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Monotheistic Violence or Zizek's Religious Temptation

Because of this I see the entire separation between tolerant 'authentic' monotheism and its violent excess as repeating the fundamental ideological gesture of claiming distance from the text. Perhaps we should supplement Zizek's thesis that being oblivious to this distance is a precondition of political activity, and extend it to religious activity as well. By claiming the excess of violence in (pseudo) monotheistic religion is proper only to its tacit polytheistic underside masks the inherent violence of any true monotheism, which consists in closing the separation between its singular discourse and the other's expression, where the latter is reduced to the former. Concretely to follow with our example, the violence advanced by Christian monotheism does not proceed from accepting the other Gods as merely 'false'; but on reducing them to being a pathological expression of some failure to abide to the norm of the monotheistic discourse (the terrorist’s proclamation of the sacred duty of the 'sons of Ala' is but the delusional influence of the corruption of the community of Christian values in sin, it's the devil's work, failure to recognize the true grace of the Lord in the community of Christian brotherhood, etc).

Monotheism bears this necessary violence intrinsically to its very discourse; it already prescribes the legitimate suppression of acts which do not comply to the normal integration to the religious community. Zizek's fault repeats the precise ideological gesture marked by monotheism- he dismisses examples of violence in self-proclaimed monotheisms as pathological examples of a quieter, apprehensive 'true' monotheism. The attack on the concept of fundamentalism must thus avoid this reference to true monotheism as a potential aspiration (unsurprisingly, Zizek himself finds in so-called true monotheists like the Amish a generally agreeable archetype which he jokingly suggests should increase in numbers).

Foucault vs. Chomsky or the Impasse of Ontological Indeterminism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Ai5WPHqWA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kawGakdNoT0

The debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky from 1971 serves as a wonderful example which concentrates some of the crucial philosophical knots proper to post-structuralism and its critics. Foucault, well in accord to the post-modern, Heideggerean tendencies of historicism and 'hermeneutics of suspicion', follows to the gap of Gelassenheit, the point of an impasse at the moment of prescription. He remains at the neutral point of anti-essentialist recognition: all facts are culture-bred and thus intra-situational, and thus any positive programme based on borrowed concepts is but an indulgence on ideological supports for a present system of power.

The same struggle was already put before Heidegger in the famous section on authenticity in Sein und Zeit, and its prescriptive impasse: the clash between Dasein's solitude and its ontological being as Mitdasein (being-with), of authentic resoluteness existence against the inauthentic idle talk of Das Man, and ultimately the short-circuit for decision making in facing the gap between being and beings. Familiar story, told in an unfairly synthesized version, but you get the point. Foucault's suspicion is, in effect, the distribution of the ontological gap across the entirety of the state of the historical situation. The key is to 'unmask the reigning mechanisms of power' which articulate the structure of our contemporary class society.

Here we see the standard view which produces the standard criticisms against post-structuralism: the ontological neutrality entailed by the hermeneutic approach leads to an impasse at the level of action; bridging the gap between the subject and an ontology results in the twofold constriction: the identity of the subjects and objects becomes the partially determined concept of a particular structure of power, and this indeterminacy serves to guarantee immobility at the point of agency. The results of both the standard procedures of a hermeneutics of suspicion is decidedly post-Cartesian in that the category of the subject becomes part of the situation, rather than the separate point to which we can withdraw to gain an apodictic foundation for knowledge (the theme which runs from Descartes to Husserl, even Sartre). The question of an ontology takes the place of the question of an epistemology: there is no minimum definition of the subject as a substantial ground for thought; ontology itself precludes the substantializing of the subject.

In this way, the notion of a subject qua agent is put in unstable grounds. The introduction to Badiou's 'Infinite Thought' by Feltham and Justin Clemens provides a nice synthesis of the dilemma between poststructuralists and its critics, citing the impasse of historical determinacy against the possibility of independent agency in Foucault:

"For example in his middle period, Foucault argued that networks of disciplinary power not only reach into the most intimate spaces of the subject, but actually produce what we call subjects. However, Foucault also said that power produces resistance. His problem then became accounting for the source of such resistance. If the subject - right down to its most intimate desires, actions and thoughts - is constituted by power, then how can it be the source of independent resistance? For such a point of agency to exist, Foucault needs some space which has not been completely constituted by power, or a complex doctrine on the relationship between resistance and independence. However, he has neither."

Following the necessity to constrict the conception of the subject, post-structuralism (most notably post-Lacanian) reduces the subject to being the suture of its situation; it is precisely a-substantial; it lacks a proper place of inscription, decentered, or to use Derrida's catchy phrase, it remains 'outside the text'. This is also grounds for the Lacanian gap between the Real and language. But Foucault does not yet consider the identification of subject with the gap; if anything he remains within the negative procedure of denying foundation. This way, The 'anthropological' point of departure thus consists, paradoxically, in denying an identifiable set of traits of the anthropos to be distributed within the field of knowledge, as foundational for univocal interpretation; the subject belongs to the situation and cannot be displaced outside of it without reproducing the structures which constitute the situation as such. Thus, power becomes reiterated over and again through appeal to the substantiality of the subject, which must be escaped.

In this way, Foucault begins by calling into question Chomsky's proposal of a 'human nature' and a standard for common values departing from the very general platitudes (love, justice, freedom...) since these concepts must themselves be understood as the ideological situation in which the mechanisms of power operate. But since Foucault has neither a theory of how positive ethico/political action can occur on the part of agents, nor an ontology to give which could be used for such projections, he runs against the pragmatic accusation that post structuralism "leads down a slippery slope to apoliticism". (1)

Here Foucault assumes too much about Chomsky's understanding of the concept of 'class', and for that the latter was not capable of understanding the extent to which Foucault's argument may lead us to locate to locate the knot of the problem. The crucial misunderstanding occurs when Chomsky reduces Foucault’s notion of class as that of economic classes within capitalist societies. But one cannot understand class as that assigned to any particular historical social order, and certainly not any particular economic or political notion of class. To say the transmission of power occurs just or primordially at the level of economic classes is certainly an excess. Furthermore, Foucault is well aware that classes are always in operation in the form of concrete economical and political processes and mechanisms, within concrete situations. But what must be understood is precisely that there is no singular notion of a class which underlies uniformly human life throughout historically, ontologies are determined from within and not transcendentally. Certainly the notion of class which is structured by the operation of Marxism is different from the feudal state, just as the notion of a 'deity' is not homogenous for medieval Christian ontology as that of other cultures, and so on. Of course, we should also be prepared to go beyond Foucault and acknowledge that the process of hermeneutic interpretation does not pose an exception to the indeterminacy of this process, but that it itself becomes subject to the negative process which would expose it as operating on a certain exclusion, an absent center.

The result is clear: one cannot propose an ontology on these terms, but must operate as if the hermeneutic text was exhibiting the systematic conformity of the situation to the interpretative text. Put more simply, the hermeneutic interpretation Foucault proposes can only serve to exhibit intrinsically the structures of power if it becomes at the same time part of the interpretative text being proposed itself, the analysis of the situation is not just another edifice with its distinct classes, but an entirely independent, indeterminate system for the interpretation of situations intrinsically. Of course, one must question whether Foucault's interpretative framework, guided by the operation of power and manifested as classes does not consist itself in just another text itself including the possibility for a deconstructive reading. One may simply recall the Derrida /Gadamer fiasco on the hermeneutic ideal to get a grasp on how easily the problem of interpretation turns muddy on anti-essentialist grounds. We can thus say that, for Foucault, the category of class as circumscribed to economic class would constitute a paradigmatic example of what Kant would have called a private use of reason: recurrence to a concept which is contingent and contained within the situation where power is applied directly; class is never the class of individuals, but of the universal which allows a set of individuals to be included in the situation, i.e. to be a subset.

