Lacan
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
Hey /lit/, How do I find my way into Lacan?
by becoming a postmodern ghoul whose capabilities for critical and original thought have athropied, and after having lost all preference for lucidly expressed ideas
>>7825969
Hi,
It's a good idea to know Freud well before actually reading him. But is that your question, or do you want to know a kind of reading order of his work?
>>7825997
Hey. Actually both. What is good to know before reading him and how I should approach his own works. Thanks.
>>7826000
I read Zizeks introduction, which didn't require any knowledge of Freud, or structuralism. But it's more of an introduction to Zizek, or rather Zizeks specific reading of Lacan.
I would recommend sticking with secondary scources and reading Freud, semiotics, on structuralism.
The Ecrits are too dense and undigestable for my tastes since they're basically word for word notations of his lectures. Look up the Jacques Lacan parle video on youtube to get an idea of how difficult it's listening to him talk
>>7825969
Does this make any sense to you?
Pulled from Amazon
1 of 2
. . .
A Pataphysical Love for Lacan
In the Ecrits, Lacan states that our discourse (our speech and language) comes in an inverted form from the Other (those who are not like Us). In a similar line of thought, we can simply say that it is a sense of difference (which is brought about by unconsciously associating with certain social signs and cultural symbols) that goes on to structure an individual's identity (which is their own personal interpretation of their true self, making it Imaginary).
In other words, identity is shaped by associating with signs and symbols, unconsciously (in, what Lacan calls, the Symbolic Realm or Order). And since those signs and symbols are the opposite of what Others use to define themselves, we see them as being different from Us, and, as such, create a false sense of separation (an Us and Them scenario). It should be noted, however, that the Other is not always outcast or alienated for being the opposite. The Other, in fact, can be the unattainable object of our desire (our "objet petit a").
In a way, people desire because they build an identity, which divides them from Others by a means of difference. In other words, we desire that which is not like us (like the yin looking for its yang, unaware that both yin and yang are already within us from the start). This, of course, is all a symbolic illusion brought about by language (found, for Lacan, in the unconscious association of signs).
>>7826259
2 of 2
Still, in our society, we see people desire every day, trying to find that difference (or Other) to match the missing part of their identity (that part looking for its missing piece) even though such a thing doesn't exist. Searching for the object of our desire is a lot like a person that is suffering from an imaginary persecution complex. The person, who believes he is being persecuted, cannot find the persecutor because, in reality, the persecutor doesn't exist. The persecution is simply an imagining of the persecuted person's mind.
For Lacan, the unconscious represents the discourse of the Other. In other words, we are not aware of the fact (we are unconscious to the fact) that what we seek in Others can already be found within ourselves (since the only ways in which we "sign-ificantly" differ from others is through the unconscious association of cultural signs and symbols). Using our example above, the persecuted person cannot find his persecutor in reality. And why? Because, in truth, the persecuted person is simply persecuting himself.
With the loss of identity, one loses signs of difference, and, in doing so, destroys desire (attaining a unity as opposed to duality perception). From here, it is easier to understand such Lacanian statements, like "The Woman does not exist." It is easier to see how the phallus (the mark of man) can, in fact, stand as the square root of minus one (an Imaginary measure). For, after all, gender identity (not biological sex), in itself, is a Symbolic discrepancy.
Though physical differences surely exist in reality, these physical differences between people have no "sign-ificance" or meaning without the inductance of cultural signs and symbols. The planet, we must know, is an impartial place (it is "indifferent," incapable of distinguishing between socially constructed identities brought about by symbolic differences). The natural world is without words. The wind does not speak. Space is silent in the realm of the Real (which cannot be attained, only approached like a mathematical limit, since it is otherwise "undefined", beyond the limits of our language). The same initial source of energy is continuously shared, neither created nor destroyed, shifting and transferring, ceaselessly, from state to state. It is both the One and All of everything.
>>7826259
Well, actually it does. It is all put in a very specific way but I can completely relate to what is stated. The statement that our self is a reason for alienation is quite reasonable and I can sense that from my experience as well. And the statement that our view is shaped by our perception is also probable. The loss of identity could also be related to the loss of ego which would lead to fulfillment without any projections to the Others (whatever that is, women, things, etc.).
I can completely relate to what is said here.
>>7825969
>met Joyce
>was a good friend of Merleau-Ponty
>scared the drek out of Heidegger by driving him in his white Mercedes at high speed
>bought L'Origin du Monde for a shit ton of cash
>married Bataille's ex wife
Why was Lacan so based?
