Instuction 5: Electracy through and within Lacan

I would like to address several things. One, being this notion of art as it makes an appearance within Lacan's text. Second, I would like to read and digest Lacan's diagrams and schematics as workings of art while considering the feedback Ulmer offered to my last post, and lastly, I would like to frame the aforementioned points to the context of our mystory as we were basically relying on schematics of art ranging from a visual template of our own narratives in an organize fashion to actual references to art: books, films and TV shows.

After talking to various classmates, it seems that I missed quite the discussion. It was brought to my attention that Ulmer had the class assess and locate potential instances of instruction within Lacan's text when art was mentioned. From this, I wondered why Ulmer was calling attention to this particular narrative form as I believe all art tells and conceals a story. Then it became apparent to me. When Lacan makes mention of art in his text, he does not do so to draw attention to its content but how the particular art form is arranged and constructed.  Perhaps the greatest example of this is when Lacan compares desire to montage. What makes a montage a montage is various components or parts of images brought together to create a holistic image that without its separate components would fail to exist, would fail to create affect.  In essence, "The montage of the drive [according to Lacan] is a montage, which first is presented as having neither head nor tail—in the sense of a surrealist collage"—169. In this quote and my description of montage, lies the spontaneous and illogical arrangement of images into one space which resembles the way that our desires can be swept up and turned towards another object or subject of interest.  As a result, disruption occurs in order to draw attention to the "thing" that has really seized our attention, the punctum. Perhaps this is why it is hard to control, ignore and forget our desires and forge our mystories.

Second, I would like to think of Lacan's use of diagrams and schematics as his own reference to art. Regarding my last post you sated:

  In electracy, with Psychoanalysis, this vital force is located and defined as "libido."  The 4 concepts Lacan tracks in their interactions in the Analytical situation capture this force in its manifestations.  Electracy as we know involves a digital apparatus of imaging technologies whose recording goes beyond alphabetic (or ideogrammic) writing.  Lacan makes use of mathematics as well as linguistics and arts to move into the new region and register opened up for metaphysics in electracy.  The point is that these media and practices express directly this dimension of being while lacking any language equivalent (or course it is possible to describe and paraphrase the issues explored in these media).

In response to this, while Lacan may not draw attention to language directly he is working with language: characters, imaged text, and figures, to communicate his theories.  I want to come back to a point I made earlier about art being more than a visual phenomenon defined by images. Instead, I want to think about art, much like the Chinese did, as a method of communication, narration, and historizaiton. Demonstrated by Lacan, this way of communicating, thinking, and representing reality is what we refer to as electracy. This juncture is where I would like to draw attention to our mystory projects. In order to create an adaptive narrative form in the context of electracy we had to rely on images, our past experience, and an arrangement of both in such a way that they would correspond to larger questions, namely, who are we and who are we becoming and what things have made us into the beings we are—our popcycle. In other words, what figures, works of art and other instance/moments in my life do I find myself re-encountering without explanation that reflects back on me as subject and as other. I could get into the discussion of transference here but that is another topic.

Instruction 5: Typology, as it is more specifically called, is the use symbols and diagrams that function closely with language. Write an instruction a friend, can be about anything, and then draw a correlative image/symbol to follow that specific instruction. How does the image disrupt, confuse, or enhance your instruction?