Psychoanalysis and Philosophy: Social Transference
Lately I've been thinking a good deal about the implications that psychoanalysis has for how we practice philosophy and political theory. In many respects, it is difficult to determine just how philosophy can be thought from a psychoanalytic perspective. If we think philosophy as organized around the discourse of the master:
S1---->S2
--..........--
$...//.....a
Then we immediately see that philosophy is premised on the repression of the unconscious. This comes out most clearly in foundationalist projects such as those of Descartes or Husserl, where we're asked to give a demonstration for each and every proposition we introduce into our system, based on some primordial presence characterized by immediacy. The Cartesian cogito or Husserlian transcendental ego is precisely an immediacy of presence to oneself without mediation or intervening opacity. Nor is the case any different with respect to a philosopher such as Hume. For while all knowledge might be based on impressions in Hume-- rather than the immediacy of consciousness to itself --these ultimate impressions are nonetheless characterized as immediate givens.
If philosophy requires a break with doxa and unsupported claims, then it is extremely difficult to see how psychoanalytic claims are admissable within philosophical thought. The reason for this can be very clearly seen in Freud's description of the nature of the unconscious. In his late essay An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, Freud writes that, "Every science is based on observations and experiences arrived at through the medium of our psychical apparatus. But since our science has as its subject that apparatus itself, the analogy ends here. We make our observations through the medium of the same perceptual apparatus, precisely with the help of the breaks in the sequence of 'psychical' events: we fill in what is omitted by making plausible inferences and translating it into conscious material. In this way we construct, as it were, a sequence of conscious events complementary to the unconscious psychical processes" (SE 23, 159). That is, psychoanalytic work consists in inferring those thought processes that would explain behavior and thoughts that the analysand finds inexplicable in their day to day experience, despite the fact that these thought processes are not present in consciousness.
Drawing on an example from early in my own analysis, when I first began teaching I was perpetually breaking chalk at the chalkboard. I would literally go through five or six pieces of chalk during any given class. Increasingly I found myself distressed by these occurances, as the students were beginning to laugh at me and I thought that it was undermining their respect in me (there's a phantasy at work here in this evaluation of what my students were thinking). Indeed, so noticable had my chalk breaking become, that at the end of the semester my students wrote a petition in calligraphy on behalf of the "citizens of Chalkville" imploring me to cease killing their innocent citizens, and offered me a suit of armor (a chalk guard) to protect their poor people. Now clearly this action on behalf of my students was indicative of a certain affection (they took a good deal of time writing up the petition and drawing a piece of chalk dressed in armor with a sword), yet I was extremely embarrassed by the whole affair and took it negatively. One day in analysis I was going on and on about the difficulties I was experiencing teaching and the problems I was having with the chalk (no, my analysis didn't always consist of such mundane things, but it is free association, after all). I simply couldn't understand why I was having such problems with the chalk. As I rambled on I said something like "I don't know what my problem is, I just can't keep myself from putting too much pressure on the chalk. No matter how hard I try I just put too much pressure on the chalk." Fink responded in a very simple way, rephrasing my words slightly and in such a way that I didn't even notice: "Pressure at the board" was all he said. I didn't occur to me that he had significantly rephrased what I said. Nor did I reflect on it after the session. Nor did I cognitively modify my behavior. Indeed, I forgot about the session entirely after it was over.
Yet oddly, a couple weeks later, I noticed that I hadn't broken any chalk for the last couple of weeks. In this simple rephrasing, Fink had spoken what my little symptom was saying. It wasn't a lack of bodily control or some inability to control my muscles that was going on at the board. Rather, my chalk breaking was 1) expressing the pressure I was experiencing at the board in physical form, and 2) expressing a desire to undermine my own authority so as to no longer have to teach (this wish to destroy myself or undermine myself was expressed in a variety of ways over the course of my analysis, that were often quite frightful, and which had to do with issues pertaining to my name that I won't go into here... Although the very act of writing this is an iteration of that very process). In speaking the symptom, in putting it into words, the symptom disappeared, but not because I had become conscious of it and was thereby able to modify my behavior, but because the linguistic structuration of my unconscious had been affected in these three simple words.
What we have here is an acephalous or headless knowledge in the unconscious (S2) that knows all by itself without the intervention of an "I" or a cogito or any sort of centralized agency. This is a knowledge that works behind our backs of which we're scarcely aware; hence the matheme S1/$ indicating the manner in which a knowledge functions in the master of which he's not aware and which thwarts his conscious sense of self or agency. Yet such a view is anathema to philosophy and to any foundationalist pretentions. How, after all, is one to verify that such a simple act of perpetually breaking chalk is "structured like a language" and indicative of a thought of which the agent is unaware? How are we to verify the truth of the intervention "pressure at the board"? Does not such an intervention become the worst manifestation of baseless doxa, perpetually unable to ground or demonstrate itself? That is, what becomes of philosophy once we give up our foundationalist pretentions?
