the jokes are there but you basically need to be a bougie philosophy grad who spent a few years in deep familiarity with the academic radical left with Hegel/Lacan to get them, so it’s pretentious as shit: he’s writing them for a very small, elite audience of radicals
e.g. Zizek will write things that are meant to be read through Hegelian “negation” of his own thought as it develops through Hegelian higher forms - his introduction to Mao is written in this style - he’s posing as a reactionary where he wants to draw attention to revisionism, and often reveals these jokes in the footnotes and references where readers won’t typically be looking for them
when he “denounces” Stalin/Mao, he often includes a reference to popular revisionist biographies that are known amongst academics to be garbage, and of course he knows it too (thinking here of Jung Chang’s terrible “biography” on Mao)
like, “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”, is a joke about the real masterwork, “The Sublime Object of Ideology” - what Zizek really means is often nearly the opposite of what he says.
A lot of academic writing makes sense in this context. They realised their ideas were being studied and co opted, so they became deliberately as opaque and self referency as possible.
Still seems like a strange choice for something so foundational. Like, I feel like most people reading it are just gonna be like, "Huh, I guess Mao sucked."
Zizek doesn't really care. Even if the above comment on his facetious use of reactionary sources as jokes are true (and I think they are), they don't give a clue into what Zizek really believes. I also would not call Althusser a Maoist, or most academic radicals Maoists at all lol.
Here's something that I think is zizek being closer to what he believes re: Mao, https://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm, though who knows really. Side note, the natural science references annoy me so much in that piece, really should not be used.
edit: on further looking, I think what I linked is just an abridged version of the intro with some stuff missing, and I don't think the intro is being super facetious.
That is what was mentioned earlier, it's just his introduction to On Practice and On Contradiction. I don't buy that he's using those sources in a facetious way, for instance he uses Jung Chang's book to make a real point about Mao's "instrumental attitude" towards people and "cosmic perspective". The link on lacan.com is missing citations that are in the book, and the content of some are omitted.
Zizek does this more in his later work. Yes. His reactionary GK Chesterton and Hegelian triads “Christology” references... the “eurocentrism”, the phone-it-in style - of course it’s a joke.
it’s honestly okay
the jokes are there but you basically need to be a bougie philosophy grad who spent a few years in deep familiarity with the academic radical left with Hegel/Lacan to get them, so it’s pretentious as shit: he’s writing them for a very small, elite audience of radicals
e.g. Zizek will write things that are meant to be read through Hegelian “negation” of his own thought as it develops through Hegelian higher forms - his introduction to Mao is written in this style - he’s posing as a reactionary where he wants to draw attention to revisionism, and often reveals these jokes in the footnotes and references where readers won’t typically be looking for them
when he “denounces” Stalin/Mao, he often includes a reference to popular revisionist biographies that are known amongst academics to be garbage, and of course he knows it too (thinking here of Jung Chang’s terrible “biography” on Mao)
like, “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”, is a joke about the real masterwork, “The Sublime Object of Ideology” - what Zizek really means is often nearly the opposite of what he says.
Huh. This actually makes a lot of sense. Zizek definitely confused me in the past.
A lot of academic writing makes sense in this context. They realised their ideas were being studied and co opted, so they became deliberately as opaque and self referency as possible.
Wait, why would he do that in his intro to Mao? Is Mao just supposed to be for elite academic radicals?
He's irony poisoned. It's just his memes are all from italian academic papers from 1996.
the academic elite radicals are pretty much all Maoists, like Althusser and so on
Still seems like a strange choice for something so foundational. Like, I feel like most people reading it are just gonna be like, "Huh, I guess Mao sucked."
Zizek doesn't really care. Even if the above comment on his facetious use of reactionary sources as jokes are true (and I think they are), they don't give a clue into what Zizek really believes. I also would not call Althusser a Maoist, or most academic radicals Maoists at all lol. Here's something that I think is zizek being closer to what he believes re: Mao, https://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm, though who knows really. Side note, the natural science references annoy me so much in that piece, really should not be used.
edit: on further looking, I think what I linked is just an abridged version of the intro with some stuff missing, and I don't think the intro is being super facetious.
That is what was mentioned earlier, it's just his introduction to On Practice and On Contradiction. I don't buy that he's using those sources in a facetious way, for instance he uses Jung Chang's book to make a real point about Mao's "instrumental attitude" towards people and "cosmic perspective". The link on lacan.com is missing citations that are in the book, and the content of some are omitted.
Yeah I think you're right.
Is the copy pasting paragraphs between different books (or even within the same book) part of the joke?
Zizek does this more in his later work. Yes. His reactionary GK Chesterton and Hegelian triads “Christology” references... the “eurocentrism”, the phone-it-in style - of course it’s a joke.