Recently, the reaction of one homosexual individual who was hurt by the hateful remark surprised me. Her response was simply that gays are common decent folk — upstanding people too — who deserve basic respect like anyone else. What’s surprising to me was that she failed to incorporate the point of view of the bigot. But then why should she? This post doesn’t explore whether or not tolerance is an issue (because it shouldn’t be), but that there are different standards of acceptability. Granted, standards are due to valuations that individuals generate — that is what makes us individuals — but is it possible that fundamental valuations be generated from a contextual position based off of the larger whole and NOT individual feelings?
I am not debating the content of her remark, but I do find her reaction and surprise itself surprising — all the more because of the obvious evidence that her verbal assailant did not consider her (as a gay) deserving of tolerance or basic respect. If there is a basic orientation to how one relates to others, it’s through the Lacanian filter of the Symbolic. The Symbolic order holds for us subjects a variety of different and individual valuations but the main function of the Symbolic is to provide orientation. The collective Symbolic regime is the resulted of a larger, abstracted social zeitgeist. How we negotiate the perceived regimes’ changing nature and what we allow or disallow provides the vehicle for politics. What we do on an individual level, such as towards our hurt friend, matters, however small. This negotiation of perceived change in the Symbolic forces personal action to be becoming-political. In a way, the hurtful remark made by the bigot is an indeterminate but discrete step.
Immaneul Wallerstein has provided a grand gesture through his World Systems Analysis which classifies a population’s attitude towards change which may be useful to our exploration: conservative, liberal and radical. Conservatives do not want change, liberals want small measured changes and radicals want a total re-orientation of the norms. Wallerstein’s classification is useful but it’s only descriptive, not an examination of the production of meaning in relation to the Symbolic function. To do that, we can turn towards Zizek’s explication of the Lacanian orders through the Gremasian square.
Gremasian Squares are one basic way of determining meaning.
The Gremasian square Zizek draws upon in For They Know Not What They Do, bounces the four positions of basic difference that create meaning surrounding the symbolic function. The four positions are:
- all are submitted (S1)
- only one is not submitted (~S2)
- none are submitted (S2)
- only one is submitted (~S1)
Zizek highlights these positions in order to explore different ‘species of judgement’ of a subject are
- necessary (S1)
- possible (~S2)
- impossible (S2)
- contingent (~S1)
The basic axis deals with the main difference of Symbolic (S1) and Real (S2). The Symbolic acts as a universal signifying function, establishing a symbolic network of linguistic meaning (S1) that is necessary for us to organize our world. At the same time, within the Real order (S2), we struggle with the impossibility of such a function existing in the universe as part of the universe. The outside Real (S2) remains indifferent and incoherent to our manifested meaning (S1). It is this interplay between impossibility (S2) and necessity (S1) that gives rise to the complexity of the system. In order to facilitate the others who approach us from the untotalizable whole of the Real (S2), we rely on the Imaginary (~S2) to orient us to the Symbolic (S1). It is in the Imaginary that we maintain an interplay of ourselves with others, ultimately enabling us to live together (though Lacan claims this is always through a kind of cross-talking). Keep in mind that the negated lower pair of ~S1 and ~S2 remain imaginary reflections of the actual complex pair, (S1) and (S2). What keeps us hinged in the necessary Symbolic edifice (S1) is a self-image which represents for us the kernel of our own subjectivity (~S1). This self-image however, is not the same as who or what we are. To this end, Lacan rewrites Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” as “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think“. Nonetheless, it is in our personal investment in (~S1) that makes us dependent on what others think of us. This external dependence is how (~S1) is structurally contingent, although the actual content is personal and open to discourse. So within this square, it is the universal function’s failure to completely foreclose the Real and prevent distortions of others (or ourself) that highlights the three different reactions Wallerstien segments as a population’s willingness to adapt to or reject change.
