The Trouble With Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2016-07-19 · 1:59:32 · 25,522 words
psychoanalysishegel-dialecticsphilosophy-generalsexuality-gendersubjectivitylanguageeveryday-lifeliberalism-political-correctness
This is a book event at Birkbeck in which Aaron Schuster presents his book on pleasure, complaint, and the Lacan-Deleuze debate, with Žižek responding as interlocutor. Schuster argues that complaint is the forgotten anthropological universal beneath philosophical critique, and that Lacan and Deleuze represent two competing conceptions of negativity. Žižek engages critically on normativity, sexuality, the Lacanian subject as dead point, and the political dangers of universalizing psychosis in contemporary Lacanian politics. The event includes audience Q&A covering prayer, gender of complaint, Malabou and neuroscience, and Jacques-Alain Miller's political turn.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Schuster and Žižek use it to name the surplus enjoyment that persists beyond demand-satisfaction, exemplified by the pleasure of complaining that outlasts its ostensible object.
Žižek and Schuster develop this formula as the defining condition of the human subject: one does not live one's life but lives one's failure not to be born, i.e. the double negation of never having fully entered existence.
Žižek insists against Miller that the Lacanian Real is a deadlock, an inner crack or impasse of symbolization, not an external flux of raw drives beyond all law.
Žižek's critical label for LGBT or transgressive identities that secretly demand normalization while presenting themselves as subversive, wanting to be admitted as normal, not genuinely outside the norm.
Referenced via Butler's use of Freud: melancholic identification with the lost object is read as a normative prescription in Butler's work, which Žižek rejects.
Žižek coins this to describe a non-theological immortality: we are immortal not because of an immortal soul but because we fail even to properly kill ourselves, a buffoonish persistence beyond death.
as “Kantian pure schematism of sexuality”
Žižek's phrase for Lacan's formal account of sexuality: sexuality is constituted not by biological content but by purely formal, schematic features such as repetition, which can sexualize any neutral act.
Invoked as the structural impossibility of full insertion into the symbolic order; the subject is already dead, and the death drive names this constitutive failure rather than biological destruction.
Žižek argues this Deleuzo-Guattarian concept embeds a theory of negativity in which the body represses its own partial drives before any social repression intervenes.
Žižek insists against Deleuze that partial drives are not primordial plurality but already effects of a more radical negativity (the death drive).
Schuster describes psychoanalysis itself as occupying the position of objet petit a with respect to other sciences, related to everything yet remaining a remainder they cannot absorb.
Žižek's critical term for the move, shared by early Lacan and Derrida, of positing an always-already present condition (the Big Other, writing) from which one cannot step outside, a quasi-transcendental circle.
Referenced in Žižek's critique of Derrida's transcendentalism: Lacan's claim that the Big Other is 'always already here' is identified as a quasi-transcendental circular move.
Cited (via Plague of Fantasies) as providing not an image of what one wants but the very ground or coordinates from which desire becomes possible at all.
Žižek's polemical label for the contemporary Lacanian drift toward treating psychosis as the universal clinical paradigm, which he regards as a political catastrophe colluding with capitalist ideology.
Žižek invokes this Lacanian figure, the death before biological death, the erasure of symbolic existence, as the radical non-meaning at the core of the subject, against Malabou's confinement of psychoanalysis to problems of meaning.
Žižek endorses Schuster's formulation that the Lacanian subject must be strictly distinguished from all bodily dynamics as a pure negative or dead point that cannot be recuperated into circuits of meaning.
Stories he reaches for 2
Žižek's mother secretly enjoyed babysitting but expressed that love only as constant complaint about the burden; when Žižek stopped sending the grandson, she was desperate, deprived of her only mode of enjoyment.
“I stopped giving her the boy and ignored her. And she was desperate. What should I do now?”
Anecdote in which Lacan gave Heidegger a lift; Heidegger kept complaining Lacan was driving too fast, so Lacan drove faster.
“Lacan had a bad impression as well where he gave him a lift in his car Heidegger kept complaining that Lacan was driving too fast and Lacan just drove faster.”
Works invoked 12
Parsifal opera
Žižek names Parsifal as the last great opera and identifies Amfortas's aria (the Fisher King's wound) as the supreme example of Klage, complaint as high art.
Anti-Oedipus book
Žižek credits Anti-Oedipus with an embedded theory of bodily self-repression and negativity but rejects its primordial plurality of drives and its reading of Lacan.
Oedipus at Colonus play
Sophocles play containing the chorus's 'it would be better never to be born', identified as the paradigmatic pure complaint for Lacan.
Butler's book, which Žižek calls perhaps her best, but criticizes for covertly installing the norm that gay subjects are more ethical by not betraying the primordial object.
Žižek's own book, referenced by Schuster as the source of the crucial Lacanian idea that fantasy provides the very ground for desire rather than picturing its object.
Freud's text, referenced for its discussion of the 'better never to have been born' joke; Schuster argues Freud's reading of that joke misfires.
The Burrow other
Kafka story that Heidegger mentioned when asked about Kafka at Cerisy; Dolar has a noted essay on it.
Norbert Wiener's foundational text; Žižek finds its dark claim that the brain is overdeveloped and heading toward extinction valuable as a pathological optic on mind.
De la grammatologie book
Derrida's book; Žižek criticizes its il n'y a pas de hors-texte as oscillating between meta-transcendental critique and naive ontologization of writing.
Cervantes text referenced by Žižek in which dogs start talking and ask whether philosophy is just slander, an analogue to Kafka's 'Investigations of a Dog.'
Investigations of a Dog other
Kafka story that Schuster announces as the subject of his next book; Žižek notes it has not been written on and that Benjamin confessed he never understood it.
Miller's text, which Žižek calls 'madness' for proposing a new Real totally outside law and denouncing formulae of sexuation as merely symbolic, colluding with capitalist ideology.
People invoked 20
Alenka Zupančič positive
Named as part of the same philosophical movement; cited for developing the point that psychoanalytic sexuality is not the same as organic biological sexuality.
Marquis de Sade positive
Referenced as an early literary example of the idea that even the non-living wants to return to nothing, a pathological optic on matter.
Jacques Derrida negative
Žižek criticizes Derrida's il n'y a pas de hors-texte as oscillating between a meta-transcendental position and a naive realist ontology when extended to DNA and quantum physics.
Aaron Schuster positive
Žižek warmly engages Schuster's book, endorses his distinction between subject and bodily dynamics as 'the best parts of the book,' and identifies their work as part of a shared movement including Dolar, Zupančič, Ruda.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek defends Lacan's conception of the Real as immanent impasse of symbolization, the subject as dead point, and the symbolic order as fundamentally a disorder.
Norbert Wiener positive
Žižek finds Wiener's dark cybernetic anti-humanism, the brain is overdeveloped and headed toward extinction, interesting as a 'pathological optic' forgotten by theorists of neuroplasticity.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Žižek acknowledges the theory of negativity embedded in Deleuze and Guattari but insists partial drives are not primordial and that Deleuze's early text celebrating Jung is unforgivable; broadly more Lacanian than Deleuzian.
Frank Ruda positive
Named as part of the shared philosophical movement in psychoanalysis and philosophy.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek argues Butler's theory in Psychic Life of Power covertly installs a norm that homosexual subjects are more ethical, contradicting her own performative theory; he 'violently disagrees.'
Mentioned as the young person who met Heidegger at Cerisy and asked him about Benjamin and Kafka; source of the butter-complaint anecdote.
Félix Guattari negative
Referenced in conjunction with Deleuze; Žižek disputes the primordial plurality thesis in Anti-Oedipus while crediting the embedded theory of bodily self-repression.
Thomas Mann positive
Cited alongside de Sade as a novelist who presents nature itself as sick, the non-living wanting to return to nothing.
Carl Jung negative
Žižek will 'never pardon' Deleuze for his early text celebrating Jung; though he acknowledges Jung put his finger on the philosophical problem of defining sexuality, he rejects Jung's libido-generalization.
Mladen Dolar positive
Cited as part of Žižek's philosophical movement alongside Schuster, Zupančič, Ruda; mentioned as having a wonderful essay on Kafka's The Burrow.
Catherine Malabou negative
Žižek argues Malabou moves too fast in confining psychoanalysis to problems of hermeneutic meaning, missing that Lacan's subject already represents a radical non-meaning or 'night of the world.'
Appears in anecdotes as a complainer (butter at Cerisy, complaining about Lacan's driving) and as politically blind (asking 'who is Benjamin?'), exemplifying the philosopher as compulsive complainer.
Jacques-Alain Miller negative
Žižek mocks Miller's recent political commentary as a vulgarized version of his own earlier work, criticizes his book Psychoanalysis: The Real for the 21st Century as 'madness,' and points to his electoral advisory role for Sarkozy as the political catastrophe of universalizing psychosis.
Walter Benjamin positive
Referenced as someone Heidegger didn't know, and as the critic who confessed he never understood Kafka's 'Investigations of a Dog'; Lacan compared to Benjamin on nature and language.
Sigmund Freud positive
Žižek defends Freudian sexuality as not reducible to genitality or biological reproduction, and endorses Freud's radical critique of normality.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek identifies Hegel as the only philosopher who never complains, he simply understands everything through reversal and negation, and uses him as the standard of dialectical comprehension.
What it argues
complaint as philosophical and anthropological categoryLacan vs. Deleuze on negativity and desirepleasure, jouissance, and the death drivethe Lacanian subject as dead pointnormativity, sexuality, and transgender politicspsychopathology and the critique of normalitynature/culture transition and its impossibility
Dialectical moves 7
“The most horrible thing you can tell a person demanding normalization is 'fuck off — you are nothing special'; they want to be normalized subversives.”
Žižek reverses the apparent radicalism of transgressive identity demands: what they secretly want is normalization, so treating them as unremarkable is more subversive than tolerating them.
“With democracy they lost their right to complain — so-called democracy deprived them of their precious object.”
Žižek inverts the usual narrative: what democracy took away from ex-communist citizens was not oppression but the pleasurable satisfaction of constant complaint that the regime had enabled.
“The only true complaint is not about an object out there but about lacking the very coordinates from which one could desire.”
Žižek reframes what Lacanian lack means: it is not absence of a desired object but absence of the ground of desire itself.
“The realm of sense is fundamentally based on nonsense; the symbolic order is fundamentally a disorder.”
Žižek inverts the usual hierarchy: meaning is not primary with noise as its failure, but non-meaning is foundational and sense is a secondary effect.
“Far from being a free flux of desire outside castration, capitalism is still a radical symbolic antagonism.”
Žižek rejects the pseudo-Deleuzian reading of capitalism as pure real and insists it remains structurally organized by symbolic deadlock.
“The Lacanian Real is not an external force outside the law but is the most immanent inner crack, the obstacle and impasse of the symbolic itself.”
Žižek inverts the pop-Lacanian notion of the Real as raw exterior force: the truly subversive Real is entirely internal to the symbolic order as its constitutive impossibility.
“We are immortal not because we have an immortal soul but because we fail even to properly kill ourselves.”
Žižek reframes immortality from a theological virtue to a buffoonish inability to complete even self-destruction.
Claims 12
asserts
Normativity cannot be dissolved by simply multiplying or permitting all subject-positions; transgenderism reproduces a normative logic even more subtly than heteronormativity.transgenderism and normativity
rejects
Butler's theory of melancholic identification covertly installs a norm that homosexual subjects are more ethical because they don't betray the primordial object — a position that contradicts her own performative theory of sexual difference.Judith Butler's Psychic Life of Power
asserts
Plurality of partial drives is not primordial; there must already be something like the death drive operating as a more radical negativity before partial drives can emerge.Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus
asserts
Under really existing socialism, complaint was the authentic form of popular satisfaction; democracy violently deprived people of their right to complain by telling them they had chosen their rulers.complaint and political ideology
asserts
Opera as a form is essentially structured as aria-as-complaint, from Monteverdi's Orpheus through Wagner's Parsifal (Amfortas's Klage).opera and complaint
rejects
The entire contemporary Lacanian drift toward universalizing psychosis as the clinical paradigm ends in a political catastrophe that buys into capitalist ideology — as demonstrated by Jacques-Alain Miller's electoral advising for Sarkozy.Jacques-Alain Miller and the universalization of psychosis
rejects
Miller's recent reading — that capitalism represents a pure real outside the law, a flux of desire beyond castration — regresses behind Lacan's own concept of the Real as immanent impasse of symbolization.Miller's Psychoanalysis: The Real for the 21st Century
rejects
The Lacanian subject already represents a kind of erasure or 'night of the world' — a radical non-meaning — so Malabou's claim that psychoanalysis is limited to problems of hermeneutic meaning misreads the theory from the start.Catherine Malabou on psychoanalysis and neuroscience
asserts
Capitalism is still a radical symbolic antagonism, not a pure real outside castration and all limitation.capitalism and the Lacanian Real
asserts
In genuinely emancipatory politics, the appropriate response to absolute evil (Hitler, Nazi Germany) is not complaint but diagnosis and action — complaint belongs to a different register of perverted enjoyment.complaint vs. political action
asserts
Social repression is always effective by hijacking the body's own inherent paranoia against its impulses — a point most Deleuzians miss.Deleuze and Guattari on social repression
asserts
Psychoanalysis in its relation to other sciences behaves as the objet petit a of those sciences — related to everything but absorbed by nothing, remaining a remainder.the status of psychoanalysis among disciplines
Quotes 8
“With so-called democracy they lost their right to complain... it's very violent at the moment somebody tries to deprive you of your right to complain.”Slavoj Žižek · complaint as right; democracy's hidden violence
“The realm of sense is fundamentally based on nonsense; the symbolic order is fundamentally a disorder.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian non-meaning as foundation of meaning
“Capitalism is still a radical symbolic antagonism. The most subversive Lacanian real is precisely totally immanent — just an inner crack, obstacle of the symbolic.”Slavoj Žižek · the Real as immanent deadlock of the symbolic
“I believe in norms... I cannot even imagine a more normative attitude than transgenderism if you ask me.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of transgressive identity as covertly normative
“You go on this path and you end up what Miller is doing now, an advisor in the electoral board for Sarkozy.”Slavoj Žižek · political consequences of universalizing psychosis
“What is the entire history of the opera but aria is a complaint? It begins with Orpheus complaining... the last great opera Wagner's Parsifal. The two great arias the Fisher King Amfortas, it's Klage, complaint.”Slavoj Žižek · opera as the art form of complaint
“The only philosopher that I know who never complains is for me Hegel. He basically just understands everything — it's a reversal of this or that. Can you imagine Hegel complaining?”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel as the philosopher beyond complaint
“Social repression is always hijacking another kind of mechanism — the body's own inherent natural paranoia. I think most Deleuzians miss that point.”Slavoj Žižek · social repression exploits bodily self-repression
Transcript 121 turns
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Anyway, whilst we're waiting, I just wanted to thank you all for coming, and we did, I mean, thanks to Madison for organizing the entire thing. Thanks to Madison, you are now in a comfortable room which is less hot than it otherwise would have been upstairs. And we’re really honored to have Aaron Schuster here today and he's on a book tour for his new book, and it's good to see him to talk about it a little bit here, in particular his first chapter, the chapter on complaint, yeah. And Žižek, who’s been working really hard at the summer school, is also joined us to offer some reading of Aaron's book. What we'll do tonight is first Aaron will give a short reading of his chapter and a résumé of the book maybe, then Žižek will respond for a few minutes and then we'll open it up to discussion. And whilst we're waiting, I mean, I just wanted to let you know that I started reading this book, I got it full price before the rest of you, it's a fantastic book and I can't recommend it enough. And if you go to, what is the room later, G16 later after we finish we'll have a reception and you'll be able to buy the book at fifteen pounds, so you get surplus value and you get it signed as well and there’s wine there as well. And I just wanted to say a couple of things about the book. I mean, if you've noticed, it's one of those books in Žižek’s series on Short Circuits, which supposedly takes a major text and interrupts it with the reading of a minor text, except in the case of Aaron. Yeah, and the whole series includes various luminary texts including by Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič and even Žižek. So the whole series is worth investing in. But in Aaron's case, instead of taking one minor in a sense of marginalized text and interrupting it with a major text, it takes two major forms of literature, Lacan and Deleuze, and presents us with what we're quite used to in actually, another double blackmail, I mean, to borrow Žižek's title of his recent book. So we've had so many double blackmails in We had, you know, do we go for racist Brexit or do we go for neoliberal EU? Do we go for opening the door as widely as possible to refugees as Žižek said or do we draw the, pull the drawbridge? Or even as Aaron just mentioned, you know, with the Turkish coup, do we denounce a coup because it goes against democratic processes or do we applaud it because Erdogan was behaving increasingly authoritarianly? So this is what Aaron presents us with as well, a double blackmail. Do we choose, you know, Deleuze or do we choose Lacan? And Aaron's fantastic achievement really is to enable us to have both, to have our cake and eat it. He is able to read both of them and inform both of them, disrupt Lacan with Deleuze and Deleuze with Lacan. And it's a beautiful, I can't recommend it enough, and as I say you get it at a discount later on. But I'll let him talk about it first and I think he'll talk about the honored discourse of complaint. Okay. No, it's really a, thanks for this invitation. It's really a pleasure to be here. I'm not often in London. And immediately, sort of the circumstances of this event sort of illustrate one of the theses of the book. I was here last week and there was just kind of this miserable weather and I was saying is it really like this the whole summer, kind of this terrible grey, cold weather. I come back here and it's kind of sweltering heat. So you see that somehow there's this oscillation between kind of a miserable sort of lack and a kind of stifling surplus somehow. So somehow maybe English weather illustrates the paradox of enjoyment. But in any event, okay, what I would like to do is give a kind of summary of the book. So I'll sort of present, I'll try to explain what I was trying to accomplish in the book and then sort of talk about the major lines of argument. And I think there's really four kind of different aspects. Sometimes I'm even tempted to think there's almost four different books that are somehow cohabiting within this book. So first of all, the book is about pleasure. And my basic thesis is that pleasure is a confusing, complicated and kind of conflicted phenomena. It's much more difficult and ambiguous than it's often made out to be. So the
Anyway, whilst we're waiting, I just wanted to thank you all for coming, and we did, I mean, thanks to Madison for organizing the entire thing. Thanks to Madison, you are now in a comfortable room which is less hot than it otherwise would have been upstairs. And we’re really honored to have Aaron Schuster here today and he's on a book tour for his new book, and it's good to see him to talk about it a little bit here, in particular his first chapter, the chapter on complaint, yeah. And Žižek, who’s been working really hard at the summer school, is also joined us to offer some reading of Aaron's book. What we'll do tonight is first Aaron will give a short reading of his chapter and a résumé of the book maybe, then Žižek will respond for a few minutes and then we'll open it up to discussion. And whilst we're waiting, I mean, I just wanted to let you know that I started reading this book, I got it full price before the rest of you, it's a fantastic book and I can't recommend it enough. And if you go to, what is the room later, G16 later after we finish we'll have a reception and you'll be able to buy the book at fifteen pounds, so you get surplus value and you get it signed as well and there’s wine there as well. And I just wanted to say a couple of things about the book. I mean, if you've noticed, it's one of those books in Žižek’s series on Short Circuits, which supposedly takes a major text and interrupts it with the reading of a minor text, except in the case of Aaron. Yeah, and the whole series includes various luminary texts including by Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupančič and even Žižek. So the whole series is worth investing in. But in Aaron's case, instead of taking one minor in a sense of marginalized text and interrupting it with a major text, it takes two major forms of literature, Lacan and Deleuze, and presents us with what we're quite used to in actually, another double blackmail, I mean, to borrow Žižek's title of his recent book. So we've had so many double blackmails in We had, you know, do we go for racist Brexit or do we go for neoliberal EU? Do we go for opening the door as widely as possible to refugees as Žižek said or do we draw the, pull the drawbridge? Or even as Aaron just mentioned, you know, with the Turkish coup, do we denounce a coup because it goes against democratic processes or do we applaud it because Erdogan was behaving increasingly authoritarianly? So this is what Aaron presents us with as well, a double blackmail. Do we choose, you know, Deleuze or do we choose Lacan? And Aaron's fantastic achievement really is to enable us to have both, to have our cake and eat it. He is able to read both of them and inform both of them, disrupt Lacan with Deleuze and Deleuze with Lacan. And it's a beautiful, I can't recommend it enough, and as I say you get it at a discount later on. But I'll let him talk about it first and I think he'll talk about the honored discourse of complaint. Okay. No, it's really a, thanks for this invitation. It's really a pleasure to be here. I'm not often in London. And immediately, sort of the circumstances of this event sort of illustrate one of the theses of the book. I was here last week and there was just kind of this miserable weather and I was saying is it really like this the whole summer, kind of this terrible grey, cold weather. I come back here and it's kind of sweltering heat. So you see that somehow there's this oscillation between kind of a miserable sort of lack and a kind of stifling surplus somehow. So somehow maybe English weather illustrates the paradox of enjoyment. But in any event, okay, what I would like to do is give a kind of summary of the book. So I'll sort of present, I'll try to explain what I was trying to accomplish in the book and then sort of talk about the major lines of argument. And I think there's really four kind of different aspects. Sometimes I'm even tempted to think there's almost four different books that are somehow cohabiting within this book. So first of all, the book is about pleasure. And my basic thesis is that pleasure is a confusing, complicated and kind of conflicted phenomena. It's much more difficult and ambiguous than it's often made out to be. So the
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kind of classic moral wisdom that would say that the human being is seeking pleasure or trying to avoid pain, or that somehow pleasure is good and pain is bad. After all, that's an idea that informs a lot of philosophy, moral psychology and economics today. I think this idea presents a far too simple sort of picture of human existence and that it's just the kind of opposite. I mean, that what we want and what we enjoy are often not the same thing. And against the idea that we're kind of striving for happiness, one can have just the opposite impression. And I think even if you're not a Freudian, so even if you don't bind to psychoanalysis, one can have the impression that human beings are actually astoundingly ingenious at engineering their own discontent. And they’re very creative and very inventive at that, at creating all sorts of ways of being unhappy. There's a wonderful line on this by Nietzsche. Nietzsche says man does not seek pleasure, only the Englishman does. I think we can even, given sort of recent political
kind of classic moral wisdom that would say that the human being is seeking pleasure or trying to avoid pain, or that somehow pleasure is good and pain is bad. After all, that's an idea that informs a lot of philosophy, moral psychology and economics today. I think this idea presents a far too simple sort of picture of human existence and that it's just the kind of opposite. I mean, that what we want and what we enjoy are often not the same thing. And against the idea that we're kind of striving for happiness, one can have just the opposite impression. And I think even if you're not a Freudian, so even if you don't bind to psychoanalysis, one can have the impression that human beings are actually astoundingly ingenious at engineering their own discontent. And they’re very creative and very inventive at that, at creating all sorts of ways of being unhappy. There's a wonderful line on this by Nietzsche. Nietzsche says man does not seek pleasure, only the Englishman does. I think we can even, given sort of recent political
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developments, one can even sort of doubt this wisdom, this kind of clichéd image of the Englishman as kind of hard-headed, pragmatic and so forth. But Nietzsche of course was making fun of this kind of, or trying to poke fun at this kind of utilitarian moral psychology. I think another aphorism that even goes really to the heart of the matter and to the core of what I consider the kind of Freudian picture of human existence or a Freudian sort of contemporary moral psychology is from a French writer I like a lot, a kind of aphorist named Georges Perros. And Perros has a wonderful quote and it goes like this. He says, it's true that people go to a lot of trouble in order to be unhappy, but are they? And what I like very much about this line is it kind of reverses again the classical picture, the kind of classical moral picture that essentially human beings are striving for happiness, they’re trying to actualize their being, they’re trying to fulfill their desires, but of course there's all sorts of sort of obstacles and conflicts along the way that will derail them. Now this is the kind of, okay, classical picture of morality which still is powerful today, still this idea that people somehow want to be happy. And I think the Freudian idea or more modern approach to this moral psychology would just be the kind of opposite, that somehow human beings are striving to sabotage their own being, they’re trying to undermine their own desires, but somehow they’re so incompetent, they’re so bad at that, that they can't even manage, they even manage to bungle their own self-sabotage, so they become happy, as it were, by accident. So this is the line, that human beings go to a lot of trouble in order to be unhappy, but are they really unhappy? Isn't there a kind of content in the discontent? So that happiness I think for us moderns in a modern universe is not the kind of goal or the telos of an actualized being, but is more a kind of accident or byproduct, something you're not aiming at but you kind of stumble into and it can be quite surprising. So, in examining pleasure, I actually go back to Freud and that's sort of the centerpiece of the book, the middle chapter, where I reread Freud, Freud's theories of pleasure and his three essays on theory of sexuality, as a kind of theory that recapitulates a lot of the debates in the history of philosophy. So I think one can reread sort of the history of philosophical ideas and theories about pleasure and desire through Freud. And one can see that actually Freudian psychoanalysis doesn't have a unitary, so it doesn't have a kind of single definition of what pleasure is or how the pleasure principle operates, but actually is a kind of, you can read the text as a kind of battleground where numerous sort of philosophical theories meet and are in conflict with one another. And I think part of the greatness of Freud is actually to present such a fragmented and complex theory of pleasure. So at some point I suggest one theory of pleasure is more Platonic, at another point he seems to be more Aristotelian, again there's a kind of more Thomistic sort of theory and then also in kind of Nietzschean aspects. So I think in the book I don't give a sort of comprehensive history of pleasure but a kind of strategic one, where I try to show sort of the complexity of Freud's own approach to pleasure, which really can be summarized by that strange German term *Lust*. And as Freud himself so says in the Three Essays, that the problem with the concept of *Lust* is that it actually has a double sense. So it can mean the feeling of satisfaction or pleasure, but it can also designate desire. Like you can say in German, like I have, like I have *Lust* for something and in that sense, like I have a desire for something. And you can see that Freud's real problem was trying to figure out how those two aspects of *Lust*, of pleasure, can be combined, how to create a synthesis between them, how they would interact: desire, wishing, willing, wanting on one hand and satisfaction, enjoyment, pleasure on the other. And in fact I think we can also read this in an interesting Hegelian way, that it seems to be a kind of speculative word, a word that contains a meaning and its opposite. So I also go and analyze all the different ways, all the different possibilities of combining these different meanings, okay. Part of my interest also is to return to the French debates about the philosophy of desire in the 1960s and 1970s. So I'm very interested in this period and the idea that desire is a kind of fundamental philosophical category or one starts doing philosophy with the concept of desire. And I think the high point of these debates were really in the 60s and 70s in France. And if you reconstruct these debates what's interesting, so if you take a kind of step back, is that it seems like there's a tremendous sort of terminological confusion and even a kind of struggle, you can even have the impression there's a kind of struggle for philosophers to decide which is the most radical sort of voluptuous term, if I can put it that way. So Deleuze for instance will say pleasure, terrible, that's a terrible word, let's just
developments, one can even sort of doubt this wisdom, this kind of clichéd image of the Englishman as kind of hard-headed, pragmatic and so forth. But Nietzsche of course was making fun of this kind of, or trying to poke fun at this kind of utilitarian moral psychology. I think another aphorism that even goes really to the heart of the matter and to the core of what I consider the kind of Freudian picture of human existence or a Freudian sort of contemporary moral psychology is from a French writer I like a lot, a kind of aphorist named Georges Perros. And Perros has a wonderful quote and it goes like this. He says, it's true that people go to a lot of trouble in order to be unhappy, but are they? And what I like very much about this line is it kind of reverses again the classical picture, the kind of classical moral picture that essentially human beings are striving for happiness, they’re trying to actualize their being, they’re trying to fulfill their desires, but of course there's all sorts of sort of obstacles and conflicts along the way that will derail them. Now this is the kind of, okay, classical picture of morality which still is powerful today, still this idea that people somehow want to be happy. And I think the Freudian idea or more modern approach to this moral psychology would just be the kind of opposite, that somehow human beings are striving to sabotage their own being, they’re trying to undermine their own desires, but somehow they’re so incompetent, they’re so bad at that, that they can't even manage, they even manage to bungle their own self-sabotage, so they become happy, as it were, by accident. So this is the line, that human beings go to a lot of trouble in order to be unhappy, but are they really unhappy? Isn't there a kind of content in the discontent? So that happiness I think for us moderns in a modern universe is not the kind of goal or the telos of an actualized being, but is more a kind of accident or byproduct, something you're not aiming at but you kind of stumble into and it can be quite surprising. So, in examining pleasure, I actually go back to Freud and that's sort of the centerpiece of the book, the middle chapter, where I reread Freud, Freud's theories of pleasure and his three essays on theory of sexuality, as a kind of theory that recapitulates a lot of the debates in the history of philosophy. So I think one can reread sort of the history of philosophical ideas and theories about pleasure and desire through Freud. And one can see that actually Freudian psychoanalysis doesn't have a unitary, so it doesn't have a kind of single definition of what pleasure is or how the pleasure principle operates, but actually is a kind of, you can read the text as a kind of battleground where numerous sort of philosophical theories meet and are in conflict with one another. And I think part of the greatness of Freud is actually to present such a fragmented and complex theory of pleasure. So at some point I suggest one theory of pleasure is more Platonic, at another point he seems to be more Aristotelian, again there's a kind of more Thomistic sort of theory and then also in kind of Nietzschean aspects. So I think in the book I don't give a sort of comprehensive history of pleasure but a kind of strategic one, where I try to show sort of the complexity of Freud's own approach to pleasure, which really can be summarized by that strange German term *Lust*. And as Freud himself so says in the Three Essays, that the problem with the concept of *Lust* is that it actually has a double sense. So it can mean the feeling of satisfaction or pleasure, but it can also designate desire. Like you can say in German, like I have, like I have *Lust* for something and in that sense, like I have a desire for something. And you can see that Freud's real problem was trying to figure out how those two aspects of *Lust*, of pleasure, can be combined, how to create a synthesis between them, how they would interact: desire, wishing, willing, wanting on one hand and satisfaction, enjoyment, pleasure on the other. And in fact I think we can also read this in an interesting Hegelian way, that it seems to be a kind of speculative word, a word that contains a meaning and its opposite. So I also go and analyze all the different ways, all the different possibilities of combining these different meanings, okay. Part of my interest also is to return to the French debates about the philosophy of desire in the 1960s and 1970s. So I'm very interested in this period and the idea that desire is a kind of fundamental philosophical category or one starts doing philosophy with the concept of desire. And I think the high point of these debates were really in the 60s and 70s in France. And if you reconstruct these debates what's interesting, so if you take a kind of step back, is that it seems like there's a tremendous sort of terminological confusion and even a kind of struggle, you can even have the impression there's a kind of struggle for philosophers to decide which is the most radical sort of voluptuous term, if I can put it that way. So Deleuze for instance will say pleasure, terrible, that's a terrible word, let's just
