A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

— Oscar Wilde

 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

— Edgar Allan Poe

 

I include the citation on utopia from the writer and wit, Oscar Wilde, because the horizon of my project is the creative design of the Pervert’s playhouse. My critique of the extant system facilitates the imagination of an alternative future of the tout autre. This messiah will arrive as the deferred not-yet goal of the aim(less) will of the über-man’s Trieb. Wilde resists an explicit description of utopia. The happy utopic future cannot be identified in the mire of the present. Utopia is a stand-in or a prop-for the Something is Missing in the system on the map of the world. Freud presents the woman’s castration as the proviso of the man’s presence and positivity.  But this castration is also origin of the narcissistic and anxious protection of man’s private property of the penis. Wilde suggests that utopia can be viewed as the Something is Missing in a system of which it is already included. The Something is Missing is simultaneously the Everything is Alive.

 

Theoretically and practically, utopia is a paradoxical absence of the Nothing is Missing. The absence of utopia disappears upon its presence. The parallactic trick is that this utopia of Nothing is Missing is coincident and continuous with the Something is Present of the system of $-ism. Man’s dystopia is always already utopia, capitalism is always already communism, and $-ism is always already the future. This Unreasonable parallactic logic indexes the strict utopic transcendence of any metaphysics of presence. Utopia can only be a tout autre — unthematized — of the future in the present. Utopia is a messianism of the present. But why are the neurotic subjects of $-ism blind to this coincidence and the overlap between past and present and future?

 

Utopia beckons from a future which will only retroactively (Freud’s Nachträglichkeit and Lacan’s après-coup) become present in a future which emerges after utopia. The contemporary moment is a present suspension of past and future in which the superposition is a parallactic overlap of dystopia and utopia, and capitalism and communism. Wilde says that a map of the world without utopia is not worth a glance. A map of the world must include the place of utopia — why? Otherwise, the land mass of the world would be fixed, eternal, and stable in an economy of Something is Missing. Utopia is the constitutive absent center of a fallen world. The Pervert and his future are present in their absence amidst the proviso of the deferred arrival of this utopia. I am already writing utopia, and you have already read this book.

 

The paradox is that the world and its map can only imagine an absence of this absolute presence. The world is structured by a Something is Missing of adulthood rather than the Nothing is Missing of childhood — in which Everything is Alive. This book shows that this utopia is present even in its absence. As Wilde says, man is always “landing” at utopia. I show the parallactic coincidence between $-ism and perverse futurity, between neurotic and Pervert, between Something is Missing and Nothing is Missing, and between capitalism and communism. Humanity lands at the utopia of the future in the present of this utopia. Spatially, man is where he is not. Temporally, man is when he is not. Life is here, in space, where it is not. Life is when, in time, when it is not. Man is dislocated and decentered in space and time. The self is where it is except in its space. The self is when it is except in its time. Man is the Outside of space, and he is the Outside of time. The horizon of this work is to show that space and time are split. In an expansive universe, space displaces and dislocates in spatiality, and time disorients and decenters in temporality.

 

Any dream — including the Pervert’s dream of $-ism — is situated by a vision. Freud suggests that this contextualized perspective is desire. The dream represents a wish, and the fanciful manifest details of the dream belie a repressed desire. Poe defines a dream as singular and exclusive. The unexpected image of the dream is select and unique, but it is not necessarily an effect of the subjectivity — psychology, history, experience, and so on — of the individual dreamer. The dream — of $-ism — is durable, and the dream unfolds over a period of time in which it gestates in its unedited originality. Dreaming consists of fear and wonder, and it exceeds the thinking, being, and living of humanity. Poe’s description of the dream articulates the loneliness of dreaming, and it displays the preternatural aesthetic of its inventions.

