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Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism
At the outset of the twentieth century, Lenin argued that materialism has to change its form with each new scientific discovery. Today, argues Slavoj Zizek in this major new work, we should apply this stricture to Lenin himself. Philosophical materialism has not yet risen to the challenge of relativity theory and quantum physics, or breakthroughs like Freudian psychoanalysis-and we need hardly mention the failure of actually existing Communism.In Absolute Recoil, Zizek proposes a new foundation for dialectical materialism that answers these fundamental challenges.
449 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
76 people are currently reading
1257 people want to read
About the author
Slavoj Žižek
638 books7,553 followersSlavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
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October 26, 2014I think Adam Kotsko, of An und für sich, got it about right with his recent comparison of Žižek with Husserl.
Absolute Recoil is this kind of working out, beginning again, grounding again, repeating the Schellingian move of getting something from nothing. This character of thinking aloud is quite apparent from the footnoting and source citing :: many references to his earlier works (rather than c-n-p’ing and making this book longer), especially to his fat Hegel book to which Absolute Recoil is a kind of supplement ; many dissertations and unpublished manuscripts cited, as you see Žižek thinking aloud in relation to what he’s been reading among his colleagues ; many things simply grab’d off the internet (why not?) Also, you can picture him writing a chapter while watching far too many films (too many in this book with their plot synopses for my taste).
But in general, if you have no interest in an obscure hegelian category (‘absolute recoil’) nor find yourself enthralled with the distinction between nothing and less than nothing, nor take much interest in the Schellingian move from drive to the subject of desire, already believe ‘Es gibt gar kein Subject’, or just don’t care about how a subject interrupts the smooth operation of a universe of nothing but objects, etc etc etc ; in other words, if you don’t find yourself intrigued with how to count from den to three, nor find yourself curious about why an atom can’t be split ; or in other words, if you take no interest in ontology, well, why are we so fascinated with this Žižek clown?
Here’s the passage from Hegel which lies at the root of this direction of Žižek’s thinking ::
In essence, Žižek’s procedure here is no different in principle from that of Husserl, who wrote and rewrote voluminous drafts and was continually “introducing” the project of transcendental phenomenology. The one thing that has changed is that Žižek is publishing his drafts as he goes. Perhaps it would be better in some way if he would wait longer between publications, but you can’t blame a non-traditional academic for sticking with the method that gained him enough notoriety to elbow his way into the philosophical conversation despite his lack of a traditional position. You can’t blame him if publishers are willing to print the latest incremental updates to his project as he produces them, nor can you blame him if enough people are willing to buy the things to make it economically viable.I have read about sixteen of Žižek’s slim volumes ; Husserl left behind a Nachlaß of tens of thousands of pages of manuscript in illegible shorthand. Peeking in at the Husserl Archive at Leuven, I see a Gesammelte Werke of 40 volumes plus another eight of Materialien. Pretty much the same situation with Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, etc etc. Instead of waiting until he’s dead, we’re getting the Nachlaß from Žižek while he’s still not (un)dead.
Nor, indeed, is it the case that he is simply repeating himself over and over. There is development and change over time, for those with the patience and investment to watch for it. If you don’t have the requisite patience or investment, you are under no obligation to keep reading his stuff, just as you’re under no obligation to paw through all of the Husserliana, or all of Lacan’s seminars, or all the iterations of Hegel’s lectures on philosophy of religion, or…. The fact that you’re tired of Žižek and don’t want to bother anymore isn’t proof of his intellectual bankruptcy — indeed, if you use your own understandable fatigue and wandering attention as grounds to discredit a major thinker and dissuade people from taking him seriously, then maybe someone is intellectually bankrupt, and it’s not Žižek.
https://itself.wordpress.com/2014/10/...
Absolute Recoil is this kind of working out, beginning again, grounding again, repeating the Schellingian move of getting something from nothing. This character of thinking aloud is quite apparent from the footnoting and source citing :: many references to his earlier works (rather than c-n-p’ing and making this book longer), especially to his fat Hegel book to which Absolute Recoil is a kind of supplement ; many dissertations and unpublished manuscripts cited, as you see Žižek thinking aloud in relation to what he’s been reading among his colleagues ; many things simply grab’d off the internet (why not?) Also, you can picture him writing a chapter while watching far too many films (too many in this book with their plot synopses for my taste).
But in general, if you have no interest in an obscure hegelian category (‘absolute recoil’) nor find yourself enthralled with the distinction between nothing and less than nothing, nor take much interest in the Schellingian move from drive to the subject of desire, already believe ‘Es gibt gar kein Subject’, or just don’t care about how a subject interrupts the smooth operation of a universe of nothing but objects, etc etc etc ; in other words, if you don’t find yourself intrigued with how to count from den to three, nor find yourself curious about why an atom can’t be split ; or in other words, if you take no interest in ontology, well, why are we so fascinated with this Žižek clown?
Here’s the passage from Hegel which lies at the root of this direction of Žižek’s thinking ::
The reflected determination, in falling to the ground, acquires its true meaning, namely, to be within itself the absolute recoil upon itself, that is to say, the positedness that belongs to essence is only a sublated positedness, and conversely, only self-sublating positedness is the positedness of essence. Essence, in determining itself as ground, is determined as the non-determined; its determining is only the sublating of its being determined. Essence, in being determined thus as self-sublating, has not proceeded from another, but is, in its negativity, self-identical essence. (Science of Logic, p444)And you see that if you’re not interested in putting that kind of stuff in your pipe and smoking it, well, there’s probably other paths you should wander.
December 8, 2023
Mit dem absoluten Gegenstoß hab ich das bisher schmerzhafteste Kapitel des Denkens aufgeschlagen.
Ich hab keinen blassen Schimmer wie ich diese abstrakte Form in eine halbwegs verständliche Besprechung bekommen soll. Ich dampfe das, auf die mir wesentlichen Aspekte, für das grobe Grundverständnis ein.
Zizek macht sich auf, zur Neubegründung des dialektischen Materialismus (semiotisch, politisch).
Was soll das heißen?
Er verknüpft Hegels Idealismus mit dem Materialismus, rührt Lacan unter und lässt alles im dialektischen Prozess zur höheren Synthese aufsteigen.
Zur Auflockerung oder Verwirrung (wie man es denn sehen mag) streut er Film- und Literaturanalysen zu den gesetzten Themen ein und lässt uns an Musiktheorie teilhaben.
Für weiteres Verständnis und Hinschmelze sorgen Ausführungen über Kant, Althusser, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Badiou, Strauss-Levi…..
Hegels Dialektik: Prozess, durch Widersprüche, der Selbstentfaltung und Selbstrückkehr.
Die These stellt eine bestimmte Aussage oder Position dar. Die Antithese ist eine entgegengesetzte Aussage oder Position, die der These widerspricht (Negation, kann aber auch eine leere Geste sein). Diese beiden Gegensätze werden dann durch eine Synthese aufgehoben, die eine neue Aussage oder Position darstellt, die über die ursprünglichen Gegensätze hinausgeht. In der Synthese können neue Erkenntnisse gewonnen und eine höhere Form des Denkens und der Realität erreicht werden.
Beim Prozess der Negation, kann man sich das tatsächlich so vorstellen, dass man aus seinem eigenen Verlust hervorgeht. Ich verwandle mich in mein Gegenteil, entfremde mich, um danach völlig verändert zu mir zurück zu kehren. Das geschieht ganz abstrakt, auf Ebene des Denkens und der Erkenntnis oder materiell. Wenn z.b ein politisches System (Paradigma) nicht mehr funktioniert und hier eine neue Prozessbewegung her muss.
Das Begehren (nach Lacan) treibt diesen dialektischen Prozess voran. Es müssen Störelemente vorhanden sein, die die Harmonie stören, Hindernisse, die einen ständigen Prozess der Anpassung erfordern. Das System funktioniert immer auf antagonistische Weise. Die Gefahr des Verfalls ist treibende Kraft. Entscheidender Punkt: Eine ursprünglich Einheit, die zerfällt gibt es nicht. Sie hat nie existiert.
Idealismus nach Hegel: Ideen, Gedanken, Begriffe durchdringen die materielle, objektive Welt. Er glaubt an eine Einheit aus Denken und Sein. Dies gestaltet sich bei Hegel immer dynamisch. Daher ist sein dialektischer Prozess der Entwicklungsmotor von Ideen, Geschichte, Natur und Geist (Normen, Gesinnheit). Statik ist Hegel völlig fremd. Ideen und Materie stehen in einem ständigen Wechselspiel miteinander.
Materie scheint in einigen Denkströmungen als etwas Außenstehendes betrachtet zu werden, das unabhängig von unseren Vorstellungen existiert. Sie wird passiv begriffen. Im dialektischen Materialismus befindet sich Materie in einem ständigen Prozess der Selbstentfaltung.
Zizek sagt, dass wahrer Materialismus ein Materialismus ohne Materialismus sei, in dem die substantielle Materie in einem Geflecht rein formaler, ideeller Ideen verschwindet.
Es geht um die immanente Materialität der ideellen Ordnung selbst.
„Am Beginn des Materialismus steht die Verletzung der alltagssprachlichen Regeln und somit ein Denken gegen die Sprache.“
„Die Position des dialektischen Materialismus ist, dass es selbst in der Leere keinen Frieden gibt.“
Sowohl Geist, Ideen und Materie, die Realität an sich, sind von Lücken und Widersprüchen geprägt.
Diese Unvollständigkeit der Realität gibt uns die Chance radikal freie Handlungen zu vollziehen.
Genau in den Fehlstellen sind revolutionäre, unvorhersehbare Veränderungen und Handlungen möglich.
Hegel wird gerne vorgeworfen mit dem Begriff des „Absoluten“ ein bestimmtes Endziel im Blick zu haben. Nope.
Das Absolute ist bei Hegel der Prozess um zu sich selbst zurückzukehren.
„Das Absolute fügt keine tiefere, substantiellere Dimension hinzu - es schließt lediglich die (subjektive) Illusion in die (objektive) Wahrheit selbst mit ein. Der absolute Standpunkt lässt uns erkennen, dass Fiktionen (und Phantasmen) zur Realität gehören und dass die richtige Wahl erst nach der falschen getroffen werden kann.“
Interessant ist hier, dass das Subjekt seine Subjektivität (Bewusstsein) erst am Ende des Prozesses erlangt. Dh. Es kann immer nur nachträglich seine Realität und Wissen konstruieren. Wir sind also immer mit dem Rückspiegel unterwegs und können nur rückwirkend die Ursachen für ein Ereignis setzen.
Wichtig hierbei ist:
„Hegels Antimobilismus: Die Dialektik hat nicht das Geringste mit der historischen Rechtfertigung einer bestimmten Politik oder Praxis auf einer bestimmten Stufe der historischen Entwicklung zu tun, einer Rechtfertigung die dann auf einer späteren, höheren Stufe verschwinden kann.
