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The Ticklish Subject : The Absent Centre of Political Ontology / S. Zizek.
... Rather than being explicitly governed by the authority of the master, the subject is seduced and governed by the incessant promise of jouissance, mediated through gadgets, advertising, and the ideological frameworks of the market (Zizek, 1999). This transition signals a shift in power dynamics: the capitalist discourse establishes control not through overt domination but through the internalization of consumerist ideologies, making it an insidious and highly effective form of social organization (Verhaeghe, 2014). ...
... Unlike the overt domination characteristic of the master's discourse, the capitalist discourse operates through seduction, embedding its ideological framework within the subject's own desires. By capitalizing on the promise of jouissance, this discourse establishes a uniquely pervasive and resilient form of control, cementing its position as a defining feature of contemporary social organization (Verhaeghe, 2014;Zizek, 1999). ...
... While Lacan's capitalist discourse unveils how cultural production and consumption are molded to sustain the market's relentless cycle, Adorno's critique elucidates the structural mechanisms enabling this process. Concurrently, these perspectives provide a nuanced understanding of how the subjective and structural dimensions of capitalism intersect to shape culture in ways that reinforce its dominance (Dean, 2009;Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002;Zizek, 1999). ...
This article reexamines Theodor W. Adorno's essay Culture and Administration to analyze how digital capitalism reshapes the relationship between culture and administration. By bringing Adorno's critique into dialogue with Jacques Lacan's concept of the capitalist discourse, this study interrogates how algorithmic control, data commodification, and platform governance erode cultural autonomy while reconfiguring subjectivity. By examining the profound transformations brought about by the digital age, this study analyzes how Adorno's reflections on the relationship between culture and administration illuminate the socio-cultural and economic tensions of our time. Particular attention is given to the erosion of autonomous cultural production in the face of algorithmic control, commodification, and the managerial logic pervasive in the digital era. Through a critical dialogue between these two influential 20th-century thinkers, the article examines how contemporary forms of cultural administration reflect and perpetuate the dynamics of the capitalist discourse. By critically engaging with these thinkers, this study illuminates how digitalization intensifies the tensions between cultural autonomy, commodification, and algorithmic administration, reshaping creative expression in late capitalism.
... Such lethal instance with the Real manifests itself when Portia commits suicide jumping into the Belmont River. As Zizek (2000) points out, the death drive "is the very opposite of dying, it is a name for the 'undead' eternal life itself, for the horrible fate of being caught in the endless repetitive cycle of wandering around in guilt and pain" (p. 292). ...
This article reinterprets Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan through a rereading of existing scholarship on Antigone. By re-evaluating Carr's Portia Coughlan as a modern counterpart to Antigone, my article discusses gender normativity, familial ties, and the interplays between representations of tragic female identities in contemporary Irish drama and societal constraints. This interdisciplinary approach not only deepens our understanding of Carr’s work but also situates it within broader debates on tragedy, ambiguity, and the cultural implications of transgressive female characters.
... It underpins a form of ideology critique which aims at safeguarding or generating a genuine space of political plurality, where diverging viewpoints can become visible and contestable, and this is exactly where its merits in terms of diagnosing the Anthropocene as profoundly post-political lie. Summarised, it is odd to criticise the post-political diagnosis for making actually existing forms of contestation invisible, as opening up spaces for this plurality is precisely its key objective (see e.g. the work of Rancière, 1998;Žižek, 2000). ...
The concept of post-politics has played a key role in diagnosing Anthropocene discourse and showing how it has reinforced the managerial, technocratic and market logics of much environmental politics. From the homogenising and naturalising discourse of humankind as a destructive species to the fetishisation of CO2 in carbon offsetting projects and the strategic mobilisation of emergency narratives: all partake in the depoliticisation of the environmental debate. Yet, the diagnosis has also been criticised for not giving enough leverage to alternative voices and for restricting the scope of what 'proper' political action can consist of. In this chapter, I show how a re-engagement with the sophisticated theoretical underpinnings of post-foundational political theory can provide us with the tools to move beyond these controversies. While defending the post-political thesis, I argue that a genuine post-foundational engagement with the Anthropocene should also recognise the altered, much more politicised historical conjuncture in which we live today.
... Contemporary radical theories about the concept of "action" clarify the radical nature of these women's "exodus" strategies. An act can "miraculous [ly]" change the very standard by which we measure and value our activity; that is, it is synonymous with what Nietzsche calls the "transvaluation of values" (Zizek, 1999). "Action" aims to establish a new evaluation system, rather than seeking recognition within the old one. ...
Through a three-month field investigation and qualitative interviews with 24 rural-to-urban migrant women aged 18–25 in Changsha, China, this study explores these women’s experiences entering the illegal online sex industry. Our findings indicate that inequality, arising from migration and gender issues, precludes rural-to-urban migrant women from earning higher salaries and social recognition, leading some to actively choose to participate in the online sex industry and express their resistance to stigmatization and strict regulations. This study contributes to sex-positive criminology, migrant crime studies, and the decriminalization of online sex workers.
