Part 4: What to Do About too much Aboutness

IV: Symbolic Resemblance and Real Counter-Resemblance 

Usually, the world appears as it does in the subjective intention without any conscious deliberation on the part of the subject. Intentional conceptual and phenomenal objects are often in the Imaginary register because they appear as wholes in the sense that they are unified, or they appear as completed in the sense that they are already what they are. The point of concepts in Predictive Processing is to reduce surprise by modeling reality. When Intentional objects are in the Imaginary register, they “resemble” reality, which can be thought of as a sort of conceptual wholeness, or completeness, that reduces surprise or non-resemblance. Surprise in Information Theory is a measure of information given by an experience, which is the difference between probabilistic expectations and an actual occurrence. Marion’s Saturated Phenomena can be thought of as experiences in which too much is given as surprise. When there is a non-resemblance between reality’s appearance and its conceptual model, it is because there is a remainder of unrepresented surprise, or a remainder of difference from conceptual models. This unintentional non-resemblance between the intentional model of a concept, and its intended referent forms an object from the unintentional counter-object of the Real, which Marion thought of as the undeterminable hermeneutics of over-proximal affects. The way that Zizek has written about this gap of non-resemblance between concepts and the Real is that it is comprised of what cannot be interpolated into the Symbolic. This gap is the counter-object of the Real that is formed by its absolute resistance to symbolization. Lacan called the counter-object of the Real both the “Object-Small-a,” and the “Object-Cause-of-Desire.”  

The imaginary’s images are wholes, so it is the register of completed conceptual and phenomenal objects. The Real’s object of counter-wholeness, or of what cannot be made whole, is an irritant to the Imaginary’s intention to make whole or to complete. This irritant is Marion’s affective object that haunts the intention as its irresolution, which is something like the intention’s failure to be intentional, or to be about wholes, as in determinate, phenomenal and conceptual objects. For Marion “more than enough intuition for the intention” is “more than enough” because it is too much givenness to be conceptualize in the Imaginary register of wholes, so that lack of wholeness is the over-proximal affect that cannot be reduced by representation. The tension between intentional representation and representation's unintentional failure is the affective object of desire, anxiety, or wonder. The gap between the resemblance of the concepts of the Lacanian Symbolic and the non-resemblance of the Lacanian Real forms an affective object of what cannot be interpolated into the Symbolic, which is the Object-Cause-of-Desire, anxiety, or wonder. The rule that forms this counter-object is the rule of what does not resemble the concept, so this object is the counter-object the defines Marion’s Counter-Experience. This counter-object is the Object-Cause-of-Desire because it causes the desire for concepts about what cannot be conceptualized. Therefore, the Subject of Desire is caused by the obstacle of non-resemblance to its objective representation. Subjectivity is constituted by desire, and desire is constituted by this obstacle of non-resemblance, so that desire is a longing-for-completion or for wholeness that includes its own absolute failure to be completed or objectified as a whole. If desire is completed or made whole, it disappears, which is what happens to the subject when it becomes an object through complete symbolic interpolation. 

The dialectical interaction of the three registers is expressed in the Lacanian notion of the “Non-Relation,” or “Non-Rapport.” The Imaginary imagines a relation, or rapport, between representation of an object and the object as it is in-itself, but the in-itself of an object withdraws from the Symbolic in the register of the Real. The Real is the Non-Relation between representation and the in-itself of an object. This Non-Relation becomes a positivized negativity, or an object, in the sentence, “There is a Non-Relation.” What cannot be represented, i.e.: the Non-Relation, is represented, or objectified, in the annunciation of the counter-object of the Real as the object of the sentence.  

The Non-Relation is the object of the Real. The object of the Real is the object of the Imaginary, or Lacan’s Object-Small-a, when it is viewed in the register of wholes because it is imagined as that which would make whole or complete if not for its obstruction. The Object of the Real, or Lacan’s Object-Cause-of-Desire is the same object, when it is viewed in the register of “lack” because it is seen as the obstacle to wholeness that causes the image of wholeness to appear. Like the Morning Star and the Evening Star, the object of the Real paints the object of desire with different hues depending on the position of the Subject of Enunciation relative to the three Lacanian registers. The object of the Real causes desire because it is the withdrawal of the in-itself of the object, which becomes the object of desire in its withdrawal from intentional representation into the unintentional counter-representation of symbolic failure. The object of the Real is the failure of the object of desire to be interpolated into the Symbolic without remainder. The remainder of what cannot be interpolated into the Symbolic about the object of desire is the too much aboutness, or the too much particularity of the object of desire, which is the object of desire’s withdrawn in-itself that is also the object of desire’s singularity, or its non-resemblance to the concepts of the Symbolic.  

