Cogito is thus not a substantial entity, but a pure structural function, an empty place—as such, it can only emerge in the interstices of substantial communal systems
Does this mean we're replacing positivism with "negativism"? Is knowledge subtractive rather than additive—every answer revealing new ignorance? i.e. when we train AI models, we're simultaneously untraining them.
The parallax view sustains contradictions rather than resolving them—and this is where I think Kant and Buddhism converge. Both lead to the same vertigo: no stable ground. The difference is aesthetic: Kant frames it as transcendental "homelessness," while Buddhism calls it emptiness and treats groundlessness as liberation. Same destination, different maps. Kant: thing-in-itself is unknowable. Buddhism: thing-in-itself is empty. Yes?
What are we, caught between these dimensions? The "undead"—neither simply alive (phenomenally free) nor dead (noumenally determined), but in suspension in between.
I love Žižek's point on democracy—it doesn't solve the parallax gap but emerges from it. Every election, every debate enacts the irreducible split without synthesis. The antagonism isn't a bug; it's the operating system. Democracy is the political form of the living dead: endlessly reanimated, never settled, tumbling forward without arriving.
But this "homelessness" doesn't have to be a bad thing. Once we accept both positions—noumenon and phenomenal—we realize they create the condition for freedom itself. This is Buddhism's dependent co-arising. The parallax gap isn't where meaning dies. It's where meaning emerges. Liberation lives in the gap.
As you may know, Žižek is often critical of Buddhism—sometimes to the point of bias, just as he is with Derrida. Even his counter-criticism of this bias can itself appear biased, a point I briefly touch upon in my text. I also make brief reference to the deconstructive aspects of Buddhism and to the relationship between Lacan and Zen Buddhism.
Isn’t the point that we’re always making new realms of the unconscious conscious? Look at the collapse of the relevance of music in the 21st century. With the rise of social media, communication has become more direct than ever and the use of a ‘medium’ - art, music, dance etc - to communicate what you have to say is less and less useful and more and more a narcissistic spectacle with no substance behind it other than a nostalgia for old forms.
The piece you’ve posted does not so much argue as it reenacts a museum tour. It strings together well-worn set pieces—Laplanche’s ‘enigmatic message,’ Kant’s indefinite judgment, Karatani’s ‘parallax’—as if recitation were critique. In doing so, it lapses into exactly the loop ŽižekAnalysis has been dissecting for months: the conversion of hard concepts into pleasing tokens that circulate as surplus-information, producing recognition-hits without changing any coordinates..... https://zizekanalysis.com/2025/10/09/parallax-as-sleepwalking-a-response-from-inside-the-workbench/
In my French-language text, I take up Karatani–Žižek’s concept of parallax and apply it to the relation between Derrida and Lacan. In doing so, I propose a new general science that I call grammato-psychanalyse (grammato-psychoanalysis)—or, more precisely, a new apparatus. My aim has been to invent a powerful device for thinking about our time by confronting the masters of our time.
This endeavor required a critical relativization not only of Derrida but also of Lacan and Žižek, who had criticized him.
"What this means is that, in order to complete the circle of its reproduction, capital has to pass through this critical point at which the roles are inverted: surplus value is realized only by workers in totality buying back what they produce. THIS FEATURE PROVIDES THE KEY LEVERAGE FROM WHICH TO OPPOSE THE RULE OF CAPITAL TODAY: is it not natural that the proletarians should focus their attack on that unique point at which they approach capital from the position of buyer and, consequently, at which it is capital which is forced to court them? “/…/ if workers can become subjects at all, it is only as consumers.”"
--
Less and less so. More and more money is concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of rich people. They do not spend their money on consumer goods or on investments in the production of consumer goods for ordinary people, but most of the economy is moving into the (small-scale) production of luxury goods: yachts, airplanes, luxury villas, prestigious products. Here, most workers are removed from both production and consumption. The whole picture of the economic structure is collapsing.
What prevents the ‘gap’ you describe from being just an artifact of our current conceptual limits rather than a structural feature of the thing itself?
