The Horror
On flaming wings, Costas returns with an announcement: the location and time for the public interrogation of Zizek session, as promised earlier by the man himself: Wednesday 2pm, 43 Gordon Square, Room B04. "Gordon Square, I like Gordon Square," interjects Zizek, "I feel little bit like General Gordon. I go to Gordon Square, I will die there - by Buddhist army!"
The topic on Thursday was politics, and Zizek began by identifying his strategic enemy, "The idea in philosophy - which you see in work of figures as diverse as Adorno, Derrida, Karl Popper - that totality is totalitarianism. I categorically reject this, I think this absolutely wrong."
"If you look at great dictators - Hitler, Stalin - you notice, these people were not theoretical at all! They were ruthlessly empirical. Hitler big idea was just that history meaningless battleground, and that you are doomed to failure anyway, so only thing that counts is heroic will. Stalin, meanwhile - he was essence of pragmatic use of power, he never was interested in theoretical totality!"
"My big enemy here today is going to postmodern politics - all about contingency, difference, democracy, blahblahblah. My view is that we need the exact opposite of this - necessity, identity, universality - and true revolutionary politics has always been about these things! If you look at French Revolution, it was Jacobins who were saying that there are these absolute values, universal human rights - and conservatives who were the ones saying contingency, difference."
Marx was betrayed...
"The idea that Marx, Marx vision, was betrayed by USSR - in general there are two conservative responses to this. First one is, Hegelian response - well, if Marx was betrayed, this is problem with Marx, error in concept - this guy aimed at totality, and missed, you cannot turn around and say now, totality was wrong. Second response is even more difficult to deal with it is - yes, Marx was betrayed, thank god! Because if he hadn't been, it would have been even worse!"
"In both cases here, major point is late Heideggerean idea - that to grasp ontological, one must err onticly," Zizek giggles insanely, "That one cannot both have ontological cake and eat it. Now, I have big problem with this idea, because it basically is wisdom position, with consequence that what we must do is, we must steer between extremes, we must choose right measure.
"The problem here, is that this idea is basically empty formalism - as every idiot knows, the entire question of politics is the question of deciding upon the definition of the right measure - there is not some eternal standard. Let me give you horrible example, just to demonstrate weakness of this doctrine - imagine we are in Germany in early thirties, and you are saying, we have Hitler, and he is saying all these things about Jews, and I turn around and say, "But wait a minute - all these things are true! I mean, it is true that, I don't know, eighty percent of lawyers in Berlin are Jews, and sixty percent of journalists, and seventy percent of doctors, and so what we need, is maybe not Hitler - too extreme, but, you know - we need right measure." I mean, it is disgusting!"
"So you get the point - wisdom doctrine is basically meaningless. And incidentally, this is what I really like about Christianity, because I think - okay, I am going to say something horrible now - I think it is only really mad religion, other religions I think smuggle in wisdom doctrine at last minute."
Is there a politics of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis?
"If we say, we can dismiss crazy conservative Lacanians in France who say things like gay marriage is very bad because what we need is strong symbolic authority in society, strong Name-of-the-Father, I think there are two main strands of political Lacanianism. First is Laclau, Mouffe theory of radical democracy. Idea here is that the fact that big Other does not exist implies democracy as means to traverse fundamental fantasy of organic whole society, for the reason that democracy is only political system to accept constitutive antagonism. So barred subject is here signifier of democracy."
"I myself in early works - my god, I am such meglomaniac - develop this theory, but I no longer buy it."
"Second strand is one which casts Lacan in role of gadfly provocateur. This is position adopted by Miller in his latest book, which is also book in which he adopts centre-right position, so I even prefer first strand to this one. But the idea here is that politics is the domain of imaginary identifications, ontologically based on blindness, misrecognition, with ultimate stance here being that of analyst who incarnates blindness, misrecognition."
"According to this theory, the idea is that radical thinkers should be tolerated within their own domains as negative thinkers, but should not be taken seriously as advocators of positive programs. The most intelligent work on this is Wendy Brown."
Homeopathic Democracy
"Wendy Brown reads fragmentation of politics into identity-politics as symptom of collapse of mainstream liberal democratic discourse. Her argument is that democracy is empty in-itself, and that it functions by defining itself ngeatively against anti-democratic content, that it finds in theory, philosophy, theology, etc."
