Perversion the Social Relation

I2.0 Slavoj Èizekcial life, like the participations in the obscene rituals of the reigningideology.Was not the infamous Kristallnacht in 1938—this half-organized halfspontaneousoutburst of violent attacks on Jewish homes, synagogues,businesses, and people themselves—a Bakhtinian "carnival" if ever therewas one? One should read this Kristallnacht precisely as a "symptom":the furious rage of such an outburst of violence makes it a symptom—the defense formation covering up the void of the failure to interveneeffectively in the social crisis. In other words, the very rage of the anti-Semitic pogroms is a proof a contrario of the possibility of the authenticproletarian revolution: its excessive energy can only be read as thereaction to the ("unconscious") awareness of the missed revolutionaryopportunity. And is not the ultimate cause of the Nostalgie (nostalgiafor the Communist past) among many intellectuals (and even "commonpeople") of the defunct German Democratic Republic also the longing,not so much for the Communist past, for what effectively went on underCommunism, but rather, for what might have happened there, for themissed opportunity of another Germany? Consequently, are the post-Communist outbursts of neo-Nazi violence also not a negative proof ofthe presence of these emancipatory chances, a symptomatic outburst ofrage displaying the awareness of the missed opportunities? One shouldnot be afraid to draw a parallel with the individual psychic life: in thesame way the awareness of a missed "private" opportunity (say, the opportunityof engaging in a fulfilling love relationship) often leaves itstraces in the guise of "irrational" anxieties, headaches, and fits of rage,the void of the missed revolutionary chance can explode in the "irrational"fits of destructive rage.The Redeeming ViolenceSo, back to Fight Club. Is then the very idea of the "fight club," the eveningencounters of men who play the game of beating up each other, notthe very model of such a false transgression/excitation, of the impotentpassage à l'acte that bears witness to the failure to intervene effectivelyinto the social body? Does Fight Club not stage an exemplary case of theinherent transgression: far from effectively undermining the capitalist system,does it not enact the obscene underside of the "normal" capitalist