Zizek and the Postpolitical.pdf

Psychoanalysis and the Post-Political:

An Interview with Slavoj Z+iz=ek

Christopher Hanlon

height—that is, at its worst. Lacan, so say his detractors, made a

career out of obscurantism, and may not even have believed very

much of what he said. Noam Chomsky once indicated such a hypothesis

when he explained that “my frank opinion is that [Lacan] was a

conscious charlatan, and he was simply playing games with the Paris

intellectual community to see how much absurdity he could produce

and still be taken seriously.” 1 Even Lacanians might ﬁnd it in their hearts

to forgive Chomsky such a remark, since it was Chomsky who, after

asking Lacan a question concerning thought (at the latter’s 1968

presentation at MIT), received the reply, “We think we think with our

brain; personally, I think with my feet. That’s the only way I come into

contact with anything solid. I do occasionally think with my forehead,

when I bang into something.” 2 As if to condense the aura of contrariness

and enigma he cultivated in such exchanges, Lacan often relayed his

teachings through now-infamous maxims and mathemes, those Zen

koans of the French postmodern era: “Desire is desire of the Other,”

“There is no sexual relation,” “The Woman does not exist.” 3 No wonder

Chomsky and many others turn their heads in exasperation.

The best counterpoint to suspicions such as Chomsky’s may well be

found in the work of Slavoj Z+iz=ek, whose frenetic endorsements of

Lacanian theory achieve a dense complexity even as they provide

moments of startling (and typically humorous) clarity. Take Z+iz=ek’s way

of explaining why even one of the most banal features of late twentieth-

century culture, the laugh-track of situation comedy, is itself an illustra-

tion of the Lacanian thesis that “desire is desire of the Other”:

. . . let us remind ourselves of a phenomenon quite usual in popular television

shows or serials: “canned laughter.” After some supposedly funny or witty

remark, you can hear the laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of

the show itself—here we have the exact opposite of the Chorus in classical

tragedy; it is here that we have to look for “living Antiquity.” That is to say, why

the laughter? The ﬁrst possible answer—that it serves to remind us when to

laugh—is interesting enough, since it implies the paradox that laughter is a

New Literary History , 2001, 32: 1–21

F OR MANY, Jacques Lacan represents postmodern theory at its

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

matter of duty and not of some spontaneous feeling; but this answer is not

sufﬁcient because we do not usually laugh. The only correct answer would be

that the Other—embodied in the television set—is relieving us even of our duty

to laugh—is laughing instead of us. So even if, tired from a hard day’s stupid

work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television set, we can

say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the Other, we had a really

good time. 4

Whimsical and yet theoretically earnest solutions to everyday conun-

drums such as this can have the effect of seducing even Z+iz=ek’s most

skeptical readers, but this is not to say that Z+iz=ek’s work hasn’t earned

him opponents. For many, Z+iz=ek’s Lacanian analyses of contemporary

culture cannot quite shed the burdens of classical psychoanalysis itself:

in an academy happily enamored of historicism and often disinclined

toward universalisms of any kind, Z+iz=ek’s mostly ahistorical, psychoana-

lytic defense of the Enlightenment draws criticism from various episte-

mological camps. One of the most persistent reproaches, for instance,

has been voiced by Judith Butler, who asks rhetorically, “Can Z+iz=ekian

psychoanalysis respond to the pressure to theorize the historical speciﬁc-

ity of trauma, to provide texture for the speciﬁc exclusions, annihila-

tions, and unthinkable losses that structure . . . social phenomena . . . ?” 5

Others have raised suspicions about the political implications of the

Z+iz=ekian subject: “[Z+iz=ek] views the modern individual as caught in the

dichotomy between his or her universal status as a member of civil

society, and the particularistic attachments of ethnicity, nation and

tradition, and this duality is reﬂected in his own ambiguous political

proﬁle— marxisant cultural critic on the international stage, member of

a neo-liberal and nationalistically inclined governing party back home.” 6

I recently met with Z+iz=ek in order to discuss such complaints, as well as

to elicit his opinions on the ongoing crises in the ex-Yugoslavia, Z+iz=ek’s

country of birth. The latter topic has become a heated subject for Z+iz=ek,

who ran a close campaign for the presidency of Slovenia in 1990, and

who views the resurgence of nationalism in the Balkan states as a

phenomenon that has gone completely misunderstood by the West.

