Slavoj Zizek

The aim of this work is to develop a comparative analysis of the discursive structures that underlie the socialized formation of the interpretative paradigms of reality. We analyse how both political ideologies and the so-called “conspiracy theories” can be understood starting from the structure and functioning of Marc Augè's ideo-logic, namely the systemic-discursive device that defines the field of all possible sentences defining the real. -/- .

Agamben is hard to pin down both theologically and philosophically. He attempts to construct miraculous minutiae out of un-miraculous things. Hence this work is the act of profaning the unprofanable. What ontological stature, what imaginative configuration and what spatio-temporal coordinates this move articulates are less than forthcoming. Indeed it is possible that Agamben disavows these entirely in favour of a Benjaminian eternal 'as if' structure, one which sees in the most mundane the traces of an eternal and secular redemption. But (...) this remains problematic; this idiosyncratic moment seems devoid of any real comprehension or description of themes concerning the rest of us mortals, such as temporality, finitude or the spatial and imaginative presentation of that which promises to redeem us. (shrink)

The term ‘reflexivity’ continues to maintain an interpretive hegemony in discussions on modernity and the Self. As a form of praxis, applications of reflexivity frequently rely upon an acknowledged awareness of one’s self-conscious attitudes, dispositions, behaviors and motives. This paper will take aim at such contentions, exploring the extent to which examples of racism rely upon a level of reflexivity, best encapsulated in Žižek’s ‘reflexive racism’. Specifically, it is highlighted how examples of non- racism/anti-racism assert the formal promotion of a (...) monadic subject, solely adept at ‘uncovering’ and ‘relinquishing’ their racism (disavowal); and, an equally unhelpful social constructionism, which depoliticizes racism by relocating and relativizing it to a particular socio-historical context (deferment). In outlining this response, specific attention is given to Lacan’s subject of enunciation and subject of the enunciated, from which it is concluded that it is in the obfuscation of one’s ‘position of enunciation’ that examples of reflexive racism reside. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek and Violence -/- Žižek’s book is fundamentally about understanding violence and the way it is represented in global society, especially in relation to economic interests. He draws a distinction between what he calls subjective violence and objective violence. Subjective violence refers to violence that is inflicted by a clearly identifiable agent of action, as in the case of criminal activity or terrorism. Objective violence, on the other hand, has no clear perpetrator and is often overlooked in the background (...) of subjective violence outbreaks. For example, the objective violence of global poverty cannot be blamed on any one entity and, even if financial elites were to be identified as culpable, they could still be exonerated by their subjugation to a system of capitalist finance that makes the rise of an elite financial class inevitable. While Žižek further subdivides objective violence, the core difference illustrated here reflects Žižek’s interest in establishing the way certain forms of violence are represented and perceived in the general social consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

This article critically details how the work of Slavoj Žižek theoretically elaborates on the links between nationalism and sport. Notably, it highlights how key terms, drawn from Žižek’s work on fantasy, ideology and the Real (itself grounded in the work of Jacques Lacan), can be used to explore the relationship between sport, nationalism and enjoyment (jouissance). In outlining this approach, specific attention is given to Žižek’s account of the ‘national Thing’. Accordingly, by considering the various ways in which sport organizes, (...) materializes and structures our enjoyment, the emotive significance of sport during national sporting occasions is both introduced and applied. Moreover, it is argued that such an approach offers a unique and valuable insight into the relationship between sport and nationalism, as well as an array of social and political antagonisms. (shrink)

This article approaches the COVID-19 pandemic as an inherently antagonistic phenomenon. To do so, it carries forward the philosophical contentions that Žižek outlines in his Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World, as well as his wider work. With reference to the parallax Real and McGowan’s Hegelian contradiction, it is demonstrated that Žižek’s philosophical premises hold a unique importance in politically confronting COVID-19. Indeed, by drawing specific attention to the various ways in which our confrontations with the Real expose the limitations of (...) our socio-ideological orders, it is argued that it is in these very limitations that the limits of the Real are transposed through the various “fictions” we employ to fight and perceive it. In outlining this confrontation, a focused discussion on the Real as “impossible” – a “characteristic” that affords an important political significance for the present context and its ongoing limitations – is provided. In conclusion, if the COVID-19 pandemic demands a new “commons”, and if our response to the crisis should be one where the desires of the nation-state are regulated and controlled, then, it may not simply be enough that we “demand the impossible”. Instead, it is today that the impossible demands a new “us”. (shrink)

