Human is an authorized animal. The reality of a world is authorized by signifiers; it’s a symbolic order. A human free will is identified as the ground of such authorizations of reality. Example: Marx’s free will subsists in history as the ground that authorizes the signifier “class struggle”; this political will is called Marxism.

Realities are not mere abstractions that hang in mid-air: Their authorizations are guided by certain concrete material embodiments of truth. A human system is established as the ground of such embodiments of truth. Example: The capitalist system subsists in history as the ground of the embodiments of commodity fetishism and surplus-value that truly capture human desire and labor.

A meaningful confrontation takes place between a will and a system. Example: The political meaning of the Marxist will confronting the capitalist system. But this is just a conscious ideological meaning that is not decisive for the flow of history. What really matters in history is the underground connection between unconscious desires and systemic malfunctions. Example: A general strike can succeed and cause malfunctions that disrupt the system only when it can rely on the workers’ unconscious desires that disrupt their conscious will.

The desire-malfunction connection is not a meaning to be understood. It’s not a reality to be authorized. It’s not a truth to be embodied. It’s unknown and elusive. It’s what psychoanalysis calls the symptom. I call it the meaningless signification of the true truth. Indeed, this is what theory is about. So what does theory do with it?

The true truth that connects desire to malfunction can only be articulated as the signifying derivative dS/dt [1]. The passing of logical time dt is the forward arrow of time which associates the true truth with the continuous increase in entropy and disorder and jouissance. The true truth is like a bunch of shards that splatter from a broken glass [2]. It only ever gets split and undergoes analysis, it never gets united by a synthesis. So what does theory do with the entropy of the true truth?

Theory stages the entropy of the true truth by deploying semblances. Example: The theoretical staging of dialectics in Hegel. The staged drama can be either tragedy or comedy, but it’s always an increase in entropy and jouissance: As time goes forward, desire always disrupts the will, and malfunction always disrupts the system. Tragedy observes the drama from the viewpoint of the disrupted will-system whereas comedy observes the same drama from the perspective of the disrupting desire-malfunction.

The miracle of theory is that its staging of entropy via semblances is repeatable and it works in different contexts for various readers and listeners. The staging of entropy works, that is, it enables the authorization of new realities, the embodiment of new truths and the understanding of new meanings. This is why theory can never be subjugated to action, practice, usefulness, application. Theory is an act in and of itself.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “The meaningless signification of the true truth”

[2] This entropic image echoes Walter Benjamin’s metaphor of translation as putting together fragments of a broken vessel. Žižek: “Judaism  conceives our universe as a broken vessel, that is, as the result of a cosmic catastrophe, with the endless task to gather the broken pieces and reconstruct the universe as a harmonious Whole, while Christianity, at its most radical, conceives the act of breaking itself as the outburst of divine creativity.” (Disparities)