First As Tragedy, Then As FarceVerso, 5 okt 2009 - 157 pagina's In this bravura analysis of the current global crisis - following on from his bestselling "Welcome to the Desert of the Real"--Slavoj Zizek argues that the liberal idea of the end of history, declared by Francis Fukuyama during the 1990s, has had to die twice. After the collapse of the liberal-democratic political utopia, on the morning of 9/11, came the collapse of the economic utopia of global market capitalism at the end of 2008. Marx argued that history repeats itself-occurring first as tragedy, the second time as farce - and Zizek, following Herbert Marcuse, notes here that the repetition as farce can be even more terrifying than the original tragedy. The financial meltdown signals that the fantasy of globalization is over and as millions are put out of work it has become impossible to ignore the irrationality of global capitalism. Just a few months before the crash, the world's priorities seemed to be global warming, AIDS, and access to medicine, food and water- tasks labelled as urgent, but with any real action repeatedly postponed. Now, after the financial implosion, the urgent need to act seems to have become unconditional - with the result that undreamt of quantities of cash were immediately found and then poured into the financial sector without any regard for the old priorities. Do we need further proof, Zizek asks, that Capital is the Real of our lives: the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing problems of our natural and social world? |
Overige edities - Alles bekijken
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
accept Alain Badiou ancien régime antagonisms anti-Semitism Atlas Shrugged Badiou bail-out basic Berlusconi biofuel bourgeois brutal capitalist catastrophe choice colonization communism communist contemporary corruption countries crisis critique Cultural Revolution cynical democracy democratic dream ecological economic egalitarian emancipatory politics enemy event Excluded exploitation fetish fetishist financial meltdown freedom function fundamental fundamentalist global capitalism Guy Sorman Haiti Haitian Revolution Hegel hegemonic human Ibid idea ideology immigrants intellectual Israeli Jean-Claude Milner Jews Left Leftist liberal liberal democracy lives logic longer Madoff Marx means Negri no-part nonetheless notion Obama organization populist postmodern precisely problem production proletariat Qarmatians reality reason relations repressed revolutionary sexual situation social society Sorman Starbucks struggle subject supposed superego supposed to know symptom Taliban things Third World threat tion today’s Toni Negri toxic traditional true Tsahal universal utopian Wall Street workers