>>7826387
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/jacques-lacan-was-sort-of-a-dick-323
>>7825969
Have knowledge of philosophy and anthropology, read (about) major psychoanalysts who came before him, then discover how much he's fraud who appeared smart because he referred to some vague ideas from linguistics, analytic philosophy and anthropology from the 60' while talking to a public that knew next nothing about it.
>>7826437
It's true. He stole most of his ideas from this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
>>7826421
That didn't really invalidate anything though. It just shows that being a dick and being based aren't mutually exclusive.
through the butt
>>7826421
>muh Nū-Left "be nice or your ideas are invalid" ethos
>>reading vice
>>7825969
From behind.
>>7826421
these people are always topping themselves with how little they can scratch the surface with how they respond to something
i fucking love this world because everyone is so willfully inferior without me even trying
>>7826596
>>7828470
If you have a philosophical background, I would recommend Lacan: The Absolute Master by Borch-Jacobson.
If you have a psychological background, I would recommend Bruce Fink's Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychology.
If you like Zizek, his introduction is okay but insofar as I can tell it's just a cut up of quotes from his other work. The Sublime Object of Ideology is, IMO, a better example of applied theory.
Also check out My Teaching by Lacan himsef. Short and accessible though often overlooked.
>>7828470
nice job jill
>>7825969
Start with the Greeks.
>>7826747
Freud is important, yes. But don't forget to read Saussure and Levi-Strauss either. Lacan is not simply a return to Freud, but an update of Freud which borrows from structuralist linguistics and anthropology.
Lacan might be interesting for literary theory or film studies but how do we know his claims about the psyche or sexual difference are true?
>>7829886
>sexual difference
lacan talks about gender identity, not biological sex. look up the aka tribe in africa or the beauty pageants of the Wodaabe men in Niger to see how masculinity and femininity are socially constructed.
>>7829886
His theories do, in fact, reference case studies and other scientific works that are assumed to be true. Ultimately, though, I think most people like him or believe his theories to be true because he confirms certain intuitions of theirs. Not unlike the reason most people subscribe to other ideologies.
>>7826259
>>7826264
This gets it sort of right but not completely. The "objet petit a", or "the missing piece" as that person puts it, isn't imaginary per se but is rather an analogy for the lack that motivates human desire, and this is not something that can be escaped any more than you can escape thirst or the need to defecate. Lacan talks about this "lack" quite a bit, and being a biological motivator, it is baked into the biology of living creatures.
>>7829898
"Masculinity" and "femininity" are not divorced from biological sex. Saying "___ is a social construct" adds nothing to the conversation.
>>7829881
I agree with you, though I don't think it's absolutely necessary to read Lévi-Strauss and Saussure before reading Lacan. This could occur later.
>>7829902
There is also the "plain" aspect of clinical application, how Lacan work did change the work of analysts who follow him.
As for >>7829886 it all depends of what you consider to be a validation. Either you choose to prefer falsifiability and statistics, or clinical aspect, and you won't have the same outlook (psychoanalysis rather claiming the second, behavioural/cognitivism also claiming the first). It's a huge problematic.
>>7829921
I think what >>7829898 may have suggested, is that Lacan offers a way of "de-essentialize" things around the question of sex and gender, the problem being more complex than a simple correlation (or indeed, more complex than a simple divorce). To say it abruptly, he allows to speak about "roles" (not that Freud didn't allowed that, though it was more difficult to openly do so with his work and his vocabulary)
>>7829921
>"Masculinity" and "femininity" are not divorced from biological sex.
Jacques Lacan:
"The Woman does not exist."
"The phallus is the square-root of minus one."
Both are Imaginary.
>>7829898
>beauty pageants of the Wodaabe men in Niger
Interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm1tN3SmDWs
>>7830044
Also, math jokes galore with Lacan.
>>7830044
>Both are Imaginary
Just like the worth of Lacan's writing.
