Zizek

BARTELBYVQF at cs.com BARTELBYVQF at cs.com
Thu Feb 28 09:50:24 PST 2002


(Matt surreptitiously changes the subject yet again) While I am not so up on Zizek or the whole academic scene he is part of, largely by choice, I have to agree with what M(r?s?) Finlayson has to say about the role of "the truth."

Acknowledgement is not empowerment, you could grab people by the lapels and shake them while reading "Manufacturing Consent" to them aloud, it is not going to necessarily reach them. The mountain does not come to Mohamed. It would be nice if we could publish our clever little books from clever little publishers, and have demo's with clever chants until the shit crumbles. But fate is not a professor we hope to get a good grade from and it is necessary to actually engage folks in a way that makes sense to them. People who sit idly by while capitalism leaves the majority of the world struggling just to get an acceptable caloric intake. Folks feel either poweless to change the system or that they share an interest in it, more likely a confused combination of both. Our mission, should we choose to accept it is not to simply inform folks that they are wrong, or that they are morally reprehensible, or stupid, those are the easy things. The real challenge resides in finding where and how the majority of americans see radical social change as a desirable and reachable possibility, or getting them to the point where they can see such a thing. mcapri (Finlayson's text follows) P.S. Lurkers rule. << But Zizek is on to something when he realises that people could find out all

the facts if they wanted to and the question is why it makes no difference.

The US has much greater freedom of information and speech than the UK where

I am and US people are much more used to using these freedoms. But it

doesn't make any difference in the end. The US state doesn't stomp all over

the rest of the world satisfying the self-interest of its leading classes

DESPITE the citizens of the republic it does it BECAUSE of them, to keep

them happy, clappy and sated, to give them what they want. They like it.

Lots of goodies and toys and fun but also some nasty all evil enemies to

feel satisfyingly threatened by and then superior to. And that is what the

wars on latin and south america gave them, the war on terrorism AND the

paranoid fantasies about world government that feed the militiamen AND the

arguments of Chomsky and the 'anarchist' left. It is all a very satisfying

and very American and even (though it may sound odd with reference to

Chomsky) Protestant eschatological manichean and individualist fantasy. On

this list, the long and unnecessary discussion about whether the US is

fascist or not was part of the same thing.

>>



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