The imp in the software

The inherent analysis of 'cultural capitalism' thus brngs us to a new type of subjectivity that emerges out of the disintegration of paternal authority. This disintegration has two facets: on the one hand, symbolic prohibitive norms are increasingly replaced by imaginary ideals (of social success, of bodily fitness, etc.); on the other hand, the lack of symbolic prohibition is supplemented by the re-remergence of derocious superego figures. So, we have a subject who is extremely narcissistic, i.e., who perceives everything as a potential threat to his precarious imaginary balance (this is the universalization of the logic of the victim: every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential threat -- if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he is already hurting me); however, far from allowing him to float freely in an undisturbed balance, this marcissistic self-enclosure leaves the subject to the (not so) tender mercies of the superego injunction to enjoy. This so-called 'postmodern' subjectivity thus involves a kind of direct 'superegoization' of the imaginary Ideal, caused by the lack of preoper symbolic Prohibition: exemplary are here the 'postmodern' hackers-programmers, those extravagant eccentrics hired by large corporations to pursue their programming hobbies in an informal environment. They are under the injunction to be what they are, to follow their innermost idiosyncracies, they are allowed to ignore social norms of dress and behaviour (what they obey are just some elementary rules of polite tolerance of each-other's idiosyncracies); they thus seem to realize a kind of proto-socialist utopia of overcoming the opposition between alienated business (where you actually earn money) and private hobby-activity (that you persue for pleasure). In a way, their job is their hobby, which is why they spend long hours at weekends in their workplace behind the computer screen: when one is paid for indulging in one's hobby, the result is that one is exposed to a superego pressure incomparably stronger than that of the old 'Protestant work ethic'. Therein resides the unbearable paradox of postmodern "disalienation': the tension is no longer between my innermost idiosyncratic creative impluses and the Institution that either doesn't appreciate them or wants to crush them in order to 'normalize' me: what the superego-injunction of the postmodern corporation (like Microsoft) targets is precisely this core of my idiosyncratic creativity -- I become useless for them the moment I start losing this 'imp of perversity', the moment I lose my 'counter-cultural' subversive edge and start to behave like a 'normal' mature subject. There thus emerges a strange alliance between the rebellious subversive core of my personality and the external corporation.

The Universal Exception, Slavoj Žižek, P. 231-232