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From "Passionate Attachments" to Dis-identification

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I [[want]] to address the problem of [[identification]] by confronting the predominant deconstructionist doxa according to which the main problem with [[Lacanian]] [[theory]] - which allegedly also limits its [[political]] use - is that [[Lacan]] elevates the [[symbolic]] into a kind of [[transcendental]] [[position]] of a fixed [[normative]] [[order]] exempted from the transformative [[process]] of historical [[practice]]. According to this critique, [[the symbolic]] fixes in advance the constraints of compulsory [[heterosexuality]] and reduces all [[resistance]] to it to [[imaginary]] [[misrecognition]]. And if one does effectively break up the chains of the [[symbolic order]], one is expelled into the [[void]] of [[psychosis]]. Since the main proponent of this criticism is [[Judith]] [[Butler]], let me focus on her latest book, <i>The [[Psychic]] [[Life]] of [[Power]]</i>.<ref>[[Judith Butler]], The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997). Numbers in parentheses refer to the pages of this book.</ref>
I want to address the problem of identification by confronting the predominant deconstructionist doxa according to which the main problem with Lacanian theory - which allegedly also limits its political use - is that Lacan elevates the symbolic into a kind of transcendental position of a fixed normative order exempted from the transformative process of historical practice. According to this critique, the symbolic fixes in advance the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality and reduces all resistance to it to imaginary misrecognition. And if one does effectively break up the chains of the symbolic order, one is expelled into the void of psychosis. Since the main proponent of this criticism is Judith Butler, let me focus on her latest book, <i>The Psychic Life of Power</i>.[1]<br><br> ===1<br><br>===Butler's, as well as Lacan's, starting point is the old [[Leftist ]] one -- how is it possible not only to resist effectively, but also to undermine and/or displace the existing socio-symbolic network - the Lacanian "big [[Other]]" - which predetermines the only [[space ]] within which the [[subject ]] can [[exist]]. Significantly, Butler [[identifies ]] "subject" with the [[symbolic position ]] occupied within this space, while she reserves the term "[[psyche]]" for the larger [[unity ]] encompassing that in the [[individual ]] which resists [[being ]] included in the symbolic space.<ref>Butler demonstrates that the Foucauldian "[[body]]" as the site of resistance is none other than the [[Freudian]] "psyche." Paradoxically, "body" is [[Foucault]]'s [[name]] for the psychic [[2apparatus]] insofar as it resists the soul's domination. That is to say, when, in his well-known definition of the soul as the "prison of the body," Foucault turns around the standard Platonic-[[Christian]] definition of the body as the "prison of the soul," what he calls the "body" is not simply the [[biological]] body, but is that which is already caught in some kind of pre-[[subjective]] [[psychic apparatus]].</ref> Butler, of course, is well aware that the site of this resistance cannot be simply and directly [[identified ]] as the [[unconscious]]; the existing order of Power is also supported by unconscious "passionate attachments," attachments publicly non-acknowledged by the subject:
<blockquote>
   If the unconscious escapes from a given normative [[injunction]], to what other injunction does it [[form ]] an attachment? What makes us [[think ]] that the unconscious is any less [[structured ]] by the power relations that pervade [[cultural ]] [[signifiers ]] than is the [[language ]] of the subject? If we find an attachment to subjection at the level of the unconscious, what kind of resistance is to be wrought from that? (88).
</blockquote>
The exemplary [[case]] of the unconscious "passionate attachments" which sustain Power is precisely the inherent reflective eroticization of the regulatory power-mechanisms and procedures themselves. In the performance of an [[obsessional]] [[ritual]], one designated to keep at bay the illicit temptation, the ritual itself becomes the source of [[libidinal]] [[satisfaction]]. It is thus the "reflexivity" involved in the [[relationship]] between regulatory power and [[sexuality]], the way the repressive regulatory procedures themselves get libidinally invested, that functions as a source of libidinal satisfaction. And it is this radical masochistic reflective turn which remains unaccounted for in the standard [[notion]] of the "[[internalization]]" of [[social]] norms into psychic prohibitions.
The second problem with the quick identification of the unconscious as the site of resistance is that, even if we concede that the unconscious is the site of resistance which forever prevents the smooth functioning of power mechanisms, that [[interpellation]] - the subject's [[recognition]] in his or her allotted symbolic [[place]] - is always ultimately incomplete, failed. "Does such resistance do anything," asks Butler, "to alter or expand the dominant injunctions or interpellations of subject [[formation]]?" (88). In short, she concludes that "this resistance establishes the incomplete [[character]] of any effort to produce a subject by disciplinary means, but it remains unable to rearticulate the dominant [[terms]] of productive power" (89).
The exemplary case of the unconscious "passionate attachments" which sustain Power is precisely the inherent reflective eroticization of the regulatory power-mechanisms and procedures themselves. In the performance of an obsessional ritual, one designated to keep at bay the illicit temptation, the ritual itself becomes the source of libidinal satisfaction. It is thus the "reflexivity" involved in the relationship between regulatory power and sexuality, the way the repressive regulatory procedures themselves get libidinally invested, that functions as a source of libidinal satisfaction. And it is this radical masochistic reflective turn which remains unaccounted for in the standard notion of the "internalization" of social norms into psychic prohibitions.The second problem with the quick identification of the unconscious as the site of resistance is that, even if we concede that the unconscious is the site of resistance which forever prevents the smooth functioning of power mechanisms, that interpellation - the subject's recognition in his or her allotted symbolic place - is always ultimately incomplete, failed. "Does such resistance do anything," asks Butler, "to alter or expand the dominant injunctions or interpellations of subject formation?" (88). In short, she concludes that "this resistance establishes the incomplete character of any effort to produce a subject by disciplinary means, but it remains unable to rearticulate the dominant terms of productive power" (89).<br><br> Therein resides the kernel of Butler's criticism of Lacan. According to her, Lacan reduces resistance to [[the imaginary ]] misrecognition of the symbolic [[structure]]. Such a resistance, although it thwarts the [[full ]] symbolic realization, nonetheless depends on the symbolic order and asserts it in its very opposition, unable to rearticulate its terms - "For the Lacanian, then, the imaginary signifies the [[impossibility ]] of the discursive - that is, symbolic - [[constitution ]] of [[identity]]" (96-97). Along these lines, she even identifies the Lacanian unconscious itself as imaginary, as "that which thwarts any effort of the symbolic to constitute sexed identity coherently and fully, an unconscious indicated by the slips and gaps that characterize the workings of the imaginary in language" (97).<ref>Incidentally, Butler here blatantly contradicts Lacan for whom the unconscious is "the Other's [[3discourse] ]," i.e. symbolic, not imaginary. Is not the best known single line from Lacan the assertion that "the Unconscious is structured like a language?" Slips and gaps are not for Lacan thoroughly symbolic facts. They confirm the functioning of the signifying network.</ref> Against this background, it is then possible to [[claim ]] that, in Lacan, "psychic resistance presumes the continuation of the law in its anterior, symbolic form and, in that [[sense]], contributes to its status quo. In such a view, resistance appears doomed to perpetual defeat" (98).<br><br>
The first [[thing ]] to take note of here is that Butler seems to conflate two radically opposed uses of the term "resistance." One is the socio-critical use - resistance to power, for [[instance ]] - and the other the [[clinical ]] use operative in [[psychoanalysis ]] - the [[patient]]'s resistance to acknowledge the unconscious [[truth ]] of his [[symptoms]], the [[meaning ]] of his [[dreams]], and so on. When Lacan determines resistance as "imaginary," he has thereby in [[mind ]] the misrecognition of the symbolic network which determines us. On the other hand, for Lacan, radical rearticulation of the predominant symbolic order is altogether possible. This is what his notion of <i>[[point de capiton]]</i> - the "[[quilting point]]" or the [[master]]-[[signifier ]] - is [[about]]. When a new point de capiton emerges, the socio-symbolic field is not only [[displaced]], its very [[structuring ]] [[principle ]] changes. Here, one is thus tempted to turn around the opposition between Lacan and Foucault as elaborated by Butler. It is Foucault who insists on the immanence of the entire symbolic field by means of an act proper, a passage through "symbolic [[death]]." In short, it is Lacan who allows us to conceptualize the [[distinction ]] between imaginary resistance -- [[false ]] [[transgression ]] which reasserts the symbolic status quo and even serves as a positive condition of its functioning - and the effective symbolic rearticulation via the [[intervention ]] of the [[real ]] of an act.<br><br>
