"I am not simply... located at the geometrical point from which the perspective is grasped. No doubt, in the depths of my eye, the picture is painted. The picture, certainly, is in my eye. But I am in the picture."
- Lacan, "Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis" (1964-1964)
“That the queen could see Gyges in the bedroom indicates that she possessed not only a power to make things invisible but also a corresponding power (as invisible spy) to make visible to herself things that were invisible to other people. Ptolemaeus Chennus writes that the eyes of "the wife of Candaules". . . had double pupils, and she was extremely sharp sighted, being the possessor of the dragon-stone. This is how she came to see Gyges as he passed through the door.” The dragon-stone has an opposite effect from the magic ring. In one case the talisman makes people invisible; in the other case, it makes people visible: taken together, their power makes things visible or invisible. This is the power of Platonic Gyges. It is also the power of the archetypal tyrant.”
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In this little anecdote Lacan happens to be in search of something different, “in the country, or at the sea.” So much so that from morning till night he finds himself sailing…on a tiny boat, in the midst of fishermen, parting from the local port. Brittany was not really industrialized at that point—there were no trawlers—and the fishermen went to sea in their own frail crafts, at great risk to themselves. “It was this risk, this danger that I loved to share.”
One day, while waiting for the moment to pull in the nets, Petit-Jean pointed out to Lacan something floating on the surface of the waves. It was a sardine can. Floating there in the sun, it was “a witness to the canning industry.” Petit-Jean said, “You see that can? Do you see it? Well, it doesn’t see you!”
We may guess that Lacan was already talking to these men about things they had never heard of before, but they seemed to understand more than what he expected. In saying this Petit-Jean was laughing. Not Lacan. Why? Because he understood that the can was seeing him, “…at the level of the point of light at which everything that looks at you is situated.”
What does Lacan mean by this point of light, and why would the event disturb him? The pattern of the fractured word pre-exists the being, already breaking up between itself and its semblance, between itself and the photograph it shows to the other. Thus the point of light embodying the gaze: “…I enter light and it’s from the gaze that…I am photo-graphed.”
In this picture there is Lacan, himself a rare object in the landscape—a sardine tin in the sea. Caught in metaphor, if the tin represents a devastating eruption of industry in the realm of nature, Lacan’s presence among those fellows earning their livings with great difficulty, “looked like nothing on earth.”
From the perspective of the subject, how Lacan looked at/from the can was not affected by the fishermen’s thoughts or feelings. His perception, in the Other, is but his own perception of himself. “In the depths of my eye the picture is painted, but the subject is not in the picture…if I am anything in the picture, it is always in the form of the screen…the stain, the spot.”
The notion of the stain comes back later in Encore, “…there where it talks, it jouis, but it knows nothing.” Two categories of thought: “la pensé,…it thinks you, le pensé,…it thinks of you.” 2
It, a stain, thinks you. If the work of art, like the signifier equated to an angel, is empty—in the sense that you are not supposed to eat Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup, or clean the house with his Brillo pads—if the work of art thinks you, it is because it may hold you in its fold, for the stain/you to joui, there where it talks, but wants to know nothing.
From Louis Aragon, from Contre-chant, in the Fou d’Elsa:A wretch, I am like mirrors
That can reflect but cannot see
like them my eye is empty and like them inhabited
By your absence which makes them blind.
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The trauma of the encounter with the Gaze is, in a sense, the trauma with the absence of any safe distance from the world. Once one recognizes the Gaze you shouldn't be able to... the gamble is, one can no longer retreat into oneself.So this gaze in Lacan's theorization of the Gaze in Seminars 11 and 13, I think, is the is really the high point of his philosophical trajectory. So, it's a point at which he forces us to confront that we're never removed from what we think is foreign. So the thing that we think is alien to us, were involved in that. And I think that's really an important philosophical idea on Lacan's part. And with the concept of the Gaze, I think he pushes his theory, I used this word before and I think it's the really important, one to its most dialectical point. So the point at which subjectivity is manifested in the world of objects. He sees, in other words, how the subject is always unconsciously "other" to itself.
55 comments:
\\It is also the power of the archetypal tyrant.”
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BS. ;-)))
People just LIKE to have freedom of being extension of tyranny. ;-P
Being non-need-to-think tool. ;-P
Tyranny -- that is not personal... but social and only social trait.
"Let you die today so I'd die tomorrow"(tm)
Or... "let your child to be a food for mine"... any mother ready to say. And do.
Instinct of survival.
Without which... there'd be no US.
Are you familiar with the life-cycle?
A baby is born a tyrant screaming for his milk, and as a senile old man, dies one screaming for morphine. Tyranny is both the first and last stage of every person's life.
Yes! That's it!
Natural. And intertwined in all we do.
That's why virtue talks are... "grow inprecise or even outdated... with time".
Or.
If to say it in one word -- Cybernetics. ;-)
Or Evolution. ;-)
Technology? ;-)
Everything/
Naaaah...
