The Underside of Psychoanalysis-Delayed

So I know I was going to write about this shit yesterday. However, I got one of those standard "I fucking hate Friday nights" moods, so I went to sleep at 8:15 or so. I woke up and talked to Katie for a while at like 9:30. She went to a movie, so I went back to sleep, then was unable to sleep more, so I got some eats and finally was able to go back to sleep around 2.

Regardless, here is the deal. I know that Zizek is the hip shit right now in many parts of the intellectual community, but I don't know how many debaters (people who seem to want to talk about Zizek more than the average folk) actually read any of his real impressive stuff. I mean, Welcome to the Desert of the Real is a very cool book, I like it, and fuck, The Ticklish Subject is up there, in my opinion, one of his best. But neither of them are Zizek at his most Lacanian. Regardless, Zizek seems to me at least, to deserve all of the credit that he gets.

He was supposed to speak on the question of Deleuze and Cinema, but seems to have decided to speak simply on Deleuze instead. Apparently he recently decided to write a book on Deleuze, so it made since for him to talk about it. I'm not sure if Joan asking him to speak inspired him to write this book or if he simply got into Deleuze on his own. Regardless, he started off with a very standard criticism, which is, however, fundamentally accurate.

He critiqued Deleuze's (and, as may become important, Guittari's) concepts of multiplicty, the rhizome, multiple subjectivities etc. by recognizing their affiliation with contemporary developments in capitalism. Basically, everything that D+G talk about in the Anti-Oedips/Thousand Plateaus books are pretty easily co-opted, if we want to put it into that rather simplistic language.

However, he made a funny transition into discussing how contrary to simply trashing Deleuze, as is all too common and probably too easy for Lacanians, he wanted to rescue him. According to Zizek, the mission of this new book, which is slated to come out in September (but probably won't get published until December, he told me yesterday) is to "Rescue Deleuze from Deleuzians." The basic point of his speech was simply to articulate in what ways a couple of Deleuze's books actually succeed in deploying concepts which are fundamentally Lacanian, castration, the phallus, and such. All through this talk he was funny, I mean constantly funny. He concluded with, what I agree with him, was a hilariously insightful quote from Don Rumsfeld referring to the status of our knowledge regarding Iraq: "there are known knowns (things we know that we know, like the oil wells not burning) known unknowns (where the WMDs are, if Saddam is alive) and unknown unknowns (things that we don't know that we don't yet know." And the one that he missed, is the most important one, the best way to understand the fundamental fantasy: unknown knowns, things we don't know that we know.

Regardless it rocked. So I had a couple drinks on Thursday night and got up bright and early for the conference the next day. In all honesty, it was a really impressive list of speakers: Jean Rabbate, Juliet Flower MacConnell, Enernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupancic, and Mladen Dolar. The latter three are the Ljubiana people, both of which apparently got into Lacan after Zizek himself popularized it in Slovenia. Rabate didnt actually show up, but his paper was pretty good. Juliet MacConnel was very interesting, she gave a reading of the seminar (oh, I suppose I should say that the conference was named after and focused on Lacan's Seminar XVII, French title L'Invers de la Psychanalyse, which is being translated as either the Underside or the Reverse-side of Psychoanalysis-it is set to be released this Spring, but those dates have never been accurate in the past, so Joan advises us all to not get too hopeful, Zizek has approved the translation though, so its just up to the people at Norton now). Ernesto talked about Badiou and some stuff that was tangentially related to the seminar itself, his talk was on "An Ethics of Militant Engagement." The best part of the morning was by far Zizek's interaction with Laclau, it was pretty funny the way that they interact and how well they seem to know each other, especially when they are so different. Laclau, showing up everyday in his tweed suits and Zizek wearing the same shabby green shirt and faded jeans both days.

The afternoon just rocked from the moment it started. Zizek spoke about the four discourses (Seminar XVII is primarily about the four discourses) in general and the effects that flowed from them. Dolar and Zupancic dealth with specific aspects of those ideas, economy and Hegel to be specific. Both of them were very impressive, though I was pretty sure from Zupancic's book (which is absolutely incredible, if you haven't read The Ethics of the Real, you should) that she would be solid. I have only read a couple of Mladen Dolar's articles, but I think that alot more of his work is going to be translated into English within the near term. I will look forward to it.

That is all for now. Big hockey game tonight that I will actually get to watch. I think I might get some wings and enjoy it . SKI-U-MAH!!

Peace,

MB-K