The Real (and the) Intersubjective
Uri Hadar
Department of Psychology
Tel Aviv University
Ramat Aviv 69978
Israel
Short title: The Real
December 2009
Abstract
The notion of the Real in Lacan is very paradoxical because, on one hand, it bears a similarity to what we intuitively consider as real, namely, something that is immediately graspable yet, on the other hand, everything we can recognize and identify is already a figure of our imagination, a representational entity. Lacan's Real takes this paradox to its limit, showing that everything is influenced by the Real, but nobody knows where or what it is.
Classically, the real is considered as an objective being, a being devoid of subjectivity, but this is not necessarily the case with the Real. Of course, wherever one encounters something Real, it seems devoid of will or intention but, like with the lost object, one has a sense that these were there in the immediately preceding moment. In that sense, one can have an intersubjective relationship with this lost moment of the Real. The paper examines the manner in which this possibility is anchored in a linguistic reality, in the property of being linguistic. The paper then proceeds to show that this intersubjectivity emanates from the relation of language to the body, from the relation of the conscious mind to its own body. This idea is illustrated by analyzing the figure of Saul Below's Henderson the Rain King.
Introduction
Psychoanalysis fluctuates- as it has done since its inception- between a vision of man as situated in an always already social matrix, and that of the lone individual facing the world with whatever inhabits her milieu, be it other human beings or other beings less human. This has reflected in the theoretical twists of what has become a tradition of thought, a whole lineage of it, full with diversities, clashes and emerging paradigms. Lacan has steered clear of taking a position on this matter, investing painstakingly in formulating his ideas in terms that equally lend themselves to intra and inter psychic explications. Of course, he criticized ego psychology more fiercely than he did any other school of psychoanalysis and some of his basic writings (e.g., the 'Seminar on The purloined letter', Lacan (1972)) are formulated in an intersubjective language, but the rumor has it that Lacan regretted these formulations and there are warnings that he explicitly gave against an intersubjective interpretation of his ideas.
The above two poles of psychoanalytic theory have left their mark on theoretical analyses of Lacan’s notion of the Real, a concept that is inherently elusive and difficult to explicate. In a recent article, I have proposed a fairly intra-psychic reading of the Real (Hadar, in press b), at least in the sense that interpersonal dynamisms could be construed as manifestations of internal constructions (of subject and other). There are, however, other readings of the Real that depict its domain within an interpersonal matrix like, for example, Stephen Frosh (2008), who wrote in a recent article that
…humanism evokes the possibility of shared experience, of recognition as many would have it, precisely because it is out of the background Real that all subjects arise, and the workings of which we can observe, and draw on, in one another. (P. 316).
The present article joins in this line of thought balancing, as it were, my previous take on the Real (Hadar, in press b). In doing so, the paper elaborates on the tension between the intuitive subject-less nature of 'reality' and the ambiguously subjective nature of the Real. While this emphasis diverges from the sensibilities of my earlier paper, it nevertheless presumes similar philosophical pre-suppositions in viewing the Real as irredeemably representational. In fact, it is precisely the manner in which the Real is shaped by representation or, more specifically, language, that it must also be considered as a bearer of subjectivity. More precisely, the Real is derived from representation, because it is located where representation has its gaps, paradoxes, incoherences, etc. These missing bits, these misses, are not only in the realm of articulation as such, not only a discourse phenomenon, but reside in the irremovable gap between subject and other. More strongly, the Real may be construed as what comes into being through the gap, the abyss, at times, between subject and other. In that sense, it can not fail to be intersubjective. This is particularly clear with regard to the Imaginary Real (see below), but it also leaves its mark in Symbolic discussions (e.g., Muller 1996). Since the agency of the other in these analyses has been quite thoroughly internal, the intersubjective- despite being an obvious possibility- has remained undeveloped.
The manner in which I wish to develop the intersubjective perspective is by starting off with Schema L, which came as Lacan’s rendering of Freud’s structural model (Lacan, 1954-1955). The Schema is very condensed presenting, as it does, Lacan’s theory of agency in mental life, the various agencies that are played out in the field of the subject and the manner in which agency corresponds with the various registers of mental life- the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. In the following pages, I shall first read schema L as an extended structural model, then I shall articulate its reading in a linguistic mode, and then extrapolate from the basic framework to an intersubjective reading. Finally, I shall present a number of illustrations in order to outline the explanatory scope of my reading.
