Slavoj Žižek. Different Figures of The Big Other.
Lecture · European Graduate School Video Lectures ·
2012 · 1:26:22 · 10,213 words
with Co-Discussant
psychoanalysisideologycinema-art-culturehegel-dialecticssexuality-gendersubjectivityphilosophy-generalhistory
A wide-ranging seminar discussion anchored in Lacan's concept of the big Other, which Žižek reframes as an innocent, ignorant gaze for whom appearances must be maintained rather than a paranoid controlling agency. He moves through Brecht's Lehrstücke and a polemical re-reading of Antigone (she is an 'evil egotist'), extended analyses of Hollywood censorship in Vertigo and Casablanca, and a Lacanian-Freudian account of perversion as the obscene supplement of power versus hysteria as the true threat. The talk closes with a discussion of hysteria as the birth of subjectivity, borderline syndrome as today's hysteria, and the Lacanian claim that subjectivity is originally feminine.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 23
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Lacan's late revision (against his own Seminar VII position) that the analyst's desire is not a 'pure desire' of a pure signifier but something else, a self-criticism of the Ethics seminar.
Lacan's ethical formula ('do not give way on your desire'), which Žižek criticizes as massively over-cited, Lacan himself only utters it once or twice, and later self-criticizes the seminar where it appears.
Via Brecht and Hegel, Žižek argues that the highest act of freedom is freely accepting what is in any case necessary, a 'Nietzsche-Wagner' motive Brecht ironically adopts in Der Jasager.
as “the false choice”
Žižek's reading of Brecht's Der Jasager: the expedition leader tells the boy 'in any case we will throw you into the valley, but custom says we must ask you', a formally free choice whose outcome is predetermined.
as “Gewohnheit (habit as second nature)”
Hegel's concept that through custom and habit the animal becomes human; habit gives minimal symbolic stability against the constitutive threat of madness.
Following Hegel, Žižek argues that madness is not an aberration but constitutive of being human: all civilization and symbolic life is apprehensible only as a reaction to the permanent threat of psychotic withdrawal.
Hegel's reading of Antigone: the insistence on funeral rites transforms the natural necessity of dying into a free symbolic act, the point of Antigone's gesture for Hegel, though Žižek ultimately rejects her as an egotist.
Transgressions that violate explicit rules but are in reality tolerated, even required, by power as its obscene supplement; contrasted with genuine transgression.
as “innocent gaze of the big Other”
The big Other construed as a pure, naive spectator whose imagined innocence obliges social actors to keep up appearances, illustrated by Hays Code censors removing Madeleine's underwear from Vertigo.
Illustrated by Jane Austen's staged play within a novel: characters can only express what they really feel by performing roles in a fiction, revealing that the fictional register carries the true content.
as “perversion as obscene supplement to power”
Freud's point that perversion is not subversive but always functions as the dark, obscene underside of power, power needs a perverse supplement; it is hysteria, not perversion, that genuinely threatens the Master.
Žižek's thesis that the male idealizing/fanatical love for a lady is already in itself homosexual: the fantasy is of possessing a woman who is 'really a man dressed up as a woman', as M. Butterfly and The Crying Game literalize.
For Žižek/Lacan, true love is sublimation, accepting the other totally, with all flaws, as absolute, while idealization (as in Vertigo) is a murderous fantasy of moulding the other into a perfected image.
Žižek uses the Potemkin village, extended to Mao's 200km-long railway performance and Tito's party school, as the paradigm case of the big Other's constitutive ignorance: the show is for an Other who 'prefers not to know'.
Žižek stresses that the big Other here is not primarily a paranoid controlling agency but the innocent, ignorant symbolic gaze for whom appearances must be maintained, the locus that 'doesn't know and doesn't want to know'.
Following Miller, Žižek argues that borderline personality disorder is the contemporary form hysteria takes, a reaction to the changed, post-traditional form of the Master (expert, science) rather than patriarchal authority.
as “hysteria as failed interpellation”
Mladen Dolar's concept (endorsed by Žižek): hysteria is proof that Althusserian ideological interpellation has failed, the subject cannot identify with the role ideology assigns.
Althusser's theory that ideology hails subjects into their social positions (father, worker, etc.); Žižek invokes it to show hysteria as the mark of its failure.
For Žižek/Lacan, hysteria, the refusal of full identification with any symbolic mandate, is not pathology but the very origin of the subject as such.
as “enigmatic otherness (Laplanche)”
Jean Laplanche's theory that the small child is a libidinal focus for others who want something from it but whose desire is opaque, the primordial encounter with the impenetrability of the Other's desire, which for Žižek underpins the Lacanian subject.
Freud's point (endorsed by Žižek) that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies ('jargon') of hysteria; in hysteria the subject is the question, in obsessional neurosis the question is displaced onto the Other.
as “subjectivity as originally feminine”
Against feminist theory that claims the modern subject is masculine, Žižek follows Lacan in arguing that pure subjectivity, the void, the hystericizing question, is originally feminine; the male is the 'objectified subject'.
as “hedonist Dalai Lama Buddhism”
Žižek's sarcastic label for contemporary ideology: the injunction to be authentic, experiment with identity, and not get caught in clichés, which functions as the real ideological message replacing traditional patriarchal morality.
Stories he reaches for 4
Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, famous for his 'goldwinisms', wrote a legendary memo to his scenario department: 'please invent as fast as possible good new clichés', Žižek endorses this as proof clichés are indispensable.
“please invent as fast as possible good new clichés. and he was absolutely right”
Žižek proposes three Brechtian versions of Antigone: (1) the original Sophoclean; (2) Antigone wins the debate, gets the funeral, but the city burns in revenge; (3) the Chorus, usually the voice of opportunistic wisdom, steps forward as a Jacobin revolutionary committee and liquidates both Antigone and Creon.
“we are representatives of the people. we have enough of your feudal rich people fighting each other and ruining us. we establish popular dictatorship. you are both arrested and killed”
After Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart embrace in his room, a two-and-a-half-second shot of the Casablanca airport tower intervenes; the scene is consciously constructed to be both 'they did it' (cigarettes after, embrace) and 'nothing happened' (same clothing, same conversation), ideology operates by supplying both moral cover and coded transgression simultaneously.
“the scene is constructed in this way that it's not so much that the scene is inconsistent, but it's consciously contradictory”
A French critic noticed that virtually every canonical film scholar misdescribes the restaurant scene in Vertigo as Scotty's point-of-view shot, when in fact Hitchcock shows it as what he imagines, the object is so intensely 'hot' it cannot be directly subjectivized, illustrating the structure of fantasy.
“it's literally too hot for him to look at it directly... you get burned if you do it”
Works invoked 15
Vertigo film
Žižek's key film example throughout: used to illustrate the big Other as innocent gaze (Hays Code underwear censorship), the impossibility of directly subjectivizing the object of desire, and idealization as murder (Scottie's remaking of Judy).
Antigone play
Sophocles' play is discussed at length as a philosophical test case; Žižek polemically reverses the Lacanian reading, calling Antigone an evil egotist.
Casablanca film
Central example for how Hollywood ideology provides both moral cover (the innocent big Other) and coded transgressive signals simultaneously; the two-and-a-half-second fade-out is read at length.
Žižek's own book; he mentions having written about the Josef Fritzl case there.
Citizen Kane film
Referenced as the source of the fictional Salammbô opera; Žižek uses it to illustrate Hollywood's genre of embedded operas that mirror real-life passions.
Home Alone film
Last 20 minutes function as a cartoon universe (Joe Pesci as immortal cartoon character), illustrating how animation reveals the brutal truth of social reality while packaging it as impossible.
The Crying Game film
Neil Jordan film used alongside M. Butterfly as literalizing that male idealizing love is already homosexual; the hero's shock at the 'discovery' is about something too close, not too foreign.
Against Love book
Laura Kipnis's book claiming faithful monogamous love is the last bourgeois taboo; Žižek disagrees, siding with Badiou that love is itself transgressive.
M. Butterfly film
Cronenberg film called one of his best; a French diplomat falls in love with a Chinese male opera singer he believes is a woman, read as literalizing the homosexual structure of courtly love.
I Love Lucy tv
Žižek calls Lucille Ball a genius for breaking the fourth wall, looking into the camera when surprised, as a classic formal innovation.
Žižek's own book; mentioned in passing as the one containing a reading of Vertigo.
Žižek says he is 'more and more against that seminar': it overemphasizes the 'do not compromise your desire' formula and presents Antigone's pure desire as a model, which Lacan himself later partially disavows.
Brecht's early learning play about accepting death as freedom; Žižek uses it at length to illustrate the false choice and amor fati.
Vargas Llosa's novel on Trujillo; Žižek met the author while it was being written and credits it as the one good novel by an author he otherwise doesn't like much.
Madame Butterfly opera
Žižek calls it one of the most boring operas and is put off by Puccini's fascist politics; nonetheless discusses a Mussolini-era film transposition he found 'wonderful'.
People invoked 36
Composer of the aria for the fictional Salammbô opera in Citizen Kane; Kiri Te Kanawa later performed it seriously.
Mentioned as origin of the Potemkin village concept, Potemkin allegedly built fake prosperous villages for her inspection tour of the south.
Case used as example of reality being stranger than fiction; Žižek uses it to illustrate the extremity of real perverse behavior.
Mahatma Gandhi negative
Žižek says he hates what Gandhi did with the untouchables, telling them they are also children of god but keeping the caste hierarchy, which he calls the fascist solution.
Umberto Eco positive
Žižek cites Eco's theory that Victor Laszlo in Casablanca is just a combination of clichés, with scenario writers using different clichés for different scenes.
Grouped with Nietzsche as source of the 'great reactionary motive' of amor fati.
Žižek recalls a Bernstein TV show about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that revealed the extent of Beethoven's struggle through surviving manuscript drafts.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek admires Lacan as a Beethoven-type creative thinker who struggles, shifts, and self-criticizes; he is nonetheless critical of over-citations of the 'do not compromise your desire' formula and of Seminar VII's idealization of Antigone.
Interpellation theory cited as the framework against which Dolar reads hysteria as failed interpellation.
Georges Bataille negative
Žižek says he hates Bataille because his entire transgression logic requires prohibition; when the sexual revolution removed prohibitions Bataille was forced to argue for restoring them, exposing the contradiction.
Called a genius for her famous gesture in I Love Lucy of breaking the fourth wall, looking directly into the camera when something surprises her.
Referenced in connection with ideas about permanently reconstructing identity and plasticity of selfhood, as representative of a tendency Žižek is skeptical of.
Called 'actually a good guy' but known for the fake villages built to impress Catherine the Great; becomes Žižek's paradigm for the big Other's constitutive ignorance.
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek says he tends to agree with Badiou that love is transgressive in today's ideological climate of constant self-reinvention.
Jean-Claude Milner positive
Milner noticed how everyone over-cites the 'ne pas céder sur son désir' formula despite Lacan only saying it once or twice.
Did a serious performance of the Herrmann/Citizen Kane Salammbô aria despite it being composed to be performed badly.
Laura Kipnis negative
Author of Against Love, who argues that faithful monogamous love is the last bourgeois taboo; Žižek disagrees, siding with Badiou that love is itself transgressive today.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Žižek discusses Brecht's Lehrstücke (Der Jasager) at length as illustrating the false choice and amor fati; he proposes his own Brechtian rewritings of Antigone.
Mario Vargas Llosa positive
Žižek says he doesn't like Vargas Llosa much but credits him with one good novel (The Feast of the Goat); personally anecdoted his meeting while Vargas Llosa was researching the Trujillo book.
Mladen Dolar positive
Žižek calls him a good friend who developed the topic of hysteria as failed Althusserian interpellation very nicely.
Mentioned briefly as someone whose writing on madness Hegel already surpasses.
Jacques-Alain Miller positive
Žižek studied with Miller in Paris; credits him with the thesis that borderline is today's hysteria and with the observation that hysteria is historical.
David Cronenberg positive
His M. Butterfly is called one of his best films; Žižek uses it as a key example of courtly love's homosexual structure.
Neil Jordan positive
Director of The Crying Game, used alongside M. Butterfly to illustrate the structure of male idealizing love as already homosexual.
Cited as the Mozart equivalent in painting, spontaneous, effortless elegance.
The Great Leap Forward Potemkin railway episode is central; Žižek also notes Mao was intelligent enough to maintain private informers to know the real situation.
Jean Laplanche positive
Žižek praises Laplanche's theory of enigmatic otherness (the child as libidinal focus of adults whose opaque desire it cannot read) as a nice account of the origin of subjectivity, despite noting he 'betrayed Lacan'.
Samuel Goldwyn positive
Hollywood producer famous for 'goldwinisms'; Žižek cites his memo telling his department to 'please invent as fast as possible good new clichés' as absolutely right.
Giacomo Puccini negative
Žižek says Puccini was a right-wing fascist; his last letter was an appeal to Mussolini to stay in power after the murder of the socialist Matteotti.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Vertigo is discussed at length as exemplifying the big Other's innocent gaze (Hays Code censorship of underwear) and the structure of idealization vs. true love; Hitchcock's genius in staging the 'too hot to look at directly' fantasy is praised.
Grouped with Bach as the 'artisan genius' type (alongside Raphael), contrasted with Michelangelo's struggling genius.
Classic work on borderline pathological narcissism cited as the framework Miller and Žižek were all reading when Žižek was in Paris.
The party school built and demolished for his visit in Croatia is used as a Potemkin village example.
