For They Know Not What They Do (Radical Thinkers No. 36)

Psychoanalysisis less merciful than Christianity. Where God the Father forgives ourignorance, psychoanalysis holds out no such hope. Ignorance is not asufficient ground for forgiveness since it masks enjoyment; anenjoyment which erupts in those black holes in our symbolic universethat escape the Father's prohibition.Today, with the disintegration of state socialism, we are witnessing thiseruption of enjoymnet in the re-emergence of aggressive nationalism andracism. With the lid of repression lifted, the desires that haveemerged are far from democratic. To explain this apparent paradox, says Slavoj Zizek, socialist critical thought must turn topsychoanalysis.For They Know Not What They Doseeks to understand the status of enjoyment within ideologicaldiscourse, from Hegel through Lacan to these political and ideologicaldeadlocks.