apparent than real. Freud already knew about the connection between narcissism and immersion in a crowd, best rendered precisely by the Californian phrase “sharing an experience.” And what is crucial is the underlying symbolic pact which enables the assembled masturbators to “share a space” without intruding on each other’s space. The more one wants to be an atomist, the more some figure of the big Other is needed to regulate one’s distance from others. Perhaps this accounts for the strange, but adequate, impression it is difficult to avoid when one encounters a true hedonist solipsist: in spite of her unconstrained indulgence in personal idiosyncrasies, she strikes us as weirdly impersonal—what she lacks is the very sense of the “depth” of a person.
What, then, is missing in today’s social bond, if it is not the big Other?30 The answer is clear: a small other which would embody, stand in for, the big Other—a person who is not simply “like the others,” but who directly embodies authority. In our postmodern universe, every small other is “finitized” (perceived as fallible, imperfect, “merely human,” ridiculous), inadequate to give body to a big Other—and, in this way, preserves the purity of the big Other unblemished by its failings. When, in a decade or so, money will finally become a purely virtual point of reference, no longer materialized in a particular object, this dematerialization will render its fetishistic power absolute: its very invisibility will render it all-powerful and omnipresent. The task of radical politics is therefore not to denounce the inadequacy of every small other to stand in for the big Other (such a “critique” only reinforces the big Other’s hold over us), but to undermine the very big Other and, in this way, to untie the social bond the big Other sustains. Today, when everyone complains about dissolving social ties (and thereby obfuscating their hold over us, which is stronger than ever), the true job of untying them is still ahead of us, more urgent than ever.
Lacan’s standard notion of anxiety is that, as the only affect that does not lie, it bears witness to the proximity of the Real, to the inexistence of the big Other; such anxiety has to be confronted by courage, it should lead to an act proper which, as it were, cuts into the real of a situation. There is, however, another mode of anxiety which predominates today: the anxiety caused by the claustrophobia of the atonal world which lacks any structuring “point,” the anxiety of the “pathological Narcissus” frustrated by the fact that he is caught in the endless competitive mirroring of his fellow men (a-a’-a”-a”’ . . .), of the series of “small others” none of which functions as the stand-in for the “big Other.”31 The root of this claustrophobia is that the lack of embodied stand-ins for the big Other, instead of opening up the social space, depriving it of any Master-figures, renders the invisible “big Other,” the mechanism that regulates the interaction of “small others,” all the more all-pervasive.
Serbsky Institute, Malibu
With this shift towards the “atonal world,” the obscene solidarity between the Law and its superego underside is supplanted by the hidden solidarity between tolerant permissiveness and religious fundamentalism. A recent scandal in Malibu not only displayed the obscene pact between the biopolitical “therapeutic” approach and the fundamentalist reaction to it, but also the catastrophic ethical price we have to pay for this pact.
In good old Soviet times, the Serbsky Institute in Moscow was the psychiatric flagship for punitive political control; its psychiatrists developed painful drug methods to make detainees talk and extract testimony for use in national security investigations. Underpinning the ability of psychiatrists to incarcerate people was an invented political mental disorder known as (“sluggish vilotekushchaia schizophrenia”). Psychiatrists described symptoms thus: a person might appear quite normal most of the time but would break out with a severe case of “inflexibility of convictions,” or “nervous exhaustion brought on by his or her search for justice,” or “a tendency to litigation” or “reformist delusions.” The treatment involved intravenous injections of psychotropic drugs that were so painfully administered that patients became unconscious. The overriding belief was that a person had to be insane to be opposed to Communism. Is this psychiatric approach to politically problematic positions a thing of the past? Unfortunately, no: not only is the Serbsky Institute today happily thriving in Putin’s Russia, but, as a recent incident with Mel Gibson indicates, it will soon open a branch in Malibu! Here is Gibson’s own description of what happened to him on Friday, July 28, 2006:
I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the LA County Sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable.
It is reported that Gibson said, “F------ Jews . . . The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” and asked a deputy, “Are you a Jew?” Gibson apologized, but his apology was rejected by the Anti-Defamation League. Here is what Abraham Foxman, director of the League, wrote:
Mel Gibson’s apology is unremorseful and insufficient. It’s not a proper apology because it does not go to the essence of his bigotry and his anti-Semitism. His tirade finally reveals his true self and shows that his protestations during the debate over his film The Passion of the Christ, that he is such a tolerant, loving person, were a sham.
Later, Gibson offered a more substantial apology, announcing through a spokesman that he would undergo rehabilitation for alcohol abuse. He added: “Hatred of any kind goes against my faith. I’m not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.” Gibson said he is “in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display.” This time, Foxman accepted his apology as sincere:
Two years ago, I was told by his publicist that he wants to meet with me and have an understanding. I’m still waiting. There is no course, there is no curriculum. We need in-depth conversation. It’s therapy—and the most important step in any therapy is to admit that you have a problem, which is a step he’s already taken.
Why waste precious time on such a vulgar incident? For an observer of the ideological trends in the US, these events display a nightmarish dimension: the mutually reinforcing hypocrisy of the two sides, the anti-Semitic Christian fundamentalists and the Zionists, is breathtaking. Politically, the reconciliation between Gibson and Foxman signals an obscene pact between anti-Semitic Christian fundamentalists and aggressive Zionists, whose expression is the growing support of the fundamentalists for the State of Israel (recall Pat Robertson’s claim that Sharon’s heart attack was divine retribution for the evacuation of Gaza). The Jewish people will pay dearly for such pacts with the devil—can one imagine what a boost anti-Semitism will receive from Foxman’s offer? “So if I now say something critical about Jews, I will be forced to submit to psychiatric therapy . . .”
What underlies the final reconciliation is, obviously, an obscene quid pro quo. Foxman’s reaction to Gibson’s outburst was not excessively severe and demanding; on the contrary, it let Gibson all too easily off the hook. It accepted Gibson’s refusal to take full personal responsibility for his words (his anti-Semitic remarks): they were not really his own, it was pathology, some unknown force that took over under the influence of alcohol. However, the answer to Gibson’s question “Where did those vicious words come from?” is ridiculously simple: they are part and parcel of his ideological identity, formed (as far as one can tell) to a large extent by his father. What sustained Gibson’s remarks was not madness, but a well-known ideology (anti-Semitism).
In our daily life, racism works as a spontaneous disposition lurking beneath the surface and waiting for a “remainder of the day” to which it can attach itself and color it in its own way. I recently read Man Is Wolf to Man, Janusz
