Zizek! (2005) - full transcript

SLAVOJ ?I?EK:
THE REALITY OF THE VIRTUAL

11th DECEMBER 2003
LONDON

Today, everybody is talking
about virtual reality

but I think, frankly, that virtual reality
is rather miserable idea.

It simply means "let us reproduce,
in an artificial digital medium,

our experience of reality."

I think that a much more
interesting notion,

crucial to understand
what goes on today,

is the opposite: not virtual reality,
but the reality of the virtual.

That is to say: reality - by this
I mean efficacity, effectiveness,

real effects - produced,
generated, by something,



which does not yet fully exist;

which is not yet fully actual.

In what sense can we
talk about this?

Huh! In many, maybe even
too many senses.

At least in three senses:

If we take, as the starting point,

the well-known lacanian triad of
imaginary, symbolic and real.

We have, put in simple terms,

imaginary virtual, symbolic virtual
and real virtual.

First, a little bit about
the first two of them,

less important,
and then of course

the big topic: the real.

Imaginary virtual: what it is?

Isn't it clear, if we look at
our most common daily experience



of ourselves and of others,

that how when we deal
with another person,

phenomenologically - that is to say,

the way we immediately
experience them -

we erase, abstract
from the image of the other person,

our partner...

certain features, which are
simply too embarrassing

to be kept in mind
all the time?!

Like, I talk to you:

of course rationally I know

you are defecating,
you are sweating,

not to mention other things,

but quite literally,
when I interact with you

this is not part of the image
I have of you.

So, when I deal with you,
I'm basically not dealing

with the real of you.

I'm dealing with the
virtual image of you.

And this image has reality,

in the sense that it, none of the less,
structures the way I am dealing with you.

And then this idealization
is crucial.

The negative proof,
a wonderful one,

would have been letters between
James Joyce and his wife Nora.

where, as far as I know,
they went very, very far,

almost to the end, into
accepting each other

in the vulgar reality
of bodies.

Like, all the sounds,
the bad smells, etc.

That was even part
of their sexual interaction.

It's incredible. I admire this
in Joyce.

So... OK.

This would be the
first elementary level:

imaginary virtual,
in the sense of the virtual image

which determines how we
interact with other people.

Virtual image in the sense of:

although we interact
with real people,

we erase, we behave as if
whole strata of the other person

are not there.

Second level, already
the more complex one:

symbolic virtual.

It's elementary.

Let's think about an experience,
known well to all of us,

of experiencing authority.

Let us say, paternal authority.

Isn't it clear, that this
authority,

in order to be operative,

in order to be experienced...
precisely there's the nice paradox,

in order to be experienced
as actual, effective authority,

it has to remain virtual.

Virtual in the sense of
a threat.

If authority is enacted
too directly,

it is, paradoxically,
experienced as a sign of impotence.

Concretely: father who truly is
an authority

doesn't have to beat you,
or to shout at you, etc.

It's just this look,
a threatening look,

and you obey.

If your father
looses his nerves

and smacks you,
starts to shout etc.,

it can be physically
painful,

but let's admit it,

there is always an aspect
of something ridiculous impotent.

There's something of a furious
outburst

of a puppet,
of a clown image.

Again, this is then
one clear example

of how symbolic authority,
in order to be operative,

that's the paradox,
I want to emphasize,

has to remain virtual.

So it's not just
"it is actual already as virtual."

No! It's actual ONLY
as virtual.

If it's fully actualized,
as the realized threat,

father beats you,
shouts at you...

it's self-destructive.

It undermines itself
as authority.

Another example of how the virtual dimension
is operative at the symbolic level

would have been beliefs.

Are we aware to what extent

our beliefs today are virtual?

By virtual I mean, in this case,
attributed to others, presupposed.

They don't actually exist,
they are virtual,

in the sense that
nobody really has to believe,

we only have to presuppose
another person to believe.

Elementary example which
I'm almost embarrassed to mention:

if you are a father or mother
of small children,

Christmas.

Of course, if somebody
asks you,

"do you really believe
in Santa Claus Christmas,"

you would say,
"No, I just pretend,

"because of the children,
which...

"not to disappoint them,"
but then,

we know how the
game goes on and on.

If you ask the children,
they say,

"No, we just play
that we are naive,

"not to disappoint our parents

"and to make it sure
that we get the presents," etc. etc.

But it's not only the children.

It's even with our political life,
I'm tempted to claim.

Now with our so called -
wrongly so called, I claim,

because we believe
more than ever -

in our so called
"cynically era",

for example, I don't
think anyone believes in democracy,

but nonetheless we want
to maintain appearances.

There is, to say...
There is some purely virtual entity,

whom we do not want
to disappoint,

who has to be kept innocent,
ignorant,

because of whom we
have to pretend.

So the paradox is that
although nobody effectively believes,

it is enough that everybody
presupposes someone else to believe

and the belief is actual.

It structures reality.
It functions.

Again, the paradox is here
then similar as the one of authority.

It's not only that a belief,
which is a virtual belief,

not belief of an actual person,
but always attributed to other,

let's call it, along Lacanian lines,
"the subject supposed to believe".

It's not only that a belief, already
as virtual, as nearly presupposed,

already is actual.
I'm tempted to claim

that many of our daily believes,
in order to function socially as believes,

have to remain virtual
in this sense.

Because if we believe
too immediately,

then I think it's, again,
self-destructive for an ideology.

We no longer appear
normal subjects,

we appear idiots.

Like, we all know how it is
when we encounter somebody,

who takes too directly
his or hers religious believes,

or political believes.

There is something
monstrous about somebody

who directly identifies with it.

It is as if he or she is
no longer a real person.

It is as if he or she turns into
a kind of a puppet.

So, I hope now these two levels
are relatively clear;

the first two levels of virtuality:

imaginary virtuality,
symbolic virtuality.

