Žižek on Jacques Lacan’s theory of Symbolic Castration

Slavoj Žižek discusses Lacan’s theory of Symbolic Castration and the Phallus.
Žižek & So On Podcast: exploring the work of Slavoj Žižek.
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[@TheDangerousMaybe]

This is easily one of Žižek's best explanations of the concept of the phallus.

[@ZizekandSoOn]

Hey mate!

[@xenoblad]

Ok I got lost half way through. I need to re-watch this.
I get the part about changing your behavior in response to the potential a threat represents.
But I got lost in the penis part.

[@4grammaton]

Imagine that you're a very weak and tiny person. Suddenly you get to pilot a giant and powerful robot.
If you got inside the robot, you would be able to wield a lot of power that you wouldn't be able to wield otherwise. But at the same time, it would look ridiculous, because of the difference between you and the robot. The contrast between your power with the robot and your power without the robot, only serves to highlight how puny and weak you are in reality.
Or imagine a little dwarf riding a huge rhinocerous and pretending to be important. The dwarf is definitely more powerful while on the rhinocerous, but at the same time would probably command more respect if he chose to do without it and act normal.
The message is: the greater the power you are bestowed with, the more it highlights how small and weak you are without it. So paradoxically, it actually emasculates you.
I suppose the simplest way of explaining it would be to describe it as "selling yourself out", or "betraying yourself" by accepting power from outside yourself. The process of accepting power from an external source is itself an act of self-betrayal, self-denigration, self-emasculation. You're bending the knee to something in return for power you don't really possess or deserve.
The phallus (penis) plays the same kind of symbolic role. For men it tends (generally) to be something we consider central to ourselves, something that defines our masculinity, something we can't imagine ourselves to be men without. Lacan's argument is that it is something that's symbolically "attached" to us, rather than being an inherent part of us.
Having a big dick is something men (and women) tend to see as a kind of social advantage, something that commands envy and admiration, and as such represents a certain degree of power. Men care about it and try to compensate for it (with big cars, guns, bank accounts, giant robots, rhinos, military uniforms, presidential elections).
But in chasing all those things, things which confer power and social status, but also could belong to anyone at any time and are not inherently part of any individual, we merely affirm to ourselves and others how incomplete and broken we are on our own, without them.

[@svperuzer]

@@4grammaton Ah...

[@bottlebeard]

@@4grammaton That argument sounds more coherent if the term phallus is simply just left out. That is to say, people try to "compensate" for their insecurities or inadequacies via external, arguably meaningless, means. I don't see why a willy needs to be involved at all. Not to mention the fact that the man's ramrod is not included in the vast majority of human interactions. Unless I'm stupid and the word manhood is simply a symbolic placeholder for any kind of seemingly inherent part of an everyday person which is subject to cause insecurity, and therefore invoke the need to compensate externally? But if that were the case, I still don't get why the pisser as an example in particular(unless he has specifically observed that men with extravagant cars and tuxedos have, on average, smaller knobs, but I digress)

[@Tokmurok]

​@@bottlebeard It is symbolic but a pretty crude sexual metaphor. Really phallus means external power compared to the more internal will to power.

[@bruisedviolets]

Really good

[@svperuzer]

Hello

[@mumps_4626]

I am here in the RUclips to show my phallus and get blocked

[@dethkon]

…and I’m already blocked 😎

[@FrancescoFp]

Where from is this taken off of?

[@ZizekandSoOn]

The extras of the DVD ‘Zizek!’