Social Critics

"I believe in clear-cut positions. I think that the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of "what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis," and so on. It really is a most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position."

"Kantian definition of the Sublime: 'The sublime may be described in this way: It is an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to regard the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a presentation of ideas...' The feeling of the Sublime is, therefore, at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain, to its estimation by reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgement of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law."

"What we are thus arguing is not simply that ideology also permeates the alleged extraideological strata of everyday life, but that this materialization of ideology in external materiality reveals inherent antagonisms which the explicit formulation of ideology cannot afford to acknowledge …"

"I claim that jihadis are really motivated neither by religion nor by a Leftist sense of justice, but by resentment, which in no way puts them on the Left, neither “objectively” nor “subjectively.” I simply never wrote that Islamic fundamentalists are in any sense on the Left—the whole point of my writing on this topic is that the “antagonism” between liberal tolerance and ethnic or religious fundamentalism is inherent to the universe of global capitalism: in their very opposition, they are the two faces of the same system. The true Left starts with the insight into this complicity. A good example of how religious fundamentalism is to be located “in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism” is Afghanistan. Today, when Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 30 years ago, it was a country with strong secular tradition, up to a strong Communist party which first took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Afghanistan became fundamentalist when it was drawn into global politics (first through the Soviet intervention)."

"'Father, why is the sky blue?' - the child is not really interested in the sky as such; the real stake of the question is to expose father's impotence, his helplessness in the face of the hard fact, to present the whole chain of reasons leading to it. The blue of the sky thus becomes not only the father's problem, but in a way even his fault. The sky is blue, and you're just staring at it like an idiot incapable of doing anything about it!"

"The original question of desire is not directly 'What do I want?', but 'What do others want from me? What do they see in me? What am I to others?'"

"Those who claim a natural link between capitalism and democracy are cheating with the facts in the same way the Catholic Church cheats when it presents itself as the "natural"advocate of democracy and human rights against the threat of totalitarianism - as if it were not the case that the Church accepted democracy only at the end of the nineteenth century, and even then with clenched teeth, as a desperate compromise, making it clear that it preferred monarchy, and that it was making a reluctant concession to new times."

"Daly: In a sense, would you say that the age of biogenetics/cyberspace is the age of philosophy? Žižek: Yes, and the age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher."

"Man as such is nature sick unto death, derailed, run off the rails through a fascination with a lethal Thing."

"'Nobody can rule innocently,' as Saint-Just puts it. And in totalitarianism, the Party becomes again the very subject who, being the immediate embodiment of the People can rule innocently. It is not by accident that the real-socialist countries call themselves 'people's democracies.'"

"The famous MacGuffin , the Hitchockian object, the pure pretext whose sole role is to set the story in motion but which is in itself nothing at all - the only significance of the MacGuffin lies in the fact that it has some significance for the characters - that it must seem to be of vital importance to them... - that's a MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is non the less efficient... what Lacan calls object petit a: a pure void which functions as the object cause of desire."

"[A]t the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of co-ordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe — the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus.""

"We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom."

"Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins."

"[A] paradox arises at the level of the subject's relationship to the community to which he belongs: the situation of the forced choice consists in the fact that the subject must freely choose the community to which he already belongs, independent of his choice - he must choose what is already given to him... The subject who thinks he can avoid this paradox and really have a free choice is a psychotic subject, one who retains a kind of distance from the symbolic order - who is not really caught in the signifying network. The totalitarian subject is closer to this psychotic position: the proof would be the status of the enemy in totalitarian distance (the Jew in Fascism, the traitor in Stalinism) - precisely the subject supposed to have made a free choice and to have freely chosen the wrong side. This is also the basic paradox of love: not only of one's country, but also of a woman or a man. If I am directly ordered to love a woman, it is clear that this does not work: in a way, love must be free. But on the other hand, if I proceed as if I really have a free choice, if I start to look around and say to myself 'Let's choose which of these women I will fall in love with,' it is clear that this also does not work, that it is not real love. The paradox of love is that it is a free choice, but a choice which never arrives in the present - it is always already made ...I can only state retroactively that I've already chosen ... [Stated by Kant], 'Wickedness does not simply depend upon circumstances but is an integral part of his eternal nature.' In other words, wickedness appears to be something which is irreducibly given: the person in question can never change it, outgrow it via his ultimate moral development."

"Memento mori should be read: don't forget to die."

"Lacan conceives the difference between the two deaths as the difference being real (biological) death and its symbolization, the settling of accounts the accomplishment of symbolic destiny (deathbed confession in Catholicism, for example). This gap can be filled in various ways; it can contain either sublime beauty or fearsome monsters: in Antigone's case, her symbolic death, her exclusion from the symbolic community of the city, precedes her actual death and imbues her character with sublime beauty, whereas the ghost of Hamlet's father represents the opposite case, - actual death unaccompanied by symbolic death, without a settling of accounts - which is why he returns as a frightful apparition until his debt has been repaid. This place between the two deaths, a place of sublime beauty as well as terrifying monsters, is the site of das Ding, of the real-traumatic Kernel in the midst of symbolic order."

