Andrea Mitchell Center Podcast: A Conversation with Slavoj Žižek
Interview · Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy ·
2025-02-12 · 0:28:21 · 3,495 words
capitalismideologycommunism-socialismfascism-populismtechnology-ai-cyberspaceecology-climatephilosophy-generaleveryday-life
Žižek defines his political identity as a 'moderately conservative communist,' arguing that Western progress is often sustained by hidden exploitation in failed states like the DRC and Sudan. He critiques the 'pseudo-radical' Left for prioritizing triumphant spectacles over substantive everyday changes, using Trump’s populism and Bernie Sanders’ clarity as counter-examples. The discussion extends to the 'culturalization of politics,' the paradox of Trumpism, the threat of AI to human subjectivity, and a materialist re-evaluation of nature as a 'dirty bitch' rather than a stable homeostatic system.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 9
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek’s self-definition: a leftist who is skeptical of progressive spectacles and insists on examining the hidden, often horrific, material costs (e.g., colonial exploitation) that sustain Western welfare.
An ironic label Žižek uses for his own practice of recycling his own examples and arguments across talks.
as “morning after”
The period of everyday life following a major political event or revolution; Žižek argues the Left fails to measure success by this metric rather than the spectacle of the event itself.
as “subject supposed to know”
Referenced implicitly in the context of trusting the teacher's authority; Žižek acknowledges that audiences trust the 'subjectivity' of the philosopher (Rousseau, Foucault, Žižek) rather than just the objective logic.
The tendency to resolve political and economic conflicts through cultural tolerance and identity politics, which Žižek views as a failure to address material realities.
as “Trumpian Left”
An ironic term for the populist, anti-elite, and economically redistributive elements present in Trump’s movement, exemplified by Steve Bannon’s past demands for high taxes on the rich.
as “new digital feudal masters”
Following Yanis Varoufakis, this refers to the tech oligarchs who control digital spaces and data, operating in opposition to democratic 'common sense.'
as “dirty bitch nature”
Žižek’s provocative formulation describing nature not as a nurturing mother but as a violent, catastrophic force, arguing that we need more alienation from nature, not less.
as “denaturalize nature”
The philosophical move to reject the ideological view of nature as a stable, homeostatic balance, recognizing instead its inherent violence, catastrophe, and fragility.
Stories he reaches for 5
Žižek defends Occupy Wall Street not by its immediate results but by its 'underground work' (Hegel’s mole metaphor), which laid the foundation for the acceptance of democratic socialism in the US.
“Marxists, but Hegel already, like this metaphor of the mole, the stupid animal beneath the earth doing its underground work”
Žižek argues that nature is not a stable homeostatic system but a site of past catastrophes (oil as organic remains), and that we must 'denaturalize' it, recognizing its fragility and violence rather than romanticizing it.
“if nature is our mother then this mother is a dirty bitch... nature stands for certain balance, homeostatic system”
Hegel supported monarchy not for its power but because it prevents the rule of experts, serving as a symbolic figure of 'common sense' above the technocratic administration.
“Hegel was for monarchy because he saw something very well that the alternative often to monarchy is the rule of experts”
Žižek imagines a future with Neuralink where digital machines read thoughts directly, ending the mystery and play of flirting, which he sees as the end of humanity as we know it.
“Just think as a dirty old man... we look at each other, we read each other's minds, immediately we see yes, yes, okay let's go to bed”
Margaret Thatcher discovered that Indian immigrants in the UK had higher average incomes than white English workers, contradicting the Left’s assumption that immigrants are automatically poor and thus natural allies.
“Margaret Thatcher. She discovered that in the UK... Indians... their income is on average already higher than the average English”
Works invoked 3
Mentioned alongside Ideology; Žižek states he hasn't seen it.
Žižek admits he hasn't seen it because 'one minute of my stupid face with all my tics... is too much' to coexist with other interests.
Wired Brain (Book) book
Žižek mentions he wrote this book on Neuralink, using it to discuss the threat of AI and direct thought-reading to humanity.
People invoked 12
Mentioned as a collaborator on the 'Pervert's Guide' documentaries, which Žižek admits he hasn't seen because his own face is 'too much.'
Kamala Harris negative
Criticized for her evasive, meaningless answers on Gaza, representing the Left’s fear of taking clear stances.
Henri Rousseau positive
Cited as an example of a philosopher whose authority ('subject supposed to know') audiences trust.
