{"id":11094,"date":"2013-05-26T09:19:06","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T14:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11094"},"modified":"2013-05-26T22:25:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T03:25:35","slug":"zizek-the-real-birkbeck-sumer-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/05\/26\/zizek-the-real-birkbeck-sumer-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017di\u017eek the Real Winnebago Tribe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a version from Parallax View I think<\/a>
\nShort 6 minute video on the Real, Birkbeck 29 June, 2011<\/a><\/p>\n

The real<\/span> is at the same time the obstacle that makes reality inaccessible.<\/p>\n

Recall Claude Levi-Strauss’s exemplary analysis<\/a>, from his Structural Anthropology<\/em>, of the spatial disposition of buildings in the Winnebago<\/strong>, one of the Great Lake tribes, might be of some help here. The tribe is divided into two sub-groups (“moieties”), “those who are from above” and “those who are from below”; when we ask an individual to draw on a piece of paper, or on sand, the ground-plan of his\/her village (the spatial disposition of cottages), we obtain two quite different answers, depending on his\/her belonging to one or the other sub-group.<\/p>\n

Both perceive the village as a circle; but for one sub-group, there is within this circle another circle of central houses, so that we have two concentric circles, while for the other sub-group, the circle is split into two by a clear dividing line. In other words, a member of the first sub-group (let us call it “conservative-corporatist”) perceives the ground-plan of the village as a ring of houses more or less symmetrically disposed around the central temple, whereas a member of the second (“revolutionary-antagonistic”) sub-group perceives his\/her village as two distinct heaps of houses separated by an invisible frontier… 20<\/p>\n

The point Levi-Strauss wants to make is that this example should in no way entice us into cultural relativism, according to which the perception of social space depends on the observer’s group-belonging: the very splitting into the two “relative” perceptions implies a hidden reference to a constant – not the objective, “actual” disposition of buildings but a traumatic kernel, a fundamental antagonism the inhabitants of the village were unable to symbolize, to account for, to “internalize”, to come to terms with, an imbalance in social relations that prevented the community from stabilizing itself into a harmonious whole.<\/p>\n

The two perceptions of the ground-plan are simply two mutually exclusive endeavors to cope with this traumatic antagonism<\/a>, to heal its wound via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure. It is here that one can see it what precise sense the Real<\/span> intervenes through anamorphosis<\/strong>. We have first the “actual,” “objective,” arrangement of the houses, and then its two different symbolizations which both distort in an anamorphic way the actual arrangement. However, the “real”<\/span> is here not the actual arrangement, but the traumatic core of some social antagonism which distorts the tribe members’ view of the actual arrangement of the houses in their village.<\/p>\n

The Real<\/span> is thus the disavowed X on account of which our vision of reality is anamorphically<\/strong> distorted; it is SIMULTANEOUSLY the Thing to which direct access is not possible AND the obstacle which prevents this direct access, the Thing which eludes our grasp AND the distorting screen which makes us miss the Thing.<\/p>\n

More precisely, the Real<\/span> is ultimately the very shift of perspective from the first to the second standpoint. Recall the old well-known Adorno’s analysis of the antagonistic character of the notion of society: in a first approach, the split between the two notions of society (Anglo-Saxon individualistic-nominalistic and Durkheimian organicist notion of society as a totality which preexists individuals) seems irreducible, we seem to be dealing with a true Kantian antinomy which cannot be resolved via a higher “dialectical synthesis,” and which elevates society into an inaccessible Thing-in-itself; however, in a second approach, one should merely take not of how this radical antinomy<\/strong> which seems to preclude our access to the Thing ALREADY IS THE THING ITSELF – the fundamental feature of today’s society IS the irreconcilable antagonism between Totality and the individual<\/span>.<\/p>\n

What this means is that, ultimately, the status of the Real<\/span> is purely parallactic and, as such, non-substantial: is has no substantial density in itself, it is just a gap between two points of perspective, perceptible only in the shift from the one to the other.<\/p>\n

The parallax<\/strong> Real<\/span> is thus opposed to the standard (Lacanian) notion of the Real<\/span> as that which “always returns at its place,” i.e., as that which remains the same in all possible (symbolic) universes: the parallax<\/strong> Real<\/span> is rather that which accounts for the very multiplicity of appearances of the same underlying Real<\/span> – it is not the hard core which persists as the Same, but the hard bone of contention which pulverizes the sameness into the multitude of appearances.<\/p>\n

In a first move, the Real<\/span> is the impossible hard core which we cannot confront directly, but only through the lenses of a multitude of symbolic fictions, virtual formations. In a second move, this very hard core is purely virtual, actually non-existing, an X<\/span> which can be reconstructed only retroactively, from the multitude of symbolic formations which are “all that there actually is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a version from Parallax View I think Short 6 minute video on the Real, Birkbeck 29 June, 2011 The real is at the same time the obstacle that makes reality inaccessible. Recall Claude Levi-Strauss’s exemplary analysis, from his Structural Anthropology, of the spatial disposition of buildings in the Winnebago, one of the Great … Continue reading “\u017di\u017eek the Real Winnebago Tribe”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-real","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11094"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11107,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11094\/revisions\/11107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}