Slavoj Zizek about dogmatic lacanian belief

[AndroidPolitician]

I share Chomsky's view that most of Derrida, Lacan's etc. work is basically nonsense and is precisely nonsense because no one can describe it.

For instance in physics people can simplify things for you but in "post-modernism" no one does so including Lacan.

[TheRacistsMustDie]

@AndroidPolitician I'm only very vaguely acquainted with their work, but I've never understood why Chomsky resorts to what is in my view too easy a way to do away with those theorists.

[AndroidPolitician]

@TheRacistsMustDie

Well I don't think it's that Chomsky is dumb and is lashing out, it's that the language is coded so it's either nonsense or at best truisms.

[TheRacistsMustDie]

@AndroidPolitician Oh Chomsky certainly isn't dumb, but an inaccessible writing style doesn't mean that what is written is bullocks & in that sense I think that Chomsky's attitude is a bit too Anglo-Saxon. (I know, very ethnocentric, but I don't know how to say it otherwise).

[AndroidPolitician]

@TheRacistsMustDie

Well yeah but people like scientists have an inaccessible writing style but they can simply their work for a lay person while Post-modernists have not and make no effort to do so.

I think overall Zizek is different in that he reaches a mass audience and tries to talk about issues that are actually important through post-modern lenses whereas most others just talk about post-modernism for post-modernism.

[bytedildo]

0:09 --that look, you know whats gonna happen next :D

[croncong]

Nice Video That You Share , So Very Nice Thanks You Slavoj Zizek about dogmatic lacanian belief

[fitnesus]

I Really Like The Video From Your Slavoj Zizek about dogmatic lacanian belief

[ThaHess]

There is an extremely good reason for Lacanians being so "dogmatic" - You actually have to open your mind in order to grasp "Ecrits." Even Obama has read Nietzsche, and everyone's been forced to read Aristotle, but Lacan? Some of the most brilliant thinkers in the world muddle up Lacanese or completely avoid it... So, it's up to us Lacanians to bring his ideas to the surface. I think Zizek does an awesome job.

[theindiekidable]

I think anyone who has read Lacan, knows how seductive it is. I think it is correct up to a point, that point being the matheme - wtf? I think that's when Lacan must have forgot his medicine and decided mathematise - i.e. totatalise - human psychology in to faux-mathematical formula. Its not exactly possible. And why are all Lacanians Communists?

[xx1994xxversion2]

@theindiekidable Why are all Lacanians communists? Jacques Lacan was influenced by Karl Marx and Lacan's work really does reflect a lot of premises of Marxism and materialism.

[xleax]

He's a professional babbler. This guy is a disgrace me and my country.

[Nuturalable]

Is't just me, or you people think the same!!! I think this man has a sexy accent...

[analyticaa]

I stopped even trying to interpret the Post-Modern (post-structural crowd) when I started reading their "deconstruction" of symbolic logic. They don't even know the difference between an axiom and a theorem and they are trying to critique logic? Please. They had at best a introductory understanding of logic (even that is doubtful given their confusion regarding quantification) and they are acting like they're experts on logic. Complete frauds!

[RetinendParadox]

what a fucking baby

[hotstixx]

love zizek,he`s alive and brings it all to life.such a welcome relief from all the monchromatic stuff out there.he makes me want to read more.

[jimmyjanglin]

lolzz

[giddensisadualist]

"i am a card carrying lacanian" ... what a line!

[ireadtoomuch]

"Knocking on the open door"....ha, that is GREAT. A nice way of saying, what, are you an idiot?

[dry3rlint]

Just watching that was liberating. Nice work, Zizek!

[Noarodman]

Oh snap, holly mother of Jesus, he hits that question out of the park, homerun, biatch!!

[ihatekhomeini]

@Noarodman hehe.

[cvvemuri]

@Noarodman

I can name several:

Herman Rapaport, Arthur Bradley, Josh Kates, Rudolph Gasche (who does point to occasional theoretical lapses or problems in certain texts of Derrida's contra to Zizek's assertion), Judith Butler, and Henry Staten.

All of these "deconstructionists" affirm Derrida's work while critically engaging it at the same time.

What Zizek says is basically true for many, if not all thinkers. It's stupid to pin it on one thinker and damn him for it.

[Noarodman]

@cvvemuri

Unless you're willing to go into specifics, my guess is that they criticize Derrida for not being Derridean enough.

[cvvemuri]

@Noarodman

Wrong. They actually point out certain shortcomings in some of Derrida's readings and theories, particularly Kates, Rapaport and Staten.

