Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, "Debt Inc.: Guilt, Credit, and the Algorithmic Future" (an excerpt)
Debt, Guilt, and Their Ambiguity
As Freud shows, for example, in his analysis of obsessional neurosis (the case study of the “Ratman”), debt plays a key role in this structure: obsessional subjects experience themselves as always indebted to the Other—be it the father, the Law, God, or the analyst. They are trapped in a paradox: on the one hand, they want to pay their debt, to be free; on the other, they endlessly postpone payment, because if the debt were ever settled, the Other’s desire would be extinguished—and that is unbearable. The obsessional solution, therefore, is to keep the debt alive. This gives them a sense of control over the Other’s desire (“I still owe, so the Other still wants (something from me)”), albeit at a very high cost, which can almost completely paralyze life, as we vividly see in the case of the “Rat Man.” Freud extends the fundamental logic of this compulsive structure to the functioning of religion in general, understanding the latter as a kind of “universal obsessive neurosis”: religion is not simply a set of beliefs and intimate faith; it operates as a system of practices and rituals aimed at managing anxiety and guilt in relation to the Other. Since, for Freud, there is at the same time no such thing as a completely non-pathological psychological structure, obsessive neurosis can be understood as one of the possible structures of “normality.”
In a slightly different register—one in which debt also resonates with guilt (as it does directly in the German language, where Schuld means both debt and guilt, though this connection is culturally more universal)—it is interesting to observe how this plays out in classical tragedy, and later in modern tragedy. As Hegel notes in his Lectures on Aesthetics, the force of the great tragic characters of antiquity lies in the fact that they have no choice: they are what they will and accomplish from their birth onward, and they are this with all their being. For this reason, Hegel continues, they do not in any way claim to be innocent of their acts. On the contrary, the greatest offence one can commit against a great tragic hero is to regard him or her as innocent; for great tragic characters, it is an honor to be guilty.[1]
To be guilty—to carry one’s particular symbolic debt—is to be, in the emphatic sense of the term. In this configuration, guilt pertains to being in a double sense: not only are we already guilty by virtue of existing (like in the tragedy of Oedipus), but guilt/debt also serves as the proof—the manifestation—of our being. Roughly speaking, we can see this logic at work later as well, in most of the classical tragedies.
In this respect, one of the most significant shifts that takes place with modernity is the idea that this symbolic debt, which once equaled (and justified) our being, can be taken away from us. In his reading of modern tragedy, as exemplified by Paul Claudel, Jacques Lacan points out that this is precisely what befalls his tragic heroines—particularly Sygne de Coûfontaine from the Coûfontaine trilogy.“We are no longer guilty just in virtue of symbolic debt. … It is the debt itself in which we have our place that can be taken away from us, and it is here that we can feel completely alienated from ourselves. The ancient Ate doubtless made us guilty of this debt, but to renounce it as we can now means that we are left with an even greater misfortune: destiny no longer applies.”[2]This possibility that arises with modernity is a possibility of a more radical alienation, which can lead to something like the sacrifice of the sacrifice itself: we can be asked or expected to sacrifice everything we have for a cause, but the next level, so to speak, is when we are then asked to sacrifice/betray this cause itself, the very thing for which we were willing to sacrifice everything. In this case, we don’t just lose everything we have; at the horizon looms the loss of everything we are.
In all these examples, debt functions as our attachment to the Other, who also bestows upon us our being. Yet we can also look at this from the other side: although the relation is not simply symmetrical, the Other too seems to depend on our debt—or guilt—for its own existence and prosperity. This, for instance, is something Nietzsche repeatedly exposed in his writings, taking Christianity as the model par excellence of this dynamic
Christianity, and particularly its Catholic strain, devised a complex system for forgiving and atoning for our sins, while simultaneously maintaining our debt to the Father and the Son who made such forgiveness possible. A sin that is forgiven, in this logic, amplifies rather than abolishes our debt.
This is the reason what Nietzsche insisted on the importance of the distinction between forgiving and forgetting: forgiving is a way of sustaining a bond—and with it, a debt. Forgiveness has a perverse way of entangling us even further in indebtedness. To forgive always somehow implies “paying” for the other, and thus turning the very act of injury and its forgiveness into a new kind of “engagement ring.” God forgives our sins by paying for them—by paying for them with his own flesh.
This, for Nietzsche, constitutes the fundamental perversity of Christianity: while forgiving, it simultaneously waves before us the cross—the instrument of torture, the reminder of the one who suffered and died so that we might be forgiven, the memory of the one who paid for us. Christianity forgives, but it does not forget.
One could say that, with the eyes of the sinner fixed on the cross, forgiveness creates a new debt in the very act of forgiving. It forgives what was done, but it does not forgive the act of forgiving itself. On the contrary, the latter establishes a new bond and a new debt. It is now infinite mercy—understood as the capacity for forgiveness—that sustains the infinite debt, the debt as infinite. The debt is no longer brought about by our actions; it is produced by the act of forgiving those actions. We are indebted for forgiveness.[3] This is the reason why Nietzsche counters the concept of forgiving with the concept of forgetting (“a good example of this in modern times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done to him and was unable to forgive simply because he – forgot”).
Christianity thus invented a singular way of maintaining and amplifying our debt—through the Savior paying for it, and through the Church forgiving our sins in His name. At the same time, for doctrinal reasons, the Catholic religion long struggled with—and resisted—the idea that today appears as an entirely natural precondition of debt, or its internal moment: namely, interest. More precisely, it resisted the monetary expression of the increase of debt, which it nevertheless very much practiced on the symbolic level.
Credit means that when we receive or borrow something—especially when we borrow money—our debt grows with time, and we must return more than we were lent. We pay for the time during which the Other holds us “in credit,” and we pay, so to speak, for the very access to debt. The notion that money could generate (more) money—that value could emerge from nothing but time—stood in deep conflict with theological orthodoxy. For this reason, in the Middle Ages only non-Christians (Jewish, and later Lombard or Florentine bankers) were permitted to lend at interest, often acting as intermediaries. Of course, this also meant that Christians could use them to lend money at interest without themselves being held accountable—thus giving rise to the classical antisemitic topos of the usurious “Jew.”
