The Knife and the Idiot
joke · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 4 talks
Žižek describes his disdain for office hours, imagining giving a 'boring idiot' student a knife and telling them to kill themselves, highlighting his hatred of student personal problems.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“I don't care kill yourself it's not my problem you know? I give them the knife and say...”
“No, all these nice introductions is that she is he is sharpening a knife in the back.”
“explorers come into a tribe and ask them are there still any cannibals among you? The answer is no yesterday we ate the last one.”23:10 Slavoj Žižek talks Nick Land AI singularity, ethics of psychoanalysis, Compact Magazine, and so on!pub. 2024-03-18 · 1:57:15
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
enunciated content versus position of enunciation
×2
deep ecology
×1
inherent transgression
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Susan Neiman2Charles Sanders Peirce2Nick Land2Neil Gaiman2Nina Power1Buddhists1David McKerracher1H. P. Lovecraft1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Žižek describes his disdain for office hours, imagining giving a 'boring idiot' student a knife and telling them to kill themselves, highlighting his hatred of student personal problems., illustrating aversion to teaching
4:43 We are playing God | Slavoj Žižek and Yuval Noah Harari on CRISPR, AI, and the future of humanity2025-07-15 · 24:28
Žižek interrupts polite introductions to highlight the hidden hostility ('sharpening a knife in the back') beneath social niceties, using it to frame his 'exception' regarding intense love., illustrating ideology,extremism of so-called deep ecology
23:10 Slavoj Žižek talks Nick Land AI singularity, ethics of psychoanalysis, Compact Magazine, and so on!pub. 2024-03-18 · 1:57:15
Explorers ask a tribe if there are cannibals left; the tribe replies, 'No, yesterday we ate the last one.' Žižek uses this to illustrate how cancel culture claims to have 'eaten' the last offender, thereby excluding anyone who doesn't fit their specific definition of the 'last one.', illustrating inherent transgression,l'énoncé vs. énonciation
20:11 Dave and Mikey interview Slavoj Žižek! for the Theory Underground book launch + Elton and Bryanpub. 2023-09-07 · 3:42:17
Explorers ask a tribe if there are still any cannibals among them; the answer is no, yesterday we ate the last one. Žižek links this to cancel culture: the very practice of exclusion eliminates the excluded., illustrating cancel culture paradox,l'énoncé / l'énonciation