Nietzsche states in “Twilight of the Idols”: What if Truth is a Woman? “In art ][Dance] woman enjoys ….art [herself] as perfection.” Art is then the supreme delight of existence; art is the fountain and source of joy in the world par excellence. And joy for Nietzsche does not require justification because joy justifies itself; joy, too, justifies existence: through joy, life is affirmed. Thus, we reach another basic role of art: art as the supreme source of joy.
By virtue of the Dionysiac element in art, …Woman, Xgndr is rendered the possibility of transcending the limits of individual existence and establishing communion with the human and the natural worlds: “Not only does the bond between xgndr and man came to be forged once more by the magic of the Dionysiac rite but nature itself, long alienated or subjugated, rises again to celebrate the reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.” Through art, Xgndr transcends the confines of xgndr’s own ego and secures oneness with the universe. Clearly, it is established: the role of art as means of self-transcendence.
Prior political philosophy has placed too little emphasis, Žižek asserts, on communities’ cultural practices that involve what he calls “inherent transgression.” These are practices sanctioned by a culture that nevertheless allow subjects some experience of what is usually exceptional to or prohibited in their everyday lives as civilized political subjects—things like sex, death, defecation, or violence. Such experiences involve what Žižek calls jouissance, another technical term he takes from Lacanian psychoanalysis. Jouissance is usually translated from the French as “enjoyment.” As opposed to what we talk of in English as “pleasure”, though, jouissance is an always sexualized, always transgressive enjoyment, at the limits of what subjects can experience or talk about in public. Žižek argues that subjects’ experiences of the events and practices wherein their political culture organizes its specific relations to jouissance (in first world nations, for example, specific sports, types of alcohol or drugs, music, festivals, films) are as close as they will get to knowing the deeper Truth intimated for them by their regime’s master signifiers: “nation”, “God”, “our way of life,” and so forth (see 2b above). Žižek, like Burke, argues that it is such ostensibly nonpolitical and culturally specific practices as these that irreplaceably single out any political community from its others and enemies. Or, as one of Žižek’s chapter titles in Tarrying With the Negative puts it, where and although subjects do not know their Nation, they “enjoy (jouis) their nation as themselves.”
four types of disintegration—positive, negative, partial, and global.
- Primary integration characterizes individuals who are largely under the influence of the first factor (biology) and the second factor (environment). These individuals experience the human life cycle and may become very successful in societal terms, but they are not fully developed human beings. Persons characterized by secondary integration are influenced primarily by the third factor; they are inner directed and values driven. As fully human, they live life autonomously, authentically, and altruistically. Biological drives are sublimated into higher modes of expression. Conformity and nonconformity to societal norms are principled. Movement from primary to secondary integration arises from positive disintegration. (Mendaglio, 2008b, p. 36)
Positive disintegration involves a two-step process. First, the lower primary integration—which involves little, if any, reflection—must be dissolved; subsequently, one must reintegrate to create a higher level of functioning (Dabrowski, 1970). During the first step of dissolution, individuals experience “…intense external and internal conflicts that generate intense negative emotions. Such experiencing may be initially triggered by developmental milestones, such as puberty, or crises, such as a painful divorce or a difficult career event or the death of a loved one. As a result, individuals become increasingly conscious of self and the world. They become more and more distressed as they perceive a discrepancy between the way the world ought to be and the way it is…”(Mendaglio, 2008b, p. 27). The way these persons view and structure the world is thrown into ambiguity and turmoil, along with the internal guidelines that they have thoughtlessly adopted from society to guide their daily behaviors. The external structure that they are steeped with becomes contradictory or meaningless when confronted with articulate, conscious individual experience.
Art is for art’s sake, that is, art justifies itself and has the quality of dispensing with a purpose – moral or rational – since only through the aesthetic production can the world be justified. “The fight against purpose in art is always a fight against the moralizing tendency in art, against its subordination to morality.” Art is the great stimulus to life, so from an aesthetic viewpoint we need not to look for purpose, for art is purpose in itself: the purpose of life.
Art sustains life. Art is what makes life endurable and thus possible. Art is what make life worth living. Nietzsche depicts this through a beautiful metaphor: “Once again we may see the artistic buoyancy and creative joy as a luminous cloud shape reflected upon the dark surface of a lake of sorrow.” Hence, this is another basic role of art: art as a metaphysical solace. Nietszsche, analyzing the Greek tragedy writes: “The metaphysical solace (with which, I wish to say at once, all true tragedy sends us away) that despite every phenomenal change, life is at bottom indestructibly joyful and powerful.”
Xgndr fashion is a Social-Marker, a Sign-Post and claim to the inalienable right to individuality: that the person cannot permanently give such rights away to their intimate partner, significant Other under any circumstances.
