Chapter Six
AN UNENLIGHTENED ENLIGHTENMENT
If the turn from prohibition to enjoyment puts up a barrier to interpretation, the role of cynicism in the society of enjoyment becomes clear: it allows the subject to overcome this lack, to feel secure in her/his knowledge of the Other. In contrast to the naïve subject of desire, the cynic has insight into every secret; there is no aspect of the Other that remains mysterious to the cynic. This insight into the secret of the Other provides the cynic with a sense of being privy to the Other’s enjoyment; for the cynic, there is no inaccessible objet petit a. Above all, the cynic wants to avoid being naïve, being one of the duped, especially when it comes to the Other’s enjoyment. In response to the imperative to enjoy, the cynic refuses to allow any site of potential enjoyment to remain unknown, and this refusal is precisely what makes cynicism such a popular attitude in the society of commanded enjoyment. The cynic pursues cynicism in an effort to heed the new social imperative to enjoy. Cynicism provides a sense of universal access, an access that refuses to acknowledge the possibility of distance or nonknowledge. However, this triumph over nonknowledge does not transform the subject or its situation. All of the cynic’s knowledge does not help the cynic escape the determinations of the symbolic order: the cynic remains a perfectly obedient and docile subject. The cynical subject has insight into the secret of the Other, and yet this insight doesn’t change anything for the subject. In this sense, cynicism represents a departure from the traditional enlightenment idea concerning the power of knowledge.
It is a fundamental tenet of enlightenment that the knowledge of a barrier or limit frees us from that barrier. If we know about the way that power works to subject us, we ipso facto gain power over that power. Hegel exemplifies this idea in his critique of the Kantian transcendental dialectic that appears in The Critique of Pure Reason. Through the transcendental dialectic, Kant believes that he discovers the limits of reason, the difficulties that reason inevitably encounters when it tries to go beyond its proper sphere. In discovering these limits, Hegel asserts, Kant should see that he has, in fact, through reason, gone beyond the very limits. This is because, according to Hegel, the act of recognizing a limit gives one power over that limit. As he puts it, “the very fact that something is determined as a limitation implies that the limitation is already transcended. For a determinateness, a limit, is determined as a limitation only in opposition to its other in general, that is, in opposition to that which is free from limitation; the other of a limitation is precisely the being beyond it.”1 One cannot recognize a limit and, at the same time, be bound by it, because the act of recognition itself implies that one has broken the hold that the limit had. The phenomenon of cynicism, however, calls this conception radically into question. Cynics recognize the functioning of ideology—they are not duped—and yet ideology still serves as a limit that they cannot transgress; ideology continues to control the behavior of cynics, despite this knowledge. For the cynical subject in the society of enjoyment, unlike for the subject in the society of prohibition, knowledge does not lead to freedom.
In this sense, cynicism seems to represent the limit of enlightenment. Faced with a cynical consciousness, enlightenment can continue to rehearse its critique, but the knowledge that it proffers works to no effect. This is the situation that Peter Sloterdijk describes in his Critique of Cynical Reason: “The discontent in our culture has assumed a new quality: It appears as a universal, diffuse cynicism. The traditional critique of ideology stands at a loss before this cynicism. It does not know what button to push in this cynically keen consciousness to get enlightenment going.”2 If the consciousness that enlightenment would enlighten already has knowledge and this knowledge hasn’t resulted in a change of behavior, then enlightenment is strapped for options. According to Sloterdijk, today’s mass cynicism is the product of too much enlightenment—we know too much—and the wrong kind of enlightenment—we don’t know in the right way. Interestingly enough, Sloterdijk blames enlightenment itself for this contemporary aporia. He claims that traditional enlightenment produced cynicism because it set itself up against the body and tied itself to the project of mastery.3 Enlightenment, in short, too often took the side of the hegemonic powers. Hence, Sloterdijk proposes that enlightenment must radically transform itself if it is to combat a cynical world: it must become an embodied enlightenment—an enlightenment of the body, not just the mind—not an activity of mastering, but “a letting happen and a nonintervention.” 4 Sloterdijk advances his radical revision of enlightenment critique precisely because this critique seems to have lost its fecundity when confronted with cynicism, to have lost its power over power. Is, however, a radical transformation of enlightenment the only possibility? Is there a way to conceive of traditional enlightenment and its critique of ideology as remaining operative in a cynical world? And finally, does Sloterdijk’s solution mark a path out of contemporary cynicism (and the society of enjoyment) or does it testify to cynicism’s predominance? These questions will open up an analysis of the symptomatic role that cynicism plays in the society of enjoyment.
