Markets without Substance
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2003 · 1:00:22 · 8,835 words
psychoanalysishegel-dialecticsideologycapitalismphilosophy-generalfascism-populismecology-climatesubjectivitydemocracyhistory
Žižek offers a systematic exposition of Lacan's four-discourse matrix (Seminar XVII) and applies it as a conceptual tool for diagnosing contemporary forms of domination. He traces the shift from the master's discourse to the university discourse, arguing that today's expert-technocratic authority is a disavowed master's discourse whose truth remains power. In the second half he draws out the paradoxes of 'permissive' biopolitical society, in which products, pleasures, and even warfare appear stripped of their dangerous substance, linking homo sacer reduction and late-liberal narcissistic sensitivity as two faces of the same survivalist logic.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 30
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Re-reading Nietzsche: 'slave' designates not the downtrodden but the new post-revolutionary master who refuses to assume the title of master, presenting domination as service to the people.
Lacan's circular definition of the signifier, opposed to the sign-as-representing-something-for-somebody; the subject is always a gap in representation, never fully captured by any single signifier.
The symbolic order as a consistent field into which symptoms and signifiers are inscribed and which guarantees the coherence of social reality; the pervert believes it exists, the analyst acts as if it does not.
The object-cause of desire: the leftover or excess that symbolic representation structurally fails to capture, functioning also as the a priori quasi-transcendental element in the logic of desire.
A social link in which neutral expert knowledge addresses the subject as an object, concealing the master signifier as its hidden truth; paradigmatically embodied in technocratic and medical authority.
Lacan's precise meaning of 'discourse': not a body of statements but the minimal formal scheme of a social bond between positions (agent, other, truth, production).
The discourse in which the split subject provokes the master to produce knowledge about what the subject is as the cause of desire, questioning rather than accepting its symbolic identity.
as “disavowed master's discourse”
The hidden truth of the university/expert discourse: it presents itself as neutral objective knowledge but is secretly sustained by a master signifier and power relations it refuses to acknowledge.
as “master signifier (S1)”
The single signifier that represents the subject in the symbolic order and organizes the field of knowledge through a purely performative gesture, without itself being knowledge.
The formula of the subject's coupling with objet a that provides a fantasized answer to the 'Che vuoi?', the opacity of the Other's desire, and sustains the failure of the master's discourse.
as “enunciated / enunciation gap”
The structural gap between what is said (the enunciated) and the position from which it is said (enunciation), exemplified by 'it was interesting' meaning 'it was boring': the excess of meaning that fantasy or ideology fills.
The primordial question 'What do you want?' addressed to the opacity of the Other's desire; fantasy provides the fantasized answer that fills in this gap of meaning.
Psychoanalysis conceived as a fourth Kantian critique: Lacan posits a non-pathological a priori object-cause of desire (objet a) where Kant allowed only empirically contingent objects of the faculty of desire.
For Lacan, the absence of a binary signifier, having only S1 with no feminine counterpart, from whose void the multitude of signifiers emerges.
The minimal gap inherent to any sign-system between an element as it is and its place within the order; the gap that necessitates S2 to supplement S1.
as “signifier of the lack of the signifier”
An element that appears as a positive member of a series but is really a placeholder that gives body to what the system's structuring principle cannot grasp; exemplified by the Asiatic mode of production in Marx.
as “Asiatic mode of production as placeholder”
Marx's category functions not as a genuine mode alongside others but as a container for all productive organizations that escape the official taxonomy, an example of the signifier of the lack of the signifier.
The social link in which the analyst occupies the place of the impossible remainder that resists symbolic inclusion, inducing the analysand to produce knowledge that arrives at the place of truth.
as “hysterization of Christ”
Reading Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ as a portrait of hysterical subjectivity: Christ cannot accept his symbolic mandate ('Why am I God's son?'), embodying the constitutive questioning of identity.
A subject-position in which the agent knows with certainty what the big Other requires and instrumentalizes itself completely to fulfill it; structurally exemplified by Stalinism.
The analysand's supposition that the analyst already knows the meaning of their symptom in advance; the engine of the analytic process located at the place of supposed knowledge.
The mode of power characteristic of the university discourse: governing populations through expert knowledge that addresses subjects as biological objects, with 'pure life' as both target and product.
as “bare life / homo sacer”
Agamben's figure of the human reduced to pure biological existence subject to administrative-expert regulation and disposable power, which Žižek reads as one face of the university discourse's object.
The shared ideological root of both homo sacer reductionism and late-liberal sensitivity: when no higher cause is recognized, survival and bare life become the supreme value, generating both extremes.
as “multiculturalism without the real other”
Respect for cultural otherness reduced to folkloric surface (dances, cuisine) while the genuine alterity of the Other is kept safely at a distance.
as “products deprived of their malignant property”
Today's market logic of offering items stripped of their dangerous substance (decaf coffee, alcohol-free beer, fat-free cream) as emblem of permissive society in which transgression is pre-neutralized.
as “virtual sex / sex without sex”
Cybersex as the sexual correlate of decaf and lite-beer: pleasure formally present but drained of its risky bodily substance.
The Powell doctrine of zero casualties on one's own side: war conducted as a technocratic operation stripped of the experience of real mortal combat, the military counterpart of coffee without caffeine.
Implicit in the discussion of how products are deprived of their malignant substance: the excessive jouissance that regulatory/permissive society tries to neutralize.
as “last man hedonism”
Drawing on Nietzsche, the contemporary ethos in which unlimited permission is combined with the requirement that each pleasure be deprived of its dangerous excess, producing a totally regulated society in the name of well-being.
Stories he reaches for 7
A California product, chocolate laxative, encapsulates the paradox of the thing as its own remedy: the pleasure and the cure for excess of pleasure are combined in one object.
“The vulgar example is that one that I encountered in California three years ago: chocolate laxative. That's it.”
Lacan told the '68 student revolutionaries: 'As hysterics, you are asking for a new master, you will get one.' This encapsulates his skeptical-conservative reading of the revolt as a demand for a new form of domination.
“As hysterics, you are asking for, you demand a new master, you will get one.”
The traditional notion of God collects the positive content of everything humans don't know, 'when we don't know it we call that God', paralleling phlogiston as placeholders that objectivize a lack of knowledge.
“The entire positive content of the notion of God is the lack of our knowledge. We know things then when we don't know it we call that God.”
The Asiatic mode of production is not a genuine historical category but a catch-all container for productive organizations that escape Marxist taxonomy, illustrating the signifier of the lack of the signifier.
“It is really like you know that famous passage from Borges quoted by Foucault how the list includes all this. It's basically a container for all those modes which do not fit the official category.”
In Allen's Love and Death all the Dostoevsky titles pour out in a single dialogue scene precisely because 'Dostoevsky' as the binary signifier opposite Tolstoy is missing, illustrating how the absence of the binary signifier generates a multitude.
“The binary signifier is missing but what you get instead of this is an exploding multitude.”
The more authority a high executive holds, the more they require a private masochistic fantasy (visiting a dominatrix) to sustain them, showing that the explicit social link must be propped up by fantasy.
“The more you are in command the more you need some fantasy realized in the sense of masochistic ritual which sustains you.”
Stalinist discourse is obsessed with the inexorable logic of history and the party as its mere instrument, the structure of perverse discourse in which the agent fully knows and serves the big Other.
“It's always this obsession that there is an objective chain of logic of history necessity and we are merely instruments of historical necessity, this total self-instrumentalization.”
Works invoked 10
Grundrisse book
Marx's Grundrisse is the source of the modes of production taxonomy; Žižek uses it critically to illustrate the signifier of the lack of the signifier via the Asiatic mode.
Žižek dislikes Scorsese personally but finds the film's hysterization of Christ intellectually useful as an illustration of the subject's inability to assume the symbolic mandate.
Love and Death film
Woody Allen's Tolstoy parody is loved by Žižek; the scene condensing all Dostoevsky titles illustrates how the missing binary signifier generates an explosion of the multitude.
Richard II play
Shakespeare's Richard II is cited as the model of hysterical discourse: the king who begins to question his own legitimacy as master.
The entire talk is an exposition of this seminar; Žižek treats it as Lacan's key contribution to social theory and his response to May '68.
Eric Santner's book, called 'wonderful,' develops the Schreber case as the founding figure of modern paranoia and the failure of the master signifier in the biopolitical era.
Rorty's book, in which the definition of a human as 'someone who can be hurt' is cited and criticized as the extreme articulation of narcissistic vulnerability-subjectivity.
L'ordre médical book
Jean Clavreul's book, endorsed for arguing that medical discourse is a university discourse concealing a disavowed master position.
Saving Private Ryan film
One of the films Žižek 'really hates': it feigns anti-war critique but actually sustains the Powell doctrine of mechanized, body-count-minimizing warfare.
What is an Author? essay
Foucault's lecture at the French Society of Philosophy, the occasion for Lacan's famous riposte about structures walking in the streets.
People invoked 28
Martin Scorsese positive
Žižek says he doesn't like Scorsese personally but finds the idea of The Last Temptation of Christ worthwhile as a hysterization of Christ's identity.
Jacques Derrida positive
Cited with apparent agreement for drawing attention to the metaphysical phallogocentric notion of linear time; Žižek humorously invokes this to excuse running over time.
Acknowledged as a bad leader but used to argue that the truth of the Iraq War debate is not about Saddam's qualities but the logic of hegemony being established.
Colin Powell negative
The Powell doctrine of zero casualties on one's own side is identified as the military form of 'war without warfare', war as a technocratic, casualty-free administrative operation.
Moritz Schreber positive
Schreber's father, described as the original Foucauldian pedagogical figure and inventor of the disciplinary orthopedic procedure, cited to link traditional disciplinary authority to the biopolitical era.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical authority: Žižek systematically expounds Lacan's four-discourse matrix and treats him as the sharpest diagnostician of modernity, though he critically distances himself from Lacan's conservative reading of May '68.
Used as a banal example of how 'discourse of George Bush' sounds deeper in academic fashion, illustrating the snobbish inflation of the term 'discourse'.
Richard Rorty negative
His definition in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity of a human being as 'somebody who can be hurt' is criticized as a sad reduction of humanity to vulnerability and biopolitical survivalism.
Woody Allen positive
Love and Death used admiringly to illustrate how the absence of the binary signifier generates an explosion of the multitude (all Dostoevsky titles in one dialogue).
Alain Badiou positive
Mentioned as having lectured the same audience on mathematical formulas; Žižek draws a parallel between Badiou's set-theoretic treatment of the empty set and Lacan's logic of S1/S2.
Giorgio Agamben positive
Invoked approvingly for the concept of homo sacer and biopolitics; Žižek opens by jokingly comparing himself to Agamben's rigor and boring thoroughness.
Jean Clavreul positive
A 'rather conservative Lacanian' whose book L'ordre médical Žižek endorses for its argument that medical discourse is a university discourse concealing a master position.
Used as the paradigm case of the master's discourse: the word 'Jew' as empty but organizing master signifier that re-articulates social chaos into a transparent narrative.
Benedictus de Spinoza positive
Spinoza's critique of the traditional notion of God as a placeholder for ignorance used to illustrate the signifier of the lack of the signifier.
Michel Foucault positive
Cited for his lecture 'What is an Author?' at which Lacan responded; also invoked for the concept of micro-practices of regulation.
Eric Santner positive
Described as a 'good friend'; his book My Own Private Germany praised for analyzing Schreber as the founding figure of modern paranoia and the failure of the master signifier.
Daniel Paul Schreber positive
As Freud's paranoid case, Schreber is the founding figure of modern paranoia: his crises on promotion illustrate the failure to assume the symbolic mandate characteristic of the biopolitical era.
