Industria y comercio

absolute Horror and destructive rage) - that is to say, where a set comes across itself within its own elements- is based on the possibility of reducing the structure of the set to a limit-case:

that of a set with one sole element: the element has to differ only from the

empty set, from the set which is nothing but the lack of the element itself (or from its place as such, or from the mark of its place- which amounts to saying that it is split). The element has to come out for the set to exist, it has to exclude itself, to except itself, to occur as deficient or in surplus.33

this logical space, the specific difference no longer functions as difference between the elements against the background of the set: it coincides with the difference between the set itself and its particular element-the set is positioned at the level as its elements, it operates as one of its own elements, as the element which "is" the absence itself, the element-lack is, as one knows from the fundamentals of set theory, each set ,(omprises as one of its elements the empty set). This paradox is

�,(ounded in the differential character of the signifier's set: as soon as one :,is dealing with a differential set, one has to comprise in the network of

�

differences the difference between an element and its own absence. In

;,�ther words, one has to consider as a part of the signifier its own absence

-\One has to posit the existence of a signifier which positivizes, "repre­

:sents", "gives body to" the very lack of the signifier- that is to say, coincides with the place of inscription of the signifier. This difference ,is in a way "self-reflective": the paradoxical, "impossible" yet necess­

·ary point at which the signifier differs not only from another (positive) 'signifier but from itself as signifier.

Abstract and nugatory as they may seem, these ruminations place us

;at the very heart of the Hegelian dialectics in which the universal genus bas only one particular species; in which the specific difference coin­

cides with the difference between the genus itself and its species. In the

:

beginning, one has the abstract Universal; one arrives at the Particular ,not by way of complementing it with its particular counterpart but by

·way of apprehending how the Universal is already in itself particular: it is not "all" -what escapes it (in so far as it is abstract, that is to say: in so far as one obtains it through the process of abstracting common features from a set of particular entities) is the Particular itself.

For this reason, the discord between the Universal and the Particular is constitutive: their encounter is always "missed" -the impetus of the dialectical process is precisely this "contradiction" between the Universal and its Particular. The Particular is always deficient and/or in excess with regard to its Universal: in excess, since it eludes the Universal; since the Universal- in so far as it is "abstract" -cannot encompass it; deficient, since - and this is the reverse of the same

predicament - there is never enough of the Particular to "fill out" the Universal frame. This discord between the Universal and the Particu­

lar would be "resolved" were it to attain the repose of the fortunate encounter, when the disjunction, the division of the universal genus into particular species, is exhaustive, when it is without remainder; yet the disjunction/division of a signifier's set is never exhaustive, there always remains an empty place occupied by the surplus element which is the set itsdf in the form of its opposite- that is, as empty set. This is how the signifying classification differs from the usual, commonsensi­

cal one: next to "normal" species, one always comes across a supple­

mentary species which holds the place of the genus itself.

This, then, is the basic paradox of the Lacanian logic of "non-all"

[pas-tout]: in order to transform a collection of particular elements into a consistent totality, one has to add (or to subtract, which amounts to the same thing: to posit as an exception) a paradoxical element which, in its very particularity, embodies the universality of the genus in the form of its opposite. To recall the Marxian example of royalism: the universal genus of"royalism" is totalized when one adds to it "repub­

licanism" as the immediate embodiment of royalism in general, as such - the universality of the "royalist" function presupposes the ex­

sistence of "at least one" which acts as exception. The radical conse­

quence of it is that the split, the division, is located on the side of the Universal, not on the side of the Particular. That is to say, contrary to the usual notion according to which the diversity of particular content introduces division, specific difference, into the neutral frame of the Universal, it is the Universal itself which is constituted by way of subtracting from a set some Particular designed to embody the Universal as such: the Universal arises- in Hegelese: it is posited as such, in its being-for-itself- in the act of radical split between the wealth of particular diversity and the element which, in the midst of it,

"gives body" to the Universal.

Therein consists the logic of sexual difference: the set of women is a particular, non-totalized, non-universal set; its multitude acquires the dimension of universality (that, precisely, of"humankind") as soon as one excludes from it an element which thereby embodies humankind as such: man. The opposition of man and woman is thus not symmetri­

cal: the genus of "man" has one species, woman. The universality of

"humankind" is not (logically) prior to the sexual difference, it is posited as such through the inscription of that difference. It is a commonplace of feminist theory to quote the ambiguity of the term

an" (human being as such, male or female; male) as a proof of the ale chauvinist" bias of our everyday language; what, however, one ally overlooks apropos of this ambiguity is the dialectical tension ween its two aspects: true, man qua male "gives body" to the .,,. 'versality of man qua human being - yet it does it in the fo m of its (as in Racine's Athalie, where God qua source of unspeakable or "gives body" to God qua Love and Beatitude) - in other precisely in so far as it immediately embodies humankind,

n qua male is radically, constitutively, more "inhuman" than

· '· man.34

Non-Hegelian idealism as well as materialist nominalism misrecog­

the status of such a paradoxical Difference, which is constitutive Universal itself and therefore cannot be reduced to an ordinary difference against the neutral background of a universal genus.

one usually conceives the category of overdete mination as (Althusser et a/.), it actually designates precisely this Hegelian paradox of a totality which always comprises a element embodying its universal structuring principle

-

as is the with production in Marx:

In all forms of society there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others. It is a general illumination which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity. It is a particular ether which determines the specific gravity of every being which has materialized within it.35

·That is "overdetermination": a determination of the Whole by one of its elements which, according to the order of classification, should be just a subordinated part- a part of the structure "envelops" its whole . . When, in the totality of production, distribution, exchange and con­

Jumption, Marx accords this place to production, he resorts to the Hegelian category of "antithetical determination" [gegensiitzlicile Be­

stimmung]: "Production predominates not only over itself, in the antithetical determination of production, but over the other moments as well."36 This "antithetical determination" designates the form ⁱⁿ which the Universal comes across itself within its particularities:

production encounters itself within its species; or: production is a species which encompasses its own genus (the totality of production, distribution, exchange and consumption)- as in theology, where God qua Love predominates over Himself in the antithetical determination,

i.e. qua unspeakable Horror and Rage. The Hegelian motto "the True is the Whole" is therefore deeply misleading if one interprets it in the sense of traditional "holism" according to which the particular con­

tent is nothing but a passing, subordinated moment of the integral Totality; the Hegelian "holism" is, on the contrary, of a "self­

referential" kind: the Whole is always-already part

of itself,

comprised within its own elements. Dialectical "progress" thus had nothing whatsoever to do with the gradual ramification of some initially non­

differentiated totality into a network of concrete determinations; its mechanism is rather that of a Whole adding itself again and again to its own parts, as in the well-known witticism often quoted by Lacan: "I have three brothers, Paul, Ernest and myself " - "myself " is here exactly the "antithetical determination" of the "I".

In document Propuesta de diseño del producto ecoturístico y su comercialización para la reserva de la biosfera (página 60-64)