In order to answer these questions, we must first examine more carefully the relationship between cynicism and knowledge. The cynic tells her/himself that she/he is not invested in the ruling ideology, that she/he sees through all of its strictures and manipulations. The symbolic order no longer represents, in the case of the cynic, a barrier to the Real; on the contrary, the cynic believes that she/he sees directly through the symbolic mediation of the Real into the Real itself.5 The knowledge of cynicism, however, is not what Lacan calls “knowledge in the Real.” This is because, in pulling away the veil of the symbolic fiction, we do not find ourselves with an unmediated access to the Real. Instead, we encounter a specular image that we take for the Real. We believe, in other words, that what we see, beyond the constraints of the symbolic fiction, is the Real, that it is not an image. While we are skeptical about the symbolic fiction, we are not at all suspicious about what we see; we are wholly taken in by the image.
The cynic knows very well that the symbolic fiction is just a fiction and also “knows” that the imaginary field beneath this symbolic fiction is a reservoir of truth. For the cynic, the status of the imaginary does not come into question. This represents a radical change in the status of belief—this insistence upon the authority of one’s own eyes and the rejection of symbolic authority. In (Per)versions of Love and Hate, Renata Salecl explains this transition through a reference to Groucho Marx: “When Groucho Marx was caught in an obvious lie, his response was: ‘Whom do you believe—my words or your eyes?’ The belief in the big Other is the belief in words, even when they contradict one’s own eyes. What we have today is therefore precisely a mistrust in mere words (that is, in the symbolic fiction). People want to see what is behind the fiction.”6 This turn away from belief in the symbolic fiction and toward the image beneath it reaches its apotheosis in the postmodern cynic.
A PROFITABLE REBELLION
In the process of disregarding and seeing through the symbolic fiction, the cynic, seduced by the image, fails to see the power that the symbolic fiction has in structuring the experience of reality and the image itself. This is why one is better off putting faith in words rather than one’s eyes: while symbolic fiction is a fiction—that is, it lies—it nonetheless has the power to produce the frame of meaning through which we experience the world. The image, on the other hand, lies doubly, insofar as it disguises the power of the symbolic fiction. As a result, those who disregard the symbolic fiction and trust only in their own eyes necessarily fail to see the structuring power of the symbolic fiction. As Slavoj Žižek puts it in The Ticklish Subject, “those who do not let themselves be caught in the symbolic deception/fiction and continue to believe their eyes are the ones who err most. What a cynic who ‘believes only his eyes’ misses is the efficiency of the symbolic fiction, the way this fiction structures our experience of reality.”7 In the act of seeing through the symbolic fiction and thereby failing to recognize its efficacy, the cynic does not escape its influence. In fact, this influence is all the more powerful for its having become wholly inconspicuous, which is precisely what befalls the subject in the society of enjoyment.
In response to the command to enjoy, contemporary cynicism is an effort to gain distance from the functioning of power, to resist the hold that power has over us. Hence, the cynic turns inward and displays an indifference to external authorities, with the aim of self-sufficient independence. Symbolic authority—which would force the subject into a particular symbolic identity, an identity not freely chosen by the subject herself—is the explicit enemy of cynicism. To acknowledge the power of symbolic authority over one’s own subjectivity would be, in the eyes of the cynic, to acknowledge one’s failure to enjoy fully, making such an acknowledgment unacceptable. In the effort to refuse the power of this authority, one must eschew all the trappings of conformity.8 This is why the great Cynical philosopher Diogenes made a show of masturbating in public, a gesture that made clear to everyone that he had moved beyond the constraints of the symbolic law and that he would brook no barrier to his jouissance. By freely doing in public what others feared to do, Diogenes acted out his refusal to submit to the prohibition that others accepted. He attempted to demonstrate that the symbolic law had no absolute hold over him and that he had no investment in it. However, seeming to be beyond the symbolic law and actually being beyond it are two different—and, in fact, opposed—things, and this difference becomes especially important to recognize in the contemporary society of enjoyment. In the act of making a show of one’s indifference to the public law (in the manner of Diogenes and today’s cynical subject), one does not gain distance from that law, but unwittingly reveals one’s investment in it. Such a show is done for the look of the symbolic authority. The cynic stages her/his act publicly in order that symbolic authority will see it. Because it is staged in this way, we know that the cynic’s act—such as the public masturbation of Diogenes—represents a case of acting-out, rather than an authentic act, an act that suspends the functioning of symbolic authority. Acting-out always occurs on a stage, while the authentic act and authentic enjoyment—the radical break from the constraints of symbolic authority—occur unstaged, without reference to the Other’s look.9 In the History of Philosophy, Hegel makes clear the cynic’s investment in symbolic authority through his discussion of Plato’s interactions with Diogenes:
In Plato’s house [Diogenes] once walked on the beautiful carpets with muddy feet, saying, “I tread on the pride of Plato.” “Yes, but with another pride,” replied Plato, as pointedly. When Diogenes stood wet through with rain, and the bystanders pitied him, Plato said, “If you wish to compassionate him, just go away. His vanity is in showing himself off and exciting surprise; it is what made him act in this way, and the reason would not exist if he were left alone.10
Though Diogenes attempts to act in a way that demonstrates his self-sufficiency, his distance from every external authority, what he attains, however, is far from self-sufficiency. As Plato’s ripostes demonstrate, everything that the cynic does to distance himself from symbolic authority plays directly into the hands of that authority.11 Here we see how cynicism functions symptomatically in the society of enjoyment, providing the illusion of enjoyment beyond social constraints while leaving these constraints completely intact.
We don’t have to look twenty-five hundred years in the past for an example of cynicism’s hidden investment in symbolic authority: this investment is even more fully present in contemporary cynicism. It is especially clear in the cynicism of the antiauthority, discontented hacker working at a new internet company. The hacker is able to eschew all of the trappings of the traditional office labor: she/he can make her/his own hours, wear what she/he wants, listen to a walkman, and, in general, be her/his own boss. But nonetheless, this rejection of authority is wholly amenable to the functioning of the internet company. In fact, such a company thrives on it. It is not uncommon for internet companies to fire hackers when they lose their rebelliousness and become part of the corporate structure. Such companies want edgy product development that only a rebellious hacker can provide. The cynical worker works all the more effectively for the company—for the authority—in the guise of an opposition to structures of authority. Imagining her/himself as a rebel against tradition allows the hacker to become more creative, to spur the company on toward greater and greater profits. Contemporary cynicism at large works much like it does in the case of the hacker. The cynic rejects authority at the same time she/he devotes all of her/his energies to helping it along. The contemporary cynic’s rebellion is, in this way, not a brake upon the functioning of late capitalism, but its engine. The cynicism among subjects today thus indicates the extent to which the society of enjoyment leaves subjects bereft of the actual enjoyment that would break from the prevailing symbolic authority.
IDOLATRY TODAY
Naïveté becomes an unbearable position in the face of the command to enjoy because it suggests that one is not in on the secret of enjoyment. This is what makes cynicism so comforting today. Cynicism stems from the belief that one sees through the functioning of power, that one knows fully how the system works. The cynic sees her/himself as a completely enlightened subject—because she/he thinks that she/he has “seen it all”—which is why Sloterdijk claims that “cynicism is enlightened false consciousness.”12 The many images that the contemporary cynic sees provide this sense of enlightenment, this sense that there is nothing to be known. Because the image is the source of the cynic’s enlightenment, it does not receive the same scrutiny as symbolic authority. This is why cynicism fails to provide any relief for the claustrophobia of the contemporary subject: while it offers the illusion of distance from symbolic authority, it sustains the subject’s sense of proximity to the imaginary underside of that symbolic authority.
The cynic’s faith in images is correlative to her/his investment in fantasy—specifically, the fantasmatic underside of the symbolic law. The realm of fantasy is an imaginary realm, a realm which is, unlike the public side of symbolic authority, replete with enjoyment. Every symbolic law depends on this obscene underside that absorbs the jouissance implicit in the emergence of the law as such and allows the public law to maintain an appearance of neutrality. In the turn to a society of enjoyment, the true locus of authority shifts to this fantasmatic underside, which the cynic never calls into question. In fact, the cynic completely invests her/himself in this fantasmatic, obscene dimension of the law. As Žižek puts it:
A cynic mocks the public law from the position of its obscene underside which, consequently, he leaves intact. Insofar as the enjoyment that permeates this underside is structured in fantasies, one can also say that what the cynic leaves intact is the fantasy, the phantasmatic background of the public, written ideological text. Cynical distance and full reliance on fantasy are thus strictly codependent: the typical subject today is the one who, while displaying cynical distrust of any public ideology, indulges without restraint in paranoiac fantasies about conspiracies, threats, and excessive forms of enjoyment of the Other.13
Because of their rejection of the public law, cynical subjects feel as if they have no investment in the big Other, as if they have distanced themselves from its power, but this is belied by their investment in the fantasmatic underside of that law.
