Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues against mystical attempts to alter states of consciousness. Instead, he says we should “censor our dreams” and engage in emancipatory struggle as the only road to salvation. These comments might seem perplexing, but they are based on an underlying theory of what a subject is. This post is an attempt to extract the outlines of that theory from his latest book, Sex and the Failed Absolute, along with several clarifications drawn from his previous books, such as Less Than Nothing, Absolute Recoil and The Fragile Absolute.

Zizek agrees with the argumentative technique of Immanuel Kant’s transcendendental idealism. For example, he believes that the subject only emerges once a Rational Being imposes ideal forms onto the objects of bare perception. Drawing on psychoanalysis, he understands the imposition of these forms as the subject unconsciously repeating the scene of a traumatic encounter. However, at the outset, this is a “primordial repression” of an encounter that is imputed to be traumatic only in hindsight. The subject that emerges in this way has to be further “hystericized” before it can become the subject engaged in emancipatory struggle.

I have tentatively identified 8 stages in the emergence of this subject:

A. Subjectivation

Stage 1: Perception

Zizek begins from a state that some mystical sects call “enlightenment”. For Zizek, this is only a starting point, not a goal that is desirable to reach.

It is by examining this state that we should answer why there is something rather than nothing. Zizek asserts that it takes an effort to remain in the perception of blankness. There are thus two “voids”. At the very beginning, we have even let go of blankness and submerged the mind in disinterested perception. Consciousness floats freely between perception and non-perception without taking note of or special interest in anything.

(If you read Zizek, he will insert his nonsense lines about the Higg’s field here, but this is what he’s saying. He’s talking about quantum physics to counter equally silly counterarguments about equilibrium corresponding to the physical state of rest, which it’s not. Basically, these two things have nothing to do with each other. Zizek says he’s using physics as a “model” for psychology, such as hydraulic models of “pent up” desires in psychoanalysis. The work of past thinkers were also more metaphor-ridden than you might think.)

Stage 2: The Void

Consciousness eventually begins to take special note of non-perception as distinct from perception. The mind imposes a structure on the field of perception, a structure that it identifies with the patches of blankness that it has noticed. This is generalized to notions of “dimensions” or “axes” such as spacetime.

As the mind keeps repeating this gesture of imposing form, the freedom of floating is lost. In exchange, it gains the ability to locate atoms of perception at points or ranges in the universal schematic. Nevertheless, this subject has no sense of personal boundaries or desires.

In Lacanese, what is gained by imposing the form of the void is called the barred subject.

Stage 3: Substance

The mind attempts to draw boundaries separating within from without, boundaries of organic integrity, of subjective and objective, of important items from trash, and ultimately, of percepts from non-percepts.

Theorem: The attempt to represent Substance with perfect objectivity necessarily fails.

Proof: The mind tries to use its memory as a map to represent the territory of the field of perception. The problem is that the conscious being is one element in this field. If the mind tries to represent itself representing itself, it runs into an infinite regress like two mirrors facing each other. Even if the mind were a perfect cartographer, it must necessarily represent the point where it represents itself by a metalinguistic symbol that stands for something like “self-description goes here”. If it does not, it gets stuck in an infinite loop until it runs out of memory and returns an error. QED.

(Yes, this exact line of argumentation is drawn from one of Zizek’s books. Probably Less Than Nothing. Could be Absolute Recoil.)

This is the first point of necessary failure. Nevertheless, the mind ends up with an extensive map of something approximating the total Substance of the world. This stage corresponds to The One of Parmenides and Advaita Vedanta.

B. The Island of Stability

Stage 4: Formal Stigmata

The Substance contains at least one metalinguistic symbol somewhere in its representation. The symbol is metalinguistic in the sense that is, strictly speaking, meaningless in the language of representation. It occurs within the field of representation, but what it represents objectively is a limitation of the cartographer. This is the point where the distinction between object language and metalanguage is located in logic.

Because the cartographer does not understand what it understands about itself, it develops a blind spot regarding the constitution of the formal axes (dimensions, columns of a table, etc.) that it uses to represent facts about itself. Emanating from this central limitation, this fact distorts the entire field representing one’s relations to the objects of perception. That is the psychoanalytic unconscious.

A metalinguistic sign occurs in the field of representation, but it exists only to tell the subject what to do. For example, “self-description goes here” tells the subject to break out of the loop without prying further at that point. Similarly, (note the analogical jump from formalism to psychoanalysis) there is no organically meaningful givenness guiding sexual relationships either. Instead, what happens in Freudian transference is that certain qualities make us identify others with our parents or siblings and transfer our pre-existing feelings to affection onto them. These qualities function precisely as metalinguistic signs telling us what to desire regardless of the dictates of rational choice. These signs defy clear classification into subjective and objective, blurring the boundaries of Substance from within.

In this way, the very attempt to represent Substance introduces a cut whereby the subject perceives an apparently external object that is in reality a feature of the subject itself. Because the coordinates of self-knowledge remain a mystery, desire is invoked by the appearance of this object. In Lacanese, the object that tells the subject what to do is called the object small a, the unconscious object cause of desire. This is the general form of psychoanalytic trauma.

With the emergence of a traumatized unconscious, the process of subjectivation is complete. Consciousness is successfully destabilized and finds it can no longer contemplate perception with equanimity. Instead, it finds itself obeying its metalinguistic signs like an automaton. If this automatism noticed, the emotion it essentially evokes is surprise, not a flustered reassertion of control. By default, you don’t want to defy the object small a, the thing which defines the very coordinates of your desire. When you desire something, that is because you misperceive the object of your desire as the object small a. Often, it appears to be a shard of the glory you lost when you underwent your traumatic experience, whatever that was. Nevertheless, all this talk of lost glory is usually located strictly within the coordinates of the constitutive fantasy of your subjectivity, not in the facts of external reality. In Hegelese, the Word (the object cause of desire) has fallen into the World, hence thought grasps content not only as Substance but also as Subject.

With this, we reach an island of stability. Regressing from this point leads to desubjectivization and the loss of personhood, a bad thing according to Zizek. Stages beyond this point are shaky (“virtual”) and open to sudden regression by a process Zizek calls “radical desublimation”.

C. Hystericization

Stage 5: Dialectics

The traumatic details which the subject has worked so hard to repress return with a vengeance. The object small a, the object cause of desire, one percept among many, claims to be a second subject distinct from the mind. Demanding neighborly regard, it begins to pick at the basic parameters of the subject’s trauma, and it hurts. The subject could regress to Stage 5 by unilaterally denying the Questioner’s personhood. But if the subject chooses coexistence, then qualities of Stage 2, The Void return in association with one of the objects of perception, this second subject. Where the boundaries lie between the two is anyone’s guess.

Stage 6: Emancipation

An encrustation of ritual develops to regulate the interaction between the two subjects. This helps dull the pain of returning repressed material, but the rituals are badly designed and generate endless chaos all by themselves. In Lacanese, these terrible rituals are called the Sinthome. They are so bad that they threaten to obliterate the very coordinates of one’s subjectivity with frightening regularity. The subject sees stars from the anxiety of engaging with them. These attempts at interaction draw out repressed material from Stage 1, Perception. Not only does the Sinthome steamroll its way over subjective trauma with cruel impunity, but it appears to undermine the very coordinates by which its rituals may have been analyzed.

Analysis of the Sinthome appears in the form of a tunnel in the field of representation. When the primary subject enters it, it finds itself on the “other side” in the role of Questioner. This alternation of roles is Plato’s Cave, except that it’s twisted into itself like a Klein bottle. (If you object to these geometric metaphors, recall that they have been with us since the beginning of Western philosophy. Eg. The Greek notion that the circle is a “perfect” figure. That one made it all the way into Dante’s description of God.) On the inside, perspective assumes the role of the subjectivized world of the primary subject, distorted by unconscious coordinates and the object cause of desire. The same perspective is the pure, worldless subjectivity of the Questioner on the outside. These roles are more symmetrical than in Plato’s philosophy, though the latter is less “obscurantist”.

Although it doesn’t know it yet, the subject is already emancipated.

D. Pure Subjectivity

Stage 7: Multiplicity

The unrelenting awfulness of the Sinthome impels the subject to fantasize about a fundamentally reformed Sinthome. It imagines the second subject will appear to be understanding of its plight should society be regimented along the lines of race, class, religion, “culture”, and so on. Along these lines of analysis, the subject might as well pass under a portal under a sign reading “Here There Be Dragons”. At first, the subject appears to find objective grounds for his analysis, but the further he digs into it, the deeper the hoped-for utopia recedes until posterity remembers you only as the bloodthirsty dictator ruling over a murderous dystopia. These utopias are what dystopia necessarily looks like at the outset.

“If only we had an X state, we’d basically have peace,” is a fantasy of peace without having to love the monstrous Neighbor whose very existence gets under your skin. Since antagonism is the result of deep problems immanent to the very constitution of the subject, these statements are structurally fallacious. There is nothing you can do to prevent even your nearest Neighbor from digging at your trauma. Eg. Compare what’s called the “narcissism of small differences”. So give up. Lose the game. This is the second point of necessary failure.

E. Formalization (or, “So what do you propose?”)

Stage 8: The Transcendental Censor

Leaving behind the land of dreams that turn into nightmares, the subject regresses to Stage 6, Emancipation. We do the only thing we can do, censor our fantasies and brutally formalize where we stand. We continually fall back into lower stages of consciousness or find ourselves hurled headlong into Stage 7 by the circumstances, but we cut away these tendencies with the benevolent ruthlessness of a surgeon. We openly acknowledge the irreducibly monstrous dimension of the Neighbor and love him anyway because we must.

In other words, the only answer is dedicating oneself to the Cause of emancipation. With this final gesture, pride’s spine is finally shattered, but no God remains to guarantee humility’s reward.