Only at this level, assuming that we take into account the Lacanian notions of point de capiton and the act as real, does a meaningful dialogue with Butler become possible. Butler's [[matrix ]] of social [[existence ]] as well as Lacan's is that of a [[forced ]] [[choice]]. In order to exist at all within the socio-symbolic space, one has to accept the fundamental [[alienation]], the definition of one's existence in the terms of the "[[big Other]]." As she is quick to add, however, this should not constrain us to - what she perceives as - the Lacanian view according to which the symbolic order is a given which can only be effectively transgressed if the subject pays the price of psychic [[exclusion]]. So on the one hand we have the false imaginary resistance to the symbolic norm, and on the [[other, the ]] [[psychotic ]] breakdown, with the only "realistic option" being full acceptance of alienation in the symbolic order - the [[goal ]] of the [[psychoanalytic ]] [[treatment]]. Butler opposes to this Lacanian fixity of the symbolic the [[Hegelian ]] [[dialectic ]] of presupposing and positing. Not only is the symbolic order always-already presupposed as the sole milieu of the subject's social existence, but this order itself [[exists ]] and is reproduced, only insofar as [[subjects ]] recognize themselves in it and, via repeated [[performative ]] gestures, again and again assume their places in it. This, of course, opens up the possibility of changing the symbolic contours of our socio-symbolic existence by way of its parodically displaced performative enactings. Therein resides the thrust of Butler's anti-[[Kantianism]]. She rejects the Lacanian symbolic a priori as a new version of the transcendental framework which fixes the coordinates of our existence in advance, leaving no space for the [[retroactive ]] [[displacement ]] of these presupposed [[conditions]]. So when in a key passage Butler asks the question:
<blockquote>
What would it mean for the subject to [[desire ]] something other than its continued 'social existence'? If such an existence cannot be undone without falling into some kind of death, can existence nevertheless be risked, death courted or pursued, in order to expose and open to transformation the hold of social power on the conditions of life's persistence? The subject is compelled to [[repeat ]] the norms by which it is produced, but the [[repetition ]] establishes a [[domain ]] of risk, for if one fails to reinstate the norm "in the [[right ]] way," one becomes subject to further sanction, one feels the prevailing conditions of existence threatened. And yet, without a repetition that risks life - in its current organization - how might we begin to imagine the [[contingency ]] of that organization, and performatively reconfigure the contours of the conditions of life? (28-29).
</blockquote>
The Lacanian answer to this is clear - "to desire something other than its continued 'social existence'" and thus to fall "into some kind of death," that is, to risk a gesture by means of which death is "courted or pursued," points precisely towards the way Lacan reconceptualized the Freudian death-[[drive ]] as the elementary form of the [[ethical ]] act. Note that the act, insofar as it is irreducible to a "[[speech ]] act," relies for its performative power on the preestablished set of symbolic rules and/or norms.<br><br> Is this not the whole point of Lacan's reading of Antigone? Antigone effectively puts at risk her entire social existence, defying the socio-symbolic power of the city embodied in the rule of Creon, thereby "falling into some kind of death" - i.e., sustaining symbolic death, the exclusion from the socio-symbolic space. For Lacan, there is no ethical act proper without taking the risk of such a momentary "suspension of the big Other," of the socio-symbolic network which guarantees the subject's identity; an authentic act occurs only when a subject risks a gesture which is no longer "covered up" by the big Other. For that reason, Lacan pursues all possible versions of this entering the domain "between the two deaths," not only citing Antigone after her expulsion, but also Oedipus at Colonus, King Lear, Poe's Mr. Valdemar, and so on. Up to Sygne from Claudel's Coufontaine-trilogy, their common predicament is that they all found themselves in this domain of the undead, "beyond death and life," in which the causality of the symbolic fate is suspended. Butler, in the above-quoted passage, too quickly conflates this act in its radical dimension with the performative reconfiguration of one's symbolic condition via its repetitive displacements. The two are not the same. In other words, one should maintain the crucial distinction between mere "performative reconfiguration," a subversive displacement which remains within the hegemonic field and, as it were, fights against it an internal guerilla battle of turning against the hegemonic field its own terms, and the much more radical act of a thorough reconfiguration of the entire field which redefines the very conditions of socially sustained performativity - in Foucault's terms, the passage from one episteme to another.<br><br> 2<br><br> Is it possible to undermine also the most fundamental level of subjection, what Butler calls "passionate attachments"? The Lacanian name for the primordial passionate attachments on which the very consistency of the subject's being hinges is, of course, fundamental fantasy. The "attachment to subjectivation" constitutive of the subject is thus none other than the primordial "masochist" scene in which the subject "makes/sees himself suffer," that is, assumes la doleur d' exister and thus provides the minimum of support to his being - like Freud's primordially repressed middle term "Father is beating me" in the essay "A Child is Being Beaten." This fundamental fantasy is thoroughly "inter-passive." In it, a scene of passive suffering, or subjection, is staged which simultaneously sustains and threatens the subject's being - only insofar, that is, as being remains foreclosed, primordially repressed. From this perspective, a new approach opens up to the recent artistic practices of sado-masochistic performance. In such practices, isn't this very foreclosure ultimately undone? In other words, what if the open assuming/staging of the fantasmatic scene of primordial "passionate attachment" is far more subversive than the dialectic rearticulation and/or displacement of this scene?<br><br> The difference between Butler and Lacan is that for Butler primordial repression is the foreclosure of the primordial "passionate attachment," while for Lacan, the fundamental fantasy, the stuff of which "primordial attachments" are made, is already a filler, a formation which covers up a certain gap or void. Thus it is only here, at this very point where the difference between Butler and Lacan is almost imperceptible, that we encounter the ultimate gap that separates Butler from Lacan. Butler again interprets these "primordial attachments" as the subject's presuppositions in a proto-Hegelian meaning of the term, and therefore counts on the subject's ability dialectically to rearticulate these presuppositions of his or her being, to reconfigure and displace them. The subject's identity "will remain always and forever rooted in its injury as long as it remains an identity, but it does imply that the possibilities of resignification will rework and unsettle the passionate attachment to subjection without which subject formation - and re-formation - cannot succeed" (105). For example, subjects are confronted with a forced choice in which rejecting an injurious interpellation amounts to not existing at all; under the threat of non-existence, they are, as it were, emotionally blackmailed into identifying with the imposed symbolic identity, "nigger," "bitch," etc. Since symbolic identity retains its hold only by its incessant repetitive re-enacting, however, it is possible for the subject to displace this identity, to recontextualize it, to make it work for other purposes, to turn it against its hegemonic mode of functioning.<br><br>
