1========

'The truth is out there'

a couple of years ago, the disclosure of Michael Jackson's alleged

'immoral' behaviour sexual games with boys) dealt
a blow to his innocent Peter Pan elevated sexual and
racial differences (or concerns), some penetrating commentators asked
the obvious What's all the fuss about? Wasn't this so-called 'dark
side of Michael here for all of us to see, in the video
that his musical which were saturated with ritual-
ized violence obscene sexualized (blatantly so in the case of
Thriller and ? The Unconscious is not hidden in any
the X Files motto: 'The truth is out
there'
Such a focusing on material proves very fruitful in the
analysis of how fantasy relates to the inherent of an ideologi-
edifice. Do not the two architectural del Fascia
local headauarters of the Fascist , Adolfo neo-
(1928) and highly modernist
transparent glasshouse (1934-36) their
inherent contradiction of the ideological which
SiIlllultaneously advocates a return to organicist co rporausm
the unheard-of mo bilization of social forces in the service of
modernization? An even better is the
buudmgs in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, which
multistorey office a gigantic statue of the weanzeu
or a couole: in the span of a couple of years, the tendency
for u •

became clearly discernible, so that it changed mcreasmgty

pedestal for the statue - does not
material feature of architectural reveal the 'truth'
in which are reduced to
 THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

id,~oJOg;lC;ll monster
which crushes actual men under his feet? The
paradox is that had anyone in the Soviet Union of the 1930s said
that the vision of the Socialist New Man was an monster
squashing actual would have been arrested It
was, allowed even - to make
is out there',
also

of , and articulate its inherent antagonism

its material existence.
This which materializes is also occluded
. That is to say: in everyday ideology is at work m
apparently innocent reference to pure - one should never
the functions as
notion; that it always involves the assertion of as meaning
example, a man who lives in a city and owns a Land Rover does not
simply lead a no-nonsense, 'down-to-earth' rather, he owns such a
car in order to signal that he leads his life under the of a no-
nonsense, 'down-to-earth' . The master of such
analysis, of course, was Claude Levi-Strauss, semiotic of
preparing food how food also serves
as 'food for all remember the scene from Buriuels
Phantom of in which relations between and are
inverted: sit on their lavatories around the
talking, and when want to eat, ask the
'Where is that .. , you know?' and sneak away to a small room in
the back. as a to Levi-Strauss, one is to propose
that shit can also serve as a matiere-d-penser: do not the three basic of
lavatorv form a kind of excremental to the Levi-
Straussian triangle of cooking?
In a traditional German lavatory, the hole in which shit after
we flush water is way in so that the shit is first laid out for us to sniff
at and for traces of some illness; in the French on
the the hole is in the back - that the shit is to
disappear as soon as possible; the Anglo-Saxon or
hv,,,t()r\! presents a kind of a mediation between
these two opposed poles - the basin is full of water, so that the shit floats
it - visible, but not to be inspected, No wonder that in the
famous discussion of different lavatories at the of

4
 InE ;,r..VE1"'J Vr..1L~ U~ l'AN !·A~Y

her Fear of Flying, mockingly claims: 'German toilets are

really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich, People who can build
toilets like this are capable of anything,' It is clear that none of these
versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: a certain
ideological perception of how the subject should relate to the unpleasant
excrement which comes from within our body is clearly discernible -
again, for the third time, 'the truth is out there',
was among the first to the geographical triad
Germany-France-England as expressing three different existential atti-
tudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness,
English moderate utilitarian pragmatism; in terms of political stance, this
triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radical-
ism and English moderate liberalism; in terms of the predominance of
of the spheres of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry
French politics and English economy. The reference to lavatories
enables us not to discern the same triad in the most intimate domain
the excremental function, but also to generate the
mechanism of this triad in the three different attitudes
excremental excess: contemplative fascination; the
rid of the excess as fast as possible; the
to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be
of in an appropriate way. So it is easy for an academic to claim
round table that we live in a post-ideological universe - the moment
the restroom after the heated discussion, U'o. 'Y "e,"A" kln~,~-(1eeo
The ideological investment of such references to
dialogical character: the lavatory acquires its
through its differential relation to French and German
la:V'al()ries. We have such a multitude of the types because there is
traumatic excess which each of them tries to accommodate - according
one of the features which distinguishes man from the animals
Preciselv that with humans the disposal of shit becomes a problem
goes for the different ways in which one washes dishes: in
enmark. for example, a detailed set of features opposes the way dishes
to the way they do it in Sweden, and a close analysis soon
this opposition is used to index the fundamental perception
national which is defined in opposition to
And - to reach an even more intimate domain - do
r(;()unter the same semiotic in the three

attitude of natural
'lplinary 'procedure of a French shaves the
to the legs, so that all that remains is a narrow
a clear-cut shave line), in the mmk attitude. the

5
 THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

I""n?;!h! attached
clitoris). Is this another version of the Levi-Straussian semiotic
triangle of wen-kent 'baked' hair and shaved 'boiled' hair?
One can see most intimate attitude towards one's is
used to ideological statement." So how does this material
to our conscious convictions? of

He himself so well into the role of a hypocrite that he played it, as it

sincerely. This way and only this way he becomes funny. Without this
purely material sincerity, without the attitude and speech which, through the
long practice of hypocrisy, became for him a natural way to act, Tartuffe would
be simply repulsive."

Bergson's expression of 'purely material sincerity' dovetails with

the Althusserian notion of State - of the external
materializes ideology: the subject who maintains his distance
towards the ritual is unaware of the
you
as if you and belief will come
'commodity fetishism' is about: in his a is
a common-sense nominalist, but the of his
deeds the 'theological whimsies' of commodity universe."
This material of the external ideological not the
of the inner convictions and desires, is the true locus of
the which sustains an ideological edifice.
The standard notion of the way fantasy works within ideology is that of
a fantasy-scenario which obfuscates the true horror of a situation: instead
of a full of the antagonisms which traverse our society, we
indulge in the notion of society as an organic Whole, together
forces of solidarity and co-operation .... Here also, however, it is much
more productive to look for this notion of fantasy where one would not
to find it: in marginal and, again, purely utilitarian
situations. Let us simply recall the safety instructions prior to the takeoff
of an aeroplane - are they not sustained by a phantasmic scenario of how
a possible plane crash will look? After a gentle landing on water
(miraculously, it is always supposed to happen on waterl ), each of the
passengers puts on the life-jacket and, as on a beach toboggan, slides into
water and takes a swim, like a nice collective
experience under the guidance of an experienced swimming instructor.
this 'gentrifYing' of a catastrophe (a nice soft landing, stewardesses

6
In cance-nke style zraciousrv nomnnz towards the

rather obvious
between and the honor of the
much more ambiguous than it may seem: fantasy conceals
at the same time it what it purports to conceal,
of reference not the images of the ultimate
from 'the gigantic squid to the ravaging
creations par excellence?) 5 Furthermore. one should
with a whole series of features,"

1: transcendental schematism

to note is that does not realize a desire in a

way: its function is similar to that of Kantian
'transcendental schematism ': a constitutes our its
that is, it 'teaches us how to desire'. The role of
f.,nh<u is thus in a way to that of the ill-fated in
philosophy, this mediator between res cogitans and res extensa:
between the formal symbolic structure and the positivity
in - that is to say,
to which certain objects in
function as of filling in the
symbolic structure. To it in somewhat terms:
mean that when I desire a cake and cannot get it in
fantasize about it; the rather: how do I know
a strawberry cake in the first place? This is what tells me.
of on the fact that 'there is no sexual relation-
universal'formula or matrix a harmonious sexual
one's because of the lack of this universal
has to invent a of his or her own. a
the sexual - for a man, the
possible only inasmuch as she fits his formula.
Slovene feminists reacted with a great
for sun
 THE PLAGUE OF FANTAS ES

her specific catalyst,

point: regarding fundamental would be lH,il t~d,-H subject,
female or possesses such a 'factor' which regulates
'a woman, viewed from on her hands
Man's a statue-like woman without hair was Ruskin's
and about our awareness of this 'factor':

