First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

by Slavoj Zizek

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

337.01

Genres

Philosophy

Economics

Politics, Government, Law and Public Policy

General Nonfiction

Nonfiction

All Topics

Publication

Verso (2009), Paperback, 157 pages

Description

"In this take-no-prisoners analysis, [the author] frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the righthook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism died twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory"--P. [4] of cover.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Mandarinate

The start of this book has promise as a social critique but quickly drifts into seemingly pointless erudition and abstraction. The only message I extracted from it was "there's a recession, so you see now that capitalism sucks, onward to revolution."

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LibraryThing member logocentric

This is Žižek at his polemical best. If you want to know what Žižek is about this is the book. It sets out in a clear and concise way his take on current politics. Get ready for his Communist Hypothesis, which does not take any prisoners and does not blink in the face of 'political

correctness',

"the point is simply that the British colonization of India created the conditions for the double liberation of India: from the constraints of its own tradition as well as from colonization itself" (116).

This book is informative and philosophically rewarding. I highly highly recommend it. Oh, if you just received your MBA from Stanford, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink first, because the truth will hit you hard.

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LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini

Slavoj, you will be unsurprised to learn, is against the citizen's wage because it degrades us and makes us dependent on capitalist-creative wealth producers and their charity, enervating a genuine socialist politics and giving them a new way to parasite on us (viz. the recent/current financial

crisis). But this is just the reform/revolution argument redux, right? And call me a dirty ameliorist, but I'm pretty comfortable calling Zizek's argument reprehensible here. Because we work to imagine/envision a society in which poverty can't exist, we shouldn't work to keep "the poor" alive? the two are mutually exclusive? If that's the case we should quit with the protests, dismantle our social services, and elect, like, rapacious space lizards to brutalize us until we REALLY want change.

The IS line was always "talk about socialism; work for socialism; struggle toward an understanding of what it might in practice mean/be; but in the meantime, vote NDP", right? Still strikes me as reasonable.

I'll quit in the interests of pre-empting a rant, although there's of course plenty more to say here--I haaate the way he conflates the welfare state with "charity", e.g., and I think the thing about European guilt/need culture and "third-world" aspiration/pride culture, while absuuuurdly reductive of course, does get to a grain of truth, and the privileging of citizens in relation to non-citizens is a big topic. But yeah, "rent enabling dignified survival to all citizens" sounds like something worth supporting. I'm for a citizen's wage covering needs, I'm for a maximum wage, I'm for taxes conceived as an active tool of redistribution, I'm for the collective ownership of property-in-the-marxist sense, I see the central questions as "how to implement these policies in a capitalist regime without causing the flight of wealth" and "how to achieve a social consensus around them" (the flip side of the envy and pride issues Zhizh raises--to me, thinking that we can work through all those bad human impulses that he knows all about "as a psychoanalyst" just amounts to saying "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"). And I'm comfortable with the idea that the reduction in human misery that I hope all of this would effect may complicate the development of a sustainable post-wage economy.

And a citizen's wage lets us all create, if we want to, artistically, without worrying about getting paid--and the alpha dawg shitbag that wants to be a big man in a big house still can, and earn more than his neighbours--just less than now.

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LibraryThing member edh

Like any good book title “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce” misdirects the reader then guides him back to a new and better understanding of the author’s intent. Zizek’s writing is dense and not easy to read. I picked this book for its leftist critique of democracy and capitalism; that it was

and more. There are enough insightful comments along these lines to make the read worthwhile. But Zizek’s shotgun approach to writing makes it difficult to see what he is aiming at. While reading if you keep in mind this central theme, the enemy of communism is not democracy or even socialism but capitalism, then the thrust of the book becomes clear. The front page blurb from the New Republic calls Zizek “The most dangerous philosopher in the West”. If he was more comprehensible we would be more dangerous.

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LibraryThing member jcook818

This tract by Žižek is another solid addition to his continuing work on ideology in contemporary society. While the book tends to flow with the efficiency of a falling brick, due to Žižek's unique style, the point of the book is clear -- the ideology of 'utopia' is no longer isolated to modern

conceptions of communism, but in fact it is a vital part of liberal-democratic capitalism. It starts with a critique on modern political and capitalist rhetoric, then flows into a rather disjointed (but typically Žižek) analysis of everything from Starbucks to classical Marxism. Žižek's proposed response to this "ideology in the age of post-ideology" to continue a call to "get back to work" at establishing a new communist "Idea" for the twenty-first century, one that can escape the failings of twentieth-century experimentation, and one that works in modern-day social relations and structures of labour -- a continuation of Badiou's work on a new "communist hypothesis."

