Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
the renunciation of ethical autonomy
This brings us to the necessity of Fall: what the Kantian
link between dependence and autonomy amounts to is that Fall is unavoidable, a
necessary step in the moral progress of man. That is to say, in precise Kantian
terms: "Fall" is the very renunciation of my radical ethical
autonomy; it occurs when I take refuge in a heteronomous Law, in a Law which is
experience as imposed on me from the outside, i.e., the finitude in which I
search for a support to avoid the dizziness of freedom is the finitude of the
external-heteronomous Law itself. Therein resides the difficulty of being a
Kantian. Every parent knows that the child’s provocations, wild and
"transgressive" as they may appear, ultimately conceal and express a
demand, addressed at the figure of authority, to set a firm limit, to draw a
line which means "This far and no further!", thus enabling the child
to achieve a clear mapping of what is possible and what is not possible. (And
does the same not go also for hysteric’s provocations?) This, precisely, is
what the analyst refuses to do, and this is what makes him so traumatic –
paradoxically, it is the setting of a firm limit which is liberating, and it is
the very absence of a firm limit which is experienced as suffocating. THIS is
why the Kantian autonomy of the subject is so difficult – its implication is
precisely that there is nobody outside, no external agent of "natural
authority", who can do the job for me and set me my limit, that I myself
have to pose a limit to my natural "unruliness." Although Kant famously
wrote that man is an animal which needs a master, this should not deceive us:
what Kant aims at is not the philosophical commonplace according to which, in
contrast to animals whose behavioural patterns are grounded in their inherited
instincts, man lacks such firm coordinates which, therefore, have to be imposed
on him from the outside, through a cultural authority; Kant’s true aim is
rather to point out how the very need of an external master is a deceptive
lure: man needs a master in order to conceal from himself the deadlock of his
own difficult freedom and self-responsibility. In this precise sense, a truly
enlightened "mature" human being is a subject who no longer needs a
master, who can fully assume the heavy burden of defining his own limitations.
This basic Kantian (and also Hegelian) lesson was put very clearly by
Chesterton: "Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire
action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of
self-sacrifice."
(Slavoj Žižek, “Cogito, Madness and Religion: Derrida,
Foucault and then Lacan,” http://www.lacan.com/zizforest.html,
Lacan.com 2007; accessed 3/12/2012. The Chesterton quote is from Orthodoxy,
FQ Publishing, 2004. The passage is also found in Mythology,
Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism; Markus Gabriel and
Slavoj Žižek, Continuum 2009, p. 98.)
Coming April 15, 2013, Raymond Lotta and Slavoj Žižek Debate...See the Challenge Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkdIGjMkOGo
http://timesflowstemmed.com/tag/slavoj-zizek/
TAG ARCHIVES: SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
Many of these links have been tweeted in the past, but here I
can tag and categorise them for future reference. I hope you find some of them
interesting too. Please feel free to discuss in comments or on Twitter.
Tomas Sedlacek interview:
“Consumption works like a drug. Enough is always just beyond the horizon”.
Michael Stein’s review of On
the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe by Andrzej Stasiuk.
Judith Butler talks about how to
read Kafka.
“A
Shadow Remains explores [Phillip] Toledano’s personal history as he
considers the impact that love and loss has had on his life, and the life of
his family.”
Žižek’s essay on
Kieślowski’s fascinating ‘The Double Life of Véronique’.
Brief but fascinating thoughts about
the implications of Ray Brassier’s tough Nihil Unbound.
Interview with
JG Ballard (in his Shepperton home)[in English after introduction].
Eleanor Wachtel’s 1995 conversation with
Harold Bloom about The Western Canon.
“On visits to Cambridge University late in life, Jorge Luis
Borges offered revealing last
thoughts about his reading and writing.”
Subversive and brilliant adbusts. “Advertising makes
people … detest their appearance”.
Foucault
and social media: I tweet, therefore I become.
On literature and evil, the only recorded TV interview with Georges Bataille.
Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy – full text [PDF] of Neoliberalism
and its crisis.
They want to ██████ the Internet
avaaz@avaaz.org
Dear Avaazers,
Right now at a UN meeting in Dubai, authoritarian
regimes are pushing for full governmental control of the Internet in a binding
global treaty -- if they succeed, the internet could become less open,
more costly and much slower. We have only 2 days to stop them.
The Internet has been an amazing example of people power -- allowing us to connect, speak out and pressure leaders like never before. That's largely because it's been governed to date by users and non-profits and not governments. But now countries like Russia, China and United Arab Emirates are trying to rewrite a major telecom treaty called the ITR to bring the Internet under its control -- the web would then be shaped by government interests and not by us, the users. Tim Berners Lee, one of the "fathers of the Internet," has warned that this could increase censorship online and invade our privacy. But if we object with a massive people-powered petition, we can strengthen the hand of countries fighting this power grab.