Let us look at the example of racism to make this clear. The contemporary white cynic will readily admit that the American public ideology of a colorblind society serves to mask the continuing presence of racism. Despite claims that the society has become colorblind, the cynic recognizes that some whites still harbor prejudice toward African Americans and that this prejudice has an adverse effect on the life chances of African Americans (as evinced by the number of African American men in jail, the disparity in income between white and African American, etc.). This recognition, however, coexists in the thinking of the cynic with a seemingly contradictory idea—that African Americans have it easier than whites today, that society has entered an era of reverse discrimination. This is why so many whites feel a visceral objection to affirmative action: it provides even more privilege to a group that already has a privileged status, a privileged relationship to enjoyment. In the racist’s view, the African American enjoys more because she/he gets more for less, has to work less for more benefits (as the policy of affirmative action seems to attest to). How can we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory attitudes? The cynic’s ability to sustain both attitudes stems from the split between her/his relationship to public ideology and to the fantasmatic underside of power. She/he doubts the official proclamations of authority, which claim to have eradicated racism, but invests her/himself in the underside of that authority, which relies on a racist fear of the Other’s enjoyment in order to function. In sustaining the investment in the underlying racist fantasy, the cynic finds support for her/his being in the big Other. But the cynic’s suspicion of public ideology allows her/him to feel as if she/he is transgressing the norms of the big Other. Thus, the cynic is able to have it both ways, attaining the security that stems from obedience and the enjoyment that transgression produces, without having to risk actually losing the support of her/his identity within the big Other. The white cynic can both feel her/himself to be righteously antiracist in her/his ability to analyze the hidden racism in American society while at the same time feeling her/himself to be a victim of reverse discrimination. Suspicion of the public law and investment in its obscene underside offers such a subject the best of both worlds.
The cynic’s investment in the fantasmatic underside of the law provides ideology with a strong hold over her/him. Whereas the subject who is invested in the public ideology can have this investment shattered by the enlightenment critique of ideology, the same is not true in the case of the cynical subject. It is doubly difficult to break the hold of ideology over the cynic because the cynic believes that she/he has already broken its hold, so that there is nothing further to be known. In addition, the cynic, unlike the traditional naïve subject, derives not only identity from ideology, but also the enjoyment stemming from ideology’s obscene underside. When we simply obey the law, we feel certain about ourselves and our place in the social order. But when we obey while feeling that we are not, we obtain enjoyment in the act of obedience. This constitutes the great power of cynicism as an ideological formation: it provides for us the best of both worlds—obedience and transgression.14 Cynicism offers the subject a sense of radicality; the cynical subject feels as if she/he is heeding the imperative to enjoy. In this way, cynicism functions as a symptom of the society of enjoyment.
THE END OF NOT KNOWING
Wim Wenders’s The End of Violence (1997) makes evident how cynicism emerges as a symptom of the society of enjoyment. The film focuses on a movie producer, Mike Max (Bill Pullman), who, at the beginning of the film, is the contemporary cynical subject in full flower. His life changes when he becomes an assassination target after Ray (Gabriel Byrne) sends him an email detailing a top-secret surveillance system that Ray is working on installing in Los Angeles in order to help fight crime, to help bring about “the end of violence.” Ray, who sees the Foucaultian dimension of the program, wants to expose it to an outsider, and he chooses Mike (because they had hit it off at a conference some months before). After narrowly surviving the assassination attempt, Mike is rescued by a family of gardeners, who take him in and provide him shelter. The assassination attempt and life with this family have a profound effect on Mike, causing him to abandon his former life as big-time movie producer and its attendant cynicism. Mike’s wife Paige (Andie MacDowell), on the other hand, moves in the opposite direction: from being disaffected with the inauthenticity of their life and ready to leave Mike at the beginning of the film, she takes over Mike’s production company with even more zeal than Mike. At the end of the film, Mike seems to have freed himself from the trap of his former cynicism, just as Paige has fully warmed to it. Mike has actually acted, giving the information about Ray to Cat (Traci Lind), a stuntwoman whom he has befriended. Cat then tells Detective Doc Brock (Loren Dean), the detective who is investigating Mike’s disappearance. Doc arranges a meeting with Ray, but just as the meeting begins, Ray is mysteriously shot, undoubtedly for his attempt to expose the surveillance program.
