The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia

An excellent metaphor for communism, which is essential precisely in what it does not display explicitly - nor are they symbols of leaders or demented masses of the people, but the mysterious hands of the surgeon-Demiurg, which are the true darkness of Švankmajer's film. Who's that? Perhaps the Great Second in the Lacanov conception, that dark, unsymbolized place of Reality that is driving us into the arms of all kinds of totalitarianism and their iconic faces. The Great Other has no face or body, yet still kneads our existence... Perhaps, as a result, this is not so much a mark of transformation by the phantom of totalitarianism, but the observance of any human effort to advance toward the truth by this "nonexistent" phantom. (28/10/2010)