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Alternation Special Edition 41 (2023) 70 – 91 70
Print ISSN 1023-1757; Electronic ISSN: 2519-5476; DOI https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2023/sp41a05
Reading between the Lines: Reflections of the
Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
Bert Olivier
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3138-1948
Abstract
This paper focuses on an emblematic encounter between philosophy and
psychoanalysis in the guise of a textual analysis that demonstrates the tension
between two (philosophical) texts by Slavoj Žižek, through what is omitted
from one of them, on the one hand, and some psychoanalytical texts, on the
other. Employing Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, one can uncover a curious
blind spot on Žižek’s part regarding the prevailing social and political
context of ‘lockdowns’ and ‘vaccinations’ – which arguably signal the
attempt to execute a global coup d’etat by the ‘New World Order’ – by
identifying lacunae in Žižek’s second text, which are symptomatic of what
Freud called ’negation’, and which Lacan relates to the ‘censored chapter’ of
the subject’s life story. One can regard these omissions as symptomatic of
repressing knowledge of disturbing events in the extant world, given Žižek’s
well-known ability to offer trenchant criticism of any action he deems
deserving of it.
Keywords: philosophy, psychoanalysis, pandemic, repression, unconscious,
Lacan, Žižek
Thus the content of a repressed image or idea can make its
way into consciousness, on condition that it is negated.
Negation is a way of taking cognizance of what is repressed;
indeed, it is already a lifting of the repression, though not, of
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
71
course, an acceptance of what is repressed .… To negate
something in a judgement is, at bottom, to say: ‘This is
something which I should prefer to repress’ (Sigmund Freud,
‘Negation’ 1974: 4141).
Since any behaviour is susceptible of a rational explanation,
it is often difficult to decide when such an explanation is
spurious – not in what it says but in what it neglects to say
(Jean Laplanche & Jean-Bertrand Pontalis 1988: 375).
Introduction
In this paper a paradigmatic encounter between philosophy and psycho-
analysis is scrutinised, in the form of a textual analysis that sets out to
demonstrate the tension between what is written in two philosophical texts
and what is omitted from one of them, despite textual signs of an
unconsciously selective awareness of such omission. The latter omission
becomes apparent when the text in question is read in conjunction with
selected psychoanalytical texts. The intended textual analysis presupposes
the distinction between intra-textuality and the domain of the extra-textual,
or social context – even if the latter may be approached as a ‘text’ of sorts
insofar as it lends itself to interpretation. The argument will roughly run as
follows: In his texts, Philosophy is not a Dialogue (Žižek 2009: 40-52), and
Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World (Žižek 2020) Slavoj Žižek engages
with two very different topics – the first focusing on the question, what
philosophy is, and the second on the early stages of the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’
(in scare quotes because it was no real pandemic; Olivier 2022: 8) that
gripped the world, roughly from 2020 until the end of 2022. While Žižek’s
argument is persuasive in its demonstration of the distinctive character of
philosophy (in the first text), one can show that a Lacanian approach to the
manner in which he approaches the ‘pandemic’ in the second text exposes
tensions between the two texts, as well as between the second text and the
extant world. That is, in the second text he may not seem to deviate from his
own previously articulated formulation of what philosophy is – including the
insight, that it issues from a position of being ‘dislocated’; that is, the
philosopher experiences the world as something ‘foreign’ – but in fact he
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does, at a different level. For example, in Pandemic! two of the blind spots
he displays (discussed below) concern the ‘only real philosophical question’
with regard to biogenetics, which implicates the question of the ‘redefinition’
of being human, and ‘mutual trust between the people and the state
apparatuses’ – which he perceives to be lacking in China, but by implication
obtains in the West. The second of these blind spots shows no regard for the
possibility that mutual trust between ‘the people’ and state (as well as other)
‘authorities’ is not warranted in the West either, while the first overlooks the
possibility of medical biogenetics revealing a repressed truth about human
beings as ‘radically evil’ (as Kant would put it). How is this possible on the
part of a ‘master of suspicion’ like Žižek? To answer this question, one may
turn to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, which enables one to dredge up the
irrational and unconscious forces at work in texts, as much as in verbal
speech, resting on the assumption of the agency of repressed materials in the
unconscious. In this case it enables one to uncover the curious blind spot on
Žižek’s part regarding the prevailing extra-textual, social and political
context, namely the attempt to execute a global coup d’etat by the so-called
New World Order, which, if successful, would seriously undermine citizens’
‘democratic freedoms’. This is demonstrated by identifying the telling
lacunae or omissions in Žižek’s second text, which are symptomatic of what
Freud calls Verneinung (negation) (Freud 1974a: 4141), and which Lacan
relates to the ‘censored chapter’ of the subject’s life story. It is argued that
one can only regard these omissions as the effect of repressing knowledge
of disturbing, unacceptable events in the extant world, given Žižek’s
demonstrable ability to offer a trenchant criticism of any agency he deems
deserving of such criticism.
