Notes and Quotes: Slavoj Žižek and Cornel West in Conversation on Theology + Politics
At New School 4 11 24
Contents
- First up Cornel West
- Hand off to Slavoj Zizek
- Cornel Interjects
- Slavoj Responds
Recording:
https://event.newschool.edu/zizekwest
Notes and Quotes
Cornel West
Death Dogma Domination. Responses to catastrophe. What we are willing to live and die for.
Big question in philo, which Camus takes out to the absurd — in Sisyphus book, and that nobility can be part of it — whereas Kafka makes out as an everyday horror.
Wretchedness of our species, wretchedness of existence. Hegel said history is a slaughterhouse.
Wretched is a big word in poetry rhymes with fetch ketch (for catch),reach leech wrench, are visual extensions and in meaning can be said to be weaning collateral meanings off it.
Transforms into language that shares with the religious, in sublime time.
The wretched is like a death in your throat bleeding for mercy. Its a rape by god of god, in a way. From Christ back to the Romans, where its beautified.
Crimes Follies Misfortunes.
(have never seen a person die, or even an animal other than a bug, WAIT mouse in trap dying, screaming. After that I preferred to catch and throw out the window. Which at seventh floor they could easily survive. Also bat my mother hit with a broom. Only visited never been inside jail. Follies is literature and circus.)
Death haunts I hear as a reality because of what history is right now, and by its existence theologically exists everywhere, if god is everything, and of course as metaphor for liquidly anything.
Wretched of the earth gods people and all. God the mercenary or god the cathedral, which is both…
Underside of human beings, says. Is where he is starting from.
The Underside The Underground The Down Under, The darkness and the depths. The under asunder thunder plunder, hover rover.
Darkness as a poetically beautified and contaminated interior in search of — as active, as an active particle, extending into dogma, wait…
I just sent a thank note to Udi for the talk and the video.
Types of Death: Physical, Social — Slavery, Civic - Exclusion, Spiritual Death, Psychic Death and so on.
The Solemn The Serious and The Comic
Ohh the comic — I wrestle with the comic up against the solemn/serious. There is an aspect of it that comes straight through rhyme, as carrier of nonsense, Zeno’s rhetorical tricks, and gods joke on humanity.
Critical Distance. Existential Cushion. Need. In order to look unflinchingly at how wretched we really are. Critical Distance, including Art and Religion. Allows us to sustain ourselves preserve sanity, dignity.
Genocide everyday on TV. Forms of Death as Back Drop
Circles back through history, what I think of as “eternal now” where past and present are just variations on the same thing meaning existing in time. Now meets up with the past.
Dominator and Dominated. Colonizer and Colonized.
This is a big discussion going on lately about europe. That Europe dominated, was a colonizer globally. And that era is ending.
Tho domination has always been local too, wrt gender and economies. As well as running from persecution, horror, genocide… Stalin brutalized Ukraine. Why should Putin be any different?
Dogma. Types of Dogma. Ideological. Religious. Academic. Inescapability Death and Dogma.
As they are connected. Death and Dogma are connected… Deeply, and darkly. Christ after all is the supreme martyr. Death by sacrifice created his resurrection to divinity. Which is an amazing over hang on dogma. Dizzying.
Skeptical in a Radical Way, becomes its own form of dogmatism. Retail vs. Wholesale Skepticism of bystanders and spectators. How walk a tightrope. What form of dogma most enabling. Confront forms of civic and social death. Forms of Domination.
Many are dominated by the economy and feel persecuted by it, lack of housing, struggles for existence, acute and a terror. And drugs as a way to reject life for what it is and create another however dismal, broken.
Drugs. Can be like a sanctuary of god living with terror just going moment to moment while circulating in reality that is despised, thrown through a concoction of riveting alternative — well, dwimmercraft —
And yet in itself a “singular” dance with death, that relates back to Art if your lucky. Many make it back through religious related dogma for structure that can survive beyond the intensity of that dance with death, which drugs create a living for.
Various traditions with their own Blind Spots. Secular or Religious.
Myopic American Empire, Wounded Russian Empire.
Other Empires, nowadays. China has a lot of “colonies.” Tibet. And elsewhere. India is not an Empire. I dont think. But it does argue with neighbors. EU? Is EU still an Empire by way of language and history. Kind of. Yeah. Iran/Saudi split. Saudi is by economies. America is by economies. Iran by weapons. Its economy not as much, as its willingness to fight for Islam, so Theologically yes. Russia is not at the same economic level but is always at war with one of its neighbors since Putin or even before. If its not trying to gobble up one, its going for another. By any means necessary. And Russians do as they are told. As bad as Germans did with Hitler? Not quite. Because the domination occurs localized as well, there has always been a profound Russian literary tradition that addresses the radical and the absurd.
Dealing with Catastrophe.
Slavoj Zizek
W. German Communist meetings. The chair kept empty for Stalin, just in case, he comes.
Christian Atheism. Jewish Scripture, Jobe loses all. Suffering has a deeper meaning. Deeper meaning maybe you did something that caused it. God is testing you. Justifies suffering.
Jehovah: who are you to judge me, where were you when I was created, the justifications of suffering… Infinite distance between divinity and us.
Chesterston says — you think your in trouble look at the universe. All I have created is one big trouble.
Radical Christian Atheist.
Kirkeguaard and Religion. Marx Proletarian. And Love, How we fall in love.
Intense engagement. Is the means, of Christianity. Marx says too about Proletarian movement.
Tho with time of course, a matter of philosophy and arguments over dogma.
