>I only have a few minutes but I wanted to respond to this. This is
not the
>only way I think Zizek can be read. I also think his account is also
>insightful for thinking about how people continue to live their
lives -- I
>don't just mean in the midst of injustices they can't do much to
change
>(not everyone who should be able to get into my university classes
can -- I
>know but) but also by taking pleasure in things they are perfectly
capable
>of recognising are false or in 'bad faith' (Buffy and racism -- I
know
>but). That is, irony is also the pleasure of comunication.
i don't know that zizek actually 'defends' irony as pleasurable, but he certainly makes a distinction between a cynical irony and (kynical) irony, following much of the discussion of this by peter sloterdijk, who regards brecht as the supreme practitioner of the latter. moreover, zizek would never think to disavow pleasure, but this is not above being critiqued, since as he sees it, pleasure (or his word: enjoyement, which has a somewhat different meaning) is the very stuff of politics and identity.
angela
for those not familiar with sloterdijk's book Critique of Cynical Reason, here's an excerpt:
"... a new quality of irony and a nonaffirmative form of affirmation makes itslef felt here. In this irony, it is not a subject that has 'stayed clean' that reveals itself, who, distanced, above teh fronts, the melee, and the tumult, tries to save its integrity. It is rather the irrony of a bashed ego who has got caught up in the clockwork (rather like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times) who makes its hands as dirty as the circumstances are and who, in the midst of teh goings-on, only takes care to observe alertly what it encounters. With Brecht, too, the pugnacious irony appropriate to modernity makes itself felt: kynical irony. It does not resist reality with 'imagined fancies' but exercises resistance in the form of resisiting accomodation.
"This irony's model piece is provided by Brecht in the famous interjection from the comedy A Man Is a Man. The Transformation of Packer Galy Gay in the Military Barracks of Kilkoa in Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-Five.
Interjection
Herr Bertolt Brecht maintains: a man is a man. And that is something anyone can prove. But then, Herr Bertolt Brecht also proves That one can do as much as one likes with a person. Here this evening, a man will be reassembled like a car Without losing anything in the process. The man will be approached humanely He will be requested firmly, wihout vexation To accomodate himslf to the course of the world And to let his private flesh swim away And no matter what he is remodelled into, In doing, so no mistake has been made. One can, if we do not wath over him, also make him ovrenight into a butcher. Herr Bertolt Brecht hopes that you will see the ground On which you stand disappear like snow under your feet And that you will notice about the packer Galy Gay That life on earth is dangerous.
(pp. 441-42)"