Nov 15, 2021
Christos Tombras (Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, UK)
Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, from Heidegger through Lacan
This book explores the themes within, and limits of, a dialogue
between Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of being and Jacques Lacan’s
post-Freudian metapsychology. It argues that a conceptual bridging
between the two is possible, and lays the foundations of that
bridge, starting with Heidegger and proceeding through the work of
Lacan. After presenting basic aspects of Heidegger’s ontology,
Tombras focuses on his incisive critique of modern science and
psychoanalysis, and argues that psychoanalytic theory is vulnerable
to this critique. The response comes from Lacan’s re-reading and
recasting of fundamental Freudian insights, and his robust
post-Freudian metapsychology. A broad discussion of Lacan’s work
follows, to reveal its rupture with traditional philosophy, and
show how it builds on and then reaches beyond Heidegger’s
critique.
This book is informed by the terminology, insights, concepts,
hypotheses, and conclusions of both thinkers. It discusses time and
the body in jouissance; the emergence of the divided subject and
signifierness; truth, agency and the event; and being and
mathematical formalisation. Tombras describes the ontological
recursive construction of a shared ontic world and discusses the
limits and historicity of this world.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Discourse Ontology is an original, highly learned and dazzling work of scholarship, that will be an invaluable reference for those seeking an overview of Lacanian and Heideggerian thinking and how the two relate and differ, whilst offering a new perspective through an original synthesis that will reward future reflection and consideration. As such, it is highly recommended and I hope it finds a wide audience, sparking a renewed debate about, and curiosity in, the foundations of psychoanalytic thought and what this might mean for psychoanalytic practice.” (Barry Watt, British Journal of Psychotherapy 37, 1)
“Alongside this effort to construct a clear and coherent thesis Tombras equally acknowledges various points of discordance between Heidegger and Lacan, yet attempts a reconciliation through reference to Heidegger’s notion of a 'circle of understanding', as a means of generating a coherent synthesis that serves to usher in the galvanising notion of a discourse ontology. ... The scope and range of this book is impressive and goes far to set out the main precepts for a serious dialogue between these seminal figures. I am sure this book will stand the test of time.” (Gwion Jones JCFAR 30)
From the Back Cover
This book explores the themes within, and limits of, a dialogue
between Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of being and Jacques Lacan’s
post-Freudian metapsychology. It argues that a conceptual bridging
between the two is possible, and lays the foundations of that
bridge, starting with Heidegger and proceeding through the work of
Lacan. After presenting an overview of key concepts of Heidegger’s
ontology, Tombras sets out an incisive critique of modern science
and psychoanalysis, and argues that psychoanalytic theory is
vulnerable to this critique. The response comes from Lacan’s
re-reading and recasting of fundamental Freudian insights, and his
robust post-Freudian metapsychology. A broad discussion of Lacan’s
work follows, which reveals its rupture with traditional
philosophy, and demonstrates how it builds on and then reaches
beyond Heidegger’s critique.
This book is informed by the terminology, insights, concepts, hypotheses, and conclusions of both Heidegger and Lacan. It discusses time and the body in jouissance; the emergence of the divided subject and signifierness; truth, agency and the event; and being and mathematical formalisation. Crucially, Tombras describes the ontological recursive construction of a shared ontic world and discusses the limits and historicity of this world. This book opens up new pathways in the study of ontology and epistemology and will appeal in particular to students and scholars of psychoanalysis and philosophy.
Christos Tombras is a supervising psychoanalyst with a Lacanian orientation, practicing in London, UK. Dr. Tombras is a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, UK, and lectures, runs workshops and facilitates reading groups. His main research interest is in a dialogue between continental philosophy and psychoanalysis. He has published in both English and Greek.
About the Author
Christos Tombras is a supervising psychoanalyst with a Lacanian
orientation, practicing in London, UK. Dr. Tombras is a member of
the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, UK, and lectures,
runs workshops and facilitates reading groups. His main research
interest is in a dialogue between continental philosophy and
psychoanalysis. He has published in both English and Greek.
Transcript
August Baker:
Hello, and welcome to New Books in Psychoanalysis. This is
August Baker.
Today we're talking to Dr. Christos Tombras, a supervising
psychoanalyst with a Lacanian orientation practicing in London.
He's a member of the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research. And
he lectures, runs workshops, and facilitates reading groups. His
main research interest is in a dialogue between continental
philosophy and psychoanalysis.