... Kultura masibo honen ezaugarri berezia desira eta kontsumo artean sortu duen berdintasun axioma da (Stearns 2006). Laugarrenik, eta hemen eztabaida amaiezina izan daiteke, lehen munduak subjektu moderno bakarrari subjektu anitzagoa, multikulturala, kontrajarri edota hobetsi dio, giza eskubideen dinamika mendebaldarraren ondorio diren gatazka biopolitikoek arrakastarik izan duten heinean (Foucault 1980;Hall 1996Hall , 2011Hardt eta Negri 2000), edota boterea hedatzeko mekanismo zoliago bihurtu diren heinean (Badiou 2001;Zizek 2000). Azkenik, orain dela gutxi arte hirugarren mundutzat hartu ditugun herriek, eta zehazkiago bertako eliteek, diskurtso ez-modernoak hedatu dituzte beren indar eta presentzia globala aldarrikatu eta botere-oreka multipolar batera goazela azpimarratzeko (Amsden 2003; ikuspegi esentzialista batetik, Huntington 1997). ...
Artikulu honek Joseba Sarrionandiaren lana eta bereziki bere Moroak gara behelaino artean?
(2010) aztertzen ditu globalizazioak eta merkatu neoliberalak euskal kulturara eta literaturara ekarri
dituen aldaketen argitan. Literatura anglosaxoiaren globalizazioa aztertu ondoren (Morrison, Rush-
die, Rowling, D. Brown), artikuluak euskal literaturaren “beste-tzea” aurkezten du globalizazioaren
eragin nagusi bezala (Atxaga, Uribe; Bestea kanon bezala). Artikuluak amaitzen du defendatuz Sa-
rrionandiak bestetzearen eskakizun globalari ekiditen diola bere lanean eta, are, bere azken lanean,
Moroak gara behelaino artean? (2010) gainera alternatiba bat proposatzen duela: multikulturalismo
kritikoa, zeina Zizek eta Galfarsororen tesien aurka doan.
... It is an excess of life. Jouissance is the excess of pleasure that there is in pain, the perverted pleasure of the pain of repeatedly missing one's goals (a misrecognition, or a failure to unify/complete) (Žižek, 2000;Hook, 2016). Importantly, in linking the death drive with the unconscious, Žižek noted that "The unconscious intervenes when something 'goes wrong' in the order of causality that encompasses our daily activity: a slip of the tongue . . . ...
This article forms part of a series on “openness,” “non-linearity,” and “embodied-health” in the post-physical, informational (virtual) era of society. This is vital given that the threats posed by advances in artificial intelligence call for a holistic, embodied approach. Typically, health is separated into different categories, for example, (psycho)mental health, biological/bodily health, genetic health, environmental health, or reproductive health. However, this separation only serves to undermine health; there can be no separation of health into subgroups (psychosomatics, for example). Embodied health contains no false divisions and relies on “optimism” as the key framing value. Optimism is only achieved through the mechanism/enabling condition of openness. Openness is vital to secure the embodied health for individuals and societies. Optimism demands that persons become active participants within their own lives and are not mere blank slates, painted in the colors of physical determinism (thus a move away from nihilism—which is the annihilation of freedom/autonomy/quality). To build an account of embodied health, the following themes/aims are analyzed, built, and validated: (1) a modern re-interpretation and validation of German idealism (the crux of many legal–ethical systems) and Freud; (2) ascertaining the bounded rationality and conceptual semantics of openness (which underlies thermodynamics, psychosocial relations, individual autonomy, ethics, and as being a central constitutional governmental value for many regulatory systems); (3) the link between openness and societal/individual embodied health, freedom, and autonomy; (4) securing the role of individualism/subjectivity in constituting openness; (5) the vital role of nonlinear dynamics in securing optimism and embodied health; (6) validation of arguments using the methodological scientific value of invariance (generalization value) by drawing evidence from (i) information and computer sciences, (ii) quantum theory, and (iii) bio-genetic evolutionary evidence; and (7) a validation and promotion of the inalienable role of theoretic philosophy in constituting embodied health, and how modern society denigrates embodied health, by misconstruing and undermining theoretics. Thus, this paper provides and defends an up-to-date non-physical account of embodied health by creating a psycho-physical–biological–computational–philosophical construction. Thus, this paper also brings invaluable coherence to legal and ethical debates on points of technicality from the empirical sciences, demonstrating that each field is saying the same thing.