Steve Bannon positive
Cited as an example of the 'Trumpian Left' due to his past demand for high taxes on the rich, despite being a key Trump advisor.
Donald Trump positive
Žižek despises Trump personally but appreciates his political clarity and willingness to take radical stances, which he argues the Left should learn from.
Bernie Sanders positive
Appreciated by Žižek for guessing that Trump won by radicalizing the situation, a lesson Žižek believes the Democrats failed to learn.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Žižek follows Varoufakis’s term 'new digital feudal masters' but admits to having 'a problem with this term.'
Michel Foucault positive
Cited as an example of a philosopher whose authority audiences trust.
Hannah Arendt positive
Cited as an example of a philosopher whose authority audiences trust.
Margaret Thatcher positive
Cited ironically as someone who correctly identified that Indian immigrants in the UK had higher incomes than white workers, contradicting Leftist assumptions.
Karl Marx negative
Žižek is 'critical towards Marx' for silently accepting nature as a stable background, ignoring its inherent instability.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for the metaphor of the 'mole' doing underground work and for his defense of monarchy as a check against the rule of experts.
Transcript 15 turns
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Welcome to the podcast of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. I'm Jeff Green, director of the Mitchell Center. Today we're joined by Slavoj Žižek, a renowned Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist whose work spans psychoanalysis, politics, and popular culture. Known for his sharp wit, provocative style, and ability to blend complex theory with humor, Žižek has been a major voice on the Western intellectual Left since the 1990s. As one of the most influential public intellectuals of our time, his insights continue to challenge and inspire debates on ideology, power, and society.
Welcome to the podcast of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. I'm Jeff Green, director of the Mitchell Center. Today we're joined by Slavoj Žižek, a renowned Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist whose work spans psychoanalysis, politics, and popular culture. Known for his sharp wit, provocative style, and ability to blend complex theory with humor, Žižek has been a major voice on the Western intellectual Left since the 1990s. As one of the most influential public intellectuals of our time, his insights continue to challenge and inspire debates on ideology, power, and society.
unknown
Slavoj Žižek, you're perhaps the world's most famous philosopher, known for your provocative, brilliant insights into the complexities of social life and our contemporary society. And again to repeat, you're the author of this recent book Against Progress, which was released just this month by Bloomsbury Press, January And Slavoj, if I could just ask you a question relating to the theme of progress. It strikes me that one quality of our time is the frequency with which we have these rankings of the countries of the world in order of how moral or just they are. Northern European countries tend to be near the top of the list, North Korea, Eritrea near the bottom, everyone else in between. And I'm wondering how useful this ranking is in your mind for thinking about progress. If you're a country, say, like the United States, ranked why can't we make it our vision of progress just to get towards Northern Europe? Get towards Denmark, as Bernie Sanders said from a democratic socialist perspective, or Fukuyama says, getting to Denmark from a liberal democratic perspective. Do we need new philosophical ideas? And I guess I'm just thinking of your idea of fetishistic disavowal, this tendency that sometimes we on the one hand know, but on the other hand we act as if we don't know. Are some on the Left guilty of a fetishistic disavowal with regard to Denmark or Northern European states as a realistic, credible vision of progress, or would you disagree with that? It's a very
Slavoj Žižek, you're perhaps the world's most famous philosopher, known for your provocative, brilliant insights into the complexities of social life and our contemporary society. And again to repeat, you're the author of this recent book Against Progress, which was released just this month by Bloomsbury Press, January And Slavoj, if I could just ask you a question relating to the theme of progress. It strikes me that one quality of our time is the frequency with which we have these rankings of the countries of the world in order of how moral or just they are. Northern European countries tend to be near the top of the list, North Korea, Eritrea near the bottom, everyone else in between. And I'm wondering how useful this ranking is in your mind for thinking about progress. If you're a country, say, like the United States, ranked why can't we make it our vision of progress just to get towards Northern Europe? Get towards Denmark, as Bernie Sanders said from a democratic socialist perspective, or Fukuyama says, getting to Denmark from a liberal democratic perspective. Do we need new philosophical ideas? And I guess I'm just thinking of your idea of fetishistic disavowal, this tendency that sometimes we on the one hand know, but on the other hand we act as if we don't know. Are some on the Left guilty of a fetishistic disavowal with regard to Denmark or Northern European states as a realistic, credible vision of progress, or would you disagree with that? It's a very
Slavoj Žižek
