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Against Adaptation: Lacan's Subversion of the Subject
"Van Haute's exegesis of Lacan's essay is as lucid as it is cogent--an admirable (and very illuminating) achievement."
-William Richardson
-William Richardson
360 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 18, 2021
The best extrapolation of Lacan at his best. If I had read this sooner it would have been cheating. An essential, preeminent work.*
*But someone must for the love of all that's holy revoke the right of academics to abuse footnotes.**
**"We will return to this later."***
***"'We will come back to this.'"****
****See n.1 ff. The passage referenced and fully quoted in the middle of the sentence will be referenced again and partially quoted at the end and I know this but what am I gonna do just skip the footnotes when it might be the 1 out of umpteen that's genuinely helpful? It's like an obsessional rite of passage: "Thou hast braved the tribulations of a thousand thousand redundant references, I hereby impart unto thee some elucidating backstory, contextualized minutiae of the oeuvre, or specific secondary resources." However you make it through, make it through.
*But someone must for the love of all that's holy revoke the right of academics to abuse footnotes.**
**"We will return to this later."***
***"'We will come back to this.'"****
****See n.1 ff. The passage referenced and fully quoted in the middle of the sentence will be referenced again and partially quoted at the end and I know this but what am I gonna do just skip the footnotes when it might be the 1 out of umpteen that's genuinely helpful? It's like an obsessional rite of passage: "Thou hast braved the tribulations of a thousand thousand redundant references, I hereby impart unto thee some elucidating backstory, contextualized minutiae of the oeuvre, or specific secondary resources." However you make it through, make it through.
September 26, 2010
A very clear, systematic, and expository textual analysis of Lacan's overall project. The Lacan quotes and page numbers are in the footnotes and can thereby be avoided altogether.
I read this rather fast and will need to re-read it. But Van Haute offers many comparisons, mainly to Freud but also to Jung and other social theorists.
But mostly this is a detailed account of what Lacan has to offer. The central point is that whereas other schools want the analysand to adapt and there by harmonize with reality, Lacan insists that reality is essentially riven. Adaptation to something that is inherently divided and itself alienated is only going to produce divided and alienated selves. The point of analysis is rather to come to terms with the essential inability of humans to be one with the world. Health is the mode by which one comes to this inability.
I will record a few short quotes and then offer a criticism/observation.
The quotes are for those of us who are interested in the relationship between music, specifically rhythm, and the unconscious.
"In other words, perversion and neurosis are each in their own way strategies to maintain desire against the incursions of jouissance, no matter what it takes.
The pleasure principle, which according to Lacan clearly must be understood as structurally homologous with the law of castration, achieves this by obliging the subject to continue to desire in accordance with the law of signifiers. It thereby impedes the subject from transgressing a certain boundary in its pursuit of jouissance, by obliging it to yield to the endless movement of one signifier (representation) to another. If we want to describe this process in Freud's economic terms (increase and discharge of tension), we can by no means say that its guiding principle is to keep tension as low as possible, for the law of desire requires us to pass from one signifier to another, and thus to maintain a certain rhythm. What counts, we could also say, is not the reduction of tension as such, but the "cadence of desire." (pages 277-8)
Comments on this quote:
1. Is it an accident that the author uses music and dance terms to describe the movement of healthy desire? I think not.
2. If I connect this quote to Chernoff and to Dinerstein, I can say that what comes to mind is coolness: a cool distance, a cool rhythm. A cool cadence is also not a "hot" one. Hotness implies being engulfed by jouissance. For Lacan such a merging with the oneness or totality of jouissance means not only ill health but also psychosis.
Another quote:
"The law of castration does not prohibit desire, but it demands form us that we maintain this movement,and the human subject must consequently abandon unlimited and destructive jouissance in order to make a limited (sexual) jouissance possible. [coolness] The law of the father demands that we exchange jouissance of the Other for desire. In this sense, desire and the law of castration have an essentially defensive significance both in pathology, and in normality; their task is to protect us from the jouissance of the Other." pages 276-66
Comments on this quote:
1. Jouissance is the quantum singularity -- that which we must move towards to cultivate desire but that which we must avoid in order not to be consumed by it. This has not only sexual overtones but also strikes me as theological. It implies a dance between the transcendent and the immanent.
2. Note that for Lacan (as presented by Van Haute, of course) all actions, whether normal or pathological, are efforts to find that space between the jouissance that we must move towards and that same jouissance that we must avoid lest it engulf us completely. Thus, pathology like normality are both strategies. They are solutions to the problem presented by the nature of reality; a reality from which humans are essentially disconnected by having become subjects. Lacan accepts a riven ontology.
3. Here is my question and critique: Can we not self-consciously desire to be engulfed by jouissance? Is this not what those who seek transcendent experiences desire? If we can desire to be one with the font and ocean of desire itself, and if we can do this while retaining our health, then does this not make Lacan's theory an attempt to protect a Western modernist subjectivity? What then of the desire to be engulfed within jouissance? Is being engulfed something that we must necessarily avoid?
