"Butcher those who insult the Buddha"

I wonder - does Zizek himself ever read these reports? This is, has he in a narcissistic mood ever entered his own name into Google - just to sneak a peek at what the big Other happens to be saying about him – clicked a random link, and arrived here? If so, after the technical calamity that befell him yesterday at Birkbeck, I offer him this advice: avoid complex machines. They do not seem to like you. Indeed – it seems almost as if they wish to revenge themselves upon you. Who knows - maybe they still are bitter about your evil book on their master, Deleuze?

Still, at least you remained insistent to the bitter end. The general concept on Tuesday was the Real, the general material was cinematic, and the major idea was the derealization effect that the cinema screen produces. Beginning with a critique of the recently released United 93, Zizek claimed that this film mystified the event of 9/11 by presenting it though the filter of a heroic act. “Don’t get me wrong,” Zizek patiently explained to a baffled empiricist in the audience who had burst out at him with the endearingly sweet, “But…United 93 is real...It really happened.”

“No, no, I am not saying,” Zizek responded, excitedly, “that it didn’t happen, I am saying that we are not there, we are in a movie theatre, and United 93 is showing this highly atypical incident, it really is not about 9/11 at all, it does not make us think about it, and so we do not ask the question, “Why did this happen?” Instead, what it does is provide us with point of identification so that heroism on screen redeems our own impotence as spectators, and then matter is closed.”

“What happened on United 93 was successful act of heroism - it was not tragedy, it was a success – the passengers really succeeded, they brought the plane down – I am not one of these crazy leftists who think, conspiracy, United States government brought it down, although…But no, what I mean is, what does this really tell us about 9/11? I mean – what it does it presents a revolt, against what was already revolt, I mean Islamic revolt against US-led global capitalism, so that we learn nothing about this primary revolt, it is just incomprehensible, and this is ok – except that because we have catharsis, we are not intrigued by this. Better film would have been a film about one of the other planes, one that hit its target, so that we get pure, pointless horror, and then this would have made us ask questions.”

His interlocutor thus silenced, Zizek moved on. The requisite technology now under control, he once again inserted his brand new Brief Encounter DVD (“I bought from Borders yesterday night, five pounds ninety-nine pence, I know, I know, I am anal character”) into the player.
“The scene I want to show you is this one at the beginning of the film – because, you know, story told in flashback – where lovers are parting at train station and friend of woman comes up, prattling woman. Oh, how I love this woman.”

“This woman is big Other, her role is to protect appearances. At first, she seems like intruder, as if she has spoiled poignant final moment, but no, if you watch closely, you notice that before she comes the conversation of lovers is beginning to turn nasty and point here is that if this woman had not come, then lovers would have confronted the real of their desire and lost tragic grandeur of affair, affair would have become just vulgar fling, because what is really happening in this scene is they are parting because they do not really love each other, neither really wants to commit, and so what this woman does, is save them from this. Okay, now I show you Mask.”

“There is this one idea that beneath our socially constructed personalities, we are all really on the inside these crazy loonies trying to escape – but what this film shows is the opposite, is that the craziness is already outside – it is only when Jim Carrey puts on mask that he becomes mad cartoon. The point here is that it is not that real is beneath the surface – no, it is on surface. This is Lacanian idea “extimacy” – the idea that it is external object that embodies for us innermost drives. Jim Carrey character says it nicely in this film, “When I put on mask, I lose all control, I can do anything I want.””

“So the idea here is that I can do what I want only when I lose control, when I am not in control. But most interesting scene is this one. [Zizek fiddles with control panel, “Sorry, sorry…”] Jim Carrey has robbed bank and now police have surrounded him but he escapes by doing this dance which is so infectious that it makes all the police dance as well. If you want to know what Lacan means by superego, this is it – this law of desire which makes us act against our will. So, for example, when you get idiotic song stuck in your head, you are ashamed of yourself, but you cannot prevent yourself from humming melody.”

“Now,” Zizek said, “I know what you are thinking. What does all of this have to do with Hegel?”

“First of all, I think we must reject the “lalangue” - or what Deleuze says is the rhizomatic model of the Real, this idea that everything seems simple at first, but really it is very complicated. No, the idea in Hegel is that the hardest thing is to see everything simply, that our problem is we complicate everything falsely.”

“Even Lacan gets this wrong sometimes - the worst seminar by Lacan is the one they have just published, La Sinthome, where he is seduced by Joyce. But we all know, true master is Beckett, because Joyce writes desire, but Beckett writes drive. You know, famous line [Note – this line has apparently become Zizek’s mantra] I can’t go on, I must go on, I’ll go on.”

“Drive is the name for this idea that there is minimal tension in reality itself, so – this is where Hegel, Marx, psychoanalysis are against Spinoza, Buddhism, who say reality is unified whole. In Buddhism, Nirvana, and the idea is that we are all now in Samsara, the wheel of life, but the goal is we get back to Nirvana by gaining self-knowledge, which is knowledge, like in psychoanalysis, that self itself is false. But problem in Buddhism is – why did we ever think that it was true? How did we leave Nirvana?”

“This is the major problem for Hegel in Logic, and his idea is that there must be some kind of primary imbalance in reality – so that in Nirvana there must be some kind of radical evil, or imbalance. The name for this imbalance in psychoanalysis is drive.”

“I will give you an example, and now you will see how this all connects with Hegel – with psychoanalysis we discover in regard to the figure of the father that it is not just that our own particular fathers who are failures, but instead the very idea of the father is already itself defined by a certain mode of failure; there is not some ideal father out there somewhere who succeeds, no – to be a father means already failure.”

“The Hegelian name for this idea is concrete universality – the idea is that the universal emerges as a result of a deadlock in the particular. For instance, Kieslowski – when Kieslowski first started, he had this idea that he wanted to make documentary films, truly authentic documentary films – real stories about real people, but he discovered that he could not film such stories without transforming them into vulgar clichés. So he started making fictional films – this is, in order to successfully make an authentic documentary.

Or another example, this is one of Hegel’s own examples, the Church and the State – at certain point in history the Church emerges from the State, the point here is that at this point, the Church had become “more State than State itself.”

“This is concrete universality fore Hegel – universality emerging out of a deadlock in particularity, emerging as the result a particularity being thwarted in its particular function…”

“Professor Zizek!”

Commotion, heads spin around.

“Professor Zizek! Professor Zizek! I would like to ask a question.”

Costas, the eternal conformist: “There can be questions at another time…” Zizek stops him short, “No, no – wait a minute, what is your question?”

“First of all, what you said…”

“I’m sorry, what I said about what?”

“About Buddhism – first of all, what you said you said from a Western-centric, Judeo-Christian perspective, and these categories don’t map, second of all you mentioned the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a book that you had read [He did, it is true] and this is not a central text of Buddhism…”

“I know this…”

“You have to read text x by author y, and text q by author p. Thirdly, the whole point about Nirvana is that it is not transcendental…”

“Okay, okay, listen – I will respond. First, don’t reproach me for things I openly admit – I openly admit that I am analyzing Buddhism from a Judeo-Christian, Western perspective. Second, you have caught yourself in your own trap, because when you say transcendental, for me it means something very specific, it is Kantian, it means transcendental as opposed to transcendent, and thirdly – okay, if I am so wrong about this, tell me now – what is the reason why false appearance?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean, why are we not all still in Nirvana, why are the way we are?”

“That question is totally out of place in Buddhism…”

“Yes! Yes! You see? This is the only answer I ever get!”