good question, but I will precisely tell you why I think it's really a good question, not just at some general level, but because when some part of the world is praised as close to the top of this list, one should always, that's my automatic reaction and it's part of my identity where to provoke people mostly. You know how I define myself now? A moderately conservative communist. Moderately conservative means what? When you see a country which pretends to be on the top progressive, no, and so on, always ask yourself to what extent is this, the progress of this country, its welfare and so on, with invisible links connected with or even sustained by horrible things that happen in other countries. You know, the example, it's my eternal example that I mention I'm sure because I repeat myself often. And you know how I ironically refer to this? When people tell me, but you copy and pasted whole passages, no? I said yes, I call this ecological writing, recycling and so on. So I will recycle my example. Take if there are countries which come close to horror today. Maybe, although it's difficult to say, maybe even worse than North Korea, although you have to put a great effort to beat North Korea, it's Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. It's a nightmare because you don't even have a functioning state. You have just different warlords controlling certain areas. So then people in our developed part like to say it's primitive, Heart of Darkness, all of the clichés about Africa. But then I spoke with a British white, so that I will not be accused of simply relying on black sources, journalist who was there and told me he was interviewing one of the top warlords. You know, he had slaves, everything nightmarish. And then a phone rang and he got it. Congo has many of these coltan and so on, whatever minerals that are necessary for our top products. And these ultra-developed our companies found it that it's much better to work with a country which is a failed state because then you make a direct link, it's much cheaper for you, but also the bad guy there profits more. So in the middle of this conversation, phone rang and the guy made a deal with a top liberal Western manager. How, you know, it's the same in Sudan. The key is that the area which now wants to secede in the west of Sudan has enormous resources of gold and other natural other minerals and so on, natural resources, and is tightly connected with very rich part Arab Emirates making a deal with them. So isn't this a very sad thing what this journalist friend, and he's not especially a leftist, he's a simple liberal humanitarian, he told me that again and again he hears in Congo that if by some magical act the territory of Congo were to be deprived of all mineral resources, it would be a poor country but much happier than now. Peaceful life. I hear what you're saying,
good question, but I will precisely tell you why I think it's really a good question, not just at some general level, but because when some part of the world is praised as close to the top of this list, one should always, that's my automatic reaction and it's part of my identity where to provoke people mostly. You know how I define myself now? A moderately conservative communist. Moderately conservative means what? When you see a country which pretends to be on the top progressive, no, and so on, always ask yourself to what extent is this, the progress of this country, its welfare and so on, with invisible links connected with or even sustained by horrible things that happen in other countries. You know, the example, it's my eternal example that I mention I'm sure because I repeat myself often. And you know how I ironically refer to this? When people tell me, but you copy and pasted whole passages, no? I said yes, I call this ecological writing, recycling and so on. So I will recycle my example. Take if there are countries which come close to horror today. Maybe, although it's difficult to say, maybe even worse than North Korea, although you have to put a great effort to beat North Korea, it's Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. It's a nightmare because you don't even have a functioning state. You have just different warlords controlling certain areas. So then people in our developed part like to say it's primitive, Heart of Darkness, all of the clichés about Africa. But then I spoke with a British white, so that I will not be accused of simply relying on black sources, journalist who was there and told me he was interviewing one of the top warlords. You know, he had slaves, everything nightmarish. And then a phone rang and he got it. Congo has many of these coltan and so on, whatever minerals that are necessary for our top products. And these ultra-developed our companies found it that it's much better to work with a country which is a failed state because then you make a direct link, it's much cheaper for you, but also the bad guy there profits more. So in the middle of this conversation, phone rang and the guy made a deal with a top liberal Western manager. How, you know, it's the same in Sudan. The key is that the area which now wants to secede in the west of Sudan has enormous resources of gold and other natural other minerals and so on, natural resources, and is tightly connected with very rich part Arab Emirates making a deal with them. So isn't this a very sad thing what this journalist friend, and he's not especially a leftist, he's a simple liberal humanitarian, he told me that again and again he hears in Congo that if by some magical act the territory of Congo were to be deprived of all mineral resources, it would be a poor country but much happier than now. Peaceful life. I hear what you're saying,
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that part of the issue of just praising Denmark is that Denmark exists in an international system and we can't just look at countries within their own domestic borders. To go back to the ranking, one thing that of course we don't do today is rank individual lives from better to worse. That's very old-fashioned, classical. Now I will do something, sorry to interrupt you, but it's important, that will make leftists, as they often do, hate me. You know, isn't my
that part of the issue of just praising Denmark is that Denmark exists in an international system and we can't just look at countries within their own domestic borders. To go back to the ranking, one thing that of course we don't do today is rank individual lives from better to worse. That's very old-fashioned, classical. Now I will do something, sorry to interrupt you, but it's important, that will make leftists, as they often do, hate me. You know, isn't my
Slavoj Žižek
eye what I really despise is this pseudo-radical leftists who like these big triumphant events, you know, remember years ago one million people in Tahrir Square, one million people in Istanbul, we are mega demonstrations, we are all together there and so on. But you know, this is why I am a moderately conservative communist. I'm never impressed by this big public event where people feel solidarity. My question is, how do you put the morning after drinking too much? The morning after. When the emergency state where we are all happy, we cry, magical event, when it's over and things return to new normality. How do people feel, experience the change in their everyday life? Is it any better or is it even worse? I'm not a pessimist, just a pessimist here. For example, people often say, look at Occupy Wall Street, it came to nothing. It's not so simple. I think that Marxists, but Hegel already, like this metaphor of the mole, the stupid animal beneath the earth doing its underground work. I think that all this did lay foundation for so-called democratic socialism. Don't forget that now, and this is one of the unintended beneficiary effects of Trump nonetheless, after I don't know almost years, you can be a socialist in the United States while even still belonging to a wing, a left wing of Democratic Party, while not being automatically excluded, no? And incidentally, another lesson here which goes against this simple ranking. You know why I appreciate, although I of course often disagree with him, with Bernie Sanders? He said something ingenious. He immediately guessed that Trump won not because he was worried as Democrats are about the middle ground, are we moving too much to the left and so on. Trump won because he got it that if you radicalize your situation and go to extreme in a certain way, you gain vote. And this is the lesson that the Democrats, I'm not an anti-feminist, but I was so desperate when I heard, you remember the interviews just before the elections with Kamala Harris? She was so afraid to go too much into one or other direction that she almost never gave an answer. They asked her what about the Gaza war, Israel, Hamas, who? Her answer was usually something like, I think there should be peace among people and we should stop the war and blah blah blah, which meant nothing. That's the big lesson that the Left should learn from Trump. Don't be afraid to take a clear stance. I read an excellent interview with some scientist, I forgot his name, who said that that's why even many people, although Trump is hypocritical, whatever, but even many people who are against Trump said that they appreciate him more because, this is I think a fake impression, but it's important point, he appears not to be afraid to state clearly his position. While with Democrats it's always as if, you know, some special advisors told him don't go too far here, don't go too far there, and so on and so on. The other mistake, and here we return to this progress and so on, another big mistake of the Left is that they automatically assume that immigrants, other races and so on, that they are automatically on our side. You know who first got this lesson half a century ago? Margaret Thatcher. She discovered that in the UK, Indians, ethnically, not your Native American Indians, India Indians, that they, their income is on average already higher than the average English, or the average income of a white Englishman. And but Labour Party ignored this. They thought, oh Indians, oppressed race, they will vote for us, you know? And now I come to a more problematic point, another mistake. In Europe and in United States, immigrants, of course I'm for more human treatment, blah blah blah, that's not the, the point is that the Left automatically assume they're the poor, homeless, they will vote for us. No, don't ever forget that most of the immigrants, they believe in the American dream. They didn't come there to make the revolution, they want to be part of the American dream. I want to switch gears and talk about philosophy because this book is also about what it means to be a philosopher and how we read and absorb philosophy. And one of my favorite parts of the book was your chapter on authority, where you make the distinction between the teacher and the teaching. And you say, I think quite rightly, that many of us don't only pay attention to the logic and persuasiveness of the teaching but absorb and trust philosophy based on our faith in the teacher, that the teacher deserves our adherence. And I think as a reader and practitioner of political theory this is absolutely correct, that we don't just want the truth, we want the truth told to us by Rousseau, by Foucault, by Hannah Arendt, by Žižek, and we want it modulated by a subjectivity and not just purely objective, which is not to say we want it to be anything less than true either. And I'm curious, I want to ask you, are you aware of how your own audiences are heeding you? Do you care? Would you prefer that they focused only on the teaching, or as a philosopher do you feel some duty to be a teacher who will fascinate and gain attention independent of the teaching? I am, now I will give a very strange answer. I cannot
