Someone please explain Zizek to me.
I tried reading The Sublime Object of Ideology and I had no idea what he meant half the time.
I tried watching some videos and he keeps using words like "Hegelian" and "ideology" but I can never understand his actual point.
I also trued reading a summary of his works, but I don't see how any of his actual philosophical ideas relate to his politics and why he's so popular and what does being a pervert have to do with cinema.
What's his end game?
If you dont have at least a cursory understanding of Marxism you're not going to understand the context of his work retard
I read the manifesto and various secondary texts. I would read more, but I need some motivation first - what's so good about Zizek?
>What's his end game?
Gatekeeping
>Someone please explain Zizek to me
'Ideology is unconscious' +' ideology is in everything we do' + 'objet petit a' + 'the other' + a whole lot of 'we think x is y, but what if it's really that y is x??'
Also 'perversion' doesn't necessarily refer to sexuality, it's more about voyeurism/exhibitionism, how all capitalism or more specifically marketing is 'pornography', and how cinema is the purest form of explicit ideology today.
As well as a basic understanding of Marxism, you have to read a bit of Hegel and Lacan to understand most of his books at least. Although all his talks and lectures are much more accessible.
Objective, non-ideological thinking is an illusion, you will only see Clearly if you realize what kind of ideology you are influenced by.
The dominant ideology at every age is the one that people interpret as non-ideology, which is today capitalism.
Hegelian dialectics bring the world forward which is why he processes an ideology that stands in opposition to the current system.
Zizek also rejects the Marxist idea that the world is inevitably moving towards communism, he think it is more likely that capitalism will continue to be dominant, even though it sucks.
The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet made for semi-literate factory workers. If you're trying to read Marxist theory and you dont know a thing about Hegel then you're doing something very wrong. Therea nothing exceptionally important about Zizek hes just a contemporary author with some novel ideas. If you want to know where Marxist thought has gone hes pretty much it, but if you dont know where it came from or how it got there then I dont really know what good it's going to do you. I'm not going to tell you to go along through Das Kapital if you're not interested in it but if you csnt find secondary ways to learn about it then philosophy might not be your thing
WHO
IS
JOKER?
His endgame is basically state socialism, preferably through democracy. He rejects Anarchism and revolution for its own sake.
He is also not a big fan of political correctness, in his ideal world racist jokes would still exist, but everyone would just say them ironically.
But in some ways society should be dogmatic according to Zizek. We shouldn't debate if rape and torture is wrong every day, it should be an obvious dogma that they are.
But they're not always wrong
question but why is he so famous if he's hard to read?
So his support of Marxism is for antithetical purposes? There's a bit of a golden mean fallacy here. For instance, I live in a social democracy, which is pretty centrist (socialism with free trade). Should I adopt the opposite of this (extremism) to enable a dialectical process to occur?
Zizek is like the darth maul of continental philosophy.
>Duel wields Hegel and Lacan while performing impressive (mental) gymnastics
>can't cut him in half because he's already ontologically incomplete
In all seriousness, his discursive style is basically:
>under capitalism everyone assumes X is good
>In reality, the assumption that X is good is actually indicative of an unconscious subordination to neoliberal hegemony
>things which appear "progressive" and foward-thinking often go hand-in-hand with corporate interests and aren't necessarily anti-racist/sexist/homophobic etc.
>now here is a dirty joke I told to one of my foreign/black/ethnic minority friends to prove it
>nooo you can't do philosophy unless you read political propaganda!
>If you're trying to read Marxist theory and you dont know a thing about Hegel then you're doing something very wrong
Are you telling me people who call themselves communists or at least support communism have all read Hegel? I don't see how you can expect support from people if you can't even explain how your political system works.
he does talking too which is just as difficult to understand but produces many funny clips and maymays of his strange and neurotic antics
yes. only genuinely intelligent and well-educated people call themselves communists
>I don't see how you can expect support from people if you can't even explain how your political system works.
