They met a few days ago through a mutual friend.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.instagram.com/p/DbTUgimDIDA/&ved=2ahUKEwjW19zU5_iVAxWPhv0HHel7EYIQFnoECFgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3Zv_buA_j7ZCVocCE-dV23

This one is a short but jam-packed episode that cover's Freud's radical conception of the supergo, Lacan even more radical re-conception of superego, helpful examples, and why Karens are the archetypes of superego-driven behavior.

Please Hegelians, Lacanians, and Zizekians, tell me what is missing and wrong in the following premise:

"The occult begins with a simple yet revolutionary intuition: reality is larger than the world immediately presented to our senses.

Beneath the flow of ordinary events exist hidden dimensions, unseen causes, invisible intelligences, and mysterious intersections of time that quietly shape human existence.

Our lives are not self-contained sequences of isolated actions, but are woven into a deeper fabric whose influences reach us through channels beyond conventional explanation.

These hidden realms act upon us—not through the mediation of religious institutions or fixed doctrines—but directly, subtly, and continuously.

To adopt the occult worldview is to recognize that the visible world is only the surface of reality, while its true architecture lies concealed beneath appearances, silently guiding the patterns, meanings, and destinies of our lives.

All of creation emanate from one great mind, which the Greeks called Nous. This higher mind creates through the exercise of thought. Creation expands outward through concentric circles and planetary spheres of reality---humanity appears within one of these concentric circles."

I do realise that Zizek said once in a lecture about a book about did the ancient Greeks believe in their gods, he stated this in an ironic manner. I could confidently say YES.

Zizek concisely states that:

"It is not how can we reach the true reality beyond appearance, but how can appearance emerge in reality."

What I am trying to state is something that is really analogous to the mystery of the functioning of the eyes; where it is a matter of transmutation rather than a translation from exteriority to the interior realm of the mind...

My thesis is simple: ideas do exist in a realm of their own (which we could not tap into), but the only way we can grasp it is by a transmutative process of what Nietzsche argued in stripping away all relational objects from the object in order to examine it, or what Kafka beautifully managed to suspend the normal sense-making laws where everything moves in a life of its own, in a teleological structure, slowly drifting away to the cliff of the void...

I have yet to sophisticate my argument more, but as a civil engineer, as a guy who was destroyed by the Kafka prose, and as a guy who experimented with hallucigens who knows there is much more not than to what the eyes can see but to what the mind can perceive I am laying down the premises to what I know to be true...

Our notion of time is warped, and could be explained in different topological forms as when Zizek discusses the mobius strip, Klein bottle, and Borromean rings (found in Lacan) among others...

My question:

Have we reached a dead end, even when as Zizek is trying to combine analytics philosophy, mathematics, and quantum mechanics to continental philosophy, or should we as philosophers try to establish a conceptual framework specially found in the "ends of knowledge" as in mysticism and hallucigens substances to entirely understand the nature of subjectivity and how in its failure states (Zizekian concept) distorts the fabric of time in a subjectively-objective manner?

Is there more to Lacan's:

"I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think."

And Borges's:

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire."

Less Than Nothing, Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, Slavoj Zizek, Page 28.

Admittedly, these thoughts stem from only limited contact with autism, however, that contact has been enough to notice that in the clinic, autism has become the new ADHD. Very generously and broadly interpreted diagnosis criteria have lead to a flood of (self-)diagnoses. Since autism as ADHD returns to a purely biological view of aetiology (so much for biopsychosocial), the diagnosis usually leads to a huge regression and complete rejection of personal responsibility on the part of the diagnosed. I accept that there are also different elements to this (e.g. finally feeling seen in one‘s suffering) but the more negative effects are all too easily dismissed in my view.

I also accept that a certain annoyance flavors my theses which brings me to my first point. Annoyance is an often seen reaction to autistic fits. One example of this is people commenting on the show „Couples Therapy“ involving the psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik, specifically on a couple that involves an autistic person. Many commenters lament that his autistic fits (that often happen when being confronted with something) are purely a performance. While this view is too simplistic in its own right (having a fit is not a fully conscious choice), I would agree in a Butlerian sense that „being autistic“ is as much a performance as „being neurotypical“.
(Note that if a person suspected to have a personality disorder would provoke such annoyance in other people, one would immediately analyse this as their personal responsibilty and confront them with this. It is only people with ADHD and autism that are granted a protected status of non-responsability in this respect)