I have not yet figured out a way to navigate the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. The anecdote I relate above was the moment where my analysis began in earnest and where I began to take seriously the notion of the unconscious (this incident occured early in my analysis), but I've never gotten the sense that I was directly before the unconscious. Rather, any relationship to my unconscious that I might have obtained over the course of analysis proceeded by inference, construction, and a willingness to see myself as other than myself, and unconscious thought still remains uncanny and disturbing to me. Philosophically it's very difficult to argue for such claims.
The problem is that it's extremely difficult to properly formulate a number of central philosophical questions without taking the claims of psychoanalysis into account. Jonathan Lear expresses this point nicely in his book Freud. There Lear writes that, "If I am sincere when I ask 'How shall I live?,' then my words mean exactly what the words mean, and I am using the words to ask a genuine question. What, then, is the nature of the failure? In neurosis, my psyche is structured in such a way that when I say 'I' I systematically fail to take my whole self into account. In saying 'I,' I speak with the voice of my ego... or I speak with the voice of my ego ideal... or I speak with the voice of a punishing superego... or I speak with the voice of a powerful wish with which I have [unconsciously] identified. I have different voices each of which uses the first person pronoun. The one thing I cannot do with 'I' is speak for myself" (Lear 2005, 220). This, it seems to me, would be no less true of "Deleuzian desiring-machines" than Kantian subjects formulating the categorical imperative. How, for instance, is the Deleuzian desiring-machine to be sure that he is truly formulating his desire and not simply engaged in a narcissistic obfuscation that fails to encounter the subject-destitution embodied in unconscious thought?
Even today many ethicists proceed as if we can unproblematically raise ethical questions pertaining to how we should live, but if the mind is not characterized by transparency, how are we to unproblematically know which "voice" is responding to this question? As Lacan attempts to demonstrate in his essay "Kant avec Sade", the unconscious truth of the Kantian categorical imperative is Sade. How do I determine whether the answer I give to the question of how I should live is a result of my punishing superego (which often functions silently and can only be inferred from its effects in my bungled actions, staged public humiliations, depression, etc)? How can I determine whether my choices of what is ethically right pertain to some genuine criteria of what is right, or whether they are expressions of some unconscious wish? Thus, for example, I recall a person I once knew had who was intensely (and devoutly) Christian. I was intrigued to discover that prior to his conversion he often got in fights with others, and took a delight in violence. No doubt this person thinks of his conversion as a turn away from this violent life, but is it possible that his particular fundamentalist brand of Christianity satisfied his aggressive impulses in a new way? That is, is it possible that his turn had nothing to do with the "good" or being redeemed, but rather that he had discovered a way to exercise these aggressive impulses and call himself good?
Perhaps more fundamental than these sorts of ethical questions, are questions pertaining to dialogue and communication. In a very real sense, it could be said that philosophy begins with a certain conception of dialogue and an ideal of persuasion. We see this evinced above all in the life of Socrates and the writings of Plato. Yet what becomes of dialogue if we take seriously the concept of transference? Over the years, this question has increasingly led me to despair, leading me to amost give up on philosophy altogether. Philosophy is premised on the notion that persuasion is possible, that it is possible to change a person's mind through dialogue. However, the experience of transference significantly calls this ideal into question. In the anecdote above, it is clear that I had a certain transferential relation to my students. I expected them to respond in a particular way, interpreting their actions as condemning and indicative of their lack of belief in my legitimacy to teach. Throughout all of my activities this has been a repetitive theme, such that I tend to discount very positive student evaluations, praise for my intellectual work, etc., etc. That is, I discount anything positive I hear from others. This is a transferential structure that organizes self/other relations, by imposing a frame on what the Other thinks and believes, and which leads me to hear others in a very specific way, even if it is contrary to what they are saying. In the analytic setting, it is often striking to see how a patient won't hear certain things at all, or will hear things in ways quite contrary to the way they were said, as if some invisible force intervenes between the enunciation and reception. The analyst learns very quickly that he must take into account the place from which the analysand hears him speaking and must strategically enunciate his interventions with this place in mind. Yet such a frame is invisible and seems like an obvious fact about the world to the person dwelling within it.