Since the Bosnian conﬂict began near the outset of the last decade, ex-

Yugoslav politics have taken up more space in Z+iz=ek’s thinking, but still,

there is probably no dominant feature within the contemporary land-

scape he analyzes. For Z+iz=ek, one quickly realizes, life is essentially an

excuse to theorize; hence, his Lacanian commentary on the psychopa-

thology of everyday existence rarely ceases. As we packed into a crowded

elevator in New York’s St. Moritz hotel, for instance, the panel of control

buttons caught Z+iz=ek’s eye, provoking an excursus on the faulty logic

behind the hotel’s symbolic exclusion of the thirteenth ﬂoor. “You

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE POST-POLITICAL

cannot cheat God!” he proclaimed, drawing bewildered glances from

the people around us. “They shouldn’t call it the fourteenth ﬂoor—they

should just make the thirteenth ﬂoor an empty mezzanine, an ominous

lack in the midst of the others.” Somehow, the commentary slid

effortlessly, naturally, into the subject of voyeurism, and from there, to

the Lacanian distinction between the gaze and the look. Our later

conversation partook of a similar, free-associative pattern even as it

returned to a few fundamental concerns: the position of Lacanian

theory in today’s academy, Z+iz=ek’s friendly antagonism with Judith

Butler, Z+iz=ek’s own polemic against multicultural identity politics. And

talking with Z+iz=ek, one realizes that these issues are all of a piece with a

larger problem: What kinds of political ontology—what manner of social

perception, for that matter—does today’s theoretical constellation allow

or, more particularly, foreclose?

Christopher Hanlon: Your home city, Ljubljana, is home to a number of

prominent Lacanians today. Was there something particular about the Slovene—

then the Yugoslav—scene that made Lacan particularly crucial during the

1980s, when you were ﬁrst formulating your project?

Slavoj Z+iz=ek: I believe it was simply some incredible contingency. The

ﬁrst thing here is that, in the ex-Yugoslavia, the phenomenon is strictly

limited to Slovenia—there are practically no Lacanians in the other

Yugoslav republics. But I’m often asked this question: “Why there?” The

only thing I can say is that there were some marginal, not-sufﬁcient,

negative conditions. One was that the intellectual climate was very open;

or rather, the regime was open if you didn’t directly pursue political

opposition. There was intellectual freedom, borders were open, and so

on . . . . And the other thing was that Slovenia was, far from being

isolated from Europe, a kind of microcosm, in the sense that all of what

went on in the philosophical scene around the world, all main orienta-

tions, were fairly represented. This is to say, there was a clear Frankfurt

School or Critical Theory orientation, there was a Heideggerian orienta-

tion, there were analytical philosophers, and so on and so on . . . . But

within this constellation, I don’t have a precise theory, though it’s

something I’m often asked. Why there? One thing is that in other

areas—around Zagreb and Belgrade, in Croatia and Serbia—they have

much more substantial psychoanalytical traditions, and maybe this is

what prevented them from appropriating Lacan. In Slovenia, there was

no psychoanalytic tradition, so we were starting from a zero-point.

For me, the original spark came out of the conﬂuence of two

traditions: Frankfurt School marxism and, of course, Lacanian psycho-

analysis. When I was a young student in Slovenia, the intellectual scene

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

was divided between Heideggerians and the Frankfurt School. Under

Yugoslav Communism, that is, dialectical materialism was dead; it was no

longer the State philosophy. It was some kind of vague humanist

marxism, linked to the Frankfurt School. At least in Slovenia, the main

opposition was Heideggerrian: this is why my ﬁrst book was on Heidegger

and language. But what made me suspicious was this phenomenon, as it

seemed to me, by which both Heideggerians and the followers of the

Frankfurt School began to speak the same language. This precisely

aroused me.

CH: Though Slovene culture and politics play a pronounced role in your later

work—say, from The Metastases of Enjoyment onward—American popular

culture remains the central touchstone. Do you see America as more pathological,

more ripe for analysis?

