July 17th, 2009

Kinder Surprise

culturite:

“Kinder Surprise, one of the most popular chocolate products on sale all around Central Europe, are empty egg shells made of chocolate and wrapped up in brightly colored paper; after one unwraps the egg and cracks the chocolate shell open, one finds in it a small plastic toy (or small parts from which a toy is to be put together). A child who buys this chocolate egg often nervously unwraps it and immediately breaks the chocolate, not bothering to eat it at first and worrying only about the toy in the center. Is such a chocolate-lover not a perfect case of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s dictum “I love you, but, inexplicably, I love something in you more than yourself, and, therefore, I destroy you”? And, effectively, is this toy not l’objet petit a at its purest, the small object filling in the central void of our desire, the hidden treasure, agalma, in the center of the thing we desire?”

- Slavoj Žižek

Instant Zizek reblog