Symbolic Identification and the Remainder
pp. 46-7: The crucial point not to be missed here is that in so far as we are dealing with Subject, the 'contraction' in question is no longer the primordial contraction by means of which the original Freedom catches being and thereby gets caught in the rotary motion of contraction and expansion, but the contraction of the subject outside himself, in an external sign, which resolves the tension, the 'inner dispute', of contraction and expansion. The paradox of the Word is therefore that its emergence resolves the tension of the pre-symbolic antagonism, but at a price: the Word, the contraction of the Self outside the Self, involves an irretrievable externalization-alienation--with the emergence of the Word, we pass from antagonism to the Hegelian contradiction between $ and S1, between the subject and its inadequate symbolic representation. This 'contingency' of the contraction in the Word points toward what, in good old structuralist terms, is called 'the arbitrary of the signifier': Schelling asserts the irreducible gap between the subject and a signifier which the subject has to 'contract' if he is to acquire (symbolic) existence: the subject qua $ is never adequately represented in a signifier. This 'contradiction' between the subject and his (necessarily, constitutively inadequate) symbolic representation provides the context for Schelling's 'Lacanian' formulation according to which God-Absolute becomes inexpressible at the very moment He expresses Himself, that is, pronounces a Word. Prior to his symbolic externalization, the subject cannot be said to be 'inexpressible', since the medium of expression itself is not yet given--or, to invoke Lacan's precise formulation, desire is non-articulable precisely as always-already articulated in a signifying chain.
In short, by means of the Word, the subject finally finds himself, comes to himself: he is no longer a mere obscure longing for himself since, in the Word, he directly attains himself, posits himself as such. The price, however, is the irretrievable loss of the subject's self-identity: the verbal sign that stands for the subject--in which the subject posits himself as self-identical--bears the mark of an irreducible dissonance; it never 'fits' the subject. This paradoxical necessity on account of which the act of returning-to-oneself, of finding oneself, immediately, in its very actualization, assumes the form of its opposite, of the radical loss of one's self-identity, displays the structure of what Lacan calls 'symbolic castration'. This castration involved in the passage to the Word can also be formulated as the redoubling, the splitting, of an element into itself and its place in the structure.
p. 49: Lacan's further point is that symbolic identification is always identification with le trait unaire, the unary feature. Let us recall Lacan's own example from the Seminar on identification (which actually originates in Saussure): the 10.45 train from Paris to Lyon. Although, materially, the train is not 'the same' (carriages and the locomotive probably change every couple of days), it is symbolically counted as 'the same', namely 'the 10.45 to Lyon'. And even when the train is late (when, say, due to a mechanical failure, it actually leaves at 11.05), it is still the same '10.45 to Lyon' which, unfortunately, is late.... Le trait unaire is therefore the ideal feature that enables us to identify the train as 'the same' even if it does not fit the material features contained in its designation. As such, le trait unaire dwells on the borderline between the Imaginary and the Symbolic: it is an image, which, by being cut out of the continuity of 'reality', has started to function as a symbol. This borderline is perhaps best illustrated by the notion of insignia: an image that functions as a symbol, as a 'trademark'--it stands for its bearer, although he no longer possesses the property it designates. One must be very careful here not to miss the difference between this concept of trait unaire and the standard idealist or Gestaltist notion of ideal unity which repeats itself as identical in the diversity of its empirical realizations: the point of (Saussure's and) Lacan's example of the train is that the feature '10.45 to Lyon' remains valid even when it is 'falsified'--when the train actually leaves, say, at 11.07.
p. 50: This Schellingian problematic of the primordial dissonance in the process of the subject's representation also enables us to avoid the fatal trap of accepting too hastily the so-called 'critique of the reflective model of consciousness': according to this doxa, we cannot ground our direct, immediate experience of the Sense of Being in notional reflection, there is always some remainder which cannot be accounted for by means of reflection, so we have to presuppose an original pre-reflective 'opening to the world' or 'self acquaintance' which precedes reflective self-consciousness.... The first thing to note here is that Schelling himself, to whom this critique usually refers as its principle forerunner, in the very gesture of asserting, against Hegel, the primacy of Being--that is, the necessary failure of every attempt to reduce Being to reflection--emphasizes again and again that this primacy is thoroughly 'empty'. As we have just seen, Schelling's point is that if the subject is effectively to 'attain itself', to 'posit itself as such' and acquire a minimum of self-acquaintance, it has to alienate-externalize itself, to 'put on' a contingent clothing. An even more important point, however, is that this critique of reflection inevitably becomes enmeshed in aporias which are none other than the good old Hegelian aporias of reflection (one usually tends to forget the key underlying claim of Hegel's logic of reflection: every attempt of reflection to accomplish the complete mediation of an immediate content fails in so far as it produces its own surplus of non-reflected immediacy).
pp. 51-2: As the term itself suggests, the premiss of 'positing' reflection is that every given positive content can be 'mediated', reduced to something 'posited', recuperated by reflective activity; there is something, however, that eludes the power of this universal reflection--itself, its own act. When reflection becomes aware of this inherent limitation to its activity, we revert to immediacy--that is to say, reflection necessarily (mis)perceives its own act in a 'reified' form, as the In-itself of an external presupposition. What is crucial for the impasse of reflection is this very oscillation of the locus of its unrecuperable kernel between the In-itself which precedes reflective activity and the reflective activity itself--and the Hegelian 'trick', of course, consists in resolving this deadlock by simply assuming the identity of these two irrecuperable kernels: the In-itself reflection endeavors vainly to catch up with, like Achilles with the tortoise, coincides with reflective activity itself--the unfathomable X of the immediate life-experience reflection is after, as it were, its own tail.... In other words, the way to break out of the vicious cycle of reflection is not to lay one's hands on some positive-immediate pre-reflective support exempted from the reflective whirlpool, but, on the contrary, to call into question this very external starting point of reflection, the immediate life-experience which allegedly eludes reflective recuperation: this immediate life-experience is 'always-already' tainted by reflection: to repeat Hegel's precise formula from his Great Logic, the (reflective-recuperative) return to the immediacy creates what it returns to. Or--to put it in Schelling's terms--one should always bear in mind that the Real, the 'indivisible remainder' which resists its reflective idealization, is not a kind of external kernel which idealization/symbolization is unable to 'swallow', to internalize, but the 'irrationality', the unaccountable 'madness', of the very founding gesture of idealization/symbolization.
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