Against the Double Blackmail
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2016-04-20 · 1:27:51 · 11,718 words
sexuality-genderideologypsychoanalysisliberalism-political-correctnessreligion-theologyhegel-dialecticsgeopolitics-warrace-antisemitism
Delivered at the LSE to mark the launch of his book 'Against the Double Blackmail', Žižek uses the polemic between Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf and rapper Tamer Nafar over women's right to sing in public as an entry point into a sustained argument about sexual difference, political correctness, and the double trap of liberal universalism versus multicultural relativism. He argues that both religious-fundamentalist enforcement of fixed gender roles and progressive transgenderism share the same underlying drive to abolish sexual antagonism, and that Lacanian sexual difference is precisely the irreducible deadlock that neither side can dissolve. The talk also covers Buddhist violence, the refugee/migrant distinction as ideological mystification, the dangers of patronizing anti-racist guilt, and the need for a 'Leitkultur' that sets limits without imposing uniformity.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “leftist fascism (Linksfaschismus)”
A term Žižek traces to Habermas's 1960s usage for the more radical left student movement, now deployed as a meaningless epithet against anyone the speaker dislikes.
The bind in which one is told to either accept Western liberal universalism or accept cultural-relativist silence about local horrors, with both options being ideologically mystified.
For Žižek (following Lacan), sexual difference is not a stable binary distribution of properties but an irreducible antagonistic deadlock that precedes any positive sexual identity.
as “ideology as mystification in the problem”
Žižek's formulation that ideology does not consist of false answers to real problems but in the false framing of the problem itself, exemplified by the refugee/migrant distinction.
Derrida's supplement, used to explain how even the strictest disciplinary institutions require a controlled outlet of transgressive enjoyment (obscene songs) to maintain their order.
Derrida's/Plato's concept of a substance that is simultaneously poison and remedy, applied here to the tolerated dose of transgressive sexual enjoyment (obscene marching chants) that sustains the disciplinary social order.
as “dogma”
Žižek reclaims 'dogma' positively as a collectively accepted ethical minimum (e.g., 'do not rape') that does not require ongoing argumentation, its erosion signals civilizational regression.
A socio-political movement advocating voluntary abolition of gender through biotechnology, cited by Žižek as the logical extreme of transgenderism that reveals its ideological agenda.
Lacan's formula that there is no sexual relationship, invoked to show that sexual difference is a fundamental deadlock rather than a complementary pairing.
as “Gegensätzliche Bestimmung”
Hegel's 'oppositional determination': the universal itself must appear as one particular species within the series of particulars, applied to waste-sorting categories and to 'gender as such' in the toilet example.
Hegel's notion of the rabble as those without a place in society, used by Žižek (via Frank Ruda) to show that the excluded universally represent humanity as such.
Žižek's proposed third toilet-door category, not a third gender identity but 'sexual difference as such', standing for the antagonistic deadlock prior to any specific determination, just as 'general waste' stands for the universal in the waste-sorting series.
as “unity of struggle”
Žižek's alternative to abstract multicultural solidarity: genuine universality is achieved only through connecting concrete particular struggles, not through the abstraction 'we are all humans'.
as “class struggle as two is always three”
Žižek's claim that class struggle (and by analogy sexual difference) always involves an unclassifiable third element, lumpenproletariat, middle classes, which is the very site of struggle.
The guilt-inducing injunction of political correctness that compels endless self-examination about one's racism or lack of sensitivity, which Žižek identifies as a form of ideological domination.
Žižek's term for the liberal guilt in which white Europeans take total responsibility for immigrants' actions, thereby paradoxically reasserting Western agency and depriving others of subjectivity.
A 'leading culture' or guiding set of norms that sets limits on what can be tolerated, which Žižek advocates as a necessary alternative to pure liberal tolerance.
Invoked implicitly in Žižek's defense of the 'power of abstraction': brutal simplifications like 'class' or 'Orient' carry a concrete universal truth rather than merely approximating a complex reality.
Stories he reaches for 6
Zen Buddhism popularizer D.T. Suzuki argued that the ideal soldier is one who has accepted Buddhist no-self: then killing is not 'you' acting, it is a knife floating in the air and the enemy's body somehow getting stuck on it in the cosmic dance of phenomena. Nobody is responsible.
“My knife is floating in the air and somehow by the undescribable dance of phenomena your body gets stuck on it. Nobody is responsible.”
Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst won the Eurovision Song Contest; Putin cited the Bible on two genders and the purpose of marriage, while Zhirinovsky called it 'the end of Europe' and Rogozin tweeted about 'a bearded girl' as Europe's future, illustrating that the real feared object of cultural difference is immoral depravity, not military or economic threat.
“No wonder you have Brexit here, you also don't want to be dominated by bearded girls.”
Dershowitz advocates regulated torture, complete with medical supervision, to prevent abuse. Žižek argues this normalization is the true danger: even if one might torture out of despair, it must remain an acknowledged atrocity, not a legalized protocol.
“You know something, you have to be tortured, but don't worry, it will be done in a proper way. The doctor will examine you, he will determine how much pain you can endure without getting a heart attack.”
At the end of the Bosnian war, an American feminist sent a letter to Bosnian rape survivors asking whether they believed women have an eternal substantial essence or whether feminine identity is constructed through performative discursive practices, causing the Bosnian women to nearly die laughing.
“Do you, poor Bosnian women who were raped, do you think that woman has an eternal substantial essence, or do you think that feminine identity is constructed through performative discursive practices?”
Khomeini declared 'We are not afraid of sanctions. We are not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of Western immorality', Žižek takes this literally: the true threat felt by Muslim fundamentalists is cultural, specifically the challenge to fixed sexual difference.
“We are not afraid of sanctions. We are not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of Western immorality.”
US Marine marching chants, limerick nonsense mixed with sexual obscenity ('I don't know but I was told that Eskimo pussies are rather cold'), illustrate how the most disciplined institution needs a pharmakon of transgressive enjoyment to sustain its order.
“I don't know but I was told that Eskimo pussies are rather cold.”
Works invoked 8
Source of the Marine marching chant ('Eskimo pussies are rather cold') used to illustrate the pharmakon of obscene enjoyment within disciplinary institutions.
Junction 48 film
Udi Aloni's film starring Tamer Nafar, about Palestinian Israelis fighting both state oppression and internal fundamentalism; attacked by the Israeli ambassador and cultural minister, which for Žižek confirms its importance.
Plato's Republic book
Used for Plato's argument that free singing threatens the social order, and for the Gegensätzliche Bestimmung logic implicit in his regulated permission of military songs.
MIT book by Žižek's friend Mladen Dolar tracing the history of the fear of the uncontrolled voice from Chinese antiquity to modernity; Žižek uses it to ground his pharmakon/voice argument.
Žižek's own book, the launch of which occasions the talk; he notes the talk goes beyond its contents by adding material not in the book.
It book
Referenced in passing when quoting Zhirinovsky's 'there are no more men and women in Europe, just It', the name echoing King's monster.
Žižek's friend Frank Ruda's book on Hegel's concept of the Pöbel/rabble, used to illustrate how the excluded universally represent humanity as such.
Plato's Laws book
Mentioned alongside the Republic as repeating Plato's concern with free singing and its danger to moral-social order.
People invoked 27
Karsten Nordal Hauken negative
Norwegian politician who felt guilty after his Somali rapist faced deportation; used by Žižek as a case study of inverted white man's burden.
Udi Aloni positive
Žižek calls him 'my Jewish friend' and praises his film Junction 48 for depicting the dual struggle of Palestinian Israelis against state oppression and internal fundamentalism.
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
Cited as the first to extend the universal form of human rights to women, exemplifying the dialectic by which formal universality exceeds its original content.
Robert Mugabe negative
Cited for his UN speech proudly declaring 'we are not gay' and denouncing gay rights as Western imperialism, used to illustrate how anti-gay politics is presented as anti-colonialism.
Mohammed Assaf negative
Žižek does not personally condemn Assaf but uses his declaration that his sister may not sing publicly as the entry point for the talk's central problematic.
Jacques Derrida positive
Žižek deploys Derrida's concepts of supplément and pharmakon to explain why even the strictest disciplinary orders need a controlled dose of transgressive enjoyment.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek invokes Lacan's formula 'il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel' to ground his argument that sexual difference is an irreducible antagonistic deadlock rather than a complementary binary.
Alan Dershowitz negative
Called 'that fake liberal lawyer'; Žižek opposes his advocacy of legally regulated torture as the worst kind of pragmatic normalization of atrocity.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky negative
Called 'rabid nationalist'; quoted declaring Conchita Wurst's victory 'the end of Europe', used as the more outspoken version of Putin's position.
Mentioned only as the originator of the concept of Orientalism, whose category Žižek finds 'a little bit deceiving' when used to deflect criticism.
Frank Ruda positive
Called 'my good friend'; wrote a book on Hegel's concept of the rabble (Pöbel), which Žižek uses to illustrate Gegensätzliche Bestimmung.
Brussels terror suspect from a fully integrated European-born family; cited to argue that radicalization is a revolt against integration, not its failure.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek notes that Slovenian right-wingers target 'gender theory', 'all the honor goes to Judith Butler', implicitly crediting her as the intellectual source of gender theory while suggesting her framework is politically exploitable by both sides.
Tim Cook negative
Apple CEO named alongside Zuckerberg as a corporate progressive who uses transgender rights advocacy to distract from labor abuses.
Nancy Fraser positive
Though Žižek says he cannot agree with her theoretically, he endorses her book arguing that American mainstream feminism was kidnapped by liberalism.
Elvis Presley positive
Used as the example of a performer whose hip movements caused identical moral panic among both Soviet Communists and American conservatives, illustrating the pharmakon of free vocal/bodily expression.
Alan Johnson negative
Named as the person who called Žižek a 'leftist fascist' in The Independent, used to open the talk's critique of the emptiness of the 'fascist' label.
Mark Zuckerberg negative
Named as a Silicon Valley executive who signed a letter to North Carolina's governor opposing transgender bathroom restrictions, cited by Žižek as ideological cover for Foxconn-style labor exploitation.
Ruhollah Khomeini positive
Quoted on fearing Western immorality rather than military power, Žižek takes this literally and approvingly as an accurate diagnosis of what fundamentalism really fears.
Mladen Dolar positive
Called 'my good friend'; Žižek references his MIT book on the voice, which traces the history of fear of the uncontrolled singing voice from antiquity through modernity.
D. T. Suzuki negative
Cited as the Zen Buddhism popularizer who argued the Buddhist dissolution of ego makes the perfect soldier, exemplifying how noble teachings are perverted into justifications for violence.
Cited only as the probable originator of the term Linksfaschismus (leftist fascism) in the 1960s German student movement context.
Tamer Nafar positive
Žižek calls him 'my hero', a Palestinian rapper who fights both Israeli apartheid and honor killings within his own community, modeling the unity of struggles Žižek advocates.
Vladimir Putin negative
Quoted citing the Bible to condemn Conchita Wurst; used to illustrate how Russian conservative nationalism defines its conflict with the West as cultural/sexual rather than military.
Winston Churchill positive
Praised for having listened to Hitler in the early 1930s and correctly identifying him as a real enemy, used to rebut the liberal formula that 'an enemy is someone whose story we didn't listen to'.
Plato positive
Used to illustrate the ancient fear of free singing / uncontrolled voice as a threat to the social order, from the Republic and the Laws.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Hegel's Gegensätzliche Bestimmung and the notion of the rabble are central tools; Žižek uses Hegelian logic to argue that the universal must appear as a particular within the series.
What it argues
sexual difference as irreducible antagonism, not a binary distribution of rolesthe double blackmail of liberal universalism versus multicultural relativismtransgenderism and Boko Haram as mirror images seeking to abolish sexual antagonismpolitical correctness as ideological mystification and liberal superegoBuddhist violence and the perversion of noble teachingsthe refugee/migrant distinction as ideological framinganti-racist guilt as inverted white paternalism
Dialectical moves 10
“Far from being simply an expression of Western imperialism, the gay rights movement is perceived in many African and Asian countries as the most visible face of capitalist modernization destroying traditional communities — so the anti-gay struggle appears as anti-colonial resistance.”
What looks like emancipation from a Western viewpoint appears as cultural aggression from a postcolonial one, revealing how the same phenomenon is radically redescribed across political frameworks.
“Sexual difference is not a difference between two positive identities; it is a difference that precedes what it differentiates — each sexual identity is an attempt to resolve a deadlock, not a stable position within a binary.”
The reversal shows that sexual difference is not about men and women having different properties but about an irreducible antagonism that makes both identities inherently unstable.
“Transgenderism and Boko Haram appear as opposites, but they are the two sides of the same: both want to get rid of sexual antagonism and achieve harmony — one through fluid identities, the other through fixed hierarchic roles.”
The apparent enemies share an identical underlying fantasy of dissolving the fundamental deadlock of sexual difference.
“The most perfidious form of Orientalism is not the aggressive Western imposition of values but tolerant Orientalism — 'oh, this is part of their culture, we shouldn't intervene.'”
What presents itself as anti-racist respect for cultural difference is actually a form of patronizing Orientalism that excuses local horrors.
“The defeat on torture is not that we give the wrong answer; the defeat is that we had to argue at all. Even arguing against torture signals that it has been normalized.”
The real ethical catastrophe is the erosion of dogmatic moral prohibitions, not any particular conclusion in a debate about them.
“An enemy is someone whose story we were not ready to listen to — this sounds noble, but listening to Hitler in the 1930s is precisely what Churchill did, and he immediately got it: this is a real enemy to be fought, not dissolved through understanding.”
The liberal formula of 'understanding the other' secretly assumes there are no real enemies; the reversal reinstates enmity as a political category.
“'General waste' is not a residual category outside the series — it IS one item in the series of waste types, and as such it stands for the universal. The same goes for 'gender as such': it is not beyond the distinction but occupies the place of the distinction itself.”
The Hegelian universal always has to appear as one particular within the series it governs, illustrated via waste-sorting and proposed as the solution to transgender politics.
“Karsten Hauken's guilt after being raped — feeling responsible for his rapist's deportation — is not noble anti-racism but its inverted form: it reproduces 'white man's burden' by making only white Europeans into moral agents while the other remains a victim.”
Liberal anti-racist guilt paradoxically re-asserts white supremacy by denying the other's moral agency.
“Today it is the right-wing populists who are subversive, violating limits, using dirty language — so the left should grab the chance to be the defenders of common decency.”
The traditional positions of transgression and authority have inverted: the left is now the conservative side and should embrace that role.
“Ideology is not a false answer to a problem; ideology is already the mystification in the problem itself — as with 'refugees vs. migrants', where the ideological battle is fought at the level of naming.”
The site of ideological struggle is not the answer but the formulation of the question.