Ein vergangenes Phänomen kann zwar ein notwendiges Moment für die Entstehung einer neuen Form sein, seine Rolle wird jedoch sofort unsichtbar, sobald das Neue da ist.“
Ein weiterer spannender Aspekt im dialektischen Prozess, der mit der Entstehung des Subjekts aus seiner Entfremdung zusammenhängt ist folgender:
„Der dialektische Prozess ist keine synthetische Einheit als Rückkehr zum Einen verstandene Aufhebung der Entfremdung. Hegels Versöhnung ist keine Überwindung der Entfremdung sondern eine Versöhnung mit der Entfremdung selbst. Das Subjekt erkennt sich als seine eigene Dezentriertheit.
Es gibt keine ursprüngliche Einheit vor dem Verlust, das Verlorene wird rückwirkend durch den Verlust konstituiert und die wahrhaft dialektische Versöhnung besteht darin, die Konsequenzen dieser Rückwirkung vollkommen anzunehmen.“
Anhand eines Kulturbeispiels wird dies deutlich:
Zwang der englischen Sprache als kultureller Kolonialismus, durch den die wahre Identität zensiert wird.
Versöhnung mit der englischen Sprache als Befreiung auffassen.
Der Sieg über die Kolonialisierung liegt nicht in der Rückkehr zu einer authentischen vorkolonialen Substanz und schon gar nicht in der Synthese von moderner Zivilisation und vormodernen Ursprüngen, sondern im vollständigen Verlust dieser vormodernen Ursprünge.
Die neue Identität wird mühelos auf Englisch formuliert - die englische Sprache wird danaturiert und verliert ihre privilegierte Verbindung.
Zizek konzentriert sich stark auf die Macht der Sprache. Wie diese ein Loch in die Realität gräbt und die Dimension des immateriellen öffnet.
Lacan und die Psychoanalyse dürfen mit mit den Ausführungen zum Realen, Symbolischen, Imaginären, dem ojet a, dem Mangel und Begehren, der Fixierung (Steckenbleiben), Nicht-Alles, Es gibt kein Geschlechtsverhältnis, Mehrlust, perverse Opfer und Subjektive Destitution die Erschließung des Hegelkosmos vertiefend unterstützen. Sextalk garantiert!
In Anlehnung an die Bedeutung des Symbolischen, geht Zizek auf Hegels „Nacht der Welt“ ein.
„Die ontologische Notwendigkeit des Wahnsinns, beruht auf der Tatsache, dass es unmöglich ist, direkt von der rein tierischen Seele, die in unserer natürlichen Umgebung verwurzelt ist, zur normalen Subjektivität überzugehen, die in ihrer virtuellen symbolischen Umgebung wohnt - der verschwindende Vermittler zwischen den Beiden ist die wahnsinnige Geste des radikalen Rückzugs aus der Realität, die den Raum für symbolische Neukonstitution eröffnet.
Hegel hat den radikalsten Versuch unternommen den Abgrund des Wahnsinns im Kern der Subjektivität zu denken“.
Der Wahnsinn des Übergangs zum Symbolischen selbst. Der Wahnsinn der Vernunft selbst.
Die Quantenphysik wird für die Verbindung zwischen dem Realen und Symbolischen bemüht.
Das Unbewusste ist strukturiert wie eine Sprache. Hierzu geht er auf die weibliche Hysterie ein, moderne Kunst, Literatur-wie der ästhetischen Selbstauslöschung, in Thomas Manns „Tod in Venedig“, Musik und den Traum ein.
Wer Gott oder sich selber gerne fallen sieht, ist hier richtig.
Das Buch bespricht viele Beispiele für Versionen der Negation und Hindernisse die im dialektischen Prozess möglich und entscheidend sind.
Hin zum absoluten Wissen (Geist). Es ist der Moment, in dem die Geschichte des Geistes (oder der Vernunft) zu einem umfassenden Verständnis ihrer selbst kommt.
Frei von Illusionen! (siehe meine Anmerkungen zum Absoluten).
Für mich waren die Inhalte fast alle komplett neu. Ich hatte mich lediglich zuvor etwas mit Lacan beschäftigt. Dies kann ich auch nur jedem raten, der auf die wahnsinnige Idee kommt dieses Buch lesen zu wollen. Ohne dezentes Lacan Grundverständnis, hast Du keine Chance hier was zu kapieren. Ich bin so schon ewig und drei Tage mit Recherche beschäftigt gewesen.
Das Buch wirkt etwas wirr in der Komposition. Häufig wird erst sehr spät klar was die Ausführungen sollen und worauf sie abzielen. Zizeks Beispiele hangeln sich doch sehr stark am Symbolischen entlang. Er greift aktuelle Diskurse auf, die dem Kulturbetrieb dienen. Er verpasst dadurch den materialistischen Gedanken zu entfalten und labert lieber über Rollenzuschreibungen und gesellschaftliche Normen.
Für mich dennoch eine Bereicherung des Lernprozesses, auch wenn er den dialektischen Materialismus irgendwie selbst etwas verfehlt.
Wenn ich das kritisieren kann, hat er anscheinend wenigstens dafür gesorgt, dass ich verstanden habe, was er sagen wollte :-D
Ich hab keinen blassen Schimmer wie ich diese abstrakte Form in eine halbwegs verständliche Besprechung bekommen soll. Ich dampfe das, auf die mir wesentlichen Aspekte, für das grobe Grundverständnis ein.
Zizek macht sich auf, zur Neubegründung des dialektischen Materialismus (semiotisch, politisch).
Was soll das heißen?
Er verknüpft Hegels Idealismus mit dem Materialismus, rührt Lacan unter und lässt alles im dialektischen Prozess zur höheren Synthese aufsteigen.
Zur Auflockerung oder Verwirrung (wie man es denn sehen mag) streut er Film- und Literaturanalysen zu den gesetzten Themen ein und lässt uns an Musiktheorie teilhaben.
Für weiteres Verständnis und Hinschmelze sorgen Ausführungen über Kant, Althusser, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Badiou, Strauss-Levi…..
Hegels Dialektik: Prozess, durch Widersprüche, der Selbstentfaltung und Selbstrückkehr.
Die These stellt eine bestimmte Aussage oder Position dar. Die Antithese ist eine entgegengesetzte Aussage oder Position, die der These widerspricht (Negation, kann aber auch eine leere Geste sein). Diese beiden Gegensätze werden dann durch eine Synthese aufgehoben, die eine neue Aussage oder Position darstellt, die über die ursprünglichen Gegensätze hinausgeht. In der Synthese können neue Erkenntnisse gewonnen und eine höhere Form des Denkens und der Realität erreicht werden.
Beim Prozess der Negation, kann man sich das tatsächlich so vorstellen, dass man aus seinem eigenen Verlust hervorgeht. Ich verwandle mich in mein Gegenteil, entfremde mich, um danach völlig verändert zu mir zurück zu kehren. Das geschieht ganz abstrakt, auf Ebene des Denkens und der Erkenntnis oder materiell. Wenn z.b ein politisches System (Paradigma) nicht mehr funktioniert und hier eine neue Prozessbewegung her muss.
Das Begehren (nach Lacan) treibt diesen dialektischen Prozess voran. Es müssen Störelemente vorhanden sein, die die Harmonie stören, Hindernisse, die einen ständigen Prozess der Anpassung erfordern. Das System funktioniert immer auf antagonistische Weise. Die Gefahr des Verfalls ist treibende Kraft. Entscheidender Punkt: Eine ursprünglich Einheit, die zerfällt gibt es nicht. Sie hat nie existiert.
Idealismus nach Hegel: Ideen, Gedanken, Begriffe durchdringen die materielle, objektive Welt. Er glaubt an eine Einheit aus Denken und Sein. Dies gestaltet sich bei Hegel immer dynamisch. Daher ist sein dialektischer Prozess der Entwicklungsmotor von Ideen, Geschichte, Natur und Geist (Normen, Gesinnheit). Statik ist Hegel völlig fremd. Ideen und Materie stehen in einem ständigen Wechselspiel miteinander.
Materie scheint in einigen Denkströmungen als etwas Außenstehendes betrachtet zu werden, das unabhängig von unseren Vorstellungen existiert. Sie wird passiv begriffen. Im dialektischen Materialismus befindet sich Materie in einem ständigen Prozess der Selbstentfaltung.
Zizek sagt, dass wahrer Materialismus ein Materialismus ohne Materialismus sei, in dem die substantielle Materie in einem Geflecht rein formaler, ideeller Ideen verschwindet.
Es geht um die immanente Materialität der ideellen Ordnung selbst.
„Am Beginn des Materialismus steht die Verletzung der alltagssprachlichen Regeln und somit ein Denken gegen die Sprache.“
„Die Position des dialektischen Materialismus ist, dass es selbst in der Leere keinen Frieden gibt.“
Sowohl Geist, Ideen und Materie, die Realität an sich, sind von Lücken und Widersprüchen geprägt.
Diese Unvollständigkeit der Realität gibt uns die Chance radikal freie Handlungen zu vollziehen.
Genau in den Fehlstellen sind revolutionäre, unvorhersehbare Veränderungen und Handlungen möglich.
Hegel wird gerne vorgeworfen mit dem Begriff des „Absoluten“ ein bestimmtes Endziel im Blick zu haben. Nope.
Das Absolute ist bei Hegel der Prozess um zu sich selbst zurückzukehren.
„Das Absolute fügt keine tiefere, substantiellere Dimension hinzu - es schließt lediglich die (subjektive) Illusion in die (objektive) Wahrheit selbst mit ein. Der absolute Standpunkt lässt uns erkennen, dass Fiktionen (und Phantasmen) zur Realität gehören und dass die richtige Wahl erst nach der falschen getroffen werden kann.“
Interessant ist hier, dass das Subjekt seine Subjektivität (Bewusstsein) erst am Ende des Prozesses erlangt. Dh. Es kann immer nur nachträglich seine Realität und Wissen konstruieren. Wir sind also immer mit dem Rückspiegel unterwegs und können nur rückwirkend die Ursachen für ein Ereignis setzen.
Wichtig hierbei ist:
„Hegels Antimobilismus: Die Dialektik hat nicht das Geringste mit der historischen Rechtfertigung einer bestimmten Politik oder Praxis auf einer bestimmten Stufe der historischen Entwicklung zu tun, einer Rechtfertigung die dann auf einer späteren, höheren Stufe verschwinden kann.
Ein vergangenes Phänomen kann zwar ein notwendiges Moment für die Entstehung einer neuen Form sein, seine Rolle wird jedoch sofort unsichtbar, sobald das Neue da ist.“
Ein weiterer spannender Aspekt im dialektischen Prozess, der mit der Entstehung des Subjekts aus seiner Entfremdung zusammenhängt ist folgender:
„Der dialektische Prozess ist keine synthetische Einheit als Rückkehr zum Einen verstandene Aufhebung der Entfremdung. Hegels Versöhnung ist keine Überwindung der Entfremdung sondern eine Versöhnung mit der Entfremdung selbst. Das Subjekt erkennt sich als seine eigene Dezentriertheit.
