Slavoj Zizek Responds to His Critics
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 มี.ค. 2023
- Zizek responds to recent critics that accuse him of being a Liberal or insufficiently radical.
Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgis
Follow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_Show
Become a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every Monday night to our undying love and gratitude for helping us keep this thing going:
patreon.com/benburgis
Visit benburgis.com
Read the philosophy Substack:
benburgis.substack.com
![แม่กลองสองใจ - ซีแกรม โตเกียว มิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GSQfVjcr_f4/mqdefault.jpg)
Props to you Ben for saying interesting stuff with enough substance that Zizek actually listens to you for several minutes lol
I'd say he suffered trough it. What an ego, considering the incoherence, to make Zizek wait! ))
@@tanshen1031 I like Zizek’s boisterous energy personally
The reason why the left fails in America is this one (as Zizek would say): it's against the American nature to study history. Maybe it's because we have so little history of our own. But you will never know what the next step for the future will be without knowing the past. If you're on the left you need to make yourself an expert on history, of all time periods because it's all relevant. Even ancient history is relevant. You have to see the whole picture and the whole mosaic. And also you have to interest yourself with history outside the beaten path of the west, you have to get into African, Latin American, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Islamic. Forget about the rubbish culture war distractions on twitter. All that stuff starts to fade into nothingness when you get a wider view.
The problem one immediately runs into here is that of paralysis: There is _too much shit_ to read about to the point where we can end up either getting lost down some tunnel of particularity and find ourselves unable to crawl back out to contextualize it against the universal, or reading such a disparate spread of ideas that there's no depth left to make use of any of it.
To put it simply, if you were _forced_ to provide a single Canon of the most crucially important works for providing _as comprehensive_ of a picture of our world and the one to come as much as possible, what works would you put in it?
Let's say a list of 10 books? What would they be?
@@Synodalian oh I wouldn't be the best one to make that list. It seems like I never read the books everybody else talks about. I found a book about Africa at the Goodwill store and I thought it was just a generic history of Africa but it actually turned out to be a Marxist analysis to my surprise. It wasn't anything famous. I'm not putting myself forward as some expert on how you should educate yourself. I find pieces here and there. Thats the problem, as you said, it's hard to know what to read but I know that you need to do it. I was just lately reading some obscure, not very well written article about a Pakistani freedom fighter who died in 1998, I couldn't follow the names very well.
Then today I was learning about Carlos Mariategui in Peru. I mean I'm not a model of how to systematically educate oneself. I've never had formal education, and I don't have money to buy books so I just find what I can at libraries (which never have much in philosophy). I have always wanted to read Zizek's books but I just don't have money to buy them on Amazon, that's the only place I've ever seen them. When I learn about something I've never heard of I google it and look on wikipedia, and then if I can find something deeper or the actual book then I try to read it when I have spare time after my studies (I'm working on an IT certificate). But that's my situation.
@@john.premose
Yeah, it's honestly _extremely_ intimidating just how much literature we might need just to even _begin_ to break into the Theory that will go on to ground future movements.
Right now I've drawn a (typically Zizekian) Eurocentric wager that _most_ of what we'll need, paradoxically even for non-Western contexts, traces all the way back to the Greeks.
Islamic scholarship for example is without a doubt one _major_ sphere that emerged in response to Greek metaphysics and provided foundations for Theology and the Sciences, so now I'm trying to at the very least work through Aristotle's _Organon_ which would go on to build the entirety of Western European metaphysics through Aquinas and subsequently the revolutions of British, German, and French thought:
1. _Categories_ (Metaphysics)
2. _On Interpretation_ (Modality)
3. _Prior Analytics_ (Groundwork for Rationalism)
4. _Posterior Analytics_ (Groundwork for Empiricism)
5. _Topics_ (Rhetoric)
6. _Sophistical Refutations_ (Logical Fallacies)
Of course this is really _just to get started._ I sense that _most_ philosophy is ultimately a response to the foundations that were laid here, so this at the very least is just to provide a solid foundation from which to begin critique.
Oh, one crucial tip: From now on I highly recommend that for _any_ book you look for, try to search on Library Genesis for the PDF file. You'll most likely find it.
That's a Hegelian explanation, certainly not a Marxist one on why the left has failed in America.
@@Synodalian absolutely. If you can get through Aristotle that is an excellent goal. I've tried and I just couldn't get very far, I've got to admit. I preferred a book that I inherited from my mom called Aristotle for Everybody. It was much easier but I've forgotten most of it lol.
I've developed a method of reading where I basically am just scanning over the lines, trying not to dwell on every word or "sound it out" in my head so to speak. My natural tendency is when I'm reading to basically hear each word in my head as if I was reading it out loud, but now I try to resist that and scan it so I can get through more material, because when you stop at every word it takes forever. I feel like I'm probably not digesting everything really well but I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that enough of it sinks in lol. Because like you said, there is an infinite amount of stuff to take in.
At 9:00, who is that author that Zizek mentions about "rearranging the world order at the end of the first World War?"
I believe he's talking about Adam Tooze. He wrote book called The Deluge.
thank you Ben! Thank you Zizek!
Love him
Bwahahahahahahaha. Burgis is so unbelievably out of his depth. For anyone who hasn't read the Rockhill piece or listened to him talk about it, please do so. He is so far above Been Burgis in his thinking and speaking, i don't even know what to say. Just go listen.
Exactly, zizek is the left that the American empire and neoliberals adore!
