ah is this video gonna be dark
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subjectivity subjectivity is what makes
you you in religious traditions there
are something like a soul it gives you
subjectivity a divine investment and
philosophy subjectivity is most often
derived from their consciousness your
mind and in some discourses from your
brain although it is derived from some
particular locus or arrangement it's
also affected by your interactions with
the world of my videos thus far this is
by far the most difficult in terms of
theory and at least for me the most
likely to induce anxiety so
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you
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in psychoanalysis beginning with Freud
desire is central to subjectivity we are
subjects that desire things basic needs
sure but also more general things good
relationships personal fulfillment
social status and you can't get these
things from inside you which means that
as a subject you can never be satisfied
by your own agency alone do me a solid
stop for a second and imagine visualize
what are you hoping to get that you
don't have right now what do you want
your life to look like in a year a
relationship better job better car a
trip somewhere to act on your bad
impulses less often a better rank and
Fortnight desires something that's
always in US and always points us
outside to those things that you
imagined would make you more yourself
now here's a spoiler alert you are never
going to be yourself how am I know
myself how am I not myself desire is
like a carrot on a stick because
whenever you actually acquire the thing
you were wanting desire then shifts a
twin new projection in psychoanalysis
this is fundamental to being a subject
we project ourselves into a future
alongside the other things we hope and
strive for for lacan desires like an
object inside you that changes forms
it's fluctuating and mimics things
outside over which you have no agency or
control this means that you're never
completely yourself there is always a
desire shaped hole inside you always to
be a subject is to be constantly
imagining yourself more satisfied with
something that you don't have you
imagine yourself with other things you
don't necessarily have any control over
and you're stuck in a loop circling the
drain until you die this loop is called
neurosis and sorry it can't be fixed
only avoided
desire is characteristic of subjects
which are never complete desire is
always a part of you but always points
outside elsewhere to things you don't
yet have so what is not you is a part of
you even right now you will often hear
incredulity when some celebrity kills
themselves the news story goes something
like why'd they do it they had
everything anyone could want fame
fortune family what is it they didn't
have well they wanted to be themselves
and gave up trying there's always
something more to want and that's the
nature of desire
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now here's the tragic point at the heart
of jacques lacan theory of subjectivity
you can never be yourself a part of
yourself qua subject is absent elsewhere
elusive yet there is a ton of societal
pressure to be true to yourself
this constant messaging everything from
kids movies yourself to advertising to
music how am I not myself now I'd say
it's pretty common knowledge that the
media spectacle is with your head it is
where characters celebrities influencers
and us try to exhibit how good we are at
being ourselves I'm going to spend the
rest of this video trying to explain
which part of your mind is getting
caught with within visual based media
the theme of this series you must appeal
to categories which are easily
represented in visual form Beauty
Fitness fashion and you know lifestyle
where you exhibit your images of wealth
popularity or your personal enjoyment
these in turn become the projections or
the desires of those who see them be
influenced in Lacanian analysis this is
called the imaginary Lacan is among the
most difficult theorists to understand
and I'm gonna have to you know speed up
a lot skip a lot if I'm gonna get this
video done but stay with me in the
Canyon psychoanalysis there are three
registers of experience the imaginary
the symbolic and the real the imaginary
is constituted by identity and images
and it's the least mediated register of
experience it's not called the imaginary
because it's pretend or make-believe but
rather because it's image based so for
example dreams are mostly made up of
images second we have the symbolic
register of language and science where
identities are not only themselves but
also defer to other meanings and the
real well
[ __ ] the reel is kind of the absent
source of the whole rest of this triadic
subjective apparatus but it will really
mess you up when it enters experience it
is the unmediated and you spend the
whole of your lights avoiding it because
encountering it means you temporarily
blow the rest of the system up which it
makes it really hard to live until you
can piece it back together this is the
source of anxiety transference and every
other neurotic adaptation
it was nietzsche who said the abyss
stares back at you and that would be
equivalent to the real now i'm currently
not in the mood for a mental breakdown
today so let's just avoid the real well