What Is this not the [[whole]] point of Lacan does here is to introduce a distinction between 's [[reading]] of [[Antigone]]? Antigone effectively puts at risk her entire social existence, defying the socio-symbolic power of the two terms which are identified city embodied in Butlerthe rule of Creon, the fundamental fantasy which serves as the ultimate support thereby "falling into some kind of death" - i.e., sustaining symbolic death, the subject's being, and exclusion from the socio-symbolic identification which space. For Lacan, there is already no ethical act proper without taking the risk of such a symbolic response to momentary "suspension of [[the trauma big Other]]," of the fantasmatic "passionate attachment." The socio-symbolic network which guarantees the subject's identity we assume in ; an authentic act occurs only when a subject risks a forced choice when we recognize ourselves in ideological interpellation relies on gesture which is no longer "covered up" by the disavowal big Other. For that [[reason]], Lacan pursues all possible versions of this entering the fantasmatic domain "passionate attachment[[between the two deaths]]," which serves as its ultimate support.not only citing Antigone after her [[expulsion]], but also [[4Oedipus]] This leads to a further distinction between symbolic rearticulations at Colonus, King Lear, Poe's Mr. Valdemar, and variations so on the fundamental fantasy . Up to Sygne from [[Claudel]]'s Coufontaine- like trilogy, their common predicament is that they all found themselves in this domain of the variations on undead, "Father is beating mebeyond death and life," - in which do not effectively undermine its holdthe [[causality]] of the symbolic fate is suspended. Butler, that isin the above-quoted passage, between too quickly conflates this dialecticization and act in its radical [[dimension]] with the possible "traversing" the very fundamental fantasyperformative reconfiguration of one's symbolic condition via its [[repetitive]] displacements. The ultimate aim of two are not the psychoanalytic process is precisely for same. In other [[words]], one should maintain the subject to undo the ultimate crucial distinction between mere "passionate attachmentperformative reconfiguration," a subversive displacement which guarantees remains within the consistency hegemonic field and, as it were, fights against it an [[internal]] guerilla battle of his or her beingturning against the hegemonic field its own terms, and thus to undergo what Lacan calls the "subjective destitution." At its most fundamental levelmuch more radical act of a thorough reconfiguration of the entire field which redefines the very conditions of socially sustained performativity - in Foucault's terms, the primordial "passionate attachment" passage from one episteme to the scene of fundamental fantasy is not "dialecticizable[[another]]."<br><br>
An example of the reconfiguration of fantasy would be Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series. In the first film, the masochist fantasy in all its ambiguity is almost directly acknowledged, while in the following installments, it looks as if Eastwood self-consciously accepted the politically correct criticism and displaced the fantasy to give to the story a more acceptable "progressive" flavor. In all these reconfigurations, however, the same fundamental fantasy remains operative. With all respect for the political efficiency of such reconfigurations, they do not really touch the hard fantasmatic kernel - they even sustain it. And in contrast to Butler, Lacan's wager is that even and also in politics, it is possible to accomplish a more radical gesture of "traversing" the very fundamental fantasy. Only such gestures which disturb this fantasmatic kernel are authentic acts.<br><br>===2===
HereIs it possible to undermine also the most fundamental level of subjection, one should look to what Butler calls "passionate attachments"? The Lacanian name for the primordial passionate attachments on which the problematic very consistency of the original Hilflosigkeit (subject'helplessnesss being hinges is,' 'distress') of small infantscourse, fundamental [[fantasy]]. The first feature "attachment to be noted [[subjectivation]]" constitutive of the subject is that this thus none other than the primordial "[[masochist]]"distress[[scene]] in which the subject " covers two interconnectedmakes/sees himself suffer, but nonetheless different, levels -- first a purely organic helplessness" that is, assumes la doleur d' exister and thus provides the inability minimum of the small child to survive, support to satisfy his or her most elementary needs, without the parentsbeing - like [[Freud]]' help, and second s primordially [[repressed]] middle term "[[Father]] is beating me" in the traumatic perplexion when the child essay "A [[Child]] is Being Beaten." This [[fundamental fantasy]] is thrown into the position of thoroughly "inter-[[passive]]." In it, a helpless witness scene of sexual interplay among the parentspassive [[suffering]], other adultsor subjection, or between adults is staged which simultaneously sustains and himthreatens the subject's being - or herself. The child only insofar, that is helpless, without "cognitive mappingas being remains [[foreclosed]], primordially repressed. From this perspective," when confronted with a new approach opens up to the enigma [[recent]] artistic practices of the Othersado-masochistic performance. In such practices, isn's <i>jouissance</i>t this very [[foreclosure]] ultimately undone? In other words, unable to symbolize what if the mysterious sexual gestures and innuendoes he or she is witnessing. Crucial for "becoming-human" is open assuming/staging of the overlapping [[fantasmatic]] scene of the two levels, the implicit primordial "sexualizationpassionate attachment" of is far more subversive than the way a parent satisfies a child's bodily needs - say, when the mother feeds the child by excessively caressing him, dialectic rearticulation and the child detects in /or displacement of this excess the mystery of sexual <i>jouissance</i>.<br><br>scene?
So, back to The [[difference]] between Butler - the crucial question concerns the philosophical status of this original and constitutive <i>Hilflosigkeit</i>. Is this <i>Hilflosigkeit</i> not another name Lacan is that for Butler primordial [[repression]] is the gap foreclosure of the primordial dis-attachment which triggers the need for the fantasmatic primordial "passionate attachment,"? In other wordswhile for Lacan, the fundamental fantasy, what if we turn around the perspective and conceive stuff of the obstacle which prevents the infans fully to fit into its environs - this original "out-of-jointprimordial attachments" state - in its positive aspectare made, is already a filler, a formation which covers up a certain gap or void. Thus it is only here, as another name for at this very point where the very abyss of freedomdifference between Butler and Lacan is almost imperceptible, for that gesture of we [[encounter]] the ultimate gap that separates Butler from Lacan. Butler again interprets these "disconnectingprimordial attachments" that liberates a as the subject from its direct immersion into its environs? Or, to put it 's presuppositions in yet another way a proto- trueHegelian meaning of the term, and therefore counts on the subject is as it were "blackmailed" into passively submitting 's ability [[dialectically]] to some form rearticulate these presuppositions of the primordial "passionate attachmenthis or her being,to reconfigure and displace [[them]]. The subject's identity " sincewill remain always and forever rooted in its [[injury]] as long as it remains an identity, outside of but it, he simply does not exist. This non-existence is not directly imply that the absence possibilities of existence, however, but a certain gap or void in the order of being which "is" resignification will rework and unsettle the subject itself. The need for "passionate attachment" to provide a minimum of being implies that the subjection without which subject qua "abstract negativity," qua the primordial gesture of disformation -attachment from its environs, is already here. Fantasy is thus a defenseand re-formation against the primordial abyss if dis-attachment that "iscannot succeed" the subject itself(105). At this precise pointFor example, then, Butler should be supplemented - the emergence of the subject and subjection subjects are confronted with a [[forced choice]] in which rejecting an injurious interpellation amounts to not existing at all; under the sense [[threat]] of the "passionate attachment," i.e. submission to some figure of the Othernon-existence, they are not strictly equivalent, sinceas it were, for emotionally blackmailed into [[identifying]] with the imposed symbolic identity, "nigger,"passionate attachment" to take placebitch, the gap which "is" the subject must already be hereetc. Only if this gap is already hereSince symbolic identity retains its hold only by its incessant repetitive re-enacting, however, can we account for how it is possible for the subject to escape the hold displace this identity, to recontextualize it, to make it [[work]] for other purposes, to turn it against its hegemonic mode of the fundamental fantasyfunctioning.[5]<br><br>
3What Lacan does here is to introduce a distinction between the two terms which are identified in Butler, the fundamental fantasy which serves as the ultimate support of the subject's being, and the [[symbolic identification]] which is already a symbolic response to the [[trauma]] of the fantasmatic "passionate attachment." The symbolic identity we assume in a forced choice when we recognize ourselves in [[ideological]] interpellation relies on the [[disavowal]] of the fantasmatic "passionate attachment" which serves as its ultimate support.<brref>For example, apropos of the [[army]] life, such a "passionate attachment" is provided by a [[homosexual]] link which has to be disavowed if it is to remain operative. See Chapter 2 of Slavoj [[Zizek]], ''The Plague of [[Fantasies]]'' ([[London]]: Verso, 1997).<br/ref>This leads to a further distinction between symbolic rearticulations and variations on the fundamental fantasy - like the variations on "Father is beating me" - which do not effectively undermine its hold, that is, between this dialecticization and the possible "[[traversing]]" the very fundamental fantasy. The ultimate aim of the psychoanalytic process is precisely for the subject to undo the ultimate "passionate attachment" which guarantees the consistency of his or her being, and thus to undergo what Lacan calls the "[[subjective destitution]]." At its most fundamental level, the primordial "passionate attachment" to the scene of fundamental fantasy is not "dialecticizable."
