A Defense of Universalism
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2014-12-12 · 1:24:09 · 11,325 words
ideologycapitalismhegel-dialecticscommunism-socialismgeopolitics-warrace-antisemitismreligion-theologyliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracyrevolution-violencephilosophy-generalhistory
Žižek delivers a public lecture in Oslo on universality, eurocentrism, and the limits of multiculturalism as a political strategy. He argues that global capitalism has decoupled itself from liberal-democratic values and now thrives under authoritarian alternatives, making post-colonial anti-eurocentrism inadvertently complicit with this new order. Drawing on Hegel, Marx, the Haitian Revolution, Malcolm X, and the Book of Job, he defends a universal emancipatory project grounded not in abstract humanism but in the solidarity of concrete struggles, and closes with a Hegelian-inflected analysis of geopolitical risk, counterfactual necessity, and the paradoxes of freedom and negation.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek uses this phrase (coined by Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore model) to name authoritarian capitalism stripped of liberal-democratic legitimation, now spreading globally.
as “autonomy of the form”
The Hegelian-Marxist insight that formal rights, even when initially ideological, generate a dynamic of their own that outstrips their original particular content and produces real liberation.
The Marxist category of bourgeois legal/formal rights, which Žižek defends against orthodox Marxist dismissal, arguing that formal universality has its own emancipatory dynamic despite masking particular interests.
The contemporary ideological form in which social hierarchies and relations of domination present themselves as the very forms of freedom, rendering them invisible as domination.
as “permissive father”
The figure of modern liberal authority who presents commands as free choices ('you can visit your grandmother or not'), thereby intensifying the injunction by requiring not just compliance but the desire to comply.
Implied in the discussion of self-entrepreneurship ideology whereby individuals are hailed as capitalist agents regardless of their actual class position.
The ideological self-image promoted by contemporary capitalism whereby even a poor credit-taking worker conceives of herself as a small investor, dissolving class antagonism into universal capitalist identity.
as “multiculturalism as ideological form of global capitalism”
The claim that global capitalism's dominant ideological form is multiculturalism and identity politics, which accommodate cultural difference while leaving economic exploitation intact.
as “universality in itself vs. universality for itself”
The Hegelian distinction Marx applies to capitalism: mere shared membership in a category (in-itself) versus the lived, self-conscious experience of one's identity as abstract individual (for-itself), which capitalism uniquely actualizes.
Marx's concept that under capitalism abstraction is not merely conceptual but part of immediate lived experience, individuals actually experience themselves as abstract, interchangeable units.
Walter Benjamin's concept, used by Žižek to describe blind, non-programmatic outbursts of protest (riots in Ferguson, Paris suburbs) that are not yet articulated political projects but signal a social deadlock.
Benjamin's term for state violence that reproduces the existing legal order, invoked here as the counterpart to divine violence.
Žižek's reading that the Book of Job is the first text of ideology critique: Job's three friends articulate the ideological move of giving suffering a meaning, while God's refusal of that move is the anti-ideological gesture.
The logic by which a contingent event (falling in love, Caesar crossing the Rubicon) appears in retrospect as inevitable; used to ground the claim that we can change our 'predestined' fate by changing the whole frame.
as “counterfactual past”
Žižek's notion (derived from Dupuy) that it is possible to change the past at the level of counterfactuals, not magically, but by altering what we understand as having been necessary (illustrated by Vertigo).
Hegel's concept that negation is always specific and content-bearing, illustrated by Žižek via the coffee-without-cream joke: the absent substance is not interchangeable, 'coffee without milk' and 'coffee without cream' are not the same.
as “intellectual property as communist”
The paradox that intellectual property behaves like a commons, its value increases the more it circulates, making it structurally incompatible with ordinary commodity logic and a threat to capitalism.
as “the Hollywood scenario”
Žižek's ironic label for the 'best case' outcome if global capitalism survives: extreme class division as depicted in films like Hunger Games and Elysium, a protected globe for insiders, invisible exploitation outside.
as “capitalism as globe”
Sloterdijk's image, adopted by Žižek, of global capitalism as a literal sphere or globe, enclosed, self-referential, with an outside that insiders cannot even perceive.
Žižek's preferred non-humanist universality: not 'we are all one human family' but the recognition that your struggle and my struggle can be united, the universal emerging through solidarity of particular fights.
as “the particular that stands for universality”
The Hegelian point, applied to black power politics, that universality is never abstract but always incarnated in a specific particular position that, in a concrete situation, embodies the universal.
Stories he reaches for 14
From Lubitsch's Ninotchka: a customer orders coffee with cream; the waiter says they only have milk, so he can have coffee without milk. Žižek connects this to Soviet shortage jokes and Hegel's determinate negation, the absent element determines the object even in its absence.
“We don't have cream we only have milk so I can only give you coffee without milk.”
Malcolm X reinterpreted his surname X, signifying violent severing from African roots, not as pure loss but as a unique chance to freely invent new communal forms, rejecting the 'Roots' nostalgic model.
“X, this X being without roots is at the same time a unique chance of freedom, of freely inventing a new communal form for us.”
South African apartheid ideologists justified racial segregation by claiming it preserved precious local cultures (Hottentots, Bushmen), Žižek uses this to show that multiculturalism can serve racism.
“they directly justified their racism in multiculturalist terms.”
The Haitian constitution declared Haiti a black republic and simultaneously made all citizens black regardless of skin color, Žižek reads this as the dialectical solution to the universality/particularity problem.
“Haiti is a black republic so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black.”
Napoleon's Polish troops, approaching the black rebel army in Haiti, expect primitive tribal songs but instead hear the Marseillaise, hundreds break ranks and switch sides, recognizing they are on the wrong side.
“And hundreds of Polish soldiers broke down. They said my God are we on the right side? And they changed sides.”
A Soviet-era joke: a man enters a store and asks if they still don't have toilet paper; the clerk says 'No, you're in the wrong store, we're the one that doesn't have oil; the other one doesn't have toilet paper.' Each store specializes in its particular absence.
“No you are in a wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil. The other store there is the one which doesn't have...”
Stalin receives fifty generals; they applaud and no one dares to stop; people collapse; finally Stalin says 'okay enough.' Žižek uses this to joke about his own audience: 'don't applaud too much now, save your energy for when we communists come to power.'
“nobody dared to stop applauding. And it went on for minutes, some of them dropped down and finally Stalin with his greatness said okay enough comrades.”
You slip on the street, a woman helps you up, you have coffee, and fall in love, a totally contingent encounter that is later experienced as predestined and inevitable, illustrating retroactive necessity.
“retroactively of course you interpret this as a closed narrative, it was predestined. You know something it's a very refined notion of how something happens contingently but once it happens it appears as necessary.”
Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon was contingent, he could have stayed, but once made it became his fate and appeared inevitable; illustrates how contingent decisions retroactively constitute necessity.
“once he did it it becomes his fate.”
Chesterton inverts the standard interpretation: God's bombastic description of creation is not 'you're nobody' but rather 'you think only you suffer, look, the whole world I created is a mess, everyone is in trouble.'
“you think only you are in trouble but look around the whole world that I created is a total mess everyone everyone is in trouble you know.”
After gaining independence, Haiti was forced to sign a contract with France compensating slave-owners for the market value of freed slaves; they were still paying the final installment in 1947 (or similar late date), explaining Haiti's chronic poverty.
“they had to sign a contract with France obliging them to as it were repay them for their liberation.”
In Hitchcock's Vertigo, Scottie thinks he loses Madeleine; he discovers she never existed, so he didn't merely lose the object, he retroactively discovered what he thought he'd lost had never been there, enabling a counterfactual change of the past.
“he in a way retroactively discovered that what he thought that he has lost never existed.”
Indian PM Modi openly pursued cheap-labor economics (China is getting too expensive, India should offer cheaper labor) while being a Hindu nationalist, Žižek uses this to demonstrate that capitalism functions better with authoritarian traditional ethics.
“At the same time a radical neoliberal in economic terms... At the same time he is a Hindu nationalist. Again, what I'm claiming is there is no tension here.”
Žižek points to the then-secret TISA trade negotiations as an example of how key decisions pre-determining economic life for decades are made without public debate, illustrating the gap between formal personal freedom and real structural unfreedom.
“extremely important negotiations which will really pre-determine the basic coordinates of our economic life, flow of information for decades to come, and it's simply not debated in public.”
Works invoked 11
Vertigo film
Cited (via Dupuy) as illustration of retroactive necessity and the counterfactual past: Scottie discovers Madeleine never existed, showing that one can change the past at the level of counterfactuals.
Ninotchka film
Lubitsch's film is the source of Žižek's 'favorite theoretical joke', the coffee-without-cream scene used to illustrate determinate negation.
Elysium film
Cited alongside Hunger Games as Hollywood knowing the reality of extreme class division, the globe as closed protected sphere for insiders.
The Hunger Games film
Cited as a Hollywood blockbuster that ironically depicts the coming class-divided society Žižek sees as the 'Hollywood scenario' best case for capitalism.
The Book of Job book
Žižek (via Zapffe and Chesterton) reads Job as the first text of ideology critique: the three friends articulate ideological consolation while God's answer subverts it.
Roots tv
The 1970s TV series about African roots is contrasted negatively with Malcolm X's rejection of the nostalgic return-to-roots model.
Malcolm X (film) film
Žižek says he doesn't really like the movie but uses one scene, the white girl asking Malcolm X what she can do, as a key illustration of authentic versus liberal universalism.
Zardoz film
1970s dystopian film with Sean Connery cited as an early Hollywood depiction of the elite surviving inside a globe while others are outside.
Discourse on Method book
Descartes's text cited for the passage where young Descartes recognizes his own customs as contingent, offered as a definition of modernity.
Assange's book (Žižek imprecisely references it as 'a book on Google') cited for the claim that Google is a privatized NSA.
The Snowman book
Jo Nesbø's novel; Žižek says he liked it 'very much' and was sad that the Scorsese film adaptation went wrong.
People invoked 30
Frantz Fanon positive
Žižek admits using Fanon's conclusions; an audience member challenges him for moving too quickly to the universalist line and bypassing Fanon's strong black power politics. Žižek concedes the point.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi negative
Cited as a local king who preached ethnic particularism in South Africa and was on the apartheid payroll; contrasted negatively with the ANC's universalist approach.
Walter Mignolo negative
Mentioned as one of 'those guys', decolonial thinkers whom Žižek criticizes for anti-eurocentrism that inadvertently serves authoritarian capitalism.
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
Cited as the first to extend formal human rights to women, exemplifying the emancipatory dynamic generated by the gap between form and content.
Narendra Modi positive
Used as an example of the compatibility of radical neoliberalism and Hindu nationalism, illustrating Žižek's thesis that authoritarian traditional values enhance rather than hinder capitalism.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Called 'quite a genius' and 'my friend'; Žižek endorses Dupuy's theory of catastrophe, that the first step to avoiding catastrophe is to accept it as fate, and his use of Vertigo to illustrate counterfactual change.
Lee Kuan Yew positive
Cited as inventor and realizer of 'capitalism with Asian values' in Singapore; used as the central example of authoritarian capitalism as a world-historical development.
Deng Xiaoping positive
Referenced as having visited Singapore and praised it as a model for China, illustrating the spread of authoritarian capitalism.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Called 'my favorite theologian'; Žižek endorses Chesterton's anti-standard reading of God's answer to Job as solidarity-in-universal-suffering rather than a put-down.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek states the Fukuyama dream of global liberal democracy is over and notes that Fukuyama himself has admitted this; met at a roundtable where Fukuyama said 'my game is over.'
Žižek mentions liking Nesbø's novel The Snowman very much; notes Nesbø is 'politically so-so.'
Judith Butler positive
Referred to as a 'good friend personally' with 'some debates theoretically'; Žižek credits Butler with the point that the first step of feminist liberation is to fully admit one's subordination.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just positive
Cited alongside Robespierre as a Jacobin who recognized the Haitian revolutionary slaves as equals.
Julian Assange positive
Cited for his claim that Google is a privatized NSA, illustrating the class struggle over control of social/digital space.
Malcolm X positive
Called 'my true hero', Žižek admires Malcolm X's reinterpretation of the X (rootlessness as freedom, not just loss) and his refusal of the nostalgic 'return to roots' model. Partial disagreement over Islam as universalism.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Žižek expresses recognition for the Jacobins, specifically Robespierre and Saint-Just, for immediately acknowledging the Haitian slaves as equals during the French Revolution.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Žižek credits Sloterdijk with the prescient prediction that Lee Kuan Yew deserves future monuments, and endorses his image of global capitalism as a 'globe', a closed protected sphere. Žižek calls him 'at least an intelligent right-winger' and not a neo-Nazi as Habermasians claim.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
Cited as director of Ninotchka, the source of Žižek's favorite 'coffee without cream' joke, which he uses to illustrate determinate negation.
Spike Lee positive
Cited as director of the Malcolm X film; Žižek says he doesn't really like the movie but likes one key scene.
Napoleon is cited negatively for sending an army to crush the Haitian Revolution, reversing the Jacobin recognition of black equality.
Joe Slovo positive
White South African communist cited as an example of how whites could participate in the Black-led liberation struggle without it being a liberal 'helping' posture.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek uses Benjamin's distinction between mythic and divine violence to analyze contemporary protests (Ferguson, Paris suburbs), endorsing the concept while noting divine violence is 'horrible' and not 'just.'
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Vertigo cited as Dupuy's favorite film and as an illustration of retroactive discovery and counterfactual change of the past.
Barack Obama negative
Žižek quotes Obama's 'we are the indispensable nation' claim and says 'out of real sympathy for the United States' this no longer works; he is 'for Obama against Bush' but criticizes the policy of playing global policeman in a multicentric world.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Habermasians are mentioned as those who dismiss Sloterdijk as almost a neo-Nazi, a position Žižek implicitly rejects.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek self-identifies as a Marxist and deploys Marx on real abstraction, universality, and colonialism in India, defending Marx against both Stalinist doxa and liberal critics.