Sigmund Freud positive
Žižek cites Freud's feminist insight that perversion is the obscene supplement of power and that hysteria (not perversion) is the true threat to the master.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for Gewohnheit/habit theory, the reading of Antigone's funeral rites as symbolic act, and remarks on madness that Žižek rates as better than Foucault.
Mentioned as source of the amor fati motive (highest act of freedom to accept fate) that Brecht ironically adopts.
What it argues
the big Other as innocent ignorant gaze rather than controlling agencyHollywood censorship as ideological mechanism supplying both moral cover and coded transgressionperversion as obscene supplement to power; hysteria as birth of subjectivitytrue freedom as accepting necessity (amor fati / Hegelian Gewohnheit)courtly love and male idealizing love as already homosexualAntigone as egotist; Brecht's Lehrstücke and Jacobin chorus as alternativesLacanian subjectivity as originally feminine
Dialectical moves 9
“the true enjoyment is that of the slave, precisely in the space where the master turns the blind eye”
Authority is not the monopolist of enjoyment; it is the slave whose secret enjoyment is enabled precisely by the master's feigned ignorance, the master's power consists in allowing transgression.
“the only true freedom is to choose what is necessary”
True freedom is not indeterminate choice but the act of freely endorsing what must in any case happen, the Hegelian-Brechtian inversion of arbitrary will into authentic decision.
“perversion always functions as a dark, obscene side of power — it is hysteria, not perversion, that is the true threat to the master”
What looks most transgressive (perversion) turns out to be power's necessary supplement; what looks merely neurotic (hysteria) is the genuine threat.
“hysteria is the proof of failed interpellation — and as such is the very birth of subjectivity”
Subjectivity does not arise from successful ideological inscription but from its failure; the hysterical refusal to be captured by the symbolic mandate is what opens the subject.
“for Lacan, subjectivity is originally feminine — the male is the objectified subject”
Against the feminist premise that modernity's subject is masculine, Žižek inverts: the void at the center (traditional image of femininity) is exactly the structure of subjectivity, so the female is the truer subject.
“this type of male love — apparently fanatical, idealizing, passionate love for a lady — is already in itself homosexual”
The apparent extreme of heterosexual devotion turns out to be its opposite: courtly idealization is structured by a fantasy of the woman as really a man in disguise.
“ideology needs both at the same time — the moral cover of the innocent gaze AND the coded transgressive signal”
Casablanca shows that ideological censorship does not simply repress transgression but requires its simultaneous presence and denial; the two moments are not contradictory but structurally necessary.
“true love does not idealize its object — idealization is the very opposite of love; it is a murderous act”
Hitchcock's Scotty mistakes obsessive idealization for love, but Lacan/Žižek invert: idealization destroys the real person (murder), while true love accepts the other in their imperfection as absolute.
“the big Other is not primarily the paranoid controlling agency — it is the benevolent agency that leaves discreetly the place open for secret enjoyment”
Standard Lacanian reception pictures the big Other as a panoptical supervisor; Žižek inverts to show its primary function is to look away and thereby guarantee the enjoyment of transgression.
Claims 18
asserts
Lacan is constantly shifting his theoretical position and masking these shifts — he is 'cheating all the time', as all great philosophers do in a 'nice way'.Lacan's method and intellectual honesty
asserts
The formula 'do not compromise on your desire' is vastly over-cited; Lacan himself only says it once or twice, and his later seminar constitutes a self-criticism of that position.Lacan's Seminar VII and the ethics of psychoanalysis
rejects
Antigone is not the Lacanian ethical heroine she is taken to be but an evil egotist whose rigid insistence on burial causes civic catastrophe.the standard Lacanian reading of Antigone
asserts
The highest act of freedom is to accept, as a free decision, what in any case will necessarily happen — amor fati is not resignation but the truest freedom.freedom, necessity, and Hegelian Gewohnheit
asserts
Proverbs and practical wisdom are totally opportunistic: one can always find a proverb to justify any outcome after the fact.wisdom, common sense, and ideology
asserts
Hollywood censorship under the Hays Code functioned by simultaneously providing moral cover (the innocent gaze of the big Other) and coded transgressive signals — ideology requires both at the same time.Hollywood ideology and censorship
asserts
Perversion is not subversive: it always functions as the obscene supplement to power, and every power needs such a supplement.perversion, transgression, and power
asserts
Hysteria, not perversion, is the true threat to the Master; perverts are the dark side of the master's mask, while hysterics destabilize the master's position.Freudian/Lacanian theory of perversion and hysteria
asserts
Bataille's entire logic of transgression requires prohibition in order to function; when the sexual revolution removed prohibitions, he was logically forced to argue for restoring them.Georges Bataille and transgression
asserts
Male idealizing/courtly love is already in itself homosexual: the fantasy underlying obsessive idealization of a woman is that one is really possessing a man dressed as a woman.courtly love, sexuality, and male fantasy
asserts
True love does not idealize its object; idealization (as in Hitchcock's Vertigo) is a murderous fantasy, while true love is sublimation — accepting the other with all flaws as absolute.love, sublimation, and idealization
asserts
For Lacan, subjectivity is originally feminine; the male is already an 'objectified subject', while the woman as void — 'nothing in the center' — embodies pure subjectivity.sexual difference and subjectivity
asserts
Hysteria is the very birth of subjectivity, because the hysterical subject refuses full identification with any symbolic mandate and thereby opens the space of the subject.hysteria and the Lacanian subject
asserts
Borderline personality disorder is effectively today's form of hysteria — a reaction to the changed contemporary master figure (expertise, science) rather than traditional patriarchal authority.borderline syndrome and the transformation of the Master
asserts
Madness is constitutive of being human, not merely an aberration; civilization's entire symbolic universe can only be apprehended as a reaction to the permanent threat of madness.Hegel on madness and humanness
asserts
Traditional paternal authority is not opposed to enjoyment but precisely opens up the space for secret enjoyment through permitted transgression — the master turns a blind eye.authority, enjoyment, and the big Other
asserts
Gandhi's 'solution' to the untouchables — you are also children of god, each at your proper place — is a fascist solution: it preserves the caste hierarchy while adding a veneer of dignity.Gandhi and caste
reframes
The big Other is primarily not a paranoid controlling agency but an innocent, ignorant gaze for whom appearances must be maintained — one that 'prefers not to know'.the Lacanian big Other
Quotes 16
“the only true freedom is to choose what is necessary”Slavoj Žižek · amor fati as freedom; Hegelian Gewohnheit
“madness is constitutive of being human. even if we all do not have to get empirically crazy mad, but all our civilization, symbolic universe can only be apprehended as a reaction to the threat of madness”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel on madness and humanness
“perversion always functions as a dark, obscene side of power. every power needs a perverse, obscene supplement”Slavoj Žižek · perversion as supplement to power
“hysteria is the very birth of subjectivity”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria and the Lacanian subject
“hysteria is historical. hysteria is reaction to the predominant figure of the master. so when the model of domination changes, hysteria changes”Slavoj Žižek · historical specificity of hysteria
“for Lacan, subjectivity is originally feminine. the male is already an objectified subject”Slavoj Žižek · sexual difference and subjectivity
“this type of male love, apparently fanatical, idealizing, passionate love for a lady, is already in itself homosexual”Slavoj Žižek · courtly love as already homosexual
“true love does not idealize its object. true love is sublimation: i accept you totally the way you are with all your mistakes and as such you are absolute for me”Slavoj Žižek · sublimation vs. idealization; true love
“they act as if we have our own sinful gaze, but there is big other precisely in the sense of an innocent gaze who watches for proper appearances and that gaze should be protected”Slavoj Žižek · innocent gaze of the big Other; Hays Code
“the true enjoyment is that of the slave precisely in this where the master turns the blind eye”Slavoj Žižek · slave's enjoyment; master's permitted transgression
“traditional paternal authority is not only not opposed to enjoyment. it precisely opens up the space for enjoyment as secret transgressions: do it discreetly, i prefer not to know”Slavoj Žižek · authority, enjoyment, and the big Other
“what is the essence of wisdom? this total opportunism. whatever happens, you can always find a proverb to justify it”Slavoj Žižek · proverbs as opportunistic ideology
“she is an evil egotist bitch. why? let's go step by step”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's polemical verdict on Antigone
“lacon is not mozart, lacon is beethoven — the heavily struggling genius who has to fight with material”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan as Beethoven-type creative thinker
“borderline is effectively today's form of hysteria — reaction to the predominant figure of the master. today's master is no longer traditional authorities but expert science”Slavoj Žižek · borderline as today's hysteria
“in any case, we will throw you into the valley. but still, the custom says that we must ask you, that you have a freedom of choice, but it doesn't matter how”Slavoj Žižek · the false choice; freedom as accepting necessity
Transcript 50 turns
Co-Discussant
an important don.
an important don.
Slavoj Žižek
lian theological debates, you know. this where we sometimes speak as some initiated circle and ordinary people cannot follow. but i think precisely that this topic of the big other and some similar topics are so crucial and can be clearly explained that we don't so so interesting, this is the first thing to learn in earth. for la com. ich how ! laccon is cheating all the time. i mean all great philosophers do in a nice way. what do you mean by cheating? i mean that he is constantly shifting his position. but he tries to mask it, to cover it up especially you should be. for example, at the beginning of sham seminar, when la com says, before we begin, i will just recapitulate. yeah. and. day.
lian theological debates, you know. this where we sometimes speak as some initiated circle and ordinary people cannot follow. but i think precisely that this topic of the big other and some similar topics are so crucial and can be clearly explained that we don't so so interesting, this is the first thing to learn in earth. for la com. ich how ! laccon is cheating all the time. i mean all great philosophers do in a nice way. what do you mean by cheating? i mean that he is constantly shifting his position. but he tries to mask it, to cover it up especially you should be. for example, at the beginning of sham seminar, when la com says, before we begin, i will just recapitulate. yeah. and. day.
Co-Discussant
did you know the?
did you know the?
Slavoj Žižek
la con. like these great axioms, like the big other. doesn't exist. il n'y a pas de grand the desire of the is not a pure desire, the very last page of seminary level. now you should always ask here if you read lacomb, an extremely stupid question. but who is the idiot who claims that that there is no big other? and there is always one answer, lac com himself a couple of years ago. daddy. assert. or. d. desire of the analyst is not a pure desire. that's his self-criticism of maybe his best-known seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, where lacom's point is precisely that the desire of antigone is a model basically for and's desire is a pure desire, desire of a pure signifier and so on and so on. which is why, incidentally, i am more and more against that seminar. yeah i wait. you know, one proof is which one jean-claude milner noticed this. how everyone, even me, likes to refer to lacom's formula of the only axiom of psychtic ethics is ne pas se dé sur son dés, do not compromise, do not give way as to your desire. what people don't excuse me. la commune says this just once or twice.
la con. like these great axioms, like the big other. doesn't exist. il n'y a pas de grand the desire of the is not a pure desire, the very last page of seminary level. now you should always ask here if you read lacomb, an extremely stupid question. but who is the idiot who claims that that there is no big other? and there is always one answer, lac com himself a couple of years ago. daddy. assert. or. d. desire of the analyst is not a pure desire. that's his self-criticism of maybe his best-known seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, where lacom's point is precisely that the desire of antigone is a model basically for and's desire is a pure desire, desire of a pure signifier and so on and so on. which is why, incidentally, i am more and more against that seminar. yeah i wait. you know, one proof is which one jean-claude milner noticed this. how everyone, even me, likes to refer to lacom's formula of the only axiom of psychtic ethics is ne pas se dé sur son dés, do not compromise, do not give way as to your desire. what people don't excuse me. la commune says this just once or twice.
Co-Discussant
in
in
Slavoj Žižek
one
one
Co-Discussant
lect.
lect.
