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6440387 No.6440387 [Reply] [Original]

Can you explain this faggot's ideas in a dummie format?

>> No.6440400

>>6440387
Dude, I don't want Zizek to be out of a job.

>> No.6440412

>>6440387
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnTQhIRcrno

>> No.6440417

Freud was right about everything except he was talking about language

The unconscious is language

>> No.6440425

even he didn't know what he was talking about

>> No.6440651

>>6440417
REEEEEEEEEEEEE

How not to read Lacan by Slobber Bigdick

>> No.6440761

That faggot's ideas, in a dummy format, are that there is the Symbolic, Imaginary and The Real orders that keep playing on each other. Symbolic are the rules of the game, the Imaginary is the images that are used to represent these symbols, and the Real is the crack in between the two, the things that are not inserted into our Symbolic of Imaginary orders. For example, a handshake is an image of two hands shaking, it is symbolic of an agreement and the Real is like the uncomfortable sweat in the other guy's hand that makes you want to get off his hand even though you don't want to break your agreement. The Real cannot be predicted.

Lacan hated examples, he didn't believe in them, he didn't believe you could take a portion of something and say "that's how it is". He didn't believe in averages or in simplifications like that. Why? Because he understood the very process of finding an example was our attempt to make something very complex enter the Symbolic. They are our imagination, the average joe, the normal person. We guide our lives through those things and so we believe certain things to be abnormal, but to him, that doesn't matter the slightest because that's a way for us to run from the truth of our problem in the guise of "I wish I was normal like him!", which is totally imagined. So that's why he rejected the diagnosis of mental illnesses and things like that, it didn't matter at all. He was all about one thing at a time, each situation being unique.

His therapy is famous for his cuts and stops. He knows that we fantasize about stuff very strongly and he understands that to be a way to cop out with Real traumatic situations, stuff that we don't want to face or we don't know how to face, etc. He gave a lot of importance to language and to the way we speak about things, about our problems and so on. So he would always takes the "throughout" route, not side by side, or against you, but finding new ways to look at things in the midst of what you're saying. His sessions were not restricted by chronological time, because the way a session ends is going to stay with the analysand and so the stop always comes at a critical point. He wouldn't let you just wander around, but provoke you at the same time that he does not judge you. It's a complicated thing to explain in dummy format.

He is concerned with desire and how desire can never be reached, that we don't desire what we desire, because that which we think we desire is made of the imaginary, fantasy. That when we get what we desire, we move to the next thing. For example, you want a gf so bad because you keep imagining how it would be like, then you get a gf and understand it is much more complicated, then you seek a lover because you imagine that will solve your problem and then drop your gf for the lover and then proceed to miss the gf, etc, etc.

He thought Freud had good points and derived his practice from Freud's.

There is much more, and so on and so on

>> No.6440937

>>6440761
So a bunch of horseshit

Thought so

>> No.6440992

>>6440761
>There is much more, and so on and so on

The summary of his work is more insightful than the body of it, which is both intentionally and unintentionally labyrinthine.

>> No.6440999

>>6440937
Yeah you can clearly make that judgment off just that.

>> No.6441007

>>6440992
come back in 2 or 3 years kiddo

>> No.6441020

>>6440651
>Lacan: Go back to Freud, by which I mean let me talk about my own theories and claim they're Freudian
>Zizek: Go back to Lacan, by which I mean let me talk about my own theories and claim they're Lacanian

>> No.6441022

>>6441007
Thinking Lacan is a charlatan isn't an uncommon opinion within academia. You can't really
>you just don't understand him
your way out of this.

>> No.6441032

>>6440937

lmao how dense can you be>>6440937

>> No.6441036

>>6440761
This is good

>> No.6441048

>>6440761
I buy some of his conclusions, but I know how vague his premises are & even some of the clearer ones seem a little out there to me.

>> No.6441068

>>6440761
>Lacan hated examples, he didn't believe in them
So he essentially admitted that his work is entirely unfalsifiable.

>> No.6441080

>>6441068
I don't think you understand the utility of the concept of 'falsifiability.'

>> No.6441088

>>6441080
>>6441068
Philosophy doesn't have to be falsifiable anyway and psychoanalysis doesn't claim to be, so you both look like idiots spouting memes

>> No.6441091

>>6441088
What? I was agreeing with you.

>> No.6441095

>>6441091
I'm not anyone you were responding to, I haven't been too involved ITT until >>6441088.

>> No.6441098

>>6440412
this lecture was actually great. thanks, anon.

>> No.6441108

>>6441095
I know, but my post was also about how that other anon was inaccurately spouting falsifiability because it's meaningless in this context, yet you lumped me in as if I were agreeing with him.

