Difference between revisions of "Fantasy"

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==def==
 
  
One way at looking at the relationshipbetween fantasy and the big Other is to think of fantasy as concealing the inconssistency of the Symbolic Order. To understand this we need to know why the big Other is inconsistent or structured around a gap. The answer to this question is that when the body enters the field of signification or the big Other, it is castrated. What Zizek means by this is that the price we pay for our admission to the univerdal medium of language is the loss of our full body selves. When we submit to the big Other we sacrifice direct access to our bodies and, instead, are condenmned to an indirect relation with it via the medium of language. So, whereas, before we enter language we are what Zizek terms "pathological" subjects (the subject he notates by S), after we are immersed in language we are what he refers to as "barred" subjects (the empty subject he notates with $). What is barred from the barred subject is precisely the body as the materialization or incarnation of enjoyment (jouissance). Material jouissance is strictly at odds with, or heterogenous to, the immaterial order of the signifier.
 
For the subject to enter the Symbolic Order, then, the Real of jouissance or enjoyment has to be evacuated from it. Which is another way to saying that the advent of the symbol entails "the murder of the thing". Although not all jouissance is completely evacuated by the process of signification (some of it persists in what are called the erogenous zones), most of it is not Symbolized. And this entails that the Symbolic Order cannot fully account for jouissance - it is what us missing in the big Other. The big Other is therefore inconsistent or structured around a lack, the lack of jouissance. It is, we might say, castrated or rendered icomplete by admitting the subject, in much the same way as the subject is castrated by its admission.
 
What fantasy does is conceal this lack or incompletion. So, as we saw previoulsly when alluding to the formulas of sexuation, "there is not sexual relationship" in the big Other. What the fantasy of a sexual scenario thereby conceals is the impossibility of this sexual relationship. It covers up the lack in the big Other, the missing jouissance. In this regard, Zizek often avers that fantasy is a way for subjects to organize their jouissance - it is a way to manage or domesticate the traumatic loss of the jouissance which cannot be Symbolized.
 
==deff==
 
For Zizek, racism is produced by a clash of fantasies rather than by a clash of symbols vying for supremacy. There are several distinguishing features of fantasy:
 
1. Fantasies are produced as a defence against the desire of the Other manifest in "What do you want from me?" - which is what the Other, in its incosnsistency, really wants from me.
 
2. Fantasies provide a framework through which we see reality. They are anamorphic in that they presuppose a point of view, denying us an objective account of the world.
 
3. Fantasise are the one unique thing about us. They are what make us individuals, allowing a subjective view of reality. As such, our fantasies are extremely sensitive to the intrusion of others.
 
4. Fantasies are the way in which we organize and domesticate our jouissance.
 
==def==
 
121 Conversations
 
  
 
+
"[[fantasy]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[fantasme]]'')
fantasy ( fantasme)                  The concept of fantasy (spelt 'phantasy' in the
 
 
 
    Standard Edition) is central to Freud's work. Indeed, the origin of psycho-
 
 
 
    analysis is bound up with Freud's recognition in 1897 that memories of
 
 
 
    seduction are sometimes the product of fantasy rather than traces of real
 
 
 
    sexual abuse. This crucial moment in the development of Freud's thought
 
 
 
    (which is often simplistically dubbed 'the abandonment of the seduction
 
 
 
    theory') seems to imply that fantasy is opposed to reality, a purely illusory
 
 
 
    product of the imagination which stands in the way of a correct perception of
 
 
 
    reality. However, such a view of fantasy cannot be maintained in psycho-
 
 
 
    analytic theory, since reality is not seen as an unproblematic given in which
 
 
 
    there is a single objectively correct way of perceiving, but as something which
 
 
 
    is itself discursively constructed. Therefore the change in Freud's ideas in
 
 
 
    1897 does not imply a rejection of the veracity of all memories of sexual
 
 
 
    abuse, but the discovery of the fundamentally discursive and imaginative
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      nature of memory; memories of past events are continually being reshaped in
 
 
 
      accordance with unconscious desires, so much so that symptoms originate not
 
 
 
      in any supposed 'objective facts' but in a complex dialectic in which fantasy
 
 
 
      plays a vital role. Freud uses the term 'fantasy', then, to denote a scene which
 
 
 
    is presented to the imagination and which stages an unconscious desire. The
 
 
 
      subject invariably plays a part in this scene, even when this is not immediately
 
 
 
      apparent. The fantasised    scene may be conscious      or unconscious. When
 
 
 
      unconscious, the analyst must reconstruct it on the basis of other clues (see
 
 
 
    Freud, 1919e).
 