Es gibt keine ursprüngliche Einheit vor dem Verlust, das Verlorene wird rückwirkend durch den Verlust konstituiert und die wahrhaft dialektische Versöhnung besteht darin, die Konsequenzen dieser Rückwirkung vollkommen anzunehmen.“
Anhand eines Kulturbeispiels wird dies deutlich:
Zwang der englischen Sprache als kultureller Kolonialismus, durch den die wahre Identität zensiert wird.
Versöhnung mit der englischen Sprache als Befreiung auffassen.
Der Sieg über die Kolonialisierung liegt nicht in der Rückkehr zu einer authentischen vorkolonialen Substanz und schon gar nicht in der Synthese von moderner Zivilisation und vormodernen Ursprüngen, sondern im vollständigen Verlust dieser vormodernen Ursprünge.
Die neue Identität wird mühelos auf Englisch formuliert - die englische Sprache wird danaturiert und verliert ihre privilegierte Verbindung.
Zizek konzentriert sich stark auf die Macht der Sprache. Wie diese ein Loch in die Realität gräbt und die Dimension des immateriellen öffnet.
Lacan und die Psychoanalyse dürfen mit mit den Ausführungen zum Realen, Symbolischen, Imaginären, dem ojet a, dem Mangel und Begehren, der Fixierung (Steckenbleiben), Nicht-Alles, Es gibt kein Geschlechtsverhältnis, Mehrlust, perverse Opfer und Subjektive Destitution die Erschließung des Hegelkosmos vertiefend unterstützen. Sextalk garantiert!
In Anlehnung an die Bedeutung des Symbolischen, geht Zizek auf Hegels „Nacht der Welt“ ein.
„Die ontologische Notwendigkeit des Wahnsinns, beruht auf der Tatsache, dass es unmöglich ist, direkt von der rein tierischen Seele, die in unserer natürlichen Umgebung verwurzelt ist, zur normalen Subjektivität überzugehen, die in ihrer virtuellen symbolischen Umgebung wohnt - der verschwindende Vermittler zwischen den Beiden ist die wahnsinnige Geste des radikalen Rückzugs aus der Realität, die den Raum für symbolische Neukonstitution eröffnet.
Hegel hat den radikalsten Versuch unternommen den Abgrund des Wahnsinns im Kern der Subjektivität zu denken“.
Der Wahnsinn des Übergangs zum Symbolischen selbst. Der Wahnsinn der Vernunft selbst.
Die Quantenphysik wird für die Verbindung zwischen dem Realen und Symbolischen bemüht.
Das Unbewusste ist strukturiert wie eine Sprache. Hierzu geht er auf die weibliche Hysterie ein, moderne Kunst, Literatur-wie der ästhetischen Selbstauslöschung, in Thomas Manns „Tod in Venedig“, Musik und den Traum ein.
Wer Gott oder sich selber gerne fallen sieht, ist hier richtig.
Das Buch bespricht viele Beispiele für Versionen der Negation und Hindernisse die im dialektischen Prozess möglich und entscheidend sind.
Hin zum absoluten Wissen (Geist). Es ist der Moment, in dem die Geschichte des Geistes (oder der Vernunft) zu einem umfassenden Verständnis ihrer selbst kommt.
Frei von Illusionen! (siehe meine Anmerkungen zum Absoluten).
Für mich waren die Inhalte fast alle komplett neu. Ich hatte mich lediglich zuvor etwas mit Lacan beschäftigt. Dies kann ich auch nur jedem raten, der auf die wahnsinnige Idee kommt dieses Buch lesen zu wollen. Ohne dezentes Lacan Grundverständnis, hast Du keine Chance hier was zu kapieren. Ich bin so schon ewig und drei Tage mit Recherche beschäftigt gewesen.
Das Buch wirkt etwas wirr in der Komposition. Häufig wird erst sehr spät klar was die Ausführungen sollen und worauf sie abzielen. Zizeks Beispiele hangeln sich doch sehr stark am Symbolischen entlang. Er greift aktuelle Diskurse auf, die dem Kulturbetrieb dienen. Er verpasst dadurch den materialistischen Gedanken zu entfalten und labert lieber über Rollenzuschreibungen und gesellschaftliche Normen.
Für mich dennoch eine Bereicherung des Lernprozesses, auch wenn er den dialektischen Materialismus irgendwie selbst etwas verfehlt.
Wenn ich das kritisieren kann, hat er anscheinend wenigstens dafür gesorgt, dass ich verstanden habe, was er sagen wollte :-D
December 19, 2023
Als Stichwortgeber, vielleicht. Als Position und theoretische Evokation, völlig unzulänglich.
Žižek schreibt viel. Er schreibt auch darüber, wie viel er schreibt und wie sehr manche seiner Kollegen ihn deshalb beneiden. Sollte dem so sein, lesen sie nicht, was er schreibt. Er schreibt nämlich immer wieder dasselbe. Nach „Weniger als nichts - Hegel und der Schatten des dialektischen Materialismus“ schien „Absoluter Gegenstoß“ auf den ersten Blick, als ein Versuch der Weiterentwicklung, eine kybernetische Fortführung des intellektuellen Unternehmens, begriffsstruktuell einen dynamischen Materialismus zu erschließen, denn anders lässt sich der Untertitel: „Versuch einer Neubegründung des dialektischen Materialismus“ nicht verstehen. Weit gefehlt:
„Im Gegensatz zu [dem Idealismus], dessen Problem darin besteht, ausgehend von der ewigen Ordnung der Ideen die zeitliche, endliche Realität zu erklären, muss der Materialismus die Frage beantworten, wie eine ewige Idee aus der Tätigkeit von Menschen hervorgehen kann, die in einer endlichen historischen Situation gefangen sind.“
Nun, hier konfligieren direkt mehrere argumentative Ebenen, bspw. woher Žižeks „muss“ herstammt, wieso der Materialismus als Instanz etwas erklären soll (was sich ja nicht als Materie denken lässt, woraus sofern auch eine Unterbestimmung des Materialismus als -ismus selbst entsteht). Davon abgesehen, also akzeptiert, dass der Materialismus etwas muss, wie lässt sich die Idee der Ewigkeit daraus ableiten. Evolutativ passiert da nichts. Der schnöde, in sich gar nicht differenzierte Idealismus bekommt bei Žižek nur einen materialistisch geläuterten Deckmantel:
„Allerdings ist hinzuzufügen, dass, auch wenn die Spaltung zwischen dem Einen und dem »den« das Unhintergehbare ist, der äußerste Horizont unseres Denkens, über den wir nicht hinausgelangen können, das Eine (die signifikante Spur) dennoch Priorität genießt, das heißt, wir befinden uns immer schon im Symbolischen.“
»Den« soll ein vorontologisches »weniger als nichts« bei Demokrit bezeichnen. Ins Gewicht fällt hier jedoch, dass die Theorie Žižeks sich rein im Bereich des Symbolischen verortet, wobei sich das Symbolische durch allerlei Techniken, musikalisch, pragmatisch, athletisch, poetisch überschreiten ließe. Als immanente Kritik an einer symbolischen Ordnung aber lässt sich Žižeks Texten viel abgewinnen, so auch in „Absoluter Gegenstoß“. Zumindest lässt er einige philosophiehistorische Begrifflichkeiten in einem neuen, obgleich oft obszönen Licht erscheinen. Das war’s dann aber auch:
Der erste Schöpfungsakt ist somit das Leeren des Raumes, die Schaffung des Nichts (oder, um es freudianisch zu formulieren: Der Todestrieb und die schöpferische Sublimierung sind auf komplizierte Weise miteinander verknüpft).
Wer sich nun fragt, wie der Todestrieb mit der schöpferischen Sublimierung wechselwirkt, geht leider leer aus. Žižek will konstruktiv Verwirrung stiften. Leider bleiben hier vielerlei philosophische Errungenschaften auf der Strecke, zum Beispiel Konsistenz. Žižek improvisiert wie ein Derwisch und tanzt den Tanz der Tausend funkelnden Begriffe, schlägt ein Pfauenrad nach dem anderen und speit Flammen wie ein an sich selbst irre gewordener Feuerschlucker. Mit Philosophie hat dieser Sermon nicht mehr viel gemein. Mit Literatur auch nicht. Eher mit einer sich selbst desavouierenden Intellektualität, die vor lauter Belesenheit und Kinofilmkonsum, vor lauter psychoanalytischer Séancen und Sessions nichts mehr mit sich anzufangen weiß, als einen Text nach dem anderen abzusondern und zu copy&pasten:
„Und damit sind wir wieder bei ‚Der Mann, den sein Gewissen trieb‘, wo die implizite Frage, die das Paar am Ende des Films stellt, nämlich präzise lautet: »Was sind wir für den Blick der Eltern, während wir es miteinander treiben?«“
Slavoj Žižeks betreibt ein intellektuelles Schaulaufen, bei dem er alle Seiten belustigen und unterhalten möchte. Seriös daran war einzig der Akt des Buchkaufes, also gänzlich auf Seiten des Publikums. Der Rest verschreibt sich dem Ulk. Das war wohl auch so gewollt, vielleicht als Konsumkritik.
Žižek schreibt viel. Er schreibt auch darüber, wie viel er schreibt und wie sehr manche seiner Kollegen ihn deshalb beneiden. Sollte dem so sein, lesen sie nicht, was er schreibt. Er schreibt nämlich immer wieder dasselbe. Nach „Weniger als nichts - Hegel und der Schatten des dialektischen Materialismus“ schien „Absoluter Gegenstoß“ auf den ersten Blick, als ein Versuch der Weiterentwicklung, eine kybernetische Fortführung des intellektuellen Unternehmens, begriffsstruktuell einen dynamischen Materialismus zu erschließen, denn anders lässt sich der Untertitel: „Versuch einer Neubegründung des dialektischen Materialismus“ nicht verstehen. Weit gefehlt:
„Im Gegensatz zu [dem Idealismus], dessen Problem darin besteht, ausgehend von der ewigen Ordnung der Ideen die zeitliche, endliche Realität zu erklären, muss der Materialismus die Frage beantworten, wie eine ewige Idee aus der Tätigkeit von Menschen hervorgehen kann, die in einer endlichen historischen Situation gefangen sind.“
Nun, hier konfligieren direkt mehrere argumentative Ebenen, bspw. woher Žižeks „muss“ herstammt, wieso der Materialismus als Instanz etwas erklären soll (was sich ja nicht als Materie denken lässt, woraus sofern auch eine Unterbestimmung des Materialismus als -ismus selbst entsteht). Davon abgesehen, also akzeptiert, dass der Materialismus etwas muss, wie lässt sich die Idee der Ewigkeit daraus ableiten. Evolutativ passiert da nichts. Der schnöde, in sich gar nicht differenzierte Idealismus bekommt bei Žižek nur einen materialistisch geläuterten Deckmantel:
„Allerdings ist hinzuzufügen, dass, auch wenn die Spaltung zwischen dem Einen und dem »den« das Unhintergehbare ist, der äußerste Horizont unseres Denkens, über den wir nicht hinausgelangen können, das Eine (die signifikante Spur) dennoch Priorität genießt, das heißt, wir befinden uns immer schon im Symbolischen.“
»Den« soll ein vorontologisches »weniger als nichts« bei Demokrit bezeichnen. Ins Gewicht fällt hier jedoch, dass die Theorie Žižeks sich rein im Bereich des Symbolischen verortet, wobei sich das Symbolische durch allerlei Techniken, musikalisch, pragmatisch, athletisch, poetisch überschreiten ließe. Als immanente Kritik an einer symbolischen Ordnung aber lässt sich Žižeks Texten viel abgewinnen, so auch in „Absoluter Gegenstoß“. Zumindest lässt er einige philosophiehistorische Begrifflichkeiten in einem neuen, obgleich oft obszönen Licht erscheinen. Das war’s dann aber auch:
Der erste Schöpfungsakt ist somit das Leeren des Raumes, die Schaffung des Nichts (oder, um es freudianisch zu formulieren: Der Todestrieb und die schöpferische Sublimierung sind auf komplizierte Weise miteinander verknüpft).