"The Real is therefore simultaneously both the hard impenetrable kernel resisting symbolization and a pure chimerical entity which has in itself no ontological consistency. To use Kripkean terminology, the Real is the rock upon which every attempt at symbolization stumbles, the hard core which remains the same in all possible worlds (symbolic universes); but at the same time its status is thoroughly precarious; it is something that persists only as failed, missed, in a shadow, and dissolves itself as soon as we try to grasp it in its positive nature... like a traumatic event constructed backwards."

"In the electoral campaign, President Bush named as the most important person in his life Jesus. Now he has a unique chance to prove that he meant it seriously: for him, as for all Americans today, "Love thy neighbor!" means "Love the Muslims!" OR IT MEANS NOTHING AT ALL."

"As a Marxist, let me add: if anyone tells you Lacan is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy."

"Actual history occurs, so the speak, on credit; only subsequent development will decide retroactively if the current revolutionary violence will be forgiven, legitimated, or if it will continue to exert a pressure on the shoulders of the present generation as its guilt, as its unsettled debt."

"Here we could use the distinction elaborated by Kovel's White Racism - between dominative and aversive racism. In Nazi ideology, all human races form a hierarchical, harmonious, whole (the 'destiny' of the Aryans at the top is to rule, while the Blacks, Chinese and others have to serve) a all races except the Jews: they have no proper place; their very identity is fake, it consists in trespassing the frontiers, in introducing unrest, antagonism, in destabilizing the social fabric. As such, Jews plot with other races and prevent them from putting up with their proper place - they function as a hidden Master aiming at world domination: they are a counter-image of the Aryans themselves, a kind of negative, perverted double; their is why they must be exterminated, while other races have only to occupy their proper place."

"The symbolic order is striving for a homeostatic balance, but there is in its Kernel, at its very centre, some strange traumatic order - the Thing. Lacan coined a neologism for it: l'extimité - external intimacy, which served as a title for one of Jacques-Alain Miller's Seminars. And what, at this level, is the death drive? Exactly the opposite of the symbolic orderL the possibility of the second death, the radical annihilation of the symbolic texture through which so-called reality is constructed. They very existence of the symbolic order implies a possibility of its radical effacement, of symbolic death - not the death of the so-called real object in its symbol, but the obliteration of the signifying network itself."

"Dreams are nothing other than a particular form of thinking, made possible by the conditions of the state of sleep. it is the dream-work which creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming - the explanation of its peculiar nature."

"Symbolic castration - the final moment of analysis is reached when the subject is ready to accept this fundamental loss, to consent to symbolic castration as a price to be paid for access to his desire."

"I found there, on the central square (Václavské náměstí), a café that miraculously worked through this emergency. I remember they had wonderful strawberry cakes, and I was sitting there eating strawberry cakes and watching Russian tanks against demonstrators. It was perfect."

"One should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions — but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.” In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state."

"The big Other, the symbolic order, with a traumatic element at its very heart; and in Lacanian theory the fantasy is a construction allowing the subject to come to terms with this traumatic kernel. At this level the final moment of the analysis is defined as going through the fantasy [la traversée du fantasme]: not its symbolic interpretation but the experience of the fact that the fantasy-object, by its fascinating presence, is merely filling out a lack, a void in the Other. There is nothing behind the fantasy; the fantasy is a construction whose function is to hide this void, this nothing - that is, the lack in the Other."

"A woman is not complimentary to a man, but she embodies his lack (which is why Lacan can say that a beautiful woman is a perfect incarnation of man's castration)."

"...there are always three elements [of psychoanalysis] at work: the manifest dream-text, the latent dream-content or thought and the unconscious desire articulated in the dream. This desire attaches itself to the dream, it interlaces itself in the interspace between the latent thought and the manifest text; it is therefore not 'more concealed, deeper' in relation to the latent thought, it is decidedly more 'on the surface,' consisting entirely of the signifier's mechanisms, of the treatment to which the latent content is submitted."

"Confucius was not so much a philosopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what one is tempted to call the elementary scene of ideology, its zero-level, which consists in asserting the (nameless) authority of some substantial Tradition."

"You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early."

"The impossible lives next door to the possible; people ring its door bell by accident all the time."

"Best of things symbolised by Jocelyne's barbell: "It's a symbol of the need for symbols." "How life shrapnels us." "Assistant bank manageress on the outside, primitive on the inside." "Of whatever I feel like." "That you can do stupid things at any point in your life.""

"Methods Used 1. Marxist: You decide you're the vanguard of the proletariat and then you can do whatever you want because history will back you up. 2. Stoic: Stay very calm. 3. Positivist: Yes, I'm positive I want to rob this bank."

