Žižek’s Jokes: (did you hear the one about Hegel and negation?) by Slavoj Žižek, The MIT Press, Hardback, Published: 21 February 2014, 148 Pages, 196x133mm, ISBN: 9780262026710, ₹1305
by Bilal Khan
When one contemplates philosophical thought, it is a norm to think of a serious arbiter who is poised unconsciously on a couch, reading a manuscript of otherworldly knowledge. This image itself is what is more or less shaken by the Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Unconventional and popular, Žižek has garnered a large following amongst academics and layperson alike, based on a technique he often uses: jokes. Žižek has time and again used jokes as a way to understand deep philosophical problems, appealing to an audience around the world. However, it is this manoeuvre itself that has given rise to some of the worst critiques the thinker has faced. Questionably, then, is it ethical or philosophical to joke about death, misery and politics? The scope of this essay seems too short to answer this question. The aim of this essay, then, is to produce a brief understanding of Žižek’s Jokes, an anthology edited by Audun Mortensen with a humorous afterword authored by Nicholas John Currie, also known as Momus, a Scottish musician and writer.
The anthology is a straightforward book of all the jokes Žižek has used in his works. With 102 citations from his work, the anthology does exactly what it is titled as: a book full of jokes made by Žižek. Through and through, the farcical nature of the content directs the book into a small guide on how to read Žižek. Even the introduction works against its own nature, where instead of providing the reader with a brief summary of the content, the document explains the profound linguistic prowess of jokes. As Žižek explains, a joke carries no author. This exclamation stands true for Žižek himself, where most of his jokes are borrowed from a mysterious source. The joke about a monkey who keeps washing his testicles in a glass of whisky seems to originate from Eastern Europe. One is left to guess if this was his invention or if this joke is actually told at weddings and ceremonies. The answer to this dilemma would be to say “both”. As he explains, jokes are always told originally, but somehow are always already heard. This, he claims, illuminates the contradictory nature of jokes, where they are individualistic yet collectively already in circulation.
What is visible from the book is the importance of jokes in philosophical thought which has remained as an object of inquiry within the field for some time now. The peculiarity of the Žižekian model is its uncanny adaptation of humour by the thinker in his work and lectures. Hence, the thinker is, ironically, not a thinker of jokes but the one who thinks in jokes. Therefore, it is common to find Žižek under the threat of being cancelled as he explores the obscene quality of jokes by uttering them in conference halls. Obviously, this unconventionality is only matched by his philosophical mentor, Jacques Lacan, who also saw jokes as crucial for understanding the unconscious mind.
Although Lacan did not use jokes extensively in his lectures, he did use peculiar oratory techniques to explain his points. Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler (2016), in their edited anthology Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Comedy, explain how the Lacanian method of therapy inhabits a punchline. For context, Lacan’s clinical practice included a therapy method which was radically opposed to the standard “talking cure” methodology of 20th-century psychoanalysis. He introduced the concept of “scansion” in the therapy model, where he would stop or scand the session after the analysand (the patient) has uttered something of value to the analyst. Instead of continuing the process and giving the analysand the driver’s seat in the session, the Lacanian method asks the analyst to guide the session with a heavier hand. Gherovici and Steinkoler suggest that this method is very similar to dropping a punchline at the right time in a comedic skit. Much like one would say, “comedy is all about timing,” Lacan would argue similarly for the truths of the unconscious.
The connection of jokes to the unconscious mind goes back to Freud (1905) who wrote a book on jokes trying to piece together the structure of a joke similar to his work on dreams. This interconnection between jokes and dreams lies in their structure, which he calls the form. It is interesting to know that Freud has always asked his readers to focus not on the dream-content (manifest or latent) but on its form. He coined this mechanical process, transforming the dream-thought as “dream-work”, which is influenced by unconscious desires. This digression to the Freudian idea of form is necessary to link jokes and dreams, meaning that both are a roadway to the unconscious. As Gherovici and Steinkoler wittingly remark, “jokes offer a shortcut to the unconscious we can use in broad daylight” (2016, p. 1) Hence, Žižek’s anthology of just his jokes manifests not as a byproduct of his philosophical technique, but instead a significant modality or form of his political thought.
Let’s take the example of a perfectly vulgar joke from the book. A Mongol officer in 14th-century Russia declares to a peasant that he is going to rape his wife. However, the officer noticed a lot of dust on the road and proceeded to order the peasant to hold his testicles, protecting them from dust while he committed the act. After the deed was done, the peasant started jumping in joy, saying that he got the officer as he let go of the testicle while the act was happening. Thus, they are covered in dust now. This obscene joke appears in The Plague of Fantasies (1997), where Žižek seems to be comparing two significant responses to any political crisis which are coded as the “conservative knave” and the “progressive fool”. The joke is used to pass a witty comment on the latter, the leftist “social critics” who are happy at analysing the oppressive forces and taking away a small amount of their power for themselves. In other words, left critics have just dirtied the testicles of globalist capital order while the system is flourishing and raping the labour class. Some might argue that this is such a vulgar joke for such a generalised observation. However, this vulgarity and upfront obscenity is not the point of the joke. It is the well-timed punchline that appears after the peasant expresses joy. His absurd enjoyment while being subjected to abject horror becomes the necessary form a joke takes to explain repressed unconscious desires or contemporary political crises.
The Žižekian model of humour then runs counter to the mainstream liberal-leftist position that sees political incorrectness as a way of normalising dominating discourses. However, jokes are rarely about their content (sexism, racism and so on) and mainly depend on their form. The jokes that appear obscene then function as a shortcut to the repressed ideas of society. They, themselves, do not play a role in a discourse as much as they address and acknowledge discourses. Pushing this repression even further through cancel culture must be understood as inadequate to deal with the political problems of the time. Whatever is repressed returns in one form or another.
This position of using humour is well explained by Momus, who wrote the afterword of the book. Momus argues that Žižek’s constant use of jokes that concern famously difficult authors including Derrida and Lacan produces a specific effect on the reader. What he calls the “lightness of profundity” is explained as a moment of recognition where one sees these authors and their philosophies as approachable. In other words, humour renders them human for the reader to (mis)understand them. He also makes an interesting linking of jokes to lies which might help people to think of alternative possibilities of endings that are too certain and “true”. A lie then comes in handy to tickle you into a plethora of questions, ambiguities and vulgarities.
There is no serious conclusion to his review apart from laughing on every page because of Žižek’s unrelenting and R-rated humour. For this reason, Momus announces that Žižek is an old family uncle who keeps repeating his jokes at family gatherings. One might think this is at least better than Momus’ brother who thought of Žižek as “crazy, a hothead”. The anthology might appear as a coherent whole of folklorish jokes, but it is anything but coherent. It resembles a book of ramblings, sometimes, it takes the shape of a personal diary and sometimes, unshockingly, a tragic treatise on politics. As Momus writes, “comedy is a legitimacy crisis followed by the sudden appearance of a cornucopia”(p. 140) Žižek’s Jokes can only be understood as a surplus, an excess, and a cornucopia.
Bilal Khan is a Research Scholar specialising in Film Studies and Psychoanalysis, with a postgraduate degree in Literary and Cultural Studies from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
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