Today we're talking to Dr. Tombras about his recent book,
Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, From
Heidegger Through Lacan.
Welcome, Dr. Tombras.
Christos Tombras:
Welcome, and thank you very much for having me.
August Baker:
Oh, it's my pleasure. I said your main research interest, and
I remember one of the interesting points in your book is you're
quoting Lacan. He's talking about his frustration and he says, "It
seems to me that it's hard to take an interest in what is becoming
a research project. I mean that I'm starting to do what the word
research implies, namely to go around in circles."
Christos Tombras:
Yes.
August Baker:
Tell us about this project, and whether it involved going
around in circles.
Christos Tombras:
I did not know. Lacan at some point was quite frustrated with
the progress of his own research, so that's why he goes into
etymology.
In my case, I was interested in Lacan because this is my
training, and this was my focus in psychoanalysis. But reading
Lacan, you can recognize continuous references to Heidegger, either
directly or indirectly. And so that raised my interest to see what
is this Heidegger about?
And then I saw that Heidegger actually is very critical of
psychoanalysis, of the Freudian kind of psychoanalysis. But he's
very, very critical. So I was intrigued: how do these things,
Heidegger philosophy and psychoanalysis as a science, as I thought
it was reconciled, one with the other? This was the starting point.
And gradually, I became more and more immersed in the subject
August Baker:
It's quite a nice book. I learned a lot from reading it. Well,
Heidegger's background is interesting, of course, because ... Maybe
we should just right off the bat touching on his affiliation with
national socialism, and his refusal to apologize for that
afterwards.
And I think he had a significant breakdown after World War II,
and went to psychanalytic treatment, or psychotherapeutic
treatment, engaged in a collaboration with Medard Boss. Could you
give us some background on that?
Christos Tombras:
Yes, yes. One important thing is my position about Heidegger's
Nazi connections. These are very problematic in my view, and one
should not ignore them. In fact, this could be a deal breaker if I
could see, if one can see in Heidegger's philosophy, in Heidegger's
phenomenology or ontology; if one can see elements that could be
thought as Nazi or fascist, then the whole project should be
abandoned. It would be very problematic if it was something of that
sort.
But I cannot see anything in Heidegger's ontology and
fundamental ontology in his philosophy, not in the moral aspects of
his philosophy. I did not see anything that I could actually think
of it, or could be thought as Nazi or fascist. Which then allowed
me to say that as far as some of the conclusions of Heidegger are
concerned can be useful in my own research, I will use them.
I consider Heidegger to be like a tool, like an instrument
facilitating a kind of thinking. I'm not interested in apologizing
about his political affiliations and mistakes. That said, because
of the collapse of Germany and his being banned from academia after
the World War II, he did suffer, Heidegger, a mental
breakdown.
This was not however that may brought him in contact with
Medard Boss. Medard Boss, a Swiss psychiatrist read Being and Time
by Heidegger, and was intrigued by the repercussions this book had
in his own thinking about psychiatry. So he came into contact with
Heidegger, Medard Boss, regardless of Heidegger's mental
suffering.
And Medard Boss asked him, Heidegger, to clarify some
questions that he had, and confirm some suspicions that Medard Boss
had about psychiatry and Heidegger and philosophy. This encounter
led to a number of seminars that Heidegger gave to some colleagues
and students of Medard Boss later in the 1950s and '60s, which have
been published. With this seminars hold great interest for the
field of psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis. It is in these
seminars that Heidegger elaborates his critique and makes his
disagreement with Freud clear.
August Baker:
And at that point he has been someone whom had benefited from;
I don't know what they would call it, analysis or treatment; but I
think the person's name was Gebsattel, the analyst that he saw.
Christos Tombras:
Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
August Baker:
And of all of the letters that he receives, Heidegger, he did
show an interest in psychology and psychiatry. And in a sense, I
think you say in your book, I think it's very difficult to improve
on Heidegger's writing because he chooses his words so carefully.
But I think you clarify or you summarize it very well.
And one of the things you say is that he considers the
adoption of the modern scientific worldview as an impoverishment;
that it comes with a number of unexamined presuppositions which
narrows the way we're open to being and our encounters with other
beings.
Christos Tombras:
Yes, indeed. I think we need to go a tiny bit through the
origins of Heideggerian thought. Heidegger became interested in the
question of being, what was called being in philosophy, through
Brentano.
