Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 6
Lecture · Justin Wagner ·
published 2018-11-28 · 1:39:14 · 13,186 words
the date above is when the video was uploaded, no recording date was found
ideologyphilosophy-generalhistorylanguagepsychoanalysiscinema-art-culturehegel-dialecticsreligion-theologyrevolution-violenceethics
Žižek analyzes the formal structure of Stalinist dialectics, arguing that its apparent horizontal subdivisions (e.g., Trotskyists, Mensheviks) function as a vertical, retroactive collapse where any deviation is objectively redefined as the enemy. He extends this logic to the Soviet categorization of 'sub-kulaks' and Gorgias’s philosophy, demonstrating how subjective political attitude overrides objective social reality. Finally, he connects this to Bentham’s theory of fictions and Kleist’s essay on the 'gradual formation of thought,' positing that language and speech inherently involve fictionalization and surprise, allowing us to speak about what we do not yet know. Žižek analyzes the Lacanian concept of the symptom, arguing that women are symptoms of men and men are women's fantasies, using Weininger and Tarkovsky as examples. He illustrates the retroactive production of meaning through Benjamin’s 'signs from the future' and a Hitchcock scene where Tchaikovsky’s music anticipates Schoenberg. Finally, he redefines the Real as the internal obstacle of one's own gaze, using trauma, Shostakovich, and Casablanca to show how the barrier to the object is part of the object itself. Žižek analyzes the famous 'three and a half seconds' in Casablanca to argue that ideology functions by offering a contradictory narrative: an innocent surface story that allows the spectator to maintain moral pretense, while simultaneously soliciting and legitimizing illicit, 'dirty' fantasies. He critiques Richard Maltby’s interpretation by arguing that the film addresses a single split subject rather than two different spectators, demonstrating how ideology requires both its explicit moral code and its transgressive 'ox content' to function. Žižek analyzes the ideological structure of Stalinist culture, arguing that the system did not merely demand propaganda but required a specific 'double-stick' distance where artists like Shostakovich and Prokofiev smuggled private despair into official works. He posits that the regime’s true goal was to produce cynical subjects who maintained an ironic distance from ideology, thereby preventing genuine political engagement. Drawing on Marx’s analysis of the post-1848 French ruling class, he argues that this ironic distance is not a subversion of ideology but its very condition of possibility, a logic mirrored in his readings of cinema, literature, and theology. Žižek analyzes Meister Eckhart’s mysticism as a proto-dialectical materialism, arguing that God’s self-alienation and dependence on human creation constitute the core of Christian revolutionary potential. He contrasts this with standard teleology, positing that God is 'helpless' without us and that our struggles determine the fate of the absolute. The excerpt concludes by linking this theological structure to the ethics of the Holocaust and Stalinism, framing the 'gap' in the universal as the site of radical responsibility.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 34
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “Stalinist dialectics”
Žižek’s reading of Stalin’s 'Dialectical and Historical Materialism' not as a genuine pluralism, but as a rigid structure where all subdivisions collapse back into a single binary opposition (us vs. enemy).
as “retroactive determination”
The process by which a later political decision (e.g., labeling someone an enemy) redefines their entire past history, making it clear they were always 'objectively' against the revolution.
A Stalinist category for a peasant who was economically poor but politically counter-revolutionary; it represents the point where objective social analysis breaks down and subjective political attitude directly inscribes itself into the objective order.
as “subjectivization of the objective”
The mechanism by which a purely political/ideological stance (e.g., 'counter-revolutionary attitude') becomes the defining feature of an objective social category, overriding economic facts.
Jeremy Bentham’s claim that 'fictitious entities' (like wealth or honesty) are necessary conditions for speaking about reality; without fictions, reality itself disappears from discourse.
The paradox that in order to speak consistently, one must include references to non-existent things or errors; speech always involves saying more than intended, revealing a 'knowing what you don't know' structure.
Lacan’s science-fiction metaphor for retroactive causality, where the effect precedes the cause, and the meaning of an event is determined by its future interpretation.
as “woman is a symptom of man”
A dialectical formula reversing traditional gender ontology, positing the woman not as a biological essence but as the man's symptom, while the man is the woman's fantasy.
as “autonomous symptom”
A symptom that acts not as a secondary error but as an autonomous agent (e.g., a woman asking 'whose symptom should I be?') that generates meaning through its failure or presence.
The idea that the failure of symbolization or the 'split' (Freud's Leistung) is not a lack but the generative moment that produces the new meaning or reality.
as “signs coming from the future”
Benjamin’s metaphor for avant-garde art that appears as undeveloped film shots, only acquiring their true meaning when retroactively decoded by a later epoch (like cinema).
The Lacanian Real is not an external object but the partial, obstructive nature of the subject's own gaze that prevents direct access to reality, making the obstacle part of the object.
The interpretation of Shostakovich as a dissident hiding behind official Soviet ideology, which Žižek critiques by arguing the 'dissident' doubt is constitutive of the 'Soviet' composer.
The process by which the meaning of prior events is determined by the ending, which Žižek argues is not actually how Casablanca was made.
A state where a text generates two mutually exclusive but distinct meanings (they did it/they didn't) that are both fully legible.
as “process paper”
A metaphor for the cinematic address that tells the spectator 'I know your dirty desires,' allowing them to enjoy illicit fantasies under the guise of moral innocence.
The transgressive, illicit, or 'dirty' content that ideology secretly relies upon and solicits, even as it publicly condemns it.
as “ideology needs both”
The thesis that ideology is not just the explicit message but requires its own transgressive underside (the 'ox content') to sustain itself.
The dual requirement of Stalinist ideology: public compliance with party lines combined with a private, ironic, or 'despairing' dimension that the system secretly desired to maintain a safe distance.
The paradox that the subject's critical distance or irony from ideology is not a negation of it, but the very mechanism that allows the ideology to function and include the subject.
The Hegelian concept where unintended consequences (like irony or failure) serve the actual realization of the rational order, here applied to how Stalinism utilized artists' cynicism.
as “ideology of cynicism”
The hypothesis that Stalinism aimed to produce cynical citizens who withdrew from public life, as sincere believers were seen as a greater threat to the regime.
as “unity of the opposites”
The dialectical structure of the Real, which is simultaneously the inaccessible transcendence and the internal distortion that prevents access to it.
as “obstacle as positive condition”
The idea that what appears to undermine or obstruct the content (e.g., cold form, ironic distance) is actually what makes the content possible or palatable.
The paradox that just as man has a center outside himself (in God), God has his center outside himself (in man); God abolishes his own eccentricity only through men.
as “God as stupid substance”
Žižek’s vulgarized reading of Eckhart: God is a 'subjectivized Spinoza' who does what is in his nature to do (love) and cannot help loving us; God is 'stupid' because he follows nature.
A Hegelian reading of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, where the supreme authority (God) embodies the conflict between order and anarchy, fighting himself to sustain the system.
as “God is helpless without us”
A revolutionary Christian attitude (citing Paul Claudel) where God depends on humans to reach himself; we give birth to God, and God is nothing outside man.
The idea that our alienation from God is actually God's own self-alienation; God loses us, meaning God is not 'up there' but is split within himself.
Eckhart’s distinction between God (the substance) and Godhead (the non-thing/abyss); the state of 'release' or withdrawal into nothingness from which the Holy Spirit is born.
The definition of God as the gap that separates the particular from itself; the universal is nothing but this internal split within humanity.
The ethical core of Eckhart’s insight: our struggles are not merely human but determine the fate of the universe/absolute; the universe hangs on our actions.
Žižek’s term for the 'more than human' dimension required to explain the horror of the Holocaust; not God, but the gap/non-coincidence within humanity itself.
Eckhart’s concept of virginity not as sexual abstinence but as the emptying of the soul of all empirical material; only by becoming 'nothing' can one give birth to God.
Stories he reaches for 5
When asked which deviation is worse, rightist or leftist, Stalin answers: 'They are both worse.' This implies the leftist deviation is objectively not leftist at all, but conservative/rightist.
“you know what his answer was. not they are both equally bad, but they are both worse.”
Freud's Leistungen (parapr slips) are not failures revealing a pre-existing deep meaning, but failures that retroactively produce meaning.
“you fail and then to account for the failure retroactively afterwards you produce meaning”
Bentham distinguishes real objects from fictitious entities (wealth, honesty). Žižek argues that to speak about reality consistently, one must use fictions; erasing fictions erases reality itself.
“if you erase fictions out of language, you lose reality itself. to talk consistently about reality, you need pictions.”
Von Trier used a cold, Dogme 95 style (handheld, blurred) to make a romantic, passionate story palatable; the 'obstacle' of the form is the positive condition for the content.
“this coldness of the form which distinguiates it... the obstacle is the positive is the positive condition here.”
The debate over whether Shostakovich was a true Soviet composer or a closet dissident; Žižek argues he was a true Soviet composer because of his private dissident doubts.
“to be truly a soviet composer. it was demanded... to do it through a certain distance”
Works invoked 19
Casablanca film
Used to illustrate Umberto Eco's theory of prosopopoeia and the fragmented nature of cinematic characters.
Goldfinger film
Cited in a joke about repetition ('once is a chance, twice is a coincidence... third time is enemy action') to mock its lack of evil.
G.K. Chesterton's novel, used to illustrate the concept of 'God fighting himself' and the unity of opposites in ideology.
Breaking the Waves film
A Lars von Trier film, used to illustrate the dialectical tension where cold form enables passionate content.
Solaris (film) film
Tarkovsky’s film, cited by Žižek as an example of 'spiritual cinema' that he finds shocking.
Stalin’s text used by Žižek to extract the formal structure of Stalinist political logic.
Theory of Fictions book
Bentham’s work, which Žižek argues is 'worth reading' for its unintended insight into the necessity of fictions for reality.
Torn Curtain film
Used as a 'neglected masterpiece' to illustrate the Lacanian gaze and the 'signs from the future' in music.
Harvest of Sorrow book
Robert Conquest’s history of Soviet collectivization, cited by Žižek for the definition of 'sub-kulak'.
Referenced for the Royal Albert Hall scene where Bernard Herrmann's music accompanies Doris Day's scream.
Shostakovich's symphony, cited in the debate over whether its bombastic finale is ironic self-denunciation of Stalinism.
Fifth Symphony other
Shostakovich's symphony, analyzed for its 'double-peak' structure and the audience's reception of its hidden sadness.
Gorgias play
Plato’s dialogue, analyzed by Žižek for its structure of division and its collapse into a single vertical line of meaning.
Used as the primary text for arguing that Christianity’s core is revolutionary: God’s self-alienation and dependence on human creation.
Morocco film
A film by Josef von Sternberg, used to illustrate the negotiation between explicit content and censorship.
Natasha's Dance book
Orlando Figes' book on Russian cultural history, quoted to describe Shostakovich's musical language.
Kleist’s essay, praised by Žižek as a 'wonderful text' that anticipates deconstruction by showing how speech surprises the speaker.
A John le Carré novel, cited for its 'dangerous propaganda' that allows for human complexity.
Shostakovich's symphony, cited alongside No. 5 regarding the 'triumphant bombastic finale' and dissident theory.
People invoked 43
Bernard Herrmann positive
Composer whose music in Torn Curtain (and Man Who Knew Too Much) is identified by Žižek as the 'Schoenbergian' sound hidden in Tchaikovsky.
Actor playing Rick, mentioned in the context of the film's production history.
Cited for Goldfinger, which Žižek mocks ('not evil enough for me') in a joke about repetition.
Character in Casablanca, referenced in the dialogue quote.
Umberto Eco positive
Cited for his note on Casablanca regarding Victor Laszlo's inconsistent drink orders.
Lars von Trier positive
Cited for his film Breaking the Waves, used to illustrate how 'cold form' enables 'passionate content'.
Evald Ilyenkov positive
A tragic Soviet philosopher who killed himself because he was a 'sincere communist' without ironic distance, making him a threat to the system.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for concepts like 'time being inverted' and 'woman is a symptom of man,' which Žižek uses to explain retroactive causality and the nature of symptoms.
Chris Marker positive
Referenced for his film on Medvedkin, a sincere pro-Stalinist filmmaker whose sincerity led to his downfall.
Stalinism positive
Used as an example of the 'ph logic' (paradoxical logic) where alienation from the state (Soviet artist) makes one a member of the state; the pain of struggle determines the fate of the absolute.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Author of The Man Who Was Thursday, used to illustrate the Hegelian concept of 'God fighting himself'.
Andrei Zhdanov positive
The Soviet cultural bureaucrat whose piano demonstration shows that the regime was not 'idiotic' but actively managed the 'double-stick' dynamic.
William Harrison Hays positive
The Hollywood censor whose insistence on codifying 'a good screwing match' illustrates the obscene subtext of official ideology.
John le Carré positive
Cited for introducing psychological complexity and 'honest communist' figures, which Žižek argues makes his propaganda more effective.
Daniel Dennett positive
Cited for his reading of Lincoln's speech as an example of retroactive meaning production.
Mentioned briefly as a modern example of a rhetorical slip (similar to Mirabeau’s) where the speaker contradicts themselves.
Heinrich von Kleist positive
Cited for his essay 'On the Gradual Formation of Thought,' which Žižek values for its insight into how speech surprises the speaker and generates originality through error.
Paul Claudel positive
A conservative poet whose statement 'God is helpless without us' is cited as the ultimate Christian revolutionary attitude.
Used as an example of a political figure whose history is retroactively redefined by Stalinist logic (from ally to objective enemy).
Benedictus de Spinoza positive
Eckhart is described as a 'subjectivized Spinoza' because God is the only substance and follows nature.
Robert Conquest positive
Cited as the source for the definition and historical context of the 'sub-kulak' category in 'Harvest of Sorrow.'
Actress playing Ilsa, mentioned in the context of the film's production history.
Mentioned as the leader of the Muslim group near whose house Žižek bought the Tchaikovsky CD in Chicago.
Sergei Prokofiev positive
Used to illustrate the failure of sincere compliance; his rejection of party-line music proves the system required a specific ironic distance.
Orlando Figes positive
Cited for his description of Shostakovich's 'double-peak' musical language, which Žižek uses to set up his counter-argument.
Character in Casablanca, referenced in the dialogue quote.
Jeremy Bentham positive
Žižek praises Bentham’s 'Theory of Fictions' as a 'tragic text' that correctly identifies the necessity of fictions for speaking about reality, contrary to Bentham’s own intent.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited alongside Lacan for the idea of 'symptoms as signs which come from the future,' an anti-Freudian reading.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Used as a primary example for the 'lacanian idea of gaze' and the 'symptomatic structure of reality' in Torn Curtain.
Alfred Rosenberg positive
Described as 'one of the most disgusting characters of 20th century' and 'Hitler's ideologist', yet Žižek claims he was 'right' about Eckhart's significance.
Richard Maltby positive
Cited as providing a 'wonderful analysis' of Casablanca, though Žižek disagrees with Maltby’s conclusion about the number of spectators.
Jürgen Habermas positive
Quoted for his insight that the Holocaust requires a 'divine dimension' (interpreted as the gap) to be fully understood, rather than just human evil.
Meister Eckhart positive
Viewed as a 'dialectical materialist' and the one who shattered the dualism between God and creatures; his mysticism is the source of modern subjectivity and revolutionary potential.
Otto Weininger positive
Cited as 'pure weininger in this worst sense' to illustrate the paradoxical ontology of gender and symptom.
Josef von Sternberg positive
Director whose memoirs are quoted to show that the 'obscene underside' was an intentional part of the Hollywood game.
Dmitri Shostakovich positive
Mentioned as the next topic of discussion regarding music and Hegel.