Why? Most plebs have absolutely no idea how the current political system actually works, but it has their support (implicitly or explicitly)
How the fuck do you know Hegel? You surely don't expect me to read that spirit book
Because being hard to read has nothing to do with how good their thoughts are.
Why not? You don't believe you can explain everything in a simple easy to read way right?
Where did I say that
Marx as required reading doesn't exactly make a work "hard to read".
Because pleb normies come for the 'funny accent sniffing man telling dirty jokes' and stay for his relatable metaphors which expertly translate deeper concepts into normie-friendly speak. There's not a lot of other philosophers in his field today that can both write solid theory while also simplistically explaining concepts in that way. I recommend starting with his films and talks first.
Admittedly it's been a while since I've watched it but I remember vid related being a good starting point. Also see his anecdote about the traditional father vs. permissive post modern father, and the video where he makes a similar comparison between the pure authoritarianism of Nazism and the totalitarianism of Stalinism.
Perverts Guide to Ideology is a pretty basic explanation
Obviously not everyone is good at that and not everyone is good at understanding things. Generally the type of crowd zizek is writing to doesnr include people who are not good at understanding things. If you dont understand marx then hes not writing to you.
He has more to do with Hegel and Lacan than Marx
No, most people who are communist aren't exceptionally well read in theory. That's why things like the manifesto were written
everything is ideology
Yeah but if you're going into him without a firm grasp of Marx then the fuck is even the point? And a firm grasp of Marx would include having an understanding of hegel.
Can someone explain Zizek’s aversion to national socialism? He always seems to come close to describing it when trying to find a new way to interpret Marx, but always shys away right before he says anything controversial.
it's due to his common sense probably
>stalinist
>common sense
Watch the clip below, or his segment on ecology and nature from the film Examined Life and you'll understand - even though he says he's against political correctness, and I do believe that he is, he still believes in the ideology behind PC, or more specifically what PC is trying but failing to do. He does come very close to NatSoc in a sense, but as he says in the video, the pure authoritarianism of Nazism "doesn't make it better". He clearly believes in individual 'transcendentalism' for lack of a better word, and doesn't believe that some things are natural, inescapable and predetermined. He still believes in ideals like equality, and leans more towards 'transhumanism' in this sense. You can tell he's more partial to a different form of Stalinism.
In my opinion yes, although he is not an orthodox marxist in any way. His main point seems to be that capitalism doesn't have a serious antithesis yet but it should have one. Marxism is a good starting point as it is still the only comprehensive critique to the dominant ideology but it's not sufficient. Thus is why Zizek emphasizes thinking over political action, theory over practice, because we should come up with a therothical alternative first. Without that acts will probably (though not always) just reinforce the current ideology as it was planned in its framework.
At least type Jijek, you hegemons.
Why do you Think so many acedemics Are marxists / left wing. Its a political idoelogy with actual thought behind it, not just reactionary "reee niggers get out, everything in the past was better" stupid shit you hear everywhere.
Agree with Marxism or not, but if you discard it entirely its because eyou havent understood it. Theres a reason why its still discussed 200 years later.
>its a political ideology
This is not a good thing.
Good posts
At least marxists Are aware of their ideology, and the way it influences Them.
>thinking Zizek is stalinist
>I tried reading The Sublime Object of Ideology and I had no idea what he meant half the time.
This is natural. Use a philosophical dictionary or encyclopedia of some kind and keep reading. There will be large sections you can understand. Re-read, and, alongside looking up unfamiliar terms, you should be able to gradually infer the meaning of the parts you don't fully understand from the parts that you do until everything falls into place and you have a good grasp of the lot.
Normies like him because of the sniffing and rape jokes. Intellectuals like him because he provides a modern defence of Socialism and because he is hard to read. It's fun to read people who have something to say but are hard to read.
Thanks user
Hegel is hardly necessary because the “dialectic” is a pedantic ripoff of Fichte
So?
People suffering from capitalist ideology isnt.
So every position someone might held is "ideological"? Then why the fuck does he go on about this or that being pure ideology if there is no ideology more valid than any other. Zizekianism would also be pure ideology.
