Post-Politics, Technocracy & Administration of Things

In his words 10

“Most of us do accept liberal democratic capitalism as the finally found formula of the best possible society. This for me is almost the only true question today.”
1:36 Ecology Without Nature · Fukuyamaism of the left

“The only ultimate choice today is: was Fukuyama right or not?”
43:31 How and Why Violence Functions · end of history / capitalism as final answer

“He defined itself as a socialist technocrat. Wonderful definition.”
55:26 Could COVID destroy capitalism? · socialist technocrat as political model

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

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.

anecdote · in 10 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…

example · in 9 of its talks

Martin Luther King and Tolerance

King practically never mentions tolerance; for him racism was a matter of economic injustice and laws, not of attitudes to be tolerated, exposing the automatic translation of racism into tolerance as ideology.

example · in 8 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…

joke · in 9 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.

anecdote · in 8 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.

Lenin's Wife and Mistress6 Rumsfeld's known/unknown matrix and the fourth term6 Bill Gates as rent-extractor from general intellect6 Breivik: anti-semitic and pro-Zionist simultaneously5 Bolivia and Álvaro García Linera5 Napoleon takes the crown from the Pope5 Roma girl and arranged marriage in Slovenia5 Brassed Off coffee invitation5 Santa Claus Belief5 Oil as evidence of nature's catastrophism4

Where it comes up 119

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

Ecology Without Nature2013 · 51:05

1:21 Fukuyamaism

… But are we aware that the majority of us, including most of today's left, we are, I don't know what would be the predicate, Fukuyamaists.

25:39 post-political era

… The answer I think is that we live in more and more, we are approaching so-called post-political era where let’s call them naively the real problems: political power, economic regulations and so on are more and more depoliticized so that whenever battles are fought they are always translated into cultural battles, conflicts.

1:05 end of history

… It is easy, it is fashionable to make fun of Francis Fukuyama’s notion developed in the early 90s of the end of history.

+1 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek. The Future of Europe. 2009 3/122009-03-07 · 09:54

2:31 Fukuyamaism

… No, I claim that of us today are Fukuyamaists.

3:50 post-political era

… Whatever remains of the left is post-political left which has two characteristics mainly: that it's moralized and legalized.

Slavoj Zizek Hardtalk 1/3pub. 2009-11-25 · 08:08

5:38 Fukuyamaism

… For me, even— wouldn't you agree that even the majority of leftists today, they are a, let's call them ironically, Fukuyama leftists? Because nobody even talks today, you know, about these old big questions: is capitalism here to stay, is democracy, is the state here to s …

5:03 end of history

saying that essentially we've reached the end of history.

Slavoj Žižek. The great challenge of The Left. 20162016-07-11 · 49:30

8:43 Fukuyamaism

… n't work let's become reasonable pragmatics within the mechanisms that we have basically we should be just I use this term with great irony left-wing Fukuyama-ists you know we accept Fukuyama general diagnosis liberal democratic capitalism is the ultimate form and we just have to like give it a little …

~0:06 bureaucracy (noble Weber sense)

The great challenge of the Left is how to reconstruct state apparatus not in this shitty populist way they will all the time be in contact with social movements and so on but as an invisible well-functioning machine relatively as far as possible non-corrupted and …

Slavoj Žižek: Democracy and Capitalism Are Destined to Split Up | Big Thinkpub. 2015-01-07 · 17:19

3:01 Fukuyamaism

… by fukuyamaism i mean the idea that basically, we found, if not the best formula, at least the least bad formula.

2:30 invisible, alienated machinery

… my idea is to live in a society where some invisible, alienated machinery takes care of things so that i can do whatever.

16:55 secret agreements

… but how is the entire field which offers you these choices and not other choices, how is it structured? at that level, we get more and more secret agreements, we get less and less freedom.