But now, of course,
the true treasure is waiting for us:

real virtuality.

So, the real virtual.

Well, the problem here, the catch,
of course, is the notion of the real.

So, this may appear void,
but we have to go again

through the triad
"imaginary-symbolic-real".

because, when Lacan defines
this triad

as the triad of a knot,

it means that they are literally
interwoven

in the sense that the entire triad
is reflected into each of the 3 terms,

which means, to put it blindly,
that there is, again,

imaginary real, symbolic real
and real real.

What would be the
imaginary real?

Images, but images which
are so strong, so traumatic,

that they are real.

Too strong to be perceived,
but still images.

Simply think about incredible,
breath-taking catastrophes,

think about monsters,

think about precisely what
in SF or horror is called The Thing.

Think about movies
like Alien,

these terrifying creatures,
too strong to be directly confronted,

but nonetheless
it's imaginary,

because it's an image
which is too strong to be confronted.

Even if you cannot confront it,
we are still moving at the imaginary level.

That would be the
imaginary real.

Then, the symbolic real.

It's simply...

for example, scientific discourse,
scientific formulas,

like quantum physics.

Why is this real?

For a simple reason.

The meaning of definition
of the real for Lacan, is,

that which resists
symbolization,

inclusion into our
universe of meaning.

And isn't it that precisely which happens
for example with quantum physics?

What is quantum physics?
Formulas which work,

experimentally confirmed,
etc., etc.,

but we cannot translate them into
our daily experience of ordinary reality.

As we all know, this is what is
so traumatic about quantum physics:

we literally cannot understand it.

Not in the sense that we, common people,
idiots, cannot understand it,

only a couple of scientists can:
even they cannot.

In what sense?

In the sense that
it just works,

but if you try to build
a consistent ontology out of it,

again, you get meaningless
results;

you get time running backwards,
you get parallel universes, or whatever.

In other works, you get things
which simply are meaningless

with regard to our ordinary
notion of reality.

So this would be symbolic real.

Symbolic - obviously
the symbolic, formulas, few signifiers -

they function, it's a functioning
machine, but meaningless.

We cannot make any sense
out of it.

We cannot relate it to
our experience.

Which is why we try
so desperately to do it.

Which is why we try to invent metaphors
to imagine quantum universe.

But it cannot be done.

Then, finally we are
coming to the real real,

which it's precisely not
what is usually identified as the real.

This would have been
the first real,

the imaginary real,
too traumatic image.

What then is this famous real real,
the very core of the real?

Let me approach it
at two levels.

The first level is still relatively
close to the symbolic order.

It would have been...

all that accompanies
the symbolic level

at as its obscene shadow.

Think about...

army units.

How they function?

You have discipline,
symbolic machine,

symbolic order,
drill, etc.

But as we all know,
this is sustained

by a kind of obscene,
shadowy reality

of - among other things -
so called "marching chants".

In every movie about the marines
you hear them,

these songs which are
extremely interesting -

songs that soldiers sing
by their training, marching -

because they are
characterized

by meaningless rhymes,

combined with sadistic,
or sexually perverse, obscenities.

One example that I remember,

I think it is from
An Officer and a Gentleman, the movie,

where marines are singing
something like:

"I don't know but I was told
that Eskimo pussies are rather cold."

The enigma is, again, why does
the military discourse need this?

So this would be one level,

this shadowy virtual reality
of affects

which has to accompany
the official discourse.

But let's move a little
bit deeper.

Let's think about...

well, one of the great achievements
of Western Civilization,

a movie like
The Sound of Music.

Officially, as we all know,

it's a story about

small, anti-fascist, democratic
Austrians,

- at the political level,
that is to say -

I will leave out all the
singing aspect -

small, honest, democratic Austrians,

fighting, resisting the Nazi
occupation of Austria in 1938.

But!

Look at the movie really closely.

Look at its texture,

and you will discover
a quite different reality,

a kind of a virtual reality

of the officially depicted
narrative reality.

If you look at how Austrians
are depicted in the movie,

you will discover
- to cut a long story short -

that they are precisely
depicted as a kind of a

small-is-beautiful
provincial fascists.

Their idiocy is emphasized,
these local folkloric dresses, etc.

They're presented directly
as anti-intellectual,

rooted in narrow
life world, etc.

Now, look at how the occupying,
invading Nazists are presented.

They're not mostly soldiers,
but managers, bureaucrats,

exquisitely dressed,
with short mustaches,

smoking expensive
cigarettes, etc.

In other words, almost
a caricature

of cosmopolitan,
decadent, corrupted Jew.

So, that's my point:

at the level of simple
narrative reality we get one message,

democratic resistance
to Nazism.

But at the level of
- let's call it - virtual texture

all these micro signs,
maybe we could even call it writing,

we get practically
the opposite message, which is:

"Honest fascists resisting
decadent Jewish, cosmopolitan, takeover."

And incidentally maybe
this is at least one of the reasons

why this movie was so
extremely popular.

While officially agreeing
with our democratic ideology,

it, at the same time, addresses
our secret fascist dreams.

But let's take a more serious example:

Robert Altman's masterpiece,
Shortcuts.

Again, at the narrative level we get
a simple story,

or rather 9-10 stories,
parallel stories,

depicting desperate everyday
life of LA middle classes,

It's the portrait of today's alienation,
solitude, etc.

But again, the very texture
of the film, I claim,

is a much more optimistic one.

It's a kind of celebration of
this magic of contingent encounters,

generatings, unexpected
effects of meaning.

So I think that...

In a similar way to how we
should read The Sound of Music,

it is wrong to read Shortcuts
simply as kind of social critical piece,

there is another much more
optimistic, life asserting even, letter.

So, to provide the formula
of this 'real virtual'.

