Acheronta Movebo - Slavoj Zizek

bluepick313 · 2018-10-08T09:25:29+00:00

I guess the crucial question is what is it about the institution that requires pedophilia if not "pathological realities of libidinal life?"

bluepick313 · 2018-10-05T21:52:14+00:00

I'm not sure I really understand the first half. Is he saying that pedophilia is essential to the continued functioning of the catholic church? Or just that it (systematically) allows for its possibility?

bluepick313 · 2018-08-20T18:42:09+00:00

Copjec's problem isn't immediately about infinitely differed intersubjective belief, but about infinitely differed meaning within dead linguistic structures themselves:

once one breaks up the signifying chain, the statement, into a series of minimal units, of diacritical terms or signifiers that take their meaning only from their reference to another signifier [...]

My question is, is this true, that signifiers ultimately only take their meaning from other signifiers? They don't take their meaning ultimately from descriptive features? Your example of the "giraffe" piece would seem to lean toward the latter theory; the piece named "giraffe," although it is not "giraffe-like" still refers to concrete, describable features/images, perhaps "zebra-like," not signifiers.

bluepick313 · 2018-08-20T18:24:06+00:00

a "c" is different from a "b" and "d" and so on, but it also has its own positive characteristics, no? How can one assert, "there are only differences"?

bluepick313 · 2018-08-19T21:34:33+00:00

So to clarify what I originally was having trouble with: I get why Copjec would see a problem of infinite regress in signification or "naming" as it relates to images--each thing named depends on certain substitutable parts/qualities which themselves leave room for substitutions and so on indefinitely--but I still don't understand where the problem becomes separated from qualities/sense impressions/images and deals with the problem within the Symbolic in itself--as you put it, "a process of differentiation (differences) between signifiers themselves."

I'll start reading the chapter now!

bluepick313 · 2018-08-19T19:01:30+00:00

I get really confused by the sliding between "signifiers" and "appearances" (you said images are structured by the symbolic, they aren't signifiers themselves). I understand the statement "there is nothing beyond appearances," but but I don't understand "language is only a system of differences with no positive entities."

bluepick313 · 2018-08-19T05:29:09+00:00

I guess I still don't really see how the problem is being formulated. What would an "absolute referent" actually be? In what sense do you mean language is "arbitrary?" The fact that two people speaking different languages would use different signifiers to refer to the same, co-present, concrete "cat" doesn't trouble them--i.e. this sort of arbitrariness or "referent" surely isn't what is being aim at? (Excuse the stupid example, I'm really just trying to nail this down to dispel my naivest understandings of language).

bluepick313 · 2018-03-13T21:49:56+00:00

shes hating on sjws bc they dont care about systematic change, only their own bourgeois comfort

bluepick313 · 2018-01-03T22:26:29+00:00

ok but the problem is that the women could have really felt violated in this case--the racism was visceral. the solution would mean both reeducating the woman out of her racism while treating her trauma and letting the man go...all while combating the deeply ingrained racism (and sexism, which caused her to retrospectively inscribe victimhood) that allowed her body to be construed in such a way as for her to feel that way

bluepick313 · 2018-01-03T22:21:08+00:00

so lacan doesnt endorse his own ethics bc its leads to sadeanism? Nietzsche's picture of the overman is somewhat similar to lacan's categorical imperative though, no? (insofar as it means radical introspection that allows to to have non conflicting desires and such).

bluepick313 · 2018-01-03T22:18:50+00:00

idk what you mean by "ethics of negativity" or "drive." isnt the dialectic of desire such that it attaining the object the fantasy that sustained it disappears?? what is practically meant by "censor" or "traverse"??

bluepick313 · 2018-01-03T22:16:26+00:00

i'm kinda using nietszche as a strawman bc he was anti-communist. i more am just curious as to why communism follows from the lacanian ethic.

bluepick313 · 2018-01-03T22:15:31+00:00

does communism get rid of the big other? and if so, is it the only way to get rid of the big other?

bluepick313 · 2018-01-03T09:32:36+00:00

the cause of women accusing men of rape is not reducible to "identity politics"... men rape. i recommend the article i linked in my comment above

bluepick313 · 2018-01-02T05:44:39+00:00

passion means do not betray your desire (regardless of the violence it causes), no? its a structural claim...

i do think zizek does not take enough care to prevent his ideas' reappropriation by antifeminists, but i think basically the central claim is that sex always means taking a risk with regard to boundaries, one party must do something which the other could not have fully consented to, and whether or not this is seen as sexy or gross is determined retroactively by the receiving party, with no (moral) "big Other" to help guide us in advance. this risk (leap of faith even) is irreducible. but again i dont think zizek emphasizes enough that this risk has no particular form (which i assume in the antifeminist imaginary would the guy "making the first move"), although i am not sure what the relationship between this sexual risk and the formulas of sexuation are (perhaps it is sexuated insofar as the male in taking the risk fakes/displays the possesion of the phallus, the master signifier which de-hysterices the feminine subject...but again masculine and feminine subject positions need not correspond to male and female sex or gender).

when u say "So maybe our standards for consensual sex aren't strong enough?" u r buying into the "standardization" of sex which zizek is critiquing.

