Re: AUT: Zizek being annoying

[Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau@xxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew,

When I was younger I gave a great deal of time trying to absorb
Zizek's contribution to radical thought, and to be completely honest
I've never been completely satisfied with his "thinking". He's had
some interesting "minor" ideas in all of his works and he has a quite
interesting way of looking at things which can be appreciated for
their novelty or humor if nothing else. The Puppet and the Dwarf is
excellent from that perspective, otherwise... eh. However I think I'd
struggle to find something he's said (in terms of a "major" thesis)
that was original in his past few books. The book Organs without
Bodies was probably his worst (in my opinion). Sometimes in his desire
to be provokative, I think he's less concerned about politics or
philosophy as he is about selling books and getting his next lecture
tour around US universities. He's like a semi-attractive woman who
talks dirty and gets you exited, then ends up a really bad lay in bed.
Such that one ends up with the feeling... 'what the hell was the point
of that?'

Anyway.. thats my experience at least.

Lowe


On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:40:09 -0700 (PDT), andrew robinson
<ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm currently reading Zizek's book on Deleuze, having
> just finished The Puppet and the Dwarf... and I'm glad
> I'm not the only one he's annoying right now.  His
> latest theory - repeated ad nauseum in both books - is
> that radical change isn't really about changing
> external phenomena or relations at all - it's just
> about changing how you see things... For instance,
> Redemption is not the reversal of the Fall, but is how
> we come to see in what we used to see as Fall, a
> Redemption instead... "true radicality does not
> consist in going to the extreme and destroying the
> system... but consists in changing the very
> coordinates that define this balance" (Deleuze book p.
> 73), so in fact the way to resist is... not to resist,
> instead to identify totally with the social order - to
> view the present as already redeemed...
>
> And this, just when I'd thought (with his stuff around
> the time of 911) he was moving in a more radical
> direction.  Now we're straight back with all the
> conservative Lacanian stuff.  "Philosophers have only
> changed the world in various ways; the point, however,
> is to change it"...
>
>
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