This lecture explores how the works of Jean-François Lyotard and Slavoj Žižek, as exemplars of postmodern thought, challenge traditional notions of consciousness, language, and political engagement by emphasizing decentered, non-linear, and often ambiguous modes of thinking and desire.
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today today we're we're
still focused on individual
Consciousness uh why you might ask well
as the site or model for symbolic
patterning of one sort or another uh uh
we can speak of the psychogenesis of the
text or film uh perhaps in the case
certainly of xek uh to some extent also
of Doo uh and and therefore we can still
understand today's readings unlike uh
Thursday's readings as belonging to the
psychological emphasis uh in our
syllabus this is actually our farewell
to the psychological emphasis and uh it
is uh so arranged because there are
intimations in
today's authors that there are political
Stakes that is to say in One Way Or
Another We're to understand their
argument about the way in which the
psyche functions as uh as having
political implications uh zek uh is
fascinating it seems to me in His
Brilliant reading of The Crying Game uh
at the very end of your essay in the
moment when he said says look this isn't
just a kind of abdication from
responsibility for um uh the Irish
Republican Revolution uh the the soldier
has not merely walked away uh from his
role in Revolutionary activity he has
discovered in his private life that is
to say in the in in in the erotic
dimension of his Consciousness the need
for revolution from within he has
disrupted his necessarily disrupted his
own thinking uh in ways equally radical
to and closely parallel to the
disruption of thinking that's required
to understand uh one's relationship with
the emerging uh stat Republican status
of Ireland and so says xek there are
political implications for
the upheaval in Consciousness that his
uh ultimately tragic encounter with the
big other entails uh I should say in
passing also about gek that um as and
your editor I think goes into this a
little bit in the talasz preface uh that
there are Temptations political
Temptations entailed in this fascination
with uh an obscure
or even perhaps Transcendent object of
desire for the individual but also for
the social psyche in religious terms
there is a perhaps surprising or
counterintuitive friendliness toward
religion in Zak's work on the grounds
that Faith or the struggle for Faith uh
after all does constitute um an effort
to enter into some kind of meaningful
relationship ship with that which one
desires yet at the same time can't have
and by the same token and this is where
uh this is where in certain moments he
confesses to uh a kind of instability in
his political thinking even though he is
by and large on the left and partly
needs to be understood uh as a disciple
of Marx nevertheless he recognizes that
in politics there's a kind of excite but
also perhaps potential danger in
fascination with a big idea uh it could
be of course some form of progressive
collectivity it could on the other hand
be the kind of big idea that
countenances the rise of fascism uh zek
acknowledges this that the that public
identification with a kind of uh
of almost or completely inaccessible
otherness either as a political idea or
as a charismatic political leader um Can
after all uh open up a uh a vertigo of
dangerous possibilities I use uh the
word vertico advisedly because I'm going
to be coming back to Hitch to I'm going
to be coming back to Hitchcock's vertico
uh vertigo in just a minute um but in
the meantime there are also obviously
political stakes in Del Del of course uh
presents to us in the F in this first
chapter of his book a thousand plateau
uh he presents to us a kind of thought
experiment both as something recommended
to the reader see if you can think in
this new sort of radically RA radically
Innovative way but also providing a
model for thinking of this kind in the
style and organization and composition
of the chapter itself so as a thought
experiment uh once again uh Del has to
do in thought with what you might call a
revolution from within but the
implications once again in politics as
indeed also for xek uh are somewhat
ambiguous that is to say the romatic
mode of thinking and we'll come back to
the romatic uh mode of thinking as we go
along um with which is radically decentering
decentering
uh and which lends itself to
identification with as it were the mass
movement of collectivity can plainly be
uh uh progressively Democratic that is
to say Democratic Beyond even what are
social and cultural cultural hierarchies
accommodate but at the same time or I
should say it can once again be
fascistic because because uh the because
the organization of fascistic culture
while nevertheless a kind of top down
arrangement with a fer involves is
nevertheless as uh the mass is mobilized
nevertheless in this mobilization up
romatic Del is careful to point out that
in the that that there that that romes
and romatic thinking is as he says
repeatedly for the best and worst rats
