The Blind Master

Dominique Holvoet

Current events emphasize more than ever the figure of the blind master in the unleashing of barbarism that the contemporary elective object gaze – constituted by the digital screen – reflects back to us daily. The screen has become the contemporary surplus jouissance [plus-de-jouir], “placed at the service of the ‘master of tomorrow’, the one who says and shows what is appropriate to be seen and heard today.”[1]

What is it that looks at us in this way and fascinates us? How is the contemporary subject drawn in, caught by these images of horror and jouissance pouring out from our screens?

Lacan remarks that the perception that the subject has of the world depends on one condition: the perceiving subject cannot be put into question as a perceiving subject. “And yet I apprehend the world in a perception that seems to concern the immanence of the I see myself seeing myself. […] As soon as I perceive, my representations belong to me.”[2] Lacan emphasizes this belonging of representations to make the point that, as a result, the subject sees only what he wants to see, so to speak. In other words, the subject literally only sees what concerns him [ce qui le regarde] – but he is unaware that it is looking at him [que ça le regarde]. That it is looking at him [Que ça le regarde] is outside the scope [hors champ], where the objet a is situated.

The digital canvas multiplies the point from which I am seen. Usually, it is this point from which I am seen that is outside the field of my representation, so that it can compose itself as contemplation. The condition for me to be able to contemplate the spectacle of the world is precisely not to see myself seeing. On the screen, on the contrary, I am seen from everywhere, the object a is shattered, everything is staring at me, and I am disoriented because the object can’t be localized.

Our clinic is one of the gaze because it is not a clinic of the visible; it invites us to “abstract himself from the ineluctable modality of the visible and renounce the image in favour of the signifier.”[3] The analyst’s entreaty will be, “speak,” implying a “what concerns you here?” [qu’est-ce qui lá vous regarde]” Through the multiple turns of speech, the fascinating object gaze is thus extracted to lay bare the blind master... that is within us.

This blind master is the discourse of the unconscious, which is nothing other than a master’s discourse. To set up the analytic experience, the analyst first constitutes themselves as S1, as the blind master of the unfolding of repetition. But the event that is expected against the background of this repetition is the event of interpretation, which “accomplishes the inversion of the status of the unconscious, the inversion from repetition to interpretation, the inversion from necessity to contingency.”[4] In other words, interpretation accomplishes the passage from the blind master’s discourse, which is the unconscious, to the analyst’s discourse. The analyst comes to awaken the point from which the subject is looked at and remains unaware of. A Janus figure, the analysand shows his world of ideals on the one hand, to better conceal the object of surplus jouissance that animates him on the other hand. It is by keeping these two poles at a distance that the treatment can advance. The traversal of the plane of identifications will make way for the emergence of object a in the fantasy, provided it is not already too real in an unconscious like an open sky [à ciel ouvert], an unconscious that will need to be handled differently in that case.

We find ourselves precisely in this moment where the place of the ideal has become vacant by the evaporation of the father – a place left empty that requires a new knotting.

In place of the blind master that is the unconscious supported by a founding S1, we now have the empire of the number. Is not the unconscious today being eroded by the senseless [insensé] empire of numbers?

What consequence does this have for interpretation? The unconscious repetition wraps itself around the initial trauma constituting the impact of lalangue on the body. But what happens to this singular mark when each One is reduced to a mere unit of value,[5] to a countable signifier that obliterates the singularity of the founding S1? The blind master becomes the number itself, to the point of generating an artificial intelligence that utilizes the infinite reservoir of big data that has digitized us in order to assign us the right place. This culture of compilation, profiling, and management simply produces another blind, tyrannical and, we may add, mute Other, instructing the subject to reduce itself to a number for its own good. This movement produces an effect of complete disorientation that leads to absolute intolerance.[6]

This countable reduction evacuates the necessary dupery of the piece of the real [du bout du réel][7] that orients our singularity as speaking-beings. It is about understanding that “the real is neither a cosmos, nor a world; nor is it an order: it is a piece, an a-systematic fragment, separated from the fictional knowledge that was produced from this encounter […] of lalangue and the body.”[8]

The piece of the real par excellence is the object gaze, whether it materializes in the intimate and secret fantasy or in the open sky on the multiplied screen. We are thus witnessing another substitution. In the absence of a master signifier of temperance, lacking an Other who knows how to turn a blind eye, a malevolent, aggressive will is substituted, the will to death inscribed in the Other that spills out onto our screens and other devices. The necessary gap between ideals and the object of the drive is reduced to nothing. As scenes of cruelty unfold, we witness a new alliance between identification and the drive.[9] Will we manage to extract the object gaze sufficiently from its blind power? Is the analyst’s desire sufficiently mobilized, “to create this field where the gaze can isolate itself as a separate object”?[10]

It is up to psychoanalysts to restore, locate, and extract this point from where I am seen, to spare the subject from being seen from everywhere when the gaze passes into the real.[11]

REfErences

[1] Roy, D., “Presentation of the theme of the 2024 Congress of the NLS: Clinic of the Gaze,” trans. P. Dravers. Available here: https://www.amp-nls.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ARGUMENT-ENG.-CONGRES-NLS-2024.pdf

[2] Lacan, J., The Seminar of J. Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan, London: Hogarth, 1977, pp. 80–81.

[3] Miller, J.-A., “The Sovereign Image,” trans. F. Baitinger & A. Khan, The Lacanian Review, Issue 5, Summer 2018, p. 42.

[4] Miller, J.-A., “When the Semblants Vacillate,” trans. E. Ragland, Lacanian Ink, Issue 48, Fall 2016, pp. 67-91.

[5] Cf. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. R. Grigg New York/London: Norton, 2007, p. 201.

[6] Cf. Miller, J.-A., “Conversation d’actualité avec l’École espagnole du Champ freudien, 2 mai 2021 (I)”, La Cause du désir, Issue 108, July, 2021, p. 54.

[7] Cf. Miller, J.-A., “The Real in the 21st Century,” presentation of the theme of the 9th Congress of the WAP, trans. R. Litten, Hurly-Burly, Issue 9, May 2013.

[8] Ibid., p. 205.

[9] Cf. Miller, J.-A., “In the Direction of Adolescence,” trans. J. Conway & F. Shanahan, The Lacanian Review, Issue 4, Winter 2018, pp. 23–33.

[10] Roy, D., “Presentation of the theme of the 2024 Congress of the NLS: Clinic of the Gaze,” op. cit.

[11] Cf. Laurent, É., L’envers de la biopolitique. Une écriture pour la jouissance, Paris: Navarin/Le Champ freudien, 2016, pp. 202-203.