Culture > January 26, 2007

In You More Than Yourself

The revolutionary potential of the Internet is far from self-evident

By Slavoj Zizek

In December, Time magazine’s annual “Person of the Year” honor went not to Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Kim Jong-Il or any of the other usual suspects, but to “you”: each and every one of us using or creating content on the World Wide Web. Time’s cover showed a white keyboard with a mirror for a computer screen, allowing each of us to see his or her own reflection. To justify the choice, the editors cited the global shift from earthly institutions to the emerging digital democracy where individuals—you—are both citizen and king.

There was more to this choice than meets the eye—and in more than the usual sense of the term. If there ever was an ideological choice, this was it: The message—the new cyber-democracy allows millions to directly communicate and self-organize, bypassing centralized state control—masks a series of disturbing gaps and tensions.

First, the obvious irony, everyone who looks at the Time cover does not see the others with whom he or she is supposed to be in direct communication. They see the mirror-image of themselves. No wonder Gottfried Leibniz, the 18th century German philosopher who invented the binary system, is one of the predominant philosophical references of the cyberspace theorists: Consider his metaphysical concept of “monads,” those entities of perception, which are to the mental realm what atoms are to the physical, though “without windows” that directly open up to external reality. Isn’t that eerily similar to what we are reduced to when immersed in cyberspace? The typical Web surfer today, sitting alone in front of a PC screen, is becoming more and more of a monad with no direct window onto reality, encountering only virtual simulacra, and yet increasingly immersed into the global network, synchronously communicating with the entire planet.

One of the latest fads among sexual radicals is the “masturbate-a-thon,” a collective event in which hundreds of men and women pleasure themselves for charity. Masturbate-a-thons build a collective out of individuals who are ready to share something with others. But what are they actually sharing? The solipsism of their own stupid enjoyment. One can surmise that the masturbate-a-thon is the form of sexuality that perfectly fits the coordinates of cyberspace.

This, however, is only part of the story. Additionally, the “you” who recognizes itself in its screen-image is deeply divided: I am never simply my screen persona. First, there is the (rather obvious) excess of me as a “real” bodily person over my screen persona: Marxists and other critically disposed thinkers like to point out that the supposed “equality” in cyberspace is deceiving. It ignores all the complex material dispositions (my wealth, my social position, my power or its lack, etc.). Real-life inertia magically disappears in the frictionless surfing in the cyberspace. What Virtual Reality provides is reality itself deprived of its substance. In the same way decaffeinated coffee smells and tastes like real coffee without being the real thing, my screen persona, the “you” that I see there, is always already a decaffeinated Self.

Second, there is the opposite and much more unsettling effect: the excess of my screen persona over my “real” self. Our social identity, the person we assume to be in our social intercourse, is already a “mask,” as it involves the repression of our inadmissible impulses. However, it is precisely under the conditions of “just gaming,” when the rules regulating our “real life” exchanges are temporarily suspended, that we can permit ourselves to display these repressed attitudes. Recall the proverbial impotent shy person who, while participating in a cyberspace interactive game, adopts the identity of a sadistic murderer or irresistible seducer. It is too simple to say that this identity is just an imaginary supplement, a temporary escape from his real life impotence. Rather, the point is that, since he knows that the cyberspace interactive game is “just a game,” he can “show his true self” and do things he would never do in real-life interaction. In the guise of a fiction, the truth about one’s self is articulated. The very fact that I perceive my virtual self-image as mere play thus allows me to suspend the usual hindrances that prevent me from realizing my “dark half” in real life—in cyberspace, my “id” is given wing.

And the same goes for my partners who I communicate with in cyberspace: I can never be sure who they are. Are they “really” the way they describe themselves? Is there a “real” person at all behind a screen-persona or is the screen-persona a mask for several different people? Does the same “real” person possess and manipulate more screen-personas? Or perhaps I am simply dealing with a digitalized entity that does not stand for any “real” person? In short, interface means precisely that my relationship to the Other is never face-to-face, that it is always mediated by the interposed digital machinery whose structure is that of a labyrinth. I “browse,” I err around in this infinite space where messages circulate freely without fixed destination, while the Whole of it—this immense circuitry of “murmurs”—remains forever beyond the scope of my comprehension. The obverse of cyberspace’s direct democracy is this chaotic and impenetrable magnitude of messages and their circuits that even the greatest effort of my imagination cannot comprehend. Immanuel Kant would have called it a cyberspace Sublime.

——————————————

A decade or so ago, there was an outstanding TV ad for beer in England. Its first part staged the well-known fairy-tale: A girl walked along a stream, saw a frog, took it gently into her lap, kissed it, and, of course, the ugly frog miraculously turned into a beautiful young man. However, the story wasn’t over yet: The young man cast a covetous glance at the girl, drew her towards him, kissed her—and she turned into a bottle of beer that he held triumphantly in his hand. For the woman, her love and affection (signalled by the kiss) can turn a frog into a beautiful man, while for the man, it is to reduce the woman to what psychoanalysis calls a “partial object,” that in you which makes me desire you. (Of course, the obvious feminist rejoinder would be that what women witness in their everyday love experience is the opposite: One kisses a beautiful young man and, after one gets too close to him, when it is already too late, realizes that he is basically a frog.)

