Fascism!

[nomadthethird]

"I've always thought of fascists as people who believe that the ends always justify the means, when it comes to violating human rights and essential freedoms in order to attain what they consider "higher" political/ideological goals."

Zizek does seem to believe this... note his comments "You can't break a few eggs without making an omelette" at the end of the Parallax View, as well as his glorification of "divine violence", military discipline and strength in "In Defence of Lost Causes."

Sigh.

Zizek has never killed anybody so "Zizekians" could take over.

Zizek seems to have an ambivalent relationship with those who preach the necessity of bloody revolution...

Some people think of revolution, even violent revolution, as something that happens when the scales of injustice tip far enough a certain way.

Think of prison riots, the LA riots, the French Revolution, whatever.

Talking about how revolution happens, and why, isn't the same as telling people to take up arms and kill their political opponents.

 

[josef k.]

Talking about how revolution happens, and why, isn't the same as telling people to take up arms and kill their political opponents.

Yes - but there is a performative dimension to language, and no such thing as a simple description. Milton Friedman, talking descriptively about how markets function, instilled at the same time a certain political trajectory. Zizek argues that a violent revolution is necessary in order to end (bad) capitalism and deliver (good) communism. Some wanton carnage will happen, he recognizes, but this will serve in the end the common good. The end will justify the means. Is this not your definition of fascism?

 

[craner]

Zizek is in line with Kojevian post-Marxism

I sometimes wonder if I am too. I find Kojeve fascinating.

 

[craner]

I've always thought of fascists as people who believe that the ends always justify the means, when it comes to violating human rights and essential freedoms in order to attain what they consider "higher" political/ideological goals.

For example, passing the Patriot Act because it was supposed to help catch terrorists. Unsurprisingly, the whistleblowers coming out now, who worked on the wires, are saying all they did was intercept phone sex between soldiers in Iraq and their significant others at home and tip off other workers to "good" calls like these.

Or Hitler's Germany killing Jews/communists.

Or Stalin's USSR killing dissenters and all sorts of randoms.

Nomad, that can't possibly define fascism as it's a symptom and effect of all political systems that actually gain power to a lesser or greater extent. Whatever happens under a US administration doesn't alter the fact that the US constitution is structurally inimicable to fascism, hence, for example, the American Civil War.

 

[nomadthethird]

Nomad, that can't possibly define fascism as it's a symptom and effect of all political systems that actually gain power to a lesser or greater extent. Whatever happens under a US administration doesn't alter the fact that the US constitution is structurally inimicable to fascism, hence, for example, the American Civil War.

Yeah, that was too broad to be a real definition. Fascism is usually a systematic and very deliberate attempt (a TOTALITARIAN one) by one central political authority to control a(n AUTHORITARIAN) state, but one of the most important characteristics of a fascist state is that they do not respect basic human rights.

I disagree, however, with the idea that the U.S. is inimicable to fascism.

 

[nomadthethird]

Yes - but there is a performative dimension to language, and no such thing as a simple description. Milton Friedman, talking descriptively about how markets function, instilled at the same time a certain political trajectory. Zizek argues that a violent revolution is necessary in order to end (bad) capitalism and deliver (good) communism. Some wanton carnage will happen, he recognizes, but this will serve in the end the common good. The end will justify the means. Is this not your definition of fascism?

Citations please.

 

[nomadthethird]

yeah economically we are post-industrial (global, digital, services, knowledge, etc.), and culturally we are post-modern. there's no awareness of high or radical modernist culture, we are less advanced that than. i can't find a meaninful difference between contemporary art and popular culture.

This should probably be a new thread, but I'm a sceptic when it comes to the "advanced" status of modernism.

 

[zhao]

only half way finished with the original TNR article (and none of this thread), and this guy's reading of Z's inversions seem pedantic and simply too literal and childish, and does not fundamentally understand Z's critique of Liberal Democracy. -- as shown in sentences like

...to understand how this erstwhile liberal democrat emerged as an idolator of Lenin and a contemptuous foe of liberal democracy.

he seems more like a fascist who swallows all the state propaganda and disavowal than Z can ever be: a true believer of "progress", and "democracy" as proof of it. what an idiot.

the more i read the more obvious it becomes that this dood is nothing but another run of the mill brain washed capitalist zombie.

 

[Mr. Tea]

liberal capitalism and democracy don't afford much in the way of private enjoyment or jouissance. the system is designed to bar us from getting off (whatever your poison is, sex, drugs, violence, etc)

What do you mean by this, exactly? Probably easiest to leave out the liberal and the democracy and concentrate on capitalism: how is it "designed to bar us from getting off"? Surely it's 'designed' (to the extent that it's been designed at all, as opposed to having evolved 'organically' over a long period of time) so as to facilitate the people at the top making lots of money? And why should they care how much fun I'm having or not having? Isn't the existence of a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry proof that huge amounts of money are to be made from people enjoying themselves?

I suspect there's a standard Marxist-psychoanalytic answer to this, which is something like "under capitalism, all pleasure is a false or temporary pleasure that leads merely to a desire for more pleasure" (insert your drug addiction analogy here - HBO as the new opiate of the people, etc.). And maybe there's a link here to a sort of dichotomy I've noticed between capitalism and Capitalism. The former is a 'mere' economic system, and a global conglomerate of corporations, banks and governments linked by a network of trade and investment (and obviously fraud, exploitation, corruption...) and even - though I'd say it's debatable - a ideology or world-view of sorts. Then there's Capital(ism), which is a kind of disincarnate spiritual vampire, a Satanic death-force that permeates the very air we breathe and the space taken up by our bodies, infecting and contaminating even those things you might naively have expected to have nothing to do with economics or money in any way. At least, some people often talk about it as if it were something like that. Any thoughts? Bit off-topic, by hey ho.

