Rather than ask for certainty of one’s own being, because even an affirmative answer to that question is yes, Marion posits another, more fundamental question which he terms the erotic reduction: “Does anyone love me?” Only a positive answer to this question can answer vanity’s “What’s the use?”

The immediate objection that can be raised, and what is, I think, the underlying objection that Marion seeks to answer throughout the remainder of the book, is: “does not the demand that someone love me presuppose that I first be?” There is no quick and easy answer to this question, as the book plays out. Instead of offering an immediate answer, to which there can be none without first establishing a new erotic logic in place of the ego cogitans reason. Once again, against vanity, it is not enough for a person to see himself as a certified or certain object; he must find himself to be an assured phenomenon that is given and free from pointlessness. This assurance, distinct from the certainty of the epistemic or ontological reduction, can only come from elsewhere; that is, the ego cannot assure himself of himself, for that would require a love of self. Loving the self, if that should provide assurance, would be no different from the burden that the thinking ego feels in attempting to legitimate its being.

What happens, when the erotic reduction becomes an issue, is that one admits to a lack in one’s self. That is, I cannot be complete without assurance against vanity, and because I cannot assure myself against this vanity (for that would be a circular endeavour anyway), my legitimation, and hence myself, must come from elsewhere. Thus Marion says,

The very one who could assure me must estrange me. In short, certainty can lead me back to myself, because I acquire it by subtraction,[...]while assurance separates me from myself, because it opens within me the separation of an elsewhere.

Of course, many will immediately object that they do not lack and can indeed assure themselves because they love themselves. After all, doesn’t everyone love themselves first before all?

Marion retorts,

How can an I become doubled, as the ambition to be assured from elsewhere demands, while at the same time remaining the same, as the intention of love oneself requires? [....] A single and compact I cannot become an other than itself, in order to give itself an assurance that responds to the question Does anyone out there love me?”

He goes further, however, to give three reasons for the absurdity of thinking one can love oneself. First, self-love would require that one precede one’s self. Marion, supposing that love is necessary for and prior to one’s self, points out that his parents could only love him originally because “they loved me before I was even in a state to receive their love; loved without yet being, I was thus preceded by the response to the question ‘Does anyone love me?’ which I could not yet pose to myself.” This point is, I think, difficult to grasp at first, because we still wish to assume that something must be before it can be loved. But, if one supposes as Marion does, that one is not until one is loved, then love must come first in everything circumstance.

Second, an answer to the erotic reduction requires a complete conviction, leaving no room for doubt and falling into the suspicion of vanity, if love is to be effective. In other words, there must be an excess of love as “an answer that is only affirmative is not enough—only the excess that surprises and surpasses would suffice” for the erotic reduction. “The measure of this love requires loving without measure” because “every love simply commensurable with vanity would only reinforce its dominion.” Thus, I would have to demand an excess of myself over myself in order to sufficiently love myself. Marion proves this point with the common situation where the love of another is not enough because one considers them to be equal as one’s self, having the same lack of assurance as one’s self. The question that remains, and which will be addressed later, is how the other comes to be able to exceed and supply the excess of love that is required for one’s assurance.

Third, although one may provisionally divide one’s self (the I can play the role of an empirical me even as it can play the role of the transcendental I), loving requires an effective exteriority that involves crossing a true distance, a distance that is not feigned. Without the crossing of a distance because distance is what is required for something to be distributed, to go, come, and return. A true action must always cover a distance, and the self, although it may divide itself, cannot ultimately cover this gap. The lover must come from elsewhere.

Over the last few weeks, I have been working on Jean-Luc Marion’s The Erotic Phenomenon in my dwindling spare time, and I have found it thoroughly enjoyable. In this book, Marion wishes to recover what philosophy has lost: a concept of love. At first, this may seem odd because one typically does not associate love and the conceptual realm—love is supposed to be irrational. Indeed, as Marion goes on to affirm later, love is irrational, at least according to one form of reason, but it is by no means senseless or opposed to the conceptual, which must not be identified with the rational.

