The Call of Transgression; Even Obama could not Escape

The unbearable is not the difference. The unbearable is the fact that in a sense there is no difference…(Zizek 1994, 2).

The psychological damages that are caused by the primordial generative element of the ‘enjoyment’ symptom to the present global individuality have no limit.  There is no escape from its demand whether you live in an advanced Capitalist nation or just in a corner of the Third World. Once yielded to the manifestation of ‘burning enjoyment’, the individuals unconsciously collapse into a bottomless abyss that carries a black hole effect to which, subsequently, all that they have so far constructed as symbolic entity upon which their present character is built are being relentlessly absorbed never to return.  The Habermasian ‘life world’ of rational integrity through societal modernization seems completely turned upside down since the ‘one that reaches into the depth of organic substance’ (Habermas 2007, 12) of a particular community deliberately decides to take things for granted. Most of this is not their fault but just an essential by-product of yielding to the call of the symptomatic systemic demand to ‘enjoy’.  Everybody has unquestioningly become victims of this symptom which is mostly propagated and intensified through the commoditization of life and through virtual social networks. Predominantly through the unregulated and digitalized technological devices what they ask the individual to do now is not to hide and control his desire but to be too open about it. To add to this, the number of deaths simply caused by social media (mainly Facebook) is on the rise in the Third World, and rather than enhancing ‘Habermasian communication’ for higher level of rationality, the social media are creating absolute havoc in the life-world. The ‘excessive proximity’ generated by these virtual media gives no space for individuality and its ‘unexposed substance’ (something that we never want to reveal to another) which actually creates the balance between private life and social life. Rather, in the present digital context, ‘the subject’ and ‘the desire’ become too close to each other so that the subject has nothing to seek for or to hide. The present global Capitalistic framework has completely lost all the control and regulatory capacities that the world once had on its subjects and, as a temporary escapism,  the only resort that Capitalism could  now turn to is (as it has always historically proved) totalitarianism at least for a ‘false’ regain of its glory.

An individual is always ‘split’ between conscious awareness and the unconscious; what he consciously says and does about politics or social life and a set of unconscious believes that govern how they ‘actually’ live. The civilizing subjects necessitate a certain founding ‘sacrifice’ to be made. This is called ‘castration’ of jouissance; to the extent that a human subject is civilized, there is a ‘cut’ from the primal object of his desire.  To dismantle this significant equilibrium, the present post-capitalist society has been promoting a new sexualized transgressive model (a trap) of ‘enjoyment’. The socio-political Law that the politicians were careful about at least few decades back is the very essence through which they derive a pervert ‘transgressive pleasure’ (enjoyment) today. It is the same violation that the so called public too expects in return for their leaders to ‘perform’ (very much like the pervert role of that of the Hollywood actors). So, we all are caught in a kind of a paradoxical pervert cobweb where there is no ‘exit’.  The politicians are actually not stupid but they all unconsciously pay a servitude to some unknown demand from their own public ‘to enjoy’ (that is why the number of viewers in certain underground paparazzi web site constantly increases). Rather the politicians are conscious of what they actually do. The role of the ‘virtual underground’ is to ‘reveal’ the very dilemma of our existence by saying ‘My God, look at what they do; they violate the very essence of our politics’ and, at the same time, giving that unknown pleasure to the public (in other words, ‘this is how they enjoy’).   Hence, the media world, one can say, is the most pervert entity of all. As Zizek says, the function of media is that they 'hold the balls of the one who tries to rape his wife in order that the balls get dirty' but they do not dare to cut them.       

In the above context today, there is no space for someone to reach ‘satisfaction’ (somewhat similar to Rolling Stone’s popular rock song in the 60s) because the only satisfaction propagated in the global media is ‘transgression’ (violate and enjoy).  In the previous world one reaches his satisfaction by being obedient to the Law, the governing agent of our desire. Now we know that central agent which regulates our desire is dead and everything is allowed and everything is absorbed to the entity of enjoyment.  As said in the standard Kantian version where the ethical subject is torn between the universal moral law and a particular ‘pathological impulses, now in this pervert guidebook of limitless drive to enjoy, there is no ‘inner struggle between complying with the law and succumbing to “pathological” temptations’ (Zizek 2008, 208). In this new world view, it is ‘the spilt’ that is being erased from the subject. Hence you will never feel guilty or ashamed of violating whatever that was previously agreed as societal values (you can import Ethanol or Heroin, do money laundering, murder innocent people and opponents, steal public funds, relentlessly suppress struggles for freedom and discard human rights etc.). According Zizek, ‘the spilt, therefore, does not take place between moral law and pathological desires but between enjoyment and pleasure’ (208) and the pleasure principle is always confronted with some ‘radical evil’ (‘the play’ that is popularly exploited by virtual media).

