According to

1
The Art of Becoming

• According to
• Freud, Lacan, Derrida iek

2
Western Humanism

• Self is stable
• Defined by operations of consciousness
• Rationality
• Free will
• Self reflection

3
Sigmund Freud (1856 1939)

• Self
• Shaped by unconscious, its drives and desires
• Questions and destabilizes humanist ideal of self
• Goal to strengthen the ego, the I self and
  conscious/rational identity, so that it can
  control and overpower the unconscious
• Implies that acquiring a stable self is the goal
  of humanity

4
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)

• The ego can never take the place of the
  unconscious, or empty it out, or control it.
• Self is an illusion
• Self is a product of the unconscious
• Unconscious ground of all being

5
Lacans Unconscious

• Structured like language
• Meaning condensed (in metaphor)
• Meaning displaced (in metonymy)
• No signifiers (signs of meaning)
• Chain of signifiers shifts constantly
• No anchor or stability

6
Lacans Art of Becoming

• Process of trying to fix, to stabilize, to stop
  the chain of signifiers
• To create a stable selfI
• Only an illusion created by misperception of the
  relation between body and self
• Self is only a fantasy

7
Stages of Becoming

• Freud
• Oral
• Anal
• Phallic

• Lacan
• Real (need)
• Imaginary (demand)
• Symbolic (desire)

8
Lacans The Other

• Self not the other
• Notions of Otherness comes before a sense of self
• The little otheridea of lack, of loss, of
  absence, incompleteness
• Language grows out of this lack and loss
• The Otherplace where adult is trying to get to,
  merge with

9
Lacans Other

• The thing to which every element relates
• The position of the Other creates and sustains a
  never-ending Lack (Desire)

10
Lacans Other

• The Phallus anchors chain of signifiers
• Not penis
• Belongs to structure of language itself
• No one has it or owns it
• The Law-of-the-Fatherlanguage is by nature male
  oriented

11
Lacanian Theory

• Realall needs fulfilled.
  1st loss (maternal)
• Mirror StageImaginary Grasp
  ideas of the Other Self
• Symbolic (paternal)
• The center of language
• Gender marked doorway

12
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

• Words refer to other words, not to things or
  thoughts.
• Attack on 'logocentrism', what Derrida called the
  western preconception with truth as a presence
  (essence, existence, substance, subject).

13
Derridas concept of language

• In short, language depends on nothing, no
  fundamental ground of logic, science or society.
• There is no end to interpretation, and no
  escaping it, says Derrida. All we can do is
  point to its workings.

14
Derrida

• Knowledge, identity, truth, meaning all the
  great concepts of western thought achieve their
  status by overlooking or repressing other
  elements in their derivation.

15
Slavoj iek (1949- )

• Well known for his use of the works of Lacan in
  a new reading of popular culture
• Writes on countless topics fundamentalism,
  tolerance, political correctness, globalization,
  subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth,
  cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism,
  David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock

16
iek according to Glyn Daly

• iek infects us with a fundamental doubt about
  the very presuppositions of our social reality
• Contemporary capitalism
• Political correctness
• Multiculturalism

17
iekian Paradigm

• Central concern with a certain failure/excess in
  the order of being as he relies on two main
  philosophical sources
• German idealism
• psychoanalysis

18
ieks Constitutive Madness of Being

• Increasing emphasis on negativity as the
  fundamental (and ineradicable) background to all
  being
• We must pass through madness as an ongoing
  attempt to impose a symbolic integrity against
  the ever present threat of disintegration and
  negativity

19
iekThe Death Drive

• Human life is never just life, it is always
  sustained by an excess of life.
• Human condition marked by an eternal and
  impossible attempt to bring about some sort of
  resolution to this drive
• Attach ourselves to objects of excess the
  ideal experience, lifestyle, possession, etc.

20
iekConsciousness

• Notion of multiple-being
• Sliding planes of différance

21
iekIdentity

• Identity is always structured in terms of a
  certain being-towards-madness
• Prone to failure and negative distortion
• Can never fully answer who am I?

22
Art of Becoming

• Western Humanism We are what we think we are.
  The self is stable and defined.
• Freud The self is structured by the unconscious
  mind. We do not have full control of identity,
  but our goal is to attain the stable self.

23
Art of Becoming

• Lacan Self is a fantasy. We try to create
  symbolic order, but all reality is grounded in
  the unconscious over which we have no real
  control.
• Derrida Self can only be attained by
  repressing other elements of reality. Everything
  unravels.

24
Art of Becoming

• iek We can never fully express or attain
  selfhood. Life is a futile search for divine
  and human perfection.

25
Credits

• C. John Holcombe LitLangs 2004 2005 2006
  http//www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.html
• Glyn Dalys Conversations with iek
• Patricia Burgey, UWG