Through a Glass Darkly

“I can stay up all evening till the middle of the night... when we get to see the planet fly by, and I get to look at the telescope.” Leo, to his mother and aunt, regarding the recently-discovered planet, “Melancholia” in Lars von Trier's film of that name (2011) [1].

Scientists have done a great deal of research suggesting that conservatives —who in the US have increasingly had to kowtow to the religious right for at least 30 years — are naturally inclined toward their biases, research which author Chris Mooney has analyzed in a book provocatively called, The Republican Brain: TheScience of Why They Deny Science – and Reality [2]. Here are a scientific critique [3] of the book and a critique of the criticism [4]. But Lacan's lecture in my last entry suggests that even this appearance of naturalness can be manufactured. Wanting to go deeper into this process, and to investigate the relationship between truth/belief and knowledge/science, I again consulted Lacan, this time through the lecture, “The Power of the Impossibles” [5]. This topic involving science, I'll navigate it using the science fiction drama quoted above.

The movie begins with a surreal montage -- all shots in slow motion -- over a majestic  instrumental from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde [6]. (The music, at first sorrowful, becomes almost triumphant by the end of the sequence.) The montage includes a shot of Leo's aunt, Justine, in a wedding dress, running through a forest clearing, grey yarn clinging to (and rippling from) her ankles and dress as well as from the trees We also see celestial events and two artistic references -- a burning print of Breugel’s “Hunters in the Snow” [7], and a shot of Justine that recalls the pre-Raphaelites' depictions of Ophelia [8].  The music ends, the screen goes black, and the movie title appears, followed by the intertitle, “Part one: Justine.”

The camerawork changes to a shakier “documentary style” as it shows us a stretch limousine attempt to bring the newly-married Justine, with her groom, Michael, over a narrow winding road to the reception. We see the couple's affection for each other as they assist, taking turns replacing the driver and guiding the car around the sharp curves. When they get to her sister, Claire’s, and her husband, John's fabulous mansion, host and hostess complain that they are two hours late, for which Justine and Michael apologize profusely, and Michael teases Justine about having chosen the stretch limo. Justine agrees, to her sister’s anxious question, that she “really wants this,” then looks up at the sky and asks about one of the stars, “the red one.” John, surprised that she can see it, says that it's Antares, the main star in the Scorpio constellation. We can use the apologies and the constellation’s symbolism [9] to herald Lacan’s lecture, which he begins by naming “shame” as

…the one sign whose genealogy one can be certain of, namely that it is descended from a signifier. [10]

 Inside, the butler, “Little Father,” asks her to participate in the wedding lottery, and she smilingly adds some beans to a jar. The people applaud as the bride and groom enter the reception hall, and Justine embraces her nephew, who congratulates his “Aunt Steelbreaker,” and her father, Dexter, who introduces her to the women on either side of him (both named Betty, and both much younger than he is.) After Justine greets the others, her mother, Gaby, says she doesn't want to make a speech, and her father annoys Gaby by taking three spoons, telling the butler that he and his companions weren’t given any, then also taking the three replacements. Justine's boss, Jack, gives the first toast, “jokingly” chiding her for not having given him a tagline [11] for their new campaign and announcing her promotion to his advertising firm’s art director. This brings us to Lacan's topic—“how to behave in the face of culture.” [12]

{Lacan discusses how we may find light allowing us to take the question in another way, then brings in the concept of the alethosphere, a concept defined elsewhere as “a kind of high-tech heaven, a laicized [13a] or ‘disenchanted’ space filled none the less with every techno-scientific marvel imaginable…”} [13b]

Dexter starts his toast: “So, what can I say without talking about your mother? – my wife of yesteryear – which is exactly what I don't wish to do. I don't think that I would be revealing any secret if I were to say that she can be very domineering at times...” Gaby protests, “What a load of crap!” expressing the opinion that she “hates marriages…Especially when they involve my closest family members.” {I should post my next Lacan quote before the end of the dinner. In discussing “the other side of psychoanalysis,” he tells his students to}

...quickly make provision in them for enough shame so that when the festivities begin, there is no lack of seasoning. [14]

