The ghost of the Mother or Nature who knows that she is dead — Işık Barış Fidaner

The ghost of ‘the father who doesn’t know that he is dead’ is central to Lacanian-Žižekian Superego theory. This ghost was first dreamt by a patient of Sigmund Freud, then it was interpreted and elaborated by Jacques Lacan, and also Leon Trotsky dreamt him in the person of Vladimir Lenin [1].

Slavoj Žižek departed from this notion to define big Other as ‘the God who doesn’t know that He is dead’ and thereby institutionalize the Lacanian symbolic order [2]. Here is the historical meaning of this thesis:

1) The famous Spectre of Communism, whose European trip Marx and Engels told about, gets institutionalized under the status of ‘the God who doesn’t know that He is dead’.

2) By declaring that ‘Stalinism is structured like perversion’ Slavoj Žižek becomes ‘the one who reminds’ the God of Communism ‘that He is dead’.

But remember: Slavoj Žižek does not simply condemn Stalinism, he even assumes the term Dialectical Materialism and starts modifying and tuning it.

Žižek’s final verdict is to raise this question: How can we condemn communism when we cannot even give it a proper analysis?

If communism was simply condemned, the only mission would be ‘to exorcise a spook’, and ‘Pope and Tsar’ would join hands with the ‘Hegelian monarch’ to rub Europe’s tummy and relieve the ideological gas, after which they would ‘recommend the best doctors’ for the remaining gas and leave the scene, but that is not the case.

The inherent gap of the Žižekian big Other is found again in Žižek’s definition of sexual difference:

If Woman does not exist, then man is Woman pretending to exist.
(The Most Sublime Hysteric)

Subtituting the terms with their counterparts, this is translated as follows:
1) If Mother does not exist, then Father is Mother pretending to exist.
2) If Nature does not exist, then God is Nature pretending to exist.

Which means that the ideological ghosts are not one but two:
1) The ghost of the Father or God who doesn’t know that He is dead
2) The ghost of the Mother or Nature who knows that She is dead

Let’s explain this second ghost with examples, later.

(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 “Ölü baba rüyası ve arzuyla geçinmek” Jacques Lacan, “Yaşayan Ölü Lenin. Ekim’in 90. yıldönümü” Slavoj Žižek; in the context of Turkey, the example of this notion would be Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; see also “Şifa dilerim: Lenin’den Gorki’ye, Stalin’den Stalin’e” Slavoj Žižek, “Lenin ve Stalin’de ‘nesnel anlam’” Slavoj Žižek, “Lakant: Hesap Günü yaklaşımı ve tam etik özerklik” Slavoj Žižek

[2] See “Özgürlük bilmezliğin öbür yüzüdür” Slavoj Žižek, “Büyük Öteki: suçu üstlenilen, anlam güvencesi, keyfiyete tehdit, zevahiri kurtarılacak” Slavoj Žižek, “Hamlet: Olmak mı olmamak mı? Mesele budur işte” William Shakespeare