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get rid of it. Why is pleasure a terrible word? Because it always seems to refer back to the idea of lack and fulfillment. Instead I want to start thinking with a new word, desire. Desire doesn't refer to lack, it will refer to the enjoyment of a force. Okay. But then Foucault comes along and says you know, desire, that's a terrible word, let's just get rid of that term. Why? Largely for the same reasons. Because desire for Foucault refers to lack and also to a kind of psychoanalytic hermeneutics, and he suggests why don't we go back to the term pleasure and to the idea of the self as an agent of pleasure, so philosophies of self-creation, and that’s his return to the Greeks. You also have and then Lacan will say well also I would downgrade pleasure and I would prefer the term enjoyment, but there's something else at stake there as well. And I think one shouldn't forget Sartre a bit earlier, but Sartre’s also of a kind of philosophy of desire as a perpetual failure. So my response to this, to try to kind of get at the core I think of what was at stake of this debate, is actually also like Foucault I return to the Greeks. But unlike Foucault, so instead of returning to the Greeks as a kind of stylistics of existence or kind of self as agent of pleasure as I said, I take a kind of more flat-footed approach. I actually go back to the Greek debates about the meaning of pleasure, so of *hedone*, and use that as a kind of grounding to then give a new sense to the terms and the relationship between the terms drive and desire, pleasure and enjoyment. And I think the most fundamental debate here in Greek philosophy comes down to that debate between Plato and Aristotle. And practically the entire history of philosophy, all, I mean, I'm exaggerating, but not much, that all subsequent philosophical sort of reflections on the nature of pleasure somehow refer back to that inaugural debate between Plato and Aristotle. They either take one side or the other or they try to combine them in some kind of creative way. So what are these two paradigms of pleasure? Plato defines pleasure as the filling of a lack. So I'll just state this very simply. For Plato pleasure is the filling of a lack, for Aristotle pleasure is the enjoyment of an activity. For Plato pleasure refers to a feeling, so it would be the soul's perception of some kind of process of replenishment, filling a lack or getting rid of some kind of surplus irritation, but essentially returning to equilibrium. Aristotle on the other hand says it has nothing to do with lack, and that the living, the living being, being as such even, can't be defined in terms of a static equilibrium of elements, but being is defined by a kind of dynamic force or an energy, an *energeia*. And that pleasure is linked to the living being's self-actualization. So whereas Plato will use the examples of like eating and drinking as forms of satisfaction, Aristotle's primary examples will be thinking, seeing and so forth, living in the active sense of the word. So I think this is the kind of ground, the basic ground for re-evaluating, for understanding different concepts of pleasure. Now the other thing I'm interested in and that I return to is also a very weird idea you get in Greek philosophy and as far as I know that idea was pretty much ignored by everyone, but I think it's really fascinating. And that's that for the Greeks, the best pleasure, the best pleasure, the purest pleasure, the greatest and most intense pleasure was philosophy. Nobody will buy this today, and especially in a kind of post-Freudian sense, you know, the gold standard for pleasure is sexuality. But I think it's interesting to actually take the Greeks seriously on this point, that thinking is the best example of pleasure and that philosophy is somehow the greatest pleasure. And so I explore that in different ways and in some ways that let's say also cut against the grain of let's say Plato and Aristotle's own or announcements. I think one of the kind of wonderful episodes in Greek philosophy that illustrates just how deeply pleasurable thinking is is actually the first joke, the first joke about philosophy. So in the kind of history of philosophy that's recounted in the *Theaetetus*, and it's a joke about Thales. So you know Thales one day is contemplating the stars, he's walking along, he's deeply absorbed in his contemplation and he falls into a ditch, he falls into a well and then there's the Thracian maid who laughs at him. This is the kind of inaugural scene, this is somehow a kind of primal scene of philosophy. And of course it's read in many different ways and the standard, I would say the standard approach to reading it is somehow this is a joke about the dangers of professional thinking, the idea that the philosopher's head is in the clouds, think Aristophanes, whereas like they’re ignorant of practical problems in the life-world. Now that's not my approach to the joke. I think what the joke illustrates is actually pleasure's deep, deeply inertial power. That if you enjoy something it means you want to do it more and more. And in fact I think the fundamental trait of pleasure, and this brings us within the sphere of what Lacan would call *jouissance* or enjoyment, it's not feeling
get rid of it. Why is pleasure a terrible word? Because it always seems to refer back to the idea of lack and fulfillment. Instead I want to start thinking with a new word, desire. Desire doesn't refer to lack, it will refer to the enjoyment of a force. Okay. But then Foucault comes along and says you know, desire, that's a terrible word, let's just get rid of that term. Why? Largely for the same reasons. Because desire for Foucault refers to lack and also to a kind of psychoanalytic hermeneutics, and he suggests why don't we go back to the term pleasure and to the idea of the self as an agent of pleasure, so philosophies of self-creation, and that’s his return to the Greeks. You also have and then Lacan will say well also I would downgrade pleasure and I would prefer the term enjoyment, but there's something else at stake there as well. And I think one shouldn't forget Sartre a bit earlier, but Sartre’s also of a kind of philosophy of desire as a perpetual failure. So my response to this, to try to kind of get at the core I think of what was at stake of this debate, is actually also like Foucault I return to the Greeks. But unlike Foucault, so instead of returning to the Greeks as a kind of stylistics of existence or kind of self as agent of pleasure as I said, I take a kind of more flat-footed approach. I actually go back to the Greek debates about the meaning of pleasure, so of *hedone*, and use that as a kind of grounding to then give a new sense to the terms and the relationship between the terms drive and desire, pleasure and enjoyment. And I think the most fundamental debate here in Greek philosophy comes down to that debate between Plato and Aristotle. And practically the entire history of philosophy, all, I mean, I'm exaggerating, but not much, that all subsequent philosophical sort of reflections on the nature of pleasure somehow refer back to that inaugural debate between Plato and Aristotle. They either take one side or the other or they try to combine them in some kind of creative way. So what are these two paradigms of pleasure? Plato defines pleasure as the filling of a lack. So I'll just state this very simply. For Plato pleasure is the filling of a lack, for Aristotle pleasure is the enjoyment of an activity. For Plato pleasure refers to a feeling, so it would be the soul's perception of some kind of process of replenishment, filling a lack or getting rid of some kind of surplus irritation, but essentially returning to equilibrium. Aristotle on the other hand says it has nothing to do with lack, and that the living, the living being, being as such even, can't be defined in terms of a static equilibrium of elements, but being is defined by a kind of dynamic force or an energy, an *energeia*. And that pleasure is linked to the living being's self-actualization. So whereas Plato will use the examples of like eating and drinking as forms of satisfaction, Aristotle's primary examples will be thinking, seeing and so forth, living in the active sense of the word. So I think this is the kind of ground, the basic ground for re-evaluating, for understanding different concepts of pleasure. Now the other thing I'm interested in and that I return to is also a very weird idea you get in Greek philosophy and as far as I know that idea was pretty much ignored by everyone, but I think it's really fascinating. And that's that for the Greeks, the best pleasure, the best pleasure, the purest pleasure, the greatest and most intense pleasure was philosophy. Nobody will buy this today, and especially in a kind of post-Freudian sense, you know, the gold standard for pleasure is sexuality. But I think it's interesting to actually take the Greeks seriously on this point, that thinking is the best example of pleasure and that philosophy is somehow the greatest pleasure. And so I explore that in different ways and in some ways that let's say also cut against the grain of let's say Plato and Aristotle's own or announcements. I think one of the kind of wonderful episodes in Greek philosophy that illustrates just how deeply pleasurable thinking is is actually the first joke, the first joke about philosophy. So in the kind of history of philosophy that's recounted in the *Theaetetus*, and it's a joke about Thales. So you know Thales one day is contemplating the stars, he's walking along, he's deeply absorbed in his contemplation and he falls into a ditch, he falls into a well and then there's the Thracian maid who laughs at him. This is the kind of inaugural scene, this is somehow a kind of primal scene of philosophy. And of course it's read in many different ways and the standard, I would say the standard approach to reading it is somehow this is a joke about the dangers of professional thinking, the idea that the philosopher's head is in the clouds, think Aristophanes, whereas like they’re ignorant of practical problems in the life-world. Now that's not my approach to the joke. I think what the joke illustrates is actually pleasure's deep, deeply inertial power. That if you enjoy something it means you want to do it more and more. And in fact I think the fundamental trait of pleasure, and this brings us within the sphere of what Lacan would call *jouissance* or enjoyment, it's not feeling
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good. So I think this is also a kind of, this is part of the inheritance of a kind of Platonic model, that we associate pleasure with somehow a good feeling or a Plato an *aisthesis*, a perception. What's interesting in the Aristotelian conception is that pleasure is not directly related to feeling, it's actually the relation, it's actually defined as the relationship between an agent or a subject and an activity. And I think pleasure takes place when you're absorbed in or let's say surrendered to an activity that sort of takes over in itself and goes its own way. So that you can actually maybe not even be aware of your pleasure, because you're simply something is simply happening. And I think this idea of Thales being so kind of enjoying philosophy so absorbed that he falls into a ditch means that indeed it underscores that kind of inertial power of pleasure, that you can see the real strength of pleasure is when you ignore everything else. And that there's something interesting about pleasure, that it wants to keep going and pursue its own path irrespective of any other kind of obstacles, limits, outside considerations and so forth. Okay. So, somehow philosophy is the best pleasure. You could also put it another way and this is how I also explore it in the book, that the idea that it's very interesting to me that somehow the theory of pleasure ends up being about the pleasure of theory, we could say in ancient philosophy. And I think it's not until psychoanalysis, until Lacan, that somebody actually takes up this idea in a serious manner. So Lacan will also say for us, and this is in one of the later seminars, thought is *jouissance*, thinking is pleasure, except that our idea of what thinking is has changed. Because for psychoanalysis thinking refers to unconscious thought processes, so that you would see in slips of the tongue or dreams or jokes or symptoms for example, but it's actually those symbolic processes that are carrying pleasure. So that thought is pleasure. And I think that's very interesting that Lacan reaffirms this ancient Greek notion that it's really fallen somehow by the wayside. I'm not even sure how seriously the Greeks intended that, the idea that pleasure is the gold standard, pleasure is really the highest and greatest pleasure. Okay. Thinking, philosophy is the highest and greatest pleasure. Okay. But, second part of the book then, about complaining. In fact I open the book with a kind of long analysis of complaining. And for me complaining is just an excellent example, kind of way into the topic, that really illustrates how strange, perverse, tortuous, conflicted, difficult the human relationship to pleasure is. And even on a very simple level, that's quite interesting. So let's just start on a simple phenomenological level. I think that's quite interesting, everybody knows those people who really enjoy complaining. And I think that's an odd phenomenon, that you can really enjoy something that's based on pain or that's based on hardships, slights, unfortunate, aggravating situations or even unbearable situations. So I start with complaining as a kind of example of pleasure and the book actually opens with a joke. So I start with this joke, it's a well-known genre of jokes, kind of two Jews on a train in Russia. And the younger man kind of sits next to this older man and the older man throughout the ride keeps saying like "Oi, I'm so thirsty, I'm so thirsty," he keeps repeating this "I'm so thirsty." So finally the younger man can't take it anymore and he goes to the other car where there's drinks and he brings a glass of water and he gives it to the old man. So the old man drinks the water, he calms down, everything looks relaxed, but like a few minutes later he sees the old man is starting to kind of get agitated, he starts shaking and finally the old man, you know, he can't hold it in anymore and he bursts out like "Ah, I was so thirsty, I was so thirsty!" Now, I think if we really deeply meditate on this joke, you can really discover everything you need to know about how human desire works. I won't go through all the nuances of the joke, but I think you can really read it in three if not four ways. You can ask about what is being complained about, so the object of complaint. And what's interesting there is of course what the old man seems to be saying is you can satisfy my demand, I'm asking for water, you give it to me, but something in my desire still persists, is not satisfied. So you can look at the object of complaint. You can look at the addressee, who's being addressed in the complaint and you can say well, it's not so much about satisfying thirst but you could say what the old man really wants is to be recognized as a thirsty human being. So it's really about manipulation and control. And you know how much in life people are complaining in order to somehow manipulate, control, dominate the other person. I think the best example in pop culture of this, if you ever watch Sopranos, think of Livia the mother who's constantly complaining clearly only in order to sort of dominate her son. You can also look at this in terms of, and I think that's a maybe more interesting aspect, the activity of complaining itself. So it's clear that the old man simply wants
good. So I think this is also a kind of, this is part of the inheritance of a kind of Platonic model, that we associate pleasure with somehow a good feeling or a Plato an *aisthesis*, a perception. What's interesting in the Aristotelian conception is that pleasure is not directly related to feeling, it's actually the relation, it's actually defined as the relationship between an agent or a subject and an activity. And I think pleasure takes place when you're absorbed in or let's say surrendered to an activity that sort of takes over in itself and goes its own way. So that you can actually maybe not even be aware of your pleasure, because you're simply something is simply happening. And I think this idea of Thales being so kind of enjoying philosophy so absorbed that he falls into a ditch means that indeed it underscores that kind of inertial power of pleasure, that you can see the real strength of pleasure is when you ignore everything else. And that there's something interesting about pleasure, that it wants to keep going and pursue its own path irrespective of any other kind of obstacles, limits, outside considerations and so forth. Okay. So, somehow philosophy is the best pleasure. You could also put it another way and this is how I also explore it in the book, that the idea that it's very interesting to me that somehow the theory of pleasure ends up being about the pleasure of theory, we could say in ancient philosophy. And I think it's not until psychoanalysis, until Lacan, that somebody actually takes up this idea in a serious manner. So Lacan will also say for us, and this is in one of the later seminars, thought is *jouissance*, thinking is pleasure, except that our idea of what thinking is has changed. Because for psychoanalysis thinking refers to unconscious thought processes, so that you would see in slips of the tongue or dreams or jokes or symptoms for example, but it's actually those symbolic processes that are carrying pleasure. So that thought is pleasure. And I think that's very interesting that Lacan reaffirms this ancient Greek notion that it's really fallen somehow by the wayside. I'm not even sure how seriously the Greeks intended that, the idea that pleasure is the gold standard, pleasure is really the highest and greatest pleasure. Okay. Thinking, philosophy is the highest and greatest pleasure. Okay. But, second part of the book then, about complaining. In fact I open the book with a kind of long analysis of complaining. And for me complaining is just an excellent example, kind of way into the topic, that really illustrates how strange, perverse, tortuous, conflicted, difficult the human relationship to pleasure is. And even on a very simple level, that's quite interesting. So let's just start on a simple phenomenological level. I think that's quite interesting, everybody knows those people who really enjoy complaining. And I think that's an odd phenomenon, that you can really enjoy something that's based on pain or that's based on hardships, slights, unfortunate, aggravating situations or even unbearable situations. So I start with complaining as a kind of example of pleasure and the book actually opens with a joke. So I start with this joke, it's a well-known genre of jokes, kind of two Jews on a train in Russia. And the younger man kind of sits next to this older man and the older man throughout the ride keeps saying like "Oi, I'm so thirsty, I'm so thirsty," he keeps repeating this "I'm so thirsty." So finally the younger man can't take it anymore and he goes to the other car where there's drinks and he brings a glass of water and he gives it to the old man. So the old man drinks the water, he calms down, everything looks relaxed, but like a few minutes later he sees the old man is starting to kind of get agitated, he starts shaking and finally the old man, you know, he can't hold it in anymore and he bursts out like "Ah, I was so thirsty, I was so thirsty!" Now, I think if we really deeply meditate on this joke, you can really discover everything you need to know about how human desire works. I won't go through all the nuances of the joke, but I think you can really read it in three if not four ways. You can ask about what is being complained about, so the object of complaint. And what's interesting there is of course what the old man seems to be saying is you can satisfy my demand, I'm asking for water, you give it to me, but something in my desire still persists, is not satisfied. So you can look at the object of complaint. You can look at the addressee, who's being addressed in the complaint and you can say well, it's not so much about satisfying thirst but you could say what the old man really wants is to be recognized as a thirsty human being. So it's really about manipulation and control. And you know how much in life people are complaining in order to somehow manipulate, control, dominate the other person. I think the best example in pop culture of this, if you ever watch Sopranos, think of Livia the mother who's constantly complaining clearly only in order to sort of dominate her son. You can also look at this in terms of, and I think that's a maybe more interesting aspect, the activity of complaining itself. So it's clear that the old man simply wants
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to complain because that's part of his very being, it's his drive to complain and he can be very devious, very clever about it. And if you're really a gifted, or if you're really a great complainer, it means that you can be more or less indifferent to the external circumstance. It doesn't matter if things are good or things are bad, you can find a way, you can always find something to complain about. So in that sense complaining almost is like a kind of Kantian schematism. It's sort of complaining is a kind of a priori as it were structure that constructs the world in a certain way. It's a kind of way of being in the world. And then I think the most psychoanalytic way, the question is to ask who actually is complaining. And that's a question that will be posed in psychoanalysis when you start speaking and you're starting explaining kind of aggravations or problems of your life. Are you speaking? Is that your father speaking? I mean, okay, to be very vulgar, but who really is speaking in you when you're complaining, who is the real subject of that. So I think there's multiple dimensions of this problem. And somehow this joke for me really encapsulates the complexities of human desire. Now, the second reason why I look at complaining is I actually want to break a certain cliché in philosophy. As you know, okay, in philosophy but let's say in intellectual discourse more broadly, we are always talking about criticism and critique. Sometimes there's even a kind of beyond of critique, I don't know, criticality or something. But never does is complaining, at least my knowledge been really raised to the level of the concept. So I think complaining is sort of the poor neglected cousin somehow of criticism and critique. But couldn't we reverse this picture and understand criticism and critique as kind of, you know, sublimations, refinements of what is, what I take to be a kind of anthropological constant. So I treat complaining as a kind of let's say universal or near universal human pastime. And the more you research it, it's actually quite an interesting subject because it has a history, it has cultural variations and it's also completely bound up with the history of literature as well. So I only, I mean, in a certain way I only kind of touch the surface in the as far as the research as far as my research was able to go. But as just a small anecdote, I can say when I was presenting, so when I was first working on this some years ago, it was quite interesting to see how different audiences reacted. And I can say probably the most enthusiastic response I got to kind of an early presentation of this critique of complaint was in Portugal in Lisbon. People really stayed for hours, hours I had to answer questions and they really tried to convince me that indeed it was the Portuguese and not the Jews who were the real masters of complaining. And of course you have a very kind of sublime complaint in the Portuguese culture and that's the art of the *fado* for instance. So okay. So I want to take complaining seriously as a philosophical problem. And again my question is not a moralistic one. That's the other problem, if people do discuss complaint it's in a very moralistic way. So they'll say something like this: don't complain too much in life, you know, only complain when something is really important, make sure your complaints are like socially productive protests and not sort of mere whinging or whatnot. That doesn't interest me in the least. I'm more interested in understanding what the phenomenon of complaining can tell us about the human condition and the nature of human desire. So I'm not interested in this kind of moralistic discourse. And in fact in some respects I kind of want to defend complaining or at least the dignity of it, that it's an interesting object of inquiry. Third, so the third aspect to my interest in complaining is I think it's a new way, sort of for me at least it was a fresh way to speak about negativity and to enter into that philosophical problem of negativity and also to try to characterize, so it's kind of the introduction, the preface of the book, it's a way into that problem, that difficult dialogue between Lacan and Deleuze. And I was quite interested, so I discovered this sort of early on, that in Deleuze's you know these ABCs, the *Abécédaire*, so these this videotaped interview where he sort of expounds on different topics going through the alphabet. When he comes to J for Joy, his main example of joy is complaining. And I think that's wonderful because it really cuts against the also the clichéd image we have of Deleuze as kind of philosopher of sort of affirmation, affirmative affects and so forth, that he actually when he talks about joy he actually talks about the complaint. And even Parnet, so his Claire Parnet, so his interlocutor is a little surprised by this. So she says like well, if you've, you know, if you've avoided these negative affects, guilt, the problematics of guilt and death, if you've tried to liberate desire from lack, and especially in his later work, if you've tried to distance yourself from psychoanalysis, why do you value, you know, why do you put so much emphasis on complaining? And Deleuze's answer is
to complain because that's part of his very being, it's his drive to complain and he can be very devious, very clever about it. And if you're really a gifted, or if you're really a great complainer, it means that you can be more or less indifferent to the external circumstance. It doesn't matter if things are good or things are bad, you can find a way, you can always find something to complain about. So in that sense complaining almost is like a kind of Kantian schematism. It's sort of complaining is a kind of a priori as it were structure that constructs the world in a certain way. It's a kind of way of being in the world. And then I think the most psychoanalytic way, the question is to ask who actually is complaining. And that's a question that will be posed in psychoanalysis when you start speaking and you're starting explaining kind of aggravations or problems of your life. Are you speaking? Is that your father speaking? I mean, okay, to be very vulgar, but who really is speaking in you when you're complaining, who is the real subject of that. So I think there's multiple dimensions of this problem. And somehow this joke for me really encapsulates the complexities of human desire. Now, the second reason why I look at complaining is I actually want to break a certain cliché in philosophy. As you know, okay, in philosophy but let's say in intellectual discourse more broadly, we are always talking about criticism and critique. Sometimes there's even a kind of beyond of critique, I don't know, criticality or something. But never does is complaining, at least my knowledge been really raised to the level of the concept. So I think complaining is sort of the poor neglected cousin somehow of criticism and critique. But couldn't we reverse this picture and understand criticism and critique as kind of, you know, sublimations, refinements of what is, what I take to be a kind of anthropological constant. So I treat complaining as a kind of let's say universal or near universal human pastime. And the more you research it, it's actually quite an interesting subject because it has a history, it has cultural variations and it's also completely bound up with the history of literature as well. So I only, I mean, in a certain way I only kind of touch the surface in the as far as the research as far as my research was able to go. But as just a small anecdote, I can say when I was presenting, so when I was first working on this some years ago, it was quite interesting to see how different audiences reacted. And I can say probably the most enthusiastic response I got to kind of an early presentation of this critique of complaint was in Portugal in Lisbon. People really stayed for hours, hours I had to answer questions and they really tried to convince me that indeed it was the Portuguese and not the Jews who were the real masters of complaining. And of course you have a very kind of sublime complaint in the Portuguese culture and that's the art of the *fado* for instance. So okay. So I want to take complaining seriously as a philosophical problem. And again my question is not a moralistic one. That's the other problem, if people do discuss complaint it's in a very moralistic way. So they'll say something like this: don't complain too much in life, you know, only complain when something is really important, make sure your complaints are like socially productive protests and not sort of mere whinging or whatnot. That doesn't interest me in the least. I'm more interested in understanding what the phenomenon of complaining can tell us about the human condition and the nature of human desire. So I'm not interested in this kind of moralistic discourse. And in fact in some respects I kind of want to defend complaining or at least the dignity of it, that it's an interesting object of inquiry. Third, so the third aspect to my interest in complaining is I think it's a new way, sort of for me at least it was a fresh way to speak about negativity and to enter into that philosophical problem of negativity and also to try to characterize, so it's kind of the introduction, the preface of the book, it's a way into that problem, that difficult dialogue between Lacan and Deleuze. And I was quite interested, so I discovered this sort of early on, that in Deleuze's you know these ABCs, the *Abécédaire*, so these this videotaped interview where he sort of expounds on different topics going through the alphabet. When he comes to J for Joy, his main example of joy is complaining. And I think that's wonderful because it really cuts against the also the clichéd image we have of Deleuze as kind of philosopher of sort of affirmation, affirmative affects and so forth, that he actually when he talks about joy he actually talks about the complaint. And even Parnet, so his Claire Parnet, so his interlocutor is a little surprised by this. So she says like well, if you've, you know, if you've avoided these negative affects, guilt, the problematics of guilt and death, if you've tried to liberate desire from lack, and especially in his later work, if you've tried to distance yourself from psychoanalysis, why do you value, you know, why do you put so much emphasis on complaining? And Deleuze's answer is
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very good. I mean, he says basically he says listen, you will understand nothing of poetry and poetic creation outside of complaining, that the main motor for poetic creation has in fact been somehow the lament. And here you see that also I intend complaining in a very broad sense. So of course it can mean anything from everyday whining, grumbling, but it can also mean, you know, protest, political protest, and it would also encompass expressions of melancholia, of elegy and so forth. So it's a very capacious category. So my question was, so the my fundamental question in that preface, so my analysis of complaint was, could we identify a kind of pure form of complaining? Could we identify what the highest or the ultimate complaint would be? Is there a complaint such that all other complaints would somehow be fragments of that complaint or species of that complaint? You know to put it in kind of Deleuzian language, is there a pure and empty form of complaining? And I think the answer is yes, and I think there's even two good candidates for that. And this also illustrates I think the theoretical what's at stake in that theoretical debate between Lacan and Deleuze. So for Lacan the pure complaint is the one that's enunciated in by Sophocles, so in *Oedipus at Colonus*, so the play that comes after *Oedipus Rex*. And the chorus at one point explains sort of expresses the misery of Oedipus, kind of summarizes you could even say sort of Greek tragic wisdom, and there's this phrase "it would be better never to be born." Okay. So, "never to be born," this kind of negation of nature itself. And immediately what's interesting in that complaint it's not exactly a formula for suicide. It's not "it would be better to kill yourself" or something. It's not about suicide. That there's actually something impossible in the complaint. And that's what's in it's not just about negation, but it's a kind of impossible negation. It calls for an impossible negativity, as if one could go back in time and kind of erase one's own existence. You could even say there's a kind of critique of suicide in in this complaint because of course you can kill yourself, so you can stop the continued harm of living, but you can't go back in time somehow and erase having emerged into being. So that what makes that complaint so poignant, so powerful, is the fact that there is no remedy. So it actually demands something impossible. Now, there's a kind of Freud joke or Freud recounts a sort of joke about this line in his book on *Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious*, and I believe there's it's also a kind of Yiddish joke or there's Yiddish variation of it, excuse me. And so Freud says this. He says, "It would be better never to be born... yes, but unfortunately that only happens once every hundred thousand times." Okay. So that's the joke and I think what's what's delightful about this joke is you know, what's funny about it or the pleasure it provides is it's actually a pleasure of making the situation even worse. And I even I think here you could even say so in a kind of grandiose way that you have a kind of meeting here of Athens and Jerusalem, this kind of Greek wisdom that it would be better never to be born and this kind of Jewish twist "ah, but that rarely happens." Which which which sounds which gives a certain way of coping with it but actually makes the situation sort of worse, it sort of digs the knife in even even further. Now, Freud's reading of this joke I think misfires actually. He he talks about it in terms of the kind of technique of nonsense or absurdity, that what the kind of punchline does is it shows the absurdity of the original line and it's actually sort of poking fun at supposed philosophical wisdom. So the joke is actually about deflating philosophical wisdom. But I think you know more profoundly, more radically, I think why this joke resonates so this line resonates is there's something just true about it. And I think that's a good way into this Lacanian problematic of the death drive, that actually that's right, in some ways the subject is not born. The subject wasn't born and that somehow that is the very foundation, the very reason why there's a kind of splitting in life or there is an unconscious. Because a subject never actually fully is inserted into the world or fully belongs to the symbolic order. That you could say a kind of twist on Heidegger that I developed throughout the book, instead of saying we're thrown into being it would be more accurate to say we're thrown out of being. And the subject is nothing other than that instance which does not belong in being, the symbolic order, the cultural universe, that it's thrown out. And Lacan's way of describing that is to say the subject is dead, is already dead. If the subject could actually speak in its own words as he says at some point, it would actually say "I'm dead," this kind of impossible sort of self-consciousness. I also developed that, I'll leave that aside, but in this idea, this strange Lacanian idea somehow that death is not what comes at the end of life. So it's not this kind of existentialist discourse that okay, we're all going to die, this problematic of
