Art in CM: locked penis images & freedom

In a nutshell one way to make the link is by reference to the Lacanian Non-All. Inside any worldview/orientation, there is no experience that does not answer to the presuppositions of that orientation-in this case, that the Good Domme is right. However your final point in the spectrum reveals that at some level there is an awareness that that presupposition is Non-All. That is if the Domme is held to be abusive and therefore wrong. It is by analogy with the subjectivity involved in that “aha” moment that Zizek sees broader political freedom.-applied in his left wing perspective one would replace “Good Domme” in the above with “enjoyment in late capitalism” and the “aha” moment would come when one realises (on his view) the error and incompleteness in such a Non-All worldview. Something like that!

 

That would be a sensible reading of what I said, but Zizek I am pretty sure would argue that what I said doesn't do justice to (on his view) the "radical freedom" implied by the subjective position that judges between Good and Bad Dommes in my imperfect example. Conceivably he would argue I think that such a subjective position carries the implication that it could overturn (negative) even the a priori conditioning/shaping factors of a previous worldview-in the case of submissives, their submissive a priori perspective.

Put differently that the subjective position that detects abuse implies the capacity to detect the void inherent in the incompleteness (Non-All) of the submissive orientation itself, even though for so long as one "inside" such an orientation (or indeed any orientation with respect to a social ordering-this isn't about submission per se) "submissive reality" appears as being "all there is". Begs many questions I know, but ultimately rests on (in his view) the ontological incompleteness of "reality" itself.

To be clear (if possible with Zizek) he would happily acknowledge that such freedom may involve a loss of enjoyment and a loss of the sincerely felt authentic self: but at crunch evental moments he would argue that is the price of freedom etc etc. (I suppose analagous to replicants learning the deeply troubling fact that they are not human in Blade Runner-that's going to spoil any replicant's day!). I cannot stress enough how nothing in Zizek is specific to submission or chastity but rather he applies his theories to society at large; that being said CM is an interesting "crucible" to (try and) apply such theories to, however stretched the application may be. I also recognise the presumptiousness of any theorist trying to argue against one's authentic lived self, so please feel free to just think it's...a load of rubbish...in which case we can get back to whether images of locked penises in CM are art...!

 

Well...yes I would say he thinks social constructs are real in the sense that, allied to personal phantasy (unconscious fantasy) they structure and shape perception. There is however a need for the social aspect-we are not talking individual psychology here. There is also a key role of language which is why I asked about humiliation and verbal degradation as a kink.

So for instance he refers frequently to the “Master Signifier” which “hegemonises a specific social field’ (my quotes not his). An example would be “FLR”: in a FLR everything that happens is stained by or has the form of the anamorphic perspective on the Real of...FLR, just as in Hollywood under the Hayes code although sexuality could not be depicted on screen everything that happened was permeated by the form of implied sexuality/sexual implications.

Obviously another example for a MS could be “the evil outsider group, X”. Everything that happens is explained and gains meaning with that MS permeating all such meaning: every specific issue Y is then an issue Y “as caused by outsider group X” or “inflected by the presupposition that outsider group X is to blame”. By hegemonise the social field all that is meant is “tie the meaning of things that happen together in a unified way”.

The link to reprogramming as you put it is that every individual in a social field hegemonised by a particular Master Signifer (MS) may come to recognise the arbitrariness of that MS-i.e how a different MS could just as well hegemonise the social field with a result being a different social ordering. Thus the Non-All (“there is no social issue that is not about the outsider group status of group X; the outsider group status of X is Non-All”).

The twist comes when such an individual appreciates that they enjoy the comfort of the original MS through phantasy...and through the consequences of phantasy in reality-as the replicant in Blade Runner enjoys the phantasy (implanted) that they are human with superior status...it then takes the “aha” moment of the replicant discovery-namely that it is a phantasy and an arbitrary MS before a reprogramming can occur...but at cost of enjoyment and social acceptance perhaps give this whole scenario is a social construct. To begin with, the “rebel” “doesn’t have the votes” but once the messsage about the arbitrariness of the MS is out there that could change.

Effectively CM and FLR/KH could be seen as alternative, opposite MS to those in mainstream society, generating enjoyment for us submissive males and dominant females alike. Still, on his theory, it is arbitrary, despite feelings to the contrast, just as the patriarchy is arbitrary in broader society.

