ŽiŽek Quotes

“According to Žižek’s dialectical materialism, there is no “how things really are.” It is not just our knowledge of reality that is incomplete; reality itself is incomplete. Moreover, my existence as a subject is characterized by the difference between how things seem to me, as opposed to how things really seem to me. Again, Žižek’s philosophical elaboration of Lacan shows why I can never access the way things really seem to me: I have no access to my most intimate subjective experience. I can never consciously experience the fundamental fantasy that forms and sustains the core of my existence.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“Again, in liberal-democratic ideology, universality is conceived as a neutral medium for compromise, and for the expression of self-interest or group identity. Against this, Žižek argues that this sterile notion of universality serves the interests of global capitalism. But how can leftists oppose nationalism without sliding into the vacuous, liberal-democratic notion of universality as a neutral framework for compromise? Žižek answers by reviving the Hegelian notion of “concrete universality,” a form of universality that is realized only through the partisan, properly political act of taking sides. Žižek argues that at this juncture in history, what is called for is the identification with the disenfranchised “excremental remainder” of society. The universal truth of an event or situation is not revealed in the big Other, the intersubjective, sociosymbolic network. On the contrary, the truth of a situation is accessible only to those who occupy the position of the abject, excluded other. Any ideology excludes and makes abject some Other, some particular group, and if this exclusion is symptomatic of a wider problem, the excluded ones experience the pathology of the entire society. This is why Žižek argues that the universal (partisan) truth of the entire social field is disclosed only through the experiences of those who are disenfranchised by the hegemonic ideology.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“Put simply, Žižek calls us to be ever more critical of our struggle to maintain our self-deceptions, and of the ideological props that sustain our relatively comfortable numbness. All it takes to break free from the manipulations of ideology is the courage to remain true to our symbolic desire. Žižek’s analysis of the symbolic subject as radical negativity opens up the space for a true act which ignores the false dilemma of a forced choice and redefines the very parameters of meaning.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“The Ticklish Subject shows how today, in spite of the decline of the paternal metaphor and the inefficacy of ethical-political principles, global capitalist relations of production actually structure an ever more prohibitive and homogenized social reality:
The true horror lies not in the particular content hidden beneath the universality of global Capital but, rather, in the fact that Capital is effectively an anonymous global machine blindly running its course; that there is in fact no particular Secret Agent animating it. The horror is not the (particular living) ghost in the (dead universal) machine, but the (dead universal) machine in the very heart of each (particular living) ghost. The conclusion to be drawn is thus that the problematic of multiculturalism (the hybrid coexistence of diverse cultural life-worlds) which imposes itself today is the form of appearance of its opposite, of the massive presence of
capitalism as global world system: it bears witness to the unprecedented homogenization of today’s world. (Ticklish, p. 218)
Multiculturalism – as well as postmodern efforts to reduce truth to “narratives” or “solidarity of belief” – simply further the interests of global capital. Žižek notes wryly that liberal pseudo-leftists really know all of this, but the problem is that they want to maintain their relatively comfortable lifestyles (bought at the expense of suffering in the Third World), and meanwhile to maintain the pose of revolutionary “beautiful souls.” Postmodern “post-politics” replaces the recognition of global ideological divisions with an emphasis on the collaboration of enlightened experts, technocrats, and specialists who negotiate to reach compromises. Such pragmatic “administration of social matters” accepts in advance the very global capitalist framework that determines the profitability of the compromise (Ticklish, p. 199). This suspension of the space for authentic politics leads to what Žižek calls “postmodern racism,” which ignores the universal rights of the political subject, proliferates divisions along cultural lines, and prevents the working class from politicizing its predicament.
Even more seriously, according to Žižek, post-politics no longer merely represses the political, but forecloses it. Thus instead of violence as the neurotic “return of the repressed,” we see signs of a new kind of irrational and excessive violence. This new manifestation of violence results from the (psychotic) foreclosure of the Name of the Father that leads to a “return in the Real.” This violence is thus akin to the psychotic passage a l’acte: “a cruelty whose manifestations range from ‘fundamentalist’ racist and/or religious slaughter to the ‘senseless’ outbursts of violence by adolescents and the homeless in our megalopolises, a violence one is tempted to call Id-Evil, a violence grounded in no utilitarian or ideological reason” (Ticklish, p. 198).