2: Intersubjectivity

The second feature concerns the of

raruasv. The critical and abandonment of term iintersub-
jectivitv in late Lacan (in clear contrast to his earlier insistence that the
proper domain of psychoanalytic is neither nor
objective, but that of does not in any involve
abandonment of the notion that the relation to Other
and the latter's desire is crucial to the subject's very rdenuty
one should claim that Lacan 's abandonment of 'intersubjectivity' is
correlative to the focusing of attention on the of the
impenetrable Other's desire (' eke ouoil'], the late Lacan does
should be opposed to
motifs of the for of connection
between of desire and desire for recognition, as well as to
middle Lacans 'structuralist' motif of the Other as the anonymous
svmbolic structure.
IJpl'h~ln~ the easiest way to discern these shifts is focusing on the
changed status of the object. In Lacan, the IS depreciated as to
its inherent it counts only as a stake in the
struggles for recognition and love (the milk demanded a child from
the mother is reduced to a 'sign of love', that is, the demand for milk
effectively aims at the mother to display her love for the
[ealous subject demands from his parents a certain this toy becomes
of his because he is aware that it is also coveted his
. In late on the contrary, the focus shifts to the
subject itself 'is', to the agalma, secret treasure, which gU.arantel::s
minimum of to the subject's That is to
a, as the object of fantasy, is that
on account of which I
desire' .
should bear in mind that the desire 'realized' In

8
 ..Il....Il....Il..L J.l.:.V.ll.;..l'll VL.LL0 VE J:'1"1.1"'ll.l1"1..:JI

tanrasv is not the subject's own, but the other's desire: fantasy, phantasmic
10 rma tLOIl , is an answer to the enigma of' Che vuoi?' - 'You're saying this,
but what do you really mean by saying it?' - which established the subject's
primordial, constitutive The question of desire is not
'What do I want?', but 'What do others want from me? What do
see in me? What am I to others?' A small child is embedded in a
complex network of relations; he serves as a kind of catalyst and battlefield
for the desires of those around him: his mother, brothers and
and so on, fight their battles around the mother sending a
message to the father her care for the son. While he is well aware
this the child cannot fathom what object, precisely, he is to others,
the exact nature of the games they are playing with him is, and
fantasv provides an answer to this enigma: a!i!smmt..flculdaml:ntal,-[<l:1l1:as:y)
IIII';;.);IIlI;d).,,L.,aclcll.W."JJJLYJ1U=IS. It is again anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitic
paranoia, which reveals this radically intersubjective character of fantasy in
way: fantasy (the social fantasy of the Jewish plot) is an
attempt to an answer to 'What does society want from me?', to
the meaning of the events in which I am forced to
participate. For that reason, the standard theory of 'projection', accord-
to which the anti-Semite 'projects' on to the figure of the the
disavowed part is not sufficient: the of the 'conceptual
cannot be the externalization (anti-Semite's) 'inner
conthct'; on the it bears witness to tries to cope the
I am originally part of an opaque network whose
m(~arlingand logic elude my control.
radical of
cases, like that (reported of his little daughter
about a cake - what we have here is no
case of the direct hallucinatory satisfaction of a desire
wanted a cake, she didn't get it, so she fantasized about it ... ). That
one should introduce here is the dimension of
the crucial feature is that while she was voraciously
cake, the little girl noticed how her parents were
this spectacle, by seeing her fully enjoying it - so what
fanrasv of eating a strawberry cake is really about is her attempt
(of the one who a cake
would parents, make

here
reduced to a token which is
as the in which my own and
the object is that
subject itself', that which I fantasize

9
 THE PLAGUE OF FANTAS ES

sees So no
serves as the mediator between my desire and the Other's
it is the Other's desire itself which serves as the mediator between the
that the 'is', -
phantasmic identity to the subject. And one can also see
[antasme consists: in an of the fact that

0pposluon between Lacan and

Habermas insists on the difference between the
object relationship and intersubjectivity proper: in the the other
subject is precisely not one of the objects in my field of but
the partner in a dialogue, the interaction with whom, within a concrete
lite-world, forms the irreducible background of my of
represses thereby, however, is simply and the intersection
of these two relations - the level at which another subject is not yet the
partner in intersubjective symbolic communication
but remains an object, a Thing, that which makes a 'rieighbour'
repulsive presence - this other qua the object which gives to an
unbearable excess of jouissance is the proper 'object of psychoanalysis'.
Lacan's is thus that intersubjectivity is not the ultimate
horizon behind which one cannot reach: what precedes it is not a
'monadic' subjectivity, but a pre-symbolic relation to an
Other which is the real the Other as not the Other
located within the field of intersubjectivity.

3: The narrative occlusion of antagonism

third point: fantasy is the primordial form of narrative, which serves to

occult some original deadlock. The sociopolitical fantasy par excellence, of
course, is the myth of 'primordial accumulation': the narrative of the two
workers, one lazy and free-spending, the other diligent and enterprising,
accumulating and investing, which provides the myth of the 'origins of
capitalism', obfuscating the violence of its actual genealogy. Notwithstand-
ing his emphasis on symbolization and/or historicization in the 1950s,
Lacan is thus radically anti-narrativist: the ultimate aim of psychoanalytic
treatment is not for the analysand to organize his confused life-experience
into (another) coherent .narrative, with all the traumas properly inte-
grated, and so on. It is not only that some narratives are 'false', based
the exclusion of traumatic events and patching up the gaps left
exclusions - Lacans thesis is much stronger: the answer to the
question 'Wlry do we tell stories?' is that narrative as such emerges in order

10
to resolve some fundamental antagonism
It is thus
witness to some The
tive the temporal
dllCdUY given what it purports to reproduce

narrative of accumulation' effectively explains notnmg,

it presupposes a worker like a full-blown capitalist)
us elaborate on this gesture of the narrative resolution of antagon-
apropos of the splitting of the domain of law into the neutral
Law and its obscene superego The with the
definition of 'totalitarianism' as the of the neutral Law,
that the entire domain of law is 'stained' the obscene superego," is
we are to conceive the prior - that where was the superego
before the advent of 'totalitarianism'? Two opposed narratives
sUJ:;glestthemselves here:
The narrative according to with the advent of the
rooted in concrete traditional and as such still per-
[ouissance of a of life', gets into the neutral
~Y'l1U'VH,', Law and its superego of obscene unwritten rules: it
with the advent of that the neutral iudicial order of
.aw delivered of substantial jouissance emerges,
counter-narrative accordinz to
modernitv, the rule of the Law is replaced
disciplinary practices Modernity involves the 'crisis of investi-
111<lUIJlllY of subjects to assume mandates: what prevents
svmbolic identification is the of
of in the big Other of the the of the
of law as permeated with obscene the
Iiscipliriary exercise of power which supplants the pure Law is
stained with superego enjoyment fact that Schreber
the vision of the obscene God who wanted to use him as
feminine in the act of is thus strictly correlative to
he was the victim of a proto-Foucauldian disciplinary
two narratives are, in their crucial
exclusive: according to the first one, the neutral Law, delivered
emerged with while according
the 'crisis of investiture

of these
~ of
deadlock which resides in fact
eniovment at the very moment of its eme1gence