very good. I mean, he says basically he says listen, you will understand nothing of poetry and poetic creation outside of complaining, that the main motor for poetic creation has in fact been somehow the lament. And here you see that also I intend complaining in a very broad sense. So of course it can mean anything from everyday whining, grumbling, but it can also mean, you know, protest, political protest, and it would also encompass expressions of melancholia, of elegy and so forth. So it's a very capacious category. So my question was, so the my fundamental question in that preface, so my analysis of complaint was, could we identify a kind of pure form of complaining? Could we identify what the highest or the ultimate complaint would be? Is there a complaint such that all other complaints would somehow be fragments of that complaint or species of that complaint? You know to put it in kind of Deleuzian language, is there a pure and empty form of complaining? And I think the answer is yes, and I think there's even two good candidates for that. And this also illustrates I think the theoretical what's at stake in that theoretical debate between Lacan and Deleuze. So for Lacan the pure complaint is the one that's enunciated in by Sophocles, so in *Oedipus at Colonus*, so the play that comes after *Oedipus Rex*. And the chorus at one point explains sort of expresses the misery of Oedipus, kind of summarizes you could even say sort of Greek tragic wisdom, and there's this phrase "it would be better never to be born." Okay. So, "never to be born," this kind of negation of nature itself. And immediately what's interesting in that complaint it's not exactly a formula for suicide. It's not "it would be better to kill yourself" or something. It's not about suicide. That there's actually something impossible in the complaint. And that's what's in it's not just about negation, but it's a kind of impossible negation. It calls for an impossible negativity, as if one could go back in time and kind of erase one's own existence. You could even say there's a kind of critique of suicide in in this complaint because of course you can kill yourself, so you can stop the continued harm of living, but you can't go back in time somehow and erase having emerged into being. So that what makes that complaint so poignant, so powerful, is the fact that there is no remedy. So it actually demands something impossible. Now, there's a kind of Freud joke or Freud recounts a sort of joke about this line in his book on *Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious*, and I believe there's it's also a kind of Yiddish joke or there's Yiddish variation of it, excuse me. And so Freud says this. He says, "It would be better never to be born... yes, but unfortunately that only happens once every hundred thousand times." Okay. So that's the joke and I think what's what's delightful about this joke is you know, what's funny about it or the pleasure it provides is it's actually a pleasure of making the situation even worse. And I even I think here you could even say so in a kind of grandiose way that you have a kind of meeting here of Athens and Jerusalem, this kind of Greek wisdom that it would be better never to be born and this kind of Jewish twist "ah, but that rarely happens." Which which which sounds which gives a certain way of coping with it but actually makes the situation sort of worse, it sort of digs the knife in even even further. Now, Freud's reading of this joke I think misfires actually. He he talks about it in terms of the kind of technique of nonsense or absurdity, that what the kind of punchline does is it shows the absurdity of the original line and it's actually sort of poking fun at supposed philosophical wisdom. So the joke is actually about deflating philosophical wisdom. But I think you know more profoundly, more radically, I think why this joke resonates so this line resonates is there's something just true about it. And I think that's a good way into this Lacanian problematic of the death drive, that actually that's right, in some ways the subject is not born. The subject wasn't born and that somehow that is the very foundation, the very reason why there's a kind of splitting in life or there is an unconscious. Because a subject never actually fully is inserted into the world or fully belongs to the symbolic order. That you could say a kind of twist on Heidegger that I developed throughout the book, instead of saying we're thrown into being it would be more accurate to say we're thrown out of being. And the subject is nothing other than that instance which does not belong in being, the symbolic order, the cultural universe, that it's thrown out. And Lacan's way of describing that is to say the subject is dead, is already dead. If the subject could actually speak in its own words as he says at some point, it would actually say "I'm dead," this kind of impossible sort of self-consciousness. I also developed that, I'll leave that aside, but in this idea, this strange Lacanian idea somehow that death is not what comes at the end of life. So it's not this kind of existentialist discourse that okay, we're all going to die, this problematic of
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finitude, but that somehow Lacan also reverses this and suggests that death comes first. That we're already dead and if you want I think this is the Lacanian answer to theology, that we are living in the afterlife. This is the afterlife, it's heaven, it's hell, I have no idea you can choose, but somehow this life is already lived in the shadow of some kind of fundamental rupture or some kind of fundamental failure of the subject to enter into existence. Another way of putting this, so another this entails a number of kind of paradoxes, another way of doing this and this is kind of this is a kind of idea that I explore that I throughout the book but I kind of announce this idea in the preface and then try to look at it in different ways. But I think we could say that the human being in this Lacanian, Freudian-Lacanian perspective is that sick animal that doesn't live its life against natural evidence like we would think. Okay, I'm alive, I have this kind of internal feeling of my life, a kind of self-affection and so forth. That somehow against that kind of natural evidence, the human being doesn't live its life, but it lives its failure not to be born, if I can put it that way. And that human life should be defined not in terms of a positive or direct sort of affirmation of existence, but in this kind of obscure sort of twisted double negation. That it actually doesn't live its life but it lives its failure not to be born. Failing not to be born is in fact the mode in which the subject, okay, is somehow inserted into the world in the way that it never fully let's say finds its place there. All right. The other aspect, so the other candidate I think for the ultimate complaint this "never being born" would be the Deleuzian take. Deleuze would say every time you're complaining, basically you're saying this: "this is too much for me." It's just too much for me. So anytime you're complaining you're basically saying it's too much. In other words, complaint bears witness to some kind of force or forces that overwhelm the self-control, that take over from the ego and destroy its mastery. So that complaining always bears witness to sort of overwhelming, uncontrollable powers, powers beyond the usual remit of the self or of the ego. And that Deleuze then would make a distinction between common complaints and what he calls the Great Complaints, so *La grande plainte*, the Great Complaint. And you could say common complaints, the everyday variety of complaining, is actually a kind of coping mechanism. So even you could say in a situation that's become a little bit unhinged, you know, even saying something like "ah, this is too much" can actually allow you to regain your balance. And I would even go so far as to say that the ego always needs to be slightly off balance. If things are going too right, you also should reinsert some kind of complaint just to make sure that there's a little wiggle room, as it were, that there's a little bit of lack there you can play with. So complaining for the most part acts as a coping mechanism, but that's not what interests Deleuze. He's interested in this Great Complaint and the Great Complaint is interestingly enough is not a complaint that's really directed at another person or it's not really interested in an interlocutor, it's not interested in recognition, but a Great Complaint is a kind of song. It's a way of transforming these overwhelming forces into some kind of song, you could say some kind of expression. To give expression precisely to that moment in which one is overwhelmed, without reasserting one's self-control. As if those forces themselves would develop some kind of new expression. So the Great Complaint is a kind of song I think, is a kind of song, a poem, an expression of these overwhelming forces and it always touches on something unconsolable. And that's also what's interesting in this Deleuzian again, it's not about making things better, it's not about compensation, it's really about the expression of something solitary and unconsolable. And I think one of the aspects that I really develop in the book is that Deleuze should be read despite, okay, again a clichéd reception as a philosopher of kind of becoming difference and pluralism and so forth. I mean of course there's truth to that, but the Deleuze I think more profoundly is really a philosopher of solitude. Okay. That brings me to the stop me if I'm simply going on too long. Another five-ten minutes? Okay. Then okay now we come to the kind of more theoretical problem, so that relationship between Deleuze and Lacan and how do I how do I approach that? And you know, this also raises a question I just throw this out as a kind of open question, especially practitioners of the discipline. I mean in some extent the book is written in that classic genre of compare and contrast. Everybody knows this genre, it's kind of a hallowed sort of form in our field. So comparing and contrasting sort of two thinkers and and I try to do something with that. I try to do something to I try to transform that in some way. I do that by trying to make things as difficult, so part
finitude, but that somehow Lacan also reverses this and suggests that death comes first. That we're already dead and if you want I think this is the Lacanian answer to theology, that we are living in the afterlife. This is the afterlife, it's heaven, it's hell, I have no idea you can choose, but somehow this life is already lived in the shadow of some kind of fundamental rupture or some kind of fundamental failure of the subject to enter into existence. Another way of putting this, so another this entails a number of kind of paradoxes, another way of doing this and this is kind of this is a kind of idea that I explore that I throughout the book but I kind of announce this idea in the preface and then try to look at it in different ways. But I think we could say that the human being in this Lacanian, Freudian-Lacanian perspective is that sick animal that doesn't live its life against natural evidence like we would think. Okay, I'm alive, I have this kind of internal feeling of my life, a kind of self-affection and so forth. That somehow against that kind of natural evidence, the human being doesn't live its life, but it lives its failure not to be born, if I can put it that way. And that human life should be defined not in terms of a positive or direct sort of affirmation of existence, but in this kind of obscure sort of twisted double negation. That it actually doesn't live its life but it lives its failure not to be born. Failing not to be born is in fact the mode in which the subject, okay, is somehow inserted into the world in the way that it never fully let's say finds its place there. All right. The other aspect, so the other candidate I think for the ultimate complaint this "never being born" would be the Deleuzian take. Deleuze would say every time you're complaining, basically you're saying this: "this is too much for me." It's just too much for me. So anytime you're complaining you're basically saying it's too much. In other words, complaint bears witness to some kind of force or forces that overwhelm the self-control, that take over from the ego and destroy its mastery. So that complaining always bears witness to sort of overwhelming, uncontrollable powers, powers beyond the usual remit of the self or of the ego. And that Deleuze then would make a distinction between common complaints and what he calls the Great Complaints, so *La grande plainte*, the Great Complaint. And you could say common complaints, the everyday variety of complaining, is actually a kind of coping mechanism. So even you could say in a situation that's become a little bit unhinged, you know, even saying something like "ah, this is too much" can actually allow you to regain your balance. And I would even go so far as to say that the ego always needs to be slightly off balance. If things are going too right, you also should reinsert some kind of complaint just to make sure that there's a little wiggle room, as it were, that there's a little bit of lack there you can play with. So complaining for the most part acts as a coping mechanism, but that's not what interests Deleuze. He's interested in this Great Complaint and the Great Complaint is interestingly enough is not a complaint that's really directed at another person or it's not really interested in an interlocutor, it's not interested in recognition, but a Great Complaint is a kind of song. It's a way of transforming these overwhelming forces into some kind of song, you could say some kind of expression. To give expression precisely to that moment in which one is overwhelmed, without reasserting one's self-control. As if those forces themselves would develop some kind of new expression. So the Great Complaint is a kind of song I think, is a kind of song, a poem, an expression of these overwhelming forces and it always touches on something unconsolable. And that's also what's interesting in this Deleuzian again, it's not about making things better, it's not about compensation, it's really about the expression of something solitary and unconsolable. And I think one of the aspects that I really develop in the book is that Deleuze should be read despite, okay, again a clichéd reception as a philosopher of kind of becoming difference and pluralism and so forth. I mean of course there's truth to that, but the Deleuze I think more profoundly is really a philosopher of solitude. Okay. That brings me to the stop me if I'm simply going on too long. Another five-ten minutes? Okay. Then okay now we come to the kind of more theoretical problem, so that relationship between Deleuze and Lacan and how do I how do I approach that? And you know, this also raises a question I just throw this out as a kind of open question, especially practitioners of the discipline. I mean in some extent the book is written in that classic genre of compare and contrast. Everybody knows this genre, it's kind of a hallowed sort of form in our field. So comparing and contrasting sort of two thinkers and and I try to do something with that. I try to do something to I try to transform that in some way. I do that by trying to make things as difficult, so part
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of my process in working on this book was to make things as difficult as I could for myself. So at the beginning I don't necessarily let's say choose sides. I mean from the beginning my interest is actually trying to discern, trying to isolate what I think the real core of the problem is, the theoretical core. And I think even though there's very obvious battle lines that can be drawn between the two thinkers I largely ignore those. And in the end I came to the conclusion that I think the real debate between Lacan and Deleuze has to do with an kind of internal debate about the meaning of negativity. So I read Deleuze against the grain as a philosopher of negativity, so to put my cards on the table. But I think he wants to he wants to think negativity differently. So I put emphasis on all these kind of negative figures in Deleuze's thought. So I want to from the beginning challenge this kind of clichéd reception. Again Deleuze's great philosophical combat is always against cliché. So in this sense I'm faithful to kind of Deleuzian inspiration. But this kind of clichéd reception of Deleuze and Lacan as on the one hand Deleuze would be the philosopher of affirmation, of becoming, of difference, of creation and so forth; Lacan is the philosopher of lack, of castration, the law, the impossible and so forth. And I want to do something different with that and to try to show how Deleuzian philosophy can actually force, so from a force the Lacanian or from the Lacanian perspective to really explicitate, to make more clear what is at stake, what they mean by lack, what is meant by the negative, and then show how Deleuze is also trying to reinvent negativity in another way. So he thinks that that tradition has become so polluted, has become so kind of stale for thinking, that he actually uses completely new vocabulary. But I still think it's a philosopher in a way of negativity, of a kind of violence, of a kind of psychic violence. So for example, I think that a very productive way of reading *Anti-Oedipus* today, if one okay wants to engage with this book, I think a kind of more productive, more stimulating way of reading this book is to say you know, this book is not about a celebration of desire, it's not about a kind of affirmation of the creative powers of the body or the kind of plasticities and flows of life. But what they’re doing is kind of articulating a meta-complaint about psychoanalysis. That the problem with psychoanalysis is that it's also kind of turned all of our problems into a certain vocabulary, a certain clichéd vocabulary of complaint. So it's always complaining about okay, my desire's never satisfied, there's always a problem with the parents and the law is repressing me. And I think Deleuze and Guattari's response is to say hey, aren't there more interesting and more troubling things to complain about? I think that's a kind of more productive way of looking at the book. It's not a kind of celebration of desire against the kind of let's say repressive apparatus, but I think really what they’re trying to do is suggest that there's actually even more painful and more interesting problems we should be talking about and not always talking about the father, the repressive law and so forth. Now, I also think they have a kind of wrongheaded or simplified very simplified version of psychoanalysis. But I think that if you rephrase the problem of *Anti-Oedipus* in those terms, for me it becomes a very interesting book again. Another way of approaching this problem, so of course I'm not not all my arguments but another okay another kind of interesting consequence I think of the comparison of the two thinkers is if we go back to this problem of lack and this idea that lack so the the concept of lack that Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari attack is precisely this idea that desire is always unsatisfied, that its object is transcending it, that it's always out there, I can never reach it. And I think that a mistaken reading of this, it's not that they think that lack is a completely wrong conception of desire, they simply they say though that it only applies to a certain class of people, neurotics. That it is the correct description of a neurotic desire, but you shouldn't universalize it. I I could go off on a side tangent but in certain respects Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari are much less radical critics of psychoanalysis than Foucault, who Foucault wants to give up the entire conception of repression and so forth. Deleuze and Guattari actually retain most of the psychoanalytic concepts actually but they have a kind of variation let's say. But so they criticize the notion of lack and saying this only applies to neurosis and beneath the lack, the lack is actually a kind of creation. You also have to see lack as a positive creation, of what, of partial drives. So their real problem is a problem of embodiment and embodiment being torn between different vectors of partial drives and what they call okay body without organs. For them what I think is quite interesting
of my process in working on this book was to make things as difficult as I could for myself. So at the beginning I don't necessarily let's say choose sides. I mean from the beginning my interest is actually trying to discern, trying to isolate what I think the real core of the problem is, the theoretical core. And I think even though there's very obvious battle lines that can be drawn between the two thinkers I largely ignore those. And in the end I came to the conclusion that I think the real debate between Lacan and Deleuze has to do with an kind of internal debate about the meaning of negativity. So I read Deleuze against the grain as a philosopher of negativity, so to put my cards on the table. But I think he wants to he wants to think negativity differently. So I put emphasis on all these kind of negative figures in Deleuze's thought. So I want to from the beginning challenge this kind of clichéd reception. Again Deleuze's great philosophical combat is always against cliché. So in this sense I'm faithful to kind of Deleuzian inspiration. But this kind of clichéd reception of Deleuze and Lacan as on the one hand Deleuze would be the philosopher of affirmation, of becoming, of difference, of creation and so forth; Lacan is the philosopher of lack, of castration, the law, the impossible and so forth. And I want to do something different with that and to try to show how Deleuzian philosophy can actually force, so from a force the Lacanian or from the Lacanian perspective to really explicitate, to make more clear what is at stake, what they mean by lack, what is meant by the negative, and then show how Deleuze is also trying to reinvent negativity in another way. So he thinks that that tradition has become so polluted, has become so kind of stale for thinking, that he actually uses completely new vocabulary. But I still think it's a philosopher in a way of negativity, of a kind of violence, of a kind of psychic violence. So for example, I think that a very productive way of reading *Anti-Oedipus* today, if one okay wants to engage with this book, I think a kind of more productive, more stimulating way of reading this book is to say you know, this book is not about a celebration of desire, it's not about a kind of affirmation of the creative powers of the body or the kind of plasticities and flows of life. But what they’re doing is kind of articulating a meta-complaint about psychoanalysis. That the problem with psychoanalysis is that it's also kind of turned all of our problems into a certain vocabulary, a certain clichéd vocabulary of complaint. So it's always complaining about okay, my desire's never satisfied, there's always a problem with the parents and the law is repressing me. And I think Deleuze and Guattari's response is to say hey, aren't there more interesting and more troubling things to complain about? I think that's a kind of more productive way of looking at the book. It's not a kind of celebration of desire against the kind of let's say repressive apparatus, but I think really what they’re trying to do is suggest that there's actually even more painful and more interesting problems we should be talking about and not always talking about the father, the repressive law and so forth. Now, I also think they have a kind of wrongheaded or simplified very simplified version of psychoanalysis. But I think that if you rephrase the problem of *Anti-Oedipus* in those terms, for me it becomes a very interesting book again. Another way of approaching this problem, so of course I'm not not all my arguments but another okay another kind of interesting consequence I think of the comparison of the two thinkers is if we go back to this problem of lack and this idea that lack so the the concept of lack that Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari attack is precisely this idea that desire is always unsatisfied, that its object is transcending it, that it's always out there, I can never reach it. And I think that a mistaken reading of this, it's not that they think that lack is a completely wrong conception of desire, they simply they say though that it only applies to a certain class of people, neurotics. That it is the correct description of a neurotic desire, but you shouldn't universalize it. I I could go off on a side tangent but in certain respects Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari are much less radical critics of psychoanalysis than Foucault, who Foucault wants to give up the entire conception of repression and so forth. Deleuze and Guattari actually retain most of the psychoanalytic concepts actually but they have a kind of variation let's say. But so they criticize the notion of lack and saying this only applies to neurosis and beneath the lack, the lack is actually a kind of creation. You also have to see lack as a positive creation, of what, of partial drives. So their real problem is a problem of embodiment and embodiment being torn between different vectors of partial drives and what they call okay body without organs. For them what I think is quite interesting
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again to summarize
again to summarize
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what I think the real
what I think the real
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force of their criticism is, and I think this is an interesting idea to to reflect on, that they would say the if you want the the main figure let's say the main example of what what desire means, desire should is not about getting what you want, for example I get what I want and therefore okay I have some I have some pleasure, or I never get what I want and I okay I'm always longing for something and but they say the the real figure of desire is surprise. You know that there's a desire in the situation when there's a kind of affect of surprise or shock. So the real sign of desire is is not okay is not okay I got what I want but oh, I had no idea I was capable of that. So something new occurs, some kind of new connection you could say. So that that motif of surprise then becomes the or of some kind of shock or some kind of disconcerting moment becomes the real harbinger, the real sign that there's desire at play. So you could say that for Deleuze desire should be defined as a kind of crisis actually. And for them it's a real crisis of embodiment. Desire always recalls you to the fact that the body is not a natural given, that embodiment is a problem, it's and that it's a real achievement and an accomplishment. And then the question then, if desire is a crisis, the question is always which forces are going to be able to exploit that crisis. What are we going to build from out of that crisis? And unfortunately as we know in the contemporary history we see that it's usually forces of reaction that are much more creative, much more inventive at exploiting crises. But the crisis is a kind of opening, so desire for them is a kind of open moment. Again when they say that desire is revolutionary in their essence, I don't think that's what they’re saying. I think they have a slightly more nuanced idea that the desire is not revolutionary per se, but that it's a kind of crisis, it opens up the possibility for something new developing. But it also of course could be reclaimed by reactionary forces, for example of the body or the retrenchment of the ego for instance. Now what can we say from a Lacanian standpoint? I think Deleuze and Guattari do not have the correct understanding of Lacan on this issue. That lack and to put this very simply but lack doesn't mean that object that I'm missing out over there. What lack means for Lacan more profoundly is that I lack the very coordinates, the very place from which I could desire. I lack any kind of rules or I lack guidelines or schema that would actually let me desire in the first place. So Lacan I think in a very radical way does not presume you could say doesn't presume the existence of desire, that desire is something that has to come into being and that is the real function of fantasy. This is actually a theme that Slavoj has worked on quite quite extensively and and one of the discussions that was inspirational for me is in the book on the *Plague of Fantasies*. This idea that the real purpose of fantasy is not to picture to represent what it is you want, but actually provides the very ground for desire. And this is the conception of lack that is missed okay in the critique of lack coming from Deleuze. Again, what's lacking is not the object that would fulfill me, what's lacking is the very ground from which I could desire. And maybe I can I have one okay two last comments. The one I would say that this will sound very abstract but I'll leave it in a kind of abstract way. Then I think the real so then we see the real core of this theoretical dispute. In Lacanian psychoanalysis this impossibility so this starting this kind of negative empty starting point of not even knowing how to desire, of how do I enter into a culture of desire for example, has to be inscribed in the psyche in one way or the other. It has to be represented in the unconscious. Not represented in the sense we usually think about it or that sense of representation criticized by Deleuze, not representation in terms of like a map represents the territory or not representation in terms of resemblance, but there has to be a representative of it, something that stands in for that lack, which continues to resonate. One way I describe that is in the unconscious, the fundamental operation of the unconscious is the subject either has to exclude itself in or include itself out. That somehow that dead subject or that failure resonates within the unconscious. It's actually the kind of core of the unconscious and that it's represented there or it finds a representative there in terms of fantasy. And that's where the the notion of the body comes into psychoanalysis, that it's represented there by a part of the body or some kind of bodily scenario. So that's the kind of function negativity in Lacanian psychoanalysis. And I think Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari consistently so throughout his philosophical career has different figures of the negative, whether it's the fractured I in *Difference and Repetition* or the crack of the surface for example in *Logic of Sense* or the even the
force of their criticism is, and I think this is an interesting idea to to reflect on, that they would say the if you want the the main figure let's say the main example of what what desire means, desire should is not about getting what you want, for example I get what I want and therefore okay I have some I have some pleasure, or I never get what I want and I okay I'm always longing for something and but they say the the real figure of desire is surprise. You know that there's a desire in the situation when there's a kind of affect of surprise or shock. So the real sign of desire is is not okay is not okay I got what I want but oh, I had no idea I was capable of that. So something new occurs, some kind of new connection you could say. So that that motif of surprise then becomes the or of some kind of shock or some kind of disconcerting moment becomes the real harbinger, the real sign that there's desire at play. So you could say that for Deleuze desire should be defined as a kind of crisis actually. And for them it's a real crisis of embodiment. Desire always recalls you to the fact that the body is not a natural given, that embodiment is a problem, it's and that it's a real achievement and an accomplishment. And then the question then, if desire is a crisis, the question is always which forces are going to be able to exploit that crisis. What are we going to build from out of that crisis? And unfortunately as we know in the contemporary history we see that it's usually forces of reaction that are much more creative, much more inventive at exploiting crises. But the crisis is a kind of opening, so desire for them is a kind of open moment. Again when they say that desire is revolutionary in their essence, I don't think that's what they’re saying. I think they have a slightly more nuanced idea that the desire is not revolutionary per se, but that it's a kind of crisis, it opens up the possibility for something new developing. But it also of course could be reclaimed by reactionary forces, for example of the body or the retrenchment of the ego for instance. Now what can we say from a Lacanian standpoint? I think Deleuze and Guattari do not have the correct understanding of Lacan on this issue. That lack and to put this very simply but lack doesn't mean that object that I'm missing out over there. What lack means for Lacan more profoundly is that I lack the very coordinates, the very place from which I could desire. I lack any kind of rules or I lack guidelines or schema that would actually let me desire in the first place. So Lacan I think in a very radical way does not presume you could say doesn't presume the existence of desire, that desire is something that has to come into being and that is the real function of fantasy. This is actually a theme that Slavoj has worked on quite quite extensively and and one of the discussions that was inspirational for me is in the book on the *Plague of Fantasies*. This idea that the real purpose of fantasy is not to picture to represent what it is you want, but actually provides the very ground for desire. And this is the conception of lack that is missed okay in the critique of lack coming from Deleuze. Again, what's lacking is not the object that would fulfill me, what's lacking is the very ground from which I could desire. And maybe I can I have one okay two last comments. The one I would say that this will sound very abstract but I'll leave it in a kind of abstract way. Then I think the real so then we see the real core of this theoretical dispute. In Lacanian psychoanalysis this impossibility so this starting this kind of negative empty starting point of not even knowing how to desire, of how do I enter into a culture of desire for example, has to be inscribed in the psyche in one way or the other. It has to be represented in the unconscious. Not represented in the sense we usually think about it or that sense of representation criticized by Deleuze, not representation in terms of like a map represents the territory or not representation in terms of resemblance, but there has to be a representative of it, something that stands in for that lack, which continues to resonate. One way I describe that is in the unconscious, the fundamental operation of the unconscious is the subject either has to exclude itself in or include itself out. That somehow that dead subject or that failure resonates within the unconscious. It's actually the kind of core of the unconscious and that it's represented there or it finds a representative there in terms of fantasy. And that's where the the notion of the body comes into psychoanalysis, that it's represented there by a part of the body or some kind of bodily scenario. So that's the kind of function negativity in Lacanian psychoanalysis. And I think Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari consistently so throughout his philosophical career has different figures of the negative, whether it's the fractured I in *Difference and Repetition* or the crack of the surface for example in *Logic of Sense* or the even the
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body without organs. But that this kind of negativity, so instead of being instead of finding its representative somewhere is directly involved in the movement, the motion, the dynamism of the drives and becomes the very principle for the kind of unique plasticity again dynamism, energy of the partial drives. And this really accounts for I think the distinction but I'll leave that for now. You if you're more interested in that you can ask me but that's a relatively abstract claim. But I think and this is my last point, I think where this gets cashed out or you can really see what's at stake then is the other thing I'm interested in is a philosophy of psychopathology. So the problem of what the study of psychopathology can sort of let me put it in a very kind of broad way, what the psychopath what the study of psychopathology can teach us about the human condition. And I also raise the question and I don't really answer that, it's a difficult question let's say for myself, but I raise that problem of the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. And why as a philosopher, so I'm not a clinician, why as a philosopher I'm interested in psychoanalysis and what is the relationship between these two fields and aren't they a kind of odd odd couple. And it's also a question to myself because so much of my work is somehow about that intersection, so why is that so why is that so compelling. And I really do think that's one of the most compelling conjunctions in 20th century, 21st century thought, that odd meeting between philosophy and psychoanalysis. And let me say I think broadly speaking there's three ways of parsing that. I mean you can say are philosophy and psychoanalysis are they allies? So would they be sort of allies in a joint project of thinking, you know, a subject that wouldn't be master in its own house? Okay. Fair enough. Are they sort of rivals? Sometimes they’re really rivals or enemies, so the philosophers will sort of expose the hidden metaphysics of psychoanalysis or psychoanalysts will be able to understand, you know, the kind of hidden desires in philosophical discourse. Okay so. Are they are they kind of strangers? Are they simply indifferent to each other? So do they have their own procedures and concerns, they meet but they fundamentally remain separate. And what I think is funny is that Deleuze sort of recapitulates all three of these options in his career. So does Michel Foucault. So at one point he's kind of allied with psychoanalysis, then he's kind of harsh critic and sort of ends with a kind of indifference. And you know, isn't this also the sort of normal course of romantic relationships, you know. There's love, there's hatred, of course then there's kind of the most cruel thing of course indifference. I think you can also ask from the perspective of psychoanalysis, so not only how does philosophy relate to psychoanalysis but how does psychoanalysis relate to philosophy or to other fields. And there I think I'll just mention this but there I think what a very interesting phenomenon is and that's the unique maybe the uniqueness of psychoanalysis. But you know that psychoanalysis from the very beginning from Freud is an incredibly promiscuous discourse. So psychoanalysis is interested in everything. So not only about clinical problems per se, but but in arts, you know, in literature and cinema, in it's interested in law, in sociology, it's interested in neurology, psychology, philosophy. It really has its hands in sort of all all pots. As if it needed this kind of external engagement in order to remain relevant and in order also to enrich itself its own reflection. If it wasn't if it simply collapsed in on a kind of reflection on the clinic, psychoanalysis would somehow also die. So it needs that external engagement. At the same time, it refuses to really ally itself with any of those fields or refuses to be absorbed in any of those fields. To use a term from Deleuze and Guattari, psychoanalysis remains a kind of celibate machine or it remains a kind of bachelor machine. It doesn't want to get married with any other field. And it even acts in a kind of oddly aloof way. So at a certain moment it just becomes indifferent. It doesn't matter what those other fields say because it has its own kind of internal consistency. And what I think what's interesting about this is that psychoanalysis in its very relationship to external sciences seems to imitate the very singularities which it itself treats or which it itself ministers to. What Lacan called the *objet petit a*. In a in an interesting way psychoanalysis itself seems to conceive of itself as the kind of partial object, the *objet petit a* of the other sciences. That it's somehow related to everything. It's deeply bound up with the very constitution of reality, so the it's deeply bound up with all these other fields and and couldn't exist without them. But at the same time it's kind of the remainder of those fields, what they can't quite deal with so it remains its own discipline. So another way of posing this problem and I think a simpler way, so put aside this this vexing problem of the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis is to say they
