Inverting the Symbolic-Real dynamic: the icon

I've had a break through thinking about the symbolic-real dynamic in Zizek. Zizek, following Lacan, claims that though we symbolically construct our world there is an interruption of our ability to dwell in the symbolic. Where the symbolic cannot contain all of experience the real leaks from under it. Zizek actually uses the image of a snail in a shell to describe the real (the snail's body) and the symbolic (the shell). He also claims that, like the snail, the real is grotesque. I like to think that the real can be beautiful. One other thing: the early Lacan conceived of the real as extra linguistic, but the late Lacan (and Zizek), claims that the real is actually a function of language. The Symbolic is also a function of language. It is the known of language, where as the real comes through in the unknown, the un-assimilated (think of the Gov't trying to code a new-immigrant who has not papers - birth certificate - yet is full of human constructs; that is how the real exceeds the symbolic).

So, here is my insight. What happens if we invert Zizek's model? The Real explodes through the Symbolic, but it doesn't exhaust it. Thus we have a symbolic that is remaindered, rather then a real. I think that the Orthodox conception of the Icon works along these lines. As Ivan Illich claims, Icons are not for collecting, they are for praying with. Icons are the Symbolic which represents the Real presence of the Saint. But the faithful 'sees' the Saint, which is communicated through the Symbolic. Yet the Real does not exhaust the Symbolic. In fact, the Real isn't even contained by the Symbolic. Switching gears here, consider the Eucharist, which always has an excess of accidents. The substance is totally changed, but the accidents remain (this maybe problematic, as I'm moving from "culture" to "nature" as it were). The bread is the construct, but the presence of Christ is the real.

A final note. Often "the Law" is the example of a symbolic coding that both Lacan and Zizek reference. It is by having a gap between symbolic and real that the subject comes into existence. Christ claimed that he came not to abolish the law (and the prophets), but to fulfill it (them). Christ is then the reconciliation of the symbolic and the real. However, the injunction that Paul gives to obey the law of rulers because they have been set in place by God highlights that he was not working within a metaphysics whereby law of any type was solely nominal. Law, even fallen law, was Real - upheld by God himself, until he should so chose to alter it, or remove the leader. I'm always troubled by this idea because it seems hyper-conservative. Clearly there are laws that are only nominal, like the speed limit. What do we do when the "nature" or "truth" (or real) of our car is to excel beyond the level of mediocrity set by the Gov't? Do I follow the spirit of the law (the car's rpms and gas mileage) or the letter? Does it matter? Well it would seem that Paul was pretty serious about slaves not leaving masters and we certainly do not respect those laws now. Should we say that they were "real"? It would seem to me that not every law is part of the incarnation of Christ, the logos. Lies are held up by signs, yet we do not think that lies are "real". They have real effect, but not reality. Though strangely, this is von Balthasar's logic for claiming that the Greek myths are real: "myths exist only as the react upon immanent being" (Murphy, Christ the Form of Beauty, 154).

Ding an Sich as Eucharist, infinitizing mater

I just finally put two and two together and realized that in Catholicism, the thing in itself is the Eucharist*, which is itself, infinitely deep, such that going into the eucharist takes us into the Logos spoken before time. Like Alice, travelling through a worm hole (or whatever she does), that is always already with us, the Eucharist comes in us from "outside" so that we are more fully part of Logos, Shalom, Love.

It is true though that a Christian goes into the body, while the body comes into her. There are some interesting border issues, or a-border issues, that have to do with spirit as infinitizing our mater.

Somehow though, this idea of the eternal pre-lapsarian body, which I in no way think ever existed other then as Christ, is in tension with this idea of a seed falling into the ground so that it might birth a plant. I know that by retaining the word body, we resist splitting the Christic body into spirit and body (we retain a unity), but sometimes, the idea of spirit as divorced from body (somewhat Cartesian, somewhat Gnostic), is canonical in Christianity. I was just reading about an interval between esse and essentia in Aquinas (around 250 in Pickstock's After Writing). Paul continually talks about putting to death flesh and living in spirit (but he also talks about putting on the body of Christ, or exhaling his self, that he might inhale Christ 1 Col...) God, the father 'exists' not as a body but as a spirit, as nothingness, yet what do we do with the body of Christ, which is itself spiritual. Do we just conflate spirit and body? It's like Hellenism and Hebraism have had a front on collision, and bodies and spirits are flying every which way. I don't know what to think.

* it is a misnomer to say that the Eucharist is a "thing" because it is a relation to the Trinity through the Son. Thus, the Eucharist as ideal ding an sich, redefines ding as Sein (being). Being as itself.
What bothers me about the discourse of being is that we have psychologized it so that being is only there for us if we attend to it. But being is not like that; it is aready there, whether we think it or not. We may have a heightened experience of being, but being is not just a state of consciousness. Ontology is regardless of psychological flux, not that we could do without psyche, but that psyche cannot erase being's persistence without dieing.
If, when we are in "the cloud of unknowing," "the dark night of the soul", the via negativa, we are close to the Father, it would seem that a psychological reading of this experience would side for non-being (perhaps this is true if the Father is nothingness). But God is the pure act of love, and action does not happen outside of a context. Understandably, God is the context for His act.
When we fold "context" and "act" together like that we open language to God. I guess this is how God is impossible.