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Troubles with the Real: Lacan as Viewer of Alien

by SLAVOJ ZIZEK

The conclusion to be drawn is that the Lacanian Real is a much more complex category than the idea of a fixed trans-historical "hard core" that forever eludes symbolization; it has nothing to do with what Immanuel Kant called the "Thing-in-itself," reality the way it is out there, independently of us, prior to being distorted by our perceptions: "/.../ this notion is not at all Kantian. I even insist on this. If there is a notion of the real, it is extremely complex and, because of this, incomprehensible, it cannot be comprehended in a way that would make an All out of it." How, then, are we to find our way and to introduce some clarity into this conundrum of the Reals? Let us begin with Freud's dream on Irma's injection, selected by him to open his magnum opus The Interpretation of Dreams.

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