Slavoj Žižek. Ontological Incompleteness in Film. 2012
Lecture · European Graduate School Video Lectures ·
2012 · 1:36:49 · 13,963 words
cinema-art-cultureeveryday-lifephilosophy-generalpsychoanalysissubjectivityideologyfascism-populismcommunism-socialism
Žižek explores the phenomenological discordance between inside and outside in spatial experience, citing the Blackwell bookstore and the uncanny nature of excrement. He argues that space is never neutral and is defined by an invisible line of separation, which generates a 'mystical' or 'horror' quality in the in-between spaces. He connects this to Hitchcock’s cinematic play with spatial boundaries, specifically referencing the crack in Vertigo and the toilet scenes in Psycho, while noting the censorship battles surrounding the latter. Žižek analyzes Hitchcock’s films, arguing that recurring visual motifs (toilets, hanging figures) function as Lacanian sinthomes, empty, repetitive gestures with no symbolic meaning, rather than symbols. He illustrates this with anecdotes about his own obsessional neuroticism, including a flooded apartment and a book-shelving incident, to discuss the nature of subjective enjoyment and the 'subject without object.' The excerpt concludes with a dialogue with Alain Badiou on materialism, subtraction, and a critique of Deleuze and Guattari’s 'bodies without organs.' Žižek analyzes the 'autonomous organ' in Fight Club and Deleuze’s body without organs, arguing that subjectivity is not located in the same place as efficacy. He critiques the distinction between the divided subject and the split subject, using Jacques-Alain Miller’s reading of Lacan to argue that the subject is a division between something and nothing (a part without a whole), illustrated by the concept of object a as the cause of desire. Žižek analyzes Hitchcock’s Vertigo to illustrate the Lacanian subject as a void or 'signifier and nothing,' using Marx Brothers jokes and film clips to explain how fantasy fills this void. He traces Lacan’s evolving formulations of the Cartesian subject, arguing that the late Lacan returns to Descartes by positing an empty overlap of thinking and being. The discussion shifts to a Q&A on censorship, where Žižek contrasts the detailed, horror-inducing specificity of totalitarian prohibitions (Stalinism, Hays Code) with the ambiguity of modern classification systems, using examples from The Passion of the Christ and Hollywood censorship history. Žižek illustrates the paradoxical functioning of totalitarian discourse through anecdotes about Yugoslav and Soviet political jokes, where the regime's reaction validates the dissident's status. He analyzes the absurdity of late socialist politics, including self-deprecating humor by politicians and the commodification of religious miracles. The excerpt concludes with a theoretical discussion on Lacan, Badiou, and Deleuze, focusing on the relationship between lack, excess, and the object of enjoyment (objet petit a).
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
The phenomenological experience where the interior and exterior of a space do not align logically (e.g., a small house with a large interior), creating a sense of uncanny proximity or metaphysical surprise.
The assertion that spatial experience is always charged with ideological or phenomenological meaning, specifically through the tension of separation.
as “invisible line which separates inside from outside”
The conceptual boundary that structures human spatial experience, which is not physically present but phenomenologically felt as a separation.
as “mystical space in a house”
The hidden, in-between architectural spaces (like cavities between walls) where utilities and waste flow, which are structurally essential but phenomenologically excluded from conscious experience.
A motif that repeats itself with no specific meaning, functioning as a minimal symbolic formation.
A chaotic form that insists but is not yet symbolic form, similar to Kristeva’s semiotic.
Badiou’s notion of the subject, which Žižek contrasts with Lacan’s requirement for an object (object a) to support the subject.
as “obsessional neurotic enjoyment”
Enjoyment derived from causing a catastrophe for 'nothing,' where the subject operates from an empty space with impunity.
Badiou’s procedure for establishing existence, which Žižek links to the efficacy of object a.
Thinking negativity as a subtractive efficacy, which Žižek questions in relation to Badiou’s materialism.
as “bodies without organs”
Deleuze and Guattari’s phrase, which Žižek critiques, arguing the correlate of the subject is an 'organ' not a 'body'.
Deleuze’s concept of pure life or pure death drive, which Žižek uses to read the Alien franchise.
An organ that acts independently of the body (e.g., the fist in Fight Club), used to undermine corporate order by claiming an organ without a body.
The goal of psychoanalytic treatment; Žižek notes Lacan uses it as a verb (the subject traverses) rather than a substantive, implying a specific logical operation.
A 'madly idealist' Hegelian phrase Lacan uses to describe the final moment of analysis, which Žižek re-reads materially: accepting object a as one's own void.
as “object a”
The minimal, often ridiculous object to which the subject is attached; the efficacy of the count-as-one procedure itself, functioning as an immaterial object.
as “pure parallax”
Žižek’s description of Lacan’s Möbius band where object a and subject are two sides of the same structure, not distinct entities.
The result of bringing division to its end: a part that is not part of a complementary whole.
Jacques-Alain Miller’s insight that the split subject is not a division between conscious/unconscious, but a division where one side is a 'part' and the other is 'nothing'.
as “fantasy screen”
The role of fantasy is to fill in the void of the subject, projecting a 'full human person' onto a dark, empty shape.
Lacan’s formulation introducing a gap between thinking and being, where the 'I' is not where he thinks.
as “overlapping of thinking and being (empty set)”
Lacan’s late formulation where the subject is the pure processuality of nothing, an empty set where thinking and being coincide.
as “partial drive”
Lacan’s insistence that even in pure subjectivity, there must be a partial object or sinthome; drive is never total.
A minimal symbolic formation or libidinal investment (a gesture/motif) that repeats with no specific meaning, distinct from a symptom which carries meaning.
as “subjectivization”
The process of becoming a subject through fantasy and identification, which Lacan critiques as distinct from the true subject.
Used as an example of how detailed, specific prohibitions create a sense of horror and mystery when transgressed, unlike vague interpretations.
A specific, absurd detail of the Hays Code/MPAA rating system regarding sexual acts, illustrating how precise censorship generates its own perverse logic.
as “Stalinist kremlinology semiotic”
The practice of reading subversive political meaning into seemingly innocuous or absurd cultural texts (like a drunk poet's verse) within a totalitarian context.
The idea that political jokes function not just as release, but as a mechanism that sustains the system by allowing the populace to vent rage, thereby preventing actual revolution.
as “Stalinist style pornography”
A grotesque hybrid of official communist rhetoric and sexual content, exemplified by a cadre describing sexual acts in the language of socialist struggle.
as “nomadic excess”
Deleuze's positive re-reading of Oedipus as a figure of flux and openness, which Žižek contrasts with the Lacanian view of the phallic signifier and lack.
Lacan's concept that the object (objet petit a) is not merely missing from a structural lack, but exists as an excess that has no proper place in the symbolic order.
as “preemptive punishment”
A mechanism of masochism/obsessional neurosis where one punishes oneself for an illicit desire, thereby deriving enjoyment from the punishment itself.
Žižek's critique of certain interpretations of Lacan (and Kierkegaard/Heidegger) that frame the subject's existence as a tragic, authentic failure to achieve fullness, which he rejects in favor of the 'excess' of enjoyment.
Stories he reaches for 2
Slovene communists promote a fake miracle near Ljubljana for economic gain, then attack the local priest for calling it superstition, highlighting the inconsistent, business-oriented nature of late socialism.
“communists were furious this is a unique document. In the communist official paper they attacked this priest for non-patriotic behavior”
An old communist cadre, trying to please young interviewers, describes his sex life using the rigid, euphemistic language of communist struggle, creating a grotesque 'Stalinist pornography'.
“This guy said I often touch women between their legs the feeling there helps me in my struggle for socialism”
Works invoked 27
Vertigo film
Used to illustrate the spatial dynamic of looking through a crack, representing the 'in-between' space.
Psycho film
Used to illustrate the phenomenological exclusion of excrement/plumbing and the censorship battles over toilet scenes.
Fight Club film
Mentioned at the very end as a David Fincher film, likely leading into a discussion of hands/objects.
Casablanca film
Cited for its 'dirty innuendos' which were part of the game and allowed for a 'soft' totalitarianism where censorship was relaxed.
Anti-Oedipus book
Deleuze's work against psychoanalysis, which contains footnotes admitting he is talking about 'standard Lacanian' rather than Lacan himself.
North by Northwest film
Cited for the cliff/hanging motif and Eve Marie Saint’s role.
Logic of Sense book
Deleuze's 'best book' (apart from Difference and Repetition), containing a beautiful Deleuzian rereading of Oedipus as nomadic excess.
Mentioned as one of Deleuze's best books.
Žižek’s own book where he reports the flood anecdote.
Cited as an example of a film that bypassed classification by mobilizing religious groups, illustrating the power of ideology over censorship codes.
Described as 'her best book' (likely by Judith Butler, though not named), which argues that repression of desire turns into desire for repression.
Kant avec Sade book
Studied in detail during Žižek’s time in Miller’s inner seminar.
Lacan’s text where he uses the phrase 'traversing the fantasy' as a verb.
Coriolanus film
A film by Ralph Fiennes for which Žižek wrote something, highlighting Fiennes’ intellectual seriousness.
Žižek’s book where he discusses Deleuze and Guattari’s 'bodies without organs.'
Guggenheim Museum artwork
Cited as an ideal building with no central places, just a staircase.
Lacan’s crucial seminar (1966-67) where he returns to Descartes.
Saboteur film
Cited for the hanging motif on the Statue of Liberty.
Badiou’s work cited in the dialogue regarding 'unicity of existence' and 'subjectivisable body.'
To Catch a Thief film
Cited for the hanging/clinging motif with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.
Alien 2 film
Used to illustrate Deleuze’s concept of 'lamella' (pure life/death drive), despite Žižek’s personal dislike.
Blackwell's Bookstore other
Cited as a real-world example of the 'discordance between inside and outside' (small exterior, large interior).
The French detective novel by Boileau and Narcejac that Vertigo is based on; Žižek notes its original political context (WWII Resistance) was depoliticized by Hitchcock.
Badiou’s work cited regarding 'being as the generic.'
Notorious film
Cited for the famous kiss scene, which was limited to three seconds by the Hays Code.
Paris Opera (Garnier) artwork
Cited via Benjamin for its grand stairs as the site of social life.
Studied in detail during Žižek’s time in Miller’s inner seminar.
People invoked 42
Mel Gibson positive
Cited in the context of The Passion of the Christ and its lack of classification due to religious support.
Sophie Fiennes positive
A friend of Žižek’s, through whom he met Ralph Fiennes.
James Stewart positive
Inferred as the actor playing Scotty in Vertigo, referenced via the character name 'Scotty' looking at Madeleine.
Kim Jong-il positive
Cited as an example of totalitarian 'realism' in propaganda (golf scores).
Edward Norton positive
Referenced as the actor in Fight Club whose character's fist becomes autonomous.
Zeno of Elea positive
Referenced via 'Zeno paradox game' of dividing an object.
Dario Argento positive
An Italian horror director Žižek loves for his 'cheap in a good sense' operatic use of mirrors.
Not explicitly named but 'Comrade Stalin' is used as a rhetorical device for giving the concluding word.
Actor in Psycho, plays Marion’s lover.
Joseph Breen positive
The Hollywood censor whose interactions with Sternberg illustrate the absurdity of censorship codes.
Žižek mentions he disagrees with her but finds her distinction between symbolic and semiotic similar to his 'pre-ontological reality.'
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek uses Lacanian concepts (sinthome, object a, symptom) to interpret Hitchcock and contrasts Lacan’s view of the subject with Badiou’s.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Žižek critiques Deleuze and Guattari’s choice of 'bodies without organs,' arguing it should be 'organs without bodies.'
Director of Fight Club, mentioned at the very end.
Osip Mandelstam positive
Cited for the observation that Stalinist society had the 'greatest possible respect for poets' because they were taken seriously enough to be shot for wrong words.
Actor in Psycho, plays Norman Bates.
The actor who played Christ in The Passion; Žižek mentions the Pope’s audience with him.
The French president in the joke about nobility ('de'), serving as the foil for Bilić's joke.
Kim Novak positive
Inferred as the actress playing Madeleine in Vertigo, referenced via the character name.
Eva Marie Saint positive
Hitchcock’s favorite actress; Žižek praises her name.
Actress in Psycho, sister of Marion Crane.
A. J. Ayer positive
British analytical philosopher cited by Miller for the idea of dividing an object until only a 'part' remains.
Boileau-Narcejac positive
Authors of the French novel D'entre les morts, which Vertigo is based on.
Ralph Fiennes positive
Žižek loves him personally, describing him as naive, promiscuous, and intellectually serious (the 'Badiou among actors').
Žižek jokes about their dynamic (hysteric/master) and engages in a 'clinical debate' with him on materialism and subtraction.
Giorgio Agamben negative
Dismissed as 'old Agamben soup' regarding the question of efficacy.
Jure Bilić positive
Described as a 'great guy' and a 'Croat politician' who used self-deprecating humor ('Jure de Bilić') to boost popularity in late socialism.
Félix Guattari negative
See Deleuze.
Actress in To Catch a Thief.
Stephen King positive
Mentioned briefly as a reference point for the 'place of the horror' being in the mysterious space in between, rather than strictly inside or outside.
Žižek says he 'should be burned' for the second Alien film, though he uses it to illustrate Deleuze's 'lamella'.
Michel Foucault negative
Žižek dismisses the Foucaultian concept of 'subjectivization' as 'deconstructionist bullshit' and contrasts it with the Lacanian subject.
Jacques-Alain Miller positive
Described as the 'true philosophical genius' and 'pedagogic master'; Žižek was part of his inner seminar in the 80s. Miller’s insight on the 'part without a whole' is crucial to Žižek’s argument.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek cites Benjamin’s reading of the Paris Opera’s stairs as the true place of social life.
Marx Brothers positive
Žižek cites their jokes about identity as perfect illustrations of Lacanian concepts.
Søren Kierkegaard negative
Cited as starting a 'trick' to put possibility higher than actuality, which Žižek opposes.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Žižek uses Hitchcock's films (Vertigo, Psycho) as primary examples to illustrate his theory of spatial phenomenology and the play with inside/outside boundaries.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch positive
Referenced via Miller's text on masochism, illustrating the logic of preemptive punishment.
Josef von Sternberg positive
Director whose confrontation with Breen illustrates the logic of censorship.
Actor in North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief.
Sigmund Freud positive
Žižek references Freud’s Traumdeutung (dream of a boy urinating) to illustrate his flood anecdote.
Immanuel Kant positive
Praised for the 'genius' of his absurd legal reasoning regarding the penis as a co-owned organ.