"This is basically homeopathic theory of democracy, where demoracy survives by conditioning itself against extimate anti-democracy. Brown says, democracy exists in tension between political necessity to fix meaning, and theoretical permanent deconstruction - so basically theory is destructive, and role of politics is to naturalize codes."
"Now - when I am in power, you will get twenty years in gulag for this thinking, with no hope of parole. Actually, now I think of it, fuck it, we should do it now! You know Moscow trials? We should organize London trials of intellectuals..."
Tarrying with the Brown
"By the way - I have a lot of respect for Wendy Brown, for what she did, which is I think she has dared to expose underlying presupposition of postmodern theory - idea that theory is basically just there to rejuvenate existing structures."
"But I think there are huge problems with this. Brown says theory is basically just negative anti-politics - but what if it does not want to stay this way? I give you example of Nietzsche and Hitler - okay, I know this was vulgarization, but nonetheless - Nazi party really did legitimize themselves with his philosophy! I will say something horrible - this figure of rejuvenating provocateur, what if this was exactly Hitler? And you know what, in a certain way: this was what he was! After all, it was only after war that for the first time ever in history liberal state power accepted role of universal provider of welfare! I am not going to turn into liberal now, but this is real achievment!"
[Intervention from floor - "The umma after death of Mohammed also accepted welfare role!" Zizek concedes as far as: "They got the next closest." Glance into archives of Islam follows: hidden feminist lineage, Hagar single mother, woman big Other, problem of umma is how to build non-patriarchal society, Pauline community of believers, as my friend Fred Jameson has demonstrated, Augustine was first Social Democrat Revisionist inner-life Menshevik scum, etc.]
"But to return - problems with Brown. Brown locates the anti-democratic impulse in philosophy, but what about all the very real anti-democratic insitutions at the heart of democracy. Brown doesn't mention them - but she is Foucauldian! Was this not Foucault's entire point? Or as T.S. Eliot, intelligent conservative, says in one of his letters - to have functioning democracy, you need strong aristocratic elite to keep crowd under control. There is always this aspect - state power is excess, with superego between lines, "Yes, yes, yes, do whatever you want, we don't mind, yeahyeahyeah, FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!!"
"Brown gets it wrong way around - the sliding of meaning is not in philosophy at all. The whole history of political philosophy is an attempt to fix meaning! From Plato to Marx! And Brown domesticates Nietzsche, turns him into pet inherent transgressor, basically unserious - this is exactly how the establishment likes its subversives!"
Heidegger and the Nazis
"There has always been big controversy about Heidegger Nazi engagement - but I agree with Fred Jameson: it was the only sympathetic thing he ever did."
"What I want to take from Heidegger is this - idea about necessity of terror. Heidegger said this was new beginning for philosophy - wonder was original beginning, terror new beginning. Heidegger idea was that terror must be instilled into dasein again. "
"The crucial point here - Hegel and Marx were saying exactly the same thing! Hegel in dialectic of Lord and Bondsman from Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel - in his radical negativity, Bondsman experiences freedom, and this was how Marx defined proleterian experience also. It is actually - this is what Christ really does for us. Because you know if you are scared of something, if you have true friend, what friend does is say, "Ok, I will do it for you - and then you will see that there is nothing to be scared of, and even that you can do it too."
"Okay - now, you thought I could not sink any lower. But I can - Ayn Rand! Moment at end of Fountainhead when Howard Roark is about to speak at his trial, and there is passage. Rand says, "Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own minds. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd--and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval?-- does it matter?-- am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free-- free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room. It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak."
"Okay, I know, Rand is crazy - but I think this passage is true."
Between Fear and Terror
"The dominant mode of biopolitics today is fear - idea is that social body is always under threat from immigrants, godless perversion, and bipolitics aims to protect us from these threats, save our identities, protect us - which it does at the price of permanent universalized fear."
"What is at heart of this fear? Marx claim in nineteenth century was, it is the abyssal horror of created by capitalism - everything sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air. If anything, this horror is even more extreme today. Today we are dealing with technologies of biogenetic intervention, this is end of nature pure and simple. It is now possible for science to generate new natures, new forms of life."
"This is the real horror, I think - this is the terror. Heidegger talks about difference between earth and world - it is difference between the unbearable heaviness and the unbearable lightness of being. In cyberspace terms - difference between hardware and software, and the point is - never before in history has the tension been so great!"
"Common ecological fear is that somehow earth will snap back, will catch up, and there will be environmental catastrophe - but I think the real terror is actualy the opposite. The terror that Earth won't catch up, that it might actually be possible to emancipate ourselves from our own species."
