« Posts tagged zizek

Žižek’s Jokes: Did You Hear the One about Hegel and Negation?

August 13, 2015 / posted in reviews, Theory / No Comments

Žižek's Jokes: Did You Hear the One about Hegel and Negation?Žižek’s Jokes: Did You Hear the One about Hegel and Negation? by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an interesting concept for a book. Considering that Zizek is known for his “jokes”, it was bound to happen. The afterword by Momus is pretty apt. Zizek presents jokes like Badiou or Lacan would present Mathemes, to show us the shape of an idea.

A pretty easy read, this book is most likely to appeal to those of us for whom Zizek is too hard to read, and those of us for whom Zizek is someone we like to read. It would have been nice if Zizek would, some day, be able to pontificate about the place of jokes, even though its fairly apparent that these jokes without his theory are well in fact castrated, meaningless. Perhaps the object of castration, like a bunch of chopped penises lying uselessly about…

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Interrogating the Real

June 26, 2015 / posted in dialectics, reviews, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Interrogating the RealInterrogating the Real by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of Zizek’s books that are less well known are kind of transistional periods for him. He writes books the way I write on tumblr, to digest information and to posture so as to try it out. If the pose doesn’t work, he discards it later on to try something else.

With this tight but small book, it becomes apparent that Zizek is after the non-changing invariance that is found in all thought, reason and experience. Through the figures of his most favorite philosophers, Zizek does two things. To show us the applicability of these concepts. And to explicate these ideas. The explication part is easy, because it’s right in our face 24/7. The applicability is more difficult. What are we to do with the organization these ideas create for us? Perhaps this is unanswerable, as Zizek himself doesn’t seem to know what to do with his own ideas. So many of these articles are poses, self-wrapping thoughts that reiterate themselves. Sometimes self titled like “beyond discourse analysis” or “hair of the dog that bit you” we get his explication of that theme through a particular theoretical angle. In his most theoretical however, we see the bare parts of the theory eventually spread out, that this maximal difference within this concept is signified, and so these two positions remain, unsynthesizable.

Later on, I believe, Zizek will realize that the Real of Lacan is breakable into two parts, the first being the Real that is unswallowable by the symbolic (so as to be expressed through pathological difference that is the characteristic of a symbolic that is always applied). The second being the pure code that is pure symbolic self-reference but lacking any way for anyone from the outside to gain access to its inner sanctum of difference. In a very real sense, this book, as I suppose all if not most of Zizek’s books, goes ahead to indulge in their philosophical rhetoric as a literal application of the first (because what else would you apply, but this philosophy?) to lead us into the heart of the second, where we have Lacanian mathemes that are left in their solemn ratios without alteration.

We are introduced to a concept, and then left holding it without any direction as to how to use it, what to do with it. Zizek is leaving us his reading glasses.

Perhaps that is the fun of Zizek. That he leads us on these journeys that act like light comedies, taking us to various different areas the way Family Guy or South Park might. Defamiliarizing familiar cultural references enough to reconfigure them in an amusing and strangely upside down deployment that shows us how their logic works backwards to resemble what they always were: purely logical organizations that take in nonsense to create nonsense. In the end these (re)organizations changing nothing about our world yet giving us insight into the way arguments by extension continually intrude in our lifeworld. This parrots the the way market brands, as material orderings, will some day arise to only quietly disappear into the void of capitalist intention, the way we visit one philosophy to briefly see who we are through them.

I would say this is an above average book of Zizek’s. It could work as an introduction as well, if you are interested.

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The Truth of Zizek

May 23, 2015 / posted in reviews, Theory / No Comments

The Truth of ZizekThe Truth of Zizek by Paul Bowman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I find the only thing more confusing and boring than reading Zizek (who is sometimes boring!) is reading about what academics have to say about him. Of course, this is where academia is at its most stupefying, where one can only take a stand by claiming that another did not say enough. While sometimes amusing, I think the short essays attempting to grasp Zizek’s complex and often compelling arguments seems to fall short. The problem with summing what someone says when they aren’t finished saying it, is that often we can’t figure out what kind of effect that person has had yet.

There are a few gems in this book, but it’s often undecidable as to who to give more weight to. Zizek’s 50 page reply at the end (by far the longest) encapsulates the very paragon of being himself. As he states ironically

When we are avidly expecting the new book of an author, and this book, when it finally appears, turns out to be a disappointment, we can say: ‘Although we were waiting for this book, this is not the book we were waiting for’. This, unfortunately, is also my impression apropos the texts in the present volume–not because it is highly critical of me, but because so many arguments in it are based on such a crude misreading of my position, that instead of confronting theoretical positions, I will have to spend way too much time answering insinuations and untruths as well as setting straight the misunderstandings of my position–which is, for an author, one of the most boring exercises imaginable. In order to ease this burden, I will effectively do what I am often accused of (over)doing: cut and paste bits of my past texts where I already clarified the issues debated here.

Taking the most critical stereotype of himself, Zizek gives permission for his detractors to mock him by effectively removing their ability to criticize him. He does what they claim he does so as to remove their criticism from him. In this manner, Zizek exercises in academia a general mode of reddit or 4chan or any other internet forum. You agree with your critics so they no longer have power over you. And yet, apropos Lacan (and Marx), you acknowledge the “terrestrial basis” of your ideology so that it can have greater force. We do what we do despite our intellectual cynicism because that which we do has power over us, to move us despite our skeptical, enlightened modality. In this way, Zizek may stop short of asking what his critics “hamsters” are, despite their probing into his own personal life, because as it may turn out (who knows), their critical hamsters may actually be the position they have placed Zizek himself. Perhaps (un)ironically, by questioning what his truth is, they have given him full license to continue to perpetuate the writings he engages in.

And in that sense, this book is wholly unsatisfying simply because there remains a pivoting but no synthesis of position. We are left knowing less than we knew before despite having all these experts positioned around a table differentiating themselves. I think this is a good view of academia in its meaningless repetition.

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The Universal Exception

March 23, 2015 / posted in dialectics, reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

The Universal ExceptionThe Universal Exception by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having read Zizek for over a decade, this work speaks out much more to me than it would had this been Zizek’s latest book. Here we see many figures of reason, a display of logic some of which did not make it to later works. Others of which show us how some tendencies may be further developed. The heady nature of this subject, an application of the theory of exception to politics can be summarized as the universal exception which must be removed before knowledge is generated.

This applies directly to politics as politics is nothing if not knowledge of others. Our ability to get along with them, to know them, to be able to understand (contain) large masses of people, trends and response to them with the understanding of policies and edicts that will effectively shape how we understand and get along with one another. In a way, Zizek is saying that we can understand our context but we cannot understand ourselves. Or we understand ourselves but not our context. The point of view needs a basis of comparison, even if it is about the point of view itself. This basis becomes invisible, absolute and profound as it is literally understood as its own shadow.

