NEMANJA: SMIRENOUMLJE

rat man

'BEM TI MIŠA!



Hidden Prohibitions and the Pleasure Principle

Slavoj Žižek and Josefina Ayerza

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SZ: Yes, although the paradox I like here is that this kind of consumer society ideology illustrates nicely what Freud already knew were the paradoxes of the pleasure principle. You have a society which is ostensibly oriented toward pure pleasure, but you pay for it through a whole series of "you can't." The hidden prohibitions: eat whatever you want, but beware of fat and cholesterol; smoke, but beware of nicotine; sex, but safe sex. Yet the ultimate consequence of this pleasure principle is that everything is prohibited in a way; you can't smoke: there's nicotine; you can't eat: there's fat; you can't have sex: you'll get sick. So this is a kind of everyday confirmation of the Lacanian paradox. We all know how Lacan reversed Dostoyevsky by saying "If God does not exist, everything is prohibited," not ''everything is permitted." I think this is perfectly epitomized by today's society of consumption. If God in the traditional sense as a universal model does not exist, then everything is allowed. You can get whatever you want but with the substance removed: coffee without caffeine, cigarettes without nicotine. I like the dirty story that was in all the magazines about Richard Gere. This widely known scandal, for me, is the ultimate example of all this. This is the story: Gere was hospitalized because he realized — with one of the latest practices in Hollywood, the latest in sexual perversion — the fantasy of Freud's Rat Man. You take a gerbil — not a rat but a gerbil — and a vet cuts off its teeth and nails. You put it in a bag, you attach a piece of string to its tail, and you put it in your anus. The animal suffocates of course and this is "it": the pleasure. Finally it is up to you to pull the dead animal out. The problem with Richard Gere, allegedly, was that he pulled it out too quickly and was left only with the tail; the dead animal remained inside. It's the same paradox: the Rat Man fantasy, you get it, but without claws, without teeth, it is all cut off by a veterinarian. For me this is the ultimate of this same logic. Nothing is prohibited you can even realize the Rat Man fantasy but in a reduced version: the vet takes care of it, cuts off the claws, etc. Again what is crucial here is the contemporary computer with its universal dimension — a kind of a Spinozist machine. We all know Lacan defines the lady in courtly love as a non-human partner. This is computers today.

JA: Is the computer a lady?

SZ: Yes, it takes the place of the lady. Thinking the innermost of your being is in a way externalized. The machine thinks for you: just by observing it you can enjoy how the other does it for you — again this is the ultimate Spinozist vision, passive immersion. Lacan falsely attributes this experience to Hegel, to Hegelian absolute knowledge, but I think it is far more Spinozist: the reduction to a pure bare observer. This kind of universal symbolic machine functioning by itself totally relieves you of your responsibility.

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