Alexander Chernoglazov. Word on the Trinity. Vol. 2. No. 1/2. 2017

Publication Details

Word on the Trinity
Title in the language of publication: Слово о Троице
Author:
Alexander Chernoglazov
Associate Research Fellow at the Sociological institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Address: 25/14 7-ya Krasnoarmeyskaya str., St. Petersburg 190005, Russia.
Issue:
P. 44–55.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
 

Abstract

In the present article, the images of the Holy Trinity by Andrey Rublev and Theophanes the Greek as a revelation of desire within the Holy Trinity and its ties with the human desire expressed in the Christian worship are analyzed. When describing the human communication, Lacan states that its property is “a structural shortcoming, a lack which is not replenished by any symbol”. This lack relates to the very speech — it is “radical and appears… as a core condition of the existence of subjectivity”. The speech does not warrant its own verity and is incomplete in this sense: it admittedly gives no answer on the question on the desire. This defect is quite what is being replenished by the object a, the object-matter of desire — a remnant which cannot be placed into the symbolic range the subject would like to coincide with. “The best way to approach to this loss”, says Lacan, “is to imagine it as a body part”. In the article, an attempt is made to show that this very “body part” is a conceptual and artificial core of Rublev’s icon. As long as we interpret the communication within the Trinity as personal, it should inevitably shape itself as spinning around a lack, which cannot be reimbursed by any word and can be replenished only by deliberate death, a unique authentic witness of love. The lack of signifier is replenished only by a loss of the subject, by his reduction to the content of the cup. The sacrifice, which arranged the relationship between human and God in the Old Testament, is introduced thereby into the core of the inner life of the Trinity on our icon: while Abraham’s sacrifice appears a deuterogenic gesture in regard of it. The humankind is, therefore, the very particle of flesh needed by the Divinity to lessen itself, to certify its desire. In this case, the icon demonstrate us not the image of divine dispensation, but a revelation of the inner life of the Trinity: the divinely desire openly discloses itself through it.

Keywords

Desire, object a, signifier, personality, images of the Holy Trinity, sacrifice, cenosis.

References 

Florensky P. A. (1996) «Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Russia». Florensky P. A. Soch.: v 4-kh t. T. 2 [Works in 4 vol. Vol. 2]. Moscow: Mysl’ (Filosofskoe nasledie. T. 124 [Philosophical Heritage. Vol. 124]): 352–369. (in Russian).

Lacan J. (1966) “La science et la vérité”. Lacan J. Ecrits. Paris: Éditions du Seuil: 855–877.

Lacan J. (1999) Le Séminaire. Livre II. Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse (1954–1955). Moscow: Gnozis; Logos. (in Russian).

Lacan J. (2006) Le Séminaire. Livre XVI. D’un Autre à l’autre (1968–1969) (texte établi par J.-A. Miller). Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

Lacan J. (2010) Le Séminaire. Livre X. L’angoisse (1962–1963). Moscow: Gnozis; Logos. (in Russian).

© Alexander Chernoglazov, 2017

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