Žižek on Philosophy and on the ‘pandemic’
In stating what he regards as distinctively philosophical, Žižek responds to
his interlocutor, Aian Badiou, in various ways. Here is one of them (Žižek
2009: 41):
If one asks us philosophers something, in general something more is
involved than providing public opinion with some orientation in a
problematic situation. For example: today we are in a war against
terror, and that confronts us with daunting problems: should we trade
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
73
our freedom for security from terror? Should we carry liberal
openness to extremes – even if this means cutting off our roots and
losing our identity – or should we assert our identity more strongly?
To point out that the alternatives we collectively face form a
disjunctive synthesis, that is, that they are false alternatives, has to
be the first gesture of the philosopher here: he must change the very
concepts of the debate – which in my opinion represents precisely
the negative of that which Badiou calls a ‘radical choice’. In our case,
concretely, it means that ‘liberalism’, ‘war against terror’ and so-
called ‘fundamentalist terrorism’ are all disjunctive syntheses; they
are not the radical choice. We must change the concepts of the
debate.
I do not want to quarrel with Žižek on his claim that, as philosophers, we
must ‘change the concepts of the debate’ – which is really what Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari argue, more radically, by saying that philosophy
is the creation of (new) concepts (Deleuze & Guattari 1994: 35-36). I agree
with them on this. What I want to insist on, however, is that even
philosophers, as human beings, sometimes face the ineluctability of having
to choose how to respond to a concrete situation that makes it imperative that
we act at an ethical and political level. It is not so much changing the
concepts of the debate that matters in our ethical response to this situation,
as it is in discerning carefully what constitutes the situation, particularly if it
is a novel, apparently life-or-death situation, and then not merely ‘daring to
think for ourselves’, but acting upon it (Hardt & Negri 2009: 17). In the light
of an experience that human beings usually cannot avoid in life, namely that
one is sometimes deliberately deceived or disappointed by others (one of the
principles on which the Bildungsroman is founded), this means that one’s
metaphorical antennae should be active all the time, searching for signs that
all may not be as it seems. And especially if the threat to human liberty seems
urgent, as it arguably does today, philosophers are not exempt from the need
to act in accordance with their critical insights, keeping in mind that (public)
writing and speaking are also acts of sorts. (In passing, it may not be as
coincidental as it appears that Žižek refers to the contemporary ‘war against
terror’ and the choice between ‘freedom’ and ‘security’, or the loss, as
opposed to the strengthening, of our ‘identity’; although it falls outside the
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scope of this paper, a case could be made that one has witnessed a careful
preparation for the current global ‘pandemic’ situation in these phenomena.)
Returning to Žižek’s two texts referred to earlier, it is noticeable that
the tone of writing in the second text is different from that of the first, more
philosophical one. Compare this excerpt – where he writes about the Chinese
government not trusting the people – to the first one (above) (Žižek 2020:
10): The chief argument against the idea that the state has to control
rumors to prevent panic is that this control itself spreads distrust and
thus creates even more conspiracy theories. Only a mutual trust
between ordinary people and the state can prevent this from
happening.
This excerpt pertains to one of Žižek’s ‘blind spots’ alluded to earlier – the
one that shows no regard for the possibility that mutual trust between ‘the
people’ and state (as well as other) ‘authorities’ – which clearly does not
obtain in China – is not warranted in the West either. He continues,
A strong state is needed in times of epidemics since large-scale
measures like quarantines have to be performed with military
discipline. China was able to quarantine tens of millions of people.
It seems unlikely that, faced with the same scale of epidemic, the
United States will be able to enforce the same measures (Žižek 2020:
10).
Ironically, Žižek proceeds by posing a stand-off between freedom (of
speech) and the sacrifice of civil freedoms in China, causing one to wonder
if, elsewhere, he would have labelled this a ‘disjunctive synthesis’, and
insisted on changing the concepts of the debate. In a way this is what he does,
though (without saying it), when he states that, in ‘some sense, both
alternatives are true’, and then goes on, seemingly, to justify the harsh
‘pandemic’ measures, with some more ironies surfacing. The first of these is
his remark about critics protesting that Chinese authorities will unfailingly
label ‘the truth’ as a mere rumour – which is doubly ironic, considering that
‘rumour’ here corresponds conspicuously with what has derogatorily been
dubbed a ‘conspiracy theory’ in western countries since the advent of the
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
75
‘pandemic’, and that what such vaunted ‘conspiracy theories’ pertain to have
turned out to be the case, after all. For example, when the ‘vaccines’ were
first rolled out, people were assured that they would prevent infection and
transmission of the virus, as well as death from Covid-19, and that detractors
who expressed doubt in this regard were ‘conspiracy theorists’. But as time
passed, the ‘authorities’ changed their tune incrementally, ultimately
admitting that none of these eventualities was preventable by the ‘vaccines’
(put in scare quotes because, clearly, they are not true vaccines, which do
prevent these things; Olivier 2022: 8-12; 16-21).