are romes crab grass is a RIS
in other words everything which
organizes itself in this fashion uh is
romatic much of it as uh I'll be coming
back to uh try to explain with a little
more care is for the good in Del's view
by the way I say delz in the same way I
said whimet gatari is an important
colleague and Ally uh they wrote many
books together including one that I'll
mention later they also wrote Things
separately but Del simply because his IR
is more ample and and people feel
somehow or another that he's more
Central to this work um is a is a sticy
for Del and and gatari and so I'll be
saying Del but I don't mean to slight
gatari um in any case uh so so uh we'll
be we'll be examining um the delizan
ryome a little bit more closely but in
the meantime um as to its political
implications and we are moving moving
closer to the political uh as we as we
begin to think about figures of this
kind uh is really on the admission of
both of them somewhat ambiguous in other
words they're introducing new
possibilities of thought and and and and
they're very different from each other
as we'll see uh they're introducing new
possibilities of thought uh but they're
candid enough to admit that they don't
quite know where these possibilities are
going that you know what what what the
Imp lications or Consequences of
successfully entering the thought world
of either one of them uh might be all
right so um yes uh they they certainly
have very different ideas that I I
wouldn't blame you for saying why on
Earth are we reading these two texts
together uh the overlap isn't altogether
clear I'm going to suggest what it is in
a minute but in the meantime uh they are
certainly on about very different things
Del are concerned with the with as I say
introducing a kind of thought experiment
which has to do with the decentering of
thought getting away from the tree or
arboresque model of thought we'll have
more to say about that and uh zek on the
other hand following laon's distinction
between uh the object uh ready to hand
that you can have uh if you want and the
object of desire which such is the chain
of signification is perpetually
something that exceeds our out distances
our grasp uh in developing this idea uh
and thinking about what the object
desire in all of its manifold forms
might be develops this curious idea
which is at the center of his thinking
uh of the blot that that the the element
in narrative form the element in the way
in which our storytelling capacities are
organized which really can't be narrated
which narrated which really can't lend
itself to meaning meaning of course
concrete specific meaning being that
which can be tied down uh to to an
accessible object and so uh so the the
central idea that gek is attempting to
develop in his essay is this is has to
do with this notion of the relationship
between the uh big other and the block
as we'll see so these these these strike
one as being extremely different ideas
and as I say I wouldn't blame you for
wondering uh just what overlap there can
be well at the same time I would think
that as you read these two uh rather the
the somewhat uh bouncy and frantic pros
of both of these of both of these texts
you did see that they had a kind of mood
or stance or orientation toward the
critical and theoretical project in
common they seem in other words uh to be
of the same moment I mean even though
their ideas seem to to be so very
different that basic ideas they're
trying to get across seem to be so very
different you could perhaps imagine
these two texts as being written if it
was just a question of considering their
Style by the same person uh I I actually
I think that's not quite true but at the
same time these the the the the kind of
high energy two caffeinated uh feeling
that you get from the pros uh of both uh
is is is something that might give you
pause uh and ask and and make you wonder
well just soort what what moment um does
this belong to the answer is important
and in a way obvious I'm sure um I'm
sure all of you are ready to tell me
what moment it belongs to it belongs to postmodernism
postmodernism
this these These are these are two
exemplars of what is by far the most
slippery um if one likes it one wants to
say versatile if one doesn't like it one
wants to say murky Concepts uh to which
we've been exposed in the last 20 or 30
years and and and I think that um I
think that in a way we can bring them
both uh into Focus as a pair a little
bit if we pause somewhat simply over the concept
concept
postmodernism I mean maybe that's one of
the things you wanted to learn in taking
a course like this so so uh I'm I'm just
providing a service um you know po so so
so postmodernism what is what is
postmodernism I think we know what it is
in artistic expression uh We've uh We've
encountered enough examples of it uh we
are we have perhaps even taken courses
in which in the context of artistic form
and expression it has come up
postmodernism and artistic expression
particularly in the visual arts but I
think this is this is true of us of of
certain movements in both narrative and
