The Last Temptation of Slavoj Zizek

Continuing the Tuesday session...

Frankenstein

"Many people have remarked upon parallels between Bible Book of Genesis and Mary Shelley Frankenstein - in both cases you have non-sexual creation of life, subsequent creation of bride, creation escaping control of creator, and so on. But there is contradiction here - between this reading, and "promethean" reading - as you know, subtitle of Frankenstein is "Modern Prometheus" - and here idea is of course rebellion against God."

"Now again, this relates back to Chesterton "Man Who Was Thursday" idea that God himself is supreme criminal, in rebellion against himself - and this is why it is always very ironic when Conservative Christians, say things like, "Oh, we must not play God, things will get out of control" - but this is exactly what happened with God himself!

"Now, writer of Frankenstein was Mary Shelley - of course, wife of Percy Shelley - and by the way, [deep breath] I have to say: I despise all these fake feminist readings of Frankenstein where critic says, idea of Frankenstein, it was written against Percy - because you know there is letter written by Mary Shelley after marrying Percy in which she describes Percy gaze and then same passage later is in Frankenstein, used as description for gaze of monster - tell me why, there is this idea, that in literary couples, man is always obscene extreme penetrating phallogocentric - you know, they should try rehabilitating Nietzsche's sister, if they dare - then I would respect them!"

"But anyway [Zizek regains his train of thought] - my point was - Percy is author of probably greatest political poem in English language, "Mask of Anarchy" - which he wrote after British government massacre - and with regard back to Chesterton point, that anarchists are already power, my point is that Percy already realized this. As he puts it:

O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.

And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.

For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
'Thou art God, and Law, and King."

Foucault in Tehran



"Just like Heidegger with Nazis, Foucault has been heavily criticized for supposed lapse, error in his thought, over his engagement with Iranian revolution. But again, my thought here is that - just like Heidegger - he did the right thing, only again, in wrong direction."

"In his Iran writings, key Foucauldian term is enthusiasm, which he takes from Kant writings on French Revolution, but turns around - original Kant idea was that political enthusiasm is property not of empirical event itself, but rather of sublme image of event - so that true French Revolution meant for him hopes aroused by French Revolution in gaze of observers."

"Now the problem with this would be that it is basically endless, we can play crazy games with it - it can work with French Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, Stalinism, Maoist Cultural Revolution - even Nazism! Which is why, incidentally, with regard to Latin America, where I think there might be something like this happening now with foreign leftists, I am tempted to turn around, and say, "Screw Chavez!""

"In any case, though - in his Iranian revolution writings, Foucault inverts Kant, he says that enthusiasm is totally contained within empirical situation, it has nothing to do with sublime image, is even opposed to this, to cold gaze of observers who Foucault claims cannot understand it at all, he says, "the man in revolt is ultimately inexplicable.""

"This is first Foucault position on Iranian revolution - that it is something totally new, and that this is something that outsiders cannot grasp."

"But Foucault then a little later withdraws from this position - effectively, what he does is to transpose the split between outside sublime image and immanent empirical scene into revolting subjects themselves: the distinction Foucault draws here is between revolt and revolution, in which former is pure event, and latter is moment of cynical reinscription of event back into realpolitik - he says things now like Iranian mullahs themselves did not really grasp the pure event."

"But this is not all - Foucault then goes to third position, where he withdraws even further. Now he claims that the enthusiasm driving the pure event in the first place was driven by reactionary factor - anti-feminism, chauvinism, xenophobic nationalism, anti-semitism, and so on - with his conclusion here basically that you need all of this historical shit in order to sustain enthusiasm, it is ultimately necessary."

"So you the see the logic here - three withdrawals. First, Foucault claims is event is absolutely new, and that whatever reactionary aspect it might seem to have belongs entirely to outside subjective perceptions. Then he says, in fact, split between new aspect and reactionary aspect inherent in event itself, but that the pure event comes first. Then, he withdraws even further, and says that actually it was reactionary aspect that came first, which generated event in the first place."

"So you see the point here - and it is charge very often levelled against Badiou, but unfairly in his case, that criteria of Badiou mean that Nazism is event - this is actually not true of Badiou, but it is, I think true of Foucault - what Foucault theorizes with Iranian Revolution applies exactly to Nazism!"

Capitalism, and the Indestructibility thereof

"I was debate in New York recently with Simon Critchley, and it was good, productive debate - no irony intended here - and question came up, "Do you believe that Capitalism is indestructible?" And Critchley answered that yes, ultimately he did."

"Now - point here is not, "Oh, Critchley is traitor!" - though after revolution, of course, we will have to have him shot - but rather that there is this aspect to capitalism, that it does present itself as indestructible - because it is basically undead - and this, of course, was Marx's point when he compared capital to a a vampire, and so on."

"Marx thought that capitalism was essentially liberating, dynamic force, but only that it met limit with capital itself which made it turn backwards on itself, and so theory was, we abolish capital, and then we would just get pure dynamic."

"The irony of this is that this basically what happened, though in an inverted way, with really existing socialism - in effect, it acted during cold war as limit to pure unconstrained capitalism, but then was eventually destroyed by globalizing world economy, which it could not match in terms of production."

Repeating Thatcher

"In Britain, Tony Blair has repeated Thatcher in the same way that Augustus repeated Caesar - by elevating what was with her just pure contingency and pragmatic decisions, into concept of Thatcherism.

"The lesson of this is that, to be a proper capitalist in the West today - as opposed to just a contingent capitalist who really only supports particular capitalist interests, old aristocratic establishment and so on - one has to be a third way social democrat, like Blair in the UK, or like Clinton was in USA. Similarly, in China rapid capitalist expansion demands authoritarian state - if the CCP was to fall, China would collapse. Tiananmen Square basically was a blessing for global capitalism."

"My own view is that as leftists, we need to appreciate Blair and Clinton for what they are, what they have done - in essence, what they represent the best that the existing system has to offer."

The Dictatorship of the Proleteriat

"When I say dicatorship of the proleteriat, what I mean is basically non-representative functioning of poltics, the aspect of state power that is irreducibly dictatorial, the unconditional premise that frames all political discourse. For example, in talking about the role of state, the underlying question is, "what is the state?" And actually, I think this is one of the things that is very positive about Chavez in Venezuela, the fact that this has been made very conscious."

"On the level of dictatorship, it is not just a question of shifting particular positions, but more radically one of competing universal visions - not just the struggle within the frame, but the struggle for the frame itself. What I mean by proleteriat is basically what people like Badiou and Ranciere are talking about in France - the non-represented, excluded part that precisely because it is excluded, stands for universality as such..."

"Professor Zizek," a woman abrasively calls out from the audience, "Will you be answering questions?"

Another voice, somewhere: "That's a meta-question!"

Zizek: "Well, it sounds like you have one, so you may as well ask it..."

The woman winds up and plunges into her mad polemic:

"You are wrong about Israel, you are wrong about everything, all you do is criticize, you are the very embodiment of everything you criticize, you have no positive program, you are the very embodiment of everything you criticize!"

