Open Letter to the
“authors of the book that focuses on the career of Slavoj Žižek” and the
“authors of the Manifesto counter-response to Slavoj Žižek”

Hello all!

First of all, you should know that Our Almighty Editora Nicol the Great has deemed me unworthy and kicked me out of both of her book projects. In this text I will describe her modus operandi and suggest that you withdraw from both of her projects. But the current scandal is just the occasion for the present analysis which can be used in other contexts as well.

1. U-turn in the Manifesto hijacked the crowd members’ motivations

Imagine a person gathering a crowd for the purpose of joining X and celebrating and defending X. This instigator introduces herself as a supporter of X, gains the trust of a number of people using this cover as a disguise, gives them hope to take part in a valuable effort, gathers them under her “project” and waits for a few weeks.

Then one day she suddenly declares that she has made “radical changes in the project” and given it “a new direction”. She is now announcing after the fact the expulsion of X from the project by herself, and she is also now commanding the same crowd to attack X as a matter of course. The crowd is faced with the dilemma to either follow her new command or disband. But disbanding now feels difficult because there is a fetishistic aspect of forming a crowd.

Voila! The instigator has given birth to malevolent temptations in all the members of the crowd that had joined her with the most benevolent intentions. Obviously, such an instigation is highly unethical, not to mention dangerous. In fact, there is a well-known word to denote this act. It’s called treason.

This is exactly what Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo did. She gathered a crowd to defend the universal value of Žižek’s European Manifesto along with Slavoj Žižek himself (under the title “Manifesto: A Struggle of Universalities”) and 17 days later she declared to her crowd that she took the liberty to personally expel Slavoj Žižek from the project without consultation and without any legitimate reason and that as their Editor she was now appointing the same crowd a brand new task: To attack Žižek’s European Manifesto (under the euphemism “counter-response” and the new title “The Real Manifesto: Non-European Responses to Slavoj Žižek”). This “new direction” was to be substantiated by Ian Parker who was to write a Foreword criticizing Žižek’s Eurocentrism.

Admittedly, there is some ambivalence in every love-hate relationship (hainamoration) but if we don’t exercise some control over such impulses how can we achieve any positive reasoning and how can we distinguish ourselves from a primal horde that suddenly turns their object of identification into a scapegoat and starts lynching him?

When I heard the news that our motivation to celebrate and defend Žižek was being hijacked to organize a treasonous attack against Žižek, this scandal warranted a forceful protest. But I did not do it. None of us did.

This is probably because we have “adapted” to the present “topsy-turvy world” and set our expectations of reasonable conduct so low that we are not surprised one bit even by a sudden top-down imposition of a 180° U-turn in the political stance of a project of which we are supposed to be the “authors”.

Nowadays, we are habitually expecting the “worst”, especially in the absence of a “father” to lay down the law. This is known as “father or worse” (père ou pire) or the decline of symbolic efficiency.

2. The hijack was instigated by the superego urge to excuse one’s erasure

So what remained after the 180° U-turn that sacrificed all the stakes in the effort? What remained is simply the superego injunction to “make a good contribution” to serve the big Other (“the project” or Nicol’s pleasure) or “beat it!” This must be familiar to you since it’s the essence of most social validation.

Please understand that Slavoj Žižek presents an easy target for those who are infected by the superego virus, because as a philosopher and as a person he is just too honest and too kind to propagate and rely on this ominous contamination. On the other hand, this negative correlation guarantees that his expulsion will function by default as an invitation for the members of the witnessing crowd to join the superego club.

Nicol’s U-turn was disguised as a “permission to criticize Žižek” but in fact it was an invitation to enjoy Žižek’s erasure (with a tinge of sadism), which actually amounted to a demand to excuse Žižek’s erasure, and to excuse one’s own erasure along with him. About Žižek’s expulsion her ultimate reference is “private reasons” which can only be excuses, not reasons. Taking refuge in private excuses can only feed one’s ego with the poison of the superego, and compound the disavowals beginning from the original erasure of Žižek, which was the entire purpose of her U-turn/hijack.

There is no longer any public value in serving this big Other. Since Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo is “the one who” made the U-turn and committed the original erasure, and her crowd is re-defined as “The ones who follow Nicol” after the U-turn and the original erasure, this crowd can only serve her private big Other. The supposed “authors” in these projects are now reduced to her private instruments. This might be an “optimal” state of affairs for some opportunists but it’s perverted to the core.

3. Editor’s delusion: “I am the one who … (-se pleasure my authors serve)”

So what did I do instead of protesting the hijack? I simply asked Nicol to let me read Ian Parker’s Foreword before submitting my final text, so that I may have some idea about what is going on. I did not reject out of hand the idea that this Foreword might justify her U-turn at least in a relative sense, and I thought I always had the option to leave the project before it’s too late [1].

In response, she swiftly declared me “impertinent” to ask for any such thing and instantly revoked my supposed “authorship” since “she doesn’t like my position”: This referred to either my audacity to ask to know something about the Foreword, or my uncritical Žižekian Eurocentrism, or both [2].

