Citation

Hauser M. Filosoficky Casopis 2009; 57(3): 395-413.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

This article aims to be a contribution to debate of the typology of the modern and post-modern subject which has once again flared up in connection with the work of Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. I attempt to show that the subject is connected with a suicidal dimension which creates space marked off from a given context. Firstly I attempt to interpret Benjamin's paper Charles Baudelaire. Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus in which suicide is spoken of as the foundation of the modern subject (suicide as "the heroic passion of modernity"). I put Benjamin's "heroic passion" into the context of the passion that Marx describes in his Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte and in his article Vom Selbstmord. I attempt to define the difference between the Marxist conception of the body, which is wrapped up with this passion, and with the concept of the body in Lacan and Žižek. In the second part I develop the theme of suicide as dislocated space by means of Maurice Blanchot's book The Writing of the Disaster. Suicidal space is understood as the space of the "neutral" which creates a parallel with Žižek's "night of the world". In conclusion I attempt to show that the basis of the modern subject is rather this suicidal space than the "night of the world". If we interpret the post-modern subject as dwelling in suicidal space, and the modern subject as its overcoming, then the post-modern subject is the basis of the modern subject.

Language: cs