William Shakespeare positive
Richard II cited as the model of hysterical discourse, the king who begins to question his own legitimacy.
Appears in the Love and Death motif as the author whose name saturates Allen's film while Dostoevsky, the binary signifier, is conspicuously absent.
Cited as the inner-circle 'Khozayain' (master) and as exemplar of the pervert discourse: total self-instrumentalization in the name of historical necessity.
Steven Spielberg negative
Saving Private Ryan is criticized as a film that appears anti-war but in fact sustains the Powell doctrine of sanitized mechanized warfare.
Karl Marx positive
Used to illustrate the signifier of the lack of the signifier via the Asiatic mode of production; Žižek is 'a little bit critical' of Marx's taxonomic inconsistency here.
Jorge Luis Borges positive
The Borges passage (quoted by Foucault) about the heterogeneous list is invoked to illustrate Marx's Asiatic mode as a catch-all container.
Sigmund Freud positive
Freud's case of Schreber cited for the connection between professional success and psychotic crisis as illustration of the failure to assume the master signifier.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Lacan's logic of S1 and the void is described as 'very Hegelian': the first contradiction is tautological, inherent to the one itself, and the multitude emerges as an attempt to fill that gap.
Immanuel Kant positive
Invoked for the three Critiques and the claim that the faculty of desire is inherently pathological; used as the foil against which Lacan's 'critique of pure desire' is constructed.
Friedrich Nietzsche positive
Redeemed as a critic not of the lower classes but of the new masters who disavow mastery; also cited for the concept of the 'last man' hedonism.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
The claim 'if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted' is inverted by Žižek into two paradoxes; Dostoevsky's titles are also used in the Allen film motif.
What it argues
Lacan's four-discourse matrix as a social-structural theoryshift from master's discourse to university/expert discoursebiopolitics and the reduction of humans to bare lifepermissive society and products deprived of their substancefantasy as supplement to the failure of symbolic representationhysterization and the questioning of symbolic identitysurvivalism as the shared root of liberal narcissism and homo sacer logic
Dialectical moves 10
“The true message of 'it was boring and stupid' is: say 'it was interesting.' To pass the pure informational content without personal targeting, you must use the polite form.”
The gap between enunciated and enunciation means a statement never coincides with itself; saying its opposite can be the only way to mean it without smuggling in an excess.
“The university discourse is not the opposite of the master's discourse — it is a disavowed master's discourse. Its truth is the very thing it denies.”
Expert neutrality is not an escape from power but its most effective concealment: the master signifier migrates to the level of truth while knowledge occupies the place of agent.
“Far from being its opposite, homo sacer reductionism and late-liberal hypersensitivity to vulnerability are two aspects of the same underlying attitude: survivalism.”
Apparent ideological opposites, totalitarian bare-life reduction and liberal rights discourse, share the same root once the master signifier fails and life becomes its own end.
“If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited. If there is God, everything is permitted.”
Žižek's double inversion of Dostoevsky: secular permissiveness produces maximum regulation; religious fundamentalism licenses unlimited transgression, both invert the expected logic.
“Lacan is not a binary thinker — he is the most radical undermining of binary logic, because the original tension is not S1 vs S2 but S1 vs its own void.”
Binary opposition is derivative: the primary structure is the asymmetry of one element and its own lack, from which the multitude erupts rather than a second polar term.
“When Nietzsche attacks slave morality, the true slave is not the oppressed but the new master who is no longer ready to assume the title of master.”
Nietzsche's real target is the post-revolutionary bourgeois order that exercises mastery while disavowing it as service, not the genuinely downtrodden.
“Even if all Nazi claims about Jews were true, anti-Semitism would still be totally false — the true question is not the truth of the claims but why this fantasmatic figure is needed.”
The falsity of ideology is not located at the level of factual accuracy but at the level of the function the fantasy serves; accepting the terms of debate already concedes the ideological terrain.
“The pervert is not simply doing horrible things — the pervert is the one who knows exactly what you need and will do it for you. Stalinism was a pervert discourse.”
Perversion is a formal structure of certainty and self-instrumentalization in the name of the big Other, not a catalog of transgressive acts.
“The lost object of desire is not out there — it is me myself as an object. The primordial enigma is: what am I for the Other?”
Desire's constitutive loss is not a missing external object but the subject's own opacity to itself as an object of the Other's libidinal investment.
“Today's permissive society that says everything is permitted is the most regulated society ever — the product is always already its own counter-agent.”
Permission and prohibition coincide in late capitalism: each pleasure comes pre-neutralized, so the transgressive and the normative are the same gesture.
Claims 20
asserts
Lacan's four-discourse matrix, properly applied, can diagnose the new forms of authority operative today, including states of exception and technocratic governance.Lacan's discourse theory / contemporary domination
asserts
The discourse of the university is a disavowed master's discourse: expert neutrality conceals the power relations that make it possible.university/expert discourse
reframes
The master's discourse is not identical with oppression or authoritarianism; it is the foundational gesture of every social link, the performative act that introduces order from confusion.master's discourse / authority
rejects
Lacan's underlying stance toward May '68 is an enlightened conservatism — revolution produces a new, potentially more oppressive master — which Žižek explicitly opposes.Lacan's reading of May '68
reframes
Nietzsche's critique of slave morality targets not the lower classes but the post-revolutionary new masters who refuse to acknowledge their mastery, presenting domination as service.Nietzsche's slave morality
rejects
Lacan is the most radical underminer of binary logic, not its champion: he posits an original asymmetry (S1 without its binary partner) from whose void the multitude emerges.accusations that Lacan perpetuates binary logic
asserts
Psychoanalysis constitutes a fourth Kantian critique — a critique of pure desire — positing objet a as a non-pathological a priori object-cause of desire.psychoanalysis and Kantian critique
asserts
The homo sacer reduction to bare life and late-liberal narcissistic hypersensitivity to vulnerability are two faces of the same biopolitical logic, not opposites.biopolitics / liberal subjectivity
asserts
Survivalism — the elevation of bare life as the ultimate value — is the shared ideological root of both concentration-camp logic and the rejection of death penalty.survivalism / biopolitics / death penalty
asserts
Today's permissive society is in fact the most regulated society ever at the level of micro-practice, precisely because permission is combined with the demand that every pleasure be deprived of its dangerous substance.permissive society / social regulation
asserts
Stalinist ideology instantiates the perverse discourse: its agents totally self-instrumentalize in the name of objective historical necessity, believing the big Other (History) fully exists.Stalinism / perverse discourse
reframes
Anti-Semitism is not falsified by showing that specific claims are false; the true question is why the fantasy of 'the Jew' is needed to sustain a particular politics.anti-Semitism / ideology critique
reframes
Accepting the terms of debate (is Saddam really bad?) already concedes defeat to the ideological frame; the true question concerns the logic of hegemony being established.Iraq War debate / ideological framing
rejects
Rorty's definition of a human being as 'someone who can be hurt' represents a sadly reductive position, reducing humanity to its dimension of vulnerability.Rorty's liberal humanism
asserts
If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited: in a fully permissive secular universe the pursuit of happiness generates a totally regulated regime of self-care.permissiveness / Dostoevsky's inversion
asserts
Conversely, if there is God everything is permitted: religious fundamentalism licenses transgression precisely by acting directly on behalf of divine necessity.fundamentalism / divine authority
asserts
Medical discourse exemplifies the paradox of university discourse: it presents itself as purely scientific yet cannot function without a quasi-mystical excess in the figure of the doctor.medical discourse / university discourse
asserts
The rejection of death penalty and the biopolitical reduction to bare life (concentration camps) are strictly correlative phenomena, both expressions of survivalism.death penalty / biopolitics
rejects
Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, despite its apparent anti-war stance, sustains a purely mechanized, body-count-minimizing conception of war consistent with the Powell doctrine.Saving Private Ryan / aesthetics of war
asserts
Structures do walk in the streets: the Lacanian response to anti-structuralist graffiti — May '68 can be accounted for through structural permutations.structuralism / May '68
Quotes 12
“As hysterics, you are asking for, you demand a new master, you will get one.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's retort to May '68 revolutionaries / hysterical discourse
“If you want to tell me it was boring and stupid meaning just this that it was really boring and stupid then you should say it was interesting.”Slavoj Žižek · enunciated/enunciation gap — the coded nature of social speech
“Coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol… We have virtual sex which is precisely sex without sex.”Slavoj Žižek · permissive society / products deprived of their malignant property
“If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited. If there is God, everything is permitted.”Slavoj Žižek · double inversion of Dostoevsky / permissiveness and fundamentalism
“The true question is not is it true what they are claiming about the Jews. The true question is why in order to sustain their politics they need this fantasy of the Jew.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological fantasy / anti-Semitism critique
“The lost object of desire is ultimately not out there what I desire, it is rather me myself as an object.”Slavoj Žižek · objet a / desire / Lacanian subject
“I think there never was a society which at the level of what Foucault referred to as micro-practice was as regulated as is today's society.”Slavoj Žižek · permissive society as maximally regulated
“The master's gesture is the founding gesture of every social link. You know what would be the best example of the master's gesture? Imagine a situation of confusion.”Slavoj Žižek · master's discourse as constitutive social gesture
“The pervert's position is precisely this kind of total self-instrumentalization. Which is why I think that the classical Stalinism was a pervert discourse.”Slavoj Žižek · perverse discourse / Stalinism
“An enunciated statement never coincides with itself. You have always this more.”Slavoj Žižek · gap of enunciation / surplus meaning
“A human being is somebody who can be hurt. Now this is I think a pretty sad position.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of Rorty / biopolitical reduction of humanity
“Lacan's idea here is a very simple one… discourse means le lien social, social link. It's the minimal scheme of social link.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's definition of discourse as social link
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
What I propose, since I usually speak too long, is nonetheless to follow the steps of our good friend Giorgio Agamben and I also decided to be as boring as possible. That is to say, I want to do some solid job. I want to avoid as much as possible my usual mistake of just jumping here and there and do what? Some of you know, some of you not, that in his Seminar XVII, L'envers de la psychanalyse, the other side, the obverse of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan from Jacques Lacan developed the so-called matrix scheme of four discourses. I want to proceed simply in two steps. First, to explain in very simple terms to give a kind of a systematic account without bothering with too big methodological question how is he right and so on, just to give you an idea of how this works and then, more crucial, in part two, the more substantial part, to see how the focus of this theory, which is the passage from the discourse of master to the discourse of university, how it can serve as a conceptual tool to grasp what is going on today, the new forms of authority inclusive of what it was already said here about states of exception and so on and all that. Okay, so if you will excuse me for the first half which will be a little bit more boring than maybe some of you expect. So L'envers de la psychanalyse, this seminar of Lacan, this is the first thing to remember, is Lacan's response to the events of The premise of this seminar is best captured by Lacan's reversal of the well-known anti-structuralist graffiti from the Paris walls of Les structures ne descendent pas dans la rue, the structures do not walk on the streets, the idea being structuralist abstract schemes know the real thing, nothing to do. I think that Lacan said this first in a meeting of the French Society of Philosophy apropos where Michel Foucault presented a talk What is an Author and in the discussion Lacan emphatically claimed that if there is anything that the events of prove is that precisely structures in the structuralist so-called structuralist sense do walk along the streets. In other words, that you can account for what occurred in for this kind of outburst in terms of the structural changes, permutations, and so on and so on. For Lacan, the key to these events, and I am don't even agree with Lacan's account of it, but his interest is focused on, as I already said, on the passage, this is the key passage from discourse of the masters to the master to the discourse of university, which is why for Lacan it is crucial for him no wonder that the revolt of was located at the universities. As such for Lacan, this revolt only signaled the shift to new forms of domination in which the scientific discourse serves, legitimizes new relations of domination. I think that Lacan's underlying premise here is, this is at least one aspect of it, and here I'm critical of Lacan, skeptic-conservative, his