> Now I haven't read the Lacan-Hitchcock book in years, but does H. count as
> postmodern?
Absolutely. Anything with mass appeal is postmodern - the logic of late capitalism yadda yadda.
> God I hate that term used as floppy everything I'm not into category.
Zizek is using the category is an extraordinarily technical sense. So I don't really see it as floppy, although one really has to dig through his work to find its limits. Postmodernism, for Zizek, is basically the symptom that we, as analysts of culture (so to speak), must engage (the postmodern makes a claim to lack nothing, which means that it is constituted by this very lack which it represses, it is sustained by its very denial of its constitutive elements). By "reading" (there must be a better term for this) the symptoms, we are able to locate cause, and the way in which cause is "outdone" by the symptom and simultaneously how it insubstantiates the cause in itself. Kind of like a Hegelian sublation with a great deal of excess (the effect always outdoes the cause qua vanishing mediator). Fancy jargon, simply means that there is more to cause and effect that meets the eye, ie. contingency, folks. Zizek makes some pretty clear distinctions between modernism, post-structuralism, postmodernism and deconstruction. Derrida et al are deconstructionists, and I'm sure he'd include Butler in this category as well. The Frankfurt School and the deconstructionists, who are "unmasking" the repressive potential of reason through the use of reason (something like that) are on the same side. Ironically, for Zizek, most modernists (like Habermas) are actually read as postmodernists and most postmodernists (like Derrida?) are read as modernists. It's a political strategy of hystericization. I'm convinced of this. Zizek is attempting to "traumatize" our dearly beloved categories. Of course, this often makes people suspicious of Zizek, because they like their world to function perfectly without thought or interuption.
> Moving on, moving on, I know much of this list by now... Also, my
understanding of Zizek would be that fusing the Real and the Symbolic is not
'a bad thing' but rather less soapboxily the constitutional force of late
modernity. Am I wrong?
The fusing of the Real and the Symbolic is Lacan's definition of psychosis (Seminar III). It is a "bad thing" in the sense that it is completely unreflective, since reflection requires an intervention by the imaginary (ie. the ego). So we go to the movies, go shopping, go to work and feel good about ourselves. Then turn on the tube, edit some book review and pour a beverage, without a single reflective moment. Welcome to a paradise. For Zizek, it is not psychosis (perversion, paranoia and so on) that grants access to the uncs, rather, neurosis. In psychosis, there is no ethics, no responsibility - just blind and mechanical functioning. In neurosis, the subject is always screwed up and questioning, reflective (hysteric and so on). So it is through neuroses that we have access to the uncs. In this way, normalacy is psychotic, and the unncanny is neurotic (I think)...
Here's an example.
"Doctor, it hurts when I twist my arm like this."
"Then don't twist your arm like that."
"I'm going to twist it all the way back!!!" "Yarrrghhhg!"
This is an illustration of the damned if you do damned if you don't psychotic behaviour. The "patient" knows damn well that they shouldn't twist their arm, but they do it anyway. If you do as your told, you are simply following orders. If you do the opposite, you are simply inverting the ordering process. So the twisting your arm back all the way - is perversion, as is doing what your told to do. The "modernist" response would be something like a spark, an ignition that disappears, "Who are you to me, doctor?" "What does this mean?" For Zizek, the subject is the "but" inbetween these two statements: "I'll do as you say, but, I'm going to twist my arm all the way back."
> I don't know this essay and should have a look when I have a moment but
perhaps you can tell me where Zizek says ethics is always from the perspective
of radical evil. Why is this a sensible way of talking about ethics? Or do you
mean the quote from Plague of fantasies? I can see what I think this is saying
about the ethical paradox -- we can only be subjects by being incapable of the
neutral-objective representation, yes? (and this is not anything he discusses
in his Britannica byte) -- but where's 'radical evil'?
There is a great anthology by Joan Copjec, Radical Evil. There are essays in there by Copjec, Salecl, Zizek and Zupancic which all relate to the idea that ethics is a viewpoint from the perspective of radical evil. Alenka Zupancic also has a new book out - Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan - which deals with this (I haven't got my hands on it yet). Zupancic and Zizek also have relevant essays in Cogito and the Unconscious and, as I mentioned, Zizek's Plague of Fantasies.