One reason why many people (including Zizek himself) around the world loved Barak Obama is that he made himself ‘an exception’ (not because he emerged from some mystified and exorcized African entity to save us from some urban evil of the world).  What is that exception? Unlike the Bush administration which propagated Christian values (such as anti-abortion) in determining modern complex human behavior, Obama came up with certain rational and secular human values. When the former George Bush (Jr.) politics relied on ‘postmodernism’ (reverting to history and to the comfort of orthodox Christianity) which led to bind conservatism, Obama’s choice was secularism (including a humanistic approach to health care policy and some other utilitarian liberal needs etc.).  He opted for rationalism which seriously considered the relevance of the application of ethical politics rather than taking refuge in fundamentalist popularism through which he could easily have earned some more Christian votes. In this case, Obama becomes a Habermasian example of advanced Capitalism where science truly functions as ‘an agent of informed common sense’ (Harbermas, 2007, 105). As a veteran politician he could sense the ‘secular borderline’ between politics and religion and believed in political common sense of as a founding ground for dignified human life.  Hence, Obama could be considered as the most authentic and ontologically rational politician who reached the most powerful position in global politics in the recent times where the mode of production has gained a completely different pace.

It is understandable that marriage has its own limitations which sometimes have be overcome (if emotionally possible) through rational means. ‘Since we have no objective knowledge of values beyond moral insight’ (Habermas 2007, 90) the moral self-understanding is an instrument (perhaps the only instrument) which not only determines the destiny of those who are in conflict with each other but those who observe and learn out of it for their future. To quote Habermas in this regard,

‘As long as the moral point of view for what is a just solution to action conflict prevails, the morality of equal respect for each, and solidarity with all, can be justified from out of the reservoir of  rational reason alone’ (94).

What is arguable here is not that Obama unfortunately confronted with a crisis in his marriage but how he actually deals with it in an American post-secular context and beyond. He should not forget the fact that some millions around the world look at him as a role model (one can argue that they also must have the moral self-understanding to determine what is good for them).  Emotionally, he may feel vulnerable and whatever media display in the recent months should not surely disrupt his subjective existential consciousness of his own choice. From a secular point of view, he enjoys the total freedom to walk away from Michelle but his cession to seduction right in front of her in bare public is morally unacceptable (be it in Mandela’s funeral or somewhere else). If there is a hint of narcissist ‘revenge’ from his part, again that is attributed to perversion (consciously performing ‘it’ for the eye of the other).  His act actually disrupts the cohesion of the political community and its moral integrity (a dialogue that is deliberately avoided by standard media), which de-socializes out existing understanding about higher values. He should have avoided this reactionary attitude and the individual situation of ‘the life project of every single person’ (Habermas 2007, 56) would have been a much standard and exemplary case in reference.

And he could not avoid it i.e. the truth of the Zizekian disavowal theory. He knew it but he did it. That is how Obama became a role model of Cynicism. A character well trained, well disciplined, well educated to be the President of United States ‘could not resist it’. In this case, structurally, the function of rationality is ‘argue as much as you will but obey’ (Zizek 2008, xxii). One can still remember how he ‘argued’ about the right and wrong of his opponents, the then politics and policies, values and what is good for America’s future during the election campaigns. That is how his slogan ‘change’ (which everybody has now forgotten) gained momentum and finally some universal meaning.  People trusted him on the basis of the authenticity for his organic and material representation of what he stood for and advocated for. He gained some global popularity on the signifier of the solidarity between the discourse and the representation; not just because, as popularly believed, he is the first Black to reach the Presidency. Now when popular virtual media circulate images of Obama either with Beyonce or former Danish Prime Minister, what immediately comes to mind is the Bakhtin’s carnivalesque suspension of social hierarchy which gets dissolved in the pervert gaze of the other. When he becomes the Law that enjoys itself, and identified himself with a specific form of transgression of the Law (specific form of enjoyment), ‘the code of honor’ that he is going to receive is that the community recognizes himself as ‘one of us’ (Zizek 1994, 55).  The mega ‘change’ that was hailed by a character who seemed to refuse to partake in the obscene superegoistic underside of the contemporary American day-to-day life  once upon a time, from a political point of view, finally ended up by being ‘a just another American’.

1.      Habermas, Jurgen (2007). The Future of Human Nature. London. Polity.

2.      Zizek, Slavoj (1994). The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality. London. Verso.

3.      Zizek, Slavoj (2008). Enjoy Your Symptom. London. Routledge.