our contemporary culture of constant compraison leaves no room for the negativity of what is atopos. We are constantly comparing on ting to another, thereby flattening them into the same, precisely beacuse we no longer experience the atopia of the Other.
the negativity of the atopic Other refuses consumpution. Therefore, the society of the consumer endeavors to eliminate atopic otherness in favor of consumable -heterotopic-differences. in contrast to otherness, difference is positive. Yet today, negativity is disappearing everywhere. Everything is being flattened out into an object of consumption.
we live in an increasingly narcissistic society,. Libido is primarily invested in one’s own subjectivity. Narcissism is not the same as self-love. The subject o self-love draws a negative boundary between him0 or herself and the Other. The narcissistic subject, never managers to set any clear boundaries. the world appears only as adumbrations of the narcissist’s self, which is incapable of recogniing the Other in his or her otherness.. Meaning can exist for the narcissistic self only when it somehow catches sight of itself. It walls in its own shadow everywhere until it drowns - in itself.
depression is a narcissistic malady. it derives from overwrought, pathologically distored self0reference. The narcissistic-depressive subject has exhausted itself and worn itself down. Without a world to inhabit, it has been abandoned by the Other.
eros and depression are opposites. Eros pulls the subject out of itself, toward the Other. Depression, in contrast, plunges the subject into itself.
today’s narcissistic “achievement-subject” seeks out success above all. Finding success validates the One through the Other. Thereby, the Other is robbed of otherness and degrades into a mirror of the One - a mirror affirming the latter’s image. This logic of recognition ensnares the narcissistic achievement-subject more deeply in the ego. The corollary is success-induced depression: the depressive achievement subject sinks into, and suffocates in, itself. Eros, in contrast makes possible experience of the Other’s otherness, which leads the One out of a narcissistic inferno. It sets into motion freely willed self-renunication, freely willed self-evacuation. A singular process of weakening lays hold of the subject of love- which, however, is accompanied by a feeling of strength. The feeling is not the achievement of the One, but the gift of the Other.
in the inferno of the same, the arrival of the atopic Other can assume apocalypitic form. In other words: today, only an apocalypse can liberate-indeed, redeem- use from the inferno of the same, and lead us toward the Other.
Melancholia
in the movie Melancholia by Lars von trier, begins with the announcement of a disastrous event. “disaster” literally means “unlucky star”. On her estate, justine stares into the night sky and sees a reddish glow, wchih later proves to be a starless planet headed for earth. This heavenly body, “Melancholia” is a desastrum, which sets fatality in motion. At the same time, however, it is a negative, emanating a healing, cleansing effect. The name melancholia is paradoxical insofar as this planet heals the depression that has taken the sahpe of a particular form of melancholy. It manifests itself as the atopic Other, which tears Justine ou tof the swamp of narcissism. She experiences a veritable blossoming under the influence of the death-bringing planet.
eros conquers depression. The tense relationship between love and depression commands the cinematic discourse of melancholia. prelude from tristan und isolde, invokes the power of love. Depression represents the impossibility of love. It is the impossibility of love that has led to depression.
erotic desire is tied to a particular absence of the Other- not eh absence of nothingness, but rather “absence in a horizon of the future.” the future is the time of the Other. The totalization of the present as the time of the Same eliminates the absene that otherwise makes the other unattainable.