body without organs. But that this kind of negativity, so instead of being instead of finding its representative somewhere is directly involved in the movement, the motion, the dynamism of the drives and becomes the very principle for the kind of unique plasticity again dynamism, energy of the partial drives. And this really accounts for I think the distinction but I'll leave that for now. You if you're more interested in that you can ask me but that's a relatively abstract claim. But I think and this is my last point, I think where this gets cashed out or you can really see what's at stake then is the other thing I'm interested in is a philosophy of psychopathology. So the problem of what the study of psychopathology can sort of let me put it in a very kind of broad way, what the psychopath what the study of psychopathology can teach us about the human condition. And I also raise the question and I don't really answer that, it's a difficult question let's say for myself, but I raise that problem of the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. And why as a philosopher, so I'm not a clinician, why as a philosopher I'm interested in psychoanalysis and what is the relationship between these two fields and aren't they a kind of odd odd couple. And it's also a question to myself because so much of my work is somehow about that intersection, so why is that so why is that so compelling. And I really do think that's one of the most compelling conjunctions in 20th century, 21st century thought, that odd meeting between philosophy and psychoanalysis. And let me say I think broadly speaking there's three ways of parsing that. I mean you can say are philosophy and psychoanalysis are they allies? So would they be sort of allies in a joint project of thinking, you know, a subject that wouldn't be master in its own house? Okay. Fair enough. Are they sort of rivals? Sometimes they’re really rivals or enemies, so the philosophers will sort of expose the hidden metaphysics of psychoanalysis or psychoanalysts will be able to understand, you know, the kind of hidden desires in philosophical discourse. Okay so. Are they are they kind of strangers? Are they simply indifferent to each other? So do they have their own procedures and concerns, they meet but they fundamentally remain separate. And what I think is funny is that Deleuze sort of recapitulates all three of these options in his career. So does Michel Foucault. So at one point he's kind of allied with psychoanalysis, then he's kind of harsh critic and sort of ends with a kind of indifference. And you know, isn't this also the sort of normal course of romantic relationships, you know. There's love, there's hatred, of course then there's kind of the most cruel thing of course indifference. I think you can also ask from the perspective of psychoanalysis, so not only how does philosophy relate to psychoanalysis but how does psychoanalysis relate to philosophy or to other fields. And there I think I'll just mention this but there I think what a very interesting phenomenon is and that's the unique maybe the uniqueness of psychoanalysis. But you know that psychoanalysis from the very beginning from Freud is an incredibly promiscuous discourse. So psychoanalysis is interested in everything. So not only about clinical problems per se, but but in arts, you know, in literature and cinema, in it's interested in law, in sociology, it's interested in neurology, psychology, philosophy. It really has its hands in sort of all all pots. As if it needed this kind of external engagement in order to remain relevant and in order also to enrich itself its own reflection. If it wasn't if it simply collapsed in on a kind of reflection on the clinic, psychoanalysis would somehow also die. So it needs that external engagement. At the same time, it refuses to really ally itself with any of those fields or refuses to be absorbed in any of those fields. To use a term from Deleuze and Guattari, psychoanalysis remains a kind of celibate machine or it remains a kind of bachelor machine. It doesn't want to get married with any other field. And it even acts in a kind of oddly aloof way. So at a certain moment it just becomes indifferent. It doesn't matter what those other fields say because it has its own kind of internal consistency. And what I think what's interesting about this is that psychoanalysis in its very relationship to external sciences seems to imitate the very singularities which it itself treats or which it itself ministers to. What Lacan called the *objet petit a*. In a in an interesting way psychoanalysis itself seems to conceive of itself as the kind of partial object, the *objet petit a* of the other sciences. That it's somehow related to everything. It's deeply bound up with the very constitution of reality, so the it's deeply bound up with all these other fields and and couldn't exist without them. But at the same time it's kind of the remainder of those fields, what they can't quite deal with so it remains its own discipline. So another way of posing this problem and I think a simpler way, so put aside this this vexing problem of the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis is to say they
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have a kind of joint interest and that's this: what can the study of psychopathology teach us about the human condition? And here what I want to develop and that's what I think is absolutely contemporary and necessary today is that I wind to a conclusion. What I think is so is really continues to be a living actual problem is Freud's radical critique of normality and normalization. That for Freud, so different pathologies, hysteria, obsessional neurosis, perversions and psychosis. That's also very interesting in psychoanalysis that it has such a restricted diagnostic schema compared to contemporary psychiatry which literally has hundreds of categories. That psychoanalysis has a fairly restricted diagnostic schema and the reason for that is that each of these illnesses is not really a mental illness per se, but more profoundly they really express ways of being human. So that each of these kind of pathological types is actually a form of subjectivity, a fully sort of accomplished if you want subjectivity or a way of being human. So that, you know, the idea of a norm or of a normal human being is actually swallowed by pathology or the study of, you could say as a general person, the study of the kind of different distortions itself constitutes the phenomenon or the thing in itself, that there is no norm. Lacan has a very nice line about this in his ninth seminar where he's he reports so he tells his audience, you know, people are always asking me why don't you talk about normal desire, you know, why don't you talk about normal desire for a change. And Lacan replies well listen, I'm always talking about normal desire, there's even three types: neurotic, perverse and psychotic. So that these different these types actually reflect the different facets of the normal structure of desire and that they refer that the psychopathologies in this sense don't refer to accidental damage. So they don't refer to a kind of developmental narrative or kind of developmental scheme where you become sick because of some kind of problem, conflict, accidental crisis that you confront along the way and knocks you off the path of development, knocks you off the path of your let's say of a kind of natural or normal desire. But that psychopathologies refer to crises, problems, okay, conflicts that are shared by all human beings, that are universal. And depending on how these problems get composed in an individual life, your subjectivity will express itself in one structure or another. But that these problems would be universally shared and what are these problems of course this would be a much longer lecture but very simply they refer to embodiment: so how do I locate myself in the my body? How do I know what the limits of my body are? Where does my body end and the body of the world begin? How do I close myself off from the world for instance? So how do I constitute myself as a singular entity? So the problem of the real body. The problem of sexuality: am I a man, am I a woman? How do I deal with the drives that demand so much and put pressure on my body? So problems of sexuality. And then you could say also the problem of the desire of the other. What does the other want from me? What am I for the other? What is my relationship to the law? How do I enter into the culture? That these are kind of universal problems that have no solution, they have no good solution in a sense, but they can be articulated in all sorts of interesting ways. So that problem of what I would call kind of patho-analysis of subjectivity, what I think is so interesting about now coming back why I would choose to write a book about Deleuze and Lacan, is I think both are inspired by the same project but they approach it in different ways. And you see that it's actually easier, so it's easier for me to say it than to actually do it. It's easy for me to say well there's no such thing as normality. But it's something else to work that out in a kind of rigorous theoretically satisfying way and to understand all the implications of that idea that there's no sort of norm of human development. And even in Freud, so at the beginning there's a kind of conflict, because you can see that certain aspects of Freudian thought seem to lend themselves more to a kind of normative developmental schema. And that's what that whole critique of the Oedipus complex is about in the 70s. Doesn't psychoanalysis even in spite of itself end up recreating recapitulating a certain normative psychology even when it says it doesn't. So that the critique coming from Deleuze and Guattari in *Anti-Oedipus* actually is an attempt to kind of reactualize that that kind of radical base of Freud, that critique of normality. Now whether it succeeds, that's another question. But Lacan also pursues this project and ultimately the debate between them will be different ways of understanding that thesis, that there is no norm in human life, in human psychic life. Maybe that's a nice point to end on and then we could speak a bit more about the problems, the implications of that idea of the critique of normality. But anyway
have a kind of joint interest and that's this: what can the study of psychopathology teach us about the human condition? And here what I want to develop and that's what I think is absolutely contemporary and necessary today is that I wind to a conclusion. What I think is so is really continues to be a living actual problem is Freud's radical critique of normality and normalization. That for Freud, so different pathologies, hysteria, obsessional neurosis, perversions and psychosis. That's also very interesting in psychoanalysis that it has such a restricted diagnostic schema compared to contemporary psychiatry which literally has hundreds of categories. That psychoanalysis has a fairly restricted diagnostic schema and the reason for that is that each of these illnesses is not really a mental illness per se, but more profoundly they really express ways of being human. So that each of these kind of pathological types is actually a form of subjectivity, a fully sort of accomplished if you want subjectivity or a way of being human. So that, you know, the idea of a norm or of a normal human being is actually swallowed by pathology or the study of, you could say as a general person, the study of the kind of different distortions itself constitutes the phenomenon or the thing in itself, that there is no norm. Lacan has a very nice line about this in his ninth seminar where he's he reports so he tells his audience, you know, people are always asking me why don't you talk about normal desire, you know, why don't you talk about normal desire for a change. And Lacan replies well listen, I'm always talking about normal desire, there's even three types: neurotic, perverse and psychotic. So that these different these types actually reflect the different facets of the normal structure of desire and that they refer that the psychopathologies in this sense don't refer to accidental damage. So they don't refer to a kind of developmental narrative or kind of developmental scheme where you become sick because of some kind of problem, conflict, accidental crisis that you confront along the way and knocks you off the path of development, knocks you off the path of your let's say of a kind of natural or normal desire. But that psychopathologies refer to crises, problems, okay, conflicts that are shared by all human beings, that are universal. And depending on how these problems get composed in an individual life, your subjectivity will express itself in one structure or another. But that these problems would be universally shared and what are these problems of course this would be a much longer lecture but very simply they refer to embodiment: so how do I locate myself in the my body? How do I know what the limits of my body are? Where does my body end and the body of the world begin? How do I close myself off from the world for instance? So how do I constitute myself as a singular entity? So the problem of the real body. The problem of sexuality: am I a man, am I a woman? How do I deal with the drives that demand so much and put pressure on my body? So problems of sexuality. And then you could say also the problem of the desire of the other. What does the other want from me? What am I for the other? What is my relationship to the law? How do I enter into the culture? That these are kind of universal problems that have no solution, they have no good solution in a sense, but they can be articulated in all sorts of interesting ways. So that problem of what I would call kind of patho-analysis of subjectivity, what I think is so interesting about now coming back why I would choose to write a book about Deleuze and Lacan, is I think both are inspired by the same project but they approach it in different ways. And you see that it's actually easier, so it's easier for me to say it than to actually do it. It's easy for me to say well there's no such thing as normality. But it's something else to work that out in a kind of rigorous theoretically satisfying way and to understand all the implications of that idea that there's no sort of norm of human development. And even in Freud, so at the beginning there's a kind of conflict, because you can see that certain aspects of Freudian thought seem to lend themselves more to a kind of normative developmental schema. And that's what that whole critique of the Oedipus complex is about in the 70s. Doesn't psychoanalysis even in spite of itself end up recreating recapitulating a certain normative psychology even when it says it doesn't. So that the critique coming from Deleuze and Guattari in *Anti-Oedipus* actually is an attempt to kind of reactualize that that kind of radical base of Freud, that critique of normality. Now whether it succeeds, that's another question. But Lacan also pursues this project and ultimately the debate between them will be different ways of understanding that thesis, that there is no norm in human life, in human psychic life. Maybe that's a nice point to end on and then we could speak a bit more about the problems, the implications of that idea of the critique of normality. But anyway
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that's just meant to give you a general idea let's say of the what I was trying to do in the book and some of the main sort of areas of discussion and argument. Okay. Thank you, Aaron. That was really compelling. I can’t believe anyone will not read the book now. I want to read it. But I've got lots of questions which I'll save for later. But I did want to comment on one thing that you mentioned because in the competition between the Portuguese and the Jewish as to who complains better, I wonder is there a Jewish version of Pessoa? Because in that book and I thought it's so Lacanian and I was thinking when you mentioned we for Lacan we haven't even been born yet, we haven't fully immersed in the symbolic order so we're already born dead and he describes himself as an abortion that survived. And for me that so sums up the death drive and we're in an abortion we're all abortions that survived. Yeah, you know, if I can just very quickly, I mean just two comments. I mean, there's a line from Pessoa I like very much that I also quote in the book and discuss, that there can be a kind of problem with a let's say pessimistic view of life when you say ah, life is terrible, life is horrible, it's not worth living, I don't know what, you say something like that. I think Pessoa has a very refined expression for this. The problem is if I say life is terrible, you could say that it actually is a way of guarding my ego, because it's as if I abstract myself, life is terrible out there and I also have the kind of, you know, the arrogance I can pronounce on that. So it's actually can be seen as a kind of defense of the ego, this kind of and Pessoa then I think has a more refined formula. He says I don't think life is terrible, I think my life is terrible. So in the guise of this kind of modesty, you see that there's actually an even worse I think effect. And then the line you mentioned, for me the maybe the ultimate author of this idea that somehow life is not directly lived but but I think the formula for let's say a non-vitalistic philosophy of life would be you know, you live your failure not to be born, is a Soviet era writer that I love very much, Daniil Kharms. And I think Kharms has some of the most brilliant sort of formulations of this. But okay. I have to read him. Sorry, I'm too tired to say anything great. I will just try to make some confused remarks. First about that normality and so long. You know, it’s an easy I disagree even with Lacan here that you quoted. Because if you say, okay, three types of normality. Okay for me it’s the same problem as with some versions of transgenderism. They cheat, because their idea is we have an old norm, masculine feminine, and now we want a new norm, everything is normal. No, I mean the whole I think they cheat in what sense? It’s in the same way that like I noticed when I have a debate with homosexuals or whomever that although like what do they want? They want they take their complaint alive. They they complain that they are not normalized but secretly the most horrible thing they can experience for them is that you simply say and that’s how I usually treat them, fuck off, I totally admit you you are nothing special. And this is horrible to tell to them. They want to be normalized subversives. And that’s why I think that we cannot dismiss norms as such. Sorry to tell you I believe in norms and it’s interesting to read how for example a lot of this for example let’s take Judith Butler. I think there is an absolutely clear even brutally violent normative dimension in her work. You know where you find it? When you read her theory of of melancholic complaint and so on. Her idea is this one that incidentally I think it’s wrong in a Freudian way. She reads in a too direct way Freud’s statement that we become what we are through identifying by the lost object. So the idea is our first object of desire is for the small girl mother, for the small boy father and then normal subjects heterosexually normal do the proper work of mourning by identifying with the lost object. So a boy having to renounce father as the object becomes a man and vice versa. Her idea is you find it very clearly in what I argue is her best book maybe *Psychic Life of Power*. Her idea is that somehow although she would probably have denied it but the idea is that that lesbian or gay are somehow more ethical. They don’t betray the primordial object. They remain faithful to it. You have a normativity there. It’s absolutely clear that for her being gay is somehow not making a crucial compromise. While I violently disagree with this. First I think it brutally contradicts her theory of sexual difference
that's just meant to give you a general idea let's say of the what I was trying to do in the book and some of the main sort of areas of discussion and argument. Okay. Thank you, Aaron. That was really compelling. I can’t believe anyone will not read the book now. I want to read it. But I've got lots of questions which I'll save for later. But I did want to comment on one thing that you mentioned because in the competition between the Portuguese and the Jewish as to who complains better, I wonder is there a Jewish version of Pessoa? Because in that book and I thought it's so Lacanian and I was thinking when you mentioned we for Lacan we haven't even been born yet, we haven't fully immersed in the symbolic order so we're already born dead and he describes himself as an abortion that survived. And for me that so sums up the death drive and we're in an abortion we're all abortions that survived. Yeah, you know, if I can just very quickly, I mean just two comments. I mean, there's a line from Pessoa I like very much that I also quote in the book and discuss, that there can be a kind of problem with a let's say pessimistic view of life when you say ah, life is terrible, life is horrible, it's not worth living, I don't know what, you say something like that. I think Pessoa has a very refined expression for this. The problem is if I say life is terrible, you could say that it actually is a way of guarding my ego, because it's as if I abstract myself, life is terrible out there and I also have the kind of, you know, the arrogance I can pronounce on that. So it's actually can be seen as a kind of defense of the ego, this kind of and Pessoa then I think has a more refined formula. He says I don't think life is terrible, I think my life is terrible. So in the guise of this kind of modesty, you see that there's actually an even worse I think effect. And then the line you mentioned, for me the maybe the ultimate author of this idea that somehow life is not directly lived but but I think the formula for let's say a non-vitalistic philosophy of life would be you know, you live your failure not to be born, is a Soviet era writer that I love very much, Daniil Kharms. And I think Kharms has some of the most brilliant sort of formulations of this. But okay. I have to read him. Sorry, I'm too tired to say anything great. I will just try to make some confused remarks. First about that normality and so long. You know, it’s an easy I disagree even with Lacan here that you quoted. Because if you say, okay, three types of normality. Okay for me it’s the same problem as with some versions of transgenderism. They cheat, because their idea is we have an old norm, masculine feminine, and now we want a new norm, everything is normal. No, I mean the whole I think they cheat in what sense? It’s in the same way that like I noticed when I have a debate with homosexuals or whomever that although like what do they want? They want they take their complaint alive. They they complain that they are not normalized but secretly the most horrible thing they can experience for them is that you simply say and that’s how I usually treat them, fuck off, I totally admit you you are nothing special. And this is horrible to tell to them. They want to be normalized subversives. And that’s why I think that we cannot dismiss norms as such. Sorry to tell you I believe in norms and it’s interesting to read how for example a lot of this for example let’s take Judith Butler. I think there is an absolutely clear even brutally violent normative dimension in her work. You know where you find it? When you read her theory of of melancholic complaint and so on. Her idea is this one that incidentally I think it’s wrong in a Freudian way. She reads in a too direct way Freud’s statement that we become what we are through identifying by the lost object. So the idea is our first object of desire is for the small girl mother, for the small boy father and then normal subjects heterosexually normal do the proper work of mourning by identifying with the lost object. So a boy having to renounce father as the object becomes a man and vice versa. Her idea is you find it very clearly in what I argue is her best book maybe *Psychic Life of Power*. Her idea is that somehow although she would probably have denied it but the idea is that that lesbian or gay are somehow more ethical. They don’t betray the primordial object. They remain faithful to it. You have a normativity there. It’s absolutely clear that for her being gay is somehow not making a crucial compromise. While I violently disagree with this. First I think it brutally contradicts her theory of sexual difference
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is that it is only enacted performatively afterwards. Wait a
is that it is only enacted performatively afterwards. Wait a
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minute what we get here is before going through that process of performative identity but enactment of differences as if sexual difference is already there from the very beginning. How come? Where does that basic sexual difference before you become man by being constructed and so on and so on? So what I’m tempted to tell is that A, normativity is much more forceful and B, especially in our permissive transgender and so on. I cannot even imagine a more normative attitude than than transgenderism if you ask me. In a way in a way it’s the same game that we heterosexuals in a very subtle way really reproducing. You know I’m the first to admit that we so-called straight heterosexuals have we are often also absolutely hypocritical. We have these subtle ways of you know you admit the equality of in principle but in a subtle way you dismiss them. But I’m saying they are doing it even in a more subtle way. Okay but that’s I don’t want to get lost here. Let me go on very quickly. Sorry not to speak for too long. First I have so many things to say I don’t have time to go what you said about complaint and so on. From very concrete at the very concrete level for example let’s take what you said about complaint and so on. I mean coming from an ex-communist country I can tell you that was maybe the greatest political genius of really existing socialism in the last decades. It when you you know people complained all the time. My god you don’t get proper you don’t get enough coke in the store, you don’t get toilet paper, you don’t get blah blah blah. But this was their life, this was their satisfaction. And the regime was ingenious it knew it all the time. This is why this was the authentic horror of democracy where people they were stupid enough to believe at the beginning in democracy. So it took them some time but really only a couple of months to realize that with so-called democracy they lost their right to complain. Because you know then even if you had a like they’re deprived of their precious object. Yeah absolutely. I remember when we had the first conservative elected government in Slovenia and in a quite ingenious way I admired them when people continued to explain basically they told the people fuck off it’s no longer communism you have chosen us you have no right to complain. Right. It’s over. So this is a very violent gesture when somebody tries to deprive you of your right to complain. I think is always extremely violent at the moment. Yeah but in this sense didn’t you think that a psychoanalysis also is in a more subtle way very violent because basically it does something even more unpleasant which is it lets you know that okay just enjoy your complaint you know like it compels you to admit that you are really enjoying. But what I’m saying is that also at a very personal level. Let me tell you maybe this would be interesting. I had the same experience with my mother when I had a small son with my wife we were of course exploiting her that’s the only reason for grandparents to exist and she of course secretly loved it. How did she articulate her love by complaining all the time: "yes I know I have another weekend ruined I will have to have your boy" and so on and so on. Then I did the most vicious thing imaginable. I stopped giving her the boy and ignored her. And she was desperate. What should I do now? Like she was deprived of her complaint and it was and up to the more sublime topic I totally agree with you complaint high art. What is the entire history of the opera but aria is a complaint? It begins with Orpheus complaining and so on and so on. It’s all it ends the last great opera as right Wagner’s Parsifal. The two great arias the Fisher King Amfortas, it’s *Klage*, complaint, the true great okay. But let me go. Yeah, if I was to go further indeed, I would you could have a whole section of I don't talk about opera but I have other examples. Yeah that would be wonderful. I mean the history of opera as a complaint I thought about that but okay. Yeah that's a very that would also be a very interesting avenue into this problem of complaint. Okay. That’s why I would like to do this type of you know what I would love to do. A topic which would be really universal philosophical topic but covered up as a very specific like why don’t why don’t we do a great colloquium you know. That like the logic of complaint in early Monteverdi operas you know like it means it may appear as a tiny specific problem but really it’s about everything imaginable. Yeah that's true. But let me go on sorry sorry don’t let me. Next point one aspect of your work here and also in your other texts that you forgot I think you have it somewhere here but I don’t think it’s in the foreground. It’s this excellent way which is for me absolutely crucial that you develop a kind of a negative
minute what we get here is before going through that process of performative identity but enactment of differences as if sexual difference is already there from the very beginning. How come? Where does that basic sexual difference before you become man by being constructed and so on and so on? So what I’m tempted to tell is that A, normativity is much more forceful and B, especially in our permissive transgender and so on. I cannot even imagine a more normative attitude than than transgenderism if you ask me. In a way in a way it’s the same game that we heterosexuals in a very subtle way really reproducing. You know I’m the first to admit that we so-called straight heterosexuals have we are often also absolutely hypocritical. We have these subtle ways of you know you admit the equality of in principle but in a subtle way you dismiss them. But I’m saying they are doing it even in a more subtle way. Okay but that’s I don’t want to get lost here. Let me go on very quickly. Sorry not to speak for too long. First I have so many things to say I don’t have time to go what you said about complaint and so on. From very concrete at the very concrete level for example let’s take what you said about complaint and so on. I mean coming from an ex-communist country I can tell you that was maybe the greatest political genius of really existing socialism in the last decades. It when you you know people complained all the time. My god you don’t get proper you don’t get enough coke in the store, you don’t get toilet paper, you don’t get blah blah blah. But this was their life, this was their satisfaction. And the regime was ingenious it knew it all the time. This is why this was the authentic horror of democracy where people they were stupid enough to believe at the beginning in democracy. So it took them some time but really only a couple of months to realize that with so-called democracy they lost their right to complain. Because you know then even if you had a like they’re deprived of their precious object. Yeah absolutely. I remember when we had the first conservative elected government in Slovenia and in a quite ingenious way I admired them when people continued to explain basically they told the people fuck off it’s no longer communism you have chosen us you have no right to complain. Right. It’s over. So this is a very violent gesture when somebody tries to deprive you of your right to complain. I think is always extremely violent at the moment. Yeah but in this sense didn’t you think that a psychoanalysis also is in a more subtle way very violent because basically it does something even more unpleasant which is it lets you know that okay just enjoy your complaint you know like it compels you to admit that you are really enjoying. But what I’m saying is that also at a very personal level. Let me tell you maybe this would be interesting. I had the same experience with my mother when I had a small son with my wife we were of course exploiting her that’s the only reason for grandparents to exist and she of course secretly loved it. How did she articulate her love by complaining all the time: "yes I know I have another weekend ruined I will have to have your boy" and so on and so on. Then I did the most vicious thing imaginable. I stopped giving her the boy and ignored her. And she was desperate. What should I do now? Like she was deprived of her complaint and it was and up to the more sublime topic I totally agree with you complaint high art. What is the entire history of the opera but aria is a complaint? It begins with Orpheus complaining and so on and so on. It’s all it ends the last great opera as right Wagner’s Parsifal. The two great arias the Fisher King Amfortas, it’s *Klage*, complaint, the true great okay. But let me go. Yeah, if I was to go further indeed, I would you could have a whole section of I don't talk about opera but I have other examples. Yeah that would be wonderful. I mean the history of opera as a complaint I thought about that but okay. Yeah that's a very that would also be a very interesting avenue into this problem of complaint. Okay. That’s why I would like to do this type of you know what I would love to do. A topic which would be really universal philosophical topic but covered up as a very specific like why don’t why don’t we do a great colloquium you know. That like the logic of complaint in early Monteverdi operas you know like it means it may appear as a tiny specific problem but really it’s about everything imaginable. Yeah that's true. But let me go on sorry sorry don’t let me. Next point one aspect of your work here and also in your other texts that you forgot I think you have it somewhere here but I don’t think it’s in the foreground. It’s this excellent way which is for me absolutely crucial that you develop a kind of a negative
