Zizek: Psychoanalysis

In exploring the intra-active, relational and material connections between humans and non- humans, proponents of posthumanism advocate a questioning of the ‘human’ beyond its traditional anthropocentric conceptualization. By referring specifically to controversial developments in mHealth applications, this paper critically diverges from posthuman accounts of human/non-human assemblages. Indeed, we argue that, rather than ‘dissolving’ the human subject, the power of assemblages lie in their capacity to highlight the antagonisms and contradictions that inherently affirm the importance of the subject. In outlining this (...) claim, we propose a turn from the posthuman to the inhuman as a way of understanding the contemporary landscape of (digital) health. (shrink)

The importation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new era of cinema scholarship and criticism. Figures including Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz are often considered the pioneers of applying Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of film theory, most notably through their writings in Screen Journal. However, where French and British scholarship on Lacan and film reached its limits, American Lacanianism flourished. When Joan Copjec’s now classic essay “The Orthopsychic Subject: Film (...) Theory and the Reception of Lacan” was published in 1989, the trajectory of Lacanian film theory would become radically altered; as Todd McGowan recently put it, the “butchered operation” on Lacan committed by Mulvey and (quoting Copjec) the “Foucaultianization” of Lacan under the auspices of Screen Journal were finally indicted in one gesture through Copjec’s critique. Copjec and McGowan’s unique American view of Lacan marks a pivotal point in the convergence of psychoanalytic theory and cinema studies; by seeking to wrest Lacan from historist/deconstructionist theories of the subject, and by revisiting Lacan beyond the mirror stage, Copjec and McGowan can be said to have instantiated a resuscitation or even a renaissance of Lacanian theory in film studies in particular and in American scholarship more generally. In this essay, this renaissance of Lacanian theory is examined, focusing on the innovations these two American thinkers brought to psychoanalytic film theory and the multiple paths carved out into other disciplines that followed. First, a detailed summation of the contentions between screen theory and Copjec’s position is introduced, as well as McGowan’s assessment thereof. Then, the trajectory of psychoanalytic film theory after Copjec’s arrival is the focus, including the major innovations in her thought from cinematic subjectivity to sexual difference (most notably from Read My Desire) and the way her position spread to philosophy and ontology. Finally, the article identifies the limitations of Copjec’s and McGowan’s thought and seeks new possibilities through which we may continue to apply psychoanalysis to the cinema in the wake of these two important thinkers. L’importation de la psychanalyse lacanienne dans la théorie du film au cours des années 1970 et 1980 a apporté une nouvelle ère de recherche et de critique cinématographiques. Des figures comme Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey et Christian Metz sont souvent considérées comme étant les pionniers dans l’application de la psychanalyse lacanienne au contexte de la théorie du film, surtout dans leurs écrits pour le Screen Journal. Par contre, là où les recherches françaises et britanniques sur Lacan et la cinématographie ont atteint leurs limites, le lacanisme américain a prospéré. La publication en 1989 de « The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan », l’essai classique de Joan Copjec, a complètement changé la trajectoire de la théorie lacanienne du film; comme Todd McGowan l’a récemment exprimé, « l’opération massacrée » commise sur Lacan par Mulvey et (citant Copjec) la « Foucaultisation » de Lacan sous les auspices de Screen Journal avaient finalement été accusées d’un seul coup par la critique de Copjec. Le point de vue uniquement américain de Copjec et de McGowan sur Lacan marque un tournant dans la convergence de la théorie psychanalytique et des études cinématographiques. En cherchant à arracher Lacan des théories historicistes/déconstructivistes du sujet, et en revisitant Lacan au-delà du stade du miroir, Copjec et McGowan ont instancié une ressuscitation, voire une renaissance, de la théorie lacanienne dans les études cinématographiques en particulier et dans les études américaines en général. Dans cet article, cette renaissance de la théorie lacanienne est examinée, mettant l’accent sur les innovations que ces deux penseurs américains ont apportées à la théorie psychanalytique du film et les multiples chemins tracés dans d’autres disciplines subséquentes. Premièrement, un résumé détaillé des différends entre la théorie du film et la position de Copjec est présenté, ainsi que l’évaluation de McGowan à ce sujet. Puis, la trajectoire de la théorie psychanalytique du film après l’arrivée de Copjec est mise de l’avant, notamment les innovations importantes de sa pensée de la subjectivité à la différence sexuelle (particulièrement dans Read My Desire) et la manière dont sa position s’est propagée dans la philosophie et l’ontologie. Finalement, l’article identifie les limites de la pensée de Copjec et de McGowan et cherche de nouvelles possibilités à travers lesquelles nous pourrions continuer d’appliquer la psychanalyse au cinéma après ces deux grands penseurs. (shrink)