eye what I really despise is this pseudo-radical leftists who like these big triumphant events, you know, remember years ago one million people in Tahrir Square, one million people in Istanbul, we are mega demonstrations, we are all together there and so on. But you know, this is why I am a moderately conservative communist. I'm never impressed by this big public event where people feel solidarity. My question is, how do you put the morning after drinking too much? The morning after. When the emergency state where we are all happy, we cry, magical event, when it's over and things return to new normality. How do people feel, experience the change in their everyday life? Is it any better or is it even worse? I'm not a pessimist, just a pessimist here. For example, people often say, look at Occupy Wall Street, it came to nothing. It's not so simple. I think that Marxists, but Hegel already, like this metaphor of the mole, the stupid animal beneath the earth doing its underground work. I think that all this did lay foundation for so-called democratic socialism. Don't forget that now, and this is one of the unintended beneficiary effects of Trump nonetheless, after I don't know almost years, you can be a socialist in the United States while even still belonging to a wing, a left wing of Democratic Party, while not being automatically excluded, no? And incidentally, another lesson here which goes against this simple ranking. You know why I appreciate, although I of course often disagree with him, with Bernie Sanders? He said something ingenious. He immediately guessed that Trump won not because he was worried as Democrats are about the middle ground, are we moving too much to the left and so on. Trump won because he got it that if you radicalize your situation and go to extreme in a certain way, you gain vote. And this is the lesson that the Democrats, I'm not an anti-feminist, but I was so desperate when I heard, you remember the interviews just before the elections with Kamala Harris? She was so afraid to go too much into one or other direction that she almost never gave an answer. They asked her what about the Gaza war, Israel, Hamas, who? Her answer was usually something like, I think there should be peace among people and we should stop the war and blah blah blah, which meant nothing. That's the big lesson that the Left should learn from Trump. Don't be afraid to take a clear stance. I read an excellent interview with some scientist, I forgot his name, who said that that's why even many people, although Trump is hypocritical, whatever, but even many people who are against Trump said that they appreciate him more because, this is I think a fake impression, but it's important point, he appears not to be afraid to state clearly his position. While with Democrats it's always as if, you know, some special advisors told him don't go too far here, don't go too far there, and so on and so on. The other mistake, and here we return to this progress and so on, another big mistake of the Left is that they automatically assume that immigrants, other races and so on, that they are automatically on our side. You know who first got this lesson half a century ago? Margaret Thatcher. She discovered that in the UK, Indians, ethnically, not your Native American Indians, India Indians, that they, their income is on average already higher than the average English, or the average income of a white Englishman. And but Labour Party ignored this. They thought, oh Indians, oppressed race, they will vote for us, you know? And now I come to a more problematic point, another mistake. In Europe and in United States, immigrants, of course I'm for more human treatment, blah blah blah, that's not the, the point is that the Left automatically assume they're the poor, homeless, they will vote for us. No, don't ever forget that most of the immigrants, they believe in the American dream. They didn't come there to make the revolution, they want to be part of the American dream. I want to switch gears and talk about philosophy because this book is also about what it means to be a philosopher and how we read and absorb philosophy. And one of my favorite parts of the book was your chapter on authority, where you make the distinction between the teacher and the teaching. And you say, I think quite rightly, that many of us don't only pay attention to the logic and persuasiveness of the teaching but absorb and trust philosophy based on our faith in the teacher, that the teacher deserves our adherence. And I think as a reader and practitioner of political theory this is absolutely correct, that we don't just want the truth, we want the truth told to us by Rousseau, by Foucault, by Hannah Arendt, by Žižek, and we want it modulated by a subjectivity and not just purely objective, which is not to say we want it to be anything less than true either. And I'm curious, I want to ask you, are you aware of how your own audiences are heeding you? Do you care? Would you prefer that they focused only on the teaching, or as a philosopher do you feel some duty to be a teacher who will fascinate and gain attention independent of the teaching? I am, now I will give a very strange answer. I cannot
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stand myself, my stupid face. The only way for me to talk is to publicly is to forget about myself. It's not a joke what I will tell you now. The two relatively popular movies that
stand myself, my stupid face. The only way for me to talk is to publicly is to forget about myself. It's not a joke what I will tell you now. The two relatively popular movies that
Slavoj Žižek
