http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezk0e1VL80o

I believe ideas are worthy and valuable if they stimulate or provoke or expand our perspective and understanding, we need not agree.

Jazzman’s conjecture: If economics were a science, there would be a host of rich economists.

The theme through all Zizek’s gags is that the financial meltdown marks a seriously dangerous moment — dangerous not least because, as in the interpretation of 9.11, the right wing is ready to impose a narrative. And the left wing is caught without a narrative or a theory. “Today is the time for theory,” he says. “Time to withdraw and think.” —Radio Open Source

As is often quoted, and as the Chinese symbol informs us, crisis is composed of both danger and opportunity. The danger of course is that we will continue in our attachment to anachronistic narratives and unproductive abstractions such as “left and right.” Such abstraction are an essential part of the discourse responsible for current circumstances. However, I believe, a radical transformation of narratives and the ideas providing their currency is essential to transcending the vicious cycles and decay that are rapidly deposing our socio-economic system.

In light of this reality, I recommend Charles Eisenstein’s essay Money and the Crisis of Civilization for your consideration. Ideas with real currency from “the left.” As Milton Friedman observed, ideas have consequences, and when crisis hits, we are dependent on the ideas we have “lying around.”

http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_crisis_civilization

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels. Often in evolutionary processes a species must adapt to new conditions in order to survive. —Albert Einstein

– regarding the wall street / banking crisis:

would Zizek view this financial crisis as a type of ‘crisis of confidence’ for individuals akin to a type of Lacanian ‘Real’ glitch or occurance that erodes the ‘symbolic’ texture of individuals understanding of ‘everyday’, ‘really existing’ capitalism? that is to say, is it not that it is precisely at these points when it seems as though the very ‘everyday’ is punctuated by anomolies that see to erode a type of cynicism. I see this crisis very much through Zizek own analogy of the ‘Alien’ film series, where the acidic blood of the alien (viewed here as the exemplar of the Lacanian ‘Real’ ) appears to erode the very surface of the space craft where the move takes place.

or

would he see the banking crisis as some form of internally generated, anomaly used as a false ‘exterior threat’ or edifice through which capitalism and liberal political economy is ‘strengthened’ through convincing further people of the need to ‘safe’ the market in the face of this ‘false’ threat?

rather than a chomsky style ‘I told you so’ / presenting people with the ‘real’ facts and letting them draw conclusions blah,blah,blah… is it precisely this ‘bedrock’ or stumbling block of the elusive functioning of the market that is needed to demonstrate how the very system ‘doesn’t have all the answers’ is akin to the ‘barre’ inserted in the Lacanian Symbolic Order (the Symbolic as unable to account for all etc.)

Also perhaps you could get Zizek also to explain where in one of his books he suchs directions for the left could take a number of positions from traditional psychoanalysis i.e

the left as neurotic or hysteric for example. the left ‘holding the place’ or simple occupying the space rather than a direct call the action?

so many questions….

please excuse my poor grammar, poor writing style. I have enjoyed reading Mr Zizek’s books for many years starting with the ‘sublime object’… and as it happens I am not even some high-brow liberal (i am a diesel mecahnic from australia I can thoroughly recommends any of Mr Zizek’s books the writing style was quite difficult to me at first but then it became easier over time as i became familiar with Lacanian psychoanalysis, hegel and so on.

thank you also Open source for hosting and making available such a great interview that wasn’t scared to ask the ‘nieve’ questions as Mr Zizek himself would call them.

- very inspiring and at the same time quite accessible (and entertaining) is just to begin with the “perverts guide to cinema” documentary… a series of basic žižkeian-lacanian notions are presented there in a form of examples, so it is really an applied theory

- second level would be some lectures on youtube plus articles (lacan.com) and of course some book – for me the entering work was “the puppet and the dwarf: perverse core of christianity” because religion is my subject, but if you are more into politics, then “welcome to the desert of the real” or “ticklish subject” etc.

- but what is the goal IMHO is to read (really, with full engagement) the masterpiece “Parallax View” – maybe if you are skilled reader of postmodern philosophy, you can jump right to this book. This book is the real treasure – the never ending dialectical reflection, “let’s-turn-it-around” all the time, after second or third reading I began to see all topics and themes in the text as examples of (just one) incredibly subtle self-reflecting thought pattern (“parallax view”), which is applied to politics, social sci., cognitive sci., even ontology. What is quite interesting is that this book works very well together with “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by D. Hofstadter, which is more “mathemathic” but still concentrates on the same subject: the inherent “incompleteness” of any symbolic system, which is totally contra-intuitive and at the same time mindblowing.

The best part about the Zizek episode,  other than the way he says the word “film?”

The show’s length.

With a full hour, you give us a chance to know the man’s mind.  He almost starts to relax towards the end.  You almost feel he’s said as much as he would like.  Well, maybe.

It’s the difference between a short story and novel:  all the digressions add up to more than the sum of their parts.

More Zizek!  And longer shows!

> Dear Christopher,

> I was just watching a rebroadcast of a Bill Moyers interview with

> Andrew Bacevich, author of a book called, “The Limits of Power”,

> and was struck by it’s similarities to some of your interview with

> Mr. Zizek. Mr. Bacevich was more grave in tone but, as he spoke of

> American politics, I couldn’t help think, in Mr. Zizek’s accent,

> “My God! Nader is right about everything!”

>

> Thank you for the email invitation to listen. Your conversations

> keep the mind limber. Andre Breton was most interested that

> Flaubert’s concern writing “Madame Bovary,” was that it communicate

> a certain yellow, the colour of mouldy wallpaper, in the minds of

> his readers. For me Mr. Zizek’s wonderful pronounciation of the

> title,”Kung Fu Panda” was not superficial, it grabbed my

> imagination. I am not sure why; I am just being honest.

> Also, when you asked your guest for a reading list you suggested,

> perhaps there were others besides writers… a group you ended

> with, “painters.”

> As a painter myself, listening late at night, drawing an elephant

> in shadows as I listened to your show, I was heartened. Thank you

> Christopher.

> -Luigino Valentin

>

Does it?