Lacan, Dostoyevsky, Bouyeri
[excerpt]
Jacques Lacan's Anxiety (II)
J - A
MILLER
The Names-of-the-Father
J - A
MILLER
The Formulas of
L'Étourdit
ALAIN BADIOU
On Giorgio Agamben's
Profanations
MEHDI BELHAJ
KACEM
The Fundamental Perversion
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
[...]
The question we should confront here is what, then, does the pervert miss, in his endeavor to absolutely separate the Truth from Lies? The answer is, of course: the Truth of the Lie itself, the truth that is delivered in and through the very act of lying. Paradoxically, the pervert's falsity (lie) resides in his very unconditional attachment to truth, in his refusal to hear the truth resonating in a lie. It was Shakespeare whose plays, long ago, provided a breathtakingly refined insight into the entanglement of truth and lies.
[...]
This brings us back to perversion: for Lacan, a pervert is not defined by the content of what he is doing (his weird sexual practices, etc.). Perversion, at its most fundamental, resides in the formal structure of how the subject relates to truth and speech. The pervert claims direct access to some figure of the big Other (from God or history to the desire of his partner), so that, dispelling all the ambiguity of language, he is able to act directly as the instrument of the big Other's will. In this sense, both Osama bin Laden and President Bush, although politically opponents, share a pervert structure: they both act upon the presupposition that their acts are directly ordered and guided by the divine will.
[...]
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