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

this almost makes him seem touchingly sentimental.

I think he is a bit sentimental.

A lot of his challops make more sense (as performances, at least) if I conceive of him as like the number one fan for a band that used to be quite big but have been near-universally unfashionable for quite some time.

Hegel is not Marx. The rabble is not the proletariat, communism is not on the horizon, and revolution is not a solution ... Hegel is not prepared to see in the contradiction of civil society the death knell of class society, to identify capitalism itself as its own gravedigger, or to see in the disenfranchised masses anything more than a surge of blind, formless reaction, “elemental, irrational, barbarous, and terrifying” ... a swarm whose integration remains unrealized and unrealizable, an “ought” ... But the aporia, untypical for Hegel, points to something unfinished or already crumbling within the edifice whose construction Hegel declares to be completed, a failure of both actuality and rationality that undermines the solidity of the state he elsewhere celebrates, in Hobbesian language, as an earthly divinity.

Is Hegel thus simply constrained by his historical context, did he come too early to see the emancipatory potential of the “part of no‐part,” so that all he could have done was to honestly register the unresolved and unresolvable aporias of his rational state?

However, as the example of the temporal discord between France and Germany demonstrated, non‐contemporaneity is for Hegel a principle: Germany was politically in delay with regard to France (where the Revolution took place), which is why it could only prolong it in the domain of thought; however, the Revolution itself emerged in France only because France itself was in delay with regard to Germany, that is, because France had missed the Reformation which asserts inner freedom and thus reconciles secular and spiritual domains. So, far from being an exception or an accidental complication, anachronism is the “signature” of consciousness: “experience is continually outbidding itself, perpetually making demands that it (i.e., the world) is unequipped to realize and unprepared to recognize, and comprehension inevitably comes too late to make a difference, if only because the stakes have already changed.”

This anachronistic untimeliness holds especially for revolutions: “The ‘French’ Revolution that provides the measure of ‘German’ untimeliness is itself untimely ... There is no right time or ‘ripe time’ for revolution (or there would be no need of one). The Revolution always arrives too soon (conditions are never ready) and too late (it lags forever behind its own initiative).”

in that last bit he's quoting from this i think:
http://www.amazon.com/Mourning-Sickness-Revolution-Cultural-Present/dp/0804761272

this is all from the new one? good stuff, anyway. i like reading him on hegel.

zizek, stan for the working class

The true horror does not occur when we are abandoned by God, but when God gets too close to us.

i bet he liked prometheus

Some months before writing this, at an art round table, I was asked to comment on a painting I had seen there for the first time. I did not have any idea about it, so I engaged in total bluff, which went on something like this: the frame of the painting in front of us is not its true frame; there is another, invisible, frame, implied by the structure of the painting, the frame that enframes our perception of the painting, and these two frames do not overlap—there is an invisible gap separating the two. The pivotal content of the painting is

not rendered in its visible part, but is located in this dis‐location of the two frames, in the gap that separates them. Are we, today, in our post‐modern madness, still able to discern the traces of this gap? Perhaps more than the reading of a painting hinges on it; perhaps, the decisive dimension of humanity will be lost when we will lose the capacity to discern this gap ... To my surprise, this brief intervention was a huge success, and many following participants referred to the dimension in‐between‐the‐two‐frames, elevating it into a term. This very success made me sad, really sad. What I encountered here was not only the efficiency of a bluff, but a much more radical apathy at the very heart of today’s Cultural Studies.

my kid could of done better than that

I haven't been able to finish this discussion on the The Dark Knight Rises (just a diff kind of torture) but its basically K-Punk acting like Zizek's lapdog and seems to touch on Z's ultimate preoccupation, which form the bits I've read its a 'how can we be better at revolutionary violence'.

I think the BFI should commission Zizek to write a book on the Nolan Batman trilogy. Has a lot of potential.

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 kulaks in their resistance to forced collectivization. An additional category was thus introduced, that of a “subkulak,” a peasant who, although too poor to be considered a kulak proper, nonetheless shared the kulak “counter‐revolutionary” attitude. “Subkulak” 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 ‘kulak,’ we mean the carrier of certain political tendencies which are most frequently discernible in the subkulak, male and female.” By this means, any peasant whatever was liable to dekulakisation; and the “subkulak” notion was widely employed, enlarging the category of victims greatly beyond the official estimate of kulaks proper even at its most strained.

The “subkulak” was thus the paradoxical intersection of species: a subspecies of the species “kulaks” whose members came from the other two species. As such, “subkulak” 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 kulak: “The grounds given in one Soviet comment are that ‘the old attitudes of a kulak have almost disappeared, and the new ones do not lend themselves to recognition.’" The art of identifying a kulak 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 kulak."

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5beopX0951r8a6qso1_1280.png

The visual/physical observations are basically correct but where are:

"is <x> not precisely..."

"here I am an old-fashioned vulgar marxist"

and so on

"This, I claim..."

read a fair chunk of In Defense of Lost Causes last week; still weighing his judgments on Stalin.

"an inversion of"

"radically un-"

some of these feel much broader than just zizek.

but the "is <x> not precisely" is completely his.

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.

imho not so

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."

polio police

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.

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

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.

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.

>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.

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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

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

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)

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

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.

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

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.

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

One of these things is not like the other

that's so awesome.

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.

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

Has this (kinda nsfw) already been discussed?

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

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.

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

*fuck it

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

lol otm