1========

'The truth is out there'

which

became clearly discernible,pedestal for the

material feature of architecturalin which

a couple of years ago, the disclosure of Michael Jackson's alleged'immoral' behaviour sexual games with boys) dealta blow to his innocent Peter Pan elevated sexual andracial differences (or concerns), some penetrating commentators askedthe obvious What's all the fuss about? Wasn't this so-called 'darkside of Michael here for all of us to see, in the videothat his musical which were saturated with ritual-ized violence obscene sexualized (blatantly so in the case ofThriller and ? The Unconscious is not hidden in any

the X Files motto: 'The truth is outthere'

Such a focusing on material proves very fruitful in theanalysis of how fantasy relates to the inherent of an ideologi-

edifice. Do not the two architectural del Fascialocal headauarters of the Fascist , Adolfo neo-

(1928) and highly modernisttransparent glasshouse (1934-36) their

inherent contradiction of the ideologicalSiIlllultaneously advocates a return to organicist co rporausm

the unheard-of mobilization of social forces in the service ofmodernization? An even better is the

buudmgs in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, whichmultistorey office a gigantic statue of the weanzeuor a couole: in the span of a couple of years, the tendency

for u •

so that it changed mcreasmgtystatue - does notreveal the 'truth'

are reduced to

THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

of , and articulate its inherent antagonismits material existence.

This which materializes is also occluded. That is to say: in everyday ideology is at work m

apparently innocent reference to pure - one should neverthe functions as

notion; that it always involves the assertion of as meaningexample, a man who lives in a city and owns a Land Rover does notsimply lead a no-nonsense, 'down-to-earth' rather, he owns such acar in order to signal that he leads his life under the of a no-nonsense, 'down-to-earth' . The master of suchanalysis, of course, was Claude Levi-Strauss, semiotic ofpreparing food how food also servesas 'food for all remember the scene from BuriuelsPhantom of in which relations between and areinverted: sit on their lavatories around thetalking, and when want to eat, ask the'Where is that .. , you know?' and sneak away to a small room inthe back. as a to Levi-Strauss, one is to proposethat shit can also serve as a matiere-d-penser: do not the three basic oflavatorv form a kind of excremental to the Levi­Straussian triangle of cooking?

In a traditional German lavatory, the hole in which shit afterwe flush water is way in so that the shit is first laid out for us to sniffat and for traces of some illness; in the French onthe the hole is in the back - that the shit is todisappear as soon as possible; the Anglo-Saxon or

hv,,,t()r\! presents a kind of a mediation betweenthese two opposed poles - the basin is full of water, so that the shit floats

it - visible, but not to be inspected, No wonder that in thefamous discussion of different lavatories at the of

id,~oJOg;lC;ll monster which crushes actual men under his feet? Theparadox is that had anyone in the Soviet Union of the 1930s saidthat the vision of the Socialist New Man was an monstersquashing actual would have been arrested Itwas, allowed even - to make

is out there',also

4

InE ;,r..VE1"'J Vr..1L~ U~ l'AN !·A~Y

her Fear of Flying, mockingly claims: 'German toilets arereally the key to the horrors of the Third Reich, People who can buildtoilets like this are capable of anything,' It is clear that none of theseversions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certainideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasantexcrement which comes from within our body is clearly discernible ­again, for the third time, 'the truth is out there',

was among the first to the geographical triadGermany-France-England as expressing three different existential atti­tudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness,English moderate utilitarian pragmatism; in terms of political stance, thistriad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radical­ism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of

of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetryFrench politics and English economy. The reference to lavatories

enables us not to discern the same triad in the most intimate domainthe excremental function, but also to generate the

mechanism of this triad in the three different attitudesexcremental excess: contemplative fascination; the

rid of the excess as fast as possible; theto treat the excess as an ordinary object to be

of in an appropriate way. So it is easy for an academic to claimround table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment

the restroom after the heated discussion, U'o. 'Y "e,"A" kln~,~-(1eeo

The ideological investment of such references todialogical character: the lavatory acquires its

through its differential relation to French and Germanla:V'al()ries. We have such a multitude of the types because there is

traumatic excess which each of them tries to accommodate - accordingone of the features which distinguishes man from the animals

Preciselv that with humans the disposal of shit becomes a problemgoes for the different ways in which one washes dishes: in

enmark. for example, a detailed set of features opposes the way dishesto the way they do it in Sweden, and a close analysis soonthis opposition is used to index the fundamental perception

national which is defined in opposition toAnd - to reach an even more intimate domain - do

r(;()unter the same semiotic in the three

attitude of natural'lplinary 'procedure of a French shaves the

to the legs, so that all that remains is a narrowa clear-cut shave line), in the mmk attitude. the

5

THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

clitoris). Is thistriangle ofOne can seeused to

I""n?;!h! attachedanother version of the Levi-Straussian semiotic

wen-kent 'baked' hair and shaved 'boiled' hair?most intimate attitude towards one's is

ideological statement." So how does this materialto our conscious convictions? of

He himself so well into the role of a hypocrite that he played it, as itsincerely. This way and only this way he becomes funny. Without this

purely material sincerity, without the attitude and speech which, through thelong practice of hypocrisy, became for him a natural way to act, Tartuffe wouldbe simply repulsive."

youas ifyou and belief will come'commodity fetishism' is about: in his a isa common-sense nominalist, but the of hisdeeds the 'theological whimsies' of commodity universe."This material of the external ideological not the

of the inner convictions and desires, is the true locus ofthe which sustains an ideological edifice.

The standard notion of the way fantasy works within ideology is that ofa fantasy-scenario which obfuscates the true horror of a situation: insteadof a full of the antagonisms which traverse our society, weindulge in the notion of society as an organic Whole, togetherforces of solidarity and co-operation .... Here also, however, it is muchmore productive to look for this notion of fantasy where one would not

to find it: in marginal and, again, purely utilitariansituations. Let us simply recall the safety instructions prior to the takeoffof an aeroplane - are they not sustained by a phantasmic scenario of howa possible plane crash will look? After a gentle landing on water(miraculously, it is always supposed to happen on waterl ), each of thepassengers puts on the life-jacket and, as on a beach toboggan, slides into

water and takes a swim, like a nice collectiveexperience under the guidance of an experienced swimming instructor.

this 'gentrifYing' of a catastrophe (a nice soft landing, stewardesses

Bergson's expression of 'purely material sincerity' dovetails withthe Althusserian notion of State - of the external

materializes ideology: the subject who maintains his distancetowards the ritual is unaware of the

6

In cance-nke style zraciousrv nomnnz towards the

rather obviousbetween and the honor of the

much more ambiguous than it may seem: fantasy concealsat the same time it what it purports to conceal,

of reference not the images of the ultimatefrom 'the gigantic squid to the ravagingcreations par excellence?)5 Furthermore. one should

with a whole series of features,"

1: transcendental schematism

to note is that does not realize a desire in away: its function is similar to that of Kantian

'transcendental schematism ': a constitutes our itsthat is, it 'teaches us how to desire'. The role of

f.,nh<u is thus in a way to that of the ill-fated inphilosophy, this mediator between res cogitans and res extensa:

between the formal symbolic structure and the positivityin - that is to say,

to which certain objects infunction as of filling in the

symbolic structure. To it in somewhat terms:mean that when I desire a cake and cannot get it infantasize about it; the rather: how do I know

a strawberry cake in the first place? This is what tells me.of on the fact that 'there is no sexual relation­universal'formula or matrix a harmonious sexual

one's because of the lack of this universalhas to invent a of his or her own. a

the sexual - for a man, thepossible only inasmuch as she fits his formula.

