Hegelian-Lacanian Variations on Late Modernity

Spectre of Madness

Alireza Taheri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367523084
• eBook ISBN: 9781000293074
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

The current rise in new religions and the growing popularity of New Ageism is concomitant with an increasingly anti-philosophical sentiment marking our contemporary situation. More specifically, it is philosophical and psychoanalytic reason that has lost standing faced with the triumph of post-secular "spirituality". Combatting this trend, this treatise develops a theoretical apparatus based on Hegelian speculative reason and Lacanian psychoanalysis.

With the aid of this theoretical apparatus, the book argues how certain conceptual pairs appear opposed through an operation of misrecognition christened, following Hegel, as "diremption". The failure to reckon with identities-in-difference relegates the subject to more vicious contradictions that define central aspects of our contemporary predicament. The repeated thesis of the treatise is that the deadlocks marking our contemporary situation require renewed engagement with dialectical thinking beyond the impasses of common understanding. Only by embarking on this philosophical-psychoanalytic "path of despair" (Hegel) will we stand a chance of achieving "joyful wisdom" (Nietzsche).

Developing a unique dialectical theory based on readings of Hegel, Lacan and Žižek, in order to address various philosophical and psychoanalytic questions, this book will be of great interest to anyone interested in German idealism and/or psychoanalytic theory.

Variation 1

The diremptive remains

Under the rubric of “diremptive remains”, I reflect on the paradoxical dialectical unity of diremption and self-reflection. Every self-reflective act of self-evacuating kenosis¹ harbours a diremptive shadow. In Science of Logic Hegel delights in the fact that,

“To sublate” has a twofold meaning in the language: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to … It is a delight to speculative thought to find in the language words which have in themselves a speculative meaning; the German language has a number of such.

(Hegel, 1969, 107)

The twofold paradoxical meaning of “sublate” points to the necessity that every sublation carries with it a diremptive remain. Interestingly the verb “to dirempt” does not contain its opposite meaning; it is thus itself diremptive. The sublation of an element into its Other is never complete as something always remains testifying to the fact that even the most thorough sublation is always partial. A minimal diremption is a structural necessity of the dialectical process; otherwise we would be relegated to the “night in which all cows are black” (Hegel, 1977, 9). The diremptive remains, insofar as they resist philosophical speculation, are akin to the object a which is “negativized” from the specular image. The object a is the diremptive remain that hinders the identity of opposites and yet it is also that which makes that identity possible. The object a is a diremptive-speculative remain.² Likewise, the diremptive remain makes sublation possible, precisely and paradoxically by virtue of the limitation it imposes on it. Like Hegelian “Spirit”, it is the “bone” that is at once “the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of the dialectical process” (Žižek, 2015, 32). It provides resistance to the dialectical process and is yet also its motor. Psychoanalysis deals precisely with those remnants that philosophy prefers to repress.³ More generally, the remnants of the self-reflective process are what the psychoanalytic clinic testifies to most faithfully and what, by contrast, the purity of theory ignores.

Once we reach a conception of difference that first passes through the experience of identity which it then relinquishes through the choice of a diremptive remain then, and only then, do we accomplish an ethical and/or aesthetic position which, despite marking its difference from its Other, recognizes the Other as its neighbour. Sublation posits the essential unity of a concept with its contrary (a unity that both disturbs and consolidates its identity) while the diremptive remain testifies to the ineradicable opposition that resists (and yet also makes possible) the self-reflective process.⁴ Speculation emphasizes identity-in-difference and the unity of opposites. This position, though laudable for freeing the mind from the impasses of common understanding, risks leading to inaction. The decision for a diremptive remain frees us from the stasis of identity-in-difference. Karin de Boer insightfully distinguishes between the “essential unity” of contraries and their “prevailing opposition” (de Boer, 2010, 363). While the former designates the speculative identity of contraries in the concept, the latter refers to the actual determination of the opposed pairs in time and space. According to de Boer, there is always a gap between the speculative identity of the elements and the opposed manner they actually transpire in the world, and, moreover, this gap accounts for movement and change (ibid, 365). The speculative identity of contraries is akin to the quantum superposition of states and the actual determination to the collapse of the wave function.⁵ What I call deciding for a diremptive remain is akin to collapsing the wave-function and thereby partially annulling the speculative superposition of states. This ethical-aesthetic moment marks the choice for one element over its Other without, however, reverting to blind diremption. The importance of the diremptive remain consists in that one cannot simply equate all things insofar as opposed pairs retain their difference in actuality despite their essential unity. Otherwise it would make no difference if one lies or tells the truth:

Just as to talk of the unity of subject and object, of finite and infinite, of being and thought, etc. is inept, since object and subject, etc. signify what they are outside of their unity, and since in their unity they are not meant to be what their expression says they are, just so the false is no longer qua false, a moment of truth.

(Hegel, 1977, 23)

Cast in Heideggerian parlance, at an ontological level, opposites unite such that each element reaches the dignity of its notion through a paradoxical kenosis into its Other. Ontically, however, an ethical-aesthetic⁶ remainder forces one to choose one element over its Other. This ethical-aesthetic-ontical remainder disrupts and organizes the domain of speculation.

The coincidence of contraries leads to increased harmony between previously falsely opposed terms insofar as, post-speculation, each term recognizes itself in the Other; the Other becomes my Other. In full-fledged diremption, prior to sublation, conflict is reducible to Lacan’s narcissistic suicidal aggression, Hegel’s battle of pure prestige and Freud’s narcissism of small differences. The “enemy” is a mere reflection of a disavowed part of the self. By contrast, conflict that occurs post-sublation involves two terms, which, having recognized their respective internal divisions, do not split off an undesired aspect (“moment”) on the Other. Any conflict that may exist concerns actual rather than the imagined differences.⁷ Such conflict can be contained within the medium of speech without spilling into a shouting match. In L’envers de la dialectique. Hegel à la lumière de Nietzsche, Lebrun puts forward a Nietzschean critique of Hegel arguing that for the latter there is conflict only insofar as one fights with one’s shadow (Lebrun, 2004, 113). Lebrun lauds Nietzsche for keeping contraries opposed rather than reconciling them through speculation. However, the idea of diremptive remains shows that conflict may subsist even after the speculative identity-in-difference of falsely opposed terms has been established. It is not necessary, as Lebrun’s Nietzsche imagines, to keep contraries opposed in order to maintain the possibility of conflict. By first subjecting opposed terms to the operation of self-reflection, one can better guarantee that conflict involves difference rather than narcissistic strife. With this Nietzschean critique, Lebrun feels that he has unearthed the hidden moral core of Hegel’s dialectic in its alleged evasion of conflict. Nietzsche, as the great celebrator of war, is thus presented as the welcome antipode and antidote. But this is to misunderstand both thinkers. Nietzsche does not keep the contraries apart prior to self-reflection. If he celebrates conflict it is, I believe, only insofar as the conflict stages a battle between different terms – a difference properly established after self-reflection. It is the Nietzschean slave who cannot accomplish self-reflection and is thus drowned in a ressentiment that is the mere obverse of his/her self-disrespect. When the Nietzschean master goes to war it is not him/herself that he battles but precisely the Other recognized as Other through self-reflection. One is more loyal to the essence of Nietzsche’s thought by recognizing him as a thinker of the diremptive remain rather than as one insouciant of the dialectical process. Lebrun’s oversight is symptomatically betrayed in the title of the work (The Inverse of the Dialectic). A more fitting title – one that would better heed to the intricacies of both Nietzsche and Hegel’s thought – would have been The Remainder of the Dialectic. The intelligence of the Nietzschean master consists of engaging in conflicts against the Other as perceived through the clarity of the speculative rather than the murky spectacles of the specular. Narcissistic discord that cannot discern between self and Other is the folly of the slave incapable of self-reflection and the subsequent decision for a diremptive remain.⁸ Hegel’s work (akin to psychoanalytic treatment) is to diminish as much as possible the reign of the imaginary (the misrecognition of internal division as external opposition) so that the Other can be rightly ascertained as Other, rather than the mere shadow of the self. This is not to abolish conflict in favour of harmony but, rather, to create the possibility of a bearable conflict. I thus also part ways with Žižek’s (2009b, ix) rather one-sided critique of dialogue. Though there is truth to Lacan’s indictment according to which all dialogue is the exchange of two monologues, this should not entail that we relinquish all discussion. The properly Hegelian view is that a reasonable interchange can be maintained if the parties involved have sufficiently submitted themselves to self-reflection. This is particularly important today with respect to the question of sexual identity-in-difference, where discussions around gender and sexuality often take the regressive form of a puerile battle of the sexes.⁹ Men’s movements cast their own frustrated masculinity on the figure of woman while certain feminists hold an allegedly wicked patriarchal order responsible for all the weight of castration. In both cases, the failure of each sex to constitute itself through its paradoxical kenosis in the Other is blindly played out as an external conflict with an Other that is increasingly little more than a reflection of one’s self.

