Pussy riot…

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Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot writing to Slavoj Zizžek

… is a great name for a band, but otherwise unimpressive. A kind friend just sent a link to a correspondence between one of the imprisoned Rioters and… wait for it … a person characterized as ‘the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek’.

A ‘Slovenian philosopher’! O Preston Sturges, thou should’st be living at this hour.

It’s pretty much unreadable, of course: windy, unmeaning self-importance and oily compliments on both sides. But there are some funny moments. This one comes from the ‘Slovenian philosopher’:

Since the 2008 crisis, this distrust of democracy, once limited to third-world or post-Communist developing economies, is gaining ground in western countries.

Clearly, Slovenia needs to teach its philosophers a little history. When, exactly, in the ‘West’ — and where exactly is that, by the way — when, I say, in this legendary ‘West’, was ‘democracy’ ever ‘trusted’?

Every sensible person, of course, understands that Zizek is a mountebank, an incoherent gasbag, a motormouthed buffoon, a bad joke.

That’s why I have written to my great and good friend Vladimir Putin, suggesting that he ought to let the Pussy Rioters go, preferably in honor of the Russian Orthodox feast of the Epiphany. They’ve had their fifteen minutes; they’re no threat to anybody; but please, please, Volodya, don’t let them give Zizek another opportunity for publicity. Imperial rivalry is one thing, but a loquacious bore is the common enemy of all mankind.

111 thoughts on “Pussy riot…”

  1. After the constant accessibility of 2.0 (‘Sandy’ time frame excepted), the last 10 days or so have been very different. ‘error in (doing something) the database’ or just hanging up at the ‘contacting SMBIVA’ stage. I thought that you should know that the boondocks seem to be falling over the horizon wrt this blog of late.

    When I read the knock on “Slovenian philosopher”, I smelled “Taffy was a Welshman” territory drawing near. Slovenia is just a place. Trieste could be considered Slovenian as much as Croatian or Italian. The “Confessions of Zeno” were written there. Zizek may be a beloved son of the place, but he seems to live in cyberspace and on TV as much as Slovenia. Eh?

    • Slovenia is distasteful to me qua membrum disiectum of Yugoslavia. Indeed the Slovenian secessionists sorta led the charge on that great crime, didn’t they?

  3. But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. [Jack London]

    Thank You

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