Žižek to present seminar series and symposium at Princeton

March 31 through April 16, 2014, 4:30 p.m. · various venues

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S39/58/55M66/index.xml?section=announcements

Cultural critic and Princeton Global Scholar Slavoj Žižek will present a seminar series "Philosophy Through Psychoanalysis" at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 31, in McCosh Hall, Room 28; and Wednesdays, April 2 and 16, and Mondays, April 7 and 14, in McCosh Hall, Room 46.

In addition he has organized a symposium "Varieties of Materialism Today," with Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupancic, to be held at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, in McCosh Hall, Room 46.

Rules and Metarules

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, pp. 56-58:

As to the form of subjectivity that fits this constellation, we might begin with “The Stranger,” the famous prose poem by Baudelaire:

Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,

Your mother, your sister, or your brother?

I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.

Your friends?

Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.

Your country?

I do not know in what latitude it lies.

Beauty?

I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.

Gold?

I hate it as you hate God.

Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?

I love the clouds ... the clouds ... that pass ... up there ... up there

... the wonderful clouds!

[Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, trans. Louise Varese, New York: New Directions 1970, p.l.]

Does this “enigmatical man” not provide the portrait of an internet geek? Alone in front of the screen, he has neither father nor mother, neither country nor god—all he needs is a digital cloud to which his internet device is linked. The final outcome of such a position is, of course, that the subject itself turns into “a cloud in pants,” avoiding sexual contact as too intrusive. In 1915, Vladimir Mayakovsky entered a train carriage in which the only other occupant was a young woman; to put her at ease he introduced himself by saying, “I am not a man but a cloud in pants.” As the words left his lips he realized the phrase was perfect for a poem and went on to write his first masterpiece, “A Cloud in Pants”:

No longer a man with a mission,

something wet

and tender

— a cloud in pants.

[Quoted from http://cloud-in-trousers.blogspot.com.]

How, then, does such a “cloud in pants” have sex? An ad in the United Airlines in-flight magazine begins with a suggestion: “Maybe it’s time to outsource ... your dating life.” It goes on: “People hire professionals to handle so many aspects of their lives, so why not use a professional to help you find someone special? We are matchmaking professionals—this is what we do day in and day out.”

[United Airlines, Hemispheres magazine, July 2011, p. 135.]

After outsourcing manual work (and much of the pollution) to Third World countries, after outsourcing (most) torture to dictatorships (whose torturers were probably trained by US or Chinese specialists), after outsourcing our political life to administrative experts (who are obviously less and less up to the task—see the morons who compete in Republican Party primaries)—why not take this process to its logical conclusion and consider outsourcing sex itself? Why burden ourselves with the effort of seduction with all its potential embarrassments? After a woman and I agree to have sex, each of us need only designate a younger stand-in, so that while they make love (or, more precisely, while the two of us make love through them), we can have a quiet drink and conversation and then retire to our own quarters to rest or to read a good book. After such disengagement, the only way to reconnect with reality is, of course, through raw violence.

[...]

Happy Birthday to Slavoj Žižek

March 21st, 2012 at 2:10 pm

http://www.cupblog.org/?p=5695

Today, March 21, is the birthday of perhaps the most talked-about figure in academia today, Slavoj Žižek. Žižek, born in Slovenia and now a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana (among many other positions), is famous for his incisive and often biting cultural critiques as well as his rambling, insightful, endlessly entertaining writing and speaking style. Columbia University Press publishes theInsurrections series, which is edited by Žižek, along with Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, and Jeffrey W. Robbins. On the occasion of Žižek’s birthday, we wanted to take a quick look at the questions of religion, politics, and culture that he has found so fascinating.

Žižek himself is known for his use of Lacan’s psychoanalysis in interpreting German idealism and Marxist political thought, and for his application of this interpretation to modern cultural phenomena. Of particular interest to him has been the role that religion plays in the private lives of individuals and the public sphere. Žižek has been one of the leading academic voices bringing attention to the ways in which ostensibly secular aspects of the modern world are incorporating religious ideas.

In the Insurrections series, Žižek and his coeditors seek to understand the modern “turn to religion” in political philosophy, modern politics, and modern culture. The series contains a necessarily wide range of books that trace the turn to religion using a variety of approaches . 