Elsewhere, in his book Therapeutic Action, Lear gives a beautiful example of such a transferential world when he writes that, "A patient of mine inhabited a disappointing world. Although she was quite successful at work, had friends, and so on, there was no success in the social world that would not be interpreted by her under an aura of disappointment. If she got a raise at work, it was because the boss was shamed into it-- he really wanted to give someone else in the office a raise, but he felt he had to give her one to appear fair. If she was invited out for a date, the person had already tried to go out with others and had failed. If someone congratulated her on some accomplishment, they were just being polite. And so on. From a distance it is clear to us, as it was not clear to her, how active she was in understanding her world in ways that were bound to disappoint. And, of course, much of the analysis was spent working through these repetitive attempts at disappointment" (Lear 2003, 48-49, italics mine).
This analysand experiences disappointment as a fact about the world, not something that is of her own making. What we have here is an excellent example of how a phantasy can structure a person's entire relationship to others and the world. As Lacan articulates it, phantasy is the frame of reality, and this is above all the case with regard to transference. I always encounter others through a particular frame that transforms the manner in which I encounter their desire into a specific demand. And no doubt, the course of analysis for this woman was accompanied by a good deal of resistance with respect to the idea that perhaps this was all a frame, perhaps the world was not a disappointing world after all, as the collapse of this frame would be accompanied by a tremendous influx of anxiety as she would lose her coordinates or basic understanding of the world. As Freud remarks in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, "The further our work proceeds and the more deeply our insight penetrates into the mental life of neurotics, the more clearly two new factors force themselves on our notice, which demand the closest attention as sources of resistance. Both of them are completely unknown to the patient, neither of them could be taken into account when our pact was made; nor do they arise from the patient's ego. They may both be embraced under the single name of 'need to be ill or to suffer', but they have different origins though in other respects they are of a kindred nature. The first of these two factors is the sense of guilt or consciousness of guilt, as it is called, though the patient does not feel it and is not aware of it. It is evidently the portion of the resistance contributed by a super-ego that has become particularly severe and cruel. The patient must not become well but must remain ill, for he deserves no better" (SE 23, 179-180). It is remarkable to witness this very phenomenon, as ridiculous as it may initially sound, unfolding in analysis at precisely that point where an analysand seems to be making the most progress. It is as if suddenly the invisible frame re-asserts itself with the utmost tenacity right when it is about to undo itself.
Now I would like to suggest that all our relations to others are organized by some such interpretative, transferential frame (though not all of this superegoic sort). Now presumably, as philosophers and political theorists, our desire isn't simply, as Marx says, to represent the world, but to change the world. We are searching for that difference that makes a difference, or that speech act that transforms the very field of communication. Unless we are simply preaching to the choir, how do we produce a speech act that is able to intervene in the transferential field governing social relations between different groups? What sort of speech acts must we produce to produce real change in the field of forces governing social relations? What sort of speech act, for instance, can produce a real effect in the transferential field governing Ed Norton's character towards african-americans and jews in American History X? Simply pointing out his mistaken judgments doesn't work, as he already assumes that such a speaker has an agenda. Here it is necessary to be attentive to questions about who is speaking (the position from which I speak already evokes a particular transferential relation, such that if I go onto a conservative blog with a screenname referring to academia, I've already elicited certain expectations that delegitimate me due to a particular conception of the university possessed by many conservatives), as well as the particular signifiers and metaphors employed in the act of speaking. That is, the issue of the transferential social field calls us to attend not so much to what is said, but how it is said. It may very well be that our speech acts-- and when we write and speak we're always engaged in acts, not mere representations --are only addressed to those who are already of a like mind. However, can we envision a speech act like an analytic interpretation, that hits the impossible real of the social situation in which we find ourselves, and which transforms the very configuration of that situation? From the perspective of our social prestige and position as theorists, would not such a position require us to function like analysts: That is, wouldn't we have to become, like analysts in the clinical setting, beings without identity, without personal titles, without position, capable of occupying whatever transferential phantasies our audience might project upon us and speaking strategically from such positions in that way that might most effectively produce a difference? If, for instance, Cindy Sheehan was, at one point, a potent voice then it was precisely because as a military mother she occupied a position that evaded expectations about war protestors. Given that "professor" and the names of theorists are already highly charged from the perspective of social transference, wouldn't this require us to adopt pseudonyms, to efface our identities, to renounce our desire for recognition, to practice heteronyms, so as to produce those differences that make a difference? What would a philosophy organized around the heteronym look like? Is this not an alternative to Badiou's ethics of the event, which is premised on militant transference to a particular cause? Is not here the aim that of targeting the very organization of the structuration of a situation, rather than tracing the consequences of an event? I am not at all clear as to how to respond to these questions.
