ABSTRACT
The objective and methods of Slavoj Zizek "Rossellini: Woman as Symptom of Man" are ambiguous. Zizek wants to exonerate Lacan of the charge of antifeminism by offering a revisionist reading of what seems to be Lacan's "notoriously antifeminist thesfis" that "woman is a symptom of man". In Bergman-as-woman, then, Zizek sees the culmination of a series of epistemological, psychoanalytic, and historical crises that are all versions of the same crisis. Rousseau makes his inability or refusal to respond to Zulietta only too clear—or rather, he reveals how clearly Zulietta herself makes it clear to him. Although the strange new world ambiguously embodied in Zulietta tempts Rousseau because it suggests he can reinvent himself with complete freedom and enjoy himself infinitely, it frightens him for the same reasons. Rousseau responds by retreating into patriarchal fictions regarding the inseparability of material and metaphysical meaning and value and their fixability according to an unchanging, transcendental scheme.