In a way, since this null point is still being shaped; the less interesting parts of this book are the parts where he lapses into his familiar terms, you get a sense that this exception is still new to him, a fragile point of hypnosis which captivates his full attention. As he gets into parallax gap, and then less than nothing, Zizek comes to understand that point has having any and every content possible. Never mind that he generally prefers the same hero worship. This worship, as silly as it may be can only be understood as a repetition of the difference he highlights. It works as both justification for the difference (it has appeared twice, as a repeat) but also as a tool of refinement in which Zizek can calibrate the theory, in this case to itself. A proper dialectical motion would follow in which Zizek insisted that Hegel was the first mistake, a random, chance, pure genius, whereas his repetition was a recognition of pure genius, the first true calibration point, in which a theory can be explicated and the point of split; the cut can be highlighted.

It would follow then, that our third effort, would be the chance to break free of the constraints of that cut, the chance to realize it as more than a singularity but a world logic. This would be the finding of a new transcendental model but only because its reflection requires that we jump back one step to justify Hegel, leaving the Byzantine ramblings of Kant. And from there, we can abstract to the method of Descartes and the ancient Greeks themselves, recognizing that the bridge between Descartes unnamed transcendental which affords only differences that self-evident and Kant’s Transcendental logic in which the functioning of that self evidence is made possible by the interstice view of the excess of various faculties’s interactions as these interactions are only visible outside of all these spheres of localized logics. Of course there is Understanding, which is self evident, Reason which extends itself into paradox, and Imagination which is spontaneous to be unpredictable. Each of these paradoxes wraps up the same faculties within their own immanence as to merely describe various anti-nomies themselves. These facial “black holes” that looking into another’s eyes or the unknown orifices in logic always present different realms of incoherence from the point of view of the outside looking in. We never get a full sense of our own arbitrariness without eliminating the possibility of there being strict rules. All topographies are distinguished by their handling of zeros. At first structure, then to texture. The procedure is logical but can be expressed via its own displacement, of which its kind of regularity is its logic. This then, becomes the genius of Descartes, as the first leap into dimensional mapping. To further this trend, we need to proceed into pure multiples.

If Liebniz understood that a curve was where any arbitrary measurement that was much like any other arbitrary measurement it follows that we’d have to reverse our way back out to get back to full points of content, back to ‘pataphysics and immanence. This is a move that Badiou and Deleuze do, but which I think we will find Zizek going to, but only if he is willing to give up the hero worshiping imposition of making a theoretical cut that includes too much of itself. The only point that creates this particular world as being what it is, as a limit to its maximal value (with no limit on its minimal) is the universal exception, the bulwark which we push off from, in order to jumpstart our content.

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Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates

December 31, 2014 / posted in dialectics, reviews, Theory, universal nothing / No Comments

Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related DatesWelcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Of course, here is Zizek again. Second time reading this book. This is a light book for him, as the chapters are short and the theory isn’t thick. Nonetheless, as always, with his dialectical switching, Zizek is interesting and insightful. One of the primary problems with those equating philosophy with truth is that it needs to be true all the way through.

Yes, okay so much of what Zizek says is sometimes conjecture. But the point is taken, and if it’s not then it doesn’t stick and it’s not useful.

What Zizek is doing here is presented 9/11 as an event in which we have a choice about the kind of world we want to live in. Nonetheless, 9/11 allowed for a further refinement in division as separate entities, like the American government, went ahead to define the field for itself (we are the victims), rather than melding the field. That conservative move to hole up created a differential in logic which of course, creates the antagonisms that we face today. This is perhaps the underlying motif that Zizek wishes to highlight through the figure of homo sacer, that much of our laws and understandings of class are determined through the difference of who is left out and how that leaving out is expressed beyond whatever political justifications may be given.

All in all entertaining to read, but simple in his point. The complexity involved is how he builds his simple point through the mediation of abstract universal figures. After all, only through mediated complexity can one arrive at a more abstract point of reference. Without that mediation, a given simple object is only itself, without extension.

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Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism

June 24, 2014 / posted in dialectics, reviews, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical MaterialismLess Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What is “less than nothing” is what is lost in order to maintain the relationship between subject and object. This nothing sustains the dialectic, but it’s also the ground that is synthesized in Hegel’s dialectical project. But really, this nothing is also the “form” by which phenomenon is understood. That is to say, coming from Kant, understanding or the law of desire is the pure nothingness that imposes the order we see in the chaotic world.

It’s actually pretty simple. The universal, the a priori, is the emptiness that is lost in understanding the Real. This is because we can’t apprehend understanding directly; we can only see it through the empirical world. The closest we get to understanding itself, so to speak, is the petit object a, the pure signifier that is its own lack necessarily: without this particle of necessary being we wouldn’t be able to see being in the world at all. As Zizek says, for Heidigger, we wouldn’t have Sein without Das Sein.

Zizek goes to great lengths to demonstrate the post-structural condition: that how we read comes before what we read. Borrowing from Karen Barad, we can separate how we read from what we read, because we can use how we read to discover what we read — or we can use what we read to discover how we read – but we cannot discover their entanglement, that is the border between the two. To paraphrase him, in order to find out how the two go together, we need to realign the objects so that we, the viewing apparatus and the object in question, are tested against a third thing…which is impossible. There is no third point of view, in the theory of relativity. Results always come from the position of the viewing apparatus, as it cannot be outside itself. Philosophically, there’s no third view either. We may try to step out of this understanding, out of the metaphysician’s realm, but all attempts to determine the root of discourse find themselves mired in the failure to fully explain the framing of that discourse. To put it another way, Zizek notes that antiphilosophy is at the heart of philosophy. With each failure to explain antiphilosophy, we get more philosophy. With this line of reasoning, Zizek, as usual, goes through a huge nest of thinkers to demonstrate how their different philosophies circumambulate various centers of discourse:

The basic motif of antiphilosophy is the assertion of a pure presence (the Real Life of society for Marx, Existence for Kierkegaard, Will for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, etc.) irreducible to and excessive with regard to the network of philosophical concepts or representations. [. . .] The great theme of post-Hegelian antiphilosophy is the excess of the pre-conceptual productivity of Presence over its representation: representation is reduced to the “mirror of representation,” which reflects in a distorted way its productive ground (841).

Of course, Zizek wants to say that Hegel was the first to reach this irreducible ground, as the synthesis of consciousness – and he traces this through a variety of manners that is both entertaining and enlightening. But Barad’s point remains; whatever language Zizek adopts, we see the mysterious Presence continually being shuffled from point to point, which reduces all discourse to a manner of tautology:

The mistake resides in the fact that the limit pertaining to the form itself (to the categories used) is misperceived as a contingent empirical limitation. In the case of cognitivism: it is not that we already have the categorical apparatus necessary to explain consciousness (neuronal process, etc), and our failure to have yet done so pertains only to the empirical limitation of our knowing the relevant facts about the brain; the true limitation lies in the very form of our knowledge, in the very categorical apparatus we are using. In other words, the gap between the form of knowledge and its empirical limitation is inscribed in this form itself (284).

