Slavoj Zizek - Hegel versus Heidegger

7/16/2019 Slavoj Zizek - Hegel versus Heidegger

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Slavoj Žižek

Hegel versusHeidegger

HeideggerÕs Critique of HegelOne of the standard critiques of Hegel, firstformulated already by the Òyoung Hegelians,Óconcerns the apparent contradiction betweenHegelÕs dialectical method and his system. WhileHegelÕs method approaches reality in its dynamicdevelopment, discerning in every determinateform the seeds of its own destruction and self-overcoming, his system endeavors to render the

totality of being as an achieved order in which nofurther development is in view. With thetwentieth century interpreters of Hegel whostand under HeideggerÕs influence, thiscontradiction between the ÒlogicalÓ and theÒhistoricalÓ acquires a deeper radicalunderpinning: what they try to outline is a morefundamental ontological frame that is both thesource of HegelÕs dialectical systematizing, andis, simultaneously, betrayed by thissystematizing. The historical dimension is herenot simply the unending evolution of all life

forms. It is also not the life-philosophicalopposition between the young Hegel trying tograsp the historical antagonisms of social lifeand the old Hegel compulsively steamrolling allcontent with his dialectical machine, but theinherent tension between HegelÕs systematicdrive of notional self-mediation (or sublation)and a more original ontological project that,following Heidegger, Alexandre Koyre describesas the historicity of the human conditionoriented towards future.1 The root of what Hegelcalls ÒnegativityÓ is (our awareness of) future:future is what is not (yet), the power of negativityis ultimately identical to the power of time itself,this force that corrodes every firm identity. Theproper temporality of a human being is thus notthat of the linear time, but that of engagedexistence: a man projects his future and thenactualizes it by way of a detour through pastresources. This ÒexistentialÓ root of negativity isobfuscated by HegelÕs system that abolishes thisprimacy of the future and presents its entirecontent as the past ÒsublatedÓ in its logical formÐ the standpoint adopted here is not that ofengaged subjectivity, but of Absolute Knowing. (A

similar critique of Hegel was deployed byAlexandre Kojeve and Jean Hyppolite.) What hiscritics all endeavor to formulate is a tension orantagonism in the very core of HegelÕs thoughtthat remains unthought by Hegel Ð not foraccidental reasons, but by necessity, which iswhy, precisely, this antagonism cannot be

dialecticized, resolved, or ÒsublatedÓ throughdialectical mediation. What all thesephilosophers offer is thus a critical ÒschizologyÓof Hegel.2

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is not difficult to recognize in this vision of

the future-oriented temporality of the engagedsubject the traces of HeideggerÕs radical

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Ilya Kabakov, They are looking downward, 1998-1999. Postcard and edition of 300Êceramic tiles.

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Jonathas de Andrade, Educationfor Adults, 2010. Installation, 60

posters. Image courtesy of theartist. Using the concepts andprocedures of Paulo Freire'salphabetization method, fromwhich the poster layout wasappropriated, the posters werethe basis for a seriesofÊmeetings with a group ofilliterate women, determiningthe final relations betweenwords-images presented in theartist's version. Faca, inportuguese means knife.

assertion of finitude as the unsurpassablepredicament of being-human: it is our finitudethat exposes us to the opening of the future, tothe horizon of what is to come, i.e.,transcendence and finitude are two sides of thesame coin. No wonder then, that it wasHeidegger himself who, in a series of seminarsand written texts, proposed the most elaborateversion of such a critical reading of Hegel. Since

this is not the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit (Beingand Time), but the later Heidegger, he tries todecipher the unthought dimension of Hegelthrough the close reading of HegelÕs notion of theÒexperienceÓ (Erfahrung) of consciousness fromhis Phenomenology of Spirit. Heidegger readsHegelÕs famous critique of Kantian skepticism Ðwe can only get to know the Absolute if theAbsolute already in advance wants to be bei uns

(with us) Ð through his interpretation of parousia

as the epochal disclosure of being: parousia

names the mode by which the Absolute (HegelÕs

name for the Truth of Being) is already disclosedto us prior to any active effort on our part, i.e.,the way this disclosure of the Absolute groundsand directs our very effort to grasp it Ð or, asmystics and theologians put it, you wouldnÕt havebeen searching for me if you had not alreadyfound me.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWhy is Hegel unable to see the properdimension of parousia? This brings us toHeideggerÕs next reproach: HegelÕs notion ofnegativity lacks a phenomenal dimension (i.e.,Hegel fails to describe the experience in whichnegativity would appear as such). Hegel neversystematically exemplifies or makes appear thedifferences between the terms rejection,negation, nothing, Òis not,Ó and so forth.3

