I've seen him solve problems.

This is the third time I hear Mr. Zizek talk--the other two on TV about different topics--and I am disappointed that he always stops at the analysis of the problem stage. I haven't heard him actually offer a solution or even suggest a path to explore to come up with a solution to the social problems he talks about. Having a good understanding of the problem is key to finding a solution, I give him that, but he seems to be paralyzed on that stage. I'd rather take a bunch of business people trying to do something and exploring different options than a million philosophers and academics running around in circles defining the problem in a hundred different ways.

Well, maybe it's because Zizek is a Marxist, and Marxists - unlike business men - don't think that society should be ruled by a minority elite. The follow through: "solutions" come from communal action, common agency.

Business men, on the contrary, rig the rules, naturalise them, and tell the people: "You must do these things (which will make us a lot of money) or you're doomed" (to put it simply).

Castoriadis talks about the way people have internalised the idea that what they have to say is of no worth; their own experience is nothing; they operate on a personal scale that has no relevance to the broader problems of society. It is exactly this, he says, that revolutionary practice has to explode.

Your own question presupposes that agency is the resolve of an elite (academic, or business or financial "experts"). Question this, and you might be starting to ask the right questions.

(Otherwise, don't worry: I'm sure we can trust the bankers and finance guys to sort out Societies ills - starting with that recession they caused.)

Best
C Wit

I think he doesnt provide a solution because he wants to become mainstream and Revolution would turn people off to any of his ideas (because it would require work to do this 'revolution' thing and Er'Merikans hate work!) or leave him vulnerable to the elements of the game (the state and capital game baby! and all that entails *jail, murder, dispearance, critque etc.*) and hence he'll be out of a job. Its probably why union's arent vessels of revolutionary struggle on the account or remote chance that they suceed there would be any no need for them. So their job is remain active in this society rather than prepare or create a new one or at least that what Malatesta griped about how anarcho-syndicalism(and probably to some extent guild socialism) was always going to be reactionary. So if Senior Slavoj helped usher in a new world his job would change and probably be forgotten, because everyone would be busy building communities and engaging in democracy and all that jive.

Nice animation. Foolish critical-theoretical nonsense. Z thinks completely in abstractions, and abstractions have been responsible for far more more suffering than charity has. But then Z doesn't support the mitigation of suffering, either, because that would take people's mind off of abstractions and the crudest of utopian political projects. For Z, the goal is not to mitigate suffering or save lives or cure disease. It is to make poverty IMPOSSIBLE. That goal is not only not possible, it is incoherent, not only because "poverty" means different things to different people in different times and places, and is valued differently, but because no human being, certainly not some elite critical-theoretical class, knows how to go about pulling the levers and pushing the buttons of history in such a way as to make make poverty (under any description) impossible. Z believes there is a "solution" to poverty, and that every action on behalf of the poor that fails to align with that chimerical "solution" exacerbates the problem. This is absurd, and it can lead him to provoke us with such cruel inanities as "the worst slaveholders were kind to their slaves" because they contributed to slavery's continuation. This is so abstract a judgment, so far from the concerte conditions in which human suffering occurs, that it is insane or sadistic in the way it valorizes cruelty. Z doesn't care aboiut poor people; he cares about poverty as the abstract thought of a systemic social phenomenon, a function of a social formation as a whole, to which there is a solution. How many critical theorists would it to dream it? How many Stalins to implement it? All solutions are incomplete and partial and take a step back with every two steps ahead. Social change is not predictable in the long run. Feed the hungry. Care for the sick. And when the opportunity comes to take a couple of steps ahead in the social and economic formations where you and others have a little power, go for it! But keep alleviating whatever suffering you can. Keep an ear on the critical theorists, but don't let their abstractions bewitch you.