Let me refer to recent
paradoxical statement

by none other
than Donald Rumsfeld.

I think that this statement
was an important contribution

to contemporary American
philosophical debate.

This happened in March 2003,
just before the war on Iraq,

where Rumsfeld elaborated the
relationship between 'known' and 'unknown'.

First, he said, there are 'known knowns'.

There are things we know
that we know.

Like, we knew at that point
that Saddam was the president of Iraq.

OK, everything clear.

Then, he went on,
there are 'known unknowns'.

There are things that
we know that we don't know.

The idea was, for example,
we know that we don't know

how many weapons of
mass destruction Saddam has.

OK, now we know he had none.

It doesn't matter.

At that point it appeared
like this.

Then there is
'the unknown unknown',

things we don't know
that we don't know,

things which are so
foreign and so unimaginable

that we even don't know
that we don't know.

For example, maybe
Saddam had

some unimaginable,
totally unexpected weapon.

And here unfortunately
Rumsfeld stopped.

because I think
he should have go on.

making the next step
to the fourth category,

fourth variation, which is missing,

which is: not the 'known unknowns',
but the 'unknown knowns'.

Things we don't know
we know them.

We know them,
they are part of our identity,

they determine our activity,

but we don't know
that we know them!

This is what,
in psychoanalysis, of course,

is called unconscious.

Unconscious fantasies,
unconscious prejudices, etc., etc.

And I think that
this level is crucial.

To refer to previous two
examples from movies:

in The Sound of Music,

what we directly know

is that it's a movie
about antifascist resistance

of modest, honest Austrians.

What we don't know
that we know

is that it's
also the opposite:

that it's the movie
about fascists

resisting the Jewish takeover.

And the tragedy of today's
American politics, I think,

is that precisely they are
not aware of these 'unknown knowns',

which is why there was
a deep truth in one of the statements

of that unfortunate
Iraqi minister of information.

We were all laughing at him
during the last Iraqi war,

because of his ridiculous
statements, denying the obvious,

but at one point, I claim,
what he told was absolutely true.

When, towards the end of the war,
he was asked,

"Is it true that Americans
already control,

"American forces,
part of the Baghdad airport?",

he said: "Not true. Americans
don't control even themselves."

Perfect truth.
Why?

Because they don't know
what they know.

And this - what you don't know
that you know -

controls you, but you don't
control it.

OK. So now we come
to the really real,

real core of the real,

much more fundamental
than the symbolic real,

but which, paradoxically,
is at the same time

the most virtual real.

It is what?

Let us think about attractors
in mathematics or in physics.

For example, you have small
pieces of iron

and you throw them
around a magnetic field.

They are dispersed,
following a certain shape,

infinitely approaching
this shape,

but this shape, of course,
is not existing itself.

It's just something
that you can abstract,

isolate from the dispersion
of the small pieces of iron.

That's the idea
of 'virtual real'.

It's a shape - this is the real
of this field,

but it doesn't exist
in itself.

It's just an abstract form,

which structures the disposition of
actually existing elements around it.

Now, what has this to do
with psychoanalytic problematic,

or, even more, with
political problematic?

My idea is: a lot.

Let's think about the precise status
of trauma in psychoanalysis.

It is similar to this
non-existing attractor.

That is to say, more closely:

Freud shifted his position,
as we all know, with regard to trauma,

he shifted his position in a way
which is, strangely enough,

parallel to the shift in Einstein's
theory of relativity,

the shift from special to general
theory of relativity.

This shift in theory of relativity
concerns the reference

to the curved space,
curvature of space.

As most of us, I hope, know,

for Einstein, first,
in a first approach,

it was the presence of the
density of matter, of stuff,

which curved the space.

Space was originally perceived
as empty space,

abstractly was symmetrical,
non-curved,

then the presence of stuff
curves it.

But then, in a second step, Einstein
accomplished a wonderful reversal.

He just termed the terms around.

It was not the presence of matter,
of stuff, which curves the space,

it was, on the contrary, the curvature
of the space which was primordial.

And what we perceive as matter

is just kind of a reified,
fetishist misperception

of a purely formal
curvature of the space.

And I claim it's exactly like this
in the psychoanalytic notion of trauma.

In a first approach Freud
imagined trauma

as some kind of dense,
raw presence,

presence of some real which brutally
intrudes into our symbolic space

and curves it.
Quite literally.

Let's imagine that I have my
well-balanced symbolic space,

then something traumatic
happens to me:

I'm raped, I witness
a terrifying event,

I'm tortured,
whatever.

And because of the traumatic
impact of this event

my symbolic space
gets curved.

Some things can no longer
be symbolized,

the function of those symbol
has to be taken over with other symbols.

There is a kind of imbalance.

There is a gap in my
symbolic space.

This would be the first approach.

But then Freud noticed
some strange things.

What things?

Let's recall his best known
analysis of Wolfman.

The traumatic scene there, of course,
is the small child, Wolfman,

witnessing the parental
coitus a terbo.

But let's look at it
in a much more precise way.

What effectively happens there?

It's not that this was simply
a trauma.

As a small, 1-year and the half
old child,

Wolfman did not find
anything traumatic in this scene.

He just perceived it
and stored it.

It was 3-4 years later,

when Wolfman started
to develop his theories,

infantile theories of sexuality,

and because he was not able
to account for sexuality,

in other words,

because the symbolic space
of his sexual theories was curved,

it is only at this point that
he resuscitated the traumatic scene.

So... I think, in clear parallel to Einstein,

we can see how here
it's the other way around.

The primordial fact is not
some brutal intrusion of the real,

of a traumatic real.

The primordial fact,
and also the primordial real,

is a purely formal imbalance.

The symbolic space is curved,

it's cut across by antagonism,
imbalanced, etc.

and to account for this
you need reference to some real.

Which is, of course,
the real.

