What do you think?
Rate this book
Living in the End Times
Žižek analyzes the end of the world at the hands of the “four riders of the apocalypse.”
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Žižek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Žižek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.
After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Žižek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Žižek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Žižek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Žižek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.
After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Žižek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Žižek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Slavoj Žižek
587 books6,622 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."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 180 reviews
October 31, 2011
Dear Slavoj,
I like you. In fact, ever since I saw a photo of you under a giant vagina, my boyfriend has theorized that I have an unhealthy obsession with you. You're starting to wear on me, though. Take a break from writing. Stop fantasizing about Lacan. Develop a slightly more linear thought process. Note: You can't do this in three weeks, so please don't write another book in three weeks. You write too much for it to be good, unique, or offer something new. You are hereby limited to one book every three years. No more repurposing previous material and spinning it into a new book, ok?
(Semi)Serious Review:
I feel like my buddy Slavoj is losing his edge with each new book. I discovered him with stars in my eyes as an undergraduate philosophy major, and he quickly became my favorite philosopher and an intellectual crush. But the long diatribes on subjects that are linked in his own mind are getting tedious, and I'm a little tired of hearing everything tied back to Hegel or Lacan.
I like you. In fact, ever since I saw a photo of you under a giant vagina, my boyfriend has theorized that I have an unhealthy obsession with you. You're starting to wear on me, though. Take a break from writing. Stop fantasizing about Lacan. Develop a slightly more linear thought process. Note: You can't do this in three weeks, so please don't write another book in three weeks. You write too much for it to be good, unique, or offer something new. You are hereby limited to one book every three years. No more repurposing previous material and spinning it into a new book, ok?
(Semi)Serious Review:
I feel like my buddy Slavoj is losing his edge with each new book. I discovered him with stars in my eyes as an undergraduate philosophy major, and he quickly became my favorite philosopher and an intellectual crush. But the long diatribes on subjects that are linked in his own mind are getting tedious, and I'm a little tired of hearing everything tied back to Hegel or Lacan.
February 19, 2012
I ate the whole thing without a background in philosophy. I probably shouldn't have done that. I probably should not be writing a review at all, but I have to comment on the ride. I could have used more bathroom breaks, but the driver was very fussy about gas stations. He didn't want any of those places where you have to beg the man for that tiny washroom key tied to a 2 x 4. The end times are distrustful times, so the log of shame knows no bounds. This meant I had to hold my pee a lot.
He likes to pass trucks a little too close. Smokes like a euro. I think he's some kind of communist.
In order to keep myself from being kicked out of the car, I had to do some things I'm not proud of: find a copy of 'Kung-Fu Panda'; read a story by Kafka; talk to the taxman about his poetry.
That's what I get for hitch-hiking alone.
He likes to pass trucks a little too close. Smokes like a euro. I think he's some kind of communist.
In order to keep myself from being kicked out of the car, I had to do some things I'm not proud of: find a copy of 'Kung-Fu Panda'; read a story by Kafka; talk to the taxman about his poetry.
That's what I get for hitch-hiking alone.
November 13, 2011
The basic premise is that Žižek's book deals with "the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse" - the worldwide ecological crisis, imbalances within the economic system, the biogenetic revolution, and exploding social divisions and ruptures. That's exactly what it says on the back of the book. Sounds pretty interesting. I thought, if anything, the structure of the book would be primarily about the "four horsemen".
Instead what Žižek did was structure his book based on the Kübler-Ross model. In other words, the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Okay. Interesting concept. According to Žižek what is meant to be grieved, the loss in question, is capitalism. I suppose if I'm digging for an actual thesis (which I'm sure is in there somewhere) the death of capitalism is what is leading to the end of the world as we know it. Mmmkay... I'm almost still on board. But this Žižek guy is pretty much out of his mind, and everyone seems to be in agreement on that fact.
I disagree that every point he made in the different chapters based on the stages of grieving really had that much to do with the individual stages of grieving. Someone in our book club group had written down several examples to show how they do fit, but even he admits he didn't catch that on his first reading. (Yes, this crazy guy read this book twice.) My argument is (and usually always will be) that these sorts of issues should be relatively easily identifiable on the first reading. If it's not, something's missing. And that's what I feel happened here.
There are some individual words of serious wisdom here. I wrote down several notes of interest, and there are plenty of specific topics I wish Žižek would have expanded upon or clarified. Instead he sort of threw them out there with no real sense of resolution or interest in resolving his statements. Žižek referenced a lot of seemingly interesting other articles and literature, all of which appears to me to be more fascinating than what Žižek himself got out of it.
Also? He's a shitty Marxist. Apparently Marxism is an entirely arbitrary word and has an even more arbitrary definition, which immediately negates what being a Marxist is. Just sayin. There's really no gray area in Marxism, so for Žižek to find some gray area is a bit suspect. Sure, take some ideas from Marxism, take some ideas from Lacan and Hegel, put it all together and then come up with a new name for your beliefs. Maybe it's just an issue of semantics, but this is exactly where semantics are important.
The only solution Žižek posited in this book is that Communism is the only way to save us, but at the same time agreed he wasn't entirely sure how to make that happen. Seems he just wanted to throw the idea out there and hope some kids take the idea, run with it, and figure out how to make it happen. Sort of like a schizophrenic handbook of sorts. Otherwise the book just ends, with no real conclusion. I read the paperback edition so there is an Afterword which actually clarifies a lot of issues and fills in a lot of holes he had left with the original text - but the one guy in our group who read the hardcover version missed out. His edition just ended after the chapter on Acceptance. When I look at it from that perspective I realize how sudden that would seem. Incomplete, even.
I have other issues too, like how it appears (based on only this one reading of Žižek so far) that he's really interested in serving his own career, which is ironic considering all that he has to say about capitalism. He claims what he is discussing is all of global importance, but this is a very Western-centric book. He focuses on Western society which certainly isn't global. One could argue that Western society is the dominant society, but that's not what Žižek suggests in the beginning, and that's certainly not what is suggested by the book cover.
I cannot get over just how misleading the book cover is.
The Kübler-Ross model structure is misleading as well. Perhaps if Žižek had published each chapter individually things would have been different. If he had thrown out small tracts like his beloved Communist Manifesto, I'd probably feel differently. I think how this book itself could have been improved is if he structured it as the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse based on his initial theory. Those could have been his chapters. The five stages of grieving could easily have been added throughout to give a little extra spice; as it was, there was too much spice and not enough cohesion and texture in the meat.
Žižek is way media-oriented - his interest lies in the media (film, news stories, radio, etc.) which is important especially in this day and age. But I don't think he recognized nearly enough the fact that the media is a corrupt organization just as is everything else.
Again, this is all based on one reading of one of his books. There are plenty of others, and I'll check them out. There's really no rush. He's interested in speaking to the elite, and I'm certainly not the elite. Whether or not I read his books is entirely inconsequential. There are plenty of other people out there who are interested in giving their money to promote him, and that's where he's going to pander his wares.
Instead what Žižek did was structure his book based on the Kübler-Ross model. In other words, the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Okay. Interesting concept. According to Žižek what is meant to be grieved, the loss in question, is capitalism. I suppose if I'm digging for an actual thesis (which I'm sure is in there somewhere) the death of capitalism is what is leading to the end of the world as we know it. Mmmkay... I'm almost still on board. But this Žižek guy is pretty much out of his mind, and everyone seems to be in agreement on that fact.
I disagree that every point he made in the different chapters based on the stages of grieving really had that much to do with the individual stages of grieving. Someone in our book club group had written down several examples to show how they do fit, but even he admits he didn't catch that on his first reading. (Yes, this crazy guy read this book twice.) My argument is (and usually always will be) that these sorts of issues should be relatively easily identifiable on the first reading. If it's not, something's missing. And that's what I feel happened here.
There are some individual words of serious wisdom here. I wrote down several notes of interest, and there are plenty of specific topics I wish Žižek would have expanded upon or clarified. Instead he sort of threw them out there with no real sense of resolution or interest in resolving his statements. Žižek referenced a lot of seemingly interesting other articles and literature, all of which appears to me to be more fascinating than what Žižek himself got out of it.
Also? He's a shitty Marxist. Apparently Marxism is an entirely arbitrary word and has an even more arbitrary definition, which immediately negates what being a Marxist is. Just sayin. There's really no gray area in Marxism, so for Žižek to find some gray area is a bit suspect. Sure, take some ideas from Marxism, take some ideas from Lacan and Hegel, put it all together and then come up with a new name for your beliefs. Maybe it's just an issue of semantics, but this is exactly where semantics are important.
The only solution Žižek posited in this book is that Communism is the only way to save us, but at the same time agreed he wasn't entirely sure how to make that happen. Seems he just wanted to throw the idea out there and hope some kids take the idea, run with it, and figure out how to make it happen. Sort of like a schizophrenic handbook of sorts. Otherwise the book just ends, with no real conclusion. I read the paperback edition so there is an Afterword which actually clarifies a lot of issues and fills in a lot of holes he had left with the original text - but the one guy in our group who read the hardcover version missed out. His edition just ended after the chapter on Acceptance. When I look at it from that perspective I realize how sudden that would seem. Incomplete, even.
I have other issues too, like how it appears (based on only this one reading of Žižek so far) that he's really interested in serving his own career, which is ironic considering all that he has to say about capitalism. He claims what he is discussing is all of global importance, but this is a very Western-centric book. He focuses on Western society which certainly isn't global. One could argue that Western society is the dominant society, but that's not what Žižek suggests in the beginning, and that's certainly not what is suggested by the book cover.
I cannot get over just how misleading the book cover is.
The Kübler-Ross model structure is misleading as well. Perhaps if Žižek had published each chapter individually things would have been different. If he had thrown out small tracts like his beloved Communist Manifesto, I'd probably feel differently. I think how this book itself could have been improved is if he structured it as the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse based on his initial theory. Those could have been his chapters. The five stages of grieving could easily have been added throughout to give a little extra spice; as it was, there was too much spice and not enough cohesion and texture in the meat.