Schema L- preliminary definitions
Lacan’s schema L is a rendering of Freud’s structural model- this emerges clearly from the seminar that has first elaborated the schema in 1955, that is, seminar II (Lacan, 1954-1955), which has the structural model as its focal topic. The fundamental divergences of schema L from the structural model are twofold: Firstly, while the structural model presents with three, schema L presents with four agencies (or instances, as the French goes). Instead of ego, superego and id- terms that Lacan, of course, never accepted on purely translational grounds (see below)- schema L presents with two agencies that are related to the subject- Es and moi in Figure 1- and two agencies that are related to the other- autre and Autre– also known respectively as the specular and the big other. Secondly, the various agencies are construed as establishing two of the most basic orders of mental function- the Symbolic and the Imaginary. The orders are seen to arise from the relation, in each case, between two of the structural agencies: the Imaginary is created on the axis of the moi and the autre, while the Symbolic is created on the axis of the Es and the Autre (Figure 1). Below I discuss these two matters.
Figure 1: The basic Schema L[1]
Let me deal with the agencies first. The way to coordinate the agencies of Schema L with those of the structural model may not be in full agreement among scholars, but there is ample support for coordinating superego with Autre, ego with moi and id with es, so let me take this as a starting assumption and not argue it here in any detail. Of course, Lacan treats these agencies very differently from Freud or ego psychology (the main proponents of the structural model in post-Freudian developments). Yet, the basic coordination needs to be kept in mind if one wishes to fully appreciate the remarkable step that Lacan took with schema L. The fourth agency- the autre- has no counterpart in the structural model, but it is crucial not only for improving on Freud, but also for an intersubjective reading of the structural model, a model that has formed in psychoanalytic tradition as the most alien for intersubjective readings. The autre refers to the personified other, or rather, the specular other. This agency offers the subject a screen against which she can see herself, with which she can identify, onto which she can project and from which she can introject. In short, the autre is best represented, initially, by the Kleinian object. Generally speaking, then, in addition to the two agencies that represent the subject (ego and id in terms of the structural model), the schema has two agencies that represent the other, one personified (‘specular’) and one impersonal (‘big’, referring to the capitalization of the A in Autre). This distinction between two forms of otherness constitutes a major theoretical leap[2].
As for the axes or the orders, we have here definitional forms that are somewhat different from the more widespread manner of defining the orders. Whilst usually the Symbolic is construed as arising- both conceptually and psychologically- from language, the Imaginary is construed as arising from vision. In schema L, however, the Symbolic is presented as arising from the tension and complementarity between Autre and Es, while the Imaginary is presented as the relation between moi and autre. The point I wish to stress in the present article is, naturally, that while in the usual construal, the orders are predicated upon types of mental processes, in schema L they are predicated upon relatedness. The Symbolic as a relation between Es and Autre has been articulated in the most concentrated fashion in Kant avec Sade (Lacan, 1963), where Lacan indicated the essential complementarity between the two attitudes to morality- Kant’s and Sade’s- the former taking the side of the superego and the latter the side of the id. Again, it is beyond the scope of the present paper to dwell on these formulations. The relational Imaginary has been dealt with extensively from early on, in the various discussions of the mirror stage (e.g., Lacan, 1949) and later, in the discussion of anxiety (Lacan, 1962-1963).