Slovene feminists reacted with a greatfor sun

THE PLAGUE OF FANTAS ES

her specific catalyst,point: regarding fundamental would be lH,il t~d,-H subject,

female or possesses such a 'factor' which regulates

'a woman, viewed from on her handsMan's a statue-like woman without hair was Ruskin'sand about our awareness of this 'factor':

2: Intersubjectivity

In

That is to

focusing on the

bear in mind that the desire 'realized'

The second feature concerns the ofraruasv. The critical and abandonment of term iintersub-

jectivitv in late Lacan (in clear contrast to his earlier insistence that theproper domain of psychoanalytic is neither norobjective, but that of does not in any involveabandonment of the notion that the relation to Otherand the latter's desire is crucial to the subject's very rdenuty

one should claim that Lacan 's abandonment of 'intersubjectivity' iscorrelative to the focusing of attention on the of the

impenetrable Other's desire (' eke ouoil'], the late Lacan doesshould be opposed to

motifs of the for of connectionbetween of desire and desire for recognition, as well as tomiddle Lacans 'structuralist' motif of the Other as the anonymoussvmbolic structure.

IJpl'h~ln~ the easiest way to discern these shifts ischanged status of the object. In Lacan, the IS depreciated as toits inherent it counts only as a stake in thestruggles for recognition and love (the milk demanded a child fromthe mother is reduced to a 'sign of love', that is, the demand for milkeffectively aims at the mother to display her love for the

[ealous subject demands from his parents a certain this toy becomesof his because he is aware that it is also coveted his

. In late on the contrary, the focus shifts to thesubject itself 'is', to the agalma, secret treasure, which gU.arantel::s

minimum of to the subject'sa, as the object of fantasy, is thaton account of which I

desire' .should

8

..Il....Il....Il..L J.l.:.V.ll.;..l'll VL.LL0 VE J:'1"1.1"'ll.l1"1..:JI

9

herereduced to a token which is

as the in which my own andthe object is that

subject itself', that which I fantasize

tanrasv is not the subject's own, but the other's desire: fantasy, phantasmic10rma tLOIl , is an answer to the enigma of' Che vuoi?' - 'You're saying this,but what do you really mean by saying it?' - which established the subject'sprimordial, constitutive The question of desire is not

'What do I want?', but 'What do others want from me? What dosee in me? What am I to others?' A small child is embedded in a

complex network of relations; he serves as a kind of catalyst and battlefieldfor the desires of those around him: his mother, brothers and

and so on, fight their battles around the mother sending amessage to the father her care for the son. While he is well aware

this the child cannot fathom what object, precisely, he is to others,the exact nature of the games they are playing with him is, and

fantasv provides an answer to this enigma: a!i!smmt..flculdaml:ntal,-[<l:1l1:as:y)IIII';;.);IIlI;d).,,L.,aclcll.W."JJJLYJ1U=IS. It is again anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitic

paranoia, which reveals this radically intersubjective character of fantasy inway: fantasy (the social fantasy of the Jewish plot) is an

attempt to an answer to 'What does society want from me?', tothe meaning of the events in which I am forced to

participate. For that reason, the standard theory of 'projection', accord-to which the anti-Semite 'projects' on to the figure of the the

disavowed part is not sufficient: the of the 'conceptualcannot be the externalization (anti-Semite's) 'inner

conthct'; on the it bears witness to tries to cope theI am originally part of an opaque network whose

m(~arlingandlogic elude my control.radical of

cases, like that (reported of his little daughterabout a cake - what we have here is no

case of the direct hallucinatory satisfaction of a desirewanted a cake, she didn't get it, so she fantasized about it ... ). That

one should introduce here is the dimension ofthe crucial feature is that while she was voraciously

cake, the little girl noticed how her parents werethis spectacle, by seeing her fully enjoying it - so what

fanrasv of eating a strawberry cake is really about is her attempt(of the one who a cake

would parents, make

THE PLAGUE OF FANTAS ES

sees So noserves as the mediator between my desire and the Other'sit is the Other's desire itself which serves as the mediator between the

that the 'is', -phantasmic identity to the subject. And one can also see

[antasme consists: in an of the fact that

0pposluon between Lacan andHabermas insists on the difference between the

object relationship and intersubjectivity proper: in the the othersubject is precisely not one of the objects in my field of butthe partner in a dialogue, the interaction with whom, within a concretelite-world, forms the irreducible background of my of

represses thereby, however, is simply and the intersectionof these two relations - the level at which another subject is not yet thepartner in intersubjective symbolic communicationbut remains an object, a Thing, that which makes a 'rieighbour'repulsive presence - this other qua the object which gives to anunbearable excess of jouissance is the proper 'object of psychoanalysis'.Lacan's is thus that intersubjectivity is not the ultimatehorizon behind which one cannot reach: what precedes it is not a'monadic' subjectivity, but a pre-symbolic relation to anOther which is the real the Other as not the Otherlocated within the field of intersubjectivity.

3: The narrative occlusion of antagonism

third point: fantasy is the primordial form of narrative, which serves tooccult some original deadlock. The sociopolitical fantasy par excellence, ofcourse, is the myth of 'primordial accumulation': the narrative of the twoworkers, one lazy and free-spending, the other diligent and enterprising,accumulating and investing, which provides the myth of the 'origins ofcapitalism', obfuscating the violence of its actual genealogy. Notwithstand­ing his emphasis on symbolization and/or historicization in the 1950s,Lacan is thus radically anti-narrativist: the ultimate aim of psychoanalytictreatment is not for the analysand to organize his confused life-experienceinto (another) coherent .narrative, with all the traumas properly inte­grated, and so on. It is not only that some narratives are 'false', based

the exclusion of traumatic events and patching up the gaps leftexclusions - Lacans thesis is much stronger: the answer to the

question 'Wlry do we tell stories?' is that narrative as such emerges in order

10

1

of these

~ ofdeadlock which resides in fact

eniovment at the very moment of its eme1gence

two narratives are, in their crucialexclusive: according to the first one, the neutral Law, delivered

emerged with while accordingthe 'crisis of investiture

to resolve some fundamental antagonismIt is thus

The narrative according to with the advent of therooted in concrete traditional and as such still per-

[ouissance of a of life', gets into the neutral~Y'l1U'VH,', Law and its superego of obscene unwritten rules: it

with the advent of that the neutral iudicial order of.aw delivered of substantial jouissance emerges,

counter-narrative accordinz tomodernitv, the rule of the Law is replaced

disciplinary practices Modernity involves the 'crisis of investi-111<lUIJlllY of subjects to assume mandates: what prevents

svmbolic identification is the ofof in the big Other of the the of theof law as permeated with obscene the

Iiscipliriary exercise of power which supplants the pure Law isstained with superego enjoyment fact that Schreber

the vision of the obscene God who wanted to use him asfeminine in the act of is thus strictly correlative to

he was the victim of a proto-Foucauldian disciplinary

witness to some Thetive the temporal

dllCdUY given what it purports to reproducenarrative of accumulation' effectively explains notnmg,it presupposes a worker like a full-blown capitalist)

us elaborate on this gesture of the narrative resolution of antagon-apropos of the splitting of the domain of law into the neutral

Law and its obscene superego The with thedefinition of 'totalitarianism' as the of the neutral Law,

that the entire domain of law is 'stained' the obscene superego," iswe are to conceive the prior - that where was the superego

before the advent of 'totalitarianism'? Two opposed narrativessUJ:;glestthemselves here:

THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

Cartesian:mbiiectivity (as correlative tonot decentre

insignificant creature on a small In other what onebear in mind is how the Cartesian de-substantialization of

subject, its reduction to $, to the pure void of self-relating negativity,correlative to the opposite reduction of man to a grain of dust

in the of the to one among the endless in it:

these are the two sides of the same process. In this nrpr,op s~~~~;~'i~~~;~£G~is that is, he dissolves s;

The emergence of a pure free ofits organic' life-world birth obscenesuperego since this very life-world once opposed tothe pure is all ofa sudden as obscene.!?

