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

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....Because I'm rereading "How Did Marx Invent The Symptom?" and thinking of diving into other parts of "The Sublime Object Of Ideology". And it is quite clear that i <3 Slavoj and he is my favourite guy EVAH.

But what do y'all think?

― Tim, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

I haven't read much of his stuff. What I have read I've found to be too Lacanian for my taste. His style is a bit too glib for my taste, and I'm not big on Leninism, so his politics seem a bit dodgy to me. _The Ticklish Subject_ has some useful stuff in it, but is deeply eccentric in other places. He is, of course, wrong about Derrida ;-)

― alext, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

I had never heard of him until the bookstore in my building got in like 5 of his books. He has, at least, earned the Josh-wants-t-buy-one-of-your-books seal of approval. The stacks on my floor will tell you that this isn't all that special an honor though.

― Josh, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

good on hegel (= lacan) => t.eagleton claims to like him but of course does not understand him like wot i do => written several good pieces on sitch in yugoslavia => really actually has watched (and liked) the popcult material he uses to explain eg psychoanalysis, which makes a nice change (f.jameson please copy)

― mark s, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

N. Barley to thread! "Had that Zizek in the back of my mini once."

― Tim, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

"His style is a bit too glib for my taste"

His style is exactly glib enough for my taste. Connections between Marx and the Marx Brothers are CHEAP but also NECESSARY.

― Tim, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

I did too. What a luvverly man. Bought me a cup of tea as we waited at Manchester Airport for his plane. Was picking him up and then taking him back after an academic conference.

I like him, but then I'm a bugger for a bit of post-Althusserian Lacanian-Marxism. And anyone who hates Heidegger and can't be doing with Derrida can't be all bad. He is also responsible for my liking of Zlatko Zahovic and the Slovenian football team. Mind you, his article in the latest London Review of Books was a bit pisspoor. His one on the Matrix was ded ded good though.

Was also the day when Chesterfield wuz robbed in the FA Cup Semi- final in 1997. Memories...

― Nathan Barley, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

In the post-Althusserian Marxist stakes, I've found more useful stuff in Ranciere than in Zizek or Badiou, but maybe I haven't looked hard enough...

― alext, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Actually, I think I really meant by 'glib' the places where Zizek says stuff like: "The truly radical assertion of historical contingency has to include the dialectical tension between the domain of historical change itself and its traumatic 'ahistorical' kernel qua its condition of (im)possibility. Here we have the difference between historicity proper and historicism: historicism deals with the endless play of substitutions within the same fundamental field of (im)possibility while historicity proper makes thematic different structural principles of this very (im)possibility. In other words, the historicist theme of the endless open play of substitutions is the very form of ahistorical ideological closure: by focusing on the simple dyad essentialism-contingency, on the passage from one to the other, it obfuscates concrete historicity qua the change of the very global structuring principle of the Social."

― alext, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

who is he and does he like beigels

― anthony, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

You know, I had to read "The Sublime Object of Ideology" for a class, and I totally have forgotten all of it. But I'm a dummy. So. That's pretty much expected.

― mandee, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

He's a silly old bore who won't shut up.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Hi PF, how ya been?

― Mandee, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Pinefox I still love you!

― Josh, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Quoth Nathan: Mind you, his article in the latest London Review of Books was a bit pisspoor.

This is about all I've read by Zizek, who my Derridean prof brother calls 'a nutter'. But I thought it was pretty good. I welcome anyone who helps me think freshly about subjects, especially when they introduce new (or revived, freshly contextualised) concepts. The Zizek piece in the LRB has several:

Homo Sacer: 'It designated, in ancient Roman law, someone who could be killed with impunity and whose death had, for the same reason, no sacrificial value. Today, as a term denoting exclusion, it can be seen to apply not only to terrorists, but also to those who are on the receiving end of humanitarian aid'.

(In other words, people seen as having diminished responsibility, adult children who can be either tortured or aided by states seeing themselves as the embodiment of rationality. To bring it closer to home, Mr Barley, compare the TV Go Home joke about TV producers who treat their audiences as 'homo sacer'.)

Einbildungskraft: Zizek brings this from Kant by way of Carl Schmidt. of substance, in a formless, infinite plasticity.) ''Enemy recognition' is always a performative procedure which brings to light/constructs the enemy's 'true face'.'

Capitonnage: Borrowed from Lacan, literally the 'quilting point'. Zizek uses it as a term for 'the operation by means of which we identify/construct a sole agency that 'pulls the strings' behind a multitude of opponents.'

'Thus Stalinism in the 1930s constructed the agency of Imperialist Monopoly Capital to prove that Fascists and Social Democrats ('Social Fascists') are 'twin brothers', the 'left and right hand of monopoly capital'. Thus Nazism constructed the 'plutocratic- Bolshevik plot' as the common agent threatening the welfare of the German nation.

And thus, Zizek contends, we are now seeing a spurious grouping of greens with terrorists in the minds of some American commentators and politicians.

This is a pretty rich haul of rather interesting ideas for one article, it seems to me, and quite the opposite of, for instance, the technique and politics of Garry Wills' piece about pedophile priests, which dismissed a lot of progressive-liberal thinking on the subject based on a use (rather than a discussion) of these techniques:

Capitonnage: Wills, like a politician, wanted to show that there was a liberal- pedophile plot, thus stringing together his two opponents, corrupt clerics and 'permissives'.

Homo Sacer: He also treated the priests themselves like 'homo sacer', people of diminished responsibility, insisting on their 'infantilization' -- in his argument, by their mothers. But, seen through the lens of

'Einbildungskraft', by the performative procedure of his own characterisation of them).

I guess this makes Wills a politician, and Zizek a thinker. Although, interestingly, Zizek ran as a presidential candidate in the Slovenian elections. So I suppose they're both politicians, but one (Zizek) is making up his ideology as he goes, showing all working, the other (Wills) using a prefab ideology (Catholicism).

― Momus, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

...et en avant la Zizek!

― The Hegemon, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Article ain't bad, tho it gives too much power to what most ppl (even those supporting resultant policy choices) recognize as very very stupid logic.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

"Momus, like a politician, wanted to show that Wills was a homophobe" etc etc

― mark s, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

but i wd rather eat my arm than reread that article or re-explain to you why you're still not reading it properly or fairly

― mark s, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Damn, I thought we were going to have some hot fun tonight with that one. Oh well, might as well go out and swing.

― Momus, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

i'm going to see le tigre tonight

― mark s, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

They'll braise and eat Mark's arm for him?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Momus is playing in Denver on June 28th. Should I go?

― Mandee, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Was also the day when Chesterfield wuz robbed in the FA Cup Semi- final in 1997. Memories...

*sobs* a lot

I'd tried to erase that day from my memory, thanks a lot Barley!!!

― chris, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

To Mandee -- yes, go. It should be a fun show and I'm interested in seeing his stable of artistes. ;-)

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

3 years pass...

well, it's interesting, anyway.

zizek is a leninist, a means-to-an-ends kind of guy, so his stance here is unexpected.

of 24: "It is here that we encounter the series' ideological lie: in spite of the CTU's ruthlessness, its agents, especially Bauer, are warm human beings - loving, caught in the emotional dilemmas of ordinary people."

which begs the question: well, can't ruthless people also be loving fathers? s/z's answer is:

"As Arendt says, the fact that they are able to retain any normality while committing such acts is the ultimate confirmation of moral depravity."

i can't help finding his paradoxes (and there are umpteen more in the article) a bit fortune cookie. isn't the ultimate confirmation of moral depravity the morally depraved act itself? likewise, do we need his thoughts on 'why is cheney telling us this' -- isn't the fact of torture enough?

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 09:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

i think it's really that everything in zizek's universe fits together -- does he believe in some idea of 'totality'? the paradoxes are only possible because the terms are 'equal' in some way. anyway, i suppose i don't think everything fits together.

― Real Goths Don't Wear Black (Enrique), Monday, 3 April 2006 10:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think the article makes sense but zizek is almost totally naturalised for me now. I'm not sure if he thinks that the above are paradoxes as such. Although it's typical of his taste for everything dialectical (real-dialectical or fake-dialectial) to construct what appear to be paradoxes.

But the main point is fairly straightforward. The means-to-an-end argument, when it comes to torture, boils down to "do what you need to do, then pay the price later." But by implying that torture has no price for those who practice it, legal or emotional, 24 to some extent moves the issue beyond mere means-to-an-end - there's no longer any moral balancing going on at all. It simply becomes "this is what we do." Torture becomes unfortunate but no longer morally troubling. The notion that this somehow goes to a person's guilt and depravity is popularly accepted in the entrenchment of the consideration of remorse as a mitigating factor in sentencing for crimes.

