Early 1980s early Yugoslav commie regime undergo a crisis of legitimation. Milosevic, providing legitimacy for the local Serb republic, devil’s pact with nationalist intelligentsia. The Poetic Military Complex. Warriors together with Poets, look out.
Pere Josef, the Catholic France made a pact with Protestant Sweden against Catholic Austrian Empire to prevent unification of Germany. This led to Hitler around hundred years later
Pere Josef was a brutal torturer. But something real crazy, wrote the most beautiful mystical reflections. How is it possible that the same person who was a monster was in his inner life a breathtakingly refined mysticist. For some the solution for this is Eastern Spirituality. But this doesn’t work for Žižek. The true heroic greatness is to sacrifice his soul, his ethics for his country. Any fool can give his life. But it’s the real here that will do evil for his country, rape woman, kill children. The ethical temptation is presented as a weakness. If you can’t kill, you are weak the true here does it. Himmler’s solution: Bhagavad Gita, the Indian epic. Bhagavad appeals to God, how can I do it, women and children will suffer, people will suffer, answer of Christna is: substantial reality doesn’t exist, what we perceive of reality is false appearance. If you arrive at spiritual enlightenment, then you see that that’s the only reality. You can kill as much as you want, kill do it, it doesn’t count, nothing is really killed, it’s all only appearance. So Himmler always carried Bhagavad Gita in his pocket. Buddhists are the same. Suzuki, how to kill without feeling guilty. False illusion of substantial reality, the Buddhist enlightenment, you are no longer part of reality, your mind is a medium of only observation, you only see a dance of shadows and appearance. Somehow your body gets stuck on the point of the knife my hand is holding. Rorty says, we don’t have any substantial identity, we are stories we tell ourselves. “We listen to each other’s stories” the way to bring peace is to listen to each other’s stories, your folkloric dances … An enemy is someone whose stories we were not ready to hear. Would you say that Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to hear his story? Abandon this conclusion of trying to understand each other
🙁 Žižek Inner authenticity is a LIE. when someone approaches you trying to understand your dances and songs in order to understand you, this tribe just wanted to be good hosts to their guests, and so as good hosts they invented the dance and masks because this is what they thought the other wanted.
You should not do to them what they are doing to you. Underground the movie is specifically for the Western Gaze. An image of Balkans, outside history, where they each drink fuck all the time. This is what the West wants to see and he stages it for them, the spectacle, what they want to see.
: ( Žižek its Racist Jokes that play a great progressive role. They were not racist jokes attacking each other but a sharing of obscenities. I’ll tell you a joke about me, you tell me a joke about yours. The correct heroic thing to do is not to say “ohhh that’s racist” but to ironically assume it. A Fairy comes to a Slovene farmer and asks him, I will do anything you want me to do, but I’ll give it to your neighbour twice as much. So the Slovene farmer says, take one of my eyes. So Montenegro, how does a Montenegro masturbate, he digs a whole in ground sticks his penis in and waits for an earthquake etc. So Žižek argues that its the exchange of these racist jokes etc. “I fucked your mother” and the message was let’s be truly friends and Žižek replies, only after I do your sister. So after that they conducted this, they didn’t have to replay it, their friendship developed, in the morning all they would exchange was “mother” and “sister.” A good feminist would say “after I fuck your father” etc. [huh?]
He’s not saying let’s start telling dirty jokes about each other. This ironic populist low humour. In each culture this works in a specific way. It’s a general feature of culture. When you look at a culture, how a community is held together, large and small. You have explicit rules, and then you have ‘meta rules’ higher level rules that tell you how to relate to these rules. We should never underestimate, the subversion, undermining of community … order but underneath, obsenity total. Croatia … we had only a med student. He slept in a room with a wash basin, and a mirror, photos of half-naked girls. Once a weeks doc came from military hospital. One guy stood up and said, “he had pains in his penis” What did you say? the doc asked. Undress. He undressed, his penis is painful. It’s only when I have an erection. Okay, the doctor says jerk off. Do it. He tries to get erection, it doesn’t work. The doc goes to mirror and gets the photo and takes them back. The doc was looking at us and laughing. This is the most oppressive, there was no underming of power. You need this OBSCENE underside.
Cold distanct dignity, undermine it with obscenity. But the problem with today’s liberal ideology: a decaffinated Other, they celebrate the Other but its a decaffeneited Other. Drinking, depair disappears, and Other becomes holistic and spiritual. The problem of “tolerance”, excessive harrasment, ‘toxic’ neighbour: pedophile, abusive father etc. It went from Albanians, Northern Africa, now Romanians. Italy is now a democracy becoming more and more insubstantial After the last elections, the Centre if falling apart and Buslusconi is the boss. But what is it about Berlusconi. Did you notice that B. is systematically undermining the minimal dignity of what it is to be the head of state. His mistresses, his wife. An obscene soap opera. Ronald Reagan was the first that played upon presenting himself as an idiot. He would mock his own stupidity. Richard Nixon was the last AUTHENTIC TRAGIC president. Italy is still a formal democracy but its becoming insubstantial, now you have an obscene head of state who openly mocks his wife’s affairs. This shouldn’t deceive you, its the like the army in the army, ha ha, masturbate, but the POWER remains there. POSTMODERN power, permissivity, the right to choice, but underneath its all the more powerful. Old type patriarch, I don’t care how you feel, behave but you’re going to grandma. Postmodern permissive non-authoritarian Father, You know how much your grandmother loves you but only visit her if you want to. Under the permissiveness of free choice, is the message not only must you go … you must enjoy.
