Lust, Caution

Sorry to say it is not easy to view the award winning film from Ang Lee “Lust, Caution” as a romantic story as it is supposed to be (although someone may not agree). For us, lust is the language of Lacan – the jouissance of the impossible, the pleasure out of extreme painful experience. Sexual excitement may not be the only possibility of desire – as desire is someone one can not have or afraid of getting hold.

Desire is the alibi of the Other, the impulsive seeking of fulfillment which is impossible except with Death.  I do not see any lust in the movie although it is the dilemma of lust and caution putting into question.  Who’s lust? The Man’s or the Woman’s or no one at all.  I think this is basically a love story about scarification, socially unacceptable (barred) love and the secrecy of romance that both the Man and Woman do not aware.

What the girl seeking for in the plot against the enemy she sleeps with is nothing but negation -  against the father in absence, the coward schoolboy and at the end the miserable of life. Neither does she identify with the non professional spy group formed by her old schoolboys, nor does she need to be a patriot in whatever sense. She is indifferent, subtle and knows exactly her own demand, but she never shares the vision of being  an assassin. She may need the extreme kind of revenge against her schoolboy’s cowardice, against her father’s insufficiency, against the nation. Revenge at the end of existence is a kind of jouissance through which she identifies with the Thing that she may not have for life. The Thing could be, in face value, the marvelous diamond ring in question – the extravagance of existence, love or peacefulness.

But at the end, who cares where does the Thing drift. It ends up in void – the signification of the Thing dissolved as the substance of the Thing archived.

Filed under: Lacan, object a, psychoanalysis, symbolic order, the Real , , Ang Lee, Caution, Chinese Film, Lust, The Thing

Interrogation

Yesterday, I am delighted to have joined a reading group online. Technology is exciting especially we read Heidegger via our skype. Heidegger has books on the question of technology though I do not know much yet. It is still an experience.

In Heidegger’s Being and Time, we have just gone through an discussion of interrogation & questioning about. To us, it seems to be two similar things. But Heidegger differs “interrogation” as process from “questioning about” which is more or less targeting on the object of “about”. It is told that Heidegger has worked our his project to negate the duality of “subject & object”. With that in mind, interrogation approximates the logics of a psychoanalytic session where the separation between analyst and analysand is eliminated and revised. Interrogation presumes the two counterparts: are there different between asking and being asked? This is the question we will have find in this text, but in Lacan, the very unique experience in a clinical session with operation of language in interrogation would be the answer.

Filed under: Uncategorized , clinical session, Heiddegger, Heidegger, interrogation, Lacan

Object of Psychoanalysis

The object of psychoanalysis is no other than what I have already proposed about the function played in analysis by object a. Is knowledge of object a thus the science of psychoanalysis?This is precisely the equation that must be avoided, since object a must be inserted, as we already know, into the division of the subject by which the psychoanalytic field is quite specifically structured — this is the point with which I resumed my seminar today. This is why it is was important to promote firstly, and as a fact to be distinguished from the question of knowing whether psychoanalysis is a science (that is, whether its field is scientific), the fact that its praxis implies no other subject than that of science. (“Science & Truth” in Ecrits)

Object a denotes the residual of symbolization through which the object a, as the reflective externality of inner most psychic reality splitting up into fragmentation, achieves its undeniable status in the psychoanalysis. It is the only that is created out of the symbolic order but exists in the realm of the Real. The real is the unspeakable, the realm that language can not pass through. It is also the case with the object a which is not a signifier or no longer at all. It is the only possible substance that is created out of symbolization. Similar to what cosmological black hole it can be, the internal tension of the object a is created out of the extensive reaction of symbolization. It is the residual of the signification, but in the meantime it is no longer within the realm of symbolic. As in the black hole, one says there is distortion of substance, speed or even time. The internal power to absorbing substance makes existence beyond it impossible. Object a is an agent already beyond the usual practice of understanding. It may have no meaning (as it is the residual) but it also in the same time the only substantial agent that have retained the trace of symbolization. The archic trace of sign that is exactly what Derrida mentioned in the scenario of the “Mythic Writing Pad.”
Object a is the only possible evidence of psychoanalysis as science. It is the Virgin Mary of existence that the holiness of the highest existence (i.e. language as God is existed) has passed through her body and makes her the only possible existence that evidence the very action of holy experience. The language operation again the object a is similar to the said holy action. It offers the prestigious status to the object a and makes it the key for understanding of psychoanalysis as science. That is the experience that even the son of man does not have, even though he is always regarded as immortal.

