Recently, in another forum, I passingly expressed my perplexity with regard to Zizek’s conception of materialism. In The Parallax View, Zizek remarks that,
Materialism is not the direct assertion of my incusion in objective reality (such an assertion presupposes that my position of enunciation is that of an external observer who can grasp the whole of reality); rather, it resides in the reflexive twist by means of which I myself am included in the picture constituted by me– it is this reflexive short circuit, this necessary redoubling of myself as standing both outside and inside my picture, that bears witness to my ‘material existence.’ Materialism means that the reality I see is never ‘whole’– not because a large part of it eludes me, but because it contains a stain, a blind spot, which indicates my inclusion in it. (17)
I confess that this definition of materialism causes me to scratch my head. First, I quite agree that I myself am included in the picture constituted by me. This is part and parcel of psychoanalysis. Perhaps one of the most jarring moments in analysis occurs when the analysand experiences the manner in which the moebius strip is, in fact, one-sided where before it appeared two-sided (i.e., that there was me in here and the world out there). If, for example, I encounter the world as a hostile place in which people are constantly denegrating my credentials, dismissing my views, and generally find nothing of worth in me, psychoanalysis brings us to the point where we come to see that I constitute this world, that this world is a product of my own desire and not in the things themselves. This is seen most strikingly in cases of paranoia.
I also quite agree that the world is not whole, that it doesn’t form a totality (though Zizek seems to articulate this thesis in epistemological terms, not ontological terms). What I have difficulty following is why these two claims taken together constitute materialism? If anything, these remarks sound far closer to traditional idealism in its Kantian formulation than anything like a thorough-going materialism. Moreover, why does the claim that we are included in material reality necessarily lead us to posit the view of an outside observe (Descartes’ God) as an observer that can grasp the whole of reality?
A few pages earlier, Zizek gives a slightly more explicit formulation of his materialism, when he writes that,
In all three cases, the problem is how to think this gap in a materialist way, which means: it is not enough merely to insist on the fact that the ontological horizon cannot be reduced to an effect of ontic occurances; that phenomenal self-awareness cannot be reduced to an epiphenomenon of “objective” brain processes; that social antagonism (“class struggle”) cannot be reduced to an effect of objective socioeconomic forces. We should take a step further and rach beneath this dualism itself, into a “minimal difference” (the noncoincidence of the One with itself) that generates it.” (10-11)
Once again, all of this sounds terrific, but what is specifically materialist about this project? For instance, when Zizek strives to argue that phenomenal self-awareness is not reducable to brain states, this strikes me as being exactly the opposite of materialism. And if we argue that being cannot be reduced to ontic beings, then we seem to find ourselves in a similar position as well.
I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something here. However, with his characteristic brilliance and penetrating insight, David shot back the following in response to my perplexity:
What if the emperor is naked and and Zizek really does not know himself what he means by materialism (why place him in the position of the subject supposed to know in the first place?) ? I have a suspicion that there is very little philosophical depth behind Zizek’s use of the concept. In these parts of Europe, and Slovenia is not far off, in the pedestrian sense of the word, openly acknowledging that one is a materialist usually means just two possibe things – A) yes, you are right, I am money-obsessed and proud of it B) I am an atheist. Usually with regard to B), especially for older generations, the concept still has the good ol’ nostalgic taste of Marxist-Leninist pseudo-scientific dialectical materialism to it.
Throughout his writings (can’t track this down now for the lack of time) Zizek often plays on the Leninist motto ‘fighting materialism’, where ‘materialist’ is freely interchangeable with ‘atheist’. In short, I read Zizek’s materialism as just another name for rather vulgar atheism. But then again I am a rather vulgar atheist myself, so maybe it’s just my imaginary ego-talk :)
In other words, David points out that Zizek himself might not be clear as to what, precisely, he means by “materialism”. The possibility that I hadn’t really entertained was that Zizek’s conception of materialism might not itself be clear or have any substantial content behind it. I find David’s observation interesting as it is the perfect example of academic transference at work. When presented with the work of a great theorist, one often encounters the points of vagueness and incoherences in that body of work not as stemming from the theorist, but as arising from our own lack or incompleteness. That is, the tendency is to assume that the master knows what he’s talking about, that it’s clear to him and that it’s simply because we haven’t read enough or can’t think deeply enough that we fail to understand the theorist on this or that particular point.
This is one of the hallmarks of neurotic thought structure: rather than face the lack in the Other, the neurotic instead assumes this lack himself. Faced with the lack in the Other, the neurotic experiences guilt. Verhaeghe explains this logic well in his brilliant Being Normal and Other Disorders. The search for a complete Other already emerges structurally in infancy, as the infant, being born helpless, relies on the Other so as to have its demands satisfied. If the Other were lacking, incomplete, desiring, then the infant would risk being unable to satisfy its demands. Consequently, it’s far more reassuring to experience oneself as lacking and incomplete, than the Other, and we thus spend our lives passing from master to master, hoping to finally find that complete Other.
This occurs in the world of theory no less than any other domain of social life, and is the lynchpin of transference. It is precisely in attaching ourself to a subject supposed (believed) to have knowledge, that that figure comes to have power over us. Thus, Lacan suggests that it is precisely in de-supposing someone from knowledge that good readings become possible. Referencing Nancy’s and Lacoue-Labarthe’s Title of the Letter, and remarking that he’s never been read better despite the fact that it’s clear that they hate him and are trying to “de-suppose” Lacan’s knowledge , Lacan suggests that de-supposition is itself a condition for reading:
In analysis, we deal with nothing but that [love], and analysis doesn’t operate by any other pathway. It is a singular pathway in that it alone allowed us to isolate what I, I who am talking to you, felt I needed to base transference on, insofar as it is not distinguished from love, that is, on the formulation of the “subject supposed to know”.
I cannot but mention the new resonance this term “knowledge” can take on for you. I love the person I assume to have knowledge. Earlier you saw me stall, back off, and hesitate to come down on one side or the other, on the side of love or on the side of what we call hatred, when I insistently invited you to read a book whose climax is expressly designed to discredit me– which is certainly not soething that can be backed away from by someone who speaks, ultimately, but on the basis of “de-sideration” and aims at nothing else. The fact is that this climax appears sustainable to the authors precisely where there is a “desupposition” of my knowledge. If I said that they hate me it is because they “desuppose” that I have knowledge.
And why not? Why not, if it turns out that that must be the condition for what I call reading? After all, what can I presume Aristotle knew? Perhaps the less I assume he has knowledge, the better I read him. (Seminar 20, 67)
Now, I am not suggesting that Zizek isn’t himself clear as to what he means by “materialism”. I’m holding out for a better answer and hopefully some plausable reasons as to why more traditional materialist philosophies– say Lucretius’ –are mistaken. However, I do find it interesting that it’s so difficult to avoid supposing the knowledge of the Other and assuming the lack in the Other in oneself.
Larval Subjects . 
July 26, 2006 at 8:28 am
a different kind of materialism from “your thoughts are chemicals in the brain”
a more thoroughly materialist one. or, more persistently.
the truth is out there, even as the horizon becomes the self
i think it makes all the difference that the lack of totality in the world is epistemological rather than ontolgcl. materialism is grounded on the material limits of the imaginable world (reality).
isn’t this why the real is different from reality?
anyway i like the rest of the post and agree and hurray, but materialism could mean all the reality that leads all the way up to the impossibility of the real.
July 26, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Thanks Anonymous,
This is what I’m trying to figure out. I, for one, don’t want a reductive materialism such as that found in “your thoughts are chemicals in the brain”.
I think your right that Zizek’s assertion of materialism is ultimately going to revolve around the real and the primacy of the real, although I still find myself doing all sorts of mental gymnastics trying to think Zizek’s materialism with his commitments to Hegel and Kant. Zizek love to was profound about Hegelian infinite judgments such as “the spirit is the bone”, so perhaps here we have something of an infinite judgment “idealism is materialism”.
You write: “i think it makes all the difference that the lack of totality in the world is epistemological rather than ontolgcl. materialism is grounded on the material limits of the imaginable world (reality).”
I’ll see your bet and raise you one! Not only is materialism grounded on the material limits of the *imaginable* world, but, pace Lacan, the world itself doesn’t exist. This is what I’m trying to get at. It’s not just that we can’t know totality or the whole, it’s that ontologically there is no whole or totality, but only situations and worldS!
July 26, 2006 at 9:08 pm
First, Levi, thanks so much for your fascinating musings. They are coming fast and furious these days and it’s hard to keep up.
Second, let me try to respond to a few of them in an overview manner (and so inexcusably reductionistically) by focusing on The Other and your relation to it.
In your debunking of Zizek (which I find is well deserved) you write:
When presented with the work of a great theorist, one often encounters the points of vagueness and incoherences in that body of work not as stemming from the theorist, but as arising from our own lack or incompleteness.
That is, the tendency is to assume that the master knows what he’s talking about, that it’s clear to him and that it’s simply because we haven’t read enough or can’t think deeply enough that we fail to understand the theorist on this or that particular point.
This is one of the hallmarks of neurotic thought structure: rather than face the lack in the Other, the neurotic instead assumes this lack himself. Faced with the lack in the Other, the neurotic experiences guilt.
In your other post about Hallward’s debunking of Deleuze, it seems you have found your non-lacking Other (Hallward) whom you are also “envious” of.
For his part Hallward has found Deleuze as HIS lacking Other, primarily because he (Hallward) wants an actual subject that can act politically. Deleuze doesn’t provide one, so he dismisses him.
In your other post you analyze (forcibly I might add, and – dare I say – conceptually creatively):
The thought of Deleuze and Guattari is essentially that of the slave.
If Hallward’s reading of Deleuze’s ontology is accurate, then this is essentially what Deleuze and Guattari are offering us with their account of counter-actualization and lines of flight.
Turn away, they say, from the predicates characterizing a situation and instead pursue vital life. This is something that can be practiced by slave, freeman, woman, minority, worker, denizen of Guantanimo Bay being tortured, etc. And significantly, it is something that does not transform the structure of the actualized situation, though it certainly might allow us to stoically endure the situations in which we find ourselves actualized.
You are slaying the Father (oops: the Other) by taking Hallward’s line, when you continue,
Deleuze and Guattari go a long way towards redeeming philosophy and rescuing it from postmodern skepticism and the claim that all is discursive constructions, yet, at the present moment in my thinking and understanding of their work, I do not think they go far enough. If we genuinely seek change, then actuality cannot be ignored in this way.
In other words: the lack (as you and Hallward see it) in Deleuze as the Other is the political activist.
Fair enough. But you want more than this (as in your reply to Yusef’s point that “concept creation” is not only virtual, but also – and most importantly – actual), you write:
What I hope to reject is the category of the virtual so as to formulate an ontology purely in the domain of the actual and the idea that creatural becomes are somehow more real than creatural products. In addition to this, I find it necessary to reject Deleuze’s ontological holism.
Now I am scratching my head: You need to define this “deleuzian ontological holism”.
Are you saying that Deleuze is a New Age Wise-man or what?
You may be right. I’m just curious and look forward to your response.
In the meantime, let’s un-Other all the Others (even if Sartre and Lacan say we cannot).
All the best – and thanks again for your thought-provoking essays.
Orla Schantz
July 28, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Levi, I think you got it right when you mention the infinite-judgementish side of Zizek’s subjectivist materialism. And it might even be that he won’t tell us, what is the truly *material* part of his materialism because he can’t.
But I really think there is something more. I cite the cruicial passage again:
“it is not enough merely to insist on the fact that the ontological horizon cannot be reduced to an effect of ontic occurances; that phenomenal self-awareness cannot be reduced to an epiphenomenon of “objective” brain processes; that social antagonism (“class struggle”) cannot be reduced to an effect of objective socioeconomic forces.”
What these all have incommon is to my mind a certain spatio-temporal fantasy of a certain happily-everafter-wonderland in which everything will be solved in a harmonious way (despite the fact that the functioning of such a fantasy would be fiercely objected).
Recall Zizek’s renunciation of Laclaus radical democracy, in which the antagonism is taken into account, but in the end, only presupposing a fantasy scenario of a community sharing this view fo the notion. And then we can ask, what happens when someone doesn’t approve of it… (And in fact, this question can be raised in line with your own somewhat utopian musings in another post.)
So maybe the point is; how to think materialism proper without having to lean on some fantasy of transcendental clearness, either temporal or spatial.
July 29, 2006 at 3:56 am
Hi Orla,
Great remarks. I must confess that your observations about my relationship to masters make me feel more than a bit naked; although it’s not the first time I’ve been called hysteric! ;)
You write:
“Are you saying that Deleuze is a New Age Wise-man or what?”
I certainly wouldn’t suggest that Deleuze is a new age thinker, for the precise reason that he has no illusions about the antagonistic nature of difference (i.e., that difference is not harmony). As for the charge of being a wise man, I do think D is looking for a certain peace of mind and beatitude similar to that described by the Stoics and Spinoza. Nor do I think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with this.
In many respects I’m still coming to terms with Deleuze and trying to figure out where to situate my own thinking with respect to his ontology. As I’ve said in the past, his account of process and actualization appeal to me powerfully. On the other hand, I often feel that he gives sad passions borne of social structuration short shrift, and that his account of the subject is inadequate. Moreover, I find his thesis of the One-All or the Whole unacceptable ontologically. I wouldn’t give him such a hard time if I didn’t love him so and truly detest the playfulness of so many of his followers.
July 29, 2006 at 5:00 am
Kimmo,
Your points about transparency hit home; however, it seems to me that this way of approaching the issue still situates incompleteness and multiplicity epistemically, rather than ontologically. That is, we’re still caught in the discourse of finitude talking about how being is opaque *for us* and not *as such*. It seems to me that Zizek vascillates between these two poles, and this is one of the reasons I’m inclined to argue that he hasn’t yet gone as far as Badiou in arguing that being itself is in fragments, not being *for us*. Dialectically, in the Hegelian sense, this move from finitude to undermining the One itself, strikes me as the next proper ontological gesture.
Could you, perhaps, say a bit more as to what you saw as being utopian in a “previous post”? I’m not asking because I’m bothered by this, but because I’m striving to work through these sorts of issues.
July 29, 2006 at 9:42 pm
“this way of approaching the issue still situates incompleteness and multiplicity epistemically, rather than ontologically.”
Well, at this point I think I should ask, what exactly do you mean by epistemology and ontology here. At least for me the very intervention Lacan does in the canon of western thought is the subversion of the very notions of “epistemology” and “ontology”. And I really think that you’ll agree with me here. What bothers me then, is the way you assume that Zizek (still?) thinks that the One has an ontological primacy over multitude. If you really listen to those Birkbeck lectures now available on the net, he explictly says that capitalism qua the real is the real of a *situation*, that the One isn’t the ontologically First one! (And this is why the real can be changed by changing the situation – I get that now.)
And what’s more, I really fail to see how it that referring to a fantasy is in some way more “epistemological” than eg. Badiou’s system of presentation.
But I do agree, that if Zizek is going to do something new on the field of relating himself to Badiou in terms of ontology, he surely has loads of things to make clear!
What comes to Badiou himself, I see that what he does to ontology as such (declaring every ontology is a situation) and Lacan (taking a “step further” from him) is one way to deal with the anti-philosophical event called, well, Lacan. On the other hand I’m not sure that this is the only possible solution to it. And for the thinker, that I, who knows, might become someday, I’d like to keep this door open at least for a little while.
“Could you, perhaps, say a bit more as to what you saw as being utopian in a “previous post”?”
By referring to your “somewhat utopian musings” in *another* post (not in a previous one, like you suggest), I didn’t mean to refer anywhere else than to your own (rhetorical?) question in the end of Lethal Liberty: “Is it utopian to imagine a collective that no longer desires masters?”
Now, I think the answer is an easy one: yes, it is extremely utopian. And maybe you even knew it. (Look who’s supposing now!)
Anyways, I still can’t see how those things you list, “tolerating freedom and creativity” etc., have anything to do with any properly *leftist* (ie. non-liberal) politics.
For me the problem of the current capitalist world dominance is simply not the amount of freedom or possibilities for creativity per se, but how the whole fundamentally screwed up system of distribution of those very “substanceless substances”!
July 29, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Hi Kimmo,
For me the difference between an ontological versus epistemological approach to these questions revolves around whether to “not-all” is a predicate of being as such, or results from our own finite perspective. Thus, for instance, Zizek writes, “Insofar as it is grounded in the finitude of human beings, ontological difference is that which makes a totalization of the ‘All of beings’ impossible– ontological difference means that the field of reality is finite” (PV, 24).
In response to this, I say that Zizek remains at an epistemological level because he grounds ontological difference in finite human beings. That is, here being isn’t being conceived as being qua being, but rather as being qua human limitation/finitude. One of the things that excites me about Badiou so much is that he’s able to conceive the constitutive not-all of being (de-suturing being from the One) without making reference to a subject functioning as a transcendental.
You write:
“What bothers me then, is the way you assume that Zizek (still?) thinks that the One has an ontological primacy over multitude. If you really listen to those Birkbeck lectures now available on the net, he explictly says that capitalism qua the real is the real of a *situation*, that the One isn’t the ontologically First one! (And this is why the real can be changed by changing the situation – I get that now.)”
I’m not sure where you’re getting this, but I don’t recall ever suggesting that Zizek remains commited to the One. Did I say this somewhere? Rather, my criticisms would lie elsewhere. I would argue that our current postmodern malaise issues out of Kant. What all philosophy since the 18th century has in common– with the exceptions of Whitehead, Deleuze, and Badiou –is the founding of the relation to being on some sort of transcendental whether that be the human, transcendental subjectivity, language, power, history, etc. Zizek, as far as I can tell, remains in this orbit. Nonetheless, it’s quite clear that Zizek’s epistemological orientation nonetheless isn’t premised on the One or any sort of organic unity. I’m just unclear as to how he can formulate a genuine universal or transituational truth based on his own premises. I’m still working through this question.
You write:
“By referring to your “somewhat utopian musings” in *another* post (not in a previous one, like you suggest), I didn’t mean to refer anywhere else than to your own (rhetorical?) question in the end of Lethal Liberty: “Is it utopian to imagine a collective that no longer desires masters?” Now, I think the answer is an easy one: yes, it is extremely utopian. And maybe you even knew it. (Look who’s supposing now!)”
Of course I did and of course I do. The question really is that of whether there’s a beyond to hysterical subjectivity. As you perhaps know, the hysteric is the one who searches for a master (that they can also manipulate and dominate). Psychoanalysis gives a clear answer to this question: yes, there is a beyond to hysterical subjectivity. That’s what traversing the fantasy and identifying with the symptom is all about in analysis. But this occurs at the level of analysis and individual cases. It’s far more difficult to imagine a collective or community that doesn’t have a psychoanalytic core. Lacan’s repeated attempts to form various schools revolved around this question, as Lacan clearly saw that any psychoanalytic organization must be premised on the non-existence of the big Other (i.e., the antithesis of hysterical desire that seeks to complete the Other). This question persists to this day in psychoanalytic organizations. Here I believe leftist political movements have a lot of value to learn from the experience of psychoanalysts in forming these organizations.
