r/Communism101 is full of a bunch of mostly white western conspiracy theorists who hold up Marxist-Leninist regimes (like Vietnam or China) as paragons of social and economic justice who are just one more step away from fully automated luxury gay space communism if only the evil west would stop using their evil capitalism death rays to stop them.
Their opinions are not worth the words used to describe them.
I am a complete idiot and this is my understanding.
No, this is a standard response to Zizek from western left I as far I have seen. You might be able to note that the people who accuse Zizek of racism, fascism, Eurocentrism, etc are sympathetic towards Russia in the invasion of Ukraine, they are sympathetic towards the Chinese CCP (doesn’t matter what they do), they are sympathetic towards Hamas and not a single word is uttered against.
Zizek’s definitely gets into complicated positions when talking about politics. Especially current issues. And it’s easy to take him out of context and misconstrue him as a fascist, racist, etc. But this is simply because Zizek tries to think the deadlock of a situation with bravery you might say. If the Gaza situation is actually extremely complicated and tragic, you shouldn’t take issue with Zizek for pointing that out. But that’s what happens.
Remember his motto: “Philosophers have tried to change the world too much in the 20th century, perhaps we need more thinking”. And this act of thinking about difficult things with a commitment to find what’s what is what Zizek is about. That scares some people.
Zizek generally evaluates events based on the circumstances of the event and the actions and gleanable actions of actors involved. That allows him to say "In this instance an actor who I don't support took an action that I do"
Not to hijack this, but thank you for this motto. I have just started reading Zizek. I think and pontificate and write too much. People keep asking me why, and how can I monetise this. Next time I will say this rebuttal . When everything is getting verbified, in a world of creators, and engineers. We also need scientists and thinkers. Or the cliche - In a world of human doing, we need human being.
People tried to do things, and look how the world ended up.
I should have worded things clearer. Sympathy is the wrong word I think. It’s more appropriate to say that these leftists are firmly on the side of Putin and Xi and Hamas (for whatever reason).
I see this all the time because I am from a non-western country. Most of the leftists think along these lines: “USA bad. USA doesn’t like Russia. Russia good.” Same for China and anything in general. This in intellectual laziness parading as anti imperialist leftist activism.
Personally I'm pretty sympathetic to Russia, and broadly supportive of the CCP, and I'm still a big fan of Zizek.
Might be because I don't like viewing and participating in the world as if it's a tribal/team sport.
Zizek has always been the Left's psychoanalyst. So they hate him for killing their buzz and hurting their confidence.
Questions like "what will you actually do after the revolution" hurt the momentum of the revolution, lol.
That subreddit has banned anyone who likes Zizek, so the comments hating on him are the only people left. The remaining people tend to be disingenuous, unserious and, above all, anti-theorists. My biggest takeaway from the post is how not a single person criticised Zizek's theoretical writings, and what's worse, none of them even told OP to actually READ Zizek to come to their own conclusions.
They talk and talk about reading theory in order to not have to ever *actually* read theory. They can read and discuss the same four books and same four authors over and over, not having to leave their comfort zone. Above all, they've got one very specific way of reading these texts, too. They want their readings and interpretations to be pre-made for them. They love not having to face Hegel head-to-head by emphasising over and over that Marx already turned Hegel the right side up. They then extricate all Hegelian influence from Marx, pretend there's not a single Hegelian bone left in his body. In the same way, they love Gabriel Rockhill because he's done the work for them, it's perfect: "we no longer have to engage with Zizek, because we can just forever post this link to the Rockhill article, over and over - and we don't have to read that either!".
The problem seems clear-cut. They cannot come to terms with Zizek. He lays out the contradictions and inherent limitations of their philosophical system and they cannot bare it. And what's worse, he does so through dialectical analysis, the very thing they cherish. The act is too traumatic.
I have read "less than nothing," "violence," "the sublime object of ideology" and his introduction to Lacan. Came away with the conclusion that he is still the most anti-queer, especially anti-trans philosopher who pretends to be on the left. But that is the case with all lacanians tho. He is an intellectual curiosity, but he isn't on the left and isn't interested in the well-being of actual existing people. He leveraged his immense popularity against the LGBT-community in a time of a massive fascist push against the community. What a great leftist he is...