Nathan what you have missed in this speech is the very notion that speaks to the historical ideas of poverty and starvation. Before collonialism you boticed you didint hear much about poverty. Does poverty exist in nomatic tribalism. Z is upset about the very idea that we have created a system where the life or death of a person depends on the buying and selling in controlled enviroments. Take for example all theses comercial that come on televisoin asking you to adopt a child that is starving in Africa or some other impoverished country. There showing you children that are starving and need help from the people on earth who have money and power. The whole point of Z anger is why the hell are these children starving in the first place. It came from economic collonialism. A majority of nomadic tribes hunted and gathered food, made the own clothes etc. The basic insticnts and way of life has been striped out from under them and then told to survive in the way we do things in the first word way of life. When he talks about changing the way we live life as humans means don'tinterrupt someones else life because ones personal greed.

when he was speaking about the slave master being nice to his slaves. the point meaning there shouldnt be slavery in the first place. Listen to his speech again..

Hi Errick,

Before the industrial age most people around the world lived in poverty. That is a fact. Due to industrialism we no longer starve. If Africa were a tenth the population they are today, perhaps they would starve less. Their natural way of living would never have been able to sustain so large populations as they have today. Furthermore, they would still suffer from a ton of deseases that the western, "evil capitalistic" world has removed.

What removes poverty is scientific and technological advance. Nothing else.

I don't think you quite understand that it was industrial western civilization that introduced disease and suffering to all of the nations, tribes, and people they colonized. The "large populations in Africa" wouldn't be so large if westerners hadn't come to the shores of Africa to profit off their people and make them PAY EUROPEANS to live on the land they were born on. Communities of poverty around the world are generally not to blame for the problems they must endure. I would even be so bold as to say that more people are starving in the world post industrial revolution by a great factor. You just can't see them because your eyes are closed.

P.S. The evil capitalist world we live in doesn't cure diseases, it treats them. There's much more money to be made that way.

No - Zizek's argument makes perfect sense if your locus is revolution. It's a nice piece of polemic, and a little bit of a shock to Liberal values. It's not, you know, a major advancement. It's not, in fact, an abstract theoretical discussion. No, it's an argument based squarely and concretely in contemporary lived experince. Does he use as an example, say, some obscure quotation from Herder? No, he uses Starbucks - and in a precise and immediately applicable way. What person is there who doesn't sense the contradictions and, to be blunt, hypocrisy of "ethical consumption" in its current manifestation? Or the hypocisy of the Cameronian "Big Society", or the paucity of Labour's "welfare"/workfare? Plainly, you are the one dealing in abstractions.

I've posted a response on my blog, http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=724

From your blog:

"Much disagreement occurs because the arguments are about different things. “Foolish critical-theoretical nonsense.” says Nathan. No it isn’t, says someone else, and off the argument goes, completely missing each other’s points, arguing from a position of ego, not humility towads understanding the other’s position."

Until I just now posted a response to Nathan, no one had criticised him. Your magnanimity and objectivity is a pose. It is exactly this hollow bourgeois magnanimity that the lecture seeks to offend and expose. And not by turning one's cheek, but by giving the other person a good slap.

I agree with you Nathan. This is not new it merely asserts that short of revolution no political action is possible. The beggar might quite like to live but must be sacrificed for the big idea – back to Stalinism. A bit of reflexivity might come in useful for him. In his own terms what is he doing but selling cultural commodities and buying his redemption in the same act by ‘thinking a world where poverty is impossible’? If there is any hypocrisy it resides in him.

It is quite disingenuous to suggest that Zizek is promoting a return to Stalinism. What he is suggesting is that, whilst he may stand alongside the Liberal in fighting poverty, racism and inequality, etc, it should be made clear to the Liberal that they are every bit a part of the problem in that they uphold a system in which these inenqualities take place. As for the dissonance of him partaking in the system by selling his cultural commodities, I find this weak ad hominum attack plainly ridiculous. I am in agreement with C Wit in that wooly liberal thinking about the inherent cruelty of denying charity is really an inability to examine the consequences of our own sentimental attitudes in the West. Whilst I remain unsure whether Zizek has anything to offer in terms of a positive critique, his assessment of our current malaise is one that is both challenging and provoking.

Terrific. Smart and amusing drawing helps clarify what Zizek is saying. Keep up the great work!

[...] Video: Slavoj Zizek: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce [...]

http://www.berfrois.com/

I listened to this lecture and thank you for this amazing additional resource, the drawings are great! Brilliant! Keep going!