« Posts under dialectics

a debonair affluence of imprecision begets the kernel of being “a” rather than being “some”

February 21, 2012 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, life as we know it, Theory / No Comments

a debonair affluence of imprecision begets the kernel of being “a” rather than being “some”

OR

how being philo-subject is being psychoanalytical

basically getting ‘better’ means to shrink one’s self. we think of getting better as increasing in numeric value, like you are a level 1 and that’s where you start. when you achieve expert you are level 7, or something. or as with weaving there are 304 distinct levels. with vietnamese cooking there are 72 levels. with american ‘southern’ cooking there are 55. like that. with piano, there is 677. and they have marginal stages of increasing complexity and clarity.

but in fact the increase in numeric value represents not an increase in height (if you think 2 dimensionally) but in fact, an increase in density if you think within an additional dimension. what i mean to say is that as one gets better one gets more condense. you discriminate more between what was previously ‘the same’ and your margin for preciseness shrinks. as a result, as you become a more specialized attorney, your area of practice gets more niche and your ability to draw meaningful divisions is more refined into smaller and smaller tools. this is true of coding as well. when you are a generalist programmer you draw broad strokes. but when you get into the nitty gritty, you need to do more with less lines. the lines themselves stand for more, and you take less moves to do the same thing.

like wise, it is as though an artist who has mastered it can do with one stroke what a new artist might take with twenty. or a poet can say with one line what a klutz might grumble on and on about. you get what i am saying.

so we tighten our belts and sink into the same. it’s like, you take the modules for granted but then, you eventually learn to take those modules apart and deal directly with them too.

this extra dimension might be dealt with as a spiral too; going up. if you see it in two dimensions, it’s a constant return, a swaying, an oscillation between two poles. but in fact, you are overcoding one side as you overcode the other. when we have arranged this west end with the new paradigm, the east end must be arranged. and when the east has been arranged with the new consequences, the west must also be arranged. this oscillation is our attention returning to one and then returning back to the other, as change ripping throughout the block. as the block becomes more complex, its grains noted in ever smaller detail, so must we always return back to basics. our foundation shifts ever so slightly.

often, a single oscillation is needed as the theme, then variation and then recapitulation. a sonata or rondo must repeat its A and B themes if it is to complete itself. you start at home, go on a journey in which you introduce variations and different moves, and then return home to reincorporate those moves into a new kernel.

sometimes we want more than a single oscillation. in ravel’s bolero , with each return, we get a louder, more present presence, one in which we can note what was single birds to be a gigantic bird, with the feathers in your face, up close and without the framing of a concert.

this intensive view, this microscoping of a particular was mistaken in phenoemnology of spirit by hegel to be the becoming universal of a particular. and when you are swallowed by the particular up close, thrown into the void like alice through the rabbit hole, you are in it, and it is empty as it is spacious — completely enveloping you as the Notion. be it a religious universality or a cultural whole for which you are both citizen and state, one with the community, one with itself A:A if you like ayn rand.

blast those particulates though. when you zoom back you, you at once see it is a liebnizetian game, each particular a monad running through other monads, commenting and interlocking, intertextual and at once phenomenological and transcendental as we can note monads overwriting monads like a web of individuals in a community, influencing each other, a shifting complex of community consciousness we suppose, as in the movie magnolia. magnolia is another modernist story, one in which we both investigate the graininess of the images and come out of that investigation with a supramacy of kernel, of intensiveness that we can only note as a ‘thing’ a unified whole as characters are commentators on one another, each a progressive level of difference, embedded in one another as a density, a unit you cannot escape, self contained, finite and yet boundary-less.

so depending on how you want to cut your rabbit hole, you can be big alice or small alice, and in either end of the jaberwocky you have either too crampt a house or too empty a room. either a/the Notion or the/a particular.

