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Superego ego and the other
What follows is the sort of speculative, uncertain post I more typically place at I Cite. Yet, because I haven't posted anything for awhile, I decided to go ahead and introduce these questions, with their uncertainties and hesitations, here.
Under what circumstances, if any, is the call or demand of the other experienced as superego? Might consideration of these circumstances help account for the intransigence of hatreds of those deemed racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual others under contemporary conditions of global communicative capitalism?
We might begin by recalling the way that the absolute command of the Kantian moral law overlaps with the Freudian superego. Whether one can or cannot is relevant--the command is unrelenting. Likewise, the command is unfulfillable to the extent that we never know whether we followed the moral law. We are guilty no matter what, as with the superego. So, we come under the force of an unknowable, unfulfillable command.
What, then, about the call of the other, the other who may be before me or the other against whose presence I have already shielded myself? If the other is other, a foreign body confronting me and in the face of whose confrontation I remain uncertain and confused, might I not confuse her demand with that of the superego? I must respond to her, but how? And how can I ever know? Even if I hear her, I may misinterpret her words, I may and will necessarily fail. So, I am commanded to respond, but can never know precisely how to respond. And, I will feel guilty.
Is it possible that sexual and racial hatreds are responses to the call of the other, ways to try to avoid confronting a certain demand? Is it possible that they are experienced as superegoistical and if so how might this experience be avoided?
Zizek argues, rightly in my view, that the superego injunction characteristic of contemporary global capitalism is an injunction to enjoy. If this is the case, then it might seem that the other is not experienced superegotistically. The other might be the one hindering our enjoyment, an object standing in our way. Those who urge tolerance might be similarly repressive, again interfering with our enjoyment.
But, such a possibility may well be too quick insofar as what we hate in the other is often the other's enjoyment or the other's theft of our enjoyment. So, gays are hated for enjoying differently and, oddly, for stealing the sexual enjoyment of others (their strangely conceived threat to straight marriage). And, racial minorities are hated because they steal our enjoyment--jobs, security, way of life--or make us instruments of their enjoyment--we provide benefits, etc. So, here the other could be experienced as enjoining us to enjoy, enjoining us to an unachievable authenticity, say, of sex or family, of the actuality of democracy, of religious faith. This view would correspond to Zizek's remark that the present is a time of the superegoization of the imaginary ideal. We compete with the other and experience this competition as an unavoidable competition.
The very experience of having an identity produced by the command to enjoy depends on consumption--we purchase the signifiers that accompany our identity, that make it recognizable to others. When others appropriate 'our' signifiers, we may find ourselves at a loss: how to signify one's 'preppy' status if Ralph Lauren is readily available at outlets and discount stores? How to signify 'hippie' if the privileged and elite have taken over this particular style? And, what about the anxiety produced over the possibility of procuring such signifiers at all?
But, with this shift to enjoyment, haven't we come too far from the ethical problems of the Kantian law and its overlap with superego? Or, might we, conveniently, be able to find here the proverbial coin with its two sides or some really quite remarkable coincidence of opposites? Might the injunction to enjoy as fully and authentically as the other include within its terms an injunction to acknowlege this other fully and authentically? And, might this ethical demand, as impossible as the demand to full enjoyment, coincide with even as it contradicts the injunction to enjoy?
If the answer to these questions are yes, the other is experienced superegotistically, then how might this problem be addressed? One way might be full acknowledgement of the absoluteness demand: yes, there is no exception or outside to the call of the other; we are fully under it. It is not reducible to race, sex, sexuality, or ethnicity; it is fully present with nothing outside it and as present it nonethless non-all. Is this acknowledgement helped or hindered through specific legal regulations? I think it is helped, but that this help may take a long time to be felt. It may also be the case that law in this domain provides breathing space, a kind of relief from the injunctions to enjoy so intertwined with consumption.