In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. -/- By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it (...) engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. -/- Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film. (shrink)

This article explores the cannibalistic dimensions of racial disgust and desire in Michel Houellebecq’s Submission. Situated within broader discourses of French déclinisme, Submis- sion offers a melancholic portrait of white nostalgia. Through the tastes and consumptive practices of his characters, Houellebecq depicts white identification as dependent on an ambivalent relationship to corporeal difference. Paying close attention to the mouth’s dual function as a site of ontological triage (sorting out the human from the non-human, the edible from the inedible) and ontological (...) transformation (converting dead matter into living flesh), I argue that cannibalist desire is integral to white nationalist anxiety. (shrink)

This paper takes off from a growing preoccupation in Western political-social philosophy on the thinkability of the materiality of change, that became most pronounced in Alain Badiou's philosophy of the event. It traces the development of the discourse of radical change tied to a materialist theory of subjectivity beginning from Badiou, down to the strong criticism posed against it by Slavoj Žižek. This is then followed by the discussion of Bruno Bosteels' potent defense of Badiou's philosophy. Finally, the last part (...) takes off from this debate and highlights how this tension in Badiou's philosophy was possible in the first place. Using Adrian Johnston's key insight on pre-evental and post-evental time, this paper argues that Žižek and Bosteels respectively employ pre-evental and post-evental lenses in reading the relation of event to being. Furthermore, these two lenses are themselves the effect of the split readability of the event at the moment of its rupture: the parallax-effect that divides the event into two. This paper asserts that neither of the two is sufficient. Both are fundamental in outlining what sort of sustained disciplines are necessary before and after events take place. (shrink)

Most readings of Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North have focused on Mustafa Saeed and the nameless narrator, both male characters, and they have largely avoided a politically radical reading of the novel. This article attempts to present the female character, Hosna, as the revolutionary par excellence, following Lacan and Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Antigone. Th rough Žižek’s distinction between the act and action, this article argues that Hosna’s deed at the end of the novel, murder and suicide, (...) is not just an action out of hopelessness but rather an act that aims to make a new social order possible. We will try to connect Žižek’s distinction between act and action to Benjamin’s distinction between divine violence and mythic violence and Lacan’s idea of “Th ing-directed desire” (Marc De Kesel 245). By doing so, this article aims to put the extreme violence of Hosna in a new light and argues against the readings that simply ignore her act as an extreme form of violence and fail to see it in a broader framework of philosophical and sociological understanding. (shrink)

