Wyrd bith ful araed!
A reminder that the Weird is upon Goldsmiths tomorrow (although I sadly won’t be able to be there) – details, and a paper on Lovecraftian / Lacanian weirdness, over at k-punk’s site. Meanwhile, here’s an image that may amuse some of our readers:
November 30th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Grrrgrrrggggrruuummmmpppgggrrrr….sigh….am I being petty, do you think? I suspect I am….
December 1st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
We took due note of your complaint and nominated you for the Adumbration of the Year. You can vote for yourself if you want to increase your chances for winning.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
There is a new nomination, but there won’t be any new ones after that until you include the Cultural parody center on your blawgroll.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
You really are deeply strange, Dejan. I don’t know about this blogrolling business; the parody stuff, bizarre as it is, I don’t mind and have even been quite amused by from time to time, but you’re mistaken if you think I’m the least bit sympathetic to Bosnian genocide denial – either yours or Chabert’s, which in its own way is equally deranged. (In the interests of warding off an inevitably tiresome and unproductive slanging match, I hereby undertake to read something meaty and factual by Chomsky on the subject, on the condition that you personally don’t start going on at me about it. If you even start, I’ll just delete you – delete, delete and delete again, as Stalin would have said if his sphere of totalitarian authority had extended no further than the comments section of a lousy weblog).
You may poop on Zizek all you like – after all, it only enhances his mystique, which I can here reveal is a spray-on pheromone called “Publicity’s Secret” – but don’t expect me to find the racist-misogynist-masculinist raillery at the ProddyCentre particularly endearing, even if it is ultimately just the puerile snickering of a pair of misanthropic queens and no more dangerous than that. As hilarious as it is to see the likes of Hollowentry getting up in arms about your bullshit…it’s still bullshit, and it still stinks.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
but you’re mistaken if you think I’m the least bit sympathetic to Bosnian genocide denial – either yours or Chabert’s, which in its own way is equally deranged.
What Bosnian genocide denial? That thread was about Kosovo. I’m not denying Bosnian genocide, but on the other hand don’t find it especially worse than the Serbian genocide…
but don’t expect me to find the racist-misogynist-masculinist raillery at the ProddyCentre particularly endearing,
well don’t expect me to find high-fallutin adumbrations about the intricacies of Action Script amusing either, we’ll just conclude that we’re not each other’s cup of tea and refrain from sex in this instance
puerile snickering of a pair of misanthropic queens
you racist, homophobic, anti-feminist NERD!
December 6th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
I hereby undertake to read something meaty and factual by Chomsky on the subject, on the condition that you personally don’t start going on at me about it.
I think Chomsky’s writing on the subject is among the best as regards factuality, but on the other hand Dr. Zizek critisized him rightly for holding on to ”facts” simply because indeed nobody listens to Chomsky, while everybody seems to be listening to Dr. Zizek. However both of these being Commie intellectuals, each in their own supposedly opposed way, I don’t pay much attention – because I’m no Commie. I do not think that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had anything to do with socialism or capitalism, except in the sense that Communism’s defunct economy helped its downfall greatly. The Serbian position was that we should have a strong federal market, primarily, by which to counter neoliberal economic expansion. This is what the secessionists thwarted, mainly. Philosophizing about the political-economic system that would make this possible is only secondarily important, and for me mostly academic.
December 7th, 2007 at 1:12 am
“I don’t mind and have even been quite amused by from time to time, but you’re mistaken if you think I’m the least bit sympathetic to Bosnian genocide denial – either yours or Chabert’s, which in its own way is equally deranged.”
What amused you at the Parody Center, Dominic? The talk about ‘fat sweaty Haitian wimmin’? The frequent and casual use of the epithet ‘Holocaust Cunt’? And why is it that only alleged ‘Bosnian genocide denial’ was enough to get you worked up (I assume that this you being worked up, but it’s hard to tell)? In fact, I’ve never heard Chabert or, in fairness to him, Dejan, deny that the Serbs committed atrocities in Bosnia. They’ve just disputed the idea that the Serbs started the ethnic cleansing, and pointed out that the Slovenes, Croats and Bosnian Muslims aren’t exactly pure as the driven snow. Nor, for that matter, are the British, the Americans the Germans or the rest of NATO. Dejan is of course extremely incoherent, so that might be where the confusion started. But I suspect that when you read any criticism of the Western narrative of the destruction of Yugoslavia you can only hear the pulsing drone: “Negationism. Negationism. Negationism.” Where do you suppose that signal’s coming from?
“You may poop on Zizek all you like – after all, it only enhances his mystique”
Zizek has all the mystique of a tapeworm.
a spray-on pheromone called “Publicity’s Secret”
I hear it’s flying off the shelves at Abercrombie and Fitch.
“I hereby undertake to read something meaty and factual by Chomsky on the subject”
Yes, please do. It’ll be a terrible trial I know, slogging through all those dates and facts (boring!) but when you’re done, you can run over to Kpunk’s place to watch Dr Who as a reward.
“ProddyCentre”
Careful, Dominic, or you’ll be mistaken for some urchin off the Falls Road. I have a feeling you wouldn’t want that at all.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Kretinoma, for the moment I am suspending parodic activities to thank you for this support. It’s not like I’ve been especially warm to Comrade Fox, or his Bible thumping team over at the Weblog, but this kind of a vicious backstabbing is completely unwarranted.