Hegelian dialectics just presupposes theoccultation of its own phenomenologico-ontological foundation; the name of thisoccultation is, of course, subjectivity. Hegelalways-already subordinates negativity to thesubjectÕs Òwork of the negative,Ó to the work ofthe subjectÕs conceptual mediation/sublation ofall phenomenal content. In this way, negativity isreduced to a secondary moment in the subjectÕswork of self-mediation. This blindness for itsown foundation is not a secondary feature, butthe very enabling feature of HegelÕs metaphysics

of subjectivity: the dialectical logos can onlyfunction against the background of a pre-subjective Absage, renunciation or saying-no.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThere nonetheless is a privilegedphenomenal mode in which negativity can beexperienced, although a negative one: pain. Thepath of experience is the path of painful

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realization that there is a gap between ÒnaturalÓand transcendental consciousness, between Òforthe consciousness itselfÓ and Òfor usÓ: thesubject is violently deprived of the ÒnaturalÓfoundation of its being, its entire worldcollapses, and this process is repeated until itreaches Absolute Knowing. When he speaksabout Òtranscendental painÓ as the fundamentalStimmung of HegelÕs thought, Heidegger is

following a line that begins in KantÕs Critique of Practical Reason.4 There Kant determines painas the only Òa prioriÓ emotion, the emotion of mypathological ego being humiliated by theinjunction of the moral law. (Lacan sees in thistranscendental privilege of pain the link betweenKant and Sade.)ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWhat Heidegger misses in his description ofthe Hegelian ÒexperienceÓ as the path of despair(Verzweiflung) is the proper abyss of thisprocess: it is not only the natural consciousnessthat is shattered, but also the transcendental

standard, measure, or framing ground againstwhich natural consciousness experiences itsinadequacy and failure Ð as Hegel put it, if whatwe thought to be true fails the measure of truth,this measure itself has to be abandoned. This iswhy Heidegger misses the vertiginous abyss ofthe dialectical process: there is no standard oftruth gradually approached through painfulexperiences; this standard itself is caught in theprocess, undermined again and again.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis is also why HeideggerÕs reproach ofHegelÕs ÒmachinationÓ misses the point.According to Heidegger, the Hegelian process ofexperience moves at two levels, that of lived-experience (Erlebnis) and that of conceptualmachination (Machenschaft): at the level oflived-experience, consciousness sees its worldcollapse and a new figure of the world appear,and it experiences this passage as a pure jump, aleap with no logical bridge uniting the twopositions. ÒFor us,Ó however, the dialecticalanalysis renders visible how the new worldemerged as the Òdeterminate negationÓ of the oldone, as the necessary outcome of its crisis. Theauthentic lived-experience, the opening to the

New, is thus revealed as something that isunderpinned by notional work: what the subjectexperiences as the unexplainable rise of a newworld is actually, behind its back, the result of itsown conceptual work, and can thus ultimately beread as produced by subjectÕs own machination.There is no experience of genuine otherness, thesubject only encounters the results of its own(conceptual) work. This reproach only holds ifone ignores how both sides, the phenomenal ÒforitselfÓ of the natural consciousness and the ÒforusÓ of the subterranean conceptual work, are

caught in the groundless abyss of repeatedvertiginous loss. The Òtranscendental painÓ is not

only the pain that natural consciousnessexperiences, the pain of being separated from itstruth; it is the painful awareness that this truthitself is non-all, cracking, inconsistent.

The Torture House of LanguageAnd this brings us back to HeideggerÕs reproachthat Hegel doesnÕt provide the phenomenalexperience of negativity: What if negativity

precisely names the gap of phenomenality,something that does NOT (and cannot ever)appear? Not because it is a transcendentalgesture that by definition eludes the phenomenallevel, but because it is the paradoxical, difficult-to-think negativity that cannot be subsumedunder any agent (experiential or not), what Hegelcalls Òself-relating negativity,Ó negativity thatprecedes all positive grounding and whosenegative gesture of withdrawal opens up thespace for all positivity. And from this point, onecan even reverse HeideggerÕs reproach to Hegel

and claim that it is Heidegger who is not able tothink this Òtranscendental painÓ Ð and that hemisses the path to think it precisely by droppingall too early the term ÒsubjectÓ needed to thinkthe (inhuman) core of being-human.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThroughout his own work, Lacan, in turn,modifies HeideggerÕs motif of language as thehouse of being. Language is not manÕs creationand instrument, it is man who ÒdwellsÓ inlanguage: Òpsychoanalysis should be the scienceof language inhabited by the subject.Ó5 LacanÕsÒparanoiacÓ twist, his additional Freudian turn ofthe screw, comes from his characterization ofthis house as a torture-house: Òin the light of theFreudian experience, man is a subject caught inand tortured by language.Ó6 Not only does mandwell in the Òprison-house of language,Ó (the titleof Fredric JamesonÕs early book onstructuralism), he dwells in a torture-house oflanguage. The entire psychopathology deployedby Freud, from conversion-symptoms inscribedinto the body, up to total psychotic breakdowns,are scars of this permanent torture, so manysigns of an original and irremediable gapbetween subject and language, so many signs

that man cannot ever be at home in his ownhome. This is what Heidegger ignores: this dark,torturing other side of our dwelling in language Ðand this is why there is also no place for the Realof jouissance in HeideggerÕs edifice, since thetorturing aspect of language concerns primarilythe vicissitudes of libido. This is also why, inorder to get the truth to speak, it is not enough tosuspend the subjectÕs active intervention and letlanguage itself speak Ð as Elfriede Jelinek put itwith extraordinary clarity: Òlanguage should betortured to tell the truth.Ó It should be twisted,

denaturalized, extended, condensed, cut andreunited, made to work against itself. Language

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Poster for Andrei Tarkovsky'sÊmovie Solaris.

