Intertextual Writing In Cultural Texts: Zizek's Explanation On Lacanian Theory

Zizek, who was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is a renowned philosopher and psychoanalysist. He is very talented, and many books which written by him can prove it. He wrote a piece of 400-page long Master's thesis in 1971 when he was twenty-two years old, and studied the theory and the practice of Franch structuralism, which shocked the academic circle. As an master against the intuition and vulgar ideas, Zizek ever does not let off any chance to theorize the real social phenomenon and the natural phenomenon. Regarding his academic influence, many well-known scholars gave him high appreciation. Butler once said that, Zizek commented on Hegel and Lacan as easy and natural as he had to breathe. To English literary theorist Terry Eagleton, Zizek stands as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe in some decades".In 1989, Zizek promoted his first English work The Sublime Object of Ideology, since then, he has already published 36 English monographs and compilations and 168 thesises. By studying thses works, we can find two characteristics in Zizek's writing: broad topics and numerous resources. Meanwhile, each kind of cultural resources he employed does not simply support someviewpoint independently. On the contrary, there are close internal relations between them. In some kind of significance, broad topics are precisely the results of interaction, coincidence, permeation and quotation between different cultural resources. For instance, he read Lacan's psychoanalysis as philosophy and regarded him as an important philosopher since Descartes in France. He proposed "Returning to Hegel", hoping to penetrate Hegelian philosophy by means of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. He also persisted in using the psychoanalysis and the Hegelian Dialectics to re-examine the contemporary ideology criticism. He thought "Marx's Commodity Fetishism has become Lacanian materialized faith, which supported the ideology fantasy, but the latter sutured the absurd reality in the capitalist society".Therefore, we employ intertextuality as the basic theory perspective to studying Zizek's cultural writing. We believe that, Lacanian psychoanalysis occupies the dominant position in Zizek's text. Based on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Zizek fuses knowledge in different fields together, such as philosophy, politics, ethics, literature, movie and opera, which makes Lacanian psychoanalysis play the vital role in linking the different cultural resources. This kind of intertextual link can be explained in three aspects: First, theory motif; Second, cultural explanation; Third, written method.In the theoretical motif, Zizek seeks the "subject issue" to connect the following three theory resources: German idealism, Marxist ideological theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis. "Subject" in Lacan's theory constitutes in three different essential factors: unconscious subject who speaks actually, that is, speaking body; symbolic subject indicated by the signifying chain and imaginative ego in the mirror stage. Between the first two essential factors, the speaking subject fading under the discourse signifying chain, which construct the subject to the personality je, and the third essential factor endow the subject lacking identity. Zizek believes that, the subject in Lacan's theory is not the rational subject as owner and ruler of the nature referred by Descarts, but a subject of language, which emphasizes that man as subject is constructed by language and knowledge. Therefore, subject is by no means born that way, but given by the Other. From this embarked, Zizek also analyzes the intertextual connection between subject concept and other concepts in Lacan's thought as well as the connection with Hegel's subject theory and Marxist ideology theory.In the cultural explanation, Zizek devotes to the psychoanalysis theory and the inter-explanation between contemporary popular culture phenomenon and the canon, forming the basic scene that high and low culture interacts. In the popular cultural analysis, we mainly intercept the movie criticism which he embarks from the psychoanalysis, especially those about the Hitchcock movies as well as the creative idea of French pomography writer Sade. What special is, in the psychoanalysis tradition, the canon is usually regarded as popular work by analysts, so is Zizek. By analysing "Hamlet" and "Antigone" in Lacan's works, and rereading Hegel and Marx's philosophy as well as Lacan's psychoanalysis in different angles, Zizek thus surmounted the stem boundary between elegant culture and vulgar culture since modern time.Regarding to Zizek's writing method, because of the deep influence of Hegelian Dialectics and the idea of "the Real" in Lacan's late life, Zizek's cultural writing obviously displays some methods as returning to, repeating, paradox and so on. To Zizek, returning is to seek real beginning. Therefore, his texts appeared a series of returning. For instance, in his text, there are "returning to Schelling, to Descarts' subjectivity, to Lacanian psychoanalysis", as well as "returning to Freud", "returning to Hegel", "returning to Lenin" and so on. During these kinds of returning, the most basic is turning to Lacan, simultaneously this turning is realized through Hegel. As for "reiterates", according to his own view, he wishes to elucidate what was not clear before by the way of repetition. Therefore, reiteration is only a kind of imagery, his basic motive is to rewrite. In Zizek's writing, the repetitions of Lacan's concept of the Real, phallus signifier, desire, fantasy and so on are everywhere. In addition, the paradox is also a common method in Zizek's writing. Therefore, scholars frequently discovered that the paradoxical style is Zizek's distinct mark. However, a succession of trail--from Zizek's reverse standpoints of himself to "say nothing" and "explanation without elucidation", and to be strictly faithful to Lacan and Hegel--is what we should grasp to understand Zizek's unique writing style. Or we can conclude that in the process of accepting and understanding Lacan's theory, Zizek does not completely imitate.In brief, Zizek's cultural writing can be rated as the model of culture study which is characterized with interdiscipline today. In the view of intertextuality, we have discovered essential factors within Zizek's texts and complex relations between them. The study on Zizek's cultural writing not only helps us peep at the basic condition in theory writing at present, but also helps to think about this question: Since Benjamin's classic analysis in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, how about the condition of cultural writing now? And after a more obvious change in the power structure between high culture and low culture, how sould we look on the textual writing condition in post-classical era?...