Incontinence of the void: economico-philosophical spandrels

323 Pages·2017·1.827 MB·English

by  Žižek, Slavoj

Incontinence of the Void
Short Circuits
Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, and Slavoj Žižek, editors
The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, by Slavoj Žižek
The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two, by Alenka Zupančič
Is Oedipus Online? Siting Freud after Freud, by Jerry Aline Flieger
Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, by Alexei Monroe
The Parallax View, by Slavoj Žižek
A Voice and Nothing More, by Mladen Dolar
Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan, by Lorenzo Chiesa
The Odd One In: On Comedy, by Alenka Zupančič
The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, by Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, edited by
Creston Davis
Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology, by André Nusselder
Lacan at the Scene, by Henry Bond
Laughter: Notes on a Passion, by Anca Parvulescu
All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity, by Andrew Cutrofello
The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis, by Aaron Schuster
The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan, by Lorenzo Chiesa
What Is Sex?, by Alenka Zupančič
Liquidation World: On the Art of Living Absently, by Alexi Kukuljevic
Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels, by Slavoj Žižek
Incontinence of the Void
Economico-Philosophical Spandrels
Slavoj Žižek
The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
© 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and
retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Copperplate Gothic Std and Joanna MT Pro by Toppan Best-set
Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-0-262-03681-8
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Series Foreword ix
Introduction: The Use of Useless Spandrels xi
I SOS: SEXUALITY, ONTOLOGY, SUBJECTIVITY 1
1 THE BARRED ONE 11
1.1 The Real and Its Vicissitudes 11
1.2 Why Is There Nothing Rather Than Something? 17
1.3 Mechanism as a Condition of Freedom 28
1.4 From Organism to Assemblage 37
1.5 The In-Itself 44
1.6 Appendix: A Detour through Quantum Physics 48
2 ANTINOMIES OF PURE SEXUATION 51
2.1 From Kant to Hegel 51
2.2 No a without the Phallus 55
2.3 Sexuality, Knowledge, and Ignorance 62
2.4 From the Barred One to the Barred Other 69
2.5 The Production of a New Signifier 74
2.6 Appendix: Void and Excess in Music 81
3 TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF FOUR DISCOURSES
AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE 87
3.1 Formulas of Sexuation 87
3.2 The Wellesian Larger-than-Life 89
3.3 Figures of Father-Jouissance 93
3.4 Randian “Subjective Destitution” 97
3.5 The Unified Theory 104
3.6 Appendix: History and Sexual Non-relationship 105
s
t
n
e 4 TRANSREAL, TRANSHUMAN, TRANSGENDER 111
t
n
o 4.1 UPS, Again 111
C
4.2 Anti-Semitism and Other Pokémon Games 114
4.3 From Bit to It 121
4.4 lalangue 125
4.5 Human, Post-human 127
4.6 The Transgender Deadlock of Classification 134
4.7 Appendix: The Post-human Disorder 141
II THE BELATED ACTUALITY OF MARX’S CRITIQUE OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY 149
5 THE VARIETIES OF SURPLUS 151
5.1 The Paradox of Lustgewinn 151
5.2 Surplus-Power 158
5.3 Surplus-Knowledge and Science 162
5.4 Use Value, Exchange Value, Cult Value 166
5.5 Beyond Homology 168
6 IN DER TAT: THE ACTUALITY OF FANTASY 175
6.1 The Intricacies of the Labor Theory of Value 175
6.2 The Unconscious Structured like a Hegelian Speculation 183
6.3 From Speculative Notion to Speculative Capital 193
7 CAPITALIST DISCOURSES 197
7.1 Can One Exit from the Capitalist Discourse without
Becoming a Saint? 197
7.2 Capitalist Perversion 200
7.3 Master, Hysteric, University, Analyst 208
7.4 Capitalist Discourses 220
8 THE POLITICS OF ALIENATION AND SEPARATION 225
8.1 Alienation, Constitutive and Constituted 225
8.2 Marx and Lacan 229
8.3 The Politics of Separation 231
8.4 From Kant to Hegel, Politically 237
8.5 Bringing In the Chorus 248
9 APPENDIX: DEATH, LIFE, AND JEALOUSY IN
COMMUNISM 255
9.1 The Changing Eternity 255
9.2 Jealousy beyond Envy 263
vi
9.3 Love beyond Death 268
9.4 mentem mortalia tangunt 274
9.5 A Materialist Conspiracy of Faith 278
Notes 287
Index 307
vii