirable to make use of suggested terminology found in a translator's footnote in a book by Habermas (examined below) to do just that. See Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 323n23. There Shapiro explains that his use of the word 'objectify' [vergegenständlichen] is meant to capture the process by which something is transformed into an object separate from and external to the subject so that the statements of natural science can apply to it. Here is the constitution of an object in the Kantian sense. In contrast, the word 'objectivate' [objektivieren] is employed when something is given form in a symbolic system (i.e., language in the case of Apel and Habermas). This latter notion is said to frustrate the simple subject-object dichotomy in that 'it may become external to the subject in the sense that others can participate in it, but it is at the same time that in which the subject exists.' Inasmuch as Apel and Habermas utilize this notion, they clearly stand closer to the hermeneutical phenomenological approach of Gadamer et al. than do Betti and Hirsch. Yet it is debatable whether this notion truly covers what Gadamer has in mind when he speaks of objectivity: could it not rather be its mere shadow approximation, one offered up from a perspective still too influenced by empirical science?
145 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 322.
146 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 323.
147 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 328.
148 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 333. We might say that for Gadamer, meaning can never become an object in any sense (neither objectified nor objectivated) for then it would become an externalized thing towards which analysis might proceed. In line with his phenomenology, meaning for him is more at the level of an experience.
149 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 336.
150 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 339.
151 Apel, “Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View,” 341.
152 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 4.
153 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 69.
154 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 91. While he does critique Peirce's justification of the validity of the rules of logical syllogism in the process of inquiry, there is plenty to suggest why Habermas feels pragmatism accomplished the first step toward the type of reflective activity he feels is needed to reinvigorate and re-adapt scientific methodology for the human sciences. For instance, Peirce is evidently already aware by 1902 of the intimate connection between the constitution of meaning and the logic of inquiry as guided by a reflection of its application when he writes: 'In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception.' (335n.17)
155 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 226.
156 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 217.
157 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 286.
158 In the Preface we learn that Palmer spent some time in Germany to study under Gadamer, met with Ebeling and even consulted with Heidegger about his project of using Heidegger's 'theory of understanding as the basis for a phenomenological approach to literary interpretation.' Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, xv.
159 Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, 221.
160 Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, 248. The examples could easily be multiplied. Here are three others: Thesis 15 warns us that 'the belief that form is separable from content and/or from the total meaningful unity of the work is a misconception based on wrong philosophical premises... [and] is a product of reflexive thinking after the experience itself.' The activity of reflection so championed by Habermas is here seen as a falling way 'from the unity and fullness of the aesthetic moment' and is based on the methodological practice of treating sensuous form as separable from the meaning-content of the work. For Palmer, in the aesthetic encounter there is no such separation (247–8). The argument of Thesis 16 is reminiscent of Ebeling: 'The beginning point for literary interpretation must be the language event of experiencing the work itself – i.e., what the work "says." The saying power of a literary work, not its form, is the ground of our meaningful encounter with it, and is not something separate from the form but rather speaks in and through the form.' (248) Finally, and what is certainly his most strongly worded condemnation of methodology occurs in Thesis 14 which refers to methodological pursuits seeking out knowledge of the object-text as 'rape theories of interpretation, if we may call them so, [which] take such an ego-centered, dogmatic, closed approach to the work that it becomes frigid' (247).
161 Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, 242.
162 Paul Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics" in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson, pp. 43–62 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
163 Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics," 44.
164 Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics," 54.
165 Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics," 59.
166 Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics," 61.
167 Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics," 62. With the words 'matter of the text' Ricoeur states that it leads him to the threshold of his own reflection and we might also pause here to reflect on Ricoeur's own career in its initial decades so as to position this essay. While his work in the 1960s was largely 'negative' in the sense of providing a defense of hermeneutics against the inroads made by structuralism and psychoanalysis (see Section 5.2 below), he only begins to make a 'positive' contribution starting in the mid-1970s of which this essay is one of the first.
168 That Ricoeur grants some autonomy to the subject is apparent from his opening discussion in this essay regarding hermeneutics and its privileged relation to language. Because of the polysemy of words, the fact that they 'have more than one meaning when considered outside of their use in a determinate context,' there is a call to be sensitive to the selective role of contexts for determining their current value. What is needed here is nothing short of the subjective activity of discernment of these contexts to produce a univocal discourse and to identify this intention of univocity: 'such is the first and most elementary work of interpretation.' Ricoeur, "The Task of Hermeneutics," 44.
169 Manfred Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text" in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Robert E. Sackett, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 145–175 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)
170 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 149.
171 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 154.
172 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 155.
173 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 163–4.
174 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 167.
175 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 169.
176 Frank, "The Interpretation of a Text," 170.
177 Jean-Luc Nancy, "Sharing Voices" in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Gayle L. Ormiston, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 211–59 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)
178 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 215.
179 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 220.
180 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 223.
181 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 232.
182 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 236–7.
183 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 244.
184 Nancy, "Sharing Voices," 259.
185 Alan How, The Habermas-Gadamer Debate and the Nature of the Social: Back to Bedrock (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995)
186 How, The Habermas-Gadamer Debate and the Nature of the Social: Back to Bedrock, viii.
187 How, The Habermas-Gadamer Debate and the Nature of the Social: Back to Bedrock, 214.
188 Demetrius Teigas, Knowledge and Hermeneutic Understanding: A Study of the Habermas-Gadamer Debate (London: Associated University Press, 1995)
189 Teigas, Knowledge and Hermeneutic Understanding: A Study of the Habermas-Gadamer Debate, 179.
190 Teigas, Knowledge and Hermeneutic Understanding: A Study of the Habermas-Gadamer Debate, 182–8.
191 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 1, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 252.
192 Gottlob Frege, “On Sinn and Bedeutung” in The Frege Reader, trans. Max Black, ed. Michael Beaney, pp. 151–71 (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1997). There are at least three commonly acceptable translations of Bedeutung as Frege uses it in this article. Besides 'meaning,' there is also 'significance' and 'reference.' In his lengthy discussion of the problems posed with translating Bedeutung in his introduction, Black tends to prefer reference while recognizing that meaning 'is the most natural translation' (39) although he notably does leave untranslated the original German term in the title, a decision which both reflects the difficulty of translation and preserves the ambiguity of what Frege tried to capture with this term.
193 Frege, “On Sinn and Bedeutung," 152. For Frege each of these expressions is a proper name (a word, sign or combination of signs) that expresses its sense and stands for or designates its meaning (156).
194 Frege, “On Sinn and Bedeutung," 156.
195 Frege, “On Sinn and Bedeutung," 157.
196 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 1, 141–2.
197 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 1, 139.
198 See for example Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 1, 353, 331, 325.
199 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 1, 322.
200 See §19, 14 of Investigation V in Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).
201 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, 554.
202 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, 589.
203 Heidegger, Being and Time, 12.
204 Heidegger, Being and Time, 33.
205 Heidegger, Being and Time, 141.
206 Heidegger, Being and Time, 142. Note that in the current section only the meaningful dimension of Dasein with respect to the fore-structures of understanding is being discussed, as the dimension of Dasein that is future oriented and anticipatory of meaning is discussed in Section 1.3 above with respect to Bultmann, Ebeling and especially Gadamer with his notion of the structure of Dasein as 'a thrown projection.' However, for completion's sake we can highlight the following passage where Heidegger speaks of this latter dimension. It comes much later in his work when he reviews the results of his analysis in sections 31–4 and also serves as his most direct commentary on meaning:
'What does meaning signify? Our inquiry encountered this phenomenon in the context of the analysis of understanding and interpretation. According to that analysis, meaning is that in which the intelligibility of something keeps itself, without coming into view explicitly and thematically. Meaning signifies that upon which the primary project is projected, that in terms of which something can be conceived in its possibility as what it is. Projecting discloses possibilities, that is, it discloses what makes something possible' (297–8).
207 Heidegger, Being and Time, 143.
208 Heidegger, Being and Time, 146.
209 Heidegger, Being and Time, 291. A little further on and much more directly he writes that 'the self cannot be conceived either as substance or as subject, but is rather grounded in existence' (305). Without substance or subjectivity the Heideggerian self stands unopposed to an external object.
210 Heidegger, Being and Time, 397.
211 Martin Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer" in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz, pp. 1–54 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)
212 Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," 12.
213 Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," 28.
214 Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," 40.
215 Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," 51.
216 Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," 32, 33.
217 The use of Logical Investigations and Being and Time as representative texts to extract out the Husserlian and Heideggerian types of phenomenology is justifiable at least from Heidegger's perspective: 'In those days I, as Husserl's assistant, regularly once a week read Husserl's first major work, the Logical Investigations, with the gentlemen from Japan. By that time the master himself no longer held his work in very high esteem; it had been published around the turn of the century. But I had my own reasons to prefer the Logical Investigations for the purposes of an introduction to phenomenology. And the master generously tolerated my choice.' See Heidegger, "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," 5. For its part, while Heidegger's 'A Dialogue on Language' forms an important supplement to Being and Time, as our interest is primarily with his hermeneutical phenomenological notion of meaning there is no better place to turn than to its rigorous articulation in Being and Time.
218 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 2002)
219 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 42.
220 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 202.
221 We find the most obvious stamp of Heidegger in the third and final part of this work, already seen in its title of 'Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World,' where Merleau-Ponty amply cites from Being and Time. In one notable passage he seeks to provide us with a Heideggerian awareness of that world horizon which stands anterior to the subject-object in a distinctly French way:
'In all uses of the word sens, we find the same fundamental notion of a being oriented or polarized in the direction of what he is not, and thus we are always brought back to a conception of the subject as ek-stase, and to a relationship of active transcendence between the subject and the world. The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world, and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which the subject itself projects. The subject is a being-in-the-world and the world remains "subjective" since its texture and articulations are traced out by the subject's movement of transcendence. Hence we discovered, with the world as cradle of meanings, direction of all directions (sens de tous les sens), and ground of all thinking.' See Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 499–500.
Here we have 'subject' being taken in two senses, as '[t]he world is already constituted, but also never completely constituted; in the first case we are acted upon [subject to], in the second we are open to an infinite number of possibilities [subject of]. But this analysis is still abstract, for we exist in both ways at once. There is, therefore, never determinism and never absolute choice, I am never a thing and never bare consciousness' (527). The articulation of freedom here is classic Marxist: I am free to choose, but not under conditions of my own choosing. It is equally the case, however, that Merleau-Ponty often gives standard Heideggerian demonstrations of how the subject-object dichotomy has been overcome, as in 'the analysis of time... [which] discloses subject and object as two abstract "moments" of a unique structure which is presence' (500). In concurrence with hermeneutical phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty likewise sees the future, past and present all linked together in the movement of temporalization.
222 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 83.
223 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 170. That '[n]either the word nor the meaning of the word is, in fact constituted by consciousness' (468) is a theme often reiterated and is developed in at least one place through a critique of Descartes who is said to overlook language and the tacit, unspoken cogito standing prior to the spoken cogito of his cogito ergo sum:
'In the proposition: "I think, I am," the two assertions are to be equated with each other, otherwise there would be no cogito. Nevertheless we must be clear about the meaning of this equivalence: it is not the "I am" which is pre-eminently contained in the "I think," not my existence which is brought down to the consciousness which I have of it, but conversely the "I think," which is re-integrated into the transcending process of the "I am," and consciousness into existence' (446).
We thus arrive at what Merleau-Ponty is most famous for, viz., his notion of consciousness as embodied.
224 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 225.
225 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994)
226 In fact this text is quite sparse on theory, preferring instead to move from one descriptive image to the next. The titles of some of its chapters already give some indication of this: The House; Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes; Nests; Shells; Corners, etc. The overall rhythm of the text moves from the citation of poetry from which images are extracted and expanded upon by Bachelard's own imagination and back, quite often interspersed by his childhood recollections. Only rarely is the process stopped for a moment of theoretical self-reflection. Notably in the introduction we are told that only images and recollections of intimate, felicitous, loving, protective, eulogized, positive and attractive spaces will be considered in his book. Given that psychoanalysis attends more to the dark underbelly of such spaces, do we not here have a better account for Bachelard's dismissal of this field inasmuch as this reflects the repression or disavowal of a traumatic truth? His own rationale for rejecting psychoanalysis is provided below.
227 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 225, 158.
228 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, xvi.
229 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 74. At most, metaphor affords us 'a fabricated image, without deep, true, genuine roots. It is an ephemeral expression.... Contrary to metaphor, we can devote our reading being to an image, since it confers being upon us. In fact the image, which is the pure product of absolute imagination, is a phenomenon of being; it is also one of the specific phenomena of the speaking creature' (74–5).
230 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 147.
231 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 134–5.
232 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 220. Moreover,
'[t]he phenomenology of the poetic imagination allows us to explore the being of man considered as the being of a surface, of the surface that separates the region of the same from the region of the other... It would be contrary to the nature of my inquires to summarize them by means of radical formulas, defining the being of man, for instance, as the being of an ambiguity. I only know how to work with a philosophy of detail. Then, on the surface of being, in that region where being wants to be both visible and hidden, the movements of opening and closing are so numerous, so frequently inverted, and so charged with hesitation, that we could conclude on the following formula: man is half-open being.' (222)
While it is clear Bachelard falls into Heidegger's phenomenological camp, he does differ slightly by downplaying the being-thrown-into-the-world aspect of Dasein to favor instead its open possibilities embodied in its future orientation. In other words, a greater emphasis is laid on becoming rather than on a static being-there. This is a distinct French reading of Heidegger to be accounted for by the use of the futur antérieur, as noted in the discussion of Nancy in Section 1.3 above.
233 Jean-Paul Sartre, "What is Writing?," "Why Write?" and "For Whom Does One Write?" in What is Literature? and Other Essays, trans. Bernard Frechtman and J. MacCombie, ed. Steven Ungar, pp.21–140, 333–38 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)
234 There are extremely few places in Bachelard's book in which meaning is directly commented upon and without exception it is taken up in a negative light in each of these cases. In one instance he suggests that meaning has a limiting dimension: 'And language bears within itself the dialectics of open and closed. Through meaning it encloses, while through poetic expression, it opens up.' See Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 222. So although Bachelard might agree with Sartre's assessment that the poetic form is relatively more vacuous of meaning than prosody, the agreement stops there between the two men on this issue.
235 Sartre, What is Literature? and Other Essays, 38.
236 Sartre, What is Literature? and Other Essays, 56. Perspicuously, Sartre recognizes how Kant neglects to also apply the constitutive function to the imagination of a spectator looking at an aesthetic object; for Kant only the regulative function need be considered (55). For a detailed discussion of Kantian aesthetics, see Chapter 4 below.
237 Sartre, What is Literature? and Other Essays, 67. The bond of understanding shared by Sartre's writer and readers is at an entirely different level than the one shared by Bachelard's poet and the single reader. From the perspective of Sartre's notions of responsibility and freedom sought out at the public level, Bachelard – that collector of literary images who seeks to exaggerate them to their limit – appears rather self-indulgent when he writes:
'There is also the courage of the writer who braves the kind of censorship that forbids "insignificant" confidences. But what a joy reading is, when we recognize the importance of these insignificant things, when we can add our own personal daydreams to the "insignificant" recollections of the author! Then insignificance becomes the sign of extreme sensitivity to the intimate meanings that establish spiritual understanding between writer and reader.' See Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 71.
238 Sartre, What is Literature? and Other Essays, 136.
239 Sartre, What is Literature? and Other Essays, 140.
240 Sartre, What is Literature? and Other Essays, 139.
241 Roman Ingarden, "On the Cognition of the Literary Work of Art" from The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, trans. Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson, in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, pp. 187–213 (New York: Continuum, 2006)
242 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 199. Ingarden laments the fact that despite Frege and Husserl's Logical Investigations which fatally critiqued psychologism, it is still a prevalent theory. For his concise discussion of the failures of psychologism in its various guises and explanations regarding meaning formation and his championing instead Husserl's notion of meaning as an intentional object, see pp. 197–205.
243 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 202.
244 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 193.
245 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 196.
246 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 206.
247 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 208.
248 Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, 208.
249 Wolfgang Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader" in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, pp. 106–19 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)
250 Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader," 106.
251 Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader," 107.
252 Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader," 112.
253 Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader," 119.
254 Hans Robert Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory" in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, pp. 3–45, 191–201 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)
255 Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," 18.
256 These are discussed in their own numbered sections in the last half of the article. See Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," 20–45.
257 Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," 25.
258 Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," 28, 30.
259 Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," 45. This political dimension does not suddenly arrive out of nowhere. It is portended by the first part of his article where he pits formalist literary theory (which raises literature to an independent object detached from its historical conditions) against Marxist aesthetic theory (which is deemed too biased in only considering material and economic conditions in its analysis of literature as reflective of inequality). Jauss' work can thus be seen as an attempt to resolve the reciprocal dilemma he sees existing between the formalist and Marxist camps, although of the two he does feel Marx's original work and those of a few of his later followers hold more promise than the formalists insofar as Marx et al. recognize how the reception of art is as important as its production.
260 Georges Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, Vol. 1, No. 1 (October 1969) pp. 53–68
261 Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," 67.
262 Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," 53.
263 Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," 56.
264 Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," 59.
265 Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," 68.
266 Paul Ricoeur, "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics" in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson, pp. 101–28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
267 Ricoeur, "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics," 105.
268 Ricoeur, "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics," 111.
269 Ricoeur, "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics," 118.
270 Ricoeur, "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics," 127.
271 Ferdinand de Saussure, Selections from Course in General Linguistics in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, First Edition, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 971–2.
272 Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx" in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Alan D. Schrift, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 67.
273 Ferdinand de Saussure, Selections from Course in General Linguistics in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, First Edition, ed. Vincent B. Leitch, pp. 960–77 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)
274 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 965.
275 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 968ff.
276 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 970.
277 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 973.
278 Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 974.
279 Roman Jakobson, Selections from “Linguistics and Poetics” and “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, First Edition, ed. Vincent B. Leitch, pp. 1254–69 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)
280 Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” 1265–6. Jakobson can in many ways be seen as building on the initial work of Saussure and his theory of metaphor and metonymy is no exception as it bears some resemblance to Saussure's own distinction between the syntagmatic and associative relations.
281 Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” 1260.
282 Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” 1263. More clearly, in a dialogue one utilizes the metalingual function when the other is stopped and effectively asked: "Now, what did you mean by that last statement?" In Jakobson's terminology, at that moment one is in search of a meaningful equivalence to the textual sequence in question.
283 Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” 1264.
284 Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” 1265. Perhaps more clearly, the poetic function takes equivalences between properties of words and sounds in an utterance to generate a linguistic sequence, e.g., a new line of poetry.
