Dr. Heywood Floyd: Deliberately buried.
Dr. Bill Michaels: Well, how about a little coffee?
Technocrats discussing a monolith just discovered on the Moon in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [1]
Now that I’ve discussed the four fundamentals of psychology, I’d like to cover a subject I had touched on in “Drive,” where I quoted Lacan on the “field of values” of which he said: “we are up to our necks in it.” What did he mean by that?
One of the more
sophisticated defenses of capitalism is that through its workings we can
calculate the needs of production, an ability its defenders claim would be
impossible under socialism. In his
seminal paper “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,”
libertarian founding father Ludwig Von Mises argues that although a socialist
state can use money as a universal medium of exchange, such money cannot “fill
in a socialist state the role it fills in a competitive society in determining
the value of production goods.” For his example, he uses tobacco products,
noting that if people generally value one cigar as much as five cigarettes, if
those in charge of determining rationing of these goods for some reason cannot
arrange to distribute tobacco products according to this evaluation, “everybody
getting [more] cigarettes would suffer as against those getting [more] cigars.
For the man who gets one cigar can exchange it for five cigarettes…” [2]
But a book came out a
couple years ago that explores some ways in which money and a pro-market
ideology can distort our “values” to the point of self-destruction. The full
title, in fact, is: Merchants of Doubt:
How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to
Global Warming. As a review says,
the book shows how
scientists
such as Fred Seitz, Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, along with the
institutes through which they, and their kind, have lent their services to a
range of rightwing, free-market foundations and institutions including the
Competitive Enterprise Institute… When not funded by the tobacco industry, many
of these outfits often receive backing from fossil-fuel companies such as Exxon.
[3]
Another review
discusses the neoliberal mainstream media’s role in these obfuscations,
criticizing the book for letting it off the hook, pointing out that denialist
tactics
were crude, the lies obvious, and the truth knowable with only a cursory web
search. If the press was “fooled,” it
was because they were either hopeless slackers, or they wanted to be fooled.
[4]
Lacan, in the above-quoted
“Impotence of the Truth” seminar, had given us some idea of how capitalism's
devotees came to be so persuasive and why it is so difficult to counter their
disinformation, but to get to why - with such overwhelming evidence of its
disastrous effects - so many who know better continue to behave as if they
don't, perpetuating the status quo, we need to explore the process of fetishism
and disavowal, including its more modern permutations. Lacan’s seminar on
Anxiety [5] gives a good analysis of this process (and, delivered in what Jameson and
others call the early postmodern era, shows some developments in this process
since Freud's day.) I’ll use the above Kubrick classic, made six years later,
to help my thoughts on this issue evolve.
We see a black screen for
three minutes while listening to eerie music by avant-garde composer György
Ligeti, then Richard Strauss' “Thus Spake Zarathustra” plays as we get the
title shot of the Moon’s silhouette, with the Earth and Sun rising in
alignment above it. The sound cuts out and Kubrick shows us a barren desert and an
intertitle: “The Dawn of Man.” We watch the sun rise over different views of
the landscape, one of which includes an animal skull, another a primate skeleton,
before we see the first living creatures - two early human ancestors,
Australopithecus, foraging by some tapirs. We get some endearing scenes of the
primates, first shooing the tapirs and then grooming each other before a
Leopard pounces on one of them, and his fellows run away. We fade to
black. With this introduction, We can
grasp Lacan's opening remarks on
{Freud's
idea of the nature of anxiety as he criticizes others' interpretations. After
ruling out the feeling as an emotion, he categorizes it as an affect. He
ridicules an anthropological explanation for the concept, saying that that way
Jungianism lies. He finally warns against the teachers' temptation to
oversimplify, saying that a cat “cannot find her kittens” as regards to what
analysts think}: Why, why ever since people have done science – because these
reflections are concerned with something quite different and with much vaster
fields [than] that of our experience – has one required the greatest possible
simplicity? Why should the real be simple? [6]
In the next scene, a tribe
of the primates is relaxing by a watering hole when another group descends on
them from behind a small hill. They make threatening gestures, and, after a
brief effort to defend their territory, the first group disburses. We get a
close-up of a victorious Australopithecus turn and bare his teeth, growling at
the retreating group before fading to black.