In retrospect, I see that this response was to be expected: After being allowed to expel Slavoj Žizek without any protest from the crowd who were effectively forced to witness this original erasure, why would she hesitate one millisecond to expel any of the rest of us, beginning from those who have the greatest fidelity to the Žižekian cause?

But honestly, telling someone in private “I’m in charge and I don’t like you and therefore you’re out” and when this improper conduct is heard by other people, exclaiming “Privacy violation!” [3] is not exercising power but just being an asshole. It just means that she is forcing the “authors” to serve her pleasure, and a perverted one at that.

In any case, her course of action signals that she expects absolute faith in her projects with zero information and no right to speak on the part of the “authors”. This means that everyone is already “out” with respect to having any say in the projects. She will not hesitate to kick you out too, if you are so careless to think of yourself as a “real author” and raise any legitimate concern.

4. The disavowal of the lack in the Editor

Despite appearances, she has never deemed you an “author”. She views you at most as a “content creator” or “contributor”. In these conditions, you can never establish any symbolic link through these “projects” (apart from analysing their scandals) because your engagement is serving merely the imaginary purposes of her ego. This is exactly what was guaranteed by her U-turn/hijack.

Thus her projects are driven purely by her private superego. They are incompatible with any public use of reason. The sad fact is that she is only ever able to view the groups of “authors” that she gathers around herself as her private instruments. In plain terms, she is abusing her power.

She also revealed her personal distaste with Žižekian authors [4]: “You are a friend of Slavoj!!!! (…) I am not interested in continuing to work with Slavoj’s friends.” After declaring her repulsion to Žižek’s friends, she also revoked my supposed “authorship” in the book she was supposedly dedicating to the work of Slavoj Žižek, ironically titled “how to think straight in a topsy-turvy world” (to be fair, the book officially “focuses on the career of Slavoj Žižek”, it is not clarified whether this focus is benevolent or malevolent). This madness can only be explained by the irrational contamination of the superego.

Honestly, we joined these projects not out of some reverence to almighty Nicol but out of a common will to support and celebrate the work of Slavoj Žižek. If the person in charge of this operation eventually ended up hating Žižek’s friends and kicking Žižek out of her project (which is not improbable since most of the population would rather call a philosopher or a theorist “smartass” as they don’t have the courage to think what (s)he has to say), then why don’t we just leave this person to her own devices?

As I often say: Will is the ground of authorization. Since she has turned against our common will and betrayed it, she can no longer have any authority over us. How long are we going to continue to disavow the lack in the Editor and imagine that the Editor has a phallus?

Seriously, who does Nicol think she is, forcing a Žižekian crowd to witness her personal expulsion of Žižek and moreover commanding them to attack Žižek? And she did all of this as a show of arbitrary power, without any valid reason or explanation. We were to be enchanted by the mere power of her words and presence. What delusion of grandeur is this? What impertinence (to use the word correctly)?

5. Conclusion

I wrote the following text to reveal her modus operandi: “A private reason is no reason at all”

She is right to feel threatened by the truth since she is in the business of privatizing reason by persuading people to excuse their own erasure.

To conclude, as you can see, her book projects are obviously not worthy of your contributions. Since she doesn’t even view you as an “author” that has any stake or say in her projects, the best course of action will be to withdraw from these projects. If you have already written a text, you can always submit it to Žižekian Analysis, which is what I did with my own texts: “Call for Blog Posts”

Finally, let me share what I would contribute to the books if they weren’t hijacked by the superego:

About Žižek:

“The Separation of Authorization (Symbolic Suture) from Embodiment (Real Suture)”

“Scare Quotes and Stress Quotes: Ego, Superego, Symptom of Words”

About Eurocentrism:

“The latcher from the world-symptom Neurope”

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] This is all I wrote to Nicol:

“Hello! Since I myself am not critical of Zizek’s Eurocentrism, I would like to read Parker’s Foreword as soon as it’s ready, and perhaps update my text accordingly, in case I might be interpreted as supporting Parker against Slavoj in whatever criticism Parker might be making.”

[2] Nicol wrote this in response, notice the phrase “I am the one who”:

“Hello Isik.

I received your email and I find it a great impertinence to both my work and Ian’s work.

What makes you think you might have a preference for editorial deadlines?
Authors will have their deadline for writing their texts, Ian his deadlines for adding the Foreword and David his time for the Epilogue.

I am the one who will review those details. Your message is extremely violent. It is not a race against Zizek. I love and respect Slavoj very much. Moreover, I admire his work. Criticizing, criticizing his work is not bad.

Since I don’t like your position. I prefer not to work with you on this paper. Out of respect for Ian’s work and my work.

Success in your projects.”

[3] I informed Ian Parker that Nicol was using his name and promised Foreword to legitimize her arbitrary expulsion of Slavoj Žižek and me, sharing the conversation above. Nicol exclaimed in response: “why are you sharing information and a personal conversation?” She should know that one has the right to disclose a private correspondence insofar as it involves abuses of power with scandalous public consequences.

[4] In the correspondence that included Ian Parker.