 
 
        While Lacan accepts Freud's formulations on the importance of fantasy and
 
 
 
      on its visual quality as a scenario which stages desire, he emphasises the
 
 
 
      protective function of fantasy. Lacan compares the fantasy SCENE (OR fTOZen
 
 
 
      image on a cinema screen; just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in
 
 
 
      order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy
 
 
 
      scene is a defence which veils castration (S4, l 19-20). The fantasy is thus
 
 
 
      characterised by a fixed and immobile quality.
 
 
 
        Although 'fantasy' only emerges as a significant term in Lacan's work from
 
 
 
      1957 on, the concept of a relatively stable mode of DEFENCE iS evident earlier
 
 
 
      on (see, for example, Lacan's remark in 1951      on 'the permanent modes by
 
 
 
      which the subject constitutes his objects'; Ec, 225). This concept is at the root
 
 
 
      both of Lacan's idea of fantasy and of his notion of clinical structure; both are
 
 
 
      conceived of as a relatively stable way of defending oneself against castration,
 
 
 
      against the lack in the Other. Each clinical structure may thus be distinguished
 
 
 
      by the particular way in which it uses a fantasy scene to veil the lack in the
 
 
 
      Other. The neurotic fantasy, which Lacan formalises in the matheme (SO a),
 
 
 
      appears in the graph of desire as the subject's response to the enigmatic desire
 
 
 
      of the Other, a way of answering the question about what the Other wants from
 
 
 
      me (Che vuoi?) (see E, 313). The matheme is to be read: the barred subject in
 
 
 
      relation to the object. The perverse fantasy inverts this relation to the object,
 
 
 
      and is thus formalised as a OS (Ec, 774).
 
 
 
          Although the matheme (SO a) designates the general            structure of the
 
 
 
      neurotic fantasy, Lacan also provides more specific formulas for the fantasy
 
 
 
      of the hysteric and that of the obsessional neurotic (S8, 295). While the various
 
 
 
      formulas of fantasy indicate the common features of the fantasies of those who
 
 
 
      share the same clinical structure, the analyst must also attend to the unique
 
 
 
      features which characterise each patient's particular fantasmatic scenario.
 
 
 
      These unique features express the subject's particular mode of ./OUISSANCE,
 
 
 
      though in a distorted way. The distortion evident in the fantasy marks it as a
 
 
 
      compromise formation; the fantasy is thus both that which enables the subject
 
 
 
      to sustain his desire (Sll, 185; Ec, 780), and 'that by which the subject
 
 
 
      sustains himself at the level of his vanishing desire' (E, 272, emphasis added).
 
 
 
          Lacan holds that beyond all the myriad images which appear in dreams and
 
 
 
      elsewhere there is always one 'fundamental fantasy' which is unconscious (see
 
 
 
      S8, 127). In the course of psychoanalytic treatment, the analyst reconstructs
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
the analysand's fantasy in all its details. However, the treatment does not stop
 
 
 
there; the analysand must go on to 'traverse the fundamental fantasy' (see S11,
 
 
 
273). In other words, the treatment must produce some modification of the
 
 
 
subject's fundamental mode of defence,            some alteration in his mode of
 
 
 
jouissance.
 
 
 
      Although Lacan recognises the power of the image in fantasy, he insists that
 
 
 
this is due not to any intrinsic quality of the image in itself but to the place
 
 
 
which it occupies in a symbolic structure; the fantasy is always 'an image set
 
 
 
  to work in    a signifying structure' (E, 272). Lacan criticises the Kleinian
 
 
 
  account of fantasy for not taking this symbolic structure fully into account,
 
 
 
and thus remaining at the level of the imaginary; 'any attempt to reduce
 
 
 
[fantasy] to the imagination      . . . is a permanent misconception' (E, 272). In
 
 
 
the 1960s, Lacan devotes a whole year of his seminar to discussing what he
 
 
 
calls 'the logic of fantasy' (Lacan, 1966-7), again stressing the importance of
 
 
 
the signifying structure in fantasy.
 
