At Nuit Blache
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2012-09-29 · 2:06:58 · 16,307 words
ideologycapitalismpsychoanalysissexuality-gendereveryday-lifecommunism-socialismreligion-theologytechnology-ai-cyberspacecinema-art-cultureconsciousness-minddemocracyliberalism-political-correctnessecology-climategeopolitics-warfascism-populismhegel-dialectics
Žižek delivers a lecture titled 'End of the World' at what appears to be a Canadian university, diagnosing multiple converging crises, ecological, economic, technological, and libidinal, as signs that humanity is approaching a structural limit he calls 'the end of the world as we know it.' He traces how ideology functions through permitted-but-prohibited ambiguities, how the Big Other (public symbolic order) is disintegrating across examples from Indonesian death-squad TV appearances to Chinese bystander apathy, and how sexuality, love, and intersubjectivity are being replaced by a solipsistic, privatized, and aseptic mode of life correlated with Western Buddhism. The Q&A extends the lecture into discussions of communist strategy, hysteria as subversion, the limits of local communities, and the failure of the left to articulate a post-capitalist vision.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 29
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The double structure whereby you are allowed to do something only on condition that you do not actually do it, the hidden authoritarian dimension of permissive societies.
The Stalinist paradox where not only is critique forbidden but publicly naming the prohibition is itself forbidden, one must pretend the prohibition does not exist.
The contemporary father who offers apparent freedom of choice ('visit grandma only if you want to') but thereby issues a harsher injunction than the traditional authoritarian father, you must not only comply but want to.
The way subjects are addressed by ideology, here analyzed through the postmodern permissive father who interpellates the child into 'free choice' while actually issuing a harsher double injunction.
as “no ethnic cleansing without poetry”
Žižek's formula that atrocity requires a quasi-religious mythic-poetic narrative to serve as a screen enabling ordinary people to commit extraordinary violence on behalf of a sacred cause.
as “good use of dogmatism”
Žižek's argument that genuine ethical progress means certain norms (e.g., against rape, racism) become unchallengeable dogmas, the moment you have to argue for them, you've already lost.
as “Big Other”
The public symbolic order, the unwritten and written rules that automatically determine what is acceptable, which Žižek argues is disintegrating when atrocities become boastable on TV.
Implicit in Žižek's point that capitalists are not hedonist egotists but devoted servants of the abstract logic of capital circulation, the cause is abstract but real in its material effects.
The excessive enjoyment tied to transgression, here analyzed in consumer culture where danger and harm are precisely the libidinal draw of a product rather than an obstacle.
Implicitly invoked through the consumerist logic where the dangerous or forbidden quality of a product (cigarettes, poisonous fish) is precisely its appeal, the excess beyond mere rational use.
as “love as fall”
Authentic love as a traumatic rupture, stumbling upon another person who ruins one's ordinary life and creates a new focus, which contemporary ideology tries to market away through 'love without the fall' dating agencies.
as “enlightened Western Buddhism”
Žižek's label for the prevailing ideological injunction to 'be authentically yourself,' avoid attachment, 'don't fall', presented as liberatory but actually the predominant norm of permissive capitalism.
as “decaffeinated other”
Implicit in Žižek's critique of official multiculturalism: the desire for the Other 'without the fall,' idealized and made safe, which he identifies as the worst form of racism.
The endpoint of anti-harassment logic where consensual sex becomes a rational contract between two parties, which Žižek argues eliminates the necessarily transgressive moment of expressing desire.
as “masturbating with a real partner”
Žižek's formulation for the contemporary privatization of sexuality where even real intercourse is essentially solipsistic, the partner merely does the work of one's hand while one remains with one's own fantasy.
Implicitly operative in the discussion of how commodities and sex require a minimal prop (a 'piece of shit') through which fantasy does its real work, the partner serving merely as the instrument of masturbatory fantasy.
as “the end of the world as we know it”
Not apocalypse but a structural limit being approached at multiple levels (ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, libidinal economy, the human self) where the basic parameters of human existence are changing.
The Buddhist doctrine of no-self, which Žižek notes Thomas Metzinger argues is the only existential position compatible with cognitivist science's elimination of the autonomous subject.
The paradox of digital connectivity and public sex: even in shared or public contexts people remain in a privatized bubble, public life proper is disappearing while private life invades public space.
as “cynical ideology”
The contemporary form of ideology where subjects know very well what they are doing yet do it anyway, not false consciousness but fully conscious participation in a structure one knows to be unjust.
A strategy of subversion: naively demanding that power live up to its own stated principles, which is more threatening to a cynical system than direct critique.
Žižek's ironic term (he notes it has nothing to do with Asia) for authoritarian capitalism, the model, exemplified by China and Singapore, of a highly productive capitalism that functions perfectly without liberal democracy.
Žižek's sardonic characterization of Singapore, a tightly controlled merchant-state that appears benign but functions on authoritarian principles, a kind of managed capitalism without democracy.
as “Renta Básica / citizen's income”
The Belgian economist Van Parijs's proposal that Žižek discusses as an attempt to reinstall welfare-state capitalism, which from a Marxist view means the working class is even more exploited to subsidize the unemployed.
as “hysteria as subversion”
Against Freud's misformulation, Žižek follows Lacan in arguing hysteria is not weak provocation but a radical questioning of the master, the truly subversive position, since perversion merely supports power.
as “perversion as support for power”
Lacan's point (cited by Žižek): every brutal power needs perverse support, perversion is not subversion but the obscene underside that sustains domination.
Badiou's term (used approvingly by Žižek) for the insight that if one does the preparatory work, solutions and revolutionary events often arrive unexpectedly, as with October Revolution or the Paris Commune.
Not simply false consciousness but the structure that holds together both an innocent public face and an obscene underground message, both dimensions are necessary for ideology to function.
The traumatic, unassimilable dimension of desire and love, the 'fall', which Žižek argues is increasingly foreclosed by permissive-consumerist ideology that demands safety and distance.
Stories he reaches for 18
Native Americans Žižek met in Missoula, Montana told him they prefer 'Indians' because at least it's a monument to white man's stupidity (Columbus thought he was in India), and they were furious at the patronizing celebration of their 'holistic sensitivity.'
“We much prefer to be called Indians because at least our name is a monument to white man's stupidity.”
German/American scientists decoded rat neural signals for movement, allowing remote control of a rat via button; when tested on humans, subjects reportedly still felt they were moving freely, the paranoiac bad solution is the true one.
“I will not even know the time I am controlled. I will still continue to think that I freely roam around.”
A French dating agency advertised enabling people to 'find themselves in love without the fall (sans tomber)'; Žižek found an American equivalent, the marketing of love as safe and non-traumatic.
“We will enable you to find yourself in love without the fall, sans tomber.”
The traditional authoritarian father orders you to visit grandmother; the postmodern permissive father says 'visit her only if you want to', a harsher injunction because it demands not just the action but the correct desire.
“Not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it, you have to want to visit her.”
Dan Brown's hero Robert Langdon never has sex with his female partner; in The Da Vinci Code Jesus himself has to be brought in as a historical lover to cover up the real couple's asexuality, Hollywood now deletes sex that was previously added.
“You have sex up there but not here. Once we said Hollywood is adding sex; now Hollywood is deleting sex.”
The last official white South African defense of apartheid was not racial inferiority but the argument that abolishing apartheid would destroy authentic black culture, teaching Žižek that celebrating the Other's authenticity can serve oppression.
“The last defense of apartheid in South Africa was authentic black values. Which is why I never forgot this.”
Himmler told SS officers in Poznań that their murderous work must remain a secret, an empty page in history books, yet would be the most glorious chapter of German history, they at least treated it as a private dirty secret.
“They at least treated it as a private dirty secret. Here it's not even that, they simply publicly boast about it all.”
In Stalin's USSR, criticizing the leader openly was fatal; but so was shouting at the critic 'how dare you criticize Stalin!', you disappeared even faster for naming the unnameable prohibition.
“It wasn't only prohibited to criticize the authorities, but this prohibition itself was prohibited. You were not allowed to pronounce it publicly.”
The first James Bond film where Bond and the Bond girl don't have sex at the end, just embrace; Žižek reads this as a symptom of the broader decline of genuine intersubjective sexuality.
“It's the first James Bond where at the end there is no sex between Bond and Bond girl.”
The famous scene where Ingrid Bergman visits Rick's room: a 2.5-second shot of the airport tower, then both fully dressed. The film consciously plants contradictory signals, signals that they did AND didn't have sex, giving the spectator plausible deniability while stimulating imagination.
“The movie is addressing you: we live under censorship, so I provide a safe cover... but once absolved, the movie plants elements to imagine all the horrors.”
In Brazil rich people in a restaurant are served a plate of formless mush alongside a beautiful photo of the food they're supposed to be eating, Žižek's image for how love and sex function: a minimal prop + fantasy.
“You eat that shit, but the photo tells you what. That's how love more and more functions.”
Reagan, accused of Holocaust-denier friends, insisted 'whenever someone at my dinner table denies the Holocaust I always insist there was one', which reveals the company he kept.
“What kind of friends did he have if he had all the time to argue that there was a Holocaust?”
A sex toy shaped like a flashlight with interchangeable orifices; Žižek uses it to illustrate the solipsistic endpoint of contemporary sexuality where the real partner is just a prop for private fantasy.
“Where are we here? What are we approaching?”
Anwar Congo and former Indonesian death-squad members appear on a state TV talk show, boasting in detail about raping and torturing thousands of people in 1965-66, with audience applause and a cheery moderator, a public obscenity that exceeds even Nazi secrecy.
“They don't even have this minimum of decency that even the Nazis had... they simply publicly boast about it all.”
Gandhi's solution was not to abolish castes but to give each its proper place and dignity; Ambedkar (the untouchable leader) opposed this, formulating 'no castes without outcasts', Gandhi was admired only by upper classes, hated by the untouchables.
“No castes without outcasts — you can never based on the caste principle construct a harmonious society.”
Augustine argued there was sex in Paradise but without arousal, sex as controlled as raising a hand to plow. After the Fall, God installed uncontrollable desire as punishment for man's hubris: erection as revenge, the organ that refuses to obey its owner.
“I will take one of your organs, penis, and you will not control it... erection is the ultimate revenge of God toward men.”
Hardcore pornography is the most tightly controlled genre, if the story engages you, you cannot see everything; if you see everything, the story must be ridiculously stupid; Gonzo eliminates story but adds the injunction of no emotional identification.
“Hardcore pornography is probably the most tightly controlled genre that you can imagine.”
A leftist friend in Venezuela visits worker-controlled factories a year after their triumphant media coverage and finds them bankrupt, re-nationalized, or reprivatized, Žižek's evidence that local community alternatives don't scale.
“It's either bankrupt or taken over by the state or reprivatized or whatever.”
Works invoked 11
The Da Vinci Code film
Robert Langdon and Sophie never have sex despite being the romantic couple; Jesus must be brought in as historical lover to cover up the sexlessness, evidence for Žižek's thesis about declining intersubjectivity.
Casablanca film
Called 'the best introduction into Hollywood ideology', the ambiguous sex scene is Žižek's central example of ideology functioning through its double structure of innocent surface and obscene underground.
Quantum of Solace film
Politically progressive Bond film where for the first time Bond and the Bond girl don't have sex, Žižek reads this as a symptom of the decline of intersubjective sexuality.
Angels and Demons film
The film version removes the sex between Langdon and Vittoria Vetra that exists in the novel, Hollywood deleting sex rather than adding it.
Brazil film
Terry Gilliam's dystopia; the restaurant scene where diners eat formless mush while looking at food photos is Žižek's image of contemporary sex/love, minimal prop plus fantasy.
The Act of Killing film
Documentary by Joshua Oppenheimer on Indonesian death-squad members boasting about atrocities; Žižek calls it 'maybe one of the most morally depressing films I've seen' and strongly recommends it as evidence of Big Other disintegration.
Augustine's treatise on marriage and concupiscence; Žižek cites it for the theory of erection as God's punishment of human hubris and the analysis of sexuality as the mark of finitude.
21 Grams film
Iñárritu film Žižek uses despite disliking the director; Naomi Watts's response to Sean Penn's love confession ('do you know how brutal this is?') is cited as a correct image of love's necessary violence.
Brecht's learning play about a merchant who kills a servant offering water and is acquitted, cited as prefigured by the Nanjing Good Samaritan case, which reality made grimmer.
Virginia Woolf's 1924 essay where she famously wrote 'on or about December 1910 human character changed', Žižek invokes it (despite disliking Woolf personally) to frame his claim about contemporary transformations of human nature.
Gandhi's autobiography, which Žižek praises for its absolute honesty about Gandhi's sexual experiments, sleeping with young girls to test his celibacy, showing Gandhi was 'no saint.'
People invoked 38
Indonesian militia leader and politician who openly demonstrated torture and murder methods on state TV; for Žižek an example of the disintegration of the Big Other.
Bill Clinton negative
Cited as representative of the co-optive 'clenching' move toward Occupy Wall Street, 'we sympathize, but come with concrete proposals.'
Mangosuthu Buthelezi negative
Cited as the one who advocated separate black cultural identity (not equality) and was later revealed to be on the white apartheid regime's payroll.
Žižek says 'I hate her, I think she was a frigid bitch' and that Daphne du Maurier is a greater writer, but he credits her April 1910 essay 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown' with capturing how human nature changes.
Mahatma Gandhi negative
Žižek admires Gandhi's absolute honesty and lack of saintly pretension, but calls his approach to caste 'proto-fascist', giving each caste its proper place rather than abolishing them, which the untouchables rightly hated.
Cited as the most famous example of the poet-atrocity link in ex-Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Serb leader who, as a poet, provided the mythic narrative for ethnic cleansing.
Philippe Van Parijs negative
Belgian economist who invented citizen's income (Renta Básica); Žižek finds the proposal a 'pretty sad' attempt to reinstall welfare-state capitalism within rather than beyond the capitalist framework.
Rick Santorum negative
Grouped with Bachmann as evidence that the ruling class is no longer able to rule properly.
Michele Bachmann negative
Cited as an example of the American Republican Party's dysfunction, 'how can you take seriously a party where people like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum come close to ruling positions?'
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked for the concept of the Big Other and for the claim that perversion supports power while hysteria is the true subversion; Žižek credits Lacan with the better reading against Freud's misformulation.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek calls him 'an honest guy' who personally admitted to Žižek that with biogenetics and financial crisis his 'end of history' thesis is over, Žižek approves of the honesty while rejecting the original thesis.
Mentioned as a greater writer than Virginia Woolf in Žižek's estimation.
Judith Butler negative
Described as a personal friend despite Žižek's 'eternal problem' with her work: he agrees with her description of performative sexuality but rejects her claim that it is subversive, it is the predominant ideology today.
B. R. Ambedkar positive
Untouchable leader increasingly celebrated in India; Žižek quotes his formula 'no castes without outcasts' as the correct counter to Gandhi's caste-harmonizing approach.
Patricia Churchland negative
One of the Californian eliminativist couple; Žižek finds their position that folk psychology could be replaced by neuroscience 'interesting but illusory.'
Terry Gilliam positive
Director of Brazil, which Žižek calls a 'mega classic' British dystopia; the restaurant scene is his image for contemporary libidinal minimalism.
Danish documentary filmmaker who made The Act of Killing; Žižek calls it perhaps the most morally depressing film he has seen and highly recommends it.
Catherine Breillat positive
French filmmaker who tries to combine serious melodrama with hardcore sex, cited as a negative proof of the ideological rule separating story from explicit content, since her work is marginalized and 'doesn't work.'
Alain Badiou positive
Personal friend who told Žižek the anecdote about the 'love without the fall' dating agency; also the source of 'materialist theology of grace' which Žižek invokes approvingly for revolutionary hope.
Žižek says he spoke with the Syriza leader (who had just lost an election) and told him that winning would have required an extremely efficient financial and police apparatus, pointing to the limits of radical left governance.
Tariq Ali negative
Debated in Zagreb; suggested in Greece people should immediately take over a city hall and distribute money, Žižek calls this crazy and dismisses it as utopian voluntarism.
Leon Trotsky positive
Mentioned as having written about the Soviet dream of a new asexual man, and for writing on permanent revolution, used as historical evidence for the recurring utopian project of re-engineering human nature.
Fredric Jameson negative
Identified as a leftist friend Žižek disagrees with on the question of cynical ideology: Jameson thinks ideology is now so cynical we no longer need ideology critique; Žižek rejects this.
Bertolt Brecht positive
His learning play The Exception and the Rule is cited as an anticipation of the Chinese Good Samaritan case, though reality outdid Brecht's fiction in grimness.
Key influence on Soviet psychology in the 1920s, though privately against the Bolsheviks; his behaviorist framework underpinned the Soviet dream of a fully controlled, asexual new man.
Cited for the Posen speech where he told SS officers their genocidal work must remain secret, used as a contrasting example of minimal decency (keeping atrocity private) against Indonesian public boasting.
Salvador Allende positive
Mentioned as the victim of the US-backed September 11 1973 coup, for Žižek the 'true September 11.'
Alejandro González Iñárritu positive
Called a 'pseudo-intellectual' whom Žižek doesn't like as a director, yet the scene in 21 Grams where Penn confesses love to Watts is used as a correct image of love's necessary brutality.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for the claim that capitalism is a religious phenomenon, which Žižek reads naively as meaning the ideal capitalist is a non-hedonist devoted to abstract capital circulation.
Henry Kissinger negative
Mentioned as having signed a letter authorizing the murder of a Chilean minister (in the September 11 1973 Pinochet coup against Allende), Žižek invokes this as the 'true September 11.'
Thomas Metzinger positive
German scientist whose position, that Buddhist enlightenment (acceptance of no-self) is the only existential position compatible with cognitivism's denial of free will, Žižek finds most interesting of the four options.
Paul Churchland negative
The other eliminativist Churchland; same position as Patricia, Žižek considers their eliminativist programme illusory.
Richard Maltby positive
British film theorist whose analysis of the Casablanca scene Žižek cites as demonstrating the consciously contradictory ideological message of the film.
Barack Obama positive
Žižek is disappointed like others but insists the healthcare debate Obama sparked was incredibly important, it struck at the American ideology of freedom of choice.
Augustine of Hippo positive
Cited for De nuptiis et concupiscentia: sexuality in Paradise was non-arousal controlled activity; original sin brought uncontrollable desire as punishment; erection as God's revenge on human hubris.
Nelson Mandela positive
Cited as always standing for citizens' equality, contrasted with Chief Buthelezi who advocated separate black culture and was later found on the apartheid regime's payroll.
