Positive Alienation & the Lie of Inner Life

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 5 of its talks

Stalin's dialectical synthesis on money in communism

Left radicals (Trotskyists) say no money in communism, Bukharin says money is natural; Stalin's dialectical 'synthesis', in communism there will be money and there will not be money: some people will have money, others will not.

anecdote · in 5 of its talks

Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek's friend and theorist of catastrophes, reported that after Fukushima the Japanese government secretly panicked at the prospect of evacuating all 30 million inhabitants of the Tokyo area, illustrating the scale of trans-state action that contemporary cr…

anecdote · in 3 of its talks

Algorithm predicting Trump voters' 'true' voting intentions

American researchers followed Trump voters, registered their opinions and habits, and found the machine not only predicted how they would vote but also how they should vote 'in accordance with their own true convictions', arguing the machine made better decisions.

example · in 5 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 3 of its talks

European Toilet Designs

Žižek analyzes French (hole in back, liquidation), English (floats, pragmatic), and German (plateau in front, contemplation) toilets, linking them to a Hegelian 'European Trinity' of political and spiritual attitudes.

example · in 4 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…

Darian Leader patient / 'Bed for two please'3 Native Americans prefer 'Indians'4 Roma girl and arranged marriage in Slovenia3 Dinner invitation: paying the bill ritual3 Lacanian jealous husband3 Stephen Hawking's brain-wired wheelchair3 coffee without cream / coffee without milk5 Book of Job as first critique of ideology3 Hitler as misunderstood enemy2 Varoufakis and Schäuble: 'Do you need help to do Grexit?'2

Where it comes up 27

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

A Defence of Eurocentrism2016-06-14 · 2:02:30

1:17:24 alienated government

… This is why when a journalist recently asked me what kind of society would be your ideal type my answer was instant bureaucratic socialism.

~20:32 alienation as a good thing

the same moment. So we have to radically rethink it. But let me go on uh as a Marxist I say we have to reinvent a certain Entfremdung alienation as a positive category. I think that there is a type of alienation personal political which …

From Surplus-Value to Surplus-Enjoyment2017-02-28 · 2:25:50

2:03:05 alienated government

… First I claim bureaucracy is perverted, reproducing itself, then I praise bureaucratic socialism or whatever, you know.

Duel + Duet with Graham Harman2017-03-02 · 2:04:01

2:03:00 alienated government

… my politics is, once i shocked my german friends, i gave an interview, they told me, you are critical of this or that, what's your model? well-structured alienation in an efficient bureaucratic socialism and they didn't like it, as you can imagine.

Courage of Hopelessness2017-03-24 · 2:12:13

2:11:28 alienated government

… No! I want to live in a society of tolerable well-functioning alienation.

A Plea for Bureaucratic Socialism2017-06-28 · 2:16:05

1:14 alienated government

… controversial in the sense of it's a paradoxical situation in what sense let me begin with the title of my talk a plea for bureaucratic socialism' now your first reaction is this must be another of my stupid post modern jokes or paradoxes and so on so i cannot emphas enough that i mea …