It is easy to discern this same in the standard Newof Descartes: Descartes is accused of however

abasement of its materialaccused of bias (the unmistakable

male features of cogito), does not his formulation of cogito asas no sex' mark the first break

sexualized Descartes is also of conceivmzas the owner of natural so that animals~<:::ll<:::l<U are reduced to mere available be with noprotection, However, is it not true that when we confer upon themthe status of property do natural for the firstprotected (as a property can

In all these cases, Descartes set up the very standard try meansof which one measures and rejects his positive doctrine on behalfofa post-Cartesian'holistic' approach. Narrativization is thus misrepresentational in both itsversions: in the guise of the story of the progress from the tothe more cultivated form (from primitive fetishistic superstitionto the monotheistic or, in the case of Descartes, fromprimitive sexualized ontology to neutral modern thought), as well as inthe of the story of historical evolution as regression or Fall inthe case of from with nature to the exploitativeattitude towards it; from the ofwoman and man to the Cartesian identification of woman with the'natural', - both versions obfuscate the absolute synchronicity of theantagonism In question.

paradox to be

12

in theas an

other hand. the opposite.er it is rootless,

13

4: After the Fall

feature, the of the Fall. Contrarvnotion of fantasizing

mediatization of immediacy, is the mostversion of such a was,

the formulation of this absoluteit, the immediate object lost in reflectionleft behind' .ll) The conclusion to be drawn from

of course, is not that 'there is no ''''''". v .

evervrbinrr was from the very outset', but that the historicaldoes not follow the logic of narration: actual historical breaks

anything, more radical than mere narrative since whatin them is the entire constellation of emergence and loss. In

a true historical break does not theloss 'progressive' gain) of in the

which enables us to measure losses and gains. l~

supreme of this coincidence of emergenceis the notion of history itself - is its

that is, which can be characterized as historicalrpre-capitalist societies do not know L: ••• __ .

'circular', 'closed', in atradition - so must emerge aftenoards, with the

organic societies. On thecapitalism itself is noits own, and therefore upon a

order which (like modem science) can thrive fromuprooting and slowly corroding all life-

specific traditions. So history is that which lost withof with its ultimate worldwide triumph, signalling

11l()mleI1lt of the 'end of history' concept).is that emergence and loss coincide: the

is only a moment, even if this moment is properly unendingfor centuries - the moment of passage from pre-capitanst

capitalist universal order. 13

the first tosvnchronicitv - as he

to be through

THE PLA E 0 FANTAS ES

but thethe suspension-transgressionof the

not escape us:to violate all the rules

for the very rule of Law. 14

let us recall the interminable search for theat which Gennan 'took the wrong turn' which

Nazism: delayed national unification, due the dismember-ment of the Gennan after the Years the aestheticiza-tion in the Romantic reaction to Kant

and ; the 'crisis of investiture' and theBismarckian state socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century;up to the report of the German tribes' to Romansallegedly, already displayed the features of .... 15 Similar

eX2lCUy, for example,

narrative doesvery act of itscastration

examples abound:coincide with the repression and of nature? The tenets of eco-feminism a multitude of determinations ofphantasmic moment of the Fall: the of nineteenth- centuryWestern modern Cartesian science, with its atti­tude towards nature; the noxious influence of the Greek rationalist Socra­tic the emergence of great barbarian up to thepassage from nomadic to civilization .... AndMiller out - is not Foucault himself also in the same

in his search for the moment when the Western order ofsexuality emerged? He regresses further and further back from modcrnitv,until he sets the limit where the ethic of the 'care of theSelf into the Christian ethic of confession: the fact that thetone of Foucault's last two books on ethics differs completelyfrom his earlier into the of power, and

instead of his usual of the material ofideology, we get a rather standard version of the of ideas' - bearsw"rn,>~, to the fact that Foucault's Greece and Rome 'before the Fall'

14

~(ll:es~;fully avoidsthe sadomasochistic the scene in which

'remains in control' at all times, maintains a distance,but his is none

that of immediate immersion.

also enables us to define Paradise as the libidinalparadox of the 'states which are

the impossible coincidence ofThe assertion of some ~

~ that there was sex in that Adam ando!:lulat<:, that their than ours the

sex after the , the and crucial differencecopulating, maintained proper measure andlost self-control - this assertion reveals

t'araciis,~: it was the of That is to say:u.rg:Lurlerlta,1 paradox of rx-rve rsion

Ag:aUlst this It IS to elaborate aFall via a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost.t" Its first feature isstructural reasons, the Fall has never occurred in the - Adam

not, speaking, he finds that he has decided. Adamhis choice rather than makes it"? is it like this? If the

choice of the were to in the it woulda1,r'eady presuppose what it gives birth to - the very freedom to choose:

.paradox of the Fall is that it is an act which opens up the very spacedecision. How is this The second feature of the Fall is that it

from the choice to in order to retain the erotic rapture ofthe lies in the fact that 'because he

he disobeyed in order to .18 Here we oncestructure of castration: when Adam chooses to fall in order to retain

what he loses is jouissance - do we nothere the reversal of the structure of the 'states which are

Adam loses X it, to... That is to say: is castration? It is the

1"QJh.it~iti,on of incest in the sense of the loss of whichsubi<:ct never possessed in the first Let us a situation

aims at X a series of pleasurable experiencesf3/;tr:3.ti,:m does not consist in him of any of

to the series a nonexistentthe accessible appear all of

satisfying. One can see here how theas the very of castration: the very signifier of

signifier which forbids the subiect access to X. gives rise to

THE PLAGUE OF

did sexual assumeof homosexual the man

must open himself up passivelv;in which 'closure', resistance to penetration,

(one knows that the of fist-fuckingphysical: the difficulty

of this oneself up to thewhose organ enters my and explores it from

the other crucial feature is that this organ, precisely, is not the phallusin 'normal' anal intercourse) but the fist (hand), the organ par

excellencenot of spontaneous but of instrumental of workand (No wonder in its almostoverlaps with the way a doctor examines the rectum for prostate CduceLIn this sense, fist-fucking is Edenic; it is the closest we can get towhat sex was like before the Fall: what enters me is not the but

object, a hand to hands around asin the surrealistic in some of Buriuel's - we

are back in a Edenic state inof some sex was

instrumental dU-1VIlY,

5: The impossible gaze

16

The fifth feature: on account of its theinvolves an impossible gaze, the gaze means of which

the is at the act of own Anexemplary case of this vicious in the service of ideology is an anti­abortion written in the 1980s a right-wing Slovene nationalist

The tale is set on an South Sea island where aborted childrenlive without their although their life is nice and

miss love and their time in sad reflection on how itis that their a career or a luxurious holiday to them-selves , , , , The of course, lies in the fact that the aborted childrenare as having been born, born into an alternative universe

lone Pacific island), memory of who 'betravedthem - in this way can direct at their parents a gazewhich makes them ]9

head of the UNPROFOR forces in and his ~peLldl

of SAS operatives, definitely had a 'hidden agenda' in Bosnia: underof a truce between the so-called

t;a(~tl,::ms', their secret task was also to the blame on the Croats, andthe Muslims (soon after the fall of for example,

operatives suddenly 'discovered', in northern some Serballegedly slaughtered by the their to 'mediate'

between Muslims and Croats inflamed the conflict betweenthese diversions were intended to create the of the

conflict as a kind of 'tribal warfare', a civil war of everybodyeverybody else in which 'all sides are to blame', Instead of

condemnation of the Serb aggression, this was destinedprepare the terrain for an international effort of which

