Cw : thinly veiled transphobia
Link: https://youtu.be/ScZCL0KYj3M
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I think he means just being transgender doesn’t automatically make you a leftist or revolutionary. It makes more sense to be if you are trans, since liberation of the working class would mean true freedom for them. Correct me if I’m wrong please.
nah Žižek has a fuckload of anti-idpol takes like this
he's funny but he's not actually good and i wish the left would stop idolizing him
There’s value in the anti idpol to a degree. Caitlin Jenner comes to mind. but as a former st*pidpol member, it can also turn into “uppity minority gender demands rights and respect, they are all bourgeoisie and corporate endorsed.”
I think respect is loose there - they use people as clout shields but don't actually have respect.
Slavoj is such a weird figure. He basically grew up watching the West use identity politics to destroy Yugoslavia. The Communist Party there hated him and he even ran in a social democratic party for president. His philosophical ideas were and still are quite popular in Western countries though. He claims to be a revolutionary Marxist, hangs a portrait of Stalin in his home, and has written that basically global communism is the only way to fight catastrophes like coronavirus and climate change. I honestly think that there is a lot we can learn from him. Lacan and Hegel and psychoanalysis are fascinating subjects. But trans people have a right to exist and it was a huge mistake of the left to basically ignore identity politics in the twentieth century. If any comrades feel I am mistaken please correct me so I can learn.
He does address identity politics in a nuanced way throughout his work, he views it as the hysterical response which is also a necessary/ fundamental moment in articulating a critique of ideology and hegemony, it's merely that this, the proliferation of the multiplicity of identities, is not in itself revolutionary. He absolutely believes trans people have the right to exist, housing, work, have full political agency, families, friends... His whole point is that these things should not hinge on whether identity of the other is merely tolerated, but on the basis of a shared emancipatory project which excepts no one. I just think he principally refuses to fetishize transgender identity (which can appear callous and be weaponized through reactionary framing).
I think a good feminist interlocutor from the same Lacanian frame as Zizek is Mari Ruti if you want to check her out. She offers a ton engagement with the notion of identity and most of her work I've read has also woven in very valid critiques of Zizek (and while these are grounded in a more individualist frame, she writes in a much more accessible manner). I get that Lacanian discourses around the phallus, castration, hysteria and whatnot can sound hyperpatriarchal, but the core implications are actually radically egalitarian if you grasp them correctly. Castration is the precondition of subjectivity for all of us.
Also the thumbnail above is obviously inflammatory relative to the content of the video, come on
He suffers from being a meme (meaning people are rarely given a reason to engage directly with his work), and from the fact that he rather likes being a meme, and plays up the character in interviews.
Anyway I'm 90% sure his take here is boneheaded, but that doesn't invalidate everything he's ever said.
What is his argument? That being trans isn’t inherently left wing? Bc I’ve seen more trans Nazis than trans leftists lol
I'm not saying i disagree with that first position, but where are you finding all these trans nazis?
I look at Tumblr as an alternative reality where you can find the most profound and strange phenomena that doesn't exist in the real world.
4chan/twitter
im sure most irl are dem to leftist, but many very online trans women come from right leaning to nazi communities aswell. 4chan is a weird place.
That's why I'm not surprised [the] transgender movement is so immensely popular among great corporate figures of the United States
Lmao what? What world is he living in? I would rather leave this for trans comrades to address better than I can, but hearing him characterize corporate "support" that way seemed to not reflect what I hear from trans friends
From just that one quote I would say thats essentially the same take as right wingers make, conflating exploitation and cooptation with support and genuine popularity, doesn't necessarily mean it comes from the same place as the right wing opinions on trans people but its a bad take.
Bad show from him, even a dingus like me knows what woke capitalism looks like.
Popular is completely the wrong word here. Companies are utterly amoral, they will do what they think looks best and as much evil shit as they can get away with as long as there's money in it. I'd bet there are medical insurance companies boasting of having a trans inclusive workplace at the same time as racheting up prices for hormone therapy and surgery. Maybe it's somewhat lost in translation but popular infers somehow a relationship between companies and trans people that is way more beneficial to trans people than the reality. I dunno maybe I am reading too much into it.
This is a stupid channel that keeps posting clips with abrasive clickbait titles and thumbnails. I watched it in 2x and skipped through some parts but it doesn't seem like he says anything particularly transphobic in the vid.
Feels like Zizek turned irrelevant after the Peterson debate, at least in every leftist space I have frequented, wonder why, maybe people just realized they got everything worthwhile out of him?
Cis people should always shut up when they talk about trans issues.
I don't know anything about this take, but I just want to say I don't get the fascination with this guy. He's practically incomprehensible and I can't tell what his idealogy even is
he's an academic contrarian because the highest echelons of academic philosophy are singularly concerned with having the most hare-brained contrarian streaks possible but not so wacky to stir up some kind of genuine movement, just enough to get students to argue back and forth forever
