The Politics of Sexual Difference: Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, and Alenka Zupančič

hello everyone welcome to NYU Skirball I'm here to represent the German department of NYU and Duchess house which I I take very seriously tonight we host a wonderful team that we want to welcome and listen to and I can't vouch for what these numbskulls are going to say but I can assert my appreciation of Lou [ __ ] and comedy which you know that one of them is in particular an expert in and I am an ear and queer friend of Slava who comes equipped with a wonderful and subtle entourage of serious thinkers whom we welcome strongly so I suppose you don't need trigger warnings but maybe you do at this point so there's a number of things to consider one is that the German tradition has a deviant track that understands the subversive necessity of a certain type of humour and off the track kind of reflection and I think that our our team tonight might express that kind of Parra basis as we call it in in the Romantic tradition of German literature and philosophy tonight one of the principal addresses will be on sexual difference and its relevance in philosophical philosophical discourse with the understanding that the United States now is in a kind sex panic there's a little bit of overdrive perhaps that we want to explore a narcissistic surplus of our grievance culture that as intellectuals we are called upon to think about very seriously the Slovenian incursion involves pinpointing the pricks of conscience what Nietzsche would call the bad conscience of an era and the pitfalls of cultural anxiety so in a way that we welcome certain certitudes that we thought we held or understood with will be broken down with pitiless intensity the university has been less and less capable of tolerating certain types of comedy comics have said that they won't stand-up comics that they won't come to universities anymore so let's be aware of that and let's be aware also that like the police there is an intolerance to the subversive undertow of comedy and see what we think about that today I'm referring to the wonderful work of alengka Japan chick and also not in dolar their work on opera and comedy in in ways that we've already familiarized ourselves with and are working with my only complaint that I just pitch in the beginning is that one of them thinks they have gone beyond Derrida excuse me so welcome our wonderful team that begins with Slava is that are you coming yes Elaine KUB and Laden I didn't get it what it meant that we are the bricks of consciousness like erected sure what but Laden begin yeah alright I'll start a link and go seconds lava in the end big finale first of all I would like to thank the organizers for this event I would like to thank anyway you the Skirball Center we are really very happy and honored to be here so now the politics of sexual difference is the general framework title for this and let me start this way you know hide the girls word Galison fight and to make it short let be is the ethics of letting be and it's translated into english as release meant or the availability between before what is this is a quote which permits us to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and their mystery well nobody in human history has ever stepped forward and proposed Galison height in sexual matters like the way that the sexual matters are arranged is just fine let it be there has always been a very quick slide from Heidegger to Lenin to the Leninist question what is to be done what is to be done with sex you cannot just let it be something needs to be done so the very question of sex always cause for social action for a certain politics in the widest sense of the world something has to be done but what well in principle there are three options the first option the traditional and conservative one treats sex has something unruly dangerous the animal part in us threat so this then cause for restriction containment one needs to canalize it codify it present acceptable forms of sexual behavior prescribed prescribed the right persons that can be involved prescribed the right legal framework the right time and place the admissible practices and ways there has to be unconstrained have to be prohibitions and prescriptions and this can be played out in a vast variety of ways and the secondary duty is deliberate one sex has to be emancipated has to be liberated give him free rein an expression one has to do away with the traditional balanced constraints that have been stifling us for millennia this will finally make us breathe free enjoy our sexuality this will liberate us from guilt from our hang-ups inhibitions when I was first in Paris and this dates me which was in 69 I missed may 68 the one year but Paris was still covered with the graffiti from 68 and I was in a group with a put him a dorm in the big inscription of that dorm was New Orleans real sons and rather we want to enjoy without impediments and that was the slogan of the moment but what if enjoyment itself turns out to be the biggest impediment now there is also a third option that would want to do away with suck so together to be rid of this past or I do have a line in late Plato in his old age he says how great that I have been liberated from this nuisance and good riddance and this attitude was not proposed merely by radical asceticism religious orders monks renunciation of all worldly pleasures leading to gratitude curiously there were also some reflections about this in the aftermath of the October Revolution in that great laboratory of radical ideas proposals and of course the majority of reflections went in direction of liberating sexuality but some was the idea of the new man who would be liberated from sexuality all together like the Autopia look at priests platinum and then there are prospects specters of this raised with our technological advancement the possibility of procreation without sex and Slava speaks about they sing his newest book he brings it up so what is the attitude of psychoanalysis in a God of these three options which politics should be espoused well none of the three but what else is there second Alice is contributed perhaps as one of the biggest factors to the general liberalization of sexual morals in the 20th century to the sexual revolution to lifting the taboos the relative freedom of speech in sexual matters to the point that Foucault could see as a problem precisely with this that the proliferation of speech about sexuality instigated by psychoanalysis so Freud has written a paper already in 1908 entitled the civilized sexual morality and the modern nervous illness and the title of this paper is the programme psychoanalysis started with the treatment of individual patients scrutinizing the most singular ways of enjoyment and suffering and both intertwined trying to alleviate their imposing symptoms and alleviate them merely by the talking cure as the first patient in our name psychoanalysis already in 1881 so it's just words words words but by 1908 Freud was perfectly aware that the problem was not with the individual sickness in pathology that it is this society that causes the sickness so that we have to do not with pathological individuals but with a socially necessary form of pathology caused by social pathology which presents itself precisely as the civilized sexual brat the cultural a sexual morale so in the limit by culture itself and hence the title of his later work civilization and its discontents that the Zumba Hagen is equal to that necessary this malaise discomfort in culture so the modern nervous illness is the necessary offspring of this cultural civilized civilized as sexual morality so what is needed is not merely an individual cure or alleviation of symptoms but a serious transformation of our sexual mores ultimately a radical social transformation which may look like nothing short of a revolution and this is what place a chronology is largely in the leftist politics in the field of the demands for radical social transformation in the 1930s had become Reich Freud's radical pupil who proposed a sex pole movement movement based on sexual politics which presented a list of simple demands free divorce free contraception free abortion sexual education schools lifting the ban on homosexuality lifting the discrimination of children born out of wedlock free sexual life legalizing prostitution they like ten points I think his idea was that if these demands were fulfilled which seemed completely utopian at a time then capitalism would crumble sin was met what makes us into pliable submissive subjects willing subordinates is the guilt produced by prohibitions weighing on our sexual lives we are crippled by our permanent capability so the libidinal economy and political economy go hand in hand and if the lebanon economy is set free from constraints then the economic exploitation will also lose ground people will gain the freedom to organize and fight fight back and if we look at this list half a century later then rikes expectations seem very naive basically all the items most of the items on this list have been largely fulfilled in most of the Western countries of course there are exceptions that backlashes they suppose but the bulk of the list presents the contemporary liberal consensus and in the country where we grew up they are all basically fulfilled yet well the the end of capitalism is not quite in sight well astonishingly these demands could be easily recuperated and the capitalist rule actually got there by much worse they actually prosper within the noose stage of capitalism and figure as the achievements of the Western world in relation to the [ __ ] third world the yardstick of progress and undoubtedly this is a progress it is really astounding the such a shift could be produced in the space of a few decades in an incredibly short time given that a drives time the demands seemed impossible against the background of the ruling morals which seemed deeply ingrained and unbeatable but have we been set free as flowers speaks in his book about a certain symptomatic stance of the left which puts up a list of demands that are impossible to fulfill knowing full well that they cannot be met and secretly counting on the fact that they will not be met which then allows distance a comfortable position with Rives demands rather the opposite was the case what seemed impossible was rather quickly and relatively easily accommodated which put us in a very uneasy tough position we have granted they can say we have granted all your demands so what more do you want so do we still need psychoanalysis then well the answer is more than ever now if psychoanalysis contributed so much to representation of morals it doesn't follow that it simply espoused the liberation of sexuality as a simple solution Freud was very skeptical about this line he saw the problem is much more complex and without ever advocating the conservative line he nevertheless didn't quite buy into the rhetoric of raishin he thought that the stakes were of a different order than this alternative constraint versus liberation his diagnosis was that the demise of paternal authority of the figure of the prohibitive father he tells another predicament and his name for it was the super-ego if the traditional paternal Authority was based on a prohibition of enjoyment restraints on sexuality then this new figure would rather enjoy enjoy enjoy meant you can turn it into an injunction or imperative a hence lakhan's proposal that the command of the super-ego is ultimately enjoy and this command is like our European system kind of kind of adopted by American waiters who say enjoy doesn't so you're supposed to enjoy that's what expected of you and Lacan put it in a very economical way with the French pun which is pair o P O Father overs which means the paternal Authority was bad enough with the Petrarca rule etc but with the lifting of this world we may be heading