This article draws upon the work of Timothy Morton and Slavoj Žižek in order to critically examine how mountain bike trail builders orientated themselves within nature relations. Beginning with a discussion of the key ontological differences between Morton’s object-oriented ontology and Žižek’s blend of Hegelian-Lacanianism, we explore how Morton’s dark ecology and Žižek’s account of the radical contingency of nature, can offer parallel paths to achieving an ecological awareness that neither idealises nor mythologises nature, but instead, acknowledges its strange and (...) contingent form. Empirically, we support this theoretical approach in interviews with twenty mountain bike trail builders. These interviews depicted an approach to trail building that was ambivalently formed in/with the contingency of nature. In doing so, the trail builders acted with a sense of temporal awareness that accepted the radical openness of nature, presenting a ‘symbolic framework’ that was amiable to nature’s ambivalent, strange and contingent form. In conclusion, we argue that we should not lose sight of the ambivalences and strange surprises that emanate from our collective and unpredictable attempts to symbolize nature and that such knowledge can coincide with Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ – an ecological awareness that remains radically open to our ecological existence. (shrink)

In his late lectures, Foucault developed the ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, a courage to speak the truth in the face of danger. While not entirely uncritical of the notion, Foucault seemed to find something of an ideal in the political and aesthetic ideal of franc-parler, of speaking freely and courageously. Simultaneously, the post-1968 political valorized the ideal of parrhesia, or “speaking truth to power”: parrhesia seemed inherently progressive, the sole preserve of the left. But a cursory inspection of the (...) annals of Nazism and fascism shows that these movements also aligned themselves with parrhesiastical modes of expression. The fragmented, disparate strands of today’s neo-fascist revival, too, are closely imbricated with the notion of speaking valiantly in the face of supposed orthodoxies: in many ways, the preeminent parrhesiasts today are found on the neo-fascist side. This points to an essential weakness in the concept of parrhesia, particularly in terms of its value and valence as a strategy for the political left. Perhaps it matters less how we speak—being caught up in language games—than what policies and programs we enact. Žižek’s plea for a renewed dogmatic orthodoxy and Chesterton’s criticism of heresy offer ways out of the parrhesiastical trap. (shrink)

The article addresses the treatment given to the notion of subject in Slavoj Žižek and Robert Kurz. Without aiming at a synthesis between the two radically opposed positions, they are played against one another in order to reveal the unidimensional stances and false steps in the field of the constitution of the struggle for a concrete negation of capitalist society.

Žižek has argued in his books on Christianity and modernity that institutional Catholic Christianity has placed its members in a double bind by insisting on belief in a nonexistent God of Being. The laws of this God of the Symbolic are perverse in that they impose impossible requirements on all believers. By the mid-twentieth century, however, Catholicism was experiencing the revolutionary reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Law at this time gave way to a renewed emphasis on the community (...) of love associated in early Christianity with the Holy Spirit. This God of the Real is inherently Trinitarian: God-Father-Thing, Spirit as community of believers, and Christ as the imaginary Real gap between them. The American gothic writer Flannery O’Connor in her short story “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” provides a meditation on this Real Trinity. In O’Connor’s story a hermaphroditic circus freak becomes an emblem of the deadlock of sexual difference and a monstrous Christ-figure in the Žižekian sense. Its place is theologically incoherent and represents the passion for the Real emerging out of the perverse situation of mid-century Catholic orthodoxy. (shrink)

It does not take much to realize that, concerning the topic of Iran, the lack of response and general confusion from the Left within liberal, Western democracies is deeply symptomatic. That the perplexed responses of liberals seem to be characterized by a fetishization of the Iranian Other, reducing them to an empty screen onto which the liberal ideological subject may project their fantasy, prevents the Left from acknowledging that Iranian ideology functions as an over- identification with many of the excesses (...) which liberal ideology is so used to criticizing. The present work seeks to traverse this fantasy space, explicating the way Iran is considered to the object-cause of liberal desire and the consequences this conception has for the Left’s capacity to coherently respond to the present situation as it unfolds. (shrink)

This article interrogates a certain philosophical scene – one which constitutes itself through the position of what Jacques Derrida calls “the ethical instance of violence.” This scene supposes a certain “style” of writing or doing philosophy, and perhaps even a certain philosophical “genre” or “subgenre”: the philosophical discourse on violence. In the course of the essay, I analyze this quasi-juridical scene through readings of Aristotle, Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Werner Hamacher, Rodolphe Gasché, and Martin Hägglund among (...) others. The scene, built on texts on texts on violence, demands a logic of purity; it is wary of contaminations and equivocations. And yet it thrives on them. In analyzing the implications of text, writing, and trace for the philosophical discourse on violence, I follow Derrida “just to see” what could make the scene tremble. (shrink)

This article examines Alain Badiou’s and Slavoj Žižek’s advocacy for fidelity to revolutionary truths in light of complex system theory’s understanding of resiliency. It begins with a discussion of how Badiou and Žižek describe truth. Next, it looks at the features that make a complex system resilient. The article argues that if we understand neoliberalism as a resilient system, then the fidelity to revolutionary truths that Badiou and Žižek advocate is not enough, for it doesn’t realize how truths come from (...) the system as a whole. The article concludes by describing how this viewpoint alters discussions of political change. (shrink)

Reviewed Work: The Leader's Two Bodies: Slavoj Žižek's Postmodern Political Theology by Claudia Breger.

Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher and politician, has argued that the end of colonialism and imperialism and the rise of the society of mass communication have contributed to the emergence of the postmodern. Modernity‘s unilinear conception of history is no longer possible in the face of multiple cultures and subcultures coming to the microphone across countries in the West. This article considers this view in the light of the problematizing comments made by the philosopher Slavoj Žižek on the nature of (...) culture – that it is something people do not take seriously and therefore people do not regard science as a culture. If science is apart from culture, then modernity can continue as the grand narrative of the increasing rationalisation of humankind as shown by the emancipating effects of science expressed through technology. Resources from Vattimo‘s broader philosophical programme are drawn upon to argue that not taking culture seriously is a postmodern condition and that science is cultural. (shrink)

Sublime Žižek: Guarding Lenin’s Tomb (July 2002) - Žižek & Badiou: The Neo-Marxist Magicians (November 2003) - The Ruins of Thought: Five Scenarios Toward a Short Film (November 2005) - Slavoj Žižek at Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, New York, April 2009 (April 2009) - Questions for Žižek (April 2009).

Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating (...) the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied. (shrink)

The Psychosis of Race offers a unique and detailed account of the psychoanalytic significance of race, and the ongoing impact of racism in contemporary society. Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction, and working against demands that simply call for more representational equality, The Psychosis of Race explores how the delusions, anxieties, and paranoia that frame our race relations can afford new insights into how we see, think, and understand race's pervasive appeal. With examples drawn from (...) politics and popular culture--such as Candyman, Get Out, and the music of Kendrick Lamar--critical attention is given to introducing as well as explicating on several key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the study of psychosis, including foreclosure, phallus, the Name-of-the-Father, sinthome, and the objet petit a. By elaborating a cultural mode to psychosis and its understanding, an original and critical exposition of the effects of racialization, as well as our ability to discern the very limits of our capacity to think through, or even beyond, the idea of race, is provided. The Psychosis of Race speaks to an emerging area in the study of psychoanalysis and race, and will appeal to scholars and academics across the fields of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and the arts and humanities. (shrink)

It is this very contention that sits at the heart of Matthew Flisfeder’s, Algorithmic Desire: Towards a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (2021). In spite of the accusation that, today, our social media is in fact hampering democracy and subjecting us to increasing forms of online and offline surveillance, for Flisfeder (2021: 3), ‘[s]ocial media remains the correct concept for reconciling ourselves with the structural contradictions of our media, our culture, and our society’. With almost every aspect of our (...) contemporary lives now mediated through the digital, the significance of the algorithm maintains a pertinent importance in making sense of the social and psychic investments that our interactions on social media, as well as other forms of digital media, rely upon and encourage. The socio-political tensions and contradictions that such interaction prescribes remains a reoccurring theme throughout Algorithmic Desire, with Flisfeder masterfully navigating the problems and pitfalls of a burgeoning digital infrastructure that is redefining our lives as social beings. What becomes apparent from Flisfeder’s account is how debates and discussions regarding the algorithm can be couched in a number of pressing concerns, including the proliferation of online misinformation and the contradictions inherent to our freedom and security. While these debates are drawn together through the prism of the algorithm, it is mostly with regards to the medium of social media that Flisfeder examines how our desire and enjoyment are algorithmically organized. This focus is expertly followed throughout the book’s eight chapters, producing a critically engaging inquiry that continually considers the socio-political tensions and ambiguities that frame and sustain our digital media interactions. Ultimately, it is this contention that lends further support to Flisfeder’s assertion that algorithms play a key role in reading our desire. In the discussion that follows, this reading will be critically considered by tracing and outlining a number of key significances underpinning Flisfeder’s approach. Most notably, this will require a discussion of the Lacanian conception of desire; the effects of disavowal and cynical perversion; the importance of ‘maintaining appearances’; and, finally, the significance of the social media metaphor. (shrink)

It does not take much to realize that, concerning the topic of Iran, the lack of response and general confusion from the Left within liberal, Western democracies is deeply symptomatic. That the perplexed responses of liberals seem to be characterized by a fetishization of the Iranian Other, reducing them to an empty screen onto which the liberal ideological subject may project their fantasy, prevents the Left from acknowledging that Iranian ideology functions as an over- identification with many of the excesses (...) which liberal ideology is so used to criticizing. The present work seeks to traverse this fantasy space, explicating the way Iran is considered to the object-cause of liberal desire and the consequences this conception has for the Left’s capacity to coherently respond to the present situation as it unfolds. (shrink)

