Subjectivity requires the impenetrable other

00:19:47 — Subjectivity requires the impenetrable other

Against the individualist assumption of cognitive science, Žižek insists — with Hegel, Freud and Lacan — that subjectivity is not a feature of an isolated monad that then happens to meet other monads. The very emergence of a subject requires the encounter with an Other whose interiority remains, a priori, opaque. Thinking is not information-processing; it is the structural effect of being unable fully to read the other who looks back at you — which is why, on this view, a sufficiently advanced digital machine still won’t get you to a thinking being.