Slavoj Zizek. Materialism and Theology. 2007 5/8

[yawnandjokeoh]

I am enjoying watching these, I don't know how much the ruling class ideology - word play -Zizek is using has value, never the less I am enjoying it.

However I did notice that he uses "opium of the masses" in the vulgar sense - as a hypnotic ideology, not as a pain killing ideology (the spirit of the spiritless world).

The popular Marx quote gets misused in this way a lot, its odd that Zizek uses it as such. Because there is nothing overtly comforting about ecology, is there?

[timetochilli]

fuck sake my lecturer was chattin such rubbish about materialism and so on fanks for the nelightenment slajov zizek

[coprographia]

I always lose wood the instant he starts badmouthing ecology. I don't have to believe in some all-wise earth mother to think humanity's going to shit the bed if we try to manipulate genes.

[MultiHogleg]

@coprographia I don't think he's badmouthing ecology, his point is that sometimes, the way a problem is understood can be part of the problem - so in the case of ecology, by thinking of nature as balance, we don't realise that nature is crazy and because it is crazy and out of control we have to see it as a serious threat - we can't expect the world to fix itself (maybe subconsciously we think that)

[patnais102]

His whole idea of lifeforms 2.0 being against the whole idea of nature is cheesy. The man is part of nature even if we create life we will only take part of nature fix them together and pass electricity in it.Even if we create life we will still be only a piece in nature.I see our self as the brain of our planet.

[elcaballodecaligula]

You are just probing Zizek's point.

[XsavagistX]

white people talk too much

[chattabox]

your a moron

[Krelianx]

Oh, and just in case anyone's interested in the formal deduction leading to the thesis that reality as a whole is non-all read Alain Badiou's Being and Event, Meditation 8 on Nature and the theory of ordinals. In the final section titled 'Nature does not Exist' he shows that there cannot be an ordinal of all ordinals (the concept of 'nature') since this leads to the contradiction of self-belonging. Zizek's 'non-all' is basically a simplification of the same concept.

[Krelianx]

It seems that more and more Zizek is advocating the Badiouean (meta) ontological edifice; overcoming his rather naive opposition to it in the Ticklish Subject. His latest book 'Violence' sounds remarkably like Badiou at some points.

[Krelianx]

Incredible story from the Polish elevator case.

[Egorend]

The presumption of a genome without ancestry runs against both fact, and against the central point that there isn't an absolutely "pure" nature that exists prior to and apart from humanity, and that the ideology of the exception as the human ironically & hypocritically asserts the fundamental err of industrialization to be its arrogance of dominion (as new age & ecological mvmts replace it with exception. Any good genetic engineer knows that the most synthetic life itself is still consequent of

[composerlafave]

I admire Zizek for his clarity and his boldness, as well as for the originality and coherence of his viewpoints. But my oh my does he dance around trying to define "materialism" as its opposite! His description of reality as "unfinished" bears no resemblance to what Hegel, etc., meant by materialism. It's much closer to Chesterton's definition of mysticism, given in the previous segment of this lecture. Why not simply say it? -- Materialism is finished, long live to new mysticism.

[sickuntodeath2]

Perhaps I'm mistaken but I believe that when Zizek describes reality as unfinished and materialism as incomplete he is pointing to the fact that knowledge is never complete.

[0neironaut]

no, not at all... Zizek is being literal: Reality is the void.

[Krelianx]

Or, to put it in Lacanese, 'that which resists symbollization'.

[sickuntodeath2]

Regarding mysticism, Lacan speaks of 2 forms of jouissance: 1. the jouissance of the Other 2. the Other jouissance. The latter is the joiussance of feminine sexuality but you don't have to be a female to have access to it; Lacan ascribes this jouissance to the mystics also.

[Vairuna]

that would make a great commercial: New vacuum bombs. Safe bombing for you and your family.

[RealityEngines]

Vacuum bombs suck. (ah-hem)

[Iokultes]

ecology as ideology; the russians just tested the "father of all bombs", a vacuum bomb that is enviromentaly-friendly :D

[alucardzer0]

major lulz :D