>>7830069
>implying you ever read him
>>7830071
>implying
Lacan's popularity perfectly exemplifies the reality of academia being a pseudo-adult version of high school. Every wants to acquire 'social capital' - in academic circles, pretending to understand Lacan without reading any interpretations or textual exegesis of him is a means of acquiring social capital by looking more sophisticated and intelligent. Take this from a French speaker: Lacan is a charlatan. He has some ideas that may be worth discussion but his incredible popularity is almost certainly predicated on pretentious New Left IdPol types pretending to understand him so they can use his bullshit in their essays to explain how ISIS are postmodern anti-imperialists. Lacan's inability to form a cogent point is not because his ideas are so complex that "inferior minds" can't comprehend them - it's because most of the time, he's full of shit. The same goes for all of the French post-structuralists and post-modernists. They hide behind a smokescreen of prolix language to dupe you into thinking that they have something to say. Ironically they're engaging in a very postmodern performative game by establishing pseudo-intellect to bolster their personal credentials. It's worth reading a decent "simplification" of Lacan (or rather, a rendering of his ideas into actually understandable language), but he offers much less than people pretend he does. Saying you know Lacan is cool. 90% of the time that's why people say it.
>>7830326
Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings everyone once in a while but quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan, just posturing before the television cameras the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential I haven’t the slightest idea I dont see anything that should be influential - Noam Chomsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Nz03cROXA
>>7828470
the funny thing is that while anti-oedipus goes against most freudian sexual theory, and despises the idea of making people feel guilty over select desires they may have that aren't socially acceptable, much of D&G's thinking isn't really all that different from lacans.
the only real difference between them is pertaining to the concept of desire and how lacan though it was Imaginary while D&G thought it could be used as a physcially productive force in people. this isn't shocking considering that guattari was basically a lacanian (before his falling out with lacan over the anti-oedipus book itself).
>>7830388
I wouldn't really resume their difference like you did, though I agree quite much with you, this "paradox" isn't really one. I think the seeming "opposition" simply comes from people who think that, since Deleuze and Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipe, they were anti-psychoanalysis plain and simple (which is, of course, not true)
>>7830326
sounds like you tried to read Of Grammatology as a teenager and didn't understand it, so dismissed all post-structural thought. French post-structuralism uses familiar language in a way that can be disorienting to people who aren't used to it, but like many fields and discourses it just uses its own specialized terminology - but unlike say the sciences, they pull that terminology from existing language, which makes people think they should be able to understand it from entry-level. A first-time reader of a neuroscience text wouldn't be able to gleam more from it than a post-structuralist work - both require familiarity with the discourse/terminology. But I'm sure it's much more comforting to just tell yourself that everyone is a "crazed charlatan"
>>7830344
For someone who can be so smart in some ways, Chomsky never got further in philosophy than a high-school-biology-teacher's understanding of empiricism (Empiricism is always right! Science is objective! To suggest otherwise is illogical!")
Daily reminder that Lacan has an enormous tome written about him detailing how he was a charlatanic shit
Daily reminder that Althusser dealt with feelings of inferiority, strangled his wife to death, and openly admitted he was a fraud in his autobiography
Daily reminder that Deleuze flung himself from his apartment window, committing suicide
Daily reminder Foucault willfully attempted to infect as many homosexuals with HIV as possible before he died
>>7830591
>willfully attempted to
exactly how willful are we talking here
>>7830591
>Daily reminder that Deleuze flung himself from his apartment window, committing suicide
because he had a horrible debilitating physical illness which he'd lived with for years. honestly you're a loser if you don't kill yourself at that point.
>>7830422
Chomsky is wrong about a lot of things; his political and philosophical musings are horrific and he should stick to what he knows (linguistics), but one of the things he is not wrong about is Lacan.
Like very few people who shitpost on this board, I've actually read Ecrits, I've read Anti-Oedipus, and a handful of other writings by people regularly labeled as charlatans. As much as I like some of Lacan's writing, he is without a doubt a charlatan, and what little gems are sprinkled throughout his writing do not justify wading through layers of obscurantist bullshit. The barefaced appropriation of mathematical symbols was an aesthetic choice, not one meant to convey information.
Chomsky is generally a fucking idiot but he's right about poststructuralist continental philosophy: if you actually gleaned any information from them that was worth repeating to someone else then you would do so instead of meming it up on 4chan. These writers existed to make a profit and their mark was gullible undergraduate students. They are the reason philosophy departments still exist today, because some moron like yourself will pay an inordinate amount of money to learn why Lacan thought Muh Dick was the square root of minus one. Everyone likes to feel like they're part of an esoteric circle and that's what Lacan / Althusser / Delueze and Guattari / Foucault / others like them provide.
