Η ΣΠΗΛΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΝΟΣΦΕΡΑΤΟΥ: Why Žižek for Political Theory?Jodi Dean - Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York

Η ΣΠΗΛΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΝΟΣΦΕΡΑΤΟΥ: Why Žižek for Political Theory?Jodi Dean - Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York

''We are expected to have a good time, to have it all, to be happy,fit and fulfilled.
This compulsion results in overwhelming guilt and anxiety.

On one hand, we are guilty both when we fail to live up to the superego’s injunction and when we follow it.

On another,we are anxious before the enjoyment of the other.

Given our inabilities to enjoy, the enjoyment of the other seems all the more powerful, all the more threatening.

The other alltoo easily threatens our imaginary balance.

An ever present reminder that someone else has more, is more fulfilled, more successful, more attractive, more spiritual, the other makes our own lack all the more present to us.

That the fragility of contemporary subjects means others are experienced as threats helps make sense of the ready availability of the imaginary identity of the victim—one of the few positions from which one can speak.

Whenothers smoke, I am at risk.

When others over-eat, make noise, flaunt their sexuality, then my American way of life, my values, are under attack.

Indeed, in the terms provided by thewar on terror, to be “civilized” today is to be a victim—a victim of fear of terrorism, a victim that has to be surveilled, searched, guarded, and protected from unpredictable violence.

In all these cases, the imaginary identity of the victim authorizes the subject to speak even as it shields it from responsibility toward another (Žižek 2003: 166-168). ......''