Changes

The fact that for [[Zizek ]] the apparently all-inclusive [[whole ]] of [[life ]] and [[death ]] are supplemented, by both a [[living ]] death and a deathly life, points to the way in which we can die not just once, but twice. Most obviously, we will suffer a [[biological ]] death in which our bodies will fail and eventually disintegrate. This is death in the [[Real]], involving the obliteration of our [[material ]] selves. But we can also suffer a [[Symbolic ]] death. This does not involve the annihilation of our actual bodies, rather it entails the [[destruction ]] of our Symbolic [[universe ]] and the extermination of our [[subject ]] positions. We can thus suffer a living death where we are excluded from [[the Symbolic ]] and no longer [[exist ]] for the [[Other]]. This might happen if we go mad or if we commit an atrocious crime and [[society ]] disowns us. In this scenario, we still exist in [[the Real ]] but not in the Symbolic. Alternatively, we might endure a deathly life or more a kind of life after death. This might happen if, after our bodies have died, [[people ]] [[remember ]] our names, remember our deeds and so on. In this [[case]], we continue to exist in the Symbolic even though we have died in the Real.The gap [[between the two deaths]], Zizek argues, can be filled either by manifestations of the monstrous or the beautiful. In [[Shakespeare]]'s [[Hamlet ]] for example, Hamlet's [[father ]] is [[dead ]] in the Real, however, he persists as a terifying and monstrous apparition because he was murdered and thereby cheated of the [[chance ]] to settle his Symbolic debts. Once that debt has been repaid, following Hamlet's killing of his murderer, he is "completely" dead. In [[Sophocles]]' [[Antigone]], the heroine suffers a SYmbolic death before her Reak death when she is excluded fom the [[community ]] for wanting to bury his traitorous brother. This destruction of her [[social ]] [[identity ]] instils her [[character ]] with a [[sublime ]] beauty. Ironically Antigone enters the [[domain ]] between the two deaths "precisely in [[order ]] to prevent her brother's [[second death]]: to give him a proper funeral that will secure his eternalization" (The [[Ticklish Subject]]: the [[Absent ]] Centre of [[Political ]] [[Ontology]]). That is, she endures a Symbolic death in order that her brother, who has been refused proper burial rites, will not suffer a Symbolic death himself.