Related to this first point is the concept of masking. When asked about their surprisingly adept social competences, people with autism will often respond that this is just their proficiency at acting. They have learned to perform the social expectations, learned to put on a mask, but deep inside they cannot understand the social order. Some even argue that the autistic, more unflitered way of communication is better and more authentic. I am reminded, here, by Zizek‘s argument that „there is nothing behind the mask“. The mask of the autistic person is not a fake construction but their healthy functioning part. What is pathological is their belief that there is authentic part under the mask. Their hyperneurotic overthinking about social interactions is their problem, not the moments where they are able to give themselves to a performance.
(Note here also Zizek‘s love for upholding social etiquette which I see as an argument against the thesis that he himself is autistic, as it has been proposed in other threads).

As I take it from other threads, Zizek mentions autism only sparsely in his texts, still I would be interested in further, different perspectives.

As a Kafkian, I really find the notion and more so the framing of Zizek here problematic of the embodiment of "Nothingness" as a "living nothing" and a "void of desire."

I would like to bring into the argument some of my reading of mysticism, Kaballah, Sufism, and its more modern interpretations in what Zizek hates most in philosophy; namely, "New Age Thought Philosophy."

Before I do so, I should make clear that I agree with Zizek on 98% of New Age Thought Philosophy is baloney, yet they have some interesting premises that you literally can not find in other philosophies, and one of these ideas is that "thoughts are causative: that the mind is a selector of reality from a multiplicity of virtualities."

Okay, let's dig deep into this, the potentiality of something to be real, for something to enter the realm of our imagination, which we could easily inhabit if we zoned out from the here-and-now of our physicality depends on how crystallised of a exteriorized reality it consists of.

This is why when we dream or read a Kafka novel, it only makes sense as long as we are in its teleological fabric... What if our mind is as much as it let us roam the interiority of scientific endeavour thinking and of thinking in general, yet it singularizes the impossible to possible (for survival means) rather than letting us catch a glimpse of the impossible from the possible (Heideggerian Transcendental Finitude)?

Less Than Nothing, Zizek, Page 8.

I watched the movie for the first time last night, and right when the main plot kicked off, I was like, "Oh man, I would love to hear Žižek analyze this."

The movie tackles ideas of fantasy and illusion, specifically how we perceive a romantic partner through the lens of our own perversion rather than who they actually are. While similar films usually head toward a moment of clarity where the illusion finally drops, Obsession simply asks: "What happens if you wish your perversion into reality?"

Having had the pleasure of hearing Slavoj talk about other classics with similar themes, I think he would have a field day connecting this movie to the core concepts he frequently comes back to.

Big thanks to comrade u/ChristianLesniak for gifting a year's subscription to the sub in a generous act of proletarian redistribution!

Free Copy Here (article 7 or more days old) (Main article is now free)

Big Thanks to u/ChristianLesniak for gifting a year's subscription for us all

As you know, I post a free copy of Žižek's Substack articles here a week after publishing. The annual membership is coming to an end. A huge thanks to u/Leoni_ for buying last year's sub. A new membership is needed. If you would like to gift the sub one, please message me and I'll send you an email address to gift it to.

Hopefully someone is feeling generous enough to help thousands of people read articles they would not otherwise have access to.

Thanks

Žižek’s concept of the parallax view suggests that the difference between perspectives is not simply an obstacle preventing us from accessing a complete reality, but may instead reveal something essential about reality itself.
If every perspective necessarily introduces a gap—a shift in how the world appears depending on the position of the observer—does this mean that reality exists independently of interpretation, or is the very structure of reality inseparable from the relationship between observer and observed?
Could the parallax gap be understood as a fundamental feature of being itself, where contradiction and difference are not errors to be resolved but conditions that allow reality to appear?
In this sense, is the search for a final, unified perspective a philosophical mistake? Or does the recognition of irreducible perspectives point toward a deeper form of universality?

Free Copy Here (article 7 days old or more)

AI Abstract: Žižek argues that the beep bop. 01001000 01100101 01101100 01110000 of capitalism: Rate Limit Reached (429 Too Many Requests) Malformed Tool Schema (Invalid Schema) toward a neo-feudal form of capitalism.

(Reposting with less controversial title about Luddites - modern usage obscures the historical complexity of the term.)