Slavoj Žižek
she never. returns! to eat. and it can be, i think, very nicely demonstrated why this is not lacombe. so on and so on. so again, concerning antigone, this is why i'm so obsessed with antigone. you know, i can tell you, probably maybe you know the story, but i like to repeat this is my favorite story. antigo. how? you know what brecht? three early so-called Lehrstücke from early 30s, learning plays. the first big one is Der Jasager, the guy who says yes. and he did three versions, all that. the only basically the right-wingers greeted it. it's the story from the japanese no play of an expedition which goes to mountains to bring medicine to the people and then young boy joins them and then young boy gets ill, becomes and they tell him, the leader of the expedition, you are now an obstacle, we warned you what will happen. now if. now, if we are to progress and we have to go on, we have to throw you into the valley, to kill you. and then it's that wonderful, what i was talking about, the s false choice, where telling the leader tells him, in any case, we will throw you into the valley. but still, the custom says that we must ask you, that you have a freedom of choice, but it doesn't matter how. and it's done in such a wonderful, cynical way. the guy reflects what and then the chorus brechtian sings in the background. he's thinking, but whatever will be the result and then the guy says yes, accept. as an act of freedom and here accepts death and here it's very nice to discover in brecht what is usually considered the great reactionary motive from nietzsche wagner and so on amor fati that is to say that the highest act of freedom is to accept is your free. decision what in any case will necessarily happen. that again, true freedom is and here, sorry i was i'm so evil yes, there is at least one don't take it personally, one blonde girl don't take it fact although i am the first to admit that the only true freedom is to choose what is necessary. i'm referring here two. hegel's theory of gewohnheit kas. where... it's in my big fan book. oh. but not these jokes. hegel says in a wonderful way that animal becomes human through custom. customs, habits. and then he says a couple of wonderful things which are i think even better than michel foucault on madness. he's already. he says that madness is not simply an aberration whatever, that madness is constitutive of being human. even if we all do not have to get empirically crazy mad, but all our civilization, symbolic universe can only be apprehended as a reaction to the threat of madness. and his idea is that precisely reaction to madness is up, you know, madness in the sense of this psychotic withdrawal, and then you do have it, habit it to. habit as a second nature to get some minimal stability so and then heel in a wonderful way says that once you are a human being, even. even your naturalism. like. d eating ex. theoretically concerned. that is my i especially like this, now i will admit it to you how evil i am. because, you know, i'm eve. i tell they but the joke is that if i say sorry, like i can i can beat he all the time just sitting there and has this ear plugs listening to something. and people are worried, no for hours she is doing this, why no? so somebody says, let's stop this and pulls. the pla out and the girl after one minute drops down dead you know so what was see they put the plaque to l the new she listened to the voice telling her, breathe in, breathe.
she never. returns! to eat. and it can be, i think, very nicely demonstrated why this is not lacombe. so on and so on. so again, concerning antigone, this is why i'm so obsessed with antigone. you know, i can tell you, probably maybe you know the story, but i like to repeat this is my favorite story. antigo. how? you know what brecht? three early so-called Lehrstücke from early 30s, learning plays. the first big one is Der Jasager, the guy who says yes. and he did three versions, all that. the only basically the right-wingers greeted it. it's the story from the japanese no play of an expedition which goes to mountains to bring medicine to the people and then young boy joins them and then young boy gets ill, becomes and they tell him, the leader of the expedition, you are now an obstacle, we warned you what will happen. now if. now, if we are to progress and we have to go on, we have to throw you into the valley, to kill you. and then it's that wonderful, what i was talking about, the s false choice, where telling the leader tells him, in any case, we will throw you into the valley. but still, the custom says that we must ask you, that you have a freedom of choice, but it doesn't matter how. and it's done in such a wonderful, cynical way. the guy reflects what and then the chorus brechtian sings in the background. he's thinking, but whatever will be the result and then the guy says yes, accept. as an act of freedom and here accepts death and here it's very nice to discover in brecht what is usually considered the great reactionary motive from nietzsche wagner and so on amor fati that is to say that the highest act of freedom is to accept is your free. decision what in any case will necessarily happen. that again, true freedom is and here, sorry i was i'm so evil yes, there is at least one don't take it personally, one blonde girl don't take it fact although i am the first to admit that the only true freedom is to choose what is necessary. i'm referring here two. hegel's theory of gewohnheit kas. where... it's in my big fan book. oh. but not these jokes. hegel says in a wonderful way that animal becomes human through custom. customs, habits. and then he says a couple of wonderful things which are i think even better than michel foucault on madness. he's already. he says that madness is not simply an aberration whatever, that madness is constitutive of being human. even if we all do not have to get empirically crazy mad, but all our civilization, symbolic universe can only be apprehended as a reaction to the threat of madness. and his idea is that precisely reaction to madness is up, you know, madness in the sense of this psychotic withdrawal, and then you do have it, habit it to. habit as a second nature to get some minimal stability so and then heel in a wonderful way says that once you are a human being, even. even your naturalism. like. d eating ex. theoretically concerned. that is my i especially like this, now i will admit it to you how evil i am. because, you know, i'm eve. i tell they but the joke is that if i say sorry, like i can i can beat he all the time just sitting there and has this ear plugs listening to something. and people are worried, no for hours she is doing this, why no? so somebody says, let's stop this and pulls. the pla out and the girl after one minute drops down dead you know so what was see they put the plaque to l the new she listened to the voice telling her, breathe in, breathe.
Co-Discussant
i.
i.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm.
i'm.
Co-Discussant
but i think it's correct.
but i think it's correct.
Slavoj Žižek
i i think it's correct. because definitely you know that it's literally even true. don't you know that? some doctor who is doing things that i absolutely reject. i mean, birth is for me to breathe. you know. you a way it can die with newly born children. so what i'm saying again is that is that. this is why also... is in itself natural necessity and so on and so on. the moment you do this, the big card is here. but okay, back to antigone. this is why hegel says very nicely, why does antigone insist on funeral rights for berlin. because precisely as hegel says it. two funeral? you change into a free symbolic act, a natural necessity, the ultimate natural necessity of dying. but okay, i'm sorry if you know it, i would like to have your reactions if you have it. what's my... problem with antigone. well i think she is an evil egotist bitch. why? let's go step by step. my three versions. yeah brecht the second version is then this is the first version then brecht wrote a second version where the boy argues back and they said okay you are right, we will not throw you in the third version, the boy dies again. but not because of some mythic custom, but because of rational reasons. so my idea is to do the same with antigone. the first one would be the one we know from sophocles. and the story takes a different direction at the crucial moment in the middle the debate between antigone and creon. so in the first one it's the way it is, you know in the second of my versions, antigone wins the debate. that is to say, antigone convinces creon that my god, he died. in death we are all equal, there should be funeral. and then what happens is what creon, who is for me almost a good guy, was worried about. this just after a civil war, and if you do something like bury publicly the traitor, people will arise new circle of violence, blah, blah. in my second version, this is what happens. there is a proper funeral for creon. but as a reaction to this, because he is considered a traitor who... weeks ago attacked. phil the city, there is new chaos and then the whole city is in flames and then that would be the last scene in my second version. antigone is desperately walking around the city, seeing flames everywhere and she's repeating her stupid headline line. remember, i was created for love, not for war, you know. and then the chorus she my say. antigone and creon are debated. then chorus steps forward. usually chorus is the embodiment of stupidity,. it is common wisdom, opportunistic wisdom, you know, chorus is what. chorus comments, proverbs and so on. but you know that there is nothing more opportunistic and stupid than wisdom, proverbs. what do proverbs mean? let's say you try to do something, a risky act. you succeed. then i can always find a proverb to justify it. you then i tell you, oh, we have a proverb, i don't know in slovene, we have proverbs like only those who risk profit, you know, only through risk can you succeed. let's say you don't. succeed. you fail. ah, i can imagine c something like we have it in slovenia, i don't know if in your languages we have it, we have this vulgar, cynical wisdom of you cannot urinate against the wind. and, you know, this is for me the essence of wisdom, this total opportunism. whatever happens dirty disgustingusting story that happened to me. i was 25, 30 years ago at jacqueline miller's seminar and i was talking precisely about this. but my friend was still bad. so i confused the verbs to urinate and to shit. and i said in slovene on our sloven we have a proverb, on ne. and mill was the wind must be then this maybe not stupid all the time. but what i want to say, let's go on, is that in my story, it's a jacobin revolutionary you are. why. antigone and creon are fighting. i mean, debating, very big dialogue, the cor steps forward and says, we are representatives of the people. we have enough of your feudal rich people fighting each other and ruining us. we establish popular dictatorship. you are both arrested and killed and cor becomes a kind of a revolutionary jacobin debt committee for public virtue and they are both liquidated and so on. that would be my myself antigone if you ask me. but okay. as i said, with la combe. you should is what's so difficult with laccon. he really is a creative thinker in the sense that even if you don't agree with his. she fights all the time, struggles with, you know, in terms of music. laconbe is not mozart, laccon is beethoven, you know. this is what always fascinated me. i think there is even some kind of historical constant. there are three types of geniuses, i think. bach, mozart, beethoven or in painting, da vinci, raphael buonarotti. the first bach is maybe most sympathetic. is guy who is a genius but doesn't make big fuss out of it. simply artisan, you know. i do patiently my hard work. i'm just working this time this was typical bach then mozart is spontaneous genius you know like raphael in painting elegance melodies or whatever just flow out of you and then you have this heavily struggling genius you know who kind of has to fight with material and this is typically this is beethoven you know that you know like once i remember when i was young no you don't remember them but popular leonard bernstein popular musical. yeah! there she said, she did not. chunking knives there. there was one... show whatever about... beethoven's fifth symphony. eight. i didn't know even this that. this is one of the few cases where notes survived. drafts of the of all. previous version and it's extraordinary to see how long beethoven was struggling. it wasn't just in a moz way that art. extraordinary you can feel how... they really don't work, the previous versions no? so i think, again, lacon works in this way. he tries this path, he withdraws. but you know, what is... most... dangerous. two prevent your understanding clom. that sometimes he does it even not only within the same year of the seminar, but even within the same text. for example, uh she smoked this off. k avec sch. can't be sharp. why is sh the truth of god? if you look to his this ethics seminar, in chapter 4, i think, where he talks about st. paul and so on. his idea there is still of this law and crime transgression, is still the simplistic st. paul version. to put it very simply, for something to become object of desire, it has to be prohibited. i don't care for this, but if i see that you want it or that you prohibit it to me, then this arouses my desire and so on and so on. so with this simplistic logic of transgression, this is my incidental. i hate georges bataille because all his logic of this transgression or whatever is based on this, which is why, i don't know if you know this, when so-called sexual revolution began in the early mid-60s, he was opposed to it because he said,, if everything is permitted, then what's the point of my big transgression, you know? he went to the end. in this paradox of how in order to do the transgression you have to have the law prohibition so he went to the end and said maybe we should even fight for the prohibition so that we can then obviously this doesn't work but then sorry just stuff. i have an answer here. if i got your point, the implicit rule would be precisely the rule of what i call inherent transgression. i think there are transgressions and transgressions, if we return to this political. there are transgressions which are real transgressions. but there are transgressions which are just you violate the explicit rules, but in reality you just i'm so sorry i don't have that clip. i don... do you know? okay, i would be open. and if more than three of you say, yes, i will kill myself. do you know my brief analysis of as seen from casablanca. no no, fuck you. i really not. cross your heart, swear on your mother's grave if she is dead. otherwise you kill her and then swear. ... the pure, i really want i'm so... said but maybe later, maybe i think you get it. i can download it and play it to you to convince you. because i discovered just this morning a couple of wonderful clips which make the theoretical point. for example, i will show it to you, maybe even in the afternoon, the one which i quote three, four times, but it showed acadia. do you know how publicity change? when i was young, at least this was good about the 60s, 70s. sin! were happening in publicity which today are more or less at least in so-called developed western in cabet. publicities were much more subversive. even at some point at 70s in england. there were publicities where there were negative publicities in the sense of the whole point was to make fun of the product. and the joke was just... it will be so funny that even if you claim how disgusting it is, it will attract you, the customers. for example, i remember one wonderful one. a fat old couple with sleeping ugly old wife, ugly old husband. they both have, of course,, their teeth in water glass, no? and then in the middle of the night, the wife awakens and says with this ferv, go to the fridge, bring me a. of. the guy gets up, goes to the fridge, opens it and says, smells the yogurt, you want to eat this that. this were nice. i mean it was enough just to mention it with all this, i think that now germans are not so bad. because a couple of years ago... i saw one in german. which is wonderful with all the gay homosexual a publicity i was... you do. this this was a movie theater i saw it. i was with my wife and you will immediately see why my wife started to cry and slapped me there. g me said, why? because the publicity was this one. a young couple who is getting ready to make love on a beach. and then she asks him, yes, we do it, but please, for security, no, this is a couple of years ago when there was more aids scared. just because close is kind of a cheap cafeteria, go there and buy a condom. okay, the guy goes there and she's there close to the toilet where you have the autom machine for condom. and machine for magnum ice cream and then you have just the inscription sometimes you have to make the right tough decision and in the last shot you see him in a very because he looks yes, he's just enough money for one of course and in the last shot he gladly in a way licking the and i started to