"Forced Choices" (was Re: The substance of the self)

[kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca]

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000 09:29:18 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:

> How have we come to live in the world in which we are forced to make "free 
choices"?  That's the question of history.  What is to be done to abolish the 
world of "forced choices"?  That's the question of politics.  Lacanians are not 
interested in either question, however.

I am a Lacanian, and I'm interested in history, therefore your assertion is 
false.

In any event, despite explicity falsehood of your claim, as Lacanians have 
pressed, again and again and again, that people are still ethically responsible 
for "forced choices" - if you have 7 cans of soup on the shelf, all with the 
same contents, one is still responsible for which can one picks off the shelf.  
The "choice" was forced... but this does not abnegate responsibility - if 
anything it pisses you off so that you'll work to make sure next time at least 
the some of the ingredients are different.  The idea of the "forced choice" is 
an observation of this responsibility - in other words - we come into the 
awareness that we didn't have a "free choice" rather that our choice was 
predetermined before "we" arrived.  Naturally, following from this insight, 
which is neither profound nor novel, we must shift our attention to how we got 
robbed in the first place.  The categorical imperative of psychoanalysis is 
this: don't give up on your desire!  The explicit aim of analysis is to target 
the Real (ie. of which, i will safely assume, HISTORY is a part).

ken