Critique of Heidegger
"One of the key insights of Heidegger I think, is realization that way to modern authenticity is not to try and escape from technology, but to embrace it to the bitter end - this was what Heidegger originally thought inner greatness of Nazism was, and he never really changed his mind! Heidegger thought, failure of Nazism was failure of politics itself - this is why after Nazi defeat he withdraws from politics completely, it is gesture of negative fidelity. It is like - you have love affair with woman, love affair ends, and so you say: "After her, no more women!" It is melancholic way of staying faithful to lost woman."
"Problem with Heidgger is - he does not go far enough, he remains too attached to idea of solid grounding in everyday life-world banality. And I think this is big problem with modern science today - you know, there is the idea that problem with science is that science thinks it is disconnected from real world? No, it is opposite - problem with science is that science stubbornly presupposes existing life-world reality, even as it works to change the very definition of this reality."
The horror, the horror
"The true horror is the abyss, the idea of totally severing our links with the life-world - but again, not through withdrawal from it, but full embrace of it."
"Withdrawal is total fake - you see this very clearly in M. Night Shyamalan film, "The Village" - where idea is basically that withdraw and still have successful community, one must be billionaire, one must be benevolent dictator, and one must invent new mythology to keep everyone in line - and it still goes wrong!"
"So what do we do? If you do not know the answer, which I will talk about next week, then you are already lost - it is dictatorship of the proleteriat."
The topic on Thursday was politics, and Zizek began by identifying his strategic enemy, "The idea in philosophy - which you see in work of figures as diverse as Adorno, Derrida, Karl Popper - that totality is totalitarianism. I categorically reject this, I think this absolutely wrong."
"If you look at great dictators - Hitler, Stalin - you notice, these people were not theoretical at all! They were ruthlessly empirical. Hitler big idea was just that history meaningless battleground, and that you are doomed to failure anyway, so only thing that counts is heroic will. Stalin, meanwhile - he was essence of pragmatic use of power, he never was interested in theoretical totality!""My big enemy here today is going to postmodern politics - all about contingency, difference, democracy, blahblahblah. My view is that we need the exact opposite of this - necessity, identity, universality - and true revolutionary politics has always been about these things! If you look at French Revolution, it was Jacobins who were saying that there are these absolute values, universal human rights - and conservatives who were the ones saying contingency, difference."
Marx was betrayed...
"The idea that Marx, Marx vision, was betrayed by USSR - in general there are two conservative responses to this. First one is, Hegelian response - well, if Marx was betrayed, this is problem with Marx, error in concept - this guy aimed at totality, and missed, you cannot turn around and say now, totality was wrong. Second response is even more difficult to deal with it is - yes, Marx was betrayed, thank god! Because if he hadn't been, it would have been even worse!"
"In both cases here, major point is late Heideggerean idea - that to grasp ontological, one must err onticly," Zizek giggles insanely, "That one cannot both have ontological cake and eat it. Now, I have big problem with this idea, because it basically is wisdom position, with consequence that what we must do is, we must steer between extremes, we must choose right measure.
"The problem here, is that this idea is basically empty formalism - as every idiot knows, the entire question of politics is the question of deciding upon the definition of the right measure - there is not some eternal standard. Let me give you horrible example, just to demonstrate weakness of this doctrine - imagine we are in Germany in early thirties, and you are saying, we have Hitler, and he is saying all these things about Jews, and I turn around and say, "But wait a minute - all these things are true! I mean, it is true that, I don't know, eighty percent of lawyers in Berlin are Jews, and sixty percent of journalists, and seventy percent of doctors, and so what we need, is maybe not Hitler - too extreme, but, you know - we need right measure." I mean, it is disgusting!"
"So you get the point - wisdom doctrine is basically meaningless. And incidentally, this is what I really like about Christianity, because I think - okay, I am going to say something horrible now - I think it is only really mad religion, other religions I think smuggle in wisdom doctrine at last minute."
Is there a politics of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis?
"If we say, we can dismiss crazy conservative Lacanians in France who say things like gay marriage is very bad because what we need is strong symbolic authority in society, strong Name-of-the-Father, I think there are two main strands of political Lacanianism. First is Laclau, Mouffe theory of radical democracy. Idea here is that the fact that big Other does not exist implies democracy as means to traverse fundamental fantasy of organic whole society, for the reason that democracy is only political system to accept constitutive antagonism. So barred subject is here signifier of democracy."