The actual couple of man and woman are thus haunted by the bizarre figure of a frog embracing a bottle of beer. What modern art stages is precisely this underlying spectre: One can easily imagine a Magritte painting of a frog embracing a bottle of beer, with a title “A man and a woman” or “The ideal couple.” (The association here with surrealist Luis Bunuel’s famous “dead donkey on a piano” is fully justified.) Therein resides the threat of cyberspace gaming at its most elementary: When a man and a woman interact in it, they do so under the spectre of a frog embracing a bottle of beer. Since neither of them is aware of it, these discrepancies between what “you” really are and what “you” appear to be in digital space can lead to murderous violence. After all, when you suddenly discover that the man you are embracing is really a frog, aren’t you tempted to squash the slimy creature?

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• Reader Comments

  This article is a good first step in outlining the social/philosophical parameters around internetworked discourse.  What is missing is an analysis of how folks actually use the medium.  The article makes presumptions about “the typical Web surfer” based on popular impressions, supposed fads, and “cyberspace gaming.” I suspect that “sitting alone in front of a PC screen . . . with no direct window onto reality, encountering only virtual simulacra” is not an accurate description of the average contemporary netizen, who clearly must interact with the “real world” in order to generate the not-insignificant economic resources required to participate in the web community.  What this means is that the web, for an individual, is just one sphere for social discourse, and that the other spheres (family, work, school, church, etc) necessarily intersect and interact with it, providing a check on some of the excesses the author describes and allowing us to make assumptions about our conversation partners that probably contain at least some degree of accuracy.

  Posted by Matt W on Jan 26, 2007 at 9:29 AM

  Decaffeinated coffee is real coffee.

  Posted by monkyhead on Jan 26, 2007 at 10:08 AM

  I have a mixed reaction to this article.  On the one hand, I definitely believe that the Internet relationship is one more step Americans are taking in distancing ourselves from everyone, with the possible exception of the One True Life-Partner whom we are encouraged to invest our entire emotional selves into.  Did you know that the *dictionary definition* of friendship in 1755 was “the highest form of intimacy”?  Or that today’s American Heritage Dictionary, in its word history for the word friend, says “a friend is a lover, literally” because it was derived from a form of an Old English verb for “to love”?  (Which doesn’t mean they had sex, and also doesn’t conclusively prove they DIDN’T, for those who just HAVE to ask.) Compare that with the, say, 1980’s or 1990’s American version of friendship where spending too much time together, especially after marriage, or being affectionate or emotional is a sign of either an affair or homosexuality, depending on your gender.  And the Internet just takes that one step further, your “friends” are whoever happens to sign up on your MySpace page, even if you’ve never met, and quantity of “friends” has finally won out over devotion to friends as the mark of character. 

  I’m already being pointed to MySpace pages by real-life friends who no longer have “time” for even a lunch every 3 months or something, rather than them either finding the time or finding the honesty to say they don’t like me any more.  At some point, I suppose, wanting to have actual lunch in person will be considered “needy,” just like wanting to be affectionate or emotional in a friendship was considered normal in 1755 but “clingy” today.

  On the flipside, I think the article is too glib about blaming technology for the ways we distance ourselves from each other.  As the history of friendship shows, we were quite capable of finding ways to push each other away using “false faces” before the Internet.  (To avoid people thinking I worship the Good Old Days: While same-sex friendship among straights was probably more open-hearted in the past, opposite-sex friendship was practically forbidden and marriage was chilly due to the rampant sexism.  So each era has its curse, I guess.) Can people pretend to be someone they’re not on the Internet?  Sure, but if you think they can’t do the same thing in real life, you haven’t been out much lately.  Hell, if, by some divine intervention, people moved from being open about their real selves under anonymous handles online to being that way in real life, and accepting that none of us are as “normal” as we claim to be, I’d have to say that would be one point for the Internet. 

  DW

  Posted by davelwhite on Jan 26, 2007 at 10:09 AM

  Beyond Marxism

  Marxists and other critically disposed thinkers like to point out that the supposed “equality” in cyberspace is deceiving. It ignores all the complex material dispositions (my wealth, my social position, my power or its lack, etc.). 

  As Zizek (and other critically disposed thinkers) are wont to do, they cast everything in the Internet in terms of class conflict (wealth, social position, power/lack thereof), and find the Internet wanting. Boo hoo hoo. So sad.  (Sniff.) Maybe we ought to start a revolution or something. 

  Marxism is a dead philosophy walking, done in by its faulty precepts, inefficiency, and corruption, a corruption inherent in the new classes created by socialism, the nomenclatura of the Soviets, and the elite liberals of the West, who are neither elite nor liberal, except as legends in their own minds.  Not to mention the killing and exile of everyone who excelled in the Marxist dictatorships, except for the nomenclatura, of course.

  Consider the sub-title of this article:

  The revolutionary potential of the Internet is far from self-evident

  Well, yes, for Marxists, that is undoubtedly true, because the true believer Marxists can’t figure out how to force the reality of the Internet into their faulty class precepts. 

  Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Internet Revolution is going full blast, creating major wealth-enhancing breakthroughs in science, production, productivity, logistics, medicine, communications, and other areas.  Instead of class conflict, the central dynamic of free market democracy is entrepreneurial competition.  Bill Gates was not a member of the landed gentry before he became the world’s richest man and began giving his assets away.

  The capitalist problem of distributing created wealth is a far different and easier than the socialist problem of wealth destruction.  Yet Zizek continues to dither with an irrelevant problem with no answer.  Boo hoo hoo. So sad.  (Sniff.)

  Posted by scorp on Jan 26, 2007 at 9:32 PM

  Is this guy serious?  “The solipsism of their own stupid enjoyment.”??? A frog clutching a beer bottle? Come on. 
  Anyway, Capitalists still have to learn from Marxists and see their own problems instead of declaring complete victory and granting holy status to their own imperfect economic system.

  Posted by BROOKLYN on Jan 27, 2007 at 2:49 AM

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