Andrei Tarkovsky negative
Criticized for 'spiritual cinema' like 'Solaris,' which Žižek finds shocking or misguided in its treatment of psychoanalytic concepts.
Joseph Stalin positive
Žižek uses Stalin’s political logic and writings as a primary example of a specific formal structure (retroactive determination) that he finds philosophically significant, despite its horrific political consequences.
Plato positive
Referenced for the method of division (genus/species) in the 'Gorgias,' which Žižek reinterprets through a Hegelian/Lacanian lens.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for his analysis of the post-1848 Conservative Republicans, whose ironic distance from republicanism objectively solidified the republican order.
Abraham Lincoln positive
Cited for his speech on fooling people, which Daniel Dennett uses to illustrate the openness of meaning.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for his concept of Leistungen (splits of the tongue) as productive failures that generate meaning.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Referenced as the source of Žižek's 'central hegelian ideological point' regarding retroactive structuring.
Transcript 17 turns
Slavoj Žižek
the underlying formal structure here is best of platonics. k. next. put the. existence. think. either don't exist or exist. if they exist. date. cannot be known or can be known. if they can be known, they cannot be communicated or they can be communicated. you got this's kind of genus is divided into two species the guardian position is here. nothing occurs. the problem being that in order to get from here to here, you have to admit the truth. of this. it... now... what has this to do with stalinism. my first claim ich. exactly the same structure. the same. gradual division of genus into species, the next species subdivided we find it in stalin at a general level and in his political practice and this is at its most formal elementary the formal structure of even stalinist political pur. it's stalin enumerated, you can get the text, but it's stupid to read on internet. the short text on dialectical and historical materialism, he enumerates there four features of marxist dialectics. h. contrary metaphysics is always the bad guy. contrary to metaphysics dialectic claims death. contr to metaphysics, which claim that reality is just a contingent agglomeration of things, dialectic claims that everything is connected. that reality built and organically collected holy. next feature according to stalin, contrary to metaphysics, which claims that reality is in a state of immobility, parmenidian immobility, dialectic claims that reality is in a continuous movement and change. next feature. contrary to dialectics. which reg... movement as a simple quantitative movement of things slowly develop, dialectics considers movement as qualitative movement jumps break. the last feature in contrast to dialectic. which thinks that... think just change. continually through peaceful evolution, dialectic things that think change in struggle. true. struggle of opposites and so on and so on. why? because now already you see my point, how we pass from here to here. stalin appears to distinguish four features as metaphysics, dialectic, butically but what is he really doing is a horizontal subdivision because think reality is composed either of totalality or agglomeration of individual objects this totality is either immobile or mobile if it's mobile, it develops in a peaceful gradual way or qualitative jumps if qualitative jumps and so on and so on. but the trick of stalin and i will develop what i'm aiming at, is that. he reached this. diagonal. division it. vertical division what do i mean? by this. first again nature is not a conglomerate of dispersed phenomena but a connected whole then this whole is not immobile but in constant movement and change then this change is not only gradual quantitative this thing but involves quantitative jumps, finally, this qualitative development. it's not a letter of harmonious deployment, but it is propelled by the struggle of opposite. the trick is here that we are not dealing only with platonic di. because the underlying premise is that this. diagonal process of division. is really vertical. that is to say that we are dealing with different aspects of one and the same division. to put it in stalinist jargon, an immobile hole is not really a hole, but just a conglomerate of elements. development, which does not involve qualitative jumps, is not really a development, but just an immobile stepping at the same place. a qualitative change which does not involve struggle of the opposite is not really a change at all, but just a quantitative monotonous all. movement or. now you will get my. point to put it in more ominous terms. let's say that you advocate this point. stalin's point would have been you may pretend that you endorse this, but really, objectively. you are for this and that's the political logic let us say class struggle. my god, this is a very mystical class. str. you are on the bourgeoisie or social democracy. let's say in social democracy you are just a christian socialist or a marxist. let's say as a marxist you are a. menshevik soy or a bolshevik? you see? this would be the normal platonic viesis, but the whole point of stalin is that. if you are a menshevik. you are objectively just a liberal. if you are liberal, you are objectively, you know that. or to put it in more political terms, put this first distinction stalin threw out trotskyists. then zinoviev and so on, but x. the last subdivision is retroactive. we have clash struggle, friend enemy. then we have first generation enemy, second generation enemy, but each of them collapses back and this is then the united front of the enemies, where he can say to be a trotskyite. it not just a subdivision among us bolsheviks. it means objectively to be a bolshevik revisionist. to be a menshevik revisionist doesn't mean to be just a liberal, unacceptable subdivision of progressive movement. it means objectively to be on the other side for the bourgeoisie and so on. so you get my point. although the division gets finer and finer, all the time it's treated as a horizontal division, where the tiniest distinction within our camp it's projected back as horizontally es. the great . it said. this, i think, is what accounts. four. two. very much. quips or almost slips of tongue of stalin to which i often refer. you know that when stalin answered the question, or mean 28. which deviation is worst? the rightist or the leftist one? you know what his answer was. not they are both equally bad, but they are both worse. the underlying premise was again that the leftist deviation is really objectively not leftist at all, but a conservative rightist one. or another even nicer example. when stalin wrote in a report on a party congress that the delegates p we. the majority of votes. unanimously approved. the resolution of the central committee. you got with the majority unanimously. the underlying premise is that there was really no minority. those who voted against thereby excluded themselves from the party. you know, you you don't get the political field. the enemy and us and us minority majority the moment you are a minority you fail back here, there is only you fall back there there is only one division that is to say, in all these cases, the universal genus repeatedly overlaps with or fully coincides with one of its species. this is how. this is what allows stalin to read history retroactively. so the thing. becam clear, retract. it was not the trotsky. as common sense would have told us, was first fighting for the revolution with lenin and stalin and then at a certain stage opted for a different strategy than the one advocated by stalin this last opposition, trotsky-stalin, makes it clear how objectively trotsky was against the revolution all the time. so then you get this wonderful paradox that basically troky saved the revolution through organizing great army in order to be able to betray it later or whatever. y now i will give you a knife. this is example of how this structure is subjectized. uh it will be a little bit of historical detail, but at please details follow it, because i think it's a wonderful example of politicization of discourse. you know that when there was the first collectivization from 201819333. stalinist ideology and political activists god always. in a kind of a classificatory deadlock. when they tried to... classify the enemy. what is the class structure of the peasants, farmers in the village? they want to crush the rich peasants kulaks resistance. so, to be marxist, to act like marxists, they divided peasants into three categories, classes, subclasses, whatever. the poor peasant they were defined objectively as those who have no land or minimal land to work for others. then they are of course the natural allies of the workers. the poor in the countryside our allies. then, the autonomous middle peasant. who oscillate between the exploited and the exploiters, they are so-so, we should a little bit pressure on them but get them on our side and then the rich peasants, so-called kulaks, employing other workers, lending them money or seeds and so on and so on. they are the exploiting class enemy, as stalin put it, they have to be liquidated as a class. it's incidentally,'s a wonderful ambiguous expression, liquidated as a class. because does this mean they have all to be liquidated or they should just be liquidated as a class while individuals can join us and everything of course, depended okay. however, the problem was that in practice, this classification became more and more blurred and inoperative. in the generalized poverty. clear criteria no longer applied. and other two categories. poor farmer's end. mid. and middle autonomous middle. farmers often rejoined kulaks in their resistance to forced collectivization. so, now comes the wonderful piece. oh in the early 30s. the stalinist discourse introduced a new category, very interesting one, that of a like, how do you call it soup les sharp culture, kulac. a peasant who although with regard to his economic situation was too poor to be considered a kulak proper nonetheless shared the kul's counter-revolutionary attitude. this mysterious category of ullak was thus. here i quote, i'm not afraid to quote the enemies if one can learn something from them, robert conquest, harvest of sorrow. quote. shkulak was a term without any real social content, even by stalinist standards. but merely rather unconvincingly masquerading as such. as was officially stated by kullak we mean the carrier of certain political tendencies which are most frequently discernible in the sub-kulak, male and female. by this means any pageant whatever was liable to dekulakization. and b, shkulak. not notion was widely employed enlarging the category of victims greatly beyond the official estimate of kulaks proper and so on and so on. so, no wonder that the official ideologies finally, renounced the very effort to provide an objective definition of kak. another quote. the grounds given in one soviet comment are that the old attitudes of the kulak have almost disappeared and the new ones do not let themselves to recognition. so the art of identifying a kulak was no longer a matter of objective social analysis. if you have so many cows or if you employ other workers, you are a kulak. it became a matter of a very complex hermeneics of suspicion, of identifying one true political attitude hidden beneath the he public proclamation. so that even in prda. they wrote this quote. even the best activists of the cannot spot the kak. what all this points towards is again, the dialectical mediation of the subjective and objective dimension. sub-kulak no longer designated an objective social category. you get my point? even if it was masked as that, we divide kulak into kulak proper and sub-kulak. effectively it designates the point at which objective social analysis breaks down and subjective political attitude directly inscribes itself into the objective order in the kian terms sub-kulak was the point of subjectivization of the objective chain. poor peasant, middle peasant, kulak. it was not an objective sub-category or subdivision of the class of kulaks. but simply the name for the kullac. kulak's subjective political attitude. this accounts for the paradox that although it appeared as a subdivision of the class of kulaks, shkulak. was a species which overflew its own genus. sub-kulaks all of a sudden were to be found anywhere. there were poor farmers who were sub-kulaks. there were middle farmers who were sub-kulaks. so you see the point. the point is precisely that. kullak. when it became blurred, everybody was poor, was starving, so who is a kulak? so they introduced another division, sub-kulak, which means even if you are not a kulak, you are all this at all levels. you can be everywhere. you know, from an objective category, it passes into almost like a joke. something which has to be detected, they are much, it can be everywhere. the point of, again, the point of... subjectivization. and to go even further, back to gorgias. i think one should read gorgias' argumentation in the same way. it may appear that gorgias proceeds in three consequent divisions. first, things exist or not. then, if they exist, they can be known or not. then, if they can be known, we can communicate this knowledge to others or not. however, the truth. of this gradual subdivision is again the... repetition of one and the same line of division. if we cannot communicate something to others, it means that we really do not know it ourselves. let's again play it. let's again, things exist, don't exist, exist. if they exist, we don't know them, we know them. if we know them, we... cannot communicate them we can communicate them, but the logic is the same. if we cannot communicate think it. because really we don't know them. what you really know you can communicate. if we don't know things, it means they don't exist. because what exists, we can know it. so it's the same collapse of. uh. diagonal into a vertical line of division. what... but what would have been here the hegelian or laian position? i claim the exact reversal. that is to say, it's not only that in order to say the truth, we need the detour through falsity or whatever. it step. we can only speak about things that don't exist. it's to turn it around. and i don't think this is a kind of a mysticism. my god, i will refer to your best english instinct. this is the whole point of the bentham's theory of fictions. that in order to consistently speak about something, you must minimally fictionalize it. that speak as such involves fictionalization. read bentham is worth reading. i don't know why verso doesn't want to reprint the book, which is long sold out of that selection that i published in my series of bentham's theories of fiction, because i think it's a very tragic text, bentham. first, he wants to do in the good analytic tradition to divide all categories into real works which designate really existing objects and fictitious entities like wealth, honesty, whatever. but then all of a sudden he's forced to admit that. although you can't distinguish between fictitious and real term. if you erase fictions out of language, you lose reality itself. to talk consistently about reality, you need pictions. and uh... even then even a step. so again, it's not only debt. we can speak about fictions, we can even go further. that. not only we can talk about things. first, okay, first it is that. oui. in order to know things and know means to articulate them rationally, we have to include things which doesn't exist. i mean, this is the whole point, for example, of plato's sophis. that. you can talk about non-existing things and we should go a step further here. no, to include reference to non-existence is a condition of human. and this would be amor la, please. in order to talk. you must also talk. talking always involves saying more than you intended, which means precisely talking about what you don't know. again, to return to donald rumsfeld, ontology. think you don't know that you know. so you got my point, what i wanted that for a properly dialectical approach. it's here that it's the truth. it's very un-stalinist, at least in this sense, is that no, it's on the contrary. to communicate or tout top ! you must- it goes like, it's almost the opposite. it's not you can talk about things. that you know. you can only ultimately in order to talk about things. you must include what you don't know. okay, to put it in more standard deconstructionist bombastic terms, talking always involves a certain autonomy of the medium. you say more than you wanted to say and so on and so on and so on. if you think i'm dreaming, then i... propose you and you can check it on the internet maybe i even already mentioned it a wonderful text, one of the miracles. of the epoch of german idealism, which although he was a critique of idealism, was nonetheless deeply indebted to it. you know, heinrich von kleist, the great guy, the best song stories. dramas and so on. she wrote it would be too much to analyze it in detail, i should. my friend kostas is teaching me this resist temptations to talk too much. because then if i talk too much, i maybe a little bit too much talk about what i don't know how from 1805. but first published 70 years later, you find the english translation on the internet, a wonderful text called about 15 pages. on the gradual formation of thought. in the process of speaking really, all this text, is's wonderful. i mean, you think that we invented things in the 20th century deconstruction. it's there. and why this text is so precious? because the link with german idealism is clear. the thesis is how you can say something original, even if you let yourself be surprised by your own work. when you know what you say it will be wonderful and she gives wonderful analysis. intimate and rhetorical from french revolution, the famous, i forgot reply of mirabeau, one of the big guys who replied to the king. it was he. gle. reconstruct the whole line killing out line by line, how? this guy got caught into a certain deadlock. first the guy wanted to reply to the king's en in a standard rhetorical way. then he made a slip and his rhetoric g. screwed up you know a sleep like my favorite you must know it. it really happened. i didn't know i thought first