The real in the sense of
the traumatic appearance.

It's a lure here.
A trap.

So what does this notion
of the virtual real,

as trauma, trauma as virtual,

what does this notion
mean for politics?

Can this serve us - we want to
analyze political, ideological phenomena?

Of course.

Let's just recall how
antisemitism functions.

In it's fascist version,
antisemitism,

or rather the figure of the Jew,
the Jewish plot,

is precisely an external trauma
which brutally intrudes,

disturbing social balance.

Curving, as it were,
the social space.

Society was supposed to be
harmonious, balanced,

then Jews intervened,
distort it.

It's, as it were, natural order.

But of course, here at least,

we should be Marxists,
and turn things around.

It's not that there is disorder,
antagonism,

disintegration, class struggle,
because of the Jews.

Class struggle, or more generally,
social antagonism, comes first.

That is to say: social space
is in itself already curved, imbalanced.

And in order to imaginarily,
in an imaginary way,

account for it,
we invent the figure of the Jew.

That is to say, we project
the cause of it into the figure of the Jew.

Even at the more fundamental level,

of today's economic constellation,

I think that this notion of the
real as virtual can help us to

critically reject, a category
which is more and more popular

with politically correct,
post-colonial authors,

the notion of so-called
alternate or alternative modernity.

The idea is, to put it simply,
the following one.

Of course there are inconsistencies,
antagonisms, repressive potentials

in the notion of modernity,

which ultimately means, of course,
capitalism as the force of modernity,

but, so the story goes,

this antagonistic, represive
elements

are not part of the very concept
of modernity,

but are only limited to
the Anglo-Saxon,

West European model
of modernization.

Why then should not there not be
other alternate modernities,

where you can have modernization,

but without this alienating
effects

which characterize Western European
process of modernization.

Without socially disruptive processes,

without alienation,
without exploitation,

without ecological catastrophes,
etc., etc.

And then, of course,
it's free for grab.

Anybody can have his
own modernity.

You can say we can have
Latin American modernity,

as alternate modernity,

we can have African modernity,
we can have Asian modernity, whatever.

So what is the problem
with this approach,

which is basically an approach
of historicist nominalism?

Because the underlined logic is
that in famous...

pseudo the constructionist logics of

"There is no modernity as such."

"There are only particular modernities."

"Like West European, Latin American,
African, etc."

Of course this is true.
The problem is elsewhere.

The problem is that through this
nominalist reduction,

again, by claiming that only particular
modernities effectively exist,

the sight of antagonism is reduced
to only one particular modernity.

It is no longer modernity as such
which is characterized by antagonism, imbalance.

Imbalance is dismissed as just
pertaining with certain species of,

particular species of modernity.

And what is problematic with this? Well...

To put it very simply:

did we not have already in the
early 20th century,

in the first part of the 20th century,

one big, well-known project
of alternate modernity?

It was called fascism.

Fascism was precisely the first
big attempt

to build an alternate modernity.

That is to say, to have the process
of modernization,

industrial development etc.

but without paying the price
of alienation, social disintegration, etc.

What should we then oppose to this model?

We should oppose to it
the idea that

some antagonism,
we can call it by different names,

traditional Marxist would have called it
"class struggle",

Frankfurt school would have call it
"dialectic of enlightenment",

but the idea being that

there is some antagonistic potential

in the very project of capitalist modernity.

That is to say that all these phenomena
that we deploy,

wars, violences, concentration camps,
new fundamentalism, you name it,

that all this is not simply regression,

or as Habermas would have put it,

a sign of modernity as an unfinished project,

but is part of the very
project of modernity.

This is what gets lost.

Which is why I think that

although it wants to be historicist,
critical,

this idea of reducing the antagonistic
aspects of modernity,

to just one particular form of modernity,
is deeply ideological.

Because it saves unblemished
the general notion of modernization.

What we should insist on
is on the contrary,

as I've just said, that
there is an antagonism

inherent to the very
universal notion of modernity,

and, now I'm coming to my point,

so that the particular species
of modernity

are not just examples
or exemplifications

of their universal genus,
of their universal notion,

but they are, in a way,
reactions to it,

they fight it.

Modernity, as a universal notion,

names a certain dead-lock,
a certain antagonism,

and particular,
really existing forms of modernity,

are attempts to resolve this deadlock,
to solve the problem.

Liberal capitalism,
as one form of modernity,

wants to solve the deadlock
of modernity in a certain way,

through market freedoms etc.,

fascist modernization
in a different way,

Latin American modernization
in a different way.

So what's properly
dialectical here?

It's, again, this very reversal
of the usual constellation.

It's not that struggle
is at the level of the particular content,

while universally it's just some kind
of neutral empty container,

so that universal means
some encompassing global notion,

and then, within this notion,
particular forms struggle,

like fascist modernization
against liberal modernization etc. etc.

No! The sight of the struggle
is universal antagonism itself.

And all particular actually
existing modernisms

are attempts to cover up,
resolve this problem.

So, again, we should
remember this that

the sight of antagonism
is universality.

What has this to do with
'virtual as real'?

Ah, precisely this sight of universality
as the sight of antagonism is virtual.

In what sense?

In the sense that
there is no universal modernization.

It's just a certain virtual
constellation of a certain antagonism.

All that exists...
Nominalists are here right.

All that effectively exists
are just particular forms of modernization.

There is no modernity
as such.

There only is Anglo-Saxon,
Latin-American, African etc., fascist modernity.

But in order to grasp
the very dynamic of this particular forms,

one has to refer them to this...
their absent cause,

to the big antagonism,
to which they react.

So, again, this would have been
another example of

how the notion of virtual as real
is operative,

of how it is a necessary notion
if we are to grasp the concrete social dynamic,

especially of today's global capitalism.

