Zizek Studies:

“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.

Your values are your “purpose”.

First of all, James: thanks for showing up.

That said, FC, I really appreciate your participation in this. Most people, for perfectly good reasons, tend to take the tourist route of looking for what they can respond to at whatever level they happen to be at. And because of that, they tend to avoid what I’m doing here. And this is not to pump up what I’m doing as more serious than what they’re doing. My process has no more value than theirs. Still, to me, you have really showed your metal in how you have participated and your willingness to focus on the project at hand -especially with such astute points.

However, as of today, I’m switching my focus from Zizek to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, or what I like to call that goddamn book by that goddamn Frenchman! I mean it: fuck the French and their weird obscure philosophies! This will start with James William’s book on it, then go to Joe Hugh’s. I’ll follow that with Levi R. Bryant’s Difference and Giveness and finish up with Claire Colebrook’s Routledge guide to Deleuze.

I will respond to some of the points you have made for today and will continue to do so when the window is there. But I hope you will join me on this one as well. But if I don’t respond here, it will have nothing to do with the quality of your points but rather a matter of the window I have with what I do here.

That said:

The ontology is the message, though, and the million dollar question is, can it compensate without hitting rock bottom? The values are predicating to be sure, but they only become determinitive, when the limits are reached from which there rnay be increasingly less return to a point. That is the absolute sufferance and the repetitions are of pulsated speed. That’s where automata fails to prevent a crash, be it trading, or any other supposedly fail safe system.

I am worried. What do you think at this point? Can social and personal invariencehave reached certain limits or, have I been reading too much James. William that is.

At that point the problem may become absolute, which system is more real thereby which difference needs to be disqualified?

As what’s happening in Kiev, the two realities are vying for more legitimacy, more reality. It is a struggle for power, all be it, based notewon preceptions then texts inside of context.

It may be a systemic breakdown due to the cutting. In of such fail safe mechanisms. Discretion narrows to the point of the indiscernible.

.d63 we may be approaching such a critical stage. Must not let it fall to the level of no return.

“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.”

It would be hard for me to exploit the technology like I do (I am A+ certified) and not appreciate what it is that Capitalism can do. And let’s put in mind here that Marx did study Adam Smith and had a full appreciation of what Capitalism could do: build the means of production and technology. His take on it was that we had to go through a successful Capitalist phase in order to have a successful (via socialism (Communist phase. And this is the take on it that I tend to follow. In fact, it has been reasonably argued that the reason Russia and China failed like they did (a failure that even Zizek recognizes) is because they tried to go straight from an agrarian society to a Communist one. In fact, this was a matter of contention among many of theorists at the genesis of the Russian Revolution.

And it has been a point of contention between me and Zizek’s thought. I’m more of a revisionist in that I have to make a concession to Edmund Burke that society is an organic thing that works better with slow change. At the same time, I tend to disagree with Burke’s take on the French Revolution in that there comes a point at which the resistance of the status quo is such that violent revolution becomes necessary. I would prefer to take it step by step –and even still maintain a role for market forces. At the same time, I have to agree with Zizek that the manipulation of Capitalism has been so deep that the only solution is a complete transformation.

As an alcoholic, I know what is at stake in the difference between taking the Methods of Moderation route and the AA one of dealing with the problem at the root: the way your whole life has structured itself around the addiction. In this sense, Zizek has been a kind of intervention in that he has pointed out the folly of my leftist concessions to Capitalism.

Still, I would argue that we can take a softer route through Zizek in getting people to face the illusions they have been working under. I would argue (as a kind of synthesis with Zizek’s mindset) that we need to take the revisionist approach with the understanding that a Communist system may well be the endgame if that’s what it comes down to in the back and forth between Marxist reformers and Capitalists. I say we make it clear to them that they can either act like they are only part of the general social system, and not its owner, and in ways that are more sincere than philanthropy, or we can eliminate their role, step by step, from the general social system.

“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.”

Now you’re waxing poetic….

Way to jam, brother!

I hope you will join me in the Deleuze study. We can deal with some of these issues there as well: the overlap.

James! You as well.

Parting shot :if the overlap is either a textual /contextual absolute, them either a complete inclusiveness, or exclusiveness may be seen (interpreted )as maximum and minimum points of reference. The determinitive is value based (as in the sudden collapse of the bitcoin ) ,and howeverMMarx may have values Capital, as a pre requisite…,he just window dressed Hegel 's naked logic.
As the French would, Viva la difference.

When it’s falling, and safe fails prove inadequate, it is the logic of the system which gives it foundation.

Capital is based on inverse logic : diminishing returns. It’a centre of gravity shifts the fulcrum by adding weight either to the short or the long is it or simply compensating by weight the changing divided dimensions .Oswald Spengler saw this coming. And yes I too had my extended happy hours with admitted remedies.

“Parting shot :if the overlap is either a textual /contextual absolute, them either a complete inclusiveness, or exclusiveness may be seen (interpreted )as maximum and minimum points of reference.”