285 Claude Lévi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson" in Tristes Tropiques, trans. John Russell, pp.286–97 (New York: Atheneum, 1963)
286 One can characterize the two distinct styles employed in this text after Jakobson's distinction between metaphor and metonymy. When Lévi-Strauss is in full narrative mode telling us of his negotiation with the native chief, providing us vivid depictions of the treacherous route through the jungle and of the temporary difficulty in securing food for the entire group, Jakobson might note the predominant use of metonymy which underlies the realistic descriptions employed. See Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” 1267. However, when Lévi-Strauss assumes an academic tone in which he provides the reader with correlations (or lack thereof) between writing and the rise and fall of great civilizations of the past, Jakobson might note that this illustrates how the ‘researcher possesses more homogeneous means to handle metaphor, whereas metonymy, based on a different principle, easily defies interpretation... Not only the tool of the observer but also the object of observation are responsible for the preponderance of metaphor over metonymy in scholarship’ (1269). This is not to say that there is no use of metaphor in the narrative portion of the text. Certainly insofar as ‘Sad’ predicates the noun ‘Tropics,’ the translated title ‘Sad Tropics’ itself would be classified as involving what Jakobson would call ‘semantic similarity’ that might serve to indicate the author’s ambivalent stance toward the text’s subject matter. [I.e., consider the case of double irony involved in the particular subjective stance Lévi-Strauss took as an anthropologist. On the one hand, he is the personification of the very Western forces that decimated 'primitive' societies; yet on the other, such decimated objects only appear within the Western horizon so that there is no need to affect nostalgia for lost cultures since nothing in a sense is truly lost. In Jakobson's theory, it is through a unique manipulation of the two kinds of connection (similarity and contiguity) in both their aspects (positional and semantic) that 'an individual exhibits his personal style, his verbal predilections and preferences' (1266)]. But the point here is that whenever Lévi- Strauss predicates the various objects he describes in the opening and closing pages, he tends to do so in a rather straightforward, factually descriptive manner and in terms which suggest a predisposition towards what Jakobson calls ‘positional contiguity’ (1269).
Another way to characterize the two writing styles is to consider, in a post-structuralist manner, the narrative portion of the text predominantly in its diachronic dimension (as might be expected since it is a description of a trek through the jungle which is most 'naturally' told from start to finish) and the content of the academic interlude as largely a synchronic analysis conducted by Lévi-Strauss (as it takes a break from the temporal flow of the story to engage in a static analysis of its elements). Against Saussure, this allows us to see how the diachronic and synchronic dimensions are both needed to achieve a fuller understanding of any text. For through this interlude Lévi-Strauss synchronically rearranges and develops new terms that not only have a retroactive effect on our understanding of the earlier narration but also anticipatorily impacts the remaining diachronic flow of the story: after the interlude whenever Lévi- Strauss observes symbolic exchanges, they are no longer curious incidents with an unknown, ambiguous status but are described much more confidently as having a clear meaning, i.e., they are political struggles over the distribution of power and capital resources between native individuals and groups. The lesson here is that, standing prior to the comprehension of meaningful textual matter, the meaning one takes from a text can be seen as a result of the dynamics of that text's underlying structural dimensions.
287 Lévi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson," 291–3.
288 Lévi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson," 288–9.
289 Another case in point occurs toward the end of the text. Lévi-Strauss was not aware of the custom of the natives to deliver payment immediately upon entering an exchange. So when he promised a machete in exchange for a message to be delivered to a neighboring group and failed to promptly hand over the machete once that task was completed, Lévi-Strauss was initially taken aback in the native's having 'gone away in a rage, and I never saw him again. I had to entrust the present to another Indian.' His failure to grasp the meaning of the initial communicative exchange is clear. But the native's abrupt departure – a 'structural scansion' if you will – which ended that exchange nevertheless sent a successful message to Lévi-Strauss so that he subsequently acted on this understanding to redress the initial communicative breakdown. See Lévi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson," 296. This abrupt departure, incidentally, demonstrates what Jakobson calls the phatic function of language whose 'messages primarily [serve] to establish, to prolong or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works' and this checking for 'contact' is not limited to verbal exchanges, but 'may be displayed by a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas.' See Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” 1263. So when Lévi-Strauss finds another native to accept the machete on the offended party's behalf to complete the exchange, this demonstrates that the communicative channel did work.
290 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)
291 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 30.
292 What is suggested at the end of Of Grammatology is how this subsuming of binary terms nevertheless posits one of the terms within the other. As he writes in the case of Confessions: 'But Rousseau could not think this writing, that takes place before and within speech.' See Derrida, Of Grammatology, 315. A facet of Derrida's analysis of Rousseau is examined in the following paragraph. Derrida's privileging of writing over speech is critiqued by Žižek in one of his essays reviewed in Chapter 5 below.
293 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 4. This science is privileged and unlike any other of the human sciences. As he later writes, 'grammatology must not be one of the sciences of man and... it must not be just one regional science among others' (83).
294 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 163.
295 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 158.
296 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 130.
297 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 108.
298 Jacques Derrida, "Sending: On Representation" in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Peter and Mary Ann Caws, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 107–138 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)
299 Derrida, "Sending: On Representation," 117.
300 Derrida, "Sending: On Representation," 121.
301 Derrida, "Sending: On Representation," 134.
302 Derrida, "Sending: On Representation," 136.
303 Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx" in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Alan D. Schrift, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 59–67 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)
304 Foucault, "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx," 59.
305 Foucault, "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx," 62.
306 Foucault, "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx," 63.
307 Foucault, "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx," 66.
308 Dominick LaCapra, "Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts" in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, pp. 23–71 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)
309 LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, 29–30. As might be expected by a thinker who has accomplished the 'linguistic turn,' much later LaCapra provides us with a concise definition of a text in the following terms: 'And, whatever else they may be, texts are events in the history of language. To understand these multivalent events as complex uses of language, one must learn to pose anew the question of "what really happens" in them' (65).
310 LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, 35–61.
311 LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, 38.
312 LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, 63. While it is clear LaCapra reads Gadamer's approach as succumbing to an excessive subjective relativism, the case of a documentary conception of texts has the opposite problem since 'a purely descriptive, objective rendering of the past can allow for uses of language that escape it only in terms of the exiguous category of unavoidable bias or particularistic subjectivity. This category may apply to certain aspects of historiography. But the simple opposition between self-effacing objectivity and subjective bias fails to accommodate the range of language uses in any significant history' (61). The interest here is how LaCapra thus conceives the hermeneutical phenomenological approach as excessively reliant on the subject while more scientifically-minded hermeneuts like Hirsch are deemed to have an approach that is comparatively subjectless – exactly the opposite argument presented in Chapters 1 and 2 above.
313 LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, 68–9. We should of course recognize in this opposition the general difference of outcomes from following either the hermeneutical approach (whether that be pre- or post-Heideggerian) or the structuralist approach (both in its classical but especially post-structuralist versions), respectively.
314 Hayden V. White, "The Context in the Text: Method and Ideology in Intellectual History" in The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, pp. 185–213, 236 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987)
315 White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, 189. In a formulation White often reiterates, 'for the analyst concerned with meaning production rather than with meaning produced, with processes of the text rather than with the text as product' (212), he does best to draw his attention to the internal semiotic shifts of the text found at the level of its form, not content.
316 White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, 190.
317 White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, 212.
318 White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, 193. As White continues, it is clear he feels his method can objectively account for more of the elements of a text than any contending '"content"-oriented method' which too easily lends itself to 'charges of tautology and petitio principii' (193). That is, while the latter tends to turn only to those texts which match the investigator's own consciously held values, his own 'approach would demonstrate its "objectivity" above all in the methodological tolerance and patience it lavished on... especially those texts representing other, opposed positions, projects, and the like' (194). Like LaCapra, he charges Gadamerian-style hermeneutics as excessively subjective and is at pains to maintain his distance from it. Indeed he expressly positions his entire project of rethinking the basic issues of intellectual history in the opening paragraph of his text as a 'response to new methodologies that have arisen in philosophy, literary criticism, and linguistics and that offer new ways of conceiving the tasks of historical hermeneutics' (185). He explains how older authorities like Hegel, Nietzsche, Dilthey and Freud have been replaced by new models represented by thinkers in phenomenology, deconstruction and discourse analysis such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, Foucault and Derrida. The remainder of the text thus makes both implicit and explicit references to these men and others, noting both their break from the previous generation but more importantly their failure to turn to the particular semiological analysis that White believes offers a greater objectivity to be had as it attends to the form and not the content of a text.
319 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 5: 302, 304. Citations to the Critique of Judgment are made following the standard KGS volume and page number. References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the standard A and B pagination of the first and second editions, respectively.
320 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image, trans. Jeff Fort (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 10–11.
321 Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens" in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt, pp. 69–82 (New York: Schocken Books, 1968)
322 Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator," 73.
323 Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator," 78–9.
324 Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator," 80.
325 Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator," 82.
326 Jean Baudrillard, Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos, Interviews, Essays, trans. Ames Hodges, ed. Sylvère Lotringer (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005)
327 Baudrillard, Conspiracy of Art, 27.
328 Baudrillard, Conspiracy of Art, 123.
329 Baudrillard, Conspiracy of Art, 175.
330 Baudrillard, Conspiracy of Art, 173–4. In even more disparaging terms, critics 'never see that, while discourse always tends to produce meaning, language and writing always make illusions – they are the vibrant illusion of meaning, the resolution of the misery of meaning by the happiness of language. That is really the only political, or transpolitical act that someone who writes can accomplish' (174). Sartre could not possibly disagree more. Theoretically, Baudrillard splits language into two levels. Language produces meaning at the level of its content but also nonsense at the level of its form: 'While it is a vector of meaning, language is at the same time a superconductor of illusion and nonsense. Language is only the unwitting accomplice of signification – in its very form, it calls for the spiritual and material imagination of sounds and rhythms, the dispersion of meaning in the event of language.' Given this, radical thought is to attend to the nonsensical form of language so as to account 'for the fundamental illusion of meaning while at the same time accounting for meaning' (175). The difference from (post)structuralism should be clear: whereas a similar accounting of meaning-content is made at the level of the structural form of language, there is a characteristic refrain by (post)structuralism from questioning the existential status of meaning; Baudrillard's aesthetic theory, however, has no trouble doing both. For meaning is also expressly judged to be illusory or imaginary in the latter's work.
331 Baudrillard, Conspiracy of Art, 221–2.
332 Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)
333 Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 9.
334 Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 1. As his translator notes, these words allude to Badiou's critique of Heideggerian poetics from one of his seminars. The Handbook is peppered with such allusions which offer the reader the opportunity to better delimit Badiou's own position which in many ways is diametrically opposed to Heidegger. For instance, he writes how
'we know that Heidegger – together with the entire hermeneutic current that invokes his name – sees the Platonic operation, which imposes the initial cut of the Idea upon the thinking of being, as the beginning of the forgetting of Being, as the inception of what is ultimately nihilistic with metaphysics. According to this position, the disclosure of the meaning of Being is already covered over in the Idea by the technical supremacy of beings, as it is arranged and enframed by a mathematical form of understanding' (37).
This accurate assessment of Heidegger stands in stark contrast to Badiou's unique return to Plato and the Idea through a new philosophical form of understanding that is precisely grounded on the fundamental axioms of set theory – the very foundation of mathematics.
335 Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 7.
336 Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 27.
337 Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 12. The artistic truth is thus a subjective composition, while 'an artwork is a subject point of an artistic truth' (12).
The particular moments of this trajectory (from the Event to its Naming with a Subject pledging Fidelity to it in Truth) are fleshed out in Badiou's chapters on the various art forms. For instance, dance is the figure of the evental site as such, mimicking an undecided thought which points to the event before it is named (61, 64); theater 'is nothing but the consequence of playing out an act of naming' (63); Beckett's prose exemplifies elements leading up to the event; while Mallarmé's poem exemplifies moments after the event (i.e., its naming, the subjective fidelity and the emergence of truth which together cause the void, the empty set of mathematics, to arise in the situation). Moreover, in a passing remark in the final chapter Badiou seems to suggest that at least one of these moments could have its meaning, but only at the cost of the dissolution of the entire procedure: 'Memory is a de-eventalization, since it attempts to connect the act of naming to a meaning' (124). So Bachelard's phenomenology of the imagination, reliant as it is on childhood remembrances, is entirely devoid of truth as his procedure ensures there is no event to which the subject could pledge fidelity.
338 Gratitude is expressed to the editors of the Avello Publishing Journal for their kind permission to reuse material initially published in their inaugural issue from 2011 for the present section. See William J. Urban "The Topology of the Kantian Sublime: Lyotard, Heidegger, Rancière, Deleuze and Nancy," Avello Publishing Journal, v.1, n.1 (2011). http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com/journal/volume-1-issue- 1/contents/ It should be noted that the argument in this section can be taken as a self-contained whole but does go well beyond material that has hitherto been developed in a few respects, utilizing, for instance, some Lacanian concepts that will only be formally introduced in Part II below. But as it was originally written well before the development of Part II, a fruitful understanding of it need not await a reading of the latter. In general the argument of the present section should be seen as an earlier attempt, through aesthetic theory, to conceive the suspension of fields presumed to be self-enclosed. It is thus not so much superseded by the aim and effort of Part II as rather standing as the latter's compliment.
339 Here is the reason why Badiou cannot be discussed in the present section. As was seen in Section 4.1 his notion of inaesthetics expressly prohibits the singular and immanent truth of art from circulating among the other registers of work-producing thought, viz., politics, love and science.
340 Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1991), 101.
341 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 252.
342 For a discussion of these three references in the third Critique, see Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 336–41.
343 Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, trans. Steven Corcoran (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 89.
344 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 252–3.
345 Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, 337.
346 See the chapter ‘The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding’ in Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A137–47/B176–87.
347 This is Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Throughout his text, Nancy refers to Heidegger’s work by this title (translated as ‘Kantbook’) which Heidegger himself gave to his own work on Kant. See Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 219.
348 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 152n14.
349 Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 1999), 39, 61.
350 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 23–4.
351 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 246.
352 Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 43, 61.
353 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 25.
354 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 44.
355 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 77.
356 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 247.
357 See Joan Copjec, "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason" in Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists, pp. 201–36, 259–60 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994). Page 213 is one place where she concisely makes this claim.
358 Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 38–9.
359 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 98.
360 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 98.
361 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 17.
362 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 21.
363 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 23.
364 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 19.
365 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 20.
366 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 97, 101.
367 ‘The sublime is not a pleasure, it is a pleasure of pain: we fail to present the absolute, and that is a displeasure, but we know that we have to present it, that the faculty of feeling or imagining is called on to bring about the sensible (the image).’ Lyotard, The Inhuman, 126.
368 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 128.
369 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 117.
370 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 143.
371 Lyotard, The Inhuman, 135.
372 Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 112–3.
373 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volumes I and II: The Will to Power as Art; The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. by David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), 70.
374 Heidegger, Nietzsche, 90.
375 Heidegger, Nietzsche, 80.
376 Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 2.
377 Heidegger, Nietzsche, 139.
378 Heidegger, Nietzsche, 123
379 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," Off the Beaten Track, trans. and ed. by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 41.
380 Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," 48–9.
381 Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," 50.
382 Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, trans. and ed. by Steven Corcoran (London: Continuum Books, 2010), 67, 75.
383 Rancière, Dissensus, 96.
384 Rancière, Dissensus, 176–7.
385 Rancière, Dissensus, 22.
386 Rancière, Dissensus, 24.
387 Rancière, Dissensus, 173–4.
388 In contrast and as seen above, the schema’s transcendental determination of time in the first Critique seems to provide enough time for a full comprehension of a common household object or a painting; with such objects, there are no gaps discernible and the imagination ‘successfully’ presents its own synthesis for a complete conceptualization in the understanding and in reason. Again, this was Heidegger’s exclusive focus and thus for him the imagination’s operation was not problematic. But as was also seen, if the mathematical sublime is conceived as the impossible schema of the ‘universe as a whole,’ we can reread this logic back into the first Critique and hypothesize that the frustrating experience of not being able to grasp this infinitely large object all at once may very well occur when viewing much smaller objects. Thus even a painting could sublimely affect the subject due to the violence of the imagination as it endeavors to overcome the inherent gap between its own apprehending and comprehending functioning.
389 Rancière, Dissensus, 139.
390 Rancière, Dissensus, 144.
391 Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, 30–1.
392 In the literature, there is some debate as to whether the imagination is its own faculty alongside sensibility. Certainly they are afforded separate status in the first edition of the first Critique, although thereafter Kant seems to use them equivalently (which is the main reason why Heidegger argues Kant ‘shrunk back’ from the singular transcendental power of the imagination). However, followed here is the example set by the French thinkers in this section who all use these two terms interchangeably or at least treat the imagination as the essential force of sensibility, pitting both against the two other major Kantian faculties, viz., the understanding (with its intelligibility) and reason (with its rationality).
393 Rancière, Dissensus, 69.
394 Rancière, Dissensus, 141.
395 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 247, 253.
396 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 209’.
397 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 316.
398 Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 40–1.
399 Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, 94.
400 Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, 131. This is certainly true for the post-Marxist, but must he not account for the necessity to our thinking that behind every contingency lurks a hidden necessity?
401 Rancière, Dissensus, 208.
402 Rancière, Dissensus, 148.
403 Rancière, Dissensus, 82–3.
404 Kant is consistent in saying that what occupies the noumenal realm in the dynamical antinomy are God and soul.
405 Rancière, Dissensus, 86.
406 Rancière, Dissensus, 207, 149.
407 Rancière, Dissensus, 212.
408 We could express this in terms of Lyotard’s first chapter in The Inhuman where he makes use of Kant’s reflective judgment. See Lyotard, The Inhuman, 15. He would need to accomplish one more crucial reflexive turn by reflecting his entire meditation in this chapter into itself. Textually, it is not enough to ‘prepare post-solar thought’ for its inevitable separation from the body (23); rather, we need to experience that singular point where this separation necessarily supports itself. By doing so, epistemological ‘failure’ becomes ontological ‘success’ and we see that the masculine and feminine subjective positions simply become two (ultimately failed) strategies to deal with the traumatic fact that there is no such thing as a sexual relation. So in a way Lyotard is quite right to divide his first chapter into just two (and only two) sections – HE and SHE – since there can be no other section to write.
409 See Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, 90ff. If Lyotard is sure of the substantiality of the forever inaccessible Thing, it seems reasonable that he would abstractly theorize on the ‘immaterial materiality’ of pure difference and pure passion and this is precisely where Rancière levels his criticism.
410 Rancière, Dissensus, 209.
411 Rancière, Dissensus, 125.
412 Rancière, Dissensus, 213.
413 Rancière, Dissensus, 210.
414 Rancière, Dissensus, 215–6, 218.
415 Although he does not provide an analysis of the particular text of Deleuze's examined here, the thesis on Deleuze articulated in this section is particularly emboldened by the fact that in his book on Deleuze, Žižek mentions that Lacan was appreciative of the fact that Deleuze managed to theorize objet a in his much earlier The Logic of Sense. See Slavoj Žižek, Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2004), 27.