 After whispering to Gaby, “Who did you even bother coming?” Claire notices her father kissing both Bettys’ hands, then Justine closing her eyes. She brings Justine into the library, telling her not to make a scene. As they return to the reception and a guitarist starts to play, Justine leaves the building. We hear Tristan und Isolde again as she takes a cart to the golf course and watches the stars. She returns soon after the wedding planner asks where she is, then Michael gives a speech for her. He is somewhat inarticulate and self-effacing (to the point of irritating Gaby) but loving.  Claire tells the guests to move to the living room and announces that they will cut the cake at 11:30. We see Justine dance with Michael, John, and Jack, and her father dance with the two Bettys, then, when Leo asks to go to bed, Justine offers to take him up. After reassuring him that she is still his Aunt Steelbreaker and that they can still build caves together, Justine falls asleep herself, and Claire has to come wake her, asking what is wrong. Justine replies, “I’m trudging through this... Praying really hard. It's clinging to my legs. It's really heavy to drag along.” This conversation can give a sense of Lacan’s next point, defending “the other side of psychoanalysis”:

You’ve got enough to open a shop. If you are not yet aware of this, then do a bit of analysis, as they say. You will see this vapid air of yours run up against an outlandish shame of living. [15]

 Claire tells her, “Don't say a word to Michael,” then leaves.  We get a series of shots: first in the Hall, of John with the cake knife; then in the bathroom, of Justine lying perfectly still in the tub; then back in the hall, of John offering to get her to come down (Claire adding, “and my Mom, too.”) Then John goes to Justine’s door, telling her they’re ready to cut the cake, and gets no response. When he knocks on Gaby's door and gets no answer, he enters and finds her clothes on the bed and the bathroom door locked. He then knocks on that door, and she answers, “When Justine took her first crap on her potty, I wasn't there. When she had her first sexual intercourse, I wasn't there. So give me a break, please, with all your fucking rituals.” We’ll use this expression of maternal repentance to deliver a fable, from the novel, El Criticón, which Lacan relates in the next section:

Truth is in labor in a town that is only inhabited by beings of the highest purity. This doesn’t stop them from taking flight, and under the influence of a hell of a fear, when they are told that truth is like having a child. [16]

 John returns to the Hall, thanks his guests for their patience – “We're just having a little issue with the wedding dress” – and asks Claire, under his breath, “Is everybody in your family stark raving mad?” His anger building as he thinks of his hospitality, money and 18-hole golf course being taken for granted, he returns to Gaby's room, grabs her clothes, puts them in her suitcase, and throws it to the bottom of the exterior staircase. (Right afterward, Little Father comes out and brings it back in.) We then see Justine back with Michael, and they cut the cake. She tries to apologize to him, but he tells her to never say she is sorry – he says he has noticed she’s not feeling well tonight – he blames himself for not having taken care of her lately, and he brings her to the library and shows her a photo of a plot of land he bought for them both –where he plans to grow an apple orchard where she can sit in the shade on days when she’s “feeling a little sad.” He gives her the photo, and she says that she'll always keep it with her, and, after they briefly fondle, she leaves the room. When he looks down, he notices that she has left it on the sofa. I hope you can bear my playing with the orchard reference to bring forth another quote from this section:

You will see this, for example, “ignoble consciousness is the truth of noble consciousness.” And it’s dispatched in a way that draws you up short. The more unworthy you are—I won’t say obscene, that’s been out of the question for a long time—the better off you are. That really clarifies the recent reforms of the university, for instance. Everything, credit points—to have the makings of culture, of a hell of a general, in your rucksack, plus some medals besides, just like an agricultural show, that will pin onto you what people dare call mastery. Wonderful! You’ll have it coming out of your ears. [17]

 Later, when Justine looks in on Leo, John accosts her: He tells her that she'd “better be goddamn happy," asking if she has any idea how much the party cost him (“for most people, an arm and a leg.”) When she says that she hopes he feels it is well spent, he says that it depends on whether they have a deal – that she'll be happy. She agrees, and he smiles when she tells him, at his request, how many holes his golf course has. We’ll let John’s little test help us examine an odd claim of Lacan’s, that our

shame is justified by the fact that you do not die of shame, that is, by your maintaining with your force a discourse of the perverted master—which is the university discourse. [18]

