For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor

by Slavoj Žižek

With the disintegration of state socialism, we are witnessing this eruption of enjoymnet in the re-emergence of aggressive nationalism and racism. With the lid of repression lifted, the desires that have emerged are from from democratic. To explain this apparent paradox, says Slavoj Žižek, socialist critical thought must turn to psychoanalysis.

For They Know Not What They Do seeks to understand the status of enjoyment within ideological discourse, from Hegel through Lacan to these political and ideological deadlocks. The author’s own enjoyment of “popular culture” makes this an engaging and lucid exposition, in which Hegel joins hands with Rossellini, Marx with Hitchcock, Lacan with Frankenstein, high theory with Hollywood melodrama.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Psychology, Literary Criticism, Theory

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.

He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).

Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."

Reviews

[Martin Hare Michno · Rating 5 out of 5]

edit: lol how does formatting work on this app

"Even today, my attitude is: those who do not want to talk about For they know not what they do should remain silent about The Sublime Object." - Žižek

This is the theoretical sequel to the stellar Sublime Object, yet it is hardly read or discussed. Reading other reviews on here, a lot of people seem to be frustrated by this book. The obvious reason for this is the apparent difficulty. Žižek himself describes it as a "book theoretical work, in contrast to the succession of anecdotes and cinema references in The Sublime Object. It is undoubtedly more difficult and theory-reliant than some of his other popular work, and relies on the reader being familiar with some of the philosophy of the signifier. I myself dived into this book with little familiarity of Hegel, yet it it didn't pose any problems, as Žižek reads Hegel through Lacan.

From my perspective, the two books form a duet: Sublime Object is the Lacanian part, whereas For they know not what they do dives deeper into Žižek's Hegelianism. Although both parts inevitably intertwine in both books. In this sense, the former seems incomplete without the latter, and I can only agree with Žižek's quote above: his theory of ideology is simply lacking without For they know not what they do.

This is not only a much more methodical, analytical, and in-depth dissection of Žižek's philosophy, but it also paves the way to a New German Idealism, and marks the a strong beginning to Žižek's project towards a dialectical materialist theory of subjectivity, based on Hegel and Lacan.

I don't know why this book is not talked about more in Žižekian circles, but in my opinion it should become essential reading, or a rite of passage for beginners, for anyone who wants to take Žižek seriously.

[Whittyfh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it possible to not understand most of a book but still really enjoy it? I find that is most of my experience with Zizek

[Kobe Bemelmans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een fijne oscillatie tussen Žižeks filosofie en persoonlijke leven, in interviewvorm. Niet baanbrekend, maar wel een aangenaam kennismakingsboek met de 'gevaarlijkste filosoof van het westen'.

[Bimbo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Following several attempts to get through this book which I have been abandoning after only a couple or a full dozen pages I finally decided to give up for some time. Nomen est omen: I didn't know exactly what I was doing (reading) and didn't enjoy it either.
Although it is not very comforting to accept your own intellectual (or even mental) mediocrity I felt more comfortable with that than with reading any further. Obviously I do not reach the heights necessary to read Žižek and/or to do that in a foreign language (English). I guess I shall stick to some of his pop-appearances on YouTube for some time until I gather the mental power for something more. :-)

[isaac smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know this is one of Zizek's hidden gems. Even though "How to Read Lacan" really got me into his work with it's listicke structure, colorful examples, and more lay-oriwnted theory, the "Sublime Object of Ideology" gave me hope that I could appreciate his philosophical project. I really want to read the Sublime Object again. I'm sure I will want to read this again too. But for now, I am glad to have finished.

I think this is the worst case scenario. I have no thoughts on this piece of work. It is like other books I've read where I come away from it realizing I hardly understood much. The other problem is that I read the first part of this before starting school again in the winter, and I chipped away at the second part in little bits and pieces for the past several months. Maybe if I reread it again I'll see ideas and say to myself, "Oh yeah, I remember seeing that." But otherwise, I don't know.

The other problem is that in the past few months I have watched a couple as Zizek talks. I mixed these up with my reading of the book. For a brief period I was also in the habit of watching movies in the background while reading this, but then I would have to reread the same passages later after remembering nothing.

I love Zizek, and there is more philosophical coherency in this one. There is some popular culture, and quite a bit of politics, but it is mostly Lacan and Hegel. He will bring in interpretations from Marxists and other cultural theorists every now and then. But, his writing will always be like a long meandering conversation to me, and that is what I enjoy about it. It just doesn't lend itself to conveying a giant idea or framework.