It is useful to note already at this early stage of my discussion that the relational axes have also been dubbed ‘second’ and ‘third’, the former relating to Imaginary and the latter to Symbolic processes. The motivation for the use of these terms ought to be referred to Charles Peirce (1932), who spoke of representation in terms of firstness, secondness and thirdness. Firstness originates in a relation of causality, where the signifier varies along a single dimension that is causally produced by the signified, as in the quicksilver thermometer. Secondness originates in a relation of iconicity, where the signifier preserves the form of the signified, as in a figurative, two-dimensional painting. One can also think of the difference between firstness and secondness in terms of the degrees of freedom that the signifier has in relation to the signified. In firstness, there is only one degree of freedom and that is the extent to which the signifier varies when the signified changes, usually along a uni-dimensional scale. In secondness there are two degrees of freedom because the signifier forms itself in a two dimensional space. A photograph, for example, can undergo remarkable distortions by stretching or shrinking and still preserve its similitude to its object. Thirdness adds another degree of freedom by giving the signifier an arbitrary dimension, as in language. Nothing in the form of ‘table’ is even remotely suggestive of ‘tablehood’. Hence the third degree of freedom. Clearly, in all three modes of signification, a signified can give rise to many signifiers, but not to any signifier. All three systems are constrained in one way or another, even if in thirdness the constraints are more subtle.
Now, in Lacan’s view, the signifier is situated in the domain of the other, while the signified is situated in the domain of the subject. Since in schema L the orders are presented as a relation between something of the subject and something of the other, we are led to the coordination of the Lacanian orders with the Peircian modes of signification (Muller, 1996). The Imaginary is second because it may be construed as originating in vision-like, iconic processes, while the Symbolic is third because it originates in language-like, formal processes. The Real, then, and intuitively very much so, must be considered as a first, but since it is not, in and of itself, an order of representation, it is impossible to define its firstness as a relation between signifier and signified, other and subject. We need to somehow depict it as a relation before we can ascribe an indexical order to it (such as firstness). This brings us back to Schema L.
The pronominalization of Schema L
Seminar II presents with one of the most elegant moves of Lacan in relation to Freud: the move from internal structures (id, ego and superego) to modes of positioning of the subject (agency). The elegance of the move originates in the fact that its forming act is an act of translation. The Standard Edition translates the structural definition of the aim of psychoanalysis as “Where id was, there shall ego be”, but Lacan shows that the more adequate translation- considering the German terms that Freud had used- should have been “Where it was, there shall I be”, which totally traverses the spirit of the dictum. Instead of a process that renders the subject objective, we have a process that subjectifies the objectified speech. A remarkable shift indeed, and one that is achieved with the most economical textual means.
The theoretical shift represented by Lacan’s re-translation is achieved by replacing the reified concepts of the Standard translation (‘id’ and ‘ego’) with two pronominal terms- ‘it’ and ‘I’. This implies a theoretical program that, more generally, replaces reified internal structures with pronominal terms, which are inherently subversive of reification, simply because the sentential context always redefines their reference. ‘It’ and ‘I’ may refer to different persons or things depending on the specific speaker, the specific listener and their shared knowledge. If the speaker is John and the listener Hannah, then the reference of “I have no intention of doing it” is necessarily different from its reference when the speaker is Hannah and the listener John.
Now, ‘I’ and ‘it’ have already been equated by Lacan with ‘moi’ and ‘Es’ of schema L (Lacan, 1954-1955), by force of a translational equivalence. While such equivalence does not exist with regard to ‘(s)he’, it is suggestive to map it with ‘Autre’, because both represent a re-spected, distanced agency. These properties of the third-person agency are clearly indicated in such expressions as “I am (s)he (who did such and such)”. Also, in Hebrew, ‘(s)he’ (/hee/, /hoo/) is closely associated with the name of the deity, through the mediating concept of the present- /hoveh/. Moreover, the mapping of (s)he with Autre is supported by the confluence of thirdness, represented by the “Es-Autre” axis in schema L and, on the other hand, the third-person agency of both ‘it’ and ‘(s)he’. Here, two intricately related senses of ‘third’- the semiotic and the linguistic- seem to coincide. It is important to note, however, that the Autre is not indifferent to the gender of the agency that it represents. Its close association with ‘the name of the father’ (Lacan, 1954-1955) suggests that it should be gendered as male, if one is to preserve the logic of ‘order’ as articulated by Lacan.
