Žižek. S. “Descartes and the Post-Traumatic Subject.” Filozofski vestnik. 29. 2 (2008): 9-29.
Žižek. S. “Descartes and the Post-Traumatic Subject: On Catherine Malabou’s Les Nouveaux Blessés.” Qui Parle. 17.2 (2009): 123–147.
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Catherine Malabou Replies to Žižek
In the new form of subjectivity (autistic, indifferent, without affective engagement), the old personality is not “sublated” or replaced by a compensatory formation, but thoroughly destroyed — destruction itself acquires a form, becomes a (relatively stable) “form of life” – what we get is not simply the absence of form, but the form of (the) absence (of the erasure of the previous personality, which is not replaced by a new one).
More precisely, the new form is not a form of life, but, rather, a form of death – not an expression of the Freudian death drive, but, more directly, the death drive. 15
does she not forget to include herself, her own desire, into the observed phenomenon (of autistic subjects)? in an ironic reversal of her claim that the autistic subject is unable to enact transference, it is her own transference she does not take into account when she portrays the autistic subject’s immense suffering. This subject is primordially an enigmatic impenetrable thing, totally ambiguous, where one cannot but oscillate between attributing to it immense suffering and blessed ignorance.
What characterizes it is the lack of recognition in the double sense of the term: we do not recognize ourselves in it, there is no empathy possible, AND the autistic subject, on account of its withdrawal, does not enact recognition (it doesn’t recognize US, its partner in communication). 17