Noam Chomsky negative
Grouped with Jameson as holding that contemporary cynicism makes ideology critique superfluous; Žižek disagrees.
Karl Marx positive
Mentioned for his surprise at the Paris Commune (illustrating the 'materialist theology of grace') and for the Marxist framework for analyzing citizen's income as requiring workers to be more exploited.
What it argues
ideology functioning through permitted-but-prohibited ambiguitydisintegration of the Big Other and public symbolic orderthe end of intersubjective sexuality and rise of libidinal solipsismWestern Buddhism as the dominant ideology of permissive capitalismno ethnic cleansing without poetry — the role of myth in atrocitycynicism of power and the limits of left-wing resistanceconvergence of cognitive science, biogenetics, and the human condition
Dialectical moves 12
“It is not only prohibited to criticize the authorities, but this prohibition itself was prohibited — you had to pretend we CAN do it, we just don't.”
The Stalinist paradox of the prohibition of the prohibition reveals how ideology functions through compulsory performance of the very freedom it denies.
“The postmodern permissive father gives a harsher injunction than the traditional authoritarian one: not only must you comply, you must WANT to.”
Apparent freedom hides a more total demand, the permissive form of authority reaches deeper into subjectivity than overt coercion.
“Ideology is not what censors the obscene underground — ideology IS both the innocent surface and the obscene underground together.”
Subversive fantasy does not undermine ideology but is its internal supplement; dismantling either pole would destroy the whole structure.
“The capitalist is not a hedonist egotist — on the contrary, he is the most non-egotist and non-hedonist person you can find, fanatically devoted to an abstract cause.”
What appears as the ultimate expression of selfish individualism is in fact a form of impersonal quasi-ethical dedication, inverting the standard critique of capitalism.
“Privacy is not disappearing — it is public life that is disappearing; privacy is invading public space.”
Digital surveillance culture is misread as destroying privacy; the real loss is publicness itself, shared symbolic space.
“The neoconservative backlash is just that — a backlash. The ACTION is Western Buddhism; neoconservatism is merely the reaction.”
The apparent threat to permissive ideology from religious conservatism is itself a symptom of how deep permissive ideology goes, not its limit.
“Far from being dangerous subversion, what Butler describes as performative sexual identity IS the predominant ideology today.”
What passes for critical theory of the subject is actually a description of the hegemonic norm, making Butler's work inadvertently ideological affirmation.
“We are not utopians — the real utopia is the belief that things can go on indefinitely the way they are.”
Žižek inverts the standard charge of utopianism against the left: the status quo requires more magical thinking to sustain than revolutionary alternatives.
“The situation is desperate, and this is precisely why it should give us hope — things are already changing so radically that change is not only possible but unavoidable.”
Pessimism about the system's self-perpetuation is simultaneously the ground for optimism: since change is already happening, the question is only whether we will steer it.
“Perversion is not subversion — the more brutal a power, the more it needs a pervert support. The true subversion is hysterical questioning.”
The apparent transgression of perversion merely gives obscene support to power, while hysteria's seemingly weaker questioning is the genuinely destabilizing position.
“The dangerous thing is not a ruling class that knows what it is doing — the more dangerous situation is that they don't know what is happening either.”
The leftist fantasy of a conspiratorial ruling class is actually reassuring; the real horror is structural drift without any agent capable of steering.
“The last defense of apartheid in South Africa was authentic black values — the idealization of the Other is the worst form of racism.”
Multicultural celebration of authenticity reverses into its opposite: the very gesture of admiring the Other's genuine culture can justify their oppression.
Claims 31
asserts
Ideology functions through a double structure: on one side, prohibitions meant to be violated; on the other, permissions given only on condition that one does not actually use them.ideology / permissive societies
asserts
The postmodern permissive father issues a harsher injunction than the traditional authoritarian father because he demands not only compliance but the correct desire.permissive ideology / family authority
asserts
Ideology is not just the moralistic censorship code (Hays Code) but both the innocent public face AND the underground obscene message together — both are necessary for it to function.Hollywood ideology / Casablanca
asserts
The obscene underground dreams that appear subversive do not undermine ideology — they sustain it.subversion / ideology
asserts
Humanity is approaching a structural limit at multiple levels — ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, apartheid — such that things cannot go on indefinitely as they are.end of the world / structural crisis of capitalism
asserts
Capitalists are not hedonist egotists but fanatically devoted to the abstract quasi-ethical cause of capital circulation, sacrificing family and health to it.capitalism / egotism
asserts
In contemporary consumerist capitalism it is more difficult than ever to be a real egotist, because both capitalists and commodity logic operate through anti-egotist excess.egotism / consumerism
asserts
Consumer culture does not address the rational egotist but works through a superego injunction of transgression — 'it's dangerous, that's why a true man does it.'advertising / consumerism / superego
asserts
The disintegration of the Big Other — the automatic reliance on ethical dogmas — is visible in societies where public boasting about atrocity becomes acceptable.Big Other / Indonesia / moral order
asserts
Progress can be measured by the level of ethical dogmatism — the degree to which certain norms (against rape, racism) no longer need to be argued for but are simply assumed.moral progress / dogmatism
reframes
The Brooklyn bystander effect is not explained by egotism but by over-reliance on the Big Other — each person assumed someone else would act, a structural rather than moral failure.bystander effect / moral indifference
asserts
Public life proper is disappearing — not privacy, but the public space — as private life invades the public sphere through digital confession, public sex, and universal connectivity.public vs private space / digital culture
asserts
The predominant ideology today is not procreation or traditional morality but enlightened Western Buddhism — the injunction not to fall, not to get attached, to keep distance.Western Buddhism / dominant ideology
rejects
Judith Butler's description of performative sexual identity as subversive is wrong — she is describing the predominant ideology today, not a challenge to it; neoconservatism is merely the backlash.Butler's performativity / subversion claim
asserts
Authentic love is by definition a 'fall' — a traumatic rupture — and contemporary ideology is trying to market away this dimension through 'love without the fall' agencies.love / consumerism / trauma
reframes
Harassment anxiety covers not genuine protection but a fear of effective intersubjectivity — of the necessarily transgressive moment when one displays desire to another.sexual harassment / desire / intersubjectivity
asserts
Even in real sex with real partners, we increasingly masturbate — the partner is just a prop while we remain enclosed in our own fantasy.sexuality / solipsism / fantasy
asserts
Western Buddhism functions as the perfect ideological supplement to global capitalism — allowing managers to maintain distance from the 'crazy dance of appearances' while fully participating in it.Western Buddhism / capitalism / ideology
asserts
Thomas Metzinger's position — that Buddhist enlightenment (acceptance of no-self) is the only existential position compatible with cognitive science's denial of free will — is the most interesting cognitivist response.Buddhism / cognitive science / free will
asserts
Human sexuality is fundamentally different from natural copulation — it is always linked to failure, repetition, and the impossibility of full satisfaction.human sexuality / drive / repetition
asserts
The coming society combines overcoming of morality and total self-naturalization with a new aseptic non-sexual spirituality — a combination already prefigured by early Soviet communism's dream of a new asexual man.future society / sexuality / Gnosticism
rejects
Things are already changing radically; the argument that 'nothing can change' is false — the danger is not stasis but uncontrolled change toward a perverse permissively authoritarian society.political pessimism / change / left strategy
asserts
The ruling class no longer functions properly — it does not know what is happening, which is more dangerous than a conspiratorial ruling class that deliberately manages events.ruling class / political crisis
rejects
The left should not translate dreams into concrete proposals immediately — the greatest defeat would be to accept the blackmail of 'do something useful now.'left strategy / Occupy Wall Street
rejects
Globalized cynicism does not exist — every cynic has a weak point, and the system is more vulnerable than it appears.cynicism / ideology critique
rejects
Local communities and direct democracy cannot provide a universal solution — we need to reinvent large-scale collective decision-making, including state authority and security apparatus.local communities / direct democracy / left strategy
asserts
The admiration of indigenous or 'primitive' peoples' authentic culture can serve as a racist justification for oppression — the last defense of South African apartheid was authentic black values.multiculturalism / racism / authenticity
asserts
Gandhi's approach to caste was proto-fascist — not 'abolish castes' but 'each caste has its proper place and dignity,' which Ambedkar correctly opposed.Gandhi / caste / India
reframes
Desires are not an individual psychological problem to be solved by pedagogy — change the system and people will desire differently.consumerism / desire / individual vs systemic change
asserts
Hysteria, not perversion, is the truly subversive position — hysterics radically question the master while perverts provide the master's obscene support.hysteria / perversion / subversion
reframes
The utopia is not communism but the belief that things can remain as they are indefinitely — the genuine realists must acknowledge the system cannot go on.communism / utopianism / realism
Quotes 24
“It is not only that certain things are de facto prohibited, but to pronounce publicly the prohibition is itself prohibited.”Slavoj Žižek · prohibition of the prohibition
“Not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it, you have to want to visit her.”Slavoj Žižek · postmodern permissive injunction — demanding the correct desire
“Ideology is both dimensions together — this innocent appearance AND the underground obscene message. Both elements are needed for an ideology to function.”Slavoj Žižek · double structure of ideology
“All these secret obscene dreams, apparently subversive dreams, don't undermine ideology, they sustain it.”Slavoj Žižek · subversive fantasy as ideological support
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry. You always need a poet.”Slavoj Žižek · mythic-poetic narrative enables atrocity
“Progress can be measured precisely by the level of dogmatism — the degree to which rape, racism, are simply unacceptable, nonsensical, automatically assumed.”Slavoj Žižek · good use of dogmatism as ethical progress
“The moment you have to reason, we are already lost.”Slavoj Žižek · dogmatism vs argumentation in ethics
“Capitalism is a religious phenomenon. The ideal capitalist is the most non-egotist, non-hedonist person you can find.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism as quasi-religious devotion
“In our consumerist society of global capitalism it's maybe more difficult than ever to be a real egotist.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-egotism of capitalism
“Public life proper is disappearing. All this culture of confession and so on — it's privacy invading public space.”Slavoj Žižek · disappearance of the public
“The predominant ideology today is some kind of enlightened Western Buddhism. Be authentically yourself. Don't fall. Don't get attached, keep distance.”Slavoj Žižek · Western Buddhism as dominant ideology
“Love is by definition a fall. If I exaggerate a little bit: I walk on the street, stumble upon a person, and oh my God all my ordinary life is ruined. Everything changes.”Slavoj Žižek · authentic love as traumatic rupture
“Even when we really make love, we more and more masturbate. We masturbate with a real partner. It's possible.”Slavoj Žižek · solipsification of sexuality
“The only way to survive in today's capitalism is to maintain a distance, to say it's just a crazy dance of appearances, I'm not really there.”Slavoj Žižek · Western Buddhism as survival strategy for capitalism
“The paranoiac bad solution is the true one — I will not even know when I am controlled. I will still think that I freely roam around.”Slavoj Žižek · free will and neural control
“God told man: you wanted to be master of the world like me — I will install a drive of which even in your own house you will not be the master.”Slavoj Žižek · Augustine on erection as God's revenge
“Human sexuality is always linked to failure, repetition — it's not the same as natural sexuality. We can imagine a copulation which is totally mechanical and there is nothing sexual about it.”Slavoj Žižek · human sexuality vs natural copulation
“The utopia is that things can remain and go on indefinitely the way they are. We will have to invent something.”Slavoj Žižek · status quo as real utopia
“Things are already changing like crazy. When people tell me nothing can be changed — no, it can, because things are already changing.”Slavoj Žižek · change already happening
“The last defense of apartheid in South Africa was authentic black values. The idealization of the other is the worst form of racism.”Slavoj Žižek · multiculturalism as racism
“I don't think we still have a ruling class which is able to rule properly. They themselves don't know what is happening.”Slavoj Žižek · crisis of ruling class capacity
“The greatest danger is to accept this blackmail of 'do something useful, translate your dreams into concrete proposals.' That would be the greatest defeat today.”Slavoj Žižek · against the blackmail of realism
“Perversion is not subversion. Perversion is always the obscene dark type of how power functions. The true subversion is hysterical questioning.”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria vs perversion
“The system is incredibly open towards naive critique. You simply naively demand something and you ignore all the cynical background.”Slavoj Žižek · naivety as subversion in cynical ideology
Transcript 31 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I hope this works. Thank you very much. I'm very proud, glad to be here. I hope you will not be too disappointed, and I cannot control myself, I want to start with a reference to what just happened here, that problem of your not allowed to sit on the floor and so on. You know, here, I’ve written a lot about it, namely, here we have an example, I think, of how ideology functions at everyday level. You got an order. Okay, a friendly order, advice, but an order. So what do you do? I think you shouldn’t even have protested. Basically, what I would have done is to say, yeah, of course, horrible, one shouldn't sit on the floor there, and then you do nothing, you just go on sitting there, no? What I'm—the reason I'm saying this, now much more serious is that what intrigues me already for over two, three decades is how this ambiguity of commandments or permissions is, I think, absolutely central for the functioning of ideology at the everyday level. On the one hand, we get many commandments, or rather prohibitions, but prohibitions which are, in a way, made to be violated. Like, society prohibits something, but if you really obey, follow it, you are an idiot. The true message is: do it but discreetly, no? But then there is an opposite, even more interesting phenomenon, which is: you are allowed to do something, even solicited to do it, on condition that you don't do it, you know? You are, as it were, you are given a freedom to do something on condition that you don't use that freedom. In other words, and this is what I want to share with you, because I think that this is the authoritarian dimension hidden in—but nonetheless sustaining our permissive societies. How things are permitted, but you should know how to read between the lines and know, is this really—is this really permitted or not and so on and so on. Which is why, and Kafka knew this very well, especially in our societies, permissive societies, I think, it's not only that certain things are de facto prohibited, but to pronounce publicly the prohibition is itself prohibited. Let me use, maybe you know it from one of my books, a standard example from communism, but then I will like—I will use another example from our actual lives. I remember I read this somewhere in a history of Stalinism. This would be the scene: Let us say it's a beautiful dream, that we are in in Moscow, you are the Central Committee, I am Stalin. Okay, I finish my speech, you applaud, then there is a debate. One of you, let's say you, Matthew, is stupid enough to stand up and start—you start to criticize me openly. No, Comrade Stalin is wrong, and so on and so on. Okay, we know what would have happened. The day after, the big question would have been who saw you alive, who was the last to see you alive. But now I'm more evil, and very serious at the same time: let’s imagine that you, for example, would then stand up and start to shout at him: how dare you criticize Comrade Stalin? Aren’t you aware that we don’t do this in Soviet Union? You would disappear even faster. You see the paradox? It wasn’t only prohibited to criticize the authorities, but this prohibition itself was prohibited. You were not allowed to, as it were, to pronounce it publicly. You had to pretend to act as if we can do it, but we just don’t do it because Comrade Stalin is really a great leader, whatever whatever. I claim that something quite similar—I’m sorry, I will be retelling an old joke, I hope at least not all of you don’t know it—happens often even in our daily lives. This is the example I like to use because it happened to me, to my sons, but I didn’t do it to them. Again, imagine it's Sunday afternoon, you are a small boy or girl and your father wants you to visit grandmother. If your father is a traditional authoritarian father, he will do something which I consider totally normal and benevolent, it will not hurt you in any way. He shouts at you a little bit, in the sense of: I don’t know how you feel, it's your duty to visit grandmother and behave nicely there. That’s good, I think, in the sense that you—you will of course resist it, but precisely this resistance will make you even more rebel and so on. But now let’s imagine a much more disgusting image of postmodern permissive father. What would he have told you in a same—he would have told you something like this: you know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, I want you to visit her only if you want to. Now you see what's the trick here? Apparently, he is giving you the freedom of choice, but the message between the lines, it’s a much harsher one than the one of the traditional authoritarian father. The message is: not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it, you have to want to visit her. And again, I think that often, quite often, beneath apparent permissivity you have this kind of a double hidden injunction. And okay, we can go on into this everyday ideology of how again things—and my point, to avoid a misunderstanding, is not simply that this is some kind of a hidden totalitarian dimension. I think that in a way every symbolic order needs this kind of ambiguity. Like on the one hand, again, prohibitions which are precisely not to be taken seriously, and on the other hand permissions which are also not to be taken—not to be taken seriously. I develop this in an old book of mine—I’m really sorry we don’t have a clip then I will start to do my proper work—because this is, I think, the best example of ideology in Hollywood, I would like to develop it to you, maybe again, I’m sorry you know the example. I hope you all saw the mega classic Michael Curtiz's Casablanca. You know the scene which I think it's the best introduction into Hollywood ideology that I can imagine. Two-thirds into the film, in the middle of the night, Ingrid Bergman comes to Rick’s Café, goes on to the second floor up to meet Humphrey Bogart there and okay, she wants to get the famous visas for—for—for the flight to Lisbon, to Porto and so on. So the point is that they have a lovers' fight and shout this usual noir cynical dialogue, you know, she pulls a gun at him and he says go on, shoot me, you will be doing me a favor, all that Mars style. Then they embrace and you have of course fade out. And for two seconds and a half, I think, you see the tower of the Casablanca airport, the light there circling around, and then we return to the same room, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, the same conversation goes on. And of course, the big question here is: did they do it or not? That is to say, is this two seconds and a half just a stand-in for half an hour or whatever where they made love, or it's just the real time? Now that’s the beauty of the film. It's not so much ambiguous as the film gives you two series of opposite signals. On the one hand, there is a whole series of signals that they did do it, that they did it. First, we all know it, in classical Hollywood, if a couple embraces and you have a small fade out, it functions as a signal that they do it. Second thing, I think that after camera—scene returns to them, you see them smoking a cigarette. That’s again—no, no, you—it’s incredibly how Hollywood was classified. If you see a couple smoking a cigarette, it means they just finished making love and so on. You know that saying, what is the second and the third most pleasurable thing in the world? The drink before and the smoke after, or whatever. It was—and not to mention even how that phallic tower can be read as kind of a sexual symbol. So again, we have signs that they did it. At the same time, we get a whole series of signs that they didn’t do it. They are tightly dressed, the same conversation seems to go on. So how does this scene really function? The British film theorist Richard Maltby wrote a wonderful text on this scene where he demonstrates how the message of the movie is precisely fully consciously contradictory. It is as if the movie is addressing you the spectator in this way: we live under the conditions of censorship, so I have to—I have to provide to you, as it were, a safe cover, so that imagine yourself watching the movie and some kind of moral agency asks you, but what are you watching? And you can say, nothing, you see, they just have a conversation. But once you can be covered, as it were, absolved, then at the same time the movie consciously plants, gives you the whole set of elements how to imagine all the horrors of what they were doing and so on and so on. And what is crucial here to bear in mind is that ideology is not just the standard Hays Code moralistic ideology which prohibits showing the sex act and so on. I claim that what is absolutely crucial is that ideology is both dimensions together. Ideology is this innocent appearance—they didn’t do it, they just talk—but at the same time this underground, beneath surface message of you can imagine all you want and so on and so on. Both elements are needed for an ideology to function. All these secret obscene dreams, apparently subversive dreams, don't undermine ideology, they sustain it. Okay, but I’ve written enough about it, this was just an introductory remark. Let me go to the topic: End of the world. Today, why is it today, maybe we are in some sense approaching the end of the world because less and less we even need these two levels. They are collapsing into one. What do I mean by this? I’ve written enough in my books on this general topic. I am not a partisan of that Maya prophecy but I think that if you analyze today’s social, ideological, political situation of our human universe, you can see that we are at multiple levels approaching a certain limit. In the sense that it cannot go on indefinitely the way it goes. Like ecology: we cannot go on exploiting nature the way we do it. Intellectual property: it's absolutely clear that with all these possibilities of copying, downloading, and so on and so on, the idea of private property in intellectual matters is becoming more and more meaningless, and I think this will undermine slowly capitalist logic even from within. Then biogenetics: what does it mean for our freedom and so on. Then new forms of apartheid and so on, more and more people living in slums or excluded. So I don't want to repeat all