"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."*

Scott McLemee links to the first two installments of his Zizek Watch column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here, a passage from the second column:

And so in February, when BBC Radio broadcast a program called "The Art of Laziness," Mr. Zizek appeared on it as a uniquely qualified expert. He criticized programs that teach relaxation techniques. "If you look closely at their leaflets," he said, "they tell you first that we are hyperactive and should learn to withdraw. But next, the second paragraph, they always say: 'This way you will relax and be even more productive.'"

(This reminds me a bit of the advice so often doled out by women's mags: women should be self-sufficient, since that's what attracts men. Anyway, continuing:)

Alluding to the surrealist thinker Georges Bataille, Mr. Zizek denounced "the hidden economy of 'I am lazy a little bit so that I will work better.'" Instead, he offered the example of residents of Montenegro, an earthquake-prone area of the former Yugoslavia. The local ethnic stereotype is that inhabitants of the region are utterly shiftless.

"The zero-level standard joke about laziness is how a Montenegro guy masturbates," he said. "He digs a hole in the earth, puts his penis in, and waits for the earthquake." The pleasure that Montenegrins take in telling the joke seems to Mr. Zizek to be the correct attitude toward both laziness and political incorrectness.

*Edgar Bergen, via Charlie McCarthy

Posted by nchicha at April 19, 2004 04:05 PM