"I myself in early works - my god, I am such meglomaniac - develop this theory, but I no longer buy it."
"Second strand is one which casts Lacan in role of gadfly provocateur. This is position adopted by Miller in his latest book, which is also book in which he adopts centre-right position, so I even prefer first strand to this one. But the idea here is that politics is the domain of imaginary identifications, ontologically based on blindness, misrecognition, with ultimate stance here being that of analyst who incarnates blindness, misrecognition.""According to this theory, the idea is that radical thinkers should be tolerated within their own domains as negative thinkers, but should not be taken seriously as advocators of positive programs. The most intelligent work on this is Wendy Brown."
Homeopathic Democracy
"Wendy Brown reads fragmentation of politics into identity-politics as symptom of collapse of mainstream liberal democratic discourse. Her argument is that democracy is empty in-itself, and that it functions by defining itself ngeatively against anti-democratic content, that it finds in theory, philosophy, theology, etc."
"This is basically homeopathic theory of democracy, where demoracy survives by conditioning itself against extimate anti-democracy. Brown says, democracy exists in tension between political necessity to fix meaning, and theoretical permanent deconstruction - so basically theory is destructive, and role of politics is to naturalize codes."
"Now - when I am in power, you will get twenty years in gulag for this thinking, with no hope of parole. Actually, now I think of it, fuck it, we should do it now! You know Moscow trials? We should organize London trials of intellectuals..."
Tarrying with the Brown
"By the way - I have a lot of respect for Wendy Brown, for what she did, which is I think she has dared to expose underlying presupposition of postmodern theory - idea that theory is basically just there to rejuvenate existing structures."
"But I think there are huge problems with this. Brown says theory is basically just negative anti-politics - but what if it does not want to stay this way? I give you example of Nietzsche and Hitler - okay, I know this was vulgarization, but nonetheless - Nazi party really did legitimize themselves with his philosophy! I will say something horrible - this figure of rejuvenating provocateur, what if this was exactly Hitler? And you know what, in a certain way: this was what he was! After all, it was only after war that for the first time ever in history liberal state power accepted role of universal provider of welfare! I am not going to turn into liberal now, but this is real achievment!"
[Intervention from floor - "The umma after death of Mohammed also accepted welfare role!" Zizek concedes as far as: "They got the next closest." Glance into archives of Islam follows: hidden feminist lineage, Hagar single mother, woman big Other, problem of umma is how to build non-patriarchal society, Pauline community of believers, as my friend Fred Jameson has demonstrated, Augustine was first Social Democrat Revisionist inner-life Menshevik scum, etc.]"But to return - problems with Brown. Brown locates the anti-democratic impulse in philosophy, but what about all the very real anti-democratic insitutions at the heart of democracy. Brown doesn't mention them - but she is Foucauldian! Was this not Foucault's entire point? Or as T.S. Eliot, intelligent conservative, says in one of his letters - to have functioning democracy, you need strong aristocratic elite to keep crowd under control. There is always this aspect - state power is excess, with superego between lines, "Yes, yes, yes, do whatever you want, we don't mind, yeahyeahyeah, FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!!"
"Brown gets it wrong way around - the sliding of meaning is not in philosophy at all. The whole history of political philosophy is an attempt to fix meaning! From Plato to Marx! And Brown domesticates Nietzsche, turns him into pet inherent transgressor, basically unserious - this is exactly how the establishment likes its subversives!"
Heidegger and the Nazis
"There has always been big controversy about Heidegger Nazi engagement - but I agree with Fred Jameson: it was the only sympathetic thing he ever did.""What I want to take from Heidegger is this - idea about necessity of terror. Heidegger said this was new beginning for philosophy - wonder was original beginning, terror new beginning. Heidegger idea was that terror must be instilled into dasein again. "
"The crucial point here - Hegel and Marx were saying exactly the same thing! Hegel in dialectic of Lord and Bondsman from Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel - in his radical negativity, Bondsman experiences freedom, and this was how Marx defined proleterian experience also. It is actually - this is what Christ really does for us. Because you know if you are scared of something, if you have true friend, what friend does is say, "Ok, I will do it for you - and then you will see that there is nothing to be scared of, and even that you can do it too."
"Okay - now, you thought I could not sink any lower. But I can - Ayn Rand! Moment at end of Fountainhead when Howard Roark is about to speak at his trial, and there is passage. Rand says, "Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own minds. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd--and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval?-- does it matter?-- am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free-- free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room. It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak."