416 Rancière, Dissensus, 143, 139.
417 Rancière, Dissensus, 181.
418 Rancière, Dissensus, 182.
419 The crucial point is that such an object frustrates the mere re-arrangement of the sensible into a new distribution. Rather, it is paradoxically at once disclosed by that distribution and the point which embodies the anticipated ‘re-distribution’ of that distribution.
420 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (London: Continuum, 2003)
421 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 2–3.
422 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 136.
423 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 96, 95.
424 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 83, 98.
425 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 97.
426 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 100–1.
427 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 102.
428 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 102–3.
429 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 104.
430 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 106.
431 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 121.
432 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 138.
433 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 156.
434 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 195n5.
435 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 157–8.
436 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 153.
437 Indeed, Lacan’s objet a has two faces, one real and the other imaginary. It is never symbolic.
438 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 159.
439 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 158.
440 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 158.
441 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 107.
442 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 21–2.
443 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 7.
444 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 10–1.
445 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 25.
446 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 26.
447 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 20.
448 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 9.
449 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 118, 123.
450 Nancy, The Ground of the Image, 112.
451 See Chapter 7 of Alenka Zupančič, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan (London: Verso, 2000).
452 This re-conception of the sublime takes advantage of the double, even triple, split that operates in the third Critique. Kant's text itself is divided into two parts, a critique of aesthetic judgment and a critique of teleological judgment. The former is further divided into two types, judgments of taste and of the beautiful in nature and art (which is the main focus for Kant), and judgments about the sublime. Following Žižek, the contention here is that in order to understand the sublime properly, teleology must also be taken into account. See chapter 2 of Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). That is, the sublime should be seen as the negative intersection between beauty and teleology, as the failed synthesis between these two. Moreover, 'the Sublime is the site of the inscription of pure subjectivity whose abyss both Beauty and Teleology endeavor to conceal by way of the appearance of Harmony' (ibid 46). We might hasten to add that this is what the concern for meaning is all about, to conceal this real abyss with imaginary meaning in order to harmonize the text by filling in its gaps and indeterminacies. As discussed, Kant further splits the sublime into its mathematical and dynamical versions which can be seen as two failed attempts to conceal the abyss. These failures manifest themselves as the magnitude of nature in the case of the mathematical and the might of nature in the case of the dynamical. These failures, which have to do with the fact that sensibility or imagination is inadequate to the Ideas of reason, is an unpleasure. Yet finding this out is pleasurable as it invokes in us the feeling of the supersensible moral Law that is stronger than the mightiest natural force. A 'pleasurable unpleasure' is thus experienced by the subject, or in French, a jouissance. It is important to note that for Kant this feeling of the sublime is always precisely just that, a feeling, so when he speaks of the sublime it always has to do with a phenomenon as experienced on the subject-side. What Deleuze and Nancy accomplish in their work in aesthetics (and what Lacanian psychoanalysis accomplishes generally) is to conceive the sublime on the object-side as well. Nevertheless, Kant is aware that where the link between beauty and the supersensible is merely explanatory and interpretive, the link of the sublime to the supersensible does one better by justifying and elevating this link to universal validity. But because Kant failed to specify a sublime object, he could not further recognize the sublime as the point of exception implied with every universal, as that singular point at which its validity or hold is canceled. As was seen above, since Deleuze and Nancy effectively do specify this sublime object in art, they could proceed to conceive it as that suspension point which troubles every narrative-interpretive gesture to aesthetic works.
It should also be recognized that aesthetic theory's accomplishment in specifying a suspension point to meaning makes it superior, on this score, to either hermeneutical phenomenology or (post)structuralism – the two dominant approaches to textual analysis explored in Chapters 1–3 above. If one permits a crude analogy, it can be seen how aesthetic theory overcomes having to choose between these two approaches. On the one hand, does not Kant's notion of beauty have more to do with the hermeneutical phenomenological approach? To have 'purposiveness without a purpose' (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 226) means that an object of beauty is a product of man's conscious activity so as to bear the mark of purposiveness, yet it is only beautiful insofar as the subject experiences it as serving no definite purpose and so is something that is devoid of reason and end. Beauty marks that point where man's activity (usually instrumental and directed to realize conscious ends) functions as a spontaneous natural force so that a true artwork springs forth not from a conscious plan but spontaneously. Here one might think of the Heideggerian gaze on a Greek temple which lies in ruins from millennia of neglect but whose being nevertheless spontaneously shines through so as to unveil the ancient Greek world. On the other hand, does not teleology have more to do with (post)structuralism? Just like the latter's focus on the blind mechanical laws of signifiers, so too with teleology's aim to discern hidden purposes and laws at work in nature among which there is no place for purposiveness. So if beauty is to hermeneutical phenomenology as teleology is to (post)structuralism, then the re-conception of the sublime as the negative embodiment of beauty and teleology allows aesthetic theory to radically undermine having to choose between either of these two dominant methodological approaches.
453 G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. Bernard Bosanquet, ed. Michael Inwood (London: Penguin Books, 2004)
454 Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, 63.
455 Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, 36.
456 Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, 77. In Chapter 1 above it was noted in passing more than once how, from Schleiermacher onward, there is a Kantian recognition that while there are rules for the subsumption of particulars under universals there is nevertheless the absence of rules for the application of those rules which indexes the ground of freedom in aesthetic judgment. However, with Hegel we begin to see how this freedom is still too abstract and must be supplemented by a more concrete notion of freedom.
457 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vols. IV and V (London: The Hogarth Press, 1958), 96, 1, 111.
458 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 96.
459 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 264.
460 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 359–60.
461 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 278. To dispel the mystery of dream analysis even further and again stress how they are treated as texts, one should reflect on Freud's actual procedure in interpreting dreams. Upon waking from a dream Freud would write it down on paper, usually immediately but never longer than a day later. Then its analysis would proceed from the written text itself. The associated thoughts these words trigger are of course key to the entire process, but one should not lose sight of the fact that throughout his book (which is composed mostly of his own dreams), the analysis often includes wordplay with the original German signifiers. It is often mused that the significance of such wordplay is lost on the non-German speaker but a more persuasive explanation as to why the lessons of Freud's wordplay might prove unconvincing is that to be fully convinced, one must actually do the hard work of such analysis oneself and this, as he often implies, is something for which most people have little patience or self-discipline. So the dreamer who sees a clock in his dream that reads 'twenty to five' (and writes it out like this with words and not '4:40') may eventually arrive in his analysis at '225' – a particularly troubling amount for the dreamer as he anxiously filled out his tax form the previous evening – and be convinced that Freud's method holds some truth. While readers without their own hands-on experience in this type of analysis might find such a scenario intellectually stimulating but remain effectively unmoved.
462 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 485.
463 This is seen throughout the book. Perhaps most directly: 'I must affirm that dreams really have a meaning and that a scientific procedure for interpreting them is possible.' Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 100.
464 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 506–7.
465 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter VI (A) and (B). These are of course later translated linguistically as metaphor and metonymy, respectively, by Jakobson.
466 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 525.
467 Freud is well aware that the impossible conjunction of form and content nevertheless does happen. After summarizing the particular findings of a patient's dream, he emphasizes the lesson to be drawn from it: 'Thus here again the lack of clarity shown by the dream was a part of the material which instigated the dream: part of this material, that is, was represented in the form of the dream. The form of a dream or the form in which it is dreamt is used with surprising frequency for representing its concealed subject-matter.' Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 332. Ultimately the only way to account for this is to posit a paradoxical object which conjoins form and content at a singular point by its very embodiment of the minimal gap which holds them apart.
At a more general level, such a real object must also be presupposed if we are to account for the minimal gap between the signifier and the image. That these two exist in different dimensions is easily confirmed by the common phenomenon of forgetting a celebrity's name while at the same time being flooded with imagery from his film and television work; once the name is recalled the images instantly recede and vice versa. In terms of dreams, Freud spends considerable time demonstrating how '[a] dream-thought is unusable so long as it is expressed in abstract form' and only becomes usable 'once it has been transformed into pictorial language' (340). As he notes, what is especially difficult for the dreamwork is to find suitable images for logical conjunctions like 'if,' 'because,' and 'either-or' (312ff). The point tere is that despite existing in distinct dimensions a transformation from one to the other is nevertheless possible because of this paradoxical element.
468 Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny'" in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XVII, pp. 219–52 (London: The Hogarth Press, 1958), 219.
469 Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" 238.
470 Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" 241, 245.
471 C. G. Jung, "Dream Analysis in Its Practical Application" in An Outline of Psychoanalysis, pp. 159–82 (New York: Random House, 1955)
472 Jung, "Dream Analysis in Its Practical Application," 169.
473 Jung, "Dream Analysis in Its Practical Application," 173–4.
474 Jung, "Dream Analysis in Its Practical Application," 182.
475 Ernst Kris, "Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Therapy" in An Outline of Psychoanalysis, pp. 77–93 (New York: Random House, 1955)
476 Kris, "Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Therapy," 83.
477 Kris, "Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Therapy," 88ff.
478 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)
479 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 8. Throughout this first part the symbol is referred to as a relation of meaning to meaning in an intentional structure (cf., e.g., 9, 12, 18, 20).
480 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 47.
481 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 65. Energetics is a term Ricoeur uses to refer to Freud's very early model of the psyche which treats psychical energy in a quantitative manner. Borrowing from physics, there is the attendant notion that this apparatus economically strives for equilibrium with respect to the conflicting flows of energy. Such an apparatus is clearly carried over into the final chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams. The psychical model articulated there explains dreaming as a regressive movement of the usual progressive movement in waking life (which proceeds from the unconscious system towards the increasing censorships of the preconscious and conscious systems). But Ricoeur also sees the notion of energetics in many subsequent texts by Freud, evidently finding enough traces of this line of thinking to elevate the tension between energetics and hermeneutics into a defining conflict within psychoanalysis.
An important point that should be noted is how Freud makes it clear that the apparatus that accounts for dreams also accounts for the neuroses. Pathology is not a collapse of the apparatus but a mere different emphasis of its components. So we learn of the neuroses by examining dreams. Thus, as he famously writes: 'The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.' Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 608. This also means that the neuroses – just like dreams – are texts that can be read.
482 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 255–6. This is really a foregone conclusion. Already at the beginning of his discussion he writes that 'there is no doubt that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics: it is not by accident but by intention that it aims at giving an interpretation of culture in its entirety' (66).
483 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 359.
484 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 342–3.
485 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 543.
486 Manfred Frank, “The 'true subject' and its double: Jacques Lacan's hermeneutics,” in The Subject and the Text: Essays on Literary Theory and Philosophy, ed. Andrew Bowie, trans. Helen Atkins, pp. 97–122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
487 Frank, “The 'true subject' and its double: Jacques Lacan's hermeneutics,” 100.
488 Frank, “The 'true subject' and its double: Jacques Lacan's hermeneutics,” 107.
489 Frank, “The 'true subject' and its double: Jacques Lacan's hermeneutics,” 115.
490 Frank, “The 'true subject' and its double: Jacques Lacan's hermeneutics,” 118.
491 Frank, “The 'true subject' and its double: Jacques Lacan's hermeneutics,” 122. To this end, in a footnote Frank approvingly cites Derrida as implicitly suggesting 'that Lacan's psychoanalysis differs only in inessential points from the analytical hermeneutics of Ricoeur' (119n100). Frank's appeal to the hermeneutical insights of the 19th century is thus thoroughly compatible with, as was seen in Section 1.3 above, Ricoeur's call to return to epistemological concerns forgotten in the wake of the Heideggerian turn.
492 Julia Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis” in Transforming the Hermeneutic Context: From Nietzsche to Nancy, trans. Margaret Waller, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, pp. 89–105 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)
493 Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” 90.
494 Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” 92.
495 Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” 95.
496 See, e.g., Kristeva, “Psychoanalysis and the Polis,” 103.
497 Jacques Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 197–268 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006)
498 Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," 221.
499 Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,' 215. The very capitalization of the term Word alone brings to mind Ebeling's word-event theology examined in Section 1.3 above.
500 Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," 227. Later he writes in a straightforward fashion that 'psychoanalysis in its early development... [was] intimately linked to the discovery and study of symbols' and this new development 'expresses nothing less than the re-creation of human meaning in an arid era of scientism' (238–9) which is significant because, as he said earlier,
'[s]ymbols in fact envelop the life of man with a network so total that they join together those who are going to engender him "by bone and flesh" before he comes into the world; so total that they bring to his birth, along with the gift of the stars, if not with the gifts of the fairies, the shape of his destiny; so total that they provide the words that will make him faithful or renegade, the law of the acts that will follow him right to the very place where he is not yet and beyond his very death; and so total that through them his end finds its meaning in the last judgment, where the Word absolves his being or condemns it – unless he reaches the subjective realization of being-towards-death' (231).
Speaking even earlier about the Word, Lacan writes that 'the world of things will situate itself' in 'a language's world of meaning' (228). Lines like these could have easily been written by Ricoeur or Gadamer or anyone well-versed in Heideggerian hermeneutical phenomenology. At this point in Lacan's career it is clear that the meaning-dense symbol forms the structure and limit of the psychoanalytic field.
501 Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," 217. The full quote nicely captures this argument and the conception of psychoanalysis with respect to it: 'What we teach the subject to recognize as his unconscious is his history – in other words, we help him complete the current historicization of the facts that have already determined a certain number of the historical "turning points" in his existence. But if they have played this role, it is already as historical facts, that is, as recognized in a certain sense or censored in a certain order.' He provides an example by way of the anal stage to illustrate that what is at stake here is not the fact of toilet training as such but whether the subject registers it as a victory or as a defeat. It should also be noted that Lacan claims such 'restructurings of the event after the fact,' which in French would be rendered by the term après coup, are in line with Freud's notion of Nachträglichkeit or deferred action (213).
The logic here is equally applicable to the reading of texts so that in no way can the writings of a Schleiermacher, a Gadamer, a Derrida, a Nancy or a Freud be taken as a simple collection of facts. Rather, the particular way they have been 'taken up' – say, from the perspective of the work of early 1970s Lacan – is what is important.
502 Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," 213. More directly he writes that '[p]unctuation, once inserted, establishes the meaning; changing the punctuation renews or upsets it; and incorrect punctuation distorts it' (258). The exact nature of the punctuation, whether it takes the form of repeating a word the subject has just uttered or through a simple clearing of the throat, is less important when compared to its proper timing. Here lies the rationale for his infamous 'short sessions' which is more accurately termed 'variable length sessions' since there is no telling when a favorable opportunity will arise to suddenly terminate the session. He writes:
'It is, therefore, a propitious punctuation that gives meaning to the subject's discourse. This is why the ending of the session – which current technique makes into an interruption that is determined purely by the clock and, as such, takes no account of the thread of the subject's discourse – plays the part of a scansion which has the full value of an intervention by the analyst that is designed to precipitate concluding moments. Thus we must free the ending from its routine framework and employ it for all the useful aims of analytic technique' (209).
In other terms which are maintained throughout this paper, punctuation has the effect of halting the subject's 'empty speech' to produce instead a genuine 'full speech.'
503 Jacques Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 6–48 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006). Throughout this article the insights available to the analyst focused on the symbolic is juxtaposed to its imaginary-meaningful effects which are liable to lead him astray. From the very first page he announces how
'[t]he teaching of this seminar is designed to maintain that imaginary effects, far from representing the core of analytic experience, give us nothing of any consistency unless they are related to the symbolic chain that binds and orients them. I am, of course, aware of the importance of imaginary impregnations (Prägung) in the partializations of the symbolic alternative that give the signifying chain its appearance. Nevertheless, I posit that it is the law specific to this chain which governs the psychoanalytic effects that are determinant for the subject – effects such as foreclosure (Verwerfung), repression (Verdrängung), and negation (Verneinung) itself – and I add with the appropriate emphasis that these effects follow the displacement (Entstellung) of the signifiers so faithfully that imaginary factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections therein' (6).
The analysis he will carry out will, among other things, demonstrate that this focus on the symbolic and away from its secondary meaning-effects is in no way a focus on some general form abstracted out from the content of phenomena.
504 Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" 21.
505 To give some sense of this, below are the opening moves from less than two full pages of his text. See Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" 35–7. Consider the following table compiled from these pages:
The first row provides us with an arbitrary diachronic series of presences and absences, as in a randomly generated succession of coin tosses. The numerical row beneath it can be thought of as the imposition of a symbolic layer or matrix on top of this random series. The bottom alphabetical row is an additional matrix imposed on the numerical series.
More specifically, the numerical row in the above table is generated synchronically, by grouping possible outcomes of the initial series according to the following definitions:
Outcomes of (+ + +) and (‒ – –) are assigned a 1.
Outcomes of (+ – +) and (– + –) are assigned a 3.
Outcomes of (+ – –), (– + +), (+ + –) and (– – +)* are assigned a 2.
*The content of this parenthetical is corrected from the error in the translated edition. See Jacques Lacan, Écrits (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966), 47.
Thus the numerical row begins with a 1 as its series is (+ + +). What follows is a 2 because of (+ + –), etc. Already a limitation imposes itself: moving from 1 to 3 (or 3 to 1) necessitates an intervening 2.
The alphabetical row is generated by additionally grouping the possible outcomes of the numeric series according to the following definitions:
Outcomes of (1—1), (3—3), (1—3) and (3—1) are noted by α.
Outcomes of (2—2) are noted by γ.
Outcomes of (1—2) and (3—2) are noted by β.
Outcomes of (2—1) and (2—3) are noted by δ.
The horizontal bar (—) can represent either 1, 2 or 3. But again there are limitations. E.g., (1—1) must be (1 1 1). Why? As already seen (1 3 1) is ruled out because 1 to 3 (or 3 to 1) necessitates an intervening 2. Moreover, (1 2 1) is ruled out because a 2 must immediately follow itself if an initial 1 is to reappear in the third slot. Given these and other limitations, the missing numbers can be filled in appropriately.
Thus the alphabetical row begins with α as its series is (1 2 3). What follows is γ because of (2 3 2), etc.
Lacan summarizes the limitations with respect to the overlaid alpha-matrix in a table reproduced below:
If at Time 1 there is an α or δ, regardless of what letter is put at Time 2, α or β always appears at Time 3.
If at Time 1 there is a γ or β, regardless of what letter is put at Time 2, γ or δ always appears at Time 3.
