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Slavoj _i_ek: Cyberspace, Or, The Possibility to Traverse the Fantasy

On account of this ambiguity, the explicit formulation of rules opens up a new space for aggressivity, i.e. for much more refined modes of humiliating the partner; suffice it to imagine a man who, after asking his feminine partner »May I unbutton your blouse?« and effectively doing it, asks her »May I now button up your blouse again?« - a cruel act of rejection after »inspecting the commodity,« masked as politeness... What we encounter here, is the structure of the failed encounter which is constitutive of the symbolic order: either the message (the permission to go further) is implicit, and as such always prone to misunderstanding, or, the very attempt to render it explicit makes it again radically ambiguous.


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