S1---->S2
--..........--
$...//.....a
Then we immediately see that philosophy is premised on the repression of the unconscious. This comes out most clearly in foundationalist projects such as those of Descartes or Husserl, where we're asked to give a demonstration for each and every proposition we introduce into our system, based on some primordial presence characterized by immediacy. The Cartesian cogito or Husserlian transcendental ego is precisely an immediacy of presence to oneself without mediation or intervening opacity. Nor is the case any different with respect to a philosopher such as Hume. For while all knowledge might be based on impressions in Hume-- rather than the immediacy of consciousness to itself --these ultimate impressions are nonetheless characterized as immediate givens.
If philosophy requires a break with doxa and unsupported claims, then it is extremely difficult to see how psychoanalytic claims are admissable within philosophical thought. The reason for this can be very clearly seen in Freud's description of the nature of the unconscious. In his late essay An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, Freud writes that, "Every science is based on observations and experiences arrived at through the medium of our psychical apparatus. But since our science has as its subject that apparatus itself, the analogy ends here. We make our observations through the medium of the same perceptual apparatus, precisely with the help of the breaks in the sequence of 'psychical' events: we fill in what is omitted by making plausible inferences and translating it into conscious material. In this way we construct, as it were, a sequence of conscious events complementary to the unconscious psychical processes" (SE 23, 159). That is, psychoanalytic work consists in inferring those thought processes that would explain behavior and thoughts that the analysand finds inexplicable in their day to day experience, despite the fact that these thought processes are not present in consciousness.
Drawing on an example from early in my own analysis, when I first began teaching I was perpetually breaking chalk at the chalkboard. I would literally go through five or six pieces of chalk during any given class. Increasingly I found myself distressed by these occurances, as the students were beginning to laugh at me and I thought that it was undermining their respect in me (there's a phantasy at work here in this evaluation of what my students were thinking). Indeed, so noticable had my chalk breaking become, that at the end of the semester my students wrote a petition in calligraphy on behalf of the "citizens of Chalkville" imploring me to cease killing their innocent citizens, and offered me a suit of armor (a chalk guard) to protect their poor people. Now clearly this action on behalf of my students was indicative of a certain affection (they took a good deal of time writing up the petition and drawing a piece of chalk dressed in armor with a sword), yet I was extremely embarrassed by the whole affair and took it negatively. One day in analysis I was going on and on about the difficulties I was experiencing teaching and the problems I was having with the chalk (no, my analysis didn't always consist of such mundane things, but it is free association, after all). I simply couldn't understand why I was having such problems with the chalk. As I rambled on I said something like "I don't know what my problem is, I just can't keep myself from putting too much pressure on the chalk. No matter how hard I try I just put too much pressure on the chalk." Fink responded in a very simple way, rephrasing my words slightly and in such a way that I didn't even notice: "Pressure at the board" was all he said. I didn't occur to me that he had significantly rephrased what I said. Nor did I reflect on it after the session. Nor did I cognitively modify my behavior. Indeed, I forgot about the session entirely after it was over.
Yet oddly, a couple weeks later, I noticed that I hadn't broken any chalk for the last couple of weeks. In this simple rephrasing, Fink had spoken what my little symptom was saying. It wasn't a lack of bodily control or some inability to control my muscles that was going on at the board. Rather, my chalk breaking was 1) expressing the pressure I was experiencing at the board in physical form, and 2) expressing a desire to undermine my own authority so as to no longer have to teach (this wish to destroy myself or undermine myself was expressed in a variety of ways over the course of my analysis, that were often quite frightful, and which had to do with issues pertaining to my name that I won't go into here... Although the very act of writing this is an iteration of that very process). In speaking the symptom, in putting it into words, the symptom disappeared, but not because I had become conscious of it and was thereby able to modify my behavior, but because the linguistic structuration of my unconscious had been affected in these three simple words.
What we have here is an acephalous or headless knowledge in the unconscious (S2) that knows all by itself without the intervention of an "I" or a cogito or any sort of centralized agency. This is a knowledge that works behind our backs of which we're scarcely aware; hence the matheme S1/$ indicating the manner in which a knowledge functions in the master of which he's not aware and which thwarts his conscious sense of self or agency. Yet such a view is anathema to philosophy and to any foundationalist pretentions. How, after all, is one to verify that such a simple act of perpetually breaking chalk is "structured like a language" and indicative of a thought of which the agent is unaware? How are we to verify the truth of the intervention "pressure at the board"? Does not such an intervention become the worst manifestation of baseless doxa, perpetually unable to ground or demonstrate itself? That is, what becomes of philosophy once we give up our foundationalist pretentions?
