36 Culture

JacquesAubert (ed.), Navanin,Joyceavechcan (Pans,Navarin, 1988),pp. 9-12, ar

D. lz.

t6 The original hysterical position is characterizedby the paradox of'teliing the truth
in the form of a lie'. In terms of literal'truth' (the correspondenceof words and
things), the hysteric undoubtedly'lies'; but it is through this lie that the truth ofhis
or her desire erupts and articulatesitself. To the extent that obsessionalneurosis is a
'dialect
of hysteria' (Freud), it impLies a kind of inversion of this relation: the
obsessive'liesin the form of a truth'. The obsessivealways'sticks to the Acts',
striving to effacethe tracesof his subjectiveposirion. He is
'hysterized'-
that is, his
The ObsceneObjectof
desire erupts - only when, finally, by some inadvertent slip, he
'succeeds
in lying'.
Postmodernity

This is a chapter from Looking Awry: An lntroduction to JacquesLacan

through PopularCulture(1991,pp. 141-53),the most accessible of ZiZek,s
surveysof culture.The book analysesa diversityof materialfrom film,
opera,dramaand fiction,engagingLacan's thought in the process and
interveningin politics,philosophyand aesthetics.
The argumentisframed by a distinctionZi2ekwishesto makebetween
modernismand postmodernism. He detectsa false oppositionbetween
Habermas's definitionof modernism - the claimthat reasonratherthan
relianceon traditionalauthorityisthe basisof a healthysociety:and his
definitionof postmodernism - asan exposure of the ideologyof thisclaim
throughrevealing the hiddenpoweragendaof 'reason,. tn Ziiek,sanaly-
sis,this latter, postmodernistclaim is still modernist,sincemodernismis
itself characterizedby 'a logic of unmasking',exemplifiedby the Big
Threeof a centuryago: Marx, Nietzscheand Freud.lt was the achieve-
ment of anotherBig Three- Adorno,Horkheimer and Marcuse, the first
generationof the Frankfurtschool- to havealreadysuspected reasonin
this way. for 2i2ek,this placesHabermasin the embarrassing positionof
finding himselfsuddenlyin the postmodernist camp, sinceHabermas
locatesthe sourceof freedomin the rejectionof a modernistutopia and
in the divisionbetweendifferent life-worlds- preciselywhat modernism
saw as alienating.tsythe sametoken, Habermastakesdeconstruction to
be a postmodernphenomenon,in that for him it constitutesan attackon
reason.But in Zizek'sreading,deconstruction is in fact modernist,as it is
 38 Culture The ObsceneObjectof Postmodernity 39
an unmaskingprocedurepar excellencgwith meaningproducedsolelyby knowing, as if its prohibitions were consistentthroughout, thereby
the movementof signifiers. In this relianceupon language,the decon- producinga subjecthauntedby an infiniteguilt, ever unableto match
structionistsare still 'structuralists':it is the 'poststructuralist,Lacanwho its actsto an endlesschain of demands.So Kafka'stext proclaimsthat
marksthe postmodernist breakby focusingupon that which liesoutside the Law is 'necessary'but not 'true': as K. discoversand paysfor with his
the signifierand which is detectableonly retrospectively, after language life, if you cannot investthe Law as necessary, you get flooded with
hasfailed in its reference. jouissance.Kafka's 'postmodern'text articulatesthe threat that the
Zizekillustratesthe contrastbetweenmodernismand postmodernism superegoposes-tothe Law through colonizingit with enjoyment.But
by noting a differencein structurebetweena scenein the modernistfilm sincethe act of speakingpresumes the existenceof the big Other as the
Blow Up and a 'postmodernist'scene in Hitchcock's Lifeboat.The theme warrant for siEnification,a necessary suppositionof - rather than a
of Blow Up isthe disappearance of a body photographedby chance,the fanaticalbelief in - the Other'sconsistency is basicto language;only
film'sactioncentringupon the searchfor what is to fill this absence. A the psychotic, who cannothandlesupposition, is persecutedby the sym-
final sequenceshowsthe photographerwatchinga ,tennis-match' in bolicnetwork.
'ball' rollsto his feet;
which the non-existent whereuponhe throws ,it,
back, joining in a game which 'works without an object'.ln this fantasy,
'nothing'istakento be 'something' - a fantasyconcealing a gap. The Postmodernist
Break
In the postmodernistscene,however, the reversehappens:there
is 'something'wheretherewas 'nothing'.In Hitchcock's film, a German Mo dernismuersusPostmodernism
U-boatsailor,while being pickedup in a lifeboat,revealshimselfas a 'When 'postmodernism'
causeof horror by showingin hisfacehis response to the response of the the topic of is discussedin 'deconstructivist'circles,it
Britishsailors.The object of fear itself thus becomesthe focus for the is obligatory - a sign of good manners,so to speak- to begin with a negarive
camera:postmodernism showsthe 'obsceneobject',whereasmodernism referenceto Habermas,with a kind of distancingfrom him. In complying with
conceals it. this custom, we would like to add a new fwist: to propose that Flabemrasrs
The 'obsceneobject of postmodernity'is the Lacanian,Thing,,the himself postmodernist,although in a peculiar way, without knowing it. To
incestuousmaternalobject, brought into horrible proximity.This same sustain this thesis,we will question the very way Habermas constructs the
menacingproximityof the Thingappearsin Kafka'sTheTrial.ZiZek picks opposition betlveen modernism (defined by its claim to a universaliry of
out two modernistmisreadings of the emptinessat the core of Kafka,s reason, its refusal of the authority of tradition, its acceptanceof rational
bureaucracy: (1) asthe mark of an 'absentgod', (2) as the projectionof argument as the only way to deGnd conviction, its ideal of a comrnunal life
an innervoid into an 'apparition'outside.Boththesereadingsmakethe guided by mutual understandingand recognition and by the absenceof con-
sameerrorin believingthat there is an absence wherethereis a disgust- straint) and postmodemism (defined as the 'deconstruction' of this claim to
ing presencethat is too present,too near. ln The Triatthe closeness of universality,from Nietzscheto 'poststructuralism';the endeavourto prove that
this presence irruptsin the court in the occurrence of a lewd couplingof this claim to universalify is necessarily,constiturively 'false', that it masks a
a man and a woman at the backof the room,the Law allowingtrans- particular nerwork of power relations; that universal rcason is as such, in its
gressionwhile seemingto forbid it: Kafka is introducingthe punitive 'repressive' 'totalitarian';
very form, and that its truth-claim is nothing but an
superegothat is drivenby an obsceneand anarchicjouissance, the incon- effect of a seriesof rhetorical figures.t Thir opposition is simply false:for whar
sistencyof which bewildersK.,the victim unableto escapethe Law.Here
Habermasdescribesas 'postrnodernism'is the imrnanent obverseof the mod-
there is a lack of consistency betweenthe (symbolic)Law and the (real)
ernist project itself; what he describesas the tension between modernism and
act of copulation,a 'trespassing of the frontier that separates the vital postmodernismis the imnrencnt tension that has defined modernism from its
domainfrom the judicialdomain',investingthe Law with a boundless
very beginning. Was not tlre acstheticist,anti-universa.List ethics of the indivi-
enjoyment.Insteadof the Law possessing an empty placeasthe idealof
justice(asin the parable'Beforethe Law'),it is engulfedby uncontrolled dual's shapinghis life as a work of art alwayspart of the modernist projecr? Is
drives:the Freudiansuperegohascloserlinkswith the id than the ego the genealogicunnraskingof universalcategoriesand values, the calling into
does.Paradoxically, at the sametime the superegopresents question of the urriversalityof reasonnot a modernist procedurepar excellence?
itselfas all-
Is not the very essencco[ thcoretical modemism, the revelation of the
40 Culture
'effective 'false
contents' behind the consciousness'(of ideology, of moraliry,
of the ego), exemplified by the great triad of Marx-Nietzsche-Freud? Is not
the ironic, seH-destructivegesture by means of which reason recognizesin
itseH the force of repression and domination against which it fights - the
gesture at work from Nietzsche to Adorno and Horkheirner's Dialecticof
Enlightenmenl- is not this gesture the supreme act of modernism? As soon as
fissures appear in the unquestionable authoriry of tradition, the tension
berr,veenuniversal reason and the particular contents escaping its grasp is
inevitable and irreducible.
The Line of demarcation between modemism and postmodernism must,
then, lie elsewhere. Ironically, it is Habermas LrimseHwho, on account of
certain crucial features of his theory, belongs to postmodernism: the break
berween the first and the secondgeneration of the Frankfurt school - that is,
betr,veenAdomo, Horkheimer and Marcuse on the one side and Habermason
the other - correspondspreciselyto the break berween modernism and post-
modernism. In Adomo and Horkheimer's Dialectit of Enlightenment,2in MaF
cuse'sOne-Dimensional Man,3in their unmaskingof the repressivepotential of
'instrumental
reason', aiming at a radical revolution in the historical totality
of the contemporary world and at the utopian abolition of the difference
'alienated'
befween life spheres,berween art and 'reality', the modemist project
reaches its zenith of self-critical fulfilment. Habermas is, on the other
hand, postmodern precisely becausehe recognizes a positive condition of
freedom and emancipation in what appeared to modernism as the very form
of alienation:the autonomy of the aestheticsphere,the functional division of
different social domains, etc. This renunciation of the modemist utopia, this
acceptanceof the fact that freedom is possibleonly on the basisof a cerrain
fundamental 'alienation', attests to the fact that we are in a postmodernist
unlverse.
This confusion concerning the break between modernism and postmodern-
ism comes to a critical point in Habermas's diagnosis of poststructuralist
deconstructionismas the dominant form of contemporaryphilosophicalpost-
modernism. The useof the prefix 'post-' in both casesshould not lead us astray
(especiallyif we take into account the crucial, but usually overlooked, fact that
'poststnrcturalism',
the very term although designating a strain of French
theory, is an Anglo-Saxon and German invention. The term refers to the
way the Anglo-Saxon world perceived and located the theories of Derrida,
Foucault, Deleuze, etc. - in Franceitself, nobody usesthe term 'postsrructur-
alism'). Deconstructionismis a modernist procedure par excellence: it presents
perhapsthe most radicalversion of the logrc of 'unmasking',whereby the very
uniry of the experience of meaning is conceived as the effect of signifying
mechanisms,an effect that can take place only in so far asit ignoresthe textual
The ObsceneObject of postmodernity 41
movement that produced it. It is only with Lacan that the .postmodernist,
break occurs, in so far as he thematizes a certain real, traumatic kernel
whose status remains deeply ambiguous: the Real resistssymbolization, but
it is at the same time its own retroactive product. In this sensewe could
even say that deconstructionists are basically still 'structuralists, and that
the only 'posrstructuralist' is Lacan, who affirms enjoyment as ,the real
Thing', the cenrral impossibiliry around which every signi4ring nerwork is
structured.
Hitchcock as Postmodernist
In what, then, does the postmodemist break consisr?Let's begin with Anto-
nioni's BIow {Jp, perhaps the last great modernist fil,,'. As the hero cleveloos
photographs shot in a park, his attention is attracted to a stain that appears
on the edge of one of the photographs. when he enrargesthe detail, he
discoversthe conrours of a body there. Though it is the middle of the night,
he rushesto the park, and indeed finds the body. But on returning to the scene
of the crime the next day, he finds thar the body has disappearedwithout
leaving atrace. The first thing to note here is that the body is, accorclingto the
code of the detective novel, the object of desie par excellence, the causethat
startsthe interpretarive desire of the detective (and the reader): how did
it
happen?who did it? The key to the film is only given to us, however, in the
final scene.The hero, resignedto the cul-de-sacin which his investigation
has
ended, takesa walk near a tennis court where a group of people - *irhorr,,
tennis ball - mime a game of tennis. In the frame of this supposedgame, the
imagrned ball is hit out of bounds, and lands near the hero. He hesrtat.s a
moment, and then acceptsthe game: bending over, he makes a gesturc of
picking up the ball and throwing it back into the courr. This scene has, of
course,a metaphoricaltunction in relation to the rest of the film. It inclicates
the hero's consentingto the fact that 'the gameworks without an object,: even
as the mimed rennisgame can be played without a ball, so his own adventure
proceedswithout a body.
'Postmodernism'
is the exact reverse of this process. It consistsnot in
demonstratingthat the game works without an objecr, that the play is set in
motion by a central absence,bur rarher in displaying the objcct directly,
allowing it to make visible its own indifferent and arbitrary character. The
same object can function succcssivclyas a disgustingreject and as a sublime,
charismaticapparition:the diffcrence,strictly srructural,doesnot pertain to
the
'effective
properries'of thc object, but only to its place in the symbolic order.
one can grasp this difference berween modernism and postmodernism
by
analysing the effect of horror in Hitchcock's fllms. At first, it seems
that
42 Culture
Hitchcock simply respectsthe classicalrule (already known by Aeschylus in
The Oresteia)according to which one must place the terrifying object or event
outside the scene and show only its reflections and its effects on the stage. If
one does not see the object directly, one 6l1s out its absencewith Antasy
projections (one seesit as more horrible than it actually is). The elementary
procedure for evoking horror would be, then, to limit oneselfto reflectionsof
the terrifying object in its witnessesor victims.
As is well known, this is the crucial axis of the revolution in horror movies
accompLished in the 1940sby the legendaryproducer Val Lewton (Cat People,
The SeuenthWctim, etc). Instead of directly showing the terrifying monster
(vampire, murderous beast),its Presenceis indicated only by means of off-
screensounds,by shadows,and so on, and thus renderedall the more horrible.
The properly Hitchcockian approach,however, is to reuerse this process.Let's
take a small detail from Lfeboat, from the scene where the group of Allied
castawayswelcome on board their boat a German sailor from the destroyed
submarine:their surprisewhen they find out that the personsavedis an enemy.
The traditional way of filming this scenewould be to let us hear the screamsfor
help, to show the handsof an unknown person gnpping the side of the boat,
and then nol to show the German sailor, but to move the camera to the
shipwrecked survivors: it would then be the perplexed expressionon their
facesthat would indicate to us that they had pulled something unexpectedout
'W'hat?
of the water. When the suspensewas finally built up, the camerawould
finally revealthe German sailor.But Hitchcock's procedure is theexactcontrary
of this: what he does not show, precisely,is the stripwreckedsurvivors. He
shows the German sailor climbing on board and saying, with a friendly smile,
'Danke schon!' Then he doesnot show the surprisedfacesof the survivors;the
cameraremains on the German. If his apparition provoked a terrifying effect,
one can only detect ttby his reaction to the survivors'reaction: his smile dies
out, his look becomesperplexed.This demonstrateswhat PascalBonitzera calls
the Proustian side of Hitchcock, for this procedure correspondsperfecdy to
that of Proust rn [Jn Amour de Swannwhen Odette confessesto Swann her
lesbianadventures.Proust only describesOdette - that her story hasa terrif ing
effect on Swann is evident only in the changein the tone of her story when she
notices its disastrouseffect. One shows an ordinary object or an activity, but
suddenly,through the reactionsof the rnilieu to this object, reflecting themselues
in theobjectitself,one realizesthat one is confronting the source of ar-rinexplic-
able terror. The terror is intensified by the fact that this object is, in its
appearance,completely ordinary: what one took only a moment ago for a
totally comrnon thing is revealedas Evil incarnate.
Such a postmodernistprocedureseemsto us much more subversivethan the
usualmodemist one, becausethe latter, by not showing the Thing, leavesopen
The ObsceneObject of postmodernity 43
the possibiliry of grasping the central emptinessunder the perspectiveof an
'absent
God'. The lessonof modernism is that the stmcture, the intersubjective
machine, works as well if the Thing is lacking, if the machine revolves around
an emptiness;the postmodernistreversalshows t/re Thing ikelf as the incarnated,
materializedemptiness. This is accomplishedby showing the terri$uing object
directly, and then by revealing its frightening effect to be simply the effect ofits
place in the structure. The terri$'ing object is an everyday object thar has
startedto funcrion, by chance,asthar which fills in the hole in the other (the
symbolic order). T'he prototype of a modernist text would be Samuel.tseckett's
waitingfor Godot. The whole futile and senselessaction of the play takes place
while waiting for Godot's arrival when, finally, 'something might happen'; but
one knows very well that 'Godot' can never arrive, becausehe is just a name
'what
for nothingness,for a central absence. would the 'postmodernist'.ew.it-
ing of this same story look like? one would have to put Godor himself on-
stage:he would be someoneexactly]ike us, someonewho lives the samefutile,
boring liG that we do, who enjoys rhe same stupid pleasures.The onry
di{ference would be that, not knowing it himserf; he has found himself by
chance at the place of the Thing; he would be the incarnation of the Thine
whose arrival was awaited.
A lesser-known film by Fritz Lang, SecretBeyondthe Door, stagesin pure
(one is almosr tempred to say distilled) form this logic of a' everyday
object found in the place of dasDing. celia Barrett, a young businesswoman,
travelsto Mexico after her older brother's death. She meets Mark Lamphere
there, marrieshim, and moves in with him. A little later, the couple receives
his intimate friends, and Mark shows them his garlery of historical rooms,
reconstituted in the vault of his mansion. But he forbids their enrrance
into room number seven, which is locked. Fascinated by the taboo
placed on ir, ce[a gets a key made and enters the room, which turns our ro
be an exact replica of her room. The most familiar ttringstake on a dimension
of the uncanny when one finds them in another prace, a place that ,is not
right'. And the thrill effec resulrs precisery from the fanriliar, domestic
characterof what one finds in this Thing's forbidden place - here we have
the perfect illustration of the fundamentalambiguiry of the Freudiannotion of
das Unbeimliche.
The opposition between modernism and postmodernism is thus far from
being reducible to a simple cliachro.y; we are even tempted to say that
postmodernismin a way prccedcs modernism. Like Kafl<a- who logically, not
only temporally,precedesJoyce - the postmod ernistinconsistency of the other
is retroactivelyperceivedby thc modemist gazeas its incompleteie_ss. IfJoyce is
the modemist par excellencc, thc writer of the symptom ('the symptomJoyce,,as
Lacan puts it), of the irrtcrprcrativedelirium taken to the infinite, of the
time
44 Culture The ObsceneObjectof Postmodernity 45
(to inteqpret) where each stable moment reveals itself to be nothing but a
'condensation' Bureaucracy
of a plural signiflring process, Kafl<a is in a certain way and Enjoyment
already postmodernist, the antipode of Joyce, the writer of fantasy, of the
spaceof a nauseousinert presence. If Joyce's text provokes interpretation, Two doorsof the Law
Kafl<a'sblocks it.
To specify further the statusof the Kafkaesqueobsceneenjoyment, let's take as
It is preciselythis dimension of a non-dialecticizable,inert presencethat is
a starting point the flmous apologue concerning the door of the Law in The
misrecognizedby a modernist reading of Ka{ka, with its accent on the inac-
Tial, the anecdote told to K. by the priest in order to explain to him his
cessible,absent,transcendentagency(the Castle,the Court), holding the place
situation uis-i-uis the Law. The patent failure of all the major interpretations of
of the lack, of the absenceassuch. From this modernist perspective,the secret
this apologue seemsonly to confirm the priest's thesisthat 'the comments often
of Kafka would be that in the heart of the bureaucratic machinery, there is only
'works enough merely expressthe comrnentator's bewilderrnent'. There is, however,
an emptiness, nothing: bureaucracy would be a mad machine that by
another way to penetrate the anecdote'smystery: insteadof seeking its meaning
itseH', asin BIow Up where the game is played without a body-object. One can
direcdy, it would be preferable ro rrear it in the way claude L6vi-Strausstreats
read this conjunction in tvvo opposed ways, which nevertheless share the
a myth: by establishingits relations to a seriesof other myths and elaborating
same theoretical frame: theological and imrnanentist. One reading takes the -Where
the rules of their transformation. can we find, then, in The Tial,
elusive, inaccessible,transcendentcharacter of the centre (of the Casde, of 'myth'
'absent another that functions as a variation, as an inversion, of the apologue
the Court) as a mark of an God' (the universe of Kafl<aasan anguished
conceming the door of the Law?
universe, abandoned by God); the other reading takes the emptiness of 'We
'illusion do not have far to look: at the beginning of the second chapter ('First
this transcendence as an of perspective', as a reverse form of the
Interrogation'),JosefK. finds himself in front of another door of the Law (the
apparition of the immanence of desire (the inaccessible transcendence, the
entrance to the interrogation chamber); here also, the door-keeper lets him
central lack, is then only the negative form of the apparition of the surplus of
know that this door is intended only for him. The washerwornan saysto him,
desire,_ofits productive movement, over the world of objects qua representa- 'I
must shut this door after you, nobody elsemust come in,' which is clearly a
tions).'
variation of the last words of the door-keeper to the man from the country in
These nvo readings,although opposed,miss the same point: the way this
the priest's apologue: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this
absence,this empry place, is always already filled out by an inert, obscene,
door, since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.' At
revolting presence. The Court in The Trial is not simply absent, it is indeed
the sametime, the apologueconceming the door of the Law (let'scall it, in the
presentunder the figures ofthe obscenejudgeswho, during night interroga-
style of L6vi-Strauss,ml) and the first interrogation (m2) carr be opposed
tions, glancethrough pornographic books; the Castleis indeed presentunder
'Which through a whole series of distinctive features. In m1 we are in fronr of the
the figure of subservient, lascivious and cormpt civil servants. is why
'absent entranceto a magnificent Court ofJustice,in m2 we are in a block of workers'
the formula of the God' in Kafka does not work at all: for Kafka's
flats, full of filth and crawling obscenities;in mt rhe door-kecpcr is arr
problem is, on the contrary,that in this universeGod is toopresent,in the guise
employee of the court, in m2 it is an ordinary wornan washing children's
of various obscene,nauseousphenomena.Kafka'suniverseis a world in which
clotl-res;in m1 it's a rnan, in m2 a woman; in m1 the door-kecper preventsthe
God - who up to now had held himself at an assureddistance- has got too
'universe nran from the country from passingthrough the door and entering the Cor"rrt,
closeto us. Ka{ka'suniverseis a of anxiery', why not - on condition,
in rn' the washerwoman pushes him into the interrogation chamber half
however, that one takesinto account the Lacanian definition of anxiety (what
against his will. In short, the frontier separatingeveryday life from the sacred
provokesanxieryis not the lossof the incestuousobject but, on the contrary,its
plece of the Law cannot be transgressed in ml , but in -2 it is easily trans-
very proximity). We are too close to dasDing; that is the theological lesson of
'Supreme grcsscd.
postmodernism:Kafl<a'smad, obsceneGod, this Being of Evil', is
- Tlrc crucial feature of rn2 is alrcedy indicated by its location: the Court is
exactlythe sameasGod 4l,raSupremeGood the differencelies only in the fact
krcatccli' the middle of the vital promiscuiry of worker's lodgings. Reiner
that we have sot too closeto him.
Stach is cluitejustified in recognizing in this detail a disrinctive trait of Kafka's
univcrsc.'the trespassingof the frontier that separatesthe vital domain from
46 Culture
the judicial domain'.6 The structure here, of course, is that of the Moebius
strip: if we progressfar enough in our descentto the social underground, we
find ourselves suddenly on the other side, in the middle of the sublime and
noble Law. The place of transition from one domain to the other is a door
guarded by an ordinary washerwoman of a provocative sensuality.In m1, the
door-keeper doesn't know anyttring, whereas here the woman possesses a this mask of simulation. . . nothing but a certain glutinous, filthy enjoymenr
kind of advanceknowledge. Ignoring the naive cunning of K., the excuse
that he is looking for a joiner caTl,edLanz,she makes him understand that his
arrival has been awaited for a long time, even though K. himself only chose
to enter her room quite by chance,as a last desperateattempt after a long and
uselessramble:
The first thing he saw in the little room was a greatpendulum clock which already
pointedto ten. 'Doesajoiner calledLanzlive here?'he asked.'pleasego through,'said
a young womanwith sparklingblackeyes,who waswashingchildren'sclothesin a cub,
andshepointedher damphandto the opendoor of the nextroom....'I askedfor a
joiner, a man calledLanz.''I know,'saidrhe woman,just go right in.,K. might not
haveobeyedif shehadnot comeup to him, grasped
the handleof the door, andsaid:
'l mustshut
this door afteryou, nobodyelsemustcomein.'7
The situation here is exacdy the sameas in the well-known incident from
The Arabian Nights:one entersa place quite by chance, and leams that one's
arrival hasbeen long expected. The paradoxical foreknowledge of the washer-
woman has nothing whatsoever to do with so-called feminine intuition - it is
based on the simple fact that she is connected with the Law. Her position
regarding the Law is far more crucial than that of a minor functionary;
K. discoversthis for himself soon afterward when his passionateargumentation
before the tribunal is intemrpted by an obsceneintrusion.
Here K. wasintermptedby a shriekfrom the end of the hall;he peeredfrom beneath
hishandto seewhatwashappening, for thereekof theroom andthe dim light together
made a whitish dazzleof fog. It was the washerwoman,whom K. had recogriizedas a
potential causeof disturbancefrom the moment of her entrance.'Whether she was ar
fault now or not, one could not tell. All K. could seewas that a man had drawn lrer into
a corner by the door and was claspingher in his arms. Yet it was not she who hacl
uttered the shriek but the man; his mouth was wide open and he was gazing up at tl-re
ceiling.8
What is the relation, then, between this woman and the Court of the Law?
In Kafka's work, the woman as a 'psychologrcal rype' is wholly consistent with
the anti-feminist ideology of an otto weininger: rhe woman is a being with-
out a proper seE she is incapable of assuming an ethical attitude (even when
The ObsceneObject of Postmodernity 47
she appearsto act on ethical grounds,she is calculatingthe enjoyment she will
derive from her actions);she is a being without any accessto the dimension of
Truth (even when what she is sayingis literally true, she lies as a consequence
of her subjectiveposition). It is insufhcient to sayofsuch a being that shefeigns
her affectionsto seducea man, for the problem is that there is nothing behind
that is her very substance.Confronted with such an image of woman, Kaflra
does not succumb to the usual critical-feminist temptation (of demonstraring
that this figure is the ideological product of specific social conditions, of
contrasting it with the outlines of another type of femininity). In a much
'W.einingerian
more subversive gesture, Kafka wholly accepts this portrait of
woman as a 'psychologrcalrype', while making it occupy an unheard-of,
unprecedentedplace, the place of the Law. This is, perhaps,as has already
been pointed out by Stach,the elementaryoperation of Kafka: this shortcircuit
betweenthe feminirLe 'substance'('psychologicaltype') and the place of the I-aw.
Smearedby an obscenevitaLiry,the Law itself - traditionally, a pure, neurral
universaliry - assumesthe featuresof a heterogeneous,inconsistent bricolage
penetratedwith enjoyment.
The ObsceneLaw
In Kafka'suniverse,the Court is - above all - lawless,in a formal sense:it is asif
the chain of 'normal' connectionsberween causesand effectswere suspended,
put in parenthesis.Every attempt to establishthe Court's mode of functioning
by logical reasoningis doomed in advanceto fail. All the oppositionsnoted by
K. (ber\,veenthe angcr of the judges and the laughter of the public on rhe
benches,berween the merry right side and the severeleft side of the pubLic)
prove false as soon as he tries to base his tactics on them; after an ordinary
answerby K. the public burstsinto laughter:
''Well,
thcn,' said the Exarnining Magistrate,turning over the leavesand addressingK.
with an air of arrthoriry, 'you are a house-painter?' 'No,' said K., 'I'rn the junior
nranager of a large Bank.' This answer evokcd such a hearty outburst of laughter
from the Right parry that K. had to laugh too. People doubied up with thcir hands
on their knees and shook as if in spasmsof coughing-'
The other, positive side of this inconsistency is, of course, enjoyment: it
empts openly when the argument of K. is disturbed by a public act of sexual
intercourse. This act, difficult to perceive because of its over-cxposure (K. has
'peer
to beneath lils hands to sce what was happening'), marks the moment
of the eruption of the trlunratic lleal, and the error of K. consists in
48 Culture
overlooking the solidarity berween this obscene disturbance and the
court. He thinks that everybody will be anxious to have order restored
and the offending couple ejected from the meering. But when he tries to
rush across the room, the crowd obstructs him. Someone seizes him from
behind, by the collar - at this point, the game is over: puzzled and confused,
K. loses the thread of his argument; filled with importent rage, he leaves the
room.
The fatal error of K. was to addressthe Court, the Other of the Law, as a
homogeneous entity, attainable by means of consistent argument, whereas the
Court can only return him an obscenesmile, rnixed with signsofperplexiry. In
short, K. expectsactionfrorn the Court Qegaldeeds,decisions),but what he gers
instead is an act (a public copulation). Kafl<a'ssensirivity to this 'trespassingof
the frontier that separatesthe vital domain from the judicial domain' depends
upon his Judaism: the Jewish religion marks the moment of the most radical
separationof thesedomains. In all previous religions,we encounter a place, a
domain of sacredenjoyment (in the form ofritual orgies, for example), whereas
inJudaism the sacreddomain is evacuatedof all tracesof vitaliry and the living
substanceis subordinated to the dead letter ofthe Father'sLaw. Kafl<atrespasses
the divisions of his inherited religion, flooding the judicial domain, once again,
with enjoyment.
Which is why Ka{ka's universe is eminently that of the superego. The Other
as the other of the sFnbolic Law is nor only dead, it doesn't even know that
it is dead (ike the terrible figure in Freud's dream): it couldn't know it, in so
far as it is totally insensible to the living substanceof enjoyment. The super
ego presents,.on the contrary, the paradox of a law that, according to Jacques-
Alain Miller,t0 'p.o...ds from the time when the Other *", ,ro, yet dead,
evidenced by the superego,a surviving remainder of that time'. The super-
ego imperative 'Enjoy!', the inversion of the dead Law into the obscene
figure of the superego,implies a disquieting experience:suddenlywe become
aware that what a minute ago appeared ro us a dead letter is really alive,
breathing, pulsating. Let us recall a shorr scene from the filrn Aliens.
The group of heroes is advancing through a long tunnel the stone walrs
of which are nvisted like interlaced plaits of hair. All at once the plaits start
to move and to secretea glutinous mucus; the petrified colpse comes alive
again.
-We
must, then, reversethe usualmetaphor of 'alienation'whereby the dead,
formal letter, a kind of parasiteor vampire, sucksour the living, presentforce.
Living subjectscan no longer be consideredprisonersof a dead cobweb. The
dead, formal character of the Law becomes now the sine qua non of our
freedom, and the real totalitarian danger arisesonly when the Law no longer
wants to stay dead.
The ObsceneObject of postmodernity 49
The result of nrl is, then, that there is no truth about Truth. Every warranr
of the Law has the status of a semblance; the_Law is necessary without being
true. To quote the words of the priest in m1, 'it is not necessaryro accept
everything as true; one must only accept it as necessary'.The meeting of K
with the washerwoman adds to this the obverse, usually passed ovcr in
silence: in so far as the I aw is not grounded in Truth, it is impregnated
with enjol'rnent. Thus, ml and m2 are complementary, representing the rwo
modes of lack: the lack of incompletenessand the lack of inconsistency.In
mi, the other of the Law as incomplete.In its very heart, there is a
certain gap; we can never reach "pp."r,
the last door of the Law. Ir is the reference to
m'that supports the intelpretation of Kafl<aas a'writer of absence',that is,
the negative theological reading of his universe as a crazy bureaucratic
machine turning blindly around the central void of an absent God. In m2,
the other of the Law appears on the conrrary, as inconsistenr:nothing is
wanting in it, nothing is lacking, but for all that it still is not .whole,/all'; it
remains an inconsistent bricolage, a collection following a kind of aleatory logic
of enjoyment. This provides the image of Karka as a 'writer of presence'- the
presence of what? of a blind machinery to which nothing is lacking in so far
as it is the very surGit of enjoyment.
If modem literature can be characterizedas 'unreadable', then Kafl<aexem-
plifies this characterisricin a way that is different fromJamesJoyce. Finnegan,s
wake is, of course,an 'unreadable'book: we cannot read it the way we read an
ordinary 'realist' novel. To follow the thread of the text we need a kind of
'reader's
guide', a cornmentary that enablesus to see our way through the
inexhaustible nerwork of ciphered allusions. yet this .illegibiiiry' functions
preciselyas an invitation to an unending processof reading of interpretarion
(recall Joyce's joke that 'with Finnegan'swake, he hopes to keep literary
scientistsoccupied for at least the next four hundred years). compared to
tlis, The Tial ts quite 'readable'. The main outlines of the story are clear
enough Kafka's style is concise and of proverbial puriry. But it is this very
'legrbility'
that, because of its over-exposed character, produces a radical
opaciry and blocks every essayof interpretation. It is as if Ka{ka'stexr were a
coagulated,'stigmatized, signif,iing chain repelling significationwith an exccss
of sticky enjoyment.
The superegoknows too much
The bureaucrarydepicted in Kafka's novels - the imrnense machinery of totally
useless,superfluousknowledge, ru'ning bli'dly and provoking an unbearable
feeling of irrational' guilt - funcrions as a superegoic knowledge (S2 in
Lacan'smathemes).This fact ru.s counter to our spontaneousunderstanding.
50 Culture
Nothing seems more obvious than the connection between the superego
and the Lacanian.Sl, the master-signifier. Is the superego not the very model
'irrational'
of an injunction founded solely in its own processof enunciation,
demanding obedience without further justification? Lacanian theory, how-
ever, runs counter to this spontaneousintuition: the opposition between S1
and 52 that is, berween the master-signifier and the chain of knowledge -
overlaps the opposition of ego-ideal (the 'unitary trait', the point of symbolic
identification) and the superego. The superego is on the side of 52, it is
a fragment of the chain of knowledge whose purest forn of apparition is
'irrational
what we call the feeling of guilt'. We feel guilty without knowing
why, as a resuit of acts we are certain we did not comrnit. The Freudian
solution to this paradox is, of course,that this feeling is well-founded: we feel
guilry because of our repressedunconscious desires. Our conscious ego
does not (want to) know anything about them, but the superego 'sees
all and knows all', and thus holds the subject responsible for its unacknow-
'the
ledged desires: superego knew more than the ego about the un-
c o n s c i o u si d ' . 1 1
We should, then, renounce the usualnotion of the unconsciousasa kind of
'reservoir'
of wild, illicit drives:the unconsciousis also (one is even tempted to
say: above all) fragments of a traumatic, cruel, capricious, 'uruntelligible' and
'irrational' law
text, a set of prohibitions and injunctions. In other words, we
'put
must forward the paradoxical proposition that the normal man is not only
far more immoral than he believes but also far more moral than he knows'.12
'What
is the precise meaning of this distinction berween belief and knowledge,
produced as if by a kind of slip and lost already in the note accompanying the
quoted phrase from The Ego and the Id? In this note Freud rephraseshis
'simply
proposition by sayingthat it statesthat human nature has a far greater
extent, both for good and for evil, than it thinks fglaubt:believes]it has, i.e.,
than ego is awareof through consciousperceptions'.t'L^."n taught us to be
extremely attentive to such distinctions that emerge momentarily and are
forgotten imrnediately afterward, for it is through them that we can detect