The object of the Real is the resistance of too-much particularity for abstract representation. It is this obstacle formed by too much difference to make whole in the register of the Imaginary, which causes the desire for the wholeness of complete representation. Wholeness is the completion given by intentional representation when concepts resemble the intentional screen. The resemblance knows through the relationship of identity, or equivalence, between a concept and its referent. When the intention is about what cannot be identified, or made equivalent, then it is about too much unknown, or counter-intentional difference. Desire for the abstract wholeness, or completeness, of concepts is the desire to “know” in every sense of the word, including and especially in the “Biblical sense” of “to know” as to possess sexually. Desire’s “libidinal” nature is the desire to possess through knowing, which is knowing as a kind of capturing of what withdraws from representation.  

Representation reveals the identity of an object by resemblance to a concept. Representation fails to reveal both desire and the subject constituted by desire because built into the structure of representation is the imbalance between abstraction’s pull towards the unification, or wholeness, of identity through equivalencies and particularity’s pull towards multiplicity as difference. As Giles Deleuze pointed out, when concepts are models, they identify or make equivalent through resemblance in such a way as to reduce the particularity of difference. The Lacanian Real and Marion’s undeterminable hermeneutics are made of the particularity of irreducible difference. The excessive particularity that withdraws from representation is the Lacanian Non-Relation that forms the Object-Cause-of-Desire, anxiety, and wonder from the non-resemblance of difference. 

The object of the Real also withdraws from the aspect of Martin Heidegger’s “Care” that is like psychoanalytic desire. This aspect of Care might be thought of as excessive Care because it cares about what is beyond, or exceeds representation, which is the object of the Real formed by the failure of intentional representation. Much of what withdraws from Care is not like the object of the Real because it is simply what withdraws because of the localization of the intention in a particular subject, so that this withdrawal of objective possibilities from the intention is because they are outside the subject’s purview.  What is outside the scope of the intention withdraws in the same way from any localized object. However, the Real is the object formed by the Non-Relation between the resemblance of concepts and the non-resemblance of what withdraws from concepts. Concepts are formed at the intersection of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real by the Lacanian “Subject of Annunciation,” i.e.: the language user.  

The Non-Relation only becomes an object for the language user. Lacan explained the Subject of Annunciation with the Liar’s Paradox. In the sentence, “I am lying,” the subject of the sentence is lying, but the Subject of Annunciation is telling the truth. The Subject of Annunciation is positioned outside of the sentence at the intersection of the three registers. The sentence is in the register of the Symbolic. The concepts of the sentence are in the register of the Imaginary, and what withdraws from the sentence is the Subject of Annunciation. The Subject of Annunciation is not determined by the predicate of the sentence, but the subject of the sentence is. The subject of the sentence is object-like because it is interpolated by the Symbolic, while the Subject of Annunciation withdraws from the Symbolic by positioning itself outside of the sentence and the determinations of its concepts.  

The Non-Relation is made into an object when it is annunciated as the object of the sentence, “There is a Non-Relation,” which does not actually have to be annunciated in speech, but might be annunciated in the intention as the non-resemblance of what withdraws from intentional concepts. The subject of the sentence, “There is a Non-Relation,” is the existential place holder “there.” “There” indicates a localized presence of what cannot have a location, namely, an absence, in this case, the absence of a relation. The absence of a relation can only have a presence because it is counter to the intention of the Subject of Annunciation to have a relation “there.” The Subject of Annunciation can localize an absence, or objectify a negativity, because it can stand outside of its own intention, which is the self-alienation of Hegel’s Self-Relating Negativity. The object of the Real appears as it withdraws from the objective determinations of the sentence, or from the annunciation of the “Facticity” of one’s Heideggerian “Thrownness.” Excessive care is like psychoanalytical desire because it is the excess of Dasein’s Facticity, which is Dasein’s standing outside of its Facticity in Hegelian self-alienation. The Subject of Annunciation is a subject because of its lack of object determination, which is the lack that becomes the inverse beyond of Facticity, or the outside of the subject of the sentence’s Thrownness.  