In any case, for our purposes it is sufficient to note that Foucault wishes to produce as a concept of class itself divorced from specific vocabularies or historical presentations. That the terms belonging to the interpretative text he proposes may itself be exhibited as groundless, contradictory or resting on its own system of classes must not deviate us from the essential direction of his thought. For what is precisely at stake is precisely how the reduction of one system to a more general one, while necessarily operating within a situation and from its own terms, may nonetheless result in a possibility for change, and thus a space for individual and collective agency to emerge.

Foucault thus uses 'class' as an absolutely general concept with respect to social, political and economic standards. Indeed, the very conceptual divisions we sketch out to begin our analysis become themselves to be questioned hermeneutically as integral parts of a particular discourse. We can say that Foucault's notion of class is effectively post-Marxist, in that the state becomes understood essentially as the establishment of a relationship to classes, or to use Badiou's helpful jargon, subsets or parts. Here we can follow Badiou's clear exposition of the Marxist concept of a class to elucidate Foucault's own usage of the term:

"Marxist thought related the State directly to sub-multiples [universal, ideological, prescriptive] rather than to terms of the situation [individual, empirical, passive]. It posits that the count-as-one ensured by the State is not originally that of individuals, but that of the multiple classes of individuals. Even if one abandons the terminology of classes, the formal idea that the State- which is the state of the historico-social situation- deals with collective subsets and not with individuals remains essential. This idea must be understood: the essence of the State is that of not being obliged to recognize individuals- when it is obliged to recognize them, in concrete cases, it is always according to a principle of counting which does not concern individuals as such... This is the underlying meaning that must be conferred upon the vulgar Marxist idea that 'the State is always the State of the ruling class'. The interpretation I propose of this idea is that the State solely exercises its domination according to a law destined to form-one out of the parts of the situation..." [B&E, Meditation 9, Pg. 105]

It is clear that Foucault is operating by the same logic here. The appeal to 'human nature', 'justice', 'freedom' and so on, cannot be understood as anything but as reintroducing oneself to the parts of the situation which the state (the representation of the historico-social situation) legitimates to be counted; there is no relation to individuals in the situation apart from what the State legitimates to be counted. Which is why Chomsky’s reply that power is not necessarily manifested in the form of classes fundamentally fails; all societies have a particular system of classes, and power is nothing but the effective human exchange which sustain the structure of these classes. So we are left, it seems, with a twofold result: a gap between the subject and justification, and the gap between negation (in the sense of unmasking/challenging the structures of power) and affirmation (in the sense of determining the space for an ontology which allows for decision without relapsing into the structures of domination).

A ‘new’ ontology should thus be both conscientious of the ontological indeterminacy of the situation while at the same time challenging the structures of power presented in the situation by unmasking their operation. At the same time, Foucault offers nothing which suggests the possibility of an ontology. We thus remain, with Foucault, entrapped in the all-too familiar anthropological, anti-essentialist theses which have become themselves another economy of power, the preservation of a certain status quo through the deployment of intra-situational platitudes. These are all well-known to most of us in their many versions: universal truths are impossible, there are only different perspectives, we are all human after all, one must be anthropologically aware and not impose our concepts onto other cultures, the attempts to elevate reason in order to justify everything misses on the dynamism of change, etc. But the equally familiar point follows that when we demand a homogeneous ethico-political project for mankind by evoking concepts such as 'freedom of choice, privacy...' and deploy a particular conceptual framework for the articulation and justification of these claims, we are relapsing into universalist metaphysics; a blindness which leads to thinking humans can be judged under one standard. As Paul would have put it, from the viewpoint of universal reason "...there are no Jews or Greeks". In order for recognition to avoid identification, one cannot operate axiomatically through the concepts which are proper to the situation as such. The question is thus the question of the gap between the different positions, or as Zizek puts it apropos of Paul: "The struggle which truly engages him is not simply "more universal" than that of one ethnic group against another; it is a struggle which obeys an entirely different logic; no longer the logic of one self-identical substantial group fighting another group, but an antagonism that, in a diagonal way, cuts across all particular groups."

