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1 " human Reason cannot be reduced to the result of evolutionary adaptation; art is not just a heightened procedure of providing sensual pleasures, but a medium of Truth; "
― Slavoj Žižek , The Parallax View
2 " in contrast to modern art, which causes displeasure-modern art, by definition, hurts. In this precise sense, modern art is sublime: it causes pleasure-in-pain, it produces its effect through its own failure, insofar as it refers to the impossible Things. "
3 " art is not just a heightened procedure of providing sensual pleasures, but a medium of Truth; "
4 " Thus 2t Grams confronts us with the same interpretive dilemma as the one in The Wings of the Dove: is the suicidal sacrificial gesture a true ethical act or not? In contrast to Wings, the answer here is yes: there is no narcissistic staging of one's death at work when Paul shoots himself, no manipulative strategy of using one's death as a gift destined to secretly sabotage what it appears to make possible. "
5 " [E]galitarian political 'extremism' or 'excessive radicalism' should always be read as a phenomenon of ideologico-political displacement: as an index of its opposite, of a limitation, of a refusal actually to 'go to the end.' What was the Jacobins' recourse to radical 'terror' if not a kind of hysterical acting-out bearing witness to their inability to disturb the very fundamentals of economic order (private property, and so on)? And does the same not go even for the so-called 'excesses' of Political Correctness? Do they also not display a retreat from disturbing the systemic (economic, etc.) causes of racism and sexism? "
6 " What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian 'il n'y a pas de rapport ...': if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship between economy and politics, no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint, although—or, rather, because—these two levels are inextricably intertwined. "
7 " We all know the elementary form of politeness, that of the empty symbolic gesture, a gesture-an offer-which is meant to be rejected. In John Irving's A Prayer forOwen Meany, after the little boy Owen accidentally kills John's-his best friend's, the narrator's-mother, he is, of course, terribly upset, so, to show how sorry he is, he discreetly delivers to John a gift of the complete collection of color photos of baseball stars, his most precious possession; however, Dan, John's delicate stepfather, tells him that the proper thing to do is to return the gift. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected; the point, the "magic" of symbolic exchange, is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, the overall result of the operation is not zero but a distinct gain for both parties, the pact of solidarity. And is not something similar part of our everyday mores? When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to withdraw, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer-in this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved....Milly's offer is the very opposite of such an elementary gesture of politeness: although it also is an offer that is meant to be rejected, what makes hers different from the symbolic empty offer is the cruel alternative it imposes on its addressee: I offer you wealth as the supreme proof of my saintly kindness, but if you accept my offer, you will be marked by an indelible stain of guilt and moral corruption; if you do the right thing and reject it, however, you will also not be simply righteous-your very rejection will function as a retroactive admission of your guilt, so whatever Kate and Densher do, the very choice Milly's bequest confronts them with makes them guilty. "
8 " According to the standard view, the past is fixed, what happened happened, it cannot be undone, and the future is open, it depends on unpredictable contingencies. What we should propose here is a reversal of this standard view: the past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed, since we live in a determinist universe... This does not mean that we cannot change the future; it just means that, in order to change our future, we should first (not 'understand' but) change our past, reinterpret it in a way that opens up toward a different future from the one implied by the predominant vision of the past. "
9 " The philosophical twist to be added [to the standard definition of parallax]...is that the observed difference is not simply 'subjective,' due to the fact that the same object which exists 'out there' is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that... subject and object are inherently 'mediated,' so that an 'epistemological' shift in the subject's point of view always reflects an 'ontological' shift in the object itself. "