Philosophy needs a concept of love because, as Marion says,

Without a concept, we can of course feel violently such or such erotic disposition, but we can neither describe it, nor distinguish it from other erotic dispositions, nor even from nonerotic dispositions, much less articulate them in a right and sensible act. Without a concept, we can even make for ourselves a very clear idea of a love we have experienced, but never an idea the least bit distinct—one that would allow recognition of when it is and is not the case, which behaviors arise from it and which in no way concern it, what logic necessarily binds them or not, what possibilities are opened or closed to action, etc.

This reason (or even speaking of a reason at all, for I do not know which order of reason Marion refers to) is intriguing to me because he identifies the starting point of his inquiry at the point where philosophy has denied love it’s unity—that is, philosophy has divided love into various kinds of love (e.g. agape, eros). On the contrary, Marion argues, a serious concept of love “distinguishes itself by its unity, or rather by its power to keep together significations that nonerotic thought cuts apart.” Developing the concept of love, says Marion, should not begin by immediately dividing but by holding the unity of the concept of love for as long as possible. I have not finished the book yet, but with only two chapters left to go, I have found no division of the kinds of love yet, and I am waiting to see where a division may emerge. In my mind, his discussion is purely of what I would call the erotic side of love, which seeks the flesh. Of course, as Marion warns against, I am assuming a division in the kinds of love from the start. Thus, I must wait to deliver a reasoned opinion on this point, at least according to erotic wisdom.

Second, Marion’s project is to give the concept of love “a rationality to all that nonerotic thought disqualifies as irrational and degrades to madness.” Love, as Marion wishes to describe it and conceive it, then, is in no way nonrational or opposed to the conceptual, lying instead in the emotional. Breaking out of the rational/emotional paradigm is guaranteed to be a difficult endeavour, for the reader as well as the author, but I think it a noble one, and it is a line of argument that Marion constructs solidly as the book goes on.

Third, the foundations for a concept of love must start with the experience or phenomena of love, giving the question of erotics primacy over questions of ontology. Parallel to Marion’s critique of ontotheology, he here wants to subvert the notion that one must first be or exist in order to be loved. On the contrary, one must not even first love in order to be, but love without being even becoming a question. This is the primary argument that is developed through the rest of the book.

The ego cogitans (the thinking I), or the modern subject, the transcendental I of Descartes’ famous dictum, is always seeking legitimacy and certainty of itself. According to Descartes, man is primarily a thinking being, and he affirms his own existence in his thought. Supposing that we are insofar as we come to know ourselves, man discovers himself (that is, he certifies his own existence) by certifying whatever else he encounters. That is, man, in determining so-called objective knowledge of the objects around him, through math, logic, and historical facts, makes certain their certainness and, since man is himself the one declaring these things certain, must be certain himself. In a sense, then (not in Marion’s words), the concern with objective knowledge is just a matter of self-affirmation, though it be, as Marion wishes to demonstrate, an illusionary certainty.

The ego cogitans is always concerned with certainty and affirming his own existence, lest he doubt and fall into despair. However, Marion asks, “What’s the use?” I think that a better translation, at least coming from my own scholarly ignorance, would be, “What’s the point?” but I digress. In asking this question, Marion undermines the modern metaphysical project by pointing out that simply affirming existence has no meaning and must fall into vanity. “Logical calculation, mathematical operations, models of the object and its technologies of production offer a perfect certainty, a ‘total quality’–but so what? How exactly does that concern me, if not for as much as I am engaged in their wold and I inscribe myself within their space?” In other words, as the I is transcendent, above the world of mere objects and hence is able to objectify them, it is ultimately irrelevant to reach any certainty of knowledge about these objects because they can give the I no knowledge of himself. Thus, Marion concludes,

Certainty attests its failure in the very instant of its success: I indeed acquire a certainty, but, like that of beings of the world certified by my efforts, it sends me back to my initiative, and thus to me, the arbitrary operative of every certainty, even my own. To produce my certainty myself does not reassure me at all, but rather maddens me in front of vanity in person. What is the good of my certainty, if it still depends on me, if I only am through myself?

From this point, Marion moves to the erotic reduction, which I plan to take up in my next post.