This perpetual oscillation between conceptual indeterminacy and the urge for positive political action cannot be resolved within the dialectic that Foucault deploys; it is merely constrained to repeat the deconstructive process of identifying the points of suture within the present state of the situation to expose them as structures of power. The 'danger' Foucault speaks off is indeed certain, but one that ultimately must be confronted. It is the danger to be found, as recognized by Lacoue-Labarthe, of repetition as such; of the inherent mimesis intrinsic to the dialectical process which follows from the assertion universality. This immediate tension, or danger, has ran its familiar course through the post-modern tendencies of discourse, ever since Heidegger demarcated Das Man and idle talk (Garede) as the (inauthentic) danger of a withdrawal of being; a deferral of the gap between the ontic and the ontological. Similarly, Derrida's notion of differance concentrates this necessary moment of deference at the point of tension between the repetition of the concept and its inherent universality:

"To put old names to work, or even just to leave them in circulation, will always, of course, involve some risk: the risk of settling down or regressing into the system that has been, or is in the process of being deconstructed. To deny this risk would be to confirm it: it would be to see the signifier- in this case the name- as a merely circumstantial, conventional occurrence of the concept of as a concession without any specific effect. It would be an affirmation of the autonomy of meaning, of the ideal purity of the abstract, theoretical history of the concept. Inversely, to claim to do away immediately with previous marks and to cross over, by decree, by a simple leap, into the outside of classical oppositions is, apart from the risk of engaging in an interminable "negative theology", to forget that these oppositions have never constituted a given system, a sort of ahistorical, thoroughly homogenous table, but rather a dissymmetric, hierarchically ordered space whose closure is constantly being traversed by the forces and worked by the exteriority, that it represses: that is, expels and, which amounts to the same, internalizes as one of its moments. This is why deconstruction involves an indispensable phase of reversal. To remain content with reversal is of course to operate within the immanence of the system to de destroyed. But to sit back, in order to go further, in order to be more radical and daring, and take an attitude of neutralizing indifference with respect to the classical oppositions would be to give free reign to the existing forces that effectively and historically dominate the field. It would be, for not having seized the means to intervene, to confirm the established equilibrium." (Dissemination)

This passage condenses the very impasse which happens between Foucault and Chomsky: the double danger. Whereas Foucault is steadfast to point out that it is necessary to elucidate how the present class system is upheld by a certain economy of power, this remains an essentially negative task, it speaks as if the elucidation of the oppositions which structure the situation could be shown as having belonged to particular framework of interpretation, external to the situation itself. In the case of Foucault, this is where an ontology of power seems to transpire: since by the hermeneutic procedure of exposing the power structures of the situation one sublates them under the mark of the general system of 'power struggle' that constitutes and allows the interpretative text to operate. On the other hand, Chomsky's position succumbs to the second danger: by neutralizing the indifference given to the classical oppositions in order to go further (i.e to show how the concepts of justice and freedom have been assumed in a particular form by the organisms of power to seek a correction on the basis of these concepts) is to relapse into the situation's terms. Here I think we have a lot to learn from Badiou and his notion of subtraction, and how for an event to happen from the situation, there must be a point of absolute (axiomatic) decision. The radicality required exceeds by far that required by opposing the empirical, circumstantial shortcomings of the state of the situation, and thus much more than Chomsky's somewhat depressing conception of 'human nature' as the foundation for a new ethics or politics.

