I’ve listened to countless hours of Todd teaching but this talk is exceptionally good. Easily his best unpacking of the contradiction between identity and subjectivity I’ve ever heard. Great job, Cadell!
Thanks Mikey. Todd was fantastic. I totally agree that this was one of the best presentations. And I am super excited that he is going to be developing his theory of value in relation to capitalist desire in the Ecrits course. I think that is not only fascinating but also timely for reflecting on some of the tensions in building out these new digital-intellectual communities.
1:48:02 🔥 I have the same experience of the corporate working world-I treasure the fire which it set in me to read into philosophy and theory. I may not have been broken enough (had motivation enough) to discover these golden Lacanian ideas without first suffering the torture and bleakness of corporate ideology.
This was an outstanding presentation and conversation, and I have been thinking all week about the idea that "lack helps us escape loss." I'm very interested in what might be called "the benefits of lack," and Dr. McGowan articulated something incredible. "The Seminars for Écrits" have been wonderful.
The idea that "lack helps us escape loss" is indeed profound. As a subject of loss, I am constantly concerned that I may lose the precious objects to which I am attached (like my precious childhood teddy bear), and develop all sorts of eternal fantasies about being united with these objects forever (I even have a fantasy of being buried with my childhood teddy bear so it will be with me from beginning to end, so to speak). But as a subject of lack, I am always-already with myself as a lost object. There is no object that I can lose because I am the lack as such. This is a very freeing notion, in a very paradoxical way.
@@PhilosophyPortal I completely agree and think that is very well spoken. I’m very interested in these ways that “positivize lack,” per se, which is to say ways in which we can see ourselves as “better for having lack” than not. This possible, paradoxical freedom is a great example of one of those positivizations, as articulated so well by Dr. McGowan.
@@PhilosophyPortal This is very interesting to me, because after a few years away I've started engaging with Buddhism again, and this time I've had a more profound direct experience of the emptiness and impermanence of all objects including the self. I think there is a misunderstanding of Buddhist "meditation" in this regards, because rather than "looking within," the classic Buddhist analytic methods deconstruct whatever appears to consciousness, or whatever object is considered, as not the self, until you realize that "self" is just a sort of place holder for a void, and what is true of you is also true of other objects including the objects of your desire, so in the end there are only processes and relationships. And actually experience this void directly seems to be incredibly liberating, it's nothing like nihilistic despair, because it actually opens up a space for transformation and open possibility beyond conventional identities.
Great presentation! So resonate and affirming of what Iv been exploring which I have been calling the sacred lack at the center of being. The nothing at the center that gives everything away. Loss attempts to reclaim, to draw back in. All attempts to do so are eventually futile for all that is grasped onto eventually falls through one’s hands (the holes in Christs hands). The holding of the lack at the center as if it’s sacred (the lion) transforms the subject into a creator, someone who can eventually play with desire as a process relational emanation from out of the lack, spilling back through one’s hands, as a exploration of the possibilities of becoming and as act of worship (the child). Looking forward to more!
Amazing reflection, wild visionary. I totally resonate with the way you are playing with both the symbolism of "Christs hands" and also the spiritual metamorphoses of the camel, lion and child. The child does seem to be a subject of lack par excellence, in the sense that the child is literally an emanation from out of the lack (Mother). More Seminars for the Ecrits on the way! Stay tuned!
Todd's demarcation between _loss_ and _lack_ here reminds me of Glyn Daly's quote from The Zizek Dictionary: "One of the central lessons of psychoanalysis is that while enjoyment is experienced as Real, it is ultimately an empty spectre, a kind of anamorphic effect of symbolic circumscription. Against its numerous ideological manipulations, we need to find ways of accepting, and living with, this traumatic knowledge. Extemporizing on an old Marxist maxim, when it comes to jouissance we have nothing to lose but the myth of loss itself."
