Slavoj Žižek Gets His Hair Cut -The Toast

Slavoj Žižek Gets His Hair Cut

ByDaniel Mallory Ortberg

on July 15, 2014 in Poetry

A primer for the unfamiliar.

Slavoj Žižek walks into a barbershop without making an appointment
he sits in the nearest empty chair
“I want a haircut,” he says to no one
and to everyone
“Cut my hair. Make it look terrible.”
“And do not look me in the eyes.”

being a Marxist
is no excuse
for not looking your best

Slavoj Žižek, what are you really angry at
capitalism
or scissors?

Slavoj Žižek
next time why don’t you try plagiarizing
a different hairstyle

Slavoj Žižek
your haircut is like late-stage capitalism
devoid of integrity
and propped up on a faltering infrastructure

Slavoj Žižek
your beard
like Communism
works better in theory
than in the real world

Slavoj Žižek
remember that Derrida objected to clearly defined theses on philosophical grounds
not personal grooming

even your haircut misreads Hegel

remember
your ontology can give primacy to the creative subject who manipulates discourse
and use a comb
at the same time

Slavoj Žižek
would it kill you to smile

take a shower Slavoj Žižek
get some rest
you look awful
your friends are worried about you, Slavoj Žižek
your friends are worried about you and your hair, Slavoj Žižek
your friends are worried about you and your hair and your views on subjectivity, Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek walks into a barbershop
and walks out again
Nothing has changed.

“Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence—by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present—but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word ‘quarters’ the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being.”

your haircut

is murder

of your head

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

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+49 Vote up Vote down

anninyn 124p · 559 weeks ago

This is brilliant.

My various meetings with self-proclaimed communists has often made me wonder some things. Is it vile capitalism to have a shower and get some sleep some time? Is it protesting the bourgeoisie fat cats to NEVER mop the greasy demonstration sweat off your great big red face?

17 replies · active 559 weeks ago

+34 Vote up Vote down

chickpeas · 559 weeks ago

it's not just the haircut though, it's the whole sort of... facial hair situation. The haircut misreads Hegel, the mustache misreads Kant. Here's hoping for a follow-up about the beard. (fingers crossed)

1 reply · active 559 weeks ago

+39 Vote up Vote down

littlehuntingcreek 135p · 559 weeks ago

His whole fashion look plagiarizes Derrida

+57 Vote up Vote down

grandma_nancy 128p · 559 weeks ago

About two years ago when I was in college I went to a lecture he gave, and as I was walking over there I spotted him on the street carrying a bag from the local independent bookstore. As I watched, he stopped in front of a trash can, took out the books (new hardcovers) from the bag, and one by one took off their dust jackets and threw them in the trash. Then he replaced the coverless books in his bag and went on his way.

The lecture was, as I should have expected, fairly silly and packed with young bearded men wearing tiny round glasses.

4 replies · active 559 weeks ago

+23 Vote up Vote down

lizdepriest 129p · 559 weeks ago

at least 2/3 Mallory posts me me feel like I am doing exactly the WRONG THINGS with all the theory and literature I've studied.

+21 Vote up Vote down

RoyaltheArtist 140p · 559 weeks ago

I think this image explains everything http://www.american-buddha.com/pervertguidescreen...

2 replies · active 559 weeks ago

+15 Vote up Vote down

icebergmama 113p · 559 weeks ago

I have literally no idea who this guy is, but this poem is 1000% perfect

+15 Vote up Vote down

Fluffernutter 111p · 559 weeks ago

THIS IS EVERYTHING.

(And theory is ruining my life. I'm convinced that by the time I am 40, I will look just like Slavoj but with bigger boobs.)

+45 Vote up Vote down

winterbymorning 133p · 559 weeks ago

I had a self-described Marxist prof in college who once told us that he took the street numbers off the front of his house so that the government wouldn't know where he lived.

3 replies · active 559 weeks ago

+36 Vote up Vote down

GruntledDave 115p · 559 weeks ago

"Even your haircut misreads Hegel" is my new go-to insult for my fellow philosopher friends.

+26 Vote up Vote down

grumblyqueer 139p · 559 weeks ago

If the description of a thing kills the thing then isn't he just, like,
killing his entire philosophy
including the very idea that words kill things
by describing said phenomenon?

1 reply · active 559 weeks ago

+8 Vote up Vote down

RoseCamelia 123p · 559 weeks ago

Abercrombie & Fitch. HA! The tags get me every time.

+36 Vote up Vote down

sorrycassandra 116p · 559 weeks ago

Slavoj Žižek
your hair is as you wish your students were:
it is trying to off itself
rather than ask for your help

+26 Vote up Vote down

ladyimogen 112p · 559 weeks ago

Adding
"your haircut
is murder
of your head"
to the next line of the toast pillow embroidery kits.

+7 Vote up Vote down

Marizane 114p · 559 weeks ago

Re: the tag, I don’t think it being laziness makes it NOT plagiarizing. In fact, I would rather argue that plagiarizing exists only as a subset of laziness. Like the square-rectangle thing, all plagiarizing is laziness, but not all laziness is plagiarizing. I mean, what other possible reason is there to plagiarize? I suppose I can theoretically imagine someone plagiarizing because they think they are too stupid to come up with anything better themselves but…I can think of almost no people who would admit to being that stupid?

1 reply · active 559 weeks ago

+17 Vote up Vote down

isabellebleu · 559 weeks ago

"being a Marxist
is no excuse
for not looking your best"
I'm silk-screening it onto something, SOMETHING, stat

1 reply · active 559 weeks ago

+3 Vote up Vote down

sparestrange 2p · 559 weeks ago

In other Zizek news, for the 20th Anniversary of Forrest Gump someone on Buzzfeed recently plagiarized (a tribute?) Zizek's opinion of the movie "Forrest Gump" -- i.e. Gump as the perfect subject of ideology, in a cynical age wherein ideology is free to reveal its constitutive idiocy with impunity -- but with fewer syllables because Buzzfeed. Oh my, the comments section. Pure popcorn.

+2 Vote up Vote down

Honggweilo · 550 weeks ago

Engels wrote tons of letters on proper grooming of facial hair
https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/18...

+1 Vote up Vote down

Womens Health Forum 63p · 483 weeks ago

Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has been a visiting professor at, among others, the University of Chicago, Columbia, London Consortium, Princeton, The New School, the European Graduate School, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Irvine and the University of Michigan. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London.

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+1 Vote up Vote down

Womens Health Forum 63p · 483 weeks ago

Žižek's early career was hampered by the political environment of 1970s Yugoslavia. In 1975, he was prevented from gaining a post at the University of Ljubljana after his Master's thesis was deemed to be politically suspect. He spent the next few years undertaking national service in the Yugoslav army and eventually became involved with a group of Slovenian scholars whose theoretical focus was on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan.

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