Psychoanalysis k – Sam Franz – rks seniors Cover Letter
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Psychoanalysis K - Sam - Wake 2016 RKS
Ignores Affect22.We don’t ignore affect – they ignore the way that speech mediates affect; our analysis is firstSolomon ’15 (Ty, Assistant Prof. @ U. of Glasgow, “The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses,” University of Michigan Press, January, 2015, pp. 46-47) For example, we can grasp a basic Lacanian insight by drawing a distinction between affect and emotion. If affect represents the quantum of libidinal energy, we could say that emotion results from the way it gets caught up in a network of signifiers. . . . It is because of this, according to Lacan, that emotions such as depression or anger can deceive: their meaning and significance is a function not of their intrinsic properties, but rather of the subject's universe of meaning and the way that [discourse] structures this. It is for this reason that Lacan cautions against the lures of emotions, paying special attention to the “letter” of what is said and the displacements of affect. Acknowledging these complexities, a few analogies are helpful for thinking about the relationship between discourse and the affective factors that sometimes escape it. If we accept that affects (rather than emotions) are often inexpressible, then the links between affects and discourse should be conceptualized in a manner that does not view them as coextensive yet allows for their overlap. In the spaces where the two do overlap, discourse and affect are not two separate entities that come together but rather mutually infuse to the extent that discourse is affective such that subjects become invested in it. Lacan offers the metaphor of a hydroelectric dam to illustrate this process. Just as affects cannot often be accessed directly and can posit their force only within the language we use to describe them, we cannot know the force of a river without studying the structure of a dam that channels its flow. We may presume that the river has forceful potential, but we can work with that potential only after it is channeled through the dam, where its force can be manipulated directly. As Lacan (cited in Boothby I991: 62) elaborated, to say that that the energy of the river is “potentially” there has little meaning, “for the energy begins to be of interest to us in this instance only beginning with the moment in which it is accumulated, and it is accumulated only beginning with the moment when machines are put to work in a certain way.” Only through the dam is the river shaped in a way that allows it to be utilized. Yet once it moves through the mechanics of the dam, it is never quite the same as it was before passing through, even if we now have a better sense of and may effectively make use its force. The relationship here between affect and signification is similar. Affect itself often remains inexpressible yet can become more meaningful (and arguably political) when represented as emotionally charged signifiers. Discourse gives contour and shape to affect, channeling it toward signifiers with which we typically name emotions. Yet like the dam that both shapes and impedes the river, discourse (in a sense) both shapes and impedes direct access to the forces of affect. Affect often escapes linguistic capture, but not completely, as the subject can experience traces or “little bits of iouissance” through fantasy (Miller 2000: 37). Download 169.86 Kb. Share with your friends:
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