This is the thread where we talk about Slavoj Zizek...

Your points make sense. I would agree that in the history of the world (the only world we can observe), capitalism, free trade, etc. have gone hand in hand with lots of innovation. But innovation also happened of course before there was anything as economically sophisticated as modern capitalism. I'm not sure about the validity of conflating trade and capitalism, because trade is about as ancient as human civilization, but I don't think we can make the same point about capitalism without making our definition overly broad.

yeah. im not sure if zizek is even thinking about these questions though! i don't know what his definition of capitalism is. im mostly thinking of britain in all this, and while for sure there's always been trade, our move to capitalism -- the concentration of capital, the institution of the large-scale firm, the notion of shareholding, the division of labour -- was intimately related to us "opening up" markets overseas (using guns). the massive profits from overseas trade stimulated industry at home. etc. the role of the state in all this became pretty controversial.

anyway -- these questions are huge and no-one can answer them once and for all. but to my mind they're going to tell us more than zizek's extolling of "love" and suchlike.

Well, it's an interesting question about how we choose to organize ourselves as a society. There's an inherent conflict between our democratic ideals which say that all people are equal, and our capitalist ideals which seem to require the existence of a wealthy class, which tends to perpetuate its existence using, ahem, less than democratic means.

right now and for the next 40 minutes, zizek on "the double death of neo-liberalism" -

http://resonancefm.com

iirc he thinks it died once on 9/11 and once again in autumn 2008.

as, really quite obviously, it did not.

as gone over above, based on the youtube clip, he doesn't actually give a fuck whether we have "neo-liberalism", "liberalism", or (what we have) a "mized economy", or any other form of capitalism. and that pretty obviously has not gone away either.

this serrano bit is basically my thesis, coulda used this this time last yr ziz

ok didn't turn out how i thought

new Verso catalogue lists "Slavoj Zizek’s brand new book Living in the End Times, about the forthcoming apocalypse." Wuh oh.

"Everything You Wanted to Know About Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Alfred Hitchcock" is pretty funny too

am i right in thinking he's interviewed in the current cahiers du cinema?

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/zizek-on-avatar.html

oh i am... and he's now written about avatar twice without seeing it.

blah blah Morbs zing blah blah will this do?

He's also in this week's New Statesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2010/05/essay-nature-catastrophe

Pretty humdrum piece though.

"We are living in an age when we are both able to change nature and more at its mercy than ever"

spose it depends on the "we", but, hey, anyone remember the age before medical science? bubonic plague?

yeah, no, we're probably more at the mercy of nature than ever.

oh i am... and he's now written about avatar twice without seeing it.

LOL, I sort of admire that

it's a shitty film

but basically it confirms my view that most film theorists -- exactly like what manny farber called the "plot-sociologists" of 70 years ago -- are just dealing with synopses, not films

Hi Slavoj! The piece about Rosicrucianism, Blanchot and the Tellytubbies is great, honestly. But we at the New Statesman feel our readership would appreciate something a little more.....humdrum. RSVP!

he;s used that unknown unknowns meme about a million times

basically my college's 2 most famous professors are now: this fucking clown and orlando figes

oh and daud abdullah

It feels better if you put "Daily Sport Stunna" in front of their names.

he's used everything he's ever said a million times. I read an introduction he wrote for someone else's book and 75% of it was cribbed from his past books, which seemed a weird too far extension of his self-plagiarism to me.

I, btw, like this guy lots even if/when he's very silly.

http://www.amazon.com/Living-End-Times-Slavoj-Zizek/dp/184467598X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273924795&sr=8-1/marginalrevol-20

Kinda really want to read this.

Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.”

classy

Zizek is truly one of the great trolls of our time.

I'll be reading that later this year, no doubt.

why not read s.thing that doesn't suck?

cause this looks super entertaining

ehh people were saying capitalism was done for 80 years ago

this is aight, for a book about... eschatology/teleology... i think those are the words i mean

http://static.letsbuyit.com/filer/images/fr/products/original/83/68/the-sense-of-an-ending-studies-in-the-theory-of-fiction-with-a-new-epilogue-8368621.jpeg

but were they finding the seeds of Communism in Heroes? i personally find Zizek very very entertaining, and sometimes I'd rather not read some dense academic text but still want to deal with provocative arguments and thoughts. Certainly more worthwhile reading Zizek than uh -- Christopher Hitchens, or Jonah Goldberg, or - le gaspe - Judith Butler.

but were they finding the seeds of Communism in Heroes?

wd have been exciting in the 80s (maybe). but you know he won't even have seen it yeah?

wont stan for latter-day hitchens so much but, looked at over his career, he a) is much less of an idiot than zizek b) can write. wouldn't put him in the same sentence as goldberg.

i find Hitchens generally hits the same notes over and over again. Maybe he frames them well, but dude hasn't had interesting things to say in a long time. I'm rarely bored around Zizek (tho too much exposure can tire you -- there's definitely a Zizek formula).

i was about to say, he is king of hitting the same notes over and over! kind of inevitable given his quasi-religious adherence to lacan and (his version of) marx.

but yeah the hitch is mostly churning it out these days. he can still write a sentence though, and he's still serious even when wrong.

pretty sure all new zizek books are cut and pasted from bits of old ones now.

but yeah i mean the guy is still funny

Verso sent me an advance hardcover copy of Living in the End Times today (and one proof I gave to the founder of ESM, to confuse him). It's on the pile with the new Bret Easton Ellis and DBC Pierre books.

ru going to review it?

give im hell imo

can i have the bret easton ellis one if ur not gonna read it?

I'm rarely bored around Zizek (tho too much exposure can tire you -- there's definitely a Zizek formula).

― Mordy, Tuesday, 18 May 2010 20:11 (6 days ago)

It is not so much that Zisek has a formula, as that formulaity itself has an essential Zizekianness.

Cute, tho the real Zizekian twist would be that it is only by expressing something in formula that one actually expresses something radical and revolutionary.

at the end of history, all we can do is ceaselessly post about Animal Collective on an internet message board

this guy has used mountains of cocaine.

i really hate / do not get lacan.

We don't really have a rolling philosophy thread (maybe we should), so I'm not sure where to put this but:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/184467617X?ie=UTF8&tag=crookedtimb04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=184467617X

New book that looks really interesting. Review in Crooked Timber here: http://crookedtimber.org/2010/06/16/envisioning-real-utopias-announcing-a-book-event-in-the-fall/

Hugely rich and stimulating, Envisioning Real Utopias is may books in one: an incisive diagnosis of the harms done by capitalism; a masterful synthesis of the best work in political sociology and political economy over the past thirty years; and innovative theoretical framework for conceptualizing both the goals of progressive change and the strategies for their achievement; and inspiring story of actually existing challenges to capitalism that have arisen within capitalism itself; and a compelling essay on the relation between the desirable, the viable and the achievable. Anyone interested in the future of leftist politics has to read this book.

That last bit, about actual existing challenges, is what piques my interest.

We don't really have a rolling philosophy thread (maybe we should)

let's do it up

fwiw, that book looks super interesting

this bro doesn't sound like he does philosophy (not a zing, js)

this bro = the guy who wrote the book, not ksh

he does conceptualize though

and what is philosophy, if not conceptualizing

take it to the philosophy thread