Alright well here’s another philosophy book that I certainly won’t do justice to. I grabbed this from Verso Books as I hadn’t read any Zizek and I was both pleasantly surprised by how much I got out of this while also sure that I didn’t fully understand it. The main issue is that this book is largely about Lacan, who is a philosopher that I haven’t actually read anything by, so I’m forced to take Zizek’s word for what different passages mean. But Zizek is blessed with being a relatively clear writer, he makes plenty of references to movies and pop culture so it’s very easy to follow along and get the gist of what he’s saying.
The first part of the book has to do with “the symptom” which I believe is a specific phrase to describe life under capitalism here. He discusses how it was actually first described by Marx, that there’s this contradiction between being free to sell your labor, and then once you do that, you are no longer free. This dissonance leads to the symptom, of seeing these contradictions and yet being trapped. I think Zizek coined the phrase “enjoy your symptom” and while that isn’t directly in this text I could see that coming up in a lecture or elsewhere. I’m not sure I grasp the full significance of the symptom as that seems to be his answer to everything (there’s a passage along the lines of “what existed before anything the symptom” of course) but there is an intuitive sense to it. I liken it to the idea of the absurd, that nothing really matters, there’s just this inherent sense that there’s a contradiction here we are ignoring the same way we don’t talk about the meaning of life constantly. He expands on the symptom and talks about how it has symbolic meaning as well, that the symptom can expand and turn into a source of joy as it becomes our main sense of meaning in life.
The next section is much more technical and I confess I was skimming a lot of it. Lacan has these diagrams that illustrate what language does when we refer to different objects of desire and how we get meaning from them. Zizek appears to be going through these and elaborating on them/explaining further, but I also just don’t really care too much about what the letter S means on a diagram from a guy I haven’t read. I did appreciate more though the discussion about what language does, since that’s common in philosophy. Are we referring to the universal? A particular? That sort of thing. From there he talks about the two deaths, that we die once physically and again when we realize we are dead. I thought this section was interesting, but I couldn’t follow the connection beyond that it was an extension of the discussion of desire. Once we stop desiring or realize that what we desire is impossible, that constitutes the second death.
The third and final section was the roughest for me because it continues into he weeds on the ideas of the subject introduced with the Lacanian desire diagrams. I did quite enjoy a part on how the object is a lack. He uses this example of a painting called “Lenin in Warsaw” of Lenin’s wife with another man where “Lenin in Warsaw” is the object specifically because he is not there. This idea that the object of desire or whatever is by necessity a lack that’s given meaning by the desire resonates a lot with me.
So there’s what I got out of that. Primarily that I should
have read Lacan (and probably brushed up on my Hegel) first. But I honestly was
impressed with how much I could follow, and I quite enjoyed Zizek’s jokes and
references to pop culture along the way. It is so hard to keep up with
philosophy once you’re out of classes, so I’m trying to not get too
discouraged, but I honestly like revisiting it every once in a while just to
see what I’m able to get out of the experience. And I can always reread
something later and learn more!