Objects do not only withdraw from the strange object of the Subject of Annunciation, but objects also withdraw from each other, as Graham Harmon has pointed out, but not in the manner of the object of the Real from the subject’s annunciation. The annunciation, or the sentence itself, can be thought of as the subject’s intention. The intention is given by the Symbolic and the Imaginary of one’s Facticity, but the Real is the self-alienation of the Subject of Annunciation from the subject of the sentence, or from the subject of the intention. The objects on the screen of the intention are determined like the objects in a sentence. The subject’s intention was constructed by Being’s Care. Care determines the objects of the intention according to their relation to Care’s projects. However, being’s Care is excessive, so it cares about what withdraws from its projects, not just because this withdrawal thwarts its projects but also because of an excessive curiosity about being in-itself. “Being-in-itself" here refers to whatever being is without Care’s projects, which is the beyond of Care’s intention, so it is excessive intention or excessive aboutness. This excessive Care is the same excess that constitutes psychoanalytic desire because both care about, and are invested in, what is beyond their purview. 

The objective aspects of a Subject’s Care can only extend to the locality of its “Thrownness,” which is the subject’s objectivity, or Heidegger's “Facticity.” The subject’s physical location in a body, or Facticity, is also the location of one’s Imaginary and Symbolic, but not of the Real because the Real is the withdrawal of the counter-whole from the Imaginary and of the counter-signifier of symbolic failure from the Symbolic. The Real is what withdraws from the given Symbolic of our Facticity as our subjectivity, which is why Zizek has said that the subject is the Real to the Symbolic. The objective possibilities outside of the purview of Care’s Thrownness, are not the object of the Real because the object of the Real withdraws from within that given purview as the counter-object of the psychoanalytic unconscious, which is the excessive Care of psychoanalytic desire.  

For Heidegger we are our possibilities in the sense that Care is localized in a particular body, so our possibilities are dictated by what is within the purview of our intention, which is given by our given Imaginary and Symbolic. However, those objective possibilities that have been withdrawn due to the limits of our intention's purview are not the same possibles that have been withdrawn from intention due to the excess of objectivity that constitutes our subjectivity. This excess of objectivity is the lack of objectivity that withdraws from object relations as the subject. Subjectivity has two related components: the intention and the unconscious, both of which are constituted by the given Imaginary and Symbolic of the subject’s Facticity. Lacan’s aphorism that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” means that the unconscious is not without language, but rather, it is the excess of language. Both our epistemology, or what we know and how we know it, and our ontology, or our being, are related to the setting in which we find ourselves. The excessive knowing of what is unknowable, or of what is beyond our given epistemology, is expressed by the desire to know Being-in-itself, or to know what withdraws from our epistemology. Psychoanalytic desire is excessive because it is only motivated by what it cannot grasp, which is to know this absolute excess of the “in-itself.” The Real is the insurance that there will always be an excess of withdrawn in-itself, no matter how much knowledge has been accumulated in the Symbolic. Lack of knowledge is the lack within being itself that becomes the excessive desire to represent this lack as knowledge in concepts. Lack of knowledge is the Object-Cause-of-Desire that becomes the excess of our being, which is our excessive desire to know what withdraws from our concepts. In the register of the Real this excess beyond concepts looks like lack, but in the register of the Imaginary, it looks like too much to know, or too much aboutness to make complete or whole. Complete or whole concepts would be concepts without a remainder of counter-conceptual, or excessive aboutness, which is the non-resemblance the Real’s absolute resistance to concepts.  

The unconscious is the concepts of the Symbolic that are withdrawn from the intention, so when it appears in the intention, it appears in the register of the Real as symbolic failure because it is counter to the concepts the intention. However, the unconscious is structured like a language because it is the voice of the Other. The unconscious is the withdrawn Symbolic, and as the internalized voice of the other, the Real withdraws from it also. The Real of the intention is the unconscious, but the Real of both unconscious and intentional representation is the Real’s counter-object of absolute resistance to symbolization. The Facticity of our Thrownness is the part of subjectivity that is object-like, or the part of subjectivity that is within the sentence, or within the Symbolic, of one’s Thrownness. What is beyond the sentence of one’s Thrownness, or the determinations of one’s Facticity, is the Self-Relating Negativity of the Subject of Annunciation, which is the excess of Heideggerian Care about what cannot be determined, or what Heidegger called, “The being for whom being is a concern.” For Heidegger it is Nonbeing, or death, that is the horizon of Care because it is the absolute beyond of being’s intentions. Care’s excessive desire is to extent its concern beyond the localized intentions of its “Being-There,” or beyond the limitations of its Facticity, which is the withdrawal of Being-in-Itself into Nonbeing.  