]]> http://www.theveilaway.com/commentary/2010/04/the-erotics-of-wisdom-part-1/feed/ 3 http://www.theveilaway.com/commentary/2010/03/is-batailles-religion-paradoxical/ http://www.theveilaway.com/commentary/2010/03/is-batailles-religion-paradoxical/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:44:55 +0000 Matt Gerrelts http://www.theveilaway.com/commentary/?p=550

What is religion for Bataille? Most fundamental to his thought is his theory of world economics, of the play and movement of energy in its excesses and productions. What is most valuable or might be said to be his morality? I have been exploring a few of his writings for these answers, particularly wanting to understand how Bataille’s thought may fit or not fit with Christianity. After all, he uses a very religious vocabulary.

In Bataille’s thought, man wishes to return to intimacy with the world, which means that man is no longer transcendent to the order of things and capable making things. A thing is that which is defined by its usefulness, for all objects we interact with are defined by their function to or for something else. The order or world of immanence lacks things as they are distinct and defined by any use. After all, for there to be a thing or an object, there must be a transcendent subject, and a transcendent subject is contradictory to immanence.

In interacting with objects for their usefulness, man continues to accumulate energy to the point that the energy in him will destroy him—a stomach ache from eating too much may reflect this, and the subsequent gaining of weight to the point of, well, nearly bursting or at least dying from its complications. Hence, man wishes to return to immanence; that is, to expend his excess energy rather than continue to produce. Expending useless energy is where the experience of pleasure comes from.

When objects become things, we can only act with the intent of production or effecting something else, which can only build or produce more energy in the long run (even though it might also require a small expenditure of energy). The greatest expenditure of energy comes in sacrifice because self-sacrifice involves an expenditure which is utterly useless and can have no return. This is why it is necessary to sacrifice that which is most valuable—that is, what increases production (such as a cow, one’s house, or one’s life). As Bataille says, “This is so clearly the precise meaning of sacrifice, that one sacrifices what is useful; one does not sacrifice luxurious objects. There could be no sacrifice if the offering were destroyed beforehand” (49).

Bataille is aware of a contradiction in the economic goal of immanence. He says,

But if man surrendered unreservedly to immanence, he would fall short of humanity; he would achieve it only to lose it and eventually life would return to the unconscious intimacy of animals. The constant problem posed by the impossibility of being human without being a thing and of escaping the limits of things without returning to animal slumber receives the limited solution of the festival. (53)

Let me try to explain: To be human is to be conscious, to be aware of one’s self, which can only happen in recognizing and juxtaposing with the world of things; that is, man finds his consciousness in his perception of the order of things. Without the order of things to perceive, man loses himself in immanence with the world. Thus, man cannot achieve the immanence he desires through the expenditure of energy without losing himself—reducing to the level of an animal consciousness which lacks the ability to be a self-consciousness. Man’s individuality, the possibility of speaking of a person or anything is distinct, is maintained only by anxiety, or the wish to remain alive in the world of things. Thus, Bataille says, “

Religion, whose essence is the search for lost intimacy, comes down to the effort of clear consciousness which wants to be a complete self-consciousness: but this effort is futile, since consciousness of intimacy is possible only at a level where consciousness is no longer an operation whose outcome implies duration, that is, at the level where clarity, which is the effect of the operation, is no longer given. (56)

Thus, religion is a perpetual search for immanence, stimulated by its bursts of energy release, epitomized by sacrifice and orgy, but enacted through any waste or use of energy with no aim. The

Although Bataille is well aware of the contradictions that the economy of immanence poses, I think that the contradiction is seen even before one begins to move toward immanence. Moving toward immanence, if it can be given a principle or direction, requires expending energy. However, once this understanding becomes an understanding, that is, it is consciously recognized, it becomes a moral principle or morality. A morality, as Bataille realizes, is by nature self-defeating because, by nature, it assumes a purpose, and purpose contradicts immanence. Hence, Bataille’s religion, when it becomes a religion with a morality of expending energy, is self-defeating because even this useless expenditure can be said to have a use, the purpose of preventing the buildup and destruction caused by the buildup of energy.