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as the Òbig OtherÓ is not an agent of wisdom towhose message we should attune ourselves, buta place of cruel indifference and stupidity. Themost elementary form of torturing oneÕs languageis called poetry Ð imagine what a complex formlike the sonnet does to language: it forces thefree flow of speech into a Procrustean bed of afixed shape of rhythm and rhyme. So what aboutHeideggerÕs procedure of listening to the

soundless word of language itself, of bringing outthe truth that already dwells in it? No wonderlate HeideggerÕs thinking is poetic. Recall themeans he uses to do this: can one imagine atorture more violent than what he does in, say,his famous reading of ParmenidesÕs propositionÒthinking-speaking and being are the sameÓ? Toextract the intended truth from it, he has to referto the literal meaning of words (legein asgathering), to counter-intuitively displace theaccent and scansion of the sentence, totranslate single terms in an idiosyncratic,

descriptive way, and so on. It is from thisperspective that late Wittgensteinian Òordinarylanguage philosophy,Ó which perceives itself as amedical cure meant to correct the usages ofordinary language that give rise to Òphilosophicalproblems,Ó wants to eliminate precisely theÒtorturingÓ of language that forces it to delivertruth. (Remember Rudolph CarnapÕs famouscritique of Heidegger from the late 1920s, whichclaims that HeideggerÕs ratiocinations are basedon the wrong use of ÒnothingÓ as a substantive).ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd does the same not go for cinema? Doescinema also not force its visual material to tellthe truth through torture? First, there wasEisensteinÕs Òmontage of attractions,Ó themother of all torturers: a violent cutting ofcontinuous shots into fragments that are thenre-united in a thoroughly artificial way, the noless violent reduction of the whole body or sceneto close-ups of Òpartial objectsÓ floating aroundin cinematic space, cut off from the organicWhole to which they belong. Then there isTarkovsky, EisensteinÕs great enemy, whoreplaced the frantic Eisensteinian montage withits opposite: a stretching-out of time, the

cinematic equivalent of the Òrack,Ó a classictorturing machine made to stretch the victimÕslimbs. Suffice it to recall TarkovskyÕs formalprocedure, which, given his Soviet origins,cannot but ironically evoke the (in)famousdialectical ÒlawÓ of the inversion of quantity inquality, and supplement it with a kind of negationof negation (which was excluded by Stalin fromthe list of these ÒlawsÓ as too Hegelian, notproperly ÒmaterialistÓ):ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTarkovsky proposed that if a take islengthened, boredom naturally sets in for the

audience. But if the take is extended evenfurther, something else arises: curiosity.

Tarkovsky is essentially proposing giving theaudience time to inhabit the world that the takeis showing us, not to watch it, but to look at it, toexplore it.7

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPerhaps the ultimate example of thisprocedure is the famous scene in TarkovskyÕsMirror , in which the heroine, who works as aproof-reader for a daily newspaper in the SovietUnion of the mid-1930s, runs in rain from her

home to the printing office because there is asuspicion that she missed an obscene misprintof StalinÕs name. Sean Martin is right toemphasize the unexpected feature of itsimmediate physical beauty:ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is as if Tarkovsky were content just towatch Margarita Terekhova running through therain, down steps, across yards, into corridors.Here, Tarkovsky reveals the presence of beauty insomething that is apparently mundane and,paradoxically (given the period), also potentiallyfatal for Maria if the mistake she thinks sheÕs

made has gone to press.8

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis effect of beauty is generated preciselyby the excessive length of the scene: instead of

just watching Maria running and, immersed inthe narrative, worrying if she will arrive on timeto prevent the catastrophe, we are seduced intolooking at the scene, taking note of itsphenomenal features, the intensity ofmovements, and so forth. One can thus wellcharacterize TarkovskyÕs polemics againstEisenstein as a polemic of one torturer with hisprofessional colleague about the use of differentdevices.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis is also the ultimate reason why, againstHeideggerÕs historicization of the subject asmodernityÕs agent of technological mastery,against his substitution of Dasein for ÒsubjectÓas the name for the essence of being-human,Lacan stuck to the problematic term Òsubject.ÓWhen Lacan implies that Heidegger misses acrucial dimension of subjectivity, his point is nota silly-humanist argument that HeideggerÒpassivizesÓ man too much into an instrumentfor the revelation of Being and thus ignoreshuman creativity. LacanÕs point is, on the

contrary, that Heidegger misses the properlytraumatic impact of the very ÒpassivityÓ of beingcaught in language, the tension between humananimal and language: there is ÒsubjectÓ becausethe human animal doesnÕt ÒfitÓ language, theLacanian ÒsubjectÓ is the tortured, mutilated,subject. Insofar as the status of the Lacaniansubject is real, i.e., insofar as the real Thing isultimately (the impossible core of) the subjectitself, one should apply to the subject LacanÕsdefinition of the Thing as that part or aspect Òofthe real which suffers from the signifier.Ó The

most elementary dimension of the subject is notactivity, but passivity, enduring. This is how

