Wednesday, July 21, 2004
(9:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
So is it safe to assume
that if Slavoj Žižek had heard of the song "Detachable Penis," it would already have become one of his recurring cut-and-paste examples? I'm thinking something along the lines of this:We are all familiar, no doubt, with the infamous King Missle song "Detachable Penis." Although the song is obviously absurd, perhaps one must take the risk of taking the song at its word. Are we not all constitutively those with a detachable penis? Do we not always wake up every morning to "find that it's missing again"? Is not the "detachable penis" the best example of Lacan's objet petit a, the object-cause of desire?Slavoj, if you're reading, you can totally use that. You don't even have to use proper attribution -- I read all your stuff, and I'll know. That's enough. But if you do use it, I will take it as evidence that you stole the "unknown knowns" bit from me. (Today Jonathan Schwartz of A Tiny Revolution confronts a similar situation, in which a time-travelling Garrison Keillor preemptively steals his idea.)
