책들의 풍경 : 수학적 사유를 강조하는 책들(교수신문)

책들의 풍경 : 수학적 사유를 강조하는 책들

2004년 04월 23일   강성민 기자

변화의 시대, 수학적 사유를 강조하는 책들이 우리 주변에 넘쳐나고 있다. 수학을 통해서 생각하면 기존과 다른 생각을 할 수 있다는 정도가 아니라, 전혀 다른 세계에 빠져들게 되고 그것은 세계관의 변화와도 직결된다는 주장들이다. 그 가운데 '사고혁명'(루디 러커 지음, 김량국 옮김, 열린책들 刊)은 대표적이다. 이 책에 따르면 세상의 모든 사물은 수, 공간, 논리, 무한 그리고 정보라는 다섯 영역에 따라 사고할 수 있다.

수학의 다섯가지 사유의 유형

예를 들어 인간의 손은 5로 표현될 수 있으며, 공간적 관점에서 보면 곡면이고, 논리의 관점에서는 근육의 기계적인 법칙에 의해 움직이는 시스템이다. 또한 무한의 관점에서는 무수한 수학적인 점들의 응집체가 된다. 이 밖에도 손은 그 외양을 결정하는 DNA 암호 속에 포함된 정보라고 볼 수도 있다.

이와 같이 이 책은 수학의 다섯 영역을 독특한 방식으로 연관시키며 독자들을 수학의 깊은 세계로 안내한다. 욕실의 타일에서부터 두뇌 반구, 이상한 나라의 앨리스, 다비드의 별 등 수학과 관련 없어 보이는 것들도 여기에서는 수학적 사고를 설명하는 소재가 된다.

결국 강조되는 것은 수학에서 건져낸 '사고의 도구들'이다. 저자는 수학이 하나에서부터 무한의 크기에 이르기까지 무언가를 이해하는 데 필요한 대체 언어가 된다는 점에서 수학의 힘을 보여준다.

'아름다운, 너무나 아름다운 수학'(경문사 刊)도 비슷한 책이다. 저자의 주장을 들어보자. "수학은 인간의 정신적 한계를 확장하고, 물리학의 최소단위까지 접근하는 동시에, 우주의 가장 바깥까지 우리를 데려갈 수 있는 놀라운 인간의 발명품"이라는 것이다.

이 책은 수학을 도구로 우리가 만날 수 있는 근본적인 진리와 사유의 세계를 보여준다. 여기에는 수학과 전혀 관계가 없어보이는 O.J 심슨 재판이나 주말 저녁 온가족이 함께 볼 영화고르기, 솔로몬의 지혜와 같은 예상치 못했던 소재들까지 다뤄진다. 어떻게 하면 독자에게 수학을 보다 친숙한 것으로 다가가게 할 것인가를 고민한 흔적이 역력하다.

수학이란 '수에 대한 학문'이기 전에 '사고 방식에 대한 학문'이라는 저자의 생각이다. 수학은 사물을 뒤집어 놓기도 하고 늘였다 줄였다 심지어 없애보기도 하면서 그것의 진정한 본성에 도달하고자 노력한다. 저자가 볼 때 인간의 생리와 경험은 근본적인 지식과 진리에 닿고자 하는 의식에 방해물이 돼왔다. 하지만 수학의 도움으로 인간은 사물을 존재하는 방식 그대로 인식할 수 있다는 것이다.

또한 수학은 '관계에 대한 학문'이다. 수학이 우리 주위의 기본 관계들을 어떻게 밝혀주는지를 말한다. 예를 들어 인과 관계, 증거와 증명의 관계, 진리와 미의 관계가 그것이다. 저자는 시적 열정이 풍부한 서술로 우주를 지배하는 법칙과 우주가 보여주는 아름다움이 동전의 앞뒷면과 같음을 이야기한다.

교양과학 서적을 만드는 출판사들 사이에선 '경험의 법칙'이 하나 있다. "책에 수식이 하나 들어갈 때마다 독자가 반으로 줄어든다"라는 아주 무시무시한 법칙이다. 그런데 이런 금기를 아랑곳않고 수학의 매력을 발산하는 책이 '사인 코사인의 즐거움'(엘리 마오 지음, 파스칼북스 刊)이다. 이 책은 삼각함수에 관해 그 탄생에서부터 20세기 양자역학의 탄생에 영향을 미치기까지 역사적인 관점에서 흥미롭게 서술하고 있다. 돋보이는 건 삼각함수의 해석학적 성격과 기하학적 의미다. 삼각법이 복소수 영역으로 확장되면서 무한급수를 해석하는 틀로 발전하는 과정을 이해하는 것은 '깊이의 수학'을 보여주기에 무리가 없다.

우주론으로 확대되는 수학의 힘

전문가들에게도 수학은 신비에 휩싸인 사고의 영역이다. 거기엔 우리 시대의 기하학으로는 도저히 따라잡을 수 없는 무한 변화가 약동하고 있다. 그걸 가장 잘 보여주는 책이 '수학의 밀레니엄 문제들7'(케이스 데블린 지음, 전대호 옮김, 까치 刊)이다. 미국의 억만장자 랜던 클레이가 문제당 1백만 달러의 현상금을 건 21세기 최고의 수학 난제 7가지를 소개한 책인데, 저자는 명확하고 직관적인 글솜씨로 일반인들의 눈높이로 끌어내려 설명해주고 있다. 그가 말하고자 하는 것은  '리만 가설', '양-밀스 이론과 질량 간극 가설', '내비어-스톡스 방정식' 등이 '무엇인지'가 아니다. 저자가 추구하는 목표는 오히려 문제들의 배경을 보여주고, 문제들이 어떻게 생겨났는지 이야기하고, 그 문제들이 왜 그토록 어려운지 설명하고, 왜 수학자들이 그 문제를 중시하는지 이해시키는 것이다. 그 동안 일상생활이 수학적 원리로 이뤄져있다는 것은 일종의 상식처럼 통해왔지만, 그 원리를 깨닫는 것이 왜 중요하고 필요한지를 수학의 세계에 발목잡힌 인간군상들을 통해 보여준다는 점이 새로운 점이다.

수학적 사유의 가장 큰 매력은 그것이 '아름답다'는 데 있다. '20세기 수학자들과의 만남'(경문사 刊)의 저자 양재현 인하대 교수는 그 이유를 창조성과 엄밀성에서 찾는다. 수학의 발전이 양수에서 음수, 다시 무리수로 변해온 것이 모두 세계를 좀더 세밀하고 명확하게 이해하려는 욕망에서 비롯된 것. 그 욕망은 우주는 팽창된 것이고 무한하다는 물리학의 정설에 의문을 제기한다. '우주의 점'(재너 레빈 지음, 이경아 옮김, 한승 刊)은 수학의 한 영역인 '위상학'(topology)를 우주론에 대입시켜 우주는 무한한 것이 아닐 수 있다는 주장을 편다. 우주가 하나의 점에서 팽창한 둥근 점이고 당연히 시작과 끝이 이어진 球形의 유한체라는 가설인 셈이다. 우주에 끝이 있다는 확신, 그 확신을 증명하는 엄밀한 과학적 논리, 그 과학적 논리를 설명하기 위해 동원되는 일상의 예들이 잘 조합돼 있는 책이다.

©2004 Kyosu.net
Updated: 2004-04-23 01:10

[퍼온글] 누가 슬라보예 지젝을 미워하는가(영문)

전출처 : 로쟈 > 누가 슬라보예 지젝을 미워하는가(영문)

라캉닷컴(Lacan.com)에서 지젝에 관한 소개내용을 옮겨온다. 마지막에 감사의 뜻이 언급되고 있지만, 토니 마이어스의 <누가 슬라보예 지젝을 미워하는가>(앨피, 2005)의 내용을 간추린 것이다. 마이어스의 원서를 안 갖고 계신 분들도 주요 대목들을 대조하여 읽어보면, 훨씬 이해가 빠를 듯하여 옮겨놓는다.

INFLUENCES

The three main influences on Slavoj Zizek's work are G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx and Jacques Lacan

1. Hegel provides Zizek with the type of thought or methodology that he suse. This kind of thinking is called dialectical. In Zizek's reading of Hegel, the dialectic is never finally resolved.

2. Marx is the inspiration behind Zizek's work, for what he is trying to do is to contribute to the Marxist tradition of thought, specifically that of a critique of ideology.

3. Lacan provides Zizek with the framework and terminology for his analyses. Of particular importance are Lacan's three registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Zizek locates the subject at the interface of the Symbolic and the Real.

The Imaginary
The basis of the imaginary order is the formation of the ego in the "mirror stage". Since the ego is formed by identifying with the counterpart or specular image, "identification" is an important aspect of the imaginary. The relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification is a locus of "alienation", which is another feature of the imaginary, and is fundamentally narcissistic. The imaginary, a realm of surface appearances which are deceptive, is structured by the symbolic order. It also involves a linguistic dimension: whereas the signifier is the foundation of the symbolic, the "signified" and "signification" belong to the imaginary. Thus language has both symbolic and imaginary aspects. Based on the specular image, the imaginary is rooted in the subject's relationship to the body (the image of the body).

The Symbolic
Although an essentially linguistic dimension, Lacan does not simply equate the symbolic with language, since the latter is involved also in the imaginary and the real. The symbolic dimension of language is that of the signifier, in which elements have no positive existence but are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences. It is the realm of radical alterity: the Other. The unconscious is the discourse of the Other and thus belongs to the symbolic order. Its is also the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the Oedipus complex. Th symbolic is both the "pleasure principle" that regulates the distance from das Ding, and the "death drive" which goes beyond the pleasure principle by means of repetition: "the death drive is only the mask of the symmbolic order." This register is determinant of subjectivity; for Lacan the symbolic is characterized by the absence of any fixed relations between signifier and signified.

The Real
This order is not only opposed to the imaginary but is also located beyond the symbolic. Unlike the latter, which is constituted in terms of oppositions such as "presence" and "absence", there is no absence in the real. The symbolic opposition between "presence" and "absence" implies the possibility that something may be missing from the symbolic, the real is "always in its place: it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from there." If the symbolic is a set of differentiated signifiers, the real is in itself undifferentiated: "it is without fissure". The symbolic introduces "a cut in the real," in the process of signification: "it is the world of words that creates the world of things." Thus the real emerges as that which is outside language: "it is that which resists symbolization absolutely." The real is impossible because it is impossible to imagine, impossible to integrate into the symbolic order. This character of impossibility and resistance to symbolization lends the real its traumatic quality.

THE SUBJECT
Unlike almost all other kinds of contemporary philosophers, Zizek argues that Descartes' cogito is the basis of the subject. However, whereas most thinkers read the cogito as a substantial, transperent and fully self-conscious "I" which is in complete command of its destiny, Zizek proposes that the cogito is an empty space, what is left when the rest of the world is expelled from itself. The Symbolic Order is what substitutes for the loss of the immediacy of the world and it is where the void of the subject is filled in by the process of subjectivization. The latter is where the subject is given an identity and where that identity is altered by the Self.

Reading Schelling via Lacan
Once the Lacanian concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real are grasped, Zizek, in philosophical writings such as his dicussion of Schelling, always interprets the work of other philsophers in terms of those concepts. This is so because "the core of my entire work is the endeavour to use Lacan as a privileged intellectual tool to reactualize German idealism". (The Zizek Reader) The reason Zizek thinks German idealism (the work of Hegel, Kant, Fichte and Schelling) needs reactualizing is that we are thought to understand it in one way, whereas the truth of it is something else. The term "reactualizing" refers to the fact that there are different possible ways to interpret German idealism, and Zizek wishes to make "actual" one of those possibilities in distinction to the way it is currently realized.

At its most basic, we are taught that German idealism believes that the truth of something could be found in itself. For Zizek, the fundamental insight of German idealism is that the truth of something is always outside it. So the truth of our experience lies outside ourselves, in the Symbolic and the Real, rather than being buried deep within us. We cannot look into our selves and find out who we truly are, because who we truly are is always elsewhere. Our selves are somewhere else in the Symbolic formations which always precede us and in the Real which we have to disavow if we are to enter the Symbolic order.

The reason that Lacan occupies a privileged position for Zizek's lies in Lacan's proposition that self-identity is impossible. The identity of something, its singularity or "oneness", is always split. There is always too much of something, and indivisible remainder, or a bit left-over which means that it cannot be self-identical. The meaning of a word, i.e., can never be found in the word itself, but rather in other words, its meaning therefore is not self-identical. This principle of the impossibility of self-identity is what informs Zizek's reading of the German idealists. In reading Schelling, i.e., the Beginning is not actually the beginning at all - the truth of the Beginning lies elsewhere, it is split or not identical to itself.

How, precisely, does the Word discharge the tension of the rotary motion, how does it mediate the antagonism between the contarctive and the expansive force? The Word is a contraction in the guise of its very opposite of an expansion - that is, in pronouncing a word, the subject contracts his being outside himself; he "coagulates" the core of his being in an external sign. In the (verbal) sign, I - as it were - find myself outside myself, I posit my unity outside myself, in a signifier which represents me. (The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters)

The Subject of the Enunciation and the Subject of the Enunciated
The subject of enunciation is the "I" who speaks, the individual doing the speaking; the subject of the enunciated is the "I" of the sentence. "I" is not identical to itself - it is split between the individual "I" (the subject of enunciation) and the grammatical "I" (the subject of the enunciated). Although we may experience them as unified, this is merely an Imaginary illusion, for the pronoun "I" is actually a substitute for the "I" of the subject. It does not account for me in my full specificity; it is, rather, a general term I share with everyone else. In order to do so, my empirical reality must be annihilated or, as Lacan avers, "the symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing".

The subject can only enter language by negating the Real, murdering or substituting the blood-and-sinew reality of self for the concept of self expressed in words. For Lacan and Zizek every word is a gravestone, marking the absence or corpse of the thing it represents and standing in for it. It is partly in the light of this that Lacan is able to refashion Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" as "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I think not". The "I think" here is the subject of the enunciated (the Symbolic subject) whereas the "I am" is the subject of the enunciation (the Real subject). What Lacan aims to disclose by rewriting the Cartesian cogito in this way is that the subject is irrevocably split, torn asunder by language

The Vanishing Mediator
The concept of "vanishing mediator" is one that Zizek has consistenly employed since For They Know Not What They Do. A vanishing mediator is a concept which somehow negotiates and settles - hence mediating - the transition between two opposed concepts and thereafter disappears. Zizek draws attention to the fact that a vanishing mediator is produced by an assymetry of content and form. As with Marx's analysis of revolution, form lags behind content, in the sense that content changes within the parameters of an existing form, until the logic of that content works its way out to the latter and throws off its husk, revealing a new form in ots stead. Commenting Fredric Jameson's "Syntax of Theory" (The Ideologies of Theory, Minnesota, 1988), Zizek proposes that

The passage from feudalism to Protestantism is not of the same nature as the passage from Protestantism to bourgeois everyday life with its privatized religion. The fisrt passage concerns "content" (under the guise of preserving the religious form or even its strengthening, the crucial shift - the assertion of the ascetic acquisitive stance in economic activity as the domain of manifestation of Grace - takes place), whereas the second passage is a purely formal act, a change of form (as soon as Protestantism is realized as the ascetic acquisitive stance, it can fall off as form). (For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political factor)

Zizek sees in this process evidence of Hegel's "negation of the negation", the third moment of the dialectic. The first negation is the mutation of the content within and in the name of the old form. The second negation is the obsolescence of the form itself. In this way, something becomes the opposite of itself, paradoxically, by seeming to strengthen itself. In the case of Protestantism, the universalization of religious attitudes ultimately led to its being sidelined as a matter of private contemplation. Which is to say that Protestantism, as a negation of feudalism, was itself negated by capitalism.

THE FORMULAS OF SEXUATION

Jouissance
The pleasure principle functions a a limit of enjoyment; it is a law that commands the subject to "enjoy as little as possible". At the same time, the subject constantly attempts to trangress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go "beyond the pleasure principle". The result of transgressing the pleasure principle is not more pleasure, but pain, since thre is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this "painful pleasure" is what Lacan calls jouissance: jouissance is suffering. The term expresses the paradoxical satisfaction the subject derives from his symptom, that is the suffering he derives from his own satisfaction.

Woman
Lacan in Encore states that jouissance is essentially phallic: "jouissance, insofar as it is sexual, is phallic, which means that it does not relate to the Other as such." However, Lacan admits a specifically feminine jouissance, a supplementary jouissance which is beyond the phallus, a jouissance of the Other. This feminine jouissance is ineffable, for women experience it but know nothing about it. Going beyond the phallus, it is of the order of the infinite, like mystical ecstasy.

"Woman doesn't exist", la femme n'existe pas, which Lacan rephrases as "there is no such a thing as Woman", il n'y a pas La femme. Lacan questions not the noun "woman", but the definite article which precedes it. For the definite article indicates universality, and this is the characteristic that woman lacks: "woman does not lend herself to generalisation, even to phallocentric generalisation." He also speaks of her as "not-all", pas toute; unlike masculinity - a universal function founded upon the phallic exception (castration), woman is a non-universal which asmits no exception. "Woman as a symptom" (Seminar RSI) means that a woman is a symptom of a man, in the sense that a woman can only ever enter the psychic economy of men as a fantasy object, the cause of their desire.

For Zizek, woman is what sustains the consistency of man; woman non-existence actually represents the radical negativity which constitutes all subjects. The terms "man" and "woman" do not refer to a biological distinction or gender roles, but rather two modes of the failure of Symbolization. It is this failure which means that "there is no sexual rapport".

POSTMODERNITY
For Zizek, present society, or postmodernity, is based upon the demise in the authority of the big Other. Continuing the theorists of the contemporary risk society, who advocate the personal freedoms of choice or reflexivity, which have replaced this authority, Zizek argues that these theorists ignore the reflexivity at the heart of the subject. For Zizek, lacking the prohibitions of the big Other, in these conditions, the subject's inherent reflexivity manifests itself in attachments to forms of subjection, paranoia and narcissism. In order to ameliorate these pathologies, Zizek proposes the need for a political act or revolution - one that will alter the conditions of possibility of postmodernity (which he identifies as capitalism) and so give birth to a new type of Symbolic Order in which a new breed of subject can exist.

The Law
Zizek refers to the law throughout his work. The term "the law" signifies the principles upon which society is based, designating a mode of collective conduct based upon a set of prohibitions. However, for Zizek, the rule of the law conceals an inherent unruliness which is precisely the violence by which it established itself as law in the first place.

"At the beginning" of the law, there is a certain "outlaw", a certain real of violence which coincides with the act itself of the establishment of the reign of the law... The illegitimate violence by which law sustains itself must be concealed at any price, because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of the law. (For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor)

The authority of the law stems not from some concept of justice, but because it is the law. Which is to say that the origin of the law can be found in the tautology: "the law is the law". If the law is to function properly, however, we must experience it as just. It is only when the law breaks down, when it becomes a law unto itself, and it reaches the limits of itself, do we glimpse those limits and acknowledge its contingency by reference to the phrase "the law is the law".

The Desintegration of the Big Other
One key aspect of the universalization of reflexivity is the resulting desintegration of the big Other, the communal network of social institutions, customs and laws. For Zizek, the big Other was always dead, in the sense that it never existed in the first place as a material thing. All it ever was (and is) is a purely symbolic order. It means that we all engage in a minimum of idealization, disavowing the brute fact of the Real in favor of another Symbolic world behind it. Zizek expresses this disavowal in terms of an "as if". In order to coexist with our neighbors we act "as if" they do not smell bad or look ridiculous.

The big Other is then a kind of collective lie to which we all individually subscribe. We all know that the emperor is naked (in the Real) but nonetheless we agree to the deception that he is wearing new clothes (in the Symbolic). When Zizek avers that "the big Other no longer exists" is that in the new postmodern era of reflexivity we no longer believe that the emperor is wearing clothes. We believe the testimony of our eyes (his nakedness in the Real) rather than the words of the big Other (his Symbolic new clothes). Instead of treating this as a case of punctuting hypocrisy, Zizek argues that "we get more than we bargained for - that the very community of which we were a member has disintegrated" (For They Know Not What They Do). There is a demise in "Symbolic efficiency".

Symbolic efficiency refers to the way in which for a fact to become true it is not enough for us just to know it, we need to know that the fact is also known by the big Other too. For Zizek, it is the big Other which confers an identity upon the many decentered personalities of the contemporary subject. The different aspects of my personality do not claim an equal status in the Symbolic - it is only the Self or Selves registered by the big Other which display Symbolic efficiency, which are fully recognized by everyone else and determine my socio-economic position. The level at which this takes place is not

that of "reality" as opposed to the play of my imagination - Lacan's point is not that, behind the multiplicity of phantasmatic identities, there is a hard core of some "real Self", we are dealing with a symbolic fiction, but a fiction which, for contingent reasons that have nothing to do with its inherent structure, possesses performative power - is socially operative, structures the socio-symbolic reality in which I participate. The status of the same person, inclusive of his/her very "real" features, can appear in an entirely different light the moment the modality of his/her relationship to the big Other changes. (The Ticklish Subject: the Absent Center of Political Ideology)

The Return of the Big Other
Besides the construction of little big Others as a reaction of the demise of the big Other, Zizek identifies another response in the positing of a big Other that actually exists in the Real. The name Lacan gives to an Other in the Real is "the Other of the Other". A belief in an Other of the Other, in someone or something who is really pulling the strings of society and organizing everything, is one of the signs of paranoia. Needless to say that it is commonplace to argue that the dominant pathology today is paranoia: countless books and films refer to some organization which covertly control governments, news, markets and academia. Zizek proposes that the cause of this paranoia can be located in a reaction to the demise of the big Other:

When faced with such a paranoid construction, we must not forget Freud's warning and mistake it for the "ilness" itself: the paranoid construction is, on the contrary, an attempt to heal ourselves, to pull ourselves out of the real "illness", the "end of the world", the breakdown of the symbolic universe, by menas of this substitute formation. Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture)

Paradoxically, then, Zizek argues that the typical postmodern subject is one who displays an otright cynicism towards official institutions, yet at the same time believes in the existence of conspirancies and an unseen Other pulling the strings. This apparently contradictory coupling of cynicism and belief is strictly correlative to the demise of the big Other. Its disappearance causes us to construct an Other of the Other in order to escape the unbearable freedom its loss encumbers us with. Conversely, there is no need to take the big Other seriously if we believe in an Other of the Other. We therefore display cynicism and belief in equal and sinceres measures.

Postmodernism: An Over-Proximity to the Real
One of the ways in which Zizek's understanding of the postmodern can be characterized is as an over-proximity of the Real. In postmodern art (or postmodernism0 Zizek identifies various manifestations of this, such as the technique of "filling in the gaps". What Zizek means by this can be seen in his comparative analysis of The Talented Mr. Ripley (book and film). In Patricia Highsmith's novel, Ripley's homosexuality is only indirectly proposed, but in Anthony Minghella's film Ripley is openly gay. The repressed content of the novel, the absence around which it centers, is filled in. For Zizek, what we lose by covering over the void in this way is the void of subjectivity:

By way of "filling in the gaps" and "telling it all", what we retreat from is the void as such, which is ultimately none other than the void of subjectivity (the Lacanian "barred subject"). What Minghella accomplishes is the move from the void of subjectivity to the inner wealth of personality. (The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory)

In Highsmith's novel the status of Ripley's sexuality is. at most, equivocal. As such, the book remains "innocent" in the eyes of the big Other because it does not openly trangress one of its norms. While we can interpret the clues in the story as indicating Ripley's homosexuality, we do not have to do so. The film, on the other hand, "shows it all", Ripley is here objectively homosexual. So whereas in one instance the reader can decide subjectively whether or not Ripley is gay, the film allows no such room for manoeuvre and the viewer is forced to accept Minghella's reading of the text.

IDEOLOGY
For Zizek, we are not so much living in a post-ideological era as in an era dominated by the ideology of cynicism. Adapting from Marx and Sloterdijk, he sums up the cynical attitude as "they know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still, they are doing it". Ideology in this sense, is located in what we do and not in what we know. Our belief in an ideology is thus staged in advance of our acknowledging that belief in "belief machines", such as Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses. It is "belief before belief."

Pinning Down Ideology with Points de Capiton
One of the questions Zizek asks about ideology is: what keeps an ideological field of meaning consistent? Given that signifiers are unstable and liable to slippages of meaning, how does an ideology maintain its consistency? The answer to this problem is that any given ideological field is "quilted" by what, following lacan, he terms a point de capiton (literally an "upholstery button" though is has also been translated as "anchoring point"). In the same way that an upholstery button pins down stuffing inside a quilt and stops it from moving about, Zisek zrques that a point de capiton is a signifier which stops meaning from sliding about inside the ideological quilt. A point de capiton unifies an ideological field and provides it with an identity. Freedom, i.e, is in itself an open-ended word, the meaning of which can slide about depending on the context of its use.

A right-wing interpretation of the word might use it to designate the freedom to speculate on the market, whereas a left-wing interpretation of it might use it designate freedom from the inequalities of the market. The word "freedom" therefore does not mean the same thing in all possible worlds: what pins its meaning down is the point de capiton of "right-wing" or "left-wing". What is at issue in a conflict of ideologies is precisely the point de capiton - which signifier ("communism", "fascism", "capitalism", "market economy" and so on) will be entitled to quilt the ideological field ("freedom", "democracy", Human rights" and son on).

The Two Deaths
The fact that for Zizek the apparently all-inclusive whole of life and death are supplemented, by both a living death and a deathly life, points to the way in which we can die not just once, but twice. Most obviously, we will suffer a biological death in which our bodies will fail and eventually disintegrate. This is death in the Real, involving the obliteration of our material selves. But we can also suffer a Symbolic death. This does not involve the annihilation of our actual bodies, rather it entails the destruction of our Symbolic universe and the extermination of our subject positions.

We can thus suffer a living death where we are excluded from the Symbolic and no longer exist for the Other. This might happen if we go mad or if we commit an atrocious crime and society disowns us. In this scenario, we still exist in the Real but not in the Symbolic. Alternatively, we might endure a deathly life or more a kind of life after death. This might happen if, after our bodies have died, people remember our names, remember our deeds and so on. In this case, we continue to exist in the Symbolic even though we have died in the Real.

The gap between the two deaths, Zizek argues, can be filled either by manifestations of the monstrous or the beautiful. In Shakespeare's Hamlet for example, Hamlet's father is dead in the Real, however, he persists as a terifying and monstrous apparition because he was murdered and thereby cheated of the chance to settle his Symbolic debts. Once that debt has been repaid, following Hamlet's killing of his murderer, he is "completely" dead. In Sophocles' Antigone, the heroine suffers a SYmbolic death before her Reak death when she is excluded fom the community for wanting to bury his traitorous brother.

This destruction of her social identity instils her character with a sublime beauty. Ironically Antigone enters the domain between the two deaths "precisely in order to prevent her brother's second death: to give him a proper funeral that will secure his eternalization" (The Ticklish Subject: the Absent Centre of Political Ontology). That is, she endures a Symbolic death in order that her brother, who has been refused proper burial rites, will not suffer a Symbolic death himself.

The Spectre of Ideology
Zizek distinguishes three moments in the narrative of an ideology.
1. Doctrine - ideological doctrine concerns the ideas and theories of an ideology, i.e. liberalism partly developed from the ideas of John Locke.
2. Belief - ideological belief designates the material or external manifestations and apparatuses of its doctrine, i.e. liberalism is materialized in an independent press, democratic elections and the free market.
3. Ritual - ideological ritual refers to the internalization of a doctrine, the way it is experienced as spontaneous, i.e in liberalism subjects naturally think of themselves as free individuals.

These three aspects of ideology form a kind of narrative. In the first stage of ideological doctrine we find ideology in its "pure" state. Here ideology takes the form of a supposedly truthful proposition or set of arguments which, in reality, conceal a vested interest. Locke's arguments about government served the interest of the revolutionary Americans rather than the colonizing British.

In a second step, a successful ideology takes on the material form which generates belief in that ideology, most potently in the guise of Althusser's State Apparatuses. Third, ideology assumes an almost spontaneous existence, becoming instinctive rather than realized either as an explicit set of arguments or as an institution. the supreme example of such spontaneity is, for Zizek, the notion of commodity fetishism.

In each of these three moments - a doctrine, its materialization in the form of belief and its manifestation as spontaneous ritual - as soon as we think we have assumed a position of truth from which to denounce the lie of an ideology, we find ourselves back in ideology again. This is so because our understanding of ideology is based on a binary structure, which contrasts reality with ideology. To solve this problem, Zizek suggests that we analyze ideology using a ternary structure. So, how can we distinguish reality from ideology? From what position, for example, is Zizek able to denounce the New Age reading of the universe as ideological mystification?

It is not from the position in reality because reality is constituted by the Symbolic and the Symbolic is where fiction assumes the guise of truth. The only non-ideological position available is in the Real - the Real of the antagonism. Now, that is not a position we can actually occupy; it is rather "the extraideological point of reference that authorizes us to denounce the content of our immediate experience as 'ideological.'" (Mapping Ideology) The antagonism of the Real is a constant that has to be assumed given the xistence of social reality (the Symbolic Order). As this antagonism is part of the Real, it is not subject to ideological mystification; rather its effect is visible in ideological mystification. Here, ideology takes the form of the spectral supplement to reality, concealing the gap opened up by the failure of reality (the Symbolic) to account fully for the Real.

While this model of the structure of reality does not allow us a position from which to assume an objective viewpoint, it does presuppose the existence of ideology and thus authorizes the validity of its critique. The distinction between reality and ideology exists as a theoretical given. Zizek does not claim that he can offer any access to the "objective truth of things" but that ideology must be assumed to exist if we grant that reality is structured upon a constitutive antagonism. And if ideology exists we must ne able to subject it to critique. This is the aim of Zizek's theory of ideology, namely an attempt to keep the project of ideological critique alive at all in an era in which we are said to have left ideology behind.

RACISM AND FANTASY

Fantasy as a Mask of the Inconsistency in the Big Other
One way at looking at the relationshipbetween fantasy and the big Other is to think of fantasy as concealing the inconssistency of the Symbolic Order. To understand this we need to know why the big Other is inconsistent or structured around a gap. The answer to this question is that when the body enters the field of signification or the big Other, it is castrated. What Zizek means by this is that the price we pay for our admission to the univerdal medium of language is the loss of our full body selves.

When we submit to the big Other we sacrifice direct access to our bodies and, instead, are condenmned to an indirect relation with it via the medium of language. So, whereas, before we enter language we are what Zizek terms "pathological" subjects (the subject he notates by S), after we are immersed in language we are what he refers to as "barred" subjects (the empty subject he notates with $). What is barred from the barred subject is precisely the body as the materialization or incarnation of enjoyment (jouissance). Material jouissance is strictly at odds with, or heterogenous to, the immaterial order of the signifier.

For the subject to enter the Symbolic Order, then, the Real of jouissance or enjoyment has to be evacuated from it. Which is another way to saying that the advent of the symbol entails "the murder of the thing". Although not all jouissance is completely evacuated by the process of signification (some of it persists in what are called the erogenous zones), most of it is not Symbolized. And this entails that the Symbolic Order cannot fully account for jouissance - it is what us missing in the big Other. The big Other is therefore inconsistent or structured around a lack, the lack of jouissance. It is, we might say, castrated or rendered icomplete by admitting the subject, in much the same way as the subject is castrated by its admission.

What fantasy does is conceal this lack or incompletion. So, as we saw previoulsly when alluding to the formulas of sexuation, "there is not sexual relationship" in the big Other. What the fantasy of a sexual scenario thereby conceals is the impossibility of this sexual relationship. It covers up the lack in the big Other, the missing jouissance. In this regard, Zizek often avers that fantasy is a way for subjects to organize their jouissance - it is a way to manage or domesticate the traumatic loss of the jouissance which cannot be Symbolized.

The Window of Fantasy
For Zizek, racism is produced by a clash of fantasies rather than by a clash of symbols vying for supremacy. There are several distinguishing features of fantasy:
1. Fantasies are produced as a defence against the desire of the Other manifest in "What do you want from me?" - which is what the Other, in its incosnsistency, really wants from me.
2. Fantasies provide a framework through which we see reality. They are anamorphic in that they presuppose a point of view, denying us an objective account of the world.
3. Fantasise are the one unique thing about us. They are what make us individuals, allowing a subjective view of reality. As such, our fantasies are extremely sensitive to the intrusion of others.
4. Fantasies are the way in which we organize and domesticate our jouissance.

Postmodern Racism
Zizek contends that today's racism is just as reflexive as every other part of postmodern life. It is not the product of ignorance in the way it used to be. So, whereas racism used to involve a claim that another ethnic group is inherently inferior to our own, racism is now articulated in terms of a respect for another's culture. Instead of "My culture is better than yours", postmodern or reflexive racism will argue that "My culture is different from yours". As an example of this Zizek asks "was not the official argument for apartheid in the old South Africa that black culture should be preserved in its uniqueness, not dissipated in the Western melting-pot? (The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For)

For him, what is at stake here is the fethishistic disawoval of cynicism: "I know very well that all ethnic cultures are equal in value, yet, nevertheless, I will act as if mine is superior". The split here between the subject of enunciated ("I know very well...") and the subject of the enunciation ("...nevertheless I act as if I didn't") is even preserved when racists are asked to explain the reasons for their behavior. A racist will blame his socio-economic environment, poor childhood, peer group pressure, and so on, in such a way as to suggest to Zizek that he cannot help being racist, but is merely a victim of circumstances. Thus postmodern racists are fully able to rationalize their behavior in a way that belies the traditional image of racism as the vocation of the ignorant.

The Ethnic Fantasy
If "ethnic tension" is a conflict of fantasies, what is then the racist fantasy? For Zizek there are two basic racist fantasies. The first type centers around the apprehension that the "ethnic other" desires our jouissance. "They" want to steal our enjoyment from "us" and rob us of the specificity of our fantasy. The second type proceeds from an uneasiness that the "ethnic other" has access to some strange jouissance. "They" do not things like "us". The way :they" enjoy themselves is alien and unfamiliar. What both these fantasies are predicated upon is that the "other" enjoys in a different way than "us":

In short, what really gets on our nerves, what really bothers us about the "other", is the peculiar way he organizes his jouissance (the smell of his food, his noisy songs and dances, his strange manners, his attitude to work - in the racist perspective, the "other" is either a workaholic stealing our jobs or an idler living on our labor. ( Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture)

So ethnic tension is caused by a conflict of fantasies if we regard fantasy as a way of organizing jouissance. The specificity of "their: fantasy conflicts with the specificity of "our" fantasy".

For Zizek, the perception of a threat, by "them" as well as by "us", remains strong. The last two decades have witnessed a marked rise in racial tension and ethnic nationalism. Following Lacan and Marx, Zizek ascribes this rise to the process of globalization. This process refers to the way in which capitalism has spread across the world. displaceing local companies in favor of multinational ones. The effects of this process are nor necessarily just commercial, for what is at stake are the national cultures and politics bodies which underpin, and are supported by, resident industries. When McDonald's opens up in Bombay, for example, it is not just another business, but represents a specifically American approach to food, culture and social organization. The more capitalism spreads, the more it works to dissolve the efficacy of national domains, dissipating local traditions and values in favor of universal ones.

The only way to offset this increased homogeneity and to assert the worth of the particular against the global is to cling to our specific ethnic fantasy, the point of view which makes us Indians, British or Germans. And if we try to avoid being dissolved in the multicultural mix of globalization by sticking to the way we organize jouissance, we will court the risk of succumbing to a racist paranoia. Even if we attempt to institute a form of equality between the ways in which we aorganize enjoyment, unfortunately, as Zizek points out, "fantasies cannot coexist peacefully" (Looking Awry

The Ethics of Fantasy
For Zizek is the state that should act as a buffer between the fantasies of different groups, mitigating the worst effects of thoses fantasies. If civil society were allowed to rule unrestrained, much of the world would succumb to racist violence. It is only the forces of the state which keep it in check.

In the long term, Zizek argues that in order to avoid a clash of fantasies we have to learn to "traverse the fantasy" (what lacan terms "traversing the fantôme). It means that we have to acknowledge that fantasy merely functions to screen the abyss or inconsistency in the Other. In "traversing" or "going through" the fantasy "all we have to do is experience how there is nothing 'behind' it, and how fantasy masks precisely this 'nothing'". (The Sublime Object of Ideology<)

The subject of racism, be it a Jew, a Muslim, a Latino, an African-American, gay or lesbian, Chinese, is a fantasy figure, someone who embodies the void of the Other. The underlying argument of all racism is that "if only they weren't here, ife would be perfect, and society will be haromious again". However, what this argument misses is the fact that because the subject of racism is only a fantasy figure, it is only there to make us think that such a harmonious society is actually possible. In reality, society is always-already divided. The fantasy racist figure is just a way of covering up the impossibility of a whole society or an organic Symbolic Order complete unto itself:

What appears as the hindrance to society's full identity with itself is actually its positive condition: by transposing onto the Jew the role of the foreign body which introduces in the social organism disintegration and antagonism, the fantasy-image of society qua consistent, harmonious whole is rendered possible. (Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Holliwood and Out)

Which is another way of saying that if the Jew qua fantasy figure was not there, we would have to invent it so as to maintain the illusion that we could have a perfect society. For all the fantasy figure does is to embody the existing impossibility of a complete society.

Lacan.com thanks Tony Myers who graciously lent material from his Slavoj Zizek, London: Routledge, 2003.

 

06. 05. 14.

 

P.S. 아래는 라캉닷컴이 제공하고 있는 지젝의 간략한 전기적 이력이다.

 

He was born the only child of middle-class bureaucrats (who hoped he would become an economist) on 21 March 1949 in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and, at that time, part of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was, then, under the rule of Marshal Tito (1892-1980), one of the more 'liberal' communist countries in the Eastern Bloc, although, as Zizek points out, the freedoms the regime granted its subjects were rather ambivalent, inducing in the population a form of pernicious self-regulation. One aspect of state control that did have a positive effect on Zizek, however, was the law which required film companies to submit to local university archives a copy of every film they wished to distribute. Zizek was, therefore, able to watch every American and European release and establish a firm grasp of the traditions of Hollywood which have served him so well since.

Zizek's interest in the films of Hollywood was matched only by a dislike for the films and, particularly, the literature of his own country. Much of Slovenian art was, for him, contaminated by either the ideology of the Communist Party or by a right-wing nationalism. Slovenian poetry specifically is still, according to Zizek, falsely venerated as "the fundamental cornerstone of Slovene society". Consequently, from his teenage years onwards, Zizek devoted himself to reading only literature written in English, particularly detective fiction.

 

Pursuing his own cultural interests, Zizek developed an early taste for philosophy and knew by the age of 17 that he wanted to be a philosopher. Studying at the University of Ljubljana, Zizek published his first book when he was 20 and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts (philosophy and sociology) in 1971, and then went on to complete a Master of Arts (philosophy) in 1975. The 400-page thesis for the latter degree was entitled "The Theoretical and Practical Relevance of French Structuralism", a work which analysed the growing influence of the French thinkers Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Gilles Deleuze.

 

Unfortunately, although Zizek had been promised a job at the university, his thesis was deemed by the officiating panel to be politically suspicious and he therefore lost the job to another candidate who was closer to the party line. According to his fellow Slovenian philosopher Miaden Dolar (b. 1951), the authorities were concerned that the charismatic teaching of Zizek might improperly influence students with his dissident thinking.

Disappointed by this rejection of his talents, Zizek spent the next couple of years in the professional wilderness, undertaking his National Service in the Yugoslav army, and supporting his wife and son as best he could by occasionally translating German philosophy. However, in 1977 several of his influential connections secured him a post at the Central Committee of the League of Slovene Communists where, despite his supposedly dissident politics, he occasionally wrote speeches for leading communists and, during the rest of the time, studied philosophy.

 

In these years, Zizek became part of a significant group of Slovenian scholars working on the theories of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) and with whom he went on to found the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana. This group, among whose best-known members are Dolar and Zizek's second wife Renata Salecl (b. 1962), established editorial control over a journal called Problem! (in which Zizek was not afraid to author bad reviews of his own books, or even to write reviews of books that did not exist), and began to publish a book series called Analecta. Zizek himself is unsure as to why so many Lacanians should have gathered in Ljubljana, but he does point out that, in contrast to the other countries in the former Yugoslavia, there was no established psychoanalytic community to hamper or mitigate their interest in the usually controversial work of the Frenchman.

Although still disbarred from a traditional university position, in 1979 Zizek's friends procured him a better job as Researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Institute for Sociology. At the time, Zizek thought that this was an intellectual cul-de-sac in which the communist regime placed those who were inconvenient to them. As it transpired, however, this job, which would be the envy of most academics, meant Zizek was able to pursue his research interests free from the pressures of teaching and bureaucracy. It was there that, in 1981, he earned his first Doctor of Arts degree in philosophy.

 

It was also in 1981 that Zizek travelled to Paris for the first time to meet some of the thinkers he had been writing about for so long and writing to - (he has several books by Jacques Derrida, for example, dedicated to him). Although Lacan was chief among these thinkers, he died in 1981 and it was actually Lacan's son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller, who was to prove more decisive in Zizek's development.

Miller conducted open discussions about Lacan in Paris (and he still does), but he also conducted a more exclusive thirty-student seminar at the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne in which he examined the works of Lacan on a page by page basis. As the only representatives of Eastern Europe, both Zizek and Dolar were invited to join this seminar and it is there that Zizek developed his understanding of the later works of Lacan which still informs his thinking today. Miller also procured a teaching fellowship for Zizek and became his analyst. It was during these analytical sessions with Miller, which often only lasted ten minutes, that Zizek learned the truth of his oft-reported assertion that educated patients report symptoms and dreams appropriate to the type of psychoanalysis they are receiving. The result of Zizek's fabrication was that the sessions with Miller often ended up as a game of intellectual cat-and-mouse.

This game ended in something of an impasse when Zizek completed his second Doctor of Arts (this time in psychoanalysis) at the Universite Paris-VIII in 1985. Miller, with whom Zizek had successfully defended his thesis, was the head of a publishing house but he delayed publishing Zizek's dissertation and so Zizek had to resort to a publisher outside the inner circle of Lacanians. This second major disappointment of his professional career threw Zizek back on his own resources. These resources were already being put to more obvious political ends back in Slovenia where Zizek became a regular columnist in a paper called Mladina. Mladina was a platform for the growing democratic opposition to the communist regime, a regime whose power was gradually diminishing throughout the second half of the 1980s in the face of growing political pluralism in both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

 

In 1990, the first democratic elections were held in Slovenia and Zizek stood for a place on the four-man Presidency - he came a narrow fifth. Although he stood as a Liberal Democrat candidate, this position was more strategic than a matter of conviction as he was attempting to defeat the conservative alliance between the nationalists and the ex-communists. Zizek does not, as he has often said, mind getting his political hands dirty. Nor did he mind becoming the Ambassador of Science for the Republic of Slovenia in 1991.