Care shapes perception by what it cares about according to its intentions, which is why the subjective screen of perception is called the “intention.” The intention is shaped by the Facticity given by one’s Thrownness, which is to say that one cares about what is in the purview of one’s intention. What one cares about is given by the desire of the Other through the concepts of the Symbolic. When those concepts are about wholeness and completeness, they are in the Imaginary register in which desire has a relation to representation, which is just to say that desire can be represented as the correspondence between an Imaginary object and the object of desire. When one’s desire does not resemble the given Imaginary objects of the Symbolic, then desire withdraws from those concepts as the non-relation between given concepts and what is given by desire. Lacan’s aphorism that “desire is the desire of the Other,” reflects the given nature of desire that the subject often mistakes for her own, inner-most desire. However, there are two senses in which desire is exterior, or other, to the subjectivity that is constituted by it. First, it is the desire of the Other, and second, it is other than one’s intention, which is an unintentional intention. The intention is one’s conscious awareness. The unconscious is the intentions of which one is unaware. Both together are the subject. When the intention is contradicted by the intentions of the unconscious, the aboutness splits between intentional concepts about desire and the unintended excess of aboutness that appears as its enigmatic withdrawal from those concepts. The concepts of desire are given by the Imaginary and Symbolic of one’s Facticity, or location in time and place, but the in-itself of one’s desire withdraws from the representation that has been given by the accidents of one’s Thrownness. Care projects desire as subjective intention, but desire is the outside of subjective intention because it is given by the Other through the Symbolic. When desire moves from the objects given by the Other to what withdraws from those objects, desire becomes the excessive desire for what cannot be an object. The excess of desire is the desire for the object of the Real, which appears in the register of the Imaginary as the desire to make desire whole or complete through representation. This is the second sense in which desire is the outside of subjective intention. It is the outside of the outside Other’s intention as well. 

The voice of the Other withdraws from the intention as the unconscious hiding its otherness, so that it speaks as if our deepest, inner self. However, the excess of desire also withdraws from the unconscious concepts of the internalized voice of the Other because of the Non-Relation between one’s desire and its representation given by the Other. The unconscious is the “unknown known,” in Zizek’s formulation, when it is the unconscious, internalized voice of the Other. However, there is an “unknown, unknown” beyond of the unconscious, which is the “hardcore kernel of the Real.” as Zizek put it. It is this hardcore kernel of the Real that withdraws from the language of the Other spoken both in the intention and in the unconscious. Lacan denied that the Real was any kind of in-itself or Kantian numina. He claimed that it was just a formal failure of language that caused the withdrawal of the Real from the Symbolic. However, a formal failure is indistinguishable from a withdrawn in-itself when it is an unknown, unknown, especially because the Real is a “Non-Rapport.” The Non-Rapport is the absence of a relationship that is positivized in the Symbolic in the statement, “There is a Non-Rapport,” so that the absence of a relation is the Object-Cause-of-Desire as a withdrawn in-itself, imagined as a lost relation. The Imaginary lost relationship is the relationship of the concept and its resemblance to the referent without any remainder of non-resemblance, which is the equivalency of an identity. Identity is the lost relationship between the Imaginary object of desire and the object of desire, and more generally, it is the Imaginary lost relationship between The Symbolic and the Real. 

Objects withdraw from Care’s projects because these projects are a kind of “Falling” into the myopic, everyday-ness of one’s given intention, which is the intentional givenness of “Being-There,” or the Facticity of being both symbolically and physically located in a particular time and place. “Dasein” is Being that is in a particular place and time, which is why it is “Being-There” for Heidegger. Objects, as defined possibilities, withdraw from Care’s intentions in its everyday mode because Care’s Fallen condition is the flow of the “Ready-to-Hand" intention given by the Symbolic, Big Other of that location. An intention is localized so that what is not in its purview withdraws from it but not as the Real. What is not within the intention’s purview withdraws as that which is not local to it. The portion of the Symbolic that constitutes the unconscious is simply in a different location from the intention until it appears as the symbolic failure of an unintentional parapraxis or symptom.  

