지젝의 외상과 바틀비의 정치학

Žižek’s Trauma and Bartleby Politics

This paper aims to explore Slavoj Žižek’s notion of trauma as a political category. Psychological trauma is usually interpreted as something one cannot assimilate into one’s consciousness. Therefore, it repeats itself indefinitely, returning to haunt the subject. Trauma and politics seem to have nothing in common, but Žižek shows the notional similarity between trauma and political revolution. To Lacan, the constitution of subject requires the entrance into the world of language and the symbolic order. These prerequisites cause the primary trauma and the barred subject. Spiltting(/) itself would be the very possibility of subject and the place of a void signifying nothing. Žižek thus defines “trauma” as a shocking encounter which disturbs the immersion into one’s life-world, a violent intrusion of something which does not fit in the existing symbolic order. Žižek’s trauma anticipates the rise of a post-traumatic subject as a new and revolutionary one, which is the violent intrusion of something radically unexpected and unintegrated. This notion of trauma has recently become more political with multi-level connotations, connecting it with political revolution. In its political mode, Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” is a kind of arche, the first stage to cause a real change and the underlying principle that sustains the entire movement. Although the figure of Bartleby falls short of a radical subject, it is true that Zizek’s new perspective is a significant shift in the way one interprets trauma.