Conclusions about the Ground of Topology
This is the conclusion from an article I just sent off to S in an attempt to shake the branches of Lacanian ideology-critique by hammering away at its roots.
Across the course of this essay we have examined the complex grounding of the topology of the Symbolic Order and the ontological function of the Vorstellungs-Repräsentanz that facilitates the relation of topology to the being of the subject located in the chora. We also noted that the ontological primacy of the chora and its inherent formlessness, and gomi’s interplay of redundancy and recognition, maintains a ‘slippage’ of temporality that grounds the appearance of symbolic objects/machines. This problem takes on a special significance for the subject’s recognition of themself as an object through self-objectivisation because this self-objectivisation of the subject cannot assimilate the being of the subject. This inability to ‘ground’ the subject as a symbolic object within a topographic account of being occurs through the resistance of being to the Symbolic Order, it is ‘void.’ Thus this aspect becomes un-conscious and recedes into the chora because the subject’s acquiescing to the order maintained by the authority of the Symbolic Other is held in check by the there-ness of consciousness. Situated in this way techne is given an ontological status; it integrates with our way of living but resists being domesticated by the various symbolic designations of it as an object. This resistance to the Symbolic register is one of the hallmarks of the Lacanian Real. And therefore this suggests there is a distinction to be made between the techne-real as gomi (a meaningless symbolic formula, etc) and the technological-representation that is bound up with human activity. With the topographic withdrawal of the techne-real we are fed our own fantasies about technology as though they are raw, unadulterated, and universal truths. This state of affairs is the phantasmatic promise of technology founded in the specific moment of self-objectivisation. Such a comportment of the subject hinges on the point at which technology acquiesces to human activity, and yet simultaneously fulfils the role of presenting its own use-value as a natural state. This is exemplified when technical objects are deprived of their use-value status as objet petit a and become unwanted, valueless gomi. Hence, we may say that the fantasy of technology resides in the very designation of a symbolic object as useful. And it is this designation that is the phantasmatic mapping of topology in the symbolic universe of psychoanalysis.
I'm unsure about how the article will fare given that I've paired Lacan and Zizek in an effort to pare down 'the resistance to topology' into something slightly more concise: Plato's conception of the chora in the Timaeus. I say nothing about Lacan's knots, which I think are a treatise in themselves akin to his medievalism.
Across the course of this essay we have examined the complex grounding of the topology of the Symbolic Order and the ontological function of the Vorstellungs-Repräsentanz that facilitates the relation of topology to the being of the subject located in the chora. We also noted that the ontological primacy of the chora and its inherent formlessness, and gomi’s interplay of redundancy and recognition, maintains a ‘slippage’ of temporality that grounds the appearance of symbolic objects/machines. This problem takes on a special significance for the subject’s recognition of themself as an object through self-objectivisation because this self-objectivisation of the subject cannot assimilate the being of the subject. This inability to ‘ground’ the subject as a symbolic object within a topographic account of being occurs through the resistance of being to the Symbolic Order, it is ‘void.’ Thus this aspect becomes un-conscious and recedes into the chora because the subject’s acquiescing to the order maintained by the authority of the Symbolic Other is held in check by the there-ness of consciousness. Situated in this way techne is given an ontological status; it integrates with our way of living but resists being domesticated by the various symbolic designations of it as an object. This resistance to the Symbolic register is one of the hallmarks of the Lacanian Real. And therefore this suggests there is a distinction to be made between the techne-real as gomi (a meaningless symbolic formula, etc) and the technological-representation that is bound up with human activity. With the topographic withdrawal of the techne-real we are fed our own fantasies about technology as though they are raw, unadulterated, and universal truths. This state of affairs is the phantasmatic promise of technology founded in the specific moment of self-objectivisation. Such a comportment of the subject hinges on the point at which technology acquiesces to human activity, and yet simultaneously fulfils the role of presenting its own use-value as a natural state. This is exemplified when technical objects are deprived of their use-value status as objet petit a and become unwanted, valueless gomi. Hence, we may say that the fantasy of technology resides in the very designation of a symbolic object as useful. And it is this designation that is the phantasmatic mapping of topology in the symbolic universe of psychoanalysis.
I'm unsure about how the article will fare given that I've paired Lacan and Zizek in an effort to pare down 'the resistance to topology' into something slightly more concise: Plato's conception of the chora in the Timaeus. I say nothing about Lacan's knots, which I think are a treatise in themselves akin to his medievalism.