Struggle Towards a New Master
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2013-11-29 · 1:56:08 · 14,491 words
ideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generalliberalism-political-correctnesssubjectivitycommunism-socialism
Žižek delivers a lecture critiquing Althusser's theory of ideology on two fronts: the over-simplification of ideological interpellation (missing the constitutive moment of hysterical doubt) and the failure to grasp the properly symbolic, rather than merely material, dimension of ideological state apparatuses. He supplements Althusser with Kant's late anthropology (on 'permissible moral appearance') and Lacan's materiality of the signifier to argue that morality, subjectivity, and social ritual depend on a productive deception that political correctness short-circuits. The talk closes with reflections on boredom/acedia as the original condition of subjectivity (contra Badiou's primacy of fidelity), the desire/drive duality in Lacan, and a defense of the Lacan–Marx connection.
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The ideas in it 20
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Althusser's material institutions (church, school, police) that reproduce ideology; Žižek argues they miss the properly symbolic, not crudely material, dimension Lacan calls the materiality of the signifier.
as “ideological interpellation”
Althusser's mechanism by which ideology hails subjects into identity, which Žižek argues is too simple because it skips the constitutive moment of hysterical doubt.
as “Western Buddhist hedonism”
Žižek's ironic label for contemporary ideology: 'enjoy, be true to yourself, find your authentic self', presented not as ideology but as personal freedom, making it the most insidious form of ideological interpellation.
as “perversion (subjective position)”
Not a sexual act but a formal stance in which the subject assumes the role of instrument of the Other's jouissance, claiming to know what the Other wants even better than the Other, the position Žižek links to Stalinist communism.
as “hysterical subjectivity”
For Lacan and Žižek the founding mode of the subject: not direct identification with an interpellation but first a questioning, 'Why me? What do they want from me?', which constitutes the subject through anxiety rather than recognition.
The primordial discovery that the Other also doesn't know, the moment the child realizes the parents are themselves caught in their games; Žižek treats this as the founding experience of subjectivity.
Lacan's concept of the symbolic order as a machine-like ideal structure that functions materialistically without being physically material; what Althusser keeps gesturing at but cannot properly theorize.
as “big Other”
Lacan's symbolic order or imputed agency of authority that interpellates subjects; Žižek emphasizes that the big Other itself 'doesn't know,' and this non-knowledge is what the child discovers as the primordial experience of the unconscious.
Lacan's ambiguity: power that functions only as potential threat loses its force the moment it is actualized, Žižek uses this to explain why gold reserves and hidden military force work only if never deployed.
Žižek's formula for the uncanny reversal where the apparent puppet (the dummy) turns out to be more alive than the apparent real person, the ventriloquist as dummy scenario illustrates how the real self can reside in the other.
Kant's category from the Anthropology for the socially necessary pretense of virtue: acting as if moral even when not, so that the deception eventually becomes genuine, what Žižek sees as the key to understanding social ritual.
The intermediate space between strict moral law and legal prohibition that Kant theorizes in the Anthropology: acts that must appear freely chosen but are socially expected, the domain political correctness eliminates by moralizing or legalizing it.
as “sincere lie / productive deception”
The Kantian/Pascalian logic of social ritual: one begins by performing virtue without feeling it, and through that performance eventually becomes virtuous, a domain that political correctness destroys by moralizing it.
Žižek's thesis (contra Badiou) that the original human condition is not engaged fidelity but disengaged lassitude, boredom creates the void that is then filled by causes, creativity, and engagement.
Žižek resists treating these as an irreducible duality, arguing that both should be derived from a prior 'discordant negativity' already at work in nature, drawing on late Lacan's more Hegelian/Schellingian direction.
Lacan's figure from Seminar XI for the libidinal excess tied to sexuality, which Žižek notes Lacan explicitly links to animal sexuality, not just the human, supporting his view that negativity precedes humanity in nature.
as “super-ego”
Not a primordial structure but drive already filtered through symbolic law and guilt; Žižek argues super-ego has no escape because its logic (like debt) aims not at repayment but at perpetual indebtedness.
Lacanian enjoyment that exceeds pleasure; Žižek invokes it in connection with drive, the perverse stance (instrument of the Other's jouissance), and Marx's concept of Genuß in the party of order's enjoyment of postponement.
Lacan's surplus object-cause of desire; Žižek uses it to explain the Hegelian joke about a footballer thanking 'mother and father especially', the 'more' that exceeds the father/mother pair is object a.
Žižek's implicit reference when discussing Marxist fetishism: we know how things really are but our reality is structured by the fantasy/illusion, not a cognitive error but a practical one embedded in social practice itself.
Stories he reaches for 3
Kierkegaard cites a Danish humor writer's absurd claim that all humanity divides into officers, housemaids, and chimney-sweepers. Žižek reads it as a logic of the three, male, female, and the surplus third, and offers a dirty triangular gloss on the structure.
“all people can be divided all humanity into officers housemaids and chimney-sweepers... you always have to have three”
The Stalinist communist occupies a perverse subjective position, not through the horrors committed but through the structure: 'We are just servants of the people, but we know better than the people what they want.'
“a Stalinist true Stalinist communist is a pervert not because of horrors they did but... we are just servants of the people but the catch is we know better than people what people want”
Malebranche imagines two farmers, one diligent, one lazy, where rain falls contingently; the lazy one harvests, the diligent one gets nothing. This is Žižek's model for divine grace as pure mechanical contingency with no relation to virtue, which he uses to illustrate how the symbolic order functions like materialist mechanism.
“God is just in a totally contingent way throwing it around absolutely nothing to do with our virtues”
Works invoked 15
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's 'big fat book which weighs two pounds' on Hegel; cited for the development of how Pascal and Hegel relate on the question of ritual and belief.
Described as 'the worst capitalist propaganda movie' that appears critical while actually celebrating American democracy through the story of two ordinary guys bringing down the president.
Freud's text cited as the model for reading individual pathology as a symptom of what is wrong with society as a whole, the proper scope of psychoanalysis as Žižek endorses it.
Blue Velvet film
Cited as Lynch's best classic; Žižek reads it as structured around a depressed woman (Isabella Rossellini) whom all male figures, even Dennis Hopper, try to arouse from her immobility, illustrating acedia as primordial.
Not I play
Beckett play mentioned to identify Jessica Tandy (who played the Mouth in the original production) as the actress in the Hitchcock episode.
Nixon (film) film
Žižek's favorite Oliver Stone film; praised for presenting Nixon as the last genuinely tragic Oedipal president, avoiding simple Nixon-phobia.
Kant's late text described as 'immensely readable' and 'excellent'; Žižek treats it as the proper theorization of the performative domain of permissible moral appearance that Althusser misses.
Althusser's central text; extensively quoted and critiqued for two failures: the over-simple closed loop of interpellation and the inability to reach the Lacanian materiality of the signifier.
Žižek's own book, cited as where he develops Kripps's refinement of Althusserian interpellation at length.
Althusser's late manuscripts (Verso); Žižek quotes the passage on hidden military force (Rambouillet tanks) to argue that Althusser's own example exceeds his framework.
Witness film
Cited as Žižek's (and the questioner's) primary source of knowledge about the Amish, in the context of a question about the super-ego.
An early black-and-white episode (Žižek believes the first story of season two) in which Jessica Tandy plays a spinster obsessed with a ventriloquist, discovering that the 'dummy' contained a real dwarf, the formula 'the double is more than I.'
Another Earth film
Mentioned alongside The East as a Brit Marling film representing progressive Hollywood.
The East film
Mentioned briefly as an example of 'progressive Hollywood today'; Žižek names Brit Marling as his 'new sex symbol.'
Gravity film
'Not such a great film but not bad'; used to illustrate the materiality of the signifier, the protagonist's child died 'at school' at four, but US children don't attend school at four, suggesting a screen fantasy.
People invoked 25
Alfonso Cuarón positive
Gravity used as an example of the materiality of the signifier (the protagonist's child 'dying at school' at age four is a screen fantasy because US children don't attend school at four).
Henry Krips positive
Described as writing 'an excellent book' that develops the crucial refinement of Althusserian interpellation: the hysterical 'Why me?' moment that precedes subject formation, which Žižek endorses fully.
Richard Nixon positive
Identified as the most progressive US president by welfare spending; praised for the China trip; read through Stone's film as genuinely tragic rather than simply villainous.
Blaise Pascal positive
Pascal's formula, act as if you believe and belief will follow, is treated as a productive insight into the logic of ritual and ideology, though Žižek complicates it with a Hegelian inversion.
Julia Kristeva negative
The 'stranger in us' framework is cited as the typical politically correct academic approach to racism, projecting repressed traumas onto the other, which Žižek criticizes as psychoanalytic cover for inadequate social analysis.
Jacques Lacan positive
Primary theoretical resource throughout; Žižek deploys Lacan's materiality of the signifier, the big Other, hysterical subjectivity, perversion, drive/desire, and lamella to supplement and correct Althusser.
Oliver Stone negative
Žižek recounts meeting Stone and telling him he finds his big iconic films (Wall Street, Platoon) boring due to repetitive Oedipal structure; he praises Nixon as the exception.
Louis Althusser negative
Central target of the lecture: Žižek critiques him on two fronts, missing the hysterical moment of interpellation and failing to grasp the Lacanian materiality of the signifier in his account of ideological state apparatuses.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Žižek claims 'great appreciation for Deleuze' but attacks pseudo-Deleuzian theory that celebrates perversion over hysteria as a hidden reassertion of male dominance.
Isabella Rossellini positive
Praised as 'a good actress' who also played in the original Beckett Not I; her role in Blue Velvet is cited to illustrate depression as the primordial subjective condition.
David Lynch positive
Blue Velvet cited favorably as a film structured around a depressed, immobilized woman (Isabella Rossellini) whom all male characters attempt to rouse, illustrating the thesis that depression/acedia precedes and enables action.
Nicolas Malebranche positive
Žižek's 'favorite theologian', cited for a materialist theory of divine grace as pure contingency (like rain falling on good and bad farmers alike) that shows how even spiritual grace operates like mechanical materialism.
Alain Badiou negative
Žižek rejects Badiou's account of the subject as constituted by fidelity to an event and evil as betrayal; he argues that acedia/boredom comes first and positive engagement is secondary.
Michel Foucault negative
Foucault's introduction to Kant's Anthropology is acknowledged but criticized: he merely uses it to show Kant's transcendental-empirical tension and misses the properly performative domain Kant is opening up.
Perry Anderson positive
Anderson's book on gold reserves of central banks is cited by Althusser as a parallel to hidden military force; Žižek follows Althusser in citing him.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling positive
Cited alongside Walter Benjamin for the idea that human language emerged to give voice to nature's pain, that there is a prior horror in nature itself, not introduced by humanity.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited alongside Schelling for the idea that language emerges to voice nature's pain, supporting the thesis that negativity precedes the human.
Jean Laplanche positive
Žižek recommends Laplanche's essays on otherness for the idea that subjectivity emerges from the child's experience of being a focal point of others' libidinal investments without knowing what it is for them.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Used for the 'orgy passage' on boredom as the origin of world history (God bored → created world), and for the three-class classification (officer/housemaid/chimney-sweeper) to illustrate object a logic.
Samo Tomšič positive
Fellow Lacanian from Slovenia whose forthcoming book on Marx and Lacan is praised for systematically tracing Lacan's engagement with Marx across different decades.
Karl Marx positive
Defended against reduction to naive false-consciousness theory; Žižek argues Marxist fetishism is a theory of practical ontological illusion, and that Lacan's systematic references to Marx constitute a genuine connection, not an eccentric one.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited alongside Lacan as genuinely feminist for clarifying that perversion (not hysteria) is the position of authoritarian power; Civilization and Its Discontents cited as the model for reading individual pathology as social symptom.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Repeatedly invoked throughout; Žižek uses Hegel's theory of marriage as a Pascalian inversion, his account of negativity preceding the positive, and the quote about Egyptian secrets.
Immanuel Kant positive
Kant's late Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is presented as the text that correctly theorizes the domain of permissible moral appearance that Althusser misses; Žižek calls it 'immensely readable' and 'maybe the most subversive aspect of Kantian philosophy.'
Mentioned by a questioner in relation to 'the absolute eye' and the gaze; Žižek's response pivots away from Wajcman specifically to discuss desire versus drive.
What it argues
Althusser's theory of ideology and its limitshysterical subjectivity versus perverse subjectivitymateriality of the signifier and the symbolic orderKantian moral appearance and productive deceptionpolitical correctness and the super-egoboredom/acedia as the origin of subjectivityMarx and Lacan as complementary frameworks
Dialectical moves 11
“The more you are innocent, the more anxiety explodes when the policeman addresses you; if you are really a criminal you know how to cover it up and identify directly.”
Legal innocence produces ideological guilt, while actual criminality enables the smooth perverse identification that Althusser mistakenly treats as the norm.
“Something which begins as undoubtedly corrupted and a means of ideological oppression can get caught into a different way—not authentic-then-corrupted but corrupted-then-authentic.”
The standard story of ideology (authentic origin → corruption) should be reversed: what starts as pure manipulation can become genuine expression for the oppressed.
“Omnipotence is always only a potential threat; the moment you actualize it, it's over.”
Power (military force, gold reserves) functions only as unrealized potential; actualization destroys the effect, which is what Althusser's examples point to without him seeing it.
“Gold reserves work only insofar as they are not put to use; the moment the state would have to actively intervene with them, everything crashes.”
Symbolic guarantees operate precisely by remaining latent; their deployment signals the failure of the system they were meant to underwrite.
“The pervert knows; the hysteric doesn't know—and this is why the hysterical position, not the perverse one, is the truly subversive one.”
Certainty about the Other's desire is the perverse (authoritarian) stance; the questioning subject who doesn't know is more radical.
“The secrets of the Egyptians were secrets for the Egyptians themselves—the Other also doesn't know what it wants.”
The founding experience of subjectivity is not that the Other conceals knowledge from me but that the Other is also caught in its own game, constitutively unknowing.
“Far from being about civic virtue, the most progressive American president measured by welfare spending was Richard Nixon.”
The apparent villain of American liberalism was materially more progressive than his successors, inverting the standard progressive narrative.
“It's not that you don't believe and then follow the ritual until you believe; it can go the opposite way—you really believe but the ritual sets you free from your belief.”
Pascal's formula (act → believe) has a Hegelian inverse: the ritual can liberate you from an oppressive belief you already hold, not only produce belief from nothing.
“Boredom comes first, then you invent a cause to get out of boredom—not fidelity first and then evil as betrayal.”
Against Badiou, subjectivity originates in disengagement (acedia), and positive commitment is a secondary filling of that void, making negativity primordial.
“In nature there is something already wrong before humanity—negativity and imbalance precede the human, they don't begin with it.”
Žižek's late-Lacanian/Schellingian move: the human is not an intrusion of negativity into a harmonious nature but the explosion of a prior natural discord.
“Marx is not saying we live in illusions that hide reality; he is saying that illusions structure our reality itself—reality is structured like a fantasy.”
Marxist fetishism is not an epistemological error but an ontological condition: the illusion is not in our heads but built into how social reality functions.