Hence what appears at Time 3 is already determined to some extent by Time 1. There are additional limitations and determinacies to be had by extending this analysis diachronically and Lacan does just that; through even more obscure tables and figures he considers what may or may not appear in Time 4 as well as other determinacies. It is in this precise sense that the unconscious is indestructible, 'remembering' when no actual conscious trace of a memory exists. So if there is any truth to Jung's contention that the unconscious and conscious thought form a sort of partnership, it is only in the limited sense that, while the latter is prone to forget, the former compensates for such deficiencies by remembering in its stead, counting and recording the past in the signifying chain itself.
One can imagine the mindboggling complexity that would ensue by extending this analysis even further synchronically, laying ever more definitional matrices on top of the existing ones. This in effect is what natural language does and Lacan's wager is that by going through exercises like those above, one becomes more proficient with the type of analysis needed to unlock the unconscious causal forces of the subject.
Moreover, if one mentally subtracts what appears in the time slots so that only these slots themselves are left for consideration, one begins to grasp how Lacan understands the symbolic order as self-limiting, chasing down as it were its inherent blank it endeavors to fill with a 'proper' signifier but ever failing to do so and thus failing to complete itself. The off-center 'thing' resisting symbolization which the symbolic order revolves around is of course the real and Lacan will soon turn his efforts to its further delimitation. It is here that one can see his full break with structuralism. But for the moment one might consider that if meaning is caught up in the differential structure of signifiers, then its pursuit is interminable yet simultaneously not without its limits at the structural level. The same of course goes for desire, Lacan's primary focus, since desire is co-extensive with lack or those slots or blanks within which signifiers fall.
Finally, to help dispel the notion that the foregoing does not reflect the universe we live in, one might consider what a tennis match looks like to someone without an inkling to the rules of its game. It might very well seem like a mindless back-and-forth series of random pluses and minus and any initial interest this new spectator takes in it is likely to quickly dissipate. However, if one teaches him how these back-and-forths are overlaid with overlapping sets of symbol matrices (i.e., one teaches him the rules for the games, sets and matches of tennis), this random activity suddenly becomes a sport which just might hold some interest – even enjoyment – for him.
506 Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" 39. This might be seen as the Lacanian version of Freud's implicit admonishment to actually practice dream analysis so as to take it seriously and thereby recognize his discovery as legitimate.
507 Jacques Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 412–41 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006)
508 Lacan begins to use algebraic symbols in the mid 1950s in an attempt to formalize psychoanalysis, a basic requirement for any field with designs on achieving scientific status, although his rationale for its use should be seen as more in line with his repeated insistence that such formalization is necessary for the successful transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge in the training of psychoanalysts. This generally accords with structuralist thought, as adherence to such formalization frustrates the imaginary lures of intuitive thinking. His use of such symbols only increases from this point in his career and in the early 1970s he coins the term matheme [mathème] to designate his own particular psychoanalytic algebra. Part II below makes extensive use of mathemes.
509 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 416.
510 This is implied throughout but sometimes stated quite directly, as when he writes how 'it is easy to see that only signifier-to-signifier correlations provide the standard for any and every search for signification [meaning].' Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 418.
511 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 419. It is as if meaning suddenly emerges from nothing since the whole of that meaning cannot to be gotten by summing up the meaning of each individual part (well-known to anyone who has ever dabbled in translation and realized how word for word translations are often useless in rendering meaning from one language to another). This 'nothing' out of which meaning springs is of course the place occupied by the signifying structure.
512 If these examples bring to mind discussions of Ingarden and Iser from Section 2.3 above, this connection should further raise the legitimate prospect of a general compatibility between Lacanian structuralist thinking and the phenomenology of reading.
513 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 430–1. Along the same lines which also considers the connection of metaphor with metonymy, Lacan writes how the '[m]etaphor's creative spark does not spring forth from the juxtaposition of two images, that is, of two equally actualized signifiers. It flashes between two signifiers, one of which has replaced the other by taking the other's place in the signifying chain, the occulted signifier remaining present by virtue of its (metonymic) connection to the rest of the chain' (422).
514 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 418.
515 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 423.
516 The idea here is that the subject can be separated from his imaginary ego, as well as be reached at the level of his symptoms, not by working in the realm of meaning but by working through the meaningless mechanisms of signifiers. Lacan portrays himself as a trainer of analysts and it is to them as well as to existing analysts that his warnings are most often addressed. Here he in effect tells them to be especially wary of being mesmerized by the surplus of meaning which issues from patients' mouths. So in no way should Lacan's turn to the meaningless signifier be seen as registering a frustration with this surplus of meaning; rather, at this point in this career it registers his faith that only the realm of the signifier can truly separate the subject from his alienating immersion in meaning and break him away from his ego which is nothing but a metonymic displacement of the patient's desire for a full and meaningful being. However, the idea of a separation between being and meaning is only clearly articulated in Lacan's third period.
517 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 433.
518 Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," 412.
519 Jacques Lacan, "The Signification of the Phallus" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 575–84 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006)
520 This relation, indeed this very distinction, is often overlooked in the literature. Perhaps rather predictably as the very title of this paper leads one to suspect that what Lacan will discuss is the meaning of the phallus. Yet a cursory glance through its pages confirms that Lacan much more often speaks of the phallus in its capacity as a signifier rather than as a signified. Moreover, in terms of causality it is clear he places its capacity as a signifier as logically prior to the experience of the phallus qua signified. Thus he declares how 'the phallus is a signifier... that is destined to designate meaning effects as a whole, insofar as the signifier conditions them by its presence as signifier.' Lacan, "The Signification of the Phallus," 579.
An additional point to be stressed in Lacan's return to Freud is how the former endeavors everywhere to ground his own work in the latter's textual edifice. A clear case in point is found in this paper in terms of Freud's anticipation of structuralism:
'[T]he commentary on Freud's work I have been pursuing for seven years... [has] led to certain results: first and foremost, to promote the notion of the signifier as necessary to any articulation of the analytic phenomenon, insofar as it is opposed to that of the signified in modern linguistic analysis. Freud could not have taken into account modern linguistics, which postdates him, but I would maintain that Freud's discovery stands out precisely because, in setting out from a domain in which one could not have expected to encounter linguistics' reign, it had to anticipate its formulations. Conversely, it is Freud's discovery that gives the signifier/signified opposition its full scope: for the signifier plays an active role in determining the effects by which the signifiable appears to succumb to its mark, becoming, through that passion, the signified' (577–8).
Lacan continues by writing how this has led to a 'passion of the signifier' which has opened up 'a new dimension of the human condition in that it is not only man who speaks, but in man and through man that it [ça] speaks.' This 'it' speaks in what is termed 'the Other,' what Lacan in his structuralist period equates with the symbolic order (i.e., the battery of signifiers that make up the unconscious) and this is so 'because it is there that the subject finds his signifying place in a way that is logically prior to any awakening of the signified' (579).
521 The experience is similar to the one which causes a subject to excitedly declare how he knows the true meaning of some situation (a success) – much like Michael Jackson's enthusiastic 'This is it!' – yet is simultaneously an experience that makes him helpless to explain what precisely that meaning is (a failure).
522 Lacan, "The Signification of the Phallus," 582.
523 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 21, 22.
524 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 211–2.
525 It will be noticed how the 'forced choice' of life in this example goes well beyond the pragmatic outcome of rational decision-making since the subject must be considered to have already 'chosen' life if he is to hear the options presented to him in the first place.
526 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 211–2.
527 Lacan implies throughout his talk that when the subject emerges, he does so in the field of the Other at the level of meaning. See, e.g., Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 218, 221.
528 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 258.
529 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 270.
530 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 250.
While continuously stressing how interpretation is not open to any and all meanings, Lacan invokes the
Wolf Man, 'one of Freud's great psycho-analytic cases, the greatest of all,' as the supreme example of
such an interpretation since 'one sees in it, more clearly than anywhere else, where the problem of the
conversion of phantasy and reality converge, namely, in something irreducible, non-sensical' (251).
531 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 207.
532 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 270.
533 The möbius strip will be extensively discussed in Part II below. Briefly, a representation of it appears
in Figure 5.5 and can be constructed as follows: Take a strip of paper, say a foot long by one inch wide. Join the two ends to form a loop but just prior to doing so give one end a one-half twist (180°). The resulting möbius strip subverts the normal way of representing space, for while it seems to have two sides this is deceptive as it really has only one side (and one edge). To each 'inside' point there seems to be an 'outside' point 'beyond' it. However, traversing the length of the strip (say, by tracing it with one's finger) reveals that the two points are not discrete but are, in fact, contiguous.
In an homologous fashion, that substantive 'beyond' the subject so often wagers on as the Cause for disturbances in its world itself turns out to be a mere effect of its own disturbing effects; its traumatic aspect only gains this feature in retrospect, from the perspective of a later symbolic horizon. The classic example is a small child who witnesses the copulation of his parents. There is nothing traumatic about the scene to the child at that time; that possibility is reserved for a later date when his first sexual theories are formulated which do not permit the remembered scene to be symbolized and thus fully integrated into his newly narrativized life-world. This notion of the retroactive character of trauma, how trauma is constituted in an overdetermined fashion, is a clear indication of how Lacan fully breaks away from certain structuralist modes of thought which proceed in a linear fashion from causes to their effects.
534 A single glance can only confirm what we already know and imbue it with meaningful understanding – a temptation to be resisted at all costs. This is the reason for Lacan's explicit admonition made on the penultimate day of this seminar during a discussion of interpretation:
'I have already tried to embody certain consequences of the very particular vel that constitutes alienation – the placing in suspense of the subject, its vacillation, the collapse of meaning – in such familiar forms as your money or your life, or freedom or death which are reproduced from a being or meaning – terms that I do not propose without some reluctance. I would ask you not to be too hasty in overloading them with meanings, for if you do you will only succeed in sinking them. So I feel that it is incumbent upon me to warn you of this at the onset.' Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 246.
535 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Russell Grigg (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007)
536 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 15.
537 One might pause here to note the distance taken from hermeneutical phenomenology, not only from those thoroughly in line with Heidegger and Gadamer but those who otherwise wish to revise it, like Ricoeur who was seen in the closing paragraphs of Chapter 2 above championing a subjective self-discipline in the name of the meaningful matter of the text. Here is a clear conception of the subject qua subjectivization, one that is only considered in its meaningful aspect. In contrast Poulet's phenomenological reading strategy is much more Lacanian as it seeks out 'a subjectivity without objectivity' in the text, one entirely devoid of objective content so that all one is left with is pure consciousness. Poulet of course cannot bring this subject to its full notion, lacking as he does a concept of the uncanny objet a which is this subject's objectal correlate. The lesson here is how phenomenologists more in line with Husserl (and not with Heidegger) forge the straighter path toward late-Lacan.
538 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 45. Moreover, 'the impossible is the real' (165) and '[i]f the real is defined as the impossible the real is placed at the stage at which the register of a symbolic articulation was found to be defined as the impossible to demonstrate to be true' (172–3) – a truth he tells us everywhere can only be (phenomenologically) experienced.
539 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 116, 19. The former point regarding how there is no sexual relation will soon have Lacan's undivided attention as he begins developing his formulae of sexuation. The latter point demonstrates the insight that while hermeneutical phenomenology is correct to seek out 'proper' historical contexts within which to appropriate the meaning of a particular phenomenon, the very logic here of subsuming particulars under universals belies the claim that meaning precedes structure. In a word, structure trumps hermeneutical phenomenology. This further implies that when it comes to the question of the origin of the signifying system itself, no recourse can be made to any historical conception of its advent. Rather, as was seen with originating cases of trauma, there is a similar retroactive logic at play here, but at a 'meta-level.' That is, the signifying system as a whole coordinates its own birth, retroactively positing its own origins. So structure trumps hermeneutical phenomenology, but in a radical way. For in its non-hermeneutical phenomenological conception structure must be seen paradoxically as ontologically prior to history. In this sense the standard (hermeneutical phenomenological) critique of Freud and Lacan as having failed to place the psychoanalytical framework into historical context becomes thoroughly innocuous.
540 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 109.
541 Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 15.
542 It should be stressed that Lacan places the accent with nonsense in the triad sense-meaning-nonsense. As seen in Chapter 4 above, (post)structuralism already moves away from meaning towards sense (and flirts at times with nonsense), but a sustained movement away from sense towards nonsense is seen with Lacan's non-hermeneutical phenomenology in the form of the Ad. For instance, during a question period in this seminar an interlocutor makes the following statement: 'What you say is always decentered in relation to sense, you shun sense' and Lacan responds: 'This is perhaps precisely why my discourse is an analytic discourse. It's the structure of analytic discourse to be like that.' Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 146.
543 Jacques-Alain Miller, "Suture (elements of the logic of the signifier)," trans. Jacqueline Rose, Screen 18, pp. 24–34 (Winter 1978). This paper was first presented in Lacan's seminar on February 24, 1965. As Lacan will later allow Miller, his son-in-law, in 1973 to publish the lectures which make up Seminar XI and will further grant to him official publication rights with respect to other seminar and written material after his death, Miller can be said to have been not only one of the earliest Lacanians but to have thoroughly inherited Lacan's intellectual legacy, at least in an official capacity. Moreover, Suture is but an early example of his efforts to expand on Lacan's original work, efforts which continue to this day.
544 Slavoj Žižek, The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieślowski Between Theory and Post-Theory (London: British Film Institute, 2001), 31. Žižek here and elsewhere traces the deviating path the concept of suture has traveled since 1966, highlighting its misappropriation at the hands of both film theorists and deconstructionists.
545 Miller, "Suture (elements of the logic of the signifier)," 25–6. Perhaps the most concise way to summarize what Miller accomplishes in this paper is to say how he specifies 'the 1' as holding the place of the impossible '0.' After its opening section, this paper is highly technical, using and developing a logic that takes its distance from (yet is also said to provide the foundation for) what Miller calls the 'logician's logic' (31) of Russell, Giuseppe Peano and others, but especially Frege who he references frequently. Thus the subject he describes in its metaphorical and metonymical relations to the signifier is expressed in terms of the double movement of the 'zero lack' and the 'zero number,' the latter of which is the suture (cf. 30–1).
546 Miller, "Suture (elements of the logic of the signifier)," 26. The operations of the zero lack appear to be responsible for 'cancelling out... meaning' at the level of signifiers in their successional chains (31). One might also mention in passing how Miller's abrupt writing style with respect to the paper's technical material seems calculated to frustrate the overly hasty assumption of the meaning of his presentation with the end result that it makes his reader more aware how meaning is constructed.
547 Roberto Harari, "Chapter 4: Destinies of the a Deception, Transference, Failure and Mourning" in Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety:" An Introduction, ed. Rico Franses, trans. Jane C. Lamb-Ruiz, pp. 87–115 (New York: Other Press, 2001)
548 In the earlier part of his career Lacan returned again and again (notably in Seminars I and III and two texts in his Écrits) to the brief commentary Kris provides in his article on one of his cases. By focusing on the patient's response to Kris' intervention, Lacan eventually contends that Kris errs by addressing the demands of his patient at the expense of his desire and its vicissitudes. Kris and by extension ego psychology as a whole are thus resoundingly criticized for their brutal attempts to mold the patient to the analyst's view of reality.
549 Harari, Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety:" An Introduction, 92.
550 Harari, Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety:" An Introduction, 105. It must be stressed that the claim 'anxiety cannot deceive' does not imply it directly speaks the truth, for the real can only be approached through a double gesture. As Harari explains, 'the subject pretends pretense when he is speaking the truth, and this is the way that the subject reacts to the fact of being marked by the signifier. This is obviously a circumstance that psychoanalysts must pay attention to even though linguists may not' (104). This should make it clearer how psychoanalysis in its most radical dimension moves a step beyond (post)structuralist understanding:
'We were saying that the recourse to deception is the best verification about the way in which the subject reacts to the determinism imposed on him by the signifying order. It is therefore valid to postulate that the speaking being is more than the candid claim that he or she is only a "marionette of the signifier." Freudian determinism does not imply a sort of resigned fatalism, the vision of a world of homunculi directed by the strings of parental or societal discourse, past or present' (105).
In short, the subject is a free subject even under the most determining of circumstances and can be held accountable for his actions. The general compatibility of psychoanalytic theory with German Idealist philosophy is perhaps rather obvious after Žižek.
551 Harari, Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety:" An Introduction, 112.
552 Monique David-Ménard, "The Act of Interpretation: Its Conditions and its Consequences" in Lacan in the German-Speaking World, eds. Elizabeth Stewart, Maire Jaanus and Richard Feldstein, trans. Elizabeth Stewart, pp. 147–58 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004)
553 David-Ménard, "The Act of Interpretation: Its Conditions and its Consequences," 147.
554 David-Ménard, "The Act of Interpretation: Its Conditions and its Consequences," 152.
555 David-Ménard, "The Act of Interpretation: Its Conditions and its Consequences," 153. This loss of control is expressed in epistemological terms as a 'loss of knowledge on the part of the analyst who deals in interpretations' and is specifically linked with the Ad in the final sentence of the paper: 'I believe... that one should attempt to think of this loss of knowledge or power as being similar to the loss that occurs at the end of an analysis' (157). It should be explained that by coming to the end of analysis the analysand necessarily becomes an analyst in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory.
556 As might have already been suspected, many of Lacan's mathemes take on (a limited number of) different equivalences depending on the context within which they are discussed. This is partly due to Lacan's occasional use of the same algebraic notation over the course of decades which saw his thought develop significantly. But it is equally true that at any given time during that development many of those differing equivalences are, in fact, effectively equivalent. Two cases in point: first, taking S2 here as denoting knowledge reflects Lacan's contention that the epistemological dimension constitutes itself as a signifying chain, which is how S2 was first introduced above; and second, the nuances between the phallus and S1 discussed above are sometimes relaxed so that they are effectively equated, as in the present analysis which makes recourse to discourse theory. While certainly confusing or even discouraging to the neophyte, this variability combined with the fixedness of a quasi-mathematics is one of the reasons Lacanian theory continues to be fruitfully developed in unexpected directions.
557 Thus the interpreter is not permitted to say: ‘I don’t quite like my interpretation, but the text imposed it upon me. So if you don’t like it either, don’t bother me about it. Talk to the text. It’s to blame!’ Clinically speaking, such a stance amounts to perversion whereby the subject hides her enjoyment derived from her interpretation behind some higher Cause, or in Kantian terms, behind a supposed respect for the 'imposed' moral Law, the categorical imperative which 'compels' a particular direction to the interpretation and thereby justifies its consequences.
558 Paul Verhaeghe, Does the Woman Exist? From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine, trans. Marc du Ry (New York: Other Press, 1999), 245.
