Žižek 9 May 2013 and broken down into 8 videos on YouTube
13.40 Antonio Damascio “Descartes Error” Cognitivist rejection of Descartes. Descartes draw a strict line of description neutral abstract thinking and animality, Descartes drew a strict distinction.
18:00 Smoking gun on Heidegger
21:25 Deleuze and Hegel: Hegel should simply be ignored. Forget Hegel.
28.00 Pittsburgh Hegelians
29:30 The Concept of Madness
Plato describes Socrates being seized by an idea. A description of someone in a hysterical seizure. Then we know Plato, the hypothesis of the evil spirit, universalized madness, debates between Derrida and Foucault. And Hegel dismissed as ultimate madman of philosophy.
31:20 Anti-Event Philosophers
Platonic Idea we have some eternal order/ideas existing in immutable way, nothing really happens, all that really happens is remembrance, rediscovering all that already is deep within ourselves, rediscovering truth that is already there. The ultimate philosopher of ANTI-EVENT.
Hegel has a system, dialectical movement, but in the course of dialectical movement, things are already becoming what they eternally are.
34:00 NO it isn’t like this says Ž. No event in Plato? Look at what actually happens in Plato, (see Badiou), the zero-level of the Platonic experience, we live ordinary daily life immersed in our daily shit, then we encounter an idea, Saul’s conversion in to St. Paul, something happens a radical cut and you discover another dimension. No wonder Plato was celebrating Love as Madness, Plato emphasized Love as the beginning of Wisdom.
We should never forget how it all begins for Plato: you are in your daily universe, thinking about daily shit, and then you confront someone who is your love, and your life is forever changed, you can feel this brutal encounter in Plato, if you are passionately in love then in your most intimate rational interests: parents, colleagues, children, can vanish, you experience a weird indifference to moral obligation to those around you. Falling in Love is the Platonic Event. This is missing in ‘Oriental’ thought. The oriental idea you are in undisturbed state of bliss, you get too engaged and fall into. Plato emphasizes this falling into as FULL engagement.
38:00 Descartes Cogito is precisely a PURE EVENT. Here Descartes misunderstands himself. Cogito is NOT a substance which is thinking. No. Cogito is this experience of a thing that exists only in sofar as it is thinking, only in the course of the process of thinking. What is CRUCIAL is not to forget that when he describes this pure experience of COGITO he’s not playing a intellectual game, he’s describing a concrete mystical/spiritual experience, you have this THE NIGHT OF THE WORLD, when you withdraw in a kind of psychotic reduction, you withdraw from reality into the abyss of your soul, the point of darkess, darkness as the absolute depth of your soul. What Descartes is describing as ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ is precisely this thought disconnected from reality, this pure moment of inwardness which is at the same time the moment of MADNESS.
Hegel was well aware of how in order for Human Spirit, our Symbolic universe to develop we have to go through the zero-point of madness, Hegel is more Foucaultian than Foucault, madness is not just a possibility of things go wrong, but our rational world emerges only as a defence against the threat of madness. Even if most of us our not mad, the only way to understand human reason is as a reaction as a form of madness, a form of madness. Wonderful passage in Freud’s reading in his analysis of paranoia, Judge Schreber, Freud says that in a paranoiac system what we usually take as the sign of madness is on the contrary an attempt to get out of madness, the paranoiac construct is an ersatze normality, the true madness is the night of the World, the withdrawal from reality. The paranoiac is a crazy attempt to cure yourself. Lacan sometimes along these lines proposed there is a moment of madness in all rationality, every rationality is an attempt to get out of madness. Platonic Event, encounter the IDEA. We can formulate the basic Platonic experience independently of this idealist substantialist metaphysics. In authentic moments of LOVE, POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT, we encounter some kind of ABSOLUTE, something strikes you, morality can act as ABSOLUTE, did you see that bullshit the life of PI.
44:00 Ang Lee wants to meet Ž. But in the novel, when you must do something, when you experience something as ethical pressure, you must do it because you cannot NOT do it. You CANNOT NOT DO IT. Absolute is something much more fragile something that belongs to the order of appearance than ordinary reality, Absolute is you have a duty, you can say fuck off if you are an unethical person. You cannot not do it. An entity totally powerless fragile, but nonetheless you CANNOT get rid of it. The more fragile the more it has a hold over you.
I think therefore I am, I am only so far as I am caught in the process of thinking.
46:00 HEGEL Philosopher of the EVENT
In what sense for Hegel is TRUTH itself evental? Appearance misleading false appearance is immanent to TRUTH. Yes of course first you cling to one idea its partially true, the other side is partial, then a higher synthesis NO NO. The ABC in the conflict between appearance and reality, the truth is in appearance. Innocent bystander, you are in a certain situation, what matters is not what you sincerely think deep in yourself, but how your situation appears to an observer, even if appearance is false, it is socailly determining, it is stronger. The drama of false appearances. There can be more truth in superficial appearances. Through totally invented accusation, the two women discover that they are attached. Inner self-experience doesn’t get it all, it is the 3rd party external observation.
1:05 Derrida started to imitate his American followers who misunderstood him. The TRUTH CAN ARISE OUT OF A MISRECOGNITION.
Immanence of Appearance to TRUTH. Something starts as misleading appearance but triggers a process making it true. This is Hegelian dialectic. Alenka Zupancic: Evental Status of a TRUTH. The truth emerges out of a series of EVENTS, out of an evental process, what begins as a misleading process becomes a TRUTH. This holds at a fundamental level of SEXUALITY.
1:10 infantile sexuality this notion is oppressed today, it is as if this is the price we are paying for our permissivity. Everything is permitted today, do it with dogs, but children are innocent, pedophilia is the ultimate crime. Innocent child as returned with a vengence. Children are the innocent observers, we can participate in orgies etc, but children must not know about it, parents who are swinging, if you mention this to my son but don’t tell my son, on condition that the child doesn’t know it, we need an innocent gaze.
So we should ask: Who are the typical bad guys. Fred Jameson says this about WIRE the HBO series, today the only acceptable bad guys in movies are terrorists, serial killers and pedaphiliacs. House of Cards, with Kevin Spacey, you can still be the point of identification as a murderer, all other murderers are relativized. Copjec told me there was that hit series HOME ALONE, a celebration of children, invincible, they always win, a protection of the innocence. Let’s go a step further.
What is so scandalous about infantile sexuality?
The scandal resides in 2 features:
1. Alenka Zupancic, infantile sexuality is something weird, its neither biologically grounded, nor fitting symbolic cultural norms. Biologically sexuality is made for copulation. It invades before biologically mature sexuality. The problem here is its not we have first infantile, then once puberty enter we can start fucking in a normal way, no it ruins the entire field. The way infantile sexuality approaches sexual topic remains in power to the end.
Quote from Laplanche: drives precede what is innate and instinctual. Instinctually biologically fucking with genitals, but you don’t start at biologically and then get cultural, no you start with unnatural sexuality,
It is instinctual sexuality (fuck to get children) which is adaptaive, it has evolutionary function, infantile drives already present in the unconscious. why this strange intrusion in children neither biology (biologically infantile sexuality is meaningless), nor culture, normativity. But some wierd in-between.
The reason for this strange excess, is the link between sexuality and cognition. Against the standard idea of sexuality as instinctual force which is sublimated though culture, one should assert the link between sexuality and cognition.
1:20 Childrens’sexuality is not masturbatory pre-genital, it is deeply cognitive, where do babies come from? And it is deeply embedded in fantasies, the small child sees some strange things, the enigma of the other’s desire, he feels something obscene in adults, what do they want from me, This is for Laplanche, the original experience of subjectivity, what do the others see in me? I have something in me that others see in me but I don’t know what. Children’s sexuality is grounded in such a cognitive search, but there is always a missing link you never get the answers, that why you have fantasies.
1:24 What I’m saying is 2 things: 1. these are childish fantasies, when you reach puberty you know answers, NO. You need Fantasies to the end. THis is what Lacan means by there is no sexual relation. To get aroused you need fantasy excess. The problem for psychoanalysis, is not vulgar pan-sexualism, the enigma of psycho-analysis is the opposite, what are we thinking when we are doing sex, there has to be some detail, you imagine the curl of the hair: somebody observing you, the scent of her hair, her calves.
The structure of infantile sexuality which is a cognitive missing link remains here to the end. We never reach maturity. The structure of sexuation through cognitive missing link and fantasy, this structure remains to the end.
1:27 Did you see David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. This is a nice fantasy structure. The best scene, Kyle observes from the closet Dennis Hopper, breathing through oxygen mask etc. Chion said only way to read the scene is a visualized audio hallucination. Oxygen breathing, this is a child listening to parent’s copulating, he hears strange sounds, the parent’s fucking but he doesn’t know what fucking is, so makes up scenario, imagines daddy breathing etc.
1:29 Judith Butler Narrative
There is normal sex, heterosexual, straight, and then we have this childish games, that if not refocused on heterosex, they are used as subordinated moments for genital sex. If I like to look at you it is ok only if its foreplay to proper penetration its okay.
Butler/Deleuze Version: we have polymorphous perverse paradise of plural practices which is violently normativized to a genital paradigm. This is also false. There is no plurality of perversions and then bad patriarchy which subordinates it. NO wrong. It is not enough to reassert infantile sexuality which is polymorphous perverse sexuality which is then totalized regulated by the Oedipal genital norm. Infantile sexuality is not the original base of sexuality which is then captured and regulated by the heterosex norm.
The idea here is that Alenka Zupancic, copulation fucking is a central point but precisely as such it ESCAPES normativity. THERE IS NO SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP.