Jacques Lacan refers in his XI’s seminar to Kant’s early essay on “Negative Magnitudes” (1763), suggesting that in this essay, Kant challenges the concept of cause as later addressed in the transcendental project. Kant’s early conception of cause cannot be overshadowed by his later thought. According to Lacan’s reading, the essay on Negative Magnitudes shows cause as an unanalyzable concept, as introducing an irreducible gap into the relation between ground and consequence. This article aimed to examine the productivity of the notion of cause as an unanalyzable gap to our understanding of concepts. The article first focuses on Kant’s essay and his concept of cause and specifies how it triggered Lacan into suggesting this idea. The article secondly traces Lacan’s motivation in addressing Kant’s essay as a key to understanding the notion of cause in psychoanalysis. Third, the article establishes the productivity of this notion of cause for the psychoanalytic understanding of psychic reality.
Žižek supposes that traumas can turn into death-drives and offer the subject surplus jouissance. He warns that ideological systems can profit from traumas to further subjugate their citizens. Notwithstanding, Badiou construes that traumas can appear as tremendous moments of Truth/Events that betrays the voids of the Symbolic Order and actualizes the universal truths that postmodernism has constantly denied or endeavored to suppress. In so thinking, Badiou hypothesizes that the Truth/Event will find/invent its own faithful subject that cooperate to actualize the suppressed or denied Real of their age. Badiou criticizes the Western Ethics for devising a secured mode of life that emasculates the subject of post capitalism age and deprives him of experiencing the sufferings that can confront him with the Real. Badiou states that the Western ethics deliberately ignores the positive effects of PTSD recoveries that can reveal a lot regarding the psychological and social weakness of the subject and the society as well. Defending the idea of traversing the fantasies and encountering the Real, Žižek, however, does not become convinced of the emancipatory force that Badiou attributes to traumatic Events. Instead, he announces that the subject's fidelity to the Badiouian Truth/Event approximates to the devoted insurgents' allegiance to the 'mythic violence' that enables them to disclaim responsibility for their deeds. Badiou himself is apprehensive of ever-present 'simulacra' that the sovereign ideology concocts to counterfeit the Truth/Event. What Žižek prescribes is an 'Act' that can be embodied in 'divine violence' that divulges the Symbolic Order's void.
This paper attempts to reconceptualize memory as an event from a theological perspective, drawing on the recent dialog between memory studies and Critical Event Studies. To this end, it analyzes the narrative and themes of the 2007 novel Brodeck’s Report by Philippe Claudel, classified as a third-generation Holocaust (narrative) writer in France, within the framework of event studies. The novel has been praised for successfully depicting the tragedy as a universal event transcending spatial–temporal specificity by utilizing the genre of allegory while minimizing references to the historical and geographical specificity of the Holocaust. Extending this evaluation, this paper particularly focuses from a theological perspective on how the protagonist and narrator, Brodeck, simply names the subject of his report—a past event that happened to an unidentified other (Autre) called the ‘Anderer’—as ‘Ereignis’ (event). This is noteworthy because Ereignis is not only the most famous concept representing late Heideggerian philosophy but also holds significant importance in post-Heideggerian modern philosophy as the speculative source of the ‘evental turn’, which, along with the ‘material turn’, constitutes one axis of the ‘ontological turn’ in contemporary humanities and social sciences. In this regard, this work, which narrativizes the universality of the Holocaust, provides interesting implications for the possibility of a disjunctive synthesis between memory studies in the humanities and social sciences and theological event studies. Above all, it stimulates a reconsideration of the conventional dichotomy between memory and event—namely, the commonplace premise of “events that occurred in the past” and “present memories of past events”—as revealed in the definition of memory studies as “naming pasts, transforming futures”. Thus, this paper explores the possibility of reconceptualizing the moment of memory as part of the ongoing event itself from past to present, and the event as a process of symbolic construction of meaning through memory.
The question of the unity of aesthetical experience and, consequently, experiencing—the experience that spans and permeates all human being—takes on a critical significance for post-Husserlian phenomenology. This question can no longer be posed in the former ego-centered (egological) paradigm of understanding the subject but presupposes its radical decentration taking into account the constitutive role of the instance of the other. The following question moves us towards the solution on such unity: which vital need the human selfness seeks to fulfil when it exists its being, involves itself in the multiple area of various kinds of arts, on the one hand, and in the “not interested” relationship with nature, on the other? The proposed solution is that such is the need to be human and to derive pleasure (joy) from such being. The general formal sign of “pure” aesthetical experiencing is a meaningful (reflexive) involvement in some life process, which is subjectively experienced as an overcoming of the finitude of one’s existence. Onto-anthropological basis of such solution is the Dasein-analytical statement about the human’s “granted” awareness of the one’s finitude (temporariness or mortality), the process of overcoming which gives one joyful—and the same is aesthetic—sense of actually human life. In this approach, the process of transition from the organic enjoyment to the orgaistic one can be understanded as the initial form of the aesthetical experience. In supplementing the Dasein-analytical understanding of the human’s Being-in-the-world by the psycho-analytical one, we constate that the necessary basis of overcoming the anxiety of the awareness of the one’s finitude is the extimic, symbolically distanced instance of the Other, reflected in which and, at the same time, based on it, the Selfness is able to affirm its own subjectivity or the very facticity of its Presence. The actually aesthetical nature of laughter is revealed in this vein, including the possibility of its schaden-freude (damage-joy) form. As a result, the following (presumably universal) formula of aesthetical experience and experiencing can be proposed: it is a symbolically distanced being in-itself and for-itself in the other. An exemplary example of the subjectivity aesthetically affirming itself is the process of literary reading. In this process, its meaningfulness is revealed with the greatest phenomenological purity.
This article challenges the widely held view that a blunt politicization – understood as the application of political norms and procedures ¬– to all spheres of society is the prime starting point for achieving social transformation. Therefore, it reconstructs intellectual reasoning about the limits of such politicization which is ultimately used for conceiving of transformative politics within a more sophisticated matrix. Initially, this article demonstrates how main authors of 19th-century social theory, such as Friedrich Schiller, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, and Karl Marx, examined the relationship between politics and social transformation by drawing conclusions from the various revolutionary processes of their time. Then, the article points out how some of these arguments migrated into struggles around the constitutionalization of politics in the 20th century. As will be argued, they were taken up and expanded on from the 1960s and 1970s onwards in critical systems theory and societal constitutionalism as well as in the ‘aesthetics of resistance’ by the German socialist writer Peter Weiss. Against this backdrop, this article establishes a systematic framework which reconceives the distinction between politics and the political by identifying four modes of politics. It is argued that a transformative politics must engage with all four in a strategic manner instead of giving primacy to one of them on a per se basis.
מאמר זה מבקש לבחון את תנאי ההופעה של תיאוריות קונספירציה בעקבות רצח רבין וסביבו. המאמר אינו מתמודד עם התיאוריות עצמן ואף אינו מנסה להוכיח או להפריך את תקפותן. הוא גם אינו עוסק ברצח עצמו כאירוע היסטורי או בתנאים שהביאו להירצחו של ראש ממשלה בישראל. במקום זאת, המאמר מברר מה היו התנאים החברתיים שהניעו את הופעתן של תיאוריות קונספירציה בנקודת זמן ספציפית, ומדוע דווקא הרצח הוא שהצמיח תיאוריות כאלה. לטענתי, הופעתו של הניאו־ליברליזם בשנות התשעים של המאה הקודמת סיפקה את התשתית לצמיחתן של תיאוריות קונספירציה. דרך המקרה הספציפי של רצח רבין המאמר מציע הסבר לאופן שבו תיאוריות קונספירציה פועלות, לעיקרון המארגן המניע אותן ולפרדוקס המובנה בתוכן, על בסיס ההנחה שתיאוריות קונספירציה מתאוות לגלות את מה שאי־אפשר לגלותו. בעזרת המושגים שיבוש קוגניטיבי, איווי ופנטזיה המאמר מתאר את הקשר בין תיאוריות קונספירציה ופופוליזם ובין הופעתו של הימין החדש בישראל.
This psychoanalytically and philosophically informed article sets its focus on one of the emerging challenges that comes with the notion of labourfication and solutionism when it frames teacher education. Teacher educators’ agency, including their poetic freedom to think critically and act as public intellectuals, has become limited by neoliberal labour policy and by the increased instrumentalization of and solutionism linked to teacher educational tasks. Among the main tasks for teacher educators is socialising student teachers to “fit in” and to “be interpellated” by the socio-symbolic neoliberal reality and to provide them with functional, useful skills and qualifications (in terms of work readiness) that can make them desirable objects for and within this reality. At the same time, the educationalization of socio-economic and moral problems demands that teacher education solve problems that can prevent “failure” with the labour-oriented task(s) they are given. This article argues that teacher educators must reclaim agency by refusing to act in ways that are targeted to satisfy the Big neoliberal Other’s desire for labourfication and solutionism in teacher education.
In an era of increasing interdependence between economic progress and social equity, ethical capital emerges as an indispensable yet overlooked dimension of sustainable development. This paper explores ethical capital as a transformative force within economic and social systems, contrasting it with traditional forms of capital such as human, social, and cultural capital. Drawing on insights from Badiou's subtractive ontology and Bourdieu's field theory, it argues that ethical capital functions as a field resource, fostering trust, equity, and resilience. Unlike accumulative forms of capital, ethical capital disrupts entrenched narratives, reconfiguring economic practices to prioritize collective well-being over individual gain. By conceptualizing ethical capital as an event-based, intangible asset, this paper underscores its role in shaping sustainable economic systems. The analysis highlights challenges in measuring ethical capital and advocates for integrating it into business and economic strategies as a foundational element for long-term societal progress and competitive advantage.