it's too good to be true it's invented. you know that famous george bush when he said the enemy is getting ready to fight us and we are also getting ready. the enemy wants to blah blah blah and then at the end he made the slip. the enemy is doing everything possible to hurt united states and so are we. you know this is the biggest rhetorical moment kle's idea is that after a mesh like that, you can see how this guy, sorry i forgot his name, had quickly to invent something to get out of this mesh. and that's how one of the most famous phrases of french revolution came up. so again, the idea is that of this... eh temporality, where? originality is not i know what i want to say and i try to express it, but i let myself be surprised by my very process of enunciation. here is a wonderful quote. four lines, don't be afraid, four gl. if, therefore, a thought is expressed in a fuzzy way, then it does not at all follow that this thought was conceived in a confused way. on the contrary, it is quite possible that the ideas that are expressed in the most confusing fashion are the ones that were thought out most clearly. and so on and so on. so, again, the idea is that creative ideas emerge when you started in a properly schgelian way. dialectical way through failure. you want to say something. think go wrong. then save your skin as it were. you quickly shift the field or reinterpret. failure that point it emerges in other words i won i was already doing a lot of this. now, when i was talking about this how necessity emerges out of contingency and so on. now i want to draw attention to another, maybe surprising for you aspect here. which is how this procedure involves. the notion of ch. der is... line that they both share. both being laccon and walter benjamin. this idea of symptoms as signs which come from the future. it's anti-yungian reading. the jungian reading being hinton's point towards some deep repressed, substantial unconscious. no for laconte. and he uses already in his first seminar on freud's technical writing. this science fiction metaphor of the the time being inverte so think you. so that you have a symptom, which is a symptom of something, but that of what is symptom comes afterwards. like the nice paradox, you first have a see, it... this is how i propose, i hope you will find this at least modestly amusing, to read lacant's well-known phrase, woman is a symptom of man. not only we men really exist, and then... although this thesis, as i already mentioned here, is very popular in today's spiritual cinema like i was shocked if you saw tarkovsky's solaris. my god, this is pure weininger in this worst sense that the idea is that the woman only exists as the materialization of chris, the hero's guilt. and the whole point is that the woman can only demonstrate her true love by literally burning herself with poison, erasing herself to set the man free. why do i like this example? because shows clearly the paradox of our intellectual predicament. if somebody were clearly to announce just to articulate the implicit sexual ontology of tarkovovsky's film solaris. one wouldn't even be denounced as a main chauvinist because but simply ridiculous. it's too crazy even for today's standards. but if he does it with all the spiritual russian partnersos, it's great art and so on. okay. but i think that the way we should stick to this lacom's formula, woman is a symptom of men. but i think this is a wonderful formula to see symptom not as this secondary sound, but the notion which is, i think, a wonderful dialectical notion of an autonomous symptom, like a woman is for me some mary being who says, i am a symptom. would you like to be? will you accept me as your symptom, you know, a symptom freely floating around, who would be? whose symptom should i be and so on. this is i think. and the man is then the idiot, you know. it's not that the man can pick her up. no, i don't want to be your symptom. fuck off and so on, you know. and what is then the man? i think that the other side, like doesn't develop it, it's clear. if woman is a symptom of man, man is woman's fantasy. that's, i think, how, for example, one has to read lacconte's thesis that don giovanni, don juan, is. feminine fantasy. she can always do it, permanent erection, whatever, it's woman's fantasy. okay, but... so what's the idea here? okay, the idea is that part of this strange temporality where the put it the progress of language is not that the underlying deep idea pre-ex the process, but it emerges through a sleep, a failure. you do it. there is a symptomatic failure you face. but this symptomatic failure does not mean that. and this is, i think, how one should properly read freud's. diese fhleistungen, splits or splits of tongue. it's not that the deep meaning is already there, it's rather that you fail and then to account for the failure retroactively afterwards you produce meaning. and i think. i couldn't resist showing you this. i think that there... the same goes also for art. where is here the connection with benjamin? you know that benjamin writes apos. of art, how often some artistic products appear as symptoms. he doesn't use the term, but he says signs coming from the future. he uses this photographic metaphor that it's as if we get film shots but to be do not yet possess the developers to properly develop the image. that sometimes avant-garde work of art are like film film shots which we have to wait for a later epoch. por example. one of the ideas would have been that a lot of painting or photography around the turn of the century. reach like a kind of a running trying to imitate in advance cinematic movement as if cinema was not yet invented but they tried to imitate it. they can only properly be read once we know cinema. and also for example if you like it i don't it's too childish,'s too innocent he's not evil enough for me but for example it's here very popular joan miró, the spanish painter, it's clear that his later paintings, all those they are already there as elements. in his early work. so this is the proper dialectical progress. how something which was part of an organic whole gets autonomized. okay, what's my point here now? now comes the surprise. now please. can you, the bright technicians, enter and raise this, now comes the extremely complicated gesture. why let's see if it works. this goes up. oh yeah, the other one goes down, yeah. i want to show you a shield from. one of hip-hop's neglected masterpieces. it's really a bad feeling. did you see hitchcock's torn curtain? it's almost as bad as topaz, which is really.. yeah i it it's towards the end of the film when the couple of julie andrews and paul newman, they found themselves in an east berlin. theater the stasi, communist police, tries to arrest them and they they are witnessing a ballet performance of thechaikovsky, francesca da rimini ballet. the reason i wanted to show you this one was because of music because i think there is even in this way, it's very private reason that i'm going to show you. okay, for two reasons. the less important reason is... that you will see this very lacian idea of gaze as the fixated moment in the image because the ballerina who is a bad communist ballerina we learn at the beginning of the film, the ballerina observes them in the hall while she's dancing, and you will see how in an almost ridiculously exaggerated way, it's her fixed gaze that signals that the ballerina calls the policeman, yes. back listen attentively to the music. because can you wait for one second before you pray? yeah sorry. there is sound my, really. now it's a matter for, you know, this is the third time it happens and i will tell you something. when i was young, i read ian fleming's goldfinger and then at the beginning you have a deep so, we repeat. once is a chance, twice is a coincidence. the first time is an enemy action, if we talk about stalinism and so on no, okay, let's hope the dish will work. because what shocked me so much is that i am an adonian, tchaikovsky, you cannot get lower and so on. but in the middle of this typical tchaikovskyian romantic music, you get a couple of just a short melodic line. which my god sounds it's pure 20th century bernard herrmann. when i first saw this, i didn't know it's tchaikovsky. i thought, my god, this is bernard herrmann, that is the same as in, you remember in the man who knew too much, second version where the royal albert hall performance when doris day screams, it is his music, okay, it's more complex,, but i thought, and then i discovered it's. check off. then i when, of course. bo. a cd with francesca dar and i discovered, at least from our sensitivity. sticks out so clearly. it's as if we get even in tchaikovsky, how should i call it, signal from future,? a totally different tone of music which tschaikovsky wasn't aware, but today with us we can see what it is. so i wanted to. show you this two. thisfor for this reason, this short. this short clip. again, this musical wonder. i think that if you know a little bit hitchcock's film, this typical tonality of schoenbergian and so on of the music by bernard herrmann you will immediately say but what's happening here but this is not tchaikovsky i couldn't have believed it and i didn't want to test the faith too much because my original goal was to play to youth first as an orchestral clip fragment this music why i couldn't resist the temptation because i bought of all places in a small store cd store in a black part of chicago, very close to the house of that muslim leader louis farrakhan. i bought, it's unbelievable. he. among others is tchaikovsky music. you will see it now. okay, bit of music is ridiculous of oh, you're sure. it's a little bit ridiculous even. it's the big gauge, blah blah blah, but the core point is music. i mean okay, maybe it works even better with. now she informs, americ spion or whatever. but my god what's going on here? the whole point is music. so again, you have all this, you know, it's like kind of a... primitive lianism of hitchcock almost too direct. the music did work. the sound okay, you know what i propose? i mean that i go on simply and then afterwards when they do it we return to that okay it's the idea here of this symptomatic structure of reality and language. it again, we are back at that idea of, let's call it ontological openness. that there is a finess inscribed into language. like let me. give you another example of what i'm aiming at with this symptomal structure that you have first a symptom and then you reconstruct a music. you know that famous lincoln, the american president, lincoln's speech, you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. well, daniel dennett was not the first to draw attention to the fact that it's absolutely not clear what is meant here. because it can be read in two opposed ways. it can mean that there are what does it mean? you can pull out and some people all the time. does it mean that? there are always there are some people who can be fooled all the time, like i cannot fool you all all the time you. but that is. okay, me. but there is somebody who is stupid enough who can be fooled all the time. or does it mean at any moment there is at least one idiot who can be fooled, but it's not always the same. and you know det provides, i think, a nice reading of this. he part this wrong to ask what beat? lincoln really mean he just got idea oh this sounds nice. you know, it's opening reality itself. we complete it today. the way we want. it's open the meaning is open in reality itself. so. this is the structure that you produce something which is in itself open and again, retroactively, you can fix it in any way you want. death books have been the elementary, how's i call it. structure. of the real in land because this cat this element, which is at the same point an obstacle. and. the generative moment. obstacle. the failure is productive. you have to get lost in order to generate the new. this would be the to use this bastic term, the dialectical moment of earth. the the unity of the opposites. so in other words, let's! let me just return to a brief point about the real here. you the latian real is definitely not. here we see how the real implies the structure of the unity of the opposites. the real is not something out there which forever eludes us. we cannot grasp it, it's too strong, whatever. we forever fail. every symbolization fails. it's like that which you try to grasp it... el your gr. the real ich the thing. you cannot get never a direct access. it's also the opposite itself. what? prevents you from getting the access to reality that let's say. the booty. the blank spot is the blank. shot in your eye. what disturbs clear image of reality. it's against the real. so you get the point. that. the obstacle in you which prevents you to see the way things are. think in themselves. they are the same. that what out there avoids you? it's here what prevents you to get. it that the real is not out there avoiding you is. the real is your gaze itself. to cut a long story short, the partial character of your gaze itself. this can be done in a very nice way. precisely apro propos. if this is not clear, let me give you a simple example, trauma. ah, okay uh. can i enter now, please? because i know where to jump. but's stay here, please,. because now... but it's gone. yes. once, more, once,. usual here. here you can see how it gets recuperated. stand romantic. thank. did find. okay. take okay, it was a little bit naive, but if you know hitchcock's films, i hope you got to the point, how strange it sounded. and again, i couldn't have believed it. i was absolutely sure this... can be only boris godunov. no, it is tchaikovsky. but let me return to it. let's take a trauma. you had a traumatic experience. something terrible happened to you. you were witnessing a torture or you were tortured or whatever. okay, because i need some a bit of time. okay, thanks very much. so. on the one hand, of course, you cannot confront the trauma directly. so it's... d. inaccessible transcendence. like you avoid the place, you cannot represent it, you can only detect it through place, signs and so on. it's too much for you to confront the scene directly. but isn't it at the same time? death week. in you not out there colors and distort all your other perceptions like i look at this somehow it reminds me of the trauma, it's twisted and so on. so you see it's at the same time not enough and too much. not enough in the sense out there avoids you, you cannot confront it directly. but at the same time it's all the time here giving this particular grief distorting your percentage so i think that this unity is absolutely crucial for the lian real. it's. in the same time that which is always distorting your that which can only be represented in a distorted way. but at the same time, that which distorts your perception. that. b. that's very odd. in other words, we have already here a nice speculative formula which is the central kegelian formula namely that the very get that. separates you from the object. the very get. between you and let's say divine object in christianity. if what includes you into it is part of the object. it says. of the thing itself. what do i mean by it? no, i already approached it. the last time, but i won't now to. to give you a couple of examples which i hope you will like a little bit. uh again, sorry for having to suffer a little bit of sovietology the last time. i always am following with... with true. fashion. this debate, i don't know if you like classical music about shostakovich but also prokofiev, namely the problem is, how are we to read shostakovich? popular works, 15.7 and so on. was he a truly pro-soviet composer or was it that privately? she mock. the content. so the idea is then that if we have this triumphant bombastic finale of the fifth symphony of the seventh leningrad symphony, that it's wrong for us to say, that it's banal, bombastic. it's meant to be like that. it's meant to be an ironic self-denunciation of stalinism. so we arrive in this way atovich. theory that i mean of that stovich was a closest dissident who was apparently following the party line but at the same time reserving a private space for his disairs and so on and so on so again the problem the problem being, what was the real shostakovich here? was he? the big official composer. with maybe some doubts or was he a closet dissident. my solution is here a very simple and radical. one. she was a true soviet composer, but not in spite of these private dissident doubts, but because of them. that is to say, to be truly a soviet composer. it was demanded. 2, not simply. directly state. soviet ideology but to do it in this toic to do it through a certain distance. in other words what we have to do is to read shostakovich. h ich like. casablanca. now comes casablanca. maybe you know the example, but nonetheless, again, i cannot resist the temptation of interpreting this wonderful fragment again and then sorry, making the point. let's now cope with sincere humility that it will go. it's the scene, of course, the night. where's the coming of the second i'm sorry, but this will last a minute or two because it it's 29. we have to come to 29 and there is no way here to jump direct. incidentally and. i could like. you will not find a treasure. i'm just carrying that yet. you good luck. how lady luck treating you? my wife. yes. y. okay, here we are. incidentally, this is the scene, you know, when she ingrid bergman comes to humphrey bogart to ask him to give her provide the visas for her and her heroic husband, victor laszlo. this morning but this is a little ahead of. well won't you sit down? why we come to the point to the short that i want to show you? connected by any chance umberto eco has a wonderful note on casablanca where he points out a strange detail that victor laszlo, the heroic husband, who is supposed to be this ascetic sacrifice, plays a very strange feature. almost in every scene whenever he is in a locale ordering a drink, he orders a different drink a very exotic one like a pernod, this kind of martini, that one and mart we each other. echo's theory is wonderful that we shouldn't treat this as a psychological sign that there is some deeper decadent but it's simply that it's prosopopoeia, they are not real persons. they were simply putting together fragments for different scenes that it's not psychological unity.. there so much stake you enjoy.
