Žižek’s book

My copy arrived from the U.S. yesterday, and I’ve just had the time to crack it open and read the first 20 or so pages.

One thing I’ve been noticing just in the past few weeks is that there’s actually a subtle drift away from Hegel just at the moment when he looks like he is reaching peak fashion again. For example, one of the most striking things about Meillassoux’s Berlin lecture is that he identifies my position with Hegel’s rather than his own. Quite aside from the improbability of that gesture (which I will discuss in my response) what is really interesting was that Meillassoux would want to dump Hegel as an ally on an opposing position. It wouldn’t have happened a year ago, I don’t think.

I was reminded of this yesterday when sensing that Žižek actually seems more enamored of Fichte these days, even at the moment of dropping a 1,000-page Hegel book at the moment.

Hegel has always been the great continental detour for those who don’t want to embrace the basic insights of Husserl and Heidegger (Deleuze is a more recent alternative path, but one that is still too new to draw long-term lessons from). Badiou, Žižek, and Meillassoux are deeply representative of this trend (which always includes passing nods to Heidegger without genuine assimilation of what is most important about him). Yet now Hegel is starting to be treated either as a tired ally or as a potentially incriminating one– it’s not yet clear which.

This is still an incipient development, but feels to me like a real one. We’re about to see the chess pieces get rearranged again. And one of these early chess moves involves calling my position either “religious” or “vitalist,” even though it’s neither. Watch for Iain Grant to get tarred with the same brush.