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SupplementAn important feature of [[Derrida]]'s [[deconstruction]] and of his critique of [[logocentrism]]'s neglect of [[writing]], as typified by the Western [[tradition]] from [[Plato]] to [[Saussure]] and [[Levi-Strauss]]. Like [[differance]], the expression is deliberately ambiguous, ''suppleer'' can mean either 'to supplement' or 'to supplant'.Derrida adopts the term 'supplement' from [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argues in his essay on the origins of [[language]] that writing is no more than a [[supplement]] to, or parasite on, a [[natural]] spoken language, and who [[notes]] in his ''[[Confessions]]'' that [[masturbation]] is a 'dangerous supplement' to normal [[sexual]] intercourse.Derrida contends that, if [[speech]] has to be supplemented or supplanted by [[writing]], it cannot be [[naturally]] [[self]]-sufficient and must therefore be characterized by an [[absence]] or [[gap]], which he describes as an 'originary lack'[[Language]] does not, that is, originate in a natural [[state]] of completion as there is no extra-[[linguistic]] point of origin, but merely the 'originary lack'.It is the [[logic]] of supplementarity that makes [[nature]] or [[speech]] appear to be the prior term; at the same [[time]], the [[chain]] of [[supplement]]s or substitutions reveals the [[lack]] within it.Any attempt to find a pure point of origin, such as [[Husserl]]'s attempt to ground [[phenomenology]] in pure [[perception]], can be shown to follow the same logic and to mistake a [[supplement]] for an origin.[[Masturbation]] is a [[supplement]], but if it is to function as such, it must resemble what it repalces; it may be a [[form]] of [[autoeroticism]], but it still focuses on the [[imaginary|imagined]] [[object]] that can never be possessed.  

Here, however, it would be productive to introduce the [[distinction ]] between the [[public ]] symbolic Law and its [[obscene ]] supplement: the [[notion ]] of the obscene [[superego ]] [[double]]-supplement of [[Power ]] implies that there is no Power without [[violence]]. Power always has to rely on an obscene [[stain ]] of violence, [[political ]] [[space ]] is never "pure" but always involves some kind of reliance on "pre-political" violence. Of course, the [[relationship ]] between political power and pre-political violence is one of mutual implication: not only is violence the necessary supplement of power, (political) power itself is always-already at the roots of every apparently "non-political" relationship of violence. The accepted violence and direct relationship of subordination in the [[Army]], [[Church]], [[family ]] and [[other ]] "non-political" [[social ]] forms is in itself the "[[reification]]" of a certain ethico-political [[struggle ]] and decision - what a critical [[analysis ]] should do is to discern the hidden political [[process ]] that sustains all these "non-" or "pre-political" relationships. In [[human ]] [[society]], the political is the encompassing [[structuring ]] [[principle]], so that every neutralization of some [[partial ]] [[content ]] as "non-political" is a political gesture par excellence. ==Spectral Supplement==[[Žižek]]'s argument is that it is this [[spectral]] [[supplement]] that constitutes the basis of all [[ideologies]]. Furthermore, he avers that [[reality]] itself depends on this [[supplement]]. This [[concept]] relies on our [[understanding]] the distinction between [[reality]] and the [[Real]]. We have no access to the [[Real]] because our [[world]] is always mediated by the [[Symbolic]]. [[Reality]], as we [[know]] it, therefore, is always [[Symbolic]]. However, the [[Symbolization]] of the [[Real]] is, and cannot be, [[complete]]. The [[Symbolic]] can never saturate the [[Real]] and so, consequently, there is always some part of the [[Real]] which remains [[unsymbolized]]. What cannot be accommodated in the [[Symbolic]] produces a fundamental [[antagonism]]. It is this part of the [[Real]] that returns to haunt [[reality]] in the guise of the [[spectral]] [[supplement]]. The [[spectre]] conceals the piece of the [[Real]] which has to be forsaken if [[reality]] (in the guise of the [[Symbolic]]) is to [[exist]]. And it is here, in the [[spectral]] [[supplement]], that [[Žižek]] locates the foundation or kernel of all [[ideologies]]. All of which is [[another]] way of saying that [[reality]] and [[ideology]] are mutually implicated in each other. One cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{Myers}} p.75</ref> ==See Also==* [[Derrida]]* [[Speech]]* [[Language]]* [[Lack]]* [[Object]]* [[Masturbation]]