#zupancic

[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

[arte-filosofia]

A guy goes into a restaurant and says to the waiter: “Coffee without cream, please.” The waiter replies: “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re out of cream. Could it be without milk?”

“It's not the same thing: coffee without cream or coffee without milk. What you don't get is part of the identity of what you get.” - Slavoj

[monasticcellphone]

This is where my notion of “Communism” comes in, not as an obscure dream but simply as a name for what is already going on (or at least perceived by many as a necessity), measures which are already being con- sidered and even partially enforced. It’s not a vision of a bright future but more one of “disaster Communism” as an antidote to disaster capitalism. Not only should the state assume a much more active role, organizing the production of urgently needed things like masks, test kits and respirators, sequestering hotels and other resorts, guaranteeing the minimum of survival of all new unemployed, and so on, doing all of this by aban- doning market mechanisms. Just think about the mil- lions, like those in the tourist industry, whose jobs will, for some time at least, be lost and meaningless. Their fate cannot be left to mere market mechanisms or one- off stimuluses. And let’s not forget that refugees are still trying to enter Europe. 

This is what those who deplore our obsession with survival miss. Alenka Zupančič recently reread Maurice Blanchot’s text from the Cold War era about the scare of nuclear self-destruction of humanity. Blanchot shows how our desperate wish to survive does not imply the stance of “forget about changes, let’s just keep safe the existing state of things, let’s save our bare lives.” In fact the oppo- site is true: it is through our effort to save humanity from self-destruction that we are creating a new humanity. It is only through this mortal threat that we can envision a unified humanity.

S. Zizek, Pandemic!

[quantizedangel]

[publicatiosui]

Short Circuits: With Students Like These...

Reading Zupancic’s “What is Sex?” after having read Dolar’s “Of Drives and Culture” and trying to come up with a rhetorical analysis of how these texts are produced. The basal technique seems to be: invoke boogey-man antinomies about psychoanalysis, or gender, or sex that only exist in some sort of strange straw-man “lay imagination.” (I suspect the lay public thinks much less about psychoanalysis than non-practicing psychoanalytic theorists presume.) Then, proceed to deconstruct that opposition by showing that psychoanalysis, or the drive, or sexuality, is in fact about everything, or nothing, or both (”less than nothing”). Finally, fervently deny that what you are doing is just deconstruction with dick jokes, primarily by slipping in outrageous pseudo-Schellingian claims about Nature. 

The only parts of this book I’ve enjoyed so far have been the Lacan quotes. I think I’m growing out of the phase of my life where I feel the need to read these people. I don’t know if that’s something in me rigidifying, or a previous calcification dissolving.  

[grandpasessions]

This is thus the deadlock, the “either/or,” of European nihilism as Nietzsche sees it: either living out the consequences of the ascetic ideal (which implies actively “willing Nothingness”), or defending oneself against this in a purely reactive way.

Indeed, if one were to define more precisely the general term “nihilism” (which is often used in a loose, careless fashion), one could say that it refers to nothing but the configuration of this mortifying either/or.

Nihilism “as such”is the configuration wherein the will (or desire) is captured in the alternative between directly “willing Nothing(ness) itself” and “not willing.”

In this sense, nihilism is not a general category that then falls into active and passive nihilism; it refers to the very tension spanning the space between these two figures or “alternatives”—it does not exist outside this space.

Active and reactive nihilism are mutually co-dependent and, as such, they constitute what is generally called nihilism.

There is,on the one hand,the imperative or the need for excitement,the need to be in touch with the “Real,” to “feel life” as vividly as possible, to feel awake—the imperative or need in which Nietzsche recognizes the core of the ascetic ideal.

This imperative, precisely as an imperative, holds us in a kind of mortifying grip, a paralysis that can very well take the form of some intense activity while still remaining exactly that: a paralysis.

On the other hand (and in response to this), there is passive nihilism as a defense against the mortification caused by surplus excitement, a defense that operates by mortifying this excitement itself.

In other words, one kind of mortification (the one that takes the path of surplus excitement) is regulated or moderated by another kind.

The “will to Nothingness” is combined with the “narcoticization” of the will— exciting stimulant combines with sedating tranquilizer.

The Shortest Shadow / A. Zupancic

[grandpasessions]

So what is the problem today? The problem is that, although our (sometimes even Individual) acts can have catastrophic (ecological and so forth) consequences, we continue to perceive such consequences as anonymous/systemic, as something for which we are not responsible, for which there is no clear agent.

More precisely—and here we are back to the logic of the madman who knows that he is not a grain of corn, but is worried that the chickens have not realized this fact—we know we are responsible, but the chicken (the big Other) has not caught on. Or, insofar as knowledge is the function of the I, and belief the function of the Other, we know the real state of affairs very well, but we do not believe it—the big Other prevents us from believing in it, from assuming this knowledge and responsibility:

"Contrary to what the promoters of the principle of precaution think, the cause of our non-action is not scientific uncertainty. We know it, but we cannot make ourselves believe in what we know."

Take global warming, as already noted: with all the data regarding its nature, the problem is not the uncertainty about facts (as those who caution us against panic claim), but our inability to believe that it can really happen: look through the window, the green grass and blue sky are still there, life carries on, nature follows its rhythm . . .

And therein resides the horror of the Chernobyl accident: when one visits the site, with the exception of the sarcophagus, things look exactly the same as before, life seems to have deserted the site, leaving everything the way it was, and nonetheless we are aware that something is terribly wrong. The change is not at the level of the visible reality itself; it is more fundamental, it affects the very texture of reality. No wonder that there are some lone farmers around the Chernobyl site who continue to lead their lives as before —they simply ignore all the incomprehensible talk about radiation.

In Defense of Lost Causes S. Zizek

[grandpasessions]

What, then, is missing in today's social bond, if it is not the big Other? The answer is clear: a small other which would embody, stand in for, the big Other —a person who is not simply "like the others," but who directly embodies authority. In our postmodern universe, every small other is "finitized" (perceived as fallible, imperfect, "merely human, ' ridiculous), inadequate to give body to a big Other — and, in this way, preserves the purity of the big Other unblemished by its failings.

When, in a decade or so, money will finally become a purely virtual point of reference, no longer materialized in a particular object, this demateralization will render its fetishistic power absolute: its very invisibility will render it all-powerful and omnipresent.

The task of radical politics is therefore not to denounce the inadequacy of every small other to stand in for the big Other (such a "critique" only reinforces the big Other's hold over us), but to undermine the very big Other and, in this way, to untie the social bond the big Other sustains. Today, when everyone complains about dissolving social ties (and thereby obfuscating their hold over us, which is stronger than ever), the true job of untying them is still ahead of us, more urgent than ever.

Lacan's standard notion of anxiety is that, as the only affect that does not lie, it bears witness to the proximity of the Real, to the inexistence of the big Other; such anxiety has to be confronted by courage, it should lead to an act proper which, as it were, cuts into the real of a situation.

There is, however, another mode of anxiety which predominates today: the anxiety caused by the claustrophobia of the atonal world which lacks any structuring "point," the anxiety of the "pathological Narcissus" frustrated by the fact that he is caught in the endless competitive mirroring of his fellow men (a-a'-a"-a"' . . .), of the series of "small others" none of which functions as the stand-in for the "big Other. " The root of this claustrophobia is that the lack of embodied stand-ins for the big Other, instead of opening up the social space, depriving it of any Master-figures, renders the invisible "big Other," the mechanism that regulates the interaction of "small others," all the more all-pervasive.

In Defense of Lost Causes S. Zizek