Žižek slamming Jameson
The Cynic. Do not need symptomal reading of ideology. Who needs complex theories, things are so obvious we just have to inform the people.
Pics from Guantonamo but Žižek showed these pics to friends and asked them “what is this?” answer: Avantgarde theatre. No. This is an intro to the Obscene underside of American culture.
The truly subversive thing today
Not to engage in any dreams, but brutal confrontation. Most of the critical analysis, whenever you talk about poverty, its much more mobilizing to talk about poverty in Africa, then the Bill Gates game, today, its precisely this need to present a terrifying situation, presenting a light at the end of the tunnel that prevents change.
Hegel and Literature
Point de capiton, Rebecca Comay hesitates here. What I think is no, Hegel is there totally consequent, he is applying the same logic all around the Phenomenology. You need a brutal regression at the. The theory of the Monarch. To get a modern state, does not depend on tradition, but a rational state, you need on the top a king, who is who he is by just a stupid biological fact. Hegel does not violate anything, this is a crucial mechanism of Hegel. To finish the mediation itself, you need a brutal return to immediacy.
What is the possible limitation of Hegel?
Can Hegel think negation of negation. Negate something into nothing, the second move is not “nothing is the subordinated moment you then get a complex” no nothing is even less than nothing ..”
Aaron Schuster on wierd optimism
The Joke by Milan Kundera.
Hegel cannot think pure repetition, he has a wonderful theory of repetition, but as an idealizing moment, second time sublation into iseal form.
He can’t think a purely mechanical repetition, a repetition without this moment of sublation.
A True post-Hegelian space
pure repetition. The problem is that the entire theory of exploitation by Marx is based on this model. When talk is returning to Marx, question, what happens to his labour theory of value and theory of exploitation. You know Marx is Capital when he emphasizes, that natural resources are not source of value, he give example of oil, if we apply Marx directly, Chavez is exploiting U.S. We have to do something different with Marx.
Second anniversary of Petrograd revolution where people played themselves. It was really a wierd moment. They repeated the attack on Winter Palace. How would Benjamin to account the urge to stage revolution itself as aesthetic itself. Ranciere tries to rehabilitate this type of aesthetics.
What do you mean by emanicpation, is it emancipation that Marx had in mind?
On Moshe Postone
Marx is not historicist enough, Marx emphasizes the definition of work. He does something strange. If we approach labour, its’ only worker on one side and object on other side. The moment we move to universal dimension the social dimension disappears???? In a communist society production will become automated, we will have collective worker, just manipulating the process. We have to think these limitations of Marx.
Disagrees with Badiou
extra state agency, the communist party which was undermining the state authority, Stalinism is not absolute state authority, it undermined state authority.
China pretends to be normal state, ministries blah blah, and then you have weird entity called Communist Party China, this party does not exist, there are no laws regulating it. The functioning of communist party, it controls the state, but has no full legal status. It is here we plead for Hegel, state socialism is precisely that the rule of law, the state was undermined. When Hegel says when some idea is actualized in wrong way, in some ways you have to blame the idea, you can’t say oh they misinterpreted Marx. What the world needs today is a good radical critique of Marx, only we can do it.
The Big Moment Will Never Arrive
Ok there was a crisis, do you hear any consistent proposal of radical left to get out of it. I’m not optimistic. The first duty of theory is to put into question this model, “there will be a true theory that will come …” As if we intellectuals will provide the true theory and people will learn it, NO. There will be dangerous moments, catastrophes, this big event, even what Benjamin was expecting, in a much more Hegelian way we must renounce this there will not be a big revolutionary moment. No program for future. in the sense in the complexity of history, you cannot include into the historical process the effects of your intervention … you HAVE TO TAKE A RISK AND INTERVENE.
But somehow the most subversive thing sometimes may appears as just a repetition.