It's the same reason nobody will explain what the fuck Hegel was actually talking about in Hegel threads. What little nugget of real value Hegel had to offer, if any, could and should be explained in less pages than what Hegel actually wrote. But modern philosophy graduate students like to trot out the well-worn quip that you need to first read X philosopher before you move on to Y philosopher in order to understand the terminology and what X philosopher is working with. Bullshit. Either 1) you're insecure about your own interpretation, 2) you don't actually know what your interpretation is, or 3) there is no real conveyable value in these writings besides splattering paint on the canvas and you're all just jerking each other off here.
>>7830670
>blatantly ignoring the rest and picking the only part of the post that was an obvious troll
>>7830686
the whole post is a troll - the whole thread is nothing but trolling. but I care enough about Deleuze to bother to reply. shrug.
>>7830718
>won't explain what his pet meme philosopher meant when directly questioned
Sounds about right. Continue jerking yourself off to obscurantists. Lacan is laughing from the underworld right now that he was able to make a lucrative career out of hooking retards like you into spending time reading his gibberish.
>>7830695
Are you the retard who didn't actually read Anti-Oedipus but felt compelled to comment on it?
If not, and you have actually read Anti-Oedipus, explain briefly your favourite takeaway from the book and how you would apply the philosophy to your own life or outlook.
>>7830742
>>7830752
Yet again, you're basically saying : "prove me wrong".
Are you seriously either asking people to briefly summarize Derrida, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan work and so on, which should approach at least more than 100 000 pages, or otherwise assume it's total shit? I can't even tell if this is bait, or if you're honest since there are a lot of people here with that way of "thinking" (if one might call it that).
If you don't see the problem in your attitude, I can't do anything for you.
>>7830752
no
and
no
I'll throw out some threadly reminders for you though:
reminder that no one actually in academic philosophy cares about continental vs analytic shit flinging
reminder that anyone who takes this shitposting seriously is either an unphilosophical stemlord or a freshman who thinks philosophy ended with wittgenstein and doesn't know jackshit about contemporary analytic philosophy
reminder that all threads about post-struct are bait
either read their work or don't. faggot.
>>7830793
>>7830801
>won't briefly explain what his pet meme philosopher meant when directly questioned by someone who has explicitly stated he's read the works in question
Glad we established that you're either unwilling or unable to expend a minimum amount of effort to share a brief summary of what you found important in either Lacan or Deleuze to someone genuinely interested in your take on a philosopher, thanks. Looks like Chomsky was right.
>>7830591
>Daily reminder that Lacan has an enormous tome written about him detailing how he was a charlatanic shit
Can you drop the title. I'm interested in reading it.
>>7825969
through the rear
>>7830867
Lacan: In Spite of Everything by Roudinesco
>>7830911
>>7830867
Actually I take that back, the book I read was not In Spite of Everything, it was simply "Jacques Lacan" by the same author. It's more or less his biography and it's almost 500 pages so I thought In Spite of Everything might have been an abridged version. Can't speak to the quality of that, but the titular book is interesting if you're looking for an inside perspective on what Lacan was like personally from a student of his.
>>7830823
Now you're baiting too hard
>>7830919
thanks. i'll check it out.
>>7830933
Not bait. Have you read Anti-Oedipus or not?
Don't.
>A: how do i understand lacan?? i have no background in 20th century philosophy and probably none in philosophy in general
>B: you don't. lacan is a fraud. his disciples just pretend 3 derivative obscurantist psychoanalytic kitsch concepts are "lacanian"
>A: SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!! I MUST LACAN
>C: have you considered getting a background in those traditioins you are missing so you can judge his work for yourself by reading it instead of relying on cultlike exegesis
>A: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GIVE ME THE NO-EFFORT SKELETON KEY TO LACANIAN MAGIC OR FUCK OFF
>D: well hello my frined. let me write a six thousand word wall of stupid about lacan that is practically as obtuse as lacan but even worse because i'm not even lacan himself, but some random guy. perhaps you should read a 500 page biography?
>A: ah yes yes.. indeed i shall..
>B & C: hey D, can you explain lacan in a basic outline, like we can do for kant/hegel/etc.