In connection to my current study on desire, my interests have spread into the philosophies concerning food, humor, and horror. Thus far, I have only had time to do a moderate amount of reading on food, a nearly worthless bit on humor, and a more serious amount on desire in the broadest sense. Bataille is the first I have read who discusses fear or, rather, horror; specifically, he traces the connection between horror and desire.

In Transgression, Bataille makes the obvious point that Desire becomes more meaningful when it overcomes resistance (95); things that come easily are not valued. It is with this in mind that he approaches the the character of prohibitions, restrictions, and taboos. Societies construct their norms and with them come those things which are not permitted but are thought of with disgust and horror, such as murder, sexual activities (in certain contexts, of course), and doing anything which might endanger one’s self. The role of a prohibition, whether explicit or implicit, is to prevent or protect. It is important to see then that prohibitions are not meant to protect one from something that is not desirable; without desire, there would be no prohibition. If there were no desire, there would be no reason to expend energy in constructing the prohibition. That which is prohibited must have value in order to be worthy of a restriction.

Thus, Bataille says,

I think that the feeling of horror (I am not talking about fear) does not correspond, as most people believe, to what is bad for us, to what jeopardizes their interests. On the contrary, if they horrify us, objects that otherwise would have no meaning take on the highest present value in our eyes. Erotic activity can be disgusting; it can also be noble, ethereal, excluding sexual contact, but it illustrates a principle of human behaviour in the clearest way: what we want is what uses up our strength and resources and, if necessary, places our life in danger. (104)

Horror is closely linked with death and, therefore, the sacred. All horror, in fact, points to death—we are horrified by what negates us or brings us harm. At the same time, however, we tend to enjoy the closeness of death and that negation. Bataille notes the peculiar enjoyment of reading stories, where “We do well to live vicariously what we don’t dare live ourselves. Not that it is a question of bearing misfortune without weakening: on the contrary, enduring it without too much anguish, we should take pleasure in the feeling of loss or endangerment it gives us” (Transgression 106). Why? “[O]nly the fictitious approach of death, through literature or sacrifice, points to the joy that would fully gratify us, if its object were real—that would gratify us at least in theory, since if we were dead we would no longer be in a condition to be gratified” [emphasis mine] (Transgression 109).

Desire, which is the useless expenditure of energy, an expenditure which does not seek to gain anything in return but only give away, is, for the individual, most thoroughly accomplished in death, where the individual gives everything away for nothing in return. Desire, therefore, is epitomized in death, for death is what gives life value. The intertwined pair of horror and desire may be difficult to see in a horror film, except for the fact that people love to watch them; it is quite obvious, however, in religion or what is sacred. In his Theory of Religion, Bataille says, “Undoubtably, what is sacred attracts and possesses an incomparable value, but at the same time it appears vertiginously dangerous for that clear and profane world where mankind situates its privileged domain” (36). Trespassing the Sacred and Holy presents an incomparable danger even as it presents an incomparable value. Why is this? Perhaps I will attempt to take this up in a later post.

What does Hegel mean by Desire? Most simply, Hegel says that “desire is self-consciousness,” but the natural question in following that is: what is self-consciousness? Or, for that matter, what is consciousness? I have not read enough Hegel to claim anything more than the most amateur level of expertise on this, and the answer is further complicated by the various interpretations of Hegel that exist. I am going to attempt to offer something of my own understanding of how Desire functions in Hegel, although I may not adequately address my original question.

Hegel says,

Consciousness, as self-consciousness, henceforth has a double object: one is the immediate object, that of sense-certainty and perception, which however for self-consciousness has the character of a negative; and the second, viz. itself, which is the true essence, and is present in the first instance only as opposed to the first object. In this sphere, self-consciousness exhibits itself as the movement in which this antithesis is removed, and the identity of itself becomes explicit for it. (105)

So, self-consciousness is movement; specifically, the movement towards removing the contrast or negativity between the material object and itself, which finds its self-identity in its contrast with the object. Without the object, there would be no Desire, self-consciousness, nor “I” to be spoken of. The self therefore finds itself and is in some sense dependent upon the material existence of the other. The key idea here that strikes me is that the self-consciousness is a movement, and it is in this “movement” that the self-consciousness becomes visible—that is, when it moves to remove its distinction from the object and appropriate it to itself. The self-consciousness, or the “I” finds itself in this move because it is only in moving towards the other (this movement towards the other is Desire) that the “I” finds itself in the other.