René Descartes positive
Žižek cites Descartes's reflection on the contingency of his own customs as 'the definition of modernity', the condition of experiencing one's particular identity as ultimately contingent.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Pervades the talk; Žižek deploys Hegelian distinctions (universality in/for itself, determinate negation, retroactive necessity, form/content dialectic) as the theoretical backbone of his argument.
Maurizio Lazzarato positive
Žižek cites Lazzarato's analysis of the 'indebted man' and self-entrepreneurship as capturing the strength of contemporary ideology, presenting even poor workers as small capitalists.
Peter Wessel Zapffe positive
Norwegian philosopher called 'a genius' by Žižek; his reading of the Book of Job as encountering a 'cosmic cave-dweller' God is cited as foundational for ideology critique.
What it argues
Universality versus multiculturalism as capitalist ideologyAuthoritarian capitalism and the decoupling from liberal democracyAnti-eurocentrism as unwitting ally of global capitalismFreedom as illusory personal choice masking structural unfreedomEmancipation through particular struggle rather than abstract humanismRetroactive necessity and counterfactual historical changeRisk of World War in a multicentric geopolitical order
Dialectical moves 10
“Relations of domination appear as the very form of freedom—domination is its own opposite.”
Contemporary ideology is most powerful when it presents hierarchy and constraint not as external impositions but as the expression of personal liberty.
“Anti-eurocentrism, far from opposing capitalism, fits perfectly its new authoritarian tendency.”
The post-colonial critique of Western values is self-defeating: it targets liberal universalism precisely when that universalism could serve as a weapon against global capital.
“What you lose did not pre-exist the loss—in the very act of losing it, it emerges.”
The retroactive constitution of origin: a tradition or identity only appears as something lost through the act of losing it, meaning there was no original to return to.
“We are not just effectively particular where we appear universal, but also the opposite: we are much more universal than we think we are.”
Against reductive historicism, Žižek argues that capitalism actually produces real universality by making abstraction part of lived experience, not just ideology.
“Traditional values are not an obstacle to capitalist modernization but precisely what enables countries to follow capitalist dynamics even more radically.”
The expected tension between tradition and capitalism is inverted: traditional ethical frameworks legitimize ruthless market engagement.
“The only universality I recognize is the universality of struggle—not we are all one human family but we have a struggle, you have a struggle, let's unite.”
Universality is not abstract shared humanity but concrete solidarity through the form of struggle, which crosses all cultural particularity.
“Haiti is a black republic so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black.”
The Haitian constitution's formulation is held up as the dialectical solution: to be fully universalist one occupies a particular identity position and then universalizes it, making particular identity the form of universal membership.
“New World War is our predestination—but we can retroactively change our fate.”
Drawing on Protestant theology and Hegel, Žižek argues that accepting catastrophe as fated is the condition for actually changing course, whereas mere caution remains within the same fatal logic.
“The God of Job is not infinitely superior in spiritual culture but a cosmic cave-dweller, omnipotent but like a spoiled child—greatness inverted into grotesque primitiveness.”
Via Zapffe and Chesterton, Žižek reads Job's God as the ideological inversion of the expected divine authority: power without wisdom or justice, which paradoxically creates the conditions for freedom.
“Intellectual property has the paradoxical property that the more you use it its value increases—it is something communist in intellectual property.”
Unlike material commodities, ideas behave as commons: circulation increases rather than depletes value, making intellectual property structurally incompatible with standard capitalist competition.
Claims 16
asserts
Capitalism has successfully decoupled itself from liberal democracy and now functions more effectively under authoritarian political forms.capitalism and democracy
asserts
The dominant ideology today presents domination and social hierarchy as the very forms of freedom, making them invisible as domination.contemporary ideology
asserts
Post-colonial anti-eurocentrism inadvertently serves the new authoritarian capitalism by attacking Western liberal values precisely when those values could serve as weapons against capitalist globalization.post-colonialism and anti-eurocentrism
asserts
Global capitalism is immanently multicultural; it has no need for Western cultural hegemony and accommodates local cultures perfectly well.global capitalism and multiculturalism
asserts
Formal freedoms and rights must not be dismissed as 'merely bourgeois': the gap between form and content generates its own emancipatory dynamic.formal versus real freedom
asserts
Traditional values (family, religion, ethnic identity) do not impede capitalist modernization but can enable individuals to engage in market competition even more ruthlessly.traditional values and capitalism
rejects
Appeals to local or pre-modern cultures as sites of resistance to global capitalism are insufficient and ultimately compatible with capitalism.cultural particularism as anti-capitalist resistance
asserts
Only a new universal emancipatory project can effectively oppose the destructive effects of capitalist globalization.strategy against capitalism
asserts
The world is entering a multicentric order analogous to pre-WWI Europe, in which the danger of a new global war is real but systematically disbelieved.geopolitical situation and war risk
asserts
To avert catastrophe one must first fully accept it as fate, not merely adopt caution within the existing frame.strategy for avoiding catastrophe
asserts
Universality is not abstract humanist sameness but is always incarnated in a particular position that stands for the universal in a given conjuncture.universality
asserts
The key political freedom today is not personal choice but the freedom to co-determine the social frame within which choices are made.freedom and political agency
asserts
Blind outbursts of protest (divine violence) are not politically correct but are symptomatic symptoms of the impossibility of articulating dissatisfaction into a political project.social protest and political deadlock
asserts
Intellectual property is structurally incompatible with capitalist commodity logic because its value increases with free circulation, making it a latent threat to capitalism.intellectual property and capitalism
asserts
The United States can no longer function as a universal global policeman in a multicentric world.US global hegemony
reframes
Marx's more important lesson is not that we are more particular than we appear universal, but that we are more universal than we think—capitalism makes abstraction part of immediate experience.Marxist historicism and universality
Quotes 20
“It orders you what freely to choose.”Slavoj Žižek · permissive authority as stronger injunction
“The cruel irony of anti-eurocentrism is that on behalf of anti-colonialism, one criticizes the West at the very historical moment when global capitalism no longer needs traditional Western cultural values.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-eurocentrism serving authoritarian capitalism
“It's fashionable to criticize the West at the very point when finally some values traditionally identified as Western values can really play a progressive emancipatory role.”Slavoj Žižek · irony of anti-Western critique
“Global capitalism's ideological form is precisely multiculturalism, up to identity politics.”Slavoj Žižek · multiculturalism as capitalist ideology
“Haiti is a black republic so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black.”Slavoj Žižek · particular universality / dialectical solution to race and citizenship
“We are not just effectively particular where we appear to be universal but also the opposite. We are much more universal than we think we are.”Slavoj Žižek · real universality against reductive historicism
“America leads we are the indispensable nation that's how we roll.”Slavoj Žižek · US self-image as global policeman (Obama quote)
“America is again and again winning wars and losing peace.”Slavoj Žižek · US military overreach in a multicentric world
“Universality today for me is not we are all one big human family but it's we have a struggle you have a struggle let's unite the struggle.”Slavoj Žižek · universality of struggle
“We should see how we... new World War is our fate. Fate not that it necessarily will happen but fate in the sense that the whole global situation is pushing us slowly towards it.”Slavoj Žižek · accepting catastrophe as condition for changing it
“There is something communist in intellectual property... the more you use it its value increases.”Slavoj Žižek · intellectual property as commons / anti-capitalist logic
“For a proper dialectician, form matters.”Slavoj Žižek · defense of formal universality against reductive Marxism
“Don't underestimate the autonomy of the form.”Slavoj Žižek · formal rights as having independent emancipatory dynamic
“A true decision, a true free act is to change also this general framework, not just to choose this or that, but to choose to co-determine the very frame.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom as co-determination of structural frame vs. personal choice
“They directly justified their racism in multiculturalist terms.”Slavoj Žižek · apartheid using multiculturalist rhetoric
“The more it freely circulates the more everyone... it's I don't think capitalism... will solve the problem of intellectual property.”Slavoj Žižek · intellectual property as structural crisis for capitalism
“Job when God appears expected a sacred pure God whose intellect is infinitely superior to ours. But Job finds himself confronted with a world ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave-dweller.”Slavoj Žižek · God in Job as ideological inversion of expected divine authority
“New World War is our predestination. But you know... we can change predestination, we can retroactively change our fate.”Slavoj Žižek · Protestant predestination as model for political agency
“you don't even have to go to Chinese gulag or Indonesia to see all those slave workers. You they are here we simply don't see them.”Slavoj Žižek · the outside is inside / invisible exploitation in Europe
“Would you like to come up for a drink of coffee? / I would love to but I don't drink coffee. / No problem I don't have any.”Slavoj Žižek · desire constituted by offered absence / erotic determinate negation
Transcript 22 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Just as an introduction, I cannot emphasize enough how much I like to be here because it may sound surprising for you, but Norwegian culture is part of my life but in a very primitive way. For example, when I walk here and along Karl Johan, I am all the time surprised that there are normal people there because my idea is I should see all those Edvard Munch zombies there, you know, just normal people, it's not natural. I think your tourist board should hire some zombies to make because I was told that that area is now a tourist trap more or less, no? So you should do it. Or like you, I know he is politically so-so, who, he? Your now big detective writer, Jo Nesbø, no? But nonetheless, I like his Snowman very much and as maybe some of you, I was very sad to learn that something went wrong with American version. I think that two years ago I read that Martin Scorsese was supposed to do the movie, no? So I just like the country. But my true dream is to go to the North, because I was told that you're racist but in a more benevolent sense, racist in the sense that, you know, in every country and I think this is the best way to learn about the country is to ask what inner antagonistic myths you have. Like people here, what do they think about northern people? And I was told that the idea here is that up there in the north, people just drink and have sex, you know, lazy and so on. Well, I not because of this but my dream is to go from here to Russia without entering Sweden, you know, to go around. I just, I just like the country. That's all I wanted to say. And also, this is civilization, the bookstore, I don't know how you pronounce it, the one there where zombies walk a little bit north, no? I, yeah, yeah, I really like it. Every time I'm here, I go there and so on and I'm not kidding, like, you know, bookstores like this are just disappearing. In all of Manhattan you no longer have a bookstore like that today. You have the big Barnes Noble and then if you ask there, for example for Derrida, I can tell you what answer you will get: something like how do you spell that sir so that he can check it in a computer, you know? So again, all the luck to you, I mean. You know why? Because maybe I'm wrong, it's easy for foreigners to idealize you. But even if we subtract all stupid idealization, I think if nothing else, that's at least how I what I read about your country with some economists, you your economy, okay you were lucky, oil and so on, but nonetheless does prove something. You are very competitive and so on, but nonetheless compared with other countries still relatively egalitarian and so on, all that. So you are an empirical proof that it's simply not true, you know, when you want more equality they immediately tell you, oh this is a catastrophe, we will lose our competitiveness. No, it's not, it's not necessary that you lose it precisely. Okay, if we go on like this, well then I would justify again my nickname, friends call me Fidel, not because of politics but because, you know, Fidel comes, just a couple of remarks and then if he is not ill it's seven hours. So let's do it. I hope you will not be too disappointed by what I will deploy here because some of the stuff will be maybe known to some of you, but I really want to confront some difficult problems today about universality, eurocentrism, is eurocentrism necessarily something bad and so on. So let me begin by a philosopher whom you may consider a right-winger, but he is at least an intelligent right-winger, don't dismiss him, Peter Sloterdijk, the German. It's not as simple as some Habermasians think in Germany who dismiss him almost as a neo-Nazi sometimes. Peter Sloterdijk remarked that if there is a person to whom they will build monuments hundreds of years in the future from now, it will be Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore leader who invented and realized the so-called capitalism with Asian values. Singapore, the mega success story. Capitalism with Asian values, of course, has nothing to do with Asia, it's simply authoritarian capitalism. The virus of this authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. It's interesting to know that before setting in motion his reforms, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and expressly praised it as a model that all of China should follow. And I think what happened forty years ago around in Singapore has a world-historical meaning. Till now, capitalism was in a way linked with democracy. There were of course from time to time recourses to direct dictatorship, but after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself, like in South Korea, in Chile and so on. So again, although we can play this Marxist game and claim oh this was bourgeois democracy, but better bourgeois democracy than nothing. I think we should as good Marxists, if you still are, I am, I hope so, completely drop this idea false, only formal bourgeois freedom. I mean for a proper dialectician, form matters. You know and about this I will maybe talk later. You know this standard boring Marxist doxa, our freedoms are just formal freedoms, human rights are not really universal, they mask a certain particular interest, they are really the rights of white men of property. Yes, it began like this and of course there was a gap between form and content. But precisely because of this gap, what was at the beginning a universal form which was false, masking particular interest, nonetheless triggered a dynamic of its own. You know the story. Yes, first human rights, of course they were masking just certain rights of again white men of property, but you know the story. First, Mary Wollstonecraft said why not also women? Then black slaves in Haiti, why not also blacks? And so on. So you know in the gap between form and content, don't underestimate the autonomy of the form. So this standard Stalinist or hardline Marxist idea just a form, it masks content, no this is not, it's not as simple as that. Every liberation begins with a form, in the sense that you establish that you are formally free, and only from this formal freedom can you even analyze and become fully aware of how but really I am not free. But you see my dialectical point, for this you need the form. Even with feminists, feminism it's like this, my good friend personally, we have some debates theoretically, Judith Butler made this point nicely when he, she once wrote that the first step of feminine liberation is to is to fully admit your subordination, you know, because today in our societies insofar as we still have in some societies anti-feminism, it's no longer a direct anti-feminism. You know we are all liberals today, yes women suffered horribly blah blah blah, but then in real so but then it's like how should I put it, maybe I should to make this point clear repeat because we I can make a long talk only about this, the forms of domination today, the problem today is that domination more and more, relations of domination, social hierarchy, appear as its opposite, as the very form of freedom. Let me tell you a story I'm of mine, an anecdote, I'm sorry if some of you know it, this will make the point. Today, for example, let's say you are a young boy or girl, it's Sunday afternoon, you have an authoritarian father who tells you, listen today you have to visit your grandmother, I know that you don't want it, that you are tired of her, but it's your duty, I don't care what you think, do it and behave properly there. I think nothing wrong with this because you know you will why not, because you experience this as an oppression, it leaves you the space to protest it and so on. But then we have this nightmarish figure of modern permissive father, what will he tell you? He will probably tell you something like this, listen it's up to you to decide, you can visit your grandmother and not, just remember how much she loves you and so on. And you know and every child, and children are not idiots, knows very well that beneath this appearance of free choice, there is a much stronger injunction, it's not just do it, it's you must like to do it. It orders you what freely to choose. And more and more our freedoms are are like that, I claim. Which is why I