Books by Christoph Holzhey
What’s in a prefix? How to read a prefix as short as ‘re-’? Does ‘re-’ really signify? Can it poi... more What’s in a prefix? How to read a prefix as short as ‘re-’? Does ‘re-’ really signify? Can it point into a specific direction? Can it reverse? Can it become the shibboleth of a ‘postcritical’ reboot? At first glance transparent and directional, ‘re-’ complicates the linear and teleological models commonly accepted as structuring the relations between past, present, and future, opening onto errant temporalities.
How can the power of wholes be resisted without essentializing their parts? Drawing on different ... more How can the power of wholes be resisted without essentializing their parts? Drawing on different archives and methodologies, including aesthetics, history, biology, affect, race, and queer, the interventions in this volume explore different ways of troubling the consistency and stability of wholes, breaking up their closure and making them more dynamic. Doing so without necessarily presupposing or producing parts, an outside, or a teleological development, they indicate the critical potential of partiality without parts.
Employing feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, Global Justice and Desire addresses eco... more Employing feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, Global Justice and Desire addresses economy as a key ingredient in the dynamic interplay between modes of subjectivity, signification and governance. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book proposes that both analyzing justice through the lens of desire, and considering desire through the lens of justice, are vital for exploring economic processes. A variety of approaches for capturing the complex and dynamic interplay of justice and desire in socioeconomic processes are taken up. But, acknowledging a complexity of forces and relations of power, domination, and violence – sometimes cohering and sometimes contradictory – it is the relationship between hierarchical gender arrangements, relations of exploitation, and their colonial histories that is stressed. Therefore, queer, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives intersect as Global Justice and Desire explores their capacity to contribute to more just, and more desirable, economies.
The ideal of tolerance is only invoked once there is a conflict. But what does it mean to answer ... more The ideal of tolerance is only invoked once there is a conflict. But what does it mean to answer a conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or rather a means of sustaining them? Does tolerance help to turn conflicts into productive tensions or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and thereby constitute a form of de-politicization?
Two major theoretician of tolerance - Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley) and Rainer Forst (University of Frankfurt/Main) - discussed such questions at the ICI Berlin in the form of a »Spannungsübung« organized and moderated by Antke Engel. In an intense debate, in which fundamental issues between different critical traditions became visible despite political similiarities, both scholars discussed different notions of tolerance, their normative premises, limits, and political implications.
WENDY BROWN is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Her work in political theory focuses on questions of power, the making of subjects and citizens, sovereignty, democracy, and de-democratization; she also has longstanding interests in theories of capitalism and in feminist and critical race theory. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
RAINER FORST is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. and Co-Director of the Research Cluster on the ‘Formation of Normative Orders’ of the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’. His work focuses on questions of justification, justice, and toleration. In 2012, he received the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Price of the German Research Foundation.
ed. by Luca Di Blasi, Manuele Gragnolati, and Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 6 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2012), 2012
"Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was both a writer and filmmaker deeply rooted in European cultur... more "Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was both a writer and filmmaker deeply rooted in European culture, as well as an intellectual who moved between different traditions, identities and positions. Early on he looked to Africa and Asia for possible alternatives to the hegemony of Western Neocapitalism and Consumerism, and in his hands the Greek and Judeo-Christian Classics morphed into unsettling multistable figures constantly shifting between West and East, North and South, the present and the past, rationality and myth, identity and otherness. The contributions in this volume, which belong to different intellectual and disciplinary fields, are bound together by a fascination for Pasolini's ability to recognize contradictions, to intensify and multiply them, as well as to make them aesthetically and politically productive. What emerges is a "euro-eccentric" and multifaceted Pasolini of great interest for the present.
Contributors: Alain Badiou, Bruno Besana, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Francesca Cadel, Luca Di Blasi, Graziella Chiarcossi, Robert Gordon, Agnese Grieco, Bernhard Groß, Christoph Holzhey, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Silvia Mazzini, Claudia Peppel, Giovanna Trento"
Multistable figures offer an intriguing model for arbitrating conflicting positions. Moving back ... more Multistable figures offer an intriguing model for arbitrating conflicting positions. Moving back and forth between different aspects, one recognizes that contradictory descriptions of a situation can be equally valid and that disputes over the correct account can be settled without dissolving differences or establishing a higher synthesis. Yet, the experience of a gestalt switch also offers a model for radical conversions and revolutions, that is, for irreversible leaps to incommensurable alternatives foiling ideals of rational choice while providing the possibility and necessity of decision. Accentuating the temporal dimensions of multistable figures, this multidisciplinary volume illuminates the critical potential and limits of multistability as a complex figure of thought.
Wie wird das Leben zum Objekt des Wissens? Und wie gestaltet sich das Verhältnis von Leben, Wisse... more Wie wird das Leben zum Objekt des Wissens? Und wie gestaltet sich das Verhältnis von Leben, Wissenschaft und Technik? Donna J. Haraway und Georges Canguilhem verstehen diese Fragen als politische Fragen und Epistemologie als eine politische Praxis. Die besondere Aktualität von Canguilhems Denken leitet sich aus der von ihm gestellten Frage her, wie sich eine Geschichte der Rationalität des Wissens vom Leben schreiben lässt. Niemand hat die politische Intention dieser Frage besser verstanden als Foucault, der in Canguilhems Nachfolge den Menschen als Lebewesen und dessen Geschichte als Teil der Geschichte der Rationalisierung des Lebens problematisierte. Haraway bezieht sich nicht explizit auf Canguilhem, schließt jedoch in ihrer Auseinandersetzung mit der amerikanischen feministischen Wissenschaftskritik, der Actor-Netzwerk-Theorie, der Philosophie des Pragmatismus und Whiteheads relationistischen Philosophie an die von ihm gestellte Frage an. In dem vorliegenden Band diskutieren namhafte PhilosophInnen, EpistemologInnen und Medienwissenschaftlerinnen aus Frankreich, Belgien und Deutschland offenliegende und verborgene Bezüge, Relationen und Differenzen zwischen dem Konzept des „situierten Wissens“ Haraways und der „regionalen Epistemologie“ Canguilhems. Es ist eine Diskussion, die zugleich interdisziplinär und international ist und damit in doppelter Weise versucht, dem Anspruch der Situiertheit und der Regionalität des Wissens gerecht zu werden.
Tension appears in many contexts and carries diverse meanings. It tends to be viewed as something... more Tension appears in many contexts and carries diverse meanings. It tends to be viewed as something to be avoided and reduced in politics; to be explained, worked through, and resolved in therapy or science; to be endured and sustained in modern art; or to be sought after and enjoyed in popular culture. This volume brings together contributions from several academic and artistic fields in order to question the self-evidence of the deceptively simple term ‘tension’ and explore the possibility of productive transfers among different forms und understandings of tension. Refusing the temptation of a stabilizing synthesis, it establishes a dense web of approaches, providing a new critical paradigm for further inquiry.
Die kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen, die mit der „lebenswissenschaftlichen Wende... more Die kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen, die mit der „lebenswissenschaftlichen Wende“ einhergehen, sind seit längerem Thema von kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung.
Wenig untersucht ist bisher jedoch die Frage, wie sich das kulturwissenschaftliche Wissen durch diese „lebenswissenschaftliche Wende“ selbst verändert. Die Aufsätze des vorliegenden Bandes zeigen, dass die Kulturwissenschaften, von der Film- und Medienwissenschaft, über die Philosophie, die Kultur- und Wissensgeschichte bis hin zu den Gender- und Queer Studies längst an der Bildung des Wissens und der Begriffe vom Leben teilhaben. Sie beziehen sich auf die neu geschaffenen Realitäten und sind selbst Bestandteil der Veränderung. Der Begriff des Lebenswissens öffnet ein Spannungsfeld, in dem sich die unterschiedlichen Beiträge der wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zum Begriff des Lebens begegnen, manchmal verbinden und manchmal auch abstoßen.
