enjoyable | First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

A very interesting defense of Communism | First As Tragedy, Then As Farce | Slavoj Zizek

books:


	• First As Tragedy, Then As Farce Slavoj Zizek Verso, 2009 - 158 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Brilliant analyses, little direction

I like Zizek. His irreverence and equal measure Aristotelean logician and Groucho Marx infused with Hegel and George Carlin work for me. And I certainly understand his anger and frustration and sense of urgency given the mess we are all in. The paradoxes and the contradictions posed by the hegemonic authoritarian powers in teh world today anger him and as you read his analyses, they should anger you as well. If they don't, you're the problem.
His observations on what the Haitian revolution of 1804 meant were written prior to the earthquake but now resonate with near clairvoyant insight, as does his deconstruction of the wealth of ids like Bill Gates. He knows exactly where the dangers are as humanity attempts to right itself and move beyond the collapses it has nearly effected. Zizke isn't sure we are really going to do that unless we take action that isn't an attempt to have both a socialist and capitalist set of pies and eat them as well.
And that's the problem. He hasn't real answers either. It is easy enough to punch holes through Obama (an empty suit if there ever was one), Putin and Berlusconi (two thugs in competing in gangs), Hu Jintao (The Dr No of the 21st Century). Zizek finds little reason to retry strategies of the past that were inspired by Marx, but does look for an Hegelian dialectical answer that does not repeat same old startegies, expecting a different result. That is an insanity that he is convinced we can ill afford to humour. I think he is or should be looking more closely at Sartre's notion of the "group in fusion". Sartre was quick to point out that unless the group constantly redefines the next cause to come together to resolve/overcome/conquer, the group falls back into self absorbed singularities. As Zizek points out, the age of nations (a very big singularity) is over. Capitalism does not respect the integrity of any individual, be it person, culture, country; nor do the fundamentalist terrorists of any stripe (Christian, Jewish, Islamic); nor does organized crime (the Mob, Russia, Goldma Sachs). Thus why should those of us bearing the brunt of their self absorption?
Exactly what steps and what directions to take are unclear. What is certain is that it is going to cost blood. Time is not in our favour. Sartre would insist that the leaders of the groups in fusion keep the targets in front, keep fueling the dialectical struggle. Hegel would expect nothing less.
This is a provactive book and is especially clear on delineating exactly what the issues are and how very, very difficult it will be to resolve them. Failure to do so will leave us smeared with teh farce of our own destruction, much like placing your head between your knees to prepare for a crash.

for more information click here

enjoyable

Zizek delivers a chaotic collage of observations and adventurous speculations, while skillfully avoiding any conclusions to any of it. Some of the thinking might be even brilliant but, again, it leads nowhere. His pro-communist chapter is particularly disappointing in that regard; I was really interested in reading something more specific, a vision that would at least deserve some consideration. He wouldn't even define communism - after all, it does seem that if one wants to be a communist the term itself needs redefining... Zizek is a good showman, knows how to keep the reader glued to the page so the book is perfect for a 3-4 hour flight. Entertaining author with lots of potential. He just gets continuously lost in thousands of facts and semi-conclusions; his constant mixing of social thought with philosophy and psychoanalysis produces some sort of a salad bar situation. I think the "intellectual virtuoso" style is supposed to impress the reader but this kind of delivery will not sell for long if it doesn't improve. There is some knowledge here (academic and otherwise) and plenty of unorthodox thinking, but you will find no depth and no wisdom. Sorry.

for more information click here

A very interesting defense of Communism

Prior to reading Zizek and this book in particular, I'd had no idea exactly what communism was. I certainly wasn't one of the fools spinning it into a political insult without knowing what it meant in the first place (i.e., "Obama is a fascist, communist, socialist alien from outer space without a birth certificate, blah blah blah"). Zizek's analysis of the one-two punch (tragedy then farce) of 9/11 and the financial meltdown are penetrating and open you up for his defense of communism. Though it hasn't "converted" me, I've found a great amount of wisdom in this book. If you love absorbing information and opening your mind, this is a title for you.

for more information click here

An act of desperation or pure irony?

Zizek is a philosopher who represents a certain desperation as that of whom believed and truly admires the work of Karl Marx and who witnessed first hand the crumble of the communist dream. After the actuality of the complex web of interrelations among people of the planet proved state planned authoritarian governments were just another side of the essential process of exploitation and power, the fervent communists, socialists, leftists and many other ists that claim to have the objective to end exploitation, by them simplified as "capitalism" - as Zizek puts it quite clearly, the "big other" - were left to look for a way to cope with the failure of the beautiful mechanic theory they worked so hard to construct. The biggest failure of Marxism was to follow Marx's brilliant thinking process as a dogmatic base to build their own thinking based upon such wishful, decontextualized, promise of a holy land of leisure time. Where Marx fails as a visionary, he achieves and surpasses as a clever analyst and participant of his own reality. The marxists sanctified his contradictory writings and the twentieth century history was made.

Mr. Zizek, coming from the classic marxist tradition, but a clever man who nevertheless thinks too much of his Slovenian jokes, tries and updates the pledge for the end of economic exploitation from the elegiac position of bringing the good things of Marx's theory to analyze the present. His attempt is noble and, at first, forthcoming, but his lack of actual grasping of the world's political backstage and the intricacies related to technological development as a fundamental behavior changing and conditioning economic fact, blocks his vision to dive deeper in the current financial and terrorism scare crises.

Mr Zizek differs himself from a horde of dialectical philosophers and 'leftists' because he understood quite well the changes caused by "Difference and Repetition", Foucault's complete ouvre, the shake down of Derrida's deconstruction, and the luminary "The Postmodern Condition". He also stands apart for not mixing such condition with Fukuyama's and other pragmatists and cynics' who fails to critically grasp the failures of the present situation and put all their chips on the technological salvation, completely forgetting about the singularities of the individuals involved in all of it. But, he ends up getting confused when trying to formulate the return to a new kind of communism that would still be based on a 'proletarian dictatorship' when he also acknowledges the actual disappearance of the proletarian condition. He is searching, no doubt, for a way to formulate in thought a way out of the dire conditions of poverty and wealth concentration, of social and economic exploitation. At this point he does not complete the loop back to the individual, he stays high above the singularities, desperately laying in the realm of categories. I say desperate because of how the Communist Hypothesis ends in such a messianic and fundamentalist note, truly as an act of desperation, he clearly (or ironically?) proposes a political theology based on a return to Hegel. I must quote the end, because it just made me laugh out loud as not even a comedy has made me do it in a long time: "do not be afraid, join us, come back! You've had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it - time to get serious again." (Sorry, I am laughing again.) I don't know why, maybe because it sounded like something a couple would say to each other when trying to hold on to a failed relationship. Maybe because this is his take on a possible farce of his proposal. Paraphrasing the title of the first chapter, one can say: It's the individual, stupid!

Nevertheless, the book is a must read. It is definitely many steps beyond the usual liberal or mechanic common sense found in the media and current non-fiction best-sellers.

for more information click here

Struggle of Ideals

Slavoj Zizek book "First as Tragedy, then as Farce" present a very powerful argument for struggle for ideals. The first half of the book calls for the left to re-enter the ideological debate about democracy and the future society, because cultural capitalism will incorporate old left words, but the vision of the future cultural capitalism will jettison to the side.Slavoj re-asserts again the importance communism again. I strongly suggest the left to read and debate this book today.

From the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.

Billions of dollars have been hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis?

In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory.

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3