http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/apr/18/zizek-calls-for-reexamination-of-capitalism/
BY DIANA LI
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Philosopher and former Slovenian presidential candidate Slavoj Žižek explained his concerns with the current state of capitalism Tuesday night.
In Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall room 114 packed with Yale undergraduates and prospective freshmen, Žižek and members of the Yale Political Union debated whether capitalism is the “opiate of the masses.” Žižek argued that capitalism and democracy are no longer synonymous — since nations like China and Singapore are developing capitalist economies but are not democratic governments — and that capitalist systems should be reexamined. While he offered no clear revision of what capitalism should look like, Žižek maintained that people need to consider how the system could radically change from its current state.
“I am afraid that this eternal marriage between democracy and capitalism is slowly coming to an end,” he said. “We have to reinvent capitalism.”
Žižek emphasized that an inability to assess capitalism critically and to consider radical changes to the system have repeatedly caused Western nations to advocate ineffective solutions to the challenges they face. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Žižek noted, has argued that even if people had known in the early 2000s that their actions would cause a recession to strike in 2008, they would not have acted differently because of an inability to redefine the capitalist mindset.
He cited the European Union’s proposed plans to stabilize Greece’s economy as another example.
“Everyone knows these plans are total bulls---,” Žižek said. “They won’t work, and everyone knows this, but nonetheless we pretend to believe.”
Žižek said few members of Western societies can imagine a shift in the deeply entrenched capitalist mindset, one he said people accept and practice without questioning. But he said the most important step for people of Western countries to take today is to “start being engaged in radical dreams” rather than resisting change.
“We can imagine the end of the earth, or the end of the world — that’s all very easy to imagine,” he said. “But to imagine a small change in capitalism, in the market, is impossible for us.”
The Chinese government, on the other hand, introduced a law in April 2011 that prohibited artistic works that involved alternate universes or time travel, Žižek said. He described the law as an attempt to discourage Chinese citizens from imagining how their lives could change, but he added that the law and the government’s concern also demonstrated that the Chinese people are “still at least able to dream.”
Žižek attributed part of the failure to question capitalism to the extensive influence of powerful government officials. For example, he said Congress was at first strongly against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $787 billion stimulus package intended to stimulate jobs and spur the economy, but that President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, among others, persuaded Congress to pass the act.
Žižek cautioned against creating atmospheres in which individuals can wield disproportionate influence, which he said skews democratic processes and damages the capitalist system.
“It’s so easy to blame people. The problem is not people like Bernie Madoff — there were always people like that,” Žižek said. “It was the social context that allowed him to do what he did that was the problem.”
Four students interviewed said they thought Žižek was a dynamic speaker who expressed his concerns with capitalism persuasively and succinctly.
“I think he really shook people’s understandings about the structures that affect their lives and called on us to ask more radical questions, which maybe had a tint of irony on Bulldog Days at an esteemed Ivy League school, but was important to say and hear nevertheless,” said Elias Kleinbock ’14, a member of the Party of the Left.
Three prospective freshmen said they were similarly impressed by Žižek’s speech. Zach Plyam ’16 said Žižek kept his discussion “light-hearted” while making important points about redefining the capitalist system.
Žižek ran for president of Slovenia in its first free elections in 1990.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Slavoj Žižek – ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’
http://tomtdowling.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/slavoj-zizek-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology/
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ is a 90 minute documentary film which is a follow up to the collaboration between Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek and film director Sophie Fiennes ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’ in 2006.
In order to recreate the scenes for ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’, Fiennes, (sister of Ralph and Joseph) both traveled to original locations and recreated sets in Ardmore Studios in August 2011. One of the few productions to use the sound stages at Ardmore in 2011 for a two and a half week period.
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ uses Slavoj Žižek’s theoretical matrix to explore what psychoanalysis can tell us about ideology. Through Žižek’s compelling direct exposition to camera we learn how ideology past and present functions. From global locations and studio interiors, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology will unearth the prevailing ideologies at work in our world.
Fiennes likened the experience to “an archaeology of film” – “What’s funny is seeing six movie sets in one room,” said Fiennes. “Here’s a fragment from ‘The Dark Knight’ opposite a fragment from the Mother Superior’s office in ‘The Sound of Music.’ And then obviously that is the toilets from ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ So it’s a very absorbing world, Slavoj’s world.”
