Review: Žižek’s Living in the End Times
Posted by Tell No Lies on July 21, 2010
From MRZine. This review was first published in Irish Left Review on 7 July 2010 under a Creative Commons license.
End Times with Slavoj Žižek
by Seán Sheehan
Review of Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek. Verso, 2010.
Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a). The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in Žižek’s work, appearing in his trailblazing The Sublime Object of Ideology in 1989, and turning up again in the final chapter of his latest book. In its role as a mask and a compensation for the ontological void, the profound sense of incompleteness that lies at the core of our subjectivity, objet petit a is inseparable from the sense of loss and metaphysical pain that gives rise to it but it is equally inseparable from the pleasure that accompanies its presence in our life. The result is enjoyment plus pain and, as Žižek puts it in The Plague of Fantasies, ‘like the castrato’s voice, the objet petit a — the surplus enjoyment — arises at the very place of castration’. Without wishing to suggest that reading Žižek is as discomforting an experience as this quotation might imply, there is a compelling pleasure to reading his next book despite, or maybe because of, the difficulties it is inevitably likely to produce.
Living in the End Times is no exception in this regard but Žižek’s latest offering does confirm a shift of emphasis on his part, one that first became apparent with the publication of Violence in 2008. With his earlier work, before Violence, the reader has always faced the difficulty of grappling with the Lacanian concepts that Žižek is seeking to unpack and apply.Terms like jouissance, the Real, the Thing, après-coup or the difference between desire and drive are not familiar to most readers and turning to Lacan’s writings for an explanation does not provide an easy-to-comprehend solution. Hegel’s dialectic might seem more familiar territory — after all, we have all heard of the term and bring varying levels of understanding to its use — but Žižek is informing us that the traditional interpretation of Hegel is seriously mistaken and so we are driven to unlearning what we thought we knew before embarking on Žižek’s reading. When Lacanian and Hegelian ideas are densely interwoven, with a measure of Kant or other selected thinkers usually thrown into the mix, the result can be a giddying combination of exhilaration and perplexity, an addictive high-speed chase with bewildering changes in terrain that for the reader necessitate multiple gear shifts, sudden U-turns, three- and four-point turns, elegant loops and impossibly narrow angles to negotiate. And, in the midst of all this, the monster of the Real rearing up in frightening proximity.
With Violence Žižek focused in a more sober way on political theory and its application to contemporary life and this concern with political analysis informs much of Living in the End Times. The first pages look at the ideological obfuscations behind the proposed banning of the burqa in France, having a dig along the way at Michael Palin’s travelogues for the BBC, and Gandhi and the Untouchables. Žižek’s object of criticism is the liberal ideal, the mistaken belief that we can live without big ideas and survive merely with mechanisms for balancing a free market with free if egotistic people. It is based on a dismal view of human nature, seeking the lesser evil, and ultimately relies on the imposition of a big idea, liberalism itself, in the guise of believing that no such overriding ideas are necessary or desirable. Interlude 1, separating chapters one and two, probes the ideology of The Dark Knight, the two versions of 3.10 to Yuma and offers a lovely analysis of Kung Fu Panda.
The second chapter covers diverse ground: the way ‘what if’ histories are currently monopolized by right-wing academics when in fact such an ‘open’ understanding of history is essential to Marxism; the popularity of TV programs about the animal kingdom that project a wished-for, coherent world where even death make sense; the nature of political love, not the bogus compassion of Oriental-style wisdom but the revolutionary love that Che Guevara proclaimed, the intolerant, impossible love of Christianity that Paul called for. His ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise’ being a call to abolish the mentality that accepts the status quo and build instead something new on groundless foundations. This apocalyptic millenarianism is read as authentic communism: a new order of equality arising from the suspension of the existing network and our constituted roles within it. An example of this is found in John Ford’s The Searchers: Ethan’s puzzlement at the precise moment when he is able to carry out his racism-driven mission to save (by killing) the girl who had been captured by and lived with the Indians. It is not that Ethan discovers his innate goodness — the typical humanist reading of this scene — but rather his subjective destitution, a disengagement whereby he sees himself as a Neighbour (the neighbour embodies the monstrous, the inhuman, an order of our being that pertains to the Real) and not a part of the community to which he thought he belonged.
It is this ‘out of place’ space that should be the basis for political action, a starting point not to be confused with liberal sympathy for the excluded (which emanates from those who feel they are not excluded) but issuing instead from an excess of unconditional allegiance with the excluded. Žižek finds a parallel for this movement in the Christian’s turning of the other cheek and it forms a part of his unorthodox and gloriously impious account of Christian emancipatory violence. There is a theological kernel to secular atheism, as opposed to the religion of capitalism and its faith in money, that Žižek returns to in the conclusion to Living in the End Times.
For Žižek anti-Semitism has always been the prime example of ideology at work in the unconscious and he returns to the topic in Interlude 2. Why, it is asked, does anti-Semitism persist? It is not enough to refer to Israel’s policies because there is also Zionist anti-Semitism directed at ‘rootless’ Jews who don’t subscribe to Israel’s policies: they too are the ‘part of nopart’ upon which a true universality should be constructed. Žižek goes on to look at how Israel is systematically colonizing the West Bank and Jerusalem, relying on peace talks to fail or stall in the interim. China, Haiti and Congo are then looked at in terms of how their identities are being shaped by capitalist forces. Ireland is discussed over three pages; its “No” in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and the reaction to it by Europe’s political elite illustrating the contradictions at work in liberal democracy.
Chapter three, a sustained defence of Marx, is the theoretical heart of the book and it allows the reader respite from Žižek’s rapid-fire forays into diverse territories and the time to appreciate what underpins his central claim that global capitalism is fast approaching a terminal crisis. Disagreeing with Badiou, Žižek seeks a return to the economy and the rule of capital as the kernel of Marx and historical materialism. Badiou rejects the traditional orthodoxy, the Marxist grand narrative, that views the working class as the revolutionary agent of change inscribed into social reality but Žižek — and this is the radicalism that distinguishes his work — rejects the whole notion of social reality as any kind of positive order. The early Marx is ahistorical in simply stressing the role of human labour in creating material reality but in Capital his concern is the analysis of political economy, the commodity and its structuring role: ‘A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’ (Capital Volume One). Lacan, until now mostly and surprisingly absent from Living in the End Times, makes an entry by way of the homology in logical form between Marx’s account of the three functions of money (a measure of value, means of circulation and actual money) and the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real triad.
Exchange value has labour at its source and labour produces a value that is greater than the price paid for the labour that produces the commodity. At base, this is what creates the value of a commodity, not some intrinsic quality, some essence, but its appearance in the market. Its logic is what creates monopolies, requires unemployment (to keep labour costs down) and sustains capitalism’s insatiable appetite and limitless self-expansion. It also creates periodic crises and the antinomy of seemingly free individuals at the mercy of ‘objective’ market necessities. Like Hegel’s Absolute — which, crucially for Žižek, is not some end point of self-identity — the drive of capital, now more than ever the Real of our lives, has no end and relentlessly seeks to resolve its inherent antagonism. Class struggle is not a rhetorical call to action but the antagonism and contradiction within capitalism:
Marx reasserts the primacy of Thought: the owl of Minerva (German contemplative philosophy) should be replaced by the crowing of the Gallic rooster (French revolutionary thought) announcing the proletarian revolution. (p. 226)
Communism has to be constantly reinvented so that, for example, the ecological crisis is seen as one form of proletarianization, depriving us of the natural substance that makes us human, condemning us to global warming rather than ‘dark, satanic mills’.
Interlude 3 opens new ground for Žižek with an excursion into contemporary architecture before chapter four gets underway with capitalism in India and China. Soon, though, he has returned to Marx and psychoanalysis, by way of Catherine Malabou’s Les nouveaux blessés, explaining how and why we are the new proletariat, a class destined (though strictly in the après-coup sense that Žižek gives to destiny and fate) to emancipate itself. Interlude 4 brings us the Žižek we know and love, bringing together the case of Josef Fritzl in Austria and The Sound of Music and identifying the lack of civility in some of what passes for modern art as part of the moral vacuum that threatens our survival.
Different types of readers have problems with Žižek, his style as much as the content, for different types of reasons. Focusing on either the style or the content misses the point because they are related in the same way as the form of theTractatus is inseparable from what Wittgenstein is saying in it. Similarly, Žižek expresses his ideas in a form that may seem wilfully bewildering. In a conventional text, one often expects to find at the start of a chapter a modest statement of some form of a hypothesis or a statement of intent, followed by a reference to alternative accounts by other critics or an overview of the relevant material, before the development of a new or revised interpretation by way of orderly inference and consecutive arguments. A chapter in a book by Žižek is more likely to begin abruptly, in medias res, often by way of an assertive or surprising statement before spiralling away into examples designed to show that something is not what it seems to be but, more likely, quite the opposite. Living in the End Times draws to an end in this way, refusing to deliver pat conclusions because there aren’t any, refusing to say what is to be done — do nothing, engage in revolutionary struggle, intervene pragmatically in situations? — because thinking that a pre-emptive choice has to be made is part of the problem and there are no quick-fit solutions and there is no manual instructing us how to get out of the mess. At the end of his book, Žižek takes us back to objet petit a. Why do otherwise intelligent people carry on supporting the way things are, rationalizing why they still obey and continue with jobs that perpetuate the system? Objet petit a underpins power because people obey not out of physical coercion (liberal democracy is only successful when force is not required) but from their unconscious investment in maintaining the status quo. It is the objet a, the surplus-enjoyment that secures the subject’s libidinal complicity, and it requires a complicated mix of Marx, Hegel and Lacan to understand and to change the end times we are living in.
Žižek has recently said that he has written 700 pages of his next book, on Hegel. Bring it on. Lenin withdrew and turned to Hegel when, shocked by the way the Social Democrats in Germany, the largest and most important socialist party in the world, unanimously supported hostilities in World War I. We don’t have to turn very far to find home-grown versions of this ability to abandon principles and embrace those who rule.
Radical Eyes said
“Communism has to be constantly reinvented so that, for example, the ecological crisis is seen as one form of proletarianization, depriving us of the natural substance that makes us human, condemning us to global warming rather than ‘dark, satanic mills’.”
-A good paraphrase of one of Zizek’s key recent insights.
Really the chapter dealing with Marx in END TIMES is quite serious and deserving wide attention amongst marxists. In a way he refutes Badiou by returning to Lukacs. (I hope to put together my notes on this book–and Zizek’s previous two, explicitly communist books!–as an article for this site soon.)
The Fish said
I find this article, even more so than Zizek, pretty incomprehesible. What is the point of it, of doing the work of comprehending high-level academic philosophy like this? I generally consider Zizek to be an interesting Marxist academic entertainer rather than a theorists whose work might help me understand and engage with the world. His style seems to support this hypothesis, as do funny contradictions such as being an academic Leninist. This is not meant to be an attack on Z, I read Violence and liked it for instance, but what have people gotten from reading Zizek or other modern Marxist philosophers?
Mike E said
Every time we discuss theory or philosophy, we fairly quickly get posts that say “What is the point?”
It is revealing. And it is frustrating.
It means we often don’t get to discuss philosophy or theory, but have to discuss whether it is ok to discuss philosophy or theory.
There seem to be an long line of people waiting to ask “Is there any reason to do the hard work?”
And the rest of us seem forced to answer that same question over and over.
What a dumbed down culture — even on the left.
And there is a kind of blithe militancy to the “why bother?” as if those who want to understand Zizek need to be confronted and challenged (and their discussions diverted to the real questoin which is “why bother?”)
Here is my answer:
Yes, it is worth it to do the work. We will not find liberation without doing a lot of this work.
If you find it incomprehensible, do what the rest of us do, work harder.
If you don’t see any reason to work hard at understanding these things, then don’t — but ask yourself, can we change the world with one-liners, cliff notes, subjective prejudices, and free-floating mood-opinions?
Mike E said
More:
Yesterday, someone who I respect quite a bit said to me: why don’t you write a one sentence summary at the beginning of each post — so we all know what it will say.
I answered: do you think everything can be summarized in one sentence?
He said: well, why not just announce what its main thesis is?
I answered: do you assume it is obvious what the “main thesis” of everything is? Sometimes the posts are written about one thing, but are really about something else. Sometimes the “main thesis” isn’t explicitly stated. What do we do then?
He said, well i get the posts on my phone and need to know if they are worth reading.
There seems to be an assumption that if it isn’t made easy, it isn’t worth the time. And if the point isn’t tooth-drilling obvious, then it hasn’t been made easy enough.
The universe we live in is far more complicated than that. And, again, the discussion we need is “what should our theory and method be?” not a recurring loop of “do we really need to do this theoretical work at all?”
The Fish said
Hmmm, I was specifically not meaning to say
“what is the point of theory or philosophy?”
I was instead meaning to ask the question I did ask, which was “what have people gotten from reading Zizek or other modern Marxist philosophers?” Feels like the hostility to this question (i.e. conflating an honest question about insights gained with anti-intellectual “dumbing down”) is responding to other people than myself. How are we to deal with the unending flow of reading material if our comrades sneer at requests for help prioritizing? Why is that unreasonable? Comrades have effectively made the case to me about Hegel for instance, I’m still interested and appreciative of anyone who wants to talk about what they’ve gotten from Zizek.
“Try harder” is not an effective pedagogical method, or even a good response to anti-intellectualism.
Radical Eyes said
I do think that The Fish is raising a valid question, one not reducible to Mike’s reaction above. (Though I think I have a sympathetic sense of why Mike might be quick to frustrated impatience on this terrain, out here.)
One way to reframe Fish’s concern might be to ask, not rhetorically but seriously: What is the use of Zizek’s theoretical discourse? That is, What are the uses to which it has and can be put, in the service of a communist project of liberation?
I have given a couple of papers addressing basically this question, which is to say, engaging Zizek from a pragmatic commmunist perspective. The last time I gave such a paper, a confident and professedly well-read philosopher in the audience took issue–and claimed that Slavoj himself would be “horrified”–with my pragmatic “use” oriented synthesis of his work.
I for one do not think that asking questions of usefulness are out of line at all. Though we ought to distinguish between the rhetorical question designed to throw people on the defensive, and the serious question that is asking for concrete answers, for direction, prioritization, clarity, and frankly, encouragement.
the Fish said
Thanks Radical Eyes, any chance I could take a look at that paper?
Mike E said
Obviously I’m responding to other people than yourself, fish.
But go look at your question again:
Or your new formulation:
Is it really an ROI equation “if I put in the work, what do I get out of it?”
Is this really about “what do people get out of it?” — as if this is a college course, and the point is your further education.
We are trying to build a revolutionary movement. We need to understand the lay of the land, the currents in the air, the tugs and pulls on peoples minds. We need to know how thousands of people are encountering these questions — if we are to speak in ways that engage.
Zizek is (if anything) engaged with the actual questions and discourses of this moment — in a way communists have been lagging decades behind. If we learn anything from Zizek, it will be how to become current in what we address.
So, what is the point of understanding the two or three most widely read communist thinkers alive? How can we not master their views — and engage them?
Even if we (hypothetically) decide that the theories of Zizek and Badiou etc. are worthless, isn’t there obvious value of understanding them well?
Radical eyes is right of course: There is a whole discussion to be had about what precisely we should draw from Zizek… what we are learning, what we are not learning?
But what does it mean to start that discussion complaining how “hard” or “incomprehensible” it is?
If you detect hostility, please know it is not aimed at you — but it is aimed at the turgid air we all are forced to walk through, where everything is about self, and where the most important discussions are turned into “what is in it for me” (or for you)? And where everything (including the Left) is dumbed down — and very militantly so. And were reading a real essay is treated like unreasonably hard work.
Besides, I didn’t just say “try harder”, I also said:
My Maoist “pedagogical method” is to try raise your sights, and critique current social default of spoonfed pablum and self-cultivation.
Perhaps if we all have a much sharper sense of the need for theory to change the world, the need to just “try harder” will be more obvious.
Mike E said
RAdical eyes writes:
I’m not quick at all.
We have literally had years where every discussion of theory gets diverted into a discussion of “it is so hard, why bother?” We have literally posted dozens of bracing new essays, to see the discussion diverted by people complaining they can’t get the value.
How do you propose we deal with this climate and its assumptions? Imagine if people get the Marxism they want…. what we will end up with?
People tell me all the time that this Kasama site is challenging, substantive and even intimidating. No. In fact (compared to our tasks and needs) the level of discussion is way too low, and remedial.
We have great difficulty getting more than a few microns into the actual questions, because there is so much balking at the entry portal.
The Fish said
I guess I just don’t understand your framework with this Mike, which surprises me.
“This is a revolutionary movement, not a college credit. We are talking about revolutionary theory for destroying oppression, not pedagogical methods.”
Huh. Is every academic Marxist destroying oppression with every word that they write? Do you really think a revolutionary movement should, or even can, ignore pedagogical methods? (which is a fancy way of saying methods for helping people to understand things) To me these things are central to the entire project, which involves generalizing the theoretical tools that Mike Ely, me and many others use to try to understand the world.
Interestingly, I feel like this is becoming a mechanically pro-intellectual conversation, which leaves out the very real and omnipresent need to discuss why you might read what when. Simply for example, in my daily life I am trying to balance reading Capital against reading articles on organization, …but maybe I should be reading more Hegel, Zizek, Badiou even though I find that very difficult and don’t really understand its relationship to “revolutionary theory for destroying oppression,” a well-put phrase for what I, along with Mike E and Kasama, are interested in building.
Technically there’s always value to understanding anything well, because it’s more understanding. Is anything a waste of our time to engage with? If not, what criteria do we use to guide our discussions?
Is spoonfeeding really an accurate characterization of asking in what way people see value in a place that I don’t?
Hey, your space is for whatever you use it for. I’m not trying to tear it down, and my point is not “Mike stop posting irrelevant elitist BS” because I don’t think that and I wouldn’t post it if I did. For me, promoting engagement with theory in my circles of friends and comrades constantly comes up against the (to me human and understandable) question of “what’s the point?”, so yeah I was looking for a little spoonfeeding of some of people’s delicious experience soup on that very question. But I’ll stop my derail, as I understand that Mike posted it in order to discuss it, rather than discuss Zizek’s relationship and usefulness to struggle.
Radical Eyes said
To Advance the Struggle (and those who are interested):
I will do my best to pull together that Zizek paper (and/or notes on his new book) and to post them in some form here, asap…say within the week.
The Fish said
Cool! Thanks Rad eyes.
Mike E said
Fair enough, Fish. Thanks for hanging in there. And thanks for being willing to dig into this.
I wrote:
Fish wrote:
No, not at all. I don’t think our revolutionary theory is synonymous with them and what they write.
I’m saying that the reason we engage them is that we are seeking to develop a revoltionary movement. And we (as revolutionaries and communists) need to engage them, in part to develop our emerging theory, and in part to engage an audience, and in part to learn from what the academic marxists uncover.
But our approach and purpose is a collective one — and you can’t measure its value by what you (in particular) get out of it.
When you take a college course (say qualitative chem) you ask yourself: is this worth taking? What will I get out of it (toward my larger understanding, or my medical degree).
But we have a different framework for revolutionary theoretical work and study. It isn’t about that. It isn’t an extracurricular extension of college education.
The methods of pedagogy (education) are not the same as the methods of raising political consciousness. There is overlap, and there are innovations in pedagogy that we should learn from. But they are separate spheres in many ways.
This is a major question I think we need to discuss: the role of popularization among our theoretical task.
I specifically don’t think that popularization (generalizing our theoretical tools) is central at this point. I think we don’t have our theoretical tools worked out.
There is work needed in popularization — but far more urgent is the actual work of reconceiving communist theory.
And over and over, people assume that the main work is popularization (and that the main work of communist theory is to help new people see the need for communist revolution.)
In fact our burning task is to construct a communist theory, and its main function is to guide the communists to develop strategy, tactics, organization etc. (and on that basis work to draw new people in).
People think that our theory is a recruiting tool. But it is mainly an analytical and leading tool.
We can, and should popularize our communist theory broadly (including among newbies), but to see that as its purpose misses the main thing, and exaggerates the peripheral thing.
It turns theory into a means of agitation.
I think a serious engagement on organization is of more value than reading more Hegel. And there too, we have trouble getting into the meat of the question (around organization)….
I won’t nit pick on this point — but i don’t agree. There are lots of things that are relatively worthless. And there are lots of things that are a waste of time.
I apologize if this was said in a way to make you take it personally.
But yes, there is a huge and constant demand to be spoonfed everything. It is not just in our discussions, but in the culture. It may be hard to convey how much society is being dumbed down.
I saw a discussions of comedians the other night, where they suddenly all vented how it is impossible to have nuance and controversy in a comedy routine. That if it is not blatant it is not understood, or it is quickly misunderstood. And how everyone “gets offended” all the time — often without understanding the essence of the satire/parody/humor.
This is getting at something general that is happening in U.S. society — everything is reduced to utilitarian nuggets. There is little shadow and nuance. And a great deal of the discourse is superficial. And this is certainly true “on the left” — which is very much part of the culture.
I am not in favor of making an endless “pro-intellectual” discussion at the expense of the explorations themselves. But we are being forced to fight (over and over, constantly) merely to have a little space to talk about political theory.
This is often confronted with a hyped urgency about “practice” or a false theoretical argument that our insights will “only come from practice.” And (pretty obviously) both of those arguments will never take us to a point where we actually “know the world to change the world.”
I wrote:
Fish replied:
First, you misunderstand me. I include you when i say “our space.” This is your space as much as mine.
But we have a collective problem that the level of discussion is so low — and the main questions we need to engaged are vaguely pointed too (much of the time) but barely scratched.
We should discuss “what’s the point?” And we should (collectively) clarify for ourselves what the point is (as both you and radical eyes are arguing).
But I am reminding you that we discuss “what is the point?” far more often than we discuss “what is the solution?” — so that every discussion of a theoretical problem becomes a discussion of “what is the point?”
I didn’t post the Zizek piece (others on the moderator team did). This is a collective site (not my personal blog). And it is not “up to me” what we focus on.
You are quite free to raise “what is the point?” And we are all free to respond.
But really, you can’t do theory in any depth, if (at each point) you stop and ask “what is the usefulness to the struggle.” Theory is vital to the struggle — but its “usefulness” is not apparent at each point.
And to be honest with you, my tone of frustration comes from sensing that we are losing the argument — that even the very best among revolutionary people are drawn to a narrow utilitarianism and practice. “Do it.” And a view that if we engage in theoretical work, we can (and should) have a quick immediate sense of how it is “useful.” Those are very American assumptions, and they are very powerful in the culture. And they will not produce the movement or the theory we need to actually rupture this fucking society. They will produce a routinized left, repeating its past mistakes, and dumbing itself down until Marxism is a grabbag of techniques and handy arguments.
Let me give you an analogy: There is a lot of research in science that is not narrowly applied. You can’t go into a quantum physics project and ask every friday “what is the usefulness of this weeks work to military effectiveness, commodity production, medical advances or space exploration?”
Much research that uncovers deeply useful things is not “useful” in that step by step way. (How is Zizek useful, compared to Mariategui or Marx?) You can’t understand (and certainly not quantify) things narrowly.
We don’t just need narrow “applied research” (where we read works on previous organization and go build a current organization). We need much more stepped back research — where we are looking at the bigger picture and experience, and rethink some basic questions.
