The Indivisible Remainder (22)

Using Lacan to reactualize Hegelian dialectic

From The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters, by Slavoj Žižek (London: Verso, 1996 & 2007). The following citations are from the 2007 edition.

p. 139: The transcendence of the big Other qua substantial In-itself--that is, the order of 'objective spirit' which exists independently of the subject's activity--is therefore a kind of necessary perspective illusion; it is the form in the guise of which the subject (mis)perceives his very incapacity to attain the In-itself of the real other whose true intentions remain impenetrable. In this precise sense, the status of the spiritual Substance is virtual: what is virtual about the big Other is its very In-itself, that on account of which the big Other cannot be reduced to the intentions, meanings, psychical states, and so on, of effectively existing individuals.

p. 140: In other words, far from depending on a kind of minimal co-ordination individuals were able to reach in spite of the opacity of their true intentions, the spiritual Substance emerges as the way to avoid the impasse of this opacity by presupposing the co-ordination-of-intentions as already given in the purely virtual Third Order of impersonal rules, so that now the problem is no longer 'Do individuals truly understand each other?', but 'Does every individual follow the common rules?' In this precise sense, every human community is 'virtual': founded upon rules, values, and so on, whose validity is by definition presupposed, never conclusively proven--the status of the big Other is forever that of a semblance.

p. 140: [....] even if some notion was first imposed as a purely instrumental means of ideological deception, the moment the majority of the people fully accept this notion as the foundation of their social existence, we are no longer dealing with a lie but with the substantial truth of a community. [....]

p. 141: This 'magic' reversal of an 'error' into the founding gesture of co-operation can also occur in the opposite direction, 'backwards': in the course of the disintegration of an 'organic' community into egotistic individualism [....]

And again, the crucial point is that this structural impossibility of verifying the rules or intentions which underlie our socio-symbolic activity, this undecidability between error and co-operation, is the positive condition of genuine co-operation: the moment we invest another subject with the capacity to possess and determine the rules which control the true meaning of our speech, we no longer participate in genuine symbolic co-operation, since we conceive ourselves as a pure instrument manipulated by those who control the rules of the game. In this case, the symbolic order loses its virtual status--that is the most succinct definition of paranoia. Let us recall the reference to Nation: Nation is an 'open' notion; no subject controls its 'true meaning'; and, for that very reason, it can serve as the frame for genuine co-operation, that is, as the substance of our social being, not a mere deceptive ploy manipulated by the rulers in order to control and exploit their subordinates.

We are effectively dealing with 'spiritual Substance' when a notion which was originally imposed as a means of ideological deception and manipulation unexpectedly escapes the control of its creator and starts to lead a life of its own. [....]

p. 142: Therein resides the fundamental enigma of the symbolic community: how is it possible to perform this sleight of hand constitutive of the symbolic order, this deceitful presentation of what is yet to come as already given? Lacan provides a precise answer: the presupposed co-ordination concerns not the level of the signified (of some shared positive content) but the level of the signifier. The undecidability with regard to the signified (do others really intend the same as me?) converts into an exceptional signifier, the empty Master-Signifier, the signifier-without-signified. 'Nation', 'Democracy', 'Socialism', and other Causes stand for that 'something' about which we are never sure what, exactly, it is--the point is, rather, that by identifying with Nation we signal our acceptance of what others accept, with a Master-Signifier which serves as the rallying point for all the others. In other words, identification with such an empty Master-Signifier is, in its most basic dimension, identification with the very gesture of identification. We can now see in what precise sense the status of the signifier as such is virtual: virtuality is the virtuality of the signified, that is, the signifier relies on a 'meaning to come' which, although it is never fully actualized, functions as if it is already effective. When the signifier 'our nation' starts to function as the rallying point for a group of people, it effectively co-ordinates their activity, although each of them may have a different notion of what 'our Nation' means.