 

[vimothy]

I have a question for the more expert: how is Zizek's "lack of seriousness" related to Lacanian psychoanalysis? Can you say more about what Lacanian psychoanalysis entails? Ta

 

[josef k.]

Then there's Capital(ism), which is a kind of disincarnate spiritual vampire, a Satanic death-force that permeates the very air we breathe and the space taken up by our bodies, infecting and contaminating even those things you might naively have expected to have nothing to do with economics or money in any way.

I love this sentence. Very good.

I have a question for the more expert: how is Zizek's "lack of seriousness" related to Lacanian psychoanalysis? Can you say more about what Lacanian psychoanalysis entails? Ta

The theory of Zizek as wild psychoanalyst goes like this - we, the readers, have all these pathological fantasies about the world, politics, and so on. Zizek confronts us with these by means of a finely-honed rhetorical strategy. Through his discursive spiral, we come to recognize these irrationalities for what they are. His more blood-thirsty sounding statement are merely rhetorical lures, concocted to draw us towards some higher purpose; namely, recognizing that, as Lacan put it with regards to the idea of the end of analysis, "one is always responsible for one's position as subject." That is, that you are the one who is ultimately responsible for the realities you choose to (unconsciously) invest in.

This may yet be the case. But there are several problems here. The first is that Zizek is not just a Lacanian, but also a Marxist, and hence someone dabbling in promulgating a master discourse, as opposed to a purely analytic one. He is also a Hegelian who wants you to know stuff - hence, there is also a university discourse. Finally, in his various comic ravings, there are definitely elements of the hysteric's discourse. So Zizek is not operating with a pure analyst's discourse.

But we are not in the clinic, and so maybe an analyst's discourse in the expanded Lacanian field involves setting-up feints of this sort. This may be. On the other hand, if this is the plan, it is going awry, since none of Zizek's supporters - without exception - appears willing to take it to its full limits. Were they to do so, it would become necessary to view outbursts like the Kirsch article as all part of the master plan. Kirsch has invested, he will be analyzed, he will be ours. But Zizek supporters don't do this - instead they say that hostile critics have misunderstood him, are in some kind of bad faith, how dare you insult him, you should leave the Zizek to the specialists. And so on. In other words, they plunge back into their own master discourses. So the discourse of the master marches on, and the analysis is arrested. And meanwhile, Zizek seems to be succeeding neither in mobilizing the hordes, or in truly opening-up space for thought.

 

[vimothy]

So Lacanian psychoanalysis is purely discursive technique meant to 'enlighten', through contradiction, the analysand as to their 'true nature'?

Is there a professional Lacanian body that regulates psychoanalysts in the field? Is Zizek a member? How does one qualify as a Lacanian psychoanalyst? (Sorry for the v. mundane questions).

 

[Mr. Tea]

I love this sentence. Very good.

Thanks. But you see what I mean, though: some anti-capitalists seem to believe in the system they long to bring down in much the same terms as the average mediaeval Christian believed in the Devil; no mere idea or system, but an Entity with a will of its own independent of those of its minions.

The theory of Zizek as wild psychoanalyst goes like this - we, the readers, have all these pathological fantasies about the world, politics, and so on. Zizek confronts us with these by means of a finely-honed rhetorical strategy. Through his discursive spiral, we come to recognize these irrationalities for what they are.

Which rather raises the question: how did Zizek divest himself of pathological fantasies? One rather suspects it was by a supreme Nietzschean effort of will.

I like this, Vimothy:

So Lacanian psychoanalysis is purely discursive technique meant to 'enlighten', through contradiction, the analysand as to their 'true nature'?

Sounds very 'Zen' when put like that!

 

[josef k.]

So Lacanian psychoanalysis is purely discursive technique meant to 'enlighten', through contradiction, the analysand as to their 'true nature'?

Is there a professional Lacanian body that regulates psychoanalysts in the field? Is Zizek a member? How does one qualify as a Lacanian psychoanalyst? (Sorry for the v. mundane questions).

That's the nub of it, yes. Though there are of course a vast number of theories on this. The point, ultimately, is the analysand must 'enlighten' (not sure a Lacanian would use this word) themselves. The analyst simply leads them through the process, with well timed interjections when they emit signs of jouissance (slips of the tongue, for example).

Lacanian qualification procedures are quite specific. There is something called "the pass" - some information on this here: http://nosubject.com/Pass

The main professional organization meanwhile is the WAP, set-up in 1992 by Boss Lacanian Jacques Alain-Miller. Miller analyzed Zizek; I believe they now have an uneasy relationship. I think - but am not sure - that Zizek himself is qualified as a psychoanalyst. But I don't think he practices,

 

[vimothy]

So is the training for the analyst is simply being analysed to the point of completion of the programme, or is proof of success the emergence of an analyst?

 

[josef k.]

More information here: http://nosubject.com/Training

Also: http://nosubject.com/End_of_analysis

And this quote: "The true termination of an analysis" is therefore no more and no less than that which "prepares you to become an analyst."

 

[vimothy]

Have you ever been analysed, Josef?

 

[josef k.]

No... And I have ambivalent feelings about that idea. I was really interested in all of this stuff a few years ago, though... strange to see it coming back.

 

[nomadthethird]

The last several posts in this thread are far more comical than anything Zizek has ever written.

 

[nomadthethird]

Zizek is not, nor has he ever pretended to be, a "psychoanalyst."