the basic misunderstanding of Gasche's book is best exem
by its very title:
the tain of the mirror,
the part where the reflectsurface is scraped, so that we see the dark rear. Within Gasche's
of
argument, this tain of the mirror serves, of course, as a for the limit of (philosophical) reflection-mirroring. Reflec- the mirroring of the subject in the object, the reappropriation of object by means of the subject recognizing in it itself, its own encounters its limit in the "tain of the mirror"; in the points instead of returning to the viewer his own image, the mirror him with a meaningless dark spot. These dark spots are, of simultaneously the condition of the possibility and the of mirroring. Precisely by limiting reflection, they the minimal distance between what is being mirrored and its the distance which makes the very process of mirroring
. Here, Gasche pays the price for the fact that - in a book which is dedicated to a criticism of the dialectical notion of reflection he fails to elaborate the elementary structure of the Hegelian notion reflection (positing, external, determining reflection). That is to
�y, the examination of this structure would immediately confront us ):with the way Hegelian "absolute" reflection is in itself always-already
,rrdoubled,
"mediated" by its own impossibility. Hegel knows perfectly well that reflection always fails, that the subject always encounters in a mirror some dark spot, a point which does not return
.him his mirror-picture - in which he cannot "recognize himself ". It
is, however, precisely at this point of "absolute strangeness" that the subject (the subject of the signifier, S. not the imaginary
ego,
caught inthe miror-relationship
m- i(a))
is inscribed into the picture. The spot of the mirror-picture is thus strictly constitutive of the subject; the subject qua subject of the look "is" only in so far as the mirror-picturehe is looking at is inherently "incomplete" - in so far, that is, as it contains a "pathological" stain- the subject is correlative to this stain.
Therein ultimately consists the point ofLacan's constant reference
to anamorphosis: Holbein's Ambassadors exemplifies literally the Hegelian speculative proposition on phrenology "spirit(= subject) is a bone(= skull)": the blind spot of the picture. In the reversal proper to the process of reflection, the subject experiences itself as correlative to the point in his Other in which he comes across an absolutely strange power, a power with which no mirror-exchange is possible. In the Hegelian reading of the Terror of the French Revolution, for example, the subject must recognize, in the arbitrary power which can at any time cut off his head, a materialization of his own essence. The guillotine, this image of uncontrollable Otherness with which no identification seems possible, is nothing but the "objective correlate"
of the abstract negativity that defines the subject. The passage of
"external" into "absolute" reflection consists precisely in this redoub
ling of reflection. Reflection as symmetrical mirroring of the subject in objectivity fails, there is always some residue which resist�· integ
ration, and it is in this residue escaping the reflective grasp that the proper dimension of the subject is "reflected". In other words, the subject is the tain of the mirror. 35
In Kafka's apologue about the Door of the Law (from his Trial) the man from the country occupies, until the final denouement, the position of" external reflection". He is confronted with the transcen
dent image of the Palace of Law where, behind every door, there is another door hiding an unapproachable Secret, and whose representa
tive (the doorkeeper) treats him with utter indifference and contempt.
The crucial reversal takes place when the doorkeeper explains to the dying man that the Door was meant only for him from the very beginning - in other words, the Law that the man from the country viewed with awed respect, assuming automatically that it did not even notice his presence, had regarded him from the very beginning;
precisely as excluded, he was always-already taken into account. '' Abso
lute reflection" is simply the name for this experience of how the subject, by means of his very failure to grasp the secret of the Other, is already inscribed in the Other's "accountancy", reflected into the Other: the experience of how his "external" reflection of the Other is already a "reflective determination" of the Other itself.