Seit einigen Jahrzehnten machen die Neuro- und Kognitionswissenschaften das ›Organ‹ der Erkenntni... more Seit einigen Jahrzehnten machen die Neuro- und Kognitionswissenschaften das ›Organ‹ der Erkenntnis - das Gehirn und damit auch das Bewusstsein oder den ›Geist‹ - zum Erkenntnisobjekt empirischer Analysen. Nur scheinbar unterliegen damit traditionelle und insbesondere mystische Welt- und Menschenbilder endgültig der wissenschaftlichen Entzauberung. Im Gegensatz zur mystischen setzt die wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis die Trennung von erkennendem Subjekt und Erkenntnisobjekt voraus und abstrahiert von der Leiblichkeit und den subjektiven Erlebnisgehalten des Erkennenden. Gerade in der Hirnforschung wird aber die Trennung von Subjekt und Objekt erneut problematisch, verstrickt sich das naturwissenschaftliche Projekt in Schwindel erregende Paradoxien, zu deren Bereinigung wiederum neue Theorien und Symboliken eingeführt werden müssen. Inwieweit sich hier Konstruktionen ergeben, die der Mystik ähnlich sind, erkundet der vorliegende Band aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven.
Papers by Christoph Holzhey
Re-: An Errant Glossary, 2019
What’s in a prefix? How to read a prefix as short as ‘re-’? Does ‘re-’ really signify? Can it poi... more What’s in a prefix? How to read a prefix as short as ‘re-’? Does ‘re-’ really signify? Can it point into a specific direction? Can it reverse? Can it become the shibboleth of a ‘postcritical’ reboot? At first glance transparent and directional, ‘re-’ complicates the linear and teleological models commonly accepted as structuring the relations between past, present, and future, opening onto errant temporalities.
De/Constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, 2017
Introduction
Employing feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, Global Justice and Desire... more Introduction
Employing feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, Global Justice and Desire addresses economy as a key ingredient in the dynamic interplay between modes of subjectivity, signification and governance. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book proposes that both analyzing justice through the lens of desire, and considering desire through the lens of justice, are vital for exploring economic processes. A variety of approaches for capturing the complex and dynamic interplay of justice and desire in socioeconomic processes are taken up. But, acknowledging a complexity of forces and relations of power, domination, and violence – sometimes cohering and sometimes contradictory – it is the relationship between hierarchical gender arrangements, relations of exploitation, and their colonial histories that is stressed. Therefore, queer, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives intersect as Global Justice and Desire explores their capacity to contribute to more just, and more desirable, economies.
Roundtable with A. Engel and J.J. Govrin, Feb 2015
Desire is bound up with structural inequaliti... more Roundtable with A. Engel and J.J. Govrin, Feb 2015
Desire is bound up with structural inequalities and normative violence. Even when it seeks to resist them, it keeps risking to reproduce hierarchies. Taking seriously the power analysis of desire, the lecture series ‘Desire’s Multiplicity and Serendipity’ explores the potentials and limits of desire as a transformative force. It proposes to draw on theories asserting desire’s multiplicity and to face desire’s paradoxes by calling on serendipity, allowing for fortunate errans. Starting their conversation with different understandings of serendipity and of the politics of desire in psychic, social, and structural registers, the organizers of the lecture series wish to engage in a discussion with the public: What are the potentials of happenstance and erring when trying to leave the dis/comfort zone of identity and normative forms of intimacy and sexuality? How can one find openings for queer reconceptualizations of desire?
in Multistable Figures: On the Critical Potential of Ir/Reversible Aspect-Seeing, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2014), 2014
Multistable Figures: On the Critical Potentials of Ir/Reversible Aspect-Seeing, ed. by. C.F.E. Holzhey, Feb 2014
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Books by Christoph Holzhey
Two major theoretician of tolerance - Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley) and Rainer Forst (University of Frankfurt/Main) - discussed such questions at the ICI Berlin in the form of a »Spannungsübung« organized and moderated by Antke Engel. In an intense debate, in which fundamental issues between different critical traditions became visible despite political similiarities, both scholars discussed different notions of tolerance, their normative premises, limits, and political implications.
