What notion of ideology, then, is implied by Lacans theoretical edifice? In one of the early Marx Brothers movies, there is a hilarious Why a duck? scene: Groucho tells Chico that they have to meet someone at a viaduct, and Chico asks: Why a duck?; when Groucho explains to him that a viaduct is a large bridge across a valley, Chico persists: Why a duck? Groucho goes on explaining: You know, a bridge! Under the bridge, there is a green meadow.... Why a duck? repeats Chico. So the exchange goes on: In the midst of this meadow, there is a pond. Why a duck? In the pond, there are some ducks swimming.... So, thats why a duck! exclaims Chico triumphantly, getting it right for the wrong reason, as is often the case in ideological legitimization. Following a wild etymology, the designation of a name is explained here through the literal meaning of its parts: Why a duck? Because there are ducks swimming in the pond beneath it.... The key feature here is that the question (about why this name) is inscribed into the name itself. As we all know, the word kangaroo originated in a similar misunderstanding: when the first white explorers of Australia asked the aborigines: What is this?, pointing at a nearby kangaroo, the aborigines did not get the point, so they answered kangaroo, which in their language meant What do you want?, and the explorers misunderstood this question as the name for the kangaroo. If, then, this misperception of the question as a positive term, this inability to recognize the question, is one of the standard procedures of ideological misrecognition, then the very inanity of the Marx Brothers dialogue displays a critico-ideological dimension, in so far as it reintroduces the dimension of a question in what appears to be a positive designation: viaduct is really why a duck? Does not the logic of anti-Semitism rely on a similar misrecognition: while the (anti-Semitic figure of the) Jew appears to designate a certain ethnic group directly, it in fact merely encodes a series of questions -- Why are we exploited? Why are old customs falling apart?, and so on -- to which the Jewish plot is offered as the semblance of an answer. In other words, the first gesture of the critique of anti-Semitism is to read the Jew as Why a Jew?... In common American parlance, the baseball phrase Whos on first?, once it had been mistaken for a positive statement in a comedy by Abbott and Costello, also started to function as an answer in the form of a question. When Christopher Hitchens tackled the difficult question of what the North Koreans really think of their Beloved Leader Kim Yong Il, he produced what is arguably the most succinct definition of ideology: mass delusion is the only thing that keeps a people sane. This paradox indicates the fetishistic split at the very heart of an effectively functioning ideology: individuals transpose their belief on to the big Other (embodied in the collective), which therefore believes in their place -- individuals thus remain sane qua individuals, maintaining the distance towards the big Other of the official discourse. It is not only direct identification with the ideological delusion which would drive individuals insane, but also the suspension of their (disavowed, displaced) belief. In other words, if individuals were deprived of this belief (projected onto the big Other), they would have to jump in and directly assume the belief themselves. (Perhaps this explains the paradox that many a cynic turns into a sincere believer at the very point where the official belief disintegrates.) (see note 96 below) This necessary gap in identification enables us to locate the agency of the superego: the superego emerges as the outcome of the failed interpellation: I recognize myself as Christian, yet deep in my heart I do not really believe in Christianity, and this awareness of not fully endorsing my interpellated symbolic identity returns as the superego pressure of guilt. Does not this logic, however, conceal its exact opposite? At a deeper level, the superego gives expression to the guilt, to a betrayal, that pertains to the act of interpellation as such: interpellation qua symbolic identification with the Ego-Ideal is as such, in itself, a compromise, a way of giving up on ones desire. The guilt of not being a true Christian functions as a superego pressure only in so far as it relies on a deeper guilt of compromising ones desire by identifying as a Christian in the first place.... This is what Lacan meant by his claim that the true formula of materialism is not God doesnt exist, but God is unconscious. Milena Jesenska wrote about Kafka in a letter to Max Brod: Above all, things like money, stock-exchange, the foreign currency administration, type-writer, are for him thoroughly mystical (what they effectively are, only not for us, the others). We should read this against the background of Marxs analysis of commodity fetishism: the fetishist illusion lies in our real social life, not in our perception of it -- a bourgeois subject knows very well that there is nothing magic about money, that money is just an object which stands for a set of social relations, but he nevertheless acts in real life as if he believed that money is a magic thing. This, then, gives us a precise insight