Alongside the increasing popularity of digital, ‘social’ media platforms, has been the emergence of self-styled digital life-coaches, many of whom seek to propagate their knowledge of and interests in a variety of topics through online social networks (such as, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc.). With many of these ‘social influencers’ garnering a large online following, their popularity, social significance and cultural impact offers important insights into the place and purpose of the subject in our digital media environment. Accordingly, this chapter will (...) examine the proliferation of digital media technologies, which, on the one hand, propose the dissolution of the subject (wearable technology, technological singularity, etc.), while on the other, provide new opportunities for discovering, ‘sharing’ and/or improving one’s ‘inner-Self’ (digital media gurus, online health and fitness regimes, etc.). It is in considering how the effects of this ‘digital subject’ redefines traditional (Cartesian) conceptions, that the relative significance of ‘Digital Guru Media’ (DGM) can be drawn. In particular, explicit attention is given to examining how our engagements with social media can be considered in relation to Lacan’s (2002) notion of the big Other and its relevance in introducing, examining and, possibly, subverting, the digital media guru. (shrink)

Fascinated by the recent scientific progress, even some philosophers today claim that philosophy is dead and that natural sciences (quantum cosmology, cognitive sciences) can answer questions which were once considered a domain of metaphysics: is our universe finite? Do we have free will? etc. The essay tries to problematize this claims by raising a series of questions. First, it is easy to show that modern science itself relies on a series of philosophical propositions. Second, what accounts for the role of (...) science in our world is its link with capitalism. Third, we should distinguish between knowledge and truth: not only philosophy, other discourses (like Marxism or psychoanalysis) also practice a notion of truth which cannot be reduced to knowledge. -/- . (shrink)

In exploring the intra-active, relational and material connections between humans and non- humans, proponents of posthumanism advocate a questioning of the ‘human’ beyond its traditional anthropocentric conceptualization. By referring specifically to controversial developments in mHealth applications, this paper critically diverges from posthuman accounts of human/non-human assemblages. Indeed, we argue that, rather than ‘dissolving’ the human subject, the power of assemblages lie in their capacity to highlight the antagonisms and contradictions that inherently affirm the importance of the subject. In outlining this (...) claim, we propose a turn from the posthuman to the inhuman as a way of understanding the contemporary landscape of (digital) health. (shrink)

Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness” alongside Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view”. In doing so, the article introduces a “past-present parallax” in order to contest that, while conceptions of the past are marked by “lack”, equally, our conceptions of and relations to Nature remain grounded in an ontological incompleteness, marked by contingency. This novel approach presents an (...) ecological awareness that remains temporally attuned to the impasses and inconsistencies which frame our relations in/with Nature. (shrink)

The importation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new era of cinema scholarship and criticism. Figures including Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz are often considered the pioneers of applying Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of film theory, most notably through their writings in Screen Journal. However, where French and British scholarship on Lacan and film reached its limits, American Lacanianism flourished. When Joan Copjec’s now classic essay “The Orthopsychic Subject: Film (...) Theory and the Reception of Lacan” was published in 1989, the trajectory of Lacanian film theory would become radically altered; as Todd McGowan recently put it, the “butchered operation” on Lacan committed by Mulvey and (quoting Copjec) the “Foucaultianization” of Lacan under the auspices of Screen Journal were finally indicted in one gesture through Copjec’s critique. Copjec and McGowan’s unique American view of Lacan marks a pivotal point in the convergence of psychoanalytic theory and cinema studies; by seeking to wrest Lacan from historist/deconstructionist theories of the subject, and by revisiting Lacan beyond the mirror stage, Copjec and McGowan can be said to have instantiated a resuscitation or even a renaissance of Lacanian theory in film studies in particular and in American scholarship more generally. In this essay, this renaissance of Lacanian theory is examined, focusing on the innovations these two American thinkers brought to psychoanalytic film theory and the multiple paths carved out into other disciplines that followed. First, a detailed summation of the contentions between screen theory and Copjec’s position is introduced, as well as McGowan’s assessment thereof. Then, the trajectory of psychoanalytic film theory after Copjec’s arrival is the focus, including the major innovations in her thought from cinematic subjectivity to sexual difference (most notably from Read My Desire) and the way her position spread to philosophy and ontology. Finally, the article identifies the limitations of Copjec’s and McGowan’s thought and seeks new possibilities through which we may continue to apply psychoanalysis to the cinema in the wake of these two important thinkers. L’importation de la psychanalyse lacanienne dans la théorie du film au cours des années 1970 et 1980 a apporté une nouvelle ère de recherche et de critique cinématographiques. Des figures comme Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey et Christian Metz sont souvent considérées comme étant les pionniers dans l’application de la psychanalyse lacanienne au contexte de la théorie du film, surtout dans leurs écrits pour le Screen Journal. Par contre, là où les recherches françaises et britanniques sur Lacan et la cinématographie ont atteint leurs limites, le lacanisme américain a prospéré. La publication en 1989 de « The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan », l’essai classique de Joan Copjec, a complètement changé la trajectoire de la théorie lacanienne du film; comme Todd McGowan l’a récemment exprimé, « l’opération massacrée » commise sur Lacan par Mulvey et (citant Copjec) la « Foucaultisation » de Lacan sous les auspices de Screen Journal avaient finalement été accusées d’un seul coup par la critique de Copjec. Le point de vue uniquement américain de Copjec et de McGowan sur Lacan marque un tournant dans la convergence de la théorie psychanalytique et des études cinématographiques. En cherchant à arracher Lacan des théories historicistes/déconstructivistes du sujet, et en revisitant Lacan au-delà du stade du miroir, Copjec et McGowan ont instancié une ressuscitation, voire une renaissance, de la théorie lacanienne dans les études cinématographiques en particulier et dans les études américaines en général. Dans cet article, cette renaissance de la théorie lacanienne est examinée, mettant l’accent sur les innovations que ces deux penseurs américains ont apportées à la théorie psychanalytique du film et les multiples chemins tracés dans d’autres disciplines subséquentes. Premièrement, un résumé détaillé des différends entre la théorie du film et la position de Copjec est présenté, ainsi que l’évaluation de McGowan à ce sujet. Puis, la trajectoire de la théorie psychanalytique du film après l’arrivée de Copjec est mise de l’avant, notamment les innovations importantes de sa pensée de la subjectivité à la différence sexuelle (particulièrement dans Read My Desire) et la manière dont sa position s’est propagée dans la philosophie et l’ontologie. Finalement, l’article identifie les limites de la pensée de Copjec et de McGowan et cherche de nouvelles possibilités à travers lesquelles nous pourrions continuer d’appliquer la psychanalyse au cinéma après ces deux grands penseurs. (shrink)