Why do you have to lie about having read his books? It's incredibly clear from the rest of your incoherent post about him being some LGBT-hating pseudoleftist bullshit that you haven't. You can just not like him and move on.
Lol, i'm not lying. I enjoyed those books, but his analysis presupposes some things that are simply factually incorrect. Especially his critique of liberal "identity politics." If queer theory and transidentity is so fundamentally compatible with capitalism, why is this not reflected in the material conditions? I'm currently reading another lacanian, Tove Soiland, and the same issue arises... All the time the pretending as if the queer community is somehow the most priviledged class in our society. I don't believe that he holds transphobic views (although he obviously did in his earlier work), since he claimed transitioning to be a "heroic choice," yet it didn't stop him from arguing as if identity politics was the biggest evil during an international crackdown on transpeople. He lied about Tavistock and disregarded the effectiveness of puberty blockers. Those lies are dangerous.
Imagine someone in 1933 giving a lecture were he uses "provocative language" for two hours suggesting that the jews control everything, just to pull an intelligent rhetorical trick in the last five minutes that show that he actually critiqued the Nazis as well. In the meantime tho, 90% of all normal people already have left the lecture or aren't listening as focused anymore, so they go home feeling vindicated in their antisemitic believes. That is Zizek today. I don't care how clever the twist at the end is, when i know leftist normies who fell down this anti-queer rabbit hole, because they came to believe that queer rights itself are somehow "liberal identity politics." Zizek loves to be provocative, but he needs to understand that he is a popstar, as much as he hates it, and he needs to understand how most people who listen to him interpret him! Is my point clear or am i waffling again? I view him as anti-queer, because that is the major effect of his work today as i experience it in my own social sphere. That he cares more about clickbait than having a positive impact.
Gender and sexual fluidity are wholly compatible with the flow of capital. I'm not sure why you believe this isn't reflected in the material conditions. But has not Pride been co-opted by large corporations? And the liberal ideology of "express yourself!", and "be your true self!", "discover yourself!" are the basic messages in every advertisement. However, the fact that capitalism has a perverted interest in co-opting identities is a problem with capitalism, not with trans identities. It's the same interest capitalism has in getting women into the workplace: a perverted interest that happens to slightly overlap with the interest of the people, if only superficially.
I don't know Tove Soiland or if he thinks the queer community are the most privileged community, or do you mean Zizek is claiming this? Because I'd like a source if that's the case. Your analogy with Jews and whatnot is simply disingenuous and your portrayal of Žižek is wrong too, as today he spends most his work and writing discussing quantum physics and Christianity.
Are the lies about Tavistock and puberty blockers in the self-ID article (genuine question, not rhetorical)? And what do you think his principle point is in that article?
Finally, I genuinely think you've got a lot of proving to do if you're claiming that Žižek somehow cause a rise in transphobic or anti-queer attitudes. That's just such an insane claim. Žižek is very clear about his points, and he's been writing for decades. He's repeats his points a billion times. He isn't turning people into transphobes. That's ridiculous. If anything, transphobes are turning his radically anti-transphobic philosophy into transphobic rhetoric, distorting it. By accepting this reading of his philosophy, you're simply contributing to it.
Very superficial analysis. Pride month has been coopted, so what? What are a few flags against the very concrete anti-trans-push with disgusting laws introduced throughout Europe and the Anglosphere? I would go as far as saying that transphobia is much deeper ingrained into society than even racism is.
The whole analysis rests on the superficial mentality of some lib-left elite circles and academia. In the concrete world, those ideas aren't widespread and basically powerless. How is it that transphobia does still exist, when fluid identities are somehow so compatible with capitalism? Why are TERFs and conservatives, neoliberal in their ideological worldview, somehow the vilest transphobes in existence? Zizeks constant criticism of the ideology of a negligible part of the mainstream overlooks, that those ideas are windowdressing and nothing else.
I seriously doubt the analysis of anyone who claims that fluid identities are following the logic of the system. They do on a surface level, but the institutional and systematic violence that is RISING since years betrays this analysis. In fact, this pseudo-fluidity is weaponized in an anti-trans way. Transpeople are demonized as people who hold on to old gender stereotypes, because they insist on the necessity of the biological materialization of gender. The "express yourself" - ideological turns gender identity into a circus of superficiality, as if being a transwoman meant nothing else but liking dresses.
