Alenka Zupančič. To enjoy is to trespass. 2018

without further ado I will simply present what I've prepared for today which I think will resonate with people who are in my class on different levels with what we are doing there but hopefully it will also make some sense for those who are not in the in the class in the seminar so idea is basically to start out of two things that are quite of actuality today that we kind of are batting in all the time the question of feelings into the question of also enjoyment I mean the the title of the lectures you probably know is to enjoy is to trespass to trespass and then hopefully to try to work or show how this seemingly simply psychological issues can open up or should open up also a serious and of political debate perhaps at least kind of indicated this okay so I will simply start with a rather I think obvious claim for those at least who who come from the kind of background that I come from the Litella Kenyan background that what is usually referred to in Lacombe by symbolic order and it's all its structures that this is not simply a kind of a tool with which we humans approach some real outside it it's not simply a medium through which and only through which we see and understand the real the reality but symbolic structures also language as part of these structures are actually part of the reality to begin with so they did not come from within as they are already out there it is a reality that invades us actually that kind of intrudes into us makes us not only speak obviously but also feel and I will dwell on this last point a little bit I mean I apologize for making some rather obvious statement but I think sometimes it is important to remind oneself of them for instance is it at all possible to hurt ones feelings with something else then speech including of course various forms of silent treatment or some kind of a myth failure of communication but nevertheless something that does belong to the symbolic register so to put it very bluntly if I fall I can hurt my leg and I feel the pain but this is different from hurting my feelings which would happen for example if the person next to me were to say you clumsy whenever we've been a fool so hurting someone's feelings is an interesting phenomena is is symbolically induced pain any less real than physical pain or is not every pain somehow physical or real even if it is symbolically induced but we could also turn this around perhaps and consider the possibility opened up for instance with the advance of neuroscience to make us feel pain for instance in the leg by directly stimulating the brain so this seems to kind of circumvent all symbolic means so it must be like physical pain but still it doesn't seem completely correct to say that my leg hurts or something maybe so or another interesting question could this experimenters hurt my feelings with a direct stimulation of my brain could they make me feel as if somebody just incited me by a direct stimulation of my brain so we all translates into chamak chemistry and chemical processes it should become somehow possible so in the sense there is no great mystery in that a direct stimulation of the central nervous system has effects on what we feel the mystery is still I think elsewhere how is it possible that a mere word can produce a chemical reaction in my body or brain so I'm sure there are lots of explanations of but I'm also almost sure that they cannot fully cower let's say that this gap or leap involved in the fact that somewhere along the chain of reactions non chemical element or course leaps over to a chemical element and here I just used this as a pretext to because I think it leads door directed to an very interesting and important claim that Lacan says something that Lacan says about the very notion of the cause namely this rather famous in the ad the coals could tsuki cloche there is but the cost of that which does not work somehow or completely function does not add up of course this is particular also for psychoanalysis because in it the question of the cause usually arises precisely when something interrupts let's say the smooth continuity of events and of course here are the examples range from the most innocent slips of the tank to all kinds of ways in which different symptoms betray points of significant discontinuity so this kind of as Jacqueline Minear put it this puts the psychoanalytic use of the notion of the course outside it's usable connections simply to lawfulness and regularity the question of the cause appears precisely when a causal chain kind of breaks the up which is to say that what is crucial for the concept of course in psychoanalysis is the element of discontinuity precisely okay this is a valuable and important lesson yet a lesson that I think still needs to be properly argued for the following objection might be right immediately is the question of the cause in psychoanalysis not always the question of another hidden cause which can well be part of some other regularity than the one that has been interrupted say by the slip of the tongue yet which nevertheless follows its own unyielding necessity and regularity and has not psychoanalysis always tended to cognise precisely in deceivingly accidental slips slips affirm logic and regularity of course this is true and the discontinuity in itself is certainly no immediate proof of the absence of causality what it proves or bears witness to is something else namely the fact that between the two levels that for instance psychoanalytic interpretation deals with like the manifest and latent level to use the Freudian terms there is no smooth immediate passage just as there is no fixed key