Transgenderism & The Cartesian Cogito

In his words 1

“the difference between external difference and internal difference compels us to complicate the notion of differentity... sexual difference means that a woman cannot fully reach its identity. that its identity is always and in a constitutive way truncated.”
~0:29 Slavoj Žižek: Should We Grasp AI Not Only as Substance But Also as Subject? - May 22, 2026 · sexual difference as internal incompleteness

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 4 of its talks

Goldwyn's New Clichés memo

Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, after reading that his films used too many clichés, immediately sent a memo to his scenario department demanding 'we urgently need new clichés.' Žižek uses this as a positive model for political reinvention.

example · in 3 of its talks

Canned laughter / TV laugh track

Mentioned as another example of passive consumption and the removal of substance (laughter without the joke/comedy).

example · in 3 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.

anecdote · in 5 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 3 of its talks

Bill Gates as rent-extractor from general intellect

Gates became the world's richest person not through standard Marxist exploitation of workers (who are actually better paid than average) but by charging rent for access to the digital space, the internet commons, that we all share.

example · in 2 of its talks

Conchita Wurst and Putin's reaction

Austria's Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst (bearded drag performer) provoked horror in Russia, Putin cited the Bible on two sexes, while a Russian ideologist called her a symbol of decadent Europe, used to illustrate the political-ideological function of fears about sexual dif…

Shanghai Commune 19672 General della Rovere (Rossellini)2 Hannah Arendt on authority: parents must act with authority even without justification2 Drowning Child and Determinism2 Lenin and Inessa Armand2 Mao on the atom bomb, accepting terror2 Fukushima and the Vancouver heat dome2 Auschwitz and the Cunning of Reason2 Zeuxis and Parrhasius2 The abandoned shopping cart in Walmart2

Where it comes up 34

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

Slavoj Zizek On Jacques Lacan (Full Lecture)pub. 2017-01-05 · 4:34:05

2:03:00 sexual difference

… But still, I thought this was the most important exploration, rectification, since your own Plato fantasy, really, on sexual difference.

57:33 Name of the Father

… e short quote from Lacan’s seminar *Identification* from January I quote: "The order of the function which we introduce here as that of the name of the father is something which has universal value, but simultaneously puts on you the charge to control if there is or not a father who fits this function.

1:15:11 un-man / non-man

… It's not "Woman isn't man." Woman is un-man or non-man.

+1 more in this talk

Lacan’s Hypothesis: Psychoanalysis as the Ex-Timate Core of Philosophy2016-10-31 · 2:08:46

1:59:42 sexual difference

… So we have class antagonism as historicizable and therefore it can be overthrown, but um is the structure of sexual difference eternal? I mean, Lacan uses the mathemes and um these kind of ways of approaching the universe...

~1:24:11 trans people as symptom of sexual impossibility

understand it" and so on and so on. I mean I'm horrified by and I I and believe me when I meet real immigrants, okay now you will say we know why, yes because I apply my creative Marxist methods and I go immediately into …

Reconstructing Communism: Part 4 SYSTEM—Disorder, in Heaven2019-06-13 · 1:09:11

49:28 Name of the Father

… maybe Alenka you know better how that the only tolerable whatever sexual relationship can occur or [unintelligible] under the guise of the name of the father.

52:18 free determinism

… That's for me a very simple Freudian solution of: Is it then social constructionism or determinism? It is a free determinism.

From Pleasure-in-Pain To Surplus-Enjoyment2016-04-18 · 2:20:14

1:24:25 sexual difference

… On the one hand, what is happening with sexual difference today? On the one hand, sexual difference is—my god, we have a whole worldwide movement of reasserting sexual difference as the key to social stability.

Is Sexuality Compatible with Human Rights? with Jean-Claude Milner2018-06-27 · 2:01:41

1:13:06 sexual difference

… At the same time, and this is the third point: there is what Julia Mitchell calls the ugly undertone of sexual difference, right? There is something about the moment of sexual differentiation which corrupts itself and leads to abuse.