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

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.

also I think that, from the late-70s onward (the first 401(k)s appeared in 1981), the kind of "welfare state" zizek is talking about has functioned by continually drawing a greater proportion of individual 'savings' into the financial markets, thus allowing a whole bunch of pro-business policies to pass under the "rising tide lifts all boats!" promise that booming stock market now = comfy life for you and your grandkids

I'm a little fucked-up tho and just throwin' shit onto the board to see what sticks

obviously the picture I paint (in discussing this article about europe with someone from the uk...) is highly americacentric

After the disintegration of the communist regimes in 1990, we entered a new era in which the predominant form of the exercise of state power became a depoliticised expert administration and the co-ordination of interests. The only way to introduce passion into this kind of politics...,

ok hold up here -- "passion" enters into politics of its own accord whether pols like it or not. what's the implication here? a basic marxian one i guess -- if folks weren't all skeered by various specters paraded by the official parties (enumerated below) they would be agitated by their basic material deprivation eg revolutionary. this is base level but i think that just isn't so. the animating passions of the electorate/the people/whatev may be gross bullshit but it's not fake

the only way to actively mobilise people, is through fear: the fear of immigrants, the fear of crime, the fear of godless sexual depravity, the fear of the excessive state (with its burden of high taxation and control), the fear of ecological catastrophe, as well as the fear of harassment (political correctness is the exemplary liberal form of the politics of fear).

last sentence is a beaut -- old line marxist contempt for interest-group politicking in a polivalent social space. "political correctness" (if it exists) is not about fear, it's about power (to force the terms of how people talk about you)

Such a politics always relies on the manipulation of a paranoid multitude – the frightening rallying of frightened men and women. This is why the big event of the first decade of the new millennium was when anti-immigration politics went mainstream and finally cut the umbilical cord that had connected it to far right fringe parties. From France to Germany, from Austria to Holland, in the new spirit of pride in one's cultural and historical identity, the main parties now find it acceptable to stress that immigrants are guests who have to accommodate themselves to the cultural values that define the host society – "it is our country, love it or leave it" is the message.

eh fair enough. point seems obvious to me tho: lots of people are kinda racist and always have been.

would you agree that 'the electorate' seems to get much more 'passionate' about whatever BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL (or TOTALLY UNAMERICAN) shit the other side is trying to pull of than about, like, how the medicare prescription drug benefit works?

point seems obvious to me tho: lots of people are kinda racist and always have been.

― goole, Monday, October 4, 2010 5:57 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

[T]he development of racism within the working class (which, to committed socialists and communists, seems counter to the natural order of things) comes to be seen as the effect of a tendency allegedly inherent in the masses, Institutional racism finds itself projected into the very construction of that psycho-sociological category that is 'the masses'.