Wer sich nun fragt, wie der Todestrieb mit der schöpferischen Sublimierung wechselwirkt, geht leider leer aus. Žižek will konstruktiv Verwirrung stiften. Leider bleiben hier vielerlei philosophische Errungenschaften auf der Strecke, zum Beispiel Konsistenz. Žižek improvisiert wie ein Derwisch und tanzt den Tanz der Tausend funkelnden Begriffe, schlägt ein Pfauenrad nach dem anderen und speit Flammen wie ein an sich selbst irre gewordener Feuerschlucker. Mit Philosophie hat dieser Sermon nicht mehr viel gemein. Mit Literatur auch nicht. Eher mit einer sich selbst desavouierenden Intellektualität, die vor lauter Belesenheit und Kinofilmkonsum, vor lauter psychoanalytischer Séancen und Sessions nichts mehr mit sich anzufangen weiß, als einen Text nach dem anderen abzusondern und zu copy&pasten:
„Und damit sind wir wieder bei ‚Der Mann, den sein Gewissen trieb‘, wo die implizite Frage, die das Paar am Ende des Films stellt, nämlich präzise lautet: »Was sind wir für den Blick der Eltern, während wir es miteinander treiben?«“
Slavoj Žižeks betreibt ein intellektuelles Schaulaufen, bei dem er alle Seiten belustigen und unterhalten möchte. Seriös daran war einzig der Akt des Buchkaufes, also gänzlich auf Seiten des Publikums. Der Rest verschreibt sich dem Ulk. Das war wohl auch so gewollt, vielleicht als Konsumkritik.
Want to read
July 20, 2015Zizek's intro to this is fantastic. Not marking it as a currently-reading quite yet, but I highly endorse reading the 47-page intro to this for a nice bit of intellectual stokage!
May 13, 2017
Zizek takes the failure of our understanding to be a stand-in for the universal.
In other words, he places our lack of understanding at very core of sense-making.
In Absolute Recoil, this idea takes on a different dimension. Rather a specific aspect, a cut, a symbol, a sign or even nothing, is taken to be the formal point that mediates the self-sublating that is "absolute recoil". It creation of whole worlds extends from the recoil of a thing from itself, as the worlds are the inhabitation of the space created by the recoil.
This is pretty elegant book, one that steps closer to cuts but still uses relational differences rather than material ones in order to create the transcendental field for order. In that sense, the key metaphor is missed, by Zizek -- probably because this would require him to step out of the ideation of Hegel... only here, Marx too is far too modal as material is mediated by the symbolic of money. Were we to recoil them, it would be the self-subulation of petit object a (Lacan), which denotes the failure for symbolisation to maintain consistency.
Zizek would have to create a new bridge, a new kind of nothing, to continue to symbolize. Which may be why he has not written another major book since this one.
Still, its such a pleasure to be able to read a writer so concise, abstract and efficient with his wording. From Less than Nothing Zizek has really cleaned up his language here. Its still him, but far more well controlled and directed in his organization. A leaner, meaner, Zizek. I can't wait to see what the next major work he is going to do. Or, has he reached an impasse in his thought process?
In other words, he places our lack of understanding at very core of sense-making.
In Absolute Recoil, this idea takes on a different dimension. Rather a specific aspect, a cut, a symbol, a sign or even nothing, is taken to be the formal point that mediates the self-sublating that is "absolute recoil". It creation of whole worlds extends from the recoil of a thing from itself, as the worlds are the inhabitation of the space created by the recoil.
This is pretty elegant book, one that steps closer to cuts but still uses relational differences rather than material ones in order to create the transcendental field for order. In that sense, the key metaphor is missed, by Zizek -- probably because this would require him to step out of the ideation of Hegel... only here, Marx too is far too modal as material is mediated by the symbolic of money. Were we to recoil them, it would be the self-subulation of petit object a (Lacan), which denotes the failure for symbolisation to maintain consistency.
Zizek would have to create a new bridge, a new kind of nothing, to continue to symbolize. Which may be why he has not written another major book since this one.
Still, its such a pleasure to be able to read a writer so concise, abstract and efficient with his wording. From Less than Nothing Zizek has really cleaned up his language here. Its still him, but far more well controlled and directed in his organization. A leaner, meaner, Zizek. I can't wait to see what the next major work he is going to do. Or, has he reached an impasse in his thought process?
February 14, 2016
Žižek is marvelous to read. This is his secret. It really has to do w/ the pleasure of traveling along the vectors of his thought process. He thinks in an electric, enticing, almost conversational manner. It is 'following' him that is pleasurable. I am not a dialectical materialist. At all. I always said I liked the Lacanian Žižek and not the Hegelian Žižek. This is absurd. Part of a general disdain for Hegel which managed (for a time) to eclipse the fact that there is not Lacanian Žižek independent of the Hegelian. They are absolutely one and the same. The idea of castration in Lacan is obviously already there in the Non-All Absolute, the One that is less than One, and the Nothing that is less than Nothing. All this talk of negations of negations and the less than Nothing continues to seem sort of irritating. I do not truck in the negative (I am ultimately a Deleuzean). I am not really interested in subjectivity as anything other than natural process of development within the realm of substance (something Žižek directly scoffs at), but I enjoy how Žižek conceptualizes the Subject. This stuff is insidious in its compelling excitement. Think of Badiou. Badiou is another mammoth contemporary philosopher who generally sees things differently than myself. W/ Badiou, unlike Žižek, I always feel like it is a hard slog to get at the concepts. Žižek is anything but a hard slog. I always look forward to reading him.
June 8, 2015
Thanks to my pal Ian for getting me this for my birthday. I've never read a full treatise of Žižek's and was thrilled. So thrilled, I started a group with folks to bounce ideas off of as we read the book.
I hate this book. I honestly have almost no clue as to what the hell he's talking about or how it pertains to dialectical materialism. Žižek is all over the place and it's really hard to pin down his arguments because they wander so much. The book also seemed to be apart of a longer philosophical discussion which I haven't read--the continuation of a great debate. As a stand alone book, it's hard to see it in its full beauty.
I did like some things about it though. For instance, Žižek offers some brilliantly poetic passages that made ME wander in my thoughts--stray from the arguments at hand. Many times throughout the book I underlined lines and passages that got me thinking about stuff in new ways. I really appreciated that--I just wasn't sure if I was even on the right track or following Žižek.
Here's one example of my own digression:
I'm now on page 108 and I can honestly say that I still am not sure what direction Žižek is heading—let alone what he's talking about. I'm gathering that he is elucidating other theorists' ideas and then putting his spin on them. That aside, there have been passages that I have really enjoyed reading and connect them to topics and thoughts I have about other work I am engaged in. I'll share one with you now.
p. 37
“Our moment is more of a Hegelian one: not the moment of highest tension when the teleological (re)solution seems near, but the moment after, when the (re)solution is accomplished, but misses its goal and turns into a nightmare. At this moment, the Hegelian problem is that of how to remain faithful to the original goal of the (re)solution and refuse to revert to a conservative position, how to discern the (re)solution in and through the very failure of the first attempt to actualize it.”
I think about this section and I relate it to the Police Advisory Board (PAB) from 1963 and the drive for police accountability over the last 50 years. The PAB was this striving for accountability on the part of (some) civilians in Rochester who saw the racism of the system and the oppression meted out by the police. So people pushed and pushed and pushed, and maybe that was the “teleological (re)solution,” the moment where violence was almost bursting—“the moment of highest tension”—when the PAB was created. The board had civilian investigatory and advisory capacity; no other board or committee since has had investigatory power. It also had the power to go public with specific cases if the chief of police and the PAB could not agree on a case. Leaders at the time saw it as a potential safety valve, but it clearly wasn't enough as the race rebellion occurred in July of 1964. And then a struggle ensued where the PAB was prevented from doing its investigative work by a federal judge when the police union filed against it claiming it was unconstitutional. It was inactive for six years, defunded in 1968, and abolished in 1970. Its work and investigative powers were found constitutional in the late '60s but by that point, it was already on a fast track to being abolished.
The second part of the quote is also important, and that is “the moment after, when the (re)solution is accomplished”—the PAB is created and instantly deprived of its ability to do the work of accountability—“but misses its goal and turns into a nightmare.” The nightmare is aiming for police accountability (in the form of the PAB) and getting far less than desired (the PAB was almost immediately halted in its tracks before it was able to get some cases under its belt and then finally abolished in 1970) in terms of real, meaningful justice.
Looking at newspaper clippings from the Democrat & Chronicle and Times-Union newspapers between 1970 to now, shows the prevalence of (reported) police violence in our community and the many attempts to regain what was lost with the PAB.
The different iterations of attempts at police accountability processes has been going on from 1970 to now—2015—with each iteration of police “accountability” as provided for by the city or police as having more and more police influence with less and less justice being administered. The nightmare includes the use of propaganda—what's called “police/community relations”—meant to deflect attention away from a recent injustice perpetrated by the police to the vacuous idea of unity.
This all leads to the final piece of the passage, “...the Hegelian problem is that of how to remain faithful to the original goal of the (re)solution and refuse to revert to a conservative position, how to discern the (re)solution in and through the very failure of the first attempt to actualize it.” If, in this example, we consider the radical edge to be the ideal of the Police Advisory Board, then the question is how to remain faithful to and fight for this idea without being co-opted by the propaganda of “police/community relations” and the slow creep of police influence and control over processes of police accountability.
Not sure if I am understanding the “Hegelian problem” here. Maybe someone can clarify that for me?
Which leads me to a bigger question. What is the radical edge regarding police accountability? The last line of the quote above asks, “...how to discern the (re)solution in and through the very failure of the first attempt to actualize it.” What if the “(re)solution” isn't the idea of Police Advisory Board at all, but something beyond it? Was the “(re)solution” the real solution? How do we discern something now in order to (re)actualize it without getting bogged down in conservative ideas of how to move forward? (Is that even forward?) If the PAB was the radical (correct) solution, then how do we resolve it now? It was actualized in 1963 and subsequently failed when the power elite, to use C. Wright Mills' term, realized how dangerous it was and then did everything in their power to overturn and demolish it and its potential.