This article explores the relational interplay between virtue and utility, challenging the reductionist ideologies of modern systems. Drawing on relational ontolo-gies and philosophical critiques, it argues that utility, far from opposing virtue, reaches its highest form when aligned with collective flourishing. Addressing the weaponization of ethics and divisive binaries like "tradition vs. modernity," it critiques dominant frameworks that perpetuate inequities under the guise of morality. Integrating perspectives from thinkers such as Aristotle, Sen, Barad, and Žižek, the article reimagines ethical capital as a transformative resource, offering a unifying paradigm for sustainable, equitable, and interconnected systems of flourishing. Node in a Network No one exists apart from being a node in a network, yet every network itself becomes a node in a larger constellation. Our sense of existence emerges not as an isolated essence but as a relational convergence-an interplay of connections that defines and sustains us. This relational ontology underscores the inseparability of individuals from their networks and networks from broader systems, mirroring Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory, which emphasizes the interconnected agency of human and non-human actants in shaping reality (Latour, 2005). The history of knowledge, viewed through various perspectives, reveals that no single viewpoint is inherently truer than the rest. Yet, like individuals asserting themselves, certain claims assert dominance, often masking the purposes of their proponents. These purposes-deliberate, discursive, practical, or even embedded within unconscious depths-become the foundation of ruling discourses. As Foucault argued, knowledge and power are inextricably linked, with dominant systems framing "truth" to perpetuate their control (Foucault, 1980).
During the last decade, we can observe rising support for right-wing leaders who produce a discourse of semblance of strength. These leaders, the new masters of politics, concentrate on the performance of political charisma and manifest a disregard for the norms of the contemporary public sphere. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of discourses, this article argues that there is a structural relation between the discontents in neoliberal forms of power and the success of these leaders performing the theatre of charisma and political dominance. The key to understanding the rise of the new masters of politics is the relation between the discourse of the master and that of the university. The political prominence of the new masters of politics can be interpreted as a precise reaction to the form of power dominant in neoliberalism – bureaucracy operating according to the norms of economic rationality. The main aim of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed interpretation of discourses of semblance of strength in the broader frame of the historical moment of a crisis of neoliberal form of power.
Kann es ein Wissen von dem geben, was als Flüchtiges, Sprunghaftes, Singuläres, Kontingentes der Regelhaftigkeit wissenschaftlicher Rationalität zuwiderläuft? Wie lässt sich dasjenige bezeugen, was als Materialität oder Sinnliches doch unfasslich bleiben muss? Diese Frage betrifft vor allem einen veränderten Vollzug tradierter Wissensweisen. Daher inszeniert vorliegender Band eine Debatte zwischen dem theatralen Projekt Hölderlins und der theatralen Philosophie Hegels darüber, inwieweit das Ereignis des Materiellen sich auf der Bühne einer Theater- oder Bewusstseinsvorstellung zeigen kann. In beiden Fällen steht die lebensspendende Destruktivität des Halbgottes Dionysos für eine vergängliche Szene der Materialität ein. Doch während Hegel sämtliche kulturelle Strukturen als kontingente Effekte einer dionysischen Dynamik ausstellt, erblickt Hölderlin in der völligen Dynamisierung stabiler Symbolsysteme die Gefahr einer entfesselten Destruktivität, welche er in einer „poetischen Logik“ durch die Befestigung der Vorstellung auszubalancieren und so ein Wissen von der Flüchtigkeit des Materiellen zu ermöglichen versucht, das nicht selbst dieser Verflüchtigung unterläge.
This chapter builds on the previous psychological and ethical facets of the police as a swirling and dynamic whirlpool which enlightens a little Other of policing maintained by storytelling and the underlying power of cultural icons such as the Blue Wall of Silence (Westmarland in Policing and Society 15:145–165, 2005) and Hypermasculinity (Bikos in “I Took the Blue Pill” The Effect of the Hegemonic Masculine Police Culture on Canadian Policewomen’s Identities). It uses data from my autoethnographic journals to explore the management of implementation within the police service and presents evidence of the neoliberal managerialist influences which have become well-rooted in police leadership praxis (Johnson in Theoria 61:5–29, 2014).
A discussion of the key themes arising from my autoethnographic research of the contemporary policing milieu and a demonstration of how the key points of police arrogance, ignorance, and moral cowardice arise from the data. The presentation of a model for use in examining and analysing any police action.
In this chapter, I make use of the model that I developed through analysis of the data collected during my PhD research which I call the Triangle of Kakistocracy. I analyse three contemporary policing issues which are linked to corruption and the drivers behind it. I deconstruct the findings of Baroness Casey and her review of culture and behaviour in London’s Metropolitan Police Service using the psychological, ethical, and managerial elements of the model. I similarly examine a recent Channel 4 documentary series “To Catch a Copper” which captured several examples of how the police manage serious misconduct through the existing legal framework. Lastly, I discuss the move towards professionalising policing through the introduction and subsequent rescinding of a strict requirement for recruits to be educated to degree level. My research and the findings I present, rooted in an academic analysis of my 30 years of experience as a police officer, provide a means of examining the subject of police corruption which can be of immediate value to researchers and practitioners in seeking an improvement in police praxis. I maintain that this book is an original addition to human knowledge in this under-examined subject where the hegemony of ‘a few bad apples’ being responsible for the horror of the police (Linnemann in The Horror of Police, University of Minnesota Press, 2022) has held currency for far too long.
