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Themesicon: navigation pathCyborg Bodiesicon: navigation pathPostsexual Bodies
 
 
 
 
 

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quantum physics» [12] and in «The Plague of Fantasies» [13] he described the arrangement made available by the Internet and its link-up possibilities. According to Zizek, in the case of the Internet we have to reckon with more far-reaching changes. It could come to a fusion with the computer, and a state might again set in which prevailed before the sexualization of the subject, i.e. a state prior to sexual differentiation and thus a state characteristic of pure pleasure—pure autoeroticism. In «The Plague of Fantasies» Zizek describes counterforces that attempt to contain this boundless state of pleasure, above all the subject her/himself, who would react to the profusion of choices presented by the Internet with anorexia-like behavior: «Is not one of the possible reactions to the excessive filling-in of the voids in cyberspace therefore informational anorexia, the desperate refusal to accept information, in so far as it occludes the presence of the Real?» [14] This is a line of argumentation that comes very close to that of Paul Verhaege. In his book «Love in a time of loneliness» [15] he makes the point that there is a comparable paradox in our society. Because in a time which professes to allow everything,

 

which almost forces the individual to be everything and to have everything and, as already mentioned, also to get pleasure from everything, instead of happiness, boredom and tiredness spread. Less and less people would be able to get involved with other people or other things. Instead, we would make out a hysterical quest for new proscriptions, new leaders, new rules and rituals. This means that immense liberty, unrestrained pleasure, communication and sexual contacts with everyone and at any time would lead to a draining. Boundaries, restraints, rules and laws are apparently necessary in order to keep that force alive which psychoanalysis termed libido at the beginning of the twentieth century, and which since Jacques Lacan has been known as the desire that drives the subject forward.

Being part of an image

How can one now understand all of the different television events in which people expose, degrade and make themselves appear ridiculous in public? What can the longing to come on to someone in the Internet or invent a false autobiography be traced back to? Is not

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