Thursday, October 25, 2012
Famous Marxist turns heads and challenges assumptions
If you’re not familiar with Slavoj Zizek, the prophetic
philosopher and cultural theorist from Slovenia, the first thing you should
know about him is that he has opinion on just about everything. When
listening to him speak, you are guaranteed to fully comprehend less than 50
percent of everything he says, be thoroughly annoyed by his fidgeting, and yet
still, ultimately, manage to be absolutely blown away. Tuesday
night’s panel featuring Slavoj Zizek alongside Columbia’s own Stathis
Gourgouris, Lydia Liu, and Bruce Robbins was no exception.
In his introduction Stathis Gourgouris, Professor of
Comparative Literature, commented that Zizek produces thought and writings at a
“super human speed and scale.” Although the official topic of the panel was
discussion of Zizek’s newest book The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, in which
Zizek argues that the“events of 2011 augur a new political reality,” Zizek
structured his presentation around five “short interventions.” Demonstrating an
incredible propensity for analysis of our current unique existence as a
globalized world, Zizek left the audience with several troubling thoughts, claiming
ultimately “our times are a time of un-doing” requiring us to reimagine the
political sphere as it is and as it could be. Zizek predicts “a divorce
on the horizon between capitalism and democracy” and argues that, as our
political landscape begins to change, we must think more radically and ask more
radical questions if we are to emerge from our current state of political
upheaval. Despite the heavy nature of the discussion, Zizek managed to
keep a light tone throughout, even ending his presentation with the
declaration, “Now I exposed myself like Jesus Christ”.
Although he takes a radical, Marxist approach, Zizek’s
conjectures still contained grains of truth that could be appreciated by
everyone regardless of political background. Furthermore, in representing ideas
of extreme radicalism, Zizek forces us all to bring into question our own
political ideals and, most importantly, to defend them. This idea was
made evident by the panel portion that followed Zizek’s initial presentation.
In this section of the evening Robbins, Liu, and Gourgouris each offered
critiques of Zizek’s arguments, which were followed by a final rebuttal by
Zizek.
Engaging, entertaining, and witty, Zizek was undeniably the
star of the panel. Initially, I doubted the sense in even bringing in
additional panelist\s, but hearing Zizek’s response to the critiques of
Gourgouris, Liu, and Robbins completely changed my opinion. Zizek was
completely invigorated by the opportunity to debate. He thoughtfully
rebuked criticisms with well-crafted answers that tended to contain a few more
curse words than his prepared portion, much to the audiences’ delight.
During the question and answer portion, Zizek even promised a
particularly discontented attendee the opportunity to debate him on the merits
of communism when he returns to New York in April. I personally am
looking forward to the event but fear slightly for this man – if there was
one lesson to be learned from Tuesday night’s panel it is that, if you debate
Zizek, you will lose. The impassioned manner in which Zizek debates reminds us
that this is what politics is supposed to be: real debate, real radicalism, and
real ideas.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Historical Materialism Conference
CfP: Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference, London,
8-11 November
CfP: The Ninth Annual HM Conference will take place in
Central London from 8-11 November 2012
The Ninth Annual HM Conference will take place in
Central London from 8-11 November 2012
Weighs Like a Nightmare
Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference
Has Marx been reanimated once again? From mainstream media
to academia, this question hangs in the air. The old ghosts of revolution
appear to be shaking off their shackles and getting agitated. What is this
spirit? Who are the militants haunting this ramshackle capitalism? Are these
new spectres - stalking the streets of Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, Athens, Spain
and Wall Street and beyond - or direct descendants of socialist and communist
ones? How does the past haunt the present? How might the present haunt the
future?
As new conflicts and struggles emerge, the old questions
refuse to go away: What type of organisation is needed to sharpen the
conflicts, if any? Who are the agents of history and change? Is the scope of
political action national or international? What is the political value of
alliances and fronts? Does history cunningly work a progressive path through
and around the contingencies of struggle? Are the same mistakes to be made, the
same failures repeated?
The ninth HM annual conference focuses on the returns and
the persistence of political forms and theoretical problems, on the uses and abuses
of the history of Marxism in this turbulent present and on the ways and forms
in which an inheritance of various Marxist traditions can help us to organise
and to act in contemporary struggles.
