{"id":4415,"date":"2009-11-01T19:07:23","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T23:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=4415"},"modified":"2013-03-19T10:15:09","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T15:15:09","slug":"zizek-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/11\/01\/zizek-neighbor\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017di\u017eek neighbor belief"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy, Second as Farce. <\/em>New York: Verso.\u00a0 2009.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n

… what is toxic is ultimately the Neighbor as such, the abyss of its desire and its obscene enjoyment.<\/p>\n

The ultimate aim of all rules governing interpersonal relations, then, is to quarantine or neutralize this toxic dimension, to reduce the Neighbor to a fellow man. <\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is thus not enough to search for contingent toxic components in (another) subject, for the subject as such is toxic in its very form, in its abyss of Otherness-what makes it toxic is the objet petit a <\/em>on which the subject’s consistency hinges. <\/strong><\/p>\n

When we think we really know a close friend or relative, it often happens that, all of a sudden, this person does something-utters an unexpectedly vulgar or cruel remark, makes an obscene gesture, casts a cold indifferent glance where compassion was expected-which makes us aware that we do not really know them; we become conscious of a total stranger in front of us. (46) <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, the fellow man changes into a Neighbor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Is not this same attitude at work in the way our governments are dealing with the “immigrant threat”? After righteously rejecting populist racism as “unreasonable” and unacceptable given our democratic standards, they endorse “reasonably” racist protective measures . . . even the Social Democrats, tell us: “We grant ourselves permission to applaud African and East European sportsmen, Asian doctors, Indian software programmers. We don’t want to kill anyone, we don’t want to organize any pogrom. But we also think that the best way to hinder the always unpredictable actions of violent anti- immigration protests is to organize reasonable anti-immigrant protection:’ This vision of the detoxification of the Neighbor presents a clear passage from direct barbarism to Berlusconian barbarism with a human face. (48)<\/p>\n

Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon film hit, provides the basic coordinates of the functioning of contemporary ideology. The fat panda bear dreams of becoming a sacred Kung Fu warrior, and when, through blind chance (beneath which, of course, lurks the hand of Destiny), he is chosen to be the hero to save his city, he succeeds . . . However, throughout the film, this pseudo-oriental spiritualism is constantly being undermined by a vulgar-cynical sense of humor.\u00a0 (50)<\/p>\n

Niels Bohr anecdote<\/a><\/p>\n

The surprise is how this continuous self-mockery in no way impedes on the efficiency of the oriental spiritualism<\/strong>\u2014the film ultimately takes the butt of its endless jokes seriously. Similarly with one of my favorite anecdotes regarding Niels Bohr<\/strong>: surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr’s country house, the fellow scientist visiting him exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief regarding horseshoes keeping evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr snapped back: “I don’t believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn’t believe in it:<\/p>\n

This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them, because we assume that they work even if we do not believe in them.<\/p>\n

This is why Berlusconi is our own big Kung Fu Panda. Perhaps the old Marx brothers quip, “This man looks like a corrupt idiot and acts like one, but this should not deceive you-he is a corrupt idiot,” here stumbles upon its limit: while Berlusconi is what he appears to be, this appearance nonetheless remains deceptive. (51)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy, Second as Farce. New York: Verso.\u00a0 2009.\u00a0 Print. … what is toxic is ultimately the Neighbor as such, the abyss of its desire and its obscene enjoyment. The ultimate aim of all rules governing interpersonal relations, then, is to quarantine or neutralize this toxic dimension, to reduce the Neighbor to … Continue reading “\u017di\u017eek neighbor belief”<\/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":[111,39,21,24,72,20],"tags":[140],"class_list":["post-4415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-ideology","category-jouissance","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-zizek","tag-tragedyfarce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415","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=4415"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4417,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415\/revisions\/4417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}