Re: [-empyre-] delineations

[Kate Southworth <katesouthworth@gloriousninth.com>]

I've been thinking about Aliette's two posts, and James Barrett's post which
I found very stimulating.  I do agree in particular with the points made by
both Aliette and James that concern the need to articulate the different
definitions of transgression and indeed of transcendence.

> 4/6/05 0:01Aliette Guibertguibertc@criticalsecret.com

> The matter is that I wonder if before my first one there were not confusion
> on the transcendence -which concerns the spirituality- with the
> transgression (malpractice? -interesting connotation, like acting a
> diverting of the rule)- which concerns acts, individual acts
> so abstract as social and also collective acts (groups, packs, masses)-.
  

>But as for me I am always bothered to see a railing of psychological
>or psycho-sociological interpretation applied to the critical
>social behavior, even if the complexity of the theory of the malpractice at
>Lacan is political in itself; In more precise terms theses interpretations
>kill politics to which it explains. Being in metapolitics (Ryan said
>otherwise politics, and no utopie) the percept of which I approve.

>That is why, to avoid a confusion, I would personally be very interested
>that one of the thematic guardians concerned in his(her,its) work or its
>artistic creation by Lacan explains to us clearly in what consists according
>to him the theory of the malpractice of Freudian psychoanalysis and / or the
>difference at Lacan. Please Kate, of Bracha Ettinger, could you lighten
>us ?

I think these differences are really key to these discussions on
transgressions, and were highlighted by James  in his earlier post
>>To me it seems to be closer to the idea
>>of karma, missing the interconnectedness (the target board) of all things.
>>Rather than breaking ("across, over, or beyond") a rule set by some
>>distant omniscient judge watching the sport. Anyone who has read Sherry
>> Simon's great book, "Gender in Translation" would understand that even
>> moving across languages is to negotiate complexities of power and
>> identity, politics and history in many forms.


I'm interested in trying to understand what's at stake in the different
meanings of transgression as articulated by Lacan, Zizek, Bataille,
Foucault, and also by Bracha Ettinger, Griselda Pollock, Rosi Braidotti,
Donna Haraway.

For example, Lacan believes that "without a transgression there is no access
to jouissance, and [...] that that is precisely the function of the Law.
Transgression in the direction of jouissance only takes place if it is
supported by the oppositional principle, by the forms of the Law."
(Jacques Lacan. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Tavistock: Routledge, 1992,
 p.177).

Foucault, on the other hand argues that transgression "must be liberated
from the scandalous or subversive, that is, from anything aroused by
negative associations. Transgression does not seek to oppose one thing to
another, nor does it achieve its purpose through mockery or by upsetting the
solidity of foundations [...] Transgression is neither violence in a divided
world (in an ethical world) nor a victory over limits (in a dialectical or
revolutionary world); and exactly for this reason, its role is to measure
the excessive distance that it opens at the heart of the limit and to
trace the flashing line that causes the limit to arise. Transgression
contains nothing negative, but affirms the limitlessness into which it leaps
as it opens this zone to existence for the first time."
(Michel Foucault. A Preface to Transgression, in Bouchard, D. (ed.)
Language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews, p. 33).


Whilst Georges Baitaille suggests that "transgression does not deny the
taboo, but transcends and completes it"

(George Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality, San Francisco: City Light
Books, 1986, p. 63 
cited in Audrone Zukauskaite, 'Transgression in a Sentimental Style,' in
Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/article/2003-05-06-zukauskaite-en.html)



bw
Kate




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katesouthworth@gloriousninth.com
http://www.gloriousninth.com