The Phenomenal Slavoj Zizek

N

Numbers

Well-known member
There is good video of a lecture at youtube, which all of you presumably have already seen. I discovered it tonight. The sniffing is hilarious.

 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Mr. Tea said:
Well if he regards sex as 'masturbation with a living partner' he's probably not too hot in the sack.
Maybe he prefers dead ones, who knows?
Click to expand...

Anyone who doesn't know what Zizek means by "masturbation with a living partner" has never had sex with a male.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
josef k. said:
"this thread needs to get back on topic (altho it is still entertaining)"

Okay, let me try, with a rather polemical paragraph.

Zizek is as a new kind of philosopher - a man who has perfected a personal style halfway between language and cathode ray. He knows, when it comes down to it, nothing (a certain amount of insight into Lacan besides) but has an opinion on everything. In this respect, the status he enjoys amongst certain bloggers is not coincidental. At the same time, Zizek is not entirely a figure of the new media (though pehaps blogs aren't either): his standing mode of address - the sweeping, empty, pronouncement, tossed off periodically - is that of the opinion journalist, which is perhaps why other opinion journalists, like Johann Hari, despise him: its a crowded market.

Moreover, I think that Zizek considered sociologically - as himself a phenomenon - is much more interesting then the content of anything he actually says. Though what he says is perhaps a factor of his own peculiar sociological status: when one considers it, Zizek's philosophy is precisely constructed to lend figures like himself a great deal of status. Ideology is everywhere, and everything is ideology - and hence you need a contrarian to get people thinking. Capitalism is triumphant, and attempts to narcotivize - thus you need Zizek, making blood-curdling statements, which, although strangely attractive to the media, nevertheless can be understood as "the true leftist position."

Finally, Zizek is a figure of the identity politics which he himself affects to despise. Want to establish an identity as "a leftist"? Follow Zizek - he'll let you know what to think, and give you your talking points.
Click to expand...

Zizek is not a new kind of anything. He's a guy who likes Hegel and Lacan who grew up in the Communist bloc and who publishes books that are not even that well-received by the "left" or academia at large. I've never, not even once, in 8 years in philosophy and media studies, EVER had a professor assign a Zizek reading or even mention him in class. (And, if I'm not mistaken, he was a visiting professor at my grad school for a time).

Zizek himself would be the first to admit he's a "figure of identity politics" insofar as we all are, insofar as any public figure is bound to be one. This is one of the problems with our current preferred forms of social organization, in his view.

I think you're confusing a small corner of the blogosphere (in their strong interest in Zizek) for "people at large" here and in some other threads. A common error in online discussions.
 
Last edited:
J

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
nomadthesecond said:
Zizek is not a new kind of anything.
Click to expand...

You don't think so? It does seem to me that, if nothing else, Zizek is something quite different from your usual grey man academic. He has a cross-platform media strategy and has starred in his own television show and also a film: Zizek! He produces a kind of discourse which is, I think, extremely unique, in its blend of pop cultural references and mighty philosophical thinkers, laying the groundwork on that basis for a further discourses conducted in similar terms.

I recog that Zizek is not hugely important in the wider world outside of (para)-academia. This is his milieu. I'm just trying to figure out what his relationship is with the outside world. I'm interested in Zizek's politics in the context of his milieu, and its relations with other milieus.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
josef k. said:
You don't think so? It does seem to me that, if nothing else, Zizek is something quite different from your usual grey man academic. He has a cross-platform media strategy and has starred in his own television show and also a film: Zizek! He produces a kind of discourse which is, I think, extremely unique, in its blend of pop cultural references and mighty philosophical thinkers, laying the groundwork on that basis for a further discourses conducted in similar terms.

I recog that Zizek is not hugely important in the wider world outside of (para)-academia. This is his milieu. I'm just trying to figure out what his relationship is with the outside world. I'm interested in Zizek's politics in the context of his milieu, and its relations with other milieus.
Click to expand...

There was no such thing as "pop culture" in the form of Hollywood movies and such until the 20th century, at which time theorists (Adorno and the Frankfurt school for starters) certainly did talk about it.

If Zizek seems to represent a point in academic culture when media saturation has increased significantly in a short period of time, it's because this is what's happened everywhere, in every sector...it's the new media/digital revolution...
 
U

UFO over easy

online mahjong
If Zizek seems to represent a point in academic culture when media saturation has increased significantly in a short period of time, it's because this is what's happened everywhere, in every sector...it's the new media/digital revolution...
Click to expand...

Seems like you guys basically agree then
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
mistersloane said:
Innit? It was him as well cos he sent me his address so I could send him stuff, it's little things like that that make me really happy.

I think he's just totally ADD rather than on the toot, you see him in that documentary and he's hyper all the way through. Big brain + no attention span = cultural studies.
Click to expand...

I see two Zizeks on myspace but only one that looks legit.

I'm gonna add him and see if I can get a response to a question about his work.

I saw this interesting short bio of him on some weird channel (maybe ion television) in the 800s once, and I was unsurprised to find that he had some interesting mannerisms. I loved it when his son laughed smugly and Zizek said "he is narcissistically amused..." He did seem quite yakked through most of it.
 
Agent

Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
i think it's odd that a Lacanian would become a rock star in Europe (with the underwear model wife and all) in the wake of the Sokal affair. Zizek seems to avoid the later Lacan and i think his interpretation of the sinthome as essentially "stupid" is way off. The only Lacan really worth anyone's time is Seminar 17 and everything that came after it (through 27 i think). That was when Lacan dealt with the Real register in-depth. Zizek's idea of the real seems self-contradictory. His explanation of the drive v. desire is fantastic though.

I would put a few living intellectuals ahead of Zizek: Jean-luc Nancy, Jean Michel Rabate, Frederic Jameson, Arne Naess, Paul Virilio, Anthony Vidler, and Manuel de Landa. But that is jmo.
 
Last edited:
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Agree totally that there are more prominent living theorists.

Thing is, Zizek's application of Lacan to films was sort of what interested me in Lacan, who before then seemed just a little too elliptical and, hmm, French about psychoanalysis. I've always found Lacan a tad opaque, and before I could make some clearer historiographical connections between Lacan and Freud, and see Lacan as someone who de-formalized psychoanalysis, generalized it so it worked outside of Victorian Austria, I wasn't too thrilled by him. It's kinda like the difference between a science and an art, the difference between Freud and Lacan.

Zizek's fascination with Hegel kinda bores me, tbf, but I do appreciate his kitchen sink approach to topical analyses by way of critical theory. Just wish Zizek didn't plagiarize his own work so often. (You'll find pages and pages from one book that are exactly copied from another...)
 
Agent

Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
no i like Zizek - to me reading his stuff is like a workout. it is very encyclopedic, dense, pynchonian, esp The Parallax View, the David Lynch essay, and Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture. The later Lacan stuff is really interesting, especially Seminar 23: The Sinthome which is about James Joyce and topology. My only prob with Zizek is that I can't identify a "big theory" he originated. His elaboration of the parallax is fascinating but he takes it from Karatani.

Lacan is pretty opaque. I had to take two courses, one on Lacanian theory (we read the Ecrits in three weeks), and one called Lacan/Hitchcock/Lynch. The second was by far the more interesting - we read Zizek, Laura Mulvey, anti-Mulvey critics, and queer theorists ("Rear Window's Glass Hole", "Anal Rope", "Spreading the Cheeks of Interpretation" - that one was by the prof... eh).

Zizek or Rabate? idk. I think David Lynch is Lacan's best interpreter but yeah it is science and art.
 
Last edited:
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Agent Nucleus said:
no i like Zizek - to me reading his stuff is like a workout. it is very encyclopedic, dense, pynchonian, esp The Parallax View, the David Lynch essay, and Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture. The later Lacan stuff is really interesting, especially Seminar 23: The Sinthome which is about James Joyce and topology.
Click to expand...
Sorry to ramble into this thread on page 7 with a n00bish question, but is there any of this sort of stuff that's a) online and b) accessible (fsvo accessible) to someone who doesn't know tons of theory already? I only really know about Zizek from reading k-punk and discussions on here, and I'd be quite interested to read him at first hand...
 
jambo

jambo

slip inside my schlafsack
There's lots of Zizek's writing online Sloth.

Some random bookmarks I had:

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-superego-and-the-act-1999.html
http://www.lacan.com/zizek-youmay.htm
http://www.lacan.com/symptom/?page_id=247

Also a lot of talks / interviews on youtube for the full audiovisual experience.

Also, primer on some of Lacan's basic terminology - http://www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html

No doubt there will be scoffing. ;)

I think we should compile a top 100 Zizek moments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top