shout, that's victory of male, we will not be terrorized the abovementioned accident with my wife. k. so they do it, but what they want to say is that another of these thirty years back, a genius, i mentioned it one or two times in my books is maybe you know it actually if you an australian publicity for beer. you remember that fairy tale we all know it. a girl walks along a stream or river, sees a frog, kisses the frog, the frog turns into a nice young guy, no? although, as a feminist, nonetheless, i'm tempted to say that, referring to you, w, isn't it unfortunately that you're more... regular experience is the opposite one. you think it's a nice guy, you give him okay, but then it's again along the same lines where my wife, if she were to be with me, would have slapped me and started to cry. you know what then happens? yes, it stopped half a minute. video clip it begins with this start now this part of the story a girl walks along the stream, a frog kisses the frog and the frog turns into a young man. you know what then happens you can guess. the young man looks with desire at her, kisses and also have a sister. like, i go on k i need more of beer. you know why this? correcto. because i think that this is. the way you the men. relates to you. it is this sad logic of reducing the other to a partial object, just to an object. you know, i think basically this is part of my long, now i'm almost a cultural conservatism pessimism. you know how i read this publicity, announcing a trend, i'm sorry if you know this line of thought of mine already, a trend which really makes me worried. co... i'll put it like this, there are some radical cultural theorists who claim that although today we have free sex, but that there still is one taboo, sex with love. in permanent partner, ich... still a norm. the idea is that first it was sex for children, that fell. then it was you have to be married, that fell. but the last taboo is sex with love. faithful to her. and then they claim that chicago girl i met once, laura kipnis. she even wrote the book, maybe some of you know about it with the simple title against love. claiming again that love is the last, to put it in primitive leftist terms, bourgeois taboo. i want that. i claim that along the lines that i referred yesterday to judith butler, you know, all these changing, permanently reconstructing yourself, your identity, plasticity, non-fixed identity. tend to agree with al badu. he save. more. love's transgression. what ideology? real ideology, like... the way i spoke yesterday about north korean and party, the big matter or whatever, not ecstasy, but the real message you get from society. it's not this patriarchal mary be faithful. it's what i call... kind of, hedonist dalaai lama buddhism, you know. be authentic, be true yourself, experiment, create your identity, don't get caught in clichés. incidentally, i'm totally for cliches, of course. you know, which is the best, you know sam goldwyn, the big hollywood producer. you know that he was famous for so-called goldwinisms, apparently stupid. mistakes or stupidity? play try each power or what about lesbians implicitly love not knowing and sam goldwyn did a movie and then somebody told him it takes but there is a problem hollywood rules you know homosexuality in the classical economy prohibited but it takes place in among lesbians you know what goldwyn answered no problem we will change it it will take place among americans you lesbians it from from memoirs people who knew him that he cultivated this image. and some of his so-called mistakes are quite nice, like his famous statement when he rejected a gentleman's agreement. he said and the legend is that one of his studio guys told him, listen, we are criticized by the press that there are too many old clichés in our films? and he wrote this legendary memoir. to his scenario department. please invent as fast as possible good nutrition. and he was absolutely right. . too. sorry, now this will bring us speaking about hollywood censorship and what is the other thing that i mentioned yes, and so on. connecting with big others. you know where i will now keep? thank. big. and and, referring to the officially greatest film of your times, ver. you saw it, no? you remember a scene? it's incredible. in the middle of the film, no. like a little bit before middle when. madcl, okay, we later learn she's not, jumps into. golden gate. b. and... chi, scotty. james stewart, d sc out. takes her to her apartment and what is implied that he does is he, because she is freezing cold, not that sex, she undresses her and puts her into his bedroom bed why... above the kitchen ch sheanks for. dresses. that's what you think. if you don't believe, che. narrative logic. the pot is hanging there, is her underwear. getting dry and so on. but do something. now with dvd. you have one long, how do you call it, pen in shot or what then. on this side, the whatever your right side, he is sitting in his drawing room scotty, then there is a kitchen scene. camera moves from him. he to the door when then in his nightgown madeleine exits. okay, now put it on freeze the moment you see there under came. put it on fr. and during she quote. there is no. yeah, yeah. just kind of towers or abstract things. yeah, and then i read in a book on vertigo. h scope, censorship. ver was shot in 56, 57. these were the last years of hcott. and as part of this, they insisted the sensors that it shouldn't be really underwear there because if it is really underwear this would have been a proof that he saw her naked. while addressingressing her, but they are not married, this violates hollywood rules so no underwear. what is so mysterious here? just ask yourself a simple question. whom are they protecting? which case? we viewers automatically. we all think it is underwear. they're not protecting us. you see how? they act as if. we have our own sinful gaze, but there is big other precisely in the sense of an innocent gaze. who watches for proper appearances and that gaze should be protected. yes, yeah, it's wonderful. it's a wonderful example of, again, if you you don't take into account, including in this innocent gaze of the big other, the one for whom, as we say, appearances should ah. don't underestimate the appearances. look. the. there is two thirds into casablanca. a wonderful shortchi. which is totally ambiguous. in the middle of the night, ingrid bergman comes to humphrey bogart, rich's café to get from him that famous visa for portugal papers and incidentally, the reason i like casablanca, no it's too much a classic, but there are so many strange things in this movie. it is a good feeling. i'm talking about, you all know the big casablanca, you know. do you know, for example, did you notice one strange thing? how... for some strange names of the officers. are carnage. you have an italian major ferrari, then you have major renault, the average spanish train. the thing. the guy who pretends to be a pure revolutionary. vtor laslo, the husband of ingrid bergman. you mean if you look... at the film closely, you will observe a strange thing. how? every time thank message, you know, like this guy pure revolutionary, where they do they come these decadent tastes or whatever, you know and then umberto eco has a nice theory here that you shouldn't think about victor laszllo as a... ex. she's just a combination of clichés. you know. scenario writers were simply using different clichés for different scenes. typically in hollywood, if you meet like this with your mix, you drink this, you drink that, it's a wonderful explanation. so, okay, let's go on. d, yes. she comes to asking for visa and then it's the usual nice van der charming this noir hard-bo dialogue, you know, when he doesn't want to give her the papers and she drops a gun to shoot him no, and then he says these are filbach dialogues. uh me. you've got no interest now. ah, now things get complicated. they embrace. and you get a fade out. then for two and a half seconds you see the tower of casablanca airport. just with the light turning around. and then... the camera. we return to the scene, the two of them. going on talking. two of them, i mean, his room up r that say countryrey bog and english bergman. now, to every normal human being, for every normal human being, a question arises here. what? what do these two and a half seconds stand for? or to be vulgar, did they do it or not? are these two and a half seconds, are they a call it? just a condensed signal of, let, whatever you want, half an hour, one hour, whenever we were doing it, or does the same conversation go on? and here, it's a guy who is even very much against psychoanalysis, but not an idiot be. british cinematur who wrote a text just on this 30 pages and demonstrates in a wonderful way that this is how hollywood works. both at the same time. that is to say, the scene is constructed in this way. that it's not so much that the scene is inconsistent, but it's consciously contradictory. on the one hand, it gives you a series of codified signals. passionately embraces and then you have a fade out it means they did it. so you have this. then after we return to the scene they are smoking cigarettes. it was absolutely qualified because you even't get, you know, what is the second and the third most pleasurable thing? thing in the world. the drink before and the cigarette after you. like. even you can say some value over the tower there and so on. like it gives you a game. i mean, it's wonderful, you know, to read. to compare, i read a wonderful comparison of soviet censorship and hollywood censorship in the dark times of h scope. if anything, soviet hollywood change script was even. mortortas. you know at what level? personal morality for example, you know all these rules. if you don't believe it, you can check it. even uh. dramas? sorry? lucille ball? yeah, yeah, yeah. although lucille ball is a genius. what she did is in her i love lucy, you know this wonderful gesture where you break the rule of, isn't a classic of i love luc? when something happens to her, she does this surprise face and looks into the camera.
i i think it's correct. because definitely you know that it's literally even true. don't you know that? some doctor who is doing things that i absolutely reject. i mean, birth is for me to breathe. you know. you a way it can die with newly born children. so what i'm saying again is that is that. this is why also... is in itself natural necessity and so on and so on. the moment you do this, the big card is here. but okay, back to antigone. this is why hegel says very nicely, why does antigone insist on funeral rights for berlin. because precisely as hegel says it. two funeral? you change into a free symbolic act, a natural necessity, the ultimate natural necessity of dying. but okay, i'm sorry if you know it, i would like to have your reactions if you have it. what's my... problem with antigone. well i think she is an evil egotist bitch. why? let's go step by step. my three versions. yeah brecht the second version is then this is the first version then brecht wrote a second version where the boy argues back and they said okay you are right, we will not throw you in the third version, the boy dies again. but not because of some mythic custom, but because of rational reasons. so my idea is to do the same with antigone. the first one would be the one we know from sophocles. and the story takes a different direction at the crucial moment in the middle the debate between antigone and creon. so in the first one it's the way it is, you know in the second of my versions, antigone wins the debate. that is to say, antigone convinces creon that my god, he died. in death we are all equal, there should be funeral. and then what happens is what creon, who is for me almost a good guy, was worried about. this just after a civil war, and if you do something like bury publicly the traitor, people will arise new circle of violence, blah, blah. in my second version, this is what happens. there is a proper funeral for creon. but as a reaction to this, because he is considered a traitor who... weeks ago attacked. phil the city, there is new chaos and then the whole city is in flames and then that would be the last scene in my second version. antigone is desperately walking around the city, seeing flames everywhere and she's repeating her stupid headline line. remember, i was created for love, not for war, you know. and then the chorus she my say. antigone and creon are debated. then chorus steps forward. usually chorus is the embodiment of stupidity,. it is common wisdom, opportunistic wisdom, you know, chorus is what. chorus comments, proverbs and so on. but you know that there is nothing more opportunistic and stupid than wisdom, proverbs. what do proverbs mean? let's say you try to do something, a risky act. you succeed. then i can always find a proverb to justify it. you then i tell you, oh, we have a proverb, i don't know in slovene, we have proverbs like only those who risk profit, you know, only through risk can you succeed. let's say you don't. succeed. you fail. ah, i can imagine c something like we have it in slovenia, i don't know if in your languages we have it, we have this vulgar, cynical wisdom of you cannot urinate against the wind. and, you know, this is for me the essence of wisdom, this total opportunism. whatever happens dirty disgustingusting story that happened to me. i was 25, 30 years ago at jacqueline miller's seminar and i was talking precisely about this. but my friend was still bad. so i confused the verbs to urinate and to shit. and i said in slovene on our sloven we have a proverb, on ne. and mill was the wind must be then this maybe not stupid all the time. but what i want to say, let's go on, is that in my story, it's a jacobin revolutionary you are. why. antigone and creon are fighting. i mean, debating, very big dialogue, the cor steps forward and says, we are representatives of the people. we have enough of your feudal rich people fighting each other and ruining us. we establish popular dictatorship. you are both arrested and killed and cor becomes a kind of a revolutionary jacobin debt committee for public virtue and they are both liquidated and so on. that would be my myself antigone if you ask me. but okay. as i said, with la combe. you should is what's so difficult with laccon. he really is a creative thinker in the sense that even if you don't agree with his. she fights all the time, struggles with, you know, in terms of music. laconbe is not mozart, laccon is beethoven, you know. this is what always fascinated me. i think there is even some kind of historical constant. there are three types of geniuses, i think. bach, mozart, beethoven or in painting, da vinci, raphael buonarotti. the first bach is maybe most sympathetic. is guy who is a genius but doesn't make big fuss out of it. simply artisan, you know. i do patiently my hard work. i'm just working this time this was typical bach then mozart is spontaneous genius you know like raphael in painting elegance melodies or whatever just flow out of you and then you have this heavily struggling genius you know who kind of has to fight with material and this is typically this is beethoven you know that you know like once i remember when i was young no you don't remember them but popular leonard bernstein popular musical. yeah! there she said, she did not. chunking knives there. there was one... show whatever about... beethoven's fifth symphony. eight. i didn't know even this that. this is one of the few cases where notes survived. drafts of the of all. previous version and it's extraordinary to see how long beethoven was struggling. it wasn't just in a moz way that art. extraordinary you can feel how... they really don't work, the previous versions no? so i think, again, lacon works in this way. he tries this path, he withdraws. but you know, what is... most... dangerous. two prevent your understanding clom. that sometimes he does it even not only within the same year of the seminar, but even within the same text. for example, uh she smoked this off. k avec sch. can't be sharp. why is sh the truth of god? if you look to his this ethics seminar, in chapter 4, i think, where he talks about st. paul and so on. his idea there is still of this law and crime transgression, is still the simplistic st. paul version. to put it very simply, for something to become object of desire, it has to be prohibited. i don't care for this, but if i see that you want it or that you prohibit it to me, then this arouses my desire and so on and so on. so with this simplistic logic of transgression, this is my incidental. i hate georges bataille because all his logic of this transgression or whatever is based on this, which is why, i don't know if you know this, when so-called sexual revolution began in the early mid-60s, he was opposed to it because he said,, if everything is permitted, then what's the point of my big transgression, you know? he went to the end. in this paradox of how in order to do the transgression you have to have the law prohibition so he went to the end and said maybe we should even fight for the prohibition so that we can then obviously this doesn't work but then sorry just stuff. i have an