So while we understand the mysterious Real though our a priori categories, these categories give us an incomplete view. In order to mirror ourselves with the exterior, to be “appropriate” to reality, we create a standing social order, a consistency within discourses (or many discourses themselves) each of which approach the mystery of the world from another angle. These discourses are always defractions, which are in themselves incomplete, hinging on one another but only shuffling pure Presence about. Spoken through Fichte: this absence can be expressed as antoss, or as Lacan liked to say about the Self: “I think where I am not.” This can be unpacked to mean that the self is simply what mediates itself. In this way, Hegel remains for Zizek the genius that first notices how what we read is how we read:

In this sense, it is meaningless to call Hegel’s philosophy “absolute idealism”: his point is precisely that there is no need for a Third element, the medium or Ground beyond subject and object-substance. We start with objectivity, and the subject is nothing but the self-meditation of objectivity (144, original italics).

Unpacking this thought, lets realize that not only is the self “less than nothing” but “less than nothing” is also the pure Presence mediating the discourse itself. We get the symbolic reality through the loss of pure Presence. Its lack allows us to read through it to get discursive reality as a full blown immersive social environment of culture.

I rather enjoyed this lengthy and inspired book. To be brief, Zizek does philosophy to hide the fact that philosophy no longer works, that in Heidegger’s language, philosophy has been suspended while capitalism contemplates itself. In this sense, capitalism tries to say what reason cannot (in this sense, capitalism occupies the same position as Art for Kant, that of a second nature). No wonder then that Zizek says philosophy stopped with Hegel, that the many guises of Hegel are in fact not-Hegel or a stunted Hegel so that we can continue on with postmodernism, with the avant garde, because we haven’t learned Hegel yet… so we hide him away while we continue on in endless jouissance. So to cut to the chase:

In every discourse, in every sense-making, we either sacrifice completeness or we sacrifice contingency. Master discourses (like that of Gods) generally sacrifice contingency to create completeness, to wrap us in universals, to guarantee the universe be stable for us to live in. But in all of these cases (and you can go on ad infinitum), you will end up asking, why is there necessity? As in is there a “necessity particle” that makes existence be (as existence itself is without cause)? Why are things even necessary? Is there pure being somewhere? Zizek’s answer is to locate the split of symbolic reality (necessity) and the Real together within the subject, that only through a split subject do we get contingency as the only necessity. Our ability to understand is then only supplemented through both Reason and an encounter with the Real that stands in to verify the completeness of discursive truth. For Zizek the subject’s being split is another way of saying that necessary to subjectivity is the provision of what needs to be included within its view, of what cannot be compromised. Zizek provides the example where some Christians replied to Darwinism by insisting that the world was 4,000 years old, that fossils were placed in the Earth to test faith. Zizek doesn’t believe this to be true but he cites this example to show that the “grain of truth” in the Christian example is their

impossible-Real objectal counter-part which never positively existed in reality – it emerges through its loss, it is directly created as a fossil. [T]he exclusion of this object is consistitutive of the appearance of reality: since reality (not the Real) is correlative to the subject, it can only constitute itself through the withdrawal from it of the object which “is” the subject [. . .] What breaks up the self-closure of transcendental correlation is thus not the transcendent reality that eludes the subject’s grasp, but the inaccessibility of the object that “is” the subject itself. This is the true “fossil,” the bone that is the spirit, to paraphrase Hegel, and this object is not simply the full objective reality of the subject [. . .] but the non-corporeal, fantasmatic lamella. (645).

This is another way of encountering the symbolic Real, the meaningless floating signifier that would guarantee completeness, that is the subject in its actualization. Be this ontology, money, or joy, fear, anxiety, love, mana or luck, such signifiers often allow discourse to hinge on these terms in order for that discourse to continue to be relevant, a kind of antiphilosophy in the heart of philosophy or antilaw at the heart of law. Zizek writes

Every signifying field thus has to be “sutured” by a supplementary zero-signifier, a “zero symbolic value, that is, a sign marking the necessity of a supplementary symbolic content over and above that which the signified already contains.” This signifier is “a symbol in its pure state”: lacking any determinate meaning, it stands for the presence of meaning and such in contrast to its absence, in a further dialectical twist, the mode of appearance of this supplementary signifier which stands for meaning as such is non-sense [. . .]. Notions like mana thus “represent nothing more or less that floating signifier which is the disability of all finite thought. (585, original italics).

So is there any way to get out? The only meaningful answer is no, as to escape pure Presence is to fall into non-sense, or at least a difference sense that is non-sense from where we current are. Even attempt to transgress the limits of the law end up invoking the law in its transgressed form, simply because those forms are how we understand. This is how the Real becomes mirrored within the symbolic as the pure form of the symbolic. The symbolic Real, which is what Zizek would call meaningless encodings necessary to moor our consistency (our discourse, so to speak), operates through the contingencies qua Real, a maneuver of the subject to mediate itself and actualize.

At this point, to recognize a new thing, like a new world order, or a solution from our capitalist dilemma, means coming to new coordinates, a new phenomenon, a new axis. Zizek locates this between drive and reason, to have the two come together. You can read this like the unification of money with language, but he leaves it open, because after all, these are metaphysical terms. Directly speaking, such terms are always beyond our understanding, lacking substance, even as they are always within the area delineated by our pure understanding, but completely impotent to interrupt our world and realign it. All we need is the right content to come along, the right void to allow us to rename it, and recognize it as the new event, in the language of Nietzsche, “the eternal return.” With that, we could have a new epoch, a new pure Presence emerging from nothingness itself, and that new Presence would be a new world order, a new symbolic Real to realign our world, to remake our world. Compared to anything in or current state it would be more than anything, a new nothing from which there would never be any possibility of return as we would irreparably be someone else.

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Truth, bullshit, Identity(ego) and Bullshit

May 3, 2014 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, manifesto, rational choice theory and homo economicus, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

If you take words like Truth seriously, you’ll find yourself going into a beyond. Because Truth with a capital T is a place, not a specific content… it’s an empty position, which means only itself. The narrowest point of all, it is also the most distant, the axis around which discourses circulate as satellites.

This “north star” only operates as itself, without meaning because it is completely itself… (meaning is always the deferral of meaning, words leading to more words, thus when it is itself, it is without meaning, an irrational point standing in for nothing but itself). Truth, must remain outside of discourse to organize discourse.

Truth is the opposite of bullshit.