In this essay I try to link Derek Hook’s interpretation of Žižek’s reading of Lacan of racial resentment as a kind of jouissance or enjoyment to what Christian Fuchs terms an ideology of hate. In my view, slurs are instances of subordinating speech partially to dehumanize targets but primarily function to signal and deploy ideology. The enjoyment racists derive from using a slurring term from a key feature of the offensiveness of a slurring term. My objective is two-fold. I intend (...) to (1) outline and argue for the enjoyment account of subordinating speech as an improvement upon prohibitionist accounts of slurring terms offensive content and (2) illustrate how slurs function in a libidinal system to reproduce and reinforce ideology. An enjoyment account of subordinating speech depends upon an interpretation of Lacanian concept of jouissance and symptom, supplemented by Hook’s libidinal object. (shrink)

In Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew takes up the central question guiding Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy: How could something like phenomenal reality emerge out of the meaninglessness of the Real? Carefully reconstructing and expanding upon his controversial reactualization of German Idealism, Carew argues that Žižek offers us an original, but perhaps terrifying, response: experience is possible only if we presuppose a prior moment of breakdown as the ontogenetic basis of subjectivity. Drawing upon resources found in Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-Kantian philosophy, Carew (...) thus develops a new critical metaphysics—a metaphysics which is a variation upon the late German Idealist theme of balancing system and freedom, realism and idealism, in a single, self-reflexive theoretical construct—that challenges our understanding of nature, culture, and the ultimate structure of reality. (shrink)

Most readings of Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North have focused on Mustafa Saeed and the nameless narrator, both male characters, and they have largely avoided a politically radical reading of the novel. This article attempts to present the female character, Hosna, as the revolutionary par excellence, following Lacan and Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Antigone. Th rough Žižek’s distinction between the act and action, this article argues that Hosna’s deed at the end of the novel, murder and suicide, (...) is not just an action out of hopelessness but rather an act that aims to make a new social order possible. We will try to connect Žižek’s distinction between act and action to Benjamin’s distinction between divine violence and mythic violence and Lacan’s idea of “Th ing-directed desire” (Marc De Kesel 245). By doing so, this article aims to put the extreme violence of Hosna in a new light and argues against the readings that simply ignore her act as an extreme form of violence and fail to see it in a broader framework of philosophical and sociological understanding. (shrink)

It does not take much to realize that, concerning the topic of Iran, the lack of response and general confusion from the Left within liberal, Western democracies is deeply symptomatic. That the perplexed responses of liberals seem to be characterized by a fetishization of the Iranian Other, reducing them to an empty screen onto which the liberal ideological subject may project their fantasy, prevents the Left from acknowledging that Iranian ideology functions as an over-identification with many of the excesses which (...) liberal ideology is so used to criticizing. The present work seeks to traverse this fantasy space, explicating the way Iran is considered to the object-cause of liberal desire and the consequences this conception has for the Left’s capacity to coherently respond to the present situation as it unfolds. Iran seems incapable of entering into the sphere of modernity, as any multiculturalist will be sure to emphasize, and yet, as any conservative will claim, in light of Iran’s control over such a huge percent of the world’s oil supply, as well as their refusal to engage in secular politics and attempts to develop nuclear technology, Iran threatens to disintegrate modernity itself. Both of these alternatives should be rejected as falling prey to the same fantastic projection to be avoided. (shrink)

Failing -- Ontology and desire in Dionysius the Areopagite -- Apophatic theology and its vicissitudes -- The death drive: from Freud to Žižek -- The gift and violence -- Divine violence as trauma -- Mystical theology and the four discourses -- Theology as failure.

¿Cómo es posible encontrar una constante en una obra que tiene en la ruptura su principal argumento? Una primera línea se puede percibir en el trabajo de Žižek sobre una política del goce cuya trayectoria circula desde el deseo a la pulsión. Desde una investigación muy orientada en el problema del sujeto, en el carácter sintomático del mismo, Žižek se ha desplazado hacia un análisis de la relación entre el objeto a y la pulsión en el marco del capitalismo actual. (...) En conexión con esta problemática se encuentra una segunda línea que tiene como punto central el trabajo crítico sobre las relaciones entre economía y política; frente al desafío que supone hoy en día la circulación espontánea del capital y el abandono del ámbito económico por parte de la teoría política. Por un lado nos encontramos con los dos sentidos del término escatología, el económico y el teológico-político, que convergen en la noción de exceso, sea de la pulsión o sea del objeto a. Al mismo tiempo, Žižek considera que no es posible traducir la atención sobre el exceso capitalista y su propia revolución inmanente en términos de dominación política.Ambas secuencias se encuentran, en definitiva, íntimamente vinculadas en la crítica de la economía política del discurso que Žižek lleva a cabo. La introducción del término paralaje puede servir como alternativa para entender la oscilación permanente que se produce en su obra entre síntoma y escatología. Una opción para leer a Žižek en función de sus incesantes desplazamientos, comenzando por el más fundamental: la paralaje entre lectura y escritura. (shrink)

According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media (...) malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization. (shrink)

In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out by Croatia) at the 2018 World Cup. True to form, the defeats proved unfalteringly English; with the 2021 final echoing previous tournament defeats, as England lost to Italy on penalties. However, what resonated with the predictability of an English defeat, was the accompanying chant, ‘it’s coming (...) home’. A ubiquitous presence throughout the course of both tournaments—while chanted at England football matches, it was also repeated across social media, the press and commercial advertising—the chant originates from the 1996 single, Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home), performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In what follows critical attention will be given to examining how the song offers what will be argued is a melancholic outlook. By re-approaching examples of English nostalgia and hubris, this chapter will expose how illustrations of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of expression, which, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (for the men’s team, at least), can be offset against a melancholic mediation that is cognizant of the centrality of loss—both for the subject and our collective sporting endeavours. (shrink)

There are two ironies in the popular science genre. First, it seeks to simplify even as it confounds. Authors in this genre have simultaneously to evoke awe-inspiring, sublime imagery, while also rendering the content easily accessible to a non-expert audience. Second, in doing so they undermine the naive realism of scientific orthodoxy and the liberal humanist subject that is their implied reader. The first irony occurs because of the use of the epistemological sublime, which is a rough cognate with awe, (...) or wonder and which is the sublime of the eighteenth century, including that of Kant. The second irony is disclosed because of what I call the ontological sublime, characteristic of late twentieth-century theories of the sublime. The ontological sublime is more radical. Rather than being triggered by the limits of knowledge or imagination — as with awe and wonder — it calls into question ontological categories, including the integrity of reality, or indeed the coherence of the subject having the sublime experience. Rather than being self-affirming (like Kant's sublime), it is an ambivalent effect; it can be seen as self-abnegating or, more frequently, disruptive of the notion of selfhood entirely, even to the point of undermining the existence of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

This book offers an original philosophical perspective on exemplarity. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s later work and Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, it argues that examples are not static entities but rather oscillate between singular and universal moments. There is a broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and universal concepts or norms. In the first part of the book, Mácha contends that there is a kind of différance between singular examples and general exemplars or paradigms. Every example is, in part, (...) also an exemplar, and vice versa. Furthermore, he develops a paracomplete approach to the logic of exemplarity, which allows us to say of an exemplar of X neither that it is an X nor that it is not an X. This paradox is structurally isomorphic to Russell’s paradox and can be addressed in similar ways. In the second part of the book, Mácha presents four historical studies that exemplify the ideas developed in the first part. This part begins with Plato’s Forms, understood as standards/paradigms, before considering Kant’s theory of reflective judgment as a general epistemological account of exemplarity. This is then followed by analyses of Hegel’s conceptual moment of particularity and Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. The book concludes by discussing the speculative hypothesis that all our knowledge is based on paradigms, which, following the logic of exemplarity, are neither true nor false. (shrink)

Covid-19 presents itself as a strange catastrophe. It has neither destroyed the planet nor has it erased humanity… but it has, in many ways, served to upend and alter what was previously considered ‘normal.’ As a result, what is perhaps the most notable characteristic of the Covid catastrophe is the very way it endures. Beyond any notion of catastrophic shock, the Covid catastrophe continues, indeed, it lingers in daily news cycles, changes to working environments and restrictions on travel. It is (...) an enduring presence, from which any determination of its ‘end’ is either nullified by an unending stream of Covid reports, or worse, ignored altogether. On this basis alone, is it even possible to discern an ‘end’ to Covid? (shrink)

