Quote note (#201)¶
Apologies for the Quote note spam, but this is just too exquisite to pass over. It’s Žižek melting-down spectacularly under pressure. Quasi-random sample:
What should people in Haiti and other places with food shortages do? Do they not have the full right to violently rebel?
— Oh sure, you’ve got the solution right there.
This is the true squeal of anguish:
… corporate capitalism has triumphed worldwide. In fact, the Third World nations that embrace this world order are those now growing at a spectacular rate. The mask of cultural diversity is sustained by the actual universalism of global capital; even better if global capitalism’s political supplement relies on so-called “Asian values.” […] Global capitalism has no problem in accommodating itself to a plurality of local religions, cultures and traditions. So the irony of anti-Eurocentrism is that, on behalf of anti-colonialism, one criticizes the West at the very historical moment when global capitalism no longer needs Western cultural values in order to smoothly function. In short, one tends to reject Western cultural values at the very time when, critically reinterpreted, many of those values (egalitarianism, fundamental rights, freedom of the press, the welfare-state, etc.) can serve as a weapon against capitalist globalization. Did we already forget that the entire idea of Communist emancipation as envisaged by Marx is a thoroughly “Eurocentric” one?
“Comrades! — We’re obliterating ourselves.” Indeed, yes.
ADDED: Another piece of delicious high-IQ Leftist meltdown. Everything is there — but the equations just won’t come out ~~right~~ left. “Rather more difficult is to conceptualize a radically different mode of production, and how to represent the sociopolitical transition required to take us there.” Quite.