As one of
the many who in initial efforts to comprehend the writings of psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan have been driven to near despair, I can report that I found the
current (2001) issue of Umbr(a): A
Journal of the Unconscious to be quite rewarding. Many fine works expositing
and interpreting Lacan’s ideas are now available, and should be consulted by
those seeking an in-depth grasp. Nevertheless, for those who, like myself,
benefit also from a ‘hands-on’ use of Lacanian concepts and ideas in varying
contexts, e.g., philosophy, literature, social and political thought, feminism,
queer theory, etc., Umbr(a) (and not only the 2001 issue being reviewed here)
provides a particularly lucid way into the more arcane heights and depths of
the Master’s creation. For example, the two concluding articles in the last
section of the issue (“Sublimation and Homosexuality), the ones most heavily
invested in Lacanian psychoanalysis. These articles are relevant to aesthetics,
queer theory, and social and political theory, as well as to psychoanalysis.

 The first of the two articles mentioned
above, “The Strange Detours of Sublimation: Psychoanalysis, Homosexuality, and
Art” is by the highly regarded feminist theorist (who has written extensively
on Lacan), Elizabeth Grosz. The second of the two is queer theorist Tim Dean’s
“Perversion, Sublimation, and Aesthetics: A Response to Elizabeth Grosz” (Dean
has authored several books, and co-edited the recent Psychoanalysis and Race). One of the points of interest here is the
way in which the two authors diverge, despite that both have important
commitments to Lacan. The crux of the matter turns upon different conclusions
regarding the implications of psychoanalysis for aesthetics in general, and in
particular, whether or not psychoanalysis consigns “high” art to being one more
means of valorizing and enforcing heteronormativity. This is Grosz’s position,
which she bases upon an extended, comprehensive, and extremely clear
presentation and discussion of Freud’s and Lacan’s views on sublimation. Lacan,
by showing that Freudian psychoanalysis is better understood as a theory of the
origin of desire in the symbolic, shows also, that sublimation sublimates
non-normative sexual objects and aims, and that therefore art, especially that
which is not “popular” or mass consumable, is a means of denying homoeroticism
and enforcing heteronormativity. “Popular” or mass-consumable art is, for
Grosz, more open to non-heteronormative aims and objects. This is the point
that Dean disputes.

Dean’s
point of departure from Grosz is given in his remark that “I would like to
suggest that art has more to do with queerness than with regulatory norms” Dean
then points to artists such as Emily Dickenson and Mark Rethko, who, in
artistic gestures that Dean interprets as revealing the significance of Lacan’s
view of Freud’s ‘death drive” as reflecting the fragmented nature of drive as
such, create “high” art as bearing within it “aesthetic challenges to
intelligibility” and “indecipherable variation” that sublimely manifest rather
than suppress queerness. In presenting these views, Dean provides a fascinating
and lucid explication of the psychoanalytic theory of the death drive.

Thus, both
articles “teach” Lacan reliably and coherently, and I find that in the context
of a very nitty-gritty discussion of gender and art that I can grasp what Lacan
is getting at handily. Indeed, the articles, neither of which mentions or even
alludes to patriarchy once, stimulated me to wonder whether or not an unspoken
assumption of both Grosz and Dean is an equation of heterosexuality with
patriarchy. If so, I would be inclined
to dispute this. Thus, the articles have stimulated in me desires both to read
other works by both authors and pursue my own thoughts on the relevant issues.

The
first section of Umbr(a), The
Universal, contains three pieces. The first two, “Theory, Democracy, and the
Left: An Interview with Ernesto Laclau” and 
“Stage Left: A Review of Contingency,
Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left” are
interrelated in that the interview deals with the same book reviewed in “Stage
Left.” The book itself contains three
separate sections authored by, respectively, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and
Slovo Zizek. This section is primarily a discourse in radical democratic theory
in relation to the Gramscian notion of hegemony (ideological production of
class, contra Marx). However, each of the three authors or parties to the
discussion have psychoanalysis, or what they see as the liberatory potential of
psychoanalysis, as a necessary component of their political thought. Thus,
while the discussion does not at all focus primarily on psychoanalysis (except
arguably in the case of Zizek, who is the foremost exponent of Lacanian
psychoanalysis today), the views of each and their differences cannot be
understood unless the Lacanian influence is understood. This section of Umbr(a)
2001 closes with Sinkwhan Cheng’s “A Plea for Civility: An Asian Woman’s Reply
to Susan Moller Okin’s ‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women’?” Cheng, using Balibar’s notion of neoracism,
i.e., postcolonial racism that emanates from the residual Western superego or
residue of cruelty in ‘civilization’, deplores what she sees as Okin’s commitment
to the superiority of the West in the “West and the Rest” version of
globalization. Neoracism is then
conjoined with envy and hatred of the different modes of jouissance extant in
different cultures, cultures which Okin wants to eliminate. (‘Jouissance’ is a
term introduced into psychoanalysis by Lacan to reflect his notion of
pleasure.)