So the conclusion to be drawn
from all this is that

the category of the real
is ultimately a purely formal category.

It's not a category of some
formless content disturbing order,

it's a pure structural gap.

It's an entirely
non-substantial category.

It's...

If we may put it
in these terms,

it's a difference,
but a pure difference.

A pure difference
in the sense that

it's a difference
which is paradoxically prior

to what it is the difference
between.

So it's not simply
that we have two terms

and there is a difference
between the two terms.

Paradoxically, the two positive terms
appear afterwards

as attempts to dominate,
cover up the tension etc. of this difference.

Again, how can this be?

Another simple example,
just to illustrate this logic:

the political distinction...

I know, it's half forgotten today,

nobody wants to hear about it,
but nonetheless,

the distinction between
Left and Right.

The first thing that strikes the eye
about this distinction,

if we take it seriously,
is that

it's not just a distinction
within a certain social cowl.

It's not that,
in a certain society,

if we take into account
all political forces, we can say:

"These are right-wing forces,
these are left-wing forces,

"and then all the
intermediate phenomena,

"in between, center, center-left,
center-right, whatever you want."

It's different.
It is that...

if you ask a right-winger,
how is the entire social field structured,

you will get a totally different answer
than if you ask a left-winger,

or, for that matter,
if you ask a centrist.

To simplify it:
a right-winger will tell you

that society is an organic,
harmonious unity,

at least the traditional
right-winger,

and that left radicals
are external intruders.

What is anathema for
radical conservative is

the idea that there is an antagonism,
an imbalance

inscribed into the very heart
of the social edifice.

For a left-winger,

the struggle is
admitted as central.

So, again, the point is
that there is no neutral way

to define the difference
between Left and Right.

In itself it's a void.

It's just that you
can approach it

either from the leftist
or from the rightist point of view.

And incidentally, for Lacan,
it's exactly in the same way

that also sexual difference
functions.

Sexual difference is not a difference
between the two species

of humanity in general,
but it's the...

From the male perspective
sexual difference itself

appears in a different way
that from the feminine perspective.

So, again, difference
paradoxically comes first.

Crucial, philosophically,
is this, let's call it pure formalism.

And against the reproach
that we are dealing here

with some kind
of idealism.

Isn't matter in it's
positive, inert presence, primordial?

I think that we should
reject this reproach

and precisely insist on
this notion of...

how should I call it?...
purely formal materialism.

Materialism as materialism
of the difference.

The minimal feature of
materialism being

that there is
a pure difference.

That there is a crack,
an antagonism in within the order of the One.

That the primordial fact
is pure, self difference.

I'm very precise here.

Self difference, and not any kind
of this mythological polar opposites,

feminine-masculine,
light-darkness, yin-yang, etc.

I think that here radical
materialism should be

even critical towards
Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze, who

blights to assert some kind
of primordial multitude,

as the ultimate
ontological fact.

From the radical prospect
that I'm advocating,

multitude already is
an effect of the inconsistency

of The One with itself,

of the fact that
The One cannot coincide with itself.

Or, to put it in a slightly
different way,

we do not have some primordial
polarity,

like masculine-feminine,
light-darkness,

and then we can play
all these New Age, agnostic games

of how win our era,
we put too much accent on one pole,

and we have to reestablish
the balance,

like we are too rational, masculine,

let's put more accent on the
feminine, emotional side, whatever...

No, it's more radical!

It's as if, as Lacan puts it,

the binary signifier
is primordially repressed,

which means, the second element
is always missing,

and this lack of the
counterpoint -

we have one, but we don't have
the accompanying other -

and this original imbalance then
sets in motion

the generation of
multiplicity.

Again, an extremely simple example

from one of the early movies
by Woody Allen,

I think it's Love and War,
a kind of a parody on Tolstoy,

where, again, the whole movie topic
focuses on topic of Tolstoy.

So, of course, our first enigma
is here: "Where is Dostoyevsky?",

The Other, natural
supplement to Tolstoy.

There is no Dostoyevsky,
so what happens in the movie,

as a kind a return of the repressed,
is that

in one wonderful short scene,

when two main characters
talk with each other,

all the big titles of Dostoyevsky's
novels emerge.

Like, "do you know what happened with that Idiot?"

"Ah, you mean the one of
the Karamazov brothers?"

"Yes." -"He did his crime,
it was punished."

"Then he went underground,
turned into a gambler", etc. etc.

The lesson of this is
ontological lesson:

is: one cannot coincide
with itself, pure difference,

because of this pure difference
as a secondary effect

the multitude explodes.

So, again...

Against the usual reproach
is this not idealism.

I would say that today it is rather
idealism which is materialist.

Today's opposition,
I'm tempted to claim,

between materialism and idealism
is that

today's idealism,
or rather spiritualism,

clings to this famous density,
inertia of experience,

of matter, of earth...
of the stuff.

No wonder that the greatest,
arguably, spiritual movie director,

the Russian, Tarkovsky,
was at the same time

practically obsessed by
the topic of inertia of matter,

density of matter,
matter in decay.

In his films, when heroes
are praying,

they don't pray looking upwards.

They pray by sometimes literally
immersing their heads into mud,

with close contact with earth.

So I think, the thing to do today

is to oppose to this kind of
spiritual materialism,

the pure formalism
of true radical materialism,

which is...

Why, for me, quantum physics is
ultimately a deeply materialist theory,

where you don't need any
positivity of matter.

You can do everything with
purely formal oscillations etc.

So, again, back to this
central insight

that difference comes first.
Difference... How to think

a difference, which is prior
to the elements it is the difference of?

Immanuel Kant,
already in his early writings,

introduces here
a crucial distinction.

A very strange,
but clear distinction.

A distinction between a negative judgment
and indefinite judgment.

That is to say,
as Kant puts it,

it is not the same thing to say:
"You aren't human"

and to say
"You are inhuman".

