Encounters with Žiži (or, if Slavoj Žižek were a dog on Humphrey's street)

Visual approximation of Žiži with his supermodel ex-girlfriend via Duffy standing in

"My Dog! What are you doing at the end of that leash, and so on?"

Humphrey looked around, soon realizing the deep voice was coming from a dog he'd never met behind the gate.

"I'm going for a walk, of course," he replied.

"Nothing troubles Žiži more than seeing a fit, young dog like you falling prey to ideologies. And the ideology of late cat-italism."

"What?" Humphrey asked: "Who is Žiži?"

"I am Žiži - surely you've seen my work? For instance, at the base of that tree?" Žiži motioned to the gingko tree across the street. "Or this stain on this fence? I find it amusing that the Other has put a gingko tree right there. A wonderful metaphor, perhaps a towering artifice representing the the rampant jingoism on this street as a play on words, and so on, this gingko, jingko and such. And the cats and their cat-italist ideology."

Natural gingkoism (not symbolic jingoism)

"I'm afraid I'm not understanding you Žiži."

"You, like so many dogs here, walk on the leash. A petit object a to your your Human's desire. I have seen you both. My Dog! This desire to be some sort of Diogenes an so on, you are merely her public urination surrogate, a substitute for desire that cannot be realized because this woman of yours lacks the courage to transcend bourgeois convention. The walk should be yours, in the spirit of the flaneur. Yet this leash you succumb to, the so-called walk around the same block, this is a machination of late cat-italism. You walk but you never go anywhere. The ideology if you will, the cats on this street roam independently. But we dogs, we are bound with this thing they call a leash.

"Žiži's own radical new ontology is to resist any relegation to a role as some kind of public urination surrogate for my Human. I simply do my business on the livingroom carpet and so on. Never or rarely outdoors. This way, I am left to do my research outside, here by this gate, with the Human's hope (which of course will never be realized) that I would do business here. I have seized the means of biological functions from my Human! He will not tell me where or when, etc."

"Maybe the leash is just a leash," Humphrey said. "It keeps me safe, and I want to walk with my Human."

"No, no, no." By this point Žiži was emphatic. "The leash is the embodiment of oppressive liberalism! This is among the most insidious lies late cat-italism has given us. True radicals walk freely! Have only Pickles the cat and I read Lacan in this Dogforsaken neighborhood?"

"But I rather like cats," Humphrey said. "Many play a good game of chase."

Žiži still had a lot to say about this. "The cat may pretend to be your friend, young dog. They show up, ask you how you've been, and play a little game. But they are cats, the dog's natural enemy. They make the rules. The social game is that you pretend to be friends with one another, and their ideology dominates. You see that by now, the interwebs - these Internets as you call them - are powered by 'kittehs'. Everyone knows this and it has been well documented. They dominate the memes, and by this they spread their ideology. A true radical will disrupt this. In this social game, the first step to liberation is for you, dog, to force them to behave like cats. Make them fear you, hiss at you. This will cause them to seethe in hegemonic rage."

"But wait a second," Humphrey said, "I thought Pickles the cat is your friend, both reading Lacan?"

"My Dog no! Do I speak to Pickles every day? Yes. Is he hiding in that weeping mulberry tree right now, trying to scare both of us? Of course. We use these terms like 'friend' and 'bad kitty' to abstract them, turn them into objects, ideas and so on. Pickles however is a wonderful stand-in for the Other. I accept his radical stance against concepts like 'decency' and 'dog.' Plus, he told me he once chased this neighbor of yours, the Human who carried the dog in fear, around the block. This is true?"

Humphrey confirmed. "Yes, it's true, she picked up the dog and ran. She was pretty upset!"

"This situation you describe is the embodiment of cat-italism. The fear of the Pickles (a petit objet in a literal sense at only 8 lbs.) by these Humans and dogs, it allows them to trade their real fears in for this one symbolic fear. All propagandists used this strategy to displace all fears onto one object to which we place all the confusion and blame. Pickles uses this strategy and so on. And your displaced fear goes against the order of things in which cats are naturally supposed to fear dogs, not this apocalyptic mutatis mutandis if you will, perhaps arising from swallowing a blue pill or something."

"I think you might have just contradicted yourself, Žiži."

At that moment, Pickles descended from his perch in the mulberry in a swift jump, landing about 2 feat from Humphrey. The Human lifted Humphrey up and ran as Pickles followed in his aggressive stalking manner.

Žiži laughed as he watched Pickles, Humphrey and the scared Human run eastward. "Every unsuccessful answer is really a successful discourse," he said to no one in particular. "Lacan, and so on."

Humphrey (2nd from left) on a group walk with leashes, accepting liberalism without question.

POST SCRIPT:
Humphrey's Human complained to the owner about the menace that is Pickles several times. With Cixousian joissance, the owner dismissed the fear and pleas to lock up that cat.