Comments for Perverse Egalitarianism

Comment on More Zizek by bryank

bryank — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:50:55 +0000

Lou: (…or if/when they read his books.)

Comment on More Zizek by Lou Deeptrek

Lou Deeptrek — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:42:22 +0000

Well, at least admit that you have been crying for days after your unmasking, that you are still recovering from that awesome blow of Harman’s crazed vengeance (at least he’s honest enough to call it “retaliation” – I wonder when the officials at AUC finally notice that one of their high-ranking administrators is making a complete ass of himself by “retaliating” against people who criticize him by digging up personal information about them and posting it online).

Comment on More Zizek by kvond

kvond — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:12:47 +0000

Lou: “I thought I’d point out that Paul’s hero of clarity and simplicity just shot out this nonsensical and delusional post about “Eli” (who he claims is Kevin, who is still recovering from Harman’s awesome unmasking of him) – the man is mad and has such childish projection issues that I think he might need help at some point.”

Kvond: I love it. I wish I could write like Eli in summation of Harman’s difficulties. I guess I take it as a compliment. Eli was spot on, but I can confirm, at least to the least paranoid, I am not “Eli”. (Sorry Graham.)

Comment on More Zizek by Mikhail Emelianov

Mikhail Emelianov — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:50:11 +0000

But you must drag this one on, it’s the rule of this troll habitat – just go with the easy “No no no” response. You can do, Paul, we believe in you!

Comment on More Zizek by bryank

bryank — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:45:09 +0000

I also enjoy the meme, shared by both k-punk and Harman, of the “This person is a great example of a critical interlocutor who isn’t a gray werewolf!”

Comment on More Zizek by bryank

bryank — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:44:13 +0000

Yes, but putting it in a decontextualized table makes it that much easier to argue, since you can interpret it like an inkblot.

By the way, what’s with this recent meme about how critique is “neutral,” “distant,” etc.? Kpunk said it on his Twitter, and now Graham is stupidly repeating it on his stupid blog. Have any of us ever claimed to be “neutral”? It’s an absurd strawman, and immediately sets the reader up to favor the argument being made against it based on the use of these obviously disingenuous adjectives. Maybe I will come right out and AFFIRM that my critiques are absolutely not neutral.

Comment on More Zizek by Paul Ennis

Paul Ennis — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:38:32 +0000

I think between Mikhail and Bryan’s posts I’ll have to do the honest thing and admit that I don’t have much of a response. Meaning that my post was somewhat over-hasty. My only worry is that I’ll be banned from the internet for not dragging out a debate even when I know I’m wrong.

Comment on More Zizek by Mikhail Emelianov

Mikhail Emelianov — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:04:07 +0000

Next time, Bryan, you can just send me your long and complicated rant and I will reduce it to a nice sound bite so that the masses can get it. I am also very good at diagrams, you know? Nothing complicated, just the stuff you can draw with the most primitive Word table and arrows…

Comment on More Zizek by bryank

bryank — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:57:54 +0000

Mikhail, I think we posted at about the same time, but your point:

“It is precisely by presenting the task as “Be simple and clear or masses will reject you” that we create these dumb masses.”

Is basically my entire post…

Comment on More Zizek by bryank

bryank — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:56:54 +0000

This whole spirit of “simplicity” is totally wrong-headed and utterly misses the point, and if you’ve ready any Zizek it would be perfectly obvious why. At some point or another, Zizek remarks that he isn’t trying to convince people on philosophical points A, B, or C, or even political programmes, X, Y, Z.

To invoke a Zizekian way of talking, he would say that if you lose the theoretical medium through which you communicate the message, you lose the message itself. Zizek’s whole point is that, even if you disagree with certain ideas, as long as he can get you to begin speaking Lacanian, he has in some sense already won the debate (this is why he spends quite a bit of time in *The Parallax View* pointing out how certain ideas in Badiou’s *Logiques des mondes* come directly from Lacan, etc.).

Now, as to the question of whether it’s possible to get ordinary people to speak Lacanian, one need only turn to the Slovenia of the late 1980s, where the Slovenian Lacanians actually did manage to popularize Lacan to the extent that major debates had to use Lacanian terms (the 4 way election for Slovenian presidency that Zizek ran for, as well as TV news shows on Slovenia using terms like “Master Signifier” {cf. “Zizek!” the movie}).

This whole emphasis on “simplicity” I find to be deeply suspicious common sense, and I think it draws a nice boundary between “us” intelligent and educated thinkers who can adequately reason through complex arguments versus “those” people who need watered down spoon-feeding of philosopher’s political and cultural engagements so they don’t have to do any hard thinking. Give me a break!