The film centers around the surveillance system that Ray is developing for the FBI. It offers the promise of cutting down on violence because it would allow nothing to go unseen. In seeing everything, it would eliminate the hiding places of violence, thereby bringing violence out of the darkness on which it thrives. As Ray’s boss tells him, trying to convince him of the project’s merits, “If we could get this thing fully operational soon, it will be an awesome tool. Cut down on crime response time by 200 percent, accuracy, eyewitness evidence. It could mean the end of violence as we know it.”15 The system would “end” violence not through the mechanism of a symbolic prohibition—not by forbidding it—but by watching every possible site at which violence might erupt.16 This represents a dramatic shift in the concept of law, a shift, within the law itself, from word to image. The chief vehicle for ridding the city of crime is no longer passing the right laws or encouraging obedience of those laws; it is instead the fact that the system would see everywhere, thereby eliminating every site of nonknowledge. This all-seeing surveillance system allows for no secret enjoyment, no objet petit a, that might exist beyond its reach. It is thus the ultimate tool of a cynical world.
This ability to see everything and everywhere is evident on an individual level as well, especially in the character of Mike Max. When we see Mike at the beginning of the film, he is sitting in a lawn chair by a pool, just outside his luxurious house in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. This setting suggests that Mike’s wealth has brought him distance from the population of the city below, that he has purchased distance from the crowd. But as the scene unfolds, we see that this distance in no way affects Mike’s ability to connect with the outside world: he has complete access. Though Mike is sitting by the pool, he has a laptop computer in front of him, two phones by his side, and he is wearing headphones. During the scene, he is talking with Claire, his assistant, via teleconference, and on three occasions, telephone calls interrupt their conversation. Whenever a call interrupts them, Mike minimizes Claire’s face on his computer screen and turns his attention to the caller. Mike is wholly “plugged in” to the Other in this scene. Despite his distance from “real” people, Mike remains thoroughly invested in the big Other through the medium of technology. Technology keeps him constantly in touch with the image of the other, and the image completely absorbs his attention. In this way, Wenders makes it clear that though Mike may have purchased himself distance from the crowds of Los Angeles, he has utterly failed in his attempt to purchase distance from the big Other as such. Mike’s investment in the image is his investment in the big Other. However, because Mike is invested in the big Other through the image, he fails to recognize this investment. His cynical position allows him to feel distanced and yet remain engaged with the Other at the same time.
CYNICISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Mike begins The End of Violence as a cynical Hollywood producer, manipulating those around him and exploiting violence in his films in order to generate profit. He knows the power that his films have to create paranoia, and yet he makes them anyway. As he tells us: “When I was a kid, movies scared the shit out of me. So then when I grew up, I went into the movie business. Turned what you would call a basic fear of strangers into a multi-million dollar enterprise. After all, paranoia is our number one export. Everybody needs an enemy.” A good cynic, Mike knows very well what he is doing but continues, nonetheless, to do it. Throughout the film, however, Mike moves away from this cynicism, having grasped its limits. Paige, on the other hand, begins the film dissatisfied. Eager for “life . . . real life,” she plans to leave Mike and go to Guatemala, but Mike’s disappearance interrupts these plans, leaving her in charge of his company. In the course of the film, Paige, despite her initial reluctance, assumes the role Mike is playing at the beginning of the film: she becomes the cynical Hollywood producer that he was. What this apparent reversal of roles conceals, however, is the similarity between the two from the beginning of the film to the end.
Both Paige and Mike see through public ideology and distance themselves from its prescripts. This becomes apparent in Mike when, upon hearing from his lawyer that Cat could sue over her injury in a stunt on the film he is making, he takes flowers to her in the hospital. Cat immediately recognizes the cynicism behind the gesture, telling Mike, right when he hands her the flowers, “I wasn’t going to sue anyway.” Mike does the “appropriate” thing—bringing flowers to someone injured—but he doesn’t do it because he is invested in the act, nor does he try to keep up the appearance of propriety. Once Cat assures him that she won’t sue, Mike quickly leaves, his cynical mission accomplished. It seems as if it is precisely this kind of cynicism that Paige is reacting to when she threatens to leave Mike. We might understand her statement, “I have a yearning for real life,” as a yearning for a world beyond the cynical one, for an authentic world. However, Paige’s disaffection, her desire for the “authenticity” of Guatemala, does not prevent her from taking up Mike’s position after his disappearance.
