Sunday, March 22, 2009

Adrian Johnston on Unfinished Reality

From Žižek 's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 2008), p. 65:

"Hence, what both German idealism and psychoanalysis point to is, as developed by
Žižek, a more radical solution to the problems masterfully uncovered (but nonetheless left unresolved) by Kant: the material Real of "nature" (especially human nature) isn't smoothly integrated and free of internal conflicts, but rather is torn apart from within by internal antagonisms.

This absolutely axiomatic Freudian-Lacanian notion of (human) nature as, from the start, a heterogeneous, unintegrated field, instead of as an organically unified set of elements and functions (with this organic unity allegedly being broken up solely by virtue of external intrusions impinging on its inner workings), ought to be recognized as a register complementary to Lacan's "barred" big Other (i.e., the symbolic order as permanently containing, within its own organizational constellations, contradictions, deadlocks, incompleteness, lack, etc.). More specifically, the Lacanian Real, viewed in the context of the preceding analyses, is a barred Real--not only the symbolic order, but the very substance of being is inconsistent and divided against itself."

No comments:

Post a Comment