Slavoj Zizek and Lady Gaga Aren’t Friends
We can put a picture of Zizek up, too. That doesn't mean he writes for us.
Yesterday, the internet was abuzz with the unexpected news that Slovenian Marxist Slavoj Zizek and pop superstar Lady Gaga are friends — perhaps more than friends. The New York Post appears to have broken this ‘news’ with a ‘Page Six’ (gossip) article. The Post refers to unnamed ‘sources’ who say they spent time together, and references a blog post entitled “Communism Knows no Monster” in which Zizek allegedly expounds on the significance of Gaga. The article ends by quoting Zizek, reached by the Post, as saying “I am terribly sorry to disappoint you, but this is all a fake!” This quote did absolutely nothing to stop the spread of this rumor. But I am almost certain that quote is the truth.
The key is the blog post, “Communism Knows no Monster.” Although it is attributed to Zizek, it is absolutely not by him. It appears on the website of something called Deterritorial Support Group. This is an anarchist/theoretical site. As those whose familiarity with Zizek dates back before June 20, 2011 probably know, Zizek’s main intellectual antagonists are anarchist theorists. They typically regard him as a rigid Marxist. He regards them as ineffectual and unwilling to take direct aim at power (on the other hand, Zizek and ‘anarchists’ like Micheal Hardt and Antonio Negri probably agree on about 80 or 90% of real world political questions. In practical matters everyone these days is less dogmatic than in theory). Zizek would not be writing for such a website. He regularly contributes to the London Review of Books, which, in any case, has a much larger readership.
Short URL: http://www.lefteyeonbooks.com/?p=2133
Posted by Left Eye On Books
on Jun 21 2011. Filed under News Blog.
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Jesus, everyone knows Negri is a Marxist not an anarchist!
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Yeah, Negri is a Marxist. Zizek’s beef seems to not be with “anarchists” but with Simon Critchley. And DSG call themselves “anti-authoritarian communists” on the site. Crazy hoax though!
“If a small website like this actually did net a contribution from a giant like Zizek, it seems inconceivable that the editor would let this discussion stand, rather than jump in to let everyone know that this is in fact Zizek.”
Are big news websites in the habit of doing this though?
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[...] Hegel and Lacan, and it’s not really very funny, to boot).” So why the hoax? The blog Left Eye on Books claims the members of the Deterritorial Support Grouppppp are “anarchist theorists” who [...]
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[...] Hegel and Lacan, and it's not really very funny, to boot)." So why the hoax? The blog Left Eye on Books claims the members of the Deterritorial Support Grouppppp are "anarchist theorists" who [...]
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Update–Further research (i.e. talks with friends on Facebook) has convinced me that the protest at which Zizek and Gaga were supposed to speak was also part of the hoax. There is little reason to believe either had been contacted. The email supposedly from Gaga readat the protest was likely another product of deterritorial support group.
Jesus and Greg–The Marxist tradition in the 20th century was obsessed with taking state power and using it to transform society. Although the autonomous Marxism that Negri was a part of rooted itself in Marx, it broke with Marxism to emphasize autonomous social movements. ‘Autonomy’ is perhaps the key word of the 21st century. I know it is an oversimplification, but it is basically accurate to see a theoretical divide between Marxists (state power) and anarchists (autonomy), Zizek and Hardt/Negri. Incidentally, Zizek has critiqued Hardt/Negri on numerous occassions, for similar reasons as to why he critiqued Critchley/Subcommadante Marcos.
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Zizek is all over the place on the State. One moment he is claiming that, like Lenin, we must understand the defensive power of the state, another he is endorsing thinkers like Badiou who believe future communist power must exist at a distance from the state. However, at the risk of scholasticism, Negri and Hardt are still Marxists. The only people who don’t like them to consider them Marxists are people with a political interest in throwing them, and the political actors influenced by them, out of actually existing political movements claiming the influence of Marx, which is basically numerous Leninists who use the word autonomy as a smear. Indeed, their are obsessively so, the whole concept of autonomia emerges from a close reading of Marx’s texts, not, note, a movement into other, say anarchist, critiques of Marx.
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OK Greg, you win. Perhaps I should have said the debate is between Leninists and autonomists. No secret where Zizek lines himself up in that debate (although then he quickly distances himself more or less from every existing Leninist formation). All I was trying to say was that it would be highly surprising, to say the least, to see Zizek contributing to something like Deterritorial support group. It is precisely the sort of theory he is always sneering at (as does Badiou, I believe, although I haven’t read as much by him).
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Well, you might have taken a moment to think it through considering this post has now been picked up by pretty major news sources, instead we now have (potentially Zizek himself!) thinking that “anarchists” are out to smear Zizek.
Having had a good look at the post, I don’t see anything smeary in that posts, if anything it is a pretty affectionate parody of his work, though perhaps missing a good slug of his normal theoretical partners, Lacan and Hegel, as you rightly say. Though, this said, the post is “Zizek” (ahem) commentating on Lady Gaga’s own theoretical essay she wrote at college. The intention of it seems good natured drumming up of support for a good cause.
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I never claimed DSG was out to ‘smear’ Zizek. In fact, I tried to correct this misapprehension in the comments section of the LA Times article on this subject. I was simply trying to point out that this wasn’t the sort of site that he would probably be contributing to. As far as I can tell, this clarification has been ignored as other news sites have picked up the LA Times interpretation of my post, that anarchists were counterattacking against Zizek. I would agree with your assessment of the post, although the first few sentences (“My theoretical project and, indeed, my defence of pure theory as such in contraposition to those calling for near unreflective action has reached a critical zero-point. Either we act now, or we do not act at all.”) strike me as a rather well aimed punch at Zizek’s notorious tendency to stay away from any sort of endorsement of many forms of political action applauded by autonomists, or anarchists, or whoever, such as the Zapatistas and the protests at major summits of IMF, World Bank etc. as well as his distancing from more traditional forms of protest, like anti-war marches or the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement.
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[...] that “aims to offer analysis and propaganda from an ultra-leftist perspective” and dislikes Žižek’s rigid Marxist [...]
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[...] Lady Gaga are unfounded, and I feel partly responsible. On June 21, we published an article titled “Slavoj Zizek and Lady Gaga Aren’t Friends” to bust a rumor that was starting to go viral – that the most famous pop star in the world [...]
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