The specular other can only match with ‘you’. Although this may give the sense that the match is a matter of default- ‘you’ and ‘autre’ are the only remaining terms that have not been matched- the agental coherence of this match is very strong, attesting to the agental coherence of schema L as a whole. It is probably most clearly evident in a Buberian line of thought, where ‘you’ and ‘I’ are intimately linked in mutual reflection and converging identities (Buber, 1958). The properties of constitutive intimacy and marked identifications also posit the Kleinian object in a position that could be thought of as ‘you’, especially in later developments (as in Winnicott’s (1969) notion of ‘object use’). But the Kleinian perspective problematizes this agency by tilting it in the direction of the third person. Still, such problematizing does not apply only to the idea of object as a second person, it also applies to ‘you’ as the present addressee. Thus, many languages have a history of using the third person in turning to the present addressee, especially as an act of distancing (Yaffe, 2006), so we have ‘Kleinian uses’, so to speak, of the second person in language as such. The Kleinian flavor of its constitution probably tilts the second person, psychoanalytically speaking, in the direction of the feminine. This bias is also strongly present in the Lacanian tradition, where the functions of identification, projection and introjection are shaped in the presence of the mother in ways that can not be easily stripped of their gendering (Hadar, in press a).
What we have here, then, is Schema L in a pronominal anchoring, as in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The pronominal Schema L
In respect of ‘I’, ‘he’ and ‘you’, the pronominal schema leaves unproblematic the basic association of agencies with the domains of signification- that of the subject and that of the other. ‘I’ falls naturally with the subject, while ‘he’ and ‘you’ fall with the other. ‘It’, however, does not easily belong in the domain of the subject. This, of course, is as true of Es as it is of ‘It’, but still, the word connotes the inability to take subject positions which the term Es circumvents by implying that it has a will of its own, a will that may subvert the primary will of the subject, nevertheless, a will (Grodeck’s (1923) notion of the ‘It’ brings this out very forcefully). To my mind, this problematic positioning of ‘it’ is reflective of a basic instability in and of the subject position, which reflects primarily in the various phenomena of unconscious acts and intentions, but it also manifests in purely linguistic constructs. Thus, in some languages, such as Hebrew, for example, ‘it’ can serve to underline agency. For example, the Hebrew for “I am the one who has done such and such” would be “/ani hu ze she’assah kach vekach/”, where ‘who’ in the English transliterates as ‘ze’ (it) in Hebrew, so the whole phrase transliterates as “I am he it has done such and such”. So here, in the Hebrew, the ‘it’ actually reinforces the agency of ‘I’. Although /ze/ can go with every other pronominal term, in all cases the effect is the strengthening of the pronominal focus and, with it, the reinforcement of agency. This complex use of ‘it’ encapsulates the intrinsic complication of having a first in the third, or rather, of needing a third for a first (but see also Benjamin, 2004).
Beyond the linguistic, or perhaps prior to it, the ‘it’ as a locus of subversive agency, of the subversion of the first person, traditionally revolves around bodily functions (Groedeck, 1923 ). As such, it enjoys or suffers from the whole range of complexities that relate the subject to her body: One’s body belongs with the subject in the most intimate fashion on the one hand, but alienates whenever becoming a focus of attention, an object of awareness. To a large extent, the subject positions herself precisely where she loosens up the drive of the corporeal to dominate consciousness, but at that very moment the subject’s need of the other, of an other, is the most tangible. Thus, it is when the subject can not maintain her own body, as when she is a baby or when she is ill, or when she can not maintain the body of the other, as in facing death, that the other is posited most urgently, most poignantly (Butler, 2004). The very existence of the other is then experienced in, of and through the experience of the body. This aspect of signification, this first in the third or third in the first, ought to be held in mind in searching for the (intersubjective) Real.