'reconcile the factions' From a sovereign state, the victimaggn:ssiOll, Bosnia was transformed into a chaotic in

warlords' acted out their historical traumas at theof innocent women and children" , , in the back-of course, is the to which peace

if we do not 'demonize' one side in the conflict:pq'us:ibility is to be with the West assuminz the role

neutraljudgq elevated above local tribal conflicts,for analysis is that General Rose's 'secret

:c__ t.r -,-,,- not to the relations between

to prepare the for a different narrativeof the situation: 'real' itself was here in the

rdeological narrativization.i" the eventas a kind of point de capitan in the held

the Bosnian war hitherto and aboutas a 'humanitarian catastrophe', was

Mitterrand's visit to Sarajevo in the summer of 1992. One is eventhat General Rose was sent to Bosnia in order to

vision of the conflict on the That is to say:the of the Bosnian

a political one: in dealing with Serb aggression, theaggression of ex-Yugoslavia an state;

1\!ljltt~:rr;'Ulld the accent shifted towards a humanitariansavage tribal war is going on, and the

do is to exert its influence to assuage'-"+","""1-' the innocent victims food

his display of towards theoarajevo, Mitterrand's visit dealt the crucial blow to Bosnian

as the factor of neutralization inof the conflict. Or - as vice-president of

E GUE ES

himself from hisactual involvement in the

onon

to receive Mitterrand, hOFnngthe West. }\.II of a that we are lost.'the IS observer fnr ",h"",

the of 'tribal warfare in the Balkans' was has the samegaze of the aborted children born

alsoimpossible neutral gaze of someone whoconcrete historical existence - that fromBosnian conflict.

The same operation is discernible in the abundant media reportsactivities of Mother Teresa in which

screen of the Third World. Calcutta ispresented as a Hell on the case of the decaving ThirdWorld full of social violence and corruption,with its residents in terminal facts are, of course,rather different: Calcutta is a muchmore than with a successful local Communist govern-ment a whole network of social . Into this ofutter Mother Teresa of to the with themessage that is to be as a way to since thepoor, their sad fate withChrist's of the Cross .... The ideoiogrcar benefitdouble: in so far as she to the poor ill thatshould seek salvation in their very Mother Teresa deters them

probina into the causes of their - from theirsituation; at the same she offers the rich from the the chanceof a kind of financial contributions toher charitable all this works the of the

of the Third World as Hell sodesolate that no political dLlllVllY,

alleviate the 21

6: The inherent transgression

it has tohas to remainIn order to bemaintain a distance towards the explicit. symbolic texture it,and to function as its inherent This constitutive gapbetween the texture and its phantasmic background is

in any work of art. to the of over theelement which fills it up, even the most harmonious work of art is a

18

to Wharton's entire"No" of the Mother'

. In Wharton'sof prohibition,

ascounterpart to this nineteenth­

attempts to fill the void around whichthe effect is that of

Heathcliff, a recent novel that deals with theWurtht7ing Heights: what was Heathcliff between his

and his return as a rich mansuccessful is the

short story of the samefaithfully follows the story;

attempt to reconstructthe 'Swede' to

father-daughter incest, withas well as, of course, the

structions', the hand holds a spear, a even a mirroreffect is that of the proper aesthetic IS

is significant in these 'reconstructions' is their very multiplicity:destined to fill the void is a

A typicallycenturv kitsch is provided

canonical work is structured;Take

tr2lgrnentu)', ,ac,,,,,u,, in to its the 'trick' of an artistic successin the artist's to tum this lack into an advantage

the central void and its resonance in the elements thatencircle it. One can account in this way for the of the Venus de

the statue's mutilation is no as aon the as a constituent of its aesthetic

A simple mental confirms this if weimagme the statue the nineteenth century,

historians were it; in different 'recon-.. ),

THE PLAGUE OF FANTAS ES

either

and

film

the militaryblend of a

sexual

factfundamental impossibility case of Edith

of course, we are dealing with the phantasmic notion thatit with one's father would really be 'it', the realized sexual

Irelatiorlstiip the woman is for in vain in her with herIhllsb'andor other . The artifice of 'true art' is thus to manipulatethe of the underlying in such a way as to reveal theradical of this fantasy.

Let us further illustrate this gap between an texture and its""--.n,,rt with an from cinema. to its

misleading appearance, Robert Altman's MASH is a conformistfor all their of jokes and sexual

escapades, the members of the MASH crew perform their job exemplarily,present absolutely no threat to the smooth of the

the cliche which MASH as ananti-militarist the horrors the meaninglessslaughter which can be endured only a measure ofcynicism, practical jokes, laughing at pompous official and so on,misses the - this very distance is ideology. This dimension of MASHbecomes even more the moment one compares it to two otherwell-known films about An Officer and a Gentleman and Full

~'~'''-''f-'''''' MASH and An Officer exhibit the two versions of the perfectlyfunctioning military subject: identification with the machine is

ironic in and,or the awareness that behind the cruel

drill-sergeant there is a 'warm human , a father-substituteAn Officer and a Gentleman), in strict analogy

profoundly anti-feminist - of a hooker who, in herlongs to be a good mother. Full Metal Jacket, on the other

successfully resists this to 'humanize' the drillsergeant or other members of the crew, and thus lays on the table thecards of the machine: the distance from it, far fromsignalling the limitation of the functions as itspositive condition of possibility. What we in the first of the film is

the direct saturated with the uniquesexualization and obscene

case,Edith is not 'innocent': she in incest at the level of fantasv.Such an fails to that there is more truth inthe artist's removal from than in its direct rendering:melodrama and kitsch are much closer to than 'true art'. In other

to account for the distortion of original fantasy'

20

speeches to the Nazi crowd in Nuremberg, Hitler made a=ier~Ilti;ll remark about how this very reunion is to be an

observer, unable to the 'inner greatness'see the of external

us, members of the movement who}!11iriiiteJly more: of the inner

encounter the reference to the lI.CHH:::L

favourite Wazner opera was neither theLOft~11f!:rm, with its call to arms to defend Germ,any against

with its tendencv leave behind the

InK'.. 0.c.. V Ll'( V.J..:.,.JI..IL<U ~~~~_

lesson is therefore clear: an identification exerts a trueon us when we maintain an awareness that we are not

to it, that there is a rich human person beneath it: 'not all isbeneath the I am also a human is theof ideology, of its , Close of even the

edifice reveals not every-popular sense of the

in everysince, if an ideology

individuals, it has to batten on'trans-ideological: vision which cannot be

instrument of pretensions to powersentiments of to a community,

a kind of 'authentic' vision discernible even in Nazismdeep which keeps the ofto mention Stalinism? The point is thus not that there is

without a 'authentic' kernel but thatreference to such a trans-ideological kernel which makes an ideology

blasphemy (at the soldiers are ordered to, , ") - in short, the superego machine of Power at itsof the film ends with a soldier on account of his

overidentification with the 'runs amok' andthe drill sergeant, then the unmediated

identification with the phantasmic superego machine necessarily leads tomurderous passage ti l'acte. The second, main of the film ends with

in which a soldier thea kind of ironic 'human distance' towards the

his helmet. the 'Born to kill' is accompaniedit looks as if he has out of

He is the one in whomsucceeded; he is the

E

oneself'aesthetic suspensionthe very core ofin it was 'something

suspension of the political throuzhextra-ideological "'-'--'U'--<, much stronger than m a 'normal' democratic

Therem, perhaps.vesides the problem ..H __ .I __ ._._.. Butler's

... does politicization need to overcome dis identification? What are theof dis identification, this of misrecognition,

this uneasy sense of standing under a sign to which one does and does notbelong?24