Although Zizek continues to provide informal advice to the Slovenian government, his energies over the past decade have been firmly geared towards his research. Indeed, since 1989 and the publication of The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek has launched over 15 monographs, and a number of edited works written in English, on an eager public. He has also written books in German, French and Slovene, as well as having his work translated into Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian and Swedish. The prolific intensity of Zizek's written output has been matched by his international success as a lecturer where he has faithfully transcribed the molten energy of the word on the page to the word on the stage across four different continents.

 

Apart from his post at what is now the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Zizek has also held positions at SUNY Buffalo; the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; the Tulane University, New Orleans; the Cardozo Law School, New York; Columbia University, New York; Princeton University; the New School for Social Research, New York; and at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor since 1991. He also maintains his editorial role for the Analecta series in Slovenia, as well as helping establish Wo es war (a series based on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxism) and SIC (a series devoted to Lacanian analyses of culture and politics) in German and English.

At all stages in Zizek's life, then, we can detect the insistence of a theme. When he was growing up he preferred the films of Hollywood to the dominant culture of poetry in his own country. As a student he developed an interest in, and wrote about, French philosophy rather than the official communist paradigms of thought. When he began his professional career he preferred to read Lacan in terms of other philosophers rather than adhering to the orthodox Lacanian line. And, as we have seen, as a philosopher himself, he constantly refers to popular culture rather than those topics customarily studied by the subject. In each case, therefore, Zizek's intellectual development has been marked by a distance or heterogeneity to the official culture within which he works. He has always been a stain or point of opacity within the ruling orthodoxy and is never fully integrated by the social or philosophical conventions against which he operates.

The point is that although Zizek's unauthorized approach has cost him the chance to become part of the established institutions on at least two occasions (once with his Master's thesis and once with his second Doctorate), he has defined his position only in his resistance to those institutions. This is not necessarily a question of Zizek initiating some kind of academic rebellion, nor even of proving how in the long run his talents have surpassed the obstacles erected against them, but rather of claiming that the character or identity of Zizek's philosophy is predicated upon the failure of the institutions to accomodate his thought.

 

The eventual success of Zizekian theory proceeds partly from its clearly failure, from the fact that Zizek was able to perceive himself as alien to the system in which he worked. It was this alienation, this difference to the discourse of philosophy of which it was and is a part, which forged the identity of Zizek's own thought. Because Zizekian theory was no part of the objective system, it was in itself subjective. The reason that this is so pertinent is that Zizek describes the formation of what is known as the "subject" in a similar way. Indeed, one of Zizek's main contributions to critical theory is his detailed eleboration of the subject.

작가의 테크닉에 대한 13가지 테제-벤야민(김남시 옮김)

Die Technik des Schriftstellers in dreizehn Thesen[1]

1. 무언가 큰 작품을 쓰려는 사람은 즐겨야 한다. 한 꼭지가 끝난 다음에는 글쓰기의 진전에 방해가 되지 않는 한 모든 것을 자신에게 허락하라.

 2. 원한다면 네가 이미 썼던 것에 대해 말해도 좋지만, 아직 진행 중인 글을 사람들 앞에 선보이지는 마라. 그를통해 생겨나는 모든 종류의 만족감은 너의 템포를 가로막는다. 이러한 체제를 따른다면, 사람들에게 자신의 글을 보여주고자 하는, 점점 증가하는 욕구가 결국 완성을 향한 모터가 된다.

3. 글쓰는 환경에 있어 이도 저도 아닌 애매한 일상을 피하라. 김빠진 소음을 동반한 반쪽짜리 조용함은 오히려 (작업을) 훼손시킨다. 그에반해 에튀드나 사람들의 뒤섞인 말소리들은, 몸으로 느껴지는 한 밤의 적막만큼이나 글쓰기에 중요할 수 있다. 한 밤의 적막이 내면의 귀를 날카롭게 한다면, 저것들은 글을 쓰는 방법의 시금석이 되는데, 그것이 쌓이게 되면 어떤 기괴한 소음들도 그 속에 파묻혀진다.   

4. (필기) 도구를 가려라. 특정한 종이, 펜과 잉크에 까탈스럽게 매달리는 건 도움이 된다. 호화로운 건 아닐지라도 이런 소품들을 갖추어 놓는 건 없어서는 안될 일이다. 

5. 떠오르는 어떤 생각들도 의식하지 않은채 지나가게 하지 마라. 너의 메모 노트를 마치 관청들이 외국인 등록장부를 다루듯 그렇게 엄격하게 활용하라.

6. 너의 펜이 떠오르는 착상에 대해 까다롭게 굴도록 해라, 그러면 펜은 자석같은 힘으로 착상들을 스스로 끌어당길 것이다. 떠오른 생각을 기록하는데 있어 숙고하면 할수록 그 생각은 더 성숙하게 자라나 네 앞에 나타날 것이다. 말은 생각을 함락시키지만, 글자는 그를 지배한다.

7. 아무 것도 떠오르지 않는다는 이유로 결코 글쓰기를 중단하지 마라. 약속 (식사, 선약)을 지켜야 하거나 작품을 끝마쳤을 때에만 글쓰기를 중단하는 것이 문학적 명예의 준칙이다.

8. 착상이 이루어지지 않을 때는 썼던 것을 깨끗히 정서해보라. 그 위에서 영감이 깨어날 것이다.

9. 하루도 글을 쓰지 않고 보내지 마라.  Nulla dies sine linea. 그러나 몇주 동안이라면.

10. 저녁부터 꼬박 날이 밝을 때까지 거기 매달려보지 않은 어떤 글도 결코 완전하다고 생각하지 마라.

11. 작품의 종결은 평소의 작업실에서 쓰지마라. 거기선 작품을 종결짓기 위한 용기가 생겨나지 않을 것이다.

12. 집필의 단계는 생각 – 문체 – 글자의 순으로 하라. 탈고의 의의는 글을 최종적으로 확정하면서 다만 멋진 글자모양을 만들어내는 데 있다. 생각은 착상을 죽이고, 문체는 사고를 속박하며 글자는 문체에 댓가를 지불한다.

13. 작품은 구상의 데드 마스크다.

1.      Wer an die Niederschrift eines größeren Werks zu gehen beabsichtigt, lasse sich’s wohl sein und gewähre sich nach erledigtem Pensum alles, was die Fortführung nicht beeinträchtigt.

2.      Sprich vom Geleisteten, wenn du willst, jedoch lies während des Verlaufs der Arbeit nicht daraus vor. Jede Genugtuung, die du dir hierdurch verschaffst, hemmt dein Tempo. Bei der Befolgung dieses Regimes wird der zunehmende Wunsch nach Mitteilung zuletzt ein Motor der Vollendung.

3.      In den Arbeitsumständen such dem Mittelmaß des Alltags zu entgehen. Halbe Ruhe, von schalen Geräuschen begleitet, entwürdigt. Dagegen vermag die Begleitung einer Etude oder von Stimmengewirr der Arbeit ebenso bedeutsam zu werden, wie die vernehmliche Stille der Nacht. Schärft diese das innere Ohr, so wird jene zum Prüfstein einer Diktion, deren Fülle selbst die exzentrischen Geräusche in sich begräbt.

4.      Meide beliebiges Handwerkzeug. Pedantisches Beharren bei gewissen Papieren, Federn, Tinten ist von Nutzen. Nicht Luxus, aber Fülle dieser Utensilien ist unerlässlich.

5.      Lass dir keinen Gedanken inkognito passieren und führe dein Notizheft so streng wie die Behörde das Fremdenregister.

6.      Mache diene Feder spröde gegen die Eingebung, und sie wird mit der Kraft des Magneten sie an sich ziehen. Je besonnener du mit der Niederschrift eines Einfalls verziehst, desto reifer entfaltet wird er sich dir ausliefern. Die Rede erobert den Gedanken, aber die Schrift beherrscht ihn.

7.      Höre niemals mit Schreiben auf, weil dir nichts mehr einfällt. Es ist ein Gebot der literarischen Ehren, nur dann abzubrechen, wenn ein Termin (eine Mahlzeit, eine Verabredung) einzuhalten oder das Werk beendet ist.

8.      Das Aussetzen der Eingebung fülle aus mit der sauberen Abschrift des Geleisteten. Die Intuition wird darüber erwachen.

9. Nulla dies sine linea – wohl aber Wochen.
10.  Betrachte niemals ein Werk als vollkommen, über dem du nicht einmal vom Abend bis zum hellen Tage gesessen hast.

11.  Den Abschluss des Werkes schreibe nicht im gewohnten Arbeitsraume nieder. Du würdest den Mut dazu in ihm nicht finden.

