No offense, but if you’re criticizing Žižek’s assumptions here, I would formally advise you to at least use his actual quotes instead of creating a straw man argument and then declaring it flawed. That’s not to say he doesn’t make mistakes, but the way you present repetition makes it sound to me as if there were a repetition outside of subjective experience. What Žižek attempts to do is read Hegel in such a way that he radicalizes Kant and reopens the problem of the subject, in order to highlight the limits of the subject itself—that is, to show that by using the concept of the subject, we project something that isn’t actually there.
And clearly, you’re completely leaving out how Hegel conceptualizes ontology. For Hegel, the introduction of epistemology appears to be ontology itself—this is the true Kantian leap, the one Kant refuses to take. This is precisely what distinguishes Žižek so radically from Marx back to Hegel and explains his obsession with quantum mechanics and, more specifically, with Christianity, an obsession that has been evident since his first bestselling book.
People, check out this Lucid and enticing essay. My own opposition to Zizek is entirely attitudinal, notional, unsystematic and probably unfair. I don't like bad manners and bad politics, simple as that, and all I really hear there that I resonate with so far is Lacan. But I try to follow and I try to understand. This is a clarification and a parti prise that gives me some purchase. I very much want to hear other people engage with it, especially those who really love Zizek, l ike my colleages at Philosophpy Portal and Theory Underground. I think there may be more to Z's repetition than this but I can't see it myself. Bear of very little brain here. So thank you for this, Rafael, and let the games begin.
I repent about Zizek. I just listened and will listen again to his talk on Job and ideology on YouTube and I disagree with much, especially the devolution of the Holy Spirit into a mere collective but I also found much to learn from and much to admire, Including a capacity for compassion I had not seen. I don’t know why my affection for bad boys did not kick in here previously but I am calling it in now. Apologies Slavoj . I wasn’t listening.
It appears to me that there are category errors in your reading of Žižek, and indeed the entire psychoanalytic edifice upon which his mode of enquiry is based.
Far from Žižek’s Event, as you argue, being “constitutively closed off to itself” I regard it as terrifyingly (sometimes tragically? Irreconcilably? Horrifically?) open to itself, often vertiginous in its depths, but not logically incomplete/incompletable. The symbolic register for such an Event is the orifice, the wound, the cunt, the cave, the labyrinth, the inferno, etc. But not the endless abyss or infinite regress; not a mis-en-a byme of infinite fracture, fragmentation or projection.
In my reading of Žižek, I come via Lacan-in-proximity-to-surrealism, with reference to other psychoanalytic thought and marxisms. The idea of the Contra, of contradiction, is not based in simple oppositional forces, binary or obverse difference (‘Big Difference’ you might say) but the contrary (the non-identical, you might say). It is the contrary that opens to the possibility of slippage, Bataille’s idea of the informe. This nuance is huge in the way we understand negation.
"Ainsi, presque tout est imitation. L'idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l'Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l'Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu'un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l'Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n'en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l'allume chez soi, on le communique à d'autres, et il appartient à tous."
Perhaps this erudite essay on Zizek's repetition compulsion qua post-Marxist philosophy, would have a made for an interesting segue into Chatgpt as a Deleuzian difference/repetition machine, as is all translation, etc, etc. Philosophers as varied as Bergson, Benjamin, Derrida,, and indeed Zizek have hinted at an intuitive belief in the reality of naturally occurring telepathy. In the latter's case another form, perhaps the defining form, of repetition become difference, a sort confessional compulsion that, whether as pseudo telepathy or telepathy tout court hints at the primeval origins of human communication and perhaps extending to primate mentality as well. This was ostensibly said by Talleyrand, but would it not have suited Nietzsche or indeed Socrates up to Wittgenstein and beyond, albeit for differing reasons?: "La parole a été donnée à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée." Not least of all from himself? So that truth, as parole, itself becomes a sort of non-collapsible unvanquishable miracle, not so dissimilar from the true movement of subatomic particles according to theories of quantum physics?
It is true, as most Hegelian scholars are coming to realise, that Hegel indeed avows a certain internal contradiction to being itself, its self-negating formula. It is therefore likely that it is Deleuze who is most clearly mistaken on the topic of Hegel (which is fathomable considering that he barely cites Hegel, and that his knowledge of Hegelian philosophy would be plagued by the excessive oversimplification of Kojève’s version of Hegel). Yet Žižek does not acknowledge this discrepancy, but rather remains duped as the the meaning of his own reading of Hegel, or to the fact that Žižek’s Hegel could be nearly anyone else’s philosophy (suggested by his endless tendency to performatively agree with his opponents, even the most reactionary ones, in debates). This is undoubtedly one of the greatest problems with Žižek: he seems to misunderstand the very essence of the repetition he deploys, or more precisely to deprive this deployment of any essential internal logic.