 She returns to the reception and briefly dances with her father, nodding when he asks, at the end of the song, if she is happy, then taking her leave. She then bumps into her boss, who introduces her to his nephew, Tim. Jack says that he just hired him based on his lack of an education – perfect for public relations. Saying that he is paying him a very good salary, he tells her that Tim will be fired if he doesn't get a tagline out of her by the end of the night -- “which sucks, considering the debts he's in.” She walks away, a little disgusted, and Jack tells Tim to follow her to “be there at the time of birth.” Tim and Justine dance, she leaves the room, and Tim follows her to the library door, showing her the campaign picture and asking her for the tagline. She says, “spare me,” and enters, shutting the door behind her. Jack’s order and picture can direct our attention to what Lacan is indicating in his diagram (a diagram discussed in my last entry,) that one should

focus on … production—[on] the production of the university system. A certain production is expected of you. It is perhaps a matter of obtaining this effect, of substituting another for it. [19]

 Michael is still there (holding the photo) with Claire. He leaves, and Claire says that she thought Justine “really wanted this,” adding, “Michael has tried to get through to you all evening to no avail.” Justine protests that she does want this – “I smile and I smile,” but Claire accuses her of lying to all of them and also leaves. Justine replaces the open art books displaying abstract prints with ones with more representational works (including “Hunters in the Snow” and “Ophelia”) and goes to her mother's room.  She brings her luggage inside, and Gaby asks, “What do you want in this place? You've no business here. Nor have I.” Justine tries to talk to her, saying that she's “a bit scared,” and Gaby (keeping her back to her through most of their conversation) asks, “A bit? I'd be scared out of my wits if I were you.” Justine says that her fear is not what her mother thinks - “I have trouble walking properly,” and Gaby replies sadly, “You can still wobble, I see. So just wobble the hell out of here...” We then see Justine sitting in the reception hall holding the photo (as Tim sits beside her.) Then she sees Michael, and walks toward him, and they seem to be looking for words to say to each other. A waitress approaches the bride with some liqueur and a glass. Justine waves it away, but Claire takes the bottle and has her drink directly from it. Michael takes a swig himself, making Justine laugh, and they kiss passionately. Claire calls for everyone to go outside as Dexter asks for another glass, mistakenly calling the waitress “Betty.” Justine asks him if they can talk, but is unable to reach him. They go outside and we hear Tristan and Isolde again (oscillating between sweet and ominous) as the guests make hot air balloons, writing good wishes on them before letting them go. Justine, through John's telescope, watches them ascend, then closes her eyes, and we see shots of stars surrounded by colorful deep space clouds. Back inside, Justine and Michael stand on a balcony above the guests; Claire takes Justine's bouquet and drops it over the railing before the couple leave for their room, and the last shot from the scene is of their father smirking up, clapping very slowly. In the bedroom, Justine sits down, exhausted. Asking Michael to sit with her a little while, she gently rebuffs his attempts at lovemaking, then asks him to re-fasten her dress and goes outside. After getting to the golf course she turns and finds that Tim has followed her, still holding the picture and a notebook. She pushes him onto the sand trap, gets on top of him, and they copulate. The sand trap can warn us that

… if you want your remarks to be subversive, you must take great care that they don’t get too bogged down on the path to truth. [20]

 We then see her inside as she dances with her father again. She says she really needs to talk to him, and has the butler prepare him a room. Afterward, Jack approaches her and asks her to join him and Tim for soup, and casually tells them both that Tim is fired. She replies that she has been thinking of a tagline that would “effectively hook a group of minors on our substandard product, preferably in a habit-forming way” She says she considered trying to sell Jack to the public, which brought her back to where she started at – nothing. She continues, “Nothing is too much for you, Jack. I hate you and your firm so deeply I couldn't find the words to describe it. You are a despicable, power-hungry little man, Jack.” Telling her that “there aren't too many jobs out there,” Jack turns to go, smashing his plate against the catering van. As he drives away, Michael emerges from the house and says goodbye, telling her “This could have been a lot different,” to which she replies sadly, “Yes, but …what did you expect?” He answers, “You’re right” and leaves. This unhappy ending can symbolize Lacan’s next admonition:

It is worth noting that I put psychoanalysis on their guard, by connoting this locus they are engaged to through their knowledge as ‘ love,” I would say to them straight away: one does not marry truth; there can be no contract with her, and even less can there be any open liaison. She won’t stand for any of that. Truth is firstly a seduction, intended to deceive you. If you are not to be taken in, you must be strong. This is not the case with you. [21]

 Her sister walks by, and Justine grabs her arm, pleading, “Claire,” who answers, “Sometimes I hate you so much.” Tim, noting that she is short of a job and a husband, humbly offers his services – “We could be a great team – we had good sex.” She says that doesn’t seem like a good idea, and he leaves. We then see Little Father telling Claire about the bean lottery (the count was 678, and no one had guessed right) and asking about the prize, to which she replies, “Throw it away.” Justine goes to Dexter’s room and finds a note: “To my beloved daughter, Betty. I'm as proud of you as any father could be. But I couldn't find you and I was offered a ride home I couldn't refuse. See you soon. Kisses from your stupid Dad.” We see a shot of her sitting on a stack of chairs in the empty hall, then of Claire waking her where she had passed out, on the library sofa. Justine says, “I tried, Claire” and her sister answers, “Yes, you did. You really did.” We can let Claire’s encouragement re-sound Lacan’s:

And then, these initial responses that have so bewildered you here, and that, it seems, went across over the radio much better than people think, have confirmed the principle that I have adopted, and this is one of the methods by which it would be possible to take action upon culture. [22]

 They go riding together, and when Justine’s horse, Abraham, refuses to cross a bridge, Justine looks up at the blue sky and says that Antares is missing from the Scorpio constellation. An intertitle comes up saying, “Part two: Claire,” and we get shots of her perfectly-manicured lawn and beautifully-decorated rooms as we see her and Little Father preparing for a guest. Then John hands her the phone, saying, “I swear to God, your sister can't do anything by herself.” Claire talks Justine into taking a cab that they had arranged to bring her to their mansion. After arguing that Justine is a bad influence on her and Leo and dismissing Claire’s assertion that she is ill, John reproaches Claire for breaking her promise not to read about Melancholia on the internet again. She confesses that she is afraid of “that stupid planet,” but he says that there is nothing to fear, that it will be an amazing experience “First it was black, now it's blue. Blocking Antares, hiding behind the sun.” “…you have to trust a scientist.” The taxi arrives, and John pays him as Claire and Little Father help a shell-shocked Justine out. Leo hugs her and asks when they can “build those caves,” and John and Claire tell him not to worry her about that right now. Later, John asks Claire what she is cooking, and she answers, “meatloaf... If that's doesn't get her out of bed, nothing will.”  Perhaps Claire’s bait can help us grasp the meaning of Lacan’s next words:

When one is caught by chance at the level of a large public, of one of these masses that a type of medium presents you with, why not precisely raise the level, in proportion to the assumed ineptitude—which is a pure assumption—of this field? Why lower the tone? Who do you have to rope in? It is precisely the game of culture to engage you in this system, namely, once the aim is reached, you can’t tell head from tail. [23]

