Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Genuine question - how does he get from point A to point B? Surely "the world is a crrrazy place" should lead to aggressive scepticism and nihilism, not admiration for Comrade Moustachevili?
Zizek: seems like a nob
- Thread starter el-ahrairah
- Start date
Genuine question - how does he get from point A to point B? Surely "the world is a crrrazy place" should lead to aggressive scepticism and nihilism, not admiration for Comrade Moustachevili?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I suspect that ska's reading is not that rigourous. This is the 2nd time i can remember that he's totally misread him.
el-ahrairah
forward communism, forward gerbils!
i dunno, i can see how scepticism and nihilism could lead a number of ways, including towards the admiration of an iron-fisted dictator. but also towards plenty of other, rather more sensible responses.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
But it didn't in zizek.
ska invita
back on the other side
ive never read him before, but this is what was in the beginners guide - reduced further by me! Sorry to confuse things with my post - I was going to try and post properly what i gleaned from it for urban interrogation later... I do get the impression though that everything he does is ultimately geared towards excusing the excesses of Communism (which he's up for repeating to some extent)...I'll write up why i think that later.
el-ahrairah
forward communism, forward gerbils!
zizek: neither stalinist nor sensible...
ska invita
back on the other side
when was this time - his anti-horizontalist comments on Occupy?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Your horrible misreading of him arguing for a SWP type role over occupy. A shameful misreading.
ska invita
back on the other side
i think it adds up... i just don't trust his communist party allegiances...if it was wrong on this occasion (a matter of opinion - i stand by it, "horrible" though it is
- still reads like a hatchet job to me) its still true of him in general. I remember you also thinking badly of Occupy (at the start at least, not sure about later) along similar lines, but I think his dislike of it comes from a different (ideological) place.not a stalinist, but he does defend stalin/ism though
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
There are no communist party allegiances. Where are you getting this from?
Zizek:
My take on it before was slightly wrong. He's basically making various Christian theologians (mainly Chesterton) central to an atheist outlook. Without Chesterton atheists aren't real, authentic atheists. Balmy really (and dependent on Lacan; to do with transcendental substructures of belief - an atheist merely believes God is dead, whereas an authentic atheist believes God is unconscious). He theorises by glorifying his prejudices. Zizek can't step outside his (occidental) intellectual tradition.
19-20 minutes in:
My take on it before was slightly wrong. He's basically making various Christian theologians (mainly Chesterton) central to an atheist outlook. Without Chesterton atheists aren't real, authentic atheists. Balmy really (and dependent on Lacan; to do with transcendental substructures of belief - an atheist merely believes God is dead, whereas an authentic atheist believes God is unconscious). He theorises by glorifying his prejudices. Zizek can't step outside his (occidental) intellectual tradition.
19-20 minutes in:
I should add that in his exposition there is no analysis of religion as a social phenomenon (he's even worse than the "new atheists" in this respect, let alone a cure for them). Related to this he has only a reformist criticism of religion (or at least Catholicism) as a moral authority.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Hmmm.
I've always dismissed Zizek as someone not worth bothering with, but I do think the idea that it is only through monotheism that one can arrive at an atheist position has some merit.
The existence of the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe with no sense of the divine, disproves it as an absolute truth. That doesn't mean it isn't an interesting idea, though.
Monotheism (which is never any such thing really - Christianity isn't monotheism really, strictly speaking) was in some ways a regression from polytheism. Polytheism, with its fluid theology that would adapt to new circumstances, was proto-scientific in its attempt to explain phenomena. The monotheistic monoliths that replaced it introduced dogmas of various kinds, unquestionable absolute truths. But they also involved a regression of the gods from being the direct causes of every event, placing them at a greater distance as the ones that set everything in motion, or set the rules, but then allowed things to proceed from there. That leaves room for the atheist to then doubt the need to postulate a god at all.
I've always dismissed Zizek as someone not worth bothering with, but I do think the idea that it is only through monotheism that one can arrive at an atheist position has some merit.
The existence of the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe with no sense of the divine, disproves it as an absolute truth. That doesn't mean it isn't an interesting idea, though.
Monotheism (which is never any such thing really - Christianity isn't monotheism really, strictly speaking) was in some ways a regression from polytheism. Polytheism, with its fluid theology that would adapt to new circumstances, was proto-scientific in its attempt to explain phenomena. The monotheistic monoliths that replaced it introduced dogmas of various kinds, unquestionable absolute truths. But they also involved a regression of the gods from being the direct causes of every event, placing them at a greater distance as the ones that set everything in motion, or set the rules, but then allowed things to proceed from there. That leaves room for the atheist to then doubt the need to postulate a god at all.
Oh it is an interesting idea, but please note that he is being more specific than you are. He is talking about Catholicism not just any old monotheism. It's because he likes Chesterton basically and the interesting idea is Chesterton's not Zizek's. The problem is Zizek's theorising is based on very little and it appears very dogmatic.
His reasoning is very different to your reasoning above. It's about the subtleties of belief. Religious beliefs have a quasi literal/quasi metaphorical character. To arrive at atheism without going through Christianity means your take on what religious belief is emphasises the literal character over the metaphorical character (caution: that's very much my way of putting it not Zizek's).
His reasoning is very different to your reasoning above. It's about the subtleties of belief. Religious beliefs have a quasi literal/quasi metaphorical character. To arrive at atheism without going through Christianity means your take on what religious belief is emphasises the literal character over the metaphorical character (caution: that's very much my way of putting it not Zizek's).
