Concrete Universality & The Exception

In his words 40

“history is history of universalities — history means precisely there is no metalanguage”
36:00 The Interaction with the Other in Hegel · historicity and concrete universality

“every universality is colored by a specific particular species of itself which gives the tone of the entire universality”
10:06 Universality: Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Marx · concrete universality; the color of universalism

“Only with capitalism labor becomes universal in real practice.”
20:28 Modalities of the Absolute · concrete universality of labor under capitalism

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

joke · in 21 of its talks

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.

example · in 12 of its talks

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…

anecdote · in 14 of its talks

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.

anecdote · in 12 of its talks

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…

example · in 11 of its talks

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.

example · in 9 of its talks

Haiti Constitution: all citizens are black

The 1804 Haitian constitution declared Haiti a black republic but stipulated that all citizens, regardless of skin color, were black. Žižek holds this up as a model for how particular identity can be universalized without erasing difference.

Afghanistan: from secular to fundamentalist8 Kansas: from populist left to Bible Belt7 Dinner invitation: paying the bill ritual7 Stalinist prohibition of the prohibition7 Antigone rewritten, three alternate scenarios7 Gulag birthday telegram to Stalin7 Jewish 'nobody' joke / synagogue self-humiliation6 Kurosawa's Hamlet6 Srebrenica 'with or without bones' land joke6 Brassed Off coffee invitation6

Where it comes up 142

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

Slavoj Zizek: COVID, Tech Billionaires, Racism, and So On — 2021 Interview2021-01-16 · 1:22:13

7:55 concrete universality

… little bit of a Hegelian political, don’t be afraid, reflection, this is how I understand, you see, the political use of Hegel's notion of concrete universality.

9:30 false universality

… While when they say, apparently in a neutral way, all lives matter, no, they secretly—this all is a false universality—they really mean black middle-class value which are still hegemonic matter.

1:11:26 historicist nominalism

… He is the true in this critical sense, he is the true historicist relativist.

+2 more in this talk

Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 4pub. 2018-11-28 · 2:10:29

38:49 concrete universality

… You know, that’s the problem that Kieślowski encountered when I will talk about concrete universality more, with pornography.

1:45:46 false universality

… What Hegel calls "abstract universality" would be the simple logic of universality and specific differences.

1:50:42 more X than X themselves

… state itself." The paradox is the same as, you know, those wonderful ethnic clichés when sometimes one claims of some group that they are "more X than X themselves." For example, the notion of misers of people who don't want to spend money is—I don't know if it's also with you here in England, but in Continental Europe it’s Scots, Scotland, no? Okay.

A Defense of Universalism2014-12-12 · 1:24:09

~1:27:41 concrete universality

is for me actual only the universality of struggle. It's not this humanist universality and so on and so on. But I will I will take your point. Can you even in a way can you even in a way I would really I'm not …

1:26:58 universality of struggle

… No, the only universality I recognize is the universality of struggle and it works wonderfully.

42:38 universality for itself

… Then there is another absolutely crucial point by Marx that the distinction between universality in itself and universality for itself (a Hegelian distinction).

Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 9 (Q & A)pub. 2018-11-29 · 1:59:32

10:35 concrete universality

… This is for me what I was trying in a confused way maybe to articulate as the lesson of Hegel's concrete universality, that each particular element as it were has its own universality so that the struggle is never a struggle of particulars within universality.

1:19:14 false universality

… But what I nonetheless claiming is that what they share is nonetheless this idea of singular universality in to put it very simply this idea that taking side, partiality, one-sidedness...

Modalities of the Absolute2018-11-05 · 2:01:44

13:23 concrete universality

… I will then towards the end, if you survive this, I will go a little bit to explain the Hegelian notion of concrete universality into figures like Tom Cruise and why are they idiots and so on.

35:56 false universality

… Abstract universality is something that simply holds for all epochs.