We actually need to study political economy and current economic structures — in ways that won’t easily answer the question (at every point) “how is this useful to the struggle?” We need to study the history of socialist revolution, and epistemology, and modern radical philosophers — and we need to do it in ways that doesn’t get easily boiled down to “four ways it is useful for the struggle.”
The fact is we won’t HAVE a revolutionary and communist struggle if we don’t fight for a bigger picture. (And things may be useful for the immediate struggle, the day-to-day struggle, but we won’t be able to draw communism out of it.
One distinction: theory in its own right, vs. theory for its own sake. We don’t need endless study for its “own sake” — i.e. without any connection to reality and revolution. But we do need theory “in its own right” — i.e. treated as a sphere of work that has its own laws and discoveries.
And as with most research, you often don’t know when you take it up — where and how it will prove useful. That is because it is a genuine process of discovery — and we are filling voids and answering nagging questions through a process that is not mapped out.
andy said
Time to order the Zizek book and have a read. He shakes up all the paradigms and gets you thinking. By itself that’s an accomplishment.
By the way you can get a Bittorrent of a Zizek ‘lecture’ at the London School of Economics in July 2010 with the same title as the book at:
http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/9539/Slavoj-Zizek–Living-in-the-End-Times–July-2010-LSE
But the video is no crib sheet substitute for the book and you should check out both.
You don’t need any justification to study philosophy. It beats the hell out of blind pragmatism. (with the emphasis on the ‘blind’).
Neil said
[Zizek] opens a copy of Living in the End Times, and finds the contents page. “I will tell you the truth now,” he says, pointing to the first chapter, then the second. “Bullshit. Some more bullshit. Blah, blah, blah.” He flicks furiously through the pages. “Chapter 3, where I try to read Marx anew, is maybe OK. I like this part where I analyse Kafka’s last story and here where I use the community of outcasts in the TV series Heroes as a model for the communist collective. But, this section, the Architectural Parallax, this is pure bluff. Also the part where I analyse Avatar, the movie, that is also pure bluff. When I wrote it, I had not even seen the film, but I am a good Hegelian. If you have a good theory, forget about the reality.”
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jun/27/slavoj-zizek-living-end-times
Joel said
mike. I get what you’re saying here and I respect that immensely.
To give an example, up until recently branch studies were sporadic and just having regular challenging studies was a big deal, people used to complain that the questions were too hard. Now we have a layer of comrades who assume weekly studies are the base and are challenging to do more, more deeply and intensely.
I’d like to see you outline more of what you think the actual questions, chart out where you want to go and start going there, especially if you’re feeling that you’re trapped in remedial repetition.
I’m keen to be challenged further.
land said
I think people need to be able to answer the question “what is the point?” Especially if you are reading Zizek.
I am not sure I agree about the role of popularization. If you don’t popularize something people will not know about it.
And that’s also where the internet comes in. How will you draw people in to the new needs around theory if you don’t popularize.
When we did the “lurking” article we found that many people were intimidated. That’s certainly not our fault. I do think the debate and conversation can cut through some of this. Or open it up anyway.
I think we need to involve people in theoretical projects. Through the internet.
I would like some examples of “the level of discussion is way too low.” On Kasama. I don’t think it is. My main concern is that we separate off revolutionary theory from people’s lives. I have never been certain if I agreed with Khukuri being a separate site. I have heard the argument that each site is for different people- theoretical versus the left. Kasama is not for the left.
I would like to hear what people think of this.
For example would you say that the level of discussion is too low around the Nepal articles or around the study group articles.
On what level does it get moved to the Khukuri site?
All for now.
May9 said
This visceral and hostile reaction to a simple question “what’s the point?” is very revealing. Seems like this anyone who dares question the reading of useless do-nothing densely written gibberish that is totally detached from people’s struggles is met with this response. Those that question the utility of reading convoluted garble are accused of being stupid and lazy (or American!), of needing to be “spoonfed”, or worse.
workandstudy said
Lots of thanks for you article, it is very helpful and I appreciated that.