Žižek, Slavoj. “Zizek_TheLacanianReal_Television” The Symptom 9 Summer 2008.
The Spirit is a Bone.
“the spirit (the subject) is a bone, a skull (der Geist ist ein Knochen).”
If we read this proposition literally, it is vulgar-materialistic nonsense, reducing the subject to his immediate material reality. But where lies, in Hegel’s words, the speculative truth of this proposition? The effect of the phrase, “the spirit is a bone.” On the listener is the feeling of its utter inadequacy, of its absolute contradiction: it is total nonsense – how can we reduce the spirit, its dialectical movement, to an inert presence of a dead object,
of a skull?
The Hegelian answer is precisely this absolute contradiction, this absolute negativity that we feel when we experience the uttermost inadequacy of the proposition, “the spirit is the bone.”
We have here a kind of dialogic economy: we articulate a proposition defining the subject, and our attempt fails; we experience the absolute contradiction, the extreme negative relationship between the subject and the predicate – and it’s precisely this absolute discordance which is the subject as absolute negativity.
It is the same as with a well-known joke from the Soviet Union about Rabinovitch, a Jew who wants to emigrate. The bureaucrat at the emigration office asks him why; Rabinovitch answers: “There are two reasons why. The first is that I’m afraid that in the Soviet Union, the communists will lose power, there will be a counter-revolution, and the new power will put all the blame for the communist crimes on us Jews – and there will be again the anti-Jewish pogroms…” “But,” interrupts the bureaucrat, “this is pure nonsense; nothing can change in the Soviet Union – the Soviet power will last eternally!” “Well,” responds Rabinovitch calmly, “that’s my second reason.”
The logic is here the same as with the Hegelian proposition, “the spirit is a bone”: the failure itself of a first reading gives us the true meaning.