I have not yet figured out a way to navigate the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. The anecdote I relate above was the moment where my analysis began in earnest and where I began to take seriously the notion of the unconscious (this incident occured early in my analysis), but I've never gotten the sense that I was directly before the unconscious. Rather, any relationship to my unconscious that I might have obtained over the course of analysis proceeded by inference, construction, and a willingness to see myself as other than myself, and unconscious thought still remains uncanny and disturbing to me. Philosophically it's very difficult to argue for such claims.
The problem is that it's extremely difficult to properly formulate a number of central philosophical questions without taking the claims of psychoanalysis into account. Jonathan Lear expresses this point nicely in his book Freud. There Lear writes that, "If I am sincere when I ask 'How shall I live?,' then my words mean exactly what the words mean, and I am using the words to ask a genuine question. What, then, is the nature of the failure? In neurosis, my psyche is structured in such a way that when I say 'I' I systematically fail to take my whole self into account. In saying 'I,' I speak with the voice of my ego... or I speak with the voice of my ego ideal... or I speak with the voice of a punishing superego... or I speak with the voice of a powerful wish with which I have [unconsciously] identified. I have different voices each of which uses the first person pronoun. The one thing I cannot do with 'I' is speak for myself" (Lear 2005, 220). This, it seems to me, would be no less true of "Deleuzian desiring-machines" than Kantian subjects formulating the categorical imperative. How, for instance, is the Deleuzian desiring-machine to be sure that he is truly formulating his desire and not simply engaged in a narcissistic obfuscation that fails to encounter the subject-destitution embodied in unconscious thought?
Even today many ethicists proceed as if we can unproblematically raise ethical questions pertaining to how we should live, but if the mind is not characterized by transparency, how are we to unproblematically know which "voice" is responding to this question? As Lacan attempts to demonstrate in his essay "Kant avec Sade", the unconscious truth of the Kantian categorical imperative is Sade. How do I determine whether the answer I give to the question of how I should live is a result of my punishing superego (which often functions silently and can only be inferred from its effects in my bungled actions, staged public humiliations, depression, etc)? How can I determine whether my choices of what is ethically right pertain to some genuine criteria of what is right, or whether they are expressions of some unconscious wish? Thus, for example, I recall a person I once knew had who was intensely (and devoutly) Christian. I was intrigued to discover that prior to his conversion he often got in fights with others, and took a delight in violence. No doubt this person thinks of his conversion as a turn away from this violent life, but is it possible that his particular fundamentalist brand of Christianity satisfied his aggressive impulses in a new way? That is, is it possible that his turn had nothing to do with the "good" or being redeemed, but rather that he had discovered a way to exercise these aggressive impulses and call himself good?
Perhaps more fundamental than these sorts of ethical questions, are questions pertaining to dialogue and communication. In a very real sense, it could be said that philosophy begins with a certain conception of dialogue and an ideal of persuasion. We see this evinced above all in the life of Socrates and the writings of Plato. Yet what becomes of dialogue if we take seriously the concept of transference? Over the years, this question has increasingly led me to despair, leading me to amost give up on philosophy altogether. Philosophy is premised on the notion that persuasion is possible, that it is possible to change a person's mind through dialogue. However, the experience of transference significantly calls this ideal into question. In the anecdote above, it is clear that I had a certain transferential relation to my students. I expected them to respond in a particular way, interpreting their actions as condemning and indicative of their lack of belief in my legitimacy to teach. Throughout all of my activities this has been a repetitive theme, such that I tend to discount very positive student evaluations, praise for my intellectual work, etc., etc. That is, I discount anything positive I hear from others. This is a transferential structure that organizes self/other relations, by imposing a frame on what the Other thinks and believes, and which leads me to hear others in a very specific way, even if it is contrary to what they are saying. In the analytic setting, it is often striking to see how a patient won't hear certain things at all, or will hear things in ways quite contrary to the way they were said, as if some invisible force intervenes between the enunciation and reception. The analyst learns very quickly that he must take into account the place from which the analysand hears him speaking and must strategically enunciate his interventions with this place in mind. Yet such a frame is invisible and seems like an obvious fact about the world to the person dwelling within it.