The ontologies of Slavoj Žižek and Gilles Deleuze are incommensurable. Rather than appropriate one at the expense of the other, this essay uses Žižek’s notion of parallax to think the two philosophers together, without mediation. Both Deleuze and Žižek provide mirrored philosophical images, with the point of divergence being absolute lack. Deleuze argues that lack, or the being of negation, is an error of representational understanding, while Žižek conceives his philosophy as being driven by absolute lack. A stark opponent of (...) Žižek’s precursor, Hegel, Deleuze rejects opposition as a constitutive feature of reality. However, Žižek mirrors Deleuze’s very concepts in his Lacanian reading of Hegel, while said concepts retain identical terms. For instance, Žižek calls l’objet petit a “difference,” while his term for absolute negation is “repetition,” and finally, he refers to his philosophical system as the “non-All”. These singular concepts in Žižek’s thought share an identical language with that of Deleuze. Deleuze’s philosophy is one of “difference,” while its mode of proliferation is “repetition,” and finally, he often refers to his philosophy as the “One-All”. Mapping these common terms that do not denote a common language, but incommensurable, inverse logics, it becomes evident that Deleuze and Žižek are mirror images of one another, infinitely fragmenting across the expanse of their respective positions. Thus, by triangulating ontology from their unique perspectives, a new ontological shift emerges—one that resists mediation and admixture. (shrink)

What are the origins of consciousness and language? Why are so many driven to see them as epiphenomenal to a metaphysically more primordial phenomenon when we have good reasons to think they are irreducible to such? Drawing on the work of the Slovenian psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek, and in particular his reading of the German philosopher F.W.J. Schelling, I suggest a provactive but nuanced thesis: that at the basis of human subjectivity there is no rhyme or reason for its emergence and (...) to protect ourselves from this insight we build various fantasy-constructions of its ground as defensive mechanisms. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek is the most popular and discussed philosopher in the world today. His prolific writings – across philosophy, psychoanalysis, political and social theory, film, music and religion – always engage and provoke. The power of his ideas, the breadth of his references, his capacity for playfulness and confrontation, his willingness to change his mind and his refusal fundamentally to alter his argument – all have worked to build an extraordinary international readership as well as to elicit much critical reaction. (...) _The Žižek Dictionary _brings together leading Žižek commentators from across the world to present a companion and guide to Žižekian thought. Each of the 60 short essays examines a key term and, crucially, explores its development across Žižek’s work and how it fits in with other concepts and concerns. The dictionary will prove invaluable both to readers coming to Žižek for the first time and to those already embarked on the Žižekian journey. (shrink)

I argue that Žižek's Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism presents us with a radically original variety of metaphysics both in terms of Žižek's own intellectual development and the history of philosophy. Rather than being concerned with the study of being qua being, Less Than Nothing proclaims that we ought to investigate nothing qua nothing inasmuch as contemporary physics demonstrates that the more we analyze reality the more we find a void, this latter now in matter (...) of fact exhibiting the traits of ultimate reality rather than the order of the perceived universe. Before arriving at this, however, I demonstrate how Žižek is led to contemporary physics in order to overcome inherent limitations in his own previous metaphysics of Hegelian inspiration. If thinking substance as subject imposes upon us the recognition that substance as a self-articulating totality of necessity is an illusion, subject being nothing but a synonymous for its constitutive tension with itself, if we are to explain how this weakly structured nature does not collapse upon itself we must go further. In this manner, Less Than Nothing outlines one way in which we must step beyond Hegel to find new metaphysical solutions for impasses that have emerged out of thinking the obscure ground of the psychoanalytic subject. (shrink)

In Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew takes up the central question guiding Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy: How could something like phenomenal reality emerge out of the meaninglessness of the Real? Carefully reconstructing and expanding upon his controversial reactualization of German Idealism, Carew argues that Žižek offers us an original, but perhaps terrifying, response: experience is possible only if we presuppose a prior moment of breakdown as the ontogenetic basis of subjectivity. Drawing upon resources found in Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-Kantian philosophy, Carew (...) thus develops a new critical metaphysics—a metaphysics which is a variation upon the late German Idealist theme of balancing system and freedom, realism and idealism, in a single, self-reflexive theoretical construct—that challenges our understanding of nature, culture, and the ultimate structure of reality. (shrink)

