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

part of the issue, i tend to think, is that we have a set of "critical practices" (some of which are very powerful and useful when applied to particular ends or effects which are carefully considered) that are very often relics of an emancipatory critical tradition which imbues them with a sense of importance they can no longer legitimately claim. at the same time, we have these tools and nowhere really to direct them except at the terrarium of a novel or tv show or whatever--essentially limited universes which can be mastered by the theoretical observer.

the implication is that if we can discern the workings of hegemony in a novel then we are one step closer to exposing it in society at large--but the result of this idea is that we've developed ever more specific practices for reading novels and not a lot of ways to achieve that larger project. it's not that these practices are useless it's that they are projects of their environment (reading and writing about literary texts) and they are not always the tools needed for, say, an analysis of racism in society at large. as i said before, it's at best an indirect relationship. the problem, in other words, is that critical practices are not general means of achieving something like "comprehending the historical movement of a whole" but in fact highly situational and pragmatic devices or tools to be used for specified ends.

oh lol I missed his post but still big virtue of zizek imo is that he isn't doing these boring identity studies critiques

the ruling class in russia, w the arguable exception of the 'bourgeois specialists' maintained for their technical expertise, was liquidated (excellent soviet euphemism) or sent into exile. there was a NEW ruling class, yes, that eventually came to resemble the old one, but it wasn't the same as the old one.

― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour)

yeah, that was my point. if you're looking to overthrow capitalist tyranny under the rule of a plutocracy, then replacing it with authoritarian tyranny under the rule of an elite must be considered a complete failure. the real problem, the oppression of the proletariat, has not been solved or even addressed.

also, the attempts upthread to isolate academics from the ruling classes seem somewhat bizarre in this (marxist) context. intellectuals are the shoeshine boys of the ruling elite. you don't have to be a fatcat banker or hereditary royalty to be part of the system that oppresses those who perform the profit-generating labor. the petit bourgeoisie may include a lot of people, but surely not those who spin inscrutable fancies for the amusement only of other ivory tower academics, a "labor" that produces no profit of any kind. these are court jesters, a superfluous product of capitalist excess. their activities are either subsidized by the wealthy or paid from public coffers. though their salary comes from similar places, K-12 schoolteachers have a much better claim to separation.

^ trying out my fox news persona

haven't read every single post in past few days here but i do think geography matters here. guys like zizek are coming out of a european context where intellectuals get to stand on much more elevated soap-boxes than their us counterparts. sartre is long gone, but the notion of the "public intellectual" isn't, along with its expectations of commitment and Resistance. us academics may have their feet on american soil, but their heads are swimming in europe, so they tilt at windmills as though their tilts would be published in the morning's Le Monde..... except they won't.

this thread's been going twelve years and i've only read about 50 pages of zizek

tough guy

a useful marxism, one defined by action as much as theory, arising from and directed to the working classes - such a movement would probably attract upper & middle class followers

trotsky

the petit bourgeoisie may include a lot of people, but surely not those who spin inscrutable fancies for the amusement only of other ivory tower academics, a "labor" that produces no profit of any kind.

see, i'd argue that it's precisely this "closure" that allows new modes of thinking or criticism to slip through. in fact i think it's only through the autonomy which seems at times frivolous (even "useless") which allows academic writing to do anything which doesn't shine the shoes of the ruling class. that "excess" is the point and the great potential of this stuff, but by that very "excess" it can be misdirected (or not directed at all). it's what you use it for.

i mean, who gets to define terms like "useless" or "excess" or "profit" anyway, hmmm?? *winks and returns to reading Ecrits*

otm.

although i can't really blame people struggling to make it in this brutal society being bitter toward the argument that academics shouldn't have to prove their work is valuable in order to continue getting paid for it.

well it goes without saying (i hope) that academics should be just as open to criticism as anyone else.

as an academic who is heavily theory-centered, i can testify that doing this sort of thing can create a whiplash from "this is totally pointless nonsense" to "this is basically the most important way i could spend my time"--and i imagine that vacillation is similar for a lot of similar occupations (art, for one)--though maybe to less extreme degrees.

also i feel compelled to point out that as i was typing that the mailman just dropped off my new copy of Ecrits!

and if it makes anyone feel better, i would wager there's only a very small (and shrinking) number of people who make any real money doing this sort of thing. if you want to find the shoeshiners of the ruling elite i suggest the English department isn't where you should focus your attention.

academics are slightly more immmune to capital's constant demand to PRODUCE than most people are and that's why people get pissed off with them. in america you need to justify your existence by your usefulness to capitalism and if you can't do this you can end up homeless or in prison etc.