Claims 16
rejects
Althusser's account of ideological interpellation is too direct: between the call and identification there must be a constitutive moment of hysterical doubt ('Why me? What did I do?') which is what actually produces the subject.Althusser's theory of ideological interpellation
asserts
The most dangerous contemporary ideology is 'Western Buddhist hedonism'—the injunction to enjoy and be authentic—precisely because it is not experienced as ideology at all.contemporary ideological interpellation
asserts
The perverse subjective position (not hysteria) is the libidinal structure required by authoritarian power, because the pervert claims to know what the Other wants and acts as its instrument.perversion, authoritarianism, and Stalinism
asserts
Hysterical subjectivity, not perversion, is the more radical and feminist political position because it maintains questioning rather than certainty about the Other's desire.feminism, hysteria versus perversion
rejects
What Althusser misses in his account of ideological state apparatuses is the materiality of the signifier in Lacan's sense—the symbolic order functions like mechanical matter even though it is an ideal order.Althusser's materialism and ideological state apparatuses
reframes
Power—whether military force or gold reserves—functions only as unrealized potential; the moment it is actualized, it collapses, which is what Althusser's account of the hidden tanks at Rambouillet fails to grasp.ideological state power and force
asserts
Kant's Anthropology, not Althusser, correctly theorizes the domain of permissible moral appearance: social ritual and politeness work only if they appear freely chosen and are not directly commanded.Kant's anthropology versus Althusser on social ritual
rejects
Political correctness undermines morality precisely by moralizing and legalizing the gray domain of voluntary appearance that Kant identifies as the only real path to genuine virtue.political correctness
rejects
Boredom and acedia, not fidelity to a cause, are the primordial conditions of subjectivity; causes are invented to fill the void created by disengagement, reversing Badiou's account.Badiou's theory of the subject and fidelity to an event
asserts
Marx invented the symptom (in Lacan's sense), and the Lacan–Marx connection is not eccentric but can be rigorously proven through Lacan's texts, especially his theory of discourse and surplus jouissance linked to surplus value.the Lacan–Marx relationship
reframes
Marxist fetishism is not a theory of false consciousness but a theory of practical illusion: we know how things are, yet we act as if the fantasy were real—our reality itself is structured by illusion.Marxist theory of commodity fetishism
reframes
Psychoanalysis should not be used to fill the gaps of social analysis or to explain why revolution failed; its proper scope is to theorize what subjective structure is required to function as a social subject.the relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxist social analysis
reframes
The desire/drive duality in Lacan should not be treated as irreducible; both should be derived from a prior discordant negativity already operative in nature before humanity.Lacanian desire versus drive
rejects
The celebration of perversion over hysteria in pseudo-Deleuzian theory is a covert reassertion of male dominance, presenting male radicalism as 'going all the way' while dismissing female hysteria as compromise.Deleuzian theory of perversion versus hysteria
rejects
The Althusserian closed loop of interpellation (hail → recognition → subject) only describes the perverse subject; most subjects pass through the hysterical detour, and this gap is constitutive.Althusser's closed loop of interpellation
asserts
Innocent people—not criminals—are the ones who feel guilty when addressed by police, because guilt in the ideological sense has nothing to do with actual legal guilt.guilt, innocence, and ideological interpellation
Quotes 13
“The more you are innocent the more when the policeman addresses you the more anxiety explodes oh my god why me what did I do if you are really a criminal you know how to cover it up.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological guilt and innocence inverted
“Western Buddhist hedonism: enjoy, be true to yourself, but truly authentically express yourself, find your true self—I claim that this ideology is maybe the most dangerous one because it's almost not experienced as ideology at all.”Slavoj Žižek · contemporary ideology as authentic self-expression
“A pervert knows; a hysteric doesn't know. The hysterical position is questioning.”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria versus perversion as subjective stances
“The secrets of the Egyptians were the secrets for the Egyptians also themselves—the other also doesn't know.”Slavoj Žižek · the Other's constitutive non-knowledge
“Omnipotence is always only a potential threat; the moment you actualize it, it's over.”Slavoj Žižek · power functions only as unrealized potential
“The more civilized human beings are, the more they are actors… eventually the virtues whose illusion they have merely affected will gradually really be aroused.”Slavoj Žižek · civilization as productive performance of virtue
“A lady does everything including orgies but she does it like a lady. A polite man doesn't mean you are not vulgar—there is a way to be vulgar in a polite way.”Slavoj Žižek · true politeness as style, not abstention
“The goal of super ego in debt is not for you to repay the debt but to remain forever indebted.”Slavoj Žižek · super-ego logic as perpetual guilt
“Boredom comes first, then you invent a cause to get out of boredom—the origin of humanity is a depressed woman.”Slavoj Žižek · acedia and feminine negativity as origin of subjectivity
“Marx is not saying we live in illusions that hide reality; he is saying that illusions structure our reality itself—reality is structured like a fantasy.”Slavoj Žižek · Marxist fetishism as ontological not epistemological
“The manipulators are always themselves manipulated. I don't believe in this cynical all-powerful subject who knows how things really are and just lies to us.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology has no master subject who sees through it
“Lacan's alienation answer is: yes, you don't control it, but there is no other who also controls it—it's even worse.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian alienation exceeds Marxian alienation
“Marx invented the symptom—and Lacan makes it clear when he says this he means it in a very precise way.”Slavoj Žižek · Marx–Lacan connection via the symptom
Transcript 37 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Today again if you excuse me I would like to do something even more than two days ago very classical a little bit boring with long quotes I would like to approach this eternal Althusserian topic of ideological state apparatuses as the material existence of an ideology and then I will try to show where Althusser falls short a little bit and how we can go on from Althusser I will pass to late Kant Kantian anthropology what he calls anthropology which I agree here with Michel Foucault is maybe the most subversive aspect of Kantian philosophy you will see why and from then on I will go into some concluding remarks about the status of subject subjectivity and so on and so on with special view on today's political situation so let me begin you know that Louis Althusser's theory of ideology the late one the earlier one it's another point has two aspects one is ideological state apparatuses the basic point of Louis Althusser being that when traditional Marxists are talking about try to be materialists they nonetheless are still idealists in the sense that they miss the proper materiality of ideology for example a traditional Marxist when he deals with an religious edifice he will of course try to ground a religion in economic social circumstances power relations he will try to show how an abstract idea of salvation guilt whatever is rooted in concrete historical circumstances on the one hand exploitation religion as legitimatization of power relations on the other hand utopian hopes and here already I'm tempted to I developed this in my old books to shift a little bit the accent what fascinates me fascinated me always is I mean everyone knows the story of decay how some original authentic experience artistic spiritual whatever gets corrupted gets instrumentalized as ideology to legitimize some power relations whatever but what always fascinated me much more and Althusser all the time Louis Althusser saw this is the opposite direction of how something which clearly is a fake consciously manipulated can catch on and become something quite authentic and if there is someone here from Mexico I hope that he will agree with me if not he better shut up whatever no that you know wasn't there in Mexico already in the late 16th century that Virgin of Guadalupe or whatever Virgin Mary appearing as black virgin I think this is exactly the moment when Christianity which till that point was clearly just an instrument of Spanish oppression blah blah became also a voice for the articulation of dreams of horrors to which the local indigenous population was submitted you know it was no longer from that point on Catholic religion simply just an instrument for oppression it also become a way for the oppressed themselves to articulate those utopias and one has to say that in contrast to European corruption mostly overall the image of Catholic Church in Latin America is not as bad as one could have expected for example a Latin American friend told me showed me already years ago one of the CIA documents which were declassified you know this thirty year period from the 60s is the document around the turn of the century it was declassified where a CIA analyst says clearly that forget about Marxism the true danger to the US interests is liberation theology and the left wing of the Catholic Church they perceive that that as much more dangerous so again this moment interests me much more not how first it was an authentic experience then it gets corrupted but how and you will see this is what Kant is talking about surprisingly as something which again can begin as undoubtedly corrupted and so on or just means of ideological oppression manipulation can get as it were caught into a different way so again back to Althusser we have with Althusserian theory of ideology two levels one is the so called ideological interpellation how the fundamental mechanism of ideology is that we are addressed by some big other of course not real God but some imaginary agency of authority let's call it like this even not power not state power it can be pure spiritual authority which interpellates you into something by this something usually means ideological identity like you are and then Althusser draws too much mileage I think tries to from the homology between this mode of hey you citizen revolutionary and so on and the moment you turn and recognize yourself in the call you are constituted as subject of ideology things I think have to be complicated here first we have to be very clear as I repeat often where are we today with this ideological interpellation some people would have claim oh this times are over like you know till somewhere before when the Cold War still went on till that point we still had ideological interpellation like society addresses was addressing us with interpellating us into a certain identity you democrat socialist whatever the idea is that after that we no longer have it no I claim we still are interpellated but in a much more tricky way I claim that first okay things get really complicated here but it's not something abstract and referring to a very concrete experience first I claim that if you ask I always repeat this I know it's not a new point if you ask yourself what is society demanding from me today of course it's no longer some direct ideological call it's something like what I ironically refer to as Western Buddhist hedonism you know enjoy be true to yourself but truly authentically express yourself find your true self something like be authentically what you are and I claim that this ideology is maybe the most dangerous one because it's almost not experienced as ideology at all but let's not go into that my second point and it's my friend he somehow disappeared from public view now Kripps was it her name Peter Kripps or what not Josef Kripps that's why I confused him because Josef Kripps was a really good Mozart conductor from 50s 60s and this guy is his nephew Kripps okay K-R-I-P-S he wrote I even forgot the title of the book an excellent book some years ago where and I if you want to know more about this look at my I think Metastasises of Enjoyment I think there I go into it namely how the proper Lacanian counterattack to Althusser should have been that simply Althusser's description of ideological subject of this of course it's an imagined process but even at this formal level that that Althusser's description is not the correct one that it doesn't work like that you know like hey you you turn around you identify yourself uh-oh you are caught the moment you reply the moment you recognize yourself in the call you are the subject of ideology Kripps does something wonderful he says that he says that we have to imagine a much more refined scenario where again even at this abstract level when you turn around your first reaction of each of us is hysterical it's not when you hear hey you it's not yes me but it's something like why me what did I do to deserve it and so on you know like why me it's this moment of doubt of hysterical doubt you are calling me democrat woman husband why that why am I that and this is why for Lacan he is very precise here subjectivity as such is hysterical and for reasons into which I cannot go now I develop this widely in my books I think that here Lacan is totally right against a certain Deleuzian pseudo-Deleuzian I have a great appreciation for Deleuze theory which I simplify to the utmost opposes perversion and hysteria as if hysteria is a feminine compromise you know a hysterical subject is a woman who provokes the master but beneath this provocation it's really a call for a stronger master or whatever like a hysteric subject just provokes the master with the demand for a stronger master while a pervert goes to the end no Lacan and already Freud made it very clear that a pervert is a perfect subject that every power the more authoritarian it is the more it needs subjects whose libidinal economy is that of a pervert and we don't have time to go into it now just to give you a quick hint recapitulating old stuff what is perversion for Lacan you know it's not oh I'm eating shit of other persons or whatever tells your dirty imagination it's Lacan is here very refined perversion is for him a formal subjective position the beautiful paradox of Lacan is that sorry for my tasteless nature I cannot escape it you know you can eat your lover's shit but you I don't but but you are not a pervert and you can make love in a totally all the missionary positions you want no but you are a pervert a perversion is a subjective position which means as Lacan puts it very precisely you assume the position of an instrument of the other's jouissance in the sense that to put it in very simple terms here I think a Stalinist true Stalinist communist is a pervert not because of horrors they did but it was you know what's the basic position of a Stalinist we are just servants of the people but the catch is we know better than people what people want and even if we have to force them you know we will this this idea of the very modesty I'm nothing in myself you know this is the difference for example between Stalinist and a fascist leader the fascist leader is openly a leader a Stalinist leader is not that a Stalinist leader is always is always a servant of the people but of course as such he knows what the people really want and so on in other words and that's the big difference between perversion and hysteria a pervert knows a hysteric doesn't know the hysterical position is questioning the hysterical position is and this is why and you know why I like here Freud and Lacan because here they are effectively much more feminists you know behind this apparently critical celebration of perversion against hysteria it's a hidden anti-feminist I mean I'm well aware I did my Lacanian homework that although traditionally it appears that women are hysterics and men are perverts this is a very delicate question and there are some wonderful analyses of how there is a specific position of feminine perversion which one of the ideas is a perversion but without a fetish you know a more com- but nonetheless vaguely it is clear that beneath this celebration of perversion against hysteria which is compromise and so on is precisely secret reassertion of male dominance you know it's like we men are true revolutionaries we go to the end while pervert women just play games provoke the master and so on and so on first so that's the first thing I think that the hysterical position is the one of questioning but then here things get really interesting questioning what questioning what I am here you know the when Lacan this is so important that I repeat it all the time when Lacan says oh the object of desire is originally missing this is not the stupid idea of how you know we never know what we want we search for a true object no the object which is originally missing is me myself that is to say what am I for the gaze of the other that's the original question of desire here although I think Lacan did a much better job but as a strategic compromise with the enemy here you can maybe read a little you are allowed from my Stalinist censorship position to look a little bit into Jean Laplanche's essays on otherness where he develops nicely this idea which is a very simple one basically but I think convincing that how does subjectivity emerge if we put it in these outright naive dimensions imagine a small child he feels that he she that he she is something for the others mother father brothers and so on and here already we could have gone into all these perverse classifications like my favorite stupidity is one of a Slovene football player who after scoring a key goal you know all in tears gave his thanks on a TV interview and says something wonderful deeply Hegelian he said I want to express my gratitude to my parents especially to my mother and father you know like as if there are some mysterious more parents but you know and I think he knew what is object a object a is precisely that more you know a parent which is neither father nor mother you know I will not repeat here all that stuff but that's why one should read this is a wonderful topic I claim all these paradoxes of classification like I think half a year ago I already spoke about Kierkegaard in I forgot which text fuck it he proposed he refers ironically to a famous classification of some Danish humor writer where he says all people can be divided all humanity into officers housemaids and chimney-sweepers now it may sound an absurdity but I think you can immediately see that there is a logic in it officer typical male subjectivity housewife serving feminine subjectivity and the key point is that you have to have three always you know and you can imagine now let's see if you are able to follow my really really dirty mind you know what's the dirtiest association that I get here of course the officer is fucking housemaid but then they didn't have a condom so did you guess it a chimney sweeper comes and okay cleans it My God think dirty a little bit no but seriously this gets at in much more seriously complex matters of why even in the domain of the class struggle you know you never have ruling class the oppressed class there must be three without the third element there is no class struggle we or as Lacan put it somewhere the original triad is not one two three it's one plus one plus object a plus this supplement which is one not even one and so on and so on but okay let's forget that and go back to nonetheless yeah to this what is subjectivity so again Laplanche's idea is this one I am as a small kid confronted with parents sisters brothers and I know already at an elementary level that I feel experience that others are playing some libidinal games with me mother is using me in her manipulations against the father and vice versa and so on like I'm the focal point libidinal investment of others but of course I don't know what this identity is and this gives rise to the original hysterical question what I know that I am something for the others but I can't see what and of course now the next crucial step is of course that the parents also don't know it that and this is for Lacan and Laplanche develops this nicely the original experience of the unconscious is when the child knows that as Hegel put it nicely what I always quote you know that the secrets of the Egyptians were the secrets for the Egyptians also themselves that it's not just that that parents others are playing some games with me and I just cannot penetrate them no the crucial discovery and this is maybe the primordial form of what Lacan calls symbolic castration is that the other also doesn't know when you feel this that you know the other that you experience how your parents literally don't know what they are talking in the sense that they are themselves caught in their own game so again the idea is that this is the primordial hysterical experience and then perversion is precisely the way out it's not more primordial the pervert position is I know the other doesn't know but I know I know perfectly what the other wants and even if I've had to even if I have to kill him I will deliver him save him or whatever so again this tension which Kripps that guy wonderfully developed this idea that the when I got an interpellation my first reaction as subject and this reaction constitutes me as subject is My God what do they want from me you know that you automatically feel guilty you know like this is Althusser's story how the policeman calls you hey you the moment you turn towards him you already identify yourself as subject of law but Kripps adds here that no even at an abstract level this is not the whole story the story is that when the policeman calls you oh hey you your reaction is what did I do wrong why me and then that you assume identity I am citizen whatever to escape this anxiety this deadlock you see that between the ideological call hey you and my identification there has to be this moment of uncertainty of anxiety so that again the and of course it can be shown I claim that this is what goes missing with Althusser he talks in his great classical text ideology and ideological state apparatuses as if this is a direct closed loop like I directly recognize myself in it no perverts do it maybe but we don't now you will say but why do we react as guilty ah here is even a nicer paradox developed by Kripps you will say no but some people are able to ha yes me directly recognize but these are usually