Anthropogenesis & the Human Animal

In his words 4

“There is no human animal. If there is a lesson of psychoanalysis, it is that the American Constitution is wrong — it's not in our nature the pursuit of happiness.”
1:37:31 Confronting Humanity & The Post-Modern · death drive negates the human animal

“There is no human animal. We humans in our nature itself, we don't strive for balance, happiness and so on — we sabotage ourselves all the time.”
1:04:54 The Animal Doesn’t Exist · no baseline human animal / drive as constitutive

“My reproach to Badiou is exactly the opposite one: there is no human animal.”
~55:53 The Big Other and The Event of Subjectivity · critique of Badiou's human animal via the death drive

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

anecdote · in 2 of its talks

Algorithm predicting Trump voters' 'true' voting intentions

American researchers followed Trump voters, registered their opinions and habits, and found the machine not only predicted how they would vote but also how they should vote 'in accordance with their own true convictions', arguing the machine made better decisions.

example · in 2 of its talks

Kant on Revolution

Kant’s paradox that a revolution is illegal, but if it succeeds and establishes a new legal order, it becomes prohibited to rebel against it, showing how outcomes retroactively validate means.

example · in 2 of its talks

Oedipus and self-fulfilling prophecy

Oedipus's parents, trying to avert the oracle, send him away, which sets in motion the very events predicted. Had they ignored the prophecy, there would have been no Oedipus complex.

example · in 2 of its talks

Angela Merkel as the only true German nationalist

Žižek credits Alenka Zupancic with the rhetorical move: Merkel, by welcoming immigrants, shows more confidence in German strength than the panicking Alternative for Germany. True nationalism is open, xenophobic nationalism is weakness.

anecdote · in 2 of its talks

Roma girl and arranged marriage in Slovenia

A Roma girl in Slovenia escaped to police claiming her father sold her into an arranged marriage; the Roma community leader argued this practice is essential to their way of life's reproduction, removing it destroys them as a community. Žižek presents this as a genuine deadloc…

anecdote · in 2 of its talks

Napoleon takes the crown from the Pope

Napoleon takes the crown from the Pope and places it on his own head; the Pope tells him he will fail at ruining Christianity because 'we Catholic institution have been trying to do this for years and didn't succeed'.

Stalin's dialectical synthesis on money in communism2 Amazon Kindle data tracking1 Nazi ethics book and Karadžić, inner life as enabling atrocity1 Monsieur de La Palice dying1 Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation2 Santa Claus Belief2 Chaplin / The Great Dictator and the ominous voice1 Scottish kilts invented in the 19th century1 The New Guinea Death Dance1 Chesterton on man as stranger on earth1

Where it comes up 14

14 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

Populism as a way to disavow social antagonism2017-05-24 · 2:24:54

29:47 domestication of wild animal culture

… order to establish this new mode of relating to our environment, a radical politico-economic change is necessary, what Sloterdijk calls the domestication of the wild animal culture.

Confronting Humanity & The Post-Modern2009 · 2:04:53

1:34:23 human animal

sense decadence and so on, human animal.

Courage of Hopelessness2017-03-24 · 2:12:13

24:55 domestication of wild animal culture

… What Sloterdijk calls the domestication of the wild animal culture.

Freedom – For Whom? To do What?2014-11-10 · 2:03:03

1:08:57 human animal

… that the topic of the new art is something he called with a strange word, of course I know what it means but strange what he means by it, *humanus*, which he simply means all the ridiculous particularities of our ordinary lives: our stupid misunderstandings, struggles, small personal tragedies, comic confusions, all this what we say ordinary life.

The Animal Doesn’t Exist2011-12-16 · 1:57:52

1:51:20 human animal

… lve into a dialectic beyond if we come as humans to understand or admit, risk admitting this ethnocentric type of categorization of the non-human animal, the human animal.