that's what most of living is and set
our sights instead on the imaginary the
imaginary is image based you can see
that word in there it's not visual as in
a sense of sight and light per se
although that is this closest correlate
if you want an analogy the function of
influencers or celebrities in our media
ecology is to create an imaginary
ultimately available for purchase I have
done some content on that in terms of
the spectacle as a social construct but
here we are talking about your mind and
how you respond to and internalize this
spectacle desire makes a return here and
moves around through this visual
vocabulary projecting your future self
which is called your ideal eye into this
world of images your ideal eye is
ultimately a fiction however you are
looking at your future self as if you
were someone else's gaze wanting to be
seen in the imaginary the same way you
see others celebrities mainly and you
see this when kids are you know singing
in front of the mirror or celebrating
after scoring even if they're shooting
hoops alone early in life your fictional
self is aligned with the fictions of the
imaginary including this imaginary crowd
according to psychoanalysis you're not a
subject when you're born babies don't
want things like fulfillment or status
because they can't yet signify in
abstractions similarly this is why
animals are not subjects in the Lacanian
sense you have to learn through images
and language and social interactions
what to desire for like all there is a
point when you're a toddler called the
mirror stage one of his most famous
terms simply put this is a moment when
you recognize the reflection in the
mirror as yourself as a two or three
year old seems rather innocuous right
not for lacan the mere stage is a
fundamental but tragic moment that is
the root cause of all the anxiety you
experience for the rest of your life now
anxiety in psychoanalysis is not
something like anxiety disorder it's not
that kind of diagnosis anxiety is a
general and fundamental symptom of just
being a subject in particular because
you can never actually get what you want
anxiety in that sense is normal
especially in a cultural imaginary
that's endlessly telling you to be
yourself so why is this moment such a
big deal
well something happens in the mirror
stage for the first time you see
yourself in the reflection as an object
remember how you are always desiring
things objects don't desire so now as an
infant you have an externalized image of
yourself as an object alongside all the
other objects that make up your world
blankets balls bottles and so on yeah
you also have an internal experience
that is diametrically opposed to this
objectivity or apparent objectivity
objects are constituted by the parts
that make them up while subjects are
constituted by desire which is an object
that doesn't make them up you aren't
like other objects because of desire
objects are objects because they don't
desire and desire is always directed
outside then not you is a fundamental
part of you so you qua subject are
caught up in an irreconcilable paradox
you see and imagine yourself as an
object yet you can never be an
object and this is the moment of the
mirror stage it's a fundamental
misrecognition or what in French is a
mechonis all's I miss knowing you'll be
stuck in from then on prior to the
mirror stage you are scattered
throughout various sensory elements your
hands your feet your voice yet none of
them condense into a single unity now in
the mirror stage the reflection in the
mirror creates an imaginary an image
based unity a form with a clearly
defined outline that you call yourself
we are never in fact ourselves but a
loose arrangement of inside outside self
desire and of subject and object one of
the most extreme symptoms of object
misrecognition for Lacan is when you
attach sexual desire to objects for
example of a man having a sexual fetish
for women's shoes he has transferred
desire sexual desire onto an object now
this initial misrecognition all happens
before we even acquire language then
when we do acquire language the problem
gets even worse it's compounded we
learned the word I I put yourself in a
sentence alongside all other signifiers
blanket ball bottle and this reinforces
that original make common sense because
now you are signifying yourself just as
you signify any other object but
yourself is not fixed because your
desires a part of you and yet always
outside of you the eye that you utter
can never fully signify your ideal eye
now we are entering the symbolic
register which defines some of lakhan's
play to work because you're a subject
you're never just yourself yourself is
caught up in this outside world
but you want to be yourself you desire
that because it would mean the end of
your anxiety now the notion of stable
ego presupposes incorrectly that there
are fixed consciousnesses from which
social arrangements emerge Lacan does
hold out a limited sense of individual
subjectivity in the uniqueness of egos
as there's a pattern of continuity but
there's not an independent subject with
particular agency that can be properly
signified the important point is that
this form the ideal eye in the mirror
situates the agency of the ego before
its social determination in a fictional
direction which will always remain
irreducible for the individual your unit
is a fiction and this fiction is