poetry as well postmodernism is an
Eclectic orientation to the Past in a
certain sense it's a return to the Past
it's an opening up of textual
possibility to Traditions uh and
historical moments of expression which
modernism had tended to suppose Obsolete
and to have set aside so that in
artistic expression as I say
postmodernism is an Eclectic return to
possibilities thrown up by the history
of art uh and literature so that I mean
in architecture um many examples are
quite extraordinary and many
unfortunately are also hideous you know
that there was a certain point 15 or 20
years ago when every strip m every
shopping mall was redecorated or what's
the word I want renovated every shopping
mall was renovated and how did they
renovated uh they'd been flat you know
they'd been sort of M vandero sort of
60s modern before then it just sat there
flat and so The Renovators came along
and put little gables on on the on the
shopping mall so that each each little
shop in the mall now has a Gable you
know and this is postmodern and the most
awful things were done with suburban
houses also also in the name of a of of
a kind of blind completely completely
tasteless return to the neoclassical and
and certain other aspects of tradition
so the postmodern in what you might call
Suburban culture has been pretty awful
uh but at the same time it has entailed
a great deal of interesting work in
painting all of a sudden you know the
New York scene isn't just one school and
that's the sign of it it's not just a
certain kind of abstraction it's not
just a a wholesale uh return agreed on
by everyone to realism it's a mixture of
everything uh so that so that every it's
not just a qu art artists are always
just completely obsessed with their
place in art history it's not just so
groups of artists together wanting to
identify a certain place for themselves
in art history it's every artist in a
kind of anarchic inde dependence from
the thinking of other artists uh coming
to terms with art history in his or her
own way uh so that the scene the art
scenes of New York and Berlin and Los
Angeles and so on the scene isn't
something that you can identify as
having a certain character anymore it's
postmodern precisely in that it's gone
Global it has a million influences and
sources and there is very little
agreement among artists about how to
amalgamate and put these sources
together so that in terms of artistic
expression the way in which the the
postmodern moment after modernism in
other words the postmodern moment uh
presents itself and I and I put it
deliberately as a medical symptoms the
way that the way the postmodern Mo
moment presents uh in in artistic
expression now um
philosophically philosophically
postmodernism can be understood about as
doubt not just about the grounds of
knowledge or you know the the very the
widespread sorts of Doubt which which
we've been talking about more or less
continuously in this course it can be
understood as doubt in particular about
the relationship between or among parts
and holes in other words can I be
sure that my leg is part of my body when
plainly it is at the same time a whole
with respect to my foot how how is it
that I know uh in any stable way what a
part or a hole is to take a more
interesting example uh this this is in
vitkin's Phil philosophical
investigations there is the flag the
French flag which is called the tricolor
right now the tricolor is made up of
three strips of color white blue and red
I'm sorry if I've gotten the order wrong
in fact I'm almost positive that I have
uh um but there are those three strips
of color existing in relation to each
other and plainly those three strips of
color are parts of the flag and they and
and they have a certain symbolic value
that is to say each color uh represents
something uh and enters and enters into
the symbolic understanding of what the
flag is but at the same time red white
and blue sorry yes red white and blue
aren't confined to this piece of cloth
the little strips of white red and blue
are obviously Parts uh of whiteness they
can't be they can't be understood um as
Parts simply in and of themselves or
parts specifically of one thing they're
parts of other things as well but what's
more you know if you look at the
tricolor without knowing what you're
looking at uh how can you say that it's
the part of a hole you say well you know
they're just they're just Parts uh they
are or they're holes unto themselves
which somebody happens to have laid uh
side by side by the same token if uh you
look at the part of the tricolor which
is white and you say
white well obviously with respect to the
vast universalizing concept
white a little flag is simply a kind of
metonymic relationship with that sense
of white but to but but to concretize
this idea of the problematic
relationship between part and whole in a
different way how can we be why are we
so confident about what we see as as as
most of you know I'm sure philosophical
thinking tends to be tyrannized by
metaphors of vision we assume that we
understand reality because um not all
together together as consciously