the underlying formal structure here is best of platonics. k. next. put the. existence. think. either don't exist or exist. if they exist. date. cannot be known or can be known. if they can be known, they cannot be communicated or they can be communicated. you got this's kind of genus is divided into two species the guardian position is here. nothing occurs. the problem being that in order to get from here to here, you have to admit the truth. of this. it... now... what has this to do with stalinism. my first claim ich. exactly the same structure. the same. gradual division of genus into species, the next species subdivided we find it in stalin at a general level and in his political practice and this is at its most formal elementary the formal structure of even stalinist political pur. it's stalin enumerated, you can get the text, but it's stupid to read on internet. the short text on dialectical and historical materialism, he enumerates there four features of marxist dialectics. h. contrary metaphysics is always the bad guy. contrary to metaphysics dialectic claims death. contr to metaphysics, which claim that reality is just a contingent agglomeration of things, dialectic claims that everything is connected. that reality built and organically collected holy. next feature according to stalin, contrary to metaphysics, which claims that reality is in a state of immobility, parmenidian immobility, dialectic claims that reality is in a continuous movement and change. next feature. contrary to dialectics. which reg... movement as a simple quantitative movement of things slowly develop, dialectics considers movement as qualitative movement jumps break. the last feature in contrast to dialectic. which thinks that... think just change. continually through peaceful evolution, dialectic things that think change in struggle. true. struggle of opposites and so on and so on. why? because now already you see my point, how we pass from here to here. stalin appears to distinguish four features as metaphysics, dialectic, butically but what is he really doing is a horizontal subdivision because think reality is composed either of totalality or agglomeration of individual objects this totality is either immobile or mobile if it's mobile, it develops in a peaceful gradual way or qualitative jumps if qualitative jumps and so on and so on. but the trick of stalin and i will develop what i'm aiming at, is that. he reached this. diagonal. division it. vertical division what do i mean? by this. first again nature is not a conglomerate of dispersed phenomena but a connected whole then this whole is not immobile but in constant movement and change then this change is not only gradual quantitative this thing but involves quantitative jumps, finally, this qualitative development. it's not a letter of harmonious deployment, but it is propelled by the struggle of opposite. the trick is here that we are not dealing only with platonic di. because the underlying premise is that this. diagonal process of division. is really vertical. that is to say that we are dealing with different aspects of one and the same division. to put it in stalinist jargon, an immobile hole is not really a hole, but just a conglomerate of elements. development, which does not involve qualitative jumps, is not really a development, but just an immobile stepping at the same place. a qualitative change which does not involve struggle of the opposite is not really a change at all, but just a quantitative monotonous all. movement or. now you will get my. point to put it in more ominous terms. let's say that you advocate this point. stalin's point would have been you may pretend that you endorse this, but really, objectively. you are for this and that's the political logic let us say class struggle. my god, this is a very mystical class. str. you are on the bourgeoisie or social democracy. let's say in social democracy you are just a christian socialist or a marxist. let's say as a marxist you are a. menshevik soy or a bolshevik? you see? this would be the normal platonic viesis, but the whole point of stalin is that. if you are a menshevik. you are objectively just a liberal. if you are liberal, you are objectively, you know that. or to put it in more political terms, put this first distinction stalin threw out trotskyists. then zinoviev and so on, but x. the last subdivision is retroactive. we have clash struggle, friend enemy. then we have first generation enemy, second generation enemy, but each of them collapses back and this is then the united front of the enemies, where he can say to be a trotskyite. it not just a subdivision among us bolsheviks. it means objectively to be a bolshevik revisionist. to be a menshevik revisionist doesn't mean to be just a liberal, unacceptable subdivision of progressive movement. it means objectively to be on the other side for the bourgeoisie and so on. so you get my point. although the division gets finer and finer, all the time it's treated as a horizontal division, where the tiniest distinction within our camp it's projected back as horizontally es. the great . it said. this, i think, is what accounts. four. two. very much. quips or almost slips of tongue of stalin to which i often refer. you know that when stalin answered the question, or mean 28. which deviation is worst? the rightist or the leftist one? you know what his answer was. not they are both equally bad, but they are both worse. the underlying premise was again that the leftist deviation is really objectively not leftist at all, but a conservative rightist one. or another even nicer example. when stalin wrote in a report on a party congress that the delegates p we. the majority of votes. unanimously approved. the resolution of the central committee. you got with the majority unanimously. the underlying premise is that there was really no minority. those who voted against thereby excluded themselves from the party. you know, you you don't get the political field. the enemy and us and us minority majority the moment you are a minority you fail back here, there is only you fall back there there is only one division that is to say, in all these cases, the universal genus repeatedly overlaps with or fully coincides with one of its species. this is how. this is what allows stalin to read history retroactively. so the thing. becam clear, retract. it was not the trotsky. as common sense would have told us, was first fighting for the revolution with lenin and stalin and then at a certain stage opted for a different strategy than the one advocated by stalin this last opposition, trotsky-stalin, makes it clear how objectively trotsky was against the revolution all the time. so then you get this wonderful paradox that basically troky saved the revolution through organizing great army in order to be able to betray it later or whatever. y now i will give you a knife. this is example of how this structure is subjectized. uh it will be a little bit of historical detail, but at please details follow it, because i think it's a wonderful example of politicization of discourse. you know that when there was the first collectivization from 201819333. stalinist ideology and political activists god always. in a kind of a classificatory deadlock. when they tried to... classify the enemy. what is the class structure of the peasants, farmers in the village? they want to crush the rich peasants kulaks resistance. so, to be marxist, to act like marxists, they divided peasants into three categories, classes, subclasses, whatever. the poor peasant they were defined objectively as those who have no land or minimal land to work for others. then they are of course the natural allies of the workers. the poor in the countryside our allies. then, the autonomous middle peasant. who oscillate between the exploited and the exploiters, they are so-so, we should a little bit pressure on them but get them on our side and then the rich peasants, so-called kulaks, employing other workers, lending them money or seeds and so on and so on. they are the exploiting class enemy, as stalin put it, they have to be liquidated as a class. it's incidentally,'s a wonderful ambiguous expression, liquidated as a class. because does this mean they have all to be liquidated or they should just be liquidated as a class while individuals can join us and everything of course, depended okay. however, the problem was that in practice, this classification became more and more blurred and inoperative. in the generalized poverty. clear criteria no longer applied. and other two categories. poor farmer's end. mid. and middle autonomous middle. farmers often rejoined kulaks in their resistance to forced collectivization. so, now comes the wonderful piece. oh in the early 30s. the stalinist discourse introduced a new category, very interesting one, that of a like, how do you call it soup les sharp culture, kulac. a peasant who although with regard to his economic situation was too poor to be considered a kulak proper nonetheless shared the kul's counter-revolutionary attitude. this mysterious category of ullak was thus. here i quote, i'm not afraid to quote the enemies if one can learn something from them, robert conquest, harvest of sorrow. quote. shkulak was a term without any real social content, even by stalinist standards. but merely rather unconvincingly masquerading as such. as was officially stated by kullak we mean the carrier of certain political tendencies which are most frequently discernible in the sub-kulak, male and female. by this means any pageant whatever was liable to dekulakization. and b, shkulak. not notion was widely employed enlarging the category of victims greatly beyond the official estimate of kulaks proper and so on and so on. so, no wonder that the official ideologies finally, renounced the very effort to provide an objective definition of kak. another quote. the grounds given in one soviet comment are that the old attitudes of the kulak have almost disappeared and the new ones do not let themselves to recognition. so the art of identifying a kulak was no longer a matter of objective social analysis. if you have so many cows or if you employ other workers, you are a kulak. it became a matter of a very complex hermeneics of suspicion, of identifying one true political attitude hidden beneath the he public proclamation. so that even in prda. they wrote this quote. even the best activists of the cannot spot the kak. what all this points towards is again, the dialectical mediation of the subjective and objective dimension. sub-kulak no longer designated an objective social category. you get my point? even if it was masked as that, we divide kulak into kulak proper and sub-kulak. effectively it designates the point at which objective social analysis breaks down and subjective political attitude directly inscribes itself into the objective order in the kian terms sub-kulak was the point of subjectivization of the objective chain. poor peasant, middle peasant, kulak. it was not an objective sub-category or subdivision of the class of kulaks. but simply the name for the kullac. kulak's subjective political attitude. this accounts for the paradox that although it appeared as a subdivision of the class of kulaks, shkulak. was a species which overflew its own genus. sub-kulaks all of a sudden were to be found anywhere. there were poor farmers who were sub-kulaks. there were middle farmers who were sub-kulaks. so you see the point. the point is precisely that. kullak. when it became blurred, everybody was poor, was starving, so who is a kulak? so they introduced another division, sub-kulak, which means even if you are not a kulak, you are all this at all levels. you can be everywhere. you know, from an objective category, it passes into almost like a joke. something which has to be detected, they are much, it can be everywhere. the point of, again, the point of... subjectivization. and to go even further, back to gorgias. i think one should read gorgias' argumentation in the same way. it may appear that gorgias proceeds in three consequent divisions. first, things exist or not. then, if they exist, they can be known or not. then, if they can be known, we can communicate this knowledge to others or not. however, the truth. of this gradual subdivision is again the... repetition of one and the same line of division. if we cannot communicate something to others, it means that we really do not know it ourselves. let's again play it. let's again, things exist, don't exist, exist. if they exist, we don't know them, we know them. if we know them, we... cannot communicate them we can communicate them, but the logic is the same. if we cannot communicate think it. because really we don't know them. what you really know you can communicate. if we don't know things, it means they don't exist. because what exists, we can know it. so it's the same collapse of. uh. diagonal into a vertical line of division. what... but what would have been here the hegelian or laian position? i claim the exact reversal. that is to say, it's not only that in order to say the truth, we need the detour through falsity or whatever. it step. we can only speak about things that don't exist. it's to turn it around. and i don't think this is a kind of a mysticism. my god, i will refer to your best english instinct. this is the whole point of the bentham's theory of fictions. that in order to consistently speak about something, you must minimally fictionalize it. that speak as such involves fictionalization. read bentham is worth reading. i don't know why verso doesn't want to reprint the book, which is long sold out of that selection that i published in my series of bentham's theories of fiction, because i think it's a very tragic text, bentham. first, he wants to do in the good analytic tradition to divide all categories into real works which designate really existing objects and fictitious entities like wealth, honesty, whatever. but then all of a sudden he's forced to admit that. although you can't distinguish between fictitious and real term. if you erase fictions out of language, you lose reality itself. to talk consistently about reality, you need pictions. and uh... even then even a step. so again, it's not only debt. we can speak about fictions, we can even go further. that. not only we can talk about things. first, okay, first it is that. oui. in order to know things and know means to articulate them rationally, we have to include things which doesn't exist. i mean, this is the whole point, for example, of plato's sophis. that. you can talk about non-existing things and we should go a step further here. no, to include reference to non-existence is a condition of human. and this would be amor la, please. in order to talk. you must also talk. talking always involves saying more than you intended, which means precisely talking about what you don't know. again, to return to donald rumsfeld, ontology. think you don't know that you know. so you got my point, what i wanted that for a properly dialectical approach. it's here that it's the truth. it's very un-stalinist, at least in this sense, is that no, it's on the contrary. to communicate or tout top ! you must- it goes like, it's almost the opposite. it's not you can talk about things. that you know. you can only ultimately in order to talk about things. you must include what you don't know. okay, to put it in more standard deconstructionist bombastic terms, talking always involves a certain autonomy of the medium. you say more than you wanted to say and so on and so on and so on. if you think i'm dreaming, then i... propose you and you can check it on the internet maybe i even already mentioned it a wonderful text, one of the miracles. of the epoch of german idealism, which although he was a critique of idealism, was nonetheless deeply indebted to it. you know, heinrich von kleist, the great guy, the best song stories. dramas and so on. she wrote it would be too much to analyze it in detail, i should. my friend kostas is teaching me this resist temptations to talk too much. because then if i talk too much, i maybe a little bit too much talk about what i don't know how from 1805. but first published 70 years later, you find the english translation on the internet, a wonderful text called about 15 pages. on the gradual formation of thought. in the process of speaking really, all this text, is's wonderful. i mean, you think that we invented things in the 20th century deconstruction. it's there. and why this text is so precious? because the link with german idealism is clear. the thesis is how you can say something original, even if you let yourself be surprised by your own work. when you know what you say it will be wonderful and she gives wonderful analysis. intimate and rhetorical from french revolution, the famous, i forgot reply of mirabeau, one of the big guys who replied to the king. it was he. gle. reconstruct the whole line killing out line by line, how? this guy got caught into a certain deadlock. first the guy wanted to reply to the king's en in a standard rhetorical way. then he made a slip and his rhetoric g. screwed up you know a sleep like my favorite you must know it. it really happened. i didn't know i thought first it's too good to be true it's invented. you know that famous george bush when he said the enemy is getting ready to fight us and we are also getting ready. the enemy wants to blah blah blah and then at the end he made the slip. the enemy is doing everything possible to hurt united states and so are we. you know this is the biggest rhetorical moment kle's idea is that after a mesh like that, you can see how this guy, sorry i forgot his name, had quickly to invent something to get out of this mesh. and that's how one of the most famous phrases of french revolution came up. so again, the idea is that of this... eh temporality, where? originality is not i know what i want to say and i try to express it, but i let myself be surprised by my very process of enunciation. here is a wonderful quote. four lines, don't be afraid, four gl. if, therefore, a thought is expressed in a fuzzy way, then it does not at all follow that this thought was conceived in a confused way. on the contrary, it is quite possible that the ideas that are expressed in the most confusing fashion are the ones that were thought out most clearly. and so on and so on. so, again, the idea is that creative ideas emerge when you started in a properly schgelian way. dialectical way through failure. you want to say something. think go wrong. then save your skin as it were. you quickly shift the field or reinterpret. failure that point it emerges in other words i won i was already doing a lot of this. now, when i was talking about this how necessity emerges out of contingency and so on. now i want to draw attention to another, maybe surprising for you aspect here. which is how this procedure involves. the notion of ch. der is... line that they both share. both being laccon and walter benjamin. this idea of symptoms as signs which come from the future. it's anti-yungian reading. the jungian reading being hinton's point towards some deep repressed, substantial unconscious. no for laconte. and he uses already in his first seminar on freud's technical writing. this science fiction metaphor of the the time being inverte so think you. so that you have a symptom, which is a symptom of something, but that of what is symptom comes afterwards. like the nice paradox, you first have a see, it... this is how i propose, i hope you will find this at least modestly amusing, to read lacant's well-known phrase, woman is a symptom of man. not only we men really exist, and then... although this thesis, as i already mentioned here, is very popular in today's spiritual cinema like i was shocked if you saw tarkovsky's solaris. my god, this is pure weininger in this worst sense that the idea is that the woman only exists as the materialization of chris, the hero's guilt. and the whole point is that the woman can only demonstrate her true love by literally burning herself with poison, erasing herself to set the man free. why do i like this example? because shows clearly the paradox of our intellectual predicament. if somebody were clearly to announce just to articulate the implicit sexual ontology of tarkovovsky's film solaris. one wouldn't even be denounced as a main chauvinist because but simply ridiculous. it's too crazy even for today's standards. but if he does it with all the spiritual russian partnersos, it's great art and so on. okay. but i think that the way we should stick to this lacom's formula, woman is a symptom of men. but i think this is a wonderful formula to see symptom not as this secondary sound, but the notion which is, i think, a wonderful dialectical notion of an autonomous symptom, like a woman is for me some mary being who says, i am a symptom. would you like to be? will you accept me as your symptom, you know, a symptom freely floating around, who would be? whose symptom should i be and so on. this is i think. and the man is then the idiot, you know. it's not that the man can pick her up. no, i don't want to be your symptom. fuck off and so on, you know. and what is then the man? i think that the other side, like doesn't develop it, it's clear. if woman is a symptom of man, man is woman's fantasy. that's, i think, how, for example, one has to read lacconte's thesis that don giovanni, don juan, is. feminine fantasy. she can always do it, permanent erection, whatever, it's woman's fantasy. okay, but... so what's the idea here? okay, the idea is that part of this strange temporality where the put it the progress of language is not that the underlying deep idea pre-ex the process, but it emerges through a sleep, a failure. you do it. there is a symptomatic failure you face. but this symptomatic failure does not mean that. and this is, i think, how one should properly read freud's. diese fhleistungen, splits or splits of tongue. it's not that the deep meaning is already there, it's rather that you fail and then to account for the failure retroactively afterwards you produce meaning. and i think. i couldn't resist showing you this. i think that there... the same goes also for art. where is here the connection with benjamin? you know that benjamin writes apos. of art, how often some artistic products appear as symptoms. he doesn't use the term, but he says signs coming from the future. he uses this photographic metaphor that it's as if we get film shots but to be do not yet possess the developers to properly develop the image. that sometimes avant-garde work of art are like film film shots which we have to wait for a later epoch. por example. one of the ideas would have been that a lot of painting or photography around the turn of the century. reach like a kind of a running trying to imitate in advance cinematic movement as if cinema was not yet invented but they tried to imitate it. they can only properly be read once we know cinema. and also for example if you like it i don't it's too childish,'s too innocent he's not evil enough for me but for example it's here very popular joan miró, the spanish painter, it's clear that his later paintings, all those they are already there as elements. in his early work. so this is the proper dialectical progress. how something which was part of an organic whole gets autonomized. okay, what's my point here now? now comes the surprise. now please. can you, the bright technicians, enter and raise this, now comes the extremely complicated gesture. why let's see if it works. this goes up. oh yeah, the other one goes down, yeah. i want to show you a shield from. one of hip-hop's neglected masterpieces. it's really a bad feeling. did you see hitchcock's torn curtain? it's almost as bad as topaz, which is really.. yeah i it it's towards the end of the film when the couple of julie andrews and paul newman, they found themselves in an east berlin. theater the stasi, communist police, tries to arrest them and they they are witnessing a ballet performance of thechaikovsky, francesca da rimini ballet. the reason i wanted to show you this one was because of music because i think there is even in this way, it's very private reason that i'm going to show you. okay, for two reasons. the less important reason is... that you will see this very lacian idea of gaze as the fixated moment in the image because the ballerina who is a bad communist ballerina we learn at the beginning of the film, the ballerina observes them in the hall while she's dancing, and you will see how in an almost ridiculously exaggerated way, it's her