This scene of domination can help us hammer meaning out of what Lacan
says in his next couple pages:
[A]nxiety
is this certain relationship [between self and Other] which I have only imaged
up to now. {Lacan then claims that} the desire of man is the desire of the
Other … as [locus of the signifier, or] unconsciousness constituted as such,
and he involves my desire in the measure of what he is lacking and that he does
not know. It is at the level of what he is lacking and that he does not know
that I am involved in the most pregnant fashion, because for me there is no
other detour, to find what I am lacking as object of my desire That the Other
as such is going to establish something, “o”, which is precisely what is
involved at the level of what desires – this is the whole impasse – in
requiring to be recognised by him. There where I am recognised as object,
because this object in its essence is a consciousness, a Selbstbewusstsein
[self-awareness,] there is no mediation other than that of violence. [7]
At twilight, a leopard
with eyes like flashlights lies on top of fresh kill, and the apes huddle
against rocks and each other, listening to its growls. A mother holds its baby
to its breast as the night falls. In the morning, strange music wakes one of them
- Moonwatcher. He howls, waking the others. The music grows louder, and we see
the monolith. The tribe surrounds it, initially trying to shoo it away.
Moonwatcher slowly advances, touches it, retreats and returns, finally stroking
its side, and his fellows follow suit. From an extremely close, low angle we
watch the Sun and moon align with it, then cut back to the barren landscape,
where Moonwatcher's tribe forages among the bones. Kubrick shows Moonwatcher flashback to the
aforementioned alignment and tilt his head, looking at the bones. “Thus Spake
Zarathustra” starts to play as Moonwatcher picks up a bone, sniffs it, and hits
other bones with increasing force and focus, ultimately crushing a skull. We
cut to a tapir falling, then back to Moonwatcher's savage face. In the next scene, we see him and his tribe
eating meat, and later returning with their new tools to the watering
hole. When the opposing leader rushes
Moonwatcher, he uses his new discovery, and the rival falls. The competing
tribe goes quiet and, as Moonwatcher's tribe follows his lead, leaves.
Triumphant, our protagonist throws his bone in the air, which spins as it
rises, and then, as it starts to fall, is transformed via a match cut into a
space craft orbiting the Earth four million years later. This juxtaposition brings up the point that
…movement
exists in every function, even if it is not locomotory. It exists at least
metaphorically, and in inhibition, it is the stopping of movement that is
involved. Stopping: does that mean that this is all inhibition is designed to
suggest to us. You will easily object, braking too, and why not, I grant it to
you. I do not see why we should not put into a matrix which ought to allow us
to distinguish the dimensions involved in a notion so familiar to us, why we
should not put on one line the notion of difficulty, and, on another coordinate
axis, the one that I have called that of movement. This is even what is going
to allow us to see more clearly, because it is also what is going to allow us
to come down to earth, to the earth of what is not veiled by the learned word,
by the notion, indeed the concept with which one can always come to terms with.
[8]
As the camera pans over
and the Earth comes into view, Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube Waltz"
starts to play. We see the craft from a different angle, then a spinning space
station which comes to “waltz” with a ship. Inside the spaceship, its sole
passenger, Dr. Floyd, sleeps in a chair before a screen playing a film, while
his pen floats nearby. A stewardess, walking awkwardly in “grip shoes,” puts
the pen in his pocket and turns off the movie. As the ship approaches the station
we see a rather inactive pilot and co-pilot, then a close-up of the IBM screen.
Floyd arrives and, after exchanging pleasantries with the receptionist and
station security, he passes through voice print identification. He enters a
phone booth and, with a view of the moon rotating behind him, gets his daughter
(“Squirt,”) of about four years old, on the line. To his questions, she says
that Mother has “gone to shopping” and that her sitter is in the bathroom. When
she asks if he can come to her birthday party, he says that he can’t; he is
traveling, but will send her something nice. He asks her if she wants anything
special, and she replies, “a telephone,” then “a bush baby.” After instructing
her to tell her mother he called and will try to call again tomorrow he wishes
her a happy birthday. The phone screen goes black, then reads, “Charge $1.70”
We can use this bill to recollect Lacan's passage on libidinal investment:
With
respect to this Other, depending on this Other, the subject is inscribed as a
quotient, he is marked by the unary trait of the signifier in the field of the
Other. Well, it is not for all that, as I might say, that he cuts the Other
into slices. There is a remainder in the sense of division, a residue. This
remainder, this final other, this irrational, this proof and sole guarantee
when all is said and done of the otherness of the Other, is the o... [Desiring
the other] without knowing it …, I take him as the object unknown to myself of
my desire, namely in our conception of desire that I identify him, that I
identify you, you to whom I am speaking, you yourself, to the object which is
lacking to yourself, namely that by this circuit that I have to take to reach
the object of my desire, I accomplish precisely for him what he is looking for.
