Reader’s Guide to Zizek’s SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE I: Presentations

by Terence Blake

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE TITLE

A) WITHDRAWAL AND THE LEAP

In this chapter I begin my discussion of Slavoj Zizek’s SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE. To
begin, I'm going to talk about the title and its ontology. And in fact, this is how Zizek himself starts
his theoretical discussion, but not right at the beginning. He begins the consideration of the title in
the second paragraph of the Introduction: The Unorientable Space of Dialectical Materialism.

The first paragraph is a plea for abstract reflection. It begins with a quotation from Lenin, who cites
Napoleon as saying, in the rough translation given, “One jumps into the fray, and then one figures
out what to do next”.

Zizek is going to deconstruct that sentence, so his first reflection is that it's important today, not to
jump straight into the fray, but to take some time for thinking. He says to see, one has to withdraw
and acquire a minimal distance. This recommendation holds not only for politics, but also for sex,
not only for thinking about sex, but for sex itself, which always relies on a minimal withdrawal, a
withdrawal which is not a retreat into passivity, but perhaps the most radical act of them all.

Aside from Zizek’s advice about how to engage in sex, which one can evaluate for oneself, there is
a methodological principle there that looks rather modest: don't jump into action, withdraw, and
reflect. But in fact, we'll see from the argument of the book, that the sort of reflection that Zizek is
trying to present and construct for us is a leap in itself, it's a leap to a higher level, it's what we can
call a “quantum ascent” in terms of the book’s vocabulary. And it's a leap into the Absolute.

Here we have the importance of the title, if we leave into the Absolute, we better get the notion of
the Absolute right. Or we may be leaping into the wrong thing and just acquiring under the goal of
trying to reach a disalienation, we may be alienating ourselves even further.

In fact, I would argue, but we'll see that perhaps later in the book, that once we make the leap into
the Absolute, and we see that the Absolute is intrinsically failed, we'll see that the Absolute itself is
composed of leaps, is composed of incommensurabilities. And these are incommensurabilities all
the way down sub-incommensurabilities and sub-sub-incommensurabilities.

So once you make the leap that Zizek is recommending, you don't ever stop, you're leaping all the
time. So rather than just having a binary opposition between leaping into the action, as against
withdrawing, we're having a nuanced distinction between two different types of leaping, either we
leap into the fray as pre-constituted by the reigning ideology or we withdraw into reflection.
Withdrawing is not easy in that case, we have to leap back -that's the withdrawal, and leap up –
that’s the reflection. So either way, we're leaping whatever we do.

B) IDEOLOGICAL READING
Next in the second paragraph comes Zizek’s considerations on the title, on the ontology of the title,
but I will argue that he only gives us half the analysis. Zizek says: “The title of this book - SEX
AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE, offers itself to two interconnected common readings”. So, there
are two “common” readings, that is to say they are ideological readings, and more properly Zizek
agrees with Badiou’s analysis of the reigning contemporary ideology which is that there are only
bodies and languages, and no truths. That is to say “and no Absolutes”. (Or, “and no Absolute”, if
you have a problem with plural Absolutes).

The two interconnected common readings are:

“(1) when religion or any other belief in an Absolute fails, unbridled hedonism imposes itself as a
way to some kind of ersatz Absolute”. That's the unconscious, unaware version, that we think we've
gotten rid of all absolutes, weighing bodies and languages, by biomaterialism and democratic
relativism, and we are unaware that by the very fact we’re enshrining the pleasures of bodies and
the pleasures of opinion as a new Absolute.

The second common reading, the second ideological reading of the title is:

(“2) because of the inconsistent nature of sexuality, its elevation into the new Absolute, necessarily
fails”.

That’s Zizek’s constant Lacanian argument: sexuality is inconsistent, it's our only contact with the
Absolute, but you can’t elevate it directly into a transcendent, autonomous Absolute, there is no
such Absolute in that sense. And any candidate “Absolute” including sexuality is traversed by inner
self-antagonism, and so necessarily a failure, and in particular is an Absolute that fails to be an
Absolute, in the sense of the transcendent Absolute.

Zizek goes on with examples, and he takes the case of female orgasm. And although he seems to
generalize it: “the description of intense sexual act as experienced with the highest most intense
unity of being is simply wrong”.

That was quite a theme 40-50 years ago when Abraham Maslow's humanistic psychology was
popular, and I think it still continues today in what people call the New Age ideologies. That's the
idea of sexuality as a peak experience, in the sense of a mystical experience where you attain
complete self-forgetting and complete fusion with the All.

Zizek is saying that's not just epistemologically and ontologically false, it's phenomenologically
false as well.

“it obfuscates the dimension of failure, mediation, gap, antagonism even, which is constitutive of
human sexuality. This minimal reflexivity that cuts from within every immediate orgasmic One is
the topic of the present book”.

