The Žižek Reticulum

How annoying that I can't quote the original post!

Oh well. I'll just have to do without.

Gigz, I know it's an intimidating book upon first reading, but it will repay your efforts. Ignore any seemingly obscure passages and keep ploughing through. Zizek digresses constantly, and you'll end up thinking you must have missed something. Maybe you have; it doesn't matter.

The basic gist of the book is this: ideology as a concept needs to be revived, and adjustments must be made to it. Although people continually reject the idea that we still live in ideological times, it is this very distance that they take towards ideology that shows that they're steeped in it. Ideology, for Zizek (and this is where his Lacanianism comes in the strongest) is what constitutes our reality, and you can't step outside of it. We build a fantasy (or a fantasy simply "appears" to come to us) to explain why we are the way we are, why society is the way it is, etc.

But ideology is inherently inconsistent. Take, for example, the pre-modern, organicist view of community so popular in fascism, which is coupled, paradoxically, with rampant capitalism. To hide these inconsistencies, ideology needs a few "sublime objects"; things, or people, or ideas, onto which we project special properties, to hide the fact that it is our ideology which is inconsistent. Zizek often uses the figure of the Jew to illustrate this. In Nazism, the Jew is a sublime object of ideology, since through him, it is possible not to have to deal with the flawed structure of the ideological edifice; instead of saying, "Oh no, our pre-modern, organicist view of community, which we couple with rampant capitalism, just creates a self-contradiction and we'd better deal with it," we say: "If our system doesn't work, it's because of the Jews."

I realize it's heavy going but do not give up. I will be here to explain your questions if I can, and to point you in the direction of an answer if I can't.

Even reading introductions to Zizek is complicated.

never mind snotty

That kinda makes sense, Phil. 11 pages in, I don't think I've approached that yet, but it seems like it could be part of the build. And flipping through, I found your avatar on 111.

As Marx's definition of ideology was an unconscious act "They do no know it, but they are doing it" (paraphrase), I'd image Marx would believe that making one's ideology a conscious formula would then cause them to see the flaws in capitalism and convert to communo-ism.

As for this being an ideology-less age, that would depend on one's definition of ideology. I see ideology as more of a conscious formula. If it's not conscious formula by which one makes decisions, then it could be 'unconscious ideology', which Marx seemed to assert. I agree that such a portion of individuals do not have a conscious ideology, in that they hold contradictory viewpoints, such as American 'liberals' being more economically controlling and American 'conservatives' being more economically liberal. It seems to be very much a language game, with paradoxes and contradictions stemming back to incompatible definitions.

Politically, many people are what I call 'blind utilitarians' in that rather than applying an ideological formula to a given issue, they assumptively consider the individual consequences one position over another. If they use a form of felicific calculation, then the utilitarianism ceases to be blind but then the ethics of the calculator used are called into question. The same goes for the ideological formula one uses to make decisions, but at least with either a calculator or a formula there is a basic framework for which decisions are made, flawed as the framework may be.

Two things to remember here. First, that this book was written in 1989, when Zizek did not yet consider himself a communist. Second, that despite this, he was still very much on the left, and that "ideology" in his work is not a vague term referring to a group of ideas held by a political party.

Ideology, in the sense Zizek uses it, is also MORE than just the set of ideas propagated by the social group in power to legitimate its dominion over the other classes. It is inescapable, the very horizon of our experience. Some useful concepts to acquaint yourself with, if you haven't yet, are Ideological State Apparatuses (Althusser), ideological interpellation (Althusser), the Cartesian subject (Descartes), descriptivism and antidescriptivism (eg Kripe), and kynicism (Sloterdijk).

You will need to forget your notions of how society works for a little bit as you get used to Zizek's thought. Because Lacanianism is so central to his thought, a lot of the things Zizek says will fail to make sense until you're more familiar with Lacan's theories. It will be hard work, but worth it. I can point you to many good resources online if you want.

Ideology, for Zizek, always involves a certain distance towards itself. To quote Zizek here:

What we call social reality is in the last resort an ethical construction; it is supported by a certain AS IF (we act AS IF we believe in the almightiness of bureaucracy, AS IF the President incarnates the Will of the People, AS IF the Party expresses the objective interest of the working class...)

Thus for Zizek it isn't so much that we don't know how things really stand, but that we act as if we didn't know. He calls this "fetishistic disavowal": instead of "they don't know it but they are doing it", it's "they know it but they are doing it anyway". The law works because we follow it, not because we believe it is good.

And "it follows, from this constitutively senseless character of the Law, that we must obey it not because it is just, good or even beneficial, but simply BECAUSE IT IS THE LAW."

Am I making sense so far?

Definitely, that's very reminiscent of The Anarchist Manifesto, the notion that government does not create order, obeying it does. This indicates that man's nature is not inherently bad, that even if he may need be subdued by a force of arms, the consensus is a force of arms is worth something, ie 'good'. This...