Which is why Chomsky appears (finally) as the obvious conservative: his recognition of the brooding conceptual indeterminateness is sufficient, and ultimately folds back to some very general platitudes which appear inoffensive and trivially true, but turn out to be 'Eurocentric' or worse. Of course, it seems quite cynical to deny that human beings want goodness, love, and so on; the intuitiveness of these seems immediate. But the meaning of these concepts, and how they operate inside a concrete order where power is enforced, is the impasse of such a dialectic course. What is needed is a radical reworking of our conceptual possibilities to arrive at novel possibilities for thought which exceed that allowed by the state of the situation. And this is something neither Chomsky nor Foucault have been ever prepared to give; even if the both have militantly reacted against the present organisms of-power.

Chomsky is thus finally trapped in a rather innocent ethical ontology using very broad concepts of- 'human nature', 'kindness', 'love', and reiterating the necessity of decision in light of the gap. The state of the situation is thus condensed in the following, apparently silly dilemma: if universality fails at the realm of justification (since justification itself fails to be universal), how do we resist a posture of Gelassenheit and propose an effective reworking of our social world. Of course, for Chomsky, this occurs within the organisms of society by denouncing acts of injustice and proposing improvement at the level of economical, political states by constantly referring to the abovementioned platitudes as the standards which must be preserved.

Foucault here is right in pointing out that Chomsky's optimism in founding society using as justification certain concepts runs the danger of preserving the status quo, or trivially modify it. But Chomsky is right in that the formal indeterminateness of concrete possibilities cannot perpetuate inertia with respect to our socio political acting. Then again, Foucault is also correct in that the conceptual work must be ready to denounce commitment to fundamental notions which support the order. Finally, the task seems to require to locate the possibility of a new conceptualization of the situation so we may produce, through a sufficient theory and the will to action, a new possibility to represent the situation or, to use Badiou's term, opening the possibility for an event, the possibility of producing a novelty by announcing that which has been thus far excluded by the organisms of power and affirming new ones through axiomatic decisions. This is where Badiou, Zizek, and the like, are cooperating towards a new possibility of understanding our present historical situation.

Enjoy! - The Hawaii Chair.

Another wonderful example of Zizek's observation that today's (permissive) biopolitics of control and extreme hedonism take part as two sides of the same phenomenon. In today's striving for self-realization, individualism and happinness, instead of enforcing the Law by banning excess, excess is rather encouraged by already offering itself as a mechanism of control. This is done precisely by making the object itself the agent for censorship: the object is already in itself deprived of it's illicit component.

Thus we get a series of objects deprived of their malignant property: 'beer without alcohol', 'safe sex', 'sweets without sugar'. Self-realization is possible only by avoiding the malignant inhibitions that might interrupt our process of unmediated enjoyment. In this way, the ideal of a 'healthy life' is, for example, promoted as the objectified course through which the prohibition to commit exceses is regulated (decaf coffee, non-alcoholic alcoholic beverages, etc). You can enjoy all you want, on the condition that you do not harm yourself in the process. Biopolitical control is the obverse side of the apparent consummerist, hedonistic urgency to enjoy. In a nutshell: "you are free to do what you want, on the condition that you do the right thing".

Transgression is no longer something one must not disobey, but one it becomes something one effectively cannot disobey, something one obeys by following the very injunction to enjoy. The object thus functions as its counter-agent; it is already desubstantialized for consumption, so one can 'freely enjoy' and commit excesses in order without violating the Law. The regulation of micropractice (to use Foucault's term) is thus driven to the point where through the injunction to enjoy ideology is mobilized in modern capitalism. The latest in this list of desubstantialized products ... The Hawaii Chair!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_amg-Aos4&feature=related

Take the work out of your workout: Enjoy!

On Sun-Lotion and Unwritten Rules.