Žižek is way media-oriented - his interest lies in the media (film, news stories, radio, etc.) which is important especially in this day and age. But I don't think he recognized nearly enough the fact that the media is a corrupt organization just as is everything else.
Again, this is all based on one reading of one of his books. There are plenty of others, and I'll check them out. There's really no rush. He's interested in speaking to the elite, and I'm certainly not the elite. Whether or not I read his books is entirely inconsequential. There are plenty of other people out there who are interested in giving their money to promote him, and that's where he's going to pander his wares.
December 8, 2017
Zizek sevdiğim bir felsefeci. Okuması zor olan kavramlarına belli bir akademik geçmiş birikim doğrultusunda, size bilindik temaları çokboyutlu gösterebiliyor. Fakat Ahir Zamanlarda Yaşarken, her ne kadar çok hızlı bitirmiş olsam da, yazarın bahsetmiş olduğu konseptlerin artık bayat ve aşırı bir populist bir yaklaşım içinde yazdığını düşünüyorum. Fakat, gene de kültürel, politik, ekonomik ve psiko-sosyolojik olarak yorumlar ilginçti.
September 15, 2016
"The God we get here is rather like the one in the Bolshevik joke about a talented Communist propagandist who, after his death, finds himself sent to Hell. He quickly sets about convincing the guards to let him go to Heaven. When the Devil notices his absence, he pays a visit to God, to demand that the propagandist be returned to Hell. However, as soon as the Devil begins his address, starting with "My Lord . . .," God interrupts him, saying: "First, I am not your Lord but a comrade. Second, are you crazy for talking to fictions—I don't even exist! And third, be quick, otherwise I'll miss my Party meeting!"
March 27, 2013
I haven't read enough of Zizek yet to be as "tired" of him as some of the other commentators to this thread. Personally I find his style fresh. His eyes are keen. He can watch the most ridiculous movies. (Kung Fu Panda features in this one) and find some deeper connection to culture and what this says about our sociological interactions. He is very aware and in tune with culture which makes him interesting as a philosopher. I find him facinating. Not only can most people not make these connections but the connections he makes are sometimes startling in their simplicity. I find it the most difficult when he references something I have not seen, read, or watched as he does not always expound enough on the details of the reference in some cases. In other cases I can understand that he does use similar anecdotes that I have seen before FROM HIM. I think this distinction needs to be made because, many authors use anecdotes we have all heard from other people and expect us to buy into this as new material. At least he is referencing his own insights and building upon his own mind. Isn't this how the mind works? We build on what we have grasped thus far? I find this a very mind to mind approach, that allows the reader to see where he is expanding and walk with him through his thoughts. Though I can understand how if you have read more of zizek this may be frustrating I think this is a natural process for any thinker and am just happy we have someone with such a keen mind to delve int Hegel and Lacants ideas and not be afraid to come up with his own as well.
July 14, 2022
deciding that this was the first book of philosophy i should read because my instagram moot liked žižek and i was going through a humiliating eurovision-fuelled slovenia phase was a decision i realised was really stupid at about page 20. nevertheless i managed to read and even sort of understand at least 65%. žižek is actually a very funny guy and you can tell he’s a genius but i feel i definitely would have got this better had i studied the entire works of marx, hegel, and lacan for several years. nevertheless, his meditations are reasonably clear and i liked how he integrates all sorts of pop culture and other references to history and architecture and politics in. what i did understand was very thought-provoking and i can empathise with his frustrations with neoliberalism. At least…. I think it was neoliberalism…..???
November 30, 2016
I am very proud of myself for finishing a book by Slavoj Žižek, as this has been an ambition for some while. (I’ve also learned from a friend that his name should be pronounced approximately Slav-osh His-ek. [EDIT: Correction to this in a comment below.]) This has been an ambition for years because much of what he writes is incredibly dense and difficult to read, unless you have a friendly familiarity with Hegel, Heidegger, Kant, et al. It isn’t merely that he references all these authors work, he uses their language and, in particular, Lacan’s. That is why it took me months to read this book - I periodically got bogged down in sentences like this:
I mean, come on. To be fair, though, on a number of occasions I tried to read this book at 5am when suffering from insomnia. That is evidently not the way to get the best from it. Nonetheless I persisted, because these philosophical quagmires are interspersed with fascinating and entirely comprehensible analysis of capitalism and its structural weaknesses. Moreover, Žižek throws in entertaining commentary on the ideological themes of films such as ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘Eagle Eye’. In short, this is a digressive and erratic book, covering an immense amount of ground. It approaches its theme of capitalism in crisis from many oblique directions, some of which work better for me than others. The arduous discussion of Hegelian Spirit quoted above is followed by an incisive summary of the Citizen’s Income concept.
Despite my complaints that I don’t know enough philosophy to understand swathes of ‘Living in the End Times’, overall the effort proved worth it. I found it largely thought-provoking and satisfying. It was quite unlike any other book I’ve read. Here are a few memorable bits:
This is an important critique of economics as a discipline, which reduces decisions to utility functions that are allegedly neutral.
I was interested in this as it implies that I’ve been taking Freud’s approach to sexuality far too literally.
This passage and subsequent pages brought to mind On Offence: The Politics of Indignation by Richard King. Žižek is talking of capitalism’s moral vacuum, which seems to provide an explanation for the reflexive offence-taking that On Offence: The Politics of Indignation deals with. King’s book comments that politics is experienced, 'as a clash of identities, as an expression of (or assault on) our individuality'. Without shared ethics or habitual civility, such politics will inevitably be acrimonious and, according to Žižek, useless at shifting power relations.
I also appreciated Žižek on climate change in the chapter titled 'Apocalypse at the Gates', in which he notes that ecological disaster has become normalised as something known but not believed. A contrast is drawn between the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change talks and the immediate, radical response to the financial crisis of 2008. We can afford to save the banks but not the climate. As he puts it, 'We may worry as much as we like about global realities, but it is Capital which is the Real of our lives'.
Despite the often baffling jumps from theme to theme and poetry to cinema to philosophy throughout, I managed to find my bearings by picking out what interested me most. If there was an overriding ideology buried in here, it escaped me. A great deal of the book went completely over my head, but what I understood I enjoyed. As a final example, this passage embroidered on points I’ve come across before about the condition of constant ambivalence in late capitalism.
Maybe one day I’ll even finish In Defense of Lost Causes.
If, then, ‘it is only as a result of itself that it is spirit’, this means that the standard discourse of Hegelian Spirit which alienates itself, and then recognises itself in its otherness and thus reappropriates its content, is deeply misleading: the self to which Spirit returns is produced in the very movement of this return, or, in other words, that to which the process of returning is returning is produced by the very process of returning.
I mean, come on. To be fair, though, on a number of occasions I tried to read this book at 5am when suffering from insomnia. That is evidently not the way to get the best from it. Nonetheless I persisted, because these philosophical quagmires are interspersed with fascinating and entirely comprehensible analysis of capitalism and its structural weaknesses. Moreover, Žižek throws in entertaining commentary on the ideological themes of films such as ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘Eagle Eye’. In short, this is a digressive and erratic book, covering an immense amount of ground. It approaches its theme of capitalism in crisis from many oblique directions, some of which work better for me than others. The arduous discussion of Hegelian Spirit quoted above is followed by an incisive summary of the Citizen’s Income concept.
Despite my complaints that I don’t know enough philosophy to understand swathes of ‘Living in the End Times’, overall the effort proved worth it. I found it largely thought-provoking and satisfying. It was quite unlike any other book I’ve read. Here are a few memorable bits:
We should add here that, in our everyday lives, ideology is at work especially in the apparently innocent reference to pure utility - one should never forget that, in the symbolic universe, ‘utility’ functions as a reflexive notion, that is, it always involves the assertion of utility as meaning.
This is an important critique of economics as a discipline, which reduces decisions to utility functions that are allegedly neutral.
Freudian ‘sexuality’ designates not merely a constrained content (sexual practices), but the very formal structure of the relationship between Outside and Inside, between the external incident/accident and its Aufhebung/integration into the internal libidinal process it triggers.
I was interested in this as it implies that I’ve been taking Freud’s approach to sexuality far too literally.
Civility stands for custom (or rather, what remains of custom) after the fall of the big Other: it assumes key role when subjects encounter a lack of substantial ethics, in other words when they find themselves in predicaments which cannot be resolved by way of relying on the existing ethical substance. [...] The more the ‘deep’ substantial ethical background is missing, the more a ‘superficial’ civility is needed.
This passage and subsequent pages brought to mind On Offence: The Politics of Indignation by Richard King. Žižek is talking of capitalism’s moral vacuum, which seems to provide an explanation for the reflexive offence-taking that On Offence: The Politics of Indignation deals with. King’s book comments that politics is experienced, 'as a clash of identities, as an expression of (or assault on) our individuality'. Without shared ethics or habitual civility, such politics will inevitably be acrimonious and, according to Žižek, useless at shifting power relations.
I also appreciated Žižek on climate change in the chapter titled 'Apocalypse at the Gates', in which he notes that ecological disaster has become normalised as something known but not believed. A contrast is drawn between the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change talks and the immediate, radical response to the financial crisis of 2008. We can afford to save the banks but not the climate. As he puts it, 'We may worry as much as we like about global realities, but it is Capital which is the Real of our lives'.
Despite the often baffling jumps from theme to theme and poetry to cinema to philosophy throughout, I managed to find my bearings by picking out what interested me most. If there was an overriding ideology buried in here, it escaped me. A great deal of the book went completely over my head, but what I understood I enjoyed. As a final example, this passage embroidered on points I’ve come across before about the condition of constant ambivalence in late capitalism.
