On Žižek's Tarrying with the Negative

One of Žižek’s theoretically most substantial books is Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (1993). In Tarrying with the Negative (abbreviated TWTN below), Žižek shows how Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory opposes cognitive and ethical relativism and reaffirms a conception of universal truth.

Žižek demonstrates, on the one hand, how Lacanian analysis reveals the produced and artificial character of the master signifier. This “signifier with no signified” (word with no definition), serves as a quilting point that provides the illusion of consistency in a discourse or social link. But on the other hand—against the misconception that Lacanian theory is just another form of postmodern relativism—Žižek shows how Lacan’s approach reinvigorates the concept of universality. For Lacan the universal truth of any situation is revealed through contingency.

TWTN shows how those who identify with an ideology tend to be unaware of its inconsistency. For example, postmodern relativism—the ideology of late capitalism—is self-referentially inconsistent insofar as it implicitly offers a synoptic view of the Whole even while it explicitly denies the possibility of any synoptic view of the Whole. It is absurd to claim that it is universally true that all meaning is the result of non-universal, performative practices. Similarly, adherents of any ideology are generally not cognizant of the hidden, obscene underside—the repressed truth—of the social reality. Thus the universal truth of an event or situation is not revealed in the “big Other”, the intersubjective, socio-symbolic network; on the contrary, the universal truth of an entire situation is accessible only to those who occupy the position of the abject, excluded other. Any ideology disenfranchises some particular group, and when this exclusion is symptomatic of a wider problem, it encapsulates what is wrong with the entire society. Consequently, the truth of the entire social field is disclosed only at its margins, through the experiences of those who are excluded and made abject by the hegemonic ideology. In sum, universal truth is revealed through a contingent and historically relative locus in the constellation of social positions.

After the ontological preparation, Žižek turns to the critique of ideology and the Real of social antagonism. In the last chapter of TWTN, he argues that nationalistic mobilizations involve an illusion produced by the element of fantasy at work in ideology. Fantasy patches up the inconsistency of the intersubjective, symbolic network, the big Other. However, the master signifier around which any ideology revolves cannot provide true unity, because it is a word with no definition—a name for nothing—that is positivized through the unreflective actions of believers so as to keep repressed any awareness of class antagonism within the regime.

In the concluding passages of TWTN, Žižek asks whether liberal democracy—and its implicit compromise with capitalism—is the only option for the left today. He reveals the vacuity of the liberal-democratic notion of the universal as a neutral medium for the expression of self-interest or group identity. He argues that this sterile notion of universality serves the interests of multinational, corporate capitalism. But how can leftists oppose nationalism without sliding into the vacuous, liberal-democratic notion of universality as a neutral framework for compromise? Žižek answers by reviving the Hegelian notion of concrete universality: a form of universality that is realized only through the partisan—and properly political—act of taking sides. Žižek argues that at this juncture in history, what is called for is the identification with the disenfranchised “excremental remainder” of society.

Because the universal truth of an entire society is revealed only through the position of that society’s excluded, abject other, it is by occupying the position of this disenfranchised other that we will traverse the fantasies of nationalism and racism, and achieve the solidarity of a common struggle. By means of a politics of identification with the abject other, we open up the possibility for the ethical-political act as symbolic suicide. In this way, a revolutionary collective may change the entire coordinates of a situation and reactualize emancipatory possibilities that had been repressed by the hegemonic ideology. In the book’s final chapter, Žižek argues for an openly partisan and committed, unorthodox version of Marxism. The concluding sentences reiterate Žižek’s claim that because of the coming ecological crisis, the fate of humanity hinges on the acceptance of transcendental materialism and its concomitant Marxist political stance. In short, communism is the only viable political alternative.

From Žižek's Organs without Bodies

"During the shooting of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago in a Madrid suburb in 1964, a crowd of Spanish statists had to sing the 'Internationale' in a scene involving a mass demonstration. The movie team was astonished to discover that they all knew the song and were singing it with such a passion that the Francoist police intervened, thinking that they were dealing with a real political manifestation. Even more, when, late in the evening (the scene was to take place in darkness), people living in the nearby houses heard the echoes of the song, they opened up bottles and started to dance in the street, wrongly presuming that Franco had died and the Socialists had taken power.

This book is dedicated to those magic moments of illusory freedom (which, in a way, were precisely not simply illusory) and to the hopes thwarted by the return to 'normal' reality."

Žižek, Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. xii.

The Main Point about Systemic Hypocrisy

From Žižek 's The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), p. 8:

"One commonplace about philosophers today is that their very analysis of the hypocrisy of the dominant system betrays their naivety: why are they still shocked to see people inconsistently violate their professed values when it suits their interests? Do they really expect people to be consistent and principled? Here one should defend authentic philosophers: what surprises them is the exact opposite--not that people do not 'really believe,' and act upon their professed principles, but that people who profess their cynical distance and radical pragmatic opportunism secretly believe much more than they are willing to admit, even if they transpose these beliefs onto (nonexistent) 'others.'"

On Perversion

From An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, by Dylan Evans (London: Routledge, 1996), page 138:

"Perversion was defined by Freud as any form of sexual behaviour which deviates from the norm of heterosexual genital intercourse (Freud, 1905d). However, this definition is problematised by Freud's own notions of the polymorphous perversity of all human sexuality, which is characterised by the absence of any given natural order.

