The (lacanian?) Discourse of the Abjector (amidst my personal grooming regime)

S1 -->  a

__       __

S2   /    $

I do not have time to work this through thoroughly just now. But in the spirit of externalizing, of airing my dirty laundry in the tabloid of the Other's concern, I offer it anyway. Make me  make it  make sense  if you must.

So, while showering (in point of fact) I was thinking about homophobic or transphobic slurs, this led to racial slurs and the idea of hate speech (as problematic as that is for some as a way to denote this stuff) ... but my curiosity was about how those sorts of speech acts shook out as discourses in the lacanian sense of the term.

So then (during the rinse, and towel off) I pondered the available four lacanian discourses and discarded one after another. I also had to clarify that I'm thinking about hate speech in a specific context, where it addressed to the other it wishes to abject, where the abjection of this other is its intended effect. & thus not the casual racist comments and jokes between Klan members at the KKK BBQ, which, though hateful from many reasonable perspectives, are not directed at those who these people wish to abject and destroy (at least, not in the minute scenario that I am using here to help make this distinction, & on the fly as I said...)

So, I came up with the quadripode I present above. & here it is again, why not?

S1 -->  a

__       __

S2   /    $

(sorry that is not a nice clean and tight graphic, but if you know Lacan's discourses, you know what it supposed to look like - plus I drew it with a finger on my bathroom mirror while gooping up my hair)

S1 - master signifier

a    - objet petit a

S2 - knowledge

$    - the split subject

So, across the top - paralleling the action of a signifying chain, the agent has the words/significations - the agent is certain of them - speaks from the place of that grounded certainty ("I know what a woman is" or "isn't" etc) and abjects the other, marking them as an object (the waste object, anal object, etc - that which is beyond the pale, obviously deserving somehow of scorn, etc) - and assuming that this discourse functions, that it succeeds in interpellating the other to whatever degree, this naming, designating (Fag! Polack! etc) is also a mark of jouissance (hence, again, the a-object). 

Now the other who is hated, designated, abjected, etc. need not passively just 'take it' or have any specific response (the discourses are in an important sense "one way" in Lacan's theory) but to the extent that this other knows that this comment is directed at them, that they 'feel the call of its malice' there is some jouissance it would seem. Likewise, no matter how well grounded that person is, how comfortable in their body and with their identity, no matter how habituated to or even forgiving of others who are hateful, the product would still seem likely to be a reiteration of a certain split, a recognition - regardless of its critique or anger even its acceptance (in cases of internalized self-hatred) - all would seem productive of maintaining, even insisting on a split in this abjected subject (and denying the split in the agent, this repressed knowledge - S2 - which would undermine the agency of the abjecting agent).

The knowledge under the Hater's S1 though... what is that exactly? I pondered that, while getting dressed and splashing on a bit of scent)

Well, I was thinking about how we commonly attribute acts of homophobic violence and the irrational levels of anger and so forth that emerge for people because of the mere existence of gays and lesbians and, in a distinct but not at unrelated way, to transphobic speech and violence... That in every case what makes these such explosions of affect is the degree of threat which accepting these other ways of being and living and loving makes to the subjective consistency and stability of the hater. It need not be a threat as we might think about it, but for whatever reasons it is a threat for many. 

Is your bathroom breeding Bolsheviks?

It we think back to the developmental narrative that we can extract from Lacan, there is that moment when the infans becomes aware of its only personally produced product - POOP! - but that Look what I made moment that is so commonly shot down and devalued by the parent. No, disgusting, don't touch that! etc. Then think of the many ways in which abjecting parts of the subject's own being and own enjoyment is wrapped up in, & maybe even required (?) in consolidating the subject as this or that particular kind of subject. So, we have the by now common claim that the perpetrator of gay bashing is lashing out at their own un-acknowledgable desires which are seen as embodied by the other. The S2 then is the knowledge (repressed, hence below the bar) that what is hated, and marked as the abject object in the other, is then a part of the agent of the hate speech as well, a part which must stay hidden, repressed, denied, etc. A knowledge that the abject object is no less an object of fascination.

... ok, that's all I got right now... will try to think this through more carefully another time. Gotta get ready for poetry now. Put my face on, etc.