Though she initially refuses to have anything to do with Mike’s company, when Paige does agree to take it over, we see her in exactly the same position that Mike occupied at the beginning of the film. She is sitting on the back lawn, talking with Claire through a teleconference, while at the same time talking on the telephone. The mise-en-scène of the earlier scene is almost precisely duplicated—indicating the similarity between Paige and Mike. In addition, Paige evinces even more ruthlessness than Mike in operating the company. After taking control of the company, she immediately shuts down a film that is shooting, The Seeds of Violence, in order to free up cash for the business. Shutting down the film midway through the shooting thwarts Cat’s chance at becoming an actress, since Mike had given her a role in this film after seeing her in the hospital. Seeing Cat’s disappointment, Paige responds in almost exactly the same cynical manner that Mike employed with her earlier in the film. She comforts Cat, telling her that she’ll get another break. Paige shows sympathy for Cat’s disappointment, even though she was the vehicle for that disappointment. This ability to have one’s cake and eat it too is the cynical ability par excellence.
When we see what becomes of Paige, we have one indication that her initial disaffection is itself invested in the cynical world from which it retreats. This becomes even more apparent, however, when Mike takes up Paige’s disaffection and himself retreats from cynicism into an “authentic” experience. Rather than going to Guatemala as Paige intended, Mike, after his kidnapping and attempted assassination, lives with a family of Mexican American gardeners. Within the life of this family, Mike feels as if he has discovered something real; here there appears to be genuine belief in the Other, not cynicism. This distance between the cynical world that Mike used to occupy and the “authentic” world of the gardeners is evident in the difference in the miseen-scène of the two worlds. Mike and Paige’s house is full of empty space: the property includes a large lawn and a pool, but few trees amidst the expanse of grass. The interior of the large house is equally vacant, with high ceilings, wide rooms, and a minimalist décor. All of this space is there for just two people, Mike and Paige. The gardeners’ house, in contrast, is much smaller, though it holds an extended family. The house has a small backyard—where we see the family eating around a picnic table—with little empty space. The inside of the house has so little room that Mike, a guest in the house, must sleep on the floor next to a fish tank. Unlike Mike’s former world of cynical distance, the world that this house embodies seems to be one of intimacy and authenticity. It appears to be a world prior to the fall into cynicism.
We must remember, however, that we see this world from the perspective of Mike. And all Mike does is see this world. Because of the language barrier—the gardeners primarily speak Spanish—Mike has only a limited symbolic contact with them.17 His contact occurs predominantly through seeing them, and what Mike sees in them is an image with which to identify. They represent that which the cynical subject—Mike—has lost and now hopes to regain. As with Paige’s apotheosis of Guatemala, Mike’s belief that the Mexican American gardeners have not yet fallen from an original authenticity partakes of a racist fantasy. This fantasy sees the Other as existing prior to the fall, still in full possession of enjoyment.18 Mike wants to regain this world because he wants to escape the cynicism of his world. When we see him at the gardeners’ house, Mike sits down to dinner, and the grandfather offers a prayer, a gesture that would be wholly out of place in the cynical world that Mike used to occupy. This religious devotion, the familial intimacy, and the kindness that the family displays all substantiate the image of their world as being part of a prior, pre-cynical era. Many members of the extended family work together, and the entire family seems to come together for meals. Rather than being torn apart by modernity, this family has sustained it “authentic roots.” It is this that Mike sees and that draws him to the image of the family. Wenders offers a hint that this view of the family specifically belongs to Mike: when we first see the family as a whole—eating at a table in the backyard—Mike is looking at them through a window in the garage, where he is cleaning himself up.