So his minimal reflexivity is not just a tiny little step back in order to think, it's the core of the book.
And it's not just a simple piece of advice from a methodologist: take a step back, take a pause, to
integrate what's going on and then go forth. He's giving it ontological purport with respect to the
Absolute.
What is missing from this paragraph, although we can find it later on, is the non-ideological reading
of the title. Using Zizek’s quantum ontology, the two ideological readings that he's proposed are
decoherent readings. Instead of having a quantum superposition with multiple quantum states
superposed and coexisting in the virtual, these ideological readings of the title of Zizek’s book via
the ontology of the ideology of bodies and languages, of biomaterialism and democratic relativism,
decoherent readings.

C) QUANTUM READING

Ontology: re-virtualising and re-actualising

From Zizek’s quantum physical point of view a title, like everything else that is actual, is the result
of the decoherence of a virtual quantum superposition. This decoherence is observed in a specific
experimental set-up. With other experimental set-ups other decoherences would have been possible.

To see this in relation to Zizek’s own title SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE, let us consider
the superposition of infinitives: sex-fail-absolute, taking each of these as unmarked verbs. Other
setups would observe: absolute sex and failure, absolutised failed sex, sexing the Absolute’s failing,
etc. The title itself defines one of the non-binary unorientable spaces that the book itself is about.
Any particular title is generated by a process of quantum descent.

We will see that to open such a space is no guarantee of "success".

So once you've read the book, you can understand the title. The title is either these both at once are
coherent superposed virtual and orientable space with the basic terms in it, that are not preset into
any particular orientation. That's the quantum ascent reading of the title, and the quantum descent
readings are the two that he has just given: bodies and their pleasures are the supreme value or more
determinately the peak sexual experience, in particular of women, is the supreme experience of the
Absolute. Those two are decoherent readings and thus deprecated by Zizek.

I'm arguing, in line with Zizek, that yes we have to have our minimum withdrawal which is either
preparatory of or effectuating quantum ascent, we have to open up these sorts of unorientable
spaces, but that alone is insufficient to guarantee success. Absolute success is ruled out in principle.
And here I'm giving not Zizek's argument but a related one, an ontological one.

Generic Quantum: immanent Platonism

Absolute “success” is ruled out in principle, as it is possible to imagine a meta-universe composed

of a nesting of universes, where the decoherent state of one sub-universe functions as a coherent
state for a sub-sub-universe’s decoherence.

A fictional presentation of this sort of cosmology can be found in Neal Stephenson’s science fiction
novel ANATHEM, which I have analysed on my blog. In that analysis I give a Badiousian reading
of the novel, and in my Presentation of TETRALOGOS I bring out its connections with François
Laruelle’s ideas. A Zizekian reading in terms of the two formulae of sexuation would also be
possible.
Quantum descent: Zizek’s "Lacan"

If we examine the individual terms of the title: “Sex” for Zizek is what Lacan says it is, "failed"
evokes Lacan’s famous "there is no sexual relationship", "Absolute" implies Zizek’s interpretation
of Hegel’s thought through that of Lacan . Zizek’s manifest title is "SEX AND THE FAILED
ABSOLUTE", but on a decoherent reading this manifest title can be read as expressing the latent
tautology: "Lacan and the Lacanned Lacan".

This decoherent reading captures the repetitious aspect of Zizek’s work, its seeming degeneration
into a vast game of tautologous reformulations of Hegel in Lacanese and Lacan in Hegelese. This
aspect of Zizek’s work captures its moments of quantum descent. However, it is incomplete without
examining the inverse movement, that of quantum ascent, what Laruelle calls the "generic".

We are all the decoherent shadows of our coherent selves, and Zizek is no exception. Badiou has
analysed (in THE IMMANENCE OF TRUTHS) this sort of decoherent reading as a "covering-
over", in which the infinities mobilised by a work are replaced by more familiar, finite properties.

Note: for a discussion of Badiou’s concept of covering-over see MY PATH THROUGH

BADIOU’S “THE IMMANENCE OF TRUTHS”: full English text

We shall attempt to do justice to Zizek’s text by refusing ourselves the facilities of such a reductive
reading.

Generic Ascent: Badiou’s Conditions

A first ascent can be achieved by means of Badiou’s philosophy. Zizek talks about "sex" where
Badiou talks about the four conditions of philosophy (science, art, love, politics). Zizek talks about
"failure", where Badiou talks about immanence. The “failed Absolute” in Zizek’s title, on a
Badiousian reading, is an Absolute that fails to be autonomously transcendent, whose absoluteness
is immanently tied to immanent worlds.

Badiou could easily write a book for each of his Truth procedures: on "Love and the immanence of
the Absolute”, "Science and the immanence of the Absolute" etc. In fact these imagined notional
titles correspond to actual chapters in the last part of Badiou’s THE IMMANENCE OF TRUTHS.

Zizek replaces "love" by "sex" and cuts out other possibilities of access to the Absolute, implying
and also explicitly stating) that his way is the only way:

"The only way for us, humans, caught in the parallax gap, to break out of it is through
the experience of sexuality which, in its very failure to achieve its goal, enables us to
touch the dimension of the Absolute" (SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE, page 107).