metaphorically in speaking about this as
perhaps we might be um we say that we
can see it but how do you see it you see
it because of the lensing or focusing
capacities of the eye which exercise a
certain tyranny over the nature of what
you see if you look too closely at
something all you can see is dots if you
close your if you look at something and
close your eyes uh that too be becomes a
kind of vast retinal Mar Toby painting
and and and you know it has a relation
to what to what to what you see but is
at the same time something very
different so if you get too far away
from objects they dissolve what you
thought was an object dissolves into a
much vaster greater space which uh has
seems to have another objective nature
the space that you if you're in a jet
and you're looking down uh what you're
seeing certainly looks like it has form
and structure but the form and structure
is not at all what you're seeing if
you're standing on the ground uh looking
at exactly the same shall we say uh
square footage uh in so far as you can
you're simply seeing different things
and if you recognize what might be
called The Tyranny of focus in the way
in which we Orient ourselves to the
world you can see that this Perpetual
dis dissolve and refocus constituting
objects perpetually in new ways and this
happens too you know in the history of
science uh the relationship between
subatomic particles sometimes turns
itself inside out and the particle that
you thought was the fundamental unit uh
turns out in fact to have uh to to to to
have uh within it a fundamental unit of
which it is a part and there and I mean
all of this was uh I'm just I'm just
referring to what happened during the
Golden Age of the linear accelerator
when when uh when all sorts of
remarkable sort of inversions of what's
taken to be fundamental um seemed uh to
be uh made available by the experimental
data so that in all of these ways uh
ranging from scientific to uh to simp to
the most subjectively visual ways of
understanding the world there are Poss
possibilities of doubt that can be
raised about part hole relations what is
a whole how do we Define a Unity should
we be preoccupied with the nature of
reality as a set of unities obviously
Del is extremely upset about this part
he doesn't want anything to do with
unity uh he doesn't he he his whole the
whole function of his thought uh
experiment is the decentering of things
such that one can no longer talk about
units or holes uh or isolated entities
it's the being together and merging
together and flying apart uh and
reuniting and kesis movement of entities
if they can even be called entities that
D is concerned with now another aspect
of the postmodern is what the postmodern
philosopher uh uh Jean franois leotar in
particular has called the inhuman or the
process of the dehumanization of the
human now this isn't this this is a
weird term to choose because it's not at
all anti-humanistic it's really a new
way of thinking about the human Del
you'll notice talks not just here in in
this in this episode but repeatedly
throughout his work uh which is why he
has so little to say about it here
that's explan
he talks about organs without bodies
that might have brought you up short uh
but what it suggests is that we are as
Del would put it machinic rather than
organic uh if the problem with centered
thought is that it thinks of everything
as arboreal as a
tree that problem has to do with the
fact that a tree is understood in its
symbolic extensions to have have organs
the roots are muscles and circulation
the blossoms are genital in nature the
crown or canopy of leaves is the mind of
the tree reaching up to the sky the
mentality of the tree and by the same
token if we think of our own bodies as
arboreal we think of certain parts of
those bodies as cognitive other parts of
those bodies as having agents as doing
things and if that's the case then we
think of a centered uh uh and and
ultimately genital or genetic
understanding of the body as being
productive Biz wants to understand the
body as being interactive as being uh
polymorphous perverse among other things
he wants he wants to understand it as
being everywhere and nowhere uh an UNS
situated body among other bodies and in
order for this to happen its interface
with other things has to be without
agency and also without uh with wi with
without Co cognitive uh intention uh on
the model of I think therefore I am the
world comes into being because I think
uh without any of this uh in play in
other words we the de the the
dehumanization of the postmodern has to
do not at all with with denying the
importance of the human but with this
radical way of rethinking the human
among other bodies and things plainly
this emphasis involves a kind of
dissolving into otherness a continuity
between subject and object uh in which
the difference ultimately between what
what is inside me what is authentic or
in integral to my being me uh and what's
outside me become completely permeable
uh and interchangeable the late 19th
century uh author and philosopher
aesthetic philosopher Walter perer in