Transcript 82 turns
unknown
...stopped in the morning,
...stopped in the morning,
Slavoj Žižek
namely, remember I mentioned that and I in my in one of my books I have a chapter where I'm totally bluffing of course on architecture but I like what I developed there. I think this is how symbolic space or even our space experience once we are in the symbolic universe blah blah is organized. What always fascinated me is in what a simple way this works, this discordance between inside and outside. For example, it happens to me maybe I am the idiot, tell me how it is with you, you are inside a car. The window, the window is closed and you look outside. But still it like when you open the window you can be hit how should I put it, it's not the same reality as the one you see from the inside, how it hits you with its proximity or whatever. So or I always like the other experience how sometimes in a house when you look at it when you are inside, outside, it looks a small house, you have this strange experience that once that the inside can be bigger than the outside you know. You know where I had this almost metaphysical experience? You know I think it still is the best bookstore in UK in England, it's Blackwell, I hope it still exists, didn't go down in Oxford. But there the effect is real for a simple reason because it's this small English house on the outside, you enter then of course they expanded it down, up, but still you know because the house is so small you you look at it sorry you experience it in a certain mystical way like it's a small house you enter it and it's like [unintelligible]. And I think again that space is never neutral. To have again that was my point our human experience of space, somewhere in your experience of space there must be this kind of invisible line which separates inside from outside. And again the place of the horror is not so much inside but as I said mentioning Stephen King and so on it's that mysterious space in between. It always comes with it, like this separation inside outside now I am speaking about our phenomenological experience of space never works. And this is incidentally also my reading of Hitchcock, that he all the time plays with this space. Not only what I obviously mentioned there the crack from which Scotty is looking at Madeleine, but generally let me tell you another of these everyday mysticism experiences. And I checked it with my friend okay maybe we are all freaks I don't know maybe it's not universal but it goes did you notice how we relate at everyday level to shit, to excrements? They like they disappear. You go to the toilet you flush it they disappear. But you know you never think where do they go. Okay you do think when the toilet is whatever blocked and blah blah blah. But how it's as if you know it's neither outside outside it's clean neither there is some architectural in between reality and this is why I think the truly mystical space in a house are those in between the walls and so on where you have all the communications, electricity comes, shit goes out, whatever. And I think that Hitchcock again quite often plays with this space. You know where? It may sound so naive but it works. For example in Psycho, you saw Psycho. You literally have toilet a couple of times there. Now I will give you a test. Imagine Hays Code, know the rules you remember no where which do you know which scene in Psycho for which shot Hitchcock had to fight most with censorship? Because Psycho is so '59 so it was just the last desperate attempts of of the Hays
namely, remember I mentioned that and I in my in one of my books I have a chapter where I'm totally bluffing of course on architecture but I like what I developed there. I think this is how symbolic space or even our space experience once we are in the symbolic universe blah blah is organized. What always fascinated me is in what a simple way this works, this discordance between inside and outside. For example, it happens to me maybe I am the idiot, tell me how it is with you, you are inside a car. The window, the window is closed and you look outside. But still it like when you open the window you can be hit how should I put it, it's not the same reality as the one you see from the inside, how it hits you with its proximity or whatever. So or I always like the other experience how sometimes in a house when you look at it when you are inside, outside, it looks a small house, you have this strange experience that once that the inside can be bigger than the outside you know. You know where I had this almost metaphysical experience? You know I think it still is the best bookstore in UK in England, it's Blackwell, I hope it still exists, didn't go down in Oxford. But there the effect is real for a simple reason because it's this small English house on the outside, you enter then of course they expanded it down, up, but still you know because the house is so small you you look at it sorry you experience it in a certain mystical way like it's a small house you enter it and it's like [unintelligible]. And I think again that space is never neutral. To have again that was my point our human experience of space, somewhere in your experience of space there must be this kind of invisible line which separates inside from outside. And again the place of the horror is not so much inside but as I said mentioning Stephen King and so on it's that mysterious space in between. It always comes with it, like this separation inside outside now I am speaking about our phenomenological experience of space never works. And this is incidentally also my reading of Hitchcock, that he all the time plays with this space. Not only what I obviously mentioned there the crack from which Scotty is looking at Madeleine, but generally let me tell you another of these everyday mysticism experiences. And I checked it with my friend okay maybe we are all freaks I don't know maybe it's not universal but it goes did you notice how we relate at everyday level to shit, to excrements? They like they disappear. You go to the toilet you flush it they disappear. But you know you never think where do they go. Okay you do think when the toilet is whatever blocked and blah blah blah. But how it's as if you know it's neither outside outside it's clean neither there is some architectural in between reality and this is why I think the truly mystical space in a house are those in between the walls and so on where you have all the communications, electricity comes, shit goes out, whatever. And I think that Hitchcock again quite often plays with this space. You know where? It may sound so naive but it works. For example in Psycho, you saw Psycho. You literally have toilet a couple of times there. Now I will give you a test. Imagine Hays Code, know the rules you remember no where which do you know which scene in Psycho for which shot Hitchcock had to fight most with censorship? Because Psycho is so '59 so it was just the last desperate attempts of of the Hays
unknown
Code no. You know which scene? No the
Code no. You know which scene? No the
Slavoj Žižek
murders or all those dead mother horrors. You remember towards the end of the film when Vera Miles the sister of Marion Crane and John Gavin the he was the the ambassador of United States in Mexico the guy who not Anthony Perkins the guy who plays the lover of Marion Crane and he they when they enter the cabin the motel Bates Motel cabin where how do they find the trace of her? In the toilet. You remember he I think not her looks for a moment into the toilet bowl and there is a piece of paper on which it is minus dollars whatever. You know that Hitchcock had to fight most ferociously for that to be allowed. That shot because it's absolutely prohibited, this was the utmost horror to show the inside of the toilet. And Hitchcock had to make take care you can check it how it's absolutely fanatically clean. And I claim that if you then read from here Hitchcock you can see as a permanent motif places which function as toilets. Toilets in the simple sense of somewhere a dark swallowing place where unpleasant or disturbing things disappear and they can return you know. Like where? In Psycho itself I claim you remember behind Norman Bates' house there is a small swamp where houses disappear sorry cars disappear with victims. And do you remember the very last shot of the film? On a rail they are pulling the car out no. I think it's within this symbolic place that swamp is another big toilet for Norman Bates. And so Norman Bates is my ethical hero, not for what he is doing but what I like is this attitude of you know cleaning things and getting rid of them you know which was for a long time I hope you all saw Psycho. My favorite scene there you remember after the first murder that wonderful almost minutes detailed scene where Norman Bates is cleaning the toilet the and I had such sympathy for him with horror I noticed he didn't do it my god there is one space there with a small stain and so okay you have this there. Then I claim even if you saw Vertigo you remember at the very end of Vertigo the final confrontation the two of them sorry that is to say Kim Novak, Madeleine, Judy and Scotty. Basically it's a very strange film it's it's almost a happy ending you remember. He accepts her, he Scotty recognizes that her love is authentic, they embrace at that point you remember some kind of entrance opens in the floor and a nun or whatever Mother Superior comes up. And it's totally irrational how she reacts and she I mean Judy the woman and falls down. I think it's the same although we know rationally of course it's the tower and up but it's as if you know some disgusting anal character whatever comes. It's like shit returning you know you thought you flushed it and it's this is so beautiful about Hitchcock. This is what I like it, I've written about it. In how many of his films you have the same visual motif repeating itself but not as a symbol. I think all readings some French guys tried it. All readings of Hitchcock which read this which interpret this recurring repeating which repeat themselves motifs as symbols don't work. That's the beautiful mystery it's a kind of a empty signifier literally. It's just a motif which repeats itself with one meaning. You know which is the best known one? You remember the very beginning of Vertigo? You must remember that Scotty when they are pursuing the bad guy and the policeman above and this is a recurring motif so many times it happens. For example you have it this motif of do you did you see North by Northwest? Yes. You remember at the very end again I think she Eve Marie Saint and incidentally no wonder she was one of Hitchcock's favorite actresses. Just think about her name. Eve Marie Saint, both of them Eve, sin, and Marie the virgin, it's an incredibly Hitchcockian name you know. How you remember that scene on the edge of that cliff she again just clinging by the hand pulling her up not that's there. Then you have it at the end of To Catch a Thief. Cary Grant holds not Grace Kelly but the murderer the bad woman as it were. Again it's the same motif. Then you have it already in Saboteur at the end the bad guy is hanging from the hero's hand on the top of Statue of Liberty. There of course is the bad ending slowly he falls down and so on and so on. But again and Hitchcock's universe is so full so full of these I call them using a specific Lacanian term sinthome S-I-N-T-H-O-M-E like not symptom. Symptom is already meaning but as Lacan repeatedly says sinthome is something different. It's just some kind of a minimal symbolic formation and it's just a minimal libidinal investment, a gesture a motif which is repeated with a certain libidinal content but with no specific meaning. Like you can say what I'm always said like look who's talking about because I'm full of these nervous gestures and so on you know. But what I want to say is that it's again wonderful to read Hitchcock and other real movie makers in this way. You know why I'm saying this? I didn't again lose the thread in my neurotic confusion although I have here in this room a clinical debate with Alain Badiou. As a joke I told him we are an ideal couple of I'm the hysteric provoking him he's the master you know this is one of the classic psychoanalytic dualities. And then he said he agrees then I said but I want a different status for myself that I am if there ever was one the ideal compulsive obsessional neurotic. And Alain insisted no way you are a hysteric one, I don't give you the dignity of being obsessional neurotic. So what I want to say is that you remember in the morning when I was improvising that motif of pre-ontological reality, some chaotic form but which is not totally formless which insist but it's not yet the symbolic form. Now for reasons into which I cannot go I don't agree with Julia Kristeva but maybe it is similar to her distinction between symbolic and semiotic you know semiotic the Platonic chora as some kind of pre-symbolic order but nonetheless minimal order which it's not yet the level of meaning which insists. And now there are so many ways to progress here because you know to cut a long story short here Lacan disagrees with Badiou. Badiou's notion of subject is and he even uses this term repeatedly that it's a subject without object. For Lacan precisely you need an object and this object would be precisely this minimal object a minimal some minimal ridiculous form to which you which can be totally ridiculous but you are attached to it. Unknowingly everything hinges on that. Like you touch you know what I liked? Maybe one nice imaginary form of this would have been another science fiction motif of as it were opening the wrong door or pushing the wrong button you know. I found it in some stories like you or the hero or the actor there enter a space and you see some small something to pull, a button to press and you think oh it's nothing let's try it. But then you experience when it's too late that that button that tiny detail was holding together the entire reality you know. And I'm not kidding in my book which one Tarrying with the Negative I think I report on what I remember clearly happened to me in Paris. I really had an experience like that. Of course afterwards I learned what it was about it was easily to be explained in a rational way no. Okay and here is the experience. I was it was deep winter freezing and okay I had to go to the toilet. Okay it's vulgar but don't be afraid I will not go in this direction. Okay I did my work of shitting blah blah then I just flushed the water. And it was unbelievable. Yes the water was flushed no but then it went on. Water started to fall from the floor and what did I do wrong? I just flushed the water and literally we had to call the firemen you know like it was an inundation it was flood. It just went on and on and then the fireman who came gave a perfect explanation that it was frozen and at the same time a little bit warmer de-frozen something like that. And I was the first to use that apartment for a long time. So what happened was that when I what happened is that one how do you call this where tube or what where the water because you know you have these problems in winter which is why if you don't have a heated apartment you even have to wrap the tubes if they are outside because if water freezes there you know this is the limit of my physical knowledge. I heard somewhere I'm not sure I believe it but that you know that water to ice it expands no it can explode. So what happened is that the the tube or whatever did explode and then but then since nobody used it there was no it's very simple there was no. So we know when I I triggered when I pushed it I it was open crack I triggered it but still it was such an incredible experience you know like oh my god I wanted to everything disappeared and that you flushed that button and then the water first you know and it went like in a good horror movie so gradually you know first a couple of drops drops from up I thought okay okay all of it then it was literally falling down literally at the end it was like like a couple of inches of water down everywhere we didn't know how to stop it and so on and so on. It's literal version of Freud in his Traumdeutung reports a wonder a dream of you know a small boy urinating that he goes on and on it's a stream it's a river it's an ocean and trans ocean how do you call it liner big ship passes by and so on. It was I don't know why it happens so often to me this such I have to be something crazy in me that attracts the attention of a because I let me tell you another story my worst. It happened to me once it was even worse. But the other guy was a victim. I'm really an obsessional neurotic which means I'm terrified by you know like I come back I see someone was in my room and you know when I left it was like this then no fuck you somebody leaves it like this I'm ready to kill for this you know. So what happened it's it's a very complex relation but you will see the effect. I was this is maybe the best feeling in all my life I felt so perversely satisfied. What happened is I was staying with a friend in their analytic apartment analytic which means there were three rooms where analysts were working I was sleeping in one and didn't like it because then you know in the morning I always had to make it clean erase the traces of my presence because there were okay. Now what happened was this. I did something very simple. I came home just to deposit some stuff there immediately to go out. I came home and I heard that there is an analysis going on patient and the analyst in a nearby room. So I took care to go on very very in a very silent way nobody heard me. I stepped entered my room just leave behind there a couple of books that I bought I wanted to go out to be free in the evening. And then yeah yeah yeah I noticed a book there on the table just like this. You know with my obsessional neurotic proto-fascist order I said this can't and I even noticed where this book belongs there. That is the ultimate trauma of me. You see a book just there you see the gap in the bookshelf. I couldn't resist it. I did this. Literally I drove a guy almost to madness like this. Because you know I learned then what happened. The guy who was doing the analysis minutes earlier was trying to return to the friend of mine a book. So he put the book on the table and then the patient rang the bell so he left it there didn't have time to look where it belongs and received the patient. And then there was something wrong with this patient I didn't know this but it was I came there it was very fast and all I did is one minute enter the room silently leave my books put the book back so this guy he didn't hear anything. Three minutes later two he came back the book was not there. Was he seriously had a breakdown he told called a psychiatrist and thought he is going crazy. I learned this because they were friends with my friends that guy so in the evening I we sat at dinner and the lady of the house told me you know that friend of ours he totally got crazy he had a breakdown and so on and I don't know why but when I told them the truth everyone took it for normal that there is something in me that it's enough that I am there that this catastrophe occurs you know. Which is why and I felt so well I like this this is typical obsessional neurotic enjoyment you know. You are in for nothing you know nobody even knows you just do something nobody you cause a catastrophe and you can laugh he he I did nothing you know. Which is why I remember some stupid journalists in early '90s asked me this pathetic question you know. Oh when did you really feel free you know. They thought I will take I will tell them some some democratic bullshit like when we were fighting communist terror no no no I told them where. I still remember it. When I was much younger you know these were pre-digital times where the old phones and you know like there was practically no way when somebody calls to check it up which number and so on. Okay so I was at home and the phone was ringing. I picked it up and somebody said is Maria there a name okay. I knew no Maria it was here it's a wrong number. And then I didn't do it because it's so bad I'm not really ethical I'm just a common decent guy but I was instantly I remember now the pain of renouncing it tempted to cause a catastrophe because I knew I was in a position of absolute freedom. Whatever I do there the guy didn't think it's me it's Maria's apartment so I can tell whatever I want with impunity. Yes I am evil. But you know what Plato said there are two types of persons only, people who do evil things and people who just dream about doing evil things. So my instant idea was to say something like I'm sorry here is the medical emergency service Maria just had a breakdown probably she will not survive boom. And it's so wonderful I would have caused the catastrophe but you know nobody would have nobody could have identified it to me. And again even now I feel the pain that I this would be Badiou laughed at almost killed me when I told him this is my proximity how I missed my event you know. So what I'm saying is that I'm not kidding here you see that this this is typical obsessional neurotic hypocrisy. This is typical sorry not neurotic hysteric no hysterics are the opposite you know hysterics are open explore but this is the obsessional neurotic of hysteric position of subjectivity. To do something which is to operate as it were from a totally empty space abstract to do something which cannot even be be traced be traced back back at you. But what I'm saying is that this is why architecture always interests me in intelligent manipulations of architectural space. For example let me tell you another crazy example. When I introduced this idea again some stupid architect asked me as an architecture conference what would be your ideal building and I told him my ideal building would have been something like you know usually we distinguish in buildings central places and places which are just appendix accessories. A building which is without central places just a big staircase one toilet like this and nothing that's all. And they told me but we have it it's even well known and they're right. Were you in Guggenheim Museum in New York? That one the it's exactly this. You go up and it's just a big staircase which goes down. I was always attracted by this idea of Benjamin wrote about this of making out of these places of passage like staircase the place where things really where things really happen. I mean this is Benjamin's very naive but nice reading of why for the imperial Paris that Garnier the old big opera house is so important because his reading is forget about the opera. The true place are that big gigantic stairs where you know ladies show their dresses men meet and so on. I mean you know the building is not built stairs are not built to enter the opera hall. The the the opera hall with chairs and podium is built to give justification so that people can go up and down the stairs. Oh now I'm a little bit we are approaching object a Lacanian because this would be I know you are preparing your knife please strike. No it's not a knife. Don't tell don't try to be Benigni no I'm really a good girl. So please go on. Okay the Lacanian subject supported on object a is not or I don't think it is a symmetrical reversal of the subject without object. No no absolutely I agree. Okay can we go because what sorry just what both reject is this classical subject object no because object a precisely is not this modern philosophy subject confronted with object. Well exactly in this okay we're going to talk about the object a. The subject without object that Badiou's talking about an object might be the one of the count-as-one or a one in appearance perhaps but the object a that's I mean the way I think of it is that's sort of the efficacy of the count-as-one procedure itself. Yeah yeah. No no you are right it's an object which is purely intersubjective formal effect it's an object without any substance and so on. Would you also just call that whenever thinking negativity as subtraction that would be like subtractive efficacy? Yeah exactly subtraction the same way Badiou uses it. But but here I have a problem and sorry you finish. No no no. No I'm sincerely sorry. I'm kind of losing my no no no. It happens to me all the time you have still years to really start to lose your thread you know. Okay there's there's an ambiguity here and it's with respect to subtraction. I am aiming this with Badiou himself but let's go on. What's the ambiguity concerning subtraction? Sometimes I think there is and it's an ambiguity that strikes right at the heart of Badiou always says he is remaining a materialist, materialist, materialist but what you've got object a that efficacy that is true isn't that true dialectical materialism? That's the stuff that's the something that costs nothing. But it's immaterial nonetheless immaterial and that's where we agree with Alain that to be a proper materialist you have to include immaterial objects. It's okay. Sorry she finishes. This functions strategically the okay the appearance of object a does that function strategically the same as what Badiou calls the unicity of an existence? Sorry the? Unicity, the inexistent? Yeah yeah. So there's these two levels of one going on, one of the count-as-one and then there's an authentic unicity said of efficacy. That's an ambiguity that I see here going on. Where exactly now you caught me I don't want to bluff where exactly in what context does he say this? The unicity of existence the Second Manifesto for Philosophy I have. Ah! I can give you quotes it's the greatest one. And what's so interesting about that is there's kind of two orders of I think materiality that could be going on because in the first manifesto he says most important concept is being as the generic and in the second one he says I'm moving away from being as the generic to the subjectivisable body. To the subject? Subjectivisable body. Yeah yeah yeah I know I know yeah yeah. But you know where I have a problem here and also not a problem but like difference and I checked it up in detail later not in my book Organs without Bodies I always was intrigued by why did Deleuze and Guattari choose the phrase organs without bodies sorry bodies without organs why not the opposite one? For me it's so obviously true that the correlate of individual or the classical soul person is a body. A subject doesn't have a body I claim. The correlate of subject is an organ. It can be even in this imaginary way you know a big eye or in like in surrealist paintings or films just a hand which is why I like you know the how is it called that movie my god it's not Nolan it's David Fincher I think he did no sorry who did who did Fight Club? David Fincher. Yeah you remember that wonderful scene one of the mega scenes where Edward Norton confronts his boss and then his fist becomes autonomous and starts to beat him. It's a tremendously efficient scene it's much more terrifying than if he were to attack directly. So okay let's go on organ. Something bothers you there like in can I be very aggressive? Sorry just to finish it's in my nature to be anti-feminist aggressive. I can see like you know Aristotelian you know Aristotelian theory
murders or all those dead mother horrors. You remember towards the end of the film when Vera Miles the sister of Marion Crane and John Gavin the he was the the ambassador of United States in Mexico the guy who not Anthony Perkins the guy who plays the lover of Marion Crane and he they when they enter the cabin the motel Bates Motel cabin where how do they find the trace of her? In the toilet. You remember he I think not her looks for a moment into the toilet bowl and there is a piece of paper on which it is minus dollars whatever. You know that Hitchcock had to fight most ferociously for that to be allowed. That shot because it's absolutely prohibited, this was the utmost horror to show the inside of the toilet. And Hitchcock had to make take care you can check it how it's absolutely fanatically clean. And I claim that if you then read from here Hitchcock you can see as a permanent motif places which function as toilets. Toilets in the simple sense of somewhere a dark swallowing place where unpleasant or disturbing things disappear and they can return you know. Like where? In Psycho itself I claim you remember behind Norman Bates' house there is a small swamp where houses disappear sorry cars disappear with victims. And do you remember the very last shot of the film? On a rail they are pulling the car out no. I think it's within this symbolic place that swamp is another big toilet for Norman Bates. And so Norman Bates is my ethical hero, not for what he is doing but what I like is this attitude of you know cleaning things and getting rid of them you know which was for a long time I hope you all saw Psycho. My favorite scene there you remember after the first murder that wonderful almost minutes detailed scene where Norman Bates is cleaning the toilet the and I had such sympathy for him with horror I noticed he didn't do it my god there is one space there with a small stain and so okay you have this there. Then I claim even if you saw Vertigo you remember at the very end of Vertigo the final confrontation the two of them sorry that is to say Kim Novak, Madeleine, Judy and Scotty. Basically it's a very strange film it's it's almost a happy ending you remember. He accepts her, he Scotty recognizes that her love is authentic, they embrace at that point you remember some kind of entrance opens in the floor and a nun or whatever Mother Superior comes up. And it's totally irrational how she reacts and she I mean Judy the woman and falls down. I think it's the same although we know rationally of course it's the tower and up but it's as if you know some disgusting anal character whatever comes. It's like shit returning you know you thought you flushed it and it's this is so beautiful about Hitchcock. This is what I like it, I've written about it. In how many of his films you have the same visual motif repeating itself but not as a symbol. I think all readings some French guys tried it. All readings of Hitchcock which read this which interpret this recurring repeating which repeat themselves motifs as symbols don't work. That's the beautiful mystery it's a kind of a empty signifier literally. It's just a motif which repeats itself with one meaning. You know which is the best known one? You remember the very beginning of Vertigo? You must remember that Scotty when they are pursuing the bad guy and the policeman above and this is a recurring motif so many times it happens. For example you have it this motif of do you did you see North by Northwest? Yes. You remember at the very end again I think she Eve Marie Saint and incidentally no wonder she was one of Hitchcock's favorite actresses. Just think about her name. Eve Marie Saint, both of them Eve, sin, and Marie the virgin, it's an incredibly Hitchcockian name you know. How you remember that scene on the edge of that cliff she again just clinging by the hand pulling her up not that's there. Then you have it at the end of To Catch a Thief. Cary Grant holds not Grace Kelly but the murderer the bad woman as it were. Again it's the same motif. Then you have it already in Saboteur at the end the bad guy is hanging from the hero's hand on the top of Statue of Liberty. There of course is the bad ending slowly he falls down and so on and so on. But again and Hitchcock's universe is so full so full of these I call them using a specific Lacanian term sinthome S-I-N-T-H-O-M-E like not symptom. Symptom is already meaning but as Lacan repeatedly says sinthome is something different. It's just some kind of a minimal symbolic formation and it's just a minimal libidinal investment, a gesture a motif which is repeated with a certain libidinal content but with no specific meaning. Like you can say what I'm always said like look who's talking about because I'm full of these nervous gestures and so on you know. But what I want to say is that it's again wonderful to read Hitchcock and other real movie makers in this way. You know why I'm saying this? I didn't again lose the thread in my neurotic confusion although I have here in this room a clinical debate with Alain Badiou. As a joke I told him we are an ideal couple of I'm the hysteric provoking him he's the master you know this is one of the classic psychoanalytic dualities. And then he said he agrees then I said but I want a different status for myself that I am if there ever was one the ideal compulsive obsessional neurotic. And Alain insisted no way you are a hysteric one, I don't give you the dignity of being obsessional neurotic. So what I want to say is that you remember in the morning when I was improvising that motif of pre-ontological reality, some chaotic form but which is not totally formless which insist but it's not yet the symbolic form. Now for reasons into which I cannot go I don't agree with Julia Kristeva but maybe it is similar to her distinction between symbolic and semiotic you know semiotic the Platonic chora as some kind of pre-symbolic order but nonetheless minimal order which it's not yet the level of meaning which insists. And now there are so many ways to progress here because you know to cut a long story short here Lacan disagrees with Badiou. Badiou's notion of subject is and he even uses this term repeatedly that it's a subject without object. For Lacan precisely you need an object and this object would be precisely this minimal object a minimal some minimal ridiculous form to which you which can be totally ridiculous but you are attached to it. Unknowingly everything hinges on that. Like you touch you know what I liked? Maybe one nice imaginary form of this would have been another science fiction motif of as it were opening the wrong door or pushing the wrong button you know. I found it in some stories like you or the hero or the actor there enter a space and you see some small something to pull, a button to press and you think oh it's nothing let's try it. But then you experience when it's too late that that button that tiny detail was holding together the entire reality you know. And I'm not kidding in my book which one Tarrying with the Negative I think I report on what I remember clearly happened to me in Paris. I really had an experience like that. Of course afterwards I learned what it was about it was easily to be explained in a rational way no. Okay and here is the experience. I was it was deep winter freezing and okay I had to go to the toilet. Okay it's vulgar but don't be afraid I will not go in this direction. Okay I did my work of shitting blah blah then I just flushed the water. And it was unbelievable. Yes the water was flushed no but then it went on. Water started to fall from the floor and what did I do wrong? I just flushed the water and literally we had to call the firemen you know like it was an inundation it was flood. It just went on and on and then the fireman who came gave a perfect explanation that it was frozen and at the same time a little bit warmer de-frozen something like that. And I was the first to use that apartment for a long time. So what happened was that when I what happened is that one how do you call this where tube or what where the water because you know you have these problems in winter which is why if you don't have a heated apartment you even have to wrap the tubes if they are outside because if water freezes there you know this is the limit of my physical knowledge. I heard somewhere I'm not sure I believe it but that you know that water to ice it expands no it can explode. So what happened is that the the tube or whatever did explode and then but then since nobody used it there was no it's very simple there was no. So we know when I I triggered when I pushed it I it was open crack I triggered it but still it was such an incredible experience you know like oh my god I wanted to everything disappeared and that you flushed that button and then the water first you know and it went like in a good horror movie so gradually you know first a couple of drops drops from up I thought okay okay all of it then it was literally falling down literally at the end it was like like a couple of inches of water down everywhere we didn't know how to stop it and so on and so on. It's literal version of Freud in his Traumdeutung reports a wonder a dream of you know a small boy urinating that he goes on and on it's a stream it's a river it's an ocean and trans ocean how do you call it liner big ship passes by and so on. It was I don't know why it happens so often to me this such I have to be something crazy in me that attracts the attention of a because I let me tell you another story my worst. It happened to me once it was even worse. But the other guy was a victim. I'm really an obsessional neurotic which means I'm terrified by you know like I come back I see someone was in my room and you know when I left it was like this then no fuck you somebody leaves it like this I'm ready to kill for this you know. So what happened it's it's a very complex relation but you will see the effect. I was this is maybe the best feeling in all my life I felt so perversely satisfied. What happened is I was staying with a friend in their analytic apartment analytic which means there were three rooms where analysts were working I was sleeping in one and didn't like it because then you know in the morning I always had to make it clean erase the traces of my presence because there were okay. Now what happened was this. I did something very simple. I came home just to deposit some stuff there immediately to go out. I came home and I heard that there is an analysis going on patient and the analyst in a nearby room. So I took care to go on very very in a very silent way nobody heard me. I stepped entered my room just leave behind there a couple of books that I bought I wanted to go out to be free in the evening. And then yeah yeah yeah I noticed a book there on the table just like this. You know with my obsessional neurotic proto-fascist order I said this can't and I even noticed where this book belongs there. That is the ultimate trauma of me. You see a book just there you see the gap in the bookshelf. I couldn't resist it. I did this. Literally I drove a guy almost to madness like this. Because you know I learned then what happened. The guy who was doing the analysis minutes earlier was trying to return to the friend of mine a book. So he put the book on the table and then the patient rang the bell so he left it there didn't have time to look where it belongs and received the patient. And then there was something wrong with this patient I didn't know this but it was I came there it was very fast and all I did is one minute enter the room silently leave my books put the book back so this guy he didn't hear anything. Three minutes later two he came back the book was not there. Was he seriously had a breakdown he told called a psychiatrist and thought he is going crazy. I learned this because they were friends with my friends that guy so in the evening I we sat at dinner and the lady of the house told me you know that friend of ours he totally got crazy he had a breakdown and so on and I don't know why but when I told them the truth everyone took it for normal that there is something in me that it's enough that I am there that this catastrophe occurs you know. Which is why and I felt so well I like this this is typical obsessional neurotic enjoyment you know. You are in for nothing you know nobody even knows you just do something nobody you cause a catastrophe and you can laugh he he I did nothing you know. Which is why I remember some stupid journalists in early '90s asked me this pathetic question you know. Oh when did you really feel free you know. They thought I will take I will tell them some some democratic bullshit like when we were fighting communist terror no no no I told them where. I still remember it. When I was much younger you know these were pre-digital times where the old phones and you know like there was practically no way when somebody calls to check it up which number and so on. Okay so I was at home and the phone was ringing. I picked it up and somebody said is Maria there a name okay. I knew no Maria it was here it's a wrong number. And then I didn't do it because it's so bad I'm not really ethical I'm just a common decent guy but I was instantly I remember now the pain of renouncing it tempted to cause a catastrophe because I knew I was in a position of absolute freedom. Whatever I do there the guy didn't think it's me it's Maria's apartment so I can tell whatever I want with impunity. Yes I am evil. But you know what Plato said there are two types of persons only, people who do evil things and people who just dream about doing evil things. So my instant idea was to say something like I'm sorry here is the medical emergency service Maria just had a breakdown probably she will not survive boom. And it's so wonderful I would have caused the catastrophe but you know nobody would have nobody could have identified it to me. And again even now I feel the pain that I this would be Badiou laughed at almost killed me when I told him this is my proximity how I missed my event you know. So what I'm saying is that I'm not kidding here you see that this this is typical obsessional neurotic hypocrisy. This is typical sorry not neurotic hysteric no hysterics are the opposite you know hysterics are open explore but this is the obsessional neurotic of hysteric position of subjectivity. To do something which is to operate as it were from a totally empty space abstract to do something which cannot even be be traced be traced back back at you. But what I'm saying is that this is why architecture always interests me in intelligent manipulations of architectural space. For example let me tell you another crazy example. When I introduced this idea again some stupid architect asked me as an architecture conference what would be your ideal building and I told him my ideal building would have been something like you know usually we distinguish in buildings central places and places which are just appendix accessories. A building which is without central places just a big staircase one toilet like this and nothing that's all. And they told me but we have it it's even well known and they're right. Were you in Guggenheim Museum in New York? That one the it's exactly this. You go up and it's just a big staircase which goes down. I was always attracted by this idea of Benjamin wrote about this of making out of these places of passage like staircase the place where things really where things really happen. I mean this is Benjamin's very naive but nice reading of why for the imperial Paris that Garnier the old big opera house is so important because his reading is forget about the opera. The true place are that big gigantic stairs where you know ladies show their dresses men meet and so on. I mean you know the building is not built stairs are not built to enter the opera hall. The the the opera hall with chairs and podium is built to give justification so that people can go up and down the stairs. Oh now I'm a little bit we are approaching object a Lacanian because this would be I know you are preparing your knife please strike. No it's not a knife. Don't tell don't try to be Benigni no I'm really a good girl. So please go on. Okay the Lacanian subject supported on object a is not or I don't think it is a symmetrical reversal of the subject without object. No no absolutely I agree. Okay can we go because what sorry just what both reject is this classical subject object no because object a precisely is not this modern philosophy subject confronted with object. Well exactly in this okay we're going to talk about the object a. The subject without object that Badiou's talking about an object might be the one of the count-as-one or a one in appearance perhaps but the object a that's I mean the way I think of it is that's sort of the efficacy of the count-as-one procedure itself. Yeah yeah. No no you are right it's an object which is purely intersubjective formal effect it's an object without any substance and so on. Would you also just call that whenever thinking negativity as subtraction that would be like subtractive efficacy? Yeah exactly subtraction the same way Badiou uses it. But but here I have a problem and sorry you finish. No no no. No I'm sincerely sorry. I'm kind of losing my no no no. It happens to me all the time you have still years to really start to lose your thread you know. Okay there's there's an ambiguity here and it's with respect to subtraction. I am aiming this with Badiou himself but let's go on. What's the ambiguity concerning subtraction? Sometimes I think there is and it's an ambiguity that strikes right at the heart of Badiou always says he is remaining a materialist, materialist, materialist but what you've got object a that efficacy that is true isn't that true dialectical materialism? That's the stuff that's the something that costs nothing. But it's immaterial nonetheless immaterial and that's where we agree with Alain that to be a proper materialist you have to include immaterial objects. It's okay. Sorry she finishes. This functions strategically the okay the appearance of object a does that function strategically the same as what Badiou calls the unicity of an existence? Sorry the? Unicity, the inexistent? Yeah yeah. So there's these two levels of one going on, one of the count-as-one and then there's an authentic unicity said of efficacy. That's an ambiguity that I see here going on. Where exactly now you caught me I don't want to bluff where exactly in what context does he say this? The unicity of existence the Second Manifesto for Philosophy I have. Ah! I can give you quotes it's the greatest one. And what's so interesting about that is there's kind of two orders of I think materiality that could be going on because in the first manifesto he says most important concept is being as the generic and in the second one he says I'm moving away from being as the generic to the subjectivisable body. To the subject? Subjectivisable body. Yeah yeah yeah I know I know yeah yeah. But you know where I have a problem here and also not a problem but like difference and I checked it up in detail later not in my book Organs without Bodies I always was intrigued by why did Deleuze and Guattari choose the phrase organs without bodies sorry bodies without organs why not the opposite one? For me it's so obviously true that the correlate of individual or the classical soul person is a body. A subject doesn't have a body I claim. The correlate of subject is an organ. It can be even in this imaginary way you know a big eye or in like in surrealist paintings or films just a hand which is why I like you know the how is it called that movie my god it's not Nolan it's David Fincher I think he did no sorry who did who did Fight Club? David Fincher. Yeah you remember that wonderful scene one of the mega scenes where Edward Norton confronts his boss and then his fist becomes autonomous and starts to beat him. It's a tremendously efficient scene it's much more terrifying than if he were to attack directly. So okay let's go on organ. Something bothers you there like in can I be very aggressive? Sorry just to finish it's in my nature to be anti-feminist aggressive. I can see like you know Aristotelian you know Aristotelian theory
unknown
hysteria the hysteron how do you call it
hysteria the hysteron how do you call it
Slavoj Žižek
mothers you know where the term hysteria comes from? The womb. Yeah yeah uterus is moving no. I can see your uterus moving when you want to strike you know. So please do
mothers you know where the term hysteria comes from? The womb. Yeah yeah uterus is moving no. I can see your uterus moving when you want to strike you know. So please do
unknown
it and then you I didn't forget about you. Okay body for Deleuze you just said body would correspond to the individual whereas organs for subject. I think that's to a degree right but Deleuze was always and you would agree reactive against any form of subjectivity he was always on the side of the
it and then you I didn't forget about you. Okay body for Deleuze you just said body would correspond to the individual whereas organs for subject. I think that's to a degree right but Deleuze was always and you would agree reactive against any form of subjectivity he was always on the side of the
Slavoj Žižek
violence of life. But I don't think Deleuze necessarily thought body either the closest he would have gone been in thinking body as body as a
violence of life. But I don't think Deleuze necessarily thought body either the closest he would have gone been in thinking body as body as a
unknown
true unicity that could be said of material efficacy like what a body can be would have been in the univocity of. No but he explains it you know that there are two three pages in le Mille Plateaux Thousand Plateaus where one or two pages where Deleuze and Guattari directly approach this topic as if they were not idiots my
true unicity that could be said of material efficacy like what a body can be would have been in the univocity of. No but he explains it you know that there are two three pages in le Mille Plateaux Thousand Plateaus where one or two pages where Deleuze and Guattari directly approach this topic as if they were not idiots my
Slavoj Žižek
god Deleuze was a mega genius I admit it you know when he and he gives arguments which don't convince me. The argument is that organ is always part of some organic
god Deleuze was a mega genius I admit it you know when he and he gives arguments which don't convince me. The argument is that organ is always part of some organic
unknown
order proto-fascist order organs serve this that and precisely if you say body without organs some
order proto-fascist order organs serve this that and precisely if you say body without organs some
Slavoj Žižek
kind of and I can also see it for example the way I read in that
kind of and I can also see it for example the way I read in that
unknown
stupid How to Read Lacan book the way I read Lacan's
stupid How to Read Lacan book the way I read Lacan's
Slavoj Žižek
concept of lamella pure life or pure death drive. And I read it through of course Alien
concept of lamella pure life or pure death drive. And I read it through of course Alien
unknown
you know in Alien in the first one the second one
you know in Alien in the first one the second one
Slavoj Žižek
Cameron should be burned the second one
Cameron should be burned the second one
unknown
is a simple adventure movie you know. But the first one the object is sorry that monster is this kind of a pure irresistible undead life which you cut it whatever it returns radical plasticity to use this Catherine Malabou term. Okay I can see how you can say this is pure life without organs. But nonetheless I claim
is a simple adventure movie you know. But the first one the object is sorry that monster is this kind of a pure irresistible undead life which you cut it whatever it returns radical plasticity to use this Catherine Malabou term. Okay I can see how you can say this is pure life without organs. But nonetheless I claim
Slavoj Žižek
because of a long tradition that a much more efficient way to undermine the corporate order nonetheless you know corporatism is corporatism is to claim again an organ without a body an autonomous organ.
because of a long tradition that a much more efficient way to undermine the corporate order nonetheless you know corporatism is corporatism is to claim again an organ without a body an autonomous organ.
unknown
So strike back. No I don't this this is kind of hard it kind of repeats. No no but I don't mean it just in joking way I mean if you really have some theoretical thing to say and I know it's hard for me to sit here and think and say it but the problem with organ that just I find a little I'm not I'm not arguing this is not. Because you know I also refer to this long horror tradition
So strike back. No I don't this this is kind of hard it kind of repeats. No no but I don't mean it just in joking way I mean if you really have some theoretical thing to say and I know it's hard for me to sit here and think and say it but the problem with organ that just I find a little I'm not I'm not arguing this is not. Because you know I also refer to this long horror tradition
Slavoj Žižek
where and I think I try to reassert this as something positive not as monstrosity this idea that you lie you your subjectivity is a
where and I think I try to reassert this as something positive not as monstrosity this idea that you lie you your subjectivity is a
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lie but then truth emerges through an organ which doesn't obey your subjectivity you know I like this idea. And and that's why Nietzsche thought that Hegel was so vulgar. Hegel was vulgar. Hegel is the most vulgar philosopher you know how many obscenities you find if you read Hegel close. But it starts with Kant you know this. Of course. Kant is the beginning of all not only do you know sorry just do you know Kant's definition of marriage? A contract among two adults adults about the mutual use of sex organs
lie but then truth emerges through an organ which doesn't obey your subjectivity you know I like this idea. And and that's why Nietzsche thought that Hegel was so vulgar. Hegel was vulgar. Hegel is the most vulgar philosopher you know how many obscenities you find if you read Hegel close. But it starts with Kant you know this. Of course. Kant is the beginning of all not only do you know sorry just do you know Kant's definition of marriage? A contract among two adults adults about the mutual use of sex organs
Slavoj Žižek
for pleasure without any sublimation and you know where one page later Kant asks the question so if a husband runs away does the wife have the right to bring him back with police? Kant's answer yes not because any deeper social bond but because according to the contract he ran away also with his penis that is to say an organ which was co-owned by her. It's beauty that's the genius of Kant. But the problem still true problem is that subjectivity is not in the same place as the place of efficacy. What do you mean ah we would have to go here in the sense of what do you mean ah this is a best question what do you mean about efficacy? Are you playing are you reheating this old Agamben soup of efficacy? No I'm just living here I'm sorry efficacy
for pleasure without any sublimation and you know where one page later Kant asks the question so if a husband runs away does the wife have the right to bring him back with police? Kant's answer yes not because any deeper social bond but because according to the contract he ran away also with his penis that is to say an organ which was co-owned by her. It's beauty that's the genius of Kant. But the problem still true problem is that subjectivity is not in the same place as the place of efficacy. What do you mean ah we would have to go here in the sense of what do you mean ah this is a best question what do you mean about efficacy? Are you playing are you reheating this old Agamben soup of efficacy? No I'm just living here I'm sorry efficacy
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that
that
Slavoj Žižek
you know this old trick from Kierkegaard onwards to put possibility higher than actuality. Because what I'm more and more fascinated is the opposite to that the real one of the names for the Lacanian real would have been an actuality which is impossible. It's impossible but real an actuality which is not the realization of an impossibility. It's in kind of in excess of its own space of possibility. I always like to turn things around like even with object a Lacan I think in a totally wrong way at some point claims when he tries to distinguish the proper object a from this mirror relationship mirror he says object a is like vampire somewhere in
you know this old trick from Kierkegaard onwards to put possibility higher than actuality. Because what I'm more and more fascinated is the opposite to that the real one of the names for the Lacanian real would have been an actuality which is impossible. It's impossible but real an actuality which is not the realization of an impossibility. It's in kind of in excess of its own space of possibility. I always like to turn things around like even with object a Lacan I think in a totally wrong way at some point claims when he tries to distinguish the proper object a from this mirror relationship mirror he says object a is like vampire somewhere in
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his early work in the sense that you
his early work in the sense that you
Slavoj Žižek
know vampires as we all know this is what I was teaching my son before he
know vampires as we all know this is what I was teaching my son before he
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knew about literature like how you kill a vampire blah blah that the vampire they don't have the image mirror image. But my idea is objet a is the exact opposite. I saw this in some horror movies it's something that only exists in the mirror. You know in a horror movie I don't know which one I found this wonderful scene of the guy looks at himself in the mirror and sees some horrible outgrowth something too much. Then he touches looks there is nothing in reality. I think this is maybe the object a you know something this goes to you against actualization and so on you know that's that's just in the let's go on. Are you then then
knew about literature like how you kill a vampire blah blah that the vampire they don't have the image mirror image. But my idea is objet a is the exact opposite. I saw this in some horror movies it's something that only exists in the mirror. You know in a horror movie I don't know which one I found this wonderful scene of the guy looks at himself in the mirror and sees some horrible outgrowth something too much. Then he touches looks there is nothing in reality. I think this is maybe the object a you know something this goes to you against actualization and so on you know that's that's just in the let's go on. Are you then then
Slavoj Žižek
and this is the question I'm trying. Now comes the KGB the third degree are you then. No it's a cheating question it's just are you thinking any kind of subjectivity that is still different from the split subject? Yeah Lacan says this. Lacan uses when he speaks about subjective and it I struggled for a long time to read it properly. It's says how often Lacan when Lacan okay I'll put it like this in when Lacan you when Lacan redefines the goal of analysis as traversing the fantasy and so on although this is another of those mystical elements. It's now almost a common dox that for Lacan the final moment of psychoanalytic treatment. But you know that and I maybe you can refute me here but I spoke with people and I've read a lot of Lacan who really cover it all and I have a simple question there is one passage in the last chapter of Seminar XI where Lacan uses the phrase traversing the fantasy but even not as a substantive not la traversée du fantasme but as just as an ordinary verb the subject traverses the fantasy. It's only once. It's what I think in logic it's called hapax or what you know a universality which has paradoxically only one and how this exploded exploded into into into a concept. So I think what Lacan is aiming at there and he even says he says then at another place in another text that the subject at that point he uses such a tremendously Hegelian term that I was shocked the subject overcomes his
and this is the question I'm trying. Now comes the KGB the third degree are you then. No it's a cheating question it's just are you thinking any kind of subjectivity that is still different from the split subject? Yeah Lacan says this. Lacan uses when he speaks about subjective and it I struggled for a long time to read it properly. It's says how often Lacan when Lacan okay I'll put it like this in when Lacan you when Lacan redefines the goal of analysis as traversing the fantasy and so on although this is another of those mystical elements. It's now almost a common dox that for Lacan the final moment of psychoanalytic treatment. But you know that and I maybe you can refute me here but I spoke with people and I've read a lot of Lacan who really cover it all and I have a simple question there is one passage in the last chapter of Seminar XI where Lacan uses the phrase traversing the fantasy but even not as a substantive not la traversée du fantasme but as just as an ordinary verb the subject traverses the fantasy. It's only once. It's what I think in logic it's called hapax or what you know a universality which has paradoxically only one and how this exploded exploded into into into a concept. So I think what Lacan is aiming at there and he even says he says then at another place in another text that the subject at that point he uses such a tremendously Hegelian term that I was shocked the subject overcomes his
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division
division
Slavoj Žižek
and posits itself as its own cause. I mean it's something so madly idealist. But I think this doesn't mean that Lacan
and posits itself as its own cause. I mean it's something so madly idealist. But I think this doesn't mean that Lacan
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is
is
Slavoj Žižek
becoming some kind of absolute idealist it's simply that I mean it can be read in a very simple materialist way that you see that you fully accept that object a as your cause the cause of your desire whatever is not some positive substance that is just another perspective of your own void. This is
becoming some kind of absolute idealist it's simply that I mean it can be read in a very simple materialist way that you see that you fully accept that object a as your cause the cause of your desire whatever is not some positive substance that is just another perspective of your own void. This is
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why
why
Slavoj Žižek
Lacan this is how in a very primitive way I understand Lacan's as pure parallax Lacan's this Möbius band you know. For me object a and subject are just two sides on the same you know they are not and it is precisely because object a is as Lacan puts it is fantasmatic feeling of what you of your impossible positive being as it were. But here things get complicated and I think okay let me give you a solution then we go on because my god this is getting crazy but this is what I like this theological topic. You know what Lacan does wonderfully. You know where we can measure where Lacan does struggle to formulate a subject which is not a divided subject. Ah here I must say with all my political and so on conflicts with Jacques-Alain Miller one has to how do you say in theological terms give to the devil
Lacan this is how in a very primitive way I understand Lacan's as pure parallax Lacan's this Möbius band you know. For me object a and subject are just two sides on the same you know they are not and it is precisely because object a is as Lacan puts it is fantasmatic feeling of what you of your impossible positive being as it were. But here things get complicated and I think okay let me give you a solution then we go on because my god this is getting crazy but this is what I like this theological topic. You know what Lacan does wonderfully. You know where we can measure where Lacan does struggle to formulate a subject which is not a divided subject. Ah here I must say with all my political and so on conflicts with Jacques-Alain Miller one has to how do you say in theological terms give to the devil
unknown
yeah what belongs to the devil. Jacques-Alain Miller is nonetheless a magician the best education
yeah what belongs to the devil. Jacques-Alain Miller is nonetheless a magician the best education
Slavoj Žižek
guy pedagogic master that I ever met. He is a magician in the sense of and this was my happiest time maybe early '80s when I was for two-three years in Paris part of this inner seminar of us met once a week and for a whole semester just studied some most difficult Lacan we went in detail through Subversion of the Subject and Dialectic of Desire and then through Kant avec Sade and what was so magical this was the magic of Miller was you have a page which is extremely dense you get nothing. You listen to Miller for two hours and it's this pure magical event but it's so clear and simple how was I so stupid not to get it no. And he Miller drew attention to this in a wonderful way. How? Namely that you know I love Miller this is the most this is the true philosophical genius when you ask the most elementary questions which are and I ask you and me I'm not playing patronizing guy the idiot here it's me myself. Okay divided subject fuck you divided between what and what. And it's absolutely clear Miller improvised wonderfully for over one hour of this that if you it's definitely not this standard Freudian between your conscious illusory self-image and some fuck you deeper unconscious. Miller developed so nicely that he quoted I remember you know that Alfred Ayer that British analytical philosopher who had a wonderful idea that the dream of logic which is of course impossible is that if you divide an object you know like you know this boring Zeno paradox game I can divide this I can divide it again. What if this process is not endless? What if if you bring division to the end you arrive at a point where you no longer can divide it between a something and another something but a division is a division between something and nothing. You know that you arrive a point where all that remains is a part but a part which is not part of a complementary whole so
guy pedagogic master that I ever met. He is a magician in the sense of and this was my happiest time maybe early '80s when I was for two-three years in Paris part of this inner seminar of us met once a week and for a whole semester just studied some most difficult Lacan we went in detail through Subversion of the Subject and Dialectic of Desire and then through Kant avec Sade and what was so magical this was the magic of Miller was you have a page which is extremely dense you get nothing. You listen to Miller for two hours and it's this pure magical event but it's so clear and simple how was I so stupid not to get it no. And he Miller drew attention to this in a wonderful way. How? Namely that you know I love Miller this is the most this is the true philosophical genius when you ask the most elementary questions which are and I ask you and me I'm not playing patronizing guy the idiot here it's me myself. Okay divided subject fuck you divided between what and what. And it's absolutely clear Miller improvised wonderfully for over one hour of this that if you it's definitely not this standard Freudian between your conscious illusory self-image and some fuck you deeper unconscious. Miller developed so nicely that he quoted I remember you know that Alfred Ayer that British analytical philosopher who had a wonderful idea that the dream of logic which is of course impossible is that if you divide an object you know like you know this boring Zeno paradox game I can divide this I can divide it again. What if this process is not endless? What if if you bring division to the end you arrive at a point where you no longer can divide it between a something and another something but a division is a division between something and nothing. You know that you arrive a point where all that remains is a part but a part which is not part of a complementary whole so
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that you add
that you add
Slavoj Žižek
a part it's a part and nothing. And then Miller claimed that this is the point which
a part it's a part and nothing. And then Miller claimed that this is the point which
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in a way you reach at the
in a way you reach at the
Slavoj Žižek
end of analysis where it's no longer this signifier against that one double signifier it's a signifier and nothing. And this nothing is the subject. And then he went on ah very nicely claiming that to escape this pure division something and nothing you mobilize fantasy no. And you know where even now I will give you a very primitive example. Sorry to neglect you you should be more aggressive I really apologize but you see we are orgasmic here these are we Lacanians love we are like you know medieval theologians debating these wonderful points you know which is was incidentally a very important very rational beneath the crazy stupid impression medieval famous debate you know how many angels you can put on the top of the needle you know. No it was a very important debate it concerns the materiality of the spiritual and so on and so on no. So what I'm saying is back to this that you know where in a very my god I will show you some of clips from Vertigo. Because then I will try to show go if you have it or maybe even on the on the web. What's this for a bullshit? What does it is some New Age how you call some spirits to attack you. Look there is you remember in Vertigo after after Madeleine's suicide which was a murder we learn Scotty wanders around and finds a woman who looks like Madeleine. And I like this because it's a deeply philosophical point there. I often quote that wonderful Marx Brothers joke you remember it? Like it's one of my favorite. Marx Brothers joke you know they have all the time jokes about identity. You know the best known one you know this man looks like an idiot acts like an idiot you shouldn't deceive you this man is an idiot you know. Then you have another version very Lacanian where Groucho Marx is seducing that ugly old lady the standard and says I love you everything on you reminds me of you your eyes your ears everything except you you don't remind me of yourself. And then there is the best one the Emmanuel Ravelli from some early Marx where Groucho plays Emmanuel Ravelli and a guy tells me oh you remind me of Emmanuel Ravelli. No sorry Groucho makes someone and says you remind me of Emmanuel Ravelli the guy said but I am Emmanuel Ravelli. And Groucho answers well if you are then no wonder you look like. And I think this is wrong. I think that precisely you don't look like yourself. It's wrong to say this. So let's go. There is a shot yes no the point is that Vertigo basically the formula is basically this Marx Brothers joke. No wonder that Judy looks like Madeleine because she is Madeleine you know that's what we learn. And you know what's so interesting you should do it if you want to do an in-depth study of Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's a wonderful story of manipulation. Do you know that Vertigo is based on a French detective novel by those two famous authors Boileau and Narcejac? They were classics of horror stories blah blah. And it was a conscious manipulation. They already wrote the novel they afterwards admitted to seduce Hitchcock. And now comes the joke. I read the novel you get it I think now even with some cheap edition on Amazon or whatever it's called the D'entre les morts or what the Reentry of the Dead Return of the Dead something like that. And what is so interesting is the total depoliticization enacted by Hitchcock. That is to say do you know that the original novel takes place during World War II during Resistance? And the same story is totally politicized there you know. It's a resistance fighter who thinks his love was killed by Germans or whatever. It's absolutely incredible the whole but okay Vertigo okay. You remember when when Scotty sees a woman who looks like Madeleine she he follows her and okay slowly he seduces her they go to a hotel not hotel to a simple boarding room whatever where she lives and then you have an absolutely incredible shot. When they enter the room it's totally dark after he takes her to to dinner I think and the scene is like this you have in the background a window and some totally artificial green light comes from a neon light just outside because this is fourth floor. And then you see Madeleine sorry Judy this new girl first you see her in profile. But it's and the profile is exactly the same profile as the one that I mentioned yesterday or when in the first scene in Ernie's just in Ernie's you see her profile beautiful of Madeleine here is just darkness. It's a kind of a very primitive materialization of this idea that she is just the real Judy is just a fantasy screen for him. It's literally dark shape to project his Madeleine fantasy. Then it's then she turns her head a little bit around and you literally get you see half of her face real features and the other half is darkness. You literally get this division into something and nothing and I think this is subjectivity at its purest. And what we call person full human person is precisely the role of fantasy is to fill in this void so that you get a full human person or whatever. So how to overcome this division? Ah it's in Lacan's okay let me go back. Usually the usual story for idiots is that Descartes the Cartesian subject cogito is non-divided pure thinking and that Lacan undermines this cogito ergo sum into you know Lacan but this is a story in itself how the usual doxa says Lacan said no I don't I am not where I think. Like to introduce a break between thinking and being. The story is much more mysterious. Lacan changed the formula three-four times. His first formulation was this simple one against Descartes he claimed that no I am not where I think. But then he immediately got it that this can be simple life philosophy. In the sense of you know what I think it's just the surface but there are the passions blah blah all the bullshit where I really am and you know it's like the top of the iceberg my reason. So he turned it around. His second is then that the unconscious is not my being out of reach of my thoughts it's the opposite. It's I think where I am not. What I am is my being is my imaginary identification. My god I see myself that's me. But unconscious is a thinking which goes on existing outside my being. Then he wasn't even satisfied with this. He tried two-three other versions. For example with one but he was more playing I think here it's pretty intelligent one it is I think and then quotation mark therefore I am you know. Like to introduce this gap. Then there is and now comes the paradox at the end in his absolutely are you asking me a question or just raising the hand? Just okay okay. I didn't forget about you yeah. He at the end in his I think it's from '66-'67 correct me if I'm wrong La logique du fantasme Logic of Fantasy his absolutely crucial seminar unfortunately not yet published where as I already mentioned the first day here I think to the surprise of everyone Lacan fully returns to Descartes and says no the subject which is the Freudian subject is the overlapping of thinking and being but of course he pulls his trick which is that the overlapping of the two is always an empty set. And he says that what does it mean I think cogito ergo sum? At that point both thinking and being are empty. The being is no being at all. The being is just the being of your fleeting thought. It's the being of nothing. This I think therefore I am it's pure processuality of nothing. At the same time what are you thinking? Nothing you just think that you are you know what I mean that it's an empty thought overlapping with an empty being. And that at this point you do overcome your your division. And then the whole struggle of the late Lacan and I agree with you here it's more complex because Lacan was deeply disturbed by Deleuze and sometimes he does think flirt with Deleuzian direction. For example when Lacan introduces the notion of drive sometimes he does he does talk like he characterizes drive almost in the terms of Deleuzian machines of desire drive as subjectless kind of a life reproducing itself without subject. He uses some terms like this or another thing in Seminar XI where Lacan introduces Freudian notion of drive because till till Seminar XI '63-'64 Lacan it's clear didn't know what to do with drive it was simply desire no. There he uses all the time the terms montage machine and so on to emphasize that as Deleuze would have put it that drive is machining no. Drive is not instinct this organic. Okay why I'm saying this to to point out how Lacan was to the end struggling with this what happens beyond and he was moving in different directions one but for reasons that I don't have time to go into now maybe we can do it if you are interested in these pure theological topics later Lacan insisted to the end that drive is always a partial drive. That is to say that no matter how even when you do have this pure subject overcoming division caught in pure drive there must be some partial object some little bit of a of a sinthome or whatever. But no what I what I wanted to say here is that Lacan himself is here ambiguous like he does use the term at the same time subjective destitution destitution subjective as what happens at the end of analysis. And okay maybe for you I'm on the wrong side because then as always in theological disputes there are two schools here. One who in my universe are in gulag and I send them a greeting card every day every year who think this means you are beyond subjectivity no. I think not. I think that one should distinguish here between subject and subjectivization. The Lacanian subject is not a subject of subjectivization it's not this subject of inner life. Oh I experience this and so on and so on. It's subject without subjectivization. Here to be very precise Lacan is against this deconstructionist bullshit where it's fashionable to say that subject is this typical Foucaultian topic that subject is the result of a process of subjectivization and then you get all that bullshit multiple subject positions and so on and so on. No for Lacan subjectivization is always fantasmatic it's kind of a filling in fantasy and so on and so on. My god time is running I hate like this. Yes please just to bring it back a little bit to the movie example. This is a good idea yeah yeah. Actually the one that that you were mentioning about mirror I think I think it's Dario Argento. Ah he's cheap cheap in a good sense Italian horror. I love them because of this pathetic yeah yeah in a very operatic way he uses the mirrors to show the the what's really happening behind or what's really gonna happen or what happened before anyway. But um I was thinking about the relationship between this crack. Yeah. The mystery the horror that's there and the definition or the definitions or the space that exists in in the censorship or nowadays classification. Yeah yeah no no yeah yeah. That that the more I think that the more detailed the more expressed the more colored and and defined the prohibition is yeah yeah it's the the more horrific it can become in a way that when transgressed perhaps. Yeah yeah. I mean all history of Stalinism confirms this. Yeah yeah. It was the most detailed prohibition but it was a nightmare then what horrible sorry please go on. Yeah because the for example this classification system just because by chance I happened to investigate and find what how it worked in different places. In the United States it's it is as opposed to every other part in the Western hemisphere it's the classification is not government body. It's citizen body. I know this was a wonderful Hollywood solution Hays Code it was nothing to do with the state you know but effectively it worked because the whole distribution machinery respected it. Like if you didn't get a Hays Code classification you were excluded. Sorry and it is separated and also it is a recommendation it is not a classification. This is how true totalitarian works you know recommendation. Yeah yeah just it sets the tone because they they had to instead of leaving it to interpretation which happens in other places you know there they had to try to run it down and say okay what makes what's after classification are it's NC-17 okay so for example a sex scene no where obviously it's stated that male genitalia should not be seen blah blah but then how many humps does that make a fuck no like a real. Ah yeah yeah even seconds you know the Hitchcock broke in Notorious kiss was limited in classical Hollywood to three seconds I think and so on everything was. Yeah more than two humps is an NC-17 classification. So you can only do two and but you can stay there and then stay there and then stay there and that makes this is wonderful because like like life I can imagine me not you like a nasty like let's say I'm too excited and the thing is too quickly no and then the woman tells me sorry I wanted a full fuck not an NC-17 then you use it in real life real life. Oh sorry this thing of the of the two humps and the and the for example. I didn't know that even this you have here. No that's that's in the United States like it's very set down like the rules in particular like how many times this how many times this yeah yeah because what happens is that if you get an NC-17 rating like many cinemas won't show it the film your film you get a limited release but you get but there's also the option because it's separated from the government there's the option of not having a classification. Yeah but then the point is getting distribution no. Then then it's without without classification but it is set to interpretation in a way and nobody has time to interpret. So they just release them the films like and if it works in the screens. But you know what I would like to know which was the biggest commercial success without classification without getting the approval. How far can you go? I think I think the the Mel Gibson the the Passion that one was without passion. Passion is an important you know what is passion you don't know it's radical gay sado-mazo movie you know about torturing a male body it's the big reassertion of homosexuality in Hollywood. That one went without classification. Really? Yeah but it got the support of all the Christians. Billionaires they sort of financed the system. But still if you don't get classification you would I mean think that they're above that they said we don't need classification. No but the problem is I think that's why it earned millions or what. I think that the catch was that he mobilized or they mobilized themselves all these religious groups which organized screening and they put pressure on and how are you gonna classify a true story. Yeah but but you know where I had to laugh the Pope the other one the Polish you know the story. He saw the film because of all his aura he didn't want to receive in Vatican Mel Gibson himself but he did give an audience to how do you pronounce the name Jim Caviezel the the actor no yeah Jim Caviezel sorry and you know I had to laugh so much you know what was Pope the other the good Polish one not this Nazi guy who now runs the thing the you know what was his comment. It was like that. But how does he know? No was he there or what you know on the contrary we know it wasn't like that because Mel Gibson was always saying we wanted to be no the first thing you learn I read a historian he said that crucifixions were done in naked. Ah I didn't see Christ's penis there not so. Yeah yeah sorry but go on. Yeah my my feeling is that that when it's more defined when it gets this evolved let's say the the classification or the restriction in a way it's the horror the mysterious thing has to just grows even more. Because if it's just set to interpretation like you can't show drugs in a film yeah ah too big interpretation what does that mean and then there's a you know the it's it can easily be accused of censorship blah blah it becomes a it's not so interesting no. It's not so mysterious. Yeah yeah but they played with this already this film you saw I spoke with I love him my friend my friend okay I mean I met him through Sophie Fiennes with whom I'm doing movie Ralph Fiennes no I love him personally he's such a wonderful like he is the Badiou among actors you know. He's so naive you know he's promiscuous like hell and then once he tries to seduce me not sexually but to write something which I did for his Coriolanus and to show how intellectual he is he told me you know Slavoj once I was tired in the evening doing a tour promoting a film of mine somewhere on the west coast and he said at seven it was all over I was so glad to be alone in a hotel room and that was his flirting with me I had a book of you I think he