Generic Ascent: Laruelle’s Acts

However, the quantum ascent is not finished with Badiou. In his recent book TETRALOGOS
Laruelle calls Badiou’s conditions the "acts" of conceptual personae, and he remarks that they
should not be limited to only four. These “conceptual personae” include philosophy, science, and
non-philosophy. I would argue that there is a complementarity persona/act, and that the four truth
conditions are both conceptual character and conceptual acts, depending on the perspective.

Laruelle further argues that Badiou’s reliance on mathematics is a non-generic limitation of his
system as it maintains a gap between formalism and the real. On Laruelle’s view quantum physics
is more generic than mathematical formalism as it overcomes this gap. Elsewhere, Zizek has also
argued the same point against Badiou. However, in SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE Zizek
argues that topological formalism can provide a more satisfying solution.

Generic Dialogue

My conclusion on this point is not that any one of these philosophers is "better" than all the others,
or has the best (most generic, or most quantum, or most immanent, etc.) system, but that we must be
sensitive to these phenomena of generic ascent and descent within the texts that we read.

My motivation, as always, is to open up a more ample dialogue by showing the zones of encounter,
the passages of argument, and the lines of translation between the diverse systems of thought that
are being elaborated around us.

One can remark that most critics of Zizek cannot be taken seriously, as to understand his work one
must read it with at least a working knowledge of Freud, Lacan, Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, quantum
physics, etc. I would add that many followers of Zizek, and that includes Zizek himself as his own
decoherent shadow, need to read him with a working knowledge of Serres, Badiou, Latour, Stiegler,
Deleuze, and Laruelle.

This is the requirement of quantum ascent: to read Zizek’s texts we must re-virtualise them. A
decoherent reading is a dogmatic one.

OTHERING THE OTHER OF THE OTHER’S OTHER

Zizek, of course, agrees with this maxim:

the true dialectical-materialist motto should be Ibi Rhodus, ibi saltus: act in such a way
that your activity does not rely on any figure of the big Other as its ontological
guarantee (SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE, 11).

It is easy to see that this ethical maxim is potentially self-contradictory, as to formulate it Zizek
relies on the terminology and concepts of his own big Other and ontological guarantee, Lacan.

FANTASMATIC SCHOLARSHIP

The problem, as Zizek indicates, is that any such failed ontology cannot be presented in direct
positive terms, but must be mediated, schematised. Zizek’s schematisations are his references to
Lacan and Hegel. They are the framing fantasies he needs to get working theoretically.

To bring out the fantasy element one has only to try a simple-thought experiment. Every time Zizek
appeals to Hegel we can substitute "Modern Occultism", every time he appeals to Lacan we give it
a Hindu spin as "Lacananda". This substitution serves to remove the authority-effect, what Zizek
calls "Word Art", defined as:

one-liners intended to fascinate us with their fake “depth.” They no longer function as
articulated propositions but more like images providing instant spiritual satisfaction
(13).

Zizek’s works contain too many of these one-liners and would be better off without them.

THE SUBSTITUTION GAME

Word Art is the decoherence of thinking, its collapse into doxic determinacy. The thought
experiment I propose can help us break out of the word art aspect of Zizek’s text. If the substitution
works, we can now discuss the actual thesis as it occurs in Zizek’s text more critically.

For example, we can rewrite:

as Hegel would have put it, 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. (SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE, 5).

to obtain:

According to Modern Occultism, subject and object are inherently "correlated", so that a
"ritual" shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects a "magical" shift in the object
itself.

Similarly, we can say that against Taoism’s yin-yang Lacananda preaches: "in yoga there is no
sexual relationship".

It is easy to see that such substitutions are ignorant travesties of Zizek’s philosophical work at the
same time that they reveal its tendency to degenerate into a new form of "wisdom". The principle of
charity requires that we do not play this substitution game with Zizek’s texts, that we give it its
“best” or most generic reading. It is only fair to require that Zizek, and his followers, not play this
game with others thinkers’ texts.

SCHEMATIC SCHOLARSHIP: schematising the bad Other

We can now see more clearly why we must reject Zizek’s useless detours critiquing and rejecting
anything and everything that could count as a possible rival to his two chosen gurus. Zizek knows
nothing about Taoism, Zen, or even Jung. He has invented "Western Buddhism" out of thin air to
have something to inveigh against.

We must not take such diatribes seriously, there is no scholarship there, no work, and no thought
either. Zizek’s interest lies elsewhere (unless you are a disciple of the decoherent Zizek).

READING FOR THE NON-STANDARD ZIZEK

We have seen that Zizek’s conceptual project as instantiated (once again) in his new book SEX
AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE could be read tendentially as a tautologous updating of the
Lacanian research programme. In its tautological form, Zizek’s project can be read as LACAN
AND THE LACANNED LACAN.

