Zizek Studies:

Jouissance (the sweet unbearable(plays a part in pretty much everything we could possibly do.

But it gets more interesting when you consider the less then sweet unbearable from the perspective of one committing cruelty:

take, for instance, the push-pull tension you tend to see in cinema sociopaths. In the later version of Last House on the Left, the leader of a gang of sociopaths chastises his victims when they “act up” by seeking to escape. There is something hysteric in his tone as if he seeks to make himself seem human (the paternal male) while being anything but.

And it can be seen, as well, in Son of Sam, in his letter sent to the New York Times in which he claims, despite all assumptions about him, to love humanity.

I’m just writing notes here: but in order to understand the Jouissance involved in cruelty, you have to imagine the ways in which you, yourself, could engage in it:

the pleasure of power disrupted by guilt in a thousand little ways.

We live for chaos

…while seeking order:

Jouissance:

the unbearable push and pull

of something

(struggling with the nothing it could be

2 have things in order

is to have a space(
a nothingness(

around them.

Hence: chaos

In other words: the push and pull tension of chaos and order:

of space (which just stands still

and time:
which seems to move

while not moving.

the outlines of the body as a horizon
to millions of little fractal movements.

It’s a wonder we can think.

The mind is fractal -in a 3 dimensional way.

Think about all the movements of space that occur between your center, that thing looking out, and what it is seeing.

Jouissance is almost the shadow side of the will to power.

Can we define, again, what Jouissance means?

It is the pleasure that isn’t really pleasure, that merges with pain - it indicates the threshold between pleasure and un-pleasure –
it is the will to power that does not actually lead to power, one might say -

It is the prospect of pleasure, that is pleasurable in the mind, but not in the body -it can split the subject in a physical and a psychical entity.

Sex can both be a means to split up the psyche from the physical, and to bring them together. Of course, porn is always a means to split them. What about pornographic sex, when one enjoys the sex act not just in terms of the physical sensations but because of the setting, the context and the idea of it?

So Jouissance the same thing that pleasure is on a scale where pleasure is limited by the ‘good’ it does to the organism, but which keeps going beyond the service of the subject.
One may say that warfare is a result of jouissance. We may even say that religious inspiration is a form of making jouissance attainable to the mind, and that art is a way of preventing pleasure from becoming jouissance, and post-structuralist art is the very expression of this act. It is taming the drive so that it condenses before it becomes jouissance, and becomes a form of death and suffering unto death.

All artforms of the American age tease us into jouissance, they open the world around the pleasure-principle-based subject to a slight degree, create a space circumfering that subject’s “need”-structure, a veritable jungle of excess, of cultivated excess, of “Hollywood”, of that place where one can not enter but with which one is in constant dialogue.

In the world of Jouisscance-disclosed, which is what Hollywood and the music industry have become, man is enabled to transcend his organic subjectivity and participate, for a while at a time, in a world where the subject is not actually bound to his organic limits. It replaces the less potent form that was religion, where man was able to transcend his organic subjectivity via ideals of sexual goodness, of a place where pleasure is endless but abstract and not-yet -attained - religion provides us with a hermetically sealed aquarium of what lies beyond - and this prospect, the idea of our entitlement to it, provides a pleasure that is capable of keeping the organism huddled up in his own reality, content in letting it pass for what it is.

Hollywood (I use this term very generally to indicate the whole desire-culture that was birthed the beginning of the past century) opens up the gates of “heaven” (that which is meant for gods and not mere organic mortals, beasts) just a tiny splintered bit so that the light of what-could-be comes shining through and compels every man to figure out ways to justify his own presence within those walls. It is at once fiercely barbaric compared to religion and terribly brave. Man turns out to be sufficiently plasmaic to, on fortunate occasions, rise to the new horizon. It turns out man is not bound by the “right to pleasure” as given by his parental structure and his organic hermetic identity. His mind is capable of creating such excessive realms that actually do host life.

Many do not yet believe in the validity of this creation, and it is true that it causes more death and entropy than it causes realized joy - but the philosophical issue is that joy that it does allow, and this again relates to the master-slave dialectic, wherein the master makes the slave suffer for his attained-jouissance, for the pleasure that he derives from transgressing the limits of his own hermetic being.

