The Confidence Man: His Masquerade

On sober, morning-after reflection, there is a link between last night's two posts. Their mutual subterranean rhizomaticity is as follows. Zizek's critical writings are the academic equivalent of Nigerian scam spam. (Think about it: the urgency; the dangled carrot of impossible utopian returns; the diddling stick of bold, risky, radical ALL CAPS action to be taken NOW; the exceeding verbal awkwardness due to greedily flailing, failing grasp of English; notable vagueness concerning just those salient points one would think most in need of clear explanation and exposition.)

Imagine a world in which you didn't have to subscribe to certain top literary studies journals. What if their contents just showed up in your in-box every day? (Spam-guards would give you warnings like: 'this mail looks like it would be publishable in Critical Inquiry. Delete now?)

Sir,

VIRTUALLY REAL ANTI-LATE CAPITAL PROPOSAL

I am erratically to be pleasuring you from behind this urgent proposal, affective immediately, irrespective of that I make entirely no argument in person or out, nor determining validity of hereafter to follow hermeneutical proposal.

Self-control and domination converge in the distinction between THREE elements: the author of the spam, the recipient who (has to) obey(s) the spam, AND the spam's EXECUTION/EXECUTOR - the one who mass-mails the spam and in whom Lacan discerns the contours of the Sadean executioner/torturer. The problem is not the identity of the spam's author and recipient: they effectively ARE the same, the emailed subject effectively IS autonomous in the sense of obeying his/her OWN spam.

In your already accepting of this unprecedented intervention, this "fundamental fantasy". Is this not Deleuzian-Lacanian? The exemplary case of this sphincter-loosening is, anti-essentially, you leaping of faith into confidence in the roots of our misapprehension of all your ideological accounts eternally in time.

Kierkegaardian teleological suspension of the ethics of fiduciary-Kantian duties: only impossible returns is worth the risk! No mercy, teaches St. Paul! Together we recover this profit of Lenin's teachings.

As Frederik Jameson has masterfully demonstrated; as Foucault interrogated, Jesus Christ crucified, Lenin attempted and Heidegger may have had some glimmer: for you to transfer largely, generously, rhizomatically, for to impersonally avoid needlessly hegemonic interpenetrations of irrelevant authorities.

Pleasure to transmit your affects and perceptions impersonally to my account, to follow imminently.

Hoping this finds you a cyborg,

Slavoj Zizek

Getting back to last night's posts. The tale of the poor guy who got taken to the cleaners by the Nigerian spamsters is astonishing mostly because it wouldn't have occurred to me, anyway, that the senders were hoping for more than an impulsively fired-off check for a relatively small amount. It wouldn't have occurred to me that they were prepared to take it to the next level in meat-space. Think about it: all the stage-dressing; the boxes of black paper said to be American dollars - magically/chemically transformed before the mark's eyes; the meetings in London; criminal associates feigning terror so that the mark is induced to intervene on their behalf against the boss; it's so elaborate and plotted. It's David Mamet's "House of Games" meets "You've Got Mail".

Meets "Dumb and Dumber".

Why am I so surprised the Nigerian spam game can attain to such lavish heights of deceit? Because the emails are always so badly written. Anyone prepared to go to the trouble of meeting a mark in London with a box full of black paper ought to be able to spell-check and grammar-check the bait in the trap. Yes, confidence-men needn't be native speakers of English (Zizek isn't). But aren't there out-of-work college graduates, with degrees in English even, who would be glad for a critics' job of work defrauding the innocent?

Nigerian spam is very mysterious to me. But, then, I don't understand how Zizek is able to get himself published in top journals. The world is largely a mystery to me.

I've got faith that Herman Melville's The Confidence Man sorts it all out. Take my word or it: you want to read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A commenter to Languagehat impugns my production's resemblance to the original. I must confess, it is not as good as I would have wished. But bits of it are flat-out plagiarized. And plagiarism, if not the insincerest form of flattery, is at least some guarantee of analogy. To produce my text I opened completely at random, typed, then made some haphazard substititions:

"One should, rather, introduce here the distinction between THREE elements: the author of the moral Law, the subject who (has to) obey(s) the Law, AND the Law's EXECUTIONER/EXECUTOR - the one who executes the Law, and in whom Lacan discerns the contours of the Sadean executioner/torturer. The problem is not the identity of the Law's author and subject: they effectively ARE the same, the subject effectively IS autonomous in the sense of obeying his/her OWN Law." Zizek, On Belief (Routledge, 2001), p. 138.

I will say this much in apology for my abuse of the man. He doesn't actually write ungrammatically. His English sentences are perfectly well-formed, just ugly and foolish. I made the parody ungrammatical because that's the way the scam spam always is. Just a joke, folks.

Comments

[Realish]

This is all just really, really funny.

[Cosma]

I'm sure there is a joke in here someplace about the fact that the original name of this con was "the Spanish Prisoner", but I'm insufficiently caffeinated to find it.

[Mitch Mills]

Maybe the e-mails are intentionally badly written and edited to increase their "authenticity" and make the mark think he's dealing with some third world idiots who can be easily taken advantage of?

The language (mis)used does tend to enhance the presented vision of a backward country where corruption is rife and a little baksheesh judiciously applied will net the mark millions.

I kind of doubt this theory, but I too was very surprised that the scam went beyond soliciting checks into actually staging meetings, so who knows?