This chapter explores the psychology associated with the implementation of new ideas in the police service using police story telling data from my personal journals (van Hulst, M., & Tsoukas, H. (2021). Understanding extended narrative sensemaking: How police officers accomplish story work. Organization, 13,505,084,211,026,878.). It provides insights into the research question “what happened within the police service when the government created the offence of Corrupt or Improper Practice for police officers in Sect. 26 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015?”.
This article engages with the problem of human suffering from the philosophy of religion perspective through a presentation of Slavoj Žižek’s exposition of a number of theological key themes related to this problem. The focal point is Žižek’s claim that the crucial aspect of human suffering has to do with our attempts to ascribe a higher meaning to it. The first section of the article introduces the problem of suffering and its theological stakes through a reading of Freud and Nietzsche, who constitute an essential part of Žižek’s context. The next two sections account for Žižek’s interpretations of the Book of Job, focusing on his notion of Job as a critic of theodicy-arguments and as an anticipator of Christ. The fourth part of the article reads Žižek’s interpretation of Christ’s suffering on the cross as a critical engagement with the classical doctrines of reconciliation. The article ends with some concluding remarks.
This essay explores the philosophical implications inherent in Samuel Beckett’s most enigmatic and metonymic late theater work, Not I, even as he frequently abjured any interest in philosophy, which he claimed neither to read nor to understand. The play is profoundly ontological, however, and its metonymic stage image engages the classical philosophical conundrum of the relationship of the part, a piece or fragment, say, to the whole, an issue with which Beckett has at least been intrigued for most of his creative life.
The concept of ‘identity’ increasingly appears in the space of public discussions of modernity: it is referred to by social activists, it is studied by academics, and its violations worry legal scholars and human rights advocates. Indirectly, the very fact of such active reference suggests that contemporary society is experiencing an identity crisis. This fact is stated by representatives of many disciplines (sociology, cultural studies, psychology, etc.), however, it is still understudied. Philosophy is not an exception in this case. Modern philosophers speak about identity (political, cultural, social, civic, etc.), but rarely attempt a full-fledged philosophical analysis of this phenomenon. In this connection, it is not surprising that there is no classification of philosophical theories of identity or analysis of their methodological foundations in the academic literature. Thus, the paper aims to provide an overview of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of identity in contemporary philosophy. As a result of applying methods of contextual analysis, comparative analysis, and rational historical and philosophical reconstruction to contemporary philosophical material on identity we have managed to identify four main approaches: Freudomarxism (S.Žižek), Poststructuralism (J.Butler), Multiculturalism (C.Taylor), and Philosophical Hermeneutics (P.Ricoeur). Their substantive specificity stems from the peculiarities of their theoretical foundations and the theoretical and pragmatic aims of their representatives and, as a consequence, entails some drawbacks, which should be taken into account in the future development of identity theory in philosophy.
This article explores the relationship between identity politics and the politics of difference, focusing especially on the tensions that characterise this relationship within progressive theories and political discourses, and on their implications. The development of the concepts of identity and difference, as well as their limits and possibilities, are examined in relation to several theorists: Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Cornel West and Judith Butler. This is followed by a discussion of Fromm’s social psychology insofar as it anticipates the growing importance of the concepts of identity and difference within late modern culture, and insofar as it identifies a number of critical concerns around these concepts which remain relevant today.
Hedendaagse constructies van authenticiteit – wortelend in de romantiek – proberen de notie van ‘het echte’ te produceren door alles wat met de natuur in verband kan worden gebracht te mobiliseren. In dit artikel wordt in een bespreking van het optreden van een Bahiaanse travestiet een andere dan de romantische notie van authenticiteit verkend, namelijk die van camp en barok, stijlen die elke notie van het natuurlijke als vals ontmaskeren om vervolgens het verlangende lichaam als ‘het onbetwistbare echte’ aan te wijzen.
The article aims to point out that Gherasim Luca’s concept of non-oedipal existence resonates with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, anticipating the nomad thought and the contemporary posthuman critical theory – as formulated by Rosi Braidotti – centred on a critical posthumanism and an affirmative politics. The key-concept of Gherasim Luca, already present in his Romanian work, is that of “Non-Oedipus”. It’s a radical view of existence that anticipates by almost 30 years the theoretical achievements of Deleuze and Guattari’s works Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.