1
 THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

The emergence of a pure free of

its organic' life-world birth obscene
superego since this very life-world once opposed to
the pure is all ofa sudden as obscene.!?
It is easy to discern this same in the standard New
of Descartes: Descartes is accused of however
Cartesian:mbiiectivity (as correlative to
not decentre
insignificant creature on a small In other what one
bear in mind is how the Cartesian de-substantialization of
subject, its reduction to $, to the pure void of self-relating negativity,
correlative to the opposite reduction of man to a grain of dust
in the of the to one among the endless in it:
these are the two sides of the same process. In this nrpr,op s~~~~;~'i~~~;~£G~
is that is, he dissolves s;

abasement of its material

accused of bias (the unmistakable
male features of cogito), does not his formulation of cogito as
as no sex' mark the first break
sexualized Descartes is also of conceivmz
as the owner of natural so that animals
~<:::ll<:::l<U are reduced to mere available be with no
protection, However, is it not true that when we confer upon them
the status of property do natural for the first
protected (as a property can
In all these cases, Descartes set up the very standard try means
of which one measures and rejects his positive doctrine on behalf of a post-Cartesian
'holistic' approach. Narrativization is thus misrepresentational in both its
versions: in the guise of the story of the progress from the to
the more cultivated form (from primitive fetishistic superstition
to the monotheistic or, in the case of Descartes, from
primitive sexualized ontology to neutral modern thought), as well as in
the of the story of historical evolution as regression or Fall in
the case of from with nature to the exploitative
attitude towards it; from the of
woman and man to the Cartesian identification of woman with the
'natural', - both versions obfuscate the absolute synchronicity of the
antagonism In question.
paradox to be

12
 mediatization of immediacy, is the most
version of such a was,
the first to the formulation of this absolute
svnchronicitv - as he it, the immediate object lost in reflection
to be through left behind' . ll) The conclusion to be drawn from
of course, is not that 'there is no ''''''". v .
evervrbinrr was from the very outset', but that the historical
does not follow the logic of narration: actual historical breaks
anything, more radical than mere narrative since what
in them is the entire constellation of emergence and loss. In
a true historical break does not the
loss 'progressive' gain) of in the
which enables us to measure losses and gains. l~
supreme of this coincidence of emergence
is the notion of history itself - is its
that is, which can be characterized as historicalr
pre-capitalist societies do not know L : • • • __ .
'circular', 'closed', in a
tradition - so must emerge aftenoards, with the
organic societies. On the other hand. the opposite
capitalism itself is no .er it is rootless,
its own, and therefore upon a
order which (like modem science) can thrive from
uprooting and slowly corroding all life-
specific traditions. So history is that which lost with
of with its ultimate worldwide triumph, signalling
11l()mleI1lt of the 'end of history' concept).
is that emergence and loss coincide: the
is only a moment, even if this moment is properly unending
for centuries - the moment of passage from pre-capitanst
capitalist universal order. 13

4: After the Fall

feature, the of the Fall. Contrarv

notion of fantasizing as an in the

13
 THE PLA E 0 FANTAS ES

narrative does the suspension-transgression but the

very act of its of the
castration

not escape us:

to violate all the rules
for the very rule of Law. 14
let us recall the interminable search for the
at which Gennan 'took the wrong turn' which
Nazism: delayed national unification, due the dismember-
ment of the Gennan after the Years the aestheticiza-
tion in the Romantic reaction to Kant
and ; the 'crisis of investiture' and the
Bismarckian state socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century;
up to the report of the German tribes' to Romans
allegedly, already displayed the features of .... 15 Similar
examples abound: eX2lCUy, for example,
coincide with the repression and of nature? The tenets of eco-
feminism a multitude of determinations of
phantasmic moment of the Fall: the of nineteenth- century
Western modern Cartesian science, with its atti-
tude towards nature; the noxious influence of the Greek rationalist Socra-
tic the emergence of great barbarian up to the
passage from nomadic to civilization .... And
Miller out - is not Foucault himself also in the same
in his search for the moment when the Western order of
sexuality emerged? He regresses further and further back from modcrnitv,
until he sets the limit where the ethic of the 'care of the
Self into the Christian ethic of confession: the fact that the
tone of Foucault's last two books on ethics differs completely
from his earlier into the of power, and
instead of his usual of the material of
ideology, we get a rather standard version of the of ideas' - bears
w"rn,>~, to the fact that Foucault's Greece and Rome 'before the Fall'

14
 Ag:aUlst this It IS to elaborate a
Fall via a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost.t" Its first feature is
structural reasons, the Fall has never occurred in the - Adam
not, speaking, he finds that he has decided. Adam
his choice rather than makes it"? is it like this? If the
choice of the were to in the it would
a1,r'eady presuppose what it gives birth to - the very freedom to choose:
.paradox of the Fall is that it is an act which opens up the very space
decision. How is this The second feature of the Fall is that it
from the choice to in order to retain the erotic rapture of
the lies in the fact that 'because he
he disobeyed in order to .18 Here we once
structure of castration: when Adam chooses to fall in order to retain
what he loses is jouissance - do we not
here the reversal of the structure of the 'states which are
Adam loses X it, to
... That is to say: is castration? It is the
1"QJh.it~iti,on of incest in the sense of the loss of which
subi<:ct never possessed in the first Let us a situation
aims at X a series of pleasurable experiences
f3/;tr:3.ti,:m does not consist in him of any of
to the series a nonexistent
the accessible appear all of
satisfying. One can see here how the
as the very of castration: the very signifier of
signifier which forbids the subiect access to X. gives rise to

also enables us to define Paradise as the libidinal

paradox of the 'states which are
the impossible coincidence of
The assertion of some ~
~ that there was sex in that Adam and
o!:lulat<:, that their than ours the
sex after the , the and crucial difference
copulating, maintained proper measure and
lost self-control - this assertion reveals
t'araciis,~: it was the of That is to say:
u.rg:Lurlerlta,1 paradox of rx-rve rsio n
~(ll:es~;fully avoids
the sadomasochistic the scene in which
'remains in control' at all times, maintains a distance,
but his is none
that of immediate immersion.
 THE PLAGUE OF

did sexual assume

of homosexual the man
must open himself up passivelv;
in which 'closure', resistance to penetration,
(one knows that the of fist-fucking
physical: the difficulty

of this oneself up to the

whose organ enters my and explores it from
the other crucial feature is that this organ, precisely, is not the phallus
in 'normal' anal intercourse) but the fist (hand), the organ par
excellence not of spontaneous but of instrumental of work
and (No wonder in its almost
overlaps with the way a doctor examines the rectum for prostate CduceL
In this sense, fist-fucking is Edenic; it is the closest we can get to
what sex was like before the Fall: what enters me is not the but
object, a hand to hands around as
in the surrealistic in some of Buriuel's - we
are back in a Edenic state in
of some sex was
instrumental dU-1VIlY,

5: The impossible gaze

The fifth feature: on account of its the

involves an impossible gaze, the gaze means of which
the is at the act of own An
exemplary case of this vicious in the service of ideology is an anti-
abortion written in the 1980s a right-wing Slovene nationalist
The tale is set on an South Sea island where aborted children
live without their although their life is nice and
miss love and their time in sad reflection on how it
is that their a career or a luxurious holiday to them-
selves , , , , The of course, lies in the fact that the aborted children
are as having been born, born into an alternative universe
lone Pacific island), memory of who 'betraved
them - in this way can direct at their parents a gaze
which makes them ]9

16
 head of the UNPROFOR forces in and his ~peLldl
of SAS operatives, definitely had a 'hidden agenda' in Bosnia: under
of a truce between the so-called
t;a(~tl,::ms', their secret task was also to the blame on the Croats, and
the Muslims (soon after the fall of for example,
operatives suddenly 'discovered', in northern some Serb
allegedly slaughtered by the their to 'mediate'
between Muslims and Croats inflamed the conflict between
these diversions were intended to create the of the
conflict as a kind of 'tribal warfare', a civil war of everybody
everybody else in which 'all sides are to blame', Instead of
condemnation of the Serb aggression, this was destined
prepare the terrain for an international effort of which
'reconcile the factions' From a sovereign state, the victim
aggn:ssiOll, Bosnia was transformed into a chaotic in
warlords' acted out their historical traumas at the
of innocent women and children" , , in the back-
of course, is the to which peace
if we do not 'demonize' one side in the conflict:
pq'us:ibility is to be with the West assuminz the role
neutraljudgq elevated above local tribal conflicts,
for analysis is that General Rose's 'secret
:c__ t.r -,-,,- not to the relations between
to prepare the for a different narrative
of the situation: 'real' itself was here in the
rdeological narrativization.i" the event
as a kind of point de capitan in the held
the Bosnian war hitherto and about
as a 'humanitarian catastrophe', was
Mitterrand's visit to Sarajevo in the summer of 1992. One is even
that General Rose was sent to Bosnia in order to
vision of the conflict on the That is to say:
the of the Bosnian
a political one: in dealing with Serb aggression, the
aggression of ex-Yugoslavia an state;
1\!ljltt~:rr;'Ulld the accent shifted towards a humanitarian
savage tribal war is going on, and the
do is to exert its influence to assuage
'-"+","""1-' the innocent victims food
his display of towards the
oarajevo, Mitterrand's visit dealt the crucial blow to Bosnian
as the factor of neutralization in
of the conflict. Or - as vice-president of
 E GUE ES

to receive Mitterrand, hOFnng

the West. }\.II of a that we are lost.'
the IS observer fnr ",h"",
the of 'tribal warfare in the Balkans' was has the same
gaze of the aborted children born

also
impossible neutral gaze of someone who himself from his
concrete historical existence - that from actual involvement in the
Bosnian conflict.
The same operation is discernible in the abundant media reports
on activities of Mother Teresa in which
on screen of the Third World. Calcutta is
presented as a Hell on the case of the decaving Third
World full of social violence and corruption,
with its residents in terminal facts are, of course,
rather different: Calcutta is a much
more than with a successful local Communist govern-
ment a whole network of social . Into this of
utter Mother Teresa of to the with the
message that is to be as a way to since the
poor, their sad fate with
Christ's of the Cross .... The ideoiogrcar benefit
double: in so far as she to the poor ill that
should seek salvation in their very Mother Teresa deters them
probina into the causes of their - from their
situation; at the same she offers the rich from the the chance
of a kind of financial contributions to
her charitable all this works the of the
of the Third World as Hell so
desolate that no political dLlllVllY,
alleviate the 21

6: The inherent transgression

In order to be has to remain it has to

maintain a distance towards the explicit. symbolic texture it,
and to function as its inherent This constitutive gap
between the texture and its phantasmic background is
in any work of art. to the of over the
element which fills it up, even the most harmonious work of art is a

18
tr2lgrnentu)', ,ac,,,,,u,, in to its the 'trick' of an artistic success
in the artist's to tum this lack into an advantage
the central void and its resonance in the elements that
encircle it. One can account in this way for the of the Venus de
the statue's mutilation is no as a
on the as a constituent of its aesthetic
A simple mental confirms this if we
imagme the statue the nineteenth century,
historians were it; in different 'recon-
structions', the hand holds a spear, a even a mirror .. ),
effect is that of the proper aesthetic IS
is significant in these 'reconstructions' is their very multiplicity:
destined to fill the void is a as
A typically counterpart to this nineteenth-
centurv kitsch is provided attempts to fill the void around which
canonical work is structured; the effect is that of
Take Heathcliff, a recent novel that deals with the
Wurtht7ing Heights: what was Heathcliff between his
and his return as a rich man
successful is the
short story of the same
faithfully follows the story;
attempt to reconstruct
the 'Swede' to

father-daughter incest, with

as well as, of course, the

to Wharton's entire
"No" of the Mother'
. In Wharton's
of prohibition,
 THE PLAGUE OF FANTAS ES

case,
Edith is not 'innocent': she in incest at the level of fantasv.
Such an fails to that there is more truth in
the artist's removal from than in its direct rendering:
melodrama and kitsch are much closer to than 'true art'. In other
to account for the distortion of original fantasy'

fact
fundamental impossibility case of Edith
of course, we are dealing with the phantasmic notion that
it with one's father would really be 'it', the realized sexual
Irelatiorlstiip the woman is for in vain in her with her
Ihllsb'andor other . The artifice of 'true art' is thus to manipulate
the of the underlying in such a way as to reveal the
radical of this fantasy.
Let us further illustrate this gap between an texture and its
""--.n,,rt with an from cinema. to its
misleading appearance, Robert Altman's MASH is a conformist
film for all their of jokes and sexual
escapades, the members of the MASH crew perform their job exemplarily,
and present absolutely no threat to the smooth of the
the cliche which MASH as an
anti-militarist the horrors the meaningless
slaughter which can be endured only a measure of
cynicism, practical jokes, laughing at pompous official and so on,
misses the - this very distance is ideology. This dimension of MASH
becomes even more the moment one compares it to two other
well-known films about An Officer and a Gentleman and Full
~'~'''-''f-'''''' MASH and An Officer exhibit the two versions of the perfectly
functioning military subject: identification with the machine is
either ironic in and
sexual ,or the awareness that behind the cruel
drill-sergeant there is a 'warm human ,a father-substitute
An Officer and a Gentleman), in strict analogy
profoundly anti-feminist - of a hooker who, in her
longs to be a good mother. Full Metal Jacket, on the other
successfully resists this to 'humanize' the drill
sergeant or other members of the crew, and thus lays on the table the
cards of the machine: the distance from it, far from
signalling the limitation of the functions as its
positive condition of possibility. What we in the first of the film is
the military the direct saturated with the unique
blend of a sexualization and obscene

20
 InK'.. 0.c.. V Ll'( V.J..:.,.JI..IL<U ~~~~_

blasphemy (at the soldiers are ordered to

, , ") - in short, the superego machine of Power at its
of the film ends with a soldier on account of his
overidentification with the 'runs amok' and
the drill sergeant, then the unmediated
identification with the phantasmic superego machine necessarily leads to
murderous passage ti l'acte. The second, main of the film ends with
in which a soldier the
a kind of ironic 'human distance' towards the
his helmet. the 'Born to kill' is accompanied
it looks as if he has out of
He is the one in whom
succeeded; he is the

lesson is therefore clear: an identification exerts a true

on us when we maintain an awareness that we are not
to it, that there is a rich human person beneath it: 'not all is
beneath the I am also a human is the
of ideology, of its , Close of even the
edifice reveals not every-
popular sense of the
in every
since, if an ideology
individuals, it has to batten on
'trans-ideological: vision which cannot be
instrument of pretensions to power
sentiments of to a community,
a kind of 'authentic' vision discernible even in Nazism
deep which keeps the of
to mention Stalinism? The point is thus not that there is
without a 'authentic' kernel but that
reference to such a trans-ideological kernel which makes an ideology

speeches to the Nazi crowd in Nuremberg, Hitler made a

=ier~Ilti;ll remark about how this very reunion is to be an
observer, unable to the 'inner greatness'
see the of external
us, members of the movement who
}!11iriiiteJly more: of the inner
encounter the reference to the lI.CHH:::L

favourite Wazner opera was neither the

LOft~11f!:rm, with its call to arms to defend Germ,any against
with its tendencv leave behind the
 E

oneself
'aesthetic suspension
the very core of
in it was 'something

suspension of the political throuzh

extra-ideological "'-'--'U'--<, much stronger than m a 'normal' democratic
Therem, perhaps.vesides the problem .. .I __ ._._. . Butler's
H __

... does politicization need to overcome dis identification? What are the
of dis identification, this of misrecognition,
this uneasy sense of standing under a sign to which one does and does not
belong?24

