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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td width="15%"></td><td valign="top" width="70%"><font face="Times New RomanPerhaps the best example of the universalised reflexivity of our lives is the growing inefficiency of [[interpretation]]. Traditional [[psychoanalysis]] relied on a notion of the [[unconscious]] as the '[[dark continent]]',Timesthe impenetrable substance of the subject's [[being]],Courier" size="3"></font><p class="b" align="justify"><font face="Times New Roman,Times,Courier" size="3">"Rule Girls" are heterosexual women who follow precise rules as which had to how they let themselves be seduced (accept probed by interpretation: when its [[content]] was brought to light a date only if you are asked at least three days in advance etc)liberating new [[awareness]] would follow. Although the rules correspond to customs which used to regulate Today, the behaviour [[formations]] of old-fashioned women actively pursued by old-fashioned men, the Rule Girls phenomenon does not involve a return unconscious (from [[dreams]] to conservative valueshysterical symptoms) have lost their innocence: women now freely choose their own rules - an instance of the 'reflexivisationfree [[associations]]' of everyday customs in today's 'risk society'. According a typical educated [[patient]] consist for the most part of attempts to the risk society theory provide a [[psychoanalytic]] explanation of Anthony Giddenshis own disturbances, so we have not only Annafreudian, Ulrich Beck and othersJungian, [[Kleinian]], we no longer live our lives in compliance with Nature or Tradition; there is no symbolic order or code [[Lacanian]] [[interpretations]] of accepted fictions (what Lacan calls the symptoms, but symptoms which are themselves Annafreudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Lacanian - they don'Big Othert [[exist]] without reference to some [[psychoanalytic theory]]. The unfortunate result of this reflexivisation is that the [[analyst]]') to guide us s interpretation loses its symbolic efficacy and leaves the [[symptom]] intact in our social behaviourits idiotic <i>[[jouissance]]</i>. All our impulsesIt's as though a neo-[[Nazi]] skinhead, from sexual orientation pressed to ethnic belonginggive reasons for his behaviour, are more and more often experienced as matters of choice. Things which once seemed self-evident - how started to feed and educate talk like a childsocial worker, [[sociologist]] or social [[psychologist]], how to proceed in sexual seductionciting diminished social mobility, how and what to eatrising insecurity, how to relax and amuse oneself - have now been "colonised" by reflexivitythe disintegration of paternal [[authority]], and are experienced as something to be learned and decided onthe [[lack]] of [[maternal]] [[love]] in his early [[childhood]].<br>The retreat of "When I hear the accepted Big Other accounts [[word]] 'culture', I reach for my gun," Goebbels is supposed to have said. 'When I hear the prevalence of codeword "culture", I reach for my cheque-cracking book,' says the cynical producer in popular Godard's <i>Le Mé</i>pris. A [[leftist]] slogan inverts Goebbels's [[statement]]: "When I hear the word 'gun', I reach for culture. New Age pseudo-scientific attempts " Culture, according to use computer technology to crack some recondite code - in the Bible, saythat slogan, or the pyramids - which can reveal serve as an efficient answer to the future of humanity offer one example gun: an [[outburst]] of this. Another [[violence]] is provided by the scene in cyberspace movies in which the hero (or often the heroine), hunched over a computer and frantically working against time, has his/her <i>passage à l'access denied', until he[[acte]]</ she cracks i> rooted in the code and discovers that a secret government agency is involved in a plot against freedom and democracysubject's [[ignorance]]. Believing there But the notion is a code to undermined by the rise of what might be cracked is of course much the same as believing in called "Post-Modern racism", the existence surprising characteristic of some Big Other: in every case what which is wanted is an agent its insensitivity to [[reflection]] - a [[neo-Nazi]] skinhead who will give structure to our chaotic social livesbeats up black [[people]] [[knows]] what he's doing, but does it anyway.<br>Even racism is now reflexiveReflexivisation has transformed the structure of social dominance. Consider Take the Balkans[[public]] [[image]] of Bill Gates. They are portrayed in the liberal Western media as Gates is not a vortex of ethnic passion patriarchal [[father]]- [[master]], nor even a corporate Big Brother running a multiculturalist dream turned into rigid bureaucratic empire, surrounded on an inaccessible top floor by a nightmarehost of secretaries and assistants. The standard reaction He is instead a kind of Small Brother, his very ordinariness an indication of a Slovene (I am one myself) is to say: 'yes, this is how monstrousness so [[uncanny]] that it is in the Balkanscan no longer assume its usual public [[form]]. In photos and drawings he looks like anyone else, but Slovenia his devious smile points to an underlying [[evil]] that is not part beyond [[representation]]. It is also a crucial aspect of Gates as [[icon]] that he is seen as the Balkans; hacker who made it is part of Mitteleuropa; (the Balkans begin in Croatia or in Bosnia; we Slovenes are the last bulwark of European civilisation against the Balkan madness.term 'hacker' If you askhas, 'Where do the Balkans begin?' you will always be told that they begin down thereof course, towards the southsubversive/marginal/anti-east. For Serbs, they begin in Kosovo or in Bosnia where Serbia is trying establishment connotations; it suggests someone who sets out to defend civilised Christian Europe against disturb the encroachments smooth functioning of this Otherlarge bureaucratic corporations). For At the Croatslevel of [[fantasy]], the Balkans begin in OrthodoxGates is a small-time, despotic subversive hooligan who has taken over and Byzantine Serbia, against which Croatia safeguards Western democratic valuesdressed himself up as the respectable chairman. For many Italians and AustriansIn Bill Gates, they begin in SloveniaSmall Brother, the Western outpost of the Slavic hordes. For many Germans, Austria is tainted average ugly guy coincides with Balkan corruption and inefficiency; contains the [[figure]] of evil [[genius]] who aims for many Northern Germans, Catholic Bavaria is not free [[total]] [[control]] of Balkan contaminationour lives. Many arrogant Frenchmen associate Germany with Eastern Balkan brutality - it lacks French finesse. FinallyIn early [[James]] Bond movies, to some British opponents of the European Unionevil genius was an eccentric figure, Continental Europe is a new version of the Turkish Empire with Brussels as the new Istanbul - a voracious despotism threatening British freedom and sovereignty.<br>We are dealing with an imaginary cartographydressed extravagantly, which projects onto the real landscape its own shadowy ideological antagonismsor alternatively, in the same way that the conversion-symptoms grey uniform of the hysterical subject in Freud project onto [[Maoist]] commissar. In the physical body the map case of anotherGates, imaginary anatomythis ridiculous charade is no longer needed - the evil genius turns out to be the boy next door. Much <br>Another aspect of this projection [[process]] is racistthe changed status of the [[narrative]] tradition that we use to [[understand]] our lives. FirstIn <i>Men are from Mars, there is the old-fashionedWomen are from Venus</i> (1992), unabashed rejection John [[Gray]] proposed a vulgarised version of narrativist-deconstructionist psychoanalysis. Since we ultimately 'are' the Balkan Other (despoticstories we tell ourselves about ourselves, barbarianthe solution to a [[psychic]] deadlock resides, Orthodox, Muslim, corrupthe proposes, Oriental) in favour of true values (Western, civilised, democratic, Christian). But there is also a 'reflexivepositive', politically correct racism: rewriting of the liberal, multiculturalist perception narrative of our [[past]]. What he has in [[mind]] is not only the Balkans as a site standard cognitive [[therapy]] of ethnic horrors changing [[negative]] "[[false]] beliefs" about oneself into an assurance that one is loved by others and intolerance, capable of primitivecreative achievements, tribalbut a more 'radical', irrational passions, as opposed pseudo-[[Freudian]] procedure of regressing back to the reasonableness scene of post-nation-state conflict resolution by negotiation and compromisethe primordial [[traumatic]] wound. Racism is a disease Gray accepts the psychoanalytic notion of an early childhood traumatic [[experience]] that forever marks the Balkan Othersubject's further [[development]], while we in the West are merely observersbut he gives it a pathological spin. What he proposes is that, neutralafter regressing to, benevolent and righteously dismayed. Finallythus confronting, there is reverse racismhis [[primal]] traumatic scene, which celebrates the exotic authenticity of the Balkan Othersubject should, as in under the notion of Serbs whotherapist's guidance, by contrast with inhibited'rewrite' this scene, anaemic Western Europeansthis ultimate phantasmatic framework of his [[subjectivity]], still exhibit as part of a prodigious lust for lifemore benign and productive narrative. Reverse racism plays a crucial role If, say, the primordial traumatic scene existing in the success your unconscious, deforming and inhibiting your creative attitude, is that of your father shouting at you, 'You are worthless! I despise you! [[Nothing]] [[good]] will come of Emir Kusturicayou,'s films in you should rewrite the Westscene so that a benevolent father smiles at you and says: 'You're OK! I trust you fully.<br>Because ' (Thus the solution for the Balkans are part of Europe, they can be spoken of in racist clichés which nobody [[Wolf Man]] would dare have been to apply 'regress' to Africa or Asia. Political struggles in the Balkans are compared to ridiculous operetta plots; Ceausescu parental coitus a tergo and then rewrite the scene so that what he saw was presented as merely his [[parents]] lying on the bed, his father [[reading]] a newspaper and his [[mother]] a contemporary reincarnation of Count Draculasentimental novel. Slovenia ) It may seem a ridiculous [[thing]] to do, but there is most exposed to a widely accepted, politically correct version of this displaced racismprocedure in which ethnic, since it is closest to Western Europe: when Kusturicasexual and other minorities rewrite their past in a more positive, talking about his film <i>Underground</i>self-assertive vein (African Americans claiming that long before European [[modernity]], dismissed ancient African empires had a sophisticated [[understanding]] of [[science]] and technology etc). Imagine a rewriting of the [[Decalogue]] along the Slovenes as a nation same lines. Is one of Austrian groomsthe Commandments too severe? Well then, nobody reactedlet's regress to Mount Sinai and re write it: an 'authentic' artist from adultery - fine, provided it is sincere and serves the less developed part [[goal]] of former Yugoslavia was attacking profound self-realisation. What [[disappears]] is not "hard fact" but [[the most developed part Real]] of it. When discussing a traumatic [[encounter]] whose organising role in the Balkans, the tolerant multiculturalist is allowed to act out his repressed racismsubject's psychic [[economy]] resists its symbolic rewriting.<br>

Perhaps In our post-political liberal-permissive society, [[human]] rights can be seen as expressing the [[right]] to violate the Ten Commandments. The right to privacy is, in effect, the right to commit adultery, in secret, without being observed or investigated. The right to pursue [[happiness]] and to possess [[private property]] is, in effect, the best example right to steal (to exploit others). Freedom of the universalised reflexivity press and of our lives is expression - the growing inefficiency right to lie. The right of interpretationfree citizens to possess weapons - the right to kill. Traditional psychoanalysis relied on a notion Freedom of [[religious]] [[belief]] - the unconscious as the 'dark continent'right to celebrate false gods. [[Human rights]] do not, of course, directly condone the impenetrable substance violation of the subjectCommandments, but they preserve a marginal 'grey zone's being, which had to be probed by interpretation: when its content was brought to light a liberating new awareness would followis out of the reach of religious or secular [[power]]. TodayIn this shady zone, I can violate the formations of Commandments, and if the unconscious (from dreams Power catches me with my pants down and tries to hysterical symptoms) have lost their innocenceprevent my violation, I can cry: "Assault on my basic human rights!" It is [[impossible]] for the Power to prevent a 'free associationsmisuse' of human rights without at the same time impinging on their proper application. Lacan draws attention to a typical educated patient consist for [[resistance]] to the most part use of attempts lie-detectors in crime investigations - as if such a direct '[[objective]]' verification somehow infringes the subject's right to provide a psychoanalytic explanation the privacy of his own disturbances[[thoughts]].<br>A similar tension between rights and prohibitions determines heterosexual seduction in our politically correct [[times]]. Or, to put it differently, so we have not only Annafreudianthere is no seduction which cannot at some point be construed as intrusion or harassment because there will always be a point when one has to expose oneself and 'make a [[pass]]'. But, Jungianof course, Kleinianseduction doesn't involve incorrect harassment throughout. When you make a pass, Lacanian interpretations of you expose yourself to the Other (the symptomspotential partner), but symptoms and her reaction will determine whether what you just did was harassment or a successful act of seduction. There is no way to tell in advance what her response will be (which is why assertive women often despise 'weak' men, who [[fear]] to take the necessary risk). This holds even more in our pc times: the pc prohibitions are themselves Annafreudianrules which, Jungianin one way or another, Kleinian, Lacanian - they donare to be violated in the seduction process. Isn't exist without reference to some psychoanalytic theory. The unfortunate result of this reflexivisation is that the analystseducer's interpretation loses its symbolic efficacy and leaves art to accomplish the symptom intact violation in such a way that, afterwards, by its idiotic acceptance, any [[suggestion]] of harassment has disappeared?<i>jouissance</ibr>Although psychoanalysis is one of the victims of reflexivisation, it can also [[help]] us to understand its implications. It's as though does not lament the disintegration of the old [[stability]] or locate in its [[disappearance]] the [[cause]] of modern [[neuroses]], compelling us to rediscover our roots in traditional wisdom or a neodeeper self-Nazi skinhead, pressed [[knowledge]]. Nor is it just another version of modern reflexive knowledge which teaches us how to give reasons for his behaviour, started to talk like a social worker, sociologist or social psychologist, citing diminished social mobility, rising insecurity, master the secrets of our psychic life. What psychoanalysis properly concerns itself with are the unexpected consequences of the disintegration of the [[structures]] that have traditionally regulated [[libidinal]] life. Why does the decline of paternal authorityand fixed social and [[gender]] roles generate new guilts and [[anxieties]], the lack instead of maternal love opening up a brave new [[world]] in his early childhood.which we can [[enjoy]] shifting and reshaping our multiple identities?<br>"When I hear The Post-Modern constellation in which the subject is bent on experimenting with his life encourages the word [[formation]] of new 'culturepassionate attachments', I reach for my gun," Goebbels is supposed (to have said. use [[Judith]] [[Butler]]'When I hear s term), but what if the word disintegration of patriarchal [[symbolic authority]] is counterbalanced by an even stronger "culturepassionate attachment", I reach for my cheque-book,' says to subjection? This would seem to explain the cynical producer in Godard's <i>Le Mé<increasing prevalence of a strict and severely enacted master/i>prisslave [[relationship]] among lesbian couples. A leftist slogan inverts GoebbelsThe one who gives the [[orders]] is the 'top's statement: "When I hear , the one who obeys is the word 'gunbottom'and, I reach in order for culture.the "top" Culture, according to that sloganbe attained, can serve as an efficient answer arduous apprenticeship has to the gun: an outburst of violence be completed. This "top/bottom" [[duality]] is neither a <i>passage à l'acte</i> rooted in [[sign]] of direct "[[identification]] with the subject's ignorance. But ([[male]]) aggressor" nor a parodic imitation of the notion is undermined by the rise patriarchal relations of what might be called "Post-Modern racism"domination. Rather, it expresses the surprising characteristic genuine [[paradox]] of a freely chosen master/slave form of coexistence which is its insensitivity to reflection - a neo-Nazi skinhead who beats up black people knows what he's doing, but does it anywayprovides deep libidinal [[satisfaction]].<br>Reflexivisation has transformed the structure of social dominance. Take the public image of Bill GatesEverything is turned back to front. Gates Public order is not a patriarchal father-masterno longer maintained by hierarchy, nor even a corporate Big Brother running a rigid bureaucratic empire[[repression]] and strict regulation, surrounded on an inaccessible top floor and therefore is no longer subverted by a host liberating [[acts]] of secretaries and assistants. He is instead [[transgression]] (as when we laugh at a kind of Small Brother, teacher behind his very ordinariness an indication of a monstrousness so uncanny that it can no longer assume its usual public formback). In photos Instead, we have social relations among free and drawings he looks like anyone elseequal individuals, but his devious smile points supplemented by 'passionate attachment' to an underlying evil that is beyond representation. It is also a crucial aspect extreme form of Gates as icon that he is seen submission, which functions as the hacker who made it (the term 'hackerdirty secret' has, the [[transgressive]] source of courselibidinal satisfaction. In a permissive society, the rigidly codified, subversiveauthoritarian master/marginal/anti-establishment connotations; it suggests someone who sets out to disturb slave relationship becomes transgressive. This paradox or [[reversal]] is the smooth functioning proper topic of large bureaucratic corporations). At psychoanalysis: psychoanalysis does not deal with the level of fantasyauthoritarian father who prohibits [[enjoyment]], Gates is a small-time, subversive hooligan but with the [[obscene]] father who has taken over enjoins it and dressed himself up as thus renders you impotent or frigid. The unconscious is not secret resistance to the respectable chairman. In Bill Gates, Small Brotherlaw, but the average ugly guy coincides with and contains law itself.<br>The psychoanalytic response to the figure 'risk-society' theory of evil genius who aims for total control the reflexivisation of our lives. In early James Bond moviesis not to insist on a pre-reflexive substance, the evil genius was an eccentric figureunconscious, dressed extravagantly, or alternatively, in but to [[suggest]] that the grey uniform theory neglects another mode of the Maoist commissarreflexivity. In For psychoanalysis, the case [[perversion]] of Gates, this ridiculous charade the human libidinal economy is no longer needed - what follows from the evil genius turns out [[prohibition]] of some pleasurable [[activity]]: not a life led in strict obedience to be the boy next door.<br>Another aspect law and deprived of this process is all [[pleasure]] but a life in which exercising the changed status law provides a pleasure of its own, a life in which performance of the narrative tradition that we use [[ritual]] destined to understand our liveskeep illicit temptation at bay becomes the source of libidinal satisfaction. In <i>Men are from MarsThe military life, Women are from Venus</i> (1992)for example, John Gray proposed a vulgarised version may be governed as much by an unwritten set of narrativistobscene rules and [[rituals]] (homoerotically-deconstructionist psychoanalysischarged beatings and humiliations of younger comrades) as by [[official]] regulations. This sexualised violence does not undermine order in the barracks: it functions as its direct libidinal support. Since we ultimately Regulatory power mechanisms and procedures become 'reflexively' eroticised: although repression first emerges as an attempt to regulate any [[desire]] considered 'areillicit' by the stories we tell ourselves about ourselvespredominant socio-[[symbolic order]], it can only survive in the solution to a psychic deadlock resides, he proposes, in a 'positive' rewriting of economy if the narrative of our past. What he has in mind desire for regulation is not only there - if the standard cognitive therapy very activity of changing negative "false beliefs" about oneself regulation becomes libidinally invested and turns into an assurance that one is loved by others and capable a source of libidinal satisfaction.<br>This reflexivity undermines the notion of creative achievements, but a more 'radical', pseudothe Post-Freudian procedure of regressing back Modern subject free to choose and reshape his [[identity]]. The psychoanalytic [[concept]] that designates the short-circuit between the scene of repression and what it represses is the primordial traumatic wound[[superego]]. Gray accepts As Lacan emphasised again and again, the psychoanalytic notion essential content of an early childhood traumatic experience that forever marks the subjectsuperego's further development[[injunction]] is 'Enjoy!' A father works hard to organise a Sunday excursion, which has to be postponed again and again. When it finally takes [[place]], but he gives is fed up with the [[whole]] [[idea]] and shouts at his [[children]]: 'Now you'd better enjoy it !' The superego works in a pathological spindifferent way from the [[symbolic law]]. What he proposes The parental figure who is thatsimply 'repressive' in the mode of symbolic authority tells a child: 'You must go to grandma's birthday party and behave nicely, after regressing even if you are bored to [[death]] - I don't care whether you [[want]] to, and thus confrontingjust do it!' The superego figure, his primal traumatic scenein contrast, says to the subject child: 'Although you [[know]] how much grandma would like to see you, you should, under the therapistgo to her party only if you really want to - if you don's guidancet, you should stay at home.'rewrite' this sceneThe trick performed by the superego is to seem to offer the child a free choice, this ultimate phantasmatic framework of his subjectivitywhen, as part of a more benign and productive narrativeevery child knows, he is not being given any choice at all. If, sayWorse than that, he is being given an order and told to smile at the primordial traumatic scene existing in same time. Not only: 'You must visit your unconsciousgrandma, deforming and inhibiting your creative attitude, is that of your father shouting at whatever youfeel, ' but: 'You are worthlessmust visit your grandma, and you must be glad to do it! I despise ' The superego orders you! Nothing good will come of to enjoy doing what youhave to do. What happens, after all,' you should rewrite if the scene so child takes it that he has a benevolent father smiles at you genuinely free choice and says'no'? The parent will make him feel terrible. "How can you say that!" his moth er will say: "How can you be so cruel! What did your poor grandma do to make you not want to see her?"<br>"You can do your [[duty]], because you must do it" is how [[Kant]] formulated the categor ical imperative. The usual negative corollary of this [[formula]] serves as the foundat ion of [[moral]] constraint: 'You're OK! I trust cannot, because you fullyshould not.' (Thus the solution The argument of those who oppose human cloning, for example, is that it cannot be allowed because it would involve the Wolf Man would have been reduction of a human being to an entity whose psychic properties can be manipulated. Which is another variation on Wittgenstein's 'regressWhereof one cannot [[speak]] thereof one must be silent.' to In other [[words]], we should say that we can't do it, because otherwise we may do it, with catastrophic [[ethical]] consequences. If the Christian opponents of cloning believe in the immortality of the parental coitus a tergo soul and then rewrite the scene so uniqueness of the [[personality]] - i.e. that what he saw was merely his parents lying on I am not just the result of the bed, his father reading a newspaper interaction between my genetic code and his mother a sentimental novel.) It may seem a ridiculous thing my [[environment]] - why oppose cloning? Is it possible that they do in fact believe in the ability of genetics to reach the very core of our personality? Why dosome Christians oppose cloning with talk of the 'unfathomable mystery of the conception' as if by cloning my body I am at the same time cloning my immortal soul?<br>The superego inverts the Kantian 'You can, but there is because you must' in a widely accepteddifferent way, turning it into 'You must, politically correct version because you can.' This is the [[meaning]] of this procedure in Viagra, which ethnic, sexual and other minorities rewrite their past promises to restore the capacity of male erection in a more positivepurely biochemical way, self-assertive vein (African Americans claiming bypassing all [[psychological]] problems. Now that long before European modernityViagra can take care of the erection, ancient African empires had a sophisticated understanding of science there is no excuse: you should have sex whenever you can; and technology etc)if you don't you should feel [[guilty]]. Imagine New Ageism, on the other hand, offers a rewriting way out of the Decalogue along super ego predicament by claiming to recover the same lines[[spontaneity]] of our 'true' selves. Is one of the Commandments But New Age wisdom, too severe? Well then, letrelies on the superego imperative: 's regress It is your duty to Mount Sinai and re write it: adultery achieve [[full]] self- fine, provided it is sincere realisation and serves the goal of profound self-realisationfulfilment, because you can. What disappears is not "hard fact" but ' Isn't this why we often feel that we are being terrorised by the Real New Age [[language]] of a traumatic encounter whose organising role in the subject's psychic economy resists its symbolic rewriting.liberation?<br>

In our postAlthough submission within a lesbian sado-political liberal-permissive society, human rights can be seen as expressing masochistic relationship and the right submission of an [[individual]] to violate the Ten Commandmentsa fundamental religious or ethnic belief are both generated by modern reflexivisation, their libidinal economies are quite different. The right to privacy lesbian master/slave relationship isa theatrical enactment, in effectbased on accepted rules and a contract that has been freely entered into. As such, the right to commit adultery, in secret, without being observed or investigatedit has a tremendous liberating potential. The right to pursue happiness and to possess private property isIn contrast, in effect, the right a fundamentalist devotion to steal (to exploit others). Freedom of an ethnic or religious cause denies the press and possibility of expression - the right to lie. The right any form of free citizens to possess weapons - the right to killconsent. Freedom of religious belief It is not that sado- the right to celebrate false gods. Human rights do notmasochists are only playfully submissive, of course, directly condone the violation of while in the Commandments, but they preserve a marginal 'grey zonetotalitarian' which political [[community]], submission is out of the reach of religious or secular powerreal. In this shady zoneIf anything, I can violate the Commandments, and if opposite is the Power catches me with my pants down and tries to prevent my violation, I can crycase: "Assault on my basic human rights!" It is impossible for the Power to prevent a 'misuse' of human rights without at the same time impinging on their proper application. Lacan draws attention to a resistance to the use of lie-detectors in crime investigations - as if such a direct 'objective' verification somehow infringes the subject's right to sadomasochistic contract, the privacy of his thoughts.<br>A similar tension between rights performance is definitely for real and prohibitions determines heterosexual seduction in our politically correct times. Ortaken absolutely seriously, to put it differently, there is no seduction which cannot at some point be construed as intrusion or harassment because there will always be a point when one has to expose oneself and 'make a pass'. Butwhile the totalitarian submission, with its mask of coursefanatical devotion, seduction doesn't involve incorrect harassment throughout. When you make a pass, you expose yourself to the Other (the potential partner)is ultimately fake, and her reaction will determine whether what you just did was harassment or a successful act pretence of seductionits opposite. There is no way to tell in advance what her response will be (which What reveals it as fake is why assertive women often despise 'weak' men, who fear to take the necessary risk). This holds even more in our pc times: link between the pc prohibitions are rules which, in one way or another, are to be violated in figure of the seduction process. Isn't totalitarian Master and the seducersuperego's art to accomplish the violation in such a way that, afterwards, by its acceptance, any suggestion of harassment has disappeared?injunction: "Enjoy!"<br>Although psychoanalysis is one A good illustration of the victims of reflexivisation, it can also help us to understand its implications. It does not lament way the disintegration of 'totalitarian' master operates is provided by the old stability or locate in its disappearance logo on the cause of modern neuroses, compelling us to rediscover our roots in traditional wisdom or a deeper selfwrapper around [[German]] fat-knowledgefree salami. Nor is 'Du darfst!' it just another version of modern reflexive knowledge which teaches us how to master the secrets of our psychic life. What psychoanalysis properly concerns itself with says - "You may!" The new fundamentalisms are not a reaction against the unexpected consequences of the disintegration [[anxiety]] of the structures excessive freedom that have traditionally regulated libidinal lifeaccompanies liberal late [[capitalism]]; they do not provide strong prohibitions in a society awash with [[permissiveness]]. Why does the decline of paternal authority and fixed social and gender roles generate new guilts and anxieties, instead of opening up The cliché about "escaping from freedom" into a brave new world totalitarian haven is profoundly misleading. Nor is an explanation found in which we can enjoy shifting and reshaping our multiple identities?<br>The Postthe standard Freudo-Modern constellation in Marxian [[thesis]] according to which the subject is bent on experimenting with his life encourages the formation libidinal foundation of new 'passionate attachments' totalitarian (to use Judith Butler's termfascist), but what if the disintegration of patriarchal symbolic authority regimes is counterbalanced by an even stronger "passionate attachment" to subjection? This would seem to explain the increasing prevalence of a strict and severely enacted master/slave relationship among lesbian couples'authoritarian personality' - i.e. The one someone who gives the orders is finds satisfaction in compulsive obedience. Although, on the 'top'surface, the one who obeys is the 'bottom' totalitarian master also issues stern orders compelling us to [[renounce]] pleasure andto sacrifice ourselves in some higher cause, his effective injunction, in order for discernible between the "top" to be attainedlines, an arduous apprenticeship has is a call to be completedunconstrained transgression. This "top/bottom" duality is neither Far from imposing on us a sign firm set of direct "identification standards to be complied with , the totalitarian master suspends (malemoral) aggressor[[punishment]]. His secret injunction is: " nor You may." He tells us that the prohibitions which regulate social life and [[guarantee]] a parodic imitation minimum of the patriarchal relations of domination. Ratherdecency are worthless, it expresses the genuine paradox of just a freely chosen master/slave form of coexistence which provides deep libidinal satisfaction.<br>Everything is turned back device to front. Public order is no longer maintained by hierarchykeep the common people at bay - we, repression and strict regulationon the other hand, and therefore is no longer subverted by liberating acts of transgression (as when we laugh at a teacher behind his back). Instead, we have social relations among are free and equal individualsto let ourselves go, supplemented by 'passionate attachment' to an extreme form of submissionkill, rape, plunder, which functions but only insofar as we follow the 'dirty secret', the transgressive source master. (The Frankfurt [[School]] discerned this key feature of [[totalitarianism]] in its theory of libidinal satisfactionrepressive desublimation. In a permissive society, ) Obedience to the rigidly codified, authoritarian master/slave relationship becomes transgressive. This paradox or reversal is allows you to [[transgress]] everyday moral rules: all the proper topic dirty things you were dreaming of psychoanalysis: psychoanalysis does not deal with , everything you had to renounce when you subordinated yourself to the authoritarian father who prohibits enjoymenttraditional, patriarchal, but with the obscene father who enjoins it and thus renders symbolic Law you impotent or frigid. The unconscious is not secret resistance are now allowed to the lawindulge in without punishment, but the law itselfjust as you may eat fat-free salami without any risk to your health.<br>The psychoanalytic response to the 'risk-society' theory same underlying suspension of the reflexivisation moral prohibitions is characteristic of our lives is not to insist on a prePost-reflexive substance, the unconscious, but to suggest that the theory neglects another mode of reflexivityModern [[nationalism]]. For psychoanalysis, the perversion of the human libidinal economy is what follows from the prohibition of some pleasurable activity: not a life led in strict obedience The cliché according to the law and deprived of all pleasure but a life which in which exercising the law provides a pleasure of its ownconfused, a life in which performance of the ritual destined to keep illicit temptation at bay becomes the source of libidinal satisfaction. The military lifesecular, for example[[global]] society, may be governed as much by an unwritten passionate ethnic identification restores a firm set of obscene rules and rituals (homoerotically-charged beatings and humiliations of younger comrades) as by official regulations. This sexualised violence does not undermine order in the barracksvalues should be turned upside down: it functions nationalist [[fundamentalism]] works as its direct libidinal support. Regulatory power mechanisms and procedures become a barely concealed 'reflexivelyyou may' eroticised: although repression first emerges as an attempt to regulate any desire considered 'illicit' by the predominant socio-symbolic order, it can only survive in the psychic economy if the desire for regulation is there - if the very activity of regulation becomes libidinally invested and turns into a source of libidinal satisfaction.<br>This reflexivity undermines the notion of the Our Post-Modern subject free to choose reflexive society which seems hedonistic and reshape his identity. The psychoanalytic concept that designates the short-circuit between the repression and what it represses permissive is the superego. As Lacan emphasised again actually saturated with rules and again, the essential content of the superego's injunction is 'Enjoy!' A father works hard to organise a Sunday excursion, regulations which has are intended to be postponed again serve our well-being (restrictions on smoking and againeating, rules against sexual harassment). When it finally takes placeA passionate ethnic identification, far from further restraining us, he is fed up with the whole idea and shouts at his children: a liberating call of 'Now youmay'd better enjoy it!' The superego works in a different way from : you may violate (not the symbolic law. The parental figure who is simply 'repressive' in Decalogue, but) the mode stiff regulations of symbolic authority tells peaceful coexistence in a child: 'You must go to grandma's birthday party liberal tolerant society; you may drink and behave nicely, even if you are bored to death - I don't care whether eat whatever you want to, just do it!' The superego figuresay things prohibited by [[political correctness]], in contrasteven [[hate]], says to the child: 'Although you know how much grandma would like to see youfight, you should go to her party only if you really want to - if you don't, you should stay at homekill and rape.' The trick performed It is by offering this kind of pseudo-liberation that the superego supplements the [[explicit]] [[texture]] of the social symbolic law.<br>The superficial opposition between pleasure and duty is to seem to offer the child a free choiceovercome in two different ways. Totalitarian power goes even further than traditional authoritarian power. What it says, when, as every child knowsin effect, he is not being given any choice at all. Worse than that, he is being given an order and told to smile at the same time. Not only: 'You must visit "Do your grandmaduty, whatever I don't care whether you feellike it or not,' " but: '"You must visit do your grandmaduty, and you must be glad to do it!' The superego orders you to enjoy doing what you have to do. What happens, after all, if the child takes it that he has a genuinely free choice and says 'no'? The parent will make him feel terrible. "How can you say that!" his moth er will say(This is how totalitarian democracy works: "How can you be so cruel! What did your poor grandma do to make you it is not want enough for the people to see her?"<br>"You can do your dutyfollow their [[leader]], because you they must do it" is how Kant formulated the categor ical imperativelove him. The usual negative corollary of this formula serves as the foundat ion of moral constraint: 'You cannot, because you should not) Duty becomes pleasure.' The argument of those who oppose human cloning, for exampleSecond, there is that it cannot be allowed because it would involve the reduction obverse paradox of pleasure becoming duty in a human being to an entity whose psychic properties can be manipulated. Which is another variation on Wittgenstein's permissive'Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silentsociety.' In other words, we should say that we can't do it, because otherwise we may do it, with catastrophic ethical consequences. If the Christian opponents of cloning believe in the immortality of the soul and the uniqueness of [[Subjects]] experience the personality - i.e. that I am not just the result of the interaction between my genetic code and my environment - why oppose cloning? Is it possible that they do in fact believe in the ability of genetics [[need]] to reach the very core of our personality? Why do some Christians oppose cloning with talk of the 'unfathomable mystery of the conception' as if by cloning my body I am at the same have a good time cloning my immortal soul?<br>The superego inverts the Kantian 'You can, because you must' in to enjoy themselves, as a different way, turning it into 'You must, because you can.' This is the meaning kind of Viagraduty, which promises to restore the capacity of male erection in a purely biochemical wayand, bypassing all psychological problems. Now that Viagra can take care of the erectionconsequently, there is no excuse: you should have sex whenever you can; and if you don't you should feel guiltyfor failing to be happy. New Ageism, on The superego controls the other hand, offers a way out of zone in which these two opposites overlap - in which the super ego predicament by claiming command to recover enjoy doing your duty coincides with the spontaneity of our 'true' selves. But New Age wisdom, too, relies on the superego imperative: 'It is your duty to achieve full self-realisation and self-fulfilment, because you canenjoy yourself.' Isn't this why we often feel that we are being terrorised by the New Age language of liberation?<br><br>

Although submission within a lesbian sado-masochistic relationship and the submission of an individual to a fundamental religious or ethnic belief are both generated by modern reflexivisation, their libidinal economies are quite different. The lesbian master</slave relationship is a theatrical enactment, based on accepted rules and a contract that has been freely entered into. As such, it has a tremendous liberating potential. In contrast, a fundamentalist devotion to an ethnic or religious cause denies the possibility of any form of consent. It is not that sado-masochists are only playfully submissive, while in the 'totalitarian' political community, submission is real. If anything, the opposite is the case: in the sadomasochistic contract, the performance is definitely for real and taken absolutely seriously, while the totalitarian submission, with its mask of fanatical devotion, is ultimately fake, a pretence of its opposite. What reveals it as fake is the link between the figure of the totalitarian Master and the superego's injunction: "Enjoy!"<brfont>A good illustration of the way the 'totalitarian' master operates is provided by the logo on the wrapper around German fat-free salami. ==See Also==* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]* [[]]  ==Source==* [[You May!]] 'Du darfst!' it says - "You may!" The new fundamentalisms are not a reaction against the anxiety [[London]] Review of excessive freedom that accompanies liberal late capitalism; they do not provide strong prohibitions in a society awash with permissiveness. The cliché about "escaping from freedom" into a totalitarian haven is profoundly misleading. Nor is an explanation found in the standard Freudo-Marxian thesis according to which the libidinal foundation of totalitarian (fascist) regimes is the Books'authoritarian personality' - i.e. someone who finds satisfaction in compulsive obedience. Although, on the surface, the totalitarian master also issues stern orders compelling us to renounce pleasure and to sacrifice ourselves in some higher cause, his effective injunction, discernible between the lines, is a call to unconstrained transgression. Far from imposing on us a firm set of standards to be complied with, the totalitarian master suspends (moral) punishment. His secret injunction is: "You may." He tells us that the prohibitions which regulate social life and guarantee a minimum of decency are worthless, just a device to keep the common people at bay - we, on the other hand, are free to let ourselves go, to kill, rape, plunder, but only insofar as we follow the masterVolume 21. (The Frankfurt School discerned this key feature of totalitarianism in its theory of repressive desublimation[[Number]] 6.) Obedience to the master allows you to transgress everyday moral rules: all the dirty things you were dreaming of, everything you had to renounce when you subordinated yourself to the traditional, patriarchalMarch 18, symbolic Law you are now allowed to indulge in without punishment, just as you may eat fat-free salami without any risk to your health1999.<br>The same underlying suspension of moral prohibitions is characteristic of Post-Modern nationalism. The cliché according to which in a confused, secular, global society, passionate ethnic identification restores a firm set of values should be turned upside downhttp: nationalist fundamentalism works as a barely concealed 'you may'//www. Our Post-Modern reflexive society which seems hedonistic and permissive is actually saturated with rules and regulations which are intended to serve our well-being (restrictions on smoking and eating, rules against sexual harassment)lrb. A passionate ethnic identification, far from further restraining us, is a liberating call of 'you may': you may violate (not the Decalogue, but) the stiff regulations of peaceful coexistence in a liberal tolerant society; you may drink and eat whatever you want, say things prohibited by political correctness, even hate, fight, kill and rapeco. It is by offering this kind of pseudo-liberation that the superego supplements the explicit texture of the social symbolic lawuk/v21/n06/zize01_.<brhtml>The superficial opposition between pleasure and duty is overcome in two different ways. Totalitarian power goes even further than traditional authoritarian power. What it says, in effect, is not, "Do your duty, I don't care whether you like it or not," but: "You must do your duty, and you must enjoy doing it." (This is how totalitarian democracy works: it is not enough for the people to follow their leader, they must love him.) Duty becomes pleasure. Second, there is the obverse paradox of pleasure becoming duty in a 'permissive' society. Subjects experience the need to 'have a good time', to enjoy themselves, as a kind of duty, and, consequently, feel guilty for failing to be happy. The superego controls the zone in which these two opposites overlap - in which the command to enjoy doing your duty coincides with the duty to enjoy yourself.<br><br>

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