In relying upon the image that he has of the gardeners rather than on any symbolic interaction with them, Mike, though he thinks he has abandoned his former cynicism, displays the cynic’s absolute faith in the image and eschewing of the symbol. Like the cynic, Mike trusts what he sees, but what he sees in the image of the gardeners is his own ideal ego. The idealization of the gardeners shows us that Mike remains within the very world that he thought he was leaving—that is, a world trusting in the image. Rather than abandoning cynicism through the course of the film, Mike demonstrates how the retreat from cynicism to authenticity remains within the orbit of cynicism. Opting out—leaving the cynical world behind for its authentic counterpart—is the cynical gesture, insofar as it betrays a trust in the image and a distrust of the symbolic order. The subject who opts out of the cynical world does so in order to find a world that doesn’t deceive at all, a world in which the image reveals everything. This is what Paige was looking for when she talked of seeking “real life” in Guatemala. This world where everything is revealed is itself nothing but the cynical ideal, the ideal of those who believe in the image and its revelatory power. It is part of the achievement of The End of Violence that it illustrates the cynical dimension of anticynicism.
At the end of the film, Mike appears to have broken completely from the prevailing cynicism. He stands on the edge of a pier, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, contemplating the changes that he has undergone. His concluding voiceover narration sums up his transformation:
Funny, just when you think you’ve got it all figured, in a heartbeat it all changes again. The thing is, in all those years when I was waiting for that sudden attack, I became the enemy. And when the enemy I’d expected finally came, they set me free. Strange. Now, when I look over the ocean, I don’t expect nuclear submarines or alien attackers anymore. I can see China now, and I hope they can see us.
As this statement makes clear, the cynicism and paranoia that were so much a part of Mike’s existence have now given way to hope. Whereas before he cultivated fear of the dangerous other, now he hopes to embrace this other. However, Mike’s transformation leaves much intact. Despite its seeming break from cynicism, Mike’s concluding statement sustains the cynic’s faith in the power of the image as that which can eliminate distance. As he says, “I can see China now, and I hope they can see us.” The image or seeing, in this vision of things, can produce a bond with the other, a way out of the spiraling effects of cynical distance. If we can see China, or so this thinking goes, we need not fear the desire of China, because the image will reveal that desire to us.
Though the ability to see each other seems to be an opening to the other, it is the image and its proximity that has triggered the flight to cynical distance in the first place. In this sense, Mike’s final “break” from cynicism only testifies to its power over the contemporary subject, its presence even in alternatives to it. Even anticynicism retains cynicism’s faith in our ability to see the truth rather than approach it through the mediation of the symbol. Wenders underlines this point in the final shot of the film, as the camera pulls back to an extremely long shot of Mike on the Santa Monica Pier. While Mike narrates his newly discovered hope, government agents are preparing to kill Mathilda (Marisol Padilla Sánchez) because of her knowledge of the surveillance system. Mike talks to Mathilda’s daughter but doesn’t notice the immanent demise of the mother happening a few feet away from him. This failure to see the most important event happening testifies to Mike’s continued blindness at the moment he lauds his own ability to “see China.” Mike’s anticynicism, like earlier cynicism, remains blind to its own inability to see all. Thus, we see here that the logic of cynicism prevails to such an extent in the society of enjoyment that it informs even the effort to break away from it. To abandon the logic of cynicism in this society would be to avow openly one’s lack, one’s lack of knowledge about enjoyment, and such an avowal represents the ultimate humiliation today.
THE EYES DON’T HAVE IT
What the cynic’s—and even the anticynic’s!—trust in the truth of the image fails to grasp is that the image cannot reveal all.19 Every look comes up against a limit, which is the limit of seeing itself. When I look at an image, I can’t see my own desire—the way in which my desire distorts what I see. This distortion stains every image I look at, acting as a limit to what the image reveals. Every image suffers from this limitation. Because my desire informs how the image appears, the image doesn’t reveal everything, despite the illusion that it does. The desire of the subject looking creates a blind spot in the image, a point at which the object representing my desire in the image—what Lacan calls the objet petit a—would be. This object doesn’t appear, and the fact that it doesn’t stains the image. In the image, this point, the point at which the distortion that my desire creates would become visible, is obscured. It is in the image, “at the level of scopic desire,” as Lacan puts it, “that the object a is most masked.”20 The image masks the objet petit a because it creates an impression of seamlessness, of full revelation, and the objet petit a only appears as a gap in the field of representation, as a lost or missing object. This is why a look that promises to see everything—like the surveillance system in The End of Violence —is ultimately so unsatisfying. In seeing everything, the surveillance system never actually captures the distortion created by the desire involved in this seeing. The image is distorted because its seemingly complete revelation actually takes this desire into account through this distortion. In short, the image doesn’t just exist; it is seen.
