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Borromean Knot

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The fundamental structure in Lacanian psychoanalysis is a tripartite confluence of what Lacan called the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic orders.1 I will define each of these in turn shortly, but first it is important to conceive of their interrelationship as "the fundamental classification system around which all [Lacan’s] theorising turns" (Evans 132). The intersection of the RSI constitutes the whole of the mental life of humans, whether in a cumulative way or in the various effects it produces – "together they cover the whole field of psychoanalysis" (Evans 132). Each of the orders not only constitutes a particular aspect of the mental life of the mature human, but also corresponds roughly to stages in the development of the infant human as it approaches maturity. Nonetheless, while it is tempting to think of the orders as stages through which the individual moves, we must resist this temptation and retain their purity as orders or registers in which, through which, and by which the individual is determined: "The symbolic, the imaginary and the real are not mental forces, personifiable on the model-builder’s inner stage, but orders each of which serves to position the individual within a force-field that traverses him" (Bowie 91). This insistence on the existence of RSI as orders or forces that traverse the individual allows us to comprehend that though together they comprise a structure, that structure is far from static. Rather, the various orders contained in the RSI configuration constantly act on each other, defining each other and themselves in contradistinction to one another. They are simultaneously mutually interdependent for their definition and utterly incommensurable. "The symbolic, the imaginary and the real pressurize each other continuously and have their short-term truces, but they do not allow any embracing programme for synthesis to emerge inside or outside the analytic encounter. The three orders together comprise a complex topological space in which the characteristic disorderly motions of the human mind can be plotted" (Bowie 98-99). Like a perpetually stymied dialectic, the three orders define themselves in purely negative relationships to each other yet never come to a point of Aufhebung at which each is subsumed by the others to produce a clear, pure, and non-pathological synthesis. The interaction of these three orders produces the analysable human subject even as their encroachment upon each other produces a variety of more or less serious disruptions in that subject.
 
Perhaps the easiest way to conceive of the interaction of the RSI is to employ Lacan’s model of the Borromean knot.
 
 
Figure 1 - a 2D representation Figure 2 - a 3D representation.2
 
 
The Borromean knot is a topological conceptualisation of the RSI in which each order is depicted as a circle that links each of the other orders. It is "a way of illustrating the interdependence of the three orders of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, as a way of exploring what it is that these three orders have in common" (Evans 19-20). Its chief value lies in the fact that it "is formed from two separate links joined to each other by a third, and in such a way that if any one of the links is severed the whole thing falls apart" (Bowie 194). That is, each of the orders is fundamental to the whole in such a way that the separation of any one would automatically result in the collapse of the entire nexus, with catastrophic results for the individual constituted and traversed by it: "‘each term is sustained only in its topological relation with the others’" (Lacan S11 89, qtd. in Evans ix).
 
This feature of the Borromean knot generates one of the keys to understanding Lacan’s quasi-dialectical conception of human being: "that which is excluded from sense-making is that which makes sense hang together; no two agents or qualities or postulates can be coupled or contrasted without a mediating third. Everything that exists ex-sists – has its being in relation to that which lies outside it – and dichotomies and complementarities are no exception to the rule" (Bowie 194). The basic thrust of Bowie’s explication of the RSI is that each order defines itself in a negative relation to the other two orders, generating its positive attributes primarily by excluding some aspect of one or both of the other orders. Thus the symbolic is that which utterly excludes the real and which dissolves the imaginary. It relies for its internal consistency on the constant and unwavering exclusion of the other two orders, producing a definitional logic of (b)orders and their impossible/inevitable transgressions: this is the meaning of Bowie’s claim that "Everything that exists ex-sists – has its being in relation to that which lies outside it." The location of some incommensurable other against which it can set itself is the fundamental condition for each of the orders to maintain not only its consistency but its very existence. This characterisation points to the fundamental role played by antagonism and aggressivity in the Borromean Knot as each of the orders fights for its supremacy by attempting to annihilate the conditions of its own existence (i.e. the other two orders). The tensions, pressures, and cross-order "cuts" produced by this conflict constitute both the central phenomenon with which we are here concerned, the subject, and the various discontents that plague him or her.
 
 
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Borromean knot (noeud borromÈen)
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