 Claire tries to give Justine a bath, but Justine cannot step into it, eventually squealing like a small child and dropping to her knees,  After Claire puts Justine's hand in the warm water and tries to coax her a little more, she calls this attempt practice for tomorrow. She later brings Justine to the dining room, and although Justine smiles at the smell of meatloaf, after taking a bite, says it “tastes like ashes” and starts to cry, and Claire has Little Father take her to bed. After excusing himself, Leo goes to her bedside, reading her an article about the Melancholia fly-by, and when Claire enters and tells him not to frighten his aunt about it now, Justine, with her eyes still closed, tells her, “If you think I’m afraid of a planet, then you’re too stupid.” Afterward, Justine is able to go out with Claire to the garden, where they pick flowers and blueberries. Suddenly, it starts to snow and Justine smiles. We then see her at the table eating jam (with obvious enjoyment) out of a jar. In the next scene, Justine is in the stable brushing Abraham while John and Little Father stash fuel and other supplies there. John explains to her that they brought “just a few things we're gonna need in case Melancholy gets really close” and says not to tell Claire. After they leave, Claire makes Justine ride with her again, and when Abraham stops at the bridge Justine beats him until he falls. Justine, looking up, points to Melancholia, saying, “There's your fly-by.” Justine’s superior vision can help us see how

…[The psychoanalyst] repudiates the mode of unearthing a shadow and then pretending it is carrion, repudiates being valued as a hunting dog. Hi[s] discipline steeps him in the fact that the real is not initially there to be known—this is the only dam that can hold idealism back. [24]

 As Claire and Justine have tea on the patio, John and Leo drive up in the golf-cart with a telescope. Little Father approaches John to help him, but is told not to touch the instrument. Leo runs to Claire, showing her a stick with an attached wire forming a large loop at one end. John proudly tells her that Leo had made it: “If you adjust the steel and point it towards the planet from your chest it'll tell you how fast it's approaching and ultimately how fast it will recede.” Later, Claire is looking at a website with the title, “Earth & Melancholia Dance of Death,” when the power goes off. She calls for John, who reassures her. “We're prepared for this. The power will be back on in a few days. Claire... Tomorrow evening Melancholy will pass us by and you'll never have to see it again, okay?” He promises that there is no chance that the scientists have miscalculated. His promise can draw us to Lacan's next point:

To be truthful, it is only from where knowledge is false that it is concerned with the truth. All knowledge that is not false couldn’t give a damn about it. In becoming known, only its form is a surprise, a surprise in dubious taste, moreover, when by the grace of Freud it speaks to us of language, since it is nothing but its product. [25]

 John concludes, “It's rising again. Just like the moon. Because of the Earth's rotation. Exactly like they said it would.” Later, we see Claire return from the village, and John asks if she is hungry. When she says she isn’t and passes him, he follows her into the library, seeing her take out a bottle of pills. He asks if she plans to kill them all, then says, “Maybe I should take those.” She locks them in a drawer and hides the key behind a book, saying, “Don't touch them. Don't you touch them.” With John's lunar reference and Claire's concealment in mind we’ll consider the following revelation…

This is the other face of the function of truth, not the visible face, but the dimension in which it is necessitated by something hidden. [26a]

...and learn a concept Lacan will bring up soon, but doesn’t define, in our present lecture – the “lathouse.” He defines “lathouses” as:

‘false objects’… Thus the quarrel over images that has been stirring up the art historians and critics is itself at base an off the track question about jouissance which in today’s world has taken on a global dimension. The true object would be Lacan’s object a (which moreover is a semblant, a logical consistency without substance), the false being the lathouse, i.e., an object that is made up of enjoying substance. (Scholarly citations removed.) [26b]

We see Claire in the stable watching the horses “spook,” then re-entering the library, where Justine is eating chocolate mints. Claire tells her that it’s time for her bath, but Justine says she has already had one. Claire expresses concern that, for the first time, Little Father didn't come to work without giving advance notice, and Justine says that this might be a time when he needs to be with his family. Claire responds, “It'll pass us by tonight. John is quite calm about it,” explaining that “John studies things. He always has.” Study being a task of two of the “impossible professions,” Lacan had enumerated in his last lecture, the word may help us remember Lacan's next warning:

[O]ne mustn’t tease the lathouse too much. What does undertaking this always assure? What I am forever explaining to you—it assures the impossible by virtue of the fact that this relationship is effectively real. The more you[r] quest is located on the side of truth, the more you uphold the power of the impossibles which are those that I respectively enumerated for you last time—governing, educating, analyzing on occasion. [27]