...is exemplified anytime a cop is 'just doing their job'. They're not saying, "Your arrest is just the collateral damage necessary for the maintainance of social order", but that's what they mean, and more often than not they do it anyway.

I reject the notion that so many others follow that you abide something "because it's the law" or tradition or whatever, as my philosophy places the principle of self-ownership as primary before any additional asperations. Whatever society creates as duty through national ideology or anything else does not precede one's own volition as a self-owner, in my humble philosophy.

So I take it Zizek is looking to act as a raiser of consciousness?

Also, causes order vs. because its the law reminds me of this vid:

When he talks about tolerance vs. the old direct way and how the 'tolerant' way is more effective. While I see his point about honesty, he seems to assert the tolerant way of asking the kid to visit grandma shouldn't be done for whatever reason, I guess he thinks its manipulative. However, it works, and I'd say do things the tolerant way rather than giving the kid a reason to rebel by being a D about it. I'd rather everyone be aware of hidden meanings than saying let's not use hidden meanings. But it's a cloudy area.

Your philosophy is incompatible with Zizek's, to an extent. Like I said, you'll have to put aside your own assumptions about the individual for a moment while reading this book; you'll get more out of it that way.

Self-ownership is far more difficult than it is often made out to be. A truly independent person, one who abides by the rules they create for themselves, is a rare thing. And the concept of "national ideology" is one which Zizek tries to work through many times throughout his oeuvre. If it's so easy to act through one's own volition, why do so few of us do it?

What IS acting out of one's free will, Gigz? Is it merely a matter of having the ability to choose what you do with yourself in a given context, like what kind of business you start up in a capitalist environment? Or is it something altogether more dangerous than that, like having the choice to shatter the symbolic coordinates of a given social structure? For Zizek, a truly heroic act is one that makes what seemed impossible in a social context suddenly seem inevitable.

So I take it Zizek is looking to act as a raiser of consciousness?

Possibly. I think what Zizek wants to do is make people think for themselves. That's why he rarely offers SOLUTIONS to problems, but rather makes the problems appear in a new light.

Zizek's entry on Wikipedia has a whole list of links to articles he wrote. He's definitely easy to read, but his stuff is interesting.

Yes, his articles are very readable. He is really good at separating the difficult from the palatable. He saves the hardcore theorizing for his philosophy monographs, and makes his articles easy and lucid, more appropriate for the general reader. I'm sure that's one reason why he's so popular.

Not being an expert on psychology, I can only assume.

I believe it's mostly because the ability to be one's self does not often present itself as an option. It doesn't seem 'easy' to fulfill one's wishes, to go into business for one's self, to change the current condition, whatever. There's a strict structure economically which if the individual doesn't fit, they are ostracized. For example, I could make a few bucks selling sandwiches at a construction site for $2-$3 a piece, less than a business like Subway would charge. Though the demand may exist, if government has strict standards to follow, any regulations at all, its another factor to contend with. The individual likely doesn't consider the process consciously, but rather says, 'setting up a business is hard' over 'government regulation eliminates easy business'.

Since interactions with others are based upon demand (they must want either your personal company or your product), self-ownership is the realization that there is no social bond outside of what individuals choose for themselves. They can be forced into interactions (public school, jail) but there is no inherent debt owed by anyone in society to anyone else that the individuals do not submit or consent to.

One of The Zizek's points that stuck with me is that even though people are aware of the fallacies of their ideology, the age is not 'post-ideology-ic' since the action continues, which I took to mean a condition of the ideology is a false realization of consciousness, a consciousness which, if they really had, would cause them to stop acting as though the ideology exists, if that makes sense.

I'd say this springs from the individual's belief that they themselves are physically incapable from changing anything, and so they just act as though things shall remain, knowing it's a flawed system. A few actually rebel to make a change, and try to inspire others, which is a product of their realization that if they do not act, it will not change.

-Looking back through the pages after typing this, I see he's called it, "cynical distance", and a cool phrase associated was 'negation of the negation', realizing a truth and dismissing it as...whatever, anti-practical.

I'm reminded of the cliché 'It only works in theory,' which is always used to dismiss something which seems practical to one's logical sense but contradicts another principle one holds higher.

Pg 30, "They know that their idea of freedom is masking a particular form of exploitation, but they still continue to follow this idea of freedom."

I feel that supports the notion of freedom as a platonic form, which people subconsciously know is unattainable, and consider consequently a definitive breaking point to balance freedom with practicality, still referring to the breaking point as 'freedom' because they feel taking their notion any further would result in less freedom, a paradox.

Rousseau had that sort of notion. He called positive rights 'freedoms', even aknowledging that positive rights inherently must violate negative rights, but by forcing choices on people, the idea was they get more 'freedoms', such as education opening one's mind. However, if a freedom has been restricted, it creates an oxymoron, and his reasoning also assumes such forced institutions as education would not be in existence if not for their compulsory nature, which is false dichotomy.

