The Indivisible Remainder. An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters

255 Pages·2007·4.194 MB·English

by  Slavoj Žižek

ON SCHELLING
AND RELATED MAnERS
THE INDIVISIBLE REMAINDER
Slavoj 2iiek
London • New York
THE INDIVISIBLE REMAINDER
Slavoj 2iiek
London • New York
Contents
First published by Verso 1996
© Slavoj Ziiek 1996
This edition published by Verso 2007
All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
PART I F.W.J. SCHELLING, OR, AT THE ORIGINS
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
Verso 1
Schelling-in-itself: The 'Orgasm of Forces'
UK: 6 Meard Street, London VIE OEG
USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014-4606 Before the Beginning • The unconscious act • The
www.versobooks.com contraction of Being • Drives and their rotary motion •
From freedom to a free subject • The divine madness •
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
Schellingian politics • The primordial dissonance •
`Symbolic castration' • The paradox of reflection • The
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-581-4
virtual reality of Ideas • The ascent from Eternity to Time •
ISBN-10: 1-84467-581-5
The 'enchainment' • 'Selfhood as such is spirit' •
Existence and its Ground • Evil as the perverted unity of
Existence and Ground • The three levels of freedom •
The materialist notion of subject • The Absolute 'out
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data of mind' • The 'formula of the world'
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
2
Schelling-for-Hegel: The 'Vanishing Mediator'
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress From subjectivization to subjective destitution • Desire
versus drive • 'The voice is a voice' • 'And' as a category •
Printed in the UK by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey The ambiguous status of lalangue • What is idealism? • The
'repressed' genesis of modernity • Die Versagung: from
Paul Claudel ... • ... to France Pregeren • The dialectical
transubstantiation • How does the Spirit return to
itself? • There is no subject without an empty signifier •
The precipitate identification • The semblance of the
'objective Spirit' • The symbolic sleight of hand • 'A is a' •
Voice as a supplement • The shofar • How not to read
Lacan's 'formulas of sexuation' • Femininity as masquerade •
Contents
First published by Verso 1996
© Slavoj Ziiek 1996
This edition published by Verso 2007
All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
PART I F.W.J. SCHELLING, OR, AT THE ORIGINS
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
Verso 1
Schelling-in-itself: The 'Orgasm of Forces'
UK: 6 Meard Street, London VIE OEG
USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014-4606 Before the Beginning • The unconscious act • The
www.versobooks.com contraction of Being • Drives and their rotary motion •
From freedom to a free subject • The divine madness •
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
Schellingian politics • The primordial dissonance •
`Symbolic castration' • The paradox of reflection • The
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-581-4
virtual reality of Ideas • The ascent from Eternity to Time •
ISBN-10: 1-84467-581-5
The 'enchainment' • 'Selfhood as such is spirit' •
Existence and its Ground • Evil as the perverted unity of
Existence and Ground • The three levels of freedom •
The materialist notion of subject • The Absolute 'out
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data of mind' • The 'formula of the world'
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
2
Schelling-for-Hegel: The 'Vanishing Mediator'
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress From subjectivization to subjective destitution • Desire
versus drive • 'The voice is a voice' • 'And' as a category •
Printed in the UK by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey The ambiguous status of lalangue • What is idealism? • The
'repressed' genesis of modernity • Die Versagung: from
Paul Claudel ... • ... to France Pregeren • The dialectical
transubstantiation • How does the Spirit return to
itself? • There is no subject without an empty signifier •
The precipitate identification • The semblance of the
'objective Spirit' • The symbolic sleight of hand • 'A is a' •
Voice as a supplement • The shofar • How not to read
Lacan's 'formulas of sexuation' • Femininity as masquerade •
CONTENTS
In praise of hysteria • 'Desire is the desire of the Other'

Introduction
PART II RELATED MATTERS 187
3
Quantum Physics with Lacan 189
The 'wired' desire • The Cartesian cyberpunk •
Cynicism as reflected ideology • Cynicism versus irony •
Quantum physics' `thesis eleven' • `Complementarity' •
Against historicism • How does one make a rat
human? • Five lessons of the 'double-slit' • Creatio
ex nihilo
237 As a Slovene, I have always been attentive to those few places in his
INDEX
writings and letters in which Freud mentions a Slovene or Slovenia; since
Slovenia was part of the Austrian Empire in his time, it is surprising that
these mentions are so rare. Apart from the dismissive but none the less
enigmatic reference to an unanalysierbares' (`unanalysable') Slovene
patient in a letter to the Italian analyst Edoardo Weiss, there is another,
perhaps even more significant case.