WENDY BROWN is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Her work in political theory focuses on questions of power, the making of subjects and citizens, sovereignty, democracy, and de-democratization; she also has longstanding interests in theories of capitalism and in feminist and critical race theory. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
RAINER FORST is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. and Co-Director of the Research Cluster on the ‘Formation of Normative Orders’ of the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’. His work focuses on questions of justification, justice, and toleration. In 2012, he received the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Price of the German Research Foundation.
Contributors: Alain Badiou, Bruno Besana, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Francesca Cadel, Luca Di Blasi, Graziella Chiarcossi, Robert Gordon, Agnese Grieco, Bernhard Groß, Christoph Holzhey, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Silvia Mazzini, Claudia Peppel, Giovanna Trento"
Wenig untersucht ist bisher jedoch die Frage, wie sich das kulturwissenschaftliche Wissen durch diese „lebenswissenschaftliche Wende“ selbst verändert. Die Aufsätze des vorliegenden Bandes zeigen, dass die Kulturwissenschaften, von der Film- und Medienwissenschaft, über die Philosophie, die Kultur- und Wissensgeschichte bis hin zu den Gender- und Queer Studies längst an der Bildung des Wissens und der Begriffe vom Leben teilhaben. Sie beziehen sich auf die neu geschaffenen Realitäten und sind selbst Bestandteil der Veränderung. Der Begriff des Lebenswissens öffnet ein Spannungsfeld, in dem sich die unterschiedlichen Beiträge der wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zum Begriff des Lebens begegnen, manchmal verbinden und manchmal auch abstoßen.
Papers by Christoph Holzhey
Employing feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, Global Justice and Desire addresses economy as a key ingredient in the dynamic interplay between modes of subjectivity, signification and governance. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book proposes that both analyzing justice through the lens of desire, and considering desire through the lens of justice, are vital for exploring economic processes. A variety of approaches for capturing the complex and dynamic interplay of justice and desire in socioeconomic processes are taken up. But, acknowledging a complexity of forces and relations of power, domination, and violence – sometimes cohering and sometimes contradictory – it is the relationship between hierarchical gender arrangements, relations of exploitation, and their colonial histories that is stressed. Therefore, queer, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives intersect as Global Justice and Desire explores their capacity to contribute to more just, and more desirable, economies.
Desire is bound up with structural inequalities and normative violence. Even when it seeks to resist them, it keeps risking to reproduce hierarchies. Taking seriously the power analysis of desire, the lecture series ‘Desire’s Multiplicity and Serendipity’ explores the potentials and limits of desire as a transformative force. It proposes to draw on theories asserting desire’s multiplicity and to face desire’s paradoxes by calling on serendipity, allowing for fortunate errans. Starting their conversation with different understandings of serendipity and of the politics of desire in psychic, social, and structural registers, the organizers of the lecture series wish to engage in a discussion with the public: What are the potentials of happenstance and erring when trying to leave the dis/comfort zone of identity and normative forms of intimacy and sexuality? How can one find openings for queer reconceptualizations of desire?
Two major theoretician of tolerance - Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley) and Rainer Forst (University of Frankfurt/Main) - discussed such questions at the ICI Berlin in the form of a »Spannungsübung« organized and moderated by Antke Engel. In an intense debate, in which fundamental issues between different critical traditions became visible despite political similiarities, both scholars discussed different notions of tolerance, their normative premises, limits, and political implications.
WENDY BROWN is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Her work in political theory focuses on questions of power, the making of subjects and citizens, sovereignty, democracy, and de-democratization; she also has longstanding interests in theories of capitalism and in feminist and critical race theory. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
RAINER FORST is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. and Co-Director of the Research Cluster on the ‘Formation of Normative Orders’ of the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’. His work focuses on questions of justification, justice, and toleration. In 2012, he received the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Price of the German Research Foundation.
