badtakes [he/him]
I disagree that “identity” is distancing from essentialism because we use descriptors all the time without implying that those characteristics are essential. People don’t need to say “Bob identifies as a teacher” in order to clarify that they belive that teacher isn’t an essential quality of Bob. I thought the opposite, that identity is sanitizing hierarchies like race and gender by implying that an individual is not coerced into comforming to a certain social category. Other replies in this thread prove the point perfectly. This is because “identity” here is often associated with “identify”, and with “identify” it suggests that the subject is choosing the social category they belong in and accepts all the connotations that come with it. Its emblemic of the kind of amoral “postmodernism” where the status quo is simply deconstructed neutrally with the intention to describe, lacking a strong critique or even a recognition of the grave injustice of the situation. Honestly, I get the impression that the kind of academics who donate to Kamala’s campaign simply don’t care and are very comfortable with the status quo.
Obviously this doesn’t discredit the great contributions zizek has made to leftist theory and philosophy, but man this guy is a deranged grifter sometimes
crazy theory: It appears on the surface that the majority of the Russian land forces have not committed to the offensive, yet they are attacking everywhere across ukraine. This is strange because if russia didnt want to commit major forces in this war, then they wouldve done something much smaller in ldnr. Yet everything indicates this is a full blown invasion of the entirety of Ukraine. I think that what is actually happening is that through the initial airstrikes and electronic warfare, ukrainian c4isr is completely fucked and they are essentially blind. Then, the majority of russian forces have gone directly through the frontlines and are encircling and cutting off the bulk of ukrainians currently thinking they are fighting the main russian forces on the frontline.
evidence: russian troops popping up out of nowhere, such as in lviv https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3413590-russian-paratroopers-land-in-lviv-region-trying-to-take-control-of-local-helicopter-unit.html
Ukraine is being steamrolled in a manner similar to the gulf war. Russia will take the entirety of Ukraine.