It—truth—does not speak. I—spreading love—am an unidentified flying object.
Why Can’t ACG Works Convey More of a Sense of Reality?1
1
To begin with, I think the first thing worth noticing about this question is that it takes this thing called a “sense of reality” to be self-evident, universal, and in no need of explanation.
But difference is actually on the side of universality, not particularity. Universality is always not-all. To put it in Laclau’s terms: the particular content of each stage is not merely a subspecies within the overall universal process; it hegemonizes that universality.2 In this case, to put it concretely, we do not share a single sense of reality. Rather, the very concept of a sense of reality is different for each person. A has A’s sense of reality, B has B’s, and C has C’s. Fundamentally, you are not entitled to say that one sense of reality is more real than another.
We are not talking about individual differences within a single set defined by a shared sense of reality; the sense of reality itself differs from person to person.
In essays such as “Neurosis and Psychosis” and “The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis,” Freud discusses the different ways neurosis and psychosis deal with the “loss of reality” and the “delusional world.” In psychosis, reality is entirely replaced by a delusional reality, whereas in neurosis, reality is mediated by a delusional world. That is, the former involves complete immersion in a delusional world, while the latter involves only occasional immersion, with most of life spent in the so-called “real world.”
Now here is the twist: the person with neurosis who occasionally escapes into a “delusional world” can actually use that escape as a foothold for better participation in the real world. For him, the delusional world is not opposed to the real world. Quite the contrary: it is the real world’s ultimate support.
This person with neurosis is the so-called “normal person” in early Lacan (or the structure closest to normality).
If we compare the former to a hardcore otaku who rejects everything about the 3D world, then the latter is naturally a not-so-hardcore otaku: he acknowledges the 3D world while loving the 2D world. Take the 2D world (delusion) away from him, and the 3D world (reality) itself loses its meaning.
As Richard Boothby puts it, traversing the fantasy does not mean discarding fantasy. Quite the opposite: traversing the fantasy makes us more subject to fantasy than ever. In the process, we enter into a much closer relation with fantasy’s true core—closer than we could have imagined.3
What I want to say here is this: the sense of reality is itself unreal. It is merely a narcissistic way of evading the trauma of the Real. There is always a portion of surplus reality within reality: for reality to be constructed (imagined) as a whole, this portion must be excluded. It is like the “subject who knows too much”: he knows so much that he ends up knowing nothing at all. Socrates is wise precisely because, unlike the sophists who think they see through everything, he admits: the only thing I know is that I know nothing.
Back to the question of the sense of reality and reality itself. The questioner sees the 2D world as nothing but “plots like a game of playing house, disconnecting a whole bunch of people’s thinking from reality.” But aren’t films and television dramas doing exactly the same thing? In real life, every one of us has to urinate and defecate. We encounter our own excrement every day. Most of us pick our noses in less than elegant ways. I think everyone here will agree that this is indeed real. But if you put shots like these into a film, will they give you a sense of reality? No. More often, you will feel disgusted; you will think the director is out of his mind (of course, most directors do not go out of their way to film the details of excretion). It is precisely these most real parts that make you lose your sense of reality.
The zero degree of film is merely a delusion; documentary is impossible. But films themselves are not delusions. Many films retroactively construct reality. In fact, all films have the structural function of manufacturing reality retroactively. When you discuss a film with a friend, the two of you have already added it to reality. If ACG is unreal, is the sense of international recognition Japan gains through ACG also an illusion? Does Shinzo Abe’s project of strengthening the nation through anime and manga lack a sense of reality too? Even though they have brought tangible benefits and added to GDP.
It is not, as the question puts it, that “the 2D world disconnects a whole bunch of people from reality.” Rather, reality itself is already disconnected from itself, which is why we need all sorts of things to suture reality together. The 2D world is only one of these many materials (a very special one, of course). The fantasy behind the question is that, without the 2D world, reality would not be disconnected—or would at least be a little more real. But reality is always already disconnected from itself. It is precisely the presence of something as apparently unreal as the 2D world that rescues a fantasy of an innocent reality. The issue is not how the 2D world (fantasy) becomes disconnected from reality, but that the question itself rests on a fantasy. (An ideology that excludes the other.)
2
Reality is retroactively constructed. This is why Hegel says that everything has to happen twice. The first time, it goes unrecognized; only the second time can it be incorporated into a symbolic system of signs. Every element of reality can retroactively reconstruct its own reality. That includes the 2D world, of course. Aren’t anime conventions real enough? Don’t the cosplayers wearing their beloved 2D outfits exist?
Likewise, a sense of reality is also no more than a fluid concept, itself constantly changing. There is no such thing as a stable sense of reality. Could today’s skyscrapers have conveyed a sense of reality to people several hundred years ago? By the same token, could things from several hundred years in the future convey a sense of reality to us now? Even in primitive tribes, in the supposed period of greatest intimacy between humanity and nature, a whole series of rituals and taboos would make any modern person lose their sense of reality. Unless you think it perfectly normal to see someone from another tribe and immediately treat him as an enemy or a king (two common attitudes toward outsiders in primitive tribes, but equally applicable to today’s postcolonial discourse).
But merely pointing out what is wrong with the questioner’s question is not enough; we can also say that it is entirely correct. The 2D world does indeed lack a sense of reality—but on one condition: this sense of reality applies only to the questioner. If we affirm fantasy, we must also affirm the respondent’s/questioner’s fantasy, but on the condition that this fantasy cannot be applied to other people.
A person with psychosis (paranoia)4 withdraws the libido initially invested in the external world back into ego-libido. This withdrawal directly produces the “experience of the end of the world”—what is also called the world’s collapse. Once delusion disappears, reality will disappear too. But delusion never disappears. This is another lesson that the delusions of grandeur in psychosis teach us.
Please respect other people’s delusions (this does not mean affirming delusions that harm others), because, in fact, you have no choice.
Editor’s note:
This was an answer to a question. I added a few pictures and cut two prefatory sentences. Let me add a couple of thoughts of my own, off the cuff. In their most immediate reality, in the 3D world where they regard themselves and others as real individuals, human beings are earthly beings; human beings are an unreal phenomenon. In illusion, in the virtual dimension of species-being, human beings are deprived of their real individual lives yet filled with an unreal universality. It is precisely this illusion that guarantees the continued existence of divided earthly reality.5