In Laruellean terms, we can call this tautologous version of Lacan the "standard" Lacan, not in the
sense of orthodoxy, but rather in the sense of philosophical sufficiency. The two senses are related
in that the principle of sufficiency underlies and validates the orthodoxy. The standard Lacan is the
self-validating Lacan. The same goes for Zizek, the standard Zizek is the self-validating Zizek.

We are reading Zizek to see where he escapes this whole process of sufficiency and self-validation.
We are on the lookout for the non-standard Zizek.

AGAINST THE TAUTOLOGY MACHINE

Zizek’s Freud-Lacan-Hegel tautology machine would quickly grind to a halt if it did not have a way
of integrating its outside as the source of a different type of insights. This predicament of combating
closure models Zizek’s more general question of how to gain access to the real while recognising
our enclosure in transcendental subjectivity.

(The parallax gap traverses Zizek’s work, and our reading of it).

This strategy of incorporating outside resources to prevent the philosophical tautology machine
from reaching maximum entropy can be seen in the reference to "sex" in the title. Zizek’s concept
of "sex" is indebted to Lacan’s formulae of sexuation. By "sex" Zizek means both biological sex
and sex "as described by Lacan’s formulae of sexuation". Zizek is playing his own substitution
game.

FORMULAE OF RECUPERATION

Lacan’s graph and formulae of sexuation are by no means an original contribution. They are
dependent on, and derive from, Deleuze’s prior distinction between the two different images of
thought, embodying the fundamental philosophical choice between standard and non-standard
philosophy: the choice between immanence and transcendence, and the corresponding choice
between pluralism or monism.

Far from preceding, anticipating, or "influencing" Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction Lacan’s
formulae come after the event. They were first expounded in his seminar in 1973, one year after
the publication of ANTI-OEDIPUS (1972), and four or five years after the publication of Deleuze’s
DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION (1968) and LOGIC OF SENSE (1969).

FORMULAE OF ANNEXATION

Lacan’s doctrine as expounded in this seminar amounts to a very weakened and watered down
appropriation of insights that Deleuze and Guattari had been elaborating over the preceding four
years. This strategy of tacit annexation and adulteration is one of Lacan’s preferred modes of
erudition and "creativity".
The amusing thing about Lacan’s graph of sexuation is that if we ask where Freud and Lacan are to
be situated we must conclude that Freud and Lacan himself must be placed on the infamous left side
of the graph, that of transcendence.

The whole of Deleuze and Guattari’s first book together, ANTI-OEDIPUS, is devoted to mapping
out this Freudo-Lacanian dilution and betrayal of immanence by means of transcendent over-
codings.

LACAN AS CONCEPTUAL PERSONA

Zizek’s research programme, while relying on the standard Lacan, attempts to elaborate a different
conceptual portrait of Lacan as non-standard thinker, and at the same time to produce a decoherent
reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought as still remaining within the confines of standard
philosophy. Having taken his distance from this decoherent clone, Zizek is free to annex the
insights he needs to maintain his non-standard Lacan.

DE-SCHEMATISING THE CONCEPTS

We may justly feel impatient with all this talk of "annexation" and pseudo-originality, as these are
mere ontic concerns, and so entangled that it is almost impossible to untangle them. Deleuze and
Guattari themselves annexed in silence and mis-read Lacan more or less knowingly and willfully.
We shall not see the greatness of a thought by cavilling and carping without end.

In SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE Zizek proposes to exit from mere picturing and to lay out
in conceptual form the heuristic core of his philosophical project. We shall need to follow him in his
"abstractive turn" to see where it may take us.

SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE has an interesting and unusual structure. In the interest of
de-schematising his thought he has resorted to a quasi-mathematical form of presentation: a nested
layout of theorems, corollaries, and scholia.

The book contains 480 pages, and after a brief introduction (15 pages) it divides into four
"Theorems" (numbered from I to IV), each followed by a "Corollary" (numbered from 1 to 4). Each
theorem and corollary is followed by from three to five "Scholia" (numbered by decimal notation,
e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 then 2.1 etc.). For the full table of contents see here.

Each theorem is stated and expounded in a chapter of about 50 pages on average (more or less,
depending on the theorem). I will list the theorems here by chapter title, by name and by the
formulation they are given in italics at the head of each theorem-chapter.

Note: the theorems are not given a name by Zizek, so I have chosen the most appropriate name in
terms of Zizek’s terminology. I have also chosen the formulation of Theorem III by quoting a very
general statement within the chapter, as it is the only chapter without a formulation in italics at its
head.

We shall see in surveying the four theorems that the book’s title SEX AND THE FAILED
ABSOLUTE corresponds to only two of the four theorems. A more accurate title would be SEX
AND THE FAILED ONTOLOGY OF UNORIENTABLE SPACES OF REAL ABSTRACTION.

