The Dislocations of the Real
3.3 Traumatic rupture
The description of the presymbolic real enabled an understanding of trauma as the resurfacing of an unbearable jouissance located at the level of corporeality, something that suddenly disrupts the smooth surface and coherence of the arduously constructed body image. The dynamic between an experience of continuity (as provided by the ego and the body image) and something real that suddenly disrupts this experience can be extrapolated to other dimensions. The main idea here is that both the experience of oneself as a solid entity and the coherence of reality, as prime examples of apparently continuous entities, can be interrupted in an unforeseen way. What underpins this idea is the claim that being
itself is marked by an irreducible lack, and that the constitution of both reality and identity as something substantive requires the installation of a fantasmatic screen to cover up the instability that lies underneath.
This screen can, however, be ripped apart. Such ruptures are encoun- tered in many different forms, on many different planes. When such a rupture occurs, trauma is one possible outcome.
The postsymbolic real thus signals the constitutive incompleteness of any symbolic structure. In Lacan’s ontology, being itself is marked by a gap, which is repeated by the emergence of the signifier. Lack is thus doubled: the lack of being cannot be remediated by the Other, which is itself barred or incomplete. The imaginary register obscures this doubled lack through the content of signification. It establishes a ‘signified world of meaning’ that we ‘consciously inhabit’ (Eisenstein & McGowan, 2012, p. 13). The primary characteristic of the imaginary is its ability to erect an experience of the world as coherent and stable: a world without gaps or rents. As Lacan puts it: ‘It’s in the Imaginary that I locate the support of what is consistency’ (Lacan, 1975–76, p. 50). The imaginary allows us to approach the world ‘in pursuit of recurrent patterns of meaning’
(Vanheule, 2011a, p. 158). This inclination towards images, appearances and unity is purportedly rooted in the experience of the body image (see above). The disturbance of the harmony provided by the imaginary provokes unease.
Traumatic rupture occurs when the natural flow of things is suddenly interrupted by the impossible. As such, the real is not reducible simply to ‘something out of the ordinary’ that traverses our expectations. The definition of a traumatic event, through the concept of the real, as the impossible which nevertheless occurs, has many and far-reaching conse- quences (Lacan, 1964, p. 280). It means that the very ‘background for understanding’ must be reworked to make possible a reading of what happened. Because the magnitude of the rupture in trauma is so vast, it implies a change in the coordinates of what is possible and what is not.
In turn, this necessitates a particular form of subjective activity that, because of its very nature, has political ramifications. In Chapter 6, these ideas will be taken up and worked out.
4 Conclusion
This chapter provided an outlook on Lacan’s difficult notion of the real in its many facets. The real can be thought of in terms of something that ex-sists outside of language and continuously disrupts representa- tion. Moreover, it is this very disruption, this failure to represent, that
continuously stimulates a series of never-ending attempts at representa- tion. The real is defined as the impossible, and it manifests itself in a strictly senseless fashion: its occurrence is entirely unpredictable in that it cannot be derived from the laws that govern the situation in which it arises. Its traumatic force lies in its formal radicality: a traumatic encounter changes the coordinates of what was deemed possible. It prevents the pre-existent symbolic-imaginary system performing its function of ‘ignorant misrecognition’ ( méconnaissance ) (Lacan, 1953–54, p. 53). The lack at the core of being is suddenly laid bare and the smooth surface of meaning is disrupted. The field of experience becomes affected by something that testifies to non-meaning, by an opaque and sense- less disturbance. Moreover, lack can no longer be covered up by the traversed pre-existent logic. From this, I propose to define trauma as that which demands a restructuration of the subject in its relation to the Other .
In the next two chapters, I will discuss the real in its ethical and polit- ical aspects respectively. This will lay the groundwork for the elabora- tion of the Lacanian act in Chapter 6.
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The title of this chapter is reminiscent of Alenka Zupancic’s (2000) book Ethics of the Real, which situates and typifies the ethics particular to psychoanalysis, as developed by Lacan mainly in Seminar VII (1959–60).