constructed during the mirror stage and
then through linguistic acquisition both
very early in life the rest of your life
is spent tragically trying to become
this I this is the reason it's so
difficult to be happy with what you are
and what you have at a moment and why we
continuously project into the future the
imaginary in psychoanalysis is about
identities identities are enclosed
boundaries or what ancient philosophers
like Aristotle would have called forms
now forms are complete they have names
they might be made up of parts but they
become one thing an image thing now
finally here's where this cashes out in
the visual based social media
influencers are Mis recognized as
objects in the same way you miss
recognize yourself as an object in the
mirror stage they are anxious subjects
trying to be themselves and in trying to
turn themselves into objects they need
to be seen as complete unities alongside
other objects
they aren't desiring to be seen is the
desire to be complete because you become
an object in another's eyes Lacan draws
on sart's phenomenology in his concept
of the gaze but extends it to show that
the function of the gaze is to
externally construct yourself as if
someone was looking at you from the
outside remember the kids in front of
the imaginary crowd that imaginary crowd
is who is watching you but no one's
actually watching you the gaze of others
is a projection that makes up you as a
subject as another failed attempt to
turn yourself into one complete thing
make sense no well think of it this way
we believe that things exist because we
see them so wanting others to see us is
a way of existing and thereby curbing
that anxiety but the desire in this
arrangement of being seen originates in
you because you don't experience others
desires others are part of you from the
mirror stage onward now social media
makes this desire concrete as to never
been done before being seen becomes
quantified in the number of likes and
views you can seduce from the massive
subscribe unfortunately you're never
seen because the imaginary crowd is in
you it's not out there the extreme
example of this is the paranoiac and the
paranoiac believes everyone's watching
him all the time even though this isn't
the case they have transferred the
imaginary crowd in their minds into
their actual experience it is your image
that is seen ultimately a body double
that you know deep down is not you that
double which is your profile pic the
gallery of images or whatever can never
be you because it doesn't have the
desire that makes you you and desire
can't be made into an image it's a
formless object with a reference that's
always fluctuating and moves immediately
when you acquire whatever it was that
you were just desiring now realizing
that your online image is not you you
want to make it the you that you desire
to be so adventurous well-liked
attractive and most importantly seen as
desirable by others now look at the
tragic logic here your desire is what
makes you incomplete yet you desire the
desire of others which is what makes
them incomplete or again desire is the
emptiness at the center of subjects it's
the lack of completeness that makes us
need things like relationships careers
lifestyles or whatever we designate
ourselves as missing so what you're
really wanting from other people is a
missing substance and negation and an
absence in others in order to fill the
absence in you this will obviously never
solve the fundamental problem in
yourself and can never be resolved the
gaze of no one in particular the
imaginary crowd is what you have already
projected into yourself since the mirror
stage so your media image is now the
mirror of a mirror now everyone has the
media technologies to try and complete
themselves like celebrities and
newsflash it's not working this is why
the loop is never ending it's orbiting
the event horizon of an interminable
fundamental lack at the center of
subjectivity itself and this is what
keeps instagrams society of spectacle
going there's always more desire to be
accrued always more virtual images to
post always an excess of desire it's a
problem without a solution which is what
makes it profitable and people will keep
buying into it
Lakai gives us sort of a rubric to
understand the function of the image and
the formed in online environments where
both the imaginary and desire run
rampant and unchecked the spectacle
offers temporary fixes for what is the
problem of being subjects and that's not
to say there's a solution however but it
seems to me like crafting a lifestyle
based on the most superficial desires
namely clothes becoming thin or getting
rich is the most unlikely we
to success damn that was heavy and in
plastic bills this is the third video in
my images of postmodernism series which
uses the books a cream and the four
fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis
by Lacombe
now I've barely scratched the surface
with either of these texts believe me
not even close but most of all I've been
doing on this channel are introductions
to concepts and then like pertinent
applications from the popular imaginary
this one is probably the most
theoretically demanding so far so please
hit the comments section if you think it
was effective or successful and these
imaginary buttons around me if you like
what I'm doing especially this one don't
end obese patch up how am I not myself