Zizek: "Now, wait a minute - I do not accept this idea that one cannot criticize without adding at the end some nice little light-at-the-end-of-tunnel happy ending. Furthermore," Zizek spies the opening for his trademark sucker-punch, "Have you not now caught yourself in your own trap, because you are not advancing positive vision either, you are just criticizing my lack..."

"Yes, but I'm not the one on stage!"

"What?"

"I'm not the one on stage."

"Well, yes, okay - this is true, but nonetheless I do not think my duty as a philosopher is to give you program, but rather to try and show you where the problem is."

Stalinism with a Latino Twist

Tuesday at Birkbeck, and once again the great man is introduced by his Colombian cameraman, who proceeds to reiterate the details of the forthcoming interrogation session, “The questions will be organized,” he begins, and it seems he means to go on, but he is too late – Zizek has spotted comic potential, and has already moved in to exploit. “They will be organized! Questions distributed through audience, tell us about your latest book here, applause for five minutes there! Stalinism with Latino twist!”

“Ho, ho, ho,” the cameraman responds.

The Antimonies of Reason

“Last time I ended on bombastic note, dictatorship of proletariat, this time I want to take step back, to Kant – idea of antimonies of reason.”

“Antimonies of reason is basically idea that contradictions emerge when reason extends beyond limits of concrete sensibility into realm of abstraction – because, for instance, there is God, there is no God, it is possible to argue both sides equally rationally, but each side is mutually exclusive.”

“Kant says that where contradiction cannot be resolved, what results is – and this is lovely phrase, ‘euthanasia of pure reason.’”

Butcher Those Who Insult Voltaire

“Danish cartoon controversy is good example of this, because here again you see possibility of argument on both sides of question. For instance, on one hand you have standard Western liberal argument that free expression is absolute value of European culture and so idea is – okay, cartoons were offensive, but this doesn’t justify threats of murder and so – and so, you know, basically boring idea from Voltaire, I detest what you are saying but nonetheless I defend to the death your right to say it, whatever.”

“There is this, also as well extreme Western guilt reaction, for example – and this is something that really makes me ashamed to be a Slovene, in Slovenia we had President apologizing to Islam on behalf of Western civilization. The other interesting thing about this is how quickly it is absorbed back into logic of capitalism – after Muslim protests, you know you had Western companies like Nestle and Carrefour advertising themselves in Islamic countries with anti-Denmark propaganda, saying things like they boycott Danish cows in solidarity, and so on.”

“Then again, you have point from other angle, where argument is that carnivalesque mockery of divinity is important aspect of European religion – for example, crucifixion re-enactions where you have Christ on back of donkey, and so on – so idea here is that Muslim reaction betrays failure to understand Europe, fundamental hostility to European traditions.”

“But then again – the fact is that the Danish newspaper which published cartoons had in fact rejected Christ cartoons, and also that before violent protests, Danish Muslims had tried to go through peaceful channels, but has basically been ignored.”

The Shoah and its Double

“In any case, the problem with the free-speech-is-fundamental-principle-of-West argument is that ultimately it is false – key counter-example here is holocaust, which is basically sacred untouchable of European identity.”

“This was proven recently by case of David Irving, who is in jail now in Austria for article he wrote fifteen years ago, a scholarly article - that okay, I know was really ridiculous travesty of scholarship, but nonetheless it was scholarly form, and form is important. But anyway, point here is that idea that West is committed to free speech, questioning everything – this is not really true.”

“And actually, speaking of question of form, there is other aspect here as well, Leftist idea that Muslim protests were not really about cartoons, but rather really about humiliation – well, okay, maybe this is true in some sense, but nonetheless, fact is that Muslim protests took this form, this is how they were expressed. I mean, we could play crazy games here – like Nazi anti-Semitism wasn’t really about Jews, and you know, it wasn’t – here I am old fashioned vulgar Marxist – but this changes nothing, explains nothing.”

Islam and the Holocaust

“One of the reactions to Danish cartoons in some newspapers in Islamic world was printing of Holocaust cartoons - Anne Frank in bed with Hitler, and so on.’

“Now, I see their logic here – idea is to turn the tables, expose hypocrisy: “So the West says it supports fundamental principle of free speech, okay – so do they support this?” Nonetheless, though, I think this move was basically self-defeating. Problem was, it ultimately just ended up repeating the original offence it was designed to be response to.”

“In any case, I think it is interesting – there is definitely a borrowed kettle logic to Muslim world presentations of Holocaust – you get everything from, Holocaust never happened, Holocaust happened but has been blown out of proportion, Holocaust happened but the Jews deserved…and the point here is obvious, it is Muslim desire for Holocaust to have never happened.”

Israel

“The central point here is of course Israel – Ahmadinejad gave speech in Mecca a few months ago on Israel, and it was interesting I think because it was basically this mixture of pure obscenity Holocaust denial – he said, for example, that “No innocent Jews died in Holocaust,” – and this is very ambiguous statement of course, because it leaves open reading that Jews died, but they were not innocent – and actually correct analysis, when he said for example that foundation of state of Israel was based on hypocritical European guilt – this is obviously in part true.”

“The major idea here was, after World War Two, why did Europe not beg Jews to come back? Say you know, please return, we will give you free lunch vouchers and so on – and maybe have Jewish state somewhere in Bavaria, why not? I am serious! I think it would have been good idea!”

“The deep irony here is that state of Israel is actually objective realization of initial Nazi plan, which you know was just to get rid of Jews from Germany, not yet final solution – in 1938 Eichmann actually travelled to Jerusalem and met with Zionists in order to try and negotiate emigration of Jews to Palestine.”

“Finally, I think it is important to state here as well, that instrumental use of Holocaust cuts both way – when pro-Israel campaigners mobilize it in support of Israel, it is very revealing, because it is basically like saying that crimes of Israel are such that they cannot be justified any other way except with reference to absolute trump card of Holocaust.”

What is to be done?

“My friend Alain Badiou has been in trouble in France lately over book he recently published to do with Israel, in which he claims that Israel is strange mixture of colonialism and revolutionary utopianism, and so for this reason that what it should do is become the most universalist state of all.”

“Now – I think Badiou makes interesting point with this, but nonetheless I see problem here, which is – can these two different aspects of Israel really be separated? Are they not really in a certain sense identical? It is a little like the joke where anti-alcohol campaigner asks politician, “What is your position on prohibiting wine?” And politician responds, “Well, if you mean the addictive substance that destroys families, leads to drunkenness and public disorder, violence and road accidents, then of course I favour prohibition, but if you mean the fine civilized drink that it is very pleasant to share with friends over a meal, then I am against.” And of course you see problem here - it is the same wine in both cases!”

“But question here still remains - what can be done? My idea, I think one possible way forward, would be something like Ed Norton gesture in Fight Club, you know where he is called into office of boss to be reprimanded, and he beats himself up, thus turning his alienated victim identity into triumphant affirmation of possibility. I think this what both Israel and Arabs should do in Middle East. For Arabs, it is the very focus on Israel, which is reason why they are losing in Middle East, and for Israel – and actually now USA as well after September 11 – it is only status of victim that justifies expansionist policies. Israel needs to be made to accept that it is not victim, but regional superpower.”

