In the book I published in 1997, entitled FICTION RECONSTRUCTED: NEW MEDIA, VIDEO, ART, POST-SOCIALISM AND THE RETRO-AVANTGARDE, I developed briefly the concept that it is possible today, at the end of the millennium, to identify two matrices of active players with regard to Eastern and Western Europe and the new media reality: i.e., the Western European "Scum of Society Matrix" and the Eastern European "Monsters Matrix".

These two matrices raise not only questions for reflection, but also offer elements of political and analytical intersection that must be discussed and articulated further and in a much more radical way. This is what I intend to do in the essay that follows.

What if, in contrast to the fantasy of the Internet and its overwhelming globalisation depicted in the utopian dream of a (virtual?) community in which relations of exchange will be harmonious and universal, the Eastern European Monsters are not only fantasised as monsters, but are (at least some of the Eastern European artists, media activists and theoreticians, etc.) the terrifying neighbors who reject the philanthropic Western ideology of sharing and pure exchange?

I will attempt to define, to indicate a break (rather than continuity) between what is often referred to as two stages in the Western-Eastern European Community. The first stage, which we may consider as that until 1989 (until the fall of the Berlin wall), may be described as the concept of relations between Western Europe and Communist Eastern Europe. The second stage is the relation between Western Europeans and their Post-Socialist Neighbors.

One may define this break similarly to the break between Freud's first and second concepts of transference. Today an almost ferocious campaign is trying to fill the gap between these two breaks and to simulate continuity. The slogans of this campaign (demanded by the West and serviced in the East, or vice versa) are BIOGRAPHY rather than THEORY and THERAPY rather than THEORY. The latter slogan is nearly an antidote proposed by a large number (although not all) of Western European (Media) Activists.

The above should be perceived as an introductory gesture describing the manner in which the word "Europe" in the title of this paper may be grasped. This gesture should be understood in a way similar to that of the bad/good guy in Hollywood action or thriller films when he makes order of a messy table, onto which he will draw the action. Not the gentle approach to every crumb on the table, re-positing them elsewhere, but the gesture of erasure, of a whip of everything.

This moment before the gesture of erasure is similar to the void that Slavoj Zizek, together with Lacan, formulated approximately as follows. In short, the Lacanian answer to the question ± Is it possible to call, to perceive, the void, i.e., to be found before the gesture of subjectivisation, a subject? ± is YES, although this question was answered negatively by Althusser, Derrida and Badiou. The subject is both at the same time: the ontological whole, the gap in the absolute contraction of subjectivity and the cut of the connections of the subject with reality.

I will try also to offer some directions for spectralisation. In his book, Spectres de Marx, Jacques Derrida put into play the term 'spectre' to indicate the elusive pseudo-materiality that subverts the classic ontological oppositions of reality and illusion. Zizek argues that perhaps we should look here for the last resort of ideology, for the formal matrix onto which are grafted various ideological formations:

"We should recognise the fact that there is no reality without the spectre, that the circle of reality can be closed only by means of an uncanny spectral supplement. Why, then, is there no reality without the spectre? [Because for Lacan] reality is not the 'thing itselfφ, [rather] it is always-already symbolised╓ and the problem resides in the fact that symbolisation ultimately always fails, that it never succeeds in fully 'covering' the real... [This real] returns in the guise of spectral apparitions. 'Spectre' is not to be confused with 'symbolic fiction'... reality is never directly 'itselfφ; it presents itself only via its incomplete-failed symbolisation, and spectral apparitions emerge in this very gap that forever separates reality from the real, and on account of which reality has the character of a (symbolic) fiction: the spectre gives body to that which escapes (the symbolically structured) realityε. (Slavoj Zizek, 'Introduction: The Spectre of Ideology', in Mapping Ideology, pp. 26-28. ) This also explains the title of my 1997 book: Fiction Reconstructed.

It is possible to say that the modern subject does not exist without an understanding that on a certain level from some other perspective: I am a piece of shit. Furthermore, the modern subjectivity arises when the subject sees itself out of joint, as cut off from the positive order of things. We may say that the cyborg, as conceived by Donna Haraway, seen from the position of exteriority-intimacy that Lacan coined as extimacy, is exactly this piece of shit.