"Jocelyne clicked her barbell on her teeth. I was watching her closely for signs of collapsing romance. Her tongue was pierced, (a process, she had elaborated, that had taken two weeks of painful healing) and it put me in mind of the tongue-piercing ceremony endured on October 28, 709 AD by the principal wife of Shield Jaguar, Blood Lord of Yaxchilan (Lintel 24); i.e. to my eye, pointless, but if it's good enough for the Mayans ..."

"Opening the fridge door, I found a rat eating the cheese. My dealings with rodents, particularly those tagged verminous, have been few, but generally the pattern has been one of man, the boss, the caretaker of creation, the namer, appearing and the lower orders hitting the road."

"Indeed I cannot doubt that there has been really one grand empire, or one Universal, one Pandæan, or one Catholic religion, with one language, which has extended over the whole of the world; uniting or governing at the same time..."

"[A] less conventional member of the squirearchy... a political radical, reforming county magistrate and idiosyncratic historian of religions."

"— We have seen that though Cristna was said to have left many sons, he left his immense empire, which extended from the sources of the Indus to Cape Comorin, (for we find a Regio Pandionis near this point,) to his daughter Pandæa; but, from finding the icon of Buddha so constantly shaded with the nine Cobras, &c., I am induced to think that this Pandeism was a doctrine, which had been received both by Buddhists and Brahmins."

"When I consider all the circumstances detailed above respecting the Pans, I cannot help believing that, under the mythos, a doctrine or history of a sect is concealed. Cunti, the wife of Pandu (du or God, Pan), wife of the generative power, mother of the Pandavas or devas, daughter of Sura or Syra the Sun—Pandæa only daughter of Cristna or the Sun—Pandion, who had by Medea a son called Medus, the king of the Medes, who had a cousin, the famous Perseus — surely all this is very mythological — an historical parable!"

"I think Pandeism was system; — and that when I say the country or kingdom of Pandæa, I express myself in a manner similar to what I should do, if I said the Popish kingdom or the kingdoms of Popery; or again, the Greeks have many idle ceremonies in their church, meaning the Greeks of all nations: or, the countries of the Pope are superstitions, &c. At the same time, I beg to be understood as not denying that there was such a kingdom as that of Pandae, the daughter of Cristna, any more than I would deny that there was a Kingdom of France ruled by the eldest son of the church, or the eldest son of the Pope."

"His indefatigable exertions in the detection and correction of the great abuses then existing in the management of the York Lunatic asylum, and the formation of another and very extensive establishment for the care and protection of pauper lunatics at Wakefield, will be monuments of his humble spirit and perseverance and philanthropy."

"We have found the Black complexion or something relating to it whenever we have approached the origin of nations. The Alma Mater, the Goddess Multimammia, the founders of the Oracles, the Memnon of first idols, were always Black. Venus, Jupiter, Apollo, Bacchus, Hercules, Asteroth, Adonis, Horus, Apis, Osiris, and Amen: in short all the... deities were black. They remained as they were first... in very ancient times."

"“The peninsula of India would be one of the first peopled countries, and its inhabitants would have all the habits of the progenitors of man before the flood in as much perfection or more than any other nation… In short, whatever learning man possessed before his dispersion may be expected to be found here, and of this, Hindustan affords innumerable traces… notwithstanding … the fruitless efforts of our priests to disguise it.”"

"Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions."

"It is curious to observe how the Cross is regaining its old place in this country. A hundred years ago our Protestant females would have been shocked at the idea of wearing a cross. Now they all have crosses dangling from their necks; and our priests generally prevail to have it elevated on the tops of our new churches. They say it is not an object of adoration. True : but all in its proper time. It will not be elevated on the church and the altar for nothing. A prudent Pope, availing himself of the powers given to him by the Council of Trent, would not find it difficult to effect a reconciliation between the Papal See and the Protestant Church of England. The extremes are beginning to bend to the circular form."

"[A]lthough you have a right to appoint me to the office... yet you have no right to expect me either to spend money to forward the election or to cheat any man's vote, and I shall do neither... a seat in the House can never bring me either honours or emoluments, nothing, in short, but labour and trouble - you cannot expect from me, so will not, in fact, receive from me, either flatteries, treats or bribes."

"This led me to extend my inquiry into the origin of all religions, and this again led to an enquiry into the origin of nations and languages; and ultimately I came to a resolution to devote six hours a day to this pursuit for ten years. Instead of six hours daily for ten years, I believe I have, upon the average, applied myself to it for nearly ten hours daily for almost twenty years. In the first ten years of my search I may fairly say, I found nothing which I sought for; in the latter part of the twenty, the quantity of matter has so crowded in upon me, that I scarcely know how to dispose of it."

"I think it right to warn my reader, that there are more passages than one in the book, which are of that nature, which will be perfectly understood by my Masonic friends, but which my engagements prevent me explaining to the world at large. My Masonic friends will find their craft very often referred to. I believe, however that they will not find any of their secrets betrayed; but I trust they will find it proved, that their art is the remains of a very fine ancient system, or, perhaps, more properly, a branch of the fine and beautiful system of WISDOM which, in this work, I have developed."