Theoretical works of political philosophy such as Radical Democracy and Political Theology and Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics After Liberalism, by series coeditors Jeffrey W. Robbins and Clayton Crockett respectively, provide a picture of how the political and the religious have become increasingly intertwined. Works like Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s Strange Wonder and Richard Kearney’s Anatheism take a more philosophical approach to modern religion. And translations of classic works like Stanislas Breton’s A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul and the forthcoming play by Alain Badiou, The Incident at Antioch, help readers trace the modern religious turn in continental philosophy to its roots.

However, the two works to which Žižek himself contributed may serve as the best encapsulation of the mission of the Insurrection series as well as representing Žižek’s own diverse interests. 

The first, Hegel and the Infinite, is a collection of essays (edited by Žižek, Crockett, and Creston Davis) attempting to apply Hegelian thought to modern philosophical issues, an effort that Žižek has been making his entire career as an intellectual. In his preface to the collection, Žižek acknowledges the difficulties to Hegelian thought posed by the post-Hegelian break, the rejection of metaphysics that created the popular conception of Hegel as the last of the idealist metaphysicians (and often as the “absolute idealist”). However, he also claims that the chaotic history of the twentieth century demands a Hegelian reading, and ends with the dramatic statement (Žižek undeniably has a gift for the dramatic statement) that “the time of Hegel still lies ahead—Hegel’s century will be the twenty-first.”

With essays ranging from a contemplation of the perverse in Hegel to a comparison of madness in the work of Hegel and Van Gogh, Hegel and the Infinite is a perfect representation of Žižek’s love of applying traditional philosophical thought to oft-overlooked aspects of culture. Žižek’s own essay, the last in the collection, is entitled “Hegel and Shitting,” and argues against what he calls “the pseudo-Freudian dismissal of Hegel” as a thinker whose Idea is a “voracious eater that ‘swallows’ every object upon which it stumbles” by looking at excreting, the opposite process of consumption, in Hegelian thought. The use of such universal but taboo subjects in coming to terms with complex theoretical models is one of Žižek’s most effective explanatory techniques.

While Hegel and the Infinite is an excellent example of Žižek’s academic thought applied to culture, his contribution to Udi Aloni’s What Does a Jew Want? shows his application of religious thought to political issues through the medium of culture. In his essay “The Jew is Within You, But You, You Are in the Jew,” Žižek places quotes from movies and political officials side by side in an attempt to understand how popular conceptions of what it means to be a Jew inform the political actions taken historically against Jews in Europe and currently by Jews in Israel. There can be no doubt when one reads What Does a Jew Want? that he is perfectly at home working with the filmmaker Aloni; Žižek seems to take particular delight in extracting Marxist and Hegelian insights from Aloni’s film Forgiveness. In its essence, though, his message in his essays in Aloni’s book is quite serious, and is much the same as the theme of the Insurrections series. Modernization does not simply involve a “phasing out” of religion from society; instead, many of the most important aspects of religion have been adopted by parts of society that are commonly seen to be wholly secular. Žižek’s concluding sentence to his introduction of What Does a Jew Want? could well apply to his own sizeable collection of works: “So, if you want to dwell in your blessed secular ignorance, then do not read this book—at your own risk!”

The Marvelous Land of Indefinitions

The poet's business is telling the truth. -Ricardo Miro

How nice! How convenient!
We have all gathered to read and listen to poems
As if everyone were actually equal
Laborers in the corn fields
Girls in the cigarette factory
Though someone always seems to be saying
"A poet's task is making poetry... blah blah blah"
But poeting with poor people doesn't end poverty.

How sweet it is! How nice!
First poems and last words
Are heard here, dedicated to friends
Describing the ultimate artistic inspirations
Incorporating all the latest stops and turns
Of fashion

Example:
          the alleys oh like psychedelic birds
          and the transfiguration of being,
          of self, of the essence, blah blah blah
It's annoying.