The problem is rather that we are forced to choose without having at our disposal the kind of knowledge that would enable us to make a proper choice - more precisely, what renders us unable to act is not the fact that we ‘don’t yet know enough’ (about whether, say, human industry is responsible for global warming, and so on) but, on the contrary, the fact that we know too much while not knowing what to do with this mass of inconsistent knowledge, not knowing how to subordinate it to a Master-Signifier.
Maybe one day I’ll even finish In Defense of Lost Causes.
July 4, 2017
Zizek's View of the World
12 April 2017
When I read this book a few years back I wrote so much that I couldn’t actually put it all onto a single Goodreads post so I ended up putting half of it onto the post, and the second half of it into a comment. Well, that didn’t seem to work all that well, but then I discovered Blogger, and the art of Blogging, so I have since moved my original review from this site and moved it onto my blog, which for those who are interested in actually reading what I have written there you obviously have the link.
Anyway, while this wasn’t the book in which I discovered Zizek, it was the first of his books that I read, and I must admit that is was a brick. In fact it was so thick that I took a break halfway through to read a couple of other books (namely because I wanted to give them to friends and family for Christmas, but not before I read them) before going back and finishing it of. Well, needless to say that after this rather indepth introduction to his philosophy I was impressed, though maybe it had something to do with him analysing films such as The Dark Knight, I am Legend, and of course his favourite Kung Fu Panda.
The idea of the book is basically exploring the collapse of society, and in doing so he explores it through the grief cycle. There are chapters that relate to each stage of the cycle, but he breaks it up with other chapters that explore similar themes but also go off on a tangent. Actually, as I come to think about it this does happen to be Zizek that we are talking about so his writings tend to end up going all over the place, and what will happen is that he will descend into some deep discussion of Lacan and the concept of the other, and you will be struggling to try to understand what it going on, only to resurface at another point to discover that some of the things that he is saying are actually really challenging and make a lot of sense.
The interesting thing about Zizek is he is an self professed communist, which is strange because he grew up in Solvenia, which was on the otherside of the Iron Curtain. The thing is that while we might jump up and suggest that for something to see the failures of communism first hand is foolish to hold onto the past, we must remember what the problems that arose was – it was not so much the economic system, but rather the totalitarian system – the people behind the Iron Curtian weren’t upset and rebelling about the planned economy, they were upset at the fact that they didn’t have freedom of speech, and that despite all of the problems, they still lived in poverty while the party leaders lived in luxury.
The other interesting thing is despite being an Athiest he seems to have a good view of Christianity, or at least a view of what it should be in an ideal world. You see the problem with Christianity happens to be christians, but that isn’t surprising because, well, we happen to be human – the only difference between us and everybody else is that we understand that there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s favour so we simply trust God that he has redeemed us. The thing is that despite all of the good things about Christianity, bad people get involved and pretty much twist the whole concept around. In a sense they forget many of the basic tennants and simply go around condemning everybody for their sins.
Anyway, since I have already written quite a bit on this book I think I’ll just leave it off here and if you wish to go deeper into some of the concepts that are explored you can always jump over to by blog.
12 April 2017
When I read this book a few years back I wrote so much that I couldn’t actually put it all onto a single Goodreads post so I ended up putting half of it onto the post, and the second half of it into a comment. Well, that didn’t seem to work all that well, but then I discovered Blogger, and the art of Blogging, so I have since moved my original review from this site and moved it onto my blog, which for those who are interested in actually reading what I have written there you obviously have the link.
Anyway, while this wasn’t the book in which I discovered Zizek, it was the first of his books that I read, and I must admit that is was a brick. In fact it was so thick that I took a break halfway through to read a couple of other books (namely because I wanted to give them to friends and family for Christmas, but not before I read them) before going back and finishing it of. Well, needless to say that after this rather indepth introduction to his philosophy I was impressed, though maybe it had something to do with him analysing films such as The Dark Knight, I am Legend, and of course his favourite Kung Fu Panda.
The idea of the book is basically exploring the collapse of society, and in doing so he explores it through the grief cycle. There are chapters that relate to each stage of the cycle, but he breaks it up with other chapters that explore similar themes but also go off on a tangent. Actually, as I come to think about it this does happen to be Zizek that we are talking about so his writings tend to end up going all over the place, and what will happen is that he will descend into some deep discussion of Lacan and the concept of the other, and you will be struggling to try to understand what it going on, only to resurface at another point to discover that some of the things that he is saying are actually really challenging and make a lot of sense.
The interesting thing about Zizek is he is an self professed communist, which is strange because he grew up in Solvenia, which was on the otherside of the Iron Curtain. The thing is that while we might jump up and suggest that for something to see the failures of communism first hand is foolish to hold onto the past, we must remember what the problems that arose was – it was not so much the economic system, but rather the totalitarian system – the people behind the Iron Curtian weren’t upset and rebelling about the planned economy, they were upset at the fact that they didn’t have freedom of speech, and that despite all of the problems, they still lived in poverty while the party leaders lived in luxury.
The other interesting thing is despite being an Athiest he seems to have a good view of Christianity, or at least a view of what it should be in an ideal world. You see the problem with Christianity happens to be christians, but that isn’t surprising because, well, we happen to be human – the only difference between us and everybody else is that we understand that there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s favour so we simply trust God that he has redeemed us. The thing is that despite all of the good things about Christianity, bad people get involved and pretty much twist the whole concept around. In a sense they forget many of the basic tennants and simply go around condemning everybody for their sins.
Anyway, since I have already written quite a bit on this book I think I’ll just leave it off here and if you wish to go deeper into some of the concepts that are explored you can always jump over to by blog.
Read
October 28, 2011I read it very fast, and while I was reading it I kept thinking, "This is just what I have always thought." Then, afterwards, I couldn't remember anything about it.
March 11, 2024
Žižek is Hegel and Roger Ebert in one. This is my first book of his, although I’ve watched his famous “debates” with the cartoonish Jordan Peterson, and other videos that prepared me for his cinephilia. This was written in 2008, so the reader is treated to analyses of the Bourne movies, The Dark Knight, and quite an in depth discussion of the Hegelian dialectics at work in Kung Fu Panda, which now I no longer need to watch. So I can thank him for that. As much as I enjoyed reading him give vent to his (and my own) frustrations over the movie I Am Legend and the other two older cinematic representations of Matheson’s short story, his digressions get very tiresome.
The task at hand is to analyze the potential end of human civilization: how it might end, and the various factors that have contributed to our current dire situation. He argues that society is going through the classic stages of grief many go through after the loss of a loved one. All this is great, if he stayed on topic for more than a few pages at a time, before getting sidetracked up his own ass with intentionally obscurantist writing. And, hey, I’ve read enough philosophy to know what I’m signing up for here and to understand the ideas being discussed after sifting through the jargon and rhetoric. But if his chapters are titled after each of the stages of grief, he could have done a bit more to tie his points to that theme a little better.
He makes a lot of great points throughout, especially when discussing Marx and late-stage capitalism, but he gets in his own way through his digressions. Also, he tends to declare as fact what are his own personal opinions with zero elaboration and back up. For example, one of his hot takes is that Daphne du Maurier is a better writer than Virginia Woolf. Ok, I don’t agree, and that’s fine, but, um, that’s a bold statement, so…why? Care to elaborate?
Anyway, I still enjoyed this. Do not read without a pretty solid background in Marx, Kant, Hegel, Lacan and early 2000’s cinema.
The task at hand is to analyze the potential end of human civilization: how it might end, and the various factors that have contributed to our current dire situation. He argues that society is going through the classic stages of grief many go through after the loss of a loved one. All this is great, if he stayed on topic for more than a few pages at a time, before getting sidetracked up his own ass with intentionally obscurantist writing. And, hey, I’ve read enough philosophy to know what I’m signing up for here and to understand the ideas being discussed after sifting through the jargon and rhetoric. But if his chapters are titled after each of the stages of grief, he could have done a bit more to tie his points to that theme a little better.
He makes a lot of great points throughout, especially when discussing Marx and late-stage capitalism, but he gets in his own way through his digressions. Also, he tends to declare as fact what are his own personal opinions with zero elaboration and back up. For example, one of his hot takes is that Daphne du Maurier is a better writer than Virginia Woolf. Ok, I don’t agree, and that’s fine, but, um, that’s a bold statement, so…why? Care to elaborate?
Anyway, I still enjoyed this. Do not read without a pretty solid background in Marx, Kant, Hegel, Lacan and early 2000’s cinema.
October 16, 2013
[T]he way to rid ourselves of our masters is not for humankind itself to become a collective master over nature, but to recognize the imposture in the very notion of the Master.
Inexplicably the last week has been one of Žižek. I struggled, slipped and regrouped to push through Living in the End Times. I find it increasingly interesting that the Slovene so often adopts theological motifs especially towards a Marxist Future: one can almost sense a crescendo of trumpets. I'm not sure of much, but this is exhilarating reading except when broaching the nuances of either Lacan or Marx; it then becomes rather numbing. This intimidating tome borrows the cycle of grief from Kubler-Ross (denial/anger/bargaining/depression/acceptance)and thusly explores the banking crisis, the viability of multiculturalism, the ethics of Hollywood, the threat of both a virtual post-humanity as well as the bio-genetic organic possibility: architecture and film receive even treatments and there's even an examination of Joself Fritzl through a parsing of Sound of Music. What, you say? The Austrian who abducted, raped and impregnated his daughter and then kept the brood underground for years, that guy? Yep. It isn't pretty. I think the postmodern possibilities where everything is plastic and differences become relative is a threatening soil. Irony can be ignored and the glib becomes noisome.
Inexplicably the last week has been one of Žižek. I struggled, slipped and regrouped to push through Living in the End Times. I find it increasingly interesting that the Slovene so often adopts theological motifs especially towards a Marxist Future: one can almost sense a crescendo of trumpets. I'm not sure of much, but this is exhilarating reading except when broaching the nuances of either Lacan or Marx; it then becomes rather numbing. This intimidating tome borrows the cycle of grief from Kubler-Ross (denial/anger/bargaining/depression/acceptance)and thusly explores the banking crisis, the viability of multiculturalism, the ethics of Hollywood, the threat of both a virtual post-humanity as well as the bio-genetic organic possibility: architecture and film receive even treatments and there's even an examination of Joself Fritzl through a parsing of Sound of Music. What, you say? The Austrian who abducted, raped and impregnated his daughter and then kept the brood underground for years, that guy? Yep. It isn't pretty. I think the postmodern possibilities where everything is plastic and differences become relative is a threatening soil. Irony can be ignored and the glib becomes noisome.
October 9, 2013
Well its quite hard , ie realising why not a single one of ma friends liked. or from those that probably would, has been labeleled in such a derog-downright silly kind'a'way.
Peerhaps in the end, my own mind, is also in the same mess Zizek´s is, but he seems to be in the perfect way to decipher the current chaotic condition, our world has currently stepped in, not that he offers straight cut answers, but at least he gives it a few serious tries. Such a maelstorm of examples, ranging from one history medium to the next.. At times his contorted history-political axioms medium ebbs away in sheer speculation-utter confusion . But then in a couple of pragraphs,( if U are still in a position to grab his meaning) You get such a profound sense of his ~personal realisation~ as if he has offered U a doorkey to his own perception, wrapped in teethers of his own multi-angled mind..
Peerhaps in the end, my own mind, is also in the same mess Zizek´s is, but he seems to be in the perfect way to decipher the current chaotic condition, our world has currently stepped in, not that he offers straight cut answers, but at least he gives it a few serious tries. Such a maelstorm of examples, ranging from one history medium to the next.. At times his contorted history-political axioms medium ebbs away in sheer speculation-utter confusion . But then in a couple of pragraphs,( if U are still in a position to grab his meaning) You get such a profound sense of his ~personal realisation~ as if he has offered U a doorkey to his own perception, wrapped in teethers of his own multi-angled mind..
February 27, 2021
It’s like how Bruce Springsteen fans unequivocally fawn over every new release of his even when it’s clear he’s just a senile drunk drivers’ rights activist who employs the n word religiously now.
That’s me with Žižek. Still good
That’s me with Žižek. Still good
June 21, 2016
¡Es mucho muy bueno! Si fueron siguiendo mis publicaciones estos días se deben haber aburrido bastante. Debo haber agregado mil libros donde en la reseña citaba a este libro. Es que este libro está hecho con pedacitos de mil otros libros. Zizek leyó un montón y sabe un montón. Todo el tiempo me fue pasando que decía: "Uy, no, no tengo la menor idea sobre..." Arquitectura, Arte, Historia de Camboya, Historia de Haiti, Rusia, Lacan, Freud, Marx, etc. Pero bueno, te incentiva a seguir leyendo y aprendiendo.
Como malo diría que no es la obra maestra de Zizek. Es más bien un rejunte, pareciera que está desesperado por sacar un libro por mes. Es impresionante lo que escribe este muchacho. Pero es entretenido y actualizado.
El libro toma la idea del modelo de Kübler-Ross, de manera que frente a la idea traumática del fin del capitalismo experimentamos Negación, Ira, Negociación, Depresión y finalmente Aceptación. Sobre eso despliega una cantidad de teoría y conocimiento bestial, y muy interesante.
Creo que le falta una propuesta, y sobre el final lo admite. Pero de todas formas es interesante, creo que comulga con lo que alguna vez le escuché decir a Chiara Lubich: El mundo nuevo viene, implacable. Podemos ponerle trabas, o ayudarlo, pero venir, viene. Aunque me imagino que entre ellos hubieran diferido un poco en la imagen sobre el mundo nuevo.
Algunas otras cosas sobre las que se insiste mucho y me parece que me quedan:
- Hay que tener cuidado con las propuestas que intentan escapar al capitalismo, pero solo le ponen redes de contención (a imagen de la Foxconn poniendo redes alrrededor de sus fábricas para que no se maten los empleados).
- El papel de la ideología (el gran tema de Zizek). ¡Cuidado!, en todo hay ideología, es mentira que la sociedad liberal actual es el fin de la ideología y cada uno hace lo que quiere. Hay una ideología hegemónica que nos dicta que hacer a cada paso.
- Relacionado con lo anterior, esta sociedad pos-política en la que nos toca vivir tiene grandes problemas por alejarse de la política, la forma de volver a tener el control, de repartir el poder es volver a la política. Economía despolitizada (la economía como ciencia natural) es en realidad la economía, las decisiones en manos de unos pocos, esos pocos tienen el poder.
- La discusión que le plantea al liberalismo respecto del derecho del otro: si cada uno hace lo que quiere, y es libre, ¿Quién tiene razón, el que usa Burka en Paris, el homosexual en Amsterdam, el que se burla de Mahoma, el que pone una bomba como reivindicación? Liberalismo no es tan sencillo como parece...
Merecidas cinco estrellas.
Como malo diría que no es la obra maestra de Zizek. Es más bien un rejunte, pareciera que está desesperado por sacar un libro por mes. Es impresionante lo que escribe este muchacho. Pero es entretenido y actualizado.
El libro toma la idea del modelo de Kübler-Ross, de manera que frente a la idea traumática del fin del capitalismo experimentamos Negación, Ira, Negociación, Depresión y finalmente Aceptación. Sobre eso despliega una cantidad de teoría y conocimiento bestial, y muy interesante.
Creo que le falta una propuesta, y sobre el final lo admite. Pero de todas formas es interesante, creo que comulga con lo que alguna vez le escuché decir a Chiara Lubich: El mundo nuevo viene, implacable. Podemos ponerle trabas, o ayudarlo, pero venir, viene. Aunque me imagino que entre ellos hubieran diferido un poco en la imagen sobre el mundo nuevo.
Algunas otras cosas sobre las que se insiste mucho y me parece que me quedan:
- Hay que tener cuidado con las propuestas que intentan escapar al capitalismo, pero solo le ponen redes de contención (a imagen de la Foxconn poniendo redes alrrededor de sus fábricas para que no se maten los empleados).
- El papel de la ideología (el gran tema de Zizek). ¡Cuidado!, en todo hay ideología, es mentira que la sociedad liberal actual es el fin de la ideología y cada uno hace lo que quiere. Hay una ideología hegemónica que nos dicta que hacer a cada paso.
- Relacionado con lo anterior, esta sociedad pos-política en la que nos toca vivir tiene grandes problemas por alejarse de la política, la forma de volver a tener el control, de repartir el poder es volver a la política. Economía despolitizada (la economía como ciencia natural) es en realidad la economía, las decisiones en manos de unos pocos, esos pocos tienen el poder.
- La discusión que le plantea al liberalismo respecto del derecho del otro: si cada uno hace lo que quiere, y es libre, ¿Quién tiene razón, el que usa Burka en Paris, el homosexual en Amsterdam, el que se burla de Mahoma, el que pone una bomba como reivindicación? Liberalismo no es tan sencillo como parece...
Merecidas cinco estrellas.
January 2, 2021
Although the structure seems to get lost sometimes, the final chapter and the afterword really tie this together
June 2, 2013
For the last few years Žižek has been exploring a set of ideas, some related to and developing Badiou’s notion of the Idea of communism and others developing an analysis based around the enclosure of the commons of internal and external life, of ecological catastrophe and of exclusion. These ideas come together in this book that is, in itself, a continuation of a case being developed through Once is Tragedy and In Defence of Lost Causes, but in this case he takes a different turn exploring the ‘end of capitalism’ through the five stages of dying associated with the work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. As with so much of Žižek’s work, however, I am more engaged with the big picture and really like the frame he brings to bear here – the five stages and the four antagonisms in a single piece – than I am convinced by the specifics of his case.
My problem with the specifics lies in three aspects of the argument. First, I have trouble with the Lacanian aspect in that while I accept that these psychoanalytic approaches can be helpful, to generalise the motifs to a whole of social order seems to risk pushing psychoanalysis beyond its limits. That said, he is backing off the excesses of psychoanalysis we saw in his late 1990s and early 2000s work. Second, his prolific publications programme makes him hard to keep up with but more that he continually recycles and reiterates sections of his previous work while developing the case. This seems to me to be thinking out loud in public, which is a little indulgent – although I see here how the four antagonisms have developed through the previous two works to become more sophisticated here. That said, there is repetition in this book, with sections of the Afterword (added to the paperback) repeating almost word for word and using identical evidence as the main text. It is also hard to see exactly why the Afterword has been added. Third, Žižek’s pyrotechnics (in the blurb Sean O’Hagen is quoted as describing as “part philosophical tightrope, part performance-art marathon, part intellectual roller coaster ride”) are in need of a rigorous and ferocious editing.
All of this is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this (and I am not going to embark on a long critique, in part because I suspect that would take about 20,000 words) but that it could have been tighter and more focussed. Problematically, like so many of us in the world of academic analysis, the case is a much better analysis than it is a programme, other than the fairly trite point that even a universalist response to the crisis must be focussed on local conditions.
That said, there are parts of the analysis I really like – faith-based politics as a politics of anger at the crisis of capitalism is an unsettling and engaging case; post-modern politics as a sign of political depression, and the notion of a debate about political economy as bourgeois classes bargaining with the crisis/end of capitalism.
I’m pretty sure I’ll come back to parts of this, but its episodic character (the product of framing the case through Kübler-Ross’s work) means that it seems to lack overall coherence, and appears as if it is a working through of further ideas rather than being something like an end point – although the rapidity and fluidity of change associated with the crisis as well as collapse of grand-narratives means we’ll be working through ideas for quite some time.
My problem with the specifics lies in three aspects of the argument. First, I have trouble with the Lacanian aspect in that while I accept that these psychoanalytic approaches can be helpful, to generalise the motifs to a whole of social order seems to risk pushing psychoanalysis beyond its limits. That said, he is backing off the excesses of psychoanalysis we saw in his late 1990s and early 2000s work. Second, his prolific publications programme makes him hard to keep up with but more that he continually recycles and reiterates sections of his previous work while developing the case. This seems to me to be thinking out loud in public, which is a little indulgent – although I see here how the four antagonisms have developed through the previous two works to become more sophisticated here. That said, there is repetition in this book, with sections of the Afterword (added to the paperback) repeating almost word for word and using identical evidence as the main text. It is also hard to see exactly why the Afterword has been added. Third, Žižek’s pyrotechnics (in the blurb Sean O’Hagen is quoted as describing as “part philosophical tightrope, part performance-art marathon, part intellectual roller coaster ride”) are in need of a rigorous and ferocious editing.
All of this is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this (and I am not going to embark on a long critique, in part because I suspect that would take about 20,000 words) but that it could have been tighter and more focussed. Problematically, like so many of us in the world of academic analysis, the case is a much better analysis than it is a programme, other than the fairly trite point that even a universalist response to the crisis must be focussed on local conditions.
That said, there are parts of the analysis I really like – faith-based politics as a politics of anger at the crisis of capitalism is an unsettling and engaging case; post-modern politics as a sign of political depression, and the notion of a debate about political economy as bourgeois classes bargaining with the crisis/end of capitalism.
I’m pretty sure I’ll come back to parts of this, but its episodic character (the product of framing the case through Kübler-Ross’s work) means that it seems to lack overall coherence, and appears as if it is a working through of further ideas rather than being something like an end point – although the rapidity and fluidity of change associated with the crisis as well as collapse of grand-narratives means we’ll be working through ideas for quite some time.
June 16, 2012
While sporadic in argument and full of the normal Lacan-Hegel/Hegel-Lacan dialectical twists, this is one of the more interesting of Zizek's less scholarly polemics. While more nuanced than his prior polemics such as "In Defense of Lost Causes" and not as rigorous (or as menacing) as his current tome on Hegel, his sections of the denial in the liberal utopian "present" seem particularly horrowing as Obama's first tenure comes to a disappointing end, and the European Dream seems to be coming to a halt that stems from a mixture of German sado-monetarism, North European financialization, and lack of productive capacity in Southern Europe, his reading of the tendency to valorize the "other" seems like a necessary but more entertaining pulling from the themes of Badiou's "Metapolitics." Yet his pessimistic tone in "acceptance" seems to lead to some what his problems with Occupy may have been, but also indicate why he may not have been able to foresee either.
The looming caveat here is the lingering "non-style" and "non-argument" of Zizek, a kind of discursiveness and aphorism through joke that resembles Nietzsche or H.L. Mencken as much as a Hegelian Marxist or a Left Lacanian theorist. Furthermore, the structure of this polemic as an "opera" actually causes a fugue, where the arguments make sense in the context of Zizek's corpus, but if one started here, it would be very easy to draw the wrong conclusions. The overlay of "denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance" seems to create a unity that often seemed to be lacking in the actual arguments, many of which anyone familiar with Zizek's (quite humorous and often excellent) speeches would be recognize immediately.
Yet the reminder that many leftists who fear Zizek's conclusions don't want to here: Liberal modernity and the current degeneration of capitalism aren't likely to end in a bang, or a whimper, or in a crash, but a prolonged violent drowning. His call to return to a modified communism, one that has flipped Marx on its head and returned to (German) Idealism with sounder political economy, may be more precarious than it seems. This book doesn't crash into the iceberg, but it doesn't get you to shore either: That's part of Zizek's call, it's time to start rowing. What remains unclear if Zizek has more of an answer here than any of us deck chairs on this titanic.
The looming caveat here is the lingering "non-style" and "non-argument" of Zizek, a kind of discursiveness and aphorism through joke that resembles Nietzsche or H.L. Mencken as much as a Hegelian Marxist or a Left Lacanian theorist. Furthermore, the structure of this polemic as an "opera" actually causes a fugue, where the arguments make sense in the context of Zizek's corpus, but if one started here, it would be very easy to draw the wrong conclusions. The overlay of "denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance" seems to create a unity that often seemed to be lacking in the actual arguments, many of which anyone familiar with Zizek's (quite humorous and often excellent) speeches would be recognize immediately.
Yet the reminder that many leftists who fear Zizek's conclusions don't want to here: Liberal modernity and the current degeneration of capitalism aren't likely to end in a bang, or a whimper, or in a crash, but a prolonged violent drowning. His call to return to a modified communism, one that has flipped Marx on its head and returned to (German) Idealism with sounder political economy, may be more precarious than it seems. This book doesn't crash into the iceberg, but it doesn't get you to shore either: That's part of Zizek's call, it's time to start rowing. What remains unclear if Zizek has more of an answer here than any of us deck chairs on this titanic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 11, 2011
Arranged in five sections that correspond to the Kübler-Ross model of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), Žižek's new book Living in the End Times tracks what he perceives to be the slow decay of postmodern capitalism. He's covered most of these big themes elsewhere (opposition to "tolerance" and liberal multiculturalism, disdain for "Zionist anti-semitism," practical applications of the "parallax view," distrust of European and US-style "democracy," and a need for some sort of ill-defined radical Marxist "Christian" emancipatory movement (in the sense that one takes Jesus' message about love seriously, and also in the sense that one believes that "God" died on the cross on Calvary Hill)), and the parts of the book where responds to other scholars (Dipesh Chakrabarty, Alain Badiou, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Catherine Malabou, etc.) in an effort to clarify points about the the works of Marx, Lacan, Freud, et al. can get rather tedious. Moreover, despite the author's attempt to give the book structure by means of the five K-R-themed chapters, most of the material appears to have been cobbled together from notes, lectures, work that has appeared in magazines or on the internet, previous books, and so forth. Nevertheless, there are some amazing moments in here, such as Žižek's description of Christopher Nolan's Joker as an "antihero" of late capitalism as well as his wonderful comparison of the high kitsch of The Sound of Music with the high kitsch achieved by Josef Fritzl in the course of sexually abusing his imprisoned daughter so as to create a "second family" in his basement (this passage alone is worth the price of admission). Living in the End Times is best read in 5-10 page chunks, since it's simply too broad and discursive to be digested in a single sitting. Alas, the prescription for social change to be found in here--which essentially amounts to "take action (or don't take action, if that's the right thing to do) because everything is so rotten!"--might be "inspiring" in some vague way, but it isn't particularly helpful.
February 3, 2021
"When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: 'Don't think, don't politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!'" (p. 3)
"Every civilization which disavows its barbarian potential has already capitulated to barbarism." (p. 6)
"In today's epoch, a state power can proudly admit to its dark side, advertising the fact that it is discreetly doing dirty things it is better for us not to know about." (p. 10)
"Are, then, today's ethico-legal neoconservatives not a little bit like Scottie in Hitchcock's Vertigo? In wanting to recreate the lost order, to make a new distinguished Madeleine out of today's promiscuous and vulgar Judy, they will sooner or later be forced to admit not that it is impossible to restore Madeleine (the old traditional mores) to life, but that Madeleine was already Judy: the corruption they are fighting in the modern permissive, secular, egotistic, etc., society was present from the very beginning." (p. 29)
"This is the true utopia, the idea that a legal order can make recompense for its founding crimes, thereby retroactively cleansing itself of its guilt and regaining its innocence." (p. 36)
"The mechanisms which will bring about social peace are independent of the will of individuals as well as of their merits." (p. 37)
"Terror and mercy are thus closely linked; they are effectively the front and the back of the same power structure: only a power which asserts its full terroristic right and capacity to destroy anything and anyone it wants can symmetrically universalize mercy -- since this power could have destroyed everyone, those who survive do so thanks to the mercy of those in power." (p. 99)
"In the summer of 1846, Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay taxes (raised to finance the Mexican war). When Emerson visited him in jail and asked 'What are you doing in here?' Thoreau answered: 'What are you doing out there?' This is the proper radical answer to the liberal's sympathetic concern for the excluded: 'How come that they are out there, excluded from public space?' -- 'How come that you are in here, included in it?'" (p. 124)
"In order to truly awaken from the capitalist 'dogmatic dream' and recognize this other true heart of darkness, we should re-apply to our situation Brecht's old quip from his Beggars' Opera: 'What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?'" (p. 164)
"Only in capitalism is exploitation 'naturalized,' inscribed into the functioning of the economy, and not the result of extra-economic pressure and violence. This is why, with capitalism, we enjoy personal freedom and equality: there is no need for explicit social domination, since domination is already implicit in the structure of the production process." (p. 207)
"...a nation exists only insofar as its members take themselves as members of this nation and act accordingly, it has absolutely no content, no substantial consistency, outside this activity; and the same goes for, say, the notion of communism -- this notion 'generates its own actualization' by way of motivating people to struggle for it." (p. 231)
"...a capitalist who dedicates himself unconditionally to the capitalist drive is effectively ready to put everything, including the survival of humanity, at stake, not for any 'pathological' gain or goal, but simply for the sake of the reproduction of the system as an end-in-itself..." (p. 335)
"We should thus mobilize for a communist struggle at every point where social conflicts cannot be resolved because they are 'false' conflicts, conflicts whose coordinates are determined by ideological mystification. Communism as a movement should intervene in such deadlocks, and its first gesture should be to redefine the problem, to reject the way that it is presented and perceived in the public ideological space. Say we are told that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a struggle of Western secular democracy against Muslim fundamentalism -- of course, if the problem is formulated in these terms, it cannot be resolved, and we are in a deadlock. The communist move is here to reject these very terms and to define a real Third Way." (p. 416)