that could provide the translation from simply from one level into the other just to use a very to-the-point quote here by gladden dual are in relationship to this the reconstruction this is the quad reconstruction of the latent text behind the strat of distortion is far from presenting us with the unconscious in persona on the contrary we are on the track of the unconscious only in the space between the two in the irreducible interval between the manifest and latent in there surplus of distortion over the true content in the dreamwork that produced the distortion antipode so you see roughly what I'm getting at in principle the distortion as a form of discontinuity can be explained related to its causes yet besides the unconscious causes of distortion there is also something else at work here something that we can call perhaps the unconscious as the cause of the distortion as the surplus of the distortion over through content a course kind of motivated by itself yet the such as this kind of a strange causa sui the cause only exists in the very relationship between the two lengths and not kind of independently of them in short we are dealing with a that is linked to the existence of the two levels and to this constitutive gap or interspace between them yet which is not directly determined or deducible from or reducible to either of them it only exists as the articulation of their non-relationship also because they do not come together so in yet the cause could a tsuki close if there is but the cause of that which does not work and I will now read you a brief quote from l'homme which is very picturesque and I think which kind of brings in or illustrates what he means here by cause in a quite funny and amusing even way he says cause is to be distinguished from that which is determinate in a chain in other words from the law by way of example think of what is pictured in the law of action and reaction the riskier one might say a single principle one does not go without the other the mass of a body that is crushed on the ground it's not the cause of that which it receives in return for its vital force its mass is integrated in this force that comes back to it in order to dissolve its coherence where return effect there is no gap here except perhaps at the end that is to say in the ground whenever we speak of course on the other hand there is always something and anti conceptual something indefinite the phases of the Moon are the cause of tides we know that the word cause is correctly used here or again my asthma's are the cause of fever that doesn't mean anything either there is a hole in something that oscillate in the interval okay I think it is a kind of a picturesque way of presenting how he distinguishes between this kind of interrupts that are one thing passing into the other and another situation when we legitimately speak or use the word cause this is from seminary 11 yes all right so okay this also this sentence also then brings us to another important idea involved in Lana's account of causality we did something that oscillates it appears in the whole and oscillates there in this an interval or gap in this kind of structural split of causality is precisely debt for which psychoanalysis actually reserves this name over the cause like the cause of desire this object ta is something that Lacan situates or recognizes precisely in this split but I won't go into this now so just to now perhaps a little bit forcefully but Nadeau nevertheless linked to the system to the beginning of my talk we could say that this is precisely why it is appropriate to say her remark caused me a lot of pain and his grip hurt my hand if I said his grip caused me a lot of pain this already I think would suggest that the grip also did hurt my feelings and there was this kind of symbolic gap in between or perhaps then we could also say if our feelings hurt there is a cause but this does not mean simply justification it does not simply mean that if my feelings are hurt someone is guilty of offense although this is indeed how sometimes and I think with increasing frequency things get articulated today the feelings are often taken as kind of an ultimate criterion of their being or not and let's say offense committed and has to be sanctioned and this is problematic in itself it but the problem is not simply that feelings are unreliable or as well as indiscriminate in themselves for instance someone who just I don't know hates women usually has very strong feelings about them but what exactly do these feelings testify to what is the real that they are pointing at probably not that women are mean or something like this so there is a certain problem to rely on this but this is not the problem that I want to discuss today the problem is more like that hurt feelings bring in precisely the issue of causality that is to say of the interspace of the interval it implies the causality implies everything happens or a lot of things happen in this interspace which is precisely not fully covered not only it is not fully covered like in advance by physical or chemical connections it is also not fully covered in advance by the symbolic and the symbolic connections this is to say that it is impossible to establish a direct link between words and their effects the same word can have very different effects it can indeed hurt someone and not someone else but it's the question of the same world or circumstances of course so what takes place in this interspace is work precisely sometimes a lot of work and the result of it is or not only some kind of causal connection but work in relation to what precisely in relation to what Lacan calls this object this object