Brentano, a philosopher of the late 19th century, beginning of
the 20th century, had posited the idea of intentionality: that you
cannot study the human intellect, the consciousness, regardless of
the entities that it is observing. It is always directed towards
entities.
This thought of Brentano was taken by Husserl, who was a
student of Brentano and became a maxim of a philosophy that said,
"Let's go back to the things to see what it is, the human mind
looking at things and this connection between the things and the
human mind."
Husserl created a field of philosophy which he called
phenomenology. And Heidegger took this maxim of Husserl's to its
extreme. He said, "If we're going to see about the things
themselves, go back to the things themselves, it is almost
unavoidable to see that the human mind cannot be separated from the
things it is observing at all.
"That the distinction between object and subject is a
problematic distinction, is a mistake, is an error that we do
because we are confused by the fact that we have an intellect. And
we look at things and we think that we can do without
it."
Reaching this conclusion, Heidegger then reconstructs his
philosophy on the basis of that: that the human being is in the
world in a way that cannot but be in the world, and sees things in
a way that can then study it, and understood as being historical
changes with the centuries, with the millennia.
Observing that, Heidegger says that there is a worldview which
is the ancient worldview. And this worldview, the ancient
worldview; meaning the ancient of the Western canon, ancient Greek
mainly; is giving its place to the modern worldview that starts
with Descartes and Galileo in the 16th century.
That change, Heidegger claims, is crucial. Because it changes
the way we think about what we can know about the world. Changes
the way we can have scientific research, for example. And that
change, because it entails an engagement with mathematics and
mathematical concepts, measurement and formulas and so on and so
forth, becomes a bit, Heidegger claims, mechanistic and poor;
impoverished. It distorts the phenomena that it purports to
study.
This is where Heidegger says that modern worldview, even
though at some specific fields has done wonders: for example,
modern technology, exploration of space, exploration of the body,
medicine and so on and so forth. When it speaks about the human
being, it distorts the phenomena. It destroys the phenomena,
really. And cannot, in any effective way, speak about the human
being; modern science, Heidegger claims.
And he thinks, Heidegger thinks, that the same sin, let's say;
if you can call it sin; is committed by Freud. That Freud, in his
attempt to speak about the human being, uncritically adopting the
modern worldview, scientific worldview, Freud distorts the
phenomena that he proposes to study and understand.
August Baker:
How does this quote relate to what you're saying? This is
Lacan. I'm quoting from your book, and Lacan says: "I am saying
contrary to what has been trumped up about a supposed break on
Freud's part with the scientists of his time, that it was this very
scientism that led Freud, as his writings show, to pave the way
that shall forever bear his image. The subject upon which we
operate in psychoanalysis can only be the subject of science."
Christos Tombras:
Yes.
August Baker:
How does that relate to Heidegger's critique of the scientific
worldview?
Christos Tombras:
Hmm. That is a very interesting point, actually. What Lacan
would be in agreement with Heidegger in this, that with Descartes
and with the modern scientific worldview, we have the human
intellect. Descartes sees the human intellect, a subject that
observes objects and studies these objects and is interested in
these objects: objects of the world, all kinds of objects of the
world.
Also, Descartes claims that the human mind has the tools,
mathematics studies, to speak about these objects, to have a
scientific understanding of these objects. Previously, many of the
aspects of being in the world; many of the facets, that some would
call them; of being in the world were thought as being related to
divine revelation or divine messaging or unexplained phenomenon,
and so on.
It is with Descartes that we think that everything is in
principle explainable. And Freud, like [inaudible 00:11:36], takes
the phenomena of the human mind: for example, a dream, a symptom, a
hysterical symptom, an illness, a mental illness.
And he says, truthful to Descartes, that "These are in
principle explainable. These are not chance phenomena. These are
not coincidences. These are phenomena that can be studied and
understood. And it is for the human being who has experienced this
phenomena, the task to look at this phenomena and tell us about
them."
That is Freud's scientific worldview, that Lacan says is at
the origin of psychoanalysis. The subject of psychoanalysis is the
subject of science. This sentence of Lacan implies that unless you
think that the phenomena of the mind are explainable, you will not
be able to see what psychoanalysis is all about.
August Baker:
I see; that's helpful. As I understand it, you're going to
look at Lacan and work with Lacan and see whether he can avoid
Heidegger's criticisms.
