#shortest shadow

[grandpasessions]

Actually, it is rather obvious that the thing that is ultimately lacking in passive nihilism is the nothing itself.

The problem of passive nihilism does not by any means consist in the fact that “there is nothing everywhere,” that there is nothing all around us: the problem is, rather, that, all around us, there are “somethings,” yet none of these particular “somethings” has the power to engage our will or desire in any serious way.

The Shortest Shadow / Alenka Zupančič

[grandpasessions]

In Catholicism,we have a clear distinction between two realms, and we have the symbolic functioning as the point de capiton (“quilting point”) of these two realms. In other words, Catholicism is essentially bound to the notion of the Other scene, this “other scene” being the scene of Truth and Sense (or Meaning).

In Protestantism, the difference between the two scenes disappears, or—perhaps more precisely—acquires a completely different status.

The first (Catholic) configuration implies two things: a well-defined division between two scenes, and the privilege of certain symbolic rituals to constitute a direct link between them.

Thus, in certain cases (in certain symbolic rituals), the “scene of our life” is (or coincides with) the “Other scene.”

Some of our actions (which are symbolically def ined as such by the Church) have this particular significance or power of changing something on the Other scene of our life.

The rest of our actions are simply indifferent or irrelevant.

The second (Protestant) configuration implies that there are no such privileged points of coincidence between the two realms (and no particular actions that can change or affect the status of our lives on the Other scene).

At the same time, our whole life (everything we do or think, in private or in public) constitutes a sign or an expression of the Other scene.

There is no such thing as an indifferent or irrelevant action.

Every small detail of our lives counts for something. In Catholicism, the Other scene is the scene of Truth, yet this does not mean that it is the Truth of the scene of our innerworldly, everyday life.

Most of our quotidian existence (actually, all of it, with the exception of some privileged points mentioned above) is indifferent to the notion of Truth.

The two scenes are not related in such a way that one would be the truth of the other.

In Protestantism, this changes radically.

To begin with,the only available truth is to be found within the scene of our life, in the here and now.

Second, this truth is the truth of the Other scene (of us being chosen or not).

The Shortest Shadow | A. Zupancic

[grandpasessions]

Nietzsche articulates the difference between the discursivity in which an event is possible and the discursivity where such a possibility is a priori excluded. He expresses it in terms of the difference between the discourse of affirmation and the discourse of negation, or, alternatively, in terms of the difference between “active” and “reactive” forces. If we were to express the distinction between the discourse of affirmation and the discourse of negation in one formula, we could say that affirmation embraces the event at the level of the contingency through which the latter appears,whereas negation (or “reaction”) qualifies the event through the necessity to which it tries to reduce this event. However—and we will return to this—in order for the affirmation to have this effect of “activating the contingency,” it must be a double affirmation.

The Shortest Shadow | Alenka Zupancic

[grandpasessions]

At the level of sublimation, the object is inseparable from imaginary and especially cultural elaborations. It is not just that the collectivity recognizes in them useful objects; it finds rather a space of relaxation where it may in a way delude itself on the subject of das Ding, colonize the field of das Ding with imaginary schemes.

In forms that are historically and socially specific, the a elements, the imaginary elements of the fantasm come to overlie the subject, to delude it, at the very point of das Ding. The question of sublimation will be brought to bear here.

Through this analysis, we can see that the critics of ideology and its “aesthetic effects” are really the critics of sublimation per se. Such criticisms are part of the fight against what Lacan calls the “colonization of the field of das Ding,” the fight that endeavors to separate “imaginary formations” from their Real, the fight against semblances as a “passion for the Real.”

I shall not engage in a discussion of the different forms that this passion for the Real can take. Rather, I shall examine a more recent phenomenon that constitutes a kind of backlash related to this “passion for the Real,” namely, the refrain about the “end of ideologies.”

The Shortest Shadow A. Zupancic