Metal Reviews

That's not really his communist stuff so it should fall welcome to your ears.

I'm already enjoying his habit of using pop-culture as a manifestation of social consciousness and whatnot, although I'm still questioning its validity. I guess I'll get a better picture when I finish the pamph- er, book.

I guess you have to assume a cultural theorist perspective where culture itself contains and reflects the power relations of a society. Raymond Williams focused on literature, Derrida on language and Zizek does movies and TV. It's always odd when he looks to stuff like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda but it's really intuitive when he analyzes The Dark Knight or Titanic stuff which takes center stage in everyone's viewing. TDK with its conclusion of lies to keep afloat Gotham society and Titanic's vampiric relationship of the wealthy on Jack's working class jubilance.

Wait till he starts criticizing Sam Harris

NOOOOOOOOOO!!

Neal Postman- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

More for his view on torture than on anything else. You'll love the quotable atheist ideas in that.

I like his take on atheism too.


http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/20 ... edito.html

Ahhh yes, I've heard a couple of critiques of his torture position. Boils down to utilitarianism in the end, doesn't it.

I do like that quote on atheism+morality though.

I think the same quote is similarly in Desert yet he adds a bit about how we as atheists should garner more awe insofar as we aren't guaranteed a heaven.

I want to be like Christopher Hitchens- sans the cancer. He's awe-inspiring. U.U

I assume Zizek is onboard with the whole "new atheist" movement?

No not at all. He sees it as a reflection of an anemic liberalism actually. He's much more for a materialist Christianity which is atheistic but has the zeal of religion. I think it's a cute idea.

Hmm. Do not want.

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/20 ... -paul-love

Zizek talking about religion.

That's basically the last few pages of Living in the End Times with some other paragraphs laced in. People definitely need to understand the need for positive action like he's saying; I've come to agree with his urgency towards social action. I like how one of the comments act as if Zizek doesn't know the story of Paul. He also quotes Jesus quite often in LitET so it's not as if he's committing the sin of quoting Paul out of context of Christ's goals. I love this quote:


Rio, what do you think of the Christian materialism he's ranting about?

Like a lot of Zizek's stuff I find it leaves me a bit... bemused. The point about not accepting nihilistic chaos, and also not simply waiting to be rewarded in some afterlife is a really important one to me. But then the problem I have is that I can just as easily see how that could be an anti-Christian message. That conclusion is something I came to myself without any need for religion whatsoever.

Actually, it reminds me a lot of Winstanley, the first communist (arguably). Who entirely rejected the way the bible was interpreted as a justification for existing hierarchy, and instead saw in Adam and Eve the metaphor for the REAL "original sin"- the first time one person became powerful by using force to seize common property. Winstanley internalised religion inside human consciousness and actually said, I think- God is Reason and Reason is God. But then reading about him I started thinking- well, if Winstanley was around today he'd probably just be an atheist and rationalise the same ethics in a different way.

Anyone interested in Christian communism- read this!

http://www.rogerlovejoy.co.uk/philosoph ... ggers2.htm

Back to topic, about to restart this

That's an important part of it but I think more so is the embrace of a zeal which the "anemic" Left in the form of the new atheists or LibDems or the dying Labor Party or post-Obama democrats just lack. There is nothing left there. Finding the fervor which Chile was so able to develop which Paul Mason described is perplexing and I think that's where religion comes in. There is this radical ideology which tons of people cling to yet it's being manipulated by Fundamentalists and the Right. The state of the world does put us in possibly apocalyptic, at least to the world as we know it, conditions so there is an urgency.

Just finished the heavy metal and theory/musicology book. Pretty solid. Less theory than I would've liked and a lot of bits on musicology just notation and stuff which I couldn't follow but listening to the actual songs I could pick up on.

I guess I'll be reading Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle next.

Salman Rushdie- The Satanic Verses

Just finished Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle.

Now going to begin Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari. If I don't make it back, don't even waste your time sending help.