I have already started reading "enjoy your symptom", and I already enjoy it much more than this one. I remember his "looking awry" reading very incoherently almost like a fever dream, but that could have been more a reflection of me at the time. But, I just like books, movies, and music. So, sorry to any of my more philosophical friends. It is funny because my persona lately has been more mathematical, which even though mathematicians are usually pretty crazy, they are also pretty theoretical. I think acting more mathematical has brought me into circles of more mathematical people. This has a cyclic effect on how I see myself and how I present myself. But, at the end of the day I think I enjoy film and literary criticism more than a lot of other areas of study. Zizek has helped me realize this. Since I do not work in any of these fields as a job, this has little bearing on anything other than my identity and how I spend my discretionary time. If I was pursuing an academic job, I would probably feel more pressure to study math instead of cultural theory.

At this point I am rambling. Bottom line is, I enjoyed this book, and you might too.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 2 out of 5]

probably should've stopped short instead of wasting so much time on this (reading Zizek half-awake on the subway is not a good place to be), but at least the last 3 pages are radically divergent from the rest in that there's some irrational rhetoric and political analysis. he also disses Deleuze implicitly, which intrigued me.
but really, I liked Zizek for his random references and because the Lacanian lexicon is very appealing, but all the Hegel and Kant comes across as near-gibberish, and I can't for the life of me figure out why reconciling them with Lacan is at all important except to philosophy students. The fact that these are lectures reformatted into a book (much as everything he writes is essays recombined) makes it more pedantic than usual as well. Sublime Object of Ideology is a much, much better work, as is Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism, both of which have interesting things to say about politics, while this only has pseudo-math and paradoxes.

[Geoff]

So, according to the man himself, if I am to believe his forward to the second edition, "those who do not want to talk about For they know not what they do should remain silent about The Sublime Object." Also, "For they know not what they do... establishes a critical distance towards some of the key positions of The Sublime Object. Although I still stand by the basic insights of The Sublime Object, it is clear to me, with hindsight, that it contains a series of intertwined weaknesses." He then goes on to elaborate these weaknesses and how he hopes to correct them in this book. I suppose then this will be my next Žižek...

[Joseph Sverker]

This was an incredibly enlightening read. It is certainlyl a slow read and very very complex at times so much that I found myself browsing past some pages. But other times I was caught by his new perspectives. I really was convinced by his argument of the "vanishing mediator" and I must think further about that. All in all a book well worth reading, but give it time, it both needs it and deserves it.

[Katrinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never know how to rate anything by Zizek, so I tend to fall back on how enjoyable it was to read any particular project. The problem with that system of rating is that most of his things end up as fives. As ever, though, I'm sometimes unsure about how/why he organizes his books the way he does-- but for sheer intellectual challenge and insight provided into Lacanian thought, I'll give this one high marks.

[Христо · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ако трябва да препоръчам Жижек на незапознат, първо бих посочил "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology", понеже всеки (следва да) обича филми за филми.

Книгата нексус на Жижековия корпус, по мое мнение, е тази. Ще се намери предостатъчно Лакан и немалко Хегел в нея, а също и ясен социален коментар. Филмографията, разглеждана тук, е достатъчно ненатрапчива/позната, щото да вземе превес над "Паралакс", макар че и последната е важно четиво, но със сигурност не и първично.

"Less than nothing", разбира се, е действителният (през година 2023) магнум опус на Жижек и нищо по-малко от енциклопедия по възкресен немски идеализъм. Но е абсолютно недопустима като първо Жижеково четиво. То трябва да бъде "For they know not".

Съществува български превод, с който не съм успял да се сдобия, но английската версия е съвсем приятна и сравнително лека. Не мисля, че има Жижекова книга освен "Less than nothing", която ще получи 5 звезди, а последната дори не ги заслужава, ако питаме самия Славой - понеже никоя, казва той, не представя крайъгълния камък на мисълта му. Аз твърдя, че тази поне го скицира достатъчно красиво.

[Knecht René · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although For They Know Not What They Do belongs to Žižek’s early works, it reads today as a retroactive supplement to his later writings.

For me the trigger to buy the book was the chapter on Wittgenstein , a philosopher not thouroughly discussed in Žižek's other works but which relevance draw my attention by Reading the essay of Markus Gabriel, co-written with ZIZEK: in 'Mythology, Madness and Laughter'.

If you don’t have the time to read Less Than Nothing, you can read Chapter 1 to understand The Logic of the Signifier with Hegel, particularly if you are still struggling with notions such as concrete universality, Substance as Subject, the One itself is Void, the Universal is already in itself particular, Identity-with-itself, pure singularity, Zero is counted as One, and the Pure Signifier, ...

Some personal notes with regard to chapter 1 On the One (Hegel a.o.) en Chapter 4 On the Other (Wittgenstein, a.o.):

CHAPTER 1: Hegel - personal notes
ZIZEK RE-reads HEGEL with LACAN today or one could say: HEGEL was already preparing of the future LACAN and ... ZIZEK .

