One can distinguish ‘alienation’ from ‘separation’ (psychoanalysis) in very simple mathematical terms: Let there be A and B which are opposite to one another.

If you say “A is the negation of B” and “B is the negation of A”, then you are in the domain of separation. Mathematically: A = -B, B = -A. The act of separation does not take sides (between A and B). Let’s call this stance internegation. In internegation, negation emerges only out of negation.

If this internegation is collapsed by taking sides (e.g. with A) and translated into “A is the positive thing” and “B is the negative thing”, then you are in the domain of alienation. Mathematically: A = 1, B = -1 [1]. Taking sides with the one (A) necessarily alienates the other (B). This alienation of the other is essential to the identity of the one who took one side. Let’s call this stance positnegation. In positnegation, negation emerges out of an act of positing.

Logically, getting alienated by taking sides “goes further” than the pure act of separation, so that one would need to “take one step back” from alienation in order to focus on the separation itself.

But their order is reversed in practice: Every individual initially finds themself as already “gone further” and taken sides (e.g. with “the society”) and thereby unable to access the locus of pure separation (which is always forgotten, repressed, censored; it’s a non-place). The individual is only able to “take one step back” to the locus of separation as a second step that comes after the acknowledgement of the initial alienation. It is not entirely impossible to retract the initial alienating step, but it comes with great difficulty and mental effort.

In both alienation and separation, the true object of identification is the separator, the curtain or veil that separates A and B. The separator is what Lacan calls the bar. In the case of alienation, two concealments take place simultaneously:

1) The truly alienating significance of the negative object (B) is concealed by the fascinating presence of the positive object (A). This is the alienating concealment between objects by the separator.

2) The real significance of the separator itself is concealed by the alienating concealment between objects by the separator. This is the concealment of the separator itself.

Thus, the positnegation of alienation apparently identifies with A while truly identifying with B, whereas the internegation of separation directly identifies with the separator itself, the bar. So you could imagine the positnegation of alienation as the usual social life of a citizen who postures about A (fighting barriers of life) while enjoying B (drinking in the bar); and you could imagine the internegation of separation as the life of someone who realizes that A and B are no different and goes on to join the “bar” association and become an attorney.

Now let’s relate this to dissatisfaction and frustration [2]:

Alienation distinguishes dissatisfaction from frustration and relates them to constitute the symbolic castration at the heart of “the society”: Dissatisfactions are openly displayed because it’s cool and enviable to have the object and then toss it into the trashcan, while true frustrations about inaccessible objects of desire are kept hidden from the neighbors.

Whereas for separation, there is no essential difference between dissatisfaction and frustration: Dissatisfaction busies itself with dreams about the past, whereas frustration busies itself with dreams about the future. When past and future dreams are collapsed into a single imaginary field, what remains of the symbolic order is merely privation or out-of-jointness.

Moving between internegation and positnegation is always a collapse although there are two different collapses.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] Or rather A = i, B = -i, where i is the square root of minus one. This makes sense when A is dissatisfaction and B is frustration. See [2].

[2] See “Frustration and Dissatisfaction, Privation and Castration”, “The Complex Plane of Symptom”