The God Dionysus equals the workings of jouissance on a society brave enough to engage it as part of the world. But this God is embedded in a societal structure in that it outlines this structure, gives rise to the physical limits of this structure by a monthly or yearly festival in which, structurally, all components of the active social body participate in transcending this social body as such in a form of rapture, excess, pleasure beyond identity.

“Our” way of dealing with the predominant role jouissance has come to playing our society, is empowered by the invitation of such a God, and to the obedience t a certain structure within which the attributes of this God is acceptable. The music industry of the 60’s was such a Gd, such a structure, such an entity into which the results of the jouissance could be inscribed, and made visible to those who had not yet tasted it, and rememberable by those who had. But where it serves perfectly in the first case, in the second case it is deficient.
The memory of something that has truly fleeted is painful and cause to many a suicide. What we lack is a true reverence for this phenomenon - a valuation of it that compels us to erect societal structures to its apex, gives us the lasting promise of re-attaining it.

Our aim, regardless of where we are in life, is to integrate all that we experience as power/pleasure into the continuing form of our organism. But the only way to do this in the case of the ‘pleasure of the Gods’ which is what we might call jouissance due to its trans-necessary nature, is to sacrifice, to a greater body of pleasure, in the knowledge it will be there when we engage it again - a collective field of ravenous joy that man, as a member of a society that serves itself through the lens of this godly garden is entitled to grow into as he accumulates experience of it and contributions to it.

Zizek has in my mind not given an accurate portrayal of sacrifice and sanctification.

You seem to have a pretty good sense of Jouissance, FC, to the extent that French thinkers like Lacan are pretty vague and obscure in their expositions (they never give it to you straight) and seem to encourage individual interpretations. Lacan, having started off publishing in a French surreal journal, and his term Jouissance, seems to open his thought up to the same dynamic as dreams and abstract art: most of the meaning to be derived from it comes from the discourse around it. And you’ve written more than I can go through in this particular window. So I’ll have to bounce around randomly and respond to what I can.

“Jouissance is almost the shadow side of the will to power.

Can we define, again, what Jouissance means?

It is the pleasure that isn’t really pleasure, that merges with pain - it indicates the threshold between pleasure and un-pleasure –
it is the will to power that does not actually lead to power, one might say -

It is the prospect of pleasure, that is pleasurable in the mind, but not in the body -it can split the subject in a physical and a psychical entity.”

Zizek certainly seems to connect Jouissance and the will to power. And given the essential role that both seem to play in pretty much all of behavior, one would have to assume that there is a connection. Now, it’s just a matter of articulating that connection.

To give you a sense of how I interpret it, I will describe my introduction in and trajectory from Lacan for Beginners. We start with sex. As Lacan describes it, sex is an activity in which we experience pleasure at a conscious level while experiencing discomfort at a subconscious one. The example he gives is that if you cut it off right before orgasm, what you would experience is discomfort. But I consider this a nominal doorway into the true subtlety of it. If you actually think about the act of sex, it is a process of working your way to a threshold that will take you to a place you’re really enjoying at the time. It’s as if you’re being pulled in 2 directions at once. And what results is a kind of push/pull tension that has been interpreted by Zizek as “the unbearable”.

Lacan then goes on to reverse this to point that for the hysteric. What is experienced on a conscious level is discomfort while at a subconscious level they are actually experiencing pleasure. And this makes perfect sense. Why else would hysteric repeat uncomfortable behaviors if they didn’t, at some subconscious level, experience pleasure. To give an example that will make a lot people uncomfortable:

A young man falls in with a woman that he is attracted to because she has that look of sex: buxom, big breasts, slightly rugged features, and an approachable personality. However, she likes to go out a lot without him, and he finds himself during these outings in a state of extreme duress as he imagines her with someone else. Now all he has to do is stop imagining such things and focus on something more productive or even leave her. But he can’t. And the reason for this is that what he was attracted to in the first place was what was, to his mind, a slut. Therefore, the reason he allows the pattern to go on is while he is experiencing extreme displeasure on a conscious level, what he is experiencing at a subconscious one is the pleasure of watching her as if she were in a porn flick.

