"Looking Awry" is the title of a book by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek,
whose analysis of today’s culture is carried out in the spirit of Lacanian (after
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan) psychoanalysis. In the book’s introduction,
Žižek explains: "This way of ‘looking awry’ at Lacan makes it possible to
discern features that usually escape a ‘straightforward’ academic look." And
"Like perspectives which, rightly gaz'd upon, Show nothing but confusion-ey'd
awry, Distinguish form."
(Bushy, Richard II, Act I, Scene II)
Lacan’s son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller, discusses the process in his own book The
Analytic Experience, wherein he quotes Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade:
"In the middle of the path was a stone
There was a stone in the middle of the path
There was a stone
In the middle of the path was a stone"
As we progress (advance) forward, we tend to encounter various obstacles. When we
focus full frontally on the obstacle itself, be it as small as it may be, we tend to refer to it
as having great dimensions, and therefore our progress might be greatly delayed. If we
learn to step back a little and “view it from the side”, we attain some distance. This
process offers us a wider, more comprehensive view of reality, thereby restoring the
obstacle to its actual proportions. In this wider picture, we obtain perspective.
From this point onwards, the path to a sense of action and capability opens up into a
more accessible space. We are then able to acknowledge the obstacle without it
overwhelming us. Rather, our encounter with it is in fact a precondition for reinvention.