I did documentaries with Sophie Fiennes, Pervert's Guide to Ideology, to Cinema, I haven't seen them. Why? One minute of my stupid face with all my tics and so on is too much for
I did documentaries with Sophie Fiennes, Pervert's Guide to Ideology, to Cinema, I haven't seen them. Why? One minute of my stupid face with all my tics and so on is too much for
unknown
me. No, what I, now I will give you my formula, maybe this will interest you. First, I don't propose to have clear final answers. I as I always repeat, what a philosopher can do today is, I cannot tell you oh against global warming this will not work, perhaps rather do that. But we can clearly analyze how often, that's the formula that I like to use, how often the way we formulate the problem is part of the problem. Mystification is not just in the solution, it is already in how we formulate the problem. My big example not to take more recent ones is racism. Don't be afraid, I'm totally against. But what I have a deep suspicion about is how you are too young, I am not to remember, I was even there, Martin Luther King times and so on, and I checked his speeches, I think you can get them somewhere on the web. He never uses almost the term tolerance. For him it would be humiliating to say what, we blacks want more tolerance from the whites or what? No, he spoke for social struggles, legal rules and so on. I think that I find it very suspicious how social tensions are translated into problems of tolerance. We should tolerate gay people, LGBT and so on. This is still in the bad sense the liberal perspective, not the perspective of a radical social antagonism and cut, but the perspective of different groups
me. No, what I, now I will give you my formula, maybe this will interest you. First, I don't propose to have clear final answers. I as I always repeat, what a philosopher can do today is, I cannot tell you oh against global warming this will not work, perhaps rather do that. But we can clearly analyze how often, that's the formula that I like to use, how often the way we formulate the problem is part of the problem. Mystification is not just in the solution, it is already in how we formulate the problem. My big example not to take more recent ones is racism. Don't be afraid, I'm totally against. But what I have a deep suspicion about is how you are too young, I am not to remember, I was even there, Martin Luther King times and so on, and I checked his speeches, I think you can get them somewhere on the web. He never uses almost the term tolerance. For him it would be humiliating to say what, we blacks want more tolerance from the whites or what? No, he spoke for social struggles, legal rules and so on. I think that I find it very suspicious how social tensions are translated into problems of tolerance. We should tolerate gay people, LGBT and so on. This is still in the bad sense the liberal perspective, not the perspective of a radical social antagonism and cut, but the perspective of different groups
Slavoj Žižek
coexist with different interest and we just have to in a tolerant way bring them together and so on. This is what I call the culturalization of politics. And I think that although Trump also of course talks about economics and so on, but a key constituent for him is precisely this cultural struggle where, and I find this, this is for me, I wonder if you will agree, the basic paradox of Trumpism. On the one hand we have, I use this term ironically, the Trumpian Left, Steve Bannon and so on, and there are Left elements in him. Do you know that he was years ago during Trump's first term, Steve Bannon was fired from the White House because he demanded of the highest tax for the rich from today's But what I want to say is that at the same so I call this the common sense direction. Did you notice how often in inaugural speech and reactions to it Trump used the term sanity and common sense? It's common sense that there are two sexes, it's common sense that LGBT+ are just a minority and so on and so on. But at the same time his close link with what I, following Yanis Varoufakis, although I have a problem with this term, what I call the new digital feudal masters who control the space. This works in exactly the opposite direction of common sense. I think we, that would be my philosophical point, we live in an era where we can less and less rely on common sense. Look at artificial intelligence. If it will control us, it will be in a certain sense the end of humanity as we know it. That's why I wrote a book on the wired brain, Neuralink. Can you even imagine what this will mean if we will be able to communicate through digital machines which will be able directly to read our thoughts? Just think as a dirty old man, that was of course my first association, just think about sex. We are flirting, no flirting, we look at each other, we read each other's minds, immediately we see yes, yes, okay let's go to bed. But you know it it will all this changes are literally literally in some sense the end of being human as we understood it till now. Yes, I mean your book is really situated in this moment of feeling that we're on the cusp of major changes, major challenges. We've talked about the American version, you're talking about the technological version. While we still have a few minutes, let's switch gears and talk about Europe. You are after all a representative of Europe and in the book you talk about the Left being able to rediscover the emancipatory potential of the European tradition and you call on us or on Europeans to be more European than Europe itself, one of your phrases. Monarchy, Slavoj Žižek, we live in a time where from a hundred years ago to now we've gone from all the European countries basically being monarchies to only nine. And it seems like a usual view is oh that is nothing, today's monarchs they have no power, it's just a figurehead, they're just vestigial. But I wonder if the dialectician in you would say that there is something more than nothing in the presence of monarchy in Europe and that maybe even as an outpost to progress maybe it's a way of achieving it. I'd be curious what you think about the European monarchs. Okay I'm not talking now about the often miserable reality of it. But Hegel was for monarchy because he saw something very well that the alternative often to monarchy is the rule of experts. And Hegel felt that the government should not be left in the hands of experts. There should be somebody on the top which stands for our, I will use now the term but in a different meaning, common sense, you know,