The failure of the image’s full revelation becomes readily apparent in the most memorable scene of The End of Violence. After having dropped out of society for four weeks, Mike wants to check his email account in order to access the file that Ray has given him; hence, Mike and the gardeners go to a computer store that will enable Mike to do this. The police, of course, are monitoring Mike’s email account, and they arrive at the computer store just minutes after he checks it. However, Mike and his new friends are able to walk right past the police as they leave the store, get into their truck, and drive away. Even though the police see all—they notice the instant that Mike checks his account—Mike can nonetheless walk past them completely undetected. Why? The police are looking for Mike Max, the white upper-class Hollywood producer, when they enter the store. They are not looking for a working-class Mexican American gardener. Like the purloined letter in Poe’s story, Mike hides himself by not hiding, by openly appearing in the image as an unimportant aspect of it. The police see a group of Mexican American gardeners; they do not see Mike Max. This is because their cynical belief in the power of the look and the image to reveal everything in a neutral way trips them up. In thinking that they will see all, they fail to consider what they can’t see—namely, their own desire. They want to see an upper-class white guy, and this desire shapes what appears in the image. The cynic sees everything except the way that desire distorts the picture. As a result, the cynic always misses the most important thing—what she/he is looking for. As a lower-class gardener, Mike becomes completely invisible, made invisible through the distortion of the image by the desire of the police. In the mind of the police, the gardeners fit perfectly within the picture that they expect to see here. Thus, they tell Mike’s friends to hurry to their truck, and one police officer even ushers Mike through the door, saying to him, “Okay, amigo, this way.”
The limitations of surveillance also become apparent in another related film, Enemy of the State (Tony Scott, 1998).21 When the NSA (National Security Agency) tries to apprehend Robert Dean (Will Smith) because he possesses information about a government-sponsored assassination, they use their system of total surveillance in order to locate him. For the first half of the film, despite his attempts to hide, he fails to evade the NSA’s surveillance. Dean begins to avoid detection successfully only when he discards his nice clothes and adopts the look of the lower class. Even though he remains under surveillance—the surveillance system is still able to see him—as a lower class African American man, he is invisible to the eyes of the NSA. Dean adroitly identifies himself with what is wholly visible—and yet also invisible. The NSA expects to see lower-class African Americans on the streets of Washington, which means that they don’t see them. Thinking that their surveillance allows them to see everything, the NSA operatives forget that their desire places a limit upon this would-be complete revelation. Desire, obscured by the image, makes itself felt in the ability of Dean to render himself invisible through the act of readily exposing himself in the image. As long as the NSA operatives remain confined to the level of the image, they will not be able to see what they desire. The object of desire cannot be reduced to the image. It is what does not fit within the full revelation of the image. As Lacan points out in his Seminar X, the objet petit a “is not visible in what constitutes, for man, the image of his desire.”22 And the more that we try to gain proximity to this object, the more it appears as image, which is to say, the more it doesn’t appear. The cynical attempt at full revelation through the image thus misses its target—and it misses all the more insofar as it attempts to reveal all.23
The scene at the computer store is the pivotal scene in The End of Violence because it emphatically demonstrates the limits of the revelatory power of the image. In providing us with everything, the image deprives us of seeing the most important thing—our own desire. This, and not loss of touch with “reality,” constitutes the danger of contemporary cynicism. The command to enjoy is at once a command to see everywhere and everything. We see everything—and thus become cynical—and yet we don’t really see anything of importance. This leads us to believe, as good cynics, that there is nothing of importance, that there is no object of desire. This is why the contemporary subject remains fundamentally nonplussed by whatever she/he encounters. No encounter, for the cynic, ever involves the Real; that is, something that might take the subject by surprise and disrupt her/his symbolic system.
Cynicism closes down the space that desire must have in order to breathe, creating a yearning for distance. And yet, this yearning for distance itself partakes of the same investment in the image and the cynicism that it is reacting against. Cynicism, in effect, seems to be our lot. But this would be to conclude too hastily. It remains possible to move beyond cynicism by focusing on what is missing in the image and what remains unknown by the cynic—the objet petit a. This type of focus requires paying attention to the way that images point to their own incompleteness. It requires that we accept that we haven’t seen it all. Such a position would represent an abandonment of the prevailing cynicism and would mark the emergence of an engaged subjectivity. When cynicism predominates, however, it becomes almost impossible to engage oneself with the larger social order. If one already knows all of the secrets harbored in the Other, there is little incentive to become an active subject in society. In this way, cynicism leads inevitably to the apathy and refusal of political engagement that also characterize the society of enjoyment.