>>> <kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca> 12/17/99 09:28AM >>>
CB wrote:
> Below, Zizek's theory of "recourse to conspiracy theories" is spun from thin
air, like an Alice in Wonderland tale. There is no real phenomenon of the type
he imagines.
So why do you lock your doors when you leave home? Why "debate" at all?
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Charles: I don't exactly understand what your questions have to do with what you clip from what I said. The reason to lock my doors is that there is a permanent state of widespread crime in late capitalism. It is not the result of a conspiracy, but a a systematic effect. I mean the individual crimes are either by an individual or may be a conspiracy , in the sense of an agreement among more than one person to commit a crime. But these "conspiracies" are not epistemologically interesting, or whatever.
What does not debating have to do with what I said ? The reason to debate is to win people to revolutionary and other feminist struggle.
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All attempts to formulate an effective crtical theory or secure some sort of epistemology are paranoiac
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CB: Speak for yourself
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(how do i know what i know? can i be sure? what if the procedure is faulty? maybe i should check again) The idea that reason is reflexive is a hallmark of paranoia. The Kantian questions of the englightenment, what can i know, what ought i do and what can i hope for??? are all paranoid questions. The questioner doesn't *know* the answer... and I daresay that the bureaucrat who knows what they are doing, and acts accordingly, is far more dangerous that the guy with the guy asking questions about the nature of consciousness.
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Charles: Kant was a bureaucrat. He worked at a desk (bureau) didn't he ? Zizek is a bureaucrat too.
Here's Hegel's answer to Kant on epistemology ( from _Logic_) paragraph #10)
"A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy bids us pause before proceeding to inquire into God or into the true being of things, and tells us first of all to examine the faculty of cognition and see whether it is equal to such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and admiration; the result of which has been to withdraw cognition from an interest in its objects and absorption in the study of them, and to direct it back upon itself; and so turn it to a question of form. Unless we wish to be deceived by words, it is easy to see what this amounts to. In the case of other instruments, we can try and criticise them in other ways than by setting about the special work for which they are destined. But the examination of knowledge can only!
be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned to swim"
> It is Zizek's theory of conspiracy theories that, of course, is not to be
accepted as fact, but as a bizarre intellectual convulusion diverting Left
intellectuals from playing a role to elucidate for the working class the
ruthlessness and Machiavellian maneuvers of the bourgeoisie and their murderous
minions in the repressive apparatus.
Isn't this exactly what Zizek is doing? He's not speaking to the "working class" per ce, but he's providing a map of culture and cultural logic that speaks to whomever will listen. And he is very precise about his critique of the political economy - as a [psychotic] perversion - a cultural logic that proceeds as if it *knows* ... and if you can't be bothered to read what he's written, just look at his track record (this shouldn't be necessary!) - how many theorists do you know have run for the presidency of their respective country - *against* the very real possibility of an ultra-right nationalist victory (Zizek was instrumental in the success of the Reform Party in Slovenia). I really don't see how this encourages ignorance or political passivity. Even heard a little quip by Lacan about "don't give up on your desire?" What do you think this means?
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Charles: Good for Zizek. Does he think the reactionary sector of U.S. capital organized the assassination of Kennedy ?
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> Zizek's mumblings about paranoia are distorted by the sand he has in his
mouth from burying his head in it like an ostrich in the face of real danger.
I'm fairly certain Zizek is well aware of the *real* dangers of military and economic destruction. Probably in a way that most of us (me) will never grasp.
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CB: Didn't Zizek support the NATO war on Yugoslavia ?
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> Since, Kant and Lacan are dead, I am not sure why we are interested in what
they have to say.
Such a strange criteria for what one should pay attention to...
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CB: Yes isn't it. Truman and Stalin are long dead, so we shouldn't discuss their actions.
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> But anyway, Kant was superceded so long ago, first by Hegel and then even
further by Marx and Engels that one wonders where Zizek "has been" to espouse
such outdated philosophy, stale as a fart from the 1700's. WWII, nuclear
weapons and Stalin and Truman are a lot more relevant to what is to be done
today than Kant's tired old ass.
And yet in terms of moral theory is is still no more of an important thinker than Kant. Perhaps Stalin and Truman are relevant precisely because people haven't paid enough attention to Kant, or Hitchcock, or...
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Charles: So, do Kantians think the SU should have gotten the bomb because the U.S. had it and had dropped it on people ? What does the categorical imperative teach about the Rosenbergs ?
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> As to who is "mad" , Lacan's babble sort of speaks for itself, and that
thing-in-itself is not at all unknowable to anybody with half a wit.
Ok - describe for me, objectively, what a human being is. Reference the 6 billion parts of the genome project if you want, but this doesn't even come close to the human condition.
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CB: The objective human condition today is the struggle to replace capitalism with communism. If Lacan furthers this program, more power to him . A human being is a social being, a socio-historical being, a planning and imagining being, a toolmaker with opposable thumb, language, a mortal being, a laboring and laughing being, fun loving, and many other things.
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"I don't *feel* like my objective make-up. And that experience, we could call it alientation or separation or a splitting of the subject, makes Zizek and his plague of fantasies, all that much more relevant.
> Zizek ought to apply for some payment from the CIA under a quantum meruit
contract theory.
He probably did. Zizek finds purity appalling. Power is there to be seized, not moralized about from on high.
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CB: All power to the workers.
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> CB and the big SAME
Adorno would have loved that piece of identity thinking.
the self is an other, ken
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CB: The self is a unity and struggle of opposites. Oh would some power the gift give us , to see ourselves as others see us.
CB