During one of his summer vacations, Freud visited Skocjan caves, a
magnificent subterranean cave system in southern Slovenia — the extent
to which descending into subterranean caves served him as a metaphor
for entering the netherworld of the unconscious is well known. So, in
the midst of his walk in this fascinating dark universe, Freud suddenly
turned pale, faced with an unpleasant surprise: there, standing in front
of him in these twilight depths, was another visitor to the caves, Dr Karl
Lueger, Mayor of Vienna, a right-wing Christian demagogic populist
and notorious anti-Semite.. . . What we must be careful not to miss here
is the wordplay with Lueger which, of course, in German immediately
associates with Liige, a lie. It was as if this contingent encounter staged
for Freud the fundamental truth of his teaching, the truth concealed
by the obscurantist New Age approach according to which, upon
penetrating the ultimate depth of our personality, we discover there our
true Self, to whom we must then open ourselves — that is, allow him or
her free expression: quite to the contrary, however, what we discover
in the deepest kernel of our personality is a fundamental, constitutive,
primordial lie, the proton pseudos, the phantasmic construction by means
of which we endeavour to conceal the inconsistency of the symbolic
order in which we dwell.
One can see here how Lacan (and, indeed, Freud) belies Foucault's
insertion of psychoanalysis in the line of development that begins with
the Christian practice of confession — his assumption that in the course
of the psychoanalytic cure the subject-analysand discloses, probes into,
vi
CONTENTS
In praise of hysteria • 'Desire is the desire of the Other'

Introduction
PART II RELATED MATTERS 187
3
Quantum Physics with Lacan 189
The 'wired' desire • The Cartesian cyberpunk •
Cynicism as reflected ideology • Cynicism versus irony •
Quantum physics' `thesis eleven' • `Complementarity' •
Against historicism • How does one make a rat
human? • Five lessons of the 'double-slit' • Creatio
ex nihilo
237 As a Slovene, I have always been attentive to those few places in his
INDEX
writings and letters in which Freud mentions a Slovene or Slovenia; since
Slovenia was part of the Austrian Empire in his time, it is surprising that
these mentions are so rare. Apart from the dismissive but none the less
enigmatic reference to an unanalysierbares' (`unanalysable') Slovene
patient in a letter to the Italian analyst Edoardo Weiss, there is another,
perhaps even more significant case.
During one of his summer vacations, Freud visited Skocjan caves, a
magnificent subterranean cave system in southern Slovenia — the extent
to which descending into subterranean caves served him as a metaphor
for entering the netherworld of the unconscious is well known. So, in
the midst of his walk in this fascinating dark universe, Freud suddenly
turned pale, faced with an unpleasant surprise: there, standing in front
of him in these twilight depths, was another visitor to the caves, Dr Karl
Lueger, Mayor of Vienna, a right-wing Christian demagogic populist
and notorious anti-Semite.. . . What we must be careful not to miss here
is the wordplay with Lueger which, of course, in German immediately
associates with Liige, a lie. It was as if this contingent encounter staged
for Freud the fundamental truth of his teaching, the truth concealed
by the obscurantist New Age approach according to which, upon
penetrating the ultimate depth of our personality, we discover there our
true Self, to whom we must then open ourselves — that is, allow him or
her free expression: quite to the contrary, however, what we discover
in the deepest kernel of our personality is a fundamental, constitutive,
primordial lie, the proton pseudos, the phantasmic construction by means
of which we endeavour to conceal the inconsistency of the symbolic
order in which we dwell.
