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.
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“ 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?
It’s basically impossible to mock Capitalist values through media.
It is. Mockery of the system is that crime against the system on which it relies, the minor transgression of the law which is itself part of the laws enforcement. If we see a comedian mocking capitalism and the state of our western affairs, what happens is that our dis-ease is put to rest, we can rest assured that someone is worrying about it, it’s all being perceived, the crimes, and so we assume that there is a certain conscience at work. I am currently watching the second season of House of Cards. It’s incredibly entertaining and compelling, and it looks a hell of a lot like criticism sometimes, but what it does is integrate all the types of criticism that have been spinning around the past years and make them manageable in terms of a set of characters whom we can empathize with.
The jouissance that the audience is granted is the identification with the lead crook, and co-conspiratorship with him. Spacey (Frank Underwood, short “FU”) often talks directly into the camera, walking out of the action for a moment and addressing the audience directly as if they are partners in crime. Is this not a radical example of the jouissance the slave is granted so as to keep him in his position as slave? Is this not the perfect manifestation of the Tartar ball-joke? I marvel at the sophistication of it all.
Now how, in theory, would we move from the enjoyment of such marginal jouissance to a different kind of existence? Is there a way out of this – addiction? Or should we perhaps simply focus, for the sake of philosophy, on the facts of our situation?
When we look at the western world through this lens, it is easy to interpret the whole Hollywood industry as providing the jouissance that keeps the public in its place, that keeps it feeling satisfied and privileged, gives it its inch of power, of feeling of power, that allows it a calm self-identity, an identity that does not require thoughts of revolution. It perfectly explains the dominant role of crime in cinema and all entertainment. The modern world slave is satisfied with a form of jouissance even less tangible than the man who let the Tartars balls drag through the mud. There are no physical testicles to hold. The modern slaves jouissance that makes him an accomplice to the universal crime of subjective agency is perfectly insubstantial, it does not come at a price for the master.
Hopefully, I’m not wandering too far off the subject of Zizek here; but in the process of reading Tony Myer’s Routledge guide to Zizek, I think I may have found an overlap (or hybrid: the thing I’m always looking for in my studies) between my proposal for the possibility of a participating self in the non-linear feedback loop (based on chaotics), poststructuralism, Deleuze, my metaphysical proposal that all perceiving things are the eyes and ears of God in that they give intentionality to the nothingness they could be, the self as primarily a particular point in space and time, Douglas Hofstadter’s symbolic webs, and Dennett’s multiple drafts model of mind.
We start with Myer’s point concerning the post-structuralist view on the subject that Zizek half rejected:
“Building upon these theories, the post-structuralists rejected the notion of the cogito with its associated individualism and advanced in its stead the idea of the decentred subject. As I have already suggested, this subject is not an autonomous being with the power of self-determination but rather an effect of the structure of discourse where competing discourses intersect and speak through the subject.” -Myers, Tony (2007-03-16). Slavoj Zizek (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 34). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Now, on one hand, Zizek sort of accepts this view in the same way Deleuze (an influence on Zizek) as a kind of model for how the mind (as a machine) interacts as an individual system with the vast system of systems interacting with other systems (machines exchanging flows of energy with other machines). At the same time, he refuses to give up the notion of a participating self and gets around it by starting with Schelling’s mythology of God starting as a nothingness that, because of some inherent mechanism in nothingness, must become something. As Sartre pointed out in Being and Nothingness: a pure nothingness would nihilate itself. This, in turn, suggests that our existence (and that of all perceiving things) primarily serves the function of giving intentionality (directedness) to nothingness. This is why Zizek defines the subject as that which exists after you take away all its conscious content (thoughts, impulses, whatever might run through a mind). In other words, the subject is this nothingness (a particular point in space and time( projecting into something and, thereby, constitutes the manner by which we, as selves, participate in the machinery and input that post-structuralism describes: that which must interact with the machinery of the brain as Dennett describes it in his multiple drafts model: that in which data is passed around through the various physiological modules until a conclusion is reached about what is being perceived.
But getting back to the underlying nothingness:
“For Zizek, Descartes’s cogito is not the substantial ‘I’ of the individual, but an empty point of negativity. This empty point of negativity is not ‘nothing’ but the opposite of everything, or the negation of all” -Myers, Tony (2007-03-16). Slavoj Zizek (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 37). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Myers then goes on to say:
“It is this void that, for Zizek, enables the transition from a state of nature to a state of culture. This is because if there was no gap between a thing (or an object) and the representation of that thing (or word), then they would be identical and there would be no room for subjectivity.”