Is not IDe attitude of the heroes of MASH, that of anactive Of course, one can argue that this disidentificatiori1S different from the lesbian imitation-subversion of feminine codes - none the the remains that thedifference is one between the two modes of not betweenidentification and its subversion. For that reason, an edificecan be undermined a too-literal which 1S itssuccessful a minimal distance from its rules.

case of such a.laJ:oslav Hasek's The Good Soldier whose

hero total havoc the ordersan overzealous and all-too-literal The inevitabledrawn from this is that the feature which

the famous Freudian-Lacanianfeature, is not IDe obvious one, the 'official'feature, even the one of a distance from the officialWhen a lesbian IDe standard feminine

does she not at a assert her 'true' queeridentitv, which such an attitude? Adifferent of the same the 'leaderwith his down': the of the group is thesubjects common disavowal of the misfortune that laid bare the Leaded'S

addicted

more

professor becomea kleptomaniac, a

22

Jr-!.t'... ,::H.~.. VC1'\j .t'....lL0 vr .r'.f\.1'J 11'\0

masochist he has stolen a line of fromstudent, etc., etc.), this very of the flaw - with the

willingness to disavow this knowledge - is the true feature of identificationthe group together.. . of course, is that the

fascinated by the charismatic of a Leader is theof a kind of he (rnisjperceives the 'because

of': in his subjective he adores the Leader inof the mark of his not because of

Duelists, Scott's directorial debut (based on aHeinrich the combat between two

uoner-class nobleman and an officerthem forever apart is the difference

to the code of honour: thedogg,~dJy follows this code for that very

a of awkward his counter-nobleman, constantly violates the rules of the official

and asserts his true The of thelower middle classes is that the true cause of

think are some hiddenfeel compelled to follow all the rules even more

is that the X which accountsbe down to a

Illlbolic feature. Here we again encounter the objetpetit a: when we aretwo series of behaviour which cannot be any

defined positive yet the difference between theunmistakable difference between true and its

imitation, that unfathomable the je ne sais quai which accounts_ _ - in short, the which makes the difference where oneestablish any positive difference - this is the objet petit a

eunfathomable object-cause of desire.Clinton administration resolved the deadlock of gays in the

the 'Don't don't tell!' soldiers areasked if are gay, so are also not compelled to liealthough are not allowed in thein so far as they their sexual orientation pnvate,

endeavour to engage others in thiswas criticized for the homophobic

towards homosexuality: attnouzn the direct prohibitionto its very

gays to remain in the closet affects their actualwhat this solution amounted to was an explicit elevation

vpc?qisy into a social like the attitude towards prostitutionel;t1tHm:al Cathouc countries - if we that gays

IES

are

the

rn"rF'rn',no- their identity.is its own

work in this criticism, with its Foucauldian background of Powerthe very act of and other forms of generates the

less seems toshort at a crucial what it misses is the way in which not

affects the status of the or subversive force that the powerdiscourse endeavours to dominate at an even more radical

the power discourse itself from within. One should ask a butnevertheless crucial here: does the so.strongly resist publicly gays into its ranks? There is only onepossible consistent answer: not because poses a threat to

and libidinal economy of theon the because the libidinal economy of the

community itself relies on a thwarted/disavowed homosexuality asthe of the soldiers' male bonding.

From my own I remember how the old infamous Yugoslavwas to the extreme someone was

discovered to have homosexual he was turned intoI-'dH~lll, treated as a non-person, before being dismissed from

, yet at the same army life was excessivelywith the of innuendo. while

soldiers were in line for their a common wasto stick a into the ass of the person ahead of you and then towithdraw it so that when the person turned hedid not know who among the soldiers sharing a obscene smilebehind his back did it. A form of greeting a fellow soldierin my unit, instead of simply saying 'Hello!', was to say 'Smoke my prick!'

kuracl , in ; this formula was so standardized that itcompletely lost any obscene connotation and was in a totallyneutral way, as a pure act of politeness,

References to (sometimes surpris-complex) soldiers' upon the

sleeping I witnessed a strange scene: three soldiers were holdinganother soldier's head on a while a fourth soldier, using hishalf-erect penis as a was beating the forehead of the soldier whosehead was fixed on the pillow. The of this strange ritualistic

involves a series of references andof Freud's famous case of the forgetting of the name ',ien,f,rE'11l

the common term for testicles is not 'balls' but 'eggs'squeeze your eggs!', not balls') . the term for

24

1tl1'.:>1'. 1'.1'1 V1'.lL:> U~ ~AN 1A:>1I

. These tworiddle-

one ismechanism of

efficiencv of the

coexistence of

subversive discourse or practice 'censored'tempted to claim that more than ever, the

intervenes oredominantlv to enhance the<iis,coulrse itself.

not. self-censoring mechanism in conservativeits sexist and racist bias? Recall the election campaigns

which the racist and sexist message is not publiclythe it is sometimes even , but

inarticulated 'between the lines', in a series of double-entendresallusions. The is that this kind of self-censorship

admitting one's own fundamental message) is necessary if, in theId,eoloJ2;lc:al conditions, Helms's discourse is to remain operative:

to articulate its racist bias in a way, this wouldin the eyes of the discursive

effectively to abandon the self-censored coded racistwould the of its targeted electoral

sel"V'Jtivp discourse is therefore an excellent examplernscourse whose on the mechanism of self-

relies on a mechanism which is operative

is the

temptation to be avoidedus to deal 'with the enemy who

, , . ) bias than "lith the hypocriticalone and

sociosymbolic posiuon ofrendered for the mainstreamthis would laLllLClllY shift the balance of the entire Idt,010g1G11 hegemony.

This is what Alain Badiou had in mind when" hedesignated his work a search for the terror', in the face ofthe emergence of new racism and sexism, the should be to makesuch enunciations unutterable, so that anyone on them automaticallyr-li cr-rr i o i i f-is> c himself in our universe, those who refer approvingly

Fascism). One should not discuss 'how manydied in Auschwitz', what are 'the of, 'the necessityof down on workers' collective , and so on; thehere should and' terrorist': thismatter democratic discussion' 26

are now in a to the distinction between theFoucauldian interconnection between and and ournotion of 'inherent , Let matrix of thepossible relations between Law and its most elementary

relation of of in whichtransgression IS to Power, and poses a threat to it.The next step is to claim that on the obstacle itviolates: without Law there is no needs anobstacle in order to assert itself of course, in Volume I of The

of both these versions, and asserts the absoluteimmanence of resistance to Power. the of 'inherent

is not that resistance is immanent to Power, thatpower and counter-power generate each is not that Poweritself the excess of resistance which it can noit is also not that - in the case of - the'repression' of a libidinal investment eroticizes this of repression

as in the case of the obsessional neurotic who derives libidinalsatisfaction from the very rituals destined to the trau-matic at

This last must be further radicalized: the power edifice itself isfrom within: in order to itself and contain its Other, it

has to on an inherent excess which in theterms of Power is its own

if it is to it has to on a kind of obscene

26

throwinz him

withto his

the

on himof

its support,Brecht gave poignant

notably In

toto choose the impossible,

Brecht's case, the expedition turning

instead of rid of himsornethmg similar part of our evervdav n~()n";~

7: The

is therefore not to assert, in a Foucauldian way,IS linked to it and

itself conditioned it: in a self-reflective way, the ismirrored back into the power edifice it from

so that the of is consubstantial with theof power. it is not to say that the

of some libidinal content eroticizes the veryof - this 'eroticization' of power is not a secondary

of its exertion on its but its very itscrime', its which has to remain invisible if

to function What we in the kind of drillin the first of Full Metal for is not a

eroticization of the which createsbut the constitutive obscene of this pro-

which renders it Butler'" ain his very formulation of the text of

the contours of a fantasvengages m sadomasochistic sexual

younger man, a child - which bears witnesssexual desire. Helms thus unwittingly

. Iibidinal toundanon of his own crusade agamst pornozraphy

THE PLAGUE s

arethe

way,

of course, terriblvto astars, his most

a promotionthe proper to do is to offer to so that

promotion, and the proper for him to do is to my offer - thisour can be saved .... What we have here is

.symbolic exchange at its made to be thesymbolic exchange, is that in the end we are back

beginning, the overall result of the is notzero but a distinct for both the of Of course,the is: what if the other to whom the offer to be is made

it? What if, upon beaten in the Imy friend's offer to the instead of A situation

like this is it causes the of thesemblance to social order - atthis seem to this ofthe semblance the of the social substance thedissolution of the social link.