By simply watching news channels, visiting the internet, even watching diverse films, my observations led me to conclude that in today’s globalized world, different forms of subjective violence – or a kind of violence that has a clear and identifiable agent – are what commonly occupies our attention. However, it is crucial to note that in every form subjective violence, there is an objective background that invisibly sustains and overdetermines it. This objective frame, often imperceptible, contains a systemic and more (...) perilous violence, for it is, in fact, a violence that prolongs and generates the very subjective violence that we are fighting and responding against. Accordingly, I would argue that a reinvention of how we view a truly ethical act should necessitate itself in today’s globalized world. My claim is that the challenge for a truly globalized ethics is that it is not enough to simply respond to these different forms of subjective violence. Instead, what is more gripping to consider is to shamelessly question the objective violence upon which these different forms of subjective violence are inherent, reacting against, and being sustained in the first place – i.e. the inherent violence produced by the predominance of global capitalism. (shrink)

Michael Haneke’s film Caché explores the psychological and social effects of the intrusion of the immigrant Other into privileged Western capitalist society. Caché allegorises the intrusion of the immigrant Other through a series of intrusive and threatening non-diegetic surveillance tapes delivered to a wealthy Parisian family’s home, the subject of the surveillance. Haneke’s film undertakes a significant critique of the increasing right-wing anti-immigrant sentiment driving neo-liberal politics and ideology in the capitalist West. Here, Caché confronts the viewer with their complicity (...) in the disavowal and subjugation of the immigrant Other within their own social edifice. The significance of Caché is the film’s potential to facilitate the viewers’ confrontation with the disavowed and repressed truth of the social edifice. This confrontation enables the viewer to assume an emancipatory subjectivity which extends beyond Caché’s cinematic frame into the viewers’ own social edifice. I argue that Haneke’s film has the potential to radically alter the way viewers relate to the diegetic reality and, through the figuration of cinema, to their own social edifice. Ultimately, Caché brings to the fore the disavowed truth of both capitalist society and of privileged subjectivities, demanding a new politics based on the excluded immigrant Other. (shrink)

Available in English for the first time, this publication from Slavoj Žižek represents a re-worked version of one of his earliest works. Hard to place amongst his recent works, perhaps the purpose of publishing this early work is to make us realise that the 1980s Žižek was already then the one we have come to recognise, just as the content of the book retroactively makes Hegel a Lacanian avant la lettre, writes Jodie Matthews.

This paper will argue that the work of Slavoj Žižek can be fruitfully understood as a response to mystical theology as it has been received in two strands of 20th century French thought—psychoanalysis and phenomenology—and that Žižek's work in turn offers intriguing possibilities for the re-figuring of mystical theology by feminist philosophy of religion. Twentieth century French psychoanalysis is dominated by the work of Jacques Lacan and by his students Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. All three of these figures engage (...) in significant ways with mystical theology—particularly with the works and figures of female mystics—as a crucial resource for theorising gender and subjectivity. A second strand of the 20th century French reception of mystical theology is the phenomenological tradition, specifically the work of Jacques Derrida. This paper will argue that, drawing on and challenging both of these elements of recent French engagement with mystical theology, Žižek's work offers a materialist ontology which seeks to locate transcendence within immanence and materiality, offering to feminist philosophy of religion the resources for re-thinking the relationship of the mystical to the material. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek's philosophy spans over more than three decades, which is confirmed by the numerous books he published since the late 1980s. Since his thinking about the idea of logos is no exception, this article focuses on what can be termed Žižek's early philosophy, and especially that depicted in his The sublime object of ideology (1989) and The metastases of enjoyment (1994). Whilst the former underlines the psychological aspects of the logos, the latter focuses more on theories about being, as (...) well as on theological considerations. This is why, three uses of the logos were identified in Žižek's thought: psychological, ontological and theological, all three with a clear focus on the human being as conceived in modern thought, which for Žižek seems to be utterly opposed to traditional thinking about man and his relationship with God. It is clear from Žižek that whilst the notion of God does appear in this thought, it only refers to the human being which encapsulates the essence of Žižek's philosophy to the point that the logos itself is a fundamental feature of the human being's material existence in the natural world. Regardless of whether the logos points to psychology, ontology or divinity (theology), it always emerges as an idea which centres on the human being, with a special interest in how it exists as well as how it works in the world. (shrink)