So what is a proper act? Jacques-Alain Miller [6] proposes as An example of the definition reconfiguration of "a true woman" a certain radical act - fantasy would be Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series. In the act of taking from manfirst [[film]], her partner, of obliterating, destroying eventhe masochist fantasy in all its ambiguity is almost directly acknowledged, that which is "while in him more than himselfthe following installments," that which "means everything it looks as if Eastwood [[self]]-consciously accepted the politically correct criticism and displaced the fantasy to him" and give to which he holds the story a more than his own lifeacceptable "progressive" flavor. In all these reconfigurations, however, the precious agalma round which his life turnssame fundamental fantasy remains operative. The exemplary figure With all respect for the political efficiency of such an act reconfigurations, they do not really touch the hard fantasmatic kernel - they even sustain it. And in literature is that of Medea who, upon learning that Jason, her husband, plans contrast to abandon her for a younger womanButler, kills their two young children, her husbandLacan's most precious possessions. It wager is that even and also in this horrible act of destroying that which matters most to her husband that she acts as une vraie femme[[politics]], as Lacan put itis possible to accomplish a more radical gesture of "traversing" the very fundamental fantasy.Only such gestures which disturb this fantasmatic kernel are authentic [[7acts]<br><br>].
Would it not be possibleHere, along these lines, also one should look to interpret the unique figure problematic of the <i>femme fatale</i> in the new noir of the 90soriginal [[Hilflosigkeit]] ('[[helplessness]], as exemplified by Linda Fiorentino in John Dahl's <i>'distress') of small infants. The Last Seduction</i>? In contrast first feature to be noted is that this "distress" covers two interconnected, but nonetheless different, levels -- first a purely [[organic]] helplessness, the classic noir <i>femme fatale</i> inability of the 40ssmall child to survive, who remains an elusive spectral presenceto [[satisfy]] his or her most elementary [[needs]], without the [[parents]]' [[help]], and second the [[traumatic]] perplexion when the new <i>femme fatale</i> child is characterized by direct, outspoken thrown into the position of a [[helpless]] [[witness]] of [[sexual aggressivity]] interplay among the parents, verbal and physicalother [[adults]], by direct self-commodification or between adults and selfhim-manipulationor herself. She has the The child is helpless, without "mind of a pimp in the body of a whore.cognitive [[mapping]]," Two dialogues are here indicative - when confronted with the classic exchange enigma of double entendres about a "speed limit" which finishes the first encounter of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray in Billy WilderOther's <i>Double Indemnity[[jouissance]]</i>, unable to [[symbolize]] the mysterious sexual gestures and innuendoes he or she is witnessing. Crucial for "becoming-[[human]]" is the first encounter overlapping of Linda Fiorentino with her partner in <i>The Last Seduction</i>. In the lattertwo levels, Fiorentino directly opens up his fly, reaches into it and inspects his merchandise before accepting him as a lover: the implicit "I never buy anything sight unseen,sexualization" she saysof the way a parent [[satisfies]] a child's [[bodily]] needs - say, and later rejects any "warm human contact" with him.when the [[8mother]] How does this brutal "self-commodificationfeeds the child by excessively caressing him," and the child detects in this reduction of herself and her male partner to an object to be satisfied and exploited, affect [[excess]] the allegedly "subversive" status mystery of the sexual <i>femme fatalejouissance</i> with regard to the paternal Law of speech?<br><br>.
According So, back to standard feminist cinema theory, in Butler - the classical noir, crucial question concerns the [[philosophical]] status of this original and constitutive <i>Hilflosigkeit</i>. Is this <i>femme fataleHilflosigkeit</i> is punished at not another name for the level gap of the explicit narrative line. She is destroyed primordial dis-attachment which triggers the [[need]] for being assertive the fantasmatic primordial "passionate attachment"? In other words, what if we turn around the perspective and undermining conceive of the male patriarchal dominance and obstacle which prevents the [[infans]] fully to fit into its environs - this original "out-of-joint" [[state]] - in its positive aspect, as another name for the very abyss of [[freedom]], for presenting that gesture of "disconnecting" that liberates a threat subject from its direct immersion into its environs? Or, to put itin yet another way - [[true]], the subject is as it were "blackmailed" into passively submitting to some form of the primordial "passionate attachment," since, [[outside]] of it, he simply does not exist. Although she This non-existence is destroyed not directly the [[absence]] of existence, however, but a certain gap or domesticated, her image survives her physical destruction as void in the element order of being which effectively dominates "is" the scenesubject itself. The subversive character need for "passionate attachment" to provide a minimum of being implies that the subject qua "abstract negativity," qua the noir films primordial gesture of dis-attachment from its environs, is exhibited in already here. Fantasy is thus a [[defense]]-formation against the way primordial abyss if dis-attachment that "is" the texture of the film belies and subverts its explicit narrative linesubject itself. In contrast to At this classic noirprecise point, then, Butler should be supplemented - the neo-noir emergence of the 80s subject and 90ssubjection in the sense of the "passionate attachment, from Kasdan's <" i>Body Heat</i> .e. submission to <i>The Last Seduction</i>some [[figure]] of the Other, are not strictly equivalent, at the level of explicit narrativesince, openly allows for the <i>femme fatale</i> "passionate attachment" to triumphtake place, to reduce her partner to a sucker condemned to death - she survives rich and alone over his dead body. She does not survive as a spectral the gap which "undeadis" threat which libidinally dominates the scene even after her physical and social destructionsubject must already be here. She triumphs directlyOnly if this gap is already here, in social reality itselfcan we account for how it is possible for the subject to escape the hold of the fundamental fantasy. How does <ref>One should link this affect opposition of attachment and dis-attachment to the subversive edge old Freudian metapsychological opposition of Life and Death [[drives]]. In The Ego and [[the <i>femme fatale<Id]], Freud defines these drives as the opposition between the forces of connection/i> figure? Does unity and the fact that her triumph forces of disconnection/disunity. Dis-attachment is real not undermine her much stronger spectral/fantasmatic triumphthus [[death drive]] at its purest, so thatthe gesture of [[ontological]] "derailment" which throws "out of joint" the order of Being. It is the gesture of disinvestment, instead of a spectral all"contraction"/withdrawal from being immersed in the [[world]]. The primordial attachment is the counter-powerful threatmove to this [[negative]] gesture. In the last resort, indestructible in her very physical destruction, she turns out this negative tendency to be just disruption is none other than [[libido]] itself: what throws a vulgar, cold, manipulative subject "bitchout of joint" deprived of any aura?is none other than the [[traumatic encounter]] with ''jouissance''.<br><br/ref>