"...our survival itself depends on a series of stable natural parameters which we automatically take for granted (temperature, the composition of the air, sufficient water and energy supplies, etc.): we can 'do what we want' only insofar as we remain marginal enough so as not to seriously perturb the parameters of life on earth. The limitation on our freedom that becomes palpable with ecological disturbances is the paradoxical outcome of the exponential growth of our freedom and power: our increasing ability to transform nature around us can destabilize the basic conditions of human life." (p. 423)
"Capital's self-expansion also sets clear limits to so-called ethical capitalism. In June 2010, the Apple manufacturer Foxconn (a Taiwanese-owned company assembling iPads) in Shenzhen (China) was plagued by a series of suicides among its workers, the result of stressful work conditions (long hours, low pay, high pressure). After the eleventh worker jumped from a high floor to his death, the company introduced a series of measures: compelling workers to sign contracts promising not to kill themselves, to report fellow workers who look depressed, to go to psychiatric institutions if their mental health deteriorates, etc. To add insult to injury, Foxconn started to put up safety nets around the buildings of its vast factory. This is ethical capitalism at its purest, taking care even of the psychic welfare of the workers instead of changing the exploitative conditions which are responsible for their psychic breakdowns. The 'ethical' side of capitalism is thus the result of a complex process of ideological abstraction or obliteration." (p. 426)
"Every civilization which disavows its barbarian potential has already capitulated to barbarism." (p. 6)
"In today's epoch, a state power can proudly admit to its dark side, advertising the fact that it is discreetly doing dirty things it is better for us not to know about." (p. 10)
"Are, then, today's ethico-legal neoconservatives not a little bit like Scottie in Hitchcock's Vertigo? In wanting to recreate the lost order, to make a new distinguished Madeleine out of today's promiscuous and vulgar Judy, they will sooner or later be forced to admit not that it is impossible to restore Madeleine (the old traditional mores) to life, but that Madeleine was already Judy: the corruption they are fighting in the modern permissive, secular, egotistic, etc., society was present from the very beginning." (p. 29)
"This is the true utopia, the idea that a legal order can make recompense for its founding crimes, thereby retroactively cleansing itself of its guilt and regaining its innocence." (p. 36)
"The mechanisms which will bring about social peace are independent of the will of individuals as well as of their merits." (p. 37)
"Terror and mercy are thus closely linked; they are effectively the front and the back of the same power structure: only a power which asserts its full terroristic right and capacity to destroy anything and anyone it wants can symmetrically universalize mercy -- since this power could have destroyed everyone, those who survive do so thanks to the mercy of those in power." (p. 99)
"In the summer of 1846, Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay taxes (raised to finance the Mexican war). When Emerson visited him in jail and asked 'What are you doing in here?' Thoreau answered: 'What are you doing out there?' This is the proper radical answer to the liberal's sympathetic concern for the excluded: 'How come that they are out there, excluded from public space?' -- 'How come that you are in here, included in it?'" (p. 124)
"In order to truly awaken from the capitalist 'dogmatic dream' and recognize this other true heart of darkness, we should re-apply to our situation Brecht's old quip from his Beggars' Opera: 'What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?'" (p. 164)
"Only in capitalism is exploitation 'naturalized,' inscribed into the functioning of the economy, and not the result of extra-economic pressure and violence. This is why, with capitalism, we enjoy personal freedom and equality: there is no need for explicit social domination, since domination is already implicit in the structure of the production process." (p. 207)
"...a nation exists only insofar as its members take themselves as members of this nation and act accordingly, it has absolutely no content, no substantial consistency, outside this activity; and the same goes for, say, the notion of communism -- this notion 'generates its own actualization' by way of motivating people to struggle for it." (p. 231)
"...a capitalist who dedicates himself unconditionally to the capitalist drive is effectively ready to put everything, including the survival of humanity, at stake, not for any 'pathological' gain or goal, but simply for the sake of the reproduction of the system as an end-in-itself..." (p. 335)
"We should thus mobilize for a communist struggle at every point where social conflicts cannot be resolved because they are 'false' conflicts, conflicts whose coordinates are determined by ideological mystification. Communism as a movement should intervene in such deadlocks, and its first gesture should be to redefine the problem, to reject the way that it is presented and perceived in the public ideological space. Say we are told that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a struggle of Western secular democracy against Muslim fundamentalism -- of course, if the problem is formulated in these terms, it cannot be resolved, and we are in a deadlock. The communist move is here to reject these very terms and to define a real Third Way." (p. 416)
"...our survival itself depends on a series of stable natural parameters which we automatically take for granted (temperature, the composition of the air, sufficient water and energy supplies, etc.): we can 'do what we want' only insofar as we remain marginal enough so as not to seriously perturb the parameters of life on earth. The limitation on our freedom that becomes palpable with ecological disturbances is the paradoxical outcome of the exponential growth of our freedom and power: our increasing ability to transform nature around us can destabilize the basic conditions of human life." (p. 423)
"Capital's self-expansion also sets clear limits to so-called ethical capitalism. In June 2010, the Apple manufacturer Foxconn (a Taiwanese-owned company assembling iPads) in Shenzhen (China) was plagued by a series of suicides among its workers, the result of stressful work conditions (long hours, low pay, high pressure). After the eleventh worker jumped from a high floor to his death, the company introduced a series of measures: compelling workers to sign contracts promising not to kill themselves, to report fellow workers who look depressed, to go to psychiatric institutions if their mental health deteriorates, etc. To add insult to injury, Foxconn started to put up safety nets around the buildings of its vast factory. This is ethical capitalism at its purest, taking care even of the psychic welfare of the workers instead of changing the exploitative conditions which are responsible for their psychic breakdowns. The 'ethical' side of capitalism is thus the result of a complex process of ideological abstraction or obliteration." (p. 426)
April 23, 2011
There are several things to like and dislike about this book and, having only read First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, I don't know how the two stack up next to the rest of his books, but they are fairly similar stylistically and several sections of FasTTasF can be found in LiET. The structure of both is the same: present an organized and clean thesis in the preface, outline the structure in an organized and systematic way, and then proceed to totally drop the thesis and ramble off into whatever strikes his fancy. Zizek's writing style reminds me of Wurtzel: yes it rambles, sometimes seemingly without reason, but within the ramblings are some of his best work. As neither a philosopher nor a communist scholar, I am not qualified to critically analyze his ontological arguments. More honestly, I have a hard time keeping up with some of them once he really gets going about Hegal, Marx, and Foucault. These passages mainly give me comfort that I am reading someone who can speak academic-ese if they want to. What I think makes Zizek worth reading are the immense flourishes to these arguments. Zizek is incredibly well read, keeps up to date on all kinds of current events, and the last 100 years of film from all over the world. He can easily relate any of the to some philosophical point he is making and delightfully, has no shame in using Avatar or Van Damme's In Hell if that is a good illustration.
If you can stomach the fun house style of the book (first we're in a room of mirrors, then without explanation we're talking about communism for 40 pages, then the rolly room, then a critique of Western Buddhism followed by an anecdote about the differences between American and European attitudes about discussing sex in public) there are plenty of gems here.
If you can stomach the fun house style of the book (first we're in a room of mirrors, then without explanation we're talking about communism for 40 pages, then the rolly room, then a critique of Western Buddhism followed by an anecdote about the differences between American and European attitudes about discussing sex in public) there are plenty of gems here.
May 10, 2011
I confess I haven't finished this book. I was fully determined to, but was unable to renew it at the library as someone else had it on hold. I hope they have better luck with it than I did.
It started off well. Zizek has a nice turn of phrase and goes at his subjects head on (whilst bringing in support from the flanks). At first he seemed to be writing with a clarity and wit that would make the book, if not easy going, than enjoyable, enlightening and mind expanding. However, by the end of the first section he had regressed into the sort of jargon- and reference-laden language and semiotic hair-splitting that - while I am sure is entirely valid and necessary within the field - can make reading works of philosophy so very hard for the layman.
I do plan to revisit the work; hopefully the rest of the book is more transparent than opaque - but in the mean time I think my non-fiction reading may stay in the more easily grasped realms of physics, biology and multi-dimensional mathematics.
It started off well. Zizek has a nice turn of phrase and goes at his subjects head on (whilst bringing in support from the flanks). At first he seemed to be writing with a clarity and wit that would make the book, if not easy going, than enjoyable, enlightening and mind expanding. However, by the end of the first section he had regressed into the sort of jargon- and reference-laden language and semiotic hair-splitting that - while I am sure is entirely valid and necessary within the field - can make reading works of philosophy so very hard for the layman.
I do plan to revisit the work; hopefully the rest of the book is more transparent than opaque - but in the mean time I think my non-fiction reading may stay in the more easily grasped realms of physics, biology and multi-dimensional mathematics.
October 25, 2012
Mostly meandering without any real point. Its like reading an adolescent showing off. There is no real structure to his argument, flitting from Marx to Lacan without really making a point. The passages on Marx's Capital are tired re-hashings with little or no new insight. The fact that he is correct on many points in the book hardly makes up for the lack of any tangible point to all this verbiage. Lacan's useless pseudo-Freudian concepts show up inexplicably with little explanatory effect which is understandable since Lacan is vacuous posturing wrapped in a pseudo-symbolic logic adding nothing useful to Freud's own work. Zizek is deeply impressed with himself but fails to let the reader in on why. Living in the End Times is the bibliographical equivalent of Lacan's petit-objet-a, a meaningless place-holder in an empty discourse. Might find functionality as a doorstop.
April 1, 2013
An ambitious book with analyses sweeping almost every current economic, social and political problems imaginable in the modern society. I cannot claim that I understand everything he said. At times it gets technically philosophical. It also comments on a broad range of topics, to the point that I lost focus on what he actually is suggesting. I suspect he suggests the urgency to promote the Idea (with capital I) of Communism to break from the stagnated, doomed Western capitalism. On the other hand he is also critical about the failed communist states in the history.