Christos Tombras:
Yes. I mean, reading Freud, you can see many things. And Lacan
does read Freud. You can see many things. You can see the
brilliance of his intellect. You can see the daring nature of his
conclusions.
But you can also see that deep in mind, somewhere hidden, is
disbelief that everything that happens, everything that is
observable by psychology, by psychoanalysis after all, can be
explained with the concepts like energy, which is affected with
laws that can actually operate in this way, not the other
way.
Even though Freud is careful not to speak about, for example,
causality and determinism, he allows this to be shown only very
limited places in his work. There is that underlying belief that
this is, in principle, possible: that you could have a final
deterministic understanding of the human psyche.
Now, Lacan rejects that. He doesn't say in any explicit way
that Freud was wrong, but he rejects that. He says that if we look
at what Freud does, not at ... He doesn't say that in these words,
but this is my understanding of what he says.
If we look at what Freud does, not his conclusions, not his
explanations, not his theoretical models; which after all, he,
Freud, reserved the right to change as needed, as he said,
progressed. If you look at what he does, we see that the phenomenon
he observes are phenomena which are mainly linguistic
phenomena.
Human beings suffer with language, in language. We speak about
our suffering in language, and we can be treated with language.
This is something that Lacan says you cannot avoid it in
psychoanalysis. Whatever you think about what unconscious is, what
the drives or the instincts are, what biology does behind all of
these.
The fact of the matter is that psychoanalysis is something
that works with words on material, which is words: something that
the patient says to you in the room, not anything else. Just
words.
When he goes there, Lacan goes into the material of
psychoanalysis, and he observes what I just said. That is just
words; he recasts the Freudian conclusions in terms of the
linguistic phenomena that they represent, for example.
August Baker:
Right, right.
Christos Tombras:
When Freud speaks, for example, about condensation in a dream,
or displacement of meanings in a dream as some of the mechanisms
that you can observe in the dream work, Lacan says these mechanisms
are very similar to what linguists call metonymy and metaphor, for
example. In fact, they are the same mechanisms. Only the field of
operation, the realm, is different. These are the same
mechanisms.
So he starts by doing a rereading, let's say, of Freud,
avoiding the mechanistic remnants of the 19th-century scientism in
Freud's background, and staying at the phenomena that Freud
observes. This is the starting point of Lacan's avoiding
Heidegger's criticism. But we don't need to go into Freud's
conclusions. We can stay with the phenomena and see what we can
think about them.
August Baker:
Right. I think a lot of listeners here would say, "Well,
there's a lot more that goes on in psychoanalysis than words. There
are blushing, embarrassment, squirming, body gestures, missing
appointments, telephoning." Isn't there a lot more that goes on in
psychoanalysis than words?
Christos Tombras:
Yes. That's a very interesting thing. Because what is,
exactly, language? What are words? And what are all these things,
really? I think we need to understand language as something much
more general than just the verbal aspect of words. Yes.
August Baker:
Yeah, comprehensive.
Christos Tombras:
Comprehensive, perhaps. What is the important thing is this:
that something can stunt for something else. The idea that
something can refer to something else. That's the important
thing.
When you speak about blushing: blushing is an event, a bodily
event which happens within a context. The context is something is
being said, and you feel embarrassed. Perhaps we can imagine now
that you feel embarrassed. Embarrassed would perhaps mean that you
think of what the other individual looking at you can think or
might think about you, any conclusions they might reach and so on.
All of this happens in a split second.
You don't put it in words. But it involves the whole world in
which you are the person you are. You have the identity you have,
and you are exchanging something with the person in front of you,
or the people in front of you. Or you are in your thoughts, but you
are not just a biological entity as such. You are a human being
within a world where what you do has a meaning. And what you do or
not do has repercussions.
That is a linguistic world. This world only exists because
human beings sustain that in language; in this course, to put it in
a different way.
August Baker:
I see.
Christos Tombras:
So you don't blush outside language.
August Baker:
Interesting.
Christos Tombras:
The only way you can blush outside language, it would be if we
can imagine someone who is incommunicative state in a hospital bed,
and perhaps there is kind of extra flush of blood in the face. That
would be not blushing, though.
August Baker:
Perhaps this is related, perhaps it isn't. But I thought one
of the many interesting points in your book was what Lacan said
about his dog.