Contributors: Alain Badiou, Bruno Besana, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Francesca Cadel, Luca Di Blasi, Graziella Chiarcossi, Robert Gordon, Agnese Grieco, Bernhard Groß, Christoph Holzhey, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Silvia Mazzini, Claudia Peppel, Giovanna Trento"
Wenig untersucht ist bisher jedoch die Frage, wie sich das kulturwissenschaftliche Wissen durch diese „lebenswissenschaftliche Wende“ selbst verändert. Die Aufsätze des vorliegenden Bandes zeigen, dass die Kulturwissenschaften, von der Film- und Medienwissenschaft, über die Philosophie, die Kultur- und Wissensgeschichte bis hin zu den Gender- und Queer Studies längst an der Bildung des Wissens und der Begriffe vom Leben teilhaben. Sie beziehen sich auf die neu geschaffenen Realitäten und sind selbst Bestandteil der Veränderung. Der Begriff des Lebenswissens öffnet ein Spannungsfeld, in dem sich die unterschiedlichen Beiträge der wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zum Begriff des Lebens begegnen, manchmal verbinden und manchmal auch abstoßen.
Employing feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, Global Justice and Desire addresses economy as a key ingredient in the dynamic interplay between modes of subjectivity, signification and governance. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book proposes that both analyzing justice through the lens of desire, and considering desire through the lens of justice, are vital for exploring economic processes. A variety of approaches for capturing the complex and dynamic interplay of justice and desire in socioeconomic processes are taken up. But, acknowledging a complexity of forces and relations of power, domination, and violence – sometimes cohering and sometimes contradictory – it is the relationship between hierarchical gender arrangements, relations of exploitation, and their colonial histories that is stressed. Therefore, queer, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives intersect as Global Justice and Desire explores their capacity to contribute to more just, and more desirable, economies.
Desire is bound up with structural inequalities and normative violence. Even when it seeks to resist them, it keeps risking to reproduce hierarchies. Taking seriously the power analysis of desire, the lecture series ‘Desire’s Multiplicity and Serendipity’ explores the potentials and limits of desire as a transformative force. It proposes to draw on theories asserting desire’s multiplicity and to face desire’s paradoxes by calling on serendipity, allowing for fortunate errans. Starting their conversation with different understandings of serendipity and of the politics of desire in psychic, social, and structural registers, the organizers of the lecture series wish to engage in a discussion with the public: What are the potentials of happenstance and erring when trying to leave the dis/comfort zone of identity and normative forms of intimacy and sexuality? How can one find openings for queer reconceptualizations of desire?
The starting point for my contribution is Freud’s presentation of the history of natural science as a series of narcissistic offences, which recent discussions of neurosciences appear to confirm by adding more radical offences. Freud’s account explains the affective resistance against scientific progress so well that this progress appears incomprehensible, even masochistic from a psychoanalytic perspective. For the acceptance of psychoanalysis, Freud fails to ask the question of an underlying pleasure, which otherwise constitutes an elementary component of his method. My paper sustains that the psychoanalytic premise that pleasure constitutes the essential driving force for all human action – including, in particular, thought – continues to exhibit a considerable critical potential. Such a premise on the one hand allows for a focus onto the remarkable break of the modern, ‘hard’ sciences onto the classical unity of the true, the good and beautiful. On the other hand, it also gives rise to the suspicion that underlying the emphasis of painful truths, there is a paradoxical form of pleasure that remains unconscious or disavowed in order to produce effects of objectivity and truth.
My paper pursues different possibilities to explain in psychoanalytic terms the seemingly masochistic acceptance of Freud’s offending conception of the unconscious, which contradicts the ego’s mastery in its own home. One possibility is that the offence is only temporary and conceived as the condition to achieve true self-mastery. Another possibility is that another type of narcissism compensates for the offended narcissism – one that promises greater satisfaction of a need that can be considered metaphysical. In a third avenue, the narcissistic offence is accepted because the ideal of a sovereign ego is deemed to produce suffering, while its radical destruction and/or shattering frees other forms of pleasure. In my analysis, the alternatives differ less on a cognitive level than in the manner in which they organise and hierarchise pleasure, so that one could also speak of aesthetic differences. Taken together, these different approaches point to an underlying phenomenon in which pleasure and pain are inextricably linked – a phenomenon that cannot be symbolised and must therefore necessarily remain unconscious. This phenomenon can be situated in the real, and its acceptance can be taken to amount to the acceptance of Freud’s offence as well as to the acceptance of (Lacanian) sexual difference. However, this necessarily unconscious phenomenon of a pleasure-pain undecidability constitutes less a lack than an excess. It constitutes the condition for the possibility of having different avenues of acceptance, leaving it up to therapy and culture to choose an ethics.
