Territorial Apories: the Imaginary and the Real Aspects of (the) Location

/, Literature, Blesok no. 22/Territorial Apories: the Imaginary and the Real Aspects of (the) Location

Territorial Apories: the Imaginary and the Real Aspects of (the) Location

The tuché of imaginary location: the knock of Real

In our “simulated” global world, the (Lacanian) knock of the Real and the sensation of re-institution into reality (a very dubious one according to the theoretical moment of today) with its (within theory, withering) aspect of the invincible Real, does happen in some parts of the Globe. Such as in most of the Balkan post-communist countries (Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania…), and not only often, but relentlessly.
One meets an insurmountable bureaucratic wall when one attempts to acquire a visa for one of the countries of EU (USA, as well). The excessive demands of impossible proofs that one is not a criminal or a potential emigrant, the humiliatingly long, endless – often entirely absurd – procedures do act, perform as the knock (tuché) of the foundationally frustrating, unpenetrable kernel of the Impossible Real.
I am speaking of the effect of – precisely the Lacanian/Zizekian – Real that has been produced by the signifying chain itself and has entered into interaction with it (with the Order of the Sign). This is indeed a theoretically rather problematic remark, but nevertheless, I would argue that the claim about the Imaginary (or the Symbolic…, the Sign) performing as the Real is of key political relevance. Namely the main political argument of this article is that it is precisely “the presence of the absence”, or the effect of the Real within the political realities (of the Balkans), which is of key relevance for the new and more productive political discussions of the Balkans today. Furthermore, the reductionist tendencies to always already (dialectically) reduce the Real (or the real) to the Imaginary do have a political bearing, contained primarily in the very oppositionary/exclusive logic of the binary structure. Moreover, besides its “purely” ideological nature, the political bearing extends also to the realm of experience as such (it, thus, includes the bodily one, as well) assuming? A certain accountability with respect to the real/”real” experiences (of – for instance – the Balkanites.)
It would be perhaps an unjust generalization to say that “the imaginary reductionism” (the philosophico-theoretical tendencies to reduce every effect of the real to the imaginary as the only Possible, the Real being the Impossible Itself) is the one responsible of (over-) relativization of certain political issues. (Issues, not categories.) Here I mean primarily – responsibility and/or accountability concerning the afflicted trauma of the Real. And yet I would risk this generalization arguing that instead of an alarm to prompt actions, the realizations of the kind “Balkans is Europe’s alter-ego”6F incite but an endless soliloquies and auto-referential theorizations of the West (of Europe). Said’s discourse of orientalism and Todorova’s of balkanism, have proliferated into valuable theoretical productions but have not inspired much of concrete initiatives in the West, such as, for instance, a wider (or any?) public debate about the EU visa-requirement towards the Balkan countries.
Certainly I am not trying to underestimate the paramount importance – paramount, according to myself as according to so many others – of the works of Said or Todorova. (The letter being an unavoidable point of reference in my own efforts to think and write about Balkan subjectivity.) I am merely proposing a thought (about the Balkan subjectivity/identity) along the lines that have been proposed for the last few years by Slavoj Žižek, namely a way of thinking/theorizing recurrently related to the question of “the Real and historicity”.7F????
The call for an immediate, or a more timely, political action can be raised through the introduction into discourse of the trauma itself – the Real. As the inutterable [indicible], unsignifyable, as the absence and as aphasia, for the least; nevertheless, as a subject to discussion. Or as the Laruellian thinkable real (as non-opposed to fiction, or to the imaginary, symbolic …“illusion”) making possible the discussion (or the thought) in terms of the real (la pensée en terms du réel), in terms the singular and the non-relative (or non-relationary).8F The introduction of this and such “real” into the political discussions of today announces a more “radical” discourse. And this is a radicalism of the “exclusive” thought; however, not in the sense of the oppositionary exclusiveness, but in the sense of the particular, in terms of the Laruellian thought of the One (or rather, la Vision-en-Un)9F and the real.
The notion of the real as the particular, inspired by Laruelle’s notion of the real as singular, is fairly consonant with the Lacanian Real as tuche: hazard, coincidence and contingency10F – the unexpected knock of the Real. In this sense it is also in a relation of consistency with the role within historicity assigned to the Real by Zizek: “non-substantial inherent limit, point of failure, and thus sets in motion the contingent process of historicization – symbolization” (Butler, Laclau and Zizek, 1999?: 9), but is itself positively defined. Namely the real is the presence and (or rather, trough) the act of the singular and the one, even if one does not deconstruct or abandon the Lacanian [the psychoanalytical] concept of the Real as the Impossible and Unpenetrable (but yet not the Unthinkable).
By way of introduction into theoretical discussion of the topographical location (as the real/imago-real generating the imaginary) – or of the fact of spatial/physical frustration brought about through the visa-requirement policy – discourses, together with their aspirations and responsibilities, are being reshaped. The absence of the real, in as much – I emphasize – as trauma and tuché, from what purports to be pertinent theory (inasmuch as theory) is liable? For the ways and shapes the latter takes.


References

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York & London: Routledge.
______________, Ernesto Laclau & Slavoj Žižek. 2000. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. Verso Books.
Lacan, Jacques. 1973. Les quatres concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Texte établi par Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Éditions de Seuil.
Laruelle, François. 1989. Philosophie et non-philosophie. Liège-Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga.
Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford University Press.

#b

6. See Todorova, in her Imagining the Balkans, refering to Van Gennep’s concept of liminality (Todorova, 1997: 18).
7. Contingency
8. Cf., “The problem of philosophy in general originates from the fact that it never thinks of the terms in their specificity, but as contrary to each other, within their relations, and, in the best case, on their borders and in their proximity. As a result of this, the concept of the real, like any other [concept], designates an amphibologic [amphibologique] reality, a limitrophy of the real, regardless of fact whether it is placed beyond [au-del&aegrave;] the latter, or before it [en deça], or on the border between the two. From classical rationalism to contemporary deconstructions, fiction has remained captivated within that relation of the mixed [le rapport de mixte], i.e., of the unitary [unitaire]. Excluded by the real, internalized by it, while internalizing it herself and pretending to co-determine it, [fiction, le fictionnel] has never escaped these games of inter-inhibition [entre-inhibition], which are those that philosophy plays with herself, where it is but one of the toys of a history which pretends to surpass it.”(Laruelle, 1989, 232)
9. See Laruelle, 1989, 37 ff.
10. The meaning of the Greek word tuch is accidence, coincidence, contingency, hazard.

AuthorKaterina Kolozova
2018-08-21T17:23:42+00:00 October 1st, 2001|Categories: Reviews, Literature, Blesok no. 22|0 Comments