this that I already did, I want nonetheless to present you something at least basically new. I want to tell you, present here some of the signs of this dimension, the of the end of the world, in the sense that we are approaching, there is on the horizon a certain zero level where things reach a limit. So let me begin with a film that I know already for four, five years because the director who is my friend was kind enough to send me a copy. The premiere of the film was, I think—was, I think, not a premiere but it was shown a month ago here at Toronto Festival if some of you were lucky enough to see it. If not, please go and see it. It's maybe one of the most morally depressing films that I’ve seen. It’s called The Act of Killing, made by a Danish documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer. It was shot in the last years in Indonesia, but they needed years to—so that it's possible to show it in public because of course lives were threatened and so on, you will immediately see why. This film, shot in Medan, Indonesia, mostly in reports on a case of obscenity which reaches to the extreme. There is in Indonesia, all this is real, it’s a documentary, a group of murderous gang members and members of the military—Anwar Congo and some of his friends, this is an Indonesian now politician and officer who in the mid, in you remember when there was a civil war, first the attempted communist coup d'état, then the anti-communist Suharto regime did strike back and around—the idea is that around two and a half million of people, mostly Chinese, allegedly communists, were slaughtered. This group, Anwar Congo and his friends, organized at that time in sixty-six a murderous gang. They were serially raping, torturing, killing thousands of people. Now comes the—they were not only ready, but they even paid Oppenheimer—they didn’t know what he will do with it—to do a film on this. And they without any shame, that's so depressing, they openly display, stage, show, talk about, show some photos, how they were killing, murdering, raping, torturing, and so on. And the high point of obscenity for me at least is a scene when on a local TV show, in October TV show on Indonesian state TV, this group presented itself, and it’s horrible, it's like you know a couple of hundred people public talk with them and a nice lady moderator. And for example this guy Anwar Congo—I mean you have to see it to believe your eyes and ears—for example asks, the lady moderator asks Anwar Congo: tell me, what was your standard procedure for raping ladies? He said, well, it was a problem because they kick back and so on, but finally we found a solution. You need two men and the lady should be on a low table, one man puts a wire around her throat and half—is half strangling her, keeping her down so it’s easier to rape her in this way. And then it goes on, he answers what is the most practical way to torture men, how you cut off his balls, makes—you make him swallow the balls. And it’s just a TV talk show. After he explains this mode of torturing, the moderator says: look how inventive these guys are, one big applause for Mr. Anwar and so on, and they all applaud and so on and so on. I mean it’s absolutely breathtaking. But—and even—so again, you have a group of people who, right-wing murderous thugs who even don’t have this, let’s call it minimum of decency that even the Nazis had. You know, you know what Heinrich Himmler said in that famous speech in Posen, Poznań in This was a speech to SS officers and he was giving them lessons on how to do the Holocaust, and he was telling them: unfortunately, your activity will have to remain a secret, an empty page in history books, but it will nonetheless be the most glorious chapter of German history. But you see, they at least treated it as a private dirty secret. You know, this is the typical right-wing logic, in the sense of: a true patriot is not just the one who is ready to die for his country, but the one who is ready to lose his soul for his country, to do horrible things, this true hero is ready to do crimes for his country. So here it's not even that, they simply publicly boast about it all. And even more, then they explain how they did it, they explain that before they become killers they were in love with Hollywood film noir mostly, Humphrey Bogart all that. So they imagined themselves as noir detective, Humphrey Bogart, whoever, they imagined as being a Hollywood noir hero when they were doing their terrifying acts. This was their imaginary. Now we can do a lot here—I don't have time to go into it—about how—how to put it—the use of poetry in ethnic cleansing. This is my old thesis and I was once almost beaten in my own country by some poets who didn’t like the idea. My formula was: no ethnic cleansing without poetry. You always need a poet. To avoid a misunderstanding, I'm not saying all poets are like that. There are mega great poets. All I'm saying is that I'm a little bit tired as a philosopher to listen for decades, you know, this idea philosophers with their notion of totality, total rationalism, laid the foundation for totalitarianism and so on. Where poets are at least as guilty as we are. Why? It’s very simple, my idea here. We are basically half decent people. If I were to be ordered—let me take you again, sorry, somebody has to suffer—if somebody were to tell me pick a—take a knife and pick your eyes out—well, unfortunately, I would have some problems to do it. So you need some strong quasi-religious mythic narrative which serves as a screen enabling you to do it. So that then through this narrative I no longer perceive myself just as a brutal torturer but something who is doing necessary although cruel things on behalf of some sacred cause, nation and so on and so on. You need—you need something like poetry. And it would be very nice to go through all ethnic cleansing cases that we know. I of course began in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, and discover it's not only Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs who is now in Hague. All other post-Yugoslav nations had their own poets who, as it were, with beautiful national myths laid the foundations for it. Now what—what interests me is—to put it in Lacanian terms of Jacques Lacan, the status of Big Other. Big Other in the sense of the public symbolic order, the unwritten or written rules which determine what is acceptable, what is not acceptable. Another paradox, I want to argue here for a good use of dogmatism. I think that I'm totally in ethical matters for dogmatism. In what sense? Let’s take rape. Sorry, but I wouldn't like to live in a society where you have—you would have to argue all the time against rape. I would like to live in a society where the fact that rape is unacceptable is simply part of our substance, it's automatically assumed, so that if somebody plays this—we all know them—stupid tasteless games, oh but women really enjoy it, they are not—don’t—not ready to admit, you don't even feel the need to—to argue against. The guy just appears as a weird jerk, eccentric, stupid, or whatever. I claim the moment you have to reason, we are already lost. So this is—now let me give you an example here, that’s what terrified me with Ronald Reagan. I remember, you are probably most of you too—too young for this. Once Reagan was accused, Ronald Reagan, that his—some of his friends, that he has many friends who are Holocaust deniers. And he said something which was I think quite funny but in a terrifying way. Namely he read: no, it's not true that I have any sympathy for Holocaust denial. Whenever at my dinner table somebody denies Holocaust, I always insist, no this is not true, there was a Holocaust. Well, the question is: okay, but what kind of friends did he have if he had all the time to argue that there was a Holocaust, you know? So you see my point. My point is, and here I see that we are approaching, as it were, if you want, the end of the world, my point is that isn't what is happening there in Indonesia... and let me be very clear here. I don't want to play any of the two easy games. Either to blame simply global capitalism, like Indonesians are good ethical guys who were just confused by universal capitalism, were thrown out of their ethical—ethical substance and can act like this, put the blame just on the developed West. But I also don't accept of course the opposite Western racist version, you know, like oh primitive Indonesians they don't have any real ethics. No, I think we first—the phenomenon as I will try to show soon is getting much more universal than it may appear. This kind of a, let’s call it disintegration of the Big Other in the very naive—forget about Jacques Lacan here—sense of automatic reliance on certain basic dogmas. Why not? And I think progress can be measured precisely by the level of dogmatism, in the sense that if there are many ethical dogmas which makes—which make rape simply unacceptable, nonsensical, which make—which make, I don't know, racism nonsensical and so on and so on. That’s one of the few signs of progress. So again, the question is: what is happening with the social body that something like that is acceptable? You see my point, I'm not worried about Anwar Congo and those guys. They are just scum, whatever they are. What worries me is what kind of society it is where it is acceptable to talk about this, boast about this in public. And here things are more complex than it may appear. Because let me give you another example. Now I will go through a couple of examples here. Some two decades ago, I think, there was a well-known scandal in Brooklyn, Brooklyn across the river from Manhattan in New York, where a woman was slowly beaten, tortured and killed at a courtyard in the middle of housing development and it was later established that at least seventy people were watching this from their windows, none of them called the police. And what is depressing is that you know, it's not that they would have to identify themselves and then be afraid that the guy would come and also beat them, it could have been done totally anonymously. No one did it. Okay, this was read as an example of moral decadence, disintegration of ordinary people in United States. No, I think it's something more ambiguous that happened here. Because when some sociologists looked into it more in detail, they discovered that all people had the same reaction, namely: I thought someone else will do it. It was just that they relied—everyone relied on someone else. And the interesting thing is that I think someone told me that they tried to do some kind of experiment where they tested this, namely staged artificially of course, a situation where the guy, for example it was more a lonely house who was observing this knew well that he is the only one who is observing it. And in that case almost all of them did call—did call the police. What I want—what I want to say here is that how are we nonetheless to interpret what the two examples nonetheless share? Indonesian example and Brooklyn example, this, let’s call it naively growing indifference, I don't care, or another one will do it, this reluctance to ethically engage yourself. The usual thing to say is to refer to egotism. You know, this is the usual Catholic or generally religious strategy. Oh in our era of hedonist egotism nobody cares for the common good and so on and so on. Well, I'm totally opposed to this reading. Here I want to refer to Walter Benjamin who already said that capitalism is a religious phenomenon. And the way I read this is in a very naive way: look at an ideal capitalist, ideal type I mean. I know some of them, fanatical businessmen. Well, all I can tell you is if ever I encountered a non-hedonist and non-egotist guy, it's a totally dedicated capitalist. My God, a proper capitalist is ready, I don't know, to ruin his family life, practically not to sleep, work nine—night and day just that there is circulation and expansion of capital. It's not—capitalists are not hedonist egotists. They are on the contrary extremely dedicated to some perverted but nonetheless perverted quasi-ethical cause. You know, you have a cause, capital has to circulate and basically you don't care. I ruin nature, I ruin my life, doesn't matter, it has to function. This is why I claim that we don't need to fight for ecology in some stupid moralistic way, like usually people say oh we think only in short terms, what about our children and so on and so on. No, the problem is not that we are too egotist today. The problem is that if we try to rehabilitate the term egotism in a proper way of rational interest in your own good, then I claim paradoxically in our consumerist society of global capitalism it's maybe more difficult than ever to be a real egotist. Because on the one hand, again, as a capitalist you are not egotist, on the other hand even the way commodities function more and more, they don't function in an egotist way. The deepest appeal of commodities is anti-egotism. What do I mean by this? Another sign for me of the end of the world: did you read this now, a month—a little bit over a month ago, in August media reported that from December of this year tobacco companies in Australia will no longer be allowed to display their distinctive colors, brand designs, and logos on cigarette packs. To make smoking as unglamorous as possible, the packs of cigarettes will come in uniformly drab shade of olive and on the—it’s no—it will be without logo, just a cigarette, this, and apart from information that this is a cigarette, you will get—sorry, it will not, I just have here—you will get a big photo extremely disgusting, like of—of—of eye getting blind, of—of—of your lungs open, all black, of an impotent penis, whatever. Absolutely disgusting. The idea is of course to make people to stop—it's obvious the idea. But I claim although, okay, people may think this is no longer commodity universe because there is no logo and so on and so on, there is no longer commodity aesthetics, it's on the contrary. The package of the product openly, graphically draws attention to the dangerous and harm qualities of its product. Is this still then commodity logic? I claim it is and maybe even the most efficient one. This idea came to me in Germany when I saw already years ago there a wonderful, in a terrifying sense, a poster for cigarettes. It wasn’t Marlboro, but they imitated that famous cowboy. Namely it was like this: it was on a poster the usual cowboy and on the bottom of course that obligatory statement: smoking is dangerous for your health. But the cowboy is pointing with his hand, with his finger towards that statement, and the message was in German: jetzt erst recht, now it’s for the real. And I think it was a wonderful male chauvinist message. It was: are you a coward? If you are a true man, now that you know that it's dangerous, now you will do it. I mean I—and I think that from the very beginning consumerism works like this. I don't think we really care about all that bullshit, oh it has so much vitamins, so much this, so much that. In if I may call it in this obscene way, in authentic consumerism there is always I think this excess of—it's dangerous but that’s why I want to do it. In even in, of course this is not consumerism, but even in some traditional societies, in a much more, if you think I doubt, authentic way, they played—for example I was told in Japan that they—that it's a almost sacred ritualistic thing to eat a certain fish and the whole point is that that fish is poisonous and there is a certain chance that you will die. But that’s precisely—that’s precisely the point. So again, my point here is—is that here it's another example of non-egotism, how publicity does not address you simply as an egotist, rational egotist, take care of your health and so on and so on, but beneath all this there is a much stronger superego injunction, no? In—in the sense of you may die and that’s why if you are a true man you will do it and so on and so on. So let me go on. What type of egotism are we then talking about today? Now I come to, I don't know if you know it, I don't think you do, but this is a story even more depressing than the one from Indonesia. I have a friend in China who sent me all the documents about this. It happened a couple of month ago in China, a story which in a strange way resembles one of the Bertolt Brecht’s so-called learning plays. Brecht wrote in a learning play with the title The Exception and the Rule. It’s a simple didactic communist play where a rich merchant and his poor servant are traversing a desert. Because of some storm they almost run out of water and then the merchant—sorry, the servant approaches the merchant with a bottle offering him, because he is a good guy, a little bit of water that he still has. But the merchant thinks that the servant is trying to kill him and kills the servant. Then you have the court in session and the judge gives right to the merchant. Because the judge says: yes, probably this was an exceptionally good servant, but this is the exception. It would have been typical in such a situation for the servant to try to attack the master, so the master was right to react the way he did. Something even more horrible than this—it’s not a joke—happened in China. It was, sorry, already half a decade ago. An elderly in one of these anonymous—no, this was even not anonymous, in Nanjing, a friend sent me all the documentation. An elderly woman fell while getting off a bus, she fell down when the door was open, and a young—she was years old and she broke her hip. Behind her on the bus there was a young decent guy, relatively wealthy but decent. So when he saw my God, woman there falling down, broken, he also stepped down, helped her, and when he saw that she is—she cannot walk, he called a taxi, took her to a hospital, and even gave her a little bit of money. A week later after the woman got home, her relatives convinced her to prosecute the guy. The reasoning was: what normal person would have helped a woman like that? No normal person. So the fact that he helped her means that he must have been responsible, he probably pushed her down. Okay, the thing got to the court, and the depressing thing is that the judge gave right to the woman. The judge said that—that no normal person would have acted—I quote now literally the judgment—no normal person would be as kind as Peng Yu—this guy claimed he was. So since he was so kind, it's clear that he is guilty and he was punished quite a lot of money, a couple of tens of thousand of dollars in US money and so on and so on. Now what is happening here? I think the thing is much more complex than it may appear. It's not simply egotism or whatever, Chinese are basically good people. Something else is happening. Namely this case caused quite a shock of course then in China, and even the official media, the People’s Daily, made big opinion polls. They asked tens of thousands of young people between and what would you have done if you were to walk along the street and you would have to see somebody there bleeding, dying, or whatever, would you have stopped and help him or not? And the situation was made clear, it's not that there is a bad guy there beating the dying person so that you can say no, no, I'm afraid to—no, no, the guy is alone, you don't risk anything, the guy who is dying. The shock was that percent of people said no, I would not help. Then they specified their answer, they said: I would first look around if there is a CCTV, that camera, no? If it is, then maybe I would have helped, if not and so on and so on. So I think that the explanation of this, it's a very sad one, it's that in today’s capitalism, and this is not about China, the limit between public and private space is shifting, changing. This friend of mine in China is a sociologist there and he told me that his reading, and I tend to agree with it, is that more and more with the dissolution of old communal forms, even when we are formally at least in public, like on a square or where with hundreds of other people, even when we are there we still experience ourselves as being in private. We ignore each other, it’s as if we are just different monads, each in our private space passing by each other, but no public. You need something more, like the—the TV camera or whatever to make it a public space proper. And I think the same goes even for sexuality. A friend of mine drew my attention to this because maybe if some of you read my work, you know that I was always intrigued by all the unwritten rules that control hardcore pornography. The reason this interests me is simply because you would have thought that my God, hardcore pornography, what can be more free, to show everything. No, it's probably the most tightly controlled genre that you can imagine. If I may repeat my standard insight, for example in the old days when it was still a story, usually you cannot just show sex, you have some stupid story to—did you notice how as a rule extremely ridiculously stupid this story is? Like I remember one from my youth and even now I’m almost ashamed to think about it, you know, it’s like housewife is alone at home, a plumber comes and says oh lady I finished it, I fixed that hole, leaking hole in the kitchen, and then the housewife says but I have another hole to be fixed, can you... I mean you are just embarrassed, no? Then there was the next step, they told me, so-called Gonzo—ah, for my first reading here: I don't think they can be so stupid. I think that the whole point is that it is as if you have a kind of a choice: if the story, the narrative is serious enough that it engages you, you cannot see it all. If you see it all, full sex, then the story should be ridiculous, like—and I think there is a negative proof of this. You know Catherine Breillat, the French author who is trying to do both, that is to say serious melodramas to call it naively with full hardcore. No wonder she is marginalized, it doesn't work. We really integrate this prohibition. And I think that what’s—so I was told—the predominant form today, so-called Gonzo, where you no longer have the pretense of a story, but actors directly address the cameraman, you know you are all the time reminded that this is just staged for the camera. I think the censorship is here even stronger, as if if you see it all, even a minimal emotional identification should be prohibited. But now in the third stage, it’s something which is, so I was told, I must admit it I checked it up and I’m paying the price because now you know I’m getting every day ten, at least ten of those famous messages, guarantee in two weeks three inches longer and all that. But what I’m saying is that it’s public sex. Interesting enough, I noticed they are mostly from post-communist Eastern Europe, Hungary and Czech Republic mostly. And again it confirms that thesis about the disappearance of public space. For example, I saw one or two Hungarian ones and it’s so depressing, it's not any glamorous part of the city, it's not they don’t do it like in a park or what, no. They take very depressive, like usual morning streetcar, tramway or bus crowded with ordinary people and then simply at a seat a couple starts to—to make love fully, undressing themselves and so on. And you can see from the confused reactions that it's not staged. But what is so shocking is how after the first moment of shock and so on, almost all people decided to ignore it, like it's their private affair. They allow them their private space. So my conclusion from this is another sad one, it's that in contrast to those who complain that because we are all the time controlled, filmed, observed through digital media that privacy is disappearing. No, I think it's the exact opposite that is happening: public life proper is disappearing. I think that all this culture of confession and so on, it's privacy invading public space. Or this is I think also how internet works. Because you know when you tell all your secrets, show your photos, whatever, masturbate in front of your Skype, whatever, the paradox is that you are still alone, you are still private. This is a kind of a shared privacy, you can be wired through all the world but it's absolutely not the same as, you know, that proverbial exhibitionist gesture. That still addresses a public space, the embarrassment here, it’s privacy. That’s another—so what does all this mean for—for sex? Ah, here I'm also a pessimist, not a total pessimist, I just note tendencies. Namely, what I see is that if once promiscuity was transgressive and the idea was that passionate individual sex, love, and so on is patriarchal, oppressive, I think that now more and more it's almost the opposite which is imposed as the norm. What do I mean by this? Okay, let me begin with popular culture and then give you some theoretical examples. Did you see the last James Bond film—not the new one, now Skyfall not shown—Quantum of Solace? Politically pretty progressive, I mean basically to cut a long story short James Bond saves the Morales regime in Bolivia from some company which wants to control water. But did you notice something very strange about this film? It's the first James Bond where at the end there is no sex between Bond and Bond girl. They just embrace, we are too traumatized... okay. Now you will say this is an exception. I'm not so sure. Now I go to the really lowest of the lowest. Did you see some Dan Brown films or novels? Did you notice for example that already in The Da Vinci Code you have a couple, Robert Langdon and the grand-grand-grand-Sophie daughter of