Welcome to the Desert of the Real!

Žižek, Slavoj

doi:10.2307/j.ctt183p6n7.10

Cited by 47 publications

(54 citation statements)

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“…I had not yet learned to think in terms of trauma and traumatogenic triggers that can constitute a veritable undoing of the psyche, nor in terms of the psychology of the perpetrator and its relationship to trauma. Only when I was subsequently introduced to psychoanalytic theory and clinical experience would I come to understand that the differences I noted in these survivors, which could be accounted for by individual psychodynamics and the diverse consequences and meanings made of traumatic experience, nonetheless, hid what was shared in common: the endurable wounds of having encountered the Lacanian Real (Žižek, 1989, 2002Boulanger, 2007).…”

Section: Social Trauma Politics and Psychoanalysismentioning

confidence: 96%

Social trauma, politics and psychoanalysis: A personal narrative

Hollander

2013

Psychoanal Cult Soc

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This article posits that social trauma is to be understood from a social psychoanalytic perspective that takes account of the complex interface and mutual impact of social forces and unconscious dynamics. Its argument, that politics and psychology are inevitably interwoven as the foundation of subjectivity, is explored through an autobiographical journey that inexorably took the author from political activism to psychoanalysis. The author's personal, professional and political encounter with the traumatogenic conditions of Latin American state terror, and her involvement in a progressive movement within psychoanalysis that aligns the profession with activist struggles on behalf of social justice, is proposed as a significant model for psychoanalysts in the Global North as well as the Global South.This article suggests that politics can be a portal to the world of psychoanalysis and that psychoanalysis can provide a lens through which to view the centrality of politics in psychological life. It is an essay about the personal and collective meanings of shared trauma and the journey toward resilience and reparation of political destructiveness. I explore these themes in an autobiographical essay that traces my evolution as a Latin American historian and feminist and Marxist activist whose professional and political experiences in the tumultuous conditions of revolution and dictatorship in Latin America inexorably led me to psychoanalysis. The particular psychoanalytic paradigm I had the good fortune to encounter in Latin America was a theory and praxis that was fashioned within extreme social situations of political repression and resistance, of human destructiveness and resilience. Its interest in the intersection between psychic and social reality represented continuity with the

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Section: Social Trauma Politics and Psychoanalysismentioning

confidence: 96%

Social trauma, politics and psychoanalysis: A personal narrative

Hollander

2013

Psychoanal Cult Soc

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“…75, 78, 79), via "a leap" 7 (p. 81), to eliminate "democracy" for a yet-to-be-imagined "new collectivity" (p. 85). 8 The resilience of this social theory identifies it as a rhetorical attractor; a predispositional symbolic set that readily transmits emotive potency. To appropriate Kenneth Burke's terms, the bio-symbolics of human political relationships readily create a "grammar" and "rhetoric" in the form of a unified enemy that can be imagined as defeated in a singular battle, after which, things in "our" tribe may be harmonious.…”

Section: For An Example Read Slavojmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Layered Trajectories for Academic Contributions to Social Change

Condit¹

2015

Quarterly Journal of Speech

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This essay follows Dr. Kirt Wilson's charge to attend to the global context as a force that shapes scholarship on communication. Key components of the present moment suggest the value of a strategy of proliferation even beyond Wilson's urged dialectical relationship between "nationalism" and "cosmopolitanism." Though "inefficient," the strategy of participatory governance at multiple levels in the model of a federalist monitory democracy will take advantage of the disparate perspectives engaged by different kinds and levels of affiliation, while both avoiding the risks of a one-world government and sustaining the necessary tasks of mutually inter-consequential collectivities. This approach is under-written by a transilient materialist ontoepistemology and a bio-symbolic analysis of common academic theories of social change.The discursive productions of academic disciplines are partially shaped by the geopolitical contexts in which they circulate. In elaborating on that rule, Dr. Wilson has drawn an incisive portrait of the role of "nationalism" and "cosmopolitanism" in the formation of the American academic discipline of Communication Studies. 1 His account illuminates some ways in which geo-political tensions and their metaphorical counterparts influenced the identities that arose during the formation of the (American) National Communication Association (NCA). Wilson concludes his exploration by issuing a challenge: readers of this journal should take advantage of the productive tensions between cosmopolitan and nationalist perspectives in such a way that "Communication Studies can and should become a leader in the twenty-firstcentury academy." Taking his historical and discursive lesson seriously, and querying

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“…Our eyes refuse to turn away from the disturbing images that appear on our television screens, such as the toppling of the Twin Towers on September 11th (Žižek, 2002;Baudrillard, 2012). Our gaze returns to the screen over and over again to view the images of the disaster caused by the Tsunami that brutally struck the coast of Japan, flinging massive ships onto shore.…”

Section: Between Ethics and Aesthetics And The Dilemma Of Jobmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emmanuel Levinas: Hermeneutics, Ethics, and Art

Ben-Pazi¹

2015

JLAS

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This article draws attention to the subject of art in Levinas's thinking through consideration of his philosophical language, which is aided by images, metaphors, and idioms of art. The primary image that will accompany our discussion throughout this article is the image of art as shadow, which Levinas incorporates into the title of the essay which he devotes to the subject of art: "Reality and Its Shadow". Thinking about art from the perspective of Levinas means thinking about image and essence, about which is visible before us and which we cannot see, and about the different ways in which art can express itself. Levinas's theory of interpretation is grounded in and guided by the field of ethics and addresses the ethical aspects of interpretation. Levinas approaches the discourse of interpretation not out of naïveté but rather based on a deep understanding of the field of hermeneutics, with all its shortcomings and challenges. Thinking of hermeneutics from an ethical perspective is no mere addition to the discussion but the very crux of the matter. An attempt to understand interpretation as an act of exposing the truth encounters serious philosophical and logical difficulties, whether we are seeking to discover the intention of the artist, the intent of a specific work of art, or a hidden form within the work itself. The engagement with Levinas's theory of hermeneutics, however, raises a different question which is the focus of this article: Can Levinas's theory of interpretation be applied to the realm of artistic creation, and if so, how? This question is sharpened by the difficulties that Levinas himself poses to his readers by designating art as the "shadow" of reality and drawing attention to the egoistic dimension of the artistic act.

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Welcome to the Desert of the Real!

Cited by 47 publications

References 0 publications

Social trauma, politics and psychoanalysis: A personal narrative

Social trauma, politics and psychoanalysis: A personal narrative

Multi-Layered Trajectories for Academic Contributions to Social Change

Emmanuel Levinas: Hermeneutics, Ethics, and Art

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