Claims 16
asserts
Sexual difference is not a binary distribution of properties but an irreducible antagonistic deadlock that precedes any positive sexual identity.sexual difference / Lacanian theory
asserts
Transgenderism and Boko Haram-style fundamentalism are mirror images: both seek to dissolve sexual antagonism, one through fluid identities, the other through fixed hierarchic roles.transgenderism and religious fundamentalism
asserts
Western liberal universalism and multicultural relativism are two sides of the same ideological mystification.liberal universalism / multiculturalism
asserts
Muslim fundamentalists' real enemy is not Western economic exploitation but the immoral culture of the West, particularly its challenge to fixed sexual difference.Islamic fundamentalism / anti-Westernism
asserts
The anti-gay and anti-feminist struggle in many African and Asian countries is experienced as part of an anti-colonial struggle, which is the saddest irony of globalization.postcolonialism / sexuality
asserts
The rehabilitation of torture as a debatable topic is an ethical catastrophe; the defeat lies not in the wrong answer but in having to argue the question at all.torture / political ethics
rejects
The statement 'an enemy is someone whose story we were not ready to listen to' is doubly wrong: there are real enemies, and listening is a tool to fight them, not dissolve enmity.liberal tolerance / understanding the other
rejects
The patronizing liberal guilt that attributes all immigrants' failures and crimes to European colonialism deprives the other of agency and reasserts Western supremacy in inverted form.liberal anti-racist guilt / postcolonial self-blame
asserts
Buddhism, like any noble teaching, can be perverted into justification for violence; Buddhist terrorism exists in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar and is ignored by Western media.Buddhism / religious violence
asserts
The formal universality of Western human rights matters even if their content secretly privileges Western values, because that form historically opened space for feminist, abolitionist, and socialist struggles.human rights / universalism
asserts
The refugee/migrant distinction is ideological mystification: naming is already the site of ideological struggle, not a neutral description.refugee/migrant discourse / ideology in language
rejects
The 'better integration of immigrants' formula is false; what is needed is less cultural pressure to integrate, and more tolerance of mutual polite distance.integration policy / multiculturalism
asserts
Silicon Valley progressivism on transgender bathroom laws is ideological cover that allows corporations to ignore slave labor conditions in their supply chains.corporate progressivism / transgender politics
asserts
Tolerant Orientalism — the refusal to criticize other cultures' horrors out of respect — is the most perfidious form of Orientalism.Orientalism / multiculturalism
asserts
The right to free, uncontrolled singing (voice not dominated by meaning) is a recurring historical anxiety across Chinese antiquity, Plato, medieval Christianity, and modern conservatism, revealing how vocal freedom threatens social order.voice / music / social order
asserts
The Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid and the internal struggle for women's rights must be connected, not opposed — as Tamer Nafar's work demonstrates.Palestine / feminism / class struggle
Quotes 14
“When you criticize me, you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors. I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood.”Slavoj Žižek · authentic political engagement vs. performative Western leftism
“Freedom for all or freedom for none.”Slavoj Žižek · the inseparability of national and gender liberation
“We are not afraid of sanctions. We are not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of Western immorality.”Slavoj Žižek · fundamentalism's real target is cultural/sexual, not economic or military
“Being a man is not a stable identity. A certain doubt about being a man, a certain way to include femininity and so on is part of being a man.”Slavoj Žižek · sexual identity as inherently unstable and self-contradictory
“Two is always three, and it is this additional element which makes it a struggle.”Slavoj Žižek · the Hegelian logic of antagonism: the unclassifiable third is the condition of struggle
“Ideology is not a false answer to a problem. Ideology is already the mystification in a problem.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology operates at the level of the problem's formulation, not merely its answer
“My ideal is to live in a big block apartment where on the one side is a lesbian couple, there are Muslims, there are Jews, there are blacks, and we very friendly, sincerely, not of course politely ignore each other.”Slavoj Žižek · tolerant coexistence through benevolent discretion rather than enforced understanding
“True contact with the other, understanding, is something very precious. It's almost a miracle when it happens, and the best way to ruin it is to enforce it.”Slavoj Žižek · genuine encounter with the other cannot be administratively produced
“Would you like to live in a country where you would have to argue all the time that women shouldn't be raped? I wouldn't. I would like to live in a country where 'you don't rape women' is simply an absolute dogma.”Slavoj Žižek · the value of moral dogmas: some ethical prohibitions must be beyond debate
“Sorry, there are real enemies. And listening to them, yes, we should listen to them, but precisely to fight them more effectively.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of liberal dissolution of enmity through empathetic listening
“We as Palestinians must fight the Israeli apartheid and the gender apartheid. It is not reasonable to walk separately and ask for unity at the same time.”Slavoj Žižek · the necessity of combining anti-colonial and feminist struggles
“What I really hate is this kind of harmonious image — man and women, yin yang, harmony — because if you look at it closely, in this harmony it's always the woman who is down.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of harmonious complementarity as concealed hierarchy
“I believe our culture is full of shit, their culture is full of shit. The only way is to somehow connect our struggles. The unity is unity of struggle. Not this abstract unity — we are all humans.”Slavoj Žižek · concrete universalism through shared struggle, not abstract humanist solidarity
“Even if you do it out of despair, it shouldn't be neutralized in a legal way. You should be absolutely aware that you did something terrifying. What worries me is this normalization.”Slavoj Žižek · on torture: the danger of legal normalization of atrocities
Transcript 28 turns
unknown
Hello and good evening. I’m delighted to welcome you to this Forum for European Philosophy event at the London School of Economics. My name’s Danielle Sands, I’m a fellow at the Forum. For those of you who don’t know, the Forum is an educational charity based at the LSE and our aim is to bring philosophy to a wider audience and you can read a bit about us on our website and you can follow us on Twitter and on Facebook. So this evening we are honored to be hosting Professor Slavoj Žižek. Professor Žižek is a world-renowned public intellectual. He’s the International
Hello and good evening. I’m delighted to welcome you to this Forum for European Philosophy event at the London School of Economics. My name’s Danielle Sands, I’m a fellow at the Forum. For those of you who don’t know, the Forum is an educational charity based at the LSE and our aim is to bring philosophy to a wider audience and you can read a bit about us on our website and you can follow us on Twitter and on Facebook. So this evening we are honored to be hosting Professor Slavoj Žižek. Professor Žižek is a world-renowned public intellectual. He’s the International
Slavoj Žižek
Director
Director
unknown
of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He’s written more than books which have been translated into languages. He writes very wide-rangingly across philosophy, psychoanalysis, and politics. Now he’s speaking to us today to mark the launch of his new book, and he will be available to sign copies of the book here right after the event. Now his talk today is entitled Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors. That's it? Yes. Thank
of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He’s written more than books which have been translated into languages. He writes very wide-rangingly across philosophy, psychoanalysis, and politics. Now he’s speaking to us today to mark the launch of his new book, and he will be available to sign copies of the book here right after the event. Now his talk today is entitled Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors. That's it? Yes. Thank
Slavoj Žižek
you very much. Well, I hope you will not be disappointed and I hope your final impression will not be the way I’m usually now attacked. The last attack, somebody told me I like it, I was characterized as a crack-addicted millionaire fascist. And it’s crazy. Never in my life—I’m the only one from my generation of whom you can say this—never in my life did I try even the smallest, what’s the softest one, marijuana or whatever. Never. And as to fascist, well, it’s becoming almost a meaningless term today. When you don’t like something as too radical, too whatever, you say fascist. You know, I was called by Alan Johnson, I think in *The Independent*, a leftist fascist. You know what's the origin of this term? From what I know, Habermas used it in the 60s when there was a student movement in Germany for the more radical left, *Linksfaschismus*. That’s the origin. So don’t you agree that fascism is today de facto one of these pseudo-categories where you see something happening in politics that you don’t like but you don’t have an exact interpretation theory of what is happening so you just say oh it’s fascism and so on. And I think it’s, this is especially dangerous today when we do have new forms of anti-immigrant racism and so on and so on, but I think it’s cognitively an empty gesture, a big mistake to just say fascism, fascism and so on. Okay, I don’t want to lose time. I will try to do something not just to give you an overview of the book and so on, but to give you an example that I don’t refer to in the book, which will be precisely against another double blackmail concerning sexual difference. Because as they say in China, when there are great catastrophes we do live in interesting times today, and one of the interesting things happening is this violent return of sexual difference as a political category on both sides. That’s my point. Not only with the fundamentalists, Boko Haram and so on, but also with whatever they call in United States left-liberals and so on. And after this I will try to propose some further theoretical points. So I would like to begin with today’s Palestine, where there is I think an extremely important struggle going on ignored in the West mostly. Two figures are at its center of this struggle: Mohammed Assaf and Tamer Nafar. Assaf is a pop singer from Gaza, wildly popular not only among Palestinians, not only in Arab world, but now even in parts of Europe. He is this ideal, beautiful, good boy. A young charismatic singer, a beautiful tenor voice, singing politically more or less neutral songs except some kind of a pro-Palestinian twist, but not political, like we love our country, our country should be free and so on and so on. And he is supported by all sides. Hamas in Gaza tolerate him, Palestinian Authority proclaimed him the cultural ambassador of Palestine and so on and so on. Politically, he is a unifying figure above political divisions. Now a strange thing happened. In March of this year, a month ago, Assaf declared in an interview that as a part of keeping tradition—the idea is that Israeli occupation or whatever Western influence undermines authentic Arab or Palestinian traditions—that he would not allow his sister to sing in public. Then we get to the good guy, to my hero, Tamer Nafar. He is a Palestinian rap artist who is the main actor and co-writer of Udi Aloni’s, my Jewish friend, movie *Junction It should open, I don’t know when here, but it was a triumph in Germany at the Berlin Festival. If you have any suspicions of Udi Aloni, the Israeli ambassador immediately attacked him, the Israeli cultural minister attacked him and so on and so on. So Tamer Nafar responded to Assaf, to that beautiful guy. I will quote the letter, it’s not too long one. If any other pop artist said "according to our tradition women are not allowed to sing" and on a personal level "I cherish these traditions so I cannot allow my sister to sing," I would protest and hurt him. But since it’s Assaf, our Cinderella from Gaza, saying these words, I still will have rage, but mainly I’m hurt. Like the Palestinians who were united for the first time in the streets of Gaza, the West Bank, the diaspora, the refugee camps and inside the Israel to support Mohammed Assaf, we ask Assaf to join us on the same streets to encourage the girls from Yemen, Gaza, Morocco, Jordan and so on, to encourage that girl who is dreaming to sing, dance, write and perform. We as Palestinians must fight the Israeli apartheid and the gender apartheid. My dream is to march hand in hand, a woman holding a man’s hand against any separation wall. It is not reasonable to walk separately and ask for unity at the same time. You want to talk about traditions? From personal experience, I used to be angry, to be an angry kid in the ghettos of Lydda, this a suburb of Tel Aviv. I wouldn't calm down unless my mother sang to me a Fairuz song. That is the tradition I want to cherish. So my dear Arab sisters, sing as loud as you can, break the borders so we can calm down. Freedom for all or freedom for none. End of it. Aloni’s film *Junction where this guy Tamer Nafar is the hero, plays the hero, deals with the difficult predicament of the young Israeli Palestinians, Palestinians descended from the families which remained within Israel after the independence war. Young Palestinians whose everyday life involves a continuous struggle on two fronts: against both Israeli state oppression and the fundamentalist pressures from within their own community. For example, in his songs Nafar mocks the tradition of honor killings of girls in Palestinian families. For what, typically for our perverted logic of political correctness, he is regularly attacked by Western PC, politically correct, leftists. A strange thing, I have it on video, somebody taped it. A strange thing happened to Nafar during a recent visit to the United States. After he performed his song protesting honor killings at the Columbia University campus in New York, some anti-Zionist students attacked him for dealing with the topic. Their reproach was the standard one: in this way he promotes the Zionist view of Palestinians as barbaric primitives, and if there indeed are any honor killings, of course Israel is responsible for them because the Israeli occupation keeps Palestinians in primitive conditions and so on and so on. And Nafar gave to them, to these critics, a wonderful dignified reply. I quote him: When you criticize me, you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors. I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood. You see, this was such a perverse event where instead of celebrating this unique chance—we can fight together, we can connect the struggle against apartheid in Israel with the struggle for women’s rights—the two are opposed. You are prohibited to mention this too much. Nafar’s point is that Palestinians do not need the patronizing help of Western liberals, even less do they need the silence about honor killings as part of the Western leftist’s respect for the Palestinian way of life. These two aspects—the imposition of Western values as universal human rights and the respect for different cultures independently of the horrors that can be part of these cultures—are the two sides of the same ideological mystification. A lot has been written about how the universality of universal human rights is twisted, how they secretly give preference to Western cultural values and norms, for example the priority of individual over community and so on. But we should also add to this insight that the multiculturalist anti-colonialist defense of the multiplicity of ways of life is no less false. It covers up the antagonisms within each of these particular ways of life, justifying acts of brutality, sexism, racism and so on as simply expressions of a particular culture that we have no right to judge by our foreign Western standards. To be very clear here as an old-fashioned Marxist, of course I know this line of thought: Western human rights are false, they secretly privilege certain values, they are basically the rights of white men of property and so on. No problem for me in this. But nonetheless their universal form matters. This is why if you know a little bit of history, you know this. From the very beginning they opened up a certain way. Remember Mary Wollstonecraft: immediately, why not also us women? Then for me maybe one of the absolutely greatest events of last centuries, the Haiti Revolution, where the blacks says no, we can also do it. Then socialism, whatever you want. So you see something, this is the beauty of historical dialectic. The usual story we like to narrate, and it’s the official conservative story, is the story of degradation. For example, some original authentic culture gets commercialized, mystified and so on. I’m more and more incidentally skeptical about that. For example, in my absolutely, I admit it, evil mind, I like you know I’m critical towards all religions but and also towards Islam. But I claim things that are attributed to Islam are often performed in no less violent way by other religions. And my special target, it’s a great not even religion, I’m talking about Buddhism, spiritual movement. And those who hate Islam usually say but nonetheless aren't the terrorists Muslim? Did you hear about Buddhist terrorists? Sorry, I have. Our media just ignore them. There are and let me name you some countries. In their fight against Tamils in the old Ceylon now it’s Sri Lanka, absolute Buddhist terrorism. Thailand, Thailand up to a point even Myanmar and so on. You have absolute Buddhist terrorism there also. I’ve written about it and now you will say but this is a distortion, but how does this happen? Buddhism is such a noble attitude, abolish all suffering and so on. Oh, it’s so nice to read. Let me improvise a little bit how this happened. All the standard tricks were used by Buddhists from the very beginning. Okay, Buddha was good, a pure guy. I admit this because you know why? He even didn't want to talk about religion. He was kind of a totally secular teacher whose point was how to diminish suffering. But there was already immediately after the death of Buddha a fight of okay, we are citizens of a state, should we fight in a war or not? So very soon after Buddha’s death, I love them, three lines of argumentation allowing you to squeeze out emerged. The first one was the standard one that we also know in Europe. It was you know this ominous distinction between lesser evil and the greater evil. Like, you are allowed to kill some people if in this way you prevent much more people to be killed. Sounds nice but and up to a point I admit it’s a reasonable attitude, but remember this was one of the big justifications of Japanese invasion of China. Chinese are like naughty children and we have to be like severe parents, beat kill some of them so that we bring peace to China. Second line of reasoning is more ingenious one. It refers to this basic Buddhist view that, I simplify it, that reality is just a flux of impressions, there is no substantial reality. And they simply take this to the end and claim—and claim so what’s the problem? There is no reality so don’t worry about it, kill and so on and so on. Like it’s a very radical position but very strongly advocated. Because then you have another position, the most ominous one, advocated maybe you know the story among others by Suzuki, the