Thus I have developed the thesis that virtual reality is the place where the subject sees itself as 'out of joint'. Let us consider briefly what happens in the classical situation of virtual reality. The user finds him/herself in a specific inter-subjective relation with his/her double. In short, this double is a kind of exteriorisation, a kind of a spectral creature or double ± an immortal libidinal object ± the famous Lacanian lamella. One may refer to this spectral creature as an excremental protuberance, an indestructible object of life beyond death that has no a fixed position in the symbolic order. This implies that not only is cyberspace constantly revealing that out there (outside of the virtual world) a kind of terrifying remainder that is impossible to wholly integrate into the virtual world is waiting for us, but that this remainder too may be seen from time to time in virtual and cyberspace.

This kind of split between the image and the real (sometimes displayed as a formless remainder on the computer screen as well, if we are in a position to meet the"=cw4t7abs") demonstrates precisely the disintegration of reality in that which is almost without substance on the one side (appearing on the Internet) and the raw material remainder of the real that was not integrated into the picture on the other.

The disgusting remainder also comprises the NSK EMBASSY PROJECT by the group IRWIN of Ljubljana where, instead of the Embassy, we are faced with the extimacy of the public space in a private apartment that suffocates us with an almost claustrophobic domesticity. Not a real Embassy, but a mise-en-sc╦ne around the kitchen table. Or the Russian artists ± Oleg Kulikφs horrendous biting animals and Alexander Brener performing as a boxer ± all these liminal works and experiences demonstrate to us the extimacy of the disgusting remainder, before it might perhaps transform into the sublime.

Let us jump into the actual space of Europe, as discussed on the Internet via such vital lists that are developing a critical view on media and the world as the Nettime list or the Syndicate list, etc. There one may read (and respond to) some interesting contributions on Eastern Europe that I will synthesise thus: "despite the initial euphoria Western Europe showed for Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eastern Europe has failed. It did not succeed to be inscribed on the map of important political, cultural, arts events in Europe". The disappointment about Eastern Europe that failed in the process to become a stable social space may also be detected in the works of such prominent philosophers as Badiou and Ranciëre.

It is a fact that the main presentation of the last Documenta in Kassel (dX in 1997) included only two or three artists from Eastern Europe. And if we are to believe the interviews, in the words of the curator (CD), this was due to the fact that there was nothing to select, in fact. The void, or the de facto elimination, of the Eastern European artist from the Documenta was, according to her own words, the result of the void proper to Eastern Europe, and was not a result of the selection. It seems that Eastern Europe has been lost for the second time, after it was just in the process of being refound in 1989.

What is Eastern Europe after the fulfillment of its destiny, after now nearly a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

A similar question is raised by Zizek through Lacan. In his reading of the Oedipal myth, Lacan focused on the field which is, in most usual readings of the Oedipal complex, left out: What is beyond Oedipus ± what is Oedipus himself ± after he has fulfilled his destiny? A question that may be posed after watching such films as Bladerunner or Seven. What happens on the day after?, or so to speak, after life goes on in its usual rhythm? As Lacan put it in Seminar II, from the beginning of the tragedy, everything leads us to the fact that Oedipus is solely an Earth rest, a remainder, a Thing that is robbed from every surface.

What we have here is a field that may be called, according to psychoanalysis, the field between two deaths ± between the symbolic and the real death. The ultimate object of horror is this life beyond death, which Lacan called lamella, as an immortal - indestructible object, i.e., life that is voided, evacuated, from the symbolic structure.

It seems that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eastern Europe has found itself in a horrible intermediate position, whereby it has been changed into an inseparable remainder, a substanceless spot of a crumb of reality that has already swallowed all the potential that was generated by its previous existence.

Eastern Europe found itself in a position similar to the one Zizek develops in re-articulating the Oedipus position following the fulfillment of his symbolic destiny (i.e., when Oedipus, incognizant, kills his father and marries his mother). After he has fulfilled his symbolic destiny, Oedipus is an indivisible remainder, the substanceless spot of the crumb of reality. He is the embodiment of that which Lacan calls plus-de-jouir, surplus enjoyment, the surplus that cannot be explained by any symbolic idealisation. But ± and this is crucial for understanding the changed, so-called failed position of Eastern Europe for the Other ± when Lacan uses the plus-de-jouir notion, he plays with the double entendre of the term in French comprising simultaneously surplus, and no more, enjoyment! Oedipus is, following the fulfillment of his destiny, plus d'homme, which means simultaneously surplus man and no man. Oedipus is conditionally man; he is a human monster and as such, a paradigmatic example of the modern subject, as his monstrosity is structural and not accidental.

In keeping with this definition and the similarity of positions, we may define Eastern Europe as plus d' Europe Oriental. Eastern Europe is surplus of Europe (as it was before the fall of the Berlin Wall: too little, or not enough, European) and no Europe.

Eastern Europe is forced to take, or is in, the position of an excremental remainder. Please allow me here to change the optics of the discourse and to state: this is not necessarily a bad thing. With a view from the lamella point ± ∞the modern subject does not exist without an understanding that on a certain level from some other perspective I am a piece of shitε ± we may say that this is actually the first condition required for Eastern Europe to take upon itself all the characteristics of a modern subjectivity. It is now from this inherently excremental position that Eastern Europe can arise or can be perceived finally as a subject. As Zizek writes, "If the Cartesian subject wants to arise on the level of enunciation, it must be described as almost nothing of ready to be thrown in the disposal garbage/trash on the level of a statement". (Cf. Slavoj Zizek, "Alain Badiou kot bralec svetega Pavla" [Alain Badiou as the Reader of St. Paulus], p. 135.)

Perhaps it is only now, when Eastern Europe is on the level of a statement this almost nothing of (ready-to-be-thrown-in-the-disposal) excremental trash (wasn't it, for example, at Documenta, reduced precisely to this nothingness?), that it can arise on the level of enunciation.

Furthermore, the classical ontology, according to Zizek, focused on the triad of the truthful, the beautiful and the good. For Lacan, these three notions press near the limit, and show that good is the mask of diabolical evil (e.g., the Russian artist dog, or the performances entitled Was ist Kunst? by the artist Rasa Todosijevic from Belgrade. In the 1970's, Todosijevic, in this series of performances, literally tried to drag the answer to ± What is art? ± out of women by force, slapping their faces with black color in the most shocking manner of body-art.); beautiful the mask of ugliness (e.g., IRWIN's series of 100 pictures also entitled Was ist Kunst? In this series, and in the exhibitions of Laibachkunst, persons who are supposed to have been part of the period of Nazism are portrayed along with members of the banned Laibach group; they are engraved into the iconography of the paintings, as their busts or torso sculptures decorate numerous paintings of the Was ist Kunst? project); and that truthful is the mask of the central void, around which gravitates every symbolical structure (e.g., the Romanian flag, after the so-called Romanian Revolution, a hole instead of the star).

The manner in which I have posited the subject and re-framed the Eastern European Monster Matrix allows for further discussion on the possible ways of acting (and living?) in Europe and on the net, and furthermore, allows us to rethink emancipation and resistance. We should first distinguish, according to Jelica Sumic-Riha, between modernist emancipation and contemporary postmodernist resistance. The modernist solution of insisting on a fidelity to politics, where politics seems to be deemed a precious treasure, suggests that in the final analysis nothing has happened. Hence the modernist emancipation function from today's point of view as the so-called university discourse, developed by Lacan, that attempts to dispose of the effects of the event for the symbolic structure, and therefore does not recognise any change in the actual political situation, living the actual defeat of politics untaught, anathematized. Postmodernist resistance is, on the other hand, possible to delineate as a hysterical discourse, as the constant production of the doubtful "no" that simply turns resistance against thought. (About these distinctions, cf. Jelica Sumic-Riha!)This may also be grasped with a quite impressive crusade against theory and theoretical knowledge, as is especially sustained by some media theorists and activists today.

To arrive at an answer, let us briefly contemplate the four discourses evolved by Lacan in dealing with the truth and events. Lacan distinguished the discourse of the master, the university discourse, the discourse of the hysteric and the discourse of the analyst. The master names the event, changing it into a new signifier-master that will guarantee the continuity of the consequences of the event. The hysteric holds the doubtful position of division toward the event. The master wishes to keep continuity, the hysteric the gap. The university discourse aims to fill the effects, to neutralise the effects as if nothing has happened.

