The Four Discourses · žižek archive

In his words 2

“As hysterics, you are asking for, you demand a new master, you will get one.”
4:23 Markets without Substance · Lacan's retort to May '68 revolutionaries / hysterical discourse

“all great totalitarians, if there was somebody who was in practice totally non-dogmatic pragmatic, it was Stalin. Everything depends on circumstances.”
1:51:50 Peter Sloterdijk in conversation with Slavoj Žižek, Indigo festival 2023 · totalitarianism as pragmatic, not truth-obsessed

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 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…

example · in 3 of its talks

Hegel on Spinoza's Schwindsucht

Hegel notes that Spinoza died of tuberculosis (Schwindsucht, literally 'seeking-to-disappear'), and quips that he was therefore consistent: his philosophy teaches that every particular identity seeks its disappearance in substance, so he died accordingly.

example · in 3 of its talks

Billy Bathgate / bad novel and bad movie generating virtual ideal

Both the Doctorow novel and its film adaptation are bad, yet through their repetition a third purely virtual entity emerges, the ideal novel that should have been. This is Žižek's model for the unconscious as a virtual, non-substantial entity.

joke · in 5 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.

joke · in 3 of its talks

Radio Yerevan / Rabinovich and the car

Radio Yerevan is asked if it's true Rabinovich won a new car in a lottery; the answer is 'in principle yes, but it was an old bicycle and it was stolen from him.' Žižek applies this to capitalism: 'in principle yes, it is thriving, but...'

example · in 3 of its talks

Antigone rewritten, three alternate scenarios

Žižek describes his book rewriting Antigone in three alternate-history versions: (1) Sophocles' original; (2) Antigone wins the argument with Creon but this triggers revolt and ruin; (3) the Chorus executes both Antigone and Creon as traitors establishing Jacobin terror. He us…

Lacanian jealous husband3 Remote-controlled rat3 Stalin joins the applause3 The Dark Tower (Film/Book)2 Aztec/Inca sacrifice so the sun rises again2 Stalin and H.G. Wells on self-criticism2 Sarajevo / Crimea as testing of limits2 The Venezuelan Factory Failure2 Metzinger and cognitivists on Plato's cave2 Viking horned helmets invented for Wagner2

Where it comes up 54

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

Lacan’s Four Discourses2014 · 1:16:01

1:11:09 university discourse

… This is University discourse which is not a discourse of real productive knowledge, but it's the discourse of true power because productive really productive knowledge is hysterical knowledge.

1:05:42 discourse of the master

… hat I want," the lost object is "what am I for the others?" And I think this provides, you know, Lacan his first discourse is the so-called Master's discourse.

1:12:51 analyst's discourse

… Then the last one of course we get the discourse of the analyst.

+2 more in this talk

Markets without Substance2003 · 1:00:22

10:43 university discourse

… You can speak from the position of knowledge, university discourse, where you just state what's going on without subjective engagement, and you can speak from the position of the analyst, which is this one, …

13:09 discourse of the master

… The discourse of the master is for Lacan the basic one.

38:21 analyst's discourse

… Then this is the analyst's discourse which is strangely similar to to of course to hysterical discourse.

+2 more in this talk

Slavoj Zizek against Miller2016-04-19 · 2:20:27

1:23:29 university discourse

… rks much better is that capitalism is split between two discourses irreducibly hysterical discourse which is this always more expansion and university discourse so that the axis university hysteria is or even to put it in terms it can be even translated into the terms of classical Frankfurt School w …

1:25:58 discourse of the master

… dness I will earn even worse designation for this on the one hand progressive movement today should shamelessly return to a certain type of discourse of the master and when people shout I tell them show me one modern relatively successful radical movement from even minor figures from Podemos to Syriza …

1:26:45 analyst's discourse

… that’s what I really wanted to do we don’t have time I wanted to develop the idea of a something that would be the social application of a analytic discourse and you know what I wanted to reread in this way it’s totally crazy idea when Lenin was close to his death not yet incapacitated he saw whe …

+1 more in this talk

The Vicious Cycle of Capitalist Reproduction2013-11-25 · 1:52:03

~1:47:43 university discourse

discourse, has at its truth the Master signifier. So that it's still dominated by Master signifier. And the way I read Lacan's discourse of the Analyst is precisely that there we also have Master signifier but it's at the fourth place

1:00:05 the Master (Herrschaft)

… n at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Mao's message to the young students was, "It is right to rebel." This is the lesson of a true Master.

1:47:51 analyst's discourse

… And the way I read Lacan's discourse of the Analyst is precisely that there we also have Master signifier but it's at the fourth place

The Fate of the Commons: A Trotzkyite View2018-12-22 · 1:45:43

1:21:57 university discourse

… Derridean? No I think that Derrida is a perfect university discourse.

1:18:53 the Master (Herrschaft)

… Master is for me the enabling master, a true master does not tell you what you want, a true master, I'm aware of all Lacan all Mao's horrors but you know when Mao says yes you have the right to rebel.

1:18:24 discourse of the master

… What I tend to rehabilitate a little bit is master's discourse.