The affectivity of racism

When do I effectively encounter the Other ‘beyond the wall of language’, in the real of his or her being? Not when I am able to describe her, not when I learn her values, dreams, etc. but only when I encounter the Other in her moment of jouissance. When I discern her in a tiny detail – a compulsive gesture, an excessive facial expression, a tic – that signals the intensity of the real of jouissance. This encounter with the real is always traumatic. There is something obscene about is. (Žižek, 1998: 168)