Interface fantasy : a Lacanian cyborg ontology

240 Pages·2006·2.517 MB·English

by  A Nusselder

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I Interface Fantasy
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16 november 2006
13.30 u.
Senaatszaal Woudestein
André Nusselder Erasmus Universiteit
Rotterdam

INTERFACE FANTASY
André Nusselder
Many thanks to Feike de Jong (Mexico DF)
Production: F&N Eigen Beheer - Amsterdam
ISBN 10: 907383895 9
ISBN 13: 978907383895 6
INTERFACE FANTASY
A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology
INTERFACE FANTASIE
Een Lacaniaanse Cyborg Ontologie
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor
aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
op gezag van de rector magnificus
Prof. dr. Steven Lamberts
en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties.
De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op
16 november 2006 om 13.30 uur
door
André Cornelis Nusselder
geboren te Hummelo
Promotiecommissie
Promotor:
Prof. dr. J. de Mul
Overige leden:
Prof. dr. P. Moyaert
Dr. H. A. F. Oosterling
Prof. dr. V. A. J. Frissen
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
List of Abbreviations 5
CHAPTER ONE. TECHNOLOGY AND DESIRE
Introduction 6
1. Technology: the desire for presence
1.1. What is technology? 6
1.2. Technological desire for presence. 8
1.3. An 'erotic core' of technology? 9
1.4. Technological media: beyond the conscious intentions of man 10
1.5. Technologies as media for simulating the real and regaining enjoyment 12
2. Philosophy: the metaphysics of presence
2.1. Nostalgia: an analogue desire 14
2.2. Platonism 14
2.3. Modern subjectivity: the analogous representation of the world 16
3. Psychoanalysis: the mediation of presence
3.1. The 'gap' in the analogical mind 17
3.2."You can't have One without the Other" 19
3.3. Eros as Thanathos: Beauty as a mediator 21
3.4. Lacanian anthropology: beyond the need 23
3.5. Law and fantasy: the object a as surplus-enjoyment 25
3.6. Fantasy and surplus-enjoyment: between pleasure and jouissance 27
Conclusion 30
CHAPTER TWO. THE TECHNOLOGIZATION OF HUMAN VIRTUALITY
Introduction 32
1. Introduction to the question of virtuality
1.1 What is virtuality: historical overview 32
1.2. Computer virtual reality 34
1.3. The real and the virtual in digital technologies: four models 36
2. Virtualization: from Lévy to Lacan
2.1. Characteristics of virtualization 36
2.2. Forces of virtualization: language, ‘law’, and technology 38
2.3. Language: the virtualization of the real 39
2.3.1. The retroaction of 'real time' 42
2.4. 'Law': the virtualization of ‘natural forces’ 43
3. Interface technologies and the virtualization of the real
3.1. Technological fiction: invocational media 44
3.2. The digital revolution: from analogue to digital representations,
from object to interface 47
3.3. Digitization and the mind's schemes of representation 49
3.4. Computer virtual reality: from insight to liberation? 51
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4. Interface technologies and the question of representation
4.1. Spaces of representation, or simulated spaces? 52
4.2. 'On the interface of it, it seems impracticable to link sign and referent' 55
4.3. A mediamatic elimination of human subjectivity?
From Vorstellung to Darstellung? 56
4.4. Cyber-subjectivism or cyber-objectivism? 59
4.5. From semiotics to the subject as a mediating window 60
Conclusion 62
CHAPTER THREE. FANTASY AT THE INTERFACE
Introduction 64
1. Fantasy as design
1.1. Design displays the central role of fantasy 64
1.2. The design of technological presence by means of metaphors 66
2. Fantasy: either 'natural' or 'artificial'?
2.1. Freudian theory:fantasy appears as a 'natural' mediation 68
2.2. Fantasy as imitation: hallucinatory wishfullfilment 70
3. Fantasy at the interface: windows of perception
3.1. Fantasy: from lure to the condition of reality 72
3.2. Kantian theory: mediating sensations and reality 73
3.3. Freudo-Lacanian theory: desirable reality 76
3.3.1. Psychotherapy: transforming, not eliminating, fantasy 78
4. Origins of interface subjectivity
4.1. Historical sketch of the notion fantasy:
between perception and understanding 79
4.2. The (unconscious) productive imagination: from Kant to Freud 80
4.3. The origins of Freudian theory: psychical reality and the real as fantasmatic 82
4.4. Fantasy in Freudian psychoanalysis: beyond the opposition of
reality and illusion 83
5. Fantasy: the model of subjectivation