It is indeed in this way that innocently or not, if I take this detour, the
other as such, object here -you should note – of my love, will fall necessarily
into my toils. [9]
We cut to Russians talking
and sipping cocktails in the corridor next to another view of the rotating Moon
when Floyd arrives. One of them, Elena, introduces him to three others, and,
when they find he is going to Clavius, they ask him to clear up a mystery that
has been happening there, saying that they have reliable intelligence that an
epidemic has broken out. After acting ignorant, he finally says that he isn't
at liberty to discuss the subject and excuses himself. After unsuccessfully
trying to get him to stay for a drink, Elena says that she hopes to see him at
a conference and that we will “bring that darling little daughter” with him.
Comparing Floyd’s two last interactions can help us connect Lacan’s
discussion of the relation between the “imaginary” and the “symbolic”:
{He asks
his students to read a discourse of his from 1946 to show how closely-woven his
interplay between the “imaginary” and the “symbolic” registers has always been,
and notes that when he had given the discourse, communists reacted to it with
what he describes as “Pharisaism,” leading him to temporarily restrict these
ideas to discussions with fellow analysts, then he shows his students a diagram
setting out the function of dependency of the ideal ego and the ego-ideal:}
yes, let us recall then how the specular relationship is inserted, finds itself
therefore taking its place, finds itself depending on the fact that the subject
is constituted in the locus of the Other...[how a child, after recognizing
himself in the mirror for the first time,] turns back towards the one who is
carrying him, towards the adult, towards the one who here represents the big
Other, as if to call in a way on his assent to what at this moment the child,
the content of whose experience we are trying to assume, the sense of which
moment we reconstruct in the mirror stage by referring it to this movement of
the rotation (mutation) of the head which turns back and which returns towards
the image, seems to demand of him to ratify the value of this image. {In this
memory he shows} that the articulation of the subject to the small other and
the articulation of the subject to the big Other do not exist separately in
what I am demonstrating to you. [10]
“The Blue Danube” resumes
as Dr. Floyd, again the sole passenger in the spacecraft, heads to Clavius. We
see him dozing as shots of awkward stewardesses are contrasted with the grace
of the technology (and karate fighters on a computer screen.) One of the stewardesses
prepares trays of food, pulling straws out of compartments marked with what the
food is supposed to taste like. As Floyd eats, the pilot comes in to talk to
him, and then we cut to Floyd reading the zero gravity toilet instructions. We
get beautiful shots of the moon before the spaceship descends, the Moonbase
opening its “maw” as the ship lands on a “footlit” platform. These
lights can illuminate how
Freud
first introduces the unconscious in connection with the dream precisely as a locus
that he called eine and erer Schauplatz, a different scene of action (scène) …
first phase, the world. Second phase, the stage upon which we construct this
world. And this is the dimension of history. History has always this character
of a staging. [11]
We next see Floyd in a
small auditorium with a gathering of scientists. He sits in the center
foreground with his back to us as a photographer takes pictures of him. One of
the men, Dr. Ralph Halvorsen, gets on a podium and introduces him. Floyd tells
them that they must maintain absolute secrecy about their discovery, although
it may be “among the most significant in the history of science,” even
“requesting” a formal written security oath from everyone with any knowledge of
“this event.” With Floyd’s performance I’ll continue Lacan’s “stage” metaphor:
In short,
the putting into question of what the cosmic world is in the real is entirely
legitimate, once we have referred to the stage. Is what we believe we have to
deal with as world, not quite simply the accumulated remainders of what came
down from the stage when – as I might put it – the stage was on tour? [12]
We hear another eerie
Ligeti piece as a small craft flies over the Moon's surface to the crater.