Clearly, this poetry reading
Will not be heard in the town square
Because people don't listen to poetry
Since poetry is "the nectar of the gods"
And these readers are demigods
Rising up to nirvana and adulation
All of those others who read, write,
Or listen to this stuff

So

Tranquilly, everyone reads
After cocktails
          embraces

Happily, an interesting poem
Reminds me of Proust
Or something from a 16th Century French book
Afterward
No one assumes responsibility for sense or vision
Because, in the final analysis, poetry
Is something personal
          intimate
          alien

Newspaper headlines are full of lies
And the radio is full of lies
AND POETRY IS FULL OF LIES!

Because everyone goes along
In slavish style follows the ways of the word
(European, Anglo-Saxon, White)

And the style, the form is what's important
Incomprehensible to everyone else
But them. Oh, in the final analysis
Everyone else is a part of the problem
And we're in the "in" crowd.

The ones who never read are ready to gossip!
Did you see so and so's new book?
          I just got accepted in Reader's Digest
Blah blah blah

But that's okay
          Okay because we made the best of it
Seated at god the father's right hand
Ok because here where nothing's happening
No one can truthfully say
                                             us least of all
That we're lazy
Hate to work,
Know nothing but gambling, drinking, fiesta, good sex
(The common definition of a Panamanian)
                                                            because
What's on our mind is the office,
                                                       Security, the kids.
          Daily bread.
A payday every two weeks or the 30th

Everyone goes along
Because unemployment goes up every day
It's okay exploit the farm workers
Ok than rent keeps going up
Ok
          that young people are lost in marijuana and "free love"
Ok
         because all the world drinks Coca-Cola and smokes Viceroys
And everyone prefers blonds and white folks
And cathedral arched eyebrows
Ok
         because the gringos don't worry themselves about anybody
(Only duck hunting in January - and that not too often -
And controlling the nation's economy)
Ok
          because the others who suffer
In the final analysis, this is the 51st state
In the wonderful land of indefinitions
Where everyone goes along
Where poets gather to read poems
And sip cocktails
                   And talk har har har
                   Chat har har har blah blah blah
                   Talk har har har
To evade the compromise
Escape the moment
Avoid facing destiny and the "secret word"
                   Each day growing clearer
                   Each day blah blah blah
                   Hovering blah blah blah
                   Nearer

by Lorenzo Thomas

Trotsky explains Marxism

http://www.critical-theory.com/marxism-explained-in-one-gif/

Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/former-top-nsa-official-now-police-state.html

Posted on December 18, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

32-year NSA Veteran Who Created Mass Surveillance System Says Government Use of Data Gathered Through Spying “Is a Totalitarian Process”

Bill Binney is the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information. A 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees.

Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.

Last year, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:

We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.

But today, Binney told Washington’s Blog that the U.S. has already become a police state.

By way of background, the government is spying on virtually everything we do.

All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.

This is a bigger deal than you may realize, as legal experts say that there are so many federal and state laws in the United States, that no one can keep track of them all … and everyone violates laws every day without even knowing it.

The NSA also ships Americans’ most confidential, sensitive information to foreign countries like Israel (and here), the UK and other countries … so they can “unmask” the information and give it back to the NSA … or use it for their own purposes.

Binney told us today:

The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].

These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.

So, they have to do a “Parallel Construction” and not tell the courts or prosecution or defense the original data used to arrest people. This I call: a “planned programed perjury policy” directed by US law enforcement.

And, as the last line on one slide says, this also applies to “Foreign Counterparts.”

This is a total corruption of the justice system not only in our country but around the world. The source of the info is at the bottom of each slide. This is a totalitarian process – means we are now in a police state.

Here are the two slides which Binney pointed us to:

[2 images]

(Source: Reuters via RT; SOD stands for “Special Operations Division,” a branch of a federal government agency.)

We asked Binney a follow-up question:

You say “this also applies to ‘Foreign Counterparts.’” Does that mean that foreign agencies can also “launder” the info gained from NSA spying? Or that data gained through foreign agencies’ spying can be “laundered” and used by U.S. agencies?

Binney responded:

For countries like the five eyes (US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) and probably some others it probably works both ways. But for others that have relationships with FBI or DEA etc., they probably are given the data used to arrest people but are not told the source or given copies of the data.