end of analysis where it's no longer this signifier against that one double signifier it's a signifier and nothing. And this nothing is the subject. And then he went on ah very nicely claiming that to escape this pure division something and nothing you mobilize fantasy no. And you know where even now I will give you a very primitive example. Sorry to neglect you you should be more aggressive I really apologize but you see we are orgasmic here these are we Lacanians love we are like you know medieval theologians debating these wonderful points you know which is was incidentally a very important very rational beneath the crazy stupid impression medieval famous debate you know how many angels you can put on the top of the needle you know. No it was a very important debate it concerns the materiality of the spiritual and so on and so on no. So what I'm saying is back to this that you know where in a very my god I will show you some of clips from Vertigo. Because then I will try to show go if you have it or maybe even on the on the web. What's this for a bullshit? What does it is some New Age how you call some spirits to attack you. Look there is you remember in Vertigo after after Madeleine's suicide which was a murder we learn Scotty wanders around and finds a woman who looks like Madeleine. And I like this because it's a deeply philosophical point there. I often quote that wonderful Marx Brothers joke you remember it? Like it's one of my favorite. Marx Brothers joke you know they have all the time jokes about identity. You know the best known one you know this man looks like an idiot acts like an idiot you shouldn't deceive you this man is an idiot you know. Then you have another version very Lacanian where Groucho Marx is seducing that ugly old lady the standard and says I love you everything on you reminds me of you your eyes your ears everything except you you don't remind me of yourself. And then there is the best one the Emmanuel Ravelli from some early Marx where Groucho plays Emmanuel Ravelli and a guy tells me oh you remind me of Emmanuel Ravelli. No sorry Groucho makes someone and says you remind me of Emmanuel Ravelli the guy said but I am Emmanuel Ravelli. And Groucho answers well if you are then no wonder you look like. And I think this is wrong. I think that precisely you don't look like yourself. It's wrong to say this. So let's go. There is a shot yes no the point is that Vertigo basically the formula is basically this Marx Brothers joke. No wonder that Judy looks like Madeleine because she is Madeleine you know that's what we learn. And you know what's so interesting you should do it if you want to do an in-depth study of Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's a wonderful story of manipulation. Do you know that Vertigo is based on a French detective novel by those two famous authors Boileau and Narcejac? They were classics of horror stories blah blah. And it was a conscious manipulation. They already wrote the novel they afterwards admitted to seduce Hitchcock. And now comes the joke. I read the novel you get it I think now even with some cheap edition on Amazon or whatever it's called the D'entre les morts or what the Reentry of the Dead Return of the Dead something like that. And what is so interesting is the total depoliticization enacted by Hitchcock. That is to say do you know that the original novel takes place during World War II during Resistance? And the same story is totally politicized there you know. It's a resistance fighter who thinks his love was killed by Germans or whatever. It's absolutely incredible the whole but okay Vertigo okay. You remember when when Scotty sees a woman who looks like Madeleine she he follows her and okay slowly he seduces her they go to a hotel not hotel to a simple boarding room whatever where she lives and then you have an absolutely incredible shot. When they enter the room it's totally dark after he takes her to to dinner I think and the scene is like this you have in the background a window and some totally artificial green light comes from a neon light just outside because this is fourth floor. And then you see Madeleine sorry Judy this new girl first you see her in profile. But it's and the profile is exactly the same profile as the one that I mentioned yesterday or when in the first scene in Ernie's just in Ernie's you see her profile beautiful of Madeleine here is just darkness. It's a kind of a very primitive materialization of this idea that she is just the real Judy is just a fantasy screen for him. It's literally dark shape to project his Madeleine fantasy. Then it's then she turns her head a little bit around and you literally get you see half of her face real features and the other half is darkness. You literally get this division into something and nothing and I think this is subjectivity at its purest. And what we call person full human person is precisely the role of fantasy is to fill in this void so that you get a full human person or whatever. So how to overcome this division? Ah it's in Lacan's okay let me go back. Usually the usual story for idiots is that Descartes the Cartesian subject cogito is non-divided pure thinking and that Lacan undermines this cogito ergo sum into you know Lacan but this is a story in itself how the usual doxa says Lacan said no I don't I am not where I think. Like to introduce a break between thinking and being. The story is much more mysterious. Lacan changed the formula three-four times. His first formulation was this simple one against Descartes he claimed that no I am not where I think. But then he immediately got it that this can be simple life philosophy. In the sense of you know what I think it's just the surface but there are the passions blah blah all the bullshit where I really am and you know it's like the top of the iceberg my reason. So he turned it around. His second is then that the unconscious is not my being out of reach of my thoughts it's the opposite. It's I think where I am not. What I am is my being is my imaginary identification. My god I see myself that's me. But unconscious is a thinking which goes on existing outside my being. Then he wasn't even satisfied with this. He tried two-three other versions. For example with one but he was more playing I think here it's pretty intelligent one it is I think and then quotation mark therefore I am you know. Like to introduce this gap. Then there is and now comes the paradox at the end in his absolutely are you asking me a question or just raising the hand? Just okay okay. I didn't forget about you yeah. He at the end in his I think it's from '66-'67 correct me if I'm wrong La logique du fantasme Logic of Fantasy his absolutely crucial seminar unfortunately not yet published where as I already mentioned the first day here I think to the surprise of everyone Lacan fully returns to Descartes and says no the subject which is the Freudian subject is the overlapping of thinking and being but of course he pulls his trick which is that the overlapping of the two is always an empty set. And he says that what does it mean I think cogito ergo sum? At that point both thinking and being are empty. The being is no being at all. The being is just the being of your fleeting thought. It's the being of nothing. This I think therefore I am it's pure processuality of nothing. At the same time what are you thinking? Nothing you just think that you are you know what I mean that it's an empty thought overlapping with an empty being. And that at this point you do overcome your your division. And then the whole struggle of the late Lacan and I agree with you here it's more complex because Lacan was deeply disturbed by Deleuze and sometimes he does think flirt with Deleuzian direction. For example when Lacan introduces the notion of drive sometimes he does he does talk like he characterizes drive almost in the terms of Deleuzian machines of desire drive as subjectless kind of a life reproducing itself without subject. He uses some terms like this or another thing in Seminar XI where Lacan introduces Freudian notion of drive because till till Seminar XI '63-'64 Lacan it's clear didn't know what to do with drive it was simply desire no. There he uses all the time the terms montage machine and so on to emphasize that as Deleuze would have put it that drive is machining no. Drive is not instinct this organic. Okay why I'm saying this to to point out how Lacan was to the end struggling with this what happens beyond and he was moving in different directions one but for reasons that I don't have time to go into now maybe we can do it if you are interested in these pure theological topics later Lacan insisted to the end that drive is always a partial drive. That is to say that no matter how even when you do have this pure subject overcoming division caught in pure drive there must be some partial object some little bit of a of a sinthome or whatever. But no what I what I wanted to say here is that Lacan himself is here ambiguous like he does use the term at the same time subjective destitution destitution subjective as what happens at the end of analysis. And okay maybe for you I'm on the wrong side because then as always in theological disputes there are two schools here. One who in my universe are in gulag and I send them a greeting card every day every year who think this means you are beyond subjectivity no. I think not. I think that one should distinguish here between subject and subjectivization. The Lacanian subject is not a subject of subjectivization it's not this subject of inner life. Oh I experience this and so on and so on. It's subject without subjectivization. Here to be very precise Lacan is against this deconstructionist bullshit where it's fashionable to say that subject is this typical Foucaultian topic that subject is the result of a process of subjectivization and then you get all that bullshit multiple subject positions and so on and so on. No for Lacan subjectivization is always fantasmatic it's kind of a filling in fantasy and so on and so on. My god time is running I hate like this. Yes please just to bring it back a little bit to the movie example. This is a good idea yeah yeah. Actually the one that that you were mentioning about mirror I think I think it's Dario Argento. Ah he's cheap cheap in a good sense Italian horror. I love them because of this pathetic yeah yeah in a very operatic way he uses the mirrors to show the the what's really happening behind or what's really gonna happen or what happened before anyway. But um I was thinking about the relationship between this crack. Yeah. The mystery the horror that's there and the definition or the definitions or the space that exists in in the censorship or nowadays classification. Yeah yeah no no yeah yeah. That that the more I think that the more detailed the more expressed the more colored and and defined the prohibition is yeah yeah it's the the more horrific it can become in a way that when transgressed perhaps. Yeah yeah. I mean all history of Stalinism confirms this. Yeah yeah. It was the most detailed prohibition but it was a nightmare then what horrible sorry please go on. Yeah because the for example this classification system just because by chance I happened to investigate and find what how it worked in different places. In the United States it's it is as opposed to every other part in the Western hemisphere it's the classification is not government body. It's citizen body. I know this was a wonderful Hollywood solution Hays Code it was nothing to do with the state you know but effectively it worked because the whole distribution machinery respected it. Like if you didn't get a Hays Code classification you were excluded. Sorry and it is separated and also it is a recommendation it is not a classification. This is how true totalitarian works you know recommendation. Yeah yeah just it sets the tone because they they had to instead of leaving it to interpretation which happens in other places you know there they had to try to run it down and say okay what makes what's after classification are it's NC-17 okay so for example a sex scene no where obviously it's stated that male genitalia should not be seen blah blah but then how many humps does that make a fuck no like a real. Ah yeah yeah even seconds you know the Hitchcock broke in Notorious kiss was limited in classical Hollywood to three seconds I think and so on everything was. Yeah more than two humps is an NC-17 classification. So you can only do two and but you can stay there and then stay there and then stay there and that makes this is wonderful because like like life I can imagine me not you like a nasty like let's say I'm too excited and the thing is too quickly no and then the woman tells me sorry I wanted a full fuck not an NC-17 then you use it in real life real life. Oh sorry this thing of the of the two humps and the and the for example. I didn't know that even this you have here. No that's that's in the United States like it's very set down like the rules in particular like how many times this how many times this yeah yeah because what happens is that if you get an NC-17 rating like many cinemas won't show it the film your film you get a limited release but you get but there's also the option because it's separated from the government there's the option of not having a classification. Yeah but then the point is getting distribution no. Then then it's without without classification but it is set to interpretation in a way and nobody has time to interpret. So they just release them the films like and if it works in the screens. But you know what I would like to know which was the biggest commercial success without classification without getting the approval. How far can you go? I think I think the the Mel Gibson the the Passion that one was without passion. Passion is an important you know what is passion you don't know it's radical gay sado-mazo movie you know about torturing a male body it's the big reassertion of homosexuality in Hollywood. That one went without classification. Really? Yeah but it got the support of all the Christians. Billionaires they sort of financed the system. But still if you don't get classification you would I mean think that they're above that they said we don't need classification. No but the problem is I think that's why it earned millions or what. I think that the catch was that he mobilized or they mobilized themselves all these religious groups which organized screening and they put pressure on and how are you gonna classify a true story. Yeah but but you know where I had to laugh the Pope the other one the Polish you know the story. He saw the film because of all his aura he didn't want to receive in Vatican Mel Gibson himself but he did give an audience to how do you pronounce the name Jim Caviezel the the actor no yeah Jim Caviezel sorry and you know I had to laugh so much you know what was Pope the other the good Polish one not this Nazi guy who now runs the thing the you know what was his comment. It was like that. But how does he know? No was he there or what you know on the contrary we know it wasn't like that because Mel Gibson was always saying we wanted to be no the first thing you learn I read a historian he said that crucifixions were done in naked. Ah I didn't see Christ's penis there not so. Yeah yeah sorry but go on. Yeah my my feeling is that that when it's more defined when it gets this evolved let's say the the classification or the restriction in a way it's the horror the mysterious thing has to just grows even more. Because if it's just set to interpretation like you can't show drugs in a film yeah ah too big interpretation what does that mean and then there's a you know the it's it can easily be accused of censorship blah blah it becomes a it's not so interesting no. It's not so mysterious. Yeah yeah but they played with this already this film you saw I spoke with I love him my friend my friend okay I mean I met him through Sophie Fiennes with whom I'm doing movie Ralph Fiennes no I love him personally he's such a wonderful like he is the Badiou among actors you know. He's so naive you know he's promiscuous like hell and then once he tries to seduce me not sexually but to write something which I did for his Coriolanus and to show how intellectual he is he told me you know Slavoj once I was tired in the evening doing a tour promoting a film of mine somewhere on the west coast and he said at seven it was all over I was so glad to be alone in a hotel room and that was his flirting with me I had a book of you I think he
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got that one Comedy Tragedy whatever and I
got that one Comedy Tragedy whatever and I
Slavoj Žižek
was looking to a
was looking to a
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nice evening reading it and then he said somebody
nice evening reading it and then he said somebody
Slavoj Žižek
knocked on the door a young groupie girl wanted to be fucked and then he said and this was such a lovely hypocrisy
knocked on the door a young groupie girl wanted to be fucked and then he said and this was such a lovely hypocrisy
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I liked it he said you know all my heart was but you know I'm a star it's my duty to do it so unfortunately my evening was ruined by that was it
I liked it he said you know all my heart was but you know I'm a star it's my duty to do it so unfortunately my evening was ruined by that was it
Slavoj Žižek
was wonderful because you
was wonderful because you
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know like like Badiou when he said so what's the problem I'm the greatest philosopher you know he said it without any trace of irony you know like what a horrible evening I had to fuck a nice young girl you know. So again he told me something which goes in the same along
know like like Badiou when he said so what's the problem I'm the greatest philosopher you know he said it without any trace of irony you know like what a horrible evening I had to fuck a nice young girl you know. So again he told me something which goes in the same along
Slavoj Žižek
the same lines at you. He told me
the same lines at you. He told me
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that with a couple of movies I wonder if you experience this in United States they already doing it you know sometimes they do a director's cut and they claim clips which were censored originally. But now he told me it
that with a couple of movies I wonder if you experience this in United States they already doing it you know sometimes they do a director's cut and they claim clips which were censored originally. But now he told me it
Slavoj Žižek
happened to him a couple of times it's already and then they use this in director's cut or in you know with DVDs you usually get deleted scenes. He told me that now it's part
happened to him a couple of times it's already and then they use this in director's cut or in you know with DVDs you usually get deleted scenes. He told me that now it's part
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of the game he was so furious when they finished shooting the director said now we will do some deleted scenes you know like they plan it in advance you know like these scenes we do them for what will be the director's cut you know it's nothing today
of the game he was so furious when they finished shooting the director said now we will do some deleted scenes you know like they plan it in advance you know like these scenes we do them for what will be the director's cut you know it's nothing today
Slavoj Žižek
it's not this kind of authentic process where director asserts his will or whatever. It's it's all planned so yes yes I agree with you another thing I wanted to tell you about what
it's not this kind of authentic process where director asserts his will or whatever. It's it's all planned so yes yes I agree with you another thing I wanted to tell you about what
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you said absolutely I quote it in one of my books about this codification
you said absolutely I quote it in one of my books about this codification
Slavoj Žižek
there is a wonderful detail about how codified this was
there is a wonderful detail about how codified this was
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about Josef von Sternberg you know the how is she called the Marlene Dietrich the he did a movie in early '40s where the hero and the heroine basically what happens is they go to what do you have in farmhouses that soft dry grass hay how do you call this hay well to fuck no but the point was that okay the point was how to signal this. And he was called to to Hays Code offices where Breen Joseph Breen I think
about Josef von Sternberg you know the how is she called the Marlene Dietrich the he did a movie in early '40s where the hero and the heroine basically what happens is they go to what do you have in farmhouses that soft dry grass hay how do you call this hay well to fuck no but the point was that okay the point was how to signal this. And he was called to to Hays Code offices where Breen Joseph Breen I think
Slavoj Žižek
was the big guy they thought about should we do it like this I like that and then finally Joseph Breen the censor told him
was the big guy they thought about should we do it like this I like that and then finally Joseph Breen the censor told him
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listen let's be frank tell me what really happened like openly he
listen let's be frank tell me what really happened like openly he
Slavoj Žižek
asked him did they fuck or not. If yes we will find a way to signal this but tell me what happened you know and then after saying that this is just a gentle encounter Sternberg exploded and said yes they had a good fuck and then Joseph Breen the