And it is this complex interaction (or compellation) of pleasure and pain that constitutes Jouissance. And writing about it now, I realize that I have been confusing the terms “pleasure” and “Jouissance” in that pleasure is only a component of Jouissance and that, contrary to the hedonistic assertion, it is Jouissance, rather than pleasure, that actually draws us. And this dynamic underlies a lot of things we do. This, for instance. Think about the immeasurable discomforts we are willing to go through (like reading obscure French philosophy) to get to those moments of self transcendence that only seem so in hindsight and that we never get to experience in the moment: the (non) satisfaction of that which promises satisfaction and fulfills by never truly satisfying. It’s not like just jacking into the pleasure center of the brain and turning up the amplitude. And even that act would seem to have an underlying discomfort to it.

“The God Dionysus equals the workings of jouissance on a society brave enough to engage it as part of the world. But this God is embedded in a societal structure in that it outlines this structure, gives rise to the physical limits of this structure by a monthly or yearly festival in which, structurally, all components of the active social body participate in transcending this social body as such in a form of rapture, excess, pleasure beyond identity.”

Excellent, Zizek-like, mythological take on it. In Plague of Fantasies, he actually goes a lot into the little transgressions that a social/political structure will allow in order to sustain its power or hold over its subjects.

But the mythological figure I would offer up as defining of Jouissance is Orpheus as he ascends out of Hades with Eurydice. One can only imagine the “unbearable” longing (Jouissance) he must have felt when he could no longer take it and turned to her only to find her not there. It is in Orpheus that we see the aesthetic aspect of Jouissance, that work of art that makes you want to fold into yourself for longing: the (non) satisfaction of that which promises satisfaction and fulfills by never truly satisfying.

I want to explore the idea that conscious pleasure is coupled with subconscious discomfort. That rings true in many ways. We might see jouissance - being that which draws us almost in spite of our self, in spite of our individual “soundness” - as a kind of meat-grinder, where the meat is our conscious will and idea of identity, and the grinder is “the world” i.e. The Real, that part of the world which transcends our individual, conscious self-identity but to which our organism can not help responding.

We do, as entities, seek out things that bring pleasure on the surface but that cause us suffering below the surface. Almost any extension of the media machine fulfills this function. There is beautiful things on the surface, and ugly questions, matters and doubts below. We consciously identify with the cool and beautiful and sexy things on screen, but subconsciously, we are drawn in by the horrible tensions and conflicts and self-debasing things that underly the very process of exposing those beauties.

For example, I am watching Mad Men, I’ve been at it for years, it’s a fucking struggle, as it’s horrible. It’s extremely well made and beautiful, but the characters go through this meat grinder on an hourly basis, there is absolutely no room for psychological comfort, there is only misunderstanding, hypocrisy, arrogance, humiliation, lies, dominance and submission, disappointment - The Real. Anything that tears at the structural integrity of the subject, will do as a storyline.

Zizeks interest in movies is of course not a side-matter, it goes into the very depths of his subject matter. And I believe his approach (he has made Lacan accessible to me, as to so many others) allows for a more accurate description of what makes movies work, than the standard Hollywood 101 playbook of three acts separated by inciting incident and conflict resolution. What really makes us watch movies is the pain, stretched out across a narrative that conveys a lot of aesthetic values - either that, or the reverse.

The hysteria example touches on the reverse. In some movies, the misery that the characters go through is so blatant and obvious, the discomfort is entirely conscious, and this does indeed allow the viewer a subconscious comfort. I know that when I watch visceral scenes from Breaking Bad, for example, or Deadwood - that my subconscious being is relieved. I can feel it, in retrospect. I can feel the tensions in my body releasing as I wince. A good Tarantino movie will do the same, and I remember watching Se7en about seven times in the cinema, engorged in the suffering, not in the least as endured by the rest of the audience.

