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

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.

http://twitter.com/zizekspeaks/status/5484005532

zizek vs. british douchebag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8cIagiKwkw

Zizek is actually great at TV though - he seems much more skilled at deflecting the "gotcha" interview than most leftists I've seen on TV.

i watched his "perverts guide to cinema" off netflix and it was pretty dim

there was one good idea presented, that in hitchcock, there is something at work beneath surface details, and further beneath the deeper stuff like theme or emotion, some kind of pre-linguistic elemental desire of forms in motion against each other through time, or some shit.

but it wasn't really elaborated upon or supported or applied to anything beyond hitchcock.

btw, what was the other recent thread where Zizek was being discussed at length? (it wasn't initially about zizek)

think it was about... dylan haha.

lol yeah. it was the why don't u like dylan thread.

Why don't I like Bob Dylan?

But there was another one too, because I remember posting on one and it wasn't that.

no logo

Yeah, that's it.

I just watched all 8 parts of antisemitism, antisemite and jew, which I thought was quite good.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zizek+antisemitism&search_type=&aq=f

I hate to use the tired saw of "doesn't offer any solutions" but there is something a bit frustrating about his successful critique of everything that doesn't quite lead to anything. I wonder if there isn't a logical fallacy in a "third way" between liberalism and authoritarianism - I mean in any sphere you either have centralized control or you don't, right? You can vary in degree of control but I'm not sure you can get outside the space between those two poles.

But maybe this: third way" between liberalism and authoritarianism

is a misstatement of his idea.

lol at zizek's liberal running in place motion at 7:47 in that first clip

Great joke shortly after 22:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw

i watched his "perverts guide to cinema" off netflix and it was pretty dim

Watched parts - some of his freudian readings of hitchcock seem a little basic since the freudian ideas are so obvious in the films. I found his readings of Lynch more interesting though at times he kind of grasps to avoid not having something to say.

im watching that video, and it is useful that he puts his cards on the table. all forms of "capitalism"
are bad, no matter how ameliorative. (he doesn't begin to define capitalism.) rwanda (or whatever) is less important than the "anti-imperialist struggle". (i don't know where this was taking place in 1994.) we must simply reject capitalism; the rest is a side-issue. he still isn't saying what his communist utopia is, how it is organized.

ah, now capitalism is a "totality" that generates religious fundamentalism because it is responsible for the decline of the secular left in muslim countries. he's talking about female circumcision. which is a "symptom" of global capitalism. i don't think this is true, is it? female circumcision (and other barbaric practices) were part of the debate during the british empire. did the empire "produce" said practices? i can see how it's comforting to think so; but zizek here is just demonstrating his historical ignorance.

(in any case he is brutally simplifying things: can he really account for the taliban *solely* in terms of capitalism? i would have thought that the invasion of the secular leftists of the ussr had at least something to do with it too. but perhaps capitalism is also responsible, in the final analysis, for the corruption of the first communist utopia.)

21 minutes: still no definition of capitalism or explanation of "totality"; no description of his utopia. so only some of his cards on the table. (oh, a rape joke. funny!) he thinks there can be and ought to be a "total" break with "capitalism" because it's a "totality" and any change within "it" is illusory. he simply does not say what lies on the other side of the break.

(ah, just now: "historical forms of capitalism". this is naked idealism.)

Basically Zizek's argument re the decline of secularism in the middle east is that the international success of capitalism politically and economically means that any attempt to rebel against its imposed status quo is now framed in apocalyptic terms.

Can't account entirely for female circumcision (he's being cute if he pretends otherwise) but maybe can account for the way in which communities lean on fundamentalism as a kind of bulwark against what is seen as the west's corruption.

Which is pretty much the same as Terry Eagleton's argument that the recent rise of islamic fundamentalism is due to the US jumping on any kind of left-wing government in the middle east until secular alternatives to the status quo became unviable.

Re this argument, Zizek does have this nice line about how Fukiyama's 'End of History' and Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations' inadvertently and unwittingly add up to a whole correct picture: in a world where capitalism has "won", conflicts between different interests can only be expressed as these massive non-economic cultural clashes.

zizek is ott but this thing about secularism/capitalism/the middle east is borne out rather nicely in iran in the works of ali shariati and jalal al e ahmad, i think!

and in khomeini's writing for that matter

foucault struggled with some of the same issues when writing about iran too.

it is kind of a fascinating question, i think--to what extent is it possible to critique "the west" using its "own" tools?

John Gray makes basically the same argument as Zizek and Eagleton (so now you'll all conclude it must be wrong!).

zizek is ott but

Probably worth making this some sort of automatic prefix to all posts about dude.