{"id":11194,"date":"2013-06-06T22:22:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T03:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11194"},"modified":"2013-06-06T22:38:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T03:38:44","slug":"11194","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/06\/06\/11194\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017d interview 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unbehagen and the subject: An interview with Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u00a0 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society<\/em> 15.4. 2010. 418\u2013428<\/p>\n

If beneath what you are asking me now is the big question, where does Freud really stand with regard to politics, I think the answer is pretty clear if you really look. I think Freud\u2019s position was, to put it very simply, that psychoanalysis allows us, when you analyse a society, to formulate, to articulate Unbehagen in der Kultur<\/em><\/span> literally, the uneasiness in culture, but more famously translated as Civilization and Its Discontents<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It does this basic symptomal job of showing how the failures, the pathological malfunctions, are symptomatic of the whole. I think that, for a true Freudian, it is totally wrong to distinguish the proper domain where you can use psychoanalysis. For the true Freudian it is not that Freud did his true job in his clinical analysis but then got a little bit crazy when he was writing<\/strong> Totem and Taboo<\/em> and Unbehagen in der Kultur<\/em><\/span> [Civilization and Its Discontents<\/em>]. No, because the whole point of Unbehagen in der Kultur<\/em><\/span> is that these pathological phenomena are conditioned by the truth.<\/p>\n

They are the symptom, the result of what is wrong in the entire social body as such<\/span>. In this sense, the two sides are necessarily connected. What is totally alien to Freud is this purely clinical idea that there is the normal functioning of society, then somebody doesn\u2019t work, then the psychoanalyst would have been like the psychological mechanic, the repairman who will set me straight.<\/p>\n

I think that Freud, to put it in fashionable terms, isolates a certain excess<\/span>. He calls it death drive<\/span>, a certain excess<\/span> of destructability that is, as it were, undermining, destabilizing the social order, an excess<\/span> that is ambiguous in the sense that it can be a source of constructive energy or it can be purely destructive.<\/p>\n

The idea is that Freud isolates this space of excess<\/span>, which then, of course, opens up the space for possible change. I think Freud\u2019s basic answer would have been: psychoanalysis just does this elementary job of showing how there is a gap, a failure, a nonfunctioning<\/strong> excess<\/span> in society. But then, about what to do, he leaves it open. We cannot jump from here directly to positive programs.<\/p>\n

This then opens up all possible versions. You can have a conservative Freudian answer: the whole point is to control this threat. You can have a Reichian, na\u00efve, Leftist answer: what is a threat is only a threat from the ruling perspective and we should identify ourselves with it. And you can have a liberal, middle-of-the-way game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unbehagen and the subject: An interview with Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u00a0 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 15.4. 2010. 418\u2013428 If beneath what you are asking me now is the big question, where does Freud really stand with regard to politics, I think the answer is pretty clear if you really look. I think Freud\u2019s position was, to put … Continue reading “\u017d interview 2008”<\/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":[125,41,20],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-11194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive","category-the-real","category-zizek","tag-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11194","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=11194"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11196,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11194\/revisions\/11196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}