And can’t we tie this all up by bringing in chaotics and make the argument for a participating self, that is in opposition to the eliminative materialist view, by recognizing in it a non-linear feedback loop between the self as constituted by its terminal function for the various flows of language from the symbolic order, as described by Post-Structuralism, and the nothingness projecting into something through the symbolic webs described by Douglas Hofstadter in We are a Strange Loop?
Sorry, FC. Came into this with a single-minded purpose. Will get to your point tomorrow. Look forward to it.
Good post, though. I would prefer to honor it by being on my better game.
I tend to see the subject similarly, as a translating machine, with an ungraspable, irreducible differentiation from nothingness. I call this ‘self-valuing’, and I would say that the self-valuing interprets all discourse around itself in terms it can integrate into its being different from nothingness, its positive existence. Which, as the psychoanalysts clarify, is hardly an unambiguous or straightforward entity or substance, but something relying on constant reflexion, denial and self-obscuring. The ‘invisible remainder’, when all illusions of selfhood are stripped away, is the capacity to translate, thus to serve as a standard at all. There is no root-self except the given of a ‘point in space and time’, which is already too substantial - even space-time shapes itself around such translating points.
This coincides with my own thoughts on the subject of why something exists at all; nothingness does not have the capacity to enforce itself. It has no capacity, therefore it does not exist.
All that exists has capacity. The capacity that survives as itself is the capacity to translate-into-self. I’ve called this valuing in terms of self-value, which implicitly means self-valuing.
Basically existence is a hermeneutical process whereby that which manages to draw the strongest coherence out of whatever is at hand, comes out on top. That which manages to translates reality into a function of itself, becomes a standard, an object, a reality - something to count with, something unavoidable.
Human life in general is very much in flux, there aren’t a lot of people who attain such being-standard. It requires, first of all, a capacity to translate contradicting narratives, moralities, ‘texts’, into a singular point of reference. Moulding, falsifying, ‘creating’. Falsifying ‘objective reality’, which is always an amalgamate of contradictions into a coherent narrative, this is what makes the human master-signifier.
Also, no need to apologize for only doing what you actually want to do in your own thread. I’m glad you appreciate my observations, of course, but I am glad you don’t feel tied to honoring them with immediate responses at the cost of what you really have to say at a given moment.
So many discourses get watered down by the mutual obligation to address each others points directly and immediately at the cost of spontaneous will and inspiration.
Glad to hear you say that because I did it again. Still you have made some inspirational points throughout. Just know that I am enjoying jamming with you.
Anyway:
“Now how, in theory, would we move from the enjoyment of such marginal jouissance to a different kind of existence? Is there a way out of this – addiction? Or should we perhaps simply focus, for the sake of philosophy, on the facts of our situation? “
We could take this at an everyday level and recognize the same thing every 12 step program does: the first step beyond denial is admitting there is a problem. However, as 12 step programs are generally as much engaged in denial as those they are trying to help in serving the status quo (the master signifiers of the dominate symbolic system –I mean what else are they trying to help these people do but become “normal”, to focus on the values of the powers that be?), it would seem imperative to move beyond that.
At the level of Zizek, it seems to be a matter of scrutinizing the phantasmic supplement that fills in the gaps between the Symbolic and the Real. At the same time, it’s as if we can never truly get out of ideology in order to truly see it objectively. And we can see this in the way Capitalism seems to absorb and assimilate all forms of rebellion against it. A while ago, there was a series of advertisements that started with a corporate CEO thanking America for giving up their free time to take care of the needs of their employer. The next one consisted of a Mortician thanking America for bumping up his business by dying younger due to on the job stress. Now this almost seems like a criticism of corporate Capitalism. But what was eventually revealed was that it was an advertising campaign for a travel agency.
But what is more chilling about Zizek’s point is that we recognize that. We’re not idiots. We, for instance, are perfectly capable of recognizing that money has no more meaning outside of that we give it. Yet, we treat a philosopher like John Searle as profound (a professional philosopher) for pointing this out to us in The Construction of Social Reality. And while it is a good read, you have to wonder why we would need a philosopher to point this out to us. Doesn’t this seem to be the most diabolical aspect of it? Capitalism, via Searle, tells us what we probably already know, then expects us to praise it for making the confession: it’s notion of freedom. I mean we could easily imagine Capitalism arguing that Searle would not have had the opportunity to write and publish the book were it not for it. Yet, we go along with it because we see it in terms of the fantasies we have about what we’re doing with it.