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Lee Miller, Burgermeistersdaughter, Town Hall, Leipzig

Germany, 1945.

Lacan locates rituals of initiation that perform aviolent cut onto the body, mutilating it:ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe rituals of initiation assume the form ofthe changing of form of these desires, ofconferring on them in this way a function throughwhich the subjectÕs being identifies itself orannounces itself as such, through which thesubject, if one can put it this way, fully becomesa man, but also a woman. The mutilation serves

here to orientate desire, enabling it to assumeprecisely this function of index, of somethingwhich is realized and which can only articulateitself, express itself, in a symbolic beyond, abeyond which is the one we today call being, arealization of being in the subject.9

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe gap that separates Lacan fromHeidegger is here clearly discernible precisely onaccount of their proximity; by the fact that, inorder to designate the symbolic function at itsmost elementary, Lacan still uses HeideggerÕsterm Òbeing.Ó In a human being, desires lose their

mooring in biology, they are operative onlyinsofar as they are inscribed within the horizonof Being sustained by language; however, in orderfor this transposition from the immediatebiological reality of the body to the symbolicspace to take place, it has to leave a mark oftorture in the body in the guise of its mutilation.

It is thus not enough to say that Òthe Wordbecame fleshÓ: what one should add is that, inorder for the Word to inscribe itself into flesh, apart of the flesh Ð the proverbial Shylockianpound of flesh Ð has to be sacrificed. Since thereis no pre-established harmony between Wordand flesh, it is only through such a sacrifice thatthe flesh becomes receptive for the Word.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis brings us, finally, to the topic of

jouissance. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe locatedvery precisely the gap that separates LacanÕsinterpretation of Antigone from HeideggerÕs (towhich Lacan otherwise abundantly refers): whatis totally missing in Heidegger is not only thedimension of the real, of jouissance, but, aboveall, the dimension of the Òbetween-two-deathsÓ(the symbolic and the real), which designatesAntigoneÕs subjective position after she isexcommunicated from the polis by Creon. Inexact symmetry with her brother Polynices whois dead in reality, but denied the symbolic death,

the rituals of burial, Antigone finds herself deadsymbolically, excluded from the symboliccommunity, while biologically and subjectivelystill alive. In AgambenÕs terms, Antigone findsherself reduced to Òbare life,Ó to a position ofhomo sacer , whose exemplary case in thetwentieth century is that of the inmates of the

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concentration camps.10 The stakes ofHeideggerÕs omission are thus very high, theyconcern the ethico-political crux of the twentiethcentury, the ÒtotalitarianÓ catastrophe in itsextreme deployment Ð so this omission is quiteconsistent with HeideggerÕs inability to resist theNazi temptation:

But the Òbetween-two-deathsÓ is the hell

which our century realized or still promisesto realize, and it is to this that Lacan repliesand to what he wants to makepsychoanalysis responsible. Did he not saythat politics is the ÒholeÓ of metaphysics?The scene with Heidegger Ð and there isone Ð is in its entirety located here.11

This also accounts for the disturbing ambiguityof HeideggerÕs description of the death inextermination camps: this death is no longerauthentic death Ð the individualÕs assuming of

oneÕs death as the possibility of his highestimpossibility Ð but just another anonymousindustrial-technological process. People do notreally ÒdieÓ in the camps, they are justindustrially exterminated. Heidegger not onlyobscenely suggests that the victims burned inthe camps somehow did not die Òauthentically,Óthereby translating their utter suffering intosubjective Ònon-authenticity.Ó The question hefails to raise is precisely: how did THEYsubjectivize (relate to) their predicament? Theirdeath was an industrial process of exterminationfor their executioners, not for themselves.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFrancois Balm•s makes here a perspicuousremark that it is as if LacanÕs implicit clinicalreproach to HeideggerÕs existential analytic ofDasein as Òbeing-towards-deathÓ is that it isappropriate only for neurotics and fails toaccount for psychotics.12 A psychotic subjectoccupies an existential position for which thereis no place in HeideggerÕs mapping, the positionof someone who in a way Òsurvives his owndeath.Ó Psychotics no longer fit HeideggerÕsdescription of DaseinÕs engaged existence, theirlife no longer moves in the coordinates of a

futural project freely engaged against thebackground of oneÕs assumed past: their life isoutside ÒcareÓ (Sorge), their being is no longerdirected Òtowards death.ÓÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis excess of jouissance that resistssymbolization (logos) is the reason why, in thelast two decades of his teaching, Lacan(sometimes almost pathetically) insists that heconsiders himself an anti-philosopher, someonewho rebels against philosophy: philosophy isonto-logy, its basic premise is, as Parmenides,the first philosopher, put it, Òthinking and being

are the same,Ó the mutual accord betweenthinking (logos as reason/speech) and being. Up

to Heidegger, the Being that philosophy has inmind is always the being whose house islanguage, the being sustained by language, thebeing whose horizon is opened by language, or,as Wittgenstein put it, the limits of my languageare the limits of my world. Against this onto-logical premise of philosophy, Lacan focuses onthe real of jouissance as something that,although it is far from being simply external to

language (it is rather Òex-timateÓ with regard toit), resists symbolization, remains a foreignkernel within it, appears within it as a rupture,cut, gap, inconsistency or impossibility:

I challenge whichever philosopher toaccount now for the relation that isbetween the emergence of the signifier andthe way jouissance relates to being.ÉNophilosophy, I say, meets us here today. Thewretched aborted freaks of philosophywhich we drag behind us from the

beginning of the last nineteenth century asthe habits that are falling apart, are nothingbut a way to frisk rather than to confrontthis question which is the only questionabout truth and which is called, and namedby Freud, the death drive, the primordialmasochism of jouissance.ÉAllphilosophical speech escapes andwithdraws here.13

It is in this sense that Lacan designates hisposition as the one of the Òrealism of

jouissance.Ó A realism whose ÒnaturalÓ enemycannot but appear HegelÕs ÒpanlogismÓ as theclimactic point of ontology, of logic (self-deployment of logos) as the total explanation forbeing, through which being loses its opacity andbecomes totally transparent. But does Lacan notproceed all too fast here? Are things with Hegelreally so simple? Is the obverse of HegelÕs basicthesis Òthere is nothing which is not logosÓ not,following LacanÕs Òformulas of sexuation,Ó theassertion of a non-All? That is to say, Ònot-all islogos,Ó i.e., logos is not-all, rather isnÕt itcorroded and truncated from within by

antagonisms and ruptures, and thereby neverfully itself?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMaybe, Lacan was obscurely aware of allthis, as indicated above by the curious limitationof his brutal dismissal of philosophy to theÒwretched aborted freaks of philosophy whichwe drag behind us from the beginning of thenineteenth century.Ó A dismissal that begins with

post-Hegelian thought. The obvious thing wouldhave been to say that it is precisely post-Hegelian thought that breaks with onto-logy,asserting the primacy of a trans-logical Will or

Life Ð the anti-logos (anti-philosophy) that runsfrom late Schelling through Schopenhauer to

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Francis Bacon, Triptych, 1973. Oil on canvas.

Nietzsche. It is as if Lacan here learnedHeideggerÕs lesson: MarxÕs formula Òbeingdetermines consciousnessÓ is not radical enoughÐ all the talk about the actual life of engagedsubjectivity as opposed to a Òmere speculativethoughtÓ remains within the confines of ontology,because (as Heidegger demonstrated) being canonly arise through logos. The difference fromHeidegger is that Lacan, instead of accepting

this accord (sameness) between Being and logos,tries to move outside of it, to a dimension of thereal indicated by the impossible joint betweensubject and jouissance. No wonder, then, that,with regard to anxiety, Lacan prefers Kierkegaardto Heidegger: he perceives Kierkegaard as theanti-Hegel for whom the paradox of Christianfaith signals a radical break with ancient Greekontology (in contrast to HeideggerÕs reduction ofChristianity to a moment in the decline of Greekontology within medieval metaphysics). Faith isan existential jump into what (from the

ontological view) cannot but appear as madness,it is a crazy decision unwarranted by any reasonÐ KierkegaardÕs God is effectively ÒbeyondBeing,Ó a God of the Real, not the God ofphilosophers. Which is why, again, Lacan wouldaccept HeideggerÕs famous statement, from the1920s, when he abandoned Catholic Church, thatreligion is a mortal enemy of philosophy Ð but hewould see this as the reason to stick to the coreof the Real in the religious experience.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is against this background of the radicalasymmetry or non-correlation between subjectand object (or thinking and reality) that one canclearly see where MeillassouxÕs critique ofcorrelationism falls short: in his rejection of

transcendental correlationism (the claim that inorder to think reality, there must already be asubject to whom this reality appears), he himselfremains too much within the confines of theKantian-transcendental opposition betweenreality the way it appears to us and thetranscendent beyond of reality in itself,independently of us. In a Leninist way (theLeninism of Materialism and Empiriocriticism),

he then asserts that we can access and thinkreality in itself. But something is lost in this veryfield of the transcendental dilemma, somethingthat concerns the very core of the Freudiandiscovery (as formulated by Lacan): the inherenttwisting figuration that is constitutive of thesubject itself. That is to say, what Lacan assertsis precisely the irreducible (constitutive) discordand non-correlation, between subject andreality: in order for the subject to emerge, theimpossible object-that-is-subject must beexcluded from reality, since it is its very

exclusion that opens up the space for thesubject. The problem is not to think the realoutside transcendental correlation,independently of subject; the problem is to thinkreal INSIDE the subject, the hard core of the realin the very heart of the subject, its ex-timatecenter.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSimultaneously, the exclusion of this objectis constitutive of the appearance of reality: sincereality (not the real) is correlative to the subject,it can only constitute itself through thewithdrawal from it of the object, of that whichÒisÓ the subject, or, in other words, through thewithdrawal of the subjectÕs objectal correlate. Toput it in the old jargon of the logic of the signifier,

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Eisenstein greeting MickeyMouse, 1930.

the subject is only possible out of its ownimpossibility, the impossibility to become anobject. What breaks up the self-closure of thetranscendental correlation is thus not thetranscendent reality that eludes the subjectÕsgrasp, but the inaccessibility of the object thatÒisÓ the subject itself.14 This is the true Òfossil,Óthe bone that is the spirit, to paraphrase Hegel,and this object is not simply the full objective

reality of the subject (the successful scientificreduction of the subjective experience toobjective processes as in biogenetics), but thenon-corporeal, fantasmatic, lamella. In some ofFrancis BaconÕs drawings, we find a (naked,usually) body accompanied by a weird darkstain-like, circular, formless form that seems togrow out of it, barely attached to it, as a kind ofuncanny protuberance that the body cannot everfully recuperate or reintegrate, and that therebydestabilizes beyond repair the organic Whole ofthe body Ð this is what Lacan aimed at with his

notion of ÒlamellaÓ (or ÒhommeletteÓ).ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWhy this primordial loss, why thisconstitutive withdrawal from reality of a part ofthe real? Precisely because the subject is a partof reality. Because it emerges out of it. This iswhy, if the subject is to emerge as the non-substantial cogito, his being should be elevated

into a spectral impossible object that foreverhaunts him (and that can assume manyfantasmatic forms, from lamella to the double).The ÒofficialÓ transcendental correlation subject-object is thus redoubled by a kind of negativecorrelation of the subject and the impossible-real object: before relating to objects, which arepart of external reality, the subject is haunted byits own objectal shadow. In the guise of this

additional virtual object, the subject is ex-posedto the real, constitutively Òde-centered,Ó muchmore radically even than in the symbolic order.This is how one can read one of LacanÕs re-statements of DescartesÕs cogito ergo sum: ÒI amat that impossible piece of the real where Icannot think.Ó We can also see in what way, twolacks overlap in this impossible object: theconstitutive lack of the subject (what the subjecthas to lose in order to emerge as the subject ofthe signifier) and the lack in the Other itself(what has to be excluded from reality so that

reality can appear). Again, the object is notsimply there at the crosscut of the two lacks: itliterally, and much more radically, emergesthrough the overlapping of the two lacks. (OnceLacan got this point, he changed the status ofobjet a from imaginary to real.) So the real is notsome kind of primordial Being lost with the

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opposition of subject and object (as Hšlderlinput it in his famous Ur-Fragment of GermanIdealism); the real is, on the contrary, a product(of the overlapping of the two lacks). The real is

not lost, it is what we cannot get rid of , whatalways sticks on as the remainder of thesymbolic operation.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the opposition between the symbolicorder and reality, the real is on the side of the

symbolic Ð it is the part of reality that clings tothe symbolic (in the guise of itsinconsistency/gap/impossibility). The real is thepoint at which the external opposition betweenthe symbolic order and reality is immanent to thesymbolic itself, mutilating it from within: it is thenon-all of the symbolic. There is a real notbecause the symbolic cannot grasp its externalreal, but because the symbolic cannot fullybecome ITSELF. There is being (reality) becausethe symbolic system is inconsistent, flawed. Thereal is thus an impasse of formalization. One

should give to this thesis all its ÒidealistÓ weight:it is not only that reality is too rich, so that everyformalization fails to grasp it, stumbles upon it;the real IS nothing but the impasse offormalization Ð there is dense reality Òout thereÓBECAUSE of the inconsistencies and gaps in thesymbolic order. The real is nothing but the non-all of formalization, not its external exception.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSince reality is in itself fragile andinconsistent, it needs the intervention of aMaster-Signifier to stabilize itself into aconsistent field; this Master-Signifier marks thepoint at which a signifier falls into the real. TheMaster-Signifier is a signifier that not onlydesignates features of reality, but alsoperformatively intervenes into reality. As such,the Master-Signifier is the counterpart of theobjet a: if objet a is the real on the side of thesymbolic, the Master-Signifier is the signifierthat falls into the real. Its role is exactlyhomologous to that of transcendental synthesisof apperception in Kant: its interventiontransforms the inconsistent multiplicity offragments of the real into the consistent field ofÒobjective reality.Ó In the same way that, for Kant,

it is the addition of the subjective synthesis thattransforms the multiplicity of subjectiveimpressions into objective reality, for Lacan, it isthe intervention of the Master-Signifier, whichtransforms the confused field of impressionsinto Òextra-linguistic reality.Ó This, then, would bethe Lacanian answer to correlationism: whiletranscendental correlationism can think theintervention of the Master-Signifier asconstitutive of reality, it misses this otherinverted correlation between the Master-Signifier and objet a, i.e., it cannot think the stain

of the real that de-centers from within thesubject.

Subject and CogitoThe Lacanian ÒsubjectÓ names a gap in thesymbolic, and its status is real. As Balm•spointed out, this is why in his crucial seminar onthe logic of the fantasy (1966-67), after morethan a decade of struggling with Heidegger,Lacan accomplishes his paradoxical and (forsomeone who adheres to HeideggerÕs notion of

modern philosophy) totally unexpected movefrom Heidegger back to Descartes, to Cartesiancogito. There really is a paradox here: Lacan firstaccepts HeideggerÕs point that the Cartesiancogito, which grounds modern science and itsmathematicized universe, announces the highestforgetting of Being; but for Lacan, the Real of

jouissance is precisely external to Being, so thatwhat is for Heidegger the argument AGAINSTcogito is for Lacan the argument FOR cogito Ð thereal of jouissance can only be approached whenwe exit the domain of being. This is why, for

Lacan, not only is cogito not to be reduced to theself-transparency of pure thought, but,paradoxically, cogito IS the subject of theunconscious Ð the gap/cut in the order of Beingin which the real of jouissance breaks in.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course, this cogito is the cogito Òinbecoming,Ó not yet the res cogitans, the thinkingsubstance that fully participates in Being and inlogos. In the seminar on the logic of fantasy,Lacan reads the truth of DescartesÕs cogito ergo

sum more radically than in his earlier seminars,where he played endlessly on the variations ofÒsubvertingÓ the subject. He started withdecentering being with regard to thought: ÒI amnot where I think,Ó the core of our being (Kern

unseres Wesens) is not in my(self)consciousness; however, he quickly becameaware that such a reading leaves the path all tooopen to the irrationalist Lebensphilosophie

thematic of a life deeper than mere thinking orlanguage, something that runs counter to LacanÕsunconscious Òstructured like a language,Ó whichis thoroughly ÒrationalÓ or discursive. So hepassed to the much more refined ÒI think where Iam not,Ó which decenters thinking with regard to

my Being. As the awareness of my full presence:the Unconscious is a purely virtual (in-existing,insisting) Other Place of a thought, whichescapes my being. Then comes a differentpunctuation: ÒI think: Òtherefore I amÓ Ð myBeing is devalued to an illusion generated by mythought. What all these versions share, however,is the accent on the gap that separates cogito

from sum, thought from being Ð LacanÕs aim wasto undermine the illusion of their overlap bypointing out a fissure in the apparenthomogeneity of thinking-being. It was only

toward the end of his teaching that he assertedtheir overlapping Ð and only a negative one, for

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sure. That is to say, Lacan finally grasps the mostradical zero-point of the Cartesian cogito as thepoint of the negative intersection between beingand thinking: the vanishing point at which I donÕt

think AND I am not. I AM NOT: I am not asubstance, a thing, an entity; I am reduced to avoid in the order of being, to a gap, a bŽance.(Recall how, for Lacan, the discourse of sciencepresupposes the foreclosure of the subject Ð to

put it in nave terms, the subject of science isreduced to zero: a scientific proposition shouldbe valid for anyone who repeats the sameexperiment. The moment we have to include thesubjectÕs position of enunciation, we are nolonger in science, but in a discourse of wisdom orinitiation.) I DONÕT THINK: here, again, Lacanparadoxically accepts HeideggerÕs thesis that(modern mathematized) science ÒdoesnÕt thinkÓÐ but for him, this precisely means that it breaksout of the frame of onto-logy, of thinking as logoscorrelative to Being. As pure cogito, I donÕt think,

I am reduced to Òpure (form of) thoughtÓ whichcoincides with its opposite, i.e., which has nocontent and is as such non-thinking. Thetautology of thinking is self-canceling in thesame way as the tautology of being, which is why,for Lacan, the ÒI am that which I amÓ announcedby the burning bush to Moses on the Mount Sinaiindicates a God beyond Being, God as Real.15