Elsewhere, in his book Therapeutic Action, Lear gives a beautiful example of such a transferential world when he writes that, "A patient of mine inhabited a disappointing world. Although she was quite successful at work, had friends, and so on, there was no success in the social world that would not be interpreted by her under an aura of disappointment. If she got a raise at work, it was because the boss was shamed into it-- he really wanted to give someone else in the office a raise, but he felt he had to give her one to appear fair. If she was invited out for a date, the person had already tried to go out with others and had failed. If someone congratulated her on some accomplishment, they were just being polite. And so on. From a distance it is clear to us, as it was not clear to her, how active she was in understanding her world in ways that were bound to disappoint. And, of course, much of the analysis was spent working through these repetitive attempts at disappointment" (Lear 2003, 48-49, italics mine).
This analysand experiences disappointment as a fact about the world, not something that is of her own making. What we have here is an excellent example of how a phantasy can structure a person's entire relationship to others and the world. As Lacan articulates it, phantasy is the frame of reality, and this is above all the case with regard to transference. I always encounter others through a particular frame that transforms the manner in which I encounter their desire into a specific demand. And no doubt, the course of analysis for this woman was accompanied by a good deal of resistance with respect to the idea that perhaps this was all a frame, perhaps the world was not a disappointing world after all, as the collapse of this frame would be accompanied by a tremendous influx of anxiety as she would lose her coordinates or basic understanding of the world. As Freud remarks in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, "The further our work proceeds and the more deeply our insight penetrates into the mental life of neurotics, the more clearly two new factors force themselves on our notice, which demand the closest attention as sources of resistance. Both of them are completely unknown to the patient, neither of them could be taken into account when our pact was made; nor do they arise from the patient's ego. They may both be embraced under the single name of 'need to be ill or to suffer', but they have different origins though in other respects they are of a kindred nature. The first of these two factors is the sense of guilt or consciousness of guilt, as it is called, though the patient does not feel it and is not aware of it. It is evidently the portion of the resistance contributed by a super-ego that has become particularly severe and cruel. The patient must not become well but must remain ill, for he deserves no better" (SE 23, 179-180). It is remarkable to witness this very phenomenon, as ridiculous as it may initially sound, unfolding in analysis at precisely that point where an analysand seems to be making the most progress. It is as if suddenly the invisible frame re-asserts itself with the utmost tenacity right when it is about to undo itself.
Now I would like to suggest that all our relations to others are organized by some such interpretative, transferential frame (though not all of this superegoic sort). Now presumably, as philosophers and political theorists, our desire isn't simply, as Marx says, to represent the world, but to change the world. We are searching for that difference that makes a difference, or that speech act that transforms the very field of communication. Unless we are simply preaching to the choir, how do we produce a speech act that is able to intervene in the transferential field governing social relations between different groups? What sort of speech acts must we produce to produce real change in the field of forces governing social relations? What sort of speech act, for instance, can produce a real effect in the transferential field governing Ed Norton's character towards african-americans and jews in American History X? Simply pointing out his mistaken judgments doesn't work, as he already assumes that such a speaker has an agenda. Here it is necessary to be attentive to questions about who is speaking (the position from which I speak already evokes a particular transferential relation, such that if I go onto a conservative blog with a screenname referring to academia, I've already elicited certain expectations that delegitimate me due to a particular conception of the university possessed by many conservatives), as well as the particular signifiers and metaphors employed in the act of speaking. That is, the issue of the transferential social field calls us to attend not so much to what is said, but how it is said. It may very well be that our speech acts-- and when we write and speak we're always engaged in acts, not mere representations --are only addressed to those who are already of a like mind. However, can we envision a speech act like an analytic interpretation, that hits the impossible real of the social situation in which we find ourselves, and which transforms the very configuration of that situation? From the perspective of our social prestige and position as theorists, would not such a position require us to function like analysts: That is, wouldn't we have to become, like analysts in the clinical setting, beings without identity, without personal titles, without position, capable of occupying whatever transferential phantasies our audience might project upon us and speaking strategically from such positions in that way that might most effectively produce a difference? If, for instance, Cindy Sheehan was, at one point, a potent voice then it was precisely because as a military mother she occupied a position that evaded expectations about war protestors. Given that "professor" and the names of theorists are already highly charged from the perspective of social transference, wouldn't this require us to adopt pseudonyms, to efface our identities, to renounce our desire for recognition, to practice heteronyms, so as to produce those differences that make a difference? What would a philosophy organized around the heteronym look like? Is this not an alternative to Badiou's ethics of the event, which is premised on militant transference to a particular cause? Is not here the aim that of targeting the very organization of the structuration of a situation, rather than tracing the consequences of an event? I am not at all clear as to how to respond to these questions.
posted by Sinthome at 5:52 PM
5 Comments:
Dear Levy,
Thanks again for a very thoughtful essay. You are grapling with issues that are so fundamental that it's hard to know where to start.