559 Verhaeghe, Does the Woman Exist? From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine, 118.
560 Verhaeghe, Does the Woman Exist? From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine, 102–3.
561 To give a phenomenological sense to this, one might make an analogy with Lacan's thesis that the mysterious 'dark continent' of femininity is nothing but an hysterical setup, something Verhaeghe stresses throughout his book. Could one not similarly dismiss the mystery supposedly dwelling in certain (poetic) texts which are said to unveil the meaning of a primordial ontology? More generally speaking, what follows from discourse theory is how one's desire for textual interpretation is sustained by the paradoxical object-cause, a surplus-jouissance, that little bit of the real which belongs neither to the interpreter nor to the object-text yet nevertheless allows access to the space of truth of the very endeavor of interpretation.
562 Bruce Fink, Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), vii. Continuing, Fink writes: '...though much of his argument must be reconstructed or pieced together from the various claims he makes on the basis of a line-by-line reading.' That is, it is not as simple as it sounds when Lacan 'comes right out and says what he means,' for even this will involve a bit of work. Moreover, the effort required to read Lacan appears to be intentional, for '[h]is texts and lectures seem designed to introduce us to the very kind of work analysis itself requires, sifting through layers of meaning, deciphering the text as if it were a long series of slips of the tongue. He says at one point that his writing style is deliberately designed to contribute to the training of analysts... but it no doubt goes further still. His writing affects us and, in certain cases, even upsets us' (155).
563 In doing so Fink's book becomes the first in English to break away from the preferred strategy in the secondary literature of commenting on the Lacanian theoretical apparatus as a whole rather than engaging in a sustained step-by-step analysis of particular texts by Lacan, as is the case here with Fink.
564 It should be noted that working through psychoanalytic commentary is more than a sterile academic exercise as it harbors the potential to produce real effects in the subject. As Lacan said in his first seminar, '[c]ommenting on a text is like doing an analysis.' Quoted in Fink, Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely, 63.
565 This tendency to smooth over difficulties with Lacanian theory extends to Fink's spoken word on at least one noted occasion. During the open discussion portion of Fink's presentation entitled "An Introduction to Lacanian Clinical Practice" given at The Ontario Psychiatric Association (Psychotherapy Section) 2008 Fall Conference held at the University of Toronto on November 1st, an audience member abruptly asked 'Where is the Lacan?' When asked to elaborate the questioner explained that he had expected to encounter much more difficulty with the presentation material but as far as he was concerned it was all perfectly in line with what he already knew. Fink's eventual response of 'If I spoke to you like Lacan you wouldn't understand a word' could only further the understanding already in play. (The author of this dissertation was in attendance at this conference).
566 Fink, Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely, 84, 159.
567 Fink, Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely, 185–6n37.
568 Žižek's consistent reading of Lacan as thoroughly opposed to both these schools of thought, which demonstrates his preference for Lacan's third period, takes many forms. In the present book under review, for instance, Žižek examines Benjamin as a sort of proto-late-Lacanian. He thus begins his examination by arguing how Benjamin's textual approach 'is quite the opposite of the fundamental guidance of hermeneutical understanding ("to locate the interpreted text into the totality of its epoch.") What Benjamin has in mind is, on the contrary, the isolation of a piece of the past from the continuity of history: ...an interpretative procedure whose opposition to hermeneutics recalls immediately the Freudian opposition between interpretation en détail and interpretation en masse.' Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 137. What follows is a demonstration of the similarities between Benjamin's thought and Lacan's notion of the agency of the signifier which, as we have seen, moves beyond mere (post)structuralist considerations by its additional concern for the real.
569 This occurs in the foreword to the second edition of the sequel to The Sublime Object of Ideology, a book entitled For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (London: Verso, 2002). There Žižek identifies some weaknesses in his former analysis inclusive of a concern that he endorsed 'a quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan, focused on the notion of the Real as the impossible Thing-in-itself' (xii). He has ever since backed away from this notion and rightly so, since this leaves Lacan vulnerable to the kind of 'deep' hermeneutical phenomenological approaches which the work of Lacan's late period belied. Some contributions of this latter book are discussed below.
570 The reference is to Lacan's famous 'Graph of Desire' presented in one of the many significant papers whose review here was not permitted. See Jacques Lacan, "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 671–702 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1960]). Briefly, Lacan there slowly builds up to the complete graph (cf. 692) by effectively beginning with a graph not dissimilar to Figure 5.6 above; starting with this figure, one can imagine another chain above and parallel to the signifying chain represented there as S1 → S2, along with a similar retroactive arc emanating up through but extending beyond the existing trajectory which buttons-down meaning. As Žižek writes, '[t]he complete graph is thus divided into two levels, which can be designated as the level of meaning and the level of enjoyment [i.e., jouissance].' Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 121. This graph thus provides a nice visual of the beyond of meaning which Lacan increasingly turns his attention to from the 1960s onwards.
571 See Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 213–4.
572 Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (London: Verso, 2002), 3, xi, xviii.
573 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do, 174n38.
574 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do, xx. Žižek further argues how this empty signifier marks the external difference (between the symbolic system and its outside) internally, in the guise of an excessive signifier which stands-in for what eludes the system's grasp. In late summer 2012 a story circulated on Toronto FM morning radio of an incident that occurred with a group of amateur spelunkers in Australia which perfectly illustrates this notion. At one point someone noticed that a member of the group was missing, which caused no small amount of worry since a rising tide flooded certain caves daily. The group immediately re-organized into a search party to find its missing member. But sometime after setting out someone retook a group count and, evidently a better mathematician than the first, discovered that no one was missing. In fact, everyone had been present all along! Now, from the moment the woman presumed lost had taken up her place in her own search party she began to function as this empty signifier, for in her very presence there she marked what eluded it. To anticipate a possible objection to this logic, it should be noted that while they did eventually 'find' the 'missing' member, at that precise moment the search party reverted back to a group of (very) amateur spelunkers. In this sense the search party did not find the missing woman; it could not, for by definition, at its very level of functioning as a search party, the woman eludes it – until, of course, a re-count is conducted.
The more general point to be made is to reflect on how this woman stood 'closer' to the subject as Lacan conceives it than any of the other members of the search party. To explain this, let each member be a signifier so that the search party is taken as a signifying system. It then becomes clear how all these signifiers are in search of the subject for the signifier which has already found it for them. This privileged signifier is the woman and precisely in this way, as the representation of the failure of this signifying system to fully represent itself (i.e., complete itself by finding the missing signifier), she is quite close to Lacan's notion of the subject which, coinciding with its own impossibility, is entirely devoid of meaning or any other substance.
575 Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do, 153–4. Žižek's cursory discussion (cf. 10ff) of Lacan's notion of the Ego-ideal in the first chapter (via Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and other short stories) allows for the opportunity to examine an early paper by Lacan, one entitled "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 75–81 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1936, 1949]). Lacan continuously re-worked its logic as he proceeded through his career and below is a schematic summary of how the lessons of that paper, which was initially written at the start of his hermeneutical period, were later re-conceived as he moved into his 'structuralist' period.
Lacan's paper is about a radically new theory on how the ego is formed. Whereas previously the thinking was that man adapts himself to reality, Lacan’s thesis essentially reverses things and in a gesture strictly homologous to Kant’s transcendental idealist revolution in metaphysics, he proclaims that it is man who adapts reality to himself. More specifically, the ego creates a new adaptation to ‘reality’ and the subject then tries to maintain cohesion with this double. It is Lacan’s initial emphasis on the nature of this double as an image or ‘imago’ that characterizes his work in its first 'imaginary' period, for he is quite literally concerned with the imaginary identification aspect of ego-formation. Lacan further refers to the appearance of these doubles and object-projections as hallucinatory and dream-like in order to underscore the role that the mirror plays in presenting a whole yet fictional image for the fragmented child. (Of course, an actual mirror need not be present. Another child or even adult can act as that other who lends its whole image to foster a sense of wholeness for the fragmented child). We can readily understand this process by considering the image Lacan asks us to consider. The human child is born pre-mature and must be cared for and up to the age of eighteen months the child has immense difficulty with motor coordination and is outdone by the chimpanzee in intelligence. But while both are able to recognize their images in a mirror, it is only the child that remains fascinated with its specular image as the chimpanzee quickly loses interest. A representation of the picture Lacan paints for us is found in Figure 5.10.
Here we have the elementary imaginary dyad: the fragmented child anticipates himself when looking into the mirror, but is ever uncertain, so he turns to his mother, who offers a confirmation. “Yes, that’s you!” she says and he is swept up in a wave of jubilation which attends to this phantasmatic experience of self-mastery. In this way, the child is compensated with a whole image of himself and this is an image that he will carry with him for the rest of his life. This image is what Lacan calls the Ideal-ego. (75–7)
It should be clear how Lacan here submits the domain of psychoanalysis to the domain of meaning. For early Lacan the goal of psychoanalytic treatment is to integrate traumatic symptoms into the patient’s life in a meaningful way, just as the goal of the hermeneutical phenomenological approach is to integrate disturbing elements of the text into an overall cohesive narrative. In hermeneutical theory the text is like the fragmented child and the goal is to provide an interpretation to reassemble the fragmented text into an imaginary wholeness much like what the child encounters in the mirror. Any gaps or distortions encountered in the text index interpretive failure and must be resolved as it impedes the text’s full integration into the domain of meaning. It is as if the text casts a disturbing gaze out from these gaps, resulting in an unsettling experience for the interpreter who endeavors to neutralize it through a hermeneutical approach.
However, as Lacan's career progresses into its second period, the logic of this paper is re-worked to include the symbolic. For instance, Lacan makes frequent mention to how ‘[t]he mirror stage establishes the watershed between the imaginary and the symbolic in the moment of capture by an historic inertia,’ telling us that within the mirror stage there is a non-mythical beyond to the limits imposed by the imaginary which has to do with another (symbolic) register. See pp. 54–6 of Jacques Lacan, "On My Antecedents" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 51–7 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1966]). Moreover, even if the imaginary overlaps somewhat with the symbolic in the mirror stage, it nevertheless harbors the rule of the dividing line between the imaginary and the symbolic within the mirror stage. See p. 461 of Jacques Lacan, "On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 445–88 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1958]); and see p. 853 of Jacques-Alain Miller, "Classified Index of the Major Concepts" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 851–7 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1966]). More importantly, Lacan elsewhere establishes the supremacy of the symbolic over the imaginary, thereby warning the subject not to remain transfixed by the mere image. See pp. 456–7 of Lacan, "On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis," 456–7; see p. 613 of Jacques Lacan, "Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 610–20 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1958]); and for additional references to the supremacy of the signifier over the signified, see Miller, "Classified Index of the Major Concepts," 853. Such transfixion with one’s Ideal-ego encourages a false sense of mastery and leads to narcissism and aggressive posturing. See pp. 355–7 of Jacques Lacan, "The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 334–63 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1956]). Lacan explicitly tells us that he has intentionally introduced his theory of the mirror stage to combat the contemporary stress on the alleged autonomy of the ego and its supposed need to be strengthened so as to better adapt the subject to ‘reality.’ See Lacan, "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious," 684–5. In contrast, Lacan finds that true resistance is found in the imaginary and it is precisely through the mirror stage that the subject can carve out some breathing space by identifying with a purely symbolic point. See pp. 607–9 of Jacques Lacan, "On an Ex Post Facto Syllabary" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 602–9 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1966]).
In another paper, Lacan adapts an extremely complex optical model, inclusive of a series of (curved) mirrors, to more fully illustrate how the subject is constituted. A cursory glance at his diagrams reveals how Lacan has in effect developed a much more sophisticated mirror stage theory. Utilizing this new model, he tells us how the real image of the subject is substituted by a virtual image that is superimposed onto the real space ‘behind the mirror.’ See pp. 565 and 568 of Jacques Lacan, ‘Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: “Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure”’ in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 543–74 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1960]); and see p. 860 of Jacques-Alain Miller, "Commentary on the Graphs" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, pp. 858–63 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006 [1966]). What he is getting at with this statement is how the imaginary and the symbolic are not simply opposed to each other as if they were on two external levels. Rather, the specific dimension of the symbolic emerges from the very imaginary mirroring itself, from its doubling: there is always a point of double reflection at which the imaginary is linked to the symbolic. This virtual point Lacan calls the ‘Ego-ideal’ and is marked in Figure 5.10 by the phallic signifier Φ. In terms previously noted, this is provided by the mother’s reassurance that the image in the mirror is really the child’s image. This symbolic point is not a glimpse into the way ‘reality’ really is, nor is it an insight into how others see me, but rather this point indexes the way I see the others seeing me. What needs to be understood is that the image in the mirror which produces the Ideal-ego (or the imaginary form in which we appear to ourselves likeable) is always subordinated to the symbolic identification of the Ego-ideal (which is that point from which we are observed). Returning to Lacan’s model of the elementary imaginary dyad of the child lacking full motor coordination observing himself in the mirror, what is crucial to grasp is how in order for this mirror stage to occur, there must logically first be a space within which to do so. What Lacan is telling us is that this a priori space (which is ‘internal’ to the psychic economy of the child in some sense), is marked off by the virtual point of the Ego-ideal, a point which forms his symbolic identification. This is the child’s identification with the very place from where he is being observed, from where he looks at himself so that he appears to be likeable (to himself). Since the imaginary identification of the Ideal-ego is always already subordinated to the symbolic identification of the Ego-ideal, the latter thereby dominates and determines one’s overall self-image. It is as if the Ego-ideal ‘clears the space’ that is subsequently filled in by the phantasmatic and meaningful image of the Ideal-ego. Hence the imaginary register of images is necessarily and inherently split, which is why Lacan refers to ‘the lethal gap of the mirror stage,’ for ‘without the gap that alienates him from his own image, this symbiosis with the symbolic, in which he constitutes himself as subject to death, could not have occurred.’ Lacan, "On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis," 476, 461. This gap is constitutive of the subject’s overall image of self and is what makes psychoanalysis possible, for such analysis ‘operates in the symbolic… [and] is able to reshape an ego that is thus constituted in its imaginary status.’ Lacan, ‘Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation,' 567.
Žižek nicely summarizes the foregoing analysis of Lacan's texts:
'The crucial theoretical point not to be missed here is that such mirror-inversion cannot be reduced to
the domain of the Imaginary. That is to say, when one deals with the opposition of the Imaginary
(captivation by the mirror-image, recognition in a fellow-creature) and the Symbolic (the purely formal
order of differential features), one usually fails to notice how the specific dimension of the Symbolic
emerges from the very imaginary mirroring: namely, from its doubling, by means of which – as Lacan
puts it succinctly – the real image is substituted by a virtual one. The Imaginary and the Symbolic are
therefore not simply opposed as two external entities or levels: within the Imaginary itself, there is
always a point of double reflection at which the Imaginary is, so to speak, hooked on the symbolic.'
Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do, 10.
However, it should be repeated how this entire discussion largely serves only to demonstrate, by way of the mirror stage schema, the general entanglement of the imaginary-hermeneutical field with the symbolic-signifying field and more specifically, how meaningful self-identity is intimately tied up with the a priori meaningless system of signifiers within which the subject is caught. But in commenting on Lacan's re-worked optical model of the mirror stage, Miller raises the question of 'the real object a [which] serves the function of the partial object... We find here a phase that precedes (according to an order of logical dependence) the mirror stage – which presupposes the presence of the real Other.' Miller, "Commentary on the Graphs," 859. That is, as Lacan increasingly turns to explore the real in his final period, it becomes possible to conceive of the radical subversion of the mirror stage schema in its entirety by way of the nonsensical objet a.
576 Slavoj Žižek, “Is There a Cause of the Subject?” in Supposing the Subject, ed. Joan Copjec, pp. 84–105 (London: Verso, 1994)
577 Žižek, “Is There a Cause of the Subject?” 85.
578 One problem is Adorno's 'lack of an explicit concept of the superego.' Žižek, “Is There a Cause of the Subject?” 93. This is highly significant given Lacan's view from his very first seminar onward that this psychic agency is rather sadistic, issuing forth the hypnotic and obscene injunction of 'Enjoy!' to the subject, a command with which the subject finds it utterly impossible to comply. Lacking this notion Adorno effectively overlooks the subversive side of psychoanalysis, its real dimension indexed by objet a (surplus-enjoyment) and thus demotes psychoanalysis to a psychological theory.
579 Žižek, “Is There a Cause of the Subject?” 95.
580 Žižek, “Is There a Cause of the Subject?” 99. Another way to understand the problem with Habermas according to Žižek is that he conceives these distortions only as empirical impediments on the path of the gradual realization of a non-violent mutual understanding. His entire approach is thus modeled on the logic of the Kantian regulative Idea which is achievable only through an asymptotic approach (ibid). Borrowing some wording from Zupančič, such regulative Ideas 'function... to institute the co-ordinates of time and space outside of time and space, and thus to enable an infinite, endless progress.' Zupančič, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan, 82. (See the graph in Figure 6.3 below for a visual presentation of a curve which endlessly approaches its asymptotes). But as seen above these distortions are precisely the way the real manifests itself in the symbolic and so a certain distortion is necessary and inherent to the field of signifiers which make up our language. Faced with the real, hermeneutics – as deep as it may be – is grossly inadequate. As well, the discussion of Lacan's theory of the four discourses above should also make clear how that theory holds to the precise opposite view of Habermas who presupposes that communicative discourse is non-authoritarian and free of constraint in its very notion; in contrast for Lacan, every discourse is marked by an inherent impossibility and haunted by a traumatic object.
581 Slavoj Žižek, “The Eclipse of Meaning: on Lacan and Deconstruction” in Interrogating the Real, eds. Rex Butler and Scott Stephens, pp. 206–30 (London: Continuum, 2005)
582 Žižek, “The Eclipse of Meaning," 210.
583 The reader can easily make this mistake by not working through the second section of this paper which contains the crux of Žižek's theoretical argument to instead immediately turn to its later sections where he provides, among other things, a counter-history to Derrida's own account of the history of Western metaphysics. Via the history of music Žižek shows that it is in fact the voice which has historically dominated over writing. The uncanny voice threatens the established order and history is an account of the endeavor to bring it under control by fixing it into writing so as to regulate its excess and prevent it from accelerating into a consuming self-enjoyment cut loose from its anchoring in meaning. Žižek, “The Eclipse of Meaning," 214ff.
584 Žižek, “The Eclipse of Meaning," 212. The title of this essay is obviously taken from Lacan's own explanation of the vel of alienation (quoted above).
585 It is largely for this reason that the review undertaken in Part I does not separately consider linguistic theory. Husserl, Saussure and Jakobson, whose thought has proven foundational for contemporary linguistics, are indeed present here, but they otherwise satisfy the overriding requirement of the present work that meaning be primarily considered in relation to the (psychoanalytic) subject.