In addition, Žižek alludes to an ‘ambiguous’ Russian programme on
‘conspiracy theories’ surrounding the coronavirus ‘pandemic’ which
ostensibly sets out to discredit them, but nevertheless leaves the impression
that they may harbour some truth. Perhaps the ultimate irony pertaining to
the Slovenian philosopher’s stance on this matter is legible in his
observation, that ‘The central message, that shadowy Western elites, and
especially the US, are somehow ultimately to blame for coronavirus
epidemics is thus propagated as a doubtful rumor: it’s too crazy to be true,
but nonetheless, who knows ... ?’ (Žižek 2020: 11). Admittedly, if Žižek had
written this book two years (or even 18 months) later, and giving him the
benefit of the doubt, he might have been less naïve, given that by this time
significant evidence had emerged that ‘conspiracy theories’ actually did
contain reliable information, and not merely a ‘kernel of truth’, which he
suggests the Russian programme insinuated – correctly, it turns out,
considering the reputable figures and groups intermittently providing
evidence of this kind (GRAND JURY, Day 1; Kennedy 2021; Kennedy
2022). Moreover, as Giorgio Agamben (2021 73-74) has argued, those who
derogate so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ in the context of the ‘pandemic’
have forgotten that history is replete with accounts of conspiracies to topple
governments. Furthermore, historians have expanded upon these attempts by
various groups at overthrowing existing power-relations, and Agamben
discusses three examples of such conspiracies that were executed with
varying degrees of success. ‘In each of these three cases’, he contends,
‘individuals gathered in groups or parties and acted resolutely to achieve
their goals, considering various possible circumstances and adapting their
strategies accordingly (Agamben 2021: 74).
The point of Agamben’s discussion of historical conspiracies is to
rid readers of the belief that ‘conspiracies’ are preposterous claims about
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non-existent phenomena, calculated by their whisperers to deceive people
into believing that lockdowns, social distancing and mask-wearing are
redundant and destructive, and that the ‘vaccines’ are dangerous, if not lethal.
In fact, by now one knows on trustworthy authority that these assertions are
in fact the case, and that labelling them ‘conspiracy theories’ was deliberately
done by those responsible for engineering the ‘pandemic’ and everything
attached to it (GRAND JURY, Day 1; The Exposé 2022; 2022a).
Returning to Žižek’s notion of philosophy as changing the concepts
of a debate, even if one agreed that new concepts – often introduced by
asking the right questions – are called for when faced by the ‘false
alternatives’ of a disjunctive synthesis, it is not the case that the terms of
these alternatives, when faced from a volitional perspective, are meaningless.
On the contrary: choosing between freedom and security (Žižek’s example)
can be approached philosophically by asking how one should understand the
grounds of that choice – not only conceptually, but historically too. How did
we get to where we have to decide between them? And is it really necessary
to make that decision? I would argue that this is the case only when these
two concepts (which pertain to concrete social reality) are set up as being
mutually exclusive, which need not be so. For example, where my partner
and I live we certainly face some security issues, but with the services of a
dedicated security firm, and cooperation among community members, we
have not sacrificed our liberties, such as being able to walk safely
everywhere in the village, or climb the surrounding mountains, or swim in
the streams and pools, sometimes kilometres from the village in mountain
gorges. What this example demonstrates is that one cannot – as some
analytical philosophers tend to do – divorce conceptual analysis from social
and historical reality. Placed in the context of the latter, they are not false
alternatives; in fact, they are not alternatives at all, but should be thought
together.
In the case of the ‘pandemic’ – more specifically the enforced
measures proclaimed as the only way of combatting its exacerbation – social
reality shows us the alternative to what I described above as the co-existence
of freedom and security. With the ‘pandemic’ these two concepts were held
up as being mutually exclusive; one simply had to obey the autocratic diktats
of the self-proclaimed authorities, thus relinquishing democratic freedoms
for the sake of putative ‘health security’ (Wolf 2022: 37-43). Heeding Badiou
and Žižek’s insights concerning philosophy, changing the debate could entail
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
77
a question, for openers: Who benefits from the public accepting such mutual
exclusiveness? At first blush it seems to be the public, threatened by a
supposedly deadly virus – until research reveals that the death toll from the
virus has actually been relatively low, at which point the suspicion should
raise its head, that perhaps ‘someone else’ was hoping to benefit from it
(Kennedy 2021: 242 - 251; Kennedy 2022: 4 - 28; Wolf 2022: 46 - 57).