great Zen Buddhism popularizer. When I was young in the hippie movement before that he was of course propagating Japanese militarism and so on. And his idea was that the best way to train perfect soldiers is through Buddhism. And maybe you know the story, I like to repeat it, it’s wonderful. That’s his example is this one, sorry to be tasteless, but that’s my nature, I cannot help it. Let’s say we are on a battlefield, you are my enemy. I have a knife. I have no, no, no, another of my friends will be on the other side when you do this you don’t get out so easily. Okay, he gives this example. If I am still caught in the illusion of Maya, what they call, I think I am a free agent, have a substantial ego, then I have some problem. Like you are a nice lady, it’s problematic, it will hurt you, it’s difficult to stuck my knife into you. But once I accept the Buddhist teaching, there is no substantial reality, if I enter Nirvana, I am no longer an agent but just as they say an observer of the pure flux of phenomena. Then—and this is beautiful Suzuki’s okay, beautiful in a terrifying way, terrifying way descriptions—then the truth of me sticking my knife into you is it’s not me who is really the agent. It’s part of a cosmic dance of phenomena. My knife is floating in the air and somehow by the by the undescribable dance of phenomena your body gets stuck on it. Nobody is responsible and so on and so on. I mean I am a great partisan of Buddhist meditation and so on and so my point is not to make fun of Buddhism but just I’m a sad pessimist here, how even the most noble teaching can be perverted into into it. So back to my point: anti-colonialism and so on and so on. The problem is that there is no simple way out. Of course we Europeans did horrible things. I don’t know if the last time I was here I used this story, I learned it from United States, which is for me—I use it even these days often when I’m in London—when what is cultural racism masked as universalism. I learned from my friend that in when the Bosnian war was ending, Bosnian women organized themselves, victim of rape and so on, and some American feminist tried to establish contact with them by writing to them a letter and so on and my God. You know what was that letter? Everyone almost died of laughing there, almost more victims than of Serb bombing or whatever. The letter was a series of questions. And the first question was, sorry, I will say it, I remember it almost literally, was something like this: Do you, poor Bosnian women who were raped, do you think that woman has, have an, has an eternal substantial essence, or do you think that feminine identity is constructed through performative discursive practices and so on? Those women just you know looked and so on and so on. No wonder although I don’t agree theoretically with Nancy Fraser, the New York psychoanalyst critical theorist, she wrote, I forgot the title, a very good book on how American feminism, mainstream feminism was kidnapped by mainstream liberalism. Okay, so let’s go on. The polemic between Assaf and Nafar is part of a big struggle for sexual difference, which gives a new twist to the old motto, when I was young, sexual is political. At that point this was of course a serious statement, a great truth. It meant sexuality is not simply a private domain politically irrelevant, but power struggles go on there also, which are politically socially overdetermined and so on. Decades ago, Ayatollah Khomeini wrote: "We are not afraid of sanctions. We are not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of Western immorality." End of quote. The fact that Khomeini talks about fear, about what a Muslim should fear most in the West, I think should be taken literally. Muslim fundamentalists do not have any problem with the brutality of economic and military struggles. Their true enemy is not the Western economic neo-colonialism and military aggressiveness, but its immoral culture. The same holds for Putin’s Russia, where the conservative nationalists define their conflict with the West as cultural, in the last resort focused on sexual difference. Do you remember the victory of the Austrian drag queen, that bearded lady, who is really a man who won the Eurovision contest, Conchita Wurst? Some tasteless name. Putin himself told after this contest at an interview, I quote Putin: "The Bible talks about the two genders, man and woman, and the main purpose of the union between them is to produce children." And now Europe is betraying this. As usual, the rabid nationalist Zhirinovsky was more outspoken and called the victory of Conchita Wurst "the end of Europe," saying: "There is no limit to our outrage. There are no more men and women in Europe, just *it*." Like in Stephen King’s novel, you know, that *It*. Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted that the Eurovision result, I quote, "showed supporters of European integration their European future: a bearded girl." I like this very much, the image of no wonder you have Brexit here, you also don’t want to be dominated by bearded girls. Now there is a certain quasi-poetic uncanny beauty in this image of a bearded lady, for a long time the standard feature of cheap circus freaks, as the symbol of United Europe. Note the same logic as in Khomeini: not army or economy, the truly feared object is immoral depravity, the threat to sexual difference. And now I come to a very sad insight. In many African and Asian countries, gay movement is also perceived as an expression of the cultural impact of capitalist globalization and its undermining of traditional social and cultural forms, so that consequently—and that’s the saddest thing—the struggle against gays appear as an aspect of the anti-colonial struggle. The same holds for, for example, Boko Haram. For its members, and strangely I met some of them who basically were for Boko Haram, they made it clear to me: the liberation of what we call the liberation of women appears as the most visible feature of the destructive cultural impact of capitalist modernization. Like one of them told me, "You know what for us means globalization in its immediate impact? It means our traditional families are falling apart" and so on and so on. So that Boko Haram, whose name, as you probably know, can be roughly and descriptively translated as "Western education is forbidden for women," they can perceive and portray themselves as agents fighting the destructive impact of modernization by way of imposing a hierarchic regulation of the relationship between the two sexes. The enigma is thus: why do Muslims, who have undoubtedly been exposed to exploitation, domination, and other destructive humiliating aspects of colonialism, why do they target in their response what is for us at least the best part of the Western legacy: our egalitarianism, personal freedoms inclusive of a healthy dose of irony, of mocking of all authorities and so on. The obvious answer is that their target is in some sense well chosen. What for them makes the liberal West so unbearable is not only that it practices exploitation and violent domination, but that to add insult to injury, it presents this brutal reality in the guise of its opposite: freedom, equality, democracy. I think that Boko Haram just brought the logic of normative sexual difference to its to its extreme. The notion of sexual difference which prescribes to each of the two sexes a specific role to play, thereby imposes a symbolic norm destined to guarantee sexual relationship, to provide the coordinates of normal sex. And again this should be something that gives us to think. I don't, okay, you live here in a more at least at this level liberal country, but isn’t this interesting: how is something like Boko Haram possible? A big social political movement which wants to refound the entire social life and the central tenet is the proper imposition of hierarchic sexual difference. For them, that’s the but are they so specific? I will talk about my own small shitty country Slovenia, where now the right-wingers also have a big campaign where the enemy is—all the honor goes here to Judith Butler—the enemy is gender theory. They claim that they sound almost like Plato, who in his *Republic* when he attacks music, he says, Plato, "music may appear marginal, a form of amusement, but" he says "music is a fundamental danger to the entire social order." Plato says if people are allowed to sing freely—and he is not afraid of the content of the songs, but just this very idea of letting yourself go to an uncontrolled voice which is not dominated by meaning of the words—Plato says "you end up being as an ape. Ultimately the whole social order spiritual order will disintegrate, we will become like animals." And the same goes, you find this in *Republic*, it’s repeated then in his thick later work *The Laws*. What’s so interesting, my friend Mladen Dolar in his book on the voice, which appeared by MIT years ago, developed the entire line—this is a fascinating topic for me—how the first ethical fragment that we know from the entire history of humanity which concerns music, it’s from China 6th, 7th Century BC, it says: "Beware of free singing, control free singing." You get some fragments from Ancient Egypt saying the same. You have Plato, you have medieval Christianity—they were obsessed as maybe some of you know by devil's tritone, by some false form of singing—and the big obsession was: if you sing, words should control the flow of the voice. The true horror is the voice which is no longer controlled by meaning. And then the story goes on. For example, for French republicans the castratos, castrated boy singing in the church, were the same depravity of this freely singing voice. Even, I remember, I'm unfortunately old enough, when I was young it was quite fascinating how Russian Communists at that point in the mid 50s and American conservatives reacted in exactly the same way to Elvis Presley and later rock music, Beatles. It was this absolute fear. I remember it was translated into Slovene but we were not a hardline Communist party ironically, where they say you know all those hip movements of Elvis Presley, that that’s animals. That's the end of humanity. It was total panic as with American conservatives. So it’s but now things get really interesting because on the one hand yes we have this fear, but here we really get a nice example of the logic of what Derrida calls *supplément*, supplement, poison in the sense of gift, in the sense of something that is dangerous but at the same time like *pharmakon* for Derrida you need a limited amount of it to keep you alive. Even already Plato has to has to consider this. He says, "This doesn't mean that singing should be totally prohibited, but it should be controlled" and as you can guess Plato opts for this discipline, military songs, no, that singing is okay. Up to—this is for me the most beautiful example—of this ambiguity of *pharmakon*. Okay, American right-wing fundamentalists can go against rock or whatever, it's decadent and so on, but at the same time they like so-called marching chants, you know, the songs sung by Marines and so on, which are a perfect example of this obscenity. Because what are the words? I was always fascinated by them. They are a mixture of limerick nonsense and sexual obscenities. Like I remember, I’m sorry if you know it, I like to repeat this one, it’s from the movie *An Officer and a Gentleman* where Marines sing, it goes like: "I don’t know but I was told that Eskimo pussies are rather cold." That’s what I’m talking about. You know it’s sex but at the same time a totally meaningless point. Now the true question to be asked is why even the institution which should stand for you know total discipline, order, obedience and so on, why does it need this *pharmakon*, this this thing? So again, what I’m saying is that sexual difference works in a similar way. Ultimately this is the absolute foundation. So a new dogma is now slowly appearing in Europe and—I like to make this point again and again—dogma is for me not, as the Germans say, *schlimmes Wort*, a bad word. I like dogmas, we cannot survive without them. Let me give you an example so that you will see what I mean. I think we need more dogmas today, but what kind of dogmas? Good ones. Look, would you like to live in a country where you would have to argue all the time that women shouldn’t be raped? I wouldn’t like to live, I would like to live in a country where "you don’t rape women" is simply an absolute dogma. It's just accepted and when some guy makes these tasteless jokes, sometimes in my style, that "why not, do they secretly enjoy it" and so on, you don't even argue against it, it’s just dismissed as stupidity. Panic, I get into a panic when all of a sudden you have to argue again. That's why for me, as I've written in another of my books, that's why for me the rehabilitation of torture, silent one, waterboarding and so on, is such a ethical tragedy. Something was unthinkable years ago. Now it’s again a respectable topic. And I think what makes me even more sad is that—you play, what is this, some divine experience? Doors opening into infinity or what? I'm really mystified what what's going on here? Okay, whatever, let's drop it. It's that the dogma—sorry, sorry—torture is that it's even more dangerous those who argue against torture. The defeat is already that that we had to argue. Now people tell me that was I had a conflict with that, how is it called, Alan Dershowitz, that fake liberal lawyer, who in it was just a small exchange in New York Times before I was prohibited there, who claimed because he advocates regulated torture. He says we have to torture, but the only legal way precisely to prevent abuses and so on is to legalize it. Okay, let’s say, sorry, I cannot again. Let's say you know something, you have to be tortured, but don’t worry, it will be done in a proper way. The doctor, the doctor will examine you, he will determine how much pain you can endure without getting a heart attack whatever, and then it will all be protocolized, the forms of torture are and so on and so on. You know what's my point here? This is the worst pragmatic realist element. My answer to it, I wonder if you would agree, is not "no, nobody should torture." Well, to be very frank, I cannot guarantee you that I would not find myself in such a situation of despair where again out of pure crazy pressure I would have tortured someone. Let me give you a totally ridiculous melodramatic example. Some evil guys have my small daughter, and I know they are evil, but I have with me I control one of them. Maybe out of pure despair because I know that he knows where is my daughter I would have tortured him. But I think what's very important is that even if you do it out of despair, it shouldn’t be neutralized in a legal way. You should feel not so much guilty as you should be absolutely aware that you did something terrifying. What what worries me is this normalization. Oh, we the doctor, doctor inspected you, everything is okay and so on and so on. Here I think—I wonder if you would propose agree with this morally conservative statement—I think that when I was young, late 60s, 70s, you know, it was the establishment spoke in official terms and we the leftist students "fuck you" and so on were using dirty words like and so on. But today, did you notice how it’s more and more the opposite? Look at the American electoral campaign just and so on. It’s the it’s the right-wing populist, they are using more and more dirty language, vulgarities, unimaginable years ago. So I would say let's grab a chance and this I see here a unique chance to connect with ordinary decent people. No, we are the defenders, the left, of common decency. We shouldn’t be afraid to to follow to follow this line. Today it’s the fanatic right-wingers who are subversive, violating limits and so on and so on. So I will try to go faster so that I don’t get lost. So the the this is one part which should give us to think. Where does this come, this sudden return of sexual difference? Yes, in my country Slovenia, for example, gender theory is explained in terms of a very specific conspiracy theory. The idea is this one: Communists tried to take over the world. They failed. So they withdrew and reflected. And they said we failed because we didn’t undermine enough common morality. People have certain basic decency, sacred family, man, woman, Christian values and so on. So if we really want to win we have to attack there. So Communists through their agents implanted implanted gender theory to undermine the stable sexual difference as the very foundation, the ultimate division articulation of our social lives. This is one side. But I think the story is more complex. I think it’s absolutely crucial to read this return of sexual difference in this fixed hierarchic way—women should do this, men should do this, detailed prescription of roles—with its opposite which is I think they are two sides of the same. Here probably some of you would disagree, what is now happening especially in the United States but also in some other countries. I will characterize it quickly with one word: transgender, transgenderism. I’m opposed to it. Not because I’m against gay rights, transgender rights, but what’s the problem? Did you notice—I mean I think it’s a wonderful example of ideological struggle, because that’s the ideology which is alive today, not the big systems, theology, socialism, freedom, but ideology is alive in this at this everyday very everyday level of daily rituals, like how do we go to toilets. And segregated toilet doors are today the center of a big legal ideological struggle in the United States. I hope you follow the news. Now two, three weeks ago, on March a group of Silicon Valley—not only but mostly—business executives headlined by Mark Zuckerberg or Apple CEO Tim Cook signed a letter to North Carolina governor denouncing a law prohibiting transgender people from using the public facilities of the opposite sex. The letter says "we are disappointed in your decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law. The business community has consistently communicated to lawmakers that such laws are bad" and so on and so on. So this already should makes us suspicious. How come that there is a big progressive battle where all the top businessmen are on the on the on are on the liberal sides. I think it works perfectly, for example, for Apple. You can forget about slave conditions in Foxconn factories and so on and so on. We are clean, we are for against against toilet segregation, and we did our our our duty. I so again, what’s the problem here? It is a real problem. Wait a minute, I’m not—the problem is more a more deep theoretical one, and maybe you followed how this it was on there were some cover stories like Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert in Nor- North Carolina and so on and so on. So what’s my problem with this? Just a definition, short one, stolen from Wiki- no WikiLeaks Wikipedia. What is transgenderism? The fundamental idea is this one: transgenderism occurs when an individual experiences a discord between his her biological sex and the corresponding gender assigned to him by society and his subjective identity. Society designates you, usually based on your physical biological features, as man or woman, but you rebel against it in multiple ways. You can be a man, man who feels and acts like a woman, or the opposite. You can and then you have then the whole network of categories: bigender, trigender, pangender, genderfluid up to agender. So the idea is this basic idea. What about all those people, they are percent, and I’m not making fun of this who simply when you go to the toilet, usually in a panic you run there and then my God you feel oppressed, terrorized by this choice: man, woman, I don't recognize myself in any of the two, what to do? I think it’s, I’m not making fun of it, a legitimate concern, but there are serious problems here I think. The first hint of the problem is that I always think that the extreme usually tells the truth of a movement. And the extreme here is so-called post-genderism, a social political cultural movement whose partisans advocate a voluntary abolition of gender which they claim is rendered