Interpassivity & Belief Through the Other

In his words 17

“It is enough that everybody presupposes somebody, someone else to believe and the belief is actual, it structures reality, it functions.”
7:29 The Reality of the Virtual · subject supposed to believe — mechanism of ideology

“Even to be a survivalist, a brutal egotist survivalist, you still need a belief that out there there is someone who is more than you.”
12:57 The Big Other and The Event of Subjectivity · transposed belief / subject supposed to believe

“We don't really believe, nobody believes today. People pretend to be cynics... but they usually need another one to believe for them. The psychoanalytic term for this would be subject supposed to believe.”
34:04 What is to be done for politics? · subject supposed to believe as structure of contemporary ideology

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

anecdote · in 28 of its talks

Niels Bohr's horseshoe

Niels Bohr had a horseshoe on his country-house door; when a scientist friend asked why a scientist would keep a superstitious charm, Bohr answered 'I was told it works even if you don't believe in it', Žižek's model for ideology today.

example · in 15 of its talks

Santa Claus Belief

Parents deny believing in Santa while buying presents; children deny believing while pretending so as not to disappoint parents. No one believes in the first person yet the ritual functions perfectly.

example · in 11 of its talks

Canned laughter / TV laugh track

Mentioned as another example of passive consumption and the removal of substance (laughter without the joke/comedy).

anecdote · in 11 of its talks

Stalin joins the applause

When a fascist leader finishes speaking the crowd applauds and he simply accepts it. In Stalinism the leader joins in the applause himself. Žižek (drawing on Dolar's work) reads this as the difference between the fascist structure of voice, charismatic reception, and the Stali…

example · in 10 of its talks

Stalinist prohibition of the prohibition

Under Stalinism it was prohibited to criticize Stalin, but it was even more prohibited to publicly state 'in our country you are not allowed to criticize Stalin', the rule that enforces the prohibition cannot itself be named.

joke · in 12 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.

Critique of Life is Beautiful9 Starbucks ethical consumerism10 Book of Job as first critique of ideology9 man who believes he is a grain of corn / the chicken8 Da Vinci Code / Da Vinci, sex displaced onto Jesus8 Organic apples as ideology7 Rumsfeld's known/unknown matrix and the fourth term7 Daisetz Suzuki's Knife7 James Bond Quantum of Solace, no sex at the end6 Lenin's Wife and Mistress6

Where it comes up 116

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

Is there a Post-Human God?2017-03-02 · 1:47:36

3:55 subject supposed to believe

… This idea of beliefs which socially function even if no one believes in them.

39:01 the subject supposed to know

… So the digital machine is maybe the latest embodiment of the Big Other, the subject supposed to know, which operates as a field of knowledge, a chain of signifiers without a master signifier, a non-subjective machine.

4:04 interpassivity

… It's a wonderful idea developed also under the guise of his Pfaller's new term "interpassivity," how others can believe for you.

On Violence2008-09-12 · 1:17:11

~17:21 subject supposed to believe

laughter on TV, Cheers, Friends, whatever, and you don't even laugh. The mystery is, admit it, at the end of the show, you feel relieved as if you have laughed. That's the mystery. How it works. And my thesis back to Donald Rumsfeld topic is …

~17:56 the subject supposed to know

if you ask parents they said no, we are not crazy, we pretend to believe not to disappoint our children. But I can guarantee you if you ask then the children, they said no, I'm not crazy, we pretend to believe not to disappoint our …

15:32 interpassivity

… ss, you know, I will endlessly repeat this joke being here, at least on the German Google you find him, he proposed a wonderful category of inter-passivity.

No Sex please, We are Post-Human2009-01-20 · 1:20:27

~48:35 subject supposed to believe

she said? It’s a nice formula. She she didn’t answer. She just said “Jewish people believe in God and I believe in Jewish people.” You know what’s weird? This is not the usual Stalinist logic where your reasoning is “you know ordinary people need to …

~1:17:48 the subject supposed to know

like that. The true question is why does the anti-Semitic subject need the figure of the Jew. And here I am tempted to repeat Jacques Lacan’s wonderful ironic statement when he says that when a husband is jealous of his wife that she sleeps around …

8:32 pseudo-activity

… u feel good: “I am doing something, mother earth is in danger, I feel I’m part of a wonderful movement to do something.” It’s this sense of pseudo-activity, I think, my god, doing something without paying any serious price and so on and so on.

Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 5pub. 2018-11-28 · 2:04:45

1:10:30 subject supposed to believe

… es him or her blah blah blah but it's very mysterious why this even without any he just arrives and knows the subject okay then we have the subject supposed to believe which would be precisely the subject supposed not to know what I called two days ago the one for whom the appearances should be protected t …

1:09:09 the subject supposed to know

… an let me explain it through the structure of supposition Lacan as you all know or should know developed first the notion of the analyst as the subject supposed to know which arises through transference supposed to know what the meaning of the patient symptom and again to repeat my old typical example if yo …

~1:23:07 the thing as a sign of itself

the structure here is the one of again of minimal difference that is to say the structure of when a thing appears is as it were a sign of itself relates a thing relates to itself but not in the sense but the thing becomes …

We’re Only Human2009-10-20 · 1:20:27

~48:36 subject supposed to believe

said? It's a nice formula. She said, "Jewish people believe in God, and I believe in Jewish people." You know what this means? This is not the usual Stalinist logic where your reasoning is "ordinary people need to believe." No, I claim nobody has to …

~10:17 the subject supposed to know

be in, you must not only follow the rules, but there is a very codified way, nothing contingent about it, of how you softly here and there violate the explicit rules. In both directions: A, there are rules, prohibitions, which are literally meant not to …