Notes on : “Zizek, How to read Lacan”.
Chapter 1.Empty Gestures and performatives, Lacan confronts the CIA plot.
Key words: Trojan horse, puppets, epiphenomena, symbolic, imaginary, real, symptom, “one”, language, communication, “phatic communication”, ambivalent, disintegration, dissolution, sociopath, “twofold moment”, unsent letter, content, meta-choice, message, food, excrement, toilet, enunciated- enunciation, declaration, tacit agreement, Monster plot, deception, act, wheelbarrow.
Key-concepts: “big Other”, “empty gestures”, “symbolic order”, “triad of human being’s reality”
In this chapter Zizek disposes the groundwork for concepts like “The Triad of the Real,” “The Big Other” and “Empty Gestures.”
The “big Other”> According Lacan, the “big Other” (b.O) :
- can be personified in a single agent: the “GOD” (someone who controls and direct above our heads) or the “Cause”( the reason for which we can sacrifice our lives).
- must be always there.
- exists in so far as subjects act if it is exists.
- is fragile, insubstantial, properly virtual.
- operates at a symbolic level.
- witnesses
According Lacan, the “big Other”, is this kind of virtual Master who regulates a social conversation and communication and in a certain extent defines and influence the construction of Self and determines the content of a message. The “big Other” has the power to permeate everywhere but at the same time is “fragile” because actually exists as long human beings exist. The lacanian idea of the b.O comes through the human interaction. The communication, understanding, interpretation, comprehension of others happen through the “b.O”. Zizek’s bring the example of the Mexican soap opera, where the actors learn how to act based on the instructions of what and how they have to do through tiny receivers in their ears. This image remind us the puppet and the master> “we talk and interact like puppets”.
For Lacan the “big Other” operates in three intertwined levels:
- Symbolic> the way of interacting with the others
- Imaginary> the virtualization of the others.
- Real> the circumstances, surrounding, ambient of the situation that can bring unexpected changes.
Example: Chess. Is it life a game, played as chess?
“big Other” and language.
“Every utterance not only transmit some content, but, simultaneously, conveys the way the subject relates to this content” (p.16).
It is the way and the intention behind words and actions that defines the relation between signifier and signified?
Enunciated content and act of enunciation. Zizek brings our attention to the gap existing between these two elements of human speech.
Language> an ambivalent gift. “Timeo Danaos, et dano ferentes”
- The language is seen as an ambivalent gift that can also destroy.The gift is an offer. The acceptance or the rejection of the gift establish the link between giver and receiver. The way that the giver gives the gift is more important than the gift itself. The gifts are signifier of the pact between two parts.
“The symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering, that marks its content as neutral in order to pose as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between giver and receiver established when the receiver accepts the gift (p.12).”
“Walking Life” is a rotoscoped film, directed by Richard Linklater, about a young man who participates actively in philosophical discussion about free will, meaning of life, existentialism etc and who realize that he is living out a perpetual dream, broken up only by occasional false awakenings.
What is language?
Symbolic order.
- The symbolic order works in tension with the Imaginary and the Real and is constituted by rules. Zizek elucidate the role of rules by saying that these rules (in relation to language- communication) can be divided at: a) rules (grammatical) that we follow blindly, but of which we can be partially aware, b) rules that we follow in ignorance (prohibitions) and c) rules that must not be seen to know of. The violation of these rules can bring : disintegration and chaos. They are taken in consideration because is what the “big Other” doesn’t do.
Empty Gesture.
The “empty gesture” concept refers to > Gestures that have been created for us purely to keep the peace and as a result be “rejected” on purpose. When they are “accepted” chaos, dissolution and disintegration can be occurred> Interruption, confusion, break of “invisible rules”.
THE SYMBOLISM OF TOILETS.
In accordance to the Levi-Straussian triangle of cooking > raw (Nature), boiled (mediation/process), baked (Culture), Zizek analyzes the 3 basic types of toilet-design on the West culture:
- German toilet> structure where the shit first laid out for us to sniff and inspect traces of illness>reflective thoroughness>German Metaphysics/poetry>ambiguous contemplative fascination.
- French Toilet>the shit dissapears as soon as possible>revolutionary hastiness>French politics>attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess immediately.
