Pepe the Frog and postfascism

Pepe the Frog is a meme, that began in 2005 and was later appropriated by the alt-right and neofascist and neonazi groups in the 2015 as symbol of white supremacy. Why and how does a meme begin to function as political in this sense and how is it fascist or postfascist? The first thing we need to do is simply to begin analyzing the very form of this fascism. Many commentators have simply dismissed the meme as fascist. The much more interesting question is however why does fascism take on such a form? In other words the critics move on all too quickly, and thereby miss what is actually new and mobilizing about this form.

A meme is a term that originates with Richard Dawkin where

Let us recall that the original meme by Matt Furier, from the Boys’ Club 2005, the cartoonist made Pepe a ‘feel good’-frog:

We can already in this picture question Matt Furie’s later claim that Pepe is “apolitical”. Both because it already had connotations “the boys’ club” and secondly because of the mantra “feels good man”. In the original meme (that no doubt sparked its popularity) we could see Pepe with his pants down urinating. Apparently doing what ‘feels good, man’ without thinking of the consequences. Can we find a more proper incarnation of the neoliberal superego command to “enjoy!”? Pepe is therefore already before his ‘political appropriation’ by the right a highly political figure and it was no doubt this that also sparked its popularity and the ‘spurious infinity’ of other Pepe-memes (like ‘Sad Pepe’, ‘Angry Pepe’ and so on). But this is precisely why we must ask the question about the form of this new fascism. Can we imagine a higher contrast than say the ‘classical’ “sieg Hail” or picture on the wall of Hitler and today’s mock-ironic cry for “praise Pepe!” (in reality there is a link, but we have to spend some time on unfolding the analysis).

But let us start with why form matters in a political analysis. We can here take the clue from Slavoj Žižek who already in his first book in English used the Freudian analysis of the dream to make a crucial intervention and to apply it to ideological formations. Žižek here reminds us that Freud writes, that the ‘secret’ of the dream is not in its latent content (the dream-thoughts), in in this very form itself.

…there is a fundamental homology between the interpretative procedure of Marx and Freud — more precisely, between their analysis of commodity and of dreams. In both cases the point is to avoid the properly fetishistic fascination of the ‘content’ supposedly hidden behind the form: the ‘secret’ to be unveiled through analysis is not the content hidden by the form (the form of commodities, the form of dreams) but, on the contrary, the secret’ of this form itself. The theoretical intelligence of the form of dreams does not consist in penetrating from the manifest content to its ‘hidden kernel’, to the latent dream- thoughts; it consists in the answer to the question: why have the latent dream- thoughts assumed such a form, why were they transposed into the form of a dream?

The secret of the dream is in the form itself, not in the hidden content. Freud, in other words, proceeds in a manner, where the dream does not consists of two levels (the form and the content). There is the manifest dream, the latent dream-thoughts and then dream-work, the unconscious does not lie in the latent thoughts, but on the contrary in the dream-work, that is the very transformation of thoughts to the manifest dream. (3). In other words, the unconscious is not some hidden kernel, but precisely ‘out there’, on the surface, it has so to speak no other substance, than a certain work of transforming the dream itself. Freud tells us, that the unconscious desire, usually from an “infantile source” attaches itself to the dream. To go immediately to “Pepe the Frog” is not this the same problem with the critics, such as Angela Naigle (and even the Hillary Clinton-campaign who in 2016 declared Pepe a “hate-symbol”?). They move too quickly on to the ‘latent thoughts’ (here fascism) and thereby overlook the most pertinent and subversive question, namely why did fascism take on such a form (of a meme, of a green urinating frog?). Freud proceeds in a two-fold way. The first is of course to claim that a dream is not simply ‘senseless’, but has a meaning that can be rendered in perfectly understandable language. Freud here goes against the claim that the dream-text is either just “nonsense” or has an organic-somatic origin. The dream means. We can say the same for Pepe. It is not merely ‘just for fun’ (as many right-wingers claimed). It definitely has a meaning. The more crucial feature, again, is however, not to rest with this claim (‘Pepe is just a fascist symbol…’) or do as can often be found a ‘genesis’ of Pepe (that is chronologically describing each stage of the Pepe-journey into fascism…), but why did fascism take such a form. Why do the postfascism, today’s alt-right take on this form? This is also the second point, the one that Freud calls much more crucial, about the dream. Not to get too fixated on the latent content, but to understand why the dream took on exactly the form it did. Freud writes in a footnote (often quoted by Žižek, in 1989; 2016):

I used at one time to find it extraordinarily difficult to accustom readers to the distinction between the manifest content of dreams and the latent dream-thoughts. Again and again arguments and objections would be brought up based upon some uninterpreted dream in the form in which it had been retained in the memory, and the need to interpret it would be ignored. But now that analysts at least have become reconciled to replacing the manifest dream by the meaning revealed by its interpretation, many of them have become guilty of falling into another confusion which they cling to with an equal obstinacy. They seek to find the essence of dreams in their latent content and in so doing they overlook the distinction between the latent dream thoughts and the dream-work. At bottom, dreams are nothing other than a particular form of thinking, made possible by the conditions of the state of sleep. It is the dream-work which creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming — the explanation of its peculiar nature. (Freud :650).

As Žižek explains Freud proceeds in two stages. The first consists of demonstrating that a dream has a meaning. That it can be rendered into preconscious and conscious thoughts. The second is the “particular form of thinking” in a dream itself (it’s essence). That is the form of the dream (“the explanation of its peculiar nature”). The same could be said for Pepe as a postfascist “dream” or phenomena. First we have to see, that there is no such thing as an ‘apolitical’ meme (‘just for fun’). But secondly, we cannot rest with the claim, that this is just facism or postfascism. There has been very little critical analysis of the second part. We could even say, and paraphrase Freud that the very obstinacy of critics too look for the “hidden kernel” of Pepe in the latent fascist “dream-thoughts” obscure us to the this very form (and thereby of everything that is new and how we are ourselves implicated in it). In other words, the theoretical attention given to the latent fascist thoughts is not only a theoretical error, it is also a repression of the ‘secret of the form’. Why is this repression necessary? Precisely because Pepe as postfascist symbol is deeply a symptom of the way politics function today in neoliberal globalized capitalism and the Superego imperative “to enjoy!”. We therefore must take a completely new view on this new fascism. While this paper in part agree, therefore, with such terms as Enzo Traverso’s postfascism (and many others, Esposito’s “impolitical” even Žižek himself, who to my knowledge has never commented on something like a ‘memetic aesthetics’), they usually remain within a more traditional view of the populism. They, in other words, fail to address the new form of this fascism, how deeply it is a result of changes in technology. We therefore have to give all the weight to Walter Benjamin’s claim that a study of capitalism and fascism (indeed something like a mutable ‘human condition’) cannot remain static but take new media-forms. Benjamin (here also working in the tradition of George Simmel) explains for instance, the arrival of new mediatic forms like the newspaper changes the sensibilities of aesthetic form. Benjamin describes how a work’s literary technique is:

There have not always been novels in the past, they do not always have to exist in the future; there have not always been tragedies, not always great epics. Commentaries, translations, even so-called forgeries have not always been divertissements on the borders of literature: they have had their place not only in philosophical literature, but in the poetic literatures of Arabia or China. Rhetoric has not always been an insignificant form. On the contrary, in Antiquity large areas of literature bore its stamp. All that should make you conscious of the fact that we stand in the midst of a powerful process of the transformation of literary forms, a process of transformation in which many of the oppositions with which we used to work could lose their power. Allow me to give you an example of the sterility of such oppositions and of the process by which they are dialectically overcome.

Like the newspaper changes the very ‘sensibilities’ of the recipient, can we not say that “transformation of literary forms” certainly also apply to a figure like Pepe the frog. If we take the “form of Pepe” away, we also miss something crucial in how this postfacism is able to mobilize and communicate. Since Žižek mentions that “Marx invented the symptom” and Žižek uses the same “analysis of form” applied to commodity fetichism it is perhaps in order to think about his notion of class-struggle. Class-struggle is not primarily between different classes or groups. Every formation of a group is itself a result and a consequence of class-struggle. Class-struggle constitutes the Real of any particular struggle. But this does not mean that it is its ‘substantial Ground’. The Real is the opposite of any substantial ground or background. It is nothing but a certain curvature or twist in the in the symbolic formations.

