The Gaze of The Photographer

No no, Lacan is not an individualist at all (if he was, Zizek would not be obsessed with him). Rather it is Lacanian theory that throws us back to our OBSESSION with social recognition. His point is that the most ardent individualists are also the most dependent on the recognition of The Other (a hegelian take on the fake opposition of Individual vs Social). And in this sense, Lacan is not culturally specific other then the fact that he is aware that he is speaking of an animal attempting to behave like a civilised human being (as was Zarathushtra when he set The Civilised Settler against The Wild Nomad).
It is rather Lacan working from the nuclear family perspective (as Freud was) which is culturally limited. I hardly believe nom-de-pere applies to Papuan village life. ;-) But that is also his least interesting point.
And your point about The Gaze of The Photographer is intelligent. Because who is "The Other" these days if not some presumed mystical stranger watching us from afar through new media technologies? It is after all not The Photographer whose gazes obsess us, but the expected engaged audience of the eventually published photograph.
If Zarathushtra were alive today, he would be very concerned with what we do "online" to each other.
Ushta
Alexander

2009/11/17 Special Kain



Nowadays it's more The Gaze of The Photographer, I guess. ;-))
What do the neighbors say?
The problem with Lacan is that his theory only applies to contemporaries, but not to anyone who was older than the common household use of mirrors.
I have also and repeatedly claimed that Zoroastrian philosophy isn't concerned with the western distinction between The Individual and The Social. And Charles Peirce and John Dewey seem to offer something interesting here. Peirce does so more than Dewey, see his semiotics. And I don't know whether Lacan's psychoanalytic theory wasn't too individualistic? He seems to promote the relentless fulfillment of one's potentials and authentic living, which doesn't always conform with The Social.

--- Alexander Bard schrieb am Di, 17.11.2009:


Von: Alexander Bard
Betreff: [Ushta] Freedom and liberation in a Zoroastrian context
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Dienstag, 17. November 2009, 17:04



Excellent, Dino, an excellent posting!!!

The answer from Psychoanalysis is that the making conscious of what you refer to as "the conflict between our social and tribal instincts and our relentlessly selfish and domineering instincts" will also produce the answer. Because the desire of desire itself is to maintain desire at all costs, in other words to maintain the Gaze of The Other no matter what. The relentless and domineering instinct is ultimately directed towards one thing: The love and acceptance of The Other. I guess as Zoroastrians we never saw egoism and altruism as opposites. This would make perfect sense to a Lacanian psychoanalyst. So the problem is not the conflict itself, but that the vast majority of people are unaware of the conflict and even more so of its profound structure.

Ushta
Alexander