andyvantino

[andyvantino]

“The ultimate Woman does not exist, that is, the elevated ideals that many men have of women. This is why Lacan says ‘Woman does not exist’.”

— Woman as such a symptom of man means that the actual woman is misunderstood or even avoided precisely because she ‘represents the radical negativity which constitutes all subjects,’ as Zizek phrases it. - ANDRE VANTINO

[andyvantino]

“The word “obscene” denotes “off the scene” and “hidden”. When sexuality is hidden, it is made abject and thereby made to look obscene, Copjec writes.”

—

What the word “obscene” describes in Zizek’s vernacular, is used not as in the context of describing the creation of taboos in earlier times, but in the context of describing the unrestrained destruction of taboos in today’s time. What used to be taboo, the outright and open approach towards enjoyment is no longer taboo. This means also that the superego pressure is no longer to feel guilty for enjoying too much or too openly, but for not enjoying ever enough. The superego has reversed course completely from Freud’s time to today because the ego ideal has changed completely. It no longer is the ideal of wanting to appear as decent, it has become the ideal of wanting to appear as successful, influential, viral, or popular. The superego that Copjec describes when she uses the word ‘obscene’, is telling women to hide their sexuality, to bring it off scene or ob-scene. This superego makes sexuality something seemingly obscene by abjecting it off the scene, away from visibility. Zizek describes a different superego when he uses the word ‘obscene’. For him it is not what the word does to us by abjecting us that is a topic, but the actual obsenity of a new superego that doesn’t want us to hide but rather wants us to hide nothing, to show it all, in terms of sexual virality. Showing all is impossible of course, and thus this superego call is, like any superego call, tormenting insofar as it calls for something we cannot live up to or fulfill. But people do become more obscene in the sense of losing their sense for the distance others might need from them in their immediate surrounding. The superego call to enjoy makes it okay for many, apparently, to see sexual meanings in words where formerly one would not come to think of some description or word as sexually charged, intentionally or not. The paradoxical result of the end of taboos is a new puritanism, not as a countermovement, but at the heart of the society of enjoyment itself. This puritanism makes abject by describing as obscene,  the non-obscene display of sexuality. This is where Copjec and Zizek can be read together. In Zizek’s texts the word ‘obscene’ denotates no longer that something is made off-stage but rather that something is made too center-stage in the society of permissivity. What is made abject and hidden will be marked as obscene. Obscene as denoting the hidden bears a different meaning than 'obscene’ in the sense of obscenely close, obscenely protruding, obscenely showing off or obscenely being non-lacking, non-desiring, suffocating any Other with one’s enjoyment. independent.academia.edu/AndreVantino

- From Copjec to Zizek: the ‘obscene’ as the abjectly hidden and off-scene vs the 'obscene’ as the obscenely center stage. - ANDRE VANTINO 

[andyvantino]

Kafka embraced the nothingness at the core of things, the void from which creativity springs. Kafka is Zizek’s example for working + writing despite the uncertainty at the heart of things. Kafka said, I must embrace the nothing. By this Kafka did not mean suicide or self-harm, but the idea of doing nothing in order to be able to do anything at all. - ANDRE VANTINO

Zizek lives the same idea when he says that he lives purely in literature, that he only does what he likes. By this he takes away all the superego pressure and is able to endure the existential void of being alive. He then can live the drive as a death drive that is no longer a selfdestructive drive but one in tune with the Real, a drive no longer repressing the void of the Real. - ANDRE VANTINO

Something can be too realistic to endure, but what makes it Real is not that. What makes it real is its undeniability, its irreversibility, like the irreversibiility of an accident or of realising that one is exposed to a threat. In the same sense nature is real, because it can kill us if we don’t think ahead or respect its dangers. - ANDRE VANTINO

[andyvantino]

[andyvantino]

“Today’s age of the “ideal ego” is a “danger to freedom”, says McGowan. Anxiety is “the horror of experiencing no ground for my freedom”, says Hegel. The rule by experts, what Lacan calls university discourse, leads away from agency & from acting as beings living up to freedom.”

— http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1217066013268815873 (via andre-vantino)

[andyvantino]

““The Talmud too says: A man without a woman is no person. I had no defence this evening against such thoughts except to say to myself: ‘It is now that you come, evil thoughts, now, because I am weak’.” - franz kafka on incel topics. We seek consistency and confirmation in others.”

— http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1384003236894412803

[andyvantino]

Where doubt about a system is not allowed we often turn to selfdoubt.

[andyvantino]

Grief & activism don't eat us up when fighting from the position of love. We grow out of cynicism, trust that we grow in grief & that connects us

https://twitter.com/AndyVantino/status/1447184278433980424

[andyvantino]

Often incivility is complete docility

http://twitter.com/AndyVantino/status/1439860026533982211

[andyvantino]

laws are proposed in at least 15 states all across the US that would ban the teaching of ‘critical race theory’ &... ‘divisive concepts’. Are the prohibited theories...divisive? Yes, but only in...that they oppose (divide themselves from) the hegemonic official myth -#SlavojZizek https://t.co/1geXaN1ZWW

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1403264249527422976

[andyvantino]

they want the West Bank, but they don’t want to directly annex it, because in doing so they would have to make the Palestinians living there Israeli citizens. -#SlavojZizek https://t.co/8mTnUVE5Ac

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1399797860451954689

[andyvantino]

rule of law in disintegrating in Israel, at least for its Palestinian citizens – they are left to themselves, alone; they cannot appeal to any higher agency ... when they are attacked..: the openly racist extreme right ... is more and more recognized as legitimate -#SlavojZizek https://t.co/DVEk1YSbXx

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1399797159470546945

[andyvantino]

Now that this facade of respect for the law is dissolving, it is not enough to say that the reality we see now was the truth behind the appearance ... Appearances are essential; they oblige us to act in a certain way – so without the appearance the way we act also changes -#Zizek https://t.co/JUlRUQnR0O

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1399795633301639180

[andyvantino]

with this public acceptance of the religious fundamentalist racism, Palestinians are now a force of secular neutrality, while the Israelis act like religious fundamentalists. -#SlavojZizek https://t.co/cJ0vWLd2sT

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1399795174662942733

[andyvantino]

a shame for one’s country, not love of it, may be the true mark of belonging to it. -#SlavojZizek quoting Carlo Ginzburg https://t.co/XNkuGpYTWV

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1399794419679870985

[andyvantino]

the danger of capitalism: ...it...is depriving the large majority of people of any meaningful 'cognitive mapping' -#SlavojZizek on how 'capitalism...sustains a 'worldless' ideological constallation' https://t.co/GrfnFlFCHS

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1399441827669942272

[andyvantino]

“Often incivility is nothing more than... complete docility,” says McGowan. “Widespread disobedience is not the problem. The problem with the society of commanded enjoyment...is not the enjoyment that it unleashes, but the barrier that it proves to enjoyment”. https://t.co/cAuSlbV7Y6

http://twitter.com/AndreVantino/status/1398994830886424576