that kind of appears in the interval so perhaps another enter rather strong but nevertheless way of putting this would be to say that on some level I always get to decide whether my feelings will really hurt or not be hurt or not of course not necessarily in any kind of straightforward conscious way but still some kind of decision regarding this seem to take place and this does not mean that if I decide that they do hurt then this is simply make it my problem in my responsibility absorbing the other from his or hers this is not what I'm saying it only means that we never just we are not never just simply passive receivers or of symbolic or even physical blows and this is precisely why some of these blows can hurt so much this is not something that is there in order to kind of diminish their relevance or pain so but what is this interspace it is not simply symbolic it is not simply real it is not regulated really in the same some kind of a palpable reality it is not regulated in advance by physical or symbolic laws it has to be somehow negotiated worked through and it gets decided in view of course different concrete circumstances or configurations I think also that this is a kind of a very crucial empty space which is at work in all social interaction out of which many of our social ties and configurations are actually generated and in which they're actually decided through which they become what they are you may think that things as as they are already liked by some kind of eternal and inherent necessity but actually it is very much at this point that what has always already been there is decided which is why I think it is also important that this interspace is there and aptly this is also the space of frictions and conflicts but the attempt to kind of eliminate this interspace in advance this kind of pre-emptive regulation of it in order to precisely avoid certain frictions and conflict is I think itself a very dub true strategy it is the strategy for instance employed or at work in some at least some of the ways in which this we're all kind of bashing this nose and political correctness is functioning precisely when it is about an attempt to kind of preemptively transform this gap of the course into some quasi regularity which functions like this in a necessary way when we are dealing precisely with this kind of a bureaucratic attempt to fill up this interspace very often with an ever dancer network of regulations and restrictions imposed whatever on our speech or behavior and so on but as we can also notice more often than not the effect of this is not simply a pacification of this interspace sometimes it is I'm not saying that this never works I think it definitely does sometimes and it is a good intervention but very often and I think more and more so we see this kind of this not pacification but rather like a growing expansion of this very interspace because the regulation itself become intrinsic to it and kind of gets objected to its indefinite logic we see this in the way in which certain for instance politically correct names and forms get immediately infected so to say some with suspicion and kind of improper twisted connotation they need to be replaced by others and others and so on and the other effect of this approach I think is also a kind of shrinking of the proper space of subjectivity for the latter tends to be reduced precisely to a kind of receptacle of feelings whereas the means and ways of negotiate them are delegated kind of outsourced out sourced to these protective rules the resultantly also kind of in infantilizing move at work here we should kind of be equipped to handle to the cite certain situations and not simply to believe that they do not exist or pretend that they do not exist Oh also I think it is not always advisable to simply try to avoid conflict at all costs okay now I will slightly shift the debate but it's still the same debate to bring in perhaps a larger scope or another thing that is very much part of this interspace namely first the question of enjoyment in this famous in famous three songs please disappear that Lacan talks about and also it's possible impossible the limitation and regulation we may have the impression and this is quite interesting that for instance in contrast to pass to the past and to some more or less fundamental religious traditions particularly Christians we are done with considering enjoyment as something evil but I think this impression could not be more wrong there are more and more forms of enjoyment which were considered rather innocent not so long ago that now really tend to strike us as intrinsically evil not only inadmissible but kind of search there surcharge with this evil connotation we can take like a rather innocent or obvious example of enjoyment in jokes evil connotation related to enjoyment in jokes comes for example from the fact that it seems kind of ugly evil to take pleasure that is to enjoy at another person's expense or at the expense of the butt of the joke there whatever supposed efficiently misfortune exposure and so on and of course there are people who object to jokes and talking in principle because the more hilarious the job the more hurtful usually or at least in some intention it is - it's bad and according to this argument the enjoyment experienced here making fun of for yeah other people and so on is bad and ugly think and one should avoid it as a matter of principle this is not to say necessarily that if we want to be politically correct in this respect no jokes are allowed they are but only like innocent jokes so quote for instance the code the jokes about like abstract jokes the jokes about for instance