3.14.2004
the plague of fantasies, revisited
well, i finished the plague of fantasies by slovenian theorist slavoj zizek a few days back, and i've been thinking it over. i'm certainly guilty of the usual laziness in reading zizek, being only an occasional dabbler in theory/philosophy (i'd like to read more, though), with little under my belt as far as time spent with the elusive jaques lacan. the blessing/curse of zizek is that he is in many ways the ideal thinker for someone like me (late 20's, out of school, with few people who want to hear me ramble about slavoj zizek, etc.). zizek breaks down complicated, seemingly abstract ideas (from lacan, marx, politics, hegel...) and puts them in relatively understandable terms (with considerable use value). he is, in a way, a great substitute for school. and he moves at a rapid fire pace, bouncing along from lacan to hitchcock to porn etiquette to bosnia to why his relatives resent him (one of my favorite little bits of this book). part of the pleasure of reading him is that, with so many concepts and judgements being thrown around, you're bound to find certain things insightful and others dismissive (not to mention frustrating).
(having said all of that, please recognize that i jot all of this down partially as a record for myself and that what you are about to read is highly questionable as an informed review of the book. i am, in all of this, still a baby...)
anyway, there's some great stuff in plague. the over-arching theme of the book (i guess) is how fantasy orchestrates desire in a constant push/pull in relation to its "object." zizek is careful and extremely insightful in his analysis of how "ideology" informs even our most basic actions. and for better or worse, he locates essentially the whole of contemporary life into a kind of socio-politcal coding (note the infamous passage about how different nations utilize different toilet designs, and what this means for national identity). it's written through the lens of ideology-- how it structures, splits, punishes and rewards a desiring subject. zizek is, in essence, doing with freud precisely what freud would forbid-- using psychoanalysis (via lacan) in application to culture, in a political manner. zizek claims himself to be a marxist, but his strategies are so insistently negative in a sense-- so destructive to assumptions and intentions-- that it's rather hard to come out of a book like this with a very clear politic.
not that i'm complaining. a book that invests so much time in dismantling ideology is probably best not to whip up one of its own too hastily. but there are still such currents at work. the bit at the end of the book ("the unconscious law: towards an ethics beyond the good") makes intruiging usage of kantian ethics-- as a rather unlikely inspiration for contemporary political thought. building on the very formal structure of this element in kant's thought-- and citing various attempts to expose its traumatic kernel-- zizek (eventually) argues in favor of what he (as well as alenka zupancic, who i may read next) calls an "ethics of the real." this notion is (i think) a marriage of the structural nature of kant's thought (the categorical imperative, perhaps) and the lacanian notion of "the real" (as a traumatic and elusive rupture capable of exposing desire as pathological; a yearning for something that, in essence, can never fully be attained). what i got out of all of this is that zizek wants ethics to begin with the lacanian real-- investigating the circumstances which give rise to it-- as a way of structuring one's relationship to ideology. through such crucial pockets of intensity (my words here, not his), one might argue that the various desires/investments/enjoyments leading up to the "real" event would be rendered with greater clarity. such a cultural transparency could be the key to a less illusionistic notion of the political, perhaps, while side-stepping certain superficial aspects of postmodern tolerance (zizek is occasionally downright reactionary-- and i would argue hypocritical-- in his attempt to set himself at a distance from multiculturalism, etc.).
to bring all of this back to planet earth a bit, i will add that the final chapter of this book made me feel a lot better about suffering through kant over the past few years. reading kant, i would often wonder "what can i do with this??? am i just reading this so i can bring it up and sound smart???" and so on and so forth. but beyond his dry, repetitive style, there are some pretty weird ideas in there. and with someone like zizek around to contextualize them, i can build on both what i've read in the past and the spin zizek puts on him, and have plenty to keep me busy on the walk home from work.
to get back to zizek, my one looming problem at the end of the book (this is my third by him, and i could say this of all three) is his insistence on getting to the bottom of things. it is no coincidence that zizek is obsessed with the genre of mystery (in hitchcock and patricia highsmith especially). he writes like a detective. and with hegel and lacan (and the bizarro kant i mentioned above) as his tools, he cracks away at his case. this process, in my estimation, holds the notion of truth a bit too dear. it's funny how in the midst of all the lacanian termonology, a basic true/false structure essentially remains. zizek is almost too sure of himself in a way, as he posits his various splits between drive and desire and so on. as someone coming from an art background, i must remind myself from time to time that truth isn't all that interesting in the first place.
