Jan 2007

Objects a in the Analytic Experience

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by JACQUES-ALAIN MILLER

I am going to bring an end to the secret: the title of the next Congress of the WAP. After "The Names-of-the-Father", it will be "The objects a in the Analytic Experience". From One (the Name-of-the-Father) to others (the objects a), this is a good sequence. No less good because it is the flip side of the sequence that is laid at the end of the seminar "L'angoisse" and that goes from the a, in the singular, to "The Names-of-the-Father" in the plural.

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The Uses of the Word "Jew"

josbad1
Tilton Gallery - New York, NY - 11/17/2006

by ALAIN BADIOU

For the last couple of decades, the intellectual situation in France has been marked by countless discussions about the status to be accorded to the word "Jew" within the divisions of thought.
Undoubtedly, this has to do with the suspicion, based on some indubitable facts and some contrived ones, that anti-Semitism has made a 'return'. But had it ever disappeared? Or is it not rather crucial to see that a considerable change has taken place in the nature of anti-Semitism's forms, criteria and inscription in discourse over the last thirty years?


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Against the Populist Temptation


zizou
Tilton Gallery - New York, NY - 11/20/2006

by SLAVOJ ZIZEK

The general conclusion is that, although the topic of populism is emerging as crucial in today's political scenery, it cannot be used as the ground for the renewal of the emancipatory politics. The first thing to note is that today's populism is different from the traditional version - what distinguishes it is the opponent against which it mobilizes the people: the rise of "post-politics," the growing reduction of politics proper to the rational administration of the conflicting interests. In the highly developed countries of the US and Western Europe, at least, "populism" is emerging as the inherent shadowy double of the institutionalized post-politics, one is almost tempted to say: as its supplement in the Derridean sense, as the arena in which political demands that do not fit the institutionalized space can be articulated. In this sense, there is a constitutive "mystification" that pertains to populism: its basic gesture is to refuse to confront the complexity of the situation, to reduce it to a clear struggle with a pseudo-concrete "enemy" figure (from "Brussels bureaucracy" to illegal immigrants). "Populism" is thus by definition a negative phenomenon, a phenomenon grounded in a refusal, even an implicit admission of impotence.

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Bodies, Languages Truths

xxjosbad
Pratt Institute - Brooklyn, NY - 11/16/2006

by ALAIN BADIOU

Our question will be:
What is the dominant ideology today? Or, if you want, what is, in our countries, the natural belief? There is the free market, the technology, the money, the job, the blog, the reelections, the free sexuality, and so on. But I think that all that can be concentrated in a single statement:

There are only bodies and languages.
This statement is the axiom of contemporary conviction. I propose to name this conviction democratic materialism. Why?


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zizek article from new york times

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Denying the Facts, Finding the Truth
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Published: January 5, 2007
The United States is continuing, through other means, the greatest crime of Saddam Hussein: his never-ending attempt to topple the Iranian government.

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