> CB: Sorry, I still don't follow. What is the door analogized to ?
One locks their door because of the paranoid logic of culture. The actual locking of the door is an ideological gesture. Zizek wrote:
"Is not the ultimate American paranoiac fantasy that of an individual living in a small idyllic Californian city, a consummerist paradise, who suddenly starts to suspect that the world he lives in is a fake, a spectatle staged to convince him that he lives in a real world, while all people around him are effectively actors and extras in a gigantic show? The most recent example of this is Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998), with Jim Carrey playing the small town clerk who gradually discovers the truth that he is the hero of a 24-hours permanent TV show: his hometown is constructed on a a gigantic studio set, with cameras following him permanently. Sloterdijk's "sphere" is here literally realized, as the gigantic metal sphere that envelopes and isolates the entire city. This final shot of The Truman Show may seem to enact the liberating experience of breaking out from the ideological suture of the enclosed universe into its outside, invisible from the ideological inside. However, what if it is precisely this "happy" denouement of the film (let us not forget: applauded by the millions around the world watching the last minutes of the show), with the hero breaking out and, as we are led to believe, soon to join his true love (so that we have again the formula of the production of the couple!), that is ideology at its purest? What if ideology resides in the very belief that, outside the closure of the finite universe, there is some "true reality" to be entered?"(2)
Is not the locked door the precise manifestation of ideology - the idea qua material repression of the Real (the trauma associated with having the substance of being stolen)? And wouldn't leaving your door unlocked be the utlimate utopian escape? The "heroic breaking out" of the ideological sphere? (of private property). Living in a society of open doors would be perceived, by some, to the actualization of a more socialized world, the "true" world underneath the capitalism realm. So the locked door is, in accord with Zizek's reading of capitalism and the Matrix, a perversion [when taken in relation to why one is locking it]. "I'll lock my door, just in case" [someone comes along to take my stuff]. But leaving the door unlocked would reveal the same structure, "I'll leave my door unlocked, just in case" [this is a sign of a more humane society].
> > What does not debating have to do with what I said ? The reason to debate is
> to win people to revolutionary and other feminist struggle.
>
> Well that explains one of the things that Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, once
> said: "Doesn't it seem like everybody just shouts at each other nowadays? I
> think it's because conflict is ddrama, drama is entertaining, and entertainment
> is marketable. Finding consensus and common ground is dull! Nobody wants to
> watch a civilized discussion that acknowledges ambiguity and complexity. We
> want to see fireworks! We want the sense of solidarity and identity that comes
> from having our interests narrowed and exploited by like-minded zealots! Talk
> show hosts, political candidates, news programs, special interest groups...
> they all become successfful by reducing debates to the level of shouted rage.
> Nothing gets solved, but we're all entertained."
>
> (((((((((((
>
> CB: Don't quite see what your point is.
You mentioned that the point is to win. I'm suggesting that winning is an instrumental goal and, as such, a form of entertainment. The more spirited the debate, the higher the ticket prices. It's appealing for precisely the same reason the Matrix is appealing.
Zizek wrote: "It is nonetheless easy to understand this intellectual attraction of The Matrix: is it not that The Matrix is one of the films which function as a kind of Rorschach test [ http://rorschach.test.at/ ] setting in motion the universalized process of recognition, like the proverbial painting of God which seems always to stare directly at you, from wherever you look at it - practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it?"
The idea of a struggle, which can actuall be won definitively by one side or the other is the key here. As Calvin notes, "We want the sense of solidarity and identity that comes from having our interests narrowed and exploited by like-minded zealots!" Argumentation, as an anchor the questions of truth and objectivity is precisely this "narrowing of interests." You place yourself in one of two camps, one of which must have the truth. The logic of competition, of one against the other, is the logic of capitalism. And insofar as you must purchase the terms of discourse from its logic, it is nothing more than a marketable tool. I'm sure the next round of gameshows will be philosophical debates - with a panel of judges and a rather hefty prize (a trip to Disney World? - where we're "all the same inside").
> !!! Really? You *know* all the answers? Again, I am prompted to ask, why
> debate then?
>
> (((((((((((((((
>
> CB: What I said does not imply I know all of the answers. It just means all
attempts to formulate an effective critical theory , etc. are not paranoiac.
If you aren't sure of yourself, you are paranoid, in each and every discourse that is presupposed to be resolvable.
> > Charles: Kant was a bureaucrat. He worked at a desk (bureau) didn't he ?
> Zizek is a bureaucrat too.
> So you are what you get paid to do? Isn't that a nasty piece of work. No
> wonder people go to the movies.
> Charles: Wasn't Zizek or whoever calling someone a "bureaucrat?" Was it
because that it what they are paid to do ? Why did he call them a "bureaucrat" ?
I can't find the reference... but one of the bureaucrat references that Zizek likes to make is something like this: it isn't the bureaucrat who thinks themself a god that is dangerous, but the god who thinks themself a bureaucrat. Why? Because the god possess true knowledge and power, but thinks of themself as powerless (just a pencil pusher) and will write commands and dictate year end margins without thinking about it (their impression is that their work is meaningless, simple calculation)... without following through with the idea that such dictates are acted upon...
> > I have no idea what Kantians think. Zizek isn't Kantian.
>
> CB: What is he ? and does he think that the idea that Kennedy was killed in
a coup d'etat is some kind of illustratio of his theory of conspiracy theories ?
He's lacanian, with a healthy dose of german idealism to boot. The Slovene Lacanian School has four chief interests: an analysis of power, a critique of ideology, a mapping of culture, and an intervention in theoretical debate - all through an unapologetic lacanian lens (although Zizek relies on Kant and Hegel and Schelling and others, they're all read through Lacan).
> > > CB: The objective human condition today is the struggle to replace
capitalism with communism.
> > This is... hilarious. You're not serious are you?
> CB: Actually it is very depressing. Humanity is failing in that struggle.
Do you think this stuggle is onto-genetic? (ie class struggle is the ground of being) (in the same way that Habermas thinks that all communication leads to understanding).
> > CB: All power to the workers.
> Power is, by definition, incomplete.
> CB: What definition of power are you referring to ?
The capacity to manipulate stuff.
> CB: Is it possible not to abuse power ?
That's an awkward question. The obvious answers are yes or no, but our lives are sustained by power and in this sense we can't do without it. However the use of power, and its justification, entail a vanishing mediator, there is a logical loop whenever power slips from being effective to being justified.
> CB: How does it follow from " the self is a *unity* and *struggle* of
opposites" that the "self is NO THING or nothing more than its own
self-relating negativity ?
The idea of the self as a unity and struggle of opposites requires that the supplement that the self is a plurality and a struggle of identical substances. The self is nothing more than self-relating negativity. The unity is opposed to the split, and the split is precisely what gives rise to the unity. What this means is that the "i" is ideology, appearance qua appreance in its experiencial negation (experience being the negation of what came prior).
ken