Christ, but there is no sex between the two of them. And I claim that we have here a kind of a strange displacement: even Jesus Christ has to engage in love—you know the thesis of the film, the secret—to cover up the fact that there is no sex here, you know? I think it's strictly correlative: you have sex up there but not here. With Angels Demons it’s even worse. There still is sex in the novel between Vittoria Vetra the scientist and the same Robert Langdon at the end, but did you notice in the film there is no sex? Where are we coming? Once we said Hollywood is adding sex to make the story more attractive, now Hollywood is—is deleting sex and so on. I think this is again a very sad tendency. The tendency is that sex is effectively becoming less and less authentically intersubjective. It's becoming—it is more and more solipsistic. I will tell you a story, maybe you know it, it was told to me by my good friend Alain Badiou and then I checked it up in the states you have the same phenomenon. Namely in French and in English it works, you say you use the verb fall, you say tomber amoureux, fall, to fall in love. Okay, but you found a publicity of one dating and marriage agency in France where basically the message was: we will enable you to find yourself in love without the fall, sans tomber. And then I found an American agency who is doing the same. And I found this very sad because the idea is this one: with all the permissivity and so on, but you know what is love? Love is by definition a fall. If I exaggerate a little bit, love is: I walk on the street quite accidentally I stumble upon a person and oh my God all my ordinary life is ruined, now I have a new focus, everything changes. Authentic love is very traumatic in this sense. Even passionate sex is traumatic in this sense: you are obsessed by it, like I want to have sex with that person even if I die, even if whatever. And I claim that more and more this is experienced as too much. I claim the predominant ideology today is not marry and procreate, no, the predominant ideology today I claim is some kind of enlightened Western Buddhism I call it. Be authentically yourself, or as they say, the stupid Yodas in Star Wars, don't get too attached to worldly subjects, which means precisely don't fall. Don't get attached, keep distance. This is my eternal problem with otherwise my personal friend Judith Butler. I agree with her description, you know: sex, sorry, our sexual identity is not eternally naturally given, it's performatively enacted through rituals of repetition, ironic displacement. My problem is just why does she think that she is describing anything subversive? I claim she is describing precisely the predominant ideology today. Now you will say but what about neoconservative backlash? Ah, I claim it's exactly that: just a backlash, a reaction. The action is this one. We are interpellated into this safety. Safety in the sense of no fall. Safe sex. Or you know my story I always repeat it at all level of consumerism: like beer yes but without alcohol, and whatever, sweet—chocolate yes but without sugar, and so on and so on. To get thing, the thing, a product without this potentially dangerous dimension. And that’s my problem with multiculturalism. Of course I am for other cultures, but that official multiculturalism and tolerance also wants the other without the fall. You know, the other who is like us and then you idealize the other, which is for me the worst form of racism. Like I had the experience of my lifetime when I met a couple of years ago in Missoula, Montana, three or four so-called Native Americans. First they protested about this term. I love them, they said: we are Native Americans, so you are cultural, we are native or what? They—they told me we much prefer be called Indians because at least our name is a monument to white man's stupidity, then, you know, they thought they are in India. They—in a very nice way they immediately detect this—you know, they—they told me they hate so much when white guys come to them and say you are wonderful, holistic, sensitive, and so on. No, with such proud I love them, they told me: fuck you white people, we burned more forest, we killed more buffaloes than you ever will do and so on, because they got very well how false this celebration of, you know, harmonious holistic approach of them is and so on and so on, no? So again, what I'm saying is that that’s the paradox of our era, where the more we talk about tolerance, the more intolerant we are. And again, this is what bothers me in this obsession with harassment. Of course I'm against harassment when it's real harassment. My God, there are rapes and I'm one of the few people that I know who is still for death penalty and I’m here radical for punishing them—don’t have any understanding for rapists. All I'm saying is that with harassment it can get more problematic, as many intelligent also feminist critics pointed out, that those if you go to the end in this logic of no harassment, basically you end up as they say consensual sex. Of course I'm for consensual sex if it simply means no one is raped, we are both for it. But this consensual sex then all of a sudden turns into contractual sex, you know, as two rational people we make a contract, you do this to me, I do this to you, and so on and so on. Okay, why not if you enjoy it, I have nothing against it. All I'm saying is that when you have authentic passionate love, in the process of seduction, and not necessarily from the side of the man, you always necessarily have to do something, that crucial step which retroactively, it depends on the receiver, can be proclaimed to be a harassment. Harassment means simply in all brutality I show you, I display my desire. You know where you have a very nice scene, although they are pseudo-intellectuals I don't like them, that guy Iñárritu the director, did you see his with Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, his nice movie or Grams? Grams. Don't—let's not go into Freudian water, what is it. When he, Sean Penn, tells her Naomi Watts well that he loves her. And her reaction is: do you know how brutal this is? How dare you tell me something like that? Do you know that you ruined my life and so on? In a way she is right, this is love. Again, so quite often I claim what this fear of harassment covers is precisely a fear of effective intersubjectivity, proximity of the other. Which is why I claim more and more the ideal, even if we have still real sex with real partners, the unwritten ideal is more and more sex with artificial plastic whatever props. Like I recently I found—you can google it, just put in Stamina training unit, I love it, I found this one. It’s a kind of a—it looks from outside as a large light, so that you are not embarrassed. But then you open the top and it's an entry. Now comes the beauty. Which entry? Ah, you can get plastic versions of vaginal entry, anal entry, mouth, you put it on, then you can regulate the—the vibration, the tightness and so on. And so I claim that where are we here? What are we approaching? Did you see the movie which I think is a mega classic, the old—now old—British dystopia Terry Gilliam’s Brazil? There is a wonderful scene towards the beginning when they, the rich people with the hero of them Jonathan Pryce, go to a restaurant and they have to select food. And it's a stroke of genius: what they get when they are served food is a plate, what is on the plate is just a shit-like—like just something like—like a piece of shit formless piece of mud, and then a photo of the—of the exquisite steak with all the—so the idea is: you eat that shit, but the photo tells you what. And I think that’s how love more and more functions, you know? You just need some minimal prop, piece of shit, to masturbate with your fantasy. I claim that in this sense even when we really make love, we more and more masturbate. We masturbate with a real partner. It's possible. Because you know in the same—like the partner is here more and more just to do the work of your hand or whatever, but you are really—you remain with your fantasy. Now to conclude, if I can conclude a little bit, which then would be generally the ideology that would fit this situation? I claim, but I have deep respect for Buddhism, now I'm talking about our type of Western Buddhism. I claim it's the way this oriental spirituality functions today. On the one hand, as I already developed in some of my books, I claim that no wonder that the majority of top managers today do some type of oriental spirituality and so on. I think that to survive in a dynamic of today’s capitalism you simply go crazy if you fully identify with it. The only way to survive is to maintain a distance, to say it's just a crazy dance of appearances, I'm not really there and so on and so on. On the other hand, now I come to the interesting point, this is the most radical maybe aspect of the end of the world as we know it. And when I say the end of the world, I don't mean only in a bad sense, I'm just saying we are approaching a certain limit. Who knows what will come? Maybe a better world, maybe a bad world. We, I think, should nonetheless take seriously the results of today’s cognitivism and brain sciences which—and I'm not interested here in the fact: is it true or not, I have my doubts about it—but the point is that the point they are making and it's taken seriously is that, you know the result: we first, we have no free will, and point two, soon it will be possible to directly link our brain to external machines. And the consequences can be quite radical here. For example, I met some scientists in Germany who together with American scientists—they even the Germans send me some videos—you know, for example, they already decoded the signals a rat is sending to its legs when it moves around. So I saw it on DVD, on DVD at least. What you can do is this: you have a rat in a cage, the rat is freely jumping around. Then you click a button, the rat is connected. And you can literally control the rat like—remote control car, left, right and so on. Because again, through this link you give signals to her neurons which are giving direction and so on. Now I spoke with these scientists and of course they are doing what I always suspected that they are doing. What they are really interested is to do this on a human being, and they are afraid to go with this into public that there will be some ethical outcry, but they hinted at me that the result is the predictable one. Namely what interests them in this: let’s say now you will be the good guy or the bad—you control me, no? Like I walk here freely around, I don't know when you push the button, so that you control my neurons which give orders of turn left, right, forward. How will I experience this? And they told me that it looks that the paranoiac bad solution is the true one. That is to say, I will not even know the time controlled. It will not be, oh my God some foreign power took over. I will still continue to think that I freely roam around. And all that stuff then, you know, this how you can move already objects with thoughts and so on—all okay. My problem is to conclude the following one: how will we subjectivize this if we will have to accept—at least the scientific ideology is telling us this, I don't think it's true, but nonetheless—that in this sense we are not free. There is no ego, there is no self which is autonomous, free, we are just the result of complex neuronal mechanisms and so on and so on. There are, as far as I can see, four main attitudes here. The first one is the naive dualism. Most of the scientists think that it is true that we have no free will, but in our daily life the way we are wired, constructed, is that we necessarily experience ourselves as having free will. So there will forever be a gap between scientific knowledge and how we experience ourselves. The second position, more radical, interesting but I think illusory, is the one of more radical cognitivists like that Californian couple Patricia and Paul Churchland, where they claim we can imagine our awareness to change according to the state of our knowledge. They say in the same way that once people thought they are obsessed by demons, but now when you go crazy we know it's not demons, it's just your madness, we can also imagine a society where people would communicate blah blah without their activity being sustained by the notions of free will, moral responsibility and so on. You have this position. Then you have some other positions, I will not lose time, but the most interesting position for me here is the one developed by the German scientist Thomas Metzinger who claims that although insofar as we remain in our ordinary state of mind, we cannot ever accept the result of cognitivism. Like we can rationally know it, but you cannot really live it. You never treat yourself as if you are just a neuronal automaton. He says except Buddhism. If you reach the Buddhist enlightenment where you accept Anātman, you have no self and so on, that Buddhist enlightenment is the only existential position which fits the result of modern science. Now this—and now I will slowly finish, but I hope you got naively my message. At a couple of levels: from this sexuality, personal identity, moral responsibility and so on, I just wanted to outline a certain zero level that we are approaching, where we will no longer experience ourselves as free responsible beings, where—again, all moral consideration will fall away, we will live in a kind of a universalized—society of universalized privacy, shameless, and so on and so on, all that stuff. I—I am not a pessimist in the sense that this is our fate. But I think that the only way to fight this fate paradoxically is to accept it as fate. I claim that what we have to do is precisely to paint a dark picture of where things move if we just let them to move spontaneously where they go. And this picture again, it's interesting because it's a society in which overcoming of morality and total self-naturalization will coexist with some kind of a new aseptic totally non-sexual spirituality. And it would be so interesting to compare here early Soviet communism with today’s technological Gnostics. You know all those crazy stories about how technology will bring us to some kind of collective identity where we will live eternally just downloading ourselves as a software program from one to another identity, all that. Do you know that all this was already dreamed throughout the twenties in the Soviet Union? Even Trotsky wrote something about it. The idea was that the true task of Bolsheviks is not only to change society but to create a new man. And the predominant reading of this new man was—that's crucial—that he is asexual. Sexuality was—it was really a kind of a spiritual materialist Gnosticism. The predominant attitude of Soviet psychologists in the twenties under the influence of Pavlov—although Pavlov was against Bolsheviks privately but he was the key influence—it was that sexual arousal is the basic weakness of Homo sapiens, that it's unnatural. And it's incredible how what the most advanced dreamers of the Soviet Union in the twenties invented was something that you already find in Saint Augustine and some Christians. Namely Saint Augustine, when he speaks about sexuality, he says of course—of course there was sex in Paradise, but it wasn't sex in this sense of arousal. Like a man was able to get erection in the same totally controlled way in which you raise your hand to work on a field and so on. It was just pure instrumental activity. And then you maybe know, it's beautiful, what Saint Augustine—the title of the work is De nuptiis et concupiscentia, what he develops there: that sexuality is not the source of sin, but it's the punishment for the sin. He claims the original sin of man is that he wanted to be like God, master. But then God tells him, I will punish you and I will punish you so that you will have a desire that you will not control. So that you wanted to be the master of the world like me, haha, I will install a drive in you of which even in your own house you will not be the master. And then Saint Augustine has a wonderful theory of erection, where he says that erection is the ultimate revenge on God towards to men. He says that: I will take one of your organs, penis, and you will not control it. Like you will want it to get up, ah it will not, or when it will be most embarrassing for you, it will get up and so on and so on. So the idea is precisely the non-controllable status of erection is God’s reminder of our finitude. Like: you dare to... So what I'm saying is that the goal explicitly is to get out of this dimension. And here I think we should be very open. Through cloning, through all this, maybe sexuality will disappear, sexuality as we know it, which is not biological. The problem is what will remain of human sexuality the way we know it. Because again, human sexuality is not the same as we all know as natural sexuality. We can imagine a copulation which is totally mechanic and there is nothing sexual about it. Human sexuality is something totally different, I tried to develop it something, it's always linked to failure, repetition, and so on. In what sense? Let me imagine an very everyday obscene scene. Let's say I'm shaking a hand to one of you. Instead of dropping the hand, I go on squeezing it rhythmically. Admit it, your association would be what dirty plans, what—like the situation would go—through just doing repeatedly what normally is done only once, the situation would go sexual in a very embarrassing way. And so something much more mysterious that goes... so what will be the fate of that? So what's my point here? I'm sorry if it appeared that I'm painting some dark picture whatever. No, I'm just saying that, and with this I really want to conclude, do you know that what Virginia Woolf—otherwise I must say I hate her, I think she was a frigid bitch, I think that—that Daphne du Maurier is greater writer than Virginia Woolf, I was almost lynched for saying this at some—but she did something wonderful. You know that in April in in her essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown from she said that it's one—on or about April human nature changed and so on. This wonderful British style of this pseudo-empiricism, like the most famous statement in these lines is, you know, a theologian in mid-19th century claimed God created the world four thousand and something years B.C. at nine in the morning and so on, you know. But what I'm saying is that with all the changes we are living now, it's not just the capitalist dynamic, it's what biogenetics means, what all this stuff happening with our desires means and so on, I think that effectively the very basic dimension of what is to be human is changing. In this sense I claim it's the end of the world, it's the end of the world as we know it. It will change what does it mean to have sex, to be human and so on. But it's not still I think determinism in the sense of new catastrophe or whatever. The situation is open, more than ever. And this is my concluding paradox: you know, it looks as if we can't really change anything, even after September 11th, sorry, I mean Occupy Wall Street, even after that one. No because you know I am a leftist here, you know when you say September 11th my association is always the putsch against Salvador Allende, you know? We should remember the true September 11th, organized, paid by the United States. You know that the smoking gun was found there. Kissinger signed a letter authorizing the murder of that Chilean minister. But what I'm saying is that on the one hand the situation may appear to be desperate, like my God, like... and it IS desperate, in the sense that leftists were telling us for decades when our situation was relatively prosperous, you remember they were telling us: ah, now we have apparent welfare, but wait a minute, there will be the crisis blah blah. Where the crisis is here. Revolts and so on, and did the left propose anything? I am not aware of any viable plan, even general idea, you can maybe correct me here. I met demonstrators and on Zuccotti Park, Frankfurt and so on, and I was always asking them a simple stupid question: what do you want? And I got answers like we want a more just capitalism, it’s—you know it’s—but I don't blame them. I think that the tragedy of our situation is the following one, and this should be again paradoxically at the same time the source of our hope. Namely, when people tell me but do you think really that we can change anything? Well, my answer is: I don't know that, but I DO know that things are ALREADY changing radically. That everything is changing so fast. That’s some aspects I tried to identify, discern today. In our economy, in our—and it's not just capital—look for example again, look at today’s capitalism. I think the whole digital phenomena and so on is much more ambiguous. It may be a triumph of capitalism, but you can see how at the same time the more we have this informational technology, the more private property itself becomes almost meaningless. I mean soon everything will be downloading and so on and so on, it will not be possible to control it, so again my point is this one: when people tell me nothing can be changed, no it can because things are already changing like crazy. And what we should say is just this: if we let things change the way they are changing automatically, we are approaching a kind of a new perverse permissively authoritarian society, which will be authoritarian but in a new way. Which is why I don't like terms like neo-fascism and so on, you know. I mean to use these terms means just you are too lazy to think what really is new. And this is what should give us a motivation to act. Things are already changing. Will we simply follow this change? Well, so again things are changing. I don't think that if we do nothing we will simply go on enjoying our relative, at least in some parts of the world, prosperity. No, I think that again even my God, even Fukuyama himself the last time I met him confessed to me, he is an honest guy, I like honest conservatives, that to put it in an ironic way he is no longer a Fukuyamaist. He told me that with biogenetics, financial crisis and so on, that his idea of the end of history is over. He admits it. Things are radically changing. And this is what should worry us. We should return the question to those in power. Because you know what’s more and more my impression if I look around at the present state of economy, that you know my answer to the leftist paranoiacs who claim ooh there are some people, mysterious meetings somewhere between Washington and China and Wall Street deciding everything. I'm tempted to say, I'm asking God, praying that it would at least be like that, but it’s not. I really don't think we still have a ruling class which is able to rule properly. The situation is much more horrible. I don't think there is some big ruling class manipulating everything. They don't know what is happening, they themselves don't know what is happening. In Europe where I come from, this is even more obvious than anywhere else. So again, the very reason to worry should be already what motivates us to think what is happening maybe to do something. I spoke for much too long but haha what can you do, you had to listen, no. Thanks very much for your patience. Stop, stop, you know what’s my usual joke: wait till we communists take power because then you WILL have to applaud for long time today, save the energy for then. Okay, so I think we have about minutes for questions. Um, so I think there are microphones on the sides here, so... and I promise that I will try to be really short in my answers. Okay, so I think we have—we’ll start over here on this side, please. Given your understanding of ideology, that um, we are conscious of oppression, domination, and yet we go about our business like it’s, you know, like it’s every other day. Yeah. How do you think we should approach, or how one could approach the possibility of a post-capitalist future that is a communist future, one that is not an abstract universal but a concrete reality? And I think you mentioned it implicitly, but I’m still looking for an answer. No, no, it's a very good question because again, um, from the idea that even if we know what we are doing we are still doing it, my conclusion is not—what is the conclusion even of some of my leftist friends, and I disagree with them here, for example they are not the same but they share this: Fredric Jameson and Noam Chomsky. They think that today the ruling ideology is so cynical that we no longer need the critique of ideology, because in order to have a critique of ideology, you still have to have an ideology which at least takes itself seriously, no? No, no, no, I claim that the lesson of what I’m saying when I develop this theory of cynicism is not oh, all resistance is already included, we cannot do it. No, no, no, at the same time the system is much more vulnerable than it may appear. We have many strategies here. First, I maybe didn't emphasize enough this: I don't believe in globalized cynicism. I claim that every cynic has a weak point. Nobody is totally a cynic. You know, even like take Hitler, yeah he liked dogs, small children, you know, you may be ruthless murderer but you have some private oasis no, but here I am a good... you know what I mean, like... so that’s one point. Second point, um, it is crucial that no ideology is consistent. Like what I said at the beginning about that how