Slavoj Å½iÅ¾ek as Internet Philosopher

Burnham, Clint

doi:10.1057/9781137361516.0023

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Žižek’s sacrificial performance, which undermines his own authoritative intellectual position, resonates with the current post-ideological context in which (political, scientific and parental) authority and authenticity are questioned in an ironic fashion (Schuster, 2020). We thus locate Žižek’s positioning process in the broader social context of the digital public sphere, or the ‘post-codex era’ (Burnham, 2014), whereby intellectual work is accomplished not solely by professionals and not merely on paper but rather involves laypersons and screens.…”

Section: žIžek the Fool And The Internal-outsidermentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Fool’ Revisited: The Making of Žižek as Sacrificial Public Intellectual

Bar-El

Baert

2021

Cultural Sociology

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This article provides a sociological explanation for the global emergence of Slavoj Žižek as a public intellectual. It presents an integrative account encompassing both personal and institutional aspects. Drawing on positioning theory and performative frameworks, the article contributes to the sociology of intellectuals, as well as to the vast ‘Žižek-literature’ that focuses on his philosophical content or political activities. We analyse the distinctiveness of Žižek’s performances, arguing that Žižek acts as a ‘sacrificial intellectual’: he plays ‘the fool’ and relies on irony to undermine the traditional role of the authoritative intellectual. Within the context of the digital public sphere and declining intellectual authority, Žižek’s unique form of positioning has been particularly effective and has contributed to his celebrity status.

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Section: žIžek the Fool And The Internal-outsidermentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Fool’ Revisited: The Making of Žižek as Sacrificial Public Intellectual

Bar-El

Baert

2021

Cultural Sociology

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“…Another rich empirical context for future research on the cultural geographies of inherent transgression are Internet subcultures, social media, and smart device practices, which bring to the fore "anxieties of control" (Leszczynski, 2015) and the "obscene" textual practices of spamming and trolling (Burnham, 2014). Of particular relevance here is the extent to which everyday culture is mass mediated by digital communication via, for example, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, phone texting, and so on.…”

Section: Inherent Transgressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uneasiness in culture, or negotiating the sublime distances towards the big Other

Kingsbury

2017

Geography Compass

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This paper engages Slavoj Žižek's thesis that people's integration into a dominant culture requires successfully negotiating certain “distances” towards what Jacques Lacan called the “big Other,” that is, a nonexistent locus that subtly guides symbolic rules, conventions, and mandates. My main goal here is to illustrate how Žižek's conceptualizations of distance and the big Other can further our geographical theorizations of culture, especially in terms of Sigmund Freud's notion of the “uneasiness in culture.” I explore Žižek's identification of three modes of distanciation towards the big Other—“inherent transgression”, “empty gesture,” and “fetishistic disavowal,” which abound in uneasiness because they are sublime, that is, demarcated by virtuality and unfathomability. I also discuss how the demise of the big Other's authority has produced new spaces of cultural uneasiness that can be usefully understood in terms of increased interactions between everyday microcultures.

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“…In classical times, this materiality involved the printing press and books but, today, also includes a series of digital tools through which linguistic and geographic barriers can be surmounted at a speed that was unthinkable only a few decades ago. This change can be underscored by differentiating between a codex or typewriter era and a post-codex or internet era (Burnham, 2014 , 2018 ). This raises the question of how the figure of the public intellectual has changed between these two eras, a subject that is nowadays almost a field of research in its own right (Baert & Booth, 2012 ; Burnham, 2018 ; Townsley, 2015 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Public Intellectuals in Digital and Global Times: the Case of Project Syndicate

Basaure

Joignant

Théodore

2022

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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In this article, we present a conceptual model for the study of intellectual trajectories. The notion of trajectory combines the figure of the intellectuals, as actors, and the stages on which they act. With the help of this model, we seek particularly to study the figure of the global digital public intellectual and the global digital stage on which this figure operates. By studying the case of Project Syndicate (the most important global platform or stage for the circulation of ideas through opinion columns), we show empirically that this stage has particularities that make it a circuit for such circulation. The notion of circuit seems to us more appropriate than field to describe this type of global stage at a transnational scale, still characterized by a lower level of institutionalization.

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Slavoj Å½iÅ¾ek as Internet Philosopher

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

‘The Fool’ Revisited: The Making of Žižek as Sacrificial Public Intellectual

‘The Fool’ Revisited: The Making of Žižek as Sacrificial Public Intellectual

Uneasiness in culture, or negotiating the sublime distances towards the big Other

Public Intellectuals in Digital and Global Times: the Case of Project Syndicate

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