To me, the overlap is the primary domain in which most of us (especially on these boards) tend to work as concerns philosophy. It goes to Deleuze’s metaphysical/epistemological point in Difference and Repetition in that what we generally start with are the issues we find repeated throughout the various texts that we tend to read. After that, we refine our understandings through the differences.

Take, for instance, the issue of mind and brain. How many different philosophers have added their tweak on the issue? And isn’t it because of this that the issue tends to be one of the most popular on these boards? And isn’t politics and social issues another?

The thing is it would be ignorantly arrogant to thumb down our nose at this since it is a perfectly natural steppingstone in the process. We have to start with the overlap in order to work our way to the details that define our development as the intellectually and creatively curious.

Even in a focused study, such as mine with Deleuze, the principle applies in that my understanding of Difference and Repetition grows through the overlap of the various texts I have read by Deleuze and about him.

Of course but the bottom line is not thumbing, whether or be noses, or through texts, that Zizek, or anyone for that matter could be referenced. And even as a subtext, it probably wouldn’t matter to interpret the basic ideas based on those references.

However, thank You d63 I will download Difference and Repetition , and try really to learn something different.

You can download it?

i think so.

Thanks d63,
I must say this is one of the most pleasant threads I’ve enjoyed on ILP. I sort of regret it’s over, I’m by no means done with Zizek or the Plague of Fantasies, even.
Deleuze is a whole different game, I am far less experienced in it. But I had a feeling, coming into this thread, that it would lead to Deleuze. I associate the guy most with blissful summers in Vienna, intoxicated with love, sun and smoke. That is to say, I don’t remember much but I have fond memories. You’ll have to give me some time to get into him. I started in Difference & Repetition, not an easy read. I was thinking of approaching it in French, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for that. It is frustrating though to read a Frenchman in English.

Have to tip my hat to the possibility to you even being able to consider reading him in French. But as far as it goes, I’m mainly focusing on secondary sources on this run that includes William’s (which can be downloaded, Obe), Hughes, Levi-Bryant, And Claire Colebrook. IF you’re intimidated, as I often am (and you would have just cause for being so), I would highly recommend Colebrook’s Routeledge guide which is accessible enough to give you enough to respond to as concerns Deleuze in general -which is what this study is about.

As far as Zizek, I hope to get back to him, and as soon as possible.

The thing is, FC (and you as well, Obe), don’t you ever feel like you reach a ceiling with these studies? It’s as if you reach a certain point and, no matter how much you read further on the subject, you will never get past the point of understanding that you, as an individual, are ready for. As has been said of Lacan: the only ones that seem to understand him are those who understood him before even encountering him.

To me, it is as if what develops through a certain thinker happens as a natural next step to my individual process while being supplemented through that thinker. You both are clearly a ways into your process. I’d just like to hear your take on how it works for you.

I think that in a sense what is said about Lacan is true for more philosopher-psychologists. It is definitely true for Nietzsche. Not because he is so complex - he is not, rather straightfoward and unwavering - but because he speaks to a certain constitution, precisely as you clarify at the end of your OP on Difference & Repetition. One can not understand Nietzsche if one demands, a priori to any investigation, that all conception of existence must be identity-based. Existence must be flux-based, illusion/fantasy must be the interface, otherwise it’s not just impossible, but unbearably boring.

I would like to participate in that thread, but feel it is folly do do so without having the Deleuze background. I might look into the sources you suggest, or I might go through with reading the book itself, at least part of it. In any case I’m very interested in the angle you take on it.

As to the ceiling: I find myself gradually elevating that ceiling every time I revisit a philosopher. Like with Zizek - I notice that I understand more of what he’s implying now than three or four years ago when I started reading him. I now understand much more of what is meant by fantasy and the phantasmatic. As simple as it may seem, or be even, I suppose I lacked the experience to truly fathom the role fantasy plays in the activity of causing the world to make sense. Fantasy is the ground to most value-assessment, to be sure, even to accepting the value things such as food have for us - the difference between the tasty meal we perceive vis a vis “the slime we actually eat”, so to speak.

Speaking of French, here too fantasy plays a fundamental part. What of the suggestions caused by the visceral reality of a language? In effect, can we not compare a language that we do not speak or understand at all to the Lacanian Real? And in the first instance, it is fantasy which allows us to connect to that language at all - we must firstly imagine that we understand, imagine an order, project our need of identity into the form-less stream of sound – not sure if I am making sense. Perhaps it is a different kind of fantasy that connects me to the French language - perhaps even the opposite of it being the Real - in fact I sometimes feel that French is, to me, the real (truly viable) symbolic order, pertaining to/disclosing reality in a way that actually allows me to exist as a ‘perfect’ (fully self-valuing) entity. A language translates the subject to himself, and all languages do this differently, producing different subjects and different hierarchies of degrees to which subjects are disclosed to themselves.

