****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
if you have the time to follow Zizek's lectures on youtube, on Liberalism, Euthansia of Tolerant Reason after Kant, Marxism in the Streets, Truth,Sam Harris,procedural Toilets; there is a lot duplicated, duplicitous in this nifty little paper-back, you can read it while listening to AC-DC, also from his "In Defense of Lost Causes".Yes Zizek forgot how violent Rock n'Roll is,how it and continuously assaults our senses and sensibilities for decades now,so was the Seventies carpet bombing of Cambodia, (Kissinger had a hand in that;well they will name a library after you Henry, dont worry); but Zizek covers topicalities interestingly, perceptively; Paris Riots,("We are Here") Katrina, Middle East,Intifada, with nice reflections of context on colonialism and Israel,"Who wants two states?", cites the "Jerusalem Chalk Circle"(a twist on Brecht with another twist on King Solomon)one cannot divide in two without killing something) time of things,of nation-building; and if sovereignties came too late, what the Ruling Classes of Globe require now is for acceptance of its Rule to an extent; to be respectable,to have violence without violence;de-caffeinated, war without war, (Colin Powell),but just for things to go on as they are requires violence everyday, every minute, so Zizek says; and there are some provisos indicated by Zizek,with the help of Badiou,"we live in a worldless culture" events are not deposited in consciousness as before;events are filtered through a hermeneutical sieve of interpreted reality, Lacanian Lenses all are utilized,all the time to gauge the states of desire, what we buy, what gives us pleasure;bouts with Fukuyama, "ends of",Sam Harris; Zizek loves to name drop, but he simply explains it and puts it all in a useful exciting context, as liberalism today, what is it, who practices it, what do they want? with spokespeople-writers and court jestors as NYT(Mr.Glib) Friedman,"there are simply problems to solve. . ."no classes, no poverty, no conflicts; "liberal fascist",Zizek calls them as Peter Sloterdijk, typically the designation is extreme but Zizek wants to you to get off yer butts and think a little bit, before you plug in your IPOD to Zone out for the day.Walter Benjamin and Paul Klee's "Angelus. . . " is here he thought about violence, and the divine violence,as in "Psycho", Arbogast on the stairs,it just happens; that the imperfections of capitalism and greed, exploitation, torture and coercion, the IRS processes, are sometimes too much, we need relief, well humanity does at some point, "divine violence" is not necessary it simply is there, like the Hurricane called Katrina, showed how the USA still philosophicaly is an Old World power, in that it couldn;t provide basic sustaining lifeforms for its taxpaying citizens,racism was central to that; just allowed people to die in water, squalor.Europe as well is still very Old World order, can it solve its problems of violence, as the Paris Riots,there were racist violence ten years ago; the youth merely wanting to know if they are part of society, can you give us a Job?, or do we live in poverty our entire existence, Sarkozky really doesn't care, it would tarnish his star status, the French Ruling elites need entertainment; and divine violence?, sans-culottes,the French Revolution an event beyond what it actually is, perhaps Beethoven's entire work would have takened a different turn, been less powerful, more woosee, if it never happened, so violence, spills spirals over into the future, like the Cultural Revolution,the last one to study; where China now props up Bill Gates and Western Capital, saving it, Freddie Mac, and Frannie needs bucks the 12$$ Trillion in its mortgages, need leveling out,propping up, curious how violence works into the future, Zizek has the interests to follow these conceptual trajectories , with Hegel in the Wings for assistance;we need to be violent so the people are not,there is systemic violence, and mythic one, all never really admitted, there is more violence happening everyday than we actually see just in order to keep things as they are.. . . from not getting worse, what do we know,"What do you know. . . ?" as the CIA Agent(Cliff Robertson) tells Robert Redford at the end of "The Day of the Condor".