criminals I claim because you know we ordinary people that's a nice paradox precisely who are not in a formal legal sense guilty the more you are innocent the more when the policeman addresses you the more anxiety explodes oh my god why me what did I do if you are really a criminal you know how to cover it up yes policeman what did yes I will like you gladly identify yourself different logic okay but let's go on so this is now I'm getting a little more refined hope so this is the first problem I claim with Althusser he doesn't get the refinement of the project of sorry process of subjectivization the counterpoint to this is the other one the other level of Althusserian theory of ideology is ideological state apparatuses as already said all this machinery of you know church police all the different apparatuses which discipline us which train us and so on and so on what Althusser misses here I claim is what he all the time insists on the materiality of this process but I claim what he misses is precisely what Lacan calls the materiality of the signifier as such he all the time has to vulgarize materiality into incidentally my megalomania with secret service is paying you know yesterday we had such a nice joke he's really a normal guy privately to both oh I was for three hours exchanging dirty jokes mostly with Julian Assange no and then my wife was with me doing an interview with him no and at a certain point her my wife's recording machine broke down and you know what was our immediate reaction no problem we just call the British police they have better transcripts than okay so sorry let me go on so that this in this eternal insistence Althusser all the time compulsively repeats it's material material he precisely escapes from something from what is really difficult to think that we have in the big other in what Lacan calls the symbolic machine we have an order which is not material in the usual sense but which nonetheless functions as an external in this sense material machine this weird materiality of the signifier how does this work let me quote you now a passage from Althusser's text this is late Althusser Philosophy of the Encounter is the book published by Verso in late Althusser's manuscripts here is how Althusser answers the question what distinguishes state from other social apparatuses and here is the first of my long boring quotes what distinguishes them is that quote everything that operates in it in the state and in its the state's name whether the political apparatus or the ideological apparatus is silently buttressed by the existence and presence of the public armed physical force that this force is not fully visible or actively employed that it very often intervenes only intermittently or remains hidden and invisible all this is simply one further form of its existence and action one had to make a show of one's force so as not to have to make use of it it suffice suffices to deploy one's military force to achieve by intimidation results that would normally have been achieved by sending it into action we may go further and say that one can also not make a show of one's force so as not to have to make use of it when threats of brute force or the force of law subject the authors in a given situation to obvious pressure there is no longer any need to make a show of this force there may be more to be gained from hiding it the army tanks that were stationed under the trees of Rambouillet Forest a forest in the suburbs of Paris in May are an example they played by virtue of their absence a decisive role in quelling the riots in Paris end of quote the first thing to note here is and I think Althusser is not attentive enough to is the radical difference between the two levels the two examples that he uses first the idea is how can you avoid the use of direct brutal real force the first thing to do every politician dictator knows it is to make a show of your force and maybe if this just spectacle fascinating brutal display of force is effective enough you don't have to use it like I don't know you know when there is a threat of demonstration this is the standard procedure you send police police cars or maybe even tanks along you parade them along the main boulevards of a city and the idea is we will warn them in advance then something much more refined happens the threat works when people already the point is of course that people must suspect that you are able to employ mobilize some force the most effective threat can be not to display any force but just to keep it as a threat and the more it is unseen the more it grows as some kind of spectral presence and Althusser's point and it's true although I was young then I was in Paris and I remember this rumor when there were clashes that there are tens of thousands of military in Rambouillet Forest with tanks ready there nobody has seen them but you know precisely as such they were much more threatening than effectively than effectively doing it than effectively displaying their force so the first thing I want to say here is that the first level would have been let's say imaginary that is to say instead of really using police force I make a show of it you know police parades in the city you can also bluff at this level you just send some elite units and you just pretend to but nonetheless you show it hoping that the spectacle not using it of showing it will scare people and so on but the second level is the properly symbolic one where the very absence of display you know when people expect for you to show force of course it's a risky procedure because people may call your bluff and then you they see you have nothing but quite often it works that you don't display the force and this makes potential display of force even all the more ominous and I claim that what Althusser misses is this the true dimension of his own example what Althusser is right to insist how not even a display of force can work in the same way as the real use of force can scare people but how of course against the background of expectation of your use of force that not displaying any force just this absolutely ominous silence you know like you know this scene in many war movies which is the elementary strategy you expect the enemy to attack and then it's just mist and silence no maybe you hear some sounds and so on but nothing and this is usually much more threatening than actually seeing the enemy soldiers you know the moment you see them it's always a kind of a relief you know oh my god look I see them I know who they are part of reality and so on Althusser here refers to a nice example he compares and this is an intelligent parallel between this and the way he refers here to a book by Perry Anderson where Perry Anderson talks about how gold reserves of the central banks function in our societies the whole economy the way it functions needs this illusion that ultimately at least I don't know how it is today in older times that somehow you know it's all ultimately supported held up by gold bank reserves the point is that you don't have even to see to take it's just enough that everyone accepts that there are bank reserves and so again his idea is that it's the same with secret with this hidden military forces which sustain the rule of law so it's enough the awareness that they are there but here I claim things get problematic first if we take precisely this example of gold reserves yes they are there hidden but what we all know and that's the mystery is that it's not only I hope you will get the point and I'm blaming me if I sound confused it's not only that they work gold reserves also or even if they are not put to use I claim they work only insofar as they are not put to use the moment the state would have actively to intervene with gold reserves usually everything crashes because you never have enough of it and so on and so on so this is I think a wonderful example of what Lacan calls he plays in his anxiety seminar of this ambiguity of toute puissance omnipotence and toute impuissance all in potency that omnipotence it's always only a potential threat the moment you actualize it it's over you see what Althusser again doesn't get is that he is right that you don't have to show brutally your force that it works good even if you don't show don't not even show it what he doesn't get is that it only works in this way the moment imagine a really tense situation where those in power except in China and so on no longer function like that like as already I think improvised once in front of you take someone like for example in United States I met recently and I not boast about it I don't agree with him politically he is way too naive but Oliver Stone and he asked me the usual narcissist artistic question which of my movies do you really like I told him when we take power my usual answer you will get your re-education camp for this type of questions no but the point is that I told him Nixon I told him frankly I don't like your big iconic movies because they're boring they all take the same boring oedipal story you know Wall Street bad father Michael Douglas who is who is incidentally the only interesting guy in the movie no against Martin Sheen's his own father played which is the good father even Platoon you have a couple of his films he is really obsessed by this struggle between good and bad father and the good father winning no but you know what I like in Nixon he didn't fall into this simple Nixon phobia first every authentic American leftist will tell you don't underestimate Nixon if you measure progressive character of a president by how much money what percentage and so on was given to welfare to unemployed to free education you know that Nixon is Richard Nixon is by far the most progressive American president because of economic crisis although I like him much more as a person already Jimmy Carter had to start reducing it point two Nixon nonetheless did a trip to China for which he was never forgiven by the radical American right and so on and so on so you know I never bought that bullshit All the President's Men you know like two ordinary this is the worst capitalist propaganda movies like All the President's Men because they appear critical oh my god even our president is corrupted but the true message of the film is of course what a great country we are two ordinary guys can overthrow the mightiest man in the world no I say sorry impolite again I say fuck you here you know like it's crucial that a strong part of American establishment had to had to endorse this let Nixon throw and I again and yes why then do I like I think Anthony Hopkins plays Nixon because he consciously here Oliver Stone was not totally stupid he presents Nixon as the last genuinely tragic oedipal let's call it like this president he really wanted greatness it fell down it was a tragedy he was a crook of course but nonetheless but with Reagan Carter is complicated transitory phenomenon with Reagan and on we have a totally different functioning of a kind of a Teflon presidency where even if Reagan tried to be dig- you know if we have already self-ironic presidents who make fun of themselves and so on for example I remember I saw it one of Reagan's press conferences where this was one of the few then he stopped giving them because he appeared too stupid but it was a journalist asking him a complicated economic question and he said why are you asking me this question you know that I'm too stupid to answer you without preparation you know this open mocking his own limitation something broke down with dignity and I think Clinton played the same game not to mention Bush and so on it's a kind of very obscene open display of stupidity and I think then Berlusconi in Europe plays the same game and so on and I don't think there is anything great democratic in it no I think it's a much more perverse functioning I'm almost I'm tempted to say for that Chinese approach no show us some respect by at least appearing not the bullshit that you really are but make an effort to look with some dignity whatever no sorry so let me go on so you see on the one hand I try to develop now back to Althusser how he doesn't see that more complex process of subjectivization on the other hand with regard to material state apparatuses I claim what again he doesn't see is that what he tries to capture as this is the real me you know this is the real me you know oh my god I came to this reversal I used in one book this you know how my double is more than I I think I may be wrong that the first story in the second year of Alfred Hitchcock presents that early black and white TV shows it really it shocked even me because I didn't know it I'm sorry for little it's a story the woman I think it plays is played by Jessica Tandy you know the mother from Hitchcock's Birds but she is a good actress she also played in the original version of Samuel Beckett's Not I she played the mouth no and she plays a lone desperate spinster who is obsessed by a how do you call this ventriloquist with a dummy and she goes every evening to his performance and when it is the last performance she cannot restrain herself she goes up on stage and addresses him touching him here hey like offering herself to him and then comes the shock I was shocked you know what you discover that the true dummy was the real large person out of the small dummy a midget a dwarf steps out so that it was the other way around you see and it is something terrifying about it so that you know what you thought was dead was alive what you thought was alive was dead okay that was my experience like the real me is that squeaking voice teasing voice there that was there but okay back to Althusser so on the one hand we have that short card with subjectivization on the other hand we have what does Althusser miss you saw what he tries to circumscribe discern as the materiality of ideology that it's precisely not the material materiality is what Lacan calls the materiality of signifier of a letter you can cut it into small pieces it remains the letter it is and so on so his idea being of Lacan that of course Lacan doesn't mean here material materiality in the sense you touch it but materiality in the sense of a blind machine-like order and this is the Lacanian big other it's as it were the materiality of the ideal order itself and this I think is always in critique of idealism even theology the most subversive moment not to prove that everything is matter but to prove that even what we perceive as God functions like mechanical matter that's why as I already repeated here often my favorite theologian is Nicolas Malebranche you know what he does he elaborates the notion of mercy but a kind of literally materialist notion of mercy sorry for repeating myself you know it his idea is this one of course he is on the line of Jansenism which means for him grace has nothing to do with virtue you know no sorry with virtue you can be a good guy doing wonderful things but you may be not blessed by mercy you will burn in hell or you can murder kill poison whatever you are touched by mercy you are redeemed incidentally do you know that French communists referred openly to to Malebranche in their critique of bourgeois ideology for them virtue meant small bourgeois values and their idea was you can be an honest small bourgeois caring for the poor people but if you don't are not touched by mercy by the mercy of having insight into communist party role and so on you are lost and so on no so but what I want to say is this that then Malebranche I'm literally quoting him almost again but my point is I'm not inventing this is his example he says I'm sorry if I repeat myself you know it imagine two farmers one works diligently all the time on his field the other nearby is a lazy guy makes throws on some seed but nothing really but then it can happen because of contingent natural processes that the bad farmer lazy gets all the rain the good one gets none so that the bad one will get some harvest the good one nothing and you know what he says he said exactly the same is with divine grace it's that God is just in a totally contingent way throwing it around absolutely nothing to do with our virtues and so on but incidentally I think even from the religious standpoint this is the only correct way because as every good Protestant and you know Protestants as a rule believe in predestination you know why this is good because if you think that your good works good deeds will bring you salvation it b- it becomes a commercial trans- transaction you know basically the dealing is oh I may be damned but let's make a transaction if I do a little bit of a good work maybe I will get grace you know it's no longer a pure ethical act the only good act is when you say I will do what I do without counting that this will affect in any way my salvation that precisely predestination far from sabotaging your ethical achievement is opening the only true space for ethical achievement but okay so again you see this is what I find so subversive in Malebranche he shows how even the spiritual domain of grace functions like mechanical materialism if you want like this no and that's the point of Lacan when Lacan speaks about the autonomy of the signifier it doesn't mean that this words printed here materially are autonomous it means that the symbolic system network on which we rely functions in a materialist way on its own but precisely as the ideal order of course the symbolic order is an ideal order it's not reality but as such it can function in a materialist way material and this again this point I claim is missed by Althusser who elaborated sorry let's see where we are another minutes oh looks bad okay okay who no okay I will then just try to recapitulate what I'm saying first I really advise you to read this Kant for a long time Immanuel Kant and I'm not now changing the terrain because this materiality of the signifier in tradition philosophical our western tradition I think it's Kant's late writing from anthropology from a pragmatic point of view which develops it in detail you can get it as one of those Cambridge or Oxford you know edition with many other texts it's immensely readable it's it's excellent Kant's problem is what first in his critique of pure reason he developed pure ethical structure you know with all this ethical rigorism it only counts as an ethical act if it's done for the sake of duty not from some for some pathological profit and so on so we have critique of pure we have ethics then under the pretext of just anthropology anthropology is for Kant ethics but like applied to real empirical life to humans as empirical objects how does it function there My God I'm getting tired of these signs of the big other whatever no although things happen I had maybe someone did it but they claim that I was when I was in high school I was in a cinematheque in Ljubljana Slovenia and we were watching a horror movie and exactly at midnight when some ghosts were supposed to appear it was also midnight in real time all the lights went out and so on you know and okay but let's go on what I'm saying is that why is this so mysterious because Michel Foucault who in his introduction to the French translation of Kant's anthropology he was the first to emphasize the key position of this text he is too short he simply uses it as a proof that Kant is caught into what he calls already in his the order of thing the transcendental empirical duality doublet you know how Kant is forced to observe human beings from two perspectives as transcendental pure free subjects and as empirical natural entities and how Kant is not able to bring the two together so that Kant has to oscillate between the two without being able to really reduce one to the other of course Kant is not a naturalist so he is forbidden to translate transcendental subject into empirical history how it emerged out of nature but also the opposite one like Kant admitted that we are caught in concrete social circumstances you cannot develop this out of pure practical reason out of pure morality but Foucault remains at this level just tension between transcendental empirical but what Foucault doesn't get is that the domain that Kant develops here in anthropology is of course it's not pure reason it's empirical circumstances but it's also not empirical in the sense of facts it's precisely what we today would have called performative dimension of social interaction Kant is obsessed he develops this in detail by the idea that although at a transcendental level you are free as a non-empirical transcendental nominal nominal simply means not submitted to empirical material causality fact but nonetheless that empirically in social life for us to become moral you social rules etiquette condition you to this but here Kant knows better than Althusser that these social rules are not simply empirical rules he Kant is not talking simply about empirical training he talks precisely about moral appearance he endorses fully something that in his pure ethics should be prohibited for example one in the subdivisions of his anthropology sub chapters is called on permissible moral appearance *Schein* appearance what Kant is developing in all possible ways is that precisely this motive that Althusser repeats all the time following Pascal that even if you are like from strict morality do you have the right to pretend that you are honest even or moral even if you are not the traditional position would have been this is the most disgusting thing you just pretend to be moral but Kant again and again tries to develop how the only way to morality is that you begin by acting as if you are moral and then there is a hope that you will fall into your own trap let me just read you nonetheless a little bit of Kant here on the whole the more civilized human beings are the more they are actors they adopt the illusion of affections of respect for others of modesty and of unselfishness without deceiving anyone at all because it is understood by everyone that nothing is meant sincerely by this and it is also very good that this happens in the world for when human beings play these roles eventually the virtues whose illusion they have merely affected will gradually really be aroused and merge into the disposition to deceive the deceiver in ourselves the inclinations is a return again to obedience under the law of virtue and is not a deception but rather a laudable illusion or cheating *Täuschung* of ourselves in order to save virtue or at least lead the human being to it nature has wisely implanted into us humans the tendency to willingly allow ourselves to be deceived good honorable decorum is an external appearance that instills respect for others and so on so okay I will not go too far but you see what Kant is wonderfully saying that the logic of morality is you should begin by deceiving others in the sense of I am really evil but to deceive you that I'm kind that I'm kind I act like that and then ultimately without even knowing the deceiver deceives himself I become moral but so he praises here empty coquetry gallantry and so on and so on endlessly and what is so interesting here is that Kant is here discovering a domain