An intention’s every-day mode, which for Heidegger was the Ready-to-Hand mode, is given by the intentions of “The They.” These intentions are codified in the local Symbolic of Dasein’s Thrownness and internalized by Dasein as both the subject’s unconscious and the intention. The relationship between the Abstract and the Particular can be seen in the phrase “local Symbolic.” The Abstract locates the particular through representation. The Real is what resists localization absolutely. The everyday intention of the Other is an intention untroubled by the Real because it flows within the world of objects as an object among objects. The Ready-to-Hand mode might be thought of as the smooth relations among objects when each interacts with the other’s exterior possibilities according to its own, but nonetheless given, internal intentions. This is the illusion of rapport, or of relation. given by the intention when it is in the Imaginary register, in which concepts resemble their referents without any remainder of non-resemblance.  

However, when Care is excessive, it is like psychoanalytic desire, which breaks the “Ready-to-Hand" flow of the intention. The Real is the not-at-oneness, or Non-Rapport, of Dasein’s intentions. Too much intention, or too much aboutness, is the Real of psychoanalytical desire. The excess that constitutes desire is the lack that is the Object-Cause-of-Desire. The Object of the Real withdraws from the flow of Ready-to-Hand, intentional representation as a counter-presence within the intention. This counter presence is the Object-Cause-of-Desire, anxiety, and wonder. When intention is excessive, it is about what is not Ready-to-Hand, or what withdraws from object relations, which is the strange sort of in-itself of the Non-Relation of non-resemblance. 

The Fallen aspect of Care reduces objective possibilities by focusing on the objective possibilities that one cares about. Fallenness in this sense is just the decentering of focusing on one thing rather than the another. Language’s focusing mechanism decenters in a similar way. Focusing on the abstract resemblance of concepts loses the non-resemblance of the difference of the particular referent. Focusing on the non-resemblance of the referent disallows conceptualization. This inverse relation between conceptual abstraction and the particularity of difference is the Non-Relation of the Real that makes representation possible. The horizon for the possibility for representation is the withdrawal of the Real as the Non-Relation between the signifier and the signified. Another way to say this, as many a modern thinker has, might be to say that representation is not the correspondence of signifier and signified, but the non-correspondence of signifier and the signified mediated through symbolic difference, or Jacques Derrida’s “Differance.”  

Representation uses concepts to identify objects on the intentional screen via general equivalencies. The Real is the excessive particularity that withdraws from the relations of general equivalencies as the Non-Relation of difference. AFN Whitehead’s definition of the simplest form of a concept was two percepts joined by a rule. The rule is the abstract, or general, aspect of the concept, and the percepts are the differences only perceivable because of the abstract, intentional relation between them. The Real is not the nothing before the intentional relations of difference. That nothing is the without relations of Being-in-Itself as a singularity, or as Being-All-In-One-Place. The Real is the difference that makes representation, as a system of differences, possible. Difference is a relation between at least two terms. The Real is a relation between the resemblance of concepts and the difference of non-resemblance, which the Symbolic registers as a failure to represent. However, the Non-Relation between the signifier and the signifier is the differential relation that appears as excess when it withdraws from representation in the Imaginary register of the intention. The excess of desire withdraws from representation because it is too much to represent. The Real withdraws as the excess of Particularity beyond the abstract relations of concepts, which is like the withdrawal of an object’s in-itself, but it is an absolute in-itself due to a lack in being itself that corresponds to the lack of correspondence within representation between the Abstract and the Particular.  

AFN Whitehead called, the framing aspect of concepts a “General.” Whitehead’s Generals make objects by unifying their differences into particular, individuated objects through the relations of rules. Objects are like sets because the rules of sets define their contents, and the rules of objects define their attributes. Objects are defined by the rules that differentiate them as particular sets of differential relations. Objects are the attributes defined by their possible relations within themselves and with other objects. Objective attributes are relationally defined possibility spaces. Objects can be made of other objects because defined possibilities within defined possibilities are also objects. Objects are defined “series of differences,” as Deleuze put it, and it is the interactions of series of differences with other series of differences that define objects as possibility spaces of a particular sort. The most basic object is the percept because the percept is already a relation between itself and another percept according to a rule. The single percept is imperceivable until it is put into differential relation with another percept through a General, at the very least, the general category of difference. 