Commenting on the first two years after the ‘pandemic’ was declared, Naomi
Wolf writes (Wolf 2022: 43):
In just two years, five hundred years of ever-developing capitalism
— which since the Glass-Steagall Act gave opportunity to millions
of middle class and working class investors and entrepreneurs and
landlords — was replaced with a bleak, coercive, Marxist-style
crony oligarchy. And when the dust settled, billions of dollars in
value were seen to have been essentially stolen from one group, the
middle and working class people of the West, and handed to another,
the globalist oligarchs.
Something has to be added to this, however, in accordance with Žižek’s
appeal to Kant’s insistence, that philosophers occupy the ‘position of the
singular universal’ (Žižek 2009: 52) – in the sense that, as a singular human
being, one participates in universality directly by engaging in an intellectual
(propositionally and conceptually articulated) debate. This contrasts with the
belief that one’s true humanity is actualised only when one identifies fully
with one’s particular culture – be it Chinese, American or Croatian. What is
the relevance of Kant’s idea here? Wolf’s observation, that ‘globalist
oligarchs’ have stolen large amounts of money from the working- and
middle-classes – a reference to the way that large corporations benefitted
hugely from lockdowns by not closing down, while ordinary businesses were
forced to shut – tacitly makes an ethical judgment which has universalist
implications (of the form: ‘Thou shalt not steal’; or, in Kantian terms, that
one should always act in such a manner that the maxim [motive] of one’s
actions can be elevated to a universal law for all rational beings; Kant 2016:
584.).
Has Žižek consistently positioned himself affirmatively vis-á-vis the
‘singular universal’? Arguably not. Recall the second blind spot detected on
his part, that he overlooks the possibility of medical biogenetics revealing a
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repressed truth about human beings as ‘radically evil’? According to Žižek,
the ‘only real philosophical question’ with regard to biogenetics asks: ‘is
there something in the results of biogenetics that would force us to redefine
what we understand by human nature, by the human way of being?’ (Žižek
2009: 46). Obviously, this formulation satisfies the criterion of universality
with reference to human nature. But does it satisfy the (arguably additional)
requirement, that ‘the results of biogenetics’ not be historically insulated, that
is, that history is marching on, and at a date beyond that on which Žižek
wrote that sentence, such biogenetic results might in fact force him to revise
his conception of ‘human nature’, or at least acknowledge the truth of Kant’s
insight, that human beings are (universally) subject to ‘radical evil’? (Kant
2016a: 951 - 963). No. There is no sign in his book on the ‘pandemic’ that
this is the case, either. But if Žižek had suspended his vaunted trust in
governments other than that of China, he might have had a nasty surprise,
uncovered by several courageous (and less naively trusting) thinkers (such
as Giorgio Agamben, Robert Kennedy, Naomi Wolf, Peter and Ginger
Breggin, Byung-chul Han, Joseph Mercola and Jordan Peterson), that the
trust of people in their governments and health authorities was scandalously
abused by these actors, with the purpose – carefully hidden by the
compromised mainstream media, but uncovered by intrepid researchers – of
destroying their livelihoods and ultimately their very lives in an
unimaginably evil manner (Wolf 2022: 253 - 254). Here I have in mind not
only the previously mentioned authors, but other individuals, such as many
medical doctors, lawyers and journalists, some of whom are no longer alive,
such as Dr Andreas Noack, who was assassinated four days after he exposed
the lethal contents of the Pfizer mNRA ‘vaccine’, particularly graphene
hydroxide, described by him as ‘nano-sized razor blades’ (BitChute 2021).
And to add insult to injury, this would be done by means of, among other
things, injecting people with experimental gene-altering substances
euphemistically (and misleadingly) labelled ‘vaccines’, supposedly to
combat a ‘virus’ of natural, zoonotic origin, but in fact – in both cases: ‘virus’
and ‘vaccine’ – of artificial, biotechnical origin (Wilson 2022). It seems as
if, in a cruel twist of history, the following – eerily prescient – observation
by the theorist of the ‘risk society’, Ulrich Beck, is in the process of being
actualised today (Beck 2000: 215).
Thomas Hobbes, the conservative theorist of the state and society,
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
79
recognized as a citizen right the right to resist where the state
threatens the life or survival of its citizens [...] tied to the attribution
of dangers to the producers and guarantors of the social order
(business, politics, law, science), that is to the suspicion that those
who endanger the public well-being and those charged with its
protection may well be identical.
In the light of the critically important work of Robert Kennedy, Naomi Wolf
and others that I have referenced – where they expose governments,
corporations and ‘health authorities’ doing precisely what Beck alludes to –
it should be clear that the ‘suspicion’ in question has never been more
apposite than in the present, epochal historical juncture.
