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Censorship, Shared Language, and the Obscene Underside of Power

I remember another case of censorship in Communist Czechoslovakia from my youth in the 1970s. During this time, Martina Navratilova was the world’s top tennis player. She had immigrated to the West and become a non-person, even for the Czech sports media. When Navratilova was a semi-finalist in an international championship, a Czech sports outlet reported on it without even mentioning her name. The title indicated there were four players in the tournament, they listed three of them, leaving out Navratilova altogether. As weird and primitive as this censorship was, it followed a certain logic: It didn’t just obfuscate the truth, because the inconsistency of the title pointed toward the excluded fourth name, which was thus “present in the mode of absence” (to use structuralist jargon).

Such censorship is structured like what Lacan calls the “university discourse”: knowledge acts as the agent of today’s predominant cynical discourse.38 The object of this knowledge is what Lacan calls objet a: the fantasized secret object, WMDs in the case of the U.S. attacking Iraq and of Russia attacking Ukraine. The “product” of this discourse is the agent presumed to threaten us with WMDs (the drug-addicted neo-Nazi Ukrainian leadership). But the truth of this obsession with WMDs is that a paranoiac Master (U.S. leadership, Putin and his circle) concocted the object (WMDs).

The media often reports that two sides of the conflict speak different languages: There is no shared world, there is a “Russian truth” and a “European truth,” as Dugin says. In contrast to this prevailing dogma, I think the Ukrainian war fits perfectly within Lacan’s formula of (symbolic) communication: In successful communication, I get my own message in its inverted and true form. I say something, but I am not aware of its true meaning—it is only from the catastrophic reaction to my message that I become aware of what my message really amounted to. Say I intervene in a country for humanitarian reasons, but violent resistance to my intervention makes it clear that my true aim was to dominate the country. From its invasion of Iraq, the U.S. learned the truth about intervention: Iraq is now, more than ever, under the influence of Iran. It is more of an Islamic fundamentalist country than it was under Saddam, and women hold a lower position in public life. The U.S. also got a belated copy of its own war crimes from Russia.

Madeleine Albright should be remembered for a 60 Minutes interview, when interviewer Lesley Stahl asked whether the death of half a million Iraqi children was “worth it.” Albright responded: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”39 Hillary Clinton’s pre-electoral campaign against Bernie Sanders reached its lowest point when, campaigning for Clinton, Albright said: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” (Meaning: women who vote for Sanders instead of Clinton.) Maybe we should amend this statement: There is a special place in hell for women (and men) who think half a million dead children is an affordable price for a military intervention that ruins a country, while wholeheartedly supporting women’s and gay rights at home … Is Albright’s quote not infinitely more obscene and lewd than all Trump’s sexist banalities? Was Albright, measured by standards which enable us to proclaim Putin a war criminal, not also a war criminal of at least the same status? And the same goes for Russia. In one of his lectures in 2022, Dugin said that the attack on Ukraine was Russia’s desperate attempt to make its message heard in the West. After twenty years of futile attempts to be heard and considered in a peaceful way, war was the only way left open to Russia. Yes, the Russian message was heard, but the message it got back was that NATO and Europe were unified more than ever against Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine, claiming there is no separate Ukrainian nation, that they are part of the same large ethnic and cultural group, and—at this moment, at least—the result is that the Ukrainian identity is stronger than ever, and that many Ukrainians hate Russians and don’t want to have anything to do with them.

练习题

In the Navratilova example, why does the author say censorship made the excluded fourth player “present in the mode of absence”?

A. Because the outlet openly named Navratilova but criticized her emigration.

B. Because the title implied four players while the report named only three, drawing attention to the missing name.

C. Because readers had no way to infer that anyone had been omitted.

D. Because the outlet replaced Navratilova with a fictional Czech athlete.

According to the passage, how is censorship linked to Lacan’s “university discourse”?

A. Knowledge functions as the agent of a cynical discourse, organizing a fantasized object and producing a threatening agent.

B. The university discourse proves that all political censorship is accidental and meaningless.

C. The university discourse describes only academic debates and has no relation to political paranoia.

D. Knowledge is presented as powerless, while the threatening agent directly creates the Master.

Which example best illustrates the author’s claim that a catastrophic reaction reveals the hidden meaning of an intervention?

A. A humanitarian intervention encounters violent resistance, revealing that its practical meaning was domination.

B. A government censors a name so completely that no one notices anything missing.

C. A military power finds the exact weapons it predicted would be hidden.

D. A political message produces exactly the peaceful recognition it intended.

Which outcomes in the passage are presented as examples of receiving one’s own message back in an inverted or unintended true form?

