Truth, Post-Truth & the Necessary Lie
The contemporary liberal panic over fake news and relativism, which Žižek diagnoses as really a panic about the collapse of hegemonic social consensus rather than about truth per se.
In his words 4
“Maybe the 12th camel is one of the names of God. God is like the 12th camel: you have to add it as a fiction so that things function.”40:53 Radical Politics Today: Hegel’s Teaching · necessary fiction / God as structural supplement
“We need a lie to see the truth of a situation.”41:24 Radical Politics Today: Hegel’s Teaching · necessary fiction / truth through falsehood
“Ideology is most dangerous where when it lies with the truth.”48:26 Is Democracy Still an Option Today? · partial truth as the most effective ideological weapon
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
Secret police department producing anti-regime jokes
A widespread fantasy in all socialist countries held that there was an ultra-secret department within the secret police whose sole function was to produce political jokes against the party leadership, to keep people satisfied with a small opening. Žižek takes the fantasy serio…
Kinder Surprise Egg
Wanting 'coffee without milk' is like wanting 'that chocolate without the stupid plastic thing.' The structure involves a void in the core that must be supplemented by a figure (object small a).
Primo Levi's Selekcja
Žižek describes the 'comedy' of prisoners pinching their lips to look healthy during Nazi selection, arguing that this desperate, absurd performance is a form of survival comedy in the face of horror.
Lenin in Warsaw
Lenin heard Beethoven's Appassionata at a friend's apartment and was almost moved to tears, but then pulled back, saying he must not listen to it too much or he will become too gentle to beat the enemies, Žižek praises Lenin's honest acknowledgment of the contradiction between…
The Last Temptation of Christ
Žižek reads Scorsese's film as Christ acting as a hysteric, resisting his role ('Why do I have to play this role?') and wanting to 'screw ladies in Samaria.'
Full Metal Jacket, the drill sergeant and Private Pyle
The drill sergeant in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is a tragic figure whose obscene shouting is a show to bribe soldiers with bits of enjoyment. Private Pyle got too directly identified with the obscene rituals, lost the distance, and turned suicidal/murderous, the danger of ov…
Where it comes up 19
20 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there