If I say "You aren't human",

it simply means you are
external to humanity,

you are animal, divine, whatever.
It's outside.

But if I say,
as Kant puts it,

if I do not simply negate a predicate,

but if I affirm a non-predicate...

So again, if I don't say simply
"You aren't human",

but if I say
"You are inhuman",

it means non-humanity,
an excess over humanity,

but an excess which is
inherent to humanity itself.

To give you another example,
which will make it clear,

there's this thing about
Steven King's horror novels,

the well known category
of the undead.

We can feel the difference.

If I say,
"You aren't dead".

It's not the same as saying
"You are undead".

If I say you aren't dead,
it simply means you are alive,

and nothing more,
nothing mysterious.

But, as every reader
of horror novels knows,

if I say,
"You are undead",

it means
you are the living dead,

you are alive
precisely as dead.

Immanuel Kant's point
is that

human freedom has
exactly such a status.

It's something which is neither nature -

animals are not free,
they are enslaved to their instincts -

nor culture - culture is already:
symbolic law, symbolic regulation.

But, the conclusion to be drawn
from Kant,

and consequently from Freud
and Lacan, is that

what cultural symbolic prohibitions
try to regulate -

to master, to dominate,
to domesticate, whatever you want -

is not directly nature,
natural instincts,

but it's this zero-level
inhuman excess,

to use Lacan's Pan:
the extimate kernel of humanity.

The in-human dimension

in exactly the same sense,
in which we talk about the undead -

not in-human as external to humanity,

but a monstrous excess,
or some radical wild freedom,

which is inherent to
humanity itself.

So again we have this paradox,

that the difference between
nature and culture,

is a level of its own.
Is neither nature, nor culture,

it's some kind of crazy excess.

So what would then a politics
of pure difference be?

Well, first, per negationem -
what it would not be?

It would definitely not be

what emerges today more and more
as the ultimate horizon of the political,

the so-called "identity politics",
or more broadly,

the politics of recognizing
the differences,

of tolerating the differences.

What is for me problematic

in this multicultural,
at least tolerant politics etc.

It's not just the vulgar fact
that they effectively,

even if they deny it,
neglect economic struggle.

It's the very logic of the struggle.

The logic of multicultural struggle,

of anti-racist struggle,
of struggle against sexism,

is again the logic
of recognizing differences.

For example:
in anti-sexist struggle,

the goal, of course, is not,
even for radical feminists -

I don't know - to kill,
to annihilate men.

It's to establish an open field

within which both sexes,
all different sexual positions,

sexual identities,
cultural identities inclusive,

will be allowed to thrive freely,

so that one will not articulate itself
at the expense of others.

Again, in the anti-racist
struggle

the ultimate horizon is that of

opening up the space for differences:

each ethnic group, religious group,
cultural group, way of life group,

should have the freedom
to freely deploy,

articulate it's potentials,
it's position.

But this conceptual field,

the field of openness
towards the other,

of tolerating, allowing
for differences,

as the ultimate ethical horizon,

this, I claim, should not,
cannot be, our ultimate horizon.

Because we can immediately see that...

to use the simplified example -
class struggle.

My God, the ultimate goal
of the class struggle is not

for proletarians to allow the bourgeoisie,

and bourgeoisie to allow proletarians
to freely deploy their own potentials etc.

It's an antagonistic struggle.

The goal is not to let
the multitude be.

The goal is to annihilate the enemy.

It's a totally different logic.

It's the logic of animosity,

it's the logic of antagonistic struggle.

Which also involves a totally
different notion of universality.

The notion of universality here

is no longer universality
as the encompassing medium,

container of the plurality
of positions -

sexual positions, cultural positions,
whatever.

No! Universality is here
the universality of struggle itself.

There is also a central paradox
to this struggling position.

The position of struggle does not mean
the position of a particular identity

and the abandonment of the
universal notion of truth.

The abandonment of the
universal notion of truth

goes very well with
multi-culturalese politics

where we can say:
"Everybody has the right

"to narrate it's own version of truth.
There is no global truth."

No! Our position should be:
there is universal truth.

There always is one universal
truth of a certain situation.

But this truth is accessible
only from a specific, partial, engaged,

engaged in the struggle,
standpoint.

So it's not that we arrive
at the universal truth

by abstracting from our particular
engagement,

from our particular interests,
the idea being:

each of us has it's own
interests, positions,

but the truth of a situation emerges

when we can step, as it were,
outside ourselves

and look at the situation more
objectively,

the way it really is.

No, on the contrary!

We should fully assume the paradox

of universal truth being accessible
only through a partial, engaged position.

This, I think, is more precious
than ever to maintain today.

And this is the reason why,
at the social level, I think,

we should cling to the notion
of collective

as it was till now practice
in three forms:

messianic religious collectives,
revolutionary parties,

and psycho-analytic communities.

They both share...
sorry, all three of them,

they share precisely this
same notion of universality

accessible only through an engaged,
struggling, subjective position.

This politics of pure difference
is opposed today

by another, I would call it,
politics of the real,

but the real of the super-ego,

in precisely the sense
I already talked about,

that is to say: super-ego injunction,

the obscene virtual super-ego
injunction to enjoy.

So how does this super-ego
injunction function today,

in the hegemonic mode
of social identification?

To put it in extremely simplified terms:

the old functioning of ethics
was that of moderation.

The ultimate task of ethics
was to moderate it,

like - do it, but not excessively.
Eat, drink - not too much.

Sex - not too much.

It was the ethics of the
proper measure.

Today, I claim, a different kind
of ethics is emerging.

An ethics which, on the one hand,
allows you limitless consumption,

no moderation,
go to the end - but why?

Because the object in itself
is already deprived

of its dangerous substance,
as it were.