But the level of Žižek’s naïveté is even more egregious where he
remarks: ‘we are now effectively approaching a state of medical war’ (Žižek
2020: 45) in the context of a discussion of different kinds of viruses,
including ideological ones. The ‘medical war’ he has in mind is the war
against the coronavirus, but he seems blissfully unaware that a different kind
of ‘medical war’ is being waged right under his (and most other peoples’)
unsuspecting nose(s) – a war aimed at population reduction on a vast scale
(Breggin & Breggin 2021: 32, 387, 398; GRAND JURY; Olivier 2022a: 1 -
23). His lack of awareness of such a possibility is reflected in his rather
optimistic remark, that,
[…] maybe another and much more beneficent ideological virus will
spread and hopefully infect us: the virus of thinking of an alternate
society, a society beyond nation-state, a society that actualizes itself
in the forms of global solidarity and cooperation. Speculation is
widespread that coronavirus may lead to the fall of Communist rule
in China […] But there is a paradox here: coronavirus will also
compel us to re-invent Communism based on trust in the people and
in science (Žižek 2020: 39).
Again, an irony obtrudes itself: an alternate society is indeed being thought
today – and evidently has been planned for some time – by the so-called
billionaire ‘elites’ of the world, brought together under the aegis of the World
Economic Forum (WEF). The difference is, however, that the benign image
conjured up by Žižek is belied by the kind of society they envisage, which
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they call one of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, but on closer inspection is really
neo-fascism – the fusion of corporations and governments, intended to
govern autocratically and oligarchically, which one already witnesses today
(Wolf 2022: 22 - 23, 46 - 57, 176). The question raised by these instances
(only some among many others; too many to discuss here) is: how is it
possible for someone who previously distinguished himself as an exemplary
critical thinker, in his many published works, to have lost, or relinquished
this critical acumen? (It is impossible to list all Žižek’s many publications
here. Suffice to say that an internet search would suffice to enlighten one on
this score. For anyone not familiar with the critical excellence of the bulk of
his philosophical work, I can recommend Žižek’s Living in the End Times
[2010], with its ironically apocalyptic title.)
How Should one Understand Žižek’s Apparent Failure to
Perceive the Deception Surrounding the ‘pandemic’?
As stated at the outset, this paper focuses on an emblematic encounter
between philosophy and psychoanalysis in the guise of a textual analysis that
sets out to demonstrate the tension between what is written in a philosophical
text and another, arguably not-so-philosophical text written by a well-known
philosopher, on the one hand, and a perhaps more significant tension between
these two texts and what is omitted from the second one (on the ‘pandemic’),
on the other hand. The intended textual analysis presupposes the distinction
between intra-textuality and the domain of the extra-textual, or social context
– even if the latter may be approached as a ‘text’ of sorts insofar as it lends
itself to interpretation. To be able to concentrate on social-contextual
criticism the psychoanalytical notion of the unconscious will be invoked, in
so far as certain matters and events that do not feature explicitly in Žižek’s
text may be shown to bear undeniable relevance for what he has written. (To
understand the psychoanalytic grounds for this claim, see Laplanche &
Pontalis [1988]: The Language of Psychoanalysis p. 375.)
The psychoanalytical theorist, Jacques Lacan (1977: 46 - 55),
emphasises the indispensable role of discourse in the analytical situation,
where the therapist assists the subject of the analysis, in the course of her or
his ‘free association’, to arrive at a comprehensible symbolic interpretation
of their reconstructed life-story. This is necessary because the free-
associative discourse of the analysand is anything but coherent, and
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
81
necessarily so. The point of free association, after all, is to neutralise the
habitual inclination of the subject, to want to speak coherently, which is a
function of reason. This enables the analyst to arrive at the ‘truth’ of the
subject’s unconscious as it manifests itself in free-associative speech.
The above, ostensibly enigmatic statement would be more
intelligible when it is recalled that Lacan is notorious (at least among those
who do not make the effort to understand psychoanalysis), for his initially
perplexing reversal of Descartes’s paradigmatically modern saying, Cogito
ergo sum (‘I think, therefore I am’). Lacan’s version reads instead: ‘I think
where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think’; and in expanded form,
even more confounding, ‘I am not wherever I am the plaything of my
thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think’ (Lacan 1977a:
166). It is important to understand that ‘…[W]here I am not’ is an allusion
to the unconscious, of which the working is decisive in so far as it manifests
itself negatively in instances of lapsus linguae as well as discursive gaps,
omissions, hesitations, signs of insistent or aggressive denials, as well as such
confirmations. By steering the analysand’s discourse in a certain direction,
the psychoanalyst utilises such symptomatic indices of the unconscious
(which is constituted by the repression of intolerable or unacceptable
material) to be able to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of their
associative speech.
