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Lacan aims at this paradox with his ‘les non-dupes errent’: those who do not allow themselves to be caught in the symbolic deception/fiction, who continue to believe their eyes, are the ones who err most. A cynic who ‘believes only his eyes’ misses the efficiency of the symbolic fiction, and how it structures our experience of reality.”

However, postmodernism’s
cynical reduction to reality ... falls short: when a judge speaks, there is in a way more truth in his words (the words of the Institution of law) than in the direct reality of the person of judge if one limits oneself to what one sees, one simply misses the point.

Žižek gives the example of a judge: ‘I know very well that things are the way I see them, that this person is a corrupted weakling, but I nonetheless treat him respectfully, since he wears the insignia of a judge, so that when he speaks, it is the Law itself which speaks through him’.

Really Existing Capitalism is marked by the same division which characterized Really Existing Socialism, between, on the one hand, an official culture in which capitalist enterprises are presented as socially responsible and caring, and, on the other, a widespread awareness that companies are actually corrupt, ruthless, etc. In other words, capitalist postmodernity is not quite as incredulous as it would appear to be

there is no progressive tendency towards an ‘unsheathing’ of capitalism, no gradual unmasking of Capital as it ‘really’ is: rapacious, indifferent, inhuman. On the contrary, the essential role of the ‘incorporeal transformations’ effectuated by PR, branding and advertising in capitalism suggests that, in order to operate effectively, capitalism’s rapacity depends upon various forms of sheathing.

This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism’. What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement.

Indeed, an anthropological study of local government in Britain argues that ‘More effort goes into ensuring that a local authority’s services are represented correctly than goes into actually improving those services’.

What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself.

The idealized market was supposed to deliver ‘friction free’ exchanges, in which the desires of consumers would be met directly, without the need for intervention or mediation by regulatory agencies. Yet the drive to assess the performance of workers and to measure forms of labor which, by their nature, are resistant to quantification, has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy.

What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

the sea, crashing and sucking and booming on the rocks, over and over and over it made the same sounds, yet never quite the same. It never rested. On all the shores of all the lands in all the world, it heaved itself in these unresting waves, and never ceased, and never was still. The desert, the mountains: they stood still. They did not cry out forever in a great, dull voice. The sea spoke forever

“Hospitality,” he said, “kindness to a stranger, that's a very large thing.”

But what a wizard spends his life at is finding out the names of things, and finding out how to find out the names of things.

No se pueden prolongar los fingimientos. Es difícil ser dos personas a la vez durante mucho tiempo. Para alguien en sus cabales, me refiero. Tenemos la tendencia a ser sólo una, excluyente, y se corre el riesgo de convertirse en la simulada, de que ésta expulse a la original y la suplante.

El estado natural del mundo es el de guerra. A menudo abierta, y cuando no latente, o indirecta, o meramente aplazada. Hay grandes porciones de la humanidad que siempre tratan de dañar a otras, o de arrebatarles algo, y siempre reinan el rencor y el desacuerdo, y si no reinan se preparan y están al acecho. Cuando no hay guerra hay su amenaza

Quienes actúan envueltos en niebla y de espaldas al resto, y no reclaman ni necesitan reconocimiento, esos son los que turban más el universo. Muy escasamente, cierto.

el hombre que se queda en casa está más desterrado que el que sale; el que actúa lo está menos que el que permanece quieto, aunque aquél vaya a malgastar su esfuerzo.

Cuanto ha ocurrido podría no haber ocurrido y todo sería igual, en esencia. O habría ocurrido de otro modo, o con algún rodeo o circunloquio, o más tarde, o con otros protagonistas. Tanto da, no podemos echar de menos lo no sucedido

toda su persona transmitía la solidez de quien es inmune a las modas y por tanto a las inseguridades

Nadie ve con nitidez lo que ya no está delante, aunque acabe de suceder o aún floten en la habitación el aroma o el descontento de quien apenas se ha despedido. Basta con que alguien salga por una puerta y desaparezca para que su imagen empiece a difuminarse, basta con dejar de ver para ya no ver claro, o no ver nada; y con oír pasa lo mismo, y no digamos con el tacto.

She seems pained by all the compliments Muriel’s colleagues are giving her. Success rests more easily on men.

It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.

I feel like a hag in a fairy tale, waiting to be made young and supple again.