i dont hate zizek, in fact I do think many of his essays are very worthwhile to read, but i find in a more general sense anything derived from that Lacan thread of thinking tends to be either nonsense or utterly derived to the point of nonsense. The issue I have with Lacan is half his stuff is complete and utter nonsense and the other half is somewhat reasonable, but depends on the bs in its extrapolation in order to be justified by him. A lot of it is also just extrapolated from Freud who I similarly think is tier. The entire thread stemming from Lacan is basically how to get to this subgenre of "leftist" writing which is just: "here's a moderate-level cultural a***ysis of a social trend. here is a popular form of media. here is how these pathologies fit into this tv show on disney channel. this is why nothing will change anytime soon."

Nahh i wouldn't say that about freud at all, lot of his theories were on some looney shyt but a lot of it also wasn't, and just in the field of psychology psychoanalysis itself and in particular psychodynamic therapy have proven to have high efficacy

I've read about lacan (none of his own works tho) and i thought most of it made sense tbh, of course much of it is non-falsifiable as with friend, but i don't think that's really the end all be all

I agree with your last point tho, too many western leftists have overemphasized the role of ideology about why revolution hasn't taken place in the West and give ideology too much credit in how it would supposedly make any change impossible

I don't have as much of an issue with Freud himself, I think some of Freud is valid, but I don't think just because something works in psychotherapy means it's necessarily fully meant to extrapolated to wider societal implication; it's through Lacan directly that we get to the nonsense we see in modern academia like "the reason male dominated societies build skyscrapers is because of the attachment to the phallus, because it resembles an erect p****" type stuff. All of that is directly from Lacan.

I don't think there's necessarily any reason to say their ideas don't have any relevance outside of psychology, and I don't think that what you said is anything inherent to Lacanian social a***yses and more so a problem of such an a***ysis from an idealist point of view.

the issue i take is mainly (w/ Lacan's works) that it doesn't exist in a vacuum, almost everything that followed went in that direction, so even if there is a higher proportion validity in the original work, it doesn't lead to much beyond that, so you're stuck with only having the basic understanding to interface with nonsense (at least imo); it's not necessarily a springboard to lead to other more interesting theory - most of the interesting successors from there can just be read by themselves w/o that point of reference (again at least imo). To me, it'd be like thinking of a religious scripture separate from the religion itself, there might be interesting stuff in the former, but in practicality it always exists tied to the latter, and it's hard to disassociate when you're looking into any means of further extrapolation.
With the psychology thing (this is more toward Freud), it's more that I think just because something is valid in certain contexts doesn't mean it's infinitely valid. I think the environment and system of psychotherapy is different than a macro-system socially for example, but much of the focus of works outside of individual psychological study is trying to pathologize conditions or behaviors solely within that realm, which I feel is often a red herring or misplacement of the origins of said behavior (which as you said yourself is because much is non-falsifiable by nature)

I don't think it's necessarily true that application of Freud's theories outside of psychology is going to be pathologizing social ills that are better understood in other ways, when these psychological terms are used it's not necessarily meant in that sense. Many psychological pathologies are simply behaviors or thought patterns that are present in everybody and only become pathological when its severity reaches a certain point, and some terms were even used in a nom-psychological context before it was adopted in psychology, like the term fetish for example.

I think there's definitely a problem with it when you get weird ideas like the ones about skyscrapers lol, but again isn't that more of a problem with idealism than anything inherent to the application of ideas from psychoanalysis outside of its original clinical context

that's fair, I just think personally I look at things from their origin to what they're connected to in a wider sense since I don't consider things in a vacuum, and generally I associate Freud & Lacan more with the ridiculousness of their successors which devalues much of the original work imo

Big brains here

phallic structures

Skyscrapers were made because they resemble p****es

Agree with most but skyscrapers are built for economic efficiency and architectural reasons the phallic shape is not purposeful. I only say this cause I think those types of hypotheses are what give this type of philosophy a bad rep

Add being in or close to a skyscraper list of things men cant do

Why americans think republic means denocracy but not completely democracy

can you @ me instead of doing this weird sub-tweet thing on a forum you keep doing to me i'm fine with engaging with people who disagree with me

They do it to everyone. I'm doing it to you right now.

ppl on this forum really be imagining a full spectrum of your entire background, full set of political and social beliefs, and entirety of your socioeconomic status and origin off of half of a sarcastic remark in a unrelated conversation then deciding to soft block you for it

How the f*** do people seriously say that Fidel Castro was a dictator and killed and imprisoned people

i have to wonder what cuba would look like if the US didn't commit protracted economic warfare against it for like over half a century

No english subs

I think youtube actually has pretty decent subtitles

"Automatic Subtitles"

kropfpolisci.com/essay.exam.gov.in.the.future.pdf

my polisci final

Lenin's life just a revenge movie