The axis of the Real
Why has the Real not appeared in schema L? To my mind, the answer lies in the Real being of a different order than the other two registers: While they can properly be considered representational- delivering particular and differential relations of signifier to signified- the Real can not (Hadar, in press a). Instead, the Real seems to consist of the various forms and loci in which representation falls short or fails in either the Imaginary or the Symbolic. The intersubjective Real, then, must answer the paradoxical condition that it can not arise in the relation of signifier to a signified, implying that it can not refer to the relation of subject to other. In other words, the Real can not be thought of as a relation between an agency on the left side of Schema L and an agency on its right side. Since the creation of Schema L aimed to base signification on the relation of subject and other (in their enactment of agency), the Real had no place in it. This means that, if one still wishes to represent the Real as a relation between agencies in Schema L, then it must show as either a left side or a right side relation. A right-side choice, a choice for the ‘other’ side, would place the Real with a pure externality, as the ultimate (intentional) otherness, the absolute spirit which, in my reading, pulls the Real towards a Kantian morality. A left-side choice would place the Real with the very gap between conscious and unconscious intentions, at the point where body becomes thought, which is rather Lacanian in its spirit, in my reading. Indeed, Lacan (2001, p. X-3) points in this direction in the following paragraph: “Once it is known, once something of the Real comes to be known, there is something lost; and the surest way to approach this something lost is to conceive of it as a fragment of the body”. Recall, of course, that bodily functions are well designated as positing ‘it’ (see end of previous section). The result is a Real that forms itself between the I and the It, the moi and the Es, or rather, a drive of the moi towards the Es, an m->s (Figure 3).
Figure 3: The intersubjective Schema L
In this version, the Real is presented as a relation between the first person and its own third or, in a psychological rendering, between the I and its body. As such, there is an irremovable instability that is built into it. Each of the two agencies (the I and the It) may be grasped- and experienced- as external and internal to the other, both at the same time. In the Symbolic register, the body is grasped as internal to the I, as in the universal sense that one’s body belongs to her. Each part of the body belongs with the I: this hand is mine and it is with my little eye that I spy an X. In the Imaginary, though, it is I who belong to my body, it is through the body that ‘I’ is located, recognized and perceived as continuous in time. When Narcissus looks at his image in the water he immediately loses the Symbolic ownership of his body and becomes entrapped in it. His urge to reach stability in relation to the body, his wish to resolve the ambiguity of its topological relation with the self, leads immediately to an emotional collapse, to a loss of volition. On the other hand, the schizotypical person, in her despair to ever attain a unity with the body, gives up on it and experiences it as an ultimate exteriority. This creates the variety of out-of-body experience.
The inherent instability of the Real may be illustrated by recourse to the Moebius strip, which has a region of instability where internal becomes external and vice versa (depending on the direction of the movement on the strip’s surface- see Figure 4).
Figure 4: The Moebius strip[3]
The region marked by the elliptic line represents the region of instability in the Moebius strip, where every move along the strip traverses the inclusion relations: Inside becomes outside in moving to the left, while outside becomes inside in moving to the right.
In the Lacanian discourse, the Moebius strip acts as a general metaphor for he distinction between subject and other. It implies that the distinction between them holds locally, where the subject is defined on the inside and the other on the outside, but when the subject starts investigating herself, starts being reflective, this may be described metaphorically as a movement on the strip, when sooner or later the subject will reach regions where the sides flip over (these regions are marked by the elliptic line in Figure 4). At this point, things become grossly unstable and the distinction between me and not me collapses. This is where the body presents itself to the subject, encapsulating the topological confusion. The area of instability hosts, as it were, the Real. I can sum this up by saying that the Real emerges where the subjectivity of the subject and the subjectivity of the other become inseparable. The body is created as a libidinal object only in order to immediately lose its externality, be lost as an object. Similarly, the body is experienced as transparent to the subject, as being entirely subject to the subject, only in order to be alienated with every pain, with every sign of in-submission. It may then be experienced as having a totally independent will of its own. One may summarize this by saying that, in the Real, the body fluctuates between its locus as self and its locus as other. Rather in the mode in which ‘it’ acts in language.
Let me now examine a few illustrations of this state of affairs.
The Real (and the) intersubjective
Consider conversive disorders, when anxiety, presumably, translates into somatic symptoms. Let me take seriously the Oedipal story here, whereby conversion is said to be tied up with the attempt to manipulate the parents in order to gain the love of both, and the discovery that things may become utterly clogged in the incommensurate conditions for love that are tagged with each of the parents. Subsequent to the discovery of this incommensurability, the subject redirects her libido towards her own body and positions it in the place of the other. (S)he then enters into a labyrinth of object relations with her body- creating, perhaps, the only conditions for which the term ‘object relations’ is wholly suitable. In her frustration, presumably, with the subjectivity of the other, with the otherness of the other, with the incommensurate conditions for parental love- the subject creates a simulation of otherness in her own body and attempts to object relate to it, only to discover that the trick doesn’t quite work out. The subjectivity of the other is, perhaps, managed, but at a very high price. The body is, of course, in some ways, other enough, but not subject enough and therefore not object enough. Let me examine in some detail this state of affairs in a case that is not constructed as a clinical study, but rather as a fictional biography: the case of Henderson the rain king (Bellow, 1958). It is precisely because this ‘case’ does not focus on bodily dysfunctions, as some clinical cases may have done, that one can obtain a fuller picture of the workings of the pursuit of the Real.