We do have this perverse polymorphous mastabatory practices, but always against the background of a cogntive hole, could have been filled in by a full genital sex, but this can’t be done there is no formula here. There is no knowledge here, there is no formula for sex. Full sex copulation, its space has be sustained by perverse scenarios.
Already Lacan says Seminar XX, simple observation, turns around completely the standard idea that Catholic church its sexual teaching privileges normative genital sexuality at the expense of oppressed perverse infantile drives etc. As if the only thing church tolerates is genital straight heterosexuality NO. Absolutely NOT TRUE.
If you look at the church imaginary it is full or oral/anal drives and art, saints eating shit, fondling each other, but never fucking, copulation is prohibited in the church imaginary. Reject Catholic sexual morality imposes normative sexuality on polymorphous perverse sexuality of humans.
One should insist that there is nothing necessarily asocial in partial drives, they function as glue as society, in contrast to the sexual straight couple.
Pre-genital oral, anal drives, the Church and Army is full of this. What they feel threatened by is copulation, the couple.
Zupancic there is something profoundly disruptive at stake in copulation, the kind of social bond it proposes (copulation) that Christianity proposes, it doesn’t need copulation, natural copulation is utterly banned from the religious imaginary.
Christianity is all about jouissance of the body, the body of God as constituting another person’s jouissance, partial drives and the satisfaction they procure are abundantly present. In its libidinal aspect, satisfaction and bonding by way of partial objects with the exclusion of sexual coupling. Infantile sexuality is part of Christianity. The pure enjoyment, enjoyment for sake of enjoyment is not banned, what is banned is sexuality in form of copulation. Christianity fully acknowledges the polymorphous perverse satisfaction of drives but Christianity desexualizes the pleasure they provide. Why this oppression of Sexuality in Church?
1:41 What happens in copulation is precisely a certain link, coupling of 2 dimension which make it problematic for Church. On the one hand sexuality in sense of partial drives, you can’t find satisfaction put finger up here, squeeze here, technical stuff of how to do it then we have the inter-subjective LINK, but isn’t the tendency today that the 2 should be kept apart.
If you are frigid = problem of partial drives. Sexual topic is reduced to question of partial drives. Sexual topic is reduced to topic of partial drives, if you can’t get erection do this … sexuality is subordinated to, does it contribute to your relation to other. What happens in intense copulation the 2 dimensions go together.
The mystery of sexuality is intense bodily enjoyment and connection with Other, not in this metaphysical sense, communicating with sould no fuck soul, it is brutally concrete, not connecting with souls, the more you reduce the other to an object, the more you have spiritual surrender.
The Church prefers missionary position, this is way to maintain distance from other, in other words the Church wants to protect us from the miraculous EVENTAL, traumatic event of SEXUALITY. a traumatic event that can’t be reduced to reproductive copulation.
1:44.20 This missing link, no sexual relationship, the last trap here. If you read Lacan, you must notice AMBIGUITY. 1. massively endorses philosophic topic, division between animal and humans. Animals=instinct you know when to copulate. Humans we need fantasies, poetry it doesn’t function. This idea of Opposing nature as domain of immediate BALANCE, no, we have to do a step: This idea that it’s not enough to say man is de-natured animal, Nature is already de-natured it doesn’t know it.
Alenka Zupancic: are you aware of something, conscious of something. UNCONSCIOUS of something. Both nature and man don’t know how to do it. Nature doesn’t know that it doesn’t know. Lacan gives some hints in Seminar II. LAMELLA undead object. at the level of animal sexuality. Oscillates Lacan between simple celebration of humanity, Man doesn’t have instinctual coordinates, which is why has to invent things NO Nature has gap itself, The battler is DENATURALIZING nature. The ultimae idealist resistance, we have nature, then somehow things go wrong with humans.
This wonderful idea in Shcelling, Benjamin, this idea human language was created to give words to the pain that is already in nature, to redeem the pain in nature. If we drop this mystical topic, and say radical discord that is ALREADY IN NATURE. with humanity nature becomes UNCONSCIOUS of its own DISCORD. THis is the way I read quantum physics, the latter denaturalizes nature, what we get is not culture but not nature in the usual way we understand it.
151:00 What would be materialist theology. Kierkargards idea of anxiety: tried to develop logical proof of God, while he’s trying to deduce existence of God, God himself is watching with anxiety, because if he fails, then God himself like the cat walking over the cliff on thin air, will suddenly drop. Will god’s existence depend on philosophy proving his existence.
Like monarch anxiety if General Assembly deciding if partial or absolute monarch.
Crazy as it may sound, each of us as subjects are in position of GOD, our existence depends on the other, fuck it, I exist if the whole world disappears, for you to exist you depend radically on the others.
The lesson of Quantum physics, at the micro level, things can go on, you can cheat ontologically. Einstein answer to Borg, God does not cheat. Ok, maybe God doesn’t cheat but he can be cheat, at quantum level things can happen that God doesn’t know about. IT isn’t is God cheating, NO. We can cheat on GOD.