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

http://www.himho.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Lars-Von-Trier.jpg

I could look at ridiculous Zizek pictures all morning

dude is so clearly just a provocateur that even if he started praising hitler or w/e

He tried his best with Robespierre

remember he said hitler wasn't violent enough? or the violence wasn't real enough.

o zizek you so crazy what will you say next

I like Zizek as far as it goes but i am put off (to put it mildly) by the insistence on the purity of a revolutionary rhetoric and manichaeanism.

i think his insight that radical violence is often a release valve for capitalism's ongoing success is pretty otm. i don't think of it as a promotion of more authentic violence but more description of why resistance is so often co-opted.

fair enough. i do think however that he holds out the possibility of a more pure or authentic "violence." that he cheekily does this by rhetorical saying or supporting practice that "liberals" would find abhorrent is fine and whatever but i think his critical project depends on that authenticity and purity being in some strange sense "real"--even if only in the negative fashion of striking an abhorrent pose.

i mean, i get his point. i think. but one questions whether his own posing gets caught up in all this as well. i mean, he's never crossed the line so firmly as to not be an academic idol.

similar to his keeness on good old Uncle Joe- when does it stop becoming rhetorical posturing and start becoming lauding a disgusting mass murdering tyrant?

remember he said hitler wasn't violent enough? or the violence wasn't real enough.

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 10:19 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

which is true btw

and this romance with theological extremism and revolutionary politics--he holds on to those legacies as a kind of resource but im not sure i agree that they hold the same potential for "resistance" that he does.

martin jay gave a lecture at cordoza once about how adorno was turned off by benjamin's authenticity aura bc he felt there was something inherently fascist about it. i think there's a sense of that here - purity in general is troubling and zizek is kinda foreclosing incremental changes as important or necessary. at the same time tho capitalism is remarkably resilient and global and so trying to understand why violence has failed to curtail it even while bringing down totalitarian regimes is important. esp when violence becomes a mode of expressing capitalism (under the guise of challenging it). world bank protests have failed to put a dent in the world bank, even w/ all the starbucks window breaking.

I think Adam Kotsko does a pretty good job of explaining the apparent trollin' and extremisms in this article http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=897&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint

keynes would probably say that riots are good for the economy

lol 'apparent trolling'

this shit is nothing new, the only thing remotely interesting about zizek is that he is not a french guy doing this

xxp tho I share misgivings some of you are on aboot.

yeah that's a great read on zizek. i still think his "project" fails (for me) for the reasons i've stated above. i think ultimately i dont see the same utility in using the old frameworks (however denuded) of revolutionary marxism and eschatological christianity (a natural pair!) -- there are, or need to be, better ways forward.

i find zizek way more compelling than badiou xxp

and no keynes would not say that riots are good for the economy

why not? puts the window manufacturers back to work.

well think about it like 'unbroken windows' are a part of the economy and when they get broken the economy gets smaller and people who own those windows are now poorer. I mean the broken windows thing is a typical strawman critique of keynesianism.

that's not to say that it couldn't, in the right macroeconomic situation 'put window manufacturers back to work', it's just not something anyone would suggest

yeah, i was just trying to be cute about one of the ways that resistance to capitalism might actually support capitalism.

i guess i believe in marxism - that capitalism is a part of a historical process that slowly becomes socialism through technological advancement. i don't think zizek has much time or interest in that idea tho.

much time for, or interest in, i mean

I can tell you for real that the mcdonalds next to zuccotti park got a shit ton of business

this is a little jargony but i think judith butler's critque of Z's notion of the "necessity of contingency" with regard to the Symbolic is pertinent--she counters with the "contingency of contingency"--essentially foreclosing the possibility of the kind of necessary, authentic, or pure rhetoric that is Z's stock in trade these days.

when talking about the matrix zizek says that neither pills are sufficient. he wants a third pill. this third pill would not give him some kind of spiritual transcendence, some kind of real, but rather would demonstrate the essential reality of the fake construct. (this is kinda kitchsy baudrillard stuff, but i'm mentioning it bc i don't think judith is being entirely fair about how zizek uses contingency.)

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

"not the reality behind the illusion, but the reality in the illusion itself"

i can't remember where at the moment, but somewhere Zizek talks about the elephant in the room with marxism being the fact that it itself, by it's own logic, is an ideological formation determined entirely by history (and thus capitalism). can't remember how he squares that circle though.

i'm annoyed at butler these days

off-topic lol

Marxism is indeed a super-structural adjunct to the capitalist base- but that doesn't necessarily make it illogical. Pure mathematics is the same and is (to some degree) a coherent system.

right but that coherence is purchased at the cost of forming an "objective" or total description--this is essentially the idea that marxism (like anything else) constitutes a "closed" system that can only really describe itself.

yeah the q is how well it maps onto the "real world" whatever that is.

i like that video above. i do find his notions therein about some kind of exposure to trauma or libido to be really interesting--but again i'd say what id say above--it's only an openness achieved by closure first.

I don't understand why I love this guy so much, but this guy is the ultimate bullshitter and i think his genius is in selling bullshit to people know they're buying bullshit, but the aura around the bullshit is so intriguing that they're happy to buy and he's happy to sell.

Also, I love his lisp. It's perfect in every way.

haha. i can't hate him, i admit. he's a fun phantom (as this thread testifies) to argue with. and i enjoy his books.

in a world w/ more interesting, serious grappling w/ global political + economic trends zizek wouldn't be necessary, but there's a serious dearth of philosophers (or anyone really) talking about this stuff in any kind of comprehensive or extensive manner

John Gray maybe?

but yeah agreed Zizek is the only (semi-) serious left wing public intellectual of any note, with the possible exception of Perry Anderson.

"not the reality behind the illusion, but the reality in the illusion itself"

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:32 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is one of my go-to lines for my impression/caricature of zizek

the larb article's thing on overidentification isn't bad. it's sort of shallow, but it does help to explain one of his basic rhetorical affectations.

surely every good zizek impression needs a PRESHISHELY, hurting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/west-crisis-democracy-finance-spirit-dictators

In short, in assessing the consequences of the referendum, the court simply accepted as fact that failing to obey the dictates of international financial institutions (or to meet their expectations) can lead to political and economic crisis, and is thus unconstitutional. To put it bluntly: since meeting these dictates and expectations is the condition of maintaining the constitutional order, they have priority over the constitution (and eo ipso state sovereignty).

Slovenia may be a small country, but this decision is a symptom of a global tendency towards the limitation of democracy. The idea is that, in a complex economic situation like today's, the majority of the people are not qualified to decide – they are unaware of the catastrophic consequences that would ensue if their demands were to be met.

Zizek channeling Krugman there - though I like how he links it to distrust of democracy in general.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/zero-dark-thirty-normalises-torture-unjustifiable

Really? One doesn't need to be a moralist, or naive about the urgencies of fighting terrorist attacks, to think that torturing a human being is in itself something so profoundly shattering that to depict it neutrally – ie to neutralise this shattering dimension – is already a kind of endorsement.

Imagine a documentary that depicted the Holocaust in a cool, disinterested way as a big industrial-logistic operation, focusing on the technical problems involved (transport, disposal of the bodies, preventing panic among the prisoners to be gassed). Such a film would either embody a deeply immoral fascination with its topic, or it would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to engender dismay and horror in spectators. Where is Bigelow here?

would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to engender dismay and horror in spectators

I mean, wouldn't it?