>> No.6441130

as much as i love this euro shit it's like half of its mystique lies in the way you can pronounce their names and let it hang in the air. jaahhhqq lakooonn. slavoy zhiiiishek. de-riii-dahhhhhh.

>> No.6441156

>>6441108
What did you mean by "the utility of the concept of 'falsifiability/?" I may have simply misinterpreted you.

>> No.6441159

>>6440387
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Fuck off until you've read his articles on both of these.

>> No.6441177

>>6441068
He is talking about something "before falsifiability", because he goes precisely towards what makes us seek ways to legitimize our lives and what makes us settle and what makes us itch. He argues we are always itching, and scratching is merely temporary, new itches will come and you'll have to learn how to scratch them.

That is, through religion, science, art, or even through analysis itself, what makes you take this or that way to deal with the world and how certain are you of it?

Lacan's work is not about creating an image of how the mind works, like a mechanism, a structure, so there isn't much to falsify. All of this is pretty vague for a reason, you should keep that in mind. Other sides of analysis and psychology try to say people want this because of that, it's in sex, no it's in god, it's in childhood, in personality, etc, etc. Lacan is more crude and puts it all into an hypothetical bag: you want to live a life that you can deal with. What is it that you can deal with? What is it that you can't? How are you running away from it? In what ways can you deal with this rather than that one way that you've been believing to be just the one for a long time and that is bringing you problems? He invites you to speak and fill the gaps so that work can begin.

If he gave an example, he'd give you something to work with and you'll refute it, accept it, love it, hate it, learn to insert it into your symbolic library. All of this can make you derail from the problem, because you'd be addressing an image of it, not the thing. If he is vague and you provide with an example that try to fit it, than this image comes from yourself and thus work can begin to address that one problem.

It's part of it to deal with that it doesn't matter what the man Lacan believes or not believe. I could ask you, why does it matter that it is falsifiable or not? And you could reply to me as if I was saying "it doesn't matter if it is falsifiable or not", even though that's not what I'm saying. You'd attack me and lecture on me, argue and so on. To Lacan, what matters is that this argument is there to certify yourself of what you believe, not to convince me. So the argument tells something about you, which can help you, shock you, usually both. He holds a mirror towards the other, that's why he speaks of "analysands" (the patients), because the guy lying there is the one doing the analysis, not like the analyst was trying to read his mind or make judgement calls.

In other words, it is a question "how do YOU think it works? Are you really listening to yourself? Look at what you said here..." and so on.

>> No.6441265

>>6441130
Id said it's more lakk-caww(silent n)

awe like how a woman from New Jersey would say it, aauuhww

>> No.6441315

>>6440761
>Lacan hated examples, he didn't believe in them, he didn't believe you could take a portion of something and say "that's how it is"


He's right, you can't. It's called the composition fallacy.

All atoms are invisible to the naked eye.
All cats are made up of atoms.
Therefore all cats are invisible to the naked eye.

>> No.6441334

>>6441022
>Thinking Lacan is a charlatan isn't an uncommon opinion within academia.

You mean among people whose job is to disagree with each other ?
Also source, but who cares really.

>> No.6441335

>>6441156
Pretty much what you ended up saying, that philosophy and psychoanalysis doesn't need to be falsifiable, and that Popper doesn't use the concept of 'falsifiability' to separate between useful and non-useful (or worth discussing vs. not) as the other anon and other 'meme spouting' idiots on this board often do.

>> No.6441345

>>6441335
Read Popper's attack on Plato, Freud and Marx before you firm that opinion up mate. Popper was exactly the kind of "edgy" little fuck when it came to falsifiability that the average /sci/-tard who has read as far as Popper but not as far as Kuhn is.

>> No.6441357

>>6441335
Cool,we're on the same page, then. Just FYI >>6441345 isn't me.

>> No.6441373

>>6441357
I'm happy for people to argue that falsifiability isn't a universal epistemological standard, I just wanted to make clear that Popper uses it as a universal standard.

>> No.6441437

>>6441315
That's not quite what I meant, though he'd agree on that fallacy as well.

It's more of a problem of language than of logic. The "normal" is an invention. Take the statement "the cat has four paws" and you'd agree, but if I'd show an amputee cat with three paws, would you say that's not a cat? You'd concede. Lacan was not the first to think like this, but he took it to psychanalysis. When a mental illness is diagnosed, it is much like how you notice the amputee cat is not a "proper healthy cat". The cat example can only take us so far, because Lacan is approaching people, people that can talk and express their problems. It doesn't matter then, what we think a healthy cat or a healthy person is, but how does the person feel?