the conclusion to a famous book of his
called the Renaissance had a wonderful
way of putting this he said we're too
used to thinking that we're in here and
everything else is out there and that
somehow or another our perspective on
everything out is a kind of of of uh
saving isolation our enabling our power
of objectivity but then perer says how
can this be because we're made up of the
same things that's out there we too are
molecular in other words what is in US
rusts iron and ripens corn there is a
continuousness between the inside
feeling we have about ourselves and the
exteror the exteriority with we are with
which we are constantly coming in
contact uh so this is I mean doas and
Gat of course um have their own um
excited jumpy way of putting these
things but it's not really a new idea
that we exagerate the isolation of
Consciousness from its surroundings
there is a there is a
permeability of inside and outside that
this kind of romic or decentered
thinking uh is meant to focus on
on
now you could say that what Deliz is
interested in is if you go back to our
coordinates that we kept you know when
we're when we're talking about the
formalist suur through structuralism
through deconstruction if you go back to
those coordinates you could say that
what Del is interested in uh like so
many others we''ve read is a rendering
virtual or possibly even eliminating of
the vertical axis in other words of that
Center or head or crown of the tree which
which
constitutes everything that unfolds on
the horizontal axis be it language be it
the unconscious structured like a
language be it whatever it might be you
could say that uh the that that the
project of deles 2 is the undoing or
rendering virt virtual of this vertical
axis well in a way I think that's true
but then what is the horizontal axis
that that is where the relation of Del
to let's say deconstruction becomes uh a
little problematic and where we can
actually see a difference I'm going to
compare him in this one respect with
laon but I want to hasten to point out
as I will in a minute uh a Divergence
from laon as well you remember that in l
H agency of the letter essay he says you
know he he doesn't just talk about the
axis of combination as a series of
concentric circles each one of which is
made up of little concentric circles he
he doesn't just talk about that he also
talks about the way in which the
combinatory uh powers of the imaginary
in language or desire in language take
staff and the and so that the
organization of signs in their
contiguity with each other can be either
melodic or harmonic uh but in any case
the you can't just think of the axis of
combination as a complete linearity it
has it has dimensionality of different
kinds well for for and that's why Del
and G he introduced the concept of
plateau toward the end of your excerpt
the book in which which your excerpt
appears is called a thousand plateaus uh
and ultimately the concept of plateau is
even more important to them than the
concept of ryone when they introduce the
concept of plateau they're doing exactly
the same thing they're saying we jump
from s cluster to S cluster and not all
s clusters are linear and uniform this
is where there is perhaps a difference
from deconstruction delz and gatari are
interested in multiplicity of coding as
they put it they're interested in the in
the way in which um when I think I'm not
just thinking in language I'm not just
thinking uh pictorially I'm not just
thinking musically uh but I am leaping
around among codes so that uh the actual
thought process is eclectic in this way
um now you could say that this is
something actually anticipated also by
laon you remember also in the agency
essay that laon reminds us uh true
inheritor of Freud which he takes
himself to be lar reminds us that at the
beginning of the interpretation of
Dreams Freud said that the decoding the
DreamWork is like figuring out the
puzzle of arus arus being one of those
uh uh trick sentences which are made up
not exclusively of words but of the odd
syllable but then of pictures ihart New
York ihart New York uh is a Reas uh and
that and that the DreamWork functions
constantly in Freud's view as a rer so
you could say that laon already
introduces uh for Del the possibility of
thinking of a multiple coding that needs
to be decoding uh on a variety of
decoded on a variety of plateaus if it's
going to make any sense um
now Del's relationship with all the
figures we've been reading is rather
problematic really um the book preceding
a thousand Plateau was called anti- edus
and it is a a continuous systematic
attack on fro on on the he always calls
fry the general uh and the the idea that
um that that that Freud feels that the
whole of our psychic lives is completely
saturated and and and dominated by the
edus complex and delz you know with his
idea of decentered thinking of R of the
ryome uh sets out to show in a variety
of ways how limiting uh and how
unfortunate for the legacy of
psychoanalysis this kind of of of of
focus on a particular issue turns out to
be this is this is Del's critique of not
