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JA: So the [[word]] "but" comes instead of "thou shalt not," implying we are not primitive anymore?
SZ: Yes, but what you get after "but" is not the [[Master Signifier|Master signifier]], it's not an order. It's a kind of masked, objective, scientific knowledge, just information. I think this is perhaps one of the things that fundamentally characterizes late capitalist, consumer [[society]]. As we all know, [[psychoanalysis]] enables us to discern that behind this [[explicit]] commandment lies a hidden, [[superego]] commandment to enjoy, to enjoy properly, to succeed. Lacan says the same [[thing]].
JA: So it's actually "Don't smoke because you won't achieve what you want."
We all know how Lacan reversed Dostoyevsky by saying "If God does not [[exist]], everything is prohibited," not ''everything is permitted." I think this is perfectly epitomized by today's society of consumption. If God in the traditional sense as a universal [[model]] does not exist, then everything is allowed. You can get whatever you want but with the substance removed: coffee without caffeine, cigarettes without nicotine.
I like the dirty story that was in all the magazines about Richard Gere. This widely known scandal, for me, is the ultimate example of all this. This is the story: Gere was hospitalized because he realized — with one of the latest practices in Hollywood, the latest in [[sexual]] [[perversion]] — the [[fantasy]] of Freud's [[Rat Man]]. You take a gerbil — not a rat but a gerbil — and a vet cuts off its teeth and nails. You put it in a bag, you attach a piece of string to its tail, and you put it in your anus. The [[animal]] suffocates of course and this is "it": the pleasure. Finally it is up to you to pull the [[dead]] animal out. The problem with Richard Gere, allegedly, was that he pulled it out too quickly and was [[left]] only with the tail; the dead animal remained [[inside]].
It's the same paradox: the [[Rat man|Rat Man ]] fantasy, you get it, but without claws, without teeth, it is all cut off by a veterinarian. For me this is the ultimate of this same [[logic]]. [[Nothing]] is prohibited you can even realize the Rat Man fantasy but in a reduced version: the vet takes care of it, cuts off the claws, etc.
Again what is crucial here is the contemporary computer with its universal dimension — a kind of a Spinozist [[machine]]. We all know Lacan defines the lady in [[courtly love]] as a non-human partner. This is computers today.
JA: Will massive immigration [[affect]] Western points of view, or will they be incorporated?
SZ: People ask me what will happen now in this new universal field with new authentic Central European cultures, but I am very skeptical about it. This idea that there are uncontaminated central European cultures fighting against this Americanized, Japanized, universal [[horror]] is false on many levels. Furthermore I have a deep mistrust of this kind of "original ", "ethical" [[culture]]. We must [[recall]] that from the very beginning these cultures are usually false. In the [[case]] of my own country, [[Slovenia]], our national costumes were copied from Austrian costumes, they were invented towards the end of the last century. The ultimate example is the [[Soviet Union]]. [[You May|You may ]] think that these nationalist revivals emerged in [[resistance]] to [[communism]], but I think it was literally through [[antagonism]] toward [[communist]] rule itself that these national entities were created.
Let's take the extreme case, [[India]], which is very instructive. People often forget that in India the anticommunist Congress party was not only founded by Indians educated at Eton, Cambridge, and Oxford, but it was even instigated by some progressive [[liberal]] Englishmen. So this is a nice paradox how the very idea of "let's get rid of [[English]] colonialism, let's return to our [[autonomous]] India" was strictly a product of English colonialism.
I'm radically Eurocentric. It is fashionable today to be anti-Eurocentric to stress African, Asian, all other cultures, but what people usually do not grasp is that every idea of anti-Eurocentricism is only possible against an Eurocentric, [[Cartesian]] background. That is against the idea that the [[tradition]] into which we were [[born]], Protestant, [[Catholic]], Indian, whatever is something ultimately [[contingent]]. Basically we are this kind of abstract anti-[[subject]], not pinned down to the [[particular]] tradition into which we were born. It is only against this background that you consider it as something not really binding you, that you can reason against Eurocentricism. One can say "We must be open to different cultures," but this kind of pluralism is only possible against the notion that tradition is ultimately something contingent, against the background of an abstract empty Cartesian subject. My ultimate [[theoretical]] point is that Lacan is absolutely 100 per cent Cartesian, absolutely, he says it, people don't listen. Lacan says [[The Subject|the subject ]] of psychoanalysis is the Cartesian subject.
JA: Well, the subject relating to the signifier and [[metaphor]] is Cartesian...