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comical Hegelian negation of negation as you put it. You have you try to negate suicide but you fail even in that. So you have a kind of not no longer this noble immortality but a kind of a obscene immortality. We are immortal not because we have an immortal soul or whatever but because we fail even to properly kill ourselves. Where do you have that? Is it here still? Well that's yes, I mean, that's also the idea I mean in some respects I think that's what Perros is saying like we're trying to we're trying to we're doing our best to be unhappy but we even manage to fail at that. So it's a kind of failure that's even sort of worse or that idea of you could say if pessimism is never fully successful in that sense. Yeah yeah yeah. And there's a I sort of developed I try to develop a philosophy of pessimism and optimism and I also have to say for many years I just thought those were stupid notions actually kind of sub-philosophical that you should be directed towards truth and pessimism and optimism are just world views or what. But then I started thinking about it more and I think what's interesting in pessimism is that it can't if it was really pessimistic it would somehow disappear into itself and it would simply vanish. I mean in a certain sense but it somehow doesn't vanish. It's a kind of negativity that somehow exists, a kind of nothing that continues nevertheless to exist. That there's something that refuses to sort of disappear into the nothingness of pessimism. Yeah and I think that's a good way of like understanding life in a in a different way in a kind of. No but I also imagine detail scenes like for me the ultimate scene is always you know you are in front of a military court a great hero you know. And you want to do some heroic gesture like you tear your shirt rather shoot me then and then something gets stuck and you have to say oh sorry one button is out I just have to unbutton myself properly so that I can then repeat the big gesture and so on you know. Sorry but let me go on. So now I will ask. It undermines this kind of hero I mean part of the argument I think undermines I mean so it could be read in an extremely yeah I mean it in a sort of comical sense I think it undermines the heroism of suicide. Yes yes yes yes. In a certain sense this idea of this this idea of failing not to be born is actually meant as a kind of that optimism weirdly reemerges within a buffoonish way. And I agree with you sorry your remark that I think that the greatest luck is not to be born. I mean we should appropriate this. This is the greatest pro-abortion statement I think or pro-abortion propaganda we should use this. Okay but now I come to two slightly trickier questions and then a final remark so that I don’t talk too much. Okay. First you know apart from obvious minor points now I’m talking as a nonetheless more Lacanian than Deleuzian. Okay this is not a big reproach and you know it. This is just what makes for me Deleuze suspicious. What I will never pardon him is from early 60s a text celebrating Jung. You know this is something kept in secret even by Deleuzians themselves. It was proven by my friend that when they put together some article they never they try to avoid reprinting it. In early 60s Deleuze has a crazy text where he totally celebrates Jung. Okay but let’s avoid that that’s not crucial. This was a blow below the belt. Now. No no actually I can say something about Jung. Please please. I mean so also completely agreeing that Freudian psychoanalysis is has nothing to do with a kind of Jungian mysticism. Nevertheless yeah. There is something theoretically interesting in Jung. Sorry to say but the original break between Freud and Jung was on an interesting point that it wasn't on kind of New Age mystical things. It was on clinical things. So you know that Freud wanted Jung to develop his theory for psychosis because he didn't have immediate clinical experience. But they really so they broke about psychosis and they also broke about sexuality. And Jung putting pressure on Freud and that was an interesting problem at the time. I'm not saying Jung was not right, but he put his finger on a certain weakness in Freud's theorizing to actually define what is sexuality. And so they really broke about that problem of what do you really mean by and I think that's an interesting philosophical problem. Again to be very clear I'm not saying Jung has a better, you know, but I think at that moment. You’re not saying the woman in the dream is your mother I saw yeah. At that moment he threw I think he put his finger on the right thing I mean there was something interesting in the split. It wasn't purely it wasn't purely about mysticism so but it
comical Hegelian negation of negation as you put it. You have you try to negate suicide but you fail even in that. So you have a kind of not no longer this noble immortality but a kind of a obscene immortality. We are immortal not because we have an immortal soul or whatever but because we fail even to properly kill ourselves. Where do you have that? Is it here still? Well that's yes, I mean, that's also the idea I mean in some respects I think that's what Perros is saying like we're trying to we're trying to we're doing our best to be unhappy but we even manage to fail at that. So it's a kind of failure that's even sort of worse or that idea of you could say if pessimism is never fully successful in that sense. Yeah yeah yeah. And there's a I sort of developed I try to develop a philosophy of pessimism and optimism and I also have to say for many years I just thought those were stupid notions actually kind of sub-philosophical that you should be directed towards truth and pessimism and optimism are just world views or what. But then I started thinking about it more and I think what's interesting in pessimism is that it can't if it was really pessimistic it would somehow disappear into itself and it would simply vanish. I mean in a certain sense but it somehow doesn't vanish. It's a kind of negativity that somehow exists, a kind of nothing that continues nevertheless to exist. That there's something that refuses to sort of disappear into the nothingness of pessimism. Yeah and I think that's a good way of like understanding life in a in a different way in a kind of. No but I also imagine detail scenes like for me the ultimate scene is always you know you are in front of a military court a great hero you know. And you want to do some heroic gesture like you tear your shirt rather shoot me then and then something gets stuck and you have to say oh sorry one button is out I just have to unbutton myself properly so that I can then repeat the big gesture and so on you know. Sorry but let me go on. So now I will ask. It undermines this kind of hero I mean part of the argument I think undermines I mean so it could be read in an extremely yeah I mean it in a sort of comical sense I think it undermines the heroism of suicide. Yes yes yes yes. In a certain sense this idea of this this idea of failing not to be born is actually meant as a kind of that optimism weirdly reemerges within a buffoonish way. And I agree with you sorry your remark that I think that the greatest luck is not to be born. I mean we should appropriate this. This is the greatest pro-abortion statement I think or pro-abortion propaganda we should use this. Okay but now I come to two slightly trickier questions and then a final remark so that I don’t talk too much. Okay. First you know apart from obvious minor points now I’m talking as a nonetheless more Lacanian than Deleuzian. Okay this is not a big reproach and you know it. This is just what makes for me Deleuze suspicious. What I will never pardon him is from early 60s a text celebrating Jung. You know this is something kept in secret even by Deleuzians themselves. It was proven by my friend that when they put together some article they never they try to avoid reprinting it. In early 60s Deleuze has a crazy text where he totally celebrates Jung. Okay but let’s avoid that that’s not crucial. This was a blow below the belt. Now. No no actually I can say something about Jung. Please please. I mean so also completely agreeing that Freudian psychoanalysis is has nothing to do with a kind of Jungian mysticism. Nevertheless yeah. There is something theoretically interesting in Jung. Sorry to say but the original break between Freud and Jung was on an interesting point that it wasn't on kind of New Age mystical things. It was on clinical things. So you know that Freud wanted Jung to develop his theory for psychosis because he didn't have immediate clinical experience. But they really so they broke about psychosis and they also broke about sexuality. And Jung putting pressure on Freud and that was an interesting problem at the time. I'm not saying Jung was not right, but he put his finger on a certain weakness in Freud's theorizing to actually define what is sexuality. And so they really broke about that problem of what do you really mean by and I think that's an interesting philosophical problem. Again to be very clear I'm not saying Jung has a better, you know, but I think at that moment. You’re not saying the woman in the dream is your mother I saw yeah. At that moment he threw I think he put his finger on the right thing I mean there was something interesting in the split. It wasn't purely it wasn't purely about mysticism so but it
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was really about the philosophical problem what do you mean by what how do you define if sexuality is not just genitality, it's not just reproduction then what is it? How do you define? And you see that then it becomes interesting because Freud it is a difficult question for Freud what do you mean by sexuality and that problem returns in psychoanalysis. So but okay. I totally agree. But I think Freud was there onto something that he didn't know and that Lacan picked it up. That's my point. That's it. But Jung put his I just would say he put his finger on the problem and then he went off in this crazy direction that's right. Yeah but then the conclusion of Jung to generalize libido is I think nonetheless there was here I remain Freudian. First for Freud and Alenka Zupančič developed this very nicely: what psychoanalysis calls sexuality is is not only not the same as organic biological sexuality, but it’s only true let’s call it symbolically human sexuality. Sexuality itself in the sense of natural coupling has to get sexualized. What Lacan proposes is if I may put it in this way almost a Kantian pure schematism of
was really about the philosophical problem what do you mean by what how do you define if sexuality is not just genitality, it's not just reproduction then what is it? How do you define? And you see that then it becomes interesting because Freud it is a difficult question for Freud what do you mean by sexuality and that problem returns in psychoanalysis. So but okay. I totally agree. But I think Freud was there onto something that he didn't know and that Lacan picked it up. That's my point. That's it. But Jung put his I just would say he put his finger on the problem and then he went off in this crazy direction that's right. Yeah but then the conclusion of Jung to generalize libido is I think nonetheless there was here I remain Freudian. First for Freud and Alenka Zupančič developed this very nicely: what psychoanalysis calls sexuality is is not only not the same as organic biological sexuality, but it’s only true let’s call it symbolically human sexuality. Sexuality itself in the sense of natural coupling has to get sexualized. What Lacan proposes is if I may put it in this way almost a Kantian pure schematism of
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sexuality, which has more to do with purely formal features. What do I mean by this? Let me do something very vulgar don’t take it personally. Give me your hand, we are French. Do we have to do we have to illustrate? No no just yeah yeah. But it’s disgusting you can do it. What if instead of dropping your hand I would now repetitively start to squeeze it? Right. It would automatically get sexualized in a dirty way. I would have done nothing. I would just repeat it and you would have been you would be totally justified in becoming furious you know what I mean. Or if somebody was to like read the same paragraph of my book over and over again like delighting in it then it would assume a sexual interest. Yeah it would be best poetry yeah. No what I’m saying no now the crucial problem so that I’m very sorry we don’t get lost here is where I see but maybe I’m wrong here. Maybe I’m of course now identifying a very simplified version of Deleuze. But there is a popular theory which goes like this: originally what later becomes normative sexuality is just the plurality of the plurality of partial drives and then in a secondary violent Oedipalization this sexual this this gets then squeezed into the normative straightjacket of two positions and so on and so on. I as a Freudian
sexuality, which has more to do with purely formal features. What do I mean by this? Let me do something very vulgar don’t take it personally. Give me your hand, we are French. Do we have to do we have to illustrate? No no just yeah yeah. But it’s disgusting you can do it. What if instead of dropping your hand I would now repetitively start to squeeze it? Right. It would automatically get sexualized in a dirty way. I would have done nothing. I would just repeat it and you would have been you would be totally justified in becoming furious you know what I mean. Or if somebody was to like read the same paragraph of my book over and over again like delighting in it then it would assume a sexual interest. Yeah it would be best poetry yeah. No what I’m saying no now the crucial problem so that I’m very sorry we don’t get lost here is where I see but maybe I’m wrong here. Maybe I’m of course now identifying a very simplified version of Deleuze. But there is a popular theory which goes like this: originally what later becomes normative sexuality is just the plurality of the plurality of partial drives and then in a secondary violent Oedipalization this sexual this this gets then squeezed into the normative straightjacket of two positions and so on and so on. I as a Freudian
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I don’t buy this. I think that this plurality of partial drives is not primordial. There already has to be something that you would have called death drive. It’s already an effect of some more radical negativity. Can I can I just insert like one reflection? I mean I really see your point on that. But you know I would give Deleuze even Deleuze and Guattari more more credit because it's not simply so again if there's something interesting in that book so let me focus on Which book? *Anti-Oedipus*. Yeah *Anti-Oedipus*. You know I think indeed there there can be one reading where you'd say there's a kind of riot of pandemonium of forces partial drives and then they are getting kind of shaped or repressed and so forth by external but that's not what they argue. I mean a more sophisticated they say that the body already represses itself before this kind of repressive law. And that's why they say that embodiment is a kind of in a tension you need at least two terms to think embodiment. Not only do you have the multiplicity of partial drives but you need the body without organs. And the reason why you need both those terms is they would say that the the body is already a kind of chaos or problem for itself and the way it copes with itself is it tries to liquidate itself. So the body immediately and that's not about an external so again they're
I don’t buy this. I think that this plurality of partial drives is not primordial. There already has to be something that you would have called death drive. It’s already an effect of some more radical negativity. Can I can I just insert like one reflection? I mean I really see your point on that. But you know I would give Deleuze even Deleuze and Guattari more more credit because it's not simply so again if there's something interesting in that book so let me focus on Which book? *Anti-Oedipus*. Yeah *Anti-Oedipus*. You know I think indeed there there can be one reading where you'd say there's a kind of riot of pandemonium of forces partial drives and then they are getting kind of shaped or repressed and so forth by external but that's not what they argue. I mean a more sophisticated they say that the body already represses itself before this kind of repressive law. And that's why they say that embodiment is a kind of in a tension you need at least two terms to think embodiment. Not only do you have the multiplicity of partial drives but you need the body without organs. And the reason why you need both those terms is they would say that the the body is already a kind of chaos or problem for itself and the way it copes with itself is it tries to liquidate itself. So the body immediately and that's not about an external so again they're
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sensitive to that Lacanian idea that repression is not introduced into the psyche
sensitive to that Lacanian idea that repression is not introduced into the psyche
Slavoj Žižek
merely by external factors. That they say the body itself becomes paranoiac and tries to fight against its own impulses in order to impose some kind of order on itself. And then they say and I think this is a sophisticated point, then they would say when social repression is effective it's because it's able to exploit somehow the inherent natural if you want paranoia of the body. So that social repression is always hijacking another kind of mechanism. I think most Deleuzians miss that point to be honest. Yeah that's that's yeah. And so I think this now having said that, so this is my argument that I think that there is a theory of negativity in the body without organs. You know they I mean I'm not and I don't think I'm stretching here. I mean they literally say these different partial objects or drives are repressed, I mean they use the word, by the body without organs that tries to liquidate them get rid of them and then it attracts them back onto itself and what they mean by intensity is actually the tension between something rejected off out of the body and then and then reintroduced you know and then brought back to the body. It's a kind of for them intensity doesn't doesn't just mean a bodily force but it actually means that tension between a body and disembodiment. No no but the sorry just the last point would be I think there is a theory of negativity even in *Anti-Oedipus*, but I think the Lacanian version ultimately is a different one. And the reason why I think it's a different one is because still the body without organs and the partial drives it's all about the kind of dynamism of bodily powers which have a very complex structure. Again more complex than I think is usually admitted by even Deleuzians. But they don't have that notion and that's a very interesting notion in Lacan that there's some kind of negativity that doesn't partake you could say directly in the movement of the drives but has to be represented in the unconscious by some kind of bodily representative like the *objet petit a* stands in for the missing subject. No no no and this is a kind of this is quite a different structure. So again if I can end on in some respects I think I've written a book that anybody everybody could complain about because for some reason I'm much more how could I say sympathetic or extend a lot of hermeneutic generosity to Deleuze from a Lacanian standpoint more than is usually extended. On the other hand, I mean for a Deleuzian you can see that ultimately I keep resurrecting bringing back these Lacanian notions and showing how their critique falls short. If there's any if the book is successful for me it's because it actually manages to really delimit what I consider the core of this dispute about these different ideas of negativity but okay. Sorry to one more go on. No no I agree with you these are tremendous problems because I think that the point I’m trying to make you make it at some point there these are for me the best parts of the book almost where you strictly distinguish the subject from all these bodily dynamics and so on. The subject is the dead point. But we don’t have time to do this now. Just the final big theoretical remark and then two final observations. The question that I told you I will ask you is the following one. I see in what we all are doing by we all I mean I’m proud to say I think the two of us are part of a movement we include Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, Frank Ruda, Lorenzo and so on who we work in this domain of psychoanalysis, philosophy and so on. And the problem that I see in philosophy is a very naive one. Up to a point Derrida and even Lacan still play the transcendental game. By the transcendental game I mean although it’s not the transcendental subject but the process for example when Lacan says the Big Other is always already here. We move in a circle we cannot go beyond. And Lacan at least the early Lacan all these questions which he addresses courageously sometimes like how did the symbolic order arise out of nature animal interaction and he has all these funny examples of dolphins playing of of lobsters interacting and so on. But these are more or less for him at that point Platonic myths and so on and so on. With Derrida you find it even clearer the dilemma I’m trying to pinpoint. You know you have his famous statement in *De la grammatologie*: *il n’y a pas de hors-texte*, although of course he doesn’t mean the stupidity that there is no reality outside language. But what he means is ambiguous: on the one hand it’s still a meta-transcendental operation of there is no direct access to reality, it’s always always already against the background of writing of texture. It’s still a kind of a meta-transcendental position. At the same time sometimes in some of his seminars for example when how is he called my god I forgot his not family name Jacob the great French biologist, François yes sorry, he has a series of lectures where Derrida risks a very naive ontologization even and talks about how life DNA is already trace, it’s already a game of *différance* and so on. So all of a sudden we are in a quite naive if I may put it like this realist ontology where our human writing or in the broadest sense is just an ontological example of writing which is proper to life as such or even sometimes Derrida hints at the extreme and goes after up to quantum physics registration and so on and so on. And my great struggle is and this is my only disappointment immanent criticism of this book, I compare it with as a good Hegelian with yourself. I think you had in some of your other texts some more explicit passages in this very speculative direction. When you quote that poetic Lacan you know how it is as if and Lacan says there the same as already Walter Benjamin and so on, it is as if the symbolic order brings out some pain which is already nature itself and so on all that speculative. Sorry this wonderful line also I took from from an artist that who knows like maybe in nature I mean they're just nature is just waiting for language so you know the fish can tell you how bad it is to always be swimming. I mean in this sense which is a wonder but okay. You finish the question I can. No what I’m trying to say is do you think we are ultimately limited to the some kind of
merely by external factors. That they say the body itself becomes paranoiac and tries to fight against its own impulses in order to impose some kind of order on itself. And then they say and I think this is a sophisticated point, then they would say when social repression is effective it's because it's able to exploit somehow the inherent natural if you want paranoia of the body. So that social repression is always hijacking another kind of mechanism. I think most Deleuzians miss that point to be honest. Yeah that's that's yeah. And so I think this now having said that, so this is my argument that I think that there is a theory of negativity in the body without organs. You know they I mean I'm not and I don't think I'm stretching here. I mean they literally say these different partial objects or drives are repressed, I mean they use the word, by the body without organs that tries to liquidate them get rid of them and then it attracts them back onto itself and what they mean by intensity is actually the tension between something rejected off out of the body and then and then reintroduced you know and then brought back to the body. It's a kind of for them intensity doesn't doesn't just mean a bodily force but it actually means that tension between a body and disembodiment. No no but the sorry just the last point would be I think there is a theory of negativity even in *Anti-Oedipus*, but I think the Lacanian version ultimately is a different one. And the reason why I think it's a different one is because still the body without organs and the partial drives it's all about the kind of dynamism of bodily powers which have a very complex structure. Again more complex than I think is usually admitted by even Deleuzians. But they don't have that notion and that's a very interesting notion in Lacan that there's some kind of negativity that doesn't partake you could say directly in the movement of the drives but has to be represented in the unconscious by some kind of bodily representative like the *objet petit a* stands in for the missing subject. No no no and this is a kind of this is quite a different structure. So again if I can end on in some respects I think I've written a book that anybody everybody could complain about because for some reason I'm much more how could I say sympathetic or extend a lot of hermeneutic generosity to Deleuze from a Lacanian standpoint more than is usually extended. On the other hand, I mean for a Deleuzian you can see that ultimately I keep resurrecting bringing back these Lacanian notions and showing how their critique falls short. If there's any if the book is successful for me it's because it actually manages to really delimit what I consider the core of this dispute about these different ideas of negativity but okay. Sorry to one more go on. No no I agree with you these are tremendous problems because I think that the point I’m trying to make you make it at some point there these are for me the best parts of the book almost where you strictly distinguish the subject from all these bodily dynamics and so on. The subject is the dead point. But we don’t have time to do this now. Just the final big theoretical remark and then two final observations. The question that I told you I will ask you is the following one. I see in what we all are doing by we all I mean I’m proud to say I think the two of us are part of a movement we include Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, Frank Ruda, Lorenzo and so on who we work in this domain of psychoanalysis, philosophy and so on. And the problem that I see in philosophy is a very naive one. Up to a point Derrida and even Lacan still play the transcendental game. By the transcendental game I mean although it’s not the transcendental subject but the process for example when Lacan says the Big Other is always already here. We move in a circle we cannot go beyond. And Lacan at least the early Lacan all these questions which he addresses courageously sometimes like how did the symbolic order arise out of nature animal interaction and he has all these funny examples of dolphins playing of of lobsters interacting and so on. But these are more or less for him at that point Platonic myths and so on and so on. With Derrida you find it even clearer the dilemma I’m trying to pinpoint. You know you have his famous statement in *De la grammatologie*: *il n’y a pas de hors-texte*, although of course he doesn’t mean the stupidity that there is no reality outside language. But what he means is ambiguous: on the one hand it’s still a meta-transcendental operation of there is no direct access to reality, it’s always always already against the background of writing of texture. It’s still a kind of a meta-transcendental position. At the same time sometimes in some of his seminars for example when how is he called my god I forgot his not family name Jacob the great French biologist, François yes sorry, he has a series of lectures where Derrida risks a very naive ontologization even and talks about how life DNA is already trace, it’s already a game of *différance* and so on. So all of a sudden we are in a quite naive if I may put it like this realist ontology where our human writing or in the broadest sense is just an ontological example of writing which is proper to life as such or even sometimes Derrida hints at the extreme and goes after up to quantum physics registration and so on and so on. And my great struggle is and this is my only disappointment immanent criticism of this book, I compare it with as a good Hegelian with yourself. I think you had in some of your other texts some more explicit passages in this very speculative direction. When you quote that poetic Lacan you know how it is as if and Lacan says there the same as already Walter Benjamin and so on, it is as if the symbolic order brings out some pain which is already nature itself and so on all that speculative. Sorry this wonderful line also I took from from an artist that who knows like maybe in nature I mean they're just nature is just waiting for language so you know the fish can tell you how bad it is to always be swimming. I mean in this sense which is a wonder but okay. You finish the question I can. No what I’m trying to say is do you think we are ultimately limited to the some kind of
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transcendental dimension whatever we say the
transcendental dimension whatever we say the
Slavoj Žižek
writing is here or so do you think these speculations are only poetic ones or can we maybe somehow break out? So I should directly I mean okay. I have a very dissatisfied I can give you the fish comment. I have a very dissatisfied answer but I can say a couple things and I can kind of answer more from the perspective also let's say not answering this this rather huge
writing is here or so do you think these speculations are only poetic ones or can we maybe somehow break out? So I should directly I mean okay. I have a very dissatisfied I can give you the fish comment. I have a very dissatisfied answer but I can say a couple things and I can kind of answer more from the perspective also let's say not answering this this rather huge
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question but you know at least how I tried to tackle it in the book. Because you wrote more you didn’t I’m imagining you sorry to interrupt you by my anal standards
question but you know at least how I tried to tackle it in the book. Because you wrote more you didn’t I’m imagining you sorry to interrupt you by my anal standards
Slavoj Žižek
where all the shit that I write I include in my book. And I noticed you didn’t include all your speculations. I have some discipline. No look let me start by saying you know sometimes I'm tempted to say something like this. Okay. That this relationship for me I kind of I tackle this in the book more talking about the relationship going back to this old metaphysical the relationship between nature and culture and the transition between the two. And I'm kind of tempted to say something like this although I haven't quite worked this out. You know in a way there is no relationship between nature and culture. From the standpoint of nature there's no such thing as culture. Everything is nature. And from the standpoint of culture there's no such thing as nature because everything is mediated by by culture. And there's kind of no transition between the two, there's almost kind of a just you shift, you know. And I think with the wait I think what I was trying to do in the book so the problem and that's where I think psychoanalysis is very strong, and I don't necessarily think psychoanalysis has the answer for everything. So you know I'm trying to also delimit what I consider the object you know the research domain of psychoanalysis is and how that can illuminate so that doesn't mean it has the answers to to all problems or it can also to some extent I think be a bit agnostic or aloof to this question for its own functioning. But I think what's interesting is that so in Lacanian theory well let me back up one one other small comment. I am alluding to a tradition that I think has not been maybe it's too strong to say excluded but a tradition that's been a little bit forgotten in contemporary let's say neuroscientifically inspired philosophy and that's this kind of very negative nature of
where all the shit that I write I include in my book. And I noticed you didn’t include all your speculations. I have some discipline. No look let me start by saying you know sometimes I'm tempted to say something like this. Okay. That this relationship for me I kind of I tackle this in the book more talking about the relationship going back to this old metaphysical the relationship between nature and culture and the transition between the two. And I'm kind of tempted to say something like this although I haven't quite worked this out. You know in a way there is no relationship between nature and culture. From the standpoint of nature there's no such thing as culture. Everything is nature. And from the standpoint of culture there's no such thing as nature because everything is mediated by by culture. And there's kind of no transition between the two, there's almost kind of a just you shift, you know. And I think with the wait I think what I was trying to do in the book so the problem and that's where I think psychoanalysis is very strong, and I don't necessarily think psychoanalysis has the answer for everything. So you know I'm trying to also delimit what I consider the object you know the research domain of psychoanalysis is and how that can illuminate so that doesn't mean it has the answers to to all problems or it can also to some extent I think be a bit agnostic or aloof to this question for its own functioning. But I think what's interesting is that so in Lacanian theory well let me back up one one other small comment. I am alluding to a tradition that I think has not been maybe it's too strong to say excluded but a tradition that's been a little bit forgotten in contemporary let's say neuroscientifically inspired philosophy and that's this kind of very negative nature of
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philosophizing. So at a certain point I'm also looking at like novelists who are more or less contemporary with Freud like one of my favorites Blaise Cendrars or Thomas Mann who have this very idea that nature itself is sick. That it's not about vibrant matter or bodies that matter but really sick matter and the first mistake it's not even like Freud said that somehow life wants to go back to the non-living but even the non-living wants
philosophizing. So at a certain point I'm also looking at like novelists who are more or less contemporary with Freud like one of my favorites Blaise Cendrars or Thomas Mann who have this very idea that nature itself is sick. That it's not about vibrant matter or bodies that matter but really sick matter and the first mistake it's not even like Freud said that somehow life wants to go back to the non-living but even the non-living wants
Slavoj Žižek
to go back to the nothing. I mean you already find this in Marquis de Sade and Thomas Mann and so on. So in some ways I'm using strategically I use these references strategically to suggest a certain aspect in contemporary materialist debates that I think is not if we can think of a kind of more pathological optic on these materialist debates. But okay that's not deeply developed. That's true, because it's essentially still a foil for my main interest which is this problem of philosophy of psychopathology. And I think that in Lacanian psychoanalysis what for me is so interesting is it wants to study that transition between nature and culture but it does so by saying fundamentally there is no transition and that lack of transition itself is the fundament, the basis for why there's an unconscious. Yes but still that's it. Now if you say still I have another okay I can't answer that. But I can at least make more precise what I think the psychoanalytic contribution to that is then then I think at least that would have the value if you're more precise than our you can reject it or not or move forward or not or whatever. And that would be to say that again there is no account of a kind of smooth transition but there's necessarily a kind of leap and that leap for psychoanalysis can't be renaturalized. So I will never so again some of my comrades if I can put it that way your work you tend
to go back to the nothing. I mean you already find this in Marquis de Sade and Thomas Mann and so on. So in some ways I'm using strategically I use these references strategically to suggest a certain aspect in contemporary materialist debates that I think is not if we can think of a kind of more pathological optic on these materialist debates. But okay that's not deeply developed. That's true, because it's essentially still a foil for my main interest which is this problem of philosophy of psychopathology. And I think that in Lacanian psychoanalysis what for me is so interesting is it wants to study that transition between nature and culture but it does so by saying fundamentally there is no transition and that lack of transition itself is the fundament, the basis for why there's an unconscious. Yes but still that's it. Now if you say still I have another okay I can't answer that. But I can at least make more precise what I think the psychoanalytic contribution to that is then then I think at least that would have the value if you're more precise than our you can reject it or not or move forward or not or whatever. And that would be to say that again there is no account of a kind of smooth transition but there's necessarily a kind of leap and that leap for psychoanalysis can't be renaturalized. So I will never so again some of my comrades if I can put it that way your work you tend
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to refer to quantum quantum physics and in other people's work like Adrian Johnston instead to the realm of biology. I think you know the argument I take from Lacan is you would not find a kind of smooth transition so there's some negativity in nature and then we finally find a fully fledged and then step by step we would find this kind of fully fledged psychic negativity. That there's a kind of leap but that leap itself is the very nature of psychic negativity and that that transition between nature and culture But that leap is part of nature. It must be in some formal sense if everything is nature. Or everything but from the perspective I would take the parallax right from the perspective of culture and in a sense there is no nature. I mean what if we just thought that there is no priority of one or the other but I mean the weird thought again and I think both Deleuze and Lacan show this is you should think I don't I don't know you should think the intersection oddly has priority over its terms. Can I ask you something. It’s strictly personal please don’t laugh at me. I’m a diabetic. Can you open the question I have to run to the toilet. Oh yeah yeah yeah. This was my. I thought you were going to like ask me a question about diabetes. No no no I’m so sad it’s very vulgar. That’s the call of nature. No but that's perfect. That saves me from the impossible. I’m so sorry. But please start the debate. No no this saves me from the impossible. I’m so ashamed but. I’m so ashamed. Maybe it’s good to open the Okay. I think so.
