The Pervert's Guide to Ideology Page #10

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This was the utmost despair

of many women raped -

in the post Yugoslav war -

in Bosnia in

the early nineties.

They survived their

terrible predicament

and what kept them alive was

the idea I must survive

to tell the truth.

If/when - if they survived they

made a terrible discovery:

there is no one to

really listen to them.

Either some ignorant

bored social worker

or some relative

who usually made

obscene insinuations like

are you sure you were not

enjoying a little bit -

the rape and so on

and so on.

They discovered

the truth of what

Jacques Lacan claims:

there is no 'Big Other'.

There may be

a virtual 'Big Other'

to whom you

cannot confess.

There may be a 'Real Other'

but it's never

the virtual one.

We are alone.

I think Kafka was right

when he said that

for a modern secular

non-religious man

bureaucracy, state bureaucracy

is the only remaining

contact with the

dimension of the divine.

It is in this scene

from Brazil

that we see

the intimate link

between bureaucracy

and enjoyment.

What the impenetrable

omnipotence of

bureaucracy harbours

is divine enjoyment.

My name's Lowry,

Mr. Warren, Sam Lowry.

The intense rush of

bureaucratic engagement

serves nothing.

Glad to have you on board.

It is the performance of

its very purposelessness

that generates

an intense enjoyment

ready to reproduce

itself forever.

Between you and

me, Lowry, this... no, no!

...departement... tell Records

to get stuffed!

...is about to be

upgraded and the...

Ah!

Here we are.

Your very own number

on your very own door.

And behind that door,

your very own office.

Congratulations, DZ-015.

Welcome to the team.

Yes. No. Cancel that.

Send two copies to Finance.

The adverse of that is

a wonderful scene

more towards the

beginning of the film.

Harry Tuttle, heating

engineer, at your service.

The hero who has a problem

in his apartment

with plumbing tries to get

the State agency to fix it.

Are you from

Central Services?

Of course, two guys come,

they just want forms

to fill in, they do nothing.

I called

Central Services.

And then the ultimate

subversive figure comes:

a kind of clandestine plumber,

played by Robert De Niro...

Just a minute. What was that

business with the gun?

Just a precaution, sir.

Just a precaution.

...who tells him: "Just tell me

what is the problem"

and promises quickly

to fix it.

This of course is the ultimate

offense to bureaucracy.

Are you telling me

this is illegal?

Thanks.

Listen kid, we're all in

it together.

Go on.

In the ordinary

theological universe

your duty is imposed

onto you by God

or society or another

higher authority, and

your responsibility

is to do it.

But in a radically

atheist universe

you are not only responsible

for doing your duty,

you are also responsible

for deciding

what is your duty.

There is always

in our subjectivity,

in the way we

experience ourselves -

a minimum of hysteria.

Hysteria is what? Hysteria

is the way

we question our social,

symbolic identity.

You're sure it's God? You're

sure it's not the devil?

I'm not sure. I'm not

sure of anything.

If it's the devil, the devil

can be cast out.

But what if it's God?

You can't cast out

God, can you?

What is hysteria at

it's most elementary?

It's a question addressed

at the authority which

defines my identity.

It's:
"Why am I what you are

telling me that I am?"

In psychoanalytic theory,

hysteria is much more

subversive than perversion.

A pervert has no

uncertainties while again

the hysterical position

is that of a doubt,

which is an extremely

productive position.

All new inventions come

from hysterical questioning,

and the unique character

of Christianity is that

it transposes this

hysterical questioning

onto God himself

as a subject.

Who's that? Who's following

me? Is that you?

This is the ingenious

idea of

The Last Temptation of Christ -

as Kazantzakis' novel and

Scorsese's film -

namely the idea that

when Jesus Christ

in his youth is told

that he is

not only the Son of God,

but basically God himself,

he doesn't simply accept it.

This is for Jesus Christ, boy,

traumatic news like, my God,

why am I dead?

Am I really dead?

How did we come to

that unique point,

which I think, makes

Christianity an exception?

It all began with

the Book of Job -

as we all know things

turn out bad for Job.

He loses everything.

His house, his family, his

possessions and so on.

Three friends visit him

and each of them

tries to justify

Job's misfortunes.

The greatness of Job is that

he does not accept this

deeper meaning.

When, towards the end of the Book

of Job, God himself appears,

God gives right to Job.

He says everything that the

theological friends

were telling Job is false;

everything that Job

was saying is true.

No meaning in catastrophes.

Here we have the first step

in the direction of

delegitimizing suffering.

Father stay with me,

don't leave me.

The contrast between

Judaism and Christianity

is the contrast between

anxiety and love.

The idea is that the Jewish

God is the God of the

abyss of the other's desire.

Terrible things happen,

God is in charge

but we do not

know what the 'Big Other',

God, wants from us.

What is the divine desire?

To designate this

traumatic experience

Lacan used the Italian

phrase 'che voglio'?

"What do you want?"

This terrifying question:

but what do you

want from me?

The idea is that Judaism

persists in this

anxiety, like God remains

this enigmatic

terrifying other.

And then Christianity

resolves

the tension through love.

By sacrificing his son,

God demonstrates

that he loves us.

So it's a kind

of a imaginary,

sentimental even,

resolution of a situation

of radical anxiety.

Father, forgive them.

If this were to be the

case, then Christianity

would have been a kind of

ideological, reversal

or pacification of the

deep, much more

shattering Jewish insight.

But I think one can read

the Christian gesture

in a much more radical way.

This is what the sequence

of crucifixion

in Scorsese's film shows us.

What dies on the

cross is precisely

this guarantee

of the 'Big Other'.

The message of Christianity

is here radically atheist.

It's the death of Christ

is not any kind of

redemption of commercial

affair in the sense of

Christ suffers to

pay for our sins.

Pay to whom?

For what? And so on.

It's simply the disintegration

of the God which

guarantees the meaning

of our lives.

And that's the meaning

of that famous phrase:

"Eli Eli lama sabachthani?"

"Father, why have you

forsaken me?"

Father, why have you

forsaken me?

Just before Christ's

death, we get

what in psychoanalytic

terms we call

subjective destitution.

Stepping out totally of

the domain of

symbolic identification,

cancelling or suspending

the entire field

of symbolic authority,

the entire field

of the 'Big Other'.

Of course, we cannot know

what God wants from us

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