The whole series of products
that we find today on the market -

decaffeinated coffee, beer without alcohol,
sugar without sugar etc. -

that is to say the product
where you get the effect

but deprived of its
potentialy dangerous substance.

So that today the injunction
is no longer

"Drink coffee, but moderately",
it is:

"Have as much coffee as you want,

"because coffee is already,
in itself, decaffeinated coffee."

Maybe the best - slightly tasteless,
but what the hell, why not? -

metaphor for this product is
something that I saw

2-3 years ago in Los Angeles.

It's the paradox of
a chocolate laxative.

Of course, chocolate being that
which gives you constipation.

With the publicity, I remember it:

"Still constipated? Not a problem,
eat more of our chocolate!"

So that's the paradox,

that the chocolate is already
its own remedy

in a kind of almost Hegelian
direct coincidence of the opposites.

So, why is this interesting?

Precisely because, I claim,
it's not limited only

to phenomena of commodities.

What interests me is how we can
locate the same logic also,

the same paradoxical logic
of an product being its own counter-effect,

already and also within the
social field.

For example, let's take
the big topic of tolerance.

What does it mean?

I claim it has precisely the structure
of chocolate laxative.

That is to say, tolerance is
a mode of appearance

of its own opposite,
of intolerance.

Because, what does it mean,
tolerance, today?

It means tolerate the differences,
which, again,

means "don't harass me".

Tolerance means: "Tolerate me",
means "Don't harass me".

What does it mean,
"Don't harass me"?

It means precisely
"Don't come too close to me".

If you come too close to me
with your excessive enjoyment,

you disturb me,
you harass me.

So we have then
this idea

that practically everything
appear form of harassment.

I look at you, it's potentially
sexual harassment.

I speak too loudly,
it's verbal harassment, whatever.

Everything, every over-proximity
of another human being

can be potentially
a form of harassment.

And I think that this fear
of harassment

is preciselly fundamental
form of intolerance, today.

And so, again, I claim that
when we talk about tolerance today,

it means precisely tolerance
as avoiding harassment,

which means intolerance.

It means let's tolerate
each other, again,

which means let's keep
at a proper distance from each other.

Yet another chocolate laxative
phenomenon

isn't it the way we deal
with wealth today?

The exemplary figure today
for me here

is somebody
like George Soros.

Half the day he engages in the
most ruthless financial exploitations,

ruining the lives of hundreds,
of thousands, even millions.

The other half he just gives
part of it back.

So the morning is chocolate,
the afternoon is laxative.

Like, you know, involving all these
human aid programs, etc.,

political, democratization, etc. etc.

So again, instead of simply not
engage in ruthless speculation,

he does it, but then
includes counter-action.

And even more radically,
is it not exactly the same with war today?

I think that Ulrich Beck,
the German sociologist,

was well justified in inventing
the term "militarist pacifism",

or "humanitarian militarism".

What goes on today where

all the wars are declared as
wars for peace.

It's not only that their ultimate goal
is defined as to bring peace,

into Iraq, to remove the
threat of war, etc. etc.

It's even more radically.

It is that the war operation itself

resembles more and more
a kind of humanitarian intervention

to help the people there.

If you read, for example,
the recent justification of attack on Iraq.

It's not so much that Iraq
was attacked

in order to remove the threat
to the Western nation of Saddam.

It was in order to help
the Iraqi people etc. etc.

No wonder then that...
the ultimate chocolate laxative...

No wonder that...
The concentration camps.

As Giorgio Agamben claims,

the typical, exemplary case
of a 20th century collective,

has precisely these both aspects.

Again, chocolate laxative structure,

the aspect of isolating the enemy -
Guantanamo or whatever -

and the aspect of concentrating people

in order to give them,
to provide them with humanitarian aid.

So, what this means
are two things.

First, I don't think that it is justified
to talk today about consumption -

we live in a society of consumption, etc.

On the contrary, I claim.
We consume less than ever,

if consuming means taking the risk,
really opening yourself.

Which is why, incidentally,
we are so afraid of smoking.

I claim it's not simply
medical results etc.

What is so terrifying in smoking

is somebody really consuming
the smoke

with all the dangers
this involves.

I think that the true consumers today are

drug-addicts, chain-smokers, etc.

And they are the figures of horror today,
if anything.

Again, the structure is that of
chocolate laxative,

which is why we are
or looking even at this level

for products which would be already
a kind of decaffeinated coffee.

Which is why I think marijuana
is so popular.

Because it's kind of
decaffeinated opium, de facto.

Opium without opium.
You can have it, but

deprived of its
dangerous substance.

So, to conclude this brief reflection,
I would say that

today the fundamental, as it were,
ethical injunction,

the injunction society bombards
us with,

is no longer the injunction
to control yourself,

to repress your strivings or whatever.

It's on the contrary, the injunction
to enjoy it, to go to the end.

This is what we feel guilty about today.

And this, I think, also
changes fundamentally

the role of psychoanalysis.

It does not make it outdated,
it's more actual than ever,

only its function fundamentally changed.

In the good all days,
or so it appeared,

now it's clear that it never
was simply like that,

the idea was the following one.

Let's say you are
sexually frustrated,

because you internalized
some paternal or other prohibitions,

you cannot enjoy sex, and
the function of psychoanalysis is

to relieve you, release you of the
pressure of these internalized prohibitions,

so you can let yourself go,
you can enjoy.

In other words, you feel guilty
if you

transgressed social prohibitions
in order to enjoy.

Today it's almost
the opposite.

You feel guilty, if you cannot make it,
if you cannot enjoy.

And we shouldn't take here
enjoyment just

in the immediate sense of sex,
sure pleasure of drinking, whatever.

It can be enjoyment of power,
social success, professional success,

it can be even spiritual enjoyment,
in the New Age sense,

Gnostic sense of realizing
your ego etc. etc.