Death of liberal Fukuyama utopia died after 9/11. Western liberal utopia is not the recipe for the rest of world. The true utopia was the 1990s, the happy era of Clinton … this moment is dangerous. It is because SHOCK THERAPY, Capitalism needs a new boost, this financial crisis a SHOCK THERAPY for capitalism. How to use this crisis to break the last of the union trade syndicate. Let’s use this crisis to break the trade unions. There was 1 good argument for Capitalism until now, capitalism did need a dictator to survive, Chile etc. but after 10-20 years it did bring democracy. But now this game is OVER. CHINA, can we imagine to which person from our time will they be raising statues 100 years in the future. The long time president of SINGAPORE. He invented Capitalism with ASIAN values. that is, Authoritarian Capitalism. China today is now an ideal capitalist country. Something is emerging in China, capitalism with Asian values, a capitalism more dynamic and productive than western capitalism but without democracy. ITS OVER the natural alliance with Capitalism and Democracy. BERLUSCONI is a European version of it. Berlusconi plays a clown but he’s got the POWER. What should be politics, the economy, is de-politicized, the economy is starting to function in an authoritarian way. What is happening in today’s capitalism, contrary to NEGRI, it NEEDS more than EVER A STRONG STATE. the STATE is getting stronger and stronger, but it won’t be able to do so in a formally DEMOCRATIC way. When Bush confronted the crisis and addressed the American people. He used almost the same terms as when he reacted to 9/11. Our way of live is in danger. Bush presented the first bail out money 700 billion dollars. First vote it was against, then all politicians came together and said to Congress Fuck Off, this is not time for democracy. They declared an economic state of emergency. Capitalism is less and less able to function in a democratic state. Italy since Sept 2008 is in a state of emergency. This enables government to use army against immigrants, mafia … it will not be classical emergency state, where you wake up and there is curfew, no, its gradual, you’ll still be able to have all your pleasures. The rise of IMMATERIAL LABOUR. when Marx spoke about it GENERAL INTELLECT, the collective practical knowlecge which is more imporatant than labour time. The source of capitalist wealth is no longer primarily worker exploitation, but COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. Labour measured by time becomes meaningless. What Marx didn’t see is the possibility, that capitalism succeeded in REPRIVATISING the general intellect itself. BILL GATES, how is he rich? He didn’t exploit his workers, he didn’t get extra profit. It isn’t from Rent to profit, but from profit to RENT. It’s not PROFIT, this price is basically totally independent of production costs, he does take into consideration production costs, ITS RENT. Bill Gates privatised part of the COMMON SPACE and we have to pay him rent. the moment you deal with immaterial property, knowledge property. It’s not like making a widget to sell on the market. With immaterial goods, the state has to intervene. Bill Gates, with intellectual property, it’s more complex. Try to privatize some genetic structure. You need an exceptionally strong state to set the parameters. All the problem of copyright. The stronger and stronger state is needed and CANNOT do it in a democratic way.
COMMUNISM NOW! Commies before were not strong enough in realizing what a terrifying experience communism was. The German FIlm Lives of OTHERS. Liberals don’t get the commie tragedy. If you know anything of how socialism functions, if you have a corrupted secret police, where the film goes wrong, in a country East Germany, the writer would have been total observation even without somebody wanting to sleep with his wife. Without religion good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. With religion good people do bad things. The tragedy, is not bad people doing bad things, its good people starting to do good end up doing BAD things. We have a whole series of antagonisms today:
– IMMIGRANTS The walls are going up, West Bank EU, Mexico
– ECOLOGY: you can’t solve with market measure.
– Intellectual property
– Bio genetics; Fukuyama thinks now, biogenetics is strong argument enough all the coordinates are mixed. There is now a wheel chair run totally by thought. He can read if you think strongly about forward, backward, left right. The wheelchair moves according to thought Our being human is I have my FREE THOUGHT. The problem is, what goes out, also goes in. They already isolated the area of brain when you go into panic, then they bombard you and you are already in panic. They have a machine, press a button all people are in panic. Things are happening, the affects most ELEMENTARY what it is to be HUMAN. This is getting underminded the inside/outside. what I think is inside, and reality is outside.
Clinton says this. The result is hunger, many countries Indonesia, Haiti, the best land was privatized companies, who bought up best lands to export. This export industrial agriculatural plants. HUNGER IS NEW PHENOMENON. Haiti is selling mud cakes. Cakes made of mud. They have minerals that fill your stomach. FOOD IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO THE MARKET says bill clinton. But Z. says what about education, arms industry, and health can’t simply be left to the market.
🙂 Butler argues about the conflation of desire with the real. What does she mean by this? That parts of the “literal” penis and the “literal” vagina, which cause pleasure and desire