Streaker Streaker:
Oh.
I thought sovereignty would be a good thing to strengthen in Canada so that we could keep pressure on us to participate in other nations' murderous wars to a minimum, just to give one example.
All the contrary, for Slavoj Zizek, only an "empty gesture" can allow Canada to overcome imperialist pressures:
Zizek argues that subversion must take the form of the "empty gesture," the gesture that is offered only in the expectation that it will be refused. For Zizek, subverting the fantasy of the false choice becomes a real act of subversion and resistance. As he writes, "the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of the Law on behalf of the underlying fantasies, but to stick to this letter against the fantasy which sustains it". That is, to resist means not to avoid the (illusion) of choice in the empty gesture, but to take it at face value; not to deny choice (or argue that it is being denied) but to revel in choice, to exploit the opportunity (falsely) offered as a genuine moment of agency and autonomy. "In other words," writes Zizek, "the act of taking the empty gesture (the offer to be rejected) literally—to treat the forced choice as a true choice—is, perhaps, one of the ways to put into practice what Lacan calls 'traversing the fantasy': in accomplishing this act, the subject suspends the phantasmic frame of unwritten rules which tell him how to choose freely—no wonder the consequences of this act are so catastrophic". The fantasy of the empty gesture is not the fantasy of having one's way—if only I could accept the offer!—but rather that of the offer qua offer: it is understood, expected that the offer will be rejected—because that is what one does. One does not say "yes" to the empty gesture without, as Zizek demonstrates, provoking catastrophe.
http://untimelymediations.wordpress.com ... -of-zizek/
