Zizek: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce Part III: The Communist Hypothesis!

So where were we? Oh yeah, capitalism bankrupt, injustice rampant, democracy gridlocked. Where to turn? Communism! This would be where you stop reading if you’re anything like a lot of people. But you’re not! And it’s worth hearing Zizek out on this point, because his goal is not to resurrect the old hammer and sickle, but to distill the essence of Communism, and use the tools this perspective offers us to evaluate our present day crises and opportunities. In his own words he “endeavors to locate aspects of our situation which open up the space for new forms of communist praxis.” He argues that the question is not: “are Hegel and Marx still relevant to us? But rather, ‘what our contemporary situation might be in their eyes, how our epoch would appear to their thought.” And refreshingly, Zizek makes absolutely no claims to be “objective” or some sort of neutral observer. Instead, he tells us that this book offers, “not a neutral analysis but an engaged and extremely ‘partial’ one—for truth is partial, accessible only when one takes sides, and is no less universal for this reason.”

ZIZEK: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (Part I)

The photos I had seen of him were confirmed as he took the stage and began speaking and waving his hands frantically: Slavoj Zikek is a sweaty, schlubby, whirling-dervish of a man. Zizek is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He’s considered a sort of maverick philosopher/public intellectual and is sometimes described as the “Elvis of Cultural Theory” or “the most dangerous philosopher in the West.” I would add that he’s definitely a genius and funny as hell.