 Justine says sadly that the Earth is evil and that nobody will miss it. Claire, taken aback, blurts out, “but where would Leo grow up?” Justine repeats that life on Earth is evil, and when Claire says that there may be life somewhere else, says with conviction that there isn’t. To Claire’s questioning, Justine says, “I know things.” At Claire’s skeptical reply, Justine says, “678” the number, that no one else was able to guess, of beans in the lottery. Leo enters, saying the words at the top of this entry, and we later see John wake him to watch the fly-by. Then the family gathers on the terrace, and we see Claire's terrified face before the large planet rises. John has her look through the telescope, and she relaxes and says that it looks “friendly.” He says that is what he had been trying to tell her. Later, however, when he says he’d like to raise a toast to life, Claire bristles -- “What do you mean, to life? You said it was going to be okay!” This cross-questioning [28] of her husband's authoritative claim can summon the next section of Lacan's lecture, where he posits that shame is

…the hole from which the master signifier arises. If it were, it might perhaps not be useless for measuring how close one has to get to it if one wants to have anything to do with the subversion, or even just the rotation, of the master’s discourse. [29]

 John calms her, explaining that “when dealing with science and calculations of this magnitude... you have to account for a margin of error.” He has her use the wire device their son made. When she looks through it for the first time, he says that it will be smaller in five minutes. When she looks again, she says, crying with relief, that it is. He answers, “Of course it is … It's moving away from us at over sixty thousand miles an hour. We’ll use the stick-and-wire gadget to convey Lacan’s idea that the master signifier is what makes

… something that spreads throughout language like wildfire … readable, that is to say, how it hooks on, creates a discourse. [30]

Claire tucks Leo into bed and sees Justine standing solemnly behind her. She tells her, “Be happy, please,” and Justine replies that she’s happy that Claire is. Claire lets out an exasperated laugh, saying that it’s easier for Justine, who always assumes the worst, and Justine agrees that it sometimes is. Claire goes out to the terrace the next morning, looking refreshed, and asks John if he wants tea, but he is staring, worriedly, through the telescope. She lies on a chaise lounge and dozes, and when she wakes up he is gone. She uses the device and sees that the planet is getting larger. She searches for John, checks the drawer where she had kept the pills, and finds the bottle is empty. When she asks Justine if she has seen John, she replies that she hasn’t, and remarks that the horses have calmed down. Claire goes to the stable and finds John’s body. She covers him with hay, lets Abraham loose, and returns to the house. She prepares breakfast for Justine and Leo and tells Justine that John had ridden to the village, then looks again through Leo’s gadget and finds that Melancholia has come much closer. The gadget can now convey

… the other side, where everything can be threaded onto a little stick, where one can place them, the little pile that they are, along with others who are, as is the nature of the progression of knowledge, dominated. [31]

She suddenly grabs Leo's hand and tells Justine to follow her. She tries to start one car, then another, but neither work, though she is able to start the golf cart. When Justine asks where she is going, Claire answers, “To the village. Come.” Justine counters, “This has nothing to do with the village.” Justine’s answer, referring to Claire and John’s elite status excluding them from solidarity with the villagers, can act as a foil to Lacan’s assertion that his schemas can justify

…that the student is not displaced in feeling a brother, … not of the proletariat but of the lumpen-proletariat. [32]

The cart stops working as Claire gets to the bridge, and she tries to carry Leo, but just then it starts to hail, forcing her to return to the mansion. After putting him to bed, she talks to Justine, saying she wants the three of them to be together when it happens, suggesting they meet on the terrace for a glass of wine. Justine, stone-faced, mocks her, “How about a song? Beethoven's Ninth...” Mention of the piece can invoke Lacan’s claim that what is produced in the university discourse is

… something cultural. And when one thinks like the university, what one produces is a thesis. [33]