Fifty plus years later and we have a Civilian Review Board (CRB) that is influenced by police, has no investigative authority, can only review and make findings based on the internal police investigation, and essentially fails at holding officers accountable and building public trust. The mechanism that was created in 1992 to deal with police accountability, the CRB, was never meant to provide actual justice. It was a stop-gap to public outrage at police misconduct. Even as different elements of the city were attempting to implement a far more ambitious committee or board than the PAB (one that had advisory, disciplinary, and investigatory power) the 1992 legislation came out of nowhere and was subsequently made law shortly after in City Council.
Anyway, just some thoughts as I consider one small passage of Žižek.
I really enjoyed this line:
"...--truth says: 'Whether you flee from me in deceit or think you can catch me in error, I will catch up with you in the mistake from which you cannot hide.'" Quoted in Slavoj Žižek's "Absolute Recoil," p. 76; original quote from Jacques Lacan's Écrits, p. 341.
An example of my confusion:
Ok ok ok--so what does Freud, sexuality, the death drive, and the bible have to do with dialectical materialism? I just finished the chapter Evental Truth, Evental Sex and I am fucking clueless.
Luckily I had folks who tried to understand it with me. I appreciated it.
Finally, I think I'm a materialist...or more so than Žižek.
Enjoy.
I hate this book. I honestly have almost no clue as to what the hell he's talking about or how it pertains to dialectical materialism. Žižek is all over the place and it's really hard to pin down his arguments because they wander so much. The book also seemed to be apart of a longer philosophical discussion which I haven't read--the continuation of a great debate. As a stand alone book, it's hard to see it in its full beauty.
I did like some things about it though. For instance, Žižek offers some brilliantly poetic passages that made ME wander in my thoughts--stray from the arguments at hand. Many times throughout the book I underlined lines and passages that got me thinking about stuff in new ways. I really appreciated that--I just wasn't sure if I was even on the right track or following Žižek.
Here's one example of my own digression:
I'm now on page 108 and I can honestly say that I still am not sure what direction Žižek is heading—let alone what he's talking about. I'm gathering that he is elucidating other theorists' ideas and then putting his spin on them. That aside, there have been passages that I have really enjoyed reading and connect them to topics and thoughts I have about other work I am engaged in. I'll share one with you now.
p. 37
“Our moment is more of a Hegelian one: not the moment of highest tension when the teleological (re)solution seems near, but the moment after, when the (re)solution is accomplished, but misses its goal and turns into a nightmare. At this moment, the Hegelian problem is that of how to remain faithful to the original goal of the (re)solution and refuse to revert to a conservative position, how to discern the (re)solution in and through the very failure of the first attempt to actualize it.”
I think about this section and I relate it to the Police Advisory Board (PAB) from 1963 and the drive for police accountability over the last 50 years. The PAB was this striving for accountability on the part of (some) civilians in Rochester who saw the racism of the system and the oppression meted out by the police. So people pushed and pushed and pushed, and maybe that was the “teleological (re)solution,” the moment where violence was almost bursting—“the moment of highest tension”—when the PAB was created. The board had civilian investigatory and advisory capacity; no other board or committee since has had investigatory power. It also had the power to go public with specific cases if the chief of police and the PAB could not agree on a case. Leaders at the time saw it as a potential safety valve, but it clearly wasn't enough as the race rebellion occurred in July of 1964. And then a struggle ensued where the PAB was prevented from doing its investigative work by a federal judge when the police union filed against it claiming it was unconstitutional. It was inactive for six years, defunded in 1968, and abolished in 1970. Its work and investigative powers were found constitutional in the late '60s but by that point, it was already on a fast track to being abolished.
The second part of the quote is also important, and that is “the moment after, when the (re)solution is accomplished”—the PAB is created and instantly deprived of its ability to do the work of accountability—“but misses its goal and turns into a nightmare.” The nightmare is aiming for police accountability (in the form of the PAB) and getting far less than desired (the PAB was almost immediately halted in its tracks before it was able to get some cases under its belt and then finally abolished in 1970) in terms of real, meaningful justice.
Looking at newspaper clippings from the Democrat & Chronicle and Times-Union newspapers between 1970 to now, shows the prevalence of (reported) police violence in our community and the many attempts to regain what was lost with the PAB.
The different iterations of attempts at police accountability processes has been going on from 1970 to now—2015—with each iteration of police “accountability” as provided for by the city or police as having more and more police influence with less and less justice being administered. The nightmare includes the use of propaganda—what's called “police/community relations”—meant to deflect attention away from a recent injustice perpetrated by the police to the vacuous idea of unity.
This all leads to the final piece of the passage, “...the Hegelian problem is that of how to remain faithful to the original goal of the (re)solution and refuse to revert to a conservative position, how to discern the (re)solution in and through the very failure of the first attempt to actualize it.” If, in this example, we consider the radical edge to be the ideal of the Police Advisory Board, then the question is how to remain faithful to and fight for this idea without being co-opted by the propaganda of “police/community relations” and the slow creep of police influence and control over processes of police accountability.
Not sure if I am understanding the “Hegelian problem” here. Maybe someone can clarify that for me?
Which leads me to a bigger question. What is the radical edge regarding police accountability? The last line of the quote above asks, “...how to discern the (re)solution in and through the very failure of the first attempt to actualize it.” What if the “(re)solution” isn't the idea of Police Advisory Board at all, but something beyond it? Was the “(re)solution” the real solution? How do we discern something now in order to (re)actualize it without getting bogged down in conservative ideas of how to move forward? (Is that even forward?) If the PAB was the radical (correct) solution, then how do we resolve it now? It was actualized in 1963 and subsequently failed when the power elite, to use C. Wright Mills' term, realized how dangerous it was and then did everything in their power to overturn and demolish it and its potential.
Fifty plus years later and we have a Civilian Review Board (CRB) that is influenced by police, has no investigative authority, can only review and make findings based on the internal police investigation, and essentially fails at holding officers accountable and building public trust. The mechanism that was created in 1992 to deal with police accountability, the CRB, was never meant to provide actual justice. It was a stop-gap to public outrage at police misconduct. Even as different elements of the city were attempting to implement a far more ambitious committee or board than the PAB (one that had advisory, disciplinary, and investigatory power) the 1992 legislation came out of nowhere and was subsequently made law shortly after in City Council.
Anyway, just some thoughts as I consider one small passage of Žižek.
I really enjoyed this line:
"...--truth says: 'Whether you flee from me in deceit or think you can catch me in error, I will catch up with you in the mistake from which you cannot hide.'" Quoted in Slavoj Žižek's "Absolute Recoil," p. 76; original quote from Jacques Lacan's Écrits, p. 341.
An example of my confusion:
Ok ok ok--so what does Freud, sexuality, the death drive, and the bible have to do with dialectical materialism? I just finished the chapter Evental Truth, Evental Sex and I am fucking clueless.
Luckily I had folks who tried to understand it with me. I appreciated it.
Finally, I think I'm a materialist...or more so than Žižek.
Enjoy.
March 29, 2020
I don’t much care for majoritarian Hegelian-influenced philosophy overall, my dire view of German idealism and romanticism with its influences, and to put it succinctly, I view the instincts of political commentary by Zizek as usually worse, with the right-wing perennial grievances, his unrelated to-topic asides and contrary to his dislike of bogeyman ‘postmodernism’, tireless use of pop-culture (films predominantly) of any given decade.
Given given this is published by Verso [which is not necessarily altogether leftist or without problems with published authors/American-centric narratives (where is the proletariat?)], whose usual class-reductionism I found a distinct lack of here strange (a thematic speciality to psychoanalysis) in Zizek; though published in 2014 when earlier publications seemed more theory-driven and less mainline socialist than now is equally a reflection on the author.
Strange cultural ramblings:
‘‘Furthermore, viewing this opposition through the lens of the Hegelian struggle between Master and Servant, one cannot avoid noting the paradox: although we in the West are perceived as the exploitative masters, it is we who occupy the position of the Servant who, in clinging to life and its pleasures, is unable to risk his life (recall Colin Powell’s notion of a high-tech war with no human casualties), while the poor Islamist radicals are the Masters ready to risk their lives (28)’’
Iraq/Afghanistan invasions, post-mujahideen armament, Sykes-Picot? How many deaths on both sides?
[cont]‘‘Deep within themselves, the terrorist fundamentalists lack true conviction—and their violent outbursts are proof of this.’’
So they are not ‘’ready to risk their lives’’ as mentioned previously?
[cont]‘‘Fundamentalist Islamist terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The fundamentalists’ problem is not that we consider them inferior to us, but that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior’’
‘Fundamentalist Islamic terror’ seems to intersect with many religious terror-isms, and with the ‘global’ dimension of consumerism is an admission that consumerism today isn’t strictly Western (every market-bazaar-or-souq then shares these properties), the reactionary dimension is seen everywhere, so not strictly ‘anti-western’, with many attacks against established institutions upon the local governing authorities. Maybe the so-called ‘struggle’ is operant on a temporal dimension or a perception of cultural shifts (maybe capitalism and failed/inefficient public spheres?) rather than a physical-conscious spatiality.
[cont]‘‘This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment’’
Honestly how has Zizek derived this point and where in public discourse throughout the superstructure of ‘civilization’, ‘Western’ or anywhere, is there not the othering of a ‘barbarous’ nebulous entity of the terrorist entailed with connotations to inferiority? Where did the ‘third-world’, ‘failed state’ discourse come from? Again suggests that behind the ‘assurances’ (public statements, on what basis?) that the ‘we’ (why contemporary populations at large are included as participants is vague), official discourse, circulates enough feelings of resentment (usually ascribed to the slave) to both agglomerated positions, regardless if the purpose of the motif is dyadic or chiliagon.
[cont]‘‘The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity) but, on the contrary, the fact that they are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them’’
So if this is the case the question is not of ideology or Islamism whatsoever if ‘they’, the components/actors are basically contemporary (not a Western exclusivity of course), but instead weaponised by material interests? This would fit the ‘genealogical’ thesis of dialectical materialism better, I think.
Examples of problematic contradictory points made are littered everywhere as stylistics: “we figure out what we want”—this is how a true Master works: he does not try to guess what people want; he simply obeys his own desire and leaves it up to others to decide if they want to follow him. In other words, his power stems from his fidelity to his desire, from refusing to compromise on it. Therein lies the difference between a true Master and, say, the fascist or Stalinist leader who pretends to know (better than the people themselves) what people really want (what is really good for them), and is then ready to enforce it on them even against their will’’(46) wherein fascist and Stalinist leaders do obey their own desire and upon inspection do not care about ‘the people’, although they may ‘pretend’ to, leaving the ‘true master’ issue moot since this is Zizek’s personal penchants (recall comments on Stalin’s clapping audience, fellow colleagues).
