The joy of shifting between middle finger and bloody ass — Engin Kurtay

An illustration from a Medieval manuscript
Source:
Open Culture, December 8th, 2020

We previously studied the complications of “playing with Other’s toy” by showing the similarities between the Ukrainian kids’ playing with the plush Javelin toys and the UkroNazis’ playing with the real Javelin missile toys.

Now we will study a similar case:

The unbearable lightness of defending the independence of Ukraine by the Ukrainians who well fulfilled their fantasies by having already moved to the West…

The similarity between the two cases is that, while in both cases they allegedly struggle for their independence, they pathetically end up in—dependence by mind and soul. Continue reading “The joy of shifting between middle finger and bloody ass — Engin Kurtay”

From Sartre to Zizek, freedom or Bashi-Bazouklouk¹ — Engin Kurtay

Everywhere, on billboards, in the newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revolting and insipid picture of ourselves that our oppressors wanted us to accept. And, because of all this, we were free. Because the Nazi venom seeped even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest. Because an all-powerful police tried to force us to hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declaration of principles. Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment.Continue reading “From Sartre to Zizek, freedom or Bashi-Bazouklouk¹ — Engin Kurtay”

Feminism having turned to its opposite and Zizek’s warnings

The good, the bad and the ugly (Kollontai, Goldberg and Steinem)

Professor Zizek’s article that has recently been published in Russian Times with the title Sex in the modern world: Can even a ‘yes, yes, yes’ actually mean ‘no?’” provides a sound framework for rethinking on the impasses of nowadays feminism. At the end of the article, Lewinsky’s statements as referred by the Professor, exemplify the main theme of the #metoo movement. This theme is typically as follows: there is always a “strong” man on stage … either a famous businessman, or artist, actor, TV commentator, a man with a career and wealth or so … and the campaign is typically aiming to judge the man’s using his power on women for sex.

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Cinselliğin Politikası (olmaz) – Bölüm 4 – Prof Slavoj Žižek

Bizim üzerinde çalışacağımız asıl eksen, bu ortadaki iki “normal” arasındaki çatışma eksenidir [y ekseni]. Meselemiz, ortadaki bu iki kampın her ikisinin de kendi tarafındaki aşırı versiyonunu görmezden gelerek bununla hesaplaşmaktan yan çizmesidir. Ilımlı-muhafazakar müslümanlar müslümanlığın IŞİD-Boko Haram tipi baskıcı barbar versiyonunu görmezden gelir, benzer şekilde kadın ve gey haklarının “açık fikirli” savunucuları da LGBT+’nın maskaralıklarını görmezden gelir. Ortadaki bu her iki kamp da, kendi taraflarından üreyen bu aşırı uçların kendi [dünya kurgularında, kuramlarında] çözümsüz bıraktıkları noktalardan üreyen arızalar olduğunu tartışmak istemezler.

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Sexual is (not) Political – Part 4 – Prof Slavoj Žižek

The opposition between the sexual politics (“biopolitics” in Foucaultian terms) of religious fundamentalism (whose extreme cases are ISIS and Boko Haram) and the radicalism of LGBT+ forms an axis of excesses from which one should distinguish another axis [axis-y], the one of the opposition between the two “normal” (and much more predominant) stances, the “normal” conservative family ideology which is ready to deplore the extremist excesses [the red curve], and the “normal” stance of liberal permissiveness which supports feminism and gay rights but prefers to mockingly dismiss the excesses of LGBT+ [the blue curve].

The basic axis is this one [y]. And each of its two opposed poles [the closer peaks to y-axis of both red and blue curves] tends to dismiss its radicalized version (Muslim-style extreme subordination of women is rejected by moderate-conservative Muslims; the excessive measures advocated by LGBT+ are also rejected by the mainstream advocates of women’s rights and of gay rights). Each side rejects such extremes as its own pathological outgrowth, as something belonging to those who have lost the proper human measure.