Filed under: object a, symbolic order, the Real , christian, Derrida, imaginary order, mythic writing pad, object a, symbolic order, the Real, virgin mary

Jouissance in subversion

The intrusion into politics can only be made by recognising that there is discourse, and not just the analytic discourse, only of jouissance, at least when one hopes for the work of truth from it. The characterisation of the discourse of the master as comprising a hidden truth does not mean that this discourse is hidden…..this mean that there is something that is compressed, that is like a superimposition, something that needs to be unfolded in order to legible. It is clean that its truth is hidden from it, and a certain Hegel articulated that it is delivered to him through the work of the slave. Only there you have it, it is a discourse of the master…..which rests on the substitution of the State for the master through the long pathway of culture, in order to end up at absolute knowledge. (Lacan, Seminar XVII Chapter 5)

In the field of politics, there is no such a thing as absolute knowledge while the only possible position is the position of the master. It is the discourse of the master which bridges the inconsistent, incoherent flow  from imaginary (libido force to dominate) to the Real. The master signifier demands, regulates and tries every possible rhetorical mechanism to defend its own validity. But it is clear, as Lacan points out, paradoxically that the validity of the master is unfold only through the work of the slave. The suppression of the slave will call out the truth of the master and let him out of his own compressed self knowledge. The position of the master is void itself; its emptiness is realized by his very impossibility to access to absolute knowledge which the acting out the the slave does help to revitalize its very existence. It is through the discontent of the slave and only through which that the discourse of master is delivered and made relevant. The pain of the slave illustrates the master’s jouissance registered in the Real. It is by the pathway of the master’s discourse that the imaginary of the master can access to the Real (painful existence of the slave) in a controllable manner.

In the election that activates the participation of the ex-chief secretary Anson Chan joining the run in Hong Kong. The master’s discourse of universal suffrage makes it possible for her imaginary (libido for power) access the Real (control and monitoring within the system). Of course, every participants enjoy the same logic of jouissance; although it is the subversion of jouissance that arouses the interest of Anson Chan’s counterpart, Regina Ip, even though she also claimed to support universal suffrage as well.

Even though the master has tried to arouse the popular attention, but without the acting out of a slave, the hidden and compressed truth of the master will never be uncovered. This is unaware even in the level of the master herself.

Filed under: symbolic order, the Real , Anson Chan, election, Hong Kong, imaginary order, jouissance, Master's discourse, psychoanalysis, Regina Ip

Le point de capiton

Point de Capiton or “quilting point” “anchoring point” is the interaction of the signifier and the signified which they are knotted together, fixed and stablized. In the daily symbolic world of discours, the continuous unstable sliding of the signifier is separated from that of the signified. If not with the point de caption, there would not be a fixed position to situate the dissemination of meanings. On those quilting points, the meaning is distributed, disseminated and stablized just like an upholstery button stitching on the material.

“It’s the point of convergence that enables everything that happens in this discourse to be situated retroactively and prospectively.” (Lacan, Seminar III, 267-8)

Lacan has a strong resistance to be categorized as structuralist in the sense that psychoanalysis, although it has stressed on signification process, is not only a problem of linguistic operation. Point de Capiton illustrates a possible materiality of the signifier
that its meaning is resistant to symbolic process. This point can be a signifier entering into the realm of the Real.

Zizek has used the point de capiton to illustrate the operation of ideology. Any particular signifier such as “democracy” or “freedom” could mean very different depended on the situation it is being pinned down. The meanings are disseminated, radicalized or doubled and means more than it should have. A signifier acts more than the function of that signifier but becomes a kind of icon. He argues that freedom can mean free action and non interference of economic decision in right wing while the same signifer may mean the freedom from control of capitalism to the right wing.

It seems that Zizek has used Lacan’s concept to build a political interpretation creatively, but at least we understand that to Lacan this Point is validated by its own materiality. In Hong Kong, the highly sensitive discussion about upcoming election with Anson Chan,
ex-chief secretary joining the run with pro-Beijing Regina Ip, the discussion about election has pinned down our fixed but contradictory meaning of democracy. The discussion of democracy raised a never ending dissemination of the meanings. Its meanings are nothing more than the operation of the master discours, not the signifier itself.

There is no point to keep finding the meaning of the signifier within, but to the encirclement of the externalities of the situation that the signifier is being used and positioned.

Filed under: the Real , Anson Chan, election, Hong Kong, Lacan, Le point de capiton, Point de Capiton, Regina Ip, Zizek