Even where in footnote 44 for the chapter there is alluded that the great leap forward has the characteristics of the ‘true master’, were it to exist, (‘‘the Party cadre in charge of a commune knows what each farmer is capable of, so he sets the plan and specifies individuals’ obligations according to their abilities; he also knows what each farmer really needs for survival and so organizes the distribution of food and other provisions accordingly. The condition of militarized extreme poverty thereby becomes the actualization of communism’’), we are instead told It is not sufficient to claim that such a reading falsifies a noble idea—we should rather indicate how it [‘true master’ exposition] lies dormant in it as a possibility’’ - the claims go unanswered and can be construed in any direction, much like Zizek’s reading of ‘God’; either dormant at one period of time but could arise or has already died conclusively, or dormant at every time, recognizable but not fulfilled. There is not the required clarity here, where theory is presented as complete and seems to hint at every conceivable outcome but doesn’t simulate an outline, instead of one of many granular options considered with relation to the grander question posited or questioned.
‘‘To prove the point, it suffices to recall the impasse of political correctness: the need for it arises when unwritten mores are no longer able to regulate everyday interactions effectively—in place of spontaneous customs followed in a non-reflexive way, we have explicit rules (“blacks” become “African Americans,” “fat” becomes “weight-challenged,” etc.)’’(59)
It is of curiosity that there are certain groups that are the resort of these so-called ‘unwritten mores’ (where? Who decides the discourse? Globally? Where is he speaking of? I doubt he means in Slovenia). And if/why do these ‘unwritten mores’ ‘no longer regulate everyday interactions effectively’, there must have been a causing movement, people unwilling to use their basic civility. Too many qualifying negations (‘the need for it arises’ -suggests this ‘PC culture’ is warranted then?) are at use in this work, to make his approach sound reasonable, ‘just asking questions’, handily exempt as a singular decider for what/whom can be said or spoken to, or of, in what manner and with which language, anything he disagrees with can label ‘PC’, the scapegoat for a magicked hand-wavy synthesis of any aporia, and a readily flawed contradiction nonetheless. Seems a little bit of reactionary PC from Zizek, no?. The Americans, pandered to incessantly, of any political persuasion, with its unquestioning concerns trained (by-the-gun) on ‘America first’, where the American ‘working class’ is one of the most privileged/wealthy classes of any country, one which hoards 31% of the world’s assets, a petit-lumpen mix). Also this is the trope the right uses: that any potential inequality is one of ‘language only’, that the oppressor is justified by their ‘god-ordained’ power; which the class reductionists pander to when they wish to minimize class, when Americans do not care about material conditions anywhere else, that race distinction is de facto class (India with its caste system anyone), that you could be a US president or extremely wealthy as a black person and be treated as undeserving (separate to capitalism), a ‘freak anomaly’, not given dignity or viewed equal in legal-personhood, not recognized where these ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’, the proletariat even, will not ever defer their judgement or thinking to. One wonders why would that be?
The ‘unwritten mores’ comment seems to deliberately frame the answer as if the exploited ethnicities have no legal protections so that when they are revoked there is no uproar, which is disingenuous. ‘‘Regulate interactions effectively’‘ can be inferred to also mean upholding the capitalist order in a utilitarian fashion, while also allowing slippage for potential racist/misogynist ‘outbursts’, that in his language would be a ‘natural occurrence of a system that is not or cannot be perfect’. Conflation of libertarian-like language of ‘regulation’ further colludes with the entire discourse for the intended audience so as to be more receptive.
[cont]‘‘The main victim of such operations is precisely the order of “sincere lies,” of pretense: under the discursive regime of political correctness, it is not enough to follow external rules of politeness, one is expected to be “sincerely” respectful of others, and continually examined on the sincerity of one’s innermost convictions.’’
Notwithstanding the substitution of government titles for the thematic quality/flourish of his work, so as to set up a well-established attack-vector for the thesis, emotionally resonant word choices (‘victim’, ‘order’ that would remind one of a governing regime) where there is a Cartesian positioning of ‘innermost convictions’ of private experience as if it were ‘under attack’; shares connections with the ‘terrorist-stable order’ rhetoric (as if pendulum or axis). Where there is any identifiable ‘groupthink’ of people clinically examining not just one’s thoughts but their ‘‘sincerity’’, in what universe and for how long is something of a fanciful imago from Zizek’s mind. Again with choices such as ‘not enough’ (or those crafty PC’s won’t leave us alone!), ‘follow’ and ‘expected’ are priming words that make the reader find it identifiable and almost ‘heroic’ to be the maverick outsider as Zizek model’s it against the insidious ‘groupthink’. I genuinely wonder what kind of novels or griftery research he had been reading throughout this.
[cont]‘‘In short, pushed to its extreme, the PC attitude resembles that of a proto-psychotic paranoid about the sincerity of every little politeness: greeting him with a “Hello, nice to meet you,” his reaction is: “Are you really glad to see me or are you just a hypocrite?”
Zizek reminds me of Bleuler or Charcot by resorting to diagnosing people and so psychologizing without justification when there is no argument, (slightly ironic given he himself could be ‘diagnosed’ with any myriad of ‘disorders’ from public behavior & persona, on ‘sniffing’ and itching alone we could say he has ADHD with a concretion of the unconscious imago in a schizophrenic manner resembling a psychotic-obsessive patient). Though one should know better. He also knows he has to qualify with ‘proto’ so as not to ‘communicate’ as unreasonable and grasping for pretext. Like with the Ayn Rand reference only men apparently, matter here, women have been omitted thus far (with any number of predictable responses).
Data points such as this and the thematic smorgasbord of quotations (lots of Ayn rand), implicitly defending the gamergate readership ‘‘one observes teenagers in, say, Seoul engaged in a collective game for several hours or even days, one might rather admire them as an exemplary case of dedicated self-discipline and concentration on an activity which brings joy—something like today’s version of the spiritual exercises elaborated by Loyola’’(63). It is of note here that none of the aforementioned criticism to ‘pretense’ is applied here (why are they seen as displaying ‘genuine spirituality’ through an illusory apparatus and on what basis?).
That there are many problems with Zizek’s political commentary, and philosophy in particular can be found in how quickly we find another outrageously shoehorned issue in a wrong cavalier manner.
‘‘It is all too easy to oppose a human being as a free autonomous subject and a human being as an object of trade, owned by another human being, deprived of his or her autonomy. The whole point of slavery is that, in some basic sense, the traded human being remains a free subject, no matter how “objectivized” she is.’’(66)
What? Tell that to the jihadi brides whose owners you earlier inveigled furiously against.
[cont]‘‘A slave can be angry at his owner, can run away from him, or can even sincerely love him … Therein resides the mystery of the relations of servitude and domination: how can free autonomous subjects nonetheless treat each other as non-free, as “objects”?’’
So much of in this writing Zizek has been cloaking his personal opinions around a context of ‘‘mystery’’, ‘unknowable’, that it makes it apposite to file this modern theology with the St Anselm’s and St Augustine’s of the world, cloistered patriarchs shouting at the sky.
[further review in comments]
Given given this is published by Verso [which is not necessarily altogether leftist or without problems with published authors/American-centric narratives (where is the proletariat?)], whose usual class-reductionism I found a distinct lack of here strange (a thematic speciality to psychoanalysis) in Zizek; though published in 2014 when earlier publications seemed more theory-driven and less mainline socialist than now is equally a reflection on the author.
Strange cultural ramblings:
‘‘Furthermore, viewing this opposition through the lens of the Hegelian struggle between Master and Servant, one cannot avoid noting the paradox: although we in the West are perceived as the exploitative masters, it is we who occupy the position of the Servant who, in clinging to life and its pleasures, is unable to risk his life (recall Colin Powell’s notion of a high-tech war with no human casualties), while the poor Islamist radicals are the Masters ready to risk their lives (28)’’
Iraq/Afghanistan invasions, post-mujahideen armament, Sykes-Picot? How many deaths on both sides?
[cont]‘‘Deep within themselves, the terrorist fundamentalists lack true conviction—and their violent outbursts are proof of this.’’
So they are not ‘’ready to risk their lives’’ as mentioned previously?
[cont]‘‘Fundamentalist Islamist terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The fundamentalists’ problem is not that we consider them inferior to us, but that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior’’
‘Fundamentalist Islamic terror’ seems to intersect with many religious terror-isms, and with the ‘global’ dimension of consumerism is an admission that consumerism today isn’t strictly Western (every market-bazaar-or-souq then shares these properties), the reactionary dimension is seen everywhere, so not strictly ‘anti-western’, with many attacks against established institutions upon the local governing authorities. Maybe the so-called ‘struggle’ is operant on a temporal dimension or a perception of cultural shifts (maybe capitalism and failed/inefficient public spheres?) rather than a physical-conscious spatiality.
[cont]‘‘This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment’’
Honestly how has Zizek derived this point and where in public discourse throughout the superstructure of ‘civilization’, ‘Western’ or anywhere, is there not the othering of a ‘barbarous’ nebulous entity of the terrorist entailed with connotations to inferiority? Where did the ‘third-world’, ‘failed state’ discourse come from? Again suggests that behind the ‘assurances’ (public statements, on what basis?) that the ‘we’ (why contemporary populations at large are included as participants is vague), official discourse, circulates enough feelings of resentment (usually ascribed to the slave) to both agglomerated positions, regardless if the purpose of the motif is dyadic or chiliagon.
[cont]‘‘The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity) but, on the contrary, the fact that they are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them’’
So if this is the case the question is not of ideology or Islamism whatsoever if ‘they’, the components/actors are basically contemporary (not a Western exclusivity of course), but instead weaponised by material interests? This would fit the ‘genealogical’ thesis of dialectical materialism better, I think.
Examples of problematic contradictory points made are littered everywhere as stylistics: “we figure out what we want”—this is how a true Master works: he does not try to guess what people want; he simply obeys his own desire and leaves it up to others to decide if they want to follow him. In other words, his power stems from his fidelity to his desire, from refusing to compromise on it. Therein lies the difference between a true Master and, say, the fascist or Stalinist leader who pretends to know (better than the people themselves) what people really want (what is really good for them), and is then ready to enforce it on them even against their will’’(46) wherein fascist and Stalinist leaders do obey their own desire and upon inspection do not care about ‘the people’, although they may ‘pretend’ to, leaving the ‘true master’ issue moot since this is Zizek’s personal penchants (recall comments on Stalin’s clapping audience, fellow colleagues).
Even where in footnote 44 for the chapter there is alluded that the great leap forward has the characteristics of the ‘true master’, were it to exist, (‘‘the Party cadre in charge of a commune knows what each farmer is capable of, so he sets the plan and specifies individuals’ obligations according to their abilities; he also knows what each farmer really needs for survival and so organizes the distribution of food and other provisions accordingly. The condition of militarized extreme poverty thereby becomes the actualization of communism’’), we are instead told It is not sufficient to claim that such a reading falsifies a noble idea—we should rather indicate how it [‘true master’ exposition] lies dormant in it as a possibility’’ - the claims go unanswered and can be construed in any direction, much like Zizek’s reading of ‘God’; either dormant at one period of time but could arise or has already died conclusively, or dormant at every time, recognizable but not fulfilled. There is not the required clarity here, where theory is presented as complete and seems to hint at every conceivable outcome but doesn’t simulate an outline, instead of one of many granular options considered with relation to the grander question posited or questioned.
