Almost done with my second paper of the semester. I have like 1 1/3 papers total to go. I am very psyched about this, its actually even better position then I was in last semster. I also found out that I get paid until June 1st, which means that if I had to finish writing during the first week of May I would be cool without a job for a little while. It also means that I could probably get away working part time this summer if I wanted to, but I think I would rather live a closer to middle-class lifestyle and not fail to pay any of my bills.
I am actually really enjoying stand up comedy night on Comedy Central tonight. First semester and the first few weeks I was back here I thoroughly looked forward to stand up night, as I think stand up comedy rocks. But then they started repeating far too many episodes that I had seen recently and they werent as funny the third or fourth time around. They could have been, but for some reason they werent, I wonder if that could possibly be Sanjay's fault, but I don't know how.
I am so happy that I am now less than 48 hours from my first cheeseburger in like 6 fucking weeks. Today was the last Friday for like 45 weeks that I will have to seriously monitor my food intake. Because I was way the fuck out here and not able to cook corned beef and cabbage for myself I havent even had my usual mid-Lenten dose of beef. I love beef, I love it so much. I think I will have a double-quarter with cheese on my way home from Easter Mass and stop by Topps afterwards and add a big filet to my diet. After all, I have to make up for the large amount of stored up red meat that has left my digestive system over these last 40 days.
On another note, I have begun to better formulate some of my arguments against what Andy Kemp so delicately referred to as "the boob argument." It gets complicated and probably not interesting to anyone who would read this, but I will rehearse it briefly.
When Joan was talking on Wednesday I understood, or at least became much better able to express, what Zizek actually means when he uses the line "read the letter of the law against itself" which I believe is from Welcome to the Desert of the Real and is apparently extensively used in the academic debate context. It seems to me that alot of people think this recommends an ironic approach to the law. That what we should do is exactly what the law asks us to do and somehow this will be effective against the mandates of the law itself.
We should recognize, first of all, which I doubt many of the debate-types do, that when Zizek refers to the law he is not referencing empirical legal practice. The law is not the American penal code its a much more complicated process than that which I really don't feel like explaining. The Law is something which governs psychic processes rather than simply your ability to steal, get high, and kill. Nonetheless, the basic point about reading the law against itself means exactly the opposite of what it may first initally appear to mean. It is not to perform that which the law prohibits (though technically the Law really isnt simply a prohibition) and its also not to perform exactly what the law says to do in an ironic or sarcastic way.
Neither of those things are in any way transgressive to law. Since we can imagine the law as roughly superegoic (at least for the purpose of this situation) it is entirely down with your transgressions of it. Those only serve to make it more powerful, further entrench the role of the Law in one's psychic apparatus. The paradox of the superego is of course, that obeying it completely doesnt help either. Its like giving in to a little kid, if you answer their first "Why?" question you have just validated the idea of simply asking "Why?" in response to every answer, they will never stop.
Its the same as what Zizek was talking about when discussing anti-semitism during his presentation on the four discourses. Refutations of anti-semitism that take place on the level of the Nazi accusations are simply not effective. For instance, Nazis said that Jews were owners and managers of the large companies, that they were rich, that they were marrying German women, and that they supported Western or Communist causes. Well, as Zizek was bold enough to admit, they were probably somewhat right. There were alot of very prosperous Jews in Wiemar Germany, many Jewish men married German women, and many of them supported democratic or communist movements (not coincedentally, because they opposed National Socialism). These admissions, however, do not prove that the Nazis are right, because their error wasnt on the factual level but rather on the basis of the interpretation of these facts. Are they because of historical circumstances and simple population ratios or are they because Jews are out to dillute and destroy German purity? Obviously the one attitude is distinctly anti-Semitic. At the moment you accept the system in which Nazism was operating you have already surrundered all your best arguments.
The point which Joan was making is fundamentally the point and title of her book Read My Desire! To read the letter of the law against itself means precisely to read the desire of the law. Exposing the figure of the Jew as the objet petit a, the uncanny object, of Nazism, is ultimately the most effective critique of its ideology.
More on this later, I have been writing for a long time. I promise, I will explain how this relates to the "boob argument."
Peace,
MB-K
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