Moreover, Lacan’s (Freudian) conception of the subject as
‘interrupted’ or ‘split’ (between conscious and unconscious) implies that
human rationality constantly has to reckon with the disrupting, destabilising
functioning of the unconscious. This is corroborated by his remark, that:
The unconscious is that part of the concrete discourse, in so far as it
is transindividual, that is not at the disposal of the subject in re-
establishing the continuity of his conscious discourse (Lacan 1977:
49).
Hence, Lacan terms the unconscious that ‘chapter’ of the subject’s personal
narrative that has been ‘censored’, and as such is ‘marked by a blank’ (Lacan
1977: 50), as indicated by the unintended verbal and physical actions on her
or his part. Nonetheless, the repressed ‘chapter’ of the subject’s history can
be revived by means of the interpretive collaboration between the
psychoanalyst and the free-associating discourse of the analysand, regardless
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of the characteristic resistance by the latter; which resistance is the function
of reason at the level of consciousness, ‘aimed at’ blocking access to the
repressed materials of the unconscious. However, the ‘language’ of the
unconscious is legible in the subject’s discursive omissions, childhood
memories, ‘idiosyncratic’ linguistic expressions and word-selection, as well
as their physical symptoms (Lacan 1977: 50).
This psychoanalytical detour, above, is necessary as heuristic or
rationale for my social-contextual criticism of Žižek’s second text, which can
be read against its backdrop, or in the terms it provides. As I have shown via
Lacan’s theoretical account, the unconscious, repressed ‘truth’ of the
psychoanalytical subject can only be reconstructed with the assistance of the
knowledgeable analyst. Furthermore, anyone familiar with psychoanalytical
discourse analysis as applied in the clinical situation, would know that it is
possible to read written texts in an analogous manner, given the comparable
occurrence of lacunae, gaps and omissions in texts – what is known in
philosophical hermeneutics as ‘the unsaid’ – and that these omissions may
similarly be interpreted as a function of repression or exclusion, in so far as
it signifies something unacceptable or unbearable to the writer – for example
something that is fear- or anxiety-inducing. If one were to add that repression
is a function of prohibition (Freud 1974c: 741), then it follows that the
conspicuous omission or ‘blind spot’ on Žižek’s part could be a symptom of
his unconscious repression of the world-shattering events alluded to earlier
– specifically to the unacknowledged, censored side of such events, which
pertains to the global usurpation of power. His discussion of the events
surrounding the ‘pandemic’ makes no reference to the manner in which they
have been used to promote the agenda of the global ‘elites’, which has been
unfolding in global space for some time now. Significantly, however, the
open discussion of all aspects connected to these events has been censored,
prohibited, by the mainstream, conventional discourse (Olivier 2022), as has
already been pointed out above in connection with accusations concerning
so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ in the mainstream media. Furthermore, it is
my contention that someone who is willing to actively search for and peruse
alternative media, where the mainstream omissions are explicitly thematised,
would not necessarily come to different conclusions about the real state of
affairs – the force of repression is such that, once one has accepted the
mainstream narrative, alternative accounts would be rejected, as Žižek has
done (Laplanche & Pontalis 1988: 375, 390 - 391).
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
83
Moreover, concerning the question pertaining to repression of
disturbing information about the ‘pandemic’ and the ‘virus’, which arguably
compelled Žižek to banish it from his mind, one thing has to be clearly
understood: repression is not a function of intelligence, or the lack of it –
nobody escapes repression, as shown in the fact of dreaming, where the
dream images embody repressed thoughts, hopes, anxieties or fears (Freud
1974: 3305) (although, what is repressed may differ widely from person to
person). Even the most intelligent people are subject to repression, Žižek
being a case in point. Another exemplary illustration of this is Freud’s
famous essay on Leonardo da Vinci – probably one of the most intelligent
and creative individuals who ever lived – in which he gives an account of
Leonardo’s personality by, among other strategies, uncovering the role of
repression in shaping the Renaissance artist and inventor’s complex psyche.
Keeping in mind that ‘repression’ refers to the defensive psychic relegation,
to the unconscious, of thoughts or ideas that may cause ‘unpleasure’ or
anxiety to the subject (Laplanche & Pontalis 1988: 390), to illustrate how
repression (in general) works, Freud writes of the notoriously sexually
conservative (‘Victorian’) society in which he lived,
Through a long series of generations the genitals have been for us
the ‘pudenda’, objects of shame, and even (as a result of further
successful sexual repression) of disgust. If one makes a broad survey
of the sexual life of our time and in particular of the classes who
sustain human civilization, one is tempted to declare that it is only
with reluctance that the majority of those alive today obey the
command to propagate their kind; they feel that their dignity as
human beings suffers and is degraded in the process (Freud 1974b:
2271).