for a bigger trouble we may be heading for worse but there is absolutely no incitement to go back to the good old days of fathers and prohibitions even though they may seem like to be easier to deal with in retrospect there is a paradox at the core of this to follow Freud's speculations its sexuality really restricted by something that is completely alien to it by an external oppressor or does it rather form a strange kind of Alliance compromise with what was supposed to oppressive so we may be looking at the picture from a wrong angle and now two quotes from Freud and is a most surprising quotes from Freud maybe the first one sometimes one seems to perceive that it is not the pressure of civility but something in the essence of the sexual function itself which denies us full satisfaction and urges us along other paths this may be wrong it's hard to decide so this is from in Bihar from 1929 and this is a very strange idea there is something in sexuality itself that resists resists it's full satisfaction and Freud gave voice to this idea for the first time seventeen years earlier in paper court on the universal tenancy to the basement in the sphere of love in 1912 a quote this is second quote it is my belief that however strange it may sound we must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual drive itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction okay so Freud in this paper goes on to give the humorous example of the happy relation between the drunkard and his bottle the drunkard has no need to go to some faraway country but the wine is more expensive or over the use of alcohol is prohibited and it seems that the relation between the drunkard and the bottle is pure harmony the model of happy marriage as opposed to gender trouble that we are doomed the trouble that may misuse the stem from sexuality itself not simply from its repression from something in sexuality that resists straightforward satisfaction on its own grounds not because of the external in position so that restrictions would then rather appear as an externalization or consequence of an internal impasse not the cause of the conflict but rather as its result so there is a kind of complicity of connivance of sexuality with its restrictions it is not simply sexuality is not simply straightforward in itself and independently of the culture that respects it but written with an internal impression is an inherent negativity this doesn't mean that people really enjoy being repressed but there is something that Joyce is an it that enjoys and short sentence from Lacombe surgery is Sumerian server it enjoys and it doesn't want to know it enjoys at our expense it enjoys at the expense of our pleasure principle it enjoys beyond the pleasure principle it enjoys but not the way we would want it to this is by the way what is called symptom and this is where psychoanalysis is usually needed not an enjoyment is inaccessible to us but we get it in a way that we cannot master or control so the stakes are much higher if you want to tackle this not and not simply fall into the alternative of either restricting or liberating sexuality now in 1905 in the three essays on the theory of sexuality which is the first Freud's first major statement on this topic introducing the drives etc well as an aside our friend Eric sent me from Chicago I was just co-teaching with him for three weeks in Chicago he has a project for his next book and we are very envious of the title because the title is three essays on the sexuality of theory I think it's good so in in the three essays Freud tellingly started his argument by considering sexual aberrations AB youngin and then proceeded to consider sexual advice and deviations regarding the sexual object and sexual go all kinds of sexual practices that stray away from what is regarded as normal and aimed at procreation but then there is something that there is finally something in sexuality as such that is defined for fraud by deviation elaboration or by declination a klingon from the path of natural quality and satisfaction physiological needs there is a deviation at a very in the very concept of sexuality in the very concept of the drive which the put natural cannot be grasped it apparently of its deviation now there is a famous adage brecht's adage at the end of the Threepenny Opera which runs what is the bank robbery in comparison with the establishment of a bank now what are all these petty thieves in comparison with the systematic legalized long term robbery accomplished by banks and by analogy which is kind of strange analogy limits when we say that frauds treatment of deviations and perversions in that book presents the following argument what are all these perversions deviations from the usual sexual object of God in comparison with sexuality as such which is in itself nothing but a massive deviation which may perhaps more spectacular than is perverse deviations aberrations and deviations are not placed in the beginning of the argument in order to lead us to the consideration of so-called normal sexuality but in order to show that normal sexuality is itself based on an aberrational deviation but using this analogy bring us again in a sort of analogous situation eligos dilemma whose side are we on the bankers of the robbers like if cultural normative sexuality is the bank and perversions of robbers whom do we support knowing full well that the bankers are actually the biggest rubbers masquerading as the respectable morals now in a footnote in that book Freud is a footnote to his considerations of homosexuality he says roughly the following when treating homosexuality when it's usually put in a position that one has to explain it like why this deviating behavior where does it originate how does it function but then the sentence continues in psychoanalysis the attraction between men and women is equally in need of explanation and is not based on some chemical magnetism so as far as I know this is the first time that anyone has written anything like it the were of course defenses of homosexuality basically saying but this is equally natural while Freud's argument is well it's equally unnatural the norm itself is put into the question the bank is the rubber but this doesn't quite mean that we can simply do away with the norm there's a certain normativity implied by sexuality itself linked with the kernel of its own impasse and may be different the simplest way to see this if you consider someone like marquis de sade champion of transgression of all norms but he badly needs norms to transgress he needs something to be socially consecrated as sacred in order to get hold the kicks from the sacrilege so there may be a secret complicity between the bankers and the robbers the latter badly need the former to have something to rob now [Music] but you in the theory subject 1981 made a very short programmatic statement which seems kind of scandalous today which is if you had the sex Iliad or class there are two sexes the two classes now why is it that the left is inclined to accept the second part but is in general completely opposed to the first one there are two classes this is what follows for Marx of course there is a vast multiplicity of social group strata social positions identities but at the bottom the very way that the social space is structured is determined by the class antagonism there is the two behind the seeming seeming colorful diversity multiplicity curving and traversing the very space in which diversity is form so in visiting the two at the core of multiplicity carefully these entangling how the two is at work in the midst of diversity is the way to a politics of emancipation but when we got to the question of sex then the opposite seems to be the case the assertion of the two the very idea of sexual difference seems to be the oppressive mode imposed on the multiplicity of sexual positions that identities the vast diversity of practices which would all want to be emancipated from the two not by deter to invokes the accursed binarism which kept us in check through millennia and in my initial alternative to would be inscribed on the side of restraint and the multiple on the side of liberation but what I guess we want to argue for is the opposite stance namely that the two is precisely the way one should hold onto in the politics of the sexual difference but which - definitely not the - of the masculine the feminine such as imposed by the tradition but a tool which works in them through them splitting them a kernel of antagonism that they have at the core which prevents us from ever simply inhabiting any sexual identity no a child is born and the first question is asked is the boy or girl and what decides about this by a very simple criterion the very basic rule of thumb the presence or absence of an atomic marker the canvas are some exceptions sure few and they don't didn't traditionally really undermine the rule so the phallic signified the phallic function is immediately put into play and this is what the signifier is it's an entity entirely bed made up of differences and differences alone ultimately based on the presence or an absence of a marker of a signifying trade and this is where the bodily contingency meets the signifying logic but if this were oh we wouldn't need psychoanalysis we need precisely because the sexual difference is not a signifying difference it cannot be spelled out or accounted for by the signifier there is no signifier of the sexual difference of course we can say a man and a woman or find a host of metaphorical metonymic extensions of it but then we just turn it into another signifying difference and the Kong has a number of notorious formulations of it for instance the woman doesn't exist there is no signifier of the no signifier of the of the other of the signifier there is no sexual relationship the difference at stake doesn't amount to a relation bit of harmony or positional complementarity the platonic - missing halves or further a sexual difference is what cannot be written but then the sentence continues with his brilliant formulation he doesn't cease not to be written he doesn't cease not to be read which means that it's substance it holds it taints all signifying differences it curves at signifying space the sexual meaning can proliferate because the sexual has no signifier and can thus contaminate contaminate or other signifiers or in other words sexual is not a special domain that could be circumscribed and limited but hence it has the propensity to infect all domains and one can see this with this numerous sexual harassment cases how the how thin is the line at interpreting what is as what is a sexual meaning or implication it can never be quite ruled and delineated can one ever say this is not sexual we are never in position say this is not sexual and of course this doesn't mean that there isn't the line and some kinds of conduct have to be unequivocally condemned know how to think the - which doesn't subscribe to the traditional binary oppositions but nevertheless holds on to the figure of the - sexual difference is what structurally exceeds the binary logic but it doesn't follow that one should then espouse the multiplicity of sexual positions identities practices as the simple way out of the constraints of the binary mode in its structures led of hundred flowers blossom but of course let them blossom and we fully support the move for the assertion and right but nevertheless the big this is the big butt of sack but which is added to this something something gets obfuscated in this move from the traditional binary to the flourishing of multiplicity precisely the question of the sexual difference as the - which doesn't solidify so the sexual identity but disrupts them the real kernel which we have to grapple with as sexual beings and which cannot be resolved either by constraint or by giving free rein to sexuality now coming to the end before passing the word to a linker a