coexist with different interest and we just have to in a tolerant way bring them together and so on. This is what I call the culturalization of politics. And I think that although Trump also of course talks about economics and so on, but a key constituent for him is precisely this cultural struggle where, and I find this, this is for me, I wonder if you will agree, the basic paradox of Trumpism. On the one hand we have, I use this term ironically, the Trumpian Left, Steve Bannon and so on, and there are Left elements in him. Do you know that he was years ago during Trump's first term, Steve Bannon was fired from the White House because he demanded of the highest tax for the rich from today's But what I want to say is that at the same so I call this the common sense direction. Did you notice how often in inaugural speech and reactions to it Trump used the term sanity and common sense? It's common sense that there are two sexes, it's common sense that LGBT+ are just a minority and so on and so on. But at the same time his close link with what I, following Yanis Varoufakis, although I have a problem with this term, what I call the new digital feudal masters who control the space. This works in exactly the opposite direction of common sense. I think we, that would be my philosophical point, we live in an era where we can less and less rely on common sense. Look at artificial intelligence. If it will control us, it will be in a certain sense the end of humanity as we know it. That's why I wrote a book on the wired brain, Neuralink. Can you even imagine what this will mean if we will be able to communicate through digital machines which will be able directly to read our thoughts? Just think as a dirty old man, that was of course my first association, just think about sex. We are flirting, no flirting, we look at each other, we read each other's minds, immediately we see yes, yes, okay let's go to bed. But you know it it will all this changes are literally literally in some sense the end of being human as we understood it till now. Yes, I mean your book is really situated in this moment of feeling that we're on the cusp of major changes, major challenges. We've talked about the American version, you're talking about the technological version. While we still have a few minutes, let's switch gears and talk about Europe. You are after all a representative of Europe and in the book you talk about the Left being able to rediscover the emancipatory potential of the European tradition and you call on us or on Europeans to be more European than Europe itself, one of your phrases. Monarchy, Slavoj Žižek, we live in a time where from a hundred years ago to now we've gone from all the European countries basically being monarchies to only nine. And it seems like a usual view is oh that is nothing, today's monarchs they have no power, it's just a figurehead, they're just vestigial. But I wonder if the dialectician in you would say that there is something more than nothing in the presence of monarchy in Europe and that maybe even as an outpost to progress maybe it's a way of achieving it. I'd be curious what you think about the European monarchs. Okay I'm not talking now about the often miserable reality of it. But Hegel was for monarchy because he saw something very well that the alternative often to monarchy is the rule of experts. And Hegel felt that the government should not be left in the hands of experts. There should be somebody on the top which stands for our, I will use now the term but in a different meaning, common sense, you know,
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beyond partisanship. The moment experts rule, the whole system becomes non-transparent. We ordinary people are not even given a chance to understand measures why. This is why in my new book which will appear in half a year, there is a chapter called a Leninist argument for constitutional monarchy. Because I read that famous Lenin where he says in communism an ordinary kitchen maid will be able to rule. No, what Hegel meant is that of course there are experts who do their job, but on the top there should be some basically contingently elected ordinary guy like us. That's for me the point, the point of monarchy. Of course I'm not for hereditary monarchy but we have lot, lot in the sense of lottery, chance and so on and so on. Of course not without any criteria, you cannot elect a total idiot and so on. There's some version of the Hegelian idea that might resonate. Can I ask you one final question? Please. You write in the book