diagnosis, you know, underlying this is an attitude which I oppose very much, this enlightened conservative attitude of yeah yeah revolutionary explosion is good, but the day after domination turns in a new maybe even more oppressive form. This diagnosis of Lacan is best captured by his famous retort to the student revolutionaries where he says, as hysterics, you are asking for, you demand a new master, you will get one. This passage of discourse of master, let's simplify the traditional discourse of power, to the discourse of university, can also be conceived in more general terms, generally as the passage from the pre-revolutionary Ancien Régime to the post-revolutionary new master who does not want to admit that he is one, but proposes, presents himself as a mere servant of the people. In Nietzsche's terms, it is the passage from master's ethics to slave morality. And this perhaps enables us a new approach to Nietzsche. When Nietzsche scornfully dismisses slave morality, I think that Nietzsche can be redeemed here, that he is not truly attacking lower, so-called lower classes as such, but rather the new masters who are no longer ready to assume the title of the master. I think if you read closely Nietzsche, slave is not the true slave. Slave is this fake new master who doesn't even want to be master, who is not ready to assume directly the position of the master. So let me do now a little bit of this elementary pedagogy. The starting point of this so-called matrix of the four discourses is Lacan's well-known so-called definition, I say so-called not to criticize Lacan because it's obviously structural sorry circular in the sense of that the term to be defined is, this is conscious Lacan's paradox, is included in the what is supposed to define him: a signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier. So how are we to read this obviously circular definition? And sorry for those of you who know Lacan, I'm sure at least some of you, at least those of you, I will not say who, but whose name begins with A and family name with B, like that, maybe you know even more Lacan, so I'm sorry for those. This definition is to be conceived in opposition, it's meant as a reversal, opposition of the standard definition of sign: sign as that which represents something for somebody. So what would this mean? Let me give you two-three very elementary examples. For example, the old-style hospital bed, now it's more digitalized, but I always admired them, you know how you lie here and at the feet you have, so that of course you as a patient you don't see it, you have this mysterious how do you call it board with you know temperature up and down, what medicine and so on and so on and so on. I think it's okay, this represents you the patient, no? Your state, your changes, temperature, blah blah what what medicines are you taking, but it represents you for whom? Now you would say oh but it's for another subject, obviously it is simply for the stupid doctor or the usually not so stupid nurses who come there to read it. No, I claim that that's not necessary. It can even happen ideally, a person is not needed there. It would be even more ideal that that would be just then, instead of being there displayed for a human gaze, it could have been simply directly connected to a computer in the sense of another chain of knowledge. It literally it represents you for the chain of medical knowledge. It is to be inscribed into medical knowledge. Or to give you even a more radical example and at the same time simpler of this signifier represent the subject for another signifier, the symptom, standard good old fashioned, they no longer make them today as they did in the good old days, hysterical conversion hysteria where, okay, we all know the symptom is a ciphered message. But to whom? Definitely not to another human being because nobody knows, not even you don't does nobody really understands it. But nonetheless it a symptom accomplishes its function the moment it is produced, since it is inscribed into the big Other, you know it's put into circulation. So based on this Lacan produced the following scheme: a subject is represented by a signifier, the one which is your stand-in within the field of within the symbolic order. So something let's say your name or whatever, usually it's not even your name, stands for you, represents you in the symbolic order. And, this is the ABC of Lacanian theory, I'm giving you a watered-down version, this representation, signifying symbolic representation always structurally fails and the failure, this failure as it were is embodied in what Lacan calls l'objet petit a, the object-cause of desire, precisely that which remains, the leftover, the excess, that which is not caught in the logic of symbolic representation. Now this is the starting point. Then what Lacan does is to further elaborate this scheme. In what terms? First, Lacan calls this four places, this agent, truth, other, production. That is to say, the agent is, to put it in very simple terms, I'm simplified to the utmost, the apparent obvious, the agent simply of the discourse, the position of enunciation, the position from which a discourse is spoken. You can speak as a master, later we'll see you can speak as a split hysterical subject. The master is the one who in pure performativity knows what he says, says what he knows directly states. You can speak from the position of knowledge, university discourse, where you just state what's going on without subjective engagement, and you can speak from the position of the analyst, which is this one, that is to say you speak precisely from the position of the impossible remainder, excess, that which resists being included into the symbolic network. So Lacan's idea then is a very simple one. We have first this zero-level discourse and you know now today it's still although the word is already a little bit out of fashion, it's still fashionable to use the word discourse like just out of snobbery often. Like instead of saying let's analyze I don't know the last speech by George Bush, it sounds much deeper if you say the discourse of George Bush, no? Lacan is not responsible for this. For him discourse means le lien social, social link. It's the minimal minimal scheme of social link. So again it's at the apparent again as the level of enunciation. At let's call it naively apparent level, the level of appearances, not apparent, sorry, it's too thick a distinction. And then, so after doing after establishing this scheme Lacan does the following. His idea is then that this is of course the elementary operation, the zero-level discourse, as it were the first gesture: simply a signifier represent you represent you there is a remainder. And then for Lacan there are three variations of this, three possible ways to as it were react to the deadlock of this discourse. These are and you arrive at them by simply in a clockwise way turning around for one quarter each time the terms in this four places. So you get master's discourse, university discourse, hysterical discourse, the discourse of the analyst. Okay, that's the zero level. But now this means nothing of course the way I put it now. So let's go step by step. First the master's discourse. The discourse of the master is for Lacan the basic one. It provides as it were the basic matrix. As already said, a subject is represented by the signifier the one which is your stand-in within the field of within the symbolic order. Lacan calls S1, the one, the master signifier. S2 is not simply another signifier but rather the chain of signifiers, he refers to it as knowledge, knowledge as opposed to pure tautological master's gesture. And then we have as already said since this symbolic representation structurally fails the remainder, the object, what Lacan calls l'objet petit a, the object small a. Here already we find the first tension. Usually incidentally why is this this line curved? It signals to simplify to the utmost that things do not quite function how should I put it that here trouble emerges. So Lacan's point to put it very simply is the following one: in the master's discourse you have this master's gesture the big the one signifier which introduces order or whatever tries to organize the field of knowledge. It fails and this you should also remember this confrontation or like a coupling of the subject with object in the sense of object-cause of desire is for Lacan also the formula of fantasy. So the point is here very convincing and simple for Lacan. You let's put it in extremely ridiculously simplified terms: you make a statement produce the one for the field of knowledge. You say something. But for Lacan there is always a gap between what you say and what Lacan calls the position of enunciation: what you wanted to say by saying this. For Lacan the most elementary gap of meaning is always is best encapsulated in this question: okay you are telling me this but why are you telling me this? And this gap for Lacan let me give you I improvise already in my class I want to elaborate it now a little bit further, for example the best since we are here in academia I cannot resist from giving you the example of this gap between enunciated enunciation from the standard rules of academic discourse. Let's say that after this very talk here I will approach full of hope with this idiotic naivety some of you and ask you how did you like my talk? Let's say that you will think oh it was boring stupid. But you know that in academic discourse you are not supposed to answer like this. And as you also probably know it's strictly codified how you answer. You say oh it was interesting, no? That's the academic way to say it was stupid and boring, polite one. You know? Okay. So now a naive idiot would have said but okay why not say directly? So what if you were to tell me it was boring and stupid? I claim that in this way the message would not be simply it was boring and stupid. The rules are if you want to tell me it was boring and stupid without the excessive surplus message smuggled into it that because you are an idiot without targeting me as a person you can only say it was it was interesting. If you want to pass the like because if you tell me it was boring and stupid meaning just this that it was really boring and stupid then you should say it was interesting. In other words in in that case I have the full right to tell you: listen if you meant that if you really just meant that it's boring and stupid why didn't you simply tell me that it's interesting? Why did you you you got it? An enunciated statement never coincides with itself. You have always this more. And Lacan's point is the following one that the structural role of fantasy is precisely to provide a fantasized answer to this more. To this you tell me you told me that but why are you telling me this? It's fantasy. In the case for example, I don't know at the most let's take the ultimate example of ideology anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is precisely the answer to this non-transparency of the social body. It's like this blah blah but why? What's really? What's going on? Anti-semitic sorry Jewish plot and so on and so on. So again fantasy fills in for or if you want provides an answer to this primordial as Lacan put it referring to terms of an old novel where the words are in Italian, to this "Che vuoi?", what what do you want? And the inter we can also read this discourse in another way which maybe will make you will make it more plastic. This two levels, a very primitive example but I was told by some psychologist that it's true. Let's say you are a high-level executive, you give orders and so on and unfortunately in order to survive you need to go once a week to a prostitute to whip you. How you know this famous story which I heard it's even true that the more you are in command the more you need some fantasy realized in the sense of masochistic ritual which sustains you and so on and so on. Another philosophical so again sorry Lacan's point here is that again the explicit social link has to be sustained with fantasies. Another crucial point here is, but I don't have time to develop it now, it's that one way to conceive Lacan's revolution is as writing a fourth critique of Kant. As you know in Kant we have three critiques, pure reason, practical reason, judgment, Urteilskraft, four but for for Kant as he explicitly emphasized the faculty of desiring is inherently pathological. Pathological in the sense of being of of being always linked to contingent worldly empirical object. There is no as Lacan as Kant puts it there is no pure faculty of desiring. Faculty sorry desiring is as such pathological. But for Lacan psychoanalysis precisely is a kind of critique of pure desire. That is to say for Lacan there is a pure non-pathological a priori proto-transcendental object-cause of desire and this precisely is the object small a. Which is a kind of a again transcendental element a priori element in the logic of desire. Now let's go a step further here. How do these two operate S1 S2? Now it's not only that they are heterogeneous they are heterogeneous in a very specific way. The first mistake to avoid here is to confuse them with any of these old how to call them polar opposite binary couples, you know like I don't know masculine feminine, yin yang or whatever, positive negative. Lacan's theory is here much nicer. It is that how to put it in a way it's a kind of a circular mechanism where each stands in for the others' lack. They are not structurally at the same level. S1 enters to fill in the lack of S2 and vice versa. What do I mean by this? Let me first give you the first example. Let's say that this is the phallic as Lacan sometimes put it masculine signifier. For Lacan when he says woman doesn't exist he precisely means that there is no feminine counterpoint to the masculine phallic signifier which incidentally is for me the ultimate argument for feminism but that's another story. What I want to tell you only is that this standard accusation then you know so fashionably in so-called postmodern deconstructionism of binary logic, Lacan binary, no, Lacan I think is the most radical undermining of binary logic. For Lacan what he calls primordial repression is as he puts it the the repression the lack the void of the binary signifier. Like you have only one and then the counterpoint that would introduce like you have how should I put it yin without yang or whichever way you put it. And on the place of this lack the multitude then emerges. So Lacan has a very nice abstract even philosophical or what it was called years ago years ago logic of the signifier level of how multitude emerges. You have the one and here I think there are some legitimate links but I'm proceeding very fast between all this relation and what Alain Badiou was explaining to you with all these formulas. That is to say how the minimum the minimal matrix of this tension is that of course of empty set. That is to say that the radical difference is not primordially a difference between an element and another element but how to put it a pure difference between an element at its own place, an element as it and its own void. And then how should I put it this minimal gap already