non-All Perhaps the true achievement of Christianity is to elevate a loving (imperfect) Being to the place of God -- that is, of ultimate perfection. Lacans extensive discussion of love in Encore should thus be read in the Pauline sense, as opposed to the dialectic of the Law and its transgression: this second dialectic is clearly masculine/phallic; it involves the tension between the All (the universal Law) and its constitutive exception; while love is feminine, it involves the paradoxes of the non-All. Consequently, there are two ways of subverting the Law, the masculine and the feminine. One can violate/transgress its prohibitions: this is the inherent transgression which sustains the Law, like the advocates of liberal democracy who secretly (through the CIA) train murderers-terrorists for the proto-Fascist regimes in Latin America. That is false rightist heroism: secretly doing the necessary but dirty thing, that is, violating the explicit ruling ideology (of human Rights, and so on) in order to sustain the existing order. Much more subversive than this is simply to do what is allowed, that is, what the existing order explicitly allows, although it prohibits it at the level of implicit unwritten prohibitions. In short -- to paraphrase Brechts well-known crack about how mild robbing a bank is in comparison with founding a bank -- how mild transgressing the Law is in comparison with obeying it thoroughly -- or, as Kierkegaard put it, in his unique way: We do not laud the son who said No, but we endeavour to learn from the gospel how dangerous it is to say, Sir, I will. What better example is there than Haseks immortal good soldier Schweik, who caused total havoc in the old Imperial Austrian Army simply by obeying orders all too literally? (Although, strictly speaking, there is a better example, namely the absolute example [Hegel], Christ himself: when Christ claims that he is here merely to fulfil the [Jewish] Law, he thereby bears witness to how his act effectively CANCELS the Law.) The basic paradox of the relationship between public power and its inherent transgression is that the subject is actually in (caught in the web of) power only and precisely in so far as he does not fully identify with it but maintains a kind of distance towards it; on the other hand, the system (of public Law) is actually undermined by unreserved identification with it. Stephen Kings Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption tackles this problem with due stringency apropos of the paradoxes of prison life. The cliché about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of prison life. The actual dialectic of prison life, however, is somewhat more refined. Prison in effect destroys me, attains a total hold over me, precisely when I do not fully consent to the fact that I am in prison but maintain a kind of inner distance towards it, stick to the illusion that real life is elsewhere and indulge all the time in daydreaming about life outside, about nice things that are waiting for me after my release or escape. I thereby get caught in the vicious cycle of fantasy, so that when, eventually, I am released, the grotesque discord between fantasy and reality breaks me down. The only true solution is therefore fully to accept the rules of prison life and then, within the universe governed by these rules, to work out a way to beat them. In short, inner distance and daydreaming about Life Elsewhere in effect enchain me to prison, whereas full acceptance of the fact that I am really there, bound by prison rules, opens up a space for true hope. What this means is that in order effectively to liberate oneself from the grip of existing social reality, one should first renounce the transgressive fantasmatic supplement that attaches us to it. In what does this renunciation consist? In a series of recent (commercial) films, we find the same surprising radical gesture. In Speed, when the hero (Keanu Reeves) is confronting the terrorist blackmailer who is holding his partner at gunpoint, the hero shoots not the blackmailer, but his own partner in the leg -- this apparently senseless act momentarily shocks the blackmailer, who releases the hostage and runs away.... In Ransom, when the media tycoon (Mel Gibson) goes on television to answer the kidnappers request for two million dollars as a ransom for his son, he surprises everyone by saying that he will offer two million dollars to anyone who will give him any information about the kidnappers, and announces that he will pursue them to the end, with all his resources, if they do not release his son immediately. This radical gesture not only stuns the kidnappers -- immediately after accomplishing it, Gibson himself almost breaks down, aware of the risk he is courting.... And, finally, the supreme case: when, in the flashback scene from The Usual Suspects, the mysterious Keyser Soeze returns home and finds his wife and small daughter held at gunpoint by the members of a rival mob, he resorts to the radical gesture of shooting his wife and daughter themselves dead -- this act enables him mercilessly to pursue members of the rival gang, their families, parents and friends, killing them all.... What these three gestures have in common is that in a situation of forced choice, the subject makes the crazy, impossible choice of, in a way, striking at himself, at what is most precious to himself. This act, far from amounting to a case of impotent aggressivity turned against oneself, rather changes the co-ordinates of the situation in which the subject finds himself: by cutting himself loose from the precious object through whose possession the enemy kept him in check, the subject gains the space of free action. Is not such a radical gesture of striking at oneself constitutive of subjectivity as such? Was not such a gesture already that of Abraham, commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, that which mattered more to him than himself? In his case, of course, an angel intervened at the last moment, staying Abrahams hand. (In the Christian reading, one could claim that the actual killing was unnecessary, since the only thing that mattered was inner intention, just as one has already committed a sin if one simply covets ones neighbours wife.) But here, precisely, we can draw the line that separates the classical hero from the modern hero: if Abraham were a modern hero, no angel would appear at the last moment; he would actually have to slaughter his son. Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute: Or, why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, Verso, 2001, pp.147-50
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 02:05:23 +0000
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