(congrats if you've made it to the bottom of this incoherent mess)
(having said all of that, please recognize that i jot all of this down partially as a record for myself and that what you are about to read is highly questionable as an informed review of the book. i am, in all of this, still a baby...)
anyway, there's some great stuff in plague. the over-arching theme of the book (i guess) is how fantasy orchestrates desire in a constant push/pull in relation to its "object." zizek is careful and extremely insightful in his analysis of how "ideology" informs even our most basic actions. and for better or worse, he locates essentially the whole of contemporary life into a kind of socio-politcal coding (note the infamous passage about how different nations utilize different toilet designs, and what this means for national identity). it's written through the lens of ideology-- how it structures, splits, punishes and rewards a desiring subject. zizek is, in essence, doing with freud precisely what freud would forbid-- using psychoanalysis (via lacan) in application to culture, in a political manner. zizek claims himself to be a marxist, but his strategies are so insistently negative in a sense-- so destructive to assumptions and intentions-- that it's rather hard to come out of a book like this with a very clear politic.
not that i'm complaining. a book that invests so much time in dismantling ideology is probably best not to whip up one of its own too hastily. but there are still such currents at work. the bit at the end of the book ("the unconscious law: towards an ethics beyond the good") makes intruiging usage of kantian ethics-- as a rather unlikely inspiration for contemporary political thought. building on the very formal structure of this element in kant's thought-- and citing various attempts to expose its traumatic kernel-- zizek (eventually) argues in favor of what he (as well as alenka zupancic, who i may read next) calls an "ethics of the real." this notion is (i think) a marriage of the structural nature of kant's thought (the categorical imperative, perhaps) and the lacanian notion of "the real" (as a traumatic and elusive rupture capable of exposing desire as pathological; a yearning for something that, in essence, can never fully be attained). what i got out of all of this is that zizek wants ethics to begin with the lacanian real-- investigating the circumstances which give rise to it-- as a way of structuring one's relationship to ideology. through such crucial pockets of intensity (my words here, not his), one might argue that the various desires/investments/enjoyments leading up to the "real" event would be rendered with greater clarity. such a cultural transparency could be the key to a less illusionistic notion of the political, perhaps, while side-stepping certain superficial aspects of postmodern tolerance (zizek is occasionally downright reactionary-- and i would argue hypocritical-- in his attempt to set himself at a distance from multiculturalism, etc.).
to bring all of this back to planet earth a bit, i will add that the final chapter of this book made me feel a lot better about suffering through kant over the past few years. reading kant, i would often wonder "what can i do with this??? am i just reading this so i can bring it up and sound smart???" and so on and so forth. but beyond his dry, repetitive style, there are some pretty weird ideas in there. and with someone like zizek around to contextualize them, i can build on both what i've read in the past and the spin zizek puts on him, and have plenty to keep me busy on the walk home from work.
to get back to zizek, my one looming problem at the end of the book (this is my third by him, and i could say this of all three) is his insistence on getting to the bottom of things. it is no coincidence that zizek is obsessed with the genre of mystery (in hitchcock and patricia highsmith especially). he writes like a detective. and with hegel and lacan (and the bizarro kant i mentioned above) as his tools, he cracks away at his case. this process, in my estimation, holds the notion of truth a bit too dear. it's funny how in the midst of all the lacanian termonology, a basic true/false structure essentially remains. zizek is almost too sure of himself in a way, as he posits his various splits between drive and desire and so on. as someone coming from an art background, i must remind myself from time to time that truth isn't all that interesting in the first place.
(congrats if you've made it to the bottom of this incoherent mess)