Perhaps what one should do here is change the terms of the debate by, first, pointing out that, far from being simply a threat to the male patriarchal identity, the classic <i>femme fatale</i> functions as the "inherent transgression" of the patriarchal symbolic universe, as the male masochist-paranoiac fantasy of the exploitative and sexually insatiable woman who simultaneously dominates us and enjoys in her suffering, provoking us violently to take her and to abuse her.[9] The threat of the <i>femme fatale</i> is thus a false one. It is effectively a fantasmatic support of patriarchal domination, the figure of the enemy engendered by the patriarchal system itself. In Judith Butler's terms, <i>femme fatale</i> is the fundamental disavowed "passionate attachment" of the modern male subject, a fantasmatic formation which is needed, but cannot be openly assumed, so that it can only be evoked on the condition that, at the level of the explicit narrative line - standing for the public socio-symbolic sphere - she is punished and the order of male domination is reasserted. Or, to put it in Foucauldian terms, in the same way that the discourse on sexuality creates sex as the mysterious, impenetrable entity to be conquered, the patriarchal erotic discourse creates the <i>femme fatale</i> as the inherent threat against which the male identity should assert itself. And the neo-noir's achievement is to bring to light this underlying fantasy: the new <i>femme fatale</i> who fully accepts the male game of manipulation, and as it were beats him at his own game, is much more effective in threatening the paternal Law than the classic spectral <i>femme fatale</i>.<br><br>===3===
One can argue, of course, that this new So what is a proper act? Jacques-[[Alain]] [[Miller]]<iref>femme fatale</i> is no less hallucinatorySee [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], "Des Semblants dans la Relation Entre les [[Sexes]], that her direct approach to a man is no less the realization of a " ''La [[Cause]] Freudianne'' 36 (masochist1997) male fantasy; what one should not forget, however, is that the new <i>femme fatale: 7-15.</iref> subverts proposes as the male fantasy precisely by way definition of directly and brutally realizing it, acting it out in "real life.a true [[woman]]" It is thus not only that she realizes the male hallucination; she is fully aware that men hallucinate about such a direct approach, and that directly giving them what they hallucinate about is the most effective way to undermine their domination. In other words, what we have in the abovecertain radical act -described scene from <i>The Last Seduction</i> is the exact feminine counterpart to the scene act of taking from Lynch's <i>Wild at Heart</i> in which Wilem Defoe verbally abuses Laura Dernman, forcing her to utter the words "Fuck me!" And when she finally does respondpartner, of obliterating, destroying even, i.e. when her fantasy that which is aroused"in him more than himself, he treats this offer as an authentic free offer and politely rejects it - "No, thanks, I've got that which "means everything to go, but maybe some other time...him" In both scenesand to which he holds more than his own life, the subject is humiliated when precious [[agalma]] round which his or her fantasy is brutally externalizedlife turns.The exemplary figure of such an act in [10[literature]] In shortis that of Medea who, Linda Fiorentino acts here as a true sadistupon learning that Jason, not only on account of her reduction of husband, plans to abandon her partner to the bearer of partial objects which provide pleasure - thereby depriving the sexual act of its "human and emotional warmth" and transforming it into for a cold physiological exercise -- but also because of the cruel manipulation of the otheryounger woman, kills their two young [[children]], her husband's fantasy which most precious possessions. It is directly acted out and thus thwarted in its efficiency this horrible act of destroying that which matters most to her husband that she acts as the support of desireune vraie [[femme]], as Lacan put it.<brref>Lacan's other example is that of Andre Gide's wife who, after his death, burned all his [[love]] letters to her, considered by him his most precious possession.<br/ref>
Is this gesture of intentionally and brutally dropping Would it not be possible, along these lines, also to [[interpret]] the spectral aura unique figure of the traditional <i>[[femme fatale]]</i> not another version of in the act new noir of une vraie femme? Is not the object which is to her partner "more than himself90s," the treasure around which his life turns, the as exemplified by Linda Fiorentino in John Dahl's <i>femme fataleThe Last [[Seduction]]</i> herself? By brutally destroying the spectral aura of "feminine mystery," by acting as a cold manipulating subject interested only in raw sex, reducing her partner In contrast to a partial object, the appendix to - and the bearer of - his penis, does she not also violently destroy what is "for him more than himself"? The enigma of this new classic noir <i>femme fatale</i> is that althoughof the 40s, who remains an elusive [[spectral]] [[presence]], in contrast to the classic new <i>femme fatale</i>, she is totally transparentcharacterized by direct, openly assuming the role of a calculating bitchoutspoken sexual [[aggressivity]], the perfect embodiment of what Baudrillard called the "transparency of Evil[[verbal]] and [[physical]]," her enigma persists. Here we encounter the paradox already discerned by Hegel - sometimes, total direct self-exposure commodification and self-transparency, i.emanipulation. She has the awareness that there is no hidden content, makes "mind of a pimp in the subject even more enigmaticbody of a whore. Sometimes, being totally outspoken is " Two dialogues are here indicative - the most effective and cunning way classic [[exchange]] of deceiving [[double]] entendres about a "speed [[limit]]" which finishes the Other. For that reasonfirst encounter of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray in Billy Wilder's <i>Double Indemnity</i>, and the neo-noir first encounter of Linda Fiorentino with her partner in <i>femme fatale[[The Last Seduction]]</i> continues to exert her irresistible seductive power on her poor partner. Her strategy is In the one of deceiving latter, Fiorentino directly opens up his fly, reaches into it and inspects his merchandise before accepting him by openly telling the truth. The male partner is unable to accept thisas a lover: "I never buy anything [[sight]] unseen," she says, and solater rejects any "warm human contact" with him.<ref>I rely here on Kate Stables, he desperately clings to the conviction thatBritish Film Institute, behind the cold manipulative surfaceLondon.</ref> How does this brutal "self-commodification, there must be a heart " this reduction of gold herself and her [[male]] partner to an [[object]] to be saved, a person of warm human feeling, [[satisfied]] and that her cold manipulative approach is just a kind of defensive strategy. Soexploited, in [[affect]] the vein of Freud's well-known Jewish joke allegedly "Why are you telling me that you are going to Lemberg, when you are actually going to Lemberg?subversive" the basic implicit reproach status of the sucker-partner to the new <i>femme fatale</i> could be formulated as "Why do you act if you are just a cold manipulative bitch, when you are really just a cold manipulative bitchwith [[regard]] to the paternal Law of speech?"<br><br>
4According to standard [[feminist]] [[cinema]] theory, in the classical noir, the <bri>femme fatale<br/i>is punished at the level of the [[explicit]] [[narrative]] line. She is destroyed for being assertive and undermining the male patriarchal dominance and for presenting a threat to it. Although she is destroyed or domesticated, her [[image]] survives her physical [[destruction]] as the element which effectively dominates the scene. The subversive character of the noir [[films]] is exhibited in the way the [[texture]] of the film belies and subverts its explicit narrative line. In contrast to this classic noir, the neo-noir of the 80s and 90s, from Kasdan's <i>[[Body Heat]]</i> to <i>The Last Seduction</i>, at the level of explicit narrative, openly allows the <i>femme fatale</i> to triumph, to reduce her partner to a sucker condemned to death - she survives rich and alone over his [[dead]] body. She does not survive as a spectral "undead" threat which libidinally dominates the scene even after her physical and social destruction. She triumphs directly, in social [[reality]] itself. How does this affect the subversive edge of the <i>femme fatale</i> figure? Does the fact that her triumph is real not undermine her much stronger spectral/fantasmatic triumph, so that, instead of a spectral all-powerful threat, indestructible in her very physical destruction, she turns out to be just a vulgar, cold, manipulative "bitch" deprived of any aura?