mine and it's and and you would think
that Del then would be a lot closer to
laon just for the reasons that I've just
described but you know Lon too there's a
at the very bottom of page uh what page
is it at the very bottom bottom of um uh
in your text uh [Music]
[Music]
034 left on on the right hand column
very bottom of the page he says it is no
accident that psycho psycho analysis
linked its Destiny with
Linguistics now it's it's impossible to
say I think quite by Design it's
impossible to say whether Delo is
referring to Freud or laon and saying
that because it's laon who claims that
Freud said it in other words that the
interpretation of Dreams is the text in
which we discover that the unconscious
is structured like a language um but at
the same time uh uh posterity has taken
uh la 's focus on Linguistics to be a
massive perhaps inappropriate revision
of Freud uh and uh to be a very
different matter so uh it's interesting
that delz quite Ambiguously seems to
suppose for us that Freud uh and laon
are part and parcel of each other and
the reason he can do that is that he is
interested in uh a form of thinking
about language which no Linguistics has
successfully uh accommodated as far as
he's concerned in other words he he
keeps talking about chsky uh you know uh
chsky seems to be in a way the villain
of your essay uh but but I think in a
way that's just a way of evading talking
about soer because you wouldn't want to
get in trouble with all those
structuralists uh uh because soer too uh
the problem with soer too is that there
is a certain tyranny or arboresque
tendency in saurian thinking
uh to be focused on the binary that is
the relationship between the signified
and signifier uh as fixed uh as
inflexible as lacking in what dared I
would call free play uh and therefore
too a kind of a a kind of of tyranny so
very quickly on the ryone how do we know
a ryone when we see it I think probably
in the long run whatever frustrations uh
uh uh the Del's essay puts in your path
I think probably in the long run you
you're pretty clear on what a ryome is
but if but but if there's any lingering
doubt just think about the flu um you
there what there is a what Del calls
romatic flu that's something we get from
other people the circulation of disease
as we all come down with it around
midterm period the circulation of
disease is romatic it's a perfect
example of uh to use another to use
another instance from from Del the
relationship between the wasp and the
Orchid the WASP like the like the the
virus um sort of flits about from
Blossom to Blossom descends and then
constitutes the flu and by contrast
there is hereditary disease that is that
which is lurking in us uh because we're
programed for it we're hardwired for it
uh it is it is genetically in our nature
and this uh Del Associates with Arbor
with the arboresque it is uh it comes
from An Origin it is it is something
that is a cause within us or a cause
standing behind us as opposed to
something coming out of left field uh in
an arbitrary and unpredictable fashion
and descending on
perhaps also not unlike Tano's
distinction between modification and
evolution the arbores
evolves the romatic is modification that
you know the the the give and take of
tensions among entities the rats
tumbling over each other the Maze of the
burrow the spreading of crab grass all
of this all of this has a kind of Rand
Randomness uh
unpredictability the power of linkage at
all conceivable points without any with
W without any
predictability uh all of this uh is
entailed in the
romatic now as to what's being attacked
and again the value systems surrounding
these things are not absolute Del is not
going so far as to say arboresque bad
romatic good he's coming pretty close to
it but he acknowled es The Perils as I
say of the rise of mtic but in the
meantime just one point in passing
because I'm running out of time to talk
about X just one point in passing about
the arboresque there are actually in the
first pages of your essay two forms of
it one is what he calls the root book in
know the the traditional classical book
which presents to you a theme I am going
to write about so and so and I'm going
to do so systematically uh one thing at
a time in a series of chapters that's
the root book but then there's what he
calls the fical book the uh a book which
consists of complicated offshoots of
roots but nevertheless entailing a tap
rot and this is what he Associates with
modernism precisely in your text he says
the fical book is like Joyce's ulses
everything including the kitchen sink is
in it it looks as though it were totally
romatic but it is of course controlled
by unified by brought into coherence by
a single uh focusing authorial
Consciousness so that it is not truly
romatic it's a fascal book here thousand
plateaus is going to be a romatic book
so you have not just two kinds of books
uh in this idea but three all right then
very quickly about
about
zek I think it can help us understand uh
laon I I I hope you agree in having read
it but I think in a way it also takes us
back or or allows us to revisit uh Peter