possible by recent scientific progress in biotechnology and reproductive technologies. Their proposal doesn’t concern only scientific possibility but also ethics. They claim that the claim of post-genderism is that social, emotional, and cognitive consequences of a fixed gender roles are an obstacle to full human emancipation. A society in which reproduction through sex is eliminated will open unheard of new possibilities of freedom, social and emotional experimenting. It will are you giving me a sign that it is already I am. Okay, okay. I like it how ultra-subtle you did it. Yeah, yeah, okay. It will eliminate a distinction which sustains all later social hierarchies, exploitations and so on and so on. I my problem here is that I disagree with both I disagree with both poles. Of course it’s easy to see how transgenderism or even or even post-genderism fits perfectly our late capitalist subjectivity, where we have all the time emphasis of against binary logic, fluidity, everything should be fluid, you change your identities and so on and so on. I have a couple of problems here. The first problem is—and this is the main problem—this is not how actually sexual difference functions. What both positions, the Boko Haram and transgenderists, what they what disappears in both cases is sexual difference, which precisely is a kind of a tension antagonism and this is what Lacan means when he says *il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel*, there is no sexual relationship. Sexual difference precisely does not function as I think gender theory is here wrong, sexual difference does not function as a simple distribution of properties: men do this, women do this. It’s precisely a name for a certain deadlock where man and woman are two ways to cope with it but both fail. For example, what’s totally wrong with gender theory is not that they are too daring, but they are not daring enough. Even I who am, I doubt what kind of, some kind of a man, sorry but I have all the time the same problem when I enter the toilet. My God, am I really a man and so on? And I think this is part of being a man. You know, being a man is not a stable identity. A certain doubt about being a man, a certain way to include femininity and so on is part of being a man. Being a man is not a stable identity, but it’s a something deeply self-contradictory, and it goes the same for the woman and so on and so on. So now I will give my theory here. I think paradoxically—and I will immediately give you an example so that you don't think that I'm totally bluffing—sexual difference is a difference which in a way, in its logical structure, precedes what it differentiates. We don’t have two positive identities and then the difference between the two of them. No, each sexual identity is an attempt to resolve a deadlock. Let me give you an example from politics. If some of you are old enough like me, maybe you still remember those old charming times when there still was in politics Left and Right. Maybe most of you don’t know what this means, no, but you know what always fascinated me in this political distinction. It’s not a simple distinction of Left-Right where you say "Leftists think this, Rightists think that." Every way to describe the difference between Left and Right is already a Leftist of a Rightist distinction. Ask a true Rightist how do you see the entire field? He will usually say, "I’m for a stable center and there are extremists." So the overall picture will be stable center and destabilizing extremes and so on. If you ask a Leftist how do you see the entire image of a society? He will give you a different mapping. Probably some radical split, us against them and so on and so on. What I’m saying here is that there is no neutral difference, way to define the difference. Every way to formulate the difference is already overdetermined by the difference. You already take you already take sides. And what I want to say is that in a way exactly the same goes for sexual difference. You cannot have a a neutral formulation of the difference. It’s an impossible difference. It’s the name of a deadlock. And I’m not talking about a biological deadlock but about a libidinal and—but I will not go into that psychoanalytic Lacanian stuff today—and this brings me back to trans- transgenderism. The first, okay, now the second thing that I find strange in transgenderism is how on the one hand they want to move beyond all precise definitions, like "no, we don’t want to be put into that that small place, I’m this, I’m that, I want to be beyond distinctions" and so on and so on. But at the same time they exhibit an exactly opposite tendency of "I cannot recognize myself in this or in that identity, I want the specific place for me" and so on and so on. If I were to be a true transgenderist, I would have said screw you with your distinction, I will enter whichever toilet I want and so on, you know. At the same time so I my position is this one. I’m sorry, now we are approaching something that is almost philosophy so that you don’t—we come here to the specifically Hegelian notion of difference. For Hegel again, difference is not a difference between positive entities, but in a way it precedes the entities. So when my position my solution, so that you will not say that I’m a brutal male chauvinist, no no, my solution is this one. It came to me without any dirty innuendos when I watch I think you have them also in London we have them now or in the UK in my country. You know they have this problem of categorization with with with waste. You know you have usually one box for for glass, one box for paper, one box for organic waste. But then this categorization never adds up, you know. So you have and I like this, it’s so deeply Hegelian. You have paper, glass, organic waste, plastic, and general waste. Did you know, but general waste as one in the series of a general and this is what Hegel knew. Hegel's term for this is *Gegensätzliche Bestimmung*, oppositional determination. The universal dimension has to appear in the particular as one of its sub- sub-species. And Hegel has wonderful things here along these lines. For example, my good friend Frank Ruda wrote a book on this. If we are here London School of Economics, I heard that you changed the name back, that it is no longer Libyan now is London School of Economics. Sorry, you must have heard this joke a hundred times. What I mean is that he wrote a wonderful book on Hegel’s notion of rabble, *Pöbel*, where he notices how rabble is not simply the excrement, those who have no place in society. Exactly as such, rabble stands for humanity as such, *un plus*, without you know. The nice point of Hegel is he always knows that those who don't have a specific place within society stand for the universality as such. And I claim applied to this my okay, I can be here in a vulgar way very practical. I claim that my solution would have been not infinite, not bigender, trigender, but male or how is it usually done ladies, gentlemen, and gender as such. And it’s deeply true, because gender as such here transgender people maybe don’t get it theoretically. Gender as such does not stand for something beyond differences, just it’s sexual difference as such prior to—the very the very deadlock of transgender people: my God, where are they, where do they stand? They stand for difference as such before its before its before its specific determination. So so you see what I’m saying here. I’m saying that A: sexual difference—it’s a little bit the same like although it’s profoundly different—class difference, class struggle. Class struggle also for Marx is not simply one class versus the other. If it were to be able to simply divide society into two, those up, those down, clear categorization, then you don’t have class struggle. Then you have just a clear categorization. Class struggle means precisely that there are elements from rumple- lumpenproletariat, middle classes, which cannot be categorized, and class struggle is basically the struggle for them. So again the paradox is that two is always three, and it is this additional element which makes it which makes it a struggle. And I think that this antagonistic dimension disappears in both cases. Both cases—now I’m returning to this Boko Haram versus transgender—both cases want to get rid of sexual antagonism precisely in this sense of enigmatic, it cannot be determined and so on. And I think all our poetry, art, even science are based on this in the sense. What pushes humans towards towards transcendence is precisely a deadlock like this. I think—but this is a general anthropological philosophical thesis—that what we humans do is that we know how to turn an obstacle into profit. Something goes wrong, oh we say, "Why don't use it in another way?" you know. Well, but that’s another story. Again what and now if you allow me just one thing, I will be very short. So my you see my point is the strange underlying similarity between theorists of sex- fixed sexual difference and transgenderists. They both basically want to get rid of an antagonism, they want harmony. Just one want the traditional hierarchic harmony, it’s clear who is man, who is woman. And it’s a very tragic situation here. You know Mugabe in Zimbabwe, you know his obsession against gays? He made a big speech, I think half year ago in United Nations, shouting proudly "we are not gay" and denouncing gay movement as the most perfidious expression of Western imperialism and so on and so on. And now I come to a crucial problem. The difference between in extreme terms transgenderism versus Boko Haram sexual difference. The danger is that this difference, this whatever you call it cultural whatever in sexual economy, up to a point colonizes the class struggle. So that we in the West appear as progressive for sexual and the the big task, maybe everything will be decided in this in that’s why I began with Nafar, with that can we bring the two struggles together? As long as women’s rights will be experienced de facto as upper-middle class struggle, you dismiss the poor lower classes as fundamentalists and so on and so on, we are in we are in for a tragedy. Now I will not go on, I will just do something which maybe of some interest to you. I wanted I made a mistake, so let’s do it like this. I like this ironic idea. Stop, I’m over. It’s a debate. And I start the debate by asking myself: Professor Žižek, what is the remaining stuff that you wanted to say? Graciously I will answer the question. I wanted to connect this—it’s may appear disconnected—but two extreme cases of subjectivity which disturb the well-established lines of we, free Western liberals against non-integrated Muslims who become terrorists and so on. You know the last guy, now no longer the last they they arrested, Salah Abdeslam, one of those suspects for Brussels? I think it’s fascinating to read his biography. Because he doesn’t fit the profile of the usual he is not this terror- he is not that Mohammed Atta from severe guy. He is a fully human, he cries and so on, but there is another thing which is absolutely crucial if we want to understand what goes on. All this stupid story about integration, integration failed, it didn’t work. It’s not like that. He first he is not a refugee immigrant. He was born in France or Belgium, I don’t know, to a family which was fully integrated. And his act, participating in terror if he did, was precisely a revolt against integration. Now of course we should raise the question: was there something wrong with that integration and so on and so on. But what this means at least for me is that it’s totally false all these terms "we have to strive to better integrate the immigrants" and so on and so on. And my solution here is a totally crazy one: maybe we need less integration. No, no, don’t be afraid. I’m not for these enclaves, each identity in its own, but less pressure for how to put it integration, especially less cultural integration. What do I mean by this? I repeat an old point which I find important so that I always repeat it. Look, if there is one sentence which for me condenses the utter stupidity of the logic of multicultural tolerance, it’s for me the statement "an enemy is someone whose story we were not ready to listen to." Ah, my reaction is nice to know. So Hitler was our enemy because we didn't attentively listen to—no, here I’m standard pro-British, what was great with all my disagreements about Winston Churchill is that he was listening to Hitler already in the early 30s and he immediately got it: this guy is more dangerous even than Stalin and so on. So what I’m saying this statement is doubly wrong, although it sounds so nice. When you don’t listen to an other, you fetishize him into a mythic enemy, you should open yourself—no, my first conclusion is: sorry, there are real enemies. And listening to them, yes, we should listen to them, but precisely to fight them more effectively. Second point: I think this entire topic of understanding the other is a typical liberal superego logic, you know. Then you get caught in this game: but was I listening to you enough? Should I listen to you more? Did I get something? Should I—I think that of course we don’t understand the others because we don’t ourselves understand ourselves, others don’t understand themselves and so on and so on. So what if we simply accept that we are all in the same shit, lost in a certain way? And the the immediate task for me is not this "how do I know what do you mean by—" but a kind of a tolerant benevolent discretion. My ideal is not to live in some stupid multicultural community where you come with your stupid food and I have to be into it, or some stupid music and I have to be interested—"Oh my God what interesting alterity!" I want my ideal is to live in a big block apartment with apartments where on the one side is a lesbian couple, there are Muslims, there are Jews, there are blacks whatever, and we very friendly, sincerely, not of course politely ignore each other. But in a very friendly way and then it’s wonderful way it happens. From time to time miracles happen and you know it happened to me. For example, I know this will sound like the ultimate anti-semitism, in United States some of my best friends are gay. But you know how it happened? They overheard me making a, as you can expect from me, a bad taste joke against gay people. And they immediately took up the game, so you know true contact with other, understanding is something very precious. It’s almost a miracle when it happens, and the best way to ruin it is to enforce it. So I’m all for mixing cultures, but not with this liberal superego "we are all—" you know it’s the same with politically correct fight against dirty words, I mean words which are aggressive, sexist, racist. You know you always have this: first it was nigger, then it was Negro, then it was black and then they always ask "Are we okay now? Is there still a trace of racism" is what I’m saying. And then you have this endless hermeneutic task you know: am I anti-racist again? And it’s clear what pleasure they have in this, like almost in an orgasmic way my politically correct friends report to me "You know I discovered that I was still a little bit a racist there" and so on. True anti-racist society is where, for example—it's an old joke, I will not repeat it again but—the greatest acknowledgment that I got from some of my black friends is when after we exchanged some dirty jokes they embraced me and told me "now you can call me nigger." The point, of course I’m not an idiot, was not that I should really call them a nigger. But it was it was one of these beautiful symbolic gestures, I love them. I think they are the basis of civilization and they have them in all cultures. Here I’m not Eurocentric. You know, offers made to be rejected. This beautiful gesture where you offer something you know it will be rejected, so although it appears a failed act, but the result is usually authentic con- you know contact, you know. Of course the situation can be comic, of course, and I love these situations. You remember like let’s say you are rich, I am poor. You, you are crazy enough, even if I want to stab you, you invite me to a restaurant. We know that you will pay. But when the bill arrives, isn’t it part of manners at least enough that I should for a brief moment insist "no, no, let me pay." We both know that it’s a game. And if you want to be truly evil—what I’m not an anti-feminist this is just descriptive anthropology and women can be truly evil—you would have said, and once this happened to me you know, "Okay then you pay if you want," you know. But you see this is what I believe in. And again again now I will really finish immediately by my last example. Did you read it in the news now in April? A tragic thing which happened in Norway. Karsten Nordal Hauken, a young progressive leftist anti-racist feminist politician, now we learn because he went public with this was raped four five years ago by a Somali refugee, brutally anally, he spoke about it. Yeah immediately if you are now sending a killing message to like liquid- like one of those messages James Bond gets you know kill him you know. He—what makes it so ridiculous and tragic is that now the guy was condemned Somali and now Norwegian authorities threaten to re- to how do you call it expel him exile him back to Somalia. And this guy now feels guilty, Karsten who was raped. He said "but wasn’t he a victim? I mean is it fair to punish him in this way? He was just a victim of circumstances" and so on and so on. And to go to the end, he, Karsten, now feels guilty. "My God what did I cause by way of denouncing him" and so on and so on. "Wasn’t it my racism?" Now I’m the first to admit a kind of a ethic nobility gentility is this. But I nonetheless think it’s false. Why is it false? Because first it’s this it’s an inverted form of racism. It’s this logic of "we white" it’s an inverted form of "white man’s burden" I claim. It’s you know it’s such a patronizing attitude towards immigrants or others. It’s as if you know only whenever something goes wrong we white Europeans have to be guilty. The others are victims. It totally deprives the others of the agency. It’s also and the same and I and also this eternal guilt feeling and so on I claim this you know like all my some of my leftist friends say "refugees coming to Europe oh my God it’s all the result of European economic colonialism we are totally responsible" and so on. They are just they are just not out of time but out of whatever. No and I’m saying that I’m against this. I think we will have to allow even more immigrants. The point is not this. The point is that this patronizing attitude "they are never guilty, we are responsible" is first reasserts our white extreme arrogance. It means they're victims we are agents. And it will end really really bad if we pursue this line with ethical catastrophe, the end of Europe maybe. Okay, thanks very much. Now did I get it correctly that for a brief split of a second you were surprised like did you really finish or whatever? Yes. Okay, sorry. Now we pretend for some time that we live in a democracy no? I mean debate and so on. Please. Okay we don't have much time so do try and keep your questions as brief as possible. That was my idea you know. Your questions as brief as possible. Gentleman at the back. But do we have a microphone because I have this. And you select them because I have such problems I’m a little bit myopic and then I’m always accused "oh you are a racist you ignored that woman that whatever" no. And maybe I am a racist but to cover that up you know. Okay sorry please. We'll take both, well one straight after the other. Yeah. Could you—could you comment on the last thing you said about political correctness and the press reaction to the threats against the Danish cartoonist and the press all turning their back on that situation? It’s Danish? The old case or now in Germany because the latest example that I like is that the Germany followed the law it’s crazy that now German courts will accuse that singer or whatever who made fun of Erdogan? Or you mean that case it’s already six seven years ago even more? I meant that one but yeah. That one. You see this is for me a serious problem and here