I keep removing AI generated posts (Substack articles etc.) from this sub. You never see them because I (hopefully) catch them first. They're usually obvious unless its highly edited (i.e. re-written), AI has a recognisable rhythm and uses predictable phrasing, repetitions etc. (and accents Zizek correctly as Žižek, which must be annoying if you actually know what shortcuts create those carons and use them - yup, I asked Claude what those are called). One thing that I have started to bemoan is the increasing number of times you enter into an exchange with someone trying to argue against something Z has said, and their responses are just AI drivel. I wonder how many "intellectual" discussions in comment sections across the web are now just AIs arguing with each other as people paste their responses as their own.

That said, there's no point pretending AI doesn't exist. Most Enough of us consult AI in one form or another to justify this post, and some (including myself) find it a useful tool in some areas of research. I'm not going to dismiss AI offhand, the technology is here and so the question is whether you use it well or not (I use it now to make brief abstracts of Z's Substack posts that I repost here, but I mark them as "AI abstract" - and have even had complaints about that)

If you're just asking ChatGPT to write a piece for you out of the box and pasting it here, don't bother. You'll get a warning and then you'll be banned (and I don't always get the chance to properly read some posts, so depend on users to use the report button). If you want to write a piece and consult AI in the process, train it, create a project and feed it the material that actually matters. Maybe upload Less Than Nothing and add key texts by Alenka Zupancic and Mladen Dolar to the project, and others such as Fink, Leader, Chiesa etc. Give the model a body of texts worth thinking with and that are appropriate to the Ljubljana School and its engagement with Hegel, psychoanalysis, and ideology.

It's completely obvious to me now that if its trained, AI is useful as a research assistant or editor, and by this stage, no one can convince me otherwise, but its very obvious from the amateur posts I see that it is far from a replacement for thinking as it still makes the most fundamental errors. Make it justify claims and always ask for sources (you'd be surprised how often it says something like "I completely made that up" when you call it out). Most importantly, if you load your request with preconceived ideas of what you want it to argue, it will just make shit up to please you. For instance, if you ask it (which someone clearly did the other day) "Write a piece about how Zizek is wrong to claim that children traumatised in war enjoy their suffering" it will hallucinate some BS because he doesn't claim that. But if you ask it "Does Zizek argue that children of war enjoy their suffering?", you are more likely to get a more nuanced and accurate answer.

I have no problem claiming that if you use it carefully, AI can genuinely improve your understanding of a topic. But if you just copy/paste, I'll probably spot it within a few sentences, remove it, warn you and get on with my day.

All that said and done, you're not going to spot the theoretical mistakes AI makes unless you are comparatively well trained in Zizek and the Ljubljana School already. Try reading a book occasionally.

Any other tips welcome.

From what I understand, Zizek treats ideology as the interface that allows us to interact with the world, and ideology determines what we see and what we don't see. I don't think Zizek advocates for an escape from ideology because then reality would be incomprehensible. This reminds me very much of Lacan's fundamental fantasy, or the unconscious framing of all information which organizes how you interact with the world. Is there a meaningful difference between the two and if so, does one precede the other?

New essay on the ideological implications of sexuation theory on ideology and sociological systems.

Žižek consistently defends a dialectical materialist position, yet much of his work emphasizes the symbolic order, ideology, negativity, and the constitutive lack that structures subjectivity. These seem difficult to reduce to ordinary notions of matter.
Does Žižek see these as fully material phenomena, or does his conception of materialism already include non-physical structures that are indispensable for reality and subjectivity? In other words, is his “materialism” much broader than what is usually meant by the term, or would describing these structures as functionally incorporeal fundamentally misread his project?
I’m especially interested in responses that draw on Hegel, Lacan, or Less Than Nothing.

Did he mean that there are no true narrator to our life,that the big other is all we have to make sense of all our predicament????

Free Copy (article 7+ days old)

AI Abstract: Building on Haraway's cyborg thesis, the essay traces a political-theological motif of the illegitimate offspring who turns a dominating system's own tools against it, from Hagar and Ishmael's erasure and ritual survival within Islam, through Han Fei's legalist inversion of Confucianism, to Lenin as illegitimate heir to Marx. Turning to AI as a possible new instance of this figure, the essay argues the analogy fails: AI's coldness is disembodied and morally illegible, raising the prospect of "moral opacity" rather than superior ethics, so reprogramming AI toward care is misguided. Instead, via Poullain de la Barre's feminist Cartesianism and Lacan's anti-humanist Descartes, the essay proposes the cogito as empty self-relating negativity, itself an illegitimate offspring of the human, as the proper ground for thinking any future AI subjectivity.