He says, "I have a dog. My dog, in my sense, and without
ambiguity, speaks. My dog has, without any doubt, the gift of
speech. This is important because it does not mean that she
possesses language totally.
"What distinguishes this speaking animal, from what happens
because of the fact that man speaks, is that contrary to what
happens in the case of man insofar as he speaks, she never takes me
for another. By taking you for another, a subject puts you at the
level of the capital O Other.
"It is precisely this which is lacking to my dog. To her,
there's only the small other. As regards to the big Other, it does
not seem that her relationship to language gives her access to
it."
I don't know if that's related to what you were saying. It
seemed to me it was.
Christos Tombras:
Yes, it was. Yes, it is. Because the speech of the dog is just
that the dog says, "Something something," well, love, let's
say.
August Baker:
Maybe like watching.
Christos Tombras:
And expect something from you. Then you exchange messages with
the dog, and that's it.
But what you do to the dog and what the dog does, if you say
to the dog ... I mean, the dog will speak to you and you can speak
back to the dog. But it will stay at that. The dog will not reach
conclusions about whether you love him or her more than you love
the other dog, or whether you have other dogs that you're going to
when you leave the room. Or something of that father.
The dog sees you as who you are, and just this. While, with a
human being, you meet another person. And the other person is not
only who you think the other person is, but also who you expect
them to be for you, who you confuse them with, who do you identify
them with, who do you think you can appear to them as, present
yourself to them as.
It is very complicated. The communication between two human
beings is much more than a channel of sound waves that go from one
to the other.
August Baker:
Right. Interesting.
I think when we go to Lacan, I think at some point you say
Lacan starts with the body, when we move to his model: the body and
the real and jouissance. I mean, your book describes these and how
symbolization arises out of them. Could you give us an
overview?
Christos Tombras:
Yes. I mean, the tricky concept that you're bringing in this
discussion is the concept of jouissance, which is tricky in the
sense that it is very complicated. Even the term is not translated
into English, even though some people do translate it as
"enjoyment." We would need to go into a genealogy of this term to
really grasp the totality of what is meant by the Lacanian theory
of jouissance. But we can say this in some way.
It all starts with the body, in the sense that we are bodies
in a world. A world that within our community of interactions,
discoursive community of interactions has a meaning for us. But we
are entering this world as bodies. We are in this world as
bodies.
A newborn baby is coming into the world; things are happening
to the body of this baby. "Things happening" means the baby is
caressed, cleaned, but people are speaking and singing and
whispering to the baby. All of these are events that happening in
the body of the baby.
And the baby starts organizing this, what is happening to the
body, into categories. For example, this friendly face: that is the
mother or the carer. Or this friendly voice or this friendly breast
that will give nutrition and so on and so forth.
So whatever happens to the body, we can call it jouissance.
But the jouissance obtains some kind of regularity and can be
systematized. It is transformed into something that can have a
meaning. So the friendly face, which is as such an aspect of
jouissance, becomes the friendly face that comes again and again.
That means the mother, so becomes the symbol of
something.
From the real of the friendly face, we have an identity. An
identity is constructed, the mother. And from the identity that is
constructed, the mother, a system of identities is also
constructed. The mother, the other person, the need of the mother
to go somewhere, my needs to have my mother next to me, the love
that the mother gives to me, and so on and so forth.
This is the construction of the world out of these small
interactions, which at the end are interactions on the level of the
body.
August Baker:
And it's a movement from continuous to discontinuous, you
point out. The movement from the body to symbolization.
Christos Tombras:
Yes. That's a very tricky and difficult subject, actually: how
this passage from the complete continuity of what's happening in
the chaos of the world, in the eyes of the newborn infant, to the
distinct and constructed world that we are occupying as children or
adults.
This passage from continuity to discontinuity is a very
complicated field of research. I don't have the answer how this can
happen, how this can be described. It's something that it is to be
explored further.
August Baker:
Right. And you end up with using the tripartite division of
... Let's see ... real, signified, and imaginary in your synthesis;
that part of Lacan remains. Is that right?
Christos Tombras:
Yes. The real, the imaginary, and the symbolic.
August Baker:
And at one point you're talking about Gebsattel.
Christos Tombras:
Gebsattel.
August Baker:
I don't know if that's the way you pronounce his name. You
said that he provided a ninefold division and you say, "This
doesn't seem like it'll be useful." Lacan was mainly interested in
clinical applications. So this tripartite model is something that
is meant to be useful in thinking about what happens in
psychoanalysis. Is that right?
