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<h1 class="css-19v093x">Slavoj Žižek’s Virulent Polemic
Against Covid-19, and Stuff!</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-1q5ec3n">John
Kendall Hawkins</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">counterpunch.org</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">11 min</div>
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<blockquote>
<p>“I used to be Deleuzanal, but, now, I’m
not Saussure.”</p>
<p>– Toilet stall wall riddle, next to <em>Nietzsche
Is Peachy</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Someone must have called Slavoj on his
Radphone in the middle of the night and said
go over to your window and look up at the
sky; he did, and there it was: the
Rad-Signal lighting up a silver Z. Some
thought it was a call for Zorro; some said
Zarathustra. Slavoj is a little bit of both.
The voice on the phone continued on
loudspeaker, “There’s a virus afoot, Slavoj,
we need your wisdom.” He thanked the caller,
an anxious acolyte, and hung up the phone.
He climbed out of his phone-booth pajamas
and raced over to his word processor and
typed like a maniac on a mission from the
entity formerly known as God.</p>
<p>Because he’s a genius, he was finished in
an hour, saved the pdf, and sent it to his
publisher: <em>Pandemic!</em> <em>Covid-19
Shakes the World</em>. The exclamation
mark there to build up the threat he faced.
Could this be his kryptonite?! Or his finest
philosophical hour? The world waited for the
master’s work with baited breath. Read it
and seep.</p>
<p>In his introduction, Slavoj Žižek starts
off <em>Pandemic!</em> by quoting from the
Bible, John 20:17, “Noli me tangere,” the
one where Jesus has Arisen and Mary Magdalen
recognizes him and comes a-running to give
him a hug, and he says,”Whoa, don’t touch
the threads, Mary. I’m a Made man now.” Or,
he has a virus; maybe her simplex has rubbed
off. We’re all herpes hosts; it erupts once
in a blue moon, like original sin, to remind
us we still have moral work to do. Žižek
says we mustn’t touch each other, but, at
the same time, if we use this historical
moment properly, “there is a hope that
corporeal distancing will even strengthen
the intensity of our link with others.”</p>
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