So to return to that surprising reaction, I would have assumed that one who rejects some social norms would understand that with this rejection, their position may occupy an untenable difference within another’s Symbolic (S1). That is to say, a conservative who would be unwilling to accept in themself a difference of sexuality without losing that possibility of self (~S1) would definitely reject that difference of sexuality in another or at least locate the unacceptable difference wholly in another (~S2). Our poor friend however, is hurt by the verbal assailant’s remarks as her subjectivity (~S1) is questioned and she responds by reinstating her own position in the necessary order of things (S1) as a public declaration. The way to read the Gremasian Square is to understand that subjectivity is contingent on both the Imaginary others (~S2) who reject or accept the subject as well as the appeal to the Symbolic (S1) against the Real (S2). Without the Imaginary (~S2) acceptance of the subject (~S1), there is no subject. Such a position is the horror that Zizek calls the space between two deaths, when one is biologically alive but ostrasized from the community, publically dead.
The rejection of that desire as considered by the other to be one’s own introduces an element of the Real (S2) into the fragile Symbolic (S1). No wonder then, that slogans from those who oppose gay marriage include banners that equate one man to marrying another to one man to marrying a dog. The equation doesn’t mean to equate men with dogs but rather, to equate the feeling of beastality with homosexual marriage. This absurd equation betrays their bend as conservative — a genuine fear that should the Symbolic (S1) be extended, that fragile absolute (another title of one of Zizek’s books) may give way. A recent expression of this comes from David Tyree’s equating New York City’s acceptance of gay marriage with anarchy. One wonders then, at how fragile some conservative’s hold on the Symbolic order may be and if we could ever relate to one another without this Symbolic (as it is a point of reference). For the function of the Symbolic, is it possible to include the Real as a space within the function while maintaining tolerance and social order? In other words, how possible is it to locate within the Real a minimal relation to be Symbolic — to provide space in the Imaginary for tolerance and acceptance?
The function of the Symbolic order appears more robust than we might think, as it goes a long way in orienting ourselves to external events. South Park, the popular adult series created Matt Stone and Trey Parker, explores various positions people take in relation to Real, unaccountable events. These events, as a rule, come from media presentations and perverse positions, other (~S2) possibilities which must oriented to the Symbolic function (S1). It is through this accounting that we get a dialectical backlash in South Park between possible configurations of acceptability as the characters attempt to orient themselves within a Symbolic order (usually unsuccessfully) to justify or explain the acceptability of actions. Contrary to most conservative commentary on South Park, the ending configurations of the characters are usually presented to be ridiculous or at least out of proportion to the issue at hand. Earlier episodes in the show’s run were more to the point as to what is a ‘rational’ position ought to be. Some of the later satires reject an overt explanation and choose instead to settle on positions that maximize humor. Even so, for humor to function, it must retain a monocum of the Symbolic as reference. As Julia Kristeva wrote in Powers of Horror, what is humorous is usually only so as the exposure of different signifiers in a novel arrangement create jouissance. In other words, what is humorous is usually only acceptable as humor because it’s not an acceptable arrangement except as humor. The pleasure of humor is the pleasure of play within the Symbolic (so long as it does not shatter that regime).
South Park, as a satire, functions by simplifying most of their character’s interest in maintaining their own contingency, preferring to underscore instead, our tumultuous relationships within the Imaginary. (What makes South Park an examination of actual possibilities and not an examination of the Symbolic is the protagonists often not-listened-to appeals to a standard rationality. The under-grid of Symbolic rationality remains ignored, not questioned.) To give a real world example of this instability with the Symbolic we can turn to the avant gaarde’s push for new directions. Such movements are often offensive to some, as such movements often rebuke representationalism. Representationalism best deploys the Symbolic as over-coding the Real in a 1:1 relationship as though conservatives are less able to handle schisms in the Symbolic. The more extreme the over-coding, the stronger violations of the Symbolic invokes a bodily reaction to events that reveal the Real’s incoherency. The adherence to such an over-coding is what establishes our societal ‘grand gesture’ which in the 20th century was known as Modernism.
Modernism philosophically started long before the 20th century, but as a social movement, Modernism came together in the late 19th century as a style of presentation and coherence that in some ways matched the singularity of world orders like the United Nations. Modernism as a whole, however, is best digested as a rejection of traditional aesthetics, an establishing of new parameters of how we are to experience and relate. Modernism marks the single largest and far-reaching break in tradition. For the life-world, Modernism became coherent as new human existence for a current Now. This emphasis on ahistorical values arises as an absolute order without an outside, the best example being Formalism. In other words, if you are not within this absolute order, you are nowhere to be found.
