On the BBC

h/t: Marcus Allion

Nach dem irischen Nein zum Vertrag von Lissabon sind die Regierungen mit ihrem Latein am Ende: Sie müssen die Bevölkerung über Europa entscheiden lassen.

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Interview with Axel Honneth, in Le Monde, obviously in French.

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Slavoj Žižek is less a philosopher than a phenomenon. The son of Slovenian Communists, and the representative on earth (so to speak) of the late French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Žižek has been travelling the globe like an intellectual rock star for the past twenty years, gathering as he goes an immense fan club. He is outrageous, provocative and entertaining. He was, he tells us, tempted to suggest for the dust jacket of one of his books: “In his free time, Žižek likes to surf the internet for child pornography and teach his small son how to pull the legs off spiders”.

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From New York Times:

It was in sometime in the ’80s when I heard someone on the radio talking about Clint Eastwood’s 1980 movie “Bronco Billy.” It is, he said, a “nice little film in which Eastwood deconstructs his ‘Dirty Harry’ image.”

That was probably not the first time the verb “deconstruct” was used casually to describe a piece of pop culture, but it was the first time I had encountered it, and I remember thinking that the age of theory was surely over now that one of its key terms had been appropriated, domesticated and commodified. It had also been used with some precision. What the radio critic meant was that the flinty masculine realism of the “Dirty Harry” movies — it’s a hard world and it takes a hard man to deal with its evils — is affectionately parodied in the story of a former New Jersey shoe salesman who dresses and talks like a tough cowboy, but is the good-hearted proprietor of a traveling Wild West show aimed at little children. It’s all an act , a confected fable, but so is Dirty Harry; so is everything. If deconstruction was something that an American male icon performed, there was no reason to fear it; truth, reason and the American way were safe.

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An interview on French TV with Alain Badiou, discussing his politics. He just published a book on Sarkozy. Link. (h/t: Ed Pluth)

The weekly Vendredis de la philosophie (Philosophy Fridays) focused on Deleuze and Guattari. Link

Slavoj Zizek on love




And a recent article by Zizek on Turkey, which appeared in the Guardian (h/t: Ian Maley)

André Gorz passed away during my blogging hiatus so this is not news to most readers. I have put together a few links that may be of interest:

• Le Monde obituary (in French)
• Guradian article
• Welt Online article (in German)
• Ari Sitas of Monthly Review
• The radio show "Vendredis de la philosophie" (audio, in French)

Finally two pieces by Gorz himself. His short article (in French) entitled Sartre malgré lui?. And his "The Social Ideology of the Motorcar". Here is the first paragraph:

The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.

Via John Protevi:

Peter Hallward, the excellent philosopher working at Middlesex University in London — also part of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective — has written an outstanding article on the interests of the British press. He contrasts the blanket coverage of a missing child to the almost total overlooking of the death of 80 Haitians at sea, deaths for which British authorities are responsible due to their callous disregard of the lives of those they intercept fleeing the poverty of Haiti. Poverty for which, it should always be recalled, American policy bears great responsibility. The article appears on what looks to be an important resource, www.haitianalysis.com. Check it out.