Mladen Dolar: Gossip’s Feast. Politics in the Time of Rumours as part of Evening Lecture Series, hosted by the The Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy at the University of Dundee.
Rumours, isn’t this a sure way to ruin one’s reputation as a philosopher. I will propose to consider rumours as an ontological entity.
Doxa: regime of opinions. Episteme: knowledge, epistemologically grounded, aims at truth, not a personal opinion, binding, based on factual impartial objectivity.
Logos = The Big Other, the guarantee of knowledge in its universal character, the authority we have to assume in order to speak at all.
Rumours are lower in rank than opinions, as the latter are personal, what people own as their own freedom of expression, whereas rumours: “Rumour has IT” the Freudian IT, something at stake in rumours. IT speaks! IT speaks in the unconscious.
Rumours have no author, come out of nowhere, a breeze turning a tempest. No assignable origin, just passed on. One just hears it and passes it on. Impersonal, anonymous, but the carry an inscrutable authority, no author no guarantee, but are mystically transformed into authority. everybody knows it is a rumour, but they lend it an ear, and allow it to work.
Je sais bien mais quand méme, I know this is a rumour but nevertheless… Beliefs without owners (Pfaller). Nobody believes to be true but nonetheless WORKS. Another form of the Big Other. Two faces of the Big Other standing facing each other. LOGOS on one hand, and other hand Big Other as RUMOUR. Solemnity of Logos, the triviality of Rumour. The Big Other and its Double.