 

The accident of desire which enframes and enables the pursuit of pure drive facilitates the writing of this Manifesto. This book is the survivor of my encounter with the fantasy of a missed encounter. The Real emerges from this imaginary capitation in the whims of desire and its endless pursuit of its object. The book’s object of desire is a symbolization which occurred to me in a dream. The origin of my efforts is the dream-work — of the work of translation from latent to manifest and to their obverse. The symbol which revealed itself to me in my dream is: “$-ism.” It was only later that I was able to reconstruct the symbol and provide its latent truth. The symbol appeared in a dream. The unconscious is the field without negation, knowledge, or temporality. The symbol manifested in my unconscious with a latent significance of which psychoanalysis is the privileged model to advance the interpretation. According to Freud, the “dream-censor” veils the latent truth (wish, desire) of the dream through the dream-work (condensation, displacement, secondary revision, considerations of representability). The labor of the unconscious disguises the desire which is manifest in the dream. Upon waking, the dreamer only remembers the profoundly opaque. The mnemic traces of the dream present like a mystery which requirs a decipherment that only the other can provide. Why?

 

The transference to an other is necessary for the significance of the symptom to make sense to the subject of the latent dream thoughts. The source of meaning and the arche of the dream are other than the subject. Unexpectedly, the shadow of the Other casts an illumination for the subject which opens the dream for this subject. The dream is authored by the Other. I did not dream my own dream. The dream is lost to the dreamer. It requires the presence of the analyst and the invariable resistance from the analysand in order to uncover its mystery and to reveal its truth. The patient’s resistance to analytic work is internal to the process of interpretation. The work of analysis is to reverse the work of translation which is performed by the dream-work. Analytic interpretation is simply the rewind of the dream-work itself. The work of analysis on the level of the conscious (system of the ego) deploys the same tricks as the work of the dream-work on the level of the unconscious (primary process). The conscious and the unconscious are isomorphic in structure. If your dream is crazy, then your analyst is crazy, too. In any case, this “dream-work” and “dream-interpretation,” as Freud deems them, are simultaneously organized by the censor, in both directions.

 

The Wish of $-ism

 

Against the Logic of Identity (A = A) which posits a simple equivalence or mirror speculation between any word and “itself,” Freud’s work illuminates the “Logic of Sameness+,” as I put it, of the signifiers in question. As deviant from “itself,” the system of the conscious is fundamentally alienated from its “own” identity. Like the displacements and condensations of the dream-work, the identity of the various agencies which comprise the psychical apparatus is otherwise than “itself.” The conscious is not the property of the conscious. The penis is not the property of the man. Similarly, the unconscious is not “itself.” From the perspective of the ego, the unconscious as a concept in theory and practice is torn from its own identity within, out, near, far, and so on a negativity. Saussure describes this negativity as “pure difference” in his discussion of the value which is generated by the signifier. This “Hot Not,” as I call it, opens the unconscious as a traumatic Real to an Outside. This other-space is the system of the conscious and the secondary process that otherwise maintains a prohibition against any imbrication — Lacan uses the word, “extimacy” — with its other. Strangely, the conscious discourse of the analyst in his interpretation is not “itself.” Rather, analytic interpretation is coincident with and equivalent to — Same+ as — the unconscious discourse of the dream-work. The dream-interpretation is always already the dream-work.

 

The analyst speaks the language of Unreason. This is the parallactic overlap between systems Cs. and Unc. These (Un)Reasonable efforts are antagonistic perspectives on the “one” and the “same” object of the dream: “itself.” Abruptly, the interpretation is a dream, and the dream is an interpretation. The dream must seek its latent significance in a place otherwise than itself. The dream is situated in the place of the analyst. The patient’s dream dreams the psychoanalyst. The psychoanalysis is, as Freud says of the dream, a fulfillment of a wish. This is also the reason that the transference must emerge in order for the latent wish of the dream to be exposed. Lacan’s famous quip that “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other” reveals its significance: the latent is in its “same place,” as he says of the Real, as a substitution of the manifest. The doctor’s analysis is part of the dream.