Hegel's often quoted and even more often misunderstood proposi
tion from the Introduction to Phenomenology of Spirit that it would be vain for the subject to try to grasp the Absolute if the Absolute were not and did not want to be in- and for-itself already with us, has to be comprehended against this background. By restating it as "the
Abso-is always with us", even Heidegger misses its crucial point. What s ake here is not the notion that the Absolute is (always) with us, less the notion that, by means of a final synthesis- reconciliation
• be with us, but the experience of how it
always-already was
with Our experience of the "loss", of the fissure between us (the subject),·
.
the Absolute, is the very way the Absolute is already with us. In sense, the final assertion of the doorkeeper that from the very· · ning the Door was meant only for the man from the country is
· fka's version of the Hegelian proposition that the Absolute was ays-already with us. The very appearance of the inaccessible cendence, of the Secret hidden beyond the endless series of rs, is an appearance "for the consciousness" -it is the way the Law resses the subject. This is how we should grasp the passage of into "determining" (absolute) reflection. The notion of the ccessible, transcendent Absolute makes sense only in so far as the .. gaze is already here - in its very notion, the inaccessible
· ther implies a relation to its own other (the subject). The subject
·. not "internalize", "mediate", the Being-in-itself of the Absolute;
simply takes cognizance of the fact that this In-itself is in-itself
for
theNOTES
, 1. Such a paradoxical status of the Real qua construction could be exemplified by the .i �ematical notion of the "non-constructive proof". elaborated by Michael Dum
. lllett apropos of intuitionism (see his Truth and Other Enigmas, Cambridge, MA:
1 Harvard University Press 1978). Dummett has in mind a procedure whereby we can
' prove (construct) the existence of a certain mathematical entity (of a certain number,
'I for example), although we are not able to exhibit this entity (number) in its positive determination- statements of the type "it is hereby proven that a cardinal number must
. exist which is a multiple of ... " which are fully valid notwithstanding the fact that we will never be able to state precisely what this number is.
The status of the Freudian-Lacanian Real (the traumatism of the primal parricide, for example) is exactly the same. We can deduce the fact of the parricide by means of a
"non-constructive proof"; we can prove that the parricide must be presupposed for (subsequent) history to retain its consistency, although we will never be able to exhibit its empirical reality; and, incidentally, in his "A Child Is Being Beaten", Freud
describes in the same way the status of the middle term in the fantasy chain which runs
&om "father beats a child" to "a child is being beaten"; the scene "father is beating me"
is wholly inaccessible to the consciousness, but we must construct it to be able to account for the passage from the first to the third form.
2. See Slavoj ZiZek, Le plus sublime des hysteriques - Hegel passe, Paris: Point-hors
ligne 1988, pp. 100-3.
3. G. W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford: Oxford University Press t9n, pp. 331-2.
4. For a more detailed elaboration of the notion of "in-between-two-deaths", see Slavoj Zitek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso 1989, pp. 131-6.
6. This paradoxical logic of a moment when, before the formal act of decision, things are already decided, enables us perhaps to throw new light upon a typical Wagnerian scene to which Claude Levi-Strauss has already drawn attention: the scene of the hero's inner peace, of his conciliation, harmony with the world, surrender to the flow of the world, just before the crucial ordeal. There are three versions of this scene in Wagner's operas: the idyll of the "murmur of the forest" before the struggle with the dragon in Act II of Siegfried; the sextet preceding the final singing contest in the Meistersinger von Niirnberg; and the "enchantment of Good Friday" before Parsifal's healing of Amfor
tas's wound in Parsifal. In all these cases, is not the inner peace before the crucial �rdeal expressive of the presentiment that the decision has already been made, that the ·'silent weaving of the Spirit" has already done its work, and that what awaits us is a purely formal act proclaiming the outcome? The dimension of this scene of conciliation is especially delicate in Meistersinger, where it immediately follows the forceful burst of passion between Hans Sachs and the future bride ofWalter von Stolzing. Suddenly and violently the truth emerges that the real libidinous tension radiates between the young girl and the fatherly figure of Hans, not between her and Walter, who is predestined to win the contest and marry her. The significance of the "sextet of conciliation" is thus overdetermined; beside Walter's calming influence in the face of the coming ordeal, it enacts the cathartic acknowledgement and, by means of the same gesture, renunciation of the "impossible" incestuous link between the girl and Hans.
