Europe, the Enlightenment Legacy & Eurocentrism
Not the Brussels bureaucracy but a Hegelian-inflected notion of Europe as the carrier of the emancipatory universalist legacy (feminism, workers' rights, Enlightenment reason) that Žižek insists is still worth defending.
In his words 5
“Nobody knows. What does the woman want? And I claim it's the same today. Nobody wants Europe, especially itself doesn't know what it wants.”8:42 The Role of Culture in Knowledge Society · Europe's identity crisis / Was will Europa
“Even those who criticize Eurocentrism usually do it by strictly relying on emancipatory rhetoric developed as part of European enlightenment.”35:28 Disorder Under Heaven · self-defeating anti-Eurocentrism
“Even when we criticize Europe and Eurocentrism, are you aware that most of the logic of the arguments is European, is taken from European enlightenment?”1:38:29 The Flight of Minerva in the City of God · universalism embedded in critique of Eurocentrism
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
Heydrich 1936 letter on Jewish emigration to Palestine
Reinhard Heydrich wrote approvingly of helping Jews emigrate to Palestine, seeing it as consistent with antisemitic goals of removing Jews from Germany, showing that the current far-right celebration of Netanyahu's call for diaspora Jews to move to Israel reproduces this same …
Havel's greengrocer
From Havel's Power of the Powerless: a shopkeeper puts a 'workers of the world unite' sign in his window he doesn't believe, and the system persists through this mass ritual participation in known falsehood.
Haiti: La Marseillaise and Polish soldiers
When Napoleon's army approached the Haitian revolutionary forces to re-enslave them, the black freed slaves were singing La Marseillaise. Thousands of Polish soldiers in the French army, recognizing the song, asked themselves if they were on the right side, and switched sides.
Bolivia and Álvaro García Linera
García Linera told Žižek that organizing 'the multitude' via tribal connections in Bolivia resulted in corruption and tribal bosses seeking enrichment, proving that 'zero level of politicization' without state alienation is an illusion.
Land Rover advertising evolution
Žižek traces three historical stages of advertising logic using Land Rover as the example: first, appeal to real properties (fuel efficiency, terrain); second, status symbol ('keeping up with the Joneses'); third, subjective experience ('drive to the countryside and feel free …
Central African Republic oil and French intervention
Oil was discovered in the Muslim northeast of Central African Republic. France, despite its anti-fundamentalist rhetoric, made a deal with the Muslim minority, staged a 'primordial ethnic rebellion', allowed Muslims to occupy the capital, then intervened militarily to protect …
Where it comes up 27
30 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there