12.  Stufen der Abfassung : Gedanke – Stil – Schrift. Es ist der Sinn der Reinschrift, dass in ihrer Fixierung die Aufmerksamkeit nur mehr der Kalligraphie gilt. Der Gedanke tötet die Eingebung, der Stil fesselt den Gedanken, die Schrift entlohnt den Stil.

13.  Das Werk ist die Totenmaske der Konzeption.

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[1] Walter Benjamin Schriften IV.1, S.106.

[퍼온글] 눈물의 일반이론

전출처 : 로쟈 > 눈물의 일반이론

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문학은 사랑과 가난과 죽음과 언어, 이 네 개의 원소로 이루어져 있다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 무의미를 견뎌내는 일이 삶에서 중요하다면, 시에서 중요한 것은 의미를 견뎌내는 일이다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 시는 우리 삶의 소중함과 비참함을 동시에 말할 수 있는 몇 안되는 기술이다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 중력이란 무엇인가? 중력은 잡아당기는 힘이다. 이것을 조금 현대적인 의미로 이해하면, 프로그램 pro-gram이다. 즉 우리의 글자들(gram) 앞에 있는(pro) 어떤 것이고, 이 글자들에 무게를 주는 어떤 것이다. 존재 Sein가 존재자를 존재자이게끔 하는 개방성이라면, 중력은 모든 글자들을 글자들이게끔 하는, 모든 형태들을 그런 형태들이게끔 하는 개방성이다. 모든 생명체의 DNA 글자들, 유전형 genotype과 표현형 phenotype은 그래서, 중력의 장 속에 놓인다. 그리고 모든 어련하다 싶은 우리의 행동양태나 행동거지들은 중력의 입김 속에 놓인다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 시는 포스트그램 post-gram이다. 시는 글자들을 보내는 기획이면서, 동시에 중력 이후의 삶을 묻는 기술이다. 우리의 바탕이 이러이러하고 그래서 우리가 이 모양이란 걸 알게 된 이후의 삶은 어떤 것이어야 하는가를 묻는다는 점에서 시는 특권적이다. 시는 삶의 윤리학이 아니라 존재의 윤리학이다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 아주 어렸을 때 일로, 나는 기억에 없지만 어머니가 증언하는 바에 따르면, 밖에 나가서 동생이 다른 아이와 싸움이 붙어도 나는 멀거니 옆에서 구경만 했다고 한다. 다 끝나고 나서야 둘이 손을 붙잡고 울면서 돌아왔다고. 이제 와서 사실여부를 확인할 수는 없지만, 그럴 만했을 거라고 생각한다. 지금이라고 해서 내가 달리 처신할 수 있을 것 같지 않기 때문이다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 이 무관심한 태도 dis-interestedness가 나에게서 삶에 대한 무능력을 낳고 무성의를 낳는지도 모르겠다. 사람들로부터 멀리 있게 하는지도 모르겠다. 책이나 영화 속의 멀리 있는 사람들이나 좋아하게 하는지도 모르겠다. 아니면 단지 너무 소심하고 겁이 많은 건지도 모르겠다. 어떤 경우든지, 그런 태도가 전제하고 또 확보하는 거리 dis-tance가 나의 의미론적 생존의 조건이 된다. 나를 생각하게 하고 글을 쓰게 한다. 문학이라거나 철학이라거나 하는 등속의 구분은 여기서 아무런 의미를 갖지 않는다. 나에게 중요한 것은 문체일 따름이다. 문체란 언어의 한 묶음의 변주 variation이고, 어떤 변조 modulation이며, 자신의 바깥을 향한 언어적 긴장이다.(들뢰즈) 문체는 언제나 이질적인 heterogenous 언어 속에다 전위차를 일으켜 그 사이로 무엇인가가 지나가게, 생겨나게 하는 것이다.([S]tyle carves differences of potential between which things can pass, come to pass...) 내가 하고 싶은 일은 바로 그러한 작업이다. 자주 다른 이들의 이런 글들을 읽으며 감전되었던 경험을 다시 되돌려주고 싶은 것이다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 나는 울고 싶은데 神은 내게 계속 쓰라고 명령한다. 그는 내가 빈들거리는 걸 원하지 않는다. 내 처는 줄곧 울고 있다. 나 역시 운다. 나는 의사가 와서 내가 쓰고 있는 동안 아내가 울고 있다고 말할까봐 불안하다. 나는 그녀에게 가지 않겠다. 내게 책임이 있는 건 아니니까. 내 어린것은 온갖 것을 보고 듣는다. 그 애가 나를 이해해 주었으면 좋으련만. 나는 키라를 사랑한다. 내 어린 키라는 자기에 대한 나의 사랑을 느낀다. 그러나 그 애 역시 내가 앓고 있다고 생각한다. 사람들이 그에게 그렇게 말해 주었기 때문이다. 그 애는 내게 내가 잘 잤는지의 여부를 묻는다. 그러면 나는 내가 언제나 잘 잔다고 말해준다. 나는 무얼 써야 할지를 모르겠는데 神은 내게 쓰기를 바라는 것이다.[...] 나는 결함을 지녔다. 나는 인간이다. 神이 아니다. 나는 神이 되고자 한다. 그러므로 나는 나 자신을 개선하려고 노력하는 것이다. 나는 춤을 추고 싶고 그림을 그리고 피아노를 치고 시를 쓰고 싶다. 나는 모든 사람을 사랑한다. 이것이야말로 내 생의 목표이다.(니진스키, <고백>) ∴ ∴ ∴ 드디어 관에 뚜껑이 덮였다. 못이 꽝꽝 박히고 짐마차에 실렸다. 마차는 삐걱거리며 움직이기 시작했다. 나는 거리가 끝나는 데까지밖엔 전송하지 않았다. 마부가 채찍을 휘둘렀다. 말은 속보로 달리기 시작했다. 노인은 그 뒤를 쫓아가면서 어이어이 소리를 내어 울었다. 뛰어서 쫓아가느라고 그 울음소리는 몹시 떨렸고 가끔 끊어지기도 했다. 가엾은 노인은 모자를 떨어뜨렸지만 그것을 집으려고 멈추어서지도 않았다. 비가 그의 맨머리를 적셨다. 바람이 일기 시작했다. 노인은 그런 것쯤은 전혀 느끼지 못하는 것처럼 소리를 내어 울며 마차의 이쪽저쪽을 겅중겅중 뛰어서 왔다갔다했다. 낡아빠진 프록코트의 옷자락은 날개처럼 바람에 나부꼈다. 호주머니란 호주머니에서는 책들이 비죽이 기어나오고 무슨 책인지 커다란 것이 한 권 소중하게 쥐어져 있었다. 길가는 사람들은 모자를 벗고 성호를 그었다. 어떤 사람들은 발걸음을 멈추고 놀란 얼굴로 이 가련한 노인을 지켜보고 있었다. 책들은 쉴새없이 호주머니에서 진창으로 굴러떨어졌다. 사람들이 그를 불러 세워 물건을 떨어뜨렸다고 가르쳐주었다. 노인은 그것을 집어들고는 다시 마차 뒤를 쫓아갔다. 길모퉁이에서 어떤 거지 노파가 그에게 손을 내밀며 들러붙더니 함께 관 뒤를 따라갔다. 드디어 마차는 모퉁이를 돌아 내 시야에서 사라져버렸다.(도스토예프스키, <가난한 사람들>) ∴ ∴ ∴ 능글맞기도 하지만 괜히 잘 우는 사람들이란 고정관념을 나는 러시아인들에 대해 가지고 있는데, 그것이 이 두 러시아인 댄서/작가에게 힘입은 것이라는 걸 부인하지 않겠다. 사실 러시아 문학을 좋아하게 된 것은 그런 그들의 정서가 나에게 맞았기 때문이었다. 