From the cultural and popular references he used (films, TV series, books) I imagine how wide range his appetite is. Something enviable!
I do need to reread this and his other books to understand his body of thought and make a sensible commentary of it.
From the cultural and popular references he used (films, TV series, books) I imagine how wide range his appetite is. Something enviable!
I do need to reread this and his other books to understand his body of thought and make a sensible commentary of it.
March 10, 2016
Like all of Zizek's works, I find portions where, because I'm not familiar with the discourse, I am a bit lost and not entirely sure of what the argument is, BUT when I am familiar with the discourse, I find penetrating insight, brilliant analysis, and even religious inspiration. Having begun this book all the way back in Scotland, I'm so glad I have finished it!
Read
August 21, 2016Was on a Zizek streak at the time and picked up the hardcover somewhere upon day of release. Slow down and be sure to skip the hardcover and read the paperback which has some 100 additional pages. I do wish the man would put new material under a new title rather than expanding existing titles.
November 8, 2010
Slovenian philosopher exploring capitalism's demise. Very thought provoking. I am reading it in small doses.
November 3, 2022
Crikey what a long and complex book that was
August 23, 2012
Ultimately, Zizek thinks there should be less democracy and more authoritarianism and censorship. As when he commends Venezuela’s Chavez for banning certain US programs from his nation’s airwaves because these shows were “morally problematic.” For Zizek thinks 99% of people are idiots, and thus they need help and guidance from government officials on what to watch and what to do. Yes, if you cornered Zizek on this he’d have all sorts of obfuscations and amendments to this, but basically he thinks individual rights should be curtailed in order to get things done more efficiently and that mass violence and state censorship is the only real way to introduce this new structure. He believes that the task today is to find a new mode of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Zizek, in classic newspeak, uses the friendlier terms radical and emancipatory, as opposed to authoritarianism and state control.
According to Z, all violence against the state is “defensive,” since the fact of the state’s existence is inherently an act of violence against the people. So, violence against the state is always justified. This seems to guarantee continual conflict, since any successful revolution will lead to the installment of a new power order. Taking Zizek at his work, violence would then also be justified against any regime a revolution installs (unless, I suppose, he’s holding out hope for the first stateless society). At what point does this supposedly defensive violence become offensive?
Often, this is Zizek’s mode: He’ll say something provocative, and then when you wait for the philosophical insight that justifies this provocative position, he’ll instead bury you in a spastic riff of a dozen movies or Stalinist daydreams that sort of just congregate and hang out around his inflammatory statement. He seems to think that because the pronouncement is inflammatory and guaranteed to rile up the status quo, it doesn’t need justifying.
And since capitalism is currently the economic mode that exists worldwide, everything that happens on the planet can be blamed on it. The environmental catastrophe we’re undoubtedly headed for is purely a capitalist problem for Zizek. And to a large extent he’s probably right. But it’s not as if the gulags and five-year plans of the USSR didn’t also negatively impact the environment (though granted it’s hard to care about the environment at all when you’re starving or scared to death of the State). But even here he exempts Stalin and the USSR: “That is to say, whence comes the Stalinist drive-to-expand, the incessant push to increase productivity?.... It comes not from some general will-to-power or will-to-technological domination, but from the inherent structure of capitalist reproduction which can survive only through its incessant expansion….” Well, well. So basically, it’s Capitalism’s fault that Stalin the archCommunist exploited the USSR’s workers. This type of argument should be beneath Zizek.
The book has an interesting discussion on Kant’s idea that a benevolent republic does not have to be a nation of angels. A good organization of the state is within man’s control, one that plays off the vices of its members so that they counter and negate each other. Such a state could lead to man being a good citizen, even if he is not a morally good person. “Given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions.”
Somehow, in a way that’s not clarified, from this Zizek concludes that the “inevitable obverse” of the old-school liberal motto, “private vices, common good,” is “private goods, common disaster.”
And then there is this monstrous (yet clownish) lament, a point in which Zizek’s macho yearning for violence comes to the fore: “Since great public causes can no longer be mobilized, since our hegemonic ideology calls on us to enjoy life and to fulfill ourselves, it is difficult for the majority of humans to overcome their revulsion at torturing and killing other human beings.”
When you read stuff like this, it’s hard not to rejoice in the bourgeois capitalist system of individualism, tolerance, and liberalism (in spite of its ongoing exploitation of workers, the growing income inequality, and the domination of nearly all facets of life by Capital), against Zizek’s daydreams of mass violence (“great public causes”), the installation of a class-based dictatorship, and his absurd apologies for Stalin, who is responsible for the senseless murder and torture of millions. It’s a good thing not being forced to work in a labor camp for the good of the community, it’s good not to be tortured because there are suspicions that my thoughts don’t conform to the thoughts of the government or to the proletariat masses, it’s nice to enjoy life. But enjoying life is a sin for Zizek; no one should enjoy existence. But then, what is the end to which his communist daydreams aspire?
Not totally germane, but I relished discovering (not from Zizek of course) that Stalin was only 5’4” tall and that Truman would refer to him as “that little squirt.” For Zizek, Stalin will always be Big Daddy. He will always be broad-shouldered, holding a scythe against a majestic sunset with happy members of the working class massed around him.
All of the above does not take away from the fact that Zizek has some great critiques of late capitalism. It’s the lawlessness, the constant drive for more in Capitalism that disturbs Zizek. Like in the Congo, Zizek points out that the warlords (who ruthlessly exploit the people) have ties to foreign corporations. It works out for everyone (i.e., for everyone who matters): corporations don’t have to deal with taxes and laws, and the warlords get rich. Zizek points out that we always read about “ethnic passions” exploding in places like the Congo, but it is clear that is global capitalism at its purest, according to Zizek: “The irony is that many of these minerals are used in high-tech products such as laptops and cellphones—in short: forget about the savage behavior of the local populations, just remove the foreign high-tech companies from the equation and the whole edifice of ethnic warfare fuelled by old passions falls apart.”
And I think Zizek is dead on to note how class tension is ignored or “obfuscated” by politicians and the media. I myself notice this often when reading global/national news. At every chance, any conflict will be discussed in sectarian, ethnic, religious terms, and only when there’s no choice will the (usually exploitative and/or imperialist) economics behind these conflicts be discussed.
Or when he compares countries’ investments into the US to the tithes paid to Rome in antiquity. “The US is ‘trusted’ as the safe and stable center, so that all others ... invest their surplus profits in the US. Since this ‘trust’ is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the problem for the US is how to justify its imperial role—it requires a permanent state of war....”
Or when he insightfully discusses the 2009 talks in Copenhagen concerning global warming: “Political elites serve capital, they are unable and/or unwilling to control and regulate capital even when the very survival of the human race is at stake.” He contrasts this with the immediate trans-national, nonpartisan unity that came about when saving the banks, in which all grudges were forgotten to save us from the “real” catastrophe, the one that impacts global banking.
Zizek gets a little personal in this interesting passage: “Radicals invoke the need for revolutionary change as a kind of superstitious token that will achieve its opposite—that will prevent the change from really occurring. If a revolution is taking place, it should occur at a safe distance…so that, while my heart is warmed when I think about the events far away, I can go on promoting my academic career.” One wonders how many self-professed radicals are the same.
As is usual with theorists, Zizek’s literary tastes are impossible to take seriously. In spite of his intellectual snobbery, he is something of a vulgarian when it comes to literature: Zizek is only concerned with plot and the author’s ideas, and these only insofar as they set up situations that he can employ his Hegelian/Lacanian snake oil to. At times, I could barely tolerate his cretinous literary opinions. I realize Zizek is very intelligent and he truly is a kind of freakish Chopin of philosophy and theory, but he’s adrift when it comes to literary stuff, as when he pronounces that Dauphne du Marier, the “master of suspense,” is superior to (the, of course, upper class) Virginia Woolf. Perhaps some class resentment is muddling his outlook. But really he knows he’s being titillating, he knows he’s being a bad boy for saying such things, and he knows he’s dead wrong. Given how he approaches literature, it is not surprising that his mind is unable to handle the wavering, nuanced, mercurial writing in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. These are great works of art that foil interpretation and ideology. Zizek reads novels like a vampire sucking out ideology like blood.
I think what Zizek seeks aesthetically is an Ayn Rand, but one for Communists. (And of course, in Zizek’s perfect world, everyone’s writings would be beneficial for worker solidarity and community morale.)
It should not surprise us, then, that Z states, “It should not surprise us, then, to discover ideology at its purest in what may appear to be products of Hollywood at its most innocent: the big blockbuster cartoons.”
This is why Zizek continues to go back to Hollywood instead of literature (aside from his attempts to see Communist yearning throughout Kafka’s stories; theorists cannot leave Kafka alone; but he is ours, not theirs). After the above quote, Z launches into a rigorous theoretical analysis of Kung Fu Panda. Truly, Zizek could go deep-sea scuba diving and see Lacanian significations among the fish. I don’t really care, as long he stays away from great works of fiction.
Zizek managed to scrounge up one writer (even if only a playwright) to support his aesthetic views. He approvingly quotes the following quote from an Austrian playwright:
“Characters on stage should be flat, like clothes in a fashion show: what you get should be no more than what you see.”
This reminded me of James Wood’s takedown of Tom Wolfe, who, like Zizek, would also like all characters to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Here's James Wood:
“Tom Wolfe’s novels are placards of simplicity. His characters are capable of experiencing only one feeling at a time; they are advertisements for the self: Greed! Fear! Hate! Love! Misery! The people who phosphoresce thus are nothing like real people. They are instead big, vivid blots of typology. The Overweening Property Developer! His Divorced First Wife! His Sexy Young Trophy Wife! The Well-Dressed Black Lawyer Who Speaks Too White! The Oafish Football Player!”
