Notes on Zizek

Zizek was as interesting a speaker as Alan Ginsburg or Stephen Toulmin. Below the fold are notes taken yesterday inside the back cover of The Camp of the Saints. Some embellishments crept in during transcription, but not many.

On the uses and misuses of violence

danish cartoons
neighbor: thing, intruder
aggressive reaction to globalization
a neighbor is a monster
more communication leads to more conflict
European ‘alienation’ of social life
contra Habermas, what if language is ultimately grounded in violence?
Language is the greatest violence.
What makes a real Jew intolerable to an antisemite? (answer: a symbol, symbolic mediation.)
reality is never intolerable—until language makes it so.
we live in different linguistically mediated lifeworlds (symbolic universes)
the invisible violence of capitalism
riots in France (Fall 2005) - absence of utopian prospect - no demands except the demand for recognition
one of the first buildings burnt was a mosque
zero-level protest—meaningless outburst
violence was necessary
John Rawls’ theory of justice is most dangerous - a society constructed according to Rawls would explode in violence driven by ressentiment
even though I (Zizek) am a Marxist, I take Hayek over Rawls here, inasmuch as in a Hayekian world I (Everyman) can say, well, I am a failure but that is contingent (or chance). But in a Rawlsian just society I know that there is equality of opportunity. Therefore if I am a failure it is my fault and not contingent. Therefore I must violently destroy something at once.

post-politics (rational administration versus populism
or, post-politics PLUS populism: example: Berlusconi

even though I (Zizek) am a leftist, Le Pen and Patrick Buchanan are fascinating. At least they are not etiolated puppets mouthing content-leached truisms.

the apolitea of the middle class.
something about Chomsky vs. George Lakoff

the right not to be harassed is a central right
passion is violence

What is missing in our culture: a reserve or modesty shown in a story about notoriously bisexual Gore Vidal. When asked whether his first experience had been with a man or a woman, he claimed that he had been “too polite to ask.”

We need alienation.
Overproximity as nightmare.
S. Kierkegaard: “The only good neighbor is a dead neighbor.”

Recent book, by Sam* Harris, on NYT list. Harris writes on torture and the evolutionary basis of sympathy, near page 100, and maintains that the squeamishness we feel about torturing a human being whose suffering is present to us - as opposed to, say, killing by ordering bombs to be dropped thousands of miles away - is analogous to certain visual illusions, such as those involving the perceived size of the moon. Harris proposes a thought experiment: a pill that induces an hour of horrible suffering, such that terrorists confess everything rather than endure another one, but the suffering induced is invisible and inaudible - the victim appears to be napping. Should we object? No, according to Harris; yes, says Zizek. In fact the Soviet tyranny had such a method! (Involving injections of curare, but he didn’t go into that.)

abyss of the monstrous other.

those who pretend to fight violence while inflicting violence.

only comedy is appropriate to horror (the Holocaust), not tragedy— Primo Levi - “horrifying comedy”

move the postcard! (??)
cheap popular esoterism

we are told of suffering in some distant land and exhorted: “Do Something!”
chomsky vs. zizek: chomsky says we do not need theory, only to present the facts (plus an exhortation to act—or this is implicit in ‘the facts”?)
But Zizek says: No, wait, think. Only Theory really works. We need Theory. ONLY THEORY!

*original notes indicate that Zizek said “Ed Harris”. Ed Harris is an actor.

Posted by Søren Renner on Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 05:33 PM in
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Comments:

Posted by Andrew on April 21, 2006, 08:25 AM | #

Actually, I recall that name Zizek, I have this feeling in ancient times, he considered himself a Prophet, as the Gods descended from the heavens with a message, and we know the story of Sodom and Demure.
Fire and brimstone, all that stuff.
I wonder if that is the essence of his newly found fame.
This would prompt a new Hypothesis: Is it a celestial event that affects some humane thinking that takes place in 1000 year cycles, due to the changes in physics, although minor. It has something to do on the similar lines of a full Moon, but the gravity forces are somewhat greater in Celestial terms as the elliptical alignment of solar system and planetary alignment is changed temporarily; but consistent. Lunatic, Celestial- tick, hmmmm. Global warming- Ice age- History. I wonder.

Posted by Rowan Berkeley on April 26, 2006, 01:59 PM | #

If the quotation is correct, Zizek is being rather typically dishonest in the construction of his argument about language. He apparently asks “What makes a real Jew intolerable to an antisemite?” (answer: a symbol, symbolic mediation.) However, the expression “a real Jew” is completely null and void, given his own criteria. As for the term “antisemite”, it is cant (not Kant).

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