find it horrible, is he translated here with you, the one who wrote about the indebted man, the Italian social philosopher, economist, Maurizio Lazzarato, where he pointed out how and this is the the strength of ideology today. It's no longer just we are all equal, it's basically we are all capitalists, in what sense? They claim this, let's say you are a poor worker barely surviving, okay, you get a credit and then of course you are free to decide, like will you take a holiday, will you will you invest in your health, in your children's education? And then the idea is, the term ideological is self-entrepreneurship, you know. The idea is that okay you add a couple of zeros and you are a big capitalist. But with just a couple of thousand of euros or dollars you are a small one, but that we are all at different levels investing capitalists, that even a poor worker who takes a credit, it's really a self-entrepreneurship investing and so on and so on. You see this is the ideology of our daily lives. And the question to be asked especially, I've written about this and I think your Le Monde diplomatique published something about it, it's very important, especially in view of this ongoing of the ongoing secret negotiations, you know about them TISA, Taisa and so on, which I think something incredible is happening here. We have extremely important negotiations which will really pre-determine the basic coordinates of our economic life, flow of information for decades to come, and it's simply not debated in public. Why? That's the problem today. We are free and I'm not making fun here, again, these personal freedoms are very important. But what if somebody asks you do you feel free? What will probably be your answer? Yes, because I can do whatever I want. I can choose my sexual orientation, choose the novels I I read, the movies I have, travel where I want, and if I have a choice if there are options of for a profession, whatever, we are free at this level of personal choices. But these personal choices more and more, no they always did, happen within a certain network of let's call it social social frame, to put it simply, which pre-determines which are even your choices. And I think a true decision, a true free act is to change also this general framework, not just to choose this or that, but to choose to co-determine the very frame. And there I think we are less and less free. All key decisions, economic, military, are simply taken behind our backs, more and more often even in a secret way. And again the tragedy is that we don't even experience this as a limitation of our freedom. Freedom for us today is at a personal level I can make the choices that I want. So okay, let me return to my main line. This is why I think that today in our Western societies, on the one hand, we are still free, but again free in this limited sense of personal choices. And as I've written in a comment of mine recently, maybe this is why we were so fascinated with the events in Ukraine. I mean I don't know, I'm not sure what really happened there, but the impression was that a collective act, like hundreds of thousands of people coming together and enforcing a global change of the entire situation, this is no longer even imaginable in our societies, I claim. We envied them. It was not that we were just narcissists, oh you see Ukrainians are also discovering our way, they want to join us. No, we envied them for such a collective act, at least it appeared to be. So again, on the one hand, our freedom is more and more limited at this level. On the other hand, worldwide, the link between democracy and capitalism is more and more broken. In the sense that today's most dynamic economies, China, South Korea, Singapore, are precisely states or economies where again a market economy, very ruthless it can be, is nonetheless linked with or grounded in a strong authoritarian state. I simply claim that that's the future. Now comes a more problematic point. We hear a lot today about the failure of the Western civilization as a global model and the failure of those decolonized nations which tried to emulate, to imitate our Western way. This is the standard post-colonial mantra, you know. The time of Europe is over and so on. Here I have a problem with this diagnosis. Yes, the Fukuyama dream of global liberal democracy is over. And incidentally, Fukuyama knows it. Fukuyama himself is no longer a Fukuyamaist or whatever, no? But at the level of economy, capitalism has triumphed worldwide. The Third World nations which endorsed it are those which are now growing with spectacular rates. And now comes my problematic maybe for some of you point. Global capitalism has no problem in accommodating itself to a plurality of local religions, cultures, traditions and so on. I totally disagree with those post-colonial thinkers who claim that ideologically global capitalism means we will all become stupid Americans eating hamburgers. No, global capitalism is immanently multicultural. In the sense that it perfectly functions this way, that at the economic level global market but our cultural identity remain specific. So the cruel irony of anti-eurocentrism is that on behalf of anti-colonialism, one criticizes the West at the very historical moment when global capitalism no longer needs traditional Western cultural values like equality, democracy in order to function smoothly and is doing quite well with authoritarian alternate modernity. In short, one tends to proclaim Western cultural values irrelevant at the very moment when critically reinterpreted, many of them, egalitarianism, fundamental rights, welfare state can serve as a weapon against capitalist globalization. You see the irony that I see, which is why the irony of the fact that today's critique of anti-eurocentrism fits perfectly this new authoritarian tendency. It's very sad how it's fashionable to criticize the West at the very point when finally some at least of values traditionally identified as Western values can really play a progressive emancipatory role. My next point, global capitalism does as already emphasized does not automatically push all its subjects towards hedonist permissive individualism. And the fact that in many countries which recently entered the road of rapid capitalist modernization, like India, many individuals stick to the so-called traditional pre-modern beliefs and ethics, family values, rejection of hedonism, strong ethnic identification and so on. This in no way prevents sorry, in no way proves that they are not fully modern. You know it's not as some people think that we in the West are properly modern, individualism, hedonism and so on, while in India or China they are too stupid or backward and they still need some traditional values. No, I claim that in in it is it is paradoxically the very this sticking to traditional values, family and so on, is precisely what allows countries like China, Singapore and India to follow the path of capitalist dynamics even more radically than Western liberal countries. Reference to traditional value enables individuals to justify their ruthless engagement in market competition to justify it in ethical terms. I'm really doing this to help my parents and so on and so on. This is why I think that one of the signs of time is what happened now a couple of months ago in India. You know their new Prime Minister, Modi. At the same time a radical neoliberal in economic terms, like he openly said, today China is getting too developed, the soon the price of labor in China will be too expensive and this is a chance of India to offer massively cheap labor and so on. At the same time he is a Hindu nationalist. Again, what I'm claiming is there is no tension here. Here one should be effectively anti-eurocentric. Capitalism today is really universal. If anything, it functions even better with more authoritarian private ethical and social order. This is why, paradoxically, only a new project of universal emancipation can enable us to fight the destructive effects of capitalist globalization. Let me report to some let me report you an experience that happened to me while I was in India, maybe you know it some of you I'm sorry to repeat myself but I think it's very important when I was and it tells a lot, when I was in India I got engaged in a debate where some local post-colonial scholars told me told me but can't you see how underprivileged we are? The very fact that we have to speak in English, the language of the colonizer, to justify to legitimize our decolonization. So already the very form of decolonization is under colonial domination, foreign imposed language. Okay, it was typical racism that they addressed me as if my natural language is English, you know. They didn't even notice this that I don't. But I claim that here is a paradox which I don't have time today to develop even at the philosophical level. You know there is this refined dialectical retroactive movement of how you experience something as lost, you are deprived from it, but what you lose did not pre-exist the loss. In the very act of losing it, it emerges. And this idea was given to me by my Indian friends that it is the same with the project of new democratic secular India. This is not return to ancient India. Precisely what they want to return to emerged through the loss. So it's absolutely crucial here I remain maybe you will disagree a traditional Marxist who and it's almost prohibited to quote that Marx on famous text on the results of colonial domination in India, where Marx points out how ambiguous the colonization of India was. Yes, it was brutal, it did tear apart traditional communal times and so on, community ties, but at the same time it opens up it opened up the space for liberation. And I think we should more than ever insist on this. Today I don't think that to oppose global capitalism in its destructive features, that some and so it's so popular with many fake leftists, you know this idea local cultures, some stupid local wisdoms can enable us to resist global capitalism. I know I have Latino American friends who are telling me but our ancient Latino Latino South American tradition can be resistance, then I tell them yes what do you plan? To return to Incas or Aztecs and to do some human sacrifices or what? And they tell me no no no okay they were bad but and then things get totally crazy. They tell me but you know there are some tribes in upper Amazon who had some notion of community which can and so on. No I totally disagree with this and I will give you an example, two examples. Okay the first one would have been South Africa apartheid struggle. The greatness with all the compromises that they made of African National Congress is that they never succumbed to the temptation of formulating their struggle against apartheid in the terms of returning to some African roots and all that bullshit and so on. You know who was preaching this message? I don't know if you are old enough if you remember it, Buthelezi, a local king, who as we know today was on the payroll of apartheid of course. His message was to keep nations but because you know you should do something very perverse that I did years ago. You should read the official justifications of apartheid by South African ideologists. It's very interesting reading because of course it was a fake just to justify racism, but it's interesting what they say. They don't say we whites are more, no, they say listen if we allow blacks to rejoin our way of life, such a precious wonderful local culture will disappear. What it will happen with Hottentot, with Bushmen, all this wonderful plu, they directly justified their racism in multiculturalist terms. ANC knew it all the time. No, at this level of political economic rights we should be universalists. Who knew this nicely? That's why I admired him always, Malcolm X, my true hero, you know the black guy. Okay, to speak in the language that you will maybe understand played by Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's film no? You know what was great about him? How he reinterpreted that X, Malcolm X. No family name, just X. Of course it refers to the fact that the blacks were violently torn out of their communities in Africa, but and I'm not bluffing here, I read him, but at the same time Malcolm X totally rejects any notion of you know like in that if some of you are old enough you may remember it, some thirty years ago there was a very popular TV series Roots, Alex, you know, we return to root. No, he totally rejected this. He said X, this X being without roots is at the same time a unique chance of freedom, of freely inventing a new communal form for us. Okay I don't agree with Malcolm X's solution which was Islam. For him Islam was this mode of universalism. Of course at the same time things are ambiguous with Islam. I am not I mean I am in no way sympathizing with so-called Muslim fundamentalism. I think even we should break this white liberal barrier that the moment you criticize Islam oh you are already Islamophobic, colonialist or whatever. I have no problems criticizing Islam. But at the same time one should notice, for example, if you ask me of one of the greatest political events of modernity, it's I think the one that I already mentioned, the Haiti Revolution. You know where in around a little bit before, black slaves rebelled there. Again not on behalf of some shitty return to some roots or traditions. No, they simply took seriously the French Revolution and said if it goes for the French why not for us? And here all my recognition goes to the my beloved Jacobins, Robespierre and Saint-Just who immediately acknowledged them, treated them as equal. Then Napoleon came, sent the army and it's a crazy story, such a beautiful story that in that army, Napoleon's army to defeat the slaves, there were many Polish soldiers whom Napoleon mobilized. And when they were approaching the black army, rebellious army, they heard some singing and they were their first reaction was okay some primitive tribal songs, whatever. Then you know what they discovered when they come closer to the army to the black army, these Polish soldiers? They discovered that the blacks are singing Marseillaise. And hundreds of Polish soldiers broke down. They said my God are we on the right side? And they changed sides. So this is why I think that only with the Haiti Revolution as its repetition French Revolution really become a universal event. So there is even a wonderful paradox of ideology how the Haiti Revolution dealt with this. They wanted to be a black republic when they wrote their constitution in But but at the same time they wanted to be honest like my God there are many good white people who helped us and they should also be full equal citizens. So if you don't believe me check it up. Haiti constitution the fourth article. It has such a wonderful paradoxical line. It says Haiti is a black republic so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. I find this an ingenious solution. That's the spirit that that we need today, you know? And so that you will not think I must tell you this the story is nightmarish. From that point on because they did what you know Haiti liberation was not this good liberal liberation slowly we will educate the blacks blah blah. No, the blacks did it and they had to be taught a lesson. So you know what's the tragedy and even now today Haiti feels the consequences as the poor country destroyed. Do you know this that when in Haiti was again accepted as in Western trade, the price was terrible. They had to sign a contract with France obliging them to as it were repay them for their liberation. The France simply accounted how much did those slaves cost in the market terms and the state of Haiti had to oblige itself to and of course the result was I'm not kidding here it's an unknown fact which is terrifying. You know that to give you an idea in late 19th century Haiti was paying to France not percent of that their state budget. You know when they paid the last installment? In Things okay, but let's go back. So to Malcolm X and so on. So again, I think that I think that this is again the crucial point here. I think that it's absolutely crucial in our struggle for emancipation to avoid this temptation of you know particular local cultures as sites of resistance. Of course I mean I have nothing against them. But nonetheless the if this is not connected or embedded in a global universal emancipatory project it fits perfectly global capitalism. Again I more and more think that global capitalism's for ideological form is precisely multiculturalism, up to identity politics and so on and so on. Of course all this should remain, but it's important that it is founded grounded in a universal political project and here I claim European legacy is crucial. The legacy of the what legacy, I don't have again time to go into it. What I even see as basic Christian legacy, the legacy of direct access to universality. You know I'm an atheist to avoid a misunderstanding. But what I admire in Christianity, not Christianity but what one finds in the Bible is this one you know when Christ says when Christ says if you don't hate your mother your father you are not my follower and so on. What does this mean? Of course it doesn't mean the stupidity that you should kill or hate your mother father. I think the way I read it that mother father family stands here for so organic social hierarchic order. What Christ is basically proposing is Holy Spirit what we call as an egalitarian community outside outside the outside hierarchical network. This is also how I read that famous parable you know when Christ is with his disciples and somebody comes in and tells him listen your mother blah blah your family is out there no and he says no my family is here. It doesn't mean you shouldn't love your mother father but not as mother father. That's so unique about Christianity and we find the same idea in modern in modern democracy this idea that this idea which is basically opposed by fascism. Namely the fascist idea is corporatism. You are member of a community only by playing your specific role as an organic part of a global social edifice. And I had the same funny experience in China two years ago. They gave me that bullshit of you know our goal today is no longer communism but harmonious society, the Confucian term. So I asked them okay cut the bullshit tell me what is harmonious society for you? And they told me it's simply a society where everyone does his or her duty. Mother is a good mother, pupil is a good pupil, leader is a good leader. Then I exploded. I said wonderful now we we overcome all these problems of cultural translation. We in Europe call this fascism. Yeah it's perfect we know where you are you know. You know they know very well that this terrifying fear of you as an individual having direct access to universality. And that's the point what is universality. Now we come if you allow me to a more complex theoretical level. You know let me return to the point that I already made the point about this limit of this pseudo-Marxist historicism. People think that the big Marxist point is to historicize, to recognize behind false appeal to universality particular interest like again human rights are really not universal human rights they are