Concerning Kafka’s short story “Josephine the Singer,” Zizek says that the first lesson of the story is that we have to “endorse a shamelessly total form of immersion into the social body, a pure ritualistic social performance....All liberal-individualist prejudices need to be abandoned… passion should obliterate all reasoning, the public should follow the rhythm and orders of the leader.” This is what you could call very bad literary criticism.
According to Z, all violence against the state is “defensive,” since the fact of the state’s existence is inherently an act of violence against the people. So, violence against the state is always justified. This seems to guarantee continual conflict, since any successful revolution will lead to the installment of a new power order. Taking Zizek at his work, violence would then also be justified against any regime a revolution installs (unless, I suppose, he’s holding out hope for the first stateless society). At what point does this supposedly defensive violence become offensive?
Often, this is Zizek’s mode: He’ll say something provocative, and then when you wait for the philosophical insight that justifies this provocative position, he’ll instead bury you in a spastic riff of a dozen movies or Stalinist daydreams that sort of just congregate and hang out around his inflammatory statement. He seems to think that because the pronouncement is inflammatory and guaranteed to rile up the status quo, it doesn’t need justifying.
And since capitalism is currently the economic mode that exists worldwide, everything that happens on the planet can be blamed on it. The environmental catastrophe we’re undoubtedly headed for is purely a capitalist problem for Zizek. And to a large extent he’s probably right. But it’s not as if the gulags and five-year plans of the USSR didn’t also negatively impact the environment (though granted it’s hard to care about the environment at all when you’re starving or scared to death of the State). But even here he exempts Stalin and the USSR: “That is to say, whence comes the Stalinist drive-to-expand, the incessant push to increase productivity?.... It comes not from some general will-to-power or will-to-technological domination, but from the inherent structure of capitalist reproduction which can survive only through its incessant expansion….” Well, well. So basically, it’s Capitalism’s fault that Stalin the archCommunist exploited the USSR’s workers. This type of argument should be beneath Zizek.
The book has an interesting discussion on Kant’s idea that a benevolent republic does not have to be a nation of angels. A good organization of the state is within man’s control, one that plays off the vices of its members so that they counter and negate each other. Such a state could lead to man being a good citizen, even if he is not a morally good person. “Given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of whom is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a constitution in such a way that although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions.”
Somehow, in a way that’s not clarified, from this Zizek concludes that the “inevitable obverse” of the old-school liberal motto, “private vices, common good,” is “private goods, common disaster.”
And then there is this monstrous (yet clownish) lament, a point in which Zizek’s macho yearning for violence comes to the fore: “Since great public causes can no longer be mobilized, since our hegemonic ideology calls on us to enjoy life and to fulfill ourselves, it is difficult for the majority of humans to overcome their revulsion at torturing and killing other human beings.”
When you read stuff like this, it’s hard not to rejoice in the bourgeois capitalist system of individualism, tolerance, and liberalism (in spite of its ongoing exploitation of workers, the growing income inequality, and the domination of nearly all facets of life by Capital), against Zizek’s daydreams of mass violence (“great public causes”), the installation of a class-based dictatorship, and his absurd apologies for Stalin, who is responsible for the senseless murder and torture of millions. It’s a good thing not being forced to work in a labor camp for the good of the community, it’s good not to be tortured because there are suspicions that my thoughts don’t conform to the thoughts of the government or to the proletariat masses, it’s nice to enjoy life. But enjoying life is a sin for Zizek; no one should enjoy existence. But then, what is the end to which his communist daydreams aspire?
Not totally germane, but I relished discovering (not from Zizek of course) that Stalin was only 5’4” tall and that Truman would refer to him as “that little squirt.” For Zizek, Stalin will always be Big Daddy. He will always be broad-shouldered, holding a scythe against a majestic sunset with happy members of the working class massed around him.
All of the above does not take away from the fact that Zizek has some great critiques of late capitalism. It’s the lawlessness, the constant drive for more in Capitalism that disturbs Zizek. Like in the Congo, Zizek points out that the warlords (who ruthlessly exploit the people) have ties to foreign corporations. It works out for everyone (i.e., for everyone who matters): corporations don’t have to deal with taxes and laws, and the warlords get rich. Zizek points out that we always read about “ethnic passions” exploding in places like the Congo, but it is clear that is global capitalism at its purest, according to Zizek: “The irony is that many of these minerals are used in high-tech products such as laptops and cellphones—in short: forget about the savage behavior of the local populations, just remove the foreign high-tech companies from the equation and the whole edifice of ethnic warfare fuelled by old passions falls apart.”
And I think Zizek is dead on to note how class tension is ignored or “obfuscated” by politicians and the media. I myself notice this often when reading global/national news. At every chance, any conflict will be discussed in sectarian, ethnic, religious terms, and only when there’s no choice will the (usually exploitative and/or imperialist) economics behind these conflicts be discussed.
Or when he compares countries’ investments into the US to the tithes paid to Rome in antiquity. “The US is ‘trusted’ as the safe and stable center, so that all others ... invest their surplus profits in the US. Since this ‘trust’ is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the problem for the US is how to justify its imperial role—it requires a permanent state of war....”
Or when he insightfully discusses the 2009 talks in Copenhagen concerning global warming: “Political elites serve capital, they are unable and/or unwilling to control and regulate capital even when the very survival of the human race is at stake.” He contrasts this with the immediate trans-national, nonpartisan unity that came about when saving the banks, in which all grudges were forgotten to save us from the “real” catastrophe, the one that impacts global banking.
Zizek gets a little personal in this interesting passage: “Radicals invoke the need for revolutionary change as a kind of superstitious token that will achieve its opposite—that will prevent the change from really occurring. If a revolution is taking place, it should occur at a safe distance…so that, while my heart is warmed when I think about the events far away, I can go on promoting my academic career.” One wonders how many self-professed radicals are the same.
As is usual with theorists, Zizek’s literary tastes are impossible to take seriously. In spite of his intellectual snobbery, he is something of a vulgarian when it comes to literature: Zizek is only concerned with plot and the author’s ideas, and these only insofar as they set up situations that he can employ his Hegelian/Lacanian snake oil to. At times, I could barely tolerate his cretinous literary opinions. I realize Zizek is very intelligent and he truly is a kind of freakish Chopin of philosophy and theory, but he’s adrift when it comes to literary stuff, as when he pronounces that Dauphne du Marier, the “master of suspense,” is superior to (the, of course, upper class) Virginia Woolf. Perhaps some class resentment is muddling his outlook. But really he knows he’s being titillating, he knows he’s being a bad boy for saying such things, and he knows he’s dead wrong. Given how he approaches literature, it is not surprising that his mind is unable to handle the wavering, nuanced, mercurial writing in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. These are great works of art that foil interpretation and ideology. Zizek reads novels like a vampire sucking out ideology like blood.
I think what Zizek seeks aesthetically is an Ayn Rand, but one for Communists. (And of course, in Zizek’s perfect world, everyone’s writings would be beneficial for worker solidarity and community morale.)
It should not surprise us, then, that Z states, “It should not surprise us, then, to discover ideology at its purest in what may appear to be products of Hollywood at its most innocent: the big blockbuster cartoons.”
This is why Zizek continues to go back to Hollywood instead of literature (aside from his attempts to see Communist yearning throughout Kafka’s stories; theorists cannot leave Kafka alone; but he is ours, not theirs). After the above quote, Z launches into a rigorous theoretical analysis of Kung Fu Panda. Truly, Zizek could go deep-sea scuba diving and see Lacanian significations among the fish. I don’t really care, as long he stays away from great works of fiction.
Zizek managed to scrounge up one writer (even if only a playwright) to support his aesthetic views. He approvingly quotes the following quote from an Austrian playwright:
“Characters on stage should be flat, like clothes in a fashion show: what you get should be no more than what you see.”
This reminded me of James Wood’s takedown of Tom Wolfe, who, like Zizek, would also like all characters to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Here's James Wood:
“Tom Wolfe’s novels are placards of simplicity. His characters are capable of experiencing only one feeling at a time; they are advertisements for the self: Greed! Fear! Hate! Love! Misery! The people who phosphoresce thus are nothing like real people. They are instead big, vivid blots of typology. The Overweening Property Developer! His Divorced First Wife! His Sexy Young Trophy Wife! The Well-Dressed Black Lawyer Who Speaks Too White! The Oafish Football Player!”
Concerning Kafka’s short story “Josephine the Singer,” Zizek says that the first lesson of the story is that we have to “endorse a shamelessly total form of immersion into the social body, a pure ritualistic social performance....All liberal-individualist prejudices need to be abandoned… passion should obliterate all reasoning, the public should follow the rhythm and orders of the leader.” This is what you could call very bad literary criticism.
February 28, 2020
This is the first—and at this point, the only—Zizek work I have read. I learned of him via his debate with Jordan Peterson, and I have watched several lectures.
Judging from this book, I don’t think that Zizek is really a communist. That being so, the only coherent way I can describe his ideas in this book is by calling him an anti-capitalist realist. I’m not sure where that places him in the vernacular political nomenclature except to reassert that he doesn’t come across as a communist, his extensive knowledge of communist history notwithstanding.
I also appreciate the bibliography (as in much of my nonfiction reading), and I’m sure this won’t remain the only Zizek book on my shelf.
Judging from this book, I don’t think that Zizek is really a communist. That being so, the only coherent way I can describe his ideas in this book is by calling him an anti-capitalist realist. I’m not sure where that places him in the vernacular political nomenclature except to reassert that he doesn’t come across as a communist, his extensive knowledge of communist history notwithstanding.
I also appreciate the bibliography (as in much of my nonfiction reading), and I’m sure this won’t remain the only Zizek book on my shelf.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 180 reviews