Intense immersion into the social body, in a shared ritualistic performance

from "Britain’s royal wedding had an emancipatory subtext," at:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/428134-royal-wedding-uk-zizek/






by Slavoj Žižek




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...in an authentic act of representation, people do not simply assert through a representative what they want, they only become aware of what they want through the act of representation.







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We should therefore shamelessly assert intense immersion into the social body, a shared ritualistic performance that would put all good old liberals into shock and awe by its “totalitarian” intensity – something Wagner was aiming at in his great ritualistic scenes at the end of Acts I and III of Parsifal.




Like Parsifal, the great concerts of the German hard-rock band Rammstein (say, the one in the arena of Nimes on July 23, 2005) should also be called, as Wagner called his Parsifal, Bühnenweihfestspiel (“sacred festival performance”) which is the vehicle for the collectivity’s affirmation of itself.




All liberal-individualist prejudices should fall here – yes, each individual should be fully immersed into a crowd, joyfully abandoning their individual critical mind. Meanwhile, passion should obliterate reasoning.




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