Eh, obviously

Drej, the other day, pointed out a ‘society’ of young doctorate-armed individuals, a pack of a dozen or so fiery young minds, who have single-handedly decided to collapse the pedestal which Žižek has set for himself, crowning himself the greatness of political philosophy and so on. Dunno, Žižek is a stuttering, twitching, spitting, hissing force of nature who at least made political philosophy sexy again and pretty much everyone knows who he is, if not so much what exactly he is talking about. Sometimes, reading his stuff, I deeply agree and admire his articulation, sometimes I wonder which one of us is crazy and am embarrassed for him, and overall I think Slovenians deserve more people who are not shy to get their message across by fraternising with Rock stars and marrying plenty of young hot women from underdeveloped countries. In truth, I think he’s entertaining. For someone who is a philosopher by profession, he’s damn entertaining; because I went to those classes while we waited for other classes to start and if quite good, educational, entertaining they were not.

So this young lady is said – by a nicely set up website – to approach her senior mentor in desire to establish a some kind of a specific psychoanalytical or ‘therapeutical society. I have no idea what that specific branch envelops, because the website is set so that you are supposed to known wholesomely who these obscure-branch people are, and because psychoanalysis is not something I particularly care to associate myself with. I am thoroughly respectful towards psychiatrists, who deal with the truly broken people, whereas psychotherapists … hm. I’ve met some, socially. I would not recommend them, professionally. Though I have met some socially catastrophic people who turned out to me mind-blowingly good as lawyers, so… I won’t judge in general terms. Just what I’ve seen.

In the little story she begins the site with, she goes to the mentor to propose this society and he tells her she is very brave, because he would never dare to stand against the mighty, the mightiest of which is Žižek.

I wrote the letter to them, saying that for two reasons their website is infantile and poorly set: the way this woman lists all of Žižek’s crimes (The Plagiarist , The Censor, The …. I dunno. Boogeyman or something,) it sounds less like an adult, professional critic (Žižek’s most ardent opponent is Chomsky and there at least you have a grown-ups’ debate), and more like a turned down college-classroom mistress. But mainly because none of her accusations have a single citation. Not a single one. Not a screen cap anywhere, not a quote, not even a single article excerpt where ANY of her denunciations would be met with evidence. Sure, they have a posh site with hot B&W portraits, they’re all young and well off, and lots of text about whom they are, young doctorate minds … aaand nothing else. Nothing about this terrible war of intellect targeted against the super famous philosopher, more famous than any of them are, combined, and their strategy to get fame is to call him a super villain and themselves the heroes of their own website. No articles of their own, no translations of their articles from foreign publications which they claim to hold to their names, no propositions of either common ground or separating on ‘church of Žižek’ and actually establishing their own branch of modern psychoanalysis. Nothing. Just a list of how bad a person Žižek is, as written by a schoolchild.  I wrote them they will not be taken seriously, least of all by him, if they make claims so incredibly half-way, so dire and yet so entirely headline-y. I was all for them, rooting for them wholeheartedly, because I enjoy listening to criticism of very loud, pompous famous people, so I can decide on my own, using my own brain, who was right, who was reactionary who was click-baity or were they neither, or both, in the wrong.

That’s the best bit about philosophy. Intelligent debate. The ONLY bit that matters in the end. I wrote two pages about this. I used all of my School of Kekistan knowledge to try and offer constructive criticism on how not to make unsubstantiated claims against their senior colleagues.  

You can imagine what their response was.

Yeah.

To get professional help.

… Something tells me I will DIE naïve.