> It is precisely now, when we are dealing with the raw Real of a
> catastrophe, that we should bear in mind the ideological and
> fantasmatic coordinates which determine its perception. If there is
> any symbolism in the collapse of the WTC towers, it is not so much
> the old-fashioned notion of the "center of financial capitalism,"
> but, rather, the notion that the two WTC towers stood for the center
> of the VIRTUAL capitalism, of financial speculations disconnected
> from the sphere of material production. The shattering impact of the
> bombings can only be accounted for only against the background of the
> borderline which today separates the digitalized First World from the
> Third World "desert of the Real." It is the awareness that we live in
> an insulated artificial universe which generates the notion that some
> ominous agent is threatening us all the time with total destruction.
I gather the word "Real" is being used here with the meaning given to it by Lacan, a meaning that, if I understand it correctly, explicitly disconnects it from "reality" and identifies it instead with unconscious "fantasy".
"Mathematization alone reaches a real - and it is in that respect that it is compatible with our discourse, analytic discourse - a real that has nothing to do with what traditional knowledge has served as basis for, which is not what the latter believes it to be, namely, reality, but rather fantasy.
"The real, I will say, is the mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious." (Le Séminaire - Jacques Lacan - Livre XX: Encore [as quoted at <http://www.expage.com/page/velloso>])
How on these premises about ourselves would it be possible for us to "bear in mind the ideological and fantasmatic coordinates which determine" our perception of a catastrophe? On these premises, must not Zizek's perception of the catastrophe and of the reaction of others to it be itself determined by "ideological and fantasmatic coordinates"? How, again on his premises, is it possible for him to know (in the traditional sense) anything about this or any other aspect of reality?
Also, on his premises it isn't "awareness that we live in an insulated artificial universe which generates the nation that some ominous agent is threatening us all the time with total destruction". It's unconscious fantasy which does this.
It's not true that "financial speculations" are "disconnected from the sphere of material production". Booms and busts in stock markets, for instance, have very significant effects on material production.
I myself think that unconscious fantasies, particularly those associated with persecutory anxiety, have a good deal to do with what occurs in both financial markets and material production. I suspect, however, that the unconscious fantasies underpinning the murder of the crew and passengers on the planes and those in and near the destroyed buildings were much more primitive and unrealistic that those underpinning the financial market activities with which the World Trade Center towers were associated. It's likely that the unconscious fantasies of the Taliban and those of New York financial capitalists are in important respects similar, but the former are not closer to reality than the latter.
Though I think Keynes seriously underestimates the dangerousness of the passions of even mature capitalism, he does have a point.
"For my own part, I believe that there is social an psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth, but not for such large disparities as exist to-day. There are valuable human activities which require the motive of money-making and the environment of private wealth-ownership for their full fruition. Moreover, dangerous human proclivities can be canalised into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunities for money making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self aggrandisement. it is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens; and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative." (General Theory, p. 374)
By the way, I don't think Lacan's claim that unconscious fantasy has a form that allows for its "mathematization" is true. Unconscious fantasy isn't analyzable into atomic elements whose identities remain unchanged in the face of changes in their relations, these relations also maintaining the constant form required for mathematization.
Dogmatic attachment to mathematizing is itself analyzable as the product of defenses against persecutory anxiety rooted in unconscious fantasy. An example is the mathematization through which those those in charge of Long-Term Capital Management deluded themselves into a false sense of security.
Ted
-- Ted Winslow E-MAIL: WINSLOW at YORKU.CA Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York University FAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3