>Everyone who is troubled by new anti-immigrant populism should make the effort to watch Europa – the Last Battle (Tobias Bratt, Sweden 2017), a 10-episode documentary. It presents in extenso the neo-Nazi version of the last hundred years of European history. According to the series, this history was dominated by Jewish bankers who controlled our entire financial system; from the beginning, Judaism stood behind Communism, and the wealthy Jews directly financed the October Revolution to deal a mortal blow to Russia, a staunch defender of Christianity; Hitler was a peaceful German patriot who, after being democratically elected, changed Germany from a devastated land to a welfare country with the highest living standard in the world by withdrawing from international banking controlled by the Jews; international Jewry declared war on him, though Hitler desperately strived for peace; after the failure of the European Communist revolutions in the 1920s, the Communist center realized that one had first to destroy the moral foundations of the West (religion, ethnic identity, family values), so it founded the Frankfurt School whose aim was to pronounce family and authority as pathological tools of domination and to undermine every ethnic identity as oppressive.
thephilosophicalsalon.com
Zizek: Troubles with Identity
I wonder if this is even true in a trivial sense as Zizek says. Everything that one knows about one's own identity is a facet of what I myself and others already know about it. One learns what it is to be black/woman/etc. from others, both from the simple knowledge that they transmit and from their treatment based on the outward signs of the identity, both of which are learned from others.
The only real claim for a particularity in knowing can be the male/female difference, yet this difference is expressed in words both they and we have to understand; the specific bodily feelings of each can't accurately be called "understood" without some language with which to express the understanding which can also be communicated between sexes. The differences merely amount to the bodily feeling that, while existing particularly in the purely sensational realm, must also be universalized to be expressed to others, and universalized even to be understood as particular to a sexual category (or race, etc.) in the first place.
How does it not apply to ethnicities too? Ethnicities are different "types" of "bodily feeling" too.
I wouldn't say in the same way, no. The difference in that case would be less significant than differences in height, weight, and so on, and these cases of differences are easily imaginable and well understood linguistically. I was using the most obvious case for particularity as the example, though.
Although I should say that the quote in question does apply to different ethnicities, with the caveat that the main difference in those cases would amount to much less.
I just watch 16 minutes of the video and they say that marx wanted a debt based system.
youtu.be
It's about a subjective experience - rather than an observation - shared with all group members, which cannot possibly be shared with the out-group.
According to (Zig Forums) NutSac ideology, a jew can never transcend their jewishness. They're jews no matter what they do, what they believe in, who they fight for, for whatever reason. All their motivations, thoughts, and reasoning are fundamentally jewish. In fact, jews may as well be aliens. They cannot be communicated or reasoned with by the fundamental reason of their alien psychology.
Everyone that isn't them is a horrifying other. Whose motivations are utterly unknowable and eldritch. And often - if not exclusively - malevolent.
It's the sort of thinking that forms the foundation for the whole "Humans vs Orcs" mythology.
Are you saying that you can't understand any identity other than yours no matter what?
I'm reading You Gentiles by Maurice Samuel and he says essentially the same thing.
The subjective experience can't be shared with anyone else in that in-group either, without some language with which to express it and understand it themselves as the subjective experience of this particular in-group (these require prior cultural understandings of self and selfhood generally as well). This language isn't distinctive to any particular in-group, so it has to be shared with out-groups as well. The only thing that can be called distinctive between individuals, our immediate awareness of the sensational realm, is never shared in its immediacy. Language mediates it in its representation of it to ourselves and others.
pathetic tbh
fuck zizek
*sniff* ah but your mother and so on
This is true. But, it would also allow that ethnic identities exist, including various kind of "white" ones. So then you have to go into the tedious territory of spelling out why one identity group should be allowed to militate openly, and so on.
In the best of worlds, we would be able to make the trivial truth of identity indeed trivial, at least for what concern's people's access to the products of society.
Yes, that's exactly what you have at Zig Forums with all the infightings between nords, mediterraneans, slavs, celts, germans, etc.
Or on the nominal left when we measure how much privilege we all have in the knapsack…
This is the dumbest sentence I read this week.
also, again with the unflattering picture in the article
>>Everyone […] should make the effort to watch [it]
tbh if Zizek has bothered to watch them i have gained respect for him for such a feat
although given that he skims through films he reviews i doubt it
Not including yours, presumably. It's intended to be obvious to set up the point that any knowledge about identity is learned.
What knowledge is not learned?
There isn't. The problem is that there's a conflation in identitarian thinking with pure sensation and "understanding" this (i.e. having awareness of it), and understanding oneself via language as a particular identity. As in , the idea exists that there's an inherent subjective racial/ethnic/gender understanding that can't be communicated.
What understanding is not via language?
Properly speaking, none. That's why I spoke of this alternative "understanding" as a conflation.
Yes, pretty much. A social worker, for instance, who had to witness dozens of lives consumed by homelessness knows more about the condition in general than a homeless person, whose experience is restricted to his own, living it 'from the inside.'
In any case you are missing the main point.
>>the unique experience of a particular group identity as the ultimate fact which cannot be dissolved in any universality
This is fucking dumb, as was already pointed out. Identity primarily has to do with the imaginary; symbolization is secondary. An example:
>he immediately believes that he belongs to them [group identity], is on of them, he imagines being so cool, having the same traits, etc.
This is up the alley of youtube "social commentators" like Shaun or Hbomber.
So he's explicitly peddling fascist propaganda to his cult now? At least he put the disclaimer that the documentaries aren't true though! I'm sure watching 10 hours of propaganda will leave impressionable retards unaffected!
I don't know anything about any Zizeks, but I DO love watching the Iiberal circular firing squad in real time.
Damn sure, everyone should watch Europa: the Last Battle to see how bad the nazis are!
Everyone, watch them.
What exactly is wrong with the human vs orcs mythology again?
It's actually very telling considering the complexity behind such a conflict.
All really good and I agree with it.
More banally, if you're a white dude like me on the left I think you should just accept it and be that. I think a lot of these self-guilt white leftists end up overcompensating or self-flagellating in various ways. Speaking for myself I've heard a few rare snide comments about "white guys" in my socialist club here in the U.S., which would've probably bothered me when I was younger but now I just don't care. I prefer not to care. I have nothing to apologize for and I have no desire to impose my own particularity on anyone as a kind of universality. I do not take offense at those comments and I don't try to change anything about who I am. You'll get a blank stare from me. The alt-right is the flip-side reverse because it's all about this aggrieved offense-taking and concern about what other people think.
I think the tensions here become more acute in America though because we're taught to be afraid of everything and everyone and are terribly thin-skinned as a result.
myheartwillgoonandsoonandsoon.blogspot.com
>self-guilt white leftists end up overcompensating or self-flagellating
For what? There's no actual crime there just baseless guilt, a pathological guilt-feeling. These absolution rituals by the immaculate indicate the participants' narcissistic attachment to what your last Zizek quote calls politics of resistance – basically the unquestioning acceptance of and ready participation in the hegemonic plot.
This is why not challenging these
is ultimately the abandoning of your revolutionary obligation, heck, less than that, just abandoning revolutionary common sense. Are you a lazy asshole or just fear becoming >that guy< in the idpol infested socialist (lol) "club" (lol) of yours?
Ah, yes, let's make this into an age-thing. Lenin was like "damn these p. bourg elements in muh revolutionary movement" but then 10 years later "ah, shucks, I'm too old for this, haha, chill bro!"
Grow a pair.
That's sexist, fyi.
I'm afraid to watch it because I know I'll cringe.
What about albinos in colored nations? Or people of one ethnicity who only grew up in a foreign land (like that Russian baseball player from Imperial Japan for example)?
Reactions may vary. It's just plain sad but understandable, IMO. Sad, because all that would be required is a simple fact check to debunk 95% of their claims, understandable, because those who believe this crap aren't really motivated by a grand quest for truth.
everyone has a pair of something.
Challenging these snide remarks is already giving them too much valence. Now, once this nonsense starts to infect party literature, rules of procedure, and programs, that's when you should mount a defense. But language policing against these kind of remarks is still just language policing. The real harm in idpol is how it distracts, and we should not let it.
kys libtard
It depends on what you mean by "know." As I mentioned, merely sensing something does not provide the proper perspective for understanding it.
He has first to see that the group is in fact that group by identifying it through the symbols with which they had been associated in his mind. He doesn't imagine it by himself first.
It was against the notion of a non-communicated private language which only a single person "understands." The point was preempting that.
Language universalizes every particular experience, but it's obviously a linguistic universality only. This implies a lot, but it doesn't change one's position materially in the world. The concept of the "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" can both be conveyed and understood as positions through language, unless you're going to propose a special bourgeois-consciousness and proletarian-consciousness which only the respective class can possibly truly understand.
If we accept that point you seem to be making, perhaps the real problem would then be that we don't properly understand the bourgeoisie, and that they're really the oppressed ones, as they often see it from their own perspective. It'd be impossible to say whether or not the proletariat, from the always limited perspective of their group identity, could truly understand the bourgeoisie and their position.
My argument was against idpol, though. The other person also seemed not to be comprehending my point either, based on his posts afterwards. To be fair, I could have worded parts of it better.
lol you're going to care when those snide comments turn into laws rules FAGGOT
...
Wittgenstein fanboy spotted.
Lol, this is bullshit tho. As if Medieval christians and reformation catholics and protestants were not really fundamentalists because they wanted to force their believe on others. Universalizing fundamentalism is completely non-contradictory and Zizek is just talking out of his ass here.
Imo sensation is assumed as universal before language, indeed, language itself is fundamentally empty because it presupposes some empirical sensation that it can 'catch' in a concept. When we talk about sensation we don't universalize our sensation, because we already expect others to 'get' it intuitively. (We cannot really know anything about their own sensation, we just assume that it is fundamentally the same as ours because we assume humans all have the exact same consciousness). The only thing we universalize, then, is a 'sign' that can point at the same universal experience.
I see nothing wrong with this way of thinking. A lot of male feminists are creeps who use it as a way to Trojan horse themselves into having sex.
I think Malcolm X said something similar about race. That he didnt like racist white people but at least he knew where he stood with them. While liberal white people smile to your face then stab you in the back
Being surprised that men act nice to get laid.
These low effort "lol, i debunked zizek" baitposts are the worst.
your brain is diseased
Ah, I've been found out.
I'd agree in a certain sense: there's a universality in a basic set of sensations (sight, taste, etc.) and this is necessary for language as a whole, although there isn't for the particular individual sensational experience I might have with these senses. These individual experiences come to be universalized linguistically, while the basic set of sensations is a presumed pre-existing universality.
No, we don't universalize it ourselves, because the sensation is already universalized when we're thinking about that sensation linguistically. A feeling of happiness, for example, is what we've already witnessed being externally identified by others as "happiness" (the word), through smiling, the way the eyes narrow, laughter, etc. My particular happiness, which could very well feel differently from someone else's, communally comes to exist as a reflection of "happiness" as a whole, too, regardless of my own individual experiences of happiness, and others' ideas about happiness, even if their experience of it might vary from my own, also come to influence my ideas about my happiness in reflection.
You're implying that there are flattering pictures of Zizek
he meant a pair of ovaries
There are feminine testicles you know
Okay, back to the discussion we had about gender, I guess (I think that was with you, at least).
I strongly doubt this point, that 'specific' experience is so strongly conditioned by language. I'm gonna bitch about animals again, but animals themselves understand specific concepts pretty damn well without having a language. They 'get' objects without having a linguistic concept of them.
Of course, you'll reply that humans are different, that we have a language and that we are simply qualitatively different in how we perceive. But I'd wonder how much difference there is, really. A dog knows a bone is a bone. We know a bone is a bone. We just happen to have a word for it. Tbh I think this way of approaching the problem (which I wager you'll also find in the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty who believed we understand the concept before the parts) is more intuitive.
It also makes temporal sense. I think you're putting the cart before the horse if you say language universalizes sense, instead of the other way around. The fact is how language could ever arise, be created, if not as a way to give a lasting sign to an object all potential speakers could already understand as being signified. If I started calling something a chair while everyone had a different specific sense experience, it would make sense to no one.
I think it is more logical and scientific to keep evolution in mind, and to claim that animals had a benefit in developing specific understandings of concepts as a species (prey, group, friendly, angry, submissive, etc) without knowing these linguistically (but just intuitively). In this way, the concept comes strongly before the sign (the word), and language developed out of already established specific sensual concepts (grass, anger, or more basically, red, high, thick, etc). I might very well be wrong ofc, but imo you should still consider whether you don't give language a bit too much importance.
Doubtful imo. That would assume that biologically, every single person has the same symptoms, but then somehow linked to a different feeling. Think of evolution. Is there a real reason that happiness would feel different for different people? There's not benefit that we could think of. So then there is no reward for genetic variation here. Then it makes sense that the conduits that we see (smiling, narrowing the eyes) lead back to a common denominator, a simple expression of the same genetics.
But I digress.
As an aside, those ideas will be nonsense because happiness is an intuitive concept that you cannot analyze (deconstrue in to 'parts'), just associate. You can literally say nothing about the essence of happiness, just that you 'want' it, that it feels 'good', that you see it here and there, etc, but that associative. Analytically, the concept is empty, just an indescribably feeling that we match with other concepts synthetically to give ourselves the illusion of being able to describe it, when we only 'get' it intuitively. Same with pleasure, anger, etc, which we can only associate but not dissect- we can perceive no parts, only a whole.
I strongly disagree that the feeling 'is' what we have witnessed, like I said above, I claim that a feeling cannot be described, just associated. While thinking in of itself is a hard subject, I agree ofc that insofar we can think linguistically we use universalized signs.
Probably.
I wouldn't say a dog has anything more than sensational awareness, some memory of those sensations, and habit; these hardly constitute knowledge. A dog knows what it might like to eat or chew on and some memory of its shape and taste, but it has no necessary or even coherent association that the particular thing is part of the structure of any animal. We often give them pieces of plastic that resemble bones which provoke similar responses. A dog's knowledge of bones is zero. I would grant that what dogs do have would be the prehistory (and some of the preconditions) of understanding and knowledge proper, but they aren't either as such.
Language universalizes individual sensuous experience, i.e. sense-experience as taken as an individual is universalized out of its specificity to me alone; as I mentioned in this and the last post, having sensational awareness constitutes a precondition and necessity of understanding.
It is doubtful, but it's not impossible. It isn't important for the overall point, since I was only using the extreme case as an example.
Insofar as the immediate experience is concerned, I do: variations in brain chemistry (whether one generates more of this or that neurochemical due to one's genetics or environmental effects) and aberrant neuronal connections. These would create variations in individual experiences of happiness.
Nonsense or not, people inquire as to the meaning of happiness, how best to achieve it, whether it's the most worthy goal in life, whether happiness should feel this way or should feel better (whether we're "truly" happy as compared to some outward or internalized standard), and whether happiness exists in that moment of expression of the internal feeling or in hindsight as reflection. We analyze happiness constantly.
Note that I'm not speaking of a division of happiness's pure emotional experience into parts but whether other's ideas about happiness come to influence my reflections and understanding of my own happiness. I would agree that associativity is basally necessary, though.
It very much is, otherwise we would have no idea what to call our own experience. The feeling is witnessed by its outward physical signs and given the word "happiness," and the word in turn is applied to us ourselves when we demonstrate those outward signs to others. It doesn't matter whether the internal emotional experience of an individual varies in certain ways; language universalizes that particular experience.