I don't follow here - isn't it generally accepted that it's on account of Zizek that 'most Hegelian scholars' are coming to accept that Hegel 'avows a certain internal contradiction to being itself' - and if so, how can it be that Zizek doesn't acknowledge 'the discrepancy' (or by discrepancy you mean Deleuze's misreading of Hegel?). The fact that Zizek's Hegel 'could be nearly anyone's philosophy' also seems to 'contradict' Zizek's own influence on the transformation of Hegel studies (to focus on the internal contradictory), and I'm not sure his 'debate agreement strategy' is significant - as you note, it's performative, and I think quite specific Hegelian (in that one feature of the arguments 'in the Hegelian' mode is a kind of psychotic inclusivity - but that very inclusivity is very specific - both to Hegel and Zizek -
Zizek fails to understand absence as the interiority of excess, and lack as the phenomenology of saturated relation. Its annoying and totally misinterprets hegel, specifically Logic.
For the record, Difference does not ‘a priori’ precede Identity (Deleuze) nor is everything different from itself just because it has to be different to everything ‘else’ to be anything at all (Hegel); identity and difference are ‘a priori’ two sides of the same coin, opposite but complementary ways of expressing the same Law (of identity). This is precisely the point at which Hegel erred, misconstruing the basic logic of double negation as incomplete negation, which reduces much of his system to triviality (at best): that everything is part of the same world, and changes in time.
None of his meandering speeches have ever made sense to me. One could accuse me of “just not getting it, man,” but the best ideas are the most easily communicated and readily understood. If your words can’t move the masses, then they’re just intricate noise.
I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I can engage in this sort of conversation but I am extremely intrigued by this space. Can anyone provide an intro text on say Lacan?
Also, as admitted I don't think I've understood anything Zizek has said (started on Enjoy you Symptom) but feel he's on to something vital about where we are at. That he didn't ridicule JP in their chat probably just means he isn't always impelled to shoot people down, especially when they have already done the work of embarrassing themselves.
No offense, but if you’re criticizing Žižek’s assumptions here, I would formally advise you to at least use his actual quotes instead of creating a straw man argument and then declaring it flawed. That’s not to say he doesn’t make mistakes, but the way you present repetition makes it sound to me as if there were a repetition outside of subjective experience. What Žižek attempts to do is read Hegel in such a way that he radicalizes Kant and reopens the problem of the subject, in order to highlight the limits of the subject itself—that is, to show that by using the concept of the subject, we project something that isn’t actually there.
And clearly, you’re completely leaving out how Hegel conceptualizes ontology. For Hegel, the introduction of epistemology appears to be ontology itself—this is the true Kantian leap, the one Kant refuses to take. This is precisely what distinguishes Žižek so radically from Marx back to Hegel and explains his obsession with quantum mechanics and, more specifically, with Christianity, an obsession that has been evident since his first bestselling book.
People, check out this Lucid and enticing essay. My own opposition to Zizek is entirely attitudinal, notional, unsystematic and probably unfair. I don't like bad manners and bad politics, simple as that, and all I really hear there that I resonate with so far is Lacan. But I try to follow and I try to understand. This is a clarification and a parti prise that gives me some purchase. I very much want to hear other people engage with it, especially those who really love Zizek, l ike my colleages at Philosophpy Portal and Theory Underground. I think there may be more to Z's repetition than this but I can't see it myself. Bear of very little brain here. So thank you for this, Rafael, and let the games begin.
I repent about Zizek. I just listened and will listen again to his talk on Job and ideology on YouTube and I disagree with much, especially the devolution of the Holy Spirit into a mere collective but I also found much to learn from and much to admire, Including a capacity for compassion I had not seen. I don’t know why my affection for bad boys did not kick in here previously but I am calling it in now. Apologies Slavoj . I wasn’t listening.
He doesnt show enough skin
It appears to me that there are category errors in your reading of Žižek, and indeed the entire psychoanalytic edifice upon which his mode of enquiry is based.
Far from Žižek’s Event, as you argue, being “constitutively closed off to itself” I regard it as terrifyingly (sometimes tragically? Irreconcilably? Horrifically?) open to itself, often vertiginous in its depths, but not logically incomplete/incompletable. The symbolic register for such an Event is the orifice, the wound, the cunt, the cave, the labyrinth, the inferno, etc. But not the endless abyss or infinite regress; not a mis-en-a byme of infinite fracture, fragmentation or projection.
