Slavoj Žižek

One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective. Slavoj Žižek has been called "an academic rock star" and "the wild man of theory"; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality—New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism—and then tries to redeem the "materialist" kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a "postsecular" age, this book—with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy—is certain to stir controversy.

What ethical stance would be appropriate in today’s messy situation of health crisis, global warming, social and economic antagonisms, etc.? The first one is that of an expert who deals with the specific task imposed on him by those in power, blissfully ignoring the wider social context of his activity. The second one is that of pseudo-radical intellectuals who criticize the existing order from a comfortable morally superior position, well aware that their criticism will have no actual effects. How, then, are we to go on living after we get rid of the illusions of a false critical stance? Not just by accepting our reality: the fascination with the end of our civilization make us spectators who morbidly enjoy the disintegration of normality. A way out of this deadlock is signalled by a line from a song by the German rock band Rammstein: “we have to live till we die”. We have to fight against the pandemic and other crises not by way of withdrawing from life but as a way to live with utmost intensity. Is there anyone more ALIVE today than millions of healthcare workers who with full awareness risk their lives on a daily base? Many of them died, but till they died they were alive.

The coronavirus epidemic is not just a biological phenomenon which affects humans: it is also a moment of a profound global and ecological crisis that includes many human and nonhuman actors. To confront the crisis, a radical philosophical change is needed, which penetrates to natural, economic, and cultural processes. The amassing of dictatorial powers of state apparatuses evoked by the pandemic highlights their basic impotence and the fact that the system as we know it cannot continue in its existing liberal-permissive form. While the final outcome is uncertain what is most probable is that a new barbarian capitalism will prevail: many old and weak will be sacrificed and let to die, workers will have to accept much lower standards of living, digital control of our lives will remain a permanent feature, and class distinctions will become much more than now a matter of life and death.

On various occasions when writing previously I’ve recounted a joke about a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed and is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do their best to convince him that he is not a seed but a human being. When they eventually succeed, he is allowed to leave the hospital. But he then returns immediately, trembling with fear. He reports that there is a chicken outside the entrance and he is terrified that it will eat him. “Dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a seed but a man.” “Of course, I know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?” My Croat friend Dejan Kršić recently sent me a corona-version of this joke: “Hello, my friend!” “O, hello, professor! Why are you wearing a mask? Two weeks ago you were explaining all around that masks don’t protect against the virus?” “Yes, I know they don’t work, but does the virus know it?”

In Ireland, HSE issued guidelines about practicing sex in the time of coronavirus, and the two key recommendations are: “Taking a break from physical and face-to face interactions is worth considering, especially if you usually meet your sex partners online or make a living by having sex. Consider using video dates, sexting or chat rooms. Make sure to disinfect keyboards and touch screens that you share with others. / Masturbation will not spread coronavirus, especially if you wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after

When the threat posed by the digitalization of our lives is debated in our media, the focus is usually on the new phase of capitalism called surveillance capitalism: a total digital control over our lives exerted by state agencies and private corporations. However, important as this surveillance capitalism is, it is not yet the true game changer; there is a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of a direct brain-machine interface (the “wired brain”). First, when our brain is connected to digital machines, we can cause things to happen in reality just by thinking about them; then, my brain is directly connected to another brain, so that another individual can directly share my experience. Extrapolated to its extreme, the wired brain opens up the prospect of what Ray Kurzweil called Singularity, the divine-like global space of shared awareness. Whatever the (dubious, for the time being) scientific status of this idea, it is clear that its realization will affect the basic features of humans as thinking/speaking beings: the eventual rise of Singularity will be apocalyptic in the complex meaning of the term: it will imply the encounter with a truth hidden in our ordinary human existence—that is, the entrance into a new posthuman dimension, which cannot but be experienced as catastrophic, as the end of our world. But will we still be here to experience our immersion into Singularity in any human sense of the term?

Članek skozi vrsto filozofskih, družbenokritičnih in znanstvenih toposov raziskuje odnos med realnostjo kot navidez od subjekta neodvisnim poljem ter Realnim kot mestom vpisa subjekta vanjo. Ta odnos se zrcali na mnogih področjih, od variacij na Platonovo votlino, do statusa zavesti v nevroznanosti, do kritike ideologije, pa vse do kvantne mehanike. Povsod se izriše enak vzorec: čeprav nikjer ne moremo predpostaviti izhodiščnega, substancialnega subjekta, pa le subjektivni vpis sploh omogoča vzpostavitev konsistentne realnosti. V tem ima razmerje med realnostjo in Realnim podobo Kleinove steklenice, ki je narejena iz ene same geometrijske površine, a vendarle proizvede svojo lastno notranjost, ki se loči od zunanjosti; subjekt je ime za zavoj te ploskve same vase in ostaja njena slepa pega, ki je potrebna, da bi notranjost nastale steklenice lahko vzbujala iluzijo dovršene in celovite realnosti.

