The Symptom & Sinthome · žižek archive

In his words 12

“they are there because we were not there. because the left failed.”
1:25:23 On Apocalyptic Times · islamofascism as symptom of left failure

“Symptoms are not some local malfunctionings — no, symptoms are the truth of normality.”
55:18 Being and Subjectivity: Act and Evental Enthusiasm · Freud-Marx parallel: symptoms as structural truth

“Symptom is a moment of truth within the field of a lie. Fetish is almost not quite the opposite. Fetish is a small lie which enables us to live in truth.”
~3:37 Welcome to the Desert of Post-Ideology · symptom vs fetish in ideology

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

Afghanistan: from secular to fundamentalist

Thirty to forty years ago Afghanistan was the most secular and tolerant Muslim country in the region; US intervention against the Soviet-backed government, by supporting the mujahideen, produced the Taliban, demonstrating that fundamentalization is the product of globalization…

anecdote · in 3 of its talks

Gianni Vattimo’s Defense of Heidegger

Žižek describes leftist philosopher Gianni Vattimo’s attempt to save Heidegger by arguing he was just a 'stupid local guy' making a concrete mistake, ignoring that Heidegger’s philosophy itself warns against confusing metaphysical stance with concrete people.

example · in 3 of its talks

Kansas: from populist left to Bible Belt

Kansas was once the most radical leftist-populist state in the US (home of John Brown, the most anti-slavery state), yet over thirty years became the Bible Belt heartland, again showing fundamentalism as the symptom of liberal-capitalist transformation, not pre-modern backward…

example · in 3 of its talks

Jaws shark as ideological condensation

Žižek argues the shark in Jaws is an empty signifier that unifies disparate social fears (banks, immigrants, nature) into one clear object, just as Hitler unified fears into 'the Jew'.

joke · in 3 of its talks

Lenin's Wife and Mistress

Žižek notes Lenin’s specific term for the woman helping in the kitchen, which he uses to pivot to Lenin’s vision of post-revolutionary polite communication.

joke · in 3 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.

Antigone rewritten, three alternate scenarios3 Bernie Sanders at Biden's inauguration3 Bill Gates as rent-extractor from general intellect3 Remote-controlled rat3 Brassed Off coffee invitation3 Book of Job as first critique of ideology3 coffee without cream / coffee without milk4 Native Americans prefer 'Indians'3 V for Vendetta morning after3 The Polish Communist and Stalin2

Where it comes up 66

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

Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 12006-05-25 · 1:45:23

30:09 symptom

… It's a message, symptom is a message but purely directed purely at the—this virtual Big Other.

28:07 unsent letter

… er*, "A letter always arrives at its destination." And one can even say that the only letter which really arrives at its destination is the unsent letter.

Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 6pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:39:14

41:22 symptom

… s is a wonderful formula to see symptom not as this secondary sound, but the notion which is, i think, a wonderful dialectical notion of an autonomous symptom, like a woman is for me some mary being who says, i am a symptom.

~43:19 symptomatic failure is productive

but... so what's the idea here? okay, the idea is that part of this strange temporality where the put it the progress of language is not that the underlying deep idea pre-ex the process, but it emerges through a sleep, a failure. you do it. …

Interview at the Book Fair Leipzig2018-03-17 · 49:43

1:00 symptom

… And I think a good Marxist analysis is like Psychoanalyse, symptom.

0:46 Disparität

… Like, why is there a knife in that corner? Why this, why that? This would be Disparität.

First as Tragedy, then as Farce2010-01-05 · 2:21:08

46:54 symptom

… s, but already the average middle classes, the usual candidates for psychoanalytic patients—they no longer come with—in this naive way with the symptom, you know.

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

1:06:01 symptom

… very simple party line i think that we should never forget and i may be wrong i'm not dogmatically clinging to it that trump's success is a symptom symptom, not in any deep psychanalytic sense, the result of the failure of the liberal center and left.