The man on Thursday

Strange revelations at Birkbeck on Thursday. First, Zizek confessed that, in his Yugoslavian Army days, he was known to his comrades by the colourful sobriquet "cuntlicker". Then, he informed us that while in London, he lives in the former home of Charles Dickens. A little later, and he related to us all his truly tragic relationship with his father (Pere Zizek: "Little Slavoj, I am tired, come here and talk nonsense to me, I do not care what you say." Zizek: "And this is why I am glad my father is dead.") Finally, and perhaps most shockingly of all, we learned the truly jawdropping fact that Alain "Art is...the production of an infinite subjective series, through the finite means of a material subtraction" Badiou "absolutely loves" the schlock Hollywood weepie The Bridges of Madison Country.

All this - and this not even to mention Zizek's amazing phonetic slips: "the disturbing surplus enjoyment of the other that in Lacanese we call 'nuissance'"; Shakespeare's unaccountably obscure comedy on the intimate relation between good and evil, "All's Hell that Ends Well."

These symptoms noted and neatly filed away for further interpretation, nonetheless it was a far calmer and more sober Zizek who took the podium yesterday - and one whom moreover had finally elected to forgo his screenic crutch. The titular topic for this session was the Hegelian "Cunning of reason" and Zizek began by briefly recapping his comedy of errors on Tuesday before moving inexorably on to the unscratchable itch that is the Buddhist question.

Death by a thousand Buddhist cuts

"This is the problem," Zizek said, "the Buddhist idea is that all sentient beings strive towards happiness. But with psychoanalysis we learn that this is not true - at least, not with respect to humans - because death drive and compulsion to repeat." If only the matter could have ended there, but sadly it did not - instead, like a rotting zombie corpse, against all odds it still continues to limp deathlessly forward into the future. At the end of the seminar, a volley of verbal attacks unleashed by the faithful in the audience provoked Zizek into the declaration that the first hour of the next session would be Buddhist hour. "Prepare your attacks," he taunted them.

I for one am praying that next week we will finally get the coup de grace, and see some Buddhist blood, because quite frankly this is getting really boring. Either the furious Buddhists, so desperate to prove a point, realize that the very fact of their fury and desperation proves nothing else quite so well as it proves that they are libidinally invested in their own supposedly anti-identitarian Buddhist identities. Or else, they elect to believe instead that, however stupid Zizek may or may not be - he is still nonetheless providing them with a new opportunity for enlightement, and this fact is to be celebrated.

In other words - either they surrender their cause or else they give up the object of contention - either way, logically speaking, they must withdraw. Whether or not they will do so is another matter entirely, and as Zizek spends his weekend sharpening his knives, he would be well advised to remember that the only way to destroy these creatures is to annihilate their brains.

Et tu, Ernesto?

"In the latest issue of Critical Inquiry - I don't know if it is out yet - there is about to be big controversy because my former friend Ernesto Laclau has written essay in it saying, "Zizek understands nothing" - which is good thing to learn."

"Laclau says in particular that I understand nothing of Lacanian Real, and this is surprising to me, because I thought that if I am known for anything, it is precisely for Lacanian Real."

Capitalism is Real!

"...my friend Alain Badiou with his latest book, Logic of Worlds - I admire his development very much and I think that he is on the right track. What he has noticed is that there is something between Being and the Event, and this thing is World, by which I mean just very simply symbolic universe."

"I always insist upon in conversation the fact that capitalism is real - in one of my books I have said capital is the concrete universal of our age. Bany of even my close friends, they want to back away from this, they say - no, it must be fictional. And this makes me think that I must be onto something with this."

"What I mean when I say that capitalism is real, is that it is first ever "worldless" - okay, I will say it, "civilization." It does not exist in a specific world, does not need to ground itself in a world - but rather can exist in every possible world."

"The conservative problem with respect to capitalism is meaning - how can we preserve meaning under capitalism? This problem goes right back to Edmund Burke, the point here is that capitalism is itself basically a meaningless phenomenon."

Lacan addresses the Catholics

"There is small book recently published in France - I do not think it has yet been translated into English - "Lacan addresses the Catholics." It is lecture Lacan delivered at Catholic university, and in it he is trying to distinguish between scientific and psychoanalytic concepts of the Real. Lacan says - difference is, scientific real is "savoir dans le réel,"- knowledge in the Real. So idea is that, for example, a stone "knows" about natural laws - gravity, thermodynamics, and so on - and this is why it behaves in certain ways."

"Now - first point is that, obviously, it is only with advent of modernity tht scientific real has been this. But second, and more interesting thing is - it is that Lacan in this book keep trying to define psychoanalytic real, but he keeps having to fall back on scientific metaphors to do it."

"I think - there are two main ways psychoanalysis intersects with science. First, quantum physics - the idea here is that at zero level of reality, there is this kind of cheating, where particles can "borrow" energy they do not really have so long as they give it back quickly enough. So, the analogy would be - you put yourself on strict diet, and the way you do it is you say to big Other figure, "Do not let me eat sweets," - but then secretly when big Other is not looking you think you are allowed to eat sweets, so long as big Other does not find out, somehow it does not count. So this is symbolic cheating - and idea of quantum phyics is that this structure is actually woven into reality itself."

"Second point is relativity, idea that space is curved - psychoanalytic idea is that space of desire is curved [I know - groan, but it does make sense] so that route to enjoyment is never straight line."

"Actually - there is third one as well, this is string theory - now, I am idiot, so I know nothing of this, only what clever people tell me, whether it is in or out at moment, I think it is ut, but it is funny, because in late Lacan, idea is developed of "sinthome" - which is basically Lacanian idea of minimal quanta of enjoyment, and way Lacan describes it, he says, "the sinthome oscillates like a string." [Interesting,ly only two days earlier Zizek was describing La Sinthome as "Undoubtedly, Lacan's worst seminar."]

"Hegel, Hegel, and only Hegel"

"It is very funny - early Lacan is unbelievably Hegelian - he basically says that role of analyst is to incarnate absolute knowledge, and it is possible to do something quite evil to him - if you look at the original 1953 version of The Function and Field of Speech in Psychoanalysis and then you compare to version later published in Ecrits you will notice small changes that are basically where Lacan has gone through dehegelianizing everything."

"When Lacan criticizes Hegel, it is almost always a caricature of Hegel. For instance, he argues that that Hegel does not realize that dialectic is never completely resolved, there is always excess. But I'm sorry - this is exactly what Hegel realized. There is this idea of Hegel as exclusively oral - the thinker who swallows everything with his system, even the world - but if you read Hegel you realize that the final moment for him is not swallowing, is not oral, but is rather the release of something - okay, I will be vulgar, it is shitting."

Cunning of (un)reason

Cunning is something other than trickery. The most open activity is the greatest cunning (the other must be taken in its truth). In other words, with his openness, a man exposes the other in himself, he makes him appear as he is in and for himself, and thereby does away with himself. Cunning is the great art of inducing others to be as they are in and for themselves, and to bring this out to the light of consciousness. Although others are in the right, they do not know how to defend it by means of speech. Muteness is bad, mean cunning. Consequently, a true master /Meister/ is at bottom only he who can provoke the other to transform himself through his act.

"Crucial point here is that cunning of reason is actually cunning of unreason - the fundametnal Hegelian wager is that "everything goes wrong." There is this very cynical aspect in Hegel, where strategy is basically, if you are fighting enemy, what you do is you surrender the field entirely to them, and do not resist them - you say, "Okay, have it your way - because I am certain you will screw it up."

"Point here is twofold - first, again because of curved space of desire, you never really know what you desire actually is, where it is actually leading. Second, what this means - it is that what you get, this must be your desire...because you have got it! This is the idea of Lacan maxim, "The letter always arrives at its destination" - which Derrida says against, "Aha! This proves Lacan is teleological" - but no, truth is opposite. The point is a letter always arrives at its destination, because wherever it does arrive, this has become its destination, this must have always been its destination. Again - the point here is that there is no repression without the return of the repressed."

"So point is, this very cynical point, that the proper dialectical reversal is really this shift in perspective where apparent failure, unintended consequence becomes success through retroactive rewriting of the criteria for success."

Le sujet suppositaire

"In psychoanalysis, at the beginning, there is the idea of "the subject supposed to," - so for instance, there is the subject supposed to know, who is basically Colombo, who arrives at crimescene at just instantly, magically, knows everything, and then there is subject supposed to believe, who in Western discourse is often figure of Islamic terrorist other, and then there is subject supposed to enjoy, which is logic superego."

"But something is missing here - and this is subject itself. Crucial point here is that passage to subject itself it not passage to "the subject supposed to be a subject" but instead is passage in which this "supposed to be" itself becomes subject."

"This is subject - this absent "x" that has to be supposed in order to account for structure of reality. But crucial point here is that it is not just that one supposes this in others, while one itself still remains real - no, point is that you yourself also has structure of supposition. This is why idea of double is so traumatic - this is idea that there is this other out there who is exactly identical to us in every way - this idea is so traumatic because it is basically true! Subject is precisely this uncanny other haunting us that really is us!"

The essence of the universal

"The first point about the Hegelian universal idea is that it always appear distorted, but in fact things are more radical than this: the real point is that the universal idea is itself precisely distortion."

"The logic of essence in Hegel is that essence equates to a crack in appearances - this is, essence inscribes itself into appearance precisely in the form of a crack, thi is the appearance of essence. In Lacan, there is example of two painters who have to paint a painting of a window. The first one paints his picture super-realistically, so reaslistic that birds fly into it. But the second one is more subtle - he paints a picture of curtains, with a slight gap between them, so that the other painter says: 'Well, come on, open the curtains, let us see your picture.'"

"This is the Hegelian logic of essence - this is, essence as precisely and only the appearance of essence."

The Man Who Was Thursday

We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's."

Syme struck his hands together.

"How true that is," he cried. "I have felt it from my boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed--say a wealthy uncle--he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors the in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else."

"There is a dimension that eludes Chesterton here - what he doesn't grasp is that universalized crime is law itself. He notices the fact that crime is essentially moal - but he fails to notice the flipside of this insight - namely, the fact that morality too is essentially criminal, the fact that morality asserts itself precisely as crime. The "universalized crime" which Chesteron here projects into philosophy and anarchism in fact is already here, in the existing moral moral order. The anarchists are already in power!"

"The Hegelian point here is that it is not law which is the concrete universal for the antimony between law and crime, but rather crime. Elsewhere, in his essay A Defence of Detective Stories Chesterton realizes this.

"...civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure, while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. /The police romance/ is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies."

"You Must Be Certain of the Devil"

"The basic idea of Christianity is that God, the actual God of the Beyond, dies on the cross and becomes Holy Ghost - this is, becomes virtual. It is not just God playing stupid games with himself - no, God really dies. The crucial point here is the notion of infinity changes into an infinitization of human finitude itself - so that in other words finitude itself becomes infinite."

Sub(lim)ation

A question from the floor: "What is the relation between the Hegelian sublation and psychoanalytic sublimation?"

"The idea of the sublime in Lacan is object elevated to the dignity of the thing. In Hegel, basic idea of sublation is that dialectical mediation ultimately fails, leaving behind/creating a remainder, and the sublime in Hegel essentially is this remainder."

"For example = in Lacanian logic of King, the idea is that the figure of the King emerges out of the deadlock in the state, in order to complete it - the idea is, in order to complete the logic of the state, what you need is this contingent idiot to serve as the mouthpiece for it."

"Another example is Christ - I don't know about you, but when I read Bible what I think is that, stuff Christ says, it is basically banal and obvious. The only point is that it this is Christ saying it! Christ is really this stupid loser - and Hegel actually says this, and this leads on to Kierkegaard - any of us could have been Christ. The only essentially thing, is that somebody needed to be."

[Nb - these reports are written from memory, and not from tape transcripts.]