Although trauma is by nature a pathological experience found in the lives of some traumatised human beings, I argue that it does not necessarily referring to the past memory. This article aims to revisit trauma by shifting trauma from intermingled with a disturbed memory the individuals might have towards the past to the new hypothesis that trauma is a contemporaneity where the relationships among the pathological subjects, the mental disorders, and the structural violence are coexistent - proved by the subject’s (...) historical awareness drawn from colonialism and capitalist epochs. (shrink)

Although some psychoanalysts in the clinical field have criticised Žižek for corrupting Lacan’s teachings, through playing down the importance of the clinical, there is no doubt that Žižek’s scholarship and contribution to psychoanalysis displays mastery of Lacanian theory. Moreover, Žižek has applied this mastery to push theoretical ideas about the subject and social worlds, into public and intellectual debate. For Žižek, Lacan is a master from whom social knowledge as well as knowledge of the social is developed and critiqued. In (...) keeping with Žižek’s ontology, an examination of the intersection of belief with desire reveals the importance of a critical return to ideology that cannot be overlooked, particularly when examining how present social conditions structure an intersection of desire and belief. For Žižek, the contemporary subject believes now more than ever. Žižek positions modern social conditions together with the practices and organisations which maintain ideologies, as structuring the contours of belief. Capitalism, the supposed master of the 20th century, has presented as not so reliable. Might belief be the 21st century master, stepping in to support those ideological forces which intensify the scaffolding of a failing capitalist system? (shrink)

What do we know about Hegel? What do we know about Marx? What do we know about democracy and totalitarianism? Communism and psychoanalysis? What do we know that isn't a platitude that we've heard a thousand times - or a self-satisfied certainty? Through his brilliant reading of Hegel, Slavoj Zizek - one of the most provocative and widely-read thinkers of our time - upends our traditional understanding, dynamites every cliché and undermines every conviction in order to clear the ground for (...) new ways of answering these questions. When Lacan described Hegel as the ‘most sublime hysteric’, he was referring to the way that the hysteric asks questions because he experiences his own desire as if it were the Other's desire. In the dialectical process, the question asked of the Other is resolved through a reflexive turn in which the question begins to function as its own answer. We had made Hegel into the theorist of abstraction and reaction, but by reading Hegel with Lacan, Zizek unveils a Hegel of the concrete and of revolution - his own, and the one to come. This early and dazzlingly original work by Zizek offers a unique insight into the ideas which have since become hallmarks of his mature thought. It will be of great interest to anyone interested in critical theory, philosophy and contemporary social thought. (shrink)

El artículo trata de analizar las repercusiones que tiene nuestro tiempo de “sociedad del espectáculo” en la construcción de realidades históricas. Para ello se analizarán las propuestas de S. Zizek y de J. Baudrillard en torno a lo Real, la realidad y el simulacro, empleando algunos planteamientos de la filosofía de F.W.J. Schelling, mostrando así la relevancia de la filosofía schellinguiana para entender para entender esta construcción.

Slavoj Zizek is operating from a position of certainty, a position discovered by Jacques Lacan in Seminar XI. In this essay, I examine this position of certainty ("Gewissheit") and the ways this position is distinct from both existential phenomenology and post-structuralism, ultimately arguing that for structuralist psychoanalysis to function requires an intentional forgetting of being.

