Žižek in Russian August 2012
Repetition
Hegel aufgehobun
Julius Cesar contingent dies, through repetition repeated as Augustus Cesar as a title as universal designation.
Post-Hegel: Empty repetition
Nonetheless there are traces in Hegel of this other repetition. For example this is Hegel at his best not reactionary, when Hegel claims that WAR is necessary. THere is a repetitive drive of absolute negativity that has to repeat itself from time to time to obliterate the concrete order.
Hegel is not Hegelian enough : Sexuality
What Hegel writes about sexuality, is that sexuality is our animal substance and through cultural development we develop it from cave man to poet. Some substantial instinct gets a more and more cultural form.
Hegel is mistaken here. Between nature this instinctual copulation and Culture there is SOMETHING IN BETWEEN, this ABSOLUTE NEGATIVITY as DEATH DRIVE. Sexuality as ABSOLUTE PASSION, I WANT TO DO IT EVEN IF I DIE DEADLY PASSION WHICH IS NOT ANIMAL!!
Tristan, this deadly passion is not cultural it is a threat to culture, and it is not animal, animals copulate twice a year during a certain time of year. IT is ABSOLUTE in humans. All this cultivation, is not trying to control natural sexuality but this ABSOLUTE PASSION.
Freudian sexuality is not a naturalist reduction. higher poetic abilities, higher intellectual work are just complicated ways to follow our instincts. You think you are writing poems but really you are just wanting to have sex.
Radical sexual passion is the first metaphysical experience. You have animal life, and then you experience ABSOLUTE sexual passion, this is metaphysical, something totally disturbs your everyday life.
I never understood those Catholic theologists, who claim if sexuality is done not for procreation but just for pleasure it is animal instinctual, but NO, for Ž sex for procreation is animalistic. If you don’t do it just for procreation it becomes an absolute metaphysical experience.
The reason the church is afraid of sexuality is not because it is animal but it is a competing metaphysical experience.
JOKE given to Ž by Darian Leader
He had a patient who told him one of his mistakes, slip of tongue. The patient wanted to seduce a lady so he took her to a restaurant which was the ground floor of a restaurant. Hoping later to go to the higher level floors. Instead of saying a table for two, he said a bed for two. The obvious wrong reading was that dinner was a pretext, he was already thinking of the sex afterwards.
Darian Leader gave another reading: An example of Freud’s PARTIAL OBJECT He said NO. What the guy who wanted to seduce the lady was afraid of, he would be so attracted by food there, he would forget about the sex afterwards, so the slip “a bed for 2” was a reminder to him don’t enjoy food here now remember what he was really there for. It was a self-controlling reminder. You cannot have direct full sex, there is always a dinner, a movie, and the problem is you might enjoy that too much and the final goal will disappear. What Lacan il n’y a pas de rapport sexual is that you need a dinner, you just can’t go directly to bed.