We can only be disclosed to ourselves in ways that we can accept - value. If we are disclosed in a way that we can not value, we necessarily destroy our existence. That is to say, we either withdraw from the appearance, becoming deliberately blind, receding into the dark, or we impose violence on ourselves in order to no longer resemble that which has been disclosed. So in this sense, psychoanalysis is not the art of disclosing the subject as he is (directly mediating the Real into the Symbolic Order) but as he can accept himself. It is probing the fantasy realm belonging to that particular subject for pathways for the Real to stream into the Symbolic Order. A subjects idea of himself is always structurally phantasmatic. In this aethir-like substance, the subjects decision making capacity is suspended like a spider in a web, he walks the fine threads he has woven to devour the Real as it has been trapped in his fantasy in order to sustain - ahh, okay enough, or too much!

“Fantasy is the ground to most value-assessment, to be sure, even to accepting the value things such as food have for us - the difference between the tasty meal we perceive vis a vis “the slime we actually eat”, so to speak.”

Hmmm. I just wondered now about breastfeeding. If what I say/quote above here is true, then we could see how much the difference between being breast-fed and fed out of a bottle would make to a human individual. If accepting value from the Real is a case of creating a fantasy as a medium, then this first, primordial value assessment must be accompanied by a very crucial first form of fantasy.

A person who has not been breast-fed would perhaps be more capable of sustaining the “plastic society” by suitable fantasies. Meaning, he would be more used to creating fantasies to interpret plastic as a proper medium of value. A person who is breast-fed on the other hand would require ‘a more human touch’ to trust the origin of his value.

But this is pure speculation based on the assumption that fantasy is always required to make the Real into Value. I like the idea, certainly - the “self-valuing”, as I call the subject, the entity, in value-ontology, is essentially a fantasizing-machine.

As I return to Zizek, I cannot help but do so with a certain amount of hesitation and anxiety. As anyone knows who has occupied these boards with me: my love (maybe just like/hate (with a dash of contempt (relationship with Capitalism has often led to some rants that have been hurtful towards people who, despite my issues with their issues, I care a great deal about. As I have said before: I try to make peace with it since there is nothing I can do about it which makes it hardly worth alienating people I actually do love despite their politics. At the same time, as I once saw on an avatar that consisted of graffiti written on a broken down wall:

“Every day I wake up on the wrong side of Capitalism.”

With Zizek, I find myself approaching the beast, and everyone in between, with my finger on the trigger. And even within my start with the introducing graphic guide (and quit rolling your eyes: they are a useful summary of the issue (the notes are flowing. The rants are sure to follow. And I apologize ahead of time to anyone who gets caught in the crossfire.

All of which kind of imposes upon me the first point to be made: the push-pull relationship I/we tend to have with Capitalism and the Jouissance it implies –Jouissance being a term that was strangely missing from the graphic guide. One of Zizek’s concerns that came up was the intimate relationship between law and prohibition and the transgression of them. In a sense, it is as if the very creation of these laws and prohibitions creates the desire to transgress them and, in turn, the very push-pull relationship that defines Jouissance.

Now what is notable here is Zizek’s Lacanian understanding of the subconscious as that which works in a way opposite to consciousness: as a kind of counterbalance to the conscious imperatives the self finds itself faced with. The thing is that Carl Jung saw the subconscious in the same sense and used it as a primary agent in the maladies that extreme introverts or extreme extroverts can succumb to. But first we have to understand what Jung actually meant by the terms as compared to the popular notions about them. The terms extrovert and introvert are actually a phenomenological issue of one’s relationship with the world of objects. For the extrovert everything begins and ends in the world of objects (the realists (while for the introvert everything begins and ends in the self (the groundhogs of reality going into the world and bringing back objects to store in their own little hole.

Jung then goes on to describe the maladies that both can fall into because of the counterbalancing role of the subconscious. The malady of the extrovert is that of hysteria: the subconscious seeking to overwhelm their focus on the world of objects and them reacting by throwing themselves deeper into that world in an exaggerated way. Hence: their propensity towards dogma since dogma is basically “out there”: a product of the symbolic order.

The malady of the introvert (for which I lack the actual term (consists of the subconscious asserting an attraction to the world of objects while the individual, at a conscious level, is repulsed by it. And, unfortunately, I can testify to this anecdotally in that much of my critical stance towards Capitalism results from the push-pull relationship I find myself in with a world of consumer goods: the objects occupying my environmental and cultural space.

I hope to go into this deeper in the context of Zizek (my window has run out (but before I go I would offer a more finished piece I did on the subject:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=179930

No worries, this is what philosophy consists of; inclusion of everything imaginable in the old sense of de-differentiating every type of knowledge into it’s methodology.

Chomsky had a spat with Zizek, which is not too admirable when looked at from the vantage point of professional philosophers. And yet, it had a progressive effect on the left, and that is probably worth to look at.