1) THE PARALLAX THEOREM (or THE "FAILED ONTOLOGY" THEOREM)

THEOREM I: THE PARALLAX OF ONTOLOGY

"Not only our experience of reality, but also this reality itself is traversed by a parallax
gap: the co-existence of two dimensions, realist and transcendental, which cannot be
united in the same global ontological edifice" (17).

2) THE REDOUBLING THEOREM

THEOREM II: SEX AS OUR BRUSH WITH the Absolute

"The only way for us, humans, caught in the parallax gap, to break out of it is through
the experience of sexuality which, in its very failure to achieve its goal, enables us to
touch the dimension of the Absolute" (107).

3) THE UNORIENTABILITY THEOREM

THEOREM III: THE THREE UNORIENTABLES

"conceptual thinking is a matter of self-referential twists and inward-turns which, at the

level of the figural, of what Hegel called “representation” (Vorstellung), cannot but
appear as a perplexing paradox" (225).

4) THE NEGATIVITY THEOREM

THEOREM IV: THE PERSISTENCE OF ABSTRACTION

"In the twisted surface of unorientables that is our reality, abstraction is not just a
feature of our thinking but the most basic feature of reality itself whose organic unity is
always and by definition ruined" (343).

THOUGHTS ON “THE WAISTCOAT”

After a general introduction (The Unorientable Space of Dialectical Materialism) which sets the
context and summarises the argument, the book begins with a chapter entitled THEOREM I: THE
PARALLAX OF ONTOLOGY. The incipit of this chapter, i.e. the first page after the introduction,
contains a brief summary and even briefer analysis of a short story, "The Waistcoat". Zizek ends by
telling us that the story illustrates Hegel’s concept of "Absolute Knowing", the central concept of
this book. This is high praise indeed!

The relation between this first example and the rest of the chapter is not evident, and the analysis
proposed by Zizek is very compressed. It is rather hard to see the relation of the story with that
particular chapter, and Zizek’s comments on it are brief and cryptic, as he talks of “Absolute
Knowing”, which is not the subject of that chapter.

The story comes at the start of Theorem I: The Parallax of Ontology and is properly the incipit not
just of this particular chapter but of the book as a whole. One may be puzzled as to the example’s
relevance at that point of Zizek’s argument, and, given the terms of the story, as to its relevance to
the book as a whole. Yet its position as incipit and its characterisation by Zizek as illustrating the
central concept of the book, Absolute Knowing, give it salience, calling for careful consideration.

I will argue that if the Introduction: The Unorientable Space of Dialectical Materialism can be
considered a retroactive summary or rational reconstruction of the book’s argument, then the short
paragraph on “The Waistcoat” can be read as a prospective synopsis of the whole book, not just of
Chapter One, and it could just as well have come at the end.

First Twist: Ruse

The story concerns a young, poor, hard-working couple. The husband is sick, he is suffering from
tuberculosis and ultimately dies of this disease. To hide his loss of weight he repeatedly shortens the
cinch of the waistcoat on one side. He does this "in order not to worry his wife", to reassure her.

The man’s wife does the same on the other side, shortening the other band, not to give her husband
the illusion that he is not losing weight, but that it is not happening as fast as he fears, that there are
periods of remission, "in order to give him hope".

Epistemology I

The waistcoat analogises our knowledge of the real. If we are constantly adjusting our knowledge to
gain a better "fit" with the real and the other is doing so too, we cannot know the real independently
of the mediations, our knowledge is mere convention.

Instead of throwing out the waistcoat and substituting another, each partner "fudges" the size to
make it fit. Knowledge is instrumental.

This corresponds to Theorem I: the parallax of the waistcoat keeps us separate from the real as we
are unable to know all the moves of adjustment at play in the game.

Asymmetry: formulae of Sexuation

Each of the partners is hiding their ruse from the other, i.e. they are not content with just producing
an appearance of (relative) health, they are trying to induce the other in error. However, the
symmetry is only apparent, the result sought by each partner corresponds to the formulae of
sexuation.

1) The husband is trying to produce an illusion that everything is under control, to close off the need
to worry.

2) The wife is trying to produce an impression that despite his weight loss things may be more open
than they seem, hope is possible.

Second Twist: Redoubling

The second twist comes with the discovery by each partner of the other’s ruse: instead of the
obvious reaction of calling the other out, halting the ruse, and discussing the problem openly, they
continue the ruse as a new game. From material and instrumental the game becomes formal and
pragmatic. We are not just confronted with errors that can be either involuntary or deliberate. We
are faced with an ocean of anomalies and adjustments

Epistemology 2

If I take into account the moves of the other players in the knowledge game and I am still obliged to
make further adjustments then something of the real is being touched on. The adjustments in
knowledge are required by transformations in the real.

By including within our purview both the waistcoat and the ongoing adjustments a non-
conventional, non-instrumental knowledge of the real is possible.

This corresponds to Theorem II: the mutual failure to observe and know the real across an
"unaltered" instrument amounts to the inscription of the subjective moves within the real to be
known.

