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- Debating the Subject of Substance: Adrian Johnston and Slavoj Žižek on
Dialectical Materialism
Authors: Christopher Martien Boerdam
Abstract: In chapter four of his latest book, A New German Idealism (2019), Adrian Johnston seeks to clarify the meaning of ‘materialism’ in Žižek’s philosophy and questions what he sees as potentially problematic aspects of Žižek’s ‘materialism without materialism’. In this article, I propose a possible reply to three problematic aspects of Žižek’s materialism identified by Johnston. First, that Žižek risks losing his materialist credentials by appealing to a Pythagorean-Badiouan mathematical idealism to define matter. Second, that Žižek’s account of the emergence of the subject from substance relies on the idea of a pre-subjective Nature that is whole and balanced, contradicting the key tenet of Žižek’s dialectical materialism that nature is a non-all. Third, that Žižek projects features of human subjectivity onto natural substance, and so problematically anthropomorphizes the pre-human Real, which is evident in how Žižek argues that there are similarities between the behaviour of particles in quantum physics and features of the Lacanian symbolic order.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Getting serious with finiteness
Authors: Nico Graack
Abstract: Žižeks work on Heidegger has not been examined in the same way as his work on Hegel, Lacan, Marx and Kant. In order to shed light on his political thought – oscillating between a heroic Leninism and a subversive Ideologiekritik – we are reconstructing his critique of Heidegger as it follows from the first chapter of The Ticklish Subject. In that we want to show how his critique is essentially Kantian – Which means for Žižek: A critique that doesn’t retreat from the full consequences of the subject’s finiteness. That is excactly what Žižek traces in both Heidegger and Kant, focussing around the role of transcendental imagination. In a last step we are showing how his doubled political position follows from this and hint at the intuition that his heroic Leninism itself could be conceived as a sort of retreat from those very consequences.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Another Alternative Reality' Exploring the Backrooms with
Žižek
Authors: Will Greenshields
Abstract: The ontological incompleteness revealed by quantum physics and the ontological stability imposed by the “augmented reality” of games such as Pokémon Go have become increasingly important references in Žižek’s materialist assessment of the contemporary Other. This paper analyzes a current online phenomenon, known as “the Backrooms,” that converges with these recent concerns in ways that are perhaps more interesting and provocative than films such as The Matrix and The Truman Show that, Žižek contends, lead one to a conceptual dead-end. That is, we might conclude that there is an authentic reality beyond the simulation or that there is no ‘real’ reality, just a variety of semblances – either way, we foreclose the real that, according to Žižek, inheres as incompleteness and inconsistency. “The Backrooms,” which began life as a cryptic and disquieting post on the forum 4chan before inspiring subreddits, video games and YouTube videos – content that is predominantly created and shared by the ‘gen x’ demographic – ex-sists in a reality that is unstable and, so goes its lore, can be accessed through glitches and ‘quantum tunnelling.’ With this one example, we shall see how culture is responding to the same political and scientific developments that Žižek’s materialism is also working through.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Surplus-Enjoyment and Joker
Authors: Luke John Howie
Abstract: Žižek has asked us to consider when we should care about the tyrant’s bloody robes. He was asking whether we should show restraint in responding to terrible injustice. The unsettling depiction of ‘Joker’ in Todd Phillips’ (2019) film of the same name goes some way to answering this question. We witness in this film a Joker unlike the many others we had seen in the Batman cinematic universe. Arthur Fleck is not a villain, at least not when he sets out to live in our world. In his own words, he is just a man with ‘nothing left to lose’ living a life that has become ‘nothing but a comedy’. He is not the chaos spreading sociopath depicted in The Dark Knight (2008). He is a man with a mental health condition. An outcast. Pushed around by society until he decided to do something about it. But why is a vigilante in a bat mask acceptable, but one in clown make-up is not' Maybe our traditional understandings of “right” and “wrong” and our childish cultural tropes about “good” and “evil” no longer serve us as they should when our heroes are greedy corporatists and our villains are the marginalised, disabled and mentally ill. Could it be that the Batman stories we have heard since we were children are designed to make us fret about the tyrant’s bloody robes' In this paper I explore Žižek’s analysis of Joker alongside his accounts of surplus-enjoyment with particular reference to Arthur Fleck’s life whilst living with a disability.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Replacement Theory would not exist in Communism
Authors: Bradley Kaye
Abstract: Often cited quotation from the Communist Manifesto that capitalism can have an anti-racist, anti-sexist bourgeoisie is the starting point of this analysis. Deploying Žižek's work on the "rotary motion" in the Indivisible Remainder, along with aspects of Marx's analysis of Ideology in the German Ideology to give readers a deeper analysis of Trump's exploitation of white voter's 'new racism as the fear of the 'theft of enjoyment' pinned on the Other' who either threatens to snatch from "us" the treasure of our 'way of life', which conceals a deeper ressentiment which exploded on January 6th, and circulates through the back corners of the internet in white supremacist chatrooms. While these reports have been widely covered in mainstream news sources, a psychoanalytical treatment of "Replacement Theory" through Žižek's work (alongside a deeper reading of Marx, which would take much further work beyond the scope of this paper) reveals that the ideology behind so-called "Replacement Theory" is grounded in a metaphysics of scarcity, which would not exist in a truly communist society of automatic production, plenitude, and common property rights.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Why Do Many Writers in Iran Say Little through So Many Words'