linkage I just published his book what is sex and I think one of the wonderful there is a wonderful weight precise way to address this problem at the minimum she speaks at length about absence the suppression of the binary signify precisely of the signifier which could if it existed pin down the other the woman etc and the way that an excess of enjoyment of resource enters precisely at that point at that spot in the place of this - as its manifestation and I think that one of the greatest qualities of her book is to support the expectations raised by the title what is sex we expect some juicy stories the proliferation of sexual meanings investigation of sexual conduct social repercussions proposal of political lines policy slogans what we get instead is a very rigorous philosophical inquiry which completely disentangle the sexual from all this in order to bring it to a very abstract core patek old to take all the fun out of it as it's been and link you to some of the oldest philosophical questions such as what is one or what is being but there is a political stance precisely in this subtraction from the usual political lines how to cut showed the proliferation of sexual meanings and bring it to the meaningless core and how to sidestep this alternative of constraint versus liberation and propose some hard work at the office Khalid core of this alternative well there is no easy political proposal to thank you Thank You mälaren Thank You avatar and of course the the organizers of this event I will take up my 20 minutes by trying to say a couple of things about what I think is important both conceptually and with also possible political political consequences in the precisely conceptual difference between the concept of sexual difference and on the other hand gender differences so I hope I don't need to say this but in view of what just recently happened to Judith Butler in Brazil ladies burning of her effigy being called witch and so on I will nevertheless say that obviously there is this kind of struggle in in this deep sense of emancipate emancipatory struggle we are on the same side but I think this kind of rise of various fundamentalist movements this is precisely not the moment to stop the serious intellectual conceptual debate but precisely at the moment when one should resist this move so ok I will just try to address very briefly and very roughly why I think the notion of sexual difference is very significant and philosophically also extremely important and where I see certain problems or certain crucial things that have been disappearing or not being addressed in the Indian Ocean or the replacement of the sex by by gender and also in this move that mud and refer to from this kind of impossible binary to multiplicity so there are very roughly put two ways in which a general theory also in political terms proposals its strategies and concept wise through this more or less liberal idea of identity politics that is let's identify all this possible sexual identities in fight for their recognition social within the social space and then there is another perhaps more radical and also sometimes more philosophically colored stance which is basically a battle against precisely any sexual identities the stance against identities as such so it will kind of briefly say some things about both so there is decent is kind of a simple identity politics perspective you have this kind of idea that the problem or and of course the repression the discrimination related to it in sexual matters comes about all from the inability or unbe English to recognize to formulate and then recognize certain sexual thing as an identity in itself and attributed it rights and I will simply remind you of a kind of I think very obvious example why this kind of thinking falls too short namely if you simply look at the history already of feminism in has a very different story to tell maybe the fact that woman has always been a legitimate sexual position or identity as part of the heterosexual heterosexual norm did absolutely nothing to prevent all kinds of atrocities in justices and discriminations being conducted against women and we probably not need to remind ourselves for example that women only got the right to vote in 1920 s in the u.s. in 1944 in France in 1971 in Switzerland on the federal level and in 1984 in Newton's time and one would be wrong I think to assume that these battles were won once and for all and you probably also know that just recently the alt-right leader Richard Spencer openly set for the Newsweek that he was not sure that women should vote so the fact I mean the more my part is that effect to be a woman has always been a socially recognized so position did little to protect women against harsh social discrimination based precisely on this recognized sexuality and part of this discrimination or the very way in which it has been carried out has always led through definitions images of what exactly does it mean to be a woman these definitions and images of course changed in time and space and of course this is basically what I'm really simplifying to the outmost but this led to this idea that a sexist or other genders are but cultural social constructions and here perhaps appears the first small but in consequence important difference between psychoanalysis and cultural or gender studies namely of course psychoanalysis agrees that definitions and images of womanhood or manhood for that matter are constructed through culture or socially constructed only it adds something to this it adds that actually culture or society itself are not simply this kind of non problematic and it is beings Buttered themselves constructed around the glitch or impossibility at their core and possibility or impediment that they are constantly struggling with in in this struggle it is also in this struggle that they produce this kind of socially problematic result so what is this glitch in the discursive system dis gabbed it according to Lacan appears together with the discursivity as such as a kind of it's inbuilt negativity its inherent obstacle Malad and already spoke about this so this kind of famous claim that there is no the non-existence of the binary signifier which is a kind of a jargon that can allow you to sleep if you just speak in this way which is probably why Lacan found another way of putting it which certainly hasn't allowed anyone to sleep namely these two famous formulas there is no sexual relation and the woman does not exist so I would just like to say a couple of words on this claim there is no sexual relation this famous claim is very often understood too quickly too hastily as basically saying something like you know this famous title men are from Mars Women are from Venus or relationship don't work there are only series of missed encounters there are only otama ties particles and this is why there is no relation so in this perspective the non relation is I think wrongly understood as a kind of ultimate truth or ultimate code of reality the truth is not very pleasant but at least we know why we are where we are I think in this understanding so we are led to conclude that no relation is the cause of oddities and difficulties in our relationships it is seen as the obstacle to the formation of any successful let's say relationship but like a most point actually is paradoxically almost the opposite it is only the in existence of the relation that opens up the space for relationships and ties as we know them in lock-ins words this is a quote the absence of the relation does of course not prevent the tie rally-ho far from it it dictates its conditions so you see this is a very different claim the non relation gives dictates the conditions of what ties us and in what way it dices which is to say that it is not a simple indifferent absence but an abscess that curves and determines the structure with which it appears the non relation is not the opposite of the relationship it is the inherent logical illogic of the relationships that are very much possible in existing it is not existing for being somewhere outside of this relationship so I think this is a very important point to have in mind that there is this kind of not idea that culture and society and it's norms are not simply symbolic sources of repression conducted against real bodies in their heterogeneity but they are themselves haunted by a real that bars them from within its kind of impediment and impossibility and one way of formulating what does mean what does it mean there is no sexual relation would simply be to say that there is no sexual binary that exists anywhere in nature or society so and this is also there is this famous Lacanian this is according to which from the television the famous text bit where he says that it is not so simple and this is what mother talked about as to say that culture society power are kind of causing the depression there are themselves formations built of depression they they have had in themselves already this gap of repression of the unconscious so the I think basically the point I'm trying to make is simply that whenever discrimination repression suppression occurred they are not simply performed by social structures on the subject as means of controlling them but are also means of dealing and finding a solution for the structural impasse impossibility of these structures themselves and I think this is precisely where we can perhaps a fine way of subverting because they are not I think where there is all this massive controlling or whatever of sexuality you can be sure that there is a massive problem of the structure which does it itself not simply its power but also its impotence so ok now I have this kind of a very short comparison where I think one can show what is the difference the conceptual difference between like general theory in theory of sexual difference and I would like just briefly consider this still in within this identity recognition politics the what is usually resumed on the way when it is presented through kind of describe multiple lettering such as lgbtq+ and of course some longer versions of it what are genders that appear here what our genders is different from sexes in this kind of formulations there are seen as ways in which we construct our sexuality in relation to the sexual division or difference which in turn is often reduced to a merge a biological or an anatomical division this is very often paradoxical with respective naturalization of masculinity and femininity that then appear them sometimes within the definitions of genders like they're dismissed community that is a femininity I mean all of the sudden these two terms appear as self-evident or simply biological which of course is the furthest possible from how psychoanalysis consists of them so the the problem or perhaps that the way to to point out this difference that I want to point out in relationship to this kind of approach one example I'm not saying that this is the best theoretical example it's simply taken from a web page containing as they call it I mean this is a title comprehensive list of lgbtq+ vocabulary definitions and what we read there for example is like this is a quote we that is the creators of this web page are constantly honing and adjusting language to our hamburger have the definitions resonate with at least fifty one out of hundred people who use the world identity terms are tricky and trying to write a description that works perfectly for everyone using that label simply isn't possible and of both though what I found problematic here is that language is understood and used simply as a tool with which we try to fit some reality and where the problem is not simply that this reality is already constituted through length through language but also what I was trying to say before that language itself is not so much constituted as like embedded by Oh traversed by a certain sexual impulse sudden without any sexual meaning but an impulse of the language itself that it itself the very side working place of all sexual impulses and meanings this at least is a fundamental Freud Allah Kenyon lesson sex is not some realm or substance to be talked about it is the inherent contradiction of speech twisting its tongue so to say which is why we can cover sex with as many identities we like the problem will not go away so sex has this kind of impossibility division or if you want sex struggle or non relation is often precisely sealed off when sex is replaced by gender or multiplicity of gender identities yes I claim this impossibility keeps returning precisely in the form of the plus again perhaps I would put it like this sex or sexual difference as understood by psychoanalysis is always in the plus not because it eludes any positive symbolic grasp or identity but because sex is where the symbolic stumbles gazed in so lack of identity its own impulse and impossibility and perhaps the shortest writing of this LBT G past would be simply M plus you already know that start so I think what I click it for me can we be set or what is clear from this kind of formula B to D plus is that identities are formed by way of externalizing the difference that always starts by barring them from within this is perhaps more accurate perception of this that simply this kind of understanding that we are simply open to new identities we'll come it is more than when a new identity is formed or recognized and hence a new letter added it just pushes the Plast as the marker of difference around the problem if about a little bit further the difference that is being does repeated at externalized you same clay I claim one into the same difference and this is the difference that makes a difference and I also would say this is the meaning of sexual difference not difference between men and women sex sexuality the difference in its pure state in this sense there may be mended genders but there is only single sexual difference that is repeated with them and exposed or pushed forward when they are constituted as identities but importantly I am NOT saying that the difference between men and women is repeated in the constitution of these identities now I'm saying that what is repeated with them is precisely the impossibility of this difference to function in the symbolic in in the real precisely the impossibility of sexually binary is what is repeated with here which is or what would become what called the real of sex so I will now just to conclude briefly return to the question of little emancipation that I started with or emancipatory politics perhaps we could roughly kind of identify three strategies or position this one that I'm kind of defending the concept of sexual different as a different kind of difference that is to say precisely a difference that does not simply is not simply a difference between multiple elements that exist in a certain space but a different than in a certain sense curves this various space within which these elements appear it makes it not some kind of a neutral space but precisely introduces this kind of curving and a symmetry and also this is of course this kind of other kind of difference that also slava spoke about in his books in relationship to the question of the class struggle in marx in classes which also are not just class struggle is not simply a struggle between positive classes existing in a society but the very structuring of the social space that structures of them in this way these various so it's kind of a similar structure ok so this is the different kind of difference then the second position this identity politics that i've already speaking about it is to save them and of impassioned to formulate as many sexual identities as possible and fighting for the recognition and then this third position which would be struggle against all sexual identities identities as such an active attempt to blur in undermine the differences as distinctions constitutive of these identities so i've already addressed the second position and the kind of a problem that i see in this third position also in relationship to psychoanalysis is i would say that it kind of keeps crashing against an open door I mean Freud's fundamental insight was precisely and learn and spoke about this that sexuality sank in something inherently disruptive rather than constructive of identities the sexual identity is a contradiction in terms of to say sexual difference also as Lacan conceives it is precisely not about sexual identities is an autumn but between feminine masculine genders but precisely about how the impossibility of this binary and of splits in two and in this sense also curves this space so sexual identities are already disrupted we don't need I don't think that the problem is that we need to disrupt and they are already disrupted at their current is precisely the problem this doesn't seem to help us so it's and again it is also very fashionable sometimes today to to simply repeat how for instance she's simply overrated and overemphasized and how this is in fact also responsible for our social enslavement so the sex and its importance are responsible for many of our miseries we are all tired of it so let's finally simply switch to something else the carried unimportant and significant and perhaps denounced Freud so-called pansexual ISM it's a straw man whose true concept if there ever was one Freud was the first to say that sex is responsible for many of our miseries exploited also in this sense very much at work in our discontent in civilization only he didn't think the solution was to look the other way he didn't believe that if we simply ceased to talk about it and talked about other things instead it ravages and difficulties will not find their way into these things twisting and complicating them and just as a example of what I have in mind here I like to use this a joke which is not a sexual joke but the structure is very similar you know there is a joke from the times of G apartheid where this violent fight starts on a path between black people sitting in the back and white people sitting in front so the driver stops the bus makes everybody get out lines them up in front of the bus and yells at them stop this fight immediately as far as I'm concerned you are all green now those of the lighter shade of green please get out on the bus in front in those of the darker shade at the back so I think this is what I'm trying to say that what also do you joke kind of exposes this danger how certain kind of neutralization which sometimes I think it's also at stake in this kind of attempts to can simply formulate a third text which would be neutral so one is could be rather ineffective in stopping the perpetration of certain kind of discrimination if we I claim forget or decide to let go of the concept of sexual differences radical sense of turn will risk ending up like the passengers of the bus from this joke declared non-sexual yet continued to be discriminated on the basis of sexuality only kind of an accessible way so now I will really conclude I want just to say one more thing namely that I think that a genuine emancipatory movement is of course never simply about recognition on acceptance of differences or different identities but about making these differences insignificant to speak for example of the right to vote is to speak about the right to vote regardless of our differences in this sense emancipatory movement of inclusion or universality implies a surveillance of the links with one's constituted identities yet the path to this does not lead a claim by a neutralization but precisely why a mobilization of this radical difference this absolute difference the difference that makes a difference that is precisely of the other kind of difference there is no emancipatory struggle that can not that can work without mobilizing this difference and this is also but there is there is always they are displeased and it mobilizes is it as sameness okay I don't have the time here to go into this Lacanian theory of how the real end is precisely the same but I will just take recourse to an item that kind of I think efficiently conveys this when we say for instance I know men women same difference and I think this needs to be taken quite literally we could also say I don't know gay transsexual make same difference quite literally in the sense not that we are all the same but that the impasse is the same and precisely this is what can finally unite us in a certain fight and not divide us okay thank you very much what I will have to say is just variations of on what was already said I would like to begin with reference to a recent film Blade Runner 49 I don't like the film too much but it has some interesting points for example the way it deals you will immediately know what I'm talking about if you saw the movie with the antagonism that cuts across the ruling elite itself in our global capitalism the antagonism between state and it's oppressive mechanisms its apparatus is personified in the film by Josie the boss of LAPD police played by Robin Wright and big corporations personified by Wallace Wallace the boss of Wallace corporation although Wallace is a real human she already acts as inhuman and under it blinded by excessive desire while Jo she stands for apartheid for the strict separation of humans and replicants or to quote her there is an order to things the world is built on a wall that separates can't tell either side there is no wall you've bought you've brought war or slaughter end of world her statement is that if this separation is not upheld again there is war and disintegration but should we not supplement the famous dish position with the famous description from the Communist Manifesto adding that also quote sexual one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible that also in the domain of sexual practices all that is solid melts into air all that is holy is profaned so that capitalism tends to replace the standard not normative heterosexuality with the proliferation of unstable shifting identities or orientations today's celebration of minorities and marginals if the predominant majority position even alter rightists who complain about the terror of political correctness present themselves as protectors of an endangered minority or take those critics of patriarchy who attack this it as if it is still a hegemonic position ignoring what we can read already in the first chapter of the communist manifesto quote the bourgeoisie wherever it has got the upper hand has put an end to all patriarchal idyllic relations end of world this simple statement is still largely ignored by those leftist cultural theorists who focus their critique on patriarchal ideology and practice so to cut a long story short I think that the fact that LGB was so enthusiastically supported by all those for me the embodiment of evil much more than Steve ban on and so on you know Mark Zuckerberg Tim Cook and so on and so on this they really act as a new type of public intellectuals all of a sudden Mark Zuckerberg an obscene figure for me present himself as a potential presidential candidate each in our house as how our life should find a new purpose this from the guy whose Facebook is the strongest machine of spending our time without any serious purpose another story okay so this is my claim we should always bear in mind the distinction between fixed identities and so on and on the other hand fluidity reinvent yourself all the time this division is the space of today's ideology there is ultimately nothing transgressive in this emphasis of fluidity and so on and so on so again to make it very clear I'm totally identified I think even in the sense that not an analemma developed with transgender people that I know but they are not representatives of this happy fluidity in ultramatic painful pain that characterizes their identity they stand for difference as such you would have put it the best way maybe to put it would have been that of this paradox or difference that we have men women and then we have there this difference as such apart from them as an object here comes my first problem with standard gender theory namely my criticism of it is that the way it ideologically appropriates what for me really revolutionary in transgender movement and so on one aspect of this is which one is what I call playful multiplicity transgenderism you know don't get to fit change your identity today you are gay tomorrow you're bisexual experiment with yourself and so on and so on this I think an insult to those transgender people who really suffer I think that here although they claim we we left behind psychoanalysis and so on this type of place for transgender peer were the solutions unlearn sexual difference try cross-dressing and so on my god for the transgender people that I know this is not a game they because most of them or many of them at least have an identity that they did choose but you know if we learn something from psychoanalysis and from the notion of unconscious which I claim is flatly denied by this playful transgendered theorists the fundamental yes we are free to truth Lacan said long ago sexual identity is a matter of choice ultimately it's not biologically determined but it's not this playful choice you know I go to to like is it still here around the corner on MacDougal down don't ask a favor they had good cakes thirty years ago you know and it's like chocolate cake strawberry cake it's a choice which is the most radical free choice which means precisely it's a choice which is always already done you are never in a position to say now I freely truth it's like falling in love referring to your experience if you are really in love it's not that you look around oh now I'm thinking sorry I'm not pointing at anyone I don't want to be arrested by politically correct police but like you know you have nice legs but you have nice smile you have nice breasts oh okay you it's you know the moment you do this it's not a radical choice of love if you're really in love remember your experience all of a sudden you discover that you don't really know why you are already in love it's never now you are already in love and another catch you don't know why the moment you can say I love you although your smile is a little bit stupid but your breasts your legs are okay it's not love so can you imagine I find an insult to impose this playful notion of oh today and is tomorrow I will put brass on or lipstick and time something different I mean did these people ever meet the truly suffering transgender people imagine you are a man but you're symbolic unconscious choice is woman what suffering are you ready to go through to follow your to follow your unconscious choice so again my what I'm opposed to is this simple idea which was referred to by both of them already that we have some inner cells which wants to express itself it's filling this is what bothers me also with this LGBTQ theorists that ultimately their argument is I don't feel like man or woman I don't fit it well I'm sorry but feeling for me is not a category of truth an authentic category because then you always can get a racist to strike back I knew unfortunately some racists who quite genuinely you cannot say it's not on thetic say I'm sure you can convince me that blacks are abs are nice people but I simply feel disgust when they are too close to me what will you tell them no you don't really feel this or what they do feeling is not a category of truth so again this idea that we have some nah you both refer to it some naturally proliferating plurality and then Beth society from outside imposes some binary difference thwart in your free expression and so on and so on what both of them already emphasize is that if psychoanalysis has any meaning and it has more than ever today yes okay meaning a role to play it's precisely you both of you I think quoted the scripture passages from Freud that operation doesn't simply come from outside sexuality is in itself something thwarted displaced self-sabotage and so on and so on and here I want to praise feminine hysteria that's how I read your M plus because Laden wrote my god we are getting old it's almost 30 40 years ago a wonderful text beyond interpolation where she had this wonderful idea LT sir is wrong not simply wrong but that you know this idea of you subjective eyes yourself when you assume a certain identity confirmed or knew by society like I am man so whatever society interpolate you into the identity it offers to you but dollar red locking in this sense that hysterical subjectivity and we should here strictly oppose the sixty-eight legacy of celebrating perversion against hysteria this was the hidden male chauvinism of Hicks the age was hysterics are confused women they don't know what they want they provoked a master but they really want a new master and perverts go to the end now every power structure needs a pervert as it's dark underside but which hysteria what's the basic hysterical question it's the most elementary form of critique of ideology hysterical question is you big other society Authority you are telling me what I am but why am i what you are telling me that I am this elementary doubting of one's identity the hysterical question is addressed at herself am I really okay to quote the greatest of them all Juliet am i that name that self that self doubting and sorry it's not true okay and now I will now you provoked my worst male chauvinist side the stem on a Juliet the same okay I'm sorry go on you see this is where I see the problem the path taken by some lgbtq+ people in simply providing new you Alankar refer to it providing new categories the idea is the binary opposition's to narrow so let's try to establish a longer least you may know that the New York City Commission on Human Rights established a list of I think 31 identities by gender crossdresser dragging drag queen third sex allied two-spirit and so on and so on and what's so interesting here are two things first do note that failure to comply with this if you refuse to respect this multiple identities can be punished with a fine up to $250,000 I find this so ironic that the whole leftist radical protest ideology was based on this Foucauldian criticism of this strategy of power to dominate by simple classification regulation and so on now we have LGBT going to the end in this biopolitical regulation so my ironic answer here with regard to what I think it was you nodded coated this parallel between class binary let's call it and sex binary maybe this has some use because what I'm provoked tempted to do is to apply the same procedure on of multiple exploding identities to class relations I have unfortunately a head and some people who think they are almost my friends who claim okay we may be rich but we don't fit class binary you know so okay I offered them multiple identities let me apply to them by class a proletarian sub employing other proletarians masturbatory Crossley's a small company self-employed owner exploiting himself class class Queen a motherly capitalist who takes care of her workers and battle rates no trade unions non class third class class fluid non-binary trans class the most beautiful one to spirit capitalist I think these are people like Bill Gates George Soros - spirits have the time you speculate in the ruthless way earning billions the other half time you are the greatest benefactor you give half of the not all billions away and one and so on and then we also have the most mysterious category here things are becoming interesting every least we learned this from Foucault himself you remember at the beginning of his order of things Foucault quotes from Boris I think that least classification it's a joke of course of all dogs and the last item is all sorry it's not dogs unimportant details okay but also those dogs who are not included into this list what I sent sound so interesting is this in this and here we get the plus and the paradoxes how in this classifications even located three elements which work like that because they tend to include they tend to include three strange categories a sexuals those who want simply to step out you point the disco and it's a beautiful dialectic how no you did not how liberation of sexuality imperceptibly tend to turn into liberation from sexuality and i think they're basically right in the census there is something in sexuality itself which resists liberation a sexual questioning a special category like you don't know where you fit the most interesting one allies maybe they would honor me with this kite like those unfortunately still [ __ ] heterosexuals but they have sympathy to us they enter one now I have nothing against this I just want to point out how they treat care because whatever allies is it's not a sexual orientation it just tends towards it so how should we react to it I have a very simple radical solution here we should accept all three terms and universalize them first a sexual position isn't it as a temptation isn't it inherent to sexual identity itself always this temptation of since every forum of sexualities particular narrow the only way to be sexual as such is to be a sexual in a way then questioning is both of them pointed out for Lacan already for Freud questioning your identity is not limited to sexuality questioning your sexual identity it's what makes you sexualized if you don't question your sexuality you live in paradise in what paradise oh I advise you to read a wonderful short treatise by st. Augustine the noctus at Caen Cooper Center where he approaches the stupid question did they have sex did they ask tree points in paradise or not and his answer is of course they did but it was a simple instrumental activity none of the thrill of sexuality like raising your penis was the same as raising your hand to work on the field and precisely for him I know Augustine theology can often savors his idea is an ingenious one for an old man like me it comes as close to truth as you it can he doesn't reach sexuality as seen but as a punishment for the scene the original scene was eating from the tree of Apple Tree of Knowledge you want we want to be like God and then Augustine said I will punish you I will punish you in what way you want to be your master what I only could be so to remind you that you are not even a master in your own house I will make it so that which men there will be one organ penis whose movement you will not be able to control you will eat will erase when you don't want it to race when you want it to race it will not look as I'm quite ingenious this theology [ __ ] gets laid but okay so what I'm saying here is that the first thing to do with these classifications which incidentally is a practical measure I of course totally support them you can define your identity my and our the point is just you don't get rid of antagonism in this way the illusion is that masculine feminine its restraining I don't feel it so if we just expand the list enough oh I will find my spot happily there that's me and it will work it doesn't and here here we go into become into a crucial moment pointed out by a length of these classifications and I'm not criticizing it that is the most productive part the role of this mysterious plus we can read this plus in a let's call it in a in a in a nominalist way our classification is same simply never full and we want to be honest maybe we didn't cover all identities so to keep it open for new identities it's a plus I think the proper way to approach it would be a paradoxical claim that Plus is not just an empty space for future possible particular identities you can be a plus also our name for the places woman for example a claim and this doesn't mean woman is less than man if anything it means exactly the opposite for Lacan subjectivity itself is hysterical hysteria is in search of this plus even at a ridiculous daily feminine hysteria which is for me incidentally not depreciating but the highest elevation what even the stupid private level we all remember if you are I'm sorry it works with others in different way the most annoying thing for us heterosexual men when you're in love with the woman is that sooner or later you are attacked by this question but tell me what do you see in me but tell me why do you love me and so on this is precisely what defines subjectivity subjectivity is strictly correlative - impossibility to find a full objective correlate for you okay not to know not to go too far just to repeat what Allegra said I would say that in this sense your wonderful formula same difference difference about which you are talking about is not a difference between identity men women their difference it's a difference which makes incomplete which from within destabilizes each identity itself it's a difference that cuts from within into into into its identity which is why I think we have some of us who are two heterosexual we have this uncanny feeling when you meet a radical suffering transgender person again he is not beyond difference in this radical sense if difference as such and now just to conclude so what should we do with regard to all these tensions okay of course we should support transgender movement but in this sense that they don't really move beyond difference they are the ultimate proof that difference cannot be reduced to this established gender binary opposition and so on but there is something new happening today and with this I would like to conclude there is a new way exploding now of contesting the traditional form of gender identities it's we see it in all media women massively coming out about male sexual violence all the features of the mediatic coverage of this event should not let's call it Harvey Weinstein event because I'm have the honor to tell you that not with regard to my activity but how I dress and so on I was already called the Harvey Weinstein of philosophy so I would say that all the mediatic cupidity should not distract us from what is really going on nothing less than an epochal change a new chapter in the history of equality thousands of years of our relations between sexes were regulated and arranged are questioned and undermined and nobody can say here that it's just a 1% minority it's the majority what is coming out is that's another important thing nothing new it is something not only in the cases we read about Harvey Weinstein Kevin Spacey and so on something that basically everybody knew about and we were just not willing ready to openly address the issue ways of exploiting women sexually women are now bringing the dark underside of our official claims of equality and mutual respect and what we are discovering is among other things how hypocritical our fashionable critique of women's operation in Muslim countries was and is of course it's scorer what is happening there but I'm sorry we have our own horrors as we are learning now as in every upheaval there will be numerous in justices ironies and so on for example since I love louis c.k I claim that what he did is lewd obscene embarrassing but I'm sorry to put him what he did at the same level with those serial rapists brutally exploiting women I find it a little bit obscene but again all this should not distract us which would rather focus on the problems that lie ahead although some countries are already approaching a new post patriarchal sexual culture like my beloved Iceland where two-thirds of children are already born out of wedlock where women occupy more posts the men in public power institutions but I think we have here three key tasks first the need to explore what we are gaining and losing in this upheaval of our inherited core seek or chipped seduction procedures new rules will have to be established so that we will avoid a sterile culture of fear and uncertainty some intelligent feminists know that long ago that if we try to imagine hundred percent politically correct courtship we get uncannily close to a formal market contract we have to the problem is that sexuality power and violence are much more intimately intertwined than we may expect so that element of what is considered brutality be sexualized libidinal invested after all sadism and masochism are forms of sexual activity sexually sexuality purified of all violence and power games can well end up getting this actualized now I'm just saying that it's not as simple as all now women will be more free and to write new rules the situation is extremely complex and ambiguous we you know like we behave as if we somehow the old game of seduction will survive and so on and here much more of a pessimist isn't it that it's if you exclude those pure contractual forms of sex through edge or whatever that in every game of courtship I claim there is a moment when somebody as they say has to make openly a move and whatever you say there is something brutally violent in that element did you see the movie by injury to 21 or 24 grams where short end declares his love to Naomi Watts and now he what said how can you do this to me do you know how brutal is this and can you imagine anything more brutal than somebody telling you I totally fall for you I desire you this terrible intrusive so the situation is extremely complex here the next task is to make sure that the ongoing explosion will not remain limited to public life of the rich and famous between trickle-down penetrate daily lives of millions of ordinary invisible individuals that's my other great fear it will become something for the big media big names but will it explode down and the last but not least point is to explore how to link this awakening to the ongoing political and economic strata how to prevent this awakening from being appropriated by Western liberal ideology and neutralise it you know the way big corporations did it in a masterful way with much of lgbtq+ you know neutralizing it this is maybe the crew sorry the crucial problem if we don't solve this problem this potential awakening can become just another publicity game in our late capitalist subjectivity thanks very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] she is asking if I'm in the mood to talk to you my answer is absolutely not I'm bored with you but to cover this up and me have to pretend that we are nice guys yes I didn't have to mime a consent culture with you but out of politeness I thought I would and what we could do now is have some form of non-psychotic Q&A where you might want to make a question that's philosophically a little sound not about your feelings because he's not into that okay but woman up and start articulating something perhaps with someone like to start off yes the microphones are here the problem is not us I hate it when somebody talks here and all the place you can come to the mic here if you will I would like to talk about louis c.k and i understand what he did is that from my point of view disgusting but how you okay how you could actually blame him in the culture where masturbation is encouraged it and porn industry has so much profit that probably add in ii cannot even count on it and how you can raise a child a boy how you can teach him to control himself in what we can teach because we don't have rules at all what is allowed what is not allowed in there is no any sexual education there's no rules in our society they hood they should to see him as they could and probably louis c.k is s victim is this women and why his women Budi chi adult cannot stop him because i am adult in many times in my life i had some kind of experience like this and just two phrases could stop any movement of the organ that cannot be controlled thank you if you very brief so that i don't talk too much is usually i agree with what you say about masturbatory culture in the sense that even in that lock-ins noise point the predominant form of male sexuality is masturbatory is la composite sexual act from the male perspective is often masturbation with the real partner but the structure is that of masturbation you use the real person as just a material prop to enact your fantasy and this is again nicely staged in Blade Runner 49 you remember that sex scene where his alter ego the the joy the hologram partner is projected onto another replicant but nonetheless real body I always asked myself how did that woman the real body who is just occupied by this how where is her experience here and so on how is she so I I I agree with you here but my point was much more modest my god my point was just that yes he was not disgusting but sorry this is not the same as as what if you are to believe the media probably we do what I don't know Harvey Weinstein and others are doing and what I'm afraid is that it get the horror of it will get water down into this you see but aren't we all obscene and so on and so on so okay wait are we sorry what's the answer you are my doubt about it I think every identity is a doubt a doubt but in a but now another difference we don't have time my god you enter here or you because what we were talking about difference and so on and don't confuse this with the stupid issue of bisexuality you know in like none of us is fully man or woman we are floating man have feminine features and vice versa and so on its own this is the union topic this is not what Lacan means by bisexual difference because the dream of this is precisely that somehow first this is absolutely part of male authority every big man and you can more successfully screw politically not empirically real women if you discover a deep feminine side in you you know that's part of the male chauvinist identity this is not what we are talking about you crucial I think in this respect is also what you said about the truth choice which is precisely not kind of supermarkets choice of identity but that feels like being compared to do something but at the same time I think precisely in these matters the certainty of what your are comes out precisely as answered I mean this is data to kind of correct it's not that okay I'm absolutely that the very question in Co feet is part of this being compelled to be I mean so it's not simply this I thank you to the whole panel this is a little bit of a naive question for everyone um so obviously on a theoretical level I'm deeply sympathetic to your positions but um I guess we could say for better or for worse that genie is out of the bottle like there are the a multiplicity of different orientations different identities and you know the this does represent a kind of emancipation for a lot of people right and the rejection of these identities can only be experienced as a further form of oppression correct so if that is the case and how how do you see this notion of the ambiguous all inclusive plus being politically deployed while you know resisting capitalist recuperation as well as you know without reject without refusing to recognize groups that have already been marginalized enough yeah but you know what only and I hope you will explore this you know that for example what is so fascinating with me is that woman's identity can also be constructed in an extremely oppressive way here questioning enters and so on it's not each of us gets an identity and so on you maybe you should go into this you develop this much better to some extent what I what I was quickly saying earlier but one very simple and two brief point a way of putting it is precisely that this kind of multiplicity of existing orientations as you put them I think that the the crucial political emancipatory struggle is precisely not so much the effort of like enumerated them and kind of yeah in this sense getting them recognized but precisely what is in this difference in this discriminated orientations that is actually common to all of them and what is this same difference which is not in not only the day share but they shared perhaps with some I don't know workers or the problem is where is the difference that actually makes a difference in the sense that it unites but also makes the certain divisions which are I mean every political struggle divides the social space it's not simply that we all unite there is the enemy so to say but where does the line line this is I think the crucial question is sometimes it gets kind of obfuscated into this kind of particularity which who is who is now also the dis question who is now embodying the difference this happens sometimes in a completely contingent way there is no kind of intrinsic necessity sometimes in the social space explodes because certain contingent thing happens in certain moment and has the power of kind of hegemony sizing or importing at least at some point this kind of a difference and another point sorry we will build it about how this identity function for example I totally support gays struggle but to do this one has to see this was what fascinated me so much when I was serving the army military know-how first it was the barracks where I was a totally homophobic space like when somebody was discovered to be gay he was dismissed from the Army but those couple of days before the official act of dismissing him came came and he was set free it was nightmare you know all this dirty military rituals every evening other soldiers inserted him when he was sleeping one put a pillow on his head others took of their belts and beating but you know what fascinated me so much that at the same time I never lived in a social space more permitted by homosexual innuendos like I remember so right so it's a very interesting case of this ambiguity of sexualities homosexual is absolutely prohibited but as if this prohibition is counteracted by an explosion of kind of a fake thwarted homosexuality for example in my unit the usual way to say good morning was and smoke yours which was a clear reference to homosexual fellatio and it was even totally neutralized it was not done with an obscene laughter it was simply smoked yours yes and smokers also our oldest extremely stupid when we were waiting in line for lunch it's so disgusting the usual game was somebody behind you quickly start finger into her ass pulled it out when you turn around who did it not me you know what so what I'm saying is absolutely nothing against homosexuality but how do this that operation is never simple operation is never simply this sense and this is again what fascinated me such a lot this complex ways the way ideology functions and so on and so on and here I think I don't have time to develop it that as Lacan points it somewhere if we take homosexuality in the literal sense as denial of other Ness the other your partner is just a fantasy just a material prop to enact your narcissistic fantasies then from the male perspective at least the standard heterosexual practice is much more in this sense only homosexual that then gave homosexuality welcome a sexuality and for theoretical reasons I cannot go into now lesbianism maybe even more I'm not sure is far more in distance heterosexual that you don't reduce the actual other to prop to enact your fantasies standard heterosexuality is most common sexual in this sense sorry I was too long but now you use nothing why are you playing here this wise guy who I says nothing and at the end you will come with some Zen Buddhist wisdom or whatever and the true enjoyment is a delegated you enjoy so much if I can delegate enjoyment I at my age you tend to think the same thing about sex sorry thanks very much sir if I didn't know okay would you mind came to reduce some kind sure hi um you had said you had discussed about the internal turmoil of transgender individuals yes and how feeling doesn't necessarily prove the truth so one may then think well how does one tell the truth perhaps one answer to that is you perform the truth you then decide to dawn the gender you feel or dawn the performance that you feel is correct but performance inherently is also something that feels very much like a lie - most people performance is something that you dawn it is a fabrication it is an edifice so how can we resolve that I totally agree with you and will not lose too much time but it you practically produced out of yourself lock-ins formula truth has the structure of a fiction in the sense that I would say not so much like that that performance is a fiction and this can be a way to enact the truth so I totally agree with you here and this brings us to all the topic of masks and so on I think one of the most stupid things to do is to think that you know when you wear a mask the truth is your stupid face behind no that can be in it's our everyday face which is basically a lie and sometimes to put on a mask is the only way to get at what you if I may use this expression really are nothing yes you must say something yes sorry no yes first of course I agreed that the truth lies at the structure of fiction and I mean it doesn't mean that true to see something fictitious that want to do away with but that truth in psychoanalysis doesn't have a structure of a proposition it's not proposition I mean in the whole history philosophy the truth value was basically attached to propositions the quality of opposition which can be true or false and then you check it against the reality in in psychoanalysis don't have this unconscious speaks always in riddles in fragments and you cannot out of those riddles at others those fragments you cannot make a whole proposition because the truth pertains just to it being fragmented and impartial it's its form of partiality which contains address it's not a proposition which you can then test against reality so there is another kind of truth at stake and therefore one needs structures fictions performance theater to actually come to this shows to formulate something that cannot be actually formulated as as a proposition as a thesis and there is more truth in the performance in this sense and in okay in theater I mean where everything is fake everything everybody says the words imposed by others everything is rehearsed but nevertheless for a moment of truth to come out it's precisely the theatrical moment a performance is necessary there's more truth in the performance than in the ambient reality we are in the theatre just one sentence because I think this is also crucial in the the truth is never simply truth about the real and the problem is not that it cannot be the problem is that because it is too close to the real to be this kind of a meter statement about real and it cannot simply spell out the real directly the only way it can do it is precisely through some kind of formation of truth witches yeah this is another reference that I often use it is in this sense that locking in a statement which I don't like it's light male chauvinist orientation but you can universalize it when he says somewhere that if a husband is jealous of his wife flipping around it's pathological even if all his suspicions are true what makes this pathological is not you should not see all let's look if he is still sleeping around and so on and I try to apply this to critique of ideology like if you debate with the Nazi the totally wrong think let's say anti-semitic or other racist today the totally wrong thing is to say okay these are your propositional claims about the Jews so let's look oh you see Jews are not like that you are wrong now the result would have been somewhere in between a Nazi claims Jews are seducing our German women well I hope they are and vice-versa what can I say the Nazis say Jews are exploiting us well not all one just to emphasize this there was also a Jewish poverty in Germany but me but you see what's wrong in this the the anti-semitism was false not even primarily because it's propositions were false the question is that why did Nazis in order to assert practice their identity need a figure of the drew it's the question of their identity not is it true or not I would even go to the end here a claim that paradoxically sometimes even if propositional your statements are true you can nonetheless lie because in what you will computed masquerade performative context it's sursum and vice-versa the big lesson of hysteria is that lies can tell the truth more than literal truth my god okay so we're going to have to give up soon this this room so would you agree to listening to the questions and and many interventions and then then will I give answers and then you should get to what question I was answering that would be buying that's what we've been doing excuse me I have two questions one is difficult and one is easy so I'm gonna list both of them thank you first one you guys all mention how sexuality like day you know defies satisfactory categories there's always something unsatisfactory in it and I was thinking how much of that is is due to the fact that it's a violent recombination of DNA if there's anything if there's any biological element how much of it which is which is violent and a little bit arbitrary so and my second difficult or do you agree that's a difficult time okay all right the easy question is if louis c.k was mick jagger would he have had to do what he did would he would he have done what he did if he was Mick Jagger in the same situation he were excuse me thank you alright next given the traditional heteronormative familial relationship as the dominant mode of reproduction if the gender revolution is to cease the ideological superstructure that is the means of reproduction what should we do after the Revolution I thought after the reproduction not very good well you're you're digesting all this and absorbing it I just want to ask about the idea of true feeling not being a contingency of truth and specifically pertaining to identity that seems like in some ways it can be interpreted as as a requirement of validity like if you wake up and decide that you feel away that you're not truly that way like if someone feels that they're not a man must should they know it do they have to know it or and if they feel that are they not are they are they lying themselves and others thank you thank you hi my question is I guess slightly oblique to the subject matter a little bit but it's addressed towards al ANCA and something that she had said towards the beginning of your portion which was that at this time where there's as you called it something like strikingly or startling number of fundamentalist groups going forward that we need now not to abandon these conceptualized types of theoretical conversations my question is is to have how you and this is for any of you really view the mechanism by which these types of conversations would address these groups who don't to me in my view seem to exist in the realm of those types of conversations and who are much more active or who are you know the reason why it's becoming so concerning is because they're now finally organizing to do something and no longer just talking about it I guess thanks yeah no I think there is perhaps there is an important question or important different yeah so yeah I'm interested in how Authority intersects in all of this so I'm noting in just a specific example how the hashtag me to movement where women the voice of women is heard only insofar as they perform a certain kind of victimhood there's some kind of a demand for paternity paternalism so that if I am complaining of being a victim if I'm demanding a paternalist protection then I can be heard so I feel like there's a kind of a punchline waiting for a joke that I'm trying to fine okay and the our penultimate because I have one so thank you very much for your lecture and I would like to send the kids but they don't think it's appropriate so I would like to ask a question so I think it seemed too / - I found the identity and not on the principle of enjoyment but the principle principle of suffering however this posed several problems yes this problem first of all and can a resemblance to Christine miss so God had his own identity