Where then, is the power to combat such foreclosure? The Ticklish Subject shows that the subversive power of subjectivity arises only when the subject annuls himself as subject: the acknowledgment of the integral division or gap in subjectivity allows the move from subjection to
subjective destitution. Insofar as the subject concedes to the inherent failure of symbolic practices, he no longer presupposes himself as a unified subject. He acknowledges the nonexistence of the symbolic big Other and the monstrosity of the Real. Such acceptance involves the full assertion – rather than the effacement – of the gap between the Real and
its symbolization. In contrast to the artificial object character of the imaginary capitalist
ego, The Ticklish Subject discloses the “empty place” of the subject as a purely structural function, and shows that this functioning emerges only as the withdrawal from one’s substantial identity, as the disintegration of the “self” that is situated and defined within a communal universe of meaning.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“But in spite of our alleged freedoms today, we cynical, postmodern subjects – finding ourselves overwhelmed by the injunction to transgress and the burden of choosing every aspect of our very existence – compensate for the decline in symbolic efficacy by voluntarily subjecting ourselves to ever new forms of constraint: in short, we demand that the Other act on our behalf. Instead of recognizing that Capital itself is the ultimate power of deterritorialization, we blame the disintegration of symbolic order on some (religious, racial, ethnic) Other. This “postmodern racism” is inherent to the multiculturalist and (allegedly) tolerant reduction of the sphere of politics proper to the clash of cultures. When all conflicts are presupposed to arise from cultural or ethnic differences, we not only miss the true causes of the conflict. More seriously, the pre-
supposition functions so as to depoliticize all problems: the result is a cynical subject. This is why the resigned, postmodern subject of late capitalism views anyone with political principles as a dangerous fanatic. Moreover, as Žižek has argued in more recent writings, “the opposition between rightist populism and liberal tolerance is a false one.” In other words, democratic openness is based on exclusion, and right-wing populism and liberal tolerance are two sides of the same coin. This explains why there are forms of racism that involve a rejection of Muslims,
for example, with the false claim that all Muslims are racist.
This implicit moment of racism in liberal “tolerance” is also manifested in the way that the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy has led to the development of a new ideological formation, the universalization of the fantasy image of the helpless victim:
“So the much-advertised liberal-democratic “right to difference” and anti-Eurocentrism appear in their true light: the Third World other is recognized as a victim – that is to say, in so far as he is a victim. The true object of anxiety is the other no longer prepared to play the role of victim – such another is promptly denounced as a “terrorist,” a “fundamentalist,” and so on. The Somalis, for example, undergo a true Kleinian splitting into a “good” and a “bad” object – on the one hand the good object: passive victims, suffering starving children and women; on the other the bad object:
fanatical warlords who care more for their power or their ideological goals than for the welfare of their own people. The good other dwells in the anonymous passive universality of a victim – the moment we encounter an actual/active other, there is always something with which to reproach him: being patriarchal, fanatical, intolerant … (Metastases, p. 215)
All of this supports Žižek’s initial, provocative claim, which at first seemed so outrageous, that unconscious enjoyment was the cause of the West’s indecision during the Bosnian war. It is the enjoyment provided by ideological formations – such as the fantasy image of the victim – that explains the failure of Western intervention in the Bosnian conflict.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“It is not reality that subjects fail to recognize, but the fantasy that is constitutive of their reality. Ideological fantasy is constitutive of social reality; ideology structures the symbolic reproduction of reality by providing a fantasy that masks the negativity of social antagonism.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“Žižek’s critique of global liberal capitalism – and its ideological supplement, pluralist “democracy” – hinges on the fact that the possibility of true democracy has long since been foreclosed by global capital. Thus, whereas today’s right-wingers blatantly violate constitutional law in order
to further the interests of an elite few, today’s liberal pseudo-leftists reduce the space of politics proper to a question of cultural diversity, and simply promote “identity politics.” The left today implicitly assumes that global capitalism is here to stay, in spite of the fact that the upheavals and crises of late capitalism are in the process of making religious fundamentalism and populist nationalism global phenomena. Today’s leftists mistakenly equate class struggle with any other political struggle. But against democratic, populist, or nationalist accommodations with capitalism, Žižek’s For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor opens up the space for a radical political act which breaks free from vulgar, egotistic bourgeois life.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“Consequently, postmodernist claims that we live in a post-ideological condition are not only false but dangerously misguided. On the contrary, as Žižek’s substantial analyses of contemporary culture demonstrate, if anything, we postmodern subjects today believe more than ever; however, our belief takes the form of imagining that someone else believes. Our cynicism still involves the belief that someone else believes; there is some Other who desires and is envious of our unfathomable X (Freedom, Democracy, etc.). Thus the anti-Enlightenment, Nietzschean tendencies of postmodernism (cynicism, indirections and distantiations, idiosyncratic and mutually exclusive interpretations of the same text) are in fact symptomatic of the contemporary subject’s inability to overcome alienation. These postmodernist gestures are modes of reproducing late capitalist symbolic reality; they are ways of domesticating the Real by inscribing it into the intersubjective symbolic network. Postmodernism is not “radical” at all; on the contrary, it exemplifies the elementary operation of ideology. In spite of our postmodern cynicism, today subjects believe more than ever. Again, the key point is that our belief is externalized: we believe that there is some Other who believes. Even though we in the USA all know that our so-called “democracy” is dysfunctional, somewhere there is someone who still believes in our democracy. In sum, today’s postmodern cynicism does not distance us from ideology; on the contrary, it allows us to be immersed in ideological fantasy today more than ever.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide

“But against proponents of identity politics and multiculturalism, Žižek argues that there is a kind of universality that is negative. The universal is not an ideal as some positive content that is always implicit to any “system” of thought. On the contrary the universal is a kind of traumatic antagonism around which ever-changing, thoroughly contingent, historical constellations of thought circle and revolve. Along these lines, according to Žižek’s reading of Hegel, the dialectic is a process without a subject, a process which revolves around a void or negativity. No agent (no God, humanity, or class as a collective subject) controls and directs the dialectical process.”
― Kelsey Wood, Zizek: A Reader's Guide