A significant question
October 4, 2010 7:11 AM Subscribe
Lacan writes about a "symbolic order," a realm of signs and culture constituting a separate domain from the "real." What other authors/thinkers (besides Lacanians, like Zizek, and their predicessors like Levy-Strauss) make use of this way of viewing the world?
Tough question. The symbolic/real/imaginary triad is pretty much the province of Lacanians alone. For what it's worth, the idea of a symbolic world in which we live and a transcendental real that we can only infer has long struck me as a very Kantian idea (transcendental apriori). Wittgenstein might be someone to look at, in terms of how the symbolic world functions. For him, everything came down to the language worlds that we create. In that sense, Gramsci's writings on language might also be useful. I can't give you exact references, but if you do some research you can probably find out which of the prison notebooks deal with language and, particularly, metaphor. Also, Nietzsche was a big influence for the Lacanians.
posted by outlandishmarxist at 7:24 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by outlandishmarxist at 7:24 AM on October 4, 2010
Pierre Bourdieu wrote of “symbolic power” but I don’t think he used the Lacanian notion of the Real in his work (not that I understand Lacan). The book to start with here is Language and Symbolic Power. In my opinion this is one of his best. You can see this theory in action in Distinction.
posted by ads at 7:25 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by ads at 7:25 AM on October 4, 2010
Also, to generalize your question a bit, Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" implicitly uses these ideas to define consumerist existence in the 20th century. Those ideas appear to have influenced George W.S. Trow's "Within the Context of No Context."
posted by Pastabagel at 7:28 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by Pastabagel at 7:28 AM on October 4, 2010
Would Deleuze and Guattari count towards this? What about Korzybski?
posted by symbioid at 8:00 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by symbioid at 8:00 AM on October 4, 2010
Kinda similar but coming out of a different intellectual tradition: Kenneth Burke's "Terministic Screens" (in Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, 1966).
posted by 5Q7 at 8:15 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by 5Q7 at 8:15 AM on October 4, 2010
Pretty much everyone does this, except the people that intentionally don't.
Great answer, right? I'll explain.
First, some data points. Plato says the world of forms is separate from the world of things - and that the world of forms is the "real" one, and that we live in the world of shadows of these transcendental forms, but bracket that for the moment. Descartes says the world of spirit is separate from the world of matter, that human consciousness is composed of spirit, that the world of spirit is anchored by God, and that the pineal gland is the point of transmission between the spirit and the body - the point at which mind becomes brain. Kant says we can't directly interact with the world of things, that all we can do is perceive our mental impressions formed by those things, and that these impressions fall into premade categories that precede the sensory experience of impression - so that the world of "forms," such as it is, is a world of mental categories, but these categories, preceding experience, are transcendentally true.
On the other hand, La Mettrie says the body is a machine organized for thinking. Foucault says sexuality has no a priori natural expression, but is constrained into particular categories by the culture in which it finds itself. Deleuze and Guattari say that the enemy of being is not the organ, but the organization - the schema which forces being into being-in-a-certain-way.
What you're getting at with your question is one of the central debates of western philosophy, that of idealism (or dualism) versus materialism (or monism): Is there anything outside of empirically observable reality, or is it turtles all the way down, so to speak?
This means that for pretty much any western philosopher you read, there will be some version of this debate internal to their work, and some position on one side or another of it. You can think of it in different thematic fields of philosophy - law asks whether there is a transcendental and universal justice separate from the contingencies of any particular instantiation of it; the "hard problem" of philosophy of mind asks how it is that the brain (the physical stuff) gives rise to the mind (the mental stuff), etc etc etc.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:18 AM on October 4, 2010 [7 favorites]
Great answer, right? I'll explain.
First, some data points. Plato says the world of forms is separate from the world of things - and that the world of forms is the "real" one, and that we live in the world of shadows of these transcendental forms, but bracket that for the moment. Descartes says the world of spirit is separate from the world of matter, that human consciousness is composed of spirit, that the world of spirit is anchored by God, and that the pineal gland is the point of transmission between the spirit and the body - the point at which mind becomes brain. Kant says we can't directly interact with the world of things, that all we can do is perceive our mental impressions formed by those things, and that these impressions fall into premade categories that precede the sensory experience of impression - so that the world of "forms," such as it is, is a world of mental categories, but these categories, preceding experience, are transcendentally true.