Inalienable XGNDR rights, in other words, are rights no one can waive. The XGNDR Declarations, albeit in fashion, dance or lifestyle signifies a thinking and experimentation on the abolishment of the reoccurring romantic and often intimate prisons that plague our emotional life and society.
An inviolable right is a right that cannot be taken away or denied. ‘The right to life is inviolable.’ This means that the right is sacred and that nobody can take away the right of any being to live in this world. An inviolable law cannot be violated or broken.
Xgndrs operate in a social space that affirms that relationships whether between men and women or women and women are inalienable.
The appeal to rights that cannot be alienated is there to insist that there are some rights one cannot simply turn over to one’s intimate other, spouse or partner. – to ‘alienate’ means to sell off or give over to someone else which is often socially intertwined and then masked by romantic relationships. When we form romantic relationships based often on political notions we often hand over or alienate rights to the other so that it can do the work we all need it to do. Xgndrs are charged with the investigation and creations of the bulwark of rights, that cannot be alienated at all: we cannot lose them by giving them to someone else.
ideologies are discourses that promote false ideas (or “false consciousness”) in subjects about the political regimes they live in. Nevertheless, because these ideas are believed by the subjects to be true, they assist in the reproduction of the existing status quo, in an exact instance of what Umberto Eco dubs “the force of the fake.” To critique ideology, according to this position, it is sufficient to unearth the truth(s) the ideologies conceal from the subject’s knowledge. Then, so the theory runs, subjects will become aware of the political shortcomings of their current regimes, and be able and moved to better them zizek
Slovjo Zizek http://www.jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol21.2/olson-zizek.pdf
. Yes, but I think that in psychoanalytic terms this is easy to understand,
in the sense that the ultimate object of anxiety is to encounter a desiring
Other. Let’s take old-fashioned male chauvinism What it really is
afraid of is the intense explosion of a woman’s ability to articulate her
desire, to enjoy herself, because then you have this logic: if women are
left to be free, they will destroy themselves, so they have to be kept in
check for their own good. So, the ultimate male devotion to the Other,
to the feminine, is precisely a devotion that says, “I’m ready to do
everything for you, to serve you all the time, just to prevent this
explosion of desire.” In this sense, we should talk a little bit about what
the Other’s desire means. When Lacan says that desire is the desire of
the Other, this is to be taken much more literally than it’s usually taken.
It doesn’t mean simply that; it means also that what I desire is
determined by the “big Other” in the sense of symbolic order desirethat
is, my desires are structures to the symbolic values, coordinates
within which I move: my desires do not directly express my nature.
They are determined by the social field within which I dwell. The
second meaning is that my desire is to be desired by the Other. But I
think that there is a more radical meaning at work in Lacan, which is that
my ultimate desire is to identify what kind of object of desire I am for
the Other. That’s the ultimate hysterical question. Not, “What do I
want?” but “What does the Other see in me?” “What kind of object of
desire am I for the Other?” This is the ultimate anxiety-provoking
question. The problem for the hysterical subject is usually that what
you really fear is to learn what you are for the Other. Here we have the
distinction between hysteria and perversion. A pervert subject knows
it perfectly;a pervertsubjectsaysopenly,”I know what I am for the
Other. 1know how to serve you.” But a hysterical subject rejects it: “I
reject this being instrumentalized in this sense.” So the whole paradox
beneath it is that we usually conceive activity as making things happen;
you do things so that something will change. What I find so productive
Slavoj Zi.iek 265
in psychoanalysis is the notion of”false activity,” in the sense that you
are active so that something will not happen, as in elementary obsessional
rituals, like when you walk along the street and you have to cross
yourself two times. The idea is, why these rituals? It’s always, “If I
don’t do this, something horrible will happen.” This something is
precisely the explosion of and the confrontation with the Other’s desire.
Q. In The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, you talk about “the end of
psychology” despite “today’s prevailing ‘psychologization’ of social
life.” Would you say more about the end of psychology?
!Kung people of the Kalahari Desert beginning in 1950. This excerpt from daughter Elizabeth Marshall’s book, The old way: a story of the first people, puts it succinctly.
“The [Ju/wasi] are extremely dependent emotionally on the sense of belonging and companionship,” wrote my mother. “Separation and loneliness are unendurable to them. I believe their wanting to belong and be near is actually visible in the way families cluster together in an encampment and in the way they sit huddled together, often touching someone, shoulder against shoulder, ankle across ankle. Security and comfort for them lie in their belonging to their group free from the threat of rejection and hostility.”(1
xgndr.com The reinvention of " Woman" 
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