== In the work of Slavoj Žižek ==
In his [[reading]] of Wagner, Žižek rejects the typical [[postmodern]] approach of [[historicism]], which would [[claim]] that Wagner’s art was simply symptomatic of the [[German]] [[conditions]] of the [[time]] and an apologetic aestheticism that insists that [[music]] be enjoyed on its own [[terms]]. Instead, he seeks to decontextualize his works, a [[process]] he [[identifies]] as originally [[being]] taken up by [[Nietzsche]], in his cri- tique of Wagner. Even more than with his [[analyses]] of [[film]], the reader approaching Žižek’s [[writing]] on Wagner is confronted with intricate plot details, alternative scenarios and references to specific productions or hypothetical [[future]] produc- tions. The overarching [[goal]] of his [[psychoanalytical]] reading is not to locate or define the beautiful in Wagner’s music or to situate him in historical context. Rather, it comes from the conviction that Wagner’s own works undermine his [[explicit]] [[ideological]] [[project]].
=''Parsifal''=<blockquote>The critique of Wagner begins with a consideration of which [[dimension]] of his works should be considered. Music, libretti and staging are all important components of [[opera]]. What will be analysed? What will be the basis of critique? In his earlier writings, the music itself is taken as primary. Reading Rousseau through [[Lacan]], Žižek finds that it renders the “[[true]] heart of the subject” (“Why is Wagner Worth Saving?”: 18). One of Wagner’s most important contributions to music is the leitmotif. In [[Living]] in the End [[Times]], Žižek criticizes [[Adorno]] by describing his writing in terms of the Wagnernian leitmotif. Adorno wrote extensively on Wagner’s use of leitmotif and claimed that it marked a kind of beginning for the commodification of music. Žižek describes Adorno’s own writing on leitmotif as being a [[form]] of [[self]]-criticism and that Adorno’s writ- ing suffers from the use of rhetorical leitmotifs. Instead of merely claiming that Wagner’s leitmotif is a kitschy precursor for film scores, Žižek claims that what- ever kitchiness resides in the leitmotif Wagner created a proper artistic form out of what was simply excessive in previous composers’ works (“Brunhilde’s Act”: 16).
However important Wagner’s music may be, Žižek has spent the most time writing [[about]] the various elements of opera that are distinct from the music itself – libretti and staging. Žižek has described his approach in the same terms that [[Freud]] approached [[dreams]] – by treating the [[emotion]]- ridden music as edifice and [[looking]] for the truer [[meaning]]. Žižek takes the [[words]] and staging of Wagner’s operas seriously:<refblockquote>ŽižekOne should turn around the standard [[notion]] of the primacy of music in opera, S. the [[idea]] that words (2000libretto) and [[The Fragile Absolutestage]] [[action]]are just a pretext for the true focus, the music itself, or Why so that the Christian Legacy [[truth]] is Worth Fighting Foron the side of music, London and New Yorkit is the music which delivers the true emotional stance ... It is absolutely crucial to bear in [[mind]] what goes on on stage, to listen to the words also. (Brunhilde’s Act”: Verso11)</blockquote>Wagner’s works are a reoccurring theme in Žižek’s works, beginning with The [[Sublime]] [[Object]] of [[Ideology]]. Beginning with his critique of Parsifal, Žižek introduces Wagner in [[order]] to explain a psychoanalytical [[concept]], the [[symptom]]. pIn his reading of Parsifal, Amfortas’s wound, which is not only killing him, but also paradoxically keeping him alive, symbolizes the mechanics of the [[Lacanian]] symptom.118-19The [[myth]] of the wound only healed by the spear that made it – die Wunde schliesst der Speer nur, der sie schlug (Wagner 1938: 470) – and Amfortas’s undead [[suffering]] [[state]] serve as a [[metaphor]] for elements of Žižek’s reading of both Lacanian [[psychoanalysis]] and the [[Hegelian]] [[dialectic]]. For Žižek, the wound represents the Hegelian Spirit:</refblockquote>[[Hegel]] says the same [[thing]], although with the accent shifted in the oppo- site direction: Spirit is itself the wound it tried to heal; that is, the wound is self-inflicted. What is “Spirit” at its most elementary? It is the “wound” of [[nature]]: the [[subject]] is the immense – absolute – [[power]] of negativity, of introducing a gap or cut into the given and immediate substantial [[unity]]. (Brunhilde’s Act: 11)</blockquote>And with the [[image]] of the spear from Parsifal, Žižek describes the [[Marxist]] notion that the [[situation]] causing [[alienation]] and [[class]] [[division]] in [[society]] also cre- ates the opportunity to end it.
Žižek’s reading of Parsifal is heavily influenced by [[Hans]]-Jürgen Syberberg’s filmed version of the opera. The film differs greatly from the original staging, but one of the larger differences, which is often cited by Žižek, is the transforma- tion of Parsifal into a young [[woman]] at the end of the second act after rejecting Kundry’s advances. Žižek reads this transformation as opening a [[space]] for a post-patriarchal [[community]] or ceremony, effectively allowing the opera to be read from a [[feminist]] perspective. However, the influence of Syberberg’s film on Žižek’s reading of Parsifal is not a ringing [[endorsement]]:<blockquote>
=''The surprising fact is how similar these two versions are, in spite of their [[difference]]: Syberberg’s Parsifal is also over-filled with inconsistent [[symbols]] which [[lack]] any firm interpretive grid, there is too much of meaning which destroys all coherent meaning, so all that remains is the general impression that there is some deep unfathomable mythic meaning. (“Brunhilde’s Act”: 3)</blockquote>In Opera’s Second [[Death]], Žižek makes an exceedingly bold claim about Wagner’s works: “What if Tristan and Parsifal simply and effectively are (from a certain standpoint at least) the two single greatest works of art in the [[history]] of humankind?” (OSD: 104). Žižek views Tristan as the “zero-level [[work]], as the per- fect, ultimate, formulation of a certain philosophico-musical vision” (OSD: 105). This philosophico-musical [[vision]] is termed by Žižek [[the Wagnerian Sublime]], and it is represented by the “höchste Lust” (Wagner 1938: 347) of Tristan’s Liebestod – the annihilation of the couple into the Hegelian “Night of the World”. Although just as with Parsifal, Žižek finds the clearest expression of the true reading of the opera in a production that takes liberty with the staging. Jean-Pierre Ponelle’s version of Tristan portrays the finale as Tristan’s delirious vision, with Isolde not sacrificing herself, but simply returning to her husband. Tristan und looks out towards the audience, with Isolde''=glittering in the background, representing only a [[masculine]] [[fantasy]].Žižek [[divides]] the six operas after Rienzi into two triads: Tristan-Meistersinger- Parsifal and Flying Dutchman-Tannhäuser-Lohengrin – with each one of the different triads rendering some variation on the “obscure [[sexual]] death [[drive]]; [[marriage]]; asexual compassion” (“Brunhilde’s Act”: 19). Following Žižek, Wagner’s Ring represents an exception, with a possible way out:<blockquote>The finale of the Twilight is thus Wagner’s critical [[rejection]] of the [[three]] options staged in his three non-Ring late operas: the suicidal abyss of Tristan, the resigned acceptance of marriage of Meistersinger, the psy- chotic rejection of [[love]] in Parsifal. True love arises only when one accepts the failure of the intense sexual [[relationship]] posited as the direct focus of the lovers’ lives, and returns from this abyss to the hard work of our daily lives. It is only against the background of this failure that a love appears which says “Yes” to all passing but no less sublime [[human]] achievements. (“Brunhilde’s Act”: 30)</blockquote>Žižek characterizes the finale of Twilight as Brunhilde’s act. Brunhilde chooses freely to sacrifice herself. In her self-immolation she does not merely sacrifice herself, but “sacrifice is thus subjectivized, reflected-unto-itself: Brunhilde does not only sacrifice the ring, the token of her love; she sacrifices herself as object” (“Brunhilde’s Act”: 23). Just as Amfortas’s wound represented Žižek’s conception of the Lacanian [[symbol]], Brunhilde’s immolation represents a Žižekian act, one of the centrepieces of his [[political]] theories.
<ref>Žižek, S. (2000) along with [[Alain]] [[The Fragile AbsoluteBadiou]], or Why recognizes something in Wagner’s works that is worth examining in new ways that diverge from the Christian Legacy standard postmodern criti- cisms. For Žižek, “the battle for Wagner is Worth Fighting Fornot over: today, London after the exhaustion of the critical-historicist and New Yorkaestheticist paradigms, it is entering its decisive phase” (“Brunhilde”s Act”: Verso3). pŽižek’s critique of Wagner points the way forwards. 159-60</ref></blockquote> [[Category:Zizek Dictionary]]
==References==
<references/>
==See Also==