Alongside the increasing popularity of digital, ‘social’ media platforms, has been the emergence of self-styled digital life-coaches, many of whom seek to propagate their knowledge of and interests in a variety of topics through online social networks (such as, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc.). With many of these ‘social influencers’ garnering a large online following, their popularity, social significance and cultural impact offers important insights into the place and purpose of the subject in our digital media environment. Accordingly, this chapter will (...) examine the proliferation of digital media technologies, which, on the one hand, propose the dissolution of the subject (wearable technology, technological singularity, etc.), while on the other, provide new opportunities for discovering, ‘sharing’ and/or improving one’s ‘inner-Self’ (digital media gurus, online health and fitness regimes, etc.). It is in considering how the effects of this ‘digital subject’ redefines traditional (Cartesian) conceptions, that the relative significance of ‘Digital Guru Media’ (DGM) can be drawn. In particular, explicit attention is given to examining how our engagements with social media can be considered in relation to Lacan’s (2002) notion of the big Other and its relevance in introducing, examining and, possibly, subverting, the digital media guru. (shrink)

Fascinated by the recent scientific progress, even some philosophers today claim that philosophy is dead and that natural sciences (quantum cosmology, cognitive sciences) can answer questions which were once considered a domain of metaphysics: is our universe finite? Do we have free will? etc. The essay tries to problematize this claims by raising a series of questions. First, it is easy to show that modern science itself relies on a series of philosophical propositions. Second, what accounts for the role of (...) science in our world is its link with capitalism. Third, we should distinguish between knowledge and truth: not only philosophy, other discourses (like Marxism or psychoanalysis) also practice a notion of truth which cannot be reduced to knowledge. -/- . (shrink)

This article interrogates a certain philosophical scene – one which constitutes itself through the position of what Jacques Derrida calls “the ethical instance of violence.” This scene supposes a certain “style” of writing or doing philosophy, and perhaps even a certain philosophical “genre” or “subgenre”: the philosophical discourse on violence. In the course of the essay, I analyze this quasi-juridical scene through readings of Aristotle, Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Werner Hamacher, Rodolphe Gasché, and Martin Hägglund among (...) others. The scene, built on texts on texts on violence, demands a logic of purity; it is wary of contaminations and equivocations. And yet it thrives on them. In analyzing the implications of text, writing, and trace for the philosophical discourse on violence, I follow Derrida “just to see” what could make the scene tremble. (shrink)

What the COVID-19 pandemic serves to reveal is the inherent limitations and contradictions of a symbolic order that must now be perceived via an “impossible subjectivity”: what this essay will refer to as the “in-human.” (Zizek, 2020). Indeed, this in-human perspective transpires not through our fetishization of the virus, as some form of justification for humanity’s impact on the world, but from a position of impossibility that renders “the whole situation into which we are included.” (Monbiot, 2020; Zizek, 2020). It (...) is on this basis that the virus confers a confrontation with the Real: an antagonism steered by the isolation of an “impossible phenomenon,” grounded in a certain level of “disengagement” that obliges us to “perceive reality as it were viewed from outside.” (Zizek, 2020). Importantly, this “view from outside” does not—and now, cannot—avoid our engagement with the impossible, but must instead be rendered via a form of approachment that conceives of the “virus” as an in-human phenomenon that is our universal condition. The following sections will serve to clarify this in-human approach. (shrink)

How can one make sense of our current political, ecological and technological dilemmas through the lens of Grant Sputore’s I Am Mother (2019)? Well-received, the film has been commended for its account of the increasing role and impact of artificial intelligence and its relation to our ongoing ecological dilemmas and potential catastrophe. While these issues are played-out through the on-screen relationship between robotic mother and human daughter, the film can also be used to help shed light on our current ideological (...) predicaments. With a narrative that steers towards our preference for cynical detachment, apathy and resignation, this review draws upon Lacan’s notion of the big Other, and its relation to the subject, in order to provide further discussion on the film’s ambiguous ending and the deeper sense of impotence that it accurately portrays with regards to our current political malaise. (shrink)

In Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), we watch the film’s protagonist, Theodore, as he struggles with the end of his marriage and a growing attachment to his artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha. While the film remains unique in its ability to cinematically portray the Lacanian contention that “there is no sexual relationship,” this article explores how our digital non-relationships can be re-approached through the medium of comedy. Specifically, when looked at through a comic lens, notable scenes from Her are examined for (...) the potential they provide in affording a self-decentrement which allows us to traverse the fantasies that structure our non-relations. (shrink)

