{"id":2022,"date":"2009-02-21T20:09:08","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T01:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2009-08-20T14:10:44","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T19:10:44","slug":"zizek-fundamental-exclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/02\/21\/zizek-fundamental-exclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"zizek fundamental exclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regarding JB’s charge of ‘ahistorical’ status of sexual difference, Z. points out Levi-Strauss’s notion of the ‘zero institution’ in Structural Anthropology. <\/em>Here a tribe divided into two groups: those ‘above’ and those ‘below’. Each was asked to draw “the ground plan of his or her village (the spatial disposition of cottages)” (112). What they found was that two different answers, Both perceive the “village as a circle” but for the ‘above’ group, there is “within this circle another circle of central houses, so that we have two concentric circles”. The group ‘below’ drew a “circle split into two by a clear dividing line.”<\/p>\n

In other words, a member of the first subgroup (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’) subgroup perceives his or her village as two distinct heaps of houses separated by an invisible frontier … <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This does not mean we fall into the postmodernist flux, cultural relativism “according to which the perception of social space depends on the observer’s group membership”<\/p>\n

the very splitting into the two ‘relative’ perceptions implies a hidden reference to a constant \u2014 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 \u2014 an imbalance in social relations that prevented the community from stabilizing itself into a harmonious whole. The two perceptions of the ground plan are simply two mutually exclusive endeavours to cope with this traumatic antagonism<\/strong>, to heal its wound via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure. Is it necessary to add that it is exactly the same with respect to sexual difference: ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are like the two configurations of houses in the … village? <\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, L\u00e9vi Strauss makes a further crucial point here: since the two subgroups none the less form one and the same tribe, living in the same village, this identity somehow has to be symbolically inscribed <\/strong>\u2014 how, if the entire symbolic articulation, all social institutions, of the tribe are not neutral, but are overdetermined by the fundamental and constitutive antagonistic split?<\/p>\n

Answer: By what Levi Strauss … calls the ‘zero institution’<\/strong> … the empty signifier with no determinate meaning, since it signifies only the presence of meaning as such, in opposition to its absence: a specific institution which has no positive, determinate function \u2014 its only function is the purely negative one of signalling the presence and actuality of social institution as such, in opposition to its absence, to pre-social chaos. It is the reference to such a zero-institution that enables all members of the tribe to experience themselves as such, as members of the same tribe. <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Is not this zero-institution, then, ideology<\/em> at its purest, that is, the direct embodiment of the ideological function of providing a neutral all-encompassing space in which social antagonism is obliterated, in which all members of society can recognize themselves? And is not the struggle for hegemony<\/em> precisely the struggle over how this zero-institution will be overdetermined, coloured by some particular signification? (113)<\/p>\n

… perhaps the same logic of zero-institution should be applied not only to the unity<\/em> of a society, but also to its antagonistic split<\/em>.\u00a0 What if sexual difference is ultimately a kind of zero-institution of the social split of humankind<\/em><\/strong>, the naturalized minimal zero-difference, a split which, prior to signalling any determinate social difference, signals this difference as such? The struggle for hegemony is then, again, the struggle over how this zero-difference will be overdetermined by other particular social differences (114).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regarding JB’s charge of ‘ahistorical’ status of sexual difference, Z. points out Levi-Strauss’s notion of the ‘zero institution’ in Structural Anthropology. Here a tribe divided into two groups: those ‘above’ and those ‘below’. Each was asked to draw “the ground plan of his or her village (the spatial disposition of cottages)” (112). What they found … Continue reading “zizek fundamental exclusion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,94,20],"tags":[105,109],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-sexual-difference","category-zizek","tag-thedebate","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","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=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3666,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/3666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}