The radical evil stuff comes from Kant's book on religion, which is actually quite fascinating. Kant argued that human beings are caught in evil, "The world lieth in evil." The two poles are this: diabolical evil (or devilish being, which Kant argues is impossible) and the highest good. Because of frailty, corruption and impurity (not in that order) we can never get to the highest good although we are obligated to try (you can because you must!). Zupancic, and Lacan earlier, argue that diabolical evil and the highest good are identical. What Kant repressed is this: that in fulfilling either, you end up negating or dissolving the categorical imperative. The logic, then, of the categorical imperative then is this: if you achieve it, if you pass the test, you've committed ethical suicide. In other words, if you actually accomplish "the good" or "do your duty" then your moral consciousness disappears. The aim, then, is to fall short. To avoid doing your duty - to sidestep "going all the way" and committing a self-reflective act of evil to do so. In doing something evil, radically evil, one must take responsibility for ones actions (because the individual will feel guilty). I see this as a powerful rebuke against the three dominant ethical theories: hermeneutical ethics of the good (MacIntyre, Taylor, Heller, Gadamer), ethics of justice (which is a procedural ethics of the good, Rawls and Habermas) and ethics of 'postmodernism' (which is a negation of the procedure in favour of some sort of 'nice' pluralism).
In the end, ethics is a question of praxis, which is a rather Aristotelian side of Kant, always incomplete yet motivated by a utopian impulse which is impossible (not unlike Adorno's thoughts in Minima Moralia toward the end, actually, at the end).
> >"Our age" would be a flux of premodernizing, modernizing and
> >postmodernizing... Zizek approaches "our age" through the study of
philosophical attitudes (ie. mapping ideology) (ie. symptoms) - hysteria and
paranoia for the modern, psychosis for the postmodern. The we is stylistic,
since the "I" does not exist. "I think."
> Yes but in this flux then what the hell is the specificity of the
'postmodern' or at least the difference between cows sawed in half and for
example cubism? because he clearly thinks there is a difference
The difference is this: mod and pomo mark two different ways of relating to the Other. In pomo, one might say, "Hey, that's the Other [which does not exist], what a contradiction, now I'm going on vacation." In mod, one might say, "My God? What the hell is that?" or pomo: "God does not exist and neither to I" - mod: "I belive in God, but I don't trust him!" Something like that anyway. It has everything to do with our relation to... something (hence, the appropriation of psychoanalysis).
> >Basically, "we" and "our" mean nothing. He articulates them as empty
> >signifiers. In Tarrying With the Negative he talks about the revolutionary
> >difference between "We are a people" and "We are THE people." One is
> >relativistic, fragmented, and substantial (and psychotic), the other empty,
> >universal, and meaningless.
> Haven't read this either -- is this different to Laclau on empty/political
> signifiers?
Nope. Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology is mirrored on Laclau and Mouffe's text (or is at least heavily indebted to it).
> But it still confuses me, given that it doesn't say anything at all for me
what happens when Zizek says 'we' in this kind of speaking philosophy to the
people moment.
I'm not sure about your confusion. If the self is an Other, then doesn't it makes sense to say "We think" rather than "I think" ?
The distinction between "a people" and "the people" for Zizek is strategic in a sense. "A people" indicate "we're like this, you are like that, and, likely, we'll never get along." In other words: identity is equivalent to some given historical substance (the subject as substance). "We are the people" indicate that there is no substance, and the empty universal is upheld because it is undetermined. What does "the people" mean? It means nothing, until we specify it to "a people." Best guess.
ken
PS. if I haven't mentioned this: psychosis and neurosis, for Zizek, are interpreted to be "philosophical attitudes" - not clinical states of mind. So he's drawing heavily on a Hegelian interpretation of Lacan here, one which Jacques Alain-Miller promotes in Lacan but one which may or may not be in Lacan...