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe importance of LacanÕs assertion ofcogito is that, with regard to the couplelanguage-world, it assures a point external to it,a minimal point of singular universality, which isliterally world-less, trans-historical. This meanswe are condemned to our world, to thehermeneutic horizon of our finitude, or, asGadamer put it, to the impenetrable backgroundof historical ÒprejudicesÓ that predetermine thefield of what we can see and understand. Everyworld is sustained by language, and everyÒspokenÓ language sustains a world Ð this iswhat Heidegger aimed at in his thesis onlanguage as a Òhouse of being.Ó Is this effectivelynot our spontaneous ideology? There is anendlessly differentiated, complex, reality, whichwe, individuals and communities embedded in it,

always experience from a particular, finiteperspective of our historical world. Whatdemocratic materialism furiously rejects is thenotion that there can be an infinite universalTruth, which cuts across this multitude of worldsÐ in politics, this means a ÒtotalitarianismÓ thatimposes its truth as universal. This is why oneshould reject, say, Jacobins, who imposed ontothe plurality of the French society their universalnotions of equality and other truths, and thusnecessarily ended in terror. So there is anotherversion of the democratic-materialist axiom: Òall

that takes place in todayÕs society is thedynamics of post-modern globalization, and the

(conservative-nostalgic, fundamentalist, OldLeftist, nationalist, religious...) reactions andresistances to it.Ó To which, of course, materialistdialectics adds its proviso: ÒÉ with the exceptionof the radical-emancipatory (Communist) politicsof truth.ÓÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course, the only way for us to articulatethis truth is within language Ð by way of torturinglanguage. As Hegel already knew, when we think,

we think in language against language. Thisbrings us to Benjamin: Could we not apply hisdistinction of mythic violence and divine violenceto the two modes of violence we were dealingwith? The violence of language to whichHeidegger refers is Òmythic violenceÓ: it is asprach-bildende Gewalt, a language-formingviolence, to paraphrase BenjaminÕs definition ofmythic violence as staats-bildend Ð the force ofmythos as the primordial act of narrativization orsymbolization. In BadiouÕs terms, the violentimposition of the transcendental coordinates of

a World onto the multiplicity of Being. Theviolence of thinking (and of poetry, if weunderstand it differently from Heidegger) is, onthe contrary, the case of what Benjamin callsÒdivine violence,Ó it is a language-destroying(sprach-zerstoerend) twisting of language inorder to enable a trans-symbolic real of a Truthto transpire in it.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×This paper was originally presented at the conference "OneDivides Into Two: Negativity, Dialectics, and Clinamen," heldat the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin in March 2011.

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Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and culturalcritic working in the traditions of Hegelianism,Marxismand Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has madecontributions to political theory, film theory andtheoretical psychoanalysis. Žižek is a seniorresearcher at the Institute of Sociology, University ofLjubljana, Slovenia, and a professor at the EuropeanGraduate School. He has been a visiting professor at,among others, the University of Chicago, ColumbiaUniversity, London Consortium, Princeton University,New York University, The New School, the University of

Minnesota, the University of California, Irvine and theUniversity of Michigan. He is currently theInternational Director of the Birkbeck Institute for theHumanities at Birkbeck, University of London andpresident of the Society for TheoreticalPsychoanalysis, Ljubljana.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1See Alexandre Koyre, ÒHegel aIena,ÓÊEtudes dÕhistoire de la

pensee philosophique, (Paris:Gallimard, 1971).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2I rely here on CatherineMalabou,ÊLa Chambre dumilieu,Êde Hegel aux neurosciences, (Paris: Hermann,2009).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3

MartinHeidegger,ÊGesamtausgabe, vol68, ÒHegel,Ó (Frankfurt: VittorioKlostermann 1993), 37.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4Ibid, 103. See generally MartinHeidegger,ÊHegelÕsPhenomenology of Spirit, trans.Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly(Indianapolis: Indiana UniversityPress, 1988).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5Jacques Lacan,ÊSeminar III: ThePsychoses, ed. Jacques AlainMiller (New York: W. Norton,1997),222.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7Sean Martin,Ê Andrei Tarkovsky ,(Harpenden: Pocket Essentials,2005), 49.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8Ibid, 135.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9Jacques Lacan,ÊLe desir et soninterpretation (unpublishedseminar), 20 May 1959.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10See Giorgio Agamben,ÊHomoSacer: Sovereign Power and Bare

Life, trans.Daniel Heller-Roazen(Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1998).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, ÒDelÕethique: a propos dÕAntigone,Óin Lacan avec les philosophes,(Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), 28.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ12See Francois Balmes,ÊCe queLacan dit de lÕetre, (Paris: PUF,1999),73

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ13Jacques Lacan,ÊLÕobjet de la

psychanalyse (unpublished

seminar), 8 June 1966.ÊÊÊÊÊÊ14See Alenka Zupančič,ÊRealno innjegovo nemozno (The Real andits Impossible), unpublishedmanuscript.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ15Here we can also establish thelink with MeillassouxÕs design ofspeculative materialism: thescientific mathematized Real isoutside the transcendentalcorrelation of logos and being.See Quentin Meillassoux,Ê After Finitude, London: ContinuumBooks 2008.

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