What does this tell me? It suggests that the real core of my being is not pleasure-seeking, but rather finding confirmation in conflict, in dissonance, in affirming the limits of this being, which of course must hurt, must have sharp edges, must make me bleed. I suppose one can take two approaches to life, then. Perhaps this sounds very 19th century chauvinist - the masculine approach might be to seek out discomfort and conflict, relying on the subconscious pleasure that this releases, somehow, and the feminine approach is to seek out pleasure, enduring the subconscious suffering that is called “discipline, manners, dear”.

The classical wisdom that too be beautiful one must suffer is unwanted in this world, but it’s true. And the reverse also, that to truly enjoy oneself, one has to ‘be willing to be terrible’, as Nietzsche says, or in less dramatic terms, one has to allow pain and ugliness above the surface. Maybe that notion may serve as a link to the story of the Christ, and the Fragile Absolute, which was the first Zizek book I read. I have not read the Plague of Fantasies, I think I’ll go out into the rain and look for it. It’s been a while since I read Zizek, I notice I missed his ‘savage’, cut-to-the-heart type approach.

Very cold rain. But the bookstore I went for had it in store. I read the preface, dealing with the obscene shadow of the father, the three modes of objet petit a and other very evocative ideas. It got me most interested in the idea of the human subjectivity as constructed with the knowledge of his own mortality. Zizek compares man to animal, in whom death is fully external, whereas in man it is part of who he is to himself. But, he writes, once the death is made actual, it leads to catastrophe. I want to understand better what he means. He suggests that once the idea of death, which is essential to the human subjectivity, becomes actualized, the subjectivity is destroyed. Not in the simple way of ‘when you die you cease to be subject’ but rather, it seems, when death is experienced up close, something goes awry in the structure of the subject. At least that’s what I got out of it, but I don’t fully understand. What does he mean here, in relation to the subjects own point of impossibility, which defines him - ?

[size=95]“This point is the objet a, that which is subtracted from reality (as it’s impossible) and thus gives it consistency - if it gets included in reality, it causes a catastrophe.” [preface, xvi][/size]
In this context, the object a is the fact of death. I had not thought of it in this way, death as the surplus enjoyment that frames mans reality. I may have misunderstood, but the context the preface provides is minimal.

Reason I ask is I have had a psychotic attack (which I countered but which shook me) after the suicide of my friend in the garden next to my bed. I think that this destroyed my capacity for an objet petit a - it certainly ruined the ‘petit’ part - the objet a had become so omnipresent in my own self-experience that the self did no longer weigh up to the death/resolution apex. Well, I pressed the scales back to normal position by an act of extreme panic/will, but the gap that defines every subjectivity was significantly widened, and I had to gather myself around its edges, and become, after 13 years of reckless adventures and extremely intense meditations, a philosopher. I had to absolutely know that I exist, be perfectly certain of what it is that exists and that I call I, the world, and all things in between.

But as much as I give Nietzsche the credit for bringing about the conditions of my philosophy I was actually in a Lacan/Zizek mode of thought at the point where it dawned on me. I think that is because their minds disclose the structure of the Real - i.e. the field of non-value, to the background of which everything is known.

Once again (and not to be condescending since you may be more in tune with the subject than me), FC, you seem to have a good grasp of the subject and make a lot of impressive points. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with the distraction of the latest issue of Philosophy Now and it leaves me less time than I would like to respond. Thankfully, magazines are quickly gotten through and, hopefully, by the beginning of next week, I’ll be able to get back to my focus on the subject at hand.

You mention The Fragile Absolute, which is the next book I plan on going through. And I’m towards the end of the Plague of Fantasies. I look forward, given your familiarity with the work, to our discourses on it. That said, I’ll respond to what I can in my limited window here.

“For example, I am watching Mad Men, I’ve been at it for years, it’s a fucking struggle, as it’s horrible. It’s extremely well made and beautiful, but the characters go through this meat grinder on an hourly basis, there is absolutely no room for psychological comfort, there is only misunderstanding, hypocrisy, arrogance, humiliation, lies, dominance and submission, disappointment - The Real. Anything that tears at the structural integrity of the subject, will do as a storyline.

Zizeks interest in movies is of course not a side-matter, it goes into the very depths of his subject matter. And I believe his approach (he has made Lacan accessible to me, as to so many others) allows for a more accurate description of what makes movies work, than the standard Hollywood 101 playbook of three acts separated by inciting incident and conflict resolution. What really makes us watch movies is the pain, stretched out across a narrative that conveys a lot of aesthetic values - either that, or the reverse.”

