Slavoj Žižek - Structual point on the impossibility to drink your own saliva
"An elementary proof that I used all the time, but it's so vulgar that I like it. The empirical proof that we are not talking about horror but simple disgust. I warn you, it is disgusting but very innocent. Imagine, you all the time swallow your saliva ... no problem, ok ... do something: Take an empty glass and spit a lot of your saliva into it. The moment it's out, it becomes disgusting. A proof. Try to drink it again. I cannot. [...] But you see, it's purely structural. Rationally, you know, my god, seconds ago it was in my mouth. But the moment it's out ..."
from:
Slavoj Žižek. Different Figures of The Big Other.
• Slavoj Žižek. Differen...
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very insightful thank you
r/videosthatendtoosoon
can somebody explain what does "structural" mean in this context?
@quadriplegic
3 жыл бұрын
I am not expert but I interpreted in the following way: he says we construct the meaning that the saliva is disgusting after we spit it out. It’s not natural. If it would have been otherwise, the saliva should have been disgusting inside our mouth as well, but it is not. So if it is disgusting in one concept; not in another, its meaning must be constructed, meaning ‘structural’.
@grubernitsch
3 жыл бұрын
No, I think it's misleading to start off by thinking about individual construction of meaning. We are beings in language, and that comes from outside. I think his other example is helpful here. He mentions some tribe in South America where the young kids run around the forest and stick their hands into every hole, get the spiders sitting in there, the hairy and nasty ones, and eat them on the spot. That's structural. What is disgusting to us is everyday life someplace else. How does this come to be?
@grubernitsch
3 жыл бұрын
The Savage Mind (French: La Pensée sauvage) is a 1962 work of structural anthropology by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Or my version. The bird clan tells the bear clan that they all came from some great bird.