586 Žižek, “The Eclipse of Meaning," 213. This might very well be one of the reasons why academic writing standards require the student to amply cite from primary sources, for it is precisely through the addition of the 'voice' of an established author that the student imbues his otherwise dull prose with a sense of subjective expression. That this 'voice' takes on an object-like quality is clear enough through the customary use of quotation marks which separate out the cited text from the unbound text which surrounds it. But it should also be noted that without this context the cited text would stand alone to convey little, if any, sense.
This equation can also be (at least) minimally manipulated in mathematical fashion to isolate any of the terms. Thus by subtracting 'meaning' from both sides, we arrive at: nonsense = sense – meaning. Here it is easily seen how the nonsensical object is attained by expunging meaning from sensible structure and analogously, how non-hermeneutical phenomenology can be initially approximated as a (post)structuralist project without any overriding hermeneutical concerns.
587 Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008)
588 Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy, 166–7. Said in other words which link this third stage to the trauma inherent to the inaugural stage of primary repression:
'The point is simply that what is traumatic is not the meaning or the content of this [first] signifier. The latter was not repressed because of its content, but in the contingency of the subject emerging in its place. The destiny of the subject is to unfold, through time, as all possible meanings of this signifier, all its masks, to be the life of all these meanings and also, perhaps, to work through them in analysis. But the crucial point is that the subject is not the sum of all these meanings, or simply their inner differentiation qua pure difference, and that her being is dislocated in relation to her meaning' (180).
In terms introduced above, Zupančič here also makes a distinction between subjectivization (the destiny of the subject unfolding its possible meanings) and the Lacanian subject qua pure difference. The point of analysis is to move from the former to the latter, to expunge meaning until all that remains of the subject is a pure point of punctuation.
Moreover, what should not be overlooked is how the forced choice of meaning offers a respite from the alienating grip of the signifying dyad. So while it is correct to say that the subject is alienated in the field of meaning, in a first move meaning acquisition offers the subject breathing space from its own traumatic emergence. This is why Zupančič implies above that in analysis the subject must work through its meanings if it is to gain a minimal distance towards them and thus grasp itself in its 'true' form.
589 Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy, 172. The schism between the child's meaning and being is
visually presented with the framework of the Md: 
where a gap exists between $, the subject of
meaning and a, its being.
590 Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy, 172–3. The child of course is no analyst. If she was she would
directly embody the objet a produced in the Md: , the discourse which organizes the universe of
meaning, so as to place it into the Ad: 
and thereby produce S1 as a loss, thus stopping any further
sliding of meaning.
591 Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy, 181. She continues: 'It is a moment at which it is no longer clear on which side we are standing – are we the audience of a joke, or something in it? Are we spectators of a picture or some spot on it?... Yet again: this disorientation is the effect of some sense emerging in an unexpected place and not, for instance, the effect of an utter loss of sense' (ibid).
592 Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy, 182. Zupančič later in an appendix carefully distinguishes the comic sequence from the functioning of jokes. As she writes: 'At the end of the joke, a Master-Signifier sutures its narrative and semantic field in a surprising manner: it "miraculously" produces a new meaning, bound up with a certain amount of pleasure. The new meaning remains fixed at the end of the joke (or it fixes this joke), and the pleasure is consummated in laughter' (198). It thus seems that while jokes never make it out of the meaningful side of the Md, the comic sequence does take advantage of the more subversive potential found in the product of this same discourse.
593 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Book XX, Encore 1972–1973, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 78–9.
594 Jacques Lacan, December 15th, 1971 session of Seminar XIX: ...Ou pire/ ...Or Worse. Quoted on page 13 of Cormac Gallagher, "Where was Jacques Lacan in 1971–72? ...ou pire and The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst." Paper presented to the 10th annual congress of APPI, 15th November 2003. Downloaded Feb 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/ uploads/2010/06/Spring_2004-WHERE-WAS-JACQUES-LACAN-IN-1971-72.pdf
595 The logical treatises of the Organon include Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations. See Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume One, ed. Jonathan Barnes, pp. 3–314 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). De Interpretatione [On Interpretation] is the Latin translation of the original Greek title Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας or Peri Hermēneias.
596 Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 27.
597 Having thus defined all four logical relationships in the classical logical square, it should be noted that there is nothing which necessitates discussing contradictoriness, contrariety, subcontrariety and subalternation in this particular order. The foregoing presentation was indeed designed to build from what proceeded it so that, say, subcontrariety would be defined without reference to subalternation, but the former could just as easily been demonstrated after the latter was first discussed. Thus to demonstrate that subcontrary propositions cannot both be false, consider that there are only three possibilities. Either 'All S are P,' in which case (by subalternation) 'Some S are P' is also true; 'All S are not P' which likewise implies that 'Some S are not P' is true; or 'Some S are P' and 'Some S are not P' are both true. It follows that at least one of the subcontrary propositions must be true or that both may be true, but not both false.
598 These two strategies of initially proceeding from the knowledge of other academics are clear cases of an 'active pursuit' of such knowledge. Yet apparently 'passively receiving' such knowledge works just as well, at least in the case of Althusser who boasted in his autobiography of having learned philosophy through 'hearsay.' He reports there how he would seriously engage with a philosophical text only after 'gleaning certain phrases in passing from my friends, and... from the seminar papers and essays of my own students.' For Althusser such hearsay was the 'equivalent of taking soundings, from a body of philosophical thinking' and only after being sufficiently armed with such 'philosophical core samples' was he able to begin reading the text in question. Louis Althusser, The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir, trans. Richard Veasey, eds. Olivier Corpet and Yann Moulier Boutang (New York: The New Press, 1993), 166–7.
In contrast to these strategies of first gaining an informed universal grasp of a text with which one is initially unfamiliar, one might engage the opposite strategy of boldly taking up the primary texts to 'organically' arrive at a universal proposition regarding the work. Moreover, there is nothing to prevent the initial position from being formulated negatively in either its universal or particular form. So it should be noted that while the present paragraph examines the circular movement which ensues by initially entering its flow with a universal affirmative position, similar examinations could be had by alternatively taking up any of the other three positions as a first move into the reading process.
599 See Guy Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences (Introduction and Ch 1: "Logic of the Sexual Fault-line"), trans. Cormac Gallagher (c. 2010 [2006]). Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Le-Gaufey-Prologue-and-Faille-of- Notall.pdf; and
Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences (Ch 2), translated by Cormac Gallagher (2008 [2006]) as "Towards a Critical Reading of the Formulae of Sexuation" from the original French version in L'Unebévue, Paris: L'Unebévue ed. (2005), no. 22. Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/TOWARDS-A-CRITICAL-READING- 2506.pdf; and
Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences (Ch 3: "Some Clinical Consequences of the Logical Difference between the Sexes"), trans. Cormac Gallagher (c. 2010 [2006]). Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Pastout-Clinic-09-2506.pdf
Unfortunately, only Chapter 3 of Lacan's Notall is paginated, numbering from 1–50. While an effort is made to identify the section within which cited material can be found for Chapters 1 and 2, the 'PDF' page number is also provided. Chapter 1 has PDF numeration from 1–37, Chapter 2 has PDF numeration from 1–52 (with pages 51 and 52 being blank). In all cases a page citation is preceded by chapter number. E.g., Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 43.
600 Presupposing that the maximal reading of the particular involves an indivisible remainder which refuses to be taken up into the universal would no doubt form part of a productive approach to reading chapter 1 of Lacan's Notall where Le Gaufey situates the medieval quarrel about universals against the eternal question of sexual difference.
601 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 28.
602 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 20. Copjec writes much clearer on this point: 'Lacan abandons two of the terms of classical logical...; instead of subject and predicate, he uses the terms argument and function.' Copjec, "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason," 215. This is explained in the ensuing discussion.
Moreover, a confirmation that Lacan makes this substitution could also readily be had by examining any of the earlier sets of formulae as they too reflect this most obvious change to the classical logical square: the abandonment of the readily understandable format of 'S is P' for a writing which employs an initially quite obscure series of symbols which Lacan uniquely constructs from established algebraic and logical symbols (i.e., his mathemes). These same mathemes are used from their initial introduction in 1971 to the finalized formulae of 1972. However, what does change over the course of this year is their actual arrangement or more specifically, the differing ways Lacan has chosen to express the quantity and quality of each proposition with the given array of mathemes at his disposal. The reader interested in Lacan's development of these formulae is directed to Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, pp. 19–26.
603 Michael Beaney, "Introduction” in The Frege Reader, ed. Michael Beaney (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1997), 10.
604 Symbolic castration is discussed in a different but closely related context in Section 5.3 above. Here the more general connection is drawn between (the signifier of) castration and the failure of signifying systems to move to completion due to their inability to represent themselves in their signifying capacity. The difficulty in conceiving Lacan's notion of castration is eased somewhat by noting how a common phenomenon experienced by most speaking beings precisely illustrates the castrating effects of language. This phenomenon involves the extraordinary difficulty in saying exactly what one intends to say. No matter how well we speak, there always seems to be something left unsaid, a remainder of sorts that resists being articulated into language. But as well the obverse experience is equally true, for we just as often find ourselves 'saying too much,' over and above what we intend to say. Such 'Freudian slips of the tongue' (as they are commonly known) often leave us quite embarrassed and at times expose us to an unconscious truth that was perhaps better left unsaid. This experience of saying (and writing) too little and too much is due to the phallic function and Lacan's propositions can be read as precisely inscribing four different relations the speaking subject may strike towards it. The entire trajectory of Part I above could then be productively retraced with this in mind, broadly identifying the predominate stance each writer takes to the phallic function, or else a particular writer could be scrutinized, closely following his text as it strikes different relations to the phallic function which might allow, moreover, for the possibility of moving that text towards relations that are omitted.
605 '[W]hat about the square proposed by Lacan, even if he does not take the trouble to construct it as such? It can be depicted as follows...'. Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 32. The cosmetic difference between the Lacanian logical square Le Gaufey presents on this page and Figure 6.2 is explained below.
606 See Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Book XX, Encore 1972–1973, 78.
607 As Le Gaufey notes, the term '[d]eixis is the name in the logical square for the elements that are ranked on the same side.' Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 39n50.
608 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 20.
609 Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2012), 761–2. Due to a typographical error, the Roman numeral referencing Lacan's seminar in footnote 31 on page 762 should read 'IX' rather than 'XI.'
610 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 22.
611 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 21n28.
612 Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 333.
613 There is no shortage of helpful examples to illustrate Russell's paradox. One of the traditional examples is related on pages 30–1 of Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). There Fink considers the status of a catalogue of all catalogues which do not include themselves within their own pages. According to this criterion a catalogue would be selected only if it did not include its own title in the list of titles it provides of other catalogues. Now, should the editor include the title of this catalogue of all catalogues within its own pages? Not to include it would make it a catalogue which does not include itself as an entry, so it should be included. But to include it makes it a catalogue which does include itself as an entry, so it should not be included. The upshot is that it is impossible to ascertain what such a catalogue contains or does not within its pages. Its status is thoroughly paradoxical. An alternative example comes from Hallward: 'Consider, for instance, the analogy of a village barber who shaves only those people in the village who do not shave themselves. Does the barber, then, shave himself? We must conclude that there can be no straightforward answer. But the fundamental assumptions of intensional set theory seem to bar us from saying that there can be no such paradoxical set.' Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 333.
614 Žižek, Less Than Nothing, 488–9. The further argument is made that the political 'Left and Right are not simply two options within a field, but two different visions of the entire field.' That is, Žižek has often drawn a direct homology between the split of political space into Left and Right and the split of the sexual into the difference between the feminine and the masculine, respectively. Žižek concisely illustrates this homology via Lévi-Strauss' analysis of the two possible perceptions by the Great Lakes tribe of the Winnebago regarding the spatial disposition of the buildings in their village in Slavoj Žižek, "Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, Please!" in Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000), 112–3. This homology lends incidental credence to having reversed the two sides of the Lacanian logical square in Figure 6.2, for now the feminine pair of formulae more properly occupy the Left deixis while the masculine pair stands to the Right.
615 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 35. This is a rather
curious statement given the title of Le Gaufey's work which seems to recognize that Lacan's greatest
contribution lay with the particular negative. Placing his highpoint with the latter would be more
consistent with what Lacan himself claimed as his single greatest discovery in psychoanalysis, viz., the
object a which, as is more clearly seen in Chapter 7 below, is the matheme from discourse theory most
closely associated with 
. However, regardless with which of the four propositions Le Gaufey places
the crucial accent, his analysis is fruitful for having suggested how the very operation of the universal
negative is what opens up the 'space' of the logical square. This is further discussed immediately below.
616 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 34.
617 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 35. While more clearly
articulated in Chapter 7 below, it can already be seen how the matheme from discourse theory most
closely associated with the 'nothing' that is inscribed by 
is $, the Lacanian subject.
618 This is analogous to how an 'object' must first exist so as to permit the conception of the space it delimits, yet logically speaking the empty space comes first and is only 'later' occupied by the object.
619 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 36. Here are Le Gaufey's words on this issue, reproduced in full so as to reemphasize this important point:
'Lacan shows that he is aware of the fact that if one wants to undermine the dualities Man/Woman, Yin/Yang, XX/XY, penised/unpenised etc., one must not hesitate to damage their logical underpinnings, since he is sure that logic, in its own foundation, is much more "gendered" (because of its fundamental binarity) than "sexed." It is important to be convinced of this point, otherwise one will miss the intuition that pushes him to bring together "logical fault" and "sexual fault." For him sex touches on logic, but logic touches just as much on sex. So that reconnecting them with one another illuminates the one and the other, the one by the other, while the couples of opposites sustain logics of the kind (man/woman, active/passive, etc.) which, for their part seek to articulate themselves without fault, and without remainder.'
620 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 38n49. Le Gaufey opposes Lacan qua existentialist to the tendency in the literature to place his thought within structuralist theory, although he is careful to note that Lacanian existentialism is not of the Sartrean type but is rather more in line with Blaise Pascal and Søren Kierkegaard.
621 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 39.
622 To Le Gaufey's point that 'The woman does not exist' (or alternatively denoted with a capital 'W' as in 'Woman does not exist') which expresses the missing universal in the speaking being, it would be legitimate to add how the missing essence has long since been captured by the 'male chauvinist' insight into how 'woman has no soul.' See Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 41.
623 Le Gaufey remarks 'that the universal (that there is no question of doing without, it is what allows us to write with complete security) maintains with the exception a relationship that Lacan to my mind, does not manage to clarify in the course of these two seminars, Of a Discourse that might not be a Semblance [Seminar XVIII] and ...or worse [Seminar XIX].' Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 41. While Le Gaufey does travel outside these two seminars in search of clues on how to conceive of this relationship (as is seen in what immediately follows), according to Fierens it is nevertheless the case that 'Le Gaufey remains at a certain level of the notall, in other words principally at the seminar ...ou pire [Seminar XIX], of 1971–1972.' Christian Fierens, "The Fact of Saying Notall with Reference to Le Gaufey's Work: Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences" trans. Cormac Gallagher, The Letter 38 (2008), no pagination. See PDF page 6. Downloaded Feb 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Autumn-2008-103-121-1.pdf Fierens, whose work is extensively taken up in Chapter 7 below, thus seems to suspect that Le Gaufey has placed the crucial accent on propositions other than the Not-all, despite the title of the latter's work. As per Fierens this can be corrected by more closely examining the 1972 text L'étourdit which reflects certain advances in Lacan's thought regarding how the formulae of sexuation might be read.
624 See Jacques Lacan, L'étourdit (First Turn), trans. Cormac Gallagher, pp. 1–21 (July 2009 [1972]). Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/etourdit-First-turn-Final-Version2.pdf; and
Jacques Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), trans. Cormac Gallagher pp. 1–24 (May 2010 [1972]). Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/etourdit-Second-turn-Final-Version4.pdf
625 Lacan, L'étourdit (First Turn), 11. As both Le Gaufey and Fierens note, there is an obvious error in the
text in that the function 
= 
is not exponential but hyperbolic.
626 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 44. This logic is of course not limited to the world of religion but permeates the very core of philosophy, as seen in Section 4.2 above. There the homology between the Kantian dynamical logic of the sublime and the masculine sexuated logic of Lacan was put into play. More specifically the inaccessible noumenal realm which acts as the constitutive exception to phenomenal reality, providing both its support and ultimate guarantee, was illustrated by contrasting the aesthetic theory of Lyotard against that of Rancière.
While on the topic of Kant it should be noted in passing how the graph in Figure 6.3 nicely illustrates the Kantian regulative Idea which, as discussed in Žižek's critique of Habermas in Section 5.3 above, is only achievable through an asymptotic approach. In this way an illusory space is held open for the subject who conceives his project as one involving infinite and endless progress.
In contrast to this reading which excludes the exceptional 
from the set of so that it provides a
clear limit, Le Gaufey argues in what follows how the exception might alternatively be conceived as
included in the set of while simultaneously also operating as the limit to that set, much like how a
topological figure includes its edge (44). This is the case with the möbius strip of Figure 5.5 above.
627 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 45. Le Gaufey has already acknowledged that such universals hold a certain necessity in the realm of writing (41) and this indispensability, we must now add, is functionally true despite their illusory quality.
628 For this reason S1 is the matheme from discourse theory most closely associated with 
and S2, all the other signifiers from which it sticks out, is the matheme likewise associated with 
. These
associations are more fully explored in Chapter 7 below.
629 It is easily seen mathematically how denying the presence of a given mark arrives at its absence by considering how the subtraction of 1 from 1 results in 0, but denying the resulting absence in no way guarantees a return to the same mark of 1. This can also be seen at a more fundamental level with reference to the Axiom of the Empty Set which is one of nine axioms of set theory that compose the very foundation of mathematics. It states that the empty or null set ∅ exists and it can be arrived at by denying the signifying mark which allows a group of elements to be collectivized into a set; the resulting elements would no longer be a set but instead loosely grouped in a domain. Here is the movement from the right to the left deixis. But there is no assurance of returning to that signifying mark by denying this domain; rather, a set would have to be made of this domain to do so. Abstractly said, a One emerges from the domain of the Other in just this way.
Incidentally, counting with numbers proceeds precisely in this manner, which can be characterized as a creatio ex nihilo. For the number 1 is arrived at not by negating the empty set ∅ but by taking the set of the empty set ∅, and since the empty set ∅ is universal in the sense of always being included in all other sets, subsequent sets of these sets can continue ad infinitum and the infinity of cardinal numbers is assured. Thus, {∅} would designate 1, {∅, {∅}} would designate 2, {∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} designates 3, {∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}, {∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}}} designates 4...etc... Note how the brackets in set theory function as punctuation. Just as in logic and language in general, once things get complicated the establishment of a method of systematized punctuation becomes essential if we are to find our way and derive a sense from what is being written.