Ben always seems to half believe Zizek's hegelian takes. Like as if he twinges at the more metaphysical portions. Must be that analytical Cohenite Marxism Ben subscribes to
Oh thought that this was gonna be him addressing that dog shit article he wrote for Compact Magazine
pretty sure it was supposed to be but the guy can not interview people and stay on topic or put any pressure on him
Both of you need to touch grass
I read it, what's your problem with it? You have to admit that such logic is bound to bring hate:
e.g. "Nearly a decade ago, the ex-Muslim activist Maryam Namazie was invited by London’s Goldsmiths College to lecture on the topic “Apostasy, Blasphemy and Free Expression in the Age of ISIS.” Her talk, which focused on Islamic oppression of women, was repeatedly and rudely disrupted by Muslim students. Did Namazie find allies among the college’s Feminist Society? No. The feminists sided with the Goldsmiths Islamic Society."
"During our discussion of incarceration, an Asian-American student cited federal inmate demographics: About 60 percent of those incarcerated are white. The black students said they were harmed. They had learned, in one of their workshops, that objective facts are a tool of white supremacy. Outside of the seminar, I was told, the black students had to devote a great deal of time to making right the harm that was inflicted on them by hearing prison statistics that were not about blacks. A few days later, the Asian-American student was expelled from the program."
What was bad about the article? You think there isn't a problem with someone who is clearly *not transgender* , slapping a wig on themselves and calling themselves trans, so they can get into a womens prison where they rape two women? Is that uncomfortable for you? Because I have bad news about philosophy, if you're here for comfort you need to leave and find religion.
The reason why you don’t have many subscribers is because your questions are way too long and we clicked on the video to hear the speaker you brought
anybody have a good book suggestion on soviet history? maybe socialism more broadly?
black shirts and reds by m parenti for some soviet/ww2 history from a marxist perspective. mao on contradiction for the philosophy of marxism and some one like joma sison for a more current perspective on the philosophy of marx
steer clear of anyone who suggests grover furr and maybe look at some of eric hobsbawms historiography or people related to him
@@nicoles3166 thanks for the suggestions. why should I stay away from grover furr?
@@TheDanhewitt the dude is a bit of a nut he denies all of stalins crimes and kinda blames trotsky for the fall of the ussr. eric hobsbawm is great tho! also fanon, sakai, and the like are greats for pan afrikan-marxist analysis which is 10/10 at analyzing the system of neo colonialism as it exists today
Richard Wolff.
It's insane to me that you don't have more subscribers
oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no
Gabriel Rockhill is the most recent sign of what Robert Pfaller called the ‘interpassivity’ of Western “leftists”: they like to be authentic through an Other who lives authentically on their behalf. Slovenia’s independence and willingness to join the European Union have unleashed in him a violent aggressiveness: he dismissed Zizek as a slave of global capital. All this because Rockhill’s interpassive game was disturbed, i.e., because Slovenes no longer behave in the way which would enable him to be authentic through them. In short, as Gilles Deleuze put it, ‘si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l’autre, vous êtes foutu!‘ (‘If you’re trapped in the dream of the other, you’re fucked!’). Slovenes are trapped in Rockhill’s dream; they are expected to live according to it.
Rockhill is the Catholic Church’s court jester and the Catholic Church is capitalism’s court jester. Rockhill is only a Catholic reactionary in Communist clothes. Rockhill just pays lip service to Marx and communism; he is working for the Catholic Church (i.e. the Villanova University: a private school in one of the poshest American suburbs; Rockhill’s students are almost all rich white boys) and the Catholic Church is a close and maybe the best ally of the CIA (and NATO). Rockhill has zero credibility: a fake leftist and a fake communist. His anti-capitalism is the same as the Catholic Church's anti-capitalism. The money he earns should rather be given to the Church’s victims of sex crimes instead of being used to attack Marxists and atheists like Zizek.
Ben - Please try to be more to the point. When you are unprepared, you ramble a lot and say nothing...
I do tend to zone out while waiting for Ben to get to the point… ✌😅💜
I love you Zizek, marry me
Bob Avakian drop.
Love that Ben doesn’t seem to care about Zizek being a transphobe.
based
He isn't. Get informed !
My critique is a lot more simple, first he's incoherent and all over the place. Second all he does is just instill despair and pessimism in accepting the status quo as inescapable by shitting on all radical challenges to it, whether past , present or future.
I find him more like an entertainer rather than a serious thinker.
wow you didn’t even push back or hold him accountable! awesome!
?
@@R3dTi3nJ3ans idk what to say man soz if you think ben burgis is a good example of the left or marxism than i really don’t want to waste my time explaining why this interview was awful and if you thought i was referencing zizek i would go back to my explanation on burgis plus the pro war and anti trans rhetoric he has been pushing
sorry to come off so rude i’m just not looking for a debate ya know? no ill will
Accountable for what? Pushing against the trans movement and people wanting to be offended? What do these movements have to do with the true left? What does the horrible living conditions and working environment of the working class has to do with butterflies feeling hurt?
I will answer the rhetorical question: nothing
@@Greedman456 you’re a class reductionist idiot who probably worships hegel get a life. actually i take that back you people don’t even read i doubt you know much of hegel lol you watch youtube videos and look at wikipedia articles it’s pathetic.
@@Greedman456 says the mofo who would have a tantrum for being called a settler. you couldn’t define marxism to save your life all you care about are sad little cultural motifs AGAIN get a life! also super cool that you support nato imperial wars of aggression!