What does science know? Lacan against positivism in his lost seminar, âOn the Names-of-the-Fatherâ
When I think about the Google Anti-Diversity memo that is circulating, I canât help but think of Jacques Lacanâs complicated relationship with science and how his ideas serve to contradict the foundation on which James Damore, the author of the memo, might claim to know anything at all.
To provide some context, in 1963, on the wrong end of the SociĂ©tĂ© Française de Psychanalyse, one of his most groundbreaking seminars, âOn the Names-of-the-Father,â was interrupted by his demotion from the position of didacticien.
Drawing a stark distinction between psychology as a tool of maintaining the status quo and psychoanalysis as, among other things, a tool to elucidate the subject and resolve symptomatic behavior, Lacan writes:
In the positivist perspective, intelligence is but one affect among others, based on the hypothesis of intelligibility. This justifies a psychology of Tarot card readers, which is concocted in places that are supposedly freest from this kind of claptrap: endowed university chairs. [To positivists,] affect, conversely, is thus merely an obscure form of intelligence.
What escapes people who study such teachings is the obscurantism to which they are subjected. We know what it leads to: to the ever more intentional undertakings of a technocracy; to the psychological standardization of subjects who are seeking jobs; and to acceptance of the established boundaries of society as it currently exists, head bent forward under the weighty standard of the psychologist.
I say that the meaning of Freudâs discovery is radically opposed to that. (âOn theâŠâ 60â61)
At the beginning of the seminar, one can hear Lacanâs frustration as his analysand-like confession of momentary disgrace is conveyed to his students.
But this quotation goes beyond frustration and beyond the discipline of psychology and the practice of psychoanalysis. Lacanâs critique of positivism and the technocracy it would precipitate reflect how Lacan sees scientific knowledge and how he might envision psychoanalysis as a science. For Lacan, science is formalized but has little to do with knowledge. Scienceâs exclusive claim to knowledge is a fantasy.
We see that in Lacanâs critique here. Lacan disputes the hypothesis of intelligibility, claiming that any psychology that purports to offer insight into an individualâs value by indexing their intelligence is tantamount to, Lacanâs cultural insensitivity aside, baseless speculation. Lacan calls psychologyâs practice of making an inventory of an individualâs traits, strengths, and weaknesses, obscurantism. For all the ways psychology claims to give a clear picture about a given person, it obscures what is most important about the subject for Lacan: that they know nothing.
Furthermore, as stated above, Lacan believes psychoanalysis is a practice that can scrutinize systems of knowledge rather than anything that can claim to be knowledge itself. This coincides with Lacanâs constant refrain that psychoanalysis is not an ontology. For Lacan, psychologyâs function as a tool of hiring, firing, and social control is antithetical to psychoanalysisâs insurgent potential.
Bruce Fink explicates an aspect of Lacanâs relationship to science quite well in his 2002 essay, âKnowledge and Jouissance.â Fink writes:
Modern science, for example, is ostensibly about measurements and the production of âhard facts,â and thus virtually the entire American psychological establishment has enlisted itself in the production of measures and statistics of all kinds.
But is that the kind of scientificity that psychoanalysis can hope to achieve or even wish to achieve? The APA Monitor, the main organ of the American Psychological Association, occasionally lists which aspects of Freudâs theories have been borne out by empirical research: of course, when we consider what they have reduced Freudâs theories to in order to test them, and then examine the research design they have come up with to test such watered-down theories, we may well wonder whether the supposed confirmations are of any more value than the alleged refutations!
According to Lacan, this is not at all the kind of scientificity at which psychoanalysis must aim: to his mind, psychoanalysis is not currently a science, and it is not by going in that direction that it will become one. âIt is not what is measured in science that is important, contrary to what people thinkâ (Seminar XX, 116/128). (Fink 27)
Here, we can see again the conflict between psychoanalysis and psychology, ranging from the Société Française de Psychanalyse which made itself accountable to associations of psychology and thus censured Lacan and the APA Monitor.
Fink goes on to say of Lacanâs view of Antiquityâs view of knowledge (a mouthful, I know), âAll knowledge at that time, participated, in Lacanâs words, âin the fantasy of an inscription of the sexual linkâ (Seminar XX, 76/82) ⊠The relation between knowledge and the world was consubstantial with a fantasy of copulationâ (Fink 28). Lacan goes on to criticize the position of his psychoanalytic contemporaries, suggesting that the fantasy of copulation has given way to the always-in-the-distance potential for harmony between âthe sexes.â If we seem far afield from the initial point, or perhaps dangerously close to sharing Damoreâs position that the gender of man and the gender of woman are inherently different, that would not be Lacanâs position. Lacanâs argument of harmony as a fantasy is not one of inherent difference between individuals assigned whatever gender at birth. Lacan believes that sex has nothing to do with biology, but rather a given psychic structure.
