Unconscious-ly

Adam Kohler has asked an excellent question in regards to my post from this morning:

From a Sartrean perspective, if we are able to become aware of the unconscious in the form of its influences, would that not then be a logical contradiction? To be conscious of an unconscious?

I know this may come across as silly, seeing as I just posted my first entry and am already responding to comments, but I have two motivations for doing so: (1) Lacanian psychoanalysis is something near and dear to my heart and does not get a proper reception in the States, even in "Continental" programs; (2) it gives me the chance to engage (albeit indirectly) with Sartre, with whom I'm not very familiar. If there's anything that torments a philosophy student (and I'd like to think I'm not alone), it's that there isn't time to read everything. So hopefully this will be a chance to meet in the middle; I can defend something I've read and conjecture about something I haven't.

Down to brass tacks: I feel this is why Lacan goes to such great lengths to redefine the field that Freud had established (Perhaps lengths too great--style is certainly not something I hope to inherit from his work. If anyone out there has seen Zizek!, you will recall the scene where watches the an old clip of Lacan's: "What interest me are his propositions. The underlying logic, not his style. His style is a total fake; I try to forget it." Which is certainly more honest than those Derrideans who feign ignorance, as Michael Naas from Depaul did when he visited my school: "I have no idea why people say [Derrida] is unclear. I find him very clear." But anyway, end parenthesis). This is why I find it much more helpful to stick with terminology that doesn't carry as much of a misleading connotation (e.g. the ego, the unconscious).

Rather than conscious and unconscious, let's distinguish between the Imaginary and the Symbolic order (in a way that won't force me to re-write Lacan's whole seminars). Our shortcut for making this distinction will be through the other/Other. I find this helpful because I can pickup right where a certain line in Adam Kohler's recent post on a common misunderstanding of existentialism here:

Sartre explains that our awareness of ourselves is contingent on other people. Whenever I reflect on who I am, that reflection is not without my awareness of what others think me to be. Essentially, "hell is other people" means that no matter how much I want to be something, I can never fully be considered as such if another has an opposing view. In that type of situation, I am constantly struggling to find a medium between what I want to be and how I am perceived to be.

I may not know Sartre, but there is something I spontaneously agree with here, in strictly Lacanian terms that I hope to develop here. If you are familiar with Jacques Lacan directly or indirectly through his following (Badiou, Miller, Kristeva, or more precisely in this case--Zizek), you have undoubtedly encountered two key terms: Autre et autre (big Other and little other, often as "the object petit a"). What is their distinction? The little other is that which is not really other, but is the product of transference: in othering ourselves we become subjects, finding ourselves in the external world. The assurance of our own figure reflected in the mirror. In the course of analysis, this transference finds its place in the "subject supposed to know," the analyst who supposedly carries the "truth" of the patient's symptoms even prior to their being discussed. Yet this inscription of images (of the Imaginary Order) is still structured by a more radical otherness.

The big Other is the Symbolic Order itself, the signifying chain that sets the coordinates or parameters of our experience (i.e. Law, the syntax of Language), or rather, this Symbolic as it is particularized for the subject. The Other thus has the form of any other subject, yet is also the order which mediates our relationship with this other subject (otherness as such).

To better answer Adam Kohler's question, one might say that "unconscious" is more helpful as an adverb than as an adjective. As an adjective--are we conscious?--the distinction falls apart just as Adam describes. But as an adverb--do we decide consciously?--we understand the term in its psychoanalytic sense. The point being that, even if we all become psychoanalysts and theorize the very details of the social effects on the individual personality, this would not provide us with any means of "escape." We are inextricably bound to language, or the Symbolic as such. That is to say, we conceive of ourselves as objects (Imaginary; other) and, in the performative dimension of linguistics, as subjects (Symbolic; Other). This is the split subject: the enunciated subject and the subject of the enunciation.

We could very well turn this around and address the original question by reformulating the quote from Adam Kohler's blog, Epoché Today:

Sartre explains that our awareness of ourselves is contingent on other people (on both forms of otherness). Whenever I reflect on who I am, that reflection is not without my awareness of what others think me to be (towards the subject of otherness as such, the big Other). Essentially, "hell is other people" means that no matter how much I want to be something, I can never fully be considered as such if another has an opposing view. In that type of situation, I am constantly struggling to find a medium between what I want to be and how I am perceived to be (because there is a gap in the subject, splitting it as object and subject between its imaginary unity in the other and its symbolic position in the Other).

I know my posts here are a short and rushed. I would rather develop ideas later, in a string of such short, rushed entries, than bore you with a wall of text.