Christos Tombras:
In the clinic as well, yes. I mean, it is these concepts,
these registers that I said of the real, of the symbolic, of the
imaginary, are used to describe the phenomena that we are all in.
It's not only to describe the clinical phenomena in session. But in
the session, it is the focus of the setting is on how these things
interrelate, interconnect, and interact.
For example, one can say in the Lacanian understanding of what
is happening in the session, that there is an axis of communication
between you and the patient or you and the analyst, whichever the
point of view we decide to take, which has expectations, ideals.
You believe that this is the best analyst in the world. You went to
them, because they are [inaudible 00:25:05] knowledge and they are
going to heal you or help you suffer less.
All of this can be thought in the Lacanian understanding of
the three registers that we just said. These are imaginary
identifications. Do you think that this person who is in front of
you; let's imagine that this is a male analyst; that this person
who is in front of you is a benign figure like your father? Or
unlike your father, or something of that sort? That would be an
imaginary construction that you are entering the setting of the
session.
The analyst can see that this is happening, and can choose to
actually distance themselves from this imaginary axis by
positioning themselves with what they say, or what they do
somewhere else unexpectedly. Let's presume that they have a
clinical reason to do that, but when they do that, they go beyond
the imaginary axis. They go to a symbolic axis, for example.
August Baker:
How does one understand what happens in psychoanalysis when it
works well? Do you understand it in terms of a draining or
liquidating of the real into the symbolic, or from the imaginary
into the symbolic? How do you see successful analysis?
Christos Tombras:
Yes. I'm not completely sure if you can say that. I think as
we indicated earlier, the concepts: real, symbolic, and imaginary,
are concepts that describe all kinds of human interactions, not
only the ones in an analytic setting. And they describe the ways of
engagement that human beings have, regardless of whether they know
it or not.
But if you know it, which is something that the theory brings
here in the picture, that allows you if you are the analyst to
position yourself, and the way you interact with your patient, in
such a way as to make something change.
Now, what is changing cannot be predicted as such. But
starting from what we said earlier, that everything starts with the
body, and this resounds. And through a number of imaginary
identifications, it becomes a symbolic system of interactions: a
proper word, let's say.
If we have this general scheme that from the real, we go to
the imaginary and the symbolic, it's not completely accurate. But
now for the purposes of this discussion, let's imagine that
something like this is happening.
Then you can say that a person that comes to you; you are the
analyst; comes to you for treatment, they have a suffering,
something that they're experiencing eventually in their body. For
example, an anxiety, or for example, the symptom that it could be
disturbs their normal life. And you try to make this and allow it
to become something different, which is not coming together with
suffering.
Then, if you describe it in this way, you can say that some
part of the real; because an anxiety, we'd imagine, as being on the
level of the real; becomes more manageable, more familiar to you.
And eventually, okay, you are not suffering from that anymore. So
you can say that even though it is a bit schematic, I think in fact
it's rather schematic. This, what I'm saying.
August Baker:
I'm wondering the real, this is center of chaos; and here's
another quote from Lacan from your book.
"The subject," Lacan says, "is not the cause of himself. He
bears within him the worm of the cause that splits him. For his
cause is the signifier, without which there would be no subject in
the real. But this subject is what the signifier represents, and
the latter cannot represent anything except to another
signifier."
This is one of those Lacanian statements that seems so true,
and yet it's also so difficult to interpret.
Christos Tombras:
Yes. Now, how could we try to approach this? I mean, we need
to clarify some concepts.
The subject, what is the subject? The subject in Lacan is not
identical. It's not equivalent to saying "the human being." A human
being can be a subject, but it's not always the case that a human
being is a subject. So they're not exactly identical; they're not
synonyms.
So a subject implies that you are already a subject of
language; that you are within a system, a linguistic discoursive
system of interactions. A world that is constructed and maintained
by other people who speak with you, at you, parallel to you, and so
on and so forth.
That subject, the subject which the human being is, but is not
identical to the human being, is confusing, actually. It is
difficult to actually describe it.
August Baker:
The subject is represented by his or her own sequence of, or
network of, signifiers.
Christos Tombras:
The tricky thing is that the signifiers; that means the words
that they are using; we are not inventing them. We are not
inventing them. We are using words which are coming to us, because
we are entering a world that had the language before we came into
existence.
