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The misfeeling of what happens: Slavoj Žižek, Antonio Damasio and a materialist account of affects

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Abstract

In The Parallax View, Slavoj Žižek outlines a Lacanian critique of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's theories of affectively shaped mental life. Damasio is faulted for failing to account for the existence of the Cogito-like subject-as-$, an existence claimed to be emotionally significant in ways directly relevant to the Damasian project. Žižek's criticisms stage a confrontation pitting psychoanalytic anti-naturalism against neuroscientific naturalism. This article involves laying out a partial defense of Damasio's proposals. In so doing, it seeks, specifically with regard to the matters at stake in Žižek's engagement with the sciences of the brain, to delineate a position based on the rejection of what is alleged to be a false dichotomy between naturalism and anti-naturalism. The forms of subjectivity posited by what would be a Freudian–Lacanian neuro-psychoanalysis are torn apart in various directions, split along fault lines of tension between what are imprecisely designated as ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ dimensions.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, The University of New Mexico, MSC 03 2140, Albuquerque, 87131-0001, NM, USA

    Adrian Johnston

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Johnston, A. The misfeeling of what happens: Slavoj Žižek, Antonio Damasio and a materialist account of affects. Subjectivity 3, 76–100 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.36

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