In the same way, I would say, that Pepe the frog is also a result of class-struggle. We therefore need a more nuanced analysis of what is going on. Simply in terms of Benjamin’ essay, from which I quoted above, we cannot understand phenomena like memes and twitter (Trump as ‘twitter-president’) if we do not take into account that the postfascist is a ‘producer’ (not simply an author). What we can see from the history of the Pepe-meme is abundant evidence, that it is ‘made’ to be shared (co-produced) and ‘re-made’. Benjamin writes in 1934 about the Newspapers way to ‘transform’ sensibilities and collapse genre-distinctions. Benjamin refers to a ‘leftist author’ and then goes on to quote this author (which is himself):

‘In our literature,’ a leftist author writes, ‘oppositions which mutually enriched each other in earlier, happier times, have become insoluble antinomies. Thus science and belles lettres, criticism and production, culture and politics have fallen away from each other, without maintaining any relationship or order. The showplace of this literary confusion is the newspaper. Its content is “material” which refuses any form of organization other than that imposed by the reader’s impatience. This impatience is not only that of the politician who expects a piece of news, or of a speculator who awaits a tip: behind them hovers the impatience of whoever feels himself excluded, whoever thinks he has a right to express his own interests himself. For a long time, the fact that nothing binds the reader to his paper as much as this avid impatience for fresh nourishment every day, has been used by editors, who are always starting new columns open to his questions, opinions, protestations. So the indiscriminate assimilation of facts goes hand in hand with the similar indiscriminate assimilation of readers, who see themselves instantly raised to the level of co-workers.

What dictates the content of a newspaper is above all the reader’s ‘avid impatience for fresh nourishments everyday”, the ‘impatience’ to be included. We can see the globalizing mechanics of his media as well, that Benjamin mentions. Every geographical far-away event is brought into the living room, every temporal distance shortened (that use to take weeks to acquire news, is with the advent of the newspaper a matter of a day).

Does not Benjamin’s words ring much more true today? When we talk about ‘memetic aesthetics’ the pace is much faster than even Benjamin’s newspaper. The way, Pepe was ‘re-memed’ is a perfect example, not simple of an article to be read (and say discussed at the café, but directly, ‘democratically’, discussed at the moment of its creation. Benjamin’s point is much more radicalized today, as in the way Trump, the ‘twitter’-president would tweet ‘comments’ in a flow unheard of ever before. Ronald Reagan is sometimes described as the first postmodern president (using acting as a political tool, referring openly to the fact that he didn’t know much about economy and so on…), but Trumps twitter-presidency refers to something new. Even Žižek often refer to Ronald Reagan, Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump as part of the same “postmodern master”, and, while he is right to point out a certain ‘family resemblance’, the mediatic change of online platforms still needs further elucidation. There is still a gap, something new has arrived. There is something new in Trump’s presidency not simply in terms of, what I would its ‘mediatic presence’, but also what I would refer to as it’s ‘libidinal presence’. To make matters simple, let us take the famous ‘locker-room’-talk that Trump flaunted during the campaign against Hillary. We all remember the outrage when Mitt Romney back in his campaign against Barack Obama, in a panic about not getting female voters, said “I have binders and binders of women”, a statement that was quickly mocked and ridiculed by feminists, who for example dressed up as a “binder”. Yet, how large a leap is there from Mitt Romney’s phrase “binders of women” to Trump’s open obscenity of “grab them by the p….”? This phrase incidentally also gives us a via regia to phenomena such as Pepe the Frog and the superego injunction to enjoy. Trump is definitely a phenomena of what Žižek calls the “permissive-hedonist” western societies, but also the paradoxes of this superego command to enjoy. To put it simply and in the manner of the ‘locker-room’-metaphor, and in terms I borrow from Žižek: the traditional master forbids locker-room talk in official matters (that is why he ‘invents’ the locker-room in the first place). The fascist leader renounces on locker-room talk, which then returns in the guise of the law itself as perpetual enjoyment. The postmodern ‘permissive’ leader makes enjoyment (the locker-room) directly at law of its own. In this sense, he is nothing but a certain symptomatic response to the neo-liberal market where everyone is encouraged to ‘enjoy’ and ‘realize their potential and dreams’.

The traditional master is one that officially prohibits enjoyment. Žižek (who has his own ‘locker-room’ style to which I will come back later) gives the example of a father who says “don’t mess with girls”, but then turns a blind eye to the son seeing a girl through the backdoor at night, and as Žižek says “no problem”. In other words, the traditional father prohibits enjoyment, but then allow for its transgressions under certain regulations. We can see, that there is a play of transgression here, that is, of course, not a ‘true’ transgression, since it is itself a function of the prohibition. In terms of the locker-room metaphor, we can say, that the prohibitive father prohibits such talk in ‘official’ polite matters (say the playing field), but precisely ‘invents the locker-room’ for such obscenities. Žižek points out that what binds a community is precisely its ‘enjoyment’, not so much the official letter of the law, but the unofficial ‘obscene enjoyment’ (in other words, the locker-room talk is even more important for a team’s sense of spirit du corps, than any official play). In his lectures, Žižek often immediately contrast this with the postmodern “permissive father”, that winks at you and encourages you to enjoy (the Superego-command). The law of the prohibitive father was a split between the letter of the Law (don’t enjoy), and the obscene superego (enjoy!), but in certain grey zones, the yearly carnival for example. What changes with the ‘permissive’ father is that prohibitions are ‘lifted’, that what was before forbidden is now encouraged, ‘only natural’.

Žižek gives a variation, which is the fascist or totalitarian leader, which is itself a response to the fall of the classic prohibitive father. We only need to look at, say Mussolini or Hitler’s hysterical body-language to see, that we are here not really dealing with a ‘stern father’, but with hysterical outbursts. Žižek makes the point, that while the prohibitive father allows the play of transgression (under regulated circumstances), the totalitarian leader is rather the transgression itself as law. This is, however, not the same as the postfascist permanent transgression. Žižek writes:

(…) the Fascist ideology is based upon a purely formal imperative: Obey, because you must! In other words, renounce enjoyment, sacrifice yourself and do not ask about the meaning of it — the value of the sacrifice lies in its very meaninglessness; true sacrifice is for its own end; you must find positive fulfillment in the sacrifice itself, not in its instrumental value: it is this renunciation, this giving up of enjoyment itself, which produces a certain surplus-enjoyment. (…) Fascism is obscene in so far as it perceives directly the ideological form as its own end, as an end in itself- remember Mussolini’s famous answer to the question ‘How do the Fascists justify their claim to rule Italy? What is their programme?’ ‘Our programme is very simple: we want to rule Italy!’ The ideological power of Fascism lies precisely in the feature which was perceived by liberal or leftist critics as its greatest weakness: in the utterly void, formal character of its appeal, in the fact that it demands obedience and sacrifice for their own sake. For Fascist ideology, the point is not the instrumental value of the sacrifice, it is the very form of sacrifice itself, ‘the spirit of sacrifice’, which is the cure against the liberal-decadent disease. It is also dear why Fascism was so terrified by psychoanalysis: psychoanalysis enables us to locate an obscene enjoyment at work in this act of formal sacrifice. (Žižek 2008: 89–90).

When we take Mussolini’s body-language we can see how Žižek’s point strikes home, a political version of the pere-version (that is perverted version of the father, leaning towards the father). On the one hand fascism dictates a total renunciation of ‘personal’, ‘pathological’ enjoyment (everything for the State). On the other hand it means, that a much stronger enjoyment is implied (precisely by ‘surrendering’ to the State you can enjoy as much as you want). Passolini’s famous movie about Marquis de Sade’s 120 days and fascism therefore simply restates what is already at work in fascism on the surface.

But this is not really what happens with “post-fascism”, say in the figure of Trump. Trump (and even his postmodern predecessors, Reagan the socalled “Teflon president” and Silvio Berlusconi) due not really dictate “obey!” (in order to enjoy all the more). On the contrary the command is much more in tune with a post-68 slogan of “enjoy without obstacles”. The permissive father is a post-68 phenomenon. Trump of course says often things like “Law-and-order”, but the whole logic is entirely different. We could never imagine the Mussolini in a performance like Trump’s famous discussion of his ‘hands’ when he was first competing with other Republican candidates. Trump had called Marco Rubio “little Marco”, to which Rubio responded (here taken from ABC news):

“[Trump] is taller than me, he’s like 6' 2”, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5' 2",” Rubio joked. “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands — “

The crowd erupted.

“ — You can’t trust them,” Rubio said.”[1]

Trump immediately of course replied to Rubio and even made this kind of a catch-phrase. In his famous study on language, Roman Jakobson referred to Eisenhower’s “I like Ike” as using the “poetic function of language”. Trump, in all his obscenity, did the same with the repetition “my hands” (and the usual mock-boasting voice of Trump):

“If you thought Rubio’s joke on the campaign trail last week would go un-answered by Trump — you were wrong. Trump has brought up his hands up at least twice in the past 24 hours. At a rally outside Detroit this morning, Trump said he would not sit back and be “presidential…when ‘little Marco’” talked about “the size of my hands.”

Trump held his hands up and said, “Those hands can hit a golf ball 285 yards.”

And at the Republican Debate in Detroit last night, Trump said, “And I have to say this, I have to say this. [Rubio] hit my hands.”

“Nobody has ever hit my hands. I have never heard of this,” Trump continued, neglecting to reveal his repeated mailings to Carter.

“Look at those hands,” Trump said on the debate stage, holding up his hands to the audience. “Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands — if they are small, something else must be small.”

“I guarantee you there is no problem,” Trump affirmed. “I guarantee you.” (ibid.).

This kind of talk for a “political debate” already showed that Rubio was playing Trump’s game. That is they were both not traditional totalitarian leaders, (“Obey!”) but instead making enjoyment the only command (this is the new form of ‘totalitarianism’ — the superego command to ‘enjoy’ relentsly all the time).

The point I want to make here is that Trumps “postfascism” here is very unlike the examples of the totalitarian leader. (Mussolini’s hands very gesturing hysterically while yelling ‘obey’), while Trump, so to speak, directly makes his hands part of his campaign). We must see here much more than the ‘phallic references’ (‘nothing small down there’), what it means is this is president who simply puts the Superego command to enjoy directly in power (and Rubio was trying to do the same). In this way, they respond much more to a certain “right to transgress” that is post-68 and to recapture Michel Foucault’s point on biopolitics, that the market is not really dependent on the State, but the State modelled after what suits the neoliberal market.

There is, however a very important point that Žižek makes with regard to the leftist critique of fascism that is even more relevant here. Žižek’s point was that the leftists critique was an attack on the “lack of program” of the fascists. Mussolini simply said “obey” and the leftists thought to ‘debunk’ the fascist by pointing out the emptiness of the fascist program. They thereby even fueled the fascist “program”, since it’s positive content was the very form, that is “enjoyment”. What about “Trump’s hands”? We can see, how much more relevant Žižek’s point is when it comes to Trump. Many commentators and comedians were immediately making fun of Trump’s way of talking about his hands (and his voice) wrongly thinking that this would take down his popularity. On the contrary it fueled his popularity much more, because it fed the “Enjoyment-machine”. The point is not the usual ‘liberal’ one, that we shouldn’t dignify Trump’s talk of his hands by making fun of it (thereby we give something ‘obscene’ too much attention…). The point is much stronger: every commentator that made fun of Trump’s making fun of his hands was directly helping him (because, if the Superego injunction is to enjoy then Trump was that president that best represented that ‘program’). Furthermore, the same ‘liberal’ commentators, clearly misperceived their own enjoyment at work in making fun of Trump. My point again is here not, that they shouldn’t have done it (if they didn’t want Trump), my point is that Trump did come not from nowhere, but from the “neoliberal permissive society” to begin with and the mobilization of his voters is impossible to understand without this ‘superego’.

We can, however, also see something else in the example with “Trump’s hands”, that will also be at work in the “memetic aesthetics”. That is there are certain things Trump doesn’t, in the end, joke about. Even while he was making fun of his hands (showing them to everyone etc.), it was still very important for him to mention the ‘phallic’ reference between the hands and “down there” (“I assure you there is no problem…”), as well as his “golf-skills” (“Those hands can hit a golf ball 285 yards.”). The psychoanalytic point here would not be to explain the jokes with ‘down there’, as though every political talk has its roots in genital sex. The point is almost the opposite, for Freud there is no ‘natural’ sex (that then gets sublimated, diverted), sex for human beings is always in itself ‘perverted’ (that is not like an animal instinct). And it is furthermore linked to failure. The paradox is that human pleasure is a paradoxically pleasure-in-pain, so that you start to enjoy ‘failure’.

To remind the reader of the point I made in reference to Freud and the dream. The point is not so much here the “content”, but precisely the form of the whole mediatic machine (the right to enjoy!). The ‘liberal’ critics that were even making fun of trump or horrified (usually both), thereby precisely go too quick to the latent thought of the dream (fascist Trump…), overlooking precisely how the ‘true secret’ is precisely in the form itself, the postfascist leader is already a response, a ‘symptom’ of the ‘permissive-cynical superego society of the right to enjoy’).

We can understand this logic also through the different constellation of the psychoanalytical term transference. The traditional master’s power relies on naïve transferential power. Through the performative gesture of the social ritual the subjects simply believe in the master’s power (as given by God). In the totalitarian master the performative gesture is taken into account. The leader says, you are simply transferring unto me the power that is in ‘you’, the People. In this way, the surplus is no longer in “God”, but rather in the People itself as split, between the sublime People and the miserable rable. In the postfascist Master, there is no direct transference. The postfascist leader simply tells you to abandon any false beliefs in anyones superiority (or power). The only power is in yourself to enjoy.

But what about the point that Benjamin, as everyone knows, makes just after my quote about the ‘dialectical moment’? This was also the hope of many ‘cyper-utopians’, right after the Web 2.0 started (and now many people have the same dreams about Web 3.0). The basic argument is always something along the lines of that currently things are run by big corporations, but the democratic takeover of online culture will ‘spontaneously’ come from the next technological revolution. Here we need to go against Marx himself and his utopia of communism as necessary outcome. Capitalism thrives on its own contradictions (that was also Marx’s point), so Marx wavers often between the two trajectories. The point is rather the Benjaminian one, of pulling the emergency brakes on progress, and perhaps also the psychoanalytical one, that men are not ‘spontaneously’ good (that if only we had a better society, enjoyment would also be better, freer…). Here we need perhaps to paraphrase Žižek and ‘censor our dreams’. It is precisely this dream of the next Web, that functions as the ‘fetich’ of failing to counteract what is wrong with the current one. Like a fetich blocks the articulation of a fundamental impossibility/contradiction so does the perpetual ‘future’ itself blocks any proper thinking of the present.

I do not wish to make a fictive distinction between Traverso’s, Esposito’s and Žižek’s study of postfascism and this paper, and it will almost embarrassing to quote Benjamin ‘against them’ (since they know Benjamin much better than me).

My point here, is however, precisely that this postfascism does take on a form that is the ‘secret’ of it, (rather than the latent thoughts, it is a “post-” of fascism. My point is on the one hand to mobilize the apparatus of ‘Žižekian critique’ on this new ‘form’ (against ‘journalistic’ critics like Naigle). On the other hand I try to bring something new to the study of this ‘postfascism’, something I believe is crucial to it.

Acid reflux Pepe:

In the original Pepe looks like this. Even here we still get a very telling distinction between pleasure and then the ‘parasite’ of enjoyment of the body (jouissance) here called ‘acid reflux’:

Here we are immediately in psychoanalytical waters. First we have the pleasure-principle (eating a hot-dog, hanging out in the couch). Then the paradox of too much enjoyment, (stomach-ache) and the burp and the socalled ‘acid’-reflux that burns my fellow-man. Translated in lacanese what we have here is the difference btw a pleasure that does not disturb the other and the pleasure-in-pain that is at odds with language. Notice how Pepe here only throws up after his friend had named “the acid”, in other words, the acid as remainder of life-substance (jouissance) is produced as a result of language, something that gets added to language, although it is not language in itself. It is a perfect example of the paradoxes of enjoyment. In other words, the ‘acid’ here functions like what Zizek described in ‘Alien the 8th passenger’. While the symptom can be ‘meaningfully deduced’ (like a slip of the tongue),, the sinthome is meaningless ‘sprout of enjoyment’, like Amfortas wound in Wagner’ Parsifal:

(…) is not the disgusting parasite which jumps out of the body of poor John Hurt precisely such a symptom, is not its status precisely the same as that of Amfortas externalized wound? The cave on the desert plane into which the space travelers enter when the computer registers signs of life in its, and where the polyp-like parasite sticks on to Hurt’s face, has the status of the pre-symbolic Thing — that is, of the maternal body, of the living substance of enjoyment. (Žižek 1989: 79).

The point here is precisely the same as in the Pepe-cartoon. We have the regulated pleasure (hotdog), that is regulated by the symbolic (we can talk about it etc), and then the excess of enjoyment that literally kills the imaginary and symbolically constituted mirror-man (the friend). As Žižek continues this enjoyment is on the hand the ‘only Real’, and the same time pure semblance. It is the only thing we can count on, meaningless enjoyment (at the same time it can only be depicted in fiction — like in the acid reflux that burns the friend).“The fact that this parasitical object incessantly changes its form merely confirms its anamorphic status: it is a pure being of semblance. The ‘alien’, the eighth, supplementary character, is an object which, being nothing at all in itself, must none the less be added, annexed as an anamorphic surplus.” (ibid.). The same here, the acid reflux is the anamorphic surplus, it changes ‘normal reality’ (so that the friend can be ‘burned’ by this acid and die, but at the same time keep the game-console in his hands). We see, therefore, already in its genesis that enjoyment and its paradoxes is at work in Pepe.

A postcolonial Pepe?

What about the ‘Enstellung’ through the name itself. Here we must ask, if Pepe is so obviously racist, why didn’t the Pepe-memers change the name. We have here a much more interesting dialectic, where the Pepe-memes at the same time identify with the ‘other’ (the Mexican called Pepe). As Freud mentioned about perversion it is never the ‘liberal’ atomized subject, but always constitute through the interplay of the other. That is the racism against the others (Mexican border’s), meaningless enjoyment (stealing our culture) is carried out by allowing oneself to be “Pepe”, the meaningless enjoyment in itself, projected on to the other. Why is this? Precisely because enjoyment is impossible ‘on its own’. Enjoyment cannot be assumed as a possession, it can only be ‘had’, through the other (so the meaningless jouissance of the Neighbor) is projected as only his (not me). But as Lacan says, the problem with the Neighbours enjoyment is precisely that it might be my ‘own’ most intimate core.