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
AFAIK the only ethnographic research done on the Piraha has been by a linguist who started out as an Evangelical Christian missionary, before going through a crisis of faith and losing his faith. Like his claim that the Piraha lack the linguistic features that Chomsky considers universal and panhuman, his points about their alleged lack of a "sense of the divine" are intriguing and important, but badly need to be confirmed by another researcher. It may well be that he's right, but it might also be that his particular relationship to religion, coming from his crisis of faith, lead him to misinterpret Piraha culture.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes, I agree that they need to be confirmed. I probably shouldn't have used the Piraha as my example, because I think that if they really don't have a recursive language, and are as unable to learn other languages as appears to be the case, that might mean something rather more fundamental about their development and particular circumstances: either that their stable environment has meant that they have not faced the challenges of new situations that require new ways of thinking and new ways of reasoning, meaning that their culture has not become one in which full human language is needed; and/or more controversially, that this lack of novelty has in fact led them along a certain separate evolutionary path.
I've been thinking about the Piraha a lot recently, and a lack of recursion in their language I think necessarily would mean that their language lacks the full expressive and creative power of other languages.
I don't know if you've read Everett's work on this. I've read some, and it does sound very convincing.
I've been thinking about the Piraha a lot recently, and a lack of recursion in their language I think necessarily would mean that their language lacks the full expressive and creative power of other languages.
I don't know if you've read Everett's work on this. I've read some, and it does sound very convincing.
revol68
what, fucking what?
it's funny watching so many lefties take the hump with him of late, as if his god awful concrete politics weren't obvious from the outset.
I think alot of people are just lazy thinkers and want people like Zizek to give them a complete and consistent answer to the world, and when they inevitably fail to do so, they are disappointed.
I think alot of people are just lazy thinkers and want people like Zizek to give them a complete and consistent answer to the world, and when they inevitably fail to do so, they are disappointed.
love detective
there's no love too small
baby night owl
revol68
what, fucking what?
The other thing is that Chomsky's argument is humans have the potential for these linguistic features, a universal language acquisition device, he never said ever human would have them.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That begs several questions, though. If the Piraha genuinely do have a language that is not recursive, and if this does indeed place limits in the kinds of thing that they can say, what is it about them that has led them not to develop recursive language if they do have the potential? It's a good trick to lie dormant like that. The answer would have to be that they have never been confronted with the kind of problem that required that level of reasoning to solve, which would give some pretty big insights into the likely ways in which recursive human language originally developed, and when.
They might also have lost a formerly recursive language due to generations of living in such a way that it was not required. But again, that begs questions - such as what is it that is different about the Piraha's circumstances from the situation of children who turn pidgin into fully recursive creole.
revol68
what, fucking what?
Definitely it raises many many questions, problem is the research is pretty patchy and from what I know seems to rely on one dx missionaries experience. Certainly I dont think theres enough to be making grand claims dismissing Chomsky's theory ofanguage quite yet.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
This link should take you to a PDF of a paper written as part of a critique of the Piraha claims:
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/peop...idence_and_Argumentation_Reply_to_Everett.pdf
A lot of it is in technical linguistic jargon that is a bit beyond me, but the gist seems to be that the ex-missionary did indeed lose the run of himself.
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/peop...idence_and_Argumentation_Reply_to_Everett.pdf
A lot of it is in technical linguistic jargon that is a bit beyond me, but the gist seems to be that the ex-missionary did indeed lose the run of himself.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I'm going to try to struggle through that at some point. Without really engaging with it, which is going to be pretty tough, tbh, it's hard to tell whether or not they have a point. There's quite a bit of angry rhetoric in there, though.
Mad4ziz
Member
As I read him, Zizek is simply reacting to the hopelessness he sees all around hm-the apathy. By mixing German Idealism with Lacan and Freud he tries to prove that there is room in a "deterministic" universe for human freedom-for an autonomous subjective act-that changes (as he would put it) the coordinates of (social) reality. Less ambitious than many who prefer "practical" politics; perhaps more necessary as cognitive neuroscience seems to remove all our agency?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I don't think it does. But this statement begs a question - what do you mean by 'our'? It seems to me that those who see a problem here feel the need for some kind of cartesian duality to be taking place, but cartesian duality, like the idea of 'god', doesn't actually solve the problem it's usually invoked to solve and itself poses its own problems.
Mad4ziz
Member
If one assumes a smooth consistent unbroken "real" (as is usually the case when a deterministic universe is mentioned) then there is a problem for freedom with or without Descartes. But Schelling as appropriated by Zizek assumes a fissured, cracked "real" as necessary if human subjectivity is to be both immanent to that "real" and yet capable of autonomous acts
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The problem for freedom is more fundamental than that. What is freedom? Is it the power not to do what you think it is best to do in any given instant? How would you do that? The concept 'free will' is incoherent - you have the freedom not to do that which you consider it is best to do - a - but instead to do b. But by making that decision to do b instead, b then assumes the position of that which you consider it is best to do. Free will is a concept that cannot even be defined.
And I suppose here you're right that neuroscience has something to say at this point. The 'decision' to act is itself a phenomenon in the self-generated construction 'conscious experience'. We act in certain ways, and explain those actions to ourselves in consciousness using all kinds of meanings, one of which is 'decision'.
I confess that I have no idea what a 'cracked real' could be. That sounds to me like an attempt to introduce dualism.
And I suppose here you're right that neuroscience has something to say at this point. The 'decision' to act is itself a phenomenon in the self-generated construction 'conscious experience'. We act in certain ways, and explain those actions to ourselves in consciousness using all kinds of meanings, one of which is 'decision'.
I confess that I have no idea what a 'cracked real' could be. That sounds to me like an attempt to introduce dualism.
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