This point is profound in that it has brought to my attention the negative Jouissance involved in horror movies –especially of the slasher type. I mean you have to ask what it is that would draw people to something that causes so much discomfort. And in a sense, what you are describing with Mad Men is a more subtle form of horror. As you rightly point out, there is definite discomfort in watching human behavior at its most pathetic. The example that comes to my mind is Steve Carrell’s role the series The Office. There are times when you find yourself cringing for the guy such as when one of his workers encountered a flasher in the parking lot and he joked about it by sticking his finger through his fly; or when he was to do a lecture at a business college and, in an attempt to be some kind of radical guru, took a student’s expensive textbook and started ripping pages out of it. It was like watching a car wreck. You cringed in horror while being unable to stop watching.

And I fully agree that Zizek’s interest in movies is not just a side matter. What else could be a better expression of the push/pull tension of Jouissance than what draws us in, seemingly, for no practical function?

That said, I would present another example of Jouissance in movies that has to do with your rightly mentioned dissonance. I think one of the best endings in movie history was that of The Black Stallion. (And I write from the assumption that you have seen it.) But it was mainly a matter of buildup and pacing. First it starts with the awkward pace (in sound) of the horse’s hooves hitting the ground in a race. Then a subtle hum of a synthesizer which is how it builds up until the Black Stallion, and the boy riding him, wins. The thing is there is a kind of discomfort about the whole buildup that gets lost when Ballard compromises it by showing scenes of the boy riding the horse on the beach. And while it, on one level, may seem like a fudge, when you think it through, you recognize that there was nothing else Ballard could do to take you past the threshold and appease the unbearable of Jouissance: the (non)satisfaction of promised satisfaction fulfilled by never being truly satisfied.

Dissonance, it seems to me, is a term that is almost interchangeable with Jouissance. Take, for instance, the work of Stravinsky or Schoenberg. And it can even be felt in the piano sonatas of Brahms: the feeling of longing: the push/pull tension between presence and absence.

Jouissance?

Now you mention the objet petit a, FC. And if I understand the concept right, that is as partial object, it may apply, in a way that fuses with Jouissance, in the movie Cloverfield. If you look at how the invading beast is portrayed throughout most of the movie, you might note that it is presented in a series of partial views or (once again: if I understand the concept right) objet petit a(s). And it seems as if the novelty and effectiveness of it lies in the phantasmic support of the imagination in that by having to fill in the rest, we get the effect of a monster unlike any we’ve experienced in movie history: a subtle amorphous form that seems to reach into the subconscious and is reminiscent of the forms seen in Dali paintings, but with the same depth, intensity, and lightness of touch seen in Francis Bacon’s work.

The thing to note here is how that effect is lost at the end when we are shown the creature face to face. And because of that, it feels like a fudge: that which detracts from the total effect of a work of art. And it becomes evident why this happened if you listen to the director’s commentary to the movie in which he points out that he felt certain external (mainstream) pressures to add the scene. And, in hindsight, I now realize that he might have done better to show the perspective of the camera panning up to capture the objet petit a of the creatures teeth rushing towards it. But that is just a stumble in an otherwise excellent performance.

The main thing to note, though, is that we find here the same dynamic at work as that of Ballard when he broke to flashbacks of the boy riding the horse on that beach: the need to cross a threshold that ultimately proves unsatisfying: Jouissance: the unbearable: that which satisfies by never truly satisfying.
*
“ I had to absolutely know that I exist, be perfectly certain of what it is that exists and that I call I, the world, and all things in between.

But as much as I give Nietzsche the credit for bringing about the conditions of my philosophy I was actually in a Lacan/Zizek mode of thought at the point where it dawned on me. I think that is because their minds disclose the structure of the Real - i.e. the field of non-value, to the background of which everything is known.”

First of all: sorry about the experience that led to this revelation. I can only guess that what was gained was little compensation for what was lost.