i suppose the question is often answered within the context of its functionality. if it goes together, and best juxtaposes one another then it is a unit. fingering on a piano is hard to separate from understanding the layout of her scales. and a pianist is hard to divide from the piano especially as the piano continually molds the pianist into her shape-becoming- like a lover who has a favorite position he insists on so the other lover eventually gets to being in it. one is hard to separate from the other so that they are most easily referred to as one.

in that way it is appropriate that lovers have offspring, be it homo or hetereo, when they self-organize into units that become-… best expressed in a new subject, a confluence of tangents that uniquely entwine, carrying with them, the comments of the foundation where they were level 1. in this sense, the reaction of an offspring is still the legacy of the parent. so we return too, to that headspace in how each of us is an interwoven complexity, a multitude of indeterminate, indistinct successions, best known to go with one another as me.

i got a little off topic, but so, the with each oscillation be it a meaningful distinction, a deeper delving of each grain requires additional geometric or even exponential energies to microscope. one resists that attention even as one desires it, as shrinking into a smaller space requires alice to shed herself, what was unnecessary to that smaller space.

indeed it is hard and harder to become experter and experter.

on radicalism and hegel — and why zizek should not be listened to

September 23, 2011 / posted in dialectics, Theory / 8 Comments

currently slavoj zizek is the rockstar in academia. while i am a bit out of touch from academia, i find it a bit disturbing that many of my idealistic colleagues and cohorts still praise zizek for various articles and statements.

i plan on making this short. so let me get to the point: we shouldn’t praise or hold zizek in such high esteem. in some sense, it’s good for one to adopt radical positions — we can learn from that. but radicality can spiral in a dialectic as one switches different basis.

for example,

1. academia is a tool of the status quo as public funding needs to (con)serve monetary infrastructures which support them. this monetary tie often forces institutions to adopt only modest changes while maintaining the superstructures which support them. nonetheless, zizek’s success in academia (and beyond) ties heartily in with supporting the status quo. how radical can zizek be while remaining entrenched in academia?

this seems contrary with the second reason:

2. the zizek of the last 10 years has enjoyed a terrible amount of success. his political position has changed somewhat — his attempts to continually focus on radical positions pushes him to adopt more and more conservative positions as he continually steps against the general positions of his liberal academic base. this seems good in light of the first position, except that by stepping against the first, zizek ends up back in the arms of the status quo in the name of being radical.

the last ties the first two nicely,

3. both marx and lacan, zizek’s two philosophical fathers have a common ancestor in hegel. hegel’s absolute system was created for two purposes — the first was to tie noumenon with phenomenon — the second was to nail absolute truth down in an increasingly cosmopolitan world. hegel’s system works by weaving all the different phenomenon of life together in a super-structure that is not of any particular phenomenon. absolute truth is achieved by finding it everywhere and nowhere at once. this absolutism does not care if one is radical or one is conservative. the system works by discarding difference to find principle relations which structure those differences. such structures are often ontologically conservative as linguistically constructed relations are, as a rule of thumb, established and integrated rather than radical and novel.

in other words, as a hegelian zizek does not care if he supports the status quo or if he supports a liberal agenda. either agenda will ultimately support the dialectical synthesis which must occur in order to step us closer to the heart of the empty Notion. in fact, in order to introduce new material for a synthesis (and to keep things interesting) zizek must continually provide new angles on old material.

it is in this adherence to a Notion that traps his philosophical framework within the established parameters (be it) capitalism, classism and/or psychoanalysis… while simultaneously giving excuse to everything under the sun. certainly powers of explanation are desirable to remove the unknown in phenomenon, so that phenomenon is just phenomenon. but moving towards the Notion is a different movement than moving back away from it.

it is as dostoyevsky’s character ivan expressed; under God everything is allowed. under the hegelian notion — all things are equal — without responsibility. also, there is little movement within hegel to achieve a difference or an aesthetics to be. hegel works by subsuming things into its own immanence. so with this in mind, zizek’s authoritarian politics takes on a nefarious tone. while zizek is perhaps not completely speaking out and writing against current events today, he is edging towards becoming a spokesperson for the status quo while clothed in the sheep of radical intellectualism. beware — reading and sharing zizek as a conservative inevitably leads to positions of “obey” and “follow” rather than “question” and “learn”, something all too available to for those who are in positions of popularity mistaken for authority.