This article discusses three recent philosophers who speak in different ways about the retroactive construction of reality by human knowledge. Bruno Latour unapologetically claims that the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II could not have died of tuberculosis, as determined by a team of French doctors in 1976, since this disease was not discovered until three thousand years after his death. Slavoj Žižek often makes comparable arguments, though his version of retroactivity draws on both psychoanalysis and dialectics in a way that is never the case for Latour. Yet in his 2012 book Less Than Nothing, Žižek takes the more prudent, realist-sounding line that changes in scientific theories do not change nature itself. The real novelty in retroactive theories is provided by Thomas Kuhn, who draws our attention to a grey temporal zone in scientific discovery in which it is impossible to pinpoint the exact date of any breakthrough. For Kuhn, this stems from a dualism found in reality itself: one between the fact “that” a thing exists and the determination of “what” its properties are. The tension between these two moments is responsible for much of the vagueness and drama surrounding any paradigm shift in the sciences and is closely related to at least one plausible theory of metaphor. In closing, three Hollywood films are cited as helpful examples for understanding the different ways in which a paradigm shift works its retroactive magic.
The inherent contradiction of the concept of ideal shows the gap between the imaginary and symbolic levels of ideals. In the confrontation with the other/Other, there are two paths for the subject. One path leads to a more symbolic ideal and law, the other path ends in an imaginary game of norms. Considering Foucault’s thesis about the historical transformation from a society of sovereignty to a society of normativity, norms are becoming more important. Alongside the logical analysis of the subject positions, a dialectical understanding provides an opportunity to understand the link between law and emancipation. This understanding has implications for psychoanalysis and its clinical applications.
Michel Foucault's essay 'The Subject and Power' has seen four decades. It is the most quoted of Foucault's shorter texts and exerts a persistent influence across the social sciences and humanities. The essay merges two main trajectories of Foucault's research in the 1970s: his gene-alogies of legal-disciplinary power and his studies of pastoral power and governance. This article connects these two trajectories to Althusser's thesis on the ideological state apparatuses, demonstrating affinities between Althusser's thesis and Foucault's diagnosis of the welfare state as a 'ma-trix' of individualising and totalising power. The article suggests that Foucault's essay straddles between two different concepts of subjectivation. First, one encounters the citizen 'internally sub-jugated' by disciplinary and pastoral power, whereas, at the end, we find a 'flat' subject of govern-ance; a form of power which intervenes only in the environment in which individuals make their rational, self-fashioning choices. The implication of Foucault's newfound concept of governance is a weakening of the link between subjectivation and the formation of the state, which also meant that the state's role in reproducing capitalism receded into the background of Foucauldian scholarship. Finally, the article suggests extending Foucault's analytical 'matrix' to current techniques of subjectivation associated with the advent of big data and artificial intelligence, which buttress the expansive technique of predictive profiling.
Slavoj Žižek, who is regarded as one of the popular names of the last quarter century, writes his works and expresses his thoughts in a wide range of fields including philosophy, psychoanalysis, cinema, politics and culture. His interconnection of these fields in his works and speeches, as well as his unique style, has resulted in his reaching a wide audience on a global scale in the field of philosophy/thought. In addition to his distance from religion, Žižek's analyses in the theo-political field also reveal remarkable approaches and arguments with the interrelation of the mentioned fields. This study focuses on Žižek's analyses of the issue (or question) of Judaism in direct connection with this field. In addition to this issue, his unique perspective and position on anti-Semitism and Israel represent the other main topics of the study. Although it may be difficult to establish a direct connection between the field of philosophy/thought and the theo-political field, it would not be wrong to say that Žižek has overcome this difficulty as in many subjects and texts. Therefore, this study is an attempt to understand Žižek in these three contexts in which thoughts and opinions emerge in the light of theoretical and actual developments.
Whenever a political or financial scandal emerges, it seems to confirm the widespread sentiment that what we are most lacking in our major political, economic, and cultural institutions are individuals and organisations who exhibit genuine virtue, integrity and a deep fidelity to the larger social and moral purpose of their particular profession, office, or social practice. We seem to yearn for the return of such figures. Yet today, the compliance regimes that are employed to combat corruption, fraud, money laundering, and other crimes seem to be increasingly techno-bureaucratic in nature, lacking in meaningful moral content, and disinterested in and incapable of cultivating a genuine moral culture. This chapter investigates why this is the case, but it does so by suggesting that compliance regimes are actually a reflection of, rather than a departure from, our dominant moral and cultural conception of ethics.
Auteur Roman Polanski uses metaphors and motifs repeatedly in his cinema to express his artistic personality. Polanski's Jewish identity and otherness phenomenon have significantly impacted his cinema. The Apartment trilogy comprises the films Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976), which deal with identity marginalization in Polanski's cinema. The identity of “other” in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy has been examined through auteur criticism. Characters with an identity different from the dominant culture experience the uncanniness, otherness, insecurity, loneliness and disgust of modernism in metropolitan spaces. As an auteur director, Polanski handles the Freudian uncanny and Kristevan abjection in the context of the characters' marginalization within the dominant culture.