That said, the desire to know that one exists or that reality exists may be an expression of the push/pull tension between presence and absence: a form of Jouissance. In fact, there may be a kind of longing intertwined in your situation reminiscent of that of Orpheus when he lost Eurydice. What concerns me is this part:

“I think that is because their minds disclose the structure of the Real - i.e. the field of non-value, to the background of which everything is known.”

What we have to consider here is the relationship between Lacan’s triad of the Imaginary, the Symbolic (or the symbolic order), and the Real. The Imaginary (a world of pure images) is what we start with before we have a language to put it into words. The Symbolic Order is that which we enter as we become more adapt with the various semiotic systems we are faced with. And the Real is that which has yet to be absorbed into the Symbolic Order: the subtleties and complexities that elude being put into words. And living in a world in which the only thing that seems fixed is the symbolic order, where we have to fumble our way through it, we run the risk of falling into one of 2 pitfalls that lie on both sides of the symbolic: the psychotic (on the imaginary side) in which we create our own semiotic bubble with its own system of rules; or the sociopathic in which we deal with the Real by acting as if it is perfectly absorbed into the symbolic order thereby giving us the illusion of power over the symbolic order: the authoritarian reaction to the elusiveness of the Real.

Mad Men: A subtle form of horror - a fitting term. I haven’t seen the Back Stallion, but I will watch it and get back to you on what you’ve written. It’s good to be able to discuss such concepts at the hand of film. It needs a complex vessel to be explicated, I believe that. Peeling off the layers of perception and interpretation.

I am currently watching True Detective. This is the precise opposite I talked about - a surface story of discomfort and a background of release, freedom, participation of the viewers instincts with the reality implied by the story and its physical form - which is intensely cinematic.

Yes, the loss has been the central story of my life, the fire in the middle of the dance. Zizek writes about that which becomes only an object after it has disappeared. The object stands at the crux of the paradigm shift caused by its disappearing. The conception of loss and gain made possible by the loss that is conceived of.

I a sure that what was lost was the center symbolism that ruled my imaginary order, and what was introduced was another symbolism - one much closer to conventional history, religion, shamanism, satanism, insanity, totem-fetish all under the obscene shadow of our society which had forced my friend to die - objet petit a of adolescence turned into a totem of the Hero as death-nor-life.

Hmm. I notice I need to contemplate this in the morning with coffee. I noticed that before about Zizek. Nietzsche is more of a nightly companion.

Yeah, the nice thing about Zizek’s use of film in describing his points is that it gives us something concrete to relate to as compared to say Deleuze who tends to describe things in pure abstraction and obscure French films that give us little to relate to. In this sense, Zizek always offers us a stepping stone into the more subtle concepts he is presenting us with –especially concerning those of Lacan. I tend to twist Russell’s point into philosophy which lies in that no man’s land between Science and Art. And Zizek works mainly on the art side of that spectrum. Hence: his designation as a continental philosopher. And as much as I respect Deleuze, as someone who considers himself more of writer who happens to love philosophy (in terms of philosophy, I’m more of a tourist more interested in presenting perspectives than the truth), I consider Zizek a closer model to what it is I want my process to do.

That said, having described Jouissance as the (non) satisfaction of promised satisfaction fulfilled through what never truly satisfies, I have to wonder if it might not have something to do with subjective time as described by Deleuze in Difference and Repetition. To put it in nominal terms, given the description of Jouissance, what we are always dealing with is the anti-climax that ultimately constitutes our experience of pleasure. Take, for instance, your computer screen as you are reading this. It seems to be a stable object. Still, no matter what point you are looking at it in, you are always looking at it at a different point in subjective time. It’s always moving even while standing still. It goes along the lines of the question:

At what point in this sentence are you right now?

As Deleuze pointed out, you are always dealing with a past present that was never truly present. Take, for instance, a vacation from work. If you think about it, most of the pleasure we arrive from it comes from the anticipation of it (we never feel so good about it as those last minutes of work before we start it) and in what we remember when it is over which is the method by which we constitute the value of it. However, throughout it all, we’re rarely, if ever, truly are in the moment. It always seems to be a matter of what is coming (the future) and what is passing (the future past). And isn’t it this phenomenon that Zen Buddhism seeks to overcome in order to achieve true content? And whether that is ever truly achieved I’ll leave to the Buddhists.

