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My work is motivated by the concept of nothingness (aka emptiness) which is further described below:


Nothingness of meaning

Nothingness is similar to the real (Lacan). The real is different from the reality that we imagine that we know — the real is pre-imaginary, pre-symbolic. It resists being represented. If we represent it as language, then it loses its reality.

Nothingness is different from the real in the sense that the real is associated with introducing trauma into our life: because we've constructed this world of concepts to make ourselves secure and feel at home, and since these concepts are not reality, they sometimes fall apart. Nothingness is different: it is the place beyond confusion, it welcomes uncertainty, unpredictability (i.e. it's not nihilistic). It doesn't seek security but clarity, to see the way things really are.


Nothingness of ego/subject

The ego, on the other hand, is situated inside our construction of meaning. The ego is constructed by thoughts. The nothingness of the ego can be interpreted in one way as the poststructuralist decentering of the Cartesian ego in favor of a de-essentialized subjectivity. Our subjectivity, what we experience, is an effect of culture, of language, of concepts, all these are constructed out of differance. The subject is constructed to a large degree by what it is not, by concepts that are not reality (the real). The real is outside the control of the subject and its consciousness.

Similarly, deconstructing the ego shows that there has never been any inherently existing ego/self that is real. We ascribe some form of inherent existence onto the flow of our experience. But that sense of ego/self is a mental construction struggling against its own non-existence, its nothingness.


Non ego-based praxis

Since this concept of nothingness is often situated ahistorically and in private space, here's a brief description of its impact on ethico-political practice.

The problems of ego-based politics come from this premise: if one has enough bread and justice, one will not want more -- more wealth/status, security, newness. Having achieved equality, one will not seek superiority. Being offended, one will not seek revenge. Having enough, one will be able to tell the difference between need and want, one will not obsess with constructing one's identity through consumption or status.

Consumption: Within an ego-materialist view of society, one's wants know no limits. Today, millions of people are wealthier than in the past, yet nine-tenths of their consumption is a self-confirming satisfying of an endless round of newly created desires. Capitalism makes a public virtue of selfishness and exploitation.

Violence: Radical political activity is characterized by the oppression-anger-revolution chain: observing oppression, getting angry at oppression, then the anger forms the basis for constructive action in defense of the oppressed. This is the model for political action in the labor movement, feminism, civil rights, anti-racism struggles, gay and lesbian liberation, and the environmental movement. Such a position can culminate in Fanon's justification of violent struggle.

The ego cannot resolve its own lack because the ego is a manifestation of that lack. Deconstructing the ego/subjectivity in an existentialist sense leads to the realization that there is no lack because there has never been any inherently-existing/essentialized ego in the first place. If the ego stops trying to realize itself as a thing, then its sense of lack will go away.

Paraphrasing Aung San Suu Kyi's speech on freedom from fear:

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Most Burmese are familiar with the four kinds of corruption: corruption in pursuit of bribes or for the sake of those one loves, wrong action to spite those against whom one bears ill will, aberration due to ignorance, but perhaps the worst of the four is fear, for not only does fear stifle and slowly destroy all sense of integrity and justice, it often lies at the root of the other three kinds of corruption.


Bibliography to come... from various sources including Robert Hattam.

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Yvonne Chu | About