Belief is Objective.
In a society in which the products of human labour acquire the form of commodities,
the crucial relations between people take on the form of relations between
things, between commodities - instead of immediate relations between
people, we have social relations between things. In the 1960s and 1970s,
this whole problem was discredited through Althusserian anti-humanism.
The principal reproach of the Althusserians was that the Marxian theory
of commodity fetishism is based on a naive, ideological, epistemologically
unfounded opposition between persons (human subjects) and things. But
a Lacanian reading can give this formulation a new, unexpected twist: the
subversive power of Marx's approach lies precisely in the way he uses the
opposition of persons and things.
In feudalism, as we have seen, relations between people are mystified,
mediated through a web of ideological beliefs and superstitions. They are
the relations between the master and his servant, whereby the master
exerts his charismatic power of fascination, and so forth. Although in
capitalism the subjects are emancipated, perceiving themselves as free from
medieval religious superstitions, when they deal with one another they
do so as rational utilitarians, guided only by their selfish interests. The
point of Marx' s analysis, however, is that the things (commodities) themselves
believe in their place, instead of the subjects: it is as if all their beliefs, super
stitions and metaphysical mystifications, supposedly surmounted by the
rational, utilitarian personality, are embodied in the 'social relations
between things'. They no longer believe, but the things themselves believefor
them.
This seems also to be a basic Lacanian proposition, contrary to the usual
thesis that a belief is something interior and knowledge something exterior
(in the sense that it can be verified through an external procedure). Rather,
it is belief which is radically exterior, embodied in the practical, effective
procedure of people. It is similar to Tibetan prayer wheels: you write a
prayer on a paper, put the rolled paper into a wheel, and turn it automat ically, without thinking (or, if you want to proceed according to the
Hegelian 'cunning of reason', you attach it to a windmill, so that it is
moved around by the wind). In this way, the wheel itself is praying for
me, instead of me - or, more precisely, I myself am praying through the
medium of the wheel. The beauty of it all is that in my psychological inferiority I can think about whatever I want, I can yield to the most dirty
and obscene fantasies, and it does not matter because - to use a good old
Stalinist expression - whatever I am thinking, oijectivefy I am praying.
This is how we should grasp the fundamental Lacanian proposition
that psychoanalysis is not a psychology: the most intimate beliefs, even
the most intimate emotions such as compassion, crying, sorrow, laughter,
can be transferred, delegated to others without losing their sincerity.
In
his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the
Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried,
full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems
of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but no
problem, there is the Chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion
instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through
the medium of the Chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if
you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place'."
Even if we, the spectators, are just drowsily watching the show,
objectively - to use again the old Stalinist expression - we are doing our
duty of compassion for the heroes. In so-called primitive societies we find
the same phenomenon in the form of 'weepers', women hired to cry instead
of us: so, through the medium of the other, we accomplish our duty of
mourning, while we can spend our time on more profitable exploits -
disputing the division of the inheritance of the deceased, for example.
But to avoid the impression that this exteriorization, this transference
of our most intimate feeling, is simply a characteristic of the so-called
primitive stages of development, let us remind ourselves of a phenomenon
quite usual in popular television shows or serials: 'canned laughter'.
After
some supposedly funny or witty remark, you can hear the laughter and
applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself- here we have the
exact counterpart of the chorus in classical tragedy; it is here that we have
to look for 'living Antiquity'. That is to say, why this laughter? The first
possible answer - that it serves to remind us when to laugh - is interesting
enough, because it implies the paradox that laughter is a matter of duty
and not of some spontaneous feeling; but this answer is not sufficient
because we do not usually laugh. The only correct answer would be that
the other - embodied in the television set - is relieving us even of our
duty to laugh - is laughing instead of us. So even if, tired from a hard
day's stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the
television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the
medium of the other,· we had a really good time.
If we do not take into account this objective s tatus of belief, we might
finish like the fool from a well-known joke who thought he was a grain
of corn. After some time in a mental hospital, he was finally cured: now
he knew that he was not a grain but a man. So they let him out; but soon
afterwards he came running back, saying: 'I met a hen and I was afraid
she would eat me.' The doctors tried to calm him: 'But what are you afraid
of? Now you know that you are not a grain but a man.' The fool answered:
'Yes, of course, I know that, but does the hen know that I am no longer a
grain?'
