(con)juncture was lawson fletcher's thought pile. Now blogging at soundofruins.net
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5.11.08

addendum to below

I suppose this is really about the issue of that gap between theory and praxis/action, assuming that ideology/culture whatever normally takes place in the latter but now looking at how it re-presents or reworks itself in the former.

In that Taylor article I mention, which is actually an interview with Srecko Horvat, Horvat ponders if, now that Žižek seems ineluctably attached to the cinema, that the theorist might make a film himself. Taylor kind of flippantly and uneasily himself replies:

It's not something that appeals to me in the sense that it seems reminiscent of celebrities in one realm trading in their cachet for a quick entry into another. I'm also not sure how easily Žižek's theoretical speculations about film could help him create the aesthetic article itself, but one of the few things I think you can say with any certainty about Žižek is that it's unlikely one of his films would be boring or predictable!


But in a sense he has kind of put up a barrier between thought - or theory, academic work, whatever - having some kind of import or, further, impact on everything outside of it. He is sticking to the notion of academic writing as some kind of sacred, untouched-by-ideology sphere, right? But then he mentioned before that academic, or rather 'intellectual', thought has effectively come to speak for the dominant order. Why wouldn't a thinker who is apparently much opposed to this - Žižek - reply be reinserting himself into the realm of the popular (which Taylor seems to outrightly hate)? There's got to be some kind of transfer for things to work. If Žižek can bring psychoanalytic theories to bear on films so well and so 'accessibly' in his readings of them, then why wouldn't he do the same - actually, complete that very project - and make a film? As the ultimate embodiment of reality? Would this have some kind of tramuatic/progressive effect because he is aware of the machinations behind it all and would thus be able to avoid them? Or would it be - Dogville-style, as he says - an attempt to still convince us of the 'magic' of cinema? Can it be anything else? Something tells me Žižek wouldn't like entirely 'demystifying' avant-garde works, no?

The problem is, I guess, is that for all his various ways of inserting himself into popular culture (even most literally in terms of the Žižek-in-diegesis moments of The Perverts Guide to Cinema) he actually most of everyone still relies on his ultimate separation from it. In this, though, isn't he performing the very mouth-piece of the order that he rails against?

don't support what you're trying to deconstruct

The worst kind of theory/action/thought is that which knows better and does it anyway. It's kind of the subculture thing.

Can't be bothered elaborating, but this might do for now:

"It's not that paper journals are Leftist or non-Leftist that is the problem. Rather my point
relates to the particular lack of reflexivity practiced by certain Leftist paper journals. Žižek cites
Lacan's distinction between Rightist knaves and Leftist fools. The knaves are the neoconservatives who act as open apologists for the existing system, whilst the fools are principled Leftists whose mode of criticism actually ends up supporting not subverting the system because it acts as a 'performative utterance'. Put another way, if one wants to criticize the existing order there's a danger that you merely adopt a pre-ordained role - much like that of the "baddy" in a pantomime. Everyone then knows their alloted roles in the performance and within this structure the established order can target its opponents with fresh resolve.
Žižek uses Benjamin in this context to distinguish between the attitudes exhibited towards the
dominant relations of production and within those relations (see footnote 2 of Love Thy
Neighbour? No Thanks!) He makes it clear that critics often explicitly condemn of a social
system/political structure but do so in such a manner that it fits the pre-existing frame (Žižek also relates this to Lacan's distinction between the enunciated content and the position of enunciation). One could add McLuhan's point that the medium tends to swamp the message and this is my key point about just some Leftist paper journals - they fail to account adequately for the significance of their position of enunciation, irrespective of what they are saying. It's not so much about the political content (although there is still this nagging irony that Leftist journals actively contribute to the exploitation of libraries) but more about being more self-reflexive - not too much to ask from intellectuals? Rather than seeking to label IJŽS Leftist or Rightist, I think it's more important to identify it as radical and unconventional in the same sense that Žižek is radical - his whole approach and methodology is reflexive and non-static."

- Paul A. Taylor, 'The Importance of Žižek's Thought'

I'm not agreeing with the dude really, just using him to remember what I mean.