 
 
 
 
== def ==
 
 
 
Fantasy (fantasme)
 
 
 
The concept of fantasy is central to Freud’s work.
 
 
 
Indeed, the origin of [[psychoanalysis]] is bound up with Freud’s recognition in 1897 that memories of seduction are sometimes the product of fantasy rather than traces of real sexual abuse.
 
 
 
This crucial moment in the development of Freud’s thought seems to imply that fantasy is opposed to reality, a purely illusory product of the imagination which stands in the way of a correct perception of reality.
 
 
 
However, such a view of fantasy cannot be maintained in psychoanalytic theory, since reality is not seen as an unproblematic given in which there is a single objectively correct way of perceiving, but as something which is itself discursively constructed.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
While Lacan accepts Freud’s formulations on the importance of fantasy and on its visual quality as a scenario which stages desire, he emphasizes the protective function of fantasy.
 
 
 
Lacan compares the fantasy [[scene]] to a frozen image on a cinema screen: just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy scene is a defence which veils [[castration]].<ref>s4 119-120</ref>
 
The fantays is thus characterized by a fixed and immobile quality.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
60
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
== def ==
 
 
 
Lacan's Conception of Fantasy
 
 
 
If the neurotic subject does not to forego the Oedipal supposition that there is some Thing that would fully satisfy the desire of the mother, it is because s/he constructs fantasies about the nature of this lost Thing, and how s/he stands towards it. The primary means s/he deploys in this process is what I recounted above, when I noted how the difficulty in knowing the referent of the phallic master signifiers obliges subjects to construct their beliefs concerning it in a 'decentred' manner, through the Others. While the subject accepts that the Real phallic Thing is lost to him/her, that is, in his/her fantasmatic life s/he yet supposes that there are Others who do know what it is that phallic signifiers refer to, and have more direct access to the Real of jousissance. In line with this, Lacan's further argument is indeed that the deepest fantasmatic postulation of subjects is always that the Real Phallic Thing that s/he has been debarred from must be held in reserve by the 'big Other' whose law it is that discernibly structures the mother’s desire.
 