Lacan said had a very interest approach on generalizations. One would think that we invent a word like "dog" because all dogs have something in common. But it is the other way around, it is because every dog is so different from each other in a way we can't deal with (this dog, that dog, that dog...), so we need to put it within the symbol: dog. The word "dog" does not refer to any specific dog. Take an example of a dog and you'll find characteristics that are unique to it. No dog is a normal or average dog. When it comes to problems of life and of language, this is crucial. Call it depressed, bipolar, normal, abnormal, perverted... Lacan is concerned with episodes, with what you claim to be the issue and with your own capacity to discover new ways to deal with it.

>> No.6441587

>>6441334
Pretty much all analytical philosophers dismiss Freud and Lacan as hacks, the most prominent of whom is probably Chomsky, who once said something along the lines of Lacan being a continuation of Freud's cocaine fueled pipedream.

>> No.6443017

>>6440761
>the Real is like
opinion disregarded, the first rule of the real is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE REAL

Can I just say that his use of mathemes is one of the most brilliant and yet sorely misunderstood practises of rhetoric in modern academia? That shit gets so many scientists riled up, and yet they've completely missed its actual functioning purpose

>> No.6443021
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6443021

>>6443017
>functioning

>> No.6443028

>>6443021
I mean in regards to how it works within his argument, not necessarily that it DOES work. You're welcome to make up your own mind on that, I understand Lacan is hard and its easy to dismiss him as obscurantist.

>> No.6443039

>>6443028
How does it work within his arguments? In your opinion, as someone who has read Lacan, does it work outside of them? If it doesn't work outside of them, the math he wants you to accept when reading him might not be based in actual mathematical laws, in which case his whole ouvre should be rejected.

>> No.6443056

>>6443039
>If it doesn't work outside of them, the math he wants you to accept when reading him might not be based in actual mathematical laws, in which case his whole ouvre should be rejected.
I don't think you quite understood my meaning, I'm a critical theorist, interpretation is everything to me. If they don't work for you, for whatever reason, I can't claim any the wiser.

>How does it work within his arguments?
Mathemes are representational parallels, a way of visualising his more complex points. For example, he uses 'asymptomatic' to describe desire: as anyone with even a modicum of an education in mathematics would know, an asymptote is a line which a curve infinitely approaches, but never touches. If the asymptote is the equivalent to the 'fulfillment' of desire, then no matter how many x/y values you punch into the equation (the values being equivalent to the relationship of subject and object of desire), you might come closer and closer to the asymptote, to fulfilling your desires, but you won't ever reach it. What better way to visualise a point than by representing it in terms which are empirically observable?

>> No.6443081

>>6443056
>I'm a critical theorist, interpretation is everything to me
Pig disgusting. Mathematics isn't purely interpretive.
>If the asymptote is the equivalent to the 'fulfillment' of desire, then no matter how many x/y values you punch into the equation (the values being equivalent to the relationship of subject and object of desire), you might come closer and closer to the asymptote, to fulfilling your desires, but you won't ever reach it.
That's a fine metaphor, I suppose, but I don't really see why such a basic sentiment needs to be codified in mathematical terms. Just using the phrase 'asymptotic desire' should be enough to get the sentiment across.

>> No.6443090

>>6443081
>Pig disgusting. Mathematics isn't purely interpretive.
no, but one can interpret mathematical formulas as representations for conceptually difficult points.

>Just using the phrase 'asymptotic desire' should be enough to get the sentiment across.
That's exactly what Lacan does. or at least, the quote is something along those lines. Still, I used a basic example because trying to explain why the phallus is equivalent to the square root of minus one is a stressful ordeal.

>> No.6443111

>>6443090
>no, but one can interpret mathematical formulas as representations for conceptually difficult points.
But you can't just say that a psychoanalytic concept works in exactly the same way as mathematical function. There doesn't seem to be much basis for the idea that that's even possible in terms of the actual psyche, let alone in terms of discourse about the psyche and about the mathematical/psychological concepts it contains. Maybe there are cases where desire actually is realized; a person who wants to, un- & consciously, & does commit suicide attains their desire. If that person attains their desire, then Lacan's use of mathemes is invalid.
>'But that isn't what desire is, and the person didn't really desire suicide; they desired what they called suicide, but the Reader of the thing was quote different from the Symbolic or the Imaginary!'
If I want to do something both consciously and unconsciously, is there anything else that could be considered more desiring than this want? Though I may not be conscious of the way the two halves of my psyche are lining up, they still are, and even if the want is imposed by society, I still genuinely want it.
As for the S-I-R, this person knows perfectly well that the word 'suicide' and the concept that corresponds to it aren't identical to the Real act of killing oneself, but all the same, they want to actually experience the Real of the imaginary thing symbolized as 'suicide.'