fixed gaze that signals that the ballerina calls the policeman, yes. back listen attentively to the music. because can you wait for one second before you pray? yeah sorry. there is sound my, really. now it's a matter for, you know, this is the third time it happens and i will tell you something. when i was young, i read ian fleming's goldfinger and then at the beginning you have a deep so, we repeat. once is a chance, twice is a coincidence. the first time is an enemy action, if we talk about stalinism and so on no, okay, let's hope the dish will work. because what shocked me so much is that i am an adonian, tchaikovsky, you cannot get lower and so on. but in the middle of this typical tchaikovskyian romantic music, you get a couple of just a short melodic line. which my god sounds it's pure 20th century bernard herrmann. when i first saw this, i didn't know it's tchaikovsky. i thought, my god, this is bernard herrmann, that is the same as in, you remember in the man who knew too much, second version where the royal albert hall performance when doris day screams, it is his music, okay, it's more complex,, but i thought, and then i discovered it's. check off. then i when, of course. bo. a cd with francesca dar and i discovered, at least from our sensitivity. sticks out so clearly. it's as if we get even in tchaikovsky, how should i call it, signal from future,? a totally different tone of music which tschaikovsky wasn't aware, but today with us we can see what it is. so i wanted to. show you this two. thisfor for this reason, this short. this short clip. again, this musical wonder. i think that if you know a little bit hitchcock's film, this typical tonality of schoenbergian and so on of the music by bernard herrmann you will immediately say but what's happening here but this is not tchaikovsky i couldn't have believed it and i didn't want to test the faith too much because my original goal was to play to youth first as an orchestral clip fragment this music why i couldn't resist the temptation because i bought of all places in a small store cd store in a black part of chicago, very close to the house of that muslim leader louis farrakhan. i bought, it's unbelievable. he. among others is tchaikovsky music. you will see it now. okay, bit of music is ridiculous of oh, you're sure. it's a little bit ridiculous even. it's the big gauge, blah blah blah, but the core point is music. i mean okay, maybe it works even better with. now she informs, americ spion or whatever. but my god what's going on here? the whole point is music. so again, you have all this, you know, it's like kind of a... primitive lianism of hitchcock almost too direct. the music did work. the sound okay, you know what i propose? i mean that i go on simply and then afterwards when they do it we return to that okay it's the idea here of this symptomatic structure of reality and language. it again, we are back at that idea of, let's call it ontological openness. that there is a finess inscribed into language. like let me. give you another example of what i'm aiming at with this symptomal structure that you have first a symptom and then you reconstruct a music. you know that famous lincoln, the american president, lincoln's speech, you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. well, daniel dennett was not the first to draw attention to the fact that it's absolutely not clear what is meant here. because it can be read in two opposed ways. it can mean that there are what does it mean? you can pull out and some people all the time. does it mean that? there are always there are some people who can be fooled all the time, like i cannot fool you all all the time you. but that is. okay, me. but there is somebody who is stupid enough who can be fooled all the time. or does it mean at any moment there is at least one idiot who can be fooled, but it's not always the same. and you know det provides, i think, a nice reading of this. he part this wrong to ask what beat? lincoln really mean he just got idea oh this sounds nice. you know, it's opening reality itself. we complete it today. the way we want. it's open the meaning is open in reality itself. so. this is the structure that you produce something which is in itself open and again, retroactively, you can fix it in any way you want. death books have been the elementary, how's i call it. structure. of the real in land because this cat this element, which is at the same point an obstacle. and. the generative moment. obstacle. the failure is productive. you have to get lost in order to generate the new. this would be the to use this bastic term, the dialectical moment of earth. the the unity of the opposites. so in other words, let's! let me just return to a brief point about the real here. you the latian real is definitely not. here we see how the real implies the structure of the unity of the opposites. the real is not something out there which forever eludes us. we cannot grasp it, it's too strong, whatever. we forever fail. every symbolization fails. it's like that which you try to grasp it... el your gr. the real ich the thing. you cannot get never a direct access. it's also the opposite itself. what? prevents you from getting the access to reality that let's say. the booty. the blank spot is the blank. shot in your eye. what disturbs clear image of reality. it's against the real. so you get the point. that. the obstacle in you which prevents you to see the way things are. think in themselves. they are the same. that what out there avoids you? it's here what prevents you to get. it that the real is not out there avoiding you is. the real is your gaze itself. to cut a long story short, the partial character of your gaze itself. this can be done in a very nice way. precisely apro propos. if this is not clear, let me give you a simple example, trauma. ah, okay uh. can i enter now, please? because i know where to jump. but's stay here, please,. because now... but it's gone. yes. once, more, once,. usual here. here you can see how it gets recuperated. stand romantic. thank. did find. okay. take okay, it was a little bit naive, but if you know hitchcock's films, i hope you got to the point, how strange it sounded. and again, i couldn't have believed it. i was absolutely sure this... can be only boris godunov. no, it is tchaikovsky. but let me return to it. let's take a trauma. you had a traumatic experience. something terrible happened to you. you were witnessing a torture or you were tortured or whatever. okay, because i need some a bit of time. okay, thanks very much. so. on the one hand, of course, you cannot confront the trauma directly. so it's... d. inaccessible transcendence. like you avoid the place, you cannot represent it, you can only detect it through place, signs and so on. it's too much for you to confront the scene directly. but isn't it at the same time? death week. in you not out there colors and distort all your other perceptions like i look at this somehow it reminds me of the trauma, it's twisted and so on. so you see it's at the same time not enough and too much. not enough in the sense out there avoids you, you cannot confront it directly. but at the same time it's all the time here giving this particular grief distorting your percentage so i think that this unity is absolutely crucial for the lian real. it's. in the same time that which is always distorting your that which can only be represented in a distorted way. but at the same time, that which distorts your perception. that. b. that's very odd. in other words, we have already here a nice speculative formula which is the central kegelian formula namely that the very get that. separates you from the object. the very get. between you and let's say divine object in christianity. if what includes you into it is part of the object. it says. of the thing itself. what do i mean by it? no, i already approached it. the last time, but i won't now to. to give you a couple of examples which i hope you will like a little bit. uh again, sorry for having to suffer a little bit of sovietology the last time. i always am following with... with true. fashion. this debate, i don't know if you like classical music about shostakovich but also prokofiev, namely the problem is, how are we to read shostakovich? popular works, 15.7 and so on. was he a truly pro-soviet composer or was it that privately? she mock. the content. so the idea is then that if we have this triumphant bombastic finale of the fifth symphony of the seventh leningrad symphony, that it's wrong for us to say, that it's banal, bombastic. it's meant to be like that. it's meant to be an ironic self-denunciation of stalinism. so we arrive in this way atovich. theory that i mean of that stovich was a closest dissident who was apparently following the party line but at the same time reserving a private space for his disairs and so on and so on so again the problem the problem being, what was the real shostakovich here? was he? the big official composer. with maybe some doubts or was he a closet dissident. my solution is here a very simple and radical. one. she was a true soviet composer, but not in spite of these private dissident doubts, but because of them. that is to say, to be truly a soviet composer. it was demanded. 2, not simply. directly state. soviet ideology but to do it in this toic to do it through a certain distance. in other words what we have to do is to read shostakovich. h ich like. casablanca. now comes casablanca. maybe you know the example, but nonetheless, again, i cannot resist the temptation of interpreting this wonderful fragment again and then sorry, making the point. let's now cope with sincere humility that it will go. it's the scene, of course, the night. where's the coming of the second i'm sorry, but this will last a minute or two because it it's 29. we have to come to 29 and there is no way here to jump direct. incidentally and. i could like. you will not find a treasure. i'm just carrying that yet. you good luck. how lady luck treating you? my wife. yes. y. okay, here we are. incidentally, this is the scene, you know, when she ingrid bergman comes to humphrey bogart to ask him to give her provide the visas for her and her heroic husband, victor laszlo. this morning but this is a little ahead of. well won't you sit down? why we come to the point to the short that i want to show you? connected by any chance umberto eco has a wonderful note on casablanca where he points out a strange detail that victor laszlo, the heroic husband, who is supposed to be this ascetic sacrifice, plays a very strange feature. almost in every scene whenever he is in a locale ordering a drink, he orders a different drink a very exotic one like a pernod, this kind of martini, that one and mart we each other. echo's theory is wonderful that we shouldn't treat this as a psychological sign that there is some deeper decadent but it's simply that it's prosopopoeia, they are not real persons. they were simply putting together fragments for different scenes that it's not psychological unity.. there so much stake you enjoy.
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what we need one woman has caught. to. well oh god, we weak! no. i'm sorry, but you are our last hope. if you don't help us we to life or will die.
what we need one woman has caught. to. well oh god, we weak! no. i'm sorry, but you are our last hope. if you don't help us we to life or will die.
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what happened? i'm gonna die in casablanca. it's a good spot for it. now, you.
what happened? i'm gonna die in casablanca. it's a good spot for it. now, you.
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all right. i tried to reason it. i tried everything. now i want those back. get my.
all right. i tried to reason it. i tried everything. now i want those back. get my.
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i don't have to. i got an idea.
i don't have to. i got an idea.
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put them on the table. i them the table.
put them on the table. i them the table.
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if llo and the cause means so much to you, you won't stop at anything. alright, i'll make it easier for you. go ahead and shoot. you'll be doing me a favor.
if llo and the cause means so much to you, you won't stop at anything. alright, i'll make it easier for you. go ahead and shoot. you'll be doing me a favor.
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i to stay away. i thought i would never see you again. and you.
i to stay away. i thought i would never see you again. and you.
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i
i
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not that you have earned. you knew what i meant. few new one. i. how much has do?
not that you have earned. you knew what i meant. few new one. i. how much has do?
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and then...
and then...
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it wasn't long after we were married that vor went back to czechoslovakia. they needed him in prague, was that a good thing?
it wasn't long after we were married that vor went back to czechoslovakia. they needed him in prague, was that a good thing?
Slavoj Žižek
okay. that was it. now it's only me talking, so no possible trauma.
okay. that was it. now it's only me talking, so no possible trauma.
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yeah
yeah
Slavoj Žižek
okay, so... what happens here? of course, apart from other things, like casablanca itself, mu have been a nice example of that retroactive structuring of meaning but unfortunately it's not true. you know that means that they didn't know what the ending will be they did know. it's not true that while they were shooting it they didn't know will ing bergman stay with with whom she will stay and so on. maybe some of you know the analysis i want to repeat it here to make my central hegelian ideological point clear and then go on to shostakovich music and to hegel again. namely, what happens in this final half a minute? they embrace, lunch go out. then we see that tower of the airport. lightening around, then we return to the same room, the same conversation seems to be going on. rick hunter smoking a cigarette, says and then to her and okay, she resumes her story. of course, the question is, did they do it or not in between? that is to say, those three and a half seconds, what do they stand for? this just real three and a half second. por. are base stand for i don't know whatever you want from five minutes to one hour, whatever things happening. i'm following here wonderful analysis by richard maltby. uh is right to emphasize that at this point the film is not simply ambiguous it is clear but. contradictory. that is to say it generates two very clear but mutually exclusive meanings. they did it and they didn't do it. on the one hand, there was in this brief fragment, there is a whole series of signals, codified signals. that they did it. that is to say that short sure. offer that. , tower stands for a longer period of time. first, whenever in classical hollywood the couple passionately embraces and then this is followed by a fade out. it's standard codified way to say they did it. second thing, the cigarette afterwards. you know, it's a codified sign, like the hollywood saying, what is the second and the third most pleasant thing in life? the drink before and the cigarette after and so on and so on. not to mention even the vulgar phalic meaning of the towel and so on. then there is a series, a parallel series of features which that that they did not do it. the bed in the background or the couch rather is undisturbed. the same conversation seems to go on without a break and so on and so on. and it's interesting how even when in the final conversation on the airport before viktor laszlo leaves with ingrid bergman. when we have the conversation between rick humphrey-bogart and viktor laslo, they directly touch. this event of the night and it's the same ambiguity. let me quote you this very short dialogue. r you said you knew about ilsa and me, victor. yes, rick. you didn't know she was at my place last night when you were. she came there for the letters of transit. isn't that true, iza? a. yes. rick, she tried everything to get them and nothing worked. she did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me. that was all over. long ago. for your sake, she pretended it wasn't and left her pretend. victor, i understand. well i don't understand because what is r here saying? is she saying that they had consummated the affair so in her attempt to convince him that she still loves him or no. might be. clch death. casablanca here, a quote. deliberately construct itself in such a way as to offer distinct and alternative sources of pleasure to two people sitting next to each other in the same cinema. while at the level of each surface, explicit narrative line, the film can be constructed by the spectator as obeying the strictest moral code. it simultaneously offers. to the sophisticated spectator enough clues to construct and alternate sexually much more daring narrative line. what i only disagree with maltby is that i think that we don't even need two spectators. that the way this shot works is that it addresses one spectator by telling you. i put it's a kind of a process paper, ironically. we all know that you have your dirty desires, but we also know that superficially at least you have to pretend to obey moral explicit regulations and so on. so here is what we will do. i, says the cinema to the spectator, we will offer you, i will offer you a narrative. can be read in an innocent way. nothing happened. so that you can pretend in front of the big other what's wrong? it's nothing,. but at the same time, this will legitimize you to engage in all your dirty fantasies. i will provide you with the screen what officially happened and with all the background now, i think that the only thing we have to add to this is to go a step further. that is to say, it's not only that it allows for your illicit pleasures, you can imagine all the dirty things and so on. but it solicites them actively. it needs the dirty pleasures. that is to say, it's not as some naive transgressive leftists would have claimed. the official hollywood texture is puritanical, but in a secret subversive undermining, the movie in its deconstructionist gesture, undermining the ruling ideology, nonetheless passes its message. this ruling ideology is both, is's the explicit message and. the ox content. ideology needs both. and i cannot resist from. quoting another famous from cinema literature dialogue between joseph von sternberg and the best guy, b, who was the boss of h court office, when they debated a certain scene, which of course implies there was sex without showing it. and it's still from this dialogue, as joseph sternberg recorded it in his memoirs, scouts the obscene underside was part of the hollywood game. look the dialogue.
okay, so... what happens here? of course, apart from other things, like casablanca itself, mu have been a nice example of that retroactive structuring of meaning but unfortunately it's not true. you know that means that they didn't know what the ending will be they did know. it's not true that while they were shooting it they didn't know will ing bergman stay with with whom she will stay and so on. maybe some of you know the analysis i want to repeat it here to make my central hegelian ideological point clear and then go on to shostakovich music and to hegel again. namely, what happens in this final half a minute? they embrace, lunch go out. then we see that tower of the airport. lightening around, then we return to the same room, the same conversation seems to be going on. rick hunter smoking a cigarette, says and then to her and okay, she resumes her story. of course, the question is, did they do it or not in between? that is to say, those three and a half seconds, what do they stand for? this just real three and a half second. por. are base stand for i don't know whatever you want from five minutes to one hour, whatever things happening. i'm following here wonderful analysis by richard maltby. uh is right to emphasize that at this point the film is not simply ambiguous it is clear but. contradictory. that is to say it generates two very clear but mutually exclusive meanings. they did it and they didn't do it. on the one hand, there was in this brief fragment, there is a whole series of signals, codified signals. that they did it. that is to say that short sure. offer that. , tower stands for a longer period of time. first, whenever in classical hollywood the couple passionately embraces and then this is followed by a fade out. it's standard codified way to say they did it. second thing, the cigarette afterwards. you know, it's a codified sign, like the hollywood saying, what is the second and the third most pleasant thing in life? the drink before and the cigarette after and so on and so on. not to mention even the vulgar phalic meaning of the towel and so on. then there is a series, a parallel series of features which that that they did not do it. the bed in the background or the couch rather is undisturbed. the same conversation seems to go on without a break and so on and so on. and it's interesting how even when in the final conversation on the airport before viktor laszlo leaves with ingrid bergman. when we have the conversation between rick humphrey-bogart and viktor laslo, they directly touch. this event of the night and it's the same ambiguity. let me quote you this very short dialogue. r you said you knew about ilsa and me, victor. yes, rick. you didn't know she was at my place last night when you were. she came there for the letters of transit. isn't that true, iza? a. yes. rick, she tried everything to get them and nothing worked. she did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me. that was all over. long ago. for your sake, she pretended it wasn't and left her pretend. victor, i understand. well i don't understand because what is r here saying? is she saying that they had consummated the affair so in her attempt to convince him that she still loves him or no. might be. clch death. casablanca here, a quote. deliberately construct itself in such a way as to offer distinct and alternative sources of pleasure to two people sitting next to each other in the same cinema. while at the level of each surface, explicit narrative line, the film can be constructed by the spectator as obeying the strictest moral code. it simultaneously offers. to the sophisticated spectator enough clues to construct and alternate sexually much more daring narrative line. what i only disagree with maltby is that i think that we don't even need two spectators. that the way this shot works is that it addresses one spectator by telling you. i put it's a kind of a process paper, ironically. we all know that you have your dirty desires, but we also know that superficially at least you have to pretend to obey moral explicit regulations and so on. so here is what we will do. i, says the cinema to the spectator, we will offer you, i will offer you a narrative. can be read in an innocent way. nothing happened. so that you can pretend in front of the big other what's wrong? it's nothing,. but at the same time, this will legitimize you to engage in all your dirty fantasies. i will provide you with the screen what officially happened and with all the background now, i think that the only thing we have to add to this is to go a step further. that is to say, it's not only that it allows for your illicit pleasures, you can imagine all the dirty things and so on. but it solicites them actively. it needs the dirty pleasures. that is to say, it's not as some naive transgressive leftists would have claimed. the official hollywood texture is puritanical, but in a secret subversive undermining, the movie in its deconstructionist gesture, undermining the ruling ideology, nonetheless passes its message. this ruling ideology is both, is's the explicit message and. the ox content. ideology needs both. and i cannot resist from. quoting another famous from cinema literature dialogue between joseph von sternberg and the best guy, b, who was the boss of h court office, when they debated a certain scene, which of course implies there was sex without showing it. and it's still from this dialogue, as joseph sternberg recorded it in his memoirs, scouts the obscene underside was part of the hollywood game. look the dialogue.