First, bullsit:

I spoke with one of best friends about this. Bullshit is machine language. It’s code. It’s a self-enclosed, self-referential discourse which does not connect well to outside discourses. Thus bullshit, which is always encased in a system (of bullshit) which generates bullshit is like Truth in that it does not refer to anything but itself, it is also equally irrational.

The difference though, is that when you participate in bullshit, when you have a stake in it as an identity in it, it is no longer bullshit, it is meaningful.

For example, you can think that as a college professor, your mission is to educate young minds. Educate them. But the colleges themselves operate on a different level. Colleges rank themselves, compete with each other for funding, create complex apparatuses which organize their departments in the form of hierarchies, ranking its employees and so on. So while a college professor can identify themself like dead poet’s society — through discourse and elucidation, a college will foist on its professors a different identity, one encoached in metrics of grading, ranking, preening and processes… all of which generally serve the college’s needs directly and only the students indirectly, if at all. Such a professor will protest this hijacking of his identity (“I am not a cog in your machine”) and thus the system and its output will be seen as “bullshit”. If you were a college administrator, or a teacher heavily invested with the system and the college’s needs, you may see yourself as both elucidator AND a position within a rank in file within the college — also a representative of the college, befitting the needs of the college. In that case, you won’t see such output as “bullshit” because your identity will be wrapped up within the logic of that hierarchical discourse.

So, other forms of bullshit also depend on identity positionings. If your identity does not fit an imposed external discourse, you will see that discourse as bullshit. You might as well be a mechanic looking at a doctor’s chart, or a doctor looking at a mechanic’s documentation of a ship’s engine. Both discourses are separate from each other, self referential with its own semiotic chains, its own indexical peculiarities, its own bullshit.

In a way, bullshit is the system itself, seen from the outside. No bullshit is bullshit unless you don’t identify within its meanings at an unconscious level. But Truth, is the standin axis for all discourses… in a way, an attempt to contain discourses within one rubric. In our fragmented postmodern world, we generate many self referential codes. Law codes, building codes, computer codes, academic codes, bureaucratic codes, administrative codes, tax codes, stock codes, logic codes, mathemes… all of which are only meaningful within their own self reference. How many tv shows create their own jokes, create their own meanings by referring to an encyclopedia of history? Comic book wikis, Star Trek wikis, Star Wars wikis, Doctor Who wikis, Lost wikis… the list goes on and on.

In the age of information, we create nestings of code in an attempt to attract people to join our languages, our plateaus of sense and reason, and thus invested they exist in a 2nd Life, Sim, fanbased community for which there can be nearly no beyond because self referentiality forecloses interaction between outside discourse. At least, online that’s the case. In person, your neighbors intrude, your economics intrude, your politics intrude and disrupt these fragile sensibilities, reminding us of a larger discourse.

For example, the master discourse today is not spoken in words but in money. Economically, with the current money laundering laws and identity theft laws, our financial institutions seek to mire us within their own code, so that we cannot escape their domain. Everything needs a bank account, or a social security number. We may have gained some autonomy to create separate spheres of influence, but the larger appratuses of capital also seek to dominate us by forcing us to psychically invest in credit scores, tax returns, and to play the game their way… their Truth of course, is money, which is meaningless in itself… Money is the petit object a, of the discourse of money, as it stands only for itself, a zero sum signifier, to guarantee that we are within the system of money, that all things can be exchanged for money as a kind of Money.

This locking of us into this immobility also involves slowly locking us out. Cities have started to impose “good neighbor fees” on home based businesses, so that only the residents can work at such home based businesses. Already in a post-industrial economy, our material dialectic is split by market mediation. We are purely consumers, purely meant to work as employees and consumers. The early 20th century saw the leftovers of consumer culture recycled back into the producer’s side of the cycle… but that divorce only increasingly locks us out of that side… the masters of production seek to keep newcomers out of competiting for production as a way of retaining their access to profit by imposing more power against those who might do otherwise. People who seek to do business on their own face increasing challenges, a nest of laws that would prohibit and limit access while increasing information cost (compliance laws) and start-up costs, raising the amount needed to start a business. People who would be in business see these external constraints as “bullshit” because they do not recognize that the system’s imposition on them as being central to what they are trying to do or who they would to be… that business people see themselves doing transactions (marketing, service or production, shipping) rather than seeing the outside state apparatus demanding of them a piece of their action before they even do anything.

This kind of dialectical opposition through identity is very illustrative of how the category of bullshit is created from the self’s position within a discourse that would locate the self in a different position than where it thinks it ought to be.

Second, Truth:

So if bullshit is being outside of a discourse of self-referentiality, then what is Truth? I sought to take such terms seriously that I looked into meta-language, philosophies, in order to clarify what Truth might be, or how it might be attained. In doing so, you examine words. Language. In doing that, you start to notice words and how they work, what they mean.

When you notice words as words, reality and language start to separate. This is an odd phenomenon, after all, as Lewis Carrol has been so often been paraphrased: Take care of the sense and the words will arrange themselves. The reverse is equally telling. Take care of words themselves, and the very thing you seek (sense itself) will slip from your grasp. When you reach a point that words like Truth mean only what they mean, and that their nest inevitably refers back to itself, you will hit reach the limits of language… for language can explain the objects in language — language moves such objects, manipulates them, for what else is language for, but the negotiation of meaning and personal position among Others — but language cannot explain itself, just as the thinker cannot think itself. This quote from Slavoj Zizek (from Less than Nothing) is useful:

In the opposition between the symbolic order and reality, the Real is on the side of the symbolic—it is the part of reality which clings to the symbolic in the guise of its inconsistency/gap/impossibility). The Real is the point at which the symbolic itself, mutilating it from within: it is the non-All of the symbolic. There is a Real not because the symbolic cannot grasp its external Real, but because the symbolic cannot fully become itself. There is being (reality) because the symbolic system is inconsistent, flawed, for the Real is an impasse of formalization. This thesis must be given its full “idealist” weight: it is not only that reality is too rich, so that every formalization fails to grasp it, stumbles over it; the Real is nothing but an impasse of formalization—there is dense reality “out there” because of the inconsistencies and gaps in the symbolic order. The Real is nothing but the non-All of formalization, not its external exception.

So as discourse is unable to cohere completely, make things what they are, we get the gaps and distortions in things within the symbolic discourse itself, always as an indexical “beyond” representation to stand in for the distortion which is only “true” as it coincides with the un-able to be symbolised formation. Where Truth as a marker of stablization sets in the discourse, it acts as the single sign that is itself, to tie in the external inconsistency/gap of the Real back to the symbolic force. Another quote from Zizek, to continue the thought:

Since reality is in itself fragile and inconsistent, it needs the intervention of a Master-Signifier to stablize itself into a consistent field; this Master-Signifier makes the point at which a signifier falls into the Real. The Master-Signifier is a signifier which not only designates features of reality, but performatively intervenes into reality.

