Filed under: video, žižek | Tags: cooper union, first as tragedy, lecture, slavoj zizek, then as farce
In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown. He spoke on that same theme at Cooper Union during a recent trip to New York.
October 14. 2009
See also:
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Žižek cut short by bomb threat
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: 2009, interview, newstatesman, october, slavoj zizek
NewStatesman | Full Transcript
This is was the point of my big fight with Simon Critchley. I think it’s too easy to play this moralistic game – state power is corrupted, so let’s withdraw into this role of ethical critic of power. Here, I’m an old Hegelian. I hate the position of "beautiful soul", which is: ""I remain outside, in a safe place; I don’t want to dirty my hands." In this ironic sense, I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn’t afraid to dirty his hands. That’s what I miss in today’s left. When you get power, if you can, grab it, even if it is a desperate situation. Do whatever is possible.
See also:
Critchley versus Žižek
Filed under: ebooks, žižek | Tags: first as tragedy, slavoj zizek, then as farce
The title of this book is intended as an elementary IQ test for the
reader: if the first association it generates is the vulgar anti-communist
cliche-”You are right-today, after the tragedy of twentieth-century
totalitarianism, all the talk about a return to communism can only be
farcical!”-then I sincerely advise you to stop here. Indeed, the book
should be forcibly confiscated from you, since it deals with an entirely
different tragedy and farce, namely, the two events which mark the
beginning and the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century:
the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2008.
See also:
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce – Cooper Union Lecture
What does it mean to be a revolutionary today?
To Each According to his Greed
Welcome to the Desert of the Real
Guardian Review
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: gotham city, hollywood today, joker, report from an ideological frontline, slavoj zizek, the dark knight
From lacan.com:
There is a tiny line that separates this “humanization” from the resigned coming to terms with lie as a social principle: what matters in such a “humanized” universe is authentic intimate experience, not truth. At the end of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, a film which also “humanizes” its superhero, presenting him as full of doubts and weaknesses, the new DA Harvey Dent, an obsessive vigilante against the mob rule who got corrupted and himself committed murders, is dead, Batman and his police friend Gordon realize the loss of morale the city would suffer if Dent’s murders became known. Batman persuades Gordon to preserve Dent’s image by holding Batman responsible for the murders; Gordon destroys the Bat-Signal and a manhunt for Batman ensues. This necessity of a lie to sustain public morale is the film’s finale message: only a lie can redeem us. No wonder that, paradoxically, the only figure of truth in the film is Joker, its supreme villain. [4] The goal of his terrorist attacks on Gotham City is made clear: they will stop when Batman will take off his mask and reveal his true identity; to prevent this disclosure and thus protect Batman, Dent tells the press that he is Batman – another lie. In order to entrap Joker, Gordon stages his own (fake) death – yet another lie…
See also:
They Live! Hollywood as an Ideological Machine
October, 2009
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: hermeneutic delirium, lacanian ink 34, slavoj zizek
From lacan.com:
And this brings me to a possible Lacanian definition of auratic presence: it is simply the fantasm, the fantasm as - for Lacan - an imaginary scenario which stages an impossible scene, something that could only be seen from the point of impossibility. Let me explain this via a detour through Deleuze who often varies the motif of how, in becoming post-human, we should learn to practice “a perception as it was before men (or after) /.../ released from their human coordinates”: those who fully endorse the Nietzschean “return of the same” are strong enough to sustain the vision of the “iridescent chaos of a world before man.”
Filed under: video, žižek | Tags: amy goodman, democracy now, slavoj zizek
Paul Krugman said basically the same thing, which tells us a lot about how ideology works today. He said, what if we make a mental experiment, and all the leading bank people, managers and so on, were to know how it would end two years ago? He said, let’s not delude ourselves; there would have been no change. They would have acted in exactly the same way.
This brings me, as a psychoanalyst, into the play, because I think this makes us aware as to what extent our everyday dealing is controlled by what in psychoanalysis we call the mechanism of fetishist disavowal. “Je sais bien, mais quand même…” “I know very well, but…” You know, we can know very well the possible catastrophic consequences, but somehow you trust the market, you think things will somehow work out, and so on and so on. It’s absolutely crucial to analyze this, not only in economy, but generally. This is the focus of my work: how beliefs function today. What do we mean when we say that someone believes?
See also:
Žižek cut short by bomb threat
Use Your Illusions
Democracy Now!, October 15. 2009
Filed under: Other, slovensko, video | Tags: dolgo slovo kapitalizma, kapitalizem, Karl Marx, marksa, marksizem, pekarna, predavanje, zakaj še brati marxa, zofijini ljubimci
Dolgo slovo Kapitalizma ali Zakaj še brati Marxa?
Video | Info
Dr. Božidar Debenjak je dolgoletni profesor filozofije na Filozofski fakulteti v Ljubljani. Pred upokojitvijo je predaval filozofijo zgodovine, socialno filozofijo ter panoramski uvod v filozofijo. Od leta 2001 nosi naziv zaslužnega profesorja. Objavil je več monografij in preko 300 člankov s področja filozofije zgodovine, socialne filozofije, marksologije, zgodovine marksizma ter filozofske terminologije. Med najbolj znana dela sodijo »Friedrich Engels – Zgodovina in odtujitev« (1970), »V alternativi. Marksistične študije« (1974) in »Vstop v marksistično filozofijo« (1977). Dr. Božidar Debenjak je v slovenščino prevedel Hegla (mdr. »Fenomenologijo duha« in »Um v zgodovini«), Marxa, Engelsa, R. Luxemburg, Korscha, Adorna, Marcuseja, Habermasa, Blocha idr. Je tudi soavtor Velikega nemško-slovenskega slovarja ter Velikega slovensko-nemškega slovarja. Pri založbi Sophia je leta 2008 izdal knjižico O spremembi sveta – Pomen Marxovih tez o Feuerbachu. Letos je ponovno izšel ponatis njegovega prevoda Komunističnega manifesta v izdaji, za katero so med drugim spremne besede prispevali dr. Mladen Dolar, dr. Slavoj Žižek, dr. Jože Mencinger in dr. Rajko Muršič.
Glej tudi:
Mladina.si – Dr. Božidar Debenjak, filozof
Predstavitev Ponatisa Knjige Komunistični Manifest
Četrtek 1.10. 2009 18:00. Hala Gustaf, Pekarna, Maribor.
Predavanje organizirali: Zofijini Ljubimci
Kamera in Video: Simon
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: antiglobalization, clubbing, first as tragedy, international monetary fund, joseph stiglitz, mass arrests, paul krugman, protesters, slavoj zizek, tear-gassing, then as farce, third world, to each according to his greed, world bank
From Harper’s Magazine:
The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable. Recall the demonstrations that throughout the last decade regularly accompanied meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: the protesters’ complaints encompassed not only the usual antiglobalization motifs (the growing exploitation of Third World countries, etc.) but also how the banks were creating the illusion of growth by playing with fictional money and how this would all have to end in a crash. It was not only economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz who warned of the dangers ahead and made it clear that those who promised continuous growth did not really understand what was going on under their noses. In Washington in 2000, so many people demonstrated about the danger of a financial collapse that the city had to mobilize 3,500 local policemen. What ensued was tear- gassing, clubbing, and mass arrests. The police were used to stifle the truth.
This essay also appears in First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, a new book available from Verso.
Filed under: video, žižek | Tags: anti-semite, anti-semitism, conflict, israel, jew, palestine, slavoj zizek
Filed under: video, žižek | Tags: buffalo university, center for the study of psychoanalysis and culture, hegel, is it possible to be a hegelian today, jean copjec, slavoj zizek
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 talk at the University at Buffalo.
Organized by the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture.
Joan Copjec introduces Žižek.
Filed under: Other | Tags: continental philosophy, copyright, ebooks, emule, p2p, piracy, sharing, torrent
From openreflections:
But how can something be truly underground in an online environment whilst still trying to spread or disseminate texts as widely as possible? This seems to be the paradox of many – not quite legal and/or copyright protected – resource sharing and collecting communities and platforms nowadays. However, multiple scenario’s are available to evade this dilemma: by being frankly open about the ‘status’ of the content on offer, as Ubu does, or by using little ‘tricks’ like an easy website registration, classifying oneself as a reading group, or by relieving oneself from responsibility by stating that one is only aggregating sources from elsewhere (linking) and not hosting the content on its own website or blog. One can also state the offered texts or multimedia files form a special issue or collection of resources, emphasizing their educational and not-for-profit value.
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: in these times, making the illegal legal, slavoj zizek
On August 2, 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families—more than 50 people—from their homes. Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court to justify the evictions, the Arab families had been living there for more than 50 years. The event attracted the attention of the global media, but it is part of a larger and mostly ignored process.
Filed under: dolar, slovensko, video, žižek | Tags: friedrich engels, janez ramoveš, jože mencinger, Karl Marx, komunistični manifest, mladen dolar, rajko rušič, slavoj zizek, založba sanje
Glej tudi:
vecer.com – Komunistični manifest spet na knjižne police
24ur.com – Komunistični manifest v času ‘kazino kapitalizma’
dnevnik.si – Kritizirati le zato, da se nič ne bi spremenilo
delo.si – Manifest kot uspešnica
studio.delo.si – Komunistični manifest v parku
siol.net – Kaj lahko Komunistični manifest ponudi danes?
vest.si – Filozofi z Žižkom na čelu o Komunističnem manifestu
Sanje.si – Komunistični manifest in Spremni zapisi k ponovni izdaji
Božidar Debenjak (avtor prevoda) – Dolgo Slovo Kapitalizma (predavanje)
Slavoj Žižek in conversation with Pierpaolo Antonello at the 2009 edition of ‘Pordenonelegge’, a Literary Festival held in Pordenone, Italy. September 2009
For the last couple of decades, the intellectual situation in France has been marked by countless discussions about the status to be accorded to the word “Jew” within the divisions of thought. Undoubtedly, this has to do with the suspicion, based on some indubitable facts and some contrived ones, that anti-Semitism has made a “return”. But had it ever disappeared? Or is it not rather crucial to see that a considerable change has taken place in the nature of anti-Semitism’s forms, criteria and inscription in discourse over the last thirty years?
Translated by Steve Corcoran. This collection was published as Circonstances 3: Portées du mot “juif”, Paris: Leo Schéer, 2005.
The Word “Jew” and the Sycophant:
One could resist responding. One ought not to, perhaps. Or else, one could respond by looking at things from a bird’s-eye view, as a very small symptom of the situation into which France has lapsed in recent times. Circonstances 3 is a book for which Cécile Winter and I alone take responsibility. Yet the violence of the reaction provoked by this book must he placed in its political context. The fact is that the situation in France today is dominated by an unprecedented reactionary offensive against workers of foreign origin, the adolescents of housing estates, children’s schooling, the health of the poorest and weakest, women with different customs, workers’ hostels, the mentally ill…
The complete version of this article of which the above is but an excerpt, appeared in Le monde on 02/02/06. It was written in response to Eric Marty”s “Alain Badiou: le futur d’une négation,” in Les temps modernes, 12/05-01/06. A complete version of the article in English, translated by Steve Corcoran, appears in Badiou’s Polemics, New York: Verso, 2006.
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: equality, fascism, freedom, human rights, jewish plot, palestina, slavoj
From lacan.com:
There are two different modes of ideological mystification which should in no way be confused: the liberal-democratic one and the Fascist one. The first one concerns false universality: the subject advocates freedom/equality, not being aware of implicit qualifications which, in their very form, constrain its scope (privileging certain social strata: rich, male, belonging to a certain race or culture). The second one concerns the false identification of the antagonism and the enemy: class struggle is displaced onto the struggle against the Jews, so that the popular rage at being exploited is redirected from capitalist relations as such to the “Jewish plot.”
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: guardian, Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene, slavoj zizek
On 2 August 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families (more than 50 people) from their homes; Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the country’s supreme court, the evicted Arab families had been living there for more than 50 years. The event – which, rather exceptionally, did attract the attention of the world media – is part of a much larger and mostly ignored ongoing process.
Filed under: text, žižek | Tags: berlusconi in tehran, london review of books, lrb.co.uk, slavoj zizek, the rome-tehran axis
When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, but before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture often takes place. All of a sudden, people know the game is up: they simply cease to be afraid. It isn’t just that the regime loses its legitimacy: its exercise of power is now perceived as a panic reaction, a gesture of impotence. Ryszard Kapuściński, in Shah of Shahs, his account of the Khomeini revolution, located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman withdrew. Within a couple of hours, all Tehran had heard about the incident, and although the streetfighting carried on for weeks, everyone somehow knew it was all over. Is something similar happening now?
