Friday, May 29, 2009

Not Linear Determinism

From The Metastases of Enjoyment, p. 31:

Herein lies the trauma's vicious cycle:  the trauma is the Cause which perturbs the smooth engine of symbolization and throws it off balance; it gives rise to an indelible inconsistency in the symbolic field; but for all that, the trauma has no existence of its own prior to symbolization; it remains an anamorphic entity that gains its consistency only in retrospect, viewed from within the symbolic horizon--it acquires its consistency from the structural necessity of the inconsistency of the symbolic field.  As soon as we obliterate this retrospective character of the trauma and 'substantialize' it into a positive entity, one that can be isolated as a cause preceding its symbolic effects, we regress to common linear determinism. 

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