Third Twist: Unoriented Thinking

These two twists are redoubled in thought, as emblematic of a space of thinking that is opened up
by the redoubling of the ruse.

The progression of the consumptive weight loss is no longer simply an unknown degree (subjective
uncertainty), it is unknown to an unknowable degree (objective uncertainty). This corresponds to
Theorem III: the ruse itself when redoubled produces an uncertainty that then becomes a mode of
knowing of the real.

The initial wish to reassure the partner by means of dupery as to the progression of the illness is
transformed into a wish to undupingly assure him or her of one’s love. The love-situation becomes
unorientable, and can be thought in terms of the three unorientables that Zizek is proposing.

1) Möbius Strip: the redoubled play of ruses and adjustments leads to a situation of the coincidence
of opposites (dupery/sharing, secret/explicit, silence/avowal).

2) Cross-Cap: the two ways of managing the traumatic situation of the fatal disease and its progress
introduce the cut of sexual difference: a materially determinate state of affairs in the real becomes
formally indeterminate in reflection.

3) Klein Bottle: the becoming aware of the game needed to continue the game displaces the object
of reflection from the "game" (formal moment), which has as object disease and death, to the love
of the couple playing the game (subjective moment).

Fourth Twist: Retroactive Negativity

These adjustments, adaptations, twists, redoublings and paradoxical subjectivations are moments of
a subjacent negativity, that is reached not only at the end but at every moment along the way.

The couple of the story have been proceeding as if they were surrounded by substantial "normal"
couples, and that their traumatic state of affairs is an exception to this rule. So they act to normalise
their situation, by at least keeping up appearances. This is fated to fail, as no couple is normal, all
couples have an absolute traumatic kernel.

This corresponds to Theorem IV: what the spouses learn from these twists and redoublings is that
negativity is there from the beginning, and is constitutive of the couple and its love. As long as the
couple perdures there is no way out, the ruses resolve nothing, nor does treating the whole thing as a
game, for the game is itself deadly serious. The husband dies at the end and the waistcoat is sold
back to the original merchant.

On Abstraction

I hope this analysis has gone some way towards unpacking the sense of this story, and why Zizek
could call it a figure of Absolute Knowing in a book titled SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE.
Where is the sex? one may ask, and what’s so "absolute" about this foolish-seeming game? Why
does Zizek conclude with "abstraction" seen as “radical negativity”?

The sex is to be found not in any transgressive excess of sexual passion, nor in the empirical fact
that we are dealing with a man and a woman, but in the logic of the different modes of coping with
the trauma, from closure and control under the conditions of exceptionality to openness and hope
under the conditions of reflexivity.

the Absoluteness is to be found in the passage from "faking" it to playing it through. The trauma of
negativity is not something that we can talk through to resolve, as it resists complete and convergent
symbolisation.

The abstraction lies in acknowledging that our attempts to patch up or to cover over the gaps or the
cracks are empty (formal) but necessary (subjective) gestures, that negativity is inevitable because
constitutive.

I have argued that the titular waistcoat of the story functions as an analogue of our transcendentally
constituted knowledge, and that its relative fit to the husband’s torso corresponds to the “fit” of our
knowledge with reality. Seen in this light the story is emblematic of the fundamental problem and
argument of the whole book, i.e. of its movement from the dangers of reductionism or relativism
stemming from the parallax of the transcendental constitution of our knowledge to the resolution of
this problem in the Absolute.

Since the couple’s knowledge of the progression of the wasting disease is singularly mediated by
the waistcoat, its adjustments and its fit, this knowledge can be manipulated accordingly. As the
mediations, in this case the different modifications of the vest’s bands, pile up it becomes even
more impossible for them to get at the true state of the disease’s progression. This impossibility of
unmediated knowledge leads to a displacement of investment.

The adjustments made to the waistcoat’s bands lose their function as (well-meaning) manipulations,
and become demonstrations of love. The move is from material game to formal game, to subjective
game, but the game is also very concrete, its stakes are life and death, the game becomes (as it
always has been) absolute. This absolute game is Absolute Knowing.

Paradoxically it is these very concrete stakes that give an added twist of universality to the story. It
takes on more general import concerning the negativity at the heart of human life and of the couple
as a lived experience and institution.

This general import is not limited to how we handle disease, but also (lack of) money, frustrated
ambitions, housework etc. and even “good” things (e.g. a promotion), as radical negativity lies in
the inescapable trauma of pure difference. (This is why a promotion, a marriage, the birth of a child,
or winning the lottery can have a traumatic impact).

Our own versions of the Waistcoat predicament will hopefully be less tragic. Zizek likes to use
pathological examples, but the lesson is also formal. We should not get too hung up on the concrete
pathology of the content.

I would add that in accordance with Lacan’s formulae of sexuation Zizek describes the actions of
the husband as being undertaken in order for his wife “not to worry”, which corresponds to the
masculine side of keeping up the pretence that everything is under control. Conversely, the woman
acts so as to “give him hope”, which corresponds to the feminine side of the “not-all”, keeping the
world, and thus also the future, open.