I was thinking about the possible confluence between lack/desire & drive and their relationship with particularity and universality. If lack is experienced by the subject in relation to this or that particular identity, wouldn't drive as the compulsion to repeat result from the consequence of a lack constitutive of the symbolic structure as such. I"m forced (subjected), by the internal topological torsion of the symbolic space, to endlessly revolve around a necessary absence and desire/lack is how I inscribe my absence within said space thereby maintaining some semblance of a resolution
Does the focus on identity and lack ignore the importance of VIRTUE? This question arises because I'm a musician, and it is clear that although performing music in front of an audience is a symbolic identity, actually performing on a musical instrument or singing with skill requires something more than standing up there faking--you have to practice and transform your mind and body in order to create new capacities; in other words, the flip side of lack is the possibility of freely developing various virtues over time, and this is not merely symbolic but actually is a fully embodied process (perhaps we could say it when we develop virtue, in a sense we weave together Symbolic, Imaginary, and the Real). Likewise, in relationship to teaching, there may not be any figure who truly inhabits an identity--but isn't it the case that to be an excellent teacher, one must exercise and practice the necessary skills and over time develop the virtue of being able to teach well? And therefore a "true fraud" as a teacher would precisely be someone that develops the virtues of teaching, rather than merely inhabiting the social role of being a teacher.
I think these types of contradictions also to an extent account for the apparently irrational effectiveness of mathematical modeling in capturing physical reality since physical reality is amenable to abstraction at the point that both conceptualization and physical reality depart from themselves, the antagonism within each is what both can share
12:26 *subjectivity is lacking* “So it doesn’t really matter if it’s: subjectivity inadequate to identity or is identity inadequate to the subject-because the point is there is a disjunction between the two and that disjunction is what creates the lacking Being. That’s why subjectivity is lacking, because it can’t coincide with itself in any kind of symbolic identity. And I think that’s the really key thing.”
Thanks for your question Othermind! I love the logic of "the lack of lack." It reminds me of that great line from the SOL using the negation of the negation: "the vanishing of the vanishing". I guess in my way of thinking about it "the lack of lack" is the subject of lack itself. Its the perspectival shift from being the subject who lacks-something (not a subject how has lost something, but lack something that needs to be "added"), to the subject who is lack itself (the lack of lack is the subject). But it is certainly an idea that makes for great "food for thought"!
I think lack means that we DO NOT have "an individual identity," because the concept of identity implies too much stability: I AM X. Instead we have roles and masks that we constantly put on and take off in various different situations. And the very multiplicity of social roles that exist in different contexts and relationships helps make it clear that there is no way for an individual to be identical with their various multiple roles, but on the other hand, there is no way to escape acting out different roles in different contexts. If you stand in front of a class and act like a teacher, you perform that role, regardless of what you believe about your personal identity.
31:53 the comment around this topic...Nagarjuna, one of the most reputable Buddhist saints, one of the main points of his doctrine is how concepts are contradictory and all fail to be adequate.
42:20 *Lack as the Real* “I do think that the lacking subject touches the Real. […] I mean obviously you’re not fully.. because you always have a symbolic identity […] I mean, I don’t think there is such a thing as being fully in the Real. But I think.. to be a lacking subject, you’re experiencing the gaps within the symbolic order. That’s what Lacan calls the Real.”
Great video! Is this definition of subjectivity (the disparity between a symbolic identity and the subject) comparable at all to Adorno's negative dialectics?
Thanks! I am not sure and I don't want to speak on Todd's behalf, but that would have been a great question for Todd, and certainly could be an interesting question/project to pursue in the Ecrits course!
I've listened to Mr. McGowan's podcasts and asked him a question about Adorno via comments at one point; if memory serves correctly, McGowan is skeptical of Adorno's account of the relation between Universal and Particular, and the idea that the universal somehow dominates the particular, and on this it seems the McGowan sticks with Hegel's account rather than Adorno's. Definitely ask him directly if you get a chance though.