Our loss of a Master-Signifier, as Zizek puts it, from the modern to the postmodern marks the fragmentation of discourses today, unable to cohere together as they split into their own alignments. Nonetheless the modern world exists today, through the auspices of Money and in its spectral form.

So how does Truth and bullshit tie together?

Third, Identity/ego:

For each of us today, as we develop identities and egos, we invest in different discourses, hoping to find one that is legitimatized and mostly compatible through whatever other discourses people around us engage in. Example of such discourses abound: a church discourse, a video game clan discourse, a fraternity discourse, academic discourse(s), economic work discoures… legal discourse(s)… these all intersect at the body of identity, bombarding us with fragmentation and contradiction. Coming to find one’s self, or to “discover yourself” is another way of saying, “I need to find an image/position immanent within a discourse where I can fit in, and become myself…” Spoken cynically, “I need to become the image others will then see as me, so that I may belong to a discourse, without the gap/distortion/inconsistency inherent in being a personality whose psychal investments connect to nothing.” Losers are narcissists for whom their meanings only mean something to themselves… no one else, no outside discourse recognizes their meanings/connections as being inherently meaningful.

Fourth, Bullshit:

And of course, noting how Truth itself functions within a discourse, radically itself because it is irrationally itself. Everything is contingent, although Truth only exists as itself, an emptiness within discourse but not of it (the center is not the center) to guarantee an anchoring of discourse. All is contingent, including the fact that sometimes necessities come out, but only do so contingently. In other words, dissolving words into words instead of reality forces us to lose the very thing we seek to gain… we lose our place because the functionality is localized into an objective model that is not-us. Truth becomes truth, and discourse becomes bullshit.

On incidental Truth, consistency and belonging

April 26, 2014 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, life as we know it, rational choice theory and homo economicus, Theory / No Comments

The reversal of Doxa (“opinions/metaphysics”) and Episteme (“truth/knowledge”) happened around the time of the early 20th century. The theory of relativity seems to be the discovery that sparked it, but really this theoretical discover is merely the “best example” of the reversal in knowledge types that I am pointing out.

Once Newtonian physics lost its bearing as being Truth — which coincided with the scientific method being formulated as a method for truth — incidentally, we also gradually lost our ability to speak from a position of privileged reality.

This loss happens historically, at the same time in which capitalism as a form of economic, social and political expansion also started to intrude enough on non-capitalist people that such these peoples also began to became capitalist, and started push back. Their entry into the capitalist market bore with it a host of signifiers and meanings that at once altered what was once a solely European narrative. At this time, capitalism as a marker of progress also, in theory, stopped being as such, and started to alter its form to become capitalism without a strong and explicitly European narrative. I don’t mean to say that the signifiers of “Enlightenment” or “progress” ever ceased to be relevant, but that such narratives only became secondary to the flow of capital, that making money became primary… that while people still today talk about “progress” and “rationality” such notions are not defined independent of the market place, but only echo it’s occurrence, that is, whatever happens in the market place is “rational” rather than rationality being the primary impetus for the flow of resources. The separation of capitalist moves from social narrative’s logic forced two effects, which are arguably the same event: 1. Europe (but mostly America) lost its sense of culture as it became the “norm” for capitalism. In other words, American culture became arguably invisible to many Americans. and 2. Capitalism as a system refined/transformed its logic to become able to sustain the creation of its own symbolic Real — for example, the movements of the financial markets are based solely on itself, without any reference to “real” activity outside of its own sphere.

Whether we want to claim that the scientific revolution sparked this separation when the theory of relativity suggested that reality itself was simply beyond our ability to measure it, that our measurements are mostly, if not purely, self-referential, OR if we want to claim that the influx of non-European cultures caused capitalism to eventually separate from the master narrative of European tradition of progress, the result is really the same.

Either way, we see a separation (parallax gap) between the “outside” happening and the “inside” activity inherent within a logical system/discourse. The result is that when the outside world becomes just a thing, when science or capitalism vanquished the over-coding of traditional narratives onto “things”, we get a world full of objects that can become whatever we want them to be. In late capitalism, we are free to manipulate products, produce environments and synthesize an entire new way of interaction with the outside. Blame this on science, or on industry, but when production is hidden from the consumer, through technology, bureaucracy, finance, or any other meaningless Symbolic Real codes that refer only to themselves, we detach from the environment and end up floating in a postmodern sea that constantly spits out signifiers… signifiers that are devoid of any hard points for navigation because we are unchained from any specific environment. In short, the world becomes the reverse imprint of who we are, and what we say.

The implication of this result is best captured by the work of Karl Popper. Although Popper is a scientific philosopher, his work is best characterized as a realization that theories exist solely through their ability to be consistent (ir)regardless of experimental results. A huge question in his work revolves around sophisticated justificationism — at what point does a scientific theory become unable to be justified? At one “key” experiment (the significance of an experiment always being after discourse has been disrupted by it), or when a theory faces of other completing theories that have more explanatory power?

The basic idea through Popper is that theories have a distinctive “shape” or formative relationship inherent within their primary parts. As this “shape” is extended, it should be able to predict results from experiments not yet performed… of course, various experiments often create auxiliary hypothesises, theoretical asides, until at some point the self referential kernel of the theory can no longer sustain the added modifications, allowing the space for a new theory will come about that will be adopted with a more refined core kernel.

What is revolutionary about this model of scientific theory is that the role of induction is minimum. In fact, Popper insists that induction is not at all needed. This is amazing so let me reiterate: Popper’s claim is that science can progress solely on the level of theoretical consistencies. Each competing theory presents a pure sheet of relations, that can be used to over-code the total field of experimental results, both past, present and future. The theory that is the most consistent despite (or because of!) disruptions from other experiments should be the theory that we adopt.

This means that removing theories due to experimental results is only incidental, given the presence of other consistencies. In other words, the primary mode for selecting a theory is its “standing power” in relation to other theories. Experiments and their results are only included as one of the judgments for which theory is most sexy.

What I mean to do now is expand the understanding of consistencies beyond the initial domain of Popper’s work and apply it to all relations and all logics of discourse.

There are various theories about the logic of sense. Among them are Hegel, Zizek, Lacan, Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, Charles Sanders Pierce, Roland Barthes, Derrida, Roman Jackobson, and Hjelmslev… although the most general of them remain, for me, Deleuze and Guattari. To avoid all this philosophical jargon, I will paraphrase Zizek’s use of Lacan, although at times I will interject other terminologies where it may be useful to highlight specific relationships not given in Lacan’s meta-language.

All subjectivities/egos/identities (I know the terms are used differently but bear with me) are constructed out of the logic of negation. In the formulation of the ego, through a self-differentiating process analogous to autopoiesis, the self carves a space out of intersubjective symbolic space to understand its role among others. At first, it may want to be belong — to follow part of the group. Eventually, it may want to lead the group and be recognized as itself.