Henderson’s malady is presented primarily in the context of intimate relationships: His first marriage gets derailed for lack of passion, and his second marriage does the same for its excesses. He is restless, quarrelsome and unable to communicate his attachment to either spouses or children. Blocked as he is, emotionally, Henderson seeks refuge in playing the violin and in growing pigs: both of these work fairly well for him, but leave him nevertheless with a marked margin of discontent, manifesting as an incessant inner voice that says “I want, I want”. In his mid-fifties, Henderson takes the chance of travel to Africa in order to part with his old life, get away from it. In Africa his permanent want finds a redeeming circumstance: He meets with what he experiences as a true and real self, becoming the Shaman of rain with a tribe that has kept its traditional culture.
The book does not give us a straightforward account of Henderson’s malaise. The prime scene of his discontent is his distraught intimate relationships, but this is preceded by the scenes of cruel fighting in Italy during WW-II. Indeed, in the most traumatic combat of the war, only Henderson and a friend remain alive, which both confuses and arouses in him a strange sense of guilt, like questioning his right to live. Still later, already in Africa, Henderson tells us that even as a child he has experienced intense aggression and an irremovable restlessness. There are also hints of paternal aggression, but the reader never quite knows. My take here is, of course, that Henderson, like many of us, especially those who have experienced violence, can not stand the wants of both Imaginary and Symbolic life and seeks the Real. Seeks an experience that transcends the ambiguities of culture. Seeks a point of no beyond, an object that does not answer him back, an other who surrenders her subjectivity. And Henderson finds such reality in the physicality of his African existence.
On the most general level, the metaphysics of corporeality is presented in terms of global oppositions, for example, on p. 101 Henderson lies in an isolated cell where he has been left in captivity by those who are soon going to offer him his transcendental role as rain king. As he opens his eyes he sees a pink color that gives him a very clear sense of reality and a sharp insight. He says “At once I recognized the importance of this, as throughout my life I have known these moments when the dumb begins to speak, when I hear the voices of object and colors; then the physical universe starts to wrinkle and change and heave and rise and smooth, so it seems that even the dogs have to lean against a tree, shivering”. One phrase is particularly resonant with the ideas presented here, namely, “when the dumb begins to speak”, when the physical becomes interpersonal, although in this phrase the physical does not concern the body: it is a lot more general. The global equation is particularized to the body some time later, after Henderson has become the rain king. We get a description of the general metaphysics of king Dahfu, Henderson’s patron and educator: “…What he was engrossed by was the belief in the transformation of human material, that you could work either way, either from the rind to the core or from the core to the rind; the flesh influencing the mind, the mind influencing the flesh, back again to the mind, back once more to the flesh”.
Yet Henderson’s African project is not that of the attainment of a general metaphysics, but one of allowing his own body to play its leading role, away from Imaginary ambiguities or Symbolic commitments. A constitutive experience in this respect has been in an interaction with queen Willatale, a woman of immense bodily proportions, who has come to like Henderson and whom, he believed, “has a real gift” for the absolute truth. He asks her to tell him what she perceived in him, to which she responds saying through the mouth of Itelo, Henderson’s aide and translator (p. 82): “ ‘She say now, Mistah Henderson, that you have a great capacity, indicated by your largeness, and especially your nose.’ My eyes were big and sad and I touched my face”. The quote certainly emphasizes the phallic aspects of Henderson’s corporeal project while, at the same time, mocks the Symbolic through Itelo’s distortion of proper English pronunciation. In another constitutive passage, Henderson gets increasingly excited in a scene that provides the main test of his focus on corporeality, when he manages to summon his great bodily strength in order to move the sculpture of a goddess from her fixed place, a movement that marks the end of a long period of aridity in the region, when the rains failed to come. This act crowns Henderson as the rain king. In nurturing the wish to go into the arena of godly sculptures, Henderson meditates (p. 182): “Oh, my body, my body! Why have we never got together as friends? I have loaded it with my vices, like a raft, like a barge.” Again we have here the body as a vehicle of mental attributes, ‘vices’ in this case, but all was going to change by a single act of ascending into the corporeal.
