April 27, 2007
if I was not myself, I would arrest myself
To the academic world's small population of postmodernists, Slavoj Zizek - a shambling, rambling Slovenian philosopher - is a folk hero. At any lecture podium, any time, anywhere, he will emit hazy clouds of gaseous theory with the speedy intensity and comic riffs of Bill Hicks.He seemed to emerge fully formed from the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia with an ec lectic magpie-philosophy, rapidly spewing out books and essays on everything from opera to the use of torture in the TV series 24. Zizek is the biggest box-office draw postmodernists have ever had, their best punch at the bestseller lists. The press fawns upon him; he has been called an "intellectual rock star"; and, according to a recent profile in the New Yorker, Slovenia has a "repu tation disproportionately large for its size due to the work of Slavoj Zizek".
more from The New Statesman here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 01:16 PM | Permalink
Comments
What a mind! For those interested in Zizek, see the frightening and very good film "Children of Men" and watch (or skip to) the bonus feature on Hope which follows the film on DVD. The movie rates as one of the all-time most effective dystopian fantasies ever. The thought-provoking bonus feature, which has a lot of Zizek as well as other professors saying intelligent things about the current and near future state of human affairs, was a wonderful surprise afterwards. We watched it twice.
Posted by: Tom Noll | Apr 27, 2007 3:33:00 PM
Tom, ya doof, did you read the piece?
What a mind!
Posted by: B.B. | Apr 27, 2007 5:08:26 PM
Well, BB, it's all in the spirit of discussion. I find most of Zizek unreadable and even disagreeable, but recognize useful insights in his work. He seems to me to be a sort of (court) jester-- spouting off all sorts of stuff much for the professor of philosophy but some of it is surprisingly interesting cultural commentary. When it comes to commentary of the merely political type, it's easy and pretty much the norm to go all Manichaean. From either direction. Leftist?--Commie garbage! Rightist?--Fascistic trash. Where's the nuance?
Posted by: Tom Noll | Apr 28, 2007 7:25:46 AM
why are we so attracted to zizek's shiny baubles of drivel? to see him speak is to watch a man sweat, spit and squirm in quasi convulsion on the edge of cardiac arrest. his spectacle is exciting, his content bewildering, like watching a human seizure without scientific understanding of its cause. as for the shameless plug for 'children of men' above, that was the most laughably stupid 'serious' film i've seen in a long while. convincing dystopia requires irony, not overbearing earnestness. a swaddled infant silencing a hail of gunfire? i choked on my vomit. 'V for vendetta' suffered from the same irritating sincerity.
Posted by: lapping up drivel | Apr 28, 2007 10:58:30 AM
The author of this piece seems inclined to take all of Zizek's statements at face value, and to conclude that he is a genuine "monster" in his support of totalitarian communism. But I remember an anecdote about Zizek in this entry from cosmicvariance which suggests these sorts of statements shouldn't be taken too literally:
He is a compelling figure, effortlessly outshining the two standard-issue academics flanking him on the panel. He adamantly insisted that he had no control over the documentary of which he was the subject, indeed that he hasn’t even seen it, but then reveals that a number of important scenes were admittedly his idea. In one example, the camera lingers on a striking portrait of Stalin in his apartment, which the cinematic Žižek explains as a litmus test, a way of interrogating the bourgeois sensibilities of his visitors. The flesh-and-blood Žižek, meanwhile, points out that it was just a joke, and that he would never have something so horrible as a portrait of Stalin on his wall. It ties into his notion that a film will never reveal the true person behind the scholar or public figure, nor should it; the ideas will stand or fall by themselves, separate from their personification in an actual human.
The cosmicvariance piece also has some links to some other interesting discussions of Zizek, but I can't post them here because apparently putting too many links in a comment gets it identified as comment spam.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Apr 28, 2007 2:02:53 PM
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