To resume again...

Pure Psychoanalysis,
Applied Psycho-
analysis and
Psychotherapy
J
ACQUES-ALAIN MILLER

A Sophism of
Courtly Love
E
RIC LAURENT

On Love as Comedy
A
LENKA ZUPANCIC

From Identification
to the Logic of
the Perceived
R
ICHARD KLEIN

Homo Sacer
in Afghanistan
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Marlene McCarty
C
ATHY LEBOWITZ
interviews
JOSEFINA AYERZA

 


























        

Homo Sacer in Afghanistan


Slavoj Zizek

The lesson to be learned from Carl Schmitt is that the divide friend/enemy is never just the verification of a factual difference: the enemy is by definition always - up to a point, at least - invisible, it looks like one of us, it cannot be directly recognized, which is why the big problem and task of the political struggle is that of providing/constructing the recognizable IMAGE of the enemy. (This also makes it clear why Jews are the enemy par excellence: it is not only that they conceal their true image or contours - it is that there is ultimately NOTHING beneath their deceiving appearances. Jews lack the "inner form" that pertains to any proper national identity: they are a non-nation among nations, their national substance resides precisely in a lack of substance, in a formless infinite plasticity). In short, the "enemy recognition" is always a performative procedure which, in contrast to the deceiving appearances, brings to light / constructs the enemy's "true face." Schmitt refers here directly to the Kantian category of Einbildungskraft, the transcendental power of imagination: in order to recognize the enemy, the conceptual subsumption under preexisting categories is not enough; one has "to schematize" the logical figure of the Enemy, providing it with concrete sensible features which make it into an appropriate target of hatred and struggle.


Subscribe to Lacanian Ink click here.