effectively the rights of rich that if you look at it closely you see how subtly a certain group is privileged behind the apparently universal form. There is a truth in it I don't doubt it. But I think a much more important lesson of Marx here is exactly the opposite one. We are not just effectively particular where we appear to be universal but also the opposite. We are much more universal than we think we are. Here I have to in the sense that the moment we for example participate on the market we act universally. In what sense? Let's say I am a European merchant I deal with Chinese merchant or manager whatever. Of course we can play at the cultural level this game of when we use the term state, art, how do we know that we mean it in the same sense? Isn't it that each of us understands this term in a particular way? Yes but I claim I agree but ultimately this is irrelevant. It works, business works you know. In our form we are universal. Then there is another absolutely crucial point by Marx that the distinction between universality in itself and universality for itself (a Hegelian distinction). In the sense that universality in itself is just the mute universality like I'm this, you are that, but we are all human. Ah no. Marx sees the uniqueness of capitalist society in the fact that universality becomes for itself. In the sense that it's not only that I don't know I'm this you are that but we are all workers. It is that abstraction is part of my immediate experience. The way I experience myself is as an abstract individual. Abstract in the sense that I am no longer immediately identified to a certain position, job, place in social hierarchy and so on and so on. Like the most elementary point here would be about the notion of profession. This is ABC even very simplified. You know that for example the notion of profession implies precisely that you are not born into your profession. You can change your profession while for example primitive example in medieval times it would have been ridiculous if you meet a knight to ask him what's your profession? My profession is to be a knight or whatever. No because precisely this element of contingency is missing. And that's what defines modernity. At the level of desire and so on that our particular identity is experienced as something ultimately contingent. And this is the greatness of Descartes, his thought. Like my favorite part is from the beginning, I always forget I think it's discourse of method maybe it's the other one big text, where he says that when he was young he saw other races as ridiculous you know their customs and so on. But then he says I asked myself but what if in their eyes our customs are no less ridiculous and so on. That's I think the definition of modernity. This idea that your own particular roots are somehow experienced as ultimately contingent. Which means again that you are universal for yourself. In your very identity you experience the gap between what you universal are and your particular actuality embodiment. Of course the problem is how to translate this into a political program. If some of you know Walter Benjamin, you know he proposed this problematic notion of divine violence as opposed to mythic violence. Mythic violence is to put it in naive terms the bad one like the violence that use the state to reproduce itself the as it were illegal foundation of the rule of law. Divine violence is supposed to be something good liberating and so on. But I would prefer to read it in a slightly different way. We all follow of course now these demonstrations in the United States Ferguson and then that other killing I forgot the name of the guy who was suffocated by police. I think that the protests of blacks and not only blacks this would be an example maybe of what Benjamin called divine violence. Because it's divine in the sense that it doesn't it's not part of a political project. It's just a kind of a blind outburst outburst. And of course now you will tell me but it's not just it's horrible like they just sometimes burn cars even maybe kill some people and you can say of course my God this is not just what did I do. Yes I don't think that what Benjamin calls divine violence is something just correct it's something horrible of course if they were trying. But it's a it's a way out in a deadlock. The other way towards so again when it's not able to propose a universal project as an articulated political project you get these outbursts. And I think this is the most terrible thing that we can tell about our society. You remember this was also divine violence in this sense of blind irrational protest. You remember a couple of years ago when cars were burning in the suburbs of Paris? You remember the protests in England which turned out into a totally blind violence just looting the shops and so on? I think this is the the most terrible diagnosis that one can give in our societies. If you have these explosions of violence obviously something is wrong but what is worrying is the impossibility to translate this dissatisfaction in even a minimal political project. Now I will have to before you play the superego before I'm mean have to condense it. So if we talk about divine violence so where is theology here? Here I would like to refer to a friend of mine from here mentioned him to me you had in he was publishing books in but also before do you know your own Norwegian theologian I think he was also a genius Peter Wessel Zapffe? He's a genius in his reading of Book of Job. You must probably know the passage. He read Book of Job as what? His reading is that Job when God appears expected a sacred pure God whose intellect is infinitely superior to ours. But Job quote from Zapffe: finds himself confronted with a world ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave-dweller, a braggart and a blaster, almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture. What is new for Job is not God's greatness in quantifiable terms that he knew fully in advance. What is new is the qualitative baseness. Like God is omnipotent but like a spoiled child. And I don't have time to go into it but I really think that Book of Job should be rehabilitated the lesson is important even today as the first text of critique of ideology. Why? On the one hand remember what happens in the Book of Job. Okay Job things turn back for him he loses what not know wives no in the Bible the line is I like goats, house, wives and so on they can't do. Okay he loses everything and then ideology enters. You remember his three theological friends come and each of them with a certain message which is your suffering has a certain meaning. The first one basically tells him God is just so even if you don't know why all this happened to you look deeper you will discover a reason. The second tells him okay maybe you did nothing but God is testing you whatever. So again the message is suffering has a deeper meaning it's justified. Now comes the miracle. You remember when Jehovah God comes then he says the opposite. He says no Job in his complaints was totally right, all that this theologians were telling him is bullshit is wrong. Then then Job says asks God nonetheless but nonetheless why did all this happen to me? And here comes the mystery. You know that the official interpretation of that God's answer which is something like you know all those bombastic evocation where were you when I create those monsters all that is that God's answer is who are you zero? I think you are an opponent of metaphysical linear notion of time no? And I propose that we enter this original authentic circular notion of time you know. Okay sorry I will go to the end just very quickly yes. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, my favorite theologian, proposed okay the standard line is God again God just tells to Job who are you you are nobody I am so much above you you cannot get my reasons. Chesterton's reading is the opposite one very much in the spirit of your Zapffe is that when God says but where were you when I created this that monster that God's answer is rather you think only you are in trouble but look around the whole world that I created is a total mess everyone everyone is in trouble you know. Okay what I claim is that such a notion of God as totally arbitrary authority and so on creates conditions for freedom paradoxically. Which is why this being a typical Protestant God you know this totally unjust God, the God of predestination. It's a condition of freedom. Okay read my next book I will not go into it. Just now to finish if you allow me just to conclude to return to concrete problems of universality today. I'm jumping over things. The problem of United States today is how to remain a universal policeman. You remember a couple of weeks ago President Obama gave an interview where he tried to explain the rules of the US engagement. I quote Obama: when trouble comes up anywhere in the world they don't call Beijing they don't call Moscow they call us that's always the case. America leads we are the indispensable nation that's how we roll. Now out of real sympathy for the United States I think that this no longer works today. If nothing else do you remember a week after it was reported in our media how Obama himself made a call to Tehran offering them collaboration against ISIS and basically Iranians rejected him in an arrogant way. I think that the catastrophe of this politics is that United States are trying to play the global policeman in a world which already is multicentric. So they end up doing the dirty job for others like Iranians must be glad Americans are doing dirty job for them. Bush was already doing this I am for Obama against Bush. What is the actual result of the American invasion of Iraq from American interest is that the majority Iraqi majority is now under political domination Shia of Iran. Others are now ISIS and so on. I mean America is again and again winning wars and losing peace. What is America missing here? The basic thing which is that we are entering a multicentric world and here I see I will try to really keep it short here I see the dangers that's why I'm a pessimist moderate pessimist. Namely the situation today I think is in an uncanny way (I'm not original here but one should repeat it) similar to that before World War I. Do you remember how we had one global power the British Empire and then we had new growing powers especially Germany which wanted their place. And the result we know what was it, World War I. Today it's Russia, maybe China, and the place of Balkan is played by Middle East. So this is the most dangerous moment, the multicentric world where we don't yet have the rules of conduct as it were, the rules of politeness. Like whatever you think about Cold War, it had a certain logic unwritten rules, and this is what I find so terrifying today. The parallel is that in the same way as before World War I for decades everybody knew war is coming and everybody was warning about it, but at the same time people didn't really believe that there can be war. And I think this is why there was a war at the end, you know. And isn't something similar going on today? That's how I see it. We are it's quite shocking are we aware what is happening today? If you read the media, almost every day there is an argument in our media for the coming war like you know it was like oh Russian planes intercepted there, Russians has now a stealth fighter, Putin wants this, Americans will counter it and so on. Everyone is already laying the it's we are behaving as if we are slowly sliding towards a new war, but I think that at a deeper level we don't really believe that it can happen. And that's why it can happen because what do I mean by this? First okay I will not quote you, just look at the media, all these examples of how we are slowly approaching a new World War which again I think the stakes are precisely similar to those of World War I. New global powers and then is the geopolitical geopolitical rearrangement and so on. And again I think that only the only solution that I effectively see is some mobilization with a progressive universal project. Other what is not enough that will be my point. What is not enough is precisely this idea it's a dangerous situation we should proceed in a very careful way. No if you do just this you already accept the frame which is our situation is we are slowly sliding towards a conflict war and we should be careful. I follow here he is quite a genius I like him my good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a theorist of catastrophes who proposed a paradoxical notion of how to avoid catastrophe. That the first step is to accept it, acknowledge it. In the sense that we should see how we it's not only the risk of World War, because if it's just that then you still can say okay we always have choices we should be careful. No we should accept it that World War, new one is our fate. Fate not that it necessarily will happen but fate in the sense that the whole global situation is pushing us slowly towards it. So it's not enough just to be careful. We remain within the same frame. We have to as it were more radically to change the entire frame or to put it in Protestant terms, new World War is our predestination. But you know and that's the deepest message of Protestantism, that's why I like it we can change predestination, we can retroactively change our fate. That's what I find so liberating in Protestantism and in my beloved philosopher Hegel. You know this idea that there is a necessity but a necessity always happens retroactively. In what sense? Remember if you had the fortune or rather misfortune to fall in love. It's always a contingent encounter no? You walk on the street you slip a lady maybe is helping you to get up and then oh my God you go for a coffee. But you know what I'm saying then retroactively of course you interpret this as a closed narrative, it was predestined. You know something it's a very refined notion of how something happens contingently but once it happens it appears as necessary. Like everything was pointing towards it. This means that yes we have the freedom retroactively to impose to impose another fate as it were. We have freedom but it's not just that limited freedom of you know okay Russians make a provocation there let's not answer too much here. No this is still the same logic. The whole global logic has to be changed. Otherwise I think we are lost. And again okay I could have go on here because the examples of this paradoxical logic are for example Hegel gives another example like let's take Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Of course it was a contingent decision he could have say no I remain up there above Rubicon. But once he did it it becomes his fate. You know this idea I like very much profoundly Hegelian idea not of a necessity of contingency in the sense of a universal idea to realize itself you need contingent part, but the contingency of necessity. There is a universal necessity but it's a contingent decision which necessity this will be. Again, something happens contingently but once it happens it retroactively becomes to give you another example just to throw you some things maybe to think. You know that's why for Dupuy my friend his favorite film is he's not very original okay now it's even voted in the last opinion poll as the greatest film of all times, Hitchcock's Vertigo. There you have that distinction. You know the story I hope so. The when Madeleine makes the fake suicide for Scottie James Stewart the hero it's a terrible loss. He loses the object of his love. But at the end when he discovers that there never was a Madeleine that she was he doesn't just lose the object, he in a way retroactively discovered that what he thought that he has lost never existed. In this way we are not talking about magic in the sense of we can change the past but in this what he calls counterfactual way. You can change the past at the level of at the level of counterfactuals. Just I cannot stop myself give me two-three minutes. Just to just to to make it clear this idea. Let's take a statement: if Shakespeare didn't write Hamlet then another one had to write it. This is acceptable no? This is a fact. I mean because Hamlet is written. Okay they didn't have computer programming there so some person had to do it if not Shakespeare it had to be another one. But if you say if Shakespeare were not to write Hamlet someone else (and this is the counterfactual statement) someone else would have to do it. Ah no this is totally different. This is the same as saying for example if Napoleon is not Napoleon then another guy would have to take his role. This is the standard Marxist determinism. I think that against this we should stick to the one to this logic of counterfactuals like something happened and of course at the level of counterfactual possibilities can change the past. To amuse you for the very last phrase is the same as that joke about which books are now written. It was okay we all know it it was in Hollywood it's my favorite theoretical joke almost. You know from Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka. You know that famous scene when joke told to Greta Garbo by her lover that a guy comes to a cafeteria and says give me coffee with cream please. And you know what the waiter answers? We don't have cream we only have milk so I can only give you coffee without milk. Now this immediately reminds me of my socialist youth when things were sometimes non-available in the stores and the classical joke is somebody comes to a store and says is it that still you don't have toilet paper and you know what the salesperson answers him? No you are in a wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil. The other store there is the one which doesn't have you see now how you can understand this is what Hegel meant by determinate negation. That no like if you the coffee is the same coffee but it's not the same thing if it's coffee without milk or coffee without cream. How does this work? Let me conclude with last obscenity. Did you see the movie it's one of the most erotic scenes that I've seen? And nothing happens you can tell this this story to your priest to your grandmother or whatever. It's Ewan McGregor, the young one, when he was still playing working class heroes, when he didn't yet become Jedi and all that stuff. He's okay he flirts with a lady he is a poor unemployed miner working with a lady there sorry flirting with a lady and okay after in the evening he accompanies her to her house and then she says it's such a simple dialogue. She says: would you like to come up for a drink of coffee? And he says: I would love to but I don't drink coffee. You know what she answers: no problem I don't have any. Can you imagine a more erotic provocation you know like because the point made is not about coffee but without any you just that's the paradox. You offer something then you take it back but all the erotic tension is there. This is our hope. As long as we can do this maybe there is chance for us. Thank you very much. Don't go for too long because you know what happened I read in a recent book to Stalin. In he received a group of generals, old ones. And there were only fifty of them they were in a room the problem is only fifty is that