Brooks uh the the uh the best example it
seems to me of the way in which uh the
tension of desire in narrative works for
zek is is although these are splendid
examples and I think and I think largely
self-explanatory the best example is
actually in another book by xek called
everything you wanted to know about laon
but were afraid to ask Hitchcock and and
and and in that book uh of course you
get a lot of attention paid to vertigo
and just think about vertigo as an
instance of the kind of plot J is
talking about you know there's that I've
forgotten her name there there's that
really nice woman you remember the
painter you know and Jimmy Stewart just
pays absolutely no attention to her
she's right there she's available she's
in love with him oh you know he doesn't
even see her except as a confidant uh
you know oh yes you uh I'm so glad
you're here uh but but he is on the
other hand
obsessed with with a woman who whose
identity he can't even be sure of it's
not it's not just that she's
inaccessible for some reason that she's
that that that she's a distant object of
Desire her identity and the question of
whether or not she's being play acted by
somebody else remains completely unclear
unclear for many Spectators even as they
watch the ending of the film completely
unclear and that is an obscure not just
a distant but an obscure object of
desire and of course the premise of her
in accessibility is what drives the plot
now I think that the interest that it's
interesting to think about the
relationship between the element of
detour And Delay as xek implies it in
understanding narrative uh the
relationship between that and what Peter
Brooks is talking about Peter Brooks is
uh is is talking about the way in which
middles in plots protract themselves
through uh episodes all of which
manifest some sort of imbalance or need
for uh need for further uh uh repetition
in a new key and much of this had
because the characteristic plot of the
kind of fiction Brooks is many thinking
about is the marriage plot much of this
has to do with an appropriate object
Choice which uh indeed um can also in
many cases Allah what I began by
mentioning in G uh politic inappropriate
political object Choice think for
example about the plot of J as Princess
casamas in that regard uh uh poor hent
Robinson strikes out on both counts in
rather completely parallel ways he he's
he ends up on the wrong side of politics
he ends up on the wrong side of Love uh
and in a way the princess C princess
Casas is an exploration of these two
sides of the issue but so in any case uh
for Brooks the resol ution of the plot
is a way in which closure can be
achieved it is the it it it is a final
moment of equilibrium as one might say
or quiet or reduction of exitation such
that the Freudian Death Wish can be
realized as we know uh in the way we
want it to be realized as opposed to uh
our being afflicted by something from
the outside so so in Brooks whose
closest ties are to structuralism there
is a sense there is there is an achieved
sense of closure which is an important
aspect of what's admirable in
fiction xak is more postmodern xak sees
following laong he sees the object of
desire as um uh asymptotic as being uh
ultimately and always inaccessible or if
it becomes accessible uh as for example
on page
1193 in the right hand column or one
might say almost accessible this gives
rise to as many problems uh as it seems
to eliminate bottom right hand column page
page
1193 GX says perhaps in courtly love
itself the long awaited moment of
highest fulfillment when the lady
renders G
Mercy to her servant is not the lady's
surrender not her consent to the sexual
act nor some mysterious right of
initiation but simply a sign of Love on
the part of the lady the miracle that
the object answered stretching its hand
out to the supplicant the object in
other words has become subject in this
moment of exchange or mutuality of
recognition or or becoming human on the
part of the lady whom uh whom of course
jjek has been associated with the
dominatrix uh in a sadistic relationship
um in this moment of becoming human of offering
offering
love the object becom more accessible
that is to say there is now the
possibility of some form of mutuality
but in becoming more
accessible the energy of Desire is
threatened with dissolution in other
words closure in zek is a threat to the
energy of desire desire is something
which inheres in our very language
according to zek and which uh and and
and which were it to be understood as as
as as as brought to
closure the lady you know the the I mean
Zak gives lots of examples of the lady
you know after all this sort of seeming
inaccessibility says sure why not you
know of course uh and and you know and
and and the person is and and the person
is completely upset and then refuses uh
refuses the act because there's nothing
more to desire all of a sudden all of a
sudden the whole structure of that
energy that drives language that drives
Consciousness comes tumbling to the
ground and desire has become need it's
become sort of merely a matter of uh of