Justine calls Claire’s plan “a piece of shit” and ridicules her desire to make the end “nice” Claire, for the second time, says, “Sometimes I hate you so much…” Later, Justine sees Leo standing alone on the terrace looking worried. He tells her that he’s afraid that the planet will hit them after all, recalling that his father had said that if that happened, there would be nothing to do and nowhere to hide. Justine answers, “If your dad said that, then he's forgotten about … the magic cave.” When Leo asks if everybody can make one she replies, “Aunt Steelbreaker can.” We see her showing him how to strip bark from a fallen branch, and together they make a sort of uncovered tepee. With her new confidence, Justine can incarnate a new master signifier, to which Lacan says the order of production is always related —

…not simply because that discerns it for you, but quite simply because it forms a part of the presuppositions according to which everything in this order is related to the author’s name. [34]

We hear Tristan und Isolde again as Justine has Leo sit inside the cave, then gently brings Claire inside it. After entering it herself, Justine adds one more branch and tells Leo to hold her hand and close his eyes. Claire, trying not to cry, takes his other one, looks at Justine’s face, and takes her hand. We get a close-up of Claire as she silently weeps, then at Justine's serene demeanor. As the music crescendos we see Melancholia come closer and closer until it fills the sky, then flames approach, engulfing the screen. We hear a crash, a sound which continues for a few moments after the screen goes black, then a minute of silence before the music resumes for the final credits. We can end our account of the lecture on the subject of credit, about which Lacan says

…As you can see, there is not much reason for you to worry that what comes out of you carries the label of what concerns you. This [is] such an obstacle, let me assure you, to the publication of anything decent—if only because of the fact that even within what you might be naturally interested in, you believe that you are obliged, in the name of the laws of a thesis, to refer it to the author—he is talented, it’s unconvincing, he hasn’t got ideas, what he says is not totally stupid. And if he has contributed something important that may not concern him in any way, you are absolutely obliged to think that this is a mind that thinks. And [that can screw you up] for a long time…if this phenomenon takes place [for you], which is frankly incomprehensible, given what it is that I put forward for the majority of you, it is because I happen to make you ashamed, not too much, but just enough. [35]

I’ll end this post with a more mundane illustration of some of the aforementioned concepts in an article about current “master signifiers.” [36]

1. Lars von Trier. Melancholia. (2011.) in: springfieldspringfield.co.uk. (Undated.)

2. Chris Mooney. “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality.” (April 1, 2012.) in: amazon.com. (Undated.)

3. Dan Kahan. “The Ideological Symmetry of Motivated Reasoning.” (December 13, 2011.) in: culturalcognition.net.

4.  Paul Rosenberg. “Disputing the science of conservative anti-science.” (22 Aug 2012.) in: aljazeera.com.

5. Jacques Lacan. “The Power of the Impossibles” from The Other side of Psychoanalysis. (1970) in: springhero.wordpress.com. (July 3 - 9, 2010.)

 6. “Tristan und Isolde.” in: Wikipedia. June 13, 2014.

7. “Hunters in the Snow.” in: Wikipedia. May 26, 2014.

8. “'pre-raphaelite’ Ophelia.” in: Google Images. Undated.

 9. “Scorpion #In Culture.” in: Wikipedia. June 24, 2014.

10. Lacan. “Impossibles [1.]”

11. While discussing this campaign, Jack projects an image on a large screen of partially-undressed women in spiked heels lying in contorted positions on a floor.

12. Lacan. “Impossibles [2.]”

13a. “Defrocking.” in: Wikipedia. March 31, 2014.

13b. Slavoj Zizek. Lacan: The Silent Patners. (2006.)

14-15. Lacan. “Impossibles [2.]”

16-20. Lacan. “Impossibles [3.]”

21-23. Lacan. “Impossibles [4.]”

24-25. Lacan. “Impossibles [5.]”

26a. Lacan. “Impossibles [5.]”

26b. Pierre-Gilles Guéguen. “Don’t Blame It on New York!” in:lacan.com. (2013.)

27. Lacan. “Impossibles [5.]”

28. Coincidentally(?), Sutherland played a perjuring officer in A Few Good Men (1992.)

29-32. Lacan. “Impossibles [6.]”

33-35. Lacan. “Impossibles [7.]”

36. James S. Fell. “The Toxic Appeal of the Men’s Rights Movement.” in: time.com. May 29, 2014.