Poo Poo Pepe:

Poo Poo Pee Pee is the name given to a series of images and comics that feature Smug Pepe committing various unethical acts, typically involving urine or feces. Most commonly found in 4chan’s /r9rk/ (robot9000) board, the comics were created as a reaction towards the usage of Pepe’s likeness in various mainstream social media sites. The first instance of the comics can be found on a /r9k/[7] thread posted on November 16th, 2014, featuring an image of an obese Smug Pepe with the message “Poo poo. Pee pee. Now mommy has to change me.” On November 28th, another comic was posted to r9k[8] in which Pepe excretes over character Wojak. On December 24th, the Poo-Poo-Pee-Pee-Frog Tumblr[9] blog was created.

This Pepe is also a perfect illustration of refusing to be ‘castrated’. Here Pepe is again ‘obscene’ and ‘obese’ enjoyment. We can also see how important the maternal Thing is for the Pepe-users (it is simple the pre-oedipal relation of mother to the little boy). (and then we say we live in a post-oedipal world?). The entire (Deleuzian) theory of the post-oedipal version of simply being islands of jouissance must therefore be re-thought. On the contrary what we see are what Lacan calls “Father or Worse”. Since there are no symbolic rites to guarantee the symbolic distinction “boy” to “man”, what we get instead is the perpetual teenager (here like the Pepe). And do we have to mention the all too obvious fact that Pepe does not have a biological organ of a penis. Why? If we are dealing with ‘phallic’ men should they not draw a penis on Pepe too? This indicates precisely Lacan’s point that the phallus in order to function must be veiled. The male organ of the penis is precisely not the phallic symbol. The penis is rather an obstacle to being the phallus (as in Freud’s case of little Hans). Paradoxically the many ‘pictures’ penises that children make are precisely attempts to ‘install castration’. It does not mean to ‘elevate’ the organic-biological penis into the phallus. It is rather that the phallus is attached to the body, as something like Hans says, that can be screwn on an off.

Hans offers in a game of seduction his little penis to his mother, who ‘castrates’ him. (we should always remember that in psychoanalysis it is the mother not the father who is the castrator). This creates anxiety for Hans, since if his penis cannot be of any value to his mother her desire must be for something else, namely for little Hans as such (in other words, it is little Hans as such that is the object of the Mother’s desire, what Lacan in this stage of his teaching calls “imaginary phallus”. This is why, we get, in this universe of no fathers precisely the perpetual teenagers (Trump, Pepe) or the ‘liberal’, ‘career’-minded women (usually a doctor, lawyer, professor). We are therefore caught in this constant dialectic between a boy that can never become a man, and a woman who was never a girl (but became a woman right away, prematurely). And this is far from any liberating notion in itself, but rather itself a product of the market and its deterritorialization. We can also see here, how wrong it is to simply attribute to Trump a ‘return to patriarchy’, Trump is rather the most post-patriarchal perpetual teenage president. Precisely the perpetual effort to transgress. Here we can indeed paraphrase Sade and say with Trump did we really get the obscene figure of the pervert in office saying “dear Americans and citizens of the free world… one more effort to be republicans!”.

This also gives us a different view on psychoanalysis in itself. It is often said that Freud wants to reinstitue the father. True, this was Freud’s dream and it is impossible to overlook what we can’t but call his “bourgeois prejudices”. But what Freud in his writing on the contrary showed was that the father was not in his place. Simply recall the case studies already published in studies of hysteria, or even more in dora. In all cases we have father’s that are not up to their function (the ‘role of the father’). In other words, psychoanalysis was only possible at this historical junction, where something was loosened up, namely the link between the big Other and the father, precisely where the big Other didn’t exist (God). This is also why psychoanalysis situates itself between the break of university discourse (the galilean break in science). Psychonanalysis is impossible without this basic natural scientific premise that nothing in ‘nature’ means anything. In all of Freud’s writings he constantly refers to this fact, that we can only locate psychoanalysis as part of the modern break, Mathmatizable nature etc. and in no way does Freud, contrary to Jung, try to reculturalize this break. Freud is not saying we need some kind of archetypes to ‘understand’ (the usual binary between natural sciences and humanities, between Natur -und Geisteswissenschaften). Freud fully endorses this break. But he also asks what happens when there is no father anymore (up to his function). The subject is of jouissance is what remains “unthought” by science and all of this is at work in Freud’s classical hysterical studies, the failure of the father and the unleashment of an unbound jouissance, i.e. hysterical symptoms. (the function of the Father, the Law of the Father is precisely to contain and regulate jouissance). This of course never ‘worked’ out, there was always a remainder (like the dangerous jouissance of ‘witches’ for example outside the law of the Father).

Peep the Toad

“On July 30th, 2016, Tumblr[62] user pornstarwars submitted an illustration of an anthropomorphic toad with the caption “when u cant afford quality name brand memes so u have to settle for / peep the toad” (shown below). Over the next eight months, the post gained over 134,000 notes.”

[2]

This Pepe is extremely important as well. It stands in ‘family resemblance’ to Wojak, that is characters of ‘melancholy’. They are the exact product of the ‘Superego’-pepe, that is the perpetual enjoyment. Here several factors are at work. Let us start with the Marxist point about the ‘enjoyment’ that is both hailed as the universal factor in the neoliberal dream, the ‘democratic’ enjoyment, and that this is linked to capital (“when u cant afford quality name brand…”). We are all hailed by the universal mantra: be happy, realize yourself, make yourself the most important project in your life… precisely in order to make better consumers. Perhaps best capsulated by the term “invest in yourself!” a perfect rendition of the its correspondent in aesthetics which is the “subject as a work of art”. This is the other side and truth of Judith Butler’s performativity theory, namely that the constant attempt to ‘perform yourself’ is merely the other side the deterritorialized market-mechanism, where one is precisely as precarious as one’s performance. For is not this precisely the side of ‘creative capitalism’, that is a capitalism where you are not simply ‘doing’ your job, but performing an experience. Today, it would be much more subversive, to simply do the job without the unwritten rule of a surplus (not coming to receptions, not small-talking in the breaks, not smiling to costumers…).

If one side of the Superego screams “Pepe”, the waste-product is therefore “Peep”, the human waste that we ‘are’ when we have done the ‘performance’. For many left-leaning theorist (like Giorgio Agamben or Leo Bersani), the best response to the market is therefore ‘melancholy’, refusing to play the frenetic activity of performing yourself. But is this really subversive or viable strategy in itself. If on the one hand there is the deleuzian deterritoralized pre-subject as an affective site, there is on the other the Bersani-Agamben strategy of ‘opting out’. But neither are effective (one simply fuels the market, the other is itself fueled by the market). And the same processes are of course at work within the same subjectivity.

It is much more a necessary outcome, and as such it does not really mobilize enough energy to really change or question anything (and is easily commodified, like in the culture of ‘victimization’). It is much closer to what Georg Simmel called the Blasiertheit of the city-dweller, the nerves being overloaded in the global village with the pace of products and the superego-command to enjoy (in a much more intense way that Simmel could have imagined).

Es gibt vielleicht keine seelische Erscheinung, die so unbedingt der Großstadt vorbehalten wäre wie die Blasiertheit. Sie ists zunächst die Folge jener rasch wechselnden und in ihren Gegensätzen eng zusammmengedrängtes Nervenreize, aus denen auch die Steigerung der großstädtischen Intellektualität hervorzugehen schien; weshalb denn auch dumme on von vornherein geistig unlebendige Menschen nicht gerade blasiert zu sein pflegen. (Simmel 2020: 70).

Now translate Simmel into today’s overload of images! And not just simply overload in one direction, one is not simply a mere passive recipient, but interpellated, as in Web 2.0, as a “user” and “producer” (“produser”) of content. This means, that one is also called upon to interact in the very same procedure. Gone are the ‘happy days’ of merely receiving orders. Today’s biomoralism does not give (direct) orders, but asks you to follow your inner ‘truth’, travel the inner journey, (notice the massive onsloaght of new age therapies). This is like Simmel’s theory being given a quantum-leap, or to speak in today’s terms like Simmel’s theory has been given a Mario cart mushroom (a mushroom that gives superpowers). Furthermore, if someone should question the link between surplus value and surplus pleasure (the fact that ‘Marx invented the symptom’), merely take into account here that also Simmel’s immediate comparison is that blasiertheit results from an overload of enjoyment. For Simmel this ‘blasé attitude’ (Blasiertheit) is a result of the nerves being excited to a point that the invidiual Gemüt cannot follow. Our emotional life, so to speak, cannot keep up with the modern city’s rapid succession of impressions. Today, the global village, just seeing a news program or even better a tik-tok video or chatroullette, how much more rapid or overwhelming is this stimulation of nerves. Simmel’s conclusion is that we by necessity become more antipathetic towards strangers, simply as a means to “protect” ourselves.

Simmel’s other very relevant point is that the “intellectuality” is not simply a result of the many rapidly succeeding impressions in city-life, but itself a product of the economy, of the money-exchange.

