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

even the biggest fans of his I've met fully accept that he talks shit half the time, I guess I've done well steering clear of the baduns.

his, uh, posting style, has really taken off. i guess it's not entirely him -- it's a tradition of hegelian/dialectical thought, and i get a similar vibe from some other cultural/philosophical marxist thinkers. but he's the current model. so saying something that [something completely paradoxical] is 'precisely' the case is something he and his followers do a lot, but they aren't the first.

ah yes, the preciselys and exactlys are always good for wtfs and lols.

ok @ zizek being interviewed about this bk on Newsnight...

wow that quote is great. i hope he titles that book "Hegel Hegel Hegel" and i will promise to read it.

shane danielsen is a bit of a blowhard, but he's on-point here:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/shane_danielsen_among_the_grifters/

and yeah it does sort of relate to hegel and avatar

tbf, Zizek didn't pretend to see Avatar, he admitted upfront that he didn't see it and his points on the film were about as meaningful as the arguments of a lot of people who had seen it. also, he wasn't rendering critical judgement about whether it was good or not, just discussing the incredibly obvious and well-worn plot.

he admitted upfront that he didn't see it

i don't think he did:

http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2010/03/avatar-reality-love-couple-sex

the point is, the plot may be transformed by the treatment (it wasn't)

hmmm. somehow he let people know. when i saw the link to the piece, the link mentioned Zizek hadn't seen the film.

(nb i saw the link right when the piece came out)

he mentioned it in cahiers du cinema. dunno when that came out in relation to the new statesman piece. n e ways, it's a question of ethics. coz of course i wouldn't talk about hegel w/o having read every last word of the motherfucker.

lol, really? cause i think everyone who has talked about hegel has done so without reading every word of his

no not really! jeez, srsly. have seen 'the abyss' tho.

lol, i thought u were joking but imbedded in context of jerks who review movies without seeing them, it's hard to tell

fwiw, someone should review Zizek not yet published Hegel book

lol yes brilliant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

Argh, I fact-checked an article about Zizek the other day. I'm sure his stuff is fun to think about, but it's not easily summarized.

watched that animation (and the David Harvey one, which was also p. good) with my friend the other day. but then we got really weirded out when we went to the website for 'Cognitive Media' (the company that produces these things) and saw a bunch of testimonials from BP and GE execs about how well their presentations went over... sorta funny.

Great profile pieces about Zizek: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,705164,00.html

What is increasingly emerging as the central human right in late-capitalist societies is the right not to be harassed, which is the right to be kept at a safe distance from others. A terrorist whose deadly plans should be prevented belongs in Guantánamo, the empty zone exempted from the rule of law; a fundamentalist ideologist should be silenced because he spreads hatred. Such people are toxic subjects who disturb my peace.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/03/immigration-policy-roma-rightwing-europe

nice leap from 'people don't want to be blown up' to 'people want terrorists locked up without charge.'

n e ways, kinda fatuous all round really, but interesting (in this context) to see the full-blown christian bit at the end

I don't think Zizek is condemning the impulse to lock terrorists up, but locating these individuals in this extrageographic space, outside the country, an "empty zone exempted from the rule of law," it's that we can't even imprison them in our nation-state midst. their very proximity is "toxic" and disturbs the peace (obv this is referring to imprisonment because a terrorist act wouldn't just be 'disturbing the peace').

yeah there's nothing wrong with criticizing guantanamo. it's a p mainstream position! but conflating the desire not to be harassed (which i don't think *is* being advanced as a 'central human right but whatevs) with guantanamo is effed up. in the real world we do lock up irl terrorists after jury trials. he's yoking two things together, but while we're there, yeah, terrorists are kind of toxic. if fundamentalist ideologists are really so hated and marginalized, how the fuck does he explain glenn beck (or, you know, himself?).

Well, I haven't gotten a chance to read the whole thing, but Zizek's general thing is that toxicity isn't a bad thing. He's praised terrorists before for mounting serious challenges to the hegemony + stuff like that, so I imagine this will to not be bothered isn't a net "good thing."

He's praised terrorists before for mounting serious challenges to the hegemony

ah

mm

k

hope they challenge his hegemony tbrr

there is nothing a priori wrong with praising acts of terrorism. sometimes it is absolutely necessary.

you can just replace your spare parts if you get blown up though :(

we are not robots.

however, we do believe that in the in the machine there is much to emulate. and soon when the technology has advanced enough we shall merge with the machine.

hegemony mayne

DANGER WILL ROBINSON

until then, terrorist acts will be occasionally be called for. not necessarily with bombs, however. nor with computer viruses. it will be a terrorism of ideas.

memerrorism, we call it.

we, robots

yeah i think dom tried that, look where it got him xp

3/5 iirc

nice leap from 'people don't want to be blown up' to 'people want terrorists locked up without charge.'

― laughing out loud lol (history mayne), Monday, 4 October 2010 10:17 (7 hours ago)

thart's a bit of a wilful misreading.

zizek at this point is like telemann writing hundreds of subtly different concertos w/ material endlessly recycled, but that's a pretty good article.

"The others are OK, I respect them," the liberals say, "but they must not intrude too much on my own space. The moment they do, they harass me – I fully support affirmative action, but I am in no way ready to listen to loud rap music."

lol

thart's a bit of a wilful misreading.

no it isn't, read it again

idk, seems tarded to me, i don't think many european liberals are in favour of affirmative action

not sure where zizek stands on either that or rap music

i think you 'know what he means'

i imagine zizek is in no way ready to listen to loud rap music

when he says wanting beer without alcohol is like wanting outsiders without the danger, what does he mean?

i don't think slavoj even gets his facts right here. like, a lot.

Incidents like these have to be seen against the background of a long-term rearrangement of the political space in western and eastern Europe. Until recently, most European countries were dominated by two main parties that addressed the majority of the electorate: a right-of-centre party (Christian Democrat, liberal-conservative, people's) and a left-of-centre party (socialist, social-democratic), with smaller parties (ecologists, communists) addressing a narrower electorate.

Recent electoral results in the west as well as in the east signal the gradual emergence of a different polarity. There is now one predominant centrist party that stands for global capitalism, usually with a liberal cultural agenda (for example, tolerance towards abortion, gay rights, religious and ethnic minorities). Opposing this party is an increasingly strong anti-immigrant populist party which, on its fringes, is accompanied by overtly racist neofascist groups.

i don't think this is true.

After decades of hope held out by the welfare state, when financial cuts were sold as temporary, and sustained by a promise that things would soon return to normal,

hard to tell which events in which countries he means, but i'm p sure those anti- the welfare state were never saying things would return to normal.

we are entering a new epoch in which crisis – or, rather, a kind of economic state of emergency, with its attendant need for all sorts of austerity measures (cutting benefits, diminishing health and education services, making jobs more temporary) is permanent. Crisis is becoming a way of life.

"a kind of economic state of emergency" dude where the f have you been 08 - now. "crisis is becoming a way of life," you say? how could have possibly have happened.

goole I think yr quibbling

i ain't quibbling with shit! there's a whole pile of rong here

also as far as how this ties into the larger body of his thought, I think maybe the more important point is that, as he writes somewhere, the 'liberal progressives' already sorta-won this fight, in the sense that it's no longer cool to be openly racist or xenophobic... but now they (we?) have trouble conceiving of effective political action on any level beyond the purely reactionary condemnation of 'populist racism'/fundamentalism/whatever, i.e. turning our attention to the messy 'structural inequalities' that somehow seem to persist without anyone (that we know of?) consciously saying "hey I wanna make sure fucktons of black kids end up in jail" or w/e

I don't think zizek would, like, deny that the economic crisis was a real thing that was going on in 08, he's just saying that the character of the public response has changed as people stopped deluding themselves that it was gonna be 2001 pt.2

oh sure, zizek is the only person who's noticed. no-one else has seen that there is a structural bias in society against immigrants.

xpost

he's just saying that the character of the public response has changed as people stopped deluding themselves that it was gonna be 2001 pt.2

this is irrelevant in europe; 2001 wasn't anything like the recent crisis, barely a blip. in the uk this is more like the end of the 1970s. the common cliche about the continent is that they never had their thatcher, so idk how the 1970s played out for them.