beyond partisanship. The moment experts rule, the whole system becomes non-transparent. We ordinary people are not even given a chance to understand measures why. This is why in my new book which will appear in half a year, there is a chapter called a Leninist argument for constitutional monarchy. Because I read that famous Lenin where he says in communism an ordinary kitchen maid will be able to rule. No, what Hegel meant is that of course there are experts who do their job, but on the top there should be some basically contingently elected ordinary guy like us. That's for me the point, the point of monarchy. Of course I'm not for hereditary monarchy but we have lot, lot in the sense of lottery, chance and so on and so on. Of course not without any criteria, you cannot elect a total idiot and so on. There's some version of the Hegelian idea that might resonate. Can I ask you one final question? Please. You write in the book
Slavoj Žižek
that the climate catastrophe is the historical necessity that must surely push us towards global solidarity. That's a comment that's both deeply concerning but also somewhat hopeful as well. Did you want to say a little bit more about how you're understanding the climate catastrophe and what possibility it might realistically lead to for a greater global solidarity? Here also we reach, we stumble upon a philosophical question because even Marx, here I'm critical towards Marx, all the liberal tradition and progressive tradition and so on, they silently accept our natural environment as a stable background, you know. We do whatever we want, we screw it up and so on but nature stays here forever, reproduces itself and so on. I think that I am totally critical towards the so-called deep
that the climate catastrophe is the historical necessity that must surely push us towards global solidarity. That's a comment that's both deeply concerning but also somewhat hopeful as well. Did you want to say a little bit more about how you're understanding the climate catastrophe and what possibility it might realistically lead to for a greater global solidarity? Here also we reach, we stumble upon a philosophical question because even Marx, here I'm critical towards Marx, all the liberal tradition and progressive tradition and so on, they silently accept our natural environment as a stable background, you know. We do whatever we want, we screw it up and so on but nature stays here forever, reproduces itself and so on. I think that I am totally critical towards the so-called deep
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ecologists who claim that we need a
ecologists who claim that we need a
Slavoj Žižek
more direct sense of us being part of nature, immersed in nature and so on. No, I think we need more alienation from nature. Why? Because the notion of nature that we usually use is an ideological notion. Nature stands for certain balance, homeostatic system where things just reproduce themselves. But I think, I always like to use, maybe I use it there in the book this very dirty obscene formulation that if nature is our mother then this mother is a dirty bitch, you know. Just think about how many mega catastrophes there were in nature before even we humans screwed it up. What is our main source of energy? Oil and coal. But can you even imagine for example Saudi Arabia? Beneath the earth you have the sand, you have oil. But oil is remainder of some organic past with trees and so on. Can we even imagine what catastrophes happened in on our earth? So we should we should denaturalize nature itself. We should not take nature as, you know, as we say okay we can ruin ourselves but nature will go on blah blah. No, maybe it will not go on, who knows. So I think that that's the paradox. Yes on the one hand science is responsible in ruthless technological exploitation of Earth, but on the other hand the only thing that can save us is even more science. Because we cannot say forget about technological exploitation, we should return to nature. If we do this it's catastrophe. We should understand more the fragility of every natural balance. Slavoj Žižek, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good visit to Penn when you come in a few weeks. I'm really looking forward
more direct sense of us being part of nature, immersed in nature and so on. No, I think we need more alienation from nature. Why? Because the notion of nature that we usually use is an ideological notion. Nature stands for certain balance, homeostatic system where things just reproduce themselves. But I think, I always like to use, maybe I use it there in the book this very dirty obscene formulation that if nature is our mother then this mother is a dirty bitch, you know. Just think about how many mega catastrophes there were in nature before even we humans screwed it up. What is our main source of energy? Oil and coal. But can you even imagine for example Saudi Arabia? Beneath the earth you have the sand, you have oil. But oil is remainder of some organic past with trees and so on. Can we even imagine what catastrophes happened in on our earth? So we should we should denaturalize nature itself. We should not take nature as, you know, as we say okay we can ruin ourselves but nature will go on blah blah. No, maybe it will not go on, who knows. So I think that that's the paradox. Yes on the one hand science is responsible in ruthless technological exploitation of Earth, but on the other hand the only thing that can save us is even more science. Because we cannot say forget about technological exploitation, we should return to nature. If we do this it's catastrophe. We should understand more the fragility of every natural balance. Slavoj Žižek, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a good visit to Penn when you come in a few weeks. I'm really looking forward
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to it. Thank
to it. Thank
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you for listening to the Mitchell Center podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and visit amc.sas.upenn.edu for more episodes.
you for listening to the Mitchell Center podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and visit amc.sas.upenn.edu for more episodes.