which is neither neither the domain of pure inner morality like look into your inside are you or external legality you know and to make a jump this is what I find so problematic for example in political correctness our the basic feature of our customs is that we you know on the one hand we have things strict moral orders what you are ordered to do like you know don't kill don't lie whatever there it's clear then we have external legality like it's not punishable not yet one never knows to directly lie or whatever but there are things which simply you are not allowed to do and of course the space of our freedom is between the two there are things that you are not allowed to do morally and there are things that you are legally prohibited to do but in between there are things which although they are not truly moral they are also not prohibited by the law cheating a little bit and so on and so on so my point is that what Kant does is open up a domain of things and the whole point is that they have to exist namely things which only are operative if you are expected to do them without being explicitly ordered to do them that's the essence of politeness it doesn't work if you are ordered to do it like to show gallantry the whole point is that it shouldn't be experienced as you a lady and you say okay I will help you but really I would like to to I don't know to put my feet so that you would slip down or whatever like you have to pretend that I could not have done it I'm not really forced to do it but it's expected from me to do it this domain I claim tends to disappear with political correctness what political correctness tries to do is precisely to directly legalize or moralize this gray domain no it's like to legalize in the sense of I don't know if I look at you in this way it can already be harassment or whatever it somehow it tries to legalize what precisely has to appear as your politeness which again even if you are expected to obey it it must appear as if you freely obey it so again Kant discovers here a domain which is really a subversive one and I think but I don't have time to develop it now I think it works also yeah yeah I know we are there no I thought you said you wanted to stop at no but I lied what did I- so what's so strange about it I lied ha ha we got her no sorry what I wanted to say immediately I'm sorry what I wanted to say is that also Kant says here some very interesting thing about domination servitude and so on where he said that the same goes for domination and servitude he makes some funny remarks which may appear only obscenities but which are very profound ones about the ambiguity of patriarchal domination where he says that when men dominate women it's expected for women not to simply turn into instruments that you totally surrender your freedom whatever you know that there must be always this gray domain in the sense of okay I am your servant but I'm freely choosing to be your servant or whatever a weird intermediate domain a weird intermediate domain emerges here so again what Kant sees here is that this Pascal formula you know Pascalian formula bless Pascal when he says you know that famous statement if you don't believe act as if you believe kneel pray and at the end you will believe that it's a much more complex process it's not simply you follow an external machine and your spirit will follow no it's a much more complex topic of deception and so on here I cannot restrain from referring to one of my books where I develop this of how I even think that in a way Pascal is up to a point wrong here it can be said that today and this is how if you read him really closely a little bit between the lines this would have been Hegel's answer to Pascal that no it's not that you don't believe you follow the ritual and then maybe you will believe what if we have the opposite process you really believe but you find your belief too oppressive so then you say I will start to follow external ritual so that I will be able to say okay fuck it I did my duty of belief and then this will set me free for my spirit to wander for not experiencing my belief as so oppressive where does Hegel enter here this is how as I developed in my big fat book which weighs two pounds which is why it is called Less Than Nothing because it certainly doesn't weigh less than nothing about Hegel's theory of marriage there are some hints that he was an old Berlin pervert no that his theory is to put it in a Pascalian line of argumentation you are passionately in love well get married with the lady make and then love will get an external ritual and you will sooner or later get bored by it and it will give you freedom and so on no so that it's not get married you know the traditional version would have been get married and love will emerge but the ritual functions also in the exactly opposite way are you too passionately in love well get married and you will get rid of your love you know instead of love you will get this external ritual which always gives you some freedom and I think this even works I spoke with some Japanese friends who told me that how they feel Western people are stupid when Western people reproach them for oh your power relations are so formalized you know like you are not allowed to criticize if you are just an assistant your professor up there and they told me no precisely this obeying to external circumstances sets free their mind much more than this terrible Western pressure you know like be sincere tell it and so on I think that in a way social ritual in the sense of lying out of politeness can be a very liberating experience I mean isn't it for example it's not my situation now but if you are married isn't it nice to be able to tell to your wife or husband yeah yeah yeah I love you which means okay the ritual is satisfied so fuck off so you know like you give me my freedom you know and I think you cannot be directly free you have to have this mediation okay I shortened this one a lot then I had another whole line of thought I'm sorry I don't have it which would have been the crucial one sorry about two minutes no I'm not ready I wait I wait you will wait long take a Coke or whatever no no seriously it's a nice point about I wanted to go into this my eternal debate with Badiou that it Badiou is here close to Althusser although in a totally different sense for him subject is defined as an exception of fidelity to an event and for him evil or if you betray a cause is a secondary mode you know like the true subject is fidelity to a cause love freedom science whatever I claim and I'm here a good Christian Kierkegaard developed this idea that no that the initial constitutive experience of subjectivity is boredom or the scene of how do you call it acedia laziness or whatever you know that original scene which is the Althusserian scene I think the way to formulate is I don't take my interpellation seriously you know like lassitude sorry lassitude yeah but I think the way to formulate is I don't take my interpellation seriously you know like because this is why some medieval authors claim that this is the most horrible scene it's the scene of you know it's easy to say I'm evil I don't know what is good but this scene means I know what is good but nonetheless I don't give a damn about you know like you are not ready to engage yourself but I think we should not take this as secondary that would be the way as a Lacanian or Hegelian I would have put it that we are what Althusser sorry what Badiou would have called human animals then you get bored and you need boredom comes first then you invent a cause to get out of boredom what do I mean by this you have a wonderful it's an orgy passage I don't have time to read it to you now from Kierkegaard where he goes into how the whole history of the world creation is the story of boredom God was bored he created the world Adam was bored God created Eve for him and then I don't know Babylonians were bored they build the tower you know and so on and so on and I think we can do it even now you know like in feudalism it gets bored capitalists start to travel and so on and so on you know like the so but you see what I'm saying here that I don't Althusser Badiou and even now more and more he emphasizes he calls this the positive approach that evil or whatever bad is just a failure a betrayal of positive goodness I remain here a Hegelian I claim no I claim that it's only boredom or this acedia laziness that creates the space for creativity this is the nothingness which opens up the space and I have here a much more detailed development but you will read in my next book if you want on how this changes the whole topic of subjectivity I claim that the original subjectivity we are back at Althusser is not the engaged subjectivity but it's precisely the disengaged subjectivity like this acedia withdrawal and then you need this empty space of laziness or whatever which can then be filled in by engagement or whatever you know again it's the Hegelian point that negativity creates the space for but we don't have time to do it now so now I under brutal feminine pressure the most evil maternal super ego is not as bad as Pascal you are not as bad because you are worse okay good good but also actually what you just finished on I think we look forward to that because it's exactly the you know that makes women the women who you know the eternal negativity and the lassitude that characterizes the so called depressed woman is more likely to lead to her being having an ethical subjectivity in the form that you are discussing it than no I totally agree with you I think that this is wonderful that the origin the origin of humanity is for me a depressed woman and you can exactly yeah which is why I like so much David Lynch's films did you notice that the central problem for example what's the central problem of the big classic but it doesn't work today it's not as good at least my experience Blue Velvet Isabella Rossellini is a depressed woman totally immobilized and I think one crazy way to read that film is that all guys who jump around her you know even the evil Dennis Hopper that you know daddy wants to fuck or whatever are just ways to to arouse her to to bring her out of her depression you know exactly find a cause yeah and even the same that's how I would read Cuarón's it's not such a great film but it's not bad Gravity you know that at a have you haven't seen it my god barbarian whatever yeah yeah yeah at a if you saw the movie you remember how when she Sandra Bullock is ready to die already in a suicidal mood depression then the idiot with rabbit teeth George Clooney appears and and I don't think this is an anti-feminist moment some stupid feminists noted two things no the first is that nonetheless she needs a man to kick her out uh-huh and the second thing they noted they noted is that this is an interesting I don't know what would be the explanation how Gravity follows the line of Alien and all those where okay we have the woman is the only survivor in a catastrophe but her name is always half you know it's Ryan her name is Ryan in the film is the same as Ripley or what in Alien you know that the woman nonetheless must have a masculine name but I did I already use this the first day on Monday here what James Schamus told me my friend for from Focus Pictures who was now fired of course no he told me no he told me did I already tell you this a wonderful detail about Gravity namely how her trauma which justifies her doubts is that her child was was killed in an accident when he was four years old in a in a school in a school courtyard whatever well the problem is that in United States children at four don't go to school no and strictly I checked with Americans if you go to some kindergarten you never call it school no so I claim it's a subtle hint that that traumatic event is really a screen fantasy no it's a trap it's not that you know it's not this oh she must have some horrible traumatic experience whatever it's the materiality of the signifier materiality of the appearance again there is why anyway okay I think there's lots of people who might want to ask questions uh James ah no I hate this this is this managerial human capitalism you know when the boss pretends to know your name and all that bullshit you know like so that he can then exploit you even more and actually we both taught him so I hope you know his name as well he was in our I can't anonym- okay yes you ask your question now and okay so today you at the very end you mentioned the space of the non-subject in a way coming first and then on Wednesday you also spoke about the problem of like white universalism and a problem of like individualization and I wonder if you want to go to the end which is one of your favorite phrases like is it not in a way time to to be a bit more critical of the function that psychoanalysis plays there because for me psychoanalysis can't really ever drop the subject and also is very individualizing and ultimately does always relate back to some kind of pathologizing even even the most radical Lacanian is always come back with that it does come back to some kind of individual subjectivity so I wonder is that and you also try to you try to say that you were trying to be more systematic and I wonder is there is there conflict there is that to me that's not very systematic as consistency there and I don't think it's just a simple paradox okay can I be I will really try to be brief it's a nice question but let me answer it in this way first problem here is no no sorry what did I say okay now I don't no no the the first point would be here the difference between subject and individual like I don't follow here quite Badiou for him the formula is a simple one subject is not an individual category subject is not only can be but even as a rule is a collective subject no for him for example the subject of the political process organization group people not not an individual what but first about psychoanalysis my point here would have been that nonetheless for reasons that I cannot develop now I don't accept first I totally agree with you that there are ways how leftists refer to psychoanalysis for help which are mystifying and false my favorite example maybe you know it is I notice how many leftists love psychoanalysis why because it enables them to stick to their theory you know like they have a certain theory there should have been a revolution working class party and then if you ask them but why didn't your stupid revolution occur then they say because of ideological manipulation to understand it go to psychoanalysis you know how we predicted history the way it should have been we leave to psychoanalysis to explain the manipulations why it didn't so here I agree with you psychoanalysis absolutely shouldn't be used to do the work of proper social analysis to fill in the gaps as it were and this is also my problem with racism and this politically correct multicultural approach which precisely I think psychoanalysis if you talk with the typical American academic what will be his approach to racism some kind of Julia Kristeva stranger in us topic when we hate others we really project onto them our own repressed traumas you know so then it all becomes a problem of you know to cure ourselves of racism let's look deep into ourselves let's do our deep analysis here I do agree with you but nonetheless I don't have time to develop this now but nonetheless I claim that and here I agree with Althusser that psychoanalysis in its scope is not simply a theory of individuality psychoanalysis answers something which is for me the crucial question of social theory not not in this wrong way crowd but how I me as a subject how do I have to be structured to function as a social subject what does it mean to be a social subject let me give you a simple a social subject my point is this one to be a social subject it's not simply a point of generalization in the sense of I claim something if I claim it alone I'm maybe an ultra genius but probably an idiot and if it's shared it's a subject subjectivity no the point is that I myself has have to relate to it as something collective you know for example this would be the single simple example a proper social rule is not I don't spit into people's faces because the majority doesn't do it it must be one doesn't do it this anonymous one which means it must be this minimum fetishization that you know something becomes socially unacceptable it's never simply because the majority of individuals doesn't do it it's because even if the majority does it but you know one doesn't do it it must be this so what I claim is that here I wouldn't dismiss psychoanalysis as simply individual pathology at its best psychoanalysis and sorry but this is how I read and I agree with you if your point would be that Freud doesn't really do it it is problematic but nonetheless as a program motto Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents means that there is something wrong that psychoanalysis is not as we called it when we were young leftists a psychological repair service you know you break down you go there to repair you no the whole point is that our individual pathologies are symptoms of something which in our society as such is wrong and in this sense here I see a parallel justified one between Freud and Marx in the same way as for Marx social crisis is not things just didn't function well social crisis is the starting point to understand how society really functions and in the same way for Freud symptoms are the only way to the key to understand how our personalities are formed and so on and so on so again I know I didn't answer you fully but my point would have been that I just wouldn't reduce psychoanalysis to ultimately an because you know the problem is which of our experiences really are individual it's not only described by Freud crowd phenomena and so on you know it's an immense problem usually not answered about what does it mean individually for you again as an individual to function as a part of collective and I claim that the whole point is that even the utmost of individualism presupposes some kind of collectivity exactly so again I would just complicate it a little bit but I if your point was again let's not use psychoanalysis in this direct way as an ersatz for Marxism and so on for concrete then I totally agree with you many Marxists today cover up the lack of their own social economic analysis by you know oh capitalist manipulation whatever and so on and so on no I don't think there is so much manipulation going on no there is don't understand but I claim that the basic rule ABC of critique of ideology is that manipulators are always themselves manipulated I don't believe in this cynical all-powerful subject who you know are there wise they know how really things are and they are just lying to us we are all Henry Kissingers here by Henry Kissinger I mean the ultimate cynic who was totally wrong and stupid in his positive analysis I know I didn't answer you but fuck you you ask a difficult question no no no we already did Tom we did it in Lacanian axioms plus you know you point out again that all this supposedly most intimate and precious to the individual is already taken from the outside so individual psychology is already social psychology and Tom we did do it and I know your name now ah so you oppressed Tom with what did you call him I did I did just now yeah but Tom now what was he before James that's like Signorelli let's do a little bit of analysis later just a question here just two quick questions the first one is in the context of Gérard Wajcman the absolute eye and the relationship with it isn't it that from time to time power has to be actualized between the I mean the gaze if if it doesn't work but from time to time it has to be a punished so the second question is on Monday and Wednesday you developed in the first one this new kind of master and in the second one the super ego but one is on the space of the desire the absolute the you have this new master and the other is in the space of jouissance could you make a relationship between these two oh my god again such a difficult question but to try to be as short as possible this is you brought us to this key duality of desire or jouissance drive whatever you call the other side what I'm more and more convinced that's all I can tell you now is that you know Lacan oscillates often between sometimes especially in the 50s he gives a clear primacy to desire and then drive is some kind of a vicious super ego