Diese Seelenstimmung ist der getreue subjektive Reflex der völlig durchgedrungenen Geldwirtsschaft; indem das Geld alle Manningfaltigkeiten der Dinge gleichmäßig aufwiegt, alle qualitativen Unterschiede zwischen ihnen durch Unterschiede des Wieviels ausdrückt, indem das Geld, mit seiner Farblosigkeit und Indifferenz, sich zum Generalnenner aller Werte aufwirft, wird es der fürchterlichste Nivellierer, es höhlt den Kern der Dinge, ihre Eigenart, ihren spezifischen Weert, ihre Unvergleichbarkeit rettungslos aus. Sie schwimmen alle mit gleichem spezifischem Gewicht in dem fortwährend bewegten Geldstrom. (Simmel 2020: 71).

In other words, it’s it the very form of exchange, that provides the key to the general ‘exchangeability’ of the individuals themselves. The city-dweller, in order to survive, cannot simply take ‘use-value’, into account but must rapidly make calculations and so on, think of objects (and people) in terms of mere profit and exchange-value. Today, when cash are almost out of the question, isn’t the same also true: money becoming purely virtual, does this not enhance and give proof of Simmel’s point. (We go on the web and make a purchase, we never even ‘have’ the money between our hands, the pass from employer, to the bank, to what we consume, it is ‘just a number’). For sure, money is as such also ‘virtual’, as Marx point out, it is not the ‘use-value’ of a coin for instance, but what it virtually means as the commodity of general exchange (it doesn’t matter if the coin’s material is worn or new, a dollar is a dollar). But even this ‘material support’ for the virtualization is disappearing more and more today.

To make another point about Simmel’s equalizing function of the money exchange. What has, however, in our virtualization become even more clear is the ‘ritual-value’ of ‘experiences’. Now the fact that a thing cannot be ‘reproduced’ is itself the ultimate form of its value, and that is why one’s ‘perversities’ (in the line of the imp of the perverse) are themselves rapidly commodified. Even the ‘rare Pepes’ are an example of this trend, of something ‘not known to mainstream’, as much more valuable. Here it is not, as in Marx formula ‘labour-time’ that decides the commodities value, but the fact that it is ‘priviledged’, that it precisely cannot simply be ‘had on the global market’.

Going from Marxism to psychoanalysis “Peep the Toad” is also a symbol of the fact, that the supego says enjoy, but one simply can’t enjoy ‘enough’ (to the level of the superego). One is therefore always guilty of not-enjoying enough. Like melancholy can be easily commodified and is, so can the fact that one is not enjoying enough and feeling guilty, of course, like in Peep the Toad itself become a factor of enjoyment. One then enjoys not going to ‘parties’, not ‘being able to…’, not being part of what Badiou calls the ‘deserving body’.

Renata Salecl has in a very perceptive book, already in 2004, pointed to precisely this result. First, we were, in post 1990 called on by the superego to ‘realize yourself’, be a work of art, (in an appropriation of Michel Foucault’s uses of pleasure and Judith Butler’s performativity theory), but then we realized a certain ‘performativity hangover’, that one was in the end not really simply a work of art. What remains is the anxiety-ridden human waste-product (like comparing yourself to your beautiful photoshopped image, and then the sad result of the real you in the mirror). Salecl points out how vacuous for instance contemporary ‘critique of ideals’ is (like Butler’s critique of ideals). This is on the contrary not subversive at all, but embraced by the market. The market doesn’t say, look like this or that actress or model today, but first of all, look like the best version of yourself. It doesn’t say become like Jennifer Aniston, it says, become like yourself. It is her very normalcy that was appealing. Jennifer Aniston is herself precisely famous for not being too pretty, but for being herself (the ‘neighbour’s daughter’-look).

The problem is not that the media offer images of success and beauty with which people want to identify, and since they cannot come close to this ideal, they feel inadequate. For some time now the fashion industry, for example, has been convincing consumers that they should not follow fashion advice and try to make themselves into someone else, but should rather discover what is unique about themselves, and with the help of fashion just accentuate it. (Salecl 2004: 56–57).

You see what the strategy is: while one may feel a bit of a failure for not looking like Britney Spears, how much more of failure not even to look like yourself (and for this reason Britney’s mantra is ‘be proud’ (not be like me). This generates of course the regime of ‘productive power’ (fully in tune with deterritorialization qua market), of a moralism that we can call biomoralism. In other words, one is even more strongly encouraged to identify with one’s image of oneself (the ideal-ego), which of course makes the miserable reality (what Lacan calls the ‘fragmented body’ stand out allt he more). at the same time of course capitalism is always ready to make melancholy into a lucrative business (and this is what makes the cry ‘melancholy of the left’ somewhat hollow. Melancholy, of making the apparatus run empty is not at all subversive today, but rather just another market to be exploited (the pharmaceutical companies have long since realized this). But to continue with Salecl:

In those days marketing thus tried to convince people to look and behave like someone else, i.e. to identify with an authority, wheras today, while people still look for role models (for example, in the entertainment industry), advertising is nonetheless more playing with the idea that consumers will discover in such models ‘heightened’ aspects of themselves, and not simply follow the dictates of the market. However, this new marketing strategy creates a lot of unease for consumers, since what actually provokes anxiety is not the failure to be someone else, but an inability to be oneself. (Salecl: 57).

Jennifer Aniston rose to fame precisely when models like Cynthia Crawford were stepping out of the public eye. We see also the problem precisely of the ‘performative studies’ (mostly linked to gender theory). Despite the blatant contradiction in coming from Foucault, it opens up so many new terrains of the market, of ‘biopolitics’, of productive power. For while it is in itself ‘good’ be oneself (who would be against it?), this is impossible, and all the failure of realizing one of your many genders (the inability to be yourself) then boomerangs back on the subject — and this is why the same theory is ready with melancholy ‘the always-already open’ to soak up this failure, and make the superego injunction sound again (enjoy!).

To explain this, think about how different we would read Marx’s early ‘humanist’ works today. Marx point was there, that human life is commodified, reduced to abstract labour. The point of revolution is to ‘restore the balance’, for us to take charge of the means of production collectively and become a ‘full human being’ (not simply reduced to a commodity). But the problem with the market today, is that it commodifies all of the human being (also the freetime), you are hired not simply for doing ‘abstract labour’, but to bring something to the product with your very ‘creativity’. Like Marx’s famous formula of the communist’s life (part fisher, part writer, part worker), this has become true today, but not in a communist utopia, but in the neoliberal market, where you are above all ‘investing in yourself’. To make the case simple, think about the way, that supermarkets require their workers sitting at the desk to ‘smile’ at customers. It is not enough merely to check that the correct amount of money is paid. One must smile while doing it (and of course, the more the worker really ‘feels’ optimistic and happy, the more ‘authentic’ the smile, the more effective this work will be — in a spiral, reminiscient of Calvin’s predestination, so those chosen by God also do ‘spontaneously good deeds’ and thereby prove that they are chosen. So that worker who spontaneously smile and ‘enjoys’ their job with to use the Heideggerian phrase their own ‘inmost’ succeed all the better at the job and paradoxically get less ‘melancholic’ in a spiral that is ever more fast-paced.

To take another example: I had recently my internet fixed. An employee from the company came and installed the new router. Now, it was clear that he was not just installing a router, but continuously wanted to talk. More and more panic-stricken by this talk, he in the end asked me to give him a review (that I could feel out online immediately). I of course gave him the best review possible (would be mean not to, even though I would have preferred, as Heidegger says of the rural communication ‘to smoke our pipes in silence’, but the point here is that this employee would probably have been much more relaxed if he could simply have installed my router, without feeling that he had to go into all these digressions about everyday life (at one point he asked me about a German book and I said something positive about the German language, and he over-emphatically agreed although he himself didn’t speak it…). The point again is that this poor man and I would have had it much easier in the ‘fordist time’ (just installing the router).

Why? Precisely because the superego injunction was to ‘enjoy’ (and realize) yourself. And is it not the same result with Peep the toad? Of course the answer given by the meme is that your are ‘too poor’ to partake on the first class of enjoyment, and must settle with Peep. Peep being the waste-product of the Pepe-feel-good-machine.

Since we are dealing with Pepe, we might ask if Peep the Toad refers to a special postfascism melancholy? Since the 1990 melancholy has been appropriated by the left, as the most important category for resistance. But this overlooks that there is also and always was a ‘fascist’ melancholy. The names in a German context that come to mind most easily are Heidegger, Ernst Jünger and Gottfried Benn.

Take the case of Jüngers Auf den Marmorklippen.

Overwatch league Ban and the absence of political Cause:

On January 10th, 2018, the video game news site Kotaku reported that two audience members were approached by security at the Overwatch League esports event, who confiscated a sign featuring Pepe the Frog illustration[3].

Here we have another example of our permissive times, that paradoxically coincides with the utmost puritanism. Therefore, Pepe is simply not a silly Frog (although he is precisely also that), but a “symptom of the times”. Let’s see why?

