Bayarea415 was a big fan of him, and so am I. Žižek is an incredibly original thinker, easily top 100 of this century. Their documentaries Pervert’s Guide on Cinema/Ideology and Dreamworlds series are some of my favourite videos, and today I watched Žižek’s competition debate with Jordan Peterson, where the latter looked like a curious, heartbroken old man.

  • Muad'Dibber
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    352 years ago

    Zizek is trash imo, he appeals to faux-college-champaigne-socialists who value media criticism more than materialist analyses of capitalism and imperialism in the modern day.

    He also is socially reactionary, worked to overthrow Yugoslavia, and goes against AES every chance he gets.

    Its kind of a testament to the stupidity of most of the western left that they think this guy is some paragon of socialist thought, and not some quirky reactionary who makes a coherent statement 10% of the time.

    Slavoj Zizek

  • commet-alt-w
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    162 years ago

    finally realized why i do not like zizek, he aims to be elitist and incomprehensible, like he’s the only one in the world that can understand everything. he says words like “communism,” but what he’s really doing is post modernism. it’s like walking into an ideological death trap. post modernism is something the usa national security state has heavily funded for over a century

    • I recommend you check his debate with Peterson, where he rips apart Peterson for many minutes on post modernism and neo Marxism right wing crap. Relevant material for your doubts.

      • Ratette (she/her)
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        2 years ago

        I’ve read some of his shit takes in the guardian and he seems reactionary af ngl so im not a fan.

        I didnt know he embarassed peterson so I’ll always give anyone who destroys lobster boy a pat on the back for the very act of slamming that chauvinistic, white supremacist, racist, sexist, homophobe but its not enough for me to like the guy given his sussy takes on russia/Ukraine and his tacit support of NATO by extension.

        • I am also taken aback by his views on Russia’s operation. He is likely trying to play safe in Europe, with his doctorates and various positions. His documentaries were also insanely good.

          Very disappointed. Muad also gave me a masterlist to read. Why do figures have to be like this?

          • Ratette (she/her)
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            2 years ago

            It’s one of them, I can begin to understand content creators playing the game to not be deplatformed when the platform can bring good e.g. Hakim hasn’t exactly openly lambasted the libs about Ukraine as a bad example at least on his YouTube channel.

            What steps over the line from Marxist who wants to maintain their platform and opportunist shill is how they do it. In the case of Žižek it feels like the later in the sense he didn’t have to push pro NATO/imperialist view points to maintain his platform. He could of offered a more considered and materialistic take on the conflict or stfu but instead chose to go full pro NATO. That’s where he lost me.

            Why do figures have to be like this? 💰 I’d argue.

              • Ratette (she/her)
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                72 years ago

                Yeah and who says a broken clock can’t be right twice a day. He probably has made some really good points in the past.

                It’s that danger of putting modern scholars/thinkers etc on pedestals we need to be super careful about in the information age.

                Like I adore Shaun on YouTube (maybe its the common nationality and his sassy breakdowns) but I wouldn’t trust him to back me as a ML for example.

                • I still consider myself a baby leftist and by no means even half as educated as most of you here. I am very unconfident about identifying myself as anything beyond a socialist who can say the correct thing. This is how I transitioned: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/376206/comment/282571

                  But what I have always had is a very strong feeling to optimise things and do things for the greater good, learn a lot and never care about what the populist opinion is, being a rebel.

            • Yeah he cornered JP by asking him who the scary marxists are, where are they? JP simply couldn’t answer. But Zizek didnt really press hard enough on this. JP has no clue what he is talking about and cant even name a single marxist when asked, much less these heinous neo-post-mega-cultural-marxists that are destroying the fabric of western civilization or whatever. I feel like Zizek took mercy on him when JP was at his most vulnerable moment.

      • lemmygrabber
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        102 years ago

        The problem is that these debates are purely theatrical. Nothing comes out of these except for a moment of spectacle. A prinicpled person sharing a stage with peterson would have clocked him in the jaw.

        • JucheBot1988
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          62 years ago

          And honestly, Petersen’s takes on Marxism are so superficial that deconstructing them doesn’t take much education or intelligence. The guy has a following purely based on how charismatic he is, and his skill at guilting people. Zizek, of course, is un-guiltable. His “victory” against Petersen was due solely to that, not to any superior understanding of Marxism.

      • commet-alt-w
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        22 years ago

        watched one of the clips, and realizing i gotta watch the whole thing. listening to jordan petersons opening argument is not something i ever want to hear again

          • commet-alt-w
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            12 years ago

            glad i watched that, did answer a few questions i had about zizek. in long form, like this debate, what he is saying comes out more clear

    • @Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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      32 years ago

      I mean, what do we expect from someone who’s entire career is invested in Lacan?

