The Real and Reality Revisited

Since the beginning of this course I have been very interested in this idea of making the ordinary strange. The concepts of the real and reality to which we were introduced in class have served to illuminate this strangeness in everyday life which, we as everyday humans seem to ignore. Over the course of my studies this year in other classes this concept of reality as a system organized by our socio-linguistic structure which veils the true nature of the real, has continued to pop up. This concept seems to have been thought of on varying levels among ages and classes of intellectuals throughout history. Earlier in the year I made a post about how the concept of the real is akin to the idea of the Tao. This is just one example that I will refrain from visiting. I would like, however to share how this concept has manifested itself in other areas of my studies, to show that the ordinary everyday spans across all peoples of all times, and that these people seek a return to the real. I feel as though these examples may serve to illuminate the universal nature of Lacan's theory of the real and reality.


1) In the early 14th century Dante Alighieri wrote his famous poem entitled or La Divina Commedia or the Divine Comedy. This work houses the very famous Inferno, which gives Dante's account of an imagined hell riddled with moral lessons and the like. But the Inferno is only the first book of a trilogy that brings the reader along with Dante the protagonist through a spiritual journey. The following two books are Purgatory and Paradise. In Purgatory the reader learns on their journey of the spiritual lesson of purging sins and learning how to Love most properly. In learning to love properly the reader may move closer toward God and Heaven. This is all explained of course through Dante who acts as both the narrator and the protagonist of this long poem. After purging their sins entirely and learning how to love properly the reader moves into the final book of Paradiso in which one makes their spiritual journey through Dante's imagined heaven. It is in this heaven that the concept of the Real emerges.
The journey through heaven is a journey towards achieving a oneness with God and all of creation. However, there are quite a few instances throughout the course of this heavenly journey in which the protagonist preemptively achieves a glimpse of this oneness. Every time that this occurs Dante always describes the feelings as ineffable, indescribable, and beyond percieved REALITY. It is like knowing all things at once without being able to explain any of it to the rational mind. However, shortly afterward in all of these moments he returns to a socially constructed understanding of the universe, which he displays by articulating it through poetry. In the moments in which he achieves oneness with all of creation, when he returns to the source of all things that have manifested, he is , in my opinion, expressing an experience with the Real. As we recall Humans seek a return to the real from this socially constructed reality. I believe that although it may not have been Dante's intention, This spiritual journey towards oneness is exactly that sought after journey towards returning to the Real.

2) I recently submitted a paper on Surrealism and the intentions behind its practices. The Surrealist practices involved unveiling the mind to what they called, the marvelous. The marvelous is in essence the "strange" part of the "making the ordinary strange" philosophy. To put it in its simplest terms (although it is not a simple philosophy) they sought for humans to not use words for their socially constructed meanings but rather they wanted humans to see the dual nature of language. Obviously words are units of language which carry social meaning and relevance. However by writing in a style called psychic automatism, in which the writer writes the immediate flow of thought in their head without regard for aesthetic opinion or care for literacy, they felt that they were unveiling the true nature and source of thought which manifested itself in these words. Thus by continuously spitting out words they saw themsleves as returning language to its source. To its source in thought. They saw themsleves as uncovering the unconscious. So the dual nature of language , in my opinion, lies on either side of the real or reality, with socially constructed units of meaning in reality on one side, and the unveiling of the true source of thought erupting into the reality manifested as language is the REAL on the other.
This practice of psychic automatism erupts the real within the reality of language. through this and other practices surrealists developed a new lens through which to view the everyday ordinary. they were able to see it as strange and marvelous as they uncovered the true Real in Reality.