What follows from this is the position that the manifestations of the unconscious represent small unconscious rebellions of the subject against the loss that s/he takes him/herself to have endured when s/he acceded to socialization. They are all under-girded by the more basic fantasmatic structuration of identity as constituted by the loss endured at castration. This is why Lacan talks of a fundamental fantasy, and argues that it is above all this fundamental fantasy that is at stake in psychoanalysis. Lacan strived to formalize the invariant structure of this 'fundamental fantasy' in the matheme: $ <> a. This matheme indicates that: '$', the ‘barred’ subject which is divided by castration between attraction to and repulsion from the Object of its unconscious desire, is correlative to ('<>') the fantasised lost object. This object, designated in the matheme as 'a', is called by Lacan the ‘object petit a’, or else the object cause of desire. Lacan holds that the subject always stabilizes its position vis-à-vis the Real Thing by constructing a fantasy about how the debarred Thing is held in the big Other, manifesting only in a series of metonymic or partial objects (the gaze or voice of his/her love objects, a hair style, or some other 'little piece of the Real') that can be enjoyed as compensation for its primordial loss of the maternal Thing. Lacan's argument is that the fundamental psychological 'gain’ from the fundamental fantasy is the following. The fundamental fantasy represents what occurred at castration in the terms of a narrative of possession and loss. This fantasm thus consoles the subject by positing that s/he at one point did have the phallic Thing, but that then, at castration, it was taken away from him/her by the Other. What this of course means is that, since the Thing was taken away from the subject, perhaps also It can be regained by him/her. It is this promise, Lacan maintains, that usually structures neurotic human desire. What the fantasy serves to hide from the subject, then, is the possibility that a fully satisfying sexual relationship with the mother, or any metonymic substitute for her, is not only prohibited, but was never possible anyway. As I recounted in Part 1, the Lacanian view, which is informed by observation of infantile behavior, is that the mother-child relationship before castration is not Edenic, but characterized by imaginary transitivity and aggressivity. This is why Lacan quips in Seminar XX that 'there is no such thing as a sexual relationship' and elsewhere that the ‘Woman’, with a capital ‘W’, 'does not exist'. Note then that the deepest logic of castration, according to Lacan, is a profoundly paradoxical one. The 'no!' of the father prohibits something that is impossible. Its very prohibition, however, gives rise in the subject to the fantasmatic supposition that the Thing in question is one that is attainable but only being debarred. Lacan thus asserts that the fundamental fantasy is there to veil from the subject the terminal nature of its loss at castration. This is not simply a speculation, however. It is supported by telling evidences that he adduces. The key point that supports Lacan's position is the stipulation the objet petit is an anamorphotic object. What this means can be seen by looking at even the most well-known exemplar of the Lacanian objet petit a: the 'object gaze'. Contrary to how it is sometimes read, the Lacanian 'gaze' is anything but the intrusive and masterful male gaze on the world. For Lacan, gaze is indeed a "blind spot" in the subject's perception of visible reality, “disturbing its transparent visibility". [Zizek, 1999a: 79] What it bears witness to is the subject's inability to fully frame the objects that appear within his/her field of vision. The classic example of the object-gaze from Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is the floating skull at the feet of Holbein's Ambassadors. What is singular about this 'thing’ is that it can literally only be seen from 'awry', and at the cost that the rest of the picture appears at that moment out of focus. From this point on the canvas, Lacan comments, it is as if the painting regards us. What he means is that the skull reminds us that we, and with us our desires and fantasies, are implicated in how the scene appears. Here then is another meaning to $ <> a: the objet petit a, for Lacan, as something that can only operate its fascination upon individuals who bear a partial perspective upon it, is that object that 're-presents' the subject within the world of objects that it takes itself to be a wholly 'external' perspective upon. If a subject thus happens upon it too directly, it disappears, or else- as in psychosis and the well-known filmic motif of what happens when one encounter one's double- the cost is that one's usual sense of how the rest of the world is must dissipate. What this indicates is that the object petit a, or at least the fascinating effect the object which bears it has upon the subject who is under its thrall, has no 'objective' reality independently of this subject. The logical consequence of this, though, as Lacan stipulates, is that this supposedly 'lost' object can never really have been lost by the subject, since s/he can never have possessed it in the first place. This is why Lacan argues the apparently chimerical position that the objet petit a is by definition an object that has come into being in being lost.
 
 
 
==def==
 
Postmodern Racism
 
Zizek contends that today's racism is just as reflexive as every other part of postmodern life. It is not the product of ignorance in the way it used to be. So, whereas racism used to involve a claim that another ethnic group is inherently inferior to our own, racism is now articulated in terms of a respect for another's culture. Instead of "My culture is better than yours", postmodern or reflexive racism will argue that "My culture is different from yours". As an example of this Zizek asks "was not the official argument for apartheid in the old South Africa that black culture should be preserved in its uniqueness, not dissipated in the Western melting-pot? (The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For) For him, what is at stake here is the fethishistic disawoval of cynicism: "I know very well that all ethnic cultures are equal in value, yet, nevertheless, I will act as if mine is superior". The split here between the subject of enunciated ("I know very well...") and the subject of the enunciation ("...nevertheless I act as if I didn't") is even preserved when racists are asked to explain the reasons for their behavior. A racist will blame his socio-economic environment, poor childhood, peer group pressure, and so on, in such a way as to suggest to Zizek that he cannot help being racist, but is merely a victim of circumstances. Thus postmodern racists are fully able to rationalize their behavior in a way that belies the traditional image of racism as the vocation of the ignorant.
 