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right.
right.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah. sberg the director who wanted to do this film i think it was of course with with. my god, who is the most famous german actress? marlene dietrich yes, sorry. at this point, describing the thing to bring to the sensor. at this point, the two principals have a brief romantic interlude. br interrupted him what you are what to say is that the two of them hopped into the hay and fuck. the indignant sternberg answered, mr. breen, you offend me. breen, oh for christ's sake, will you stop the horse shit and face the issue? we can help you make a story about adultery if you want, but not if you keep calling a good screwing match a romantic interlude. now, what do these two people do? kiss and go home? no, said sternberg. they fuck. good, y. breen pounding the desk. now i can understand your story. and so they made it. but you know, even bring the censor wanted to know what really is supposed to happen to codify it properly. you this is. and we are talking about the top censor. he needed to know what is the. prohibition, what is prohibited in order to codify it. to reconstruct it. so again, my thesis here is that hollywood is not only explicit hollywood ideology, it's the distance itself. the distance towards the official ideology, which is as it were, part of the game. it's unique also. death. implicit subtext and my thesis, now back to stalinist music. is that what if exactly the same holds for shostakovich? what if? the way the stalinist music funk. it not simply you do the bombastic realist socialist music for those in power, but secretly you smuggle messages about despair, depression, irony, and so on. what is you need both. what is this with the ideal stalinist music? i think this is the only way. to explain a wonderful paradox that i read recently in a book on the other great soviet composer, prokofiev. prokofiev couldn't understand what is going on. was caught in the stalinist supere ego when he stuck to his modernist troops and wrote contemporary music. he was accused of anti-people's formalism, bourgeois decadence, and so on and so on. but when thereafter, he tried to do his best, to follow the party line. and for example, when he did in the late 30s. the cantata for the 20th anniversary of the october revolution. uh to music texts by marx lenin and stalin. you know what happened? the cantata was rejected as whoa. leftist deviation and well again. then he did it again, qiki did something called sounds of our days. mixing party sing-alongs and folk tunes. again, he was dismissed as the composition was not even performed, zdanov said, this is pale lacking any sincere individuality. it's just cheap propaganda. so, prootya was simply, which incidentally was true, comrade skov was right here. which propot didn't get it. now, what's happening here? if i do the party line if i do what i want to do, i'm accused of bourgeois individualism, psychism, modernism, formalism. if i follow the party line, i am... i'm confused of cheap leftism, just empty propaganda and so on. he didn't get it, what's the true party order.. it's like like casablanca, you have they are just talking and you have signal between the lines they're having a good screw and so on. or like that in other words let me go on here to give you... this is, i think, what accounts for this. it's a very interesting ideological phenomenon. if you follow soviet music, the fate of soviet music today, there especially shostakovovich is tremendously popular today. but there is something, i claim, totally irrational going on recently. namely, looking for the smoking gun, for some final private paper that would have demonstrated that shostakovich really was a dissident. maybe some of you know all the polemics about the so-called bulk of memoir are they authentic or not whatever why this terrible need two. prove that secretly they were dissidents. because if you accept the official line. in their sum of official work, they made a compromise, composed soviet cantatas, but then their real car dis music. then encounter a same scandal which doesn't work, which ruins everything. there is a massive scandal. which is dead. exactly the word. which, where? found the greatest success, not only popular but official success, stalin prizes and so on, in the soviet regime are the works which are the most popular today in the west. the fixed himpon. ironic subtitle soviet artist's response to justified criticism and so on. like not only one stalin price immediate triumph, return of sheakovich to favor, do you know that even in the west, it's the most performed symphony in the entire 20th century. and so on and so on. of shostakovich's chamber pieces, his piano quintet. wonderful piece in a light way. very popular in the west. and'm very sorry, it got stalin price in 1940 and so on. so you know there is a problem. how to do this? so the way they solve the problem, these hericians, is to engage in this totally ridiculous stalinist... totally ridiculous stalinist her. like all the moments which are openly stalinists have to be denounced as irony. like no, he's really mocking keith and so on and so on. but what i claim is that what we should do is something slightly different. we should do what? except again. very gap between the two levels. in the same way that hollywood is not only official hollywood, but all these obscene inuendas and so on, in the same way i claim what the stalinists wanted from composers is not some pure superficial propaganda, but they wanted this other dimension that we ask, that we like so much today,, this is the true sincerity, there is another private dark dimension. let me quote here, which is why this also accounts for many many extremely strange events like yeah. of prokofiev, one of the commonplaces about prokofiev is that in his last years, totally desperate, he withdrew to writing, as they put it, music for the drawer, not even to be performed. and usually the piece listed is his violin sonata in d major. you always say, oh, this is the secret music, despair, it was meant to sound like the wind in a graveyard and so on, you know. there there is one extremely embarrassing fact. in 1947. d, pish. dissident be dark. the first order stalin prize. and you know, to get the first order stalin prize, the guy himself must have liked it. you get my point. i claim that the safe gap. that we find in the west where for example, everybody knows what is the shift from ian fleming to john le carré. john le carré introduced this psychological complexity. we should also show like the man, if you ask me here, even i read when i was young a soviet official reply to the spy who came in from the cold. well, they claim this is the truly dangerous propaganda, precisely because it doesn't paint us as primitives and the west as simple allotent winners like james bond, but there you have, you know, the fiddler, the honest communist, there is an honest communist figure and the western side itself. the circus in le is shown to brutally manipulate and so on and so on. this is the truly dangerous propaganda. when you allow for this human side so that the logic is nonetheless in spite of this our side basically good and so on. and my point is that in stalinism also, you need both sides. so my point is that, again, the question, okay, sorry let me give you another example, a nice quote from orlando figes natasha's dance, russia's cultural history, where this is the description of shostakovich key provides, just a quote. since. since the stalinist assault against shostakovich's music in 1936, shostakovich has developed a sort of doublepeak in his musical language, using one idiom to please his masters in the kremlin and another to satisfy his own moral conscience as an artist and a citizen. outworkly. he spoke in a triumphant voice. yet beneath the ritual sounds of soviet rejoicing, there was a softer, more melancholic voice, the carefully concealed voice of satire and dissent, only audible to those who had felt the suffering his musing expressed. these two voices are clearly audible in shostakovich's fifth symphony.ally to heat. which received a half hour ovation of electrifying force when it was first performed. beneath the endless fanes trumpeting the triumph of the soviet state in the finale, the audience must have felt its sadness and they responded to the music as a spiritual release. hope. the the incredible paradox of this description. it claimed that the other message, the dark message, this despair pessim mission was carefully concealed. well, fact it, carefully concealed but understood by everybody, by thousands and so on. as if do you really think that the bureaucrats where're such idiots. j and so on, not to get what every listener got there. i mean... you know that he was a disgusting guy, but do you know that shdanov was a much more interesting character when there was this puris i mean anti-formalist campaign in 46-47. you know what's done of deep dance? everybody was shocked. at a meeting in the composers union house. there was a piano and zhdanov sat behind the piano, took a piece by shostakovich, played it the way it was, and then you said, this is how you should have done it to be more socialist realist, and played, okay, a kitsy version, but a different version, and even used these technical terms, mor, din, profissimo here and so on. so we are talking about horrible people, but don't make them idiots where they were not idiots. what i'm saying again is that obviously this doesn't work. a secret message which everybody gets. hey. and again. work apparently of a protection. but works of a protest which. ended up being celebrated by everybody. so i think again, that what if something is terribly wrong here? what if the opposition is not simply was shostakovich the official composer or did he have secret doubts and so on? what if he was an official? composer precisely because of what figures called this double stick. what if the party order was double-st? we want you, official fromars, but at the same time put all your private sheep, despair, doubts, and so on. we want that. one? because usually it is said that this private aspect is ironic ironizes the public mercy. like when you have, i wanted to play to you but it would take, i'm superstitious after today's experience even more. something goes wrong. see i was playing too much with that shitty lesson the cunning of reason is that you can always trust that something will go wrong. and i got an answer from the real. okay. what i wanted to say... but what irony? where is the irony here? what if it's not simply that? shostakovich heads. private ironical attitude towards the public. message like all the bombastic finale back it's meant as mocking and so on. what these think. functions in a doubly reflected way. that is to say, let me repeat again a passage from marx which i always like to return to because i think it's marx at his best. marx with regard to how ideology works. marx describes, you have it in almost all of my books, i'm sure you know it if you know a little bit my work. marx articulates the logic of the party of order, the conservative republican party which was in power immediately after 1848 revolution in france. they were. royalists, basically. the coalition of the two royalists. orlean legitim. but they have to pretend to be republicans. my's point is the following one. they publicly followed the republican line, but in all possible ways they mocked it, they laughed at it, they all the time made royal slips, made fun of the republic and so on and so on. but marx's point is that the irony is not where they thought. they thought we just follow the republican line, secretly we are royalists, we make fun. but the irony was double. the irony was double. although they thought they were secretly roy. objectively, they functioned as republicans. their legislation, pro-bourgeois legislation, solidified the republican capitalist order and so on and so on. so again, you have a surface which you privately mock and so on. but the truth is nonetheless in the surface. your distance is a false one. it's not that the true message is. the surface, what you laugh at. and again, what these the same coach. form. what is the same coach for? for shostakovich. what is so what if he mocks? she mocks it, but at the same time, nonetheless, she does't. and what if, let me go even the. step further, what if this is how in stalinism also, ideology function. what if they didn't want you really to identify with it? this is my own thesis. i developed it in one of my books that... for example, with socialist education, the idea was it was a dismal failure. the idea was to bring up, to elevate a new socialist personality, sacrificing himself for the others and so on, dedicated to humanity. what effectively the system produced were cynics who withdraw from public life, cared only about private pleasures. but wait a minute, what if this is what they really wanted? what if the ideal soviet citizen what those in power really were afraid of? citizens who would took the ruling ideology too seriously and would then get engaged and you never know where you get. you know, if you get engaged, then... it's one step towards dissidence,, when you get that things are really not like that. are you playing that that i hope you got my point that shostakovich wants your this would be the hegelian formula now. the very feature. weak. distinguished shost which the very shostakovich very distant from subject. ideology, all these private traumas, irony and so on. is what ultimately makes him a soviet composer. because it's interesting to see how i have a negative proof. there were a couple of let's call them naively sincere. communist, marxists, philosophers sch baker. they were either totally crushed, like maybe you know chris marker did a wonderful movie on him, medvedkin. he was a kind of an absolutely sincere pro-stalinist. all his works were prohibited and so on. no way. then another example in philosophy, i don't know if you know the again. he's not an idiot. he wrote very intelligent things on hegel, evald ilyenkov, the most tragic figure of soviet philosophy. she was an impossible almost thing, a kind of a sincere communist marxist. in 79, i think he killed himself. because two kind. it was simply. i mean it was. she even couldn't get published and it's really tragic now that they are opening his archive to see what. the bureaucracy, the censors, what they were disturbed at. that precisely he really means it, that there is no ironic distance, no obscene message behind or whatsoever and so on and so on. so it's. that that's the point that this unity of the opposites that precisely what you think it's your distance from it. is the point where, as it were, you are. included e. into where you are included into the thing. to give you here... not that. example. which i use in my, i think, i forgot even which book, okay, it doesn't matter. it's a. you know, last for three years breaking the waves. it's a nice hegelian theory of why he shot the film the way he shot it. the wager is the tension, the proper dialectical tension between form and content. the content is. romantique it's a crazy passionate story. emily watson sacrifices sk. and he says, if i were to shoot the film in the way that would, if the form were to fit the content, it would simply appear ridiculous. he says, this is why he shot it in this dogma way handheld camera, blurred image and so on. this he claims it the only way for us to swallow this content. it's true. this. coldness of the form which distinguiates it. so you see the point. in this sense, the forum falls into contempt. i put. what appears to undermine content is the condition of possibility. the obstacle is not really the obstacle. the obstacle is the. the obstacle is the positive is the positive condition here. that that's again. the properly dialectical moment that i was trying to articulate, it's not the same as transcendental moment. the transcendental movement would have been the priority of form. it would have been to say, oh, van trier is telling us a story, but he really wants to undermine the story. and that the truth is in the forum, that the forum makes fun of the content. the proof is in the form. i think we have to make an additional tour. that what is the undermining of content? it's what enables, what renders the content palpable. it's a little bit like the old example that i used. in today's ironic era, i cannot say i love you. i appear ridiculous. then i have to put it in an ironic way, as a poet would have put it, i love you, maybe i love you, and so on and so on. doesn't simply undermine it. it's the only way. it's the only way. to pes. tu pass d mess. okay okay, i developed enough in my group understanding how this enters for me the christian space where again, the whole point is this same overlapping where the very distance is what throws you in like like, for example, at the very point that you are radically divided from god. in the position of job or when christ is abandoned, you are identified with god. that is to say, the christian solution of the gap between man and god. it's not somehow we overcome the gap, but it's death. when you feel abandoned by god. the very gap that separates you from god is inherent to god himself. because this is the position at which christ found himself on the cross, blah, blah, blah, blah. so you see the point. you don't overcome the gap. in the same way, i hope you saw the chronology, that in the case of shostakovich, the very gap that separates him from soviet ideology makes him a soviet. ideoology so now, nonetheless, let me do quickly, at least as much as possible, the last line. what i promised you so that we get rid of. religion and can go to politics two days from now. the man who was thursday. you know what's deep? starting position that mysterious super secret scotland yard department and its boss, a mysterious chief, who is convinced that, a quote, a purely intellectual conspiracy threatens the very existence of civilization. already the last time i read you. a paragraph i would just like briefly to read you another paragraph. wonderful. mysterious boss, is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the family interstate. he has therefore formed a special corps of policemen who are also philosophers. it is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy. not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. the work of the philosophical policeman is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. the ordinary detective goes to po houses to arrest thieves. we go to artistic tea parties to detect pessimism. the ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. we discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. we have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on. on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime and so on and so on i think what okay. but it's not as simple as that. what i claim is that this is not cash cutting's position. what he gets at at the end is that it's not simply discern the universal the true crime, the universal top crime in particular crimes but that in order for this to function, god himself has to be the supreme. criminal. as you know, this is what. happens in the novel towards the end, the discovery that. this supreme police chief is the same as the boss of the of council of the anarchists and then he is reproached at the end when they confront him god a very english style remark by one of the detectives. it seems so silly that you, god, have been on both sides and fought yourself. in other words, that god is a hegelian fighting himself. and then, okay, we don't have time for all this lines. then chesterton approaches. the key problem. here ich. what does this mean, this coincidence of opposite? does it mean simply that from our finite view, god appears both good and evil, but because we are split, in itself, god is the unity, or is god in itself this gap, the highest contradiction, the highest pain, and catch as an answer is. the kok band. why is this so interesting? let me now conclude a little bit on meister eckhart, who i think effectively is, here i agree i will say something horrible, but i like this shocking