This movement is what elevates the I beyond mere being, which for Hegel is finitude, a material existence that fails to meet the notional requirement. That is, nothing material can completely fit into the I’s conceptual framework—there is always something left over to be actualized. Zizek says, “the existence of material reality bears witness to the fact that the Notion is not fully actualized. Things ‘materially exist’ not when they meet certain notional requirements, but when they fail to meet them—material reality is as such a sign of imperfection” (“Preface” to The Sublime Object of Ideology XX). The self-consciousness, as it finds otherness, makes a move—conceptualizing the other in a Notion, which is the movement of knowing—and thus finds itself to be “more than a motionless tautology” (Hegel 105).

However, as the material object is more than can be sublated or negated in the Notion—that is, as the object is assumed to be equal with the self, the self-consciousness cannot contain the object and thus must drop it or leave it in its material shape. My friend Robert Minto used the analogy of a tetris game—if I am appropriating it correctly—to say that the self-consciousness’s sublation of the object is like filling in the rows of the game, and the blocks that are not filled in and deleted are the failure of the object to equal or match the self-consciousness; thus, those blocks are not deleted but leftover as the non-conceptualized material. So, it is through the movement and sublation of the blocks that the self-consciousness and object find themselves to be implicitly independent. Hegel says, “Self-consciousness which is simply for itself, or is primarily desire, will therefore, on the contrary, learn through experience that the object is independent” (106). This independence or difference of the subject and the object only appears in this movement between them towards sublation. So, Desire is the movement which makes clear the difference between the self-consciousness or subject and its object, enunciating these lines to reveal the material as material and not pure Notion.

This week’s reading has brought me back to the well-worn yet still at least superficially complex world of Hegel’s Infinite. Hegel is the kind of writer that I think I understand when reading him and about him, but when I go to explain him, I inevitably stumble. Nevertheless, here I will venture a few thoughts upon desire in Hegel and Levinas. Next week I will probably be writing on Hegel again, so I will refrain from extensively summarizing him now.

For Hegel, desire wants to close the distance between one’s self, the subject, and its object. If the subject actually closes this distance, the other, or the object, will cease to exist because, for Hegel the subject and the other are the same at that point. Attaining the other and fulfilling desire means overcoming the other who is also the self because the other is reducible to the concept of selfsameness. Because the Subject is Infinity (the all-encompassing Spirit), it wishes to overcome all alterity (the other), and alterity exists only as finitude (which is not consumed by infinity). As Infinity wishes to bring everything into totality, it must overcome the barrier of finitude between itself and the other, who is finitude. However, if finitude is absorbed into Infinitude, then the other is none other than the same as the self.

Levinas took issue with this because alterity is not truly Other, absolutely Other. For Levinas, desire is not a lack or void that must be filled or overcome. Rather, the Other is Infinity, not the subject, and thus Desire comes out of the Other. So, desire is a movement toward the Other that doesn’t try to comprehend or overcome the Other, as this is impossible. The Other is desired because the Other is Other, because the Other is Infinite and always outside of conception and comprehension. Thus, Desire is not a lack or negative space to be filled but a positive movement that occurs because the beloved is different and truly individual in a pure sense. Like the love of the Good in Plato, the Other is desired simply because it is good to Desire it. Desire is a response as the Other, the Infinite, the Good, reveals itself and shows itself. In the same way, Christians claim to love God not because He fulfills an emptiness or piece of us—God is infinitely beyond us and too great to merely fill us. Rather, Christians love God because the face of God has invoked us and called us to love Him first. We want God because He is God, and there is nothing comprehensible about that.

I have many questions on erratic trajectories that are seeking some coherence before they can be asked well. For example, as an attempt, I want to ask how it is that Desire comes out of the absolutely Other—how is this desire experienced? Does the self experience the desire of the Other? Doesn’t desire assume a degree of intentionality (of the subject) towards something; namely, the object other? At the same time, I feel as if my questions are probably assuming too much of a Hegelian perspective, if Levinas is indeed correct. Regardless, I know that my mind hasn’t made sense of it all yet, and I wonder if coordination of these questions should be sought after if the Other remains an incomprehensible part of my desire.