Freud's crucial insights, the whole dimension of which he himself failed to
notice (let us recall only what Lacan has been able to derive from a similar
'slippery' distinction
bef,weenego-ideal and ideal ego). What, then, is rhe
import of that ephemeraldistinction befween belief and knowledge? llltim-
ately, only one answer is possible:if man is more immoral than he (con-
sciously) believes and more moral than he (consciously)knows - in other
words, if his relation toward the id (the illicit drives) is that of (dis)belief,and
hr-isrelation toward the super-ego (its traumatic prohibitions and injunctions)
that of (non-)knowledge,i.e., of ignorance- must we not conclude that theid
in itselfalreadyconsists ofunconscious, repressedbeliefs,andthat thesuperego
consists
The ObsceneObject of postmodernity 51
an unconscious knowledge,of a paradoxical knowledge unbeknown to the sub-
ject? As we have seen, Freud himself treats the superego as a ki'd of
knowledge ('the superego knew more than the ego about the unconsclous
id'). But where can we graspthis knowledge in a palpableway, where doesit
acquire- so to speak- a material, externalexistence?ln paranoia,in which this
agencythat 'seesall and knows all' is embodied in the real, in the person of the
all-knowing persecutor,able to 'read our thoughts'. Concerning the id, we
only have to remember the famous challenge made by Lacan to his audience
that they show him one singlepersonwho did nor unconsciouslybelieve in his
own immortahry, in God. According to Lacan, the true formula of atheism is
'God
is unconscious'.There is a certain fundarnentalbelief - a belief in the
other's basicconsistency- thar belongsto languageassuch.By the mere act of
speaking,we suppose the existenceof the big other as guarantorof our mean-
ing. Even in the most asceticanalyticalphilosophy, this fundamentalbelief is
maintained in the form of what Donald Davidson called 'the principle of
charity', conceiving it as the condition for successfulcommunication.la The
only subject who can effectively renounce the 'chariry principle' - that is,
whose relation to the big other of the symbolic order is characterizedby a
fundamental disbeLief* ts the psychotic- a paranoiac,for example, who seesin
the symbolic network of meaning around him a plot staged by some evil
Persecutor.
Notes
1 cf, Jrirgen Habermas, The PhilosophicalDiscourseof Modernity (cambridge, Mass.,
MIT Press,1987).
2 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, DialecticoJEnlightentnent (London, Allen
Lane, 1.973).
3 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, Beacon press, 1964).
4 PascalBonitzer, 'Longs feux', L'Ane 16 (1984\.
5 ci Gilles Deleuze and F6lix Guattari, KaJka: Towarda Minor Literuture(Minnea-
polis, Universiry of Minnesota Prcss,1986).
6 Rciner Stach, KaJkaserotischer
Mythos (Frankfurt, Fischer Verlag, 19g7), p. 3g.
7 Franz Kafl<a, The Tnal (New York, Schocken, 1984), p. 37.
8 Ibid., p. 46.
9 I b i d . ,p . 5 0 .
10 'Dury
Jacques-A)ainMiller, and the Drives', Newsletter
of theFreudia,Field 6 (1/2\
(1,992),pp. 5-15, ar p. 13.
11 Sigmund Freud, 'The Ego and the Id', in The standardEdition oJ the complete
Psychological works, (London: Hogarth press and the Institute of psycho-Analysis,
1953),vol. 19, p. 51. The nicestirony of the title of Freud's'The Eso and the Id,
of
52 Culture
is that it leaves out the third crucial notion that contains the real theoretical
'The
innovation of this essay:its title should be Superego in its Relations to the
Ego and the Id'.
t 2 Ibid.,p. 52.
I J rbid.
'Mental Events',in Essays
onActionsandEuents(New York,
1 4 Cf, Donald Davidson,
Odrrd Univenity Press,1980).
The Spectreof ldeology

Thisis the introductionto a collectionentitled Mappingldeology,edited

by 2iZe*.(1994),pp. 1-33, which reassesses the concept of ideology
through readingsfrom philosophy,sociologyand psychoanalysis. Here
2i2ek providesa surveyof the century'stheoriesof ideology,showing
how there is a basicfault-linethat showsthrough in oppositional struc-
turesof truth and falsity,which ideologyitselfservesto conceal.
Three aspectsin the current approachesto ideology can be distin-
guished:(1)the beliefs,arguments,basicassumptions and modesof rhet-
oric that constituteits conceptualapparatus;(2) the institutions,ritual
practices and socialorganizations that maintainits dominance;(3) the
ideologyemergingat the core of the socialin responseto its current
formations, suchasliberalsubjects experiencing themselves asindividuals
with uncontrolled'free choice'.First,ZiZekquestionswhether'true' com-
munication canbedistinguished from'false',asif discourse did not depend
on an ideologicalstructureto function at all. Second,it is not correctto
regardthe 'ldeologicalStateApparatus'asdeterminingbeliefsof subjects,
sincethe Fascist experience showsthat the so-called manipulators were
indifferentasto whetherthey were believedor not, as long asthe rituals
produceda suffi<.ientsemblance of solidarity.
Third,it is no simplematter
to separatesupposedly extra-ideologicalelementsfrom'spontaneous'
ideologicaloneswhen the ideologicalis hidden in self-evident 'facts',
suchas laws,economicstructures and sexualrelations.
Whateverthe opposition,there is an assumption on which it depends
that is neverquestioned;for example,where an oppositionbetweenan
earlyand a lateform of capitalism is assumed in orderto dismissMarx's