The film was co-financed by the BFI (British Film Institute) Film Fund, Film4, Channel 4, Irish Film Board, and a new London-based financier/producer called Rooks Nest.
Fiennes admits it was originally difficult to get funding. “We’ve been trying to make this film for five years, and it was really hard to get the finance together because people always stumbled on the word ‘ideology’ like it was something that no one knew what it meant.”
It’s expected that A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” will be release in September 2012; it’s hardly surprising that there were some copy right issues with material featured in the movie. It should make compelling viewing and something that will provoke much debate.
Director/Writer: Sophie Fiennes (Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow)
Producers: James Wilson (“Attack the Block”), Martin Rosenbaum (The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema), Katie Holly, Blinder Films (One Hundred Mornings), Sophie Fiennes
Executive Producers: Shani Hinton, Katherine Butler (Film4), Tabitha Jackson (Channel 4), Michael Sackler, Julia Godzinskaya (Rooks Nest Entertainment)
Cast: Slavoj Žižek (“The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”) Designer, Lucy van Lonkhuyzen (One Hundred Mornings)
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ is a 90 minute documentary film which is a follow up to the collaboration between Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek and film director Sophie Fiennes ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’ in 2006.
In order to recreate the scenes for ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’, Fiennes, (sister of Ralph and Joseph) both traveled to original locations and recreated sets in Ardmore Studios in August 2011. One of the few productions to use the sound stages at Ardmore in 2011 for a two and a half week period.
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ uses Slavoj Žižek’s theoretical matrix to explore what psychoanalysis can tell us about ideology. Through Žižek’s compelling direct exposition to camera we learn how ideology past and present functions. From global locations and studio interiors, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology will unearth the prevailing ideologies at work in our world.
Fiennes likened the experience to “an archaeology of film” – “What’s funny is seeing six movie sets in one room,” said Fiennes. “Here’s a fragment from ‘The Dark Knight’ opposite a fragment from the Mother Superior’s office in ‘The Sound of Music.’ And then obviously that is the toilets from ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ So it’s a very absorbing world, Slavoj’s world.”
The film was co-financed by the BFI (British Film Institute) Film Fund, Film4, Channel 4, Irish Film Board, and a new London-based financier/producer called Rooks Nest.
Fiennes admits it was originally difficult to get funding. “We’ve been trying to make this film for five years, and it was really hard to get the finance together because people always stumbled on the word ‘ideology’ like it was something that no one knew what it meant.”
It’s expected that A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” will be release in September 2012; it’s hardly surprising that there were some copy right issues with material featured in the movie. It should make compelling viewing and something that will provoke much debate.
Director/Writer: Sophie Fiennes (Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow)
Producers: James Wilson (“Attack the Block”), Martin Rosenbaum (The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema), Katie Holly, Blinder Films (One Hundred Mornings), Sophie Fiennes
Executive Producers: Shani Hinton, Katherine Butler (Film4), Tabitha Jackson (Channel 4), Michael Sackler, Julia Godzinskaya (Rooks Nest Entertainment)
Cast: Slavoj Žižek (“The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”) Designer, Lucy van Lonkhuyzen (One Hundred Mornings)
Friday, April 13, 2012
Corporate Rule of Cyberspace
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/05/02/slavoj_zizek_essay_on_cloud_computing_and_privacy
By Slavoj Žižek on May 2, 2011
Part of the global push towards the privatization of the "general intellect" is the recent trend in the organization of cyberspace towards so-called "cloud computing." Little more than a decade ago, a computer was a big box on one's desk, and downloading was done with floppy disks and USB sticks. Today, we no longer need such cumbersome individual computers, since cloud computing is Internet-based, i.e., software and information are provided to computers or smartphones on demand, in the guise of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer. In this way, we can access information from wherever we are in the world, on any computer, with smartphones literally putting this access into our pocket.