 

Against the Logic of Identity, the interpretation of the dream is the dream “itself.” Oddly, the interpretation is a dream. Astonishingly, the unconscious is the conscious. Coincidence between the opposed words is possible because each locution is deviant from itself. The “conscious” and the “unconscious” are torn internally by an other and an outside which dispossess and decenter each identity from “itself.” The mechanisms of the dream-work (displacement and condensation) rupture the identity of each signifier as otherwise than “itself.” This is the bizarre delusion of the “Real Signifier,” as I call it. In the absence of the dream-work and the logic of unconscious processes, this profound extimacy would be invisible to the observer. The dream illuminates the Unreason of the discourse of Reason itself.

 

As part of my own analysis, I submit dreams to my analyst for collaborative interpretation, using the technique of “free association” to uncover the latent wish of the symptom. The subterranean truth of the unconscious is a desire which is prohibited from an expression in the conscious except in its covert form. Why was the symbol of $-ism barred from access to the conscious system? The unconscious latent wish threatens the ego. This is the reason that its content is unconscious. The reason that the wish is veiled in the peculiar form of the symptom is that it wishes to avoid the system (s). The repression of the Cs. system is the proviso of the desire of the dream. The law is the condition of desire. What wish was satisfied in this novel textualization, “$-ism”? My conscious recall of the dream is the presentation of the symbol $-ism in block black letters against an improbably black background pulsating like a 3-D image. Symptoms dream in pictures. This image must satisfy a wish (truth, desire) of my unconscious. What is this wish?

 

The first suggestion that I proposed is that I desire symbolization itself. The “concerted human action” of Praxis, as Lacan puts it, seeks to symbolize the resistant — unspeakable and unwriteable — Real by the function of the symbolic and the set of signifiers in the system. Praxis is the horizon of the devastating interventions of the Real. I wish to write — like this — we decided. I want to textualize in the Freudian “considerations of representability” an indecipherable symbol which is itself indistinguishable from its background. This background is the proviso of the groundless abyss of its emergence. The symbol of $-ism in block black letters against an equally black background offers a clue to its significance. The symbol itself ($-ism) is continuous with the system and the mise-en-scène in which it is embedded.

 

However, in the dream — a fulfillment of a wish, as Freud claims — the symbol of $-ism as such was visible to me despite its shared color with the background. I could decipher the symbol as such, even if its content remained a mystery to me because it pulsated. What pulsated was the symbol’s blossoming from the black background to the foreground in block black letters. This jouissance animated the symbol. The symbol ($-ism) enjoyed its manifestation as a symbol apart from the context in which it was formerly indistinguishable. The symbol ($-ism) had a wish: the desire to be written. However, if the symbol’s desire is to be textualized, then it must not in fact be a symbol. The symbol is not a symbol. The symbol is not “itself.” The symbol ($-ism) is otherwise than “itself” because of its submission to the mechanisms of the dream-work of condensation and displacement. What is a symbol? My approach to the shakings and quiverings of $-ism missed the encounter. I needed to return to the object which was masked by the imaginary fantasy of the mise-en-scène.

 

In my analysis of the dream of $-ism, I concluded without certainty that the nonsymbol $-ism wished the enjoyment of isolation apart from the system with which it was continuous. My own missed encounter with the nonsymbol qua symbol was itself indicative of my own wish to symbolize $-ism. $-ism appeared as the Real around which the speaking and writing of $-ism was to be performed in the judders of my enjoyable Praxis and symbolization of the Real. The nonsymbol’s wish for textualization indicated a (my) desire to treat the Real by the symbolic. The symbol represented my own desire: to write the Real.

