ÜberblickDada lives!
The territory of analysis and commentary concerning Žižek’s 'spectral' confrontation with ideology is well trodden and already overdetermined. I am faced with the proverbial problem of starring at the white canvass, attempting to intervene in the heavily congested palimpsest of traces that are already in play, but remain invisible. In-depth attempts of addressing his reconceptualization of ideology have already been written by Matthew Sharpe (2004, 2006), Jodi Dean (2005), Tim Dean (2002), Fabio Vighi and Heiko Feldner (2007a,b,c), to name those I found most accomplished and helpful. What can be said that has not already been said? The charges of "inconsistency" or "oscillation" (Žižek 2005a, 219-220) means very little when addressing this question, since the very delirium of Žižek's style is meant to be explorative and thought provoking, a work in perpetual progress as with any philosopher/artist/scientist who toils at the brink of the unknown and the unthought. Inconsistency is part of his "obsession" as a "thinking machine" (Olson & Worsham 2001, 253), built into the very unfolding of his thought.
Given that the Real is an "inruption" of nonsense into the signifying system, which can never be signified, a 'nothing' that becomes detectable only after the event of it's effects are constructed backwards to paraphrase Eagleton (2001, 42), so it is with Žižek’s address on ideology. His 'logical' inconsistencies are those moments of inruption. Staying on track and going off-road are part of the same process. His writing remains a paradoxical affair, as ideology itself becomes a master signifier, acting like a spectral Joker that can take on multiple masks depending on which card game is being played. Yet, at the same time, ideology must minimally bear the weight of critique so that it remains politically enabling — exposing some aspect of the game itself. Without such a proviso the necessity of updating the force of this Marxist concept within a global capitalist neoliberal order could not be possible, and the concept of ideology itself becomes useless, empty or greatly reduced in its effect since there are conservatives who argue that in a multi-mediated society ‘everything’ is already ideological and therefore its an outdated concept. ...
The shadow title is meant sincerely for it seems to me there are many unacknowledged touchstones that present Žižek’s madness as a form of schizophrenia — the delirium of him as a writing machine. His work is systematically rhizomatic to use an oxymoron, leaving his own singular trail as he gropes for the unknown and the unsaid. By taking on the role of the analyst he seems to be performing what Deleuze called 'becoming imperceptible', a process of transformative encounters that charts his own becomings. Finally, anyone who has met or heard Žižek talk, the role of the academic clown/fool presents, oddly enough, the very opposition to the thrust of his mutant Hegelio-Lacan figure. It is of course, his avatar that does the fantasmatic work in the Star Wars, who seems to be his immortal spectral figure. Through his laughter and the will of his Spieltrieb, through his dirty jokes and sexual innuendos, the affect of his body spewing the materiality of the dynamic sublime as it were, doesn't he exhibit the very joy and the laugh of Zarathustra that Deleuze embraced? In this sense he does live out the singularity of his sinthome.
Much more admirable is Anthony Daniels' tribute to Flaubert's Un coeur simple -
In it, he managed the difficult technical feat of making someone interesting who was good but ordinary and not particularly intelligent, and he also managed the far more difficult emotional and ethical feat of entering the world of someone with whose outlook he did not agree, and portraying it with sympathy, understanding, and admiration, recognizing in it the beauty that it possessed. Here is true tolerance, in a non-ideological sense; it is rare in an age of diversity in which ignorant armies nevertheless insist on clashing by night.