I think The Kierkegaard said it best with, "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." There is no absolute freedom, the sense that's dangled just out of reach by politicians is more a platonic form of freedom. My goal is a society in which man's freedom is as much his own choice as is humanly possible. I recognize it as utopian to believe you can kick back playing N64, sippin margaritas all day, but it is possible that a society could exist in which the demand of society is not curbed by government, and the product or service you may choose to supply is not restricted by government. In that sense, more options are open to the individual, thus there is more freedom. But man must remember that he is controlled by the demand of others in the marketplace. You may desire to make red shirts for a living, but if a better service is already being provided, and there is no demand for red shirts, the market will not support such an idea. So man is never totally free. Then the most controlling forces surrounding man outside of market demand would be the environment he is born into, but outside of that, the rest is choice.

Hmmm...powerful, but to make something seem inevitable sounds like it may be redirecting ideology, making the masses believe a false idea to be true and inevitable. Whether this idea is better or worse than the idea from which it was diverted would then be the piece to examine.

Reminds me of something he said from the 'Zizek!' docu, paraphrase, 'The goal of philosophy is not to solve a problem but give a new way of looking at the problem', which he went on to say if some disease was going to kill mankind, you don't need philosophy, a way of looking at the disease, you need a medical treatment.

I'm a little over 40 pages in right now. Page 12, things started making sense, and I got to fetishitic disavowal and clicking noises commensed.

Page 20, there's analogies to kings being kings and subjects being subjects and living with it, and though he doesn't use the words, he basically is describing divine right of kings and the social contract, ideas that I feel were invented to justify social situations rather than ideas which intrinsically justify social conditions. There's some amazing stand-alone quotes I've been pulling:

Pg 16, "The subject can 'enjoy his symptom' only in so far as logic escapes him."

Pg 21, "A madman who believes himself to be a king is no more mad than a king who believes himself a king."

Pg 31, "...when they deal with one another they do so as rational utilitarians, guided only by their selfish interests." I especialy like this rather subtle piece as a statement in itself because I'm a firm believer that utilitarianism is a byproduct of egoism, as no one makes decisions independent of their own egos.

Pg 35, "The Law's authority lies in its process of enunciation." That's a major piece of the social contract, which tried to justify itself by saying people naturally do not oppose the structure of government, so it is naturally justified. Since people go through the motions, definitely it's a way of re-enforcing that there's something intrinsically important in the motions. Even Locke, considered a liberal then, libertarian today, believed in the notion of silent consent as justification of the social contract. Holding this position invalidated any notion that Locke was a voluntaryist, of which one of the guiding principles is explicit consent.

I also noticed Zizek chose to capitalize 'law' here, making it a proper noun, a recognized entity in itself, something I would not choose to do, though it is often treated as an entity of its own.

Pg 41, "In a universe in which all are looking for the true face beneath the mask, the best way to lead them astray is to wear the mask of truth itself."

This I would not have understood seeing it as a quote by itself, because before it I was confused by the notion of hiding an idea by showing it, but it makes sense that giving someone truth and as falsehood and vice versa allows for ideology to manipulate actions. The voluntaryist example of this is, "Tell them taxes are justified and they will not see the seizure of them as theft."

Earlier, on page 22 he speaks of human relations really being the product of material relations, which I assume is exchanging goods on the marketplace. I don't see this as a bad thing (and I'm not sure he does either) because humans are naturally driven to fulfill their needs, buy food, etc, and the fact that humans network through this fulfillment of need I see as an accomplishment of mankind, choosing a network beneficial to all over hermit-ness. Though I don't critisize self-sufficiency, either, as it's an individual choice.

Some excellent points in there.

Since interactions with others are based upon demand (they must want either your personal company or your product), self-ownership is the realization that there is no social bond outside of what individuals choose for themselves. They can be forced into interactions (public school, jail) but there is no inherent debt owed by anyone in society to anyone else that the individuals do not submit or consent to.

You're touching upon something that is crucial in Lacan and Hegel, and therefore in Zizek. Your use of "demand" is different from that used by Lacan, but I won't go into that at this point. What's important for you to understand if you want the full Zizek experience is that up till recently, Zizek relied heavily on his three masters (Lacan, Hegel and Marx), and it's only in the last few years that he's been moving on and coming up with concepts that go BEYOND Marxist, Lacanian or Hegelian dogmatism.

I don't know if in Sublime Object of Ideology (SOI) Zizek refers to the master-slave dialectic. If not, I'll sum it up in an extremely simplistic way: self-consciousness, according to Hegel, desires recognition from another self-consciousness. Men want to be recognized but dislike having to recognize others. Thus in a primordial scenario, man pits himself against man until one becomes master and the other becomes his slave. The master depends on the slave for recognition, while the slave does not get recognition in return. You can figure out the implications of this, and how it affected Marx, on your own.