This allows us further to specify Perhaps what one should do here is [[change]] the Lacanian notion terms of an authentic act. Act is the debate by, first, pointing out that, far from being simply a threat to be opposed to mere activity. Activity relies on some fantasmatic support, while the authentic act involves disturbing - "traversing" - the fantasy. In this precise sensemale patriarchal identity, act is for Lacan on the side of classic <i>femme fatale</i> functions as the object qua real as opposed to signifier - to "speech act.inherent transgression" We can only perform speech acts insofar as we have accepted the fundamental alienation in of the patriarchal symbolic order and [[universe]], as the fantasmatic support necessary for the functioning male masochist-[[paranoiac]] fantasy of this order, while the act as real is an event which occurs ex nihiloexploitative and sexually [[insatiable]] woman who simultaneously dominates us and [[enjoys]] in her suffering, without any fantasmatic support. As such, act as object is also provoking us violently to be opposed take her and to the subject, at least in the standard Lacanian sense of the "alienated" divided subjectabuse her. <ref>The correlate to fantasy of the act is all-powerful woman whose irresistible attraction presents a divided subjectthreat not only to male domination, but not in to the sense that because very identity of that division act is always failed or displaced. On the contrarymale subject, act as traumatic tuche is that which divides the subject who cannot ever subjectivize this act, assume it as "his own,fundamental fantasy" posit himself as its author-agentagainst which the male symbolic identity defines and sustains itself. </ref> The authentic act that I accomplish threat of the <i>femme fatale</i> is always by definition thus a foreign body, an intruder which simultaneously attracts/fascinates and also repels me, so that, if and when I come too close to it, this leads to my aphanisis, self-erasurefalse one. If there It is effectively a subject to the actfantasmatic support of patriarchal domination, it is not the subject of subjectivization, figure of integrating the act into [[enemy]] engendered by the universe of symbolic integration and recognitionpatriarchal [[system]] itself. In Judith Butler's terms, <i>femme fatale</i> is the fundamental disavowed "passionate attachment" of assuming the act as "my ownmodern male subject, a fantasmatic formation which is needed," but rather cannot be openly assumed, so that it is an uncanny "acephalous" subject through which can only be evoked on the act takes place as condition that which is "in him more than himself." Act thus designates , at the level at which of the fundamental divisions and displacements usually associated with explicit narrative line - standing for the "Lacanian subject" [11[public] are momentarily suspended] socio-symbolic sphere - she is punished and the order of male domination is reasserted. In the actOr, the subject, as Lacan puts to put itin Foucauldian terms, posits itself in the same way that the discourse on sexuality creates sex as its own cause and is no longer determined by the decentered object-cause. Thus if we subtract from it its scenic imagery, its fascination with the divine majestymysterious, and reduce it impenetrable entity to be conquered, the essential, Kant's well-known description of how a direct insight into patriarchal [[erotic]] discourse creates the noumenal God <i>femme fatale</i> as the Thing in inherent threat against which the male identity should assert itself would deprive us of our freedom and turn us into lifeless puppets paradoxically fits perfectly . And the description of the ethical act.neo-noir's [[12achievement] This act is precisely something which unexpectedly "just occurs." It is an occurrence which most surprises its agent itself.[13] The paradox is that in an authentic act, the highest freedom coincides with the utmost passivity, with a reduction to a lifeless automaton who just blindly performs its gestures. The problematic of act thus compels us bring to accept light this underlying fantasy: the radical shift of perspective involved in new <i>femme fatale</i> who fully accepts the modern notion male [[game]] of finitude. What is so difficult to accept is not the fact that the true act - in which noumenal manipulation, and phenomenal dimensions coincide - as it were beats him at his own game, is forever out of our reach. The true trauma resides much more effective in threatening the paternal Law than the opposite awareness that there are acts, that they do occur and that we have to come to terms with them.classic spectral <bri>femme fatale<br/i>.
This shift is homologous to that implied in the Kierkegaardian notion One can argue, of "sickness unto death." The "sickness unto death" propercourse, its despair, opposes the standard despair of the individual who is split between the certainty that death this new <i>femme fatale</i> is the endno less [[hallucinatory]], that there her direct approach to a man is no beyond less the realization of eternal life and the equal certainty that death is a (masochist) male fantasy; what one should not the last thingforget, however, that there is another life with its promise of redemption and eternal bliss. The "sickness unto death" rather involves the opposite paradox of the subject who knows that death is not the end, that he has an immortal soul, but cannot face new <i>femme fatale</i> subverts the exorbitant demands male fantasy precisely by way of this fact - the necessity to abandon vain aesthetic pleasures directly and to work for his salvation - and sobrutally realizing it, desperately wants to believe that death is the end, that there is no divine unconditional demand exerting its pressure upon him. The standard religious je sais bien, mais quand meme is inverted here. It is not that acting it out in "I know very well that I am a mere mortal living being, but I nonetheless desperately want to believe that there is redemption in eternal real life." It is rather thus not only that "I know very well she realizes the male [[hallucination]]; she is fully aware that I have an eternal soul responsible to God's unconditional commandmentsmen hallucinate about such a direct approach, but I desperately want to believe and that there directly giving them what they hallucinate about is nothing beyond death, I want the most effective way to be relieved of the unbearable pressure of divine injunctionundermine their domination." In other words, what we have in contrast the above-described scene from <i>The Last Seduction</i> is the exact [[feminine]] [[counterpart]] to the individual caught scene from Lynch's <i>Wild at Heart</i> in which Wilem Defoe verbally abuses Laura Dern, forcing her to utter the standard skeptical despair - words "[[Fuck]] me!" And when she finally does respond, i.e.when her fantasy is aroused, the individual who knows he will die but cannot accept treats this offer as an authentic free offer and politely rejects it and hopes for eternal life - we have here, in the case of "sickness unto deathNo," the individual who desperately wants to diethanks, I've got to disappear forevergo, but knows that he cannot do itmaybe some other [[time]]..." In both scenes, that he the subject is humiliated when his or her fantasy is condemned to eternal lifebrutally externalized. The predicament <ref>For a detailed [[analysis]] of the individual "sick unto death" is the same as that of the Wagnerian heroesscene from Wild at Heart, from the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> see Appendix 2 to Amfortas in <i>Parsifal[[Slavoj Zizek]]'s [[The Plague of Fantasies]].</iref>In short, who desperately strive for deathLinda Fiorentino acts here as a true [[sadist]], for not only on account of her reduction of her partner to the final annihilation bearer of [[partial]] [[objects]] which provide [[pleasure]] - thereby depriving the sexual act of its "human and emotional warmth" and selftransforming it into a cold [[physiological]] exercise --obliteration but also because of the cruel manipulation of the other's fantasy which would relieve them of is directly acted out and thus thwarted in its efficiency as the hell support of their "undead" existencedesire.<br><br>
In Is this gesture of intentionally and brutally dropping the criticism spectral aura of Kant implicit in this notion the traditional <i>femme fatale</i> not another version of the act, Lacan is thus close to Hegel who also claimed that the unity of une vraie femme? Is not the noumenal and the phenomenal adjourned ad infinitum in Kant is precisely what takes place every time an authentic act object which is accomplished. Kant's mistake was to presuppose that there is an act only insofar as it is adequately her partner "subjectivizedmore than himself," that isthe treasure around which his life turns, accomplished with a pure will, a will free the <i>femme fatale</i> herself? By brutally destroying the spectral aura of any "pathologicalfeminine mystery," motivations. And, since one can never be sure that what I did was effectively motivated by the moral Law acting as its sole motivea cold manipulating subject interested only in raw sex, reducing her partner to a [[partial object]], the moral act turns into something which effectively never happens, but can only be posited as appendix to - and the final point bearer of an infinite asymptotic approach - his [[penis]], does she not also violently destroy what is "for him more than himself"? The enigma of the purification of the soul. For this reason, Kantnew <i>femme fatale</i> is that although, in order contrast to guarantee the ultimate possibility of the actclassic <i>femme fatale</i>, she is totally [[transparent]], had to propose his postulate of openly assuming the immortality [[role]] of the soul, which, as it can be shown, effectively amounts to its very oppositea calculating bitch, the Sadean fantasy perfect embodiment of what [[Baudrillard]] called the immortality "[[transparency]] of [[Evil]]," her enigma persists. Here we