The Whiteheadian General, is like a container, or a set, for the Particular when the Particular is thought of as difference, or a series of differences, and the General is thought of as its abstract frame. The abstract frame of a General either obscures difference through resemblance or defines it through differentiation depending on the perspective of the intention. The General reduces difference by excluding what does not fit within the set defined by abstract resemblance to the concept, which is how the Imaginary creates whole or complete objects. But a definition is a contrast, so it defines a set by contrasting individuated difference from its identification as a resemblance, which is how the object of the Real is individuated through differentiation from Imaginary objectification. When an object is individuated by differentiation, the generality of its resemblance defines its difference as its particularity, so that the General presents difference as a concrete form. The General as an abstract form is negated by the Determinate Negation of the Particular into Hegel’s Concrete Form. A Concrete Form is a particular object individuated through differentiation rather than through the identification of equivalency. 

Whiteheadian Generals arise as repetitions from within difference. Generals obscure difference through the relation of resemblance in the Imaginary register, but Generals are the forms from which difference defines itself in the register of the Real. The Real defines its object as its withdrawal from the Imaginary’s object, which is the withdrawal of the counter-whole of difference from the whole or resemblance. The Subject of Annunciation stands at the intersection of the three registers, so her intention registers not only Imaginary resemblance but also what withdraws from resemblance, which is what fails to be interpolated into the Symbolic in the register of the Real. Generals define and intensify difference in the manner of Deleuze's “Repetition of Difference.” The Repetition of Difference is a general plus what cannot be generalized, which is form plus the difference it defines. The repetition is a temporary general that presents the difference of what cannot be generalized in the sense that it cannot be interpolated into the Symbolic through the abstraction of representation. Both Whitehead and Deleuze opposed generals as transcendent forms, which is why Deleuze’s term for form is “repetition.” Repetitions of Difference do not obscure difference through resemblance to a transcendent identity but intensify and present difference as a singular, or particular, form. 

Difference before it is defined is too open or chaotic to be an objective possibility space. Difference before the relations of definition is the nothing of the singularity, or of Being-in-Itself. Possibilities are defined series of differences, so they are concrete objects, even when they are not concretized in material. Deleuze thought of a concrete set of possibilities as “actualized” possibility because it was structured, or objective, possibility. When actual possibilities are withdrawn from object relations, they are virtual. One of Deleuze’s examples of a virtual object was a concept that is stored in memory until it is activated by being put into relation with other objects. The withdrawal of virtuality from active object relations is not the withdrawal of the Real. The Real withdraws from virtual objects as well as from active object relations but not from the perspective of objects of the intention because they are the objects determined by the sentence. The Real withdraws from the Subject of Annunciation because only the self-alienated position outside of the sentence can see it withdraw from the annunciation of the sentence itself.  

Deleuze’s concept of a “Body Without Organs,” is a defined possibility space in which its structures individuate objects according to the processes of differentiation rather than through the processes of identification. The structures in the Body Without Organs intensify and protect difference against the “cancerous stratifications” of too much structure by maintaining its “smooth” surface. A Heideggerian “Clearing” is also defined possibility space, so it is an object that creates new objects through defined but indeterminate space as well. The defining of possibility is the minimal structure that the clearing or the Body Without Organs needs to presence difference as a continual flow of individuation through differentiation. Heidegger defined the Clearing as the contrast between his concepts of “Ready-to-Hand" intention verses “Present-at-Hand" intention. When the intention is Ready-to-Hand, it identifies conceptual and phenomenal objects accord to their use, which is the relation of a tool to the intention. “Ready-to-Hand" intention is like Deleuze’s depiction of how concepts are used as models. For Deleuze, when concepts were models, the intention related to difference as usable, because exchangeable, equivalencies. However, for Heidegger, when the intention was Present-at-Hand, it cleared space for whatever objects were when they did not function as tools and were not about use. The useless attributes of objects withdraw from the Ready-to-Hand intention, so the Present-at-Hand intention is a clearing for “Being to speak for itself,” in which what was withdrawn when objects were useful is present to the intention in their uselessness. For Deleuze, when concepts were not used as model’s, their different came to the foreground of their intentions, so that their difference could be brought into relation with the difference of other objects to differentiate new objects rather than reproduce old ones. For Deleuze, when Being spoke for itself, it always spoke new words. 

