Pill Pod 220 - Lacan's Subject: The Other of Language (exclusive)
Added 2025-08-15 19:20:09 +0000 UTCWe wanted to review some Lacan because everybody be desirin, and Bruce Fink's Lacanian Subject (1995) is quite often touted as the best unofficial intro, and it is easy to see why. We tried to talk about the book without referencing direct page numbers so it's recommended but not required reading. As always, let me know how it hits!
This is the book: https://amzn.to/4oubPxQ
Comments
go Eric!
Zachary Manenti
2025-11-11 16:27:41 +0000 UTCAI obviously is not ‘alive’ nor does it have an uncs…. diff between code and language… but unstable ppl could be pulled in to believing there’s no diff. I wonder what is precisely meant by ‘responsibility’ in this context?
Zachary Manenti
2025-09-14 19:54:46 +0000 UTCReally, really glad the Pod hasn't abandoned theory episodes like this, and hell fucking yeah we want more Lacan please. If y'all are thinking of maybe interviewing anyone for this series, I hope you'd consider Isabel Millar, who wrote The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence, definitely some great topical shit rn. Also, Chomsky can't be taken seriously by any serious political radical: the guy preaches anarchism and yet keeps telling everyone to vote Dem. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-chomsky-nod Besides how his dismissal of Lacan is pure cope. ALSO, if anyone is looking for a short intro to Lacan, I really recommend Callum Neil's Jacques Lacan: The Basics, just 100 pages and I think for the length it gives a good general, BASIC idea of Lacanian theory. Pills content and other over the years has definitely helped me make more sense of it generally too. Also @pills in this book I feel like he totally ripped off your black hole metaphor from your Real video.
anacidcommie
2025-08-21 17:48:57 +0000 UTCPlease for the love of god please get to ChatGPT psychosis
Stian van Wyk
2025-08-20 15:55:35 +0000 UTCZupancic just today contributed a guest essay to the Zizek substack about the Lacanian subject, AI, and Gaza. I found it to be very relevant to where this episode's discussion was heading.
Joel Martin
2025-08-16 16:07:30 +0000 UTCThis episode has crystalized lacan, at least on a particular point, in a very accessible way. Than you Chat-PillPodT 41:00 nobody badmouths my bran flakes!! Fiber for days! 39:00 strawberries as steaighfhfhg and green as gru gru gru. When I was a kid I would call my sister Meghan "e-e" and yeah, I only continued calling her that because she responded to it. Once I realized logically that her name was Meghan, then the ruse was up, and it could only be employed ironically. Tim Heidecker as a guest on a PillPod Theory of Comedy (31:00) would be top notch lol. Idk from this perspective a episode as human as Other discourse if you will would be very interesting, particularly looking at this moment in comedy and how comedy has certainly changed, and to see when it leads or lags everyday discourse, when is it the horse and when is it the cart. Feels a lot like the cart rn. My initial affect circa 5:00 Erik summarizing of Lacans foray into cybernetics talking about when one door closes another one opens, is Richie Aprile in the sopranos constantly evoking this phrase and always attributing it to The Tao, only to eventually have his embodied door closed very permanently lol. 19:00 pills really laid out the and to paraphrase, just marking the approx time of a passage I liked, "why should you potentially care vis a vis do we just assemble random things in our dreams and if so, are we doing the same thing when awake" was very well crystalized. The idea of the sampling of multiple influential discourses, each with its own sphere, its own refrain. 13:00 "lacan is still interesting as long as there are still people around worth analyzing" this a head nod to people just reproducing the algorithmic code they consume, i.e. not much to analyze, just puppetry. Erik around 54:00 brought to mind spinal catastrophe or whatever that book was, the notion of sedimentation in the fact of something happening 30 years ago not just being a fleeting memory but part of the fabricated ground we stand on. 59:00 because I'll never miss an opportunity, Victor talking bout unconsciousness always brings Mind Consciousness (what we are concious about at the moment) and Store Consciousness (pretty much the equivalent of all discourses we have ever come in contact with that then become possibilities for us), of the metaphor that inevitably anything can spring from store consciousness into mind consciousness, but that through mindfulness we can exert our will of water those seeds of store consciousness that provide nourishmemt, and not those that cause suffering, as determined by single pointed mindfulness, care and attention to most of what we do by a certain age, which is a habit or a discourse that we look back upon and really for the first time question as "where did you come from?"
ageOfBumFires
2025-08-16 13:10:40 +0000 UTCIncredible, start a podcast!
JN
2025-08-16 11:43:27 +0000 UTCThere's a bit in "Surplus Enjoyment" where Zizek talks about the difference between psychoanalysis and falsifiable sciences and how the subject is excluded. If a blot of ink can look like my parents fighting maybe randomness is just meaning we haven't incorporated into a narrative.
Thomas Brereton
2025-08-16 09:03:37 +0000 UTC