statement. here one of the most disgusting characters of 20th century was right, namely alfred rosenberg, you know, the hitler's ideologist, when he says, our western mysticism beginning with the rh mystique of meister eckhart is the beginning of something different, new. don't ask me why, i think he was right. but i'm not original here because they were even intelligent and progressive enough in east germany meister eckhart was rehabilitated as the first dialectical materialist even and so on and so on. what? which is the vision here? of this notion of b. tension, contradiction in god himself. it's not only that. the tension, the highest pain, suffering is in god himself. it's much more. it is death. the absolute gap that separates, as already said, us from god is inherent to god himself, which means that our alienation from god is god's self alienation. that's for the message of christianity. when we are abandoned by god, god is not up there. god loses us. him check. which means, and here is the terrible revolutionary potential. it's almost the opposite of the standard. notion of teleology where you say, oh, whatever we are doing, somehow we can count on god to help us. no, it's not us who is helping god. i think the ultimate christian attitude, which is very revolutionary here is as paul claudel, a conservative put. god is helpless without us. we should be aware that when we are fighting for, and this is what benjamin is god's fate is decided in revolution. it's not only in a particular revolution, it's not only a revolution. you know, the faith of much more universal. and the one who first formulated this. this idea that, again. we are god's strong. through us. god suffers. eh did. eckhart was the one who shattered up. the very dualism between god and his creatures. this should be taken literally. it's not just these platitudes that god becomes man and so on. it is not just that god gives birth or creates to or creates men. it is also not only that, this is the standard pantheist platitude that. god gives death. only true. and in man god becomes fully god. it is that. man himself gives birth to god. god is nothing outside man. although this nothing is not simply a nothingiveness, but the abyss of godhead and so on and so on. now, one should be here very precise. eckhart if you allow me this last line of thought. eckard distinguishes between god and godhead. god. i think godhead is a non-god. he calls it und, a non-thing. but again, i think this has to be read as the k and infinite judgment. it doesn't mean no god. it means god which is no longer only god, like the am-de. so what happens here? the idea is that. g needs man in order to reach himself, be that in man god is born. holy ghost means a moment when in man god is born. how? a wonderful quote from he charmons. god has such a need to seek us out exactly as if all his god had dependent on it, as in fact it does. god can no more dispense with us. that we can dispense with him, even if it were possible that we might turn away from god. god could never turn away from us. so what this means is that the only sight of god is. oh, show this. a another quote. in my eternal birth all things were born, and i was cause of myself as well as of all things. if i had willed it, neither i nor anything would be. and if i myself were not, god would not be either. that god is god, of this i am a cause. if i were not, god would not be god. so what this paradox involves is eckhart's fundamental mystical insight. why? a human being has a center outside it, in god. he accepts. but. there must also be a corresponding eccentricity in g himself. that god also has his center. outside. consent. the eccentricity of man is the self-exentricity of god. show that g can. relate to himself. abolishes eccentricity only through men. uh here. again. we have this... totally crazy theory. oh,... of eckhart where he even goes as far to say that. we should not be grateful to god for his love. he said, god is stupid substance. gott is basically, she's kind of a subjectiveized spinoza already. she gives an incredible twist at heart to the idea, what does it mean that christ suffers from us. none of this paying the price for our sins. the idea is simply this one. got is the only substance that there is. we, our soul is nothing. we are virgin, but virgin he doesn't mean no sex. he means the opposite. for him, it is wonderful. mother is the only true virgin. only a virgin can give birth. why? because to give birth means you empty your soul of all empirical shit material and so on. at that moment, you give birth. the holy spirit, which is the godhead. gheit is borrowed in you. but god as such is not this abyss of spiritual. gotthead. gott is just i'm consciously vulgarizing him here, but he says this in a way. god is the substance of being. all there is is god. and when you become virgin, what he calls virginity is this. mystical withdrawal where you withdraw from reality. and at that point, you no longer suffer, but god suffers for you. but this only means the matter, things suffer. you know you are no longer i mean you withdraw from reality. god is all reality. because for eckhart, god is literally all reality. it's not that god is higher reality and then this table, for example, is a lower reality. all that is, is god. so then if you withdraw from reality from all the t and accept this position of gelassen of releaseishment when you are nothing. of course you don't suffer. god suffers but this means out there you are not identified with it. and four. but this god who suffers, it's just the stupid reality. it's only through your release into nothingness that god is born in you. but this god who is born in you is nothingness itself. and i really think that here we have the birth in of modern subjectivity. where? in that crucial. the kian moved. yes, and my god, you found them wonderful. i don't have time paradoxes here in eckhart. for example, when he says... gott ich! you't loves us like a dog. you know, dog has to love us. it is nature. god is nature. we don't have to be grateful. he says he says, god cannot order us anything. god just does what is in his nature to do. god cannot help us. god cannot help loving us. he says no god can just follow what he does and it is us who can order god. it's our duty to order things to god. god is stupid. he does what he can. he cannot. it's an absolutely breathtaking view, which i think is profoundly christian. he takes it seriously that nature but here is vision. out of nature, you withdraw into nothingness. out of this nothingness the holy spirit arises. which is justice. void as a spiritual space for something new, collective action to emerge and so on and so on. so again. now you will shave. but what is the difference between this radicality and a simple materialism. when you say, okay, so what's the big deal? we know it. god doesn't exist. we give birth to god. no, no, no, it's not a simple aesthetic. it's that it's not... the catch, what? misses the usual materialism. is precisely this dimension of how. y alienation from the substance, from god's substance. the thing shows. a cap, a split. in the thing itself of how, what i developed apropos, for example, of stalinism, the ph logic is the same. how when when precisely when we are alienated from the state, like the soviet artist was, this is what makes us members of the state. that is to say that the pain, our struggles are not only our struggles. the fate of the absolute is. decided in our struggles. it's a very anthropocentric vision, but i think it is the deepest ethical vision. it is the vision which also sustains this horror at the holocaust. well, you know, this idea of when something as horrible as holocaust happens. he. and many who survived it reported on this very existential experience, which tells you, but isn't there something obscene that you witness holocaust and then you go out and the sun is still there. it's as if when something so horrible happens, somehow the sun should stop shining. you know, this idea that our struggles are not only our struggles, that the fate of everything depends on us. this extreme point of responsibility and even habermas is here, right, i quote him somewhere, who says that when we when against this stupid argument against theology, which is, but how could god have allowed so many people to be killed in gulak, in blah blah? how much is intelligent enough to point out that this far from simply being an argument against god, if there is a good god, omnipotent, he would never allow it. on the contrary this is why we need some kind of reference to divine dimension because when you translate these terrifying crimes into simple human language of, oh, this guy was bad and so on, it's not strong enough. it's the very horror of these crimes which calls for another dimension. of course, the whole point is to read it not as god in the sense of religion, but i call this dimension precisely the prian dimension of the and and so on, whatever. so my point is that in order to give a materialist version of the lesson from hegel. okay. religion, it's not simply to say but god is truly man, but it's to introduce we need something more than human but this more than human of course is not god, but it's what i call okay. what we call the un debt and so on, that there has to be that has to be a gap. god is in the same way as i already developed that eh. the universal is nothing but the gap that separates the particular from itself. what religion calls god is the non-cocidence of men too. it. the gap within humanity. so again, what time pleading for is as a legacy of religious attitude. this much more radical messianic attitude, not any guaranteed messianic optimism or whatever, but in this sense of great action. anti post-mod. our struggles, you know, that this all the universe hangs on our struggles are the center. this idea of the fate of the universe is decided in our struggle. this idea of kashkeputin. ethical justification of of universe. but okay. from this i will pass to the ethics of intellectuals the next time. what i will not use here, because i don't want to repeat myself and we don't have enough time, is i wanted to give one talk on islam. but. i didn i remember
yeah. sberg the director who wanted to do this film i think it was of course with with. my god, who is the most famous german actress? marlene dietrich yes, sorry. at this point, describing the thing to bring to the sensor. at this point, the two principals have a brief romantic interlude. br interrupted him what you are what to say is that the two of them hopped into the hay and fuck. the indignant sternberg answered, mr. breen, you offend me. breen, oh for christ's sake, will you stop the horse shit and face the issue? we can help you make a story about adultery if you want, but not if you keep calling a good screwing match a romantic interlude. now, what do these two people do? kiss and go home? no, said sternberg. they fuck. good, y. breen pounding the desk. now i can understand your story. and so they made it. but you know, even bring the censor wanted to know what really is supposed to happen to codify it properly. you this is. and we are talking about the top censor. he needed to know what is the. prohibition, what is prohibited in order to codify it. to reconstruct it. so again, my thesis here is that hollywood is not only explicit hollywood ideology, it's the distance itself. the distance towards the official ideology, which is as it were, part of the game. it's unique also. death. implicit subtext and my thesis, now back to stalinist music. is that what if exactly the same holds for shostakovich? what if? the way the stalinist music funk. it not simply you do the bombastic realist socialist music for those in power, but secretly you smuggle messages about despair, depression, irony, and so on. what is you need both. what is this with the ideal stalinist music? i think this is the only way. to explain a wonderful paradox that i read recently in a book on the other great soviet composer, prokofiev. prokofiev couldn't understand what is going on. was caught in the stalinist supere ego when he stuck to his modernist troops and wrote contemporary music. he was accused of anti-people's formalism, bourgeois decadence, and so on and so on. but when thereafter, he tried to do his best, to follow the party line. and for example, when he did in the late 30s. the cantata for the 20th anniversary of the october revolution. uh to music texts by marx lenin and stalin. you know what happened? the cantata was rejected as whoa. leftist deviation and well again. then he did it again, qiki did something called sounds of our days. mixing party sing-alongs and folk tunes. again, he was dismissed as the composition was not even performed, zdanov said, this is pale lacking any sincere individuality. it's just cheap propaganda. so, prootya was simply, which incidentally was true, comrade skov was right here. which propot didn't get it. now, what's happening here? if i do the party line if i do what i want to do, i'm accused of bourgeois individualism, psychism, modernism, formalism. if i follow the party line, i am... i'm confused of cheap leftism, just empty propaganda and so on. he didn't get it, what's the true party order.. it's like like casablanca, you have they are just talking and you have signal between the lines they're having a good screw and so on. or like that in other words let me go on here to give you... this is, i think, what accounts for this. it's a very interesting ideological phenomenon. if you follow soviet music, the fate of soviet music today, there especially shostakovovich is tremendously popular today. but there is something, i claim, totally irrational going on recently. namely, looking for the smoking gun, for some final private paper that would have demonstrated that shostakovich really was a dissident. maybe some of you know all the polemics about the so-called bulk of memoir are they authentic or not whatever why this terrible need two. prove that secretly they were dissidents. because if you accept the official line. in their sum of official work, they made a compromise, composed soviet cantatas, but then their real car dis music. then encounter a same scandal which doesn't work, which ruins everything. there is a massive scandal. which is dead. exactly the word. which, where? found the greatest success, not only popular but official success, stalin prizes and so on, in the soviet regime are the works which are the most popular today in the west. the fixed himpon. ironic subtitle soviet artist's response to justified criticism and so on. like not only one stalin price immediate triumph, return of sheakovich to favor, do you know that even in the west, it's the most performed symphony in the entire 20th century. and so on and so on. of shostakovich's chamber pieces, his piano quintet. wonderful piece in a light way. very popular in the west. and'm very sorry, it got stalin price in 1940 and so on. so you know there is a problem. how to do this? so the way they solve the problem, these hericians, is to engage in this totally ridiculous stalinist... totally ridiculous stalinist her. like all the moments which are openly stalinists have to be denounced as irony. like no, he's really mocking keith and so on and so on. but what i claim is that what we should do is something slightly different. we should do what? except again. very gap between the two levels. in the same way that hollywood is not only official hollywood, but all these obscene inuendas and so on, in the same way i claim what the stalinists wanted from composers is not some pure superficial propaganda, but they wanted this other dimension that we ask, that we like so much today,, this is the true sincerity, there is another private dark dimension. let me quote here, which is why this also accounts for many many extremely strange events like yeah. of prokofiev, one of the commonplaces about prokofiev is that in his last years, totally desperate, he withdrew to writing, as they put it, music for the drawer, not even to be performed. and usually the piece listed is his violin sonata in d major. you always say, oh, this is the secret music, despair, it was meant to sound like the wind in a graveyard and so on, you know. there there is one extremely embarrassing fact. in 1947. d, pish. dissident be dark. the first order stalin prize. and you know, to get the first order stalin prize, the guy himself must have liked it. you get my point. i claim that the safe gap. that we find in the west where for example, everybody knows what is the shift from ian fleming to john le carré. john le carré introduced this psychological complexity. we should also show like the man, if you ask me here, even i read when i was young a soviet official reply to the spy who came in from the cold. well, they claim this is the truly dangerous propaganda, precisely because it doesn't paint us as primitives and the west as simple allotent winners like james bond, but there you have, you know, the fiddler, the honest communist, there is an honest communist figure and the western side itself. the circus in le is shown to brutally manipulate and so on and so on. this is the truly dangerous propaganda. when you allow for this human side so that the logic is nonetheless in spite of this our side basically good and so on. and my point is that in stalinism also, you need both sides. so my point is that, again, the question, okay, sorry let me give you another example, a nice quote from orlando figes natasha's dance, russia's cultural history, where this is the description of shostakovich key provides, just a quote. since. since the stalinist assault against shostakovich's music in 1936, shostakovich has developed a sort of doublepeak in his musical language, using one idiom to please his masters in the kremlin and another to satisfy his own moral conscience as an artist and a citizen. outworkly. he spoke in a triumphant voice. yet beneath the ritual sounds of soviet rejoicing, there was a softer, more melancholic voice, the carefully concealed voice of satire and dissent, only audible to those who had felt the suffering his musing expressed. these two voices are clearly audible in shostakovich's fifth symphony.ally to heat. which received a half hour ovation of electrifying force when it was first performed. beneath the endless fanes trumpeting the triumph of the soviet state in the finale, the audience must have felt its sadness and they responded to the music as a spiritual release. hope. the the incredible paradox of this description. it claimed that the other message, the dark message, this despair pessim mission was carefully concealed. well, fact it, carefully concealed but understood by everybody, by thousands and so on. as if do you really think that the bureaucrats where're such idiots. j and so on, not to get what every listener got there. i mean... you know that he was a disgusting guy, but do you know that shdanov was a much more interesting character when there was this puris i mean anti-formalist campaign in 46-47. you know what's done of deep dance? everybody was shocked. at a meeting in the composers union house. there was a piano and zhdanov sat behind the piano, took a piece by shostakovich, played it the way it was, and then you said, this is how you should have done it to be more socialist realist, and played, okay, a kitsy version, but a different version, and even used these technical terms, mor, din, profissimo here and so on. so we are talking about horrible people, but don't make them idiots where they were not idiots. what i'm saying again is that obviously this doesn't work. a secret message which everybody gets. hey. and again. work apparently of a protection. but works of a protest which. ended up being celebrated by everybody. so i think again, that what if something is terribly wrong here? what if the opposition is not simply was shostakovich the official composer or did he have secret doubts and so on? what if he was an official? composer precisely because of what figures called this double stick. what if the party order was double-st? we want you, official fromars, but at the same time put all your private sheep, despair, doubts, and so on. we want that. one? because usually it is said that this private aspect is