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

Preemptive fuck you to you-know-who.

Berlusconi is our own Kung Fu Panda

my two favorite things on earth together at last

i reproduced that quote bcz it sounded really stupid on its face -- the paragraph supporting it isn't very convincing.

it's hard to tell what that essay is even about, first segment is arguing against some strawman leftist affection for ahmadinejad that i have never seen or heard of anywhere, middle bit is a badiou book report, and then all this stuff about how berlusconi is a racist corrupt asshole. drawing a lot of lines but none of them connect.

"how berlusconi is a racist corrupt asshole"
he's not?

uh yes, yes he is.

At the empirical level multi-party liberal democracy ‘represents’ – mirrors, registers, measures – the quantitative dispersal of people’s opinions, what they think about the parties’ proposed programmes and about their candidates etc. However, in a more radical, ‘transcendental’ sense, multi-party liberal democracy ‘represents’ – instantiates – a certain vision of society, politics and the role of the individuals in it. Multi-party liberal democracy ‘represents’ a precise vision of social life in which politics is organised so that parties compete in elections to exert control over the state legislative and executive apparatus. This transcendental frame is never neutral – it privileges certain values and practices – and this becomes palpable in moments of crisis or indifference, when we experience the inability of the democratic system to register what people want or think. In the UK elections of 2005, for example, despite Tony Blair’s growing unpopularity, there was no way for this disaffection to find political expression. Something was obviously very wrong here: it wasn’t that people didn’t know what they wanted, but rather that cynicism, or resignation, prevented them from acting.

This is not to say that democratic elections should be despised; the point is only to insist that they are not in themselves an indication of the true state of affairs; as a rule, they tend to reflect the predominant doxa. Take an unproblematic example: France in 1940. Even Jacques Duclos, the number two in the French Communist Party, admitted that if, at that point in time, free elections had been held in France, Marshal Pétain would have won with 90 per cent of the vote. When De Gaulle refused to acknowledge France’s capitulation and continued to resist, he claimed that only he, and not the Vichy regime, spoke on behalf of the true France (not, note, on behalf of the ‘majority of the French’). He was claiming to be speaking the truth even if it had no democratic legitimacy and was clearly opposed to the opinion of the majority of the French people. There can be democratic elections which enact a moment of truth: elections in which, against its sceptical-cynical inertia, the majority momentarily ‘awakens’ and votes against the hegemonic opinion; however, that such elections are so exceptional shows that they are not as such a medium of truth.

dude just come out with it, if you want to be a vanguardist, just say so...

I only read the kung fu panda part and it was disappointingly coherent, but I kind of take it more as criticism of kung fu panda than berlusconi.

I'm taking a class when him and Ronell next semester.

― Mordy, Tuesday, July 21, 2009 10:47 PM (Yesterday)

Jealous

My class starts in half an hour. Live blog? :P

Zizek's Twitter page is one of my favorites:

http://twitter.com/zizekspeaks

His attempts to justify (or Saint-Justify, if you prefer) Robespierre and the Terror on that documentary on the French Revolution were amusing

... and as he was up against Simon Schama, it has hard not to warm to him

Does anyone else reads his tweets imagining how he would be saying them?

i like simon schama more than PLANK zizek.

he has a lloyd grossman thing going on but at least he 1) is erudite about history 2) is not an apologist for terrible authoritarian regimes 3) doesn't explain everything in terms of lacan's mirror theory.

Yeah but Zizek kept rubbing his nose in a funny way in that doc so all is forgiven.

# Inglorious Basterds is the opposite of living out one's fantasy. It condemns us to the truth. The real fantasy is a world sans Auschwitz 5:13 PM Aug 27th from TwitterFox

huh interesting.

# Currently working on article comparing Irish potato famine to Cheers. I think it will be an interesting one. 10:16 AM Aug 31st from TwitterFox

lol gtfo

# RT @sarahksilverman Syntax question: Is the word, "guzzle" exclusive to jizz? 8:56 PM Aug 5th from TwitterFox

is this really real? I can never tell with this guy. In what's probably a common opinion, I think he's wrong about everything but love him anyway.

I have some doubts that it's actually Zizek.

Maybe Mordy can ask him!!

c'mon - it's obviously fake

Cheney's favorite drink- Yoo-hoo
4:45 PM Aug 17th from TwitterFox

c'mon - it's obviously fake

Probably, but it's more fun to pretend it's real.

Ha I misread as "This is the thread where we talk like Slavoj ZIzek..."
can some posters indulge me and do this?

I tried once but someone threw a tantrum.

is this not the thread where we talk about slavoj zizek?

hey mordy could you ask him why he compared israeli treatment of gaza with the holocaust via the hilarious neologism "palestinian-frei'"?

I think any chatting we're going to be doing will mostly be w/r/t Hegel + Antigone. I'd be surprised if Gaza came up.

(Also, I'm shocked that ILX would care about the neologism 'palestinian-frei.')

# RT @sarahksilverman Syntax question: Is the word, "guzzle" exclusive to jizz? 8:56 PM Aug 5th from TwitterFox
― goole, Friday, September 11, 2009 10:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wda thought this was quite a big clue it was fake

What if it's fake, but it's still authored by Zizek?

yeah pretty sure zizek's the author

what is an author?

The twitterer is dead.

il n'ya pas de hors-Twitter

http://twitter.com/zizekspeaks/statuses/4118700070

i wonder if it is german, french or american style?

'there is no subjectivity without the reduction of the subject positive-substantial being to a disposable "piece of shit."'

you charm me so, Slavoj.

his philosophy feels like it comes from the attitude to other philosophers I would probably have if I spent 20 years working in philosophy departments

I love the picture of him giving a lecture, where he looks like he is going to start dishing out karate chops.

I think any chatting we're going to be doing will mostly be w/r/t Hegel + Antigone. I'd be surprised if Gaza came up.

— Mordy, Saturday, September 12, 2009 12:16 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(Also, I'm shocked that ILX would care about the neologism 'palestinian-frei.')

— Mordy, Saturday, September 12, 2009 12:17 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, actually given his reading of 'antigone' i'd imagine gaza would come up.

why are you "shocked" that ilx (or me anyway) would have a problem with his view that the israelis are trying to eradicate the palestinians just as the nazis tried to eradicate the jews? i care about this because among stupid people he's quite an influential figure.

His reading of Hegel/Antigone has been mostly about contingency, comedy/tragedy, and decadence. Not so much discussion of Gaza, or really any current events (tho he did discuss health care briefly w/r/t choice/freedom).

i care about this because among stupid people he's quite an influential figure.

― history mayne, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 7:00 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

great way to dialogue there bro

# There is a sobering message in the failure of the Matrix series: no final solution exists on the horizon today. Capitalism is here to stay.8:13 AM Aug 14th from Echofon

so it's kind of like a dark joke...

but he really does believe in a "final solution" to what he calls "capitalism", doesn't he?

w-w-what

Yeah, that twitter is for sure not real. His latest positions (at least as he's stated them in class) have been fairly conservative and in favor of incremental changes. He even said last week that he's no longer against Capitalism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09zizek.html

eh...

"communism, capital. both...pretty bad!"

www.zizek.us

New site for all yr Zizek needs, apparently run by Verso.