The Subject

The Cogito

The Introduction of Zizek' s The Ticklish Subject begins with his assertion that' a spectre is haunting Western academia. . ., the spectre of the Cartesian subject' (TTS: 1). The Cartesian subject, or coBita as it is also known, is, he proclaims, constantly liable to attempts to exorcize it from contemporary thought by New Age obscurantists, postmodern deconstructionists, Habermasians, Heideggerians, cognitive scientists, Deep Ecologists, post-Marxists and feminists. In short, just about every reviles the cogito. Aficionados of ZiZek' s contrary mode of thought will, therefore, not be surprised to learn that, in opposition to all these theoretical factions, he fully endorses the model of the Cartesian s~jecL All of which raises the question: what is the coBita and why does everyone (except Zizek) seem to want done with it?

Although the idea for it was originally proposed by Saint Augustine (354--430), one of the founders of the Christian Church, the caBita in the form that we know it was first advanced by Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the French philosopher, mathematician and soldier who is often referred to as the Father of Modern Philosophy. Descartes' starting point for the caBita was a cold winter's day. It was so icy that he climbed into a very large stove to keep himself warm and stayed there all day. During his confinement Descartes commenced upon the philosophic procedure which is named after him: Cartesian doubt. The point of this procedure was to establish what could really be known.

Descartes began by isolating the evidence of his senses: was he really sitting by a fire in his dressing gown? He concluded that he could not be sure. He had often dreamt of just such a scenario and, in his dream, this had seemed real to him. However, even if the dream itself were an illusion, what of the concepts employed by the dream, the mathematical concepts such as shape, number and size which apparently match those of reality? Descartes concedes that although these may seem to be correct, there is a possibility that they are all the invention of an evil genius designed to fool him. If this were the case though, Descartes argues that he could not be deceived if he did not exist in some form. Given that his body may be an illusion, Descartes concludes that at the very least his thought must exist, if it is to be deceived:

While I decided thus to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; and observing that this truth: / think, therefore / am, was so certain and so evident that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were not capable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.

(Descartes 1968: 53-54)

This phrase and first principle - 'I think, therifare I am' or 'coBita, erBa sum' - is what the term' caBita' designates.

The Cogito and the Post-Structuralist

There are many ways of interpreting the caBita, but we are interested here only in two - the post-structuralist version and Zizek's version. For the post-structuralists, the caBita is the basis of the centred subject, or, as it is more commonly known, the 'individual', and it is regarded by them as the spoilt brat of philosophy. T individual, as the name ~ggests,~ indivisib~e. In our day-to-day lives, we tend to think of ourselves as individual ause we feel we are com lete in charge o ourselves and not subject to the whims 0 outside forces. When Descartes states 'I who thought thus must be something', we understand that 'I', the 'I' of the caBita, to be an individual. It is the 'I' that does the thinking - the thoughts belong to him rather than him to the thoughts. In other words, the 'I' of the caBita is the master of itself. A!:.lndividual is therefore self-transparent - nothing impedes its understanding of itself because it is In total control and has total autonomy over its actions. There are no dark banana skins of the soul ~tO slip up the psyche, there are no words which threaten to betray the meaning of their speaker, and there are no gusts of history which might suddenly blow the individual from its perch. The world of the individual is an immaculate, windless, danger-free environment.

It is, therefore, a state of perfection. Its main advantage is that nothing impinges upon the autonomy of the individual. Every person, as the saying goes, is an island - self-sufficient, independent and free to do what it wills. Its main disadvantage, however, is that nothing impinges upon the autonomy of the individual. Every person is an island - self-sufficient, independent and free to do what it wills. In other words, the very features of the individual which seem to confer upon it such blessings are also those which blight it. This is because the individual conceived in this way is utterly subjective; everything remains within its dominion and subject to its control. There is no objectivity at all.

If this seems merely to be a philosophical problem, the consequences for this model of subjectivity are equally compelling within 'reality' as well. For example, until recently, it was generally accepted (by men at least) that only men were masters Df themselves. Women, on the other hand, were supposed to be subject to passions and feelings which they could not properly control. That is to say, women were not