in German idealism even I think in medieval logic they call it symbolic reduplicatio that the moment we are in the order of signs you have always a minimal gap between an element at its place and to fill in this gap you need the S2. Now sorry if I repeat old jokes from my talk but they are worth repeating here. The best example I could think about this is the stupid but I love it, you know Woody Allen film the parody on Tolstoy not War and Peace it's called War and Love, which is about Tolstoy. Throughout the entire movie Tolstoy Tolstoy Tolstoy. Now every normal Western subject has here okay where is Dostoevsky? No Dostoevsky. Ah but that's the nice thing. So Tolstoy/Dostoevsky this one is missing but what you get instead of this is an exploding multitude. In one of in a wonderful scene of the film the two main characters get involved in a conversation where all the Dostoevsky titles are condensed: like have you seen that idiot? I you mean the Karamazov brother? He got the punishment for it then he went underground he was too furious you know like all the titles. It's like you know the binary signifier is missing you get you get the explosion. So again this is I think I don't have time to work on it more but an extremely important point that this imbalance they are not this is not how should I put it this is not the same field. You know the the original tension is not S1 S2. It is even if I may put it this way because one of the Lacanian names of of this lack is subject, it is signifier represents the subject but then this you have the tension between one and zero and to fill in this zero it's a you get S2. It's even a very Hegelian theory of how the first contradiction is purely tautological contradiction inherent to the one itself and then as a an attempt to fill in this gap you get the multitude, the explosion. But we can also generate this tension on from the other side: that the S2 the chain is never complete and in order to complete the chain you have to have an excessive element which appears to be one of the elements of the chain but to use this fashionable expression which one is almost ashamed to use it today, which is signifier of the lack of the signifier. That is to say it appears to be a positive signifier but just fills in the lack. Okay just to give you a couple of old examples which are probably even known to you. For example even with Marx, let me be a little bit critical of Marx. You know that in Marx you get in his Grundrisse a certain categorization, a series of so-called mode of production. You have this the so-called whatever primitive pre-class society whatever mode of production you have Asiatic mode of production, so-called Oriental despotism, you have slave ancient Greek or slave mode of production, feudal, capitalist and whatever comes afterwards, socialism or whatever. Okay. Now but if you look at it closely it is clear how Marx arrived at the Asiatic mode of production. That what appears to be just one mode in the series was really generated in a different way. It was that to cut a long story short Marx the original categorization was just the one which was incidentally later established codified by Stalinism which is why Stalinism always rejected the notion of Asiatic mode. It was primitive tribal societies, simply slave, feudalism, capitalism, communism. Then Marx encountered a whole series of totally heterogeneous ultimately modes of okay not conceptual modes of production but let's say productive organization since which did not fit any of these modes. And why the Asiatic mode of production appears to be a positive term at the same level of others, it is really like you know that famous passage from Borges quoted by Foucault how the list includes all this. It's basically a container for all those modes which do not fit the official category. So you got the point: apparently we had a complete list but which includes everything but in order to have it we need to include an element which appears deceivingly as one in the series but it is effectively a stand-in, le tenant-lieu as they put it it sounds better in French, the place-holder within the system of what escapes of what of that which the system based on its structuring principle cannot grasp. We have the same for example, I don't know this is the Spinoza Spinozean Spinoza's classical criticism of the traditional notion of God as the one up there and so on. That it's simply that the entire positive content of the notion of God is the lack of our knowledge. We know things then when we don't know it we call that God. So okay we may agree to disagree with it but the point is simply that an element which appears as a positive term in itself is just just gives body to the lack. We have numerous other examples like for example in physics phlogiston phlogiston you know it appears to be to name a positive physical element but it simply objectivizes the failure the lack of knowledge. So to conclude the lesson here is that there is no reason to be dismissive of the discourse of the master, you know it's has nothing to do with yeah yeah bad master authoritarian repression or whatever. The the master's gesture is the founding gesture of every social link. You know what would be the best example maybe of the master's gesture? Imagine a situation of confusion like certain social order is disintegrated also its ideology so you don't know where you stand. I mean there is no as we put it today in fashionable terms global narrative which allows here and then at that point you have ideological struggle for new hegemony and at that point you get a new term which when somebody pronounces the right word which is usually an even an empty word but it's as if how should I put it the word is pronounced and there is a new order. My favorite example I'm sorry to insist on it but because it's simply the most plastic would be let's say Germany in the late twenties. We have economic we have so-called moral decadence, economic crisis of course political whatever you want, German humiliation and what I mean people were simply large amounts of people disoriented and for Hitler's production "Jew" was you know like you are confused then Hitler says Jew, Jewish plot, aha things are clear. The new narrative. That's the basic idea of the that's the basic idea if you want if you want of the of the master discourse. It's not a whole new the point you learn nothing new. It's just a new re-articulation which all of a sudden makes things transparent. That's the master's discourse. But again you need fantasy to sustain it because of its failure and so on and so on. Now let's go slowly on. What happens then if we make one shift quarter that is to say the university discourse? In the university discourse as you see the position of the agent is neutral knowledge. It's knowledge. This knowledge is addressed precisely to that remainder. So you'll see the nice logic of Lacan. This object small a was the excess of the master's discourse when that fails ah the idea is of course let's account for that one, let's focus our knowledge on that one. But remember I I wrote on the other side that's the agent and this is the truth. So already you can see what's Lacan's point: it is that the truth of the university discourse, which the best naive example today would be the expert discourse, is that it's a disavowed master's discourse. What what does this mean? And of course as such it produces subjectivity. How are we to read this? Let me give you first one example which I think from our daily experience even, which I think perfectly renders this shift imperceptible shift between university discourse and master's discourse: the medical discourse. The paradox of the medical discourse is that and an old rather conservative Lacanian wrote nonetheless twenty years ago a nice book, Jean Clavreul called L'ordre médical where he argued this I think that at this level he was right: namely that university sorry the medical discourse is precisely the paradox of a discourse which appears to be purely scientific university although that's another story for Lacan science does not have the structure of university discourse, it's another but nonetheless it's not the but the point is that which still functions as master's discourse. You know how you can detect this? You are horrified if a doctor simply treats you as an object. There is always with the figure of a doctor this mystical excess you know like it's not just knowledge. The doctor has to understand you, has to have some special insight. The horror is that a doctor your I mean medical doctor should not be reduced to simple that you know medicine as they like to put it medicine demands also a deep understanding of the person, medicine medicine should not be simply science. But okay a more classical example if you want it of the master of the sorry of how master the position of the master is the truth of the university discourse would be well take a political example would be today's economists, market experts, who advocate strong budgetary measures, cut welfare and so on as a necessity imposed by his the expert's neutral expertise, devoid of any ideological biases. This this is I think the la you know what they don't admit is that in order for this budget measures that they are really not neutral, that in order for economy to function the way they describe it there are certain power relations already. It's kind of a disavowed power disavowed dimension of power. That is to say this is if you want the basic cheating of the university discourse: it presents itself as a simple objective neutral knowledge but you have the it is as if you know you are not even a subject for me I just read you at as as an object that's the truth of the things but nonetheless its truth is that still you are confronted with this disavowed dimension of the master. Then let's go on. Next change the other way to undermine or to change the to step out of the position of the master of the master's discourse is what Lacan calls hysterical discourse. Here also the matrix works perfectly because this is what defines hysteria for Lacan: hysteria is the subject, the split subject, provoking the master. In what way? Tell me, what the hysteric does is addresses the master provoking him: I want you to produce knowledge about what I am as the cause of desire, as object. That is to say, to put it in very naive terms, let's take a thing, what would be the model would be Shakespeare Richard the Second probably. The moment you no longer accept with full naivety of the master "I am a king," but you know the moment you get caught into this "am I really the king? why am I a king? what is", this at this point hysterization begins and again you are addresses the figure of the master: tell me, let me know what I am. Here we have already a very nice point of Lacanian theory which should be kept in mind, which is that for Lacan, you know all this poetry "yeah the object of desire is originarily lost and so on," but for Lacan the lost object of desire is ultimately not out there what I desire, it is rather me myself as an object. That is to say the enigma is the following one: imagine imagine a small child, he knows that or she that for parents, brothers, sisters, he is an object of libidinal investment. But you know the primordial enigma is why? What do they see in me? What kind of this is for Lacan the primordial enigma: what kind of an object I am? If that idiot says he she loves me I love you why? What does he see in me? This inexplicable excess in me. Or to put it in a to put it in another way: if the master gives you your social symbolic ideological identity, the classical example "you are my wife," then the hysterical question is "but what do you see in me that I am your wife? why am I your wife?" you know this questioning. Which is why for Lacan there is a hysterical aspect of every of every revolutionary explosion and so on and so on. Then this is the analyst's discourse which is strangely similar to to of course to hysterical discourse. You know sorry to the discourse of perversion. Because this is also Lacan's formula of perversion. What does Lacan mean by this? Perversion is truly a contrast, the opposite of hysteria. In the minimal definition of hysteria is questioning. You question your symbolic identity, you question what is the object in me which makes me what I am, which is why in my first book already I focus on a wonderful painting I think on I think of one of the Pre-Raphaelites when which angel brought to Virgin Mary the news that she is pregnant, Gabriel I think, yeah. And it's a wonderful painting because the Virgin Mary is totally perplexed, you know like you are saying this but shit what did I do to deserve this why what I you you know you know this like you're informing me that that's my historical role, why? What did I do? And I think even the movie which I otherwise don't like because I don't like Martin Scorsese but nonetheless the idea is not bad his Last Temptation of Christ. The beauty of it is this kind of hysterization of Christ. Christ doesn't "what's happening? why do I have these miracles? why am I God's son?" Christ cannot accept this identity. Okay. But in contrast to this hysterical doubt the I which is why I love them the pervert subject for Lacan is not simply you know perversion is for Lacan a formal symbolic I don't like the word structure, but okay structure. It has nothing to do with oh my god what horrible things you are doing, no. It in the sense that a pervert precisely does not have any questioning, he knows. The pervert position is: I know perfectly what you the subject need and I will do it for you. You know you want to be whipped, you want to be tortured, whatever no, that's a the pervert's position is precisely this kind of total self-instrumentalization. Which is why I think that the classical Stalinism was a pervert discourse. Not because oh my god what horrible things they were doing, but because if you read the Stali and I but on the other hand I think that fascism was a perverted for good term a kind of a fake attempt to return to the discourse of the master. Because Stalin is definitely not you totally miss it although privately Stalin was usually ironically addressed as master. No I don't know but the nickname for Stalin in the inner circle around him was Khozayain which is the Russian word for master, no. But the structure of discourse work in what sense? If you read the Stali great Stalinist texts, it's always this obsession that there is a there is a objective chain of logic of history necessity and we are merely instruments of historical necessity, this total self-instrumentalization. What happens now? Are then analysts perverts? Ah the whole point is that for the pervert the big Other exists still. He just fully knows what the big Other wants. For example in Stalinism in the guise of this inexorable historical necessity and we are just the instruments of it no. But what happens if the big Other doesn't exist in the sense that if there is no consistent symbolic order? Then all this changes totally. You have here would be the patient and the analyst stands precisely for quite literally for that rock, stone that cannot be involved included into into communication. You know