“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, July 15, 2011

Anti-Denial Magic

re: my previous on the need for magic. This magic is not of the Starhawk kind. When it comes to global warming, that is nowhere near threatening enough. The kind of magic we need has also to destroy nihilism, fed by cynicism. You see, it's not simply the others (the Republicans) who are a problem. Yes, that's right, I'm looking at you.

Slavoj Žižek himself has given many of my colleagues reasons not even to buy a Prius or eat vegetarian. Since buying a Starbucks coffee is totally hypocritical, you might as well wait for a people's army to seize control of the state. (But will they be more ecological?)

They think they are following his words of wisdom, which he cleverly hedges about with “I'm not against charity, my God, but you know what I mean...” (He knows very well that “I'm not x but ...” is the very form of postmodern cynicism.) But the attitude with which they follow these pithy maxims is identical to the right wing do-nothings. Nothing happens. No progress is made. 

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