encounter the body[[paradox]] already discerned by [[Hegel]] - sometimes, [[total]] self-exposure and [[self-transparency]], i.e. the [[14awareness]] Only in such a way can one hope thatthere is no hidden [[content]], after endless approximationmakes the subject even more enigmatic. Sometimes, one will reach the point of being able to accomplish a true moral act. The point of Lacan's criticism totally outspoken is thus that an authentic act does not presuppose its agent, the most effective and cunning way Kant assumes with misleading self-evidence, "at the level of deceiving the act" with his will purified of all pathological motivationsOther. It is inevitable, thenFor that reason, that the agent neo-noir <i>femme fatale</i> continues to exert her irresistible [[seductive]] power on her poor partner. Her strategy is not "at the level one of its act," for he is himself unpleasantly surprised deceiving him by openly telling the "crazy thing he just did" and truth. The male partner is unable fully to come accept this, and so, he desperately clings to terms with what he did. Thisthe conviction that, incidentallybehind the cold manipulative surface, is the usual structure there must be a heart of heroic acts - somebody whogold to be saved, for a long timeperson of warm human [[feeling]], led an opportunistic life and that her cold manipulative approach is just a kind of maneuvering and compromisesdefensive strategy. So, all in the vein of a sudden, inexplicably even Freud's well-known [[Jewish]] [[joke]] "Why are you telling me that you are going to himselfLemberg, resolves when you are actually going to stand firmly, cost what it may. Thus Lemberg?" the paradox basic implicit reproach of the act resides in sucker-partner to the fact that although it is not "intentional" in the usual sense of the term, it is nonetheless accepted new <i>femme fatale</i> could be formulated as something for which its agent is fully responsible - "I cannot Why do otherwiseyou act if you are just a cold manipulative bitch, yet I am nonetheless fully free in doing it.when you are really just a cold manipulative bitch?"<br><br>
So, if we return for a brief moment to <i>The Last Seduction</i>, Linda Fiorentino's gesture nevertheless does not quite fit the description of a true ethical act, insofar as she is presented as a perfect demoniac being, as the subject with a diabolical will who is perfectly aware of what she is doing; she fully subjectivizes her acts, insofar as her Will is at the level of her wicked deeds. As such, she remains a male fantasy: the fantasy of encountering a perfect subject in the guise of the absolutely corrupted woman who fully knows and wills what she is doing.<br><br>===4===
ConsequentlyThis allows us further to specify the Lacanian notion of an authentic act. Act is to be opposed to mere [[activity]]. Activity relies on some fantasmatic support, while the authentic act involves disturbing - "traversing" - the fantasy. In this Lacanian notion precise sense, act is for Lacan on the side of the object qua real as opposed to signifier - to "[[speech act]]." We can only perform speech acts insofar as we have accepted the fundamental alienation in the symbolic order and the fantasmatic support necessary for the functioning of this order, while the act as real is an [[event]] which occurs ex nihilo, without any fantasmatic support. As such, act as object is also enables us to break with be opposed to the subject, at least in the deconstructionist ethics standard Lacanian sense of the irreducible finitude"[[alienated]]" [[divided]] subject. The correlate to the act is a divided subject, but not in the sense that because of how our situation that [[division]] act is always failed or displaced. On the contrary, act as traumatic tuche is that which [[divides]] the subject who cannot ever subjectivize this act, assume it as "his own," posit himself as its [[author]]-[[agent]]. The authentic act that of I accomplish is always by definition a displaced beingforeign body, caught in a constitutive lackan intruder which simultaneously attracts/fascinates and also repels me, so that all we can do is , if and when I come too close to assume heroically it, this lackleads to my [[aphanisis]], self-erasure. If there is a subject to assume heroically the fact that our situation act, it is that not the subject of [[subjectivization]], of being thrown integrating the act into an impenetrable finite context. The corollary the universe of this ethicssymbolic integration and recognition, of courseassuming the act as "my own, " but rather it is an [[uncanny]] "acephalous" subject through which the act takes place as that which is "in him more than himself." Act thus designates the level at which the fundamental divisions and displacements usually associated with the "Lacanian subject"<ref>That is, the [[split]] between the ultimate source subject of totalitarian the [[enunciation]] and other catastrophes is manthe subject of the [[enunciated]]/statement, the subject's presumption that he can overcome this condition of finitude"decenterment" with regard to the symbolic big Other, and so on.</ref> are momentarily suspended. In the act, the subject, as Lacan puts it, posits itself as its own cause and is no longer determined by the decentered object-cause. Thus if we subtract from it its scenic imagery, its [[fascination]] with the divine majesty, lack and displacementreduce it to the essential, [[Kant]]'s well-known description of how a direct insight into the noumenal God as the Thing in itself would deprive us of our freedom and "turn us into lifeless puppets paradoxically fits perfectly the description of the ethical act like God,.<ref>" Instead of the [[conflict]] which now the [[moral]] disposition has to [[wage]] with inclinations and in a total transparencywhich, after some defeats, moral strength of mind may be gradually won, surpassing his constitutive divisionGod and [[eternity]] in their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes... Lacan's answer Thus most actions conforming to this is that absolute/unconditional acts do occurthe law would be done from [[fear]], few would be done from hope, none from [[duty]]. The moral worth of our actions, but not on which alone the worth of the person and even of the world depends in the idealist guise eyes of a self-transparent gesture performed by a subject with a pure will who fully intends themsupreme wisdom, would not exist at all. They occurThe conduct of man, so long as his [[nature]] remained as it is now, would be changed into mere [[mechanism]], on the contrarywhere, as in a totally unpredictable tuchepuppet show, everything would gesticulate well but no life would be found in the [[figures]]." [[Immanuel Kant]], ''Critique of [[Practical]] Reason'' (New York: Macmillan, 1956), a miraculous event 152-153.</ref> This act is precisely something which unexpectedly "just occurs." It is an occurrence which shatters our livesmost surprises its agent itself. To put it in somewhat pathetic terms<ref>After an authentic act, this my reaction is always, "I myself do not [[know]] how the I was able to do that - it just happened!"divine" dimension </ref> The paradox is present that in our livesan authentic act, and the different modalities highest freedom coincides with the utmost [[passivity]], with a reduction to a lifeless [[automaton]] who just blindly performs its gestures. The problematic of ethical betrayal relate precisely act thus compels us to accept the different ways radical shift of perspective involved in the modern notion of betraying [[finitude]]. What is so difficult to accept is not the fact that the true act-eventin which noumenal and phenomenal dimensions coincide - is forever out of our reach. The true source of evil is not a finite mortal man who trauma resides in the opposite awareness that there are acts like God, but a man who disavows that divine miracles they do occur and reduces himself that we have to come to just another finite mortal beingterms with them.[15]<br><br>
Notes:<br><br> 1. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997). Numbers This shift is homologous to that implied in parentheses refer to the pages Kierkegaardian notion of this book"sickness unto death.<br>2. Butler demonstrates that the Foucauldian "bodyThe "sickness unto death" as proper, its despair, opposes the site standard despair of resistance the individual who is split between the [[certainty]] that death is none other than the Freudian "psyche." Paradoxicallyend, "body" that there is Foucault's name for no beyond of eternal life and the psychic apparatus insofar as it resists equal certainty that death is not the soul's domination. That last thing, that there is to say, when, in his well-known definition another life with its promise of the soul as the redemption and eternal bliss. The "prison of the body,sickness unto death" Foucault turns around rather involves the standard Platonic-Christian definition opposite paradox of the body as subject who [[knows]] that death is not the end, that he has an immortal soul, but cannot face the "prison exorbitant [[demands]] of this fact - the soul[[necessity]] to abandon vain aesthetic pleasures and to work for his salvation - and so," what he calls desperately wants to believe that death is the "body" end, that there is no divine unconditional [[demand]] exerting its pressure upon him. The standard [[religious]] je sais bien, mais quand meme is inverted here. It is not simply the biological bodythat "I know very well that I am a mere mortal [[living]] being, but is I nonetheless desperately want to believe that which there is already caught redemption in some kind of pre-subjective psychic apparatuseternal life._<br>3. Incidentally, Butler here blatantly contradicts Lacan for whom the unconscious " It is rather that "the OtherI know very well that I have an eternal soul [[responsible]] to God's discourseunconditional commandments,but I desperately want to believe that there is [[nothing]] beyond death, I want to be relieved of the unbearable pressure of divine injunction." In other words, in contrast to the individual caught in the standard skeptical despair - i.e. symbolic, not imaginary. Is not the best known single line from Lacan individual who knows he will die but cannot accept it and hopes for eternal life - we have here, in the assertion that case of "sickness unto death,"the Unconscious individual who desperately wants to die, to [[disappear]] forever, but knows that he cannot do it, that he is structured like a language?condemned to eternal life. The predicament of the individual "sick unto death" Slips and gaps are not is the same as that of the Wagnerian heroes, from the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> to Amfortas in <i>Parsifal</i>, who desperately strive for death, for Lacan thoroughly symbolic facts. They confirm the functioning final annihilation and self-obliteration which would relieve them of the signifying networkhell of their "undead" existence.<br>
