about a group of Jews in a synagogue publicly admitting their nullity in the eyes
of God. First, a rabbi stands up and says: “O God, I know I am worthless. I am
nothing!” After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating
himself on the chest: “O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material
wealth. I am nothing!” After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up
and also proclaims: “O God, I am nothing.” The rich businessman kicks the
rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn: “What insolence! Who is that guy who
dares to claim that he is nothing too!”
#5 The reason I find Badiou problematic is…
that, for me, something is wrong with the very notion that one can excessively “enforce” a truth:
one is almost tempted to apply the logic of the joke quoted by Lacan: “My fiancée is never late for
an appointment, because the moment she is late, she is no longer my fiancée.” A Truth is never
enforced, because the moment fidelity to Truth functions as an excessive enforcement, we are no
longer dealing with a Truth, with fidelity to a Truth-Event
#6 For decades, a classic joke has been circulating
among Lacanians…
to exemplify the key role of the Other’s knowledge: a man who believes himself
to be a kernel of grain is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do
their best to convince him that he is not a kernel of grain but a man; however,
when he is cured (convinced that he is not a kernel of grain but a man) and
allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back, trembling and very
scared—there is a chicken outside the door, and he is afraid it will eat him. “My
dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a kernel of
grain but a man.” “Of course I know,” replies the patient, “but does the
chicken?”
Therein resides the true stake of psychoanalytic treatment: it is not enough to
convince the patient about the unconscious truth of his symptoms; the
unconscious itself must be brought to assume this truth. The same holds true
for the Marxian theory of commodity fetishism: we can imagine a bourgeois
subject attending a Marxism course where he is taught about commodity
fetishism. After the course, he comes back to his teacher, complaining that he
is still the victim of commodity fetishism. The teacher tells him “But you know
now how things stand, that commodities are only expressions of social
relations, that there is nothing magic about them!” to which the pupil replies:
“Of course I know all that, but the commodities I am dealing with seem not to
know it!” This is what Lacan aimed at in his claim that the true formula of
materialism is not “God doesn’t exist,” but “God is unconscious.
#8 In an old joke from the defunct German
Democratic Republic,…
a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by
censors, he tells his friends: “Let’s establish a code: if a letter you will get from
me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false.”
After a month, his friends get the first letter, written in blue ink: “Everything is
wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and
properly heated, movie theaters show films from the West, there are many
beautiful girls ready for an affair—the only thing unavailable is red ink.”
And is this not our situation till now? We have all the freedoms one wants—the
only thing missing is the “red ink”: we “feel free” because we lack the very
language to articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink means is that,
today, all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict —“war on
terror,” “democracy and freedom,” “human rights,” etc.—are false terms,
mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it. The
task today is to give the protesters red ink.54
