Howtoreadlacan

zizek read lacan

freud. 3 narcisistic illnesses

copernicus-darwin-freud

Today. Our mind is a mere computing machine. that processes data.our sense of freedom and autonomy is the users illusion of this machine

Today the time of psychoanalysis has come.

Through Lacan freuds key insights emerge in their true dimension. lacan, freudian evolution that freud wasnt aware of

The unconscious is structured as a language

The predominant perception of the unconsious is that is it the domain of irrational drives, opposed to the rational consious self. For Lacan this notion of the unconsious belongs to the Romantic Lebensphilosophie and has nothing to do with Freud. The freudian unconsious caused such as scandal not because of the claim the the rational self is subordinated to the much vaster domain of blind irrational instincts but because it demonstrated how the unconsious itself obeys its own grammar and logic, the unconsious talks and thinks. ITs a place where the dramatic truth speaks out. Therein lies Lacans versions of Freuds moto Where it was , i am to become. Not the ego should conquer the id, but I should dare to approach the site of my truth. What awaits me there is not a deep truth i have to identify but an unbearable truth i have to learn to live with.

FOr Lakan psychoanalysis doesnt show an individual the way to accomodate him to the demans of social reality. instead it explains how something like "reality" constitutes itself in the first place. It explains how the dimension of truth emerges in human reality.

FOr Lacan, pathological formations like neuroses, psychoses and pervertions have the dignity of fundamental philosophical attitudes towards reality. His main critique of other psychoanalytic approachces it that they have a clinical orientation. For lacan its not the patients well beeing or succesfull social life the goal of the psychoanalytic treatment but to bring the patient to confront the elementary coordinate and deadlocks of his her desire.

IMaginary, Symboli, Real. THe big other as the symbolic order. Subject not ego. (differences from freud)

Psychoanalysis for Lacan is a method of reading texts. (oral as the patients speech or written)

Lacanian readings.

Mexican soap operas , the BIg other. The symbolic order, societies unwritten constitution is the second nature of every speaking beeing.

THe reality of human beeings is constituted by 3 intertagled levels: the symbolic, the imaginery and the real.

IN chess. The rules= its symbolic dimension, the way in which different pieces are shaped and charakterised by their names king queen etc= imaginary and we can imagine different imaginarys. The entire complex set of contingent circumstanes that affect the course of the game= the real. (intelligence of players, unpredictable intrusions etc). The big other operates in the symbolic level.

When we speak or listen we never merely interact with the others.our speech activity is grounded on accepting and relying a complex network of rules and other kinds of presuppositions. Grammatikal rules. BAckground of participating in the same life world. Divide of rules= some i follow blindly out of habit but if i reflekt on them i can become at least potentially aware and some ifollow, meanings haunt me, in ignorance.(unconsious prohibitions).THen there are the rules we pass over in silence to keep the proper appearances.

The symbolic space acts like a yardstick against which i can measure myself. This is why the bigother can be personified or reified in a single agent: the :god: who watches over me from beyond, and over all individuals , or the Cause that involves me ( Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which im ready to give my life. While talking im never merely the small other (individual) interacting with other small others, the big other must be always there.

The third. Cindy crawford. belies the possibility of an unspoiled private pleasure. Sex is always mininalist exhibitionism and relies on anothers gaze.

In spite his power the big other is fragile, properly virtual. Exists in a status of subjective presupposition.

It exists only in so far as subjects act as if it exists. It is status is so similar to an ideologic cause.(...) yet the only thing that exists is these individuals and their activity, so this substance exists when the individuals believe in it and act accordingly.

Its because of the virtual charakter of the big other that a letter always arrives at its destination. The only letter that fully...is the unsent letter with one addressee, the big other.

Lacan =the preservation of the unsent letter is its arresting feature. the gesture of keeping the message, by saving it we are sending it

Freud symptom-> coded message about secrets desires or traumas, the addressee is the big other Symbolic order is not a kind of spiritual substance existing independently of individuals but it is sustained by ther continuous activity.

For Lacan language is a gift so dangerous to humanity as the trojan horse. IT offers itself to our use free of charge but since we accept it it colonises us.THe symbolic order emerges from a gift.

Human communication is charakterised by an irreducible reflexivity. every act of communication symbolises the fact ot communication.

Belonging to a society involves this paradoxical point at which each of us i orderd to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us(we all must love our country, parents, religion) Notion of symbolic gesture. offer meant to be rejected.

Symbolic gesture and every day behaviour. Friends in competition. win. offer to withdraw. rejection.

Social link through empty gestures. Sociopath. "many human acts are performed..for the sake of the interaction itself" Sociopath use of language paradoxically mathces the standard commonsensenotion of language as a purely instrumental means of communication, as signs that transmit messages. He uses language. -user.- .This determinates sociopaths attitude towards morality. Practises the notion of morality developed by utilitarianism. Doing evil is a mistake on calculation, not a guilty act.

Every utterance not only transmits some content but silmuntaneously conveys the way the subject relates to the content

Utility functions as a reflektive notion.

Declaration. the act of saying or not saying can create additional meaning

Collin Powel advocation of attack in Iraq. Guernica background covered. If US delegation had refrained fro demanding its cncealment, propably noone would associate the speech with the painting but this gesture revealed its truth.

James Jesus ANgleton and Paranoia

MonsterPlot. In Angleton himself.there resides the truth of the paranoiac stance= it is itself the destructive plot against which it is fighting

THE interpassive subject

Chorus and the other

Cyberspace. Interactivity, participate actively in spectacle created by someone else and more and more establish the rules of the spectactle.Interpassivity, the object deprives me of, relieves me of the duty to enjoy myself.it enjoys the show instead of me

VCR as big other

Canned laughter

The function of the oops. the virtual big brother has to be informed about it

Interpassivity, im passivte thourth the other

I can continute to work in the evening while the VCR enjoys for me. False activity.

People can also act in order to prevent things of happening, so that nothing will change. THerein resides the typical strategy of the neurotic: he is frantically active in order to prevent the real thing from happening

Politics. Danger of pseudo- activity.

We are active all the time to make sure that nothing will really change. The first critical step is to wihtdraw into passivity and refuse to participate.

Lacans notion of the big other, displacement of our most intimate feeling and attitudes onto some figure of the other The other can also believe and now for me.

In order to designate this discplacement of the subjects knowledge onto another, Lacan coined the notion of the subject supposed to know.