Inside, Floyd eats synthetic sandwiches while Halvorsen
and Dr. Bill Michaels show him pictures and graphs concerning the new find and
flatter him on his “excellent speech.” They have the exchange quoted at the top of this post, and
Floyd asks Halvorsen if he has “any idea what the damn thing is.” The music returns as they reach the crater, then changes – to the Monolith's
“song.” When they reach it, Floyd strokes its side, then poses for his picture
in front of it. Suddenly, the Monolith emits a high-pitched sound that makes
everyone stagger, covering what would have been their ears if not for their
helmets, and we get a shot of the rising (setting?) sun with the earth directly
above it. With Floyd's posturing we’ll turn to Lacan’s employment of a more
specific use of the stage – the titular role, Hamlet:
It is himself,
carrying out the crime in question, this character whose desire, for reasons
that I tried to articulate for you, cannot be roused to accomplish the will of
the ghost, of the fantome of his father, this character attempts to embody
something; and what it is a matter of embodying passes by way of his image
which is really specular here, his image not in the situation, the mode of
carrying out his vengeance, but of assuming first of all the crime that must be
avenged. [13]
A melancholy tune plays
while the intertitle: “Jupiter Mission: 18 Months Later” appears, and we see
the spaceship, “Discovery.” Inside, an astronaut, Frank Poole, jogs, “boxing”
the air, past three hibernating crewmembers. We get a shot of the ship
computer, HAL's, “eye,” then one of the other astronaut, Dave, climbing down a
ladder holding a clipboard. He and Frank eat from trays with different
compartments containing mush of various shades of brown and yellow as they
watch a recording of themselves being interviewed by the BBC. We get a long
shot of several monitors with Hal's eye in the middle as Dave and Frank’s
recorded selves discuss the hibernation of their survey team. These videos can
help us picture Lacan’s idea that
This
cathexis of the specular image is a fundamental moment of the imaginary
relationship, fundamental in the fact that there is a limit and the fact is
that the whole of libidinal cathexis does not pass through the specular image.
There is a remainder. [14]
When the interviewer, Mr.
Amer, asks HAL if his enormous responsibility causes him any lack of
confidence, the computer replies that his series is “Incapable of error,” and
when asked if he is frustrated by his dependence on people to carry out
actions, says that he enjoys working with humans and that he has “a stimulating
relationship” with Drs. Poole and Bowman. Sensing pride in HAL’s replies, Amer
asks his crewmates if HAL is capable of emotions, and Dave says that he
doesn’t think anyone can truthfully answer that question. This non-answer regarding a
powerful being can help us reflect on Lacan’s description of a symbol of power:
the
phallus appears in the form of a lack, of a (-$>)• In the whole measure that
there is realised at i(o) something that I called the real image, the
constitution in the material of the subject of the image of the body
functioning as properly imaginary, that is to say libidinised, the phallus
appears as a minus, appears as a blank. The phallus no doubt is an operational
reserve, but one which is not only not represented at the level of the
imaginary but which is circumscribed and, in a word, cut out of the specular
image…
[D]esire depends on the relationship that I gave you as being that of the phantasy, the diamond, with its meaning that we will learn how to read in a still different way soon, o<> d. [15]
[D]esire depends on the relationship that I gave you as being that of the phantasy, the diamond, with its meaning that we will learn how to read in a still different way soon, o<> d. [15]
The sad music returns as
we get another external view of the ship. Inside, Frank lies on an antiseptic
chaise longue under a bright light watching his parents deliver a pre-recorded
birthday message while Dave sleeps in the same type of compartment that holds
the cryogenic tanks. Frank’s parents sit behind a cake, chatting about having
been interviewed with Dave’s parents on television and delivering best wishes
from friends and others. They inform him that he should receive his higher
rates of pay by next month, then finish by singing “Happy Birthday.” We can
pause on this chilly scene to cover the concept Lacan approaches next:
… by the
Unheimlich [Uncanny, Opposite of familiar] many things can appear which are
anomalous, this is not what makes us anxious. But if all of a sudden all norms
are lacking, namely what constitutes the lack – because the norm is correlative
to the idea of lack if all of a sudden it is not lacking – and believe me try
to apply that to a lot of things – it is at that moment that anxiety begins.