"Okay, I know, Rand is crazy - but I think this passage is true."
Between Fear and Terror
"The dominant mode of biopolitics today is fear - idea is that social body is always under threat from immigrants, godless perversion, and bipolitics aims to protect us from these threats, save our identities, protect us - which it does at the price of permanent universalized fear.""What is at heart of this fear? Marx claim in nineteenth century was, it is the abyssal horror of created by capitalism - everything sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air. If anything, this horror is even more extreme today. Today we are dealing with technologies of biogenetic intervention, this is end of nature pure and simple. It is now possible for science to generate new natures, new forms of life."
"This is the real horror, I think - this is the terror. Heidegger talks about difference between earth and world - it is difference between the unbearable heaviness and the unbearable lightness of being. In cyberspace terms - difference between hardware and software, and the point is - never before in history has the tension been so great!"
"Common ecological fear is that somehow earth will snap back, will catch up, and there will be environmental catastrophe - but I think the real terror is actualy the opposite. The terror that Earth won't catch up, that it might actually be possible to emancipate ourselves from our own species."
Critique of Heidegger
"One of the key insights of Heidegger I think, is realization that way to modern authenticity is not to try and escape from technology, but to embrace it to the bitter end - this was what Heidegger originally thought inner greatness of Nazism was, and he never really changed his mind! Heidegger thought, failure of Nazism was failure of politics itself - this is why after Nazi defeat he withdraws from politics completely, it is gesture of negative fidelity. It is like - you have love affair with woman, love affair ends, and so you say: "After her, no more women!" It is melancholic way of staying faithful to lost woman."
"Problem with Heidgger is - he does not go far enough, he remains too attached to idea of solid grounding in everyday life-world banality. And I think this is big problem with modern science today - you know, there is the idea that problem with science is that science thinks it is disconnected from real world? No, it is opposite - problem with science is that science stubbornly presupposes existing life-world reality, even as it works to change the very definition of this reality."
The horror, the horror
"The true horror is the abyss, the idea of totally severing our links with the life-world - but again, not through withdrawal from it, but full embrace of it.""Withdrawal is total fake - you see this very clearly in M. Night Shyamalan film, "The Village" - where idea is basically that withdraw and still have successful community, one must be billionaire, one must be benevolent dictator, and one must invent new mythology to keep everyone in line - and it still goes wrong!"
"So what do we do? If you do not know the answer, which I will talk about next week, then you are already lost - it is dictatorship of the proleteriat."
12 Comments:
His gloss on Heidegger is manipulative and selective beyond reckoning. I'd be annoyed if I didn't find it so pathetic/humorous.
This post has been removed by the author.
Kenneth - I am in no position to judge, I know almost nothing of Heidegger -or Wendy Brown for that matter, and for this reason it is highly probable that I have badly notated Zizek here.
Let me know what specifically you have a problem with here, and I may be able to provide some greater depth.
Elsewhere, Zizek notes that the pleasure of consuming the postmodern object is the pleasure of making everything that was previously prohibited now immediately present. That is, postmodern politics are obscenely transgressive. The postmodern machine colonizes every zone of transgression, making what was once entirely prohibited now common and banal.
Surely Zizek takes precisely this pleasure in repeatedly doing one of the things that democratic postmodernism has prohibited: the naming of the heroic Leninist gesture. That is, when Zizek continually tells us that he's a Leninist who wants to send everyone to the Gulag, he reduces Lenin to a grandfather masturbating in the shadows, railing against a world that's far surpassed him.
I don't want to write too much about this, as my complaints about Zizek's selective readings (i.e. misreadings) of prominent philosophers are fairly explicit and posted elsewhere, and I don't want to seem redundant. But let me note that Heidegger a) does not say we must follow technology through to its bitter end, he says we must work through a determination of technology that alters the manner in which technology demands from being a response and a metric, b) technology was not what he saw as the greatness of national socialism, quite the opposite, and its his exposure to the failures of national socialism (an ill advised, even heinous participation with) that causes him to formulate the famous question concerning technology and his more explicit interest in art/aesthetics.
Assuming you're characterizing Zizek correctly, Z is doing his standard bait and switch, and just hoping that his groupies and acolytes haven't read the same material - or more threatening - more of the source material than he has, or more rigourously than he has. He's done this elsewhere with Levinas, Laclau, Deleuze, so there's no reason at this point to give him the benefit of the doubt with Heidegger.
