Wednesday 14 November 2007

Žižek: resistance is surrender

Jason points us to an excellent column by Slavoj Žižek in today’s London Review of Books. In an engagement with Simon Critchley’s new book, Žižek critiques the idea that the task for politics today “is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control.” This position is simply “the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism.” Indeed: “Today, it is the great capitalists – Bill Gates, corporate polluters, fox hunters – who ‘resist’ the state”!

This is great stuff – I reckon Žižek is at his best as a critic of fashionable leftist politics. He is indeed (as one reader complains) an “embarrassment to the Left.”

1 Comment:

byron smith said...

I had Simon Critchley as a visiting lecturer during my philosophy honours and he was probably the best philosopher I've met (apart from Matheson Russell!), though his politics did seem a little simple in comparison.

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