The Real and the Semblance

Jacques-Alain Miller

[...]When Levi-Strauss speaks of the real he refers to, for example, the geography of a territory inhabited by a population, or to the different origins of this population, or to the different locations in which it settles, that can hold up as objective facts. At the individual level, the real is the hump that King Richard has on his back, which he did not choose; rather it was assigned or distributed to him. It could have also been a bowleg or a missing limb, anything that deviates from the norm and makes of this feature a particularity that said king transforms into the motive of his vindication. Because of this hump that was given to him as an affliction, he feels authorized or justified in violating a certain number of principles, of prejudices, and provides it a meaning—precisely that which Shakespeare’s play shows us—which has consequences that go far beyond.

On the other hand, a bunch of other meanings can be given to a hump. While on vacation I read the memoirs of Casanova, and among his adventures appears a humpbacked beauty, who has a double-hump, not only on the back, but also on the front. As Casanova observes, she was a young person who knew how to play around remarkably well with her hump—with her humps—to such a point that it made her extremely desirable... How difficult for sexual pleasure, but all the more interesting! It deals with a character who did absolutely nothing to make her double-hump into a motive for vindication—and with this point one could contrast her very well to Richard—but rather, on the contrary, made it into an element of seduction. That is why, moreover, Casanova takes the bait and congratulates himself for the acrobatics he is led to perform in order to enjoy the double-humped beauty, which introduces a change in the routine of his adventures.[...]

 

art: Saul Fletcher,Untitled #270 (Woodchen), 2013

 

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