Culture and the City as Object a
Culture and The City as Object a
If one extends the definition of Lacan’s object a to abstraction, one may fuse multiple explanations of how to reach enlightenment. It brings together Freud’s concept of the death drive and its ensuing redefinition as the knowledge drive, Derrida’s différance or the general notion of dissonance, Buddhist interpretations of the enso, and mathematical properties of zero. Though Lacan describes object a as occupying a place in a person’s body, it need not be a tangible nor clearly definable thing. We may extend our use of this concept in studying ourselves and literature in the hope to find a way toward enlightenment as Joan Copjec does in “The Tomb of Perseverance: On Antigone.” Though we cannot reach enlightenment within our mortal lives, reaching enlightenment beyond mortality cannot be confused with a realization through death. Instead, we must circle something repeatedly during our lives, constantly getting closer to its core, but always remaining satisfyingly unsettled. When this object a we circle becomes the very space and culture in which we live, there is constant stimuli and anticipation for the next lap toward enlightenment.
I often hear my ex-patriot friends proclaim that they “could never really go back.” There is nothing wrong with home. On the contrary, visits home are some of the best times of year—seeing old friends, visiting familiar places, and feeling completely at ease. However, the idea of moving home is frightening. Even if home is Barcelona or Melbourne, the cities seem “boring” and their friends “just don’t understand” them anymore. Perhaps a fast-changing, multicultural city like New York, or especially Hong Kong, has an edge in drawing people home by allowing for frequent cultural and spatial change within the city. The cities are ideal for ex-patriots who seek change after leaving home without actually moving again.
In a recent Economist issue, an article entitled “Being Foreign” discusses the need for some artists to be engulfed in a foreign culture and city in order to effectively create. As example, one could examine the group of ex-patriot writers in Paris in the early twentieth century. Writers like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald held both French culture and Paris itself as their object a’s. While there was some writing going on about Paris as a goal of understanding, such as Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, it was rather the effects of energy changes within each author that allowed for creative forces leading to some realization of immortality.
In order to explore how this functions, let us take Joyce as an example. After leaving Dublin, he never returned to his homeland. Perhaps he was afraid to upset the energy shifts he had achieved upon arrival on Europe’s mainland. Without going into specific biographical events, we can understand his rise as a literary genius through this physical act. Upon moving to Paris, Joyce is immediately immersed in French language and culture, along with the space of Paris itself. As he walks the streets, occupies cafés, reads local newspapers, listens to French radio, goes to art galleries, and observes fashions, he becomes closer and closer to understanding French culture and Paris. However, he will never be able to feel as if he is a part of the space nor will he ever speak French like a native. Joyce experiences dissonance as a vibration of his known space and culture in Dublin with those of Paris. The tension is the same as is described in Derrida’s “Différance” and also similar to the space between a veil and a woman that contains her identity in William Egginton’s “Sexual Differences and the Ethics of Duplicity.” The frictions between the known and the unknown create energy, mimicking physics’ definition of friction. As Joyce circles around Paris and French culture, he becomes closer and closer to an understanding. His circle becomes smaller and tighter, therefore twirling faster like a figure skater’s perfect spin. The feeling is euphoric. He seems to be driving toward nothingness in the intersection of cultures and spaces, namely in the form of the death drive. He consumes and creates energy at great speed and is therefore able to create art at the highest level possible. Therefore, the death drive becomes a knowledge drive as his work reveals more knowledge now not about Paris, but about Dublin. Joyce reaches deep into his being to form an understanding of his homeland like no one has before, creating Dubliners, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake to become one of the most read and talked about authors ever to live. Through the creation of these works, object a has lead to both a feeling of nothingness and complete understanding, and that understanding has explored the entire life cycle through literature. The shape of Joyce’s energetic circular motion also mimics the aesthetics and function of a Buddhist enso. The enso’s round brush stroke is the cycle of life, the moon, the sun, everything, and nothing all in one. It therefore links him with the enlightened Buddha, but can he become immortal?
It would be easy to assume that Joyce reaches a version of immortality through the texts he has created. They have endured to reach multiple printings and translations and may be found in nearly every library or bookstore. Some have placed Ulysses as the best book of all time. Is it a transferal of knowledge from Joyce to book to reader that allows him to live on? While this does allow his thoughts to be remembered and rediscovered, it is instead the act of creating these texts that gives Joyce some form of immortality. Let us take the mathematical concept of zero to understand. Copjec mentions zero in connection to object a as a beginning to a “series of signifiers” (260). Zero physically resembles both the circling motion of object a and the enso, while also taking different qualities than the numbers or signifiers that follow. When we divide any number by zero, we have an undefined answer that approaches infinity. Paris and French culture cannot divide Joyce into different beings based on his cultural identities; instead it divides his energy toward infinity. As he creates literature, his energy is spread nearly infinitely, which makes him nearly reach immortality.
Similarly, as a native Bostonian, my creative urge has been re-realized through both living in Hong Kong and with my French husband, Philippe. Hong Kong already contains a clash of cultures within itself and has a frequently changing spatial representation. I learn from what I see and hear in my journeys through the city. I also learn from Philippe’s cultural differences and experience it while speaking in French, attempting to fully capture its idiosyncrasies. I will never fully understand Hong Kong nor Philippe, but that is what makes discovering more about each of these object a’s a rewarding energetic experience. Perhaps there are too many factors at play right now: French, Chinese, Hong Kong, East meets West, and even a recent flat move and the re-starting of graduate studies. However, as I discover a circling motion around one aspect of all this dissonance, I may produce the creative energies needed to write and discover through my internally produced knowledge drive.
Works Discussed
“Being Foreign,” The Economist. 19 Dec. 2009-1 Jan. 2010: 99-101.
Copjec, Joan. “The Tomb of Perseverance: On Antigone,” Giving Grounds. Ed. Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin. New York: Verso, 1999. Reproduced in University of Hong Kong CLIT 7010 Course Packet, 2010.
Derrida, Jacques. “Différance,” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1998. Print.
Egginton, William. “Sexual Difference and the Ethics of Duplicity,” Perversion and Ethics. Reproduced in University of Hong Kong CLIT 7010 Course Packet, 2010.