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Sexual is (not) Political – Part 3 – Prof Slavoj Zizek

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Although the LGBT trend is right in “deconstructing” the standard normative sexual opposition, in de-ontologizing it, however, it reduces this tension to the fact that the plurality of sexual positions is forcefully reduced to the normative straight-jacket of the binary opposition of masculine and feminine, with the idea that, if we get away with this straight-jacket, we will get a full blossoming multiplicity of sexual positions (LGBT etc.), each of them with a full ontological consistency: once we get rid of the binary straight-jacket, I can fully recognize myself as gay, bisexual, or whatever. From the Lacanian standpoint, however, the antagonistic tension is irreducible, it is constitutive of the sexual as such, and no amount of classificatory diversification and multiplication can save us from it. Continue reading “Sexual is (not) Political – Part 3 – Prof Slavoj Zizek”

Sexual is (not) Political – Part 2 – Prof Slavoj Zizek

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Trudeau, profiting from the parade

The irony of this parade is that the situation from decades ago is almost symmetrically inverted: now it is heterosexuality which is tolerated, of course, but it is expected from heterosexual majority not to display their orientation with too much pride since such display would be instantly qualified as heterosexist – heterosexuality is (not explicitly but subtly) perceived as a limitation, as a sexual orientation which is opportunistically satisfied with the old established patterns and avoids the risk to explore new liberating possibilities, as an impassive submission to the libidinal order imposed by the structure of social domination.
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Cinselliğin Politikası (olmaz) – Bölüm 2 – Prof Slavoj Zizek

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Kanada Başbakanı Trudeau, Onur Yürüyüşünden nemalanırken..

Karşıcinsçiliğe bu eleştirel bakış her ne kadar normatif olmama, farklı yönelimlere açık olma iddasında olsa da, bunu alttan alta karşıcinsel-olmayan [non-heterosexual] yönelimlere ayrıcalık yüklemeden yapamıyordu. Bu ayrıcalık yüklemesi de, karşıcinsel-olmayan [non-heterosexual] yönelimlerin – en azından – egemen ideolojinin etkisinden daha bağımsız olduklarına ve egemen ideolojiye karşı radikal bir karşı çıkışı temsil ettiklerine dair imalar içeriyordu.

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Cinselliğin Politikası (olmaz) – Bölüm 1 – Prof Slavoj Zizek

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[Çevirenin Notu: Profesör Zizek’in bu yazısının daha kısa bir versiyonu 1 Ağutos 2016’da The Philosophical Salon’da yayımlandı. Kimlik siyasetine karşı bugüne değin en derli toplu ve güçlü eleştiriyi ortaya koymasıyla da, bu paradigmada kalem oynatmaktan ekmek yiyen liberal-sol çevrelerde kıyamet kopardı.

Yazının The Philosophical Salon’da yayımlanan ilk versiyonunda Profesör Zizek, Kemalist Devrim yıllarında Erzurum’da kıyafet devrimine muhalefetten idam edildiği iddia edilen “Şalcı Bacı” hikayesine kısa bir paragrafla değiniyordu. Çeviriye başlamadan önce Profesör Zizek’e, bu hikayeye ilk kez 60’ların sonunda şair Necip Fazıl Kısakürek’te rastlandığını, ondan önce bir kaynak bulunmadığını, islamcı ve liberal yazarların da Kısakürek dışında referans gösteremediklerini, islamcı bir yazar tarafından olaya delil diye gösterilen bir fotoğrafın da Erzurum’da değil başka bir ilde yıllar sonra cinayetten hüküm giyen bir kadına ait olduğunun ortaya çıktığını, Erzurum’a ait İstiklal Mahkemeleri tutanakları da yayımlanmadığından hikayeyi doğrulama imkanı bulunmadığını, dolayısıyla da karşı-devrimci propaganda ürünü bir palavra olma olasılığının güçlü olduğunu anlattık ve çeviride bununla ilgili ne yapmamız gerektiğini sorduk. Profesör, yazıdan o bölümün çıkarılıp atılması talimatını verdi. Ayrıca Sendika.Org okurlarına özel, 2017 Eylül ayında yayımlanacak son kitabından – Incontinence of the Void, MIT Press, September 2017 – bölümler de ekleyerek, yazının daha uzun ve kapsamlı bir versiyonunu oluşturdu ve gönderdi.

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Sexual is (not) Political – Part 1 – Prof Slavoj Zizek

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People often ask themselves if a person can really imagine what it is to be another person; what a psychoanalyst would have added to this is that we also cannot imagine what is to be ourselves – or, more precisely, we (only) imagine that we are ourselves without really being it – and here is an example of this impossibility to be oneself. Continue reading “Sexual is (not) Political – Part 1 – Prof Slavoj Zizek”