>D: HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? HAVE YOU READ LACAN? MIRRORS AREN'T REAL UNLESS YOUR PHALLUS IS REAL. 1+(2/5) = PENIS. PHILISTINES! PARTS OF SOUTH AMERICA
every lacan thread
>>7831070
>he read Lacan but just shitposts instead of talking about what he read
every lacan thread
>>7826421
>"the misanthropic Zizek"
>"the probably-a-nazi Heidegger"
i'm audibly keking. but then again this is vice
>>7828490
have you met any unwillfully superior people? this is the unicorn at the end of my desires
>>7830075
>implying implications aren't the most cost-effective way of calling people out on the quadchin
>>7830944
*sigh* anon probably hasn't read it, and if all you take from this is that you win the argument, so be it. can you fuck off now?
>inb4 any reply
check warosu and you'll find that reply verbatim
![17239812-Dog-dressed-as-mafia-gangster-with-black-hat-and-sunglasses-golden-retriever-Stock-Photo[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BAI74kb.jpg "17239812-Dog-dressed-as-mafia-gangster-with-black-hat-and-sunglasses-golden-retriever-Stock-Photo[1].jpg")
>I evaluate lacan
>>7830679
Anon, the reason nobody can explain Hegel to you is because nobody has seriously read him. Everyone knows Hegel through thesis-anithesis-synthesis but simply reading the introduction to the Phenomenology shows you that's bullshit. Don't lump him in with Deleuze and Guattari just because the scholarship is lazy.
>>7830679
god damn, what a fucking illiterate you are
>>7831070
dude, bad post. don't do that again.
>>7830326
>essays to explain how ISIS are postmodern anti-imperialists
This literally doesn't exist.
>>7831070
This is good.
>>7830326
this
every lacan apologist ITT should read the chapter on lacan, at the very least, from
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Fashionable-Nonsense-Postmodern-Intellectuals-Abuse-of-Science-Alan-Sokal-Jean-Bricmont.pdf
>>7825990
this desu senpai
>>7830793
>Are you seriously either asking people to briefly summarize Derrida, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan
If you ask some Astrophysicist or Cosmologist to briefly summarize any current theory about their areas, they'll gladly do it.
For all the constant excuses on all the obscurantism in Continental (and particularly french) philosophy that try to compare it to the specialized concepts of natural sciences, when someone actually tries to ask an adept of Lacan, Deleuze and co. a similar simplified explanation as the ones that natural scientists continuously gladly struggle to offer, they're met with derision.
I bet this post will be met with derision too.
>>7830793
>Derrida, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan
Cherry-picked list, and even then the first three can be explained relatively easily (#2 especially, #3 not bad, #1 debateable). Only Deleuze and Lacan are really difficult, and even Deleuze can still be mediated to a layperson, he's just full of shit.
Lacan though, no, it can't be done! Lacan is an esoteric experience!!!
> "The less you understand, the more you listen."
- Jacques "A Four Minute Session To Cure Your Depression," "In Paris Be a Fraud and You'll Get The Broads" Lacan
>>7832699
>"A Four Minute Session To Cure Your Depression"
>>7832676
I'm not that other anon, I agree with you but I'm curious about who you think the charlatans are specifically and who you think might have substance since I am genuinely curious to read more postmodern philosophers. I've tried reading Derrida and although very purposefully difficult I still felt like at any point I could rewrite what he said in simpler terms and have genuinely meaningful and interesting statements. With Lacan however, everything seemed like pure posturing gibberish. I've also tried Virilio, who suffered a sort of state in between pure gibberish and just obfuscated meaningfulness but more of a medium affliction made bearable by being poetic on occasion.
I'd like to know, are there some you consider more valuable than others and who would you recommend reading of the postmodernist philosophers and who would you recommend not wasting your time on?
>>7830679
Leave Hegel alone. He explained himself in the most autistic way possible at the time. It's not his fault that modern standards of autism have risen to ridiculous levels and humanity can't be bothered to update him with equations and shit.
>>7830801
I can offer you a third option: they're in the English, Social Science, or Critical Theory department or some such horseshit.
I am sick of this "continental philosophy means I get to be a special snowflake" meme.
>>7832676
>>7832699
>If you ask some Astrophysicist or Cosmologist to briefly summarize any current theory about their areas, they'll gladly do it.
I'm quite certain that if you tell an astrophysicist : "you're a charlatan, you're nothing but shit" like an obnoxious little brat, he won't "gladly explain to you" : he will tell you to shut your mouth, because you don't know shit.
Same here, you've never read any of the books you're talking about. No need to lie, you're anonymous here. Because that's clear for anybody who read at least one of those authors : the best you did was opening a book one time, and call it shit because you didn't understood at first read. That's not reading.