630 It is almost as if the square has anticipated the approach of the subject, much like in mathematics which remains immune to its critics who point out that its entire field would collapse if only another set of a priori principles had been chosen. To which the mathematician need only reply that 'That's entirely the point!' and point out that among its nine axioms of set theory is precisely the Axiom of Choice which states quite simply that the function of choice exists. This is the precise concept of the being (not act) of subjective intervention and lying as it does at the foundation of mathematics this axiom amounts to making a choice regarding choice itself. With this axiom it begins to become clear how mathematics is self-grounding and dependent on a subject – which with Lacan is $ and so effectively equated with ∅. A general difference between axiomatic set theory and the Lacanian logical square is that the latter goes one better, endeavoring to also inscribe the 'mistaken' view of the non-mathematician/logician so as to articulate its relationship to the 'correct' view.
631 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 8. The aliquot designates a part of a number that divides the number evenly and leaves no remainder. The number 8 is such a part of 24. The aliquant designates a part of a number that does not divide the number evenly but leaves a remainder. The number 8 is such a part of 25.
632 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 11–2. In contrast to his chapter 2 where it seems Le Gaufey often places the crucial accent with the universal negative (which conflicts with the title of his work), on these two pages he quite expressly places that accent on the particular negative in order to make sense of the internal writing of the four propositions.
633 Indeed this is the case if is associated with S2, the matheme shown in Section 5.3 above to
denote knowledge. So undermining the universal simultaneously undermines the possibility that
knowledge is so easily transferable.
634 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 17.
635 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 19.
636 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 20.
637 See Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 25–6. Once again Le Gaufey seems to discuss this graph as if Lacan intended it to capture both sides of his logical square. But as previously noted its introduction in L'étourdit comes when Lacan first discusses the two propositions of the right deixis. For this reason it is safe to assume that it is only meant to illustrate their relation.
638 Moreover, the impression from the graph is that the exception algebraic symbol = 0 is singular when clearly the
existential quantifier of reads as 'at least one' or 'some' and can thus be understood not just as a
singular exception but as a plural exception as well.
639 Note that not affirming the existence of the antecedent term is not the same as actively denying it, for the latter would lead to the fallacy known as 'denying the antecedent.' To illustrate, consider the hypothetical proposition 'If there is fire, then there is oxygen.' By affirming there is fire, it is sufficient to conclude there is oxygen, but by denying there is fire, one cannot conclude that there is or is not oxygen. For completeness sake, there are two other possibilities. What is known as 'affirming the consequent' similarly leads to a fallacy, for by affirming there is oxygen, one cannot conclude that there is or is not fire. But the hypothetical syllogism which denies the consequent leads to an entirely valid conclusion. Called modus tollens [Latin, 'mode of taking away'], by denying there is oxygen, one can conclude there is no fire, for the consequent is a necessary condition of the antecedent.
640 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 27.
641 As already indicated, this is in keeping with the practice in academia that when an author's name is invoked, it is tacitly understood that the speaker/writer is referring to the body of work penned by that author. The following discussion provides the logical underpinnings as to why such an understanding can remain unspoken; that is, what Frege and then Lacan inscribe in logical terms is the very possibility for such a conventional shorthand. The usual explanation that this shorthand is culturally-contextually determined stands as a secondary consideration which only concretizes this a priori possibility.
642 See Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 33-7.
643 To exemplify this, the author of the present work is acquainted with a former analysand who recounted to his analyst a memory he had as a child defacing the surface of a wall in his childhood home. He had drawn a multi-celled structure and in each cell had written a name of one of his family members including his own. The explanation to his analyst was the same one given to his father at the time: 'It's a place where we can leave and pick up messages from the others.' For the analysis to be successful, it had to follow this latent thought through its transformation into the manifest content of the drawing and for argument's sake, let the operating thesis within which this proceeded be stated as 'All sons want to be like their fathers.' Indeed his father was a postman and the possibility that this episode was nothing more than a charming example of a young boy unknowingly emulating his father was the conclusion both the analysand and analyst initially arrived at in the analysis. Yet the troubling detail of distinct and isolated cells within which the names were written returned again and again to the analysand's speech. The latent thought eventually gave way to a much more troubling thought, that the drawing emphasized how no one in his family was truly talking, as if everyone had somehow been silenced into their own separate worlds. The work of analysis linked this silence to the silence that would ensue upon his father's arrival home from work each evening, a time when each family member became afraid of making too much noise for fear of upsetting him. The drawing of the analysand thus also reflected his father's desire for silence as much as it formed a protest against it. Accordingly, a new thesis would have to be written, one that would perhaps also encompass the less cheerful fact that sons often emulate fathers even to the point of conflicting desires.
644 See Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 38ff.
645 A paradoxical statement because if I speak truly when I say I am speaking falsely, I am speaking falsely. But if I am speaking falsely when I say I am speaking falsely, I am speaking truly. So what I say is true if (and only if) it is false, which seems absurd. Sometimes written in the form 'This statement is false' which is equally paradoxical as it seems to be false if true, and true if false, the advantage of the form 'I am lying' is that it highlights the subjective elements which allow for the Lacanian 'solution' to this paradox to more readily be appreciated, viz., the Lacanian notion that the subject is split between his enunciation and his statement. That is, it is only to the extent that these two levels are confused that we find ourselves in a paradox (as in the case of traditional logic which fails to make this distinction, in contrast to the Lacanian square which endeavors to inscribe this very confusion itself in logical form). In everyday discourse the comprehension of such statements is usually had without any difficulty. They are entirely admissible precisely because we implicitly make such a distinction between these two levels whenever we hear or read these statements.
646 Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 3, p. 39.
647 The two positions alternately occupied by Epimenides quite effectively illustrates the difference between obsessional neurosis and hysteria which Žižek has characterized in the following fashion: 'the obsessional neurotic lies in the guise of truth (while at the level of factual accuracy his statements are always true, he uses this factual accuracy to dissimulate the truth about his desire...), while the hysteric tells the truth in the guise of a lie (the truth of my desire articulates itself in the very distortions of the "factual accuracy" of my speech: when, say, instead of "I thereby open this session," I say "I thereby close this session," my desire clearly comes out...).' Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), 36–7. An example of the obsessional neurotic would be the office prankster who is accused of pulling a well-orchestrated prank which he did not, in fact, commit. When he rationally explains to his accusers how he was not even in town when the prank occurred and so cannot possibly be held to account, at a factual level he tells the truth, yet this 'truth' is propagated to conceal the fact that the prank realized his desire. The not-quite-repressible smile that might emerge during his self-defense bears witness to this lie and would be visible to all, but it could easily be misread as proof that the lie subsists at the factual level.
648 For instance: the set of all cats is not a cat, the set of all guns is not a gun...
649 This is the same with the predicate 'Heideggerian' which is less like 'tall' and more like 'membership' or 'truth' in being doubly-inscribed. Recall from Part I how 'being Heideggerian' was to express a concern with the a priori dimension to any subject-object dichotomy, a mark which was clearly borne in some fashion by the likes of Bultmann, Ebeling, Gadamer and Palmer. In linguistic terms, the subject-object dichotomy translates as subject-predicate. But the sense in which the object or predicate 'overtakes' the statement within which it finds itself (and thus doubles itself by being in two positions at once) is not unique to the predicate 'Heideggerian.' For after Heidegger's conception of such an a priori dimension, all other predicates can potentially be read as doubly-inscribed and so threaten their propositions by a similar paradox. The difficulty here is to conceive these predicates as Fregean functions which release this potential the moment the interpreter no longer overlooks his own subjectivity in the matter at hand. Thus it must be recognized that to judge whether a particular passage of Gadamer can or cannot be subsumed under the universal 'All of Gadamer is Heideggerian' is to set into play the interpreter's own Heideggerian-ism, such as it is. These considerations were implicitly in place during the examination above of the predicate 'mortal' which put into play a similar paradox the moment the speaker recognized the incongruence between his own pretentions to immortality and his uttered statement 'All men are mortal.'
650 This possibility that both propositions in the right deixis are true despite the contradiction between them is a reiteration of Copjec's original finding which Žižek has thoroughly followed in many of his books: since there is a structural homology between Kant's dynamical antinomies and Lacan's masculine set of sexuated formulae, the latter can be handled in exactly the same way Kant resolved the former in the Critique of Pure Reason; roughly speaking, Copjec invites us to view the two formulae as inscribing two radically different levels so that the truth of one does not necessarily interfere with the truth of the other, just as in the case of the phenomenal and noumenal realms in Kantian philosophy. See Copjec, "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason," 228ff.
651 Charles Melman, "What Thrilled Me in Fierens' Book," trans. Cormac Gallagher, The Letter 41 (2009), 128. Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CM-CG-Trans-Lettter-41.pdf
652 As written, the title L'étourdit is a neologism. Derived from the substantive form of the adjective étourdi, the noun l'étourdi (without the 't') refers to someone who is thoughtless, dazed, dizzy, inattentive, or distracted. In common parlance such a person might be referred to as a scatterbrain or a blunderer. Now, the addition of the final 't' at the written level amounts to little more than a spelling error. So to begin understanding what is captured by the term l'étourdit, one might instead turn to the phonetic level. But as spoken the neologism effectively disappears, for l'étourdit and l'étourdi are pronounced exactly the same because the final 't' is silent in French. In the end the reader is forced to hear the title as les-tours-dits (similarly pronounced, this literally translates as 'the-turns-said') in order to grasp a modicum of its meaning without, of course, losing sight of the fact that those who complete such a circuit of 'saids' are blunderers nonetheless.
653 In this way a 'figure eight' resembling Figure 5.5 above has been traced through the logical square.
Incidentally, this sequence of negations can be used to articulate the overall logic in play with respect to the present study. Roughly speaking, the first two chapters of Part I present hermeneutical phenomenology qua universal methodology of textual analysis, which is then negated by the third chapter on (post)structuralism which delimits an exceptional dimension to the reign of this universal. But with the fourth and especially fifth chapters, the contradiction between the first two poles is itself negated. The sequence thus proceeds Herm Phen → not Herm Phen → non-Herm Phen. (Note that the negation which denies the exception cannot be filled with a positive term and is thus impossible to represent; that is, it must itself vanish in order to function as that which 'clears the space' for the presence of the other terms). The difference between the two negations should be clear: where the first negation results in something definitely 'not hermeneutical phenomenological' such as (post)structuralism, the further negation has indefinite results. Žižek has often alerted us to the fact that such a difference is captured by Kant's discussion of the infinite judgment as opposed to the negative judgment in his first Critique (cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A71/B97). As Žižek explains, any positive judgment like 'the soul is mortal' or 'he is dead' or 'he is human' can be negated by directly denying the predicate to the subject. Accordingly, 'the soul is not mortal' and 'he is not dead' and 'he is not human.' This is the negative judgment and it does result in something definite. For instance, 'he is not human' externalizes the subject with respect to humanity, positing him as either animal or divine. But the infinite judgment negates by affirming a non-predicate. Accordingly, 'the soul is non-mortal' and 'he is un-dead' and 'he is inhuman.' With the infinite judgment an indefinite third domain is opened up which undermines the distinction between the previous two judgments. Hence to be 'undead' is to be neither alive nor dead but the monstrous 'living dead' well-captured by the figure of the zombie of popular culture (just as to be 'inhuman' marks the subject neither as 'human' nor 'not human' but with a terrifying excess inherent to being-human – something explored by Lyotard in his similarly titled book examined in Section 4.2 above). See, for example, p. 162 of Slavoj Žižek, “Fichte’s Laughter” in Mythology, Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism, eds. Markus Gabriel and Slavoj Žižek, pp. 122–67 (London: Continuum, 2009).
Thus, the fact that the present study seeks to theorize a non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach to textual analysis (as per its title) should not simply be read as taking an external distance from hermeneutical phenomenology by championing a method either already established like (post)structuralism or one it seeks to newly develop. But neither is the distance taken a simple doubling of that initial external distance, as if the addition of another 'degree of freedom' (i.e., the positioning of another methodological parameter between itself and hermeneutical phenomenology) would affect the proper methodological stance. Rather, the two negations resulting in non-hermeneutical phenomenology is the alignment with that which is already inherent to hermeneutical phenomenology. Any subversion of the latter's methodology would then come from within so that if one must speak of 'distance,' this must be understood as a self-distance. The additional consequence of this strategy is that nothing definitive can be said of the non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach. Here the Heideggerian stance of 'active passivity' which eschews holding out hope for a positive determination recommends itself – certain to frustrate any subject whose expectations are otherwise. For the approach championed here is rather parasitic, putting into play the terms of the field it seeks to undermine and subvert (and thus tears a page out of the book of Lacan who follows the methodology of Plato and Kant in taking the sophistry of his time and using it against itself and who, as we know, has inspired men like Badiou and Žižek to do much the same). And to the extent that this approach is already in play in the present study (and not only being theorized), the impact on its subject moves beyond frustration towards unleashing that excessive jouissance which attends any infinite judgment.
654 This raises an interesting possibility, expressible in terms discussed in the first two chapters of Part I. For if the epistemological dimension could be said to oppose from the right deixis the ontological dimension inscribed in the left, this would legitimize using the logical square to frame the debates in hermeneutical phenomenology over the question of methodology.
655 Lacan, L'étourdit (First Turn), 18.
656 A clarification is in order. As already noted, topology is a branch of set theory so strictly speaking the shift in question is not from set theory to topology but from that aspect of set theory which concerns the formation of sets. This specific aspect was chiefly the extent to which set theory was put into play in the discussions of the logical square in Chapter 6 above.
657 Indeed that Lacan's writings should be deciphered as rebuses is a generally held belief amongst Lacanians. But it has often been said how L'étourdit stands out as his most difficult. Le Gaufey speaks of it as Lacan's 'ultra-cryptic écrit' (Le Gaufey, Lacan's Notall: Logical Consistency, Clinical Consequences, Ch 2, p. 47) while Fierens notes the exceptional status of L'étourdit on the opening page of his commentary on it, telling us that for him, this 'particularly obscure and enigmatic' text for years 'resisted decipherment.' See page 3 of Christian Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (First Turn), trans. Cormac Gallagher (c. 2010 [2002]). Downloaded Feb 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/FIRST-TURN-ALL-CHAPTERS-FINAL-VERSION.pdf
The second half of this book-length commentary will be cited from Christian Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (Second Turn), trans. Cormac Gallagher (June 2010 [2002]). Downloaded Feb 5, 2013. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/SECOND-TURN-ALL-CHAPTERS-FINAL-VERSION.pdf
The exceptional difficulty of L'étourdit is also witnessed by the colorful account of Melman who had originally received from Lacan this 'repugnant' text with the desire that it be published in his own review Scilicet (which it eventually was). Melman reports how he 'had given it back to him [Lacan] telling him that it was an absolutely unreadable, impossible text; that no one would ever understand anything in it; and that the sense of such a publication seemed to me to be absolutely not obvious.' Melman, "What Thrilled Me in Fierens' Book," 121.
658 Lacan, L'étourdit (First Turn), 18.
659 This is graphically seen in Figure 6.3 above where the curve of the hyperbolic function occupies a region bounded by its asymptotes.
660 Fierens, "The Fact of Saying Notall with Reference to Le Gaufey's Work," 11.
661 Lacan, L'étourdit (First Turn), 1.
662 See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A290–2/B346–9.
663 See Fierens, "The Fact of Saying Notall with Reference to Le Gaufey's Work," 13–4.
664 St Thomas Aquinas, Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House, 1948), 533.
665 Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (First Turn), 5. Fierens is well aware of this dimension and the privileged place this text of Lacan's occupies in this respect: 'L'étourdit is the primary form that diverts us from our conscious semantics, it is the apparition of the unconscious in the dimension of non-sense, and it opens up a beyond of common meaning' (5). Moreover, 'L'étourdit will deal with psychoanalytic interpretation. How will it deal with it? In what manner? In the manner of an interpretation: L'étourdit interprets interpretation' (11). This nonsense, this dimension which involves interpreting interpretation whose objectivity is conditional on not hearing it from meaning alone, is readily approachable through topology and Fierens' work here is superb. Indeed, this dissertation is in as great a debt to Fierens for having worked through Lacan's topological moves as it is with Le Gaufey for his account of the Aristotelian heritage of the Lacanian logical square and for his explication of the intricate relations between the propositions of that square.
666 Žižek, Less Than Nothing, 794–5.
667 It will be recalled from Section 6.2 above how the ordering of the propositions of the two quadrants in the right deixis were reversed from Lacan's popular presentation of them in Seminar XX in order to construct a logical square directly comparable to the classical Aristotelian version. So by interchanging them once again they revert back to the way they are usually presented as per the table of sexuation. (This interchange will be assumed from now on whenever the Lacanian logical square is spoken of in toto as a discourse).
Of course Žižek need not worry about these particular details, working as he does directly from
the table of sexuation and not the logical square. Yet in doing so another problem arises. For by reading
directly off the table of sexuation the arrangement is 
which is not one of the four discourses.
No matter how many 90° turns are made, no legitimate discourse will emerge. But by simply reversing
the two sides of the table of sexuation this problem is instantly resolved – yet another advantage for
having done just that from Section 6.2 onward.
668 Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (First Turn), 21.
669 Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (First Turn), 22.
670 'Each of the three non-analytic discourses is established thanks to its own meaning-relationship: the academic discourse finds its stability in the necessary, the master discourse in the impossible, the hysterical discourse in contingency.' Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (First Turn), 24.
671 More directly stated in terms held from Chapter 6 onward, the thesis 'Gadamer is Heideggerian' (S2) becomes the agent in the Ud on condition that it takes up again its truth that 'There is (at least one) text of Gadamer that is not Heideggerian' (S1). With a quarter turn to the Md this problematic passage of Gadamer that is not Heideggerian puts to work the thesis in the sense of offering it a challenge. While another quarter turn produces the Hd where this passage is itself put to work to produce the very thesis in question. This illustrates the a priori nature of this discourse which subsists in the left deixis of the logical square, as well as its productive capacity to extend the epistemological field – something which Freud was one of the first to recognize.
672 Such an argument is not new. Recall from Section 4.2 above how Rancière correctly charges the Lyotardian aesthetic project's preoccupation with meaninglessness as itself too meaningful a project.
673 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A334/B391.
674 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 1.
675 René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Volume 1, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, pp. 1–49 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967)
676 René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. and ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
677 Statements by Lacan himself that testify to his accomplishment in this respect abound throughout his later work. For instance, in discussing the dual quality of objet a as both real and imaginary, Lacan says in Seminar XX:
'The affinity of a to its [imaginary] envelope is one of the major conjunctions put forward by psychoanalysis. To me it essentially introduces a point about which we must be suspicious. This is where the real distinguishes itself. The real can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse of formalization. That is why I thought I could provide a model of it using mathematical formalization, inasmuch as it is the most advanced elaboration we have by which to produce signifierness. The mathematical formalization of signifierness runs counter to meaning – I almost said "à contre-sens" [counter meaning/direction]. In our times, philosophers of mathematics say "it means nothing" concerning mathematics, even when they are mathematicians themselves, like Russell.' Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Book XX, Encore 1972–1973, 93.