So we are entering a linguistic world, and we are forced by
this entrance into the linguistic world to adopt it and use it. But
we don't have any guidance in the beginning at all. The only
guidance that we can have is with other signifiers. We are entering
a world of signifiers. And whatever we do with these signifiers is
guided and helped and facilitated by other signifiers.
Let's say the baby cries, and the mother says, "What is
happening to you? Are you hungry?" Then the baby in that way, in
this very simplistic way, understands, learns that his cry, his or
her cry, was a cry for food and nutrition. And then this is a
meaning that has been introduced to the crying of the baby, that
the meaning was not there in the beginning. This is a
signifier.
The human being adopts signifiers, becomes a subject of
language, and uses the signifiers. And in the way every human being
uses the signifiers, that is invested with; or occupied by,
actually; in the way they use these signifiers, they present
themselves.
It is in this sense that Lacan says that the subject is what
one signifier represents to another signifier.
August Baker:
[inaudible 00:31:18]
Christos Tombras:
That is in the interconnection of signifiers, your identity is
coming through to me.
August Baker:
I see.
Christos Tombras:
That is the way you as a subject is represented in the
signifiers to me.
The tricky thing with the signifiers here is that I'm using
signifiers to speak to you. You are using signifiers to speak to
me. Lacan is using signifiers to explain all of this.
We are already in the world which is forced onto us, in a
linguistic world which is forced onto us. We are suffering in
language, and we cannot but suffer in language. And yet, we are
trying to speak about language. That is the main difficulty of
these concepts, and now these ideas: that we are on the same level
of the phenomena that we are trying to describe.
We cannot stand aside. We cannot stand a bit elsewhere and
look this phenomena from a distance. And for example, to connect it
with earlier, this is what Heidegger says as well: "It is not that
a human being can stunt vis-a-vis the world and decide not to take
the world and go and do something else. You are already always in
the world. You cannot do otherwise."
Similarly, in the Lacanian understanding of what is happening
both in the session, but also in life in general, you are in
language and you try to speak. That means you are in something that
comes to you from outside, has been forced to you from outside
because you were forced to accept this language as your own.
You are there, you're trying to speak about yourself, and this
is a tension. There's always a tension between what is yours and
what is not yours: what is internal and what is external.
August Baker:
Now, I thought that parable that you present, that Lacan
presented of a egg. Lacan focused on the question of limits in
connection to the human body. The rims around holes on the body
surface causes loci where jouissance flows faster, so to speak.
To picture this, Lacan used a small parable in which he
referred to the human being as a smooth-surfaced egg that breaks
because of language. I thought that was a helpful metaphor.
Christos Tombras:
Yes. This touches upon the other issue that we said earlier:
how from the continuity we go into the discontinuity? Because all
of these questions are connected, interconnected.
August Baker:
Exactly correct.
Christos Tombras:
So this problem, the human being as an egg, that is smooth:
nothing changes, everything flows around it. You can imagine it in
a river. And the water goes around it without making any
turbulence, nothing. Because the human body is not an egg, things
are happening on the human body in localities. Some things are
happening around the mouth, some things are happening around the
eyes, and so on.
If we continue imagining this water flowing around the egg,
some part of the egg reveals itself as the mouth, let's say, or the
eyes. And the flowing of the world; let's call it like this; around
this egg has a small turbulence, local turbulence there. This
becomes more and more complicated, shall we say. And eventually,
discontinues; something breaks.
Lacan actually make this joke: "From this egg, you make an
omelet." An omelet that is home, that is a small omelet of a man,
let's say. Manelet, I think, it has been translated into
English.
This is a parable, of course. This is not what is happening.
Obviously, human beings are not eggs. But he's trying to describe
this: that from something that in the beginning is completely
undifferentiated and chaotic, like white noise, nothing changes.
All of this simultaneously, continuously in all frequencies,
differentiations appear.
And when you have a differentiation, then you can have a
distinction between presence and absence. You can start having
things that can be identified. And you enter into the arm of the
imaginary, like we said earlier, because you can identify
something. That is in contrast to, that is not it anymore.
The breast: breast versus the absent of the breast. Then it
becomes more complicated and so on and so forth.
August Baker:
So you end up with a discourse ontology. Can you tell us about
the choice of those two words, and what you mean by an "ontology"
here? And I guess "discourse" is a Lacanian term of art. You're
using it in Lacan's sense?
