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

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbhhjdb8qR1qdcvb4o1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1289237755&Signature=%2BUE33PGej4z76lXL1lyp%2B7iGy6k%3D

lol gross

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

Was this posted yet? It's awesome. I love it.

"Confuses Major Philosophers" -- does this mean that Slavoj Zizek gets major philosophers mixed up, or that major philosophers who are in attendance at the lecture feel confused?

"when Zizek critiques liberalism, which he does a lot, he almost always uses ‘liberal’ to mean, narrowly, economic neoliberalism. Forces of economic globalization. The Washington Consensus. Liberalism is: Sarkozy trying to make France more Anglo-ish. It’s never: John Rawls. I think it’s fair to say that Zizek is hereby basically strawman-ing liberal democracy, and liberalism qua political philosophy, by identifying both with the Washington Consensus. This is not only philosophically unsatisfactory but rhetorically odd, because Zizek ends up sounding weirdly like a Fox News commentator, talking trickle-down as if it were an Iron Law of Prosperity, under any conceivable, market-based system.

There is one major exception to Zizek’s liberalism = neoliberalism tendency: namely, he not infrequently uses ‘liberalism’ to refer to academic-style, ironist-relativistic multi-culti, feel-good pc leftism. Then he sounds sort of like P.J. O’Rourke yelling in your ear at a Laibach concert"

http://crookedtimber.org/2010/12/17/zizek-on-the-financial-collapse-and-liberalism/

It's a silly complaint since liberalism as it is practiced in America IS economic neoliberalism. People who oppose neoliberalism are either the detoothed hippies who cannot engage the system in a meaningful way, or the radical terrorists who move the battlefield from an economic confrontation to one of violent force. But if you're gonna take about liberal democracy in the US you have to talk about economic neoliberalism.

I think the whole "academic-style, ironist-relativistc, multi-culti, feel-good pc leftism" thing is better to challenge Zizek on, but is it surprising that a guy who mainly associates with the academy (and particularly with departments like NYU's German Dpt, or that silly Humanities in Europe program thingie) would harp on multi-culti, feel-good pc leftism? I remember a professor in grad school defending clitoridectomies on the basis of multiculturalism, so it's definitely possible to blow the sentiment out of proportion because of close exposure to one particular institution.

liberalism = liberal democracy = US liberal democracy = economic neoliberalism seems like a hell of conflating imo.

xp

liberalism occurs today (when it occurs and has power) as economic neoliberalism. is Badiou out there fighting against the entire system? yes. but arguably is not longer a 'liberal' in any meaningful sense anyway. i think Zizek's critique that liberalism occurs within economic neoliberalism is right on and is actually essential to understanding politics, particularly US politics. otherwise you're like the guys on the US Politics thread constantly being outraged that the "liberals" in office are perpetuating capitalist inequalities. or you can dismiss the romanticization and realize, "oh, hey, this is just another performance of economic neoliberalism"

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/slavoj-zizek/good-manners-in-the-age-of-wikileaks

p sure i could do zizeks job now

he should just make every political article a repeated copy and pasting of that time when he said he doesn't care about politics, only hegel. i'm down with that.

http://www.vbs.tv/en-gb/blog/slavoj-zizek-on-egypt

tariq ramadan trying to keep a straight face at this gurning performance had me lollin'

oh man this is gonna make my day

got a big lol out of the "reader email" asking zizek to explain his mao quote.

on my facebook favorite quotes at the moment:
"everything that keeps me together is falling apart. the situation is excellent." - modest mao

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/feb/10/egypt-miracle-tahrir-square

truly wretched performance, but at least he's being a bit more explicit these days

but doesn't zizek hate liberal democracy? i don't get how he now seems to be or for it

or maybe he really does thing the universal realm of indivisible oneness is at hand...

I thought that was mainly terrible, too, but this is very well put:

When President Obama welcomed the uprising as a legitimate expression of opinion that needs to be acknowledged by the government, the confusion was total: the crowds in Cairo and Alexandria did not want their demands to be acknowledged by the government, they denied the very legitimacy of the government. They didn't want the Mubarak regime as a partner in a dialogue, they wanted Mubarak to go. They didn't simply want a new government that would listen to their opinion, they wanted to reshape the entire state.

but doesn't zizek hate liberal democracy? i don't get how he now seems to be or for it

if you watch that tv bit up there you'll see that he's still leaning towards blaming the "tolerant liberals" for everything that stands in the way of change, rather than putting the blame on anyone, say, vaguely right-wing or a bit dictatory.

y'all mad

history mayne do u think the egyptian people are "for" or "against" "liberal democracy"

or should we wait until they take a nationwide referendum

zizek emerges on the academic scene duing the early- to mid-90s, at a time when ppl are getting really into this habermasian/rawlsian/fukuyaman defense of the inherent rationality of the western liberal democratic tradition. i don't think zizek necessarily disagrees that that rationality exists, or that it has value; but he would certainly dispute the idea that it is fully controlled or contained within the self-understanding of the western democracies themselves — in the egyptian case, it's closer to a kind of hegelian cunning of reason, operating behind the backs and against the wishes of the hegemonic powers

re: "putting the blame on anyone, say, vaguely right-wing or a bit dictatory" — I p.much agree with SZ when he says that those who do not wish to address the shortcomings of liberal democracy should remain silent about fundamentalist theocracy/fascism/totalitarianism/etc

plus, y'know, you gotta take into account that the audiences he addresses tend to be closer to the "tolerant liberal" end of the spectrum...

I p.much agree with SZ when he says that those who do not wish to address the shortcomings of liberal democracy should remain silent about fundamentalist theocracy/fascism/totalitarianism/etc

― there is a lout that never goes "aight" (bernard snowy), Friday, February 11, 2011 1:44 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

mmm, that rich straw aroma. yes indeed, those tolerant habermasian liberals never, ever address the shortcomings of their own societies, do they?

history mayne do u think the egyptian people are "for" or "against" "liberal democracy"

or should we wait until they take a nationwide referendum

― there is a lout that never goes "aight" (bernard snowy), Friday, February 11, 2011 1:13 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes i think they are for it, mutatis, mutandis, or whatever the phrase is. the democratic majority of them. but zizek is against it. he's in favour of totalitarianism iirc.

plus, y'know, you gotta take into account that the audiences he addresses tend to be closer to the "tolerant liberal" end of the spectrum...

― there is a lout that never goes "aight" (bernard snowy), Friday, February 11, 2011 1:45 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes, quite. he's a wind-up merchant above all.

nobody is for "totalitarianism", it's a purely ideological term, come on man

(which isn't to say that you can't play devil's advocate, or that zizek doesn't do so, but seriously, grow 1 brayne)

yes, quite. he's a wind-up merchant above all.

"Hey Mr. Caliban..."

iirc zizek says totalitarianism is a "purely ideological term" used to protect liberal democracy from universal justice. you're not going to realize the "eternal idea of freedom, justice and dignity" under democracy.

what is "the eternal idea of freedom"?

i dunno i don't think it's written down anywhere

http://i.imgur.com/pQxPx.gif

lol

lol amazing

btw just to continue conversation from other thread:

And specifically in "Living in End Times" he writes (I don't have a page cite - PLEASE FORGIVE ME) that with Democracies there is the appearance of consent so resistance/protest in light of inequalities is v limited. By contrast a dictator knows he only rules with the consent of the people in a much more explicit manner and therefore needs to act more in their self interest. in my own words: that democracy can serve as a valve to let off steam and not let any real reforms come to the surface while dictators need to be more responsive more immediately or risk losing their heads.

― Mordy, Wednesday, February 23, 2011 4:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Zizek dropping truthbombs in a footnote:

This limitation of democracy has nothing to do with the standard worry of the liberal
exporters of democracy: what if the result is the victory of those who oppose
democracy, and thus its self-cancellation? "This is a terrible truth that we have to
face; the only thing that currently stands between us and the rolling ocean of Muslim
unreason is a wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect"
(Sam Harris, The End of Faith, New York: Norton 2005, p.132). Here, then, is
Harris's motto: "when your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become
another weapon in his hand" (ibid., p. 202). And, from here, predictably, he proceeds
to justify torture . . . While this line of reasoning may appear convincing, it is not
pursued to the end; it remains stuck in the terms of the tiresome liberal debate: "Are
the Muslim masses mature enough (culturally fit) for democracy, or should we
support enlightened despotism amongst their rulers?" Both terms of the underlying
choice (either we impose our democracy on them or we exploit their backwardness)
are false. The true question is: what if the "wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we
have helped to erect" is precisely what sustains and generates the "rolling ocean of Muslim
unreason"?

dude should ring in to any answers?, someone basically says that every week

not always w/comedy speech impediment obv.

The true question is: what if the "wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect" is precisely what sustains and generates the "rolling ocean of Muslim unreason"?

again with the misplaced 'precisely'. if the world really did fit together like a balanced equation, sure, maybe... is he talking about egypt? i think the case of egypt shows that we shouldn't accept, as zizek does, the 'ocean of muslim unreason' assumption. but it would be bad history to try to explain away the muslim brotherhood (which does meet the description of muslim and unreasonable) solely as a response to... well, someone's definition of what the US was doing in egypt in the 1970s. im pretty sure the MB was being whaled on by the egyptian government a long time before the US could really be called an ally. i dunno if this is a bit empirical sry.

i think even zizek must know he cld do w/ a dose of empiricism from time to time

idk if zizek deals w/ his whole biography anywhere of if he's too self-involved to attempt to historicize/contextualize his own work/ideology as he does everyone else's

h-mayne: nah he's not talking about egypt, that's from his 2008 book — just struck me as oddly relevant.

and uh... wtf, he's obviously not accepting any kind of argument about "muslim unreason" — pretty sure he's repeating dude's absurd rhetoric in order to further mock him.

should have said: "precisely in order to" etc etc

he puts "muslim unreason" in quotes, but i don't think the sentence makes any sense whatsoever if we think he doesn't mean it in some way.

The true question is: what if the "wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect" is precisely what sustains and generates the "rolling ocean of Muslim unreason"?

what is the true question here, if we don't believe in the "rolling ocean"? or, are we also to discount the existence of the "wall of tyranny and human rights abuses", which are also in quotes?

i get he's not talking specifically abt egypt, but, well, what is he talking about if not egypt? to which situation is he referring?

right but like... the dude he's quoting is basically saying "welp, they can't have democracy because our wall of tyranny is the only thing holding back the rolling ocean of unreason, so we might as well enjoy getting our hands dirty and to hell with scruples!", to which zizek replies that, 'convincing' as this argument may appear (and it does, because it is almost tautological), it perhaps overlooks one or two things...

I mean, is it really controversial to assert that "unreason", terror, and religious fundamentalism have been promoted rather than cured by US support for repressive dictators? I thought this was like, post-cold war politics 101

or in other words, I don't think he's referring to any particular "situation" so much is he is criticizing a particular approach to american foreign policy

I mean, is it really controversial to assert that "unreason", terror, and religious fundamentalism have been promoted rather than cured by US support for repressive dictators? I thought this was like, post-cold war politics 101

― on some outer space shit (bernard snowy), Thursday, February 24, 2011 12:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

it's not controversial, but it's not incontrovertible in a fair number of cases, egypt being the example which i gave, as the most obviously favoured-by-the-US of all middle eastern dictators. to repeat, islamic fundamentalism there did not begin as a result of US policy.

either way, saying that it is 'precisely' US policy that actually generated (as against promoted, failed to prevent, etc) islamic fundamentalism is wrong.

his whole appeal rests on 'precise' paradoxes; he wouldn't be a big shot without them.

dude I think you're conflating ideologiekritik with philosophy

what is "precise" is the way in which different aspects of the world-view in question (Harris') reinforce one another towards a definite end. there are pieces there that more-or-less correspond to certain realities (US-backed human-rights abuses on the one hand, an angry "ocean" of "unreason[able]" people [i.e. mass popular discontent?] on the other) but somehow they are not put together correctly ('maybe some of the things they're angry about are... our fault?').

but whatever we're obviously not gonna change each other's minds on this one

I haven't chimed in on this bc I think that Zizek's comment is one of his less interesting, less insightful bits, but the fact that you guys keep arguing about it makes me think that you're seeing something there that I'm not. Isn't linking our support for human rights violations to anti-American sentiment a really old argument at this point? Like Glenn Greenwald or half a dozen people on ILX make that point every week. Is he adding anything to it?

Why does he SNIFF so much when he's talking?

this guy has used mountains of cocaine.

― by another name (amateurist), Sunday, May 23, 2010 9:58 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark

In seminars, Lacan acts as analysand, he “freely associates,” improvises, jumps, addressing his public, which is thus put into the role of a kind of collective analyst. In comparison, his writings are more condensed, formulaic, and they throw at the reader unreadable ambiguous propositions which often appear like oracles, challenging the reader to start working on them, to translate them into clear theses and provide examples and logical demonstrations of them. In contrast to the usual academic procedure, where the author formulates a thesis and then tries to sustain it through arguments, Lacan not only more often than not leaves this work to the reader – the reader has often even to discern what, exactly, is Lacan’s actual thesis among the multitude of conflicting formulations or the ambiguity of a single oracle-like formulation.

zizek u have no self awareness do u

http://www.lacan.com/zizhowto.html

Zizek calls himself a Lacanian all the time