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The old joke circulating among Lacanians to exemplify the key role of the Other’s knowledge: a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed is taken to the mental institution where the doctors do their best to finally convince him that he is not a grain but a man; however, when he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back very trembling of scare [sic] - there is a chicken outside the door and that he is afraid that it would eat him. “Dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man”. “Of course I know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?”

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Quantum of Solace, the latest chapter in the redefined 007 series, is jam-packed with curiosities.  Yet one motif sticks out among them: the scrambled message concerning environmentalism and what it means to be involved in a ‘green’ economy.
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All too often the blank is ignored. Perhaps from disinterest or boredom, maybe from the legitimate claim that such things have no substance, the blank has been subjugated by the sweeping authority of facts, symbols, and straightforward representations. In short, the blank is slave to the dominion of stuff, the dominion of things.

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Democracy in many ways is a loaded term, an ambiguous word with multifarious interpretations. But in all its incarnations and formulations there is a specific commonality that can, perhaps, best define what we mean – that democracy is nothing more than the activation of individual political beings in place of political subjects. (more…)