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

amateurist, c'mon man, now you're playing the victim a bit.

nobody's saying you can't critique z. b/c you haven't read his heavier tomes. what i was responding to wasn't the fact that you were critiquing him, but the fact that a major point of your critique was that you saw in zizek a lot of hot air and posturing without substance, and i'm saying, well, there are these books of his where, um, i do think there's a lot of substance.

but i will concede that we could use more diacritical marks.

"not a field unto themselves"

except of course for the field of p-adic numbers given rise to by any prime p. whoops!

finney, i don't know if this fits into "theory" for you, but there's plenty of interesting stuff in barthes, althusser, etc.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, July 30, 2013 12:50 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would definitely put both of those in the camp of Theory for the purpose of the conversation - at least to the extent that, if someone was going to object to Theory outright on the basis of it being a whole lot of obtuse hot air, I would imagine Barthes and Althusser as being among the first 100 against the wall.

When I was first really getting into post-marxist theory, and before I realised that I'm basically an Adorno stan, I really liked Althusser, but subsequently found that my favourite Zizek (specifically The Sublime Object of Ideology) felt like a smarter* and funnier version of him.

("smarter" in the sense of having smarts, not in the sense of intellect or profundity or etc.)

I would definitely recommend both TSOI and Contingency, Hegemony, Universality as both incredibly thoughtful and highly readable (though with the latter the credit is as much with Laclau and Butler).

Also this nice little book I found really squared the circle for me b/w Zizek as serious worldbuilder and Zizek as the popular Socrates figure:

http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Conversations_with_Zizek.html?id=ExMYKdVRjHIC&redir_esc=y

also the idea that i can't or shouldn't critique Zizek (however sophomorically) if I don't already admire/accept all of the intellectual underpinnings of his work is kind of o_O honestly.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, July 30, 2013 12:54 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To be clear, this wasn't my point.

A critique in the sense of "this falls short of (insert)" is difficult to decode if it's not clear what (insert) is - self-evidently, someone who likes some Zizek but feels he mostly doesn't live up to his best work (or the claims he wants to make for it) will have a different take from someone who admires Zizek's influences but finds him to be a shallow blend of them, who will have a very different take from someone who dislikes those influences but likes other vaguely related modes of thought, who will have a different take again from someone who dismisses that whole field.

Any one of those takes might be quite reasonable, but the more the vantage point of critique zooms out, the more those levels of disappointment become conflated with each other.

But then in basically any area of critique I'm a zoom-in-ist so am probably biased towards what I tend to do reflexively.

flopson, what are the names of some of those textbooks? they sound interesting.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, July 29, 2013 8:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've really enjoyed armstrong basic topology, munkres topology, kolmogorov intro to theory of functions and functional analysis, gouvea p-adic numbers, needham visual complex analysis. you need a pretty solid foundation of algebra & analysis to read any of those though, like the equivalent of a standard first year course. also a really fun thing to read is proofs from the book

http://critical-theory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/perverts-guide-to-ideology.jpg

i don't even know what these 104 new answers are about, i just wanna post this https://twitter.com/zizek_ebooks/status/362997937116160000

thanks for the list!

zizek ebooks is prob one of my favorite feeds tbh

np! (xp)

nobody's saying you can't critique z. b/c you haven't read his heavier tomes. what i was responding to wasn't the fact that you were critiquing him, but the fact that a major point of your critique was that you saw in zizek a lot of hot air and posturing without substance, and i'm saying, well, there are these books of his where, um, i do think there's a lot of substance.

r. pippin sez 'srs book is srs', writes ginormous review to demonstrate

http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/back-to-hegel

interesting review. funny how it seems Zizek has sorta come around to Sartre's notion of consciousness as a "hole in Being."

Hasn't he been saying something along those lines since at least Tarrying With The Negative?

https://twitter.com/angstravaganza/status/381110626632085504

damn

www.youtube.com/embed/bRTdDyXM3VM

http://critical-theory.com/zizek-vice/

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/11/who-responsible-us-shutdown-2008-meltdown-slavoj-zizek

They reject the concept of fruit

uh he's doing a lot of interviews

i just found a bunch more

shocking for a man who seems pretty prominent most of the time and also has a movie out lol

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/mandelas-socialist-failure/

And was this also not the truth about the whole of the Mandela memorial ceremony? All the crocodile tears of the dignitaries were a self-congratulatory exercise, and Jangtjie translated them into what they effectively were: nonsense. What the world leaders were celebrating was the successful postponement of the true crisis which will explode when poor, black South Africans effectively become a collective political agent. They were the Absent One to whom Jantjie was signalling, and his message was: the dignitaries really don't care about you. Through his fake translation, Jantjie rendered palpable the fake of the entire ceremony.

This article was amended on 16 December 2013 to comply with our editorial guidelines

hahahaha <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQsZMzcfYa0

brotherhood, unity, etc.

omg that doctor story at the end

lot of books coming out this year

like, at least four

he just does a word scramble of all his other books though

I like the Philip Kaufman version, with Donald Sutherland. The ending, when the world is already occupied by body snatchers, you remember how the snatchers react when they see still humans? [Imitates Donald Sutherland’s gaping jaw howl] For years it became fashion among my friends to greet each other like this.

http://thephantomcountry.blogspot.de/2014/02/release-from-ideology-is-painful.html

heh seeing his initials like that made me think of

http://conversationalreading.com/images/S-Z-roland-barthes.jpg

My last revisionism: I quite liked—and I know this is the lowest of the lowest—the last two seasons of 24. You have Jack Bauer torturing, blah, blah, and you have Alison Taylor, good liberal president. They both got in the bad luck and break down. It shows very honestly how, within today’s universe, there is no way to be noble.

SF: You make me want to see it now.

SŽ: It’s not that good, I have to tell you. Life is too short. Fuck, even if you count out the publicity, it’s 24 times 45 minutes! Unless you are freak with nothing but time, it’s just too much.

SF: I like it, but it’s sort of falling back on titties.

Please Stop Worshipping the Superstar Professor Who Calls Students “Boring Idiots”

done

would like to hear the opinions of his students rather than some journalist with an agenda

when i took him for a class in grad school he was always polite + thoughtful when students spoke to him. i vaguely remember him complaining about US students v. european students who he felt were more respectful + humble v. US students who were kinda loud children. i thought he was otm.

She's just confirming the stereotypes that Americans have no sense of irony and consider good customer service to be the most important quality.

Mordy: did he ask for papers though?

Ironically, she sounds like a boring idiot.

when i took him for a class in grad school

have you ever mentioned this?

I watched Pervert's Guide to Ideology recently and enjoyed it, although I felt like it came apart toward the end. Also, I have a problem with "They Live"/red pill-type metaphors about ideology. I mean, I think they're useful to an extent because they explain ideology as the default mode of seeing rather than something that's only there when you deliberately employ it. However, these metaphors seem to give people the idea that one can just take the "truth pill" or put on the "truth glasses" and suddenly be free of ideology, which is bullshit.

read the sublime object if you're interested in a decent explanation of his notion of ideology

he contrasts it with marx's and althusser's early on

i feel like you're snarking me, markers bc surely i've mentioned that xp

also liked pervert's guide to ideology

and no, he didn't read the papers. avital ronell did. or one of her grad students. idk. who cares? papers are boring.

seeing isn't being free it's only seeing; i can't remember but i'm sure "they know but still they are doing" was in there somewhere.

i was kinda disappointed by this after pervert's guide to cinema, felt a lil thinner/glibber? v easy to stare at for 2.5 hours tho.

I generally get IA when people act like fucking babies about their professors.

xp I agree pervert's guide to cinema was better and a little more challenging too.

I thought maybe this one was meant to be a little bit more introductory.