to refer to quantum quantum physics and in other people's work like Adrian Johnston instead to the realm of biology. I think you know the argument I take from Lacan is you would not find a kind of smooth transition so there's some negativity in nature and then we finally find a fully fledged and then step by step we would find this kind of fully fledged psychic negativity. That there's a kind of leap but that leap itself is the very nature of psychic negativity and that that transition between nature and culture But that leap is part of nature. It must be in some formal sense if everything is nature. Or everything but from the perspective I would take the parallax right from the perspective of culture and in a sense there is no nature. I mean what if we just thought that there is no priority of one or the other but I mean the weird thought again and I think both Deleuze and Lacan show this is you should think I don't I don't know you should think the intersection oddly has priority over its terms. Can I ask you something. It’s strictly personal please don’t laugh at me. I’m a diabetic. Can you open the question I have to run to the toilet. Oh yeah yeah yeah. This was my. I thought you were going to like ask me a question about diabetes. No no no I’m so sad it’s very vulgar. That’s the call of nature. No but that's perfect. That saves me from the impossible. I’m so sorry. But please start the debate. No no this saves me from the impossible. I’m so ashamed but. I’m so ashamed. Maybe it’s good to open the Okay. I think so.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, can can I see some hands and then we can take start taking questions. Or everything is just clear now. I'm sorry, yeah. Just a quick question about the complaint and its kinship with let's say what you'd call prayer. Yeah. And how is prayer kind of like a sublimated complaint and what's the difference? What what can you say? I don't know, I'm tempted immediately to throw that back at you and just what do you think? I mean I mean complaining can be a kind of liturgy and some liturgy you know there are
Yeah, can can I see some hands and then we can take start taking questions. Or everything is just clear now. I'm sorry, yeah. Just a quick question about the complaint and its kinship with let's say what you'd call prayer. Yeah. And how is prayer kind of like a sublimated complaint and what's the difference? What what can you say? I don't know, I'm tempted immediately to throw that back at you and just what do you think? I mean I mean complaining can be a kind of liturgy and some liturgy you know there are
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liturgies that are kind of you know in in religion of course are highly developed I mean complaints. I mean think just of Job. So what's what's the major difference between would you say? Off the top of my I don't know. I mean that's one
liturgies that are kind of you know in in religion of course are highly developed I mean complaints. I mean think just of Job. So what's what's the major difference between would you say? Off the top of my I don't know. I mean that's one
Slavoj Žižek
of the things that I quickly came across in my research that it becomes very hard to actually define complaint in terms of delimiting it clearly from other forms of expression because the more you start thinking about it, really, I mean I'm not saying everything is a complaint but it starts to you know quite quickly insinuate itself elsewhere. So at a certain point I mean I'm a sort of complaining amateur I think but at a certain point I started to try to look well did literary theorists try to define it as a genre for instance. So I took kind of seriously also a historical question and I found some scholarship on this but not so much and it wasn't so clear. So I don't have an answer I mean I really just don't know. But I found like some of the most interesting literature on like medieval and where they said you know there was a and I talked about this that there's a kind of four the complaint genre there was four main kinds of complaints and I mean the most wonderful complaint of course is the love complaint, you know, courtly love is a kind of cultivation of complaining as the very form of of love which I think was very impacted a lot let's say on Western eros if you want. So
of the things that I quickly came across in my research that it becomes very hard to actually define complaint in terms of delimiting it clearly from other forms of expression because the more you start thinking about it, really, I mean I'm not saying everything is a complaint but it starts to you know quite quickly insinuate itself elsewhere. So at a certain point I mean I'm a sort of complaining amateur I think but at a certain point I started to try to look well did literary theorists try to define it as a genre for instance. So I took kind of seriously also a historical question and I found some scholarship on this but not so much and it wasn't so clear. So I don't have an answer I mean I really just don't know. But I found like some of the most interesting literature on like medieval and where they said you know there was a and I talked about this that there's a kind of four the complaint genre there was four main kinds of complaints and I mean the most wonderful complaint of course is the love complaint, you know, courtly love is a kind of cultivation of complaining as the very form of of love which I think was very impacted a lot let's say on Western eros if you want. So
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the Yeah. It's a really good question actually because basically yeah, is anything is there anything that is not a complaint? I mean you start, you know the the way you define it everything becomes, you know, poetry, philosophy, everything we communicate with complaint. Well, you know I didn't start with an a priori definition. I started with some commonsensical notions and then I actually did some historical research to try to understand and and of course you find very many interesting things but I didn't find a clear definition of a of a kind of of a of a genre. And of course then complaining does become very I mean for me, you know, my question of course coming from philosophy and not from theology, was more how could we relate complaint to to critique for instance. And I think
the Yeah. It's a really good question actually because basically yeah, is anything is there anything that is not a complaint? I mean you start, you know the the way you define it everything becomes, you know, poetry, philosophy, everything we communicate with complaint. Well, you know I didn't start with an a priori definition. I started with some commonsensical notions and then I actually did some historical research to try to understand and and of course you find very many interesting things but I didn't find a clear definition of a of a kind of of a of a genre. And of course then complaining does become very I mean for me, you know, my question of course coming from philosophy and not from theology, was more how could we relate complaint to to critique for instance. And I think
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that we could see critique as a kind of sublimation or refinement, a real cultivation of of of complaining. And I think that's a funny perspective on that problem of philosophy on the on the critical vocation of philosophy. So how do you relate complaint to Kant’s notion of critique? Right. The big question expected, predictable. Well, I there's an answer to that maybe not totally satisfied but I mean at some point and that's meant as a kind of okay it's a witticism. But I say there should be a critique of pure complaint, so this in German like *Reine Beschwerde*, there should be and and ultimately that would be the fourth missing critique which would provide the key for understanding how the other critiques relate and that again would be the question of what went wrong or what went all too right at the very beginning. So and then that leads me to the
that we could see critique as a kind of sublimation or refinement, a real cultivation of of of complaining. And I think that's a funny perspective on that problem of philosophy on the on the critical vocation of philosophy. So how do you relate complaint to Kant’s notion of critique? Right. The big question expected, predictable. Well, I there's an answer to that maybe not totally satisfied but I mean at some point and that's meant as a kind of okay it's a witticism. But I say there should be a critique of pure complaint, so this in German like *Reine Beschwerde*, there should be and and ultimately that would be the fourth missing critique which would provide the key for understanding how the other critiques relate and that again would be the question of what went wrong or what went all too right at the very beginning. So and then that leads me to the
Slavoj Žižek
question of what would be the pure form of complaining. So I think that would that would actually be a kind of supplement to understanding then Kant's critical project. In other words, where the problem of critique would like reflect on its own limits and to try to understand the genesis of
question of what would be the pure form of complaining. So I think that would that would actually be a kind of supplement to understanding then Kant's critical project. In other words, where the problem of critique would like reflect on its own limits and to try to understand the genesis of
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its categories. Now I'm saying something that's let me
its categories. Now I'm saying something that's let me
Slavoj Žižek
say that's very ambitious and I only you know I don't really I don't
say that's very ambitious and I only you know I don't really I don't
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you know
you know
Slavoj Žižek
write about Kant for pages or something trying to But I mean I think that's a kind of provocative I hope anyway provocative way to to again to raise complaining to a philosophical concept and not simply as a kind of everyday nuisance or or or something. I also talk about wailers by the way, you were mentioning that in your class about the weepers and I mean you know Deleuze has these crazy line wonderful I think that he says "you know if I would have if I wasn't a philosopher and if I would have been born a woman I would have liked to have been a weeper." That's his dream. So his un- his fantasy is he says "I would have been one of these wailers, like just who would be known as a virtuoso complainer," which wonderful. Exactly. We are paid to cry for other people. "Oh, how wrong is it!" Yes. Exactly. But that's interesting no? That's a very interesting fantasy. People can go on their daily work they pay us to to cry for them. Right. To complain. Can I sorry to if I can say just one more thing about that. This is on a new
write about Kant for pages or something trying to But I mean I think that's a kind of provocative I hope anyway provocative way to to again to raise complaining to a philosophical concept and not simply as a kind of everyday nuisance or or or something. I also talk about wailers by the way, you were mentioning that in your class about the weepers and I mean you know Deleuze has these crazy line wonderful I think that he says "you know if I would have if I wasn't a philosopher and if I would have been born a woman I would have liked to have been a weeper." That's his dream. So his un- his fantasy is he says "I would have been one of these wailers, like just who would be known as a virtuoso complainer," which wonderful. Exactly. We are paid to cry for other people. "Oh, how wrong is it!" Yes. Exactly. But that's interesting no? That's a very interesting fantasy. People can go on their daily work they pay us to to cry for them. Right. To complain. Can I sorry to if I can say just one more thing about that. This is on a new
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project but my next book is about this Kafka
project but my next book is about this Kafka
Slavoj Žižek
story "Investigations of a Dog" and I discovered in this book of Cervantes has a book on the "Dialogue of the Dogs", *El coloquio de los perros*, and he and they have a wonderful conversation about philosophy. The dogs start talking and they say "but isn't philosophy just slander?" So as soon as you start talking, isn't the basic impulse of all human you know all language to start slandering and gossiping?
story "Investigations of a Dog" and I discovered in this book of Cervantes has a book on the "Dialogue of the Dogs", *El coloquio de los perros*, and he and they have a wonderful conversation about philosophy. The dogs start talking and they say "but isn't philosophy just slander?" So as soon as you start talking, isn't the basic impulse of all human you know all language to start slandering and gossiping?
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And isn't philosophy just a mask for slander and gossip? I also think this is a wonderful start. You are in good company. Did Mladen tell you, Mladen asked Agamben who as a young boy met in Cerisy-la-Salle that Heidegger and since
And isn't philosophy just a mask for slander and gossip? I also think this is a wonderful start. You are in good company. Did Mladen tell you, Mladen asked Agamben who as a young boy met in Cerisy-la-Salle that Heidegger and since
Slavoj Žižek
Heidegger was the old guy protected by Jean Beaufret. Oh this room right. Yeah and he asked Heidegger two questions: what did he read of Walter Benjamin and of Kafka? Okay a good reactionary Heidegger's answer was "who is Benjamin" and what of Kafka he mentioned? "Only that story... No no it’s another. No it’s *The Burrow*. Ah, *The Burrow*, sorry. Because that story That makes sense because Mladen actually Mladen Dolar has a wonderful essay about *The Burrow* and the burrow you know this this No "Investigations of a Dog" if I can say "Investigations of a Dog" has not been written on and the one funny comment I did find now I do propaganda for my next project but the one comment I did find was Walter Benjamin when you know when he wrote his essay on Kafka in the correspondence with Adorno he actually says "you know the only story I never figured out was the 'Investigations
Heidegger was the old guy protected by Jean Beaufret. Oh this room right. Yeah and he asked Heidegger two questions: what did he read of Walter Benjamin and of Kafka? Okay a good reactionary Heidegger's answer was "who is Benjamin" and what of Kafka he mentioned? "Only that story... No no it’s another. No it’s *The Burrow*. Ah, *The Burrow*, sorry. Because that story That makes sense because Mladen actually Mladen Dolar has a wonderful essay about *The Burrow* and the burrow you know this this No "Investigations of a Dog" if I can say "Investigations of a Dog" has not been written on and the one funny comment I did find now I do propaganda for my next project but the one comment I did find was Walter Benjamin when you know when he wrote his essay on Kafka in the correspondence with Adorno he actually says "you know the only story I never figured out was the 'Investigations
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of a Dog'." Just says that's the one story I never understood. But just the last thing sorry very briefly. You know that Agamben’s impression of Heidegger there was the one all the time complaining. His memory of you know they had at Cerisy-la-Salle this
of a Dog'." Just says that's the one story I never understood. But just the last thing sorry very briefly. You know that Agamben’s impression of Heidegger there was the one all the time complaining. His memory of you know they had at Cerisy-la-Salle this
Slavoj Žižek
kitschy
kitschy
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authentic farmers’ breakfast you know like original butter there and Heidegger all the time complained: "you took too much butter I wanted that butter" and so on. Sorry. Lacan had a Lacan had a bad impression as well where he gave him a lift in his car Heidegger kept complaining that Lacan was driving too fast and Lacan just drove faster. Of course. But actually I was thinking you know that line from Deleuze that I did notice from
authentic farmers’ breakfast you know like original butter there and Heidegger all the time complained: "you took too much butter I wanted that butter" and so on. Sorry. Lacan had a Lacan had a bad impression as well where he gave him a lift in his car Heidegger kept complaining that Lacan was driving too fast and Lacan just drove faster. Of course. But actually I was thinking you know that line from Deleuze that I did notice from
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your book is something that you don't really deal I think in the book maybe about the gender of complaining. I mean it worries me that you know I mean like if men are doing it it's called philosophy if women are doing it it's called complaining. I mean that's what you know from and it's a bit I mean philosophy to me you know the way you ex- you describe complaining, I mean all philosophy is complaining all communication is complaining. I mean why would we bother talking? I'm complaining right now. Well that's that's a radical thesis that I'm not un- you know I I'm not unsympathetic to that idea but you would have to defend it more strongly than immediately just to say I won't take as long as you. But you're right that that is a I take that criticism I that's right and I thought about that but I don't deal with that and that would be another So in a sense what's funny if I can be very confessional I guess from is that you know when I was working on this I really wanted to resist or find something to do with the again that genre of compare and contrast which is which is important and yet deeply dull on some levels. And so I tried to find a way into the problem that was kind of neither Lacanian um nor Deleuzian, just a completely odd sort of way into it. What is it in the world is neither Lacanian Way. The complaint is not explicitly that's not an explicit concept in either thinker I'm sorry. But so I tried to introduce via complaint but what I discovered is wow this is a fantastic topic, even better than the so I could have at a certain point I almost just said oh you could write a whole book on this. And so I do a kind of history of complaint but indeed there's plenty of things if you want a more comprehensive study you know there's and indeed that is one area I did think about the the gender of complaint that would be of course that's extremely coded that's extremely gender-coded um genre. But you know I would also say I can also tell you that the problem of like sexuation in general is not like a problem I really deal with in the book because after all there has to be limits in life and so those I write about that in but so I don't deal with I just have to admit. But purely don't be afraid I will not take. Would you agree I was trying to think that a philosopher the only philosopher that I know who never complains is for me Hegel. He basically just understands everything yeah yeah it’s a reversal of this or that. Can you imagine Hegel complaining about everything? Not human being. Okay sorry. Jean has a question. Just in relation to the contemporary situation um philosophy and the psychopathological and I’m looking at a dialogue that’s going on between the Lacanians and um Catherine Malabou on neuroscience and brain science. She’s been here a lot in conversation with Lacanians like Eric Laurent and many others at London and they've been in conversation recently Jacqueline Rose here at Birkbeck with her and she comes as you know from philosophy and comes to it because of pathology of her her grandmother who had Alzheimers. So she argues with the Lacanians that the subject, the category of the subject, the unconscious, sexuality and the body are going to be deconstructed by brain science. And the Lacanians seem quite open to some of the things that she was sort of offering. And my question is do you think um the post-Oedipal clinic that the Lacanians admit to now is a deter- is the determination for for that from brain science, neuroscience or from the schizoanalytic clinic. Um so it’s the post-Oedipal for is one of the things that comes to mind and I just
your book is something that you don't really deal I think in the book maybe about the gender of complaining. I mean it worries me that you know I mean like if men are doing it it's called philosophy if women are doing it it's called complaining. I mean that's what you know from and it's a bit I mean philosophy to me you know the way you ex- you describe complaining, I mean all philosophy is complaining all communication is complaining. I mean why would we bother talking? I'm complaining right now. Well that's that's a radical thesis that I'm not un- you know I I'm not unsympathetic to that idea but you would have to defend it more strongly than immediately just to say I won't take as long as you. But you're right that that is a I take that criticism I that's right and I thought about that but I don't deal with that and that would be another So in a sense what's funny if I can be very confessional I guess from is that you know when I was working on this I really wanted to resist or find something to do with the again that genre of compare and contrast which is which is important and yet deeply dull on some levels. And so I tried to find a way into the problem that was kind of neither Lacanian um nor Deleuzian, just a completely odd sort of way into it. What is it in the world is neither Lacanian Way. The complaint is not explicitly that's not an explicit concept in either thinker I'm sorry. But so I tried to introduce via complaint but what I discovered is wow this is a fantastic topic, even better than the so I could have at a certain point I almost just said oh you could write a whole book on this. And so I do a kind of history of complaint but indeed there's plenty of things if you want a more comprehensive study you know there's and indeed that is one area I did think about the the gender of complaint that would be of course that's extremely coded that's extremely gender-coded um genre. But you know I would also say I can also tell you that the problem of like sexuation in general is not like a problem I really deal with in the book because after all there has to be limits in life and so those I write about that in but so I don't deal with I just have to admit. But purely don't be afraid I will not take. Would you agree I was trying to think that a philosopher the only philosopher that I know who never complains is for me Hegel. He basically just understands everything yeah yeah it’s a reversal of this or that. Can you imagine Hegel complaining about everything? Not human being. Okay sorry. Jean has a question. Just in relation to the contemporary situation um philosophy and the psychopathological and I’m looking at a dialogue that’s going on between the Lacanians and um Catherine Malabou on neuroscience and brain science. She’s been here a lot in conversation with Lacanians like Eric Laurent and many others at London and they've been in conversation recently Jacqueline Rose here at Birkbeck with her and she comes as you know from philosophy and comes to it because of pathology of her her grandmother who had Alzheimers. So she argues with the Lacanians that the subject, the category of the subject, the unconscious, sexuality and the body are going to be deconstructed by brain science. And the Lacanians seem quite open to some of the things that she was sort of offering. And my question is do you think um the post-Oedipal clinic that the Lacanians admit to now is a deter- is the determination for for that from brain science, neuroscience or from the schizoanalytic clinic. Um so it’s the post-Oedipal for is one of the things that comes to mind and I just
Slavoj Žižek
heard this this it’s become primarily a psychotic. The Lacanian clinic has become primarily a psychotic clinic. It’s moved from neurotic to psychotic. Is this a schizoanalytic influence is this coming from the critique from Deleuze and Guattari or is it coming from brain science or is it other kinds of determinations. Because I've heard Lacanians in this exchange with Catherine Malabou say that the unconscious is very very different, the body is different, sexuality is different, subjectivity has to be rethought, therefore symptomology is different, the clinic has to be rethought. And I just wonder what are the determinations. Is it the conjunction between schizoanalysis and the critique coming from Deleuze and Guattari or is it brain science or is it other kinds of determinations in relation with neoliberal globalization technology and so on. No okay that's obviously that's a very that's a very contemporary and let's say a very difficult question that I can't okay just give a simple formula for. But I can I can give some indications. One is that um I got very fascinated also by um the fundaments let's say of brain science and the kind of image they had of psychopathology. And I was very fascinated by Norbert Wiener who's really the grandfather of cognitive science, you know, the inventor of cybernetics. And nobody reads this as far as I know but in in the book on *Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* and so forth, he has a chapter on psychopathology and he actually has a very dark cybernetic anti-humanism. It's not just that the brain is a kind of machine, neuronal networks and so forth, but he actually says at one point the brain is kind of overdeveloped and it's clear that it's on its way to extinction like this horn of these dinosaurs that died out. So you see that even in kind of Wiener this idea that somehow has a kind of I think interesting take or something that's forgotten sometimes in theorists of like neuroplasticity and so forth that are always emphasizing the let's say creativity of the brain that there's something deeply wrong with the brain or a kind of pathological optic um that that um that I was interested in. Okay. But that's not really a serious engagement with Malabou and also my book is not really about that. So I can give some comments but they go they go beyond. I would say that in some respects I'm I'm rather conservative. Um I don't jump on the bandwagon of saying that somehow the Oedipal clinic is gone and that we exist in a new brave new world of completely new diagnostic categories. I think for me and that's something so I try to defend, I'm very interested in those classic categories. I think that also um that normativity of the Oedipus complex is something that's still very active, that we don't sort of live in simply a purely permissive sort of post-Oedipal age. And that I think that a lot of contemporary Lacanians and I think maybe on this point we're in deep agreement, in a weird way end up recapitulating what I what I consider a vulgarized version of of Deleuze. And that's fascinates me that this idea that fundamentally we live in a kind of culture where there's just enjoyment and drives and then we look at different symbolic prohibitions or ways of structuring drives, um was never um Lacan's idea and that's not for me what's at stake in this kind of um universalization of psychosis. I think that um for Lacan you could say you know I'm still interested in these so I'm interested in what we can get out of these classical clinical distinctions which I don't think have been or at least indeed my approach is a bit conservative that I don't think we should throw those away too quickly. That I think there's still a lot to be learned from them precisely as I tried to develop them as like real subjective types or as reflecting fundamental problems and crises in subjectivity. I think the the one difficulty I have with Malabou or where I where I can't follow exactly but you know I don't know her I also have to say I don't know her that well. Okay so I'm still working on this. But the where I don't follow precisely is the relegation of like psychoanalysis to problems of meaning. So that Freudian psychoanalysis only applies let's say every every kind of psychic trauma or or or complaint in psychoanalysis somehow refers to this kind of ambiguous realm of meaning. Um and and
heard this this it’s become primarily a psychotic. The Lacanian clinic has become primarily a psychotic clinic. It’s moved from neurotic to psychotic. Is this a schizoanalytic influence is this coming from the critique from Deleuze and Guattari or is it coming from brain science or is it other kinds of determinations. Because I've heard Lacanians in this exchange with Catherine Malabou say that the unconscious is very very different, the body is different, sexuality is different, subjectivity has to be rethought, therefore symptomology is different, the clinic has to be rethought. And I just wonder what are the determinations. Is it the conjunction between schizoanalysis and the critique coming from Deleuze and Guattari or is it brain science or is it other kinds of determinations in relation with neoliberal globalization technology and so on. No okay that's obviously that's a very that's a very contemporary and let's say a very difficult question that I can't okay just give a simple formula for. But I can I can give some indications. One is that um I got very fascinated also by um the fundaments let's say of brain science and the kind of image they had of psychopathology. And I was very fascinated by Norbert Wiener who's really the grandfather of cognitive science, you know, the inventor of cybernetics. And nobody reads this as far as I know but in in the book on *Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* and so forth, he has a chapter on psychopathology and he actually has a very dark cybernetic anti-humanism. It's not just that the brain is a kind of machine, neuronal networks and so forth, but he actually says at one point the brain is kind of overdeveloped and it's clear that it's on its way to extinction like this horn of these dinosaurs that died out. So you see that even in kind of Wiener this idea that somehow has a kind of I think interesting take or something that's forgotten sometimes in theorists of like neuroplasticity and so forth that are always emphasizing the let's say creativity of the brain that there's something deeply wrong with the brain or a kind of pathological optic um that that um that I was interested in. Okay. But that's not really a serious engagement with Malabou and also my book is not really about that. So I can give some comments but they go they go beyond. I would say that in some respects I'm I'm rather conservative. Um I don't jump on the bandwagon of saying that somehow the Oedipal clinic is gone and that we exist in a new brave new world of completely new diagnostic categories. I think for me and that's something so I try to defend, I'm very interested in those classic categories. I think that also um that normativity of the Oedipus complex is something that's still very active, that we don't sort of live in simply a purely permissive sort of post-Oedipal age. And that I think that a lot of contemporary Lacanians and I think maybe on this point we're in deep agreement, in a weird way end up recapitulating what I what I consider a vulgarized version of of Deleuze. And that's fascinates me that this idea that fundamentally we live in a kind of culture where there's just enjoyment and drives and then we look at different symbolic prohibitions or ways of structuring drives, um was never um Lacan's idea and that's not for me what's at stake in this kind of um universalization of psychosis. I think that um for Lacan you could say you know I'm still interested in these so I'm interested in what we can get out of these classical clinical distinctions which I don't think have been or at least indeed my approach is a bit conservative that I don't think we should throw those away too quickly. That I think there's still a lot to be learned from them precisely as I tried to develop them as like real subjective types or as reflecting fundamental problems and crises in subjectivity. I think the the one difficulty I have with Malabou or where I where I can't follow exactly but you know I don't know her I also have to say I don't know her that well. Okay so I'm still working on this. But the where I don't follow precisely is the relegation of like psychoanalysis to problems of meaning. So that Freudian psychoanalysis only applies let's say every every kind of psychic trauma or or or complaint in psychoanalysis somehow refers to this kind of ambiguous realm of meaning. Um and and
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neuro- the new neurological problems confront us really with problems that can't that have no hermeneutic interpretive dimension whatsoever, that they’re simply um let's say neuronal um problems and real erasures of subjectivity like in Alzheimer's and so forth. And actually I think from the beginning, and that's not like late Lacan, I really think that's part
neuro- the new neurological problems confront us really with problems that can't that have no hermeneutic interpretive dimension whatsoever, that they’re simply um let's say neuronal um problems and real erasures of subjectivity like in Alzheimer's and so forth. And actually I think from the beginning, and that's not like late Lacan, I really think that's part
Slavoj Žižek
of the core of the theory, was that it wasn't simply about the ambiguity, the double meanings, the double ententes and so forth, the interpretation, but trying to delineate that the unconscious fundamentally is based on or the symbolic order is fundamentally a disorder. Or that the realm of sense is fundamentally based on nonsense or that the subject already represents a kind of hole that can't be recuperated into circuits of meaning. So I think
of the core of the theory, was that it wasn't simply about the ambiguity, the double meanings, the double ententes and so forth, the interpretation, but trying to delineate that the unconscious fundamentally is based on or the symbolic order is fundamentally a disorder. Or that the realm of sense is fundamentally based on nonsense or that the subject already represents a kind of hole that can't be recuperated into circuits of meaning. So I think
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and I on this point I really think
and I on this point I really think
Slavoj Žižek
we're in deep agreement because I know that Slavoj has developed this point that the
we're in deep agreement because I know that Slavoj has developed this point that the
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Lacanian subject you can also develop this in a more Cartesian direction already um represents a kind of erasure or night of the world in this more Hegelian sense whatever. And that
Lacanian subject you can also develop this in a more Cartesian direction already um represents a kind of erasure or night of the world in this more Hegelian sense whatever. And that
Slavoj Žižek
the second death and that oh I I I don't use that language but I use this language of death or second death and I developed that okay with other references. And I think that Malabou it's too fast yeah to um to sort of
the second death and that oh I I I don't use that language but I use this language of death or second death and I developed that okay with other references. And I think that Malabou it's too fast yeah to um to sort of
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delimit psycho- the field of
delimit psycho- the field of
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalysis
psychoanalysis
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to just those old-fashioned problems where you would have some ambiguity of some kind of sexual trauma and you don't know what it meant and it haunts you and you try to recuperate it into inter- you know interpretation. I think that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a more radical conception let's say of non-meaning. That's not now I don't think that's a fully sufficient answer but it's a step in the direction anyway. It's a step. No no I agree with you these are tremendous problems because I think that the point I’m trying to make you make it at some point there these are for me the best parts of the book almost where you strictly distinguish the subject from all these bodily dynamics and so on. The subject as the dead point. But we don’t have time to do this now. Just the final big theoretical remark and then two final observations. The question that I told you I will ask you is the following one. I see in what we all are doing by we all I mean I’m proud to say I think the two of us are part of a movement we include Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, Frank Ruda, Lorenzo and so on who we work in this domain of psychoanalysis, philosophy and so on and the problem that I see in philosophy is a very naive one. Up to a point Derrida and even Lacan still play the transcendental game. By the transcendental game I mean although it’s not the transcendental subject but the process for example when Lacan says the Big Other is always already here. We move in a circle we cannot go beyond. And Lacan at least the early Lacan all these questions which he addresses courageously sometimes like how did the symbolic order arise out of nature animal interaction and he has all these funny examples of dolphins playing of of lobsters interacting and so on but these are more or less for him at that point Platonic myths and so on and so on. With Derrida you find it even clearer the dilemma I’m trying to pinpoint. You know you have his famous statement in *De la grammatologie*: there is no outside text, although of course he doesn’t mean the stupidity that there is no reality outside language. But what he means is ambiguous: on the one hand it’s still a meta-transcendental operation of there is no direct access to reality, it’s always always already against the background of writing of texture. It’s still a kind of a meta-transcendental position. At the same time sometimes in some of his seminars for example when how is he called my god I forgot his not family name Jacob the great French biologist, François yes sorry, he has a series of lectures where Derrida risks a very naive ontologization even and talks about how life DNA is already trace, it’s already a game of *différance* and so on. So all of a sudden we are in a quite naive if I may put it like this realist ontology where our human writing or in the broadest sense is just an ontological example of writing which is proper to life as such or even sometimes Derrida hints at the extreme and goes
to just those old-fashioned problems where you would have some ambiguity of some kind of sexual trauma and you don't know what it meant and it haunts you and you try to recuperate it into inter- you know interpretation. I think that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a more radical conception let's say of non-meaning. That's not now I don't think that's a fully sufficient answer but it's a step in the direction anyway. It's a step. No no I agree with you these are tremendous problems because I think that the point I’m trying to make you make it at some point there these are for me the best parts of the book almost where you strictly distinguish the subject from all these bodily dynamics and so on. The subject as the dead point. But we don’t have time to do this now. Just the final big theoretical remark and then two final observations. The question that I told you I will ask you is the following one. I see in what we all are doing by we all I mean I’m proud to say I think the two of us are part of a movement we include Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, Frank Ruda, Lorenzo and so on who we work in this domain of psychoanalysis, philosophy and so on and the problem that I see in philosophy is a very naive one. Up to a point Derrida and even Lacan still play the transcendental game. By the transcendental game I mean although it’s not the transcendental subject but the process for example when Lacan says the Big Other is always already here. We move in a circle we cannot go beyond. And Lacan at least the early Lacan all these questions which he addresses courageously sometimes like how did the symbolic order arise out of nature animal interaction and he has all these funny examples of dolphins playing of of lobsters interacting and so on but these are more or less for him at that point Platonic myths and so on and so on. With Derrida you find it even clearer the dilemma I’m trying to pinpoint. You know you have his famous statement in *De la grammatologie*: there is no outside text, although of course he doesn’t mean the stupidity that there is no reality outside language. But what he means is ambiguous: on the one hand it’s still a meta-transcendental operation of there is no direct access to reality, it’s always always already against the background of writing of texture. It’s still a kind of a meta-transcendental position. At the same time sometimes in some of his seminars for example when how is he called my god I forgot his not family name Jacob the great French biologist, François yes sorry, he has a series of lectures where Derrida risks a very naive ontologization even and talks about how life DNA is already trace, it’s already a game of *différance* and so on. So all of a sudden we are in a quite naive if I may put it like this realist ontology where our human writing or in the broadest sense is just an ontological example of writing which is proper to life as such or even sometimes Derrida hints at the extreme and goes
Slavoj Žižek
after up to quantum physics registration and so on and so on.