- American Toilet> mediation between the two opposed previous poles>moderate utilitarian pragmatism>economics>pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object.
FREE CHOICE?
“Belonging to a society involves the paradoxical point at which each one of us is ordered to embrace freely…what is anyway is imposed on us” (p12)
A nice comment on free will comes again from the film “Walking Life”
“There is not a lot of room left for freedom” 0:55sec
Freud and Symptom> Freud argues that symptoms are a physical link to the experiences that have shaped our consciousness.
Zizek explains that from Freud’s point of view the symptoms are actually coded messages about inner experiences, desires or traumas.
The monster plot.
Was James Angleton paranoic?
“The deception resided in our failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of (globalized) suspicion” (p.21)
details about monster plot> http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/james_jesus_angleton/7.html
FIGURE OF A SOCIOPATH.
Zizek defines as sociopath as a person who “discern the mortal rules that regulate social interaction”, “lacks the “gut feeling” of right or wrong”, ” practices the notion of morality developed by utilirianism”. Sow e can say that sociopath is marked by the inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules.
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ARTISTS related to the chapter.
At my opinion some artist , whose work can have a link with the philosophical aspects and concepts that Zizek brings in light are>
Gerhard Richter is a German artist, whose work can be examined through the prism of Lacanian theory.
“In addition, both analyst and artist ask us to locate the ‘real’. The ‘real’ has different meanings for Lacan and for Richter. In Lacan the ‘real’ is an “unrent, undifferentiated fabric”; there are no divisions or gaps in his ‘real’ register as it belongs to the period before language and the ‘symbolic’ order, and equates to the time before the baby’s body was socialised and coaxed into compliance. The ‘real’ in that sense does not exist – it is “killed” by the letter of the ‘symbolic’ order which, as Bruce Fink puts it, “cuts into the smooth facade of the ‘real’, creating divisions, gaps and distinguishable entities… laying the ‘real’ to rest”. Lacan borrows from Heidegger when he says that the ‘real’ “ex-ists” outside of our reality; it only exists insofar as we use language to describe it and give it a sort of substance.”
Lesley Marks “Situating the “Real,” Discovering Desire”. PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts. December 15, 2009. Available http://www.psyartjournal.com/article/show/marks-situating_the_real_discovering_desire.Accessed 03.o8.2013
Raul Ruiz> He is a chilean filmmaker; a poet of oneiric imagery and a fabulist of labyrinthine stories-within-stories whose films slip effortlessly from reality to imagination and back again. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0749914/bio)
Juan Carlos Mendizabal>contemporary artist from Salvador. In his installation “Itzpapalotl: black Butterfly/Mariposa negra” for the SOMArts’ exhibition Mourning and Scars: 20 Years After the War he made a booth that- as he explains in an interview-represents the surface, the flesh, the social entity that is part of the symbolic order. Outside there is language, symbols and frozen images. Inside is the inner world of myths, dreams and direct perceptions.
http://www.somarts.org/mendizabal/
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Post studium- reflections
It was very interesting reading this chapter and at the same time trying to explain some basic concepts in a simple way to 3 young Greek people who happened to be in the same space with me .
From our discussion some interesting questions came out:
-The big Other is like the big (br)Other?
It comes in my mind the book of Orwell “1984”, in which is described how people’s thoughts are controlled to ensure purity of the oligarchical system in place. Figurehead of the system is the omnipresent Big Brother. After some years the “Big Brother” took form as a reality show where people were in 24/7 surveillance. This big eye that controls everything is happening. The “existence” and the idea of an external eye, that controls, was influencing and directing the behavior of who was inside that space. Taking in consideration the theories about the “big Other”, it seems that since the beginning of the human civilization -the human beings co-exist with the “b.O”.
-Is the big Other a social construction important for the function of a society?
-If the big Other is taking from us “freedom” to be who we are, how do we know that without it we would be “free”?
-Does exist “Self” without the “big Other”?if not why is needed to identify/recognize the existence of the “big Other”?
-Where my agency as individual starts and ends in relation to the “big Other”?
-How do we fight against the power of the big Other? One way is the radical opposition in cost of life. (Zizek in his book: “Live Theory”, brings as example Antigone, who acted against the universality of the Power. She opposed the Power in the name of her Cause (justice for her brother).