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