The idea of something arising from or ultimately consisting of the irreducible antinomy between two aspects of its nature reminds me of this passage from Musil's "Man Without Qualities:"
"the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional one, a national one, a civic one, a class one, a geographical one, a sex one, a conscious, an unconscious and perhaps even too a private one; he combines them all in himself, but they dissolve him, and he is really nothing but a little channel washed out by all these trickling streams, which flow into it and drain out of it again in order to join other little streams filling another channel. Hence every dweller on earth also has a tenth character, which is nothing more or less than the passive illusion of spaces unfilled; it permits a man everything, with one exception: he may not take seriously what his at least nine other characters do and what happens to them, in other words, the very thing that ought to be the filling of him. This interior space—which is, it must be admitted, difficult to describe—is of a different shade and shape in Italy from what it is in England, because everything that stands out in relief against it is of a different shade and shape; and yet both here and there it is the same, merely an empty, invisible space with reality standing in the middle of it like a little toy brick town, abandoned by the imagination.
In so far as this can at all become apparent to every eye, it had done so in Kakania, and in this Kakania was, without the world’s knowing it, the most progressive State of all; it was the State that was by now only just, as it were, acquiescing in its own existence. In it one was negatively free, constantly aware of the inadequate grounds for one’s own existence and lapped by the great fantasy of all that had not happened, or at least had not yet irrevocably happened, as by the foam of the oceans from which mankind arose."
The idea also invites the comparison with the Lacanian ego vs. subject. The person is not "really" either one (as in ego-psychology or Jungian selfolatry respectively); rather, the person arises out of or ultimately ought to identify with the irreconcilable conflict between them (the symptom appropriated as sinthome).
Does this mean we're replacing positivism with "negativism"? Is knowledge subtractive rather than additive—every answer revealing new ignorance? i.e. when we train AI models, we're simultaneously untraining them.
The parallax view sustains contradictions rather than resolving them—and this is where I think Kant and Buddhism converge. Both lead to the same vertigo: no stable ground. The difference is aesthetic: Kant frames it as transcendental "homelessness," while Buddhism calls it emptiness and treats groundlessness as liberation. Same destination, different maps. Kant: thing-in-itself is unknowable. Buddhism: thing-in-itself is empty. Yes?
What are we, caught between these dimensions? The "undead"—neither simply alive (phenomenally free) nor dead (noumenally determined), but in suspension in between.
I love Žižek's point on democracy—it doesn't solve the parallax gap but emerges from it. Every election, every debate enacts the irreducible split without synthesis. The antagonism isn't a bug; it's the operating system. Democracy is the political form of the living dead: endlessly reanimated, never settled, tumbling forward without arriving.
But this "homelessness" doesn't have to be a bad thing. Once we accept both positions—noumenon and phenomenal—we realize they create the condition for freedom itself. This is Buddhism's dependent co-arising. The parallax gap isn't where meaning dies. It's where meaning emerges. Liberation lives in the gap.
we have replace enlightenment with anti-enlightenment, credulity, and delegation of power - and credulousness is the foundation for all domination
As you may know, Žižek is often critical of Buddhism—sometimes to the point of bias, just as he is with Derrida. Even his counter-criticism of this bias can itself appear biased, a point I briefly touch upon in my text. I also make brief reference to the deconstructive aspects of Buddhism and to the relationship between Lacan and Zen Buddhism.
Isn’t the point that we’re always making new realms of the unconscious conscious? Look at the collapse of the relevance of music in the 21st century. With the rise of social media, communication has become more direct than ever and the use of a ‘medium’ - art, music, dance etc - to communicate what you have to say is less and less useful and more and more a narcissistic spectacle with no substance behind it other than a nostalgia for old forms.
I love the idea of philosophy and universality having their origin
in "the interstices of communal identities"
a thinking born not from belonging, but from displacement.
Heidegger could think the abyss, standing on the very edge of Nothingness,
but he could not dwell there.
He looked back, longing for his Heimat, his lost home.
His thought remained directed toward a forgotten origin
toward SEYN itself,
as the remainder of a lost remainder, forgotten remainder
Universality as an Echo, not a totality,
but difference as such
the infinite return of the same,
difference and repetition,
the becoming of what is not yet ...
Radically singular
displacement you refer to here can also be spoken in terms of Heidegger’s “Thrownness” 🐚
As non-English native speaker I've always problems with the word 'displacement' but we can make a link as I see it now:
Throwness with a twist:
==> the echo of a Being already split within itself.