It takes no genius to realise that contemporary society no longer displays
signs of such strong collective sexual repression; on the contrary, it is no
accident that, since the 1970s, it has been called the ‘permissive society’. In
the case of Leonardo things were more complex, as Freud indicates in the
following observation about him – keeping in mind that ‘sublimation’
denotes the channelling of libidinal (sexual) energy into creative cultural
(artistic, scientific) endeavours (Freud 1974b: 2257):
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It is true that here too sexual repression comes about, but it does not
succeed in relegating a component instinct of sexual desire to the
unconscious. Instead, the libido evades the fate of repression by
being sublimated from the very beginning into curiosity and by
becoming attached to the powerful instinct for research as a
reinforcement. Here, too, the research becomes to some extent
compulsive and a substitute for sexual activity; but owing to the
complete difference in the underlying psychical processes
(sublimation instead of an irruption from the unconscious) the
quality of neurosis is absent; […] the instinct can operate freely in
the service of intellectual interest. Sexual repression, which has
made the instinct so strong through the addition to it of sublimated
libido, is still taken into account by the instinct, in that it avoids any
concern with sexual themes.
This brief digression on repression in the case of someone as conspicuously
intelligent and creative as Leonardo serves to emphasise that Žižek is by no
means exempt from repression; all human beings are subject to it, but not all
people repress the same things, partly because not everyone is distressed by
the same phenomena and partly because – even if the same thing or event is
experienced as disturbing by everyone – as the example of Leonardo
illustrates, each person’s psyche or subjectivity is configured differently, and
therefore everyone responds differently. This is the case with the current
disturbing attempt to take control of governments and health authorities
worldwide by the globalist neo-fascists, too, remembering that its first
manifestation was the dictatorial imposition of lockdowns, social distancing,
mask-wearing and later, mass-’vaccinations’, justified as necessary to
combat a ‘deadly virus’ (Wolf 2022: 37 - 43; 60 - 66; 191 - 195; Kennedy
2022: 4 - 28). One need not look any further for confirmation of this
statement than a cursory glance at the manner in which (professional)
philosophers have responded to the ‘pandemic’. Evidence suggests that the
vast majority have responded in a similar manner as Žižek, with only a
handful – foremost among them Giorgio Agamben and Bernard-Henri Lévy
– resolutely confronting the adversary through their philosophical writing,
highlighting the nefarious motives behind the authoritarian clampdowns
(Olivier 2022b).
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
85
It could be argued, however, that Žižek’s book on the ‘pandemic’ is
based on observations from 2020, before sufficient evidence of the real
motives driving the unfolding global drama was available. A comparison
between Žižek’s response and that of Agamben is therefore instructive, given
that the latter also reacted speedily to the events of early 2020. Take the
following statements by Žižek first (Žižek 2020: 39):
The ongoing spread of the coronavirus epidemic has also triggered a
vast epidemic of ideological viruses which were lying dormant in
our societies: fake news, paranoiac conspiracy theories, explosions
of racism. The well-grounded medical need for quarantines found an
echo in the ideological pressure to establish clear borders and to
quarantine enemies who pose a threat to our identity.
Furthermore – commenting on the ‘need to maintain a proper
distance’ from others, despite which ‘a deep look into the other’s eyes can
disclose more than an intimate touch’ – he observes that,
No coronavirus can take this from us. So there is a hope that
corporeal distancing will even strengthen the intensity of our link
with others. It is only now, when I have to avoid many of those who
are close to me, that I fully experience their presence, their
importance to me (Žižek 2020: 2).
In the first excerpt, Žižek’s qualification of ‘conspiracy theories’ (discussed
earlier with reference to Agamben) as ‘paranoiac’, is symptomatic of his
uncritical acceptance that there is nothing untoward about the outbreak of the
‘pandemic’ and the accompanying ‘quarantine’ measures. Considering that
‘paranoia’ is associated with delusion, it is ironic, again, that he attributes it
to ‘conspiracy theories’ and not to himself. Moreover, in the second excerpt,
which addresses ‘social distancing’, he engages in a classic instance of what,
in psychoanalysis, is called ‘rationalisation’ – which is defined as follows:
Procedure whereby the subject attempts to present an explanation
that is either logically consistent or ethically acceptable for attitudes,
actions, ideas, feelings, etc., whose true motives are not perceived
(Laplanche & Pontalis 1988: 375).
