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Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the plank in your own? (Matt 7:3)1
Those without sight may see and those with sight turn blind. (John 9:39)
IN The Metastases of Enjoyment, Lacanian critic Slavoj Zizek defines Ego-Evil in this way: Ego-Evil refers to behavior "motivated by selfish calculation and greed" (70). Ego-Evil is different from Superego-Evil in the sense that the former is about the elevation of self-love while the latter welcomes evil due to some "fanatical devotion" or an "ideological ideal." Id-Evil, in contrast, is about the perverse enjoyment of wickedness (Zizek 70). In its purest form, Ego-Evil is about the self's overidentification with its views and interests, which easily leads to a narcissistic denigration of the other and a violation of universal laws. If Zizek suggests that Ego-Evil is "the most common kind of evil" (70), this essay argues that it is common because it is related to the politics of the eye. In the Bible, the elevation of the self is linked to a subjective, narcissistic viewing process: the self sees not itself but only the splinter in the other's eye. The resulting lack of self-knowledge makes Edgar Allan Poe's narrator in "The TellTale Heart" judge the old man based on his own (the narrator's) affections, and not the truth. The deliberate (mis)judgment of the other can only mirror the "blindness" of the self, signifying a lack of insight.
This essay foregrounds this interplay between the ego and the eye, although Poe gives his story additional intersubjective and intrasubjective emphases. That is, the ego sees and judges the other subjectively, but the other has the power to look back and topple the ego, while the other-inthe-self can further derail the self. In turn, self-splitting occurs to characterize Poe's version of Ego-Evil: the hero becomes a divided subject that can see what's wrong, or understand the concepts of universal right and wrong through the eyes of the other, and yet he remains blind to his sins. In the story, the eye, the gaze, and the glare all help relate the self to the other, prioritize the self at the expense of the other, push the self to relentlessly judge and eliminate the other, and, finally, wreck...