In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 Aesthetics of Neurosis Nothing is more apparent to the senses, than the distinction betwixt a curve and a right line; nor are there any ideas we more easily form than the ideas of these objects. But however easily we may form these ideas, 'tis impossible to produce any definition of them, which will fix the precise boundaries betwixt them. -Hume 1978, 49 The sinuous line inscribes the chain which permits a calculus ofthe subject . It is directed, and its direction constitutes an order in which the appearance of the objet a in the place of the cause is made clear by the universality of its relation to the category of causality, which, in forcing the threshold of Kant's transcendental deduction, would inaugurate a new Critique of Reason hinging upon the impure. -Lacan 1989, 63 Why is the secret of neurosis to be sought in mathematics? According to Freud, the neuroses in general result when the ego represses an instinctual impulse originating in the id (SE XIX, 149-50). Because ofthis repression, the impulse remains or becomes unconscious, finding its way back into consciousness only through a symptom. To put this in Kantian terms, we could say that repression deflects something away from the understanding and on to sensibility. As an objectofsensible but not intellectual intuition, the significance of the symptom would remain hidden; qua spatial or temporal object ofintuition, it would be on the side of sensibility rather than the side of understanding. Yet insofar as every object of intuition appears, as it were, before the tribunal of the understanding, the appearance of the symptom would mark a kind of return of the repressed. Here, however, we see the return of the repressed leading to a split within the understanding, akin to Freud's notion of the splitting of the ego. As an object of intuition, the neurotic symptom is something that calls forth judgment; however, as an appearance in nature whose significance remains hidden, the neurotic symptom is something that 28 29 AESTHETICS OF NEUROSIS cannot be judged. This split corresponds to Kant's division between the mathematical categories and the dynamical categories. The mathematical categories (quantity and quality) are applicable to everything in intuition; the dynamical categories (relation and modality) are applicable to appearances only insofar as these exist in systematic connection with each other in nature. For Freud, the neurotic will be conscious of having a symptom (i.e., can apply categories of quantity and quality to it) but will be unable to explain it-i.e., will be unable to reconstruct a "dynamical" narrative that will situate the symptom in its place in the order of causes. This suggests that both "in itself' and "for the subject" in question, neurotic symptoms can be classified as mathematical rather than dynamical. Lacan's theory ofthe genesis ofsubjectivity requires two stages. The first of these is the mirror stage, when the subject first appears solely as a "geometrical" subject, identified with a visual object ofouter intuition. In this original misapprehension (meconnaissance), Lacan locates both the origin of "geometrical" representations of space, and the fact that the subject first appears on the side of the Other (Lacan 1977, 27). Mter the mirror stage, the subject's unconscious begins to develop out of the auditory data of heard discourse: "The unconscious is constituted by [ce sont] the effects ofspeech on the subject" (Lacan 1978, 149). This process coincides with the formation of the subject's ego and ego ideal. We can think of it as the "echo stage," for unlike the visual and geometrical imago with which the mirror stage subject identifies, the auditory subject of the echo stage identifies with purely temporal objects (heard sounds). Just as the mirror imago is constituted in the gaze of the Other, so the echo fixation is constituted, as it were, in the voice of the Other. Hence, the spatial subject is older than the temporal subject, which implies a profound inversion of the Kantian model. Although in his narrative Kant presents an analysis of space before his analysis of time, he eventually identifies the subject ofintuition with the temporal subject. Thus, according to Kant, all of the subject'S representations take place in time; only some represent objects in space: Time is the formal a priori condition ofall appearances whatsoever. Space, as the pure form of all outer intuition, is so far limited; it serves as the a priori condition only of outer appearances. But since all representations, whether they have...

Share