answer here. if i got your point, the implicit rule would be precisely the rule of what i call inherent transgression. i think there are transgressions and transgressions, if we return to this political. there are transgressions which are real transgressions. but there are transgressions which are just you violate the explicit rules, but in reality you just i'm so sorry i don't have that clip. i don... do you know? okay, i would be open. and if more than three of you say, yes, i will kill myself. do you know my brief analysis of as seen from casablanca. no no, fuck you. i really not. cross your heart, swear on your mother's grave if she is dead. otherwise you kill her and then swear. ... the pure, i really want i'm so... said but maybe later, maybe i think you get it. i can download it and play it to you to convince you. because i discovered just this morning a couple of wonderful clips which make the theoretical point. for example, i will show it to you, maybe even in the afternoon, the one which i quote three, four times, but it showed acadia. do you know how publicity change? when i was young, at least this was good about the 60s, 70s. sin! were happening in publicity which today are more or less at least in so-called developed western in cabet. publicities were much more subversive. even at some point at 70s in england. there were publicities where there were negative publicities in the sense of the whole point was to make fun of the product. and the joke was just... it will be so funny that even if you claim how disgusting it is, it will attract you, the customers. for example, i remember one wonderful one. a fat old couple with sleeping ugly old wife, ugly old husband. they both have, of course,, their teeth in water glass, no? and then in the middle of the night, the wife awakens and says with this ferv, go to the fridge, bring me a. of. the guy gets up, goes to the fridge, opens it and says, smells the yogurt, you want to eat this that. this were nice. i mean it was enough just to mention it with all this, i think that now germans are not so bad. because a couple of years ago... i saw one in german. which is wonderful with all the gay homosexual a publicity i was... you do. this this was a movie theater i saw it. i was with my wife and you will immediately see why my wife started to cry and slapped me there. g me said, why? because the publicity was this one. a young couple who is getting ready to make love on a beach. and then she asks him, yes, we do it, but please, for security, no, this is a couple of years ago when there was more aids scared. just because close is kind of a cheap cafeteria, go there and buy a condom. okay, the guy goes there and she's there close to the toilet where you have the autom machine for condom. and machine for magnum ice cream and then you have just the inscription sometimes you have to make the right tough decision and in the last shot you see him in a very because he looks yes, he's just enough money for one of course and in the last shot he gladly in a way licking the and i started to shout, that's victory of male, we will not be terrorized the abovementioned accident with my wife. k. so they do it, but what they want to say is that another of these thirty years back, a genius, i mentioned it one or two times in my books is maybe you know it actually if you an australian publicity for beer. you remember that fairy tale we all know it. a girl walks along a stream or river, sees a frog, kisses the frog, the frog turns into a nice young guy, no? although, as a feminist, nonetheless, i'm tempted to say that, referring to you, w, isn't it unfortunately that you're more... regular experience is the opposite one. you think it's a nice guy, you give him okay, but then it's again along the same lines where my wife, if she were to be with me, would have slapped me and started to cry. you know what then happens? yes, it stopped half a minute. video clip it begins with this start now this part of the story a girl walks along the stream, a frog kisses the frog and the frog turns into a young man. you know what then happens you can guess. the young man looks with desire at her, kisses and also have a sister. like, i go on k i need more of beer. you know why this? correcto. because i think that this is. the way you the men. relates to you. it is this sad logic of reducing the other to a partial object, just to an object. you know, i think basically this is part of my long, now i'm almost a cultural conservatism pessimism. you know how i read this publicity, announcing a trend, i'm sorry if you know this line of thought of mine already, a trend which really makes me worried. co... i'll put it like this, there are some radical cultural theorists who claim that although today we have free sex, but that there still is one taboo, sex with love. in permanent partner, ich... still a norm. the idea is that first it was sex for children, that fell. then it was you have to be married, that fell. but the last taboo is sex with love. faithful to her. and then they claim that chicago girl i met once, laura kipnis. she even wrote the book, maybe some of you know about it with the simple title against love. claiming again that love is the last, to put it in primitive leftist terms, bourgeois taboo. i want that. i claim that along the lines that i referred yesterday to judith butler, you know, all these changing, permanently reconstructing yourself, your identity, plasticity, non-fixed identity. tend to agree with al badu. he save. more. love's transgression. what ideology? real ideology, like... the way i spoke yesterday about north korean and party, the big matter or whatever, not ecstasy, but the real message you get from society. it's not this patriarchal mary be faithful. it's what i call... kind of, hedonist dalaai lama buddhism, you know. be authentic, be true yourself, experiment, create your identity, don't get caught in clichés. incidentally, i'm totally for cliches, of course. you know, which is the best, you know sam goldwyn, the big hollywood producer. you know that he was famous for so-called goldwinisms, apparently stupid. mistakes or stupidity? play try each power or what about lesbians implicitly love not knowing and sam goldwyn did a movie and then somebody told him it takes but there is a problem hollywood rules you know homosexuality in the classical economy prohibited but it takes place in among lesbians you know what goldwyn answered no problem we will change it it will take place among americans you lesbians it from from memoirs people who knew him that he cultivated this image. and some of his so-called mistakes are quite nice, like his famous statement when he rejected a gentleman's agreement. he said and the legend is that one of his studio guys told him, listen, we are criticized by the press that there are too many old clichés in our films? and he wrote this legendary memoir. to his scenario department. please invent as fast as possible good nutrition. and he was absolutely right. . too. sorry, now this will bring us speaking about hollywood censorship and what is the other thing that i mentioned yes, and so on. connecting with big others. you know where i will now keep? thank. big. and and, referring to the officially greatest film of your times, ver. you saw it, no? you remember a scene? it's incredible. in the middle of the film, no. like a little bit before middle when. madcl, okay, we later learn she's not, jumps into. golden gate. b. and... chi, scotty. james stewart, d sc out. takes her to her apartment and what is implied that he does is he, because she is freezing cold, not that sex, she undresses her and puts her into his bedroom bed why... above the kitchen ch sheanks for. dresses. that's what you think. if you don't believe, che. narrative logic. the pot is hanging there, is her underwear. getting dry and so on. but do something. now with dvd. you have one long, how do you call it, pen in shot or what then. on this side, the whatever your right side, he is sitting in his drawing room scotty, then there is a kitchen scene. camera moves from him. he to the door when then in his nightgown madeleine exits. okay, now put it on freeze the moment you see there under came. put it on fr. and during she quote. there is no. yeah, yeah. just kind of towers or abstract things. yeah, and then i read in a book on vertigo. h scope, censorship. ver was shot in 56, 57. these were the last years of hcott. and as part of this, they insisted the sensors that it shouldn't be really underwear there because if it is really underwear this would have been a proof that he saw her naked. while addressingressing her, but they are not married, this violates hollywood rules so no underwear. what is so mysterious here? just ask yourself a simple question. whom are they protecting? which case? we viewers automatically. we all think it is underwear. they're not protecting us. you see how? they act as if. we have our own sinful gaze, but there is big other precisely in the sense of an innocent gaze. who watches for proper appearances and that gaze should be protected. yes, yeah, it's wonderful. it's a wonderful example of, again, if you you don't take into account, including in this innocent gaze of the big other, the one for whom, as we say, appearances should ah. don't underestimate the appearances. look. the. there is two thirds into casablanca. a wonderful shortchi. which is totally ambiguous. in the middle of the night, ingrid bergman comes to humphrey bogart, rich's café to get from him that famous visa for portugal papers and incidentally, the reason i like casablanca, no it's too much a classic, but there are so many strange things in this movie. it is a good feeling. i'm talking about, you all know the big casablanca, you know. do you know, for example, did you notice one strange thing? how... for some strange names of the officers. are carnage. you have an italian major ferrari, then you have major renault, the average spanish train. the thing. the guy who pretends to be a pure revolutionary. vtor laslo, the husband of ingrid bergman. you mean if you look... at the film closely, you will observe a strange thing. how? every time thank message, you know, like this guy pure revolutionary, where they do they come these decadent tastes or whatever, you know and then umberto eco has a nice theory here that you shouldn't think about victor laszllo as a... ex. she's just a combination of clichés. you know. scenario writers were simply using different clichés for different scenes. typically in hollywood, if you meet like this with your mix, you drink this, you drink that, it's a wonderful explanation. so, okay, let's go on. d, yes. she comes to asking for visa and then it's the usual nice van der charming this noir hard-bo dialogue, you know, when he doesn't want to give her the papers and she drops a gun to shoot him no, and then he says these are filbach dialogues. uh me. you've got no interest now. ah, now things get complicated. they embrace. and you get a fade out. then for two and a half seconds you see the tower of casablanca airport. just with the light turning around. and then... the camera. we return to the scene, the two of them. going on talking. two of them, i mean, his room up r that say countryrey bog and english bergman. now, to every normal human being, for every normal human being, a question arises here. what? what do these two and a half seconds stand for? or to be vulgar, did they do it or not? are these two and a half seconds, are they a call it? just a condensed signal of, let, whatever you want, half an hour, one hour, whenever we were doing it, or does the same conversation go on? and here, it's a guy who is even very much against psychoanalysis, but not an idiot be. british cinematur who wrote a text just on this 30 pages and demonstrates in a wonderful way that this is how hollywood works. both at the same time. that is to say, the scene is constructed in this way. that it's not so much that the scene is inconsistent, but it's consciously contradictory. on the one hand, it gives you a series of codified signals. passionately embraces and then you have a fade out it means they did it. so you have this. then after we return to the scene they are smoking cigarettes. it was absolutely qualified because you even't get, you know, what is the second and the third most pleasurable thing? thing in the world. the drink before and the cigarette after you. like. even you can say some value over the tower there and so on. like it gives you a game. i mean, it's wonderful, you know, to read. to compare, i read a wonderful comparison of soviet censorship and hollywood censorship in the dark times of h scope. if anything, soviet hollywood change script was even. mortortas. you know at what level? personal morality for example, you know all these rules. if you don't believe it, you can check it. even uh. dramas? sorry? lucille ball? yeah, yeah, yeah. although lucille ball is a genius. what she did is in her i love lucy, you know this wonderful gesture where you break the rule of, isn't a classic of i love luc? when something happens to her, she does this surprise face and looks into the camera.
Audience Member
mm
mm
Slavoj Žižek
but,. what i want to say is that, but at the same time... you get a whole series of signs that it didn't happen. they are both properly dressed, the same as before, the same conversation seems to go on and so on and so on. and morbi's great idea is that the way. def feel. addresses us. prec precisely ext. levels simultaneous. ide idea ich. believe in nobresis. sexual regime. so. the shape give you a moral cover. like imagine you are watching casablanca and you have a moral agency of big other observing you and said, oh, what are you watching? they screwed and you can see not nothing no. they give you, at the same time, after you are covered like this, they give you clear codified signs. so that just you know, how to violate prohibition, all the possible transgressions. and it's wonderful again to see, you know that for example, homosexuality i'm not insulting anyone here from that, but you know, the cod for prostitution in classical hollywood was, if somebody says that woman comes from new orleans. don't ask me why. she is a prostitute. so.
but,. what i want to say is that, but at the same time... you get a whole series of signs that it didn't happen. they are both properly dressed, the same as before, the same conversation seems to go on and so on and so on. and morbi's great idea is that the way. def feel. addresses us. prec precisely ext. levels simultaneous. ide idea ich. believe in nobresis. sexual regime. so. the shape give you a moral cover. like imagine you are watching casablanca and you have a moral agency of big other observing you and said, oh, what are you watching? they screwed and you can see not nothing no. they give you, at the same time, after you are covered like this, they give you clear codified signs. so that just you know, how to violate prohibition, all the possible transgressions. and it's wonderful again to see, you know that for example, homosexuality i'm not insulting anyone here from that, but you know, the cod for prostitution in classical hollywood was, if somebody says that woman comes from new orleans. don't ask me why. she is a prostitute. so.
Audience Member
where where the film is targeting smaller children and adults as well and then they subinal messages that are very sexual.
where where the film is targeting smaller children and adults as well and then they subinal messages that are very sexual.
Slavoj Žižek
do do you know that even in lion king or there is a big industry where they show, no already in snow white or where, that if you go freeze frame by frame, you see horrors there..
do do you know that even in lion king or there is a big industry where they show, no already in snow white or where, that if you go freeze frame by frame, you see horrors there..
Audience Member
is. yes yes. yeah!
is. yes yes. yeah!
Slavoj Žižek
no, no, no. i know, i know. . mm switch. but you know what why i like cartoons? because i think that... precisely, you know, cartoons are for me a nice example of thanks. yeah. the truth. h. of a f. imagine a typical scene in a cartoon tom jerry. can you imagine a universe which is more they are all the time beating each other, slicing, laying trap to each other, whatever.
no, no, no. i know, i know. . mm switch. but you know what why i like cartoons? because i think that... precisely, you know, cartoons are for me a nice example of thanks. yeah. the truth. h. of a f. imagine a typical scene in a cartoon tom jerry. can you imagine a universe which is more they are all the time beating each other, slicing, laying trap to each other, whatever.
Audience Member
it
it
Slavoj Žižek
this is our brutal social reality. i this was my dream, to do a movie. which was just... with real actors enact an episode from tom and j. and the end they should be both 10 times dead or.
this is our brutal social reality. i this was my dream, to do a movie. which was just... with real actors enact an episode from tom and j. and the end they should be both 10 times dead or.
Audience Member
you know.
you know.
Slavoj Žižek
where?
where?
Audience Member
wwe...
wwe...
