>It is also not sufficient to replace this standard proposition with
>the more refined notion of the "embodied mind" (see The Embodied
>Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch). A human
>being is not just the outcome of the interaction between genes and
>environment as two opposed entities; he/she is, rather, the engaged
>embodied agent who, instead of "relating" to his/her environs,
>mediates, creates his/her life-world.
Except that texts like Varela et. al's. really are quite sufficient for dispensing with the goofy/reductionist biology Zizek reports on here. To imply otherwise is like suggesting that only psychoanalysis can respond to Creationism, or Lamarckianism, or something. Granted, the latter might lend useful insights into the latter as phenomena; insights outside the purview of most scientific or social critique. But the less informed might want to know that Lamarckianism, etc. have be successfully refuted on more Conscious grounds, too.
Likewise, given the unbelievable press this genome stuff has been getting (cover story of Chicago Trib this morning) it might have been nice if Britannica.com browsers knew that there are plenty of rubust refutations, within "science" itself, of much of the reducionist and right-wing theorizing that Z. describes. ...But I know, I know: furnishing that kind of mundane information wouldn't be as pleasurable as chasing our Slovenian satyr through his enchanting woods. (And really, I enjoy the ride as much as the next over-educated type.)
BTW, the chapter on Natural Drift (ch. 9) in the aforementioned Varela book is a key summary and contribution to the rethinking going down in the past 30 years, challenging received neo-Darwinian understandings.
Of course Richard Lewontin, too, has a bunch of intelligent books addressing this topic of the hour, including one recent one whose title, something like _The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions_, sounds pertinent to this whole terrain danced through by our satyr.
>In other words (and pace Steven Pinker), there is no inborn
>"language instinct." There are, of course, genetic conditions that
>have to be met for a living being to be able to speak; but one
>actually starts to speak and enters the symbolic universe only in
>reacting to a traumatic jolt. And the mode of this reacting - the
>fact that, in order to cope with a trauma, we symbolize - is not "in
>our genes."
And this is where I foolishly hoped Zizek might satisfy my Desire. The Lacanian virtuoso actually waves his wand over the terrain of biology; so rather than lightly hopping from biology to psychoanalysis, I hoped he'd say something more provocative about links between the two. Because one thing that's always interested me about Lacanian analysis (and why I don't think the whole project can just be dismissed "from a materialist perspective"), is the theory's grounding in the uniqueness of human biology.
The Real is based on the anatomical incompleteness, the biological "prematurity" (compared to the present-from-birth instincts of other species) of human babies; on the motor unco-ordination, unease, organic dependence on others etc. experienced by these not-yet-subjects, these aggregates of organs, sensations, impulses, zones, etc.
Baby humans are of course born this way as the product of their species having biologically evolved into "naturally" symbolic, social, creatures. This symbolic evolution made humans more open and "undetermined," and made their childhoods exceptionally long, more biologically and psychically "traumatic" and more deeply dependent on the social/family formations they're born into.
The mirror-image's solidity, so Lacanian theory goes, then concretizes and compensates for the unease of the Real (human biological "prematurity"), which ushers in a new sense of absence/presence, which brings on a child's entry into the realm of Others/representation, the Symbolic, etc...
Would have been really interesting to see Zizek explore the Lacanian biological/evolutionary insights a bit more (the grounding of capital-S Symbolic in small-s symbolic of human evolution, etc.) and juxtapose them to the genome fetishism he examines.
If my brain code is ever down-loaded onto a CD I'll have one of my hardware embodiments reads up a bit more on all this. Then one of me can just write about it myself.
Maureen