K Punk/Pseud's Corner
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john eden
male pale and stale
It is this reversal of meaning that we also have in Zizek's other examples of the master-signifier in For They Know Not, which is that book of his where he deals most extensively, as he says, 'on the One' (TK, 7-60). The first is the notorious Dreyfus Affair, which in 1898 saw an innocent Jewish captain of the French Army, Alfred Dreyfus, sent to Devil's Island for being part of a plot to overthrow the government of the day. It is an episode that even now has its effects: the separation of Church and State in modern democracies, Socialist collaboration in reformist governments, the birth of both Zionism and right-wing populist political movements. The decisive incident of the whole affair, argues Zizek, did not occur when we might at first think, during that moment when Dreyfus was initially accused and then vigorously defended by the writer Zola, when the facts were weighed up and appeals made to the rule of law. Rather, the turning point came later, when all was seemingly lost for the anti-Dreyfus forces, when the evidence seemed most stacked against them. It was the episode in which the Chief of French Intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel Henry, who had just been arrested for forging documents implicating Dreyfus, committed suicide in his cell. Of course, to an unbiased observer, this could not but look like an admission of guilt. Nevertheless, it was at this point that the decisive intervention occurred. It was that of the little-known journalist Charles Maurras who, outwitting his better credentialled opponents, argued that this action by Henry was not evidence against the plot in which Dreyfus was implicated but evidence for. That is, looked at in the right way - and here the connection with Hitchcock's notion of the 'gaze' - Henry's forgery and suicide were not an admission of guilt but, on the contrary, the heroic actions of a man who, knowing the judiciary and press were corrupt, made a last desperate attempt to get his message out to the people in a way they could not prevent. As Zizek says of Maurras' masterstroke: 'It looked at things in a way no one had thought or dared to look' (TK, 28) - and, we might even say, what Maurras added, like Hitchcock, is just this look itself; what he makes us see is that Henry's actions were meant for our look and cannot be explained outside of it.
We find the same sudden reversal of meaning - the same turning of defeat into victory - in our next example from For They Know Not. It is that of St Paul, the founder of the Christian Church. How is it, we might ask, that St Paul was able to 'institutionalize' Christianity, give it its 'definitive contours' (TK, 78), when so many others had tried and failed before him? What is it that he did to ensure that Christ's Word endured, would not be lost and in a way could not be lost? As Zizek writes, in a passage that should remind us of what we said in our Introduction about how the messages of our great philosophers cannot be superseded or distorted:
He (St Paul) did not add any new content to the already-existing dogmas - all he did was to re-mark as the greatest triumph, as the fulfilment of Christ's supreme mission (reconciliation of God with mankind), what was before experienced as traumatic loss (the defeat of Christ's mundane mission, his infamous death on the cross) . . . 'Reconciliation' does not convey any kind of miraculous healing of the wound of scission; it consists solely in a reversal of perspective by means of which we perceive how the scission is already in itself reconciliation. To accomplish 'reconciliation' we do not have to 'overcome' the scission, we just have to re-mark it. (TK, 78)
We might say that, if St Paul discovers or institutes the word of Christ here, it is in its properly Symbolic sense. For what he brings about is a situation in which the arguments used against Christ (the failure of His mission, His miserable death on the cross) are now reasons for Him (the sign of His love and sacrifice for us). Again, as opposed to the many competing prophets of the time, who sought to adduce evidence of miracles, and so on, it is no extra dimension that St Paul provides (that in fact Christ succeeded here on earth, proof of the afterlife). Rather, he shows that our very ability to take account of these defeats already implies a kind of miracle, already is a kind of miracle. Defeat here, as understood through the mediation of Christ's love, is precisely not a sign of a victory to come but already a form of victory. St Paul doubles what is through the addition of an empty signifier - Christ's worldly mission - so that henceforth the very lack of success is success, the failure of proof is proof. Through this 're-mark', the very fact that this defeat is seen means that it is intended to be seen, that a lesson or strength is sought to be gained from it. This gaze on to events becomes part of these events themselves. It is what Lacan in his Seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis calls the 'point of view of the Last Judgement' (S7, 294). And in this would lie the 'superiority' of Christianity over both atheism (St Paul) and Jewishness (Maurras). Exactly like the figure of the king for Hegel, through Christ we are able to bring together the highest and the lowest, the Son of God and the poorest and most abject of men (TK, 85). Indeed, this is what Hegel means by dialectical sublation - or this is what allows dialectical sublation - not the gradual coming-together of two things, but a kind of immediate doubling and reversal of a thing into its opposite. Seen from another hitherto excluded perspective, the one already is the other, already is 'reconciled' to the other (although, as we have seen, it is also this that allows us to think their separation, what cannot be taken up or sublated).