geometrical shapes but if we look up at some of this it becomes reader obvious did they do not so much who resolved the problem as they kind of perpetuate it on their own ground okay I just look up two of these jokes to kind of present you with an example to example so this is the first one what did the triangle say to the circle your life seems so pointless and then the other one what did he put it he put a new state to the other side nice legs okay you have it aggressiveness sexism these are the very two tendencies that Freud recognized at the very heart of all tendentious this is non innocent jokes so even though these remarks do not refer in this case to any particular person or group or nationality or whatever it is clear that the offensive reference is already implicit also within the abstract jokes the enjoyment in aggressive and sexual remark is still there making these jokes like less innocent that one might want them to be but of course to be sure this problem with kind of clearly the limiting innocent jokes is the problem I think of enjoyment as such enjoyment is somehow always kind of structurally enjoyment at someone's expense even when it doesn't seem so at first sight I don't know considered the classical example of someone driven crazy by the smell of the neighbor's cooking possibly belonging to another ethnical tradition they cook eat and enjoy in the privacy of the kitchen but since their enjoyment has a smell that kind of penetrates other apartments they enjoy other their neighbors expense this is how this can be perceived or take the example of passive smoking the more one wants to confine smokers to their own clearly delimited space the more the smoke of their enjoyment has the tendency to find some way out and annoy us so in this sense I claim that to enjoy is to trespass not because of some excessive debauchery or radical transgression involved in it but kind of structurally because it is situated at the very intersection of the subject in the other this is it's the only place where it kind of actually appears it is the very name or concept of death what it comes up in this intersection so socially in this way enjoyment registers as a form of trespassing that's crossing a limit which in itself is not entirely clear and is difficult to determine in which we usually only decide as a limit or not in retrospect once it has already been crossed or not and for this is also how jokes function I mean joke is not a joke until it is told and somebody responds to it with laughter this is also what Freud says it's not that there is a joke and then the joke as such is not fully ontologically constituted before we laugh at it before we kind of baptize it as a joke that this has passed and that this limit was not crossed in this sense but actually kind of possibly even United as in sharing this joke or in partaking in this particular form of enjoyment so this odd to say that the structural problem of enjoyment is I think real we cannot simply swept it under the carpet or under the banners of tolerance enjoyment the moment it manifests itself as enjoyment is always kind of out of place because precisely it has no place that there are of course symbolic spaces when it could be assigned but there it is already precisely we don't perceive it as this kind of intrusive things that disturbs us it only exists as I said in this intersection of the subject and the other it doesn't have a room of its own to paraphrase the famous title it is more like perhaps a corridor that both separates and connect different rooms so I I said to enjoy is to trespass but I could also say to desire is to trespass her well as to love is to trespass an example that Slava often makes or even why not even go so far as to say to speak is to trespass in this sense precisely because one cannot simply separate speech from what get attached to it in this 30 way but if I add well a little bit on this to love is to trespass to focus a little bit on the question of love here this brings us to I think very important very also at this particular time very actual thing that we observe Asians that Lacan makes in ethics of psychoanalysis in relationship precisely to the difference between love and philanthropy he commends there quite extensively on this kind of a horror that seizes fright at the Christian commandment of love of one's neighbor the next day this do shall do shall love thy neighbor as thyself and as you probably know Freud has this in a civilization and it contains he has this kind of a reaction to this but listen men tries to satisfy this is literally from Freud Maine tries to satisfy his need for aggression at the expense of his neighbor to exploit his work without compensation to use him sexually without his consent to appropriate his goods to humiliate him to inflict suffering under him to torture and kill him so why should I love him indiscriminately something like this is the end that kind of is amused at this what he recognizes a kind of Aristotelian reaction in in Freud and comments on it in extensor saying precisely that Freud horror comes among other things from the fact that he takes love here not as a kind of in a kind of philanthropic sense we could also say that he doesn't take it in the common sense of what we call Christian love as a kind of good that can be spread across and divided among the entire humanity but precisely as something less benign and more more demanding more trespassing if you want in this way so I will now read you what I think it's a little bit longer quote but by Lacombe but it is really I think it's quite powerful quote but that brings us all so directly to the heart of these issues he