I read this rather fast and will need to re-read it. But Van Haute offers many comparisons, mainly to Freud but also to Jung and other social theorists.
But mostly this is a detailed account of what Lacan has to offer. The central point is that whereas other schools want the analysand to adapt and there by harmonize with reality, Lacan insists that reality is essentially riven. Adaptation to something that is inherently divided and itself alienated is only going to produce divided and alienated selves. The point of analysis is rather to come to terms with the essential inability of humans to be one with the world. Health is the mode by which one comes to this inability.
I will record a few short quotes and then offer a criticism/observation.
The quotes are for those of us who are interested in the relationship between music, specifically rhythm, and the unconscious.
"In other words, perversion and neurosis are each in their own way strategies to maintain desire against the incursions of jouissance, no matter what it takes.
The pleasure principle, which according to Lacan clearly must be understood as structurally homologous with the law of castration, achieves this by obliging the subject to continue to desire in accordance with the law of signifiers. It thereby impedes the subject from transgressing a certain boundary in its pursuit of jouissance, by obliging it to yield to the endless movement of one signifier (representation) to another. If we want to describe this process in Freud's economic terms (increase and discharge of tension), we can by no means say that its guiding principle is to keep tension as low as possible, for the law of desire requires us to pass from one signifier to another, and thus to maintain a certain rhythm. What counts, we could also say, is not the reduction of tension as such, but the "cadence of desire." (pages 277-8)
Comments on this quote:
1. Is it an accident that the author uses music and dance terms to describe the movement of healthy desire? I think not.
2. If I connect this quote to Chernoff and to Dinerstein, I can say that what comes to mind is coolness: a cool distance, a cool rhythm. A cool cadence is also not a "hot" one. Hotness implies being engulfed by jouissance. For Lacan such a merging with the oneness or totality of jouissance means not only ill health but also psychosis.
Another quote:
"The law of castration does not prohibit desire, but it demands form us that we maintain this movement,and the human subject must consequently abandon unlimited and destructive jouissance in order to make a limited (sexual) jouissance possible. [coolness] The law of the father demands that we exchange jouissance of the Other for desire. In this sense, desire and the law of castration have an essentially defensive significance both in pathology, and in normality; their task is to protect us from the jouissance of the Other." pages 276-66
Comments on this quote:
1. Jouissance is the quantum singularity -- that which we must move towards to cultivate desire but that which we must avoid in order not to be consumed by it. This has not only sexual overtones but also strikes me as theological. It implies a dance between the transcendent and the immanent.
2. Note that for Lacan (as presented by Van Haute, of course) all actions, whether normal or pathological, are efforts to find that space between the jouissance that we must move towards and that same jouissance that we must avoid lest it engulf us completely. Thus, pathology like normality are both strategies. They are solutions to the problem presented by the nature of reality; a reality from which humans are essentially disconnected by having become subjects. Lacan accepts a riven ontology.
3. Here is my question and critique: Can we not self-consciously desire to be engulfed by jouissance? Is this not what those who seek transcendent experiences desire? If we can desire to be one with the font and ocean of desire itself, and if we can do this while retaining our health, then does this not make Lacan's theory an attempt to protect a Western modernist subjectivity? What then of the desire to be engulfed within jouissance? Is being engulfed something that we must necessarily avoid?
September 5, 2018
This is exactly the book I needed to clarify some of Lacan's ideas that remained vague and cryptic to me. Van Haute almost entirely limits himself to Lacan's lecture on "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire," where the "graph of desire" is laid out, so he can expand on very short but dense passages. I discovered Lacan's interesting thoughts on the ego ideal were very much obscured by Sheridan's old translation - Lacan says we identify with a "specific trait" - a very simple idea - whereas Sheridan has us identifying with an "unbroken line"! I still have the impression that Lacan is discussing generalities about the human condition, which is fine, but more philosophy than psychoanalysis. Van Haute makes a strong case that the notions of lack and indeterminacy are necessarily embodied and sexual, due to the phantasy and the object a, where they are endowed with psychic meaning. My appreciation of Lacan's project has definitely increased!
October 21, 2021
A beautiful and elegant, essayistic overview of Lacan. As an introductory work, I'd recommend this over anything by Fink, Zizek or the rest of them. Certainly over anything by the master himself. It works on a few levels though, so a re-read is recommended.
May 18, 2023
I’ve read three books from Fink on Lacan and still I find this book to provide the most clarity on some fundamental concepts pertaining to subjectivity. However, Fink is superior in explaining the significance of the nom-du-pere.
RIP to Phillipe Van Haute
RIP to Phillipe Van Haute
August 14, 2020
Precise. To the point. Great help to understand the lacanian graph of desire. Highly recommend if you are starting to learn about lacanian psychoanalysis.
August 7, 2024
One of my favourite books on Lacan's theory of subjectivity, emphasizing the fact that the human being will always remain a fundamentally strange and maladapted animal in their environment.
April 11, 2015
Quite an extensive and enlightening commentary on The Subversion of the Subject.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews