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| Rand's Atlas Shrugged |
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| Zizek: Reading Lacan |
So while I consider the twin pedestals of metaphysics and epistemology in Objectivism to be in serious error, they are so only when considered as attempts at serious scholarship. They become something quite different if we think of them as extended footnotes to readers of her novels; "asides" made to them by the various characters of Galt, Reardon, Taggart, Roark, et al., for the purpose of strengthening the plausibility of the story, and, ultimately, maintaining that all-important suspension of the reader's disbelief. The philosophy of Objectivism (especially its metaphysics and epistemology) — like Atlas Shrugged itself — is ultimately meant as entertainment, not scholarship.
http://aynrand2.blogspot.com/2012/03/philosophy-of-objectivism-as-floating.html
In contemporary art, we often encounter brutal attempts to 'return to the real', to remind the spectator (or reader) that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from the sweet dream. This gesture has two main forms that, although opposed, amount to the same effect. In literature or cinema, there are (especially in postmodern texts) self-reflexive reminders that what we are watching is a mere fiction, as when the actors on screen address us directly as spectators, thus ruining the illusion of the autonomous space of the narrative fiction, or the writer directly intervenes in the narrative through ironic comments. In theatre, there are occasional brutal events that awaken us to the reality of the stage (like slaughtering a chicken on set). Instead of conferring on these gestures a kind of Brechtian dignity, perceiving them as versions of alienation, one should rather denounce them for what they are: the exact opposite of what they claim to be - escapes from the Real, desperate attempts to avoid the real of the illusion itself, the Real that emerges in the guise of an illusory spectacle. (Reading Lacan - Lacan with Eyes Wide Shut - Zizek
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| Bertolt Brecht |
What we confront here is the fundamental ambiguity of the notion of fantasy: while fantasy is the screen that protects us from the encounter with the real, fantasy itself, at its most fundamental - what Freud called the 'fundamental fantasy' which provides the most elementary coordinates of the subject's capacity to desire - cannot ever be subjectivized, and has to remain repressed in order to function.
(RL - Zizek)
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| Eyes Wide Shut - Ending |
Zizek Video: Screening Thought with Paul Taylor
Zizek below also on youtube with Paul Taylor
http://youtu.be/410z4x6ZbtYsrc="http://www.youtube.com/embed/410z4x6ZbtY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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| Lacan |
Lacan's quip about awakening into reality as an escape from the real encountered in the dream holds true more aptly than anywhere else of the sexual act itself: We do not dream about fucking when we are not able to do it; rather we fuck in order to escape and quell the exorbitant power of the dream that would otherwise overwhelm us. For Lacan, the ultimate ethical task is that of the true awakening: not only from sleep, but from the spell of fantasy that controls us even more when we are awake.(RL - Zizek)
Jorge Luis Borges
“A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.”
Darren's interpretation is that Rand's Objectivism is a footnote to Atlas Shrugged. Was Rand continuing the illusion of the Real (Atlas Shrugged the fiction) or was Rand trying to awaken us from sleep and the spell of fantasy that controls us even more when we are awake???? (Lacan)
In formalizing Objectivism was Rand continuing the fantasy when she was awake to maintain the illusion of the Real? Was Rand trying to keep herself from the Real of the dream by her activity when awake? Was she, was she, was she........? Did she know? Did she suspect?