Conclusion

In sum: love is a figure of real abstraction, moving in the unorientable space of traumatic
divergence, hoping for moments of reprieve beyond our ability to provoke and control.

THE TANGLED HEURISTICS OF THE CONCEPT

In SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE Zizek gives a systematic presentation of his philosophy
in the form of four theorems (Parallax, Redoubling, Unorientability, Negativity). Together these
theorems express our relation to the Absolute and relate a series of steps towards, or ascent to,
Absolute Knowing.

In discussing our relation to the Absolute Zizek sometimes makes use of the terminology of
"access", and talks of the modalities of our access to the Absolute. However, I think this vocabulary
is untrustworthy. In general “access” is not an appropriate term to describe the knowledge relation.

We must not forget that Object-Oriented Ontology has perverted the term of "access" to create a
false problem and a corresponding false solution. Knowledge is not access, the knowledge relation
is not best described as one of "access". Further, perception is not access, although both knowledge
and access may require some form of access among their conditions of possibility.

“Access” as an epistemological term presupposes a determinate existing object to which an already

constituted subject establishes a partial but direct relation. OOO rightly concludes that we never
have direct access to the object but only to its sensual and conceptual mediations. It wrongly reifies
this conclusion by positing a division between real and illusory “sensual” objects. Zizek concludes,
as do many others, that this inherent failure of “access” demonstrates that this is not the right way to
conceptualise knowledge, but sometimes he forgets his own conclusions.

We have already given names to these theorems, but they have several possible names. If our focus
is epistemological we can view them as providing a coherent critique of the “access” model of
knowledge. We can call them respectively: the No Access Theorem, the Disrupted Access
Theorem, the Dis-oriented Access Theorem, and the Dissolution of Access Theorem.

If the "object" to be accessed, the accessing "subject" and the relation of "access" itself are all
instantiations of radical negativity (TIV – Negativity Theorem), then the picture of a subject
accessing an object (or not) is far too simplistic. This access is impossible (TI – Parallax Theorem),
and it cannot be achieved by indirection (TII – Redoubling Theorem). This redoubling can be
epistemologically effective only when it is itself redoubled (TIII – Unorientability Theorem),
allowing for the inscription of subjectivity into every moment of the quest for access, opening an
unorientable space in which access itself is dissolved and dispersed, as is the Absolute ontological
gap between real and sensual objects.

These four theorems also allow us to reply to the question of the location of the concept, and to that
of its movement. The concept is present from the beginning (TI – Parallax Theorem – concept-
ladenness). All attempts to get behind the concept to compare it to the real only serve to redouble
the concept-ladenness (TII – Redoubling Theorem – all methodologies aiming to redress concepts
are themselves permeated by conceptual presuppositions). This means that a more formal approach
to adapting and improving concepts based on methodological progression fails, the aim of cognitive
convergence on a single “best” theory fails, opening up contradiction, discontinuity, cuts, gaps,
lack, exception and disruption in and between concepts and theories. This failure to achieve
“access" to the object is re-conceptualised as indicating the necessary inscription of unorientable
subjectivity in the concepts themselves (TIII – Unorientability Theorem) and is retroactively or
reflexively attributable to constitutive negativity (TIV - Negativity Theorem: non-self-identity of
concepts).

These four steps, derived from the four theorems, are present in Zizek’s recapitulation of "The
Waistcoat". He calls them deception, redoubled deception, silent knowing, Absolute Knowing.

The Concept as concrete universality is immanent self-reflexively in step three ("silent knowing")
and fully subjectively in step four. It is however present from the start, and the ineradicable parallax
of the concept drives the process.

It follows from this analysis that Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the concept and its place (in
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?) is seriously flawed. Firstly, the detachment of the concept from other
thinking practices (e.g. science) creates an illusion of autonomy of philosophy with respect to
science. Secondly, they deny the existence of concepts inside science, thus making paradigm-
change unthinkable. Thirdly, they re-orient a previously unoriented space to striate it with separate
Zones of Thought (philosophy, art, science). This is a decoherent reading of the concept.

Zizek implicitly uses the Unorientability Theorem in his criticism of Badiou’s distinctions and
demarcations between Being and Event, and between Truth and Knowledge. Similar considerations
apply to Deleuze and Guattari’s treatment of the concept as characterising uniquely philosophy, to
the exclusion of other domains. We have seen above that this thesis is untenable.

Unorientability is constitutive, it defeats these demarcations (i.e. those affirmed by Deleuze and
Guattari and by Badiou) from within.

We have seen that sometimes Zizek slips into a vocabulary of access in regard to knowledge, and
that this is unfortunate. This usage can be contrasted with an analysis making use of the terms of
"embodiment" and "inherence", which I think are far less likely to induce us into error than the
vocabulary of "access" popularised by OOO and its archaic analysis of the knowledge relation.

