All Blog Comments

Dock Currie - Zizek & Materialism

Dock Currie — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:28:02 +0000

I haven't read the portion of Lost Causes but I can say that Organs without Bodies is a well written grift. Zizek's ability to depict a Deleuze that is reconcilable to Hegel and Lacan, and Zizek himself, is spectacular and yet spectacularly hollow. I feel like Zizek's implicit project with writing about Deleuze is not so much to confront Deleuze's texts as they actually are, but to obfuscate his corpse and corpus in such a manner as to obviate the need to confront him whatsoever. In other words, I view Zizek's relation to Deleuze in much the same light as the scene in Full Metal Jacket where Earl unveils the dead vietcong: "This is my bro. . ." Zizek tells us of his posthumous relation to Deleuze, "this is his party. . . he's the guest of honour. . . this is his birthday."

debbanerji - Bergson\'s Method of Intuition

debbanerji — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:16:00 +0000

Have you forgotten what Bergson told you? Your s-t continuum implied a reduction of time to a function of space. Though both you and Deleuze were influenced by Spinoza, evidently you didn't quite catch the radical difference in his work.

lumpnboy - CFP: Immigration against the Empire

lumpnboy — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:41:54 +0000

Does this "immigration against the Empire" issue exist on-line somewhere?

isaac - Institutionalizing Revolution

isaac — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:12:39 +0000

This reminds me a lot of something I encountered as a teenager and just wrote a paper on in an attempt to explain the rioting during the G20 here in Toronto: Alfredo Bonanno's "From Riot to Insurrection" found in shitty online format here: http://digitalelephant.blogspot.com/2010/08/from-... This text is also a good place to start, titled "Insurrectionalist Anarchism" ; http://digitalelephant.blogspot.com/2010/08/insur... Bonanno's been put in jail numerous times over the last few decades for writing inflammatory texts in support of armed struggle and has just recently gone back to jail -- at the age of 70 -- for armed robbery. He would be fervently against the authoritarian communism hinted at by Zizeks "enforcement of a new order" -- but the correspondence between the two is peculiar and I'm curious as to whether Zizek ever bothers to cite him. My guess is not.

BdF - Das Ding & Le Petit Objet a (Part 1)

BdF — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:54:34 +0000

If you wish to use the French expression, it's "objet petit a", not "petit objet a", the "petit" being a synonym of the French for "lower case". :-)

gatheringthings - Conflict Networks

gatheringthings — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:30:57 +0000

Nick, Once the dissertation is finished I'd be happy to share it with you. John

theaccursedshare - Conflict Networks

theaccursedshare — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:26:46 +0000

Much thanks for your response! Your own work sounds quite fascinating, and as my regional specialization is likely to be in Afghanistan (and Central Asia more generally), I'd be really interested in reading through it at some point. If you don't mind, whenever you have some of the dissertation ready for a wider audience it'd be great if you could send it to me at nsrnicek[at]gmail[dot]com Always nice to meet similar scholars!

gatheringthings - Conflict Networks

gatheringthings — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:15:02 +0000

Nick - your paper was recommended to me by a commentator at 'larval subjects' and I'm working my way through it at the moment. I'm currently finishing my dissertation on a cross-border conflict prevention development program that was implemented in the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia. Conflict is a key aspect of the study in spite of the fact that very little conflict of the kind predicted (region wide) for this region has occurred (revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and the events in 2005 in Andijon notwithstanding). While my study is on one project, there have been a handful of similar projects in the Ferghana Valley region since 2000 and they have come under particularly harsh criticism from critical/post-development studies. Thus they've been criticized for misapprehending conflict by focusing on local concerns such as shared infrastructure. The argument is that they should have instead looked to power-relations outside local villages, though that relation is left unexplained by those scholars. without going in to too great of detail, my research perspective is based on Latour's work and more generally on actor-network theory. It's refreshing to see an article like yours which can provide some basis for dealing with the relations between local and global. Your paper stands in stark contrast to what I see as the under-theorization of conflict offered by some scholars working from the post-development studies perspective.

teresa - Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze: Re-Thinking War in the 21st Century

teresa — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:01:00 +0000

I'd be happy too! I wish I could make it myself. But to go to Canada for one day from Europe is quite a thing! please do post some recording on the web. thanks Teresa

theaccursedshare - Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze: Re-Thinking War in the 21st Century

theaccursedshare — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:03:16 +0000

Thanks Liz! That would be great if there were a recording made, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be looking forward to it!

@lizjsutherland - Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze: Re-Thinking War in the 21st Century

@lizjsutherland — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:31:03 +0000

Hi Nick, It is too bad you can't make it over for the workshop, but rumour has it that a member of the organizing committee might be able to arrange a videorecording of the session. We'll keep you posted! Liz S.

