As someone recommended, I read this article about Lacan's "objet petit a".

As much as I doubt the usefulness of psychoanalysis, it was an interesting read and I think I more or less understand what is the "objet petit a": it's the carrot in the carrot & stick metaphor of life, created by the idea of original jouissance that never was and that we try to see and find everywhere. Fair enough, I am not sure what to do with that, but we can call it objet petit a, and I can see why it can be interesting to study.

Now, the issue is that the quotes and explanations make very heavy use of metaphors and analogies, which is fine and all (altough at some point, I think you should be able to extract the substance of the point you are trying to make in all the metaphors), until I start noticing that there are metaphors and analogies that do not make any sense. Then, I start wondering if you tried to trick me along, or if you had no idea what you were talking about?

So we have here the structure of the Moebius strip: the subject is correlative to the object, but in a negative way — subject and object can never ‘meet’; they are in the same place, but on opposite sides of the Moebius strip.

At the very end of the article the author uses this quote from Žižek. Now, Žižek, you know what is the entire point of a Moebius strip? It only has one side. So saying that they are "on opposite sides" is nonsensical. And if you really want to use something that is a strip and has sides? Use a cylinder. Oh yeah, doesn't sound as cool as Moebius strip. I tried to see if there was any specific property of the Moebius strip that would make sense in this context, I couldn't find one.

the more Coke you drink, the thirster you are

No Žižek, I don't get thirstier the more I drink coke, it's still mostly water, what the hell? But ok, I'm nitpicking there, I get what he is trying to say, it's just... annoying.

One never knows what might suddenly come over her and make her shut her trap. That’s what the mother’s desire is. Thus, I have tried to explain that there was something that was reassuring. I am telling you simple things, I am improvising, I have to say. There is a roller, made out of stone of course, which is there, potentially, at the level of her trap, and it acts as a restraint, as a wedge. It’s what is called the phallus. It’s the roller that shelters you, if, all of a sudden, she closes it.

The two previous quotes were straight up wrong but this one from Lacan is more subtle, in the sense that I can't tell if it's wrong, or right, or anything, because, what the hell? Seriously, what does this even mean? How does this help understand what the object petit a is? What is the point of this?

Anyway, I'm criticizing Lacan and Žižek here but let's be honest they are far from being the only ones guilty of that. The Moebius one irritated me a lot though. I think some philosophers should spend more time focusing on clarity and less on trying to sound clever cough Hegel cough.

      • Ectrayn [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        So I've been thinking about this conversation some more, and while I generally agree with @zgeliz and wanted to do a similar comment as he did, I think I see your point too.

        You approach this problem from the perspective that things in the world are unambiguous and/or can be disambiguated and that’s what science is about.

        I do believe in that, with a fundamental caveat: Humans cannot possibly reach this absolute knowledge in which the contradiction between objective things and ideas is resolved and they become one and the same. Because of this limitation I agree that absolute, unambiguous knowledge of concrete things is not a thing. However, precisely because of this limitation, and the limitation of language itself, I think that it is of the utmost importance to communicate as clearly as it is possible. Sure, if you need to use jargon because this is the clearest way of doing so, it makes perfect sense and my ignorance of said jargon shouldn't stop you.

        But this you said about Derrida is different, and I think is closer to my reproach to Žižek & Lacan. This is the opposite of communicating an idea clearly. It is hoping that the reader will fight sufficiently with the text to come up with a potential meaning, and because the author does not let his intention be known, and hides it as much as he can, then instead of having ideas flowing from the text to the reader, the reader must construct ideas and try to infuse the text with them, hoping that they eventually make sense, that all the ideas that he created while reading form a coherent whole.

        Now, I think I can see the point of it, it forces the reader to think "for thinking", to create new ways to conceive things to match what he reads, to see new reasoning and all that, that he can later apply to more material / concrete situations, and in reading other "clearer" texts, "see through the clarity" to get more from it. Am I correct?

