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m
→Moor Eeffoc
The limitation of Kristeva's theory of the abject resides in the fact that she conceives the symbolic order and abjection as the two extremes between which one has to negotiate a middle way. What she neglects to do is to inquire into ''what the symbolic order itself is in terms of the abject''. The symbolic order is not just always already embedded in the feminine ''chora'' (or what Kristeva in her earlier work referred to as the semiotic), penetrated by the materiality of its immanent libidinal rhythms that distort the purity of the symbolic articulations. If it is here, it had to emerge out of ''chora'' through a violent act of self-differentiation or splitting. Consequently, insofar as we accept Kristeva's term ''abjection ''for this self-differentiation, then we should distinguish between ''chora'' and abjection; abjection points towards the very movement of withdrawal from ''chora,'' which is constitutive of subjectivity. This is why we had to further specify Kristeva's diagnosis: every "unilateral call to return to what [the Judeo-Christian compound] has repressed (rhythm, drive, the feminine, etc.)" generates fascism (as in Céline's work) not because it regresses from the symbolic but because it obfuscates abjection itself, the primordial repression that gives rise to the symbolic. '''The dream of such attempts is not to suspend the symbolic but to have the (symbolic) cake and eat it—in other words''''', '''to dwell in the''' '''symbolic without the price we have to pay for it '''''<nowiki/>'''(primordial repression, the subject's ontological derailment, antagonism, out-of-joint, the violent gap of differentiation from natural substance), the ancient dream of a masculine universe of meaning, which remains harmonically rooted in the maternal substance of ''chora''. In short, what fascism obfuscates (forecloses even) is not the symbolic as such but the gap that separates the symbolic from the Real. This is why a figure like that of the Jew is needed; if the gap between the symbolic and the Real is not constitutive of the symbolic, if a symbolic at home in the Real is possible, then their antagonism has to be caused by a contingent external intruder—and what better candidate for this role than Judaism, with its violent monotheist assertion of the symbolic law and rejection of the earth-bound paganism?'''
"an ontology finally taking into account, as previous orientations have not yet done, explosive events of indigestible, meaningless traumas in which destructive plasticity goes so far as to destroy plasticity itself, in which plasticity is exposed, thanks to itself, to its own disruption. . . . The massive cerebrolesions of catastrophic neurotraumas produce the bodies of human organisms living on but not, as it were, living for, that is, not Inclining toward future plans, projects. Plasticity (including neuroplasticity) stands permanently under the shadow of the virtual danger of its liquidation." (22)
A materialist notion of humanity should effectively take into account the shadow of a permanent threat to our survival at a multitude of levels, from external threats (an asteroid hitting the earth, volcanic eruptions, and others) through individual catastrophes like Alzheimer's up to the possibility that humanity will destroy itself as a nonintended consequence of its scientific and technological progress. Is there, however, a ''catastrophe ''that always already occurred and that is missing from the list of external threats: the catastrophe that is the emergence of subjectivity, of the human mind, out of nature? The exclusion of the real Real of ''this ''catastrophe (what Freud called primordial repression) is what introduces the gap that separates the real Real from reality—it is on account of this gap that what we experience as external reality always has to rely on a fantasy and that when the raw real Real is forced upon us it causes the experience of the loss of reality. G. K. Chesterton was on the right track here in his wonderful description of Charles Dickens's realism:
"[Dickens] was a dreamy child, thinking mostly of his own dreary prospects. Yet he saw and remembered much of the streets and squares he passed. Indeed, as a matter of fact, he went the right way to work unconsciously to do so. He did not go in for 'observation,' a priggish habit; he did not look at Charing Cross to improve his mind or count the lampposts in Holborn to practice his arithmetic. But unconsciously he made all these places the scenes of the monstrous drama in his miserable little soul. He walked in darkness under the lamps of Holborn, and was crucified at Charing Cross. So for him ever afterwards these places had the beauty that only belongs to battlefields. For our memory never fixes the facts which we have merely observed. The only way to remember a place for ever is to live in the place for an hour; and the only way to live in the place for an hour is to forget the place for an hour. The undying scenes we can all see if we shut our eyes are not the scenes that we have stared at under the direction of guidebooks; the scenes we see are the scenes at which we did not look at all—the scenes in which we walked when we were thinking about something else—about a sin, or a love affair, or some childish sorrow. We can see the background now because we did not see it then. So Dickens did not stamp these places on his mind; he stamped his mind on these places. For him ever afterwards these streets were mortally romantic; they were dipped in the purple dyes of youth and its tragedy, and rich with irrevocable sunsets."
