The Phenomenal Slavoj Zizek

[vimothy]

State communism.
Christianity without the belief in god bit.
'The West' as an historical ideal.

Of course, as chabert points out in the debate that you linked to, a degree of deniability and wriggle-room is very much built into the style of his writing (so in that sense you're right). But if you read through even a small fraction of his work, he's clearly much more sympathetic to some viewpoints than others.

^^Just games people play.

 

[Tentative Andy]

^^Just games people play.

Well from my own reading experiences I'm not wholly convinced about that, but if he really is just playing games then I'd be tempted to say who cares about anything he writes?
("Not me" would be one potential answer to that...)
It's unfortunate though because as I said there is a more analytical aspect to what he does, but that seems to have become increasingly obscured of late.

 

[baboon2004]

Why people will play such games (if they are games, of course - and they may be part game and part not) is exceptionally interesting in itself.

 

[vimothy]

...The colostomy point was introduced in order to say, badly, that there is a distinction in what I claim to be advocating, and what I might actually be advocating. There is a difference between the label and the thing. This is especially true in the orgy of cross-dressing that is contemporary politics.

Zizek says he is a Marxist-Leninist - but what does that mean in an era in which this label possesses no mass movement at all. There is an argument - I think a good one - that Marxism was tied to a certain set of historical, social and technological conditions, and derived its power from them. So what does it mean to be a self-proclaimed Marxist today?

The only thing I'd suggest is it means something to do with genre. That is, it is about a politics of style, rather than politics in the traditional sense. It is about a certain way of staging an appeal. About a style which allows a writer to link the personal to the political, beneath the shelter of a redemption narrative and a sense that they are in some self-evident way serving the Good.

These genre rules are derived from Marxism, but do not necessarily always serve Marxist political ends. There is a notable genre similarity between certain Marxist and fascist narratives, though there are differences as well. The question is: When does the one bleed into the other? When does a genre-narrative which calls itself Marxist, in the rhetorical act of promulgating a message, become something else?

Again, I don't think the answer is necessarily to be found in the content of what is actually being advocated. I think instead instead it is do with the nature of the appeal, what it leans on, and what it closes off.

Intellectuals look to establish certain patterns of communication between people. It is these patterns - these games - which are transmitted more powerfully then the content of the messages they claim to be standing for.

http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?8527-Fascism!&p=158938#post158938

 

[swears]

Josef was a top poster, and frequently OTM, imo.

He went through a phase of being pretty hardcore leftist inna Richard Seymore stylee before joining Dissensus, y'know.

 

[scottdisco]

Josef top boy in the game (and Arsenal fan like Paul Nomos)

Zizek was pretty decent around the time of the Haiti quake, he was very much bigging up Peter Hallward.

i don't think Hallward is probably perfect on Haiti, sure (and i only say that because people like J. Michael Dash might have a slight disagreement w him, even if it is nothing massive *), but he was a damn sight better than many if not most commentators, and he kept rightly banging that Franco-US historical plunder drum.
(i seem to recall k-punk and LENIN'S TOMB both quoting that fine Hallward Comment is Free piece that drove that message home for the general reader.)

anyway, bit off-topic.

* though both men know a lot more about Haiti than me, natch, so what do i know

 

[baboon2004]

Zizek was pretty decent around the time of the Haiti quake, he was very much bigging up Peter Hallward.

ah, my friend knows him thru academia. pretty sure i met him v briefly at a talk on Haiti. Seemed, er, very nice, but I have no knowledge of his thought (tried the Jedi mind trick, failed)

 

[nomadthethird]

i like this clip. of course he forgets that men narrativise sex incredibly, so the view of women as Other is a bit tiresome, but, altogether, very interesting subject if he could get past that.

That's bullshit, every word of it.

If I had a dime for every time I sat in a room surrounded by my brother and his friends and was forced to listen to them recount every sexual encounter they'd ever had, in gorey detail, so they could all bond over it, I'd be rolling in dimes.

Then, if someone took away a dime every time I knew a girlfriend of mine had had sex with someone, but she didn't say anything about it, I'd be poor again.

Zizek has this strange tendency, where he thinks he's really onto something when he simply flips the terms of a ridiculous stereotype-- the stereotype is that men brag about sex to their friends, so let's "reverse" this, and it'll seem like a brilliant flash of insight.

It isn't. It's just a stupid stereotype in reverse.

 

[scottdisco]

sorry more OT, but i'd forgotten the fun on that fascism thread, superb. 75 pages, excellent stuff, i remember following it to the end.

loving the early doors stuff

I guess I'm principally interested in the more micropolitical forms of fascism... "the fascist within", to quote Deleuze and Guattari.

I used to subsribe to these kind of ideas, too. "Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life" and all that. Now I don't, because in the end it gets as hollow and airy as 'power = fascism'; it's exactly what leads to the denuding of fascism as a useful and apposite term. The trouble is, the Fascist and Nazi regimes, when they existed, didn't or couldn't effectively theorise themselves, and attempts to do so became famous jokes (Marinetti's punch-ups, Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century lying unread next to Hitler's bed). Go to a decent bookshop and you can usually find a well-stocked Marxism section, but you wouldn't even be able to stock a Fascist equivalent. In the last few years I've read George L. Mosse and Renzo de Felice, and their books Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice and The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism are both rich and vivid and useful.

I think part of the corruption of fascism as a clear political and theoretical category was caused by the Cold War 'totalitarian' theories, too, and that's to be regretted: this seemed to sharpen the critique of Communism while diluting the defeated foe (that still actually existed in Portugal, Latin America, etc.): so you end up with, I suppose, Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 'Dictatorships and Double Standards'. Actually, Felice's analysis of fascism is so specific and forensic that he doesn't even consider the Franco regime to be fascist, per se.

 

[baboon2004]

That's bullshit, every word of it.

If I had a dime for every time I sat in a room surrounded by my brother and his friends and was forced to listen to them recount every sexual encounter they'd ever had, in gorey detail, so they could all bond over it, I'd be rolling in dimes.

Then, if someone took away a dime every time I knew a girlfriend of mine had had sex with someone, but she didn't say anything about it, I'd be poor again.

Both ways round are stupid stereotypes. Some men never talk about sex, some women recount their experiences in detail. I talk to my female friends way more about sex than my male friends, in terms of graphic detail, but that might be quite different for other people in their friendships. Things don't cut neatly across gender lines.

 

[nomadthethird]

Both ways round are stupid stereotypes. Some men never talk about sex, some women recount their experiences in detail. I talk to my female friends way more about sex than my male friends, in terms of graphic detail, but that might be quite different for other people in their friendships. Things don't cut neatly across gender lines.

Yeah, I know. That was my point.

I was just trying to point out that making sweeping categorical essentialisms based on "gender", whether you think gender and sex are one or not (a lot of Zizekians/Lacanians claim not to, but it's the same message either way) is stupid, precisely because you can only ever base your opinions on anecdote.

 

[nomadthethird]

You see, anecdote will never amount to evidence because all it takes is one counter-anecdote to invalidate any other anecdote. My story, if it contradicts yours, invalidates yours. And vice versa.

The problem with privileged discourses like philosophy, theory, etc.-- and those who are lucky enough to find themselves included in them-- is that both operate under the assumption that the privileged subjects who produce this discourse are in some special position of authority, rendering their anecdotal, "eyeball ethnographies" (to borrow a phrase from Chabert) unassailable and unable to be effectively countered by anyone but another symmetrically privileged subject.

So, in Zizek's view (although this is implicit, never explicit), a woman or feminist could never rightfully undermine his essentialisms and anecdotes about Woman-- only someone with the same amount of class, race, gender, and institutional privilege as he has could possibly effectively challenge his authority. In other words, Zizek's discursive ramblings will only ever "give way" to those of, say, a Badiou or a Toscano. No discursive ground will ever be ceded by Zizek to anyone who isn't a "universal subject" or at least a speaker-for-universal-subjects, i.e., a white, Christian, heterosexual cis-male.

Handily and conveniently enough, Zizek's discourse even goes one further on the rest and hermetically seals itself off from critique from lesser-than-universal-subjects (e.g., black American or French muslim feminists) by rendering any and all utterances by those lesser beings a form of rank, politcally correct multiculturalism; which is, incidentally, also responsible for any failure on the part of the revolutionary European Left to get anything done. (Riiight...)

Zizek is fun to read when he talks about film and other pomo media, especially when his Lacanianism is particularly strained and overwritten. He seems like such a teddy bear, then. It's when he gets "political" that things tend to go spiraling downward.

 

[zhao]

i want to buy a non-theory friend a few theory books, and am considering Welcome to the Desert of the Real, just because it is short, grounded in current events, and relatively lite and accessible. which would you choose for this purpose?

also in the list is Virilio's Vision Machine, that one i am certain about. any other recommendations welcome cheers

 

[scottdisco]

You see, anecdote will never amount to evidence because all it takes is one counter-anecdote to invalidate any other anecdote. My story, if it contradicts yours, invalidates yours. And vice versa.

damnit, someone needs to tell the tabloids in the UK.

(e.g., black American or French muslim feminists) by rendering any and all utterances by those lesser beings a form of rank, politcally correct multiculturalism

this is one reason why so many of today's feminists are self-deluding Orientalist dupes you see, shoring up the whole edifice w their bourgeois morality systems.

i actually see Josef's opening post mentions P Hallward, my bad.

 

[Mr. Tea]

this is one reason why so many of today's feminists are self-deluding Orientalist dupes you see, shoring up the whole edifice w their bourgeois morality systems.

Eurgh...multiculturalism, equality and human rights are all so revoltingly Westernliberalborgeois, don't you find?

Martin Amis recently attacked Islam as the most boring of all religions, demanding its believers to perform again and again the same stupid rituals and learn by heart the same sacred formulas – he was deeply wrong: it is multicultural tolerance and permissiveness which stand for real boredom.

Hell yeah, life is much more interesting when you live in an oppressive, racist dictatorship! Say what you like about the Nazis, but they knew how to paint the town red, eh?

 

[scottdisco]

Martin Amis recently attacked Islam as the most boring of all religions, demanding its believers to perform again and again the same stupid rituals and learn by heart the same sacred formulas – he was deeply wrong: it is multicultural tolerance and permissiveness which stand for real boredom.

there is a rich vein of potential genre analogies here

Islam as the minimal of the world of organised religion? repetition to reveal inner workings.

Buddhism could be glam rock.

 

[grizzleb]

Catholicism as emo rock, all self hatred and the like.

 

[nomadthethird]

Eurgh...multiculturalism, equality and human rights are all so revoltingly Westernliberalborgeois, don't you find?

Hell yeah, life is much more interesting when you live in an oppressive, racist dictatorship! Say what you like about the Nazis, but they knew how to paint the town red, eh?

Oh yes, and what's even better about these types is that they're constantly going on about the evils of moral relativism...and how the only thing that will save us is like Badiou's Ethics. But Badiou's Ethics is basically Situational Ethics 2.0, the idea is there is no universal ethical principle, it's all situational. (Ok I simplified his argument but that's the gist of it). That's pomo as fuck, I'm sorry.

Meanwhile, Zizek and Badiou and theorists who claim to be soooo over moral relativism are constantly using it to excuse things like: oppressive religions that force women to wear veils, oppressive religions with figureheads like Saint Paul, basically any issue where white men get to tell women or racial minorities what they are and what they should be doing, etc.

 

[nomadthethird]

"Faith" for these people is self-help... and they have the fucking nerve to accuse other people of putting aside important "political" concerns in favor of self-help.

And of course, the people they're saying this kind of thing to are the types who've been repeatedly raped, abused, assaulted, discriminated against at work, discriminated against at home, in their communities, who can't make a living wage anywhere near what these fucks make for drooling their idiotic pronouncements all over the place.

It's sick. Fuck all of them.

 

[Tentative Andy]

^^ Yeah I was going to say something about that quote, but nomad has basically covered it all plus a good deal more that wouldn't have occured to me. I'm going to butt out again now as it seems pointless giving any more time to debating a guy I don't really read or care about much anymore.

(Very) ignorant question before I go though: what is the cis- thing all about?