I don’t think I’m being especially incoherent; the theory I subscribe to was that Yugoslavia was basically made to fall apart and on the basis of the same antiSerbist racism driving the superpowers in the Second World War. I am also not in favor of idealizing islam, and think that Albanians currently find themselves in the position of ´´ordinary Germans´´ visavis the Empire / without meaning to say that they should be gassed or massacred. In fact when you look carefully the only one who ever wanted to gas them was the same NATO angel that came to their rescue (when I think back I am still shocked at the way people were watching strings of refugees fleeing NATO´s merciless bombs, and giving up on all logic, concluding that the refugees were fleeing Serbian oppression instead of the bombs…
December 7th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Nope, you two can definitely have this conversation somewhere else. Out! Out!
December 7th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Ok Dominic, we´re leaving. Best wishes in your programmatic pursuits and I hope you DO finally create the perfect cyborgian woman for yourself! Meantime, I am going to get laid with my favorite Marxist bitches…
December 7th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
I will leave – an Englishman’s home is his castle and all that – but not with Dejan, and not to continue any conversation I am supposed to be having with him. In any case you have confirmed my suspicion that your promise to read more about Yugoslavia was not serious, and that your reference to “something meaty and factual by Chomsky” was meant as a jocular caricature of dry-as-dust leftism. But if you are serious about educating yourself on the Yugoslav conflict, let me recommend the film ‘Yugoslavia: An avoidable war’ on google videos to start with. It even features two of your so-called Lords – Carrington and Steel – describing what a deception the anti-Serb narrative of that war was, so you’ll know you’re on safe ground.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
No, no; I respect Chomsky and will read him…
December 7th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Oh ok then; apologies for the scolding tone (I was miffed at being lumped in with Dejan)! I just think the Yugoslavia debacle is a very important issue, regardless of Zizek’s lies on the issue, and one the left hasn’t really come to terms with. But it’s vital to understanding resurgent European imperialism, and a really chilling instance of manipulation of public opinion. A lot of the anti-Serb stuff was just thawed out from the Nazi period by the Germans and others. And also, a lot of tactics of manipulation laid the foundations for the current wars in a lot of ways.
That documentary I mentioned really is very good. It’s based on a book by Nora Beloff, an Observer journalist who was an expert on Balkan affairs. In it, even the NYT journalist who started the ‘Serb ethnic cleansing’ meme admits that it was a hugely inaccurate and one-sided representation of events. (In the google version, some short sequences seem to have been cut by Serb TV, but it doesn’t really affect the overall argument).
You might also check out the recent lengthy article in Monthly review by Edward Herman and David Peterson, which focusses on a lot of the same material.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
A lot of the anti-Serb stuff was just thawed out from the Nazi period by the Germans and others.
Including the Great Albania, Kretinoma, for this was awarded to Albanians in Hitler’s times, and the Kosovar Albanian very ethnogenesis is focused on the dream of having their big state – this is all I was trying to say before the Trotskyan Pollyannas jumped on me with allegations of racism, nationalism, misogyny, self-mutilating homophobia and all those other politically correct idioms. So that there is a fifity year continuity, the Albanian fight for independence never really stopped. You just didn’t see it behind the Berlin wall. But whoever has trouble making up their mind on this issue, I will ask them a logical question: have they ever heard of SERBIAN TERRORISM in the West – such a thing only exists in the movie PEACEMAKER by Spielberg. Maybe then they will think, gee, where did I pick that up about Serbian nationalism?
December 7th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
I think the NATO invasion screws everyone’s perspective; the propaganda for it on the one side, and the imperative to debunk and contest that propaganda on the other. I also believe that there’s a line of pro-Serb apologetics that serves an entirely ethnically partisan exculpatory agenda, and that anti-Imperialist lefties have on occasion got suckered into complicity with that agenda, viz: minimizing Serbian atrocities, demonizing Serbia’s regional adversaries, and blaming everything on “neo-liberalism” as if this were somehow less hopelessly superstitious and over-simplifying than the other side’s racist hand-waving about “ancient ethnic rivalries”. But this is a largely uninformed (or, you may say, thoroughly indoctrinated) opinion, which I am in no position to defend with cogent and factual argument; hence my recourse to Chomsky, who may yet set me straight.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I did say I would delete, Dejan, and delete I shall…
December 8th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Well Western involvement long precedes the NATO invasion; it began with the secession of Slovenia. Neoliberalism as irrational bogeyman? Maybe, because there’s nothing very novel about imperialism. But perhaps we can discuss this at a later time.
‘Greater Albania’ isn’t on the cards at all Dejan. And all that stuff about Muslims deliberately ‘breeding like rabbits’ was just vile.
December 8th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Allow me this last one, for the sake of your lordship’s honor, and then you can delete delete and delete all you want:
your vision here is understandable if one takes the Marxist (as well as commonsensical) approach that in a war, it takes two to tango, so that there can’t be just one guilty side. I notice that this is the line taken at Leninino’s, I suppose by SWP as well. But if for a moment you disregard the question of ethnicity, ethnic war etc and observe Serbia strictly politically, as a Russian ally on the peninsula (the most important one next to Greece), you will see that from the Imperial perspective, it is paramount to crack Serbia and Serbia only. Then you will also see that Serbia’s defense wasn’t primarily defined in ethnic terms – even as in any other country on the planet, Serbia had its own ultranationalists – while all other republics defined their new political program as the process of establishing an ethnic identity.
it is for this reason that I am vehemently critical of Marxist discourse about ”human rights”, ”genocide”, ”ethnicity”, ”nationalism” and ”feminism” being applied in this instance to explain Yugoslavia. All that misses the point, because the politics of the players was more determined by the positions they wanted to strike in the new order of things, which Empire they would belong to, than by their alleged ”dispute” and ”disharmony” with Serbia. To put it bluntly, Slovenia went away because they wanted Austrian money, not because they are especially different from Serbs.
December 8th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Kenoma I transferred my reply to your blawg, so that Comrade Fox may read his Chomsky in peace.