[lbo-talk] "Mechanical marxists"

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Sat Apr 5 11:29:03 PST 2003


Yoshie quoted Zizek:


> ***** _Blade Runner_...gives a double twist to the commonsense
> distinction between human and android. Man is a replicant who does
> not know it. Yet if this were all, the film would involve a
> simplistic reductionist notion that our self-experience _qua_ free
> 'human' agents is an illusion founded upon our ignorance of the causal
> nexus that regulates our lives. For that reason, one should
> supplement the former statement: it is only when, at the level of the
> enunciated content, I assume my replicant status, that, at the level
> of enunciation, I become a truly human subject. 'I am a replicant' is
> the statement of the subject in its purest....In short, the implicit
> thesis of _Blade Runner_ is that replicants are pure subjects
> precisely in so far as they experience the fact that every positive,
> substantial content, inclusive of the most intimate fantasies, is not
> 'their own' but already implanted.

But, on these premises, "I am a replicant" cannot be consistently interpreted as the "own" statement of a "subject" since in the case of a "replicant" "every positive, substantial content, inclusive of the most intimate fantasies, is not 'their own' but already implanted."

Ted



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