asked him did they fuck or not. If yes we will find a way to signal this but tell me what happened you know and then after saying that this is just a gentle encounter Sternberg exploded and said yes they had a good fuck and then Joseph Breen the
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okay now we know it I will tell you how to signal this and so
okay now we know it I will tell you how to signal this and so
Slavoj Žižek
on no. So
on no. So
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what I think and that's my perversion is that maybe the truly Lacanian subversive thing
what I think and that's my perversion is that maybe the truly Lacanian subversive thing
Slavoj Žižek
would have been
would have been
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not to shot a scene with all these innuendos no but to arouse these innuendos and then somehow to let it know that nothing happened you know the most horrible sometimes subversive news is surface itself. I always like to
not to shot a scene with all these innuendos no but to arouse these innuendos and then somehow to let it know that nothing happened you know the most horrible sometimes subversive news is surface itself. I always like to
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repeat another of these stories then I didn't forget about you which happened to me maybe you know it I use it in my books it's my fundamental experience I love it. Exactly as you said how this logic that you described works also in politics. When
repeat another of these stories then I didn't forget about you which happened to me maybe you know it I use it in my books it's my fundamental experience I love it. Exactly as you said how this logic that you described works also in politics. When
Slavoj Žižek
I was young I was not really a dissident it was a soft communism half-dissident whatever. Okay there were elections in
I was young I was not really a dissident it was a soft communism half-dissident whatever. Okay there were elections in
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ex-Yugoslavia it wasn't
ex-Yugoslavia it wasn't
Slavoj Žižek
as bad as in the east but you knew always who will win of course they were communist elections but just that it wasn't like this Saddam Hussein or Stalin numbers the party didn't get it got like to make it more realistic. And
as bad as in the east but you knew always who will win of course they were communist elections but just that it wasn't like this Saddam Hussein or Stalin numbers the party didn't get it got like to make it more realistic. And
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it's
it's
Slavoj Žižek
always wonderful when totalitarian
always wonderful when totalitarian
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leaders want to be
leaders want to be
Slavoj Žižek
realistic how it gets even more crazy. I read recently you must have guessed who is my big love Kim Jong-il who loved you know what happened they opened the first golf course and of course he opened it and the media reported of course the best result of all times. He only of or holes only once or twice did he have to hit the ball two times. But I can imagine why didn't they go on to the end like
realistic how it gets even more crazy. I read recently you must have guessed who is my big love Kim Jong-il who loved you know what happened they opened the first golf course and of course he opened it and the media reported of course the best result of all times. He only of or holes only once or twice did he have to hit the ball two times. But I can imagine why didn't they go on to the end like
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okay hits
okay hits
Slavoj Žižek
holes you know. I can see some bureaucrat thinking if we say it was always the first time it would be non-realistic you know. So let's have it that maybe once he missed it
holes you know. I can see some bureaucrat thinking if we say it was always the first time it would be non-realistic you know. So let's have it that maybe once he missed it
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or whatever no. So what
or whatever no. So what
Slavoj Žižek
I'm saying is that the same there we were more intelligent no Yugoslav communists. So okay what happened is this it's a wonderful story. There were elections we knew who will be and our problem was how to annoy a little bit those in power
I'm saying is that the same there we were more intelligent no Yugoslav communists. So okay what happened is this it's a wonderful story. There were elections we knew who will be and our problem was how to annoy a little bit those in power
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the party. Some of us advocated not me a radical dissident move let's simply even if it's the last thing we do let's simply publish an issue of our small student journal claiming it's a cheat these were not free elections and so on. But then we knew first we would just be maybe not arrested but lost our position at the university but we wouldn't tell anything new to anyone everyone knew okay. So then one of us not me I admit it got this
the party. Some of us advocated not me a radical dissident move let's simply even if it's the last thing we do let's simply publish an issue of our small student journal claiming it's a cheat these were not free elections and so on. But then we knew first we would just be maybe not arrested but lost our position at the university but we wouldn't tell anything new to anyone everyone knew okay. So then one of us not me I admit it got this
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely ingenious idea. Let's subvert it not by giving some dark hints oh no it's not like this really these are not free elections there. Those in power claim these are free elections so let's just treat them as free elections and report precisely in the way one reports about free elections. So on the evening of elections we published an extraordinary issue of our small student newspaper with the big title latest election results it looks that probably communists will remain in power or whatever you know as if you know all the people were waiting what and it was wonderful. We were immediately called to the central committee it wasn't really dangerous just some old party apparatchik shouting at us no but it was so tragic I had immediate sympathy for him because he told us boys don't fuck with me don't play such dirty games. We told him but tell us what did we do wrong you claim these are free elections we believe you we treated them as free elections what did we do wrong are you trying to say that these were not free elections then. And it was so tragic that the guy couldn't within the rules of the discourse couldn't say don't fuck with me you know we always win no. He couldn't so he was in such a defense he just repeated you know very well guys what I mean don't fuck with me but tell us what what you know it was so nice that you know and it was a wonderful thing it was much better than do the open dissident gesture because the publicity was incredible all the people were talking about it. And along the lines of what you said this is why who said this Mandelstam or who and there is a moment of truth in it that Stalinist society had the greatest possible respect for poets. It's the only country in the world Soviet Union where poets are taken so seriously that for a wrong word you can be shot you know at least they are taken seriously. So I remember a similar experience in a journal literary theoretical journal where I was we published a poem which the poet was some stupid drunken idiot but okay if you read it with extreme Stalinist kremlinology semiotic you can discern some politically subversive message you know like there was a line in that poem I think something like we know who are the true fathers of our freedom okay if you are fanatic you will say eh do they claim that it's not the Communist Party which and so on no. And the joke was this one again the old story we were called to the central committee it became a scandal extraordinary session of the cultural cultural cultural group whatever of central committee. But speaking frankly with guys at the central committee and they admitted to us here they did privately we told them but are you crazy if you were to ignore this poem absolutely nothing would have happened nobody would even read this poem that it's you with your reaction who did the greatest you know the poet who was a total coward drunkard became a great dissident hero and so on you know it's incredible no. So at some point now we come to the point it's not quite like that maybe but more and more I think that that was the whole point I think already mentioned this of political jokes. There was a myth which unfortunately it's not true but it's typical that there was a myth in ex-Yugoslavia and in other countries that political jokes I mean dissident jokes against those in power are produced by some secret ideological secret police group and that they are consciously by the party spread around to put it in simple terms to give people an easy way out to enact their rage you know you are furious thing don't function okay you hear a good joke you laugh you go back to work and so on. Unfortunately this is not true but it's absolutely true that political jokes did play this type of how should they call it constructive role. You know that they were strictly the same as what I was talking yesterday or when about the same like in Casablanca all those dirty innuendos which are part of the game because you know where which were the most interesting times of my life my edu times of education. The last years of Yugoslav communism because it still was a real totalitarian communism but it was a soft one no longer working seriously which means that all this censorship mechanisms were relaxed so that their nonsense and inconsistency become how should I put it more and more directly palpable. For example this idea that jokes help politicians. In those last years of Yugoslavia where communist politicians knew there will probably be democracy and they fought for political survival they started directly to refer themselves to the jokes about themselves to boost their popularity. It was an incredible thing unimaginable in Stalinism a big communist politician comes to give a speech and starts to tell jokes about himself. The great guy here was I will have to describe it to you because it's a complex structure but you will get it a Croat politician called Jure Bilić. Jure is a Croat word for George Jure J-U-R-E Bilić is just a Croat name okay but remember how with it's like von a predicate you know Bilić means just qualification of bish no. So the joke was one of these absolutely sublime East European two level already Freud mentioned it this is the the middle the middle European rather specialty two level jokes you know you think the joke is over but then there is another. Okay the point is this guy visits France Giscard d'Estaing you remember. And learns that in France if you want to appear noble you have to add de D-E as you know you are not simply Giscard d'Estaing you are Giscard de d'Estaing d the of nobility you know. So they present each other Giscard d'Estaing said I'm Giscard d'Estaing he said Jure of course the joke is debil Jure de Bilic de bil you know he has and then comes the wonder. Giscard says real de facto and he says no de jure you know oh my god I mean but isn't it wonderful this guy told this joke about himself and it was it was it was madness. Another element of this inconsistency sublime. This was maybe the most perverse moment that I remember. In the last years of socialism Slovene communists were much more business oriented than the communists in other republics. So maybe you remember it no you're too young most of you. In the '80s and '70s there was a great miracle in south of Bosnia Croat part that Medjugorje yes it was mega. And the stupid Bosnian communists were hardliners they didn't want to legalize it. And Slovene and Croat other communists were furious because of that Yugoslavia lost a couple of billions of dollars. Because Italian tourist agencies entered organized the trips and and we Slovene communists who were already business oriented were furious. So then it happened. Close to Ljubljana capital of Slovenia precisely very well located between Ljubljana and Ljubljana airport there is some small crossing country roads where there was a statue of Virgin Mary and that statue started to do what Virgin Mary statues are supposed to do no move a little bit cry tears of blood blah blah. And the Slovene communists were delighted. Now we will teach the Bosnians how you do it plans were done build hotels there special tours. And then a catastrophe happened. The local Catholic priest in whose domain this happened made a statement where he says no this is not a miracle this is just a superstition. And communists were furious this is a unique document. In the communist official paper they attacked this priest for non-patriotic behavior like fuck him it's economic crisis it's his duty to help the country and now he's doing some materialist bullshit whatever. It was so wonderful this you know or maybe you know the joke I'm sorry if I repeat myself but it's another ultimate one. There was a student radio independent dissident in '87-'88 I'm sorry if you know the story which was specialized in like provocative out of control by the communist party this were of the half liberal okay they invited an old communist cadre to an to an interview with him. This guy was old retired but kind of real old hard communist and he was in a total panic I knew him because he just he knew communist would probably lose power and he terribly wanted to please the young generation no. So he knew he must say yes do whatever blah blah. So this poor old guy I totally sympathize with him the interviewers provoked him like how is your sex life and so on. This poor guy now knew he has to say something good positive that's what the young generation want. But at the same time the only language he spoke was the old communist language. So you got something so terrifying a kind of a Stalinist style pornography you know. This guy said I often touch women between their legs the feeling there helps me in my struggle for socialism and sort of perversity you know like pornography but as official I mean it was I loved those moments I think these are the most productive moments where you know as a now maybe you know this story a friend from Egypt told me that now you have and with my bad taste jokes feminist somebody told me I don't know if it's true or not that in Saudi Arabia they published two-three years ago the first this Happy Mary Life sorry Happy Married Family Life book you know these we have in the West how to do sex a family and it's done in the very American way written the style you know this easy conversation blah blah. But the content is the old one. So I like it a modern book written in this way but then it teaches the husband how to hit his wife so that it will not hurt too much but I like absolutely you know this where discourses get mixed how should I put it no where okay we are crazy nonetheless so what I propose then nonetheless I feel bad to give you yeah like you are now Comrade Stalin to give the concluding word to the session of central committee. But I think this central point in you mentioned it in the book is around the debate between Badiou and Miller on suture. Yeah. Where he goes basically to deny small object a into his construct. Although I will immediately give you just bear in mind that when Miller introduced suture there is also not yet an object a. It's just one signifier. My question actually which is precisely where do we locate object a like where is the excess? And it seems to me that as you say Badiou's subject is purely situated within the imaginary chain of signifiers locates it in the imaginary. Does that mean that he what does he make of the phallic signifier? That's true. But you are right already in what sense that in that early stage Badiou was against the notion of the subject in that polemics. Yeah yeah. Only later with his event blah blah stuff did he as it were write why. Yeah but still there's a sort of a Deleuzian relation to the phallic as such and and to the negation of the phallus. What do you mean by Deleuzean because the point that I emphasize in my book yeah but like like like we can proceed without without naming it but what I mean is that you know that Deleuze is much more ambiguous here in his Logic of Sense this is why I'm a classical Stalinist and I claim the traitor who is to be shot is Guattari not this but because in what is for me his best book apart from Difference and Repetition Logic of Sense Oedipus is not yet a bad guy there. If you look ah ah ah look at around page towards the end he gives a wonderful Deleuzian rereading of Oedipus where Oedipus is precisely I think it's a beautiful reading the nomadic excess which introduced flux openness and so on and so on and there he even he has maybe the best most beautiful here you see Deleuze's genius. Deleuze at his best he apropos some point which is basically a Lacanian he does a better formulation than Lacan himself. But does the phallic signifier produce a lack does lack proceed in Lacan's Lacan's notion does lack proceed in that which creates the excess? That's a crucial question I propose that I go into this with pleasure tomorrow because here I agree with Badiou who says that we should be very specific here which is why I think we should be that maybe Deleuze is a little bit too goes a little bit too fast when he dismisses this you know lack mis blah blah. But if you read Lacan really close and Deleuze is honest enough here I must admit even in Anti-Oedipus when he goes against psychoanalysis that there are a couple of footnotes where he says I'm talking about standard Lacanian not about Lacan. Lacan is much more big because the first thing about Lacan is to say you know Deleuze it's a wonderful quote I quote it all the time where he goes that what characterizes the symbolic order is there is always an empty space space of lack but he says but it's not only that there is an empty place in the structure the lack but this lack is correlated with an excess. You have a place without an object but at the same time you have an object without place. And then of course the whole point of structuralism is that this common sense stupid idea doesn't work that you say so what's the big deal you put the object into that place of a lack and everything no because they are structurally the same. This object out of place is again on this Möbius band just the other side of the lack itself. It's lack itself existing as object. And I think this is crucial for Lacan, Lacan never was the way he is identified this fucking tragic thinker oh lack incest we always miss the big object. Already I like to emphasize this how for Lacan enjoyment Lacan is not just saying this bullshit of we always miss the true object it's always metonymy of a lack enjoyment is missing but this the fact that we always miss what we you know this is the hysterical formula you know that famous phrase by Lacan I give it to you but it's never it's not that you know like always this structurally point and then Lacan is very clear that the other side of this is an excess in the sense that Lacan's point is not simply we never get the full enjoyment it's that at the same time precisely because we don't get it we get too much of it. This is the whole point of for example obsessional neurotic or to give you the simplest example
