Whither the erratic affective baby?

A selection from a new piece by Zizek in Critical Inquiry. He begins by imagining, as it were, the worst case scenario. A really banal and offensive sort of person - the sort of person one meets all too often - gets hold of some philosophy. (Plato says: books always roll around, get into wrong hands; nothing to be done, really.) This person - call him Z - responds very enthusiastically, yet obviously without the least understanding, hence deeply inappropriately. Indeed, a noxious cloud of embarrassing, kitsch-pornographic exuberance is emitted in lieu of the least thread of thought or argument or analysis.

If that happened, it would be high time to interrogate "the very logic of publicity, of video clips, and so on" (such precision!) Because it would be sort of sad if - concerning, say, a work of philosophy - what mattered were obviously not any claim or content but "the intensity of the transmitted affects and perceptions." I mean, if it were just, like, played for shock value?

Which is your favorite bit? I mean, besides the fist-f*****g bit - which is, like, so Spinozistic it hurts.

I like the scare quotes around 'troubling and confusing'. There is something so guileness and clumsy - yet strangely urgent and earnest - about this care taken, lest innocent readers suffer actual trouble or confusion, due to the mistaken notion that it was exactly - instead of merely sort of - trouble and confusion about which the author was talking.

But I have to vote for:

"What if ... one should precisely throw out the baby with the bath water and renounce the very notion of erratic affective productivity, and so on as the libidinal support of revolutionary activity?"

I say: hasta la vista, erratic affective baby! Limp on, revolutionary activity!

I must say: this piece takes anti-globalization rhetoric to new and unpleasant lows. (Virginia Postrel, call your agent: The Future and its Enemas?)

I wonder if Zizek ever thinks to himself, 'God, I'm such a complete idiot. I just am.' If he did that, I could forgive much - not all, but much. New forms of comedy are always welcome, after all.

Comments

[dsquared]

I thought it was quite good.

[jholbo]

You shouldn't joke, man. This is serious.

[Fontana Labs]

I was more interested in the virtual-reality sex video game, really. The best part of the opening paragraph is I am so completely full of shit conjoined with haha, look at that stupid fuck trying to find out what philosophy is-- I can tell by his suit it'll never work.

[Cosma]

Do the editors of Critical Inquiry realize that Zizek is just feeding them output from the Postmodernism Generator? (Yes, I realize that was a cheap-shot.)

[Martial]

New forms of comedy are always welcome, after all.

I've been saying for years that Derrida should be understood as a humorist (imo, one of the great comedic writers, if not quite in the first rank), and his impact on American academics as a sort of French revenge for Jerry Lewis.

Zizek has always seemed to me as though he too got the joke - and wanted some groupies of his own. Though it is always possible, I suppose, that Mr Z hit upon a similar technique independently.