==> the Zwiefalt/Fold of Being and Nothing
==> We are Thrown, but we never 'land'
until we Decohere (with a Quantum - Zizekian twist)
The piece you’ve posted does not so much argue as it reenacts a museum tour. It strings together well-worn set pieces—Laplanche’s ‘enigmatic message,’ Kant’s indefinite judgment, Karatani’s ‘parallax’—as if recitation were critique. In doing so, it lapses into exactly the loop ŽižekAnalysis has been dissecting for months: the conversion of hard concepts into pleasing tokens that circulate as surplus-information, producing recognition-hits without changing any coordinates..... https://zizekanalysis.com/2025/10/09/parallax-as-sleepwalking-a-response-from-inside-the-workbench/
To the respected Žižek and his readers,
In my French-language text, I take up Karatani–Žižek’s concept of parallax and apply it to the relation between Derrida and Lacan. In doing so, I propose a new general science that I call grammato-psychanalyse (grammato-psychoanalysis)—or, more precisely, a new apparatus. My aim has been to invent a powerful device for thinking about our time by confronting the masters of our time.
This endeavor required a critical relativization not only of Derrida but also of Lacan and Žižek, who had criticized him.
For those interested, my text Prolégomènes à la grammato-psychanalyse : science générale après la « philosophe » is already listed in the catalogue of the University of Montpellier Paul Valéry Library (https://catalogue.scdi-montpellier.fr/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma9930093018804231&context=L&vid=33MON_INST:33UPVM_VU1&lang=fr&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,grammato-psychanalyse). While the full text is not yet accessible, it will be made available soon, and later it will also appear in the French Master’s Theses Archive (https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/).
Jiho PARK
The full text is now available for anyone to view on the Paul Valéry University Library website.
"What this means is that, in order to complete the circle of its reproduction, capital has to pass through this critical point at which the roles are inverted: surplus value is realized only by workers in totality buying back what they produce. THIS FEATURE PROVIDES THE KEY LEVERAGE FROM WHICH TO OPPOSE THE RULE OF CAPITAL TODAY: is it not natural that the proletarians should focus their attack on that unique point at which they approach capital from the position of buyer and, consequently, at which it is capital which is forced to court them? “/…/ if workers can become subjects at all, it is only as consumers.”"
--
Less and less so. More and more money is concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of rich people. They do not spend their money on consumer goods or on investments in the production of consumer goods for ordinary people, but most of the economy is moving into the (small-scale) production of luxury goods: yachts, airplanes, luxury villas, prestigious products. Here, most workers are removed from both production and consumption. The whole picture of the economic structure is collapsing.
What prevents the ‘gap’ you describe from being just an artifact of our current conceptual limits rather than a structural feature of the thing itself?
The idea of something arising from or ultimately consisting of the irreducible antinomy between two aspects of its nature reminds me of this passage from Musil's "Man Without Qualities:"
"the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional one, a national one, a civic one, a class one, a geographical one, a sex one, a conscious, an unconscious and perhaps even too a private one; he combines them all in himself, but they dissolve him, and he is really nothing but a little channel washed out by all these trickling streams, which flow into it and drain out of it again in order to join other little streams filling another channel. Hence every dweller on earth also has a tenth character, which is nothing more or less than the passive illusion of spaces unfilled; it permits a man everything, with one exception: he may not take seriously what his at least nine other characters do and what happens to them, in other words, the very thing that ought to be the filling of him. This interior space—which is, it must be admitted, difficult to describe—is of a different shade and shape in Italy from what it is in England, because everything that stands out in relief against it is of a different shade and shape; and yet both here and there it is the same, merely an empty, invisible space with reality standing in the middle of it like a little toy brick town, abandoned by the imagination.
In so far as this can at all become apparent to every eye, it had done so in Kakania, and in this Kakania was, without the world’s knowing it, the most progressive State of all; it was the State that was by now only just, as it were, acquiescing in its own existence. In it one was negatively free, constantly aware of the inadequate grounds for one’s own existence and lapped by the great fantasy of all that had not happened, or at least had not yet irrevocably happened, as by the foam of the oceans from which mankind arose."
The idea also invites the comparison with the Lacanian ego vs. subject. The person is not "really" either one (as in ego-psychology or Jungian selfolatry respectively); rather, the person arises out of or ultimately ought to identify with the irreconcilable conflict between them (the symptom appropriated as sinthome).