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  • Žižek’s Brand of Philosophical Excess and the Treason of the IntellectualsWagers of Sin, Ugly Ducklings, and Mythical Swans
  • Paul Taylor

Žižek’s brand of excess and la trahison des clercs

No one who has tried to work in cultural studies from a perspective which is even conscious of the global hegemony of neo-liberalism and its social consequences can fail to be dismayed by the atmosphere of complete disengagement which seems to infuse so much “cultural studies” and related areas of thought …

(Bowman and Stamp 77)

I heard recently Oliver Cromwell’s address to the rump parliament in 1653 (online, I’m not a Time Lord) where he bawls out the whole of the House of Commons as “whores, virtueless horses and money-grabbing dicklickers.” I added the last one but, honestly, that is the vibe. I was getting close to admiring old Oliver for his “calls it as he sees it, balls-out” rhetoric till I read about him on Wikipedia and learned that beyond this brilliant 8 Mile-style takedown of corrupt politicians he was a right arsehole; starving and murdering the Irish and generally (and surprisingly for a Roundhead) being a total square. The fact remains that if you were to recite his speech in parliament today you’d be hard pushed to find someone who could be legitimately offended.

(Brand)

Through his inimitable use of philosophical excess in the form of frequently offensive examples and dirty jokes, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has risen to either academic celebrity status or notoriety depending upon one’s personal taste. The briefest survey of his work reveals serious philosophical points conveyed through jocular descriptions of sphincters, interracial threesomes, and the Hegelian nature of shit. This paper uses the specific case of Žižek and his use of filthy humour to explore wider questions about the viability of excess as a compensatory strategy for today’s version of la trahison des clercs—the intellectual pusillanimity and lack of engagement with the social and cultural consequences of neoliberal ideology, a problem recognised above by even one of Žižek’s fiercest critics. This lack of engagement has produced an intellectual climate in which the most basic critical concepts have become decaffeinated. Ironically, this is not because [End Page 128] critical theory’s insights have proved inaccurate, but rather the opposite. “Pragmatic” accommodations by academics with capitalist realpolitik have plumbed such quotidian depths that familiarity has bred, not contempt, but consent. For example, instead of constituting a cautionary concept, Adorno and Horkheimer’s deliberate oxymoron “the culture industry” has become smoothly co-opted into such new capitalism-acquiescent fields of study as “creative and cultural industries,” and in today’s UK university sector, scholars scrabble indecorously to prove to funding councils the “real world” and commercial “impact” of their work. This paper argues that within such a depressingly acquiescent environment, comedic excess can serve a valuably uplifting corrective and countervailing role—in terms of the advertising slogan for Heineken beer, it can still refresh the parts that other forms of political analysis no longer reach.

The second quotation above comes from a guest editorial by the comedian Russell Brand for the British political magazine, The New Statesman. Whilst calling for a revolution in the way we think about our current political situation, Brand does so in a manner that shares Žižek’s strategic use of ribald humour’s excess as an ideological tool with which to critique the contemporary mediascape. Shortly before the publication of his article, Brand appeared on a BBC flagship news programme Newsnight questioned by the doyen of aggressive British TV political interviewing, Jeremy Paxman. By the end of the interview, due to a combination of Brand’s strength of feeling, the radical nature of his views and the paradoxically earnest nature of his defence of the right to be facetious, Paxman (despite being widely referred to in the press as a “Rottweiler”) appears to be visibly chastened and the video of the encounter went viral (Paxman). It is important to emphasize that, to a significant extent, neither politically aware comedians nor humorous philosophers tell us anything that we didn’t already know...

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