as we usually put it in simplistic terms: the analyst just sits as an idiot and frustrates you, no? You like to engage him in some communication no he is literally that excess what that resists it. And that's then the structure of the analytic discourse in the sense that this stands here for supposed knowledge, but it's more ambiguous in the sense of, you know, this is called transference: that you suppose that the analyst knows in advance the meaning of your symptom. At the same time it's more complex because you remember that this was the place of truth. So you can also say that an analyst also stands for that in the analytic discourse only knowledge which to put it in very simplistic terms otherwise functions in this neutral way in the fake way for example of the university discourse where you just make objective research but only in the analytic link only in the analytic link knowledge arrives at the place of truth. And I think the way Lacan refers here to the notion of truth it has something to do with the way Alain Badiou does it. What do I mean by this? As we all know in psychoanalysis especially we know how knowledge does not necessarily involve truth even if it is a true knowledge in the sense of adequate knowledge. For example we know we well we all know I hope there so well-known Lacan's outrageous statement that even if, it's a little bit mid-shovinistic but nonetheless, even if a jealous husband claims that his wife is cheating him that she sleeps around with other men, even if they are all true, his jealousy is still pathological. So that you know the factual truth can be or adequacy can be combined with untruth. Why? Let me give you a much more traumatic example which makes the same point clearly. Let's take what Nazis claimed about the Jews. I think we should have to go to the end here and claim even if okay not all I wouldn't go so far, but even if some of what they claimed was true, nonetheless anti-semitism was totally totally a lie a fake. Why? I think that's my general point that the moment you even think about endorsing accepting discussing at this level, like for example let's say I don't know I'm an I'm a Nazi you are an honest liberal and I say Jews seduce our young girls, Jews exploit us and I say this. You say no this is a lie. That comes a naive university neutral idiot and says "oh it's difficult, let's take an objective look at it." You sell your soul to the devil in this because let's be clear: the result will be unambiguous. Yes the Nazis exaggerated it but not quite. Because wait a minute now let's say something horrible: many Jews were also rich in Germany so yes they definitely exploited Germans. On the other hand I hope so it's normal I think that some Jews definitely probably were seducing German girls why not? You know what I mean. Why is this false? Because the true how to put it the Nazis here even if it were to be true but it wasn't of course they lied in the guise of truth. Because the true question is not is it true what they are claiming about the Jews. The true question is why in order to sustain their politics they need this fantasy of the Jew? Why they need this fantasmatic figure of the Jew? And incidentally it's the same I think even today with Iraq. Here I got here I think that many fake leftists fell into the trap of accepting the terms of the debate. And when Americans said we have to attack Iraq because it's a terrible regime and so on. No the point is not to argue no Saddam is good, of course he's bad. But I claim the paradox is that even if all the statements about Saddam were true, and incidentally now I say something horrible even I was slightly surprised I thought they would find some weapons of mass destruction or at least I mean couldn't as couldn't CIA or American army apply the old creative lesson of drug-busting American police. They don't have drugs you plant them there, my god we live in 21st century. No but my point is that you get my point. This is not the true question. The true question is not is it true what they claim about Saddam. The true question is a totally different one is: what kind of new logic of hegemony, new world order is established in this way and so on and so on? I think that to accept even to accept these terms and then to argue you put yourself into a totally idiotic position, no? When there you have to argue oh but it's not so bad some people nonetheless supported Saddam, that's not our debate my god. That's not the level. That's not again that's not the level of of truth. So to put it in this old previous terms of enunciated enunciation truth would be here we have knowledge at the level of truth. That is to say at the level of your which also affects affects your position of enunciation. So let me just briefly recapitulate and then I will go on. So if a political leader says I'm your master let my will be done, then this direct assertion of authority can first be hystericized when the subject starts to doubt his qualifications as a leader. Am I really a master? What is it in me that legitimizes me to act as a master? Then it can be masked authority in the guise of the university discourse: like I'm asking you to do this and in asking you I only follow the insight into objective historical necessity. So I'm not your leader, I'm merely the servant of of history or it's merely expertise and so on or you can adopt the analyst's position of precisely occupying the very place of the impossibility of failure of the discourse. But now comes the second part which I will try to make as short as possible. On the other hand I must emphasize that here I totally agree with Derrida who likes to draw attention to the predominance of this metaphysical quantified phallogocentric notion of linear time which you simply measure. With my talk I want to contribute towards subverting this notion of time so please don't okay. Okay let's go on. So how really does it work then university discourse? Let me return to it now. Here it did strike me that how what Agamben and others developed as biopolitics it's precisely this. This would be biopolitics: expert knowledge you are this would be here can nicely stand for pure life. Expert knowledge pure life and so on but the truth of it would nonetheless be that this is still that it doesn't really work as that. It is still sustained by a master signifier addressing the subject subject but more in a more refined way by the failure of this. My good friend Eric Santner in his wonderful book My Own Private Germany developed this in a wonderful way in the figure who is precisely maybe the founding figure of our modern paranoia, Schreber, Freud's case where as you know the problem of Schreber was precisely to assume the symbolic mandate master signifier which defines you. It's typical if you read Freud's analysis of Schreber or directly his memoirs that all the psychotic crisis occurred precisely when he professionally succeeded immediately or was in a position like when he was nominated as a judge hop crisis he couldn't assume it. And on the other hand as you know Schreber's father was the one that is to say that crazy even now they have in Germany this disciplinary procedure he was the original Foucauldian pedagogical figure. So I think it's nonetheless crucial to emphasize the the codependence of this level. That you have the failure of the master discourse of traditional symbolic authority and then biopolitics biopolitics enters. The two aspects together. However and now comes the key message that I want to deliver, however the object pure life of the discourse of university has two aspects which appear as belonging to two opposite ideological spaces but I think precisely they are two aspects of the same and this is crucial. First we have of course a simple reduction of humans to bare life topic of homo sacer and so on or humans as disposable objects of the expert knowledge. Then we have a topic today which is apparently the opposite one. That is because when I say homo sacer and defend Agamben in front of my friends I always get the same answer: but are you crazy what about the opposite tendency which is not only did we ever talk so much about human rights but isn't it that today we are so hypersensitive to vulnerability, harassment and so on and so on. Okay that's the other aspect. The respect for the vulnerable other brought to extreme. The attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experience itself as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential harassments. And I think the extreme articulation of this attitude is Richard Rorty who in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity even defines in this defines in this way a human being. He says a human being is somebody who can be hurt. Now this is I think a pretty sad position. If we define as the ultimate dimension of a human being that which can suffer that which can be hurt. Now of course again you will say but is there a stronger contrast than the one between the respect for the other's vulnerability and the reduction of the other to mere life regulated by administrative knowledge? But what if nonetheless these two stances rely on the same root? What if they are two aspects of one and the same underlying attitude? That is to say what is beneath both both of them the underlying thing is precisely this failure of the master signifier that is to say the refusion sorry the refusal the rejection of any higher cause as we put it the notion that the ultimate goal of life is survival is life itself. So you got it I claim that this extreme what they share in common homo sacer reduction to bare life and this excessively sensitive late bourgeois narcissism: oh my god you laugh at me ho ho I'm hurt, I look at a woman who I harassed her already, is precisely the reduction of the other to this pure minimal life. They share survivalism as the ultimate as the ultimate attitude. And I think that nowhere is the complicity of these two levels clearer than now I will say something horrible than in the opposition to death penalty. Precisely because death is the ultimate traumatic point of biopolitics, of the politics of the administration of life. Namely I claim that did you notice how this is what always bothers me. I'm not privately for death penalty for everyone. I think ha ha that only those who deserve it should be okay. No but seriously what bothers me that the usual argumentation against death penalty: it doesn't work it doesn't prevent it's barbarian and so on and so on and especially this pseudo-social socialist reasoning pseudo which is but people are victims of circumstances and so on and so on. It's precisely that you have this desubjectivizing reduction reduction to mere life. Precisely you are reduced to object of biopolitics and as such of course you can be the object of even cruel administrative measures but no death penalty. So I think the rise of what Agamben calls this homo sacer concentration camps little machinery and the rejection of death penalty for me are strictly in this sense strictly correlative phenomena. Even with regard to war it's more ambiguous. The movie I really hate is one of them is Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Why? It appears as subversive, you know horror of the war, but first it's an abstract horror of the war, you know the message is every war blah blah. What I find so suspicious in it, I have this fantasy that this movie was ordered by Colin Powell to sustain his doctrine. Because you know Powell doctrine is purely mechanized war with no no that no deaths on our side of course. And this would be a perfect counterpoint to this Saving Private Ryan attitude. Now we came to to the what I see as the central feature of this university discourse. The central paradox of as it were condensing the opposite because I think in this university discourse opposites coincide. In what sense? In the traditional master discourse you have this clear contrast in the sense of this is permitted this is not permitted prohibition contains you and so on and so on. But what we get in today's so-called permissive society of control is I claim how should I put it that it's no longer transgression counter reaction and so on. It is as if how should I put it the same product tries to be already its counter-agent. What I mean by this? For example you know that on today's market you find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol, and I think the list goes on. We have virtual sex which is precisely sex without sex. We get Colin Powell doctrine which is precisely war without warfare, without death on our side of course. And I claim incidentally that the same goes for multiculturalism. It's the respect of the other without the real other no because you know in multiculturalism the other is this sublime other, folkloric dances and so on all that holistic approach and so on and so on. So let me go on. So I think that this is the paradox of what following Nietzsche we could designate as today's hedonistic, you know Nietzsche's term, last man. Everything is permitted you can enjoy everything but it has to be deprived of its substance which makes it dangerous. Coffee yes without caffeine. I mean alcohol beer yes without alcohol. Meat yep yes without fat and so on and so on. Here I don't have time to go it we could elaborate this Lacan's paradoxes of Lacan's paraphrase of Dostoevsky which are: if God doesn't exist everything is prohibited. That's for me the paradox of today's permissivity. Yes God is dead we live in a permissive universe that is to say you should strive for pleasures and happiness but now comes the trick: in order to really enjoy a full life of happiness you should avoid dangerous excess not harass others take care of your health and so on and so on. So precisely when you want to have a life of full pleasure dedicated just to your happiness you end up in a totally regulated society. I think that there never was a society which at the level of what Foucault referred to as micro-practice was as regulated as it is as is today's society. And the opposite is also true namely the other version which is if against Dostoevsky if there is God everything is permitted. But that's the whole point of so-called fundamentalism: we act directly on behalf of God necessity whatever so who are you to you know it's permitted. So let me go on. So today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint but not that's now crucial in a way which is totally opposite to this old antique version of proper measure because this was to cut it short the pre-Kantian ethics no proper measure sex yes but not too much eat but yes. No today it's not the right measure between pleasure and constraint and so on. It is that it's a kind of a more direct coincidence of the opposites where again a thing it's already its its own remedy its own counter-action. The vulgar example is that one that I encountered in California three years ago: chocolate laxative. That's it. Fine. Just checking because I'm usually accused of telling too many dirty jokes, I skipped the dirty part about the chocolate laxative. It's too vulgar, I try to remain at a more philosophical level. Okay, so now I gave you this first part, let's go more into details and then into practice.
