any result, lacanians - marxistphilosophy

[Kenneth MacKendrick]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of j
laari

Ken,

tell me why false.

> Whitebook equates the Lacanians with Habermas, as linguistic
reductionists.
> I think the assessment of both as such is false.

*Whitebook's claim that Lacan is a linguistic reductionist assigns too high
a role to the symbolic in Lacan's work. It ignores the register of the Real
and the Imaginary - in particular, the way in which the symbolic is situated
in the Imaginary (fantasy). Whitebook's claims regarding Lacan are
coincidental with Lacan's claims about psychosis. In psychosis one because
immersed in language - i.e. linguistic reductionism.

*With regards to Habermas, even if Whitebook's critique is correct, and
Habermas is a linguistic reductionist, he is still left with the problem of
how we can access nature apart from language. In his earlier work he
suggested the discipline of biology, but I suspect this hasn't panned out
since he doesn't mention it in his later work. Aside from that difficulty,
Whitebook doesn't adequately take serious Habermas's understanding of power
and ideology: distorted communication. Distorted communication relies on
non-linguistic mechanisms - which, really, govern our everyday use of
language. That's hardly linguistic reductionism.

 For me it's O.K. to think both Habermas' and Lacan's theories of
thinking linguistically reductionist ones. Why? Because they don't
give a clear account of what thinking is and what is its relation to
language. When lacanians are referring to thinking, they usually begin
to talk about The Symbolic. (And what are Habermas' non-linguistic
mechanisms?) As far as I can tell, that's linguistic reductionism in
relation to thinking. There is no concept of thinking as such, just
descriptions of linguistic forms or structures and activities. Now, I
don't mind when it comes to lacanian psychoanalysis, because it's not
philosophy (it would be silly to "criticize" psychoanalysis to be
psychoanalysis instead of philosophy). It's different with Habermas
and the Frankfurt tradition.

*There is a tremendous amount of material on thinking and Lacanian
psychoanalysis... so much so that I wouldn't know where to start. How about
Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious? Esp. the essay by Mladen Dolar.

What bothers me a bit is lacanian reaction when someone utters some
kind critical remarks. 'You don't understand this.' Well, I understand
it in my way. And from my viewpoint. Worser lacanian reaction is
psychologizing: 'You are psychopathological case', as someone already
noted. Well, perhaps so. However, in rational discussion we don't go
into personal issues. No 'ad hominem' arguments, bitteschn. It's all
about concepts, theories, and logic. Or it's not reasonable
discussion, I think.

*Fair enough, to be sure... but, really, most people that don't articulate a
sustained engagement with Lacan really butcher his work. The same goes for
Habermas. Quite often both are casually tossed off with a couple lines. I'd
say that it is quite fashionable to treat both of these thinkers this way.

 ...And then read something from Lacan, where he collapses Hegel,
Heildegger, Freud
and Levi-Strauss into one happy discourse.

*sigh.

ken