Full Lecture: Žižek vs. identity politics, class vs. gender/race, Hegel vs. postmodernism

[@julianphilosophy]

Ps: I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to call this series “The Part of no Part”.

[@nifarious]

Im thrilled for this series. It always shocks me how people misunderstand Zizek. It always strikes me as willful recalcitrance...beligerence...resentment. I dont understand it the way I do, say, conservative, fundamentalist, or liberal politics. Anyway, glad you are shifting away from the semblance angle. Radicality, revolutionary politics and what comes after, universality...its all pressing in the utmost!

[@jadzouein]

What a BRILLIANT start. Can't wait for the next one!

[@acht2849]

Very interesting and thought-provoking lecture, as always! I have a few questions. I don't understand the definition of the working class from a marxist position: what is the difference between social mobility and deidentifying itself as 'working class'? Is 'absolution' not a religious concept? And why would an eliminated working class imply an eliminated capitalism? Zizek doesn't really believe in the utoptian teleological idea of marxism, right? He doesn't buy the classless society? I do get your point of difference between identity politics (representation in the capitalist order instead of revolutionizing this capitalist order) and marxism (deidentifying the working class as such). But I don't really understand the relationship between deidentifying and universalize the working class. The whole concept of deidentifying is a bit of a mystery for me at this moment.

[@Cuthloch]

The working class is made up of people who have nothing to sell but their labor in a society predicated on commodity production bifurcated by those who use their capital and those who sell labor, or perhaps trifurcated including those who rent their land. Within capitalism what makes the selling of labor distinct is that the worker actually sells their labor time, it is possible then for those who merely use their capital with the purchased labor of others to generate a surplus. For Marx the "proletariat" seems to me to be more narrowly defined by other aspects associated with factory labor in industrial Europe. Those distinct aspects are what make it a class in itself, but what is important is that the European Proletatriat had become, especially in Britain and France, latter in Germany as well, a class *for itself*. Which continues, or sublates, the sort of accidental distinct aspects of the specifically European working class because this is the particular working class which had become conscious of itself and its relation to a broader historical program. The reason the end of the system of the capitalists is the end of the working class is that what defines the working class is not working, but the negation of having nothing to sell but their labor within a system where the purchasing of labor power to generate a surplus is the basis of society. I'm not sure Marxism proper is ever utopian, and not really teleological in the aristotealian sense. My understanding of Zizek, here I admit to being less well read, is that Zizek thinks communism is the direction, but an unobtainable end of history. There is a flaw in reality where the dialectic never fully turns into the circle it's supposed to be [in that sense Zizek seems to believe that Hegel never actually transcends limitation as such, Hegel is merely pushing transcendental method as far as it can go without really surmounting it] I think on this Zizek is, from what I've read, most clear in the intro to the newer editions of the Sublime Object.

[@MilleLagerqvist]

Heads up, there’s a spelling mistake in the caption. Currently it says everybweek!

[@Liliquan]

If one suggests that postmodernism is pro identity politics, one might as well become Peterson stans. Postmodernism is fundamentally anti-identity politics. There’s a video by Cuck Philosophy which covers this.

[@Liliquan]

If we a going to do some slander….. Zizek frequently steals from postmodernists and rebrands it in his own terminology and pretends it’s innovate just to write his 1000th book. Like seriously though, when will he shut up. How many books does he need to write. If anyone was supporting capitalism……😂

[@McDonaldsRich]

Zizek is pointing out that deconstructionism opened up the pathway for identity politics to take hold, ultimately putting class struggle and its politics to the side. It wasn't a focused effort of postmodernism to conjure up identity politics, but instead a natural result of its logic. Whereas Jordan Peterson's critique is about Western chauvinism, moral relativism and the fall of man. They're quite different imo

[@HakuYuki001]

@@McDonaldsRichLol, really. A literary analysis technique that focuses on how a text’s structure creates implicit contradictory messages led to identity politics. Go ahead and explain the logic.

[@McDonaldsRich]

@@HakuYuki001 Sure. Deconstructionism is an important tool, no doubt. However, it spurred on the splintering of many groups and ideas into categories, perhaps even what you might call "identities". The focus on the individual detracts from the radical / revolutionary nature of the collective. Identity politics leverages postmodern critique (deconstruction) in order to focus on marginalized groups instead of a greater class consciousness. Hopefully this is more clear now.

[@markoslavicek]

​@@McDonaldsRich I see your point and even though it's a sound one, I am not convinced that this was the key factor that led to the development of identity politics. The departure from class struggle towards personal identities may have just as well be a by-product of the capitalist West. For all its flaws, capitalism did manage to raise a good portion of working class to the middle class level. When the working class shrunk and the middle class formed the majority of the Western population, the people began to focus on different issues. Their working conditions weren't anymore such a problem (or at least they didn't perceive it as such, again, due to capitalism's nuanced PR) but began focusing on other things, such as the rights of the minorities. Derrida's theoretical legacy has hardly anything to do with that. And one more thing regarding Zizek and Postmodernim - one must differentiate the Postmodernity as a period and Postmodernism as a philosophical umbrella term. I believe Zizek has less problems with certain 'French theories' as such than he does with the world we live in. For example - as we're already on the topic of identity politics - aren't *identities* quite an important notion of the political Right? Not in the sense of abolishing the oppression of the minorities, but quite the contrary, in the sense of religious, national, and racial identity that for some reason deserves to be saved (think in direction of Peterson's sacred 'Western Judeo-Christian values'). It seems to me as if we're dealing with basic projection psychology in which the Right accuses the Left of the flaws it itself is to blame for. And ironically, the Left fails to see the irony behind it and falls for it...