We have stopped attacks like this before and can do it again before the treaty text is locked this week. A wave of opposition to a new ITR is already building -- sign the petition to tell governments hands off our Internet!and then forward this email to everyone you know -- when we hit 1 million signers, it'll be delivered straight to the delegates at this cozy meeting:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/hands_off_our_internet_i/?bWsKqdb&v=20029
The meeting to update the ITR (International Telecommunication Regulations) is being convened by a UN body called the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Normally, it wouldn't merit much attention, but Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others are trying to use the meeting to increase government control of the Internet through proposals that would allow for access to be cut off more easily, threaten privacy, legitimize monitoring and traffic-blocking, and introduce new fees to access content online.
At the moment, our Internet has no central regulatory body, but various non-profit organisations work together to manage different technological, commercial and political interests to allow the Internet to run. The current model is certainly not without its flaws. US dominance and corporate influence highlight the need for reform, but changes should not be dictated from an opaque governments-only treaty body. They should emerge from an open and transparent, people-powered process -- putting the interests of us users in the center.
The ITU does extremely important work -- expanding affordable access for poor countries and securing networks -- but it's not the right place to make changes to how the Internet operates. Let's ensure that our Internet stays free and governed by the public and show the ITU and the world that we won’t stay silent in the face of this Internet attack. Click below to sign and then share this email widely:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/hands_off_our_internet_i/?bWsKqdb&v=20029
Avaaz members have come together before to save the free web -- and won. More than 3 million of us demanded the US kill a bill that would have given the government the right to shut down any website, helping push the White House to drop its support. In the EU, the European Parliament responded after 2.8 million of us called on them to drop ACTA, another threat to the free net. Together, now we can do it again.
With hope,
Pascal, Ian, Paul, Luca, Caroline, Ricken, Kya and the rest of the Avaaz team
SOURCES
Cerf and Berners Lee Criticize ITU Conference (IT Pro Portal):
http://www.itproportal.com/2012/12/05/sir-tim-berners-lee-joins-criticism-of-un-internet-regulation-talks/#ixzz2EDlH06f5
ITU and Google face off at Dubai conference over future of the internet (Guardian):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/03/telecoms-unitednations
Keep the Internet Open (New York Times):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/opinion/keep-the-internet-open.html?_r=1&
Proposal for global regulation of web (Financial Times):
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1b114d8c-422e-11e2-bb3a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EdnmBAXI
Who controls the Internet? (Guardian):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/17/who-rules-internet
The Internet has been an amazing example of people power -- allowing us to connect, speak out and pressure leaders like never before. That's largely because it's been governed to date by users and non-profits and not governments. But now countries like Russia, China and United Arab Emirates are trying to rewrite a major telecom treaty called the ITR to bring the Internet under its control -- the web would then be shaped by government interests and not by us, the users. Tim Berners Lee, one of the "fathers of the Internet," has warned that this could increase censorship online and invade our privacy. But if we object with a massive people-powered petition, we can strengthen the hand of countries fighting this power grab.
We have stopped attacks like this before and can do it again before the treaty text is locked this week. A wave of opposition to a new ITR is already building -- sign the petition to tell governments hands off our Internet!and then forward this email to everyone you know -- when we hit 1 million signers, it'll be delivered straight to the delegates at this cozy meeting:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/hands_off_our_internet_i/?bWsKqdb&v=20029
The meeting to update the ITR (International Telecommunication Regulations) is being convened by a UN body called the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Normally, it wouldn't merit much attention, but Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others are trying to use the meeting to increase government control of the Internet through proposals that would allow for access to be cut off more easily, threaten privacy, legitimize monitoring and traffic-blocking, and introduce new fees to access content online.
At the moment, our Internet has no central regulatory body, but various non-profit organisations work together to manage different technological, commercial and political interests to allow the Internet to run. The current model is certainly not without its flaws. US dominance and corporate influence highlight the need for reform, but changes should not be dictated from an opaque governments-only treaty body. They should emerge from an open and transparent, people-powered process -- putting the interests of us users in the center.
The ITU does extremely important work -- expanding affordable access for poor countries and securing networks -- but it's not the right place to make changes to how the Internet operates. Let's ensure that our Internet stays free and governed by the public and show the ITU and the world that we won’t stay silent in the face of this Internet attack. Click below to sign and then share this email widely:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/hands_off_our_internet_i/?bWsKqdb&v=20029
Avaaz members have come together before to save the free web -- and won. More than 3 million of us demanded the US kill a bill that would have given the government the right to shut down any website, helping push the White House to drop its support. In the EU, the European Parliament responded after 2.8 million of us called on them to drop ACTA, another threat to the free net. Together, now we can do it again.
With hope,
Pascal, Ian, Paul, Luca, Caroline, Ricken, Kya and the rest of the Avaaz team
SOURCES
Cerf and Berners Lee Criticize ITU Conference (IT Pro Portal):
http://www.itproportal.com/2012/12/05/sir-tim-berners-lee-joins-criticism-of-un-internet-regulation-talks/#ixzz2EDlH06f5
ITU and Google face off at Dubai conference over future of the internet (Guardian):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/03/telecoms-unitednations
Keep the Internet Open (New York Times):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/opinion/keep-the-internet-open.html?_r=1&
Proposal for global regulation of web (Financial Times):
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1b114d8c-422e-11e2-bb3a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EdnmBAXI
Who controls the Internet? (Guardian):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/17/who-rules-internet
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)