나는 그다지 잘 우는 편은 아니지만, 자신의 연약함과 무능력에 대한 고백으로서의 울음이 우리 생의 첫 발성(언어)이었다는 사실에 언제나 감동받는다. 외롭고 힘들어 지칠 때마다, 우리가 이 근원의 장소를 찾아가고 이 원초적 정념에 호소한다는 사실에 언제나 고무받는다. 예컨대, <파리, 텍사스>에서 자신이 가장 사랑했던 가정이 파탄나자 트래비스는 자신이 잉태되었던 바로 그 근원의 장소로서 '파리'(프랑스 파리가 아니다)를 찾아 사진 한 장을 들고 황량한 텍사스 사막을 헤맨다. 그의 그런 행위에 의해 물리적으로 동질적인 어떤 공간이 파리 Paris/텍사스 Texas로 분절된다. 이 분절은 성(聖)/속(俗)의 경우와 마찬가지로 의미론적이고 구제론적인 것이다. 이 고질적인 의미론/구제론은 아주 인간적이고 너무도 인간적이다. 우리는 그리 돼먹은 듯하다. ∴ ∴ ∴ "나는 한번도 울어본 적이 없다. 왜냐하면 나의 눈물들은 생각들로 변했기 때문이다. 이 생각들은 눈물과 마찬가지로 쓰라리지 않을까?" 이것은 루마니아의 작가 에밀 시오랑(E. M. Cioran, 1911-1995)의 말이다. 철학을 공부하다가 그만둔 그는 1937년 파리로 건너가서 이후 죽을 때까지 인근의 창녀들이 야밤에도 소란을 피우는 싸구려 호텔 다락방에 은둔하며 살았다. 그가 철학을 그만둔 데에는 한 가지 일화가 있다. 칸트와 피히테, 쇼펜하우어, 베르그송을 읽으면서 철학을 제외하곤 시에도 무관심했던 그는 남들처럼 논문을 쓰기로 결정하고 어떤 주제를 고를까 고심했다. 그리고는 진부하면서 뭔가 독특한 주제를 찾았다고 생각해서 지도교수에게 달려갔다. "'눈물의 일반이론'이 어떻겠습니까? 그건 해낼 수 있을 것 같습니다." 그러자 "가능이야 하겠지. 하지만 참고문헌을 찾는 게 어렵지 않겠나." 이에 "그건 문제가 없습니다. 인류의 역사 전체가 논문의 근거가 되니까요." 그는 자신에 차서 말했다. 그러자 지도교수는 경멸에 찬 시선을 보냈고, 그는 그 순간 철학에 대한 모든 기대를 포기한다. 그의 말: "나는 철학이 어려움에 처한 인간에게 아무런 말도 할 게 없다는 걸 깨달았다. 철학은 인간에게 문제를 제기하는 법을 가르치지만 결국은 인간을 각자의 운명속으로 내팽개치고 마는 것이다." ∴ ∴ ∴ 나는 언젠가 나 자신이 그런 작업을 해보면 어떨까 하는 생각을 하게 되었다. 시오랑이 포기한 '눈물의 일반이론'이란 것. 현재 이러고저러고 하는 것의 대부분은 이 눈물의 일반이론을 위한 연습이고 밑그림이라는 생각도 한다. 거꾸로 철학에 대한 나의 관심은 이에 근거한다. 어려움에 처한 인간에게 아무런 말도 할 게 없는 철학의 무능력 자체는 바로 우리의 무능력을 닮은 것이다. 우리는 거기에서 다시 시작해야 한다. 무엇을? 내던져지고 내팽개쳐진 각자의 운명(시오랑은 해체de-composition라고 부른다. 이 해체가 그의 글쓰기 양식을 규정한다.) 속에서, 각자의 눈물 속에서 의미있는 일반이론, 즉 연대 solidarity를 끌어내는 일 말이다. 개인의 울음을 집단의 통곡으로 바꿔놓는 일 말이다. 언젠가는. ∴ ∴ ∴ 가난한 내가 아름다운 나타샤를 사랑해서 오늘밤은 푹푹 눈이 나린다 나타샤를 사랑은 하고 눈은 푹푹 날리고 나는 혼자 쓸쓸히 앉어 소주(燒酒)를 마신다 소주(燒酒)를 마시며 생각한다 나타샤와 나는 눈이 푹푹 쌓이는 밤 흰 당나귀를 타고 산골로 가자 출출이 우는 깊은 산골로 가 마가리에 살자 눈은 푹푹 나리고 나는 나타샤를 사랑하고 나타샤가 아니 올 리 없다 언제 벌써 내 속에 고조곤히 와 이야기한다 산골로 가는 것은 세상한테 지는 것이 아니다 세상 같은 건 더러워 버리는 것이다 눈은 푹푹 나리고 아름다운 나타샤는 나를 사랑하고 어데서 흰 당나귀도 오늘밤이 좋아서 응앙응앙 울 것이다 - 백석, <나와 나타샤와 흰 당나귀> ∴ ∴ ∴ 이 시의 1연은 나(화자)의 사랑-이야기의 전조이다. 가난한 내가 아름다운 나타샤를 사랑하는 건 현실에서는 잘 이루어지기 힘든 사랑이다. 이때 푹푹 나리는 눈은 이 사랑의 축복과 고난을 동시에 표시한다. 아름다운 나타샤를 사랑하는 나는 눈이 푹푹 나리는 날 밤주막에서 소주를 마시며 그녀를 기다린다. 이런 나의 현실을 이 시에서 가장 객관적으로 토로하고 있는 부분은 2연의 전반부이다. "나타샤를 사랑은 하고/ 눈은 푹푹 날리고/ 나는 혼자 쓸쓸히 앉어 소주(燒酒)를 마신다". 여기서 '사랑하고' 대신에 쓰인 '사랑은 하고'란 표현은 은근하게 나의 사랑을 특수화, 주제화하고 있다. '은'이라는 조사에 의해서 한정되어 있는, 나의 사랑은 혼자만의 사랑이고 외로된 사랑이다. 즉 나는 그녀, 나타샤가 오지 않을 거라는 걸 이미 알고 있다. 오지 않을 그녀는 눈 나리는 밤에 내가 불러낸 일종의 미적 가상이라고 해도 좋을 것이다. 그것은 오직 상상 속에서만 현실화될 수 있는 어떤 것이다. '님'이란 말 대신에 이 시에 이색적으로 쓰인, 러시아 여성의 이름 '나타샤'도 나와 그녀와의 거리를 더욱 분명하게 표시하며, '푹푹'(한숨소리!) 날리는 눈발 또한 혼자 소주를 마시는 그의 쓸쓸한 정조를 부추긴다. 그렇지만 이런 그의 정조는 곧 반전된다. 후반부의 내용은 어느 정도 술이 오른 나의 소망사항이다. 나는 이렇듯 눈이 푹푹 나리고 쌓이는 밤에 나타샤와 흰 당나귀를 타고 깊은 산골 마가리(오막살이)에 가서 살고 싶다. 그것이 나의 소망이고 꿈이다. 여기서 아마도 도회(혹은 읍내)와 대립적인 의미로 사용되고 있는 산골은 현재의 현실과 대립되어 있는 소망스런 미래의 공간이다. 나는 (현재의)도회/(미래의)산골, (현재의)현실/(미래의)소망이라는 구도를 떠올리면서 전자에서 후자로의 이행 bergang을 자신에게 독려한다. 나의 환유 metonymy로서의 흰 당나귀는 이 이행의 매개자이며 보조자가 될 것이다. 3연은 소주 기운과 자신의 소망에 더욱 고조된 나의 자신감을 보여준다. "나타샤를 사랑은 하고/ 눈은 푹푹 날리고"(2연)와 "눈은 푹푹 나리고/ 나는 나타샤를 사랑하고"(3연)의 도치된 문형은 그런 정조의 차이를 확연하게 드러낸다. 그의 자신감은 사랑의 주체로서의 나를 분명하게 명시하고 있는 데서도 확인할 수 있다. 이후로 나에게서 푹푹 나리는 눈은 나와 나타샤의 사랑에 대한 따뜻하고 여유로운 축복의 뜻을 강하게 갖는다. 이윽고 마지막 5연에서 나의 기쁜 마음은 절정에 이른다. 이제 아름다운 나타샤는 (다른 사람도 아닌) 나를 사랑하는 것이다! "흰 당나귀도 오늘밤이 좋아서 응앙응앙 울 것"이라는 표현은 나타샤와의 사랑을 통한 나의 신생(新生)을 말하는 것에 다름아니다. ∴ ∴ ∴ 시에 대한 감상을 대강 적어보았다. <나와 나타샤와 당나귀>(1938)는 60년 전의 시이다. 그렇지만 응앙응앙 하는 신생의 울음소리는 아직도 생생함을 잃지 않고 있다. 나는 그런 것이 시로 변한 눈물들, 생각으로 변한 눈물들, 빈들거리지 않는 눈물들의 힘이라고 생각한다(당신은 소주의 힘이라고 말하려는가?). 사실 우리가 "더러워 버리는 것"이기는 해도, 우리는 매번 세상한테 (넘어)진다. 그래서 넘어가는 사람 Uber-mensch이 되기 위한 바쁜 이행 Uber-gang의 와중에도 넘어지는 사람 Unter-mensch으로서 우리는 매번 몰락 Unter-gang하기를 잊지 않는 것이다. 하지만 어쩌겠는가, 그것이 우리가 피할 수 없는 운명이라면. 세상이 본래 그리 돼먹은 거라면. 우리가, 가난한 우리가 참는 수밖에. 우리가 이 운명을 사랑하는 수밖에. 이러한 운명이 너무 좋아서 응앙응앙 오늘도 우는 수밖에! ∴ ∴ ∴ 간혹 돈가방이라도 들고 어디론가 튀고 싶다!.. 98. 8. 5-6.