ironic ironizes the public mercy. like when you have, i wanted to play to you but it would take, i'm superstitious after today's experience even more. something goes wrong. see i was playing too much with that shitty lesson the cunning of reason is that you can always trust that something will go wrong. and i got an answer from the real. okay. what i wanted to say... but what irony? where is the irony here? what if it's not simply that? shostakovich heads. private ironical attitude towards the public. message like all the bombastic finale back it's meant as mocking and so on. what these think. functions in a doubly reflected way. that is to say, let me repeat again a passage from marx which i always like to return to because i think it's marx at his best. marx with regard to how ideology works. marx describes, you have it in almost all of my books, i'm sure you know it if you know a little bit my work. marx articulates the logic of the party of order, the conservative republican party which was in power immediately after 1848 revolution in france. they were. royalists, basically. the coalition of the two royalists. orlean legitim. but they have to pretend to be republicans. my's point is the following one. they publicly followed the republican line, but in all possible ways they mocked it, they laughed at it, they all the time made royal slips, made fun of the republic and so on and so on. but marx's point is that the irony is not where they thought. they thought we just follow the republican line, secretly we are royalists, we make fun. but the irony was double. the irony was double. although they thought they were secretly roy. objectively, they functioned as republicans. their legislation, pro-bourgeois legislation, solidified the republican capitalist order and so on and so on. so again, you have a surface which you privately mock and so on. but the truth is nonetheless in the surface. your distance is a false one. it's not that the true message is. the surface, what you laugh at. and again, what these the same coach. form. what is the same coach for? for shostakovich. what is so what if he mocks? she mocks it, but at the same time, nonetheless, she does't. and what if, let me go even the. step further, what if this is how in stalinism also, ideology function. what if they didn't want you really to identify with it? this is my own thesis. i developed it in one of my books that... for example, with socialist education, the idea was it was a dismal failure. the idea was to bring up, to elevate a new socialist personality, sacrificing himself for the others and so on, dedicated to humanity. what effectively the system produced were cynics who withdraw from public life, cared only about private pleasures. but wait a minute, what if this is what they really wanted? what if the ideal soviet citizen what those in power really were afraid of? citizens who would took the ruling ideology too seriously and would then get engaged and you never know where you get. you know, if you get engaged, then... it's one step towards dissidence,, when you get that things are really not like that. are you playing that that i hope you got my point that shostakovich wants your this would be the hegelian formula now. the very feature. weak. distinguished shost which the very shostakovich very distant from subject. ideology, all these private traumas, irony and so on. is what ultimately makes him a soviet composer. because it's interesting to see how i have a negative proof. there were a couple of let's call them naively sincere. communist, marxists, philosophers sch baker. they were either totally crushed, like maybe you know chris marker did a wonderful movie on him, medvedkin. he was a kind of an absolutely sincere pro-stalinist. all his works were prohibited and so on. no way. then another example in philosophy, i don't know if you know the again. he's not an idiot. he wrote very intelligent things on hegel, evald ilyenkov, the most tragic figure of soviet philosophy. she was an impossible almost thing, a kind of a sincere communist marxist. in 79, i think he killed himself. because two kind. it was simply. i mean it was. she even couldn't get published and it's really tragic now that they are opening his archive to see what. the bureaucracy, the censors, what they were disturbed at. that precisely he really means it, that there is no ironic distance, no obscene message behind or whatsoever and so on and so on. so it's. that that's the point that this unity of the opposites that precisely what you think it's your distance from it. is the point where, as it were, you are. included e. into where you are included into the thing. to give you here... not that. example. which i use in my, i think, i forgot even which book, okay, it doesn't matter. it's a. you know, last for three years breaking the waves. it's a nice hegelian theory of why he shot the film the way he shot it. the wager is the tension, the proper dialectical tension between form and content. the content is. romantique it's a crazy passionate story. emily watson sacrifices sk. and he says, if i were to shoot the film in the way that would, if the form were to fit the content, it would simply appear ridiculous. he says, this is why he shot it in this dogma way handheld camera, blurred image and so on. this he claims it the only way for us to swallow this content. it's true. this. coldness of the form which distinguiates it. so you see the point. in this sense, the forum falls into contempt. i put. what appears to undermine content is the condition of possibility. the obstacle is not really the obstacle. the obstacle is the. the obstacle is the positive is the positive condition here. that that's again. the properly dialectical moment that i was trying to articulate, it's not the same as transcendental moment. the transcendental movement would have been the priority of form. it would have been to say, oh, van trier is telling us a story, but he really wants to undermine the story. and that the truth is in the forum, that the forum makes fun of the content. the proof is in the form. i think we have to make an additional tour. that what is the undermining of content? it's what enables, what renders the content palpable. it's a little bit like the old example that i used. in today's ironic era, i cannot say i love you. i appear ridiculous. then i have to put it in an ironic way, as a poet would have put it, i love you, maybe i love you, and so on and so on. doesn't simply undermine it. it's the only way. it's the only way. to pes. tu pass d mess. okay okay, i developed enough in my group understanding how this enters for me the christian space where again, the whole point is this same overlapping where the very distance is what throws you in like like, for example, at the very point that you are radically divided from god. in the position of job or when christ is abandoned, you are identified with god. that is to say, the christian solution of the gap between man and god. it's not somehow we overcome the gap, but it's death. when you feel abandoned by god. the very gap that separates you from god is inherent to god himself. because this is the position at which christ found himself on the cross, blah, blah, blah, blah. so you see the point. you don't overcome the gap. in the same way, i hope you saw the chronology, that in the case of shostakovich, the very gap that separates him from soviet ideology makes him a soviet. ideoology so now, nonetheless, let me do quickly, at least as much as possible, the last line. what i promised you so that we get rid of. religion and can go to politics two days from now. the man who was thursday. you know what's deep? starting position that mysterious super secret scotland yard department and its boss, a mysterious chief, who is convinced that, a quote, a purely intellectual conspiracy threatens the very existence of civilization. already the last time i read you. a paragraph i would just like briefly to read you another paragraph. wonderful. mysterious boss, is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the family interstate. he has therefore formed a special corps of policemen who are also philosophers. it is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy. not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. the work of the philosophical policeman is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. the ordinary detective goes to po houses to arrest thieves. we go to artistic tea parties to detect pessimism. the ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. we discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. we have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on. on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime and so on and so on i think what okay. but it's not as simple as that. what i claim is that this is not cash cutting's position. what he gets at at the end is that it's not simply discern the universal the true crime, the universal top crime in particular crimes but that in order for this to function, god himself has to be the supreme. criminal. as you know, this is what. happens in the novel towards the end, the discovery that. this supreme police chief is the same as the boss of the of council of the anarchists and then he is reproached at the end when they confront him god a very english style remark by one of the detectives. it seems so silly that you, god, have been on both sides and fought yourself. in other words, that god is a hegelian fighting himself. and then, okay, we don't have time for all this lines. then chesterton approaches. the key problem. here ich. what does this mean, this coincidence of opposite? does it mean simply that from our finite view, god appears both good and evil, but because we are split, in itself, god is the unity, or is god in itself this gap, the highest contradiction, the highest pain, and catch as an answer is. the kok band. why is this so interesting? let me now conclude a little bit on meister eckhart, who i think effectively is, here i agree i will say something horrible, but i like this shocking statement. here one of the most disgusting characters of 20th century was right, namely alfred rosenberg, you know, the hitler's ideologist, when he says, our western mysticism beginning with the rh mystique of meister eckhart is the beginning of something different, new. don't ask me why, i think he was right. but i'm not original here because they were even intelligent and progressive enough in east germany meister eckhart was rehabilitated as the first dialectical materialist even and so on and so on. what? which is the vision here? of this notion of b. tension, contradiction in god himself. it's not only that. the tension, the highest pain, suffering is in god himself. it's much more. it is death. the absolute gap that separates, as already said, us from god is inherent to god himself, which means that our alienation from god is god's self alienation. that's for the message of christianity. when we are abandoned by god, god is not up there. god loses us. him check. which means, and here is the terrible revolutionary potential. it's almost the opposite of the standard. notion of teleology where you say, oh, whatever we are doing, somehow we can count on god to help us. no, it's not us who is helping god. i think the ultimate christian attitude, which is very revolutionary here is as paul claudel, a conservative put. god is helpless without us. we should be aware that when we are fighting for, and this is what benjamin is god's fate is decided in revolution. it's not only in a particular revolution, it's not only a revolution. you know, the faith of much more universal. and the one who first formulated this. this idea that, again. we are god's strong. through us. god suffers. eh did. eckhart was the one who shattered up. the very dualism between god and his creatures. this should be taken literally. it's not just these platitudes that god becomes man and so on. it is not just that god gives birth or creates to or creates men. it is also not only that, this is the standard pantheist platitude that. god gives death. only true. and in man god becomes fully god. it is that. man himself gives birth to god. god is nothing outside man. although this nothing is not simply a nothingiveness, but the abyss of godhead and so on and so on. now, one should be here very precise. eckhart if you allow me this last line of thought. eckard distinguishes between god and godhead. god. i think godhead is a non-god. he calls it und, a non-thing. but again, i think this has to be read as the k and infinite judgment. it doesn't mean no god. it means god which is no longer only god, like the am-de. so what happens here? the idea is that. g needs man in order to reach himself, be that in man god is born. holy ghost means a moment when in man god is born. how? a wonderful quote from he charmons. god has such a need to seek us out exactly as if all his god had dependent on it, as in fact it does. god can no more dispense with us. that we can dispense with him, even if it were possible that we might turn away from god. god could never turn away from us. so what this means is that the only sight of god is. oh, show this. a another quote. in my eternal birth all things were born, and i was cause of myself as well as of all things. if i had willed it, neither i nor anything would be. and if i myself were not, god would not be either. that god is god, of this i am a cause. if i were not, god would not be god. so what this paradox involves is eckhart's fundamental mystical insight. why? a human being has a center outside it, in god. he accepts. but. there must also be a corresponding eccentricity in g himself. that god also has his center. outside. consent. the eccentricity of man is the self-exentricity of god. show that g can. relate to himself. abolishes eccentricity only through men. uh here. again. we have this... totally crazy theory. oh,... of eckhart where he even goes as far to say that. we should not be grateful to god for his love. he said, god is stupid substance. gott is basically, she's kind of a subjectiveized spinoza already. she gives an incredible twist at heart to the idea, what does it mean that christ suffers from us. none of this paying the price for our sins. the idea is simply this one. got is the only substance that there is. we, our soul is nothing. we are virgin, but virgin he doesn't mean no sex. he means the opposite. for him, it is wonderful. mother is the only true virgin. only a virgin can give birth. why? because to give birth means you empty your soul of all empirical shit material and so on. at that moment, you give birth. the holy spirit, which is the godhead. gheit is borrowed in you. but god as such is not this abyss of spiritual. gotthead. gott is just i'm consciously vulgarizing him here, but he says this in a way. god is the substance of being. all there is is god. and when you become virgin, what he calls virginity is this. mystical withdrawal where you withdraw from reality. and at that point, you no longer suffer, but god suffers for you. but this only means the matter, things suffer. you know you are no longer i mean you withdraw from reality. god is all reality. because for eckhart, god is literally all reality. it's not that god is higher reality and then this table, for example, is a lower reality. all that is, is god. so then if you withdraw from reality from all the t and accept this position of gelassen of releaseishment when you are nothing. of course you don't suffer. god suffers but this means out there you are not identified with it. and four. but this god who suffers, it's just the stupid reality. it's only through your release into nothingness that god is born in you. but this god who is born in you is nothingness itself. and i really think that here we have the birth in of modern subjectivity. where? in that crucial. the kian moved. yes, and my god, you found them wonderful. i don't have time paradoxes here in eckhart. for example, when he says... gott ich! you't loves us like a dog. you know, dog has to love us. it is nature. god is nature. we don't have to be grateful. he says he says, god cannot order us anything. god just does what is in his nature to do. god cannot help us. god cannot help loving us. he says no god can just follow what he does and it is us who can order god. it's our duty to order things to god. god is stupid. he does what he can. he cannot. it's an absolutely breathtaking view, which i think is profoundly christian. he takes it seriously that nature but here is vision. out of nature, you withdraw into nothingness. out of this nothingness the holy spirit arises. which is justice. void as a spiritual space for something new, collective action to emerge and so on and so on. so again. now you will shave. but what is the difference between this radicality and a simple materialism. when you say, okay, so what's the big deal? we know it. god doesn't exist. we give birth to god. no, no, no, it's not a simple aesthetic. it's that it's not... the catch, what? misses the usual materialism. is precisely this dimension of how. y alienation from the substance, from god's substance. the thing shows. a cap, a split. in the thing itself of how, what i developed apropos, for example, of stalinism, the ph logic is the same. how when when precisely when we are alienated from the state, like the soviet artist was, this is what makes us members of the state. that is to say that the pain, our struggles are not only our struggles. the fate of the absolute is. decided in our struggles. it's a very anthropocentric vision, but i think it is the deepest ethical vision. it is the vision which also sustains this horror at the holocaust. well, you know, this idea of when something as horrible as holocaust happens. he. and many who survived it reported on this very existential experience, which tells you, but isn't there something obscene that you witness holocaust and then you go out and the sun is still there. it's as if when something so horrible happens, somehow the sun should stop shining. you know, this idea that our struggles are not only our struggles, that the fate of everything depends on us. this extreme point of responsibility and even habermas is here, right, i quote him somewhere, who says that when we when against this stupid argument against theology, which is, but how could god have allowed so many people to be killed in gulak, in blah blah? how much is intelligent enough to point out that this far from simply being an argument against god, if there is a good god, omnipotent, he would never allow it. on the contrary this is why we need some kind of reference to divine dimension because when you translate these terrifying crimes into simple human language of, oh, this guy was bad and so on, it's not strong enough. it's the very horror of these crimes which calls for another dimension. of course, the whole point is to read it not as god in the sense of religion, but i call this dimension precisely the prian dimension of the and and so on, whatever. so my point is that in order to give a materialist version of the lesson from hegel. okay. religion, it's not simply to say but god is truly man, but it's to introduce we need something more than human but this more than human of course is not god, but it's what i call okay. what we call the un debt and so on, that there has to be that has to be a gap. god is in the same way as i already developed that eh. the universal is nothing but the gap that separates the particular from itself. what religion calls god is the non-cocidence of men too. it. the gap within humanity. so again, what time pleading for is as a legacy of religious attitude. this much more radical messianic attitude, not any guaranteed messianic optimism or whatever, but in this sense of great action. anti post-mod. our struggles, you know, that this all the universe hangs on our struggles are the center. this idea of the fate of the universe is decided in our struggle. this idea of kashkeputin. ethical justification of of universe. but okay. from this i will pass to the ethics of intellectuals the next time. what i will not use here, because i don't want to repeat myself and we don't have enough time, is i wanted to give one talk on islam. but. i didn i remember