🫣🙃😏 Hypocritique 🫣🙃😏

A critical theorist is someone who performs dissatisfaction in the intellectual realm, which involves a double prohibition [1]:
1) You are prohibited to display frustration: You have to vindicate yourself from dependence and lack by projecting your frustration onto someone else, who will be your scapegoat/demon from now on.
2) You are prohibited to display satisfaction: Because otherwise you will be forced to acknowledge your interlocutor/audience and admit your dependence on him/her/them. You must set a buffer zone by inserting your scapegoat/demon in between you and them.

The essence of critical theory is masculine imposture [2]. It says the following:
1) “I have the phallus…” i.e. I am not frustrated, I have the object you desire.
2) “…but it does nothing for me.” i.e. I am not satisfied, the object serves something else.

This is exactly what Herr K said to Dora (Freud’s patient) when he attempted to kiss her by the lake:
1) “My wife…” i.e. I own your object-cause of desire, the other woman.
2) “…is nothing to me.” i.e. I have some critical thoughts that might interest you.

Critical theory is only as “cool/sexy” as the scandal of ingratitude that it exhibits, so the general formula is [3]:
1) To be relatively well-off in a “developed” country with some cultural hegemony (not frustrated).
2) To disparage gratitude for one’s fate and praise the power of envy to mobilize disgruntled people (not satisfied).

The most effective criticism is psychocriticism [4], because people cannot easily control their emotions; and the most effective psychocriticism is sexual psychocriticism, because sexual emotions are the most difficult to control. This brings us to two pieces of psychocritical wisdom mentioned by a listener to articulate the spirit of an online panel [5]:
1) “Don’t trust anyone who cannot get laid.”
2) “Don’t trust anyone who talks too much about getting laid.”

As you might have guessed:
1) The first wisdom prohibits sexual frustration. This is because the psychocritic needs a scapegoat/demon whose visible marks of frustration will vindicate the psychocritic from lack.
2) The second wisdom prohibits sexual satisfaction. This is because the psychocritic has to focus his/her empathy on mobilizing the envy of his/her audience elsewhere.

The general problem of psychocritique is how to constantly present new metaphors of sex:
1) It must be a condensation sufficiently intense to stand for sex (not frustrated).
2) But sexuality must remain indirect to conserve its metaphoric effect (not satisfied).

The problem with psychocritique is not that it’s too sexual, but that it’s not sexual enough: It skips the metonymic foreplay of signifiers in lalangue (psychoanalysis) too early and rushes to jump the bones of imaginary meaning.

(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 “Castrated: Cast & Rated”, “Networking and Wetworking”, “Occidental Demembrance”, “Frustration and Dissatisfaction, Privation and Castration”

[2] See “Genuine Analysis is Beyond Criticism: Criticism Reveals Imposture, Analysis Reveals Self-Sabotage”, “From hypo-critical reason to hippo-queery-tickle reason: Just a dream → A just dream → Adjust dream”

[3] See “Make Gratitude Cool Again”

[4] See “Lack-own and Ideoanalysis”, “The Psychorevolt Liberration Manifesto: Žižek With A Human Face Or Scrubbing Intersectional Politics With The Psychoanalytic Detergent”

[5] See “Game B: A Dark Renaissance Response” Alexander Bard, Cadell Last, Owen Cox, Raven Connolly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRT4s2hXY34