We find the same sudden reversal of meaning - the same turning of defeat into victory - in our next example from For They Know Not. It is that of St Paul, the founder of the Christian Church. How is it, we might ask, that St Paul was able to 'institutionalize' Christianity, give it its 'definitive contours' (TK, 78), when so many others had tried and failed before him? What is it that he did to ensure that Christ's Word endured, would not be lost and in a way could not be lost? As Zizek writes, in a passage that should remind us of what we said in our Introduction about how the messages of our great philosophers cannot be superseded or distorted:
He (St Paul) did not add any new content to the already-existing dogmas - all he did was to re-mark as the greatest triumph, as the fulfilment of Christ's supreme mission (reconciliation of God with mankind), what was before experienced as traumatic loss (the defeat of Christ's mundane mission, his infamous death on the cross) . . . 'Reconciliation' does not convey any kind of miraculous healing of the wound of scission; it consists solely in a reversal of perspective by means of which we perceive how the scission is already in itself reconciliation. To accomplish 'reconciliation' we do not have to 'overcome' the scission, we just have to re-mark it. (TK, 78)
We might say that, if St Paul discovers or institutes the word of Christ here, it is in its properly Symbolic sense. For what he brings about is a situation in which the arguments used against Christ (the failure of His mission, His miserable death on the cross) are now reasons for Him (the sign of His love and sacrifice for us). Again, as opposed to the many competing prophets of the time, who sought to adduce evidence of miracles, and so on, it is no extra dimension that St Paul provides (that in fact Christ succeeded here on earth, proof of the afterlife). Rather, he shows that our very ability to take account of these defeats already implies a kind of miracle, already is a kind of miracle. Defeat here, as understood through the mediation of Christ's love, is precisely not a sign of a victory to come but already a form of victory. St Paul doubles what is through the addition of an empty signifier - Christ's worldly mission - so that henceforth the very lack of success is success, the failure of proof is proof. Through this 're-mark', the very fact that this defeat is seen means that it is intended to be seen, that a lesson or strength is sought to be gained from it. This gaze on to events becomes part of these events themselves. It is what Lacan in his Seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis calls the 'point of view of the Last Judgement' (S7, 294). And in this would lie the 'superiority' of Christianity over both atheism (St Paul) and Jewishness (Maurras). Exactly like the figure of the king for Hegel, through Christ we are able to bring together the highest and the lowest, the Son of God and the poorest and most abject of men (TK, 85). Indeed, this is what Hegel means by dialectical sublation - or this is what allows dialectical sublation - not the gradual coming-together of two things, but a kind of immediate doubling and reversal of a thing into its opposite. Seen from another hitherto excluded perspective, the one already is the other, already is 'reconciled' to the other (although, as we have seen, it is also this that allows us to think their separation, what cannot be taken up or sublated).
mos dan
fact music
funny you should ask, as i was just reading k-punk talking *about* pseud's corner
http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/2008/07/ridicule-is-nothing-to-be-scared-of.html
it's interesting what he says about pseud's corner being a stick used to beat journos into mediocrity. this is copied and pasted from an email i got from a senior editor about my burial interview:
"believe me, you do not want to end a piece about a dubstep producer by quoting ts eliot. you would be ridiculed, and in pseud's corner next week."
he may have been right in this instance lol. it was a seriously fucking apt quote though, ya get me.
http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/2008/07/ridicule-is-nothing-to-be-scared-of.html
it's interesting what he says about pseud's corner being a stick used to beat journos into mediocrity. this is copied and pasted from an email i got from a senior editor about my burial interview:
"believe me, you do not want to end a piece about a dubstep producer by quoting ts eliot. you would be ridiculed, and in pseud's corner next week."
he may have been right in this instance lol. it was a seriously fucking apt quote though, ya get me.
Jesus, that's low of Private Eye. Surely looking for entries into pseud's corner in the Wire is like shooting fish in a barrel. Or at least I'd hope it would be, anyway. It's what The Wire is *supposed* to do, guys... It's a large part of what makes it such a necessary publication.
nomos
Administrator
Does this magazine have a very high profile? From the website it reminds me of one we have here - a cynical, crypto right-leaning, anti-intellectual, reactionary rag that frames itself as an Everyman defender of Common Sense against PC and Ivory Towers. Is that about right?
If I found myself in a column like that I think I'd just put it on my fridge or office door and have a laugh.
If I found myself in a column like that I think I'd just put it on my fridge or office door and have a laugh.
well it's a satirical mag - and it's very good at unearthing bullshit, malpractice and hypocrisy in the press and in government, and has had libel cases against it very often from various people who deserved to be picked on, but at the same time it's satirical which is almost always slightly reactionary and it's pretty public school so it has a few jokes and tut tuts at the expense of those who aren't male and public school educated i think.
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nomos
Administrator
yeah fair enough. that's like the one i'm thinking of too with its government/business exposes which can be good. but it lapses too much into the other stuff and cheap shots (so and so is a slut, etc.) to be taken too seriously.
(sorry, not to get OT, but what you call "public" is what we call "private," right? "public" schools for us are government funded and open to everyone.)
well it's not nasty like that, it would never lapse into that kinda just discrimination, yeah i mean private schools - what you pay to go to.
bassnation
the abyss
i might be totally off the mark here, but isn't k-punk from that very same background? they do enjoy a good knockabout, those public school boys, right or left. i might be talking utter shit though.
i enjoy marks blog a lot, often post links to other forums but a lot of people who follow the links seem to find it pretentious, esp as regards the pomo thing. it doesn't bother me having to occasionally look up words in the dictionary (in fact, i love it - really doesn't happen that often unless its k-punk or boris) but he tends to lose me both with knowledge and in terms of interest when he posts more abstract stuff about zizek etc.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Not really. It's always described as a satirical magazine but in fairness at least half of it is devoted to exposes (how do you get an accent on the "e"?) and scandals which it tends to be quite quick off the mark with eg Mapely Steps. There is also a lot of scrutiny of mps, people in the media, councillors, businessmen etc I think it's pretty good that they point out things that otherwise I would have no way of knowing along the lines of so and so wrote a glowing review of some restaurant chain/kitchen refitters which just so happens to be owned by her husband etc
The second half of the magazine is cartoons and the like, some of which are occasionally funny, most of which aren't. One small part of it is called Pseuds' Corner where they reproduce what they consider overly pretentious writing from interviews or whatever. They often have some good stuff in there with corporate bullshit or luvvies that need to be shot down but as they have a column to fill every two weeks or whatever it is they obviously need a constant supply of "pseuds" and that means it does tend to end up including a few things that are basically just people daring to use long words and leaves you with the impression that in the opinion of Private Eye to talk about anything in a complicated or involved manner must always be pretentious.
It was set up by a load of public school types and I guess has always been edited by such but I think a lot of the people who write the exposes are anonymous so who they are is anyone's guess (or is it one of those open secret type things - I dunno?).
I had a friend whose dad was called Richard Ingram, he was occasionally bothered by phone calls complaining about the content of his magazine even though he didn't have the s on the end.
Oh yeah, I guess it has a fairly high circulation and does have a fairly high profile but I don't know how effective it is in the grand scheme of things.
That's a bit childish isn't it? You can't help what kind of school you went to so it seems silly to be offended by someone implying you went to a different kind than the one you did. Anyway, I heard he was head boy at Winchester?
fokse vektaire xeven
Arab Nazi
viz is a shit version of viz
not when you've taken numerous stands over class issues. public school is always a shameful secret in this country- just look at the kicking banksy took this last week
there is a real intellectual meanness to private eye, they have always abhorred the avant garde. their conception of what is permissible in creative fields is tradtional to say the least. gets boring and can come off as very narrow, tho as has already been said there is likely to be something of real value in any given issue. when they stick in stuff from frieze or the wire or whatever in pseuds' corner it does seem pointless, i thought the point was to flag up such writing in inappropriate places.
fokse vektaire xeven
Arab Nazi
ponce
not really, as it's clear from his writing that kp's stated hes working class often and he's always criticized the public school system and the kind of adults it often breeds, quite rightly.
And you're right you can't 'help' which school you go to, unless your parents are wealthy enough to make those decisions with money as going to a public school is a privilege only afforded by the wealthy and the associations can set you up for life, whether you're competent or not.
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