It is arguably the case that the diremptive remains divide in accordance to the sacred-profane identity-in-difference. One of two diremptive remains generally falls on the side of sacralization while the other pertains to profanation. Thus, the particular identity-in-difference positing the unity of the sacred and the profane provides the general content for the others; a diremptive remain will thus either choose the sacred or the profane as the determining tendency of its content. As to form, however, the identity-in-difference of the feminine and the masculine will provide the general prototype. Sexual difference provides the form of difference tout court.¹⁰ Let us recall for a moment Lacan’s formulae of sexuation:

•Masculine sexuation:

•For All x PHI x.

•There is One x Not PHI x.

•Feminine sexuation:

•There is no X Not PHI x.

•Not All x PHI x.

Masculinity arguably hinges on a profanation that occurs against the background of the sacred while femininity hinges on a profanation that permeates the sacred realm. Masculinity is marked by profane exceptions – the obscene primal father representing its most overt form – while the feminine lacks a profane exception insofar as it is constitutively profane. Linking the perverse and the profane we may argue, following Benvenuto (2016), that the feminine is constitutively perverse-profane while masculinity, essentially on the side of the non-perverse (sacred) is, instead, plagued by “attacks of femininity” (ibid) or “attacks of profanity”. Thus, our initial division of form and content (the product of the understanding’s labour) now reveals itself as a moment to be surpassed. By providing the form of difference in general, sexual difference also determines the content (sacred and profane). With this we may posit the primacy of the feminine and argue that the masculine is a defence against the feminine. The feminine position is marked by greater anxiety, insofar as “‘male anxiety’ stops at castration anxiety” (Zupančič, 2017, 56). According to Lacan, Zupančič explains, “the feminine posit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The paradox of self-reflection
• Variation 1 The diremptive remains
• Variation 2 The triumph of dialectical “lower” terms
• Variation 3 Speculative topology
• Variation 4 Vicious dialectical reversals
• Variation 5 Faith and reason
• Variation 6 The paradoxes of love
• Variation 7 The paradox of identity
• Variation 8 Subject and collective
• Variation 9 Ausstossung and Verwerfung
• Variation 10 Symbolic murder and suicide
• Variation 11 Generational difference: parent and child
• Variation 12 Power difference: analysand and analyst
• Variation 13 Sexual difference: man and woman
• Variation 14 The paradox of a boundary without a limit
• Variation 15 Good and evil
• Variation 16 Truth and lies
• Variation 17 Thrownness and autonomy
• Variation 18 Life and death
• Variation 19 The force and frailty of the law
• Variation 20 Madness and sanity
• Variation 21 The diremptions of fantasy
• Variation 22 The untimely-contemporary
• Variation 23 Religion and atheism
• Variation 24 The death of God
• Variation 25 The symptom as human notion
• Conclusion: From via dolorosa to gaya scienza
• References
• Index