Once again: it is almost impossible to argue against Capitalism through media. This is because, as Zizek points out in his dismissal of postructuralism and postmodern’s argument for a post-ideological era, we are always making our point from within ideology –the product of the Symbolic Order. All we can do is turn to the phantasmic supplement that fills in the gaps between the Symbolic and the Real and that defines our notions of what it is we’re doing. In other words, even leftist critics, such as me, are fucked.
Still, our only hope is to continue with this endless process of scrutiny (internal and external). We have to, as Deleuze and Guattarri implore us: seek out and undermine all pockets of fascism that emerge everywhere –including, and most importantly, within ourselves. We have to find within ourselves the strength it would take any character in the chorus of Tennyson’s “Land of the Lotos Eaters” to get out of the land of the lotos eaters.
If I get him right, Zizek, above all, advises us against complacency.
“When we look at the western world through this lens, it is easy to interpret the whole Hollywood industry as providing the jouissance that keeps the public in its place, that keeps it feeling satisfied and privileged, gives it its inch of power, of feeling of power, that allows it a calm self-identity, an identity that does not require thoughts of revolution. It perfectly explains the dominant role of crime in cinema and all entertainment. The modern world slave is satisfied with a form of jouissance even less tangible than the man who let the Tartars balls drag through the mud. There are no physical testicles to hold. The modern slaves jouissance that makes him an accomplice to the universal crime of subjective agency is perfectly insubstantial, it does not come at a price for the master.”
As much as I hate to admit it, we could say as much about alcohol and drugs (even the ones prescribed by doctors) in that they are that little bit of Jouissance that “The Master” allows us in order to keep us complacent.
But you clearly see the hegemonic role that Hollywood and media in general, despite its leftist sentiments, plays in our complacency. Note, for instance, the way that most sitcoms (such as Seinfeld) present a world in which no one has to concern themselves with how much a product costs as if they lived in a world where the only concern was what product to buy. They always seem to just go about, carefree, purchasing what they need regardless of their means. It’s as if they live under an ideal coexistence of efficiencies where things are coordinated in such a way that everyone has the resources necessary to meet whatever it might be that they need, demand, or desire: the minimization of the differential between what is put into a thing and that gotten out that most people in the world don’t get to experience.
But a real telling point on this came from an episode of At the Movies in which Siskal and Ebert were going through these miscellaneous lists and had one called “How Do They Afford Those Apartments?”. In it, they were noting the discrepancy between the normal cost of the apartment the characters of movie were portrayed owning or renting and the salaries those characters would have given their occupations: what they in reality would be able to afford. This, of course, results from the imperative of directors to stock their environments with pretty things in order to make their creation pretty. Note, for instance, David Lynch’s inclusion of that little cone hat with the whirly blade on top in Blue Velvet. In the real world, something like it may have been well beyond the budget of Isabelle’s character for her son; but it had to be involved as a novel prop that added to the general effect of Lynch’s film.
And you might also note, as you’re watching various movies and TV shows, the various artworks you see hanging on the walls. As someone who has dabbled in art himself, much of what I see is pretty high end –in other words: expensive: maybe too expensive for the resources implied by the given character’s job and the resources it would give them in the real world. Most of us have to settle for prints of good art. Still, as expected by those who offer us this alternative reality, it works.
And how does this not come from the corporate/Capitalist values that must, by necessity, dominate Hollywood and media in general? That is despite the general right-wing consensus concerning some left-wing conspiracy coming out of Hollywood?
The thing though, returning to Zizek’s most profound point, is that we don’t just accept this reality blindly. We know better but play along. And that is the scary part. And in the same sense, we know that the reality presented in TV ads is not our reality. At the same time, we can’t help but feel that our political representatives (those who are closest to the corporate/Capitalist mentality behind the illusion) actually do believe it. But is that necessarily true? They couldn’t be idiots and get where they have. The majority of them are college educated. And they’re clearly not bots or corporate puppets that just come into it to facilitate the illusion perpetrated by Capitalist interests. They have to in order to obtain and hold their position of power. I believe that what they come up against are systematic imperatives that force them to carry out the corporate mission, even when they come into it with the best of intentions and knowing better.
And I would argue that within this complex of imperatives created by Capitalism lies the very foundation of that predicted by authentic Christianity and Yeat’s “The Second Coming”: the Beast: the eternal return of the Roman Empire in the form of Global Capitalism.