        If I am, then the question that is left is the following: how to make sure that the mental production of this "idea to text" exercise is not rubbish? How is one to evaluate it, to make sure that no trap door have been triggered and blind spots created in one's mind? That this newly created "thinking" is worth pursuing?

          • Ectrayn [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I was halfway through typing my reply when I had to restart Firefox and forgot to copy what I wrote somewhere. Stupid me. Anyhow, let's try again. At least I get to practice repetition...

            What is a thought which harms no one, neither thinkers nor anyone else?

            As Nietzsche says, Truth may well seem to be 'a more modest being from which no disorder and nothing extraordinary is to be feared: a self-contented and happy creature which is continually assuring all the powers that be that no one needs to be the least concerned on its account; for it is, after all, only “pure knowledge”…

            I'll group these two quotes because the answer is essentially the same. A thought is a thought, doesn't matter whether it harms anybody. And anyway, no thought, no matter how true it is, will harm anybody, only the consequences of the thought matter. E.g., that thought my lead to a release of dopamine in the brain and feel good. Maybe that thought will lead someone to commit a racial murder. I'd say the thought or the Truth alone is always harmless, but in reality both quotes are probably way too metaphysical. It is simply pointless to consider a thought in isolation. No thought emerges from nothing, and any thought, or Truth, only exists in a given context and the perception of that context and the consequences of itself. If we accept this, that it is pointless to consider a thought or the Truth in isolation, then the second quote becomes plainly wrong. Someone with the absolute Truth of the universe (say, an unambiguous knowledge of it) could do so much and depending on their inner selves, consequences could be either infinitely good or infinitely bad.

            Thought is primarily trespass and violence, the enemy, and nothing presupposes philosophy: everything begins with misosophy. Do not count upon thought to ensure the relative necessity of what it thinks. Rather, count upon the contingency of an encounter with that which forces thought to raise up and educate the absolute necessity of an act of thought or a passion to think. The conditions of a true critique and a true creation are the same: the destruction of an image of thought which presupposes itself and the genesis of the act of thinking in thought itself.

            Is this a way of saying that thought only emerge when solving a problem in an automaton-like fashion fails? If so, I disagree: some people experience an intellectual high when solving intellectual problems and keep chasing it, and thinking becomes its own reward (with the associated dopamine rush). I am not sure what is meant by "true creation" and "true critique" though. The last part of the quote is unclear. Is it an invitation to question common sense? To question where our thoughts come from? In this case, does he mean that "true creation" and "true critique" are defined merely because they are conceived outside of the sphere of common thought? Then by definition, anything that is wrong and doesn't exist in common sense becomes true creation or true critique? That paves the way for lots of rubbish if you ask me. Numerology fits that definition, I don't think I'd give it any critique or creative value.

            Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering. In whichever tone, its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed. In this sense it is opposed to recognition.

            That I can agree with, although I don't think there is one specific thing that forces us to think, but many. Or maybe these can be grouped under the umbrella "the human condition". Our bodily needs, the knowledge of our own mortality, our spatial and temporal limitations.... Even Lacan's objet petit a.

            Teachers already know that errors or falsehoods are rarely found in homework (except in those exercises where a fixed result must be produced, or propositions must be translated one by one). Rather, what is more frequently found - and worse - are nonsensical sentences, remarks without interest or importance, banalities mistaken for profundities, ordinary ‘points’ confused with singular points, badly posed or distorted problems - all heavy with dangers, yet the fate of us all.

            Fair enough, this sentence is... very clear, very unambiguous (we could argue what is an error, but the context lifts the ambiguity). We could ask if it's not the professor who cannot see through the sentence's meaning, mistakes profundities for banalities, singular points for ordinary points, etc. The professor denying the unity of opposites: their pupils teach them and they refuse this lesson, seeing themselves as keeper of some sort of absolute Truth. This is a real problem in education.

            We doubt whether, when mathematicians engage in polemic, they criticize one another for being mistaken in the results of their calculations. Rather, they criticize one another for having produced an insignificant theorem or a problem devoid of sense.

            Deleuze should have talked to more mathematicians when he was in l'ENS