Hysteria (Questioning Identity)

In his words 27

“Hysteria is much more subversive than perversion. A pervert has no uncertainties, while the hysterical position is that of a doubt—which is an extremely productive position.”
1:47:31 The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) · hysteria vs perversion

“For me as a Lacanian perversion is bad, hysteria is good.”
41:45 The Silent Voice of a new Beginning · Lacanian hysteria as political virtue

“A pervert knows; a hysteric doesn't know. The hysterical position is questioning.”
12:59 Struggle Towards a New Master · hysteria versus perversion as subjective stances

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

example · in 8 of its talks

Starbucks ethical consumerism

Buying a Starbucks cappuccino is sold as supporting Guatemalan organic farmers and saving the planet; the owner appeared like Anthony Giddens calling Starbucks an ersatz place of collective experience. The sin of consumerism and its redemption are packaged together in the same…

joke · in 8 of its talks

coffee without cream / coffee without milk

A customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they have no cream but can offer coffee without milk. Even though the result is identical, the absent supplement matters, Hegelian negativity in a joke.

example · in 5 of its talks

Antigone rewritten, three alternate scenarios

Žižek describes his book rewriting Antigone in three alternate-history versions: (1) Sophocles' original; (2) Antigone wins the argument with Creon but this triggers revolt and ruin; (3) the Chorus executes both Antigone and Creon as traitors establishing Jacobin terror. He us…

example · in 4 of its talks

Billy Bathgate / bad novel and bad movie generating virtual ideal

Both the Doctorow novel and its film adaptation are bad, yet through their repetition a third purely virtual entity emerges, the ideal novel that should have been. This is Žižek's model for the unconscious as a virtual, non-substantial entity.

anecdote · in 5 of its talks

Native Americans prefer 'Indians'

A Native American man in Missoula, Montana told Žižek he prefers 'Indian' over 'Native American' because 'at least that is a monument to white man's stupidity', and proceeded to demolish the left-liberal image of indigenous people as ecologically holistic, saying they burned m…

joke · in 4 of its talks

Jewish 'nobody' joke / synagogue self-humiliation

In a synagogue, the rabbi, then a rich merchant, then a poor Jew each prostrate themselves as 'nobodies before God.' One of the rich men then stabs the other: 'Who is this guy, thinking he can be a nobody like us?', illustrating how self-humiliation confers a monopoly on judgm…

Lenin in Warsaw4 Remote-controlled rat4 The Last Temptation of Christ3 Brief Encounter, the busybody as the big Other3 Tom Cruise in Magnolia3 biodegradable bullets with seeds3 Beckett's Catastrophe3 Hysterical question: 'Tell me why do you love me'3 Prague Spring saved by Soviet intervention3 Abu Ghraib as obscene underside of military culture3

Where it comes up 52

68 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

Slavoj Zizek lecture: the double nature of the capitalist discourse2016 · 1:29:13

~1:12:55 hysteria

will tell you, if you have non-hysterics, the big problem of psychoanalytic treatment, if you get a pervert, is to hystericize him first. Because hystericization is in a way a condition of analytic work. That's the problem with perverts, you know. I'm not sure here, …

1:02:16 hysterical question

… So this is the original hysterical question.

~1:03:50 hysteria as critique of ideology

no? and it’s, it's mad as shit. Okay. Sorry. I have the honor of being personally attacked half a year ago by Erdogan, you know. He attacked Chomsky, but then in one version he also mentioned me as the most corrupted, unworthy of—but I had …

+1 more in this talk

Hegel in Athens: what would Hegel have said about our predicament?2015-12-04 · 2:01:07

1:03:29 hysteria

… Lacan is here a great feminist because Lacan always emphasizes the true revolutionary dimension is in hysteria, not in perversion.

1:04:32 hysterical question

… The hysterical question is, as Lacan puts it very nicely already in his Seminar and especially on psychosis, "Why am I what you are saying that I am?" No, this doubting like...

"THE DARK KNIGHT RISES is a Conservative Liberal Film" - Slavoj Žižek (2012) | TIFF REWIND2012 · 1:09:18

3:08 hysterical question

… And the hysterical question is of course that of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, am I that name? That is to say, you are saying I am that, mother, woman, whatever, but why am I what you are saying that I am? Is this elementary questioning of my own identity.

2:34 hysteria as critique of ideology

… It's the hysterical feminine position which is what? I think the best definition of hysteria is failed interpellation.

Slavoj Žižek. Different Figures of The Big Other.2012 · 1:26:22

1:17:29 hysteria as critique of ideology

… my good friend mladen dolar years ago developed this nicely, the topic as a critique of althusser of failed interpellation.

~1:18:48 enigmatic signifier

are very precise points which work. where already freud says crucially that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies like jargon of hysteria. interesting. the questioning is displaced in hysteria. you are the question in obsessiveessional neurosis questions is addressed at the other and so on and …

~1:17:30 hysteria as birth of subjectivity

mladen dolar years ago developed this nicely, the topic as a critique of althusser of failed interpellation. of how, you know, louis althusser's classical theory of interpellation, ideology interpolates you, how you as what you are, father, mother, leader, worker, whatever. but... dard did this …

+1 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek - Buddhism, happiness and sacrifice day 012023 · 1:51:03

57:46 hysteria

… Which means that a hysterical power is impossible.

~50:42 passage from having to being

fantasy. We cannot simply dismiss this as a gross misunderstanding of Lacan because there is a grain of truth in it. Desire is metonymic. Every empirical positive object that we desire is a trap, in the sense that if we get it, our desire is …

53:06 hysterical desire

… Recall Lacan's basic formula of hysterical desire: "I ask you what? To refuse what? What I offer you.