Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:
“Lessons From the ‘Airpocalypse’”
Notes: The phrase “spaceship Earth” was coined by R. Buckminster Fuller. Žižek seems to clarify Fuller’s suggestion, “If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?” Žižek repeats his general position that people should not cynically obtain surplus enjoyment for doing what is good, but should instead be duty-bound to do good.
Link to an article by Rob Hunter:
Slavoj Žižek – The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (Verso 2000)
Typically Žižek writes long and short books, with the shorter ones restating concepts he had introduced in longer works. But The Fragile Absolute is a bit different in terms of being shorter but also developing (relatively) new concepts. His views on christian atheism are significant enough that this book was reprinted years later as part of the publisher’s “Essential Žižek” series. Yet for as important as the the core christian ideas are to the book, given its title, most of the first half or so scarcely mentions religion at all. And for that matter, Žižek doesn’t ever mention Thomas J.J. Altizer‘s “death of god” theory, or Ernst Bloch‘s Atheism in Christianity (1968), which seem to set forth a similar frame of discussion. Instead he starts with Alain Badiou‘s Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism (1998). In short, Žižek’s thesis is that christianity offers a radical position that used “love” as a way toward universality. Using his typical Lacanian psychoanalytic techniques, and a heavy reliance on Hegelian philosophy, he explores how a sense of duty in the christian concept of love — specifically Pauline agape (love as charity) — can rupture the duality of law and transgression and the pagan notion of life cycles built around a global social hierarchy (of each person and thing in its “proper” place). In other words, he sees christianity as offering a significant step forward toward an egalitarian society by asserting that each individual has immediate access to (and the right to participate in) universality, without seeing it as “evil” when a person (or strata) no longer is satisfied with a position within an ordered social hierarchy (which inherently has masters who must be obeyed). Žižek’s key arguments are as profound as ever, yet those could have been distilled to more potent essay or article rather than a book that comes across as rambling in the first half.
Link to an article by Alan Nasser:
“Making Greater Possibilities Inconceivable: Another Thought or Two on the Logic of Lesser Evilism”
Bonus Quote: “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want and get it.” Eugene V. Debs
Bonus Link: Lizard democracy quote by Douglas Adams from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Link to an interview of Daniel Zamora by Dave Zeglen:
“CSC Interview with Daniel Zamora”
See also: “How Michel Foucault Got Neoliberalism So Wrong” and “Foucault’s Responsibility” and Read My Desire
“It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.”
Slavoj Žižek quote from “Democracy’s Fascism Problem”:
“Of course, no privileged political agent knows inherently what is best for the people and has the right to impose its decisions on the people against their will (as the Stalinist Communist Party did). However, when the will of the majo[r]ity clearly violates basic emancipatory freedoms, one has not only the right but also the duty to oppose that majority. This is not reason to despise democratic elections — only to insist that they are not per se an indication of Truth. As a rule, elections reflect the conventional wisdom determined by the hegemonic ideology.”
Bonus links: “Draft Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” and Footnote Four of Carolene Products
Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:
“The Cologne Attacks Were an Obscene Version of Carnival”
Selected quotes:
Link to an interview with Michael Scott Christofferson conducted by Daniel Zamora:
Bonus quote:
“The anarchist denunciations of [state power] from Foucault to James Scott are less worried about transnational monopolies than about the (now defunct) Soviet party state or even the social-democratic nanny state. And as for the intellectual and cultural polemics, they always end up denouncing Marx and Marxism. I think these battles on the left are unproductive politically and intellectually . . . .”
Link to an article by Japhy Wilson:
“The Joy of Inequality: The Libidinal Economy of Compassionate Consumerism”
Bonus links: “The Politics of Online Friendship” and “So You’re Still Being Publicly Shamed” and “Too Much of Not Enough: An Interview with Alenka Zupančič”