[Nb – Zizek also alluded here to an interview that Badiou allegedly did with Ha’aretz, but I have been unable to find any trace of it.]

Against the Populist Temptation

“My argument against populism is basically three-fold. First of all, I think it is true, the way that modern post-politics, in which state is managed by technocratic elite, actually works, is only with reference to populist supplement. You see this in Italy with Berlusconi, who is ultimate post-political figure – his “Forza Italia” party, and also I think in United States where Neo-Conservatives are basically alliance between corporate power and populist Christian right.”

“My second problem is that I think populism always involves mystification – in essence it is reduction of complex socio-political situation to a simple figure of concrete enemy, which I think is ultimately an impotent manoeuvre. It is like old joke, it is night and man is scrabbling around under a streetlamp, stranger come up to him, and says, “What are you doing?” Man says, “I am looking for my keys.” Stranger says, “Did you lose them here?” And man says, “No, somewhere over there, but the light is better here.””

“My third problem is that, despite how it first appears, populism is essentially a middle-class phenomenon, with central mobilizing ideology always basically a middle-class ideology, “We just want to live and work and in peace, but we are being threatened/prevented by something.” The radical point here is that this is actually anti-political vision, not political at all.”

‘Deadlock in attempt to formulate theory of progressive populism I think is demonstrated very clearly by work of George Lakoff, whose basic claim is that the reason why the Left is losing in America is that it is too high-minded, and that what needs to do accept Rightist terms of debate, at level of seduction, propaganda and so on.”

“Lakoff idea is that Rightists have managed to boil down their ideology to a series of simple slogans – free markets, smaller government, family values strong military, lower taxes, and so on – and that Left needs to respond with simple slogans of its own, and in his book “Don’t think of an Elephant” he suggests some: stronger America, broad prosperity, better future, effective government, mutual responsibility.”

“The problem here though, is that these slogans are basically meaningless. I mean, think about it – stronger America: who wants weaker America? Broad prosperity? Who would admit to wanting narrower prosperity? Effective government? Who wants ineffective government? Better future – who wants a worse future? I mean, Rightist slogans, okay I know they are not really true, for instance I know you do not really have free market in America, but nonetheless these slogans stand for something, whereas what Lakoff suggests here ultimately are just empty formalisms – and this guy is supposed to be an expert in political rhetoric!”

The Second Coming

“The fundamental problem here I think lies already in the basic analysis of the political situation – Leftist liberals have this idea that it something like Yeats poem, “Second Coming” – you know, “The best lack all conviction,” – this is liberals, “and the worst of full of passionate intensity,” – this is, fundamentalist conservatives: my view is that the real truth is actually closer to opposite of this.”

“Modern fundamentalism is often thought to represent signifier of radical belief, but actually I think this is not the case, that modern fundamentalism in fact is symptom of envy and resentment. If you meet authentic fundamentalists, like Amish, or some Buddhists for example, you notice that they look on craziness of non-believers with kind of ironic amusement - not crazy hatred, like inauthentic fundamentalists. Authentic fundamentalists know they have the truth, what do they care about what the other thinks!”

Two Political Traps

“In politics generally, I think there are two major traps that need to be avoided.”



“First, trap of melodramatic sacrifice - for example, there is film [I forget which one he mentioned] about fighter pilot who is shot down during war, and temporarily blinded, and he is nursed back to health by peasant woman and falls in love with her, but then he recover sight, and he notices that nurse is – how should I put this in politically correct way, “attractively challenged” – but and so what he does is he deliberately blinds himself permanently by staring at sun, so as to preserve her inner beauty.”

“Now, if you translate this idea into politics, what you tend to get is ultimate racism, cultural relativism, where you idealize figure of other and conveniently ignore the barbaric things that they actually do – for instance, clitorectemy in Africa was which was big deal a while ago – idea here would be, “Oh, it is just part of their tradition, who are we to judge, cultural imperialism,” and so on.”

“Second trap is one you see in Michael Powell film, “Death of the Night”, which is film about ventriloquist dummy that goes crazy, and takes over ventriloquist – the idea here is identification with symptom. Other example here would be “Eichmann in Jerusalem” where Hannah Arendt discusses this with reference to Nazi ethical inversion where you have SS guys, and you know, they are still human, they know they are doing horrible things, but what they do, is they invert it, so it turns from, “What horrible things I am doing,” to “What horrible things I am having to do for the cause.” The key point here is that with this, duty changes sides, and become duty to not let down cause, from duty to stop doing terrible things.”

[Part two (Frankenstein, Foucault in Tehran, The Trangressive Model, Repeating Thatcher, The Dictatorship of the Proleteriat) to follow tomorrow, and then the final Zizek shortly after]

"in which the cold pastoral freezing into a tableau is experienced as a release from identity..."

Stunningly beautiful review of Tiny Colour Movies from k-punk, as coolly poetic as anything that Benjamin ever wrote.

"This Film Is Based On Actual Events": Andrew Nicoll's Lord of War

When Andrew Nicoll began pre-production on his 2005 film Lord of War, his first instinct was to look for Hollywood funding, but he quickly found out that no US studio was prepared to back him. This is telling, because - rare amongst commercial movies that try to play politics - Lord of War is a film that is substantially and authentically true.

Narrated by, and telling the story of Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) - an American-Ukrainian arms dealer, it opens on a shot of Orlov himself, perfectly dressed, briefcase in hand, stolling casually over a sea of empty bullet casings in some generic West African warzone. Turning towards the camera, in the manner of Brechtian theatre, Orlov says calmly, "There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other eleven?"

A chilling statement? Except that this is how a businessman thinks - and the genius of Lord of War lies in the fact that it realizes that an arms dealer is really nothing more than a businessman - just another link in a productive process that begins in a factory, and ends embedded in a brain: such is the logic of capitalism.


One narrative strand in Lord of War is concerned with the attempt of Interpol agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke) to apprehend Orlov. The Hollywood ending here is obvious - Lord of War unequivocably refuses it. Near the end - having been betrayed by his wife - Orlov has finally been arrested. Valentine taunts him, "You are going to spend the next ten years of your life walking between a jail cell and a court room - and this is before you even start serving your time." Orlov coolly responds, "I am sorry to disappoint you, but I will not serve a single day in jail. This is what is going to happen next. In a few moments, you will hear on the door. Outside will be someone who outranks you. He will commend you on your fine work, and then he will tell you to release me. The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."

Is there a better illustration of the fact that the anarchists are already in power? And this is not even all - the really crucial point here regards the humanist trap.

In the middle of Lord of War, Valentine pays a visit Orlov's wife, Ava Fontaine. He tells her what her husband does to fund their luxurious lifestyle - knowledge she had managed to maintain a tenacious ignorance towards up until this point. She suffers a crisis of conscience and confronts her husband, I feel like all I've done my whole life is be pretty. I mean, all I've done is be born! I'm a failed actress, a failed artist... I'm not much good as a mother. Come to think of it, I'm not even that pretty anymore. I have failed at everything, Yuri - but I won't fail as a human being. Why don't you just stop? We have enough."

Orlov whispers back, "Because I'm good at it."

This is the essence of the matter - not greed, not pathology, but only just simple and indifferent technical ability. By refusing to bury itself under trite sentimentality, Lord of War succeeds in demonstrating this point concisely. We are given to understand - Orlov is not really an evil man. But rather just an absolutely alienated one. "I leave my work at the office," he says to his brother at one stage - and this of course was Marx's point with regards to the division of labour. As the latter puts it in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, "The object produced by labor, its product, now stands opposed to it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer. . . .The more the worker expends himself in work the more powerful becomes the world of objects which he creates in face of himself, the poorer he becomes in his inner life, and the less he belongs to himself."

Such is the character of Orlov - effectively, a cipher, lacking substance entirely - and this fact sheds light on the major theoretical lesson that can be learned from this film: namely the lesson that moralistic leftism is ultimately impotent and futile.

The ultimate failure of the character of Jack Valentine - the Interpol agent who expressly understands Orlov as an evil man - exemplifies this point. Valentine evinces the following underlying logic: Orlov is an evil man, therefore I, Valentine, am a good man, and the crucial point here is that - as Nietzsche in the Genealogy of Morals already knew - this logic finally is self-defeating. Not merely because it gets in the way of Valentine's pragmatic efficiency - at several points in Lord of War Valentine could easily get rid of Orlov if he was only a little more ruthless. But more fundamentally, because it drives him to pursue in the first place a basically illogical strategy - namely, to hold Orlov personally accountable for a situation that he certainly exploits, but ultimately did not create.

The deeper point underlying this is the fact that in the end, Valentine does not really want to detroy either Orlov or the system that created him - because Valentine is ultimately complicit in this system. Orlov is evil, therefore he is good - but if Orlov did not exist, then he would be nothing.

In this way, Valentine is essentially a beautiful soul - someone who does not want to get their hands dirty, someone does not really want to do good - indeed, someone who really does not want to do anything at all - but instead wants only to be good, to be something. Let the world disappear, but let me remain. In the famous third part of the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche extensively criticized this attitude, defining it as life against life, as ascetic ideal. His point here was not moralistic, but rather strategic - his insight consisted of recognizing for what it was the lack that lay at the heart of it.

This point noted though, the deeper problem still remains to be answered - what could Valentine have done? Even if he had killed Orlov (he had numerous opportunities) would this really have made any difference? The real problem is a social problem, it concerns the mode of production. The market dictates in this world, and another arms dealer would have picked up where he left off.

There is something to this point, but ultimately it is insufficient - especially since Lord of War ultimately does present an authentic model for the ethical act. Specifically, the act undertaken by Orlov's brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) near the end of the film. Having accompanied his brother (and his erstwhile partner, before he succumbed to cocaine addiction) to West Africa to negotiate a transaction with Sierra Leone rebels, Vitaly sees them murder a woman and child in the refugee camp that we had previously thought they were only guarding, but now realize they are preparing to wipe out. He remonstrates his brother to stop the deal, his brother refuses, "It is not our fight. We don't take sides." Vitaly appears to acquiesce, but coverty takes a grenade, and manages to destroy half of their shipment before he is killed.

In a certain sense, this act might be thought to represent a failure - after Vitaly dies, Orlov completes the deal, and the massacre goes ahead as predicted. Nonetheless - in another way, by it, Vitaly unmistakably did succeed - at least in redeeming himself.

The Horror

On flaming wings, Costas returns with an announcement: the location and time for the public interrogation of Zizek session, as promised earlier by the man himself: Wednesday 2pm, 43 Gordon Square, Room B04. "Gordon Square, I like Gordon Square," interjects Zizek, "I feel little bit like General Gordon. I go to Gordon Square, I will die there - by Buddhist army!"

The topic on Thursday was politics, and Zizek began by identifying his strategic enemy, "The idea in philosophy - which you see in work of figures as diverse as Adorno, Derrida, Karl Popper - that totality is totalitarianism. I categorically reject this, I think this absolutely wrong."

"If you look at great dictators - Hitler, Stalin - you notice, these people were not theoretical at all! They were ruthlessly empirical. Hitler big idea was just that history meaningless battleground, and that you are doomed to failure anyway, so only thing that counts is heroic will. Stalin, meanwhile - he was essence of pragmatic use of power, he never was interested in theoretical totality!"

"My big enemy here today is going to postmodern politics - all about contingency, difference, democracy, blahblahblah. My view is that we need the exact opposite of this - necessity, identity, universality - and true revolutionary politics has always been about these things! If you look at French Revolution, it was Jacobins who were saying that there are these absolute values, universal human rights - and conservatives who were the ones saying contingency, difference."

Marx was betrayed...

"The idea that Marx, Marx vision, was betrayed by USSR - in general there are two conservative responses to this. First one is, Hegelian response - well, if Marx was betrayed, this is problem with Marx, error in concept - this guy aimed at totality, and missed, you cannot turn around and say now, totality was wrong. Second response is even more difficult to deal with it is - yes, Marx was betrayed, thank god! Because if he hadn't been, it would have been even worse!"

"In both cases here, major point is late Heideggerean idea - that to grasp ontological, one must err onticly," Zizek giggles insanely, "That one cannot both have ontological cake and eat it. Now, I have big problem with this idea, because it basically is wisdom position, with consequence that what we must do is, we must steer between extremes, we must choose right measure.

"The problem here, is that this idea is basically empty formalism - as every idiot knows, the entire question of politics is the question of deciding upon the definition of the right measure - there is not some eternal standard. Let me give you horrible example, just to demonstrate weakness of this doctrine - imagine we are in Germany in early thirties, and you are saying, we have Hitler, and he is saying all these things about Jews, and I turn around and say, "But wait a minute - all these things are true! I mean, it is true that, I don't know, eighty percent of lawyers in Berlin are Jews, and sixty percent of journalists, and seventy percent of doctors, and so what we need, is maybe not Hitler - too extreme, but, you know - we need right measure." I mean, it is disgusting!"

"So you get the point - wisdom doctrine is basically meaningless. And incidentally, this is what I really like about Christianity, because I think - okay, I am going to say something horrible now - I think it is only really mad religion, other religions I think smuggle in wisdom doctrine at last minute."

Is there a politics of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis?

"If we say, we can dismiss crazy conservative Lacanians in France who say things like gay marriage is very bad because what we need is strong symbolic authority in society, strong Name-of-the-Father, I think there are two main strands of political Lacanianism. First is Laclau, Mouffe theory of radical democracy. Idea here is that the fact that big Other does not exist implies democracy as means to traverse fundamental fantasy of organic whole society, for the reason that democracy is only political system to accept constitutive antagonism. So barred subject is here signifier of democracy."

"I myself in early works - my god, I am such meglomaniac - develop this theory, but I no longer buy it."

"Second strand is one which casts Lacan in role of gadfly provocateur. This is position adopted by Miller in his latest book, which is also book in which he adopts centre-right position, so I even prefer first strand to this one. But the idea here is that politics is the domain of imaginary identifications, ontologically based on blindness, misrecognition, with ultimate stance here being that of analyst who incarnates blindness, misrecognition."

"According to this theory, the idea is that radical thinkers should be tolerated within their own domains as negative thinkers, but should not be taken seriously as advocators of positive programs. The most intelligent work on this is Wendy Brown."

Homeopathic Democracy

"Wendy Brown reads fragmentation of politics into identity-politics as symptom of collapse of mainstream liberal democratic discourse. Her argument is that democracy is empty in-itself, and that it functions by defining itself ngeatively against anti-democratic content, that it finds in theory, philosophy, theology, etc."

"This is basically homeopathic theory of democracy, where demoracy survives by conditioning itself against extimate anti-democracy. Brown says, democracy exists in tension between political necessity to fix meaning, and theoretical permanent deconstruction - so basically theory is destructive, and role of politics is to naturalize codes."

"Now - when I am in power, you will get twenty years in gulag for this thinking, with no hope of parole. Actually, now I think of it, fuck it, we should do it now! You know Moscow trials? We should organize London trials of intellectuals..."

Tarrying with the Brown

"By the way - I have a lot of respect for Wendy Brown, for what she did, which is I think she has dared to expose underlying presupposition of postmodern theory - idea that theory is basically just there to rejuvenate existing structures."

"But I think there are huge problems with this. Brown says theory is basically just negative anti-politics - but what if it does not want to stay this way? I give you example of Nietzsche and Hitler - okay, I know this was vulgarization, but nonetheless - Nazi party really did legitimize themselves with his philosophy! I will say something horrible - this figure of rejuvenating provocateur, what if this was exactly Hitler? And you know what, in a certain way: this was what he was! After all, it was only after war that for the first time ever in history liberal state power accepted role of universal provider of welfare! I am not going to turn into liberal now, but this is real achievment!"

[Intervention from floor - "The umma after death of Mohammed also accepted welfare role!" Zizek concedes as far as: "They got the next closest." Glance into archives of Islam follows: hidden feminist lineage, Hagar single mother, woman big Other, problem of umma is how to build non-patriarchal society, Pauline community of believers, as my friend Fred Jameson has demonstrated, Augustine was first Social Democrat Revisionist inner-life Menshevik scum, etc.]

"But to return - problems with Brown. Brown locates the anti-democratic impulse in philosophy, but what about all the very real anti-democratic insitutions at the heart of democracy. Brown doesn't mention them - but she is Foucauldian! Was this not Foucault's entire point? Or as T.S. Eliot, intelligent conservative, says in one of his letters - to have functioning democracy, you need strong aristocratic elite to keep crowd under control. There is always this aspect - state power is excess, with superego between lines, "Yes, yes, yes, do whatever you want, we don't mind, yeahyeahyeah, FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!!"

"Brown gets it wrong way around - the sliding of meaning is not in philosophy at all. The whole history of political philosophy is an attempt to fix meaning! From Plato to Marx! And Brown domesticates Nietzsche, turns him into pet inherent transgressor, basically unserious - this is exactly how the establishment likes its subversives!"

Heidegger and the Nazis

"There has always been big controversy about Heidegger Nazi engagement - but I agree with Fred Jameson: it was the only sympathetic thing he ever did."

"What I want to take from Heidegger is this - idea about necessity of terror. Heidegger said this was new beginning for philosophy - wonder was original beginning, terror new beginning. Heidegger idea was that terror must be instilled into dasein again. "

"The crucial point here - Hegel and Marx were saying exactly the same thing! Hegel in dialectic of Lord and Bondsman from Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel - in his radical negativity, Bondsman experiences freedom, and this was how Marx defined proleterian experience also. It is actually - this is what Christ really does for us. Because you know if you are scared of something, if you have true friend, what friend does is say, "Ok, I will do it for you - and then you will see that there is nothing to be scared of, and even that you can do it too."

"Okay - now, you thought I could not sink any lower. But I can - Ayn Rand! Moment at end of Fountainhead when Howard Roark is about to speak at his trial, and there is passage. Rand says, "Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own minds. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd--and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval?-- does it matter?-- am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free-- free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room. It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak."

"Okay, I know, Rand is crazy - but I think this passage is true."

Between Fear and Terror

"The dominant mode of biopolitics today is fear - idea is that social body is always under threat from immigrants, godless perversion, and bipolitics aims to protect us from these threats, save our identities, protect us - which it does at the price of permanent universalized fear."

"What is at heart of this fear? Marx claim in nineteenth century was, it is the abyssal horror of created by capitalism - everything sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air. If anything, this horror is even more extreme today. Today we are dealing with technologies of biogenetic intervention, this is end of nature pure and simple. It is now possible for science to generate new natures, new forms of life."

"This is the real horror, I think - this is the terror. Heidegger talks about difference between earth and world - it is difference between the unbearable heaviness and the unbearable lightness of being. In cyberspace terms - difference between hardware and software, and the point is - never before in history has the tension been so great!"

"Common ecological fear is that somehow earth will snap back, will catch up, and there will be environmental catastrophe - but I think the real terror is actualy the opposite. The terror that Earth won't catch up, that it might actually be possible to emancipate ourselves from our own species."

Critique of Heidegger

"One of the key insights of Heidegger I think, is realization that way to modern authenticity is not to try and escape from technology, but to embrace it to the bitter end - this was what Heidegger originally thought inner greatness of Nazism was, and he never really changed his mind! Heidegger thought, failure of Nazism was failure of politics itself - this is why after Nazi defeat he withdraws from politics completely, it is gesture of negative fidelity. It is like - you have love affair with woman, love affair ends, and so you say: "After her, no more women!" It is melancholic way of staying faithful to lost woman."

"Problem with Heidgger is - he does not go far enough, he remains too attached to idea of solid grounding in everyday life-world banality. And I think this is big problem with modern science today - you know, there is the idea that problem with science is that science thinks it is disconnected from real world? No, it is opposite - problem with science is that science stubbornly presupposes existing life-world reality, even as it works to change the very definition of this reality."

The horror, the horror

"The true horror is the abyss, the idea of totally severing our links with the life-world - but again, not through withdrawal from it, but full embrace of it."

"Withdrawal is total fake - you see this very clearly in M. Night Shyamalan film, "The Village" - where idea is basically that withdraw and still have successful community, one must be billionaire, one must be benevolent dictator, and one must invent new mythology to keep everyone in line - and it still goes wrong!"

"So what do we do? If you do not know the answer, which I will talk about next week, then you are already lost - it is dictatorship of the proleteriat."

"God is like this stupid dog"

Supporting the headline act on Tuesday was Ronaldinho versus Spivak, a grudge match staged for my pleasure by two grad students sitting in the row immediately before mine.

Spivak fan: I am going to a conference on postcolonialism chared by Spivak.
Ronaldinho: Spivak!! She is so problematic!!! I find her really problematic. Can the Subaltern Speak? is really problematic!!!!
Spivak: Well...
Ronaldinho: She is not self-reflexisive at all!!!
Spivak: Er...
Ronaldinho: You are just essentializing what a third worldist is!!!!!

[Ronaldinho, who has been vibrating like a faulty electrical appliance throughout this exchange, suddenly explodes. A shower of aluminium shards rain down upon the immediate area]

Spivak: Um...

Heidegger and Foucault

2pm rolls around, and Zizek enters stage left and strolls up to his podium, to be introduced by the camera guy of previous weeks, Costas having apparently finally abdicated his diplomatic responsibilities, having finally tired of always playing the straight man.

Zizek starts by trailing his own coming attractions over the next two sessions - Foucault and the Iranian revolution, Heidegger and Nazism, and the unbearable political lightness of being a radical public intellectual.

"I think, we must reject," Zizek begins, "This intellectual blackmail that says, because of Heidegger involvement with Nazism, Heidegger is worthless. No, this is not true - almost everything in Heidegger is right! Only he adds this one tiny thing, and it all becomes shit."

"There is great similarity between patterns of thought of Heidegger and Foucault - in both you see this early fascination with power, and then later withdrawal into aesthetics of self. You see this logic also in way Nietzsche is treated today by feminists - you have this nice, friendly, politically correct Nietzsche - but no, Nietzsche is brutality itself. You look at his style, he says things lik, "George Sands is a fat cow whose breasts give sour milk." Imagine if someone today said something like this about Judith Butler or someone, "Judith Butler is a thin cow whose breasts have dried up." They would get crucified, and rightly so! I think we must say, Nietzsche is brutal - and if he is not brutal, he is not really Nietzsche."

"This will be major target fo me next time - idea of public intellectual as kind of clown [!] who sometimes say funny violent things but is not really to be taken seriously, because that would be disaster. I think that this idea is absolutely wrong. Again - crucial point here about Heidegger and Foucault is - they did right thing! Or at least, almost right thing."

"I will say something horrible now, about Hitler - problem with Hitler, was he was not violent enough! [An audible shudder echoes around the auditorium] What I mean is - all of his violence was impotent acting out, not real violence, he did not really act, did not disturb means of production."

Original Greece was One Big Kitsch Factory

"There is American joke - one that plays into American stereotype, of rich Arab who buys classical Greek statue and before he puts it in his house in Hollywood, he has it painted - and idea is, look how vulgar rich Arabs are - but real point, originally all Greek statues were painted! There is the idea of ancient Greece as all these pure white marble eternal forms, but no - original Greece was one big kitsch factory!"

From Gorgias to Stalin

"The pure logic of Sophism is the one you find in Plato dialogue Gorgias where Gorgias, who is pupil of Parmenides - and by the way [No! No, Zizek, No!] you do know that Parminedes, he didn't say to himself "I am going to write fragment today" [Arrrghhh!!] - he was writing long boring poems, only today only fragments left."

"Gorgias says three things, he says first, "Nothing exists." Then he says a little later, "If anything did exist, it could not be known." Finally, he says, "If anything did exist, and be known, it could not be communicated."

"So, in other words, nothing - there is nothing. Rhetoorical idea here is backward movement. "If we can't communicate something, that must mean we don't really know it, if we don't really know it, that must mean it doesn't exist. In fact - way out of this is actually very simple, it is just - we can talk about things that don't exist, we do it all the time. I mean here very boring Deconstruction point - we always say too much, more than we intended, more than we know."

"There is text by Bentham - it is actually very tragic text, it is Bentham text on fiction, where he starts out and what he wants to do is to seperate reality from fiction in normal analytic way, but what he realizes is that he cannot do it, because if you lose fiction, you lose reality as well. I want for Verso to republish it, because it is out of print, but they do not want to, I don't know why."

"Other crucial text here - and this text, I think, is really one of the miracles - is text by Kleist, On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts in the Process of Speech, when Kleist says - and this quote is only four lines long, so don't be scared, "The situation is quite different if the mind is finished already with a thought before the speaking starts. Then the spirit stays back in the process of mere articulation and this business of articulation, far from exciting the spirit, on the contrary reduces the mental intensity. If therefore a thought is expressed in a fuzzy way, then it does not at all follow that this thought was conceived in a confused way. On the contrary it is quite possible that the ideas that are expressed in the most confusing fashion are the ones that were thought out most clearly."

"Anyway - my claim is that this Gorgias logic is in Stalinism as well - difference is that Gorgias logic is diagonal, but Stalin logic vertical. In his text, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Stalin makes four key points. He says, first - "Contrary to metaphysics," - and metaphysics is always the enemy, "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other." Then he says, second: "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that nature is not a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing, and something always disintegrating and dying away. Third: "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open' fundamental changes' to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another; they occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes. Finally: "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes. The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a "struggle" of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions."

"Now, key point here is again, great distinction, and logic which keeps pushing enemy back. So if you don't agree with Stalin fourth point, for example, you find you go back to third, and then second, and then first - so that contingent enemies always slide back to absolute enemy. This philosophical logic is political and historical logic too - which is why with Stalin you get crazy situation where Trotsky, for instance, organizes Red Army after revolution, only because later he wanted to destroy it."

"Crucial moment is when, with great purges, Stalin had ordered liquidation of Kulaks, but problem was that this mean that objective category of Kulaks became undermined, because this was economic category, and after Stalin collectivisation of agriculture, economic definition ceased to work, because there were no more Kulaks, but there was still political resistance. So what you got was new category, "sub-Kulak".

"Sub-Kulak was pure hermenutic of suspiction category - it had no objective characteristics. There is even report in Pravda at this time which says - even our best activists cannot always identify the sub-Kulak. Basically, sub-Kulak was the category that expressed failure of Stalinist dialectical mediation - with the sub-Kulak, situation now became, one could be anywhere at all in friend/enemy distinction - there was no longer any way to tell."

[Nb - I do not understand a word of this]

The Two Sides of Ideology

Falling back into the bitter embrace of his own absolute enemy, the Birkbeck video projection equipment, Zizek now screened the Ingrid-Bergman-goes-too-try-to-get-the-visas scene from Casablanca, at the end of which (as you may recall) Ingrid succumbs to Bogey's Malboroic charms and collapses into his arms. The scene fades out, and then resumes, Humph now with a cigarette in hand, but otherwise nothing significant having apparently happened.

"Now," Zizek said, "The question here is obvious - did they do it or not? On the one hand, there is compelling reason to think they did - last shot was them kissing, then was fade out - which is conventional classical Hollywood code for romantic interlude, and now Bogart is smoking post-coital cigarette. But on the other hand, couch is undisturbed, both are still wearing same clothes, and conversation is the same as it was before."

"Now, what is really funny here is that this same ambiguity is redoubled later in film, in parting scene of Ingrid and Bogey, when Rick recounts early to Victor Laszlo, says: "She tried everything to get them, and nothing worked. She did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me, but that was all over long ago. For your sake, she pretended it wasn't, and I let her pretend." And Victor responds, "I understand."

"Well, I'm sorry - but I don't understand. Rick is saying here that, "She tried everything" - does this mean she screwed him?"

"What I claim is that way things are constructed, it is basically double. They both did, and they didn't do it. What Hollywood is basically saying here is, "We know that you all have these dirty desires, but also that you like to pretend that you don't, so what we are going to do, is we will put it together in such a way so that you can have it both ways."

"This double logic - this is the essence of ruling ideology: surface innocence, combined with obscene underside. Irony is - this is Stalinist ideology also. Classic example here is Shostakovich - there is idea in West that Shostakovich toed party line, but really was secret dissident - to extent that for long time now there has been this mad hunt for some kind of "smoking gun" letter which will finally prove this thesis. But what I claim is that it is precisely this appearance of secret dissidence that made Shostakovich pure Stalinist composer."


"In Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, the classic Western reading is that beneath surface bombastic, triumphant major chords, Shostakovich wrote in secret minor melody that expressed his real message which was suffering, dissent, and so on. But I'm sorry - idea of secret code that somehow everyone understands except Party? Fifth Symphony won Stalin prize - and Stalin was not stupid. It is very funny also - the Shostakovich works that are most popular in West are the exact same works that were most popular in Soviet Union, both with public and with party!"

Mind the Gap

"My argument is - what if it was precisely because of "secret message" that Shostakovich was official party composer? What if idea of distance between surface and real message was precisely essence of Stalinist ideology, Stalinist ideology at purest. My point here is again, old Marxist point, that is the appearance that is true, and the supposedly ironic distance which is the falsity. Classic example here - which I quote in all my books - is Marx example from 18th Brumaire, where you have party of order who think they are secretly Monarchists pretending to be Republicans, but irony was in wrong place, because what they really ended up objectively doing was securing Republic.

"In Soviet Union - and this is true - the really persecuted people were the ones who were sincerely Stalinists!"

Meister Eckhardt, I presume

"There is another part from Man who was Thursday I want to quote - this is from early in book, where character says: "The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime."

"Okay - it is nice idea. But what I want to emphasize here is that this is not real Chesterton position, because later in the book we find out, Chief of philosophical police, who is really also Chief of anarchists, furthermore really in fact is God, and he has orchestrated whole thing as elaborate game, which proves one thing at least - that God is Hegelian, and so we get passage at end of book where all characters are confused and angry, and one says, "It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides and fought yourself."

"Now, radical point in this, is that this absolute gap, of incomprehension or whatever, that seperates us from God - this gap in fact is already inherent in God himself, God is alienated from himself. You find this in Paul Claudel, who was conservative, who says something like, "God is helpless without us."

"The first moment that this really appears in Western thought is with Meister Eckhardt, who says: it is stupid the idea that God gives orders - we give God orders! God is like this stupid dog, he loves us because he can't help it."

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.]

"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!”

The Hegelian Death-Drive

Thursday was Hegelian Death-Drive day at Birkbeck (ho-hum) and the incipient sense was that we are now starting to touch-upon the philosophical core of Zizek's project. Opening with a video clip from Vertigo (cue inevitable technical incompetence - as Avital Ronell once put it, "I am a philosopher of technology! I don't know anything about how to actually make it work!") Zizek moved to repeat his analysis of the split-subjectivity of Madeline-Judy from Organs without Bodies.

"Do you like the fantasy I project onto you"











When Scottie first encounters Madeline, Hitchcock presents to the viewer a luminous profile of Kim Novak - Madeline as the ideal woman. The crucial point here, though, is that this profile is not framed according to Scottie's point of view - rather it amounts to a kind of inner vision, a "subjectification without subject." This is the Lacanian understanding of fantasy - this is to say, the Lacanian understanding of fantasy is that fantasy is always in some sense never exactly my fantasy, but rather something beyond me, and in excess to me.

The spectral double (the "negative") of the Madeline profile shot is the "dark Judy" shot that Hitchcock presents later in the film. This shot testifies to the crucial point about Lacanian fantasy - namely that it always ultimately fails. Vertigo is thus not a film - as some feminist critics have claimed - about the (sexual) objectification of woman by (patriarchal) man, but rather a film about the deadlock that sexual objectification ultimately encounters, the failure of sexual objectification - and the birth of the subject as the result of this failure.

"I started hanging out with the undead"

The subject emerges from the collapse of fantasy - as in the fall from paradise. But what precisely is this subject, what does it amount it - and specifically, what does it amount to as an ethical agent? As Zizek understands it, turning around Althusser, the question equates to a kind of practical - and not just theoretical - anti-humanism. This, for the reason that the essence of the human must be acknowledged as properly inhuman - this is to say, desire. Desire is traumatic, anxious, dangerous - it is situated beyond the pleasure principle, and for this reason even the mere spectre of it serves to threaten our entire libidinal economy. How can we deal we desire? If there is hope, it lies in Hegel.

"Mr. Big Other"

There is a certain image of Hegel, claimed Zizek - Hegel as this kind of ridiculous Mr. Big Other figure, with his end of history, his absolute knowledge, his concrete universality, his cunning of reason. But the truth of these concepts is in fact almost diametrically the reverse of their conventional understandings. As Owen Hatherley has already noted, contra Fukuyama, the end of history does not mean that we - fortunate, wise us - have now finally come to the end of a marvellous, progressive journey through the ages. Rather, it means that in fact every point in history presents itself precisely as the end of history - or, as Walter Benjamin put it, "This state of emergency in which we live is not the exception, but the rule."

Similarly, absolute knowledge is not this idea that, once upon a time, a man named Hegel, sitting at his desk in Jena came upon the objective truth of all existence - no, it means instead that from the perspective of any perspective whatever, knowledge always immediately presents itself at absolute and total - such is the simulacrum that it manufactures of itself. But, as Deleuze might put it, in representation (and after all, what really is absolute knowledge except the representation of representation?) we see only answers - and incomplete answers at that, and if we want to really understand something, what we need to see the problem that has produced such an answer. "And this," said Zizek, as he pulled a rabbit from a hat, "is precisely what Hegel meant by concrete universality! And the cunning of reason - this is not the idea that beneath all blind contingency there is really this secret objective necessity, it is the opposite - subtending all apparently rational necessity was originally nothing more than blind contingency!"

History to a Girl

The fact remains, Zizek said - we are entirely determined by the past. But the crucial point is, though this is true, it is also true that how precisely we define the past to a certain extent depends on us, and specifically the option is open to us to insert new possibilities into the past - new possibilities that functioning beyond-themselves succeed in opening up new possibilities in the present. As Badiou-Macmillan would put it, "Events, dear boy, events..."

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

The major theme running through the X-Men film trilogy, as well as through the comic books from which it stems, has been the conflict between the X-Men themselves, led by the benign, serene, Professor Xavier, and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by the willful and fanatical Magneto.

What does this conflict amount to? On one level, it is tempting to read it as an allegory of the standard liberal doxa of evil radicalism. The original comic book name for the Brotherhood of Mutants was The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants - with this name amazingly given by Magneto himself to his own organization! Was he trying to be ironic?

In any case - this reading is clearly possible, and Bionic Octopus takes issue with it here. However, there is also more involved here. First of all, there is the question of mutant identity itself. This identity is clearly sexual - the symptoms of mutation begin at the onset of puberty, the issue is caused by a wild x-chromosome. Futhermore, this identity is clearly also queer sexual. In X-Men 3, one dramatic thread concerns the inability of the character Rogue - because of the special nature of her powers - to have a physical relationship with her boyfriend. Another telling scene occurs when Magneto (played by the gay actor and activist Ian McKellen) visits an underground Mutant community to recruit for the Brotherhood of Mutants. He delivers a short speech, and then is immediately confronted by three characters who then demand of him why he is not tatooed - the reference here is to the fact that solidarity in gender politics is often signalled by an outward, extrinsic sign/mode of dress that is able - because of its very contingency - to denote a queer identity while at the same time leaving open the question of what a queer identity exactly is.

The clearest indication of this queer orientation of mutant identity is explicitly thematized on the level of the plot of X-Men III, concerned as it is with the invention of a "cure" for mutants. We are given to understand that this cure was developed (in Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, of all places!) after a wealthy pharmaceutical industry boss discovered that his own son was a mutant.

The scene of this discovery takes place is presented to us, and worth remarking on. The teenage Warren Worthington (the X-Man Archangel) has locked himself in a bathroom and is breathing heavily. He is trying to cut off his wings with some rusty scissors. His father demands that he opens the door, "You've been in there for over an hour!" A panicked act of attempted concealment ensues, he opens the door, his father immediately understands, "Not you as well..."

This ambivilance of this scene is fascinating - on the one hand it functions as allegory of being caught in the act of masturbation, on the other hand it seems to concern even more fundamentally the act of self-harm. Both noted patterns of teenage behaviour - and it seems to me that what the audience is being invited to understand here is that from a certain perspective (namely, that one of militant heteronormativism) these acts amount to the same act: sexuality (masturbation) as disease, as sin.

In this way, what we encounter in this scene is effectively the primal scene in reverse. But the ultimate effect is the same: castration. Later in the film, Worthington's father will have his (initially, cooperating) son strapped to a operating table, so as to attempt to cure him of his sickness, and Worthington will break free and soar across San Francisco bay on his angelic white wings - the veritable image of gay liberation

Becoming-Fascoid

In response to the demand for him to show his papers, issued to him in the mutant underground scene, Magneto - as we know, a holocaust survivor - rolls up his sleeve and shows his camp tatoo. On one level, this gesture points toward the claim for a universal solidarity of the oppressed, beyond all identity-political lines, but on the other hand this is not what Magneto himself seems to mean, and throughout X-Men 3 he remains unmistakably trapped in the binary (and ultimately infantile) logic of us against them.

The key scene here occurs after Magneto has seemingly succesfully rescued the beautiful, naked blue shapeshifter Mystique from the clutches of his enemies. A final grunt, still alive, tries to shoot him with a specially designed gun, loaded with the anti-mutant cure, but Mystique notices at the last moment, and takes the bullet from him. She loses her powers - and pitiless, unblinking, Magneto immediately abandons her, "You are no longer one of us."

This sectarianism testifies to the general, becoming-fascoid, character development that Magneto undergoes in this film. And indeed, not just Magneto. The climactic battle scene of X-Men 3 pits the X-Men themselves against Magneto and his forces, fighting stubbornly for their slavery, as though it was their salvation, as the latter labours to destroy the factory producing the mutant cure - significantly, this scene is foreshadowed by the macho Wolverine declaring to a room of mixed gendered "X-Men" that now is the time for them "all to be X-Men."

No doubt, this statement amounts to the absolute betrayal of gender politics. But then, of course, this was always on the cards. It is extremely important in several respects that Magneto and Professor Xavier are understood to be friends, and I am tempted to construe the relation they share in terms of the relation between the Father-of-Enjoyment, and the Name-of-the-Father.

To be clear - Professor Xavier is undoubtedly the latter. He is also known in the comic books as Professor X - and not only is he the leader of the X-Men, but furthermore the mutant gene is specifically a mutant X-chromosome. Thus, we are given to understand, his (nominal) paternal authority is not just local, but rather, embraces the totality of mutant kind as such.

Magneto, on the other hand, is obviously the former - the salient point here is first, that the name of his own organization is the Brotherhood of Mutants (echoes here of the Freudian band-of-brothers combining to kill the primal father in Totem and Taboo) and second, that the actual membership of this organization is - in contrast to the relatively stable X-Men - basically ad hoc, and highly transient. Furthermore, Magneto is understood to be the undisputed master over the Brotherhood, to the extent that he personally leads its operations in the fields - this again, in contrast, to the impotent, physically disabled, Professor Xavier, who requires the virile Wolverine to act as his heroic proxy in the field.

The relation between these two fathers is emphasized especially strongly in X-Men 3 through the dramatic trajectory of the character Jean Grey. Near the beginning of the film, we discover that Jean Grey is the most powerful mutant of them all, to the extent that she is dangerous, both to herself and others. Professor Xavier has succeeded in controlling her by means of inserting repressive blocks into her psyche, but this operation has had led an unfortunate schizoid side-effect: The Phoenix. As Professor Xavier explains it, "The phoenix is the unconscious part of Jean's personality - whereas Jean is calm and thoughtful, the Phoenix is pure will, instinct, glee, rage..."

To my mind, the distinction being alluded to here is clearly the classic psychoanalytic one between the ego and the id. As Freud himself puts it: "The Ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the Id, which contains the passions...The functional importance of the Ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in relation to the id it is like a man on a horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the Ego uses borrowed forces. The analogy may be carried a little further. Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged to guide it where it wants to go…"[The Ego and the Id, 1922, II)]

Psychiatric Warfare

Professor Xavier's effort to control Jean Grey is clearly ego-psychological - his basic method throughout the film appears to consist of attempting to strengthen her conscious personality, by repressing her unsconscious. That this attempt ultimately fails is instructive, and the fact that the precise consequence of this failure is not only Jean Grey switching allegiances to join with Magneto, but even more radically, the death of Professor Xavier himself, is yet more interesting still.

It is possible to understand the relation between Professor Xavier and Magneto in terms of the relation between the Name-of-the-Father and the Father-of-enjoyment - but it is also possible to understand their relation in terms of two different styles of analytic approach.

Professor Xavier is ultimately committed to ego-psychology - Magneto, on the other hand, appears as almost a kind of vulgar Nietzschean. "You have always held her back," he says to Professor Xavier viz Jean Grey at one point, before then turning to her, "I want you to be what you are." Interestingly, lurking in the background also here is the American sitcom star Kelsey Grammar, of Frasier-fame, playing Dr. Hank McCoy - "the Beast."

Love conquers all

At the culmination of X-Men 3, Jean Grey has fully assumed her alternate identity of the Phoenix and accordingly is now threatening the sanctity of San Francisco bay. As the rest of the characters desperately flee from her awesome power, it is left to Wolverine to struggle determinedly through the rubble up to to her elevated position, before then finally killing her.

This scene is so epic as to defy all logic. Visually, fires are raging everywhere, the sky has darkened, and the general atmosphere is apocaylptic in the extreme. But dramatically as well, we are here dealing with the extremes of human experience - if indeed, such experiences could really be called human at all.

Wolverine loves Jean Grey, and it because he loves her that he must kill her - it is understood that nobody else could fulfil this task. Furthermore, it is also that Wolverine kills Jean for the very reason that he loves her, "You would do all this for them," Jean asks him, "No," he replies, "Not for them. For you."

As Zizek puts it, "I love you, but inexplicably I love something in you more than you, and therefore I destroy you."