Today again if you excuse me I would like to do something even more than two days ago very classical a little bit boring with long quotes I would like to approach this eternal Althusserian topic of ideological state apparatuses as the material existence of an ideology and then I will try to show where Althusser falls short a little bit and how we can go on from Althusser I will pass to late Kant Kantian anthropology what he calls anthropology which I agree here with Michel Foucault is maybe the most subversive aspect of Kantian philosophy you will see why and from then on I will go into some concluding remarks about the status of subject subjectivity and so on and so on with special view on today's political situation so let me begin you know that Louis Althusser's theory of ideology the late one the earlier one it's another point has two aspects one is ideological state apparatuses the basic point of Louis Althusser being that when traditional Marxists are talking about try to be materialists they nonetheless are still idealists in the sense that they miss the proper materiality of ideology for example a traditional Marxist when he deals with an religious edifice he will of course try to ground a religion in economic social circumstances power relations he will try to show how an abstract idea of salvation guilt whatever is rooted in concrete historical circumstances on the one hand exploitation religion as legitimatization of power relations on the other hand utopian hopes and here already I'm tempted to I developed this in my old books to shift a little bit the accent what fascinates me fascinated me always is I mean everyone knows the story of decay how some original authentic experience artistic spiritual whatever gets corrupted gets instrumentalized as ideology to legitimize some power relations whatever but what always fascinated me much more and Althusser all the time Louis Althusser saw this is the opposite direction of how something which clearly is a fake consciously manipulated can catch on and become something quite authentic and if there is someone here from Mexico I hope that he will agree with me if not he better shut up whatever no that you know wasn't there in Mexico already in the late 16th century that Virgin of Guadalupe or whatever Virgin Mary appearing as black virgin I think this is exactly the moment when Christianity which till that point was clearly just an instrument of Spanish oppression blah blah became also a voice for the articulation of dreams of horrors to which the local indigenous population was submitted you know it was no longer from that point on Catholic religion simply just an instrument for oppression it also become a way for the oppressed themselves to articulate those utopias and one has to say that in contrast to European corruption mostly overall the image of Catholic Church in Latin America is not as bad as one could have expected for example a Latin American friend told me showed me already years ago one of the CIA documents which were declassified you know this thirty year period from the 60s is the document around the turn of the century it was declassified where a CIA analyst says clearly that forget about Marxism the true danger to the US interests is liberation theology and the left wing of the Catholic Church they perceive that that as much more dangerous so again this moment interests me much more not how first it was an authentic experience then it gets corrupted but how and you will see this is what Kant is talking about surprisingly as something which again can begin as undoubtedly corrupted and so on or just means of ideological oppression manipulation can get as it were caught into a different way so again back to Althusser we have with Althusserian theory of ideology two levels one is the so called ideological interpellation how the fundamental mechanism of ideology is that we are addressed by some big other of course not real God but some imaginary agency of authority let's call it like this even not power not state power it can be pure spiritual authority which interpellates you into something by this something usually means ideological identity like you are and then Althusser draws too much mileage I think tries to from the homology between this mode of hey you citizen revolutionary and so on and the moment you turn and recognize yourself in the call you are constituted as subject of ideology things I think have to be complicated here first we have to be very clear as I repeat often where are we today with this ideological interpellation some people would have claim oh this times are over like you know till somewhere before when the Cold War still went on till that point we still had ideological interpellation like society addresses was addressing us with interpellating us into a certain identity you democrat socialist whatever the idea is that after that we no longer have it no I claim we still are interpellated but in a much more tricky way I claim that first okay things get really complicated here but it's not something abstract and referring to a very concrete experience first I claim that if you ask I always repeat this I know it's not a new point if you ask yourself what is society demanding from me today of course it's no longer some direct ideological call it's something like what I ironically refer to as Western Buddhist hedonism you know enjoy be true to yourself but truly authentically express yourself find your true self something like be authentically what you are and I claim that this ideology is maybe the most dangerous one because it's almost not experienced as ideology at all but let's not go into that my second point and it's my friend he somehow disappeared from public view now Kripps was it her name Peter Kripps or what not Josef Kripps that's why I confused him because Josef Kripps was a really good Mozart conductor from 50s 60s and this guy is his nephew Kripps okay K-R-I-P-S he wrote I even forgot the title of the book an excellent book some years ago where and I if you want to know more about this look at my I think Metastasises of Enjoyment I think there I go into it namely how the proper Lacanian counterattack to Althusser should have been that simply Althusser's description of ideological subject of this of course it's an imagined process but even at this formal level that that Althusser's description is not the correct one that it doesn't work like that you know like hey you you turn around you identify yourself uh-oh you are caught the moment you reply the moment you recognize yourself in the call you are the subject of ideology Kripps does something wonderful he says that he says that we have to imagine a much more refined scenario where again even at this abstract level when you turn around your first reaction of each of us is hysterical it's not when you hear hey you it's not yes me but it's something like why me what did I do to deserve it and so on you know like why me it's this moment of doubt of hysterical doubt you are calling me democrat woman husband why that why am I that and this is why for Lacan he is very precise here subjectivity as such is hysterical and for reasons into which I cannot go now I develop this widely in my books I think that here Lacan is totally right against a certain Deleuzian pseudo-Deleuzian I have a great appreciation for Deleuze theory which I simplify to the utmost opposes perversion and hysteria as if hysteria is a feminine compromise you know a hysterical subject is a woman who provokes the master but beneath this provocation it's really a call for a stronger master or whatever like a hysteric subject just provokes the master with the demand for a stronger master while a pervert goes to the end no Lacan and already Freud made it very clear that a pervert is a perfect subject that every power the more authoritarian it is the more it needs subjects whose libidinal economy is that of a pervert and we don't have time to go into it now just to give you a quick hint recapitulating old stuff what is perversion for Lacan you know it's not oh I'm eating shit of other persons or whatever tells your dirty imagination it's Lacan is here very refined perversion is for him a formal subjective position the beautiful paradox of Lacan is that sorry for my tasteless nature I cannot escape it you know you can eat your lover's shit but you I don't but but you are not a pervert and you can make love in a totally all the missionary positions you want no but you are a pervert a perversion is a subjective position which means as Lacan puts it very precisely you assume the position of an instrument of the other's jouissance in the sense that to put it in very simple terms here I think a Stalinist true Stalinist communist is a pervert not because of horrors they did but it was you know what's the basic position of a Stalinist we are just servants of the people but the catch is we know better than people what people want and even if we have to force them you know we will this this idea of the very modesty I'm nothing in myself you know this is the difference for example between Stalinist and a fascist leader the fascist leader is openly a leader a Stalinist leader is not that a Stalinist leader is always is always a servant of the people but of course as such he knows what the people really want and so on in other words and that's the big difference between perversion and hysteria a pervert knows a hysteric doesn't know the hysterical position is questioning the hysterical position is and this is why and you know why I like here Freud and Lacan because here they are effectively much more feminists you know behind this apparently critical celebration of perversion against hysteria it's a hidden anti-feminist I mean I'm well aware I did my Lacanian homework that although traditionally it appears that women are hysterics and men are perverts this is a very delicate question and there are some wonderful analyses of how there is a specific position of feminine perversion which one of the ideas is a perversion but without a fetish you know a more com- but nonetheless vaguely it is clear that beneath this celebration of perversion against hysteria which is compromise and so on is precisely secret reassertion of male dominance you know it's like we men are true revolutionaries we go to the end while pervert women just play games provoke the master and so on and so on first so that's the first thing I think that the hysterical position is the one of questioning but then here things get really interesting questioning what questioning what I am here you know the when Lacan this is so important that I repeat it all the time when Lacan says oh the object of desire is originally missing this is not the stupid idea of how you know we never know what we want we search for a true object no the object which is originally missing is me myself that is to say what am I for the gaze of the other that's the original question of desire here although I think Lacan did a much better job but as a strategic compromise with the enemy here you can maybe read a little you are allowed from my Stalinist censorship position to look a little bit into Jean Laplanche's essays on otherness where he develops nicely this idea which is a very simple one basically but I think convincing that how does subjectivity emerge if we put it in these outright naive dimensions imagine a small child he feels that he she that he she is something for the others mother father brothers and so on and here already we could have gone into all these perverse classifications like my favorite stupidity is one of a Slovene football player who after scoring a key goal you know all in tears gave his thanks on a TV interview and says something wonderful deeply Hegelian he said I want to express my gratitude to my parents especially to my mother and father you know like as if there are some mysterious more parents but you know and I think he knew what is object a object a is precisely that more you know a parent which is neither father nor mother you know I will not repeat here all that stuff but that's why one should read this is a wonderful topic I claim all these paradoxes of classification like I think half a year ago I already spoke about Kierkegaard in I forgot which text fuck it he proposed he refers ironically to a famous classification of some Danish humor writer where he says all people can be divided all humanity into officers housemaids and chimney-sweepers now it may sound an absurdity but I think you can immediately see that there is a logic in it officer typical male subjectivity housewife serving feminine subjectivity and the key point is that you have to have three always you know and you can imagine now let's see if you are able to follow my really really dirty mind you know what's the dirtiest association that I get here of course the officer is fucking housemaid but then they didn't have a condom so did you guess it a chimney sweeper comes and okay cleans it My God think dirty a little bit no but seriously this gets at in much more seriously complex matters of why even in the domain of the class struggle you know you never have ruling class the oppressed class there must be three without the third element there is no class struggle we or as Lacan put it somewhere the original triad is not one two three it's one plus one plus object a plus this supplement which is one not even one and so on and so on but okay let's forget that and go back to nonetheless yeah to this what is subjectivity so again Laplanche's idea is this one I am as a small kid confronted with parents sisters brothers and I know already at an elementary level that I feel experience that others are playing some libidinal games with me mother is using me in her manipulations against the father and vice versa and so on like I'm the focal point libidinal investment of others but of course I don't know what this identity is and this gives rise to the original hysterical question what I know that I am something for the others but I can't see what and of course now the next crucial step is of course that the parents also don't know it that and this is for Lacan and Laplanche develops this nicely the original experience of the unconscious is when the child knows that as Hegel put it nicely what I always quote you know that the secrets of the Egyptians were the secrets for the Egyptians also themselves that it's not just that that parents others are playing some games with me and I just cannot penetrate them no the crucial discovery and this is maybe the primordial form of what Lacan calls symbolic castration is that the other also doesn't know when you feel this that you know the other that you experience how your parents literally don't know what they are talking in the sense that they are themselves caught in their own game so again the idea is that this is the primordial hysterical experience and then perversion is precisely the way out it's not more primordial the pervert position is I know the other doesn't know but I know I know perfectly what the other wants and even if I've had to even if I have to kill him I will deliver him save him or whatever so again this tension which Kripps that guy wonderfully developed this idea that the when I got an interpellation my first reaction as subject and this reaction constitutes me as subject is My God what do they want from me you know that you automatically feel guilty you know like this is Althusser's story how the policeman calls you hey you the moment you turn towards him you already identify yourself as subject of law but Kripps adds here that no even at an abstract level this is not the whole story the story is that when the policeman calls you oh hey you your reaction is what did I do wrong why me and then that you assume identity I am citizen whatever to escape this anxiety this deadlock you see that between the ideological call hey you and my identification there has to be this moment of uncertainty of anxiety so that again the and of course it can be shown I claim that this is what goes missing with Althusser he talks in his great classical text ideology and ideological state apparatuses as if this is a direct closed loop like I directly recognize myself in it no perverts do it maybe but we don't now you will say but why do we react as guilty ah here is even a nicer paradox developed by Kripps you will say no but some people are able to ha yes me directly recognize but these are usually criminals I claim because you know we ordinary people that's a nice paradox precisely who are not in a formal legal sense guilty the more you are innocent the more when the policeman addresses you the more anxiety explodes oh my god why me what did I do if you are really a criminal you know how to cover it up yes policeman what did yes I will like you gladly identify yourself different logic okay but let's go on so this is now I'm getting a little more refined hope so this is the first problem I claim with Althusser he doesn't get the refinement of the project of sorry process of subjectivization the counterpoint to this is the other one the other level of Althusserian theory of ideology is ideological state apparatuses as already said all this machinery of you know church police all the different apparatuses which discipline us which train us and so on and so on what Althusser misses here I claim is what he all the time insists on the materiality of this process but I claim what he misses is precisely what Lacan calls the materiality of the signifier as such he all the time has to vulgarize materiality into incidentally my megalomania with secret service is paying you know yesterday we had such a nice joke he's really a normal guy privately to both oh I was for three hours exchanging dirty jokes mostly with Julian Assange no and then my wife was with me doing an interview with him no and at a certain point her my wife's recording machine broke down and you know what was our immediate reaction no problem we just call the British police they have better transcripts than okay so sorry let me go on so that this in this eternal insistence Althusser all the time compulsively repeats it's material material he precisely escapes from something from what is really difficult to think that we have in the big other in what Lacan calls the symbolic machine we have an order which is not material in the usual sense but which nonetheless functions as an external in this sense material machine this weird materiality of the signifier how does this work let me quote you now a passage from Althusser's text this is late Althusser Philosophy of the Encounter is the book published by Verso in late Althusser's manuscripts here is how Althusser answers the question what distinguishes state from other social apparatuses and here is the first of my long boring quotes what distinguishes them is that quote everything that operates in it in the state and in its the state's name whether the political apparatus or the ideological apparatus is silently buttressed by the existence and presence of the public armed physical force that this force is not fully visible or actively employed that it very often intervenes only intermittently or remains hidden and invisible all this is simply one further form of its existence and action one had to make a show of one's force so as not to have to make use of it it suffice suffices to deploy one's military force to achieve by intimidation results that would normally have been achieved by sending it into action we may go further and say that one can also not make a show of one's force so as not to have to make use of it when threats of brute force or the force of law subject the authors in a given situation to obvious pressure there is no longer any need to make a show of this force there may be more to be gained from hiding it the army tanks that were stationed under the trees of Rambouillet Forest a forest in the suburbs of Paris in May are an example they played by virtue of their absence a decisive role in quelling the riots in Paris end of quote the first thing to note here is and I think Althusser is not attentive enough to is the radical difference between the two levels the two examples that he uses first the idea is how can you avoid the use of direct brutal real force the first thing to do every politician dictator knows it is to make a show of your force and maybe if this just spectacle fascinating brutal display of force is effective enough you don't have to use it like I don't know you know when there is a threat of demonstration this is the standard procedure you send police police cars or maybe even tanks along you parade them along the main boulevards of a city and the idea is we will warn them in advance then something much more refined happens the threat works when people already the point is of course that people must suspect that you are able to employ mobilize some force the most effective threat can be not to display any force but just to keep it as a threat and the more it is unseen the more it grows as some kind of spectral presence and Althusser's point and it's true although I was young then I was in Paris and I remember this rumor when there were clashes that there are tens of thousands of military in Rambouillet Forest with tanks ready there nobody has seen them but you know precisely as such they were much more threatening than effectively than effectively doing it than effectively displaying their force so the first thing I want to say here is that the first level would have been let's say imaginary that is to say instead of really using police force I make a show of it you know police parades in the city you can also bluff at this level you just send some elite units and you just pretend to but nonetheless you show it hoping that the spectacle not using it of showing it will scare people and so on but the second level is the properly symbolic one where the very absence of display you know when people expect for you to show force of course it's a risky procedure because people may call your bluff and then you they see you have nothing but quite often it works that you don't display the force and this makes potential display of force even all the more ominous and I claim that what Althusser misses is this the true dimension of his own example what Althusser is right to insist how not even a display of force can work in the same way as the real use of force can scare people but how of course against the background of expectation of your use of force that not displaying any force just this absolutely ominous silence you know like you know this scene in many war movies which is the elementary strategy you expect the enemy to attack and then it's just mist and silence no maybe you hear some sounds and so on but nothing and this is usually much more threatening than actually seeing the enemy soldiers you know the moment you see them it's always a kind of a relief you know oh my god look I see them I know who they are part of reality and so on Althusser here refers to a nice example he compares and this is an intelligent parallel between this and the way he refers here to a book by Perry Anderson where Perry Anderson talks about how gold reserves of the central banks function in our societies the whole economy the way it functions needs this illusion that ultimately at least I don't know how it is today in older times that somehow you know it's all ultimately supported held up by gold bank reserves the point is that you don't have even to see to take it's just enough that everyone accepts that there are bank reserves and so again his idea is that it's the same with secret with this hidden military forces which sustain the rule of law so it's enough the awareness that they are there but here I claim things get problematic first if we take precisely this example of gold reserves yes they are there hidden but what we all know and that's the mystery is that it's not only I hope you will get the point and I'm blaming me if I sound confused it's not only that they work gold reserves also or even if they are not put to use I claim they work only insofar as they are not put to use the moment the state would have actively to intervene with gold reserves usually everything crashes because you never have enough of it and so on and so on so this is I think a wonderful example of what Lacan calls he plays in his anxiety seminar of this ambiguity of toute puissance omnipotence and toute impuissance all in potency that omnipotence it's always only a potential threat the moment you actualize it it's over you see what Althusser again doesn't get is that he is right that you don't have to show brutally your force that it works good even if you don't show don't not even show it what he doesn't get is that it only works in this way the moment imagine a really tense situation where those in power except in China and so on no longer function like that like as already I think improvised once in front of you take someone like for example in United States I met recently and I not boast about it I don't agree with him politically he is way too naive but Oliver Stone and he asked me the usual narcissist artistic question which of my movies do you really like I told him when we take power my usual answer you will get your re-education camp for this type of questions no but the point is that I told him Nixon I told him frankly I don't like your big iconic movies because they're boring they all take the same boring oedipal story you know Wall Street bad father Michael Douglas who is who is incidentally the only interesting guy in the movie no against Martin Sheen's his own father played which is the good father even Platoon you have a couple of his films he is really obsessed by this struggle between good and bad father and the good father winning no but you know what I like in Nixon he didn't fall into this simple Nixon phobia first every authentic American leftist will tell you don't underestimate Nixon if you measure progressive character of a president by how much money what percentage and so on was given to welfare to unemployed to free education you know that Nixon is Richard Nixon is by far the most progressive American president because of economic crisis although I like him much more as a person already Jimmy Carter had to start reducing it point two Nixon nonetheless did a trip to China for which he was never forgiven by the radical American right and so on and so on so you know I never bought that bullshit All the President's Men you know like two ordinary this is the worst capitalist propaganda movies like All the President's Men because they appear critical oh my god even our president is corrupted but the true message of the film is of course what a great country we are two ordinary guys can overthrow the mightiest man in the world no I say sorry impolite again I say fuck you here you know like it's crucial that a strong part of American establishment had to had to endorse this let Nixon throw and I again and yes why then do I like I think Anthony Hopkins plays Nixon because he consciously here Oliver Stone was not totally stupid he presents Nixon as the last genuinely tragic oedipal let's call it like this president he really wanted greatness it fell down it was a tragedy he was a crook of course but nonetheless but with Reagan Carter is complicated transitory phenomenon with Reagan and on we have a totally different functioning of a kind of a Teflon presidency where even if Reagan tried to be dig- you know if we have already self-ironic presidents who make fun of themselves and so on for example I remember I saw it one of Reagan's press conferences where this was one of the few then he stopped giving them because he appeared too stupid but it was a journalist asking him a complicated economic question and he said why are you asking me this question you know that I'm too stupid to answer you without preparation you know this open mocking his own limitation something broke down with dignity and I think Clinton played the same game not to mention Bush and so on it's a kind of very obscene open display of stupidity and I think then Berlusconi in Europe plays the same game and so on and I don't think there is anything great democratic in it no I think it's a much more perverse functioning I'm almost I'm tempted to say for that Chinese approach no show us some respect by at least appearing not the bullshit that you really are but make an effort to look with some dignity whatever no sorry so let me go on so you see on the one hand I try to develop now back to Althusser how he doesn't see that more complex process of subjectivization on the other hand with regard to material state apparatuses I claim what again he doesn't see is that what he tries to capture as this is the real me you know this is the real me you know oh my god I came to this reversal I used in one book this you know how my double is more than I I think I may be wrong that the first story in the second year of Alfred Hitchcock presents that early black and white TV shows it really it shocked even me because I didn't know it I'm sorry for little it's a story the woman I think it plays is played by Jessica Tandy you know the mother from Hitchcock's Birds but she is a good actress she also played in the original version of Samuel Beckett's Not I she played the mouth no and she plays a lone desperate spinster who is obsessed by a how do you call this ventriloquist with a dummy and she goes every evening to his performance and when it is the last performance she cannot restrain herself she goes up on stage and addresses him touching him here hey like offering herself to him and then comes the shock I was shocked you know what you discover that the true dummy was the real large person out of the small dummy a midget a dwarf steps out so that it was the other way around you see and it is something terrifying about it so that you know what you thought was dead was alive what you thought was alive was dead okay that was my experience like the real me is that squeaking voice teasing voice there that was there but okay back to Althusser so on the one hand we have that short card with subjectivization on the other hand we have what does Althusser miss you saw what he tries to circumscribe discern as the materiality of ideology that it's precisely not the material materiality is what Lacan calls the materiality of signifier of a letter you can cut it into small pieces it remains the letter it is and so on so his idea being of Lacan that of course Lacan doesn't mean here material materiality in the sense you touch it but materiality in the sense of a blind machine-like order and this is the Lacanian big other it's as it were the materiality of the ideal order itself and this I think is always in critique of idealism even theology the most subversive moment not to prove that everything is matter but to prove that even what we perceive as God functions like mechanical matter that's why as I already repeated here often my favorite theologian is Nicolas Malebranche you know what he does he elaborates the notion of mercy but a kind of literally materialist notion of mercy sorry for repeating myself you know it his idea is this one of course he is on the line of Jansenism which means for him grace has nothing to do with virtue you know no sorry with virtue you can be a good guy doing wonderful things but you may be not blessed by mercy you will burn in hell or you can murder kill poison whatever you are touched by mercy you are redeemed incidentally do you know that French communists referred openly to to Malebranche in their critique of bourgeois ideology for them virtue meant small bourgeois values and their idea was you can be an honest small bourgeois caring for the poor people but if you don't are not touched by mercy by the mercy of having insight into communist party role and so on you are lost and so on no so but what I want to say is this that then Malebranche I'm literally quoting him almost again but my point is I'm not inventing this is his example he says I'm sorry if I repeat myself you know it imagine two farmers one works diligently all the time on his field the other nearby is a lazy guy makes throws on some seed but nothing really but then it can happen because of contingent natural processes that the bad farmer lazy gets all the rain the good one gets none so that the bad one will get some harvest the good one nothing and you know what he says he said exactly the same is with divine grace it's that God is just in a totally contingent way throwing it around absolutely nothing to do with our virtues and so on but incidentally I think even from the religious standpoint this is the only correct way because as every good Protestant and you know Protestants as a rule believe in predestination you know why this is good because if you think that your good works good deeds will bring you salvation it b- it becomes a commercial trans- transaction you know basically the dealing is oh I may be damned but let's make a transaction if I do a little bit of a good work maybe I will get grace you know it's no longer a pure ethical act the only good act is when you say I will do what I do without counting that this will affect in any way my salvation that precisely predestination far from sabotaging your ethical achievement is opening the only true space for ethical achievement but okay so again you see this is what I find so subversive in Malebranche he shows how even the spiritual domain of grace functions like mechanical materialism if you want like this no and that's the point of Lacan when Lacan speaks about the autonomy of the signifier it doesn't mean that this words printed here materially are autonomous it means that the symbolic system network on which we rely functions in a materialist way on its own but precisely as the ideal order of course the symbolic order is an ideal order it's not reality but as such it can function in a materialist way material and this again this point I claim is missed by Althusser who elaborated sorry let's see where we are another minutes oh looks bad okay okay who no okay I will then just try to recapitulate what I'm saying first I really advise you to read this Kant for a long time Immanuel Kant and I'm not now changing the terrain because this materiality of the signifier in tradition philosophical our western tradition I think it's Kant's late writing from anthropology from a pragmatic point of view which develops it in detail you can get it as one of those Cambridge or Oxford you know edition with many other texts it's immensely readable it's it's excellent Kant's problem is what first in his critique of pure reason he developed pure ethical structure you know with all this ethical rigorism it only counts as an ethical act if it's done for the sake of duty not from some for some pathological profit and so on so we have critique of pure we have ethics then under the pretext of just anthropology anthropology is for Kant ethics but like applied to real empirical life to humans as empirical objects how does it function there My God I'm getting tired of these signs of the big other whatever no although things happen I had maybe someone did it but they claim that I was when I was in high school I was in a cinematheque in Ljubljana Slovenia and we were watching a horror movie and exactly at midnight when some ghosts were supposed to appear it was also midnight in real time all the lights went out and so on you know and okay but let's go on what I'm saying is that why is this so mysterious because Michel Foucault who in his introduction to the French translation of Kant's anthropology he was the first to emphasize the key position of this text he is too short he simply uses it as a proof that Kant is caught into what he calls already in his the order of thing the transcendental empirical duality doublet you know how Kant is forced to observe human beings from two perspectives as transcendental pure free subjects and as empirical natural entities and how Kant is not able to bring the two together so that Kant has to oscillate between the two without being able to really reduce one to the other of course Kant is not a naturalist so he is forbidden to translate transcendental subject into empirical history how it emerged out of nature but also the opposite one like Kant admitted that we are caught in concrete social circumstances you cannot develop this out of pure practical reason out of pure morality but Foucault remains at this level just tension between transcendental empirical but what Foucault doesn't get is that the domain that Kant develops here in anthropology is of course it's not pure reason it's empirical circumstances but it's also not empirical in the sense of facts it's precisely what we today would have called performative dimension of social interaction Kant is obsessed he develops this in detail by the idea that although at a transcendental level you are free as a non-empirical transcendental nominal nominal simply means not submitted to empirical material causality fact but nonetheless that empirically in social life for us to become moral you social rules etiquette condition you to this but here Kant knows better than Althusser that these social rules are not simply empirical rules he Kant is not talking simply about empirical training he talks precisely about moral appearance he endorses fully something that in his pure ethics should be prohibited for example one in the subdivisions of his anthropology sub chapters is called on permissible moral appearance *Schein* appearance what Kant is developing in all possible ways is that precisely this motive that Althusser repeats all the time following Pascal that even if you are like from strict morality do you have the right to pretend that you are honest even or moral even if you are not the traditional position would have been this is the most disgusting thing you just pretend to be moral but Kant again and again tries to develop how the only way to morality is that you begin by acting as if you are moral and then there is a hope that you will fall into your own trap let me just read you nonetheless a little bit of Kant here on the whole the more civilized human beings are the more they are actors they adopt the illusion of affections of respect for others of modesty and of unselfishness without deceiving anyone at all because it is understood by everyone that nothing is meant sincerely by this and it is also very good that this happens in the world for when human beings play these roles eventually the virtues whose illusion they have merely affected will gradually really be aroused and merge into the disposition to deceive the deceiver in ourselves the inclinations is a return again to obedience under the law of virtue and is not a deception but rather a laudable illusion or cheating *Täuschung* of ourselves in order to save virtue or at least lead the human being to it nature has wisely implanted into us humans the tendency to willingly allow ourselves to be deceived good honorable decorum is an external appearance that instills respect for others and so on so okay I will not go too far but you see what Kant is wonderfully saying that the logic of morality is you should begin by deceiving others in the sense of I am really evil but to deceive you that I'm kind that I'm kind I act like that and then ultimately without even knowing the deceiver deceives himself I become moral but so he praises here empty coquetry gallantry and so on and so on endlessly and what is so interesting here is that Kant is here discovering a domain which is neither neither the domain of pure inner morality like look into your inside are you or external legality you know and to make a jump this is what I find so problematic for example in political correctness our the basic feature of our customs is that we you know on the one hand we have things strict moral orders what you are ordered to do like you know don't kill don't lie whatever there it's clear then we have external legality like it's not punishable not yet one never knows to directly lie or whatever but there are things which simply you are not allowed to do and of course the space of our freedom is between the two there are things that you are not allowed to do morally and there are things that you are legally prohibited to do but in between there are things which although they are not truly moral they are also not prohibited by the law cheating a little bit and so on and so on so my point is that what Kant does is open up a domain of things and the whole point is that they have to exist namely things which only are operative if you are expected to do them without being explicitly ordered to do them that's the essence of politeness it doesn't work if you are ordered to do it like to show gallantry the whole point is that it shouldn't be experienced as you a lady and you say okay I will help you but really I would like to to I don't know to put my feet so that you would slip down or whatever like you have to pretend that I could not have done it I'm not really forced to do it but it's expected from me to do it this domain I claim tends to disappear with political correctness what political correctness tries to do is precisely to directly legalize or moralize this gray domain no it's like to legalize in the sense of I don't know if I look at you in this way it can already be harassment or whatever it somehow it tries to legalize what precisely has to appear as your politeness which again even if you are expected to obey it it must appear as if you freely obey it so again Kant discovers here a domain which is really a subversive one and I think but I don't have time to develop it now I think it works also yeah yeah I know we are there no I thought you said you wanted to stop at no but I lied what did I- so what's so strange about it I lied ha ha we got her no sorry what I wanted to say immediately I'm sorry what I wanted to say is that also Kant says here some very interesting thing about domination servitude and so on where he said that the same goes for domination and servitude he makes some funny remarks which may appear only obscenities but which are very profound ones about the ambiguity of patriarchal domination where he says that when men dominate women it's expected for women not to simply turn into instruments that you totally surrender your freedom whatever you know that there must be always this gray domain in the sense of okay I am your servant but I'm freely choosing to be your servant or whatever a weird intermediate domain a weird intermediate domain emerges here so again what Kant sees here is that this Pascal formula you know Pascalian formula bless Pascal when he says you know that famous statement if you don't believe act as if you believe kneel pray and at the end you will believe that it's a much more complex process it's not simply you follow an external machine and your spirit will follow no it's a much more complex topic of deception and so on here I cannot restrain from referring to one of my books where I develop this of how I even think that in a way Pascal is up to a point wrong here it can be said that today and this is how if you read him really closely a little bit between the lines this would have been Hegel's answer to Pascal that no it's not that you don't believe you follow the ritual and then maybe you will believe what if we have the opposite process you really believe but you find your belief too oppressive so then you say I will start to follow external ritual so that I will be able to say okay fuck it I did my duty of belief and then this will set me free for my spirit to wander for not experiencing my belief as so oppressive where does Hegel enter here this is how as I developed in my big fat book which weighs two pounds which is why it is called Less Than Nothing because it certainly doesn't weigh less than nothing about Hegel's theory of marriage there are some hints that he was an old Berlin pervert no that his theory is to put it in a Pascalian line of argumentation you are passionately in love well get married with the lady make and then love will get an external ritual and you will sooner or later get bored by it and it will give you freedom and so on no so that it's not get married you know the traditional version would have been get married and love will emerge but the ritual functions also in the exactly opposite way are you too passionately in love well get married and you will get rid of your love you know instead of love you will get this external ritual which always gives you some freedom and I think this even works I spoke with some Japanese friends who told me that how they feel Western people are stupid when Western people reproach them for oh your power relations are so formalized you know like you are not allowed to criticize if you are just an assistant your professor up there and they told me no precisely this obeying to external circumstances sets free their mind much more than this terrible Western pressure you know like be sincere tell it and so on I think that in a way social ritual in the sense of lying out of politeness can be a very liberating experience I mean isn't it for example it's not my situation now but if you are married isn't it nice to be able to tell to your wife or husband yeah yeah yeah I love you which means okay the ritual is satisfied so fuck off so you know like you give me my freedom you know and I think you cannot be directly free you have to have this mediation okay I shortened this one a lot then I had another whole line of thought I'm sorry I don't have it which would have been the crucial one sorry about two minutes no I'm not ready I wait I wait you will wait long take a Coke or whatever no no seriously it's a nice point about I wanted to go into this my eternal debate with Badiou that it Badiou is here close to Althusser although in a totally different sense for him subject is defined as an exception of fidelity to an event and for him evil or if you betray a cause is a secondary mode you know like the true subject is fidelity to a cause love freedom science whatever I claim and I'm here a good Christian Kierkegaard developed this idea that no that the initial constitutive experience of subjectivity is boredom or the scene of how do you call it acedia laziness or whatever you know that original scene which is the Althusserian scene I think the way to formulate is I don't take my interpellation seriously you know like lassitude sorry lassitude yeah but I think the way to formulate is I don't take my interpellation seriously you know like because this is why some medieval authors claim that this is the most horrible scene it's the scene of you know it's easy to say I'm evil I don't know what is good but this scene means I know what is good but nonetheless I don't give a damn about you know like you are not ready to engage yourself but I think we should not take this as secondary that would be the way as a Lacanian or Hegelian I would have put it that we are what Althusser sorry what Badiou would have called human animals then you get bored and you need boredom comes first then you invent a cause to get out of boredom what do I mean by this you have a wonderful it's an orgy passage I don't have time to read it to you now from Kierkegaard where he goes into how the whole history of the world creation is the story of boredom God was bored he created the world Adam was bored God created Eve for him and then I don't know Babylonians were bored they build the tower you know and so on and so on and I think we can do it even now you know like in feudalism it gets bored capitalists start to travel and so on and so on you know like the so but you see what I'm saying here that I don't Althusser Badiou and even now more and more he emphasizes he calls this the positive approach that evil or whatever bad is just a failure a betrayal of positive goodness I remain here a Hegelian I claim no I claim that it's only boredom or this acedia laziness that creates the space for creativity this is the nothingness which opens up the space and I have here a much more detailed development but you will read in my next book if you want on how this changes the whole topic of subjectivity I claim that the original subjectivity we are back at Althusser is not the engaged subjectivity but it's precisely the disengaged subjectivity like this acedia withdrawal and then you need this empty space of laziness or whatever which can then be filled in by engagement or whatever you know again it's the Hegelian point that negativity creates the space for but we don't have time to do it now so now I under brutal feminine pressure the most evil maternal super ego is not as bad as Pascal you are not as bad because you are worse okay good good but also actually what you just finished on I think we look forward to that because it's