misunderstandings emerge and then I’m accused of fascism, European racism. You know tolerance in itself cannot work. No no no, not because whatever we need domination or whatever. But because this is what I mean when I to provoke things of course advocate *Leitkultur*, leading culture. The problem is that each culture—and of course they don’t exist in a pure state I know they all mixed but basically if we allow this abstraction—each culture implies not only the way they live but the way this culture relates to other cultures. For example our problem is the way we perceive personal freedoms and so on, we may do in a Muslim or other third-world country things which we think are normal part of our irony but they may be deeply humiliating or whatever to them. And of course vice versa. If we have a strong Islam community they not only it’s not only "we want to live our way leave us alone," but they always involve a certain way to relate to other cultures. And here you immediately encounter problems. I don’t blame anyone here. To be neutral and not to blame anyone, I will take the usual victims they are so few so that you can freely attack them, bad jokes, Roma. You know they were once called Gypsies. Roma. In Slovene, I’m sorry if you know the story, it does refer directly to your question. Some years ago there was a big problem. Roma girl escaped from her family because their parents her parents wanted to marry her when she was to a—you know they have this tradition of father arranges marriages and so on. So she escaped from her family and took refuge by the police. And then there was a big public debate what to do with her. Feminists totally supported her, perfect, okay. But the problem is they didn’t even notice that this was from the standpoint of traditional Roma community an extremely aggressive act, because one of the leading figures of Roma community went public and say and says "Do you know that arranged marriages are the very basic form of how our community reproduces itself? He said you take this from us and in two three generations okay we still maybe doing our Jewish sorry Jewish Gypsy sorry Roma sorry from one mistake to the other Roma barbecue singing Gypsy songs and so on but our cultural identity is over." So you see that's the problem of tolerance for me. What would you do with her? Now you will probably most of you say absolutely our police or whatever welfare authorities should protect the girl. Okay but then don’t give me bullshit don’t bluff. This means you are ready to destroy undermine gradually a certain community. You know communal life, community is something very brutal. It’s not just folkloric dances and the way you do your food songs. It means above all sexual relations and all that stuff which is very brutal and so on. So that's my problem where things emerge. Or for example I know that Muslims also have their gay organizations and so on but it’s an extremely sad phenomenon. Do you know that in they had these problems in I know of them in Amsterdam, in Denmark and in Berlin where fundamentalist Muslim activists—not the majority but nonetheless—attacked gay parades and so on and so on, claiming this is an obscenity and so on and so on. So again here what do you do here? You have to set some limit. The pure liberal formula "each should have his her their way of life, we just should tolerate each other" it simply doesn’t work. You have to set a limit. What do you do? And that’s why I want to give all the freedom to—my problem is not, I’m totally opposed to what they did in France prohibiting Muslim girls to wear veils. My problem is is if a Muslim girl does *not* want to bear to have to have her face being veiled and then her family puts pressure on her and then she seeks refuge with I don’t know public authority. What do you do then? There is no easy way out. So the beginning of solution for me is to admit a deadlock. If you say just tolerance, tolerance, it’s not clear what type of tolerance, you know. Because every tolerance is based on certain preconceptions. Like for us tolerance means basically individual tolerance, tolerance of each way of life and so on. For others this is not what tolerance means and so on and so on. So I
you very much. Well, I hope you will not be disappointed and I hope your final impression will not be the way I’m usually now attacked. The last attack, somebody told me I like it, I was characterized as a crack-addicted millionaire fascist. And it’s crazy. Never in my life—I’m the only one from my generation of whom you can say this—never in my life did I try even the smallest, what’s the softest one, marijuana or whatever. Never. And as to fascist, well, it’s becoming almost a meaningless term today. When you don’t like something as too radical, too whatever, you say fascist. You know, I was called by Alan Johnson, I think in *The Independent*, a leftist fascist. You know what's the origin of this term? From what I know, Habermas used it in the 60s when there was a student movement in Germany for the more radical left, *Linksfaschismus*. That’s the origin. So don’t you agree that fascism is today de facto one of these pseudo-categories where you see something happening in politics that you don’t like but you don’t have an exact interpretation theory of what is happening so you just say oh it’s fascism and so on. And I think it’s, this is especially dangerous today when we do have new forms of anti-immigrant racism and so on and so on, but I think it’s cognitively an empty gesture, a big mistake to just say fascism, fascism and so on. Okay, I don’t want to lose time. I will try to do something not just to give you an overview of the book and so on, but to give you an example that I don’t refer to in the book, which will be precisely against another double blackmail concerning sexual difference. Because as they say in China, when there are great catastrophes we do live in interesting times today, and one of the interesting things happening is this violent return of sexual difference as a political category on both sides. That’s my point. Not only with the fundamentalists, Boko Haram and so on, but also with whatever they call in United States left-liberals and so on. And after this I will try to propose some further theoretical points. So I would like to begin with today’s Palestine, where there is I think an extremely important struggle going on ignored in the West mostly. Two figures are at its center of this struggle: Mohammed Assaf and Tamer Nafar. Assaf is a pop singer from Gaza, wildly popular not only among Palestinians, not only in Arab world, but now even in parts of Europe. He is this ideal, beautiful, good boy. A young charismatic singer, a beautiful tenor voice, singing politically more or less neutral songs except some kind of a pro-Palestinian twist, but not political, like we love our country, our country should be free and so on and so on. And he is supported by all sides. Hamas in Gaza tolerate him, Palestinian Authority proclaimed him the cultural ambassador of Palestine and so on and so on. Politically, he is a unifying figure above political divisions. Now a strange thing happened. In March of this year, a month ago, Assaf declared in an interview that as a part of keeping tradition—the idea is that Israeli occupation or whatever Western influence undermines authentic Arab or Palestinian traditions—that he would not allow his sister to sing in public. Then we get to the good guy, to my hero, Tamer Nafar. He is a Palestinian rap artist who is the main actor and co-writer of Udi Aloni’s, my Jewish friend, movie *Junction It should open, I don’t know when here, but it was a triumph in Germany at the Berlin Festival. If you have any suspicions of Udi Aloni, the Israeli ambassador immediately attacked him, the Israeli cultural minister attacked him and so on and so on. So Tamer Nafar responded to Assaf, to that beautiful guy. I will quote the letter, it’s not too long one. If any other pop artist said "according to our tradition women are not allowed to sing" and on a personal level "I cherish these traditions so I cannot allow my sister to sing," I would protest and hurt him. But since it’s Assaf, our Cinderella from Gaza, saying these words, I still will have rage, but mainly I’m hurt. Like the Palestinians who were united for the first time in the streets of Gaza, the West Bank, the diaspora, the refugee camps and inside the Israel to support Mohammed Assaf, we ask Assaf to join us on the same streets to encourage the girls from Yemen, Gaza, Morocco, Jordan and so on, to encourage that girl who is dreaming to sing, dance, write and perform. We as Palestinians must fight the Israeli apartheid and the gender apartheid. My dream is to march hand in hand, a woman holding a man’s hand against any separation wall. It is not reasonable to walk separately and ask for unity at the same time. You want to talk about traditions? From personal experience, I used to be angry, to be an angry kid in the ghettos of Lydda, this a suburb of Tel Aviv. I wouldn't calm down unless my mother sang to me a Fairuz song. That is the tradition I want to cherish. So my dear Arab sisters, sing as loud as you can, break the borders so we can calm down. Freedom for all or freedom for none. End of it. Aloni’s film *Junction where this guy Tamer Nafar is the hero, plays the hero, deals with the difficult predicament of the young Israeli Palestinians, Palestinians descended from the families which remained within Israel after the independence war. Young Palestinians whose everyday life involves a continuous struggle on two fronts: against both Israeli state oppression and the fundamentalist pressures from within their own community. For example, in his songs Nafar mocks the tradition of honor killings of girls in Palestinian families. For what, typically for our perverted logic of political correctness, he is regularly attacked by Western PC, politically correct, leftists. A strange thing, I have it on video, somebody taped it. A strange thing happened to Nafar during a recent visit to the United States. After he performed his song protesting honor killings at the Columbia University campus in New York, some anti-Zionist students attacked him for dealing with the topic. Their reproach was the standard one: in this way he promotes the Zionist view of Palestinians as barbaric primitives, and if there indeed are any honor killings, of course Israel is responsible for them because the Israeli occupation keeps Palestinians in primitive conditions and so on and so on. And Nafar gave to them, to these critics, a wonderful dignified reply. I quote him: When you criticize me, you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors. I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood. You see, this was such a perverse event where instead of celebrating this unique chance—we can fight together, we can connect the struggle against apartheid in Israel with the struggle for women’s rights—the two are opposed. You are prohibited to mention this too much. Nafar’s point is that Palestinians do not need the patronizing help of Western liberals, even less do they need the silence about honor killings as part of the Western leftist’s respect for the Palestinian way of life. These two aspects—the imposition of Western values as universal human rights and the respect for different cultures independently of the horrors that can be part of these cultures—are the two sides of the same ideological mystification. A lot has been written about how the universality of universal human rights is twisted, how they secretly give preference to Western cultural values and norms, for example the priority of individual over community and so on. But we should also add to this insight that the multiculturalist anti-colonialist defense of the multiplicity of ways of life is no less false. It covers up the antagonisms within each of these particular ways of life, justifying acts of brutality, sexism, racism and so on as simply expressions of a particular culture that we have no right to judge by our foreign Western standards. To be very clear here as an old-fashioned Marxist, of course I know this line of thought: Western human rights are false, they secretly privilege certain values, they are basically the rights of white men of property and so on. No problem for me in this. But nonetheless their universal form matters. This is why if you know a little bit of history, you know this. From the very beginning they opened up a certain way. Remember Mary Wollstonecraft: immediately, why not also us women? Then for me maybe one of the absolutely greatest events of last centuries, the Haiti Revolution, where the blacks says no, we can also do it. Then socialism, whatever you want. So you see something, this is the beauty of historical dialectic. The usual story we like to narrate, and it’s the official conservative story, is the story of degradation. For example, some original authentic culture gets commercialized, mystified and so on. I’m more and more incidentally skeptical about that. For example, in my absolutely, I admit it, evil mind, I like you know I’m critical towards all religions but and also towards Islam. But I claim things that are attributed to Islam are often performed in no less violent way by other religions. And my special target, it’s a great not even religion, I’m talking about Buddhism, spiritual movement. And those who hate Islam usually say but nonetheless aren't the terrorists Muslim? Did you hear about Buddhist terrorists? Sorry, I have. Our media just ignore them. There are and let me name you some countries. In their fight against Tamils in the old Ceylon now it’s Sri Lanka, absolute Buddhist terrorism. Thailand, Thailand up to a point even Myanmar and so on. You have absolute Buddhist terrorism there also. I’ve written about it and now you will say but this is a distortion, but how does this happen? Buddhism is such a noble attitude, abolish all suffering and so on. Oh, it’s so nice to read. Let me improvise a little bit how this happened. All the standard tricks were used by Buddhists from the very beginning. Okay, Buddha was good, a pure guy. I admit this because you know why? He even didn't want to talk about religion. He was kind of a totally secular teacher whose point was how to diminish suffering. But there was already immediately after the death of Buddha a fight of okay, we are citizens of a state, should we fight in a war or not? So very soon after Buddha’s death, I love them, three lines of argumentation allowing you to squeeze out emerged. The first one was the standard one that we also know in Europe. It was you know this ominous distinction between lesser evil and the greater evil. Like, you are allowed to kill some people if in this way you prevent much more people to be killed. Sounds nice but and up to a point I admit it’s a reasonable attitude, but remember this was one of the big justifications of Japanese invasion of China. Chinese are like naughty children and we have to be like severe parents, beat kill some of them so that we bring peace to China. Second line of reasoning is more ingenious one. It refers to this basic Buddhist view that, I simplify it, that reality is just a flux of impressions, there is no substantial reality. And they simply take this to the end and claim—and claim so what’s the problem? There is no reality so don’t worry about it, kill and so on and so on. Like it’s a very radical position but very strongly advocated. Because then you have another position, the most ominous one, advocated maybe you know the story among others by Suzuki, the great Zen Buddhism popularizer. When I was young in the hippie movement before that he was of course propagating Japanese militarism and so on. And his idea was that the best way to train perfect soldiers is through Buddhism. And maybe you know the story, I like to repeat it, it’s wonderful. That’s his example is this one, sorry to be tasteless, but that’s my nature, I cannot help it. Let’s say we are on a battlefield, you are my enemy. I have a knife. I have no, no, no, another of my friends will be on the other side when you do this you don’t get out so easily. Okay, he gives this example. If I am still caught in the illusion of Maya, what they call, I think I am a free agent, have a substantial ego, then I have some problem. Like you are a nice lady, it’s problematic, it will hurt you, it’s difficult to stuck my knife into you. But once I accept the Buddhist teaching, there is no substantial reality, if I enter Nirvana, I am no longer an agent but just as they say an observer of the pure flux of phenomena. Then—and this is beautiful Suzuki’s okay, beautiful in a terrifying way, terrifying way descriptions—then the truth of me sticking my knife into you is it’s not me who is really the agent. It’s part of a cosmic dance of phenomena. My knife is floating in the air and somehow by the by the undescribable dance of phenomena your body gets stuck on it. Nobody is responsible and so on and so on. I mean I am a great partisan of Buddhist meditation and so on and so my point is not to make fun of Buddhism but just I’m a sad pessimist here, how even the most noble teaching can be perverted into into it. So back to my point: anti-colonialism and so on and so on. The problem is that there is no simple way out. Of course we Europeans did horrible things. I don’t know if the last time I was here I used this story, I learned it from United States, which is for me—I use it even these days often when I’m in London—when what is cultural racism masked as universalism. I learned from my friend that in when the Bosnian war was ending, Bosnian women organized themselves, victim of rape and so on, and some American feminist tried to establish contact with them by writing to them a letter and so on and my God. You know what was that letter? Everyone almost died of laughing there, almost more victims than of Serb bombing or whatever. The letter was a series of questions. And the first question was, sorry, I will say it, I remember it almost literally, was something like this: Do you, poor Bosnian women who were raped, do you think that woman has, have an, has an eternal substantial essence, or do you think that feminine identity is constructed through performative discursive practices and so on? Those women just you know looked and so on and so on. No wonder although I don’t agree theoretically with Nancy Fraser, the New York psychoanalyst critical theorist, she wrote, I forgot the title, a very good book on how American feminism, mainstream feminism was kidnapped by mainstream liberalism. Okay, so let’s go on. The polemic between Assaf and Nafar is part of a big struggle for sexual difference, which gives a new twist to the old motto, when I was young, sexual is political. At that point this was of course a serious statement, a great truth. It meant sexuality is not simply a private domain politically irrelevant, but power struggles go on there also, which are politically socially overdetermined and so on. Decades ago, Ayatollah Khomeini wrote: "We are not afraid of sanctions. We are not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of Western immorality." End of quote. The fact that Khomeini talks about fear, about what a Muslim should fear most in the West, I think should be taken literally. Muslim fundamentalists do not have any problem with the brutality of economic and military struggles. Their true enemy is not the Western economic neo-colonialism and military aggressiveness, but its immoral culture. The same holds for Putin’s Russia, where the conservative nationalists define their conflict with the West as cultural, in the last resort focused on sexual difference. Do you remember the victory of the Austrian drag queen, that bearded lady, who is really a man who won the Eurovision contest, Conchita Wurst? Some tasteless name. Putin himself told after this contest at an interview, I quote Putin: "The Bible talks about the two genders, man and woman, and the main purpose of the union between them is to produce children." And now Europe is betraying this. As usual, the rabid nationalist Zhirinovsky was more outspoken and called the victory of Conchita Wurst "the end of Europe," saying: "There is no limit to our outrage. There are no more men and women in Europe, just *it*." Like in Stephen King’s novel, you know, that *It*. Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted that the Eurovision result, I quote, "showed supporters of European integration their European future: a bearded girl." I like this very much, the image of no wonder you have Brexit here, you also don’t want to be dominated by bearded girls. Now there is a certain quasi-poetic uncanny beauty in this image of a bearded lady, for a long time the standard feature of cheap circus freaks, as the symbol of United Europe. Note the same logic as in Khomeini: not army or economy, the truly feared object is immoral depravity, the threat to sexual difference. And now I come to a very sad insight. In many African and Asian countries, gay movement is also perceived as an expression of the cultural impact of capitalist globalization and its undermining of traditional social and cultural forms, so that consequently—and that’s the saddest thing—the struggle against gays appear as an aspect of the anti-colonial struggle. The same holds for, for example, Boko Haram. For its members, and strangely I met some of them who basically were for Boko Haram, they made it clear to me: the liberation of what we call the liberation of women appears as the most visible feature of the destructive cultural impact of capitalist modernization. Like one of them told me, "You know what for us means globalization in its immediate impact? It means our traditional families are falling apart" and so on and so on. So that Boko Haram, whose name, as you probably know, can be roughly and descriptively translated as "Western education is forbidden for women," they can perceive and portray themselves as agents fighting the destructive impact of modernization by way of imposing a hierarchic regulation of the relationship between the two sexes. The enigma is thus: why do Muslims, who have undoubtedly been exposed to exploitation, domination, and other destructive humiliating aspects of colonialism, why do they target in their response what is for us at least the best part of the Western legacy: our egalitarianism, personal freedoms inclusive of a healthy dose of irony, of mocking of all authorities and so on. The obvious answer is that their target is in some sense well chosen. What for them makes the liberal West so unbearable is not only that it practices exploitation and violent domination, but that to add insult to injury, it presents this brutal reality in the guise of its opposite: freedom, equality, democracy. I think that Boko Haram just brought the logic of normative sexual difference to its to its extreme. The notion of sexual difference which prescribes to each of the two sexes a specific role to play, thereby imposes a symbolic norm destined to guarantee sexual relationship, to provide the coordinates of normal sex. And again this should be something that gives us to think. I don't, okay, you live here in a more at least at this level liberal country, but isn’t this interesting: how is something like Boko Haram possible? A big social political movement which wants to refound the entire social life and the central tenet is the proper imposition of hierarchic sexual difference. For them, that’s the but are they so specific? I will talk about my own small shitty country Slovenia, where now the right-wingers also have a big campaign where the enemy is—all the honor goes here to Judith Butler—the enemy is gender theory. They claim that they sound almost like Plato, who in his *Republic* when he attacks music, he says, Plato, "music may appear marginal, a form of amusement, but" he says "music is a fundamental danger to the entire social order." Plato says if people are allowed to sing freely—and he is not afraid of the content of the songs, but just this very idea of letting yourself go to an uncontrolled voice which is not dominated by meaning of the words—Plato says "you end up being as an ape. Ultimately the whole social order spiritual order will disintegrate, we will become like animals." And the same goes, you find this in *Republic*, it’s repeated then in his thick later work *The Laws*. What’s so interesting, my friend Mladen Dolar in his book on the voice, which appeared by MIT years ago, developed the entire line—this is a fascinating topic for me—how the first ethical fragment that we know from the entire history of humanity which concerns music, it’s from China 6th, 7th Century BC, it says: "Beware of free singing, control free singing." You get some fragments from Ancient Egypt saying the same. You have Plato, you have medieval Christianity—they were obsessed as maybe some of you know by devil's tritone, by some false form of singing—and the big obsession was: if you sing, words should control the flow of the voice. The true horror is the voice which is no longer controlled by meaning. And then the story goes on. For example, for French republicans the castratos, castrated boy singing in the church, were the same depravity of this freely singing voice. Even, I remember, I'm unfortunately old enough, when I was young it was quite fascinating how Russian Communists at that point in the mid 50s and American conservatives reacted in exactly the same way to Elvis Presley and later rock music, Beatles. It was this absolute fear. I remember it was translated into Slovene but we were not a hardline Communist party ironically, where they say you know all those hip movements of Elvis Presley, that that’s animals. That's the end of humanity. It was total panic as with American conservatives. So it’s but now things get really interesting because on the one hand yes we have this fear, but here we really get a nice example of the logic of what Derrida calls *supplément*, supplement, poison in the sense of gift, in the sense of something that is dangerous but at the same time like *pharmakon* for Derrida you need a limited amount of it to keep you alive. Even already Plato has to has to consider this. He says, "This doesn't mean that singing should be totally prohibited, but it should be controlled" and as you can guess Plato opts for this discipline, military songs, no, that singing is okay. Up to—this is for me the most beautiful example—of this ambiguity of *pharmakon*. Okay, American right-wing fundamentalists can go against rock or whatever, it's decadent and so on, but at the same time they like so-called marching chants, you know, the songs sung by Marines and so on, which are a perfect example of this obscenity. Because what are the words? I was always fascinated by them. They are a mixture of limerick nonsense and sexual obscenities. Like I remember, I’m sorry if you know it, I like to repeat this one, it’s from the movie *An Officer and a Gentleman* where Marines sing, it goes like: "I don’t know but I was told that Eskimo pussies are rather cold." That’s what I’m talking about. You know it’s sex but at the same time a totally meaningless point. Now the true question to be asked is why even the institution which should stand for you know total discipline, order, obedience and so on, why does it need this *pharmakon*, this this thing? So again, what I’m saying is that sexual difference works in a similar way. Ultimately this is the absolute foundation. So a new dogma is now slowly appearing in Europe and—I like to make this point again and again—dogma is for me not, as the Germans say, *schlimmes Wort*, a bad word. I like dogmas, we cannot survive without them. Let me give you an example so that you will see what I mean. I think we need more dogmas today, but what kind of dogmas? Good ones. Look, would you like to live in a country where you would have to argue all the time that women shouldn’t be raped? I wouldn’t like to live, I would like to live in a country where "you don’t rape women" is simply an absolute dogma. It's just accepted and when some guy makes these tasteless jokes, sometimes in my style, that "why not, do they secretly enjoy it" and so on, you don't even argue against it, it’s just dismissed as stupidity. Panic, I get into a panic when all of a sudden you have to argue again. That's why for me, as I've written in another of my books, that's why for me the rehabilitation of torture, silent one, waterboarding and so on, is such a ethical tragedy. Something was unthinkable years ago. Now it’s again a respectable topic. And I think what makes me even more sad is that—you play, what is this, some divine experience? Doors opening into infinity or what? I'm really mystified what what's going on here? Okay, whatever, let's drop it. It's that the dogma—sorry, sorry—torture is that it's even more dangerous those who argue against torture. The defeat is already that that we had to argue. Now people tell me that was I had a conflict with that, how is it called, Alan Dershowitz, that fake liberal lawyer, who in it was just a small exchange in New York Times before I was prohibited there, who claimed because he advocates regulated torture. He says we have to torture, but the only legal way precisely to prevent abuses and so on is to legalize it. Okay, let’s say, sorry, I cannot again. Let's say you know something, you have to be tortured, but don’t worry, it will be done in a proper way. The doctor, the doctor will examine you, he will determine how much pain you can endure without getting a heart attack whatever, and then it will all be protocolized, the forms of torture are and so on and so on. You know what's my point here? This is the worst pragmatic realist element. My answer to it, I wonder if you would agree, is not "no, nobody should torture." Well, to be very frank, I cannot guarantee you that I would not find myself in such a situation of despair where again out of pure crazy pressure I would have tortured someone. Let me give you a totally ridiculous melodramatic example. Some evil guys have my small daughter, and I know they are evil, but I have with me I control one of them. Maybe out of pure despair because I know that he knows where is my daughter I would have tortured him. But I think what's very important is that even if you do it out of despair, it shouldn’t be neutralized in a legal way. You should feel not so much guilty as you should be absolutely aware that you did something terrifying. What what worries me is this normalization. Oh, we the doctor, doctor inspected you, everything is okay and so on and so on. Here I think—I wonder if you would propose agree with this morally conservative statement—I think that when I was young, late 60s, 70s, you know, it was the establishment spoke in official terms and we the leftist students "fuck you" and so on were using dirty words like and so on. But today, did you notice how it’s more and more the opposite? Look at the American electoral campaign just and so on. It’s the it’s the right-wing populist, they are using more and more dirty language, vulgarities, unimaginable years ago. So I would say let's grab a chance and this I see here a unique chance to connect with ordinary decent people. No, we are the defenders, the left, of common decency. We shouldn’t be afraid to to follow to follow this line. Today it’s the fanatic right-wingers who are subversive, violating limits and so on and so on. So I will try to go faster so that I don’t get lost. So the the this is one part which should give us to think. Where does this come, this sudden return of sexual difference? Yes, in my country Slovenia, for example, gender theory is explained in terms of a very specific conspiracy theory. The idea is this one: Communists tried to take over the world. They failed. So they withdrew and reflected. And they said we failed because we didn’t undermine enough common morality. People have certain basic decency, sacred family, man, woman, Christian values and so on. So if we really want to win we have to attack there. So Communists through their agents implanted implanted gender theory to undermine the stable sexual difference as the very foundation, the ultimate division articulation of our social lives. This is one side. But I think the story is more complex. I think it’s absolutely crucial to read this return of sexual difference in this fixed hierarchic way—women should do this, men should do this, detailed prescription of roles—with its opposite which is I think they are two sides of the same. Here probably some of you would disagree, what is now happening especially in the United States but also in some other countries. I will characterize it quickly with one word: transgender, transgenderism. I’m opposed to it. Not because I’m against gay rights, transgender rights, but what’s the problem? Did you notice—I mean I think it’s a wonderful example of ideological struggle, because that’s the ideology which is alive today, not the big systems, theology, socialism, freedom, but ideology is alive in this at this everyday very everyday level of daily rituals, like how do we go to toilets. And segregated toilet doors are today the center of a big legal ideological struggle in the United States. I hope you follow the news. Now two, three weeks ago, on March a group of Silicon Valley—not only but mostly—business executives headlined by Mark Zuckerberg or Apple CEO Tim Cook signed a letter to North Carolina governor denouncing a law prohibiting transgender people from using the public facilities of the opposite sex. The letter says "we are disappointed in your decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law. The business community has consistently communicated to lawmakers that such laws are bad" and so on and so on. So this already should makes us suspicious. How come that there is a big progressive battle where all the top businessmen are on the on the on are on the liberal sides. I think it works perfectly, for example, for Apple. You can forget about slave conditions in Foxconn factories and so on and so on. We are clean, we are for against against toilet segregation, and we did our our our duty. I so again, what’s the problem here? It is a real problem. Wait a minute, I’m not—the problem is more a more deep theoretical one, and maybe you followed how this it was on there were some cover stories like Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert in Nor- North Carolina and so on and so on. So what’s my problem with this? Just a definition, short one, stolen from Wiki- no WikiLeaks Wikipedia. What is transgenderism? The fundamental idea is this one: transgenderism occurs when an individual experiences a discord between his her biological sex and the corresponding gender assigned to him by society and his subjective identity. Society designates you, usually based on your physical biological features, as man or woman, but you rebel against it in multiple ways. You can be a man, man who feels and acts like a woman, or the opposite. You can and then you have then the whole network of categories: bigender, trigender, pangender, genderfluid up to agender. So the idea is this basic idea. What about all those people, they are percent, and I’m not making fun of this who simply when you go to the toilet, usually in a panic you run there and then my God you feel oppressed, terrorized by this choice: man, woman, I don't recognize myself in any of the two, what to do? I think it’s, I’m not making fun of it, a legitimate concern, but there are serious problems here I think. The first hint of the problem is that I always think that the extreme usually tells the truth of a movement. And the extreme here is so-called post-genderism, a social political cultural movement whose partisans advocate a voluntary abolition of gender which they claim is rendered possible by recent scientific progress in biotechnology and reproductive technologies. Their proposal doesn’t concern only scientific possibility but also ethics. They claim that the claim of post-genderism is that social, emotional, and cognitive consequences of a fixed gender roles are an obstacle to full human emancipation. A society in which reproduction through sex is eliminated will open unheard of new possibilities of freedom, social and emotional experimenting. It will are you giving me a sign that it is already I am. Okay, okay. I like it how ultra-subtle you did it. Yeah, yeah, okay. It will eliminate a distinction which sustains all later social hierarchies, exploitations and so on and so on. I my problem here is that I disagree with both I disagree with both poles. Of course it’s easy to see how transgenderism or even or even post-genderism fits perfectly our late capitalist subjectivity, where we have all the time emphasis of against binary logic, fluidity, everything should be fluid, you change your identities and so on and so on. I have a couple of problems here. The first problem is—and this is the main problem—this is not how actually sexual difference functions. What both positions, the Boko Haram and transgenderists, what they what disappears in both cases is sexual difference, which precisely is a kind of a tension antagonism and this is what Lacan means when he says *il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel*, there is no sexual relationship. Sexual difference precisely does not function as I think gender theory is here wrong, sexual difference does not function as a simple distribution of properties: men do this, women do this. It’s precisely a name for a certain deadlock where man and woman are two ways to cope with it but both fail. For example, what’s totally wrong with gender theory is not that they are too daring, but they are not daring enough. Even I who am, I doubt what kind of, some kind of a man, sorry but I have all the time the same problem when I enter the toilet. My God, am I really a man and so on? And I think this is part of being a man. You know, being a man is not a stable identity. A certain doubt about being a man, a certain way to include femininity and so on is part of being a man. Being a man is not a stable identity, but it’s a something deeply self-contradictory, and it goes the same for the woman and so on and so on. So now I will give my theory here. I think paradoxically—and I will immediately give you an example so that you don't think that I'm totally bluffing—sexual difference is a difference which in a way, in its logical structure, precedes what it differentiates. We don’t have two positive identities and then the difference between the two of them. No, each sexual identity is an attempt to resolve a deadlock. Let me give you an example from politics. If some of you are old enough like me, maybe you still remember those old charming times when there still was in politics Left and Right. Maybe most of you don’t know what this means, no, but you know what always fascinated me in this political distinction. It’s not a simple distinction of Left-Right where you say "Leftists think this, Rightists think that." Every way to describe the difference between Left and Right is already a Leftist of a Rightist distinction. Ask a true Rightist how do you see the entire field? He will usually say, "I’m for a stable center and there are extremists." So the overall picture will be stable center and destabilizing extremes and so on. If you ask a Leftist how do you see the entire image of a society? He will give you a different mapping. Probably some radical split, us against them and so on and so on. What I’m saying here is that there is no neutral difference, way to define the difference. Every way to formulate the difference is already overdetermined by the difference. You already take you already take sides. And what I want to say is that in a way exactly the same goes for sexual difference. You cannot have a a neutral formulation of the difference. It’s an impossible difference. It’s the name of a deadlock. And I’m not talking about a biological deadlock but about a libidinal and—but I will not go into that psychoanalytic Lacanian stuff today—and this brings me back to trans- transgenderism. The first, okay, now the second thing that I find strange in transgenderism is how on the one hand they want to move beyond all precise definitions, like "no, we don’t want to be put into that that small place, I’m this, I’m that, I want to be beyond distinctions" and so on and so on. But at the same time they exhibit an exactly opposite tendency of "I cannot recognize myself in this or in that