678 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 5.
679 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 14.
680 See pp. 30–4 of Plato, Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1999).
681 See Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 196–7, 205. Also see Jacques Lacan, "Position of the Unconscious" in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 716–7.
682 Besides the above quote there are other passing references to the sphere in L'étourdit that imply Lacan understands it as the topological figure of the universal. For instance, he writes that 'a spherical topology [is] the one that sustains the universal, the as-for-all: the topology of the universe.' Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 4. This citation is modified with the translation by Jack W. Stone, et al. See p. 17 of Jacques Lacan, L'étourdit, trans. Jack W. Stone, et al. Downloaded February 5, 2013. http://web.missouri.edu/~stonej/L'Etourdit.pdf.
683 More specifically, each of these is an example of a '2-manifold' defined as a topological space that locally resembles 2-dimensional Euclidean space. This is easily understood in the case of the sphere by noting how the earth is sufficiently large so as to appear flat to the inhabitants on its surface. But in the other three cases this is not so easy. Yet moving away from the strict occupation of a meta-position which takes in the entire topological figure 'at a glance' to instead experience its local 2-dimensional surface is precisely what is needed to appreciate Lacan's work with these figures. This is why he often asks his listeners to imagine the perspective afforded to a small insect as it travels the surface of a torus or a mӧbius strip and to contemplate what lessons this holds for us beings who nevertheless simultaneously occupy the meta-position perspective on these figures. Here the powers of the imagination become indispensible and supplement any experience gained through actively manipulating these figures as per Lacan's instructions.
It is interesting to note that many introductory topology textbooks contain a discussion of manifolds in the context of cosmology. The central question entertained concerns speculation on the very shape of the universe which is taken as a spatial slice of 4-dimensional space-time. Since space appears locally to be 3-dimensional the assumption is that our spatial universe is a 3-manifold, although which 3- manifold is cause for speculation. The examination of the leading 3-manifold contenders is thought to help in determining the actual structure of the universe, much like ancient observations (like how the mast was the last part of a ship to disappear on the horizon as it sailed away from shore) indicated that the earth was not flat but curved. But knowing that locally the surface of the earth is 2-dimensional (implying it is a 2-manifold) did not preclude the shape of the earth from being, say, a torus rather than a sphere. Thus historically for a time speculation could theoretically ensue on the exact shape of the earth, just as it does now with the universe as a whole. Such is the current state of cosmological thinking on the shape of the universe. In the face of such speculation on which of the variety of 3-manifolds is the likely candidate for the actual shape of the universe, Lacan's work with manifolds of one dimension less appears quite modest. Or does it? Speculating on the ultimate shape of the universe seems to open itself to the Kantian critique which would indict it for overlooking the regulative aspect of the transcendental idea of contemplating the universe as a whole. In this sense Lacan need not move onto higher dimensions: aligning one's thought with the 2-manifold suffices to think the very shape of the universe itself. This is one way to understand a claim Žižek often makes of both Hegel and Lacan, viz., that they are not to be understood as going 'deeper' than the philosophies which preceded them, but rather are thinkers who stick much more closely to the 'surface' of things.
684 This explains the ambiguity regarding the precise shape that Aristophanes has in mind during his speech which seems to suggest both spherical and circular beings: primordial Man is spherical and when split, each of the two hemispheres are topologically equivalent to the disk which of course need not be perfectly circular. Hence the popular conception of this myth which has it that man occupies a semicircle whose jagged diametrical edge matches up with the complimentary edge of the semicircle of woman such that when the two meet up a perfect circle results.
685 Above topological equivalence or homeomorphism was introduced by way of defining topology as rubber-sheet geometry. The implication was that as long as a topological space was not cut, any stretching or twisting of the space results in a topologically equivalent space. Yet while our intuition and imagination confirms this to be true, nevertheless such a confirmation process is insufficient. For the notion of homeomorphism moves beyond what can be grasped by these human faculties. To appreciate this one must get their hands dirty and perform an actual topological operation. A simple exercise should suffice to demonstrate this (although it should be understood that this can easily be complicated so as to require using an accounting system to keep track of the changes being made): if a simple band of paper is cut, a narrow strip of paper results; but if the cut is sutured back together with points along either side of the cut matching as they did before the cut, the simple band of paper is restored. Of course this is quite obvious. But matching the points up as they did before the cut is equally satisfied if a full 360° twist (or whole multiples thereof) is made to the strip before the ends are sutured. The resulting band with a full twist is topologically equivalent to the original band with no twist; the former is simply a different embedding of the latter into Euclidean space. Yet it will be noticed how they cannot be deformed from one to the other as rubber sheets. For the cutting operation which momentarily destroys equivalence is necessary to move from one figuration of this topological space to the other. This fact takes on greater significance below when the cut as such is equated with the subject, reminding us interpreters never to overlook our own interpretive activity. But for the moment it suffices to note how intuition and imagination, which thrive in the meaningful realm of images, both fail to grasp an equivalence constituted in a realm holding no meaning. This reconfirms in topological terms the basic argument from Chapter 3 above regarding the existence of a meaningless structural dimension.
686 To clarify, a boundary is an edge which could be created with a cut. So as long as the surface of a torus or a sphere remains intact (closed), they are both examples of manifolds with no boundaries. Thus, for example, severing the ring of a torus in one place through its core would destroy this characteristic, as it would create two boundaries or edges at each end (this operation effectively transforms a torus into a cylinder); likewise puncturing or cutting the sphere in any way transforms it into a manifold with boundaries.
687 Fierens' introduction to the topological discussion found in L'étourdit reminds us that Lacan in the 1960s had repeatedly utilized such a path traveled around the torus to visually illustrate the difference between demand (the repeated spirals around the core of the torus) and desire (the repetition of demands simultaneously carries out a turn around the central axis of the torus). See Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (Second Turn), 8–9. This also brings to mind how Lacan made use of the torus as early as 1953: the fact that its 'peripheral exteriority and central exteriority constitute but one single region' generally problematizes the distinction between inside and outside. More specifically, that the center of gravity of the torus falls outside the space inscribed by its surface makes it an apt illustration of the decentered nature of the subject. See Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," 264.
688 There appears to be an error in Fierens' text which reads that what must be produced is 'a single fold which goes through two turns of the core of the torus before coming back to its starting point.' It should instead read as '...two turns of the axis of the torus...' See Fierens, Reading L'étourdit: Lacan 1972 (Second Turn), 10.
689 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 1.
690 Although these distinctive operations we are asked to perform on the torus – from the pinching procedure that deflates it with a one-half twist, to the subsequent cut which follows the resultant single fold so that a bipartite strip is produced – are entirely possible, from a practical-logistical standpoint the procurement of suitable materials to actually carry them out nevertheless proves difficult. Yet it is crucial to physically perform as many of these operations as possible and having a working model of the bipartite strip is quite helpful, especially if we hope to continue following Lacan in his moves which from this point on only increase in complexity.
Now, like all figures encountered in the sequence 
→ 
→ 
→ 
, the bipartite strip can be
conceived as an intermediate figure between the figure leading up to it and the figure following it. In the
present case the bipartite strip is midway between the torus and the mӧbius strip. More specifically, by
suturing its edges in two different ways, it can either regress to the flattened torus that feigns to be the
mӧbius strip or it can progress on to the topological space of the true mӧbius strip. This implies it can be
produced by a little 'reverse engineering' which proceeds not from the torus but from the möbius strip.
It turns out that this is quite simple to do. First, construct a möbius strip. The commentary on Figure 5.5 above has already provided the usual method for quickly doing so: Take a strip of paper, say a foot long by one inch wide and join the two ends to form a loop but just prior to doing so give one end a one-half twist (180°).
(We should note that in so doing we are momentarily ignoring Lacan's expressed warning not to construct the möbius strip in this fashion; yet yielding to this temptation does have the advantage in providing an initial approximation to these difficult to imagine topological spaces and more importantly, in establishing a standpoint from which to better appreciate Lacan's efforts at a more 'real' construction).
To arrive at the bipartite strip, simply cut the constructed möbius strip lengthwise down its center. This is known as the median cut. What results is the bipartite strip, a strip which initially appears to have two laminas but when stretched out reveals itself to be one strip twice the length of the strip before the cut.
This strip possesses two faces and two edges, so it is not homeomorphic to the möbius strip. Its lack of topological equivalence can also be assessed by simply noting that there are two full twists (720°) along its length. In general, a surface has two sides (is bipartite) if the number of half twists m is even, and has one side (equivalent to the möbius strip) if m is odd, where a half twist is defined as π radians or 180°.
It will be noticed how the 'two' laminas immediately produced after the median cut of the mӧbius strip can be slid one over the other in either direction so that a 'single' loop is made of the same length as the original strip (although half its width). In this position a möbius strip would be produced if the two laminas are fused together; but a torus is produced if the two aligned edges of the two laminas are instead sutured and the interior space they now delimit is inflated.
This method of proceeding from a constructed möbius strip to the torus effectively reverses Lacan's own transformation of the torus into the möbius strip. To reiterate, this method involving a median cut of the möbius strip goes against Lacan's expressed wishes, yet again in the present context the overwhelming benefit is that a bipartite strip is now in the reader's hands ready to be manipulated in the fashion recommended in L'étourdit. The contention is that while Fierens, to his great credit, provides ample illustrations of the many figures Lacan discusses in this text, their value can only be enhanced whenever they are supplemented by workable 3-dimensional models.
691 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 2.
692 Interestingly, since the two laminas of the bipartite strip can be manipulated to overlap with each other so as to feign the möbius strip, it can additionally be inlayed with the true möbius strip that is linked to it, resulting in a triple-thick möbius strip (only one third of which, of course, is a true möbius strip).
693 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 2. Even more categorically, he writes that 'this cut = the Moebius strip' (ibid).
694 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 2.
695 Note that the metaphor of a small traveling insect used above to demonstrate various attributes of surfaces will no longer suffice when it is a matter of understanding orientability. To grasp this concept the traveler must be thought of not so much as on the surface as rather in the surface. In other words when it comes to demonstrating orientability, 2-manifolds require 2-dimensional travelers. To retain the metaphor of the small traveling insect, one might imagine it as infinitely flat. In another approach, a clock face might be observed as it travels around a mӧbius strip that is constructed out of translucent material. In both cases the path traversed reverses the orientation of the traveling object. Moreover, in theory it is not possible to distinguish such a traveler from its reflected image. This fact alone helps us appreciate Lacan's turn to the mӧbius strip as the quintessential topological space of the subject, a turn foretold already by his early mirror stage theory which concerns the role played by the initially quite confusing reflected image in the formation of the subject.
696 Lacan, L'étourdit (First Turn), 15. See also pp. 11, 12 (ibid) and p. 19 of Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn).
697 Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 2.
698 The phrase Lacan actually uses is the 'ab-sense of meaning' and this within the context of critiquing Plato's notion of true opinion. Here Lacan mentions the regret of those clinging to meaning in the face of the non-meaningful domain the pure matheme opens up, a domain which progresses precisely at the expense of meaning. See Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 12.
It is worthwhile to reiterate that Lacan does not primarily concern himself with expressing the fact that 'there is no such thing as a sexual relation' in terms of meaning, non-meaning and nonsense – which would otherwise be a fair and concise characterization of the project undertaken in this Part II of the present study. At best it might be said that as Lacan finds various vehicles to express this fact, from topology and discourse theory to mathematics and the very formulae of sexuation themselves, he does offer us the occasional statement on the implications his analysis holds for meaning. Such 'one-offs' are supplemented with equally irregular occurrences of declarative statements of a more global nature, as on the day of June 11, 1974 in his twenty-first seminar when he remarks: 'Everything implied by the analytic engagement with human behaviour indicates not that meaning reflects the sexual, but that it makes up for it.' Quoted in Copjec, "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason," 204.
699 The operation in question involves suturing the one-edge of a mӧbius strip to the one-edge of another mӧbius strip to produce the well-known closed topological manifold called the Klein bottle. Like the cross-cap, it does not exist in 3-dimensional space without self-intersection, although it does present a better visual approximation of itself in our universe than does the cross-cap.
700 The cross-cap is thus quite aptly named and the image evoked by characterizing this suturing operation metaphorically as 'capping off' is indeed helpful when attempting to grasp this difficult topological space.
To further explain this operation a mӧbius strip constructed out of paper again proves useful. It will be noticed that the one-half twist to the strip which makes it one-sided and one-edged also effectively twists space itself. That is to say, the central hole of the möbius strip is not simply an encircled empty space, but an emptiness that 'curves in' on itself. It might be imagined that this hole is what is 'capped off' by suturing the single circular edge of a hemisphere to the one-edged möbius strip, or else the curved space of this hole might be seen as having been 'given body' by the twists placed into the hemispheric cap as a result of the suturing process. Figure 7.2 attempts to provide an approximate representation of the cross-cap, but it should be noted that while the metaphor of a capping action gives the impression of a top-down operation, the representation found there appears to cap the möbius strip from the bottom-up. By way of explanation, the cross-cap in Figure 7.2 mirrors the standard illustration of it given in many recent introductory topology textbooks. But of course there is no 'up' or 'down' when it comes to the two topological spaces of the left deixis since they are both nonorientable surfaces – which again reminds us of the failings of the image when dealing with such real objects.
701 Lacan continues, designating the cross-cap which harbors this single point with other names: 'This is the asphere... In other words, Desargues' projective plane, a plane whose discovery as reducing its horizon to a point, is specified by the fact that this point is such that every line drawn to converge at it only passes through it by going from the front face of the plane to its back face.' Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 2.
702 Žižek's work is peppered with many helpful ways to approach tautological gestures. A particularly apt example is a passage he has often cited from Richard Wagner's Parsifal: '[T]he wound is healed only by the spear which smote it.' See, for instance, Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 158.
703 See p. 13 and 16 of Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), where Lacan writes that despite how the supplementation of the out-of-line point (a) to the line without points ($) 'makes of the sphere an asphere or a cross-cap... [w]hat it nevertheless makes happen in the cross-cap through being borrowed from the sphere, is that a cut that it makes Moebian in the surface that it determines in making it possible, restores this surface, to the spherical mode: for it is insofar as the cut is equivalent to it, that what it supplements itself with as cross-cap "projects itself," as I have said.' He continues by characterizing 'the supplementary point' (a) as that which is 'able to sphericize itself' and as that which is capable of having 'the effect of resolving it into a spherically spreadable point.' The point here is that although it harbors within the unbounded aspherical cross-cap, this does not prevent the objet a from functioning in a capacity capable of bounding a universal field of spherical meaning. There is no real secret to how this is done. The constitution of the universal is established through taking the position of the exception, as per the logic of the right deixis extensively covered in Chapter 6 above. In Lacan's words: 'The object (a) in falling from the hole of the [möbius] strip projects itself after the fact into what we will call, from an abuse of the imaginary, the central hole of the torus.' That is, seen from the perspective of the right deixis, the objet a is (mis)read as the constitutive exceptional point which establishes a universal field of meaning, or in the topological terms of the present chapter, objet a acts as the 'missing' center of gravity of the torus which forms a limit so as to constitute the universal sphere of meaning. (These citations have been modified or wholly replaced with the translation by Jack W. Stone, et al. See Lacan, L'étourdit, 23, 26).
704 One of the earlier references to the notion of 'traversing the fantasy' comes on p. 273 of Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
705 It is worthwhile to pause with Lacan and take note of this rather surprising transformation which, for present purposes, underscores the intimate connection that the left deixis has with the right in the logical square: 'What is remarkable in this sequence is that the asphere... only arrives at the evidence of its asphericity by being supplemented by a spherical cut.' Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 3.
706 Seeing as how the mӧbius strip is the only surface with an edge in the logical square, it is quite appropriate to conceive it as the sole cutting instrument in the Lacanian topological toolbox.
707 While nevertheless maintaining some connection, the brief etymological discussion which follows should make it clear how the sense intended by the use of this term departs from many of the main senses listed in dictionaries for the verb 'to suspend,' inclusive of those which convey the sense of exclusion (to bar or forbid from an office or the performance of a usual duty or activity, especially as a penalty), the sense of making inoperative for a time (to cancel, halt, withhold, render inactive or invalid temporarily) and the sense of holding back, refraining from, putting off, deferring or delaying the making of a judgment, sentence, etc., until a later time.
708 This might be likened to a somewhat common experience: upon crossing the threshold of one's home for the first time after an extended period of absence (say, after a two or three week vacation), the immediate surroundings are of course quite familiar and bear the subject's personal stamp. But there is nevertheless the feeling of an eerie, cold 'objectivity' which seems to permeate each room and because of which, momentarily makes the subject a stranger in his own home. But perhaps this experience is less possible today than in previous decades. As Baudrillard laments (celebrates?) somewhere, the exit made by today's moviegoer from a darkened matinee theater into the sunny afternoon of reality is no longer momentarily met with a similar disconcerting feeling as it once did in years past.
709 It should be noted that Figure 7.3 directly reads as the Ad: 
(and thus in a writing which visually
displays knowledge to be barred to the analyst) provided that quadrants and are interchanged.
Again this interchange simply aligns the quadrants of the Lacanian logical square with the four places of
discourse.
710 Such an attitude would have more to do with a subject still somewhat immersed in the field of meaning, or else should be thought of as a remnant of subjectivization – the analyst's ego – which casts an all-too-knowing and cynical glance from somewhere below the suspended field. In contrast, subjectivity proper is a 'full' occupation of the very point of suspension.
711 To hang by a support from above and to do so without attachment are two additional senses commonly found in dictionaries under their entries for 'to suspend.' Of those five or six in common use today, these two are closest to capturing the original sense of suspendere.
712 Simply said, objet a 'is' the suspended hermeneutical circle.
713 That Lacan is not interested in tapping into a beyond becomes clear in passages like the following which champions mathematics for its lack of meaning and for opening, through topological transformations, a field entirely devoid of that historical dimension so dear to hermeneutical phenomenology and which, moreover, harbors an ontologized point of nonsense:
'The matheme is uttered from the only real recognized from the onset in language: namely number. Nevertheless the history of mathematics demonstrates (saying it makes the case) that it can be extended to intuition, on condition that this term is as castrated as can be of its metaphorical use. Here therefore is a field in which what is most striking is that its development, over against the terms from which it is absorbed, does not [proceed] from generalization but from topological re-shaping, from a retroaction onto the beginning such that its history is effaced. No surer experience to resolve its embarrassment. Hence its attraction for thought: which finds in it the nonsense proper to being, or to the desire for a speech with no beyond.' Lacan, L'étourdit (Second Turn), 12.
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