Notes2ndtrim

How can Zizek’s understanding of ideology, as presented in The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, be applied to Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and Renzo Martens’ Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty ?

sources

1 Slavoj Zizek. The sublime object of ideology) http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/cynicism-as-a-form-of-ideology/ 2 Renzo Martens. Enjoy Povery 3 3 Joshua Opperheim. The act of killing 4 Slavoj Zizek. How to read Lacan 6 Zizek. The Pervert's Guide to Ideology 7 Renzo Martens Interview. Lost Source! 8 Collective notes piratepad

ideology

MARx "Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es" ("they do not know it, but they are doing it"). The very concept of ideology implies a kind of basic, constitutive naïveté: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions, of its own effective conditions, a distance, a divergence between so-called social reality and our distorted representation, our false consciousness of it the classic concept of ideology as 'false consciousness" is a part of the reality itself

ADORNO

only a system which makes a claim to the truth, not simply a lie but a lie experienced as truth, a lie which pretends to be taken seriously.

SLOTERDIJK, 1983, critique of cynical reason=

ideology's dominant mode of functioning is cynical, which renders impossible- or, more precisely, vain — the classic critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less The formula, as proposed by Sloterdijk, would then be: "they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it". Cynical reason is no longer naïve, but is a paradox of an enlightened false consciousness: one knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still one does not renounce it.

Cynicism is the answer of the ruling culture to cynical subve. Cynical reason is no longer naïve, but is a paradox of an enlightened false consciousness: one knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still one does not renounce it. rsion.This cynicism is therefore a kind of perverted 'negation of the negation' of the official ideology traditional critique of ideology no longer works TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGY =It is no longer meant, even by its authors, to be taken seriously — its status is just that of a means of manipulation, purely external and instrumental; its rule is secured not by its truth-value but by simple extra-ideological violence and promise of gain.

ZIZEK MORE

ideology as 'false consciousness',cultural capitalism (todays form of capitalism) starbucks is mroe what u bying into. than what u buy. u are buyinh into a cofee ethics. The remedies are part of the disease last attempt to make capitalism work for socialism ETHICS global capitalism with a human face (mroe human more tolerant etc ) relative freedom, wellfare, security etc a certain type of misantrhopy which is much better than this charitable humanism? A MIXTURE zero point(biogenetiks nw aparthieds, eologiclly etc) repairing with the right hand what u destroy with the left hand George Soros gates etc reenergised 19th cent philanthropy

PERVERTs GUIDE to ideology

they Live.sunglasses how does psychoanalysis and re-enactment highlight the subjects relation to idealogy? How does re-enactment in act of killing bring to surface the obsceneties? enjoy poverty should be 'performing poverty' idealogy is hidden in plain sight.

BIG OTHER

In a Stalinist universe there definitely is what in psychoanalytic theory we call the Big Other. This Big Other in the Stalinist universe has many names. The best known of them are the necessity of historical progress towards communism or simply history. On the one hand, of course, the Big Other is the secret order of things like divine reason, fate or whatever, which is controlling our destiny. Big other provides state of exception This precisely is the function of the Big Other. We need for our stability, figure of Big Other for whom we maintain appearances. They discovered the truth of what Jacques Lacan claims: there is no Big Other. There may be a virtual Big Other to whom you cannot confess. Much more interesting is the Big Other as the order of appearances. History itself is the big other. History is the necessary succession of historical stages.

DESIRE

"Desire is the agent of ideology." Desire for desire itself—excess ultimate melancholy experience is the loss of desire. The excess is with us forever let’s have another coke (‘enjoy your symptom’)

my notes

HISTORY. HOW THESE THINGS ARE ENSCRIBED IN HISTORY

Renzo, WHY a film!!!!

this movies as cultural artifacts feed big other. or become parts that constitute it

media and representation,

individual and corporate world

I think his attitude is a bit like doign a media literacy program to them,and to show how media transform "the truth" and so we should accept and they should accept how far they re from it and that he knows better. like he s into solving the problem.

media presentation of africa in 60s 70s , antitourism, poor image

DIFERENCE ACT AND RENZL

act of killing more fictional act of killing about a collective and ideology, renzo more about how one guy exrpesses it obj-subj renzo it talking about ownserhip

RENZO MARTeNS INTEVERIW

I do not only film reality; film itself creates the social conditions into reality. Artists stage and create a lot of commentary on inequalities in the world. In and of itself, this is a good thing because obviously there are many problems in this world, and art is one way of addressing them Although many artists try to stage such collaborative projects through photos or videos, the trouble with these projects is that more often than not, the economic benefits of such art pieces are not found in the places where the piece the art intervenes or stages an alternativ

The IHA is not only working to close the gap, though it is a big chunk of what we do. We’re building an art center in the Congolese rainforest, and we’re asking for local people to participate. These include people who work for logging companies or on big plantations—subsistence farmers who make, let’s say, $20 a month. We ask them, and then we provide them with the opportunity to not only do what their normal job involves but also to critically reflect on their labor conditions by making drawings or videos or performance pieces. We can show them in presentations in some of the most prestigious art institutes in the world. Just imagine that a guy who has been working for 10 or 20 years on a plantation, earns about $200 a year with a full-time job, and then makes a drawing about that experience. So if we can show that drawing and then sell it to a gallery, one critical drawing about the worker’s lifestyle and his labor conditions can make five or ten times the money he’s earning from one year of work. As such, critical reflection on one’s life and labor conditions can be far more beneficial than just performing the labor one’s required to do.

We hope that the economic benefits of artistic critique can have an impact on the places where the critique came from. You can critique anything and everything. But what does this really mean, this artistic critique, if it has no impact on the lives of the people who live in the situation that you comment upon? So if people come to a place like that, they will probably be stimulated or pushed to make the artistic critique a little more poignant vis-à-vis the living conditions that they see.

ACT OF KILLING

gangsters are people who work outside the system, not for the government. through ideology, facts, events and even crimes are seen as 'natural', inevitable, history.

killing happily, psychological consequences uknown(self and social), appearances and the use of language, better economy, safety, city of good times, taking ecstasy after killing , nature and war, "morality is relative", history-narrative-identity, re-enact killing inspired by films, personal narrative , social narrative n crime

ZIZEK READS LACAN

Today the time of psychoanalysis has come.

For Lakan psychoanalysis doesnt show an individual the way to accomodate him to the demans of social reality. instead it explains how something like "reality" constitutes itself in the first place. It explains how the dimension of truth emerges in human reality.

THe big other as the symbolic order.

Mexican soap operas , the BIg other. The symbolic order, societies unwritten constitution is the second nature of every speaking beeing.

The reality of human beeings is constituted by 3 intertagled levels: the symbolic, the imaginery and the real.

The symbolic space acts like a yardstick against which i can measure myself. This is why the bigother can be personified or reified in a single agent: the :god: who watches over me from beyond, and over all individuals , or the Cause that involves me ( Freedom, Communism, Nation) and for which im ready to give my life. While talking im never merely the small other (individual) interacting with other small others, the big other must be always there.