To also interject the language of Deleuze and Guattari, in the process of autopoiesis, selves carve out vast territories for which there exist collections of intensities, black holes, and other erotified zones. Black holes, in particular, exist as indexical signs (Pierce and Jackobson) that signify/refer to the outside of a system. Such black holes, exist on the territory of the human face, such as the eyes and mouth. In terms of profiles, for a subject, the signifier/d “father” may also cover such a black hole. Such zones are unique to each individual, depending on how they have pushed meaning from term to term. Although individual distinction of such psychial positions may differ depending on a subject, the event of such positions is the effect of autopoiesis as much as it is the intersubjective space differentiating population from population, group from group, or meta-group from meta-group. We create these piles to bracket meaning as a foundation so that we can go about the business of our lives, to create empty space to move freely. The weaker the ego, the less space it carves for itself flourish, and the more easily it is threatened by its own internal inconsistencies (which are also antinomies found in the world, in itself, and in its own immanent verticies).

As Lacan was so quick to point out, through his example of the Edgar Allen Poe’s Purloined Letter, the existence of such intensities pre-dates the “accident” of encountering such intensity. If you have issues with your father, you may have created, in the image of your father (and by extension all Fathers) a repository for the entangled meanings that you have discarded. In order to create a clear sense of self, or a clear space for yourself to exist, certain meanings such as being a “loser” or other similar undesirables may be buried inside such intensities, wrapped up in the particular of “father”. Such intensities, buried as they are, may be incompletely buried so that they create such a sinthome, that the encounter of a resemblance may bring about again, a threatening of this knot so that the ties of this knot, that hold together the topology of the subject may threaten to become undone. A non-psychoanalytic example of how the creation of such a place in discourse creates the space for the verification of this discourse through its encounter with the outside. Hegel uses the example of a man, Ceasar, to illustrate this. Ceasar created such a revolutionary space for himself so that even after his actual death, that space he created persists under the his moniker. All others after him, would become Ceasar, a subset of being marked as he had been/was/is… and this verification reifies their position as Ceasar, as the centerpiece of Roman political life.

This kind of incidental verification occurs often, beyond scientific theory. In fact, the reaction of individuals that are “out of proportion” with their circumstance bespeak the tripping of such sinthomes since they have encountered (through happenstance), a particular antinomy particular to their identity construct (which is also their singular world view).

The general rule, however, to understanding this is that this merely doesn’t happen in regard to individual encounters that are out of proportion… an encounter with an other/object/not-me is always an encounter with discarded meanings, constructs that have been laid aside through autopoiesis. When I see an other, I am actually seeing my construct because I am seeing an other. This isn’t to say that our senses deceive us (although they do, on a different level), or that one who is different isn’t different in how they appear. But the meaning of what they appear to us, is a meaning that is inscribed in the very heart of how we have created our-self, through either our identification of them, (you are like me, we are of the same/similar group) or our rejection of them (you are not-me, you are an other).

Of course, history and political discourse abounds with such examples, which can be expanded upon later.

The primary extension of this notion of sense, lies in how individuals through political discourse (or discourse in general) are able to weave a super-structure of meaning that is independent but also of, how they encounter the world. In an environment where very little is prized as being key, “the discourse” of different consistencies with different constructs can be brought forward by individuals whose only claim to being true, is the very consistency inherent in the logic of their discourse. Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”, as it were. The “facts” as they are, often only function as incidental but “meaningful” accidents that verify/validate discursive claims for-itself. In other words, when you are within a logic of discourse that supports your sense of self, objects will speak to you of their truthiness and seem to mean the things you need them to mean. When you are within a particular consistency, the strength of this consistency will be that you fit the lifeworld and the lifeworld fits you. In short, the illusion is that you (and your view of the lifeworld) are validated by external markers that seem to speak for themselves when in fact you are speaking to yourself what you mean for them to be, and what you mean to be, through them.

This ability of consistencies to swallow “facts” through (invisible) dialogical reasoning is of course, the problem with pundit discourse — the same fact can be used to deploy alternate/contradictory meanings depending on which discourse it has been deployed in. While statements can be taken out of context, the fault lies less with the original context of the fact itself, than with the differences in context given different discursive logics, different worldviews and different identity constructions that need to be preserved differently.

In other words, even when encountering a beloved, a prized pet, or a car, that beloved is only such because of their place in how you construct the meanings surrounded your own identity. The looser your inscription defining such position that the prized beloved incidentally aligns with, the less meaningful such incidental occupation of such a position will be… and the less pleasure (or pain) you will have when the validation is (or is not) affirmed.

So, “life” affirming memes, or posts, telling you that life is precious, go surround yourself with good, beauty and truth… is really just telling you to create a situation where the positive “hot-spots” in your psychial world are fulfilled by any other who can fill them, while not challenging your world view. In this model, the strong case for discourse consistency is that truth is really only about the you using the outside validating what you’ve always wished to be the case… not about finding something new. The weaker case for discourse consistency is that truth can only exist when the outside coincides with a position in the psychial consistency… so that the discourse is “useful”… whether that position is desirable or not, is irrelevant.

This ability of the mind to sublimate facts in-itself is not a bad thing… but given the impermanence of even change itself… chances are your consistency is not rugged enough to survive for very long if you venture away from your nest of like minded associates (which given technology, is both easy and hard). The energy it takes to constantly redeploy and maintain such meanings can be very astounding, depending on how desperately you hang onto your identity construction. When you start to understand how you are blinding yourself, when you see your own internal cause is the root of external meaning, most likely you won’t be able to identify with such a construct any longer, because you can see how things could be different. When the magic goes away, you won’t find any good reason why what was, was at all possible… even if you remember how plausible, wonderful and orderly it all seemed to be.

art and connoisseur-ship as market affects

May 6, 2012 / posted in art, images of being-human, manifesto, rational choice theory and homo economicus, Theory / No Comments

apparently there’s a release of a new documentary called jiro dreams of sushi. have not seen it. was curious though — thought it was an anime about sushi. cuz on fb and twitter people watch the movie and then go eat sushi.

okay.

naw, it’s about a man who took sushi as an art to the next level. as a biography that’s kind of alright. but the movie seems to translate into go have sushi and appreciate it even more.

that’s okay too. its kind of duh. i mean if you know anything about japan, of course it’s an art. but at the same time, what isn’t anything anyone does an art?

stacking rocks is an art. breathing is an art (yoga). looking at something, standing. it’s all an art. so what!

If everything is art, then why should we care about art?

