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One of Žižek’s earliest ventures onto the territories covered by cognitive science is his 1998 essay “[[The Cartesian Subject versus the Cartesian Theater]]” (in ''[[Cogito and the Unconscious]]'', a multi-contributor volume he edited). Therein, he employs American Analytic [[philosopher]] of mind [[Daniel Dennett]] (specifically, Dennett’s 1991 book ''[[Consciousness Explained]]'', with its quasi-Humean, neuro-science-inspired assault on standard notions of [[self]]-hood or personal [[identity]]) as a foil enabling him to clarify further his rendition of subjectivity as a [[cogito]]-like [[void]] of kinetic negativity – more precisely, Lacan’s [[barred]] subject ($) and the Freudian–Lacanian [[death-drive]] as re-read through the lenses furnished by Kant and the post-Kantian idealists. Situating Dennett within a larger contemporary constellation of all those declaring the modern subject [[dead]] or deconstructed in different ways – anti-Cartesianism makes for very strange bedfellows, bringing together a wide variety of otherwise unrelated or even antagonistic orientations (as observed through a paraphrasing of the opening lines of ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'' at the start of 1999’s ''[[The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology]]'') – Žižek strives to extract from Dennett’s stance resources for his own [[position]] as well as to pinpoint what a cognitive and evolutionist approach of this sort fails to appreciate in [[German idealist]] and Lacanian models of subjectivity, themselves [[interpreted]] as elaborations and extensions of the [[Cartesian]] [[model]].
As he similarly underscores in his contributions to the 2000 book ''[[Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left]]'' (co-authored with [[Judith Butler]] and [[Ernesto Laclau]]), Žižek in 1998 claims that dissolutions of a [[stable]] self or “me” into a [[plurality]] of disparate bits and pieces, whether as Dennett’s “multiple drafts” depiction of [[consciousness]] or any other number of other fragmentations of the “I” as classically conceived, ironically bring the cogito-like modern subject into even sharper relief, rather than, as this subject’s critics intend, invalidate it. Th is [[claim]] [[about]] the self-subverting irony of these sorts of critiques is underpinned by Žižek’s [[thesis]] according to which Cartesian-style subjectivity is [[nothing]] other than the hollowed-out [[virtual]] [[space]] of an insubstantial, anonymous, faceless emptiness – not to be confused with the substantial, fleshed-out [[contents]] of familiar selfhood or recognizable personal identity – serving as a condition of possibility for the [[manifest]] comings and goings of the fragments of the disunifi ed “postmodern” person. Kant’s and Hegel’s dismantlings of the substance [[metaphysics]] of early-modern “[[rational]] psychology” and Lacan’s [[distinction]] between the ego (''moi'') and [[The Subject|the subject ]] (''[[sujet]]'') are pivotal precursors and points of reference for this Žižekian line of argumentation.
In the 2004 books ''[[Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences]]'' and ''[[Conversations with Žižek]]'' (with [[Glyn Daly]]) Žižek deepens his engagements with cognitive science and neurobiology. Through references to life-scientifi c thinkers such as [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Lynn Margulis]], [[Humberto Maturana]], [[Stephen Pinker]] and [[Francisco Varela]], he outlines a number of speculative trajectories stemming from his approach to things [[biological]] via the [[triad]] of [[German idealism]], [[Marxism and Psychoanalysis|Marxism and psychoanalysis]]: the emergence of the cogito-like subject from the substances and [[processes]] described by biology and evolutionary theory; the implications for [[images]] and [[ideas]] of [[nature]] of this precise sort of Hegelian-dialectical emergentism; the immanent genesis of dis/mal-adapted humanity out of evolutionary pressures; the compatibility of German idealist, Marxist and psychoanalytic perspectives on [[language]] with meme theory; and the agreements and disagreements between a Lacanian theory of the [[libidinal]] [[economy]] and more naturalist renditions of the motivational forces and factors moving humanity. These musings set the [[stage]] for Žižek’s most significant treatment of biological topics in his 2006 book ''[[The Parallax View]]''.
Therein, Žižek wrestles directly with the neurosciences through readings of [[Antonio Damasio]] and [[Joseph LeDoux]] in [[particular]], in addition to addressing once again a number of Analytic [[philosophers]], cognitive scientists and evolutionary theorists addressed by him in previous texts (some of whom are mentioned above). Damasio’s and LeDoux’s research in “[[affective]] neuroscience” is critically evaluated on the basis of Lacan’s [[metapsychology]] of [[affect]]. But the [[figure]] of contemporary philosopher [[Catherine Malabou]], a former student of [[Jacques Derrida|Derrida]] and [[author]] of a Žižek-[[beloved]] study of Hegel (''[[The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic]]'', 2004), is by far the most important new reference along these lines featuring in ''[[The Parallax View]]''. In ''[[What Should We Do with Our Brain?]]'' (2008) and other texts, Malabou utilizes the empirical fact of [[neuroplasticity]] to initiate a comprehensive philosophical reassessment of biological [[analyses]] of [[humans]] in the vein of [[dialectical materialism]]. Although Žižek, in the fourth chapter of 2010’s ''[[Living in the End Times]]'', subsequently voices reservations about Malabou’s more recent book ''[[The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage]]'' (2012) – he faults her for misunderstanding [[the cogito]] as a pure void surviving even the most psychically devastating traumas impacting the self as well as for failing to grasp the [[true]] nature of Lacanian [[jouissance]] proper – her Hegel-inspired and science-informed materialist recastings of subjectivity remain extremely close to Žižek’s heart.
What Žižek and Malabou share in common is a determination fully to take into consideration the undeniable relevance of the natural sciences for a materialist [[Theory of the Subject|theory of the subject ]] without, for all that, giving up on the irreducibly nonnatural dimensions of subjectivity as uncovered within the [[past]] two centuries of European philosophy as well as [[Freudian]] psychoanalysis. This requires a series of very delicate balancing [[acts]]. But a categorically anti-naturalist materialism is no materialism whatsoever.
==References==
