Yeah he was on Chapo like Spring 2020 and Virgil asked him about it I think. He hadn't seen it but talked about it anyways lol
He also did like a 45 minute analysis that can be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/r-mXnMmr3Ww
after nonetheless, against all my principles, actually seeing the movie, I, I changed my mind
What does he even have in regards to socialist political philosophy? Like really, because sometimes I think he's just a raccoon that talks in circles and we all memed him into relevance.
I don't think it's any coincidence Zizek is well-regarded and would be well-regarded even if he wasn't this funny raccoon human eating hot dogs in the steet. Depending on who you ask, either his work on ideology was a complete revelation they were waiting their whole life for (Todd McGowan says as much), or just the poor man's Derrida. He talks in circles because he's pegging the same cube into the same circle-shaped hole over and over, like hegelians often do. If you're interested on finding out why Zizek is esteemed, you should try reading Sublime Object of Ideology. It's short, consice, well-explained and there's plenty of material online digesting it, and you'll get a good idea of Zizek's proposed framework. Who knows, maybe it'll get you into Kripke and language theory.
I mean, Matt Christman is infamous for saying Zizek was a hack fraud, because "it takes one to know one", and now his streams are just shy of being full of lacanianisms, constantly brings up jouissance in the exact same way Zizek does, it's just a very valuable tool to analyze ideologies.
If you need help, DM me and I'll link you the Peter Rollins course which I paid 50 fucking dollars for.
I mean, depends? If you read his books then Zizek actually operates the other way around, he wants to communicate an abstract idea and then presents an appropriate example to illustrate it, usually he gets his examples from movies, books, plays and sometimes from jokes. But Zizek on the Pervert's Guide series of movies and on interviews he does more run-of-the-mill media analysis which is sometimes iffy, he himself admits sometimes he doesn't even watch the stuff he's analyzing, he cobbles together his conception of certain movies through trailers and second-hand opinions and summaries. So there.
he himself admits sommetimes he doesn’t even watch the stuff he’s analyzing, he cobbles together his conception of certain movies through trailers and second-hand opinions and summaries.
That is pretty funny as a bit if he led with this.
I think the chapo guys ask him for his opinion on the joker or whatever, and he pretty much blurts out that he doesn't watch movies before giving his opinion anyway. it was pretty funny.
I remember reading a critique of Zizek by some dude which was like 'is Zizek literate', I figured it was bad translations while looking through a Derridian lense, now I understand, he just doesn't do the source reading himself, the end lol.
If Zizek said that trans people are only trans because of capitalism, then you betcha, that there is a class reductionist take!
:brak: You can be right about a lot of things and also still very wrong about other things!
Zizek’s view that the current transgender discourse is nowhere near radical enough
Could you link me to a summary of Zizek's position that you're working from? I found multiple articles and Zizek is not exactly known for being a concise person. From what you're saying, it sounds like he needs to read more trans theory based around liberation.
I'm a Marxist, so yes, I understand class as a dimension that intersects with other components and that class is not the only or even (in some cases) the primary driver of oppression. I understand abolishing the class system would not somehow magically resolve systemic racism, misogyny, colonialism, etc.
I've definitely run into class reductionists in the wild. See: stupidpol. They tend to be white straight dudes whose main experiences with oppression/inequality comes from class. This often leads to an extremely narrow understanding of intersectionality that stunts both their personal growth and their utility as socialists.
To be clear, there are lots of good comrades with that background, it just requires working through the contradictions created by one's privilege. Similar thing for a wealthy person who becomes the good kind of class traitor. It's not difficult, you just have to be okay admiting you don't knowing everything, ya dig?
I dont expect Zizek to have the best takes on lgbt stuff, far from it, but i really doupt he said "trans people exist because of capitalism". Dont wanna sound like a vaush fan but it sounds like something a random quote out of context. I remember reading a long af article of him on lgbt issues and despite being all over the place it didnt even begin to approach any take like that
Oh yah, I'm gonna need to dig in there myself. Emphasis on "if", you know?
he's a yugoslav former lib that says good things about communism and bad things about capitalism. does he not support trans people?
He is definitively in support of trans people, but doesn't really understand and as a result has said a lot of things that are at various levels of genuinely bad to neutral. He generally always catches flak for all of it any time he says anything about trans people. A friend of mine regularly goes out of their way to explain why a bunch of the things he's said that people were upset about were taken out of context and not actually problematic when you understand even the basics of lacanianism, but was also absolutely fucking malding and unable to let it go for about two weeks after he said that being transgender was not, in and of itself, an inherently revolutionary act.
So, TL;DR, zizek is a land of contrasts, and while he has said a number of things that are very shitty, I'd say about 50-75% of the things he catches shit for are largely misunderstandings of a boomer that doesn't get it and is trying to explain something he doesn't really understand through the lens of Hegel or Lacan, which tends to not really work out well.
is trying to explain something he doesn’t really understand
Y’know that right there might be the problem.
Wonder if somebody had a take on talking authoritatively about topics you don’t understand?
:mao-wave:
OH WOW IF IT ISN’T MAO
I. NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won' t do!
It won't do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
-Mao, Oppose Book Worship
I’m riffing here. Zizek is gonna be a mixed bag and someone who generally has a good batting average can also just have a dogshit for brains take on a topic.
I mean, yeah. That's exactly his biggest problem, and a pretty significant portion of people's. He talks about things he doesn't understand, that are out of the scope of who he is and what he does. But don't we all, from time to time? It's something a lot of people need to work on.
I know I sure do! Good to call each other on that as we see it.
Compared to almost everywhere else on the internet people on this site are really good at not talking nonsense.
It's usually better for sure, since it's a tighter group of people with a more focused scope, so we're interacting with others who know a lot about the subject matter, and thus we're less likely to need/want to speak about something we don't know about, since someone else is going to be there to say what actually should be said.
Dug around a bit and found this article by Zizek, which is a mess:
http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-sexual-is-political/
I might bother reading through it all later, but it's not very well structured. From what I read, Zizek basically tries to cram the concept of gender into a Lacanian framework. It's a philosophical exercise for him and because of that he winds up playing with some ideas that are not well founded in modern psychology / biology.
Reddit post about the topic I haven't read through yet, might be terfy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/52z33t/everything_you_always_wanted_to_know_about/
