Reposting Ceasefire

A lot of friends recently started making references to Ceasefire magazine, so I thought I’d check it out. I enjoyed this reference to Adorno in an essay on Zizek – it reminded me of a point I made about the relationship between analysis and action in a blogpost a while back:

One should take part. Whoever restricts himself to thinking but does not get involved is weak, cowardly and virtually a traitor. This hostile cliché … The trouble with this view is that it results in the prohibition of thinking. Very little is needed to turn the resistance against repression repressively against those who – little as they might wish to glorify their state of being – do not desert the standpoint that they have come to occupy … One clings to action because of the impossibility of action. (Adorno – “Resignation”)

Žižek’s preference for contemplative thought over mindless action is supported above by Adorno’s scathing interpretation of those who fail to provide theory with enough room to breathe. Humour is Žižek’s theoretical praxis to be opposed to the sort of pseudo-activity that, according to Adorno, fails to admit “… to what degree it serves as a substitute for satisfaction, thus elevating itself to an end in itself … When the doors are barricaded, it is doubly important that thought not be interrupted.”