The point is that this dialectic heavily influenced Lacan, who claims that desire is the desire of the Other. In one sense of that formulation, it means that we desire what we think others desire. If an object is recognized as valuable, then people will want it, like recognition itself. There are other interpretations that I don't have the time to go into right now. Lacan makes a distinction between NEED, DEMAND and DESIRE which I recommend you look into. It's based on the development of the child, but applies to all subjects.

I also recommend you read on with a particularly careful focus on whether Zizek claims that there is such a thing as a "social debt". After all, for Zizek, following Lacan, schools and jails and the state are purely symbolic constructions. Are you familiar with the Lacanian distinction between Imaginary, Symbolic and Real? If not, tell me and I'll guide you through it.

One of The Zizek's points that stuck with me is that even though people are aware of the fallacies of their ideology, the age is not 'post-ideology-ic' since the action continues, which I took to mean a condition of the ideology is a false realization of consciousness, a consciousness which, if they really had, would cause them to stop acting as though the ideology exists, if that makes sense.

I'd say this springs from the individual's belief that they themselves are physically incapable from changing anything, and so they just act as though things shall remain, knowing it's a flawed system. A few actually rebel to make a change, and try to inspire others, which is a product of their realization that if they do not act, it will not change.

Later on in the book Zizek talks at length about the "social fantasy" and how fantasy plays a role in the way subjects relate to ideological pressures. Fantasy, of course, in the Lacanian sense. He explains it quite well and I don't think you'll miss it. For Zizek, ideology is not merely false consciousness, but a NECESSARY condition of reality. Bear in mind that in Lacanian terms, something only EXISTS if we speak about it symbolically. The other side is BEING, but that's a whole other topic in itself.

The reason this is NOT a post-ideological age, for Zizek, is that we are all still steeped in ideological notions, even just because of the language in which we think, a language which is unstable and in which meanings keep shifting. In the chapter called CHE VUOI, which is the most interesting of all, I think, you will encounter what Lacan called the point de capiton (an explanation is given in the book) and the Master-Signifier. I think you'll be fascinated by the idea of the Master-Signifier, but it's an extremely complicated concept and if you have any trouble with it, let me know.

I used 'demand' to compliment 'supply'. Taking the demand concept outside of economics would change the proper word to 'desire', I suppose, and fortunately you knew what I was getting at. Obviously, you don't 'demand' a relationship with someone, you desire it.

Haha, I can imagine Marx had a field day with that one. I've heard that concept before, I think from a psych class. Makes sense that it was Hegelian.

I'll do that. Kinda side note, I've got my own theory that the volitional nature of man terminates the concept of 'need', meaning man's concept of need is an abstract idea that is more a forced desire. Since people are capable of refusing food, shelter, other survival necessities, it's potential to be a choice makes it a choice.

I may find this notion appealing because I've grown distasteful of the word 'need' when talking politicos with people. 'Need', along with more formal thought-terminating clichés indicates that my opponent has run out of points and is now operating on the faith that they are right rather then allowing themselves to see my point. Example, "We need...(fill in the blank, gov't restriction of business, a monopolistic police force, etc). Realistically, no individual 'needs' anything, let alone there be a collective need. It's also why I dislike the 'we', their brain ceases to focus on on the point and begins making (likely subconscious) off topic assertions. By building anything upon, 'we' and 'need', they're saying automatically that the two of us as individuals share in the utmost concept which transcends desire and if lacking, would terminate our mutual survival. It's the same reason John McCain would consciously call everyone 'My friends'...I'm digressing, but I also should point out that I catch myself doing the same thing from time to time, after a lenghty rant, I sometimes finish subconsciously with a 'we need' before correcting myself and inserting, 'based on these principles, I believe individuals should'...such and such.

I assumed he believed in some sort of social debt since he is a Marxist, though I'll try to clear my mind of assumptions here on out.

Can't say I am. I noticed him referring to stuff this way and then related it to a story, and I knew what he meant through the analogy of the story, but as far as the formal defs of the words themselves, I'm not 100%.

Only exists if we talk about it symbolically, is that related to the theory of symbolic interactionism? I've studied that a bit from the criminological angle, there's a crime theory called 'labeling theory' which espouses crime is caused by individuals being deemed criminals by society. It's roots are symbolic interactionism and various 'conflict' threories, meaning any theory attributed to social conflict caused by structure, which is credited mostly to Marx. Labeling theory is considered by most criminologists to be rather vague, but fills in some gaps that other theories do not. It says someone is picked up for a minor offense that everyone may do (let's say underage drinking) and are treated by the system like a criminal, so they begin to act out those behaviors. The theory focuses on punishing the act and not the actor, and often advocates no punishment in many instances, which many criminologists aren't happy about.

I could actually apply this theory to my own spiral from nationalistic American 'conservative' to anarcho-capitalist/voluntaryist. I was given a ticket for rolling a stop sign (wasn't even aware I did) and felt kinda 'betrayed' by the system, having always been taught only bad guys get shit from the system, that if you're nice and didn't bother anyone or intentionally break the law, you'll get a warning. A month or two later, I was introduced to the notion of anarcho-capitalism, which I had never considered before, and took a while to become one but found myself quickly buying more and more of the philosophy, and consequently rejecting more and more of what I had previously believed. While the stop sign violation was less of a cause then the intense conversation that introduced me to the idea, without that incident, my feelings towards 'the system' would not have been resentful enough to consider rejecting its worth.