Earlier today I found out about the peculiar sun lotion ‘no-ad’; named in allusion to the producer’s policy of not using advertisements as a means to sell their product, i.e. not trying to gain costumers by calling attention to aspects which are irrelevant to the product’s concrete quality and functionality. Hence, they would not show any comforting pictures of beaches on the bottle’s front, not fancy it with explosive colored fonts and so forth. The lotion apparently became rather popular, in spite of its producer’s unwillingness to publicize.It isn’t hard to gain insight into the basic paradox: by claiming that they didn’t advertise themselves they in fact did. How so? Doesn’t the claim merely call attention to the fact that nothing in the product attempts to draw an audience on the basis of trivialities? Sure it does. One might be charged with disbeliever’s paranoia in claiming that just by saying they are not advertising their product, the manufacturers already are. For what attractiveness could a bottle of sun-lotion gain by claiming they don’t advertise their own product, such that it could constitute another instance of advertising, like the ones they are trying to denounce? The answer: the fact that the claim makes it the right choice.

The paranoia starts to suddenly appear more earthly if we merely acknowledge that the extent to which the manipulative forces of advertisement can go is not restricted to affect only our senses, but also our moral decisions and actions. Again, how so? How can we accuse the sun lotion of tacitly containing a normative content of which it is guilty of advertising? The first thing to notice is that the name ‘no-ad’ does not merely stand for ‘We do not advertise’, but again tacitly and more crucially for ‘We do not advertise, because one shouldn’t’. That they do not advertise their product can only be of importance if we first accept that advertising contains an uncanny element to it, which if suppressed constitutes an improvement on the product or amends the intent of its producers. In succeeding with such suppression, the producer is thereby excused from the guilt of advertisement. By the same token, the consumer must then make a deliberate choice between choosing the product which doesn’t advertise, or one among the many who do. In calling one’s attention to the virtue of not advertising, ‘no-ad’ becomes not only one possible option amongst many, but indeed the mandatory one. Without knowing, the audience is not only led to prefer this lotion over the others in virtue of its inherent qualities and functional virtues, as it claimed to do, but rather on the basis of saying they are not advertising it, and that choosing a different product which does is to be persuaded on the basis of advertisement and to blindly surrender to a subversive authority.

The simple, apparently inoffensive normative claim ‘We do not advertise this lotion’ now appears more demanding than all the beaches, girls and fonts of the alternatives combined. For now it is not a matter of how attractive the product might be according to the costumer’s free possibility of preference, but of the inevitable guilt one surrenders to in choosing any of the alternatives. ‘We do not advertise this lotion, because one ought not to- and so if you buy a brand that advertises you are letting yourself be tricked in supporting it’. Not only can buy this lotion, but you ought to. You must buy no-ad in order to make a decision free from the guilt of gullibility. But what provides this alleged freedom stems from the unspoken injunctions in the statement itself, and its censoring of the competition. This surrender to the authority of the statement could be taken as a paradigmatic example of what Adorno has called the ‘jargon of authenticity’, in reference to Heidegger's alleged overcoming of metaphysics. The claim, in promising freedom from the available choices, becomes the only possible choice. One doesn’t plead allegiance to anything but the claim, and that which provides the claim, i.e. the product. But above all, adds quite elegantly to Zizek’s examples of how the Lacanian Big-Other operates on the background of the unwritten rules prescribed in silence. This way, the apparent tolerance and freedom avowed by the producers ultimately harbors a stronger, tacitly conveyed order which remains operating with the same subversive agenda as the alternatives they are supposed to be denouncing.

Accordingly, whether advertisement is really something condonable becomes quite secondary and is given no further thought. The shortcut in the name already provides the necessary spark to draw the masses, reminding them that next to it lays the dishonest competition, which ploys to gain their attention through their underhanded ways. At the same time, we are reminded that ‘no-ad’ does not ask for your allegiance, au contraire, it has revealed the enemy: the competition! In choosing no-ad for its represented moral integrity we do not follow the masses, but act of our own accord, with freedom! Simultaneously, whether the product is indeed better or not becomes a completely unmanageable task for the costumer; one is merely reminded that the competition is guilty of advertising, irrespective of the qualities in their product. Even more strongly, one is foolishly led to believe that we have in sight the better product of the bunch, the only one that’s respectable and trustworthy. The line separating two distinct and unrelated issues disappears: the moral implications leading the fact they presumably do not advertise the way others do, and the implications that not-advertising may have in validating the purchasing of no-ad over other the alternatives. In other words, the line separating the relation between the moral issue of advertising and the criteria one should follow in choosing a product becomes confused, and deliberately so.