On the other hand, La Mettrie says the body is a machine organized for thinking. Foucault says sexuality has no a priori natural expression, but is constrained into particular categories by the culture in which it finds itself. Deleuze and Guattari say that the enemy of being is not the organ, but the organization - the schema which forces being into being-in-a-certain-way.
What you're getting at with your question is one of the central debates of western philosophy, that of idealism (or dualism) versus materialism (or monism): Is there anything outside of empirically observable reality, or is it turtles all the way down, so to speak?
This means that for pretty much any western philosopher you read, there will be some version of this debate internal to their work, and some position on one side or another of it. You can think of it in different thematic fields of philosophy - law asks whether there is a transcendental and universal justice separate from the contingencies of any particular instantiation of it; the "hard problem" of philosophy of mind asks how it is that the brain (the physical stuff) gives rise to the mind (the mental stuff), etc etc etc.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:18 AM on October 4, 2010 [7 favorites]
I don't know the people or schools you mentioned, but your description sounds like a cousin of Platonic Idealism, or maybe its inverse. His theory of forms said (in my hazy, vague familiarity it) that ideas were the true things and what we saw in the material world were just reflections of those things.
posted by Askr at 8:20 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by Askr at 8:20 AM on October 4, 2010
I hope this looks something like an answer - I think what I'm getting at here, to address your question, is that there is a substantial history, arguably the longest history in western philosophy, of the question "Is there a realm of X constituting a separate domain from the real?" Lacan is interesting here not because he participates in this, because I think at some level everyone does, but because he complicates it. Lacanian ontology has three separate domains, as outlandish points out - the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary - and none of those has any particular priority over the others. 3 ontological categories as opposed to 2, in the west, at least, counts as an interesting move.
You might reasonably and productively ask whether he succeeds at this, though, or whether he's just another Cartesian dualist who finely parses the field of spirit but leaves the field of matter about where it's always been.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:27 AM on October 4, 2010
You might reasonably and productively ask whether he succeeds at this, though, or whether he's just another Cartesian dualist who finely parses the field of spirit but leaves the field of matter about where it's always been.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:27 AM on October 4, 2010
FWIW: chapter 5, "Style/Substance Matrix," in Richard Lanham's The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information (2006).
posted by 5Q7 at 8:28 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by 5Q7 at 8:28 AM on October 4, 2010
Well, not to be too obvious about it, but Lacan said, "You can all be Lacanian, I'll be Freudian." That is to say, aside from the Structuralists with whom he shared an intellectual moment, Lacan drew his ideas from Freud's work. Now, Freud never used the terms Symbolic, Real, or Imaginary, but the concepts are certainly there. The Symbolic is particularly present in discussions in Civilization and Its Discontents, as well as Freud's various discussions of Oedipus/penis envy/castration anxiety. The Real is most often discussed by Freud when he talks about trauma/apres coup, as well as the unconscious and the id.
posted by OmieWise at 8:31 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by OmieWise at 8:31 AM on October 4, 2010
I'm not familiar with specific writers who have discussed this topic, but you may want to look into the concept of the noosphere.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:50 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by Rhaomi at 9:50 AM on October 4, 2010
Jung's theory of a collective unconscious seems to reinforce the notion of another world in which persons also function and exist.
posted by Gilbert at 10:26 AM on October 4, 2010
posted by Gilbert at 10:26 AM on October 4, 2010
Best answer: This is the best book I've ever read. It's technical and experiential and about the relationship between symbols and experiencing.
http://www.amazon.com/Experiencing-Creation-Meaning-Philosophical-Psychological/dp/0810114275/
posted by zeek321 at 12:13 PM on October 4, 2010
http://www.amazon.com/Experiencing-Creation-Meaning-Philosophical-Psychological/dp/0810114275/
posted by zeek321 at 12:13 PM on October 4, 2010
Also, this is a somewhat mystical book that takes up this question from the time of the ancient Greeks:
http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Peter-Kingsley/dp/1890350095/
posted by zeek321 at 12:15 PM on October 4, 2010
http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Peter-Kingsley/dp/1890350095/
posted by zeek321 at 12:15 PM on October 4, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Barthes is another writer who relies on these concepts, as do many others, listed here. Jean Baudrillard also relies on some of these concepts as well, esp. his "Simulacra and Simulation," which was horribly misunderstood by the writers of The Matrix.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:21 AM on October 4, 2010 [1 favorite]