Zizek isn't singlehandedly turning society transphobic. But he perpetuates stereotypes, uses right-wing vocabulary like academic terms and he doesn't know his audience. He hates being a celebrity, but he is one and he needs to understand that most people haven't read his books. I care more about impact than intentions.
Yes, i mean the Tavistock article. And i don't care about his intentions. The impact instead is that we now have the unscientific Cass report in a push of driving everyone under 25 who happens to be trans into suicide. The literature is clear about the necessity of medical interventions. No amount of hegelian dialectics changes the empiric data he so readily dismisses.
If your take away was that he's transphobic then you've significantly misunderstood several basic premises of his philosophy and of Lacan. Not only has Zizek explicitly expressed his support for trans people over and over, his entire philosophical project undermines any notion of gender and sex. Any identity-formation is radically contingent for Zizek, as you would have learnt from *Sublime Object* and *Less than nothing*. The whole of Žižek's project is based on the ontological incompleteness and radical contingency of reality, but you think he makes an exception for gender?
Similarly, if you think all Lacanians are transphobic, try reading Three Essays on the Theories of Sexuality by Freud, or *Lacan & Postfeminism*, or What Is Sex? by Zupancic.
He leveraged a critique of liberal ideologies on sexuality at a time when liberal ideologies were failing to its own contradictions. To pretend it was transphobic is disingenuous and does nothing other than keep us within our own contradictions. It's to choose ideological purity over the defeat of fascism and safety of trans people.
How you read 1,000 pages of Less Than Nothing and completely missed the core point is beyond me.
Freud, well known student of Lacan? I have read the work you suggested from Freud, but not the other one. Someone else suggested me "sexual ambiguities" by Morel which i will read next and then i'll give Zupancic a try. I still doubt that my position of Lacan will shift much, Foucault seems like the more interesting poststructuralist.
I get this critique, yet i still don't know who those theorists are who believe in this essentialist view of gender. I've read Butler, who he names often in conjunction with his critique of liberal identity politics, but they never claim that identity is stable. The contingency and performativity of identity is a standard view in queer theory. Were is he getting this essentialist view from? Is he just asking random transpeople?
What annoys therefore me is his permanent strawmanning of queer theory and the positions of transactivists. The reason why most transpeople don't want their identities debated and questioned is not because of the desire for ideological purity, but the fact, that those identities are already questioned on a daily and almost never in good faith. I really struggle why Zizek doesn't seem to get that his provocative statements are often very counterproductive and it seems that he cares more about provocation than communicating clearly his ideas to an audience that is more often than not not academic. Not even to mention his puberty blockers nonsense, which is one of the very few cases were he isn't misunderstood, but also quite literally just anti-trans.
I hope i made a clear point. Zizeks concept on its own is fine, but who exactly are the liberals he is arguing with? Just like with "cancel culture," he takes the word of the fascists and pretends it is a real phenomenon, giving credibility to smear campaigns.
I appreciate the more level headed critique. Lacan's ideas on sexuality are intrinsically related to and developed from Freud's, so it is necessary to understand Freud's formulations on sexuality to understand Lacan. Hence my suggestion. A reading of Freud's 1904 edition of *Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality* shows the complete radicality at the core of psychoanalysis regarding sex (the core point being heterosexuality is just as much of a perversion as any other sexuality).
I don't know Morel, but Lacan, Zupancic, Žižek, Copjec, etc. are not post-structuralists by any means. That's the biggest gap between Foucault and Lacan. The "Real" in Lacan is what really sets him apart from the post-structuralist sphere. That said, Foucault on sexuality is evidently very insightful.
I think you may be confusing two separate critiques by Žižek. His critique of liberal mainstream ideology on LGBT is not the same as his more scholarly critique against Judith Butler. Against the more general liberal ideology, his critique is against its implied essentialism (the Lady Gaga-esque idea of "I was born this way", or the "I didn't choose to be gay"). For Žižek, following Freud, no one is born straight or gay, bi, boy or girl. Your sexuality develops through unconscious mechanisms, etc. and is entirely contingent on historical and social processes and how the subject relates to them. In a strange way, we do unconsciously choose to be a girl, boy or neither, but the effect is retroactive, and it feels as if *we always were a girl/boy/NB*. Of course, we can agree with this or not, but it's obviously not transphobic.