This shift between Ready-to-Hand usefulness and Present-at-Hand uselessness, is the shift from use-value to the excessive value that Karl Marx identified in exchange value. The commodity shifts from something that is valued because of its usefulness to something that is valued because of what someone will exchange for it under Capitalism. The “commodity fetish” is a scandal to Marx, but it is what Lacan theorized as “Jouissance” or “Excessive Enjoyment.” What made enjoyment excessive for Lacan was not only its lack of use-value but also the inherent detrimental effects of excess outlined by Freud’s concept of the Death Drive. Love for Lacan entirely lacks exchange-value, so it is a useless exchange of nothing, which can be seen in his aphorism, “Love is giving what you don’t have, to someone who doesn’t want it.” This sense of love as the giving of nothing might be thought of as giving space to the beloved to be without the intention of use. Exchange-value in economic theory is an exchange of nothing since the grounding of value that use-value and labor-theory-of-value seemed to give is eliminated in exchange-value. However, being does not speak for itself in the intention of the market, so exchange-value is still an intention about being-for-something rather than Being-for-Itself. Heidegger’s Present-at-Hand intention is not the exchange-value of the market, it is a granting of space. Heidegger saw the clearing away of Ready-to-Hand intention as making room for what is not economic or exchangeable to come forth. Deleuze’s rejection of the exchangeable equivalencies of identity was a similar rejection of economic transactions among object relations. Deleuze felt that identity reduced difference through resemblance, so clearing away concepts of identity, made room for concepts of difference, which were open flows of objective individuation through differentiation. Deleuze’s Body-without-Organ and Heidegger’s Clearing are both sorts of intentions without any particular intentions. 

The mystic seeks to make a clearing of herself for God to speak for Herself. The words of the mystics must reveal God as She withdraws. Whatever “God is a rock,” reveals, is withdrawn via the negation, “God is not a rock.” However, mystical speech is not a simple negation, or clearing away without remainder, but a clearing away that produces the unresolved double negation, “not, not.” It is a clearing that adds space for the additive negativity of “God is not, not a rock” to resonate within. The mystic’s withdrawal from Ready-to-Handed-ness into disciplined, Present-at-Hand uselessness is a subtraction of the objects of the economic intention that adds new objects of speech about what is unsayable with economic concepts. Concepts and practices without any particular intentions are what Deleuze called, “Repetition without a concept,” which for him was the definition of “Repetitions of difference.”  Repetitions without a concept are without a concept as a model, so the differentiation of new objects is unguided by a convergence on an absent, or transcendent, identity. Mystical concepts are open in this same way, even though they are guided by the desire for the absent, and perhaps transcendent, divine’s presence. However, this intention for the divine does rely on any particular intentions for the divine, which is why mystical intention is a clearing away of intentions. The practice of the Via Negative is the exempla gratis of making oneself a clearing through negation, but all mystical practices involve negation, particularly the negation of economic usefulness, which is why the mystic practices so many intentionally useless things. An Anchorite is just one extravagant example in which the renunciate walls herself up in a small room to pray and receive alms. No value is produced and not is transacted between the Anchorite and her God, but mystical emptiness is said to be priceless. Mystical prayer is not for anything because it is for nothing. Self-renunciation is making oneself a clearing for God by making oneself useless. Meister Ekhart summed up all of this uselessness well in his many sermons on “living without a why.” Any reason for living had to be negated, for Ekhart, so that grace, as the gift of valuelessness, could be freely given and freely received without the transaction of a reason. Ekhart like Lacan believed that love is only love when it is for nothing, which in this case means invaluable, rather than valueless. 

Divine love is best expressed in the failure to articulate it, which is a distinct sort of failure from the failure to speak. The failure to articulate is speech that produces a concrete failure. Love is a concrete nothing or nothing at all. When love is the failure to speak, it disappears into its own impotency. When love’s failure is made concrete, it’s impotency becomes the vehicle of its perfection. Mystical theology may seem at times to be a desire for that former, abstract oblivion of nirvana, but as with all things mystical, mystical desire is a paradox that expresses itself through the dialectic of abstract representation and the excessive, because symbolically irresolvable, particularity of desire; particularly, desire’s failure to articulate the Real of the beloved.  

Mystical love is union with God through the renunciation of the self, which is the reduction of the intentional particularity of self in favor of the intentional abstraction of space for the other to fill with Her own particularity. Representation is the relation between the Abstract and the Particular outlined in Hegel’s dialectic of the Concrete. In mystical speech the abstract concept is negated by the Particular in the sense that what is particular about the divine is what is different from the concepts of it. The self-reduction of silence produces particular words. Mystical speech is characterized by hyperbole and negation. Hyperbole because the particularity of love super-saturates the beloved beyond a mere negation of the abstract general, e.g.: Pseudo-Dionysius's “Super-Saturated Substance,” which for many mystics is articulated as a super-saturated void. Love makes a clearing as an abstract space for the super-saturation of excessive particularity, so that love is a process of absenting Ready-to-Hand intention for the emptied intention to become super-statured with the presence of the Particular. Love is the intention that is about the excessive presence of the concrete particular.  