This article affords particular attention to the relationship between memory, the narrativization of news and its linear construction, conceived as journalism’s ‘memory- work’. In elaborating upon this ‘work’, it is proposed that the Hegelian notion of retroactive causation (as used by Slavoj Žižek) can examine how analyses of news journalists ‘retroactively’ employ the past in the temporal construction of news. In fact, such retroactive (re)ordering directs attention to the ways in which journalists contingently select ‘a past’ to confer meaning on (...) the present. With regard to current literature, it is noted that a retroactive analysis can highlight two important dialectics within the practice of news journalism: 1) the relation between contingency and necessity; and, 2) the relation between content and form. Indeed, it is argued that this theoretical account offers a novel approach to examining the significance of memory in news journalism as well as the inconsistencies which underscore journalism’s memory-work. It is in accordance with such inconsistency that broader reflections on time, temporality and our relations to the past can be made. (shrink)

Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroy’s assertion that the everyday banality of living with difference is now an ordinary part of British life, this article considers how Olusoga’s historicization of the Black British experience reflects a convivial rendering of UK multiculture. In particular, when used alongside Žižek’s notion of parallax, it is argued that understandings of convivial culture can be supported by (...) a historical importance that deliberately ‘shocks’, and subsequently dislodges, popular interpretations of the UK’s ‘white past’. Notably, it is parallax which puts antagonism, strangeness and ambivalence at the heart of contemporary depictions of convivial Britain, with the UK’s cultural differences located in the ‘gaps’ and tensions which characterize both its past and present. These differences should not be feared but, as a characteristic part of our convivial culture, should be supplemented with historical analyses that highlight but, also, undermine, the significance of cultural differences in the present. Consequently, it is suggested that if the spontaneity of conviviality is to encourage openness, then understandings of multiculturalism need to go beyond reification in order to challenge our understandings of the past. Here, examples of ‘alterity’ are neither ‘new’ nor ‘contemporary’, but instead, constitute a fundamental part of the nation’s history: of the ‘gap’ made visible in transiting past and present. (shrink)

¿Cómo es posible encontrar una constante en una obra que tiene en la ruptura su principal argumento? Una primera línea se puede percibir en el trabajo de Žižek sobre una política del goce cuya trayectoria circula desde el deseo a la pulsión. Desde una investigación muy orientada en el problema del sujeto, en el carácter sintomático del mismo, Žižek se ha desplazado hacia un análisis de la relación entre el objeto a y la pulsión en el marco del capitalismo actual. (...) En conexión con esta problemática se encuentra una segunda línea que tiene como punto central el trabajo crítico sobre las relaciones entre economía y política; frente al desafío que supone hoy en día la circulación espontánea del capital y el abandono del ámbito económico por parte de la teoría política. Por un lado nos encontramos con los dos sentidos del término escatología, el económico y el teológico-político, que convergen en la noción de exceso, sea de la pulsión o sea del objeto a. Al mismo tiempo, Žižek considera que no es posible traducir la atención sobre el exceso capitalista y su propia revolución inmanente en términos de dominación política.Ambas secuencias se encuentran, en definitiva, íntimamente vinculadas en la crítica de la economía política del discurso que Žižek lleva a cabo. La introducción del término paralaje puede servir como alternativa para entender la oscilación permanente que se produce en su obra entre síntoma y escatología. Una opción para leer a Žižek en función de sus incesantes desplazamientos, comenzando por el más fundamental: la paralaje entre lectura y escritura. (shrink)

Reviewed Work: The Leader's Two Bodies: Slavoj Žižek's Postmodern Political Theology by Claudia Breger.

It is often supposed that Marxist philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy are not just very different but that they are opposed to each other. Wittgenstein was notoriously against theorizing in philosophy whereas Marx tried to give a scientific account of human society and culture. Marx famously said that ‘[t]he philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’, while Wittgenstein was concerned with conceptual considerations and had very little to say about workers' struggles. My aim (...) in this paper is to show that these apparent differences dissolve once one realizes that Marx and Wittgenstein thought differently about the nature of philosophy. In the course of coming to this conclusion I will look at misinterpretations of Wittgenstein's philosophy from Perry Anderson and Alex Callinicos as well as at Wittgensteinian criticisms of Marxist philosophers such as Leon Trotsky, John Rees and Slavoj Žižek. I will conclude that Marxist philosophers stand to gain from a clearer understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy and that Wittgensteinians can similarly gain from an appreciation of the kind of analysis of economics, society and politics offered by Marxists. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher and politician, has argued that the end of colonialism and imperialism and the rise of the society of mass communication have contributed to the emergence of the postmodern. Modernity‘s unilinear conception of history is no longer possible in the face of multiple cultures and subcultures coming to the microphone across countries in the West. This article considers this view in the light of the problematizing comments made by the philosopher Slavoj Žižek on the nature of (...) culture – that it is something people do not take seriously and therefore people do not regard science as a culture. If science is apart from culture, then modernity can continue as the grand narrative of the increasing rationalisation of humankind as shown by the emancipating effects of science expressed through technology. Resources from Vattimo‘s broader philosophical programme are drawn upon to argue that not taking culture seriously is a postmodern condition and that science is cultural. (shrink)