The biggest shills for capitalism are the self-proclaimed marxists who think they have it all figured out as they shill for the same policies as every Fortune 500 HR department. Being "aware" of your ideology makes you its biggest puppet
>Can someone explain Zizek’s aversion to national socialism?
Do you think it might be related to the fact that "national socialism" has literally nothing to do with socialism?
I wouldnt say it has anything to do with Marxism but to say it doesnr have anything to do with socialism is just wrong. Theres a clear lineage of Bakunin/Proudhon>Sorel>fascism>national socialism as well as a huge influence from Prussian socialism.
What does Nazism has in common with socialism, it's literally a capitalist ideology.
I would say its neither capitalist nor Marxist, although the socialist influence is obvious if you've read Sorel. "Nazis are capitalist" might as well be on the same level as "Nazis and commies are both lefitst" as far as low iq boomer takes. If anything fascists were almost reasserting a pre-capitalist feudal mode where the bourgeoisie were subverted beneath a martial class, obviously instead of nobility you had the SS/black shirts/etc. The large difference being though that feudalism was based on agrarian serfdom whereas fascism was based on endless industrial war. Hitler wanted every citizen to be a peasant-soldier because the world was his frontier to pillage.
Replace "bourgeoisie" with "jews" and "proletariat" with" aryans" and suddenly Nazism and Socialism are identical.
>and why he's so popular
there are two zizeks, user. One writes deep hardcore philosophy stuff, the other writes deep stuff too but very accessible for anyone who isn't a retard. You probably stumbled upon the hardcore stuff.
Or hes retarded
I have to say I failed to notice the non-surface-level difference by watching that.
As stated in well known works, in both countries people would later say they were only doing what they were supposed to do, following orders. In fact, this is true for any country, no matter what its political system is. If purges were limited to show trials, then one might see them as more Asian way of crushing your opponent, or argue that politicians don't believe in anything, and only hold to power by any means necessary. However, as also stated many times, there was no point in general in terror and persecutions. Some concentration camps provided labor force, others didn't, or the results were largely useless. People didn't work better out of fear, corrupted officials didn't change their lifestyle, neither did removing skilled engineers helped industry, or removing experienced officers helped army. All around the country, people got killed and imprisoned without any kind of trial, let alone public. Backwater peasants could be declared enemy of the people and agents of patriarchy for mere real or perceived mishandling of cattle, and the direct reason for that could be denunciation, or law enforcement kissing up to their authorities, or an unrelated wrongdoing, or many other things. It seems to me it's the same devolution of the society into primitive state in the name of, and greatly accelerated by, empty shells of “progress”.
I'd recommend Solzhenitsyn's short story “An incident at Kochetovka station”.
literally the only reason you’re saying this is because you bought into socialism and you feel it’s your job to oppose the nazis you fucking sheep, lol. please make it more obvious. corporations don’t rule in nazi. the economy is very controlled in certain areas.
I think it is pretty uncontroversial to say that Germany was capitalist under the Nazis, capitalism just means that the means of production are privately owned, which was how their economy worked. Maybe you can find some influence from socialist thinkers on some obscure esoteric point, but since the means production weren't owned by the workers it doesn't really have anything to do with socialism.
>literally the only reason you’re saying this is because you bought into socialism and you feel it’s your job to oppose the nazis you fucking sheep, lol. please make it more obvious. corporations don’t rule in nazi. the economy is very controlled in certain areas.
Literally the only reason you're saying this is that all your (mis)information about socialism comes from libertarian memes. Socialism doesn't mean that the government has partial control of the economy - that's called central planning. Socialism is when the means of production are owned by the workers.
He's a public intellectual masturbator. There's little point to it, but it's entertaining.
To approach The Sublime Object you absolutely need to understand basics of Lacan, although even that won't be enough to grasp the part of the book where he's constructing the retarded graph (pic rel).
Chapter 6 is actually useful, in that it manages to explain some aspects of Kant and Hegel rather well.
While reading the book for the first time you should skip the preface to the new edition.
