YouTube 字幕：
15. The Postmodern Psyche

不必从头看完视频——获取完整字幕，搜索关键词，一键复制。

AutoDub

听懂YouTube外语视频

沉浸式YouTube翻译中文配音

告别语言障碍，拥抱全球优质内容

免费使用

视频字幕

视频摘要

Summary

Core Theme

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.

Mind Map

点击展开

点击探索完整互动思维导图

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

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

点击任意文字或时间戳，即可跳转到视频对应位置

大多数字幕 5 秒内即可准备好

一键复制125+ 种语言搜索内容跳转到时间戳

粘贴 YouTube 链接

输入任意 YouTube 视频链接，获取完整字幕

大多数字幕 5 秒内即可准备好

安装 Chrome 扩展

无需离开 YouTube，一键获取视频字幕。安装我们的 Chrome 扩展，直接在视频页面访问任意视频的完整字幕。

免费添加到 Chrome

支持 YouTube、Coursera、Udemy 等主流教育平台

快速获取字幕：直接修改地址栏中的域名即可！

YouTube

←

→

↻

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

YoutubeToText

←

→

↻

https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

YouTube 字幕正在为您准备结果……

YouTube 字幕：15. The Postmodern Psyche