The question of symbolic power is taking on a special importance today, when the purely symbolic means of legitimisation of power are being transformed, weakened and replaced by new forms of governance that refer to economic and technical norms. Pierre Bourdieu’s account of symbolic power, so influential in contemporary sociology, equates its operation with symbolic violence. Contemporary societies are manifesting multiple symptoms of crisis in the structures of symbolic power — and this crisis is leading not to the easing of violence but to the emergence of new forms of suffering. A different theoretical portrayal of symbolic power is therefore needed, one that would explain what we are losing with the crisis and weakening of this power. This article presents such a take, which refers predominantly to Lacanian psychoanalysis. Its first section lays out the main problem and provides a short reconstruction of Pierre Bourdieu’s account. The second part presents the sources of the notion of symbolic power, in the works of the Durkheimian school and structuralism, while the third introduces the psychoanalytic account. The fourth tackles the crisis in symbolic power, the fifth — new forms of suffering in the new, “post-symbolic” social situation, and the last part offers a summary of the arguments by referring to the issue of the relationship between symbolic and post-symbolic power.
This paper examines the mechanisms of differentiated discursive disciplining for immigrants of different religious backgrounds in the French media. Based on a sample of 120 articles on immigration in the French mainstream media, textual analyses and comparisons were conducted. Results show that influenced by religious factors, the French media use secularism as a tool to portray completely different images of immigrants through different discursive logics. Muslim immigrants present a paradoxically biased negative image in the French media discourse as a collection of invaders and the disciplined. In contrast, the media image of Ukrainian immigrants of Orthodox Christian background is positive on the whole, with a certain degree of deliberateness in the details of its construction. The difference in the symbolic characterization between Catholicism and Islam enables the exclusionary media discourse against Muslim immigrants. The paper also discusses French media discourse flaws and policy dilemmas. The logic of French media discourse is paradoxical in its inability to maintain an intact secularist identification and to effectively influence political issues to the detriment of promoting immigrant integration.
The common-sensical view and philosophers of science attribute the characteristic of progress to scientific transformation by abstracting scientific activity from its social embeddedness. Conversely, this dissertation aims to investigate the social embeddedness of scientific transformation around the question of whether there exists a narration of scientific transformation or not in scientific textbooks and if it exists how it is narrated. I investigate this issue by analyzing two textbooks including Concepts of Modern Physics textbook by Arthur Beiser and Introducing Cultural Studies textbook by Longhurst et al. The reason behind selecting textbooks as the objects of study is that these textbooks provide insights into the canonization of scientific activity in the social context in contrast to scientific activity in its abstract form. I analyze these textbooks by employing the analytical frameworks of Bachelard and Althusser around the notion of ‘epistemological obstacle’. Within this framework, I discuss the textbooks’ narration of scientific transformation between contemporary and previous scientific activities. Firstly, I discuss Longhurst et al.’s narration that contemporary cultural studies breaks from essentialist and reductionist approaches by taking cultural complexity into account. Secondly, I analyze Beiser’s narration that modern physics breaks from the notions of absoluteness and universality rooted in classical physics. I argue that there exists a continuity in the organizing principles on which analytical concepts are rooted in the previous and current scientific activities as narrated by textbooks. Nevertheless, I also argue that these concepts multiply and become more particularistic in their narration.
Hearing is an intricate but delicate modality of sensory perception, continuously enfolded in the surroundings in which it takes place. While passive in its disposition, it is integral to the movement and fluctuations of one’s environment. Always attuned to the present and immersed in the murmur of its background, hearing remains a situated perception but fundamentally overarching and extended into the open. It is an immanent modality of being in and with the world. It is also the ultimate juridical act, a sense-making activity that adjudicates and informs the spatio-temporal acoustics of law and justice.
This collection gathers multidisciplinary contributions on the relationship between law and hearing, the human vocalisations and non-human echolocations, the spatial and temporal conditions in which hearing takes place, as well as the forms of order and control that listening entails. Contributors explore, challenge and expand the structural and sensorial qualities of law, and recognise how hearing directs us to perceiving and understanding the intrinsic acoustic sphere of simultaneous relations, which challenge and break the normative distinctions that law informs and maintains. In exploring the ambiguous, indefinable and unembodied nature of hearing, as well as its objects – sound and silence – this volume approaches it as both an ontological and epistemological device to think with and about law.
This article elaborates on a theoretically informed model of action rooted in the concept of professional resistance, which approaches groups of people and social problems in an alternative way to the dominant modes of managerial practice. The aim is to create conditions for approaching groups with social needs differently and to be able to act politically for social change within contemporary society. We will do this by exploring the potential of the assembly in line with Hardt, Negri and Butler, as well as the notion of transversal politics as developed by Yuval-Davis, for creating political subjectivities and alliances across differences. The reason for this theoretical approach is based on how the effects of categorisation and its political function can sometimes be challenging to identify. This is argued to especially be the case within a neoliberal capitalist society where categories induce competition between precarious groups to maintain the political status quo.
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