Category: Uncategorized

Ilan Kapoor – Žižek, Antagonism and Politics Now

Link to an article by Ilan Kapoor:

“Žižek, Antagonism and Politics Now: Three Recent Controversies”

 

I’m not sure I agree with the criticisms of Žižek this offers, partly because they seem conclusory and underdeveloped, even if intriguing.  For instance, the notion that Žižek is overexposed seems to call for an explanation of what “overexposed” means, and why it applies.  For example, a discussion of that concept in view of Žižek’s well-known critique of liberalism’s inability to cope with the destructive power of envy seems apropos.  Or perhaps something out of Bourdieu or another branch of sociology?

Alain Badiou Quote

“The goal of all enemy propaganda is not to annihilate an existing force (this function is generally left to police forces), but rather to annihilate an unnoticed possibility of the situation.”

Alain Badiou, “Seminar on Plato” at the ENS, Feb. 13, 2008 (unpublished), quoted in “No Way Out? Communism in the New Century,” in The Idea of Communism 3 (2016).

See also “Ernst Lubitsch, Censorship, and Political Correctness” (“Alain Badiou put it in a wonderful and precise way: the main function of today’s ideological censorship is not to crush actual resistance—this is the job of repressive state apparatuses—but to crush hope, to immediately denounce every critical project as opening a path at the end of which is something like a gulag.”)

Bonus link: “Abnormalize The Empire”

James Plested – Recycling Crisis is Capitalist Business as Usual

Link to an article by James Plested:

“Recycling Crisis is Capitalist Business as Usual”

 

Bonus links: “As the Ocean Waters Rise, So Do the Islands of Garbage” and “Against Recycling” and “How Europe’s ‘Trash Market’ Offloads Pollution on Its Poorest Countries” and “A Plastic Bag’s 2,000-Mile Journey Shows the Messy Truth About Recycling” and “Circular Claims Fall Flat Again” and “Plastic Merchants of Myth: Circular Claims Fall Flat” and Portlandia Season 2, Episode 8 “Which Bin Does It Go In?” and The Closing Circle