What I propose, since I usually speak too long, is nonetheless to follow the steps of our good friend Giorgio Agamben and I also decided to be as boring as possible. That is to say, I want to do some solid job. I want to avoid as much as possible my usual mistake of just jumping here and there and do what? Some of you know, some of you not, that in his Seminar XVII, L'envers de la psychanalyse, the other side, the obverse of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan from Jacques Lacan developed the so-called matrix scheme of four discourses. I want to proceed simply in two steps. First, to explain in very simple terms to give a kind of a systematic account without bothering with too big methodological question how is he right and so on, just to give you an idea of how this works and then, more crucial, in part two, the more substantial part, to see how the focus of this theory, which is the passage from the discourse of master to the discourse of university, how it can serve as a conceptual tool to grasp what is going on today, the new forms of authority inclusive of what it was already said here about states of exception and so on and all that. Okay, so if you will excuse me for the first half which will be a little bit more boring than maybe some of you expect. So L'envers de la psychanalyse, this seminar of Lacan, this is the first thing to remember, is Lacan's response to the events of The premise of this seminar is best captured by Lacan's reversal of the well-known anti-structuralist graffiti from the Paris walls of Les structures ne descendent pas dans la rue, the structures do not walk on the streets, the idea being structuralist abstract schemes know the real thing, nothing to do. I think that Lacan said this first in a meeting of the French Society of Philosophy apropos where Michel Foucault presented a talk What is an Author and in the discussion Lacan emphatically claimed that if there is anything that the events of prove is that precisely structures in the structuralist so-called structuralist sense do walk along the streets. In other words, that you can account for what occurred in for this kind of outburst in terms of the structural changes, permutations, and so on and so on. For Lacan, the key to these events, and I am don't even agree with Lacan's account of it, but his interest is focused on, as I already said, on the passage, this is the key passage from discourse of the masters to the master to the discourse of university, which is why for Lacan it is crucial for him no wonder that the revolt of was located at the universities. As such for Lacan, this revolt only signaled the shift to new forms of domination in which the scientific discourse serves, legitimizes new relations of domination. I think that Lacan's underlying premise here is, this is at least one aspect of it, and here I'm critical of Lacan, skeptic-conservative, his diagnosis, you know, underlying this is an attitude which I oppose very much, this enlightened conservative attitude of yeah yeah revolutionary explosion is good, but the day after domination turns in a new maybe even more oppressive form. This diagnosis of Lacan is best captured by his famous retort to the student revolutionaries where he says, as hysterics, you are asking for, you demand a new master, you will get one. This passage of discourse of master, let's simplify the traditional discourse of power, to the discourse of university, can also be conceived in more general terms, generally as the passage from the pre-revolutionary Ancien Régime to the post-revolutionary new master who does not want to admit that he is one, but proposes, presents himself as a mere servant of the people. In Nietzsche's terms, it is the passage from master's ethics to slave morality. And this perhaps enables us a new approach to Nietzsche. When Nietzsche scornfully dismisses slave morality, I think that Nietzsche can be redeemed here, that he is not truly attacking lower, so-called lower classes as such, but rather the new masters who are no longer ready to assume the title of the master. I think if you read closely Nietzsche, slave is not the true slave. Slave is this fake new master who doesn't even want to be master, who is not ready to assume directly the position of the master. So let me do now a little bit of this elementary pedagogy. The starting point of this so-called matrix of the four discourses is Lacan's well-known so-called definition, I say so-called not to criticize Lacan because it's obviously structural sorry circular in the sense of that the term to be defined is, this is conscious Lacan's paradox, is included in the what is supposed to define him: a signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier. So how are we to read this obviously circular definition? And sorry for those of you who know Lacan, I'm sure at least some of you, at least those of you, I will not say who, but whose name begins with A and family name with B, like that, maybe you know even more Lacan, so I'm sorry for those. This definition is to be conceived in opposition, it's meant as a reversal, opposition of the standard definition of sign: sign as that which represents something for somebody. So what would this mean? Let me give you two-three very elementary examples. For example, the old-style hospital bed, now it's more digitalized, but I always admired them, you know how you lie here and at the feet you have, so that of course you as a patient you don't see it, you have this mysterious how do you call it board with you know temperature up and down, what medicine and so on and so on and so on. I think it's okay, this represents you the patient, no? Your state, your changes, temperature, blah blah what what medicines are you taking, but it represents you for whom? Now you would say oh but it's for another subject, obviously it is simply for the stupid doctor or the usually not so stupid nurses who come there to read it. No, I claim that that's not necessary. It can even happen ideally, a person is not needed there. It would be even more ideal that that would be just then, instead of being there displayed for a human gaze, it could have been simply directly connected to a computer in the sense of another chain of knowledge. It literally it represents you for the chain of medical knowledge. It is to be inscribed into medical knowledge. Or to give you even a more radical example and at the same time simpler of this signifier represent the subject for another signifier, the symptom, standard good old fashioned, they no longer make them today as they did in the good old days, hysterical conversion hysteria where, okay, we all know the symptom is a ciphered message. But to whom? Definitely not to another human being because nobody knows, not even you don't does nobody really understands it. But nonetheless it a symptom accomplishes its function the moment it is produced, since it is inscribed into the big Other, you know it's put into circulation. So based on this Lacan produced the following scheme: a subject is represented by a signifier, the one which is your stand-in within the field of within the symbolic order. So something let's say your name or whatever, usually it's not even your name, stands for you, represents you in the symbolic order. And, this is the ABC of Lacanian theory, I'm giving you a watered-down version, this representation, signifying symbolic representation always structurally fails and the failure, this failure as it were is embodied in what Lacan calls l'objet petit a, the object-cause of desire, precisely that which remains, the leftover, the excess, that which is not caught in the logic of symbolic representation. Now this is the starting point. Then what Lacan does is to further elaborate this scheme. In what terms? First, Lacan calls this four places, this agent, truth, other, production. That is to say, the agent is, to put it in very simple terms, I'm simplified to the utmost, the apparent obvious, the agent simply of the discourse, the position of enunciation, the position from which a discourse is spoken. You can speak as a master, later we'll see you can speak as a split hysterical subject. The master is the one who in pure performativity knows what he says, says what he knows directly states. You can speak from the position of knowledge, university discourse, where you just state what's going on without subjective engagement, and you can speak from the position of the analyst, which is this one, that is to say you speak precisely from the position of the impossible remainder, excess, that which resists being included into the symbolic network. So Lacan's idea then is a very simple one. We have first this zero-level discourse and you know now today it's still although the word is already a little bit out of fashion, it's still fashionable to use the word discourse like just out of snobbery often. Like instead of saying let's analyze I don't know the last speech by George Bush, it sounds much deeper if you say the discourse of George Bush, no? Lacan is not responsible for this. For him discourse means le lien social, social link. It's the minimal minimal scheme of social link. So again it's at the apparent again as the level of enunciation. At let's call it naively apparent level, the level of appearances, not apparent, sorry, it's too thick a distinction. And then, so after doing after establishing this scheme Lacan does the following. His idea is then that this is of course the elementary operation, the zero-level discourse, as it were the first gesture: simply a signifier represent you represent you there is a remainder. And then for Lacan there are three variations of this, three possible ways to as it were react to the deadlock of this discourse. These are and you arrive at them by simply in a clockwise way turning around for one quarter each time the terms in this four places. So you get master's discourse, university discourse, hysterical discourse, the discourse of the analyst. Okay, that's the zero level. But now this means nothing of course the way I put it now. So let's go step by step. First the master's discourse. The discourse of the master is for Lacan the basic one. It provides as it were the basic matrix. As already said, a subject is represented by the signifier the one which is your stand-in within the field of within the symbolic order. Lacan calls S1, the one, the master signifier. S2 is not simply another signifier but rather the chain of signifiers, he refers to it as knowledge, knowledge as opposed to pure tautological master's gesture. And then we have as already said since this symbolic representation structurally fails the remainder, the object, what Lacan calls l'objet petit a, the object small a. Here already we find the first tension. Usually incidentally why is this this line curved? It signals to simplify to the utmost that things do not quite function how should I put it that here trouble emerges. So Lacan's point to put it very simply is the following one: in the master's discourse you have this master's gesture the big the one signifier which introduces order or whatever tries to organize the field of knowledge. It fails and this you should also remember this confrontation or like a coupling of the subject with object in the sense of object-cause of desire is for Lacan also the formula of fantasy. So the point is here very convincing and simple for Lacan. You let's put it in extremely ridiculously simplified terms: you make a statement produce the one for the field of knowledge. You say something. But for Lacan there is always a gap between what you say and what Lacan calls the position of enunciation: what you wanted to say by saying this. For Lacan the most elementary gap of meaning is always is best encapsulated in this question: okay you are telling me this but why are you telling me this? And this gap for Lacan let me give you I improvise already in my class I want to elaborate it now a little bit further, for example the best since we are here in academia I cannot resist from giving you the example of this gap between enunciated enunciation from the standard rules of academic discourse. Let's say that after this very talk here I will approach full of hope with this idiotic naivety some of you and ask you how did you like my talk? Let's say that you will think oh it was boring stupid. But you know that in academic discourse you are not supposed to answer like this. And as you also probably know it's strictly codified how you answer. You say oh it was interesting, no? That's the academic way to say it was stupid and boring, polite one. You know? Okay. So now a naive idiot would have said but okay why not say directly? So what if you were to tell me it was boring and stupid? I claim that in this way the message would not be simply it was boring and stupid. The rules are if you want to tell me it was boring and stupid without the excessive surplus message smuggled into it that because you are an idiot without targeting me as a person you can only say it was it was interesting. If you want to pass the like because if you tell me it was boring and stupid meaning just this that it was really boring and stupid then you should say it was interesting. In other words in in that case I have the full right to tell you: listen if you meant that if you really just meant that it's boring and stupid why didn't you simply tell me that it's interesting? Why did you you you got it? An enunciated statement never coincides with itself. You have always this more. And Lacan's point is the following one that the structural role of fantasy is precisely to provide a fantasized answer to this more. To this you tell me you told me that but why are you telling me this? It's fantasy. In the case for example, I don't know at the most let's take the ultimate example of ideology anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is precisely the answer to this non-transparency of the social body. It's like this blah blah but why? What's really? What's going on? Anti-semitic sorry Jewish plot and so on and so on. So again fantasy fills in for or if you want provides an answer to this primordial as Lacan put it referring to terms of an old novel where the words are in Italian, to this "Che vuoi?", what what do you want? And the inter we can also read this discourse in another way which maybe will make you will make it more plastic. This two levels, a very primitive example but I was told by some psychologist that it's true. Let's say you are a high-level executive, you give orders and so on and unfortunately in order to survive you need to go once a week to a prostitute to whip you. How you know this famous story which I heard it's even true that the more you are in command the more you need some fantasy realized in the sense of masochistic ritual which sustains you and so on and so on. Another philosophical so again sorry Lacan's point here is that again the explicit social link has to be sustained with fantasies. Another crucial point here is, but I don't have time to develop it now, it's that one way to conceive Lacan's revolution is as writing a fourth critique of Kant. As you know in Kant we have three critiques, pure reason, practical reason, judgment, Urteilskraft, four but for for Kant as he explicitly emphasized the faculty of desiring is inherently pathological. Pathological in the sense of being of of being always linked to contingent worldly empirical object. There is no as Lacan as Kant puts it there is no pure faculty of desiring. Faculty sorry desiring is as such pathological. But for Lacan psychoanalysis precisely is a kind of critique of pure desire. That is to say for Lacan there is a pure non-pathological a priori proto-transcendental object-cause of desire and this precisely is the object small a. Which is a kind of a again transcendental element a priori element in the logic of desire. Now let's go a step further here. How do these two operate S1 S2? Now it's not only that they are heterogeneous they are heterogeneous in a very specific way. The first mistake to avoid here is to confuse them with any of these old how to call them polar opposite binary couples, you know like I don't know masculine