Abstract
Iwould like to close with a few brief remarks concerning what we, following Lacan, can learn from (or “understumble” about) anxiety. As I have argued (in Chapter 4 in particular), we stand to gain absolutely nothing by thinking deeply about anxiety, that is, by isolating the phenomenon and taking it as the object of a direct and sustained philosophical investigation. To make a signifier (or a properly philosophical concept) out of anxiety is already to falsify it as a phenomenon, to court the perennial temptation of conceptual jargon, and, ultimately, to defraud anxiety’s lesson—presuming of course that it has anything to teach at all—of its dreadfully inarticulable certainty.
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Notes
On this point, I am directly indebted to Slavoj Žižek’s poignant remarks in the opening moments of his film, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (London: P Guide Ltd., 2006).
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© 2015 Brian Robertson
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Robertson, B. (2015). Concluding Remarks ‘Understumbling’ Anxiety. In: Lacanian Antiphilosophy and the Problem of Anxiety. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137513533_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137513533_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51352-6
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