5.1. The double bind of fantasmatic identification 85
5.2. The computerized Self: appearance or illusion? 88
Conclusion 91
CHAPTER FOUR. TECHNOLOGY AND THE FANTASMATIC RELATION
TO THE REAL
Introduction 92
1. Technology and the real
1.1.Technè and tuchè: the pleasure principle and its beyond 92
1.2. The encounter with the real 95
1.3. A historical outline of the real in Lacan's work 96
1.4. The real as the object of lost gratifications 98
1.5. Every man has his cross to bear: the real loss as trauma 99
1.6. Tuchè animates technè: the two-fold relation to the real of defense
and disclosure 100
2. The fantasy-interface as a mirror-screen
2.1. The screen and the shield 103
2.2. The screen as principally defensive: phobia, and its computerized treatment 106
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3. The fantasy-interface as a window
3.1. The scheme of the veil 107
3.2. The unconscious fantasy 109
3.3. 'Interactivity': the screen as a window or frame 112
3.4. The interactive fantasy: the Self and the question of the Other 113
3.5. The screen and the other: computer psychotherapy 115
3.6. 'Interactivity' and the paradigm of interface-subjectivity 117
Conclusion 118
CHAPTER FIVE. EMBODIMENT: THE IMAGINARY 'STUFF' OF
VIRTUAL SPACE
Introduction 119
1. The 'steersman' and his body
1.1. Wiener and Lacan: the logic of cyborgs 119
1.2. Information codes and embodiment 121
1.2.1 Cybernetics 122
1.2.2. Cyberspace 123
2. Embodied space
2.1. The quest(ion) of space 125
2.2. Mirror space: the ego as a virtual unity 126
2.3. The optics of reflected figures: consciousness as an effect 128
2.4. Imaginary space interfaces man and world 129
2.5. Imaginary space: projecting sensations at/as the surface of the body 132
2.6. Avatars: engaging the body in space 134
2.7. Fascination: the double bind of occupying virtual space 136
3. Cyborg subjectivity
3.1. Emotions: a surface- and superficial thing? 138
3.2. Between deficiency and perfection: the never-ending promise of the cyborg 140
3.3. The excess of the cyborg: annihilating the threat of the real 142
3.4. Between exploring and dominating space 143
4. Third wave cybernetics
4.1 A Lacanian third wave cybernetics? 145
4.2. Incorporating the virtual surfaces 147
Conclusion 148
CHAPTER SIX. FANTASY AND SUBJECTIVATION:
SURPLUS-ENJOYMENT
Introduction 150
1. Objects of enjoyment
1.1. Techno-fetishism 150
1.2. The reality of pleasure: surplus-enjoyment 153
1.3. The perverse enjoyment of media: not the act, but the scene 155
1.4. The vital disavowal 157
1.5. Interpassivity and the technological belief 159
1.6. Theoretical foundations of the transition from narrative to audio-visual
culture 160
1.6.1. The sinthome: the glory of the mark 161
1.6.2. The partial objects and the cut 163
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2. Subjectivized fantasy: identifying oneself as an object
2.1. Subjectivation: the subject as an object 166
2.2. Lifestyles 168
2.2.1. The sinthome and the body 168
2.2.2. The passion of the eye and the ear: 'Encore!' 170
2.3. Symbols, information and commitment 171
2.4. Ideological interpellation in an age of information 174
2.5. Real identifications? 175
2.6. The (cyber) fantasy beyond subjectivation: false liberation 176
2.7. The body and the scene: subjectivity at the interface of meatspace and
cyberspace 180
Conclusion 182
CHAPTER SEVEN. A LACANIAN THEORY OF REPRESENTATION
Introduction 184
1. The Cartesian subject of representation
1.1. Descartes, causality and imagination 184
1.2. The mind screening reality: Cartesian perspectivism 186
2. Lacan: fantasy as the 'real stuff' of the Cartesian subject
2.1. Lacan beyond Cartesian dualism: Cogito and libido 188
2.2. The unconscious (virtual) subject as a partial perspective upon the world 189
2.3. Fantasy as the stuff of the point of view 191
2.4. Lacan's logic of visual representation 192
3. Fantasy as a scheme
3.1. Kant: schematism as a 'hidden art in the depths of the human soul' 194
3.2. Freud on fantasy as a scheme 196
3.3. Lacan: fantasy as the scheme of desire 197
Conclusion 199
APPENDIX. Semiotics: towards the referent as a form
1. Introduction 201
2. 'Mentalese': meaning as an object in the mind 201
3. Ferdinand De Saussure: meaning is dependent on the sign 202
4. Lacan’s sequel to De Saussure 204
5. Summary. Three positions on the relation between sign and referent: idealism, 205
realism, and constructivism
PRÉCIS 207
REFERENCES 211
Samenvatting 225
Curriculum Vitae 230
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