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The Art of Shrinking Heads
Jodi Dean over at I cite has put together a brief review of Dany-Robert Dufour’s The Art of Shrinking Heads, a Lacanian critique of late capitalism and the rise of the “postmodern subject.” I haven’t read Dufour’s book yet, but going off of Dean’s review, it seems to significantly overlap with Zizek’s similarly-themed politico-philosophical project, which would be one reason among others to take some interest in reading it (or her post(s) on it, at the very least).
Conditions of Receptivity
Dr. Sinthome:
At what point do certain statements, certain declarations, certain assertions, take on the capacity to resonate and produce effects in a receiver? What are the conditions for the possibility of being heard? … I became capable of receiving a message where before I was not. But how and under what conditions? Likewise, under what conditions do certain political positions and declarations begin to resonate within the social field? This question is at the very heart of social change and is not secondary or ancillary to questions of critique. For without adequately answering these questions, adequate strategies of producing change cannot be formulated. However, a glance at the history of political transformations also seems to indicate that while these shifts are cultural in character, they also seem to involve material transformations that problematize the cultural sphere, calling for new institutions, new group formations, new ways of feeling, new subjectivities, and new ways of living.
The Symptom 9: Universalism vs. Globalization
I haven’t really been following its publication recently, but there looks to be a bunch of interesting pieces in here, including J.-A. Miller’s essay, “Extimity,” Zizek’s essay on the Lacanian Real and television, and several of Heidegger’s political tracts from the early 1930s. (Via Larval Subjects.)