Happy new year, dear blog readers!

I haven’t posted since last year, yes. Took a little break. But, no worries, here I am back to get it in, in 2011!

First post of the year, a bit about Wikileaks by the homie, Slavoj Zizek.

It’s a fun and interesting read about the whole dripping drama of secrets and lies. He even starts with a bit about The Dark Knight. Who doesn’t love a movie-made-into-reality example?

Interestingly enough, Zizek also argues that secrets and lies do make a international polity polite. The whole sensationalized epic that is Wikileaks and Julian the A., is really about a public shaming, confirming what we’ve known and tolerate and concede to. That is, capitalism is ruining everyone’s lives. Well, except for the few elites. But they know that we know that they know.

Zizek says, “What WikiLeaks threatens is the formal functioning of power.” An interesting argument he makes is that Wikileaks’ threat isn’t the information, it is the subversive and non-normative way in which Assange and his organization decided to challenge power.

Why I wanted to post this article is really to start off a discussion about Zizek’s closing sentence:

Through actions like the WikiLeaks disclosures, the shame – our shame for tolerating such power over us – is made more shameful by being publicised. When the US intervenes in Iraq to bring secular democracy, and the result is the strengthening of religious fundamentalism and a much stronger Iran, this is not the tragic mistake of a sincere agent, but the case of a cynical trickster being beaten at his own game.

What do you think, dear reader?