By Jodi | June 2, 2006 in Zizek | Permalink
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Cross posted at Long Sunday: here are some speculations on superego and the other. Under what circumstances, if any, is the call or demand of the other experienced as superego? Might consideration of these circumstances help account for the intransigence [Read More]
Tracked on Jun 2, 2006 2:42:09 PM
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Jodi, a couple of even more tentative responses. I think I agree with you that the "call or demand of the Other" can be mistaken for the superego injunction, and that that confusion lies behind a lot of the knottier problems of racial and sexual politics (I particularly think that the permanent complaint that "the problem was real but is now solved, in the past, so why are you still bothering me?" is a reaction formation to the bottomless guilt that you are talking about). But ultimately I think that is a mistake, because in the pure sense, the Other qua Other is beyond both enjoyment and competition. That is, enjoyment of and competition with the Other are both forms of (to put it in Levinasian terms) an ontological reduction of the ethical relationship (as is the notion that the Other can itself enjoin the Self's own enjoyment). That's not to say that these reductions are avoidable. But they are all, in one way or another, a "falling away" from the relationship to the Other itself. Instead, if this makes any sense, I would interpret that relationship (which is not really the right word since it's a "relationship" that presupposes the absence of relationship, a possibility that depends on its own impossibility, etc. etc.) as the open limit of "enjoyment," "competition," and possibly "injunction" as well. At least, I think that's true if "the injunction to enjoy" is understood in terms of the mandate to pursue pleasure through consumption, which by definition involves a return-to-self.
If that's correct, then the answer to your question, "Might the injunction to enjoy as fully and authentically as the other include within its terms an injunction to acknowlege this other fully and authentically?", must be "no." To put it another way, I don't think that the "call of the Other" demands "acknowledgment" of anything, and least of all a "full and authentic" acknowledgment of the Other him/her/itself. It seems to me that "full and authentic acknowledgment of the Other" is the language of Hegelian reciprocity, the mutuality of recognition earned in the struggle with the Other that's aufgehoben in a "we" in place of the two "I"s, etc. etc. etc. Strictly speaking there can be no "we" with the absolute Other, and the (non-)relationship isn't characterized by struggle but by absolute passivity -- an experience undergone rather than an exchange of any kind. Which is not to say that the asymmetical (non-)relationship to the Other has no connection to pleasure, but I think it's pleasure of a totally different kind than the late-capitalist consumerist type that Zizek is talking about -- the pleasure (and terror) of love rather than consumption. That may be consistent with your own conclusion (about the Other as presence of the non-all), but I'm even less sure about that than the rest of this . . . .
Posted by: Adam Thurschwell | Jun 3, 2006 12:24:01 AM
Well, one more thing. I also agree with you that legal regulation can provide "breathing space" for the (properly speaking) ethical relationship to the Other, even though legal regulations presuppose exactly the kind of Hegelian reciprocity that I may seem to be bad-mouthing above. In fact I think a legal structure based on enforced reciprocal rights and mutual respect is necessary just because the ontological reductions of the ethical relationship are unavoidable; only by fighting fire with fire can we get that little breathing space to give the ethical relationship its chance to take place.
Posted by: Adam Thurschwell | Jun 3, 2006 12:32:48 AM
Why is it that the other appears as a demand at all (rather than, say, as a spectacle)?
I guess my suspicion is that the appearance of the other as demand is more consistent with a version of the superego which is not understood as an injunction to enjoy, in other words, with a conception of superego which is not really in tune with the operation of the superego in our time, and that the idea that the appearance of the other does constitute a demand may be weakening as a result.
But I am interested in other possible answers to the question I posed, answers which may well appear within the tradition -- I am asking as a person who doesn't know very much.