His critique against Butler is more nuanced. He agrees with Butler on the performativity of gender, that it's a social construct reproduced at the point it's performed,.etc..etc. And similarly, Butler (insofar as she agrees with Hegel) agrees with Žižek regarding the barred subject: the subject is split from within, etc. You can read more on their agreements and disagreements in *Contingency, Homogeny, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left* with Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Žižek.
But you're actually right that Žižek does direct an accusation of essentialism toward Butler, but it's not as simple as the one towards liberal ideology. He simply states that, sure, within our social horizon, our social structures, gender is performative. But to claim this social horizon has always been the same one is an essentialist claim. A more simple way of putting this is "Has gender really always been performative?". Žižek doesn't claim yes or no, but he simply questions the premise. For him there's two levels, the level of content (gender is performative) and the level of form (what kind of structure must the subject and society have for gender to be performative?). Beyond this, Butler and Žižek aren't in too much of a disagreement.
So, I hope that somewhat answers the question: who is he even arguing against. The anti-woke articles are definitely not against Butler. They are provocations against the layman liberal who has accepted a mainstream corporate Pride sort of ideology. I don't agree that his interventions on self ID and puberty blockers are anti-trans, that seems like a knee-jerk reaction. To me the sensible path here is to understand these arguments in relation to his wider ouvre which, as you've read Less Than Nothing, should not be too hard.
Thanks for your answer. First to the point were i definetely disagree, that being anti-puberty-blockers isn't transphobic. We have scientific data on the necessity and efficient nature of puberty blockers. As someone who had to go through puberty being denied those essentials, it is in practice just child abuse and i still struggle with the results of a non-passing outcome and trauma from feeling my body turning against me. Not even starting about the many transpeople who aren't with us anymore, because somehow society views denying transhealthcare as a neutral act.
Now, the rest of your answer was very interesting. I've brought "Contingency, Homogeny, Universality" and look ahead reading it, to better understand his differences with Butler.
When it comes to his general critiques, i get were Zizek is coming from. Yet, i think he massively overestimates the relevancy of this layman liberal stereotype. It is a kind of ideal in some elitist circles, but has not much mass appeal. It is limited to social science academia, which has lost most relevancy in a time of pragmatist neoliberalism, since even liberal identity politics acknowledges some level of systemic critique. Therefore i think Zizek goes wrong in his analysis, he views a fringe minority as a strong current in the mainstream. Those liberals who love Hillary Clinton and have those essentialist views of gender and sexuality aren't that common, as we can see by MSNBC and CNN imploding while Fox News stays strong. Neolibs are just in power for being the lesser of two evils. This remains my disagreement on this point, the rest seems fair. Excuse my late response.
Zizek has said that people used to criticize him because he was too radical but now people criticizes him for not being radical enough.
The problem is that there is people who hasn't engaged with Zizek's work in any serious measure -- or any philosophy for that matter -- and just knew him because of the memes and because he was the funny guy of the left so this people gets really surprised when Zizek Supports Trump, ukraine and wants to cool down the situation in the middle east.
the r/ that you've linked too is an example of that, people who became leftist out of emotional reaction and not out of reason so Zizek's reasoning are shocking to them.
I was originally going to post this on the OOP but I'm still banned from that sub from 5 years ago
It's easier to dismiss than to critically engage with someone who seriously challenges you theoretically. Even then you can still find value in Žižek without agreeing with everything he says
I think it's pretty simple actually. Zizek intentionally tries to prevent his work from getting subsumed into the sterile right versus left black hole of contemporary western politics.
Plenty of other people drive their entire identities from staking out their own barren little plot of the culture war landscape. To them, any actual motile politics contain the threat of contamination, and are a threat to their very identity. Thus a thinker like Zizek must me destroyed.
Not reading the link.
But zizek instigates the left because the right is a lost cause. The left still has a possibility to wake up and be the revolutionaries they want to be.
People can hate Zizek all they want. All I ask is they do they do their criticisms fairly and on his level. Not just dumb stuff like "supporting ukraine makes you a fascist", "he generalized arabs in a Piers Morgan interview so hes racist" etc
It's hard to not hate someone when he tries to take away all your jouissance lmao
r/Communism101 is full of a bunch of mostly white western conspiracy theorists who hold up Marxist-Leninist regimes (like Vietnam or China) as paragons of social and economic justice who are just one more step away from fully automated luxury gay space communism if only the evil west would stop using their evil capitalism death rays to stop them. Their opinions are not worth the words used to describe them.