exactly the you know that makes women the women who you know the eternal negativity and the lassitude that characterizes the so called depressed woman is more likely to lead to her being having an ethical subjectivity in the form that you are discussing it than no I totally agree with you I think that this is wonderful that the origin the origin of humanity is for me a depressed woman and you can exactly yeah which is why I like so much David Lynch's films did you notice that the central problem for example what's the central problem of the big classic but it doesn't work today it's not as good at least my experience Blue Velvet Isabella Rossellini is a depressed woman totally immobilized and I think one crazy way to read that film is that all guys who jump around her you know even the evil Dennis Hopper that you know daddy wants to fuck or whatever are just ways to to arouse her to to bring her out of her depression you know exactly find a cause yeah and even the same that's how I would read Cuarón's it's not such a great film but it's not bad Gravity you know that at a have you haven't seen it my god barbarian whatever yeah yeah yeah at a if you saw the movie you remember how when she Sandra Bullock is ready to die already in a suicidal mood depression then the idiot with rabbit teeth George Clooney appears and and I don't think this is an anti-feminist moment some stupid feminists noted two things no the first is that nonetheless she needs a man to kick her out uh-huh and the second thing they noted they noted is that this is an interesting I don't know what would be the explanation how Gravity follows the line of Alien and all those where okay we have the woman is the only survivor in a catastrophe but her name is always half you know it's Ryan her name is Ryan in the film is the same as Ripley or what in Alien you know that the woman nonetheless must have a masculine name but I did I already use this the first day on Monday here what James Schamus told me my friend for from Focus Pictures who was now fired of course no he told me no he told me did I already tell you this a wonderful detail about Gravity namely how her trauma which justifies her doubts is that her child was was killed in an accident when he was four years old in a in a school in a school courtyard whatever well the problem is that in United States children at four don't go to school no and strictly I checked with Americans if you go to some kindergarten you never call it school no so I claim it's a subtle hint that that traumatic event is really a screen fantasy no it's a trap it's not that you know it's not this oh she must have some horrible traumatic experience whatever it's the materiality of the signifier materiality of the appearance again there is why anyway okay I think there's lots of people who might want to ask questions uh James ah no I hate this this is this managerial human capitalism you know when the boss pretends to know your name and all that bullshit you know like so that he can then exploit you even more and actually we both taught him so I hope you know his name as well he was in our I can't anonym- okay yes you ask your question now and okay so today you at the very end you mentioned the space of the non-subject in a way coming first and then on Wednesday you also spoke about the problem of like white universalism and a problem of like individualization and I wonder if you want to go to the end which is one of your favorite phrases like is it not in a way time to to be a bit more critical of the function that psychoanalysis plays there because for me psychoanalysis can't really ever drop the subject and also is very individualizing and ultimately does always relate back to some kind of pathologizing even even the most radical Lacanian is always come back with that it does come back to some kind of individual subjectivity so I wonder is that and you also try to you try to say that you were trying to be more systematic and I wonder is there is there conflict there is that to me that's not very systematic as consistency there and I don't think it's just a simple paradox okay can I be I will really try to be brief it's a nice question but let me answer it in this way first problem here is no no sorry what did I say okay now I don't no no the the first point would be here the difference between subject and individual like I don't follow here quite Badiou for him the formula is a simple one subject is not an individual category subject is not only can be but even as a rule is a collective subject no for him for example the subject of the political process organization group people not not an individual what but first about psychoanalysis my point here would have been that nonetheless for reasons that I cannot develop now I don't accept first I totally agree with you that there are ways how leftists refer to psychoanalysis for help which are mystifying and false my favorite example maybe you know it is I notice how many leftists love psychoanalysis why because it enables them to stick to their theory you know like they have a certain theory there should have been a revolution working class party and then if you ask them but why didn't your stupid revolution occur then they say because of ideological manipulation to understand it go to psychoanalysis you know how we predicted history the way it should have been we leave to psychoanalysis to explain the manipulations why it didn't so here I agree with you psychoanalysis absolutely shouldn't be used to do the work of proper social analysis to fill in the gaps as it were and this is also my problem with racism and this politically correct multicultural approach which precisely I think psychoanalysis if you talk with the typical American academic what will be his approach to racism some kind of Julia Kristeva stranger in us topic when we hate others we really project onto them our own repressed traumas you know so then it all becomes a problem of you know to cure ourselves of racism let's look deep into ourselves let's do our deep analysis here I do agree with you but nonetheless I don't have time to develop this now but nonetheless I claim that and here I agree with Althusser that psychoanalysis in its scope is not simply a theory of individuality psychoanalysis answers something which is for me the crucial question of social theory not not in this wrong way crowd but how I me as a subject how do I have to be structured to function as a social subject what does it mean to be a social subject let me give you a simple a social subject my point is this one to be a social subject it's not simply a point of generalization in the sense of I claim something if I claim it alone I'm maybe an ultra genius but probably an idiot and if it's shared it's a subject subjectivity no the point is that I myself has have to relate to it as something collective you know for example this would be the single simple example a proper social rule is not I don't spit into people's faces because the majority doesn't do it it must be one doesn't do it this anonymous one which means it must be this minimum fetishization that you know something becomes socially unacceptable it's never simply because the majority of individuals doesn't do it it's because even if the majority does it but you know one doesn't do it it must be this so what I claim is that here I wouldn't dismiss psychoanalysis as simply individual pathology at its best psychoanalysis and sorry but this is how I read and I agree with you if your point would be that Freud doesn't really do it it is problematic but nonetheless as a program motto Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents means that there is something wrong that psychoanalysis is not as we called it when we were young leftists a psychological repair service you know you break down you go there to repair you no the whole point is that our individual pathologies are symptoms of something which in our society as such is wrong and in this sense here I see a parallel justified one between Freud and Marx in the same way as for Marx social crisis is not things just didn't function well social crisis is the starting point to understand how society really functions and in the same way for Freud symptoms are the only way to the key to understand how our personalities are formed and so on and so on so again I know I didn't answer you fully but my point would have been that I just wouldn't reduce psychoanalysis to ultimately an because you know the problem is which of our experiences really are individual it's not only described by Freud crowd phenomena and so on you know it's an immense problem usually not answered about what does it mean individually for you again as an individual to function as a part of collective and I claim that the whole point is that even the utmost of individualism presupposes some kind of collectivity exactly so again I would just complicate it a little bit but I if your point was again let's not use psychoanalysis in this direct way as an ersatz for Marxism and so on for concrete then I totally agree with you many Marxists today cover up the lack of their own social economic analysis by you know oh capitalist manipulation whatever and so on and so on no I don't think there is so much manipulation going on no there is don't understand but I claim that the basic rule ABC of critique of ideology is that manipulators are always themselves manipulated I don't believe in this cynical all-powerful subject who you know are there wise they know how really things are and they are just lying to us we are all Henry Kissingers here by Henry Kissinger I mean the ultimate cynic who was totally wrong and stupid in his positive analysis I know I didn't answer you but fuck you you ask a difficult question no no no we already did Tom we did it in Lacanian axioms plus you know you point out again that all this supposedly most intimate and precious to the individual is already taken from the outside so individual psychology is already social psychology and Tom we did do it and I know your name now ah so you oppressed Tom with what did you call him I did I did just now yeah but Tom now what was he before James that's like Signorelli let's do a little bit of analysis later just a question here just two quick questions the first one is in the context of Gérard Wajcman the absolute eye and the relationship with it isn't it that from time to time power has to be actualized between the I mean the gaze if if it doesn't work but from time to time it has to be a punished so the second question is on Monday and Wednesday you developed in the first one this new kind of master and in the second one the super ego but one is on the space of the desire the absolute the you have this new master and the other is in the space of jouissance could you make a relationship between these two oh my god again such a difficult question but to try to be as short as possible this is you brought us to this key duality of desire or jouissance drive whatever you call the other side what I'm more and more convinced that's all I can tell you now is that you know Lacan oscillates often between sometimes especially in the 50s he gives a clear primacy to desire and then drive is some kind of a vicious super ego
unknown
cycle
cycle
Slavoj Žižek
into which desire gets
into which desire gets
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caught but the late Lacan tends towards sometimes the opposite view which is that drive is the original circulation and then to get out of the deadlock of the drive symbolic law intervenes and symbolic law transforms drive into desire symbolic law imposes castration the object is lost and so on and so on and I just would like
caught but the late Lacan tends towards sometimes the opposite view which is that drive is the original circulation and then to get out of the deadlock of the drive symbolic law intervenes and symbolic law transforms drive into desire symbolic law imposes castration the object is lost and so on and so on and I just would like
Slavoj Žižek
to avoid both of these why I will link them to another duality already I think half a year ago developed this which I think absolutely crucial and all of my friends we are now working on this did you notice how Lacan most of his time at least in the 50s till his last decade accepts this standard philosophical topic of the difference between humans and animals like in nature there is sexual relationship okay not harmony but things function and then you know with human *la femme n'existe pas* there is no sexual as if the human is or
to avoid both of these why I will link them to another duality already I think half a year ago developed this which I think absolutely crucial and all of my friends we are now working on this did you notice how Lacan most of his time at least in the 50s till his last decade accepts this standard philosophical topic of the difference between humans and animals like in nature there is sexual relationship okay not harmony but things function and then you know with human *la femme n'existe pas* there is no sexual as if the human is or
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existential
existential
Slavoj Žižek
catastrophe or whatever a certain gap opens but I think that the more you read the late Lacan the more it's clear that he tries to be much more Hegelian or even Schellingian and more and more his idea is that it's not that nature is a homeostatic closed circle and then humanity introduces some terrible negativity with there there must have been something wrong already before in nature itself for example be careful about something when Lacan in seminar XI introduces the notion of *lamella* that eternalized blah blah he says that *lamella* is produced the moment we get sexualized being and he explicitly said sexualized also in the animal sense not just humanity so you know like he is often trying and this is for me the most productive Lacan to say not we have full nature and then oh something horrible happens negativity with humanity but that in humanity some gap some imbalance which is already at work back in nature explodes and I didn't lose my thread in this way I would have answered you that I don't think that desire drive is an irreducible duality in the sense that that's as far as we can think I think the effort should be to formulate some kind of discordant negativity whatever which is which precedes the duality of desire and drive I but these are I like this question because my god this is what I'm doing now in my new book which is the
catastrophe or whatever a certain gap opens but I think that the more you read the late Lacan the more it's clear that he tries to be much more Hegelian or even Schellingian and more and more his idea is that it's not that nature is a homeostatic closed circle and then humanity introduces some terrible negativity with there there must have been something wrong already before in nature itself for example be careful about something when Lacan in seminar XI introduces the notion of *lamella* that eternalized blah blah he says that *lamella* is produced the moment we get sexualized being and he explicitly said sexualized also in the animal sense not just humanity so you know like he is often trying and this is for me the most productive Lacan to say not we have full nature and then oh something horrible happens negativity with humanity but that in humanity some gap some imbalance which is already at work back in nature explodes and I didn't lose my thread in this way I would have answered you that I don't think that desire drive is an irreducible duality in the sense that that's as far as we can think I think the effort should be to formulate some kind of discordant negativity whatever which is which precedes the duality of desire and drive I but these are I like this question because my god this is what I'm doing now in my new book which is the
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book of post-coital
book of post-coital
Slavoj Žižek
sadness that is to say after you finish a big shitty book over pages of Hegel on Hegel you have a necessary experience which is the longer the book is the more
sadness that is to say after you finish a big shitty book over pages of Hegel on Hegel you have a necessary experience which is the longer the book is the more
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you feel that you failed to say what really should have been said you know
you feel that you failed to say what really should have been said you know
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and this is what I'm now working on you know is this wonderful idea which you do find somewhere in Lacan and I think it can be given a wholly non- material non-theological materialist reading this crazy idea from Schelling Benjamin has it that human language emerge to render able to nature to voice its pain you know like that there is something horrible before so that there is a previous horror already in nature you know that humanity is not a catastrophe opening and so on and that's also incidentally why primitive and maybe wrong as it is I'm so fascinated by quantum physics because I think there you find something weird which is a phenom- they are describing a universe quantum universe which is not human clearly but at the same time it's not natural in the sense of how we usually think of nature and so on and so on that's what fascinate me so much in quantum physics that you get a universe in which in a very strange way things which usually we identify as a specificity of symbolic
and this is what I'm now working on you know is this wonderful idea which you do find somewhere in Lacan and I think it can be given a wholly non- material non-theological materialist reading this crazy idea from Schelling Benjamin has it that human language emerge to render able to nature to voice its pain you know like that there is something horrible before so that there is a previous horror already in nature you know that humanity is not a catastrophe opening and so on and that's also incidentally why primitive and maybe wrong as it is I'm so fascinated by quantum physics because I think there you find something weird which is a phenom- they are describing a universe quantum universe which is not human clearly but at the same time it's not natural in the sense of how we usually think of nature and so on and so on that's what fascinate me so much in quantum physics that you get a universe in which in a very strange way things which usually we identify as a specificity of symbolic
Slavoj Žižek
universe that potentiality is stronger more than actuality retroactivity and so more all this is at work there you know again I didn't answer you but fuck it that's life here sorry one at the back yes on Wednesday I asked you about this you think sucker that you will get the answer now the question is of scape from from the super ego maybe forcing into a crowd formation yeah the Lacanian I said well is there any escape from the super ego you said an example of like the Amish or some Tibetan Buddhists but what is special because they don't there's no envy there what is special about this the Amish figure of God or whatever that somehow ever appears in the guise of a super ego I mean I know nothing about the Amish apart from having seen in the film Witness and that's my- for me too I'm not bluffing it's the same I did read one or two books but the basic source is Harrison Ford of course the Witness of course of course I mean I mean no no no what I'm like what I'm nonetheless saying even at a purely formal level is that it's clear that and I cannot develop it now but it's clear that there is some previous deadlock for me the key notion of super ego is it's not a primordial notion it it is an attempt to to resolve a certain deadlock which comes earlier as it were no so that's the only crucial point on which I insist that super ego although I see your point because I see the temptation of how you know insofar as drive as is the basic formula of drive would be pleasure in pain how like the idea is to put it very simply in a clean simplified way okay fundamental experience of castration the object is always lost but then what drive does it turns in the very repeated failure to reach the object of desire you turn this very circular movement into a satisfaction like I cannot fuck you but I repeatedly try to fuck you and I gain a pleasure of this you know circulating so what I would have said is is only that something more has to be here to talk about super ego because there is no super ego without guilt I would have focused on guilt and I don't see necessarily in the very concept of drive anything that would involve in itself guilt that would have been maybe my answer to it like because if anything as Lacan makes it clear if there is something which is characteristic of drive it is that it is beyond law guilt and all that so maybe one way to put it I'm totally improvising now maybe it's total bullshit is that the super ego is drive which is already filtered by the symbolic law drive already through the screen of symbolic prohibition and so on and so on but I'm not totally convinced by this sorry but sorry I will I have some obligations I will drop so please let's now introduce some dynamic into it I want to ask one as well but there's also people fuck them okay sorry can I ask a quick question about I mean you spent the entire lecture telling us the bits that Althusser didn't see after that Althusser didn't didn't see yeah yeah and then you finished very briefly on on Kant by pointing out that Kant did appreciate the materiality of appearances that Althusser didn't okay and then I thought oh my god so that means that you know then you pointed out that the politically correct ideology cannot work because you actually have to be you cannot be told to do it so even when you are pretending because you- so how do we all become Kant basically how do we find that space of freedom that Kant appreciated but Althusser didn't no Kant appreciated and Althusser didn't appreciate how do we find that domain of freedom if we are no Kant or even Kantian I mean what if you know but why not sorry it won't sense my point would have been we're naive that we practically are we all play this game of you know pretending that we are better than we are and so on so what is wrong with being told by the politically correct crowd I mean I've agreed with you about political correctness up to now and then you bring in this in and you tell me that actually pretending even if I if I were racist for example okay because I think that political correctness basically maybe I'm wrong with its precisely what I was developing two days ago this eternal super ego examination but how do you know that that remark wasn't racist and so on and so on it because you know the Kantian answer would have been okay maybe it was
