eroticized subjects of meaning
Continuing with my obsession of Baudrillard, in Cool Memories he says, "Lacan is right: language does not convey meaning. It stands in place of meaning. But the result produced are not effects of structure, but seduction effects. Not a law which regulates the play of signifiers, but a rule which ordains the play of appearances..."
My interest is in the final line which appears to be a reinterpretation of Lacan's bar restricting signification. Lacan stages language as a signifier over a signified, the two forever resisted by a barrier. In my most loved of his works, "Agency of the letter in the unconscious, or reason since Freud", Lacan clarifies his work as not merely examining the "arbitrariness of the sign", but questioning the assumption that "the signifier answers to the function of representing the signified" (149, 150). His goal is not to suggest that the words used to describe reality are inherently meaningless, and that the sound 'dog' has nothing to do with the very ridiculously cute creature asleep on my left leg at the moment. Rather, Lacan is questioning the supposition that the sound dog even references this ridiculously cute being. We acts as though it does, and surely on some level communication is possible. But Lacan's focus is on the ways in which this very signifier (the noise dog referring to any one specific dog) never quite fully signifies anything completely.
In a particularly dense sentence, Lacan suggests that it is a metonymic structure that is the connection between signifier and signified which creates a lack in the object being referenced. Words are related to each other (I believe as individual chains in a linked fence was Derrida's metaphor), and defined by one another. Thus, in order to talk about a specific subject, many words can be needed. Without full and complete signification by any one word, we add more and more to the sentence, desperate to find a phrase, a paragraph, a sentence, a book that will achieve the goal. Each word and every substitution leaves lack, as each new word posits its lack into the object (the furry creature who still sleeps). It is this very substitution of words that drives our desire. We desire because we cannot signify (completely) and we perpetually lack because the ego is rooted in signification. The lack of a full and complete signification causes a fragmentation we constantly and unconsciously try to fulfill.
Baudrillard is perhaps suggesting that desire is more seductive. Each word's lack hides something from us in an almost sexual manner. The bar's prevention of signification tempts and allures us to explore the mysterious. We always explore the unknown in our quest to become the Knowers. What is it other than knowledge that separates god from man? We are driven to mystery, or perhaps Baudrillard would say that mystery tempts us as a seductress.
Theology aside, Baudrillard takes a Foucaultian stance in exploring the process of analyzing. Competition among multiple analyses, he says, "is quite secondary by comparison with their joint commitment to the operation of dissection and transparency. Whatever you analyse and however you do it, you are helping to give primacy to desert forms, indifferent forms" (10). In other words, truth is less concerned with which of the multiple analyses are 'correct' than with the process of figuring out. Or perhaps the only truth that exists is the process of uncovering, naming, classifying, categorizing and subsequently, destroying.
In any event and most optimistically, it is no longer feasible to determine the role truth plays in contemporary American political culture. However, the illusion of objectivity still tantalizes us, but in an environment of sound bytes and talking points, even the supposedly objective reality is merely a construction aimed at appearing to be real. As David Foster Wallace says, television no longer needs to point to reality. Instead it points only back to itself.
The veritable army of reporters that follow around political candidates no longer captures Senator Obama as an individual. They only broadcast his simulacrum, a very carefully constructed image intent, if not hell bent, on appearing real. Mr. Obama can advocate for an amorphous change without ever dismantling power by addressing himself as the 'change candidate'. The concept of change becomes good, and therefore the Senator himself becomes good, all the while the influences of power that shape society slink by unnoticed; a change candidate who's existence relies on his own failure to make change. McCain's 'Straight Talk Express' is little more than a market where the Senator sells icons to the American voting public. As symbols are apt to do, they push aside reality and 'straight talk' becomes what McCain says, rather than the reversal. The Senator will simultaneously eliminate greed on Wall Street through government regulation while eliminating greedy government regulation on Wall Street. What will remain when he is finished? The Bush Administration is able to dismiss nearly any claim by repeating its antithesis. Saying 'we do not torture' makes it so, despite people being tortured. The motivation for war changes almost nonstop - that is to say, the only motivation for war changes almost nonstop. The United States is fighting Iraq to prevent the very terrorist connections the fighting created. The prevention of Al Qaeda in Iraq is the only motivation for the war, despite it being a byproduct of the war.
We are seduced by our own confusion over politics, drawn inexplicably towards the place where two or more oppositional statements merge. We attempt to make sense of the world under a paradigm of truth that never existed, one we believe is connected to the physical world. Thus, we remain eroticized subjects of our own attempt to discern meaning.