Concerning the lack as real, is it misleading to think that symbolic identity as lacking has a dimension of real, like symbolic real. Does that make any sense? I think that this move would take us closer to Hegel in a sense that language must also have its internal contradiction, from whitch it gets its signifying power. Mcgowan said something about the unconscious as the gap or relation between signifier. Im not sure but to me that somehow resonates with this though.
When Hamlet says “the king is a thing of nothing,” it seems to touch on exactly what Todd is highlighting. His biological father, the king, is a ghost, a thing of nothing, who is being punished for his sins (desire), failing symbolic identity. Simultaneously Hamlet is insulting Claudius and stating he does not recognise his uncles symbolic authority, but it also may refer to his joke with Ophelia where ‘thing’ and ‘no-thing’ represent male and female genitals, stating that any king is only a man born of woman, a thing of no thing, and thus less than the symbolic identity of kingship. To strike at Claudius and be a good son is to separate out identity and subjectivity in relation to his father, who he idealises (“Hyperion to a Satyr”) as in striking Claudius he acknowledges the separating of symbolic position and occupant, thus symbolically killing his idealised father again. This might be one reason to delay. Anyone want to problematise this for me?
1. To what extent is the concept of lack related to "poverty of instincts" humans suffer from in relation to animals; the way infants are born helpless and stupid and totally dependent on other humans for survival. 2. Is "lack" similar to the emptiness of a cup, which can be filled with various substances? Relating to point 1, it seems that human freedom is only possible because we lack instincts, and thus have possibilities for open end projects and investing desire in various objects and circumstances. But it also exposes us to new traumatic possibilities, including the possibility that infants are left to die. 3. Isn't the mother's womb some kind of really existing primordial prelapsarian state, which makes birth itself a traumatic event that is universal for human beings? And this is the problem with the desire to "regain wholeness" is that the price of that would be to regress to a prehuman state? (The so-called "Oceanic feeling"?)
I’ve listened to countless hours of Todd teaching but this talk is exceptionally good. Easily his best unpacking of the contradiction between identity and subjectivity I’ve ever heard. Great job, Cadell!
Thanks Mikey. Todd was fantastic. I totally agree that this was one of the best presentations. And I am super excited that he is going to be developing his theory of value in relation to capitalist desire in the Ecrits course. I think that is not only fascinating but also timely for reflecting on some of the tensions in building out these new digital-intellectual communities.
Hear hear!
Two of my favorite creators Cadell & Todd ♥️♥️
1:48:02 🔥 I have the same experience of the corporate working world-I treasure the fire which it set in me to read into philosophy and theory. I may not have been broken enough (had motivation enough) to discover these golden Lacanian ideas without first suffering the torture and bleakness of corporate ideology.
This was an outstanding presentation and conversation, and I have been thinking all week about the idea that "lack helps us escape loss." I'm very interested in what might be called "the benefits of lack," and Dr. McGowan articulated something incredible. "The Seminars for Écrits" have been wonderful.
The idea that "lack helps us escape loss" is indeed profound. As a subject of loss, I am constantly concerned that I may lose the precious objects to which I am attached (like my precious childhood teddy bear), and develop all sorts of eternal fantasies about being united with these objects forever (I even have a fantasy of being buried with my childhood teddy bear so it will be with me from beginning to end, so to speak). But as a subject of lack, I am always-already with myself as a lost object. There is no object that I can lose because I am the lack as such. This is a very freeing notion, in a very paradoxical way.
@@PhilosophyPortal I completely agree and think that is very well spoken. I’m very interested in these ways that “positivize lack,” per se, which is to say ways in which we can see ourselves as “better for having lack” than not. This possible, paradoxical freedom is a great example of one of those positivizations, as articulated so well by Dr. McGowan.