To me, though, this experience of subjective time constitutes the push/pull tension facilitated by presence and absence. We should also consider a point made by Raymond Tallis concerning ontological time: that time never really flows or moves: only objects in space do. It seems to me that this would only add to the push/pull tension (the Jouissance) in the Kantian aspect of the interaction between the noumenal and the phenomenal. In other words, there is every reason to believe there is a noemic foundation to the noetic experiences by which we know the world. Still, we are always dealing with the frustration of being stuck with the phenomenal and never being able to directly connect with the noumenal: the (non)satisfaction of promised satisfaction fulfilled by that which can never truly satisfy.

Just finished Plague of Fantasies and am now moving on to The Fragile Absolute. And throughout it all, I got so caught up in the ubiquitous applications of Jouissance, I have managed to neglect 2 of the most important points made in the book for my purposes:

One is Zizek’s concerning how the slave/master relationship can be sustained through the tolerance of small transgressions which comes in the form of the slave stealing Jouissance from and through the master. In this sense, the slave is given just enough of a taste of freedom to settle for the transgressions rather than the actual freedom of escape. We have seen this dynamic at work in the way that marijuana laws have been loosely enforced –except, of course, when it came to the minorities (those unfortunate others) who happened to supply it. Even back in the 70’s, pot was treated as a highly discouraged drug. Still, it was not uncommon for cops to just let it go (that is while taking your weed) and all was right with the world and system. It was as if we were allowed to do it according to unofficial law while being condemned officially.

But getting back to the slave/master dialectic, I now realize how much a part the dynamic played in what Malcolm X referred to as the house slave and how it has bled into contemporary culture. The house slave was one whose family was kept in the house and given privileges. This way, when one of the other slaves got uppity and talked about rebellion or escape, the house slave would be right there insisting that the consequences of doing so would be far worse than just accepting their present condition. But what we need to consider here is the role the house slave must have played in the phantasmic support of the social arrangement of the slave in offering possibility rather than real advantage. Imagine the slave thinking that if they work hard and conform enough, they too might one day be a house slave.

And isn’t it that very kind of possibility that Capitalism sells (that is as compared to real advantage) through reality TV: Who Wants to be a Millionaire, American Idol, Pimp My Ride, Extreme Home Makeovers, etc., etc.? In fact, does not so-called Reality TV (as well as U-tube) sell possibility in the inherent suggestion that anyone can be a star? Of course, outside of what marketers think they can sell, the catch is that you have to stay within the values of producer/consumer Capitalism. The only other alternative is an appearance on COPS or Jerry Springer which are basically whipping posts for minorities and white trash: those who do not stay within the confine of ideal producer/consumers. I mean what is Duck Dynasty but testament to the conservative values that have overtaken media –that is even though the right still insists on some kind of left wing Hollywood conspiracy.

Of course the well to do left need not despair. They can drink Starbucks lattes and watch Maher’s Real Time and Stewart’s The Daily Show. And while I do not question the integrity of Maher’s or Stewart’s leftist sentiments, I have to wonder if it isn’t just another example of a tolerable instance of the slave stealing Jouissance for the sake of the power relationship (between us and corporate power) as a whole. I mean the right to dissent can only be the appearance of freedom until it actually changes something that might not be in the interest of the status quo.

That said, will get to the second point on the next post.

Finally, one of the most important influences of The Plague of Fantasies is its observations concerning the role of Jouissance (the push/pull tension) and the phantasmal supplement involved in human cruelty. Most notable was Zizek’s observation of the cruel ritual involved in the morning exercise routines imposed on Jews in concentration camps which gave their Nazi overseer’s the extra kick of believing they were doing so for the health of their victims.

Steven Spielberg was clearly on to this in the movie Schindler’s List. In one scene, the commander of the camp, played by Ralph Fiennes, attempts to present himself as a civilized human being when, inspecting the latest female prisoners, kindly tells one to step back as he had a cold. And this struggle with rationalization can be seen as well in his choice of one of the Jewish prisoners as a mate and the loyalty he shows Schindler when working to get him released from jail.