Scott Welsh is likely to elicit a sigh of relief from the many academics who struggle with what, if any, public intellectual persona they should adopt. Welsh (2012) argues against a broad swathe of mostly left-leaning rhetorical scholars that the academic’s democratic duty is adequately discharged by providing suitably ambivalent rhetorical resources for others to use in their political struggles. For Welsh, following Slavoj Žižek (2008), the scholar’s first obligation is to “enjoy your symptom”—that is, to demonstrate in one’s discursive (...) practice the problematic nature of trying to claim epistemic privilege in a society ostensibly of equals. The main conceptual difference between Welsh’s and my own conception of .. (shrink)

Examining Marcel Duchamp’s final installation Etant donnés: 1º la chute d’eau, 2º le gaz d’éclairage or Given: 1. The Waterfall 2. The Illuminating Gas (1946-66) has proven to be problematic for historians and theorists. Theories involving this assemblage typically incorporate the work into existing conceptions of Duchampian work and therefore do not consider the implication of the work in comparison to Duchamp’s artistic work as a whole, specifically in relation to his consistent engagement with issues of sexuality and fantasy. My (...) paper examines Duchamp’s staging of a series of fantasy constructions, which are compared with Freud’s stages in “A Child is Being Beaten,” specifically in relation to an understanding of fantasy developed by Zizek, as well as Laplanche and Pontalis. (shrink)

This discussion examines how Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence questions what remains of being human and the assemblage of humanity when the human and the machine collide and elide their limit of differentiation. It will be shown how the film's predilection for technology in its narrative content and technological rationalism in its wider conceptual embedding reconstructs humanity but rejects the metaphysical valuation of humanity through notions of dignity, taboo, respect, affect, and so forth. By connecting this twin problematic of (...) ontological difference and metaphysical poverty to the ontological philosophy of Martin Heidegger and psychoanalytic philosophy of Slavoj Žižek, this paper aims to unearth and lay bare the paradoxes inherent in the view of technology and society deployed by Innocence and how the film is able to, in the presence of these explicitly ontological paradoxes, put the question of what constitutes a human Subject into crisis by coding it as a symptom. (shrink)

Arguably the most prolific and most widely read philosopher of our time, Slavoj Zizek has made indelible interventions into many disciplines of the so-called human sciences that have transformed the terms of discussion in these fields. Although his work has been the subject of many volumes of searching criticism and commentary, there is no assessment to date of the value of his work for the development of these disciplines. _Zizek Now_ brings together distinguished critics to explore the utility and far-ranging (...) implications of Zizek's thought and provide an evaluation of the difference his work makes or promises to make in their chosen fields. As such, the volume offers chapters on quantum physics and Zizek's transcendentalist materialist theory of the subject, Hegel's absolute, materialist Christianity, postcolonial violence, eco-politics, ceremonial acts, and the postcolonial revolutionary subject. Contributors to the volume include Adrian Johnston, Ian Parker, Todd McGowan, Bruno Bosteels, Erik Vogt, Verena Conley, Joshua Ramey, Jamil Khader, and Zizek himself. (shrink)

This paper suggests that The Interpretation of Dreams contains some of Freud's most provocative, far-reaching, and powerful psychoanalytic insights regarding futurity, intersubjective communication, and the relationship between the dream, the dreamer, and the world. By focusing on the specific status and function of the dream (as opposed to all other psychic actions), this paper explores how and why the singular language of dreams—and the very possibility of dream interpretation—provide a specifically psychoanalytic model of translation. The essay examines the specific status (...) of the dream by appealing to a selection of important and influential philosophical readings of Freud's text by Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean Laplanche, and Jean-François Lyotard. Building upon the differences in their respective approaches to the question of dream, the essay argues that because the language of every dream is radically singular, and because dreams trouble all temporal boundaries so that they cannot be located in a particular space or time, they open up the pathway to the future. Furthermore, by showing that dreams produce effects over time and that they leave material traces, the essay also argues that dreams produce real events in the real world. Close attention to Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams reveals that Freud's “dreambook” combines elements of an ethics, a politics, and a poetics. This paper concludes by suggesting that the dream is the fragile bridge that joins the subject to the social world through a form of language that has no presence, and that belongs to no one. (shrink)