One can see here how Lacan (and, indeed, Freud) belies Foucault's
insertion of psychoanalysis in the line of development that begins with
the Christian practice of confession — his assumption that in the course
of the psychoanalytic cure the subject-analysand discloses, probes into,
vi
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
brings to light, the truth about himself hidden deep in his unconscious: and the humiliating exercise of Power, the agency of Power which
what the subject encounters in the unfathomed 'depths' of him- or shouts severe orders but simultaneously shares with us, his subordinates,
herself is, on the contrary, a primordial lie. Psychoanalysis therefore obscene laughter bearing witness to a deep solidarity. .
emphasizes the obverse of Vaclav Havel's famous dissident motto 'life One could also say that this scene exemplifies the symptom of Power:
in truth': the 'natural state' of the human animal is to live in a lie. the grotesque excess by means of which, in a unique short circuit,
Freud's uncanny encounter condenses, as it were, two closely connected attitudes which are officially opposed and mutually exclusive reveal
Lacanian theses: the Master is unconscious, hidden in the infernal their uncanny complicity, where the solemn agent of Power suddenly
world, and he is an obscene impostor — the 'version of the father' is starts to wink at us across the table in a gesture of obscene solidarity,
always a pere-version. In short, the lesson for the Ideologiekritik is that there letting us know that the thing (i.e. his orders) is not to be taken too
is no Herrschaft which is not supported by some phantasmic enjoyment. seriously, and thereby consolidating his power.2 The aim of the 'critique of
A personal experience revealed this inherent obscenity of Power ideology', the analysis of an ideological edifice, is to extract this
to me in a most distastefully-enjoyable way. In the 1970s I did my symptomal kernel which the official, public ideological text simultane-
(obligatory) military service in the old Yugoslav People's Army, in a ously disavows and needs for its undisturbed functioning. One is
small barracks with no proper medical facilities. In a room which also tempted to say that each of the three main politico-ideological positions
served as sleeping quarters for a private trained as a medical assistant, ('Right', 'Centre', 'Left') relies on such an unacknowledged yet
a doctor from the nearby military hospital held his clinic once a week. unavoidable supplement: the 'Right' finds it difficult to conceal its
On the frame pf the large mirror above the washbasin in this room, the fascination with the myth of a 'primordial' act of violence supposed to
soldier had stuck a couple of postcards of half-naked girls — a standard ground the legal order; the 'Centre' counts on innate human egotism
resource for masturbation in those pre-pornography times, to be sure. (between the lines, liberalism as a rule addresses the individual's
When the doctor paid us his weekly visit, all of us who had reported for egotistic indifference to other people's plight); the 'Left', as has long
medical examination sat on a long bench alongside the wall opposite been discerned by perspicacious conservative critics from Nietzsche
the washbasin, and were examined in turn. onwards, manipulates with ressentiment and the promise of revenge
One day, while I was waiting to be examined, it was the turn of a ('Now it's our turn to . ..').
