In a Second Moment/From the Beginning

Mary Ann Doane, in "Masquerade Reconsidered," brings up the issue of delay in her rebuttal to Tania Modleski's criticism of the Doisneau photograph. She pits one's ability to "get" (p. 41) the joke, to be in on it, versus one's ability to only understand it afterwards. Doane relates "getting it" to the act of reception whilst a comprehension "in a second moment" is associated with "the critical act." Doane also says that when she “finds” herself laughing at a sexist joke when watching late night TV she is “other.”

This notion of "getting it" as an immediate understanding "from the beginning" (as Laplanche would have it) against the rational comprehension that comes later, "in a second moment" relates to our previous and ongoing class discussion about "what swastikas are doing in the bedroom" -- and whether one should be held responsible for their presence. I'd like to put into question Doane's assertion that she is "other" when she "finds" herself laughing, perhaps betrayed by "the historicity of the feminist enterprise" (41). Would this moment be, precisely, when she is "self"? If we know, and we do know, that it is this unconscious finding of one's self that drives us, then while it might be urgent and helpful to re-visit this "find" utilizing, say, the feminist enterprise "in a second moment," it is undeniable that we are not "other" in these instances of spontaneity. It seems symptomatic, if not arrogant, for an academic to assume otherness when she catches herself being driven by her unconscious (the place she might still occupy despite), unable to make quick, different sense of what she sees.

It's clear that it is exactly these "from the beginning" drives that make us "self" (even if we use the critical thinking that "in a second moment" allows to further develop this "self") when we think of the incest prohibition, which makes "civilization" as we know it possible. I wouldn't be the first to say that if there is a prohibition it's because there is a desire that precedes it. And "another" one that resists it. To "find" oneself caught up in this desire doesn't make us "other," whether we repress it "in a second moment" of rational (or not-so-rational ego-management) respect for the Law or not. It is, in fact, these moments of helpless "chance encounters" with the self that serve as one of the most fundamental techniques of psychoanalysis clinically: i.e. slips of the tongue, free associations. That's why the analysand is supposed to say whatever comes to mind when she arrives for her session.