@@PhilosophyPortal This is very interesting to me, because after a few years away I've started engaging with Buddhism again, and this time I've had a more profound direct experience of the emptiness and impermanence of all objects including the self. I think there is a misunderstanding of Buddhist "meditation" in this regards, because rather than "looking within," the classic Buddhist analytic methods deconstruct whatever appears to consciousness, or whatever object is considered, as not the self, until you realize that "self" is just a sort of place holder for a void, and what is true of you is also true of other objects including the objects of your desire, so in the end there are only processes and relationships. And actually experience this void directly seems to be incredibly liberating, it's nothing like nihilistic despair, because it actually opens up a space for transformation and open possibility beyond conventional identities.
Great presentation! So resonate and affirming of what Iv been exploring which I have been calling the sacred lack at the center of being. The nothing at the center that gives everything away. Loss attempts to reclaim, to draw back in. All attempts to do so are eventually futile for all that is grasped onto eventually falls through one’s hands (the holes in Christs hands). The holding of the lack at the center as if it’s sacred (the lion) transforms the subject into a creator, someone who can eventually play with desire as a process relational emanation from out of the lack, spilling back through one’s hands, as a exploration of the possibilities of becoming and as act of worship (the child).
Looking forward to more!
Amazing reflection, wild visionary. I totally resonate with the way you are playing with both the symbolism of "Christs hands" and also the spiritual metamorphoses of the camel, lion and child. The child does seem to be a subject of lack par excellence, in the sense that the child is literally an emanation from out of the lack (Mother). More Seminars for the Ecrits on the way! Stay tuned!
Todd's demarcation between _loss_ and _lack_ here reminds me of Glyn Daly's quote from The Zizek Dictionary:
"One of the central lessons of psychoanalysis is that while enjoyment is experienced as Real, it is ultimately an empty spectre, a kind of anamorphic effect of symbolic circumscription. Against its numerous ideological manipulations, we need to find ways of accepting, and living with, this traumatic knowledge. Extemporizing on an old Marxist maxim, when it comes to jouissance we have nothing to lose but the myth of loss itself."
I was thinking about the possible confluence between lack/desire & drive and their relationship with particularity and universality. If lack is experienced by the subject in relation to this or that particular identity, wouldn't drive as the compulsion to repeat result from the consequence of a lack constitutive of the symbolic structure as such. I"m forced (subjected), by the internal topological torsion of the symbolic space, to endlessly revolve around a necessary absence and desire/lack is how I inscribe my absence within said space thereby maintaining some semblance of a resolution
Does the focus on identity and lack ignore the importance of VIRTUE? This question arises because I'm a musician, and it is clear that although performing music in front of an audience is a symbolic identity, actually performing on a musical instrument or singing with skill requires something more than standing up there faking--you have to practice and transform your mind and body in order to create new capacities; in other words, the flip side of lack is the possibility of freely developing various virtues over time, and this is not merely symbolic but actually is a fully embodied process (perhaps we could say it when we develop virtue, in a sense we weave together Symbolic, Imaginary, and the Real).
Likewise, in relationship to teaching, there may not be any figure who truly inhabits an identity--but isn't it the case that to be an excellent teacher, one must exercise and practice the necessary skills and over time develop the virtue of being able to teach well?
And therefore a "true fraud" as a teacher would precisely be someone that develops the virtues of teaching, rather than merely inhabiting the social role of being a teacher.
I think these types of contradictions also to an extent account for the apparently irrational effectiveness of mathematical modeling in capturing physical reality since physical reality is amenable to abstraction at the point that both conceptualization and physical reality depart from themselves, the antagonism within each is what both can
share
12:26 *subjectivity is lacking* “So it doesn’t really matter if it’s: subjectivity inadequate to identity or is identity inadequate to the subject-because the point is there is a disjunction between the two and that disjunction is what creates the lacking Being. That’s why subjectivity is lacking, because it can’t coincide with itself in any kind of symbolic identity. And I think that’s the really key thing.”
Thanks for the fabulous seminar and dialogue Cadell/Todd.
I did find myself wondering if the lack of lack is death?
