Slavoj Žižek - Politeness and Civility in the Function of Contemporary Ideology

I'm going to give this guy another chance. Will listen to audio only. Last talk he gave he spent 2 hours pulling at his front. This went way beyond a mannerism and looked like a neurotic tick.

Perhaps he has come out against politeness and civility-- see Stuff White People Like in the other comments.

Welp, he was picking at his shirt again and the first word out of his mouth was 'basically.'

I pulled it off.


Please join my campaign to eliminate the tedious use of the word 'basically.'

Here is the reasoning::

The word "basically" is an overused verbal tick which demeans and condescends to the listener. It is at the same time a way for the speaker to inflate his own self esteem by flogging and repeating words that appear to emphasize personal knowledge.

It is a fault which has become, I fear, some sort of custom or accepted
colloquialism.

lon im starting to suspect that you are an agent of the bourgeoisie.

And just to clear the record there is NO functional difference between "stuff white people like" and "Larry the Cable Guy" or "Jeff Foxworthy." If you want to avoid anything based on popular stereotypes, it's a fondness for that blog.

Stuff White People Like are things they can automatically identify with as being part of the privileged class of the meritocracy. Christian Lander has 'outed' them in a most effective way.

Having heard Zizek and watched him pick at his jersey for two hours once before, I'd say that politeness and civility prevent his audience from calling him a buffoon and worse.

But no, what they want him to do is make references to Karl Marx with a clever reference to some dialog from The Brady Bunch or some other tripe he's fond of. The result is a form glossolalia of random chatter not uncommon in a nut house. The references to pop culture affirms the listener's narcissism.

Larry The Cable Guy and the like are creations of a bourgeoisie which gets transplanted into Hollywood from Eastern prep schools and literary fraternities.

I have no agency.

But I have a favorite story. It's from the legend of Thomas Pynchon. At receiving the The National Book Award, Pynchon sent Professor Irwin Corey to accept on his behalf. Corey is a stand up comedian who appears in oversize scholarly trappings and expounds on various topics with punchlines.

I thought of Professor Irwin Corey when I first saw Zizek.

Pynchon? Isn't he the ultimate yuppie-marketed author -- the vain would-be intellectual's da vinci code?

I like that. touche' Hard to say if Pynchon has been marketed much after the early 70's as a cult figure. I never thought so.

But the comparison is with Irwin Corey. I was surprised to find a wiki for him. And the comparison is with a comedian on the one hand and a public embarrassment like Zizek or Richard Stallman on the other.