We invite proposals for presentations or panels (with two or
three suggested participants) on topics such as: the echoes of the past in the
present; learning or not learning from the past; the reanimation of revolution;
history as farce, history as tragedy; historiography and Marxism; cycles;
circulation; anti-memory as a political stance; new histories of capital and
the labour movement; Marxism and 'deep history'; theory as history; the role of
archival sources in history and the place of theory; rhythms of historical
development, combined, uneven or otherwise; concepts of pre-capitalism; the
question of successive modes of production; historical or other materialisms;
the return of radical politics in Eastern Europe and elsewhere; post-communism;
the endless afterlives of 'Classical' Marxists and 'Western' Marxist theorists
and others who refuse to go away; the reruns of crisis; the role of memory and
the revisioning of history; forgotten figures suddenly blasted into
contemporary relevance; perma-war; imperial ghosts and their legacies, racism's
haunting returns; old and new world orders; old and new cultures; avant-gardes
and rearguards; the re-reading of classic texts; the question of Marxism's
relation to tradition; ideas of inheritance and 'selective tradition';
recovery; recuperation; periodisation; continuities and discontinuities;
narratives of new and old beginnings (of history, of culture, of the Left, of
Marxism).
[…]
Interview with Dr. Dr. Božidar Debenjak (in Slovenian)
http://tvslo.si/predvajaj/dr-bozidar-debenjak/ava2.72234783/
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
The Cutesy Pie Vocabulary of 21st-Century Fascism: “Dvushechka” and “Jam Day”
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
The Russian language is believed to be rich and highly
nuanced.
This made foreign journalists think hard about how to
translate the worddvushechka, used by President Vladimir Putin in reference to
the two-year sentences the imprisoned women of the feminist punk collective
Pussy Riot were given in August for an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow
cathedral.
“The whole case ended up in court and the judge slipped them
a dvushechka,” Putin said when interviewed for his 60th birthday
television special, which aired Sunday.
Dvushechka is a vulgar diminutive of “two,” and so news
agency Agence France-Presse translated it as “a little two,” while the
Associated Press news agency chose to avoid the subtleties and translated the
word as a plain “two years.”
This is a pity because the Russian word says a lot about the
person who uses it. It sounds loutish, somewhat tender and almost lustful,
giving the idea that a man who has it in his vocabulary has a certain amount of
power, finds nearly sexual pleasure in imposing it on those who cannot defend
themselves and does not care what others think about it.
In classic Russian literature, diminutives are frequently
used by the most repulsive characters.
Using the word about prison terms for anybody — even if they
were not young women, two of whom have young children — suggests a sinister
background and evil frame of mind.
After dropping his dvushechka, Putin, however, was
quick to remark, “I have nothing to do with it.”
According to Putin, Pussy Riot’s performance was not political,
but pure hooliganism, for which they “got what they asked for.”
If anybody had any doubts about his direct involvement, now
they should not.
Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were
arrested March 3, while Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was arrested March 16. The
three have been held in a Moscow detention center since then.
Their crime consisted of entering the church when there was
no service being held and trying to videotape a music performance, which was
stopped by the church’s guards after less than 60 seconds.
Like Pussy Riot’s other performances, it was directed
against Putin and was called “Holy Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.”
Putin expressed his satisfaction about the verdict three
days before a postponed appeal hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 10. The
women’s defense team said it sees his remarks as applying pressure on the
court.
But quite frankly, an official of such stature has many
other, more discreet ways to give orders to the court than via television.
A number of protests are planned around the world Wednesday,
but not in St. Petersburg, where a rally was held Oct. 1. Check Pussy Riot’s support
websites for times and locations.
Meanwhile, in a videotaped birthday card that resembles a
deliberate and total inversion of Pussy Riot’s brief performance in the Moscow
cathedral and their entire short career prior to that, the “women’s movement”
Otlichnitsy (“Teacher’s Pets”) invoked a frequent and irritatingly cutesy-pie
play on words whereby den’ rozhdeniia (“birthday”) is turned into den
vareniia (“jam day”) and presented the so-called Russian president with
several jars of jam, including orange jam (by the woman on the right in the
back row) “so that our country is never shaken by orange revolutions and there
is more vitamin C in our politics.” (Thanks to Comrade Olga for the heads-up.)
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