>> No.6443245

>>6443111
>But you can't just say that a psychoanalytic concept works in exactly the same way as mathematical function
Nowhere did I suggests it works in 'exactly' the same way; it is simply a metonymic device designed for the reader to grasp an incredibly abstract process within realisable terms. Also bear in mind mathemes are in no sense proofs of how desire functions. That comes primarily from derridian post-structuralism, with the deferral of desire equated to the deferral of meaning along the signifying chain.

>Maybe there are cases where desire actually is realized; a person who wants to, un- & consciously, & does commit suicide attains their desire.
no. They have fulfilled a present need, which is the need for unconsciousness, for death. But they have not fully satiated desire because desire is always and indefinitely in flux, at least according to psychoanalytic theory. They may have succeeded in killing themselves, but had they been rehabilitated and brought back from the brink of death, their desire would've already moved onto other things: a fulfilling life, a wife, etc.

>If I want to do something both consciously and unconsciously, is there anything else that could be considered more desiring than this want?
Again, you're taking an issue with something that is for Lacan self-evident in Derridian post-structuralism. Think of it this way; your need to fuck a qt can be fulfilled, but your desire 'to fuck' itself can never be satiated because it is a verb with no direct object (in this instance, an object of desire) on which it is performed.

>As for the S-I-R, this person knows perfectly well that the word 'suicide' and the concept that corresponds to it aren't identical to the Real act of killing oneself, but all the same, they want to actually experience the Real of the imaginary thing symbolized as 'suicide.'
This is quite an interesting point actually. I suppose that the desire for suicide would imply a lack elsewhere, if you see what I mean. The only reason one would justifiably commit suicide would be because their desire for other things has failed to be accomplished, and the only other apparent option is death. And, as I suggested earlier, had their suicidal thoughts been treated, their desire would've already moved onto something else.

>> No.6443305

>>6443245
>it is simply a metonymic device
Which is why I take issue with the use of mathematical terms. Math and metaphors don't mix, and their only synthesis is sophistry.
>That comes primarily from derridian post-structuralism
Isn't that post-Lacanian? I haven't studied Derrida so this is a genuine question.
>They have fulfilled a present need, which is the need for unconsciousness, for death. But they have not fully satiated desire because desire is always and indefinitely in flux, at least according to psychoanalytic theory
What basis does theory have for the proposition 'Desire is indefinitely in flux'? I'm willing to accept it under certain conditions but I want to know Lacan's premises before buying his conclusion.
>They may have succeeded in killing themselves, but had they been rehabilitated and brought back from the brink of death, their desire would've already moved onto other things:
Fine, but never mind treatment; psychoanalysis should offer ideas about how the way the mind works in general, not just of how to prevent suicide. If I kill myself while under the influence of a desire to do so which pervades my whole mind, it doesn't matter if I *would have had* a different desire; I'm dead and I got what I wanted, which was essentially to kill myself. Was this really because I wanted to cease experiencing consciousness? Whether or not it was, it has no bearing on my point. The desire to cease being conscious is identical with the desire to die.
>but your desire 'to fuck' itself can never be satiated because it is a verb with no direct object
Fine, but why should I necessarily structure my desires around the verbs to which they correspond? What if I desire a qt, rather than 'to fuck'? I suppose nouns aren't any more substantial than verbs, though.
Back to my main point, though: the desire for death is a desire for something obtainable, or do you disagree?
>I suppose that the desire for suicide would imply a lack elsewhere
Does the fact that a desire is caused by a lack make it less of a desire?

>> No.6443336

>>6443305
>Math and metaphors don't mix, and their only synthesis is sophistry.
It isn't sophistry, it's persuasive rhetoric. Plenty of other philosophers and writers use metaphorical devices as handy demonstrations of their theories, why should maths be exempt?

>Isn't that post-Lacanian?
There's a lot of overlap. Bot writers were publishing and writing for a while. Lacan claims that the unconscious is structured like a language, and naturally if one takes the Derridian model of signification as how language works, then they're very complimentary fields.

>What basis does theory have for the proposition 'Desire is indefinitely in flux'?
Again - Derridian post-structuralism. Lacan will seem like completely unfalsifiable nonsense unless you read Derrida.

>I'm dead and I got what I wanted
In the moment of attempting suicide, you wanted suicide - but suicide is never the 'end goal' of desire for anyone, and one would only commit suicide had all their other desires subsequently failed.

>Fine, but why should I necessarily structure my desires around the verbs to which they correspond?
Altogether now - Derridian postructuralism!

