Had I been allowed to review Slavoj Zizek’s new book, Violence, at greater length than I did, I would have been able to say more, and in particular, more on the following point:

One might balk especially at Žižek’s labelling of murder and torture as “subjective violence” (what is not objective about them?), though it’s clear that, rather than seeking to trivialise them, Žižek is clearing rhetorical space for his other violences.

To expand: in a way, to call killing “subjective violence” is to invite the kind of idiotic criticism of Zizek that says he loves totalitarianism and doesn’t care about mass murder, etc, etc; which view is plainly untenable as soon as one bothers to read any of his books. But I do think his terminology is likely to be rhetorically self-defeating. continued »

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The admirable Mariella Frostrup writes:

I’m thinking of compiling a collection of my favourite euphemisms.

Good idea!

The vogue for them among the chattering classes should guarantee a bestseller

I wish. Anyway, what are some of Mariella’s favourite euphemisms?

‘Extraordinary rendition’ is a joy, particularly because it’s often explained as ‘like ordinary rendition, only extraordinary’. You’ll agree that makes things so much clearer!

I wish I had known that while I was writing the section about “extraordinary rendition” in Unspeak. What a delicious fact, that it is often explained as “like ordinary rendition, only extraordinary”. But hang on, is it really a fact? Who has ever explained it in this way? Google doesn’t know. But probably Mariella has resources that exceed Google’s.

Anyway, the topical example that apparently prompted Mariella’s column is “subprime”: continued »

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Spare a thought for the polar bear. Not only is it slandered as “one of nature’s most vicious beasts” by global-warming “sceptic” Brendan O’Neill¹, it is also now at the centre of a long-running philosophical/scientific debate occurring in the august pages of the London Review of Books.

Jerry Fodor, of whose writing on the philosophy of mind I have long been an admirer, there published an article on evolution last October called Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings. After reading it a couple of times I found myself scratching my head, wondering what exactly he was getting at. I felt slightly better after a variety of biologists and philosophers and other responders to the LRB letters pages in subsequent issues also signalled their uncertainty as to what exactly he was getting at. But we can be sure that it involved polar bears. continued »

1. Who, on the matter of global warming, cites the business-friendly political scientist Björn Lomborg, always a revealing sign. ↩

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On Saturday the Guardian printed my review of Daniel Johnson’s White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard, which adds another datapoint to our thinking about the uses of the phrase “moral clarity”, Johnson’s thinking on international relations having been morally clarified by such window-cleaners as Mark Steyn. It’s also interesting to compare the moral clarity of Johnson’s view of the Cold War with a line I recently cited from Terry Eagleton’s Ideology (now updated with extra Amis-bashing).

Johnson:

The power struggle between East and West had also been a battle between ideology and truth.

Eagleton:

To seek some humble, pragmatic political goal, such as bringing down the democratically elected government of Chile, is a question of adapting oneself realistically to the facts; to send one’s tanks into Czechoslovakia is an instance of ideological fanaticism.

Happy New Year!

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