‘‘To prove the point, it suffices to recall the impasse of political correctness: the need for it arises when unwritten mores are no longer able to regulate everyday interactions effectively—in place of spontaneous customs followed in a non-reflexive way, we have explicit rules (“blacks” become “African Americans,” “fat” becomes “weight-challenged,” etc.)’’(59)
It is of curiosity that there are certain groups that are the resort of these so-called ‘unwritten mores’ (where? Who decides the discourse? Globally? Where is he speaking of? I doubt he means in Slovenia). And if/why do these ‘unwritten mores’ ‘no longer regulate everyday interactions effectively’, there must have been a causing movement, people unwilling to use their basic civility. Too many qualifying negations (‘the need for it arises’ -suggests this ‘PC culture’ is warranted then?) are at use in this work, to make his approach sound reasonable, ‘just asking questions’, handily exempt as a singular decider for what/whom can be said or spoken to, or of, in what manner and with which language, anything he disagrees with can label ‘PC’, the scapegoat for a magicked hand-wavy synthesis of any aporia, and a readily flawed contradiction nonetheless. Seems a little bit of reactionary PC from Zizek, no?. The Americans, pandered to incessantly, of any political persuasion, with its unquestioning concerns trained (by-the-gun) on ‘America first’, where the American ‘working class’ is one of the most privileged/wealthy classes of any country, one which hoards 31% of the world’s assets, a petit-lumpen mix). Also this is the trope the right uses: that any potential inequality is one of ‘language only’, that the oppressor is justified by their ‘god-ordained’ power; which the class reductionists pander to when they wish to minimize class, when Americans do not care about material conditions anywhere else, that race distinction is de facto class (India with its caste system anyone), that you could be a US president or extremely wealthy as a black person and be treated as undeserving (separate to capitalism), a ‘freak anomaly’, not given dignity or viewed equal in legal-personhood, not recognized where these ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’, the proletariat even, will not ever defer their judgement or thinking to. One wonders why would that be?
The ‘unwritten mores’ comment seems to deliberately frame the answer as if the exploited ethnicities have no legal protections so that when they are revoked there is no uproar, which is disingenuous. ‘‘Regulate interactions effectively’‘ can be inferred to also mean upholding the capitalist order in a utilitarian fashion, while also allowing slippage for potential racist/misogynist ‘outbursts’, that in his language would be a ‘natural occurrence of a system that is not or cannot be perfect’. Conflation of libertarian-like language of ‘regulation’ further colludes with the entire discourse for the intended audience so as to be more receptive.
[cont]‘‘The main victim of such operations is precisely the order of “sincere lies,” of pretense: under the discursive regime of political correctness, it is not enough to follow external rules of politeness, one is expected to be “sincerely” respectful of others, and continually examined on the sincerity of one’s innermost convictions.’’
Notwithstanding the substitution of government titles for the thematic quality/flourish of his work, so as to set up a well-established attack-vector for the thesis, emotionally resonant word choices (‘victim’, ‘order’ that would remind one of a governing regime) where there is a Cartesian positioning of ‘innermost convictions’ of private experience as if it were ‘under attack’; shares connections with the ‘terrorist-stable order’ rhetoric (as if pendulum or axis). Where there is any identifiable ‘groupthink’ of people clinically examining not just one’s thoughts but their ‘‘sincerity’’, in what universe and for how long is something of a fanciful imago from Zizek’s mind. Again with choices such as ‘not enough’ (or those crafty PC’s won’t leave us alone!), ‘follow’ and ‘expected’ are priming words that make the reader find it identifiable and almost ‘heroic’ to be the maverick outsider as Zizek model’s it against the insidious ‘groupthink’. I genuinely wonder what kind of novels or griftery research he had been reading throughout this.
[cont]‘‘In short, pushed to its extreme, the PC attitude resembles that of a proto-psychotic paranoid about the sincerity of every little politeness: greeting him with a “Hello, nice to meet you,” his reaction is: “Are you really glad to see me or are you just a hypocrite?”
Zizek reminds me of Bleuler or Charcot by resorting to diagnosing people and so psychologizing without justification when there is no argument, (slightly ironic given he himself could be ‘diagnosed’ with any myriad of ‘disorders’ from public behavior & persona, on ‘sniffing’ and itching alone we could say he has ADHD with a concretion of the unconscious imago in a schizophrenic manner resembling a psychotic-obsessive patient). Though one should know better. He also knows he has to qualify with ‘proto’ so as not to ‘communicate’ as unreasonable and grasping for pretext. Like with the Ayn Rand reference only men apparently, matter here, women have been omitted thus far (with any number of predictable responses).
Data points such as this and the thematic smorgasbord of quotations (lots of Ayn rand), implicitly defending the gamergate readership ‘‘one observes teenagers in, say, Seoul engaged in a collective game for several hours or even days, one might rather admire them as an exemplary case of dedicated self-discipline and concentration on an activity which brings joy—something like today’s version of the spiritual exercises elaborated by Loyola’’(63). It is of note here that none of the aforementioned criticism to ‘pretense’ is applied here (why are they seen as displaying ‘genuine spirituality’ through an illusory apparatus and on what basis?).
That there are many problems with Zizek’s political commentary, and philosophy in particular can be found in how quickly we find another outrageously shoehorned issue in a wrong cavalier manner.
‘‘It is all too easy to oppose a human being as a free autonomous subject and a human being as an object of trade, owned by another human being, deprived of his or her autonomy. The whole point of slavery is that, in some basic sense, the traded human being remains a free subject, no matter how “objectivized” she is.’’(66)
What? Tell that to the jihadi brides whose owners you earlier inveigled furiously against.
[cont]‘‘A slave can be angry at his owner, can run away from him, or can even sincerely love him … Therein resides the mystery of the relations of servitude and domination: how can free autonomous subjects nonetheless treat each other as non-free, as “objects”?’’
So much of in this writing Zizek has been cloaking his personal opinions around a context of ‘‘mystery’’, ‘unknowable’, that it makes it apposite to file this modern theology with the St Anselm’s and St Augustine’s of the world, cloistered patriarchs shouting at the sky.
[further review in comments]
July 8, 2018
Veldig bra bok som introduserer og analyserer de viktigste temaene i Žižeks tenkning. Dropper en stjerne pga en del overflødige filmanalyser.
February 20, 2015
I think I liked some of the chapters in this book, or at least found the arguments entertaining to ponder, but it would take a lot longer to really unpack and understand each chapter before I could really say whether I agree with Zizek's conclusions, assumptions and reasoning. I enjoy that his philosophy is very much a glass bead game of popular books and films, mainstream religions and more obscure sources, tying together philosphy, music, literature, and science with lots of extra ornamentation to create a very modern-sounding philosophy. I found his essays in this book a bit more like practice puzzles, rather than practical philosophy, addressing sexuality, gender, and religious questions that are inherently masculine, and elitist, 'Western' masculine. Thus, while I can find the 'games' in his essays interesting and fun, they feel very artificial.
Granted, mainstream philosphy is Western and male in our current society, still, so of course it is not surprising that Zizek's book is addressing questions of sexuality that address 'female hysteria', and that generally approach sex from the heterosexual male perspective. At least there are nods toward an awareness in this book that the 'female' perspectives may differ a bit, but at least in this book, Zizek's philosophy is not one that I can easily internalize as personally resonant as a female reader, however much I might like some of Zizek's points. He did at least spend a whole paragraph or so discussing Ayn Rand's novel We The Living, which I appreciated. Maybe after I've found time to unpack these essays, watching, listening to, and reading all the sources he references and studying the philosophers he particularly addresses, I'll find his philosophy a bit less distancing.
Granted, mainstream philosphy is Western and male in our current society, still, so of course it is not surprising that Zizek's book is addressing questions of sexuality that address 'female hysteria', and that generally approach sex from the heterosexual male perspective. At least there are nods toward an awareness in this book that the 'female' perspectives may differ a bit, but at least in this book, Zizek's philosophy is not one that I can easily internalize as personally resonant as a female reader, however much I might like some of Zizek's points. He did at least spend a whole paragraph or so discussing Ayn Rand's novel We The Living, which I appreciated. Maybe after I've found time to unpack these essays, watching, listening to, and reading all the sources he references and studying the philosophers he particularly addresses, I'll find his philosophy a bit less distancing.
Read
June 2, 2015Pretty much answers all the philosophical questions ever. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lacking in following through with concrete suggestions for politics and life, though. (So I guess the philosophical question it doesn't directly answer is, "how should we live?") Irregardless, I do feel like I understand Freud, Lacan, Hegel, and Marx way better now
August 9, 2024
Zizek tries to rid himself of the idealism of classical German philosophy, but ultimately he too needs some kind of God to guarantee the overlap between nature and subjectivity. For him, reality (nature) is a symptom, which means that its independence, not from the mind, but more closely from consciousness, depends on/is reduced to its non-symbolization (or discursive unarticulation) up to a certain point ('so far'), which means that *once* what he calls the Real (to designate this symptomal part, which is, as such, temporarily (dialectically) independent, of "reality" or nature) is absorbed by interpretation, either "reality" collapses, or it needs, to sustain itself, another little piece of Real that resists symbolization, and so on. The central argument of this system is that quantum mechanics would illustrate such an influence of symbolization on reality itself (cf. the EPR paradox), thus "reducing" the "independent" reality of the natural sciences to Lacan's symptomal "Real". It's easy to see the systematic motivation behind this twisted reasoning: to make the dialectical process itself the/its indialecticizable rock.
What puzzles me is that, just as in the case of the symptom, the "reality" of the symptom effectively disappears once articulated (although not always: we sometimes live with our symptom, but let's take the example of hysterical pain), so in the case of the collapse of the wave function, an inherently indeterminate reality (quantum entanglement) becomes inherently determinate (measurement). But then, the appeal to the Lacanian Real cannot account for the independence of the subject's *determinate* reality (post-measurement). A reality of which I am aware (not the symptom) continues to be independent of my awareness of it! The miracle here is the reception into consciousness of that which is foreign to it, and which idealism understands only by postulating an immemorial acquaintance with it in the form of an unconscious constitution of reality in an archaeological past, or God's creation of the world, so that conscious activity always rolls over the traces of unconscious activity, which is analogous to it in one sense or another, like the Dupondt brothers lost in the desert who fall back on their own traces without recognizing them as such in Tintin.
Zizek (significantly?) excludes the case of living with one's symptom: he doesn't account for the subject's relationship to symbolized reality, which nonetheless remains independent of it (in a sense that the Lacanian Real, therefore, cannot capture). Idealism, on the other hand, gives the impression that consciousness phagocytizes what it becomes aware of. This is ridiculous.