SZ+: This is perhaps the result of my personal trauma, which was that

my relationship with Slovene art, especially with Slovene literature and

cinema, was extremely negative. In Slovenia we have a cult of literature,

especially poetry, as “the fundamental cornerstone of our society”; the

idea is that the Slovene poets effectively created the Slovene nation, so

there’s a false veneration of poetry. On top of it, most Slovene writers

now are, in no uncertain terms, right-wing nationalists, so I’m happily

not on speaking terms with them—it’s a kind of negative gesture of

pride for me to turn to American pop culture. Although, in the last few

years, I have been turning toward so-called “literary” or high culture; my

new book will deal with Shklovsky, Tchaikovsky, and so on.

CH: Another new book? Does Verso at all worry that you might ﬂood the

market?

SZ+: There have been some surprises here. For example, they were

worried about The Ticklish Subject . “After so many books, who will buy

such a thick book, 400 pages . . . .” But OK—I know that I am very close

to ﬂooding the market; the next thing will be that next month a short

book on David Lynch’s Lost Highway will come out by the University of

Washington Press, Seattle. Then it will be this other book, this big triple-

orgy, this dialogue, between Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and me. The

idea was that each of us should write an opening statement, maybe ﬁfty

pages, deﬁning his or her position toward the other two. Then two

rounds of questions and answers; it grew into a big book, about three

hundred printed pages. And it’s very interesting to me, because it isn’t a

polite debate; it’s nasty, nasty—it almost but I hope didn’t ruin our

personal relationships. We’re really pretty good friends, but it does get

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE POST-POLITICAL

nasty, with all these rude expressions, you know: “He’s totally missing the

point,” “He didn’t do his homework,” “Sounds like she’s decided to tone

it down a little bit,” and so on and so on.

CH: I want to ask about one common critique of your work, most recently

voiced by James Hurley, that centers on what we might call your “intrapsychic”

focus. 7 For you, of course, ideological coercion occurs at the libidinal level, at the

constitutive level of a subject who “is” a disjunction between the Symbolic and the

Real. But some commentators have expressed concern that this intrapsychic focus

has the effect of leaving us little to do by way of intervening upon speciﬁcally

institutional mechanisms of coercion. Do such objections concern you?

SZ+: No, because I think that such criticism misses the point of

Freudian subjectivity. I think that the very term “intrapsychic” is mislead-

ing; I think that, at least for Lacan, who emphasizes this again and again,

the proper dimension of the unconscious is not “deep inside.” The

proper dimension is outside, materialized in the state apparatuses. The

model of split subjectivity, as later echoed by Louis Althusser, is not that

there is something deep in me which is repressed; it’s not this internal

psychic conﬂict. What subverts my conscious attitudes are the implicit

ideological beliefs externalized, embodied in my activity. For instance,

I’m interested in this new fashion of Hollywood Holocaust comedy.

Have you noticed how, starting with Life Is Beautiful , we have a new

genre, repeated in Jakob the Liar , and so on? Apropos of this, I ask, “Why

do Holocaust tragedies fail?” For me, Speilberg is at his lowest during a

scene from Schindler’s List , when the concentration-camp commander

faces the Jewish girl and we have this internal monologue, where he is

split between his attraction to the girl and his racist tract: you know, “Are

you a rat? Are you a human being?” and so on. I think this split is false.

I take here quite literally Lacan’s dictum that psychoanalysis is not

psychology, that the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis is that when you

analyze phenomena like Nazis or Stalinism, it is totally wrong to think

that you will arrive at any pertinent result through so-called in-depth

proﬁles of ﬁgures like Stalin or Hitler. Here there is a lesson to be

learned from Hannah Arendt—though at a different level I disagree

with her—about the banality of evil. The banality of evil means for me

that the key is not, for example, the personality of Eichmann; there is a

gap separating the acts of Eichmann from Eichmann’s self-experience.

But what I would add is that this doesn’t mean that Eichmann was simply

innocent in the sense that he was possessed by some kind of brutally

objective logic. My idea is more and more that we are dealing with—to

reference my eternal idea about canned laughter—what I am tempted

to call a kind of canned hatred. In the same way that the TV set laughs

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: