Trip Like I Do :: Essays Papers

Trip Like I Do Force and counterforce, resistance and power. What is the space and relation of one to the other? Are they to be understood as in parasitic or symbiotic relation? Does the yes need a no for its function, and in what ways? Could there be a â€Å"war† on Iraq without protests of such brutal possibilities? Slavoj Ã… ½iÃ… ¾ek’s â€Å"The Seven Veils of Fantasy† provides a relation of sincere hypocrisy within but ostensibly against ideology. Fantasy squirms throughout the piece as concealment of horror, creation of horror to be concealed, and vital sustaining support of an ideological edifice. Effectively, not taking ideology seriously and consistently is crucial to its survival; this sort of resistance is already internal to power in this analysis. Ã… ½iÃ… ¾ek’s painting of the space between ideology and resistance - the counterpower Foucault seems to have missed that is lodged already within power itself - fails to take its own acrylic depth seriously . And like a depth charge too, this catabolizes what remains of ideology itself in a bubbling broth wrenched from the ingredients that might fill it. To begin with, his conception of fantasy takes some descriptive moves to defend its apparently ridiculous presumptions. Upon reading it, the article’s quick acceptance of fantasy as distinct from a reality and external to it seems unimaginative and inexcusable. Yet, fantasy is not unreal for any reason but the old one: the terms are counterdefined and a matched pair of a dichotomy - people think so. â€Å"The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is thus to (re)focus attention from factual accuracy to hysterical lies, which unknowingly articulate the truth† (37). Your truth in terms of, uh, ours. Whereas fantasy can be experienced as completely compelling reality, Ã… ½iÃ… ¾ek nearly denudes it of alternative associations and frameworks. For him, fantasy cannot take a hold any more important than one inhering to desire, the real, and all the rest. His work ensconces it within the terms of a language/system - which itself is treated as something previous and joined, such that its conclusions can be presumed as already present. Not that his argument is circular, but the language that Ã… ½iÃ… ¾ek joins in order to strike such gymnastic maneuvers need not be taken as already ensuring the division of fantasy as an extricable parasite within a real.