Here's the most important paragraph of the book:
>Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality; in its basic dimension it is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our 'reality' itself: an 'illusion' which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernel (conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as 'antagonism': a traumatic social division which cannot be symbolized). The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel.
His work has very little to do with Marxism. He just likes calling himself communist because it triggers people or something.
From "A Reply to My Critics" (2016):
>The (anti-Semitic figure of the) "Jew" as the threat to the organic order of a society, as the element which brings into it from the outside corruption and decay, is a fetish whose function is to mask the fact that antagonism does not come from the outside but is immanent to every class society. Anti-Semitism "reifies" (embodies in a particular group of people) the inherent social antagonism: it treats "Jews" as the Thing which, from outside, intrudes into the social body and disturbs its balance. What happens in the passage from the position of class struggle to Fascist anti-Semitism is not just the replacement of one figure of the enemy (bourgeoisie, the ruling class) with another (Jews); the logic of the struggle is totally different. In class struggle, the classes themselves are caught in the antagonism inherent to social structure, while the Jew is a foreign intruder who causes social antagonism, so that all we need in order to restore social harmony, according to Fascist anti-Semitism, is to annihilate Jews.
>If anything fascists were almost reasserting a pre-capitalist feudal mode where the bourgeoisie were subverted beneath a martial class
That's utter nonsense. The fascists are not another class subjugating the bourgeoisie, but an organizational organ of that class: it's central committee, which might indeed subjugate individual capitalists, but only in order to enforce rules that will benefit their class as a whole. But this is not some novel function -- already Engels described this (or even something that goes still furhter -- total takeover of production) as a function of the state in Anti-Duhring.
You're right but, people are dumb, how does someone who is hard to read become popular when most people struggle to read and understand 250 word news articles?
The simplistic version is that it's just like his analogy of the traditional authoritarian father vs. the postmodern father - the former tells you what to do and punishes you for not doing it, the latter gives you freedom on the condition you don't use it, and forces you to feel a certain way toward your authority e.g. "You're going to your grandmothers whether you like it or not" vs "You don't have to come, but you know how much your grandmother loves you etc.".
Just like the difference between how an archetypal male and female wields authority, this is the difference between authoritarian Nazism and totalitarian Stalinism. This is also precisely how Neoliberalism (and neoliberals that self-identify as socialists) functions today. It doesn't tell you what to do, it brainwashes you into feeling a certain way for not *wanting* to do what it wants you to do.
>All around the country, people got killed and imprisoned without any kind of trial, let alone public. Backwater peasants could be declared enemy of the people and agents of patriarchy for mere real or perceived mishandling of cattle, and the direct reason for that could be denunciation, or law enforcement kissing up to their authorities, or an unrelated wrongdoing, or many other things.
Which is exactly why he says Stalinism was closer to Enlightenment ideals - isn't that precisely what happened in the French Revolution, complete virtually eternal slaughter for increasingly minor or perceived grievances. Whereas Nazism just exported that slaughter on to a more limited other, and gave leniency to the in-group.
>left wing politics are built on marxist theory written by intelligent people for intelligent people like myself
>right wing politics is literally "niggers bad"
man i didn't think it was possible for something to be this deluded. try getting your head out of your ass before making a post.
It needs to be kept in mind that perversion is a technical term in Lacan, and it's much broader than just something about voyeurism. This is some random excerpt from Zizek:
>This brings us back to perversion: for Lacan, a pervert is not defined by the content of what he is doing (his weird sexual practices, etc.). Perversion, at its most fundamental, resides in the formal structure of how the subject relates to truth and speech. The pervert claims direct access to some figure of the big Other (from God or history to the desire of his partner), so that, dispelling all the ambiguity of language, he is able to act directly as the instrument of the big Other's will. In this sense, both Osama bin Laden and President Bush, although politically opponents, share a pervert structure: they both act upon the presupposition that their acts are directly ordered and guided by the divine will.
There's a whole chapter on perversion in Fink's "A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis".
