The
first time anyone goes into Seattle’s Town Hall, their
reaction is invariably the same: “This place looks like
a church.” Everyone sits in pews encircling a stage,
anxious to receive some sort
of knowledge or enlightenment. Out walks a middle-aged
man with wild hair, spasmically scratching his nose and
waving strands of hair out of his face with one hand
while gesturing with the other and saying with great
gusto that Hollywood has clearer,
real ideology than real life itself. This is Slavoj
Zizek: present-day philosopher and a
native of Slovenia.
Although Mr. Zizek’s tour was supposedly for the
purpose of promoting his new book on violence, he
devoted his two-and-a-half-hour lecture this past
Monday, September 8, to the conceptual flaws of
various ideologies, eventually tying them to
political theory and current and historical affairs
around the globe. Through a series of anecdotes,
jokes, pop culture references, and ridiculous
stories, Mr. Zizek succeeded in proving just how
ridiculous ideological thinking can be.
One idea Mr. Zizek used over and over again was the
paradox of “transitive belief.” An example of this
is children pretending to believe in Santa Claus
only because they think their parents do, and vice
versa. Then there’s the anecdote about the crazy man
who was released from the hospital, cured of
thinking he was a seed. He returned to the hospital
later, after having run away from a chicken. When
asked why he ran from the chicken when he knew he
was a human being not a seed, he replied, “Yes, but
does the chicken know that?” This “transitive
belief,” Mr. Zizek claimed, was exactly what kept
the revolution and partition of Yugoslavia from
happening until after Tito’s death. People didn’t
know whether or not Tito knew of the impeding and
inevitable restructuring, so they pretended they
didn’t know either--for the sake of both parties
involved. Tito was the chicken.
In this same manner of discussion, Mr. Zizek
examined the unwritten rules of civility, how
political correctness is actually oppressive, and
how in today’s ideology the impossible becomes real.
He concluded with some analysis of the present US
presidential candidates, which the audience found
most intriguing.
Even though the lecture was all over the
place--taking one idea and morphing it into a
completely different one, only to eventually come
back to the original--it was all very interesting
and got everyone in the room thinking about beliefs
and contradictions. We also wondered how exhausting
it would be to live with such a complex, post-modern
thinker as Slavoj Zizek.
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