| Title: | The Stratification of Cause: when does the desire of the leader become the leadership of desire? |
| Author: | Philip Boxer |
| Category: | Published |
| Publication Year: | 1998 |
| Where Published: | Psychanalytische Perspektieven, 32/33, pp137-159. |
| Abstract: |
Following Aristotle’s four causes, a stratified analysis of cause is developed and applied to ‘explaining’ the behaviour of the Corporation. The desire of the leader is identified with knowing what is ‘right’ for the Corporation as a whole, formulated in terms of what is necessary and determinate for the purposes of the Corporation. The anticipative logic of hyperincursive control is introduced to show how Aristotle’s notion of the final cause is extended, and it is argued that this forms the basis for a third cybernetics through its constituting of a relation to the undecideabilities constituted in the logic of the present moment. Basing itself on Maturana’s formulation of the observer, the paper goes on to argue the problematic nature of the intersection between the body and the observer’s ‘I’ in a third-order linguistic closure, which corresponds to a problematising of the desire of the leader. It is argued that this third-order linguistic closure has its own impossibilites and undecideabilities as a medium, introducing an Otherness through its parasitising effects on the constituting of the intersecting ‘I’. The resulting undecideabilities in the constituting of the ‘I’ institute the effects of desire – the observer’s relation to what is lacking in the coherence and consistency of intersection. This relation to desire is constitutive of a third-order cybernetics, and is the basis of a leadership of desire.