> What are the specific differences between the concepts of 'false
consciousness' and 'psychosis'?
I'll frame it like this, just for fun.
First, we start with the idea of consciousness, the recognition of the self as a self, in full acknowledgement of the tautology - expressed by Descartes: "I think therefore I am." If I'm not mistaken, Hegel had words about this too (wink). Basically, consciousness, in this sense, is purely positivistic (What you see is what you get).
Next, we find that the concepts don't always match the object (signifier vs. signified). So at some point, the idea of "false consciousness" emerged. Why goes wrong in consciousness that screws up our perceptions of the "real world." What we need to do here is critique things so that they begin to appear, in language, in theory... as they actually are (the Matrix is a good example of this or Angel Heart or Total Recall or even Blade Runner and What Dreams May Come).
Finally, we find that the entire structure of consciousness rests on illusions, and that all of reality is, in fact, a illusion - an ideological fabrication (without a specific non-ideological fabricator) (see Cronenberg's eXistenZ).
I'll submit that these three orientations regarding "false consciousness" can be placed in a Hegelian triad, the concept, the negation, and the negation of the negation. Of course, if we take Hegel's theory of the absolute to be a theory of ideology - then sublimation becomes a subordination, not a transcendence. In which case, all three positions are simply a variation on the same theme - the first, reality as such, the second, reality as such hidden, the third, reality as such forbidden.
We could say that the three conceptions of consciousness correspond to mythical, modern and postmodern attitudes.
And I think you know where I'm going with this. I'll suggest a fourth perspective, a post-structuralist reading: the Real is that which is unknown and, in a totality, unknowable. The idea that reality itself is an ideological illusion cum materiality that does not stop being written.
To expand on this: First we have truth. Second, we have a falsehood negated by the truth. Third, we have a falsehood negated by truth leading to another falsehood.
My thinking is this: the fourth version argues that that we start with a falsehood negated by a falsehood, which gives us the shape of the truth (the truth is a falsehood representing itself to be a falsehood). In other words, truth is self-relating negativity. Basically, the first three positions are all variations on the discourse of the University, "the knowing subject" - who "knows" reality, "knows" the falsehood or "knows" the truth of the faslehood. In each case, there is a subject who knows (without question or qualification). The Zizekian response, as anticipated, is that this "subject who knows" is illustrative of perversion (the one who knows the law, the one who knows the law and transgresses the law, the one who knows the law, transgresses the law, only to reinstitute the law again). In other words, in perversion, it is the law that speaks us, the "voice in the head" is the one who knows what is and isn't. Which is why Neo from the Matrix is a pervert. He "knows" the "truth" about reality in his negation of the matrix...
Why do I have the feeling I'm going to be blasted for this? If this doesn't make sense, just think about negative dialectics - this is exactly what Adorno is doing or Marcuse's "great refusal" (to name "reality" once and for all). Even Marx's "ruthless criticism of everything existing" is representative of this idea, he was a Hegelian of sorts after all. I might not have explained this well, but I hope the idea is there. Basically, two negatives don't add up to a positive. So the conversation continues... in effect: reality is REAL, and this is the kernel around which our struggles are waged. There is no "transcendence" in our viewpoint, because we live *in* reality, not beyond it. As such, reality continues to be written, and all things come to pass.
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