says it is in the nature of the root to be altruistic but as that is not the love of thy neighbor Freud makes a spill this without articulating it fully every time he stops short in horror and the consequences of the commandment to love ones neighbor we see evoked the presence of that fundamental evil which dwells within this neighbor but if this is the case then it also dwells within me and what is more of a neighbor to me then this heart within which is death of my reasons in which I don't care I don't dare go near for as soon as I go near it there rises up the unfathomable agressivity from which I flee that I turn against me in which in the very place of the vanished law adds its weight to that which prevents me from crossing a certain frontier at the limit of the thing still a little bit he goes on as long as the question of the booth there is no problem our own and our neighbors are of the same material son Martin shares his cloak this refers to the biblical story san martin shares his cloak and a great deal is made of it yes it is after all a simple question of training material is by the very nature made to be disposed of it belongs to the other as much as it belongs to me but perhaps over and about that needs to be closed his son Martin was begging for something else he the beggar was begging son Martin for something else namely then some depth Sam Martin either kill him or sleep with him in any encounter there is a big difference in meaning between response of philanthropy in that of laughs I think this quote and you will see when we're all this is heading is quite important because it kind of efficiently draws our attention to an important difference between precisely what Lacan calls this kind of altruism and he kind of really repeats this insistently how my how agrees I mean altruism are not at all incompatible and I think this is also very important lesson of our time when we often tend to introduce or simply stop our social criticism in these terms of a grism how these are all about this egg we stick drives people are gooey stick they don't want to share and so on I think what Lacan is here trying to say is that it is a altruism and egoism actually are kind of mirroring each other they are not at all incompatible what is incompatible with this logic is actually something else so he says for example that my algorithm quite is quite content with certain altruism and it is effective experience that what I want is the good of the art of others but in the image of my own and this really doesn't cost so much what I want is the good of others perceived provided that it remain in the image of my own so actually the argument and what kind of sticks out of it or doesn't fit this picture is precisely what he caused this education of reasons where all of the sudden my visions in debt of the neighbor become indistinguishable enhance all the more reason for this incompatibility aggression there is no place for both of us here so the argument that Lacan makes this kind of moves in two steps or two points the first would be this general that has already been also been made but by badou in his book on some pole I think or perhaps on ethics I mean he says that in all this proliferation of differences which we tend to glorify we do this so far as none of these differences really makes a real difference the moment there is some kind of a real difference we are horrified by barbaric customs or whatever we just stop at it this kind of more strange difference immediately directly translates into evil a fundamental evil that dwells within this neighbor we like others if there are but colorfully different versions of ourselves and it even be desired is it even desirable that they are a bit different uniformity and uniform repetition is already disturbing here why because it comes dangerously close to suggesting precisely what lakhan's the second step suggests namely that this evil the dress within my neighbor also dress within me and it is actually one and the same evil what is more of a neighbor to meet in it's hard then my own reasons which I don't dare to go near so in this sense we could say the fundamental problem of resource is not simply dead of difference but even more on an even more fundamental level precisely that of sameness the evil enjoyment of the other is the same as mine but what does this mean I claim that this does not mean that one cannot simply translated is indirect psychological terms and say that I secretly want to do what others do even if I don't allow myself to do it although clearly repression in this kind in front Ian stains has the effect of replacing desire for something with hatred and repulsion for it and but and by the way when this happens repulsion is real it is not fainted to say for example that I don't know most gay haters have themselves homosexual desires may be true but these desires are not hidden somewhere behind or below the hatred in repulsion they exist precisely as this repulsion this is the way the the very passion in which it exists it's not something to be so it is there this repulsion is not simply fake it is quite real but this is more on the side I just want to say that the sameness of the enjoyment is at least how I read it does not refer to this kind of a same content of enjoyment but precisely to something else namely that before or below or beside any concrete forms enjoyment can take in terms of what gives me or youth enjoyment it is precisely this structural place this emptiness also Lacan says a hollowed out space which emerges and exists precisely as the intersection between the subject in the other of course present also in the configuration of the