In the larger picture, while Modernism can be connected with capitalism’s ever expanding market, market capitalism is but one expression of the ‘make it new’ of Modernism. Other expressions of Modernism include Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism. So while many philosophers such as Lyotard claim that Modernism is dead in favor of Postmodernism, Modernism continues as a grand narrative, under the guise of Postmodernism. Under Postmodernism, deployment of new expressions continues as an ahistorical re-framing of historical contexts. As such, Postmodernism functions as a hyper-modernism, co-opting the small other to illicit a homogeneous world order. Despite the many disavowals of the I and the kowtowing to small others when recognized as legitimate, any and all contacts with global capitalism usually means the destruction of alternate Symbolic configurations in favor of our global capitalism. Any sensitivity of context is a sensitivity necessary in a Postmodern deployment.
I bring this up not because it has anything to do with the dignity that our homosexual couple insisted on, but rather because our current Symbolic order displays an absolutism — that relationships and transactions be concluded through a narrow regime of Symbolic association. For instance, one of the main modes of our Symbolic relies on the filters of money and legal documentation, two contractual basises which form the bridge of our current Symbolic Regime. Fights over gay rights, or the slutwalk occur within capitalism because the market has not established a preference either way (unlike say, stealing). As time persists and capitalism benefits from the religious right and the spending power of the homosexual left so both will continue to contest one another in the public space at the expense of other policy decisions. Most likely though, capitalism is not incompatible with homosexuality and ultimately marriage will be expanded to include homosexual arrangements as this does not hurt global capitalism.
This brings us back to the original question — in terms of our current grand narrative of global capitalism — is the Symbolic completely mutually exclusive to the Real? Is there a psychial configuration that would allow us to better tolerate instances of the Real? Why rely on the contingency of others as deal with ourselves and each other in the imaginary spaces of (~S2) and (~S1)? In seeking to find a philosophical method to explain going beyond the Symbolic edifice, we run analogous to Buddhist thought on enlightenment. Enlightenment serves as a psychial position that exceeds the worldly concerns that structure subjectivity. Now as the order of the Symbolic operates more as a referent than a set content, so a re-centering the four positions can be best understood by retooling the Gremiasian Square through an analogous the structure in Buddhistm known as the Tetralemma.
The Tetralemma is a four fold step introduced as a logical exercise in Buddhist doctrine to expound the doctrines of two truths. Put simply, the two truths at hand are conventional truth — the common place wisdom of existence having substance, and the sacred truth — the emptiness or non-existence of substance. The four lemmas of the Tetralemma involves the precepts:
- x
- ~x
- both x & ~x
- neither x & ~x
In dealing with the concepts of existence (x) and emptiness (~x), through the exercise of the Tetralemma, we step beyond having just classifications of the conventional existence of substance and the philosophical existence of nothing. In other words, the goal of the Tetralemma is to gain an understanding beyond the distinctions of ontology, of which emptiness is a exposition of the formal constraints of ontology. This is different from the Gremasian square in the sense that the Tetralemma works as a delimiter rather than as a position. The goal is to avoid all four positions, whereas in the Gremasian square it is the orientation of the positions that provide meaning. Nonetheless, used in conjunction with the Gremasian square above, we can utilize two Tetralemmas of emptiness and substance with the two indexes from the Gremasian square as the actual (S1) and (S2) with substance and the reflective (~S1) and (~S2) with emptiness. In the first Tetralemma:
- There is a Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S1)
- There is no Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S2)
- Both (S1) and (S2) apply
- Neither (S1) and (S2) apply
In other words, we are dealing with the grounding of both existents and nothingness. Arguably, the social schism introduced by Modernism killed philosophy’s search for an ontological life leaving us with nihilism. Nihilism, like early postmodernism, insists that the formal constraints of ontology are not applicable anywhere, leaving us with nothing (to fit the bill with). Rather than a full blown rejection of the system itself, nihilism involves an adaptation of the system of meaning and its consequential failure to cohere meaning. Nihilism does not mean that there are no systems, only that the metrics we use to find valid systems yields no content. In this way, the third step and fourth step both appear to be alternative universalisations that happen when the symbolic function fails to yield an appropriate conclusion. Nihilism occupies both positions such that we have the system but no ontology or we reject the system and still do not have the authenticity of ontology.