you never were sure if Stalin doesn't see you and at the end they applauded to Stalin. And nobody dared to stop applauding. And it went on for minutes, some of them dropped down and finally Stalin with his greatness said okay enough comrades. But I felt almost like dead so again my message to you is my old joke maybe some you know it is like don't applaud so much when we communists come to power you will have to applaud, save your energy for them for them. I'm sorry my talk was I know confused but I was in a panic you know I got but these are no unfortunately the part which was not just a joke was I think we have a couple of time for a couple of questions also. You know but that's my hypocrisy I like to talk too much and then I like to say with all the hypocrisy I'm so sad that we don't have time for the debate for the debate. Because you know I love debates, dialogues, ooh but you know which dialogues? If some of you are philosophers do you know late Plato's dialogues which look like this, one guy talks all the time and the other one just says every ten minutes or so by Zeus Socrates you are right and so on you know. So let's have a dialogue like. I think we have time for one or two short questions and please state your name and also be short ask questions don't give us. Oh my God why this Stalinist twist why the name? Okay anyone? Nobody dares to say anything. Didn't you do your Stalinist duty? You know how one organizes in Stalinism the democratic debate, you distribute the questions in advance and. Please. Ah just be loud enough I heard some reaction. You see you have to use the microphone since there are people in other rooms of the house where was somebody saying anything? There was a hand no? Although there is always this semiotic ambiguity that somebody is just scratching his head. I think he was taking a photo. Take a. I hate this, I would prohibit selfies and all that stuff. Ah I'm sorry. Sorry for this. Hello. Um you talked about very similar hi I'm here. Hi. Whatever. Here. Ah there okay okay. Um you talked about some very similar circumstances now and then before First World War. Yeah yeah. I also I'm not a scholar but I also got the same impression by what I read in the news. So I was wondering but there is a very powerful element at this moment I think and it's our power of communication and the fact that people are watching and it's I think it should not be underestimated this power of communication and and it might be actually a way out or to create a better model right? So what do you think would be the the role of that element now how would it change our predetermined fate? What what do you make of. It's a wonderful question. But I think again as always with new things that the role of all this communications media is very it's ambiguous. On the one hand yes it creates a public space of instant possible at least mobilization no? At the same time you know the guy whom I mentioned Peter Sloterdijk makes a simple but I think accurate remark when he says that this global communication makes everyone a neighbor so that tensions can explode for example you remember not here in Denmark that stupid those stupid Muhammad caricatures. How like hundred two hundred years ago nothing would have happened but precisely because we have one global space of communication days afterwards thousands were demonstrating I don't know in Pakistan and so on who probably didn't have any idea maybe not even where Denmark is and so on and so on. So I claim that it's very ambiguous. I think this new communication I think we should that's my modest opinion avoid both temptations. On the one hand this naive dream oh we have universal medium we can instantly mobilize, but at the same time this also has opens up as we all know new possibilities of control and so on and so on. Which is why I think that precisely what you referred to as this new social space is if I may use the term which I think should still be used, it's maybe one of the main domains of class struggle today. That's what all is about. Who will control it, how will it be controlled and so on and so on. I think that Julian Assange have now published a book on on on Google where he basically said Google is a privatized NSA you know. And this again this struggle is extremely important. It's not only the struggle for control of social space it's also a struggle for so-called intellectual property. I think in a very naive way maybe I'm wrong that although intellectual property may appear the ultimate form of capitalism with all this instant business, it's at the same time something that is maybe one of the greatest threats to capitalism. I
Just as an introduction, I cannot emphasize enough how much I like to be here because it may sound surprising for you, but Norwegian culture is part of my life but in a very primitive way. For example, when I walk here and along Karl Johan, I am all the time surprised that there are normal people there because my idea is I should see all those Edvard Munch zombies there, you know, just normal people, it's not natural. I think your tourist board should hire some zombies to make because I was told that that area is now a tourist trap more or less, no? So you should do it. Or like you, I know he is politically so-so, who, he? Your now big detective writer, Jo Nesbø, no? But nonetheless, I like his Snowman very much and as maybe some of you, I was very sad to learn that something went wrong with American version. I think that two years ago I read that Martin Scorsese was supposed to do the movie, no? So I just like the country. But my true dream is to go to the North, because I was told that you're racist but in a more benevolent sense, racist in the sense that, you know, in every country and I think this is the best way to learn about the country is to ask what inner antagonistic myths you have. Like people here, what do they think about northern people? And I was told that the idea here is that up there in the north, people just drink and have sex, you know, lazy and so on. Well, I not because of this but my dream is to go from here to Russia without entering Sweden, you know, to go around. I just, I just like the country. That's all I wanted to say. And also, this is civilization, the bookstore, I don't know how you pronounce it, the one there where zombies walk a little bit north, no? I, yeah, yeah, I really like it. Every time I'm here, I go there and so on and I'm not kidding, like, you know, bookstores like this are just disappearing. In all of Manhattan you no longer have a bookstore like that today. You have the big Barnes Noble and then if you ask there, for example for Derrida, I can tell you what answer you will get: something like how do you spell that sir so that he can check it in a computer, you know? So again, all the luck to you, I mean. You know why? Because maybe I'm wrong, it's easy for foreigners to idealize you. But even if we subtract all stupid idealization, I think if nothing else, that's at least how I what I read about your country with some economists, you your economy, okay you were lucky, oil and so on, but nonetheless does prove something. You are very competitive and so on, but nonetheless compared with other countries still relatively egalitarian and so on, all that. So you are an empirical proof that it's simply not true, you know, when you want more equality they immediately tell you, oh this is a catastrophe, we will lose our competitiveness. No, it's not, it's not necessary that you lose it precisely. Okay, if we go on like this, well then I would justify again my nickname, friends call me Fidel, not because of politics but because, you know, Fidel comes, just a couple of remarks and then if he is not ill it's seven hours. So let's do it. I hope you will not be too disappointed by what I will deploy here because some of the stuff will be maybe known to some of you, but I really want to confront some difficult problems today about universality, eurocentrism, is eurocentrism necessarily something bad and so on. So let me begin by a philosopher whom you may consider a right-winger, but he is at least an intelligent right-winger, don't dismiss him, Peter Sloterdijk, the German. It's not as simple as some Habermasians think in Germany who dismiss him almost as a neo-Nazi sometimes. Peter Sloterdijk remarked that if there is a person to whom they will build monuments hundreds of years in the future from now, it will be Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore leader who invented and realized the so-called capitalism with Asian values. Singapore, the mega success story. Capitalism with Asian values, of course, has nothing to do with Asia, it's simply authoritarian capitalism. The virus of this authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. It's interesting to know that before setting in motion his reforms, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and expressly praised it as a model that all of China should follow. And I think what happened forty years ago around in Singapore has a world-historical meaning. Till now, capitalism was in a way linked with democracy. There were of course from time to time recourses to direct dictatorship, but after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself, like in South Korea, in Chile and so on. So again, although we can play this Marxist game and claim oh this was bourgeois democracy, but better bourgeois democracy than nothing. I think we should as good Marxists, if you still are, I am, I hope so, completely drop this idea false, only formal bourgeois freedom. I mean for a proper dialectician, form matters. You know and about this I will maybe talk later. You know this standard boring Marxist doxa, our freedoms are just formal freedoms, human rights are not really universal, they mask a certain particular interest, they are really the rights of white men of property. Yes, it began like this and of course there was a gap between form and content. But precisely because of this gap, what was at the beginning a universal form which was false, masking particular interest, nonetheless triggered a dynamic of its own. You know the story. Yes, first human rights, of course they were masking just certain rights of again white men of property, but you know the story. First, Mary Wollstonecraft said why not also women? Then black slaves in Haiti, why not also blacks? And so on. So you know in the gap between form and content, don't underestimate the autonomy of the form. So this standard Stalinist or hardline Marxist idea just a form, it masks content, no this is not, it's not as simple as that. Every liberation begins with a form, in the sense that you establish that you are formally free, and only from this formal freedom can you even analyze and become fully aware of how but really I am not free. But you see my dialectical point, for this you need the form. Even with feminists, feminism it's like this, my good friend personally, we have some debates theoretically, Judith Butler made this point nicely when he, she once wrote that the first step of feminine liberation is to is to fully admit your subordination, you know, because today in our societies insofar as we still have in some societies anti-feminism, it's no longer a direct anti-feminism. You know we are all liberals today, yes women suffered horribly blah blah blah, but then in real so but then it's like how should I put it, maybe I should to make this point clear repeat because we I can make a long talk only about this, the forms of domination today, the problem today is that domination more and more, relations of domination, social hierarchy, appear as its opposite, as the very form of freedom. Let me tell you a story I'm of mine, an anecdote, I'm sorry if some of you know it, this will make the point. Today, for example, let's say you are a young boy or girl, it's Sunday afternoon, you have an authoritarian father who tells you, listen today you have to visit your grandmother, I know that you don't want it, that you are tired of her, but it's your duty, I don't care what you think, do it and behave properly there. I think nothing wrong with this because you know you will why not, because you experience this as an oppression, it leaves you the space to protest it and so on. But then we have this nightmarish figure of modern permissive father, what will he tell you? He will probably tell you something like this, listen it's up to you to decide, you can visit your grandmother and not, just remember how much she loves you and so on. And you know and every child, and children are not idiots, knows very well that beneath this appearance of free choice, there is a much stronger injunction, it's not just do it, it's you must like to do it. It orders you what freely to choose. And more and more our freedoms are are like that, I claim. Which is why I find it horrible, is he translated here with you, the one who wrote about the indebted man, the Italian social philosopher, economist, Maurizio Lazzarato, where he pointed out how and this is the the strength of ideology today. It's no longer just we are all equal, it's basically we are all capitalists, in what sense? They claim this, let's say you are a poor worker barely surviving, okay, you get a credit and then of course you are free to decide, like will you take a holiday, will you will you invest in your health, in your children's education? And then the idea is, the term ideological is self-entrepreneurship, you know. The idea is that okay you add a couple of zeros and you are a big capitalist. But with just a couple of thousand of euros or dollars you are a small one, but that we are all at different levels investing capitalists, that even a poor worker who takes a credit, it's really a self-entrepreneurship investing and so on and so on. You see this is the ideology of our daily lives. And the question to be asked especially, I've written about this and I think your Le Monde diplomatique published something about it, it's very important, especially in view of this ongoing of the ongoing secret negotiations, you know about them TISA, Taisa and so on, which I think something incredible is happening here. We have extremely important negotiations which will really pre-determine the basic coordinates of our economic life, flow of information for decades to come, and it's simply not debated in public. Why? That's the problem today. We are free and I'm not making fun here, again, these personal freedoms are very important. But what if somebody asks you do you feel free? What will probably be your answer? Yes, because I can do whatever I want. I can choose my sexual orientation, choose the novels I I read, the movies I have, travel where I want, and if I have a choice if there are options of for a profession, whatever, we are free at this level of personal choices. But these personal choices more and more, no they always did, happen within a certain network of let's call it social social frame, to put it simply, which pre-determines which are even your choices. And I think a true decision, a true free act is to change also this general framework, not just to choose this or that, but to choose to co-determine the very frame. And there I think we are less and less free. All key decisions, economic, military, are simply taken behind our backs, more and more often even in a secret way. And again the tragedy is that we don't even experience this as a limitation of our freedom. Freedom for us today is at a personal level I can make the choices that I want. So okay, let me return to my main line. This is why I think that today in our Western societies, on the one hand, we are still free, but again free in this limited sense of personal choices. And as I've written in a comment of mine recently, maybe this is why we were so fascinated with the events in Ukraine. I mean I don't know, I'm not sure what really happened there, but the impression was that a collective act, like hundreds of thousands of people coming together and enforcing a global change of the entire situation, this is no longer even imaginable in our societies, I claim. We envied them. It was not that we were just narcissists, oh you see Ukrainians are also discovering our way, they want to join us. No, we envied them for such a collective act, at least it appeared to be. So again, on the one hand, our freedom is more and more limited at this level. On the other hand, worldwide, the link between democracy and capitalism is more and more broken. In the sense that today's most dynamic economies, China, South Korea, Singapore, are precisely states or economies where again a market economy, very ruthless it can be, is nonetheless linked with or grounded in a strong authoritarian state. I simply claim that that's the future. Now comes a more problematic point. We hear a lot today about the failure of the Western civilization as a global model and the failure of those decolonized nations which tried to emulate, to imitate our Western way. This is the standard post-colonial mantra, you know. The time of Europe is over and so on. Here I have a problem with this diagnosis. Yes, the Fukuyama dream of global liberal democracy is over. And incidentally, Fukuyama knows it. Fukuyama himself is no longer a Fukuyamaist or whatever, no? But at the level of economy, capitalism has triumphed worldwide. The Third World nations which endorsed it are those which are now growing with spectacular rates. And now comes my problematic maybe for some of you point. Global capitalism has no problem in accommodating itself to a plurality of local religions, cultures, traditions and so on. I totally disagree with those post-colonial thinkers who claim that ideologically global capitalism means we will all become stupid Americans eating hamburgers. No, global capitalism is immanently multicultural. In the sense that it perfectly functions this way, that at the economic level global market but our cultural identity remain specific. So the cruel irony of anti-eurocentrism is that on behalf of anti-colonialism, one criticizes the West at the very historical moment when global capitalism no longer needs traditional Western cultural values like equality, democracy in order to function smoothly and is doing quite well with authoritarian alternate modernity. In short, one tends to proclaim Western cultural values irrelevant at the very moment when critically reinterpreted, many of them, egalitarianism, fundamental rights, welfare state can serve as a weapon against capitalist globalization. You see the irony that I see, which is why the irony of the fact that today's critique of anti-eurocentrism fits perfectly this new authoritarian tendency. It's very sad how it's fashionable to criticize the West at the very point when finally some at least of values traditionally identified as Western values can really play a progressive emancipatory role. My next point, global capitalism does as already emphasized does not automatically push all its subjects towards hedonist permissive individualism. And the fact that in many countries which recently entered the road of rapid capitalist modernization, like India, many individuals stick to the so-called traditional pre-modern beliefs and ethics, family values, rejection of hedonism, strong ethnic identification and so on. This in