absolutely ingenious idea. Let's subvert it not by giving some dark hints oh no it's not like this really these are not free elections there. Those in power claim these are free elections so let's just treat them as free elections and report precisely in the way one reports about free elections. So on the evening of elections we published an extraordinary issue of our small student newspaper with the big title latest election results it looks that probably communists will remain in power or whatever you know as if you know all the people were waiting what and it was wonderful. We were immediately called to the central committee it wasn't really dangerous just some old party apparatchik shouting at us no but it was so tragic I had immediate sympathy for him because he told us boys don't fuck with me don't play such dirty games. We told him but tell us what did we do wrong you claim these are free elections we believe you we treated them as free elections what did we do wrong are you trying to say that these were not free elections then. And it was so tragic that the guy couldn't within the rules of the discourse couldn't say don't fuck with me you know we always win no. He couldn't so he was in such a defense he just repeated you know very well guys what I mean don't fuck with me but tell us what what you know it was so nice that you know and it was a wonderful thing it was much better than do the open dissident gesture because the publicity was incredible all the people were talking about it. And along the lines of what you said this is why who said this Mandelstam or who and there is a moment of truth in it that Stalinist society had the greatest possible respect for poets. It's the only country in the world Soviet Union where poets are taken so seriously that for a wrong word you can be shot you know at least they are taken seriously. So I remember a similar experience in a journal literary theoretical journal where I was we published a poem which the poet was some stupid drunken idiot but okay if you read it with extreme Stalinist kremlinology semiotic you can discern some politically subversive message you know like there was a line in that poem I think something like we know who are the true fathers of our freedom okay if you are fanatic you will say eh do they claim that it's not the Communist Party which and so on no. And the joke was this one again the old story we were called to the central committee it became a scandal extraordinary session of the cultural cultural cultural group whatever of central committee. But speaking frankly with guys at the central committee and they admitted to us here they did privately we told them but are you crazy if you were to ignore this poem absolutely nothing would have happened nobody would even read this poem that it's you with your reaction who did the greatest you know the poet who was a total coward drunkard became a great dissident hero and so on you know it's incredible no. So at some point now we come to the point it's not quite like that maybe but more and more I think that that was the whole point I think already mentioned this of political jokes. There was a myth which unfortunately it's not true but it's typical that there was a myth in ex-Yugoslavia and in other countries that political jokes I mean dissident jokes against those in power are produced by some secret ideological secret police group and that they are consciously by the party spread around to put it in simple terms to give people an easy way out to enact their rage you know you are furious thing don't function okay you hear a good joke you laugh you go back to work and so on. Unfortunately this is not true but it's absolutely true that political jokes did play this type of how should they call it constructive role. You know that they were strictly the same as what I was talking yesterday or when about the same like in Casablanca all those dirty innuendos which are part of the game because you know where which were the most interesting times of my life my edu times of education. The last years of Yugoslav communism because it still was a real totalitarian communism but it was a soft one no longer working seriously which means that all this censorship mechanisms were relaxed so that their nonsense and inconsistency become how should I put it more and more directly palpable. For example this idea that jokes help politicians. In those last years of Yugoslavia where communist politicians knew there will probably be democracy and they fought for political survival they started directly to refer themselves to the jokes about themselves to boost their popularity. It was an incredible thing unimaginable in Stalinism a big communist politician comes to give a speech and starts to tell jokes about himself. The great guy here was I will have to describe it to you because it's a complex structure but you will get it a Croat politician called Jure Bilić. Jure is a Croat word for George Jure J-U-R-E Bilić is just a Croat name okay but remember how with it's like von a predicate you know Bilić means just qualification of bish no. So the joke was one of these absolutely sublime East European two level already Freud mentioned it this is the the middle the middle European rather specialty two level jokes you know you think the joke is over but then there is another. Okay the point is this guy visits France Giscard d'Estaing you remember. And learns that in France if you want to appear noble you have to add de D-E as you know you are not simply Giscard d'Estaing you are Giscard de d'Estaing d the of nobility you know. So they present each other Giscard d'Estaing said I'm Giscard d'Estaing he said Jure of course the joke is debil Jure de Bilic de bil you know he has and then comes the wonder. Giscard says real de facto and he says no de jure you know oh my god I mean but isn't it wonderful this guy told this joke about himself and it was it was it was madness. Another element of this inconsistency sublime. This was maybe the most perverse moment that I remember. In the last years of socialism Slovene communists were much more business oriented than the communists in other republics. So maybe you remember it no you're too young most of you. In the '80s and '70s there was a great miracle in south of Bosnia Croat part that Medjugorje yes it was mega. And the stupid Bosnian communists were hardliners they didn't want to legalize it. And Slovene and Croat other communists were furious because of that Yugoslavia lost a couple of billions of dollars. Because Italian tourist agencies entered organized the trips and and we Slovene communists who were already business oriented were furious. So then it happened. Close to Ljubljana capital of Slovenia precisely very well located between Ljubljana and Ljubljana airport there is some small crossing country roads where there was a statue of Virgin Mary and that statue started to do what Virgin Mary statues are supposed to do no move a little bit cry tears of blood blah blah. And the Slovene communists were delighted. Now we will teach the Bosnians how you do it plans were done build hotels there special tours. And then a catastrophe happened. The local Catholic priest in whose domain this happened made a statement where he says no this is not a miracle this is just a superstition. And communists were furious this is a unique document. In the communist official paper they attacked this priest for non-patriotic behavior like fuck him it's economic crisis it's his duty to help the country and now he's doing some materialist bullshit whatever. It was so wonderful this you know or maybe you know the joke I'm sorry if I repeat myself but it's another ultimate one. There was a student radio independent dissident in '87-'88 I'm sorry if you know the story which was specialized in like provocative out of control by the communist party this were of the half liberal okay they invited an old communist cadre to an to an interview with him. This guy was old retired but kind of real old hard communist and he was in a total panic I knew him because he just he knew communist would probably lose power and he terribly wanted to please the young generation no. So he knew he must say yes do whatever blah blah. So this poor old guy I totally sympathize with him the interviewers provoked him like how is your sex life and so on. This poor guy now knew he has to say something good positive that's what the young generation want. But at the same time the only language he spoke was the old communist language. So you got something so terrifying a kind of a Stalinist style pornography you know. This guy said I often touch women between their legs the feeling there helps me in my struggle for socialism and sort of perversity you know like pornography but as official I mean it was I loved those moments I think these are the most productive moments where you know as a now maybe you know this story a friend from Egypt told me that now you have and with my bad taste jokes feminist somebody told me I don't know if it's true or not that in Saudi Arabia they published two-three years ago the first this Happy Mary Life sorry Happy Married Family Life book you know these we have in the West how to do sex a family and it's done in the very American way written the style you know this easy conversation blah blah. But the content is the old one. So I like it a modern book written in this way but then it teaches the husband how to hit his wife so that it will not hurt too much but I like absolutely you know this where discourses get mixed how should I put it no where okay we are crazy nonetheless so what I propose then nonetheless I feel bad to give you yeah like you are now Comrade Stalin to give the concluding word to the session of central committee. But I think this central point in you mentioned it in the book is around the debate between Badiou and Miller on suture. Yeah. Where he goes basically to deny small object a into his construct. Although I will immediately give you just bear in mind that when Miller introduced suture there is also not yet an object a. It's just one signifier. My question actually which is precisely where do we locate object a like where is the excess? And it seems to me that as you say Badiou's subject is purely situated within the imaginary chain of signifiers locates it in the imaginary. Does that mean that he what does he make of the phallic signifier? That's true. But you are right already in what sense that in that early stage Badiou was against the notion of the subject in that polemics. Yeah yeah. Only later with his event blah blah stuff did he as it were write why. Yeah but still there's a sort of a Deleuzian relation to the phallic as such and and to the negation of the phallus. What do you mean by Deleuzean because the point that I emphasize in my book yeah but like like like we can proceed without without naming it but what I mean is that you know that Deleuze is much more ambiguous here in his Logic of Sense this is why I'm a classical Stalinist and I claim the traitor who is to be shot is Guattari not this but because in what is for me his best book apart from Difference and Repetition Logic of Sense Oedipus is not yet a bad guy there. If you look ah ah ah look at around page towards the end he gives a wonderful Deleuzian rereading of Oedipus where Oedipus is precisely I think it's a beautiful reading the nomadic excess which introduced flux openness and so on and so on and there he even he has maybe the best most beautiful here you see Deleuze's genius. Deleuze at his best he apropos some point which is basically a Lacanian he does a better formulation than Lacan himself. But does the phallic signifier produce a lack does lack proceed in Lacan's Lacan's notion does lack proceed in that which creates the excess? That's a crucial question I propose that I go into this with pleasure tomorrow because here I agree with Badiou who says that we should be very specific here which is why I think we should be that maybe Deleuze is a little bit too goes a little bit too fast when he dismisses this you know lack mis blah blah. But if you read Lacan really close and Deleuze is honest enough here I must admit even in Anti-Oedipus when he goes against psychoanalysis that there are a couple of footnotes where he says I'm talking about standard Lacanian not about Lacan. Lacan is much more big because the first thing about Lacan is to say you know Deleuze it's a wonderful quote I quote it all the time where he goes that what characterizes the symbolic order is there is always an empty space space of lack but he says but it's not only that there is an empty place in the structure the lack but this lack is correlated with an excess. You have a place without an object but at the same time you have an object without place. And then of course the whole point of structuralism is that this common sense stupid idea doesn't work that you say so what's the big deal you put the object into that place of a lack and everything no because they are structurally the same. This object out of place is again on this Möbius band just the other side of the lack itself. It's lack itself existing as object. And I think this is crucial for Lacan, Lacan never was the way he is identified this fucking tragic thinker oh lack incest we always miss the big object. Already I like to emphasize this how for Lacan enjoyment Lacan is not just saying this bullshit of we always miss the true object it's always metonymy of a lack enjoyment is missing but this the fact that we always miss what we you know this is the hysterical formula you know that famous phrase by Lacan I give it to you but it's never it's not that you know like always this structurally point and then Lacan is very clear that the other side of this is an excess in the sense that Lacan's point is not simply we never get the full enjoyment it's that at the same time precisely because we don't get it we get too much of it. This is the whole point of for example obsessional neurotic or to give you the simplest example
unknown
or perverse. Let us say you are an ordinary guy like me okay me me me I take the blame here. I would like to have girls I'm too
or perverse. Let us say you are an ordinary guy like me okay me me me I take the blame here. I would like to have girls I'm too
Slavoj Žižek
ugly I don't get them so I try to escape to repress this to escape into some
ugly I don't get them so I try to escape to repress this to escape into some
unknown
pure space for example I do mathematics. But as you know then whatever I do there this returns like I do physics and it says there how much energy is unleashed when two bodies hit each other sorry it's like there. But the same Lacan says what let's say I have and Judith Butler at her
pure space for example I do mathematics. But as you know then whatever I do there this returns like I do physics and it says there how much energy is unleashed when two bodies hit each other sorry it's like there. But the same Lacan says what let's say I have and Judith Butler at her
Slavoj Žižek
best her best book I think is Psychic Life of Power a modest one she has there some good points where she says that how the basic mechanism Freudian is that the repression of desire always turns around into desire for repression which means and this is the whole logic of this believe me I know it I'm the one the for obsessional neurotics you fear some excess of enjoyment let's say I have some dirty dreams torture sado-mazo whatever. Then in order to keep this at a distance I I take refuge in obsessional rituals you know I will avoid this if I do these gestures but the problem is that these very gestures gets invested with the very same energy so I start to enjoy the which is why even somewhere already the early Lacan gives a wonderful definition one of possible definitions which is also taken over I think by Badiou a little bit in his wonderful short text on masochism introduction to Sacher-Masoch where he says that the trick of one of the tricks of masochism is this one. I have a certain illicit desire so because since I cannot actualize it directly I punish myself but since in normal logic you punish yourself for illicit acts in this way through a detour I enjoy you know it's a kind of a preemptive punishment through punishment you try to prove that you are a really doing it or whatever. So what I'm saying is that yes here I absolutely agree and here also yes another thing here comes I think the crucial difference between desire and drive. Maybe this holds for the early Lacan of the 50s this tragic poetry of desire which it's always lack we miss it we never get it blah blah but no then the same incidentally the same logic of how jouissance is not simply impossible is not only something that you always miss but it's paradoxically at the same time something that you never can get rid of. Like that poor guy I want to get rid of I do mathematics ha ha you get it there no. And you know that for Lacan Lacan somewhere says that it's exactly the same exactly the same goes for free associations. Freud knows very well that there are really no free associations okay there are but you never can you always cheat and that's a big joke among analysts like I was cheating like crazy you know when I was with Miller it was total fiasco because I like I invented every session that I went I invented everything in detail you know all the gestures oh now I remembered something fuck it was all planned and so on. But Miller got it he was not so stupid and he got me the right answer he said that yes there is no free association he knows the patients cheat all the time you know like every good neurotic patient prepares in detail usually what he will associate but at the same time says Miller the trick of a good analyst is that no matter how well you prepare it you treat it as a free association you know like you may have invented a story and you think you control it but usually what story you invent and so on you betray yourself even more and so on. So you get my point it's the same of course there is no pure it's a myth that you can become some kind of a surrealist writer and really just adopt this passivity and you just freely associate you always cheat. But this doesn't mean it doesn't work because even if you cheat structurally whatever you do it has the status of a free association and so on and so on. So even if we go back to the subject which is why and here I got if I got it correctly the trust of your question I think that we should get rid of this notion of subjectivity you know this pseudo-Lacanian poetry of lack and failure and so on this is a certain tragic logic in the line of maybe Kierkegaard Heidegger and so on we always fail the only thing we can do is fail authentically and so on and so on. This is not Lacan and but that's why I don't like ethics of psychoanalysis because I think that there Lacan comes closest to this let's call it poetry of failure you know but this is not the last Lacan. Fuck it the lady will kill me tomorrow we go on and don't
best her best book I think is Psychic Life of Power a modest one she has there some good points where she says that how the basic mechanism Freudian is that the repression of desire always turns around into desire for repression which means and this is the whole logic of this believe me I know it I'm the one the for obsessional neurotics you fear some excess of enjoyment let's say I have some dirty dreams torture sado-mazo whatever. Then in order to keep this at a distance I I take refuge in obsessional rituals you know I will avoid this if I do these gestures but the problem is that these very gestures gets invested with the very same energy so I start to enjoy the which is why even somewhere already the early Lacan gives a wonderful definition one of possible definitions which is also taken over I think by Badiou a little bit in his wonderful short text on masochism introduction to Sacher-Masoch where he says that the trick of one of the tricks of masochism is this one. I have a certain illicit desire so because since I cannot actualize it directly I punish myself but since in normal logic you punish yourself for illicit acts in this way through a detour I enjoy you know it's a kind of a preemptive punishment through punishment you try to prove that you are a really doing it or whatever. So what I'm saying is that yes here I absolutely agree and here also yes another thing here comes I think the crucial difference between desire and drive. Maybe this holds for the early Lacan of the 50s this tragic poetry of desire which it's always lack we miss it we never get it blah blah but no then the same incidentally the same logic of how jouissance is not simply impossible is not only something that you always miss but it's paradoxically at the same time something that you never can get rid of. Like that poor guy I want to get rid of I do mathematics ha ha you get it there no. And you know that for Lacan Lacan somewhere says that it's exactly the same exactly the same goes for free associations. Freud knows very well that there are really no free associations okay there are but you never can you always cheat and that's a big joke among analysts like I was cheating like crazy you know when I was with Miller it was total fiasco because I like I invented every session that I went I invented everything in detail you know all the gestures oh now I remembered something fuck it was all planned and so on. But Miller got it he was not so stupid and he got me the right answer he said that yes there is no free association he knows the patients cheat all the time you know like every good neurotic patient prepares in detail usually what he will associate but at the same time says Miller the trick of a good analyst is that no matter how well you prepare it you treat it as a free association you know like you may have invented a story and you think you control it but usually what story you invent and so on you betray yourself even more and so on. So you get my point it's the same of course there is no pure it's a myth that you can become some kind of a surrealist writer and really just adopt this passivity and you just freely associate you always cheat. But this doesn't mean it doesn't work because even if you cheat structurally whatever you do it has the status of a free association and so on and so on. So even if we go back to the subject which is why and here I got if I got it correctly the trust of your question I think that we should get rid of this notion of subjectivity you know this pseudo-Lacanian poetry of lack and failure and so on this is a certain tragic logic in the line of maybe Kierkegaard Heidegger and so on we always fail the only thing we can do is fail authentically and so on and so on. This is not Lacan and but that's why I don't like ethics of psychoanalysis because I think that there Lacan comes closest to this let's call it poetry of failure you know but this is not the last Lacan. Fuck it the lady will kill me tomorrow we go on and don't
unknown
be afraid of this free talking.
be afraid of this free talking.