on our luck

from happiness after september 11 by slavoj zizek in the book welcome to the desert of the real

"happiness is thus- to put it in alain badiou's terms- not a category of truth, but a category of mere being, and as such, confused, indeterminate, inconsistent."

"in a strict lacanian sense of the term, we should thus posit that 'happiness' relies on the subject's inability or unreadiness fully to confront the consequences of its desire: the price of happiness is that the subject remains stuck in the inconsistency of its desire."

"for example, when 'radical' academics demand full rights for immigrants and opening of the borders, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate developed western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent working-class racist backlash which would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics?  of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met - in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position."

"the gesture is that of calling the other's bluff, counting on the fact that what the other really fears is that one will full comply with his or her demand."

"knowledge ultimately makes us unhappy. . . jacques lacan claims that the spontaneous attitude of a human being is that of 'i don't want to know about it' - a fundamental resistance against knowing too much."

"that is the enigma of knowledge: how is it possible that the whole psychic economy of a situation changes radically not when the hero directly learns something (some long repressed secret), but when he gets to know that the other (whom he thought ignorant) also knew it all the time, and just pretended not to know in order to keep up appearances."

"what the emphasis on multitude and diversity masks is, of course, the underlying monotony of today's global life. . . what occludes (and thereby sustains) this monotony is the multiplicity of resignifications and displacements to which the basic ideological texture is submitted."

"it is difficult, properly traumatic, for a human animal to accept that his or her life is not just a stupid process of reproduction and pleasure-seeking, but that it is in the service of a truth.  and this is how ideology seems to work today, in our self-proclaimed postideological universe: we perform our symbolic mandates without assuming them and 'taking them seriously'."

"through all these displacements, the same old story is being told.  in short, the true function of these displacements and subversions is precisely to make the traditional story relevant to our 'postmodern' age - and thus to prevent us from replacing it with a new narrative. . . we make fun of our beliefs, while continuing to practice them, that is, to rely on them as the underlying structure of our daily practices. . . when we think we are making fun of the ruling ideology, we are merely strengthening its hold over us."

"spontaneity and the 'let it go' attitude of indulging in excessive freedoms belong to those who have the means to afford it - those who have nothing have only their discipline.  the 'bad' physical discipline, if there is one, is not collective training but, rather, jogging and body-building as part of the subjective economy of the realization of the self's inner potentials - no wonder an obsession with one's body is an almost obligatory part of ex-leftist radicals' passage into the 'maturity' of pragmatic politics."

"the apparently modest relativization of one's own position is the mode of appearance of its very opposite, of privileging one's own position of enunciation.  compare the struggle and pain of the 'fundamentalist' with the serene peace of the liberal democrat who, from his safe subjective position, ironically dismisses every full-fledged engagement, every 'dogmatic' taking sides."

". . .in the unique [russian] expression awos or na awos, which means something like 'on our luck'; it articulates the hope that things will turn out all right when one makes a risky radical gesture without being able to discern all its possible consequences. . . the interesting feature of this expression is that it combines voluntarism, an active attitude of taking risks, with a more fundamental fatalism: one acts, makes a leap, and then one hopes that things will turn out all right."