On March 18th, Overwatch competitor Jay Won from the team San Francisco Shock removed a Pepe tweet and subsequently posted a followup claiming that he “had to delete” the tweet (shown below).

There’s nothing simple in this process. I encourage again the reader to consult the page, Know you Meme, but of course the page simply states the facts and ‘genesis’ of Pepe, it does not say, why and how it matters. This is why, we need, pardon me the image, more than a dose, but like bulldozer of Zizekian analysis to penetrate to ‘issues’ at hand.

Let us notice that if we view the Overwatch event (January 10) in a totality, Pepe is precisely the ‘disturbing’ factor. It is for this reason that the two audience members ‘sneaked him in’. This in itself, as seen in picture, should make us pick up our ears. Why didn’t they just walk in and gave a proper ‘political’ speech? Precisely because the fascination is in this disturbing element alone, beyond something that can be rendered in conscious-preconscious latent thoughts. Here again we are back with the form of the dream. The sneak-in clearly is part of a ‘political program’, where there is none. This means, life is reduced to life alone, what Michel Foucault called biopolitics, there is no ‘grand narrative’. The only grand narratives is the ‘end of all grand narratives’, and therefore simply the injunction of the superego left: enjoy! — and this is what Pepe stands for here. To be sure, for the two ‘Pepe’-supporters, they very well knew that Pepe had a meaning, but it is also clear, that they did not really have a clue about which political meaning exactly, apart from ‘trolling’ against the official pc-lines of the Overwatch event. And this is another way, in which Pepe becomes a symptom. Let us recall that these video games are extremely violent. This violence is however, like the violence in Marquis de Sade’s novels a ‘de-activated’ violence. By this I mean a violence purely virtual. We know from Sade’s novels, that Justine, for instance, can be tortured and raped again and again and yet, come out even more purified and beautiful in the next scene. It is the same with lives in computer games. The player can of course kill another player in the game, but the player is then ‘resurrected’ usually back at his base within 5–10 seconds. The only consequences of getting killed is therefore merely a 5–10 second ‘death’. In other words, it is impossible really to die, a strange immortality reigns in this computer games. Zizek clearly fascinated with this ‘obscene immortality’ already in the 90ies pointed to the difference in computer games between ‘biological death’ and ‘symbolic death’. (a difference taken from Marquis de Sade). Sade’s heroes follow the commandment of Nature to kill and rape (that is destruction). The ‘problem’ if we may put it this way, is however, that by breaking all moral and societal laws, the sadist merely carry out Nature’s own whims (the sadist is therefore in other words, the complete opposite of a ‘pathologically’-feeling hedonist. In other words, he merely carry out the eternal recurrence of the same, that is the absence of mortality in the sense, that one could really die. The sadist therefore dream about ‘the ultimate crime’, that would end the endless cycle. In Zizek’s example this is the same difference at work in early computer games between a player’s character’s multiple lives (often indicated by hearts) and the life of the player’s character overall.

In these early games, the enemies are the multiple white ‘monsters’, and the player the green space-ship. The ‘lives’ of the player are indicated in the low corner to the left (space-ships). If the player dies they lose one life (one space-ship), but can start over at the same level. If all lives (spaceships) are lost the game is over and the player’s highscore is set to 0 and he or she has to start over the whole game on level 1 with a high-score of 0, but with 3 new lives. This very simple constellation perfectly repeats the difference in Sade between the ‘biological’ death (which is not really a death, since one is perpetually reborn). What Sade refers to as ‘symbolic death’ would be a death that would end the perpetual rebirth itself, the endless circle of decay and blossoming. This symbolic death here refers to the starting the whole game over as such.

We might think that this is a silly video game. But Zizek claims (and I agree) that this difference is precisely not able to be ‘thought’ in someone like Martin Heidegger’s being towards death. Heidegger’s claim is that man (Dasein) is not simply a biological life of an animal. It refers to the very relationship of man to death. A human being, in contrast to an animal, can relate to their own death, and that is why, as Heidegger says the fundamental relation of being is to time, man ‘projects’ his own being forward in a fundamental ‘essencing’ and so on. But to put matters quite simply, there is no ‘symbolic’ death in Heidegger (in the sense of Sade and computer games). This is also the inherent link between the purely ‘biological’, i.e. ‘instinctual’ notion of sexuality in Heidegger.

Heidegger, who reduces psychoanalysis to another ‘regional science’, merely a part of the nihilistic epoch of subjectivism fails to see, that precisely in psychoanalysis sexuality cannot be reduced to an instinctual notion. (that is something like a preprogrammed biological rhythm). Sexuality is instead a strange curvature of the instinct. This is why video-games provides a very good metaphor for the way ‘the inhuman’ is at work in psychoanalysis. Sexuality is not something like a ‘vital’ force (that is it is not simply a vitalism). It is rather, like in these computer games a kind of obscene way of un-being towards death, not a vitalist principle, but the ‘undead’. (like the difference between a player’s ‘disposable’ lives and the true game over).

Where does the ‘undead’ however return in Heidegger? Precisely in the symptom that is avoided by most Heidegger-scholars. In the notion of the ‘jew’ that has now come out in the ‘black notebooks’ (but which were clear for many years for anyone reading Heidegger seriously before…). The problem, however, with the Heidegger-scholars is that they want to eliminate the ‘obscenities’ of Heidegger from the pure thinking of Being. It is precisely the return of the symptom that is the truth of Heidegger’s thought, namely the repression of this obscene immortality as inherent to Dasein. When one looks at Heidegger’s description of the jews ‘perversion’ of Being it brings together all the paradoxes characteristic of a sublime object (the jews are rootless, without any ‘soil’, they are the most ruthless machines, incarnation of nihilism at its worst…at the same time, they are too fixated on ‘soil’, too ‘organicist’, to reflect properly — reflect in the Heideggerian in the double sense of projecting forward and being able to keep a minimal distance of ‘gelassenheit’). In other words, the ‘jews’ in Heidegger’s notebooks exemplify everything that was missing from Heidegger’s official philosophy, namely sexuality as perverted instinct and this as the feature that first makes us ‘Daseins’ (humans) to begin with.

Zizek’s example of the video games is also a good example of the psychoanalytic (and Marxist) ‘symptomatic reading’. Like Simmel (and Kracauer and many others claim), you have to know a time from its supposedly surface phenomena (Simmel’s example is the watch’s significance for the city-dwellers ‘sensibilities’):

So ist die Technik des großstädtischen Lebens überhaupt nicht denkbar, ohne das alle Tätigkeiten und Wechselbeziehungen auf pünktlichste in ein festes, übersubjektives Zeitschema eingeordnet würden. Aber auch hier tritt hervor, was überhaupt nur die ganze Aufgabe dieser Betrachtungen sein kann: das sich von jedem Punkt an der Oberfläche des Daseins, sosehr

The ‘thou art that’, there in something ‘superficial’ like video games, we see the ‘truth of our being’ (here the distinction of biological and ‘sublime’ life), the phantasy of life that cannot killed.

If we think about the Overwatch event, we have now video games that are much more advanced than Space-invaders. Players are killing each other in the game. Yet, there is no ‘real’ death and the speed of the game-play is many times faster than 30 years ago (I encourage the reader to go on youtube and find any video of Overwatch-game play. My point here is simply that on the one hand we find in the game a slaughter-house of virtual reality (constant murder etc.), whereas in ‘real life’ the E-sports developers are going by the most strict PC-lines. That is to say, in other words, they are a perfect example of our hedonist paradoxes, that is the superego injunction to enjoy! (but also not to enjoy too much, enjoy so that it does not disturb anyone else…). It is as though we, with our E-sports, recognize and promote the most murderous activities, and at the same time, of course, prohibit those very activities, or not even the activities, the censorship of any enjoyment that might impinge on our fellow neighbor. In other words, the mantra of enjoyment is perpetually linked to the market’s law of deterritorialization and profit, while at the same time a production of the very antagonism of the ‘right to enjoy’ itself.

This is part, I think, of the obscene tactics of the Pepe-the-Frog ‘activist’, they want to transgress and follow the injunction to enjoy, precisely to the point where it does hurt the other.

My point is again, however, that the Pepe-the-frog-activtist are definitely not engaged in any activity that we could call ‘true life’ (in Badiouian sense of engaged in an event). Badiou himself writes about the two ways of life open today to young people:

The first enemy is what could be called the passion for immediate life, for amusement, pleasure, the moment, some song or other, a fling, a joint, or some stupid game. All of that exists; Socrates doesn’t try to deny it. But when it all builds up, when it’s carried to its extreme, when that pas­sion produces a life that is lived from one day to the next, a life dependent on the immediacy of time, a life in which the future is invisible or at any rate totally obscure, then what you get is a kind of nihilism, a kind of conception of life with no unified meaning- a life devoid of mean­ing and consequently unable to go on as a true life. (9).