Quite predictably, one suddenly stops thinking about the concrete quality of the product the moment one faces an apparent moral dilemma. No-ad becomes first and foremost an obligation and only secondly one possible choice for sun-lotion. The martyrs who, for the sake of honesty and transparency, plead allegiance to the brand and to it's moral dictum, become their very own victims. Quality has been displaced, and decisions are made on moral grounds. After all, why not name the lotion with an irrelevant, non-suggestive name, if quality is all that matters? Less catchy perhaps? But they aren't supposed to be advertising. Less important then? But is it really more important to avoid publicizing than to offer a better product than the alternatives, or is it sufficient to avoid advertising? If not, and granting them that they do not publicize, why should we base our decision on the basis of their non-advertising policy?

One may anticipate them defending that the idea is that by not spending money on advertisement they show how all of their resources get employed in the quality of the product itself and not in producing some deceptive gimmick for the masses. Yet it is plainly obvious that this is far from guaranteeing a better product. The costumer cannot make a decision on the basis of quality just knowing that. But the issue of advertisement, being taken to the name of the bottle, becomes emblematic for what the lotion is identifiable as qua product. That is, the name baptizes the object for the potential buyer: 'This is no-ad, the sun lotion that if bought, represents the obligatory moral choice to be taken, because it doesn't advertise and therefore uses all of its resources in improving the product itself.' Yet by circumscribing the object (and therefore the costumer) to that singular issue of advertisement one is taken without further reflection to the concrete predicament: ‘do I buy this lotion or another one- on the basis of what I know of this object?’ And what does the costumer know? It knows about no-ad that it doesn't advertise. It knows furthermore that in advertising there is the guilt of using resources for deceit and not quality.

Indeed, the costumer concludes that since all resources go to the lotion and not advertising, any manufacturer which advertises must have a more deficient product.Since no-ad stands innocent from these charges, it is automatically made to stand in a privileged position for the costumer. The corrupted inference solidifies: since the manufacturers devote all of their resources to the product's quality they must therefore make the better product! But this is of course absurd, as it may be the company cannot afford to beat the competition on the basis of quality, ads or not. One loyal supporter can only then reply that at this point the question about quality becomes secondary to the fact that it is not-advertising and as such there is a moral issue involved at the heart of things. These supporters become the advertisers of no advertising, the church of no religions, deconstruction or whatever. The campaign in favor of no advertisement becomes the product’s strongest asset, and works beautifully in creating a legion of followers. For it is easier to appeal to the moral intuition of the masses than to their willingness to acquire knowledge. Indeed, most simply won’t; no-ad gets acknowledged as having purged the demons of beaches and suns in all their metaphysical and non-objective pretensions, in the spirit of being transparent to the costumer.

We can freely choose no-ad and at the same time claim that if you don’t, then you’re not free, that you’re guilty for being gullible, for supporting the subversive ways of the competition, of the advertisers, of those guilty of using resources for advertising and not research. We choose no-ad freely and knowing that all of its resources went into the quality of the product and not in attracting out attention through irrelevant diversions. We support the sun-lotion to end all sun-lotions! And we can enjoy our lotion no-ad with the modest elation of having done the right thing!But in the end, who cares if the lotion was better or not?

I conclude: the enjoyment one gains from supporting ‘no-ad’ is anything but free- it can only result from the tacit injunction gained from and through the purchasing of the product. Is there really any other way? Here I return to Zizek:“How do we account for this paradox: that the absence of law universalizes prohibition. There is only one possible explanation: enjoyment itself, which we experience as a transgression, is in its innermost status something imposed, ordered- when we enjoy we never do it spontaneously, we always follow a certain injunction”.