The need for order(materialized in the so-called unwritten thus bears witness the

vulnerability: the to allow for PV~~lUH1UC;~ofchoices must take since theirwould cause the to and the function of the unwrittenrules is the actualization of these choicesallowed the In the Soviet Union of the 1930s 1940s - totake the most extreme - it was not forbidden to criticize

it was even moreforbidden to announce this very trrohibition:state publicly that it was forbidden to criticize Stalin. Themaintain the that one was allowed to criticize theappearance that the absence of criticism fact that there was no

or movement, that the 99.99 per cent of thevotes at elections ... ), demonstrated that Stalin was the

and In terms, this appearance quaappearance was essential.

Or - to it another way - the paradoxicalwith to the

violateadditional rules which restrain

28

Otherness is what sustains desire- this non-acceptance of the ultimate

Fanrasv which

THE SEVEN VEl LS OF ~'AN 'lAS Y

how we are to understand the letter nftnp'l'''''Af

how in our era of universalat the level of

universal ideological proclama­sometimes, at least - the

~ the letter of Law on behalf of thelel-IYIng; tantasies, but to stick to this letter which sustains

the act of the gesture offer to bethe forced choice as a true choice - is,

into what Lacan calls 'traversingin this act, theof unwritten rules which tell him how to choose

consequentes of this act are so catastrophic.bear in mind the radical of

bl..,t?I~V works both ways, it simultaneouslyspan renders and sustains the structure of

cnoice, it tells us how we are to choose if we are to maintainof choice - that is, it the gap between the formal

of choices and social the choiceifin fact ruin the system)

the false opening, the idea that the excluded choice mightand does not actually take place only on account of

- as in Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of thetry to dine but

an unforeseen incident misunderstand the date ofpolice burst searching the place for drugs, etc., etc.).role of the phantasmic frame is to maintain thethat the three might have succeeded in having

and that what this from happeningof unfortunate circumstances - what is therebv

these intervene necess-dinner is, as it were, the very tundamentat

allowed for - even - the . WhenllnivtTs,ll human were in the late eighteenth century,

universality, of course, concealed the fact that whitenropertv; however, this limitation was not it was

qualifications like I allare rational and free', which then

THE GUE OF ES

gesture.

I hear the voicefeature or content to

Bearmg in mind that our to desire involvesstructure of the forced choice (of the symbolic gesl1.:lreto be gap between the symbolic

the choice and the obsceneprecludes it - that is, of the gap which thespace in which the subject dwells from the kernel ofbeing), one can the radical character of the

means of this the gap is the structure of theforced choice is suspended, the closure of thehysterical game of '1 offer you X to leave our com-rnunitv), on condition that you it', which structures our belongingto a community, is over. Once we move desire - that is to say,beyond the which sustains desire -'I. we enter the domainof drive: the domain of the which findssatisfaction in endlessly

closure, thisthe corner. In my personal

ringing, to

Drive's 'eternal. return of the same'

The Freudian drive is thus another name for the radical ontological closure.Does not Nietzsche's famous 'Drunken from the Fourth Part ofZarathustra (' The world is deep, / And deeper than the day could read. / Deep isits woe - , / Joy deeper still than grief can be: / Woe says: Hence! Col/But joysall want eternity ,/ - Want deep, profound express perfectly theexcessive pleasure-in-pain at which late Lacan aims in his rehabilitationof drive? This Nietzschean is to be opposed todeath: it is the of drive against the finitude of desire. The 'Yes!'of the 'eternal return of the same' thus aims at the same as Lacari's'Encore

", - Nietzsche himself says in the preceding paragraph

that 'the name of song/ is "Once more""), which is to be read (also)as an evocation of the woman's 'More!' the sexual act- it stands for more of the same, for the full acceptance of the itself asinherent to the excess of pleasure which is [ouissance. The 'eternal return

30

not in

thesense, the

the

which remains full of red blood and continues- this undead organ which follows

physical death stands for the it is drivethe cvcle of generation and corruption. One is

the same' thus no involves the Will to Powerstandard sense of the it indexes the attitude of "rti"phl

the passive confrontation with objet petit a,intermediate role of the screen of In this

return of the same' stands for the moment when'tr2lvel-ses the fantasv'

According to the doxa, stands for the moment of closure: '''''he"

means of which the subjectenlglua of the desire - is .tr<lVer,;IIJ,1;

as It nus in the void of the Other'ssustains the (false) the notion that there is some radical

which makes our universethe involves the acceptance of a radical

9IJ.tolo~;ic:al closure? The unbearable of the 'eternal return of the- the Nietzsch ean name for the crucial dimension of drive - is theclosure this notion to endorse and assume the 'eternalof the same' means that we renounce every every beliefmessianic Otherness - here late Lacan with the 'deconstruc-notion of with the Derrideari-Levinasian problematic

or dislocation ), with the notion ofnot-vet-runv bntologically constituted. The is thus to

the radical closure of the 'eternal' drive to the involvednrntudey ternporality of the desmng subject.closure of of course, is not to be confused with the domain

animal crucial here is the basic anddiscord between drive as eternal-'undead'instinctual of the For that reason, as such

it stands for an unconditional whic:ih~"""~iGj~eiiai:a:sneeds of the and battens on it. It is as if

of the an organ, is torn out of itsand thus caught in an

~ around the void of itsimpossibility. It is as if we are not fit to fit our bodies: drive

'undead' 'The Heart', a poemRomantic France expresses theof which is libido: years after afor some

THE PLAGUE OF IES

we

is easy to

anotherlocated in

the Other ofis not but another 'sublime'

materiality. !-,pd,-:>r,< modem art the most oertment case of thisother materiality.When modernist artists about the Spiritual

(Schoenberz), the 'spiritual'In pamtmg (Kandinsky) or in musictowards the 'spiritualization'

of Matter and as outside its referenceMeaning. Let us recall the 'massiveness' of the protracted stains which

in late Van or the water or grass in thisuncanny 'massiveness' neither to the direct of thecolour stains nor to the of the dwells in akind of intermediate domain of calledKorperlichkeii. From the Lacanian this'spiritual cornorealitv' as materialized unussance, "[ouissance turned into

organ one of the arrnervnal

index the at whichrepulsive horror?

problem with Nietzsche, perhaps,

flesh' .30

drive

to the

Desire emerges when drive gets in the cobwebin the vicious in which must be refused,reached on the inverted ladder of the Law of desire'of castration'") - and of this primordialIoss,it JW5,,~,'AM" Pf'OClCSS

this sense, is the Vel) screen that seiiarates ittells the story which allows the to (mis) perceive the void aroundwhich drive circulates as the loss constitutive of desire.other a rationale for the inherent deadlock ofdesire: we are ofis concentrated in the Other who stole it from us. anti-Semiticideologrcal L'Ul,.a~y, social IS explained away via the reference

as the secret who is social from us

32

profiting from

33

to stop... ) his

to retribution from the Other.of culpabilizing the also resides the limitation of 'postmod-

Id(~nlity politics, in which the deprived minority indulgesand seeking' retribution

