The Real, Trauma & Impossibility

In his words 40

“this is not a return to the real, but an escape from the real. the real is precisely that abyss of that imaginary abyss.”
~33:16 Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture · cynical de-mystification as escape from the Real

“when fantasy disintegrates, you don't get reality. you get some nightmarish real, too traumatic to be experienced as ordinary reality.”
1:32:16 The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) · the Real as what appears when fantasy collapses

“Reality itself is always defined as that which resists through the minimal resistance, friction and so on.”
48:51 A Lacanian Plea for Fundamentalism · the real as defined by minimal resistance — against Gnosticism

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 12 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 8 of its talks

Rumsfeld's known/unknown matrix and the fourth term

Rumsfeld articulated three epistemological categories before the Iraq war (known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns); Žižek argues he missed the crucial fourth, 'unknown knowns' (unconscious fantasies), which is what the U.S. lacked awareness of, making the Iraqi Ministe…

anecdote · in 8 of its talks

Lacanian jealous husband

Lacan's formula that pathological jealousy is pathological regardless of its factual truth, what matters is why the subject needs the fantasy of the unfaithful wife to maintain their subjective consistency. Žižek applies this to anti-Semitism.

anecdote · in 7 of its talks

The Wolfman Case

Freud pays the Wolfman, losing his neutral position and triggering paranoia ('che vuoi?'); the patient is later cured by Muriel Gardiner, an American psychoanalyst.

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 7 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…

Zeuxis and Parrhasius6 Antigone rewritten, three alternate scenarios6 Goldwyn's New Clichés memo6 Book of Job as first critique of ideology6 Hardcore porn and narrative censorship5 Adorno, antinomy of individualism vs. social objectivism5 Auschwitz and the Cunning of Reason5 God as Lazy Programmer5 Fidel Castro / fidelity to castration5 Žižek's father dying, no deathbed reconciliation5

Where it comes up 145

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

Slavoj Zizek On Jacques Lacan (Full Lecture)pub. 2017-01-05 · 4:34:05

1:20:19 the Real

… toshoot of the village and we will see what is reality." Here comes the greatness of Lévi-Strauss, no, who says "No, the point is not this, the real is not this.

1:20:28 social antagonism

… No, we have something more: social antagonism, which nowhere exists—in this sense it's not nominalist—but you have to refer to it.

1:20:38 class struggle

… ernity in the 20th century; it’s called Fascism, no? Fascism was precisely a dream of "We can have modernity but without Jewish corruption, class struggle, without all that." And that’s for me also the lie of historicism.

+3 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek - Critica Jacques Alain Miller sobre lo Real de Lacan 19/4/20162016-04-19 · 33:42

3:43 the Real

… il y a un grand désordre dans le réel simply english, there is a great disorder in the real.

26:39 social antagonism

… in order to avoid the immanence of social antagonism, you project its cause onto an external disturbing element, the jews, who introduce antagonism and so on and so on and so on.

12:22 imaginary/symbolic/real (Lacanian triad)

… i would add that laccon invented a way of representing the real with the borromean knot.

+2 more in this talk

Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semite and Jew2009 · 1:12:54

39:25 the Real

… So you see my point: although it may seem to be much easier to say to an antisemitic worker, "But can't you see you are duped, the real enemy is elsewhere," this process is de facto a very difficult one.

~2:05 the Real as formal impossibility

calls real, le Réel, is the point of impossibility within a field of reality. Along the same lines, what for Alain Badiou defines a world and I think this is crucial when you read him is not primarily the positive qualities, features of a world, …

2:01 point of impossibility

… One of the definitions of what Jacques Lacan calls real, le Réel, is the point of impossibility within a field of reality.

The Reality of the Virtual2004 · 1:13:15

1:14 the Real

… First a little bit about the first two of them, less important and then of course the big topic, the real.

0:17 Real as purely virtual

… I think that a much more interesting notion, crucial to understand what goes on today, is the opposite, not virtual reality but the reality of the virtual.

9:39 imaginary/symbolic/real (Lacanian triad)

… Because when Lacan defines this triad as the triad of a knot, borromean knot, it means that they are literally interwoven in the sense that the entire triad is reflected into each of the three terms.

+3 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek: Lacan and the Virtual Triad | Video Lecture Series (1/3)2020-01-19 · 26:19

25:30 the Real

… The primordial fact is not some brutal intrusion of the real, of a traumatic real.

0:24 Real as purely virtual

I think that a much more interesting notion, crucial to understand what goes on today, is the opposite: not virtual reality, but the reality of the virtual.

~8:46 imaginary/symbolic/real (Lacanian triad)

true treasure is waiting for us: real virtuality. So, the real virtual. Well, the problem here, the catch, of course, is the notion of the real. So, this may appear boring, but we have to go again through the triad imaginary, symbolic, real. Because when …

+2 more in this talk