Žižek on Lacan and Truth

"According to Alain Badiou, we live today in the age of the 'new sophists.' The two crucial breaks in the history of philosophy, Plato's and Kant's, occurred as a reaction to new relativistic attitudes which threatened to demolish the traditional corpus of knowledge: in Plato's case, the logical argumentation of the sophists undermined the mythical foundations of the traditional mores; in Kant's case, empiricists (such as Hume) undermined the foundations of the Leibnizean-Wolfian rationalist metaphysics. In both cases, the solution offered is not a return to the traditional attitude but a new founding gesture which 'beats the sophists at their own game,' i.e., which surmounts the relativism of the sophists by way of its own radicalization (Plato accepts the argumentative procedure of the sophists; Kant accepts Hume's burial of the traditional metaphysics). And it is our hypothesis that Lacan opens up the possibility of another repetition of the same gesture." [...]

"The perception of Lacan as 'anti-essentialist' or 'deconstructionist' falls prey to the same illusion as that of perceiving Plato as just one among the sophists." [...]

"Lacan accepts the 'deconstructionist' motif of radical contingency, but turns this motif against itself, using it to assert his commitment to Truth as contingent." [...]

"To ask 'Is Lacan one among the postmodern new sophists?' is to pose a question far beyond the tedium of a specialized academic discussion. One is tempted to risk a hyperbole and to affirm that everything, from the fate of so-called 'Western civilization' up to the survival of humanity in the ecological crisis, hangs on the answer to this related question: is it possible today, apropos of the postmodern age of new sophists, to repeat mutatis mutandis the Kantian gesture?"

Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, pp. 4-5

Materialism as Topological Discord

"Therein consists the ant-Cartesian sting of the Lacanian logic of "not-all" (as opposed to Descartes' premise that the less perfect cannot act as the cause of what is more perfect, the premise which serves as the foundation for his proof of God's existence): the incomplete "causes" the complete, the Imperfect opens up the place subsequently filled out by the mirage of the Perfect."

Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 58.

Possible Government Complicity in 9/11?

"The most controversial and disturbing aspect of the entire scenario of the War on Terror involves questions raised but not explored by U.S. media or the 9/11 Commission about possible American government complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Specific issues include these: plans already drawn up for an invasion of Afghanistan in summer 2001; at least four or as many as six war-game exercises going on that day, so that in some cases FAA employees were unable to be sure which blips were actual hijacked planes and which were decoys; the massive purchase of puts on stocks for United and American Airlines, betting that their value would drastically decrease, which they did in the wake of the attacks; the scientific and engineering claims that even exploding jet fuel would not have led to the collapse of steel towers, which have never before collapsed in such a manner (including the collapse of the WTC 7 building much later in the afternoon, though not hit by an aircraft); the unprecedented delay in scrambling fighter jets to intercept the hijacked planes; and evidence suggesting that Flight 93 may have been shot down."

The Sleeping Giant Has Awoken (New York: Continuum Books, 2008), p. 96.

American Fascism

"What I am calling American Fascism is the specific conjunction of three phenomena: (1) an intensely passionate, angry, and sometimes brutal form of Southern Christianity traumatized by the Civil War and civil rights; (2) a nationalism that increasingly resorts to military means to defend its economic security and financial interests; and (3) a virulent and unrestrained corporate fascism that has decimated labor, unions, and many forms of worker's rights, largely by downsizing and relocating jobs overseas."

From "Jeb Stuart's Revenge," in The Sleeping Giant Has Awoken (New York: Continuum Books, 2008), p. 90.

Tony Myers on Fredric Jameson on Postmodernism

“Jameson contends that the past thirty years or so have witnessed the arrival of a new wave of capitalism which he calls ‘late capitalism’. The distinction of late capitalism is the scale of its reach, its hitherto unsurpassed infiltration of every area of life. For Jameson (and, indeed, for Žižek, who loosely draws upon this model), postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism, or the response of culture to its colonization by the commodity. Some of the main features of postmodernism identified by Jameson are the integration of previously separate cultural genres (the mixing of high and low art, as well as the combination of distinct styles, such as Westerns and science-fiction films), the loss of a sense of history (manifest in a desire for nostalgia), and a euphoric attachment to surfaces or depthlessness (such as can be found in the predominance of the image over the word).”

From Tony Myers’ excellent book, Slavoj Žižek (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 48.

Remembering Engels

As an ordinary working person, I think that we should remember Friedrich Engels, who was born into a privileged family, but fought all his life for the poor. Engels also worked dutifully at a job he detested for decades, primarily in order to provide financial support to his friend Karl Marx. In addition, Engels wrote several influential and theoretically substantial books and hundreds of pamphlets, reviews, and articles. He actually wrote many of the articles purportedly written by Marx, so that upon publication, Marx would have the royalties. Engels co-authored several books with Marx, edited Marx’s work, and translated some of Marx’s writing into English. Engels was also a brilliant organizer, publicist, and man of action. And unlike Marx, Engels took up arms and put his life on the line, fighting alongside his comrades in several pitched battles against the forces of oppression and autocracy.

And despite Engels’ later deferential attitude toward Marx, there is no doubt that early on in the relationship Engels’ critique of political economy impressed Marx deeply, and was instrumental in shaping Marx’s own views. Engels’ observations and research led to the publication in 1845 of his masterpiece, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Here is how Engels begins:

Working men!
To you I dedicate a work, in which I have tried to lay before my German countrymen a faithful picture of your condition, of your sufferings and struggles, of your hopes and prospects. I have lived long enough amidst you to know something about your circumstances; I have devoted to their knowledge my most serious attention, I have studied the various official and nonofficial documents as far as I was able to get hold of them—I have not been satisfied with this, I wanted more than a mere abstract knowledge of my subject, I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in your everyday life, to chat with you on your condition and grievances, to witness your struggles against the social and political power of your oppressors.
(Marx/Engels, Collected Works, London 1975, vol. 4, p. 296)

When he heard that Engels had died, Lenin wrote: “After his friend Karl Marx, who died in 1883, Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilized world.” How many American intellectuals today have Engels' courage or his humble devotion to a cause?

Engel's Quote

In Engels’ view, any approach to human relationships that emphasizes competition over cooperation is not only mistaken—insofar as it ignores the fundamentally inter-relational dimension of human nature and society—but also immoral, as the following quotation indicates:

In other words, because private property isolates everyone in his own crude solitariness, and because, nevertheless, everyone has the same interest as his neighbour, one landowner stands antagonistically confronted by another, one capitalist by another, one worker by another. In this discord of identical interests resulting precisely from this identity is consummated the immorality of mankind’s condition hitherto; and this consummation is competition.

(“Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy”, Marx/Engels, Collected Works, London 1975, vol. 3, p. 418)