The project of corporeality does not concern only Henderson’s body, but also the internalization of other bodies. In the above scene with queen Willatale, Henderson is made to kiss her belly, an experience that is described in the following way (p. 74): “I was aware of the old lady’s navel and her internal organs as they made sounds of submergence. I felt as though I was riding in a balloon above the Spice Islands, soaring in hot clouds while exotic odors arose from below. My own whiskers pierced me inward, in the lip.” The experience of other bodies clearly widens the range of connecting to the Real, which is taken even further in the following passage, where king Dahfu instructs Henderson about how to make the most of the fairly intimate presence of his lioness (p. 267): “And glare as you do so. Roar, roar, roar, Henderson-Sungo. Do not be afraid, let go of yourself. Snarl greatly. Feel the lion. Lower on the forepaws. Up with hindquarters. Threaten me. Open these magnificent mixed eyes. Oh, give more sound. Better, better,” he said, “though still too much pathos. Give more sound. Now, with your hand- your paw- attack. Cuff. Fall back. Once more- strike, strike, strike, strike! Feel it. Be the beast. You will recover humanity later, but for the moment, be it utterly.”
I think that the above quotations give a clear sense of the problematics of the intersubjective Real, namely, the manner in which the attainment of the corporeal is promoted precisely by its transcendence; the relationship between the body and the other creates itself in the process where the body is alleviated towards non-bodiness, towards non-physicality, towards odors, animality or even speech.
The body as Real
The experience of the body is not synonymous with the relation of the ‘I’ to the ‘it’- this must be stressed in any discussion of the Real. Rather, the body ought to be thought of as a system through which the Real is marked, a system that allows us to map the Real onto Imaginary and Symbolic terms. Of course, if the Real is not related to the corporeal in any simple way, then why does the body possess a special status in representing it? I have already noted that the crux here is not in the corporeality of the body, but in its unstable locus between inside and outside. Yet, the Other also occupies a similarly unstable position, so why the body and not the Other? I think that, indeed, both body and Other partake in the topological Moebiusity that is involved with the Real, in the ambiguity of internal and external, but the Other is most clearly another agency, another contention on subject positions, whilst the body is not. As much as one can differentiate between the subject of consciousness and the subject of the unconscious, between “I” and “It” as agencies, the “It” does not fully partake in the occupying of subject positions, definitely not in the manner in which it is marked by the body. It is precisely this degraded subjectivity that gives the body its preferential status in marking the Real. Yet, the commonality of body and other, their Moebiusity, creates conditions in which they are identified. This is what happens when the body is charged with the roles of the other, as in conversive phenomena, and maybe also in psychosomatic phenomena. Here the body starts speaking to the subject, starts sending messages, and these messages are not confined to bodily jouissance, to the experience of the body; they can also extend to messages of a higher logical order, even to metaphysical messages. If we look at the paralysis of Anna O, whose hand got paralyzed following a fantasy in which, in their movement towards the body of her father, her fingers transformed into phallic agents (snakes). Well, it is clear here that the body takes the role of the other, of an agency that has separated itself from Anna’s “I”. Indeed, this agency is probably that of the Other (with a capital ‘O’), because it acts as a superego. The body tells the hand that its movement is damned and condemned due to its incestuous erotization. Paralysis is the sentence that the hand receives from the body, in its identification with the Other. In some extreme cases, the situation becomes even more sinister. The body becomes invaded by external forces, by others who are both specular and capitalized (both other and Other). Such are the experiences of Schreber, who is invaded by god and is being transformed by Him into a woman. Collett Soller (1995) defines this situation- following Lacan- as “the reintroduction of jouissance in the place of the Other”. One speaks here of bodily jouissance, of course: Schreber’s experience is that of a physical pain. In fact, what we have here is what Lacan calls ‘phalic jouissance’, namely, a jouissance that is predicated upon sexuation, upon sexuall difference. In its “reintroduction in the place of the Other”, the body is transformed into the other body, the body that (de)codes the other sex.
