Has Zizek genuinely lost the plot?
Has Zizek genuinely lost the plot?
https://slavoj.substack.com/p/a-leftist-plea-for-new-imperialist
He's earnestly advocating for imperialism.
I'm just going to post the last paragraphs and bold of the most eyebrow raising sentences.
So how are we to act in this depressive situation? We should above all avoid the false “public use of reason” which advises neutrality and the search for peace through negotiations. The most disgusting thing to do at this moment is to repeat with triumph the old motif “we were telling you for years that Ukraine cannot win…” – obviously true, but whatever the final outcome will be, Ukraine achieved an unexpected miracle in resisting Russia for such a long time. Another stupidity is the idea that the Ukrainian war is just a moment of the conflict between Russia and NATO, with thousands of Ukrainians sacrificed to the NATO interests to weaken Russia. Are Ukrainians really so stupid to play this role while they could have enjoyed peace? What peace? Russian occupation which would annihilate them as a nation… This is why the alternative “peace through negotiations or war” is a false one: Ukraine will be in a position to negotiate only if it will remain strong enough to present a real obstacle to Russian invasion.
In such a predicament, the only serious option is to finally accept that we are entering a global emergency state: we are at war and only a full Western commitment can give Ukraine a chance. The same holds for Gaza - here again only the US military intervention can save things. Not long ago a picture circulated from inside Gaza showing smoke billowing from the explosion of a US-supplied bomb, and discernible in the background was the outline of eight black parachutes dropping US aid in precisely the same neighborhood.[2] This photo renders perfectly the opportunism of the US politics: supplying the arms to bomb Gaza and then helping the people whose lives were ruined by these same bombs – this is what humanitarian help means today.
The US has been humiliated again and again. As crazy as this may sound, the fact that the US are no longer able to act as a global superpower also has its bad aspects - history repeats itself, just recall the US army’s withdrawal from north Syria to protect the Kurds, as well as the premature withdrawal from Afghanistan. **As I already suggested in a recent text of mine, ideally the US (with some allies) should simply invade Gaza from the sea, establish its own power zone there where millions of civilian refugees will be safe, providing for their elementary welfare and in this way constrain Israeli power - it is a safe bet that Israel would not risk an open conflict with the US. In crazy times, crazy acts are needed. **Before you dismiss this idea as madness, think realistically what would happen! It would be a great relief for millions of starved and bombed civilians. Similarly, one should take the risk to raise the Ukrainian war to a higher level, setting clear red lines that Russia should not overrun. One should, of course, proceed very carefully not to provoke a global war – but, again, the only way to prevent a new global war is to take calculated risks now.
Will something like this happen? The one thing one can rely on is that the US regularly miss the opportunity to use (whatever remains of) its global imperialist power for a good cause.
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he should’ve retired years ago. like his work on lacan and ideology was very insightful especially with the connection to hegel, but now he could miss the point if it was right in front of him.
no zizek, nobody is arguing that ukrainians chose between being nato cannon fodder or being free. that’s not the argument, you’re just an old man yelling at clouds.
Unironically Ukraine did choose between being nato cannon fodder and their freedom.
The Ukrainian government chose between making their citizens cannon fodder and having peace, while the citizens were conscripted into the war at gunpoint.
I think there’s also the domestic politics situation of Zelensky keeping his office and not wanting to give ammunition to the far right. Basically, an early peace deal would’ve given the fascist elements in Ukrainian politics the angle of “Zelensky bends the knee to the Russian horde, vote for us and we won’t sacrifice Ukrainian agency.”
Zelensky bends the knee to the Russian horde, vote for us and we won’t sacrifice Ukrainian agency.
Having a Jewish, West-friendly president do this would be a stab-in-the-back myth to fuel the Ukrainian far right for decades. There are ways to stop them from milking it, but I have the feeling the post-maidan order wouldn't be able to pull it off.
I don’t like that framing because it basically means the war was inevitable. If that’s the case Russia would be completely justified in leveling Ukraine to the ground and winning in a week like everyone predicted.
That war wasn't inevitable, it actually took A LOT of consecutive and purposeful bad choices by Maidan government and their US handlers.
I know, that’s why I said I don’t like this framing.
I know! Back in 2020 or so I had a Lacan phase that I can thank Zizek for. But .. but I soon found out he just sucks at everything else :(
like his work on lacan and ideology was very insightful especially with the connection to hegel, but now he could miss the point if it was right in front of him.
I don’t think it was, I think we were seeing the early seeds of his incorrect takes in that stuff. It’s mostly just weird idealistic woo with vaguely science-coded language. Like an older version of LessWrong cultists
i have to disagree, i don’t think it’s fair to dismiss his work as idealistic woo. i haven’t read that much by him, mostly sublime object, but there’s a coherent materialist line of thinking throughout it (especially in relation to the real) for someone who spends most of his time discussing lacan and hegel, i’m surprised by how clear it still is. back then he also had his silly moments of course, i’m not denying he has always been a bit of a contrarian lib.
as for the vaguely science-coded language, are you referring to the mathemes? or did he do that thing philosophers sometimes do where they just take gödel and heisenberg to make vague claims about the incompleteness of reality?
Where Zizek shines is how he bridges the individual (Lacanian) psychology to mass-Ideology, via Identity and Desire. He maps how they work together to frame and drive the so-called false consciousness (in the tradition of Gramsci and Adorno), and is hands-down the best philosophical treatment of the phenomenon.
Where Zizek falls over is when he tries to affect politics using therapy techniques via Op-Eds. That's not how his own theory of Ideology works. I think the brainworms come from psychology's side, where often a patient's stated motive hides the (unconscious) real motive. This style of political analysis "works" because politicians are bald-faced liars. But lying is not the same as hidden/unconscious narratives in psychoanalysis. Politicans don't read Zizek Op-Eds. You cannot do-the-thing-but-ironically - a strategy that works in therapy - because you aren't rewiring a politician's unconscious internal narrative and identity. There isn't an internal narrative conflict to reconcile.
In my personal opinion Zizek would intellectually fare much better as a critic of the Elite than the therapist of the masses, but that doesn't get you Op-Eds.
yeah agree, he's also just plain bad with facts and will often just blurt some theory out at a strawman or something. i don't think it's just his old age, i remember a passage in soi where he dedicated quite a few pages to kgb activity in the 30s, which is quite impressive for an agency founded in the 50s. some of these mistakes are pretty benign, but they add up to him being seriously misinformed, especially when he rushes an op-ed out.
vague claims about the incompleteness of reality?
If I remember right (and I could be totally talking out of my ass here because I didn't read the book, only some reviews from after it came out), his book Less Than Nothing was supposed to be his magnum opus ultimate last word on Hegel, and in it he says that reality itself isn't "complete" and is full of contradictions and gaps at a fundamental level (quantum physics, indeterminate probabilities, etc).
I'm not arguing anything about Zizek here one way or another, I've just had that bit of trivia stuck in my head for years
i might also be talking out of my ass since i haven't read less than nothing either, but that is one of his recurring themes (afaik for the ljubljana school of psychoanalysis in general). to oversimplify it, reality in psychoanalysis is the meaning we ascribe to the world, but this meaning is never complete, there is the real which resists signification. material reality is the failure to adhere to this notional determination. of course, psychoanalysis being psychoanalysis, sex is determined as this constitutive lack, something which definitely is, but as to what it is? (which is why sex requires fantasy)