Aye I get that. I was driving at the same thing you've been talking about with my question. Removing the aspects of the theory which look like they should be taken literally makes it just "one interpretive device among others", rather than a structure you'll be compelled to believe by its power to facilitate description of stuff that happens.
Gesturing towards "a decent analogy is how ideological production produces subjectivities", kinda names the space the phenomenon occurs in, but doesn't pin down an account. And if you want an account that's tied to an event, hollowing out the literal aspects of the theory won't do - at one point you care that it's really happening, at one point it's devolved to a metaphor that plays a role in describing an interpretive device. — fdrake
I've found that, for me, reading Zizek (and many other writers of theory) only led to meta-fascination: fascination with becoming-fascinated — csalisbury
People seem to get addicted to the 'discourse', reading about the same cluster of ideas from different angles, never actually changing anything, but going back to the bookshelf again and again and again. — csalisbury
I will try to explain myself. Of course, I like this kind of philosophical stuff. Yet, there are a few more things. Pleasure, all types of enjoyment and self-enjoyment are everywhere. People aspire to achieve happiness through the possession of material goods and ordinary self-affirmation. Many of them experience joy, maybe at least for some while. Unfortunately, for some reason, I am different. Therefore, I try to apply my reading to reconstruct various behavioral models connected to desire theories and then experiment with my situation. For me, there are two significant philosophies of desire: Lacanian and Deleuzian. My self-observation and experience incline me towards Lacan's model. Yet, it does not give any way out since it prioritizes an ultimate traumatic character of desire. Differently, Deleuze asserts the existence of lines of flight towards the unknown and creative connections with the forces from outside. Honestly, sometimes I doubt that either Deleuze or Lacan and Zizek are still relevant to explain what is going on right now. As you said:" There's no need for us, in 2020, to approach these matters as though we're living in Paris between 1940-1980." 'The matters' are dizzily super-fascinating! — Number2018
Zizek is right about the link between fascinating objet a and the void. The addictive meta-fascination, going back to the same self-experiencing again, and again, and again indicates the hyper-accelerating motion around the void. But what is this void? It is a mode of death; it is an experience of death or absolute loneliness. Likely, since one cannot find ways out, and since one’s social self-affirmation could fail, one’s self starts to vibrate at the same location forcefully. It could be possible to find here the Lacanian split and doubling of ego, expressed by an intensive inner monologue between the interiorized Other and the imaginary self
of the mirror stage or a similar structure ( Althusser’s interpellation). One becomes governed by some model of death or fear of death. So, it could be about fear and the actualization of the transcendent subjectivation scheme. — Number2018
And interwoven through all of it was some felt urgency, like, for some reason, I had to understand these guys, or be left out in some sort of metaphysical cold. — csalisbury
People aspire to achieve happiness through the possession of material goods and ordinary self-affirmation. Many of them experience joy, maybe at least for some while. Unfortunately, for some reason, I am different. — Number2018
I don't assume that we are different in the same ways, but I think that critical writers (Lacan, Freud, whoever) appeal to creeps and weirdos. I use those term playfully. A small subset of the population maybe just can't embrace various ordinary pleasures without some kind of self-consciousness that gets in the way. Like Zizek can't dance, because it's 'obscene.' — f64
For me the critical writers are some kind of violent alternative self-affirmation that also involves continual self-negation. It's like a drug addiction. And part of that self-negation gets around finally to mocking the master of various useless lingos, useless unless and until one is famous or paid, etc. — f64
Likely, we do have different personal experiences of the void. Nevertheless, to find common ground, our task could be to conceptualize it. For Zizek, it is a crucial part of his project: "in order to enact the shift from capitalist to analyst's discourse, one has merely to break the spell of objet a, to recognize beneath the fascinating agalma, the Grail of desire, the void that it covers" ((Zizek, 'Incontinence of the void'). The first hypothesis is that the void could be a break, a dysfunction, or social bond destruction. It is how Lacanian classical psychoanalysis proceeds: any treatment procedure to the disruption of some refers to socialization's setting (for example, the mirror stage). Accordingly, the hyper-fascinating retaining of self could be understood as a perversive compensatory reaction, expressing the hyper joy of retaining the lost identity.My feeling is that, of the two things you mention, this 'void' is closer to absolute loneliness than death. But I think, at its essence, its an instinctive fear of re-encountering forgotten emotions and memories which are very painful (or a means of delaying encounter with 'pending' emotions built up from things you've lived without fully digesting) — csalisbury
Zizek proposes a more elaborated model. His void is now the current libido economy, directly incorporated into economic, social, and political systems. In fact, Zizek implicitly accepts and further develops Deleuze and Guattari's position that desire is an integral part of economic and political infrastructure. In this case, the void is the newest 'capitalistic' way of organization of the social.The results of my own self-experimentation lead me to think that the idea of a 'void' is a sort of veil over very complex, differentiated fullnesses. — csalisbury
I understand what you say, but however painful and traumatic our experiences could be, they tend to acquire inertia and become masochistic:The results of my own self-experimentation lead me to think that the idea of a 'void' is a sort of veil over very complex, differentiated fullnesses. Many of those are complex, differentiated fullnesses of (quite serious) pain. But there are also little pockets of something you might call happiness, or peace, within that pain, and you have to withstand the pain to expand those pockets. — csalisbury
You represent a relatively common point of view: all these thinkers are freaks and nuts, having enormous and baseless ambitions. It is understandable and widespread. Yet, this opinion is as old as philosophy itself: Plato has perfectly narrated the story of Socrates. — Number2018
What I most like about Lacan is that he is only interested in people who are interested in their condition. Like it was something that paying attention to could change.
Otherwise, why bother? — Valentinus
Sorry, I did not understand.What you are missing (I think?) is that I count myself among them. — f64
I do wonder how perfectly Plato narrated the story of Socrates. It seems likely enough that he swallowed up a more radical figure in order to cough up yet another story of this-is-how-it-is. We might call it a false assimilation of the negative. — f64
The modelling element either reveals something kept from view or it does not. I don't know how to approach that side of things. It is easy to become what one opposes. — Valentinus
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