(…) the second inner threat for a young person is seemingly the opposite: the passion for success, the idea of becoming some­one rich, powerful, and well established. Not the idea of consuming oneself in immediate life but, on the contrary, of obtaining a good position in the existing social order. Life then becomes the sum total of tactics for becoming well estab­lished, even it means you have to be better than everyone else at submitting to the existing order so as to succeed in it. This is not the regime of instant gratification of pleasure; it’s that of the well-conceived, highly effective plan. (10–11).

Her we have a perfect description. Either the full consummation of pleasure in the moment (or retaining the status quo, ‘getting a career’). The two options are of course not as separated as Badiou lists here. On the contrary, the same person indulges in both, goes from one to the other, often within the same week (consuming drugs on Saturday, but ‘obtaining a good position’ Monday). Today, the market is even more extreme than Badiou seems to recognize, since ‘to get a good position’, you also have to ‘enjoy the immediate pleasures’ (say the ‘team-building exercise, just for fun…’ of the company).

In the case of this Overwatch Event, the point is that “Pepe-the-Frog”-banner is not merely, what we could call a ‘meaningful program’. The young men definitely feel ‘part of something bigger’, and gleefully enjoy to bring in the banner as a ‘hidden message’ to the people who are already in the know, or to spread ‘Pepe’s’ message (a kind of perpetual transgression). Yet, it is also a ‘cause’ in deterritorialized world, where the only options are perpetual enjoyment (that culminates in even stronger puritanism). We see in this case the enjoyment of Jay Wonton and the ‘activists…’. But also the selfrighteous puritanism of the gaming world (that indicate all the paradoxes of the neoliberal ‘right to enjoyment’ and ‘right to profit’). There is the right to profit (that is making the most macabre games possible…). The problem is here precisely the problem designated by the socalled ‘utopian’ fantasy of enjoyment. Every socialist utopia was at the same time the utopia of fully regulated enjoyment. The point already indicated by Sade, was that there was no such thing.

“I have the right to enjoy your body,”, anyone can say to me, “and I will exercise this right without any limit to the capriciousness of the exactions I may wish to satiate with your body” (Lacan 2006: 648).

The problem is that while we can distribute material goods democratically we cannot guarantee democratic enjoyment. The only thing we can distribute is therefore democratic ascetism, that is the universalizable prohibition of enjoyment. (but like in Freud’s famous myth of the primal father), even this prohibition must rely on some figure of enjoyment in order to mobilize itself (in Freud’s myth the primal father), here the ‘obscene enjoyment’ of Pepe’s fans. The point is not that this enjoyment is not obscene. It is. The point is however, that it is also a symptom of the very ‘democratic asceticsm’ and paradoxical market-driven right to enjoy at the same time. (the generalized notion of happiness today is precisely to be comfortable, to each his or her own pleasure…)

That is why it was also Marx that ‘invented the symptom’, that brought to clarification the notion of surplus-value (or in psychoanalytical terms surplus-pleasure).

Lolcats:

Lolcats are also a very good way to start if you want to problematize the relationship, so often taken for granted on the left, by the distance between (in Kristeva’s terms) presymbolic language and the language of the of the Father, in Freud’s terms between the primary and secondary process of language. The secondary process is the language of hierarchical structure, of conjunctions, of correct speech, hypertaxical. Primary process is parataxical, does not recognize negation, uses the conjunction “and…” “and…”.

When we look at lolcats they are however not on the left and they completely transform the narrative that presymbolic language is somehow subversive. They are a good example of what Zizek problematized around ‘marching chants’ (who use a mix of non-sensical phrasing and obscene content). Jean-Claude Milner has defended the ‘babbling’ and playing of ‘maternal’, ‘rooted language against abstract transnational langue. For Milner in a short-circuit between this playfulness of the primary processes and the secondary castrative function of hypertactical language, this also means a general decline in cultural (humanistic) education. Milner complains about the fact, that the homophony between Freud’s unbewusste and Lacan’s une bevue, will rarely be heard by people today, who as a rule only speak their mother tongue and then some form of ‘globish-english’. Here lolcats are also a perfect rebuffer. Lolcats use exactly the kind of language, that is not maternal, but strictly ‘globish’ (from gamer-communities, for example). Zizek writes about Milner’s distinctions, in a I think more pertinent way:

This is why the new era of Globish (exemplified by English spoken worldwide by traders and managers, but also a transnational cultural events) effectively announces a new universal barbarism: if being struck in a local “maternal” culture is primitivism, then cutting these roots and floating in Globish is barbarism. But when in this rootless Globish universe lalange massively returns, it is too simple to claim that it has been simply “instrumentalized” as a tool for commercial or political marketing”. It functions at a much more basic level as the obscene support of public speech. A military community only becomes “livable” against the background of the obscene unwritten rules and rituals (marching chants, fragging, sexual innuendoss), in which it is embedded — think about the US Marine Corps’ mesmeric “marching chants” — are their debilitating rhythm and sadisticallty sexualized nonsensical content not an exemplary case of the consuming self-enjoyment in the service of power. (Žižek 2021: 434).

Žižek is much more on point when it comes to phenomena such as lolcats than Milner. They cannot be reduced to Milner’s commercial purposes. But are they simply then the playful innocent children’s word-play? No, they are like the online communities equivalent of the marching chants. This also means that when scholars uncritically celebrate the ‘playfulness of poetic’ homophonetics etc, it is precisely this transgressiveness that is simply part of the game of the new Right. And as Žižek shows this ‘transgressiveness’ and childrens’ play was always part of the Right (what is the fascist new man if not exactly the restoration of the fantasy of ‘maternal’ full Thing, where there is no ‘castration’). We therefore need to see the exact function of the playfulness. Furthermore, if there is one point that Freud made and that was never accepted “mainstream” in its sting it was precisely children’s sexuality as the ‘sting’ of perversions. There is nothing ‘innocent’ here for Freud. Part of the price of popularization of Freudian ‘perversions’ into global mainstream culture was precisely that the subversive edge was cut off, children were reduced to angelic beings, while every perversion were allowed and encourage by the neoliberal subject (as a ‘free choice’). Freud’s entire point about perversions originating in childhood was on the contrary, that while they are not in any way ‘free’, there was still a forced choice at work (called by him Neurosewahl). The psychoanalytical cure does not mean to ‘cure perversions’ (as in Freud’s own time many people would want), but it is also not to ‘encourage and produce it’ (as many people would want today). It means to be able to get some minimal distance to one’s own mode of enjoyment, so that one can enjoy, but does not have to (as in the superego commandment).

Speaking of this kind of stupid repetitiveness of enjoyment equally widespread phenomena now is of course the gif, not simply a meme (an image with text), but a short video that runs in a repetitive loop. A perfect indication of the drive’s circuit around itself, the ‘obscene immortality’. Often with such gifs you are simply stuck, as if wondering (will it really start again?). The example is a bit the same as when you watch sports’ games and in the break of the game they repeat the same ‘goal’ over and over in a loop, from different angles. Here we are in a crazy Wagnerian universe of Tristan (not being able to die, the goal-sequence not being able to end).

Lolcats also use the socalled ‘lolspeak’, that is they show a kind of broken English. Here are some examples of some of the most famous. In 2010 the website catster published a list of the 10 most famous ‘lolcats’, including happy cat, monorail cat, limestone cat, civil disobedience cat etc. an early article in the Star descripes the site as funny and stupidly addictive”:

No less an authority than The Times of London called lolcats the “stupidest” of all Internet trends. But even critics admit, often sheepishly, that lolcats is a guilty pleasure — genuinely funny and disturbingly addictive. As columnist Dwight Silverman of The Houston Chronicle said: “Don’t visit unless you have plenty of time to kill — it’s a serious threat to your productivity.”[4]

Here we have not simply a silly ‘game’, but a much more psychoanalytical question: namely the enjoyment in the meaningless, “silly” itself. Commentators usually describe the use of lolcats as the cats cute use of English. But especially in the hacker-and gamer communities it is much more a reference to the language used there (the kind of Globish Zizek described above). Jouissance does not mean an terrifying pain-pleasure in the rituals of Masoch (analysed by Gilles Deleuze). It means simply the feeling that you are ‘stuck’ on something you find ‘stupid’, ‘gross’, ‘disgusting’ — yet find it impossible to walk away from.

Take for example, “happy cat” (2003), that originally came from a Russian food company also called happy cat.

Then, I have included its 2007 ‘lolcat’-version [5]:

After a caption reading “I Can Has Cheezburger?” was superimposed onto the Happy Cat image, more images in similar fashion began appearing on the web, launching the LOLcats meme and the popular I Can Has Cheezburger website.

NEDM is an acronym for “Not even Doom Music”, a variation of the same meme. My point here again, is that not to remain too much with the meme’s ‘auratic’ origin (who made what, but precisely it’s reproducible feature). NEDM refers to “not even DOOM music” (referring to a popular video-game).It is used as a catchphrase online and associated with this phrase.

The same meme was then associated with the catchphrase: “Oh God how did I get in here”, that was supposed to mock technologically inept meme-users. This catchphrase is derived from an image featuring a poorly cropped picture of happy cat, this catchphrase is used ironically, say when ‘noob’ (a ‘newbie’) tries to catch up with technology.