ideology always relies on unwritten rules, you have to transgress... so there is a—one of possible strategies would be the one which I practiced modestly when I was young against communist regime. It's to take the ruling ideology more seriously than it takes itself. In my country it worked wonderfully because the system was so cynical that the communists in power, what they were really afraid was someone to take the official Yugoslav ideology seriously. Literally, it’s so literally true. I remember two of my friends, it’s old story I repeat it always, they had a job at the Central Committee of Slovene Communist Party, they lost their job because they really believed in the system. And this was considered as a first step towards—you know and so on and so on. So again—so again there are—if anything there are one way which opens up again is naivety. I—I believe that in this totally cynical functioning the system is incredibly open towards naive critique. Like you simply naively demand something and you ignore all the cynical background and so on and so on. What is more of a problem if you ask me for me is: look, the only serious economic idea, I doubt how much serious it is that we have, because even today look, ask Wall Street people and so on majority what they—what they want. The majority I claim has some kind of a vaguely Keynesian welfare state idea. We need to control banks, we need to spend more on education, blah blah. That’s the basic idea. I doubt if it works. Then you have that dream of local communities, direct democracy, and so on. I claim this doesn't work. Doesn't work in the sense of you cannot universalize it. I claim on the contrary to confront all the ecological problems and so on, the big task is to reinvent mega large processes of collective decision and so on. So—so the problem for me here is: are we really able to provide a global vision beyond capitalism? I mean you know it sounds easy but like—like in a way okay now I will—I am still a communist my God, but I will tell you something terribly cynical. You know when people, I hate leftists who claim yes we know how things are just the majority are stupid people entrapped in ideology. Well, if I were to be an ordinary guy, I doubt if I were to cast my vote for today’s radical left because like as an ordinary person you have the right—you know I hate leftists I know I will not name them but many high academic leftists who despise ordinary people, they just care for their children, money and so on. Where my God, imagine yourself a modest worker who has two, three children and so on, you worry. You—here I even understand, you know when people were arrogant saying in Egypt why didn’t the majority follow? The majority worries about their survival and so on and so on. So again, um, I see—but at the same—then why am I still a communist? You know why? Because at the same time I don't believe that things can go on the way they go on. Because my social democratic friends are telling me you should become more modest, accept it, we remain within this space just with local struggles we try to make things better. I think that will not be enough. I really believe that the system is approaching a deep structural crisis, and I'm not saying this will happen next year, it can drag on and so on, but I think um so many things are happening, from ecology to new forms of poverty, hunger, chaos. For example, all this problem of immigrants, apartheid and so on, I think the message of this is very sad one. It's that, you know, the idea of Marx was still that capitalism can afford what Marxists call formal freedom. We can all be legally free, but since you have maybe, maybe not a factory, I don’t, I have to sell my labor force to you. I don’t think capitalism can still afford as a universal level this freedom. I think we will get more and more first class, second class citizens, exclusions and so on and so on. So you know, the problem is not can we do it? The problem is that if we don't do it then we are approaching a very dark sad new authoritarian, I don't know how to call it, society and already this is typical. How do we really know for example what is emerging now in China? This is what I would worry. For example this as I always repeat, this new, poetically we call it capitalism with Asian values. Of course it has nothing to do with Asia. It has but it’s something else. It's a capitalism which is, at least it looks for now, more dynamic productive than our Western liberal capitalism, but it looks that it functions perfectly without democracy. This should worry us, you know. People were usually claiming democracy and capitalism go together. Yes, till now let's be frank, it did appear this. But now capitalism is obviously functioning better, much better, with if there is a democracy, a tightly controlled democracy. So why not, at some point I was tempted, frankly I visited recently Singapore and it's kind of a fascism with a human face, haha. Why not if that functions? But of course it's a dream, it doesn't work because Singapore is an exception, a merchant state, you know what I mean. We all cannot become Singapore and so on. The problem is—the problem is when people say again that we are utopians. My answer is no, the utopia is that things can remain and go on indefinitely the way they are. We will have to invent something, maybe we will not, but then it will really be a new authoritarian society and so on and so on. So I know I didn’t answer your question but who did? Okay, another thing. Look, the only creative idea that I know is the idea of what in Brazil they call Renta Básica, citizen’s income. But are they afraid what this is? I read Van Parijs, that—that Belgian economist who invented it. This is precisely an attempt to reinstall welfare state capitalism. The idea is today’s capitalism is so productive that while remaining within capitalism society can afford to pay minimum wage for everyone. So it’s—it's in a way, especially funny is if you try to account for citizen's income in the terms of Marxist theory of exploitation. Because then you have to say that what those partisans of citizen’s income propose is that the workers who will still be working should be even more exploited, that they should be paying capitalists, the state, and the unemployed and so on and so on. I found this a pretty sad thing. That um more than ever maybe we cannot even realistically imagine a beyond of capitalism. Pundits and social theorists alike have labeled it as hysterical. Do you see any sort of radical political potential in this hysteria, and more specifically in the figure of the hysteric? And I ask this question um as a kind of restaging of the way Lacan was a commentary of May and the way he responded to the fundamental sort of chez vous that the hysteric asked at that point. And he responded, of course, they’re asking for another master and they’ll get one. It’s a very good question and the only problem is that to answer it fully it’s half an hour, but very briefly. My first answer would have been to rehabilitate the term hysteria. Here I am a good feminist: it's not a chance that psychoanalysis emerged through hysterical patients. You know, the ordinary vulgar theory is: hysterics are weak women who just provoke a master, they don't know what they want. The truly radical guys are perverts, you know? Hysterics just—even Freud once has this total misformulation where he says a pervert guy does
I hope this works. Thank you very much. I'm very proud, glad to be here. I hope you will not be too disappointed, and I cannot control myself, I want to start with a reference to what just happened here, that problem of your not allowed to sit on the floor and so on. You know, here, I’ve written a lot about it, namely, here we have an example, I think, of how ideology functions at everyday level. You got an order. Okay, a friendly order, advice, but an order. So what do you do? I think you shouldn’t even have protested. Basically, what I would have done is to say, yeah, of course, horrible, one shouldn't sit on the floor there, and then you do nothing, you just go on sitting there, no? What I'm—the reason I'm saying this, now much more serious is that what intrigues me already for over two, three decades is how this ambiguity of commandments or permissions is, I think, absolutely central for the functioning of ideology at the everyday level. On the one hand, we get many commandments, or rather prohibitions, but prohibitions which are, in a way, made to be violated. Like, society prohibits something, but if you really obey, follow it, you are an idiot. The true message is: do it but discreetly, no? But then there is an opposite, even more interesting phenomenon, which is: you are allowed to do something, even solicited to do it, on condition that you don't do it, you know? You are, as it were, you are given a freedom to do something on condition that you don't use that freedom. In other words, and this is what I want to share with you, because I think that this is the authoritarian dimension hidden in—but nonetheless sustaining our permissive societies. How things are permitted, but you should know how to read between the lines and know, is this really—is this really permitted or not and so on and so on. Which is why, and Kafka knew this very well, especially in our societies, permissive societies, I think, it's not only that certain things are de facto prohibited, but to pronounce publicly the prohibition is itself prohibited. Let me use, maybe you know it from one of my books, a standard example from communism, but then I will like—I will use another example from our actual lives. I remember I read this somewhere in a history of Stalinism. This would be the scene: Let us say it's a beautiful dream, that we are in in Moscow, you are the Central Committee, I am Stalin. Okay, I finish my speech, you applaud, then there is a debate. One of you, let's say you, Matthew, is stupid enough to stand up and start—you start to criticize me openly. No, Comrade Stalin is wrong, and so on and so on. Okay, we know what would have happened. The day after, the big question would have been who saw you alive, who was the last to see you alive. But now I'm more evil, and very serious at the same time: let’s imagine that you, for example, would then stand up and start to shout at him: how dare you criticize Comrade Stalin? Aren’t you aware that we don’t do this in Soviet Union? You would disappear even faster. You see the paradox? It wasn’t only prohibited to criticize the authorities, but this prohibition itself was prohibited. You were not allowed to, as it were, to pronounce it publicly. You had to pretend to act as if we can do it, but we just don’t do it because Comrade Stalin is really a great leader, whatever whatever. I claim that something quite similar—I’m sorry, I will be retelling an old joke, I hope at least not all of you don’t know it—happens often even in our daily lives. This is the example I like to use because it happened to me, to my sons, but I didn’t do it to them. Again, imagine it's Sunday afternoon, you are a small boy or girl and your father wants you to visit grandmother. If your father is a traditional authoritarian father, he will do something which I consider totally normal and benevolent, it will not hurt you in any way. He shouts at you a little bit, in the sense of: I don’t know how you feel, it's your duty to visit grandmother and behave nicely there. That’s good, I think, in the sense that you—you will of course resist it, but precisely this resistance will make you even more rebel and so on. But now let’s imagine a much more disgusting image of postmodern permissive father. What would he have told you in a same—he would have told you something like this: you know how much your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless, I want you to visit her only if you want to. Now you see what's the trick here? Apparently, he is giving you the freedom of choice, but the message between the lines, it’s a much harsher one than the one of the traditional authoritarian father. The message is: not only you have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it, you have to want to visit her. And again, I think that often, quite often, beneath apparent permissivity you have this kind of a double hidden injunction. And okay, we can go on into this everyday ideology of how again things—and my point, to avoid a misunderstanding, is not simply that this is some kind of a hidden totalitarian dimension. I think that in a way every symbolic order needs this kind of ambiguity. Like on the one hand, again, prohibitions which are precisely not to be taken seriously, and on the other hand permissions which are also not to be taken—not to be taken seriously. I develop this in an old book of mine—I’m really sorry we don’t have a clip then I will start to do my proper work—because this is, I think, the best example of ideology in Hollywood, I would like to develop it to you, maybe again, I’m sorry you know the example. I hope you all saw the mega classic Michael Curtiz's Casablanca. You know the scene which I think it's the best introduction into Hollywood ideology that I can imagine. Two-thirds into the film, in the middle of the night, Ingrid Bergman comes to Rick’s Café, goes on to the second floor up to meet Humphrey Bogart there and okay, she wants to get the famous visas for—for—for the flight to Lisbon, to Porto and so on. So the point is that they have a lovers' fight and shout this usual noir cynical dialogue, you know, she pulls a gun at him and he says go on, shoot me, you will be doing me a favor, all that Mars style. Then they embrace and you have of course fade out. And for two seconds and a half, I think, you see the tower of the Casablanca airport, the light there circling around, and then we return to the same room, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, the same conversation goes on. And of course, the big question here is: did they do it or not? That is to say, is this two seconds and a half just a stand-in for half an hour or whatever where they made love, or it's just the real time? Now that’s the beauty of the film. It's not so much ambiguous as the film gives you two series of opposite signals. On the one hand, there is a whole series of signals that they did do it, that they did it. First, we all know it, in classical Hollywood, if a couple embraces and you have a small fade out, it functions as a signal that they do it. Second thing, I think that after camera—scene returns to them, you see them smoking a cigarette. That’s again—no, no, you—it’s incredibly how Hollywood was classified. If you see a couple smoking a cigarette, it means they just finished making love and so on. You know that saying, what is the second and the third most pleasurable thing in the world? The drink before and the smoke after, or whatever. It was—and not to mention even how that phallic tower can be read as kind of a sexual symbol. So again, we have signs that they did it. At the same time, we get a whole series of signs that they didn’t do it. They are tightly dressed, the same conversation seems to go on. So how does this scene really function? The British film theorist Richard Maltby wrote a wonderful text on this scene where he demonstrates how the message of the movie is precisely fully consciously contradictory. It is as if the movie is addressing you the spectator in this way: we live under the conditions of censorship, so I have to—I have to provide to you, as it were, a safe cover, so that imagine yourself watching the movie and some kind of moral agency asks you, but what are you watching? And you can say, nothing, you see, they just have a conversation. But once you can be covered, as it were, absolved, then at the same time the movie consciously plants, gives you the whole set of elements how to imagine all the horrors of what they were doing and so on and so on. And what is crucial here to bear in mind is that ideology is not just the standard Hays Code moralistic ideology which prohibits showing the sex act and so on. I claim that what is absolutely crucial is that ideology is both dimensions together. Ideology is this innocent appearance—they didn’t do it, they just talk—but at the same time this underground, beneath surface message of you can imagine all you want and so on and so on. Both elements are needed for an ideology to function. All these secret obscene dreams, apparently subversive dreams, don't undermine ideology, they sustain it. Okay, but I’ve written enough about it, this was just an introductory remark. Let me go to the topic: End of the world. Today, why is it today, maybe we are in some sense approaching the end of the world because less and less we even need these two levels. They are collapsing into one. What do I mean by this? I’ve written enough in my books on this general topic. I am not a partisan of that Maya prophecy but I think that if you analyze today’s social, ideological, political situation of our human universe, you can see that we are at multiple levels approaching a certain limit. In the sense that it cannot go on indefinitely the way it goes. Like ecology: we cannot go on exploiting nature the way we do it. Intellectual property: it's absolutely clear that with all these possibilities of copying, downloading, and so on and so on, the idea of private property in intellectual matters is becoming more and more meaningless, and I think this will undermine slowly capitalist logic even from within. Then biogenetics: what does it mean for our freedom and so on. Then new forms of apartheid and so on, more and more people living in slums or excluded. So I don't want to repeat all this that I already did, I want nonetheless to present you something at least basically new. I want to tell you, present here some of the signs of this dimension, the of the end of the world, in the sense that we are approaching, there is on the horizon a certain zero level where things reach a limit. So let me begin with a film that I know already for four, five years because the director who is my friend was kind enough to send me a copy. The premiere of the film was, I think—was, I think, not a premiere but it was shown a month ago here at Toronto Festival if some of you were lucky enough to see it. If not, please go and see it. It's maybe one of the most morally depressing films that I’ve seen. It’s called The Act of Killing, made by a Danish documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer. It was shot in the last years in Indonesia, but they needed years to—so that it's possible to show it in public because of course lives were threatened and so on, you will immediately see why. This film, shot in Medan, Indonesia, mostly in reports on a case of obscenity which reaches to the extreme. There is in Indonesia, all this is real, it’s a documentary, a group of murderous gang members and members of the military—Anwar Congo and some of his friends, this is an Indonesian now politician and officer who in the mid, in you remember when there was a civil war, first the attempted communist coup d'état, then the anti-communist Suharto regime did strike back and around—the idea is that around two and a half million of people, mostly Chinese, allegedly communists, were slaughtered. This group, Anwar Congo and his friends, organized at that time in sixty-six a murderous gang. They were serially raping, torturing, killing thousands of people. Now comes the—they were not only ready, but they even paid Oppenheimer—they didn’t know what he will do with it—to do a film on this. And they without any shame, that's so depressing, they openly display, stage, show, talk about, show some photos, how they were killing, murdering, raping, torturing, and so on. And the high point of obscenity for me at least is a scene when on a local TV show, in October TV show on Indonesian state TV, this group presented itself, and it’s horrible, it's like you know a couple of hundred people public talk with them and a nice lady moderator. And for example this guy Anwar Congo—I mean you have to see it to believe your eyes and ears—for example asks, the lady moderator asks Anwar Congo: tell me, what was your standard procedure for raping ladies? He said, well, it was a problem because they kick back and so on, but finally we found a solution. You need two men and the lady should be on a low table, one man puts a wire around her throat and half—is half strangling her, keeping her down so it’s easier to rape her in this way. And then it goes on, he answers what is the most practical way to torture men, how you cut off his balls, makes—you make him swallow the balls. And it’s just a TV talk show. After he explains this mode of torturing, the moderator says: look how inventive these guys are, one big applause for Mr. Anwar and so on, and they all applaud and so on and so on. I mean it’s absolutely breathtaking. But—and even—so again, you have a group of people who, right-wing murderous thugs who even don’t have this, let’s call it minimum of decency that even the Nazis had. You know, you know what Heinrich Himmler said in that famous speech in Posen, Poznań in This was a speech to SS officers and he was giving them lessons on how to do the Holocaust, and he was telling them: unfortunately, your activity will have to remain a secret, an empty page in history books, but it will nonetheless be the most glorious chapter of German history. But you see, they at least treated it as a private dirty secret. You know, this is the typical right-wing logic, in the sense of: a true patriot is not just the one who is ready to die for his country, but the one who is ready to lose his soul for his country, to do horrible things, this true hero is ready to do crimes for his country. So here it's not even that, they simply publicly boast about it all. And even more, then they explain how they did it, they explain that before they become killers they were in love with Hollywood film noir mostly, Humphrey Bogart all that. So they imagined themselves as noir detective, Humphrey Bogart, whoever, they imagined as being a Hollywood noir hero when they were doing their terrifying acts. This was their imaginary. Now we can do a lot here—I don't have time to go into it—about how—how to put it—the use of poetry in ethnic cleansing. This is my old thesis and I was once almost beaten in my own country by some poets who didn’t like the idea. My formula was: no ethnic cleansing without poetry. You always need a poet. To avoid a misunderstanding, I'm not saying all poets are like that. There are mega great poets. All I'm saying is that I'm a little bit tired as a philosopher to listen for decades, you know, this idea philosophers with their notion of totality, total rationalism, laid the foundation for totalitarianism and so on. Where poets are at least as guilty as we are. Why? It’s very simple, my idea here. We are basically half decent people. If I were to be ordered—let me take you again, sorry, somebody has to suffer—if somebody were to tell me pick a—take a knife and pick your eyes out—well, unfortunately, I would have some problems to do it. So you need some strong quasi-religious mythic narrative which serves as a screen enabling you to do it. So that then through this narrative I no longer perceive myself just as a brutal torturer but something who is doing necessary although cruel things on behalf of some sacred cause, nation and so on and so on. You need—you need something like poetry. And it would be very nice to go through all ethnic cleansing cases that we know. I of course began in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, and discover it's not only Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs who is now in Hague. All other post-Yugoslav nations had their own poets who, as it were, with beautiful national myths laid the foundations for it. Now what—what interests me is—to put it in Lacanian terms of Jacques Lacan, the status of Big Other. Big Other in the sense of the public symbolic order, the unwritten or written rules which determine what is acceptable, what is not acceptable. Another paradox, I want to argue here for a good use of dogmatism. I think that I'm totally in ethical matters for dogmatism. In what sense? Let’s take rape. Sorry, but I wouldn't like to live in a society where you have—you would have to argue all the time against rape. I would like to live in a society where the fact that rape is unacceptable is simply part of our substance, it's automatically assumed, so that if somebody plays this—we all know them—stupid tasteless games, oh but women really enjoy it, they are not—don’t—not ready to admit, you don't even feel the need to—to argue against. The guy just appears as a weird jerk, eccentric, stupid, or whatever. I claim the moment you have to reason, we are already lost. So this is—now let me give you an example here, that’s what terrified me with Ronald Reagan. I remember, you are probably most of you too—too young for this. Once Reagan was accused, Ronald Reagan, that his—some of his friends, that he has many friends who are Holocaust deniers. And he said something which was I think quite funny but in a terrifying way. Namely he read: no, it's not true that I have any sympathy for Holocaust denial. Whenever at my dinner table somebody denies Holocaust, I always insist, no this is not true, there was a Holocaust. Well, the question is: okay, but what kind of friends did he have if he had all the time to argue that there was a Holocaust, you know? So you see my point. My point is, and here I see that we