 

The expression of the Real by the function of the symbol can only avoid the lures and temptations of the fantasmatic imaginary in the event that the desire transforms into drive. The wish must transition toward a subjective orientation which comes to enjoy the wanders about a resistant object “qua” Real. Freud submits an insight into the object of desire as it slips beyond itself when he mentions the “navel” of the dream — “the spot where it reaches down into the unknown.” From the perspective of drive, the reach down — Fort! Da! — toward this “navel” misses the object. The fleeting object is the écriture of the nonsymbol of $-ism. The object flees in the eternal return of the drive’s infinite encirclement of the object qua Real. This Real resists representation absolutely. The modus operandi of the Real is the disruption of the regulations and constraints of the pleasure principle of the system (s). Peculiarly, my wish to write the nonsymbol of $-ism is a désir which transforms into Trieb in the dream itself because the symbol is a nonsymbol. The dream of $-ism coincides with the pulsations of enjoyment of the nonsymbol qua symbol. What, then, is the wish?

 

The wish is to return the textualization of the nonsymbol of the Real to the background, the system, and the context from which $-ism emerged in its jouissance. My desire is for a perverse approach to $-ism. My désir (Trieb) wants to return the disavowed in the symbolic of $-ism. $-ism is a nonsymbol of the Real which enjoys its prohibited representation in the dream. From return, but to where? — to the Real of the disruptions in the system from which it is indistinguishable except for its enjoyment. The coincidence between the symbol and the system from which it emanates is written as: s = $-ism. This is precisely the simultaneous overlap of the mutually antagonistic viewpoints on the “one” and the “same” split parallactic object. The system (s) — our system in the West — is the $-ism — our system in the West. The desire for a perverse approach to $-ism is instructive. As it turns out, the Pervert animates a future selfhood and sociality which will make this system (s) intelligible and destructible. The manifest form of the symptom shrouds the latent truth. Manifest representations color the peculiar écriture of $-ism.

 

This perverse desire to write the system (s) as the $-ism is a peculiar wish because the Pervert’s desire is no ordinary desire. The Pervert seeks jouissance in drive rather than lack in desire. This is a division that Trieb itself suspends in its aimless wander. The shift between desire and drive is crucial to the project of the Becoming of the Pervert. Rather than the neurotic’s repression or the psychotic’s foreclosure, the Pervert ventures toward a disavowal. This disavowal can be described as a system of both the perverse both/and economy and the schizoid neither/nor structure but neither — The Pervert’s both/and energizes the dream-work of the primary process. It scrambles the logical relations that otherwise dominate the secondary process of the hard-and-fast division between words. Why? — because each object is mismatched as “itself.” The schizoid’s neither/nor horizonal process quietly puts aside the present options in a hopeful passion for a tout autre. What does my wish to return $-ism to the Real to which it was always a constitutive part except for its enjoyment indicate about $-ism itself? What is a nonsymbol of the Real whose resistance to symbolization is prohibited except through its jouissance? What is unalloyed ecstasy? — precisely, the subject who is dominated by the painful and orgasmic Real of the Other. The Pervert affirmatively gestures toward the Woman’s experiments in thinking, being, and living the future. My interpretation of the dream concluded that the nonsymbol of $-ism symbolized itself — from Real to symbolic — in the ecstatic and disruptive pulsations of its enjoyment. The jouissance of $-ism is its fundamental essence. $-ism is an essential construction which exceeds the contours of $-ism “itself.” Who, then, is $-ism? Freud (1900) offers a clue to its interpretation:

Whenever my own ego does not appear in the content of the dream, but only some extraneous person, I may safely assume that my own ego lies concealed, by identification, behind this other person.

The enjoyment of $-ism was my own Other jouissance. The future work of the writing of the Real is my means of a radical, rebellious, and even obstreperous jouissance of an Other. This Other-Me enjoys the Real in my-her place as a substitution — a metonymic displacement and metaphorical condensation. As alienated from my désir, the master signifier pulsates in its enjoyment in the place of the Other. But what is the place of the Other?

