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.