Can a Zizekian parallax gap be considered a Badouian Event? the parallax gap, that unfathomable X which forever eludes the symbolic grasp and thus causes the multiplicity of symbolic perspectives. The paradox is here a very precise one: it is at the very point at which a pure difference emerges - a difference which is no longer a difference between two positively existing objects, but a minimal difference which divides one and the same object from itself - that this difference as such immediately coincides with an unfathomable object: in contrast to a mere difference between objects, the pure difference is itself an object. Another name for the parallax gap is therefore minimal difference, a pure difference which cannot be grounded in positive substantial properties. I call an event a rupture in the normal order of bodies and languages as it exists for any particular situation (if you refer to Being and Event [1988] or Manifesto for Philosophy [1989]) or as it appears in any particular world (if you refer instead to Logics of Worlds [2006] or the Second Manifesto for Philosophy [2009]). What is important to note here is that an event is not the realization of a possibility that resides within the situation or that is dependent on the transcendental laws of the world. An event is the creation of new possibilities. It is located not merely at the level of objective possibilities but at the level of the possibility of possibilities. Another way of putting this is: with respect to a situation or a world, an event paves the way for the possibility of what from the limited perspective of the make-up of this situation or the legality of this world - is strictly impossible. If we keep in mind here that, for Lacan, the real = the impossible, the intrinsically real aspect of the event will be readily seen. We might also say that an event is the occurrence of the real as its own future possibility
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 12:08:35 +0000