What is this truth?

“Desire unconscious of itself is logic.”

 – Anthony Paul Farley, The Dream of Interpretation

“There are always more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.”

– Anthony Paul Farley, The Dream of Interpretation

“[I]f you purport to love truth as power, if you reject the fact that all true love of truth is love of an impotence or a weakness, if you purport to love truth as power and not as weakness, then you’ll be helpless in the face of ignorance. The power of the love of truth, including its power to block ignorance, is precisely to be the love of a weakness, the love of a certain impotence. Ultimately, the love of truth is only powerful if it is the love of an impotence.”

– Alain Badiou, Lacan: Anti-Philosophy

Thinking begins from a place called, ‘I love you.’ There is no Thought that is not also a hainmoration. Hainmoration is the Lacanian term given to the ambivalence embedded within love and hate. You could think of hainmoration as a theoretical translation of that Eminem line from ‘When I’m Gone’ when he says, “Have you ever loved someone so much you give an arm for her? Not the expression, no, literally give an arm for her?” Pain, hate, disgust and love, ecstasy, bliss commingle in a convoluted knot. Thought holds a hainmoration. The object-relation of the hainmoration of Thought is often that of the speculative possibility of the realization of the so-called ‘Truth.’ It is not simply that the Thought seeks Truth, that Thought aspires to Truth – it is the case that Thought is often in love with the Truth. Thought has a ‘monogamous’ object-relation with Truth. In this prelogical formation, it matters not whether the Truth is ‘real’ or a ‘fantasy’ what matters is that ‘we’ are in love with it. The ‘Other’ that we love in the flesh, (an Other human being let’s say) is both an outcome of the real and imaginary aspects of our Idea of them. This is true of the category of the Human itself. So, if there is a Truth “out-there” (in here? … if there is a truth in-here!) then, I want to suggest that this notion of Truth – our sociogenic notion of the object-relation of Truth – gets projected upon with the features of love as hainmoration. And this love, indeed, is a kind of possessive love. It is ‘monogamous’ as much as it is ‘monotheistic.’ It is a love in which in which hatred for what one both possesses (and oh so clearly does not possess) can result in some of the most robust expressions of ‘loving someone so much you give an arm for her.’ Has one ever been more willing to ‘give an arm’ for anything more than their love of Truth? Is not this love the prelogical – meaning, before the logic of rationalization unfolds as an instrument requiring tuning, training, practice, and drive – request of the Truth-seeker? Perhaps, love is too strong of a term perhaps you prefer, Desire. Whatever. Anthony Paul Farley states, “Desire is cultivated by training. Desire is both necessary condition for and the result of training. Desire reveals itself in rules. Rules are institutions, habits, and conventions. Desire, confronting the possibility of its own finitude, projects itself as the whole of space and time. Desire confronts a repressive force and becomes logic. Logic is desire infinitely extended.” (Anthony Paul Farley, The Dream of Interpretation, 686) Love constitutes a fundamental desire in the cultivation of institutional training. The love of Truth is the rule. Thought towards the love of Truth is hainmoration, towards the inevitability of war. This is to say that our institutions – understanding that there is a desire for and in Thought, understanding that thinking is part of what we both need and demand, – will continue to cultivate ‘the Love of Thought’ as ‘Truth.’ This is the dream of rational interpretation. This is the logic of Logic’s desire. Thought is not being trained to say, “I hate the Truth.” Even if one’s frustration along the journey causes one to utter this or become angry, disappointed or deadly. Thought becomes deadly precisely out of a Love. Every one possess their ‘Truth’ as an object-relation of their Thought. Desire is prelogical exploration. It is wonder held within the sensuousness of the term. One withdraws wonder in the disavowal of desire. One leaves “the Thing” unconscious. What is this Thing, we are after, in the Other, in OurSelves, in-the-World itself? What is it we desire? What is this Truth? Whatever we desire, desire itself speaks too a kind of not-knowing. Desire hints at not-knowing. The one who seeks the Truth knows it not. This agnotological dimension of desire is the prelogical basis for its relation to exploration. One explores what they are ignorant about in each Other, (and in the Truth-as-Other-and-Within-You) as a matter of desire. That ‘Truth’ – as a Real phantasy – exist, as a quest that one is often willing to go to war for, is the truest reason for thinking Kant with Sade. When we say knowledge and power apparatuses, when we say ‘regime of Truth’, when we say Truth as a Real phantasy, we mean: “Hierarchy unifies power and pleasure in the disguise of interpretation. The pleasure of mastery finds its way into the body as it interprets: masters, therefore, endeavor to interpret. The pleasure of slavery finds its way into the body that it interprets: slaves, therefore, endeavor to be interpreted. This is the ecstasy of hierarchy.” (APF, The Dream of Interpretation, 689). A regime of truth is nothing more than Thought turned into an ecstasy of hierarchy. Thought turned into the love of Truth as monolithic rule, as Law. Thought made into a regulative principle. Thought made into a sadism. “The pleasure of mastery is sadistic. The pleasure of slavery is masochistic.” (APF, The Dream of Interpretation, 690). The sadistic pleasure of mastery is disavowal as much as the masochistic pleasure of slavery. Both evoke a relative silence in the landscape of confession. But, we are often found stating that,  “We love what we do,” when what we do is ostensibly the task of “knowledge production” – as the accumulative wet-dream of the dream of interpretation. Truth is the pleasure of building upon the ecstasy of hierarchy in Thought.  It is Thought as ‘I Love You.’ Yet, since Thought disavowals this thought it is often turned into the Love of Truth as Power. This is where knowledge production meets desiring-machine meets war machine. The old adage is correct: Knowledge is power. But it is more precise to say that the love of power is the truth of knowledge.