Commodity Fetishism & Real Abstraction
Žižek insists Marx's commodity fetishism is not naïve illusion but an illusion embodied in social practice: you can be cynically disbelieving yet still act as if you believe in the market's magic.
In his words 26
“In the social field, as if is the thing itself. Abstraction is actual in the life of exchange.”23:52 Environment, Identity and Multiculturalism · real abstraction / performativity is actuality
“It's not only that universality is often an empty universality which secretly privileges a certain particularity. Also the contrary holds: when I think I'm just within a particular experience, I am effectively much more universal than I think I am.”20:16 The Silent Voice of a new Beginning · real abstraction / double movement of universality
“Ideology is not only in this that it's a universality which covers its own historical particular character — capitalism is much more universal than it may appear, market is universality in practice.”1:19:56 Ideology as Augmented Reality · real abstraction / capitalism as practical universality
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
Niels Bohr's horseshoe
Niels Bohr had a horseshoe on his country-house door; when a scientist friend asked why a scientist would keep a superstitious charm, Bohr answered 'I was told it works even if you don't believe in it', Žižek's model for ideology today.
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.
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…
V for Vendetta morning after
In the final scene of V for Vendetta thousands of unarmed Londoners march on parliament and the people take over; Žižek says he would sell his mother into slavery to see Part 2, what happens the day after the victory.
Santa Claus Belief
Parents deny believing in Santa while buying presents; children deny believing while pretending so as not to disappoint parents. No one believes in the first person yet the ritual functions perfectly.
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 183
217 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there