Parallax View

MG was kind enough to send me a copy of a recent review by Zizek that appeared in the LRB. Here's a copy of it: Download parallax_view.pdf . If it looks familiar, that may be because big chunks of it appear in Zizek's preface to the collection of his writings, Interrogating the Real and in a chapter of the collection entitled, appropriately, "The Parallax View."

As I understand it, a parallax view is a view on two completely incompatible points or levels; it involves holding onto an antinomy or seeing two sides of an item that can never meet; it differs from contradiction, I think, in so far as in a contradiction two elements meet at the same level, clashing, throwing each other out of joint. A parallax, however, concerns a fundamental gap, as in the gap between desire and drive (Zizek also uses the vagina as an example, which strikes me as absurd). Zizek writes, "my entire work circulates around this gap that separates the One from itself, for which the Lacanian designation is the Real."

And, he says:

The basic idea of the parallax view is that the very act of bracketing off produces its object--democracy as a form emerges only when one brackets of the texture of economic relations as well as the inherent logic of the political state apparatus; they both have to be astracted from people who are effectively embedded in economic processes and subjected to state apparatuses. The same goes also for the logic of domnation, the way people are controlled/manipulated by the apparatuses of subjection: in order to clearly discern these mechansism of power, one has to abstracted not only from the democratic imaginary . . . but also from the process of economic (re)production. And, finally, the specific sphere of economic (re)production only emerges if one methodologically brackets off the concrete existence of state and political ideology . . . And, of course, the trap to be avoided here is precisely the naive idea that one should keep in view the social totality . . . if one tries to keep the whole in view, one ends up seeing nothing, the contours disappear. This bracketing off is not only epistemological, but it concers what Marx called the 'real abstraction': the abstraction from power and economic relations that is inscribed into the very actuality of the democratic process.

Everybody is probably freaking out at this point, jumping up and down and screaming, BUT HOW DOES THIS WORK WITH HEGEL? Relax. It's ok. The movement of negativity through Hegel is a kind of parallax, an account of the way 'reality' "itself is caught in the movement of our knowing of it" (and vice versa).

And, the other question: if the concept works with Zizek's particular combination of Hegel and Lacan, does it add anything?

Comments

[Amish Lovelock]

Did he borrow this from Karatani, or was it always there before? Being in Tokyo, I'd be interested to hear what anyone thinks of the Karatani stuff.

See more here:

http://www.kojinkaratani.com/

and here:

http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2188&editorial_id=16261

[Rodkong]

Jodi,

If you have a chance pick up a copy of November's Atlantic Monthly. They have a feature on college admissions with an article by Richard Hersh...

[Jodi]

Amish--yes, he borrows from KK; like I said, the review and the sections of the book are the same. In fact, in the preface to the book, in the sentence about all of his work, he has a footnote to KK that cites Transcritique. There are a couple of details in the reading of Marx and Kant that Zizek rejects; but, for the most part he thinks the book is a great achievement.

[shaviro@shaviro.com]

Jodi, thanks for linking to this: I definitely have to read Karatani, what he is doing is closely related to stuff I have been struggling to work out.

A paragraph or two of the review, by the way, also appears in Zizek's introduction to Jacques Ranciere's The Politics of Aesthetics. But Zizek recycling texts is no surprise.

I wonder why Zizek didn't seize the opportunity to mention the film The Parallax View -- to my mind the very best of the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s.

[Jodi]

Steven--now I see what I should watch this weekend! I know I saw it ages ago, but don't recall. Weird that Z doesn't mention it--didn't Jameson write about it? I'm interested in seeing how you use the K book; I know I should read it, but right now I think I'm just going to get this stupid Z book finished.

I wish you had trackback/comments on your A history of violence post!

[shaviro@shaviro.com]

I had to turn the comments off on my blog, I was getting too much spam.

I got the Karatani book today and read the Intro -- but it'll be a while before I have the time to read more.

Anyway, what interests me in Karatani is 1) his emphasis on circulation (which is necessary in order to realize the surplus value extracted in production) and 2) his use of the Kantian antinomy (Kant's dialectic *as opposed to* Hegel's; which is precisely where I have issues with Zizek): both of these are things I have been trying to work out, because they are both crucial to the argument of my book in progress...

[Amish Lovelock]

Steven,

Thanks for your take. The thing which has confused me about Karatani is the following. He claims the triad of capital-nation-state forms a nexus of transcendental illusions in the strictest Kantian sense. Therefore just getting rid of one will not ensure the end of capitalism. That if you do away with the market, the state will merely take over. He uses this to understand Fascism, Stalinism and neo-liberalism to an extent, as they merely tried to do away with one aspect of the nexus and the others just simply kicked in. There is a kind of circulation both within each node and between the nexus as a whole.

This is pretty simplified but I still don't know what to make of it.