The same dynamic can be seen as well in movies about sociopaths such as the contemporary version of Last House on the Left when the leader of the antagonists chastises one of the female victims for her resistance then proceeds to stab her to death. Given his power to do whatever he wanted with the victim, and the likelihood that he was going to kill her regardless, the chastisement seems almost superfluous. Yet, it may well have seemed necessary to him in order to justify or motivate the actual act of stabbing her. And we see as much in other movie sociopaths and serial killers: the need to establish themselves as more than monsters.

And the same can be seen in real world serial killers. Take, for instance, Son of Sam’s claim, in a letter he wrote to the New York Times, that contrary to popular consensus, he actually loved humanity, or the voluntary and self justifying role Ted Bundy played in the capture of the Green River Killer.

But to bring it into to more immediate day to day territory and, given its application to acceptable human behavior, creepier, can’t we see a similar MO at work in the hysteria of the more extreme factions of the Tea Party and Neo Cons? We of more moderate and leftist temperaments have traditionally seen such behavior as the result of some kind of solipsistic indifference to the plight of those destroyed by Capitalism: for instance, those who die because of lack of access to healthcare. But couldn’t it be that maybe they do, at some level, feel guilt taking advantage at the expense of others, but find it so unbearable that they have to turn to hysterical measures such as half-assed reasoning rooted in cognitive dissonance? Could it be that their behavior and reasoning is the product of the push/pull tension between guilt and self interest? Jouissance?

I mean like the sociopath in Last House on the Left, they could just argue that they do what they do because it is in their interest to do so and they have the power to do it. But they feel the need to rationalize it and pass it off as true reason: that which most people don’t understand.

Ignorance, as I am coming to realize, is defined by the bad faith of seeking to feel like one has solid ground beneath their feet. I mean choose your medicine: doxa (popular opinion), religion, atheism, the scientific method, art, sobriety, addiction, Capitalism, Marxism, etc.,etc… We see as much Zizek’s distinction between the fool and the knave. The fool is the court jester that seeks to undermine power’s authority. This was typified by the joke concerning the Tartar who met a Russian couple on the road and told the husband that not only was he going to rape his wife, but he was going to force him to hold the Tartar’s balls while he violated the peasant’s wife so that they didn’t get dirty on the dirt road. After the deed was done, and the Tartar was riding away, the husband laughed. When the wife asked how he could laugh, he responded, triumphantly, that he had got the Tartar since he did let his balls drag in the dirt –the strategy of the fool. And we see as much through media and the leftist expressions of it. In this sense, Maher’s Real Time and Stewarts The Daily Show is a little like the little piece of Jouissance the peasant husband had stolen from the Tartar.

And we see as much in those who would adapt the radical purely for sake of the radical. They think they are standing on solid ground by pointing to the illusion of solid ground involved in mainstream beliefs. But isn’t the solid ground of their contrarian position just as delusional?

The other side of the equation is the knave who seeks their solid ground in the status quo. Zizek illustrates this though another joke. A man goes into a bar and finds that every time he orders a drink, a monkey skitters down the bar and washes his balls in the man’s drink. Eventually, the man, out of frustration, asks the gypsy who is going about the bar playing his violin and taking requests why the monkey is doing it to which the gypsy, the knave, answered in the affirmative, started strumming his violin, and sang “why is the monkey washing his balls in my drink?” Is this not the same mocking of any complaints against Capitalism that we see in Fox News and Rush Limbaugh? It is as if we should simply accept our fates and any refusal to do so is merely a sign of weakness that warrant chastisement by the players in the given power structure.

It is this dynamic that has allowed pro-Capitalist drones to affirm their (a) rationality through a kind of rock star diva nonchalance. Take, for instance, Mary Matalin’s response to Maher’s points, on real time, about global warming being a man made phenomenon with a casual point:

“I hope you don’t expect me to ride a bike to work.”

Ultimately, it is about confirming precarious notions through the grounding of popularity. And don’t we see the same dynamic at work in what we do on these boards? Don’t we seek to reinforce our beliefs (the solid ground) through how many others we get to respond (how long our strings become) or, on Face book, how many likes we happen to get?