It's basically the same argument w/r/t Cheney openly justifying what was formerly tacitly permitted: this does violence to the notion that there is a price to be paid for these actions, that there is a price that should be paid. The point is not merely to bring formerly hidden acts out into the open, but to disrupt and overturn the systems of understandings that necessitated the acts be hidden. A government which has to hide its torture is one which submits to the notion that, strictly speaking, what is being done is wrong. And there is always the possibility that the torture will be publicly exposed, resulting in loss of face and power for the ruling government.

The hiding at least pays lipservice to the notion that what is happening is morally reprehensible (as Mac says on Commander In Chief, "I don't want to hear that he was tortured"). What is changed in publicly announcing the use of torture is not necessarily the seriousness of the acts of torture committed (which, perhaps in the short-term, does not increase), but the system of morality within which that act is situated, and the system of power relationships. The Government says "you can no longer hold your avowed distaste for torture over me"; if the public does nothing at this stage, it effectively acknowledges "I accept your use of the torture as morally defensible."

I think that the ramifications for "society" in this are pretty huge, and that it's therefore right for Zizek to argue that the consideration of the moral depravity of an act can go beyond the act itself and extend to how it is framed in discourse.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 3 April 2006 13:56 (7 years ago) Permalink

tim the point about zizek being naturalized is nice -- i feel the same way. like the sort of category work and relationships he works with are pretty much integrated into how i look at things by now so i get much less out of reading more of him.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 3 April 2006 14:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

isn't that really because he's extremely repetitive? it's fairly easy to naturalize someone who runs a lacan script on everything he comes across.

― Real Goths Don't Wear Black (Enrique), Monday, 3 April 2006 14:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

"tim the point about zizek being naturalized is nice -- i feel the same way. like the sort of category work and relationships he works with are pretty much integrated into how i look at things by now so i get much less out of reading more of him. "

I wouldn't go that far because I haven't really gotten to the "make your own zizekian argument" stage. But yeah his stuff (esp. these sorts of arguments) feels very familiar now, you sort of know where it's going immediately.

Yeah he is very repetitive, and not just in terms of overall approach but in terms of specific detail - the analogy of the husband and the wife who have the tacit agreement w/r/t his infidelity is in half a dozen other books by him. For me it's really all about the world-building of the first two big books (The Sublime Object and For They Know Not What They Do).

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 3 April 2006 14:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

one thing i like tho is how sometimes when he revisits the same things (parsifal, etc) you can tell he's thought more and added new nuances and twists since the last time he wrote about them.

(of course, he also coasts in other things too, but then that's more an element of not seeing himself as a "theoretician" so much as a sort of gadfly polemicist)

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 3 April 2006 15:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah that's right. It was really annoying last year when I was writing my big essay on him and I'd have this vague memory of him phrasing something really perfectly (w/r/t, oh I dunno, why lukacs secretly rocks or something) and having to laboriously reread through seven different pieces on the exact same topic to try to find that precise phrase.

But cool that he'd thought enough about it to come up with that one perfect phrase.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 3 April 2006 15:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

as far as the thinking his way thing it doesn't happen to me all the time but i rememeber, e.g., watching pirates of the carribean and just instictively "reading" it in terms of a circuit of tokens and a few other times too -- also happened to me with pump up the volume. more frequent when i've read/thought about him recently, of course.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 3 April 2006 15:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

I just started the Routlegde Critical Thinkers: Zizek.

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Saturday, 13 May 2006 14:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n08/letters.html

excellent combination of bad faith and projection, well done.

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 12:16 (5 years ago) Permalink

it would be kind of interesting to see him deploy that argument w/r/t palestine though, also not an independent state pre-1948, etc etc etc

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 12:18 (5 years ago) Permalink

I agree that he is too understanding of China's policies, but I thought this paragraph was spot-on:

One of the main reasons so many people in the West participate in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly propagated by the Dalai Lama, is one of the chief points of reference for the hedonist New Age spirituality that has become so popular in recent times. Tibet has become a mythic entity onto which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of an authentic Tibetan way of life, it isn’t because they care about real Tibetans: what they want from Tibetans is that they be authentically spiritual for us, so that we can continue playing our crazy consumerist game. ‘Si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l’autre,’ Gilles Deleuze wrote, ‘vous êtes foutu.’ The protesters against China are right to counter the Beijing Olympic motto – ‘One World, One Dream’ – with ‘One World, Many Dreams’. But they should be aware that they are imprisoning Tibetans in their own dream.