 

Try this:

http://www.google.com

 

$-ism as the Object of Drive

 

The project of this Manifesto is to write a nonsymbol by enjoyably wandering around the object of my drive — $-ism. The success of this Trieb will be decided between us, the author and the reader, of this Manifesto. $-ism is coincident and continuous with the Real from which it emerged in the dream. My effort at Praxis is made possible by the secondary revision and the considerations of representability of the dream-work and the analysis-work. The ego-structures of discourse — syntax and semantics — make the otherwise dreamy incoherence of Unreason a Reasonable book with logical relations and chronological succession. Unreason is Reasonable. Crazy talk is internal to ego discourse. Freud (1900) writes: “an analysis only gives us the content of a thought and leaves it up to us to determine its reality.” Freud’s point would be that the symbolic efficacy or “reality” of my writing $-ism is the Same+ as the Real from which it separates only in jouissance. A writing of the Real is the delirium of an ecstasy of symbolization. This simultaneous (in)coincidence between écriture et jouissance will be determined by fantasy — what Freud describes as “up to us” between egos in the imaginary register. The Trieb beyond the pleasure principle as I wander about in my witty way is my object. It is experienced as a present absence (drive) rather than an absent presence (desire). But what’s the difference?

 

I hope to resist the fantasmatic lures and the manipulative temptations of the imaginary in the mise-en-scène of desire. However, the success of my écriture of the Real is “up to us,” as Freud says. It is determined by these lures and temptations which obstruct drive and reduce it to desire. This explains the vibrations in the dream: $-ism is the signifier of enjoyment rather than the index of desire. $-ism articulates the wish in question: to avoid the accidental desire which upsets the drive of the Other jouissance. Beyond analysis is the fate of the symbolic function: to write the Real and to destabilize the homeostasis — convention and rule — of the symbolic order. The shudders of $-ism in the dream demonstrate that it is a revolutionary enjoyment which needs to be written. The Pervert is the character in this screenplay who flirts with the underground of jouissance. This Other-Pleasure is beyond lack and castration. The Perverts make jokes at the expense of scarcity and supply/demand. They laugh at the frustrations of desire. These generalized aporetics of desire are common to all forms of neurosis. How do you make a Pervert out of a neurotic? How do you make communism out of capitalism? You don’t just fucking write for God’s sake. You get your own fucking movie deal.

 

The dream wishes to substitute the imaginary symbol of the system with the Real nonsymbol of the disorder of the current system. I desire drive. I desire the minor but vast parallactic interval between the “one” and the “same” object. This Real terrorizes the Logic of Identity and the self-sameness and the self-identity of the field of objects and words in the order of the world. This task involves the textualization of the Real in Praxis without capture by the imaginary function of the mirror. The strategy is to avoid the lures of the imaginary and to evade the temptations of the fantasy. This playful effort avoids desire itself and focuses on the drive of an aim(less) stroll with(out) detours. These circuitous routes traverse missed encounters with the various authors and the multitude of concepts which populate The Pervert’s Manifesto. As a Pervert, this jouissance inspires the wanders of the object as Real in the textualizations which comprise the essence of this project. The essence of Trieb is the impossible enterprise to symbolize the Real in its disruption of the symbolic order. This programme must entertain all modalities of écriture in form and content. The project includes the most antithetical and contrary of representational styles and symbolic techniques. I also want to illuminate the simultaneous (non)coincidence between the s of system and its underside in $-ism. If the system is the $-ism, if the unbarred s of the system is the same as the barred $ of the latent truth of the manifest form of the symbolic order itself, then the truth of this constitutive and parallactic overlap must be elaborated from within the system (s) which obscures it. The only mode of analysis is the mimicry of the primary process or the dream-work whose tortured revisions in condensation and displacement illuminate the detours or defiles through which the truth passes into the luminescence of waking life. As Freud (1900) puts it: “Each train of thought is almost invariably accompanied by its contradictory counterpart, linked with it by its antithetical association.” My work is to forge the link between the different levels and to explicate the $-ism at the center of the system (s). The construction of essence is the return of the Real to Sameness+. My project returns to the Real in order to make sense of the signifier and ourselves. We, and the signifier, are otherwise the province of the system of the symbolic order.