Drive and the decline of symbolic efficiency

It is possible that I've made a little progress toward thinking about drive and politics. It has taken me to a problem I've had with Zizek for some time, a problem I've tried to repress or overlook. The problem involves the combination of the thesis of the decline of symbolic efficiency with other aspects of his thinking. So, as is well known, Zizek emphasizes Lacan's rethinking of the Freudian death drive as 'the elementary form of the ethical act, the act that is irreducible to a 'speech act' which relies for its performative power on the pre-established set of symbolic rules and/or norms.' Zizek's example is Antigone. The Ticklish Subject:

For Lacan, there is no ethical act proper without taking the risk of such a momentary 'suspension of the big Other,' of the socio-symbolic network that guarantees the subject's identity: an authentic act occurs only when the subject risks a gesture that is no longer covered up by the big Other.

But if the setting is one where the symbolic is in decline, then no act is fully covered by the big Other. The big Other is already suspended. The subject's identity is fragile, unstable, without guarantee. To this extent, either every thing the subject does is an ethical act or there is no such thing as an act in the terms established thus far.

Comments

[mike]

Hi Jodi,

Even under the conditions you outline here, I think that it's still impossible that "every thing the subject does is an ethical act."

For Zizek, there are several criteria that a subject's actions must meet in order for them to be considered an "ethical act proper." He outlines these criteria succinctly in "The Act and Its Vicissitudes," (http://www.lacan.com/symptom6_articles/zizek.html), which ended up being integrated into The Fragile Absolute in some form. The quote I'm thinking of here comes from his discussion of the presence of the ethical act proper in C.S. Lewis's Surprised By Joy:

"In a way, everything is here: the decision is purely formal, ultimately a decision to decide, without a clear awareness of WHAT the subject decides about; it is non-psychological act, unemotional, with no motives, desires or fears; it is incalculable, not the outcome of strategic argumentation; it is a totally free act, although one couldn't do it otherwise. It is only AFTERWARDS that this pure act is "subjectivized," translated into a (rather unpleasant) psychological experience."

Right there are most, if not all, of the criteria of the act.

[Jodi]

the question, then, is how this fits with drive: in what way does it make sense to say that drive is a decision?

[mike]

Unfortunately, I'm not too sure. . . . Sorry!

[Jodi]

thanks, Mike, that's honest, and the way I feel with this material much of the time. I can't figure out how drive is or can be a decision (particularly in that Freud gives four elements of the drive and Lacan repeats those elements--it's possible that because the object of the drive can shift and move and be nearly anything that any new object tells us something about a 'decision', but I haven't found Z making this argument)