young, half-illiterate soldier who complained of pains in his penis The conclusion to be drawn from this, however, is not that there is
(which, of course, was in itself sufficient to trigger obscene giggles from no escape, that every subversion of the existing power structure is false,
all of us, the doctor included): the skin on its head was too tight, so he illusory, caught in advance in the network of what it endeavours to
was unable to draw it back normally. The doctor ordered him to pull undermine, but the exact opposite: every power structure is necessarily
down his trousers and demonstrate his trouble; the soldier did so and split, inconsistent; there is a crack in the very foundation of its edifice
the skin slid down the head smoothly, though the soldier was quick to — and this crack can be used as a lever for the effective subversion
add that his trouble occurred only during erection. The doctor then of the power structure. .. . In short, the foundations of Power can be
said: 'OK, then, masturbate, get an erection, so that we can check it!' shaken because the very stability of its mighty edifice hinges on
Deeply embarrassed and red in the face, the soldier began to mastur- an inconsistent, fragile balance. The other conclusion to be drawn is
bate in front of all of us but, of course, failed to produce an erection; deeply solidary with the preceding one, although it may give rise to the
the doctor then took one of the postcards of half-naked girls from the false impression of contradicting it: perhaps the moment has come to
mirror, held it close to the soldier's head and started to shout at him: leave behind the old Leftist obsession with ways and means to 'subvert'
'Look! What breasts, what a cunt! Masturbate! How is it that you don't or 'undermine' the Order, and to focus on the opposite question — on
get an erection? What kind of a man are you! Go on, masturbate!' All what, following Ernesto Laclau, we can call the 'ordering of the Order':
of us in the room, including the doctor himself, accompanied this spectacle not how can we undermine the existing order, but how does an Order
with obscene laughter; the unfortunate soldier himself soon joined us emerge out of disorder in the first place? Which inconsistencies and splittings
with an embarrassed giggle, exchanging looks of solidarity with us while allow the edifice of Order to maintain itself?
he continued to masturbate.. . . This scene brought about in me an The philosopher who came closest to this obscene shadowy double
experience of quasi-epiphany: in nuce, there was everything in it, the of public Power was F.W.J. Schelling: there is no Geist without Geisterwelt,
entire panoply of Power — the uncanny mixture of imposed enjoyment no pure spirituality of Logos without the obscene spectral 'spiritual
2 3
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
brings to light, the truth about himself hidden deep in his unconscious: and the humiliating exercise of Power, the agency of Power which
what the subject encounters in the unfathomed 'depths' of him- or shouts severe orders but simultaneously shares with us, his subordinates,
herself is, on the contrary, a primordial lie. Psychoanalysis therefore obscene laughter bearing witness to a deep solidarity. .
emphasizes the obverse of Vaclav Havel's famous dissident motto 'life One could also say that this scene exemplifies the symptom of Power:
in truth': the 'natural state' of the human animal is to live in a lie. the grotesque excess by means of which, in a unique short circuit,
Freud's uncanny encounter condenses, as it were, two closely connected attitudes which are officially opposed and mutually exclusive reveal
Lacanian theses: the Master is unconscious, hidden in the infernal their uncanny complicity, where the solemn agent of Power suddenly
world, and he is an obscene impostor — the 'version of the father' is starts to wink at us across the table in a gesture of obscene solidarity,
always a pere-version. In short, the lesson for the Ideologiekritik is that there letting us know that the thing (i.e. his orders) is not to be taken too
is no Herrschaft which is not supported by some phantasmic enjoyment. seriously, and thereby consolidating his power.2 The aim of the 'critique of
A personal experience revealed this inherent obscenity of Power ideology', the analysis of an ideological edifice, is to extract this
to me in a most distastefully-enjoyable way. In the 1970s I did my symptomal kernel which the official, public ideological text simultane-
(obligatory) military service in the old Yugoslav People's Army, in a ously disavows and needs for its undisturbed functioning. One is
small barracks with no proper medical facilities. In a room which also tempted to say that each of the three main politico-ideological positions
served as sleeping quarters for a private trained as a medical assistant, ('Right', 'Centre', 'Left') relies on such an unacknowledged yet
a doctor from the nearby military hospital held his clinic once a week. unavoidable supplement: the 'Right' finds it difficult to conceal its
On the frame pf the large mirror above the washbasin in this room, the fascination with the myth of a 'primordial' act of violence supposed to
soldier had stuck a couple of postcards of half-naked girls — a standard ground the legal order; the 'Centre' counts on innate human egotism
resource for masturbation in those pre-pornography times, to be sure. (between the lines, liberalism as a rule addresses the individual's
When the doctor paid us his weekly visit, all of us who had reported for egotistic indifference to other people's plight); the 'Left', as has long
medical examination sat on a long bench alongside the wall opposite been discerned by perspicacious conservative critics from Nietzsche
the washbasin, and were examined in turn. onwards, manipulates with ressentiment and the promise of revenge
One day, while I was waiting to be examined, it was the turn of a ('Now it's our turn to . ..').
