Showing posts with label pics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pics. Show all posts
The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase:
“The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: “We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Where did the somewhat awkward “pursuit of happiness” come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property— the latter was replaced by “the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property.”
― Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes
 |
| 2008 In Defense of Lost Causes, London |
Reading Žižek – Where to Start?
This Leninist freedom of choice — not “Life or money!” but “Life or critique!”
How, then, do things stand with freedom? Here is how Lenin stated his position in a polemic against the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionaries’ critique of Bolshevik power in 1922:
This Leninist freedom of choice — not “Life or money!” but “Life or critique!” — combined with Lenin’s dismissive attitude towards the “liberal” notion of freedom, accounts for his bad reputation among liberals. Their case largely rests upon their rejection of the standard Marxist-Leninist opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom: as even Leftist liberals like Claude Lefort emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion “formal,” so that “actual freedom” equals the lack of freedom.” That is to say, with regard to freedom, Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort “Freedom yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?” — for him, in the case of the Mensheviks quoted above, their “freedom” to criticize the Bolshevik government effectively amounted to “freedom” to undermine the workers’ and peasants’ government on behalf of the counter-revolution ... Today, is it not obvious after the terrifying experience of Really Existing Socialism, where the fault of this reasoning resides? First, it reduces a historical constellation to a closed, fully contextualized, situation in which the “objective” consequences of one’s acts are fully determined (“independently of your intentions, what you are doing now objectively serves . . . “); second, the position of enunciation of such statements usurps the right to decide what your acts “objectively mean,” so that their apparent 11 objectivism” (the focus on “objective meaning”) is the form of appearance of its opposite, the thorough subjectivism: I decide what your acts objectively mean, since I define the context of a situation (say, if I conceive of my power as the immediate equivalent/expression of the power of the working class, then everyone who opposes me is “objectively” an enemy of the working class). Against this full contextualization, one should emphasize that freedom is “actual” precisely and only as the capacity to “transcend” the coordinates of a given situation, to “posit the presuppositions” of one’s activity (as Hegel would have put it), i.e. to redefine the very situation within which one is active. Furthermore, as many a critic pointed out, the very term “Really Existing Socialism,” although it was coined in order to assert Socialism’s success, is in itself a proof of Socialism’s utter failure, i.e. of the failure of the attempt to legitimize Socialist regimes — the term “Really Existing Socialism” popped up at the historical moment when the only legitimizing reason for Socialism was a mere fact that it exists . . . “
- Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (2001)
Indeed, the sermons which ... the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries preach express their true nature: “The revolution has gone too far What you are saying now we have been saying at[ the time, permit us to say it again.” But we say in reply: “Permit us to put you before a firing squad for saying that. Either you refrain from expressing your views, or, if you insist on expressing your political views publicly in the present circumstances, when our position is far more difficult than it was when the white guards were directly attacking us, then you will have only yourselves to blame if we treat you as the worst and most pernicious white guard elements."”
This Leninist freedom of choice — not “Life or money!” but “Life or critique!” — combined with Lenin’s dismissive attitude towards the “liberal” notion of freedom, accounts for his bad reputation among liberals. Their case largely rests upon their rejection of the standard Marxist-Leninist opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom: as even Leftist liberals like Claude Lefort emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion “formal,” so that “actual freedom” equals the lack of freedom.” That is to say, with regard to freedom, Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort “Freedom yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?” — for him, in the case of the Mensheviks quoted above, their “freedom” to criticize the Bolshevik government effectively amounted to “freedom” to undermine the workers’ and peasants’ government on behalf of the counter-revolution ... Today, is it not obvious after the terrifying experience of Really Existing Socialism, where the fault of this reasoning resides? First, it reduces a historical constellation to a closed, fully contextualized, situation in which the “objective” consequences of one’s acts are fully determined (“independently of your intentions, what you are doing now objectively serves . . . “); second, the position of enunciation of such statements usurps the right to decide what your acts “objectively mean,” so that their apparent 11 objectivism” (the focus on “objective meaning”) is the form of appearance of its opposite, the thorough subjectivism: I decide what your acts objectively mean, since I define the context of a situation (say, if I conceive of my power as the immediate equivalent/expression of the power of the working class, then everyone who opposes me is “objectively” an enemy of the working class). Against this full contextualization, one should emphasize that freedom is “actual” precisely and only as the capacity to “transcend” the coordinates of a given situation, to “posit the presuppositions” of one’s activity (as Hegel would have put it), i.e. to redefine the very situation within which one is active. Furthermore, as many a critic pointed out, the very term “Really Existing Socialism,” although it was coined in order to assert Socialism’s success, is in itself a proof of Socialism’s utter failure, i.e. of the failure of the attempt to legitimize Socialist regimes — the term “Really Existing Socialism” popped up at the historical moment when the only legitimizing reason for Socialism was a mere fact that it exists . . . “
- Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (2001)
It is as if, today, “bio-cosmism” is reemerging in a new wave of “post-human” thought.
“In the first decade of the Soviet Union, so-called “bio-cosmism” enjoyed an extraordinary popularity—as a strange combination of vulgar materialism and Gnostic spirituality that formed the occult shadow-ideology, or obscene secret teaching, of Soviet Marxism. It is as if, today, “bio-cosmism” is reemerging in a new wave of “post-human” thought. The spectacular development of biogenetics (cloning, direct DNA interventions, etc.) is gradually dissolving the frontiers between humans and animals on the one side and between humans and machines on the other, giving rise to the idea that we are on the threshold of a new form of Intelligence, a “more-than-human” Singularity in which mind will no longer be subject to bodily constraints, including those of sexual reproduction. Out of this prospect a weird shame has emerged: a shame about our biological limitations, our mortality, the ridiculous way in which we reproduce ourselves—what Günther Anders has called “Promethean shame,”6 ultimately simply the shame that “we were born and not manufactured.” Nietzsche’s idea that we are the “last men” laying the ground for our own extinction and the arrival of a new Over-Man is thereby given a scientific-technological twist. However, we should not reduce this “post-human” stance to the paradigmatically modern belief in the possibility of total technological domination over nature—what we are witnessing today is an exemplary dialectical reversal: the slogan of today’s “post-human” sciences is no longer domination but surprise (contingent, non-planned emergence). Jean-Pierre Dupuy detects a weird reversal of the traditional Cartesian anthropocentric arrogance which grounded human technology, a reversal clearly discernible in today’s robotics, genetics, nanotechnology, artificial life and Artificial Intelligence research:
Should we see an unexpected sign of hope in this reemergence of surprise at the very heart of the most radical naturalism? Or should we look for a way to overcome the impasses of cognitivist radical naturalism in Deleuzian “New Materialism,” whose main representative is Jane Bennett with her notion of “vibrant matter”?”
- Slavoj Žižek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism
how are we to explain the fact that science became such a “risky” activity that, according to some top scientists, it poses today the principal threat to the survival of humanity? Some philosophers reply to this question by saying that Descartes’ dream—“to become master and possessor of nature”—has turned out bad, and that we should urgently return to the “mastery of mastery.” They understand nothing. They don’t see that the technology profiling itself at our horizon through the “convergence” of all disciplines aims precisely at non-mastery. The engineer of tomorrow will not be a sorcerer’s apprentice because of his negligence or ignorance, but by choice. He will “give” himself complex structures or organizations and will try to learn what they are capable of by exploring their functional properties—an ascending, bottom-up, approach. He will be an explorer and experimenter at least as much as an executor. The measure of his success will be more the extent to which his own creations will surprise him than the conformity of his realization to a list of pre-established tasks.
Should we see an unexpected sign of hope in this reemergence of surprise at the very heart of the most radical naturalism? Or should we look for a way to overcome the impasses of cognitivist radical naturalism in Deleuzian “New Materialism,” whose main representative is Jane Bennett with her notion of “vibrant matter”?”
- Slavoj Žižek, Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism
I suppose Zizek is rightly described as a performer.
I suppose Zizek is rightly described as a performer. He has this element of provocation that is very characteristic and does help to interest people, but I'm not certain that people who are reading Zizek are actually drawn very much nearer rethinking the problems of the left.
- Eric Hobsbawm, in Eric Hobsbawm: a conversation about Marx, student riots, the new Left, and the Milibands
- Eric Hobsbawm, in Eric Hobsbawm: a conversation about Marx, student riots, the new Left, and the Milibands
At some point, Alcoholics Anonymous meet Pascal: "Fake it until you make it.."
Niels Bohr, who gave the right answer to Einstein's "God doesn't play dice" ("Don't tell God what to do!"), also provided the perfect example of how such a fetishist disavowal of belief works in ideology: seeing a horse-shoe on his door, the surprised visitor said that he doesn't believe in the superstition that it brings luck, to what Bohr snapped back: "I also do not believe in it; I have it there because I was told that it works also if one does not believe in it!" What this paradox renders clear is the way a belief is a reflexive attitude: it is never a case of simply believing - one has to believe in belief itself. Which is why Kierkegaard was right to claim that we do not really believe (in Christ), we just believe to believe - and Bohr just confronts us with the logical negative of this reflexivity (one can also NOT believe one's beliefs...).
At some point, Alcoholics Anonymous meet Pascal: "Fake it until you make it.." However, this causality of the habit is more complex than it may appear: far from offering an explanation of how beliefs emerge, it itself calls for an explanation. The first thing to specify is that Pascal's "Kneel down and you will believe!" has to be understood as involving a kind of self-referential causality: "Kneel down and you will believe that you knelt down because you believed!" The second thing is that, in the "normal" cynical functioning of ideology, belief is displaced onto another, onto a "subject supposed to believe," so that the true logic is: "Kneel down and you will thereby MAKE SOMEONE ELSE BELIEVE!" One has to take this literally and even risk a kind of inversion of Pascal's formula: "You believe too much, too directly? You find your belief too oppressing in its raw immediacy? Then kneel down, act as if you believe, and YOU WILL GET RID OF YOUR BELIEF - you will no longer have to believe yourself, your belief will already ex-sist objectified in your act of praying!" That is to say, what if one kneels down and prays not so much to regain one's own belief but, on the opposite, to GET RID of one's belief, of its over-proximity, to acquire a breathing space of a minimal distance towards it? To believe - to believe "directly," without the externalizing mediation of a ritual - is a heavy, oppressing, traumatic burden, which, through exerting a ritual, one has a chance of transferring it onto an Other...
Slavoj Zizek, • WITH OR WITHOUT PASSION •, What's Wrong with Fundamentalism? - Part I
At some point, Alcoholics Anonymous meet Pascal: "Fake it until you make it.." However, this causality of the habit is more complex than it may appear: far from offering an explanation of how beliefs emerge, it itself calls for an explanation. The first thing to specify is that Pascal's "Kneel down and you will believe!" has to be understood as involving a kind of self-referential causality: "Kneel down and you will believe that you knelt down because you believed!" The second thing is that, in the "normal" cynical functioning of ideology, belief is displaced onto another, onto a "subject supposed to believe," so that the true logic is: "Kneel down and you will thereby MAKE SOMEONE ELSE BELIEVE!" One has to take this literally and even risk a kind of inversion of Pascal's formula: "You believe too much, too directly? You find your belief too oppressing in its raw immediacy? Then kneel down, act as if you believe, and YOU WILL GET RID OF YOUR BELIEF - you will no longer have to believe yourself, your belief will already ex-sist objectified in your act of praying!" That is to say, what if one kneels down and prays not so much to regain one's own belief but, on the opposite, to GET RID of one's belief, of its over-proximity, to acquire a breathing space of a minimal distance towards it? To believe - to believe "directly," without the externalizing mediation of a ritual - is a heavy, oppressing, traumatic burden, which, through exerting a ritual, one has a chance of transferring it onto an Other...
Slavoj Zizek, • WITH OR WITHOUT PASSION •, What's Wrong with Fundamentalism? - Part I
This is why, in Kafka’s case, the first (naive) reading is often the most adequate one.
“Reading Kafka demands a great effort of abstraction—not of learning more (the proper interpretive horizon to understand his works), but of unlearning the standard interpretive references, so that one becomes able to open up to the raw force of Kafka’s writing. There are three such interpretive frames: theological (modern man’s anxious search for the absent God); socio-critical (Kafka’s staging of the nightmarish world of modern alienated bureaucracy); and psychoanalytic (Kafka’s “unresolved Oedipus complex,” which prevented him from engaging in a “normal” sexual relationship).
All this has to be erased. A kind of childish naïveté has to be regained for a reader to be able to feel the raw force of Kafka’s universe. This is why, in Kafka’s case, the first (naive) reading is often the most adequate one.”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology
All this has to be erased. A kind of childish naïveté has to be regained for a reader to be able to feel the raw force of Kafka’s universe. This is why, in Kafka’s case, the first (naive) reading is often the most adequate one.”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology
Who Is Zizek And Why Is He Corrupting My Son?
From The Daily Event by Heywood Gould, published by Tolmitch Press, www.heywoodgould.com
Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor of paranoiaisfact.com and columnist for the DE answers readers' questions.
Dear Igor,
My son came home for winter break with a new culture hero--Slavoj Zizek. Zizek had taken his university by storm, giving two sold-out lectures and sitting for an online interview that lasted hours. "He's a post-modern ironist," my son said. It was nice to hear him use words I didn't think he knew. It was great that he went to hear a philosopher-any philosopher- give a lecture. But then I read some of Zizik's essays and I was appalled. Zizik says that Islamic terrorists are not fundamentalists or even revolutionaries, but the casualties of global capitalism. That on 9/11 a paranoid America got what it had been fantasizing about for decades. That Mohammad Atta and his terrrorist hijackers represented the "good as the spirit of and actual readiness to sacrifice in the name of a higher cause." That when prisoners were tortured in Guantanamo they were really being initiated into the true essence of American culture. And if Americans really believed in Democracy they would not vote themselves, but would let the rest of the world choose their leader. My son says I should
My son says I should lighten up. It's just a big joke-"post modern, dad-" meant to make people question conventional assumptions. But then I read an article which calls Zizek "the most dangerous philosopher in the west." Is this paranoia or fact?
60's Liberal
Shaker Heights, Ohio
Dear Liberal,
First...If you want to cure your son of his post-modern tendencies cut off his allowance.
Now to your question. This is pure paranoia. If Zizik were dangerous you would never have heard of him. The capitalist culture welcomes and rewards only harmless iconoclasts, who do not challenge the economic order. To Zizek goes the lucrative honor of being this generation's token anarchist.
Slavoj Zizek is Slovenia's most famous culture hustler. (Admittedly, it is a small country.) You could say he is the Jon Stewart of the academic lecture circuit. He plies a nice trade on the well-endowed campuses of the world, making statements that seem to be outrageous, but are really clever panderings to the politics of his audience. He is a living oxymoron-a best-selling philosopher. He publishes prodigiously dense, obscure musings, but always inserts a sensational easy-to-understand headline about the US, Nazism, Stalinism, Jihadism, Christianity, Zionism, Anti-Semitism (a particular favorite) which creates controversy and adds to his box office appeal.
If Zizek didn't exist, Woody Allen would have had to invent him. He is the subject of a full length documentary, has had a punk band (Laibajh) and a virtual nation (NSK) founded in his honor. He has his own academic journal (International of Zizek Studies,) has written copy for the Abercrombie and Fitch Catalogue and is recently married to a beautiful Argentine model.
He cultivates publicity, responding to every request for a quote or an interview. He loves to tweak Americans and Jews because they can be counted to respond with howls of injured indignation. In his book The Borrowed Kettle he is quoted as saying: "Better the worst Stalinist dictatorship than the most liberal capitalist democracy." He is modishly anti Israel, saying that Nazism and Zionism were allied in their programs to "change violently the ratio of ethnic groups in a population." He has been quoted as supporting the view that "the only true solution to the Jewish question is the final solution (their annihilation) because the Jews are the ultimate obstacle to the final solution of history of overcoming of divisions in unity and flexibility" while offering an exemption from extermination "to Jews resisting identification with the state of Israel." When challenged he responds with rhetorically raised eyebrow that Jews are "the majority of my friends and theoretical collaborators."
Zizek's politics are shared by many on the lifestyle left. But he stands out because of his clever use of American popular culture to disarm his critics. He is an expert on Hitchcock, finds great significance in the Matrix trilogy and leavens his diatribes with movie references, jokes and humorous anecdotes. How angry can you be at a man who claims to see the world as a Marx Brothers' out take?
In the spirit of Zizek I can offer you an anecdote for consolation. In my student days I worked as an orderly on the psychiatric ward of the Pinsk hospital. A man marched back and forth, a sheet wrapped around him like a toga.
"He thinks he's Julius Caesar," a nurse said with a smile.
Another man stood by the window, whining and strumming on an air guitar..."Thinks he's Bob Dylan," she said.
In a shadowy corner a man sat crooning to himself, while he rocked back and forth on a pile of soiled, fetid sheets.
"Who does he think he is?" I asked.
"An intellectual," the nurse said.
Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor of paranoiaisfact.com and columnist for the DE answers readers' questions.
 |
| "He's a post-modern ironist," my son said |
Dear Igor,
My son came home for winter break with a new culture hero--Slavoj Zizek. Zizek had taken his university by storm, giving two sold-out lectures and sitting for an online interview that lasted hours. "He's a post-modern ironist," my son said. It was nice to hear him use words I didn't think he knew. It was great that he went to hear a philosopher-any philosopher- give a lecture. But then I read some of Zizik's essays and I was appalled. Zizik says that Islamic terrorists are not fundamentalists or even revolutionaries, but the casualties of global capitalism. That on 9/11 a paranoid America got what it had been fantasizing about for decades. That Mohammad Atta and his terrrorist hijackers represented the "good as the spirit of and actual readiness to sacrifice in the name of a higher cause." That when prisoners were tortured in Guantanamo they were really being initiated into the true essence of American culture. And if Americans really believed in Democracy they would not vote themselves, but would let the rest of the world choose their leader. My son says I should
My son says I should lighten up. It's just a big joke-"post modern, dad-" meant to make people question conventional assumptions. But then I read an article which calls Zizek "the most dangerous philosopher in the west." Is this paranoia or fact?
60's Liberal
Shaker Heights, Ohio
 |
| Is this paranoia or fact? |
Dear Liberal,
First...If you want to cure your son of his post-modern tendencies cut off his allowance.
Now to your question. This is pure paranoia. If Zizik were dangerous you would never have heard of him. The capitalist culture welcomes and rewards only harmless iconoclasts, who do not challenge the economic order. To Zizek goes the lucrative honor of being this generation's token anarchist.
Slavoj Zizek is Slovenia's most famous culture hustler. (Admittedly, it is a small country.) You could say he is the Jon Stewart of the academic lecture circuit. He plies a nice trade on the well-endowed campuses of the world, making statements that seem to be outrageous, but are really clever panderings to the politics of his audience. He is a living oxymoron-a best-selling philosopher. He publishes prodigiously dense, obscure musings, but always inserts a sensational easy-to-understand headline about the US, Nazism, Stalinism, Jihadism, Christianity, Zionism, Anti-Semitism (a particular favorite) which creates controversy and adds to his box office appeal.
If Zizek didn't exist, Woody Allen would have had to invent him. He is the subject of a full length documentary, has had a punk band (Laibajh) and a virtual nation (NSK) founded in his honor. He has his own academic journal (International of Zizek Studies,) has written copy for the Abercrombie and Fitch Catalogue and is recently married to a beautiful Argentine model.
He cultivates publicity, responding to every request for a quote or an interview. He loves to tweak Americans and Jews because they can be counted to respond with howls of injured indignation. In his book The Borrowed Kettle he is quoted as saying: "Better the worst Stalinist dictatorship than the most liberal capitalist democracy." He is modishly anti Israel, saying that Nazism and Zionism were allied in their programs to "change violently the ratio of ethnic groups in a population." He has been quoted as supporting the view that "the only true solution to the Jewish question is the final solution (their annihilation) because the Jews are the ultimate obstacle to the final solution of history of overcoming of divisions in unity and flexibility" while offering an exemption from extermination "to Jews resisting identification with the state of Israel." When challenged he responds with rhetorically raised eyebrow that Jews are "the majority of my friends and theoretical collaborators."
Zizek's politics are shared by many on the lifestyle left. But he stands out because of his clever use of American popular culture to disarm his critics. He is an expert on Hitchcock, finds great significance in the Matrix trilogy and leavens his diatribes with movie references, jokes and humorous anecdotes. How angry can you be at a man who claims to see the world as a Marx Brothers' out take?
In the spirit of Zizek I can offer you an anecdote for consolation. In my student days I worked as an orderly on the psychiatric ward of the Pinsk hospital. A man marched back and forth, a sheet wrapped around him like a toga.
"He thinks he's Julius Caesar," a nurse said with a smile.
Another man stood by the window, whining and strumming on an air guitar..."Thinks he's Bob Dylan," she said.
In a shadowy corner a man sat crooning to himself, while he rocked back and forth on a pile of soiled, fetid sheets.
"Who does he think he is?" I asked.
"An intellectual," the nurse said.
Is Hegel Dead—Or Are We Dead in the Eyes of Hegel? A Hegelian View of the Present Age
The question we should ask is not: is “Hegel” still alive, is his thought of any use for us today? The true question is: what are we – our global capitalist world – in the eyes of Hegel? What if, from the Hegelian standpoint, we are all dead – in what sense? Wolf Bierman once wrote that, while the spiritualist question is “Is there life after death?” the materialist question is: “Is there life before death?” Are we really alive today, alive in the sense of ecstatic opening which makes life worth living?
Ｚｉｚｅｋ＇ｓ ｂｏｏｋｓ ｏｎ Ｈｅｇｅｌ：
❥ ❥ Zizek's favourite books on Hegel - Stop the Owl of Minerva!
How to Be a Communist
 |
| Understand the plight of the proletariat. |
 |
| Avoid causing physical or mental harm other people in the course of your revolutionary activities. Becoming an oppressor yourself will not further the communist cause, and will only land you in jail! |
Zizek Halloween Mask: The most tasteless hysteric
“In other words, who dares to strike today,when having the security of a permanent job is itself becoming a privilege?”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
The Only Way to Be an Atheist is Through Christianity
Christianity is much more atheist than the usual atheism, which can claim there is no God and so on, but nonetheless it retains a certain trust into the Big Other. This Big Other can be called natural necessity, evolution, or whatever. We humans are nonetheless reduced to a position within the harmonious whole of evolution, whatever, but the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no Big Other, no point of reference which guarantees meaning.
Objet petit ☭
“It was already Marx who long ago emphasized that a commodity is never just a simple object that we buy and consume. A commodity is an object full of theological, even metaphysical, niceties. Its presence always reflects an invisible transcendence.”
“We are obliged to enjoy. Enjoyment becomes a kind of a weird perverted duty. The paradox of Coke is that you are thirsty, you drink it, but as everyone knows the more you drink it the more thirsty you get.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
