Surplus-Enjoyment Quotes

“ontologizes into a universal frame the differential structure caught in a self-referential movement circulating around its constitutive impossibility, and the real appears within this frame as the “impossible” of this structure and, as such, as an ahistorical limit—as the elusive excess that defines the structure itself. However, this ontologization of the logic of the signifier is based on ignoring the fact that it is rooted in the artificially produced analytic situation, produced by the “enclosure of the clinical space” (analyst-analysand): the real is the “impossible” excluded from and by this situation, and as such a historical variable which can be analyzed as part of another wider reality.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“It is thus crucial to keep in view how ideological limitation works in two opposed directions. Ideology is not only the eternalization of a specific historical situation, it is also the reduction to a specific contingent property of something that is constitutive of the entire field. Ideology is not just the elevation of capitalism into the most appropriate and rational economic order; it is also the dismissal of crises and antagonisms that characterize capitalism into a deviation due to particular contingent circumstances, and the accompanying idea that another capitalism is possible which would avoid crises ant antagonisms.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“The way out of this ideological deadlock is to supplement the negation of positive universals with the assertion of negative universals, i.e., with an impossibility constitutive of the entire domain: yes, all positive universals are relative, unstable, they can be transformed, but not simply because of the dynamic and changeable form of reality. Positive formations are so many attempts to deal with the same underlying antagonism, and what triggers change is the ultimate failure of every attempt to resolve this antagonism. One of Lacan’s negative universals is “there is no sexual relationship,” which means that it is not enough to point out the immanent instability and historical character of the traditional gender binary—one should also add that every determinate form of gender relationship, no matter how open and flexible it is, will fail to overcome the impossibility constitutive of human sexuality.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“what Hegel called “bad infinity”: it is “static” in its over-dynamization itself, a process that reached its peak in “postmodern” historicist relativism.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“bad infinity”: it is “static” in its over-dynamization itself, a process that reached its peak in “postmodern” historicist relativism.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“historical relativization cannot relativize itself; it presupposes itself as universally valid.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“Exactly as in Lacan’s formula of the discourse of the analyst, what matters with the Party’s knowledge is not its content, but the fact that it occupies the place of Truth.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“but it is crucial to bear in mind that it depends on us, his hysterical pupils, how the master’s claim will turn out. The Master is not a genius in himself, he only becomes a genius through our hard work. What this means is that, after he has done his work, the Master should be ruthlessly abandoned, left for what he is: an illusory point of transference whose misery is finally revealed.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“a madman is not only a beggar who thinks he is a king but also a king who thinks he is a king:”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“A is not the same after I’ve chosen B—after I’ve chosen B, A is measured by the standards which made me choose B. In other words, the reasons we make a choice do not preexist our choice: we only know the reasons why we chose A (or B) once we made the choice. Let’s take a decision in fighting the pandemic when we confront a choice between A and B: A prioritizes the economy, B prioritizes health. Advocates of A claim that, if we choose B, we may first save some lives but, in the long term, the costs to the economy will generate more poverty and even more health problems. (The problem with this reasoning is that it automatically assumes that the same economic system will persist.) Advocates of B claim that, if we choose A, not only there will be more suffering and more deaths, but due to the prolonged health crisis, even the economy will suffer more in the long term. There is no neutral way to compare the two options, so, maybe, after making a choice (say, of B), the solution is to look at B itself from the imagined standpoint of A—in our case, how prioritizing health appears from the standpoint of economy. This brings us to the true problem: since, obviously, the existing economic system cannot stomach such prioritizing of health, how should we change our economic life so that we can avoid the debilitating dilemma “lives or economy”? And the same goes for sexual difference: for a man it is not enough just to take women’s side—he should ask himself: how do I choose to be a man so that, as a man, I can avoid oppressing women?”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“the “alternate” worlds have the same reality as the world in which we really find ourselves.2”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“we will have to get used to living with multiple simultaneous crises.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“In nature, this domain of contingency where the Idea exists in the externality with regard to itself, we are by definition in the domain of ambiguous signs and the “spurious infinity” of complex interactions where each occurrence can be a sign of its opposite, so that every human intervention aimed at restoring some kind of natural balance can trigger an unexpected catastrophe, and every catastrophe can be a harbinger of good news.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“we should also be fully aware of how uncertain analyses and projections are in this domain—we will know for sure what is going on only when it is too late. Fast extrapolations only give arguments to global warming deniers, so we should at all costs avoid the trap of “ecology of fear,” a hasty morbid fascination of a dooming catastrophe.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“The only way to think and interact freely implies not only that we rely on shared rules of language and manners but also that we accept these rules as something given of which we are not reflectively aware—if we were to reflect on and negotiate these rules all the time, our freedom would be self-destroyed by its very excess.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“[T]he Real has no substantial reality in itself since it is an immanent self-impediment of the Symbolic itself.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“What this means is that subject is not the real person behind the symbolic mask but the self-awareness of the mask itself in its distance towards the real person.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed

“This is why Kant’s formula of Enlightenment is not “Don’t obey, think freely!” and is not “Don’t obey, think and rebel!” but: “Think freely, state your thoughts publicly, and obey!” The same holds for vaccine doubters: debate, publish your doubts, but obey regulations once the public authority imposes them.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed