Let's try having a thread on this man. It baffles me how rarely we explicitly discuss him on this board, even though he's obviously a big influence.
What's your opinion on him? Are there any interesting Zizek pieces you've read / watched / listened to recently? Are there any statements of his that you'd like to discuss? Should we treat Zizek as a serious contributor to the Marxist canon? Are you a "Zizekian"?
Personally I find it difficult to find points on which I disagree with the man. His analysis always seems to be on point, even if it's often disorganized.
as I a huge Zizek fanboy, my problem with him seems to be that hes great at diagnosing a problem, but not so good at coming up with viable alternatives to the current way things are. In this way, he can be sort of counter-revolutionary. We don't need to be told changing things are hard, we need someone to show us how to change things the right way.
I need to get into him more but honestly the sniffing drives me insane
Eli Wood
Just read his shit then.
David Flores
I like how he challenges the "self-righteous left standing on the moral highground" stereotype.
Jeremiah Torres
I think that's what attracts me to him. He dispels most misconceptions about what being a leftist entails without at any point compromising anything for it.
Nicholas Smith
Zizek is a postmodernist dumbass. He demonizes migrants and tries to divide up the working class using rhetoric that a fascist would be proud of. He literally divides mankind into “three kinds of subjects”–a “Western, ‘civilized, bourgeois, liberal-democratic subject”; “those who do not belong to the West and who are obsessed by their longing for the West”; and finally, “those fascistic nihilists whose envy of the West is transformed into a deadly self-destructive hatred.”
Again this concept of “the west” is rooted in identity politics. There is no “west”, there is advanced capitalist countries and developing. South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, UAE, Israel, etc are all advanced yet not in the “West” (Countries with majority European descent ruling class)
For example he grossly overestimated the New Year’s Eve event in Cologne and called it “obsene carnival of the working class”.
He uses sophistry to overexggagerate the hold of fascism on the working class while denying their revolutionary spirit
Aiden Perez
Where does he do this exactly? You seem to be quoting from somewhere.
Christopher Bell
Stopped reading there.
Ayden Hill
Not them, but that poster seems to have completely ripped off their analysis from RedKahina (Molly Klein), a Twitter ML noted for such hot-takes as "Chinese imperialism is a bigger threat than the US" and "'Yankee' is an antisemitic dog-whistle."
Luis Baker
don't forget how he shits all over the Cuban revolution
Ethan Roberts
Does anyone remember that user that posted a tumblr post about how Zizek is a grifter, a fascist and a nazi?
He used to be all over this board when it was young but since nobody can be bothered to read or even watch YouTube videos he’s fallen out of favor
Caleb Cook
Do people even bother reading him as opposed to watching Youtube videos? I remember that the last book I read from Zizek is Incontinence of the Void.
Ryder Russell
...
Jonathan Powell
"For Žižek, social democracy is insufficient, but it is perilous to prescribe a fixed alternative. “We have to reject whatever remains in Marxism of historic teleology… Socialist revolution produces its own mess, it goes wrong. I’m globally a pessimist but what gives me hope is precisely this catastrophic situation. Because in such catastrophic situations you have to be creative, you have to improvise. That’s why I don’t trust leftists who have these simple solutions.”
I ask if he is attracted by the notion of “luxury communism”: an automated economy in which humans are sustained by a state-funded universal basic income. "
This is your idiot god. A self proclaimed "Marxist" who shows utter contempt for the working class and denies their revolutionary potential at a time of reemerging class struggle like the Yellow Vest Movement.
Jace Lopez
Didn't he said that the GJ does have revolutionary potential but its demands are quite limited?
Jacob Price
"The deadlock that global capitalism finds itself in is more and more palpable. How to break out of it? Fredric Jameson recently proposed global militarization of society as a mode of emancipation: Democratically motivated grassroots movements are seemingly doomed to failure, so perhaps it’s best to break global capitalism’s vicious cycle through “militarization,” which means suspending the power of self-regulating economies. Perhaps the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe provides an opportunity to test this option.
It is at least clear that what is needed to stop the chaos is large-scale coordination and organization, which includes but is not limited to: reception centers near to the crisis (Turkey, Lebanon, the Libyan coast), transportation of those granted entrance to European way stations, and their redistribution to potential settlements. The military is the only agent that can do such a big task in an organized way. To claim that such a role for the military smells of a state of emergency is redundant. When you have tens of thousands of people passing through densely populated areas without organization you have an emergency state—and it is in a state of emergency that parts of Europe are right now. Therefore, it is madness to think that such a process can be left to unwind freely. If nothing else, refugees need provisions and medical care."
Here is Zizek dressing up fascism and pretending its "Marxist". Denouncing workers movements and advocating for military setting up camps to control people fleeing oppression. Bloody brilliant! Sniff man does it again!
Do people even read his books? I want to talk about them but i'm such a brainlet.
Angel Cruz
Denying their potential for revolution isn’t eh same thing as hating them. Lots of Marxists have been saying that the West has no revolutionary potential for decades, and they’ve been right for the most part. It’s only very recently that class consciousness is re-emerging, and the GJs are the first movement with even a hint of revolutionary potential since fucking 1968.
Sebastian Green
You’re retarded. Countries all over the world deploy the military to deal with humanitarian crises and rescue efforts on a regular basis. He’s literally advocating using it as a tool to coordinate meeting the needs of refugees, including settling them in their new countries, not putting them in concentration camps.
William Bennett
The article contains nothing of the sort you described. You simply Googled "Zizek Eurocentrism" and copied the first result, assuming that it would back up your case. It doesn't. It's a highly theoretical text on the nature of the political. Zizek is clear that he is Eurocentrist only in the sense that he identifies the Europe as the origin of "egaliberté," a general universalizing idea.
More uncomprehending slander.
Luke Sanchez
Zizek, Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through
"Let’s face it: today, Lenin and his legacy are perceived as hopelessly dated, belonging to a defunct ‘paradigm’. Not only was Lenin understandably blind to many of the problems that are now central to contemporary life (ecology, struggles for emancipated sexuality, etc.), but also his brutal political practice is totally out of sync with current democratic sensitivities, his vision of the new society as a centralized industrial system run by the state is simply irrelevant, etc.?"
Isaac Rivera
You want to pretend that we're still living in the early 20th century. We aren't. Times have changed. Lenin is a great figure that we have to learn from, but the remarks in that quote are all correct.
Brandon Campbell
Also iirc that entire book is about how Lenin is still relevant, so it’s blatant misrepresentation of Zizek’s position to post that quote and say “See! Zizek hates Lenin!”.
Alexander Baker
Everything you'll read on leftypol is that. People CRAVE peremptory statements that disqualify thinkers so that they can disregard them. It's not even funny.
Christopher Green
You can't prove that wrong though.
Aiden Cruz
Arguing over which is a bigger threat is like taking sides in WW1 because you deluded yourself into thinking German victory will topple the Tsar, or because Britain and France were the birthplaces of liberalism.
Liam Allen
That is a completely false equivalence. If we are talking about where the workers are most oppressed, it's definitely China and other Third World countries. The US is garbage but China is even more garbage, unless they return to actual socialism.
Dylan Garcia
I have a fond memory of watching Q&A (Aus) when I was just 14 and Zizek was being an absolute boss on this panel. This is the perfect format for Zizek, it demonstrates his versitility, determination, and autistic referential memory to rival ismail. Tony Jones (the mod) was being such a smug cunt to Zizek. Also, Mark looks like Stiner, he probably smells like milk too. youtu.be/QhAMgVFKokk
Zizek is a fucking joke, no wonder the media loves him. And how convenient it is that he's the ONLY "marxist" that jordan peterson is willing to debate. Gee, I wonder why. Didn't this fucking dude persecute gypsies en masse while he was in power or something? Slovakia wasn't it?
Daniel Mitchell
I remember watching this back in the day, I really enjoyed it. I think it was linked to me on 4chan.
Proofs?
Jordan Martin
Of fucking course you would like zizek. You two have the exact same fucking shtick, confusion and gaslighting. You preach sophistry and idealism while IN PRACTICE supporting US imperialism whenever you can.
Of fucking course you would like him. Just lol, please stay banned next time you rat.
Lol, even entertaining this fucking retarded argument. He said chinese IMPERIALISM, not chinese DOMESTIC conditions. Learn to read.
You really want to tell me china even achieves half the destructive results and potential of the US? I promise you, those will be difficult straws to pull. Now if you want to conflate domestic worker conditions with imperialism then we can call Uganda the most dangerous imperialist country.
Luke Robinson
My thought on this is that Peterson relies on it that Zizek won't approach the debate with the aim of defending Marxism. Zizek isn't an educator on Marxism, like for example Richard D. Wolff would be. He is a student of ideology. When speaking with Peterson, his interests would be to analyse Peterson's brand of conservatism, and to discuss the subject of ideology in general. These things are much less threatening than someone taking him up on his McCarthyist fear-mongering. You can tell this from the way Zizek has spoken about the eventual debate in the past. He's said that he was originally very enthusiastic about the debate because he imagined Peterson to be an intellectual of the alt-right (i.e. an interesting ideological subject), but that he lost interest when he found out Peterson is really a generic wisdom-peddler (i.e. a bland ideological subject). You can find the YouTube fragments of this.
William Cook
My impression is that for the moment China is a positive element in the world-stage, but that the (legitimate) fear is that this could turn around very quickly. They're amassing a lot of power, and have a brilliant infrastructure (better than the US) to put this power to exploitative use.
Lincoln Miller
Found the succdem. They do love Zizek.
Jason Lewis
Didn't Zizek say he was a fan of bureaucratic socialism or something like that? I'm fairly certain his ideal society is just Yugo.
Adrian Hughes
Obviously educating the American public on Marxism entails shifting some things around. He does a good job of it.
I read that as his unconscious wish for cybernetic socialism.
Ayden Phillips
(me) Wolff definitely isn't an educator on advanced Marxist theory though. He's attempting to lay the foundations of a more popular approach. Don't make the mistake of thinking coops are the end of his project. It's clear that this is not the case if you watch his lectures. Coops are simply a preliminary stage to further economic socialization. What I love most about coops personally is that it breaks the traditional public-private paradigm. American animosity towards socialism is largely based on a distrust of the state. Great, then let's do socialism without the state. Cooperatives.
Kayden Gonzalez
Do you do anything but throw labels at everyone trying to disqualify them?
Daniel Johnson
Holy shit everyone but zizek and that middle-eastern woman is retarded in this video.
Owen Sanchez
Lol these dudes support the Democrat Cops of America and the ISO, organizations proven to side with trade unions and the democratic party.
Joshua Torres
Would love a Zizek vs Peterson debate. They always talk about it, hyping it up as if it would happen but nothing so far.
Thomas Perez
What's the problem with critically supporting those organizations? They aren't great, but they're the best we got at the moment.
Ryan Myers
The vast majority of "humanitarian efforts" are colonial intrigues.
So, is he retarded? Why would the bourgeois state do that with even a modicum of well-intention?
Zizek sniffs and says a whole bunch of confusing shit but at the end of the day he's nothing more than a social democrat who doesn't really believe that a vanguard party is necessary. He has a lot more in common with Noam Chomsky than he does with Lenin or Trotsky
Jaxson Cook
Popular support?
Yes.
Something like a vanguard party is probably necessary, but not in the form of traditional Leninism.
Brayden Peterson
and what's your suggestion? I guess we just need more big tents like Syriza and Demcops.
Joshua Perez
all the labor aristos in Europe are going full-blown fash. guess what they support. actual workers would never muster "popular support" for a bourgeois military government, you absolute dunce. I'd say that Zizek fails absolutely to comprehend class, but he's subverting it deliberately.
Luke Smith
He exactly said that in the last video in the OP.
Christopher Moore
My proposal would be to pursue the worker cooperatives angle. Ideally we get a government in power that implements some form of general workplace democracy, and gives workers the tools to organize a planned economy within what's essentially still the private sphere.
Zizek is aware of this problem and stresses it constantly. There are no easy solutions here.
His intention with this proposal is to get people thinking differently. At present the European left has no strong narrative to offer on migration. They're vaguely in support of the status quo, helping out refugees that come over the border, etc… This doesn't speak to people. Maybe if they proposed a strong organized effort to help the refugees out this would be different.
Jordan Cruz
lol he doesn't say that, he just knows (like most sane Marxists) that revolution has a time and place. does someone have the mspaint comic of the gopher explaining revolutionary politics, or is this board dead now?
Lincoln Perez
Zizek had never even thought of the possibility that the working class would revolt like with the Yellow Vests and instead promotes "pragmatism" and "gradually changing the system". He has always discounted the immense power of the working class.
Jeremiah Moore
Again, who the fuck are you quoting?
Owen Gutierrez
he says there's nothing wrong with either one, just like Marx. give up on the incrementalist/revolutionary dichotomy, it's a spook.
Mason Morris
Can we talk about Zizek's philosophical works for a change? What do you think of his Hegelian-Schellingian-Lacanian stuff?
Ayden Long
Another huge problem with Zizek is the simple question of: What does this man stand for? Like what does he actually propose the solution to be? He keeps saying we need a "new" kind of Leninism but what the fuck does that mean? His answers are always in generalities and he as a tendency to see capitalism in a nationalistic framework rather than an international one. From what I have seen and read of him, he has never brought up the international proletariat and the globalization of production. In his recent Yellow Vest video on RT for example, he had never brought up the fact that within the nation-state framework, the demands of the Yellow Vests couldn't be met.
This guy seems to be all hype with no substance whatsover. Please enlighten me, name one idea that he has had that is novel and advances marxism in any way. If there isn't, then Zizek is simply a huge waste of time.
Oliver Myers
Have you read any of Zizek's books? Like his philosophical works, not online articles and not his books on politics.
Kevin Bailey
He hasn't invented anything new, he's just able to absorb Lacan and Hegel and represent them in a palettable format using pop culture. He also formalized major aspects of Critical Theory (Ideology) which helps us to better understand how we undermine ideological institutions and advance ourselves beyond Capitalism. Believe it or not but people don't have to make grand prophetic assertions to be useful. He doesn't propose any solutions because he, like most people who understand Hegel, knows that violently rapid political endeavors or prone to error. So? He's not an economist, that's not his job. I'm sure he's aware neoliberalism has had some ontological impact but why should he embarrass himself on a subject he knows nothing about just for you?
Bentley Perry
IMO, Zizek is the kind of marxism who's interesting when class struggle is not in struggle (like in the 1991-2007 period) because his main interests is not the revolution but culture, philosophy, psychology etc.
A couple years ago my country deployed the military to assist with catastrophic flooding rescue and repair efforts. Was that an example of fascism in action? He’s not suggesting they would, he’s saying they should. That’s a major difference. Bourgeois states also won’t stop climate change, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t.
Not my fault you’re just too much of a brainlet to actually understand a nuanced position. How do I support US imperialism in practice? By opposing Western companies using Chinese people as wage slaves? By engaging in critical support of Maduro, Assad, etc? It should probably tell you something when pretty much every ban I’ve ever gotten has been successfully appealed and lifted. You’re just a screeching retard incapable of processing anything other than a black and white worldview.
Levi Taylor
Read the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article I linked in the OP. It's a good treatment of this exact question.
Xavier Peterson
Is there anything specific you had in mind? There's so much of this stuff and I can't say I comprehend it to any significant degree.
Justin Turner
Your little anecdote doesn't refute what I said at all.
It's major idealism.
Kayden Carter
Yes it does. Countries deploying their military to help with disaster relief, humanitarian crises, etc is literally a regular occurrence. It’s not some outlandish crypto-fascist solution to this problem. Which is hardly the same as fascism.
Carson Bell
I will, after someone here points out a contribution that he has made to marxism or any clarifying insight that he has. If you guys can't even explain that much, then his works are worthless
Jack Diaz
His work on ideology is probably his main contribution. >Žižek agrees with critics about this “false consciousness” model of ideology. Yet he insists that we are not living in a post-ideological world, as figures as different as Tony Blair, Daniel Bell or Richard Rorty have claimed. Žižek proposes instead that in order to understand today’s politics we need a different notion of ideology. In a typically bold reversal, Žižek’s position is that today’s widespread consensus that our world is post-ideological gives voice to what he calls the “archideological” fantasy. Since “ideology” since Marx has carried a pejorative sense, no one who taken in by such an ideology has ever believed that they were so duped, Žižek comments. If the term “ideology” has any meaning at all, ideological positions are always what people impute to Others (for today’s left, for example, the political right are the dupes of one or another noble lie about natural community; for the right, the left are the dupes of well-meaning but utopian egalitarianism bound to lead to economic and moral collapse, and so forth). For subjects to believe in an ideology, it must have been presented to them, and been accepted, as non-ideological indeed, as True and Right, and what anyone sensible would believe.
Josiah Murphy
So zizek is an enlightened centrist above ideologies. Also what on earth is "archideological". Sounds like postmodern nonsense. You know, the concept that all ideas are valid and there is no grand historical narrative.
Kayden Gomez
It should also tell you something that you've been BANNED so many times in the first place! We've had mods who've sabotaged this board in the past, no doubt the same snakes that like you.
As I said, no wonder you like Zizek.
Elijah Kelly
Can't wait for Zizek to BTFO peterson in april or whenever
Wyatt Watson
How do I do that exactly? I explicitly denounce imperialism in every thread. Do you actually think that any criticism at all of China, Syria, etc means I support US imperial designs against them? Even when I explicitly state the opposite?
Michael Mitchell
What? Where are you getting any of this?
Logan Moore
Hi OP.
I read Puppet & The Dwarf, reading Like a Thief in Broad Daylight r/n. I really like his insights into Lacanian ideas. I can't believe people call themselves Marxists and don't think to understand dialectical thought. Have you read Hegel yet? >brainlet.jpeg
Dylan Rivera
Answer the question
Daniel Phillips
You are an absolute fucking idiot. Jesus christ, at least it's nice to know in a weird way that so many leftists are just as illiterate as liberals and fascists.
His point is that NO ONE is above ideology, and that the belief that you can transcend ideology and simply make rational decisions from a set of sensible options without political influence is only evidence of how fully immersed you are in an ideological landscape, since the parameters of those choices, the level to which some seem reasonable and others seem impossible, etc, is overdetermined by a symbolic landscape. Ironic distance, centrism, "the end of history", contempt for sincere expression, these are symptoms of a society so immersed in neoliberal hegemonic ideology that it violently rejects real alternatives.
You cretins need to read a fucking book. I don't even agree completely with Zizek and I will gladly be his internet defense force against slobbering troglydites angry at everything that cant be faked from skimming a wiki article.
Dominic Garcia
Wiktionary defines "arch-" as "chief, highest, most extreme." This isn't jargon. Not that there would be anything wrong with using technical terms.
Evan Kelly
Lol, this is not a new insight at all. Just fancy words covering up something even a 10yr old peasant child can tell you. Of course you need to be given objective facts and realities alongside an argument to get to believe in an ideology. Go buy some fancy cheese and wine while you jerk yourself off you pompous bougie ass faggot
Cooper Foster
Also “no one is above ideology” is a dumb statement. Our material conditions and the way we survey the world is what determines our ideology and it is this perspective that guides our actions. The examples of “theories” that you gave have a class basis which creates ideology which has existed since the time that a class structured society had existed.
Dylan Walker
Have u even tried reading zizek's work? Perhaps try reading the sublime object of ideology first then come here once you've found problems with it? Otherwise i'm going to assume you're a troll trying to stifle discussion.
Elijah Foster
This isn't the point. Zizek is saying that what you define to be "objective facts and realities" is exactly what is most indicative of the ideological framework you're in. It isn't a matter of being given objective facts and then adopting an ideology, that's the idea that Zizek is arguing against. Ironically, your dismissal is thereby the perfect argument for the significance of Zizek's work.
Zizek believes that ideology is material. Again, if you just read the article going over the essence of his work, you'd know this…
Zizek is critical of Marxist materialism however (on a philosophical level, not as a methodological doctrine), believing Hegel to have been essentially materialist from the start. For Hegel contradictions exist within material reality, Marx didn't innovate on that point.
Angel Stewart
Idk why you're all bothering with this person, they do this literally everytime zizek is brought up. It's definitely the same person as well. It's gotten to the point where I think they're either actually literally RedKahina or they're someone who is obsessed with RedKahina and her shitty takes.
Jace Nguyen
looks like my auto-translator plugin found the problem
Not only is that completely contrary to what Zizek believes, I have no idea how you managed to get that from what I wrote. You are an idiot and your resentment and appeals to "a 10 year old could do it" are reactionary.
lmao it wouldnt matter if I was a student studying because good for them but I am responding to you on break at my contracting job, but go ahead and keep using conservative talking points to weasel out of having to think