This position reflects the same underpinnings as dialectical nihilism by at first insisting on a universal position although it goes beyond dialectical nihilism by in fact not sublimating the structure of the Tetralemmas at the level of the Notion. It is through the Tetralemma’s four precepts that we gain a richer understanding that unlike conservatives and our gay couple above, it’s not simply enough to be within the function and to desire collapse the Gremasian square to gain a tolerance of the Other so as to live with them (to insist that what I imagine to be the other’s position is in fact where I am as well, that (~S1) and (S1) and (~S2) and (S2) are in fact all super-imposed, without difference… the way to read this desire is that the conservative judges the homosexual to have a desire the homosexual then denies having). The Tetralemma instead goes beyond this to reject both the system and its content reserving neither Notion nor internal distance to uphold this desire or its judgement.
A rejection of the distinction of both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) constitute, in traditional terms, a confusion between how we are to understand our role in the world and how to basically orient ourself in the world. How can we make sense of what we could do vs how things happen to us and what we should make of them? Both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) rely on specific instances in order to provide actual interactions. It is in the application of the function in the imaginary spaces of (~S1) and (~S2) by which we run across the negative Tetralemma. Without addressing the application of the orientations inherent in (S1) and (S2), we run into the profound difficulty of skirting the regime of madness:
- There is no self that is I (~S1).
- There are no other subjectivities (~S2).
- Both self (~S1) and others (~S2) do not exist.
- There is neither no subjectivity (~S1) nor are there no other subjectivities (~S2).
The main difficulty in this Tetralemma lies in the lack of orientation a rejection of the application of possibility and contingency implies. Within this regime of non-applicability, we run into pitfalls similiar to those who do not socialize properly. I speak of some criminally insane who do not genuinely understand others, nor read on others the desire and pain, both reflective and independent of their own subjectivity.
What marks the difficulty in deploying an orientation of these concepts isn’t in their conceptual nature. We should not assume that the proper position within the Tetralemma involves a rejection of their concepts as such, but rather a rejection of the desire that navigates these polemics and binds us in these orientations. Movement within the Tetralemma isn’t accurately a dialectic, although I have used the term. Dialectical movements within the Hegelian traditional involve a progression of positions within an order to explain their meaning. The Tetralemma instead involves the limits of expatiation. When we abut a lemma we encounter a failure to grasp the Tetralemma as a whole. This is how the Tetralemma also is not a Gemasian Square — it does not rely on static positions from which we can garnish meaning from the other three positions.
So for applicability, let us return to our original example, it is not that the knee jerk response of our friend is in fact inappropriate. She is correct to understand that her subjectivity is contingent on the external circumstances of others who accept her, legitimatizing her place in the Symbolic. But the most the Symbolic can guarantee her or anyone else is a position of contingency and tolerance. Acceptance within the Symbolic does not assure her of the dignity of her subjectivity, it only imprisons her within the confines of the possibility of authenticity when continually confronted with others. This is the nature of contingency (~S1).
The ‘way out’ as espoused through the dialectical and radically transformative nature of the Tetralemma isn’t in the sublimation of the Tetralemma the way Hegel might want us to distance ourselves from the Notion in order to better find ourselves within it. The key of the Tetralemmas is best expressed through the Real, as the Real remains the threat for all other positions. What makes the position of the Real ‘Impossible’ (S2) is not only the ineffectual application of Symbolic order on a shifting and vague desire — but, from the point of view of the Real, the union between any of the other three relationships are impossible because of the shifting and vague nature of desire undergridding each. When we seek to legitamize ourselves, that legitamcy is in fact never permanent, being contingent. When we seek to understand the other on their terms, it is impossible because we must resort to imagination — we can never know their radical difference, only read on their difference a reflection of our own difference.
This insubstantiability of position that all eight lemmas deploy disallows one to fully invest in any position, opening the door to the Real as it were without casting one fully into it. We acknowledge our own insubstantiality inasmuch as anyone else’s. For instance, in neither accepting being submitted to the function or outside of the function, one rejects both the absolute madness of emptiness and the contingency one might always bear. One can be oneself, as it were, all the while allowing others to be themselves without that reflexivity or demand that one be ‘with it’ or not ‘with it’.
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