Thursday, March 09, 2006
(6:00 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Knowingness, and how to communicate it
Talking with erstwhile Webloggian Robb Schuneman today, I was compelled to read some old threads, including this one in which I had an argument with F. Winston Codpiece III, ultimately necessitating his excommunication from The Weblog. At that time, erstwhile Weblog reader George W. complained that I didn't do philosophy anymore. It still stung. And so: philosophy.That is to say: Lacan. There is something about an encounter with Lacan that produces arrogance in the subject. Of course I don't need to tell you this: our experience proves as much every single day. There is something about feeling as though one has decoded one of his enigmatic texts that gives one the impression that one has a direct line to Being itself. Let others sit around and spout off unfounded random opinions: the one who has subjected himself to Lacan knows, and surely gets off on that knowledge. He sits content, smiling at those naive, uninitiated folk -- the only question is how to convey to them, not his knowledge (for that would be impossible, they would never understand), but the fact that he knows, the very knowingness to which he has been exposed and in which he participates. A patronizing "Socratic" question, inquiring whether common sense isn't exactly wrong? Perhaps too risky -- although it happens, perhaps more often than we think, it is undoubtedly a stroke of luck when one hits on a position that is the strict inverse of truth. A direct exposition is not a real option -- the desire to start drawing things on the blackboard may be too strong to resist. In most cases, smugness will do.
That's how you can tell someone who is just taking Zizek's word for it from someone who has seriously studied Lacan at first hand -- the former is insecure, over-eager to spout the dogma in every possible position; the latter can remain silent, simply shake his head and chuckle dismissively. (They say that for the last few years of his seminar, Lacan stood behind the podium in utter silence.)
(For a while, I tried telling women that I had read Lacan in French. Though true, it did not "get me anywhere." I still don't fully understand why that was.)