gratification through what's ready to
hand uh and no longer a question of
sustaining a
dream and this and and and this
generally speaking is what xek wants to
focus on in talking about these plots
the the object of Desire must be not
just distant but also obscure I'm going
to make two more points first of all As
you can no doubt tell this is a perfect
replica of hun hine's the ambassadors uh
I mean I I I I'd be I'd be amazed uh if
anyone in the room hadn't recognized it
um but there it is there it is um
there's two guys there's a table between
them they are negotiating probably over
one of Henry VII's marriages and this I
think is not insignificant they are
there you know in the service of Henry
VII negotiating one of those extremely
complicated marriages possibly even the
one that led to the uh the uh abdication
uh uh of the Anglican Church from the
Roman Catholic Church who knows who
knows but the lore about the painting is
that it has to do with the negotiation
of an object of desire and that object
is absent in other words it's something
really only implied by the painting
in the foreground of the painting
notorious to Art historians there's this
thing now this is pretty much what's in
the painting I this is not a replica of
the two guys standing there but this is
pretty much what you see when you look
at the foreground of the painting if you
look sort of from the side it turns into
something very much like a skull and
generally speaking there's a kind of
consensus among Scholars that it may be
a uh a weirdly distorted Shadow or
representation of a skull what a skull
is doing in the foreground of course
causes us to wonder as well obviously
you can have some ideas on the subject
but it's still um not exactly real as
painting we're talking about if he
sticks a skull in the foreground well it
also has a certain resemblance to other
things we could mention uh but the r but
the main point about it is that we don't
really know what it is
it is in other words uh something we've
already become familiar with in thinking
about Lon it is that signifier that ultimate
ultimate
signifier which is the Obscure object of
Desire called sometimes by laon the phus
and it seems simply to be there before
us in this painting now both in the book
in hitch on Hitchcock where he finds
something like this in just about every
film Hitchcock ever made and also in h
Bin's painting xek calls this the
blot it's it's it's you know it's we
have nothing else to call it it's a blot
what's it doing there it in in fiction
we would call it irrelevant detail we
can think of we we can find a way of of
placing formally absolutely everything
in fiction the weather what the flowers
on the table whatever it might be we can
place formally but there may be
something in in fiction which is simply
unaccountable we cannot account for it
and that's the block that's the block
for J all right now
finally undesir and language there's a
part of x's essay which you may have
thought of as a digression and he's
suddenly talking about JL Austin's
ordinary language philosophy he's
suddenly talking about the linguist uh
J's idea of predication
in both cases what's important
about in in the one case the element of
performance in any other in any
utterance and in the other case the
dominance of an entire sentence by
predication what's important in both of
those elements is that they take over an
aspect of language of which they were
only supposed to be a part in other
words in Austin there are both
performatives and conaes but in the long
run the argument of how to do things
with words suggests that there are only
performatives I mean I thought this was
a conative I thought this was just
straightforward language but I can now
see an element of performance in it and
that's the way that's that there's a
gradual changing of his own mind in
Austin's book uh which um to which zek
is sensitive by the same token du talks
about the way in which the predicate
element of a subject predicate relation
has a kind of energy of agency that
simply uh takes over the grammatical
subject uh and constitutes a kind of
performance in the sentence performance
in both cases meaning desire when I
promise to do something I also desire to
fulfill the promise when uh when I when
I predicate something I'm also evoking a
desire that that something be the case
possibly through my own in
instrumentality this is the argument
that's what J means by desire in
language and by the inescapability of
desire in language and the way in which
it permeates everything we can say to
each other and most particularly the way
in which it permeates the plot or as
they say in film studies diis of the
kinds of filmic examples that J gives us
uh I'd better stop there uh I I hope
that this somewhat rapid fire survey of
some key ideas in these texts are
helpful and I think in the long run
perhaps I hope mainly that you see these
two energetic authors as exemplars of
what we call postmodernism and see the
relevance of the concept of the
postmodern to the study of literary Theory
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