Alenka Zupančič QUOTES

1 " An important part of Nietzsche's philosophy is thus shaped by this conviction that it is wrong to identify truth with the Symbolic, that truth should be related to the Real. This is precisely why truth can be dangerous to life: the Symbolic is the shelter of life, whereas the Real is its exposure and vulnerability. This is also what places truth in the field of ethics, as is clear in the second of the passages quoted above (where truth is considered not as an epistemological category, but as a matter of courage — "error is not blindness, error is cowardice...") "

― Alenka Zupančič

2 " The other concept of truth in Lacan situates the truth, so to speak, in the midst of reality. Here, the discontinuities, ruptures, standstills, and crises of reality are places or points of its truth. The truth is not some impossible and lethal Beyond that can be reached only by transgressing the limits of the Symbolic and the Imaginary –Lacan comes to present it as something that speaks between the lines, detectable in changes of discursivity, in the disturbances, interruptions, and slips of the discourse... "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

3 " The thing (as one) no longer throws its shadow upon another thing; instead, it throws its shadow upon itself, thus becoming, at the same time, the thing and its shadow. When the sun is at its zenith, things are not simply exposed ("naked", as it were); they are, so to speak, dressed in their own shadows. "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

4 " the true choice is between losing it all and creating what we are about to lose: only this could eventually save us, in a profound sense . . . The possible awakening of the bomb is not simply 'let's do all in our power to prevent it before it's too late', but rather 'let's first build this totality (unity, community, freedom) that we are about to lose through the bomb. "

― Alenka Zupančič

5 " Negativity, lack, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, are perceived more and more as moral faults-worse, as a corruption at the level of our very being or bare life. "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Odd One In: On Comedy

6 " …the expression “beyond good and evil” is all too easily (mis)understood. When we say of someone that he is acting as if he were “beyond good and evil,” we usually mean that, to put it plainly, he doesn’t give a damn about the good. The expression “beyond good and evil,” which has become a kind of ritornello, is typically misused—that is to say, it is used to refer to what would be more correctly referred to as “beyond good.” In other words, it is employed to describe a space where, although the good is no longer taken into consideration, the evil and fascination with evil are still very much at work. In this context (and if we follow Lacan’s thinking to its logical conclusion), even the scandalous Marquis de Sade got no further than merely transgressing the good. In de Sade’s literature, the victims not only remain beautiful throughout the horror to which they are subjected, but even gain in beauty during this process: right up to the end, a sublime beauty “covers” the bodies of the victims, even in their naked exposure. Lacan’s point is that there are walls and defences that humanity has erected as shields against the central field of das Ding (connoted as evil): the first protective barrier is the good; the second is the beautiful or sublime. This is where the intimate link between sublime beauty and evil (or danger) originally springs from. Nietzsche himself develops the idea that, by transgressing (or being indifferent to) the good, we enter the domain of the sublime, although this does not by any means imply that, for all this, we are effectively “beyond good and evil". "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

7 " Following Nietzsche's arguments concerning the genealogy of the word "good"(and "evil"), one could also say that the main difference between "masters"and the "herd" (as the new masters) is that masters are the ones who "give names" (and can thus say "this is so-and-so") whereas the "herd" fights for the -interpretation- of these names ("this -means- so-and-so"). Yet this interpretation is itself a form of mastery, and is often much more tyrannical than the act of "giving names". "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

8 " If a love encounter is like a good joke, then what is love in its duration and temporality-what is, as we say, a love that lasts? "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Odd One In: On Comedy

9 " Jupiter promises us infallible happiness, fortune, a thousand blessings, and a brave son. Isn't this what everybody wants? "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Odd One In: On Comedy

10 " It is this short circuit that constitutes the peak of comedy: not simply the fact that Big Jim erroneously sees a chicken when he looks at Charlie, but also the fact that, for all his error, he is somehow right-Charlie does look like a chicken. "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Odd One In: On Comedy

11 " it is not enough that we know how things really stand; in a certain sense, things themselves have to realize how they stand. "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Odd One In: On Comedy

12 " comedy and comic satisfaction thrive on things that do not exactly add up. They thrive on these discrepancies as a source of pleasure rather than pain. Yet this by no means implies that comedy is distinguished from tragedy by what one would call today a "positive attitude," "positive thinking," the ability to find something positive and satisfactory even in the worst situations. "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Odd One In: On Comedy

13 " It is not about recentering the subject (via the effect of recognition), but about decentering her radically, producing a subjective split in its purest form. The temporal dimension comes into play at this very juncture. "

― Alenka Zupančič , The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two