Lacan overcomes this impasse in Freudian theory by defining perversion not as a form of behaviour but as a clinical structure.

'What is perversion? It is not simply an aberration in relation to social criteria, an anomaly contrary to good morals, although this register is not absent, nor is it an atypicality according to natural criteria, namely that it more or less derogates from the reproductive finality of the sexual union. It is something else in its structure.' (S1, 221)

The distinction between perverse acts and the perverse structure implies that, while there are certain sexual acts which are closely associated with perverse structures, it is also possible that such acts may be engaged in by non-perverse subjects, and equally possible that a perverse subject may never engage in such acts. It also implies a universalist position; while social disapproval and the infraction of 'good morals' may be what determines whether a perticular act is perverse or not, this is not the essence of the perverse structure. A perverse structure remains perverse even when the acts associated with it are socially approved. Hence Lacan regards homosexuality as a perversion even when practised in Ancient Greece, where it was widely tolerated (S8, 43). (This is not because homosexuality or any other form of sexuality is naturally perverse; on the contrary, the perverse nature of homosexuality is entirely a question of its infringement of the normative requirements of the Oedipus complex (S4, 201). Thus Lacan criticises Freud for forgetting at times that the importance of heterosexuality in the Oedipal myth is a question of norms and not of nature (Ec, 223). The analyst's neutrality forbids him from taking sides with these norms; rather than defending such norms or attacking them, the analyst seeks merely to expose their incidence in the subject's history.)"

And from page 140:

"While neurosis is characterised by a question, perversion is characterised by the lack of a question; the pervert does not doubt that his acts serve the jouissance of the Other. Thus it is extremely rare for a perverse subject to demand analysis, and in the rare cases when he does, it is not because he seeks to change his mode of jouissance. This perhaps explains why many psychoanalysts have argued that psychoanalytic treatment is not appropriate for perverse subjects, a line which even some Lacanian analysts have taken, comparing the certainty of the pervert with that of the psychotic, and arguing that perverts cannot take the position of 'one who does not know' before a 'subject supposed to know' (Clavreul, 1967). However, most Lacanian analysts do not take this view, since it is a view completely at odds with Lacan's own position."

On Pseudo-Leftist Academics

From Žižek 's Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 60-61:

"When today's Left bombards the capitalist system with demands that it obviously cannot fulfil (Full employment! Retain the welfare state! Full rights for immigrants!), it is basically playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand which will be impossible for him to meet, and will thus expose his impotence. The problem with this strategy, however, is not only that the system cannot meet these demands, but that, in addition, those who voice them do not really want them to be realized. For example, when 'radical' academics demand full rights for immigrants and opening of the borders, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent working-class racist backlash which would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics? Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demands will not be met--in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position." [...]

"If someone accuses a big corporation of particular financial crimes, he or she is exposed to risks which can go right up to murder attempts; if he or she asks the same corporation to finance a research project into the link between global capitalism and the emergence of hybrid postcolonial identities, he or she stands a good chance of getting hundreds of thousands of dollars."

How We Are Believers Today

From Žižek 's Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London: Verso, 2002), p. 71:

[...] "this is how we are believers today--we make fun of our beliefs, while continuing to practice them, that is, to rely on them as the underlying structure of our daily practices.

In the good old German Democratic Republic, it was impossible for the same person to combine three features: conviction (belief in the official ideology), intelligence, and honesty. If you believed and were intelligent, you were not honest; if you were intelligent and honest, you were not a believer; if you were a believer and honest, you were not intelligent. Does not the same also hold for the ideology of liberal democracy? If you (pretend to) take the hegemonic liberal ideology seriously, you cannot be both intelligent and honest: you are either stupid or a corrupted cynic. So, if I may indulge in a rather tasteless allusion to Agamben's Homo sacer, I can risk the claim that the predominant liberal mode of subjectivity today is Homo sucker: while he tries to exploit and manipulate others, he ends up being the ultimate sucker himself. When we think we are making fun of the ruling ideology, we are merely strengthening its hold over us."

Adrian Johnston on Unfinished Reality

From Žižek 's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 2008), p. 65:

"Hence, what both German idealism and psychoanalysis point to is, as developed by Žižek, a more radical solution to the problems masterfully uncovered (but nonetheless left unresolved) by Kant: the material Real of "nature" (especially human nature) isn't smoothly integrated and free of internal conflicts, but rather is torn apart from within by internal antagonisms.

This absolutely axiomatic Freudian-Lacanian notion of (human) nature as, from the start, a heterogeneous, unintegrated field, instead of as an organically unified set of elements and functions (with this organic unity allegedly being broken up solely by virtue of external intrusions impinging on its inner workings), ought to be recognized as a register complementary to Lacan's "barred" big Other (i.e., the symbolic order as permanently containing, within its own organizational constellations, contradictions, deadlocks, incompleteness, lack, etc.). More specifically, the Lacanian Real, viewed in the context of the preceding analyses, is a barred Real--not only the symbolic order, but the very substance of being is inconsistent and divided against itself."