Zizek and truth

I just think this is such a badass poster, and wanted to have it here for you all to see:

That said, maybe some remarks are in order on some interesting things I keep returning to that Zizek has written. Throughout The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek I think puts things absolutely well with regard to deconstruction conceived as some sort of simple logical maneuver theoretical tool (in the sense of a tool which does not itself question and disrupt or interrupt its own functioning), which many of its deployments indeed affirm, if not overtly then at least when we interrogate them as to their most basic thrusts. But one can always and must always contend that this is only one side of deconstruction, if any side at all. But enough talk, let's quote him:

The problem with deconstruction, then, is not that it renounces a strict theoretical formulation and yields to a flabby poeticism. On the contrary, it is that its position is too "theoretical" (in the sense of a theory which excludes the truth-dimension; that is, that which does not affect the place from which we speak).

-The Sublime Object of Ideology, 155

The reason why this only hits at one side of deconstruction is that deconstruction always has a truth dimension. For good reasons with respect to his own amazing view of things, Zizek thinks that deconstruction is an attempt to remain external to any process of founding a truth, of bringing one into existence (this assumption is what will lead Badiou to come up with the absurdity of his version of a truth function). But this is what it does in each case. Deconstruction always says, at the end of its functioning, "truth is this." However, it always, in order to deconstruct, places the "is" in question. Thus we always get truth is this, but only as truth "is" this. Which precisely leaves us with an imperative--if we can look at it that way: "truth this!" "Make this truth!" "Bring it into being as truth!" ("But precisely by questioning, again, whether it is and whether there is being!")

So deconstruction is not some attempt to try and be as responsible to the object of investigation that one proceeds by attempting to wholly eliminate the subject position or place from which we speak. It is not trying to find some ultimate neutral ground with regard to the critique of its object. Like psychoanalysis, deconstruction asserts its interest in the object by folding itself back into its critique. But unlike (especially Lacanian) psychoanalysis, deconstruction asserts its irreducible interest with respect to the object at the limits at which, indeed, only the one true objectivity about it would be possible. Zizek does not see this, and thus can conceive it only as a one-sided effort to bring the object into relief as much as possible. In short, he re-dialectizes what was never (and yet always can be) dialectical.

Thus the opposition here Zizek is making--to try (nobly, as always) to bridge a bitter gap between deconstruction and psychoanalysis of the Lacanian type by denying that deconstruction is just hot air--really does not oppose anything at all. Perhaps we might also affirm that in this example, deconstruction is and should be flabby poeticism, if Zizek thinks from his perspective that deconstruction is, in reality, not flabby poeticism but an excess of theorizing. If it is therefore a mere theoretical tool, it is not by any means a simple tool that just functions as it is (like that psychoanalytic tool which would fold the critic back into the critique, leaving its subject position--even though it is a fantasy--always in tact), but remains the most complex and problematic tool (because it always--and yet without guarantee--fails to function as what it is).