Can one really tolerate a neighbour
the symptom pre-exists what it is a symptom of
If a woman is a symptom, she is walking around, do you want me to be your symptom
Pure symptom: a nun, a radical feminine position, I will be a pure symptom
Man need a symptom to be
Film DaVinci Code: The girl is frigid, totally de-sexualized. She witnessed the primordial sin, saw her grandfather in some pagan sin. So jesus has to copulate to cover up that she doesn’t.
Solution: She accepts her role as leader of group who believe in her. A passage from eros to agape, from eros to political love.
Abyss of subjectivity: elementary reaction is FEAR, especially today, the inexistence of the big Other is more apparent than ever, not only language, but also ecology, is disappearing. The moment through genome and bio manipulations, the moment you can manipulate nature this way, it is no l onger nature in the sense of dense impenatrability.
If somone fucks with your inner nature, they violate your freedom, no its much more radical … the ultimate horror, modern science can produce new forms of monstors, not just observe.
Nonetheless behind all this is fear of the neigbour. The big problem today is to control this dimension of the neighbour.
The neighbour INTRUDES. Unlike Sam Harris who can happily promote torture because the dimension of the neighbour gets LOST. So Sam can just go ahead and treat humans as just a calculus of ok I toruture you here to prevent greater suffering. the dimension of the neighbour gets lost.
All outbursts get lost, is outburst against the neighbour. Since we are still neighbours within our own symbolic universes, own ways of enjoyment. So what we need today is not more communication but more distance, a new code of discretion, to ignore others more.
Our solution to deal with proximity of the neighbour is Tolerance which Zizek HATES.
He criticizes Wendy Brown, but likes her book, Regulating Aversion.
He talks about Martin Luther King who didn’t use ‘tolerance’ as a category, same with feminism, they don’t ask to be ‘tolerated’. Tolerance is a depoliticized politics. MLK was inequality, poverty which demands political solutions.
Brown develops the culturalization of political differences, political differences translated into cultural differences, into different ways of life.
Fukuyama and Huntington Clash of Civilizations, are same don’t contribute, class of civilizations is politics at the ‘end of history’. politics is rational administration, the only true passionate conflicts are conflicts of culture.
Critique of Brown: They remain caught in too primitive critique of ideology: denouncing the false universality
What appears to be a neutral notion, privledges a certain culture, human rights are not real human rights they privledge male straight males. Zizek doesn’t subscribe to this.
Of course there is a gap, universal human rights and hwo they function. this gap has POSITIVE aspects, we can REWRITE IT, mary wollstencraft rewrote it, the blacks in Haiti after the French Rev.
2. If you read closely Hegel it’s that this is only 1 side of the story, of denouncing universality as false universality, blah blah
– We also have the opposite mystification which is more interesting: something you percieve is only your particular interest is already universal dimension.
The cunning of reason, you think you are just following your narrow interests, you don’t see the universal dimension of your acts.
As capitalist subject, you are universal in your own individual self experience, you relate to yourself as self as universal.
My profession is being a knight or a serf, this is absurd they didn’t see themselves as a profession
you yourself experience yourself in the core of your being as universal, whenever capitalism spreads, from within it undermines each culture. Chinese discovered this and now are using capitalism to destroy their culture instead of the primitive way of using guns that didn’t work.
Foreign cultures appear stupid to me, what from
Experience your own identity as ultimately contingent. there is no authentic liberation, there is no feminism,
the way to break out of neighbour, abbyss otherness, should we tolerate it or not
EMBRACE this radical universality … in the form of a struggle. Not that I’m in my culture and you in yours, it’s that what I want to share with you is our shared intolerances, the only universality I share with you is universality of struggle. My own particular identity, I am not fully myself, in the very core of my identity is a universality that surpasses me, that’s what gives us some hope, that we are not only more particular than we think, even when you think you are immersed in your culture you are UNIVERSAL
SOLIPSISM is FALSE.
THE UNIVERSAL ETHICS IS KANTIAN ETHICS
IMMORAL ETHICS: It doesn’t matter what you do, by fully engaged. No that’s not Zizek.
Kantian Ethics is for Zizek. there is no BIg other, you cant put on big other to tell you your duty, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. A Good Kantian cannot say, what can I do I just obeyed my duty, you are NOT ALLOWED to use duty as excuse to do your duty. No you have to fully stand behind your duty. You can’t say I was only doing my duty.
Problem of tolerance:
TERROR!
Abandon that what you are afraid to lose, Accept the loss become UNIVERSAL
You are afraid to lose your particular identity, maybe what you are protecting is in itself worthless, ABANDON THAT
So what a minor disturbance in the solar system.
Don’t fear be calm, things will get better: NO it’s not this, there is no BIG OTHER, it doesn’t exist, we are in the abyss there are no guarantees.
ABC good radical ecology; there is no natural balance, there is no way to return. Nature as balanced homeostasis HA, Nature is one big catastrophe, what is oil, one big catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
If all human industry to stop, earth is so adapted to it, it would cause a catastrophe.
Violent Imposition of Universal Will: ecological crisis, other crisis, the way to beat phenomena like Bush, is not through local resistances, don’t buy the pomo poetry, no longer capitalism from top down, but decentralized, multiple agents, multiple sites of resistance.
NO we must reassert BIG COLLECTIVE decisions. we have a struggle, you have a struggle, lets see if we can join our struggles, our universality is universality of struggles.
We will need to assert big collective decisions. The capitalist state is getting bigger and stronger. State mechanisms military spending, economy these are all state interventions. More than ever the state is crucial.
If I were to choose American or Chinese model of capitalism,