 
 
The Ethnic Fantasy
 
If "ethnic tension" is a conflict of fantasies, what is then the racist fantasy? For Zizek there are two basic racist fantasies. The first type centers around the apprehension that the "ethnic other" desires our jouissance. "They" want to steal our enjoyment from "us" and rob us of the specificity of our fantasy. The second type proceeds from an uneasiness that the "ethnic other" has access to some strange jouissance. "They" do not things like "us". The way :they" enjoy themselves is alien and unfamiliar. What both these fantasies are predicated upon is that the "other" enjoys in a different way than "us":
 
 
 
    In short, what really gets on our nerves, what really bothers us about the "other", is the peculiar way he organizes his jouissance (the smell of his food, his noisy songs and dances, his strange manners, his attitude to work - in the racist perspective, the "other" is either a workaholic stealing our jobs or an idler living on our labor. ( Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture)
 
 
 
So ethnic tension is caused by a conflict of fantasies if we regard fantasy as a way of organizing jouissance. The specificity of "their: fantasy conflicts with the specificity of "our" fantasy".
 
For Zizek, the perception of a threat, by "them" as well as by "us", remains strong. The last two decades have witnessed a marked rise in racial tension and ethnic nationalism. Following Lacan and Marx, Zizek ascribes this rise to the process of globalization. This process refers to the way in which capitalism has spread across the world. displaceing local companies in favor of multinational ones. The effects of this process are nor necessarily just commercial, for what is at stake are the national cultures and politics bodies which underpin, and are supported by, resident industries. When McDonald's opens up in Bombay, for example, it is not just another business, but represents a specifically American approach to food, culture and social organization. The more capitalism spreads, the more it works to dissolve the efficacy of national domains, dissipating local traditions and values in favor of universal ones.
 
The only way to offset this increased homogeneity and to assert the worth of the particular against the global is to cling to our specific ethnic fantasy, the point of view which makes us Indians, British or Germans. And if we try to avoid being dissolved in the multicultural mix of globalization by sticking to the way we organize jouissance, we will court the risk of succumbing to a racist paranoia. Even if we attempt to institute a form of equality between the ways in which we aorganize enjoyment, unfortunately, as Zizek points out, "fantasies cannot coexist peacefully" (Looking Awry
 
 
 
The Ethics of Fantasy
 
For Zizek is the state that should act as a buffer between the fantasies of different groups, mitigating the worst effects of thoses fantasies. If civil society were allowed to rule unrestrained, much of the world would succumb to racist violence. It is only the forces of the state which keep it in check.
 
In the long term, Zizek argues that in order to avoid a clash of fantasies we have to learn to "traverse the fantasy" (what lacan terms "traversing the fantôme). It means that we have to acknowledge that fantasy merely functions to screen the abyss or inconsistency in the Other. In "traversing" or "going through" the fantasy "all we have to do is experience how there is nothing 'behind' it, and how fantasy masks precisely this 'nothing'". (The Sublime Object of Ideology<)
 
The subject of racism, be it a Jew, a Muslim, a Latino, an African-American, gay or lesbian, Chinese, is a fantasy figure, someone who embodies the void of the Other. The underlying argument of all racism is that "if only they weren't here, ife would be perfect, and society will be haromious again". However, what this argument misses is the fact that because the subject of racism is only a fantasy figure, it is only there to make us think that such a harmonious society is actually possible. In reality, society is always-already divided. The fantasy racist figure is just a way of covering up the impossibility of a whole society or an organic Symbolic Order complete unto itself:
 
 
 
    What appears as the hindrance to society's full identity with itself is actually its positive condition: by transposing onto the Jew the role of the foreign body which introduces in the social organism disintegration and antagonism, the fantasy-image of society qua consistent, harmonious whole is rendered possible. (Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Holliwood and Out)
 
 
 
Which is another way of saying that if the Jew qua fantasy figure was not there, we would have to invent it so as to maintain the illusion that we could have a perfect society. For all the fantasy figure does is to embody the existing impossibility of a complete society.
 
==ref==
 
 
 
http://www.lacan.com/zizekchro1.htm
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[[Category:Terms]]
 
[[Category:Concepts]]
 
 
 
==References==
 
<references/>
 
 
 
[[Category:Ideology]]
 
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
 
[[Category:Subject]]
 
[[Category:Slavoj Žižek]]
 

Revision as of 08:57, 30 July 2006