Aufhebung (Sublation) & Determinate Negation
Žižek reinterprets Hegel's negation of negation not as a return to higher positivity but as the productive failure when a negation does not fully succeed, illustrated by the master-slave dialectic's constitutive compromise.
In his words 40
“to save what is worth saving in liberalism, we will have to go a step further, beyond liberalism.”1:24:20 On Apocalyptic Times · Aufhebung of liberalism
“Capitalism comes with many institutions. To really learn what part of this we are ready as it were to sacrifice—what we don't want—it's much more difficult.”1:07:09 The Deadlock · the difficulty of determinate negation of capitalism
“Sorry but we have run out of cream but we still have milk. Can I then bring you coffee without milk? This is what Hegelian dialectics is called.”1:12:29 Screening Thought · coffee without cream / determinate negation
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
coffee without cream / coffee without milk
A customer orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they have no cream but can offer coffee without milk. Even though the result is identical, the absent supplement matters, Hegelian negativity in a joke.
Brassed Off coffee invitation
A woman invites a man up for coffee; he says he doesn't like coffee; she says she has none, the double withdrawal of coffee produces erotic meaning far more charged than a direct proposition.
Starbucks ethical consumerism
Buying a Starbucks cappuccino is sold as supporting Guatemalan organic farmers and saving the planet; the owner appeared like Anthony Giddens calling Starbucks an ersatz place of collective experience. The sin of consumerism and its redemption are packaged together in the same…
Malcolm X and the loss of roots as emancipatory starting point
Malcolm X (the X standing for lost African roots) refused the game of searching for original African identity (à la Roots) and instead proposed using the dispossession of roots as a chance to build a new, freer universality, which is why he became a Muslim (the Umma as communi…
Stalin's dialectical synthesis on money in communism
Left radicals (Trotskyists) say no money in communism, Bukharin says money is natural; Stalin's dialectical 'synthesis', in communism there will be money and there will not be money: some people will have money, others will not.
Native Americans prefer 'Indians'
A Native American man in Missoula, Montana told Žižek he prefers 'Indian' over 'Native American' because 'at least that is a monument to white man's stupidity', and proceeded to demolish the left-liberal image of indigenous people as ecologically holistic, saying they burned m…
Where it comes up 173
281 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there