In reference to discourse: facebook.com/peterkalebtheo … nt_mention
“…. but he’s vulgar and if you ever read this Mr. Zizek, drop the shock therapy appeal to your audiences and spell out the solutions not the problems in flowery description only, what do you propose to change the world, what kinds of solutions, and how comprehensive should we imagine the scope of the change, the subtlety of the changes that’s what you want to be a philosopher….” –Peter
I’m actually sympathetic with some of this Peter. For one thing, he has a propensity for the radical strictly for the sake of the radical. And this clearly has a lot to do with his desire to be popular. Note, for instance, his support of Trump which I can only guess to be a kind of Marxist agenda in that he sees Trump as the last gasp of Capitalism, that which overheats so it will finally die at last. And this propensity clearly seems to be at work in his rather weird and radical solutions that often reek of theoretical overreach. He’s really not that pragmatic when comes to social and political policy.
At the same time, I tend to look at other writers in terms of what I can use. And I have found a lot of that in Zizek, which is why he is part of my holy trinity along with Rorty and Deleuze. For one thing, I like his method. He tends to repeat things in effort to create a kind of momentum that will, in turn, get him beyond himself. This, I think, is what lies behind him being such a prolific writer: he just keeps throwing it out there and seeing what happens to stick with limited concern about what might not.
For another, I admire his generosity in applying pop culture to his philosophical explorations in order to make his more obscure conceptual schemes more accessible. On top of that, he does a really effective job of decoding mainstream messages in order to expose the Capitalistic dogma that underlies them.
And finally (and this mainly has to do with Plague of Fantasies), I have found his explorations of Lacanian Jouissance (that kind of push-pull feeling we all live with and experience most clearly in sex (that which underlies much of human experience (even human cruelty: LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME HAVE TO DO!!! (especially useful in its subtlety and depth which is perfectly worthy of continental philosophy.