There are other peoples the Chinese central government has oppressed as well, such as the Uyghurs, but since they don't have evoke similar imagery in Westerners as the Tibetans do, and don't have a charismatic leader like the Dalai Lama, they are mostly ignored. (Also, the Uyghurs happen to be mostly muslims, which of course makes them less likely to get much Western support.)

― Tuomas, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:15 (5 years ago) Permalink

it would be kind of interesting to see him deploy that argument w/r/t palestine though, also not an independent state pre-1948, etc etc etc

The difference is, though, that the Israeli government has done little if nothing to develop the Palestinian areas. I'm not trying to defend China here, but the two situations aren't that easily comparable.

― Tuomas, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:20 (5 years ago) Permalink

oh that bit about new-age hippies was what i meant by 'projection'; i suppose it might be true of some people who are actively pro-tibet, but most people seem to be against the occupation on more liberal grounds. just as many people who broadly support the palestinian cause might not be so keen on hamas.

zizek doesn't actually advance any evidence of this syndrome, anyway:

When people mourn the loss of an authentic Tibetan way of life, it isn’t because they care about real Tibetans: what they want from Tibetans is that they be authentically spiritual for us, so that we can continue playing our crazy consumerist game.

is just a standard zizek-y paradox. i'm sure he's used it before, conjoining it with the line from 'to be or not to be'; "the poles do the camping, we do the concentrating."

i'm not saying palestine corresponds with tibet 1:1, but zizek's take on it is likely to be 180 degress from his take here -- namely that the occupier is right, and the vocal support for a religio-nationalist cause is wrong.

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:26 (5 years ago) Permalink

Tibetan Buddhism, deftly propagated by the Dalai Lama, is one of the chief points of reference for the hedonist New Age spirituality that has become so popular in recent times.

This is bullshit as regards specifically Tibetan Buddhism, which strikes me as being way too particularist to offer much to New Age thinking. The Dalai Lama's charisma and media savvy has done far more to keep Tibet in the public consciousness of Western liberals. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of anti-Chinese government protests are grounded in issues other than Tibet. Amnesty's campaigns are one obvious example.

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:29 (5 years ago) Permalink

Plenty of Stalin apologists argued that he was only liquidating horrible reactionaries, too.

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:30 (5 years ago) Permalink

Yes to the Dalai Lama's media profile keeping it in public consciousness - linked to strong idea of Tibet as a separate occupied country, a profile that abkhazia, dagestan, kurdistan, don't have - kosovo being the anomaly here (but western govts wanted kosovar independence, rather than western people - so a bit of a red herring?)

Aren't Uyghar's in a minority in Xianjiang?

― laxalt, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:39 (5 years ago) Permalink

laxalt, by that i'm guessing you think none of these countries deserve independence? pretty blatantly in the case of kosovo.

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:41 (5 years ago) Permalink

bringing the opinion of 'western people' is a huge red herring, really, but i'd have thought those western people who have heard of kosovo will generally recall why its independence from serbia could be seen as a good thing for the people of kosovo.

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:43 (5 years ago) Permalink

No that isn't what I mean. (also wether Western Govt's wanted Kosovar independence or not shouldn't make that independence any more or less desirable per se)

I'm not suggesting any of these countries either deserve or don't deserve independence (just that western policy towards Kosovo was unusual as the usual state of affairs is to preseve integrity of the nation state).

Its more that I was trying to suggest that Tibet has a higher profile as an actual occupied state in western minds, whereas the others are probably thought of as regions - and that itself must be at least partially responsible for pro-Tibetan feeling in the west.

― laxalt, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:46 (5 years ago) Permalink

Surely one of the Kosovans' core claims to independence is that Kosova corresponds to what a nation-state is supposed to be?

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:50 (5 years ago) Permalink

yeah, undeniably. though again: palestine is fairly prominent in the west. those other places barely even register as names, kurdistan excepted. i think there's some kind of insinuation threaded through this line -- i don't know what it is exactly, but my main reaction is 'so what?'

western policy towards Kosovo was unusual as the usual state of affairs is to preseve integrity of the nation state

greater serbia wasn't a nation state. plus the west had been operating in the former yugoslavia pre-1999. plus it was the west (germany) that encouraged its break-up.

