Places – Page 2 – Mark Bould

Žižek and the dawning light not quite dawning; or, a little self-knowledge is a dangerous – but unlikely – thing

Admit it. For the longest time you’ve suspected there’s a reason these two men have never been photographed together.

Ben Stiller, of all people, was the first to draw attention to the rhetorical strategy that the professional contrarian and incessant Lacanian shares with the Sphinx. But since it pissed Stiller off so much, we were so busy relishing his impotent fury that we failed to think through the implications – that beneath the Sphinx’s masks must lurk not the excellent Wes Studi but a certain Slovenian philosopher.

Over the last decade, fractures have appeared in Žižek’s work that suggest even he is beginning to suspect himself of being one of the Mystery Men. For example, 116 pages into Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Picador 2008) Žižek writes:

It is, however, all too easy to score points in this debate using witty reversals which can go on indefinitely.

However, the remainder of the book and many of his subsequent pronouncements merely indicate the depths of his denial.

Capabilities, integrated

integrated capabilities integrated capabilites1

The moment you realise your life is just a cartoon waiting to happen

fireworks1 fireworks2

Yer basic bog-standard Maltese falcon

falcon1

Caravaggio was here

caravaggio In the pit underneath this hatch in 1608. For brawling, breaking down a door and badly injuring the knight with whom he was brawling. After a month, he escaped, fled Malta, and was expelled from the Knights of Malta (into which he had been inducted the year before as official painter to the Order) as a ‘foul and rotten member’.

Imagine what this shit would be worth if they’d kept it in the original packaging

All items found in one room of a museum (the Grand Inquisitor’s Palace) largely dedicated to arguing that the Inquisition wasn’t actually that bad since it only occasionally tortured and executed people, while blithely describing its brutal oppression of the general population. Such as the slave who was tried for heresy for – it was claimed by his anonymous accuser – complaining that he would have been better off if he was still a slave of Muslims since they treated their slaves better than Christians did.

And there was me thinking the Grand Inquisitor was some kind of music hall memory-man act.

Holiday reading 3: what I read on my holiday

books2 books1

What I didn’t read on my holiday:

books

Poor Caine Mutiny has now traveled over 20,000 miles in my luggage since December and is still unread. Maybe next time.

What only got as far as Manchester because the case was too heavy when Andrea selfishly packed her stuff in it:

books1

And, okay, the books I bought in Malta:

books2 In my defence, they were both remaindered, I’ve never seen a copy of the Lotz, and the Winslow was because when we were mis-sold bus travel credit, they refused to refund but would exchange, then mis-sold us different bus travel credit but on leaving the shop we checked online what they’d straight out lied to us about, and still they refused to refund, so we bought the correct bus travel credit and then spent ages finding a bunch of things we did not really want for them to have to ring up on the till (though, that said, the Winslow sounds like a great piece of trash, and so no doubt it will find itself packed in the luggage for another trip some time. But not until I’ve finally read The Caine Mutiny).