the name of a problem

“Communism is today not the name of a solution but the name of a problem: the problem of the commons in all its dimensions – the commons of nature as the substance of our life, the problem of our biogenetic commons, the problem of our cultural commons (‘intellectual property’), and, last but not least, the problem of the commons as that universal space of humanity from which no one should be excluded. Whatever the solution might be, it will have to solve this problem.”

– Žižek, “Why the Idea and Why Communism?”

http://lacan.com/symptom12/?p=186

“And in the Marxian perspective, utopian socialism consists in the very belief that a society is possible in which the relations of exchange are universalized and production for the market predominates, but workers themselves none the less remain proprietors of their means of production and are therefore not exploited – in short, ‘utopian’ conveys a belief in the possibility of a universality without its symptom, without the point of exception functioning as its internal negation.”

– Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 23

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

By Liz Ferguson

http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2013/03/08/cinematheque-offers-another-chance-to-see-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-featuring-slavoj-zizek/

[…]

On the web site Truthout.org, Yosef Brody writes:  “(Zizek’s) main thesis is that ideology in its most powerful form is hidden from the view of the person who submits to it. Once it can be clearly perceived it effectively loses its power of social control; obversely, to believe oneself to be non-ideological is actually equivalent to being driven primarily by ideology.”

“No matter which orthodoxy we may live under, Zizek explains, we usually enjoy our ideology, and that is part of its function. Paradoxically, it hurts to step outside of it and examine it critically; by default we tend to resist seeing the world from any angle other than the one fed to us.”

(Hence the presentation of the scene from John Carpenter’s film They Live, in which the hero and his best friend have a knock-down-drag-out fight because the friend is unwilling to try on the truth-revealing sunglasses for even a moment.)

James Wilson, producer of The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, told Screen Daily: “The film is undercut by a witty and obscene sense of humour which is his alchemy. He isn’t a mad professor, he is compelling. When he does his analysis he is thinking as he does it. Sophie has an idea of what she wants him to talk about but it is quite ad hoc. He was inspired by things on set sometimes.”

“He is constructing ideas as he talks. He builds to incredible observations which become like a dramatic performance. It’s not pre-planned but has intellectual drama which he ties together in a brilliant way. From the Bible, to Donald Rumsfeld, to the London riots, to A Clockwork Orange, it all comes together like a speech in a great play.”

“This is a film about thinking. The film essay is a really exciting and underexplored form. This should be like a workout for your brain, a mind-gym. This is a film about the excitement of thinking, like the best lecture you ever went to.”

In a Skype interview with Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Magazine, director Sophie Fiennes said: “Cinema is a great tool to explore ideology, because what [Zizek] calls ideology goes much further than the assumption of ideology as being some sort of explicit text, like a religious or political text that you’re meant to follow. It’s more, as Zizek says in the Taxi Driver sequence, that ideology is how we fill in the gaps where things can’t be explained, where we’re trying to make something feel like it has meaning in our lives. Fantasy obviously connects to dream, [and the film is about] how that holds together the ways in which we reason our place in society. . .”

“It’s all about belief, and so there are crossovers between [cultural theory] and cinema, which is also the art of suspending disbelief and believing in society. . .”

“Ideologies are kind of dreams, even at the most extreme, explicit, crude levels, like Nazism, which is a dream of a cohesive Germany without this disturbing element.”

BTW: Don’t be in a rush to leave before the credits are over, or you’ll miss something funny.

[…]

Chaoda

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2011/09/Chaoda.pdf

Žižek review: Going ‘beyond Marx’ - or regressing?

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/951/zizek-reviewgoing-beyond-marx-or-regressing

Callum Williamson reviews: Slavoj Žižek, 'The year of dreaming dangerously'. Verso, 2012, pp142, £7.99

[…]

2011 was a year in which numerous ‘horizontal’ movements, from Oakland to Madrid, entered the political stage. Žižek is, initially, frank about the weaknesses of these movements, pointing out that they have now died down and that their desire to be ‘apolitical’ means they risk becoming coopted into a reformist project or appropriated by forces of reaction. He points out that an “honest fascist” could agree with almost all of the demands of the ‘indignados’ (p79). For him “It is here that we encounter the fatal weakness of the current protests. They express an authentic rage that remains unable to transform itself into even a minimal positive programme for social change” (p78). Then there is, of course, the issue of the organisational forms of these protests - forms that are clearly inadequate for the tasks of social revolution. Žižek stresses the need for revolutionary movements to create new forms of organisation and discipline.

Bizarrely, he then proceeds to claim that nonetheless “what should be resisted at this stage is any hasty translation of the energy of the protests into a set of concrete demands”, which calls on the movements to advance a “minimal positive programme” (p78) - the lack of which was just a few pages earlier described as the biggest weakness of those movements. The author goes on to say that the key “insights” of Occupy are that it identifies that it is the economic system itself that needs to be addressed; and that a new kind of democracy is needed to cope with developments in global capitalism (p87). Whether these were really the insights of Occupy is highly debateable, but for Žižek they point towards radical conclusions: “Is there a name for this reinvented democracy beyond the multi-party representational system? There is indeed: the dictatorship of the proletariat” (p88). What is missing is any indication of how exactly we get from protest to power.

The book arrives at the point where the crucial question is raised: what must revolutionaries do now? The events of 2011 are meant to be “fragments of a utopian future that lies dormant in the present” (p128). He continues: “What is needed, then, is a delicate balance between reading the signs from the (hypothetical communist) future and maintaining the radical openness of that future” (pp128-29). There are comparisons then between a communist in our times analysing events and a Christian waiting for god to perform miracles. But, while communists are acting as political monks, Žižek adds that well placed, “moderate” demands can affect dramatic systemic change (p134). What he advocates in practical terms seems to be half economism and half withdrawal to a position of political spectator.

[…]

I come not to bring peace, but a sword.

Malabou. Biopolitics as a form of Sovereignty