>The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet made for semi-literate factory workers. If
Capital was for workers too. I don't get it. Is deprecating The Manifesto just a way of deprecating people who only read the Manifesto and pretend that this should suffice? If so then why not just say that directly? I'm not specifically talking to you -- various people like to shit on that booklet for no good reason.
He's entertaining.
He gave hundreds of public lectures and wrote many short pieces for popular audiences.
What I've learned from the very smart anons of Yea Forums:
- You can't read Marx without reading Hegel first
- You can't understand communism unless you do the above
- Marx wrote a pamphlet so that normal people would understand communism without having to read Hegel first...
- ... but actually this pamphlet won't help you understand communism
- Communism is only for very intelligent people like the posters in this thread
- If you're not a communist you are very dumb
I always hear people say that communism won't work because Marx's conception of the romantic noble savage was wrong and that we're all really greedy horrible people, but this thread has shown me the light. What a nice bunch of communists in this thread, totally showed me!
They aren't able to explain anything to you because it's all nonsense.
Guess you're stupid because that's not what's being communicated here.
*sniff*
>Someone please explain Zizek to me
Scam leftists, get money.
Here's an explanation of Peterson for you:
Scam NEETs roleplaying as Christian consevatives, get money.
>Scam leftists, get money.
Then either leftists are poor ass cheapskates or he blew all that money on cocaine cause I don´t see him being wealthy.
Capitalism is a system that feeds on you by extracting your hopes and dreams and then sells them back to you in a repackaged version made in China.
Looks like you can't read basic English :)
>Marx wrote a pamphlet so that normal people would understand communism without having to read Hegel first...
Marx wrote a pamphlet to goad illiterate factory workers into a revolution, it has nothing to do with understanding Hegel or dialectics
Based ideologue
I don't think that antisemitism was the core of Nazism, and I don't think that others had it much easier. Racism was the traditional channel for all the uber/untermenschen talk to spill over and realize itself (as some say, traditional Russian collectivism similarly directed the post-revolutionary development). Keep in mind that it was also based well enough in a number of scientific theories of the 19th century — cranium measurements and all, — and also went hand in hand with a number of prominent ideological and avant-garde art movements. Science, art and progress — that's the Enlightenment (well, what's left of its form as it reached the masses).
I'd recommend Platonov's short story “Rubbish wind”.
> Marx wrote a pamphlet to goad illiterate factory workers into a revolution
That's what Red terrorists want you to believe.
that's a personal opinion based on having read both the Manifesto and a bunch of Marx's other work
This is the beauty of continental philosophy, it's just one big sophism.
isnt he a millionaire?
thats only if you are week and are swayed more by materiel than geist.
have you see where he lives?
What?
It's more like
-a pamphlet was written in a way to communicate the political goals that were conclusions to marxist theory aka communism
-you can understand the goals but can't understand the theory from which these conclusions rise without engaging with Marx's other works and some of Hegel's (mainly just dialectics, alienation of the subjecy, and the progress of history)
What on earth is novel about Zizek? Every time I listen to him, his signal to noise ratio is really low. He takes 50 words to say something that could be said in 5. For example, read the first two paragraphs of this:
marxists.org
All he is saying in those two paragraphs is that we shouldn't write off Lenin even though the modern liberal-democratic "post-ideological", scientifically rooted consensus is that he was a retard.
Zizek is precisely everything I despise about academia rolled up into one person. Low signal to noise ratio, no original ideas, overly referential, keen to coin nonsense terminology, and a sycophantic following that thinks he can do no wrong.
Sometimes rich people live like slobs. More importantly, he has a really cushy job where all he has to do is write an essay every now and then. And the essay doesn't even have to be that good since his followers will lap it up like it's water. He is the very definition of bourgeois.
>we shouldn't write off Lenin even though the modern liberal-democratic "post-ideological", scientifically rooted consensus is that he was a retard
that is literally the thesis of the book, good job user. now, imagine that he just said that. people would ask him, what do you mean? you need to provide evidence and examples. he might even write a book about it, where you can learn why we shouldn't write off Lenin even though the modern liberal-democratic "post-ideological", scientifically rooted consensus is that he was a retard. welcome to reading books, please read the sticky before posting
I had this exact same problem. What texts would you recommend reading beforehand in order to comprehend The Sublime Object of Ideology?