I enjoyed Zizek's piece about ideology where 'should the friendly neighbor who's a Jew change the man who bought into the ideology?' Not knowing it was a setup, I instantly said, "Yeah, of course he'll realize that Jews are not what they're made out to be." To which Zizek says, "Of course not, if he buys the ideology, he'll view the friendly Jew as an example of their sneaky, manipulative nature."

It reminded me of the pleasantly shocked feeling I got the first time I found out a friend of mine was an atheist. And not an 'I don't think I believe in God' atheist, but a legit, comfortably confident atheist. I thought, "so...they're normal people?" Same exact feeling at the end of the conversation that changed my political groundings, when that friend said, 'these are 'radical' ideas, but that's coming from an anarchist.' Totally blew my mind, yet in about six months, I was a 'government agnostic', I didn't believe government had intrinsic value yet wasn't ready to say they need be abolished. Another 6-8 months, I was firmly an anarcho-capitalist.

I got off topic, I know, but anyways, that's how I'm connecting to The Zizek. Perhaps it's not what he envisioned individuals taking from his work.

Also kinda off topic, but not really, there's three recognized shools of criminology that I'm aware of that are specifically Marxist. They're recognized enought to be thought in a criminal theories class. They're Instrumental Marxism, Structural Marxism, and Dialectic Marxism. Instrumental is simple, and I think stupid. It blames all crime on the bifurcation of capitalism and insists in a communist society there would be no crime. Basically all crime is 'rebellion' against capitalism. Structural Marxism dismisses such a theory and instead places the blame on the system's specific design, and concludes all victories of the proletariat are illusions, such as labor laws and such, and the CJ system is designed to target those who are a threat to capitalism. I like many aspects of this reasoning, such as the 'victories are illusions' thing, but also find it simplistic in relativity to other criminological theories. Then there's Dialectic Marxists, who feel the victories for the proleteriat are not illusions, and are signs that the system is changing for the better, though far from complete.

They're all based on the notion that capitalism is the cause of crime, they just take the level of complexity in different directions. I like the idea of structuralist view, but don't find it mutually exclusive of other points of view either.

Will do, I'm heading into that chapter now.

Also, 'nuther thing I didn't fully either understand, or if I did, then don't fully agree with. Zizek talks about the guy dreaming of being a butterfly, and how the dream cemented his belief for reality, etc. How is he able to conclude that dreaming about reality indicates this as the man's subconscious goal? I'm not necessarily saying it doesn't, but I don't see proof that it does either.

Lacan sees the human experience as divisible into three distinct categories: the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. For Zizek it's the symbolic and the real that are most important, so I'll start with those.

The symbolic is language, in all its guises. It is the law, the Other, the way we communicate with each other. We think in the symbolic, speak in the symbolic, learn and teach in the symbolic. All social institutions are symbolic, since they are controlled by language. Therefore a school is a symbolic construction, as is a court, or a social hierarchy. Anything to do with words and social gestures, from the offering of gifts to the declaration of war, is mediated by language (if not completely controlled by and dependent upon it).

The real is usually opposed to the imaginary and has an important relationship with the symbolic. It is the undifferentiated mass into which the symbolic "cuts". Think of the real the way you'd think of the Sartrean "in-itself", the totality of the universe which would still "be there" even if there were no language, nobody to "observe" that it was there. It's like a positive texture which is all One, and which, through language, becomes divided into the "things" we deal with every day, like toasters, buses, breasts, shit and clouds. Before language they don't "exist" in the Lacanian sense; they are merely part of the real.

The imaginary is the world of images, of dreams, of alienation. It is less important in Zizek's work, and so I'll leave it undeveloped as a concept here. Suffice it to say that fantasy is part of the imaginary, but mediated by language, as is everything else.

Zizek takes up this trinity in his work, and relates it to politics where Lacan focused mostly on the individual subject. The symbolic and the real are very complicated concepts, far more complex than I've made them out to be here. If you're interested in finding out more, check out http://www.iep.utm.edu/z/zizek.htm, in which the author neatly explains Zizek's basic positions on the essentials.

I don't know much about symbolic interactionism, but what you said about it makes me think of Lacan's ideas about how we identify with our reflection (in others, or in the mirror), and how we form an imaginary relationship with that image; an image which misrepresents us, distorts our view of ourselves and therefore leaves us with a false sense of identity. Add to that the burden of language, which is a world where we "are" our name, and in which we can only describe ourselves and our needs with words which were around long before we were, and you start to see where the two concepts overlap: if the world says YOU are Giggan, then you must accept that you are, or risk madness. Throughout time we come to identify with our name and stop questioning it, even if we know it's arbitrary; but labels like "criminal" are powerful because if we do identify with them (and of course this is only in an imaginary and symbolic way, since in the real there is no such thing as a criminal... since "criminal" is merely a word which means the opposite of "not-criminal"...) then we may end up causing serious damage to ourselves or to others. I may not have explained that very well, but we have plenty of time.