And incidentally, "terror" is a word better adapted for use with Kierkegaard's fear and trembling than it is useful as a term to describe Heidegger's Abgrund. But I'm not really that concerned it, all things considered.
If you are interested in the technology issues though, I can provide cites of some particularly good and close readings of Heidegger on just this issue.
I find it highly odd, the way you quote Zizek so verbatim without helping him with the conjunctions.
Kenneth - On the general point regarding selective and manipulative readings. Obviously, Zizek is guilty of this - but to be honest, I am not sure exactly what this crime substantially amounts to. I suppose the idea is that if he tried a bit harder, he would produce a better piece of work - except what criteria are we using to judge here in the first place? Questions of ethics and politics are in play here, and so is the definition of reading itself. One point which I think is important here, though, is that Zizek's Birkbeck lectures was specifically marketed as a series of polemical confrontations - and need to be recognized in these terms. In this sense, then, I think you are almost certainly correct: we are not really getting a terribly nuanced Heidegger.
But on the other hand, Zizek I think is using "Heidegger" in different way - essentially as a name for a concept with only a tenuous connection to the real Heidegger. Like a Heidegger trampoline, to bounce things off. Presumably you feeling is that this does the real Heidegger a disservice (I must point out: you sound a little defensive) and it probably does. But nonetheless, I still think there is logic here which is not simply cynical, though it is this as well.
On terror - I am aware that elided this in my report - Zizek did specifically say he precisely did not mean Kierkegaardian angst, but something else (you say abgrund, I believe you). In any case, my suspicion here is that his ultimate reference point here is really Kant, via his colleague Alenka Zupancic - I refer you to her book Ethics of the Real, and especially the chapter "Between Superego and the Law", in which she discusses the Kantian idea of respect.
Heidegger and technology - I am interested in everything! Reference away!!!
Anonymous - I have been mulling on your point, and after some sustained reflection, I have concluded that it is because Zizek is my master, and I am his slave, and in my impotence I hate and fear him. Thus I resentfully present to the global net in the manner of a mitteleuropean madman, to temporarily assuage my deep sadness and longing.
Hope this helps.
Wesley - Point taken. Which Lenin would you prefer?
I don't prefer any Lenin. The point is that in our time that's all that Lenin can be. Even as Zizek rails against postmodernism, ultimately his politics is slave to it.
Look, I'm all for Heidegger just being a marker, a signifier for a philosophical meaning/regime that may bear only a passing similarity to the work Heidegger did. Indeed, I would argue that all Heidegger scholarship is essentially just this, though its range of variation is a bit more circumscribed by fidelity to what Heidegger did or wrote or whatnot. But if Heidegger here, for Zizek, stands in for, whatever the hell Zizek wants him to mean because after all Zizek is just being polemical, I find that sort of politics disingenuine at best, chicanerous at worst.
Now I don't agree with Zizek's project. I think he's basically full of it, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But I also just don't care that much about him. He's a polemicist, I like that, I relate to it. I appreciate his ability to fashion disparate discourses into a seeming whole, and to reinject an urgency to psychoanalytic thought that had gone missing. And his early work, up until Plague of Fantasies, is really quite impressive and erudite. But that Zizek is dead and gone, as far as I can tell, or at least dormant, while his much more inept doppleganger wanders around making all the gestures of respectability while doing none of the adroit scholarship that made him famous. That's perfectly fine by me, of course. Everyone has to earn a living, and he seems to be doing well. I just can't take his thinking seriously when he so clearly doesn't take reading seriously, or doesn't read at all. If that's defensive, I guess I'm fine with that, as I'm defending the position that referencing a name in order to invoke the authority and credibility that comes with tackling the issues with which that name is associated should at least be done with integrity, and not as a cheap public speaking parlor trick.
As for cites, check out Lacou-Labarthe's utterly brilliant _Heidegger: Art and Politics, Fritsche's _Historical Destiny and National Socialism, and even more importantly, if you want to see some cool stuff, check out Osborne's Politics of Time. And you'll want some primary stuff, too: The Der Spiegel interview with Heidegger, which is 1966 I believe; the essays in _Question Concerning Technology_ and especially the Origin of the Work of Art essay and it supplemental appendix material; if you want something more substantive, try Contributions to Philosophy from Enowning, or alternately, his lecture series on Parmenides.
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