A. The U.S. invasion of Iraq left Iraq more under Iranian influence.

B. Iraq became, according to the passage, more Islamic fundamentalist than under Saddam.

C. Russia’s war message returned as a stronger unity of NATO and Europe against Russia.

D. Russia’s denial of Ukrainian nationhood strengthened Ukrainian identity.

E. Dugin’s claim that there is a separate “Russian truth” and “European truth” is accepted without criticism.

Which statements accurately capture the author’s criticism of Madeleine Albright and liberal interventionism in this passage?

A. Albright’s claim that half a million Iraqi child deaths were “worth it” is presented as deeply obscene.

B. The passage argues that support for women’s and gay rights at home can coexist with support for destructive military intervention abroad.

C. The author suggests that Western abuses should be exempt from criticism when Russia is also guilty of aggression.

D. The passage implies that equal critical standards should be applied to both Russia and the West.

E. The passage treats Albright’s statement as less morally serious than ordinary sexist vulgarity.

In the author’s account, the censorship of Navratilova simply erased the truth without leaving any structural trace of what was excluded.

In the passage, objet a refers to an empirically verified object, such as confirmed weapons that directly and transparently justify war.

According to the passage, Russia’s attempt to make its message heard through war produced the opposite effect: NATO and Europe became more unified against Russia, and Ukrainian identity became stronger.

In the author’s Lacanian account, the fantasized secret object such as WMDs is called ___.

Explain why the author presents Albright’s “the price is worth it” statement as more obscene than ordinary vulgarity.

Which option best explains the relationship between the censored omission of Martina Navratilova’s name and the earlier example of blank or indirect antiwar signs in Russia?

A. Both show that censorship always succeeds when it removes forbidden words from public circulation.

B. Both show that an absence can become determinate: what is omitted can still point to a specific forbidden content.

C. Both show that political messages become meaningless unless they are stated explicitly and literally.

D. Both show that censorship works only in sports media, not in wartime political communication.

Which statements correctly connect the current section’s discussion of $o bj e t a$ and paranoid discourse with the prior section’s discussion of WMDs and bioweapon labs?

A. WMDs and secret bioweapon labs function as fantasized secret objects that help justify military attacks.

B. The unfound or elusive character of the alleged weapons can intensify, rather than weaken, their perceived danger.

C. The current section claims that the threatening agent is produced by paranoid discourse organized around the alleged secret object.

D. The prior section argues that the U.S. and Russia launched attacks only because they fully believed the alleged weapons were empirically confirmed.

E. Both sections present alleged hidden weapons as politically useful objects rather than simply neutral military facts.

The current section’s criticism of Madeleine Albright’s defense of Iraqi child deaths is consistent with the prior claim that supporting Ukraine and criticizing Western abuses are part of the same struggle.

In Lacan’s formula of symbolic communication, Russia’s invasion meant to make its message heard, but the message returned in inverted true form was that NATO and Europe became more ___ against Russia.

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Censorship, Shared Language, and the Obscene Underside of Power

Censorship, Shared Language, and the Obscene Underside of Power

练习题

In the Navratilova example, why does the author say censorship made the excluded fourth player “present in the mode of absence”?

According to the passage, how is censorship linked to Lacan’s “university discourse”?

Which example best illustrates the author’s claim that a catastrophic reaction reveals the hidden meaning of an intervention?

Which outcomes in the passage are presented as examples of receiving one’s own message back in an inverted or unintended true form?

Which statements accurately capture the author’s criticism of Madeleine Albright and liberal interventionism in this passage?

In the author’s account, the censorship of Navratilova simply erased the truth without leaving any structural trace of what was excluded.

In the passage, objet a refers to an empirically verified object, such as confirmed weapons that directly and transparently justify war.

According to the passage, Russia’s attempt to make its message heard through war produced the opposite effect: NATO and Europe became more unified against Russia, and Ukrainian identity became stronger.

In the author’s Lacanian account, the fantasized secret object such as WMDs is called ___.

Explain why the author presents Albright’s “the price is worth it” statement as more obscene than ordinary vulgarity.

Which option best explains the relationship between the censored omission of Martina Navratilova’s name and the earlier example of blank or indirect antiwar signs in Russia?

Which statements correctly connect the current section’s discussion of objet a and paranoid discourse with the prior section’s discussion of WMDs and bioweapon labs?

The current section’s criticism of Madeleine Albright’s defense of Iraqi child deaths is consistent with the prior claim that supporting Ukraine and criticizing Western abuses are part of the same struggle.

In Lacan’s formula of symbolic communication, Russia’s invasion meant to make its message heard, but the message returned in inverted true form was that NATO and Europe became more ___ against Russia.

Which statements correctly connect the current section’s discussion of $o bj e t a$ and paranoid discourse with the prior section’s discussion of WMDs and bioweapon labs?