On Traversing the Fantasy

 Slavoj Zizek, "Why is Ophelia for Hamlet Phallus" (excerpts)

All forms of authority that exerted pressure on her (Ophelia) are now cancelled, not in the sense of liberation but in a much more terrifying sense of her Self transformed into a selfless space in which confused phantasmagorias circulate – something that Hegel, following the German mystic tradition, described in the following often-quoted passage:

"The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity - an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him - or which are not present. This night, the interior of nature, that exists here - pure self - in phantasmagorical representations, is night all around it, in which here shoots a bloody head - there another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears. One catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye - into a night that becomes awful."

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...As for the obvious fact that in the Auslander video clip, blacks are portrayed in the mode of white racist clichés: of course, because Auslander is not about real Blacks but about Blacks as part of White racist fantasies – the point is to ruin these fantasies from within, displaying their disgusting ridiculousness.

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This is what Rammstein does to totalitarian ideology: it de-semanticizes it and brings forward its obscene babble in its intrusive materiality. Does Rammstein's music not perfectly exemplify the distinction between sense and presence, the tension in a work of art between the hermeneutic dimension and the dimension of presence "this side of hermeneutics," a dimension which Lacan indicated by the term sinthom (formula-knot of jouissance) as opposed to symptom (bearer of meaning)? The identification with Rammstein is a direct over-identification with sinthoms which undermines ideological identification. We should not fear this direct over-identification – what we should fear is the articulation of this chaotic field of energy into a (Fascist) universe of meaning. No wonder Rammstein's music is violent, materially present, invading, and intrusive with its strong volume and deep vibrations – its materiality is in constant tension with its meaning, undermining it. 

...or William Holman Hunt, "The Hireling Shepard" 

Jesus (Good Shepard) vs. "The Church" (Hireling Shepard)