pdfLibrary

zizek / hegel and constipation

One of the standard motifs of the pseudo-Freudian dismissal of Hegel is to characterize his System as the highest and most over-blown expression of oral economy: is the Hegelian Idea not a voracious eater which “swallows” every object it stumbles upon? As Hegel likes to point out, however, we can only grasp the object if this object itself already “wants to be with/by us.” The standard critical reading constructs the Hegelian absolute Substance-Subject as thoroughly constipated – keeping in itself the swallowed content. But what about the counter-movement, the Hegelian shitting, excrementation? Is the subject of what Hegel calls “absolute Knowing” not also a thoroughly emptied subject, a subject reduced to the role of pure observer of the self-movement of the content itself?