This article reads Cherokee academic/author Thomas King’s “The One About Coyote Going West” and Okanagan writer Jeannette Armstrong’s “This is a Story” to question whether these Aboriginal creation tales subvert the referential race codes and the kinds of hierarchical exclusion that take place in Caucasian discourses about Homo sapiens. To do so, it draws links between Slavoj Zizek’s post identity theories, and post-colonial and Indigenous literary and nationalist epistemologies, to challenge the implications of how the Coyote narratives transformation the hegemony, (...) or “the big Other.”. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the question of the hybridity of the religious and the secular through the example of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and his psychoanalytically inspired notion of the undead. The undead is Žižek's rendering of the Freudian death drive, and as the undead is instantiated in the popular culture cliché of the zombies, we need to look no further than to George A. Romero's classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead from 1968. Thus, this article (...) proceeds in three steps: first, I trace the concept of the death drive from Freud to Žižek, supplemented, for their theological importance, by two contemporary philosophers, Jonathan Lear and Eric Santner. Second, I discuss the zombie in contemporary popular culture, with a focus on Romero's movies, and whether such cinematic representations can function as a kind of cultural critique. In conclusion, I return to the question of theology by showing what Žižek means by theology and contrasting as well as comparing his philosophy to Augustine's anthropology. Despite Žižek's atheistic confession and his dismissal of all pre‐modern philosophy and theology, I show that Augustine's anthropology is structurally similar to Žižek's, thus suggesting that the relationship is more complex than Žižek allows. Both are united in rejecting any superficial and transparent understanding of self, and become, consequently, an example of the ambiguous relationship between religion and secularity in contemporary times. (shrink)

Following Žižek's hermeneutics of Hegelo-Lacanian theory, this paper provides a Žižekian reading of the early American novel: The Female American. Viewed through the dialectical lenses of Hegel's concrete universality, and, homologous to the latter, Lacan's formulae of sexuation, the overall aim of this paper is to refute the predominating critiques of The Female American currently in circulation; that the text is not a proto-feminist subversion of the standard, masculine-oriented castaway novel. Rather, the novel itself operates precisely as a "re-marking" of (...) the masculist ideology of its time. By providing a detailed explication of the complex nature of Žižek's rendition of Hegel's concrete universality à la Lacan's formulae of sexuation, this paper presents the following argument: The Female American functions as a point de capiton, creating a new space into which the old elements of the universal ideology of its time get reinscribed; therefore weakening today's leading commentary on the matter that The Female American is a feminist text. (shrink)

The paper constitutes an exploration of the construction of academic identities through a retrospective autoethnographic narrative analysis. In what is an essentially experimental mode I set out to examine processes of identification, and in particular, the understanding of desire that lies at the heart of them, for, it can be argued without desire there is no identity. Therefore, I begin my analysis by following two lines of thought concerning desire. The first, drawing on the work of Lacan, conceives of desire (...) negatively as lack (Fink 1995; Lacan 2001). The second deriving from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (2004/1987, 2004/1972) constructs desire as abundance, a positive force. These two conceptualisations may, at first sight, appear to be opposed but is this necessarily the case? The question to be examined then is, to what extent can these two conceptualisations of desire – as lack and as abundance - be held to be incommensurable? And following this, can an unstable accommodation between desire as lack and desire as abundance be drawn on in theorising processes of identification and the subjectivities that these processes give rise to? If identification is always (already?) an inherently unstable process, located within a space, which I shall designate a narrative space, how does a mobilisation of desire which moves between lack and abundance enable a creative and experimental conceptualisation of processes of identification to emerge? (shrink)