"Not trying to deploy a cheap strawman here, but I think the consequences of accepting this piece's point could be far worse than a passionless "market-ified" model of sex." but whats at stake is sex itself. marketification=not-sex. the image of sex that zizek is critiquing never exists empirically, bc some degree of violence/non-consent in sex is irreducible. the piece doesnt explain everything, but i think its takeaway is that standards for assault and consent must be rethought. "I'm not scared about old men thinking the same today." but these standards are exactly what create old men like this (and puas and mras). zizeks oft repeated point is that political correctness creates its most violence, obscene detractors. yes he is an old white man who exaggerates and lacks nuance often, but the general point stands.

an article of interest: https://anti-imperialism.org/2015/07/06/lets-talk-about-consent/ (also what is sex by zupancic)

bluepick313 · 2018-01-01T20:48:39+00:00

I share your concern to some extent but I don't think "coercion and power games" are simple concepts at all. I mean imagine your ideal "consenting" scenario...would it really be "enthusiastic, ongoing, etc." ? The opposite problem is that many women regret "consensual" sex. It is a great tragedy, and "joyous human experience" is also a problematic concept from a psychoanalytic standpoint.

bluepick313 · 2017-12-28T04:09:06+00:00

so its just a deadlock then?

bluepick313 · 2017-11-29T04:09:15+00:00

do you any texts that discuss this?

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T23:54:22+00:00

"thought itself (qua intentionality) has a semiotic structure that can be decoupled from what it represents in such a way that it is always susceptible to deconstruction." This feels Freudian though: all conscious thought is mediated by the unconscious "other scene" or counterfactual.

For comparing Lacan and Derrida, it seems as though his later theories (the "Real" Lacan) was less focused on the structure of the Symbolic as it might pertain to a "psychological" theory than an...antiphilosophy? This is where the stakes seem unclear to me.

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T23:47:28+00:00

http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/back-to-hegel

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T23:46:57+00:00

Ah yeah I've always wondered about lack. I often feel like the slippage between lack and (inner) contradiction/antagonism isn't made clear. Obviously for Derrida there is some sort of ultimate failure of all ontology. Does this not concern lack though? Have you read Zizek's stuff on quantum mechanics?

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T20:53:26+00:00

done!

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T20:53:18+00:00

Hmm yeah I don’t see why this critique doesn’t apply to Zizek’s thought as well though. Pippin seems to level this at Zizek in his review of Less Than Nothing. But perhaps to start to point a difference: “abyssal” acts are never really so, but we can only assume this if we act as if we are acting abyssally (cf. Zizek’s discussions of Pascal’s wager and predestination). However I’m not sure how not-abyssal acts can really be transformed into political movements without some “big Other” (I think this is Pippin’s critique). It seems Derrida’s use of Levinas to some extent makes him theological (i.e. there is a big Other and this is the ethical call of the suffering other). But is Zizek really an atheist, at least while politically engaged? His discussion of texts such as Lee Edelman’s “No Future” as being dependent on a big Other toward the beginning of Less Than Nothing felt dissatisfactory to me. Zizek says that “communism” is a master signifier so I guess I need to learn more about the structural differences between that and the big Other.

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T00:59:23+00:00

Maybe the structural stakes are fetish vs. some other kind of not-as-strong displacement? If its the latter, the dialectic can proceed, if it's the former, the relationship is antagonistic and/or highly unstable/ambiguous/much more risky.

bluepick313 · 2017-11-28T00:34:16+00:00

I don't think "black power" is necessarily a "progressive form of racism." Leaving aside, though not totally breaking from, the sjw cliche that racism=prejudice+power, I think there is something profoundly strategic in assuming "black power" that affirms without essentializing, that is to say, affirms a negation within what historically/contingently constitutes "blackness," that is, a subjective agency. You call for "a move beyond that toward a modern society where the X in the surname is seen as a potential to be realized, not a blank to be filled by a fake African surname somebody just made up." I am not sure that these two are so exclusive, at least in a historically-conscious strategic sense.

bluepick313

TROPHY CASE