Pistrician supersiliation
No wonder that all early modern egalitarian radicals, from Rousseau to Jacobins, admired Sparta and imagined the republican France as a new Sparta: there is an emancipatory core in the Spartan spirit of military discipline which survives even when we subtract all historical paraphernalia of Spartan class rule, ruthless exploitation of and terror over their slaves, etc.
One would also, in order to approach anything remotely “emancipatory”, have to subtract the masculinist nihilism that drips from every pore of Miller’s “Spartan” three hundred’s impeccable torsoes. But never mind. If there’s one thing dear Slavoj has a talent for, it’s getting himself talked about – not least by people who purport to despise him.
(incidentally, can anyone improve on my pig-latin above? Pistrix, sea-monster; supersilio a back-formation from absilio / circumsilio / desilio etc.)
May 1st, 2007 at 10:45 am
Can you be more explicit about what you mean by ‘masculinist nihilism’ in the film?
May 1st, 2007 at 11:05 am
That whole Frank Miller thing, really. Theweleit has (I’m told) the goods.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:18 pm
To put it another way: at the extreme towards which Miller tends, masculinism is nihilistic because it proposes a purification without end: everything “unmanly” has to go, but because manliness is a phantom this inevitably ends up in a death cult, a purge of life itself (all crimes are, after all, committed by the living…I mean, all crimesss…). Mass slaughter as purification, as the affirmation of a hard “kernel” of allegedly emancipatory discipline…I mean, I think, “no thanks”.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I think that perversion is the masculine nihilistic form, but I’m interested in whether the film’s ‘masculinist nihilism’ perversely enjoys masculinity as a ‘no-thing’, or whether it produces/constitutes this real space of nothing.
I guess that the form of seduction is the closest thing to feminine nihilism, though seduction, unlike perversion, suspends the Law that constitutes the nothingness that provides the integral object of nihilistic belief.
In any case, your piece makes the film sound bloody (and) hot! I see it tomorrow evening, after teaching, nice and tired, and in the perfect mood to enjoy the evident meaninglessness of this escapist fantasy.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Holy shit, jinx! Buy me a coke!
May 1st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
sorry about the name changes, it’s not deliberate, it keeps reverting back to default setting.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:14 pm
What does ‘manliness’ mean? I agree that masculinism is nihilistic, though for me it’s because masculinism is identical to belief in the Law, and in the end the Law is always nihilistic, because it’s founded on the prohibition of the object that it enjoys.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I agree that masculinism is nihilistic, though for me it’s because masculinism is identical to belief in the Law, and in the end the Law is always nihilistic, because it’s founded on the prohibition of the object that it enjoys.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:22 pm
More here.
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:06 pm
My response to the film is at my site.