What puzzles me is that, just as in the case of the symptom, the "reality" of the symptom effectively disappears once articulated (although not always: we sometimes live with our symptom, but let's take the example of hysterical pain), so in the case of the collapse of the wave function, an inherently indeterminate reality (quantum entanglement) becomes inherently determinate (measurement). But then, the appeal to the Lacanian Real cannot account for the independence of the subject's *determinate* reality (post-measurement). A reality of which I am aware (not the symptom) continues to be independent of my awareness of it! The miracle here is the reception into consciousness of that which is foreign to it, and which idealism understands only by postulating an immemorial acquaintance with it in the form of an unconscious constitution of reality in an archaeological past, or God's creation of the world, so that conscious activity always rolls over the traces of unconscious activity, which is analogous to it in one sense or another, like the Dupondt brothers lost in the desert who fall back on their own traces without recognizing them as such in Tintin.
Zizek (significantly?) excludes the case of living with one's symptom: he doesn't account for the subject's relationship to symbolized reality, which nonetheless remains independent of it (in a sense that the Lacanian Real, therefore, cannot capture). Idealism, on the other hand, gives the impression that consciousness phagocytizes what it becomes aware of. This is ridiculous.
June 22, 2025
A cause retroactively posits its own presuppositions. Or so Hegel gives in his science of logic. A systems failure generates the ground it stands on. Or so Zizek gives.
Less self-plagiarism in this one. Feels like a follow-up to Less Than Nothing.
I think Zizek's repetition relieves me of my own ruminations. And when he adds something new it gives me room to imagine new things. Even after a dozen or so books I still don't understand when he directly talks about passages from Hegel or Fichte or Schelling or some other German idealist or whomever.
Daydreams and overvalued ideas are superstitions. Distortions are pictures. The ultimate command and duty is to enjoy. The ultimate enjoyment is the failure to meet a command or duty. A failure of duty is an excess or a shortcoming. We did too much or too little. We always exceed our fall short of the object cause of desire. Well being as moderation or cultivation of virtues which are moderations. But enjoyment is excessive. Daily habits are superstitions. Science can initiate a habit. Superstition sustains a habit. But we fail our superstitions. We fail superstitions by exceeding or falling short. We enjoy failing the command of the superstitions. But we also enjoy whatever is excessive.
Less self-plagiarism in this one. Feels like a follow-up to Less Than Nothing.
I think Zizek's repetition relieves me of my own ruminations. And when he adds something new it gives me room to imagine new things. Even after a dozen or so books I still don't understand when he directly talks about passages from Hegel or Fichte or Schelling or some other German idealist or whomever.
Daydreams and overvalued ideas are superstitions. Distortions are pictures. The ultimate command and duty is to enjoy. The ultimate enjoyment is the failure to meet a command or duty. A failure of duty is an excess or a shortcoming. We did too much or too little. We always exceed our fall short of the object cause of desire. Well being as moderation or cultivation of virtues which are moderations. But enjoyment is excessive. Daily habits are superstitions. Science can initiate a habit. Superstition sustains a habit. But we fail our superstitions. We fail superstitions by exceeding or falling short. We enjoy failing the command of the superstitions. But we also enjoy whatever is excessive.
August 24, 2024
I’ve read quite a bit of Zizek, and find his rollercoaster approach to philosophical and political concepts frequently compelling. Though reliant on his own interpretation of Hegel and Lacan to a fault, his “coffee without cream” analogies are memorable.
The first 2/3’s of Absolute Recoil reminded me of what I enjoy about him- heady concepts, optimism versus despair, existentialism, the self- all relevant. He anticipates counter-arguments within his own writing, which again can be entertaining and dare I say, dialectic. However, the last section of this book left me unimpressed: a vague thesis and a hundred pages of nonsensical Hegelian and Lacanian synthesis whose point seemed to be that there is no possibility of an underlying “point”. It was in one ear and out the other for the most part.
Overall always worth dipping into his thought processes now and again, but when he gets into pure philosophy, sans cinema or other referents, he stops even trying to make any point based in the real world, which whether we like it or not exists.
The first 2/3’s of Absolute Recoil reminded me of what I enjoy about him- heady concepts, optimism versus despair, existentialism, the self- all relevant. He anticipates counter-arguments within his own writing, which again can be entertaining and dare I say, dialectic. However, the last section of this book left me unimpressed: a vague thesis and a hundred pages of nonsensical Hegelian and Lacanian synthesis whose point seemed to be that there is no possibility of an underlying “point”. It was in one ear and out the other for the most part.
Overall always worth dipping into his thought processes now and again, but when he gets into pure philosophy, sans cinema or other referents, he stops even trying to make any point based in the real world, which whether we like it or not exists.
December 19, 2020
Demonstrated to me my limits and helped me overcome them.
I love how Zizek uses some of the most influential thinkers in human history - Hegel, Marx, Freud, Darwin, Lacan, Plato, Descartes, the Gospel writers and others - and weaves a common thread through all of their work. He'll point out where their thoughts coincide and where they differ. He isn't afraid to say where he thinks they went wrong and will correct their line of thinking using their own logic. Through this, Zizek begins to paint the outlines of an universality of Knowledge that we all spend our lives trying to grasp.
Beautiful
I love how Zizek uses some of the most influential thinkers in human history - Hegel, Marx, Freud, Darwin, Lacan, Plato, Descartes, the Gospel writers and others - and weaves a common thread through all of their work. He'll point out where their thoughts coincide and where they differ. He isn't afraid to say where he thinks they went wrong and will correct their line of thinking using their own logic. Through this, Zizek begins to paint the outlines of an universality of Knowledge that we all spend our lives trying to grasp.
Beautiful
July 24, 2025
People often frame this as one of Žižek's more "serious" works, an attempt to present his take on Hegelian ontology in Less Than Nothing in more summarized form, but at the end of the day, it's not that different from any of the rest of his works. Especially frustrating is his insistence on listing out "all" possible positions (before refuting them in turn), and his refusal to ever stage his own point without the prop of a foil. But perhaps most frustrating of all is the way he culls history (and the history of philosophy) in order to alight on the most interesting topics and figures, only to say absolutely nothing interesting about them whatsoever.
July 13, 2022
Not his best book, as it doesn’t really contain anything which he hasn’t described more thoroughly in his other works. It is generally a bit sloppier than works such as parallax view, the ticklish subject and the sublime object of ideology. However it is worth a read if you’re already familiar with Zizek.
The introduction is however incredibly well written and worthwhile.
The introduction is however incredibly well written and worthwhile.
July 3, 2019
Zizek has said that this is his best book. And it is, until the last chapter, which is a total mess.
That said, I understand his reading of Hegel much better now. This is his most clear explication.
That said, I understand his reading of Hegel much better now. This is his most clear explication.
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August 6, 2021Playfully unnerving recount of dialectical materialism. True to marxist language and critique without being dry and unattainable to the reader. Some vulgarity and religious content existing on the same page, still a good read.
February 26, 2020
Zizeks greatest philosophical work and probably the most readable and intelligible of his philosophical works
March 6, 2017
Maybe not the best starting point for Zizek, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I appreciate this great thinker. The labor spent working through his ideas is worth the pay off.
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January 27, 2017Philosophical materialism in all its forms – from scientific naturalism to Deleuzian New Materialism – has failed to meet the key theoretical and political challenges of the modern world. This is the burden of philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s argument in this pathbreaking and eclectic new work. Recent history has seen developments such as quantum physics and Freudian psychoanalysis, not to speak of the failure of twentieth-century communism, shake our understanding of existence.
In the process, the dominant tradition in Western philosophy lost its moorings. To bring materialism up to date, Žižek – himself a committed materialist and communist – proposes a radical revision of our intellectual heritage. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designated the “speculative” approach in thought.
Absolute Recoil is a startling reformulation of the basis and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. While focusing on how to overcome the transcendental approach without regressing to naïve, pre-Kantian realism, Žižek offers a series of excursions into today’s political, artistic, and ideological landscape, from Arnold Schoenberg’s music to the films of Ernst Lubitsch.
In the process, the dominant tradition in Western philosophy lost its moorings. To bring materialism up to date, Žižek – himself a committed materialist and communist – proposes a radical revision of our intellectual heritage. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designated the “speculative” approach in thought.
Absolute Recoil is a startling reformulation of the basis and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. While focusing on how to overcome the transcendental approach without regressing to naïve, pre-Kantian realism, Žižek offers a series of excursions into today’s political, artistic, and ideological landscape, from Arnold Schoenberg’s music to the films of Ernst Lubitsch.
February 26, 2015
A crash course in thinking "dialectically" from Slavoj Zizek. I read another review that viewed this book as like listening to Zizek's thought process, or his working notes, and that certainly rings true. It is disorganised and rambling but also contains genuine flashes of insight. Zizek talks in the introduction about this book as a demonstration of using dialectics rather than an exposition of what dialectics are. That is also certainly true, and it can make this tough going at times. But all that aside this is a masterful display of the incisive use of dialectics to demonstrate how an approach that might feel counter-intuitive is in fact the only way that can make sense of complex systems.
March 19, 2024
This book's main message, as well as Zizek's main philosophy, could be summed up in this sentence: "‘The position of dialectical materialism is that there is no peace even in the Void". A pretty anti-Buddhist idea! For him, reality itself, right from the beginning, is inconsistent and incomplete, not at peace with itself.
Zizek is the most fun philosopher to read, he's just an amazing writer! Zizek considers this book to be a "reprise" of his previous 1000-page opus Less than Nothing, which is great because it's short enough for me to finish it! While I was lost a lot while reading the book, the extremely engaging writing and powerful ideas are more than enough to guarantee a 5-star.
Zizek is the most fun philosopher to read, he's just an amazing writer! Zizek considers this book to be a "reprise" of his previous 1000-page opus Less than Nothing, which is great because it's short enough for me to finish it! While I was lost a lot while reading the book, the extremely engaging writing and powerful ideas are more than enough to guarantee a 5-star.
August 14, 2014
This book was really difficult for me, so I found on line an essay from the same author that, in a way, sums up the most important part of the book: http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijz...
Questo libro é stato veramente difficile per me, quindi ho trovato in rete un saggio dello stesso autore, che per certi versi, riassume le parti piú importanti del libro: http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijz...
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND VERSO BOOK (US) FOR THE PREVIEW!
Questo libro é stato veramente difficile per me, quindi ho trovato in rete un saggio dello stesso autore, che per certi versi, riassume le parti piú importanti del libro: http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijz...
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND VERSO BOOK (US) FOR THE PREVIEW!
December 31, 2014
I felt - simultaneously - not smart enough and too smart to read this book. Here were my thoughts: "..." oh, that's a very interesting way of thinking. I like that!
"..." What!? No really. I have no idea what you are talking about.
"..." Ok, cool...but where is your evidence?
"..." Ok, this is word-salad and nothing more.
"..." What!? No really. I have no idea what you are talking about.
"..." Ok, cool...but where is your evidence?
"..." Ok, this is word-salad and nothing more.
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December 23, 2015Slavoj Zizek may be the most inventive modern philosopher within the western tradition that we have working today. I'm not certain anyone else could have taken on the history of Dialectic Materialism reemerge out its own loss, hence the title "Absolute Recoil."Absolute Recoil is profound, witty and entertains while devastating phenomenological assumptions.
December 17, 2015
Re-read this and understood about 80% this time around
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February 6, 2015Essential reading for all scholars of Zizek
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