this comes to light especially in some of the recent articles he has written. take a look at this gem: in which zizek accuses lesbians of being unable to love. or perhaps zizek’s rant on the recent riots on the u.k.. these two pieces aren’t the only articles of course, zizek is famously prolific. in some sense, it doesn’t really matter whether this famous speaker becomes a spokes person for the status quo or not. he’s just one man, and his betrayal of his fan bases’ sensibilities will only hurt him in the end. certainly as intelligent as he is, he won’t be the first celebrity to succumb to stardom by become a parody of himself.

nonetheless, while i don’t fully agree with the analysis of zizek in either article, i do believe it to be important for us to really understand not just what he says but where he is coming from. zizek by aesthetic and philosophical choice can only really promote what is conservative as he is bound by a conservative philosopher.

when trying to understand a philosopher, we must first understand what problems he wishes to solve before we can fully understand what his philosophy is all about. being taken in by soundbites or clips, be it a paragraph from an article or an entire book in a collection work won’t give us the full picture of what the philosophy is all about.

the best hint of zizek’s agenda comes from his own mouth in astra taylor’s zizek! in which zizek professes that he wishes to merge marx and lacan. his later talks have tended to view totalitarianism as the best way to find both the sublime and authenticity as an ethical subject. in the latter, totalitarianism acts as a bulwark by which individuals can be perverse, ethical singularities. i believe it is only the desire for a bulwark which serves for zizek to recommend authoritarianism as the quickest route to subjecthood. without that bulwark, there can be no ethical subjectivity, only a mess of pre-subjective desires. in that sense, zizek would not embrace permissive post-modernism and apparently, that includes the snippet above about lesbian love.

while zizek is undoubtably creative theoretically, it behooves us to ask if zizek’s position on subjectivity is what is best for society or even an individual. it probably does not serve us all to be perverse subjects, to take ethical stances in the form of unyielding drives, nor would it be in our best interest as a group of people who need to live among one another for us each to embrace totalitarianism just to cast it aside.

to me, zizek remains an interesting spectacle, but one who is so theoretically entangled in his musings that he seems to believe that if he is hysterical enough, everything he says will come to be… that people are synonymous with subjectivity and that the theoretical edifices he lays out will become absolutely true. if anything, he remains fully trapped by the dichotomies and gremasian squares he continually lays out for his readers.

so the question remains. do we need this roundabout philosopher to tell us what the most conservative of political groups already say?

on nil

August 19, 2011 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, universal nothing / No Comments

(from twitter)

what’s odd about nothing is that there are 3 kinds of nothing: 1.absence of anything, 2.absence of change and 3.absence of a particular x.

in programming terms, this analogizes to 1. null, 2. loops and 3. zero.

what’s further odd about zero is that in languages like php, zero can be the value zero, empty, null or one.  this 0 = 1 is a 4th kind of zero.

i think this overlap has to do with either specific content, the context of expression or the structure of expression —

all of which may be nil.

the most basic nil is in the structure of expression — which is the kantian negativity. context of expression is hegelian negation (zizek)

and of course specific content is what we are most familiar with and deal with everyday. in culture finding the hegelian negation is akin

to finding the “species which is its own genus” as zizek says, the primary case. something i think south park keeps trying to hit.

of course that’s also philosophy’s goal too, to explicate the zero point of structure, find the root of being all that jazz.

the purest case with the simpliest move. we can always tailor our structure to support other items “a priori”, in theory.

 

Zeros in numbers are a purely expressive entity but as such refers to what would otherwise be uncaptured substance.

Saying that is like making digital analogue. An mp3 recorded on vinyl.

