英文摘要 |
This essay offers a critical study of contemporary culture of conspiracy. The whole essay starts with Freud’s clinical, theoretical assessment and Lacan’s later reconceptualization of Schreber’s case of paranoia in order to examine the relevance or irrelevance of the category “paranoia” to contemporary cultural, political analyses, and how its analytical value of properly psychoanalytic origin has been distorted, undermined or redefined. Then, paranoid-cynical subjectivity is analyzed in light of Žižek’s theory of ideological fantasy, which highlights how ideology grips the subject through the structuration of enjoyment and the split of belief and actions. Accordingly, whether paranoid cynicism transgresses or supports the dominant power system and status quo is brought into discussion. The final section of this essay, through interpreting films like The Truman Show and Fight Club, relates conspiracy and paranoid-cynical subjectivity to contemporary society of enjoyment and examines the difficulty, if not impossibility, of desiring, free choice and ethico-political agency under the impact of the pervasive superegoic commands to transgress and enjoy. |