are approaching, as it were, if you want, the end of the world, my point is that isn't what is happening there in Indonesia... and let me be very clear here. I don't want to play any of the two easy games. Either to blame simply global capitalism, like Indonesians are good ethical guys who were just confused by universal capitalism, were thrown out of their ethical—ethical substance and can act like this, put the blame just on the developed West. But I also don't accept of course the opposite Western racist version, you know, like oh primitive Indonesians they don't have any real ethics. No, I think we first—the phenomenon as I will try to show soon is getting much more universal than it may appear. This kind of a, let’s call it disintegration of the Big Other in the very naive—forget about Jacques Lacan here—sense of automatic reliance on certain basic dogmas. Why not? And I think progress can be measured precisely by the level of dogmatism, in the sense that if there are many ethical dogmas which makes—which make rape simply unacceptable, nonsensical, which make—which make, I don't know, racism nonsensical and so on and so on. That’s one of the few signs of progress. So again, the question is: what is happening with the social body that something like that is acceptable? You see my point, I'm not worried about Anwar Congo and those guys. They are just scum, whatever they are. What worries me is what kind of society it is where it is acceptable to talk about this, boast about this in public. And here things are more complex than it may appear. Because let me give you another example. Now I will go through a couple of examples here. Some two decades ago, I think, there was a well-known scandal in Brooklyn, Brooklyn across the river from Manhattan in New York, where a woman was slowly beaten, tortured and killed at a courtyard in the middle of housing development and it was later established that at least seventy people were watching this from their windows, none of them called the police. And what is depressing is that you know, it's not that they would have to identify themselves and then be afraid that the guy would come and also beat them, it could have been done totally anonymously. No one did it. Okay, this was read as an example of moral decadence, disintegration of ordinary people in United States. No, I think it's something more ambiguous that happened here. Because when some sociologists looked into it more in detail, they discovered that all people had the same reaction, namely: I thought someone else will do it. It was just that they relied—everyone relied on someone else. And the interesting thing is that I think someone told me that they tried to do some kind of experiment where they tested this, namely staged artificially of course, a situation where the guy, for example it was more a lonely house who was observing this knew well that he is the only one who is observing it. And in that case almost all of them did call—did call the police. What I want—what I want to say here is that how are we nonetheless to interpret what the two examples nonetheless share? Indonesian example and Brooklyn example, this, let’s call it naively growing indifference, I don't care, or another one will do it, this reluctance to ethically engage yourself. The usual thing to say is to refer to egotism. You know, this is the usual Catholic or generally religious strategy. Oh in our era of hedonist egotism nobody cares for the common good and so on and so on. Well, I'm totally opposed to this reading. Here I want to refer to Walter Benjamin who already said that capitalism is a religious phenomenon. And the way I read this is in a very naive way: look at an ideal capitalist, ideal type I mean. I know some of them, fanatical businessmen. Well, all I can tell you is if ever I encountered a non-hedonist and non-egotist guy, it's a totally dedicated capitalist. My God, a proper capitalist is ready, I don't know, to ruin his family life, practically not to sleep, work nine—night and day just that there is circulation and expansion of capital. It's not—capitalists are not hedonist egotists. They are on the contrary extremely dedicated to some perverted but nonetheless perverted quasi-ethical cause. You know, you have a cause, capital has to circulate and basically you don't care. I ruin nature, I ruin my life, doesn't matter, it has to function. This is why I claim that we don't need to fight for ecology in some stupid moralistic way, like usually people say oh we think only in short terms, what about our children and so on and so on. No, the problem is not that we are too egotist today. The problem is that if we try to rehabilitate the term egotism in a proper way of rational interest in your own good, then I claim paradoxically in our consumerist society of global capitalism it's maybe more difficult than ever to be a real egotist. Because on the one hand, again, as a capitalist you are not egotist, on the other hand even the way commodities function more and more, they don't function in an egotist way. The deepest appeal of commodities is anti-egotism. What do I mean by this? Another sign for me of the end of the world: did you read this now, a month—a little bit over a month ago, in August media reported that from December of this year tobacco companies in Australia will no longer be allowed to display their distinctive colors, brand designs, and logos on cigarette packs. To make smoking as unglamorous as possible, the packs of cigarettes will come in uniformly drab shade of olive and on the—it’s no—it will be without logo, just a cigarette, this, and apart from information that this is a cigarette, you will get—sorry, it will not, I just have here—you will get a big photo extremely disgusting, like of—of—of eye getting blind, of—of—of your lungs open, all black, of an impotent penis, whatever. Absolutely disgusting. The idea is of course to make people to stop—it's obvious the idea. But I claim although, okay, people may think this is no longer commodity universe because there is no logo and so on and so on, there is no longer commodity aesthetics, it's on the contrary. The package of the product openly, graphically draws attention to the dangerous and harm qualities of its product. Is this still then commodity logic? I claim it is and maybe even the most efficient one. This idea came to me in Germany when I saw already years ago there a wonderful, in a terrifying sense, a poster for cigarettes. It wasn’t Marlboro, but they imitated that famous cowboy. Namely it was like this: it was on a poster the usual cowboy and on the bottom of course that obligatory statement: smoking is dangerous for your health. But the cowboy is pointing with his hand, with his finger towards that statement, and the message was in German: jetzt erst recht, now it’s for the real. And I think it was a wonderful male chauvinist message. It was: are you a coward? If you are a true man, now that you know that it's dangerous, now you will do it. I mean I—and I think that from the very beginning consumerism works like this. I don't think we really care about all that bullshit, oh it has so much vitamins, so much this, so much that. In if I may call it in this obscene way, in authentic consumerism there is always I think this excess of—it's dangerous but that’s why I want to do it. In even in, of course this is not consumerism, but even in some traditional societies, in a much more, if you think I doubt, authentic way, they played—for example I was told in Japan that they—that it's a almost sacred ritualistic thing to eat a certain fish and the whole point is that that fish is poisonous and there is a certain chance that you will die. But that’s precisely—that’s precisely the point. So again, my point here is—is that here it's another example of non-egotism, how publicity does not address you simply as an egotist, rational egotist, take care of your health and so on and so on, but beneath all this there is a much stronger superego injunction, no? In—in the sense of you may die and that’s why if you are a true man you will do it and so on and so on. So let me go on. What type of egotism are we then talking about today? Now I come to, I don't know if you know it, I don't think you do, but this is a story even more depressing than the one from Indonesia. I have a friend in China who sent me all the documents about this. It happened a couple of month ago in China, a story which in a strange way resembles one of the Bertolt Brecht’s so-called learning plays. Brecht wrote in a learning play with the title The Exception and the Rule. It’s a simple didactic communist play where a rich merchant and his poor servant are traversing a desert. Because of some storm they almost run out of water and then the merchant—sorry, the servant approaches the merchant with a bottle offering him, because he is a good guy, a little bit of water that he still has. But the merchant thinks that the servant is trying to kill him and kills the servant. Then you have the court in session and the judge gives right to the merchant. Because the judge says: yes, probably this was an exceptionally good servant, but this is the exception. It would have been typical in such a situation for the servant to try to attack the master, so the master was right to react the way he did. Something even more horrible than this—it’s not a joke—happened in China. It was, sorry, already half a decade ago. An elderly in one of these anonymous—no, this was even not anonymous, in Nanjing, a friend sent me all the documentation. An elderly woman fell while getting off a bus, she fell down when the door was open, and a young—she was years old and she broke her hip. Behind her on the bus there was a young decent guy, relatively wealthy but decent. So when he saw my God, woman there falling down, broken, he also stepped down, helped her, and when he saw that she is—she cannot walk, he called a taxi, took her to a hospital, and even gave her a little bit of money. A week later after the woman got home, her relatives convinced her to prosecute the guy. The reasoning was: what normal person would have helped a woman like that? No normal person. So the fact that he helped her means that he must have been responsible, he probably pushed her down. Okay, the thing got to the court, and the depressing thing is that the judge gave right to the woman. The judge said that—that no normal person would have acted—I quote now literally the judgment—no normal person would be as kind as Peng Yu—this guy claimed he was. So since he was so kind, it's clear that he is guilty and he was punished quite a lot of money, a couple of tens of thousand of dollars in US money and so on and so on. Now what is happening here? I think the thing is much more complex than it may appear. It's not simply egotism or whatever, Chinese are basically good people. Something else is happening. Namely this case caused quite a shock of course then in China, and even the official media, the People’s Daily, made big opinion polls. They asked tens of thousands of young people between and what would you have done if you were to walk along the street and you would have to see somebody there bleeding, dying, or whatever, would you have stopped and help him or not? And the situation was made clear, it's not that there is a bad guy there beating the dying person so that you can say no, no, I'm afraid to—no, no, the guy is alone, you don't risk anything, the guy who is dying. The shock was that percent of people said no, I would not help. Then they specified their answer, they said: I would first look around if there is a CCTV, that camera, no? If it is, then maybe I would have helped, if not and so on and so on. So I think that the explanation of this, it's a very sad one, it's that in today’s capitalism, and this is not about China, the limit between public and private space is shifting, changing. This friend of mine in China is a sociologist there and he told me that his reading, and I tend to agree with it, is that more and more with the dissolution of old communal forms, even when we are formally at least in public, like on a square or where with hundreds of other people, even when we are there we still experience ourselves as being in private. We ignore each other, it’s as if we are just different monads, each in our private space passing by each other, but no public. You need something more, like the—the TV camera or whatever to make it a public space proper. And I think the same goes even for sexuality. A friend of mine drew my attention to this because maybe if some of you read my work, you know that I was always intrigued by all the unwritten rules that control hardcore pornography. The reason this interests me is simply because you would have thought that my God, hardcore pornography, what can be more free, to show everything. No, it's probably the most tightly controlled genre that you can imagine. If I may repeat my standard insight, for example in the old days when it was still a story, usually you cannot just show sex, you have some stupid story to—did you notice how as a rule extremely ridiculously stupid this story is? Like I remember one from my youth and even now I’m almost ashamed to think about it, you know, it’s like housewife is alone at home, a plumber comes and says oh lady I finished it, I fixed that hole, leaking hole in the kitchen, and then the housewife says but I have another hole to be fixed, can you... I mean you are just embarrassed, no? Then there was the next step, they told me, so-called Gonzo—ah, for my first reading here: I don't think they can be so stupid. I think that the whole point is that it is as if you have a kind of a choice: if the story, the narrative is serious enough that it engages you, you cannot see it all. If you see it all, full sex, then the story should be ridiculous, like—and I think there is a negative proof of this. You know Catherine Breillat, the French author who is trying to do both, that is to say serious melodramas to call it naively with full hardcore. No wonder she is marginalized, it doesn't work. We really integrate this prohibition. And I think that what’s—so I was told—the predominant form today, so-called Gonzo, where you no longer have the pretense of a story, but actors directly address the cameraman, you know you are all the time reminded that this is just staged for the camera. I think the censorship is here even stronger, as if if you see it all, even a minimal emotional identification should be prohibited. But now in the third stage, it’s something which is, so I was told, I must admit it I checked it up and I’m paying the price because now you know I’m getting every day ten, at least ten of those famous messages, guarantee in two weeks three inches longer and all that. But what I’m saying is that it’s public sex. Interesting enough, I noticed they are mostly from post-communist Eastern Europe, Hungary and Czech Republic mostly. And again it confirms that thesis about the disappearance of public space. For example, I saw one or two Hungarian ones and it’s so depressing, it's not any glamorous part of the city, it's not they don’t do it like in a park or what, no. They take very depressive, like usual morning streetcar, tramway or bus crowded with ordinary people and then simply at a seat a couple starts to—to make love fully, undressing themselves and so on. And you can see from the confused reactions that it's not staged. But what is so shocking is how after the first moment of shock and so on, almost all people decided to ignore it, like it's their private affair. They allow them their private space. So my conclusion from this is another sad one, it's that in contrast to those who complain that because we are all the time controlled, filmed, observed through digital media that privacy is disappearing. No, I think it's the exact opposite that is happening: public life proper is disappearing. I think that all this culture of confession and so on, it's privacy invading public space. Or this is I think also how internet works. Because you know when you tell all your secrets, show your photos, whatever, masturbate in front of your Skype, whatever, the paradox is that you are still alone, you are still private. This is a kind of a shared privacy, you can be wired through all the world but it's absolutely not the same as, you know, that proverbial exhibitionist gesture. That still addresses a public space, the embarrassment here, it’s privacy. That’s another—so what does all this mean for—for sex? Ah, here I'm also a pessimist, not a total pessimist, I just note tendencies. Namely, what I see is that if once promiscuity was transgressive and the idea was that passionate individual sex, love, and so on is patriarchal, oppressive, I think that now more and more it's almost the opposite which is imposed as the norm. What do I mean by this? Okay, let me begin with popular culture and then give you some theoretical examples. Did you see the last James Bond film—not the new one, now Skyfall not shown—Quantum of Solace? Politically pretty progressive, I mean basically to cut a long story short James Bond saves the Morales regime in Bolivia from some company which wants to control water. But did you notice something very strange about this film? It's the first James Bond where at the end there is no sex between Bond and Bond girl. They just embrace, we are too traumatized... okay. Now you will say this is an exception. I'm not so sure. Now I go to the really lowest of the lowest. Did you see some Dan Brown films or novels? Did you notice for example that already in The Da Vinci Code you have a couple, Robert Langdon and the grand-grand-grand-Sophie daughter of Christ, but there is no sex between the two of them. And I claim that we have here a kind of a strange displacement: even Jesus Christ has to engage in love—you know the thesis of the film, the secret—to cover up the fact that there is no sex here, you know? I think it's strictly correlative: you have sex up there but not here. With Angels Demons it’s even worse. There still is sex in the novel between Vittoria Vetra the scientist and the same Robert Langdon at the end, but did you notice in the film there is no sex? Where are we coming? Once we said Hollywood is adding sex to make the story more attractive, now Hollywood is—is deleting sex and so on. I think this is again a very sad tendency. The tendency is that sex is effectively becoming less and less authentically intersubjective. It's becoming—it is more and more solipsistic. I will tell you a story, maybe you know it, it was told to me by my good friend Alain Badiou and then I checked it up in the states you have the same phenomenon. Namely in French and in English it works, you say you use the verb fall, you say tomber amoureux, fall, to fall in love. Okay, but you found a publicity of one dating and marriage agency in France where basically the message was: we will enable you to find yourself in love without the fall, sans tomber. And then I found an American agency who is doing the same. And I found this very sad because the idea is this one: with all the permissivity and so on, but you know what is love? Love is by definition a fall. If I exaggerate a little bit, love is: I walk on the street quite accidentally I stumble upon a person and oh my God all my ordinary life is ruined, now I have a new focus, everything changes. Authentic love is very traumatic in this sense. Even passionate sex is traumatic in this sense: you are obsessed by it, like I want to have sex with that person even if I die, even if whatever. And I claim that more and more this is experienced as too much. I claim the predominant ideology today is not marry and procreate, no, the predominant ideology today I claim is some kind of enlightened Western Buddhism I call it. Be authentically yourself, or as they say, the stupid Yodas in Star Wars, don't get too attached to worldly subjects, which means precisely don't fall. Don't get attached, keep distance. This is my eternal problem with otherwise my personal friend Judith Butler. I agree with her description, you know: sex, sorry, our sexual identity is not eternally naturally given, it's performatively enacted through rituals of repetition, ironic displacement. My problem is just why does she think that she is describing anything subversive? I claim she is describing precisely the predominant ideology today. Now you will say but what about neoconservative backlash? Ah, I claim it's exactly that: just a backlash, a reaction. The action is this one. We are interpellated into this safety. Safety in the sense of no fall. Safe sex. Or you know my story I always repeat it at all level of consumerism: like beer yes but without alcohol, and whatever, sweet—chocolate yes but without sugar, and so on and so on. To get thing, the thing, a product without this potentially dangerous dimension. And that’s my problem with multiculturalism. Of course I am for other cultures, but that official multiculturalism and tolerance also wants the other without the fall. You know, the other who is like us and then you idealize the other, which is for me the worst form of racism. Like I had the experience of my lifetime when I met a couple of years ago in Missoula, Montana, three or four so-called Native Americans. First they protested about this term. I love them, they said: we are Native Americans, so you are cultural, we are native or what? They—they told me we much prefer be called Indians because at least our name is a monument to white man's stupidity, then, you know, they thought they are in India. They—in a very nice way they immediately detect this—you know, they—they told me they hate so much when white guys come to them and say you are wonderful, holistic, sensitive, and so on. No, with such proud I love them, they told me: fuck you white people, we burned more forest, we killed more buffaloes than you ever will do and so on, because they got very well how false this celebration of, you know, harmonious holistic approach of them is and so on and so on, no? So again, what I'm saying is that that’s the paradox of our era, where the more we talk about tolerance, the more intolerant we are. And again, this is what bothers me in this obsession with harassment. Of course I'm against harassment when it's real harassment. My God, there are rapes and I'm one of the few people that I know who is still for death penalty and I’m here radical for punishing them—don’t have any understanding for rapists. All I'm saying is that with harassment it can get more problematic, as many intelligent also feminist critics pointed out, that those if you go to the end in this logic of no harassment, basically you end up as they say consensual sex. Of course I'm for consensual sex if it simply means no one is raped, we are both for it. But this consensual sex then all of a sudden turns into contractual sex, you know, as two rational people we make a contract, you do this to me, I do this to you, and so on and so on. Okay, why not if you enjoy it, I have nothing against it. All I'm saying is that when you have authentic passionate love, in the process of seduction, and not necessarily from the side of the man, you always necessarily have to do something, that crucial step which retroactively, it depends on the receiver, can be proclaimed to be a harassment. Harassment means simply in all brutality I show you, I display my desire. You know where you have a very nice scene, although they are pseudo-intellectuals I don't like them, that guy Iñárritu the director, did you see his with Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, his nice movie or Grams? Grams. Don't—let's not go into Freudian water, what is it. When he, Sean Penn, tells her Naomi Watts well that he loves her. And her reaction is: do you know how brutal this is? How dare you tell me something like that? Do you know that you ruined my life and so on? In a way she is right, this is love. Again, so quite often I claim what this fear of harassment covers is precisely a fear of effective intersubjectivity, proximity of the other. Which is why I claim more and more the ideal, even if we have still real sex with real partners, the unwritten ideal is more and more sex with artificial plastic whatever props. Like I recently I found—you can google it, just put in Stamina training unit, I love it, I found this one. It’s a kind of a—it looks from outside as a large light, so that you are not embarrassed. But then you open the top and it's an entry. Now comes the beauty. Which entry? Ah, you can get plastic versions of vaginal entry, anal entry, mouth, you put it on, then you can regulate the—the vibration, the tightness and so on. And so I claim that where are we here? What are we approaching? Did you see the movie which I think is a mega classic, the old—now old—British dystopia Terry Gilliam’s Brazil? There is a wonderful scene towards the beginning when they, the rich people with the hero of them Jonathan Pryce, go to a restaurant and they have to select food. And it's a stroke of genius: what they get when they are served food is a plate, what is on the plate is just a shit-like—like just something like—like a piece of shit formless piece of mud, and then a photo of the—of the exquisite steak with all the—so the idea is: you eat that shit, but the photo tells you what. And I think that’s how love more and more functions, you know? You just need some minimal prop, piece of shit, to masturbate with your fantasy. I claim that in this sense even when we really make love, we more and more masturbate. We