Slavoj Žižek
it's boy. but but
it's boy. but but
Audience Member
i like
i like
Slavoj Žižek
something in this idea, now i go to the lowest of the lowest. i mean, i have low tastes, but this is too low even for me. namely, how is it called sorry home alone. yeah it's the usual bullshit, but then the battle, the last 20 minutes. you are de facto in a cartoon universe. you know the two idiots, joe pesci, you know, everything happens, he puts his head in the water, there is alcohol, explodes, but you know, they become in a cartoon way i dead, immortal. you know, like in tom jerry, you are sliced, you are overrun, no matter, in the next scene you are again here and so on. i like... yeah. the way to get it is to... understand that at a certain point you enter a different universe. this universe of cartoons where... everything is possible and so on and precisely because it is a cartoon. you can be much more open about the brutality of our lives precisely because you know it cannot really happen. it's the same. i may insult you with this, but i don't like jane austen. i am from brom for this but nonetheless in one of her i always forgot which part, is it mansfield park or not happy where jane austen has also another nice example of the truth has the structure of a fiction. you know typ seen that a group of rich in big, father is absent, and five, six young people are there, mixed sex, and there is lost passion, but we are 18th century blah blah supposedly. they cannot so what they do is they decide to stage some comedy, some play. and of course, through playing those roles, they can shape ! what they don't dare to say openly. you know, like a couple, they love each other. they don't dare to say this openly. but they... also, we can go on here with poetry art. do you know that? this is what really interests me in hollywood. i found this in a book on opera and cinema. i'm an ana collector. i bought it in the good... book, how it calledff books jack books in london, kind for 3 pounds, over a thousand pages encyclopedia, filament opener. where it says it's wonderful. this is the whole genre. where they take a play or an opera so that the real life passions are mirrored in the opera story. and even i'm starting to appreciate them. do you know that in mussolini's times they did a very nice, almost feminist version of m butterfly. i found it wonderful that you know vaguely the story, although i think it's one of the most boring operas for the time. no, i have a problem with puccini. he was a right-wing fascist. do you know this? he died in 24. you know what was the last message he did, the last letter? in 24 there was the last resistance to mussolini in the parliament and a socialist member of parliament denounced him. and he was found dead, tortured to death. and there was still an outcry in all italy, pressure on mussolini to step down. and then all the great right-wingers, you know, from pirandello to gabriele d'annunzio, wrote appeals to mussolini, stay, now the nation needs you. among them puccini, his last he was already in switzerland dying ill. okay, let's go on. in that era, nonetheless, they did a wonderful version of madame butterfly, where? you know what happens in the opera? she is screwed by the american guy, american guy comes and then she kills. i don't know only herself, i think herself at the end it this no that she is an opera singer who is in decline, in love with a big. it's very nicely transposed. it's a film about staging of madame butterfly where in reality it's the opera singer, the woman. who was? screwed. two years ago by a much bigger opera star who tells her, i will come back, blah blah, then two years later, they sing in the same opera, but he pretends not to remember anything and presents to her, the same as in madame butterfly, his new wife and so on. and then... they sing the opera on stage. she dies but in real life she says fuck you i will raise my kid you know kind of a more it's a very nice idea. to change it. another genre here, it's wonderful. it's invented operas. for example, of course you saw. we all know by heart the big loser, that is to say, big loser, i mean still the second of citizen k. we all saw it, okay you remember the opera that the misres right seats. the scandal, you know. for. it's called salammbô, i think. the opera doesn't exist. it's just a reference to a non-existent opera. although i heard now that this aria by bernard herrmann is nonetheless so good that although there it is hurt in a consciously, they want a bad performance to signal that. the girl doesn't know how to sing. but now kiri te kanawa did a serious performance. casablanca. so what happens in casablanca? ugh. again, the idea is that this is how hollywood functions, which is why those primitive less. k. official story it's nothing, just a conversation nothing happened and what is indicated that two seconds and a half are just standing for, i don't know, one hour where. many things get up. you are allowed both at the same time. and the crucial thing is that again, for an ideology to function, you need both. dish dirty secrets which are just indicated this crucial. there is absolutely nothing transgressive about them. they are not only tolerated. by power. they are it's the same as what i was telling you yesterday, all those obscene jokes homosexual in the army. it wasn't. we were resisting the discipline. absolutely no. this is part of army ideology. i even think that. if you do not participate in these obscene rituals. you are ostracized. you are, i mean, i was doing this and i got into some trouble when i said, okay, i don't have sense for these stupid jokes and so on, dirty jokes and then i was attacked for lack of solidarity or whatever. so i wrote it in one of my books. i forgot his name. an american short story writer. this something wonderful. he wrote a short story, the title is simply, i think, as time goes by. just about this two and a half seconds. that is to say it. it's wonderful observing. the story is... it begins with ingberger coming up. it exactly follows the feeling. and at the end of the story, it's the same. he gives her the visa, she is blah blah. but in between you get 15 pages of absolutely well-known lines from casablanca. or humphrey boart. repertoire giving it an extremely obscene twist. for example, you know this standard humphrey bogoggart line here is to you kit. no? you know when she says this in this story, when he puts his penis into her mouth, like here is to you kit and so on. but don't misunderstand me. i'm not saying that there is something subversive in this. okay, we don't have time to go with it. i think that this made clear what freud was about when freud said something which is, i think, deeply feminist. and, freud said something which was often forgotten you know, because what, in our usual understanding, we think that perversion is much more radical than hysteria. know the idea is hysterics are women who are soft in between. you provoke a master, a little bit, but you are basically just asking for it. you know, that's the main saist idea, that women with their hysterical provocations just display a call for a true master and so on, just provoking. while the idea is that perverts go to the end. they really. ah, d freud. freud says something wonderful. freud says that no, perversion, there is nothing subversive about perversion. perversion always functions as a dark, obscene side of power. every power needs a perverse, obscene supplement. so it's very precisely because, again, perversion is usually taken more as masculine versus feminine hysteria. freud is saying this all the time, that no, cle begin with hysterics. hysterics are the true threat, the true threat to the master, not perverts. perversion is plus the other side of the mask. let me give you an example. i've written about it in that book of mine, i think i'm not sure i write many books, living in the end times. you remember that horrible thing in austria that josef fritzl? you remember him, the great guy who... it's a story which is so crazy. you know what i like about this type of story? that they are so incredible death. imagine that stories. you know, he had, i think, his daughter in the basement for, i don't know, 15, 20 years. yeah, children. now, if somebody were to tell you this happened, you would have said, no, it's too crazy. it's story. when think... crazy sounds, not realistic but really they happen. which is why we'll talk here about did you see for me the best kronenberg film. did you see m butterfly? you. it's no wonder the movie was a failure because it sounds absolutely dramatic. it's the story of a french diplomat in beijing, china in the time of cultural revolution, who falls in love with an opera singer. they become lovers. she has children with him and then she discovers that she was a man. that it's not a woman at all. she was just culturally stupid because she didn't know that in chinese opera men singing women's songs. so now, of course, you will ask the stupid question, no? like, my god why were they doing certain things? you know how didn't he know this? no? but no, i even read in a book on this case. i guess now you get what my point. ich really habe. first i thought, oh, it's some kind of a crazy kronenberg fantasy. the guy is still alive in the film, jeremy irons, he kills himself in the end. the guy is still alive. in french prison. because... the story is this one. the chinese secret police used this woman. he... the guy then even explained how you do it. they were making love always in darkness. the guy pretended as a woman to be very shy. it was never clear. and then he learned how to, if it's very vulgar, i'm sorry, if you have small testicles, you can somehow push them in. somehow. and of course, the pregnancy was simply that the guy says he has to visit his parents for pregnancy and of course they took another child, whatever. but what i'm saying is that i like this case because it's so crazy but it was br. you know, and here i had, i think already the last time two months ago when i was here improvis on this but it's important. here! the point is how to read this. here again, i have a conflict with some gay. d. who claimed and i totally disagree. we debated about this feeling and about the other along the same lines, much more. much better known it's also very good, but maybe a little bit less good than this one. you probably saw this one, neil jordan, the crying game. where again the follows current the confrontation is when what i like is that it's a wonderful reversal of you know how freud in these naive terms discovers the experience of feminine ca which leads to fetishism and how you address a woman and you expect something. both. you see nothing where you expect something, penis, no? here like it's the opposite no? like he's something where he expects nothing. okay, my point is this one that come to read this. my gay friends and even chamvic. in big media, i mean, critics of the field. made repeatedly the point how these feelings are ambiguous. how they still count on this horror at homosexuality. that instead of openly endorsing homosexuality they guy read it in this way. of course in both cases, m. butterfly and the crying game, the hero. not. d. the object of his love is a man dressed up as a woman. but! she repressed it. so the idea is this about homosexuality, how it's not radical enough and so on and so on. my reading is a totally opposite one. it's quite shocking. my reading is that both films are films about courtly love in the sense of elevating a woman into an absolute object, untouchable and so on. i think, and lacon gives some hints here that when a man is in love with you, if you are willing, and when you see push towards idealization, that's never true love. lac is very. and he says true love does not idealize its object. two love sublimation. sh means i accept you totally the way you are with all your mistakes and as such you are absolute for me. idealization. that's the lesson of hitchcock's vert. he wants, you remember when he gets judy, this is really an act of murder, how he wants her perfectly redressed, shaped into the ideal of madeleine and so on and so on. so let me go on. you know what's for me the true message of these films? what does their shock mean? here i agree with gay theorists. my message is this from death. this type of male love, apparently fanatical, idealizing, passionate love for a lady, is already in itself homosexual. if you are part of this love, when you screw the lady, your fantasy is unscrewing a man dressed up as a lady. end. the crying game, we have this dramatic scene when the guy discovers she's the penis she is a boy, a man. why is he shocked there, the hero? not because, oh my god, it's disgusting, it's a man, not a woman, but it's not that something totally foreign, terrifying, unimaginable ahead. but something too close to him on hand. direct if spend. you know, his fantasy was all the time to screw a woman. which is really a man dressed up as a woman. but this is a nice point of laconbe how. on fantasy which is that ein kind wird gesch a child is being beaten, where he says how the central fantasy is totally primordial. repressed. you see here lacon is very radical. lacon is not saying realize your deepest desire. no, you cannot. it... another, i've written about this in my reading book, i forgot, i think organs without bones. vertigo. again, vertigo. there is a wonderful detail of hitchcock's genius. you remember when they meet in that ernish, expensive restaurant? ah, fuck you, i have something that you don't get. now it's a cheap picture here, they closed it down.? yeah, this is american barbarism. but i was there when it still was ern. thank. i'm scott, she's madaine. and then there is the cruise scene. it that is so beautiful, just the detail how he's sitting behind a bar and he's like the fearful, timid way looking back. she's a because they she's approaching. and then you see this wonderful shot of her profile enlightened in a totally nonacist way and then she leaves with her husband theu. now, a french guy, i called him in my book, french guy, i forgot his name, esther has, i thinkgarian, noticed something wonderful, which is a symptom. that almost all. practically all. fascinating. but... it's a very mysterious mistake because check it out if you don't believe me. if you watch the movie. you see, it's not his point of view. it's what he imagines. like he doesn't look at culture he does and like as if you know it's literally too hot for him. to look at it directly. age. so typical. i try to interpret why why why all almost all! practically all the great names, i mean la, who is the guy who did robin hood, named them. they all, all the big readers, they make the mistake here, describing this as a but with hcock it's done very nicely in the sense that, and this would be fantasy, it's something which is as it were. so hot, intense that you cannot even directly subjectize. no you cannot. a teach. face to face. you get burned, if you. you get burned if you do it. okay. so, yes, casablanca, transgression and all that. let's now nonetheless come back to the... so that after all this, this entire pic, detour to where we started, the big other, the reason i engage in this detour is to make clear how, and now i go a little bit into big other you terrorized neighborhood, so i have to do my again... you know, usually. predominantly. the lacachenian dog says that the big other is simply the symbolic substance, the symbolic order which secretly pulls the strings and so on and so on. but the first thing to say is that the la big other issue. at the same time op. ignorant otherer. other who doesn't and don't want to know. the other precisely the supposed innocent other for whom appearances should be maintained. you remember, for example, the started with already with catherine the great, potemkin, who was incidentally a good guy even, but he is known as potemkin's villages, you know, when catherine the great, in late 18th century, as russian empress, she visited south to impress her, potemkin allegedly built a couple of villages with ideal dancing farmers and so on. but the interesting point is that if you are... looking for the greatest case of potemkin's village. you know which one it is. it shall be horrible. when in the great leap forward, late 50s, maoong heard rumors that there is hunger and wanted to visit it. so he said, let's take a train from beijing to shanghai and maybe stop here and there to see, you know. sh. d nomenclatura, the guys wrong now. we're not sure where ma will stop. so for about, i don't know how much is it, 200, 200000 or whatever kilometers. the entire the entire land around the railway was, you know, buildings were painted enough food and so on.. of happy, well-fed people, so on and so on. what can say on shop. again. you hey. it was a scandal. when... president tito, the big man of ex-yugoslavia. was done, they built north of zagreb, capital of croatia, a party school. educate inito spirit young cadre and proper rope. quito came, left, and then they destroyed. which brings us back to lacon. i think that authority is not primarily the paranoiac authority of the one who controls she all. authority is much more the one who, as it were, this is how true authority works. i, for example. i prohibit. in a biography of hersein, i read somewhere how one of her people around her warned her how her servants, after in the evening the party is over, are stealing wine and caviar, good food. and she said, i know this, but to keep them satisfied, i turn a blind eye. so again, this is why i mentioned yesterday project x or that one, but that's how the true paternal authority functions. this is why lacone says that traditional paternal authority is not only not opposed to enjoyment. it preciselyely opens up the space for enjoyment. as this, you know, secret transgressions, do it discreetly, i prefer not yes.
