This is Zizek's point about objects never being simply objects, but always-already inscribed with meaning by the viewer. A food is never simply a food, it is a food and organic, or it is a food and fair trade, or it is a food and in this case, literally nothing else. Cigarettes help you relax but you also look cool, Starbucks will sell you coffee but also donate 10% to kids in wheelchairs. The phenomenon has become so saturated with its this excess that marking the absence of a something else, of a little object A, is significant. This is a dialectical process - food, like anything, exists in a substantive nothingness ("everything makes love to silence"). This nothingness is filled by a somethingness - organic, fair trade, cookie dough, 10% to charity. This somethingness becomes so ingrained into the object itself that its presence is so expected that we mark its absence. This now exists as a trait of the object, and the gap between the object and its excess informs us of what is real
As I commented elsewhere, Zizek expresses this point with the joke: "I'll take my coffee without cream." "I'm sorry but we are out of cream, can I bring you coffee without milk instead?"
This is Zizek's point about objects never being simply objects, but always-already inscribed with meaning by the viewer. A food is never simply a food, it is a food and organic, or it is a food and fair trade, or it is a food and in this case, literally nothing else. Cigarettes help you relax but you also look cool, Starbucks will sell you coffee but also donate 10% to kids in wheelchairs. The phenomenon has become so saturated with its this excess that marking the absence of a something else, of a little object A, is significant. This is a dialectical process - food, like anything, exists in a substantive nothingness ("everything makes love to silence"). This nothingness is filled by a somethingness - organic, fair trade, cookie dough, 10% to charity. This somethingness becomes so ingrained into the object itself that its presence is so expected that we mark its absence. This now exists as a trait of the object, and the gap between the object and its excess informs us of what is real
As I commented elsewhere, Zizek expresses this point with the joke: "I'll take my coffee without cream." "I'm sorry but we are out of cream, can I bring you coffee without milk instead?"