==> But also Derrida can be re-read and Derrida shows with his "Rhetorical Gesture" that he is "thoroughly Hegelian": "Truth"' as opposed to "mere rhetoric" is nothing but rhetoric to its extreme, to the point of its self - negation ... Logos nothing but myth brought to self - negation, ..." (p. 32 + footnote 25)

The “I” as subject appears as a point of pure singularity, stripped of all predicates, not a thing or a property, but a voided difference that sustains itself. This is the core of what Žižek calls absolute individuation: an identity that coincides only with itself because it embodies its own difference.

A nice example is law as universalized crime or Thatcher as the ""impossible" conjunction of femininity with the resolute calculating "male" attitude": ==> Thatcher's identity merged in a impossible coincidence of a caring + law-and-order woman in IRON LADY ( p.38)

==> as in the Tautology 'God is God' or Oxymorons as 'royalist is republican' , 'Spirit is Bone'
==> applied to Thatcher: what seems on first side as Uncanny/ Antagonistic is merged in a law-and-order woman which became her "true" identity and a new concept + her "secret" factor X ( something uncanny), 'le trait unaire' ( unitary feature)
==> The contradiction, the real impossible stays repressed, pushed away in a timeless past ( cf mythological remainder of Schelling and link to death drive in Zizek's later works)

These are some examples to explain the always impossible, mutilated and antagonistic embodiment of Identity. While Hegel is going to the end (sublation of sublation), Derrida is endlessly postponing - in his deconstruction - and hinders the full identity-with-itself, a vanishing point, a point of pure singularity
==> so we arrive at Lacan's / Hegels dialectic of lack and excess: 1 = 0 ( = substitution of One for Zero), Something for Nothing ), re-marked by the Exception ( P. 50)

But as we learn in chapter 2: "the difference was always-already sublated ... it never effectively existed. The dialectical "sublation" is "thus always a retroactive 'unmaking"...". (P.62) .... which sounds Deleuzian: things happen before they already happen, all is already decided ...

cf. "The silent weaving of the Spirit" in Hegels' phenomenology ( p.331-332) which can be translated as "the unconscious transformation of the entire symbolic network" (P.64) , "conscious necessarily comes too late" (p. 65) and the, often cited, cartoon of a cat walking over the precipice falling in the abyss only when it looks down, etc.

Link to psychoanalysis: "He already believes although he doesn't yet know it" (P.66) = the moment when the psychoanalyst recognize the silent weaving with the analysand has already done its work.

Žižek shows how meaning does not reside in words themselves but in the dialectical movement between them, a critique of Heidegger’s belief in the “original” truth of language (p. 54).

==> Wordplays and ambiguities are for Žižek not accidental distortions, but symptoms of a dialectical process in which truth emerges contingently.

==> Language lies: because "it renders invisible the dialectical movement of notions, yet sometimes, by means of a “felicitous accident,” the speculative content can emerge." (p.54)
It is more than a wordplay (metonymyc substitutions) as we create a symbolic order

==> which comes alive /creates a new universum of meaning (like in commodity fetishism )

==> which creates new lacks/ excesses, a factor X , ... it helps us understanding ideology, the world of semblances, etc, the common themes in Zizek's works.

See also: Chiasmic exchange of properties, Substance become subject, "'example of the example' coincides with truth itself" (p39-42)

Chapter 2 - Wittgenstein - personal notes
In the later Chapter 4 (On the Other), Žižek shows how Wittgenstein is extremely close to Hegel! Here Wittgenstein is recognized as someone who, like Hegel, exposes the void within the order of meaning.

His life-forms float in a symbolic space without foundation, which Žižek translates into Lacanian terms: the non-existence of the Big Other.

He describes the transformation of Wittgenstein II to Wittgenstein III: Wittgenstein became aware of a irreducable gap separating 'objective certainty from 'truth' which van be detected in the latest works of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" but mostly in "On Certainty"

"Wittgenstein effectively breaks out of the Cartesian confines: by means of affirming a radical discontinuity between certitude and "truth"; of positing a certainty which, although unquestionable, does not guarantee its truth".(P.152)

“Wittgenstein is well aware that life-forms ultimately, so to speak, ‘float in empty space’; that they possess no ‘firm ground under their feet’ - or, to use Lacanian terms, that they form ‘self-referring, symbolic, vicious circles maintaining an unnameable distance from the Real.’ (p. 152)

"This distance is empty; we cannot pinpoint any positive, determinate fact that would call ‘objective certainty’ into question since all such facts always already appear against the unquestionable background of ‘objective certainty’; yet it attests to the lack of support of the ‘big Other’, to its ultimate impotence, to the fact that, as Lacan would put it, ‘the big Other does not exist’, that its status is that of ‘an impostor of pure pretence.’” (P.152)

Wittgenstein' s sceptical paradox (Philosophical Investigations par. 201)
“No course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule". ==> In short: every course of action that appears to infringe the established set of rules can retroactively be interpreted as an action in accordance with another set of rules.” (P.152)

==> Beautiful examples can you find in chapter 2 on page 85 when discussing Derrida en his re-mark and Hegels's defending of the monarchy: a King is King is a personification of sceptical paradox.