something in this idea, now i go to the lowest of the lowest. i mean, i have low tastes, but this is too low even for me. namely, how is it called sorry home alone. yeah it's the usual bullshit, but then the battle, the last 20 minutes. you are de facto in a cartoon universe. you know the two idiots, joe pesci, you know, everything happens, he puts his head in the water, there is alcohol, explodes, but you know, they become in a cartoon way i dead, immortal. you know, like in tom jerry, you are sliced, you are overrun, no matter, in the next scene you are again here and so on. i like... yeah. the way to get it is to... understand that at a certain point you enter a different universe. this universe of cartoons where... everything is possible and so on and precisely because it is a cartoon. you can be much more open about the brutality of our lives precisely because you know it cannot really happen. it's the same. i may insult you with this, but i don't like jane austen. i am from brom for this but nonetheless in one of her i always forgot which part, is it mansfield park or not happy where jane austen has also another nice example of the truth has the structure of a fiction. you know typ seen that a group of rich in big, father is absent, and five, six young people are there, mixed sex, and there is lost passion, but we are 18th century blah blah supposedly. they cannot so what they do is they decide to stage some comedy, some play. and of course, through playing those roles, they can shape ! what they don't dare to say openly. you know, like a couple, they love each other. they don't dare to say this openly. but they... also, we can go on here with poetry art. do you know that? this is what really interests me in hollywood. i found this in a book on opera and cinema. i'm an ana collector. i bought it in the good... book, how it calledff books jack books in london, kind for 3 pounds, over a thousand pages encyclopedia, filament opener. where it says it's wonderful. this is the whole genre. where they take a play or an opera so that the real life passions are mirrored in the opera story. and even i'm starting to appreciate them. do you know that in mussolini's times they did a very nice, almost feminist version of m butterfly. i found it wonderful that you know vaguely the story, although i think it's one of the most boring operas for the time. no, i have a problem with puccini. he was a right-wing fascist. do you know this? he died in 24. you know what was the last message he did, the last letter? in 24 there was the last resistance to mussolini in the parliament and a socialist member of parliament denounced him. and he was found dead, tortured to death. and there was still an outcry in all italy, pressure on mussolini to step down. and then all the great right-wingers, you know, from pirandello to gabriele d'annunzio, wrote appeals to mussolini, stay, now the nation needs you. among them puccini, his last he was already in switzerland dying ill. okay, let's go on. in that era, nonetheless, they did a wonderful version of madame butterfly, where? you know what happens in the opera? she is screwed by the american guy, american guy comes and then she kills. i don't know only herself, i think herself at the end it this no that she is an opera singer who is in decline, in love with a big. it's very nicely transposed. it's a film about staging of madame butterfly where in reality it's the opera singer, the woman. who was? screwed. two years ago by a much bigger opera star who tells her, i will come back, blah blah, then two years later, they sing in the same opera, but he pretends not to remember anything and presents to her, the same as in madame butterfly, his new wife and so on. and then... they sing the opera on stage. she dies but in real life she says fuck you i will raise my kid you know kind of a more it's a very nice idea. to change it. another genre here, it's wonderful. it's invented operas. for example, of course you saw. we all know by heart the big loser, that is to say, big loser, i mean still the second of citizen k. we all saw it, okay you remember the opera that the misres right seats. the scandal, you know. for. it's called salammbô, i think. the opera doesn't exist. it's just a reference to a non-existent opera. although i heard now that this aria by bernard herrmann is nonetheless so good that although there it is hurt in a consciously, they want a bad performance to signal that. the girl doesn't know how to sing. but now kiri te kanawa did a serious performance. casablanca. so what happens in casablanca? ugh. again, the idea is that this is how hollywood functions, which is why those primitive less. k. official story it's nothing, just a conversation nothing happened and what is indicated that two seconds and a half are just standing for, i don't know, one hour where. many things get up. you are allowed both at the same time. and the crucial thing is that again, for an ideology to function, you need both. dish dirty secrets which are just indicated this crucial. there is absolutely nothing transgressive about them. they are not only tolerated. by power. they are it's the same as what i was telling you yesterday, all those obscene jokes homosexual in the army. it wasn't. we were resisting the discipline. absolutely no. this is part of army ideology. i even think that. if you do not participate in these obscene rituals. you are ostracized. you are, i mean, i was doing this and i got into some trouble when i said, okay, i don't have sense for these stupid jokes and so on, dirty jokes and then i was attacked for lack of solidarity or whatever. so i wrote it in one of my books. i forgot his name. an american short story writer. this something wonderful. he wrote a short story, the title is simply, i think, as time goes by. just about this two and a half seconds. that is to say it. it's wonderful observing. the story is... it begins with ingberger coming up. it exactly follows the feeling. and at the end of the story, it's the same. he gives her the visa, she is blah blah. but in between you get 15 pages of absolutely well-known lines from casablanca. or humphrey boart. repertoire giving it an extremely obscene twist. for example, you know this standard humphrey bogoggart line here is to you kit. no? you know when she says this in this story, when he puts his penis into her mouth, like here is to you kit and so on. but don't misunderstand me. i'm not saying that there is something subversive in this. okay, we don't have time to go with it. i think that this made clear what freud was about when freud said something which is, i think, deeply feminist. and, freud said something which was often forgotten you know, because what, in our usual understanding, we think that perversion is much more radical than hysteria. know the idea is hysterics are women who are soft in between. you provoke a master, a little bit, but you are basically just asking for it. you know, that's the main saist idea, that women with their hysterical provocations just display a call for a true master and so on, just provoking. while the idea is that perverts go to the end. they really. ah, d freud. freud says something wonderful. freud says that no, perversion, there is nothing subversive about perversion. perversion always functions as a dark, obscene side of power. every power needs a perverse, obscene supplement. so it's very precisely because, again, perversion is usually taken more as masculine versus feminine hysteria. freud is saying this all the time, that no, cle begin with hysterics. hysterics are the true threat, the true threat to the master, not perverts. perversion is plus the other side of the mask. let me give you an example. i've written about it in that book of mine, i think i'm not sure i write many books, living in the end times. you remember that horrible thing in austria that josef fritzl? you remember him, the great guy who... it's a story which is so crazy. you know what i like about this type of story? that they are so incredible death. imagine that stories. you know, he had, i think, his daughter in the basement for, i don't know, 15, 20 years. yeah, children. now, if somebody were to tell you this happened, you would have said, no, it's too crazy. it's story. when think... crazy sounds, not realistic but really they happen. which is why we'll talk here about did you see for me the best kronenberg film. did you see m butterfly? you. it's no wonder the movie was a failure because it sounds absolutely dramatic. it's the story of a french diplomat in beijing, china in the time of cultural revolution, who falls in love with an opera singer. they become lovers. she has children with him and then she discovers that she was a man. that it's not a woman at all. she was just culturally stupid because she didn't know that in chinese opera men singing women's songs. so now, of course, you will ask the stupid question, no? like, my god why were they doing certain things? you know how didn't he know this? no? but no, i even read in a book on this case. i guess now you get what my point. ich really habe. first i thought, oh, it's some kind of a crazy kronenberg fantasy. the guy is still alive in the film, jeremy irons, he kills himself in the end. the guy is still alive. in french prison. because... the story is this one. the chinese secret police used this woman. he... the guy then even explained how you do it. they were making love always in darkness. the guy pretended as a woman to be very shy. it was never clear. and then he learned how to, if it's very vulgar, i'm sorry, if you have small testicles, you can somehow push them in. somehow. and of course, the pregnancy was simply that the guy says he has to visit his parents for pregnancy and of course they took another child, whatever. but what i'm saying is that i like this case because it's so crazy but it was br. you know, and here i had, i think already the last time two months ago when i was here improvis on this but it's important. here! the point is how to read this. here again, i have a conflict with some gay. d. who claimed and i totally disagree. we debated about this feeling and about the other along the same lines, much more. much better known it's also very good, but maybe a little bit less good than this one. you probably saw this one, neil jordan, the crying game. where again the follows current the confrontation is when what i like is that it's a wonderful reversal of you know how freud in these naive terms discovers the experience of feminine ca which leads to fetishism and how you address a woman and you expect something. both. you see nothing where you expect something, penis, no? here like it's the opposite no? like he's something where he expects nothing. okay, my point is this one that come to read this. my gay friends and even chamvic. in big media, i mean, critics of the field. made repeatedly the point how these feelings are ambiguous. how they still count on this horror at homosexuality. that instead of openly endorsing homosexuality they guy read it in this way. of course in both cases, m. butterfly and the crying game, the hero. not. d. the object of his love is a man dressed up as a woman. but! she repressed it. so the idea is this about homosexuality, how it's not radical enough and so on and so on. my reading is a totally opposite one. it's quite shocking. my reading is that both films are films about courtly love in the sense of elevating a woman into an absolute object, untouchable and so on. i think, and lacon gives some hints here that when a man is in love with you, if you are willing, and when you see push towards idealization, that's never true love. lac is very. and he says true love does not idealize its object. two love sublimation. sh means i accept you totally the way you are with all your mistakes and as such you are absolute for me. idealization. that's the lesson of hitchcock's vert. he wants, you remember when he gets judy, this is really an act of murder, how he wants her perfectly redressed, shaped into the ideal of madeleine and so on and so on. so let me go on. you know what's for me the true message of these films? what does their shock mean? here i agree with gay theorists. my message is this from death. this type of male love, apparently fanatical, idealizing, passionate love for a lady, is already in itself homosexual. if you are part of this love, when you screw the lady, your fantasy is unscrewing a man dressed up as a lady. end. the crying game, we have this dramatic scene when the guy discovers she's the penis she is a boy, a man. why is he shocked there, the hero? not because, oh my god, it's disgusting, it's a man, not a woman, but it's not that something totally foreign, terrifying, unimaginable ahead. but something too close to him on hand. direct if spend. you know, his fantasy was all the time to screw a woman. which is really a man dressed up as a woman. but this is a nice point of laconbe how. on fantasy which is that ein kind wird gesch a child is being beaten, where he says how the central fantasy is totally primordial. repressed. you see here lacon is very radical. lacon is not saying realize your deepest desire. no, you cannot. it... another, i've written about this in my reading book, i forgot, i think organs without bones. vertigo. again, vertigo. there is a wonderful detail of hitchcock's genius. you remember when they meet in that ernish, expensive restaurant? ah, fuck you, i have something that you don't get. now it's a cheap picture here, they closed it down.? yeah, this is american barbarism. but i was there when it still was ern. thank. i'm scott, she's madaine. and then there is the cruise scene. it that is so beautiful, just the detail how he's sitting behind a bar and he's like the fearful, timid way looking back. she's a because they she's approaching. and then you see this wonderful shot of her profile enlightened in a totally nonacist way and then she leaves with her husband theu. now, a french guy, i called him in my book, french guy, i forgot his name, esther has, i thinkgarian, noticed something wonderful, which is a symptom. that almost all. practically all. fascinating. but... it's a very mysterious mistake because check it out if you don't believe me. if you watch the movie. you see, it's not his point of view. it's what he imagines. like he doesn't look at culture he does and like as if you know it's literally too hot for him. to look at it directly. age. so typical. i try to interpret why why why all almost all! practically all the great names, i mean la, who is the guy who did robin hood, named them. they all, all the big readers, they make the mistake here, describing this as a but with hcock it's done very nicely in the sense that, and this would be fantasy, it's something which is as it were. so hot, intense that you cannot even directly subjectize. no you cannot. a teach. face to face. you get burned, if you. you get burned if you do it. okay. so, yes, casablanca, transgression and all that. let's now nonetheless come back to the... so that after all this, this entire pic, detour to where we started, the big other, the reason i engage in this detour is to make clear how, and now i go a little bit into big other you terrorized neighborhood, so i have to do my again... you know, usually. predominantly. the lacachenian dog says that the big other is simply the symbolic substance, the symbolic order which secretly pulls the strings and so on and so on. but the first thing to say is that the la big other issue. at the same time op. ignorant otherer. other who doesn't and don't want to know. the other precisely the supposed innocent other for whom appearances should be maintained. you remember, for example, the started with already with catherine the great, potemkin, who was incidentally a good guy even, but he is known as potemkin's villages, you know, when catherine the great, in late 18th century, as russian empress, she visited south to impress her, potemkin allegedly built a couple of villages with ideal dancing farmers and so on. but the interesting point is that if you are... looking for the greatest case of potemkin's village. you know which one it is. it shall be horrible. when in the great leap forward, late 50s, maoong heard rumors that there is hunger and wanted to visit it. so he said, let's take a train from beijing to shanghai and maybe stop here and there to see, you know. sh. d nomenclatura, the guys wrong now. we're not sure where ma will stop. so for about, i don't know how much is it, 200, 200000 or whatever kilometers. the entire the entire land around the railway was, you know, buildings were painted enough food and so on.. of happy, well-fed people, so on and so on. what can say on shop. again. you hey. it was a scandal. when... president tito, the big man of ex-yugoslavia. was done, they built north of zagreb, capital of croatia, a party school. educate inito spirit young cadre and proper rope. quito came, left, and then they destroyed. which brings us back to lacon. i think that authority is not primarily the paranoiac authority of the one who controls she all. authority is much more the one who, as it were, this is how true authority works. i, for example. i prohibit. in a biography of hersein, i read somewhere how one of her people around her warned her how her servants, after in the evening the party is over, are stealing wine and caviar, good food. and she said, i know this, but to keep them satisfied, i turn a blind eye. so again, this is why i mentioned yesterday project x or that one, but that's how the true paternal authority functions. this is why lacone says that traditional paternal authority is not only not opposed to enjoyment. it preciselyely opens up the space for enjoyment. as this, you know, secret transgressions, do it discreetly, i prefer not yes.
Audience Member
d regime in iran.
d regime in iran.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah
yeah
Audience Member
exactly the.
exactly the.
Slavoj Žižek
hey.
hey.
Audience Member
i hope not really.
i hope not really.
Slavoj Žižek
robot, robot.
robot, robot.
Audience Member
.
.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah. yeah.
yeah. yeah.
Audience Member
set up nobody looked hungry, they looked tax. people looked
set up nobody looked hungry, they looked tax. people looked
Slavoj Žižek
was intelligent enough. mao was nonetheless not an idiot. she had an immense pride. private in the sense of not controlled by state apparatus security spy ring. which was telling him very discreetly what is really going on.
was intelligent enough. mao was nonetheless not an idiot. she had an immense pride. private in the sense of not controlled by state apparatus security spy ring. which was telling him very discreetly what is really going on.
Audience Member
i think you live in a fantasy.
i think you live in a fantasy.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, this is very serious because this is how you lose power then, you know mao was more intelligent. he knew even stalin was intelligent here. he always had some private informers who you know, him he was aware.
yeah, this is very serious because this is how you lose power then, you know mao was more intelligent. he knew even stalin was intelligent here. he always had some private informers who you know, him he was aware.