 

Got it. I don't think my personal view is too different from yours in that Zizek is trying to overcome the limitations of seeing language/conscious thinking in concepts as vehicles for preserving the German Idealist vision of "freedom" based on Ideal Notions-the snag is that once philosophy figured out that making freedom dependent on language it gets sucked into the vortex of the incompleteness of all representations (they all leave a point of invisibility behind which is unrepresented), we find contemporary philosophy condemned to assert itself through it's self-negation. Almost like...submissive males....

That is the link back to art...every representation be it linguistic or artistic leaves something out. Perhaps FLR/C is the "invisible left out" of mainstream discourse and art at the moment?

 

Thanks and noted. I've tried to bring it back to art in my post just made above. That being said, all posts gratefully received!

 

I’ve been mulling over the point made here and elsewhere on CM threads that there is a non-arbitrary core of one’s selfhood e.g. a submissive sexual orientation. For instance (from an earlier post on this thread):

The philosophical equivalent of such invariant hard wiring is the Idea or Thing-In-Itself.

Schopenhauer in the World as Will and Representation claims that it is possible to have cognition of the Idea-but only when one completely suppresses one’s individual will.

In italics below is an extract from section 34 of the World as Will and Representation and I claim that the words I have underlined
describe the non arbitrary (for locked submissive males) Idea, the Thing-In-Itself of freely submitting (through “strength of mind”) to be locked in chastity.

What is philosophically interesting is that the images of locked penises represent not merely the Will-Less cognitive state of the lockee but also of the necessary subjective state of the viewer of art (who may well be not hard wired as submissive) if he/she can temporarily, aesthetically through “strength of mind” cancel his/her own will and engage aesthetically with the image in the manner of Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory in section 34 set out below.

The overall claim is that the images of locked penises represent by way of their content what is required subjectively for any art work to be appreciated aesthetically-the cancellation of the viewer’s will.

Extract from section 34 of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation

When elevated by strength of mind to stop viewing things in the ordinary
way, no longer led by the forms of the principle of sufficient reason to pursue
merely the relations between things (which in the end always aims at their
relation to our own will), if we stop considering the Where, When, Why
and Wherefore of things but simply and exclusively consider the What,
if we do not allow our consciousness to become engrossed by abstract
thinking, concepts of reason; but if, instead of all this, we devote the entire
power of our mind to intuition and immerse ourselves in this entirely,
letting the whole of consciousness be filled with peaceful contemplation
of the natural object that is directly present, a landscape, a tree, a cliff,
a building, or whatever it might be, and, according to a suggestive figure
of speech, we lose ourselves in this object completely, i.e. we forget our
individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, the clear
mirror of the object, so that it is as if the object anyone to perceive it, and we can no longer separate the intuited from the intuition as the two have become one, and the whole of consciousness is completely filled and engrossed by a single intuitive image – if, therefore, the object is in this manner removed from any relation to things outside of itself, and the subject is removed from any relation to the will, then what we thus cognize is no longer the individual thing as such, but rather the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objecthood of the will at this
level: and this is precisely how someone gripped by this intuition is at the
same time no longer an individual: the individual has lost himself in this
very intuition: rather, he is the pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of
cognition.

 

I’m not very familiar with Jung but a quick look at the wiki on archetypes suggests some affinity between Idea and archetypes as such. That being said the Thing In Itself is precisely for Schopenhauer the Will in so far as it is NOT an object for a subject and I’m not sure Jung has an equivalent.

 

Thanks for the extra information about archetypes. I’d put it like this: at the level of objective representation of the Will (which is all we ever have in the phenomenal world), or put differently, at the level of talking about Plato’s Ideas, we agree.

That being said, the Thing-In-Itself is the Will in so far as it is not an object for any subject (not represented, in other words), and therefore we can neither agree nor disagree about it.

So one might say that by these lights the Thing-In-Itself is the source of freedom, and another might say it is the source of necessity. Ergo what we say about or how we represent the Thing-In-Itself (including in art) is arbitrary, but perhaps the Thing-In-Itself is not arbitrary, and we get an inkling of that possibility when we contemplate an art work selflessly.

 

We philosophical art critics hang together.

 

Compuslive beauty does have that effect on me.