2nd Update: Žižek responds to Chomsky's "Fantasies"
- Žižek v. Chomsky continues: Žižek has responded to Chomsky's last comment in an article in the International Journal of Žižek Studies. You can read the entire article here, select excerpts follow. I am particularly interested in how Žižek focuses on conflicting definitions of ideology as a key factor in Chomsky's misunderstanding of Žižek's work:
For me, on the contrary, the problem is here a very rational one: everything hinges on how we define “ideology.”
[...]
This bias is ideology - a set of explicit and implicit, even unspoken, ethico-political and other positions, decision, choices, etc., which predetermine our perception of facts, what we tend to emphasize or to ignore, how we organize facts into a consistent whole of a narrative or a theory.
- After a rational and diplomatic refutation of Chomsky's comments, Žižek ends the essay with a parting blow:
Chomsky obviously doesn’t agree with me here. So what if – just another fancy idea of mine – what if Chomsky can not find anything in my work that goes "beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old because” because, when he deals with continental thought, it is his mind which functions as the mind of a twelve-years-old, the mind which is unable to distinguish serious philosophical reflection from empty posturing and playing with empty words?