Despite those important and remarkable cases in which the body and the Other are mixed, transposed or confused- cases whose possibility is inherent in the ambiguity of both body and other with regard to internality and externality- despite of these cases, the Other is not conceived here as a major player in the positioning of the Real (beyond its obvious role in the Symbolic). Instead, the I positions the Real by turning to corporeality, namely, to an otherness that is lacking of agency. Lacan has repeatedly referred to this otherness as ‘ex-sistent’, namely, as an entity that attains its ontological position from the Symbolic, as its internal externality (see also, Hadar, in press b).
Conclusion
Lacan’s Real is in a complex relationship with Freud’s real, considered as the notion on which is predicated the ‘reality principle’. In both cases, the ‘I’ finds in the real something that (s)he experiences as different from herself, something that is beyond subjectivity, yet influences her life in an irremovable and powerful manner. In both cases, the real is something that the subject experiences as of urgent importance for its survival. Yet, Freud’s reality purports to be, on the face of it, external, unambiguously so. With Lacan one does not know the locus of the Real: it is internal as much as it is external. Yet, the subject has a need to posit it as wholly external. As I have shown in my earlier paper on the Real (Hadar, in press b), this need drives the conversion of anxiety into desire and, in turn, is driven by this very conversion. My Henderson illustration shows, I think, how precisely where the subject is totally convinced of having put her finger on the Real, there she is most deeply trapped in phantasmatic mentation. The Real is not more real than anything else in mental life, even when it is experienced as objective.
Lacan’s Real is not only lacking in locus in terms of the topology of inside and outside, it is also lacking in connectivity. It is dispersed in mental life among symbolic and imaginary representations, because every idea demands an externality. Every idea creates its Real in a process whose retrospectivity can not be traced. This is what Lacan means by the paradoxical idiom for which he is copyrighted: always already. By the time an idea had forged itself in our mind, its Real externality is already formed as well. This means that, inasmuch as ideas can be elaborated, transformed, divided and added up- so can the Real. It does not occupy a connected or a full space. Indeed, the Real can not save us from the indeterminacy of our mental life. Rather, it keeps complicating things ever and ever more.
In the formulations suggested here, the Real is also construed as an intersubjective domain, albeit, an intersubjectivity that is between the subject and her body. In various forms, this has been argued by relational psychoanalysts in the past few decades (Mitchell, 2000), but in the specific form in which it appears here, the Real is characterized by the elimination of any subjectivity from mental representation, be it in the representation of self, or in the representation of other. Apparently, it is not extraordinary for the subject to wish to remove the subjectivity of the other and turn her into an object (Benjamin, 1998), but that this should also be done to the self is a specific contribution of Lacan’s reading of Freud. The motivation to do so does not arise in power relations or needs of domination, as is often the case in the interpersonal realm (Benjamin, 1998), but answers a particular need that originates in the very nature of mental life, of representation. The very ability to create a representation is driven by the experience of a level of existence that is devoid of subjectivity, which is where the Real comes into being. It is as if representation is a kind of being that can not sustain itself without a non-subjective otherness. As if representation can only walk in the world with a leaning stick that stabilizes it, something that anchors it and prevents it from being carried away in the stream of signification. This issue is very important in its own right, but it is beyond the scope of the present paper.
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[1] The figure of the schema has been copied from the French Wikipedia at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%A9ma_L
[2] Hebrew has two different words that correspond precisely to the present reading of autre and Autre. The specular autre is called /zulat/, a word whose origin is not clear and also means 'except for'. Its close phonological relatives are ‘cheap’ or /zol/ as well as ‘disrespect’ /zilzul/. The big Autre is called /acher/, a word that also has an adjectival form synonymous with ‘different’. Being late /le’acher/ and behind /me’achor/ are also connected to this root.
[3] Copied from the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip
