Slavoj Zizek - The Parallax View (Short Circuits)

THE PARALLAX VIEW

SHORT CIRCUITS

Slavoj iek, editor

The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, by Slavoj iek

The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsches Philosophy of the Two, by Alenka Zupani

Is Oedipus Online? Siting Freud after Freud, by Jerry Aline Flieger

Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, by Alexei Monroe

The Parallax View, by Slavoj iek

Slavoj iek

THE MIT PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND

2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

iek, Slavoj.

The parallax view / Slavoj iek.

p. cm. (Short circuits)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-262-24051-3 (alk. paper)

1. Philosophy. I.Title. II. Series.

B4870.Z593P37 2006

199.4973dc22

2005051704

d_r0

para Analia, el axioma de mi vida

CONTENTS

SERIES FOREWORD

A short circuit occurs when there is a faulty connection in the networkfaulty, of course, from the standpoint of the networks smooth functioning. Is not the shock of short-circuiting, therefore, one of the best metaphors for a critical reading? Is not one of the most effective critical procedures to cross wires that do not usually touch: to take a major classic (text, author, notion), and read it in a short-circuiting way, through the lens of a minor author, text, or conceptual apparatus (minor should be understood here in Deleuzes sense: not of lesser quality, but marginalized, disavowed by the hegemonic ideology, or dealing with a lower, less dignified topic)? If the minor reference is well chosen, such a procedure can lead to insights which completely shatter and undermine our common perceptions. This is what Marx, among others, did with philosophy and religion (short-circuiting philosophical speculation through the lens of political economy, that is to say, economic speculation); this is what Freud and Nietzsche did with morality (short-circuiting the highest ethical notions through the lens of the unconscious libidinal economy). What such a reading achieves is not a simple desublimation, a reduction of the higher intellectual content to its lower economic or libidinal cause; the aim of such an approach is, rather, the inherent decentering of the interpreted text, which brings to light its unthought, its disavowed presuppositions and consequences.

And this is what Short Circuits wants to do, again and again. The underlying premise of the series is that Lacanian psychoanalysis is a privileged instrument of such an approach, whose purpose is to illuminate a standard text or ideological formation, making it readable in a totally new waythe long history of Lacanian interventions in philosophy, religion, the arts (from the visual arts to the cinema, music, and literature), ideology, and politics justifies this premise. This, then, is not a new series of books on psychoanalysis, but a series of connections in the Freudian fieldof short Lacanian interventions in art, philosophy, theology, and ideology.

Short Circuits intends to revive a practice of reading which confronts a classic text, author, or notion with its own hidden presuppositions, and thus reveals its disavowed truth.The basic criterion for the texts that will be published is that they effectuate such a theoretical short circuit. After reading a book in this series, the reader should not simply have learned something new: the point is, rather, to make him or her aware of anotherdisturbingside of something he or she knew all the time.