The parallax view

445 Pages·2006·5.971 MB·English

by  Žižek, Slavoj

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The Parallax View
Short Circuits
Slavoj Zˇizˇek,editor
The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity,by Slavoj Zˇizˇek
The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two,by Alenka Zupancˇicˇ
Is Oedipus Online? Siting Freud after Freud,by Jerry Aline Flieger
Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK,by Alexei Monroe
The Parallax View,by Slavoj Zˇizˇek
The Parallax View
Slavoj Zˇizˇek
TheMITPress Cambridge,Massachusetts London,England
©2006Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or me-
chanical means (including photocopying,recording,or information storage and retrieval) with-
out permission in writing from the publisher.
MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promo-
tional use.For information,please email [email protected] or write to Special
Sales Department,The MIT Press,55Hayward Street,Cambridge,MA 02142.
This book was set in Joanna and Copperplate by Graphic Composition,Inc.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zˇizˇek,Slavoj.
The parallax view / Slavoj Zˇizˇek.
p.cm.— (Short circuits)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-262-24051-3(alk.paper)
1.Philosophy. I.Title.II.Series.
B4870.Z593P37 2006
199′.4973—dc22
2005051704
para Analia,el axioma de mi vida

Contents
Series Foreword ix
INTRODUCTION:DIALECTICALMATERIALISMATTHEGATES 2
I The Stellar Parallax: The Traps of Ontological
Difference 15
1 THESUBJECT,THIS“INWARDLYCIRCUMCISEDJEW” 16
The Tickling Object • The Kantian Parallax • The Birth of (Hegelian) Concrete
Universality out of the Spirit of (Kantian) Antinomies • The Master-Signifier
and Its Vicissitudes • Soave sia il vento... • The Parallax of the Critique of Political
Economy • “... ce seul objet dont le Néant s’honore”
2 BUILDINGBLOCKSFORAMATERIALISTTHEOLOGY 68
A Boy Meets the Lady • Kierkegaard as a Hegelian • Die Versagung • The
Traps of Pure Sacrifice • The Difficulty of Being a Kantian • The Comedy
of Incarnation • Odradek as a Political Category • Too Much Life!
INTERLUDE1:KATE’SCHOICE,OR,THEMATERIALISMOFHENRYJAMES 124
II The Solar Parallax: The Unbearable Lightness
of Being No One 145
3 THEUNBEARABLEHEAVINESSOFBEINGDIVINESHIT 146
Burned by the Sun • Pick Up Your Cave! • Copernicus,Darwin,Freud...
and Many Others • Toward a New Science of Appearances • Resistances to
Disenchantment • When the God Comes Around • The Desublimated
Object of Post-Ideology • Danger? What Danger?
4 THELOOPOFFREEDOM 200
“Positing the Presuppositions” • A Cognitivist Hegel? • The False Opacity •
Emotions Lie,or,Where Damasio Is Wrong • Hegel,Marx,Dennett • From
Physics to Design? • The Unconscious Act of Freedom • The Language of
Seduction,the Seduction of Language
INTERLUDE2:OBJET PETITAINSOCIALLINKS,OR,THEIMPASSESOF
ANTI-ANTI-SEMITISM 252
III The Lunar Parallax: Toward a Politics of
Subtraction 271
5 FROMSURPLUS-VALUE TOSURPLUS-POWER 272
Ontic Errance,Ontological Truth • Gelassenheit?No,Thanks! • Toward the Theory
of the Stalinist Musical • The Biopolitical Parallax • The Historicity of the Four
Discourses • Jouissanceas a Political Category • Do We Still Live in a World?
6 THEOBSCENEKNOTOFIDEOLOGY,ANDHOWTOUNTIEIT 330
The Academic Rumspringa,or,the Parallax of Power and Resistance • Human
Rights versus the Rights of the Inhuman • Violence Enframed • The Ignorance
of the Chicken • Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Fundamentalism? • Over the
Rainbow Coalition! • Robert Schumann as a Theorist of Ideology • Welcome
to the Desert of the American Subculture • Of Eggs,Omelets,and Bartleby’s Smile
Notes 387
Index 431
Series Foreword
A short circuit occurs when there is a faulty connection in the network—faulty,of
course,from the standpoint of the network’s smooth functioning.Is not the shock of
short-circuiting,therefore,one of the best metaphors for a critical reading? Is not one
of the most effective critical procedures to cross wires that do not usually touch:to
take a major classic (text,author,notion),and read it in a short-circuiting way,through
the lens of a “minor”author,text,or conceptual apparatus (“minor”should be under-
stood here in Deleuze’s sense:not “of lesser quality,”but marginalized,disavowed by
the hegemonic ideology,or dealing with a “lower,”less dignified topic)? If the minor
reference is well chosen,such a procedure can lead to insights which completely shat-
ter and undermine our common perceptions.This is what Marx,among others,did
with philosophy and religion (short-circuiting philosophical speculation through the
lens of political economy,that is to say,economic speculation);this is what Freud and
Nietzsche did with morality (short-circuiting the highest ethical notions through the
lens of the unconscious libidinal economy).What such a reading achieves is not a
simple “desublimation,”a reduction of the higher intellectual content to its lower eco-
nomic or libidinal cause;the aim of such an approach is,rather,the inherent decen-
tering of the interpreted text,which brings to light its “unthought,”its disavowed
presuppositions and consequences.
And this is what “Short Circuits”wants to do,again and again.The underlying
premise of the series is that Lacanian psychoanalysis is a privileged instrument of such
an approach,whose purpose is to illuminate a standard text or ideological formation,
making it readable in a totally new way—the long history of Lacanian interventions
in philosophy,religion,the arts (from the visual arts to the cinema,music,and litera-
ture),ideology,and politics justifies this premise.This,then,is not a new series of
books on psychoanalysis,but a series of “connections in the Freudian field”—of short
Lacanian interventions in art,philosophy,theology,and ideology.
“Short Circuits”intends to revive a practice of reading which confronts a classic text,
author,or notion with its own hidden presuppositions,and thus reveals its disavowed
ix