Bert Olivier
86
To substantiate my claim, that the justification of ‘social distancing’
is a case of rationalisation, a number of thinkers who immediately perceived
its actual intent could be cited. This is how Naomi Wolf expressed her take
on it,
How do you dissolve human civilization? One way a machine
program could target human beings is by attacking and undoing the
magical power of touch. One of the strangest diktats from the start
of the pandemic was the demand for ‘distancing’, that inorganic,
awkward verb that was introduced in a new context, and redefined,
early in the pandemic (Wolf 2022: 20).
Furthermore, compare Žižek’s response to that of Agamben, as articulated in
the following,
Never before, not even under Fascism and during the two world
wars, has the limitation of freedom been taken to such extremes:
people have been confined to their houses and, deprived of all social
relationships, reduced to a condition of biological survival
(Agamben 2021: 36 - 37).
There is no attempt here to ‘rationalise’ the authoritarian measures
implemented to contain an admittedly dangerous, but supposedly lethal virus
– the death toll of which has turned out not to warrant these Draconian rules;
instead, with a keen sense of historical differentiation, Agamben (and Wolf)
home in on the exceptional features of the present ‘crisis’. It is not difficult
to recognise here the theme of the ‘state of exception’ that runs through
Agamben’s work (particularly Agamben 1992) – that is, the reduction of
human beings to ‘bare life’ (minus basic human rights), dating back to the
ancient world and which, according to Agamben, reached its nadir in the
Nazi death camps. Once again Agamben introduces an historical perspective,
reminding one of a similar, coerced conversion of governance structures in
the Roman Empire of the third century that resulted in a despotism similar to
the one that is emerging today at the cost of democratic institutions, and
increasingly, of people’s freedoms. There is a difference, however, as he
remarks (Agamben 2021: 6):
Reflections of the Unconscious in a Philosophical Text
87
The defining feature … of this great transformation that they are
attempting to impose is that the mechanism which renders it
formally possible is not a new body of laws, but a state of
exception – in other words, not an affirmation of, but a
suspension of constitutional guarantees …. While in Nazi
Germany it was necessary to deploy an explicitly totalitarian
ideological apparatus in order to achieve this end, the
transformation we are witnessing today operates through the
introduction of a sanitation terror and a religion of health.
Had Agamben written the chapters for this book today (early 2023), he would
have known that this ‘transformation’ has not ended there, but by now
includes the disruption of supply chains and energy as well as food sources
worldwide, as well as, most recently, threats of ‘climate change lockdowns’
– all aimed at sowing chaos (and possibly civil war) in global societies
(GRAND JURY; Wolf 2022: 259-261). I doubt very much whether he would
have changed his critical understanding of what is happening, however; on
the contrary.
The comparison, above, of Žižek’s response to that of Agamben,
illustrates well what was meant by saying that a psychoanalytic approach to
the writings of the Slovenian thinker on the ‘pandemic’ reveals clear
instances of repression and ‘rationalisation’ on his part, in stark contrast to
those of his Italian counterpart, who displayed perspicacity as well as
courage in his characterisation and condemnation of the manner in which the
‘pandemic’ was handled. The fact that Agamben alludes mordantly to a
‘sanitation terror and a religion of health’, above, speaks volumes.
Conclusion
What has been attempted in this paper is to show that, and how, philosopher
Slavoj Žižek’s response to the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ was unable to escape
the functioning of repression (and related to this, ‘rationalisation’) in so far
as his observations about various aspects of this event display classic
(textual) psychoanalytic evidence of instances where the actual motives of
‘authorities’ in the course of lockdowns were arguably not perceived. What
Žižek – who is, after all, one of the world’s leading critical thinkers –
Bert Olivier
88
neglected to write, is demonstrable evidence of repression on his part. This
can be explained by considering (as pointed out above) that no person is
exempt from the psychic mechanism of repressing disturbing, anxiety- or
fear-promoting thoughts or events, and Žižek is no exception. His
surprisingly uncritical reaction in the second of his texts scrutinised here (on
the ‘pandemic’) is all the more puzzling when compared to his first text (on
philosophy), and to the responses of other thinkers, such as Giorgio
Agamben and Naomi Wolf. These thinkers, as well as others (see for
example Chossudovsky 2022), have made no secret of their awareness that
the ‘pandemic’ response worldwide (together with subsequent actions on the
part of governments and global corporations) has been an attempt to usher in
a repressive, authoritarian regime. While Agamben, Wolf and others like
themselves clearly experienced the event of the ‘pandemic’ just as disturbing
and anxiety-provoking as Žižek did – including, and especially, the
tyrannical form assumed by government responses to it – as may be seen in
the manner they expressed their understanding of it, in contrast to him, they
did not repress their anxiety by rationalising it, but instead elaborated on it
courageously.
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Bert Olivier
Department of Philosophy
University of the Free State
South Africa.
OlivierG1@ufs.ac.za
bertzaza@yahoo.co.uk
