In our inability to reconcile representation and an incomprehensible reality, the apprehension of ‘the sublime shatters [our] misplaced belief in authentic representation.’ (link, p. 723) We are besieged in our minds; confronted with ‘the limits of our own capacity for understanding.’ (ibid, p. 720) Here, argues Žižek, the subject is reacting to representative failure of the sublime object. Possessing neither beauty nor purpose, as a symbol or signifier, said object ‘evokes its Beyond[ness] by the very failure of its symbolic representation.’ (link)
Ultimately, then, the depth and power of the sublime rests not in the scale and power of ‘natural disasters or political events and heroic responses’ (link, p. 727), but in our capacity to resist the intellectual subjugation of the terrible Beyond. In Kantian terms, it is ‘our response to [the] terror that is in fact sublime, rather than the terror itself.’ (link, p. 37) As long as the subject remains at a ‘certain distance from the events in question … one is not simply overwhelmed by pain and fear … one feels relief, when one realise that the threat posed by the overwhelming source of terror is not immanent, that it is suspended or held at a distance.’ (link, p. 721)