young, half-illiterate soldier who complained of pains in his penis The conclusion to be drawn from this, however, is not that there is
(which, of course, was in itself sufficient to trigger obscene giggles from no escape, that every subversion of the existing power structure is false,
all of us, the doctor included): the skin on its head was too tight, so he illusory, caught in advance in the network of what it endeavours to
was unable to draw it back normally. The doctor ordered him to pull undermine, but the exact opposite: every power structure is necessarily
down his trousers and demonstrate his trouble; the soldier did so and split, inconsistent; there is a crack in the very foundation of its edifice
the skin slid down the head smoothly, though the soldier was quick to — and this crack can be used as a lever for the effective subversion
add that his trouble occurred only during erection. The doctor then of the power structure. .. . In short, the foundations of Power can be
said: 'OK, then, masturbate, get an erection, so that we can check it!' shaken because the very stability of its mighty edifice hinges on
Deeply embarrassed and red in the face, the soldier began to mastur- an inconsistent, fragile balance. The other conclusion to be drawn is
bate in front of all of us but, of course, failed to produce an erection; deeply solidary with the preceding one, although it may give rise to the
the doctor then took one of the postcards of half-naked girls from the false impression of contradicting it: perhaps the moment has come to
mirror, held it close to the soldier's head and started to shout at him: leave behind the old Leftist obsession with ways and means to 'subvert'
'Look! What breasts, what a cunt! Masturbate! How is it that you don't or 'undermine' the Order, and to focus on the opposite question — on
get an erection? What kind of a man are you! Go on, masturbate!' All what, following Ernesto Laclau, we can call the 'ordering of the Order':
of us in the room, including the doctor himself, accompanied this spectacle not how can we undermine the existing order, but how does an Order
with obscene laughter; the unfortunate soldier himself soon joined us emerge out of disorder in the first place? Which inconsistencies and splittings
with an embarrassed giggle, exchanging looks of solidarity with us while allow the edifice of Order to maintain itself?
he continued to masturbate.. . . This scene brought about in me an The philosopher who came closest to this obscene shadowy double
experience of quasi-epiphany: in nuce, there was everything in it, the of public Power was F.W.J. Schelling: there is no Geist without Geisterwelt,
entire panoply of Power — the uncanny mixture of imposed enjoyment no pure spirituality of Logos without the obscene spectral 'spiritual
2 3
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
corporeality' of the living dead, and so on. This perversion of spirituality
prior to the creation of the world simply out of touch with our post-
and ideality is not something that accidentally befalls them: its possibility
Enlightened pragmatic universe? Among the numerous platitudes
is contained in the very notion of spirituality. This Schellingian notion
proposed by Karl Popper, one idea stands out as more inane than the
of 'spiritual corporeality' enables us to establish an unexpected link with
rest: that of an inherent link between philosophical `totalism' (`strong'
Marx. Today, it is clearly established that Schelling prefigures a series of
philosophy striving to grasp the Absolute) and political totalitarianism
key Marxian motifs, up to Marx's 'revolutionary' reproach to Hegel's
— the idea that a thought which aims at the Absolute thereby lays the
dialectics according to which the speculative-dialectical resolution of
foundation for totalitarian domination. It is easy to mock this idea as
the contradiction leaves the actual social antagonism intact (Hegel's
an exemplary case of the inherent imbecility of analytical philosophy,
`speculative positivism' ). The roots of the Marxian problematic of
3
of its inferiority to the dialectical (and/or hermeneutical) tradition —
`commodity fetishism' in Schelling provide another link to this series.
however, do not Adorno and Horkheimer, the two great opponents of
That is to say: why, precisely, did Marx choose the term fetishism in order
the Popperian orientation, put forward what ultimately amounts to the
to designate the 'theological whimsy' of the universe of commodities?
same claim in their Dialectics of Enlightenment?