Is not IDe attitude of the heroes of MASH, that of an

active Of course, one can argue that this disidentificatiori
1S different from the lesbian imitation-
subversion of feminine codes - none the the remains that the
difference is one between the two modes of not between
identification and its subversion. For that reason, an edifice
can be undermined a too-literal which 1S its
successful a minimal distance from its rules.
case of such a
.laJ:oslav Hasek's The Good Soldier whose
hero total havoc the orders
an overzealous and all-too-literal The inevitable
drawn from this is that the feature which
the famous Freudian-Lacanian
feature, is not IDe obvious one, the 'official'
feature, even the one of a distance from the official
When a lesbian IDe standard feminine
does she not at a assert her 'true' queer
identitv, which such an attitude? A
different of the same the 'leader
with his down': the of the group is the
subjects common disavowal of the misfortune that laid bare the Leaded'S
more

professor become
addicted a kleptomaniac, a

22
 Jr-!.t'... ,::H.~.. VC1'\j .t'....lL0 vr .r'.f\.1'J 11'\0

masochist he has stolen a line of from

student, etc., etc.), this very of the flaw - with the
willingness to disavow this knowledge - is the true feature of identification
the group together.. . of course, is that the
fascinated by the charismatic of a Leader is the
of a kind of he (rnisjperceives the 'because
of': in his subjective he adores the Leader in
of the mark of his not because of
Duelists, Scott's directorial debut (based on a
Heinrich the combat between two
uoner-class nobleman and an officer
them forever apart is the difference
to the code of honour: the
dogg,~dJy follows this code for that very
a of awkward his counter-
nobleman, constantly violates the rules of the official
and asserts his true The of the
lower middle classes is that the true cause of
think are some hidden
feel compelled to follow all the rules even more
is that the X which accounts
be down to a
Illlbolic feature. Here we again encounter the objet petit a: when we are
two series of behaviour which cannot be any
defined positive yet the difference between the
unmistakable difference between true and its
imitation, that unfathomable the je ne sais quai which accounts
_ _ - in short, the which makes the difference where one
establish any positive difference - this is the objet petit a
eunfathomable object-cause of desire.
Clinton administration resolved the deadlock of gays in the
the 'Don't don't tell!' soldiers are
asked if are gay, so are also not compelled to lie
although are not allowed in the
in so far as they their sexual orientation pnvate,
endeavour to engage others in this
was criticized for the homophobic
towards homosexuality: attnouzn the direct prohibition
to its very
gays to remain in the closet affects their actual
what this solution amounted to was an explicit elevation
vpc?qisy into a social like the attitude towards prostitution
el;t1tHm:al Cathouc coun tries - if we that gays
 IES

are

rn"rF'rn',no- their identity.

is its own
work in this criticism, with its Foucauldian background of Power
the very act of and other forms of generates the
less seems to
short at a crucial what it misses is the way in which not
affects the status of the or subversive force that the power
discourse endeavours to dominate at an even more radical
the power discourse itself from within. One should ask a but
nevertheless crucial here: does the so
.strongly resist publicly gays into its ranks? There is only one
possible consistent answer: not because poses a threat to
the and libidinal economy of the
on the because the libidinal economy of the
community itself relies on a thwarted/disavowed homosexuality as
the of the soldiers' male bonding.
From my own I remember how the old infamous Yugoslav
was to the extreme someone was
discovered to have homosexual he was turned into
I-'dH~lll, treated as a non-person, before being dismissed from
, yet at the same army life was excessively
with the of innuendo. while
soldiers were in line for their a common was
to stick a into the ass of the person ahead of you and then to
withdraw it so that when the person turned he
did not know who among the soldiers sharing a obscene smile
behind his back did it. A form of greeting a fellow soldier
in my unit, instead of simply saying 'Hello!', was to say 'Smoke my prick!'
kuracl , in ; this formula was so standardized that it
completely lost any obscene connotation and was in a totally
neutral way, as a pure act of politeness,
References to (sometimes surpris-
complex) soldiers' upon the
sleeping I witnessed a strange scene: three soldiers were holding
another soldier's head on a while a fourth soldier, using his
half-erect penis as a was beating the forehead of the soldier whose
head was fixed on the pillow. The of this strange ritualistic
involves a series of references and
of Freud's famous case of the forgetting of the name ',ien,f,rE'11l
the common term for testicles is not 'balls' but 'eggs'
squeeze your eggs!', not balls') . the term for

24
 1tl1'.:>1'. 1'.1'1 V1'.lL:> U~ ~AN 1A:>1I

. These two
riddle-

coexistence of

not
. self-censoring mechanism in conservative
its sexist and racist bias? Recall the election campaigns
which the racist and sexist message is not publicly
the it is sometimes even , but
inarticulated 'between the lines', in a series of double-entendres
allusions. The is that this kind of self-censorship
admitting one's own fundamental message) is necessary if, in the
Id,eoloJ2;lc:al conditions, Helms's discourse is to remain operative:
to articulate its racist bias in a way, this would
in the eyes of the discursive
effectively to abandon the self-censored coded racist
would the of its targeted electoral
sel"V'Jtivp discourse is therefore an excellent example
rnscourse whose on the mechanism of self-
relies on a mechanism which is operative

subversive discourse or practice 'censored' one is

tempted to claim that more than ever, the mechanism of
intervenes oredominantlv to enhance the efficiencv of the
<iis,coulrse itself.
 temptation to be avoided
us to deal 'with the enemy who
, , . ) bias than "lith the hypocritical
one and

sociosymbolic posiuon of
rendered for the mainstream
this would laLllLClllY shift the balance of the entire Idt,010g1G11 hegemony.
This is what Alain Badiou had in mind when" he
designated his work a search for the terror', in the face of
the emergence of new racism and sexism, the should be to make
such enunciations unutterable, so that anyone on them automatically
r-li cr-rr o i i f-is> c himself
i in our universe, those who refer approvingly
Fascism). One should not discuss 'how many
died in Auschwitz', what are 'the o f , 'the necessity
of down on workers' collective , and so on; the
here should and' terrorist': this
matter democratic discussion' 26
are now in a to the distinction between the
Foucauldian interconnection between and and our
notion of 'inherent , Let matrix of the
possible relations between Law and its most elementary
is the relation of of in which
transgression IS to Power, and poses a threat to it.
The next step is to claim that on the obstacle it
violates: without Law there is no needs an
obstacle in order to assert itself of course, in Volume I of The
of both these versions, and asserts the absolute
immanence of resistance to Power. the of 'inherent
is not that resistance is immanent to Power, that
power and counter-power generate each is not that Power
itself the excess of resistance which it can no
it is also not that - in the case of - the
'repression' of a libidinal investment eroticizes this of repression
as in the case of the obsessional neurotic who derives libidinal
satisfaction from the very rituals destined to the trau-
matic at
This last must be further radicalized: the power edifice itself is
from within: in order to itself and contain its Other, it
has to on an inherent excess which in the
terms of Power is its own
if it is to it has to on a kind of obscene

26
 is therefore not to assert, in a Foucauldian way,
IS linked to it and
itself conditioned it: in a self-reflective way, the is
mirrored back into the power edifice it from
so that the of is consubstantial with the
of power. it is not to say that the
of some libidinal content eroticizes the very
of - this 'eroticization' of power is not a secondary
of its exertion on its but its very its
crime', its which has to remain invisible if
to function What we in the kind of drill
in the first of Full Metal for is not a
eroticization of the which creates
but the constitutive obscene of this pro-
which renders it Butler'" a
in his very formulation of the text of
the contours of a fantasv
engages m sadomasochistic sexual with
younger man, a child - which bears witness to his
sexual desire. Helms thus unwittingly the
. Iibidinal toundanon of his own crusade agamst pornozraphy

7: The

its support,
Brecht gave poignant
notably In

on him
of

to
to choose the impossible,
Brecht's case, the expedition turning
instead of rid of him throwinz him
sornethmg similar part of our evervdav n~()n";~
 THE PLAGUE s

of course, terriblv
to a
stars, his most

a promotion
the proper to do is to offer to so that
promotion, and the proper for him to do is to my offer - this
way, our can be saved .... What we have here is
.symbolic exchange at its made to be the
symbolic exchange, is that in the end we are back
beginning, the overall result of the is not
zero but a distinct for both the of Of course,
the is: what if the other to whom the offer to be is made
it? What if, upon beaten in the I
my friend's offer to the instead of A situation
like this is it causes the of the
semblance to social order - at
this seem to this of
the semblance the of the social substance the
dissolution of the social link.
The need for order
(materialized in the so-called unwritten thus bears witness the
vulnerability: the to allow for PV~~lUH1UC;~ of
choices must take since their
would cause the to and the function of the unwritten
rules is the actualization of these choices
allowed the In the Soviet Union of the 1930s 1940s - to
take the most extreme - it was not forbidden to criticize
it was even moreforbidden to announce this very trrohibition:
state publicly that it was forbidden to criticize Stalin. The
maintain the that one was allowed to criticize the
appearance that the absence of criticism fact that there was no
or movement, that the 99.99 per cent of the
votes at elections ... ), demonstrated that Stalin was the
and In terms, this appearance qua
appearance was essential.
Or - to it another way - the paradoxical
with to the
violate are
additional rules which restrain the

28
 THE SEVEN VEl LS OF ~'AN 'lAS Y

allowed for - even - the . When

llnivtTs,ll human were in the late eighteenth century,
universality, of course, concealed the fact that white
nropertv; however, this limitation was not it was
qualifications like all I

are rational and free', which then

Fanrasv which
how we are to understand the letter nftnp'l'''''Af
how in our era of universal
at the level of
universal ideological proclama-
sometimes, at least - the
~ the letter of Law on behalf of the
lel-IYIng; tantasies, but to stick to this letter which sustains
the act of the gesture offer to be
the forced choice as a true choice - is,
into what Lacan calls 'traversing
in this act, the
of unwritten rules which tell him how to choose
consequent es of this act are so catastrophic.
bear in mind the radical of
bl..,t?I~V works both ways, it simultaneously
span renders and sustains the structure of
cnoice, it tells us how we are to choose if we are to maintain
of choice - that is, it the gap between the formal
of choices and social the choice
ifin fact ruin the system)
the false opening, the idea that the excluded choice might
and does not actually take place only on account of
- as in Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the
try to dine but
an unforeseen incident misunderstand the date of
police burst searching the place for drugs, etc., etc.).
role of the phantasmic frame is to maintain the
that the three might have succeeded in having
and that what this from happening
of unfortunate circumstances - what is therebv
these intervene necess-
dinner is, as it were, the very tundamentat

Otherness is what sustains desire

- this non-acceptance of the ultimate
 THE GUE OF ES

closure, this
the corner. In my personal
ringing, to

I hear the voice

feature or content to

Bearmg in mind that our to desire involves

structure of the forced choice (of the symbolic gesl1.:lre
to be gap between the symbolic
the choice and the obscene
precludes it - that is, of the gap which the
space in which the subject dwells from the kernel of
being), one can the radical character of the
means of this the gap is the structure of the
forced choice is suspended, the closure of the
hysterical game of '1 offer you X to leave our com-
rnunitv), on condition that you it', which structures our belonging
to a community, is over. Once we move desire - that is to say,
beyond the which sustains desire -'I. we enter the domain
of drive: the domain of the which finds
satisfaction in endlessly gesture.

Drive's 'eternal. return of the same'

The Freudian drive is thus another name for the radical ontological closure.
Does not Nietzsche's famous 'Drunken from the Fourth Part of
Zarathustra (' The world is deep, / And deeper than the day could read. / Deep is
its woe - , / Joy deeper still than grief can be: / Woe says: Hence! Col/But joys
all want eternity , / - Want deep, profound express perfectly the
excessive pleasure-in-pain at which late Lacan aims in his rehabilitation
of drive? This Nietzschean is to be opposed to
death: it is the of drive against the finitude of desire. The 'Yes!'
of the 'eternal return of the same' thus aims at the same as Lacari's
'Encore , - Nietzsche himself says in the preceding paragraph
"
that 'the name of song/ is "Once more""), which is to be read (also)
as an evocation of the woman's 'More!' the sexual act
- it stands for more of the same, for the full acceptance of the itself as
inherent to the excess of pleasure which is [ouissance. The 'eternal return

30
 the same' thus no involves the Will to Power not in
standard sense of the it indexes the attitude of "rti"phl
the passive confrontation with objet petit a, the
intermediate role of the screen of In this sense, the
return of the same' stands for the moment when the
'tr2lvel-ses the fantasv'
According to the doxa, stands for the moment of closure: '''''he"
means of which the subject
enlglua of the desire - is .tr<lVer,;IIJ,1;

as It nus in the void of the Other's

sustains the (false) the notion that there is some radical
which makes our universe
the involves the acceptance of a radical
9IJ.tolo~;ic:al closure? The unbearable of the 'eternal return of the
- the Nietzsch ean name for the crucial dimension of drive - is the
closure this notion to endorse and assume the 'eternal
of the same' means that we renounce every every belief
messianic Otherness - here late Lacan with the 'deconstruc-
notion of with the Derrideari-Levinasian problematic
or dislocation ), with the notion of
not-vet-runv bntologically constituted. The is thus to
the radical closure of the 'eternal' drive to the involved
nrntudey ternporality of the desmng subject.
closure of of course, is not to be confused with the domain
animal crucial here is the basic and
discord between drive as eternal-'undead'
instinctual of the For that reason, as such
it stands for an unconditional whic:ih~"""~iGj~eiiai:a:s
needs of the and battens on it. It is as if
of the an organ, is torn out of its
and thus caught in an
~ around the void of its
impossibility. It is as if we are not fit to fit our bodies: drive
'undead' 'The Heart', a poem
Romantic France expresses the
of which is libido: years after a
for some
which remains full of red blood and continues
- this undead organ which follows
physical death stands for the it is drive
the cvcle of generation and corruption. One is
 THE PLAGUE OF IES

organ one of the arr nervnal

index the at which
repulsive horror?
problem with Nietzsche, perhaps,

another
located in we
the Other of
is not but another 'sublime'
materiality. !-,pd,-:>r,< modem art the most oertment case of this
other materiality.When modernist artists about the Spiritual
In pamtmg (Kandinsky) or in music (Schoenberz), the 'spiritual'
towards the 'spiritualization'
of Matter and as outside its reference
Meaning. Let us recall the 'massiveness' of the protracted stains which
in late Van or the water or grass in this
uncanny 'massiveness' neither to the direct of the
colour stains nor to the of the dwells in a
kind of intermediate domain of called
Korperlichkeii. From the Lacanian is easy to this
'spiritual cornorealitv' as materialized unussance, "[ouissance turned into
flesh' .30

drive

Desire emerges when drive gets in the cobweb

in the vicious in which must be refused,
reached on the inverted ladder of the Law of desire'
of castration'") - and of this primordialIoss,
it JW5,,~,'AM" Pf'OClCSS
this sense, is the Vel) screen that seiiarates it
tells the story which allows the to (mis) perceive the void around
which drive circulates as the loss constitutive of desire.
other a rationale for the inherent deadlock of
desire: we are of
is concentrated in the Other who stole it from us. anti-Semitic
ideologrcal L'Ul,.a~y, social IS explained away via the reference
to the as the secret who is social from us

32
 !.t1E ~J:..VE1"J VElL'::;' v!' r Arv r Ax r

seducing our women ... ) .32 In 'traversing the fantasy',

find jouissance in the vicious cycle of circulating around the void of the
object, the that jouissance has to be amassed
somewhere else.
the exemplary case of desire as a defence against
in contrast to the pervert who works incessantly to
to the the wants to be the object of
Other's not the of his enjoyment - she is well aware that
only way to remain desired is to postpone the satisfaction, the
of desire which would The fear
in so far as she is the object of the Other's eniovrnent. she is
to an instrument of the
the other hand, there is a true
an instrument of the of his jouissance/" In a
l1y:,tenc3.1 triangulation, while a wife can fully illicit sex her
lTJ.!essage to her lover is: if her husband learns of her affair and leaves her,
also have to him .... What we encounter here is the basic
neurotic of back from the other of the [ouissonce
taken from us: her she steals back from him
the he stole from her. That is to say: a
lleuroti,c has made the-sacrifice of [ouissance is why she is not a
pSJ{ctlOtlC), which enables to enter the symbolic
with the
somewhere in profiting from
- so her strategy
the Other's norms (from
l.1l<lstlul::!ating and cheating, up to speeding without getting a ticket).
the neurotic's basic notion is that the Other's authority
'Iegitimate : behind the of there is an obscene
!()uissance stolen from the neurotic (in the case of Dora, Freud's patient,
her as a old man instead of
'castrated' her - turned her into an of exchange and offered
K - in order to pursue his dirty affair with Mrs . What the
cannot stand is the idea that the Other is profiting from his
he the obsessional) is prepared to sacrifice evervthinz
conasuon that the Other does not profit from it, that he does not amass
lCl1h ced j ou issa nce, does not in his
the neurotic must be to stop
... ) his
to retribution from the Other.
of culpabilizing the also resides the limitation of 'postmod-
Id(~nlity politics, in which the deprived minority indulges
and seeking' retribution

33
 HE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES

dialecuc of as
amassing iouissance, and crumbs
of [ouissancc; these small awareness that he can also
manipulate the tolerated the Master, not to
present any threat to the Master in fact, constitute the 'libidinal
bribery' which maintains the servant's servitude. In the satisfaction
that is able to IS
servant s servitude
Although both the neurotic and the sacrifice
although neither of the two is a immersed in iouissance
- the economy of sacrifice is fundamentally different: a neurotic is
traumatized the other's [ouissance (an obsessional for
example, works like mad all the time to prevent the Other from enjoying- or,
as they say in pour que rien ne bouge pas dans - while a
pervert posits himself as the of the Other's iouissance;
he sacrifices his jouissance to jouissance in the Other. In psychoan-
alytic treatment, the obsessional is active all the tells stories, presents
symptoms, and so on, so that will remain the same, so that notrunz
change, so that the will remain immobile and will not
effectively intervene - what he is most afraid of is the moment of silence
which will reveal the utter of his incessant In an
intersubjective with an undercurrent of an
obsessional who detects this undercurrent talk to the
distraction of those around in order to the awkward "I,pnrp
m conflict
thus the intermediate
perversion, between and neurosis, between the psy-
chotic's foreclosure of the Law and the neurotic's into the
Law. According to the standard view, the perverse attitude as the staging
of the 'disavowal of castration' can be seen as a defence against the motif
'death and , against the threat of mortality as well as the
contingent imposition of sexual difference: what the pervert enacts is a
universe as in cartoons, a human being can survive any
catastrophe; in which adult is reduced to a childish game; in
which one is not forced to die or to choose one of the two sexes." As
such, the universe is the pure universe of the symbolic
the signifier's game its course, unencumbered
human finitude. What this standard view (which within the
confines of desire, Law and finitude as the ultimate horizons of human
existence: the Law elevates to - or sublates into - a symbolic prohibition,
the 'natural' barrier of mortality and sexual reproduction) leaves out of
consideration is the short circuit between Law and jouissance: in
contrast to the neurotic, who acknowledges the Law in order occasionally

34
to take in its theft ... ), and thus
obtains satisfaction snatching back from the Other of the stolen
[ouissance, the pervert elevates the enjoying big Other into the
agency of Law. As we have seen, the aim is to establish,
not to undermine. the Law: the male masochist elevates his
into the whose orders are to be
acknowledges the obscene-jouissant underside of
since he gains satisfaction from the very of the gesture
installing the rule of Law - that of 'castration'. In the 'normal' state
the Law access to the
thus creates the desire for it; in it is the object itself the
in which makes the law. Here the theoretical
concept of masochism as touches the common notion of a
who 'enjoys tortured the Law': a masochist locates
enio'Vrnent in the very agency of the Law which prohibits the access to eniovment.

The truth of the of fanrasv

coincides with the 0P'PC1SlillOn

[acques-Alam.Miller emphasized, the concept
the claim
accepts the construction,
it, this is a of resistance
confirms that the construction has touched
traumatic kernel within the ... ).
relies on the other side of the same coin, which is crucial in
it the who is by the wrong
from at the end of r'""' In.

relJe;ate~dly claims: 'You do not say "God is t h e , you say

God I am in the '). In order to grasp this
~HVU.1U focus on the crucial distinction between construction and its
CC}].lHl:ellpar't, interpretation - this is
That is to say: an ;nl'PYTW'pt:,-
embedded in the dialectic
between the and the interpreter-analyst;
about the effect of truth apropos of a n:o>rt;,rllhr
(a a a slip of
u himself u

nlF'r:nn",pT: precisely in order to this signification,

that's me, I
is measured
the posuw n
 THE GUE OF ES

violent resistance ... ). In clear contrast to a construction

\LIP"'LO-""I' that of a fundamental has the status of a knowledge
can be assumed
himself, the truth in which he recognizes

is
emphasizes, IS so radically unconscious that it can never be remembered:

This second phase is the most important and the most momentous of all. But
we may say that in a certain sense it has never had a real existence. It is never
remembered, it has never succeeded in becoming conscious. It is a construction
of but it is no less a on that account."

The fact that this 'never had a real existence', of course, indicates
its status as the Lacanian the about it, a 111

the real', is a kind of 'acephalous

it is a kind of 'Thou art that!' which articulates the very kernel of the
rather, for that very , its assumption desubiectio-
izes me - that I can assume my fundamental so far as I
undergo what Lacan calls destitution'. Or - to put It 111 yet
another way - and construction stand to each other as do
and symptoms are to be fundamental
is to be constructed. . . . this notion of
knowledge emerges rather late in Lacans - somewhere around
after the between and has
profound shift:

from the 1940s to moves within the co-ordinates

philosophical opposition between the 'inauthentic'
knowledge which disregards the subject's position of enunciation,
and the 'authentic' truth in which one is existen tially erigaged, affected
it. In the this is best exempli-
fied the clear contrast between the obsessional neurotic and the
hud"'r,,-- the obsessional neurotic lies in the guise at the level
of factual accuracy his statements are true, he uses this factual
accuracy to dissimulate the truth about his desire: say, when my enemy
has a car accident because of a brake go to
to to anyone who is to listen to me that was never near
his car am not for the - true,
but this 'truth' is me to conceal the fact that accident
realized my desire ... ), while the tells the truth in the of a lie

