Re: [Marxism] Zizek interview in the FT

[J Rothermel <jayroth6@xxxxxxx>]

I've spent the last week trying to get halfway through "In Defense of 
Lost Causes" (Verso 2008 $34.95).

He spends many pages on Badiou, Heidegger, Jacobins, The Great 
Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the film of "The Da Vinci Code."  
The working class, the exploited of the world, have yet to make their 
appearance. 

The book is a series of strangely airless and abstracted discussions 
defending something Zizek calls "revolutionary terror," while neglecting 
to give it a  historical or economic context from the French revolution 
onward.  Philosophizing gets in the way of philosophy. 

Often, the history Zizek reviews reads like a Martian's.  Consider 
(p219) this summing-up of the Cuban missile crisis:  "So, again, what we 
witness here is a confrontation between Khrushchev's humanist 
considerations (ultimately, the legacy of traditional culture 
resuscitated by high Stalinism) and Castro's ruthless total wager, which 
echoes Mao Zedong's reflection on the possible annihilation of the human 
race.  As we have noted earlier, Che Guevara approached the same line of 
thought when he praised the heroic readiness of the Cuban people to risk 
its own effacement."   I'm not sure the thought process that leads one 
to think resuscitated high Stalinism (whatever that is) gave rebirth to 
humanism.

Page 176 goes on at considerable length about revolutionary strategy 
read as a series of religio-doctrinal theses-counter-theses between 
Marx><Lenin and Lenin><Mao.  Apparently it all goes back to Jesus><Paul.

Zizek presents himself as a partisan of Marxism.  God save Marxism from 
these friends. 


-- 
*j a y   r o t h e r m e l
*
               jayroth6@xxxxxxx







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