“Slavoj Zizek’s new book INCONTINENCE OF THE VOID embodies the latest stage in his ongoing “non-standard” metaphysical research programme.”
“It is non-standard in that its “ontology” of the “barred One” is at the same time an exploration of “the impossibility of ontology.””
“Part 1 is entitled “SOS: Sexuality, Ontology, Subjectivity”. It begins with an introduction in which Zizek reflects on the contemporary status of the question “What is philosophy?” by way of analysing the oft-repeated accusation that Zizek himself is “not” a philosopher.”
“Behind this accusation Zizek diagnoses the remanence of an untenable opposition between idealism and materialism that makes his sort of (non-)ontology inconceivable and incomprehensible as philosophy.”
“Zizek tells us that his metaphysical research programme, symbolised by the formula SOS is of a different nature than deconstructionist philosophies caught in the “hypercritical transcendental questioning of every ontological claim”, but also differs from the rise of the many “new ontologies” which “replace the critical stance with (sometimes feigned) realist naivety”.”
“Zizek’s project attempts to escape the false alternative between critical sterility and naive proliferation:”
“The project of SOS is to formulate a third way: to break out of the critico-transcendental approach without regressing into precritical realist ontology.”
“At the beginning of this introduction, Slavoj Zizek cites a series of critiques that seek to deny him the very status of philosopher. The three main claims are that”
“1) Zizek has no philosophy, no system, but only proposes and exemplifies a method, he is a “reader of philosophy” rather than a real philosopher.”
“2) Zizek has no status as a philosopher inside of the academy, he is anxious over “being excluded from prestigious institutional apparatuses and departments of philosophy”.”
“3) Zizek is an excitable hysteric rather than a Stoical master.”
“In short, Zizek has no legitimacy as a philosopher.”
“A primitive psychological explanation accompanies this diagnosis: Zizek’s nervousness, anxiety, and bodily tics are so many subjectivations and somatisations of his intellectual and social situation, psychosomatic reactions to his lack of legitimacy.”
“One is reminded here of Deleuze’s similar response to intellectual and personal criticism in his text “I have nothing to admit”.”
“Zizek too refuses to admit to a diverse collection of imputed personal failings, and chooses to raise the discussion from this trivial level to a more philosophical one. Like Deleuze before him, Zizek diagnoses a dogmatic image of thought (in Lacanese, the discourse of the master) underlying his detractors’ accusations.”
“2) Symptom versus singularity: Zizek quickly dismisses accusation to (2), by remarking simply that there is no psycho-sociological interpretation to be given of his nervosity and bodily tics, which are purely physical manifestations of an organic disease. They are, like Deleuze’s workers’ vest and long nails, not symptoms to interpret but singularities.”
“As for complaints (1) and (2), he finds them to be based on dichotomies that he does not accept.”
“1) Method versus system: Zizek indicates that his work is not purely methodological or “deconstructive”, but that it contains also a constructive element, a kind of ontology, or a “quasi-ontology””
“3) Hysteric versus master: Zizek replies that philosophy after Kant and Hegel does not conform to the dogmatic image of the master’s discourse. Philosophy is deconstructive and reflexive, but it is not purely destructive. This is because the impasses to thought and the obstacles to knowledge that the deconstruction discovers are not just epistemological failures, they have ontological import and weight.”
“Zizek contrasts what he calls, in a way reminiscent of Laruelle, the “standard situation”, (where philosophy’s task is “to contain the subversive potential of the sciences”) with another, call it “non-standard”, situation where philosophy and science provide us with arms on the terrains of class struggle.”
“Zizek clearly rejects the whole model of standard philosophy, but he denies that the only alternative is purely negative deconstruction.”
“Sophistry makes a real discovery, that standard philosophy tries to cover over. This discovery is that of the impossibility to fixate meaning within a universal unchanging system, resting on a synchronic ontology.”
“What non-standard philosophy adds to this discovery, so as to avoid falling into the trap of total scepticism or of facile relativism, is a new ontological idea. This failure to obtain univocity, totality, and stability is not just a negative trait preventing us from obtaining absolute knowledge, it is also a positive feature giving us ontological knowledge of a different sort, “non-standard” philosophy, if you will. This is what Zizek calls “quasi-ontology” and that I have discussed elsewhere under the name of “diachronic ontology“.”
“Note: Zizek’s critique of Althusser’s “simplicity” and “arrogance” can justly be transposed onto non-philosopher François Laruelle.”
“The source of these failings is the same for both Althusser and Laruelle: a naive, dualist principle of demarcation, a simplified and univocal terminology, and an undue degree of certitude and arrogance in the form of the enunciation.”
“Thus, in examining the initial question of whether Zizek is a philosopher, we are confronted with two seemingly plausible possible responses, a veritable parallax:”
“1) Zizek the hysterical cultural studies guy, the neurotic failed philosopher”
“2) Zizek the proponent of a new image of thought, of a different sort of philosophy, Zizek the quasi-ontologist”
“My interpretative hypothesis is that the link between the heterogeneous blocks is not so much discursive (in the sense of the “university discourse”) as performative.”
“Zizek is not a “failed” ontologist nor even a deconstructionist of the “failure” of ontology. Failure enters Zizek’s thought as a feature rather than a fault.”
“In a slogan, the only good ontology is a failed ontology, one that performs its own failure instead of dogmatically asserting it”
“This ontological impossibility of ontology explains why Zizek affirms that the “heart of the problem” is performative, it lies “in the application to philosophy of the opposition between the Master and the Hysteric.”
“This is another Deleuzian point.”
“with Kant, philosophy is no longer a Master’s discourse, its entire edifice gets traversed by a bar of immanent impossibility, failure, and inconsistency.”
“This failure is not to be simply asserted as the abstract principle of a negative dogmatic “non-philosophy” but is to be performed concretely, as in Hegel’s phenomenology:”
“With Hegel, things go even further: far from returning to pre-critical rational metaphysics (as Kantians accuse it of doing), the whole of Hegelian dialectics is a kind of hysterical undermining of the Master … immanent self-destruction and self-overcoming of every metaphysical claim.”
“This Hegelian “hysterical undermining of the Master” aptly characterises Zizek’s own performative undermining of declarative ontologies and deconstructionist critiques.”
“The contribution of psychoanalysis to philosophy is to formalise and to intensify this hysteric approach:”
“Insofar as philosophy (traditional ontology) is a case of Master’s discourse, psychoanalysis acts as the agent of its immanent hystericization.”
“Zizek’s response to the question is not to give a hard and fast identitarian answer, but to entertain us with a performance.”
“To “entertain” is a parallax concept: as the post-Jungian James Hillman reminds us, it means to hold in the space between two possibilities:
That word “entertain“ means to hold in between. What you do with an idea is hold it between — between your two hands (PHILOSOPHICAL INTIMATIONS, 28).”
“The “performance” of philosophy, in Zizek’s sense, means holding the idea between the two alternatives of hysterical practical application and academic theoretical reflexion.”
“Underlying the question Is Zizek a philosopher?, that his critics answer in the negative, Zizek diagnoses a fixation on identities, the presupposition of an identitarian ontology that inscribes social identities in a putative hardcore Real.”
“Philosophy for Zizek belongs to performance and enjoyment.”
“The social status of “philosopher” is something else: the retrospective reconstruction of an identity and of its exclusions.”
“situates himself at the analytic pole of an ontology of the incomplete, inconsistent real.”