Not everything.
Though... is our Universe OPEN or closed in that sense... who knows???
everything everywhere all at once! ;)
You think I NOT got it?
Question is -- we dunno.
Our miserly brains NOT fit to contain anything like that.
Even concept itself. ;-P
I hate the castration of language!
???
What Kronos did to Ouranos and gave 'birth" to Aphrodite.
???
Sorry for being so dumb. :-(((
Acta non Verba.
Language is incapable of expressing the Kantian "Thing in Itself"... it "castrates" it, and then reproduces the castrated parts (tainted by "desire" (Aphrodite) and produces the Lacanian "reality".
It was my reaction to your statement:
Our miserly brains NOT fit to contain anything like that.
Even concept itself. ;-P
As they saying in science.
There is upper bound.
There is 10^80 atoms in this Universe.
And our miserly brains contain... several billions of neurons.
Clearly not enough to comprehend that 10^80.
You talking about more subtle reasons...
Well, only language allows to us to squeeze all that complexity... into several letter. Like U-N-I-V-E-R-S-E.
Even though it with humongous losses... it still quite ingenious fit.;-)
So... viva, las language! ;-P
Understanding its' limits, for the limit defines the form. ;)
Yeah!
But also... seek for how that limits can be workaround-ed. ;-)
Shifting the Overton window. I like the way you think... ;)
More like "believing 3 impossible things before breakfast". ;-P
;-)
BTW.
"crazy SOB"... how much damning it sounds to you?
You know, as foreigner I cannot know such things.
Like once I was enlighten that "moron" is DAMN swearing... and not just a snobbish remark. ;-P
...not much of an insult in my book. But I'm used to it.
Well... I double-checked it.
And it was between the lines.
While missive was "but climate change is worse"... bleh.
Let Don Quixote be Don Quixote...
And who he was? How it is -- to be HIM? ;-)
Like any really good story... it have many layers.
And answer... tells more about reader, not written. ;-)
It's not always about how you live. Sometimes, it's about how you die.
So maybe being called a "crazy SOB" isn't all that bad...
:P
\\So maybe being called a "crazy SOB" isn't all that bad...
Yeah.
Especially if one have "great" predecessors.
Ivan Terrible.
Stalin.
liliPut fits PERFECTLY in that line.
Almost... no matter what result will be... ALMOST. ;-)
You forgot Catherine. But then again, she's probably still in the stables checking out the horse flesh. ;)
\\You forgot Catherine.
BigMazzaFka? :-)))))
She was pretty mediocre.
That is Peter who Made Russia Great Again.;-P
With new (for russia) techs. ;-)
The Spectre of Rossiya HAUNTS Ukraine...
:P
\\The Spectre of Rossiya HAUNTS Ukraine...
Yawn,
You know nothing about history of Ukraine...
Russia. Boo!
Naaah. Poseidons. Boo! ;-P
Sorry, as someone who helped develop submarine detection and torpedo countermeasures, Poseidon isn't scary at all.
Can Poseidon launch a defensive saturation attack?
With 1,000 decoys?
...cuz THAT might scare me... for a little while.
Do you have net of ocean sonars... that large and flawless???
And well.
What counter-measure... to a boat deep down below your subs going???
And going either very slow and unnoticeable. Or too fast.
Well... you talking BS.
Because, there is *practical* real world test of your capabilities -- narkotic trafficing subs... you still CANNOT catch em all.
Some made by some craftsmen... in jungles.
Lame bragging.
Yawn.
And well... RFia mentioned that they shared that info... about Poseidons. With NK. (China goes by default... made by China, launched by proxy)
Well... I think your Pentagon and WH behave so timidly... because they REALLY SCARRED.
And see NO counter-measures.
Especially.
As your crunch point is TOO CLOSE. Why their -- too far. RFia -- easily can survive through Mos-Cow bombing -- their population will only be reassured that liliPut was right.
And China... they can spare half of their population (they was self-genociding themself, with that One Family One Child moronic program).
Why you...
Even DOZEN of your Ams died, on some distant insignificant island.
And your BOTH parties will be doomed. And your politics in a state of turmoil.
Do you have net of ocean sonars... that large and flawless???
Ever hear of SOSUS? That was "old" tech.
Know was an RRM is? The Russians had PMR-2's back in the 70's. Where do you think THAT tech is today?
Know how Noisy a supercavitating underwater body is?
You really think that our DOD cares about illegal immigrants and drug shipments?
Yeah.
The same as about terrorists capturing airliners...
Lack of imagination.
Proactivity?
Bleh.
If they really cared, they'd "break" the domestic drug gangs/ cartels that distribute the drug products. What would become of the inner cities of America if they did that? There'd be no "economic activity" for inner city dwellers to participate in. Vice is a tribute paid to Virtue.
America's one true religion.
Yeah.
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