Abstract (dt)
Ausgangspunkt für meinen Beitrag ist Freuds Darstellung der Naturwissenschaftsgeschichte als Serie narzisstischer Kränkungen und ihre scheinbare Bestätigung in gegenwärtigen Diskussionen der Hirnforschung, die Freuds Kränkung weiter radikalisiert. Freud erklärt affektive Widerstände gegen wissenschaftlichen Fortschritt so gut, dass dieser aus psychoanalytischer Sicht unverständlich, wenn nicht gar masochistisch erscheint. Ausgerechnet für die Akzeptanz der Psychoanalyse versäumt Freud nach der Lust zu fragen, während sonst das Aufdecken einer oftmals unbewussten Lust – bzw. eines Begehrens danach – elementarer Bestandteil seines Vorgehens darstellt. Dabei entfaltet die psychoanalytische Grundannahme, dass Lust und Begehren wesentlicher Antrieb für jegliche Form menschlichen Handelns darstellen – einschließlich insbesondere des Denkens –, nach wie vor ein bedeutendes kritisches Potenzial. Denn sie schärft einerseits den Blick auf den bemerkenswerten Bruch der modernen, 'harten' Wissenschaften mit der klassischen Einheit des Wahren, Guten und Schönen und lässt andererseits vermuten, dass der Hervorhebung schmerzhafter Wahrheiten eine (paradoxe) Lust zugrunde liegt, die unbewusst verdrängt oder verleugnet wird, um Objektivitäts- und Wahrheitseffekte zu erzielen.
Mein Beitrag geht verschiedenen Möglichkeiten nach, wie die scheinbar masochistische Akzeptanz von Freuds kränkender Konzeption des Unbewussten, welche dem Ich die Herrschaft im eigenen Haus abspricht, psychoanalytisch verstanden werden könnte. Eine Möglichkeit ist, dass die Kränkung nur temporär ist und wahre Souveränität erwartet wird, eine andere, dass der gekränkte Narzissmus durch einen anderen ersetzt wird, der ein höheres, gewissermaßen metaphysisches Bedürfnis befriedigt. In einem dritten Ansatz wird die narzisstische Kränkung angenommen, weil das Ideal eines souveränen Ichs selbst Leiden erzeugt und dessen radikale Zerstörung und/oder Erschütterung andere Formen der Lust freisetzt. In meiner Analyse unterscheiden sich die Alternativen weniger auf kognitiver Ebene als in der Art und Weise, wie sie Lust organisieren und hierarchisieren, so dass man von ästhetischen Differenzen sprechen kann. Dabei weisen die unterschiedlichen Organisationen der Lust weiterhin Spuren paradoxer Lust auf und deuten zusammen genommen auf ein zugrunde liegendes Phänomen der Ununterscheidbarkeit von Lust und Unlust, das nicht vollständig symbolisiert werden kann und daher notwendig unbewusst bleibt. Dieses Phänomen lässt sich im Realen verorten, seine Anerkennung kommt der Akzeptanz der Freudschen Kränkung gleich, wie auch letztlich der Lacanschen sexuellen Differenz. Aber die notwendig unbewusst bleibende, inhärente Lust-Schmerz-Verstrickung ist weniger Mangel als Überfluss. Sie stellt die Bedingung der Möglichkeit dafür dar, dass es verschiedene Wege der Akzeptanz gibt, was Therapie und Kultur gleichermaßen vor die Aufgabe stellt, eine Ethik zu wählen.