In trying to keep up with the concepts, I wasn't able to get the full meanings out of the graphs, but I know I'll be delving in SOI again after gathering more knowledge about Hegel and Lacan. I'm on the last chapter and plan on finishing the book tomorrow morning.

Had I read this book a year ago, I would have probably taken 1/10 of it what I can now, and I still feel like there's a lot I'm only seeing pieces of. SOI could easily be 1,000 pages long if he explained everything he referenced without assuming the reader knows. Things such as Saul Kripke's critique of the descriptive theory of names, only being marginally familiar with this, it causes me, as a reader, to have to take Zizek's word for all the references he speaks of. I wonder if this is conscious on his part to establish a necessary trust between author and reader, or if his brain is actually processing multiple philosophical and psychological theories simultaneously.

The 'point de caption' and 'master-signifier' I was loving, the whole idea that the system is self-perpetuating. I especially enjoyed his point about 'People's Republics' being an oxymoron because collecting the people into a unit removes the individuality that makes them 'people'.

The piece on free will and consciousness, the story of the guy refusing to sign unless ordered to, in which the contract is void, is epic. Reminded me of Lysander Spooner's critique of any sort of oath or constitution/law as contract. The fact that a Marxist recognizes these ideas gives me hope.

This got me thinking (again) of what exactly is politically 'right' and 'left'. Page 117, Zizek considers Hitler 'right'...and though he's historically branded as 'right', often it is forgottent that nazi stood for 'national socialist'...meaning gov't control of goods, which when done in China (very similar to nazi germany, minus the racism) they are not considered, 'right'. Zizek's views on the contract, forced choice, etc, lead me to believe, since he realizes the random and structurally flawed nature of any system (inherently symbolic), that he 'sees the anarchy' of the system, the clearest way I can think to put it. He realizes that there is no system, it is not an inherent device of civility, it is a social construct, no more real than a voluntary communism or voluntary capitalism. If he's considered a Marxist (and since he has applied the label to himself) he seems no more Marxist than Marxist in thought. I don't know if he's labeled himself a communist, but for him to choose any system to endorse is to select a system that he sees the inherent imperfection in and would still be willing to go through the motions of ideology with. Any system of state forces the individual born into that system to accept the laws or duties to which 'citizens' (subjects) are conscribed. He knows it's all a charade, so I don't know...I don't know. Not sure where I'm going with this, but gears are turning in my head, and I don't know what they're steaming towards.

Back to left vs. right, Left is often associated with socialistic movements, right with capitalist. Anarcho-libertarianism also has left and right branches. Murray Rothbard, the first declared anarcho-capitalist was a 'right-libertarian' because even though his goal was a stateless society, he participated in politics to acheive these ends. Left-libertarians, of which Samuel Konkin is considered the figurehead, were anti-political, working completely outside of the system, encouraging use of the black market and tax evasion to bring about an eventual weakening of the government. They both believe the same system is ideal (anarcho-capitalism) yet the means determine left vs. right. In the same way, Marx favored dictatorship of the proleteriat, and violent revolution to segway to the ideal communist environment. Nazism, if we call that 'right', acheived it's goals via state authorization (since Hitler and Mussolini were voted in). The difference is the need of acknowledgement: Rothbard aknowledged the legitimacy of the state by participating in the political process. He may have done so because he thought it effective, but he'd be as Zizek would say, (I forget his exact words) still suffering from ideology because even though he knows he is doing it, he still does it. Konkin on the 'left' aknowledges the nature of the state is to protect those in power, though instead of making an enemy of the bourgeoisie, his enemy is the statist. Same concept as Marx, similar tactics, though Konkin was not in favor of offensive revolution, but rather defensive, ie, black market protecting its interests from government intervention.

I've never heard of a libertarian who supports a minimal state (minarchists) encouraging only anarchist means (left libertarianism), so minarchists are by default right-libertarians. I guess all this gets back to language and context, with 'left' and 'right' being only slightly clearer than labels such as 'liberal' and 'conservative'.

In my last post, in reference to structuralist marxists vs. dialectic marxists, using the criminological definitions, structural marxists would be 'left-marxist' and dialectic marxists 'right-marxists', if we use right and left to distinguish the means regardless of the end goal. Left seems to be 'I'm going to start living like I'm there' and right more 'I aknowledge that I want things to change, but I'll play by the rules before I up and change them myself'.

Found a quote I was looking for, he was actually quoting Schelling to make his point, pg 190, "Although in the temporal reality of his life, he never chose his country, he was treated as though he had already chosen - as if, in an atemporal, eternally past act, he chose what was from the very beginning imposed on him - the allegiance to his country."

