What Withdraws from Identity?

An identity is a type of interpretation. An interpretation is a type of closer. Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous obsession with the duck / rabbit figure was how he demonstrated that there was no solid ground from which to render a final judgment about what something was because any possible ground for a judgement was itself incomplete, which Lacan put as "There is no metalanguage," and Leotard put as "There is no meta-narrative." For Deleuze, any interpretive closure, like a phenomenological objectification or an intentional conceptualization, contained the illusion of wholeness given by the appearance of a repetition, which was the illusion of "resemblance," but there was no true repetition because resemblance was the imposition of a transcendent identity onto what was ultimately immanent difference, which for Deleuze was the differential background that underlay all reality and any possible foregrounding of an objective unification. Lacan saw the projection of the virtual object, which he called "Objet-Petit-a" in a similar manner, as a fantasy projection of wholeness onto what was essentially incomplete, disunified, and ambiguous, like Deleuze's differential background from which any temporary repetition emerged, which Deleuze called, "Difference-in-itself." Lacan's phenomenology can be said to be that of object-small-a because it was a fantasy projection that unified a multiplicity or positivized a lack of oneness as if a one, which was the oneness imagined in Lacan's register of the Imaginary. Badiou, referring to the work of Meillassoux, called this projection of oneness the "take-as-one" function of Set Theory, in which oneness is imposed by defining what belongs in the set and what doesn't. The outside definition of a set, or its externally given intention, functions as a classical substance because it defines what it contains like a substance used to contain its attributes. In Kant's phenomenology, the subjective intention "synthesizes" objective phenomena via intuitive categories, and then projects these objectifications as what appears as the objective, exterior world. This intuitive synthesis accords with the general structure of the take-as-one unification because it synthesizes a one from perceptual difference, as in Whitehead's definition of a perception or a conceptualization as at least two percepts joined together according to a rule. However, this synthesis isn't complete as Hegel showed in his dialectical double negation, which didn't resolve into a synthesis but was always left with an irresolvable remainder, which could be called "irreducible ambiguity." Irreducible ambiguity might be thought of as a contradiction that cannot be resolved into a synthesis, but a nonetheless, productive irresolution. If irreducible ambiguity is what withdraws from any interpretation, then, perhaps, it is a productive withdrawal, just as the Lacanian Real is what resists symbolic identification but is also the ground of the Symbolic, or as the void is the negation whose inability to negate itself produces whatever appears as the world.https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.