feminine, yin yang or whatever, positive negative. Lacan's theory is here much nicer. It is that how to put it in a way it's a kind of a circular mechanism where each stands in for the others' lack. They are not structurally at the same level. S1 enters to fill in the lack of S2 and vice versa. What do I mean by this? Let me first give you the first example. Let's say that this is the phallic as Lacan sometimes put it masculine signifier. For Lacan when he says woman doesn't exist he precisely means that there is no feminine counterpoint to the masculine phallic signifier which incidentally is for me the ultimate argument for feminism but that's another story. What I want to tell you only is that this standard accusation then you know so fashionably in so-called postmodern deconstructionism of binary logic, Lacan binary, no, Lacan I think is the most radical undermining of binary logic. For Lacan what he calls primordial repression is as he puts it the the repression the lack the void of the binary signifier. Like you have only one and then the counterpoint that would introduce like you have how should I put it yin without yang or whichever way you put it. And on the place of this lack the multitude then emerges. So Lacan has a very nice abstract even philosophical or what it was called years ago years ago logic of the signifier level of how multitude emerges. You have the one and here I think there are some legitimate links but I'm proceeding very fast between all this relation and what Alain Badiou was explaining to you with all these formulas. That is to say how the minimum the minimal matrix of this tension is that of course of empty set. That is to say that the radical difference is not primordially a difference between an element and another element but how to put it a pure difference between an element at its own place, an element as it and its own void. And then how should I put it this minimal gap already in German idealism even I think in medieval logic they call it symbolic reduplicatio that the moment we are in the order of signs you have always a minimal gap between an element at its place and to fill in this gap you need the S2. Now sorry if I repeat old jokes from my talk but they are worth repeating here. The best example I could think about this is the stupid but I love it, you know Woody Allen film the parody on Tolstoy not War and Peace it's called War and Love, which is about Tolstoy. Throughout the entire movie Tolstoy Tolstoy Tolstoy. Now every normal Western subject has here okay where is Dostoevsky? No Dostoevsky. Ah but that's the nice thing. So Tolstoy/Dostoevsky this one is missing but what you get instead of this is an exploding multitude. In one of in a wonderful scene of the film the two main characters get involved in a conversation where all the Dostoevsky titles are condensed: like have you seen that idiot? I you mean the Karamazov brother? He got the punishment for it then he went underground he was too furious you know like all the titles. It's like you know the binary signifier is missing you get you get the explosion. So again this is I think I don't have time to work on it more but an extremely important point that this imbalance they are not this is not how should I put it this is not the same field. You know the the original tension is not S1 S2. It is even if I may put it this way because one of the Lacanian names of of this lack is subject, it is signifier represents the subject but then this you have the tension between one and zero and to fill in this zero it's a you get S2. It's even a very Hegelian theory of how the first contradiction is purely tautological contradiction inherent to the one itself and then as a an attempt to fill in this gap you get the multitude, the explosion. But we can also generate this tension on from the other side: that the S2 the chain is never complete and in order to complete the chain you have to have an excessive element which appears to be one of the elements of the chain but to use this fashionable expression which one is almost ashamed to use it today, which is signifier of the lack of the signifier. That is to say it appears to be a positive signifier but just fills in the lack. Okay just to give you a couple of old examples which are probably even known to you. For example even with Marx, let me be a little bit critical of Marx. You know that in Marx you get in his Grundrisse a certain categorization, a series of so-called mode of production. You have this the so-called whatever primitive pre-class society whatever mode of production you have Asiatic mode of production, so-called Oriental despotism, you have slave ancient Greek or slave mode of production, feudal, capitalist and whatever comes afterwards, socialism or whatever. Okay. Now but if you look at it closely it is clear how Marx arrived at the Asiatic mode of production. That what appears to be just one mode in the series was really generated in a different way. It was that to cut a long story short Marx the original categorization was just the one which was incidentally later established codified by Stalinism which is why Stalinism always rejected the notion of Asiatic mode. It was primitive tribal societies, simply slave, feudalism, capitalism, communism. Then Marx encountered a whole series of totally heterogeneous ultimately modes of okay not conceptual modes of production but let's say productive organization since which did not fit any of these modes. And why the Asiatic mode of production appears to be a positive term at the same level of others, it is really like you know that famous passage from Borges quoted by Foucault how the list includes all this. It's basically a container for all those modes which do not fit the official category. So you got the point: apparently we had a complete list but which includes everything but in order to have it we need to include an element which appears deceivingly as one in the series but it is effectively a stand-in, le tenant-lieu as they put it it sounds better in French, the place-holder within the system of what escapes of what of that which the system based on its structuring principle cannot grasp. We have the same for example, I don't know this is the Spinoza Spinozean Spinoza's classical criticism of the traditional notion of God as the one up there and so on. That it's simply that the entire positive content of the notion of God is the lack of our knowledge. We know things then when we don't know it we call that God. So okay we may agree to disagree with it but the point is simply that an element which appears as a positive term in itself is just just gives body to the lack. We have numerous other examples like for example in physics phlogiston phlogiston you know it appears to be to name a positive physical element but it simply objectivizes the failure the lack of knowledge. So to conclude the lesson here is that there is no reason to be dismissive of the discourse of the master, you know it's has nothing to do with yeah yeah bad master authoritarian repression or whatever. The the master's gesture is the founding gesture of every social link. You know what would be the best example maybe of the master's gesture? Imagine a situation of confusion like certain social order is disintegrated also its ideology so you don't know where you stand. I mean there is no as we put it today in fashionable terms global narrative which allows here and then at that point you have ideological struggle for new hegemony and at that point you get a new term which when somebody pronounces the right word which is usually an even an empty word but it's as if how should I put it the word is pronounced and there is a new order. My favorite example I'm sorry to insist on it but because it's simply the most plastic would be let's say Germany in the late twenties. We have economic we have so-called moral decadence, economic crisis of course political whatever you want, German humiliation and what I mean people were simply large amounts of people disoriented and for Hitler's production "Jew" was you know like you are confused then Hitler says Jew, Jewish plot, aha things are clear. The new narrative. That's the basic idea of the that's the basic idea if you want if you want of the of the master discourse. It's not a whole new the point you learn nothing new. It's just a new re-articulation which all of a sudden makes things transparent. That's the master's discourse. But again you need fantasy to sustain it because of its failure and so on and so on. Now let's go slowly on. What happens then if we make one shift quarter that is to say the university discourse? In the university discourse as you see the position of the agent is neutral knowledge. It's knowledge. This knowledge is addressed precisely to that remainder. So you'll see the nice logic of Lacan. This object small a was the excess of the master's discourse when that fails ah the idea is of course let's account for that one, let's focus our knowledge on that one. But remember I I wrote on the other side that's the agent and this is the truth. So already you can see what's Lacan's point: it is that the truth of the university discourse, which the best naive example today would be the expert discourse, is that it's a disavowed master's discourse. What what does this mean? And of course as such it produces subjectivity. How are we to read this? Let me give you first one example which I think from our daily experience even, which I think perfectly renders this shift imperceptible shift between university discourse and master's discourse: the medical discourse. The paradox of the medical discourse is that and an old rather conservative Lacanian wrote nonetheless twenty years ago a nice book, Jean Clavreul called L'ordre médical where he argued this I think that at this level he was right: namely that university sorry the medical discourse is precisely the paradox of a discourse which appears to be purely scientific university although that's another story for Lacan science does not have the structure of university discourse, it's another but nonetheless it's not the but the point is that which still functions as master's discourse. You know how you can detect this? You are horrified if a doctor simply treats you as an object. There is always with the figure of a doctor this mystical excess you know like it's not just knowledge. The doctor has to understand you, has to have some special insight. The horror is that a doctor your I mean medical doctor should not be reduced to simple that you know medicine as they like to put it medicine demands also a deep understanding of the person, medicine medicine should not be simply science. But okay a more classical example if you want it of the master of the sorry of how master the position of the master is the truth of the university discourse would be well take a political example would be today's economists, market experts, who advocate strong budgetary measures, cut welfare and so on as a necessity imposed by his the expert's neutral expertise, devoid of any ideological biases. This this is I think the la you know what they don't admit is that in order for this budget measures that they are really not neutral, that in order for economy to function the way they describe it there are certain power relations already. It's kind of a disavowed power disavowed dimension of power. That is to say this is if you want the basic cheating of the university discourse: it presents itself as a simple objective neutral knowledge but you have the it is as if you know you are not even a subject for me I just read you at as as an object that's the truth of the things but nonetheless its truth is that still you are confronted with this disavowed dimension of the master. Then let's go on. Next change the other way to undermine or to change the to step out of the position of the master of the master's discourse is what Lacan calls hysterical discourse. Here also the matrix works perfectly because this is what defines hysteria for Lacan: hysteria is the subject, the split subject, provoking the master. In what way? Tell me, what the hysteric does is addresses the master provoking him: I want you to produce knowledge about what I am as the cause of desire, as object. That is to say, to put it in very naive terms, let's take a thing, what would be the model would be Shakespeare Richard the Second probably. The moment you no longer accept with full naivety of the master "I am a king," but you know the moment you get caught into this "am I really the king? why am I a king? what is", this at this point hysterization begins and again you are addresses the figure of the master: tell me, let me know what I am. Here we have already a very nice point of Lacanian theory which should be kept in mind, which is that for Lacan, you know all this poetry "yeah the object of desire is originarily lost and so on," but for Lacan the lost object of desire is ultimately not out there what I desire, it is rather me myself as an object. That is to say the enigma is the following one: imagine imagine a small child, he knows that or she that for parents, brothers, sisters, he is an object of libidinal investment. But you know the primordial enigma is why? What do they see in me? What kind of this is for Lacan the primordial enigma: what kind of an object I am? If that idiot says he she loves me I love you why? What does he see in me? This inexplicable excess in me. Or to put it in a to put it in another way: if the master gives you your social symbolic ideological identity, the classical example "you are my wife," then the hysterical question is "but what do you see in me that I am your wife? why am I your wife?" you know this questioning. Which is why for Lacan there is a hysterical aspect of every of every revolutionary explosion and so on and so on. Then this is the analyst's discourse which is strangely similar to to of course to hysterical discourse. You know sorry to the discourse of perversion. Because this is also Lacan's formula of perversion. What does Lacan mean by this? Perversion is truly a contrast, the opposite of hysteria. In the minimal definition of hysteria is questioning. You question your symbolic identity, you question what is the object in me which makes me what I am, which is why in my first book already I focus on a wonderful painting I think on I think of one of the Pre-Raphaelites when which angel brought to Virgin Mary the news that she is pregnant, Gabriel I think, yeah. And it's a wonderful painting because the Virgin Mary is totally perplexed, you know like you are saying this but shit what did I do to deserve this why what I you you know you know this like you're informing me that that's my historical role, why? What did I do? And I think even the movie which I otherwise don't like because I don't like Martin Scorsese but nonetheless the idea is not bad his Last Temptation of Christ. The beauty of it is this kind of hysterization of Christ. Christ doesn't "what's happening? why do I have these miracles? why am I God's son?" Christ cannot accept this identity. Okay. But in contrast to this hysterical doubt the I which is why I love them the pervert subject for Lacan is not simply you know perversion is for Lacan a formal symbolic I don't like the word structure, but okay structure. It has nothing to do with oh my god what horrible things you are doing, no. It in the sense that a pervert precisely does not have any questioning, he knows. The pervert position is: I know perfectly what you the subject need and I will do it for you. You know you want to be whipped, you want to be tortured, whatever no, that's a the pervert's position is precisely this kind of total self-instrumentalization. Which is why I think that the classical Stalinism was a pervert discourse. Not because oh my god what horrible things they were doing, but because if you read the Stali and I but on the other hand I think that fascism was a perverted for good term a kind of a fake attempt to return to the discourse of the master. Because Stalin is definitely not you totally miss it although privately Stalin was usually ironically addressed as master. No I don't know but the nickname for Stalin