intersubjectivity it is repeated in every aisle with every one of us yes it is the same space there is a question of individuation if you want at stake here it is a kind of indivisible space or emptiness that only becomes divisible that is to say precisely ready for segregation when particular forms of enjoyment emerge to it and they always do related to different practices cultural subjectivity and so on but at the heart it's the same problem it's the same thing that one doesn't particularly want to deal with that emerges but segregating different forms of enjoyment does not I think resolve the problem which is precisely death of of the sameness the moment that enjoyment comes or seems to come to close even within our rich we usually don't simply embrace it but arise all kinds of defenses against it this is also one of Lana's claim in the ethics and I think we can we're able to relate this to an interesting question also of today sexuality namely the question of hate speech do people who practice it enjoy it I think this is a real question I believe enjoyment perhaps constitutes a marginal gain in the practice of hate speech it is much more on the side perhaps of the defense against enjoyment to use hate speech it's perhaps not so much to enjoy the dirty words aimed at the other as it is to insult to curse the enjoyment as such perceived precisely as situated in the other but the perhaps we should take this dimension into account as well that it is also hate speech is also practice of of slurring this difficult ex-teammate problematic place of enjoyment okay we have I don't want to go on too long so I will simply now kind of wrap up by trying to answer some direct questions that probably have arrived in relationship to what I've been saying first of all that's what I've been saying mean that the problem at stake here is fundamentally a psychological problem no this is not what I'm saying I'm not saying that for instance it follows from there that we simply need to come to terms with our enjoyment and all our whatever social and political problems will be solved now it is a structural problem and psychology is already a response to this structural problem we could say the human psychology is a response to a certain impasse of simple contradiction of symbolic order which exists in different configurations it is a structural problem which does not exist independently of our interaction with others and above all which does not exist independently of the social bonds and edifices that we partake in and when Freud wrote civilization and its discontents disk has already been about him detecting precisely two things a kind of increase in as we would put it today mental issues like psychological problems and about their intrinsic irreducible link to the social to the civilization to the not simply be civilization is limp not simply the cause of this but these issues are it's kind of its inherent symptom and I'm I think it's safe to say that the discomfort in civilization is even growing or exploding nowadays and this is not simply because ok there are different kind of crisises it is not simply because for many let's say it's really hard and insecure which is certainly is but also because on top of this we are supposed to be kind of entirely responsible for it and to deal with it personally this is the usual whatever ideological answer the whole job market is extremely precarious where you should be able to deal with it and if you are not okay invest in some psychological growth or therapy or if you cannot afford it medication and the statistics about the rise in the amount of anti-depressive and you know anti-anxiety drugs is really stunning so I said that psychology is a kind of response to a structural problem of the symbolic order and the expanding of psychology shows in this respect I think a really huge failure precisely of social politics to somehow also address this structural problem or to articulate this in in different ways I think it is not psychoanalysis but the official ideology of leite ribeiro capital isn't it constitutes a proper machine for turning social problems into psychological problems with us to to deal with them so I think what happens more and more particularly yeah we can say in Western society is that our psychology kind of remains as the almost only social infrastructure the rest of this infrastructure being precisely successfully destroyed by the ideology and practice of this kind of a liberal neoliberal capitalism it is upon at the weight that our psychology is supposed to to to to to carry here it's quite amazing and I'm just I was reminded when I was writing about this about of course this famous saying by Margaret Thatcher you know society does not exist or there is no such thing as society which and then I looked into the whole interview where she actually said this and it's really quite amazing and I thought I cannot go into all details but it is really amazing because it is all precisely about this question of whether there are only individuals of course and then this frictional interspace or there is some kind of a social interest infrastructure that can take upon itself precisely certain certain things that are now expected only from us to take upon and what is really interesting is that it is precisely the question of the neighbor that is the pops up in this interview in this way she articulates this this famous saying so I will simply read to you slightly longer sections it surrounds the famous quote about drew no society she says so this is 1987 I think we have gone gone through a period this was the period of the welfare state of course we have gone through the period when too