What one should bear in mind here is that 'fetishism' is a religious term
To begin with, one is tempted to venture an `empirical' refutation
for (previous) 'false' idolatry as opposed to (present) true belief: for the
of this notion of an inherent link between philosophical `totalism'
Jews, the fetish is the Golden Calf; for a partisan of pure spirituality,
and political totalitarianism: on the one hand, the philosophy that
fetishism designates 'primitive' superstition, the fear of ghosts and
legitimizes a totalitarian political regime is generally some kind of
other spectral apparitions, and so forth. And the point of Marx is that
evolutionary or vitalist relativism; on the other hand, the very claim
the commodity universe provides the necessary fetishistic supplement
to a 'contact with the Absolute' can legitimize an individual's resistance
to 'official' spirituality: it may well be that the 'official' ideology of our
to a terrestrial political power — the link is thus far from necessary and
society is Christian spirituality, but its actual foundation is none the less
self-evident; rather, the opposite. Is not the ultimate argument against
the idolatry of the Golden Calf: money.
this link provided by Schelling, who advocates the strongest version
In short, Marx's point here is deeply Schellingian: there is no spirit
of the philosophy of the Absolute (in Part I of Weltalter he attempts to
without spirits-ghosts, no 'pure' spirituality without the obscene spectre
present the Past as the 'age' of God Himself prior to creation), yet who,
of `spiritualized matter'. The first to accomplish this step 'from spirit
in the name of this very reference to the Absolute, relativizes the State — that is,
to spirits' in the guise of the critique of pure spiritual idealism, of its
conceives it as something contingent, unachieved-incomplete in its very
lifeless 'negative' nihilism, was precisely Schelling who, in the dialogue
notion?
Clara (1810), drove a wedge into the simple complementary mirror-
How, then, do we stand with regard to Schelling today? The co-
relationship of Inside and Outside — between Spirit and Body, between
ordinates of the contemporary philosophico-ideological scene are
the ideal element and the real element which together form the living
provided by two orientations: 'postmodern' relativist New Sophists (from
totality of the Organism — by drawing our attention to the double
neo-pragmatists to deconstructionists) and New Age obscurantists. For
surplus that 'sticks out' . On the one hand, there is the spiritual element
both these orientations the reference to Schelling, to his critique of
of corporeality: the presence, in matter itself, of a non-material but
Hegel and of modern idealism in general, is of crucial importance. The
physical element, of a subtle corpse, relatively independent of time
New Sophists emphasize how Schelling was the first to introduce a crack
and space, which provides the material base of our free will (animal
into Hegel's panlogicist edifice by asserting the motifs of contingency
magnetism, etc.); on the other hand, there is the corporeal element of
and finitude; the New Age obscurantists perceive Schelling as the
spirituality: the materialization of the spirit in a kind of pseudo-stuff, in
philosopher who accomplished the 'Jungian' turn by asserting
substanceless apparitions (ghosts, living dead). It is clear how these two
the notions of Weltseele, primordial Wisdom, sexualized cosmology, and
surpluses comprise in nuce the logic of the opposition of commodity
so on.
fetishism and of the Althusserian Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs):
Again, the relationship between Schelling and Hegel is the knot,
commodity fetishism involves the uncanny 'spiritualization' of the
the junction at which 'everything is decided'. According to the
commodity-body, whereas ISAs materialize the spiritual, substanceless
predominant doxa, in Hegel's absolute idealism and panlogicism the
big Other of ideology.
4
self-movement of the Idea generates its own content and retroactively
However, are not Schelling's obscure ruminations about the Absolute
grounds its own presuppositions, whereas Schelling introduced a gap
4