My readings this week on desire delved into the relationship of desire to language and poetry, which have been recent fascinations of mine due to my studies of Paul Ricoeur. In poetry, or metaphor, there is an inherent excess of meaning through which language develops or gains new meanings. In a metaphor, or poetry, one thing both is and is not the other thing which the predicate equates it with. Categories are broken when one says, “That red color is really loud,” or, “The homely tree dipped its head before the commanding sun.” No metaphor can be adequately paraphrased to capture 100% of the meaning that it contains, and in the creation of that new meaning, there is a violence or destruction that occurs within language. Thus, one can say that “Language is an opening, a space of sacrifice and excess, a space where a destructive fusion occurs—a theater or altar at which meaning and signification are made and become their own victims” (LaFountain 29).

LaFountain, in an essay on Bataille, makes a connection between the tendencies of language and desire, identifying the poetic point of desire in the erotic. Desire is excessive, wanting what is beyond use, something that pushes against limitations in revolt to reach ecstasy, reaching ultimately for death. Why death? It is only in death that “we rid ourselves of satisfaction and steep ourselves in the free accidental play of desire” (LaFountain 28). Desire does not seek satisfaction but wishes to prolong desiring, for that is what it is to be human. As far as I can understand it, it is only in death that can one cease to seek and find satisfactions. The fulfillment of desires, paradigmatically noted in the orgasm, are thus termed as “little deaths,” where satisfaction is momentarily past and one can return to seeking excess. LaFountain says, “To be whole, to experience existence, is to seek excess, to lose oneself in it, to be tortured by its rapturous overflow” (28).

The erotic fulfillment of desire in orgasm is a moment of total communication, where there is a “continuity” or unity between people is reached (30). Even as the metaphor bridges two worlds and destroys language in the new unity, so eroticism leads to a unity that destroys the social. That is, the unity between persons is an excess—it has no use and is a space outside of laws; it cannot be understood. As LaFountain quotes Bataille, “I approach poetry: but only to miss it” (33). It cannot be defined as it rages in linguistic convulsions that involves the whole. “And just as the body of writing is forced into a frenzy that disrupts its coherence, so too do the bodies of ‘I’ and ‘we’ disappear [...] into an abyss, united beyond any fusion they could ever say or use” (33). That is, both bodies disappear in the total unity or solidarity (36). The significance of each individual, as an individual, is destroyed or ruptured as new meaning is created in the excessive fusion.

Thus, one should not limit their conception of communication to the word. Communication extends beyond the textual or spoken word. Bodies, gestures, and the very existence of things is bound up in communication. Desire, as it is erotic and intentional, leads to communication, albeit communication in a nonverbal form. Emotions and feelings are thus intimately connected to the word or traditionally rational domain in the body. Recognizing Bataille’s understanding of desire presents a more holistic picture of humanity that does not subdivide emotions off from the rational mind.

Plato’s Phaedrus pictures a philosophy of love and the soul which, besides its characteristic queerness, contains many fascinating links to contemporary philosophy. One point in particular that I am struggling to understand, however, is the assertion that the beloved sees himself in his lover. What Plato means by that, I am not sure. I quote the preceding passage in full:

And as this intimacy continues and the lover comes near and touches the beloved in the gymnasia and in their general intercourse, then the fountain of that stream which Zeus, when he was in love with Ganymede, called ‘desire’ flows copiously upon the lover; and some of it flows into him, and some, when he is filled, overflows outside; and just as the wind or an echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns whence it came, so the stream of beauty passes back into the beautiful one through the eyes, the natural inlet to the soul, where it reanimates the passages of the feathers, waters them and makes the feather begin to grow, filling the soul of the loved one with love. So he is in love, but he knows not with whom; he does not understand his own condition and cannot explain it; like on who has caught a disease of the eyes from another, he can give no reason for it; he sees himself in his lover as in a mirror, but is not conscious of the fact [emphasis mine]. (255c-d)

At first thought, I am drawn to reflect on Levinas’s critique of modern ethics. Levinas says the modern ethic treats the other only insofar as the other is the same as one’s self. Thus, moral action towards others is still ultimately selfish. Is Plato saying that the love of another is merely the love of one’s self that somehow appears in the other? I don’t think so because the love of the lover is a genuine attraction to the beloved—the lover loves because he sees something beautiful in the other. The desire and love of the lover overwhelms the beloved and causes him to love in return, although he apparently may not see anything beautiful in the lover.

This strain of thought connects to Freud and Lacan, on whom I am only beginning a semester of study. Plato says the desire of the lover fills the beloved and, essentially, is adopted by the beloved. The desire of the lover becomes the desire of the beloved. In his little book, How to Read Lacan, Zizek points out this same theme in the movie 21 Grams, where a dying man declares his love to a widow that barely knows him. She confesses the next time they meet that now she can’t stop thinking about him, and although she tells him that he is ridiculous to profess such love, she ends up falling for him (44-45). What caused her to fall for him? Zizek turns to Lacan’s philosophy, pointing out that the man’s profession of love is a performative act (i.e. one that accomplishes the state of affairs in their pronouncement); that is, the man’s profession of love is a symbolic trust and engagement through which one not only obliges himself to the other but also obliges the other to treat one’s self in a particular way. Zizek explains:

When I tell someone ‘You are my master!’ I oblige myself to treat him in a certain way and, in the same move, I oblige him to treat me in a certain way. Lacan’s point is that we need this recourse to performativity, to the symbolic engagement, precisely and only in so far as the other whom we confront is not only my mirror-double, someone like me, but also the elusive absolute Other who ultimately remains an unfathomable mystery. (45)

The Other, as it is used here, is not simply the individual person with whom one interacts but the “big Other,” the Other of the symbolic order or unwritten rules of society. I do not wish to attempt to fully explain the Other now because I do not feel that I have an adequate understanding of it, but Zizek provides some basic hints at what Lacan means by the Other. The symbolic order of the Other comes out of a gift or offering that establishing a link between the giver and the receiver. The content of the gift is not important but what the gift symbolizes:

Everyone who is in love knows this: a present to the beloved, if it is to symbolize my love, should be useless, superfluous in its very abundance—only as such, with its use-value suspended, can it symbolize my love. Human communication is characterized by an irreducible reflexivity: every act of communication simultaneously symbolizes the fact of communication. (12)

To give another example, if two friends are competing for a job position and one wins, the proper thing for the winner to do (in order to preserve the friendship) is to offer to withdraw, and the proper thing for the other to do is to reject the offer (Zizek 13). Neither is necessarily conscious of this social norm, but each wishes to do the proper thing. There is therefore a “free” compulsion to do what is right. The situation is the same between the lovers that Socrates describes in the dialogue: the beloved feels that it is right to respond to the lover in such a way, unconscious of the symbolic rectitude of that fact. If the beloved rejects the lover, or if the losing competitor accepts the friend’s offer to withdraw, the social link or substance is destroyed (Zizek 13).

Although this explanation of Plato is perhaps anachronistic or imprecise, it is the best suggestion or explanation that I can find for understanding the reflection of the beloved’s self in the lover. I am not wholly convinced by the connection I have tried to make here, but the possibility of the link is nevertheless fascinating to me.

In Plato’s Symposium, Agathon asserts that Love is of surpassing beauty and goodness. After all, as he says, “since this god arose, the loving of beautiful things has brought all kinds of benefits both to gods and to men.” Although immediately flattering Agathon’s elegance, Socrates drastically changes the direction of the conversation by pointing out (via questioning) that love is directed or intentional; that is, love has an object or is the love of something.

If love must be the love of something, then love must be a desire for something that it lacks. Thus, Love cannot be beautiful because it desires the beautiful. If Love was beautiful, then it would not desire beauty because it would be satisfied. For Plato, then, desire or love implies a lack of something; there must be a distance between the subject and the object. One cannot love that which one already has. Thus it is that people quickly tire of the new things that they buy or in general become bored with whatever they previously delighted in. Once satiated, the joy or love of that thing disappears.

