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

Anybody seen the "Zizek blathers on about Lacanian readings of Movies" doc? Looks interesting.

yeah you totally sold that!

i think he takes a fresh look at such critically neglected films as 'psycho' and 'blue velvet' through the optics of freudian psychoanalysis.

Mentioning this K-Punk thing reminds me of something...a few years ago I was reading ILM and somebody brought that blog up, so I took a look at it. WTF is that guy on about? Do any of you understand it? I get this way with thinkers in "critical theory": like the words sorta make sense individually, but together it sounds like pure nonsense (this thread, at least at the top, is like that to me also) e.g.

""The truly radical assertion of historical contingency has to include the dialectical tension between the domain of historical change itself and its traumatic 'ahistorical' kernel qua its condition of (im)possibility."

I'm not afraid of egghead rambling---I am/pretend to be an egghead, even, and get paid for it. But I will have worked all day today to write like one page of clear philosophical text: it won't be mysterious and sexy like what I quoted there, but I will have communicated a thought. What's the attraction of text like that?

er by "What's the attraction of text like that", I mean of Zizek's. So much for communicating a thought!

hahahaha. don't even go there. it comes under i a richards's category of 'prudential speech'.

i think he takes a fresh look at such critically neglected films as 'psycho' and 'blue velvet' through the optics of freudian psychoanalysis.

-- banriquit, Saturday, April 19, 2008 6:55 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah it's not the "fresh readings" that attract me so much as the comedy. I lol'd considerably at "Zizek!" even if the whole thing was the filmmaker's thinly disguised mash note to dude.

my post was meant as a zing -- britishes style.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=D9FXyr-LLeI

zizek's finest moment afaic

Oh I know dude that's why I put "fresh readings" in zingquotes. xxp

lol Lacan = mad fresh rite

omg do want xp to latebloomer

You've been Zizekrolled!

Bah! Can somebody find for me the Zizek interview/essay where he talks about atheism and the death of God. It's driving me crazy, I read it on the internet somewhere fairly recently and didn't bookmark it and I really want to find it again because I can't quite remember what he said that I thought was cool.

that sounds like 70% of his output

don't get my hopes up like that

bump, because I still haven't found it.

Slavoj Zizek, 59, was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities in London and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's institute of sociology. He has written more than 30 books on subjects as diverse as Hitchcock, Lenin and 9/11, and also presented the TV series The Pervert's Guide To Cinema.

When were you happiest?

A few times when I looked forward to a happy moment or remembered it - never when it was happening.

What is your greatest fear?

To awaken after death - that's why I want to be burned immediately.

What is your earliest memory?

My mother naked. Disgusting.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the twice-deposed president of Haiti. He is a model of what can be done for the people even in a desperate situation.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Indifference to the plights of others.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Their sleazy readiness to offer me help when I don't need or want it.

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Standing naked in front of a woman before making love.

Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?

The new German edition of the collected works of Hegel.

What is your most treasured possession?

See the previous answer.

What makes you depressed?

Seeing stupid people happy.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

That it makes me appear the way I really am.

What is your most unappealing habit?

The ridiculously excessive tics of my hands while I talk.

What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?

A mask of myself on my face, so people would think I am not myself but someone pretending to be me.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Watching embarrassingly pathetic movies such as The Sound Of Music.

What do you owe your parents?

Nothing, I hope. I didn't spend a minute bemoaning their death.

To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?

To my sons, for not being a good enough father.

What does love feel like?

Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

What or who is the love of your life?

Philosophy. I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

What is your favourite smell?

Nature in decay, like rotten trees.

Have you ever said 'I love you' and not meant it?

All the time. When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks.

Which living person do you most despise, and why?

Medical doctors who assist torturers.

What is the worst job you've done?

Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

What has been your biggest disappointment?

What Alain Badiou calls the 'obscure disaster' of the 20th century: the catastrophic failure of communism.

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

My birth. I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

To Germany in the early 19th century, to follow a university course by Hegel.

How do you relax?

Listening again and again to Wagner.

How often do you have sex?

It depends what one means by sex. If it's the usual masturbation with a living partner, I try not to have it at all.

What is the closest you've come to death?

When I had a mild heart attack. I started to hate my body: it refused to do its duty to serve me blindly.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

To avoid senility.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

The chapters where I develop what I think is a good interpretation of Hegel.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

That life is a stupid, meaningless thing that has nothing to teach you.

Tell us a secret.

Communism will win.

What is your greatest fear?

To awaken after death - that's why I want to be burned immediately.

That's OTM. My greatest fear is dying and being a consciousness trapped in a dead body.

http://www.jewcy.com/post/defense_zizek

Good stuff.

Eh, I'd say he's constructing a bit of a stawn man there.

er, strawn man.

fuck it.

was just trying to remember, what was his point about passive-aggressive parenting being "less honest" than the "totalitarian style"? something about the glance at the room + "have you cleaned your room today?" vs. "clean your room now"

Shack, you mean the original article was a strawman, right? Cause the one I linked to is a defense of Zizek. Unless you think he was strawmanning the critics?

naw, it was a poor gag. look at the guy's name.

<3 u Ziz

Xp. Cute, you earned retroactive lolz from me.

Reading both those pieces inspired me to read Enjoy Your Symptom! Now I just need to find a copy cheap (InterLib Loan!)

so sick of people calling dude a closet authoritarian

My fave Zizek clip:

Would kill for a Zizek film critic gig at the Voice (or wherever).

this one's still my fave, this or the fragile absolute interview with the local newsman

It's like the Beatles V. the Ramones. When I read Adorno, I'm blown away and shocked and awed. When I read Zizek, I feel like - hey, that's cool. I could do that too.

Bummer! I thought the thread title read: "This is the thread where we talk like Slavoj Zizek"

Is there a good intro to all those terms he uses from (I assume) Lacan?
The Big Other, the Real & the Imaginary & the Symbolic, the little a etc? I always feel like I'm completely missing the point of Zizek's stuff because I don't have a proper idea what those things mean. Also, I hear Lacan's a dreadfully tough read, one I don't think I'm up to.

I'm aware that Zizek's written such an intro himself.

Lacan, Baudrillard, Hegel... I mean those are the places to start, I guess. If you're really looking for a fun, easy opening, Baudrillard's Simulacra is really good. Tho a lot of my friends say that it's stupid and unoriginal (but I enjoyed it!).

I mean, a lot of what he's talking about in those clips is kinda 'swimming in the waters of theory,' and I'm not sure I can place all of it. Certainly some of it should be accessible to any American living in a culture where Matrix was a hit flick, right?

Or, ya know, this is ILX and it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm awake. Ask whatever particular question you had and I'll give my interpretation/understanding (with no promise that it's the correct one).

Thanks, I don't really have any specific question at the moment though. (I'm at work, so I've not watched any of the clips, just talking about previous experiences reading him)

Can we make a "talk like Zizek" thread?

Zizek on religion is always the best, I zone out a little when he gets too "idealogical system" on me though.

Mordy, did you used to have a longer name on this dealy?

A long while ago.

thought you didn't seem that new

I've been posting on and off since at least 2005.

as mordy?

As my longer name; m0rd3ch4i sh1n3f13ld

That seems google-proof enough, right?

Aha! that's who I was talking about, I used to really enjoy your poptimist style posts, anyway I think the Zizek I've enjoyed most is the Puppet and the Dwarf partic for this little nugget: "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience." Which is kind of interesting because by focusing on the fetishistic, materialistic nature of christianity via the eucharist, he opens up these really interesting, if kindof oblique, intersections with Benjamin and Kierkegaard and a kind of dialectical theology.