==> the king cannot break the law since his word immediately makes law: " ... we cannot say that his act violates the rule since it (re) defines it ..." ... there is no gap between the King and the Notion king.

" .... we should maintain the greatest possible gap between the Master's symbolic legitimation and the level of "effective " qualifications" (P.84)

==> this means the Master/ King is an empty placeholder, 'an element which is more than totality'( the monarch could be an idiot), ..., 'an element through which rational totality constitutes itself' ... 'the Secret of dialectical mediation', etc.
==> p84-85 deserves a very close reading to arrive at a Hegelian-Wittgensteinian definition of identity (p.86).

These paradoxes reveals exactly what Hegel already indicates structurally: the retroactive nature of meaning. No act, rule, or form possesses any original certainty: every order is legitimized only retroactively by a symbolic context that is itself void.

Žižek calls this Wittgenstein III, who is aware of the “abyss” that Wittgenstein II left unconsidered:
“ ... it was only in On Certainty (linked to Wittgenstein 3) that he articulated his version of the ‘nonexistence of the big Other ... … Wittgenstein II (2) leaves out of consideration is the the abyss, the 'empty' distance, which forever separates a life-form from the non-symbolizable Real.’” (P.154)

Stop here: because the elaborations are endlessly within Žižek's works ( endless patience with the reader!, Thank you)

Conclusion
The reason I bought this older book (2008) was because of the links with Wittgenstein, which I wanted to explore further. But each chapter contains connections to Žižek’s later works, not as repetitions, but as genuine deepening of his philosophical project: retroactively read. Difference and Repetition in the true sense.

[Vik · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always fun to read Zizek; how much useful, one cannot really tell except who is a Lacanian.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Lacan can be said to have Saussureanized Freud, then one could claim that Žižek's move here is to Saussureanize Hegel: every "explanation" of some Hegelian concept is ultimately referred back to "the logic of the signifier," regardless of what "figure" is used to these ends (Lacan, Wittgenstein, Derrida, etc.) I think the main problem is that Žižek only has two or three "moves" to recourse to that are simply repeated over and over again (inversion, retroaction, etc.). And while he claims that Sublime Object is a less serious work chock-full of pop culture references, whereas this current one is properly "philosophical," he then proceeds to do the exact same thing that he did in his first work, even if toned down a bit. I will say, I was surprised to see the references to Jacqueline Rose, especially around her work on Sylvia Plath, here.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zizek's prose manages to make Lacan make more sense and Marx make less. Still the observations about The Other in political authority from the book's final chapter have only gotten more vital now three decades on from the collapse of the USSR.

["Nico" · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really valuable read for those interested in furthering their understanding of Hegel, Lacan, and ideology. If you aren't already studying these topics seriously, this isn't the book for you, and that's okay.

[Allison Perzinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's great for reference and a comfort during troubling times but came across as little scattered (particularly the forward). Funny contextual examples!

[нєνєℓ ¢ανα · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting at some point...

[Abraham Lewik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent mental gymnasium. Follow his expressions of theory through demonstration and ponder the profound possibilities of such a method.

[Pablo Bilbao · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you buy it, get the second edition. The preface to the second edition is the best part of the book

[TofurkyVectrex64 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't like it. I feel like I could write a python script that can produce Zizek essays. He goes on wordy tangents that over complicate sentences that do not need that level of complexity. He'll name drop somebody mid tangent as to anchor some sort of social proof to what he is saying. It's a shame because I really like his youtube talks but his writing style is so hard to follow you cringe because you know it is merely to appear academic. He reads like a polisci student fan zine. Better on video than on paper.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Browsing through it, more useful as references to external topics even though (more often than not) self-referential.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

lotsa hegel and political theory... denser

[ryan bears · Rating 4 out of 5]

a decent critique ideology and liberal pomo's... if you can handle all the damn hegel. he claims the sublime object is more popular but im having trouble getting into it.

[Cheyanne]

still reading, but he's awesome

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just re-read this. Definitely the best book on dialectical materialism I’ve read yet.

[joshua caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's a head-scratcher of a page-turner. not for the faint of heart!