>the desire for death is a desire for something obtainable, or do you disagree?
I think the reason why you see desire as fulfillable is because your conception of desire is different to mine; you see desires, the plural, whereas I see 'desire', the driving force which allows us to make actions, and 'need', the momentary want for this or that. It's very important to be aware of the distinction when reading Lacan.

>Does the fact that a desire is caused by a lack make it less of a desire?
desires are not less, or more - desire is just desire, the force which makes us behave, speak, fuck, absolutely anything.

>> No.6443354

>>6443305
>their only synthesis is sophistry.

Mathism, ladies and gentleman.

>muh precious math symbols cannot be mixed with them dirty metaphors!

>> No.6443376

>>6443336
>It isn't sophistry, it's persuasive rhetoric
>other philosophers
>Implying rhetoric has a place in philosophy
>Lacan claims that the unconscious is structured like a language, and naturally if one takes the Derridian model of signification as how language works, then they're very complimentary fields.
And if one rejects this concept and asserts a physical unconscious rooted in neurology itself rather than in language I guess you'd just tell one to read more Derrida?
The idea that language structures our experience more than the structure of the brain that interprets and speaks language does is laughable. The unconscious is a primarily physical phenomenon that I influenced by the way we verbally address the world, and I see no reason to accept-on a purely rhetorical basis, nonetheless-that the mind is pure language.
>In the moment of attempting suicide, you wanted suicide - but suicide is never the 'end goal' of desire for anyone, and one would only commit suicide had all their other desires subsequently failed.
You can directly desire suicide, though.
>you see desires, the plural, whereas I see 'desire', the driving force which allows us to make actions, and 'need', the momentary want for this or that.
I see the distinction, I'm using suicide as an example of a case that invalidates his use of the asymptote metaphor and you keep bringing up sex or language so as to avoid my point.
>desires are not less, or more
So you admit, then, that in this case an admittedly perverse but nonetheless vid desire to commit suicide has been satisfied, and that thus that Desire helped the subject to attain what was ultately his singular desire?

>> No.6443380

>>6443354
Well, I mean, metaphors aren't supposed to be precise, while math and disciplines that use it do so precisely because of its precision.

>> No.6443452

>>6443017
>opinion disregarded, the first rule of the real is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE REAL
Yeah, hence it is for dummies. I had to yield somewhere. You don't talk about the Real, but you talk about not talking about the Real. Better to just corrupt myself in the same sense that I've been giving examples about how examples don't work in the hopes that some anons will move on from there.

>>6443111
Your example is quite interesting. The suicidal has no moment to look back and say "I've fullfilled my desire", because he would be dead. The asymptotic desire is still working there, you see? It means you feel you got somewhere, then you notice it's not really what will settle you down and so you look for the next thing. Suicide is a specific case where there is no desire that comes after it, but as you can see, there is no subject left either, no one to attain it. The desire line does not encounter its attainment, it remains asymptotic, just cut short (along with the attainment of anything).

On the S/I/R, you seem to be taking it more of a distance between a real thing and its description, like a point on how language never meets life and so on, but it goes beyond that. The Real with a capital R is not "reality" (the symbolic and the imaginary are also real stuff, they have a weight, they have effects, etc), the Lacanian Real is always unexpected, always traumatic. This name "Real" messes up with a lot of people, it should be called "Traumatic".Traumatic because it is an encounter with something you cannot organize in your head within the symbolic.

So in the circumstance of a rape, in which you are denied as a subject, completely violent, outside of a relationship you can conceive (that would be sex as a "game" between people's desire), in this case sex is just this other person acting on you. This is the Real. The person then proceeds to find ways to organize that into the symbolic, there must be a reason, a reaction, something... That's why a lot of people develop feelings of guilt or why they cease to react to the rape, they "tilt" trying to deal with it, they become responsible because it's impossible for them to admit they were objects at that point, etc. In the handshake example I gave early, you quickly adjust yourself, either pulling your hand off or accepting the sweat in favour of the agreement, but the point stands that the Real is always unexpected. Zizek uses the chess analogy. The imaginary are the elements like "knight" and "queen" that illustrate the game, symbolic is the way the pieces move on the board and act on each other and the Real is the dog that walks over your chessboard messing with the game. The Real "breaks the game", cuts your imagination short, throws you out of the symbolic entirely.

The suicidal doesn't want the Real(capital R) act of killing oneself, because you cannot want it. The Real could be like failing to kill yourself and waking up in the morning in a hospital bed.

>> No.6443479

>>6443376
The problem with desire for suicide is that the moment the desire is actually fulfilled is the moment that you can no longer feel desire, or anything. You can never fulfill a desire for death because the instant you are dead and have achieved your goal, you are precluded from knowing that you have.

