Saturday, August 29, 2009

On the Term "Žižekian"

From “Žižek and Cinema” (editor Srecko Horvat) in: Tvrda Journal for Theory, Culture and Visual Media, 1-2, editor in chief Žarko Paic, Croatian Writers Society, Zagreb, 2007.

Questioner - Srecko Horvat (SR), Interviewee - Paul A. Taylor (PT)

See the Interview online at

Since Žižek is perhaps most characterized by his constant striving to question and interrogate, his work does not lend itself well to the static quality implied by the term Žižekian. The uncategorizable aspect of Žižek is indicated by the geographical and disciplinary spread of Žižek's readership in general and the IJŽS Editorial Board in particular.

But so far as people may be very loosely called Žižekian or Žižekian fellow-travellers, I would suggest that they are identified by such common features as:

An eclectic range of interests - Žižek combines a huge breadth of references - from US television programmes to Shakespeare to international differences in toilet design - with a depth of analysis that contains rewarding insights into the complex intricacies of philosophy and psychoanalysis. The ease with which he cuts across almost tribal disciplinary boundaries and vested interests is another important reason why, if there is such as thing as an identifiably Žižekian approach, it is unlikely to ossify any time soon!

A good (or maybe wicked?) sense of humour - Žižek's work is profoundly rewarding to sustained and diligent reading (an increasingly rare luxury in today's stressed world) and highly entertaining - there are not many philosophers who can make you laugh out loud the way Žižek regularly does. This is a much under-rated quality of his work - the pure jouissance of his theorising. Why should intellectual work be disproportionately staid and po-faced? But more than this, Robert Pfaller's article in Issue 1 of IJŽS explains how beyond the value of the humour itself, Žižek's jokes and stories serve an important theoretical purpose - they keep the practice of philosophy alive and well and not just the distant, hard-to-approach content of dusty tomes.

A parallax view - Žižek illustrates theory's power to go beneath the surface of our everyday reality. After reading Žižek, you may continue as you did before, but you can no longer claim you don't know any better. An under-acknowledged feature of his work is this ethical quality - his exposure of hypocrisy and lazy thinking that dominates the public sphere.

Faith in speculation - a particular appeal of Žižek's theorizing is its practical usefulness. Ironically, his unashamedly speculative approach in such recent works as Welcome to the Desert of the Real (about the events and aftermath of 9-11) and Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, nevertheless serves to uncover the underlying issues behind very real events better than most self-styled "realistic" or "pragmatic" writings. If you want to understand better the dynamics of denial involved in a Western society that does not even go to the bother of accurately documenting the numbers it kills - Žižekian speculation helps you realize such victims' status as the West's little Others.

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