What we are getting today is
that you feel guilty if

in this sense you cannot
enjoy yourself.

So this brings us, I claim, to a
double function of psychoanalysis today.

A. It's message is not "relax, get rid
of prohibitions".

It's message is, as
Alain Badiou put it in wonderful terms,

"you should learn to become
a pitiless censor of yourself."

The role of pychoanalysis today.
It's not to enable you to enjoy,

but to open up a space in which
you are allowed not to enjoy.

That's the fundamental message
of psychoanalysis today.

You are not
obliged to enjoy.

You are allowed
not to enjoy.

Which, of course, is not the same
as saying you are prohibited to enjoy.

Just: you are allowed
not to enjoy.

This confronts us furthermore
with the paradoxes of today's superego.

Which is how, on the one hand,
permissivity ends up in its opposite.

Like: today the injunction
is "enjoy",

the result is more prohibitions,
regulations than ever.

You can enjoy yourself,
but in order to enjoy yourself properly,

you are ordered to - what -
not to eat too much,

to engage in jogging,
to take care of your fitness,

not to smoke, etc. etc.

Just look around and I think that
there is nothing more miserable today

than those younger couples or people
who organize their life

in order to enjoy themselves.
The regulation is total.

On the other hand,
we have the opposite paradox,

which is that the so-called
"newly emerging fundamentalism"

is not here in order to introduce
some new stability,

to give you firm ethical foundation

in today's world where there are
no firm stable values etc.,

but on the contrary, I claim,
it is here to open up

as a kind of a false space
of freedom.

I'm referring here, of course,
implicitly

to Lacan's famous reversal
of the Dostoyevsky motto.

it is not that if God doesn't exist,
everything is permitted,

but if God doesn't exist,
everything is prohibited.

This is the lesson of the
hedonistic yuppies.

And the opposite lesson,
no less crucial:

if God exists,
then everything is permitted.

Which means: if you can
justify your role

as that of being the instrument
of the divine will,

in other words - you hear voices,

you have the contact with
the guy up there,

either George Bush
or Osama bin Laden -

as many people noticed:
this is what they have in common,

they both hear directly from up there -

then you can do whatever you want -

you can do terrorist acts,
bomb countries, etc. etc.

So here we see how difficult it is
to orient ourselves in today's constellation

where there is a certain urge
to false freedom,

inherent to the system itself.

Which is why, I claim,
the main task today

is to reinvent utopia,
a space of utopia.

What do you mean by this?

It's not, of course, the old
fashioned utopia,

which is the utopia of
imagining ideal world

about which we know in advance
that it will never be realized.

The big models here are, of course:
Plato's Republic,

Thomas Moore Utopia,
and - we should not forget -

Marquis de Sade:
Philosophy in the Boudoir.

That's the classical utopia.

Then we have, what I'm tempted to call,
the capitalist utopia.

This unbridled solicitation
of new and new desires,

which can go pretty far.
Like today I learned that

in the United States, they are,
in some communities,

seriously considering the idea
that necrophiliacs,

those who want to play sexual games
with corpses, dead bodies,

are seriously deprived.
So isn't it the duty of our society

to provide them with corpses?
Can it be done in some way

so that people sign voluntarily

in the same way that you sign
that if you die, your heart,

your organs can be used,
that your body can be used

to be delivered to necrophiliacs etc. etc.

The problem here is that,
radical as this may appear,

there is something ridiculously
benign about it,

about this capitalist utopia.

You can go to the end,
basically nothing happens.

But we have a third utopia,
which is, again,

neither this classical utopia
of imagining an alternative universe,

not even dreaming about
really realizing it,

then the capitalist utopia
of ever new desires,

extreme forms of satisfying
your desires,

there is a third mode which,
I would say it precisely -

the real,
the real core of utopia.

I think a truly radical utopia

is not an exercise
in free imagination.

Like, you sit down,
don't have anything wiser to do

than to imagine possible
ideal worlds.

It's something that you do
literally as out of an inner urge.

You have to invent something new
when you cannot do it otherwise.

True utopia for me is not a matter
of the future,

it's something to be
immediately enacted,

when there is no other way.

Utopia in this sense simply means:

do what appears, within the given
symbolic coordinates, as impossible.

Take the risk, change
the very coordinates.

And I'm not talking here about
something crazy.

Even big classical well-known,
even some times conservative acts,

have this utopian dimension.
Like, to take a ridiculous example,

thirty years ago, remember
Richard Nixon's trip to China.

There was almost a utopian
dimension to it. Why?

Because he did what was appeared
as impossible.

China was portrayed as
the ultimate evil super power.

With Soviet Union there was detente,
not with China.

That act changed
the entire coordinates.

It did the impossible.

This is what we need
more than ever today.

Because ultimately, I claim,
the true utopia today

is not a different order.
It's the idea that

the existing order
can function indefinitely.

The true utopia, I claim,
was not communism,

which disintegrated in '89,

it was the utopia of the 90s.

The idea, elaborated, among others,
by Francis Fukuyama,

that we discovered the final
social form -

liberal capitalist democracy -
that we cannot go further.

That it's just a question of
making it little more tolerant,

spread it all around the world,
but that we have the formula.

And I think that if there is
a symbolic meaning to September 11th,

is that the time of that utopia
is over. The real of history is back.

Which is why today the urge
is not to be terrorized

by the so-called
"post-political politics"

which tells us:
"ideological times are over,

"all you can do is just
to play the realistic game

"of accepting the trends" etc. etc.
We should dare

to enact the impossible.

We should rediscover how to
not imagine, but enact utopia.

The point is not again
about planning utopias,

the point is about practicing them.

And I think this is not
a question of

should we do it or should we
simply persist in the existing order.

It's much more radical.
It's a matter for survival.

The future will be utopian,
or there will be none.