Obscene Underside of Power & Dirty Jokes

In his words 29

“It wasn't only prohibited to criticize Stalin. It was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition.”
54:33 Fear Thy Neighbor as Thyself · double prohibition / obscene underside of power

“What appears to be a secret resistance to power, all the obscenities, dirty jokes and so on, is the way power is sustained.”
15:31 The Uses and Misuses of Violence · obscene underside as support of power

“No human rights without Guantanamo.”
1:20:37 Neurosciences and Freedom · inherent transgression: liberal rights require an obscene underside

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

anecdote · in 15 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.

example · in 11 of its talks

They Live / critique of ideology glasses

In John Carpenter's They Live, aliens live among us and special glasses reveal the alien/robot behind the human face. Žižek calls this the 'critique of ideology glasses' and uses it to read Biden-era capitalism.

example · in 12 of its talks

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…

example · in 10 of its talks

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.

example · in 10 of its talks

Daisetz Suzuki's Knife

Žižek quotes Zen master D.T. Suzuki, who justified killing in war by claiming enlightenment allows one to see the 'dancing knife' as a phenomenon without substantial reality, thus bypassing ethical guilt.

example · in 10 of its talks

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.

Father Joseph / Père Joseph, Gray Eminence8 Yugoslav army and homosexual innuendo8 Postmodern permissive father and grandmother visit8 Remote-controlled rat8 Gulag birthday telegram to Stalin8 Rumsfeld's known/unknown matrix and the fourth term7 Book of Job as first critique of ideology7 coffee without cream / coffee without milk8 Hitchcock's Vertigo, the missing underwear6 Apologizing to Judith Butler6

Where it comes up 116

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

The Ambiguity of Obscenity2009 · 2:13:18

51:59 inherent transgression

… That's the true transgression the the real way to exclude yourself is to ignore or violate these implicit rules.

1:08:32 obscene supplement

… the Fritzl domain where what I was talking about this two levels of how ideology works: the official public level, explicit rules and this obscene supplement.

~54:24 carnival

refer more to contemporary experience: if you a couple of boys get drunk and rape a couple of girls in a gangbang. I mean if there ever was a carnival this is a carnival. I hope you got my point: I'm not justifying the rape, …

+1 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek Zero Level of Fundamental Belief2006-05-01 · 1:59:22

39:10 obscene underside

… That is to say, it's literally the obscene underside, the unconscious of the institution itself.

1:53:09 obscene supplement

… Here the logic of obscene enjoyment and so on is its at stake.

41:02 meta-rules

… So I think that the true integration into a certain symbolic field is precisely when you not only know the rules, but know this secret meta-rules of how are the rules to be taken, which rules are there only to be violated so that you are simply an idiot so that the safest way to be excluded is to follow the rules, to just simply follow the rules.

+1 more in this talk

Lacan’s Four Discourses2014 · 1:16:01

31:57 obscene underside

… If you take away this obscene underside, military discipline would disintegrate.

42:06 prohibition of the prohibition

… The prohibition itself is prohibited.

35:06 meta-rules

… You always have, let’s call them naively, meta-rules which tell you how to treat rules.

+1 more in this talk

A Philosophical Journey Through A Concept2014-09-23 · 1:11:38

19:58 obscene underside

… All I am claiming is that pedophilia is something like the hidden curriculum, if you want, the obscene underground of Catholic Church as an institution.

25:23 prohibition of the prohibition

… But what interests me, what always fascinated me, are cases where—how should I put it?—prohibition itself is prohibited.

29:15 meta-rules

… ty like a university department to larger communities, is that you don't only have rules which regulate your behavior, you also always have meta-rules which tell you how to obey explicit rules.

The Uses and Misuses of Violence2009-11-17 · 1:32:03

33:58 inherent transgression

… I think it's a great example that effectively there must be something of what I call an inherent transgression.

~14:52 obscene supplement

of my insights. Where to be frank I'm a kind of what you call control freak, obsessional neurotic, almost a fascist character. I like order, efficiency. So quite openly I was glad to go to the army. But then came the disappointment of my life. …

38:56 over-identification

… I like ideologies who undermine the ruling ideology not by subverting it from the outside but through what I call over-identification, as it were showing the cards too directly, too openly.