Slavoj Žižek: interview

The Marxist provocateur and bestselling philosopher on communism, poststructural theory and his reluctance to play poster boy for the fashionable European left

"He opens a copy of Living in the End Times, and finds the contents page. "I will tell you the truth now," he says, pointing to the first chapter, then the second. "Bullshit. Some more bullshit. Blah, blah, blah." He flicks furiously through the pages. "Chapter 3, where I try to read Marx anew, is maybe OK. I like this part where I analyse Kafka's last story and here where I use the community of outcasts in the TV series Heroes as a model for the communist collective. But, this section, the Architectural Parallax, this is pure bluff. Also the part where I analyse Avatar, the movie, that is also pure bluff. When I wrote it, I had not even seen the film, but I am a good Hegelian. If you have a good theory, forget about the reality." "

On the value of objective scholarship

Politics and Objectivity in History and Political Science: The Poverty of Our Philosophy

by Bruce Cummings for H-Diplo

"My “upbringing” in Beard’s sense included being escorted in April 1968 by guards through a student-occupied Columbia campus into the interview for my graduate work, and looking out the window during classes as guerrilla theater unfolded on the campus: a student would don a professorial get-up and his comrades would point at the “professor” and chant, “value-free! value-free!” Younger professors echoed these sentiments by arguing that if one were a scholar as well as a malcontent, an honest researcher as well as a radical, his very partisanship, bias, call it what you will, gives him a kind of objectivity. Because he stands opposed to established institutions and conventional conceptions, the radical scholar possesses an unconcern for safety or preservation which enables him to carry inquiry along paths where the so-called ‘objective’ conservative or liberal scholar would not dare to tread."

My own views on the subject are heavily influence by Cummings' work. But if I might add one thing: As Cummings' work makes so clear, the supposedly "value neutral," "objective" scholarship of the mainstream carries its own biases - deference to the flag, or the class, or the race, etc.. but of course one who rejects those biases is deemed as lacking in objectivity. What happens if you simply ask the questions that inspire you without concern for who might be offended by your answers?

Both the Attack on the Flotilla and the Siege of Gaza are Illegal

Israel's Impunity From International Law

By GEORGE BISHARAT

Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza "Freedom Flotilla" was flagrantly illegal. The flotilla, carefully searched for arms before disembarkation, enjoyed the right of free navigation in international waters, and Israel had no legal justification to interrupt its peaceful mission.

Don't single out Helen Thomas

Monday, June 14, 2010

By Saree Makdisi

"Mainstream politicians, civic leaders, university presidents and others in this country routinely express their support for Israel as a Jewish state, despite the fact that such a state only could have been created in a multicultural land by ethnically cleansing it of as many non-Jews as possible. Today, Israel is only able to maintain its Jewish identity because it has established an apartheid regime, both in the occupied territories and within its own borders, and because it continues to reject the Palestinian right of return.

Where is the outrage about that?

Where was the outrage in 1983 when Israeli Gen. Rafael Eitan looked forward to the day that Jews had fully settled the land, because then "all the Arabs will be able to do about it is scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle"? Or when Alan Dershowitz suggested in 2002 that Israel summarily empty and then bulldoze an entire Palestinian village as a punitive measure each time it was attacked? Or when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claimed in 2006 to have discovered a "pathology" that caused some Arabs to "hate others more than they love their own kids"? Or when Avigdor Lieberman (who now serves as Israel's foreign minister) said in 2004 that Palestinian citizens of Israel should "take their bundles and get lost"? Or when Israeli professor Arnon Sofer, one of the country's leading demographic alarmists, said that to preserve the Jewish state, Israel should pull out of Gaza, though that would require Israel to remain at the border and "kill, and kill, and kill, all day, every day"?

An endless deluge of statements of support for the actual, calculated, methodical dehumanization of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular goes without comment; whereas a single offhand comment by an 89-year-old journalist, whose long and distinguished record of principled commitment and challenges to state power entitles her to respect — and the benefit of the doubt — causes her to be publicly pilloried.

To accept this appalling hypocrisy is to be complicit in the racism of our age."

Senator Chuck Schumer and the "Economic Strangulation" of Gaza

by Mark LeVine

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/17-6

"With all due respect to Helen Thomas and her illustrious career, she was merely a columnist, with no political power and a relatively small readership. When she adopted opinions or arguments that contradicted the facts or were morally problematic, they were easily rebutted in the public sphere.

Charles Schumer, however, is an extremely powerful senator who serves on some of that body's most powerful committees, such as banking and judiciary.

Moreover, through his representation of New York, the state with the largest Jewish population in the US, he is a leading pro-Israel voice in congress who has the ability directly to impact the nature of US policy towards Israel and the Middle East more broadly.

In other words, what Senator Schumer says actually can cost people - Palestinians, Israelis, Americans - their livelihoods and even their lives, not to mention help prolong or alleviate one of the world's most intractable conflicts. And yet no one in official Washington even blinked."

Red Cross: Gaza Blockade Illegal

"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it."

Timing of Leak of Afghan Mineral Wealth Evokes Skepticism

by Jim Lobe

"Given the increasingly negative news that has come out of Afghanistan - and of U.S. strategy there - some analysts believe the front-page article is designed to reverse growing public sentiment that the war is not worth the cost."

Comment: This reminds me of when Greenspan came out with his "the Iraq war is about oil" comment at the height of public disillusionment there in 2006. We start with idealistic justifications for war, and then shift to "realistic" ones when the chips are down...