Of symbolic mortification and undead life : Slavoj Žižek on the death drive

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dc.contributor.author Hook, Derek
dc.date.accessioned 2017-05-30T07:20:08Z
dc.date.available 2017-05-30T07:20:08Z
dc.date.issued 2016-07 en
dc.description.abstract 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'. en_ZA
dc.description.department Psychology en
dc.description.uri http://www.euppublishing.com/loi/pah en
dc.identifier.citation Hook, D. 2016, 'Of symbolic mortification and undead life : Slavoj Žižek on the death drive', Psychoanalysis and History, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 221-256. en
dc.identifier.issn 1755-201X (online) en
dc.identifier.issn 1460-8235 (print) en
dc.identifier.other 10.3366/pah.2016.0190 en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/60702
dc.language.iso English en
dc.publisher Edinburgh University Press en
dc.rights © 2016 Edinburgh University Press en
dc.subject Between two deaths en
dc.subject Death drive en
dc.subject Lacan en
dc.subject Lamella en
dc.subject Libido en
dc.subject Symbolic en
dc.subject Žižek en
dc.title Of symbolic mortification and undead life : Slavoj Žižek on the death drive en
dc.type Postprint Article en


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