Thanks for your question Othermind! I love the logic of "the lack of lack." It reminds me of that great line from the SOL using the negation of the negation: "the vanishing of the vanishing". I guess in my way of thinking about it "the lack of lack" is the subject of lack itself. Its the perspectival shift from being the subject who lacks-something (not a subject how has lost something, but lack something that needs to be "added"), to the subject who is lack itself (the lack of lack is the subject). But it is certainly an idea that makes for great "food for thought"!
I think lack means that we DO NOT have "an individual identity," because the concept of identity implies too much stability: I AM X. Instead we have roles and masks that we constantly put on and take off in various different situations. And the very multiplicity of social roles that exist in different contexts and relationships helps make it clear that there is no way for an individual to be identical with their various multiple roles, but on the other hand, there is no way to escape acting out different roles in different contexts. If you stand in front of a class and act like a teacher, you perform that role, regardless of what you believe about your personal identity.
31:53 the comment around this topic...Nagarjuna, one of the most reputable Buddhist saints, one of the main points of his doctrine is how concepts are contradictory and all fail to be adequate.
42:20 *Lack as the Real* “I do think that the lacking subject touches the Real. […] I mean obviously you’re not fully.. because you always have a symbolic identity […] I mean, I don’t think there is such a thing as being fully in the Real. But I think.. to be a lacking subject, you’re experiencing the gaps within the symbolic order. That’s what Lacan calls the Real.”
Great video! Is this definition of subjectivity (the disparity between a symbolic identity and the subject) comparable at all to Adorno's negative dialectics?
Thanks! I am not sure and I don't want to speak on Todd's behalf, but that would have been a great question for Todd, and certainly could be an interesting question/project to pursue in the Ecrits course!
I've listened to Mr. McGowan's podcasts and asked him a question about Adorno via comments at one point; if memory serves correctly, McGowan is skeptical of Adorno's account of the relation between Universal and Particular, and the idea that the universal somehow dominates the particular, and on this it seems the McGowan sticks with Hegel's account rather than Adorno's. Definitely ask him directly if you get a chance though.
Concerning the lack as real, is it misleading to think that symbolic identity as lacking has a dimension of real, like symbolic real. Does that make any sense? I think that this move would take us closer to Hegel in a sense that language must also have its internal contradiction, from whitch it gets its signifying power. Mcgowan said something about the unconscious as the gap or relation between signifier. Im not sure but to me that somehow resonates with this though.
When Hamlet says “the king is a thing of nothing,” it seems to touch on exactly what Todd is highlighting. His biological father, the king, is a ghost, a thing of nothing, who is being punished for his sins (desire), failing symbolic identity. Simultaneously Hamlet is insulting Claudius and stating he does not recognise his uncles symbolic authority, but it also may refer to his joke with Ophelia where ‘thing’ and ‘no-thing’ represent male and female genitals, stating that any king is only a man born of woman, a thing of no thing, and thus less than the symbolic identity of kingship. To strike at Claudius and be a good son is to separate out identity and subjectivity in relation to his father, who he idealises (“Hyperion to a Satyr”) as in striking Claudius he acknowledges the separating of symbolic position and occupant, thus symbolically killing his idealised father again. This might be one reason to delay. Anyone want to problematise this for me?
Point of view
1. To what extent is the concept of lack related to "poverty of instincts" humans suffer from in relation to animals; the way infants are born helpless and stupid and totally dependent on other humans for survival.
2. Is "lack" similar to the emptiness of a cup, which can be filled with various substances? Relating to point 1, it seems that human freedom is only possible because we lack instincts, and thus have possibilities for open end projects and investing desire in various objects and circumstances. But it also exposes us to new traumatic possibilities, including the possibility that infants are left to die.
3. Isn't the mother's womb some kind of really existing primordial prelapsarian state, which makes birth itself a traumatic event that is universal for human beings? And this is the problem with the desire to "regain wholeness" is that the price of that would be to regress to a prehuman state? (The so-called "Oceanic feeling"?)