identity, I want the specific place for me" and so on and so on. If I were to be a true transgenderist, I would have said screw you with your distinction, I will enter whichever toilet I want and so on, you know. At the same time so I my position is this one. I’m sorry, now we are approaching something that is almost philosophy so that you don’t—we come here to the specifically Hegelian notion of difference. For Hegel again, difference is not a difference between positive entities, but in a way it precedes the entities. So when my position my solution, so that you will not say that I’m a brutal male chauvinist, no no, my solution is this one. It came to me without any dirty innuendos when I watch I think you have them also in London we have them now or in the UK in my country. You know they have this problem of categorization with with with waste. You know you have usually one box for for glass, one box for paper, one box for organic waste. But then this categorization never adds up, you know. So you have and I like this, it’s so deeply Hegelian. You have paper, glass, organic waste, plastic, and general waste. Did you know, but general waste as one in the series of a general and this is what Hegel knew. Hegel's term for this is *Gegensätzliche Bestimmung*, oppositional determination. The universal dimension has to appear in the particular as one of its sub- sub-species. And Hegel has wonderful things here along these lines. For example, my good friend Frank Ruda wrote a book on this. If we are here London School of Economics, I heard that you changed the name back, that it is no longer Libyan now is London School of Economics. Sorry, you must have heard this joke a hundred times. What I mean is that he wrote a wonderful book on Hegel’s notion of rabble, *Pöbel*, where he notices how rabble is not simply the excrement, those who have no place in society. Exactly as such, rabble stands for humanity as such, *un plus*, without you know. The nice point of Hegel is he always knows that those who don't have a specific place within society stand for the universality as such. And I claim applied to this my okay, I can be here in a vulgar way very practical. I claim that my solution would have been not infinite, not bigender, trigender, but male or how is it usually done ladies, gentlemen, and gender as such. And it’s deeply true, because gender as such here transgender people maybe don’t get it theoretically. Gender as such does not stand for something beyond differences, just it’s sexual difference as such prior to—the very the very deadlock of transgender people: my God, where are they, where do they stand? They stand for difference as such before its before its before its specific determination. So so you see what I’m saying here. I’m saying that A: sexual difference—it’s a little bit the same like although it’s profoundly different—class difference, class struggle. Class struggle also for Marx is not simply one class versus the other. If it were to be able to simply divide society into two, those up, those down, clear categorization, then you don’t have class struggle. Then you have just a clear categorization. Class struggle means precisely that there are elements from rumple- lumpenproletariat, middle classes, which cannot be categorized, and class struggle is basically the struggle for them. So again the paradox is that two is always three, and it is this additional element which makes it which makes it a struggle. And I think that this antagonistic dimension disappears in both cases. Both cases—now I’m returning to this Boko Haram versus transgender—both cases want to get rid of sexual antagonism precisely in this sense of enigmatic, it cannot be determined and so on. And I think all our poetry, art, even science are based on this in the sense. What pushes humans towards towards transcendence is precisely a deadlock like this. I think—but this is a general anthropological philosophical thesis—that what we humans do is that we know how to turn an obstacle into profit. Something goes wrong, oh we say, "Why don't use it in another way?" you know. Well, but that’s another story. Again what and now if you allow me just one thing, I will be very short. So my you see my point is the strange underlying similarity between theorists of sex- fixed sexual difference and transgenderists. They both basically want to get rid of an antagonism, they want harmony. Just one want the traditional hierarchic harmony, it’s clear who is man, who is woman. And it’s a very tragic situation here. You know Mugabe in Zimbabwe, you know his obsession against gays? He made a big speech, I think half year ago in United Nations, shouting proudly "we are not gay" and denouncing gay movement as the most perfidious expression of Western imperialism and so on and so on. And now I come to a crucial problem. The difference between in extreme terms transgenderism versus Boko Haram sexual difference. The danger is that this difference, this whatever you call it cultural whatever in sexual economy, up to a point colonizes the class struggle. So that we in the West appear as progressive for sexual and the the big task, maybe everything will be decided in this in that’s why I began with Nafar, with that can we bring the two struggles together? As long as women’s rights will be experienced de facto as upper-middle class struggle, you dismiss the poor lower classes as fundamentalists and so on and so on, we are in we are in for a tragedy. Now I will not go on, I will just do something which maybe of some interest to you. I wanted I made a mistake, so let’s do it like this. I like this ironic idea. Stop, I’m over. It’s a debate. And I start the debate by asking myself: Professor Žižek, what is the remaining stuff that you wanted to say? Graciously I will answer the question. I wanted to connect this—it’s may appear disconnected—but two extreme cases of subjectivity which disturb the well-established lines of we, free Western liberals against non-integrated Muslims who become terrorists and so on. You know the last guy, now no longer the last they they arrested, Salah Abdeslam, one of those suspects for Brussels? I think it’s fascinating to read his biography. Because he doesn’t fit the profile of the usual he is not this terror- he is not that Mohammed Atta from severe guy. He is a fully human, he cries and so on, but there is another thing which is absolutely crucial if we want to understand what goes on. All this stupid story about integration, integration failed, it didn’t work. It’s not like that. He first he is not a refugee immigrant. He was born in France or Belgium, I don’t know, to a family which was fully integrated. And his act, participating in terror if he did, was precisely a revolt against integration. Now of course we should raise the question: was there something wrong with that integration and so on and so on. But what this means at least for me is that it’s totally false all these terms "we have to strive to better integrate the immigrants" and so on and so on. And my solution here is a totally crazy one: maybe we need less integration. No, no, don’t be afraid. I’m not for these enclaves, each identity in its own, but less pressure for how to put it integration, especially less cultural integration. What do I mean by this? I repeat an old point which I find important so that I always repeat it. Look, if there is one sentence which for me condenses the utter stupidity of the logic of multicultural tolerance, it’s for me the statement "an enemy is someone whose story we were not ready to listen to." Ah, my reaction is nice to know. So Hitler was our enemy because we didn't attentively listen to—no, here I’m standard pro-British, what was great with all my disagreements about Winston Churchill is that he was listening to Hitler already in the early 30s and he immediately got it: this guy is more dangerous even than Stalin and so on. So what I’m saying this statement is doubly wrong, although it sounds so nice. When you don’t listen to an other, you fetishize him into a mythic enemy, you should open yourself—no, my first conclusion is: sorry, there are real enemies. And listening to them, yes, we should listen to them, but precisely to fight them more effectively. Second point: I think this entire topic of understanding the other is a typical liberal superego logic, you know. Then you get caught in this game: but was I listening to you enough? Should I listen to you more? Did I get something? Should I—I think that of course we don’t understand the others because we don’t ourselves understand ourselves, others don’t understand themselves and so on and so on. So what if we simply accept that we are all in the same shit, lost in a certain way? And the the immediate task for me is not this "how do I know what do you mean by—" but a kind of a tolerant benevolent discretion. My ideal is not to live in some stupid multicultural community where you come with your stupid food and I have to be into it, or some stupid music and I have to be interested—"Oh my God what interesting alterity!" I want my ideal is to live in a big block apartment with apartments where on the one side is a lesbian couple, there are Muslims, there are Jews, there are blacks whatever, and we very friendly, sincerely, not of course politely ignore each other. But in a very friendly way and then it’s wonderful way it happens. From time to time miracles happen and you know it happened to me. For example, I know this will sound like the ultimate anti-semitism, in United States some of my best friends are gay. But you know how it happened? They overheard me making a, as you can expect from me, a bad taste joke against gay people. And they immediately took up the game, so you know true contact with other, understanding is something very precious. It’s almost a miracle when it happens, and the best way to ruin it is to enforce it. So I’m all for mixing cultures, but not with this liberal superego "we are all—" you know it’s the same with politically correct fight against dirty words, I mean words which are aggressive, sexist, racist. You know you always have this: first it was nigger, then it was Negro, then it was black and then they always ask "Are we okay now? Is there still a trace of racism" is what I’m saying. And then you have this endless hermeneutic task you know: am I anti-racist again? And it’s clear what pleasure they have in this, like almost in an orgasmic way my politically correct friends report to me "You know I discovered that I was still a little bit a racist there" and so on. True anti-racist society is where, for example—it's an old joke, I will not repeat it again but—the greatest acknowledgment that I got from some of my black friends is when after we exchanged some dirty jokes they embraced me and told me "now you can call me nigger." The point, of course I’m not an idiot, was not that I should really call them a nigger. But it was it was one of these beautiful symbolic gestures, I love them. I think they are the basis of civilization and they have them in all cultures. Here I’m not Eurocentric. You know, offers made to be rejected. This beautiful gesture where you offer something you know it will be rejected, so although it appears a failed act, but the result is usually authentic con- you know contact, you know. Of course the situation can be comic, of course, and I love these situations. You remember like let’s say you are rich, I am poor. You, you are crazy enough, even if I want to stab you, you invite me to a restaurant. We know that you will pay. But when the bill arrives, isn’t it part of manners at least enough that I should for a brief moment insist "no, no, let me pay." We both know that it’s a game. And if you want to be truly evil—what I’m not an anti-feminist this is just descriptive anthropology and women can be truly evil—you would have said, and once this happened to me you know, "Okay then you pay if you want," you know. But you see this is what I believe in. And again again now I will really finish immediately by my last example. Did you read it in the news now in April? A tragic thing which happened in Norway. Karsten Nordal Hauken, a young progressive leftist anti-racist feminist politician, now we learn because he went public with this was raped four five years ago by a Somali refugee, brutally anally, he spoke about it. Yeah immediately if you are now sending a killing message to like liquid- like one of those messages James Bond gets you know kill him you know. He—what makes it so ridiculous and tragic is that now the guy was condemned Somali and now Norwegian authorities threaten to re- to how do you call it expel him exile him back to Somalia. And this guy now feels guilty, Karsten who was raped. He said "but wasn’t he a victim? I mean is it fair to punish him in this way? He was just a victim of circumstances" and so on and so on. And to go to the end, he, Karsten, now feels guilty. "My God what did I cause by way of denouncing him" and so on and so on. "Wasn’t it my racism?" Now I’m the first to admit a kind of a ethic nobility gentility is this. But I nonetheless think it’s false. Why is it false? Because first it’s this it’s an inverted form of racism. It’s this logic of "we white" it’s an inverted form of "white man’s burden" I claim. It’s you know it’s such a patronizing attitude towards immigrants or others. It’s as if you know only whenever something goes wrong we white Europeans have to be guilty. The others are victims. It totally deprives the others of the agency. It’s also and the same and I and also this eternal guilt feeling and so on I claim this you know like all my some of my leftist friends say "refugees coming to Europe oh my God it’s all the result of European economic colonialism we are totally responsible" and so on. They are just they are just not out of time but out of whatever. No and I’m saying that I’m against this. I think we will have to allow even more immigrants. The point is not this. The point is that this patronizing attitude "they are never guilty, we are responsible" is first reasserts our white extreme arrogance. It means they're victims we are agents. And it will end really really bad if we pursue this line with ethical catastrophe, the end of Europe maybe. Okay, thanks very much. Now did I get it correctly that for a brief split of a second you were surprised like did you really finish or whatever? Yes. Okay, sorry. Now we pretend for some time that we live in a democracy no? I mean debate and so on. Please. Okay we don't have much time so do try and keep your questions as brief as possible. That was my idea you know. Your questions as brief as possible. Gentleman at the back. But do we have a microphone because I have this. And you select them because I have such problems I’m a little bit myopic and then I’m always accused "oh you are a racist you ignored that woman that whatever" no. And maybe I am a racist but to cover that up you know. Okay sorry please. We'll take both, well one straight after the other. Yeah. Could you—could you comment on the last thing you said about political correctness and the press reaction to the threats against the Danish cartoonist and the press all turning their back on that situation? It’s Danish? The old case or now in Germany because the latest example that I like is that the Germany followed the law it’s crazy that now German courts will accuse that singer or whatever who made fun of Erdogan? Or you mean that case it’s already six seven years ago even more? I meant that one but yeah. That one. You see this is for me a serious problem and here misunderstandings emerge and then I’m accused of fascism, European racism. You know tolerance in itself cannot work. No no no, not because whatever we need domination or whatever. But because this is what I mean when I to provoke things of course advocate *Leitkultur*, leading culture. The problem is that each culture—and of course they don’t exist in a pure state I know they all mixed but basically if we allow this abstraction—each culture implies not only the way they live but the way this culture relates to other cultures. For example our problem is the way we perceive personal freedoms and so on, we may do in a Muslim or other third-world country things which we think are normal part of our irony but they may be deeply humiliating or whatever to them. And of course vice versa. If we have a strong Islam community they not only it’s not only "we want to live our way leave us alone," but they always involve a certain way to relate to other cultures. And here you immediately encounter problems. I don’t blame anyone here. To be neutral and not to blame anyone, I will take the usual victims they are so few so that you can freely attack them, bad jokes, Roma. You know they were once called Gypsies. Roma. In Slovene, I’m sorry if you know the story, it does refer directly to your question. Some years ago there was a big problem. Roma girl escaped from her family because their parents her parents wanted to marry her when she was to a—you know they have this tradition of father arranges marriages and so on. So she escaped from her family and took refuge by the police. And then there was a big public debate what to do with her. Feminists totally supported her, perfect, okay. But the problem is they didn’t even notice that this was from the standpoint of traditional Roma community an extremely aggressive act, because one of the leading figures of Roma community went public and say and says "Do you know that arranged marriages are the very basic form of how our community reproduces itself? He said you take this from us and in two three generations okay we still maybe doing our Jewish sorry Jewish Gypsy sorry Roma sorry from one mistake to the other Roma barbecue singing Gypsy songs and so on but our cultural identity is over." So you see that's the problem of tolerance for me. What would you do with her? Now you will probably most of you say absolutely our police or whatever welfare authorities should protect the girl. Okay but then don’t give me bullshit don’t bluff. This means you are ready to destroy undermine gradually a certain community. You know communal life, community is something very brutal. It’s not just folkloric dances and the way you do your food songs. It means above all sexual relations and all that stuff which is very brutal and so on. So that's my problem where things emerge. Or for example I know that Muslims also have their gay organizations and so on but it’s an extremely sad phenomenon. Do you know that in they had these problems in I know of them in Amsterdam, in Denmark and in Berlin where fundamentalist Muslim activists—not the majority but nonetheless—attacked gay parades and so on and so on, claiming this is an obscenity and so on and so on. So again here what do you do here? You have to set some limit. The pure liberal formula "each should have his her their way of life, we just should tolerate each other" it simply doesn’t work. You have to set a limit. What do you do? And that’s why I want to give all the freedom to—my problem is not, I’m totally opposed to what they did in France prohibiting Muslim girls to wear veils. My problem is is if a Muslim girl does *not* want to bear to have to have her face being veiled and then her family puts pressure on her and then she seeks refuge with I don’t know public authority. What do you do then? There is no easy way out. So the beginning of solution for me is to admit a deadlock. If you say just tolerance, tolerance, it’s not clear what type of tolerance, you know. Because every tolerance is based on certain preconceptions. Like for us tolerance means basically individual tolerance, tolerance of each way of life and so on. For others this is not what tolerance means and so on and so on. So I
unknown
think
think
Slavoj Žižek
this is a problem and I have great Muslim friends, but you know
this is a problem and I have great Muslim friends, but you know
unknown
where things
where things
Slavoj Žižek
once broke down? I had to run from a meeting. Hey maybe this is a time to pause and take another question. This is
once broke down? I had to run from a meeting. Hey maybe this is a time to pause and take another question. This is
unknown
called castrating phallic women, okay sorry yeah. Please.