But let me join the conversation by suggesting the following:
Psychoanalysis and philosophy are not separate entities. Consequently they are not in conflict. They are both modes of creating meaning = a basic human (cognitive) need on a par with satisfaction of hunger and sex.
Nietzsche talks about our DRIVE for causality.
Your write:
In a very real sense, it could be said that philosophy begins with a certain conception of dialogue and an ideal of persuasion. We see this evinced above all in the life of Socrates and the writings of Plato. Yet what becomes of dialogue if we take seriously the concept of transference? Over the years, this question has increasingly led me to despair, leading me to amost give up on philosophy altogether. Philosophy is premised on the notion that persuasion is possible, that it is possible to change a person's mind through dialogue.
That is true, but again it is only ONE (although very basic) way of human interaction. And yet it has worked exceedingly well through the centuries as an IDEAL.
Let's be pragmatic about it: As organisms we communicate biologically and - in this case - electronically as the survival machines we are. In order to do so we reach out as cells and minds to form alliances and connections that we deem beneficial for our continuing growth processes.
The whole subject of THE SUBJECT, so so speak, is, I (sic!) think just a practical matter. In the organization of ideas, laws, and societies for the past two thousand years the cogito has been a useful concept that has advanced the lives of the human organisms.
So let's stick with that. It works.
I'm with Rorty in defining psychoanalysis, philosophy, biography, etc as literature.
It's all story telling.
And THAT has worked too for the human animal for much of its history on this restless planet.
I'm not trying to convince you. It's about an exchange or interconnectiveness (is that even a word?).
Your writing inspired a response.
Isn't that what it is all about?
You are a stimulus. I am a reaction.
That's dialogue. If we choose to define it thus.
Thanks again for provoking a(n) (re)action.
Orla Schantz
Hi Orla,
Thanks for the interesting remarks. What I'm trying to do here is not suggest that such a confluence between philosophy and psychoanalysis is impossible, but rather to clearly pose a problem. As Deleuze argues, the more clearly we're able to pose a problem, the more the solution emerges.
In this spirit, I begin with the most rigorous conceptions of philosophy I'm familiar with and I take these philosophers at their word when they claim that they are searching for an assumptionless beginning and an absolute foundation.
Above you make a number of claims about what philosophy is (it's creating meaning, a form of literature, human interaction, an emergence from human biology, etc), but why should I accept any of these claims? Why are these not simply *dogmatic* assertions? Please do not take me in the wrong way when I ask these questions. It is not that I disagree with you. However, as a philosopher I cannot begin with assertions of this sort. Philosophy proceeds in another way.
In my view, the proper way to respond to the questions I'm raising is to show the impossibility of establishing any foundation whatsoever *a priori*. I have encountered two *rigorous* ways in which such a demonstration proceeds: First, Derrida's account of a priori repetition as a condition for presencing in _Speech and Phenomenon_, "Differance", *Signature, Event, Context*, and _Of Grammatology_ effectively demonstrates why presence is always contaminated by an a priori absence that undermines the very possibility of grounding anything in a pure presence whatsoever. Derrida does not simply *assert* that things are groundless, but demonstrates why, as a matter of logical necessity, the demand for grounding is always doomed to fail. This calls for a new type of philosophizing, but it doesn't become an "anything goes" free for all. Similarly, Deleuze-Bergson's analysis of time and duration, along with the analysis of repetition, carries out a similar ungrounding. With any luck, I'll be writing on these themes in the next week or so.
I personally am unable to accept pragmatism, as I all too often to find it to be a euphamism for sloppy thinking. Even if philosophy is unable to find an ultimate ground, I think the ideal of rigorous argumentation and breaking with doxa ought to be preserved. If we start saying "everything is just a form of communication" I fear we all too easily fall back into the worst sort of doxa.
Thanks a lot, Levy, for your quick and stimulating response. I greatly value your comments and look forward to your next post on the ungrounding of philosophy.
You are of course right that my assertions are just more doxa, but I was trying to reach some foundation while also being aware of the need to go beyond that to a pre-philosophical level or "plane".
I'm glad you brought up Jacques Derrida who has taught me a lot when I studied him excitedly some years ago. I skall never forget the symposium I attended here in Denmark where he was the main speaker. A truly gracious iconoclast of a gentleman in his handsome 70's.