masturbate with a real partner. It's possible. Because you know in the same—like the partner is here more and more just to do the work of your hand or whatever, but you are really—you remain with your fantasy. Now to conclude, if I can conclude a little bit, which then would be generally the ideology that would fit this situation? I claim, but I have deep respect for Buddhism, now I'm talking about our type of Western Buddhism. I claim it's the way this oriental spirituality functions today. On the one hand, as I already developed in some of my books, I claim that no wonder that the majority of top managers today do some type of oriental spirituality and so on. I think that to survive in a dynamic of today’s capitalism you simply go crazy if you fully identify with it. The only way to survive is to maintain a distance, to say it's just a crazy dance of appearances, I'm not really there and so on and so on. On the other hand, now I come to the interesting point, this is the most radical maybe aspect of the end of the world as we know it. And when I say the end of the world, I don't mean only in a bad sense, I'm just saying we are approaching a certain limit. Who knows what will come? Maybe a better world, maybe a bad world. We, I think, should nonetheless take seriously the results of today’s cognitivism and brain sciences which—and I'm not interested here in the fact: is it true or not, I have my doubts about it—but the point is that the point they are making and it's taken seriously is that, you know the result: we first, we have no free will, and point two, soon it will be possible to directly link our brain to external machines. And the consequences can be quite radical here. For example, I met some scientists in Germany who together with American scientists—they even the Germans send me some videos—you know, for example, they already decoded the signals a rat is sending to its legs when it moves around. So I saw it on DVD, on DVD at least. What you can do is this: you have a rat in a cage, the rat is freely jumping around. Then you click a button, the rat is connected. And you can literally control the rat like—remote control car, left, right and so on. Because again, through this link you give signals to her neurons which are giving direction and so on. Now I spoke with these scientists and of course they are doing what I always suspected that they are doing. What they are really interested is to do this on a human being, and they are afraid to go with this into public that there will be some ethical outcry, but they hinted at me that the result is the predictable one. Namely what interests them in this: let’s say now you will be the good guy or the bad—you control me, no? Like I walk here freely around, I don't know when you push the button, so that you control my neurons which give orders of turn left, right, forward. How will I experience this? And they told me that it looks that the paranoiac bad solution is the true one. That is to say, I will not even know the time controlled. It will not be, oh my God some foreign power took over. I will still continue to think that I freely roam around. And all that stuff then, you know, this how you can move already objects with thoughts and so on—all okay. My problem is to conclude the following one: how will we subjectivize this if we will have to accept—at least the scientific ideology is telling us this, I don't think it's true, but nonetheless—that in this sense we are not free. There is no ego, there is no self which is autonomous, free, we are just the result of complex neuronal mechanisms and so on and so on. There are, as far as I can see, four main attitudes here. The first one is the naive dualism. Most of the scientists think that it is true that we have no free will, but in our daily life the way we are wired, constructed, is that we necessarily experience ourselves as having free will. So there will forever be a gap between scientific knowledge and how we experience ourselves. The second position, more radical, interesting but I think illusory, is the one of more radical cognitivists like that Californian couple Patricia and Paul Churchland, where they claim we can imagine our awareness to change according to the state of our knowledge. They say in the same way that once people thought they are obsessed by demons, but now when you go crazy we know it's not demons, it's just your madness, we can also imagine a society where people would communicate blah blah without their activity being sustained by the notions of free will, moral responsibility and so on. You have this position. Then you have some other positions, I will not lose time, but the most interesting position for me here is the one developed by the German scientist Thomas Metzinger who claims that although insofar as we remain in our ordinary state of mind, we cannot ever accept the result of cognitivism. Like we can rationally know it, but you cannot really live it. You never treat yourself as if you are just a neuronal automaton. He says except Buddhism. If you reach the Buddhist enlightenment where you accept Anātman, you have no self and so on, that Buddhist enlightenment is the only existential position which fits the result of modern science. Now this—and now I will slowly finish, but I hope you got naively my message. At a couple of levels: from this sexuality, personal identity, moral responsibility and so on, I just wanted to outline a certain zero level that we are approaching, where we will no longer experience ourselves as free responsible beings, where—again, all moral consideration will fall away, we will live in a kind of a universalized—society of universalized privacy, shameless, and so on and so on, all that stuff. I—I am not a pessimist in the sense that this is our fate. But I think that the only way to fight this fate paradoxically is to accept it as fate. I claim that what we have to do is precisely to paint a dark picture of where things move if we just let them to move spontaneously where they go. And this picture again, it's interesting because it's a society in which overcoming of morality and total self-naturalization will coexist with some kind of a new aseptic totally non-sexual spirituality. And it would be so interesting to compare here early Soviet communism with today’s technological Gnostics. You know all those crazy stories about how technology will bring us to some kind of collective identity where we will live eternally just downloading ourselves as a software program from one to another identity, all that. Do you know that all this was already dreamed throughout the twenties in the Soviet Union? Even Trotsky wrote something about it. The idea was that the true task of Bolsheviks is not only to change society but to create a new man. And the predominant reading of this new man was—that's crucial—that he is asexual. Sexuality was—it was really a kind of a spiritual materialist Gnosticism. The predominant attitude of Soviet psychologists in the twenties under the influence of Pavlov—although Pavlov was against Bolsheviks privately but he was the key influence—it was that sexual arousal is the basic weakness of Homo sapiens, that it's unnatural. And it's incredible how what the most advanced dreamers of the Soviet Union in the twenties invented was something that you already find in Saint Augustine and some Christians. Namely Saint Augustine, when he speaks about sexuality, he says of course—of course there was sex in Paradise, but it wasn't sex in this sense of arousal. Like a man was able to get erection in the same totally controlled way in which you raise your hand to work on a field and so on. It was just pure instrumental activity. And then you maybe know, it's beautiful, what Saint Augustine—the title of the work is De nuptiis et concupiscentia, what he develops there: that sexuality is not the source of sin, but it's the punishment for the sin. He claims the original sin of man is that he wanted to be like God, master. But then God tells him, I will punish you and I will punish you so that you will have a desire that you will not control. So that you wanted to be the master of the world like me, haha, I will install a drive in you of which even in your own house you will not be the master. And then Saint Augustine has a wonderful theory of erection, where he says that erection is the ultimate revenge on God towards to men. He says that: I will take one of your organs, penis, and you will not control it. Like you will want it to get up, ah it will not, or when it will be most embarrassing for you, it will get up and so on and so on. So the idea is precisely the non-controllable status of erection is God’s reminder of our finitude. Like: you dare to... So what I'm saying is that the goal explicitly is to get out of this dimension. And here I think we should be very open. Through cloning, through all this, maybe sexuality will disappear, sexuality as we know it, which is not biological. The problem is what will remain of human sexuality the way we know it. Because again, human sexuality is not the same as we all know as natural sexuality. We can imagine a copulation which is totally mechanic and there is nothing sexual about it. Human sexuality is something totally different, I tried to develop it something, it's always linked to failure, repetition, and so on. In what sense? Let me imagine an very everyday obscene scene. Let's say I'm shaking a hand to one of you. Instead of dropping the hand, I go on squeezing it rhythmically. Admit it, your association would be what dirty plans, what—like the situation would go—through just doing repeatedly what normally is done only once, the situation would go sexual in a very embarrassing way. And so something much more mysterious that goes... so what will be the fate of that? So what's my point here? I'm sorry if it appeared that I'm painting some dark picture whatever. No, I'm just saying that, and with this I really want to conclude, do you know that what Virginia Woolf—otherwise I must say I hate her, I think she was a frigid bitch, I think that—that Daphne du Maurier is greater writer than Virginia Woolf, I was almost lynched for saying this at some—but she did something wonderful. You know that in April in in her essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown from she said that it's one—on or about April human nature changed and so on. This wonderful British style of this pseudo-empiricism, like the most famous statement in these lines is, you know, a theologian in mid-19th century claimed God created the world four thousand and something years B.C. at nine in the morning and so on, you know. But what I'm saying is that with all the changes we are living now, it's not just the capitalist dynamic, it's what biogenetics means, what all this stuff happening with our desires means and so on, I think that effectively the very basic dimension of what is to be human is changing. In this sense I claim it's the end of the world, it's the end of the world as we know it. It will change what does it mean to have sex, to be human and so on. But it's not still I think determinism in the sense of new catastrophe or whatever. The situation is open, more than ever. And this is my concluding paradox: you know, it looks as if we can't really change anything, even after September 11th, sorry, I mean Occupy Wall Street, even after that one. No because you know I am a leftist here, you know when you say September 11th my association is always the putsch against Salvador Allende, you know? We should remember the true September 11th, organized, paid by the United States. You know that the smoking gun was found there. Kissinger signed a letter authorizing the murder of that Chilean minister. But what I'm saying is that on the one hand the situation may appear to be desperate, like my God, like... and it IS desperate, in the sense that leftists were telling us for decades when our situation was relatively prosperous, you remember they were telling us: ah, now we have apparent welfare, but wait a minute, there will be the crisis blah blah. Where the crisis is here. Revolts and so on, and did the left propose anything? I am not aware of any viable plan, even general idea, you can maybe correct me here. I met demonstrators and on Zuccotti Park, Frankfurt and so on, and I was always asking them a simple stupid question: what do you want? And I got answers like we want a more just capitalism, it’s—you know it’s—but I don't blame them. I think that the tragedy of our situation is the following one, and this should be again paradoxically at the same time the source of our hope. Namely, when people tell me but do you think really that we can change anything? Well, my answer is: I don't know that, but I DO know that things are ALREADY changing radically. That everything is changing so fast. That’s some aspects I tried to identify, discern today. In our economy, in our—and it's not just capital—look for example again, look at today’s capitalism. I think the whole digital phenomena and so on is much more ambiguous. It may be a triumph of capitalism, but you can see how at the same time the more we have this informational technology, the more private property itself becomes almost meaningless. I mean soon everything will be downloading and so on and so on, it will not be possible to control it, so again my point is this one: when people tell me nothing can be changed, no it can because things are already changing like crazy. And what we should say is just this: if we let things change the way they are changing automatically, we are approaching a kind of a new perverse permissively authoritarian society, which will be authoritarian but in a new way. Which is why I don't like terms like neo-fascism and so on, you know. I mean to use these terms means just you are too lazy to think what really is new. And this is what should give us a motivation to act. Things are already changing. Will we simply follow this change? Well, so again things are changing. I don't think that if we do nothing we will simply go on enjoying our relative, at least in some parts of the world, prosperity. No, I think that again even my God, even Fukuyama himself the last time I met him confessed to me, he is an honest guy, I like honest conservatives, that to put it in an ironic way he is no longer a Fukuyamaist. He told me that with biogenetics, financial crisis and so on, that his idea of the end of history is over. He admits it. Things are radically changing. And this is what should worry us. We should return the question to those in power. Because you know what’s more and more my impression if I look around at the present state of economy, that you know my answer to the leftist paranoiacs who claim ooh there are some people, mysterious meetings somewhere between Washington and China and Wall Street deciding everything. I'm tempted to say, I'm asking God, praying that it would at least be like that, but it’s not. I really don't think we still have a ruling class which is able to rule properly. The situation is much more horrible. I don't think there is some big ruling class manipulating everything. They don't know what is happening, they themselves don't know what is happening. In Europe where I come from, this is even more obvious than anywhere else. So again, the very reason to worry should be already what motivates us to think what is happening maybe to do something. I spoke for much too long but haha what can you do, you had to listen, no. Thanks very much for your patience. Stop, stop, you know what’s my usual joke: wait till we communists take power because then you WILL have to applaud for long time today, save the energy for then. Okay, so I think we have about minutes for questions. Um, so I think there are microphones on the sides here, so... and I promise that I will try to be really short in my answers. Okay, so I think we have—we’ll start over here on this side, please. Given your understanding of ideology, that um, we are conscious of oppression, domination, and yet we go about our business like it’s, you know, like it’s every other day. Yeah. How do you think we should approach, or how one could approach the possibility of a post-capitalist future that is a communist future, one that is not an abstract universal but a concrete reality? And I think you mentioned it implicitly, but I’m still looking for an answer. No, no, it's a very good question because again, um, from the idea that even if we know what we are doing we are still doing it, my conclusion is not—what is the conclusion even of some of my leftist friends, and I disagree with them here, for example they are not the same but they share this: Fredric Jameson and Noam Chomsky. They think that today the ruling ideology is so cynical that we no longer need the critique of ideology, because in order to have a critique of ideology, you still have to have an ideology which at least takes itself seriously, no? No, no, no, I claim that the lesson of what I’m saying when I develop this theory of cynicism is not oh, all resistance is already included, we cannot do it. No, no, no, at the same time the system is much more vulnerable than it may appear. We have many strategies here. First, I maybe didn't emphasize enough this: I don't believe in globalized cynicism. I claim that every cynic has a weak point. Nobody is totally a cynic. You know, even like take Hitler, yeah he liked dogs, small children, you know, you may be ruthless murderer but you have some private oasis no, but here I am a good... you know what I mean, like... so that’s one point. Second point, um, it is crucial that no ideology is consistent. Like what I said at the beginning about that how ideology always relies on unwritten rules, you have to transgress... so there is a—one of possible strategies would be the one which I practiced modestly when I was young against communist regime. It's to take the ruling ideology more seriously than it takes itself. In my country it worked wonderfully because the system was so cynical that the communists in power, what they were really afraid was someone to take the official Yugoslav ideology seriously. Literally, it’s so literally true. I remember two of my friends, it’s old story I repeat it always, they had a job at the Central Committee of Slovene Communist Party, they lost their job because they really believed in the system. And this was considered as a first step towards—you know and so on and so on. So again—so again there are—if anything there are one way which opens up again is naivety. I—I believe that in this totally cynical functioning the system is incredibly open towards naive critique. Like you simply naively demand something and you ignore all the cynical background and so on and so on. What is more of a problem if you ask me for me is: look, the only serious economic idea, I doubt how much serious it is that we have, because even today look, ask Wall Street people and so on majority what they—what they want. The majority I claim has some kind of a vaguely Keynesian welfare state idea. We need to control banks, we need to spend more on education, blah blah. That’s the basic idea. I doubt if it works. Then you have that dream of local communities, direct democracy, and so on. I claim this doesn't work. Doesn't work in the sense of you cannot universalize it. I claim on the contrary to confront all the ecological problems and so on, the big task is to reinvent mega large processes of collective decision and so on. So—so the problem for me here is: are we really able to provide a global vision beyond capitalism? I mean you know it sounds easy but like—like in a way okay now I will—I am still a communist my God, but I will tell you something terribly cynical. You know when people, I hate leftists who claim yes we know how things are just the majority are stupid people entrapped in ideology. Well, if I were to be an ordinary guy, I doubt if I were to cast my vote for today’s radical left because like as an ordinary person you have the right—you know I hate leftists I know I will not name them but many high academic leftists who despise ordinary people, they just care for their children, money and so on. Where my God, imagine yourself a modest worker who has two, three children and so on, you worry. You—here I even understand, you know when people were arrogant saying in Egypt why didn’t the majority follow? The majority worries about their survival and so on and so on. So again, um, I see—but at the same—then why am I still a communist? You know why? Because at the same time I don't believe that things can go on the way they go on. Because my social democratic friends are telling me you should become more modest, accept it, we remain within this space just with local struggles we try to make things better. I think that will not be enough. I really believe that the system is approaching a deep structural crisis, and I'm not saying this will happen next year, it can drag on and so on, but I think um so many things are happening, from ecology to new forms of poverty, hunger, chaos. For example, all this problem of immigrants, apartheid and so on, I think the message of this is very sad one. It's that, you know, the idea of Marx was still that capitalism can afford what Marxists call formal freedom. We can all be legally free, but since you have maybe, maybe not a factory, I don’t, I have to sell my labor force to you. I don’t think capitalism can still afford as a universal level this freedom. I think we will get more and more first class, second class citizens, exclusions and so on and so on. So you know, the problem is not can we do it? The problem is that if we don't do it then we are approaching a very dark sad new authoritarian, I don't know how to call it, society and already this is typical. How do we really know for example what is emerging now in China? This is what I would worry. For example this as I always repeat, this new, poetically we call it capitalism with Asian values. Of course it has nothing to do with Asia. It has but it’s something else. It's a capitalism which is, at least it looks for now, more dynamic productive than our Western liberal capitalism, but it looks that it functions perfectly without democracy. This should worry us, you know. People were usually claiming democracy and capitalism go together. Yes, till now let's be frank, it did appear this. But now capitalism is obviously functioning better, much better, with if there is a democracy, a tightly controlled democracy. So why not, at some point I was tempted, frankly I visited recently Singapore and it's kind of a fascism with a human face, haha. Why not if that functions? But of course it's a dream, it doesn't work because Singapore is an exception, a merchant state, you know what I mean. We all cannot become Singapore and so on. The problem is—the problem is when people say again that we are utopians. My answer is no, the utopia is that things can remain and go on indefinitely the way they are. We will have to invent something, maybe we will not, but then it will really be a new authoritarian society and so on and so on. So I know I didn’t answer your question but who did? Okay, another thing. Look, the only creative idea that I know is the idea of what in Brazil they call Renta Básica, citizen’s income. But are they afraid what this is? I read Van Parijs, that—that Belgian economist who invented it. This is precisely an attempt to reinstall welfare state capitalism. The idea is today’s capitalism is so productive that while remaining within capitalism society can afford to pay minimum wage for everyone. So it’s—it's in a way, especially funny is if you try to account for citizen's income in the terms of Marxist theory of exploitation. Because then you have to say that what those partisans of citizen’s income propose is that the workers who will still be working should be even more exploited, that they should be paying capitalists, the state, and the unemployed and so on and so on. I found this a pretty sad thing. That um more than ever maybe we cannot even realistically imagine a beyond of capitalism. Pundits and social theorists alike have labeled it as hysterical. Do you see any sort of radical political potential in this hysteria, and more specifically in the figure of the hysteric? And I ask this question um as a kind of restaging of the way Lacan was a commentary of May and the way he responded to the fundamental sort of chez vous that the hysteric asked at that point. And he responded, of course, they’re asking for another master and they’ll get one. It’s a very good question and the only problem is that to answer it fully it’s half an hour, but very briefly. My first answer would have been to rehabilitate the term hysteria. Here I am a good feminist: it's not a chance that psychoanalysis emerged through hysterical patients. You know, the ordinary vulgar theory is: hysterics are weak women who just provoke a master, they don't know what they want. The truly radical guys are perverts, you know? Hysterics just—even Freud once has this total misformulation where he says a pervert guy does
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in reality what hysterics only dream about. But this is totally wrong. As Lacan puts it nicely, every
in reality what hysterics only dream about. But this is totally wrong. As Lacan puts it nicely, every
Slavoj Žižek
power, the more brutal it is, the more it needs a
power, the more brutal it is, the more it needs a
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pervert support. Perversion is not subversion.