In my reading of Žižek, I come via Lacan-in-proximity-to-surrealism, with reference to other psychoanalytic thought and marxisms. The idea of the Contra, of contradiction, is not based in simple oppositional forces, binary or obverse difference (‘Big Difference’ you might say) but the contrary (the non-identical, you might say). It is the contrary that opens to the possibility of slippage, Bataille’s idea of the informe. This nuance is huge in the way we understand negation.
"Ainsi, presque tout est imitation. L'idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l'Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l'Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu'un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l'Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n'en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l'allume chez soi, on le communique à d'autres, et il appartient à tous."
Perhaps this erudite essay on Zizek's repetition compulsion qua post-Marxist philosophy, would have a made for an interesting segue into Chatgpt as a Deleuzian difference/repetition machine, as is all translation, etc, etc. Philosophers as varied as Bergson, Benjamin, Derrida,, and indeed Zizek have hinted at an intuitive belief in the reality of naturally occurring telepathy. In the latter's case another form, perhaps the defining form, of repetition become difference, a sort confessional compulsion that, whether as pseudo telepathy or telepathy tout court hints at the primeval origins of human communication and perhaps extending to primate mentality as well. This was ostensibly said by Talleyrand, but would it not have suited Nietzsche or indeed Socrates up to Wittgenstein and beyond, albeit for differing reasons?: "La parole a été donnée à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée." Not least of all from himself? So that truth, as parole, itself becomes a sort of non-collapsible unvanquishable miracle, not so dissimilar from the true movement of subatomic particles according to theories of quantum physics?
Most people here in Slovenia don‘t really know much about his work lol
That contributes nothing to this conversation lol
It's just a remark to calling it "A Slovenian End to Ontology and Politics"
But I guess it's to be expected when a country has few world-famous people. I dunno.
It is true, as most Hegelian scholars are coming to realise, that Hegel indeed avows a certain internal contradiction to being itself, its self-negating formula. It is therefore likely that it is Deleuze who is most clearly mistaken on the topic of Hegel (which is fathomable considering that he barely cites Hegel, and that his knowledge of Hegelian philosophy would be plagued by the excessive oversimplification of Kojève’s version of Hegel). Yet Žižek does not acknowledge this discrepancy, but rather remains duped as the the meaning of his own reading of Hegel, or to the fact that Žižek’s Hegel could be nearly anyone else’s philosophy (suggested by his endless tendency to performatively agree with his opponents, even the most reactionary ones, in debates). This is undoubtedly one of the greatest problems with Žižek: he seems to misunderstand the very essence of the repetition he deploys, or more precisely to deprive this deployment of any essential internal logic.
I don't follow here - isn't it generally accepted that it's on account of Zizek that 'most Hegelian scholars' are coming to accept that Hegel 'avows a certain internal contradiction to being itself' - and if so, how can it be that Zizek doesn't acknowledge 'the discrepancy' (or by discrepancy you mean Deleuze's misreading of Hegel?). The fact that Zizek's Hegel 'could be nearly anyone's philosophy' also seems to 'contradict' Zizek's own influence on the transformation of Hegel studies (to focus on the internal contradictory), and I'm not sure his 'debate agreement strategy' is significant - as you note, it's performative, and I think quite specific Hegelian (in that one feature of the arguments 'in the Hegelian' mode is a kind of psychotic inclusivity - but that very inclusivity is very specific - both to Hegel and Zizek -
Zizek fails to understand absence as the interiority of excess, and lack as the phenomenology of saturated relation. Its annoying and totally misinterprets hegel, specifically Logic.
For the record, Difference does not ‘a priori’ precede Identity (Deleuze) nor is everything different from itself just because it has to be different to everything ‘else’ to be anything at all (Hegel); identity and difference are ‘a priori’ two sides of the same coin, opposite but complementary ways of expressing the same Law (of identity). This is precisely the point at which Hegel erred, misconstruing the basic logic of double negation as incomplete negation, which reduces much of his system to triviality (at best): that everything is part of the same world, and changes in time.
This is gibberish
Please do tell me more
None of his meandering speeches have ever made sense to me. One could accuse me of “just not getting it, man,” but the best ideas are the most easily communicated and readily understood. If your words can’t move the masses, then they’re just intricate noise.
Capitalism fetishises its own limits...love that
At first I thought this was a parody of his writing
I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I can engage in this sort of conversation but I am extremely intrigued by this space. Can anyone provide an intro text on say Lacan?
Also, as admitted I don't think I've understood anything Zizek has said (started on Enjoy you Symptom) but feel he's on to something vital about where we are at. That he didn't ridicule JP in their chat probably just means he isn't always impelled to shoot people down, especially when they have already done the work of embarrassing themselves.