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Showing posts with the label Slavoj Zizek

Ontological Incompleteness of the ‘Inward Immigrant’ or Why Nothing in Today’s Media-Saturated Overconnected World Makes Any Sense

Let me begin by using myself as an example.   I was born and raised in the Czech Republic.   My mother remarried when I was 11 and when I turned 12, she and I moved to the United States as a result of this marriage. I’ve lived in the US ever since.   I will spare the reader the nitty gritty details of the actual move, the integration, and so on, mostly to say that my experience and the experience of the thousands of others that emigrated to the US that year alone are on the surface typical. Cut to today and I can with a lot of confidence say that, as a first generation immigrant, having emigrated at the age I did, my experience of the world and of American culture can only be described as incomplete.   The same can be said of my experience of the Czech culture.   What would seem as an upper hand, being bilingual, having roots in both cultures (muliticultural), etc, to me seems, while not a handicap, as a void that can never be filled.   True, Walter Benjamin’s experiences as an exi

Navigating Zizek: Uncanny Happiness

Navigating Zizek Intro: Slavoj Zizek seems to be everywhere, all over YouTube, presenting papers, and teaching at three different schools at least, while at the same time still managing to publish 2-3 new books per year.   Granted, much of what Zizek puts out is rehashed or recycled ideas and anecdotes from previous books and essays, it is nonetheless mystifying how much this guy’s engaged.   To say that he’s prolific is an understatement.   I’ve already read a lot of Zizek, but I doubt that I’ve read even half of what he’s written so far, and the dude keeps on writing.   So it’s a bit of a catch up game for me.    Now, I understand there’s a lot of criticism out there of Zizek already and there is a question whether my voice will add anything at all to the conversation, already in progress.   If anything, my voice will most likely get drowned out in the sea of critique of Zizek’s ideas, this I understand.   The reason I’m doing this is personal. There are lots of other

Behold the Pirates

The rise of the Pirate party in recent Czech elections shows that the left may in fact be invigorated enough to go beyond the Occupy movement and its ultimate failure. Gaining 22 seats in the Czech parliament, the Pirates are now the third largest party in Czech Republic. The only irony here is that the Pirates consider themselves a center party.   This digital ‘left’ acts as a counter point to the alt-right described by Angela Nagle in her book on the subject called ‘Kill All Normies.’   As if there is no end to all the irony in the world, in today’s upside-down world, it is the ‘right’ that is most plugged into the digital world and the internet, somehow able to coopt every tactic that the old ‘new left’ used in its political stance on very diverse issues, from feminism and gay rights, to environmentalism and animal rights, and literally turning them inside-out, into stances like men’s rights, which were initially tongue-in-cheek, but developed into a strangely potent politica

The King’s Speech: On Zizek’s Speech Impediment

First, I would like to point out that in no way am I offering any sort of diagnosis of Slavoj Zizek’s speech impediment.   This article/essay is a simple exercise in perception, and yes, a Zizekian analysis.   What do we get when we apply Zizek’s theories to Zizek himself?   The answer may or may not be surprising, depending on whether you are a Zizek follower or an anti-Zizek propagandist.    In an analysis of The King’s Speech, Zizek points out that the king’s stuttering makes the king self-conscious and in a way embarrassed.   As a divine ruler, the king of England should be a confident authority figure perfectly capable of assuming the role of the head of state.   Delivering messages to the masses through oratory on the radio is just one of the ways that the king’s authority is projected to the public and if the people hear that in the voice of the king is a slight imperfection, this may be read as a fault that might preclude the king from carrying out his divine duty, f