Christos Tombras:
Yes, yes. Discourse is in the way that we were describing just
now: that human beings speak together. And whether they do speak
simultaneously to each other, it's not the important thing. That
there is a community of human beings that create a world. This is a
discoursive space. And that discoursive space allows a world to
manifest itself.
As we said earlier, that when you speak to someone and you
blush, there are many, many, many things that happen simultaneously
with this blushing. Your identity, your expectations, your thoughts
about the expectations of the others, your history and so on and so
forth.
All of this, the collection of entities that comprise your
world, is an ontology. It is an ontology. It has always been called
an ontology philosophy. This is what ontology means. It means
collection of entities. This is what Heidegger also says when he
speaks about the clearing where entities gather for design to
see.
So this collection of entities which comprise your world,
which is an ontology, can only be sustained for as long and as far
as there are human beings holding the discourse. I'm not claiming;
I'm systematizing. I'm not inventing this, but I'm systematizing
the conclusions that one can reach by bringing, as we said earlier,
Heidegger together with Lacan.
But it's not that there is an ontology regardless of the human
beings that have constructed this world. It's not that each and
every human being has direct say into how this world is
constructed. It's not my invention. It's not your invention. We are
brought into this. We are forced to accept it. We are forced to
occupy it. But when we occupy it, we recreate it. We sustain it
within our interactions in the discoursive space constructed by
us.
I thought that the best way to speak about the world as far as
human beings are concerned: and that's the important thing, as far
as human beings are concerned. It's not the world that is Martian
beings are concerned or other kinds of beings. We do not know about
them. I do not know anything about them.
But as far as human beings are concerned, the world that we
built together can be described with something which I call
discourse ontology. And I thought systematizing, I say again, the
work of some of the conclusions of Heidegger's and some of the
conclusions of Lacan; I thought that you can fruitfully approach
this discourse ontology in five different axes.
Which I identified as the speaking being, which is the human
being that speaks; and then that which means sustains the
discourse; truth, the question of what truth is, is a whole subject
for its own. We can go a bit later if we have time.
Time, as such. Time meaning what permeates our being in the
world, in the sense of presence versus absence. The most basic
aspect of time is that the body as being the locus within from
which everything starts. What we were calling earlier about the
jouissance and the events that happen on the body.
And then all of this, how it brings together a world which is
constructed by the discoursive interactions of these bodies who are
there.
August Baker:
Who were thrown in, right?
Christos Tombras:
Yes.
August Baker:
I think you carefully do all this with a minimum of concepts
from the outside. I think you say you do use the concept of a
structure; other than that, you are paying attention to Heidegger's
critique that we might be using these concepts which come from a
scientific worldview, which we haven't really thought through.
Christos Tombras:
That is very true. I don't think we can get away without using
the word structure. Because structure, what does it mean?
Structure? I don't mean any structured structure in any specific
way. I mean a configuration of elements which has some
stability.
August Baker:
Yeah, I think I looked it up. If I'm right, it's a piling
together.
Christos Tombras:
Piling together. There has to be some elements are together,
and have some specific configuration. If I don't have a specific
configuration, then we don't have a structure if they're randomly
thrown together.
But if they are thrown together in such a way as to the
interactions to have some kind of regularity, then we speak about
structure. So it is a necessary [inaudible 00:40:09] concept, and
it is not the case that we have always structures. There can be
situations where there is no structure.
But if we speak about the human beings and the way that we're
trying to understand what is the world, what is the symbolic, what
is suffering and so on, we need at least this extra concept that
things can coexist in some kind of regular and stabilized way. That
we have a structure.
August Baker:
Right? Unfortunately, we are five minutes over time. Yeah.
There's so much that your discussion of sexuation and truth and the
Kant statement that I always speak the truth, the death drive,
treatment of psychosis versus neurosis. There's just so much here;
but unfortunately, we're out of time. But thank you so much for
joining us, Dr. Tombras.
Christos Tombras:
Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss this. And
yes, the time was limited. I hope we were not being too schematic
about some of this very complicated [inaudible 00:41:08]
August Baker:
It is; very true. Well, the book is very careful, and I
recommend it highly. So thank you very much.
Christos Tombras:
Thank you.
August Baker:
And have a good evening.
Christos Tombras:
Thank you very much. The same to you. Bye-bye.