many children and people have been given to understand I have a problem it is the government's job to cope with it and so they are casting their problems upon Society but who is Society there is no such thing there are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look for themselves first it is our duty to look after ourselves first and then after our neighbor again there is no such thing as society so okay first ourselves and then our neighbor this is not a very Christian thing to say but I'm not even pointing out this question of the whatever egoism altruism it is more about the next line where she kind of illustrates how this welfare state social benefits actually abused by those who manipulate the system and here you see this figure of the neighbor emerge in it's kind of a in with all the all the evil so to say that locking point out she says if you cannot get a job you should have a basic standard living standard of living this was the idea behind the dough but what then some people come and say but what then is the point of working I can get as much on the dough and then the answer look it is not from the dole it is your neighbor who is supplying you see the the hole emerges that the help recited the infrastructure that was there precisely in order for let's say very bluntly this man is not coming directly from my neighbor but from something which is it exists as a social infrastructure and institution is now saying there is this nominalist nominalist argument okay but there is no society who can see society like we can see individual horses but who can see a horse such walking around so this there is no such thing so it is directly your neighbor and I think you can actually very much point down here the the the very idea or the very reemergence of your neighbor as those on dole and so to say evil neighbors because they kind of directly take money from yourself so good almost working so so I think basically the the the argument that I would like to make is that perhaps yeah those in even power progressive forces in power who very much often taint or carry worry about our our feelings about our psychological comfort to them that we should perhaps say forget about our feelings and about protecting them and starts doing your job of making kind of social life depend less on unless shaky ground then precisely on this kind of feelings and emotional sponsors but instead I think what we see is mostly on one hand the encouragement and polarization of effect on one side and a segregation as the only regulation or only response to the growing hostility and friction on the other side the last become in touch with those who not only live and think differently but actually shared the same space also we could put it like this of surplus enjoyment of surplus-value the better and I've given this example in the class which i think is quite eloquent of the older in importance of how institutions tend to deal with this kind of frictions is the allegedly it really happened in one American University when they were female student sunbathing I mean sitting outside on the lane in short-sleeved t-shirts and there were like Mexican workers working on the facet of the building just next to this field and they started like drawing some remarks at girls kind of sexual remarks I suppose so there was a complaint from the female students about this sexual harassment so the solution that the university came up with was the following they actually enveloped the whole building where the workers were working on with another wall so they kind of boxed it in they put another facet let's say on the outside and then they built a corridor leading from there from this working place to outside the campus so that these two groups would never come into any into any contact and I think this is precisely I think it kind of it's a kind of image of precisely how the only way that we have found so far of dealing with these issues which are of course profoundly political economic and so on is simply this kind of segregation even on this micro level it just kept the separate spaces and so I would simply say that this brings with this can bring us back to the question of this interspace that I was talking about earlier I said that this was kind of the interspace is crucial space out of which also our social ties and configurations are generated are determined and it is also yet the place of the possible conflict but that closing this this space also by ways of simply segregation is a very dangerous game which has kind of serious consequences because I think by closing up this space we also are closing up the very space of politics proper not only of whatever social interaction because this space is precisely where eventually some tectonic shifts can happen and where as I try to argue at the beginning causality gets decided or what it gets decided this to what extent something at least to some extent something will determine us in what will determine us and what will not determine us on this kind of decision fundamental level ok sorry if this was a little bit you

Channel: European Graduate School Video Lectures

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Keywords: Philosophy (Field Of Study), University, Curriculum (Literature Subject), egs, European Graduate School (College/University), The European Graduate School, Saas Fee, Switzerland (Country), Malta, PhD (Degree), Master's Degree (Degree), Critical Theory (Field Of Study), EGS Malta, European Graduate School Malta, 2018, Alenka Zupančič, psychoanalysis, Lacan, ethics, philosophy

Id: KBK1My2T1u0

Length: 52min 58sec (3178 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2019