Enjoy Your Symptoms!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out

Description

The present book was written with a view to bringing to public notice the nullity of cynical distance. Its subtitle is not to be taken ironically: it simply refers to the two divisions of each chapter. As it is indicated by their didactic titles ("Why ..." ), the aim of each of the five chapters is to elucidate some fundamental Lacanian notion or theoretical complex (letter, woman, repetition, phallus, father). In the first division of each chapter, Lacan is "in Hollywood," i.e., the notion or complex in question is explained by way of examples from Hollywood or popular culture in general; in the second division, we are "out of Hollywood," i.e., the same notion is elaborated as it is "in itself," in its inherent content. Or, to put it in Hegelese: Hollywood is conceived as a "phenomenology" of the Lacanian Spirit, its appearing for the common consciousness, whereas the second division is closer to the "logic" qua articulation of the notional content in and for itself. CONTENTS Introduction IX Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination? 1.1 Death and Sublimation: The Final Scene of City Lights The trauma of the voice-The tramp's interposition-The separation 1.2 Imaginary, Symbolic, Real 9 Imaginary (mis)recognition-Symbolic circuit I: "There is no metalanguage"-Symbolic circuit II: Fate and repetition- The real encounter 2 Why Is Woman a Symptom of Man? 31 2.1 Why Is Suicide the Only Successful Act? 31 The act as an answer of the Real-Germany, Year Zero: The word no longer obliges-Europa '51: Escape into guilt-Stromboli: The act of freedom 2.2 The "Night of the World" 46 Psychoanalysis and German idealism-The fiction ofreality- The fascination of the sacrifice 3 Why Is Every Act a Repetition? 69 3.1 Beyond "Distributive Justice" 69 Why was Chandler's Playback a failure?-"Distributive justice" and its exception-Sacrifice, traditional and utilitarian- Le pere ...- ... ou pire-Repetition: imaginary, symbolic, real-Repetition and postmodernity-"Either/ or" redoubled 3.2 Identity and A uthority 83 The "exception reconciled in the universal" -The vicious circle of dialectics and its remainder-Identity and fantasy- Socrates versus Christ-The paradoxes of authority- The "impossible" performative-Kierkegaard's "materialist reversal of Hegel"-Lacan versus Habermas 4 Why Does the Phallus Appear? 113 4.1 Grimaces of the Real 113 The "phantom of the opera": A spectroscopy-The voice qua object-From the modernist sinthome .. . -... to the postmodernist Thing 4.2 Phallophany of the Anal Father 124 The anal father-Phallophany versus phallic signifier- Class struggle in the opera-The subject of the Enlightenment 5 Why Are There Always Two Fathers? 149 5.1 At the Origins of Nair. The Humiliated Father 149 The paranoiac Other-"Woman as the symptom of man" revisited-From Ned Beaumont to Philip Marlowe-From Philip Marlowe to Dale Cooper 5.2 Die Versagung 165 The "sacrifice of the sacrifice"-Die Versagung, castration, alienation-"Subjective destitution"-"Tarrying with the Negative" Index 195