Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism by Slavoj Zizek

Author:Slavoj Zizek
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Idealism, Philosophy, Movements
ISBN: 9781844679027
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2012-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Rickeracke! Rickeracke!

Geht die Mühle mit Geknacke.

Hier kann man sie noch erblicken,

Fein geschroten und in Stücken.

In the original illustration, the shapes are sneering obscenely, insisting in their evil even after death … (Adorno was right when he wrote that when one encounters a truly evil person, it is difficult to imagine that this person can ever die.) The formula of the drive is thus the same as Kant’s formula of duty, “Du kannst, denn du sollst!” (You can, because you must!)—a deeply ambiguous formula that can be read in two ways which may appear to overlap, but are in fact very different: (1) no matter how hard or impossible the task appears, you simply have to do it!; (2) since you should do it, although you really cannot, you are forever condemned to feel guilty for not having done it. The first version is the formula of the unconditional drive which insists beyond life and death; the second is its superego perversion.

This obstinacy can also be embodied in a particular organ, like a fist or the feet, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Red Shoes,” the story of Karen, a poor little girl adopted by a rich old lady after her mother’s death. Growing up vain, she buys a pair of red shoes and wears them to church, where she pays no attention to the service. When her adoptive mother becomes ill, Karen deserts her, preferring to attend a party in her red shoes. But once she begins dancing, she cannot stop—the shoes take over: she cannot control them, they are stuck to her feet and continue to dance, through fields and meadows, come rain or shine, night and day. She cannot even attend her adoptive mother’s funeral. An angel appears to her, condemning her to dance until she grows cold and pale, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen then asks the executioner to chop off her feet. He does so and gives her a pair of wooden feet and crutches. Thinking that she has suffered enough for the red shoes, Karen decides to go to church, but the chopped-off feet still wearing the red shoes dance before her, barring the way. The following Sunday she tries again, thinking herself at least as good as the others in church, but again the dancing shoes bar the way. Karen then goes to do service in the parsonage, and when Sunday comes she dares not go to church. As she sits alone at home and prays to God, it is as though the church comes home to her and her heart becomes so filled with peace and joy that it bursts. She dies, and her soul flies on rays of sunlight to heaven, where no one asks her about the red shoes.63

In his film The Red Shoes, Michael Powell transposed Andersen’s fairy tale into a modern ballet-company setting, but with a strange twist: the dancing shoes bring death to the heroine (called Vicky) not because they enact her fidelity to her vocation, but because they push her towards the suicidal act of sabotaging her return to a dancing career.

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