Religions are about engaging in intensities. That are not always distinct from love. I often feel crowded by religion into a corner, with no way out. So I refuse to belong to any one coda, but that there are many gods, of earth, and the universe as an idea that makes sense it seems, is just another. And have been told by those from all three main monotheisms - god loves me, they feel sorry for me.
But I can think about god as multiplier, they do that in Tibetan book of dead, the idea of god as multiplier through time, every one popping back out again as a repetition of the first, i let that in, I never let it be the one god thing, which I found left me in terror.
Truth doesn’t arrive by comparisons between the options,
I love having options. I dont like scripture. From any of them. Traditions blind me with terror, and universal love makes me panic. so I skip it, and let universal love in as a condition of kindness to strangers, and as a feeling of affection where it arrives.
Truth is always an engaged truth.
Like love, falling in love just happens.
Its something cant be denied, it doesnt matter if you deny it, it doesnt stop. Its glorious and terrible. Love is a fire that comes in a gust and forces movement. It becomes a force to be reckoned with — leaves me in a constant state of rationalization, why — there is a bit of the devil in love, and — can get so bad it plays with with my death turns into a wretched chess game. somehow demands my focus to the extreme. leaves me ill… makes me feel like beethoven and his wall.
wasnt always that way. brain vs body. sometimes its local and your body just takes you there, and its sweet and spontaneous. other times is the sponge after quarry and I am always left in despair.
First you discover your in Love, then rationalize. Reasons for love occur only when you are already in love.
Yup cant stop.
Truth is only revealed through an engaged stance.
Sometimes I think there are different truths. There is truth that exists in time at moment in which occurs, as an event. And then there are “truths” that can only be gotten to by an engagement with their continuity, as a process of meaning and being. One is presence as is, and the other is well, I kind of like to call the The Fold.
Personally I have to work at both…
Uniqueness of Holy Spirit. Second coming, doesnt think of that way. Just wait… No. Jesus says, whenever there is love between two of you, I will be there.
I dont think of it through Jesus. I do use Jesus as a protector of universal love anyway, love just because I am alive, and also a figure of sorrow at moment of crucifixion, life as its own martyrdom. deeply filled with sorrow (and even contempt for anything but the divine… hah)
God is not a faith assurance. Some good guy in the sky. Things are radically open. There may be a catastrophe.
What dies on cross is primitive.
Religion as community is like Communists becoming a Party.
Christ says this is my family. Holy spirit notion of emancipatory community outside hierarchical structure and social relations. And so on.
Today approaching new forms of indifference. New spirit lets enjoy your little small life.
Western Buddhism. Military dictatorships, and some Corporate Heads. Could be causing ecological crises. But this is just a game of appearances.
I dont think of appearances as games. But caught in the inexorability of time. Even if being mischievous and playing flickers, I consider that a kind of call and response in the silence of time, as it appears always a little beyond my control. Possibly because it is a bit stinky, as it evolves, looking through the images as source, the aberrations it takes on, are cyclical and to some extent, because of the engagement, tormented.
New forms of fundamentalism. Density of legal power. As in Israel, extremists condemned by court becoming the government. Proud Boys, they are a criminal gang. Even the law and order states cannot reproduce themselves without producing an obscene criminal element.
Cornel Interjects
Dominant practices among the professional managerial class. Market driven careerism tied to a narcissism — not fundamentalism or religion, or western buddhism, its deeply secular. Winners corporate globalization. Class war on poor people now called Neo Liberalism. Unleashing markets in an unprecedented way. The market will take care of the children. Market driven highly commoditized cultured. Part of the response of the barbaric fascists that are escalating — because they see a certain spiritual emptiness.
Scapegoat the most vulnerable instead of confront the most powerful. Fall in behind the strong men. Neo fascist pied piper like Trump.
Have experienced Americanization of the world. Disproportionate influence on the whole world.
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. Rabbi Hescher: We must have an ecumenical movement because the major ecumenical movement was nihilism. Generated by the market.
Slavoj Responds
Himmlers favorite book Bagdavida. The eternal self doesnt disappear, death and suffering are a just a matter of finite bodies.
Ethical problem Nazi guards who have to kill, torture, how to survive without becoming bestial themselves. Dont identify, act at a distance.
Most horrible thing today. The unfreedom that experiences itself as freedom. Today’s digital control all forms of it. More controlled than ever without even being aware of how controlled you are.
Directly connecting thoughts to a digital machine. Sell us horrible new invention. This will help crippled people. Goes also other way around. Machine will control what you think, implant thoughts into you.
What I see so far in AI, is its creating another opening to engage, with it as its collective, but my own experience so far shows, that it remains limited to what already exists there. So far I see it presenting no unique value, w.r.t. research.
But that of course it can be used, is probably already being used to spread propaganda, as we have entered into an era of violently, viciously prescribed propaganda — related to political power and war.
We dont just live in one crises we have 4 5 6… environmental crises, economic crises, new forms of nationalism, fundamentalisms. Maybe ecological catastrophe will sober us a little.
Thats whats been happening now, already, for years, and we just go on, fighting over what it means.
Dont believe bullshit we live in obscene times, everything is sexual. Not true. Digital lives, everything is disappearing. Studies show less and less sexual activity in high schools. His sons friends, told him, who has the time.
Neo conservative attack post modern stories relativism. Is who Trump is. He is obscene, lacks dignity, and so on. Traditional moral figure, Bernie Sanders. Isnt it time for us, the left, sorry you neo conservative guys, we dont allow you to take the moral majority, it belongs to us. You are the perverter post modern.
There’s a bit more online….
Fascinating to watch you process this.