no way prevents sorry, in no way proves that they are not fully modern. You know it's not as some people think that we in the West are properly modern, individualism, hedonism and so on, while in India or China they are too stupid or backward and they still need some traditional values. No, I claim that in in it is it is paradoxically the very this sticking to traditional values, family and so on, is precisely what allows countries like China, Singapore and India to follow the path of capitalist dynamics even more radically than Western liberal countries. Reference to traditional value enables individuals to justify their ruthless engagement in market competition to justify it in ethical terms. I'm really doing this to help my parents and so on and so on. This is why I think that one of the signs of time is what happened now a couple of months ago in India. You know their new Prime Minister, Modi. At the same time a radical neoliberal in economic terms, like he openly said, today China is getting too developed, the soon the price of labor in China will be too expensive and this is a chance of India to offer massively cheap labor and so on. At the same time he is a Hindu nationalist. Again, what I'm claiming is there is no tension here. Here one should be effectively anti-eurocentric. Capitalism today is really universal. If anything, it functions even better with more authoritarian private ethical and social order. This is why, paradoxically, only a new project of universal emancipation can enable us to fight the destructive effects of capitalist globalization. Let me report to some let me report you an experience that happened to me while I was in India, maybe you know it some of you I'm sorry to repeat myself but I think it's very important when I was and it tells a lot, when I was in India I got engaged in a debate where some local post-colonial scholars told me told me but can't you see how underprivileged we are? The very fact that we have to speak in English, the language of the colonizer, to justify to legitimize our decolonization. So already the very form of decolonization is under colonial domination, foreign imposed language. Okay, it was typical racism that they addressed me as if my natural language is English, you know. They didn't even notice this that I don't. But I claim that here is a paradox which I don't have time today to develop even at the philosophical level. You know there is this refined dialectical retroactive movement of how you experience something as lost, you are deprived from it, but what you lose did not pre-exist the loss. In the very act of losing it, it emerges. And this idea was given to me by my Indian friends that it is the same with the project of new democratic secular India. This is not return to ancient India. Precisely what they want to return to emerged through the loss. So it's absolutely crucial here I remain maybe you will disagree a traditional Marxist who and it's almost prohibited to quote that Marx on famous text on the results of colonial domination in India, where Marx points out how ambiguous the colonization of India was. Yes, it was brutal, it did tear apart traditional communal times and so on, community ties, but at the same time it opens up it opened up the space for liberation. And I think we should more than ever insist on this. Today I don't think that to oppose global capitalism in its destructive features, that some and so it's so popular with many fake leftists, you know this idea local cultures, some stupid local wisdoms can enable us to resist global capitalism. I know I have Latino American friends who are telling me but our ancient Latino Latino South American tradition can be resistance, then I tell them yes what do you plan? To return to Incas or Aztecs and to do some human sacrifices or what? And they tell me no no no okay they were bad but and then things get totally crazy. They tell me but you know there are some tribes in upper Amazon who had some notion of community which can and so on. No I totally disagree with this and I will give you an example, two examples. Okay the first one would have been South Africa apartheid struggle. The greatness with all the compromises that they made of African National Congress is that they never succumbed to the temptation of formulating their struggle against apartheid in the terms of returning to some African roots and all that bullshit and so on. You know who was preaching this message? I don't know if you are old enough if you remember it, Buthelezi, a local king, who as we know today was on the payroll of apartheid of course. His message was to keep nations but because you know you should do something very perverse that I did years ago. You should read the official justifications of apartheid by South African ideologists. It's very interesting reading because of course it was a fake just to justify racism, but it's interesting what they say. They don't say we whites are more, no, they say listen if we allow blacks to rejoin our way of life, such a precious wonderful local culture will disappear. What it will happen with Hottentot, with Bushmen, all this wonderful plu, they directly justified their racism in multiculturalist terms. ANC knew it all the time. No, at this level of political economic rights we should be universalists. Who knew this nicely? That's why I admired him always, Malcolm X, my true hero, you know the black guy. Okay, to speak in the language that you will maybe understand played by Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's film no? You know what was great about him? How he reinterpreted that X, Malcolm X. No family name, just X. Of course it refers to the fact that the blacks were violently torn out of their communities in Africa, but and I'm not bluffing here, I read him, but at the same time Malcolm X totally rejects any notion of you know like in that if some of you are old enough you may remember it, some thirty years ago there was a very popular TV series Roots, Alex, you know, we return to root. No, he totally rejected this. He said X, this X being without roots is at the same time a unique chance of freedom, of freely inventing a new communal form for us. Okay I don't agree with Malcolm X's solution which was Islam. For him Islam was this mode of universalism. Of course at the same time things are ambiguous with Islam. I am not I mean I am in no way sympathizing with so-called Muslim fundamentalism. I think even we should break this white liberal barrier that the moment you criticize Islam oh you are already Islamophobic, colonialist or whatever. I have no problems criticizing Islam. But at the same time one should notice, for example, if you ask me of one of the greatest political events of modernity, it's I think the one that I already mentioned, the Haiti Revolution. You know where in around a little bit before, black slaves rebelled there. Again not on behalf of some shitty return to some roots or traditions. No, they simply took seriously the French Revolution and said if it goes for the French why not for us? And here all my recognition goes to the my beloved Jacobins, Robespierre and Saint-Just who immediately acknowledged them, treated them as equal. Then Napoleon came, sent the army and it's a crazy story, such a beautiful story that in that army, Napoleon's army to defeat the slaves, there were many Polish soldiers whom Napoleon mobilized. And when they were approaching the black army, rebellious army, they heard some singing and they were their first reaction was okay some primitive tribal songs, whatever. Then you know what they discovered when they come closer to the army to the black army, these Polish soldiers? They discovered that the blacks are singing Marseillaise. And hundreds of Polish soldiers broke down. They said my God are we on the right side? And they changed sides. So this is why I think that only with the Haiti Revolution as its repetition French Revolution really become a universal event. So there is even a wonderful paradox of ideology how the Haiti Revolution dealt with this. They wanted to be a black republic when they wrote their constitution in But but at the same time they wanted to be honest like my God there are many good white people who helped us and they should also be full equal citizens. So if you don't believe me check it up. Haiti constitution the fourth article. It has such a wonderful paradoxical line. It says Haiti is a black republic so all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. I find this an ingenious solution. That's the spirit that that we need today, you know? And so that you will not think I must tell you this the story is nightmarish. From that point on because they did what you know Haiti liberation was not this good liberal liberation slowly we will educate the blacks blah blah. No, the blacks did it and they had to be taught a lesson. So you know what's the tragedy and even now today Haiti feels the consequences as the poor country destroyed. Do you know this that when in Haiti was again accepted as in Western trade, the price was terrible. They had to sign a contract with France obliging them to as it were repay them for their liberation. The France simply accounted how much did those slaves cost in the market terms and the state of Haiti had to oblige itself to and of course the result was I'm not kidding here it's an unknown fact which is terrifying. You know that to give you an idea in late 19th century Haiti was paying to France not percent of that their state budget. You know when they paid the last installment? In Things okay, but let's go back. So to Malcolm X and so on. So again, I think that I think that this is again the crucial point here. I think that it's absolutely crucial in our struggle for emancipation to avoid this temptation of you know particular local cultures as sites of resistance. Of course I mean I have nothing against them. But nonetheless the if this is not connected or embedded in a global universal emancipatory project it fits perfectly global capitalism. Again I more and more think that global capitalism's for ideological form is precisely multiculturalism, up to identity politics and so on and so on. Of course all this should remain, but it's important that it is founded grounded in a universal political project and here I claim European legacy is crucial. The legacy of the what legacy, I don't have again time to go into it. What I even see as basic Christian legacy, the legacy of direct access to universality. You know I'm an atheist to avoid a misunderstanding. But what I admire in Christianity, not Christianity but what one finds in the Bible is this one you know when Christ says when Christ says if you don't hate your mother your father you are not my follower and so on. What does this mean? Of course it doesn't mean the stupidity that you should kill or hate your mother father. I think the way I read it that mother father family stands here for so organic social hierarchic order. What Christ is basically proposing is Holy Spirit what we call as an egalitarian community outside outside the outside hierarchical network. This is also how I read that famous parable you know when Christ is with his disciples and somebody comes in and tells him listen your mother blah blah your family is out there no and he says no my family is here. It doesn't mean you shouldn't love your mother father but not as mother father. That's so unique about Christianity and we find the same idea in modern in modern democracy this idea that this idea which is basically opposed by fascism. Namely the fascist idea is corporatism. You are member of a community only by playing your specific role as an organic part of a global social edifice. And I had the same funny experience in China two years ago. They gave me that bullshit of you know our goal today is no longer communism but harmonious society, the Confucian term. So I asked them okay cut the bullshit tell me what is harmonious society for you? And they told me it's simply a society where everyone does his or her duty. Mother is a good mother, pupil is a good pupil, leader is a good leader. Then I exploded. I said wonderful now we we overcome all these problems of cultural translation. We in Europe call this fascism. Yeah it's perfect we know where you are you know. You know they know very well that this terrifying fear of you as an individual having direct access to universality. And that's the point what is universality. Now we come if you allow me to a more complex theoretical level. You know let me return to the point that I already made the point about this limit of this pseudo-Marxist historicism. People think that the big Marxist point is to historicize, to recognize behind false appeal to universality particular interest like again human rights are really not universal human rights they are effectively the rights of rich that if you look at it closely you see how subtly a certain group is privileged behind the apparently universal form. There is a truth in it I don't doubt it. But I think a much more important lesson of Marx here is exactly the opposite one. We are not just effectively particular where we appear to be universal but also the opposite. We are much more universal than we think we are. Here I have to in the sense that the moment we for example participate on the market we act universally. In what sense? Let's say I am a European merchant I deal with Chinese merchant or manager whatever. Of course we can play at the cultural level this game of when we use the term state, art, how do we know that we mean it in the same sense? Isn't it that each of us understands this term in a particular way? Yes but I claim I agree but ultimately this is irrelevant. It works, business works you know. In our form we are universal. Then there is another absolutely crucial point by Marx that the distinction between universality in itself and universality for itself (a Hegelian distinction). In the sense that universality in itself is just the mute universality like I'm this, you are that, but we are all human. Ah no. Marx sees the uniqueness of capitalist society in the fact that universality becomes for itself. In the sense that it's not only that I don't know I'm this you are that but we are all workers. It is that abstraction is part of my immediate experience. The way I experience myself is as an abstract individual. Abstract in the sense that I am no longer immediately identified to a certain position, job, place in social hierarchy and so on and so on. Like the most elementary point here would be about the notion of profession. This is ABC even very simplified. You know that for example the notion of profession implies precisely that you are not born into your profession. You can change your profession while for example primitive example in medieval times it would have been ridiculous if you meet a knight to ask him what's your profession? My profession is to be a knight or whatever. No because precisely this element of contingency is missing. And that's what defines modernity. At the level of desire and so on that our particular identity is experienced as something ultimately contingent. And this is the greatness of Descartes, his thought. Like my favorite part is from the beginning, I always forget I think it's discourse of method maybe it's the other one big text, where he says that when he was young he saw other races as ridiculous you know their customs and so on. But then he says I asked myself but what if in their eyes our customs are no less ridiculous and so on. That's I think the definition of modernity. This idea that your own particular roots are somehow experienced as ultimately contingent. Which means again that you are universal for yourself. In your very identity you experience the gap between what you universal are and your particular actuality embodiment. Of course the problem is how to translate this into a political program. If some of you know Walter Benjamin, you know he proposed this problematic notion of divine violence as opposed to mythic violence. Mythic violence is to put it in naive terms the bad one like the violence that use the state to reproduce itself the as it were illegal foundation of the rule of law. Divine violence is supposed to be something good liberating and so on. But I would prefer to read it in a slightly different way. We all follow of course now these demonstrations in the United States Ferguson and then that other killing I forgot the name of the guy who was suffocated by police. I think that the protests of blacks and not only blacks this would be an example maybe of what Benjamin called divine violence. Because it's divine in the sense that it doesn't it's not part of a political project. It's just a kind of a blind outburst outburst. And of course now you will tell me but it's not just it's horrible like they just sometimes burn cars even maybe kill some people and you can say of course my God this is not just what did I do. Yes I don't think that what Benjamin calls divine violence is something just correct it's something horrible of course if they were trying. But it's a it's a way out in a deadlock. The other way towards so again when it's not able to propose a universal project as an articulated political project you get these outbursts. And I think this is the most terrible thing that we can tell about our society. You remember this was also divine violence in this sense of blind irrational protest. You remember a couple of years ago when cars were burning in the suburbs of Paris? You remember the protests in England which turned out into a totally blind violence just looting the shops and so on? I think this is the the most terrible diagnosis that one can give in our societies. If you have these explosions of violence obviously something is wrong but what is worrying is the impossibility to translate this dissatisfaction in even a minimal political project. Now I will have to before you play the superego before I'm mean have to condense it. So if we talk about divine violence so where is theology here? Here I would like to refer to a friend of mine from here mentioned him to me you had in he was publishing books in but also before do you know your own Norwegian theologian I think he was also a genius Peter Wessel Zapffe? He's a genius in his reading of Book of Job. You must probably know the passage. He read Book of Job as what? His reading is that Job when God appears expected a sacred pure God whose intellect is infinitely superior to ours. But Job quote from Zapffe: finds himself confronted with a world ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave-dweller, a braggart and a blaster, almost agreeable in his total ignorance of spiritual culture. What is new for Job is not God's greatness in quantifiable terms that he knew fully in advance. What is new is the qualitative baseness. Like God is omnipotent but like a spoiled child. And I don't have time to go into it but I really think that Book of Job should be rehabilitated the lesson is important even today as the first text of critique of ideology. Why? On the one hand remember what happens in the Book of Job. Okay Job things turn back for him he loses what not know wives no in the Bible the line is I like goats, house, wives and so on they can't do. Okay he loses everything and then ideology enters. You remember his three theological friends come and each of them with a certain message which is your suffering has a certain meaning. The first one basically tells him God is just so even if you don't know why all this happened to you look deeper you will discover a reason. The second tells him okay maybe you did nothing but God is testing you whatever. So again the message is suffering has a deeper meaning it's justified. Now comes the miracle. You remember when Jehovah God comes then he says the opposite. He says no Job in his complaints was totally right, all that this theologians were telling him is bullshit is wrong. Then then Job says asks God nonetheless but nonetheless why did all this happen to me? And here comes the mystery. You know that the official interpretation of that God's answer which is something like you know all those bombastic evocation where were you when I create those monsters all that is that God's answer is who are you zero? I think you are an opponent of metaphysical linear notion of time no? And I propose that we enter this original authentic circular notion of time you know. Okay sorry I will go to the end just very quickly yes. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, my favorite theologian, proposed okay the standard line is God again God just tells to Job who are you you are nobody I am so much above you you cannot get my reasons. Chesterton's reading is the opposite one very much in the spirit of your Zapffe is that when God says but where were you when I created this that monster that God's answer is rather you think only you are in trouble but look around the whole world that I created is a total mess everyone everyone is in trouble you know. Okay what I claim is that such a notion of God as totally arbitrary authority and so on creates conditions for freedom paradoxically. Which is why this being a typical Protestant God you know this totally unjust God, the God of predestination. It's a condition of freedom. Okay read my next book I will not go into it. Just now to finish if you allow me just to conclude to return to concrete problems of universality today. I'm jumping over things. The problem of United States today is how to remain a universal policeman. You remember a couple of weeks ago President Obama gave an interview where he tried to explain the rules of the US engagement. I quote Obama: when trouble comes up anywhere in the world they don't call Beijing they don't call Moscow they call us that's always the case. America leads we are the indispensable nation that's how we roll. Now out of real sympathy for the United States I think that this no longer works today. If nothing else do you remember a week after it was reported in our media how Obama himself made a call to Tehran offering them collaboration against ISIS and basically Iranians rejected him in an arrogant way. I think that the catastrophe of this politics is that United States are trying to play the global policeman in a world which already is multicentric. So they end up doing the dirty job for others like Iranians must be glad Americans are doing dirty job for them. Bush was already doing this I am for Obama against Bush. What is the actual result of the American invasion of Iraq from American interest is that the majority Iraqi majority is now under political domination Shia of Iran. Others are now ISIS and so on. I mean America is again and again winning wars and losing peace. What is America missing here? The basic thing which is that we are entering a multicentric world and here I see I will try to really keep it short here I see the dangers that's why I'm a pessimist moderate pessimist. Namely the situation today I think is in an uncanny way (I'm not original here but one should repeat it) similar to that before World War I. Do you remember how we had one global power the British Empire and then we had new growing powers especially Germany which wanted their place. And the result we know what was it, World War I. Today it's Russia, maybe China, and the place of Balkan is played by Middle East. So this is the most dangerous moment, the multicentric world where we don't yet have the rules of conduct as it were, the rules of politeness. Like whatever you think about Cold War, it had a certain logic unwritten rules, and this is what I find so terrifying today. The parallel is that in the same way as before World War I for decades everybody knew war is coming and everybody was warning about it, but at the same time people didn't really believe that there can be war. And I think this is why there was a war at the end, you know. And isn't something similar going on today? That's how I see it. We are it's quite shocking are we aware what is happening today? If you read the media, almost every day there is an argument in our media for the coming war like you know it was like oh Russian planes intercepted there, Russians has now a stealth fighter, Putin wants this, Americans will counter it and so on. Everyone is already laying the it's we are behaving as if we are slowly sliding towards a new war, but I think that at a deeper level we don't really believe that it can happen. And that's why it can happen because what do I mean by this? First okay I will not quote you, just look at the media, all these examples of how we are slowly approaching a new World War which again I think the stakes are precisely similar to those of World War I. New global powers and then is the geopolitical geopolitical rearrangement and so on. And again I think that only the only solution that I effectively see is some mobilization with a progressive universal project. Other what is not enough that will be my point. What is not enough is precisely this idea it's a dangerous situation we should proceed in a very careful way. No if you do just this you already accept the frame which is our situation is we are slowly sliding towards a conflict war and we should be careful. I follow here he is quite a genius I like him my good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a theorist of catastrophes who proposed a paradoxical notion of how to avoid catastrophe. That the first step is to accept it, acknowledge it. In the sense that we should see how we it's not only the risk of World War, because if it's just that then you still can say okay we always have choices we should be careful. No we should accept it that World War, new one is our fate. Fate not that it necessarily will happen but fate in the sense that the whole global situation is pushing us slowly towards it. So it's not enough just to be careful. We remain within the same frame. We have to as it were more radically to change the entire frame or to put it in Protestant terms, new World War is our predestination. But you know and that's the deepest message of Protestantism, that's why I like it we can change predestination, we can retroactively change our fate. That's what I find so liberating in Protestantism and in my beloved philosopher Hegel. You know this idea that there is a necessity but a necessity always happens retroactively. In what sense? Remember if you had the fortune or rather misfortune to fall in love. It's always a contingent encounter no? You walk on the street you slip a lady maybe is helping you to get up and then oh my God you go for a coffee. But you know what I'm saying then retroactively of course you interpret this as a closed narrative, it was predestined. You know something it's a very refined notion of how something happens contingently but once it happens it appears as necessary. Like everything was pointing towards it. This means that yes we have the freedom retroactively to impose to impose another fate as it were. We have freedom but it's not just that limited freedom of you know okay Russians make a provocation there let's not answer too much here. No this is still the same logic. The whole global logic has to be changed. Otherwise I think we are lost. And again okay I could have go on here because the examples of this paradoxical logic are for example Hegel gives another example like let's take Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Of course it was a contingent decision he could have say no I remain up there above Rubicon. But once he did it it becomes his fate. You know this idea I like very much profoundly Hegelian idea not of a necessity of contingency in the sense of a universal idea to realize itself you need contingent part, but the contingency of necessity. There is a universal necessity but it's a contingent decision which necessity this will be. Again, something happens contingently but once it happens it retroactively becomes to give you another example just to throw you some things maybe to think. You know that's why for Dupuy my friend his favorite film is he's not very original okay now it's even voted in the last opinion poll as the greatest film of all times, Hitchcock's Vertigo. There you have that distinction. You know the story I hope so. The when Madeleine makes the fake suicide for Scottie James Stewart the hero it's a terrible loss. He loses the object of his love. But at the end when he discovers that there never was a Madeleine that she was he doesn't just lose the object, he in a way retroactively discovered that what he thought that he has lost never existed. In this way we are not talking about magic in the sense of we can change the past but in this what he calls counterfactual way. You can change the past at the level of at the level of counterfactuals. Just I cannot stop myself give me two-three minutes. Just to just to to make it clear this idea. Let's take a statement: if Shakespeare didn't write Hamlet then another one had to write it. This is acceptable no? This is a fact. I mean because Hamlet is written. Okay they didn't have computer programming there so some person had to do it if not Shakespeare it had to be another one. But if you say if Shakespeare were not to write Hamlet someone else (and this is the counterfactual statement) someone else would have to do it. Ah no this is totally different. This is the same as saying for example if Napoleon is not Napoleon then another guy would have to take his role. This is the standard Marxist determinism. I think that against this we should stick to the one to this logic of counterfactuals like something happened and of course at the level of counterfactual possibilities can change the past. To amuse you for the very last phrase is the same as that joke about which books are now written. It was okay we all know it it was in Hollywood it's my favorite theoretical joke almost. You know from Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka. You know that famous scene when joke told to Greta Garbo by her lover that a guy comes to a cafeteria and says give me coffee with cream please. And you know what the waiter answers? We don't have cream we only have milk so I can only give you coffee without milk. Now this immediately reminds me of my socialist youth when things were sometimes non-available in the stores and the classical joke is somebody comes to a store and says is it that still you don't have toilet paper and you know what the salesperson answers him? No you are in a wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil. The other store there is the one which doesn't have you see now how you can understand this is what Hegel meant by determinate negation. That no like if you the coffee is the same coffee but it's not the same thing if it's coffee without milk or coffee without cream. How does this work? Let me conclude with last obscenity. Did you see the movie it's one of the most erotic scenes that I've seen? And nothing happens you can tell this this story to your priest to your grandmother or whatever. It's Ewan McGregor, the young one, when he was still playing working class heroes, when he didn't yet become Jedi and all that stuff. He's okay he flirts with a lady he is a poor unemployed miner working with a lady there sorry flirting with a lady and okay after in the evening he accompanies her to her house and then she says it's such a simple dialogue. She says: would you like to come up for a drink of coffee? And he says: I would love to but I don't drink coffee. You know what she answers: no problem I don't have any. Can you imagine a more erotic provocation you know like because the point made is not about coffee but without any you just that's the paradox. You offer something then you take it back but all the erotic tension is there. This is our hope. As long as we can do this maybe there is chance for us. Thank you very much. Don't go for too long because you know what happened I read in a recent book to Stalin. In he received a group of generals, old ones. And there were only fifty of them they were in a room the problem is only fifty is that you never were sure if Stalin doesn't see you and at the end they applauded to Stalin. And nobody dared to stop applauding. And it went on for minutes, some of them dropped down and finally Stalin with his greatness said okay enough comrades. But I felt almost like dead so again my message to you is my old joke maybe some you know it is like don't applaud so much when we communists come to power you will have to applaud, save your energy for them for them. I'm sorry my talk was I know confused but I was in a panic you know I got but these are no unfortunately the part which was not just a joke was I think we have a couple of time for a couple of questions also. You know but that's my hypocrisy I like to talk too much and then I like to say with all the hypocrisy I'm so sad that we don't have time for the debate for the debate. Because you know I love debates, dialogues, ooh but you know which dialogues? If some of you are philosophers do you know late Plato's dialogues which look like this, one guy talks all the time and the other one just says every ten minutes or so by Zeus Socrates you are right and so on you know. So let's have a dialogue like. I think we have time for one or two short questions and please state your name and also be short ask questions don't give us. Oh my God why this Stalinist twist why the name? Okay anyone? Nobody dares to say anything. Didn't you do your Stalinist duty? You know how one organizes in Stalinism the democratic debate, you distribute the questions in advance and. Please. Ah just be loud enough I heard some reaction. You see you have to use the microphone since there are people in other rooms of the house where was somebody saying anything? There was a hand no? Although there is always this semiotic ambiguity that somebody is just scratching his head. I think he was taking a photo. Take a. I hate this, I would prohibit selfies and all that stuff. Ah I'm sorry. Sorry for this. Hello. Um you talked about very similar hi I'm here. Hi. Whatever. Here. Ah there okay okay. Um you talked about some very similar circumstances now and then before First World War. Yeah yeah. I also I'm not a scholar but I also got the same impression by what I read in the news. So I was wondering but there is a very powerful element at this moment I think and it's our power of communication and the fact that people are watching and it's I think it should not be underestimated this power of communication and and it might be actually a way out or to create a better model right? So what do you think would be the the role of that element now how would it change our predetermined fate? What what do you make of. It's a wonderful question. But I think again as always with new things that the role of all this communications media is very it's ambiguous. On the one hand yes it creates a public space of instant possible at least mobilization no? At the same time you know the guy whom I mentioned Peter Sloterdijk makes a simple but I think accurate remark when he says that this global communication makes everyone a neighbor so that tensions can explode for example you remember not here in Denmark that stupid those stupid Muhammad caricatures. How like hundred two hundred years ago nothing would have happened but precisely because we have one global space of communication days afterwards thousands were demonstrating I don't know in Pakistan and so on who probably didn't have any idea maybe not even where Denmark is and so on and so on. So I claim that it's very ambiguous. I think this new communication I think we should that's my modest opinion avoid both temptations. On the one hand this naive dream oh we have universal medium we can instantly mobilize, but at the same time this also has opens up as we all know new possibilities of control and so on and so on. Which is why I think that precisely what you referred to as this new social space is if I may use the term which I think should still be used, it's maybe one of the main domains of class struggle today. That's what all is about. Who will control it, how will it be controlled and so on and so on. I think that Julian Assange have now published a book on on on Google where he basically said Google is a privatized NSA you know. And this again this struggle is extremely important. It's not only the struggle for control of social space it's also a struggle for so-called intellectual property. I think in a very naive way maybe I'm wrong that although intellectual property may appear the ultimate form of capitalism with all this instant business, it's at the same time something that is maybe one of the greatest threats to capitalism. I
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think
think
Slavoj Žižek
that if I may put it in consciously naive form there is something communist in intellectual property you know because if I have a material object this glass of water if I drink it you cannot drink it no? Here is this competition that's why I can sell it to you. But with intellectual property it has this paradoxical property that the more you use it its value increases you know the more it freely circulates the more everyone so it's I don't think capitalism again this is what I list as critical points of today's capitalism. One point is I don't think it will solve it will have to introduce more and more of state control and so on to solve the problem or at least to contain it of intellectual property. Then we have the problem of biogenetics and so on. Biogenetics as you maybe know is the main reason why Fukuyama is no longer
that if I may put it in consciously naive form there is something communist in intellectual property you know because if I have a material object this glass of water if I drink it you cannot drink it no? Here is this competition that's why I can sell it to you. But with intellectual property it has this paradoxical property that the more you use it its value increases you know the more it freely circulates the more everyone so it's I don't think capitalism again this is what I list as critical points of today's capitalism. One point is I don't think it will solve it will have to introduce more and more of state control and so on to solve the problem or at least to contain it of intellectual property. Then we have the problem of biogenetics and so on. Biogenetics as you maybe know is the main reason why Fukuyama is no longer
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a Fukuyamaist.
a Fukuyamaist.