Even going so far as to say 'his' country implies an inherent association. This is the first time I've seen these issues raised outside of 'radical' libertarian literature, so however people wanna twist Zizek (left, right, conserv, liberal, or otherwise), I'm glad to see the point highlighted, the fallacy of citizenship and state-granted 'freedom'.

Non-political, awesome concept:

Pg 194, "...a beautiful woman is a perfect incarnation of man's castration."

I hesitate to call Zizek's work 'nihilistic' but it must be aknowledged how heavily his work as well as Lacan's relies upon the notion of nothingness. I thought it was well-summarized here:

(pg 195) "The real is nothing but the impossibility of its inscription."

Getting at the idea that most of what we perceive is not something inherently, but a lack of something which we invision is a strong reminder of how fragile the human mind really is. The Zizek's on to something.

After I cruise through the last 35 or so pages, I'll post a final review. Already I can say this has been an important read, I feel like my mind has expanded just trying to understand some of these concepts. So thank you, Phil, for turning me on to The Zizek and his crazy complexities, as well as for all the info and discussion here to help me better understand it.

Cool stuff in the last few pages:

“As soon as we start talking, truth is on the side of the Universal, of what we are ‘effectively saying’, and the ‘sincerity’ of our innermost feelings become something ‘pathological’ in the Kantian sense of the word: something of a radically non-ethical nature, something which belongs to the domain of the pleasure principle.”

Pg. 245, The mother’s sacrifice concept is grand. I see it as proof of the hidden egoism in everything, we sacrifice because we desire the sacrifice. “I’m ready to give up, to sacrifice everything…everything but the sacrifice itself.”

Pg. 249, “By means of the funeral rite, the subject takes upon himself this process of natural disintegration, he symbolically repeats it, he pretends that this process resulted from his own free decision.”

That, I feel, speaks heavily of human nature, the desire to see control, choice, freedom, anywhere one can, even when they are not truly free, or at least liberated. I’ve heard the distinction that freedom is the ability to select among options, and liberty is a state of unrestricted control. So freedom would be the concept to maximize, liberty the theoretical, symbolic absolute.

I watched a six part YouTube clip of The Žižek on ‘Democracy Now’, and he concluded by quoting Marx (paraphrase), “Philosophy has only so far interpreted history. The goal is to change it.” He then said his message would be to people with the will to see and alter a problem into something else to not be afraid to stand aside and think, to have the will to not immediately act, but rather understand. I found that very un-Marxist Marxism.

My Dirtbook Visual Bookshelf Review of The Sublime Object of Ideology:

Confusion often causes me to table and forget a book. The opposite was the case here. Žižek’s complex psychological and philosophical theories and concepts seem to be coming from a different time and place, as though they were thought up by a distantly evolved mind. It seems as though it is something you should understand, but don’t.

Going into The Žižek, it helps to have a background in basic philosophy and psychology, and you should definitely know the names Freud, Lacan, Hegel, and Marx. Whether you’re solid on these guys or no, you’re not going to understand everything here the first time you read this. And that’s just chipper. I look forward to reading it again in the future, after my brain goes on vacation for a little while.

Though Wikipedia will preach of The Žižek as a radical Marxist, pseudo-Stalinist character, do not allow an inability to singularly label the man falsely define him. I don’t know what Žižek is, and in an ironic sense, that suits him perfectly, since much of his work focuses on deconstructing the meaning, the language, the symbolic construct which creates the network we call reality, which in actuality is just our perception. SOI is a continuous matrix of understanding, with no clear definitive base with which to label as its principle (at least I haven‘t seen one). Žižek is a critic, an analyst, an eternally questioning entity. This is what makes him so accessible, yet so incomprehensible. Anyone from any background could pick up this book and learn something. It’s just a matter of how many gears you can turn in your head at once. The further you go, the more things begin to move, with an evolution of understanding often as continuous as a dialectic engine. In the future, I may get all there is to get from this book, but for now, my work is cut out for me.

Not the most climactic read, and again, confusion doesn’t make for a natural page-turner. But on the uniqueness and innovative scale, The Sublime Object of Ideology is an 11.

His PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is pretty good. His thought on Hitchcock and Lynch are really interesting. There's tons of lectures from him in iTunes (video-)podcasting areas.

Would this be a good book to get into those ideas on the Imaginary, Symbolic and the Real?
Or maybe just pick up something from Lacan directly?
A lot of what I'm jotting down lately starts to delve into some of these areas and I want to augment my own little self-taught ideas on them with ones by people that have actually spent lengthy amounts of time on them.
Give me some recommendations, yes?

I’ve read a few books on the Lacanian basics, including Zizek’s How to Read Lacan, and still don’t feel like I have a complete understanding. Zizek seems to put them into context--all the pop culture references-- before fully explaining the concepts, and, as mentioned above, he goes into quite a few digressions. I found a website recently, though, and it probably has been the most helpful in grasping the Triad. You should be able to understand it pretty easily up against the background of this thread.