To understand the importance of the four discourses for today political involvement in media theory and art practice let try to answer the question, never posed before in debates about media and activism, which of the four discourses is occupied by the famous cyborg, conceived by Haraway as our politics and ontology for the year 2000.

My answer is: Donna Haraway has positioned the cyborg as a hysterical discourse. The virtual world is positioned in Haraway's semiotic square in such a way that the truth of these four spaces is to be found in the virtual space. We also should consider the fact that Haraway conceptualises the cyborg as a piece of shit and, at the same time, as a sublime object. This means that I will position the cyborg as an object a. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, object a represents the double entendre of the plus-de-jouir notion meaning simultaneously a surplus, and no more, enjoyment. Taking all of these important elements into consideration, we should then take as a conceptual equivalent of Haraway's semiotic square the Lacanian discourse of the hysteric.

We are now ready to draw the consequences of this homographical act. The virtual space and the cyborg as refracted in Haraway's semiotic square of Virtual Space from The Promises of Monsters occupied the same position as truth and the object a in the Lacanian discourse of the hysteric. Hence the truth is covered by this sublime-disgusting cyborg object, while the entire discourse is still enunciated from the Earth. The agent is therefore still out there (the Real Space of The Promises of Monsters is in the same place as the $ in the hysterical link ± the $ over a represents the subject-agent who is traumatised by the question of what role to play in the Other's desire), to be found on the Earth or in the Real Space.

Is this then an answer to how we should be positioned between emancipation and resistance? Are we to act as hysterics, putting everything under question in order to resist the existing symbolic order by refusing to assume the role assigned to us by this order, as the hysterics taught us? The answer follows shortly, after taking into brief consideration the fourth type of discourse: that of the analyst. It also seems that we have lost, in the meantime, the Matrix of the Monsters which simply tells that ± I am this piece of useless trash here. Or maybe not!

Jacques Lacan formulates his position as an analyst as follows: "The more saints, the more laughter; that's my principle, to wit, the way out of capitalist discourse ± which will not constitute progress, if it happens only for some". (Lacan, Television, p.16)Designating the saint as the site of resistance, he clearly indicates that a resistance to capitalism can only be theorised in terms of some resistant instance, which is, strictly speaking, neither exterior nor interior, but rather, is situated at the point of exteriority in the very intimacy of interiority, i.e., the Lacanian extimacy (exteriority-intimacy).

In the discourse of the analyst, object a is posited as the agent/agency, whereas knowledge occupies the space of truth. In the Lacanian analyst discourse, the agent a reduces itself to the void, provoking in such a way the subject to confront the truth of its desire. Wasn't the Matrix of the Monsters, by the way, implying exactly a similar subjective position? And more, knowledge refers to the supposed knowledge of the analyst, and simultaneously, according to Zizek, signals something of crucial importance that "the knowledge gained here will not be the neutral 'objective' knowledge of scientific adequacy, but the knowledge that concerns the subject (analysand) in the truth of his subjective position". (Zizek, "Four Discourses, Four Subjects", p. 80.) Perhaps herein lies, again and again, the path of my explicit redirections towards theory and against therapy when discussing the Eastern European Matrix of the Monsters. It is possible to say that between therapy and theory, the therapeutical approach clinches on a theoretical thesis of the Eastern Europeans as "survivors" as the mute victims who needs to share that victim experience through small biographical anecdotes and traces, if s/he wants to be integrated into the long chain of civilisational theoretical backgrounds in the West.

What makes it possible then for the saint to evade the deranged machine of production? Lacan puts forward a solution which consists ultimately of identification with that which is left over ± with the trash ± as we see that the agent/agency occupies the position of the useless trash remainder (object a). In short, between emancipation or resistance, with Lacan, we can put forward an absolutely political solution, a radical politisation of the Eastern European position, which consists ultimately in the identification with the useless trash remainder, with the piece of shit!

Acknowledgment: As always, I would like to express all my gratitude to Ms. Adele Eisenstein of C3/Budapest for her careful language and general editing of all of my texts.