[traccan]

@cvvemuri I don't think either Rapaport or Staten would consider themselves "Derridean". I took classes from a grad. student of Rodolphe Gasche who was a perfect example of what Zizek is talking about -- not so much the inability or unwillingness to criticize Derrida or deconstructionists, but the absolute unwillingness to ever hold a non-difference/deconstruction thought or statement about anything. It's not Lacan the questioner is attacking but 'identitarian'/coincidence type thinking...

[traccan]

@traccan the bind this gets postmodern/poststructuralists into, is the one pointed out by Eagleton many times, that poststructuralism is undogmatic about everything (for good ethical reasons) except dogmatism, about which they are properly dogmatic. The pendulum swings too far one way, Hegel, Kojeve, Sartre, Althusser etc., the reaction is to swing it to the other extreme: Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard. Lacan is one of the few who fit on both sides (along with Merleau-Ponty and Barthes

[cvvemuri]

@traccan

Actually they do. I've read their work extensively, actually talked with Henry Staten several times btw. Actually, they'd probably question the notion of "Derridieanism" but they certainly identify their work as being along the lines of thought set out by Jacques Derrida.

[cvvemuri]

@traccan

Besides, Zizek himself asked for one "critical" remark. Henry Staten and Arthur Bradley made critical remarks regarding certain deconstructive arguments in Of Grammatology, with Staten even going so far as to suggest that we need a post-deconstructive account of naturalism, which Bradley assented to. Herman Rapaport and Christopher Fynk also make pointed criticisms regarding Derrida's analysis of Heidegger.

[featheon]

@cvvemuri I know, I was waiting for someone to yell out Staten's Wittgenstein and Derrida. Such an ill book.

[cvvemuri]

@Noarodman

There's also Christopher Fynsk who challenges some of Derrida's work for not engaging in a fully productive encounter with Heidegger, instead falling to a limited reading of his corpus, ignoring many lectures where he actually can be said to come close to Derrida's ideas.

[jdriscoll2000]

@cvvemuri you are completely missing the point. in a scene right before this one (it's from the documentary) zizek says he finds it irritating that lacanian theory is generally marginalized as too 'dogmatic.' his point is--why? the derrida example is to show that derridean theory is ubiquitously accepted/practiced, but it is never called dogmatic. *he's not arguing for it to be called dogmatic,* he's giving an example of the unfair treatment the he, his colleagues, and his own master receives.

[cvvemuri]

@jdriscoll2000

Actually many in continental philosophy have brought up the issue of a dogmatic Derrideanism in the academy. Just as many have raised the same point for the influence of Foucault, Marx and, yes, Lacan.

[cvvemuri]

@jdriscoll2000

Zizek's complaint is that there is no question of dogmatism for Derrideans yet he is being unfairly persecuted. I'm ridiculing is defense by showing that the same objections have been raised for the other big thinkers and that he's not immune.

[traccan]

@cvvemuri (and no doubt Zizek would have some dogmatic Lacanian explanation for the fact that I just replied to my own comment above)

[raisecain]

@traccan amazing <3

[traccan]

@raisecain My comment is, or the video? lol...I agree if it's about the latter, not so much about the first. But thx! I was looking at your artwork, pretty amazing too. If it weren't for the fucking winters in Montreal, I would love to be in an environment like that. The east coast has no avant garde tendencies whatsoever.

[timtak1]

@cvvemuri

Thanks for the reading list.

But all the same...I think that the general point that, he is no more dogmatic than a Derridean, sounds fair.

I have only read the Zizek books where he uses Lacan.

[cvvemuri]

@timtak1

A red herring as that could be said about any thinker. But the specific point he made had to be criticized nonetheless.

[timtak1]

@cvvemuri The point being, Derrideans do not criticise Derrida? And are the ones that do, Derridean? And was Derrida a terrorist obscurantist anyway?

Zizek not is criticising Derrideans for not criticising Derrida, nor even criticising Derrida for being difficult to criticise. That is a Derridean Shtick. "Oh you are all so dogmatic. Let us deconstruct your dogma for you. "

Zizek writes his own Lacan, about the world, not about dogma. Let Derrideans deconstruct themselves.

[cvvemuri]

@timtak1

Fair enough but if you actually read Derrida's work, you'll find that one of the key points is to recognize one's own contingency and deconstructibility. Derrida does not posit himself as a bird's eye. And much of Derridean work emphasizes this clearly. At some point, all thinkers exert some form of imposing influence on the academy and it can be said that adherence to their ideas risks becoming dogma.

[cvvemuri]

@timtak1

It was true for Sartre, for Heidegger, for Marx. And its equally true for Derrida and Lacan.

[Revolutionarythought]

@cvvemuri The point, I think, is about the charge of dogma that usually is attached to people in a school of thought you disagree with, all while failing to turn your critique inward. We are nearly all dogmatists to someone.