You write:
“For me the problem of the current capitalist world dominance is simply not the amount of freedom or possibilities for creativity per se, but how the whole fundamentally screwed up system of distribution of those very “substanceless substances”!”
This is terrific. With regard to questions of freedom, it was these issues of domination that I was trying to raise. The reason I’ve been revolving around questions of autonomous subjects is that theories of subjectivization have made it far more difficult to see how it is possible to act against this domination, insofar as the subject, being the result of these systems through subjectivization, very easily ends up fighting on *behalf* of the very system it takes itself to be struggling against. Could you perhaps say a bit more about the screwed up system and substanceless substance you have in mind? The other night I thought to myself that far too much time is spent engaging in critique without giving any positive picture of aims or goals. That is, a good deal of post-marxist political theory resembles the activity of the obsessional who’s always trying to prepare everything and get it all right before acting, thereby infinitely deferring the task and forestalling any traumatic encounter with the object of his desire.
July 30, 2006 at 8:00 am
Hi Levi,
and thanks for being patient with me. Now that you have explained more precisely what you mean by Zizek being caught in epistemology, I see my own response to it was quite a bit of a strawman. So pardon me.
But none the less, reagarding the passage you quote from PV, I think it isn’t really that much apart from the being (qua being) of Badiou’s, because he too has to define it as that *what can be said* of being, not positing anything about being *as such*, implicating that the being in question relies fundamentally on a notion of a finite man/language. Or am I completely astray here?
I do agree, that Kantianism is a huge problem today in western academia. And I do find many of Zizek’s implications, especially in PV, highly troubling in that way. (And not the least, when he discusses about Kalevala, the one and only epoch of Finland, stating that the two distinct verses denote an “X” of non-being “actuality”. Zizek tries to tell us that those mutually exclusive mini-narrations are all we’re gonna get, but I’m not really that convinced. What’s more, this is nothing new, nothing that hasn’t been already said of Kalevala. Here he lacks, I think, a certain twist of a hegelian joke. And maybe this is the reason he relies so heavily only to examples…)
you write:
“Could you perhaps say a bit more about the screwed up system and substanceless substance you have in mind?”
Sorry, I have to let you down and withdraw. It’s not that it isn’t important or interesting, it’s just that I don’t really have the time. I agree fully with your remarks of the difficulty of the matter.
July 30, 2006 at 5:53 pm
You write:
“But none the less, reagarding the passage you quote from PV, I think it isn’t really that much apart from the being (qua being) of Badiou’s, because he too has to define it as that *what can be said* of being, not positing anything about being *as such*, implicating that the being in question relies fundamentally on a notion of a finite man/language. Or am I completely astray here?”
Badiou has been entirely clear on his rejection of any founding of ontology on either a transcendental subject or language. He sees the discourse of ontology as completely immanent to itself and *real* in the Lacanian sense (i.e., as non-representational). He describes his project as a “secularization of infinity”; which is to say that he rejects any notion of the infinite as a beyond that is other than the finite, but rather, treats *all* situations as infinite. His essay “Philosophy and Mathematics: Infinity and the End of Romanticism” in _Theoretical Writings_ is especially clear on this point: “We will here call ‘Romantic’ any disposition of thinking which determines the infinite within the Open, as a horizonal correlate for a historicity of finitude. Today in particular, what essentially substs of Romanticism is the theme of finitude. To re-intricate mathematics and philosophy is also, and perhaps above all, to have done with finitude, which is the principle of contemporary residue of the Romantic speculative gesture” (25).
Whether Badiou is successful in this move is, of course, another question. But it certainly is a breath of fresh air.
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