the problem is that anyone is subject to that brutal logic. at this point in history, most of the labor that people are doing is not socially necessary and often actively destructive. things could be sorted out differently, so that people could have work that is both more socially useful and personally fulfilling and the ability to pursue intellectual or artistic projects won't be seen as the mere province of the elites.*

*i do not know exactly how this would work, obviously. but i consider myself a "leftist" insofar as i believe in the possibility of a society that makes better use of people's talents.

what is that adorno said? that he believed every person is capable of things that, in bourgeois society, would be considered genius. i believe this. what is obscene about capitalism is that it wastes people.

still linkable after all these years

i fucking love that essay

see, i'd argue that it's precisely this "closure" that allows new modes of thinking or criticism to slip through. in fact i think it's only through the autonomy which seems at times frivolous (even "useless") which allows academic writing to do anything which doesn't shine the shoes of the ruling class. that "excess" is the point and the great potential of this stuff, but by that very "excess" it can be misdirected (or not directed at all). it's what you use it for.

― ryan, Saturday, July 27, 2013 9:03 AM (2 hours ago)

of course. this is why pop celebrities are such a vitally important component of the cause. ;)

christ i don't know what i was going on about here yesterday. i'm not the working class warrior i portrayed myself to be - my family's old-school upper middle class and i grew up around that shit, just had hard luck with deadbeat parents. guess i was being immature.

thinking about it a little more, my issue with ppl like zizek and other academics isn't necessarily with them, it's that there aren't any effective voices or activists on the left in the US, and it's hard watching the direction things are going in. but that's hardly the fault of academia and it's followers. and my issue with them is because an ex-girlfriend was a lefty academic. i'm a nut.

fwiw i liked your perspective, even if i'd want to complicate it just a bit (maybe in my own defense). i think lots of leftist academia is very vulnerable to what you were saying.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/07/beware-celebrity-academia.html

be wary of people who say classic texts are difficult to summarize. but read lots of textbooks. check.

something about this exact kind of poindexter makes me wonder if maybe i shouldn't become an authoritarian

"In fact, it is hard to do better than just sitting in a university bookstore and just reading all the intro texts they have. I spent many days in the Stanford bookstore doing just that. Once you are done with textbooks, review articles are the next most robust option."

confirms precisely how obnoxious these ppl are in my mind. cf rationalism AI cultist creeps

in the future all ideas will be bite sized.

order your education off the dollar menu

i mean that sort of advice can only come from someone who hasn't ever actually understood anything ever

depends on the field, obv in humanities there`s a good reason for focus on primary & secondary texts but in anything technical u can get really far without looking at anything other than textbooks. but yeah

Have any of you here seen this?

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

I've not read anything by Zizek but watching him in that video doesn't inspire me to read any of his books.

I'm willing to try, though. What book would you guys recommend?

the sublime object of ideology

"Contingency, Hegemony, Universality" is good as well i think--and you get Butler and Laclau in the bargain.

There's a gaping hole in Chomsky's argument against Zizek, which is: there sits Chomsky, providing us with vast amounts of empirical data as to why this or that US foreign policy is disastrous, why this commonly-held belief about history is false, why austerity is disastrous, and so on. There it is, it is all true, capitalism is terrible, Chomsky has diligently done all this research, and there it all is, to watch, read, and listen to.

And no-one gives a fuck.

as if zizek is doing anything other than preaching to the star struck converted. give me a fucking break. chomsky has a reductive understanding of historical change and causality but at least it's a coherent (if often conspicuously one-sided) set of ideas. zizek's "politics" are little but a projection of his own chauvinism/narcissism.

never not worthwhile to read ppl arguing abt chomsky vs zizek on the internet

depends on the field, obv in humanities there`s a good reason for focus on primary & secondary texts but in anything technical u can get really far without looking at anything other than textbooks. but yeah

― flopson, Sunday, July 28, 2013 3:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh, if you want to understand technical things at all well, there are textbooks written by the people who also wrote the papers. they tend to be good, often contain new material themselves, and be well regarded as works in the field in their own right. often they are assigned to grad courses. then there are lots of terrible textbooks written by other people, and those are mainly not going to be very good, and they will teach you things that aren't true, often. those are more the "intro texts" that i imagine the author is speaking of. after reading those you can sometimes pretend you know things, but only in the company of people who don't know things themselves. the problem is they don't want to tell you a vision of a field of study, they just want to tell you what you need to pass the course.

zizek's "politics" are little but a projection of his own chauvinism/narcissism.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Sunday, July 28, 2013 5:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is obv not true, but whatever.

you're precisely the sort of scatterbrained cult studies dipshit who would love zizek, sterling

still a name droppin fool after all these years

(but that puts you in good company i guess)

that's not really a substantive critique of either zizek or sterling so...

i guess it's easy to tolerate a prankster who pretends to be a neo-stalinist (and actually is one of those european folks who thinks america doesn't have a history, etc.) if he has a really bitchin' reading of hitchcock's the birds.

trust me, treeship, zizek doesn't need my "substantive critique," and neither does sterling

chomsky has a reductive understanding of historical change and causality but at least it's a coherent (if often conspicuously one-sided) set of ideas.

i dont personally think Zizek is the answer but I submit that a non-reductive understanding of "historical change and causality" would resemble Zizek more than Chomsky.

well zizek admits complexity insofar as he'll assert one thing in one article and the opposite in the next. or sometimes in the same forum. that's one way to do it.

sorry i was way too aggro up there about sterling. it's just hard for me to believe that people fall for zizek's schtick even now that he's given himself a few miles of rope with which to hang himself.

amateurist i know we have interacted for many years and i still have no idea what conversation that must be over five years ago has set you off so much that you drag out this 'cult studies dipshit' thing on me on the regular.

like w/r/t zizek he's often funny and occasionally insightful which is as much as i get from most people writing columns for lrb et al, if not more.

he's absolutely more fun to read than chomsky. more useful -- depends for what?

its also interesting to me the vituperative reactions that z elicits, which are obv intentional -- he's a troll, and a provocateur, etc. but he's also a self-declared clown who enjoys as you say like readings and rereadings of hitchcock films, etc. so you get the jon stewart effect, where pundits say "this isn't serious news, you're a joke!" and he says "well, yeah."

and my point above is really that zizek does have actual politics, and they're actually much less radical than his theoretical showmanship, not that I agree or disagree with his politics in any particular -- they're just actually there, and perfectly interpretable without dragging in our own freudian analysis of his personality traits.

i mean i guess what winds people up about zizek (and what winds you up about me?) is that he doesn't buy into this idea that serious issues and serious ideas must always and only be discussed seriously.

"on the regular"--i can't even recall interacting w/ you on this board for years! at least not addressing you directly. if by "on the regular" you mean like once every three years or something, maybe. anyway i'm sorry i was such an asshole.

when he actually makes a coherent political observation it tends to be completely banal (or at least run-of-the-mill leftist) and not as well-articulated as the dozens of pundits who have said it before him. which is pretty revealing, i think. as you suggest, the "radicalism" of his political observations usually tends to be inextricable from his fundamental clown-like persona, even when he insists he's being serious (you didn't seem to like it when i made this observation the first time, but then you basically make a different version of it in your own post). i don't appreciate that this becomes a kind of "get out of jail free" card as when you say something genuinely insulting to a friend and when you realize you've gone too far you just back away and say "kidding! i was only kidding!"

i don't really care whether he thinks "serious" issues should be discussed "seriously" or not--that's not my beef with him, and i think you're giving him too much credit as a provocateur. i've yet to read or hear anything he's said that wasn't deliberately incendiary/useless and pedestrian/banal.

also i don't think zizek is the least bit funny. if you're looking for humor, there are some better places to look. but to each his own i guess.

deliberately incendiary/useless OR pedestrian/banal.

i think there's a number of ways to respond to that on Zizek's behalf, but i think the easiest way is to simply deny that making a "coherent political statement" is really any part of his project. if you're looking for that you're bound to be disappointed. the sorta left-hegelian/lacanian framework he is working in doesn't really even allow such a thing, if he's being true to it. if you think doing theory in this way is a waste of time, well that's another discussion. but i think he knows what he's doing.

on the other hand, see his answer to the first question in that video posted above for a good example of that tactic falling flat into banality. you can see what he's trying to do but it doesn't come off (imo).

i think we discussed it way upthread, but his admiration for "absolutists" like Paul and Lenin gives the game away i think. in this he's not too far from something like Gillian Rose's Hegel Contra Sociology. but for him i imagine trying to find the thing you can say that is "going too far" is sorta his method in a reductive nutshell.

but i dont think the problem with this is that he's not coherent enough. maybe too coherent to the extent that the "absolute violence" or whatever he will advocate for (tongue in cheek or no) isn't really as free from the hegemonic ideological field he wants to disrupt. you can keep drawing a distinction between actual, specific violence (to be shunned) and "absolute violence" all you want but that doesn't bring "absolute violence" (and any theoretical position it would be based on) into view. it is, to use a word he seems to favor to an suspicious degree, impotent.

tldr: i think if you buy into the framework of what he's doing then the form of his method has precedence over the content of his writings (or that these two things are in a dialectical relationship of mutual destabilization).

so in that sense, "i was just kidding!" --> "or was i?" isn't really bad as a summary. Lacan goes on about this sort of thing all the time, actually.