No Shangri-La Part II

No Shangri-La Part II

Awhile ago I posted a link to a letter written into the LRB by Slavoj Žižek entitled, “No Shangri-La,” in which Žižek criticizes the Western media and the Tibetan solidarity campaign for portraying a distorted and quixotic picture of pre-1949 Tibet, a vision Žižek argues is essentially libidinal (you can find his other Tibet-related pieces here and here). This caused something of an academic kerfuffle, with numerous scholars accusing Žižek of simply parroting the PRC’s propaganda (see Shego Jinpa, the University of Michigan’s Donald Lopez and Michel Thibaud, who somehow uses this as an opportunity to accuse Žižek of being a closet-Zionist).

To make what could otherwise be a long and somewhat unimportant story short, Žižek has written a short follow up letter to the LRB, available here. Needless to say, I’m sure the two Agent Coopers are very sad. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)