passed antagonism: first notes on psychoanalysis

let us probe the holes of our discourse, in etymology: Greek, combining form of psych, breath, spirit, soul, mind; akin to psychein,  to blow. and analysis, from ana-, against and the greek word for loosen. psychoanalysis, a loosening of that which we back up against.

find the audio programme at this feinted spot of place —-> psycho

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we are in a crisis point. waiting for godot. until he comes, he never comes. like in kafka’s doorkeeper parable, astride the door we dream to enter, waiting for permission to cross the threshold. this door is for us; permission will never come. we are looking for a release of the burden of subjectivity, “condemned to live diminished lives,” as small men. here, the analyst is the key to this closure and its opening.

as subjects, we are the effects of signification. laurent notes that the subject is “beyond forgiveness” with nothing more to say. where the subject cannot re-present, in the hole, the rim, beyond forgiveness, there she is. this reminds me of sk’s abraham, a knight who should be tried for murder but suspends himself beyond the ethical matters of forgiveness; abraham is rendered silent in his faith. might analysis take us to a place of faith.

a blown mind,

the dreamer, dreamed

–unconscious–
- the dreamer is the dream. but psychoanalysis is to take us beyond the politics of the dream to the politics of desire. there is no world beyond the word; no outside of speech. but linguistics has a slight grip on unconscious; AND but we find unconscious through discourse. the unconscious appears when the subject re-presents representation of what/where it lacks. the unconscious is not equivalent to meaning; it is impossible to say.

what does it mean to speak? especially when the world in its real is impossible to know. how do we use a grammar of what cannot be written? let us take heart recalling the arguments of wittgenstein and russell, witt highlighting–through poetry and passion–the failure of mathematics and mappings, the lack reasserted by positivism. how do we hear the unconscious? we are not listening for meaning; no, the unconscious appears as though coming sideways, through repetition. in listening, we cannot nurture the meaning that arrogantly strides to greet us at the front.

psychoanalysis seems to espouse that human life is a struggle…we live as a divided subject and subjectivity is opaque to itself. using the vocabulary of lalangue–our shared community of an uncodified “language” that is also radically particular to the relationship of analyst-analysand, a lovers’ discourse prior to the dogma and rite of saussurian linguistics–this is how we hope to speak the same language.

–process– (gaze, voice)
- laurent critiques the father of his father. in freudian analysis, the analysand already knew what they were supposed to say–the tropes were there, these universal axioms of interpretation. there was no break-through effect. it is through the lacanian orientation, the resistance of the analyst, from the subject, whereby one learns better from failures than successes. to topple a rigid and idealist position, make interpretation transparent. the knowledge of psychoanalysis is not an exposed knowledge; it arises out of treatment (via the gaze, the voice). brousse urges that you must be upside-down during the session saying, this treatment concerns flesh and bones, not hermeneutics. but hermeneutics could be sartrean, not simply gadamer. that is, is this dismissal of hermeneutics a fear–asserted as the Big Other–of the public language that orients speech always (for gadamer, i.e horizons and embeddedness). we might instead think of a hermeneutics of private language, that is, expression as a radical singularity.

in analysis, the analysand invents his own solution. soleim notes that the process of self-authorization is the same structure of suicide. there is a good to anxiety, as you wake and and are marked; but also a bad anxiety that is still waiting for the void to speak. all the analysts i spoke with argued that one needs orientation. a priest. they expressed a fear of dilution. but what of the way in which all expression (though a failure) is revelatory…in its asymptotic function. may we celebrate the failure that is the incapacity of linking knowledge to a mastery. to further topple the totem to hierarchy, a knowledge that is earned, might we reconfigure the analyst-analysand relationship as any and all of a subject and her others? might a true subversion of master’s discourse lie outside of the order of credentialism and capital?

the hole of the play

the analyst is resisting identification; in a sense, she is withholding the object and not substantiating the analysands’s identification with her (analyst) as the subject who is supposed to know. though analysis might begin with questions like, who is the controller, it moves toward a “point of passage.” the pass occurs when the analysand, the subject, no longer believes in his analyst…he has some thing to say and do. self-authorized. the desire of the analyst brings her to try to transmit some thing. the subject supposed to know disappears; is this aufhebung, whereby we move beyond the threshold?

price calls the analyst the lecton to position of unconscious. this word, lecton, is what can be said. the third term (o holy triptych) of the signifer-signified relation. it is almost signified, but more accessible. in this capable, easy expression, the analyst conveys interpretation and construction. this interpretation never ends at the level of meaning. but i do not yet understand what it is that the analyst offers. in short, she works to de-nurture meaning. often using the cut, the short session, a surprise in order to subvert the master’s order.

it was repeated to me by many analysand’s almost hysterically, that is, to reveal its own untruth in its insistence, that the analyst cannot be in love with the analysand. is the analyst then a pervert: one who looks, but does not touch? isn’t this kind of renunciation a resignation? (i am not clear on the level of renunciation proffered by lacan. he ends his seminar eleven to call for the liquidation of transference (267).) certainly an ethics of joi is present, to be developed. and it is from within the anxiety, this is how we must find the space to invent…to break the domineering and purportedly objective–objet-ifying–signifying chain. thus psychoanalysis unfolds to thwart the logic of capitalism!

