>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 05/01/00 12:23PM >>>
Apsken at aol.com wrote:
>Aside from the injunction to cut off heads, has
>Zizek ever adhered to this precept?
The "cut off heads" remark was something of a joke, though I know that Lenin is very very serious business, almost as serious as the Blessed Virgin Mary. But the point of the joke is that something must be done to get beyond this seemingly permanent horizon of liberal/multicultural/Third Way capitalism. While Marx has been partly rehabilitated in intellectual circles, meaning his critique of capitalism, we don't have any idea of or hope for revolution. Reimagining a Lenin for the year 2000 is a big political task, and I'm not sure that evoking the Lenin of 1917 is the best way to go about it.
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CB: We already have the equivalent of Lenin for the year 2000: Fidel Castro.
Since Leninism is the concrete analysis of the concrete situation, Leninists in 2000 already work at disgarding what is outdated from his thinking 1917 and retaining his generalizations that have longer term validity.
In reading Lenin, I find his sense of humor to be equal to yours.
CB