I found the book to be a great read, with tons of compelling points made, and would recommend it to anyone who has more than a passing interest in these ideas. At only 157 pages, it is easy enough to finish in a few days, great for a light introduction to the "new school" of modern communist philosophers.

For those who are not familiar with Žižek's work, he draws a lot from the concepts of Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou, so it would be helpful to at least have a familiar knowledge of their core concepts before jumping in to this book.

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LibraryThing member MarkHurn

This book renewed my interest in political philosophy, although saying that, it is probably better appreciated by someone with a renewed interest than with a new interest. The reason I say this is that there are a lot of references to writers and use of terminology which many will not know, I found

myself turning to dictionaries of philosophy more than once.

The book attacks contemporary capitalist society from a communist perspective, but not the communism of Marxism-Leninism but a contemporary communist thought rooted in the classics of Kant and Hegel, but strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and phenomenology.

'all the features we today identify with freedom and liberal democracy (trade unions, the universal vote, free universal education, freedom of the press, etc.) were won through a long and difficult struggle on the part of the lower classes throughout the ninetenth and twentieth centuries - in other words they were anything but the "natural" consequences of capitalist relations' (p.38). He points out that many of the demands of The Communist Manifesto have been won and are widely accepted.

Some of his comments on contemporary oppositions are frighteningly perceptive: 'such a Left fears for its own comfortable position as a critical voice fully integrated into the system, ready to risk nothing' (p.75) how many in the Labour Party and trades unions must feel this at the moment? And if you do feel it can you afford to take the risks?

And you think you've heard all the criticisms of capitalism? Well no, I was amazed to read that 'help' from the International Monetary Fund makes people ill, and this is no wild claim, it is based on research by a respected University, showing how IMF inspired cuts in public health budgets of many countries has led to increased ill-health in those countries (p.81).

Some might be surprised that Zizek states that the future conflicts will between socialism and communism, that is a 'corporate' socialism of state and big-business that actually rules/owns most everything at the moment, the individual entrepreneur (so beloved of the neo-liberals) is extremely rare and ineffectual.

There is so much more I could say about Zizek's arguments, often they are excellent, but not always convincing, he is like a boxer that wins on points and not on knock-out blows. Also, however good criticism of the existing order might be, the question will always arise 'how would you do otherwise?' and Zizek is rather short on advice in this department.

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LibraryThing member librarianbryan

Gah. This was enjoyable but it is hardly igniting a new Left (or something). Zizek's psychoanalytic arsenal makes for fun perversions of right-wing writers to make is his case for the communist idea. That being said, it is way too theoretical for a general reader (a zombie?). I'm just happy he

mentioned Linux when discussing the privatization of intellectual space. This little book is all over the place but it will make you think.

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LibraryThing member StephenBarkley

The write-up on the back cover sounded compelling. The tragedy referred to in the title was the events of 9/11. The farce was the economic collapse of 2008. Taken together, these events signal the political and economic death of Western-style liberalism.

I was expecting an analysis of these events

(with liberal doses of Hegel and Lacan, as always). I quickly learned that the writer of the back cover must have only read the introduction! Žižek quickly left these events behind to mount his defense of Socialism in the face of failed Capitalism.

Capitalism with a warm and fuzzy face is still capitalism, and no amount of charity from the capitalists will change that. In fact, just as kind slave-owners exacerbated the problem by masking the evil, charitable capitalists cloud the real issue: what is needed is the sort of deep socioeconomic reordering of society that would render charity superfluous.

I evidently don't have enough of a background in political theory to follow all the details of his argument (that, or I didn't read slowly enough). Much of the book seemed disjointed and needlessly dense.

Žižek is incredibly intelligent and funny. I just wish he could write a little more intelligibly for the masses.

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LibraryThing member jonfaith

We are forced to live as if we were free. -- John Gray

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is my favorite work yet by Žižek. Despite its many passages being recycled in later works, there is a clarity here which moved me. The specific grasp was Žižek's viewing the newly inaugurated President Obama.

Certainly the philosopher fears a hegemon with a human face, he rightly critiques the vaunted 2009 speech in Cairo. The philosopher then betrays himself as a sentimentalist by comparing the 2008 Obama victory with the 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution. Hegel and the rest of the Enlightenment were all about the concept of liberation from slavery, except where actual slaves were involved. That simply didn't enter the equation. Thus when French peacekeepers arrived to find natives singing La Marseillaise , there was a historic realization: these black people might be more French than we are. Such is the drenched weight of ideology.

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