We already participate in cloud computing when we run searches and get millions of results in a fraction of a second — the search process is performed by thousands of connected computers sharing resources in the cloud. Similarly, Google Books makes millions of digitized works available any time, anywhere around the world. Not to mention the new level of socialization opened up by smartphones: today a smartphone will typically include a more powerful processor than that of the standard big box PC of only a couple of years ago. Plus it is connected to the Internet, so that I can not only access multiple programs and immense amounts of data, but also instantly exchange voice messages or video clips, and coordinate collective decisions, etc.
This wonderful new world, however, represents only one side of the story, which as a whole reads like the well-known doctor joke: "first the good news, then the bad news." Users today access programs and software maintained far away in climate-controlled rooms housing thousands of computers. To quote from a propaganda-text on cloud computing: "Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure 'in the cloud' that supports them."
There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, "transparent" in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.
This, of course, holds for any complex technology: a TV viewer typically will have no idea how his remote control works, for example. However, the additional twist here is that it is not just the core technology, but also the choice and accessibility of content which are now controlled. That is to say, the formation of "clouds" is accompanied by a process of vertical integration: a single company or corporation will increasingly have a stake at all levels of the cyberworld, from individual machines (PCs, iPhones, etc.) and the "cloud" hardware for program and data storage, to software in all its forms (audio, video, etc.).
Everything thus becomes accessible, but only as mediated through a company which owns it all — software and hardware, content and computers. To take one obvious example, Apple doesn’t only sell iPhones and iPads, it also owns iTunes. It also recently made a deal with Rupert Murdoch allowing the news on the Apple cloud to be supplied by Murdoch’s media empire. To put it simply, Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates: whether it be Apple or Microsoft, global access is increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access. The more an individual user is given access to universal public space, the more that space is privatized.
Apologists present cloud computing as the next logical step in the "natural evolution" of the Internet, and while in an abstract-technological way this is true, there is nothing "natural" in the progressive privatization of global cyberspace. There is nothing "natural" in the fact that two or three companies in a quasi-monopolistic position can not only set prices at will but also filter the software they provide to give its "universality" a particular twist depending on commercial and ideological interests.
True, cloud computing offers individual users an unprecedented wealth of choice — but is this freedom of choice not sustained by the initial choice of a provider, in respect to which we have less and less freedom? Partisans of openness like to criticize China for its attempt to control internet access — but are we not all becoming involved in something comparable, insofar as our “cloud” functions in a way not dissimilar to the Chinese state?
By Slavoj Žižek on May 2, 2011
Part of the global push towards the privatization of the "general intellect" is the recent trend in the organization of cyberspace towards so-called "cloud computing." Little more than a decade ago, a computer was a big box on one's desk, and downloading was done with floppy disks and USB sticks. Today, we no longer need such cumbersome individual computers, since cloud computing is Internet-based, i.e., software and information are provided to computers or smartphones on demand, in the guise of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer. In this way, we can access information from wherever we are in the world, on any computer, with smartphones literally putting this access into our pocket.
We already participate in cloud computing when we run searches and get millions of results in a fraction of a second — the search process is performed by thousands of connected computers sharing resources in the cloud. Similarly, Google Books makes millions of digitized works available any time, anywhere around the world. Not to mention the new level of socialization opened up by smartphones: today a smartphone will typically include a more powerful processor than that of the standard big box PC of only a couple of years ago. Plus it is connected to the Internet, so that I can not only access multiple programs and immense amounts of data, but also instantly exchange voice messages or video clips, and coordinate collective decisions, etc.
This wonderful new world, however, represents only one side of the story, which as a whole reads like the well-known doctor joke: "first the good news, then the bad news." Users today access programs and software maintained far away in climate-controlled rooms housing thousands of computers. To quote from a propaganda-text on cloud computing: "Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure 'in the cloud' that supports them."
There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, "transparent" in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.
This, of course, holds for any complex technology: a TV viewer typically will have no idea how his remote control works, for example. However, the additional twist here is that it is not just the core technology, but also the choice and accessibility of content which are now controlled. That is to say, the formation of "clouds" is accompanied by a process of vertical integration: a single company or corporation will increasingly have a stake at all levels of the cyberworld, from individual machines (PCs, iPhones, etc.) and the "cloud" hardware for program and data storage, to software in all its forms (audio, video, etc.).
