Lacan’s subject: the imaginary, language, the real and philosophy

South African Journal of Philosophy

2005

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This paper addresses the question regarding the relation between capitalism and nature, on the one hand, and that of the continued existence of life, including humankind, on earth in light of the disturbing evidence that has emerged since the early 1970s, concerning massive environmental degradation, on the other. It is argued that the evidence of such destruction is there for everyone to see; what is less obvious -in fact, mostly ignored or deniedis the connection between capital as a process which either grows, or dies, and the devastating effect of such uncontrollable growth on geo-ecology (where a distinction is made between ecology and environment in terms of the relations of interdependence by which the former is characterised). Ironically, as far back as 1972 the 'Club of Rome' warned against the dangers of 'unlimited growth'. The paper draws substantially, but not exclusively, on the work of Joel Kovel, who argues in favour of what he terms eco-socialism as the best kind of alternative to capitalism. Needless to say, this entails an understanding of the latter, in an encompassing sense as a state of being, instead of in a narrow economistic sense. It also requires that one should distinguish clearly between a mechanistic conception of nature (the Cartesian) that seems to legitimize its exploitation for human use and eventual degradation, on the one hand, and another (Kantian) conception which makes room for the inscrutability of a natural purposiveness that transcends human cognition.

Section: As Constituents Of Different Culturesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Nature, Capitalism, and the Future of Humankind

South African Journal of Philosophy

2005

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“…Elsewhere I have elaborated on these and other facets of Lacan's poststructuralist, psychoanalytical theory of the subject. See Olivier (2004aOlivier ( , 2005cOlivier ( , 2005d.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature as ‘Abject’, Critical Psychology, and ‘Revolt’: The Pertinence of Kristeva

South African Journal of Psychology

2007

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Today nature is put under tremendous pressure through human, including technological, activities — so much so that some haveraised the question of nature's (and all living creatures') survival. It seems as if the world is on a slippery slope, sliding towards its own destruction. Even critical thought and practice seem powerless to affect those in power, whose leadership seems: to bear decisively on whether the current situation can be improved or not. This tends to induce pessimism. On the other hand, Heidegger's philosophy of technology, and especially Kristeva's psychoanalytical thought, inspire hope that, whatever the odds may be against such a possibility, at least it is conceivable that humankind may resurrect the culture of ‘revolt’. This could recuperate nature from the periphery of human concerns where it has, arguably for a considerable time, occupied the non-position of what Kristeva calls the ‘abject’, and restore it to the formerly revered realm that has engendered (and still does) the emergence of all life on earth. A critical psychology that situates individual subjects in the encompassing context, not merely of technophiliac society but of a society crucially dependent on nature, can contribute substantially to nature-sensitive social practices.

“…In A Thousand Plateaus they wrote that “subjectifications are not primary but result from a complex assemblage” (1987, p. 79). What this means is that someone is not, in substantialist fashion, first a kind of unitary subject and then enters into complex relations of reciprocity that constitute “assemblages”; the subject is always already an “assemblage” of sorts, which is something similar to what one finds in Lacan in terms of the complex relations among his three “registers” of the “real”, the symbolic and the imaginary (Olivier, , ). What one learns from Deleuze and Guattari, too, is that subjectivity is always already a matter of a complex tension among different registers or subject‐positions, for example the virtual, the actual, the discursive, and so on, except that their notion of the subject is more complex than Lacan's.…”

Section: The Assemblage‐subjectmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ethical (and political) status of theorizing the subject: Deleuze and Guattari

Psychotherapy and Politics International

2017

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With Lacan's exhortation that the subject's ethical task is to “take up” his or her desire as its point of departure, this paper thematizes the question of the ethics of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's notion of the subject, as articulated (mainly) in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). It is argued that, given their ontological conceptualization of the subject as an open, complex “agency‐assemblage” that is ineluctably characterized (“virtually”, if not “actually”) by a rhizomatic and multiplicitous structure (every subject always already being “a crowd”), their conception enables one to address the issue of the ethical status of theory in psychology in an exemplary manner. The reason for this claim is that their complex, multifaceted theorization of the subject construes it in a nonsubstantialist, “machinic”, or rather “structural‐machinic” manner (that is, with a complex structure that operates like a becoming‐machine). This stresses the enduring possibility for change on the part of the subject – something that has to be presupposed in any psychological or psychoanalytic theory of the subject, lest the possibility of efficacious therapeutic intervention be theoretically and ethically compromised. Another way of putting this is that, at the level of what Deleuze and Guattari termed “the abstract machine”, the subject is overdetermined insofar as it comprises an indefinite sphere of “virtual” possibilities that may be actualized under certain conditions – the subject is always already more than what has been historically actualized. Moreover, such a theory allows for the “deterritorialization” of the subject along “nomadic” “lines of flight” that effectively resist its endless “territorialization” by the “state apparatus”.