Jak opisać współczesne Chiny? Gdzie szukać analogii dla ich dzisiejszego dynamicznego rozwoju? W komentarzach często powraca teza, że Państwo Środka wybrało własną, absolutnie unikalną drogę rozwoju. Inni wskazują na podobieństwa z ewolucją kapitalizmu w Europie Zachodniej - Chiny miałyby teraz przechodzić jej najbardziej brutalną XIX-wieczną fazę. Dopiero w przyszłości "naturalną" koleją rzeczy zapanuje tam demokracja i upowszechnią się instytucje państwa opiekuńczego. Slavoj Žižek proponuje jeszcze inną interpretację - błyskotliwą i pełną paradoksów. Być może rzeczywiście Chiny odtwarzają pewną fazę rozwoju zachodniego kapitalizmu. Jest to jednak faza na tyle wczesna, że na ewentualną demokratyzację Państwa Środka będziemy musieli czekać jeszcze wiele lat. Bardziej prawdopodobne jest jednak to, że mamy dziś do czynienia z powtórką rewolucji kulturalnej z czasów Mao Tse-Tunga. Tak jak wtedy zachęca się obywateli, by podejmowali "spontaniczne" działania, które partia czujnie nadzoruje. Tym razem jednak ich celem jest budowa nowych, kapitalistycznych porządków

Skozi primere Antigone, Sygne de Coûfontaine, Abrahama, sindikalne pesmi Joe Hill, portugalske politične situacije v sedemdesetih letih dvajsetega stoletja, filma Bežno srečanje in skozi mnogo drugih anekdot in zgodovinskih koincidenc članek postavlja tezo o velikem Drugem ne kot zgolj kot o anonimnem simbolnem polju, temveč hkrati kot o tisti instanci, ki potrebuje naključnega posameznika, ki ga v določeni situaciji zastopa. V subjektovem odnosu do Drugega gre dejansko za zaprt krogotok, zanko, ki jo najbolje upodablja Escherjeva slika dveh rok, ki slikata druga drugo. Veliki Drugi je virtualni red, ki obstaja le v toliko, kolikor subjekt »veruje« vanj; kolikor subjekt Drugega suspendira, pa izgine s tem tudi subjekt sam, njegova »realnost«.

Danes, v procesu razkroja marksizma in oblikovanja »post-marksizma«, imamo opraviti s tremi prevladujočimi pojmovanji subjekta, od katerih vsako hkrati implicira določeno etično držo: Habermasov subjekt jezikovne refleksije, zavezan idealu brezprisilne komunikacije; »post-strukturalistični« pluralizem subjektnih pozicij, ki pri Foucaultu implicira etiko invencije, samoizgradnje jaza; Althusserjev subjekt kot učinek imaginarnega sprevida, ki implicira etiko subjektivne destitucije. Lacanova psihoanalitična teorija pa vsebuje četrto paradigmo, nezvedljivo na prve tri: že pred procesom subjektivacije oziroma interpelacije je subjekt navzoč kot praznina, ne-možnost simbolne strukture, kot korelat realnemu jedru, ki se upira simbolizaciji. Temu ustreza etika realnega, etika, ki vztraja na razmiku med travmo realnega in poskusi njene simbolizad je. Delo Laclaua in Mouffove Hegemonija in socialistična strategija je prvi poskus, razdelati teorijo družbenega, ki bi ustrezala lacanovskemu polju: družba je nemožna totalnost, zgrajena okoli travmatičnega jedra. Kritičen pretres pojma antagonizma nam pokaže, da je subjekt, ki ustreza Laclau/Mouffovi teoriji družbenega, prav lacanovski sujet barré.

The very beginning of David Lynch's The Straight Story, the words that introduce the credits, "Walt Disney Presents - A David Lynch Film," provides what is perhaps the best resume of the ethical paradox that marks the end of century: the overlapping of the transgression with the norm. Walt Disney, the brand of the conservative family values, takes under its umbrella David Lynch, the author who epitomizes transgression, bringing to the light the obscene underworld of perverted sex and violence that lurks beneath the respectable surface of our lives. Today, more and more, the cultural-economic apparatus itself, in order to reproduce itself in the market competition conditions, has not only to tolerate, but directly to incite stronger and stronger shocking effects and products. Suffice it to recall recent trends in visual arts: gone are the days when we had simple statues or enframed paintings - what we get now are expositions of frames themselves without paintings, expositions of dead cows and their excrements, videos of the inside of the human body, inclusion of smell into the exposition, etc.etc. Here, again, as in the domain of sexuality, perversion is no longer subversive: the shocking excesses are part of the system itself, the system feeds on them in order to reproduce itself. Perhaps, this is one of the possible definitions of postmodern art as opposed to modernist art: in postmodernism, the transgressive excess loses its shocking value and is fully integrated into the established artistic market.

Days before the election, Noam Chomsky told progressives that they should vote for Obama, but without illusions. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: From a pragmatic-realistic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will just do some minor face-lifting improvements, turning out to be “Bush with a human face.” He will pursue the same basic politics in a more attractive mode and thus effectively even strengthen U.S. hegemony, which has been severely damaged by the catastrophe of the Bush years. There is nonetheless something deeply wrong with this reaction — a key dimension is missing in it. It is because of this dimension that Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggles for majority with all their pragmatic calculations and manipulations. It is a sign of something more. This is why a good, American friend of mine, a hardened Leftist with no illusions, cried for hours when the news came of Obama’s victory. Whatever our doubts, fears and compromises, in that moment of enthusiasm, each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.

The gap that separates Lacan from Heidegger is here clearly discernible precisely on account of their proximity, i.e., of the fact that, in order to designate the symbolic function at its most elementary, Lacan still uses Heidegger’s term “being”: in a human being, desires lose their mooring in biology, they are operative only insofar as they are inscribed within the horizon of Being sustained by language; however, in order for this transposition from the immediate biological reality of the body to the symbolic space to take place, it has to live a mark of torture in the body in the guise of its mutilation.

Noam Chomsky called for people to vote for Obama ‘without illusions’. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will make only some minor improvements, turning out to be ‘Bush with a human face’. He will pursue the same basic policies in a more attractive way and thus effectively strengthen the US hegemony, damaged by the catastrophe of the Bush years. There is nonetheless something deeply wrong with this reaction – a key dimension is missing from it. Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more. This is why an American friend of mine, a hardened leftist with no illusions, cried when the news came of Obama’s victory. Whatever our doubts, for that moment each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.