Philosophy, Society and the Cunning of History in Eastern Europe charts the intellectual landscape of twentieth century East-Central Europe under the unifying theme of 'precariousness' as a mode of historical existence. Caught between empires, often marked by catastrophic historic events and grand political failures, the countries of East-Central Europe have for a long time developed a certain intellectual self-representation, a culture that not only helps them make some sense of such misfortunes, but also protects them somehow from a collapse into (...) nihilism. An interdisciplinary study of this sophisticated culture of survival and endurance has been long overdue. Not only is it charming and worth studying in its own right, but with the re-integration of the 'new Europe' into the 'old' one and the emergence on the 'Western' European intellectual scene of many authors from the 'East,' such a culture will also shape the European mind of the 21st century. This volume decodes and explores this culture of 'precariousness' from the complementary angles of philosophy, political theory, intellectual history and literary studies. Expert contributors look at a wide range of topics, from philosophical martyrdom to collective suffering to geographical fatalism, and explore the works of key authors in the field including Cioran, Kołakowski, Kertész, Bauman and Žižek. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. (shrink)

Lacanian thought has an interesting beam of effects in the realm of philosophy and political theory. The concern of the article is the Lacanian ability to develops a practice of thought that deals with the real and that not to yield to its own desire. The main themes that the paper take into analyse are the Lacanian critique of individualism and of classical political thought with particular concern for the relationships between Lacan and Descartes-Hegel-Heidegger, and between Lacan and modern politics.

Setting out from a debate between two contemporary Lacanians about the religious significance of psychoanalysis, this paper argues that what such analysis really has to offer to a discussion of religion is purloined by the current round of academic polemics about its "revival." This argument is built in three steps: in the first, I demonstrate that the "site" of a meeting of psychoanalysis and religion is the "fundamental fantasy," tracing that concept's history from its Freudian pre-history through Lacan and showing (...) it to coincide closely with both Freud's and Lacan's criticism of religion. In the second step, I show how the "fundamental fantasy" equally supports Johnston's militant anti-religiosity and Žižek's comparably militant argument for a revolutionary, transformed religion. "Following Atheism" traces the critical weaknesses of either position, noting how both lead to internal contradiction, to a failure to live up to the basic ethical claims of psychoanalysis. Based upon such a demonstration, the final step of the argument shows that, between them, these anti- and pro- religion polemics conspire to hide "in broad daylight" a single critical task for psychoanalytic theory today: they do so because what is emerging in our world defies description as either "anti-religion" or "religion." Turning to a deeper thread of Žižek's thought, "Following Atheism" asserts this basic transformation/replacement of fantasy underway in contemporary society. The paper closes with reflections on the nature of this revolution. (shrink)

From film theory to post-theory -- Sublime objects of cinema -- Class struggle in film studies -- Interlude: the pervert and the analyst -- Cinema, ideology, and form -- Enjoyment in the cinema -- Conclusion: theory as realism set in drive.

Among Marxists and Communists, Louis Althusser has long had a reputation for theoreticism and scientism, the factors most often cited to explain the eclipse of his work since the 1960’s. According to the standard account, the distinguishing characteristic and major flaw of his work is that it brings everything back to knowledge. In this essay, I interrogate this understanding of Althusser by reconsidering two cornerstones of Althusserian theory that seem most to exemplify his extreme privileging of epistemology: the symptom and (...) the interpellation theory of ideology. I argue not that taking them to work on the epistemological level is wrong but rather incomplete; there exists a not quite acknowledged beyond of knowledge and interpellation in Althusser, which takes the form of a traumaticnarrative of history, enjoyment, and desire. The production of knowledge in Althusser unfolds as a pathos-laden story, which on one level gestures toward the turbulent world history in which he developed his theory: primarily WW II and the post-war Stalinist revelations, along with the conflicts it provoked in the Communist Party, and the French Communist Party in particular. Although not the subject of extended analysis, these events haunt Althusser’s texts in the form of allusions and the surprisingly violent figurative language with which Althusser discusses theoretical labor. I contend that they call to be analyzed as a kind of return of the repressed, best approached through Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytically inflected theory of ideology. (shrink)