"Access" indicates a short cut in the passage from the particular to the universal, without noting that
this passage is itself by no means universal. It can only be a heuristic (i.e. useful in some cases) but
non-obligatory requirement. Even so the impression of this passage from particular to universal is
often the product of a retrospective re-ordering of a far more messy dis-ordered or "unorientable"
process.

For example, in many cases one can begin with the universal and approach the particular almost as
an afterthought. This is true both on the intellectual plane (identity politics as particularism is a
derivative, tardive phenomenon) and the subjective plane (politics is in place before ego). There is
no rule.

These neat orderly progressions (such as first particular then universal) correspond to a detached
pedagogical schema imposed on a more disorderly subjectivity. The pedagogy of life and of lived
political experience may, but need not, follow this schema.

The primacy of the signifier as material, and thus particular, element is of no avail here, as if its
materiality allowed it to escape from the aporias of the immaterial concept. The signifier is just one
face of the concept, and it risks enclosing us in a pseudo-universal phase of the dialectical process
because of its own associated parallax. The necessary parallax of the signifier is just as much a
transcendental trap as the parallax of the concept.

The discovery of the signifier may induce a subjective revolution in a particular conjuncture but its
moment cannot be absolutised without falling into the trap of abstraction. The attempts to avoid this
trap may lead in some cases to the "disappearance of the signifier", where an author appeals to some
other word or set of words in order to avoid the word "signifier" becoming itself a master-signifier.

A similar phenomenon would be at work in the "disappearance of the concept". Once one has
recognised the omnipresence of the concept one can begin to think that its parallax is dangerously
reinforced by the word itself, which may tend to enclose our thought in a pan-conceptualism, or
pan-intellectualism. The passage by a synonym can be a useful heuristic in this case.

For example in his new book UNIVERSALITY AND IDENTITY POLITICS Todd McGowan
makes far less use of the word "concept" than in his previous book on EMANCIPATION AFTER
HEGEL. However, McGowan clarifies, quoting Hegel, that the word universality "belongs to the
concept as its own", p 220. The non-mention of the name “concept” is no proof of its absence.
Whereas the signifier bestraddles the type/token distinction, which is what allows it to function as
an implicit concrete universal, the concept is traditionally more on the type side of the distinction
and so more readily associated with the universal. The passage from signifier to concept can be seen
as one path of philosophically bootstrapping oneself into access to the Absolute by increasing
abstraction.

Note: I have discussed above the sense of "heuristic" as one non-obligatory path amongst many, and
the defects of the terminology of "access".

This "bootstrapping" via the concept comes close to granting too much autonomy to the concept as
such. While I have no absolute objection to such depictions, in a discussion whose focus is on an
epistemological heuristics it may be useful to emphasise that the logical and ontological impetus
behind such "bootstrapping" is negativity.

In this chapter I am in the process of re-reading Zizek’s SEX AND THE FAILED ABSOLUTE and
I find it a very interesting and inspiring work. It contains a very useful and systematic elaboration of
Zizek’s main ontological and epistemological theses. In particular, the book contains a thorough
working out of Zizek’s thesis that the (epistemological) absence of foundations for our knowledge
is redoubled by the (ontological) absence of foundations in and for being.

According to Zizek, it is the absence of foundations that is foundation enough.

I read the book as presenting a metaphysical research programme in the technical sense of Karl
Popper and Imre Lakatos, i.e. as presenting a very general vision of the world containing both
testable and untestable elements (Popper) structured around a heuristic core (Lakatos).

Zizek’s metaphysical research programme is in explicit dialogue with other metaphysical research
programmes, in particular with those of Gilles Deleuze and of Alain Badiou, and with the various
new materialisms and speculative realisms.

I would also include the thought of François Laruelle, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, and Bernard
Stiegler as important components of the current problem-situation. A neglected predecessor is Jean-
François Lyotard, especially in his epistemological and ontological reworking of the death-drive.

Zizek is in dialogue with these thinkers, and with many more from philosophy’s history. “Dialogue”
is a grand word. In Zizek’s terms all dialogue is failed dialogue. He also explains there can be no
complete epistemological or ontological closure, so dialogue is always possible.

We can see this thesis of the necessary failure of dialogue exhibited both in Zizek’s often flawed
accounts of other thinkers and conversely in the many flawed or travestied readings of Zizek’s
books. Unsurprisingly on this account Zizek, whose thought is in constant dialogue with itself, also
misunderstands himself.

Zizek’s self-thwarting dialogue with his own thought is a great part of the dialectical force driving
his research programme forward. No doubt he also self-plagiarises, we all do that, the name of this
operation is ego. However, it is self-failing that is the primary dynamic of his constant progress.
We should be aware of this fraught, fractured, wounded, incomplete, and improbable self-dialogue,
and of our own, as we plunge into this eccentric, cranky, wrong-headed, unlikely, i.e. philosophical,
book.