{"id":9834,"date":"2012-11-18T23:31:47","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T04:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9834"},"modified":"2021-04-27T18:46:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T22:46:53","slug":"140-z-begins-his-critique-of-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/18\/140-z-begins-his-critique-of-butler\/","title":{"rendered":"140 \u017d begins his critique of butler the act neighbor as Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slavoj, \u017di\u017eek, “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology<\/em> Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard. 2006. 134-190.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The limit of such a reference to the impenetrable background into which we are thrown and on account of which we cannot be taken as fully accountable and responsible for our acts is the negativity of freedom: even when the entire positive content of my psyche is ultimately impenetrable, the margin of my freedom is that I can say No! to any positive element that I encounter<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This negativity of freedom provides the zero-level from which every positive content can be questioned. Lacan\u2019s position is thus that being exposed\/overwhelmed, caught in a cobweb of preexisting conditions, is not incompatible with radical autonomy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, I cannot undo the substantial weight of the context into which I am thrown; of course, I cannot penetrate the opaque background of my being; but what I can do is,<\/span> in an act of negativity, \u201ccleanse the plate,\u201d draw a line, exempt myself, step out of the symbolic in a \u201csuicidal\u201d gesture of a radical act \u2014what Freud called \u201cdeath drive\u201d and what German Idealism called \u201cradical negativity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What gets lost in this \u201ccritique of ethical violence\u201d is precisely the most precious and revolutionary aspect of the Jewish legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us not forget that, in the Jewish tradition, the divine Mosaic Law is experienced as something externally, violently imposed, contingent and traumatic\u2014in short, as an<\/strong> impossible\/real Thing<\/span> that \u201cmakes the law.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is arguably the ultimate scene of religious-ideological interpellation<\/strong> \u2014 the pronouncement of the Decalogue on Mount Sinai \u2014 is the very opposite of something that emerges \u201corganically\u201d as the outcome of the path of self-knowing and self-realization: the pronouncement of the Decalogue is ethical violence at its purest.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Judeo-Christian tradition is thus to be strictly opposed to the New Age Gnostic problematic of self-realization or self-fulfillment, and the cause of this need for a violent imposition of the Law<\/strong> is that the very terrain covered by the Law is that of an even more fundamental violence, that of encountering a<\/strong> neighbor<\/span>: far from brutally disturbing a preceding harmonious social interaction, the imposition of the Law endeavors to introduce a minimum of regulation onto a stressful \u201cimpossible\u201d relationship.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Old Testament enjoins you to love and respect your neighbor<\/span>, this does not refer to your imaginary semblable\/double, but to the neighbor qua traumatic Thing<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to the New Age attitude which ultimately reduces my Other\/Neighbor<\/span> to my mirror-image or to the means in the path of my self-realization<\/strong> (like the Jungian psychology in which other persons around me are ultimately reduced to the externalizations-projections of the different disavowed aspects of my personality), Judaism opens up a tradition in which an alien traumatic kernel forever persists in my<\/span> Neighbor<\/span> \u2014 the Neighbor<\/span> remains an inert, impenetrable, enigmatic presence that hystericizes me.  The core of this presence, of course, is the Other’s desire<\/span>, an enigma not only for us, but also for the Other itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, the Lacanian “Che vuoi?”<\/span> is not simply an inquiry into \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d but more an inquiry into \u201cWhat\u2019s bugging you?<\/strong>  What is it in you that makes you so unbearable, not only for us but also for yourself, that you yourself obviously do not master?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 in Serb, there is a vulgar expression which perfectly renders this meaning: when somebody is getting on one\u2019s nerves, one asks him, \u201cWhat for a prick is fucking you? [Koji kurac te jebe?]\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slavoj, \u017di\u017eek, “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard. 2006. 134-190. The limit of such a reference to the impenetrable background into which we are thrown and on account of which we cannot be taken as fully accountable … Continue reading “140 \u017d begins his critique of butler the act neighbor as Thing”<\/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":[78,138,75,38,106,20],"tags":[105,109],"class_list":["post-9834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-butlerethics","category-dissertation","category-ethics","category-the-act","category-zizek","tag-thedebate","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834","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=9834"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14826,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834\/revisions\/14826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}