Psychoanalysis Ks 

Introduction

Lacanian psychoanalysis is the poster child of high theory K debate and has many applications. I’ll break down the way the theory of power understands the world, which will make links easier to understand when you see them. Because this is an intermediate guide to a complex topic, things like alternatives might come later because there’s a wide range of them with differing strategic viability and philosophical justifications, and the same goes for framework interpretations or ROTB/ROTJs.

Overview

Lacan understands the world within 3 large orders which make up the world and how we understand it: the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real. Using these, we can understand the subject, how the subject acquires knowledge, processes it, and takes action based on that, eventually understanding the root of desire.

The Imaginary

The imaginary is formed during the mirror stage (when they recognize themself and develop an ego, or sense of self), and it is the realm of images, identifiers, and illusions. When one develops an ego, they develop a unified image by which they perceive themself, while internally, Lacan believes that they feel fragmented. The subject feels whole and coherent, but that is not what is internal to the subject, and thus we develop self-alienation, and an identity based on external comparison rather than internal reflection. 

The Symbolic

The symbolic is the way that we structure the imaginary order, and it begins when we acquire language (when Lacan says language, he really means any form of semiotic exchange / understanding, so even things like symbols we recognize, sign language, etc., are all forms of “language”). Once the subject acquires language, they enter a system of structure which governs the way that they can think and understand the world, through things like grammar, societal norms, cultural traditions, etc. 

The Other

The Other exists in two forms, in the imaginary and the symbolic. In the imaginary, we have the little Other. This is who you compare yourself to when developing a sense of identity that creates that self-alienation that is intrinsic to the mirror stage and the ego.

The big Other, however, is not another subject. It is a part of the symbolic order and is a really important concept for understanding what helps us understand why things have meaning in the first place. The big Other is the system of language, law, culture, norms, and general cultural/social structures that applies structure to society and the way we behave. When a subject takes actions, they are using a system of shared meaning, understanding, and normative decision-making which is shaped by the system of the big Other that they exist in.

Desire

For Lacan, the subject’s desire is the desire of the big Other. We desire what others desire, and we desire to be desired. Our actions happen to garner recognition from the big Other, which becomes a problem because:

The Big Other is Lowkey Fake

Ultimately, there is not a true, objective authority that defines what systems of semiotic exchange or action mean. We behave as if there is one, however. We construct our own subjective authority and enforce it upon ourselves as if it is an objective, omniscient form of control. Lacan believes that this creates anxiety, and inevitable self-destruction of the big Other. As institutions collapse or authority is exposed as arbitrary, we feel anxiety because our system of meaning-production is failing. 

The Real

The real is that which resists our ability to be turned into exchangeable and understandable symbolic representations. It is not “reality” in the typical sense, but rather the world in its unmediated form, but we can never even conceptualize it because our conception of reality/unmediated things is inevitably one categorized by abstraction.

The Lack

As addressed earlier, to be a subject means to enter the Symbolic order. However, because language can never represent experience or fullness, something is lost, and that is exactly what the real is- the unrepresentable parts of reality which we are unable to symbolically represent. Desire emerges, then, out of the need for the subject to fill the lack, to understand the real, unmediated form of the world. However, this is impossible, because the lack is intrinsic to the subject, which means that this attempt to fill the lack is entirely futile, can never be achieved, and in fact leaves us lacking more, because now we are striving for the wholeness of the real in itself. This creates the ground for serial policy failure/case turn arguments, where the K would argue that the affirmative’s attempt to fix the problems proposed in the plan ignores the fundamental nature of desire and thus fails to create meaningful change and causes endless repetition of suffering.

Links

It’s obviously not possible to cover every link that exists, but I’ll go over a few common ones, when you should read them, and how to go for them in the 2nr.

Life Affirmation

This link is to the affirmatives attempt to prolong life or prevent its end. There are a variety of links that say this, but for example:

This link argues that by attempting to rid the world of death, we remove the source of value for life. It argues that it is the finite nature of life in itself that creates the room for us to assign values to things. To quote:

“Without the value that death provides, neither love nor ice cream nor friendship nor anything that we enjoy would have any special worth”

By depriving the world of death, we lose the structure it provides, and thus our lives are now structured around pure life and constant expansion and production. Value now depends not on finite, established individual relations such as with ice cream and friendship but now on productivity. However, in the search for infinite productivity, this new drive will be met with the unfortunate reality that there is a finite amount of life and a finite amount of production and will be stuck in the endless pursuit of something unattainable. 

Utopia

The utopia link exists for basically any topic- for example, on the two of the 25-26 topics:

Plea Bargaining:

Rewilding:

The general idea behind these links is that the affirmative’s policy action and attempt to create ideal worlds reinvests in systems of desire by creating a new perfect image which will inevitably differ from the real, worsening the lack all the while making the problem they’re attempting to solve worse.

Lundberg / Ballot PIKs

Many people will read specific cards as Kritik of the affirmative’s performativity, call for the ballot, or even the reading of the affirmative in the space of debate. These will often be PIKs (plan inclusive Kritik), which allow them to be executed as straight turns where the negative can steal all the affirmative’s offense while avoiding the impacts of the Kritik.

Alternatives

Lots of psycho debaters argue that they do not need an alternative because the Kritik gives a sufficient reason that the epistemological underpinnings of the affirmative or the plan are bad and thus an alt isn’t necessary.

Another common approach is to refuse the mastery of the lost object or embrace the lack- this can be worded in a variety of ways, but the general idea is that instead of attempting to create a perfect world or fulfill our desires, we must become comfortable with the unattainability of the real and the imperfection of the symbolic representation which we understand things through.