Subject: Enjoy Your Nation as Yourself     ! or ?
Date: 	Sun, 12 Mar 2000 08:39:28 -0500


On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 11:14:10 -0500 chris.brittain-AT-utoronto.ca wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca wrote:
Is anyone interested in talking about "Enjoy Your Nation as Yourself!" in 
Zizek's Tarrying with the Negative?  I'm trying to figure out what Zizek is 
talking about in the last paragraph.

> I'm game - but I haven't read the article yet.
> Chris

Hey Chris, how YOU doin' ?

Ok, here's the troubling passage.  "Sometimes... the only truly subversive 
thing to do when confronted with a power discourse is simply to take it at its 
word" (pg. 237, Tarrying with the Negative).

Basically - Zizek is outlining the logic of the impossible choice, the 
pragmatic paradox of a self-contradicting performative (it would be premature 
to mention Habermas's performative contradiction here so I shall not do so).  
Prior to the sentence just mentioned, Zizek writes, "In order to function 
properly, power discourse must be inherently split, it must 'cheat' 
performatively, to disavow its own underlying performative gesture."  I don't 
quite "get" the point that he is making.  I'm not really up for debating its 
validity, I'm more interested in understanding what he's getting at here.  I 
have a vague idea, but "to take it at its word" ... I'm missing something.  
Would it be like, normally, we second guess power discourses - "Ha!  You only 
think you have power!  True power resides in God... or the People..."  and 
Zizek is saying here, "Ha!  Power exists in power relationships!"  Which, of 
course, is a tautology, but this is always the way it is with Zizek.  
Tautologies usually mask the split.  

ken

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