The negation of Negative Theology is a denial of any particular representation because each is an inadequate clearing for the divine’s super-saturation. The Real of desire is like Dasein's Fallenness because Fallenness is a fall into the myopia of the particular. For the Christian mystic, God’s self-emptying into a particular human body is the central mystery of contemplation’s clearing. The Incarnation is the mystery of the super saturation of self-emptying love into a Fallen, even if sinless, Facticity that cannot contain it: the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. God’s abdication of the throne in favor of a castrated, concrete form is the central mystery of human sanctification through Fallen Facticity.  

In personal relations there is a noncoincidence between representation and desire, which can be thought of as the void at the heart of romantic love. There is no lover who can complete the other because lack is the obstacle that is also the condition of love, which is why for Lacan it is the Non-Rapport that makes love possible. If love could make whole and complete, then it would be ineluctably bound with transactional, or economic, relations. The Non-Relation is a relation, but not of the type that the mystic seeks to exit in the non-transactional relation of grace. When your beloved is the transcendent, because absent, God, as it is for the mystic, your love is your lack, which becomes the vehicle of God’s immanence. Mystical love is a lack because it is a clearing that is a clearing away of what is not God, so that God can be foregrounded. The Via Negative is a vehicle because it transports the immanent mystic to the transcendent mystery, which is the mystery of the “sacred mundane,” or the “near far.” What is most emphasized by the central ritual practice of the Christian mystic, the Eucharist, is the comically mundane mystery of how transcendence presents itself in bread as the body of God to be eaten, and wine as divine blood to be drunk. For Marion the Eucharist was the invisible made visible not in the transcendence of the divine, but in the absurd mundanity of the host.  

St. Augustine of Hippo said, “God is more intimate to me than I am to myself,” and the immanence of God’s intimacy is articulated in the Eucharist in the excessive intimacy of eating and drinking the beloved’s body and blood. The Eucharist has been a central example for Marion of a Counter-Experience because of this interplay between abstract transcendence and excessive immanence, which is the absurd particularity of divine love as a meal. Another important example of Saturated Phenomena has been sickness for Marion, which provides a defining counterpoint to the Eucharist because while both produce undeterminable affects, the affects produced in each type of Saturated Phenomenon are very different, so that the defined indeterminacy of these affects is a particular defined indeterminacy. The defined indeterminacy of Saturated Phenomena is the object of the Real, which is defined by the differentiation of the counter-object of Counter-Experience. Absolute resistance to symbolization has a concrete form particular to the concepts that it resists, even though this concrete form appears as a concrete (de)formation in the intention. 

In the Eucharist the comic absurdity of bread as the body of the divine is the intentional obstacle to hermeneutical interpretation that forms the Object-Cause-of-Desire from the undeterminable hermeneutics of the ritual. This Sacrament is the practice of super-saturating a substance with undeterminable hermeneutics. However, Marion argued that the substance was not the bread but the intentions of the participants in Communion. Marion was against the doctrine of the Church that described the Eucharist as a process of “Transubstantiation” of the substance of the bread to the substance of the divine for this reason. He preferred the doctrine of “Real Presence” instead because the Real was not in the bread, but rather in the phenomenon of Communion itself.  

In sickness undeterminable hermeneutics provoke anxiety rather than desire. The Object-Cause-of-Anxiety in illness is the horror of the undeterminable hermeneutics of over-proximal affects. For Marion this over-proximity is too much givenness for the intention to intent. Paul Tillich talked about the “pain of pain,” which was pain without a meaning. Built into illness is pain without meaning because its affects are indeterminable even when a diagnosis has been given, which is to say that illness does not resemble its concepts. In both the case of the Eucharist and of illness, the intention is not about abstract transcendence, but rather the intention is about the immanence of the body. In the former the body of God takes the excessively particular form of bread and wine. And in the latter the body manifests the excessively particular affects of illness. Both forms of excessive particularity resist the concepts meant to contain them. This excessive resistance is the absolute resistance of the Real. The object of the Real is the obstruction to hermeneutical procedures that causes the intention to be in and of the peculiar particularities of the body rather than in some transcendent aboutness.