after up to quantum physics registration and so on and so on.
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And my great struggle is and this is my only disappointment immanent criticism of this book, I compare it with as a good Hegelian with yourself. I think you had in some of your other texts some more explicit passages in this very speculative direction. When you quote that poetic Lacan you know how it is as if and Lacan says there the same as already Walter Benjamin and so on, it is as if the symbolic order brings out some pain which is already nature itself and so on all that speculative. Sorry this wonderful line also I took from from an artist that who knows like maybe in nature I mean they're just nature is just waiting for language so you know the fish can tell you how bad it is to always be swimming. I mean in this sense which is a wonderful but okay you finish the question I can. What I’m trying to say is do you think we are ultimately limited to the some kind of transcendental dimension whatever we say the writing is here or so do you think these speculations are only poetic ones or can we maybe somehow break out? So I
And my great struggle is and this is my only disappointment immanent criticism of this book, I compare it with as a good Hegelian with yourself. I think you had in some of your other texts some more explicit passages in this very speculative direction. When you quote that poetic Lacan you know how it is as if and Lacan says there the same as already Walter Benjamin and so on, it is as if the symbolic order brings out some pain which is already nature itself and so on all that speculative. Sorry this wonderful line also I took from from an artist that who knows like maybe in nature I mean they're just nature is just waiting for language so you know the fish can tell you how bad it is to always be swimming. I mean in this sense which is a wonderful but okay you finish the question I can. What I’m trying to say is do you think we are ultimately limited to the some kind of transcendental dimension whatever we say the writing is here or so do you think these speculations are only poetic ones or can we maybe somehow break out? So I
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should directly I mean okay.
should directly I mean okay.
Slavoj Žižek
I have a very dissatisfied You can take the fish comment. I have a very dissatisfied answer but I can say a couple things and
I have a very dissatisfied You can take the fish comment. I have a very dissatisfied answer but I can say a couple things and
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I can kind of answer more from the perspective also let's say not answering this this rather huge question but you know at least how I tried to tackle it in the book. Because you wrote more you didn’t I’m imagining you sorry to interrupt you by my anal standards where all the shit that I write I include in my book. And I noticed you didn’t include all your speculations. I have some discipline. No look let me start by saying you know sometimes I'm tempted to say something like this. Okay. That this relationship for me I kind of I tackle this in the book more talking about the relationship going
I can kind of answer more from the perspective also let's say not answering this this rather huge question but you know at least how I tried to tackle it in the book. Because you wrote more you didn’t I’m imagining you sorry to interrupt you by my anal standards where all the shit that I write I include in my book. And I noticed you didn’t include all your speculations. I have some discipline. No look let me start by saying you know sometimes I'm tempted to say something like this. Okay. That this relationship for me I kind of I tackle this in the book more talking about the relationship going
Slavoj Žižek
back to this old metaphysical the relationship between nature and culture and the transition between the two. And I'm kind of tempted to say
back to this old metaphysical the relationship between nature and culture and the transition between the two. And I'm kind of tempted to say
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something
something
Slavoj Žižek
like this although I haven't
like this although I haven't
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quite worked this out. You know in a way there is no relationship
quite worked this out. You know in a way there is no relationship
Slavoj Žižek
between nature and culture. From the standpoint of nature there's
between nature and culture. From the standpoint of nature there's
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no such thing as
no such thing as
Slavoj Žižek
culture. Everything is nature. And from
culture. Everything is nature. And from
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the standpoint of culture there's no such
the standpoint of culture there's no such
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thing as nature because everything is mediated by by culture. And there's kind of no transition between the two, there's almost kind of a just you shift,
thing as nature because everything is mediated by by culture. And there's kind of no transition between the two, there's almost kind of a just you shift,
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you know. And I think with the
you know. And I think with the
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wait I think what I was trying to do in the book so the problem and that's where I think psychoanalysis is very strong, and I don't necessarily think psychoanalysis has the answer for everything. So you know
wait I think what I was trying to do in the book so the problem and that's where I think psychoanalysis is very strong, and I don't necessarily think psychoanalysis has the answer for everything. So you know
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I'm trying to also delimit what I consider the object you know the research domain of psychoanalysis is and how that can illuminate so that doesn't mean it has the answers to to all problems or it can also to some extent I think be a bit agnostic or aloof to this question for its own functioning. But I think what's interesting is that so in Lacanian theory well let me back up one one other small
I'm trying to also delimit what I consider the object you know the research domain of psychoanalysis is and how that can illuminate so that doesn't mean it has the answers to to all problems or it can also to some extent I think be a bit agnostic or aloof to this question for its own functioning. But I think what's interesting is that so in Lacanian theory well let me back up one one other small
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comment. I am alluding to
comment. I am alluding to
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a tradition that I think has not been maybe it's too strong to say excluded but a tradition that's been a little bit forgotten in contemporary let's say neuroscientifically inspired philosophy and that's this kind of very negative nature of philosophizing. So at a certain point I'm also looking at like novelists who are more or less contemporary with Freud like one of my favorites Blaise Cendrars or Thomas Mann who have this very idea that nature itself is sick. That it's not about vibrant matter or bodies that matter but really sick matter and the first mistake it's not even like Freud said that somehow life wants to go back to the non-living but even the non-living wants to go back to the nothing. I mean you already find this in Marquis de Sade and Thomas Mann and so on. So in some ways I'm using strategically I use these references strategically to suggest a certain aspect in contemporary materialist debates that I think is not if we can think of a kind of more pathological optic on these materialist debates. But okay that's not deeply developed. That's true, because it's essentially still a foil for my main interest which is this problem of philosophy of psychopathology. And I think that in Lacanian psychoanalysis what for me is so interesting is it wants to study that transition between nature and culture but it does so by saying fundamentally there is no transition
a tradition that I think has not been maybe it's too strong to say excluded but a tradition that's been a little bit forgotten in contemporary let's say neuroscientifically inspired philosophy and that's this kind of very negative nature of philosophizing. So at a certain point I'm also looking at like novelists who are more or less contemporary with Freud like one of my favorites Blaise Cendrars or Thomas Mann who have this very idea that nature itself is sick. That it's not about vibrant matter or bodies that matter but really sick matter and the first mistake it's not even like Freud said that somehow life wants to go back to the non-living but even the non-living wants to go back to the nothing. I mean you already find this in Marquis de Sade and Thomas Mann and so on. So in some ways I'm using strategically I use these references strategically to suggest a certain aspect in contemporary materialist debates that I think is not if we can think of a kind of more pathological optic on these materialist debates. But okay that's not deeply developed. That's true, because it's essentially still a foil for my main interest which is this problem of philosophy of psychopathology. And I think that in Lacanian psychoanalysis what for me is so interesting is it wants to study that transition between nature and culture but it does so by saying fundamentally there is no transition
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and that lack of transition itself is the fundament, the basis for why there's an unconscious. Yes but still that's it. Now if you say still I have another okay I can't answer that. But I can at least make more precise what I think the psychoanalytic
and that lack of transition itself is the fundament, the basis for why there's an unconscious. Yes but still that's it. Now if you say still I have another okay I can't answer that. But I can at least make more precise what I think the psychoanalytic
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contribution to that is then then I think at least that would have the value if you're more precise than our you can reject it or not or move forward or not or whatever. And that would be to say that again there is no account of a kind of smooth transition but there's necessarily a kind of leap and that leap for psychoanalysis can't be renaturalized. So I will never so again some of my comrades if I can put it that way your work you tend to refer to quantum quantum physics and in other people's work like Adrian Johnston instead to the realm of biology. I think you know the argument I take from Lacan is you would not find a kind of smooth transition so there's some negativity in nature and then we finally
contribution to that is then then I think at least that would have the value if you're more precise than our you can reject it or not or move forward or not or whatever. And that would be to say that again there is no account of a kind of smooth transition but there's necessarily a kind of leap and that leap for psychoanalysis can't be renaturalized. So I will never so again some of my comrades if I can put it that way your work you tend to refer to quantum quantum physics and in other people's work like Adrian Johnston instead to the realm of biology. I think you know the argument I take from Lacan is you would not find a kind of smooth transition so there's some negativity in nature and then we finally
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find a fully fledged and then step by step we would find this kind of fully fledged psychic negativity. That there's a kind of leap but that leap itself
find a fully fledged and then step by step we would find this kind of fully fledged psychic negativity. That there's a kind of leap but that leap itself
Slavoj Žižek
is the very nature of psychic negativity and that that transition between nature and culture But that leap is part of nature. It must be in some formal sense if everything is nature. Or everything but
is the very nature of psychic negativity and that that transition between nature and culture But that leap is part of nature. It must be in some formal sense if everything is nature. Or everything but
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from the perspective I would take the parallax right from the perspective of culture and in a sense there is no nature. I mean what if we just thought that there is no priority of one or the other but I mean the weird thought again and I think both Deleuze and Lacan show this is you should think I don't I don't know you should think the intersection oddly has priority over its terms. And that's the weird idea that there's intersection of nature Can I ask you something. It’s strictly personal please don’t laugh at me. I’m a diabetic. Can you open the question I have to run to the toilet. Oh yeah yeah yeah. This was my. I thought you were going to like ask me a question about diabetes. No no no I’m so sad it’s very vulgar. That’s the call of nature. No but that's perfect. That saves me from the impossible. I’m so sorry. But please start the debate. No no this saves me from the impossible. I’m so ashamed but. I’m so ashamed. Maybe it’s good to open the Okay. I think so. Yeah, can can I see some hands and then we can take start taking questions. Or everything is just clear now. I'm sorry, yeah. Yeah, this is quick question about the complaint and its kinship with let's say what you'd call prayer. Yeah. And how is prayer kind of like a sublimated complaint and what's the difference? What what can you say? I don't know, I'm tempted immediately to throw that back at you and just what do you think? I mean I mean complaining can be a kind of liturgy and some liturgy you know there are liturgies that are kind of you know in in religion of course are highly developed I mean complaints. I mean think just of Job. So what's what's the major difference between would you say? Off the top of my I don't know. I mean that's one of the things that I quickly came across in my research that it becomes very hard to actually define complaint in terms of delimiting it clearly from other forms of expression because the more you start thinking about it, really, I mean I'm not saying everything is a complaint but it starts to you know quite quickly insinuate itself elsewhere. So at a certain point I mean I'm a sort of complaining amateur I think but at a certain point I started to try to look well did literary theorists try to define it as a genre for instance. So I took kind of seriously also a historical question and I found some scholarship on this but not so much and it wasn't so clear. So I don't have an answer I mean I really just don't know. But I found like some of the most interesting literature on like
from the perspective I would take the parallax right from the perspective of culture and in a sense there is no nature. I mean what if we just thought that there is no priority of one or the other but I mean the weird thought again and I think both Deleuze and Lacan show this is you should think I don't I don't know you should think the intersection oddly has priority over its terms. And that's the weird idea that there's intersection of nature Can I ask you something. It’s strictly personal please don’t laugh at me. I’m a diabetic. Can you open the question I have to run to the toilet. Oh yeah yeah yeah. This was my. I thought you were going to like ask me a question about diabetes. No no no I’m so sad it’s very vulgar. That’s the call of nature. No but that's perfect. That saves me from the impossible. I’m so sorry. But please start the debate. No no this saves me from the impossible. I’m so ashamed but. I’m so ashamed. Maybe it’s good to open the Okay. I think so. Yeah, can can I see some hands and then we can take start taking questions. Or everything is just clear now. I'm sorry, yeah. Yeah, this is quick question about the complaint and its kinship with let's say what you'd call prayer. Yeah. And how is prayer kind of like a sublimated complaint and what's the difference? What what can you say? I don't know, I'm tempted immediately to throw that back at you and just what do you think? I mean I mean complaining can be a kind of liturgy and some liturgy you know there are liturgies that are kind of you know in in religion of course are highly developed I mean complaints. I mean think just of Job. So what's what's the major difference between would you say? Off the top of my I don't know. I mean that's one of the things that I quickly came across in my research that it becomes very hard to actually define complaint in terms of delimiting it clearly from other forms of expression because the more you start thinking about it, really, I mean I'm not saying everything is a complaint but it starts to you know quite quickly insinuate itself elsewhere. So at a certain point I mean I'm a sort of complaining amateur I think but at a certain point I started to try to look well did literary theorists try to define it as a genre for instance. So I took kind of seriously also a historical question and I found some scholarship on this but not so much and it wasn't so clear. So I don't have an answer I mean I really just don't know. But I found like some of the most interesting literature on like
Slavoj Žižek
medieval and where they said you know there was a and I talked about this that there's a kind of four the complaint genre there was four main kinds of complaints and I mean the most wonderful complaint of course is the love complaint, you know, courtly love is a kind of cultivation of complaining as the very form of of love which I think was very impacted a lot let's say on Western
medieval and where they said you know there was a and I talked about this that there's a kind of four the complaint genre there was four main kinds of complaints and I mean the most wonderful complaint of course is the love complaint, you know, courtly love is a kind of cultivation of complaining as the very form of of love which I think was very impacted a lot let's say on Western
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eros if you want. So the Yeah. It's a really good question actually because basically yeah, is anything is there anything that is not a complaint? I mean you start, you know the the way you define it everything becomes, you know, poetry, philosophy, everything we communicate with complaint. Well, you know I didn't start with an a priori definition. I started with some commonsensical notions and then I actually did some historical research to try to understand and and of course you find very many interesting things but I didn't find a clear definition of a of a kind of of a of a genre. And of course
eros if you want. So the Yeah. It's a really good question actually because basically yeah, is anything is there anything that is not a complaint? I mean you start, you know the the way you define it everything becomes, you know, poetry, philosophy, everything we communicate with complaint. Well, you know I didn't start with an a priori definition. I started with some commonsensical notions and then I actually did some historical research to try to understand and and of course you find very many interesting things but I didn't find a clear definition of a of a kind of of a of a genre. And of course
Slavoj Žižek
then complaining does become very I mean for me, you know, my question of course coming from philosophy and not from theology, was more how could we relate complaint to to critique for instance. And I think that we could see critique as a kind of sublimation or refinement, a real cultivation of of of complaining. And I think that's a funny perspective on that problem of philosophy
then complaining does become very I mean for me, you know, my question of course coming from philosophy and not from theology, was more how could we relate complaint to to critique for instance. And I think that we could see critique as a kind of sublimation or refinement, a real cultivation of of of complaining. And I think that's a funny perspective on that problem of philosophy
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on the on the critical vocation of philosophy. So how do you relate complaint to Kant’s notion of critique? Right. The big question expected, predictable. Well, I there's an answer to that maybe not totally satisfied but I mean at some point and that's meant as a kind of okay it's a witticism. But I say there should be a critique of pure complaint, so this in German like *Reine Beschwerde*, there should be and and ultimately
on the on the critical vocation of philosophy. So how do you relate complaint to Kant’s notion of critique? Right. The big question expected, predictable. Well, I there's an answer to that maybe not totally satisfied but I mean at some point and that's meant as a kind of okay it's a witticism. But I say there should be a critique of pure complaint, so this in German like *Reine Beschwerde*, there should be and and ultimately
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that would be the fourth missing
that would be the fourth missing
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critique which would provide the key for understanding how the other critiques relate and that again would be the question of what went wrong or what went all too right at the very beginning. So and then that leads me to the question of what would be the pure form of complaining. So I think that would that would actually be a kind of supplement to
critique which would provide the key for understanding how the other critiques relate and that again would be the question of what went wrong or what went all too right at the very beginning. So and then that leads me to the question of what would be the pure form of complaining. So I think that would that would actually be a kind of supplement to
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understanding then Kant's critical project. In other words, where the problem of critique would like reflect on its own limits and to try to understand the genesis of its categories. Now I'm saying something that's let me say that's very ambitious and I only you know I don't really I don't you know write about Kant for pages or something trying to But I mean I think that's a kind of provocative I hope anyway provocative way to to again to raise complaining to a philosophical concept and not simply as a kind of everyday nuisance or or or something. I also talk about wailers by the way, you were mentioning that in your class about the weepers and I mean you know Deleuze has these crazy line wonderful
understanding then Kant's critical project. In other words, where the problem of critique would like reflect on its own limits and to try to understand the genesis of its categories. Now I'm saying something that's let me say that's very ambitious and I only you know I don't really I don't you know write about Kant for pages or something trying to But I mean I think that's a kind of provocative I hope anyway provocative way to to again to raise complaining to a philosophical concept and not simply as a kind of everyday nuisance or or or something. I also talk about wailers by the way, you were mentioning that in your class about the weepers and I mean you know Deleuze has these crazy line wonderful
Slavoj Žižek
I think that he says "you know if I would
I think that he says "you know if I would
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have if I wasn't a philosopher and if I would have been born a woman I would have liked to have been a weeper." That's his dream. So his un- his fantasy is he says "I would have been one of these wailers, like just who would be known as a virtuoso complainer," which wonderful. Exactly. We are paid to cry for other people. "Oh, how wrong is it!" Yes. Exactly. But that's interesting no? That's a very interesting fantasy. People can go on their daily work they pay us to to cry for them. Right. To complain. Can I sorry to if I can say just one more thing about that. This is on a new project but my next book is about this Kafka story "Investigations of a Dog" and I discovered in this book of Cervantes has a book on the "Dialogue of the Dogs", *El coloquio de los perros*, and he and they have a wonderful conversation about philosophy. The dogs start talking and they say "but isn't philosophy just slander?" So as soon as you start talking, isn't the basic impulse
have if I wasn't a philosopher and if I would have been born a woman I would have liked to have been a weeper." That's his dream. So his un- his fantasy is he says "I would have been one of these wailers, like just who would be known as a virtuoso complainer," which wonderful. Exactly. We are paid to cry for other people. "Oh, how wrong is it!" Yes. Exactly. But that's interesting no? That's a very interesting fantasy. People can go on their daily work they pay us to to cry for them. Right. To complain. Can I sorry to if I can say just one more thing about that. This is on a new project but my next book is about this Kafka story "Investigations of a Dog" and I discovered in this book of Cervantes has a book on the "Dialogue of the Dogs", *El coloquio de los perros*, and he and they have a wonderful conversation about philosophy. The dogs start talking and they say "but isn't philosophy just slander?" So as soon as you start talking, isn't the basic impulse
Slavoj Žižek
of all human you know all language to start slandering and gossiping? And isn't philosophy just a mask for slander and gossip? I also think this is a wonderful start. You are in good company. Did Mladen tell you, Mladen asked Agamben who as a young boy met in Cerisy-la-Salle that Heidegger and since Heidegger was the old guy protected by Jean Beaufret. Oh this room right. Yeah and he asked Heidegger two questions:
of all human you know all language to start slandering and gossiping? And isn't philosophy just a mask for slander and gossip? I also think this is a wonderful start. You are in good company. Did Mladen tell you, Mladen asked Agamben who as a young boy met in Cerisy-la-Salle that Heidegger and since Heidegger was the old guy protected by Jean Beaufret. Oh this room right. Yeah and he asked Heidegger two questions:
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what did he read of Walter Benjamin and of Kafka? Okay a good
what did he read of Walter Benjamin and of Kafka? Okay a good
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reactionary Heidegger's answer was "who is Benjamin" and what of Kafka he mentioned? "Only that story... No no it’s another. No it’s *The Burrow*. Ah, *The Burrow*, sorry. Because that story That makes sense because Mladen actually Mladen Dolar has a wonderful essay about *The Burrow* and the burrow you know this this No "Investigations of a Dog" if I can say "Investigations of a Dog" has not been written on and the one funny comment I did find now I do propaganda for my next project but the one comment I did find was Walter Benjamin when you know when he wrote his essay on Kafka in the correspondence with Adorno he actually says "you know the only story I never figured out was the 'Investigations of a Dog'." Just says that's the one story I never understood. But just the last thing sorry very briefly. You know that Agamben’s impression of Heidegger there was the one all the time complaining. His memory of you know they had at Cerisy-la-Salle this kitschy authentic farmers’ breakfast you
reactionary Heidegger's answer was "who is Benjamin" and what of Kafka he mentioned? "Only that story... No no it’s another. No it’s *The Burrow*. Ah, *The Burrow*, sorry. Because that story That makes sense because Mladen actually Mladen Dolar has a wonderful essay about *The Burrow* and the burrow you know this this No "Investigations of a Dog" if I can say "Investigations of a Dog" has not been written on and the one funny comment I did find now I do propaganda for my next project but the one comment I did find was Walter Benjamin when you know when he wrote his essay on Kafka in the correspondence with Adorno he actually says "you know the only story I never figured out was the 'Investigations of a Dog'." Just says that's the one story I never understood. But just the last thing sorry very briefly. You know that Agamben’s impression of Heidegger there was the one all the time complaining. His memory of you know they had at Cerisy-la-Salle this kitschy authentic farmers’ breakfast you
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know like original butter there and Heidegger all the time complained: "you took too much butter I wanted that butter" and so on. Sorry. Lacan had a Lacan had a bad impression as well where he gave him a lift in his car Heidegger kept complaining that Lacan was driving too fast and Lacan just drove faster. Of course. But actually I was thinking you know that line from Deleuze that I did notice from your book is something that you don't really deal I think in the book maybe about the gender of complaining. I mean it worries me that you know I mean like if men are doing it it's called philosophy if women are doing it it's called complaining. I mean that's what you know from and it's a bit I mean philosophy to me you know the way you ex- you describe complaining, I mean all philosophy is complaining all communication is complaining. I mean why would we bother talking? I'm complaining right now. Well that's that's a radical thesis that I'm not un- you know I I'm
know like original butter there and Heidegger all the time complained: "you took too much butter I wanted that butter" and so on. Sorry. Lacan had a Lacan had a bad impression as well where he gave him a lift in his car Heidegger kept complaining that Lacan was driving too fast and Lacan just drove faster. Of course. But actually I was thinking you know that line from Deleuze that I did notice from your book is something that you don't really deal I think in the book maybe about the gender of complaining. I mean it worries me that you know I mean like if men are doing it it's called philosophy if women are doing it it's called complaining. I mean that's what you know from and it's a bit I mean philosophy to me you know the way you ex- you describe complaining, I mean all philosophy is complaining all communication is complaining. I mean why would we bother talking? I'm complaining right now. Well that's that's a radical thesis that I'm not un- you know I I'm
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not unsympathetic to that idea but you would have to defend it more strongly than immediately just to say I won't take as long as you. But you're right that that is a I take that criticism I that's right and I thought about that but I don't deal with that and that would be another So in a sense what's funny if I can be very confessional I guess from is that you know when I was working on this I really wanted to resist or find something to do with the again that genre of compare and contrast which is which is important and yet deeply dull on some levels. And so I tried to find a way into the problem that was kind of neither Lacanian um nor Deleuzian, just a completely odd sort of way into it. What is it in the world is neither Lacanian Way. The complaint is not explicitly that's not an explicit concept in either thinker I'm sorry. But so I tried to introduce via complaint but what I discovered is wow this is a fantastic topic, even better than the so I could have at a certain point I almost just said oh you could write a whole book on this. And so I do a kind of history of complaint but indeed there's plenty of things if you want a more comprehensive study you know there's and indeed that is one area I did think about the the gender of complaint that would be of course that's extremely coded that's extremely gender-coded um genre. But you know I would also say I can also tell you that the problem of like sexuation in general is not like a problem I really deal with in the book because after all there has to be limits in life and so those I write about that in but so I don't deal with I just have to admit. But purely don't be afraid I will not take. Would you agree I was trying to think that a philosopher the only philosopher that I know who never complains is for me Hegel. He basically just understands everything yeah yeah it’s a reversal of this or that. Can you imagine Hegel complaining about everything? Not human being. Okay sorry. Jean has a question. Just in relation to the contemporary situation um philosophy and the psychopathological and I’m looking at a dialogue that’s going on between the Lacanians and um Catherine Malabou on neuroscience and brain science. She’s been here a lot in conversation with Lacanians like Eric Laurent and many others at London and they've been in conversation recently Jacqueline Rose here at Birkbeck with her and she comes as you know from philosophy and comes to it because of pathology of her her grandmother who had Alzheimers. So she argues with the Lacanians that the subject, the category of the subject, the unconscious, sexuality and the body are going to be deconstructed by brain science. And the Lacanians seem quite open to some of the things that she was sort of offering. And my question is do you think um the post-Oedipal clinic that the Lacanians admit to now is a deter- is the determination for for that from brain science, neuroscience or from the schizoanalytic clinic. Um so it’s the post-Oedipal for is one of the things that comes to mind and I just heard this this it’s become
not unsympathetic to that idea but you would have to defend it more strongly than immediately just to say I won't take as long as you. But you're right that that is a I take that criticism I that's right and I thought about that but I don't deal with that and that would be another So in a sense what's funny if I can be very confessional I guess from is that you know when I was working on this I really wanted to resist or find something to do with the again that genre of compare and contrast which is which is important and yet deeply dull on some levels. And so I tried to find a way into the problem that was kind of neither Lacanian um nor Deleuzian, just a completely odd sort of way into it. What is it in the world is neither Lacanian Way. The complaint is not explicitly that's not an explicit concept in either thinker I'm sorry. But so I tried to introduce via complaint but what I discovered is wow this is a fantastic topic, even better than the so I could have at a certain point I almost just said oh you could write a whole book on this. And so I do a kind of history of complaint but indeed there's plenty of things if you want a more comprehensive study you know there's and indeed that is one area I did think about the the gender of complaint that would be of course that's extremely coded that's extremely gender-coded um genre. But you know I would also say I can also tell you that the problem of like sexuation in general is not like a problem I really deal with in the book because after all there has to be limits in life and so those I write about that in but so I don't deal with I just have to admit. But purely don't be afraid I will not take. Would you agree I was trying to think that a philosopher the only philosopher that I know who never complains is for me Hegel. He basically just understands everything yeah yeah it’s a reversal of this or that. Can you imagine Hegel complaining about everything? Not human being. Okay sorry. Jean has a question. Just in relation to the contemporary situation um philosophy and the psychopathological and I’m looking at a dialogue that’s going on between the Lacanians and um Catherine Malabou on neuroscience and brain science. She’s been here a lot in conversation with Lacanians like Eric Laurent and many others at London and they've been in conversation recently Jacqueline Rose here at Birkbeck with her and she comes as you know from philosophy and comes to it because of pathology of her her grandmother who had Alzheimers. So she argues with the Lacanians that the subject, the category of the subject, the unconscious, sexuality and the body are going to be deconstructed by brain science. And the Lacanians seem quite open to some of the things that she was sort of offering. And my question is do you think um the post-Oedipal clinic that the Lacanians admit to now is a deter- is the determination for for that from brain science, neuroscience or from the schizoanalytic clinic. Um so it’s the post-Oedipal for is one of the things that comes to mind and I just heard this this it’s become
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primarily a psychotic. The Lacanian clinic has become primarily a psychotic clinic. It’s moved from neurotic to psychotic. Is this a schizoanalytic influence is this coming from the critique from Deleuze and Guattari or is it coming from brain science or is it other kinds of determinations. Because I've heard Lacanians in this exchange with Catherine Malabou say that the unconscious is very very different, the body is different, sexuality is different, subjectivity has to be rethought, therefore symptomology is different, the clinic has to be rethought. And I just wonder what are the determinations. Is it the conjunction between schizoanalysis and the critique coming from Deleuze and Guattari or is it brain science or is it other kinds of determinations in relation with neoliberal globalization technology and so on. No okay that's obviously that's a very that's a very contemporary and let's say a very difficult question that I can't okay just give a simple formula for. But I can I can give some indications. One is that um I got very fascinated also by um the fundaments let's say of brain science and the kind of image they had of psychopathology. And I was very fascinated by Norbert Wiener who's really the grandfather of cognitive science, you know, the inventor of cybernetics. And nobody reads this as far as I know but in in the book on *Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* and so forth, he has a chapter on psychopathology and he actually has a very dark
primarily a psychotic. The Lacanian clinic has become primarily a psychotic clinic. It’s moved from neurotic to psychotic. Is this a schizoanalytic influence is this coming from the critique from Deleuze and Guattari or is it coming from brain science or is it other kinds of determinations. Because I've heard Lacanians in this exchange with Catherine Malabou say that the unconscious is very very different, the body is different, sexuality is different, subjectivity has to be rethought, therefore symptomology is different, the clinic has to be rethought. And I just wonder what are the determinations. Is it the conjunction between schizoanalysis and the critique coming from Deleuze and Guattari or is it brain science or is it other kinds of determinations in relation with neoliberal globalization technology and so on. No okay that's obviously that's a very that's a very contemporary and let's say a very difficult question that I can't okay just give a simple formula for. But I can I can give some indications. One is that um I got very fascinated also by um the fundaments let's say of brain science and the kind of image they had of psychopathology. And I was very fascinated by Norbert Wiener who's really the grandfather of cognitive science, you know, the inventor of cybernetics. And nobody reads this as far as I know but in in the book on *Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* and so forth, he has a chapter on psychopathology and he actually has a very dark
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cybernetic anti-humanism.
