Zizek @ Birkbeck. 6thDec08 (3 of 9)

Lecture title is 'From The Critique of Religion to the Critique of Political Economy'
Slavoj Zizek is the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

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• zizek
• philosophy
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• marx
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[Krelianx]

Zizek's appropriation of Lacan to extend it to culture in general is exciting as part of the critical process to supercede historicism. I think this is also the fundamental detachment from Rorty, the fatalism of Frankfurt school, the whole anthropologization of philosophy, anti-Platonism and anti-Cartesianism, and of course, the democratic fetish. This recurrent theme in Zizek, Badiou and Agamben is what we must now attempt to think through to the end.

[Krelianx]

Which rejects even history as formally restricting interpretation. I think the whole point in Badiou's work is that we must be capable of going beyond the localization of texts within a historic framework, and beyond the deconstruction of the text and be prepared to propose a new systematic rationality that avoids the impases of traditional metaphysics. And this is where Lacan, Cantor, Cohen and Heidegger come nicely together to redefine truth, being, subject...

[Krelianx]

In any case, we agree that such a concept of Objective history should not be contemplated as a reasonable end for inquiry. At the same time I think the rejection of historicism is for Zizek parallel to his rejection of Heidegger's later thought, where he renounced fundamental ontology in favor of his 'history of being' (Ticklish Subject). To conflate the death of metaphysics with the necessity for historicism is precisely what we must contend; but not simply to arrive at deconstruction...

[Krelianx]

I meant something similar with 'Objective history'; the metadescription you speak of is precisely what I call the dimension of the thing-in-itself, whose discovery would be the end of inquiry. The point is essentially the same: to arrive at a concept of 'Objective history' is not something possible, just as little as it was for Kant to speak of things-in-themselves, or noumena. Of course Kant does not make this point apropos of history, but could be extended to Hegel or Fukuyama...

[TheMariborchan]

I would also like to point out that the quote you marked as Kantian is not my belief, but the one I oppose. Incidentally it's a position some guy took with whom I had a brief discussion, I never knew it was Kantian.

[TheMariborchan]

I wasn't reffering to "Objective history" as a predetermined end, but rather as the belief that there exists some metadescription of history as in some continuity that we need to discover in order to situate ourselves in it..

And with lineage I was aiming at the master discourse (check out the article "Jacques Lacan's Four Discourses"). I would also like to point out that I don't use the term 'historicism' precisely.. it is still a signifier whose meaning I tried to come to from the context.

[Krelianx]

Zizek's constant struggle is to overcome this dimension of democracy, just like Badiou. To contend the democratic fetish we must resist this perpetual localization of theory within history as the final horizon for philosophical thought. This fascination with alterity is what prevents novelty in theory to emerge. And I agree with Zizek in that perhaps we need theory omre than ever. That's where Badiou comes in.

[Krelianx]

There is the constant fear that we will somehow reverse to metaphysics, ontotheology, Platonism, theoretical fascism or whatnot. The point we must understand is how Zizek links the prevalence of historicism to the homogonization of all revolutionary attempts to forms of proto-fascism. The historicist demands no discourse to claim universality, and strives for a democratic acceptance of all discourses. It fears all forms of affirmative discourse to authoritatian irrationalism, violence and so on.

[Krelianx]

That seems to be decidedly Kantian in placing the noumenal thing-in-itself as the radically impossible. I would certainly agree in the rejection of a notion of 'Objective history' qua some predetermined end or platitude. I agree in that this awareness of lineage is crucial; that's hermeneutics' and deconstruction. The ruse of historicism, however, is that one cannot go beyond this contingency of history in affirmative discourse; like Buttler and Laclau contend in their respective fields.

[TheMariborchan]

... like "all we can do is to approach the Objective history, but there will of course because of our human limitations always be deviations from the Objective pucture".