Ethical Substance, Civility & Dogmatism
Despite his usual skepticism, he endorses its everyday-manners aspect, politeness, respect for others, respecting the rules, as exactly what the crisis demands now.
In his words 8
“The first rule of an egalitarian emancipatory politics should be: no shibboleth please.”7:29 Rules, Race and Mel Gibson · emancipatory politics and unwritten rules
“Trump does something that you cannot say is directly against the law, but it's obvious that, to use the standard expression, this is not how it was meant to be used.”~0:00 Reconstructing Communism: Part 4 SYSTEM—Disorder, in Heaven · Trump violating unwritten rules rather than explicit laws
“It was forbidden to criticize Stalin, but it was forbidden to announce publicly these prohibitions themselves.”15:50 The Flight of Minerva in the City of God · meta-prohibition and unwritten rules in Stalinist ideology
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
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…
Da Vinci Code / Da Vinci, sex displaced onto Jesus
In The Da Vinci Code there is no sex between the protagonists, but Jesus himself has to make love to cover for the absence of sex between Robert Langdon and the heroine. In Angels & Demons, sex present in the novel is removed from the film.
Goldwyn's New Clichés memo
Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, after reading that his films used too many clichés, immediately sent a memo to his scenario department demanding 'we urgently need new clichés.' Žižek uses this as a positive model for political reinvention.
Ahmadinejad at Columbia
At Columbia, Ahmadinejad's reply on homosexuals was translated as 'there are no homosexuals in Iran'; Iranian friends told Žižek he actually said they deal with it discreetly, not talking about it, the Old Testament logic of 'not in front of me'.
Stalinist prohibition of the prohibition
Under Stalinism it was prohibited to criticize Stalin, but it was even more prohibited to publicly state 'in our country you are not allowed to criticize Stalin', the rule that enforces the prohibition cannot itself be named.
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 32
32 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there