cybernetic anti-humanism.
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It's not just that the brain is a kind of machine, neuronal networks and so forth, but he actually says at one point the brain is kind of overdeveloped and it's clear that it's on its way to extinction like this horn of these dinosaurs that died out. So you see that even in kind of Wiener this idea that somehow has a kind of I think interesting take or something that's forgotten sometimes in theorists of like neuroplasticity and so forth that are always emphasizing the let's say creativity of the brain that there's something deeply wrong with the brain or a kind of pathological optic um that that um that I was interested in. Okay. But that's not really a
It's not just that the brain is a kind of machine, neuronal networks and so forth, but he actually says at one point the brain is kind of overdeveloped and it's clear that it's on its way to extinction like this horn of these dinosaurs that died out. So you see that even in kind of Wiener this idea that somehow has a kind of I think interesting take or something that's forgotten sometimes in theorists of like neuroplasticity and so forth that are always emphasizing the let's say creativity of the brain that there's something deeply wrong with the brain or a kind of pathological optic um that that um that I was interested in. Okay. But that's not really a
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serious engagement with Malabou and also my book is not really about that. So I can give some comments but they go they go beyond. I would say that in some respects I'm I'm rather conservative. Um I don't jump on the bandwagon of saying that somehow the Oedipal clinic is gone and that we exist in a new brave new world of completely new diagnostic categories. I think for me and that's something so I try to defend, I'm very interested in those classic categories. I think that also um that normativity of the Oedipus complex is something that's still very active, that we don't sort of live in simply a purely permissive sort of post-Oedipal age. And that I think that a lot
serious engagement with Malabou and also my book is not really about that. So I can give some comments but they go they go beyond. I would say that in some respects I'm I'm rather conservative. Um I don't jump on the bandwagon of saying that somehow the Oedipal clinic is gone and that we exist in a new brave new world of completely new diagnostic categories. I think for me and that's something so I try to defend, I'm very interested in those classic categories. I think that also um that normativity of the Oedipus complex is something that's still very active, that we don't sort of live in simply a purely permissive sort of post-Oedipal age. And that I think that a lot
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of contemporary Lacanians and I
of contemporary Lacanians and I
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think maybe on this point we're in deep agreement, in a weird way end up recapitulating what I what I consider a vulgarized version of of Deleuze. And that's fascinates me that this idea that fundamentally we live in a kind of culture where there's just enjoyment and drives and then we look at different symbolic prohibitions or ways of structuring drives, um was never um Lacan's idea and that's not for me what's at stake in this kind of um universalization of psychosis. I think that um for Lacan you could say you know I'm still interested in these so I'm interested in what we can get out of these classical clinical distinctions which I don't think have been or at least
think maybe on this point we're in deep agreement, in a weird way end up recapitulating what I what I consider a vulgarized version of of Deleuze. And that's fascinates me that this idea that fundamentally we live in a kind of culture where there's just enjoyment and drives and then we look at different symbolic prohibitions or ways of structuring drives, um was never um Lacan's idea and that's not for me what's at stake in this kind of um universalization of psychosis. I think that um for Lacan you could say you know I'm still interested in these so I'm interested in what we can get out of these classical clinical distinctions which I don't think have been or at least
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indeed my approach is a bit conservative that I don't think we should throw those away too quickly. That I think there's still a lot to be learned from them precisely as I tried to develop them as like real subjective types or as reflecting fundamental problems and crises in subjectivity. I think the the one difficulty I have with Malabou or where I where I can't follow exactly but you know I don't know her I also have to say I don't
indeed my approach is a bit conservative that I don't think we should throw those away too quickly. That I think there's still a lot to be learned from them precisely as I tried to develop them as like real subjective types or as reflecting fundamental problems and crises in subjectivity. I think the the one difficulty I have with Malabou or where I where I can't follow exactly but you know I don't know her I also have to say I don't
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know her that well. Okay so I'm still working on this. But the where I don't follow precisely is the relegation of like psychoanalysis to problems of meaning. So that Freudian psychoanalysis only applies let's say every every kind of psychic trauma or or or complaint in psychoanalysis somehow refers to this kind of ambiguous realm of meaning. Um and and neuro- the new neurological problems confront us really with problems that can't that have no hermeneutic interpretive dimension whatsoever, that they’re simply um let's say neuronal um problems and real erasures of subjectivity like in Alzheimer's and so forth. And actually I think from the beginning, and that's not like late Lacan, I really think that's part of the core of the theory, was that it wasn't simply about the ambiguity, the double meanings, the double ententes and so forth, the interpretation, but trying to delineate that the unconscious fundamentally is based on or the symbolic order is fundamentally a disorder. Or that the realm of sense is fundamentally based on nonsense or that the subject already represents a kind of hole that can't be recuperated into circuits of meaning. So I think and I on this point I really think we're in deep agreement because I know that Slavoj has developed this point that the Lacanian subject you can also develop this in a more Cartesian direction already um represents a kind of erasure or night of the world in this more Hegelian sense whatever. And that the second death and that oh I I I don't use that language but I use this language of death or second death and I developed that
know her that well. Okay so I'm still working on this. But the where I don't follow precisely is the relegation of like psychoanalysis to problems of meaning. So that Freudian psychoanalysis only applies let's say every every kind of psychic trauma or or or complaint in psychoanalysis somehow refers to this kind of ambiguous realm of meaning. Um and and neuro- the new neurological problems confront us really with problems that can't that have no hermeneutic interpretive dimension whatsoever, that they’re simply um let's say neuronal um problems and real erasures of subjectivity like in Alzheimer's and so forth. And actually I think from the beginning, and that's not like late Lacan, I really think that's part of the core of the theory, was that it wasn't simply about the ambiguity, the double meanings, the double ententes and so forth, the interpretation, but trying to delineate that the unconscious fundamentally is based on or the symbolic order is fundamentally a disorder. Or that the realm of sense is fundamentally based on nonsense or that the subject already represents a kind of hole that can't be recuperated into circuits of meaning. So I think and I on this point I really think we're in deep agreement because I know that Slavoj has developed this point that the Lacanian subject you can also develop this in a more Cartesian direction already um represents a kind of erasure or night of the world in this more Hegelian sense whatever. And that the second death and that oh I I I don't use that language but I use this language of death or second death and I developed that
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okay with other references. And I think that Malabou it's too fast yeah to um to sort of delimit psycho- the field
okay with other references. And I think that Malabou it's too fast yeah to um to sort of delimit psycho- the field
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of
of
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalysis to just those old-fashioned
psychoanalysis to just those old-fashioned
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problems where you would have
problems where you would have
Slavoj Žižek
some ambiguity of some kind of sexual trauma and you don't know what it meant and it haunts you and you try to recuperate it into inter- you know interpretation. I think that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a more radical conception let's say of non-meaning. That's not now I don't think that's a fully sufficient answer but it's a step in the direction anyway. It's a step. Steven and then Slavoj. Something’s been troubling me about the complaint stuff which I'm sure you deal with in the book but we haven't read the book. And that's that the different kinds of complaints seem to matter enormously to me. And just just to give the example I work on I suppose is there's a difference between the complaint that is a whine, a kind of you know kvetch in the Jewish field with *kvetch*, and there's a difference between the complaint that's really directed at some source of oppression. And just to give the biblical example here, so the children the Israelites were in the wilderness and they're being fed beautifully on the manna every day you know without doing anything and they complain, they say we haven't had any meat. And God has the perfect response: he says "you want meat? I'll give you quails, and I'll give you so many quails that you will be stuffed full of them and you will be sick and you'll hate them." And that's you know he has the perfect complaint. But when they when the Israelites are in slavery and they start to complain the biblical response to that is "let's free them, let's free them." There is a difference surely as I say I'm sure you deal with this. There's a difference between the whine which is basically saying "I'm unhappy" and the complaint which says "the structures need to be challenged here." Right. You know um I I I'm tempted to say you know see what you think. I mean read it and then see what you think. But I mean on the one hand you know I maybe from your perspective I maybe don't deal um adequately with that because that wasn't my focus. And I think there and I and I really forget his name but there's very little written about complaint but I discovered this one popular well-known um English philosopher I'm sorry he wrote a book on complaining and the core of that sorry the name just escapes me but in the end it wasn't helpful for me I mean I don't cite it. And the core of that book is actually kind of moral psychology of trying to make a hierarchy of so-called you know let's say mere whining and then a proper complaint. And I actually sort of you know for other reasons wanted to put aside that kind of taxonomy um with a double goal. I mean on the one hand to say that again I wasn't interested in this moralistic question. So I'm not saying your question is necessarily moralistic, but I wanted to avoid that question to actually again to simply say complaining is an interesting object of of inquiry. And then I had a very specific reason for that you know a specific way and that was this problem of the the kind of pure complaint or the ultimate you know complaint. Um so that's the direction I went in. But you know again the problem of the gender of the complaint would be interesting and then the problem of the the idea of a protest or injustice. But you know that's not my that wasn't my focus because one has to remember also it's not a book about complaining per se, but it was a kind of strategy, a way into a problem to discuss and hopefully from a fresh perspective to I don't know to spark something in this debate about negativity.
some ambiguity of some kind of sexual trauma and you don't know what it meant and it haunts you and you try to recuperate it into inter- you know interpretation. I think that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a more radical conception let's say of non-meaning. That's not now I don't think that's a fully sufficient answer but it's a step in the direction anyway. It's a step. Steven and then Slavoj. Something’s been troubling me about the complaint stuff which I'm sure you deal with in the book but we haven't read the book. And that's that the different kinds of complaints seem to matter enormously to me. And just just to give the example I work on I suppose is there's a difference between the complaint that is a whine, a kind of you know kvetch in the Jewish field with *kvetch*, and there's a difference between the complaint that's really directed at some source of oppression. And just to give the biblical example here, so the children the Israelites were in the wilderness and they're being fed beautifully on the manna every day you know without doing anything and they complain, they say we haven't had any meat. And God has the perfect response: he says "you want meat? I'll give you quails, and I'll give you so many quails that you will be stuffed full of them and you will be sick and you'll hate them." And that's you know he has the perfect complaint. But when they when the Israelites are in slavery and they start to complain the biblical response to that is "let's free them, let's free them." There is a difference surely as I say I'm sure you deal with this. There's a difference between the whine which is basically saying "I'm unhappy" and the complaint which says "the structures need to be challenged here." Right. You know um I I I'm tempted to say you know see what you think. I mean read it and then see what you think. But I mean on the one hand you know I maybe from your perspective I maybe don't deal um adequately with that because that wasn't my focus. And I think there and I and I really forget his name but there's very little written about complaint but I discovered this one popular well-known um English philosopher I'm sorry he wrote a book on complaining and the core of that sorry the name just escapes me but in the end it wasn't helpful for me I mean I don't cite it. And the core of that book is actually kind of moral psychology of trying to make a hierarchy of so-called you know let's say mere whining and then a proper complaint. And I actually sort of you know for other reasons wanted to put aside that kind of taxonomy um with a double goal. I mean on the one hand to say that again I wasn't interested in this moralistic question. So I'm not saying your question is necessarily moralistic, but I wanted to avoid that question to actually again to simply say complaining is an interesting object of of inquiry. And then I had a very specific reason for that you know a specific way and that was this problem of the the kind of pure complaint or the ultimate you know complaint. Um so that's the direction I went in. But you know again the problem of the gender of the complaint would be interesting and then the problem of the the idea of a protest or injustice. But you know that's not my that wasn't my focus because one has to remember also it's not a book about complaining per se, but it was a kind of strategy, a way into a problem to discuss and hopefully from a fresh perspective to I don't know to spark something in this debate about negativity.
unknown
So instead of immediately saying negativity is defined this way and this you know I try to enter into it through this anthropological dimension. But indeed that problem of injustice um is very interesting in you know linked to complaint. But again maybe there is something illuminating from this perspective of analyzing these so-called like pure forms of complaint as ultimate injustices let's say. Um but yeah I think that's kind of the best I can do. Okay. Slavoj. Very briefly. Yeah sure and then there was a question here. Oh yes okay. After Slavoj. Sorry what’s your order now? You go. Yeah he was before. Yeah okay he likes clear orders. First just briefly about complaint. You know what I would be tempted to say. That there must be a way in if such a thing still exists which I doubt more and more real emancipatory politics. Let’s say you have Hitler. I think it’s somehow inappropriate to say that we should be complaining about Hitler. No you simply diagnose him as evil, let’s liquidate him. I don’t think that when Jews were talking about horrors in Germany that they should even use the word complaint. I would use your term complaint in a much more specific way you know like complaint always is for me perverted in the sense that you secretly enjoy it and so on. So I would move in that direction. But very briefly just about
So instead of immediately saying negativity is defined this way and this you know I try to enter into it through this anthropological dimension. But indeed that problem of injustice um is very interesting in you know linked to complaint. But again maybe there is something illuminating from this perspective of analyzing these so-called like pure forms of complaint as ultimate injustices let's say. Um but yeah I think that's kind of the best I can do. Okay. Slavoj. Very briefly. Yeah sure and then there was a question here. Oh yes okay. After Slavoj. Sorry what’s your order now? You go. Yeah he was before. Yeah okay he likes clear orders. First just briefly about complaint. You know what I would be tempted to say. That there must be a way in if such a thing still exists which I doubt more and more real emancipatory politics. Let’s say you have Hitler. I think it’s somehow inappropriate to say that we should be complaining about Hitler. No you simply diagnose him as evil, let’s liquidate him. I don’t think that when Jews were talking about horrors in Germany that they should even use the word complaint. I would use your term complaint in a much more specific way you know like complaint always is for me perverted in the sense that you secretly enjoy it and so on. So I would move in that direction. But very briefly just about
unknown
your question my deep agreement with you and I can tell you the whole story because I was there in Paris years ago.
your question my deep agreement with you and I can tell you the whole story because I was there in Paris years ago.
unknown
Millerians for a long time they denied this topic. The line was no all this borderline is American bullshit no nothing changed. They even I got much criticism that I’m losing nerve all these Hollywood movies and so on. Then I don’t know if you noticed some to years ago it began a total reversal. Miller now his political comments often sound to me sorry this arrogance as a bad vulgarized version of myself years ago you know all these quick popular
Millerians for a long time they denied this topic. The line was no all this borderline is American bullshit no nothing changed. They even I got much criticism that I’m losing nerve all these Hollywood movies and so on. Then I don’t know if you noticed some to years ago it began a total reversal. Miller now his political comments often sound to me sorry this arrogance as a bad vulgarized version of myself years ago you know all these quick popular
unknown
analysis and he makes grave mistakes. Just read
analysis and he makes grave mistakes. Just read
unknown
what he wrote after her first appearance about Sarah Palin as new type for femininity who will crush Barack Obama and so on and so on. But yeah but what I’m saying I deeply agree with you is that I much agree with early Miller who gave a very good reading. He convinced me years ago of borderline as typically a historical shift in hysteria. That hysteric subject traditional provokes a master. When you get a modern type of expert knowledge no longer direct figure of the master you get borderline and so on. So it’s I think that especially you know what’s the danger then what you get the worst text of Miller that I’ve read recently it’s his *Psychoanalysis: The Real for the 21st Century*. It’s madness. He goes into how we have now a new real. He even denounces in the most vulgar pseudo-Deleuzian way formulae of sexuation are still symbolic attempts to discipline the real but we have now a real totally outside law. He buys capitalist ideology. Capitalism presents itself some some pure flux of desire outside castration outside all limitation and so on. It’s horrible and I totally agree with you more than ever we should say no we are not dealing with universalized psychosis it’s not pure real. Capitalism is still a radical symbolic antagonism. They even regress on the Lacanian notion of the real. Lacan says the real is a deadlock an impasse of symbolization the most subversive Lacanian real is precisely totally immanent just an inner crack obstacle of the symbolic. I think this is a political not just theoretical but even a political catastrophe. You go on this path and you end up what Miller is doing now, an advisor in the electoral board for for Sarkozy. You know, can I say what just as a little um I thought of it while Slavoj was talking I have a better answer for you Steven about the about the problem of the complaint. It's not just about a moral problem but it's actually I kind of have a joke about this where I reread Spinoza and and say that the ethics should be read as the art of complaint. Because there's different levels of the kind of perfection of complaining if you read Spinoza in a kind of odd way. But I think that you know from a psychoanalytic perspective um the problem is not so much indeed this standard again moralistic discourse okay the self-serving complaint versus a really constructive complaint. But it's a question when a complaint really touches on something um that it doesn't just um so it's not just a kind of self-enjoyment that somehow is within the ambit of the ego but when the complaint really touches on something that changes or that can't be admitted. And then Lacan even Lacan does have a few lines about complaint and he says what matters about the complaint in a way is what's beyond the complaint. That at some point the complaint will fail, that it falls into silence which means it touches on a point that in a way you can't even complain. Then you know something interesting happened. So that's that's maybe an immanent again it's not an it's not an external kind of moralistic discourse about what are good complaints, but a kind of immanent psychoanalytic way of understanding how the complaint can evolve
what he wrote after her first appearance about Sarah Palin as new type for femininity who will crush Barack Obama and so on and so on. But yeah but what I’m saying I deeply agree with you is that I much agree with early Miller who gave a very good reading. He convinced me years ago of borderline as typically a historical shift in hysteria. That hysteric subject traditional provokes a master. When you get a modern type of expert knowledge no longer direct figure of the master you get borderline and so on. So it’s I think that especially you know what’s the danger then what you get the worst text of Miller that I’ve read recently it’s his *Psychoanalysis: The Real for the 21st Century*. It’s madness. He goes into how we have now a new real. He even denounces in the most vulgar pseudo-Deleuzian way formulae of sexuation are still symbolic attempts to discipline the real but we have now a real totally outside law. He buys capitalist ideology. Capitalism presents itself some some pure flux of desire outside castration outside all limitation and so on. It’s horrible and I totally agree with you more than ever we should say no we are not dealing with universalized psychosis it’s not pure real. Capitalism is still a radical symbolic antagonism. They even regress on the Lacanian notion of the real. Lacan says the real is a deadlock an impasse of symbolization the most subversive Lacanian real is precisely totally immanent just an inner crack obstacle of the symbolic. I think this is a political not just theoretical but even a political catastrophe. You go on this path and you end up what Miller is doing now, an advisor in the electoral board for for Sarkozy. You know, can I say what just as a little um I thought of it while Slavoj was talking I have a better answer for you Steven about the about the problem of the complaint. It's not just about a moral problem but it's actually I kind of have a joke about this where I reread Spinoza and and say that the ethics should be read as the art of complaint. Because there's different levels of the kind of perfection of complaining if you read Spinoza in a kind of odd way. But I think that you know from a psychoanalytic perspective um the problem is not so much indeed this standard again moralistic discourse okay the self-serving complaint versus a really constructive complaint. But it's a question when a complaint really touches on something um that it doesn't just um so it's not just a kind of self-enjoyment that somehow is within the ambit of the ego but when the complaint really touches on something that changes or that can't be admitted. And then Lacan even Lacan does have a few lines about complaint and he says what matters about the complaint in a way is what's beyond the complaint. That at some point the complaint will fail, that it falls into silence which means it touches on a point that in a way you can't even complain. Then you know something interesting happened. So that's that's maybe an immanent again it's not an it's not an external kind of moralistic discourse about what are good complaints, but a kind of immanent psychoanalytic way of understanding how the complaint can evolve
unknown
within the process of psychoanalysis. And so that's
within the process of psychoanalysis. And so that's
Slavoj Žižek
that's a better that's how I try to present the question. I think that's a better answer for you. It's about the addressee isn't it who are you addressing every time you are complaining. I think we'll take our last question because we're nearly it's nearly o'clock and on that note yeah I have to I have to act ephrosinian and I
that's a better that's how I try to present the question. I think that's a better answer for you. It's about the addressee isn't it who are you addressing every time you are complaining. I think we'll take our last question because we're nearly it's nearly o'clock and on that note yeah I have to I have to act ephrosinian and I
unknown
will save everybody's dignity by imposing this limit now. I'd like to thank Madison for organizing it. Aaron's publishers for coming and bringing the books which will be on sale in G16. Slavoj for giving us more time, we do have drinks there. Slavoj for coming, Aaron for being here and especially all of you. And
will save everybody's dignity by imposing this limit now. I'd like to thank Madison for organizing it. Aaron's publishers for coming and bringing the books which will be on sale in G16. Slavoj for giving us more time, we do have drinks there. Slavoj for coming, Aaron for being here and especially all of you. And
Slavoj Žižek
you are not Hegelian
you are not Hegelian
unknown
you should thank yourself you should thank
you should thank yourself you should thank
Slavoj Žižek
yourself.
yourself.