Kant avec :(

The following "ecrit" was put together by the famous rogue psychoanalyst Jas Pecan in his very fruitful outpouring of the early 2000's, known as his "symbolic" period. During this epoch of Pecan's thought, the motif of symbolic representation was probably touched upon at some point, although no one can say for certain. What is certain is that this text, condensed from the lost source for "Seminar XXCL: iPodipus Comp(r)ex", which was also probably pretty weird.

Kant avec L

That the work of Lacan anticipates the emoticon, be it in respect of the catalogue of mathemes, symbols, rude words etc. is a stupid thing to say, which gets repeated endlessly among literary types; the fault, as always, belongs to the Internet.

Rather let it be said that Lacan "anticipated" nothing except the "emoticon" with all of his "matheme bullshit".

The question that immediately arises when one considers the thousands of variations on the emoticon is that of the originary, or rather the Ur-moticon. A classical liberal would suggest L, the nasty, brutish, and short response to the original text message of birth. On the other hand, the Jacobin believes the J must fulfill this role; “L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.” Is it perhaps the K, a tabula rasa? The Pagan :D? The Biblical :O ? Or does the “moticon” predate the “emo” entirely? Is Ur­-moticon the Poundian ideograph? Hieroglyph? Cave painting? Is it not the terror of the mask, but the horror behind it? And what if that horror were a banana? What then? Or even worse - no banana at all.

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

Actually, Ur-moticon is no image at all. It is something closer to the notification noise, vibration, or shock before the message is even opened. Ur-moticon is the terror of the pure signifier. The confrontation of absolute nullity – the void behind the veil of Sais, once ripped aside, revealing the originary gap (gross!) sabotaging from the get-go all attempts to posit meaning or connection, flawed ab initio, ex nihilo and ad nauseum. It is a quantum operation – as soon as the message is opened, the "blank" notification is given its signification - meaning is posited retroactively; that "jerk really did eat all of the Doritos", as such. Only after the message is “received” can Ur-moticon allow itself to die – except that, try as it might, it cannot die.

It cannot die precisely because the emoticon is the birth of subjectivity ($>OMG) itself. The Dharmic cycle of Samsara only begins with the positing of the subject, the “I” and its caravan, spinning endless text msgs for itself in the great cosmic dance of WTF. A dance that can, by no means, STFU by its own efforts.

What is the relationship of the emoticon to the Lacanian matheme? Actually, there is no “emoticon” as such. There is only ever actually Ur-moticon. The emoticon arises when Ur-moticon is integrated into the symbolic order by an act of traumatic violence-via-text. But it is never a stable state; the signification of the emotion, once read, is the opposite of finality. An emoticon never stands on its own; it always demands textual and contextual interpretation. And not just for the receiver. An emoticon is not a sexual act; it cannot communicate, it can only masturbate. (S > $keet$keet).

The sadface does not say to the Other “this is how I feel. I feel X”. It says, rather, “che vuoi? What do you want from me?” and in so doing, establishes itself as a hysteric subject to be communicated with. The text is never received from the sender, it is always stuck in the endless cycle of the Outbox. Even if you reset the phone. Even if you call your service provider. Even if you screenshot it and send it as an attachment. There are no such things as emoticons.

This is different from claiming that there are non-emoticons, which of course everyone will readily admit. These are often encountered in the form of Emojis, shockingly specific or subversive emoticons which are (temporarily) effectual precisely because their precision overrides their “generic” status as an emoticon. One is not shocked by the Emoji in relation to the context of the message, one is shocked by the Emoji as such – how can it exist so minutely? Who the fuck has an emoticon for horseracing?

Nevertheless it is an illusion. An emoticon cannot be translated; an Emoji can be. One cannot account for the effect of J as “smiley face” etc., but with the multiplicity inherent in an Emoji, precisely because it is not generic but only appears in the style of the generic, as it were, it is completely translatable into words. An Emoji always originates as a phrase. It is therefore a fetishistic stand-in for the original loss of Ur-moticon – “if I cannot have a meaningful message, then the medium will itself be the meaning”. 

McLuhan masturbating in front of a camera while shouting his infamous slogan.

One might claim the emoticon as the extreme endpoint of the Deleuzian facial (gross!). Deleuze and Guattari, who see the face overcoded everywhere and on every each thing in the schizophrenic and altogether wacky world of capitalism, would have been the first to deny that the emoticon represents the mere facializing of speech as such, or some Heideggerian interpretation of its masking the technological etc. The emoticon is no face. That is the terrifying thing about it. There is no hidden gaze or overcoded machinery in the emoticon itself. The emoticon cannot emote. It cannot even whistle awkwardly and leave the room to "get some fresh air" while the subject shuffles to the corner.

But if it is not a face, then what is the emoticon which does not exist? The emoticon which does not exist is a mask for the most unnecessary, stupid, ugly, and ultimately and non-existant part of speech: the punctuation mark. Antiquity had none such marks, and despite the tyranny of modern grammar, usage always resists their codification, their utility. They have always been a superfluity; are always untenable by themselves; always require context to give them any meaning at all; truly there is no such thing as punctuation. What is the emoticon but the horror of the punctuation’s inability to die?

This is where we stand, then. A text message is sent from the Big Other, the dominant discourse of the symbolic order. It gets stuck in the outbox. The message contained three items: a word, a punction, an emoticon. Ur-moticon reduces these three to the originary "terror" of the neighbour with a cell-phone plan. The message is still stuck in the outbox. What does it contain? The true terror lies in the fact that one can only read it from the phone that sent it. What does it contain, encore?

Hey! sup :P

And so the terror of the Real emerges.