>> No.6443497

>>6443452
>The asymptotic desire is still working there, you see?
If death is the cessation of consciousness, he has reached the asymptote by not being able to look back.
>but as you can see, there is no subject left either, no one to attain it.
True, but the subject desired oblivion; he wanted to become a non-subject and the only way that he saw to attain this state was suicide.
>Traumatic because it is an encounter with something you cannot organize in your head within the symbolic.
Like suicide?
>The Real could be like failing to kill yourself and waking up in the morning in a hospital bed.
Fair enough, but if Desire doesn't correspond to anything that could be categorized as Real, wouldn't escaping the possibility of the Real by successfully committing suicide with that specific purpose (the elimination of consciousness is in this case the elimination do the possibility of the experience of the Real) as fundamentally constituent to the subject's will immediately prior to the Act invalidate the asymptote analogy?

>> No.6443503

>>6443479
>You can never fulfill a desire for death because the instant you are dead and have achieved your goal, you are precluded from knowing that you have.
Attaining a desire isn't the same as enjoying the fruits of that attainment.

>> No.6443556

>>6443497
Attainment of desire is not met, anon. It doesn't matter what happends in an objective out there world, because Lacan is always talking about people, not trying to bring forth an image of how the world works or what death is like. The premise is that you're a person, but when you kill yourself, you're not a person anymore. If you were to talk about suicide, we'd have something to work with: why you want to kill yourself, what do you wish to attain with it and so on.

The asymptote here is to illustrate that when you desire something, when you want to do something, to be something, to achieve a certain thing, you create an image of it as something that will bring you a certain peace or satisfaction or whatever. Then, when you meet that and another desire emerges you may feel frustrated about it, "but wasn't that what I wanted?". Lacan is there to say that the answer is not in the thing, in that naive way. Other analysts talk about this as well, that you don't want what you want. If you take Freud, he said the answer to it was biological: sex, survival and that we confuse that as children for love, dispute, power and so on. Jung would give you a practically religious argument for unity, individuality and so on. Lacan doesn't even tell you what is this thing that you want when you say you want another, he merely perceives that desire keeps pushing you and that this will not cease as long as you are a person.

His work is to get you to talk about what you want when you want something.

>Traumatic because it is an encounter with something you cannot organize in your head within the symbolic.
>Like suicide?
Not at all, far from it really! Suicide is an idea, it's completely fleshed out. The Real cannot come from within you, it's not something you want or conceive. A car accident on a sunny thursday is more like the Real. Suicide is something that you can wish for, escape from, have an opinion on it, think about it, discuss. The accident is not, at least for the time when it happends and escapes your symbolic structure. It is the moment you are left thinking "what the fuck happened/is happening?" when you are clueless about what to do with this, complete shock.

That's why I said the Real for the suicidal is waking up the next morning. It comes with this "what now?" feeling. He wanted to cease to exist, he did it and there he is again. Do you think it is easy for this person to, for example, find a new hobby the next day or study for a test or start a relationship? The first reaction is to cry your eyes out and slowly build up new symbolic structures from which to work from.

Again on suicide, there is nothing to talk about if it happends, there is something to talk about before it happends.

>> No.6443585

>>6443556
>Attainment of desire is not met, anon.
You have yet to convince me of this. I've been trying to provide counterexamples to precisely this point all thread.
>It doesn't matter what happends in an objective out there world, because Lacan is always talking about people, not trying to bring forth an image of how the world works or what death is like.
IMO that's a shortcoming.
>The asymptote here is to illustrate that when you desire something, when you want to do something, to be something, to achieve a certain thing, you create an image of it as something that will bring you a certain peace or satisfaction or whatever
So it isn't so much a point you never reach as an illusion? Why use the asymptote metaphor, then?
>That's why I said the Real for the suicidal is waking up the next morning
And what about the suicide who doesn't wake up?

>> No.6443637

>>6443585
>You have yet to convince me of this.
There is no one there, anon. There is no problem to approach, nothing left there.

>IMO that's a shortcoming.
Shortcoming is a great word to describe desire in a lacanian sense. You desire that Lacan were to talk about things through a certain perspective, but here he is talking about them on another. Just like any other desire, we may expect that getting what we want, the film you wanted to see, the person you wanted to meet, etc, would settle things down, but desire always emerges once again and you experience a shortcoming.

>So it isn't so much a point you never reach as an illusion? Why use the asymptote metaphor, then?
Because this illusion keeps appearing once again. And once again, you don't meet it. You want this today, you get it and then you realize there are other things you want, you go after them, reach them, but once again you want something else. There is a movement here, the asymptote is not a static graph. You can think of it as a guy playing with math, dividing 1 by 2, then by 3, then by 4 and thinking it is getting there to the smallest number, but not realizing that this way of doing things won't really end. To Lacan, we are like that guy and we cannot live our lives without being that guy. The suicidal says "I don't want to play math no more", but you wouldn't say he reached the smallest number, he is just out.