The inexpressible is expressible by virtue of the concept of the negative, by voids in expressive structure.

This is not to confuse a deployed camera’s negation with the negativity of blackness on a movie screen.

Where hegel abuts universality in force is like law taking onto account violations by being more strict than necessary.

Or like good design swallowing common human error.

This is what theoloticians may mean by taking about human freewill made compossible with god’s supreme will VIA Jesus, god as man.

 

(post-twitter)

god’s will must encompass everything, including that which is free of god.

that’s where determinism and freewill intermix, in a figure like jesus.  jesus acts as the central binding agent on the way to universality, as petit objet a, the stain of god on man, a stand in for the subjectivity/godhood.

but if jesus is the stand in, and jesus is negative, how can god be negative?  not just in terms of not-man and not-god but also as zero qua one (as stated above).

what’s particularly interesting in this is that in the fullest level beyond universality, hegel still insists on the emptiness of the notion beyond the traditional readings of dialectics.

in a very real way, negation for hegelian dialectics is necessary — one can’t have universality without taking into account that which is not explicated.

joan copjec in her brilliant essay ‘body as viewing instrument or the strut of vision’ takes heed of this when she explains how renaissance painting isn’t simply a field.  the field from the subject projects an idealized viewing point just behind the head of a viewer situated squarely before the painting.  the ‘final’ negative acts as the last suture, by taking into account that final kernel of understanding — rooted from the subject.

this brings us beyond negation into universality — but the step beyond negation qua universality is to consider the totality itself as self-determining — that Emptiness is Godhood itself which can only be expressed as the zero-sum of structure.

once again, we find ourselves enwrapped in a kantian lock-box of phenomenon — only this time there isn’t a noumenality by which we cannot know, for the noumenal is included as part of the structure itself like how phenomenon is structured.

if anything, at this point we’ve aligned the first three nils on one another: content, expression and structure like an empty structured database, or a spread sheet or pivot table without data, devoid of content.  virtually there but inexpressed.  what we’ve ended with is the last kind of zero, where it acts in a higher level as one.

this is simply because while one is a totality when viewed from the outside –from a position of immanence, one is needed as zero to establish metaphysics of presence, marking a structural change from pure absence to a structured presence.  in terms of programming, a zero is already one bit.  a nothing wouldn’t even show up and cannot be considered.

an interesting consequence of this concept of zeroth-ing is to understand that subjectivity itself is the zero point sum, the empty category that establishes the modal structure of renaissance order.  this seems to suggest that we understand others as a consequence of our own singularity.

but this grasp of subjectivity as zero misses the point, for we have a totality as one in subjectivity already.

so where is the nil point that is pre-subject?

copjec talks of the gaze as the field that cleaves and binds; for if the subject is us, what does our presence guarantee?  how does being one equate to being zero?  it is in the consequences of getting to be one that we already assume a zero — in Lacanian language it is the Other that bounces off subjectivity in so as subjectivity requires others.  what copjec calls the gaze guarantees both subject and object and acts as the originary marking place.  they are dual views of the same situation.

therein lies the structural difference by which noumenal and phenomenal are cleaved, inexplicable but also nil.  the ground of being separate must be established before being can be, a crux of psychoanalysis from motherandchild to i and you.  in each point epistemologically, we must have the empty container-notion which can contain it all, and is rightly not anything.  The set of all sets is not really a set, it is the empty set par excellence.

Can we function with an outside on the inside?

July 9, 2011 / posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

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:

  1. all are submitted (S1)
  2. only one is not submitted (~S2)
  3. none are submitted (S2)
  4. only one is submitted (~S1)

Zizek highlights these positions in order to explore different ‘species of judgement’ of a subject are

  1. necessary (S1)
  2. possible (~S2)
  3. impossible (S2)
  4. 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:

  1. x
  2. ~x
  3. both x & ~x
  4. 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:

  1. There is a Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S1)
  2. There is no Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S2)
  3. Both (S1) and (S2) apply
  4. 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:

  1. There is no self that is I (~S1).
  2. There are no other subjectivities (~S2).
  3. Both self (~S1) and others (~S2) do not exist.
  4. 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’.