Audience Member
it's funny because when you go and look at the palaces now, his palace was very plain and simple.
it's funny because when you go and look at the palaces now, his palace was very plain and simple.
Slavoj Žižek
you mean shock.
you mean shock.
Audience Member
but if you see the palaces that the people around him lived in, the homes that people it was a lot more luxurious.
but if you see the palaces that the people around him lived in, the homes that people it was a lot more luxurious.
Slavoj Žižek
you know whom? i don't like him too much, although he did write one good novel because he's mario vargas llosa. i met him when he was writing his fiesta del chivo, the feast of the goat, on trujillo, no? and he told me he visited and he was also, it was exactly the same. you know, trujillo basically lived in small modest, but you know why he was nonetheless civil, he told me, but he knew all about corruption around him and he was, of course, using this, you know, because every good leader knows if you want fidelity, you should allow corruption. and then you can always use it. you have people afraid all the time with you are not. that again, the only sin of trujillo was, it's true what you learn in the novel was that he wanted a regular supply of young girls or whatever, no? but he didn't leave. his children or all around him were corrupted and so on. you know. this is very interesting. yes, i think that even mao, okay, we cannot compare them, but mao was the same. you know, he lived in the forbidden city. but not in the peak, he lived in a small cottage which was originally for some sub sub servants of the emperor or whatever, you know. i think this is in a way part of the charm of a true dictator. that you enjoy much more power in this personal modesty.
you know whom? i don't like him too much, although he did write one good novel because he's mario vargas llosa. i met him when he was writing his fiesta del chivo, the feast of the goat, on trujillo, no? and he told me he visited and he was also, it was exactly the same. you know, trujillo basically lived in small modest, but you know why he was nonetheless civil, he told me, but he knew all about corruption around him and he was, of course, using this, you know, because every good leader knows if you want fidelity, you should allow corruption. and then you can always use it. you have people afraid all the time with you are not. that again, the only sin of trujillo was, it's true what you learn in the novel was that he wanted a regular supply of young girls or whatever, no? but he didn't leave. his children or all around him were corrupted and so on. you know. this is very interesting. yes, i think that even mao, okay, we cannot compare them, but mao was the same. you know, he lived in the forbidden city. but not in the peak, he lived in a small cottage which was originally for some sub sub servants of the emperor or whatever, you know. i think this is in a way part of the charm of a true dictator. that you enjoy much more power in this personal modesty.
Audience Member
even certainly it's a reflection of the superficial image that's presented to the, their superficial image that they project to the people. it's a reflection of that same person.
even certainly it's a reflection of the superficial image that's presented to the, their superficial image that they project to the people. it's a reflection of that same person.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, that's true, yes, also again,. yeah, but again, this is why. as i said yesterday, i found it significant and enigmatic north korea. because safety... like, you know, in a nation which is starving. they openly display their stomachs, you know. like my sh but has called them my is so evil he calls me, how do you call it to small water animal called cheawks or what? is this the name? yeah. my son started to call me seahorse. can you imagine why?
yes, that's true, yes, also again,. yeah, but again, this is why. as i said yesterday, i found it significant and enigmatic north korea. because safety... like, you know, in a nation which is starving. they openly display their stomachs, you know. like my sh but has called them my is so evil he calls me, how do you call it to small water animal called cheawks or what? is this the name? yeah. my son started to call me seahorse. can you imagine why?
Audience Member
mm
mm
Slavoj Žižek
this was so weird, my god. because he told me they learned in biology. that, she horses are one of the few animals where the male is pregnant. yeah. i sorry. evil okay so let's go on. so again that would be the first point you know the big other is even more maybe this benevolent agency which leaves discreetly the place open for secret enjoyment. hegel ist rein? sorry. israel sch. slavery. what. no lacom says the true enjoyment is that of the slave precisely in this where the master turns the blind eye. please attack..
this was so weird, my god. because he told me they learned in biology. that, she horses are one of the few animals where the male is pregnant. yeah. i sorry. evil okay so let's go on. so again that would be the first point you know the big other is even more maybe this benevolent agency which leaves discreetly the place open for secret enjoyment. hegel ist rein? sorry. israel sch. slavery. what. no lacom says the true enjoyment is that of the slave precisely in this where the master turns the blind eye. please attack..
Questioner
the big other is an inconsistent presence in the postmodern subject, let's say. but how do we account for the rise of borderline syndromes where we have in-between psychoneurosis in this way where the subject is thrown with no support in the symbolic
the big other is an inconsistent presence in the postmodern subject, let's say. but how do we account for the rise of borderline syndromes where we have in-between psychoneurosis in this way where the subject is thrown with no support in the symbolic
Slavoj Žižek
okay, i don't have time to go into this in detail. and i'm also, maybe, i mean, i laugh enough,. but i was, because i remember i was doing my studies in paris with miller, precisely when we were all reading that, you know, the big old classic, otto kernberg, and this big topic of borderline pathological narcissism exploded and. miller, okay, i can just give you, so that we don't lose too much time, the, how should i call this... the party line, the elementary position. he convinced me, miler, in this, namely that borderline is effectively today's form of hysteria, that traditional hysteria is reaction to traditional master, today's master is no longer traditional authorities, expert science and so on. and that borderline, because miller made very nicely this point that, you know, this old joke, hysteria, historia, history. that there is a truth in it. in the sense that hysteria is historical. hysteria is... reaction to the predominant figure of the master. so when the model of domination changes? hysteria. even more than me. my good friend mladen dolar years ago developed this nicely, the topic as a critique of althusser of failed interpellation. of how, you know, louis althusser's classical theory of interpellation, ideology interpolates you, how you as what you are, father, mother, leader, worker, whatever. but... dard did this quite ingenious thing when he says that hysteria is the proof of a failed interpellation. hysteria is what? hysteria is matriarchal discourse are telling me i am woman mother. why am i... what you are saying. but i here agree with lacombe and freud. these are very precise points which work. where already freud says crucially that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies like jargon of hysteria. interesting. the questioning is displaced in hysteria. you are the question in obsessiveessional neurosis questions is addressed at the other and so on and so on. but again, so hysteria is not just which is why now we get the next point here. hysteria means i as a subject cannot ever identify myself as an object. and for lacon, hysteria is the very birth of subjectivity. and that even... fantasy, it is most fundamental. is. an answer to the hysterical question, in what sense? you know whom you should read? he betrayed la com. but still, i think he is not so bad. you know, jean laplanche, his idea of otherness, opaque, he has a very nice theory, where he says that, i simplified of course, that what's the situation of a small kid?
okay, i don't have time to go into this in detail. and i'm also, maybe, i mean, i laugh enough,. but i was, because i remember i was doing my studies in paris with miller, precisely when we were all reading that, you know, the big old classic, otto kernberg, and this big topic of borderline pathological narcissism exploded and. miller, okay, i can just give you, so that we don't lose too much time, the, how should i call this... the party line, the elementary position. he convinced me, miler, in this, namely that borderline is effectively today's form of hysteria, that traditional hysteria is reaction to traditional master, today's master is no longer traditional authorities, expert science and so on. and that borderline, because miller made very nicely this point that, you know, this old joke, hysteria, historia, history. that there is a truth in it. in the sense that hysteria is historical. hysteria is... reaction to the predominant figure of the master. so when the model of domination changes? hysteria. even more than me. my good friend mladen dolar years ago developed this nicely, the topic as a critique of althusser of failed interpellation. of how, you know, louis althusser's classical theory of interpellation, ideology interpolates you, how you as what you are, father, mother, leader, worker, whatever. but... dard did this quite ingenious thing when he says that hysteria is the proof of a failed interpellation. hysteria is what? hysteria is matriarchal discourse are telling me i am woman mother. why am i... what you are saying. but i here agree with lacombe and freud. these are very precise points which work. where already freud says crucially that obsessional neurosis is a subspecies like jargon of hysteria. interesting. the questioning is displaced in hysteria. you are the question in obsessiveessional neurosis questions is addressed at the other and so on and so on. but again, so hysteria is not just which is why now we get the next point here. hysteria means i as a subject cannot ever identify myself as an object. and for lacon, hysteria is the very birth of subjectivity. and that even... fantasy, it is most fundamental. is. an answer to the hysterical question, in what sense? you know whom you should read? he betrayed la com. but still, i think he is not so bad. you know, jean laplanche, his idea of otherness, opaque, he has a very nice theory, where he says that, i simplified of course, that what's the situation of a small kid?
Questioner
he.
he.
Slavoj Žižek
father. him mother, cuddles him, his brothers, sisters, play with him. she gets she dead. he is a kind of a libidinal focus of others. others expect, want something from him, but he doesn't know what. and. case boy, what do you want? d primordial es it were. impenetrability of the others. desire. and. the idea of laong is that. this is the virtue of subjectivity, which is why a very nice feminist conclusion for lacombe. against this standard traditional feminist theory, which says that modern subject is masculine and women are not for lacan, subjectivity is originally feminine. mail is already an objectified subject. for example, le miller told me this once, improvised that, you know, in descartes. you have this imperceptible che where things go wrong first, the card does this insight. coito ergo sum. i think that i am. it is purely eventful process. then descartes does something. il my. when he? translate this pure conceptual i think therefore i am. into re! co dance. com for la sexual difference, which is why, and i like this, would you agree or not, that for every good lakian and already for sh already has this summer. you know this usual idea of femininity women are like onion, you peel one mask. the other that is just void, nothing. but for maccon, this is it. nothing in the center is the subject. i mean, this is a sh put it in very wonderfully sh great guy between k fichte and gegel german ideal. she uh... you... for the properties of subject he uses his german word i think anti which means some man. means you escape- devoid of subject. cannot accept the vital subjectivity you have to identify with. this is me some firm earth. substance or whatever, whatever. you know what? life is cheat but we will go on with vika you know what i will do? what i always promised you but i promise i will give it to you. look, i'm cheating in what sense? obviously, the way we go, we will not be able to do all of the pr. but you know what i propose you. is there sam? gandhi. then got into traffic. okay? i hate what gandhi did with the untouchables, you know. she was for caste system, but in a typically fascist way. she just said we should recognize all of them. the untouchables also have their role to play. they are also children of god. this is the fascist solution. let's still have capitalist workers, but we should say to the workers, you are also an important organ. or whatever, so that everyone at his her proper place, you know. so again, okay, let's slide sorry yes, in this sense i am treating you respectfully. you are also son of god, say. this file that is to say image of all of them. this time, the last time i told you, i can promise you something and you don't have to read it. another reason for death penalty is to me, i say that, you know, when somebody gives you his book, okay, i gave people the right to do this. but then you know, a week later, oh professor, can you maybe have a chance to read this book? you know. so i will not be doing this, know but then what i promise you is that all the stuff that i was to deliver, because as always i treat it from my forthcoming books, i will email them boom the slaves so that they can simply, you will get all the stuff. and it's unpublished stuff. i will not know about all this. so okay, so in the afternoon we go on, you know but you work hard, we you also have in the...
father. him mother, cuddles him, his brothers, sisters, play with him. she gets she dead. he is a kind of a libidinal focus of others. others expect, want something from him, but he doesn't know what. and. case boy, what do you want? d primordial es it were. impenetrability of the others. desire. and. the idea of laong is that. this is the virtue of subjectivity, which is why a very nice feminist conclusion for lacombe. against this standard traditional feminist theory, which says that modern subject is masculine and women are not for lacan, subjectivity is originally feminine. mail is already an objectified subject. for example, le miller told me this once, improvised that, you know, in descartes. you have this imperceptible che where things go wrong first, the card does this insight. coito ergo sum. i think that i am. it is purely eventful process. then descartes does something. il my. when he? translate this pure conceptual i think therefore i am. into re! co dance. com for la sexual difference, which is why, and i like this, would you agree or not, that for every good lakian and already for sh already has this summer. you know this usual idea of femininity women are like onion, you peel one mask. the other that is just void, nothing. but for maccon, this is it. nothing in the center is the subject. i mean, this is a sh put it in very wonderfully sh great guy between k fichte and gegel german ideal. she uh... you... for the properties of subject he uses his german word i think anti which means some man. means you escape- devoid of subject. cannot accept the vital subjectivity you have to identify with. this is me some firm earth. substance or whatever, whatever. you know what? life is cheat but we will go on with vika you know what i will do? what i always promised you but i promise i will give it to you. look, i'm cheating in what sense? obviously, the way we go, we will not be able to do all of the pr. but you know what i propose you. is there sam? gandhi. then got into traffic. okay? i hate what gandhi did with the untouchables, you know. she was for caste system, but in a typically fascist way. she just said we should recognize all of them. the untouchables also have their role to play. they are also children of god. this is the fascist solution. let's still have capitalist workers, but we should say to the workers, you are also an important organ. or whatever, so that everyone at his her proper place, you know. so again, okay, let's slide sorry yes, in this sense i am treating you respectfully. you are also son of god, say. this file that is to say image of all of them. this time, the last time i told you, i can promise you something and you don't have to read it. another reason for death penalty is to me, i say that, you know, when somebody gives you his book, okay, i gave people the right to do this. but then you know, a week later, oh professor, can you maybe have a chance to read this book? you know. so i will not be doing this, know but then what i promise you is that all the stuff that i was to deliver, because as always i treat it from my forthcoming books, i will email them boom the slaves so that they can simply, you will get all the stuff. and it's unpublished stuff. i will not know about all this. so okay, so in the afternoon we go on, you know but you work hard, we you also have in the...