Antoine - Conflict Networks

Antoine — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 22:07:49 +0000

Congratulations on the article, Nick! We need more ANT in IR and conflict studies. That looks like a great issue too. Been reading Devji's work on global jihad recently, very stimulating stuff.

theaccursedshare - Institutionalizing Revolution

theaccursedshare — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:01:01 +0000

Ghostchild, I admit I'm not sure what you are getting at. What is the point of your statement that "revolution is related to the practico-inert"? And what is the point of your statement that "the revolution as pending is related to the revolution after it has occcured"?

Ghostchild - Institutionalizing Revolution

Ghostchild — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:56:10 +0000

Nick, not having read any of Zizek's work I will comment with caution. As well as attempting to provoke multiplicity on socio-political ground and justification. "To the extent that it (revolution) may relate to the practico-inert (institutional pace)". Now as you may have presumed you never made such a statement as to practico-inert representing the measure of speed (emancipation) in revolution. Moreover I hope you may be one of those pseudo-intellectuals who ride scapegoats on "I never said that!", in the hope that you may allow me to indulge myself to multitudes. 1. To what extent does revolution as pending (non-event) positively relate to revolution after it has occurred (non-event)? i.e there is no specificity or acknowledgment to revolution in its induction of its own name/term. Revolution persist as a tense which supersedes all proposition(s) and event(s) a posteriori. As to rule (in resemblance to language-game's) does revolution simply go out the door until it is called upon out of its detention? For now I will leave my proposals suspended until i receive a response that equally provides entry of ideology without excluding its science (quantification).

theaccursedshare - Institutionalizing Revolution

theaccursedshare — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:07:25 +0000

Simon, you're right, the distinction between ideology and material factors was a poor one on my part, particularly for Zizek. By the latter I meant something along the lines of the economic structure. Which is of course saturated with ideology, but talking about ideology is not talking about economics, and talking about economics is not talking about ideology. To Zizek's credit, though, there's a lot more discussion of economics in his latest than I ever remember seeing in his work. (Which is why I say his explicit statements on the central importance of ideology are disrupted by other claims in the book.) And I should say I'm not trying to deny that Zizek's concepts are useful - rather, actually bringing them into action require a lot of work that is left to the side of Zizek's analysis. What would it mean to alter the ideological space in contemporary Britain, for instance? Zizek's work doesn't give us any real traction on this project. Granted, it's not exactly the type of question he typically aims to answer, but since this work seems highly focued on intervening in a specific historical conjuncture, it seems like one of the crucial questions to be raised.

Simon - Institutionalizing Revolution

Simon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:06:09 +0000

For Žižek, ideology is something very much material, so I don't really see the distinction here. And I don't think those ideas are too 'baggy', they just have to be used in a precise sense, perhaps depending on the author one is relying on. From Marx to Althusser to Žižek, they all developed the concept in their own way. I think that ideology-critique/analysis is an extremely useful tool for political action.

Phip - Some Notes on Ontology and Politics

Phip — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:38:54 +0000

I'm a little unclear as to what the motivation is to evacuate politics from ontology. My initial reaction (and I've only just started to read this stuff in the past few days so bear with me) is that one should think of ontology as politically indeterminate but not outside of politics. I think it can be summarised like this: ontology encloses political possibility without determining it. In other words, any ontological position will fail to proscribe any given political position but it will limit political possibility within that ontological design. Thus it is inescapably political. (Of course, this is my strictly common sensical reaction. I am a neophyte at best on these issues.) Thus you can discuss metaphysics apart from politics in peace (if that is what you want) but it will be a perpetually exclusionary procedure -- a dissipative structure if you will -- that will always require re-inscription, re-presentation and the unending input of energy to keep the two things apart. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, in my opinion -- I'm just a little unclear as to why it matters.

theaccursedshare - Institutionalizing Revolution

theaccursedshare — Sun, 8 Nov 2009 16:54:00 +0000

I don't see why it takes any religious appeal, or logical necessity, to argue that a system that excludes 80% of the world is a bad system.

kvond - Institutionalizing Revolution

kvond — Sun, 8 Nov 2009 00:06:02 +0000

[Zizek quoted]: As this logic reaches its extreme, would it not be reasonable to bring it to its self-negation: is not a system which renders 80 percent of people irrelevant and useless itself irrelevant and of no use?"

Kvond: I love the near religious appeal to the self-negating dialectic. If a computer existed that had 80% of its processing power made irrelevant or useless, we would never dream of saying that the computer would result in its self-negation. It simply would be extremely inefficient at doing x, y or z.

Very specific things need to be answered: Use for what? No use, or little use? Use in these particular ways and NOT these other ways? It is just this absurd tendency to abstract from circumstances into a dream world of "logical" necessity that makes most Marxist inspired revolutions what they seem to be, broad stamps of brutal and imaginary reconfigurations upon the body of the socius.

theaccursedshare - The End of Revolutions?

theaccursedshare — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 17:55:53 +0000

Yann, sorry for the slow reply - and much thanks for the link to your article. I intend on reading it soon, and hope to comment on it as well.