[…]cynicism, of cynical distance which pertains to the very notions of Enlightenment and which today seems to have reached its apogee: although officially undermined, devalorized, authority returns through the sidedoor — “we know there is no truth in authority, yet we continue to play its game and to obey it in order not to disturb the usual run of things…” Truth is suspended in the name of efficiency: the ultimate legitimization of the system is that it works. In Eastern Europe’s now-defunct “really existing socialism,” the split was that between public ritual of obedience and private cynical distance, whereas in the West, the cynicism is in a way redoubled: we publicly pretend to be free, whereas privately we obey. In both cases, we are victims of authority precisely when we think we have duped it: the cynical distance is empty, our true place is in the ritual of obeying — or, as Kurt Vonnegut put it in his Mother Night: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” (x)
Žižek, Slavoj. Enjoy your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2001.
