17 quotes
Man as such is nature sick unto death, derailed, run off the rails through a fascination with a lethal Thing.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
All the proper balances of our daily life are disturbed, everything we do is colored by the underlying thought of "that".
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Memento mori should be read: don't forget to die.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
As Bertolt Brecht puts in his Threepenny Opera: What is the robbery of a bank compared to the foundation of a new bank?'
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
A woman is not complimentary to a man, but she embodies his lack (which is why Lacan can say that a beautiful woman is a perfect incarnation of man's castration).
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
The general reference of the philosophical discussion is usually the triangle world: world-language-subject, the relation of the subject to the world of objects, mediated through language.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Zhuang Zi, who dreamt of being a butterfly, and after his awakening posed himself a question: how does he know that he is not now a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuang Zi?
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Everything pales into insignificance compared to our passionate attachment. In this sense, falling in love is like the blinding light that hit Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus: a kind of religious suspension of the Ethical, to use Kerkegaard's terms.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Lacan's definition of human deception: We deceive the Other by means of the truth itself; in a universe in which all are looking for the true face beneath the mask, the best way to lead them astray is to wear the mask of truth itself.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Dreams are nothing other than a particular form of thinking, made possible by the conditions of the state of sleep. it is the dream-work which creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming - the explanation of its peculiar nature.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
The symptom is not only a cyphered message, it is at the same time a way for the subject to organize his enjoyment - that is why, even after the completed interpretation, the subject is not prepared to renounce his symptom.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
'Ideological' is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence - that is, social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals 'do not know what they are doing.'
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Symbolic castration - the final moment of analysis is reached when the subject is ready to accept this fundamental loss, to consent to symbolic castration as a price to be paid for access to his desire.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
If we merely wait for the appropriate moment we will never live to see it, because this [appropriate moment] cannot arrive without the subjective conditions of the maturity of the revolutionary force being fulfilled - it can only arrive after a series of failed attempts.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Subject - (1) a person subject to political rule; (2) a free agent, instigator of its activity - subjects can realize themselves as free agents only by means of redoubling themselves as, only in so far as they project, transpose the pure form of their freedom into the very heart of the substance opposed to them; into the person of the subject-monarch as head of state.
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
'Nobody can rule innocently,' as Saint-Just puts it. And in totalitarianism, the Party becomes again the very subject who, being the immediate embodiment of the People can rule innocently. It is not by accident that the real-socialist countries call themselves 'people's democracies.'
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)