Posted by: hugh | Jun 3, 2006 1:10:25 AM
While looking back over Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason to see if I want to reread it, I found this quite long passage that I believe addresses some of the issues that jodi raises:
Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, reverses the Aristotelian field and thus redirects the problem of connection. He regards the human being as a species of the genus of rational beings, to wit, the species that has the distinction of being animal, i.e., being embodied: the human being is the animal rational. Hence the human being is no longer the highest among creatures but the lowest among hosts. The direction to the human is not animation but incarnation. (The former sets Frankenstein's limitation; the latter Pygmalion's. Pygmalion overcame his limitation through desire and prayer; Frankenstein through craft and theft.) This results from, and serves, Kant's purpose, which is not to explain the fact of our freedom but to show the possibility of it, i.e., to vindicate our inescapable conviction of it; one might say: our attitude toward ourselves and others as possessing it. Being human is aspiring to being human. Since it is not aspiring to being the only human it is an aspiration on behalf of others as well. Then we might say that being human is aspiring to being seen as human. This is a possible interpretation of Frankenstein and Pygmalion. Their shared limitation is that they could accept being seen only by their own creation. This still sounds as if their aspiration was to be God. But how is this aspiration different from that toward the human? The confusion seems inherent in the reception of Christianity. The message of the words of Christ, that we share a common nature, that we are flesh, seems consistently overshadowed by the message of the fact of Christ, that only a God, or the son of God, could bear being human.Kant's image of the animal rational, demanding of itself the acknowledgement of others (Kant thinks of it as respect), and aspiring to be worthy of it in return, never knowing whether it is truly embodied, in oneself or others, is his continuation of the ancient interpretation of human separateness as a message of human incompleteness. What will complete the human work is, however, not one other but only all others. So to have an idea of the human being is to have an ideal of the human being; and for Kant this entails, and is entailed by, and ideal of the human community. According to this ideal, love must not absorb respect and respect does not require love. Genuine love and respect will both know this. (p. 399)
Posted by: cynic librarian | Jun 4, 2006 2:35:31 PM
Brilliant post Jodi. You ought to experiment at Long Sunday more often! You have precisely articulated both the distinction and a possible complementary relation between the "ethics of the Other" and Zizek's ideological critique. A key question (that I have not yet found an adequate response to) is how can we think the injunction to enjoy and the call of the Other together? And is it possible or even desirable to do so?
At this point the only suggestion I have - and it is tentative - is that Zizek's notion of the act may provide a bridge to the Levinasian problematic. The idea that "Miracles can happen," that there are revolutionary moments of clarity, and the impossible is suddenly, and retroactively the inevitable, seems to provide a space for a relationship. The temporality of the Other, that it disrupts all linearity and bursts forth from an Outside I know not where, and saturates the infinite within the moment - this seems to me to be close (or at least share a family resemblence) to Zizek's talk of the act, and his paraphrasing of Badiou's notion of a truth event. If that makes any sense?
Posted by: Alain | Jun 4, 2006 6:07:33 PM
I realized after writing the above comments it sounds like some of the same ground we covered a while back at I cite:
http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/02/kill_kill_.html#comment-14009047
The difference, of course is that the previous discussion did not touch on the injunction to enjoy. so this perhaps moves the conversation a long?
Posted by: Alain | Jun 4, 2006 7:08:52 PM
Thanks, folks, for your comments. I can't do justice to them, but here are some of my initial responses.
Alain, thanks so much. You've pegged my goal here. My worry is just as you suggest, that the call of the Other is experienced in terms of a superego injunction and this is an injunction to enjoy. So, in a way, there are 3 things--the other, superego, and enjoyment. It seems important to use this version of the superego injunction insofar as it is crucial for thinking about late capitalism. And, it seems to me that there is a particularly persistent hatred that accompanies late capital. I think that the combination of the other and enjoyment helps explain this hatred. But, it isn't yet clear to me exactly how. And, I think it helps account critically not for the ontological relation to the other but for the psychic experience of the other.
Your move to the act is great. I like the way combining it with Badiou and Levinas makes Truth 'shine through' in the miracle, to the truth is this kind of relation.
This leads to Adam, where the relation involves passivity rather than recognition--so, we are before the other, before our very tie to the other that appears in the act. The act breaks the present ethical/political arrangement, letting something else shine through. Unfortunately, even as we try to maintain a kind of fidelty to this shining true, even as we retroactively interpret etc it, we will lose it again, substituting activity for passivity and again becoming involved in enjoyment. But, this doesn't have to be a story of the fall, or if it is, its a recognition of the way that activity etc is necessarily fallen, that we work within these conditions.
So, yes, the other qua other is beyond enjoyment and competition. The imaginary other is the one with whom we compete; the other inserted into the position of superego, or imagined as a the object superego voice is symptomatic of our current condition.
On full acknowledgement: my idea here is to find within something as unseemly as the superego injunction to enjoy the possibility of something else, like an underside or core . The idea is that even the most awful formation has to include some ideal element.
Posted by: Jodi | Jun 5, 2006 2:50:31 PM
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