In what follows, this paradoxical notion of an ‘ethics of the real’ will be scrutinized, whereby the primary focus on trauma is momentarily aban- doned. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of this excursion will be to illumi- nate the interrelations between trauma and ethics. In Chapter 2, I argued that the practices associated with the PTSD construct dovetail with the assumptions underpinning today’s prevailing ethical stance, encapsulated in the human rights doctrine. A brief discussion of Badiou’s critique of this type of ethics laid bare the problems associated with it, despite its merits:
the emphasis on vulnerability reduces those affected to the position of victims and strips them bare of their agency. In turn, this risks producing a general attitude of ‘nihilistic resignation’ that obstructs the envisioning of alternatives, and thus serves to consolidate the status quo. The framework of PTSD was thereby shown to be interwoven with this particular ethical position – in contrast with the popular outlook that considers it a merely technical, value-free construct. Given the problems associated with both PTSD and this type of ethics, a search for alternatives is warranted.
The central claim of this book is that the concept of the real is at the heart of the intersections between trauma, ethics and politics. In what follows, the goal is to chart the manner in which the real is related specifically to the field of ethics. As established in the previous chapter, the real is the central Lacanian concept to think trauma. It thus comes as a surprise that this same concept is propounded to be the driving force behind a specific type of ethics associated with psychoanalysis.
4
The Lacanian Concept of the
Real in Relation to the Ethics of
Psychoanalysis
How are we to understand this claim? How can something that is ‘inher- ently traumatic’ be, at the same time, the very foundation of ethics?
Importantly, what does this imply for our understanding of trauma and the manner in which we deal with it? What place do ethics take in the manner in which we address trauma? These preliminary questions orient the following sections. Our point of entry will be a description of the so-called ethics of the real. In secondary literature, the works of Zupančič (2000), Marc De Kesel (2002) and Calum Neill (2011) consti- tute its most notable articulations, which we will use as a springboard for what follows. Zupančič’s work will be the primary point of reference for this chapter, as her line of reasoning renders vivid, in a very clear and direct way, the point where the real intersects with ethics. The discus- sion of the real within ethics necessitates a terminological distinction between morality on the one hand, and ethics on the other. As Neill (2011) remarks, morality is concerned with concrete and sturdy notions of what constitutes right or wrong. Most often, this translates in a set of particular edicts or prescriptions which are consolidated in tradition.
Ethics will be revealed to be what lies beyond these particular concep- tions of the good, beyond the concrete content of the moral codes in question.
1 Kant’s ethics of desire
According to Zupančič (2000), Lacan’s elaboration of the ethics of psychoanalysis takes as its point of departure the Kantian break with
‘traditional ethics’. This break is twofold. First, Kant acknowledged that the moral imperative is not concerned with the possibility of fulfilling certain obligations: morality is inherently a demand for the impossible. As such, he discovered the dimension of desire, as something that endlessly circles around an impossible real, to be central to ethics (Zupančič, 2000, p. 3). Second, Kant rejected the view that ethics concerns itself with the
‘distribution of the good’: it is not about wanting the good for others as one conceives it for oneself. Both Kant and Lacan rally against utilitarian and standard Christian ethics that try to ground ethics in some calculus of pleasures or gains. As such, their position is in turn very much out of sync with the dominant moral outlooks of our times, which remain strongly influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s and John Stuart Mill’s forms of utilitarianism. The latter is the paradigmatic example of a consequen- tialist ethical theory, wherein the moral worth of an action is judged by its resultant outcome: the best course of action is the one that maximizes a positive effect in terms of utility. For instance: ‘the greatest happiness
of the greatest number’ as the measure of right and wrong. By contrast, Kant attempted to ground his ethics in the adherence to a rational prin- ciple merely for the sake of duty, which is why it is often considered an example of deontological ethics. Zupančič (2000) argues that Lacan started off from Kant’s analysis of the logics of desire in ethics, in order to take an additional step into the realm of the drive as central to ethics.
In this endeavor, however, Kant remained the most important philo- sophical reference point for Lacan, and a large portion of this chapter will therefore be devoted to some of the former’s main ideas.
The opening question to be addressed is the following: how is desire related to ethics? The traditional answer is that human desires are exces- sive: they constitute a dangerous, disruptive force that must be kept in check through the formation of and adherence to a moral code, so that our behavior is kept free of all excess. The unbridled living out of desires is deemed problematic because it interferes with the rights, preferences and happiness of others. Therefore, ethics appears to be involved with a gradual turning away from one’s egotistical inclinations towards more and more sociable goals. Kant will turn this idea upside down: ethics will not keep our conduct free of excess, but it is, in itself, excessive by nature. As I will show, this claim derives from his particular conception of ‘the good’.