Zizek: How to read Lacan. Ch3

Notes  on: Zizek, How to read Lacan.

Chapter: FROM che vuoi? TO FANTASY: LACAN WITH EYES WIDE SHUT

Key words: “che vuoi?”, Judaism, performatives, desire, real, reality, dream, anti-humanism, rape, known, unknown, October revolution, paradox, feminism, neighbor, 10 Commandments, frog, beer, “fuck”, awaking.

What do you Want?

“REALITY IS FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT  ENDURE THEIR DREAMS” (p.57)

In this chapter,  Zizek treats basically the concept of desire and its interpretation through the lenses of fantasy. This analysis starts with  question: “Che vuoi?” (What do you want?); a question that according Lacan “leads the subject to the path of his own desire”. So Zizek here tries to elucidate the lacanian formula of Fantasy. The basic thesis that comes out is that in opposition to the opposite elements of dream and reality, fantasy is closer to the reality. Fantasy is considered as a screen that protects us from the encounter with the Real. That mean that there is a distinction between reality and Real.  Actually what Lacan says is that “reality” is a fantasy but this doesn´t mean that life is just an illusion or just a dream. Dream is actually is the way, the state that help us to approach the hard kernel of the Real. This means that what we approach in the dream is the fantasy-framework which determines our activity in reality.

Fantasy appears as  the answer to the question “che vuoi?” and to the enigma of the desire of the Other. Zizek explains that the desire cannot be completely “subjective”, doesn´t belongs to the subject but actually is linked to Other´s desire, the desire of who is around me and, the desire of whom I interact with. The desire is constructed by the big Other, this unfathomable mechanism of the symbolic order. “What do I want” is the mask of “What the others want from me?”.  So we could claim that the  aim behind the question “What do I want” is to discover my desire and the fantasy is “the imagined scenario representing the realization of the desire”.

The concept of Man´s desire of the Other´s desire brings me in confrontation not only with the enigmatic desire of the Other but also with the fact that I don´t know what I really want. Enigma of the Other-Enigma of myself. In this Judaism´s contribution was the “love”for your neighbor who becomes a mirror- image and an inert , impenetrable, enigmatic presence that hystericizes me. Questions like “who counts as my neighbor?” “what exactly is meant by love?” and “how can I love my neighbor as myself?” has been emerged.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor [plesion] has fulfilled [plerow] the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up [anakephalaioutai] in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling [pleroma] of the law. (Romans 13:8-10) (source:http://www.soundandsignifier.com/research/Texts/Freud%20My%20Neighbor.html)

But Lacan speaks about the neighbor as the Thing (das Ding) that “beyond” of the pleasure principle whose unbearable, terrible Good is also an Evil. Thus, neighbor can be a negative and traumatic source. For this “Love” and be loved, as Zizek claims, is “so violent a discovery, even traumatic” . According this theory, the love expressed by the other can be perceived as something intrusive and obscene. Here it takes place the theory of performatives,  “speech acts that accomplish in the very act of their enunciation the state of affairs that they declare”.

The terrifying role of the other as Thing arise the question of how we can avoid the the traumatic impact of being too much exposed to the tremendous abyss of the Other and how can we cope with Other´s desire. The answer again is FANTASY. Fantasy not only is conceived as a construction that allows to  the subject to come to terms with its traumatic kernel (caused by the Other) but  shows us how to desire and tells me how do we know what we desire.

Sexuality is the field where we come more close and we establish an intimate relationship with other individuals so that  sexual relations, according Lacan, has to been screened through fantasy. Zizek brings different examples regarding the aspect of sexuality and fantasy. One of those examples regards to the rape and the fantasy to be raped. His point is  rape fantasy is a fantasy but is rooted in the symbolic; what the “actual” rape contains  is the sense of impossibility .No matter how wildly  or not the perverse one’s fantasy may be, the point is that as an event, the violation of rape is a confrontation with impossibility and meaninglessness.

All this is linked with the binary relationship “know-unknown”. Donald Rumsfeld will speak about three possibilities within this relationship.

1. There are known knows.
2. There are known unknowns.
3. There are unknown unknowns.

And Zizek will add a 4th one: There are unknown knows. This means that there are things that we don´t know that we know. This lack of awareness of what we know determines our actions and feelings and also decentralize the subject. Lacan refers that the subject is always “decentred ” so that teh individual is deprived by his most intimate subjective experience that guarantees the core of  who is. Even if ones  claims that although unknown mechanism  nobody can deprive him/her  from the experience to feel and see, Lacan argue that the role of the psychoanalyst is to take away from the subject its fundamental fantasy that regulates the universe of his/her self experience.

Zizek will end this chapter with the reference to the film Eyes wide shut, a film that is a kind of doorway that bridging the gap between reality and fantasy.  A story  about the couple that “wakes up” and sees the social power structure as it  is. Bu according Zizek we find in this film the manifestation of fantasies ambiguity, a paradigm of fantasy as a frame that protects us from the encounter with the Real. The awaking in the reality of the protagonists is  an escape from the real encounter within their dreams.

In this chapter Zizek dealt with the terms of desire, fantasy, dreams, reality, Real in relation to the big Other and the symbolic order, with the aim to elucidate the  “true awaking” from what control us.

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MORPHEUS: “What is real? How do you define real? If you are talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you’re talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

Wachowski Brothers- MATRIX

I believe the film DOGTOOTH  directed by Yorgos Lanthimos is a great example that could be analysed únder the lenses of Lacan´s theory. It is about a husband and wife who keep their children ignorant of the world outside their property well into adulthood. Construction of reality, Subjectivity, the big Other, Symbolic order and more can be traced within the film.

“A TALE ABOUT HOW TOYS CAN BECOME REAL. Always the fairy tales hide more deep meanings and maybe the children can capt the depth of them better that the adults

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html

 QUESTIONs

• Is it my ethical duty to confront you with the frog embracing the bottle of beer while in the daydream you are embracing your beloved;
• As choreographer, whose desires I stage?mine?yours?Other´s?
• Should I make art in order to wake up the others?

 I came to dream with you.

I came to live the lie with you.

I came  to lose myself with you rather to find  my real “Self”.

Reality doesn´t exist. I don´t exist. But what do you see is real.