 

What is wrong with Art for Art’s sake?

i am not sure why i am on such a bent on thinking of connoisseurship. what’s wrong with it? i think art for art’s sake is stupid. i think art for a purpose is just as stupid.

art for art’s sake or collecting specific knowledges like collecting shot glasses. connoisseurship for personal development is a waste, a sign of our decadent society. behaving in this manner is like picking a random thing and making that thing central. that kind of imbalance isn’t really all that great for anyone. but taken seriously, it becomes a replacement for actual life.

i would like to make a distinction now, between knowing what you like and being a snob, an otaku or a fanatic about it… there too is a formal difference between being a connoisseur and being an addict, but i don’t think that in this context, addict vs connoisseur is a meaningful distinction as both seek to centralize a content area. what’s tragic about this content area is that the borders of the content area are often arbitrary, formed from external factors (market influenced, historical or personal, to name a few). EX: you can be a tennis connoisseur but why not soccer or racquetball? that’s a different sport? what about clay courts vs concrete or grass? what about right or left handed players? singles or doubles? mens or womens? you see my point.

in contrast to this decadence, is knowledge collected for the sake of solving a problem. for instance, being nitpicky about how a certain module is built can have an impact on the entire system for the purposes of a network server. that’s fine. or how a proposal is written. okay! but being nitpicky about how a wine is aired is some sense ridiculous.

so art is nebulous, a matter more of deployment and affect than of substance.  this is because there’s no big picture for art. a big picture which preserves art as a concrete thing is a fantasy, because art like authenticity exist in the middle as a tactical endeavor.  art as a material affect lacks authenticity.  authenticity is about relations.

 

Authenticity and the Market place, What makes Hipsters Capitalists

so yes, all i do is talk about the big picture. but there is a difference between relationships and meaning/intention. certainly there is a correlation between things, even cause and effect. for instance, as i’ve complained before, hipsters have a notion that only non-market effects have authenticity.

this means that we (as hipsters) buy things that are local and personal. we despise corporate. but this really misses the point. the corporate (market) culture worships material. through branding, through product and design… the whole point is to get to the point of sale. so knowing this, hipsters avoid markets, and seek far flung corners of the globe to escape market realism.

but this is nonsense because by considering the non-market affects as alternatives to market products, hipsters actually bridge the gap between market and non-market. they introduce global capitalism by seeking supposed non-market areas and introducing rational choice theory and other market constructs. ive said it before; hipsters are very much the avant-gaarde of global capitalism by bringing fringe affects to the center.

so my point about authenticity is that hipsters like their corporate nemesises, miss the point:

Authenticity is found in relations, not Material.

you may complain that your boss treats you inhumanly, like a cog in the machine. but that treatment is authentic because when you are at work you are a cog in the machine. getting cut off on the freeway is definitely an authentic relationship, as is talking to the local barista for five minutes each day. in much the same way, hipsters mistake authenticity as a market construct — they think that having a human relationship means getting to know your local bum as your brother.

walter benjamin got it right with art in the age of mechanical reproduction. art as a market construct comes about when an item can be massed produced. the ‘original’ item then, becomes something more than mass produced. it becomes art, valuable and priceless because of its non-market origins. this is a different understanding of art than as a tactical maneuver.

when you think of non-market influenced art, like performance art.. but even more so like street art, graffiti art or transient earth art as real art (non-museum, non-institutionalized pieces) you are making a mistake about what art is. art as a produced item, even if it has non-market origins only enters the market as more market produced items.

graffiti art just happens to be the latest taste… performance art (which cannot be traditionally museumized due to its localized and temporalized nature) and earth art were previous forerunners in a series of attempts to experience non-market reality. but this too becomes just another item that is more prized as art once reproductions (albeit even imperfections) are passed on.

post-industrial capitalism as a whole is rightly a post-modern worldview, of signifiers divorced from having a penultimate signified.  post-industrial capitalism encapsulates material within a decontextualised territory, of market place, passing on the content as the form. hipsters seeking to escape market influence only spread its affects further because they mistook the market place as a set of content not a logic of deployment.  to grasp onto someone who was the first or who was the best (as with jiro) is just another expression of those elevating forces that define art and artistry as another market deployment. (this works, of course, the same way with music hipsters, who must hate a thing once it has obviously entered the market…)

so if you re-tool authenticity as relationships which originate from us as who we are, then we have to accept that authenticity is market-agnostic. so to go over human relationships as being authentic or not, wearing your mother’s sweater she got you is an authentic thing — not because she made it by hand (rather than old navy — because it might be from old navy) but because you note she loves you and you love her back is the thing. so in this i agree with zizek. the waiter who notes his role as waiter with a dose of cynicism is the man who actually is a waiter… he notes the expected rules and approaches them with the intention of being effective as a waiter is one who is authentic about his being a waiter… more so than the one who just does what he is supposed to with a pure heart… that kind of attitude means that the latter has not sacrificed all that he is into the role — he has not given up that which is not waiter yet, as he has not acknowledged it to give it up.

this is kind of a complex idea, but it comes from zizek’s background growing up in stalin eastern europe. one’s actual actions count, so that if one even carries with it the negativity about their duty and yet performs their duty — then one really is completely “into it” so to speak since one has made the choice to accept one’s fate… rather than one who mindlessly does it because it’s there (suggesting that the latter has yet to really make up their mind as they haven’t yet realized their mind).

in much the same way, one who is with their spouse despite their spouse’s flaws is one who is committed to the relationship. perhaps that is a more obvious way of speaking.

this of course, defines authenticity regardless of market influence.   authenticity has to do with personal affect, if it touches you or not.

sad to note though: the most authentic relationships most people have in their daily lives are with their pets. we can imbue our pets with subjectivity so as to better relate to them — or we can take that subjectivity away, should it be inconvenient. what makes most people’s relationships inauthentic is our inability to really accept the other person, due to expectations, market forces, career pressures, emotional hang ups or whatever… (i don’t mean that one should blindly accept whatever your significant other dishes, i mean that your relationship should be defined on a personal basis before one plays the role of “wife”… not because one has to be a “wife” so that means you behave in a particular way regardless of how one feels or doesn’t feel)

So where does that leave us with Art and Jiro?

rather than pursuing art in terms of market, we should probably see it natively. that is, with the viewer’s  (our own) sensibilities than any group focus. group objectivity is a theoretical position, one which is best fostered through art community consensus or market forces (enough people recognize, or it has been reproduced enough times to be famous). this means that art is a nebulous thing… and it is up to the artist to manage their audience’s expectations, should they wish to be an artist. i don’t think that art for arts sake should be how we see it, otherwise as a model of self expression, bad poets are the most artistic of all, since they speak directly from their emotions regardless of craft… and bad poetry is something most people will recognize as not being at all art.

so what we take from the movie is what we will, be it a biography, or a better appreciation. and if it be the latter, than we have achieved the most simple marker, haven’t we? and if watching a movie lets us be affected by sushi as art, then so be it.

what’s missing from corporate materialism is enchantment… and tactically, that is what art does.

so yeah, i did start somewhere, against something and i ended up in the same spot, with everything possibly, as an art. so what!

the game of tag

February 17, 2012 / posted in universal nothing / No Comments

Looney toons always has a pair. One who “gets it” and one who fails.