into Kafkas universe: Kafka was able to experience directly fantasmatic beliefs which we, normal people, disavow -- Kafkas magic is what Marx liked to call the theological freakishness of commodities. Lacans God is unconscious should not be confused with the opposite Jungian New Age thesis the Unconscious is God -- the difference between the two, that of the Hegelian inversion of subject and predicate, concerns the opposition between a lie and the truth. (The opposition here is exactly the same as the one between A dream is life and Life is a dream: while the first statement aims at a Nietzschean assertion of the dream as a full-blooded life-experience, the second expresses the attitude of melancholic despair à la Calderon: what is our life but a worthless dream, a pale shadow with no substance?...) Lacans God is unconscious reveals the fundamental Lie that constitutes a persons fantasmatic unity: what we encounter when we probe the innermost kernel of our being is not our true Self, but the primordial lie [proton pseudos] -- secretly, we all believe in the big Other. In contrast, the Unconscious is God means that the Divine Truth dwells in the unexplored depths of our personality: God is the innermost spiritual substance of our being, which we encounter when we delve into our true Self. Hitchenss definition of ideology shows us how to answer the boring standard criticism of the application of psychoanalysis to social-ideological processes: is it legitimate to expand the use of the notions which were originally deployed for the treatment of individuals to collective entities, and to say, for instance, that religion is a collective compulsive neurosis? The focus of psychoanalysis is entirely different: the Social, the field of social practices and socially held beliefs, is not simply on a different level from individual experience, but something to which the individual him- or herself has to relate, something which the individual him- or herself has to experience as an order which is minimally reified, externalized. The problem, therefore, is not how to jump from the individual to the social level; the problem is: how should the decentred socio-symbolic order of institutionalized practices /beliefs be structured, if the subject is to retain his or her sanity, his or her normal functioning? Which delusions should be deposited there so that individuals can remain sane? Take the proverbial egotist, cynically dismissing the public system of moral norms: as a rule, such a subject can function only if this system is out there, publicly recognized -- that is to say, in order to be a cynic in private, he has to presuppose the existence of naive other(s) who really believe. (See note 99 below) This strange power of the belief in a symbolic fiction often produces an uncanny je sais bien, mais quand même... : even if we are well aware that, in the well-known scene of eating shit from Pasolinis Salo, the actors were in fact eating a delicious mixture of honey and the best Swiss chocolate, the effect upon the viewer (always supposing, of course, he or she is not a coprophague) is none the less one of disgust. This is how a true cultural revolution should be conducted: not by directly targeting individuals, endeavouring to re-educate them, to change their reactionary attitudes, but by depriving them of support in the big Other, in the institutional symbolic order. 96. If, then, in order to be operative, an ideological text should not be taken (and acted upon) literally, in what, then, does the break between the traditional and the modem functioning of ideology consist? The clue is provided by the Marxian notion of the unconscious fantasmatic status of commodity fetishism: in the traditional functioning of ideology, the belief is direct, public (although assumed only as an appearance towards which we maintain a distance) -- that is to say, a traditional subject directly believes (or, rather, pretends to believe) in religious claims; while the modem subject represses this belief in the unconscious (as in the theology of commodity fetishism). The traditional subject explicitly claims to believe, while in his heart of hearts he does not believe; the modem subject explicitly claims not to believe, while in his unconscious (fantasy) he does so. 99. Since one usually opposes belief (in values, ideals, etc.) to the cynical attitude of its [only] money that matters, we should emphasize the all too obvious (and, for that very reason, all too often neglected) fact that money is belief at its purest and most radical: it functions only if there is trust in the social link. Money is in itself a worthless piece of paper or metal (or, with the advent of electronic cash, not even that): its ultimate status is that of a thoroughly symbolic obligation -- if people no longer believe in it, it ceases to function. Even with gold, the embodiment of real wealth, we should not forget that it has no use value, that its worth is purely reflexive, the result of peoples belief in its worth. Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, Verso, 2008 (second edition), pp.lxix-lxxii and note 96 (p.ciii) and note 99 (p.ciii)
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 20:16:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015