Lynchean Love

The Unconscious is outside, not hidden by any unfathomable depths...1

- Slavoj Zizek

1 - The Lacanian notion of quilting fundamentally concerns the problem of the "subjectivization" of reality, that is, how does the historical and social reality one inhabits become internalized and experienced? In what way does the social world in which I am become something comprehensible to me, something that has identity or unity for me, an individual experiencing the world in which I am. And here, the Lacanian answer is the reverse of the "commonsensical". Ones' first response might be to say that socio-historical reality takes on unity and identity because of something "in" that reality, because of "meanings" already there, which one then integrates into an already existing "i", thereby creating a connection between self and world. The Lacanian answer, according to Slavoj Zizek, is differently directed: socio-historical reality is this formless morass (the "real" as it were), there is no there there, nothing in it that has a coherent essence or form, it's a bit like the child before he sees his image in the mirror and becomes through the image, an ego. In order for self and a reasonably coherent world for the self to emerge, the "signifier" has to act on "reality" for the subject, has to reach into reality to recreate as something meaningful for the experiencing subject (who, too, comes into existence as a particular kind of subject through that operation). This operation is "quilting."