Pairs, like Tweety and Sylvester. Or Wile E Coyote. Maybe in some complexity of three with Tom and Jerry (and that bulldog), but mostly in regards to two, such as Bugs and Daffy or Bugs and Elmer Fudd.

These scenes resemble little more than snapshots of complex schemes often with little change between how one scene connects with next; they all occupy the same region; they are interchangable; syntagmatic.

Contrary with more contemporary cartoons, these looney tunes begs the question; who are we to identify with? How do we enter into the narrative? We relate with one or the other: The one who struggles with desire or the one who achieves mastery?

“meep meep.”

Neither position really presents much in the way of identification — at least for modern audiences. In such vignettes, at least for me, my interest is in the interplay between the one who “gets it” and the attempts of one who does not.

I guess in that sense, Venture Brothers is the same way. Only they all pretty much fail.

No one gets anything. Not the Guild and not O.C.I..

Even the super secret agents get confused about the counter plot. Don’t you see? It’s all just a test to prove your mettle, to see if you ‘get it’ or not!

Even the super powerful agent Brock Samson is at times reduced to an angry gorilla. ‘Getting it’ depends largely on understanding your role at all times, and no one can do that. Everyone fails at some point, with the twists and turns in the plots and complex schemes. We can’t always see how we stand with or among others.

What’s intriguing in Venture Brothers is that despite super science and heros and villains a reoccurring theme appears with older characters who have given it up.

So then theres “life outside discourse” where you “settle down”… (Venture Brothers episode 406)

This is very insulating, in the sense that we are walking into a dichotomy. Whether it is “settling down” or ruling the world, Everyone wants the dream-life. In the larger picture, we just don’t know what the idea ‘it is’ or ‘how it could be’. Again, those who ‘get it’… are who we want to be, if its the start of a career as a super scientist or one who is washed up at the end of it and ‘knows better’.

I think that kind of story (finding your way in or out of a discourse) is more interesting than ones where “the course of discourse must be decided” on “the battlefield”

Examples of the latter? Like Bravehart or Twilight or Star Wars… (we won’t talk about these because they are really boring as the ‘answer’ is obvious from the start, the journey is supposedly in the resolution of the conflict, but it is ‘safe’ conflict as the ending is pretty much guaranteed.)

An example of the former?

Married with Children is one example of the former. So life is gappier. You talk the big talk, Al Bundy (or Marcy Darcy or whoever) but then through the twists and turns you are revealed to be empty. To be a fraud, to only have your dreams. Dreams no one else really cares about.

Do you get it?

In Venture Brothers, the character we follow, for whom things are revealed, must always ‘figure it out’. The colorful side characters always ‘know more’ or ‘know nothing’ but become part of the tapestry as mastermind or victim/bystander.

There is a third kind of discursive position though, one in which things are arrows, in terms of maintaining the discourse.

Sitcoms repeat drive states until one character “gets how to deal with that imbalance” before life can return to its normal repetition.

IRL is probably more like sitcoms, although sometimes we think it’s about “getting it” in which case we think others “get it” and we try to “get it” too, or at least fool others into think we “get it” until we actually become one of those who “get it”. This is best seen in business where new businesses spend an inordinate amount of time convincing others they are legitimate….

The problem with imbalance and return is that IRL there’s really nothing to return to.

Just like there ain’t a discourse that’s inscibed in the cosmos, only ones inscribed in us. And we select from those partial lines.

IRL is like a bad play that just won’t end.

If, like the current movie, j Edgar, maybe we can improve the narrative if we tell it out if order so it’s not a flat narrative in which we repeat cycles. But why not sacrifice ‘realism’ if you are going to step Outside the chronological line and stage a trial by gods where j Edgar must recall his life in purgatory and judge himself…

So the conflict is drawn out — already j Edgar relies on voice overs and incidential parallels in time to explain the character reasoning which we wouldn’t otherwise get without it. In fact, the movie starts off with j Edgar relating to an agent to write a book; he supplies a narrative in order to reconstruct his own life, suggesting for us that he is the mastermind of his own plot — (calling into question what for us, might be the actual meaning).

This is very IRL — when here on the blogosphere, or with friends, we explain how we were in the recent past — to give continuity and identity to our current actions. We explain ourselves into a discourse, bring others into the fold so as to legitimize what we are doing right now.

For j Edgar, the voice belongs to a disembodied super ego which lasts beyond the narrator’s own death. But wouldn’t it be more interesting if the voice overs was the disembodied id and the determination in the scenes was due to the superego attempting to weave a dignified plot line?

As it is, the movie starts out it was the ego but it shifted when you caught up to the ‘narrative present’…

And then confusingly surpassed it.

Over all, with j edgar, it’s too easy to understated. The movie asks the wrong questions. We want to make a tragic figure? But it was too much a victimization…

Aristolean conflicts with the cobbled story line not withstanding.

If we could be explorers. Would it be best told as Marlowe or as Kurtz?

Between Naruto and Sasuske the story is told by the witness, Sakura. Not by Sherlock Holmes, but by Watson, a bystander.

Cuz, you know, Sakura is otherwise worthless. And that is the role others play for us, to witness it, and share it, to legitimize it. The crow lets the pawnshop owner to live and run back and ‘tell the tale’ so that others may know his story. Others can ‘get it’ too.

so, back to that shared discourse, it is the effort to legitimize our behavior within a symbolic (larger social reality) which Lacan was able to extract from Freud and speak of it directly without Freud’s troublesome metaphor.

I think that is pretty much Lacan right there; we get a calculas of who ‘gets it’ and ‘who does not’ and how we are each frauds — without substance and with substance– but in different ways. I think if there is a lesson to be learned is that we must not believe in the ‘getting it’ that ought to be gotten. That even adults are frauds, and that everyone is nothing in the face of the awesome sublime. Nonetheless, some ppl can be okay with nothing, and the job of an analyst is to help you become okay with nothing. And that ppl who are okay with nothing have nothing over those who are not okay with nothing. That there is no difference, and it is this nothing that makes no difference difference with everything.

I mean, yeah, zizek says that too. But he says more than that, although its not much more… its this nothing that really helps you see where Zizek and Buddhism collide. Actually it’s fuzzy in my head, but I think Zizek did mention it, in some book, I forget where, at the end of Parallax Gap, maybe. I saw it years before he wrote that book, but someone was bound to eventually point it out in print.

Zizek himself said it. Because then at that point, he ‘got it’ too.

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