The fascinating thing about partial objects, in the sense of organs without bodies, is that they embody what Freud called “death drive”…the dimension of the undead, the living dead, something which remains alive even after it is dead. Something you cannot destroy – the more you cut it, the more it exists. It goes on. – Slavoj Zizek, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
Zizek employs the Deleuzian ‘Bodies without organs’ concept in reverse, an act which i ultimately see as nothing more than a slight re-orientation, rather than a true shift in meaning. It is possible to see the BwO as the result of a body shifting from a metamachine, an organised whole compiled from smaller parts, to a single machinic entity, which is the subject of singular desire.
Is not the BwO a single organ? A disorientated autonomous partial object/organ seperated from a whole?
The tongue is driven into action by its desire – and must seperate from the body at large in order to persue its desire. The machinic processes the bind the tongue – namely the mouth, teeth, the body, notions of civility and good manners – are transcended by the autonomous tongue which can now fully embrace its own ‘toungue-ness.”
As Zizek speculates;
Perhaps the ultimate bodily part which fits this role of the autonomous partial object is the fist, or rather the hand. – Zizek, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
The presentation of the autonomous partial object (ApO) is common in popular culture. Disembodies hands represented in popular culture screen commodities – generally to invoke a feeling of fear and unease in horror texts. The final scene of Carrie features the hand of the ‘dead’ reaching up from the grave.
But as well as a feared, the BwO / ApO is a site of fetish.
Protagonists of action films often become an ApO / BwO – demonstrating that the BwO is fetished as a liberated body. There is the moment in action films where a character (after being slowly stripped down to a BwO) knows what they need to do – an single act. This is the point where the charachter runs fowards taking bullet after bullet, but not stopping because he/she no-longer has limbs to feel pain with, no longer sees anything but the goal, the desire.
Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove becomes nothing but a ‘bomb releasing machine’.
This is what liberation means – you first have to get rid of, what within you, attaches you to the leader, the conditions of slavery, etc. – Zizek, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
This kind of ‘death defying’ gesture of the BwO is at the heart of heroism. We can examine the internet fad of ‘epic maneuvers’ as valorizing the grandiose actions of a BwO – these short looping gif animations highlight the moments of ‘dancing inside out’ as Artaud would put it.
I’ll be developing these concepts for my final blog post – particularly how artists and creative people use and create themselves as a BwO to sell their products.
I’m also very interested in how the desire for and fear of the autonomous partial object is reconciled.