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/psychoanalysis/lacanstructure.h...

Splendid.

I realize this thread has been inactive for quite awhile, but I was wondering if either if you two guys understand Zizek’s position of the ethics of psychoanalysis? I know it’s pretty complex and might take some time to paraphrase, but I think I’ve narrowed the problem some.

So Zizek takes Lacan’s position that the only thing one can be guilty of is giving ground relative to one’s desire, but isn’t the point of traversing the fantasy to part with desire and realize that it merely acts a screen which dissolves when the subject comes in contact with it and is therefore unnecessary? Or am I missing an important distinction between desire and fantasy, and for that matter jouissance as well?

At one point I understood “not ceding to one’s desire” as not indulging jouissance or enjoyment, and clinging to one’s innermost desire, but how would the subject be aware of that desire and would clinging to that desire entail not enjoying anything at all? And would the path toward not ceding to one’s desire be a continuous act of struggle with no end result of satisfaction?

Hopefully one of you guys can point me in the right direction if that's clear enough; it seems like you’re both pretty knowledgeable on the subject.

What if your only desire in life is to not cede to your desires?

it merely acts a screen which dissolves when the subject comes in contact with it and is therefore unnecessary

Think of desire less as unnecessary and more as unavoidable. When we are acquiring language, learning to think with words and express our needs, there is always something left over that we can't express. That's where desire is born. Lacan distinguishes between desire, demand and need. We can demand attention, for instance, and that can be given to us. We can need food, and that can be supplied. But when we desire something, we aren't going to be satisfied once we receive it, because the key to understanding desire is knowing that desire feeds off itself, sustains itself, and can never be satisfied.

That's why Lacan introduces the concept of objet petit a, the object-cause of desire as he calls it; "object" as in the target of our desires, and "cause" because, as I've said, desire needs only itself as motivation. The objet petit a (OPA) is an imaginary object, but with connotations of the real. It's the leftover caused by the cutting of the symbolic into the real when you're a kid. Fantasy helps us to make sense (however erroneously) of the way we are, and why we desire what we desire. That's what fantasy is for; we use it to construct a vision of the world that is consistent with our desire. If an object (penis, fast car, whatever) sets desire in motion, it's objet petit a.

Also, don't forget that Zizek takes up Lacan's positions on many things and places them in entirely different contexts. For Zizek, never giving ground relative to one's desire has clear political connotations, and with all his revolutionary posturing nowadays, he's obviously going to push for that interpretation. For Lacan it's more subtle than that. I tend to read the phrase "the only thing of which one can be guilty is giving ground relative to one's desire" as a commentary on guilt itself AS WELL as desire. In other words, we feel guilty when we do certain things, but that's because we weren't acting in total accordance with our real desires. But my interpretation may not be the correct one, and I'm ready to admit that. I'm a bit rusty on this stuff right now as I haven't read Lacan in a few months.

Thanks for that, Xec. I think I understand fantasy as filling in for the initial lack and drawing the coordinates of reality and so forth, but as you admit the concept of ethics is still a hazy one. Zizek always comes back to the same examples in his essays, but I still can’t discern that he’s advocating the subject take up any ethical position or in plain terms live his life in any certain way, but that he merely know that desire is just covering up the lack that each subject suffers, which doesn’t provide much guidance other than be prepared to lose the kernel of your being, and to be filled in by a new symbolic substance. So then in Zizek’s political terms at what point when the subject loses its symbolic substance, which is fraught with ideology, does he get filled in with a new symbolic substance which just as fraught with ideology? Where’s the free space outside of ideology, or fantasy, you know?

Some of the examples he uses are the Stalinist show trials, apparently a death deprived of any dignity, as they had to admit they were criminals and they had to enjoy it, is his idea of an ethical act, but it seems like it’s just something the subject stumbled into rather than choosing, which I think is along the same lines of the Antigone example, but again I can’t see where she chooses to be ethical. The clearest example he uses is the one from an old Slovenian poem, where the King, a pagan, discovers most his people have been Christianized, so he seeks the advice of his lover, who turns out has already been Christianized and tries to convince him to give up the cause of Paganism in the name of their love. So he concedes, but then there is a second stipulation. She requires that he convert to Christianity in the name of their love, and that they no longer see each other, and he concedes to this, too. Zizek calls this the sacrifice of the sacrifice, then compares it to Kierkegaardian ethics, as one would first suspend the aesthetic for the ethical, and then the ethical for the religious.

Giving more thought to it now, it doesn’t seem as difficult to understand as much as it presents all kinds of difficulties. So somewhat in line with your comment on his revolutionary posturing, his message of ethics seems oddly reminiscent of Soviet propaganda: You, the individual, are not important; sacrifice yourself for the cause. There’s obviously more to it than that, but for as much as the average reader is going to take away, it’s at least dangerously close to that line of thought.