with enemies like these, who needs friends?

This is a couple of months old, but it was just drawn to my attention. I’m not sure I follow all of it, but it’s a fun rant against me:

“My Goodness, yet another naive materialist obscurantist has burst out of academia (what a surprise in the age of Enlightenment, a.k.a. Inquisition). ‘Plutonium actually exists and it is dangerous’ – Harman

Dangerous for who? (Oh, I’m not aloud to ask that in Harman’s philosophy, because there is no subject-object relationship [only ‘hyper-objects’, i.e. ‘objects beyond objects’]. Harmon has mistaken a step backwards, for something new (in just the way we might mistakenly imagine extreme old age to be similar psychologically to infancy, i.e., two times when we are in the care of others [actually they are greatly opposed to one another, since old age is the moment the life’s history is collated in the being). Notably, he (Harman), mentions Tibet, as a futuristic place where the people would be comfortable going to Mars, or wherever (sorry that it is politically incorrect, but no, this is not a futuristic people [he simply forgets to have made a study of the religions and proto-philosophies of the world [archaic Greeks included, and study the systems of the Old Europeans of Marija Gimbutas, all the famous world holy-books, etc.]- total naive idiocy (no perspective) on this point (Zizek would not be so poorly read (so naive) as to make such a dumb ass blunder as this – so, for some reasons, Zizek is still useful, at least when compared to these idiots coming up today [although, he is like 45, or something [Zizek is 60 something]). It’s clear what this guy’s problem is, it’s obvious how he has gone wrong, and even that this stuff is brought about by the market demand – so to speak – in today’s academia. At the same time, this is really unspeakably bad philosophy. Not entirely without interest, but quite awful.

Probably (of course there are many objections to be made to my hyper-petite reading here, but I’m just doing a B.S. summing up, corresponding to the level of the theory, there is no real reason to engage it in a serious or rigorous fashion) his B.S. ‘philosophy’ (actually nothing but authority based discourse), could be summed up by saying, I erase the subject and the idealized world, and retain the physical world, that was derived from that subject, that I now erase. Total self-mystification (I doubt he believes much of it himself, although that is hardly the point).”

*How can I be naive, a materialist, an obscurantist, an Enlightment figure, and an Inquisitor simultaneously? Talk about being criticized for opposite reasons! But it’s fun to imagine a thinker capable of combining all those traits.

*I don’t remember writing about Tibet and Mars in the same passage, though I doubt he’s totally making that up. (I don’t say “he/she,” because trollish rants are an abominably and exclusively male thing, as per the laws of primate behavior and prison cell blocks. The gender of the poster is as obvious as can be.)

*'[although, he is like 45, or something [Zizek is 60 something])” I’m 42 years old. I will turn 43 in May. I believe Zizek is 61, and eternally energetic.

*”his B.S. ‘philosophy’ (actually nothing but authority based discourse)” What authority? Heidegger?

*”It’s clear what this guy’s problem is, it’s obvious how he has gone wrong, and even that this stuff is brought about by the market demand – so to speak – in today’s academia.” Ka-CHING! I didn’t do all those focus groups and marketing studies for nothing. I’m a business mastermind.

*”(I doubt he believes much of it himself, although that is hardly the point).” Actually, I think it is the point. Before being right or wrong, people are either serious or full of sh*t. That is a basic distinction of human types, and (I will claim in a publication at some point) the basic fact of ethics.