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The Interpassive Subject

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However, it would be a crucial misunderstanding to read this radical decentrement involved in the notion of fetishism (I am deprived of my innermost beliefs, fantasies, etc.) as "the end of Cartesian subjectivity." What this deprivation (i.e. the fact that a phenomenological reconstitution which would generate "reified" belief out of the presupposed "first-person" belief necessarily fails, the fact that substitution is original, the fact that even in the cases of the most intimate beliefs, fantasies, etc., the big Other can "do it for me") effectively undermines, is the standard notion of the so-called "Cartesian Theater," the notion of a central Screen of Consciousness which forms the focus of subjectivity, and where (at a phenomenal level) "things really happen." In clear contrast to it, the Lacanian subject qua $, the void of self-referential negativity, is strictly correlative to the primordial decentrement: the very fact that I can be deprived of even my innermost psychic ("mental") content, that the big Other (or fetish) can laugh for me, believe for me, etc., is what makes me $, the "barred" subject, the pure void with no positive substantial content. The Lacanian subject is thus empty in the radical sense of being deprived of even the minimal phenomenological support: there is no wealth of experiences to fill in its void. And Lacan's wager is that the Cartesian reduction of the subject to pure cogito already implies such a reduction of every substantial content, inclusive of my innermost "mental" attitudes — the notion of "Cartesian Theater" as the original locus of subjectivity is already a "reification" of the subject qua $, the pure void of negativity.
 
 
 
==Source==
* [[The Interpassive Subject]]. ''Centre Georges Pompidou''. Paris, Traverses. 1998. <http://www.lacan.com/zizek-pompidou2.htm>. Also listed on ''Lacan.com''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizek-pompidou.htm>
 
Available: http://www2.centrepompidou.fr/traverses/numero3/textes/zizeke.html.
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