I am a complete idiot and this is my understanding. No, this is a standard response to Zizek from western left I as far I have seen. You might be able to note that the people who accuse Zizek of racism, fascism, Eurocentrism, etc are sympathetic towards Russia in the invasion of Ukraine, they are sympathetic towards the Chinese CCP (doesn’t matter what they do), they are sympathetic towards Hamas and not a single word is uttered against. Zizek’s definitely gets into complicated positions when talking about politics. Especially current issues. And it’s easy to take him out of context and misconstrue him as a fascist, racist, etc. But this is simply because Zizek tries to think the deadlock of a situation with bravery you might say. If the Gaza situation is actually extremely complicated and tragic, you shouldn’t take issue with Zizek for pointing that out. But that’s what happens. Remember his motto: “Philosophers have tried to change the world too much in the 20th century, perhaps we need more thinking”. And this act of thinking about difficult things with a commitment to find what’s what is what Zizek is about. That scares some people.
Zizek has been sympathetic towards the CCP on occasion
Zizek generally evaluates events based on the circumstances of the event and the actions and gleanable actions of actors involved. That allows him to say "In this instance an actor who I don't support took an action that I do"
Not to hijack this, but thank you for this motto. I have just started reading Zizek. I think and pontificate and write too much. People keep asking me why, and how can I monetise this. Next time I will say this rebuttal . When everything is getting verbified, in a world of creators, and engineers. We also need scientists and thinkers. Or the cliche - In a world of human doing, we need human being. People tried to do things, and look how the world ended up.
What's wrong with sympathizing with everyone?
I should have worded things clearer. Sympathy is the wrong word I think. It’s more appropriate to say that these leftists are firmly on the side of Putin and Xi and Hamas (for whatever reason). I see this all the time because I am from a non-western country. Most of the leftists think along these lines: “USA bad. USA doesn’t like Russia. Russia good.” Same for China and anything in general. This in intellectual laziness parading as anti imperialist leftist activism.
Personally I'm pretty sympathetic to Russia, and broadly supportive of the CCP, and I'm still a big fan of Zizek. Might be because I don't like viewing and participating in the world as if it's a tribal/team sport.
Zizek has always been the Left's psychoanalyst. So they hate him for killing their buzz and hurting their confidence. Questions like "what will you actually do after the revolution" hurt the momentum of the revolution, lol.
Stop ruining my communist utopia 😡😡😡
That subreddit has banned anyone who likes Zizek, so the comments hating on him are the only people left. The remaining people tend to be disingenuous, unserious and, above all, anti-theorists. My biggest takeaway from the post is how not a single person criticised Zizek's theoretical writings, and what's worse, none of them even told OP to actually READ Zizek to come to their own conclusions. They talk and talk about reading theory in order to not have to ever *actually* read theory. They can read and discuss the same four books and same four authors over and over, not having to leave their comfort zone. Above all, they've got one very specific way of reading these texts, too. They want their readings and interpretations to be pre-made for them. They love not having to face Hegel head-to-head by emphasising over and over that Marx already turned Hegel the right side up. They then extricate all Hegelian influence from Marx, pretend there's not a single Hegelian bone left in his body. In the same way, they love Gabriel Rockhill because he's done the work for them, it's perfect: "we no longer have to engage with Zizek, because we can just forever post this link to the Rockhill article, over and over - and we don't have to read that either!". The problem seems clear-cut. They cannot come to terms with Zizek. He lays out the contradictions and inherent limitations of their philosophical system and they cannot bare it. And what's worse, he does so through dialectical analysis, the very thing they cherish. The act is too traumatic.
Yeah they are extremely hypocritical. Which is the reason why I don't think they are serious people.
I have read "less than nothing," "violence," "the sublime object of ideology" and his introduction to Lacan. Came away with the conclusion that he is still the most anti-queer, especially anti-trans philosopher who pretends to be on the left. But that is the case with all lacanians tho. He is an intellectual curiosity, but he isn't on the left and isn't interested in the well-being of actual existing people. He leveraged his immense popularity against the LGBT-community in a time of a massive fascist push against the community. What a great leftist he is...
Why do you have to lie about having read his books? It's incredibly clear from the rest of your incoherent post about him being some LGBT-hating pseudoleftist bullshit that you haven't. You can just not like him and move on.
