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Showing posts from April, 2019

The Performance of Anti-Ideology: Peterson & Žižek in Toronto

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I can imagine that many who watched the Peterson-Zizek debate last night were disappointed. I wasn't one of them. Neither academic made "a fool" out of the other, "destroyed the other with these five simple points," or made an emotional appeal to the audience in an attempt to publicly unveil the stupidity and ignorance of the other. It was not the aggressive, confrontational bout that I presume many had hoped to see. Despite my issues with their opening statements--especially Peterson's ignorance of the historical reception of Marxism and his claim that "intellect" and capitalism could be enough to solve the ecological crisis--I have to concede that the two actually talked. They seemed to actually want to find common ground, and in fact they found a lot of it--the most disappointing of which for the audience (given the demographic and current Zeitgeist ) was most certainly the emergence of a definition happiness as grace. Performative Anti-