called castrating phallic women, okay sorry yeah. Please.
Slavoj Žižek
Does it work? Yes. Hi, so my
Does it work? Yes. Hi, so my
unknown
question is also about
question is also about
Slavoj Žižek
political correctness and I found that a lot of the things you describe as political correctness would actually be called by any serious leftist Orientalism. Sorry is it that I am an Orientalist for criticizing
political correctness and I found that a lot of the things you describe as political correctness would actually be called by any serious leftist Orientalism. Sorry is it that I am an Orientalist for criticizing
unknown
political correctness or that political correctness is— I think
political correctness or that political correctness is— I think
unknown
that you’re creating a strawman out of political correctness and most serious leftists would say that political correctness is just treating others with respect and that what you
that you’re creating a strawman out of political correctness and most serious leftists would say that political correctness is just treating others with respect and that what you
Slavoj Žižek
describe as political correctness they would call Orientalism. I here I see your point and in so far as I understand it please allow me to interrupt you and then you can finish your question. The problem I see is this one and I hinted at it. I see what do you
describe as political correctness they would call Orientalism. I here I see your point and in so far as I understand it please allow me to interrupt you and then you can finish your question. The problem I see is this one and I hinted at it. I see what do you
unknown
mean because
mean because
Slavoj Žižek
this political correctness in enforcing its rules involves a set of presuppositions which clearly privilege Western type of liberal individualist subjectivity and so on and so on. But my problem is this one, and I hinted at it. I think that as we all know the most perfidious form of Orientalism for me is precisely a tolerant Orientalism in the sense of "oh this is part of their culture we shouldn’t intervene." I think that both main versions are wrong. Of course it’s wrong to simply impose on them our notions, but it’s also wrong to to excuse everything by saying oh this is part—I remember this from my youth. It was sexual revolution in which I didn’t participate. But many of those people couples not even couples living in commune they were all it was fashionable for Maoists no they celebrated Cultural Revolution. And then we learned from the media how it functioned: sexuality in China. If a Red Guard was caught or a girl with a man, usually it was she was sent to countryside he was even shot or whatever no. And you know how all those leftists who wanted total sexual freedom but were Maoists also answered? "No, you don’t get it. In Chinese culture sexuality functions in a totally different way." You totally—so my solution is an old one: the I don’t believe in some trans-cultural community, what I ironically call UNESCO books you know world culture all this described. I believe our culture is full of shit, their culture is full of shit. The only way is to somehow connect our struggles. The unity is unity of struggle. Not this abstract unity we are all humans. We are not all humans my God. We can—so again you see all I know I didn't precisely answer your question. All I’m saying and on the other hand I think that the category of the category of Orientalism, I know its history Said and so on, is a little bit deceiving, especially I don’t like the game of "but there is not one Orient you know there are many Orients" where in itself this is totally meaningless for me because in this way you can defend everything. I attack a Nazism and then they will say me "but don’t you see that Nazis from Bavaria are totally different from Nazis from Prussia" and so on. You know, I am here for the power of abstraction as a philosopher. I think that brutal simplifications are not just a tool like reality is too complex we have to simplify, but they have a truth in it. If we treat the universality as a concrete universality. For example it can be shown that there are many I know very noble aspects of feminine subjectivity not only in the preferred case of Western liberals they say oh but Sufi mysticism you get that. But nonetheless all these forms of subjectivity refer somehow to some basic attitude towards women. And I’m here to shock you, please allow me this because it’s a nice tasteless story, I’m here even not not totally just critical of Islam. Look let’s take I use this in a couple of my books, let’s take the worst example that you can imagine. You remember in Australia there was some big scandal almost years ago when a Muslim no a Muslim girl went out dressed as a modern girl and was raped by some Muslim boys and some big figure of Australian in Islamic hierarchy whatever attacked her. He said he made this terrible metaphor comparison. He said: "Look, if on a street you find a piece of un- you a dog finds a piece of unpacked meat, he will eat it. Whom would you blame, the dog or the idiot who left that meat there?" And he said it was the same here when she went out alone she provoked it she is responsible. I claim
this political correctness in enforcing its rules involves a set of presuppositions which clearly privilege Western type of liberal individualist subjectivity and so on and so on. But my problem is this one, and I hinted at it. I think that as we all know the most perfidious form of Orientalism for me is precisely a tolerant Orientalism in the sense of "oh this is part of their culture we shouldn’t intervene." I think that both main versions are wrong. Of course it’s wrong to simply impose on them our notions, but it’s also wrong to to excuse everything by saying oh this is part—I remember this from my youth. It was sexual revolution in which I didn’t participate. But many of those people couples not even couples living in commune they were all it was fashionable for Maoists no they celebrated Cultural Revolution. And then we learned from the media how it functioned: sexuality in China. If a Red Guard was caught or a girl with a man, usually it was she was sent to countryside he was even shot or whatever no. And you know how all those leftists who wanted total sexual freedom but were Maoists also answered? "No, you don’t get it. In Chinese culture sexuality functions in a totally different way." You totally—so my solution is an old one: the I don’t believe in some trans-cultural community, what I ironically call UNESCO books you know world culture all this described. I believe our culture is full of shit, their culture is full of shit. The only way is to somehow connect our struggles. The unity is unity of struggle. Not this abstract unity we are all humans. We are not all humans my God. We can—so again you see all I know I didn't precisely answer your question. All I’m saying and on the other hand I think that the category of the category of Orientalism, I know its history Said and so on, is a little bit deceiving, especially I don’t like the game of "but there is not one Orient you know there are many Orients" where in itself this is totally meaningless for me because in this way you can defend everything. I attack a Nazism and then they will say me "but don’t you see that Nazis from Bavaria are totally different from Nazis from Prussia" and so on. You know, I am here for the power of abstraction as a philosopher. I think that brutal simplifications are not just a tool like reality is too complex we have to simplify, but they have a truth in it. If we treat the universality as a concrete universality. For example it can be shown that there are many I know very noble aspects of feminine subjectivity not only in the preferred case of Western liberals they say oh but Sufi mysticism you get that. But nonetheless all these forms of subjectivity refer somehow to some basic attitude towards women. And I’m here to shock you, please allow me this because it’s a nice tasteless story, I’m here even not not totally just critical of Islam. Look let’s take I use this in a couple of my books, let’s take the worst example that you can imagine. You remember in Australia there was some big scandal almost years ago when a Muslim no a Muslim girl went out dressed as a modern girl and was raped by some Muslim boys and some big figure of Australian in Islamic hierarchy whatever attacked her. He said he made this terrible metaphor comparison. He said: "Look, if on a street you find a piece of un- you a dog finds a piece of unpacked meat, he will eat it. Whom would you blame, the dog or the idiot who left that meat there?" And he said it was the same here when she went out alone she provoked it she is responsible. I claim
unknown
there is a feminist
there is a feminist
Slavoj Žižek
potential in this,
potential in this,
unknown
don’t laugh. You know in what sense? Just think about it what is the implicit presupposition of this statement:
don’t laugh. You know in what sense? Just think about it what is the implicit presupposition of this statement:
Slavoj Žižek
that we men are total idiots. Again don’t be—I see you half naked, I cannot do
that we men are total idiots. Again don’t be—I see you half naked, I cannot do
unknown
it you know that. Men we are like dogs, we just do it, and that the only ethical agent who can and must constrain herself is the woman. And this is a central part of Islam. Look how did
it you know that. Men we are like dogs, we just do it, and that the only ethical agent who can and must constrain herself is the woman. And this is a central part of Islam. Look how did
Slavoj Žižek
Mohammed become a prophet? Read it. First when archangel Gabriel I think appeared to him he thought he is dreaming crazy. Then Khadija, his first wife, convinced him that he is that this is God who—in other words there is a long tradition in Islam of a man, okay I’m not saying they are great total feminism, but nonetheless even if a man tells the truth, this truth to be asserted as truth has to be mediated through woman’s recognition. It’s a very interesting point which is why with all the horrors, Taliban, Boko Haram, I still prefer Islam to standard whatever Hindu oriental Hindu oriental culture and so on. Because what I really hate is this kind of harmonious image you know, man and women, yin yang, harmony and so on. But if you look at it closely in this harmony it’s always the woman who is down you know and you know who is up. Like while in this Muslim idea at least there is tension there, paradoxes and so on, it offers a space for— yeah, we have run out of time but I do want to squeeze in one last question. Woman at the back. I liked that already, now I will be really evil, already your meta- metaphorics is getting obscene, squeezing and so on. I’m horrified, I’m horrified I must tell you. Okay sorry let’s go on. Please. To move it on from political correctness, it strikes me that in the UK we are constantly talking about refugees rather than migrants. There’s a really big distinction made and that’s because the refugees are posed as victims and migrants are agents coming looking for a better life. Do you think that’s part of the kind of liberal self-hatred that’s going on? No, I extremely agree with you. You see this is where—you've got two minutes to answer this. You know what? You now I’m tempted to do you know what? To answer in this Zen Buddhist way: clap with one hand or whatever you know and then you can think all—no, but seriously I agree where I agree with you is nice example of what when a gentleman earlier asked me a question the point I wanted to make how you see this is ideology today. Not big debates, Communism or whatever, but this how things already happen at the level how we formulate the problem. Ideology is not a false answer to a problem. Ideology is already the mystification in a problem. For example I totally agree with you that the key debates are already at the level of names, you know all these desperate distinctions: for example immigrants versus refugees, refugees good, immigrants bad and so on. No no, the fight goes on already at this level. The lesson is that words matter. Words are not just instruments and this it doesn’t matter no. Okay, I didn’t pay you enough, I expected more applause. I'm sorry we have run out of time. Do come and get your books.
Mohammed become a prophet? Read it. First when archangel Gabriel I think appeared to him he thought he is dreaming crazy. Then Khadija, his first wife, convinced him that he is that this is God who—in other words there is a long tradition in Islam of a man, okay I’m not saying they are great total feminism, but nonetheless even if a man tells the truth, this truth to be asserted as truth has to be mediated through woman’s recognition. It’s a very interesting point which is why with all the horrors, Taliban, Boko Haram, I still prefer Islam to standard whatever Hindu oriental Hindu oriental culture and so on. Because what I really hate is this kind of harmonious image you know, man and women, yin yang, harmony and so on. But if you look at it closely in this harmony it’s always the woman who is down you know and you know who is up. Like while in this Muslim idea at least there is tension there, paradoxes and so on, it offers a space for— yeah, we have run out of time but I do want to squeeze in one last question. Woman at the back. I liked that already, now I will be really evil, already your meta- metaphorics is getting obscene, squeezing and so on. I’m horrified, I’m horrified I must tell you. Okay sorry let’s go on. Please. To move it on from political correctness, it strikes me that in the UK we are constantly talking about refugees rather than migrants. There’s a really big distinction made and that’s because the refugees are posed as victims and migrants are agents coming looking for a better life. Do you think that’s part of the kind of liberal self-hatred that’s going on? No, I extremely agree with you. You see this is where—you've got two minutes to answer this. You know what? You now I’m tempted to do you know what? To answer in this Zen Buddhist way: clap with one hand or whatever you know and then you can think all—no, but seriously I agree where I agree with you is nice example of what when a gentleman earlier asked me a question the point I wanted to make how you see this is ideology today. Not big debates, Communism or whatever, but this how things already happen at the level how we formulate the problem. Ideology is not a false answer to a problem. Ideology is already the mystification in a problem. For example I totally agree with you that the key debates are already at the level of names, you know all these desperate distinctions: for example immigrants versus refugees, refugees good, immigrants bad and so on. No no, the fight goes on already at this level. The lesson is that words matter. Words are not just instruments and this it doesn’t matter no. Okay, I didn’t pay you enough, I expected more applause. I'm sorry we have run out of time. Do come and get your books.
unknown
I’m not
I’m not
Slavoj Žižek
sorry. I’m glad I’m rid of you. I'd like to thank you all
sorry. I’m glad I’m rid of you. I'd like to thank you all
unknown
for
for
unknown
coming.
coming.
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.