!.t1E ~J:..VE1"J VElL'::;' v!' r Arv r Ax r

somewhere in- so her strategy

the Other's norms (froml.1l<lstlul::!ating and cheating, up to speeding without getting a ticket).

the neurotic's basic notion is that the Other's authority'Iegitimate : behind the of there is an obscene

!()uissance stolen from the neurotic (in the case of Dora, Freud's patient,her as a old man instead of

'castrated' her - turned her into an of exchange and offeredK - in order to pursue his dirty affair with Mrs . What the

cannot stand is the idea that the Other is profiting from hishe the obsessional) is prepared to sacrifice evervthinz

conasuon that the Other does not profit from it, that he does not amasslCl1h ced j ou issance, does not in his

the neurotic must be

seducing our women ... ) .32 In 'traversing the fantasy',find jouissance in the vicious cycle of circulating around the void of the

object, the that jouissance has to be amassedsomewhere else.

the exemplary case of desire as a defence againstin contrast to the pervert who works incessantly toto the the wants to be the object of

Other's not the of his enjoyment - she is well aware thatonly way to remain desired is to postpone the satisfaction, the

of desire which would The fearin so far as she is the object of the Other's eniovrnent. she is

to an instrument of thethe other hand, there is a true

an instrument of the of his jouissance/" In al1y:,tenc3.1 triangulation, while a wife can fully illicit sex herlTJ.!essage to her lover is: if her husband learns of her affair and leaves her,

also have to him .... What we encounter here is the basicneurotic of back from the other of the [ouissonce

taken from us: her she steals back from himthe he stole from her. That is to say: a

lleuroti,c has made the-sacrifice of [ouissance is why she is not apSJ{ctlOtlC), which enables to enter the symbolic

with the

HE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

dialecuc of asamassing iouissance, and crumbsof [ouissancc; these small awareness that he can alsomanipulate the tolerated the Master, not topresent any threat to the Master in fact, constitute the 'libidinalbribery' which maintains the servant's servitude. In the satisfactionthat is able to IS

servant s servitude

Although both the neurotic and the sacrificealthough neither of the two is a immersed in iouissance- the economy of sacrifice is fundamentally different: a neurotic istraumatized the other's [ouissance (an obsessional forexample, works like mad all the time to prevent the Other from enjoying- or,as they say in pour que rien ne bouge pas dans - while apervert posits himself as the of the Other's iouissance;he sacrifices his jouissance to jouissance in the Other. In psychoan-alytic treatment, the obsessional is active all the tells stories, presentssymptoms, and so on, so that will remain the same, so that notrunz

change, so that the will remain immobile and will noteffectively intervene - what he is most afraid of is the moment of silencewhich will reveal the utter of his incessant In anintersubjective with an undercurrent of anobsessional who detects this undercurrent talk to thedistraction of those around in order to the awkward "I,pnrp

m conflictthus the intermediate

perversion, between and neurosis, between the psy-chotic's foreclosure of the Law and the neurotic's into theLaw. According to the standard view, the perverse attitude as the stagingof the 'disavowal of castration' can be seen as a defence against the motif

'death and , against the threat of mortality as well as thecontingent imposition of sexual difference: what the pervert enacts is auniverse as in cartoons, a human being can survive anycatastrophe; in which adult is reduced to a childish game; inwhich one is not forced to die or to choose one of the two sexes." Assuch, the universe is the pure universe of the symbolicthe signifier's game its course, unencumberedhuman finitude. What this standard view (which within theconfines of desire, Law and finitude as the ultimate horizons of humanexistence: the Law elevates to - or sublates into - a symbolic prohibition,the 'natural' barrier of mortality and sexual reproduction) leaves out ofconsideration is the short circuit between Law and jouissance: incontrast to the neurotic, who acknowledges the Law in order occasionally

34

the of fanrasvThe truth of

coincides with the 0P'PC1SlillOn[acques-Alam.Miller emphasized, the concept

the claimaccepts the construction,

it, this is a of resistanceconfirms that the construction has touched

traumatic kernel within the ... ).relies on the other side of the same coin, which is crucial in

it the who is by the wrongfrom at the end of r'""' In.

relJe;ate~dly claims: 'You do not say "God is the, you sayGod I am in the '). In order to grasp this

~HVU.1U focus on the crucial distinction between construction and itsCC}].lHl:ellpar't, interpretation - this is

That is to say: an ;nl'PYTW'pt:,-

embedded in the dialecticbetween the and the interpreter-analyst;

about the effect of truth apropos of a n:o>rt;,rllhr

(a a a slip of

u himself u

nlF'r:nn",pT: precisely in order to this signification,that's me, I

is measuredthe posuw n

to take in its theft ... ), and thusobtains satisfaction snatching back from the Other of the stolen[ouissance, the pervert elevates the enjoying big Other into theagency of Law. As we have seen, the aim is to establish,not to undermine. the Law: the male masochist elevates his

into the whose orders are to beacknowledges the obscene-jouissant underside of

since he gains satisfaction from the very of the gestureinstalling the rule of Law - that of 'castration'. In the 'normal' state

the Law access to thethus creates the desire for it; in it is the object itself the

in which makes the law. Here the theoreticalconcept of masochism as touches the common notion of a

who 'enjoys tortured the Law': a masochist locatesenio'Vrnent in the very agency of the Law which prohibits the access to eniovment.

THE GUE OF ES

from the 1940s to

violent resistance ... ). In clear contrast to a construction\LIP"'LO-""I' that of a fundamental has the status of a knowledge

can be assumedhimself, the truth in which he recognizes

isemphasizes, IS so radically unconscious that it can never be remembered:

This second phase is the most important and the most momentous of all. Butwe may say that in a certain sense it has never had a real existence. It is neverremembered, it has never succeeded in becoming conscious. It is a constructionof but it is no less a on that account."

The fact that this 'never had a real existence', of course, indicatesits status as the Lacanian the about it, a 111

the real', is a kind of 'acephalousit is a kind of 'Thou art that!' which articulates the very kernel of the

rather, for that very , its assumption desubiectio-

izes me - that I can assume my fundamental so far as Iundergo what Lacan calls destitution'. Or - to put It 111 yetanother way - and construction stand to each other as do

and symptoms are to be fundamentalis to be constructed. . . . this notion of

knowledge emerges rather late in Lacans - somewhere aroundafter the between and has

profound shift:

moves within the co-ordinatesphilosophical opposition between the 'inauthentic'

knowledge which disregards the subject's position of enunciation,and the 'authentic' truth in which one is existen tially erigaged, affected

it. In the this is best exempli-fied the clear contrast between the obsessional neurotic and thehud"'r,,-- the obsessional neurotic lies in the guise at the levelof factual accuracy his statements are true, he uses this factualaccuracy to dissimulate the truth about his desire: say, when my enemyhas a car accident because of a brake go toto to anyone who is to listen to me that was never nearhis car am not for the - true,but this 'truth' is me to conceal the fact that accidentrealized my desire ... ), while the tells the truth in the of a lie

36

(the truth of my desire articulates itself in the very distortions of the'factual accuracy' of my speech: when, say, instead of '1 thereby open thissession', 1 say '1 thereby close this session', my desire clearly comesout. .). The aim of treatment is thus to (re )focusattention from factual accuracy to which unknowinglyarticulate the and then to progress to a new knowledgedwells in the place of truth; instead of truth, givesrise to truth-effects - to what the Lacan of the 1950s called 'full speech',the speech in which truth reverberates. As we have already

Lacan thus reinserts his into a long tradition. fromKierkezaard to of the mere 'factual truth' .