What is important here is Lacanâs conception of the âunknowing subjectâ and formalization over knowledge. Damore represents the scientific position of a potential harmony between two genders if these two genders are understood as totally bifurcated and biologically determined. Lacan subverts this position by deploying the unknowing subject and attempting to eliminate the fantasy of harmony, a harmony that is only possible through an acknowledgement of fundamental biological difference, a claim which Lacan consistently refutes in every bit of his work. Fink gives Lacanâs reasoning for extolling Freudâs deployment of Oedipus in his work, âOedipus was ⊠a perfect model for the unknowing subject, for a subject who acts without knowing why, in any conscious sense of the word âknowing.â From the vantage point of psychoanalysis, âThereâs no such thing as a knowing subjectâ (Seminar XX, 114/126) says Lacanâ (Fink 30).
According to Fink, Lacan contends that one of the most important aspects of Freudâs discovery of the unconscious is that unconscious knowledge is totally inaccessible to the subject. Fink goes on to say, âLacan is generally suspicious of the wholeâ (Fink 31). The wholeness of a world inhabited by individuals in âtheir proper placeâ is a fantasy that Lacan abhors.
It is not that Lacan is opposed to science itself, but how science can be said to relate to knowledge and truth. Lacan writes in âBeyond the âReality Principleââ from Ecrits (1966), âI am not playing at being paradoxical by claiming that science need know nothing about truth ⊠But truth in its specific value remains foreign to the order of scienceâ (Ecrits 63). As Lacan attempted to move psychoanalysis toward a system of mathematical formalization, with his convoluted âmathemes,â he embraced a version of science that does not have an exclusive claim to truth or knowledge and, in fact, cannot definitely produce either.
Doesnât science itself, without Lacan, put the lie to Damoreâs authority? Doesnât it undercut the value of the cries of his supporters that his sexist memo is âscience!â So what? Empirical research on human behavior provides the tentative and possible rather than the definitive and uncontestable. From a colloquial understanding of science, studies contradict themselves infinitely. They are only worth as much as their research methodology. Scientific positivism can only offer contingent knowledge. Results that simply await dispute by the next study.
Lacanâs longtime editor, Jacques Alain-Miller, would write of âOn the Names-of-the-Fatherâ:
Having concluded from his tribulations that âpsychoanalytic discourseâ had not authorized him to lift, as he had intended, the veil Freud had cast over the true mainspring of psychoanalysis, and that he had been struck down for his sacrilegious act, he signaled, in a word to the wise, in particular in the ironic title that he gave to a later Seminar, Les non-dupes errent, that he would keep close to his chest truths that were too tempestuous.
Ultimately, though Lacanâs fate might appear to share some commonalities with Damore despite their fundamental ideological disagreement, there is a critical distinction between the professional failings of the two. Lacan was momentarily discredited for doing complex, difficult work that defied the understanding of the psychoanalytic establishment. Primarily it was his practice of the variable length session that led to his censure. Damore, on the other hand, has uncritically deployed so-called scientific material to fall back on the fantasy of wholeness that numbers and mathematization can provide.
Above all, what âOn the Names-of-the-Fatherâ and Finkâs âKnowledge and Jouissanceâ demonstrate is the importance of Lacanian psychoanalysis today. Lacan offers unparalleled insights into the nature of knowledge, science, and psychology: brutally critiquing them all. And yet Lacan seeks to redefine psychoanalysis in the terms of a science that would prioritize formalization over knowledge. It is Lacanâs challenge to science that broadly refutes Damoreâs claim of authority. Just like the poor empirical research of the APA Monitor in relation to Freud, individual examination of Damoreâs citation make his argument similarly spicious. But beyond this broad, epistemological challenge to Damore and others like him, Lacan can also serve to contract Damoreâs vision of gender concretely through his ideas of sexuation and disharmony.
from Stories by Miguel Rivera on Medium http://ift.tt/2v2eqDd
discoholicmusic
areudirty
pixelskylines
stormborns
dailybridgerton