[16]
We watch Frank playing
chess with HAL, where, after one of Frank's moves, HAL responds, “I'm sorry,
Frank. I think you missed it” and states the next few moves leading to HAL's
checkmating him. These moves can help us navigate this complex passage:
An image
of ourselves that is simply reflected, already problematic, even
fallacious...is at a place that is situated with respect to an image which is
characterised by a lack, by the fact that what is called for there cannot
appear there, that there is profoundly orientated and polarised the function of
this image itself, that desire is there, not simply veiled, but essentially
placed in relation to an absence, to a possibility of appearing determined by a
presence which is elsewhere and determines it more closely, but, where it is,
ungraspable by the subject, namely here, I indicated it, the o of the object,
of the object which constitutes our question, of the object in the function
that it fulfills in the phantasy at the place that something can appear. [17]
Kubrick then shows us Dave
drawing his frozen crewmates, and Hal asks to see the sketches and notes his
improvement. He then hesitantly asks Dave if he has been having second thoughts
about the mission, using expressions such as “extremely odd,” “strange
stories,” “tight security,” and “melodramatic touch.” Dave guesses that HAL is
working up a crew psychology report, and HAL apologizes, calling it “a bit
silly.” Then he says, “Just a moment....Just a moment. I've just picked up a
fault in the ae-35 [communication] unit. It's going to go 100% failure within
72 hours.” This talk of suspicions and prediction of failure can bring up
Lacan’s discussion about castration anxiety:
[The form
of castration] is constructed at the level of the breaking that is produced at
some time because of a certain imaginary drama; and this – as you know – is
what gives importance to the accidents of the scene which for that reason is
described as traumatic.
What the
neurotic retreats from, is not castration, it is from making of his own
castration what is-lacking to the Other, 0, it is from making of his castration
something positive which is the guarantee of this [signifying] function of the
Other. This Other which slips away in the indefinite putting off of
significations, this Other which the subject no longer sees as anything but
destiny, but a destiny which has no end, a destiny which loses itself in the
sea of histories – and what are histories, if not an immense fiction – what can
ensure a relationship of the subject to this universe of significations, if not
that somewhere there is jouissance? [18]
We see Frank and Dave
walking through the ship, working on reports before they get permission from
the base to go EVA. Then a suited-up Dave gets in the pod. We hear nothing but
the sound of Dave's breathing and a stream of white noise as the small craft
exits the globe-like end of the ship. This sound continues through long shots
of the pod's movements, under Frank and HAL's watchful eyes, past when the
bulbous pod opens its door and Dave emerges, spinning toward his goal before he
finally exchanges the units. This exchange can stand for Lacan’s exposition of
the uncanny:
[W]hen
Freud made of anxiety the transformation of the libido, there is already the
indication that it could function as a signal…[the concept] is linked to
everything that can appear at that place… The first thing which stands out in
it even on a superficial reading [of his “Unheimlich,”] is the importance that
Freud gives to linguistic analysis. The … second, is that the definition of
unheimlich is to be un-heimlich. It is
what is at the high-point of Heim… Man
finds his home in a point situated in the Other beyond the image of which we
are made and this place represents the absence where we are. Supposing – which
happens – that it reveals itself for what it is: the presence elsewhere which
constitutes this place as absence, then it is the queen of the game.
It makes off with the image which supports it and the specular image becomes the image of the double with what it brings in terms of a radical strangeness and, to employ terms which take on their signification by being opposed to the Hegelian terms, by making us appear as object by revealing to us the non-autonomy of the subject. [19]
It makes off with the image which supports it and the specular image becomes the image of the double with what it brings in terms of a radical strangeness and, to employ terms which take on their signification by being opposed to the Hegelian terms, by making us appear as object by revealing to us the non-autonomy of the subject. [19]
Graphics of the AE-35
being tested cut to a shot of HAL's eye, then to HAL'S fish-eye point-of-view
of Frank and Dave working. Finally, the men exchange meaningful glances and
Dave says, “Well, HAL, I'm damned if I can find anything wrong with it.” We can
use these eyes to visualize Lacan's discussion of an example of Freud's,
{the
source of the opera, Tales of Hoffman,
in which a man falls in love with a mechanical doll created by an evil
magician, the magician finishing the doll with an eye.} And the eye involved
can only be that of the hero of the story. The theme of this eye which is to be
stolen from him is what gives the explanatory thread of the whole story. [20]
HAL admits, “It's
puzzling” and suggests putting the unit back and letting it fail, after which
they can track down the cause. We cut to Frank and Dave communicating with the
base, which, while allowing them to follow HAL's plan, says that he is in
error, basing their conclusion on results from their own twin 9000 computer.
We’ll let these twins help track down the solution to this puzzle:
[D]esire
enters the den where it has been awaited from all eternity in the shape of the
object that I am, in so far as it exiles me from my subjectivity by resolving
of itself all the signifiers to which this subjectivity is attached… At every
detour of this long and so tortuous truth, we understand from the note that
Freud gives, which allows it to be understood that one loses oneself a little
in it and even this “losing oneself in it” is part of the function of the
labyrinth that must be brought to life.