Slavoj Žižek
He told me I met him at the round table he told me it my game is over I admit it. Then we have ecology of course where again I don't believe that bullshit of you know local communities who process their own water and so on. No it will have to be a tremendous we we will have to reinvent rehabilitate large-scale acts to cope with it. The problem of new forms of apartheid and so on and so on. I see so many problems
He told me I met him at the round table he told me it my game is over I admit it. Then we have ecology of course where again I don't believe that bullshit of you know local communities who process their own water and so on. No it will have to be a tremendous we we will have to reinvent rehabilitate large-scale acts to cope with it. The problem of new forms of apartheid and so on and so on. I see so many problems
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that I think global capitalism will not be able to deal with it. And even if we avoid a new global war I think
that I think global capitalism will not be able to deal with it. And even if we avoid a new global war I think
Slavoj Žižek
that in the best case the Hollywood scenario will be realized.
that in the best case the Hollywood scenario will be realized.
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By Hollywood scenario
By Hollywood scenario
Slavoj Žižek
I ironically mean what you know people tell us Marxists today oh you idiot you still believe in class struggle and I tell them well Hollywood knows it don't believe me look at so many
I ironically mean what you know people tell us Marxists today oh you idiot you still believe in class struggle and I tell them well Hollywood knows it don't believe me look at so many
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ongoing Hollywood blockbusters Hunger Games, Elysium they are all about a coming society which is the one of extreme
ongoing Hollywood blockbusters Hunger Games, Elysium they are all about a coming society which is the one of extreme
Slavoj Žižek
class division and so on. And here even Sloterdijk the right-winger was right when he warned how it's a nice touch of
class division and so on. And here even Sloterdijk the right-winger was right when he warned how it's a nice touch of
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how
how
Slavoj Žižek
talking about global capitalism it's not just global in the
talking about global capitalism it's not just global in the
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sense of all-encompassing it's also global in the sense of a globe,
sense of all-encompassing it's also global in the sense of a globe,
Slavoj Žižek
protected
protected
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sphere. We are inside but from inside we are not even aware of the outside. Like the way humanity is moving today is
sphere. We are inside but from inside we are not even aware of the outside. Like the way humanity is moving today is
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some twenty twenty-five thirty percent are inside and there are others who are outside. Again Hollywood knew it this long ago. There was already in the sixties seventies a series of dystopian films maybe you saw Zardoz with Sean Connery or some others where again the idea is the elite survives inside within a globe. So again it's Sloterdijk who knows very well that global capitalism is also a globe in the sense of a controlled closed space and where you even ignore the outside. And the
some twenty twenty-five thirty percent are inside and there are others who are outside. Again Hollywood knew it this long ago. There was already in the sixties seventies a series of dystopian films maybe you saw Zardoz with Sean Connery or some others where again the idea is the elite survives inside within a globe. So again it's Sloterdijk who knows very well that global capitalism is also a globe in the sense of a controlled closed space and where you even ignore the outside. And the
Slavoj Žižek
outside need not be in some third world country and so on. Like this is why it was so shocking for Italians, do you remember a year or two ago when there was fire in some suburb small city near Florence some twenty Chinese were burned and then they discovered that in a suburb of Florence there is a small city where around fifteen thousand illegal Chinese workers work like slaves and so on. So you know you don't even have to go to Chinese gulag or Indonesia to see all those slave workers. You they are here we simply don't see them. I think it's a great art today of our apparently totally transparent societies what we don't see. And in one of my books I even developed the point that that's how TV works. You know we watch news on TV but it's absolutely crucial that what we see there and there you can see everything raped women suffering children blah blah. We see it on screen. It's not part of our reality although we rationally say oh this is happening somewhere. But it's happening somewhere else and our entire strategy is to keep that somewhere else at a proper distance. That's why I think all these charity programs are so popular you know the Starbucks bullshit you know like five percent of our profits go for some stupid Guatemala children or whatever. The idea I think that although hypocritically we talk about charity caring basically intimately be honest we accept this as a kind of a tax we pay so that you know we love neighbors suffering neighbors if they remain at a proper distance you know outside our globe precisely. I talk too much I'm sorry. Okay I think we'll end there with the. No but there is another guy. Okay. Listen you are a reactionary you started on the right wing now at least give center a chance not to mention left here no. Hello. Hi. Yeah I I just want to raise two concerns. One is that I firstly agree with most of your attacks on post-colonialism and also your fights with the decolonial guys. I think you're actually right on those. But attack me please where you don't agree. Yeah yeah but when I don't agree is when you use Fanon when you use Malcolm X and the rest of these other guys is that you tend to move too quickly to the universalist line and you bypass because you use you use a lot of Fanon's conclusions. Yeah yeah I admit. I know but the point is you become precisely like the very guys you you disagree with on the basis that you you point us into this kind of universalist move but nevertheless you never want to stick with the strong part of Fanon where it re-emphasizes the very same black power politics, no? This is this is the same with Haiti, this is the same with Malcolm X, even if he points us to the X but there's an immanent strong retention of the black power politics. So it's not I don't think it's this big abstract universalist thing. Similarly when you praise Nelson Mandela and and his the ANC the point remains there as well that the sell-out project that happens in is part of this abstract universalist politics because he was not or the ANC was not universalist at all because the sell-out project which includes white people in South Africa becomes the one it part of the process that ends up in compromise. So there is more universalism in black power politics that excludes in politics of South Africa that excludes white participation. Same as Haiti which excluded the masters same with black power politics would exclude white people but there's a dialectical relationship there as well. So but I'm just saying that sorry. No this is just a concern. Yeah yeah yeah. This is just a concern that as much as you criticize the decolonial and all those guys Mignolo and them but there's a slippage with you where you go to bed with the same liberal guys. Maybe although I would say this I especially like your formula that precisely you had to be black power to be truly universal. I would read this like that and I wonder if you would agree. I mentioned this somewhere I don't really like the movie Malcolm X, it's too much of a I know but I like one scene there. You remember when he makes a tour of campuses a white girl approaches him and says what can I do for you? And he says nothing. You can do anything. I don't think this simply means nothing, but it means you will not play the old liberal game of helping us black. You have to accept that it will be our fight and then on this background you can maybe join us but it had to be our act and in this sense I see yours when you say black power, I don't think this means whites are excluded. Like we know the role of Joe Slovo in South Africa but it has to be as part of you know the whole shift should change and here as a Hegelian I I admit I apologize my mistake but I totally agree with you that to be universal is never just abstractly universal. It's that as you wonderfully said there is a particular position which in a concrete situation stands for the universal. And this is as you said black power and so on. And here here I simply agree I would just add one thing I hope you also agree. You know we should make this very clear. When we talk about universality, it's not this UNESCO universality you know how this culture is nice that culture is nice. No, the only universality I recognize is the universality of struggle and it works wonderfully. When I was shocked how often for example, we can play these games if you go to Egypt ooh who knows and you're caught in this stupid multicultural games you know how do we know what goes on there aren't we speaking different languages? The moment you had their demonstrations fight, you identify with struggle. Universality today for me is not we are all one big human family but it's we have a struggle you have a struggle let's unite the struggle. Universality is for me actual only the universality of struggle. It's not this humanist universality and so on and so on. But I will I will take your point. Can you even in a way can you even in a way I would really I'm not kidding my God I almost put it in a racist way, do you have a name or what but can you email me through them your name because I would like to refer to you that very nice point how this power black power that only through that you attain universality. And that's the Hegelian point. Hegel knew this absolutely. Universality does not mean some abstract we are all it. It means there always is again a particular one which stands for universality. I I'm just sorry that life is shit and we don't have time because of those oppressive partisans of metaphysical notion of time you know yeah. I'm sorry. We will end here but okay. I noticed that you gave voice only to right wing and to center and that you totally. Yes that's me yeah I'm sorry about that. Slavoj Zizek will also give a book signing out there but please before you leave just stay put just a few minutes so that he will be able to actually get out to the bookstore before all the people fill the hallway. I find this incredibly I think Stalinism when the leader leaves everyone has to stay there you know. Give him one more applause on his way out. No no no. Okay. I follow you. Ah yeah ah. Okay and just a few practical notes on the debate that starts at eight which will be in Norwegian so I actually change change language. Klokka åtte så starter den debatten vi oppsummerer den serien som har gått i høst om universalisme.
outside need not be in some third world country and so on. Like this is why it was so shocking for Italians, do you remember a year or two ago when there was fire in some suburb small city near Florence some twenty Chinese were burned and then they discovered that in a suburb of Florence there is a small city where around fifteen thousand illegal Chinese workers work like slaves and so on. So you know you don't even have to go to Chinese gulag or Indonesia to see all those slave workers. You they are here we simply don't see them. I think it's a great art today of our apparently totally transparent societies what we don't see. And in one of my books I even developed the point that that's how TV works. You know we watch news on TV but it's absolutely crucial that what we see there and there you can see everything raped women suffering children blah blah. We see it on screen. It's not part of our reality although we rationally say oh this is happening somewhere. But it's happening somewhere else and our entire strategy is to keep that somewhere else at a proper distance. That's why I think all these charity programs are so popular you know the Starbucks bullshit you know like five percent of our profits go for some stupid Guatemala children or whatever. The idea I think that although hypocritically we talk about charity caring basically intimately be honest we accept this as a kind of a tax we pay so that you know we love neighbors suffering neighbors if they remain at a proper distance you know outside our globe precisely. I talk too much I'm sorry. Okay I think we'll end there with the. No but there is another guy. Okay. Listen you are a reactionary you started on the right wing now at least give center a chance not to mention left here no. Hello. Hi. Yeah I I just want to raise two concerns. One is that I firstly agree with most of your attacks on post-colonialism and also your fights with the decolonial guys. I think you're actually right on those. But attack me please where you don't agree. Yeah yeah but when I don't agree is when you use Fanon when you use Malcolm X and the rest of these other guys is that you tend to move too quickly to the universalist line and you bypass because you use you use a lot of Fanon's conclusions. Yeah yeah I admit. I know but the point is you become precisely like the very guys you you disagree with on the basis that you you point us into this kind of universalist move but nevertheless you never want to stick with the strong part of Fanon where it re-emphasizes the very same black power politics, no? This is this is the same with Haiti, this is the same with Malcolm X, even if he points us to the X but there's an immanent strong retention of the black power politics. So it's not I don't think it's this big abstract universalist thing. Similarly when you praise Nelson Mandela and and his the ANC the point remains there as well that the sell-out project that happens in is part of this abstract universalist politics because he was not or the ANC was not universalist at all because the sell-out project which includes white people in South Africa becomes the one it part of the process that ends up in compromise. So there is more universalism in black power politics that excludes in politics of South Africa that excludes white participation. Same as Haiti which excluded the masters same with black power politics would exclude white people but there's a dialectical relationship there as well. So but I'm just saying that sorry. No this is just a concern. Yeah yeah yeah. This is just a concern that as much as you criticize the decolonial and all those guys Mignolo and them but there's a slippage with you where you go to bed with the same liberal guys. Maybe although I would say this I especially like your formula that precisely you had to be black power to be truly universal. I would read this like that and I wonder if you would agree. I mentioned this somewhere I don't really like the movie Malcolm X, it's too much of a I know but I like one scene there. You remember when he makes a tour of campuses a white girl approaches him and says what can I do for you? And he says nothing. You can do anything. I don't think this simply means nothing, but it means you will not play the old liberal game of helping us black. You have to accept that it will be our fight and then on this background you can maybe join us but it had to be our act and in this sense I see yours when you say black power, I don't think this means whites are excluded. Like we know the role of Joe Slovo in South Africa but it has to be as part of you know the whole shift should change and here as a Hegelian I I admit I apologize my mistake but I totally agree with you that to be universal is never just abstractly universal. It's that as you wonderfully said there is a particular position which in a concrete situation stands for the universal. And this is as you said black power and so on. And here here I simply agree I would just add one thing I hope you also agree. You know we should make this very clear. When we talk about universality, it's not this UNESCO universality you know how this culture is nice that culture is nice. No, the only universality I recognize is the universality of struggle and it works wonderfully. When I was shocked how often for example, we can play these games if you go to Egypt ooh who knows and you're caught in this stupid multicultural games you know how do we know what goes on there aren't we speaking different languages? The moment you had their demonstrations fight, you identify with struggle. Universality today for me is not we are all one big human family but it's we have a struggle you have a struggle let's unite the struggle. Universality is for me actual only the universality of struggle. It's not this humanist universality and so on and so on. But I will I will take your point. Can you even in a way can you even in a way I would really I'm not kidding my God I almost put it in a racist way, do you have a name or what but can you email me through them your name because I would like to refer to you that very nice point how this power black power that only through that you attain universality. And that's the Hegelian point. Hegel knew this absolutely. Universality does not mean some abstract we are all it. It means there always is again a particular one which stands for universality. I I'm just sorry that life is shit and we don't have time because of those oppressive partisans of metaphysical notion of time you know yeah. I'm sorry. We will end here but okay. I noticed that you gave voice only to right wing and to center and that you totally. Yes that's me yeah I'm sorry about that. Slavoj Zizek will also give a book signing out there but please before you leave just stay put just a few minutes so that he will be able to actually get out to the bookstore before all the people fill the hallway. I find this incredibly I think Stalinism when the leader leaves everyone has to stay there you know. Give him one more applause on his way out. No no no. Okay. I follow you. Ah yeah ah. Okay and just a few practical notes on the debate that starts at eight which will be in Norwegian so I actually change change language. Klokka åtte så starter den debatten vi oppsummerer den serien som har gått i høst om universalisme.
unknown
Hvis dere skal være med på den debatten, så bli enten sittende her eller legg igjen noe på stolen sånn at dere sånn
Hvis dere skal være med på den debatten, så bli enten sittende her eller legg igjen noe på stolen sånn at dere sånn
Slavoj Žižek
at vi ser at dere skal være her, for vi må ta en ny telling og få gjerne et stempel på
at vi ser at dere skal være her, for vi må ta en ny telling og få gjerne et stempel på
unknown
vei ut hvis du ikke har fått det. Så velkommen tilbake til åtte, og de som
vei ut hvis du ikke har fått det. Så velkommen tilbake til åtte, og de som
unknown
ikke skal komme, god kveld.
ikke skal komme, god kveld.