My point is that he took 602 words to say something that could be said in 10. He's a pseud, pure and simple. Brevity is the soul of wit.
>I read the manifesto.
>THE MANIFESTO
REally? How did you do it, i want to know.
I wouldn't call myself a Karl Marx reader if i didn't read Marx.
Behind Jordan Peterson's youtube videos and twitter LGBT progressivist, there is a whole world unknown, especially by the young zoomer american.
yeah I imagine Plato's work would be held in much higher regard had he just said that forms exist on a higher plane and inform the incomplete appearances of our senses and shut the fuck up already
>comparing the high signal to noise ratio of Plato to anything by Zizek
Lol. Zizek is a brainlet who pads out all of his shit to stay relevant in academia.
He´s the very definition of bourgeiose, becuase he lives in a city. Also you have no data on his wealth, so I don´t see why to continue.
>He´s the very definition of bourgeiose, becuase he lives in a city
proletariats live in cities too retard, where do you think the factories are? the definition of bourgeoisie is "owner of the means of production". even if Zizek was rich (he isn't) you can be rich and not be in the bourgeoisie, it isn't simply a matter of wealth.
>If you're trying to read Marxist theory and you dont know a thing about Hegel then you're doing something very wrong.
Marx's flirtation with Hegelianism was a youthful indiscretion.
>If you dont have at least a cursory understanding of Marxism you're not going to understand the context of his work retard
This is the equivalent of somebody making an argument and then responding ‘read nietzsche, Aristotle, etc.’ I’m guessing Marxist’s don’t read or don’t understand their own ideas. Op asked a simple question. I believe Hegel believed something to be good in itself and the counter arguments wanted a utilitarian view of art. I have no idea though, but that could easily be rectified without an autist screeching ‘read Hegel retard. You retard, dumb idiot, retard, retard, retard.’
Bourgeois includes those in the intelligentsia. You could make the argument it falls into the petty bourgeois, but it's all the same.
>"The latter group contains sections of the population who belong to the big bourgeoisie: all the rentiers (living on the income from capital and real estate...), then part of the intelligentsia, the high military and civil officials, etc. (Vladimir I. Lenin: 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia', in: 'Collected Works', Volume 3; Moscow; 1960; p. 504).
mltranslations.org
>even if Zizek was rich (he isn't) you can be rich and not be in the bourgeoisie
Isn't the point of Marxist theory that it IS all about your wealth? Like, there's no rich proletariat at all. What you're talking about is something that is only possible in modern capitalist society, where someone can be rich and still have working class sensibilities.
I was talking about Marxism not Marxist-Leninism, and no, Marx doesn't care if you're some rich craftsman or painter or whatever, he cares when you are exploiting other people's surplus labor value for profit. the craftsman becomes a bourgeoisie when he buys a factory, not when he has a lot of money. the proletariat are those who, not having ownership over the means of production, are made to sell their labor for subsistence. if you are extremely wealthy you don't necessarily need to do that. and yes, largely this is a new phenomena in modern capital. in past times it was very rare for a painter or musician or the like to become extremely wealthy. turns out capitalism has changed a bit since 1850, but I don't think you can hold that against Marx.
>that essay
holy shit this can guy can waffle like no other. i thought peterson was bad.
Remember when Will Self actually put him on the spot?
>getting this buttmad over somebody asking a genuine question.
Midwits love him because of his eccentric style and opaque thought. That doesn't mean his ideas are bad, but the majority of his fans are just using him to LARP as intellectuals.
So like the marxist equivalent of a neo-reactionary?
That's all of academics and why I am disillusioned by the entire notion of "academics" Yes it is true that in order to understand a concept you may need to understand other concepts that it builds upon but often times it becomes a kind of self-righteous thing where you use it to obscure your true meaning instead of actually building on an idea. Then it becomes a form of anti-communication.
based shirt.
DON'T MOCK THE SNIFF MAN