As you write, he - effectively demonstrates why presence is always contaminated by an a priori absence that undermines the very possibility of grounding anything in a pure presence whatsoever.
It is indeed the absence we ought to concern ourselves with, and in the most rigorous fashion that should mark any philosophical work.
I think Deleuze's attempts at arriving at some pre-philosophical state is helpful here. His writings on the "plane of immanence" at least inspire my own thinking.
The "chaosmos" or pure flow of life is I think a good working definition of the absence of philosophy. Or nonphilosophy.
You are of course familiar with D&G's What Is Philosophy" (1994), but let me quote from page 42:
The plane of immanence is like a section of chaos and acts like a sieve. In fact, chaos is characterized less by the absence of determinations than by the infinite speed with which they take shape and vanish. This is not a movement from one determination to the other, but, on the contrary, the impossibility of a connection between them, since one does not appear without the other having already disappreared, and one appears as disappearance when the other disappears as outline. Chaos is not an inert or stationary state, nor is it a chance mixture. Chaos makes chaotic and undoes every consistency in the infinite. The problem of philosophy is to aquire a consistency without losing the infinite into which thought plunges (in this respect chaos has as much a mental as a physical existence)."
Aside from the obvious irony of Deleuze trying frantically to create concepts of the a-conceptual, and his occasional infatuation with his own eloquence (Derrida is also often a victim of this, but they are both forgiven!), we HAVE to philosophize about the a priori, about the non-philosophical, limited as we are cognitively.
And we have to think pre-Aristotelian, pre-logic even if Deleuze doesn't succeed. But he is pointing us in the right direction, I feel.
I look forward to your insight.
All the best,
Orla Schantz
Thanks a lot, Levy, for your quick and stimulating response. I greatly value your comments and look forward to your next post on the ungrounding of philosophy.
You are of course right that my assertions are just more doxa, but I was trying to reach some foundation while also being aware of the need to go beyond that to a pre-philosophical level or "plane".
I'm glad you brought up Jacques Derrida who has taught me a lot when I studied him excitedly some years ago. I skall never forget the symposium I attended here in Denmark where he was the main speaker. A truly gracious iconoclast of a gentleman in his handsome 70's.
As you write, he - effectively demonstrates why presence is always contaminated by an a priori absence that undermines the very possibility of grounding anything in a pure presence whatsoever.
It is indeed the absence we ought to concern ourselves with, and in the most rigorous fashion that should mark any philosophical work.
I think Deleuze's attempts at arriving at some pre-philosophical state is helpful here. His writings on the "plane of immanence" at least inspire my own thinking.
The "chaosmos" or pure flow of life is I think a good working definition of the absence of philosophy. Or nonphilosophy.
You are of course familiar with D&G's What Is Philosophy" (1994), but let me quote from page 42:
The plane of immanence is like a section of chaos and acts like a sieve. In fact, chaos is characterized less by the absence of determinations than by the infinite speed with which they take shape and vanish. This is not a movement from one determination to the other, but, on the contrary, the impossibility of a connection between them, since one does not appear without the other having already disappreared, and one appears as disappearance when the other disappears as outline. Chaos is not an inert or stationary state, nor is it a chance mixture. Chaos makes chaotic and undoes every consistency in the infinite. The problem of philosophy is to aquire a consistency without losing the infinite into which thought plunges (in this respect chaos has as much a mental as a physical existence)."
Aside from the obvious irony of Deleuze trying frantically to create concepts of the a-conceptual, and his occasional infatuation with his own eloquence (Derrida is also often a victim of this, but they are both forgiven!), we HAVE to philosophize about the a priori, about the non-philosophical, limited as we are cognitively.
And we have to think pre-Aristotelian, pre-logic even if Deleuze doesn't succeed. But he is pointing us in the right direction, I feel.
I look forward to your insight.
All the best,
Orla Schantz
Hi Olga,
I certainly wasn't trying to suggest that your remarks are formulated from the standpoint of doxa, only trying to clarify what I'm up to! In Negotiations Deleuze writes that 'A creator who isn't grabbed around the throat by a set of impossibilities is no creator. A creator is someone who creates their own impossibilities, and thereby creates possibilities" (133). I take it that Deleuze is here claiming that there is no production without constraint, which is another way of saying that every individuation, every actualization, is the resolution of a problematic field. I take the history of philosophical foundationalism as a problematic field, and look for a post-foundationalist form of thought that wouldn't simply be the reign of doxa, "common sense", or culture.
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