Authentic Radical Fundamentalism that is ? Still not sure, but I got one thing right with Zizek
… taking things seriously and taking sides
are absolutely not the same …
In “The Empty Wheelbarrow” he says …
The ruling ideology appropriated the September 11 tragedy and used it to impose its basic message: it is time to stop playing around, you have to take sides – for or against. This, precisely, is the temptation to be resisted: in such moments of apparent clarity of choice, mystification is total. Today, more than ever, intellectuals need to step back. Are we aware that we are in the midst of a “soft revolution”, in the course of which the unwritten rules determining the most elementary international logic are changing ?
Two distinct points
(1) Step back from world-scale stark choices.
(2) In apparent clarity of choice, mystification is total.
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Post Note
Re-reading Zizek’s 2005 piece again in 2023 – he’s obviously a bit “Marmite” as a philosopher and commentator – Lacanian, provocative style as well as wearing his socialist heart on his sleeve, I’ve witnessed him in action a few times – but prescient here in pinpointing the poly-crises facing us.
Even just the paragraph starting “On September 11 2001, …”
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