But it is clear that, even though everyone makes this detour, the subject only arrives at, only accedes to, his desire by substituting himself always for one of his own doubles. [21]
But it is clear that, even though everyone makes this detour, the subject only arrives at, only accedes to, his desire by substituting himself always for one of his own doubles. [21]
Dave asks HAL how he would
account for the discrepancy between him and his twin, and HAL says that it must
be attributable to human error. We'll let HAL's eagerness to put the blame for
failure on others to deflect suspicion from himself bring us to Lacan's claim
about “the neurotic” who
...never
makes very much of his phantasy. It succeeds in protecting him against anxiety
precisely in the measure that it is a false o...This object o functioning in
their phantasy, and which serves as a defense for them against their anxiety,
is also, despite all appearances, the bait with which they hold onto the other.
[22]
Dave asks Frank to help
him with the transmitter in the C-Pod. We see them leave in a reflection in
HAL's eye. We'll let his point-of-view draw our attention to Lacan's point that
The true
object the neurotic seeks is a demand: he wants a demand to be made of him, he
wants to be begged. The only thing that he does not want is to pay the price.
...a phantasy which can be found everywhere in the oldest moralistic-religious
preachings, that of oblativity. [23]
The astronauts have HAL
open the pod’s door (which bears the sign, “Caution: Explosive Bolts.) Then they
switch off the sound and ask HAL to rotate the pod make sure he can't hear them.
Through HAL's eyes, we get a closeup of the lower part of their faces in
profile as they express fear about his fallibility and decide to disconnect his
higher functions if the unit does not fail as predicted. We can use their
unreasonable demands to act as a foil for Lacan's next point about the neurotic
patient:
He wants
you [the analyst] to demand something of him. Since you demand nothing of him –
this is how the first entry into analysis takes place – he begins to modulate
his own, his demands, which come there at the place Heim. And I tell you in
passing: I find it hard to see, outside what is articulated almost by itself on
this schema, how one has been able to justify up to now, except by a sort of
false, gross comprehensibility, the dialectic of frustration aggression-
regression. [24]
We again hear the heavy
breathing and white noise and see the underside of the ship as it moves away
from us. The pod approaches its target and Frank slowly emerges. Then, when
Frank is halfway to his destination, the pod turns so that its “arms” face him.
We get a frontal closeup of the vehicle advancing, arms and pincers fully
extended, then one of HAL's eye before cutting to Dave as he sees Frank flying
out into space, spinning and struggling with his severed umbilical cable. Dave
gets into another pod (forgetting his helmet,) and we get another view of the warning about the bolts.
As he retrieves Frank we see HAL shutting down the hibernating crewmembers'
life functions. Then we see Dave's face, a mask of concentration, as he
returns. He repeatedly tells HAL to open the pod bay door and asks, “do you
read me” before HAL finally answers. Refusing to open the door, HAL says that
he knows that Frank and Dave were planning to disconnect him. Dave's mouth
opens and shuts a couple of times before asking, “Where did you get that idea?”
HAL replies that he could see their lips move. Dave's mouth opens and shuts again,
then says that he'll go in through the emergency airlock. HAL remarks that this
maneuver would be rather difficult without his helmet before saying that their
conversation “can serve no purpose anymore.” Dave’s lips can help us recall
Lacan’s thoughts on the therapeutic use of Freud’s developmental stages:
There are
those who, placed before this paradox of how it is that by going back to the
oral phase one separates out the phallic relationship, have tried to make us
believe that after the regression one should retrace one’s steps in the
opposite direction, which is absolutely contrary to experience. [25]
Dave releases Frank, gets
the airlock door open and uses the explosive bolts to propel him in. After
grabbing the emergency hatch lever and shutting the door, he advances on Hal's
logic memory center. HAL tries to dissuade him, first coaxing, then pleading
through the painfully slow process of shutting down the system. Finally he
says, “My mind is going....there is no question about it...I can feel it....I can feel it...I’m
afraid...” and then delivers a speech he had made when he was first activated, a speech which ends with a progressively slower
rendition of the song, “Daisy.“ HAL’s regression can bring us to the
…point at
which we arrive now and which also has never been explained up to now in a
satisfactory fashion, … how it happens that it is along this regressive path
that the subject is lead to a moment that we are indeed forced to situate
historically as progressive. [26]
A recording plays
revealing the purpose of the mission. We cut to the words, “Jupiter and Beyond
the Infinite” and hear the strange music that always accompanies the Monolith.
