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

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

"I spent literally 10 minutes on this assignment, just free-associating. I was in theoretical despair!"

free t-shirts, no doubt

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/04/simple-courage-decision-leftist-tribute-thatcher

ha it's like he basically took Critchley's critique of him and decided to make it explicit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5L6kwJJtA&feature=player_embedded

classic video

https://twitter.com/MarikaRose/status/332898683614019585

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=4302541&boardid=77&threadid=67478

lool

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BH5RPmLCQAA64Bd.jpg

Cocaine users are 45% more likely to develop glaucoma (blindness) even if they’ve given up the drug.

People who take cocaine or are former users are 45 per cent more likely to develop a common form of blindness, a large study has found.

Researchers also found they developed glaucoma 20 years earlier on average than patients without a history of drug use.

A study of 5.3million people by the Veterans Health Administration, in Indianapolis, found glaucoma patients with a history of cocaine use were on average only 54-years-old. This compared to patients with no history of class A drug abuse who were around 73-years-old.

Study leader Dr Dustin French, from the Regenstrief Institute, said: ‘The association of illegal drug use with open-angle glaucoma requires further study, but if the relationship is confirmed, this understanding could lead to new strategies to prevent vision loss.’

:-(

do you read zizek, treeship?

i read the sublime object of ideology and liked it, but then my friend told me that the stuff i liked about it was mostly just ripped off of althusser. i like reading interviews and things with him, and once i saw him in starbucks in princeton, nj.

http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745628974

that seems like a good book to get a structural overview of where he is coming from in a broad sense, re. his lacanian/hegelian marxism which places a lot of emphasis on teasing out paradoxes and contradictions in cultural and political texts. when i read zizek, i find him really entertaining but sometimes i get confused about what larger project his critiques are supposed to serve. i guess this project is "communism" defined as a "reawakened belief in the possibility of collective action," but that seems a bit nebulous, maybe, for a political thinker. idk, i'll bookmark that page and try to check out that book someday, thanks

maybe leaf through this at a library or something http://www.amazon.com/Zizek-Critical-Introduction-Sarah-Kay/dp/0745622089/

haven't seen this before http://www.amazon.com/The-Zizek-Dictionary-R-Butler/dp/1844655822/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP6LoH3hASo

Man does that guy always spend so much time touching his face?

https://www.thebaffler.com/past/camera_shy_blah_blah

My basic idea is that our times are weird times. On the one hand, they are superficially permissive. You get all the hardcore you want on the net, you can participate in orgies, blah blah blah. But at the same time it’s not even true consumerism. You have this obsession with safe sex, and so on. I think the only true consumerists that we have are, if you ask me, drug addicts, those who say, “Fuck it, I want to go to the end, I don’t care.” No, our consumerism is not dead. It’s a very strategic, calculating consumerism.

And this, even if true, has what signifigance to anything?

glad he was able to slip in the phrase "This is ideology at its purest." it wouldn't be a zizek essay without that sentence.

Hah, that's the one phrase of his I've adopted -- it's primarily something I mutter to myself to improve my mood.
He's also made me aware that some thinkers tend to use the word "precisely" just when they're being most abstruse or nebulous.

i admire his verve with blah blah blah

I mean, even now, I am shocked. I remember one of the early movies: a plumber comes and fixes a hole in the kitchen. [And she says], “But I have another hole down there, can you also fix that for me.” And then it came to me. My god, it cannot be that they are so stupid. This is censorship. The idea is, you can either be totally emotionally identified [as in mainstream films], then you don’t see it all, or, you see it all, all the details [in porn films], but then the story has to be ridiculous, so you shouldn’t take it seriously.

I do actually really like Zizek's way of talking about pornography without lapsing into moralisms or celebrations.

I even think you could do a clever graph called 'ways people talk about porn', and it would have two axes, one running from 'moralism' to 'celebration', and the other running from 'left' to 'right' (in the political sense). And Zizek, whatever else you might think about him, would avoid the stupid areas of this graph.

i agree with that. the essay isn't bad, but very short.

http://esjaybe.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/zizeks-response-to-chomsky/

if nothing else, when I am older I want to talk like zizek and so on and all this

my god

i don't believe chomsky when he says that he is mystified by the success of people like zizek. he has definitely read marx before, and understands why cultural analysis and the critique of ideology have played an important role in the history of the left.

he can disagree with this kind of project, and think it has a negative or ambiguous legacy, and argue that leftists should be more focused on concrete political reality, but that is a different conversation than just saying "this is charlatanism"

When I read "Here I violently disagree." I imagined a bit of spittle and headshake accenting "violently"