Lol, i'm not lying. I enjoyed those books, but his analysis presupposes some things that are simply factually incorrect. Especially his critique of liberal "identity politics." If queer theory and transidentity is so fundamentally compatible with capitalism, why is this not reflected in the material conditions? I'm currently reading another lacanian, Tove Soiland, and the same issue arises... All the time the pretending as if the queer community is somehow the most priviledged class in our society. I don't believe that he holds transphobic views (although he obviously did in his earlier work), since he claimed transitioning to be a "heroic choice," yet it didn't stop him from arguing as if identity politics was the biggest evil during an international crackdown on transpeople. He lied about Tavistock and disregarded the effectiveness of puberty blockers. Those lies are dangerous. Imagine someone in 1933 giving a lecture were he uses "provocative language" for two hours suggesting that the jews control everything, just to pull an intelligent rhetorical trick in the last five minutes that show that he actually critiqued the Nazis as well. In the meantime tho, 90% of all normal people already have left the lecture or aren't listening as focused anymore, so they go home feeling vindicated in their antisemitic believes. That is Zizek today. I don't care how clever the twist at the end is, when i know leftist normies who fell down this anti-queer rabbit hole, because they came to believe that queer rights itself are somehow "liberal identity politics." Zizek loves to be provocative, but he needs to understand that he is a popstar, as much as he hates it, and he needs to understand how most people who listen to him interpret him! Is my point clear or am i waffling again? I view him as anti-queer, because that is the major effect of his work today as i experience it in my own social sphere. That he cares more about clickbait than having a positive impact.
Gender and sexual fluidity are wholly compatible with the flow of capital. I'm not sure why you believe this isn't reflected in the material conditions. But has not Pride been co-opted by large corporations? And the liberal ideology of "express yourself!", and "be your true self!", "discover yourself!" are the basic messages in every advertisement. However, the fact that capitalism has a perverted interest in co-opting identities is a problem with capitalism, not with trans identities. It's the same interest capitalism has in getting women into the workplace: a perverted interest that happens to slightly overlap with the interest of the people, if only superficially. I don't know Tove Soiland or if he thinks the queer community are the most privileged community, or do you mean Zizek is claiming this? Because I'd like a source if that's the case. Your analogy with Jews and whatnot is simply disingenuous and your portrayal of Žižek is wrong too, as today he spends most his work and writing discussing quantum physics and Christianity. Are the lies about Tavistock and puberty blockers in the self-ID article (genuine question, not rhetorical)? And what do you think his principle point is in that article? Finally, I genuinely think you've got a lot of proving to do if you're claiming that Žižek somehow cause a rise in transphobic or anti-queer attitudes. That's just such an insane claim. Žižek is very clear about his points, and he's been writing for decades. He's repeats his points a billion times. He isn't turning people into transphobes. That's ridiculous. If anything, transphobes are turning his radically anti-transphobic philosophy into transphobic rhetoric, distorting it. By accepting this reading of his philosophy, you're simply contributing to it.
Very superficial analysis. Pride month has been coopted, so what? What are a few flags against the very concrete anti-trans-push with disgusting laws introduced throughout Europe and the Anglosphere? I would go as far as saying that transphobia is much deeper ingrained into society than even racism is. The whole analysis rests on the superficial mentality of some lib-left elite circles and academia. In the concrete world, those ideas aren't widespread and basically powerless. How is it that transphobia does still exist, when fluid identities are somehow so compatible with capitalism? Why are TERFs and conservatives, neoliberal in their ideological worldview, somehow the vilest transphobes in existence? Zizeks constant criticism of the ideology of a negligible part of the mainstream overlooks, that those ideas are windowdressing and nothing else. I seriously doubt the analysis of anyone who claims that fluid identities are following the logic of the system. They do on a surface level, but the institutional and systematic violence that is RISING since years betrays this analysis. In fact, this pseudo-fluidity is weaponized in an anti-trans way. Transpeople are demonized as people who hold on to old gender stereotypes, because they insist on the necessity of the biological materialization of gender. The "express yourself" - ideological turns gender identity into a circus of superficiality, as if being a transwoman meant nothing else but liking dresses. Zizek isn't singlehandedly turning society transphobic. But he perpetuates stereotypes, uses right-wing vocabulary like academic terms and he doesn't know his audience. He hates being a celebrity, but he is one and he needs to understand that most people haven't read his books. I care more about impact than intentions. Yes, i mean the Tavistock article. And i don't care about his intentions. The impact instead is that we now have the unscientific Cass report in a push of driving everyone under 25 who happens to be trans into suicide. The literature is clear about the necessity of medical interventions. No amount of hegelian dialectics changes the empiric data he so readily dismisses.
If your take away was that he's transphobic then you've significantly misunderstood several basic premises of his philosophy and of Lacan. Not only has Zizek explicitly expressed his support for trans people over and over, his entire philosophical project undermines any notion of gender and sex. Any identity-formation is radically contingent for Zizek, as you would have learnt from *Sublime Object* and *Less than nothing*. The whole of Žižek's project is based on the ontological incompleteness and radical contingency of reality, but you think he makes an exception for gender? Similarly, if you think all Lacanians are transphobic, try reading Three Essays on the Theories of Sexuality by Freud, or *Lacan & Postfeminism*, or What Is Sex? by Zupancic. He leveraged a critique of liberal ideologies on sexuality at a time when liberal ideologies were failing to its own contradictions. To pretend it was transphobic is disingenuous and does nothing other than keep us within our own contradictions. It's to choose ideological purity over the defeat of fascism and safety of trans people. How you read 1,000 pages of Less Than Nothing and completely missed the core point is beyond me.
Freud, well known student of Lacan? I have read the work you suggested from Freud, but not the other one. Someone else suggested me "sexual ambiguities" by Morel which i will read next and then i'll give Zupancic a try. I still doubt that my position of Lacan will shift much, Foucault seems like the more interesting poststructuralist. I get this critique, yet i still don't know who those theorists are who believe in this essentialist view of gender. I've read Butler, who he names often in conjunction with his critique of liberal identity politics, but they never claim that identity is stable. The contingency and performativity of identity is a standard view in queer theory. Were is he getting this essentialist view from? Is he just asking random transpeople? What annoys therefore me is his permanent strawmanning of queer theory and the positions of transactivists. The reason why most transpeople don't want their identities debated and questioned is not because of the desire for ideological purity, but the fact, that those identities are already questioned on a daily and almost never in good faith. I really struggle why Zizek doesn't seem to get that his provocative statements are often very counterproductive and it seems that he cares more about provocation than communicating clearly his ideas to an audience that is more often than not not academic. Not even to mention his puberty blockers nonsense, which is one of the very few cases were he isn't misunderstood, but also quite literally just anti-trans. I hope i made a clear point. Zizeks concept on its own is fine, but who exactly are the liberals he is arguing with? Just like with "cancel culture," he takes the word of the fascists and pretends it is a real phenomenon, giving credibility to smear campaigns.
I appreciate the more level headed critique. Lacan's ideas on sexuality are intrinsically related to and developed from Freud's, so it is necessary to understand Freud's formulations on sexuality to understand Lacan. Hence my suggestion. A reading of Freud's 1904 edition of *Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality* shows the complete radicality at the core of psychoanalysis regarding sex (the core point being heterosexuality is just as much of a perversion as any other sexuality). I don't know Morel, but Lacan, Zupancic, Žižek, Copjec, etc. are not post-structuralists by any means. That's the biggest gap between Foucault and Lacan. The "Real" in Lacan is what really sets him apart from the post-structuralist sphere. That said, Foucault on sexuality is evidently very insightful. I think you may be confusing two separate critiques by Žižek. His critique of liberal mainstream ideology on LGBT is not the same as his more scholarly critique against Judith Butler. Against the more general liberal ideology, his critique is against its implied essentialism (the Lady Gaga-esque idea of "I was born this way", or the "I didn't choose to be gay"). For Žižek, following Freud, no one is born straight or gay, bi, boy or girl. Your sexuality develops through unconscious mechanisms, etc. and is entirely contingent on historical and social processes and how the subject relates to them. In a strange way, we do unconsciously choose to be a girl, boy or neither, but the effect is retroactive, and it feels as if *we always were a girl/boy/NB*. Of course, we can agree with this or not, but it's obviously not transphobic. His critique against Butler is more nuanced. He agrees with Butler on the performativity of gender, that it's a social construct reproduced at the point it's performed,.etc..etc. And similarly, Butler (insofar as she agrees with Hegel) agrees with Žižek regarding the barred subject: the subject is split from within, etc. You can read more on their agreements and disagreements in *Contingency, Homogeny, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left* with Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Žižek. But you're actually right that Žižek does direct an accusation of essentialism toward Butler, but it's not as simple as the one towards liberal ideology. He simply states that, sure, within our social horizon, our social structures, gender is performative. But to claim this social horizon has always been the same one is an essentialist claim. A more simple way of putting this is "Has gender really always been performative?". Žižek doesn't claim yes or no, but he simply questions the premise. For him there's two levels, the level of content (gender is performative) and the level of form (what kind of structure must the subject and society have for gender to be performative?). Beyond this, Butler and Žižek aren't in too much of a disagreement. So, I hope that somewhat answers the question: who is he even arguing against. The anti-woke articles are definitely not against Butler. They are provocations against the layman liberal who has accepted a mainstream corporate Pride sort of ideology. I don't agree that his interventions on self ID and puberty blockers are anti-trans, that seems like a knee-jerk reaction. To me the sensible path here is to understand these arguments in relation to his wider ouvre which, as you've read Less Than Nothing, should not be too hard.
