Lacan and the Nonhuman

K O O H K E R E D D N A L L I E N M U L A C S R O S T E I R D I E E S LACAN AND THE NONHUMAN EDITED BY GAUTAM BASU THAKUR AND JONATHAN MICHAEL DICKSTEIN The Palgrave Lacan Series Series editors Calum Neill School of Psychology and Sociology Edinburgh Napier University Edinburgh, UK Derek Hook Duquesne University Pittsburgh, USA Jacques Lacan is one of the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th century. The reach of this influence continues to grow as we settle into the 21st century, the resonance of Lacan’s thought arguably only beginning now to be properly felt, both in terms of its application to clinical matters and in its application to a range of human activities and interests. The Palgrave Lacan Series is a book series for the best new writing in the Lacanian field, giving voice to the leading writers of a new generation of Lacanian thought. The series will comprise original mono- graphs and thematic, multi-authored collections. The books in the series will explore aspects of Lacan’s theory from new perspectives and with original insights. There will be books focused on particular areas of or issues in clinical work. There will be books focused on applying Lacanian theory to areas and issues beyond the clinic, to matters of society, politics, the arts and culture. Each book, whatever its particular concern, will work to expand our understanding of Lacan’s theory and its value in the 21st century. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15116 Gautam Basu Thakur Jonathan Michael Dickstein Editors Lacan and the Nonhuman Editors Gautam Basu Thakur Jonathan Michael Dickstein Boise State University Independent Scholar Boise, ID, USA Worcester, MA, USA The Palgrave Lacan Series ISBN 978-3-319-63816-4 ISBN 978-3-319-63817-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63817-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962004 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Deborah Ayers / EyeEm / gettyimages Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgment We owe this collection to a series of conversations inspired by and between two conferences, namely, the 2016 American Comparative Literature Association Annual conference (specifically, the “Lacan and Philosophy” seminar) and the inaugural conference of LACK which took place a month later that same year. The hard work put in by all the contributors, the series editors, and the wonderful editorial and publishing staff at Palgrave Macmillan has brought it into its final form. Additionally, we thank Columbia University Press and Cultural Critique for allowing us to reprint respectively Jamieson Webster’s and Kiarina Kordela’s chapters. Lastly, we thank our friends and family for bearing with us through the process. v Contents Chicken Knowledge: Or, What Does the Nonhuman Want? 1 Gautam Basu Thakur and Jonathan Michael Dickstein Part I Definitions and Contexts 17 Toward a Less-Than-Human Psychoanalysis: Coitus Interruptus and the Object 19 Jamieson Webster A Horse: No Worse? Phobia and the Failure of Human Metaphors in Psychoanalysis 43 Celeste Pietrusza and Jess Dunn The Human Not in the Human 63 A. Kiarina Kordela L’extermination de tout Symbolisme des Cieux: Reading the Lacanian Letter as Inhuman ‘Apparatus’ and Its Implications for Ecological Thinking 101 Kevin Andrew Spicer vii viii Contents Lacanian Anti-Humanism and Freedom 121 Ed Pluth The Sovereign Signifier: Agamben and the Nonhuman 135 Paul Eisenstein Part II Applications 155 Triplicity in Spencer-Brown, Lacan, and Poe 157 Don Kunze Like an Animal: A Simile Instead of a Subject 177 Todd McGowan Beckett’s ‘Marionette Theater’: Psychoanalysis, Ontological Violence, and the Language of Desubjectification in Stories and The Unnamable 199 Amanda Duncan Do Electric Sheep Dream of Androids?: On the Place of Fantasy in Consideration of the Nonhuman 213 Calum Neill ASMR Mania, Trigger-Chasing, and the Anxiety of Digital Repletion 227 Hugh S. Manon For the Love of Nonhumanity: Anxiety, the Phallus, Transference, and Algorithmic Criticism 249 Jonathan Michael Dickstein Index 277 List of Figures Fig. 1 The ‘horizontal’ signifying chains of the Symbolic intersect orthogonally at the point of a gap with a ‘vertical’ injunctive that constitutes a vector by which the Form may reenter itself 159 Fig. 2 Concentric marks (‘consecution’) lead to an interior concavity of marks within marks, where, as Dupin comments, the ‘hand that conceals’ is forever foiled by the ‘hand that finds.’ When concentricity moves outward, however, the space of the POV is engaged, and with it the topological/recursive position, which, when accessed, engages the dimension of time 165 Fig. 3 While the police go left, Dupin goes right. Dupin’s method (like Poe’s) is a version of the game of Morra 165 Fig. 4 Paired inverter gates (left) ensure permanent distribution of values in the circuit, while a single inverter gate (right) causes a passing signal to oscillate 166 Fig. 5 In the sorites of Lewis Carroll’s puzzles, all elements but two appear twice, in mirroring forms. The terms and their ‘echoes’ frame the middle of the story, the exchange of ‘the purloined letter’ for the reward check 169 ix Chicken Knowledge: Or, What Does the Nonhuman Want? Gautam Basu Thakur and Jonathan Michael Dickstein One of the most striking recent developments in the humanities and the social sciences has been the shift of focus away from the human to the nonhuman. This shift is represented by not one but many concurrent critical and philosophical movements, concerning speculative considerations about topics such as ecology, post- and transhumanism(s), affect studies, systems and network theory, and object-oriented ontology. These considerations have led to, on the one hand, the exploration of the com- plex relational or congregational functions of nonhumans; and, on the other, the need to reimagine the world in the context of hyperadvancing technologies, swarming embodied communities, unending global con- flicts, and looming specters of environmental crises. Sometimes together referred to as ‘non-anthropocentric humanities’ or more colloquially as the ‘nonhuman turn,’ these new research directions G. Basu Thakur (*) Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA J.M. Dickstein Independent Scholar, Worcester, MA, USA © The Author(s) 2018 1 G. Basu Thakur, J.M. Dickstein (eds.), Lacan and the Nonhuman, The Palgrave Lacan Series, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-63817-1_1 2 G. Basu Thakur and J.M. Dickstein have proven vital to twenty-first century thought.1 What though does this vitality entail? To begin to provide an answer, we might observe that each approach symptomatically stresses the problematization, critique, and rejection of human-only or human-centered approaches to a given object of study. Their common interest might be said to imply a characteristic rejection of what Immanuel Kant designated his Copernican Revolution— that is, a rejection of the replacement of the assumption that ‘all our cognition must conform to the objects,’ with the assumption that ‘the objects must conform to our cognition.’2 The result of such a rejection tends to amount to a decentering of the human in favor of a recentering of nonhumans and their world, thereby a vacating of the semblance of unadulter- ated anthropocentrism and a repurposing of the human–nonhuman dynamic according, not to conflict, but to symbiosis. We are not claiming to dismiss this tendency outright—to reject the rejection of transcendental or even metaphysical idealism. We are claiming, however, that a purely (or overly) positive account of the original rejection proves too hasty. In this context, therefore, we posit the irreducibility of the Other insofar as the lack indicated by this irreducibility overlaps with the lack demonstrated by the subtraction of the subject from its world—that is, a subtraction leading to the subject being only a subject for its world but never a subject of it. Certainly, we grant the first thesis of any materialism: There is some One (i.e., a One that is materiality as such).3 Nevertheless, as good dialecticians, we aim—even if in dif- ferent ways—to privilege the necessary second thesis: Materiality is prior to thought.4 In this sense, we want to focus on what connects humanistic interest in the nonhuman with an eye more on what these interests lack than on what they possess.

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