of God but he became entranced God and he became Jesus and he suffered and he and therefore he became a very important person and second don't you feel like that previous in previous epic identities were based on principles enjoyment and enjoyment was monetized by capitalism don't you fear that if you will give us an identity a identity based on suffering suffering will also be monetized by capitalism and what do you do with that do you mean sorry just to make it clear I'm not answering do you mean by principle of enjoyment simply pleasure principle or do you have a distinction because as Lacanian for us everything because for us enjoyment is painting pleasure you cannot even separate enjoyment from certain type oh I will not also answer your question but I will say if you if you say that suffering is the thing from enjoyment therefore you have this distinction in the pocket so I'm asking not about enjoyment even in like an incense but I'm asking about suffering as you've used it you have like two minutes to answer all those questions in the Zen Buddhist way hear me clapping with one hand that stuff okay please just like try to pick up to two questions one is was I think it was the first one about I will not address the DNA part of it but the very expression that we were talking about section is that what divides all categories yes but there is a certain kind of problem with this formulation I think that what we are saying or at least I suppose so is not that sex is this kind of think or substance beyond to reach of language or of categories and that if we try to define it or then it simply did kind of cannot we cannot do it the problem is more I think the Lacanian point is more radical it is the very breakdown of the language it is not something exteriors it in where the language of these categories ran into their own emphasis there you have it sex it actually it's just it's not some kind of bodily substance somewhere beyond reach and I think this is probably the difficult this kind of container intuitive point of this I kinetic theory of sex it's not some juicy it's precisely a certain impasse of the structure at which the point of which appears this kind of surplus excitations excitement but okay this is just to perhaps square clarify this point and then just this question about fight and when there are this fundamentalists causes rising should we renounce or not to our whatever intellectual debates I think it's always a kind of a permit I mean it's a choice to be made perhaps from one case to another of course I'm all against this kind of narcissism of small differences to say in cocaine Hawaii we have a slightly different from you and there is this is often a disease of the left that you have this kind of but at the same time I think there are some important questions that should not be simply forgotten or or even forbidden to be discussed because now we should all stick together against this any because a certain way of the thinking thinking itself is already radical thing and I think Slava brought some beautiful pages of this and we should first twofold not stop thinking whatever we do we should not stop thinking but thinking he's takes sometimes a form of a certain fight or polemics so be it but not yeah this kind of narcissism of differences okay I'll take up two things one is okay Vanessa's question about the question of victims and victimization victimhood in all this I think just one aspect of it I think also the sexual harassment cases this women were actually yes victims of a certain behavior but being a victim and I think this is a very important political lesson is not enough for the politics this is why all this situation is so ambiguous at this point because we want to see women as passive not the agents not sexual ages anyway just never see and of all these things and we love the victims we love the victims victimhood is not enough once one should proceed from that a point of sheer victimization as the form of subjectivity to forming certain political stances out of that by loving the innocent victims is not enough as it stands for any fight and there is no history to this and I will I don't know we mentioned France panel who was the great the first post-colonial theories before any post-colonial studies ever started in 52 who saw this point extremely well that for blacks proclaiming that there are victims of the imperialism white racism at etc this is not a politics this is some sort of sort of beautiful soul like the one should form a radical politics out of this and okay I will pick up the question about the revolution what do we do after the revolution will disappear after revolution again with some skepticism about the way that the signified revolution functions and functions has a sort of easy label or easy way out we are all for revolution we are not reformists we are not just liberals we want revolution and there is the sentence in over which I love I mean because it's indicating a certain position which goes roughly like this in every revolutionary every revolutionary opinion draws both of his strengths from the secret conviction that nothing can be changed it's a very good sentence points to a certain lipid inner underpinning of revolutionary talk because we secretly believe that well nothing will change and therefore we we are safe to speak about revolution radicality which then stands in for our own incapacity for change they were engaging in real action at this point because we all await this big event of revolution and wonder what the hell will happen after the revolution will we have how we organize a society after that so there are many ways in which the signifier revolution actually hinders prevents radical politics okay I stopped just miss two comments we we are you done or are you gonna start talking Slava very briefly don't be afraid first what both of you touch this is so important about victimhood become here that was great no sorry very briefly because I experienced the same problem of this false complicity of victims and public and neutral narcissistic satisfaction 2025 years ago when there was a civil war in my country although not in my part and I participate this is one of my formative experiences I participated in some Hitchcock conference in San Francisco I think and a guy attacked me how can you talk here about such a trivial thing like Alfred Hitchcock when your country is in flames and I explode that back AHA you know I was allowed just to play that role of women raped villages are burning c'mon country my answer was very simply but you can talk or what you know this idea that I was in a very racist way even identify with that the second thing I will connect this passion to that of suffering and so on the problem with me is that the problem with suffering is that when you draw a certain even libidinal enjoyment out of it I will not lose time we don't have addressed I advise you to do something go on youtube and put Goebbels Joseph total war speech from 43 it's an incredible document of access of enjoyment in suffering what he promises to Germans is not any final paradise victory what he promises to journals is he says do you want a total war a wall war so total with so much effort and suffering that you cannot even imagine it and crowd shouts oh yes yes we will and so on so you know things are here extremely twisted you cannot simply oppose suffering as with a victimhood I totally agree with not an others that the victimhood as such is not only not political aid but it's like didn't you notice how big media in our day loved victims in third-world countries the moment these victims organized themselves they tend to disqualify them immediately almost ah you are a terrorist or whatever you know everybody everybody everybody loves victims so I totally agree with Laden and I'm mad at you that I didn't get this part before that I wonder what will be now with all this Rose McGowan and so on protesting what will be the second act you know will this be all me also me also I read somewhere I don't know you told me which true or not that even Monica Lewinsky now raised her voice me too I was also victimized by building ok the first step but then comes the much more difficult crucial part that you as the victim should not get caught into perversely enjoying your victimhood there is a whole industry today of victimhood others like alt right and so on I agree with if I got it correctly what you said because let's be concrete kill all tried horror and so on and rewards well one has to do more precise analysis first it said how some old rightists part of their neo-fascist project no doubt are making claims that almost no leftist at least in institutional parties is ready to do for example Steve ban on you know what he said as a reaction to tax Trump's tax that's reform plan he said this is a horror it privilege is the reach on the contrary taxes should be raised to 40 raised to 45 percent for the rich the second thing we what we we should really avoid what you plot not said about about about this not you yes we have to be United but at the same time when we have now this all right rebellion whatever you call it the crucial point is what did we in the Pharisee or count ourselves as liberal progressive what did we do wrong are we aware what scandal was Trump's election everybody thought he is a lost case what where was the mistake here and you made him when you were the mistake but you know what I want just very briefly don't be mad I just wanted to add is that now the scandal is what is Democratic Party doing now Trump is doing his job of successfully ruining gradually Republic apart the Democratic Party what are they doing all these stories about Russians meddling of course they probably did the way United States are doing all the time in foreign collecting but this was not the crucial factor the crucial factor it was clear was the mistake totally wrong strategy getting rid of Bernie Sanders of the left and so on and all this obsession with Russian checkers and so on it was to prevent Republican Party from asking the key self-critical questions and the real way to fight alright and Trump is to go on with this self-critical fight if we don't do this then if we believe he wrote nicely these two just guys like Jon Stewart John Oliver then we can have all the last at Strom but he will keep winning no so I know that you've you've really donated a lot of thought to this event and we are very very fortunate to have heard from all three of you shut up let me just wrap this up already it's been like two hours too long after my intro it went downhill I I want to say one thing I do want to say one thing that you know in terms of autobiography I've been shuttling between the so called different destinations which of course rigorously we do need to address of sexual difference like ln6 sue and others and and gender theory and trouble so I would have liked maybe to ask for a more complicated relation to some Judith Butler's work though I understand that that's not always possible but for the next time the next round should we reinvade you--every I that will be your punishment your sexuality will be to wear the mask of gender trouble how's that is that a deal no because I don't have sexuality at my age no the bare description of that's what they all say of the you know the beautiful English joke when some Lord in his Park was doing how do you call it push-ups no and the butler comes and says did his lordship not notice that the lady has already left you know alright this lady is leaving thank you everybody [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Deutsches Haus

Views: 32,975

Rating: 4.731286 out of 5

Keywords: Slavoj Zizek, zizek, Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, deutsches haus, nyu, german, skirball talks, skirball center, philosophy, Sociology, slovenia

Id: 4R7SCY5zVLg

Length: 129min 27sec (7767 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2017