universe that potentiality is stronger more than actuality retroactivity and so more all this is at work there you know again I didn't answer you but fuck it that's life here sorry one at the back yes on Wednesday I asked you about this you think sucker that you will get the answer now the question is of scape from from the super ego maybe forcing into a crowd formation yeah the Lacanian I said well is there any escape from the super ego you said an example of like the Amish or some Tibetan Buddhists but what is special because they don't there's no envy there what is special about this the Amish figure of God or whatever that somehow ever appears in the guise of a super ego I mean I know nothing about the Amish apart from having seen in the film Witness and that's my- for me too I'm not bluffing it's the same I did read one or two books but the basic source is Harrison Ford of course the Witness of course of course I mean I mean no no no what I'm like what I'm nonetheless saying even at a purely formal level is that it's clear that and I cannot develop it now but it's clear that there is some previous deadlock for me the key notion of super ego is it's not a primordial notion it it is an attempt to to resolve a certain deadlock which comes earlier as it were no so that's the only crucial point on which I insist that super ego although I see your point because I see the temptation of how you know insofar as drive as is the basic formula of drive would be pleasure in pain how like the idea is to put it very simply in a clean simplified way okay fundamental experience of castration the object is always lost but then what drive does it turns in the very repeated failure to reach the object of desire you turn this very circular movement into a satisfaction like I cannot fuck you but I repeatedly try to fuck you and I gain a pleasure of this you know circulating so what I would have said is is only that something more has to be here to talk about super ego because there is no super ego without guilt I would have focused on guilt and I don't see necessarily in the very concept of drive anything that would involve in itself guilt that would have been maybe my answer to it like because if anything as Lacan makes it clear if there is something which is characteristic of drive it is that it is beyond law guilt and all that so maybe one way to put it I'm totally improvising now maybe it's total bullshit is that the super ego is drive which is already filtered by the symbolic law drive already through the screen of symbolic prohibition and so on and so on but I'm not totally convinced by this sorry but sorry I will I have some obligations I will drop so please let's now introduce some dynamic into it I want to ask one as well but there's also people fuck them okay sorry can I ask a quick question about I mean you spent the entire lecture telling us the bits that Althusser didn't see after that Althusser didn't didn't see yeah yeah and then you finished very briefly on on Kant by pointing out that Kant did appreciate the materiality of appearances that Althusser didn't okay and then I thought oh my god so that means that you know then you pointed out that the politically correct ideology cannot work because you actually have to be you cannot be told to do it so even when you are pretending because you- so how do we all become Kant basically how do we find that space of freedom that Kant appreciated but Althusser didn't no Kant appreciated and Althusser didn't appreciate how do we find that domain of freedom if we are no Kant or even Kantian I mean what if you know but why not sorry it won't sense my point would have been we're naive that we practically are we all play this game of you know pretending that we are better than we are and so on so what is wrong with being told by the politically correct crowd I mean I've agreed with you about political correctness up to now and then you bring in this in and you tell me that actually pretending even if I if I were racist for example okay because I think that political correctness basically maybe I'm wrong with its precisely what I was developing two days ago this eternal super ego examination but how do you know that that remark wasn't racist and so on and so on it because you know the Kantian answer would have been okay maybe it was
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racist but be decent and pretend that you are not a racist you know and this precisely this space for sincere lies for pretending the the Kantian answer is okay maybe you were a racist but pretend that you are not and
racist but be decent and pretend that you are not a racist you know and this precisely this space for sincere lies for pretending the the Kantian answer is okay maybe you were a racist but pretend that you are not and
Slavoj Žižek
then maybe you will
then maybe you will
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not
not
Slavoj Žižek
be a racist you know but that this
be a racist you know but that this
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eternal
eternal
Slavoj Žižek
self probing you know oh the way I look at you was there
self probing you know oh the way I look at you was there
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something
something
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evil in it or whatever you know that it's this is not the way because
evil in it or whatever you know that it's this is not the way because
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you know why it's not the way again because precisely it's in the bad super ego sense endlessly self reproducing it you know it's like debt what I say the goal of super ego in debt is not for you to repay the debt but to
you know why it's not the way again because precisely it's in the bad super ego sense endlessly self reproducing it you know it's like debt what I say the goal of super ego in debt is not for you to repay the debt but to
Slavoj Žižek
remain forever indebted so I pretend to pretend by maintaining my space but there is nothing mystical in it we we do this all the time sorry to tell it just I noticed with people it's my daily experience maybe I live in some perverted society of how people you know they think they are evil they do something out of politeness and then when you corner them push them into a corner they opt for politeness they are forced to admit that this is for me the most charming moment you pretend that something is just a pretend I don't mean it seriously but you are not aware that really you are taking it seriously okay but to me this seems to rehabilitate a bit of the dreaded and annoying political correctness because that's what it makes us do even when we are if we were racist we are being told don't be racist on the surface and therefore then we start to I see I see now your point but no no no no I think that precisely okay we can go into it I'm not sure it really works like that because I think that precisely what in Kant you don't find again is this super ego dimension of eternal self questioning you know like is this the right way to do should I address you like this like that and so on and so on my idea as I already said it answering that fuck off question my idea of true politeness is that you know like what Grace Kelly whom I don't like sexually but she said once when she she when she was asked like by some friend I read this in a biography of her like about participating in some orgies and how can you do this you are a lady she said a lady does everything including orgies but she does it like a lady you know like a polite man doesn't mean you are not vulgar there is a way to be vulgar in a polite way I find really interesting how you use both Lacan and Marx to analyze social realities especially especially how I expose or oppose ah I use for yeah especially when when it has been proven sometimes that it is a problematic relationship since they have different methods and so on I just wanted to know if this combination of both Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist political economy is it just spontaneous or do you believe that a systematic combination of both can actually be achieved what do I mean by this of course first I'm not a standard Marxist I clearly and I've written about it I clearly see a limitation in Marx I think I agree with Lacan that there is in some sense a basic alienation which should be admitted but it's not the Marxian alienation it's an even you know Marx has this traditional notion of alienation it means it's not me an alienated force is controlling me market destiny whatever Lacan's answer is that this type of alienation is already a cover up the point is that yes you don't control it but there is no other who also controls it it's even worse okay let's not what I'm
remain forever indebted so I pretend to pretend by maintaining my space but there is nothing mystical in it we we do this all the time sorry to tell it just I noticed with people it's my daily experience maybe I live in some perverted society of how people you know they think they are evil they do something out of politeness and then when you corner them push them into a corner they opt for politeness they are forced to admit that this is for me the most charming moment you pretend that something is just a pretend I don't mean it seriously but you are not aware that really you are taking it seriously okay but to me this seems to rehabilitate a bit of the dreaded and annoying political correctness because that's what it makes us do even when we are if we were racist we are being told don't be racist on the surface and therefore then we start to I see I see now your point but no no no no I think that precisely okay we can go into it I'm not sure it really works like that because I think that precisely what in Kant you don't find again is this super ego dimension of eternal self questioning you know like is this the right way to do should I address you like this like that and so on and so on my idea as I already said it answering that fuck off question my idea of true politeness is that you know like what Grace Kelly whom I don't like sexually but she said once when she she when she was asked like by some friend I read this in a biography of her like about participating in some orgies and how can you do this you are a lady she said a lady does everything including orgies but she does it like a lady you know like a polite man doesn't mean you are not vulgar there is a way to be vulgar in a polite way I find really interesting how you use both Lacan and Marx to analyze social realities especially especially how I expose or oppose ah I use for yeah especially when when it has been proven sometimes that it is a problematic relationship since they have different methods and so on I just wanted to know if this combination of both Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist political economy is it just spontaneous or do you believe that a systematic combination of both can actually be achieved what do I mean by this of course first I'm not a standard Marxist I clearly and I've written about it I clearly see a limitation in Marx I think I agree with Lacan that there is in some sense a basic alienation which should be admitted but it's not the Marxian alienation it's an even you know Marx has this traditional notion of alienation it means it's not me an alienated force is controlling me market destiny whatever Lacan's answer is that this type of alienation is already a cover up the point is that yes you don't control it but there is no other who also controls it it's even worse okay let's not what I'm
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saying
saying
Slavoj Žižek
to you is that so on the one hand and I
to you is that so on the one hand and I
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elaborated systematically a whole series of points where clearly Marx is limited but what is so interesting and a guy from our Lacanian gang in Slovenia Samo Tomšič did a book Marx and Lacan now where he went it will be translated into English we will
elaborated systematically a whole series of points where clearly Marx is limited but what is so interesting and a guy from our Lacanian gang in Slovenia Samo Tomšič did a book Marx and Lacan now where he went it will be translated into English we will
Slavoj Žižek
try to push it pages he goes in detail through all Lacan's statements of Marx and shows how you know there is one Lacan of the 50s the first big Lacan symbolic order all that bullshit and then you have the Lacan of the 60s 70s let's call it the Lacan of discourses jouissance and so on how Marx systematically returns in this Lacan for example he even opposes how Lacan's formula for the 50s is unconscious is structured like a language in the 70s Lacan says the unconscious is political politics and so on and all the reference to this new role of objet petit a or object small a which is explicitly linked to capital and so on so it's a much more much more subtle questioning of course this Marx is no longer the old Marx but nonetheless Lacan makes it clear when he says for example and in a very precise way he means it that Marx invented the symptom and so on and so on so what I'm claiming is that no it's not that I'm playing some eccentric way let's bring them together it can be proven how central the reference to Marx it's a critical reference but it is an absolutely crucial reference and I agree with you if this was your implication there are big problems here like of course we cannot sustain simply Marxist vision of communist revolution here Althusser gave a wonderful I think he
try to push it pages he goes in detail through all Lacan's statements of Marx and shows how you know there is one Lacan of the 50s the first big Lacan symbolic order all that bullshit and then you have the Lacan of the 60s 70s let's call it the Lacan of discourses jouissance and so on how Marx systematically returns in this Lacan for example he even opposes how Lacan's formula for the 50s is unconscious is structured like a language in the 70s Lacan says the unconscious is political politics and so on and all the reference to this new role of objet petit a or object small a which is explicitly linked to capital and so on so it's a much more much more subtle questioning of course this Marx is no longer the old Marx but nonetheless Lacan makes it clear when he says for example and in a very precise way he means it that Marx invented the symptom and so on and so on so what I'm claiming is that no it's not that I'm playing some eccentric way let's bring them together it can be proven how central the reference to Marx it's a critical reference but it is an absolutely crucial reference and I agree with you if this was your implication there are big problems here like of course we cannot sustain simply Marxist vision of communist revolution here Althusser gave a wonderful I think he
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was fundamentally correct thing he claimed that the standard Marxists of Marx view of communist society is you know Marxist opposition between forces of production and relations of production in the sense of relations within which I am caught in a certain that to cut it short Marxist vision of communism is forces of production without relations of production that you know we just consciously relate to each other but there is no a priori network of relations of production
was fundamentally correct thing he claimed that the standard Marxists of Marx view of communist society is you know Marxist opposition between forces of production and relations of production in the sense of relations within which I am caught in a certain that to cut it short Marxist vision of communism is forces of production without relations of production that you know we just consciously relate to each other but there is no a priori network of relations of production
Slavoj Žižek
which controls us and so on and so on so things get complicated here but again what can be proven I claim nonetheless
which controls us and so on and so on so things get complicated here but again what can be proven I claim nonetheless
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it's not only it's again on the one hand how often systematically Lacan refers to Marx and
it's not only it's again on the one hand how often systematically Lacan refers to Marx and
Slavoj Žižek
on the opposite hand this is what always fascinates me if you read through Lacan Marx what wonderful places paradoxes you discover for example when in a passage that I often quote Marx describes that rule of the party of order in France Revolution and he says how you know it's an impossible republicans as universal royalism in general combination and he uses the term literally of the idea is that law of order are royalists who pretend who pretend to be republicans but they are really royalist but they endlessly postpone actualizing their royalist pretensions and then Marx uses a wonderful term the *Genuß* the enjoyment of endless postponing and so on you know no no you find sorry
on the opposite hand this is what always fascinates me if you read through Lacan Marx what wonderful places paradoxes you discover for example when in a passage that I often quote Marx describes that rule of the party of order in France Revolution and he says how you know it's an impossible republicans as universal royalism in general combination and he uses the term literally of the idea is that law of order are royalists who pretend who pretend to be republicans but they are really royalist but they endlessly postpone actualizing their royalist pretensions and then Marx uses a wonderful term the *Genuß* the enjoyment of endless postponing and so on you know no no you find sorry
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procrastination
procrastination
Slavoj Žižek
yeah it's wonderful or another I mean there are so many there are so many real wonders you or for example now I find a wonderful it's pure theory of structure where Marx says that the problem of French society was that one class was doing what what the the the
yeah it's wonderful or another I mean there are so many there are so many real wonders you or for example now I find a wonderful it's pure theory of structure where Marx says that the problem of French society was that one class was doing what what the the the
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bourgeois should have been doing the middle class was doing what the middle class had to be doing should have been doing
bourgeois should have been doing the middle class was doing what the middle class had to be doing should have been doing
Slavoj Žižek
working class is doing you know it's this wonderful theory of we have social structure we have elements but as if it gets shifted and so on and then of course the wonderful structural problem is who then does what the working class should be doing and here Marx's genius comes his point is the military and he know no no no no sorry not in the sense that the army is our real revolutionary force but in the simple sense that the working class should have been doing revolution and that Napoleon's formula was it's a wonderful formula even
working class is doing you know it's this wonderful theory of we have social structure we have elements but as if it gets shifted and so on and then of course the wonderful structural problem is who then does what the working class should be doing and here Marx's genius comes his point is the military and he know no no no no sorry not in the sense that the army is our real revolutionary force but in the simple sense that the working class should have been doing revolution and that Napoleon's formula was it's a wonderful formula even
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liberals
liberals
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like François Furet were fascinated in the debate when Marx says that Napoleon saw that since socially you cannot go further with revolution the only way to continue revolution is to transpose
like François Furet were fascinated in the debate when Marx says that Napoleon saw that since socially you cannot go further with revolution the only way to continue revolution is to transpose
Slavoj Žižek
it into external war you know the only way to keep revolutionary dynamic is to do that so again I think it's a wonderful topic if you read Marx through Freud Hegel how many of these especially I would say not only in Capital but in his analysis of of revolution plus again my eternal motive I simply still don't get it how people didn't notice this earlier how much more complex and Althusser is here totally stupid how much more complex Marxist theory of fetishism it is again they don't see that fetishism is not things are really like that but we are a stupid we misperceive no the point of Marxist theory of fetishism is we know how things really are but it's in our reality that we follow the fantasy the illusion no it's a wonderful reversal more actual than ever today Marx is not saying Marx is not an idiot who says reality is out there we don't see the way it is we live in illusions no Marx says we pretend to be rational but we don't see illusions which structure our reality itself here you have what Lacan is saying reality is structured like a fantasy and so on and so on listen can we slowly stop and fuck democracy I'm sorry but I have to run my god I have problems let I will be back like Terminator said when he disappeared I will be back and so on ah you know who is my new sex symbol did you watch the movies this nice girl Brit Marling did you see The East the Another Earth and so on this is progressive Hollywood today and so on well we have time to thank you even though no I don't give you the time to thank no no no sorry please ask the question now
it into external war you know the only way to keep revolutionary dynamic is to do that so again I think it's a wonderful topic if you read Marx through Freud Hegel how many of these especially I would say not only in Capital but in his analysis of of revolution plus again my eternal motive I simply still don't get it how people didn't notice this earlier how much more complex and Althusser is here totally stupid how much more complex Marxist theory of fetishism it is again they don't see that fetishism is not things are really like that but we are a stupid we misperceive no the point of Marxist theory of fetishism is we know how things really are but it's in our reality that we follow the fantasy the illusion no it's a wonderful reversal more actual than ever today Marx is not saying Marx is not an idiot who says reality is out there we don't see the way it is we live in illusions no Marx says we pretend to be rational but we don't see illusions which structure our reality itself here you have what Lacan is saying reality is structured like a fantasy and so on and so on listen can we slowly stop and fuck democracy I'm sorry but I have to run my god I have problems let I will be back like Terminator said when he disappeared I will be back and so on ah you know who is my new sex symbol did you watch the movies this nice girl Brit Marling did you see The East the Another Earth and so on this is progressive Hollywood today and so on well we have time to thank you even though no I don't give you the time to thank no no no sorry please ask the question now