>And what about the suicide who doesn't wake up?
To that there is no Real, no Symbolic, no Imaginary, no Desire, no Jouissance, nothing. We can only talk about those things in relation to people, much like a game of chess is not a game of chess without players, it's just pieces of wood. Lacan (and psychanalysis in general) talks about how people relate to stuff, not about stuff. It's about the game, not the objects. You can't put the corpse through analysis, we can't talk about what it wants or if it is satisfied with the results, you can't solve the problems of the corpse, you can't provoke it. He is not relating himself to the world anymore. The S/I/R are ways in which the world orders itself in our head. There must be a head.

>> No.6443878

>>6443376
>And if one rejects this concept and asserts a physical unconscious rooted in neurology itself rather than in language I guess you'd just tell one to read more Derrida?
No, I'd say that qualia is something inherently non-physical, and to dismiss it because 'muh empricism' is silly. We're looking at two sides of the same coin, only my side is the phenomenological heads and yours is the observable tails. The idea that the unconscious is physical and contradicts the lacanian unconscious is ridiculous given that they are most certainly not considered the same thing, there is nothing wrong with suggesting that the unconscious is both physical and structured like a language (be wary, I never said it IS 'pure language', being objective when talking about the lacanian unconscious is very risky)

>The idea that language structures our experience more than the structure of the brain that interprets and speaks language does is laughable.
Nowhere did I say that language affects our experience MORE than the structure of the brain, again, you're assuming they're two entirely separate conceptions of the unconscious. The phenomenological experience of the unconscious is only perceptible to us through language; I don't know enough about neurology to state otherwise, but I'm guessing one can only make correlations between stimuli and brain activity, rather than saying 'this is what happens in your phenomenological experience when I do this'. I don't doubt the validity of what you're saying, I just fail to see how it renders Lacanian psychoanalysis 'laughable'.

>I'm using suicide as an example of a case that invalidates his use of the asymptote metaphor and you keep bringing up sex or language so as to avoid my point.
It doesn't, and I wasn't avoiding anything. >>6443556 puts it far better than I ever could.

>>6443376
>So you admit, then, that in this case an admittedly perverse but nonetheless vid desire to commit suicide has been satisfied
No, I simply said desires cannot be judged as 'less' or 'more' by nature of them being one and the same. Desire is just desire: it's simply the force which provokes us to perform whatever action we feel like acting out.

>>6443503
>Attaining a desire isn't the same as enjoying the fruits of that attainment.
No, because enjoying the 'fruits' of that attainment is something completely different, you've simply proved that one can't fulfill desire because as soon as it is apparently fulfilled, its 'fruits' - and not the thing itself - are there to be enjoyed and not the initial thing that was desired in the first place.

>> No.6444240

>>6443637
>There is no one there, anon
Niceeee
>You desire that Lacan were to talk about things through a certain perspective, but here he is talking about them on another.
Honestly I'd rather he just hadn't decided to base his ideas purely in rhetoric. If he'd actually put forth arguments or tried to prove that what he was saying had some facts supporting it I would probably be a Lacanian, but his premises-the ones I'm familiar with-don't seem to convincingly lead to the conclusions he puts forth.
>Because this illusion keeps appearing once again
So what? The asymptote doesn't disappear, the curve just never touches it. The point is always there. The metaphor continues to seem flawed.
>We can only talk about those things in relation to people
So dead people aren't something Lacan even wants to account for, and that's his or your excuse for that?
>You can't put the corpse through analysis
Of course you can; it has chemical properties that can be analyzed in a laboratory to determine the cause of death & plenty of other things. That Lacan doesn't care doesn't mean these propositions aren't true.
>inb4 'what is truth?'
>There must be a head.
And Lacan literally doesn't have an account of what happens when the head explodes? He doesn't even deal with death or suicide as things that can happen to people?
>>6443878
>qualia
Not even what I'm talking about, I'm not a vulgar empiricist, I just think the scientific method is one of many valid ways of attaining truth. It's more substantial than rhetoric.
>It doesn't
Because you continue to assert Lacanian conclusions based on premises that you're unwilling to even argue for. You want me to take Lacan's rhetorical word at face value, which I refuse to do.
>Desire is just desire
And is any particular desire less of a desire than desire in general just because it specifies what it wants?
>No, because enjoying the 'fruits' of that attainment is something completely different,
The desire to kill oneself, once successfully carried through, yields its fruits as identical to the object of desire: death, the absolute cessation of consciousness. 'I want to die' is not like 'I want to fuck' because fucking cannot 1) occur as spontaneously or unpredictably as death has the potential to [it requires two parties] and 2) suicide in particular is reflexive death. The subject is his own object & receives his desire immediately upon performing the thing he knows can bring it to him.