We see the pod moving towards it and then some colorful beams of light take us
into a space that almost gives one the sense of being made to stand facing the
corner in a psychedelic schoolroom. Suddenly, we are looking through the pod
window at a room decorated in Rococo style, but for the modern floors lit
beneath it. We see, then take the point of view of, increasingly older Daves
until the final version sees the Monolith. Then, in his place, the “Star Child”
appears. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” plays as the Child returns to Earth. This fetus can
illustrate the last couple points of this entry:
Well
then, take up again Freud’s very list that I take here arrested at its term in
full flight, as I might say: do you not know that it is not nostalgia for what
is called the maternal womb which engenders anxiety, it is its imminence, it is
everything that announces to us something which will allow us to glimpse that
we are going to re-enter it…
You should consider that what I told you today is still only a preliminary way in, that the precise mode of situating it that we will go into from the next time is therefore to be situated between three themes that you have seen being outlined in my discourse today: one is the jouissance of the Other, the second the demand of the Other, the third could only be heard by the sharpest ears. It is the following, this sort of desire which manifests itself in interpretation, of which the very incidence of analysis in the treatment is the most exemplary and the most enigmatic form, the one which has made me pose the question for a long time for you: “In this essential economy of desire, what does this sort of privileged desire which I call the desire of the analyst represent?” [27]
You should consider that what I told you today is still only a preliminary way in, that the precise mode of situating it that we will go into from the next time is therefore to be situated between three themes that you have seen being outlined in my discourse today: one is the jouissance of the Other, the second the demand of the Other, the third could only be heard by the sharpest ears. It is the following, this sort of desire which manifests itself in interpretation, of which the very incidence of analysis in the treatment is the most exemplary and the most enigmatic form, the one which has made me pose the question for a long time for you: “In this essential economy of desire, what does this sort of privileged desire which I call the desire of the analyst represent?” [27]
The above paragraph seems a good place to stop my Lacanian exposition for now.
I’ll end this post with an article [28] about a movement that offers hope that people can
overcome their fetishism to deal with a key problem discussed at the start of
this essay – global warming, as well as one [29] illustrating
a particularly widespread and ugly form of fetishism.
1.
Stanley Kubrick. “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
in: ark tv transcripts. Aired at 12:15 PM on Saturday, Feb 20, 2010
(2/20/2010).
2.
Ludwig Von Mises. Economic Calculation in
the Socialist Commonwealth. (1920/1990.) in: books.google.com. (Undated.)
3.
Robin McKie. “Merchants of Doubt by
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway.” The Observer. (Aug. 7, 2010.) in:
theguardian.com. (Aug. 8, 2010.)
4.
Climate Guest Contributor. “Review of the must-read book: Merchants of Doubt.” in: think.progress.org. (July 14, 2010.)
5.
Jacques Lacan. “Anxiety.” from The
Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X. (1962-63.) in: springhero.wordpress.com.
(November 4 - 18, 2010.)
6.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [10 (S2.)]
7.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [11 & 12 (S2.)]
8.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [13 (S2.)]
9.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [14 (S2.)]
10.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [15-16 (S3 {Seminar seems to be misidentified as "S2" in my source website.})]
11.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [17 (S3.)]
12.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [18 (S3.)]
13.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [19 (S3.)]
14.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [20 (S3.)]
15.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [21 (S3.)]
16.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [22 (S3.)]
17.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [23 (S4.)]
18.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [24 (S4.)]
19.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [25 (S4.)]
20.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [25 (S4.)]
21.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [26 (S4.)]
22.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [27 (S4.)]
23.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [28 (S4.)]
24.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [28 (S4.)]
25.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [29 {I know, I took this quote out of order.} (S4.)]
26.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [28 (S4.)]
27.
Lacan. “Anxiety.” [29 (S4.)]
28.
Jamie Henn. “A Climate Movement That Can't Be Ignored.” (Sept. 12, 2014.) in:
CommonDreams (Sept. 12, 2014.)
29.
Jack Stubbs. “Child abuse revelations divide ‘most shameful town in Britain.’”
in: Reuters. (Sep 2, 2014.)
