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Of Symbolic Mortification and ‘Undead Life’: Slavoj Žižek on the Death Drive

Of Symbolic Mortification and ‘Undead Life’: Slavoj Žižek on the Death Drive <jats:p> The work of Slavoj Žižek contains arguably the most conceptually ambitious re-articulation of the Lacanian notion of the death drive. This paper offers an expository thread joining many of the fragmentary depictions of the death drive in Žižek's work. I begin by tracing the most counter-intuitive aspects of Žižek's re-articulations of the concept. Opposing the notions of death drive as biological instinct, cosmic principle, Nirvana-like release, and self-annihilating impulse, Žižek highlights instead the Lacanian notions of repetition automatism, excess negativity, ‘undead’ eternal life, and symbolic mortification. Žižek provides useful applications of a series of related Lacanian ideas – the lamella, the zone between two deaths, and the ethical dimension of the death drive – and extends these via a set of philosophical conceptualizations (self-relating negativity, negative inherence, death drive as non-historicizable). The last section of the paper explores how the notion of self-relating negativity allows Žižek to consolidate the foregoing Lacanian concepts and to understand the death drive as simultaneously reflexive, a-subjective and ‘meta-causative’. </jats:p> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Psychoanalysis and History Edinburgh University Press

Of Symbolic Mortification and ‘Undead Life’: Slavoj Žižek on the Death Drive

Hook, Derek
Psychoanalysis and History , Volume 18 (2): 221 – Jul 1, 2016
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References (55)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
Subject
Articles; Historical Studies
ISSN
1460-8235
eISSN
1755-201X
DOI
10.3366/pah.2016.0190
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

<jats:p> The work of Slavoj Žižek contains arguably the most conceptually ambitious re-articulation of the Lacanian notion of the death drive. This paper offers an expository thread joining many of the fragmentary depictions of the death drive in Žižek's work. I begin by tracing the most counter-intuitive aspects of Žižek's re-articulations of the concept. Opposing the notions of death drive as biological instinct, cosmic principle, Nirvana-like release, and self-annihilating impulse, Žižek highlights instead the Lacanian notions of repetition automatism, excess negativity, ‘undead’ eternal life, and symbolic mortification. Žižek provides useful applications of a series of related Lacanian ideas – the lamella, the zone between two deaths, and the ethical dimension of the death drive – and extends these via a set of philosophical conceptualizations (self-relating negativity, negative inherence, death drive as non-historicizable). The last section of the paper explores how the notion of self-relating negativity allows Žižek to consolidate the foregoing Lacanian concepts and to understand the death drive as simultaneously reflexive, a-subjective and ‘meta-causative’. </jats:p>

Journal

Psychoanalysis and History – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Jul 1, 2016

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