4. For exampleIn the criticism of Kant implicit in this notion of the act, apropos Lacan is thus close to Hegel who also claimed that the unity of the army lifenoumenal and the phenomenal adjourned ad infinitum in Kant is precisely what takes place every time an authentic act is accomplished. Kant's mistake was to presuppose that there is an act only insofar as it is adequately "subjectivized," that is, accomplished with a pure will, such a will free of any "passionate attachmentpathological" is provided motivations. And, since one can never be sure that what I did was effectively motivated by a homosexual link the moral Law as its sole motive, the moral act turns into something which has effectively never happens, but can only be posited as the final point of an infinite asymptotic approach of the purification of the soul. For this reason, Kant, in order to [[guarantee]] the ultimate possibility of the act, had to propose his postulate of the immortality of the soul, which, as it can be disavowed if it is shown, effectively amounts to remain operativeits very opposite, the Sadean fantasy of the immortality of the body. <ref>See Chapter Alenka [[Zupancic]], "[[The Subject]] of the Law," SIC 2 of , ed. Slavoj Zizek, <i>The Plague of Fantasies</i> (LondonDurham: VersoDuke UP, 19971998).<br/ref>5. One should link this opposition Only in such a way can one hope that, after endless approximation, one will reach the point of attachment and dis-attachment being able to the old Freudian metapsychological opposition of Life and Death drivesaccomplish a true moral act. In The Ego and the Id, Freud defines these drives as the opposition between the forces point of connection/unity and the forces of disconnection/disunity. Dis-attachment Lacan's criticism is thus death drive at that an authentic act does not presuppose its purestagent, the gesture of ontological way Kant assumes with misleading self-evidence, "derailment" which throws "out at the level of jointthe act" the order with his will purified of Beingall pathological motivations. It is inevitable, then, that the agent is not "at the gesture level of disinvestmentits act, of "contraction"/withdrawal from being immersed in the world. The primordial attachment for he is himself unpleasantly surprised by the counter-move to this negative gesture. In the last resort, this negative tendency to disruption is none other than libido itself: what throws a subject "out of jointcrazy thing he just did" and is none other than the traumatic encounter unable fully to come to terms with <i>jouissance</i>what he did.<br>6. See Jacques-Alain MillerThis, "Des Semblants dans la Relation Entre les Sexesincidentally," <i>La Cause Freudianne</i> 36 (1997): 7-15.<br>7. Lacan's other example is that the usual structure of Andre Gide's wife heroic acts - somebody who, after his deathfor a long time, led an opportunistic life of maneuvering and compromises, burned all his love letters of a sudden, inexplicably even to himself, resolves to herstand firmly, considered by him his most precious possession._<br>8cost what it may. Thus the paradox of the act resides in the fact that although it is not "intentional" in the usual sense of the term, it is nonetheless accepted as something for which its agent is fully responsible - "I rely here on Kate Stablescannot do otherwise, British Film Institute, Londonyet I am nonetheless fully free in doing it.<br>"
9. The fantasy of the all-powerful woman whose irresistible attraction presents a threat not only to male domination, but to the very identity of the male subjectSo, is the "fundamental fantasy" against which the male symbolic identity defines and sustains itself._<br>10. For if we [[return]] for a detailed analysis of the scene from Wild at Heart, see Appendix 2 brief [[moment]] to Slavoj Zizek's <i>The Plague of FantasiesLast Seduction</i>.<br>11. That is, the split between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciated/statement, the subjectLinda Fiorentino's "decenterment" with regard to the symbolic big Other, and so on.<br>12. "Instead of the conflict which now gesture nevertheless does not quite fit the moral disposition has to wage with inclinations and in which, after some defeats, moral strength description of mind may be gradually won, God and eternity in their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes... Thus most actions conforming to the law would be done from feara true ethical act, few would be done from hope, none from duty. The moral worth of our actions, on which alone the worth of the person and even of the world depends in the eyes of supreme wisdom, would not exist at all. The conduct of man, so long insofar as his nature remained as it she is now, would be changed into mere mechanism, where, presented as in a puppet showperfect demoniac being, everything would gesticulate well but no life would be found in as the figures." Immanuel Kant, <i>Critique subject with a diabolical will who is perfectly aware of Practical Reason</i> (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 152-153.<br>13. After an authentic act, my reaction what she is always, "I myself do not know how I was able to do that - it just happened!"<br>14. See Alenka Zupancicdoing; she fully subjectivizes her acts, "The Subject of the Law," SIC 2, ed. Slavoj Zizek (Durham: Duke UP, 1998).<br> 15. In a further elaboration, one should thus reread Lacan's matrix of the four discourses insofar as three modes of coming to terms with her Will is at the trauma level of the analytic acther wicked deeds. The master's semblance resides in the fact that he pretends to nominate and thus directly translate into the symbolic fidelity the dimension of the act. That isAs such, she remains a male fantasy: the defining feature fantasy of the Master's gesture is to change the act into encountering a new master-signifier. In contrast to the master, perfect subject in the hysteric maintains the ambiguous attitude guise of division towards the act, insisting on the simultaneous necessity absolutely corrupted woman who fully knows and impossibility of its symbolization. In contrast to both of them, the perverse agent of the university discourse disavows that the re was the event of an act in the first placewills what she is doing. By means of the chain of knowledge, he wants to reduce the consequences of the act to just another thing which can be explained away as part of the normal run of things.<br><br>
Consequently, this Lacanian notion of act also enables us to break with the deconstructionist [[ethics]] of the irreducible finitude, of how our [[situation]] is always that of a displaced being, caught in a constitutive [[lack]], so that all we can do is to assume heroically this lack, to assume heroically the fact that our situation is that of being thrown into an impenetrable finite context. The corollary of this ethics, of course, is that the ultimate source of totalitarian and other catastrophes is man's presumption that he can overcome this condition of finitude, lack and displacement, and "act like God," in a total transparency, surpassing his constitutive division. Lacan's answer to this is that absolute/unconditional acts do occur, but not in the idealist guise of a self-transparent gesture performed by a subject with a pure will who fully intends them. They occur, on the contrary, as a totally unpredictable tuche, a miraculous event which shatters our lives. To put it in somewhat pathetic terms, this is how the "divine" dimension is [[present]] in our lives, and the different modalities of ethical [[betrayal]] relate precisely to the different ways of betraying the act-event. The true source of evil is not a finite mortal man who acts like God, but a man who disavows that divine miracles occur and reduces himself to just another finite mortal being.<ref>In a further elaboration, one should thus reread Lacan's matrix of the four [[discourses]] as [[three]] modes of coming to terms with the trauma of the [[analytic]] act. The master's [[semblance]] resides in the fact that he pretends to nominate and thus directly translate into the symbolic fidelity the dimension of the act. That is, the defining feature of the Master's gesture is to change the act into a new master-signifier. In contrast to the master, the [[hysteric]] maintains the ambiguous attitude of division towards the act, insisting on the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of its [[symbolization]]. In contrast to both of them, the [[perverse]] agent of the [[university]] discourse disavows that there was the event of an act in the first place. By means of the [[chain]] of [[knowledge]], he wants to reduce the consequences of the act to just another thing which can be explained away as part of the normal run of things.</ref>
===Notes:===
<references />
==Source==
* [[From "Passionate Attachments" to Dis-identification]]. ''Umbr(a): Identity/Identification''. [[Number ]] 1. 1998. <http://www.gsa.buffalo.edu/lacan/zizekidentity.htm>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan.com]]''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizekpassionate.htm>.
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