It would be extremely interesting to compare this Wagnerian repose of the hero before the ordeal with those moments in Raymond Chandler's novels when, exhausted by his activity, Philip Marlowe disconnects from the frenetic run of things, lies down and takes a rest. Far from bringing about any kind of inner conciliation, these moments when Marlowe yields to the "flow of the world" mark the intrusion of "things" in their filth and corruption. When his vigilance slackens, Marlowe finds himself face to face with the nausea of existence. Through the luminescence of advertisements, through the stench of alcohol and garbage, through the intrusive noise of a big city, ail the rot and decay from which he has tried to escape by means of activity return to strike him in the face. There is nothing calming or reassuring in these moments; the passive thought, confronted with the positivity of existence, is, on the contrary, pervaded by paranoia. Marlowe "thinks", yet his thought is not a free-floating, calming reflection, but rather a sneaking crawling under the watchful eye of a cruel superego: "I thought, and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes" (Farewell, My Lovely). This would be, then, Marlowe's cogito: I think, therefore an obscene, sadistic superego is watching me.
6. The logic at work here is therefore the very opposite of the surplus of the Ideal over its actual realization; of the "idealist" insistence that empirical reality can never fully correspond to its Notion. What we have here is, quite on the contrary, an (actual)
which. although it is not a member of the genus X, is "more X than X itself".
is often referred to in everyday expressions, as when we say of a resolute that she is "more man than men themselves", or of a religious convert that he is Catholic than the pope", or of the legal plundering via stock exchange that it "outcrimes crime itself". The above-mentioned relation of Art and is to be grasped according to this logic: Religion is "more Art than Art itself"
the Notion of Art and hereby subverts it, transforms it into something else . is therefore on the side of the "example", not on the side of the ideal is an "example" of Art which is "more Art than Art itself " and thus the passage into a new Notion. (See Chapter 3 below.)
.F. Hegel,jenaer Realphilosophie, Werlee S-6, Hamburg: Meiner Verlag 1967,
Elster, Sour Grapes, Cambridge: Cambridge Univenity Press 1983.
The Tain of the Mi"or, Cambridge, (MA): Harvard Univenity Ibid., p. 219.
Jacques-Alain Miller, "Suture", Cahiers pour /'Analyse 1, Paris 1967; and (Matrix), Ornicar? 4, Paris 1975.
Gasche, p. 221.
An interesting variation of this procedure is offered by the opening of Wagner's The "motif' consists of the rhythmic repetition of a single note, while the contains a rich melodic texture. Such a revenal of the "normal"
creates an extreme tension discharged with the instantaneous passage into singing of the "Rhine maidens" whereby the hitherto "accompaniment" takes on status of the main melody.
As to the notion of" quilting point", Slavoj 2:i.Zek, The Sublime Object of Idtology, Veno 1989, Chapter 3.
15. 2:itek, Le plus sublime des hystmques, Chapters 2 and 6.
·• i6. Gasche, p. 222 (emphasis added).
• . 17. Ibid., pp. 290-91.
· 18. Ibid., p. 291.
, : 19. Note here the way Gasche, by a kind of structural necessity, entangles himself in
"contradiction". In the quoted passage, the "illusion of a reflexive totalization"
to the effacement of the fact that re-mark itself is inscribed anew within the series it is supposed to dominate, whereas sixty pages earlier (on p. 221) he qualifies
"metaphysical illusion of the self-present referent" by a reduction of re-mark to a :: lhere semic function. We fall prey to metaphysical illusion as soon as we level re-mark
�With other marks; as soon as we efface its exceptional character, the fact that it is not just
··IIIOther bearer of a semic function but represents the empty space of their inscription.
20. Gasche, p. 221.
21. G. W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Oxford: Oxford Univenity Press 1967, pp.
288-9.
22. Ibid., p. 288.
23. Ibid., p. 183.
24. G. W .F. Hegel, Naiss11nce de Ia philosophie hege/ienne d'ttilt, Jacques Taminiaux, ed.
Paris: Payot 1984, p. 268.
25. One of the reasons for the public success ofRonald Reagan's presidency was that
what a lot of his critics mocked as his weaknesses- the obvious limits to what he was able to understand, and so on- were effectively positive conditions of his reign. Reagan was perceived precisely as somebody who reigned in a king-like fashion: making empty gestures, putting the dots on (other's) i's, not really grasping what was going on . . . . So much for the idea that the logic of the Hegelian monarch is an eccentric witticism of no importance for today's world.