Your only argument since the beginning is "prove you've read it, otherwise it's shit". I don't call that an argument, I call that a fucking bait and I'm angry enough to take it. People more relaxed than me will just assume it's fucking useless to engage in an internet argument and they are right.
Once again, you're assuming that if nobody on a image board can prove you're wrong, then you're right. Don't you see any fucking logical problem in that? Are you trolling since the beginning, or just fucking stupid?
>>7833364
People are taking issue with you and others like you absolutely refusing to discuss your interpretation of books you've supposedly read and understood. There's a reason you for this: you're either 1) unwilling or 2) unable because you actually don't understand what you read.
>>7833364
Holy fuck, look, it's another giant post where a Lacanian doesn't actually explain anything but just pontificates
Throw it on the pile
>>7833364
OK anon, I'm not the guy you quoted. I'm interested to hear about one basic Lacanian idea, any Lacanian idea at all, can you please explain one to us?
>>7832119
And then read this:
http://www.alphavillle.com/avillle/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ap-lacan-and-math-Plotnitsky1.pdf
And realize that things aren't that simple. Lacan worked with two actual mathematicians, for what it's worth. Anyone who understands a bit of structuralism gets the relationship between topology and (psychic) structure, despite Lacan's awful style. Deleuze and Guattari actually have an article about it that makes everything pretty clear and will make you feel like an idiot when you go "hurr that's not the mathematical definition!": http://www.topoi.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/How_Do_We_Recognize_Structuralism.pdf
What I did find genuinely distressing from Fashionable Nonsense was the Deleuze & Guattari chapter. Not because I consider them to be frauds in any way, but because it underlines just how much time they wasted on certain concepts that nobody gives a shit about. Why did Deleuze spend so many pages developing the outdated (albeit interesting) musings of Newton and Leibniz when his points could've been made much easier, for instance?
But yeah, reading that chapter I did feel a bit of anguish since linking philosophical concepts (chaos in D&G's sense, for instance) to actual scientific concepts (chaos in Chaos Theory, which means something quite different) must be such a chore.
>>7833521
>outdated (albeit interesting) musings of Newton and Leibniz
Meant to say mathematical musings, not in general. Leibniz is fascinating in his own right.
>>7833521
I'm honestly not sure if you're serious. The Deleuze article you linked is anything but "perfectly clear". It presumes familiarity with so many things and makes so many implicit arguments that I don't think you could read it thoroughly given a decade. Never mind passing judgment either way on the content, to all intents and purposes it's impenetrable. That's the real problem here: Hegel, Husserl, Kant, they're all immensely difficult but they are trying to help the reader understand their points. I don't think the authors here care about anyone reading or understanding them at all.
>>7833517
Lacan says that we are born into a imaginary structural order of self and other following the mirror phase where the infant learns how to see itself in the mirror. From there, we encounter language and the symbolic and the big Other enter the Oedipus Complex. The real is basically unattainable or imaginary although it is in some sense pierced by the symbolic. Through the manipulation of meaning, the analyst allows the analysand to find new and better modes of orienting your being in reality.
>mfw these plebs will never understand the paradox of all power structures via mathéme of fantasy $ - a
>>7833791
>mathéme
more like mathmeme amirite
>>7832036
bad post, chum. do not attempt that again.
>>7833589
You may be right, it's been a while since I read it and I was quite familiar with structuralism, psychoanalysis and post-structuralism already at that time. I just remember it being worded better than most texts on the subject and explaining topological space in a clearer manner. It's certainly nowhere near Lacan's style in terms of difficulty.
>>7825990
/thread
Lacan is a charlatan.
>>7825969
if u dont read french i dont see the point
any translation of Lacan is a failure, and a joke
he plaid so much w words, expressions
>>7833500
Totally unwilling to "discuss my interpretation" with people calling it shit before even hearing about it. All I've said until now was : "if you talk shit about something, take the text and show me why". Nobody bothered to quote and comment a single page. Do you know what the burden of proof is?
>>7833344
You dismiss everything coming from philosophy as bullshit BEFORE even reading it, you are hopeless. That's OK to be illiterate, but don't brag about it. Not being in "continental philosophy" or "social science" doesn't make you a special snowflake able to speak about things you don't understand.
As for >>7830679 who thinks one reads authors like Foucault to feel "esoteric", implying he's impossible to decipher, whereas his work is absolutely intelligible. And you dare to pretend you did read Ecrits and Anti-Oedipus? Protip : "reading a book" is more than "opening it and seeing words from the first page to the last one". "I don't understand it, so it's got to be non-sense"...