Authors: Ali Mehraein
Abstract: Some evidence indicates that redundancy (superfluous repetition of an idea, word, phrase, sentence, etc. in a text) is not just an editorial error but also a symptom (a form of compulsion to repeat). To understand why there is so much redundancy in the works of many writers in Iran, we may need to delve into the social link between educators and students in Iranian education institutions. The educator is raised to the position of the Knower who not only demands that the student acknowledge that he knows something about her desire, but also that she still has not learnt that he knows. The student, however, distances herself from her link to the educator, claiming an independence from him. This social link between educator and student is reproduced in the written works of many writers in Iran: they either posit themselves as the student, thereby unconsciously compelled to repeat their gesture of independence from the Other; or as the Knower, thereby unconsciously compelled to repeat that they know. However, because, at some level, redundancy is what we want and enjoy, but nonetheless cannot enjoy enjoying it, the true question is how to enjoy the enjoyment of redundancy; the answer is found in act and love, as understood by Slavoj Zizek.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Liberal Multiculturalism, Post-Racism, and Islamophobia: A Žižekian
Interpretation of Said’s Orientalism
Authors: Panagiotis Peter Milonas
Abstract: White liberals like to claim that they live in a post-racial society. Furthermore, they believe that most people do not sympathize with the far-right. However, it is not racism fueling right-wing extremism in North America and Western Europe but the dominant ideology, liberalism. Consequently, Slavoj Žižek argues that racism is a problem concerning “objective violence,” which he further breaks down into “symbolic violence” and “systemic violence.” These primarily target minority groups. Thus, “objective violence” best explains the West’s problematic views of Muslims and Islam since it supports what Edward Said refers to as “Orientalism” and reproduces racist depictions of racialized communities. These are incredibly harmful since the West still perceives the Orient and its residents as violent, strange, and backward. These Orientalist attitudes ultimately lead to discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. Furthermore, this ideology naturalizes and legitimizes capitalist social relations while concealing racialization processes.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Haiti as an example of Hegelian universality
Authors: Renato Paes Rodrigues
Abstract: ResumoEste artigo tem por objetivo problematizar a ideia de ser a América Latina um espaço do puro contingente, como defende o filósofo argentino Enrique Dussel. Recorrendo a um evento extraordinário do século XIX, a Revolução Haitiana, defendemos a ideia que, mesmo no espaço colonial, é possível encontrar a circulação e a defesa de ideias universais. Mais do que isso, essa revolução apresenta um bom exemplo de como podemos refletir sobre a universalidade hegeliana, elaborada por dois grandes pensadores contemporâneos: Susan Buck-Morss e Slavoj Žižek. Palavras-chave: Dussel; Buck-Morss; Žižek; universalidade hegeliana. Abstract This article aims to problematize the idea of Latin America being a space of pure contingent, as defended by the Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel. Using an extraordinary event from the 19th century, the Haitian Revolution, we defend the idea that, even in the colonial space, it is possible to find the circulation and defense of universal ideas. More than that, this revolution presents a good example of how we can reflect on the Hegelian universality, elaborated by two great contemporary thinkers: Susan Buck-Morss and Slavoj Žižek. Key-words: Dussel; Buck-Morss; Žižek; hegelian universality.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Book Review on Slavoj Zizek’s Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in
the Era of Post-human Capitalism
Authors: Ruben; Jr Obrar Balotol
Abstract: Slavoj Žižek is an extremely interesting philosopher of our time who translated the philosophy of Hegel, Marx and the psychology of Lacan into a formidable scholarship and activism. Importantly, his philosophy participates in Alain Badiou’s conviction that the function of philosophy is to corrupt the youth, to alienate them from the hegemonic ideologico-political order, to spread radical doubts, and enable them to think unconventionally, boldly think dangerously
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
- Review of Marc James Léger’s Bernie Bros Gone Woke: Class,
Identity, Neoliberalism
Authors: Elias Khoury
Abstract: This engaging book explores Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, a radical movement that represented a diverse voter base. As such, it had to navigate the complexities of class, identity, and their interrelation. The thesis author Marc Léger seeks to defend is that the campaign ultimately failed in this endeavor. Rather than reassert the centrality of class in socialist politics, he argues, the campaign indulged a dubious politics of division.
PubDate: 2023-06-13
Issue No: Vol. 17, No. 1 (2023)
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