>> No.6444366

>>6444240
>The asymptote doesn't disappear, the curve just never touches it.
That's what he is saying about desire, so the analogy is working really well.
>So what?
That's what Lacan would ask

>That Lacan doesn't care doesn't mean these propositions aren't true
That Lacan doesn't care doesn't mean he is saying these propositions aren't true. At all. If anything it should be indicative that Lacan has no problem with it at all. His job is to work with living people with the problems that they express to be going through.

>dead people aren't something Lacan even wants to account for
>head explosion
>chemical analysis
Psychanalysis, anon. You know, bringing forth problems in meaning, human relationships... There was never the pretension to be talking about anything else, don't play dumb here, you trolled me into thinking you were interesting it, even if still not understanding Lacan's point.

>> No.6444551

>>6444366
>That's what he is saying about desire
You used a metaphor that involved the disappearance and immediate return of the illusion so I got confused. See the problem with rhetoric?
>Psychanalysis
Then no one should ever mention him outside of that discourse. Unfortunately, you Lacanians refuse to confine yourselves to pseudoscience and decided to fuck around in philosophy and other territories.
>There was never the pretension to be talking about anything else
Lacanians talk about other things all the time & don't apologize. Zizek, for instance. And Deleuze, and Derrida, though I haven't read him. Clearly, some people think he's useful outside of his field, and even if he had no pretensions about being a philosopher, political activist, or literary critic.

If Lacan was purely a psychoanalyst why does anyone ever bring him up outside of clinics?

>> No.6444575

>>6444240
>Not even what I'm talking about
No, and that's precisely my point! Even if you aren't a devoted empiricist, you're defending the neurological conception of the unconscious against Lacan as if he somehow threatens it. I'm merely arguing that neither the one contradicts the other. The scientific method is a perfectly valid way of attaining truth, but in no sense does it come into conflict with Lacanian psychoanalytics, something which so many people - both scientists and philosophers - fail to realise.

>Because you continue to assert Lacanian conclusions based on premises that you're unwilling to even argue for.
Literally the only plausible way I could argue my case is if my response was filled with impenetrable deconstructive jargon, because that's how I learned to read and understand Lacan. A thread like this is so fruitless, Lacan requires such an extensive list of preparatory reading that going in empty-handed is gonna result in you getting very little out of reading him.

>And is any particular desire less of a desire than desire in general just because it specifies what it wants?
Like I said, I don't accept the plurality of 'desires'. I see immediate need, and I see desire as the unconquerable, primordial, undirected force behind those needs. Asking me questions as to whether 'a' desire is less of a desire isn't really gonna go anywhere. If you were to formulate the distinction as I do, then I'd be capable of answering you.

>The subject is his own object & receives his desire immediately upon performing the thing he knows can bring it to him.
This sounds a lot like Hegel: 'For the lord, on the other hand, the immediate relation becomes through this mediation the sheer negation of thing, or the enjoyment of it'. If you're thinking of the individual as both subject and object of desire, then it becomes a completely paradoxical arrangement; there is no subject to take pleasure in superseding the 'otherliness' of the object (which is itself, superseded by suicide), as both have already been negated in the act itself. Regardless, your entire argument is based on the hypothetical that someone would, with every inch of their being, desire death: has there ever been such a person? Is suicide not the result of a multiplicity of reasons, often outside of a mere desire for death? I would assume such a desire in isolation is impossible.

>> No.6444597

>>6444575
>Literally the only plausible way I could argue my case is if my response was filled with impenetrable deconstructive jargon, because that's how I learned to read and understand Lacan
Doesn't seem worth it, really.
>Regardless, your entire argument is based on the hypothetical that someone would, with every inch of their being, desire death: has there ever been such a person?
There are all kinds of mental illness and a psychoanalyst should be able to account for a lot of them. If there's no Lacanian response for this kind of psychosis there isn't much use for Lacanian psychoanalytic therapy.

>> No.6444604

ITT: Proof that the answer to OP's question is no

>> No.6444625

>>6444597
>If there's no Lacanian response for this kind of psychosis there isn't much use for Lacanian psychoanalytic therapy.
Neurosis, not psychosis. And what, specifically, would that Neurosis be? I can't say I've ever heard of one in which the patient has nothing else to them other than the desire for death. Besides, I identify as a critical theorist, not a psychoanalyst, I don't make any claims as to its application outside of textual/philosophical analysis and enquiry.