The second
section of Umbr(a) also contains three articles. The first, Marc de Kesel’s
“Antigone’s Fart: Some Notes Concerning Simon Critchley’s ‘Comedy and Finitude’”
deploys ideas drawn from Lacan’s Seminar
VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, and especially Lacan’s notion of
“desire” to counter Critchley’s claim that rather than expressing human
finitude, tragedy, for example Sophocles’ Antigone,
depicts personae who, as tragic heroes, are shown to transgress, rather than
appropriate, their finitude. Kesel shows that, au contraire, even though Antigone is fully aware that her burial
of her brother will without doubt mean her own death, she makes clear “that
desire can transgress the reach of the law…” For Kesel, Antigone’s self-interpretation would read:
‘…I reveal that the law, which made my desire possible, is radically finite’.
Kesel continues: “That law too is in fact but desire, that is, an instance
which, it’s true, wants to reign in the universe, but nevertheless only can want, desire that.” It would be
interesting to have had a response to this article, too. For myself, Lacan’s
views on ethics are compromised by the way, reminiscent of the techniques of
some analytic philosophers, that he circumscribes the ethical domain.
Nevertheless, even those with limited background can learn much from the essay
about Lacanian psychoanalysis.

The same
can be said about the next contribution, Kirsten Hyldgaard’s “Truth and
Knowledge in Heidegger, Lacan and Badiou.” Here, Hyldgaard seeks to show that
the notions of truth and knowledge in the three thinkers are homologous,
although Badiou receives less attention than the other two. Hyldgaard begins by remarking that Heidegger’s
post-Being and Time conception of
truth as alethia, or uncealedness, reflects the influence
of the psychoanalytic notion of a
symptom as both concealing and revealing the unconscious. The author then
discusses Heidegger’s favorable interpretation of the Plato of the cave in The Republic, which exemplifies altethia as a process of formation, and
Heidegger’s unfavorable interpretation of the later Plato as having fallen away
from alethia and adopted a truth as
correctness schema. Hyldgaaard next maintains that there are homologies among
the categories of neurosis, perversion, and psychosis and the Existenzialen of Being and Time on one hand, and between the psychoanalytic concepts
of repression, disavowal, and foreclosure and the former triplets. What follows
is a fascinating discussion of Heidegger that aims to reject historicist
interpretation of his thought by denying that he postulates a “real” (Lacan)
that is “outside” of or “before” the symbolic, assuming, it seems to me, that
historicism requires such a preexistent real that then guarantees the
continuity of history throughout its constant change.

The next
essay, by Sam Gilespie, “Neighborhood of Infinity: On Badiou’s Deleuze: The
Clamor of Being”, is a defense of Badiou’s critique of Deleuze. The essay is a
lucid discussion of the differences between Deleuze and Badiou and a
presentation of Badiou’s basis for claiming that Deleuze is not au fond a philosophier of multiplicity.
Gilespie describes Badiou as a “complex thinker who weaves Cantorian set
theory, Maoist politics, Lacanian antiphilosophy, and Mallarme’s poetics—among
other things—into a philosophical system that can easily meet the challenges
posed by Heidegger, Levinas, and Deleuze.”

The final
paper in this category or section of Umbr(a) 2001 is a defense of Deleuze
against Badiou. Ophir and Azoulay maintain that Badiou has failed to understand
the transcendental character of Deleuzian ontology—i.e., that the unity in
multiplicity of Being are such that on the level of transcendentality the
multiplicity is not a matter of simulacra or things, but is internal to Being
as such: “The oneness of Being should not be opposed to the multiplicity of
simulacra or things, but to the multiplicity of its own transcendental
bifurcations.”

In
conclusion, Umbr(a) is a valuable
resource of ideas and discussion for
all those interested in psychoanalysis in general and in Lacan in particular.

© 2002 Marilyn Nissim-Sabat

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, Ph.D.,
M.S.W., Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy,
Lewis University, Romeoville, IL , Clinical Social Worker, private practice
in psychodynamic psychotherapy, Chicago, IL, Member Executive Board, Assoc. for
the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry

Categories: Psychoanalysis, Philosophical