reagan ross wrote:
">> Is our world always artifice?
>
">but if it is, then what possibly -- what
>conceivably -- could be the *real* in
>contradistinction to which our world
>is merely artificial? . . .
"Actually I think one can answer this rather simply and straightforwardly,
from Lacan's notion of the Real, that which is outside of our own
subjectivity (roughly, Lacan's imaginary) and the symbolic world we
produce
(language, signs, etc.). Since we can never get outside of the prison of
our subjectivity and this symbolic world we can never know what the Real
is. That has always been my sense of the term though others, such as
Jameson, have moved the term closer to their own ideas of an exterior Real
(Jameson's History) to suggest our real conditions of existence within an
existing dominant ideology that must produce meaning which will sustain
itself and its inequities."
and i want to express my thanks for the gloss -- i'm always
grateful for those messages which try carefully to sort through
what's already on the table rather than throw on more heat
producing calories -- but i'm not sure it addresses what's at
stake
in this thread . . .
as i understand it, lacan's REAL deserves its privileged place
because of its foundational position relative to human
consciousness . . . but to the extent that it is foundational
to consciousness, and precisely on that account, it is of
course inaccessible to consciousness . . . that is, it is NOT
a form of consciousness, "true consciousness" as it were,
against which a false consciousness might be inferred . . .
more important, to the extent that it is inaccessible it
can have no political or, i suspect, philosophical implications
my sense is that philosophy can deal only with that which is
already inscribed in consciousness . . . which suggests that
any
philosophical notion of the "REAL" -- such as has been at stake
in this thread -- must be very different from what lacan was
talking about . . . .
in a phrase: there ain't no philosophy in the "imaginary"
mike
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