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:51 (5 years ago) Permalink

I'm curious as to why Zizek is someone you guys read/talk about? Is he someone you read in school, and if so in what course of study? Or is he a big public intellectual in the UK or Australia or somewhere, and in those places public intellectuals are taken seriously? I'm just ignorant but curious, not trying to be snarky.

― Euler, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:52 (5 years ago) Permalink

-- Euler, Saturday, April 19, 2008 2:52 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

he's definitely a prominent public intellectual -- ie he doesn't just address a specialist philosophy audience. (there is a q-mark over what his specialism is, perhaps.)

there've been about four films made about him, he gets new yorker profiles done on him, he gets into the LRB, guardian, etc, and he publishes a lot.

he's achieved this mostly post-9/11 and i was at uni before then and anyway he doesn't have much to say on my subject (history).

as for public intellectuals being taken seriously -- britain has often perceived itself as not giving intellectuals their due, in comparison with france where they alledgedly have a bigger public profile.

― banriquit, Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:57 (5 years ago) Permalink

Skipping 802 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

It's possible that we're all overthinking this guy. I think he's basically a philosophical troll who says a lot of left-field shit to make you say, "huh...?" At first, you're like, "hey, maybe he's right..." but then the more you think about it, the more you say, "I'm not even sure what he's saying." And then you go, "Huh. Do *I* even know what *I'm* talking about?"

The guy's entire schtick is to disrupt your confidence in your critical thinking skills and educational background, and disorient you to the point where you don't even know your relationship to the world anymore.

― Poliopolice, Monday, 11 February 2013 17:54 (3 months ago) Permalink

imho not so

― Mordy, Monday, 11 February 2013 17:55 (3 months ago) Permalink

However, in practice, this classification became more and more blurred and inoperative: in the generalized poverty, clear criteria no longer applied, and peasants in the other two categories often joined poliopolices in their resistance to forced collectivization. An additional category was thus introduced, that of a “subpoliopolice,” a peasant who, although too poor to be considered a poliopolice proper, nonetheless shared the poliopolice “counter‐revolutionary” attitude. “Subpoliopolice” was thus a term without any real social content even by Stalinist standards, but merely rather unconvincingly masquerading as such. As was officially stated, “by ‘poliopolice,’ we mean the carrier of certain political tendencies which are most frequently discernible in the subpoliopolice, male and female.” By this means, any peasant whatever was liable to depoliopoliceisation; and the “subpoliopolice” notion was widely employed, enlarging the category of victims greatly beyond the official estimate of poliopolices proper even at its most strained.
The “subpoliopolice” was thus the paradoxical intersection of species: a subspecies of the species “poliopolices” whose members came from the other two species. As such, “subpoliopolice” was the embodiment of the ideological lie (falsity) of the entire “objective” classification of farmers into three categories: its function was to account for the fact that all strata of farmers, not only the wealthy ones, resisted collectivization. No wonder that the official ideologists and economists finally gave up trying to provide an “objective” definition of poliopolice: “The grounds given in one Soviet comment are that ‘the old attitudes of a poliopolice have almost disappeared, and the new ones do not lend themselves to recognition.’" The art of identifying a poliopolice was thus no longer a matter of objective social analysis; it became the matter of a complex “hermeneutics of suspicion,” of identifying an individual’s “true political attitudes” hidden beneath their deceptive public proclamations, so that Pravda had to concede that “even the best activists often cannot spot the poliopolice."

― administrator galina (Matt P), Monday, 11 February 2013 18:00 (3 months ago) Permalink

polio police

― Women, Fire, and Dangerous Zings (silby), Monday, 11 February 2013 18:01 (3 months ago) Permalink

not to be a jerk, but if your analysis begins from a point of non-comprehension and tries to critically position that confusion as being the point itself, it might be better to have some humility and work on understanding the work b4 adopting that kind of meta-hermeneutic.

― Mordy, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:02 (3 months ago) Permalink

all these so-called "philosophers" do is speak a bunch of mumbo jumbo!!

― Arty, Noisy, Weird, Funky, Punky Pope (crüt), Monday, 11 February 2013 18:05 (3 months ago) Permalink

I'm well versed in both philosophy and sociology. But it's my opinion that this guy is more an entertainer and bullshit artist than anything else. For what it's worth, he's good at both.

― Poliopolice, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:09 (3 months ago) Permalink

it's not always a bad interpretive move and i think writers like adorno are trying to push against comprehension (or at least entire a poetic dialectical mode that resists full comprehension) but a) zizek i found very easy to comprehend compared to idk hegel/derrida/deleuze/aforementioned adorno and b) it's a move that should be made in very limited circumstances and should not replace more traditional interpretative inquiries.

― Mordy, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:10 (3 months ago) Permalink

>not to be a jerk, but if your analysis begins from a point of non-comprehension and tries to critically position that confusion as being the point itself, it might be better to have some humility and work on understanding the work b4 adopting that kind of meta-hermeneutic.

your argument is based on the assumption that there is something to understand, which is 100% inconsistent with my point. I think what he does is theater.

― Poliopolice, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:13 (3 months ago) Permalink

i don't assume that there is something to understand. i read his works and find it very accessible and understandable.

― Mordy, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:14 (3 months ago) Permalink

I'm not talking about the accessibility or understandability of his words. I'm talking about the general inscrutability of the arguments that he makes. I have a hard time believing that even he believe half the stuff he says.

― Poliopolice, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:21 (3 months ago) Permalink

i agree that Z is admirably clear, but then maybe im not the best judge of that. i may have quoted this upthread at some point but i always liked how he explained his fascination for the "idiocy" of popular films: "The idiot for whom I endeavor to formulate a theoretical point as clearly as possible is ultimately myself."

― ryan, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:26 (3 months ago) Permalink

again, i do not find his arguments inscrutable in the least. is there a particular argument you are having trouble - uh - scrutinizing?

― Mordy, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:27 (3 months ago) Permalink

i do think there's perhaps a larger point to all this about "performativity" and all that with regard to contemporary critical theory/philosophy. derrida is a good example since he basically lays out his program in first few books (albeit it's not the easiest thing in the world to grasp, but he is trying to be clear) while his later stuff (simplifying greatly) is basically "performing" that program over and over.

― ryan, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:30 (3 months ago) Permalink

since i'm technically a performance studies guy i think that paradigm applies to all philosophers + everyone really and that zizek is not an exception

― Mordy, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:35 (3 months ago) Permalink

absolutely. what's that great quine quotes? "what i am saying applies in particular to what i am saying"

― ryan, Monday, 11 February 2013 18:37 (3 months ago) Permalink

In any case there is a critical aspect. So much of what Z does is asking questions and undermining earlier established arguments. Fewer answers of his own, and often tentatively put forth ('is it not the case?' and so on) That doesn't neccessarily mean his dumber than other philosophers, he might just be more humble (I very much prefer to read him as an ongoing critical-philosophical performance, just as I much prefer Lacan's performative seminars to his 'grander' Ecrits)

― Frederik B, Monday, 11 February 2013 20:20 (3 months ago) Permalink

"is it not the case" is just an affectation.

― s.clover, Monday, 11 February 2013 20:38 (3 months ago) Permalink

Yeah if anything the purpose of "is it not the case" is the opposite of humility really, it's to give his conclusions the air of an unavoidable logical deduction.

Typically the only parts of Zizek books I find really difficult to decipher are when he digs deep into Hegel and German idealists, and given they're the only parts, I'm willing to assume until proven otherwise that my difficulties are really with Hegel etc. rather than with Zizek.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 12 February 2013 05:53 (3 months ago) Permalink

you can play the usual game of pretending to understand Hegel; iirc that's what everyone has always done

― Women, Fire, and Dangerous Zings (silby), Tuesday, 12 February 2013 07:07 (3 months ago) Permalink

I think one of the problems there is that Zizek renders Lacan and Hegel fundamentally indistinguishable, especially confusing cuz it's Hegel resting on Lacanian structuralism rather than vice versa. But I dunno.

Hegel himself, SIMPLE.

― hot young stalin (Merdeyeux), Tuesday, 12 February 2013 12:43 (3 months ago) Permalink

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/14/valentines-day-is-romance-dead

― markers, Thursday, 14 February 2013 14:42 (3 months ago) Permalink

One of these things is not like the other

― Gukbe, Thursday, 14 February 2013 15:22 (3 months ago) Permalink

that's so awesome.

― s.clover, Thursday, 14 February 2013 15:40 (3 months ago) Permalink

although, if you strip out all the stylistic tics and provocation and get down to the core argument, we're basically left with a sienfeld joke. which is awesome too, i guess.

― s.clover, Friday, 15 February 2013 14:30 (3 months ago) Permalink

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/17/free-market-fundamentalists-think-2013-best

― markers, Sunday, 17 February 2013 21:43 (3 months ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

Has this (kinda nsfw) already been discussed?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36429575/A-F-2003-Back-to-School

― sktsh, Sunday, 17 March 2013 13:06 (2 months ago) Permalink

i hadn't seen that before but i think it's telling that by the end i was skipping through the pages of pornography in order to get to the next zizek remark; i think he would be happy to agree that the philosopher unpacking sex is- like mathematics - much sexier than the naked nudist bodies simulating sex.

― Mordy, Sunday, 17 March 2013 14:18 (2 months ago) Permalink

shit, why not have a cake and eat it too?

― j., Sunday, 17 March 2013 18:20 (2 months ago) Permalink

*fuck it

― c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le beurre (imago), Sunday, 17 March 2013 19:27 (2 months ago) Permalink

this just made me think about zizek having sex :-/

― ryan, Sunday, 17 March 2013 19:59 (2 months ago) Permalink

lol otm

― Woody Ellen (Matt P), Sunday, 17 March 2013 20:54 (2 months ago) Permalink

"I spent literally 10 minutes on this assignment, just free-associating. I was in theoretical despair!"

― s.clover, Monday, 18 March 2013 00:13 (2 months ago) Permalink

free t-shirts, no doubt

― j., Monday, 18 March 2013 00:14 (2 months ago) Permalink

4 weeks pass...

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/04/simple-courage-decision-leftist-tribute-thatcher

― markers, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 18:16 (1 month ago) Permalink

ha it's like he basically took Critchley's critique of him and decided to make it explicit.

― ryan, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 18:18 (1 month ago) Permalink

― crdbl (admrl), Sunday, 21 April 2013 21:32 (1 month ago) Permalink

classic video

― markers, Sunday, 21 April 2013 21:40 (1 month ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

https://twitter.com/MarikaRose/status/332898683614019585

― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:13 (1 week ago) Permalink

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=4302541&boardid=77&threadid=67478

― there is no special cathexis with mini fried donuts (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:15 (1 week ago) Permalink

lool

― markers, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:29 (1 week ago) Permalink

― markers, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:30 (1 week ago) Permalink

Cocaine users are 45% more likely to develop glaucoma (blindness) even if they’ve given up the drug.

People who take cocaine or are former users are 45 per cent more likely to develop a common form of blindness, a large study has found.

Researchers also found they developed glaucoma 20 years earlier on average than patients without a history of drug use.

A study of 5.3million people by the Veterans Health Administration, in Indianapolis, found glaucoma patients with a history of cocaine use were on average only 54-years-old. This compared to patients with no history of class A drug abuse who were around 73-years-old.

Study leader Dr Dustin French, from the Regenstrief Institute, said: ‘The association of illegal drug use with open-angle glaucoma requires further study, but if the relationship is confirmed, this understanding could lead to new strategies to prevent vision loss.’

― there is no special cathexis with mini fried donuts (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:34 (1 week ago) Permalink

:-(

― Treeship, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:35 (1 week ago) Permalink

do you read zizek, treeship?

― markers, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:36 (1 week ago) Permalink

i read the sublime object of ideology and liked it, but then my friend told me that the stuff i liked about it was mostly just ripped off of althusser. i like reading interviews and things with him, and once i saw him in starbucks in princeton, nj.

― Treeship, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:39 (1 week ago) Permalink

http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745628974

― markers, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:43 (1 week ago) Permalink

that seems like a good book to get a structural overview of where he is coming from in a broad sense, re. his lacanian/hegelian marxism which places a lot of emphasis on teasing out paradoxes and contradictions in cultural and political texts. when i read zizek, i find him really entertaining but sometimes i get confused about what larger project his critiques are supposed to serve. i guess this project is "communism" defined as a "reawakened belief in the possibility of collective action," but that seems a bit nebulous, maybe, for a political thinker. idk, i'll bookmark that page and try to check out that book someday, thanks

― Treeship, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:48 (1 week ago) Permalink

maybe leaf through this at a library or something http://www.amazon.com/Zizek-Critical-Introduction-Sarah-Kay/dp/0745622089/

― markers, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:50 (1 week ago) Permalink

haven't seen this before http://www.amazon.com/The-Zizek-Dictionary-R-Butler/dp/1844655822/

― markers, Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:51 (1 week ago) Permalink

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