tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post8467373960385911754..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Why I Am Still Not An Anarchist (Or Am I?) -- ContinuedDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20080151642235147702011-07-30T12:55:46.848-07:002011-07-30T12:55:46.848-07:00An interesting clip -- of course I found Assange e...An interesting clip -- of course I found Assange enormously subtle and interesting and Zizek mostly insufferable throughout. So strange the way his comments were always followed by joyous applause (as Assange's only came to be later, as it became clear from Zizek that their comments should be understood as performing monkey acts). While Zizek made a few valid points about how truths never speak for themselves but must always be contextualized and how ideology functions less to deceive us as to permit us to engage in the collective cynicism of acting as if we are deceived while we know we are not -- the fact is that Assange clearly already brought these assumptions on board. Mostly, Zizek functioned in the strange way commercials do during the Superbowl. Usually, commercials are unwelcome interruptions of the content we have chosen to attend to, we mute them or use them for bathroom breaks, or endure them as a kind of good- capitalist- subject penance for getting "something for nothing." But of course, many watch the Superbowl FOR the ads. The Superbowl is of course the culminating event in American football, possibly the most tedious palpably ridiculous sport in the world, and the promise of clever original funny ads (that will be talked about at work or school the next day) renders endurable the joyless ritual of people pretending they care about football even when they do not. Zizek's performances are always self-promotional, he is no longer ever philosophizing apart from performing himself (derisively waving away the Elvis comparison while endlessly flogging it), and of course since the West no longer really gives two shits for philosophy or critical theory -- finding it a dull excuse for bathroom breaks or the mute button or at best a penance endured to demonstrate one is a better sort of bourgeois, one who can name-drop Kant as well as regurgitate a NYT op-ed -- Zizek's clown show variation on it is especially welcome, enough so to lend allure to the difficult intellectual and practical work Assange is doing, permitting Assange to be re-imagined as a kind of Brando whose work need not be thought through as he himself so scrupulously and forcefully has done, but can instead be enjoyed via Zizek as a dirty joke or an abbreviated Barthean reading of a pop culture object with all the sarcasm and little of the truth. I think the exchange was interesting among other things in showing that Assange really is dangerous to the status quo and Zizek is not at all so, and yet the elite-incumbent media in applying the label to them indiscriminately reveals it either doesn't recognize how dangerous Assange really is or is still silly enough to fancy Zizek is (either blind spot would be pretty encouraging) or is so aware it means to domesticate Assange via Zizek (with Zizek's participation) in case it cannot constrain him, which is not at all encouraging.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-33849510426532137782011-07-30T01:44:01.057-07:002011-07-30T01:44:01.057-07:00Brecht's quip mentioned again in this debate:
...Brecht's quip mentioned again in this debate:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VdFtb4zNXE<br /><br />and of some interest to your article. <br /><br />xoxo<br />JDJD Tuyeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17648788235892268668noreply@blogger.com