And in the spirit of Zizek, I would quote a line from Cronenberg’s version of The Fly:
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Do mitigate the fear by my prediction : there never will be trillionaires only conceptually. However relatively midas could be considered a trillionaire in modern terms, even a Rothschild of two centuries ago, maybe the Waltons are heading that way but I doubt it nevertheless.
I would go even further: I think that Marxism is itself a capitalist “product”. It appeals to those within capitalism who have the least to enjoy and provides them with a perspective of power and entitlement. In the end Marxism has not led to a breach in capitalist hegemony, it has only integrated all types of revolt into the system. You can not these days be a Marxist and not be “hip” and “interesting”. Look at Zizek himself. This is why I can not consider myself a revolutionary or Marxist of any kind - to my mind, philosophy is the only way out of the symbolic order. That is, what I try is to disclose a symbolic order that encompasses capitalism and its drive structure. I think we can never move past capitalism, we can only transform it by translating it. I believe that Capitalism is ‘proper’ in that it does address the core of the human condition, whereas Socialism only addresses a small part of it.
The pockets of fascism in humans are fucking endless, Humans are fascists. The only reason the world is not a giant fascist machine is that everyone wants to be the bloody Führer, and fascism allows only for so many beneficiaries, it requires endless hordes of slaves. Capitalism has less restraints, people can behave like fascists without being seen as fascists. Most often, the most fascistic people do not even know they are being fascists, they go about priding themselves on their economic viability and their smooth ways with the system. This gets awfully close to the reason I’ve restricted my activities on ILP though, the last thing I want is to bring my emotions about unconscious fascism into this thread. I might just say that I sometimes openly behave like a brute or a tyrant because I sense that the environment is cluttered and clogged with the kind of fascist-goo that is the excess result of the Century of the Self - and which stifles, chokes what is reaching for proper self-hood, signifiership, in premature phases.
The idea of selfhood is easily attained, but the idea gives rise to such excess arrogance hypocrisy and blindness that the transition from ideating a self to fully taking responsibility for it, is rarely made. What exists instead of an army of autonomous selves now is a goo, a mob, a plaster of quasi individuals who act to preserve their idea of selfhood, at the cost of every opportunity of sacrifice that would lead them along the path to true selfhood. I believe selfhood, being a fully fledged human entity, requires that one does not expect reward or societal progress, because these all rely on accepting existent, ‘dead’ terms as the terms of ones self-valuing. Early success in life is bound to make one a slave, a sub-entity, at least on a political/potentiating level. It is bound to make one a function of whichever part of the machine has use for this particular subject.
We can not however accept this as a reason to steer away from societal dynamics, economy, etc - rather, a new kind of standard for success would have to be set. The biggest problem is that the whole concept of succeeding has been absorbed into a symbolic order - which is thereby made immune to failure.
I probably go a bit too far in generalizing literally everything under the capitalist signifier. But capitalism gets something absolutely right, and there is no way around that. What it gets right is the interplay between value and self-value. It ‘understands’ (uses, relies on) that the individual is constantly in the process of attributing value in order to persist. We value ‘desperately’ - to bestow value on objects, products, other people, systems, ideologies, countries, sports heroes, personal accomplishments, talents, love affairs, diets, drug experiences, is as crucial to our being as breathing. Perhaps even more crucial. We’d ultimately be glad to stop breathing to not have to stop valuing that which is most dear to us. Without values, we do not exist. We might live for a while, but when our sense of self as structurally being able to value in terms of itself has given way to some kind of ‘objectivity’, death has already made its introduction. Objectivity and death are, to me, the same thing. Capitalism is pure subjectivity, thus pure ‘murder’.
To be or not to be: to stand in the right place in the text.
Text as in “there is no outside-of-text” -
Within text, our presence causes a context.
Our presence can cause many contexts. The art of life is to learn how to create the type of context that sustains a vital and/or agreeable experience of translating.
Youth runs through the text, is not yet encapsulated by it, has not learned enough. Instinct carries one through youth to a specific type of place to stand within the great logos, the text of the world, the web of perspectives, intersecting contexts, rhizomes of identity.
Happiness is to have identified ones proper paragraph, sentence, term or even inflection. But the more texts inhabit ones mind, the more puzzling the given of a proper locus becomes. To stand in the right place in the text: the holy grail. It is not the object of our utmost desire, it is knowing what we desire most.