We can see, here, that despite Ngai’s analysis of a universal ‘cuteness’-factor, this cuteness factor is precisely levelled against cuteness. Notice how the catchphrase “oh god how did this get in here I am not good with computers” refer precisely to the language NOT used by the adept online memer, but by, say the mainstream middle-aged person (mostly women) that constantly posts about cats. We can think of the misogyni related to Hillary Clinton’s campaign when she began to use “Pokemon-go” in her speeches, “I want everyone to pokemon-go to the polls”, that obviously misfired.

The misogyny is here a very important factor and in no way, can these processes be reduced to a category of the ‘cute’ as Ngai’s analysis only allows for. To use Freud’s own analysis of ‘cats’, the cat rather refers to a ‘primary narcissism’, a kind of enjoyment not ‘castrated’ by language.

A perfect example of why lolcats can only function in what Brecht would call a constant “Umfunktionierung”, in online culture. And they only function as a response, something created in response to a situation. This we saw a negative proof of, when artists began trying to make exhibitions out of them. The problem was here, precisely that they were to trying to make ‘real art’ out of the bathroom-stall ‘sensibility’ needed for the cat to work. In 2012, the Framer’s gallery in London featured 49 images called lolcats LOLCAT — TEH EXHIBISHUN, featuring 49 original LOLCat inspired artworks.

In a very Benjaminian way, the lolcat is connected to the ‘lightness’, and fast-pace communication of its own production. It does not work in a museum, staying on the walls for several weeks. Here are some examples of lolcats made into art and institutionalized:

We can see why these cats simply ‘don’t work’. They are too stylished and ‘stale’, not made for the moment. A very big part of the production of lolcats is precisely the ‘amateurism’ and DIY-aspect. Even if a producer spends many hours on thinking on the right phrase a lolcat image must seem to simply be a kind of ‘waste’-product, made for the moment. Especially the knitting and the over-thought humour precisely take away the whole aspect of montage, that as Benjamin saw, is necessary. In fact, using benjamin’s terms, it is a like a panic-stricken mainstream response trying to bring a bit of ‘aura’ (the long term knitting, the cards on the front that says things “lolcatraz correcshunal facilitee’, name: Ninja, born on ‘fursday 25th Juleye, 2012’ back into the art in the age of mechanical reproduction. The humour here also has no ‘sting in it’, it is like the original ‘cute’ cats that had the tagline ‘you are purrrrfect’. That is precisely the image of all conflicts resolved, no antagonisms etc. What is also a problem is the way, that this language is again a ‘gentrified’, ‘clean’ version of ‘lolspeak’, without anything sinister in it, which was clearly a motivation to begin with.

It is impossible to understand ‘lolcats’ language without the global village. Why are the cats not speaking correctly? Precisely because what is mocked (and celebrated by the nerdy users) is what Sloterdijk called “Singapore English”, the kind of Globish broken English that is now the lingua franca of the internet. As beforementioned Catster article says:

The LOL Cat tidal wave grew from anonymous postings on various websites into the global pastime it is today — we might even venture to call LOLspeak a universal language at this point. It all started with folks captioning random photos of cats with distinct, funny, intentionally misspelled headlines in web forums. The ICHS founders would later pick up on this phenomenon and give it a home on ICanHasCheezburger.com. Now anyone can visit the site, upload a cat photo, add a LOL caption and get feedback from the Cheezburger community.[7]

The article is of course right that it is ‘universal’ language at this point. But it misses the entire scope of this kind of ‘globish’, commercialized English (the English by non-natives that are part of the global market, including of course its aesthetics).

Furthermore the cats whose ‘cuteness’ factor is essential is here precisely used as a vehicle for a kind of jouissiance. In other word, Ngai’s theory allows only for the pleasure principle not for jouissance (beyond the pleasure principle). This is why her entire theory is based on Aristotelian notion of pleasure (the homeostatic principle), avoiding all the paradoxes that came to light with psychoanalysis, namely pleasure-in-pain etc, in short everything that makes the human inhuman, not at home in his or her own body.

Whereas the ‘cute’ cats are always send in a kind of sentimental ‘liberal’ mainstream-culture, and maximized optimism of market procedures (the cuteness here working as motor), the lolcats are their dark twin. To be more precise the lolcats evoke precisely the mix of my neighbor as a Thing and my neighbor as my fellow man (nice mirror-image). While the original ‘cute’ cats, are cats that are unthreatening, that we can ‘relate’ to, the lolcats evoke the Neighbor, the Neighbor that does not care about me, and want simply to use me for his or her pleasure:

“Those who understand globalization as an opportunity for the entire earth to be a unified space of communication, one which brings together all humanity, often fail to notice this dark side of their proposition. Since a Neighbour is, as Freud suspected long ago, primarily a Thing, a traumatic intruder, someone whose different way of life (or, rather, way of jouissance materialized in its social practices and rituals) disturbs us and, when the Neighbour comes too “close, throws the balance of our way of life off the rails, this can also give rise to an aggressive reaction aimed at getting rid of this disturbing intruder”. (Slavoj Žižek 2017, 57).

This is also what’s wrong about Sianne Ngai’s theory about the ‘cute’ as one of our aesthetic categories (replacing the sublime). In a recent interview with the danish newspaper Information, Ngai fully endorsed also now, her theory of the cute from her older book.[8] For Ngai the cute is a response to a certain antagonism in capitalism, whereby we try to make ‘cute’ what we have no control over. Ngai’ example is an excavator, small and bit by bit was trying to dig out the giant ship, Ever Given stuck in the Suez-channel, and it made about 12 percent of world commerce come to a halt. Many users commented on the image like “my mental health during Covid” and so on.

Ngai’s theory is that we portray our impotence. By portraying our impotence we laugh, but we also, perhaps, realize that we don’t want to be ‘laughed at’ and take more control over the market. This is Ngai’s notion of the cute as an aesthetic category. What Ngai misses is precisely the much more disturbing aspect of both the cute as an ‘aesthetic’ category (but also much more the ‘subversive’ potential in simple ‘cute’ video and ‘laughing’ as subversive mechanism.

In other words, Ngai’s own analysis of market capitalism is itself very ‘cute’, almost a caricature version of Marx’s dictum that ‘religion is opium for the people’, so now the ‘cute’, and the analysis of capitalism and its discontents solely through the cute, is now opium for the people. Laughter is, as many Marxists have noted, not at all subversive to power, it is today simple part of the game, that is why it seems rather misleading with Ngai’s suggestion that the picture of the excavator contains something potentially terribly subversive about it.

First of all it does not see, how the sublime is precisely at work in ‘lolcat’ speech, namely ‘our’ sublime — not Kant’s eruptic volcanoes and wild seas). The sublime is characterized as psychoanalysis says by trivial objects, but elevated to the ‘dignity of the Thing’ (that is instead of thinking through the sublime for us, Ngai merely replaces it with the category of the ‘cute’, in an straightforward way thinking that the sublime must be thought in a stagnant way). Because her straw-man approach to Kant’s sublime she can of course easily replace it with the ‘cute’. The revenge is that something like lolcats is precisely the ‘cute’ radicalized so it becomes a sublime object. The lolcats are like the evil elevated into an impossible-Thing (this is why also that the “Not even Doom music”-referring to an extremely violent trend-setting game). What Ngai avoids is what precisely characterized the 20th century and ‘our aesthetic categories’, namely what Badiou calls ‘passion for the real’, the attempt to purify life from representation and connect with a direct affirmative life-force (that always burst any representation), Ngais theory of the cute is this life-force in its ‘reactive mode’ (what Nietzche calls passive nihilism). Of course, the whole point and problem, is that passive nihilism needs passion of the real (active nihilism) in order to function, it needs it as its other that it can both draw jouissance from and distance itself from. To put it in Ngai’s term there is not so thing as the ‘cute’, that does not once in a while need a burst of the Real. (I am even tempted to say that the widespread usage of cats in college-campuses is precisely a result of neoliberal market capitalism, a kind of buffer, against the onsloaght of the cultural shock for many young people moving away from home and for the first time being and caught up in the maelstroem of getting good grades and becoming socially successful etc.).

The second more important point is that Ngai would like us to spend time more time on the ‘cute’ cat videos on youtube. What she misses here is precisely the l’envers of these cute catvideos, the lolspeak cats. In Freudian terms, Ngai would like us to only focus on the mirror-image of my fellow man, not the ‘ugly’ Neighbor. The problem is however, that we cannot get rid of jouissance, that is of the Neighbour in his monstrosity, since his enjoyment is really like my own, I am in the end really my own Neighbor.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/history-donald-trump-small-hands-insult/story?id=37395515

[2] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog#fn82

[3]

[4] https://www.thestar.com/life/2007/09/22/funny_how_stupid_site_is_addictive.html

[5] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-cat

[6] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lolcats#fn10

[7] https://www.catster.com/cats-101/lol-cats

[8] https://www.information.dk/kultur/anmeldelse/2021/05/forstaa-vores-verden-bedre-gennem-gakkede-nuttede-interessante