Everything thus becomes accessible, but only as mediated through a company which owns it all — software and hardware, content and computers. To take one obvious example, Apple doesn’t only sell iPhones and iPads, it also owns iTunes. It also recently made a deal with Rupert Murdoch allowing the news on the Apple cloud to be supplied by Murdoch’s media empire. To put it simply, Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates: whether it be Apple or Microsoft, global access is increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access. The more an individual user is given access to universal public space, the more that space is privatized.
Apologists present cloud computing as the next logical step in the "natural evolution" of the Internet, and while in an abstract-technological way this is true, there is nothing "natural" in the progressive privatization of global cyberspace. There is nothing "natural" in the fact that two or three companies in a quasi-monopolistic position can not only set prices at will but also filter the software they provide to give its "universality" a particular twist depending on commercial and ideological interests.
True, cloud computing offers individual users an unprecedented wealth of choice — but is this freedom of choice not sustained by the initial choice of a provider, in respect to which we have less and less freedom? Partisans of openness like to criticize China for its attempt to control internet access — but are we not all becoming involved in something comparable, insofar as our “cloud” functions in a way not dissimilar to the Chinese state?
Hegel on Marriage
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/hegel-on-marriage/
Slavoj Žižek
Far from providing the natural foundation of human lives, sexuality is the very terrain where humans detach themselves from nature: the idea of sexual perversion or of a deadly sexual passion is totally foreign to the animal universe. Here, Hegel fails with regard to his own standards. He only considers how, in the process of culture, the natural substance of sexuality is cultivated, sublated, mediated—we humans no longer just make love for procreation, we get involved in a complex process of seduction and marriage by means of which sexuality becomes an expression of the spiritual bond between a man and a woman, and so forth. However, what Hegel misses is how, once we are within the human condition, sexuality is not only transformed/civilized, but, much more radically, changed in its very substance. It is no longer the instinctual drive to reproduce, but a drive that gets thwarted as to its natural goal (reproduction) and thereby explodes into an infinite, properly meta-physical passion. The becoming-cultural of sexuality is thus not the becoming-cultural of nature, but the attempt to domesticate a properly un-natural excess of the meta-physical sexual passion. This is the properly dialectical reversal of substance: the moment when the immediate substantial (“natural”) starting point is not only acted upon, trans-formed, mediated/cultivated, but changed in its very substance. We not only work upon and thus transform nature; in a gesture of retroactive reversal, nature itself radically changes its “nature.” (In a homologous way, once we enter the domain of legal civil society, the previous tribal order of honor and revenge is deprived of its nobility and appears as common criminality.) This is why Catholics who insist that only sex for procreation is human while coupling for lust is animal totally miss the point and end up celebrating the animality of humans.
[…]
Slavoj Žižek
Far from providing the natural foundation of human lives, sexuality is the very terrain where humans detach themselves from nature: the idea of sexual perversion or of a deadly sexual passion is totally foreign to the animal universe. Here, Hegel fails with regard to his own standards. He only considers how, in the process of culture, the natural substance of sexuality is cultivated, sublated, mediated—we humans no longer just make love for procreation, we get involved in a complex process of seduction and marriage by means of which sexuality becomes an expression of the spiritual bond between a man and a woman, and so forth. However, what Hegel misses is how, once we are within the human condition, sexuality is not only transformed/civilized, but, much more radically, changed in its very substance. It is no longer the instinctual drive to reproduce, but a drive that gets thwarted as to its natural goal (reproduction) and thereby explodes into an infinite, properly meta-physical passion. The becoming-cultural of sexuality is thus not the becoming-cultural of nature, but the attempt to domesticate a properly un-natural excess of the meta-physical sexual passion. This is the properly dialectical reversal of substance: the moment when the immediate substantial (“natural”) starting point is not only acted upon, trans-formed, mediated/cultivated, but changed in its very substance. We not only work upon and thus transform nature; in a gesture of retroactive reversal, nature itself radically changes its “nature.” (In a homologous way, once we enter the domain of legal civil society, the previous tribal order of honor and revenge is deprived of its nobility and appears as common criminality.) This is why Catholics who insist that only sex for procreation is human while coupling for lust is animal totally miss the point and end up celebrating the animality of humans.
[…]
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