      Not knocking the meat of the philosophical ideas. They’re pretty interesting and compelling. But they’re also incoherent as fuck.

  • Seanchaí (she/her)
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    2 years ago

    “It’s not only this, that we will get more states like China and Singapore, and so on — that is to say, authoritarian capitalism. I think that even in the West where we do have some kind of democracy — and I do acknowledge it’s a real achievement, definitely better than some dictatorial regime — it’s becoming more and more relevant.” - Zizek calling China “authoritarian capitalism” and the West is lucky not to be that.

    " Should those outside Europe — immigrants, refugees — be allowed to enter Europe? I’m not a utopian here. I’m not a stupid leftist liberal who is saying, “Oh, you know, horror, people are drowning in the Mediterranean from Africa, we should open our gates to them.” No, that’s stupidity." - Zizek saying that immigration is bad and Europeans should close their borders

    " Don’t you have, now, in the United States this madness with “yes means yes”? The idea is that when two people, if they want to have sex, it’s not enough if there is no no." - Zizek saying that consent in sexual intercourse is “madness.” This is fucking disgusting.

    “For example, as I always emphasize also in my book, I still have some sympathy for Obama.” - What??

    “And I think this is what we should be doing today. Not dream about big revolution, or whatever” - Zizek, who doesn’t believe in revolution

    "I don’t believe in progress. Let’s take the Marxist utopia at its most radical. Yes, we will somehow manage to overcome capitalism, there will be a new society of — of what? How do we know there will not be even some other type of greater horrors there, and so on? " -Zizek on why defeating capitalism is idealist and probably will make things worse somehow

    • Wow. Maybe he should not be given a free pass, but his works and commentary on pretty much everything before Russia’s operation seemed to be insanely good.

      A different take on this. I think it is the same thing that Chomsky (I do not like him much now) and other intellectuals have had to do, since USA and Europe intellectual figures do not have much choice but to survive through this time, when everyone can be labelled Russian/Chinese agent within a flicker moment. Zizek has a prominent voice in Europe.

        • Project Syndicate’s public service mission has received support from the Open Society Foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MasterCard Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, the European Journalism Centre, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, GAM, the Google Digital News Initiative, McKinsey Global Institute, the Nature Conservancy, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

          My guess was not far off. Žižek seems to have opted for safe haven in these weird times, compromising on his integrity. I expected him to be one of the last people to do this, but he seems to worry about his intellectual reach in West.

  • KiG V2
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    112 years ago

    Judging by the like/comment ratio I’m sure people are trashing him plenty. Me personally? I used to love him a lot back when I was in a hazy, nascent Marxist/Trot/Marxist-Leninist sphere in my life. I like some of his cultural takes on what I would call Wokeism, some were a little cringey but some were right in line with a phenomenon I feel is underanalyzed. However, after solidifying my position as an ML I became to resent his views on China, “authoritarians,” his doomerism, his more weird takes…it essentially became a removed in the armor of his brilliance I couldn’t unsee and suddenly he became less and less of a brilliant thinker and more of a ignorant guy who was trying too hard to be unique and getting lost in the sauce of academic pretentions instead of focusing on the attainable goal of socialism and what useful things one could be doing in the now to pursue it.

    I however don’t disrespect someone for liking him, believe me I get it I have been glued to his lectures before, and I’m sure if I gave them another try there would still be nice things I could say about his intellectual contributions to society. But solely on his contempt and misunderstanding of China alone I can’t fully trust his worldviews, analysis or prescriptions anymore.

  • @lxvi@lemmygrad.ml
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    112 years ago

    I think Zizek’s theory is a good 50/50. There’s a lot to disagree with. He’s abandoned every materialist principle of Marxism, reduced riots to trained apes acting out their consumerist lusts, denied valuable history. His theories on ideology and cinema are good.

    • ⚧️TheConquestOfBed♀️
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      2 years ago

      It’s really funny how his theory on postmodern ideology is spot-on and yet he is unable to see his own. But I suppose that’s why he calls it a trashcan. 🚮

  • Soviet Snake
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    102 years ago

    He does some fine Marxist analysis of popular culture, ask him to provide meaningful insights into real life scenarios and he has sniff no idea, and so on, and so on.

  • @frippa
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    32 years ago

    Zizek became Liberal with the years, bur I didn’t read enough about him to form an opinion