http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/26/the_fp_100_global_thinkers?page=0,55#thinker92
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 16:53 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/08/capitalism
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 November 2012 17:32 (eleven years ago) link
Also, I really hate all of this politically correct, cultural studies bullshit. If you mention the phrase “postcolonialism,” I say, “Fuck it!” Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals.
― Mordy, Sunday, 30 December 2012 04:54 (eleven years ago) link
In 1918-19, Trotsky was much harsher than Stalin. And I do like this in him. But I will never forgive him for how he screwed it up in the mid-’20s. He was so stupid and arrogant. You know what he would do? He would come to party meetings carrying French classics like Flaubert, Stendhal, to signal to others: “Fuck you, I am civilized!”
― Mordy, Sunday, 30 December 2012 05:00 (eleven years ago) link
I was going to bump this to finally ask someone if zizek is antisemitic so I could determine if I'm justified in not caring about him but I think I'm going to derive my justification from his reference to the "guilt of white liberals" instead
― (panda) (gun) (wrapped gift) (silby), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 06:32 (eleven years ago) link
i've been watching bits + pieces of pervert's guide to cinema. so funny. i love the part where he's on the boat in the birds and says, "i feel like melanie. i want to fuck mitch."
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 13:35 (eleven years ago) link
Let’s run with that. You have said before: “I am a philosopher, not a prophet.” And yet, your followers are remarkably pious; many worship you as a prophet. Why?
Well, I’m ambiguous on this. On the one hand, I return to a more classical Marxism. Like: ‘It cannot last! This is all crazy! The hour of reckoning will come, blah blah blah.’
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 13:41 (eleven years ago) link
zizek otm
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 13:44 (eleven years ago) link
and where are the guiltiest liberals of all? post-colonial vienna
http://germanistik.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/ag_hfs_germ_babka/cover_cd_bhabha.JPG
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 14:39 (eleven years ago) link
i dont think zizek is an anti-semite
― max, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 14:55 (eleven years ago) link
i don't think so either
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 14:57 (eleven years ago) link
dude is so clearly just a provocateur that even if he started praising hitler or w/e I am not sure it would be grounds for any real conclusion
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 14:58 (eleven years ago) link
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2013/1/12/1357993749882/slavoj-zizek-010.jpg
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:00 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.himho.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Lars-Von-Trier.jpg
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:00 (eleven years ago) link
I could look at ridiculous Zizek pictures all morning
― mh, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:17 (eleven years ago) link
dude is so clearly just a provocateur that even if he started praising hitler or w/e
He tried his best with Robespierre
― Designated Striver (Tom D.), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:18 (eleven years ago) link
remember he said hitler wasn't violent enough? or the violence wasn't real enough.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:19 (eleven years ago) link
o zizek you so crazy what will you say next
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:22 (eleven years ago) link
I like Zizek as far as it goes but i am put off (to put it mildly) by the insistence on the purity of a revolutionary rhetoric and manichaeanism.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:54 (eleven years ago) link
i think his insight that radical violence is often a release valve for capitalism's ongoing success is pretty otm. i don't think of it as a promotion of more authentic violence but more description of why resistance is so often co-opted.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:55 (eleven years ago) link
fair enough. i do think however that he holds out the possibility of a more pure or authentic "violence." that he cheekily does this by rhetorical saying or supporting practice that "liberals" would find abhorrent is fine and whatever but i think his critical project depends on that authenticity and purity being in some strange sense "real"--even if only in the negative fashion of striking an abhorrent pose.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 15:59 (eleven years ago) link
i mean, i get his point. i think. but one questions whether his own posing gets caught up in all this as well. i mean, he's never crossed the line so firmly as to not be an academic idol.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:00 (eleven years ago) link
similar to his keeness on good old Uncle Joe- when does it stop becoming rhetorical posturing and start becoming lauding a disgusting mass murdering tyrant?
― Neil S, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:01 (eleven years ago) link
― Mordy, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 10:19 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark
which is true btw
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:01 (eleven years ago) link
and this romance with theological extremism and revolutionary politics--he holds on to those legacies as a kind of resource but im not sure i agree that they hold the same potential for "resistance" that he does.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:02 (eleven years ago) link
martin jay gave a lecture at cordoza once about how adorno was turned off by benjamin's authenticity aura bc he felt there was something inherently fascist about it. i think there's a sense of that here - purity in general is troubling and zizek is kinda foreclosing incremental changes as important or necessary. at the same time tho capitalism is remarkably resilient and global and so trying to understand why violence has failed to curtail it even while bringing down totalitarian regimes is important. esp when violence becomes a mode of expressing capitalism (under the guise of challenging it). world bank protests have failed to put a dent in the world bank, even w/ all the starbucks window breaking.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:03 (eleven years ago) link
I think Adam Kotsko does a pretty good job of explaining the apparent trollin' and extremisms in this article http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=897&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint
― Bill Goldberg Variations (Merdeyeux), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:04 (eleven years ago) link
keynes would probably say that riots are good for the economy
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:05 (eleven years ago) link
lol 'apparent trolling'
this shit is nothing new, the only thing remotely interesting about zizek is that he is not a french guy doing this
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:06 (eleven years ago) link
xxp tho I share misgivings some of you are on aboot.
― Bill Goldberg Variations (Merdeyeux), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:07 (eleven years ago) link
yeah that's a great read on zizek. i still think his "project" fails (for me) for the reasons i've stated above. i think ultimately i dont see the same utility in using the old frameworks (however denuded) of revolutionary marxism and eschatological christianity (a natural pair!) -- there are, or need to be, better ways forward.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:07 (eleven years ago) link
i find zizek way more compelling than badiou xxp
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:07 (eleven years ago) link
and no keynes would not say that riots are good for the economy
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:08 (eleven years ago) link
why not? puts the window manufacturers back to work.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:10 (eleven years ago) link
well think about it like 'unbroken windows' are a part of the economy and when they get broken the economy gets smaller and people who own those windows are now poorer. I mean the broken windows thing is a typical strawman critique of keynesianism.
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:18 (eleven years ago) link
that's not to say that it couldn't, in the right macroeconomic situation 'put window manufacturers back to work', it's just not something anyone would suggest
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:19 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, i was just trying to be cute about one of the ways that resistance to capitalism might actually support capitalism.
i guess i believe in marxism - that capitalism is a part of a historical process that slowly becomes socialism through technological advancement. i don't think zizek has much time or interest in that idea tho.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:22 (eleven years ago) link
much time for, or interest in, i mean
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:23 (eleven years ago) link
I can tell you for real that the mcdonalds next to zuccotti park got a shit ton of business
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:24 (eleven years ago) link
this is a little jargony but i think judith butler's critque of Z's notion of the "necessity of contingency" with regard to the Symbolic is pertinent--she counters with the "contingency of contingency"--essentially foreclosing the possibility of the kind of necessary, authentic, or pure rhetoric that is Z's stock in trade these days.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:27 (eleven years ago) link
when talking about the matrix zizek says that neither pills are sufficient. he wants a third pill. this third pill would not give him some kind of spiritual transcendence, some kind of real, but rather would demonstrate the essential reality of the fake construct. (this is kinda kitchsy baudrillard stuff, but i'm mentioning it bc i don't think judith is being entirely fair about how zizek uses contingency.)
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:29 (eleven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RynFTJdyldg
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:31 (eleven years ago) link
"not the reality behind the illusion, but the reality in the illusion itself"
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:32 (eleven years ago) link
i can't remember where at the moment, but somewhere Zizek talks about the elephant in the room with marxism being the fact that it itself, by it's own logic, is an ideological formation determined entirely by history (and thus capitalism). can't remember how he squares that circle though.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:36 (eleven years ago) link
i'm annoyed at butler these days
― Mordy, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:38 (eleven years ago) link
off-topic lol
Marxism is indeed a super-structural adjunct to the capitalist base- but that doesn't necessarily make it illogical. Pure mathematics is the same and is (to some degree) a coherent system.
― Neil S, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:40 (eleven years ago) link
right but that coherence is purchased at the cost of forming an "objective" or total description--this is essentially the idea that marxism (like anything else) constitutes a "closed" system that can only really describe itself.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:43 (eleven years ago) link
yeah the q is how well it maps onto the "real world" whatever that is.
― Neil S, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:44 (eleven years ago) link
i like that video above. i do find his notions therein about some kind of exposure to trauma or libido to be really interesting--but again i'd say what id say above--it's only an openness achieved by closure first.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:45 (eleven years ago) link