36
(the truth of my desire articulates itself in the very distortions of the
'factual accuracy' of my speech: when, say, instead of '1 thereby open this
session', 1 say '1 thereby close this session', my desire clearly comes
out. .). The aim of treatment is thus to (re )focus
attention from factual accuracy to which unknowingly
articulate the and then to progress to a new knowledge
dwells in the place of truth; instead of truth, gives
rise to truth-effects - to what the Lacan of the 1950s called 'full speech',
the speech in which truth reverberates. As we have already
Lacan thus reinserts his into a long tradition. from
Kierkezaard to of the mere 'factual truth' .
• From the late 1960s, however, Lacan focuses his theoret-
attention on drive as a kind of knowledge which brings
satisfaction. This involves neither an inherent relation
truth nor a of enunciation - not because it
the subjective of but because it is in
to the very dimension of truth
of course, the very becomes
since is definition a discourse on truth ... ).
knowledze are thus related as desire and drive: interpretation
subject's desire truth of desire is the desire
to it in a pseudo-Heideggerian
construction the about drive. Is not the
case of such an knowledge that to
modern science/" which the 'blind insistence'
drive? Modern science follows its (in microbiology,
n/lrtl.rlp pb.YS:lCS ... ), cost what it may; satisfac-
is not any moral or communal
scientific knowledge supposedly serves. And are not all the 'ethical
committees' which abound and endeavour to establish rules for the
conduct of gene medical and so on,
UHlllJlat,ely so many to reinscribe this inexorable drive-
pDogres:s of science, which knows of no inherent limitation short: this
ethic of the scientific , within the confines of human
to orovide them with a 'human face', a limitation or
to The
that 'our power to
sCientific devices has run ahead of our
to make of
modern ethics of
ethics of leading a life regulated proper measure
pl1bordin:lti.onof all its aspects to some notion of the Good.
course, that the balance between the two can never be achieved: the
 E 0 lES

notion the of IS
at its purest - the fundamental Fascist
limitation of this kind is foreign to the inherent
science to Real as a mode of Real is
indifferent to the modalities of its to the way it will affect

UYUIM::, although the concrete of the scientific appara-

tus, up to its most abstract is 'mediated',
game of a mechan-
istic and ... ) bias of modern science, in a way, does not
really concern science, the drive which effectuates itself in the run of the
scientific machine. position here seems
perhaps it is all too easy to dismiss him as the most
proponent of the thesis that science a misses the dimension of
truth (didn't he claim that 'science doesn't think', that it is definition
unable to reflect its own philosophical foundation, the hermeneutic
horizon of its furthermore, that this far from
playing the role of an is a positive condition of the possibility
of its smooth functioning?). His more crucial point rather, as
modern science at its most fundamental cannot be reduced to some
limited 'socially conditioned' (expressing the interests of a
certain social group, , but the of our historical moment,
that which 'remains the same' in all possible and 'reaction-
, 'technocratic' and' ecological' , 'and 'feminist') o puu'v,',,_
universes. is thus well aware that all fashionable 'critiques
science', to which science is a tool of Western
domination, and so forth, fall short of, and thus
leave unquestioned, the 'hard kernel' of the scientific drive." What Lacan
forces us to add is science is also 'real' in an even more
radical sense: it is the first (and probably unique) case of a discourse
which is stricto sensu non-historical, even in the most fundamental Heidez-
gerian sense of the of the epochs of - that whose
functioning is indifferent towards the determined
horizons of the disclosure of Precisely in so far as science 'doesn't
think', it knows, ignoring the dimension of and as such, drive at
its purest .... Lacan 's to Heidegger would thus be:
should this utter 'forgetting of Being', at work in modern science, be
perceived as the greatest 'danger'? Is there not within it an alreadv
perceptible 'liberating' dimension? Is not the suspension of ontological
Truth in the unfettered of science a kind of 'passing
through' the closure?
Within psychoanalysis, this of drive, which can never be

38
subjectivized, assumes the form of about the 'funda-
mental , the specific formula which his or her access to
jouissance. That is to say: desire and jouissance are antagornsnc,
even exclusive: raison d'ctre function', to use Richard
Dawkins's is not to realize its to find full but to
itself as desire. So how is it possible to couple desire and
to a minimum of jouissance within the space of
is the famous Lacanian objet a that mediates between the
incompatible domains of desire and jouissance. In what sense is
a the object-cause of desire? The objet petit a is not what we
what we are that which sets our desire in motion,
fhe sense of the formal frame which confers on our desire:
of course, it shifts from one to another;
through all these desire none the less retains a
minimum of formal features which. when
encountered in a make us desire this
a as the cause of desire is other than this formal frame
consistency. In a slightly different way, the same mechanism regulates
in love: the automatism of love is set in motion when
finds itself

~ also allows us to tackle

psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic on the side of
scientific gaze, classifying,
explaining sexuality away, and thus its or on the side
transgression - that is, does it a kind of initiatory knowledge
jouissance hidden from the official gaze? One
"U.'UUIU, rather, the that psvchoanalvtic knowledze is
lQc:at'"d at the intersection of Law and its - an intersection
of course, is an empty set. In the of 'actuallv
e)Qsting Socialism', every schoolchild was told
read and of his advice to young people:
, - a classic joke from Socialism a nice
this motto in an context. Marx,
were each asked what a wife or a mistress.
attitude in intimate matters is well known to have been rather
answered 'A wife'; who knew how to
course, 'A mistress,'; the
wife and mistress!' - Is
excessive sexual since
tell your mistress that with your and your wife
about to visit your mistress .. .' 'And what do you actually
and learn!' Psychoanalytic knowledge is definitelv Leninisr

39
 E PLAGUE OF IE

transgression constitutes the domain ~'""~~,~.~

(non-phatnc) Leninist knowledge IS constitutive of the domain
breaks out of the vicious of desire
Iinvolved in its transgression.

L See Anders Linde-Laursen, 'Small Differences - Large Issues', The South Atlantic
\{ll,'lneny, 94:4 (Fall 1995), pp. 1123-44.
most obvious case - which, for that reason, I left out - is, of course, that of
ideological connotation of different the sexual act; that is, of the implicit
ideological statements we are making by 'it' in a certain position.
3. Bergson, An Essay on Laughter, Smith 1937, p. 83.
4. For a more detailed elaboration of the paradoxes of fetishism, see
5. The example of conservatism's refereilce to the horrifying origins
prohibition talking about these origins, which precisely creates the
'primordial means of which was instituted) perfectly expresses the r-adic allv
ambiguous functioning of the with respect to the fantasy-screen: Horror is not
and unambiguously the unbearable Real masked the fantasy-screen - the way
focuses our attention, imposing itself as the disavowed for that reason, all the more
operative central of reference. The Horrible can also function as the screen itself, as
thing whose effect conceals something 'more horrible than horror itself',
the primordial void or For is not the anti-Semitic demonic of
the Jew, the Jewish plot, an evocation the ultimate Horror which, precisely,
phantasmic screen enabling us to avoid confrontation with the social antagonism>
The of the horror which functions as a screen masking the void can also be
the uncanny power of the motif of a along alone,
crew to steer it. This is the ultimate not the nrove rhial
machine in the ghost: there is no rrl orr i n c- ao-en t
as a blind contingent device. At
or Masonic conspiracy conceals: the horror of society as contingent
mechanism following its path, caught in the vicious cycle of its antagonisms.
6. VI'e can leave aside the feature which acquired status: the answer to
the 'Who, where, how is the (fantasizing) into the phantasmic
narrative?' is far from obvious; even when the subject within
not his point of identification - that is,
'idenufies with . (At a different level, the same goes for the
identity; the best to render its paradox palpable is to paraphrase the standard disclaimer
from the movie resemblance to actual events or is
the gap between $ and S, the void of the subject the signifying
represents him, means that 'any resemblance of the subject to rn-m.cen "
is no connection whatsoever between the (phantasmic) real of subject and his
Symbolic the two are thoroughly incommensurable.i Fantasy thus creates a multitude
of 'subject among which the (observing, subject is free to float, to
shift his identification from one to another. Here, talk about dispersed
is justified, with the proviso that these subject positions are to be
\",,:listinlgllislhe,dfrom the void that is the subject.
7. The reference to narrative also enables us to differentiate between neurosis
(hysteria) and perversion, since each involves a unique form of narrative: hysteria
the linear narrative of origins (the neurotic's while in perversion
narrative remains stuck in the same place and repeats - that is to say, the
perverse narrative is unable to 'progress' properly.

40