Monday, August 5, 2013

Sucking Upon Monkey Balls

In his seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan elaborates the distinction between two types of the contemporary intellectual, the fool and the knave:
The 'fool' is an innocent, a simpleton, but truths issue from his mouth that are not simply tolerated, but adopted by virtue of the fact that this 'fool' is sometimes clothed in the insignia of the jester. And in my view it is a similar happy shadow, a similar fundamental 'foolery', that accounts for the importance of the left wing intellectual.

And I contract this with the designation for that which the same tradition furnishes a strictly contemporary term, a term that is used in conjunction with the former, namely, 'knave'... He's not a cynic with the element of heroism implied by that attitude. He is, to be precise, what Stendhal called an 'unmitigated scoundrel'. That is to say, no more than your Mr. Everyman, but your Mr. everyman with greater strength of character.

Everyone knows that a certain way of presenting himself, which constitutes part of the ideology of the right-wing intellectual, is precisely to play the role of what he is in fact, namely, a 'knave'. In other words, he doesn't retreat from the consequences of what is called realism; that is, when required, he admits he's a crook.
In short, the right-wing intellectual is a knave, a conformist who refers to the mere existence of the given order as an argument for it, and mocks the Left on account of its' utopian plans, which necessarily lead to catastrophe; while the left-wing intellectual is a fool, a court jester who publically displays the lie of the existing order, but in a way which suspends the performative efficiency of his speech. Today, after the fall of Socialism, the knave is a neoconservative advocate of the free market who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as a counterproductive sentimentalism, while the fool is a deconstructionist cultural critic who, by means of his ludic procedures destined to 'subvert' the existing order, actually serves as its' supplement.

What psychoanalysis can do to help us to break this vicious cycle of the fool-knave, is to lay bare its underlying libidinal economy - the libidinal profit, the 'surplus enjoyment', which sustains the two positions. Two vulgar jokes about testicles from Eastern Europe illustrate the fool-knave opposition perfectly. In the first one, a customer is sitting at a bar drinking whiskey; a monkey comes dancing along the counter, stops at his glass, washes his balls in it, and dances away. Badly shocked, the customer orders another glass of whiskey; the monkey strolls along again and does the same. Furious, the customer asks the bartender: 'Do you know why that monkey is washing his balls in my whiskey?' The bartender replies: 'I have no idea - ask the gypsy, he knows everything!' The guest turns to the gypsy, who is wandering around the bar, amusing guests with his violin and songs and asks him: 'Do you know why that monkey is washing his balls in my whiskey?' The gypsy answer calmly: 'Yes, sure!', and starts to sing a sad and melancholic song: 'Why does that monkey wash his balls in my whiskey, O why...' - the point, of course, is that gypsy musicians are supposed to know hundreds of songs and perform them at the customers request, so the gypsy has understood the customer's question as a request for a song about a monkey washing his balls in whiskey... The second joke takes place in medieval Russia, under the Tatar occupation, where a Tartar horseman encounters, on a lonely country road, a peasant with his young wife. The Tartar warrior not only wants to have sex with her, but - to add insult to injury, and to humiliate the peasant even further - he orders him to hold his (the Tartar's) balls gently in his hands, so that they will not get too dirty while he copulates with the wife on the dusty road. After the Tartar has finished with the sexual encounter and ridden away, the peasant starts to chuckle with pleasure; asked by his wife what is so funny about her being raped in front of her husband he answers: 'Don't you get it, my love? I duped him - I didn't really hold his balls, they're full of dust and dirt!"

So: if the conservative knave is not unlike the gypsy, since he also, in answer to a concrete complaint ('Why are things so horrible for us.../gays, blacks, women/?'), sings his tragic songs of eternal fate ('Why are things so bad for us people, O why?') - that is, he also, as it were, changes the tonality of the question from concrete complaint to abstract acceptance of the enigma of Fate - the satisfaction of the progressive fool, a 'social critic', is of the same kind as that of the Russian peasant, the typical hysterical satisfaction of snatching a little piece of Jouissance away from the Master. If the victim in the first joke were a fool, he would allow the monkey to wash his balls in the whiskey yet another time, but would add some dirt or sticky stuff to his glass beforehand, so that after the monkey's departure he would be able to claim triumphantly: 'I duped him! His balls are even dirtier now than before!'

---

...Each of the two positions, that of the fool and that of the knave, is thus sustained by its own kind of jouissance: the enjoyment of snatching back from the Master part of the jouissance he stole from us (in the case of the fool); the enjoyment which directly pertains to the subjects pain (in the case of the knave). What psychoanalysis can do to help the critique of ideology is precisely to clarify the status of this paradoxical jouissance as the payment that the exploited, the servant, receives for serving the Master. This jouissance, of course, always emerges within a certain phantasmatic field; the crucial precondition for breaking the chains of servitude is thus to 'traverse the fantasy' which structures our jouissance in a way which keeps us attached to the Master - makes us accept the framework of the social relationship of domination.
-Zizek, "The Plague of Fantasies"

33 comments:

  1. the crucial precondition for breaking the chains of servitude is thus to 'traverse the fantasy' which structures our jouissance in a way which keeps us attached to the Master - makes us accept the framework of the social relationship of domination.


    And how does Zizek suggest we do this?

    If the precondition for the fool / knave system is a fantasy, how to break it? In what way is it a fantasy? (That there is no Master at all?!)
    I can see this...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ps, your Beckett quote is the theme of my adventures with photography lately. :p

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think that Zizek is suggesting that by "knowing" the source of our jouissance, we can recognize "why" we adopt the preference for the intellectual positions we do, fool/knave.

    ...not that I entirely agree with his characterization of the "knave" position... as that is the "cynical" position that Zizek assigns me... yet from the joke, the Gypsy doesn't "know", his "hysterical" misinterpretation of the question is self-serving only through NOT knowing.... yet I "grant" that one who "thinks" he already "knows" something will not pursue a solution to a problem he does not recognize exists.... and yet I still fail to see "capitalism" as a "problem" to be solved.... for I have a hard time envisioning a workable alternative to it (ala - potlatch societies).

    And ps - what happened to your blog??? Only your most recent post seems to be active. I do like your latest photos, btw.

    ReplyDelete
  4. And ps - The post-modern "Master" no longer knows himself, he only "senses/feels." He depends upon the "experts" who maintain the "University Discourse" for actual "knowledge"... and if they are the Leftist intellectual "fools" of the University, the post-capitalist society of the future is in for one 'H of a roller-coaster ride down the mountain that capitalism built.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ...and NOTHING could be more "self-serving" than for the Left-wing intellectuals who today control the University Discourse to keep spinning the current Marxist nonsense they're spinning...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Here is another example of Zizek trying to get people to understand the "source" of their jouissance. Perhaps the only thing that I dislike about it is his moral "tone"... as if there weren't a perfectly acceptable "reason" for the position (as evidenced by my footnote to the video).

    ReplyDelete
  7. In the current post-modern "western" world, the "Master" is a "Democracy"... a bunch of people who don't "know" the answers, but who depend upon their "representatives" in the Congress and/or Academia to "know" and inform them and/or make the "right" decisions. As opposed to the "king" back in the day who made all the decisions for his own (and not necessarily) his subject's benefit.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Be back later today! :) off to work.

    ReplyDelete
  9. No problem... but that doesn't mean that I won't keep rambling on... ;0

    According to a legend, during the decisive battle between the Prussian and Austrian army in the 1866 war, the Prussian king, formally the supreme commander of the Prussian army, who was observing the fight from a nearby hill, looked worried at (what appeared to him) the confusion in front of his eyes, where some of the Prussian troops even seemed to be retreating. General con Moltke, the great Prussian strategist who planned the battle deployment, turned to the king in the middle of this apparent confusion and told him: "May I be the first to congratulate your majesty for a brillian victory?" This is the gap between S1 and S2, at its purest: the King was the Master, the formal commander totally ignorant of the meaning of what went on in the battlefield, while von Moltke embodied stragic knowledge - although at the level of actual decisions, the victory was Moltke's, he was correct in congratulating the King on behalf of whom he was acting. The stupidity of the Master is palpable in this gap between the confusion of the master-figure and the objective-symbolic fact that he had already won a brilliant victory. Zizek, "Zizek Now: Current Perspectives in Zizek Studies"

    ReplyDelete
  10. .
    not that I entirely agree with his characterization of the "knave" position... as that is the "cynical" position that Zizek assigns me... yet from the joke, the Gypsy doesn't "know", his "hysterical" misinterpretation of the question is self-serving only through NOT knowing.... yet I "grant" that one who "thinks" he already "knows" something will not pursue a solution to a problem he does not recognize exists.... and yet I still fail to see "capitalism" as a "problem" to be solved.... for I have a hard time envisioning a workable alternative to it (ala - potlatch societies----


    Well, Zizek is a Marxist, so....

