Brainstorming the antagonism
There is an identity marker overflowing with negative
identification. Objet z, but a kind of reverse objet a.
It is a master-signifier. This means:
1) that its meaning has been
overdetermined (in the case of ‘liberal’ as the object of hate). Where language
is a relational system in which its position determines any term’s meaning, the
master-signifier is different in that it is pure
position. It is purely functional and
not semantic at all.
2) it forms a role of unifying a
field of discourse. Articulated (linked) to other terms it fixes their meaning
as well as stabilising the discursive space between them. It ‘evacuates the
lack’, bringing fullness to meaning
‘Liberal’ has become
an epithet meaning value-free, rootless, elitist, relativist, dangerously
progressive, contemptful of tradition. This has become a master-signifier, one that,
rather than having its meaning determined by other terms, has a fixed meaning.
In the insurgent imaginary, its meaning is
Rush Limbaugh, Fox
News and countless smaller conservative outlets have constantly painted climate
change as a liberal indulgence. Example. The cumulative effect of these
micro-articulations is that at the macro-level climate has been linked to ‘liberal’
master-signifier.
We need to meditate more on negative affect accruing to the negative
master-signifier. We can convince non-Lacanians of it through plenty of
examples.
We tend to think that our conceptions of the things we are
close to are neutral. But they are actually imbued with a positive slant that is
probably undeserved. As if to insulate ourselves from self-doubt, we are
constantly refreshing this positivity, constantly affirming the goodness of who
we are at all levels. The most powerful way to do this is negatively. We affirm
our personal goodness every time we shame somebody else’s actions as indecent,
inconsiderate, etc. We affirm our family’s goodness whenever we celebrate a family
birthday. We affirm the Good of our social class whenever we engage in
political discussion about welfare bums and the victim mentality (or bourgieous
morality, capitalist parasites or victim-blaming). We affirm the good of our nation
not only in banal actions (banal nationalism, Billig) but through micro-racism,
micro-jingoism, and so on.
The negative master-signifier accrues the inverse of our
narcissism.
Now think about the cross-over epistemology that happens
here.
There is affect even in all of our so-called neutral beliefs.
Indeed, any durable belief is held together by affective glue. It is not just
that climate is a hoax. It’s a hoax because
I hate liberals.Affective rationality.
Reason is affective because affects help prioritise
articulations. Thought is time-bound, processual, and therefore any articulation
that actually occurs does so at the expense of all the other possible
articulations. (More genearlly, language is time-bound, processual, and
therefore any occuring articulation does so at the expense of all other
possible articulations).
Thought takes from affect its neurological buttressing,
while affect takes from thought its spacing.
While thought is spatial-relational, affect is topological,
hydraulic.
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