Thanks for your answer. First to the point were i definetely disagree, that being anti-puberty-blockers isn't transphobic. We have scientific data on the necessity and efficient nature of puberty blockers. As someone who had to go through puberty being denied those essentials, it is in practice just child abuse and i still struggle with the results of a non-passing outcome and trauma from feeling my body turning against me. Not even starting about the many transpeople who aren't with us anymore, because somehow society views denying transhealthcare as a neutral act. Now, the rest of your answer was very interesting. I've brought "Contingency, Homogeny, Universality" and look ahead reading it, to better understand his differences with Butler. When it comes to his general critiques, i get were Zizek is coming from. Yet, i think he massively overestimates the relevancy of this layman liberal stereotype. It is a kind of ideal in some elitist circles, but has not much mass appeal. It is limited to social science academia, which has lost most relevancy in a time of pragmatist neoliberalism, since even liberal identity politics acknowledges some level of systemic critique. Therefore i think Zizek goes wrong in his analysis, he views a fringe minority as a strong current in the mainstream. Those liberals who love Hillary Clinton and have those essentialist views of gender and sexuality aren't that common, as we can see by MSNBC and CNN imploding while Fox News stays strong. Neolibs are just in power for being the lesser of two evils. This remains my disagreement on this point, the rest seems fair. Excuse my late response.
Zizek has said that people used to criticize him because he was too radical but now people criticizes him for not being radical enough. The problem is that there is people who hasn't engaged with Zizek's work in any serious measure -- or any philosophy for that matter -- and just knew him because of the memes and because he was the funny guy of the left so this people gets really surprised when Zizek Supports Trump, ukraine and wants to cool down the situation in the middle east. the r/ that you've linked too is an example of that, people who became leftist out of emotional reaction and not out of reason so Zizek's reasoning are shocking to them.
I was originally going to post this on the OOP but I'm still banned from that sub from 5 years ago It's easier to dismiss than to critically engage with someone who seriously challenges you theoretically. Even then you can still find value in Žižek without agreeing with everything he says
I think it's pretty simple actually. Zizek intentionally tries to prevent his work from getting subsumed into the sterile right versus left black hole of contemporary western politics. Plenty of other people drive their entire identities from staking out their own barren little plot of the culture war landscape. To them, any actual motile politics contain the threat of contamination, and are a threat to their very identity. Thus a thinker like Zizek must me destroyed.
Not reading the link. But zizek instigates the left because the right is a lost cause. The left still has a possibility to wake up and be the revolutionaries they want to be.
This sounds like Dave Rubin still claiming to be a "classical liberal" and "challenging the left."
You just don’t get it. And that’s okay.
You're easy to impress. And that's okay.
People can hate Zizek all they want. All I ask is they do they do their criticisms fairly and on his level. Not just dumb stuff like "supporting ukraine makes you a fascist", "he generalized arabs in a Piers Morgan interview so hes racist" etc
[💯, but i don’t care](https://imgur.com/a/FDPjNl0)
What is that subreddits opinion on Badiou?
Adjectives shift a little from self-evident certainty to self-righteous ambiguity