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Perceval
I'm in a poli-sci department with a bunch of continental political theorists. I cannot stand Slavok Žižek. Probably the biggest living bullshit artist in political theory.
[dead] alsomike
Yes, Zizek has very little respect for conventions of academia.
127
I'm interested. Can you offer any source for this claim? I was considering of reading some of his writings but if he has to offer no value, I'd rather know in advance.
kingkawn
Relying on academics' opinions of their peers as a measure of value is not going to serve you well.
pjscott
Not all academic fields are so subjective. In math, science, engineering, and so on, it's entirely normal to build a good or bad reputation based on the actual quality of your work.

(Full disclosure: about a year ago, I came to the conclusion that Zizek was full of shit, and that his main real skills were sounding profound, avoiding testable claims of any consequence, and getting other people to venerate him. I can't remember the specifics, though, so take this with the usual salt grain.)

n3m6
He talks about a lot of stuff and offers his opinion, which I guess you should take with a grain of salt. His actual field of expertise is in Ideology, and there I believe he can offer quite a lot. Regarding him "sounding profound", I guess it must be because of the way continental philosophers construct sentences, and us not being able to relate to their terms.

If you thought he was bad, you should listen to someone like Derrida (he's dead btw).

blendergasket
Regarding Derrida, I think a lot of what he was writing about was the fundamental biases inherent in language and how people use it. To coax these out he had to write in a way as to not get stuck inside these biases and to reflect them back on themselves. Christian mystics and George Bataille wrote in this way.

Not that Derrida is necessarily a mystic, but I think when talking about the limits and inherent biases of language, straight, rational writing gets stuck in the same traps the writer is seeking to extricate himself from, both the post-modernists and mystical writers throughout history have dealt with this.

The bit of Derrida I read had a structural element to it, that added to the content.

andrewvc
He's one of a whole family of postmodern bullshit artists, similar to lacan, derrida, etc.

Read up on the Sokal hoax if you want to learn more about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair .

Estragon
Tarring all of postmodern theory with the Sokal hoax brush is like claiming that all of medicine is a fraud because of the Thalidomide disaster. Not saying you're necessarily wrong, just that your reasoning here is at least as lazy and flawed as you're implying post modern theory to be.
andrewvc
The hoax itself didn't undermine it all. You could reasonably make the case that it Social Text was simply lazy and just published shit w/o reading it.

Reading about the hoax, however, is a good way to introduce people to what PoMo theory is, and the problems with it, as it introduces some important people and perhaps the biggest criticism of lit-crit (that being the emperor has no clothes).

I read quite a bit of PoMo stuff in college, kept waiting for a point for it all to make sense. Ultimately, I realized it was just a giant community of fakes and charlatans with little of value to say.

The problem with arguing with lit-crit types is you cannot argue on their terms. Their game is a game of empty words, built upon the ramblings of countless self-indulgent writers and pseudo-philosophers before them.

There's nothing in the way of reality to anchor anything they say, so anything can be said, and points are scored for the most convoluted explanations of.... well... nothing. It's downright embarrassing.

But don't believe me, go read some for yourself and decide.

Oh, and Estragon, there was actually nothing in the way of 'reasoning' in my original comment. I simply gave a quick opinion and a single link that those interested in it might find interesting. I'm not sure why you construed it as such.

Confusion
You're completely disregarding the fact that at least Derrida has made substantial and widely acknowledged contributions to his field. He's not in the same category as Lacan or 'the lit crit types'. Disregarding all of postmodernism based on the excesses it brought forth is as unwise as disregarding everything Nietzsche wrote based on him dying rather insane.
katovatzschyn
Can you offer any criticisms or arguments to support the claim that Slavok is a "bullshit artist," outside of the claim itself, or your own qualifications to so easily dismiss a prominent and respected public intellectual who commands respect and has a severe and extensive resume?
mlinsey
Žižek is a brilliant writer, and Perceval doesn't really understand Žižek at all if he thinks he's a "postmodernist", but I have to agree that it's easy to waste a lot of your life and mental energy studying Žižek and not get very much out of it.

I say that only as someone who spent a lot of time reading many of his books, and discussing his work only in a rather informal, amateurish context, so perhaps I am pretty unqualified.

But my warning to HN readers about Žižek is that while his columns and short commentary can be very clever, his real theoretical work all starts with a foundation built on top of Marxism and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Granted, Žižek reinterprets both of those disciplines in clever, Hegelian ways that might make them unrecognizable at first glance to the modern reader, but if you're of the opinion that those two disciplines have little to offer intellectually (and I suspect most HN readers are in this boat), you'll ultimately look at the time you spent puzzling out Žižek and want those hours of your life back.

codeup
"I'm in a poli-sci department with a bunch of continental political theorists."

Since when is this some kind of feature for quality or authority?

blendergasket
Assange claims to be being blackmailed over the bank docs he has. I wonder if the lawsuit he just filed is related to that in any way.
borism
do you mean the complaint about illegal blocking of their funding by Visa and MasterCard?

How would that be related in any way?

blendergasket
So what you're saying is there's absolutely no way these organizations are motivated to block the money going to the organization which threatens to publish their own secrets because of any threat to themselves?
borism
Blackmail != blocking money

in many cases it's the exact opposite.

cheez
Yeah, this is the first I've heard of the same thing. I wonder what the blackmail is? Maybe the CIA did some transfers into his BoA accounts to make it appear as if he is on the CIA payroll? Inquiring minds want to know!