• From the late 1960s, however, Lacan focuses his theoret-attention on drive as a kind of knowledge which brings

satisfaction. This involves neither an inherent relationtruth nor a of enunciation - not because it

the subjective of but because it is into the very dimension of truth

of course, the very becomessince is definition a discourse on truth ... ).

knowledze are thus related as desire and drive: interpretationsubject's desire truth of desire is the desire

to it in a pseudo-Heideggerianconstruction the about drive. Is not the

case of such an knowledge that to

modern science/" which the 'blind insistence'drive? Modern science follows its (in microbiology,

n/lrtl.rlp pb.YS:lCS ... ), cost what it may; satisfac-is not any moral or communalscientific knowledge supposedly serves. And are not all the 'ethical

committees' which abound and endeavour to establish rules for theconduct of gene medical and so on,

UHlllJlat,ely so many to reinscribe this inexorable drive-pDogres:s of science, which knows of no inherent limitation short: this

ethic of the scientific , within the confines of humanto orovide them with a 'human face', a limitation or

to Thethat 'our power to

sCientific devices has run ahead of ourto make of

modern ethics ofethics of leading a life regulated proper measure

pl1bordin:lti.onof all its aspects to some notion of the Good.course, that the balance between the two can never be achieved: the

E 0 lES

38

UYUIM::, although the concrete of the scientific appara-tus, up to its most abstract is 'mediated',game of a mechan-istic and ... ) bias of modern science, in a way, does notreally concern science, the drive which effectuates itself in the run of thescientific machine. position here seemsperhaps it is all too easy to dismiss him as the mostproponent of the thesis that science a misses the dimension oftruth (didn't he claim that 'science doesn't think', that it is definitionunable to reflect its own philosophical foundation, the hermeneutichorizon of its furthermore, that this far fromplaying the role of an is a positive condition of the possibilityof its smooth functioning?). His more crucial point rather, as

modern science at its most fundamental cannot be reduced to somelimited 'socially conditioned' (expressing the interests of acertain social group, , but the of our historical moment,that which 'remains the same' in all possible and 'reaction-

, 'technocratic' and' ecological' , 'and 'feminist') o puu'v,',,_

universes. is thus well aware that all fashionable 'critiquesscience', to which science is a tool of Westerndomination, and so forth, fall short of, and thusleave unquestioned, the 'hard kernel' of the scientific drive." What Lacanforces us to add is science is also 'real' in an even moreradical sense: it is the first (and probably unique) case of a discoursewhich is stricto sensu non-historical, even in the most fundamental Heidez-gerian sense of the of the epochs of - that whosefunctioning is indifferent towards the determinedhorizons of the disclosure of Precisely in so far as science 'doesn'tthink', it knows, ignoring the dimension of and as such, drive atits purest .... Lacan 's to Heidegger would thus be:should this utter 'forgetting of Being', at work in modern science, beperceived as the greatest 'danger'? Is there not within it an alreadvperceptible 'liberating' dimension? Is not the suspension of ontologicalTruth in the unfettered of science a kind of 'passingthrough' the closure?

Within psychoanalysis, this of drive, which can never be

notion the of IS

at its purest - the fundamental Fascistlimitation of this kind is foreign to the inherentscience to Real as a mode of Real isindifferent to the modalities of its to the way it will affect

39

isgaze? One

of 'actuallv

a nice

also~ allows us to tacklepsychoanalysis, psychoanalytic on the side of

scientific gaze, classifying,explaining sexuality away, and thus its or on the side

transgression - that is, does it a kind of initiatory knowledgejouissance hidden from the official

"U.'UUIU, rather, the that psvchoanalvtic knowledzelQc:at'"d at the intersection of Law and its - an intersection

of course, is an empty set. In thee)Qsting Socialism', every schoolchild was told

read and of his advice to young people:, - a classic joke from Socialism

this motto in an context. Marx,were each asked what a wife or a mistress.attitude in intimate matters is well known to have been rather

answered 'A wife'; who knew how tocourse, 'A mistress,'; the

wife and mistress!' - Is

excessive sexual sincetell your mistress that with your and your wifeabout to visit your mistress .. .' 'And what do you actually

and learn!' Psychoanalytic knowledge is definitelv Leninisr

subjectivized, assumes the form of about the 'funda-mental , the specific formula which his or her access tojouissance. That is to say: desire and jouissance are antagornsnc,even exclusive: raison d'ctre function', to use RichardDawkins's is not to realize its to find full but to

itself as desire. So how is it possible to couple desire andto a minimum of jouissance within the space of

is the famous Lacanian objet a that mediates between theincompatible domains of desire and jouissance. In what sense is

a the object-cause of desire? The objet petit a is not what wewhat we are that which sets our desire in motion,

fhe sense of the formal frame which confers on our desire:of course, it shifts from one to another;

through all these desire none the less retains aminimum of formal features which. when

encountered in a make us desire thisa as the cause of desire is other than this formal frame

consistency. In a slightly different way, the same mechanism regulatesin love: the automatism of love is set in motion when

finds itself

E PLAGUE OF IE

transgression constitutes the domain ~'""~~,~.~

(non-phatnc) Leninist knowledge IS constitutive of the domainbreaks out of the vicious of desire

Iinvolved in its transgression.

L See Anders Linde-Laursen, 'Small Differences - Large Issues', The South Atlantic\{ll,'lneny, 94:4 (Fall 1995), pp. 1123-44.

most obvious case - which, for that reason, I left out - is, of course, that ofideological connotation of different the sexual act; that is, of the implicit

ideological statements we are making by 'it' in a certain position.3. Bergson, An Essay on Laughter, Smith 1937, p. 83.4. For a more detailed elaboration of the paradoxes of fetishism, see5. The example of conservatism's refereilce to the horrifying origins

prohibition talking about these origins, which precisely creates the'primordial means of which was instituted) perfectly expresses the r-adicallvambiguous functioning of the with respect to the fantasy-screen: Horror is not

and unambiguously the unbearable Real masked the fantasy-screen - the wayfocuses our attention, imposing itself as the disavowed for that reason, all the moreoperative central of reference. The Horrible can also function as the screen itself, as

thing whose effect conceals something 'more horrible than horror itself',the primordial void or For is not the anti-Semitic demonic ofthe Jew, the Jewish plot, an evocation the ultimate Horror which, precisely,phantasmic screen enabling us to avoid confrontation with the social antagonism>

The of the horror which functions as a screen masking the void can also bethe uncanny power of the motif of a along alone,

crew to steer it. This is the ultimate not the nrove rhialmachine in the ghost: there is no rrlorr i nc- ao-en t

as a blind contingent device. Ator Masonic conspiracy conceals: the horror of society as contingent

mechanism following its path, caught in the vicious cycle of its antagonisms.6. VI'e can leave aside the feature which acquired status: the answer to

the 'Who, where, how is the (fantasizing) into the phantasmicnarrative?' is far from obvious; even when the subject within

not his point of identification - that is,'idenufies with . (At a different level, the same goes for theidentity; the best to render its paradox palpable is to paraphrase the standard disclaimerfrom the movie resemblance to actual events or isthe gap between $ and S, the void of the subject the signifyingrepresents him, means that 'any resemblance of the subject to rn-m.cen "

is no connection whatsoever between the (phantasmic) real of subject and hisSymbolic the two are thoroughly incommensurable.i Fantasy thus creates a multitudeof 'subject among which the (observing, subject is free to float, toshift his identification from one to another. Here, talk about dispersed

is justified, with the proviso that these subject positions are to be\",,:listinlgllislhe,dfrom the void that is the subject.

7. The reference to narrative also enables us to differentiate between neurosis(hysteria) and perversion, since each involves a unique form of narrative: hysteriathe linear narrative of origins (the neurotic's while in perversionnarrative remains stuck in the same place and repeats - that is to say, theperverse narrative is unable to 'progress' properly.

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