More Zizek from Turkey (Işık Barış Fidaner)

 

Slavoj Žižek, "Sarcasm vs. Irony/Wave " (Google translated from Turkish)

Peter Sellars's version of Cosi fan tutte is based on this basic premise: Alfonzo, a philosopher in one passionate love, and Despina enact the impasse of their own hopeless love by engaging in experiments with other young couples. This reading strikes at the heart of Mozartian irony/sarcasm, which should be opposed to sarcasm. In the simplest terms:

The cynic privately mocks the beliefs he professes abroad (you preach to sacrifice for the country in the public eye, you pile up the gains in the private sphere...).

In irony/wave, the subject takes a subject much more seriously than he shows it to the outside, and actually secretly believes in something he makes fun of in the public eye.

Alfonzo and Despina, the cold-blooded experimental philosopher and the demoralized servant girl, play the ridiculous erotic mayhem of the other poor couples like instruments in order to confront their own traumatic bonds as passionate lovers.

We can now formulate the unique feature of Mozartian irony/wave: in it, even though the music has become completely autonomous from the words, it does not yet lie.

Mozartian irony/wave is the only moment when the truth actually 'speaks in the language of music', it is the music that calls out to you from the Unconscious, which makes Lacan say 'Moi la verité, je parle' (I am the truth, I am speaking).

And only today, in our postmodern age, which is claimed to be devoid of faith because it is overflowing with irony/wave, the Mozartian irony/wave reaches its full reality and confronts us with this embarrassing fact:

Not deep down, but in our actions, in our social practice, we believe much more than we are aware of.

Notes:

From the book Freedom: An Incurable Disease

Turkish: Işık Barış Fidaner

See “Sikhzamane: Sarcasm and Irony” by Slavoj Žižek

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Slavoj Žižek, "Who is guilty?" (Google translated from Turkish)

It is a moral disaster that people refuse to consider the terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An interesting maneuver is evident in the reactions to the October 7 Hamas attack: anyone who talks about the need to understand the circumstances in which the attack took place – Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the iron blockade of the Gaza Strip – is accused of supporting or rationalizing Hamas terrorism. Do we realize how strange this ban is? I think this is a moral disaster.

When I say understanding the conditions, I do not mean this stupidity disguised as deep wisdom: "It means you have not heard the story of the person you call your enemy." Can it be said that we regard Hitler as an enemy simply because his story has not been heard? When I get to know and “understand” Hitler better, won't I consider him even more of an enemy? Moreover, the stories we tell ourselves are not the truth – they are often a fabricated lie to rationalize the real horrors I inflict on others. The truth is outside, it is in the real deeds we do. Every aggressor who attempts ethnic cleansing presents himself as a victim reacting to this or that attack. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant lost his own humanity the moment he said Israel was fighting “human animals.”

Hamas leader Ismail Haniye, who was enjoying his time in Qatar, said on the day of the attack: “We have only one thing to say to you: Get out of our country. "Depart from us... This country is ours, Jerusalem is ours, everything [here] is ours... There is neither place nor safety for you."

Clear and disgusting. But wasn't that what the Israeli government said about the Palestinians in Gaza, albeit in more measured language? Here is the first of the official ‘fundamental principles’ of the current government in Israel: “The Jewish people have the exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. “The Government will develop and promote settlements in all regions of the Land of Israel – in the Galilee, in the Negev, in the Golan, and in Judea and Samaria.” In the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Israel is not a state for all its citizens, it is a state for the Jewish people – and its own.”

How can Israel blame the Palestinians' refusal to negotiate when there is such a "principle" encoded in national laws? Doesn't this "principle" already exclude every possibility of serious negotiations? Are Palestinians left with any option other than violent resistance? The state of Israel has offered no hope or positive vision that creates a place for Palestinians in society; He treated them as a problem that could only be solved through force and law.

So, if the second Nakba occurs, who will be responsible? Should the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or the secret service be blamed? In interviews in Dror Moreh's documentary The Gatekeepers ( 2012), all six chiefs of Israel's internal security agency Shin Bet voice warnings about the dangers posed by politicians. After meeting with Shin Bet chiefs, Moreh told the Economist newspaper that he decided that Netanyahu "poses a major threat to the existence of the state of Israel." He continued: “I read in their eyes that our leaders actually do not want to solve this problem. They do not have the courage, courage, will and courage that a leader should have. I do not place the blame entirely on Israeli leaders. I think Palestinian leaders are suffering from the same terrible disease. “I think the fact that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity, to paraphrase Abba Eban, applies to both sides.” So is the IDF – remember the condemnation of “refuseniks” who refused to serve in the West Bank. The process of pure politicization carried out in Israel by the last Netanyahu government is included in the nationalist-fundamentalist struggle that surrounds the world, it is a populism that opposes even the legal state.

In 1989, Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal wrote: “The perennially victorious state of Israel cannot rely on 'victim' sympathy forever.” The great anti-communist recruit Arthur Koestler expressed the same problem differently: “If power corrupts people, the opposite is also true; Being oppressed also corrupts victims, albeit in more subtle and tragic ways.” This problem applies to both sides of the ongoing war. First-generation Israeli leaders openly admitted that their claims to the land of Palestine could not be based on universal justice: it was known that in the late 1940s and 1950s there was an outright war of conquest between two groups with no chance of mediation. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, wrote: “Everyone sees the serious problems in Arab-Jewish relations. But no one sees that there is no solution to these problems. There is no solution! There is a gulf in the middle and it is impossible to make ends meet... We, as a people, want to own this country; Arabs, as a people, also want to own this country.”

On April 29, 1956, a group of Palestinians crossed the Gaza border and plundered the harvest in the fields of the Nahal Oz kibbutz. Roi, a young Jewish member of the kibbutz who was standing guard in the fields, rode his horse against the Palestinians to chase them with a staff in his hand. The Palestinians captured him, took him to the Gaza Strip, and his body was destroyed, which the UN returned the same day.

IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan spoke at Roi's funeral the next day: “Let's not blame the murderers today. How can we blame them for having a deadly grudge against us? They had been living in Gaza's refugee camps for eight years, and we were showing off the lands and villages where they and their ancestors lived and adding them to our heritage. We must look for Roi's blood within ourselves, not among the Arabs of Gaza. How did we turn a blind eye, how did we refuse to face our fate, how did we fail to see how cruel the fate of our generation was? Have we forgotten that the gates of Gaza are on the shoulders of these young people living in Nahal Oz?

Is such a statement conceivable today? Remember how far we are from years ago, when there was talk of a “land for peace” treaty and a two-state solution, when even the staunchest supporters of Israel now were pressing for Israel not to establish settlements in the West Bank. In 1994, Israel built a wall separating the West Bank, thus recognizing the West Bank as a special entity, as before the Six-Day War (1967).

All this progress, however limited, has now evaporated. Europe needs to have its own voice on this issue, instead of accompanying global cries. Europe can do this because it did so many years ago, because it has always been ready to see the complexity of the situation and listen to all sides. It would be a real shame if this role fell to Putin and China.

Notes:

Turkish: Işık Barış Fidaner

See “Analysis Ban: Žižek's Frankfurt speech and Žižek baenmayan afendi shojuks” , “Analyseverbot: critic with refined tastes etc. analysis proper” , “The Counter-Oedipal Impulse in the Festival Raid” , “Judas and Hamas” , “The Real Fault Line Separating Israel and Palestine” Slavoj Žižek (trans. Barış Özkul)