This is a new kind of post where i have no idea what it is i want to say, other than that i need to say something. I just finished watching yet another brilliant Slavoj Zizek talk, so brilliant that i find myself uncomfortably close to deifying the man. I don’t know how to post the talk up here, since it’s not widely available. That said, let the rambling thoughts begin.
What i like about Zizek is that he’s constantly reminding us that life as we know it *is*, inescapably, a contradiction. A series of contradictions leading up to one big contradiction. I can’t help but try, in my own groping way, to see my own ever-adapting worldview reflected in this man’s genius.
To my mind, so long as we experience subjectivity–that is, an only *partial* experience of what *is*–contradiction is inevitable. So to be really truthful is to actually embrace that. Of course, these inherent contradictions… the inevitable product of experiencing reality on the temporal scale, on the ’secular’ scale in the original meaning of the term… can be found everywhere. The contradiction that ‘i’ exist yet that there is really only one transcendent reality… the contradiction that no matter how hard we try to ‘acheive,’ let’s say, ‘justice,’ it will never be a fully accomplished project… the fact that any system that tries to explain everything *must* fall short somewhere… the contradiction that when i reassure someone i love them, even i don’t know what kind of love i mean, let alone whether i mean it.
This is the ‘differance’ of Derrida, the ’separation’ of Rumi, the ‘dialectic’ of Hegel or whoever. The pursuit of truth (or rather, the fundamental submission to it) means refusing to pretend that the world as we see it isn’t broken, that everything is, or will be, OK in the secular sense… It won’t! It can’t be! That’s ideology, i think. Or i think that’s the inner truth of what Zizek means when he talks about ideology, anyway, whether he thinks he means that or not. Difference, distinction, language, constructs… these all entail incompleteness, a violence against the whole. An inevitable violence. Stop trying to pretend it’s not there! Just accept it, damn it, don’t pretend! Submit! Submit! Lament! Long for it! Don’t accept lies that tell you you don’t have to!
Hmm… that feels a little better. I don’t think that really does it justice (ha!), but maybe someone somewhere someday will read this and just go *yes* … *exactly*. That would be cool. I’d be lying if i pretended i didn’t care, even a little.
1 Comment
September 12, 2009 at 8:41 am
me gusta!