Slavoj Žižek

It's been over a year since the first lockdown and I don't want to hear about Covid-19 ever again. Unless it's Žižek talking. This book is short (a pamphlet, really), to the point and really important. It was also written just a month into the pandemic, but it is still very current (there is a part 2 I need to get on to asap).

This is a collection of essays that playfully touch on all the things that we have been obsessing about since the pandemic started. As expected, Žižek makes a strong case for systemic change. We need a new way of doing things, to save ourselves and the planet.

Unfortunately, a year into the pandemic it seems like humanity has once again chosen the "civilized barbarism", putting a higher value on the abstract of the market economy than the survival of the weakest.

This is Žižek at his best, funny, lucid and strangely optimistic. I do miss him being more provocative, but in a book like this that would be out of place and he is aware of it.

In the light of climate change, there have been many calls for the global government and the change of the destructive neoliberal economic model (most notably by Chomsky in 2019 - [b:Internationalism or Extinction|52170427|Internationalism or Extinction|Noam Chomsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574743215l/52170427._SX50_SY75_.jpg|72999976]).

The Covid-19 pandemic only made it more clear that such a change is absolutely crucial. Unfortunately for many in the West, the bogeyman of "old communism" is still very much alive and may destroy any attempt of such change. But, the power of crisis is that it makes things seem possible because the crisis will inevitably cause change, as we have all witnessed over the last year.

The question is simple: “Will the epidemic be reduced to another chapter in the long sad story of what Naomi Klein called “disaster capitalism,” or will a new, better-balanced if perhaps more modest, world order emerge from it?”

So is the answer: “A common sooth now in circulation is that, since we are all now in this crisis together, we should forget about politics and just work in unison to save ourselves. This notion is false: true politics are needed now—decisions about solidarity are eminently political.”… (mere)

I am no expert in economics so some parts were maybe a but confusing, but overall this was mostly accessible. The author definitely provided some interesting insights (sometimes using some interesting metaphors) into capitalism but there were times when I wish he'd given a bit more attention to third world countries. A big example of this is when he talked about debt, where he focussed on the Greek financial crisis. He did mention how people were against Argentina paying back their debt early, but I would have loved to see more conversation about how it is leveraged to keep Africa poor, for example. But I did enjoy getting to see how capitalism is impacting so many aspects of life and his discussions around a need for change.… (mere)

Another reason to feel old: reading Looking Awray: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan and a Plea for Intolerance somewhere in 2002. Slavoj Žižek is somewhat of a rockstar among philosophers, but that should not detract from what he has to say – nor should his incessant referring to Jacques Lacan, Marx and Hegel. When I heard him exclaim “the true dreamers are those who think the things can go on indefinitely the way they are” on YouTube in October 2011, I’ve always thought of him as someone that is able to pull away the curtain on certain things.

It has been over 20 years since I read something of the man, and this title caught my eye – especially after I read The Deluge. 2024 promises to be something of a year celebrating the existential crisis, so in search of denouement, I turned to Žižek again.

Too Late To Awaken has 163 pages, subdivided in 17 short chapters. It was written around the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The bulk of the book – the first 100 pages – mainly deal with Žižek’s thoughts on what this invasion means for global politics. The picture ain’t pretty: maybe we should stop worrying about the coming calamity, and admit we are already knee-deep in it. That future dystopia we all fear is already happening, right now. We might be well aware of that, but we choose to ignore it.

Žižek offers some thoughts on the culture wars as well, and his analysis is not that original, if well put: both sides of that war ignore economic foundations. Are we even aware how thoroughly our lives have changed the last few decades? Referring to Alenka Zupančič and Yanis Varoufakis, he ends with a chapter warning about the current form of neo-feudalism, as our most important commons today are privately owned.

He ends with the notion that markets move too slowly to solve the current environmental and political crisis. Remarkably, the book is a call to arms to switch to some kind of war economy, one that bypasses our failing democracies. “Our [only] hope today is the crisis.”

Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It… (mere)

This was ok, interesting, but not that thought expanding. I did like the idea introduced in the last chapter that we need to be open to political responses in the current moment as being events transported from the future, events that are the result of a different trajectory than the developing of current conditions. In other words, let's not constrain our imagination and activism to building relations and social structures that are simply naive, "better" versions of current conditions, but allow ourselves to make radical breaks that are moving towards the new relations of equity required to achieve a socially just, healthy world for all.… (mere)