26. What is therefore crucial about the Hegelian monarch is that he cannot be reduced to a pure agency of nonsensical Master-Signifier: his status is simultaneously that of the Real. We should not be surprised, then, to find Hegel himself assigning the monarch a place in the series of the "answers of the Real". In para. 279 of the Philosophy of Right, he deals with the difference between ancient aristocracy or democracy and modem
monarchy: in aristocracy or democracy, the "moment of the final, self-determining decision of the will" is not yet explicitly posited as an "organic moment immanent to the State"; the pure performative point of decision, the "So be it!" which transforms an opinion into a state's decision, has not yet acquired the form of subjectivity; the power of a pure unambiguous decision is therefore delegated to:
afatum, determining affairs from without. As a moment of the Idea, this decision haC: \o come into existence, though rooted in something outside the circle of human freedom with which the state is concerned. Herein lies the origin of the need for deriving the last word on great eveots and important affairs of state from oracles, a "divine sign" (in the case of Socrates). the entrails of animals, the feeding and flight of birds, etc. It was when men had not yet plumbed the depths of self-consciousness or risen out of their undifferentiated unity of substance to their independence that they lacked strength to look within their own being for the final word.
(G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, pp. 183-4)
Oracles, entrails ... so many names for an answer supposedly written in the Real itself - the status of the oracles is by definition that of a writing to be interpreted, to be integrated into our symbolic universe. The subjectivity of the monarch occupies this very place of the "answers of the Real": instead of looking for the "final word"
(the Master-Signifier) in a writing contained within the Real itself (entrails, feeding of birds . . . ) it is the person of the monarch who assumes the act of transforming the opinion of his ministers into a state's decision.
27. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 182.
28. The paradox of Lacan is that, although in his explicit statements he also subscribes to what later became the "deconstructivist" argumentation against Hegel (the-"there-is-always-a-remainder-that-resists-AI!fhebung"-story), his actual theoreti
cal work goes against it and is Hegelian precisely where he himself does not know it.
The effect of it is that Lacan often "refutes" Hegel by means of an argument which is itself deeply Hegelian, as, for example, in this passage from Ecrits:
Certainly there is in all this what is called a bone. Though it is precisely what is suggested here.
namely, that it is structural of the subject, it constitutes in it essentially that margin that all thought has avoided, skipped over, circumvented, or blocked whenever it seems to succeed in being sustained by a circle, whether that circle be dialectical or mathematical. Oacques Z...can, Ecnts: A Stlection, London: Tavistock t9n, p. 318)
How can one not recognize in this "bone" which is structural of the subject precisely in
as it resists symbolization (dialectical mediation) an allusion to the Hegelian thesis Spirit is a bone"?
• It is for this reason that, in Hegel's Logic, identity appears as the first "determina
f-rcflection" (RQlexionsbestimmung]. Identity of an object with itself is the point within the series of its predicates-determinations, this object encounters ' ",the empty place of its inscription; in the shape of"identity", this empty place
. into the object itself. The structure of identity-with-itself is therefore
'I,' • y that of the re-mark: identity "represents" the place of inscription of all
'cates and thus re-marks them, Let us take the case of the tautology "law is law":
emptiness holds open the space in which aU other positive predicates-determina
of the law could inscribe themselves.
1, Gasche, p. 223.
In psychoanalytic theory, this paradox assumes the shape of the relationship ' the Unconscious qua repressed and its "returns" in symptoms. Against the conception according to which symptoms "reflect" in a fragmentary, distorted y the previously given unconscious "infrastructure", we should follow Lacan and that rtpression and the return of the repressed are two sides of the same process. The sed" content constitutes itself retroactively, by means of its failed/distorted
m in symptoms, in these "unaccounted for" excesses: there is no Unconscious ide its "returns".
32. Gasche, p. 222.
33.1bid.
34. This was perfectly clear to Hegel- one has only to examine the way he articulates passage of being-for-another into being-for-itself apropos of the German idiom