The Violence of Subjectivity complements our Lack of Negativity

May 5, 2011 / posted in dialectics, life as we know it, manifesto, Theory, Universal non-all / 2 Comments

There is an inherent violence in being a subject.

AS what Slavoj Zizek calls the universal exception, our subjectivity each, is an exception of the unbreakable rule of the universal.

This subjectivity must be “non-all” an untotalized whole which prevents the universal from foreclosing.

Part of why I think so much continental philosophy goes on and on about subjectivity and cannot bridge the gap between subjectivity and society remains in this gap between the “non-all” and the universal.

A great part of why modern philosophy starts with Kant is that Kant provides exegesis on subjectivity — but only does so at the expense of the noumenal.  Kant sacrifices the rest of the world, the external world in exchange for securing subjective phenomenal experience.

Hegel tries to fix Kant.  The genuis of Hegel is that he wrote on the extra subjectivity, the becoming-universal of particulars — he tried to bridge that gap with his dialectical absolutist system, to totalize the non-all and unproblematize the subjectivity by enfolding it back into the Notion.

Whether he succeeds or not is up to debate of course, but no other philosopher has come close to his achievement.  This is why Hegel remains for both Marx and Lacan (in fact even today), the godfather — Hegel provides the only comprehensive system of talking about the universal qua society with an eye on the particular.  He does so by nearly sacrificing the subjective, but saves it through a kind of transcendental rambling.

By comparison, Deleuze and Guattari don’t even talk about subjectivity; they make it irrelevant.  Graham Harman also side-steps this Cartesian mutualism by going via the Object with Merleau-Ponty and his notion of flesh.

But I’m not going to go in depth to examine others.

What’s so damning about Hegel is that through his particular becoming-universal he found the universal on the particular, through a kind of metaphysical “raising” of essence.  This is obviously what Deleuze and Guattari do with various meta-tools, like territorializations and refrains, the difference though is that Hegel does this raising through negation.

Negation eliminates what does not fit that form.  To emphaize my point, Kristeva attributes negation as a concept to Hegel — the specific making of a negative (something).  Contrast this with Kant and Kristeva points out that Kant only discovered negativity — the absence of what we are looking for.

The negation of Hegel allows us not only a radical de-subjectivising but also the clearing of room to make way for the *trumpet sounding* throne of one particular to rise up to the throne of universality. In contrast, Kant used negativity in order to make room.

Where violence comes into place is our rejection of the negation.  Our supposition as a subjectivity must come about through social effluence — we stand up to this symbolic universal by declaring our relevance against our own negation by this universal.

We tear out and subjectivise what would be an object.  We would do violence to universals and other would-be universal small-others through our radical Otherness qua subjectivity.  Think of the violence today perhaps in Libya and Egypt

Think of the French Revolution.

Think of all the expressions of free-self organization that the U.N. throughout the 20th century and up till today have stamped out, and how small-other Universals qua government seek to legitimize their claim on what would be a universal expression of their own brand of subjectivity… we return to State Democracy its own Jacobianian Excesses in the form of our own self-subjectivisation which then must always be violent.

This is also how Hegel is also the first modern philosopher-statesman inasmuch as the first and only true philosopher on modern Universality.

Unfortunately we seem stuck on this in Continental Philosophy and unable to articulate other forms of universality. We can’t articular a society let alone conceive of one. And no, ramblings of a disintegrated body of objectivity does not a society make.

So no: the radical pluralism of Deleuze and Guattari do not count simply because while they clear our the space for alternate forms they are too reactionary against Hegel to be useful in constructivism.  It’s also questionable as to whether or not we are at a point in which there is enough space for anything else to be constructed.

Newer Posts »