Critics complain of a theoretical chaos in which questions and answers are confused and in which Žižek constantly recycles old ideas which were scientifically refuted long ago or which in reality have quite a different meaning than Žižek gives to them.[72] Harpham calls Žižek's style "a stream of nonconsecutive units arranged in arbitrary sequences that solicit a sporadic and discontinuous attention."[73] O'Neill concurs: "a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance."[74]

Oh, it's more than just this. I've seen enough of his stuff to notice the pattern. Perhaps I'm overly critical, but he just strikes me as somebody who says things because they sound true. Basically, an entertainer of sorts.

That said, I probably ought to withhold judgement, since I imagine I'd have to read his books to really understand what he has to say.

In some ways, he strikes me as a much more ridiculous version of Noam Chomsky. Although with Chomsky, even if he is pretty clearly engaging in some form of persuasive writing / debating much of the time, he clearly has spent a great deal of time researching and thinking about what he has to say).

Noam Chomsky is critical of Žižek saying Žižek is guilty of "using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever," and also said that Žižek’s theories never go "beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old."[80]

Noam Chomsky can speak authoritatively on an incredibly wide range of topics, including many outside his area of expertise where he likely speaks with greater confidence than experts in the field. Zizek says things that have a ring of truth to it, but he's hardly a purveyor of knowledge. I don't think there's much to learn from Zizek, but he can be fun to listen to.

In some ways, he strikes me as a much more ridiculous version of Noam Chomsky. Although with Chomsky, even if he is pretty clearly engaging in some form of persuasive writing / debating much of the time, he clearly has spent a great deal of time researching and thinking about what he has to say).

Noam Chomsky can speak authoritatively on an incredibly wide range of topics, including many outside his area of expertise where he likely speaks with greater confidence than experts in the field. Zizek says things that have a ring of truth to it, but he's hardly a purveyor of knowledge. I don't think there's much to learn from Zizek, but he can be fun to listen to.

I'm fine with criticizing Zizek, he doesn't mean much to me other than being sometimes interesting. Chomsky I'll be more defensive of..

Žižek arranges his book like a piece of music with different movements, with chapter subheadings such as “allegro moderato”. This is fitting, because Žižek is something of a virtuoso, but as a player of paradoxes. His great riffs take one of a finite number of forms. There is the simple psychoanalytic trope of claiming that however something seems, its true nature is the precise opposite. Then you have the repeated claim that a certain position entails its opposite, but that both sides of the paradox are equally real. Then again, there is the reversal of common sense, in which, whatever the received wisdom is, Zizek postulates the opposite.

Zizek has that continental tendency to deliberately cast ideas as paradoxes just because an easy way to persuade someone that you're being profound by saying that something it both on thing yet also (somehow!! who would've guessed!!) its opposite, or that that thing that everyone knows is so-and-so is really the exact opposite.

He'd say some bull**** like this: "Yet while Donald Trump, who has been married three times and is known for being sexually insatiable is often criticized for cynically wooing evangelicals with a Faustian bargain, the renowned libertine is in fact the fullest embodiment of Reformation Protestant morality. Yet is it any surprise? Here we see how promiscuity is in fact self-overcome in one and the same individual, as promiscuity is self-overcome, and becomes the most profound chastity..." blah blah blah

hmm... so maybe he just figured out this one weird trick for selling books in order to buy more cocaine.

so, basically the philosophy equivalent of 'dumpster diving'.

To be fair, many insights can be attained this way. Humans are adept at finding false causes. Sometimes reversing the arrow on a causal implication can reveal the true one.

For instance, many people seem to believe that expressing virtues (being orderly, patient) etc will make you happy. Try reversing it: what if instead it's happy people who are more likely to express virtues. The former is what people are often told. Psychologically speaking the latter is more accurate, though.

It is one weird trick, but it's a good trick when you realize how bad people are at accurately gauging causation.

I mean, sure, that's the analytic criticism of continental philosophy. Contrarily, I could criticize analytic philosophy for being boring, being sterile, and saying nothing of relevance to anyone's lives. Every school of thought has faults, generally a good idea to not buy into the acting performances academics give about "the state of the field".

Well I dunno, perhaps an analytic philosopher steeped in logical deduction might suggest that by presuming the truth of any false statement, you can literally prove anything.

Why not just have something profound to say and be clear about it?

Even though Peterson was mesmerized by Žižek’s charisma, he was even more impressed by Žižek’s firm refusal to align himself with the core arguments of Marx and Engels. Despite Žižek’s left-commitments, he and Peterson both affirmed the existence of class society, social hierarchy, and the inescapable fate of suffering. We can only hope to cope with the suffering generated by capitalism (either as individuals or through tepid regulations) — we can never hope to overcome this system.

Peterson said that Žižek’s claims sounded nothing like Marxism, and more like “Žižekism.” But there’s nothing original here: this is not Žižekism or Petersonism, but the old metaphysics of bourgeois pessimism. Neither participant in this debate outlined a specific alternative to capitalism. Nor do they believe that a real systematic alternative is desirable.

The difference between Žižek and Peterson is thus the difference between John Locke’s fool and madman: The fool cannot draw conclusions from his premises, whereas the madman dutifully draws his conclusions from bad ones. Žižek here is the fool, since his left-wing commitments remain incompatible with the philosophical premises he shares with Peterson’s tragic view of human existence. Peterson, the madman, takes these tragic premises to their logical, anti-socialist conclusion.

But who knows: With so much in common, could this be the start of a beautiful friendship?

Aside from 100 million hamburgers not eaten because of Stalin's regime:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/9/18172826/bds-law-israel-boycott-states-explained

Has anyone ever seen this before? Apparently you can be made to sign a contract working for a public school which requires you not to defame or boycott Israel. Is this some kind of joke?

I mean, the boycotts are basically kind of stupid, but is this seriously the solution? I hope I'm not understanding something because this is upsetting.

Just in case anybody was under the impression that anti-BDS laws are about protecting an ally, and not about protecting American investments in Israel.

https://mobile.twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/1121458299725987840

lmao, yeah, I can’t tell either Twitter

I wonder if there's a correlation between black hate groups and democrats.