TL;DR : people talk shit about authors without even bothering to quote and comment ONE single page from them
(not that it would prove anything anyway, you'd still have hundreds of thousands pages to disprove)
>>7834291
end this meme. your garbage piss language is a provincial dialect of nothing. suck my fucking dick french bitch.
>>7833364
like I expected.
Only derisions
I'm not even the other anon.
>>7832807
Lyotard is pretty cool I guess.
>>7834423
>"pretended to read"
>"disprove"
Shittiest shitpost I've seen all week and that's saying something. Yes, continue to act like nobody read the same book as you while continuing to not share your interpretation of said book, surely that will convince everyone you're not full of shit!
>>7834665
Of fuck off already he did
>>7834423
You fail at reading comprehension.
>>7833344
is saying your shitposting is only possible from someone *outside* academic philosophy. It implies that half the drama and bait about continental vs analytic comes from people who shouldn't be discussing philosophy. I.e. it's giving comments or ideas from actual academic philosophers or people in academic philosophy priority, numbnuts.
>>7833724
That isn't clear at all, you haven't defined selfhood and alterity. You haven't explained the leap to language. You haven't told us who the big Other is. You haven't told us what the Oedipus Complex is or justified its existence. You haven't told us what the real is or given an explanation of what imagination and the symbolic are. You haven't spelled out what "your [one's] being" is or what "reality" is for Lacan.
>>7831070
>PARTS OF SOUTH AMERICA
kek'd
But ok, here's a summary of Lacan in case anyone is still around and interested. I'm not an expert Lacanian correct me if I'm wrong.
So Lacan, like all the thinkers of his time, got a lot out of literature. I don't know all his influences, besides the obvious ones, but one major influence on most thinkers of that time, including Lacan, was Proust. Proust had this concept of a "partial object" which is basically something that attracts us as detached from a complete person or "object" in a philosophical sense: a gesture, an expression, a pair of tits, whatever. Those tend to show up in our dreams. Lacan basically says that those exist due to our phantasm, our fundamental fantasy that does not show itself in the imaginary (the imaginary, inspired by the tradition of German Idealism, basically means anything in experience: visual images, acoustic images, feelings, etc.), but rather affects anything and everything without allowing itself to be fully formulated. D&G, humorously, compared this to the circuit of water in nature: you piss in the toilet, it gets to a river, it evaporates and at the end of the day your piss is raining down on you. It's a joke analogy so don't sperg out, but it does show the general idea. Now this phantasm is already the result of how the Subject (us, insofar as we speak a language that we cannot fully and permanently get away from at will) has received language. A child while learning language doesn't do so due to a desire to learn or whatever, but because he is open to the Other (his parents or caretakers) and focuses on the voice (intonation and so on) so that he is not just learning a language but getting attached to it as well, attaches emotional signification to words in an unequal manner. The child's positioning (how he begins to view himself in relation to his caretakers) is determined in a topological space, meaning that the positions are what matter and not actual spatial distances. According to Lacan, the first desire is for the mother figure while the father figure (actual father or an aunt or whatever) represents an interdiction (someone else who gets in the way of the eternally happy union between child and mother, at least in the child's natural, initial mind). This interdiction is called castration and deflects the child's desire away from that ideal, fictional, mother-object that the young child seeks and towards actual people. This is why, for Lacan, there is an initial loss in all desire. In Freudian terms, this is when the pleasure principle meets the reality principle and the child's desire, due to "castration" suffers a permanent change that starts the endless attachment to partial objects and the impossibility of permanent satisfaction (there is no sexual rapport for Lacan thus means that we can never attain that perfect union because our fantasies, dictated ultimately by our phantasm, regardless of actual empirical development, gets in the way).
>>7835364
Damn, that's one ugly wall of text. Anyway, continued:
So the structure that actually has a phantasm is the neurotic structure, the castrated individual. Females tend to be hysterics (characterized by acting-outs that they do not understand, yet nonetheless find themselves doing) as a response and unconscious protest to the impossibility of sexual rapport (not actual sexual relationships obviously). Men tend to be obsessionals, characterized by overthinking (to the point of destroying their own work out of dissatisfaction) and phallic sexuality (tending towards partial objects rather than emotions and sensations).