Now, how to turn the above into a paper for my folklore class.
My interest is in the final line which appears to be a reinterpretation of Lacan's bar restricting signification. Lacan stages language as a signifier over a signified, the two forever resisted by a barrier. In my most loved of his works, "Agency of the letter in the unconscious, or reason since Freud", Lacan clarifies his work as not merely examining the "arbitrariness of the sign", but questioning the assumption that "the signifier answers to the function of representing the signified" (149, 150). His goal is not to suggest that the words used to describe reality are inherently meaningless, and that the sound 'dog' has nothing to do with the very ridiculously cute creature asleep on my left leg at the moment. Rather, Lacan is questioning the supposition that the sound dog even references this ridiculously cute being. We acts as though it does, and surely on some level communication is possible. But Lacan's focus is on the ways in which this very signifier (the noise dog referring to any one specific dog) never quite fully signifies anything completely.
In a particularly dense sentence, Lacan suggests that it is a metonymic structure that is the connection between signifier and signified which creates a lack in the object being referenced. Words are related to each other (I believe as individual chains in a linked fence was Derrida's metaphor), and defined by one another. Thus, in order to talk about a specific subject, many words can be needed. Without full and complete signification by any one word, we add more and more to the sentence, desperate to find a phrase, a paragraph, a sentence, a book that will achieve the goal. Each word and every substitution leaves lack, as each new word posits its lack into the object (the furry creature who still sleeps). It is this very substitution of words that drives our desire. We desire because we cannot signify (completely) and we perpetually lack because the ego is rooted in signification. The lack of a full and complete signification causes a fragmentation we constantly and unconsciously try to fulfill.
Baudrillard is perhaps suggesting that desire is more seductive. Each word's lack hides something from us in an almost sexual manner. The bar's prevention of signification tempts and allures us to explore the mysterious. We always explore the unknown in our quest to become the Knowers. What is it other than knowledge that separates god from man? We are driven to mystery, or perhaps Baudrillard would say that mystery tempts us as a seductress.
Theology aside, Baudrillard takes a Foucaultian stance in exploring the process of analyzing. Competition among multiple analyses, he says, "is quite secondary by comparison with their joint commitment to the operation of dissection and transparency. Whatever you analyse and however you do it, you are helping to give primacy to desert forms, indifferent forms" (10). In other words, truth is less concerned with which of the multiple analyses are 'correct' than with the process of figuring out. Or perhaps the only truth that exists is the process of uncovering, naming, classifying, categorizing and subsequently, destroying.
In any event and most optimistically, it is no longer feasible to determine the role truth plays in contemporary American political culture. However, the illusion of objectivity still tantalizes us, but in an environment of sound bytes and talking points, even the supposedly objective reality is merely a construction aimed at appearing to be real. As David Foster Wallace says, television no longer needs to point to reality. Instead it points only back to itself.
The veritable army of reporters that follow around political candidates no longer captures Senator Obama as an individual. They only broadcast his simulacrum, a very carefully constructed image intent, if not hell bent, on appearing real. Mr. Obama can advocate for an amorphous change without ever dismantling power by addressing himself as the 'change candidate'. The concept of change becomes good, and therefore the Senator himself becomes good, all the while the influences of power that shape society slink by unnoticed; a change candidate who's existence relies on his own failure to make change. McCain's 'Straight Talk Express' is little more than a market where the Senator sells icons to the American voting public. As symbols are apt to do, they push aside reality and 'straight talk' becomes what McCain says, rather than the reversal. The Senator will simultaneously eliminate greed on Wall Street through government regulation while eliminating greedy government regulation on Wall Street. What will remain when he is finished? The Bush Administration is able to dismiss nearly any claim by repeating its antithesis. Saying 'we do not torture' makes it so, despite people being tortured. The motivation for war changes almost nonstop - that is to say, the only motivation for war changes almost nonstop. The United States is fighting Iraq to prevent the very terrorist connections the fighting created. The prevention of Al Qaeda in Iraq is the only motivation for the war, despite it being a byproduct of the war.
We are seduced by our own confusion over politics, drawn inexplicably towards the place where two or more oppositional statements merge. We attempt to make sense of the world under a paradigm of truth that never existed, one we believe is connected to the physical world. Thus, we remain eroticized subjects of our own attempt to discern meaning.
Now, how to turn the above into a paper for my folklore class.
posted by peuryan at 9:08 AM
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