    ReplyDelete
  11. ps - The post-modern "Master" no longer knows himself, he only "senses/feels." He depends upon the "experts" who maintain the "University Discourse" for actual "knowledge"... and if they are the Leftist intellectual "fools" of the University, the post-capitalist society of the future is in for one 'H of a roller-coaster ride down the mountain that capitalism built.
    ---

    Who is the Master? I thought he was a fantasy, perpetuating the roles of fool/knave.

    ReplyDelete
  12. ...and NOTHING could be more "self-serving" than for the Left-wing intellectuals who today control the University Discourse to keep spinning the current Marxist nonsense they're spinning...
    ----

    Of course! I recognized it as bullshit at the time, but kids just accept it now. :(

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ahh, you read my mind. Master = democracy.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I will explain the photo blog, but first let me discuss my day. Do you mind?? Ok.

    I took all three kids with me to run errands and see one home health patient. They sit in the lobby of the very nice assisted living facility where she lives. They enter like angels. I leave them sitting quietly watching animal planet....Sweet babes.

    I return to find the yyounger two wrestling on the couch, boy has girl pinned down and is arguing over channels. Old folks watching. Defcon level 1.....

    We leave to buy groceries....in 104 degree heat.
    In the store, kids two and three continue playing/fighting/loving/hating.

    At the checkout, the lady stares at me while I load groceries on the counter, trying to get the hell out of there asap. She just stares at me instead of ringing stuff up. Hello?
    She says she needs me to put the heavy stuff up close to her first. She. Just. Stares.

    Defcon 2

    One kid cries on the way home because he got no ice cream. Because he was a turd in the store.

    At home we unload the car. Daughter drops a jar of pasta sauce and glass and sauce go all over the floor, furniture, etc.

    Defcon 3

    So.......pbbbbththth!!

    :)

    Life is absurd.

    ReplyDelete
  15. The blog.
    I can't find my niche.
    All over the place.
    Why show people online?? No real benefit there.

    Just frustrated. It's more than a hobby but I don't know what it is.

    ReplyDelete
  16. And thank you 're: the recent photos. I love them. Very symbolic to me.

    ReplyDelete
  17. :P

    Sorry that you had such a crappy day. But there is at least one reason to put your stuff on line. So that through reminiscing (Plato, "Phaedrus") you can gage your progress.... in failing better!

    I know I do. :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. ...and not your progress. Mine. :)

    ReplyDelete
  19. But I can go through my work offline even easier.

    So the question boils down to: why show others?

    I didn't catch the "borderline" connection...

    ReplyDelete
  20. Power legitimated by knowledge. The post-modern involves a separation of the two, between the Master and University discourses.

    ...and if you already save your stuff, you don't need to post it online, unless you want "the other's" impressions. Ducky is usually pretty good at that.

    ReplyDelete
  21. You can see how capitalism contributed to the separation of the two, power and knowledge... through the division of labor. So much for the old "know yourself" addage. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  22. btw- You'll miss these days when they're all off to college (cuz you'll only remember the good days). ;)

    ReplyDelete
  23. The only Marxism I have encountered has been through university, but utopia has never been worth investing in. I can't take Marxists seriously when they live, AND PROFIT, in America.

    ReplyDelete
  24. But I also don't claim to know the best way....which is why I have been called a variety of names on political blogs we both frequent.

    ReplyDelete
  25. And I know....I will cry one day when my house stays clean.

    I get flustered by the chaos, but I am laughing about it.

    They are my heart, after all...

    ReplyDelete
  26. My daughter is back home with us for a few months, looking for work, and waiting to hear on how she did on the NY State Bar Exam.
    we're glad to have some noise in the house again! :)

    ReplyDelete
  27. That's pretty great. I know you're proud of her!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Yes we are! As you are of yours, when they surprise you!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Why is that monkey washing his balls in my whiskey????
    "
    That wins a prize for the title and thought alone!!!

    ReplyDelete