6 ms·
I like Zizek's take on postmodernism and how it relates to authority. > Instead of bringing freedom, the fall of the oppressive authority thus gives rise to ne
by mathieuh 6y ago
I like Zizek's take on postmodernism and how it relates to authority.
> Instead of bringing freedom, the fall of the oppressive authority thus gives rise to new and more severe prohibitions. How are we to account for this paradox? Think of the situation known to most of us from our youth: the unfortunate child who, on Sunday afternoon, has to visit his grandmother instead of being allowed to play with friends. The old-fashioned authoritarian father’s message to the reluctant boy would have been: “I don’t care how you feel. Just do your duty, go to grandmother and behave there properly!” In this case, the child’s predicament is not bad at all: although forced to do something he clearly doesn’t want to, he will retain his inner freedom and the ability to (later) rebel against the paternal authority. Much more tricky would have been the message of a “postmodern” non-authoritarian father: “You know how much your grandmother loves you! But, nonetheless, I do not want to force you to visit her – go there only if you really want to!” Every child who is not stupid (and as a rule they are definitely not stupid) will immediately recognize the trap of this permissive attitude: beneath the appearance of a free choice there is an even more oppressive demand than the one formulated by the traditional authoritarian father, namely an implicit injunction not only to visit the grandmother, but to do it voluntarily, out of the child’s own free will. Such a false free choice is the obscene superego injunction: it deprives the child even of his inner freedom, ordering him not only what to do, but what to want to do.
- WJW 6y agoPretty interesting! Where is this quote from? I'd like to read the surrounding text as well if it contains the same level of insight.
- mathieuh 6y agoI'm not 100% sure, I saw him talk about it in a YouTube video a while ago, the name of which I can't recall. I typed some keywords into Google and found the full quotation here: https://www.lacan.com/essays/?p=184 https://www.lacan.com/essays/?p=184, but I'm not sure if he expands on it further in any of his books.
- not_a_moth 6y agoHe brings it up in this interview about his book "The Puppet and the Dwarf". I remember this clip from years ago because the interview is such a wild contrast of headspaces! https://youtu.be/KjEtmZZvGZA https://youtu.be/KjEtmZZvGZA
- dang 6y agoThat's amusingly written and I agree with it, but how is the second father, the non-authoritarian one, being postmodern, exactly? Zizek is the postmodernist here—he's the one offering a postmodern analysis. More precisely, this is pure Foucault: power that forces physical compliance is lesser, while power that reforms your own relationship to yourself is more insidious. Zizek just describes it with a more earthy example than Foucault ever would. Real postmodernists don't do earthy.
- m0zg 6y agoAs a father of a 16 year old young man, given a choice, even a "false" choice like this, he simply won't do shit. And that's _bad_, since when he grows up not doing shit won't be an option conducive to putting food on the table or providing for his family. Frankly I wish I were more authoritarian when he was younger. I bought into the "modern" parenting hook line and sinker early on, and in retrospect it could have ruined my child's prospects in life. And now it's too late to fix it - the kid has a work ethic of an inebriated sloth and only does what he wants and nothing else.
- dang 6y agoHe'll come around.
- afiori 6y agoIn a sense I am exactly in your son position (even if quite older already) I don't really have to blame my parents, but sure as hell I did everything I could to avoid learning any discipline and now I am paying for it in predictable ways. As often happen Scott Alexander has written a nice article on the topic; in this case it is a review of a Chinese-American mother that lives the Chinese education system through a western lens and comes to like some of the differences. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/22/book-review-review-little-soldiers/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/22/book-review-review-lit...
- adwn 6y agoAs with all articles on SSC, the comments are also very much worth reading. In addition, one should keep in mind that there are ways to instill some discipline and self-control into one's children that don't turn them into mindless little automatons (as the Chinese school in the reviewed book tries to do).
- m0zg 6y agoAdmitting you have a problem is the first, necessary step to solving it, so kudos to you - better late than never. A lot of people go through their entire lives without realizing they have a problem in the first place.
- ldeangelis 6y agoThat's a really good analysis. I never really though about it that way.
- JacksonGariety 6y agoKeep in mind that Zizek has placed the word 'postmodern' in heavy scare quotes here. When I read this passage (it's from Ticklish Subject, I think?) I understand Zizek to be critiquing the pseudo-permissiveness of neoliberalism rather than French theory. (Zizek is a hardcore Lacanian, after all.)