sublime masochism

Two quotes from
Slavoj Zizek. Notes on a Debate "From Within the People"
Criticism - Volume 46, Number 4, Fall 2004, pp. 661-666

...

With reference to Deleuze:

"The masochist, while remaining within the domain of the
paternal (contract), reintroduces the Woman as the partner
in the contract—not in order to fully enjoy the Woman, but
in order to mockingly undermine the paternal
authority. The masochist thus stages an uncanny
short-circuit, a monstrous travesty of the Law: in her
very elevation to the undisputed Master, whose every whim
the masochist is obliged to obey, the Woman is turned into
a puppet effectively controlled by her slave, who controls
the game, writing its rules—the explicit asymmetry of the
masochist contract (at the level of enunciated: man's
subordination to woman) relies on then opposite asymmetry
at the level of the position of enunciation. The humor of
masochism is therefore not directed only at the figure of
the father; it relies on the ridiculous (and,
simultaneously, monstrous) incompatibility or discord
between the symbolic place of symbolic power and the
element who occupies it."

With reference to Badiou:

"How can a human animal forsake its animality and put its
life in the service of a transcendent Truth? How can the
'transubstantiation' from the pleasure-oriented life of an
individual to the life of a subject dedicated to a Cause
occur? In other words, how is a free act possible? How
can one break (out of) the network of the causal
connections of positive reality and conceive of an act
that begins by and in itself?"