–symptom– (drive, other)
-laurent describes the symptom as reduced to that which cannot be changed; incurable, that which is escaping you. the symptom is at times difficult to ascertain, always constituted by a formal envelope. like “the purloined letter,” it is related to a hiddenness that is in full view. symptoms are obstacles which impede the transmission of a message; obstacles that create loopholes. similar to poe’s letter, we have an awareness of the symptom due to the queen hiding it. after this revelation, it is its visibility that keeps it hidden. this is like the holes that are present in our language which reveals. the symptom was explained variously as a signifier without meaning, and the frame of the analytical experience. the curriculum chair of the nyc psychoanalytic institute exhorted our audience to conceive of a copernican/kantian turn: we must fit the world to our symptom, not the symptom to our world. psychoanalysis might offer the treatment…to expose that it is through the object that your partner becomes your symptom.

"wonderful images" cf ayerza

–semblance–
- lacan teaches, there is no sexual rapport. gender is a semblance. “one receives from the other a mask of skin,” the paper tyger that highlights the empty place that the objet fills. sexuality is the result of a primary substitution…is gender just once of many semblant ids? does it have a more fundamental implication? given an unrelationality among subjects, our relation (if socalled incorrectly) is a relation of substitution, of subject with objet (a void wherein object-partner–actually, an impossibly singular subject–is en placed). but this objet is not always concrete; enter, objet petit a.

the subject is related to objet a; psychoanalysis is to investigate how the partner comes up as the substitute (objet). herein lies the importance of blending the subsitute! cf my “sugar on the tongue”. so that this does not dampen the timbre of loving, make it less romantic, un-enjoyable. we instead recognize the subject-partner as objet a as excess; that is, the objet a is the real partner of the subject. we awaken beyond forgiveness as we confront our connectedness as excess.

–jouissance–
- for lacan, jouissance seems to be a mixture of enjoiment and discontent. it is the grasping, trapping of semblance. and he assembles joi into two:
- female jouissance (is it abuse?)
one wants to make of partner an object of a mad, intense love. it is erotomaniacal. it is process which laurent relates to how de beauvoir characterizes woman at the conclusion of //second sex//. this is almost more hazardous, calling female jouissance a historical symptom…which of course maps genitalia onto joi…(whereby the forced conditions of history are incorporated into subjectivization)…). in his brilliant summary he might confuse the lacanian project to sever the semblance from physiology–as there is no sexual relation, there is no inducement by genitalia to strive for a female, male jouissance. at the conclusion of //the second sex// we find that women must induce men to speak of them. women actualize as void, mystique; they want their lover to speak the right spot. laurent calls this a defamation (dit-fama –reputation) et (dit-femme)). this joi is not narcissistic, but echoing. feminine jouissance is after the other. and, so, is it also a paradigm of abuse: the other is unknown, misspoken, a phantasy; this joi is in love with failure.

- male jouissance (is it prison?)
the masculine/phallic jouissance is fetishistic. it describes the narcissitic position, an identification with the phallus that one “knows” to have. this joi is after the drive (an asymptote of object while desiring its (w)hole). is this not the logic of capitalism? the intensity that is never resolved, self-perpetuating loss? this joi seems to me an inscription, a jail, as though incarcerated.

some asked me if i wished for a neologism. i question, if lacan does not mean strictly female, male to map to the joys, why are we using these words? if phallus has nothing to do with genitalia, then why not call it the conch? do we not tend to replicate oppressive reactionary associations, the illusion, with our language? to what extent must we maintain a relation to the master’s discourse to subvert it? our signifiers have to catch up with what society is doing. and i wish for identity of lack to be un sexed.

androgynous nude

laurent argues, “it is impossible not to define two positions of jouissance.” but may this two lead a way to open, to “help subjects to find their way in more subtle construction.” he explains the joy-dyad as the divide between signifiers// no signifiers. if this is the divide, why not change the prison/paradigm of male/female…which tricks toward a mapping en flesh?

–transference–
- of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanlaysis that lacan enumerates, transference–this relationship that develops between the analyst and analysand–is the most confusing. is it love? brousse tells me that it is the love that i silence always. what a horrible play on loving.

in psychoanalysis we subvert the master’s discourse in the cut-the silence, to let the analysand hear her unconscious via echo. may be i am wrong to read such a disymmetrical position of analyst-analysand. laurent argues that the relationship is, in fact, egalitarian in the sense that both others and big Others are on the same side of the unconscious. but i fear that analysis is the method of unrequited love.

–love–
- love addresses itself to an other; it is at rest with the semblance. we hope to move toward a dignified love, which includes jouissance and fidelity. a dignified love is the articulation of the madness at stake in my relation to you, other. love escapes incarceration. recall de beauvoir’s staging in //the ethics of ambiguity//, love is loving the freedom in and of an other. may we strive to find a partner to shift from a fixation on false holes (the discourse of mastery that silences) to real holes.

what is the relationship between drive and symptom (if there is no total sexual drive, it is a symptom)? what are our ethics of jouissance? they are there to be developed.

is there some thing to the avowal? like a confession to a priest? how does realization and its expression not simply reify mein ego? let psychoanalysis not simply be this resurgence of ego. (is it coincidence that the analysts loved to chew gum–a ritual for a renewed mastery over a dead signifiying chain?)

is aufhebung the utopia that psychoanalysis is not? does it find itself instantiating two, a dual, a duel, to maintain a process of subversion (that is, that which requires opposition to overcome)?

in analysis we find the love that i silence always. what kind of silence is this? laurent offers that science also establishes a silence in the heavens. but, we do not seek this stillness. our real is lawless.

notes in undertaking an analysis that is willing to risk love. on both sides.

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prior to attending this pulsation, i met with a friend in a studio to discuss some things, including technology and its entrance/intrusion into education. to listen, click here —-> education  this is passed/past due.