There are many aspects of this worth discussing, such as whether love equals desire or love must seek the beautiful, but here I want to explore this principle of distance in the notion of self-love. Is self-love possible, following Socrates’ axiom that love cannot possess that which it loves or desires? Perhaps it would be better to ask: how is self-love possible, what does self-love truly love, or what is the self that can be loved?

Initially, it might appear that self-love, according to Socrates, is impossible because one clearly already possesses one’s self. But, the possession of the self is not so clear when one asks who one is. What does it mean to be me? If self-love is possible, and one is not under the delusion of desiring something that is not the self, then one must somehow be outside the self. In other words, I would suggest that one’s selfhood is bound up with an otherhood through which one can love one’s own self.

A personal identity cannot, of course, be formed in absence of another with whom one may contrast one’s self. The self cannot be without another. Indeed, identity-forming choices are made all the time that could not be made without the existence of the other. Fashion, style, race, age, sex, personality, etc… would not be without the existence of others. The perception of one’s self is in some ways dependent on the perception of other beings by which one can begin to compare one’s self. In the same way, perhaps the love of one’s self is dependent upon others, for others give one a reason to love one’s own existence. Utterly alone, I cannot imagine having value in any sense. It is others that make me feel valued and give me the ability to find value in myself. Value is, of course, the precondition of desire and love.

Although here I have argued the idea very weakly, I think that such an understanding of vicarious self-love may perhaps lead to a greater love for others as one recognizes how everyone depends on others for their own identity.

I had to put the question to myself: in what ways does Dordt College form the desires of its students? Surprisingly (to me), the first thing that I thought of was my Resident Life training.

I’m a Resident Assistant this year in one of Dordt’s residence halls, and one of the interesting distinctions that are presented to Resident Assistants as part of their training are the three primary areas for RA activity: reporting violations of the code of conduct, forming relationships with residents, and planning/conducting wing/campus “programming.” The interesting portion of that trio, for my purposes, was “programming.” The ambiguities of the word itself point in the direction I want to go. Does programming have to do with planning and running programs for students to participate in—wing events, bible studies, all-campus activities—or with literally programming students such that they unconsciously behave in certain ways? Both, I think. The first kind of programming is intended to accomplish the second kind.

The most important element of Resident Life programming occurs during W(eek)O(f)W(elcome). At least three unconscious sets of habits are instilled by the activities that Freshmen are led through during WOW week. (1. They are presented with a dramatic presentation known as “The Show,” which essentially provides a rationale for following the Dordt code of conduct; (2. They are exposed to what are supposed to be models for relating to other students in the persons of their “WOW leaders” (a guy and girl chosen to lead each small “WOW group” of freshmen); (3. They are programmed to conduct their social lives, preferably, in certain public areas like the campus center, the recreation center, and the food commons.

As far as I can see, Resident Life Services in its comprehensive, detailed, and on-going attempts to program Dordt students has (if in other terms) best understood that education is formation above and beyond information. It is perhaps too bad that they are the only group consciously engaged in the formation of students’ desires (–Smith would argue that other sections of the college, such as classes, also engage in formation, but often unconsciously with deleterious effects because the telos embodied in these sections of the campus are quite possibly identical to those of un- or anti-Christian colleges), but that is another issue for another post.

The inevitable result of identifying Resident Life “programming” as a pedagogy of desire is that one has to put this question to it: what telos is embodied in the practices it seeks to establish among students?

Chiefly, the telos seems to be a vision of communal life in which the rules are obeyed because they are recognized to be in one’s best interests and in which highly visible inter-genderal socializing occurs regularly. Quite appropriately then, one of the buzzwords of Residence Life rhetoric is “community.” I recognize and admire the self-consciousness of their pedagogy of desire. It puts things in perspective and adds a new degree of coherence even to disagreements I have with their vision of community or the programming by which they preach to student hearts. On those disagreements more, perhaps, some other time. In the meantime: kudos to Res Life for understanding that students are desiring animals, and I hope that other sections of the college follow their example to become pedagogues of desire.