If the young child has not accepted castration, he becomes a psychotic (latent psychotic until, much later in life, when it is actually triggered through a traumatic event). Psychosis has it's own categories (paranoia, schizophrenia) and a major sub-category called Perversion where the subject attests the existence of a law (the father's initial interdiction) through his defiance of the law (often quite literally doing a crime and waiting to be arrested).
Obviously there's also jouissance, translated as enjoyment although that isn't always the best term for it since it doesn't necessarily involve the feeling of pleasure (a masochist is suffering jouissance even when there is no actual sensual pleasure). The point is that jouissance attaches itself to language in such a way that we enjoy our own speeches, even when we're a psychotic talking to murderous angels or whatever, so that "truth" becomes enjoyable even when it's obvious (to any normal person) that it's bollocks.
Now, the reason psychotics don't have a phantasm as neurotics do is because they do not attach themselves to Signifiers (words, symbols and so on) as neurotics do. Rather, they suffer "foreclusion", they reject the language coming from the Other (since language isn't, as I said, just words but rather voice as well - a loving motherly voice, a strictly father's voice or any combination you can think of, even a shouting violent voice). This causes their Symbolic (Symbolic - Real - Imaginary being the three INTERTWINED spheres that characterize the mind according to Lacan) part to become disorganized and allow various types of hallucinations depending on their substructure.
This way of getting emotionally (unconsciously) attached to Signifiers is possible for Lacan because he inverts the old Saussurian Signifier-Signified relation. So it is no longer the Signifier that is a word, image, abstract image, etc. indicating a Signified (the actual object that we connect it to), but the Signifier is something that we no longer understand despite using and which isn't just an abstract part of the Symbol (the union of Signifier and Signified), but something that actually affects us emotionally. Like St. Augustine says: everyone understands what Time is until you actually ask them about it.
>>7835364
That was the first time I have ever seen a genuine effort to explain Lacan in one of these threads. Thank you, anon.
>>7833724
You're a wanker, how hard could it really have been to make >>7835364 instead of shitposting?
>>7835382
Then there's the Real - Reality distinction. Reality is basically anything that goes through the Symbolic, that our mind understand and accepts, filtered through language. The Real is the traumatic, which can no longer be accepted into the mind directly and, due to this, causes damage. The Real is often compared to The Thing In Itself from Kant in that it is always filtered through our senses and language and we never get the "raw", unadulterated object. But the point is that we are in the Real all the time since what Freud called the Id, the unconscious drives that we do not control directly are produced in our body that we do not have access to (although it would be really cool to actually produce your own desires and drives at will).
I'm sure there's a ton of stuff more to be said, like how most of this fits into the Heideggerian term of "ek-sistence" as being thrown outside of yourself or the Proustian things that involve subjectivity directly (the voluptuousness of the body as opposed to simple image, literary ideas as opposed to described facts and music as opposed to sounds), but I feel that I've already complicated things enough.
>>7835409
>>7835382
>>7835364
I forgot to mention the obvious: that initial positioning of the child also determines, through identification, gender identity. Obviously, all of this in Lacan is explained in terms of Name-of-the-Father that keeps S-R-I together and so on, but I tried to avoid the terminology heavy route while explaining, for the most part.
>>7835364
Thanks, anon.
>>7826387
My favorite period is his postwar period, when he trolled famous philosophers like Heidegger.
>>7830679
Why would you read Ecrits, but not the Seminars? Anyway, here's your (You) for your trouble.
>>7835931
Did he troll anyone else besides Heidegger though?
>>7830679
> Everyone likes to feel like they're part of an esoteric circle and that's what Lacan / Althusser / Delueze and Guattari / Foucault / others like them provide.
> Althusser
> Foucault
> esoteric
Seriously?
one final bump before we let this bad boy die
Have you dips who are arguing about whether he's a charlatan or not even read his name?
Lacan
Pronounced "La con"
The con
>>7825969
The first time Lacan made any sense to me was after I had read Judith Butler's book Subjects of Desire.
If you want a fun little diddy then go ahead and read Zizek's book on How to Read Lacan. It has nothing to do with Lacan, but it is pretty hilarious.
>>7835488
>>7835409
>>7835382
>>7835364
>>7831115
Jesus Christ, it's like they are trying to become a living caricature of themselves
>>7831070
>E: ARGENTINA IS WHITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>7832676
hey man can you summarize real quick Stoke's Theorem for me?
kthx bye
>>7841739
"Mate, Stokes was a hack"
>>7825990
kek