in the inner circle around him was Khozayain which is the Russian word for master, no. But the structure of discourse work in what sense? If you read the Stali great Stalinist texts, it's always this obsession that there is a there is a objective chain of logic of history necessity and we are merely instruments of historical necessity, this total self-instrumentalization. What happens now? Are then analysts perverts? Ah the whole point is that for the pervert the big Other exists still. He just fully knows what the big Other wants. For example in Stalinism in the guise of this inexorable historical necessity and we are just the instruments of it no. But what happens if the big Other doesn't exist in the sense that if there is no consistent symbolic order? Then all this changes totally. You have here would be the patient and the analyst stands precisely for quite literally for that rock, stone that cannot be involved included into into communication. You know as we usually put it in simplistic terms: the analyst just sits as an idiot and frustrates you, no? You like to engage him in some communication no he is literally that excess what that resists it. And that's then the structure of the analytic discourse in the sense that this stands here for supposed knowledge, but it's more ambiguous in the sense of, you know, this is called transference: that you suppose that the analyst knows in advance the meaning of your symptom. At the same time it's more complex because you remember that this was the place of truth. So you can also say that an analyst also stands for that in the analytic discourse only knowledge which to put it in very simplistic terms otherwise functions in this neutral way in the fake way for example of the university discourse where you just make objective research but only in the analytic link only in the analytic link knowledge arrives at the place of truth. And I think the way Lacan refers here to the notion of truth it has something to do with the way Alain Badiou does it. What do I mean by this? As we all know in psychoanalysis especially we know how knowledge does not necessarily involve truth even if it is a true knowledge in the sense of adequate knowledge. For example we know we well we all know I hope there so well-known Lacan's outrageous statement that even if, it's a little bit mid-shovinistic but nonetheless, even if a jealous husband claims that his wife is cheating him that she sleeps around with other men, even if they are all true, his jealousy is still pathological. So that you know the factual truth can be or adequacy can be combined with untruth. Why? Let me give you a much more traumatic example which makes the same point clearly. Let's take what Nazis claimed about the Jews. I think we should have to go to the end here and claim even if okay not all I wouldn't go so far, but even if some of what they claimed was true, nonetheless anti-semitism was totally totally a lie a fake. Why? I think that's my general point that the moment you even think about endorsing accepting discussing at this level, like for example let's say I don't know I'm an I'm a Nazi you are an honest liberal and I say Jews seduce our young girls, Jews exploit us and I say this. You say no this is a lie. That comes a naive university neutral idiot and says "oh it's difficult, let's take an objective look at it." You sell your soul to the devil in this because let's be clear: the result will be unambiguous. Yes the Nazis exaggerated it but not quite. Because wait a minute now let's say something horrible: many Jews were also rich in Germany so yes they definitely exploited Germans. On the other hand I hope so it's normal I think that some Jews definitely probably were seducing German girls why not? You know what I mean. Why is this false? Because the true how to put it the Nazis here even if it were to be true but it wasn't of course they lied in the guise of truth. Because the true question is not is it true what they are claiming about the Jews. The true question is why in order to sustain their politics they need this fantasy of the Jew? Why they need this fantasmatic figure of the Jew? And incidentally it's the same I think even today with Iraq. Here I got here I think that many fake leftists fell into the trap of accepting the terms of the debate. And when Americans said we have to attack Iraq because it's a terrible regime and so on. No the point is not to argue no Saddam is good, of course he's bad. But I claim the paradox is that even if all the statements about Saddam were true, and incidentally now I say something horrible even I was slightly surprised I thought they would find some weapons of mass destruction or at least I mean couldn't as couldn't CIA or American army apply the old creative lesson of drug-busting American police. They don't have drugs you plant them there, my god we live in 21st century. No but my point is that you get my point. This is not the true question. The true question is not is it true what they claim about Saddam. The true question is a totally different one is: what kind of new logic of hegemony, new world order is established in this way and so on and so on? I think that to accept even to accept these terms and then to argue you put yourself into a totally idiotic position, no? When there you have to argue oh but it's not so bad some people nonetheless supported Saddam, that's not our debate my god. That's not the level. That's not again that's not the level of of truth. So to put it in this old previous terms of enunciated enunciation truth would be here we have knowledge at the level of truth. That is to say at the level of your which also affects affects your position of enunciation. So let me just briefly recapitulate and then I will go on. So if a political leader says I'm your master let my will be done, then this direct assertion of authority can first be hystericized when the subject starts to doubt his qualifications as a leader. Am I really a master? What is it in me that legitimizes me to act as a master? Then it can be masked authority in the guise of the university discourse: like I'm asking you to do this and in asking you I only follow the insight into objective historical necessity. So I'm not your leader, I'm merely the servant of of history or it's merely expertise and so on or you can adopt the analyst's position of precisely occupying the very place of the impossibility of failure of the discourse. But now comes the second part which I will try to make as short as possible. On the other hand I must emphasize that here I totally agree with Derrida who likes to draw attention to the predominance of this metaphysical quantified phallogocentric notion of linear time which you simply measure. With my talk I want to contribute towards subverting this notion of time so please don't okay. Okay let's go on. So how really does it work then university discourse? Let me return to it now. Here it did strike me that how what Agamben and others developed as biopolitics it's precisely this. This would be biopolitics: expert knowledge you are this would be here can nicely stand for pure life. Expert knowledge pure life and so on but the truth of it would nonetheless be that this is still that it doesn't really work as that. It is still sustained by a master signifier addressing the subject subject but more in a more refined way by the failure of this. My good friend Eric Santner in his wonderful book My Own Private Germany developed this in a wonderful way in the figure who is precisely maybe the founding figure of our modern paranoia, Schreber, Freud's case where as you know the problem of Schreber was precisely to assume the symbolic mandate master signifier which defines you. It's typical if you read Freud's analysis of Schreber or directly his memoirs that all the psychotic crisis occurred precisely when he professionally succeeded immediately or was in a position like when he was nominated as a judge hop crisis he couldn't assume it. And on the other hand as you know Schreber's father was the one that is to say that crazy even now they have in Germany this disciplinary procedure he was the original Foucauldian pedagogical figure. So I think it's nonetheless crucial to emphasize the the codependence of this level. That you have the failure of the master discourse of traditional symbolic authority and then biopolitics biopolitics enters. The two aspects together. However and now comes the key message that I want to deliver, however the object pure life of the discourse of university has two aspects which appear as belonging to two opposite ideological spaces but I think precisely they are two aspects of the same and this is crucial. First we have of course a simple reduction of humans to bare life topic of homo sacer and so on or humans as disposable objects of the expert knowledge. Then we have a topic today which is apparently the opposite one. That is because when I say homo sacer and defend Agamben in front of my friends I always get the same answer: but are you crazy what about the opposite tendency which is not only did we ever talk so much about human rights but isn't it that today we are so hypersensitive to vulnerability, harassment and so on and so on. Okay that's the other aspect. The respect for the vulnerable other brought to extreme. The attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experience itself as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential harassments. And I think the extreme articulation of this attitude is Richard Rorty who in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity even defines in this defines in this way a human being. He says a human being is somebody who can be hurt. Now this is I think a pretty sad position. If we define as the ultimate dimension of a human being that which can suffer that which can be hurt. Now of course again you will say but is there a stronger contrast than the one between the respect for the other's vulnerability and the reduction of the other to mere life regulated by administrative knowledge? But what if nonetheless these two stances rely on the same root? What if they are two aspects of one and the same underlying attitude? That is to say what is beneath both both of them the underlying thing is precisely this failure of the master signifier that is to say the refusion sorry the refusal the rejection of any higher cause as we put it the notion that the ultimate goal of life is survival is life itself. So you got it I claim that this extreme what they share in common homo sacer reduction to bare life and this excessively sensitive late bourgeois narcissism: oh my god you laugh at me ho ho I'm hurt, I look at a woman who I harassed her already, is precisely the reduction of the other to this pure minimal life. They share survivalism as the ultimate as the ultimate attitude. And I think that nowhere is the complicity of these two levels clearer than now I will say something horrible than in the opposition to death penalty. Precisely because death is the ultimate traumatic point of biopolitics, of the politics of the administration of life. Namely I claim that did you notice how this is what always bothers me. I'm not privately for death penalty for everyone. I think ha ha that only those who deserve it should be okay. No but seriously what bothers me that the usual argumentation against death penalty: it doesn't work it doesn't prevent it's barbarian and so on and so on and especially this pseudo-social socialist reasoning pseudo which is but people are victims of circumstances and so on and so on. It's precisely that you have this desubjectivizing reduction reduction to mere life. Precisely you are reduced to object of biopolitics and as such of course you can be the object of even cruel administrative measures but no death penalty. So I think the rise of what Agamben calls this homo sacer concentration camps little machinery and the rejection of death penalty for me are strictly in this sense strictly correlative phenomena. Even with regard to war it's more ambiguous. The movie I really hate is one of them is Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Why? It appears as subversive, you know horror of the war, but first it's an abstract horror of the war, you know the message is every war blah blah. What I find so suspicious in it, I have this fantasy that this movie was ordered by Colin Powell to sustain his doctrine. Because you know Powell doctrine is purely mechanized war with no no that no deaths on our side of course. And this would be a perfect counterpoint to this Saving Private Ryan attitude. Now we came to to the what I see as the central feature of this university discourse. The central paradox of as it were condensing the opposite because I think in this university discourse opposites coincide. In what sense? In the traditional master discourse you have this clear contrast in the sense of this is permitted this is not permitted prohibition contains you and so on and so on. But what we get in today's so-called permissive society of control is I claim how should I put it that it's no longer transgression counter reaction and so on. It is as if how should I put it the same product tries to be already its counter-agent. What I mean by this? For example you know that on today's market you find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol, and I think the list goes on. We have virtual sex which is precisely sex without sex. We get Colin Powell doctrine which is precisely war without warfare, without death on our side of course. And I claim incidentally that the same goes for multiculturalism. It's the respect of the other without the real other no because you know in multiculturalism the other is this sublime other, folkloric dances and so on all that holistic approach and so on and so on. So let me go on. So I think that this is the paradox of what following Nietzsche we could designate as today's hedonistic, you know Nietzsche's term, last man. Everything is permitted you can enjoy everything but it has to be deprived of its substance which makes it dangerous. Coffee yes without caffeine. I mean alcohol beer yes without alcohol. Meat yep yes without fat and so on and so on. Here I don't have time to go it we could elaborate this Lacan's paradoxes of Lacan's paraphrase of Dostoevsky which are: if God doesn't exist everything is prohibited. That's for me the paradox of today's permissivity. Yes God is dead we live in a permissive universe that is to say you should strive for pleasures and happiness but now comes the trick: in order to really enjoy a full life of happiness you should avoid dangerous excess not harass others take care of your health and so on and so on. So precisely when you want to have a life of full pleasure dedicated just to your happiness you end up in a totally regulated society. I think that there never was a society which at the level of what Foucault referred to as micro-practice was as regulated as it is as is today's society. And the opposite is also true namely the other version which is if against Dostoevsky if there is God everything is permitted. But that's the whole point of so-called fundamentalism: we act directly on behalf of God necessity whatever so who are you to you know it's permitted. So let me go on. So today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint but not that's now crucial in a way which is totally opposite to this old antique version of proper measure because this was to cut it short the pre-Kantian ethics no proper measure sex yes but not too much eat but yes. No today it's not the right measure between pleasure and constraint and so on. It is that it's a kind of a more direct coincidence of the opposites where again a thing it's already its its own remedy its own counter-action. The vulgar example is that one that I encountered in California three years ago: chocolate laxative. That's it. Fine. Just checking because I'm usually accused of telling too many dirty jokes, I skipped the dirty part about the chocolate laxative. It's too vulgar, I try to remain at a more philosophical level. Okay, so now I gave you this first part, let's go more into details and then into practice.