pervert support. Perversion is not subversion.
Slavoj Žižek
Perversion
Perversion
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is always the obscure dark type of how power functions. And on the contrary, for Lacan the true subversion is hysterical questioning. So in this sense, okay, I mean it's a question of PR, public relations, like... but theoretically at least, I would say yes, we are hysterical and that’s why we are truly subversive, you know? Because again, the beauty of hysterical position is—is it’s not just this kind of ambiguous provocation of the master, but it’s a true questioning of the master. A much more radical questioning of the master
is always the obscure dark type of how power functions. And on the contrary, for Lacan the true subversion is hysterical questioning. So in this sense, okay, I mean it's a question of PR, public relations, like... but theoretically at least, I would say yes, we are hysterical and that’s why we are truly subversive, you know? Because again, the beauty of hysterical position is—is it’s not just this kind of ambiguous provocation of the master, but it’s a true questioning of the master. A much more radical questioning of the master
Slavoj Žižek
than that pervert control and so on and so on. So that would be my first point. Second point, um, I think that at this stage as I’ve written about it, I wouldn’t even worry too—I didn’t like this type of criticism I referred to as clenching of Occupy Wall Street. You know, Bill Clinton did this and all those guys: like, okay, we sympathize with you guys, but you are just criticizing, come with concrete proposals and so on and so on. No, we have to think through this. To—if—they tell us come with realistic proposals. Sorry, but the only realistic proposals are by definition proposals now which are part of the system. If you make a realistic proposals now, it automatically means you just patch things up with, I don't know, better legislation here, better taxation there. But I think the crisis is deeper. Which is why again, I even advocated in one of the short things I did about Occupy Wall Street, advocated that what the last thing we need now is a dialogue. We should be left alone to think. There—I am not saying there is an easy way out, but um solutions at the same time I think I’d like to use here what my friend Badiou called materialist theology of grace, you know? You work and solutions often come by themselves. Remember that all great revolutions happened by this. October Revolution was a total surprise. Marx was surprised by Paris Commune and so on and so on. So then you see value in the sort of empty signifier that the hysteric...? Absolutely, absolutely. I think the greatest danger is to accept this blackmail of do something useful, translate your dreams into concrete proposals or whatever. No, that would be the greatest defeat today. This doesn't mean that we should not fight concrete battles. Of course, for example, the example that I like to use: so many people are disappointed, I am also, I'm not an idiot, by Obama. But I still insist that the debate that he unleashed, that set in motion about universal health care, was an incredibly important debate because it did strike the key element of American ideology, this false idea of freedom of choice. Because you know this was the truly efficient conservative counter-argument: universal health care deprives you of the freedom of choice. We should accept—we should move the debate there. What kind of freedom of choice is there? Is it really freedom that you get there and so on and so on? So again, this would be the art today: yes, to engage in concrete battles here, there, but nonetheless to maintain the space open for thinking. Not—don’t be hystericized by the opponent. We have enough of our own hysteria to put it this way, you know, like oh where are the concrete answers and so on and so on. And my answer to those in power on the other hand would have been: wait a minute, you don't know what you are doing. I mean what I said before, and it's a very dangerous potentially situation, I really mean it that—look at United States. Sorry, but you know once the Republican Party was the party of this Rockefeller rich elite and so on. This was horrible. But at least now I will sound—now I will sound horribly cynical, but what the hell. At least you have some trust: these are rich guys with certain sense of responsibility. But how can you take seriously a party where people like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum come close to ruling positions? I really mean it that like it's as if the ruling class itself no longer functions, is no longer able to rule properly. And this is potentially a dangerous situation. Haha, I succeeded with that. Then I will be able to say hypocritically I'm so sorry that we can’t stay all the night, you know, sorry. Ah, the struggle of two ladies who... the green lady and the gray lady or... I’m a little bit concerned that um, you know, that while the ruling class is trying to sort it out and while we're deferring to other people and saying, you know, someone else will solve all these problems—I didn’t say this here but yeah, yeah—how—how are we actually going to pull ourselves together and like ourselves solve the problems of today's society when even somebody who’s politically active and aware is ready to defer to other people and say, well, somebody's probably sorting this out, I don't have to take personal responsibility. And um, don’t—don't you think that—that the negligence that I myself will take blame for, um, might result in some catastrophe and how could we possibly avoid that? No, it's a very good question but here let me tell you my pessimism, even Trotsky the permanent revolution somewhere considered this point. You know like here I'm a brutal realist, you have to accept that—this will sound horrible that—most that you will get from the majority of people, and majority of people is not now the code name for the lower classes, it's more even the upper, that they want normal peace and work. They are not ready to be permanently engaged. It’s easy to have the magic moment of revolution where millions participate, but for me the greatest problem was always the day after. How is all that one—like Tahrir Square, Egypt, okay, we all cried it's wonderful, but then when things return to normal, how you will feel the difference there? That’s you know, like what I would like is a little bit less focus on this magic moment. You know what's my nightmare? That we do another Tahrir Square or Occupy Wall Street and then every year we meet in a cafeteria and talk how nice it was and then while we talk my cell phone rings oh I have to run to my bank you know sorry I don’t have time. You know that it will become just this nice memory and so on and so on. You know, and but unfortunately here I don't think there is a simple answer. It’s already a tragic symptom that we are asking this question. I mean—and this is the problem. I mean I'm always challenging people who shout at me oh you're a traitor revisionist, then I tell them okay tell me what to do. They tell me people should take over. Okay, I'll tell them what do you mean by this? Through voting, through coup d'état, revolution, whatever, or... and you see that vaguely like for example I had a debate in Zagreb, Croatia with Tariq Ali who said it should have happened in Greece that maybe not in Athens but in another city people should take over immediately, take over the town hall, distribute money. I told them are you crazy? First distribute what money? Money is no longer the real money you have there. It’s all mostly virtual. You know what I mean? Like I'm shocked about howly—so what I'm saying, now here you will probably not agree, that’s my hardline message is: we have to reinvent state authority and so on and so on. Are we aware—and this was what I talked openly with Tsipras, the Greek guy who just lost, no? I told him don’t think about democracy, think about secret police. Think about oppression, because I told him this: let's say that by a chance Syriza were to win in Greece. I told him are you aware that without extremely efficient financial and other police you wouldn’t have stood not even a chance? Because the first thing that would have happened would be that you know all the capitals fly out and so on. Then they tell me ah you are a Stalinist, you have your Stalinist dreams. I tell them no, but if we don't do this
than that pervert control and so on and so on. So that would be my first point. Second point, um, I think that at this stage as I’ve written about it, I wouldn’t even worry too—I didn’t like this type of criticism I referred to as clenching of Occupy Wall Street. You know, Bill Clinton did this and all those guys: like, okay, we sympathize with you guys, but you are just criticizing, come with concrete proposals and so on and so on. No, we have to think through this. To—if—they tell us come with realistic proposals. Sorry, but the only realistic proposals are by definition proposals now which are part of the system. If you make a realistic proposals now, it automatically means you just patch things up with, I don't know, better legislation here, better taxation there. But I think the crisis is deeper. Which is why again, I even advocated in one of the short things I did about Occupy Wall Street, advocated that what the last thing we need now is a dialogue. We should be left alone to think. There—I am not saying there is an easy way out, but um solutions at the same time I think I’d like to use here what my friend Badiou called materialist theology of grace, you know? You work and solutions often come by themselves. Remember that all great revolutions happened by this. October Revolution was a total surprise. Marx was surprised by Paris Commune and so on and so on. So then you see value in the sort of empty signifier that the hysteric...? Absolutely, absolutely. I think the greatest danger is to accept this blackmail of do something useful, translate your dreams into concrete proposals or whatever. No, that would be the greatest defeat today. This doesn't mean that we should not fight concrete battles. Of course, for example, the example that I like to use: so many people are disappointed, I am also, I'm not an idiot, by Obama. But I still insist that the debate that he unleashed, that set in motion about universal health care, was an incredibly important debate because it did strike the key element of American ideology, this false idea of freedom of choice. Because you know this was the truly efficient conservative counter-argument: universal health care deprives you of the freedom of choice. We should accept—we should move the debate there. What kind of freedom of choice is there? Is it really freedom that you get there and so on and so on? So again, this would be the art today: yes, to engage in concrete battles here, there, but nonetheless to maintain the space open for thinking. Not—don’t be hystericized by the opponent. We have enough of our own hysteria to put it this way, you know, like oh where are the concrete answers and so on and so on. And my answer to those in power on the other hand would have been: wait a minute, you don't know what you are doing. I mean what I said before, and it's a very dangerous potentially situation, I really mean it that—look at United States. Sorry, but you know once the Republican Party was the party of this Rockefeller rich elite and so on. This was horrible. But at least now I will sound—now I will sound horribly cynical, but what the hell. At least you have some trust: these are rich guys with certain sense of responsibility. But how can you take seriously a party where people like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum come close to ruling positions? I really mean it that like it's as if the ruling class itself no longer functions, is no longer able to rule properly. And this is potentially a dangerous situation. Haha, I succeeded with that. Then I will be able to say hypocritically I'm so sorry that we can’t stay all the night, you know, sorry. Ah, the struggle of two ladies who... the green lady and the gray lady or... I’m a little bit concerned that um, you know, that while the ruling class is trying to sort it out and while we're deferring to other people and saying, you know, someone else will solve all these problems—I didn’t say this here but yeah, yeah—how—how are we actually going to pull ourselves together and like ourselves solve the problems of today's society when even somebody who’s politically active and aware is ready to defer to other people and say, well, somebody's probably sorting this out, I don't have to take personal responsibility. And um, don’t—don't you think that—that the negligence that I myself will take blame for, um, might result in some catastrophe and how could we possibly avoid that? No, it's a very good question but here let me tell you my pessimism, even Trotsky the permanent revolution somewhere considered this point. You know like here I'm a brutal realist, you have to accept that—this will sound horrible that—most that you will get from the majority of people, and majority of people is not now the code name for the lower classes, it's more even the upper, that they want normal peace and work. They are not ready to be permanently engaged. It’s easy to have the magic moment of revolution where millions participate, but for me the greatest problem was always the day after. How is all that one—like Tahrir Square, Egypt, okay, we all cried it's wonderful, but then when things return to normal, how you will feel the difference there? That’s you know, like what I would like is a little bit less focus on this magic moment. You know what's my nightmare? That we do another Tahrir Square or Occupy Wall Street and then every year we meet in a cafeteria and talk how nice it was and then while we talk my cell phone rings oh I have to run to my bank you know sorry I don’t have time. You know that it will become just this nice memory and so on and so on. You know, and but unfortunately here I don't think there is a simple answer. It’s already a tragic symptom that we are asking this question. I mean—and this is the problem. I mean I'm always challenging people who shout at me oh you're a traitor revisionist, then I tell them okay tell me what to do. They tell me people should take over. Okay, I'll tell them what do you mean by this? Through voting, through coup d'état, revolution, whatever, or... and you see that vaguely like for example I had a debate in Zagreb, Croatia with Tariq Ali who said it should have happened in Greece that maybe not in Athens but in another city people should take over immediately, take over the town hall, distribute money. I told them are you crazy? First distribute what money? Money is no longer the real money you have there. It’s all mostly virtual. You know what I mean? Like I'm shocked about howly—so what I'm saying, now here you will probably not agree, that’s my hardline message is: we have to reinvent state authority and so on and so on. Are we aware—and this was what I talked openly with Tsipras, the Greek guy who just lost, no? I told him don’t think about democracy, think about secret police. Think about oppression, because I told him this: let's say that by a chance Syriza were to win in Greece. I told him are you aware that without extremely efficient financial and other police you wouldn’t have stood not even a chance? Because the first thing that would have happened would be that you know all the capitals fly out and so on. Then they tell me ah you are a Stalinist, you have your Stalinist dreams. I tell them no, but if we don't do this
unknown
the real Stalinism will return. Like I distrust this old leftist dream of transparent society, no state, and so on and so on. Okay, we can call it state or not, but we have to start to seriously think how to organize security, state apparatus, and so on in a different way. This is the crucial question. Maybe even more crucial question immediately than capitalism itself. Because
the real Stalinism will return. Like I distrust this old leftist dream of transparent society, no state, and so on and so on. Okay, we can call it state or not, but we have to start to seriously think how to organize security, state apparatus, and so on in a different way. This is the crucial question. Maybe even more crucial question immediately than capitalism itself. Because
Slavoj Žižek
you know the problem today is precisely the complexity of social organization where you cannot play with all these transparent local communities no. Like then they always tell me what about Zapatistas in Mexico? Oh I love them because they are cynically realist, like you know they very well organized the progressive tourism no? You come to their liberated region no, but I spoke with one of them and they told me, and this is not cynical what I will tell you now, that's why I admire them. There is a problem, namely in the Zapatista territory there is no prostitution and no alcohol. But of course all the leftist professors who come there want both. So they organize every evening a bus just outside where you have a brothel, tequila and so on and so on. I mean I—how to put it? I'm sick and tired of this big enthusiastic moments where we all cry together there. I'm more and more in love with this difficult, concrete, boring work how you really change daily life. And here I don't think the situation is as hopeless as it may—as it may appear. But I know I didn't answer you and I'm not bluffing you know. Yes please. No, that lady, leave both ladies yeah. Like two of those knights of the round table, the green lady and the great lady. Gray lady, I don't know who is the good one or... sorry. Yeah but Žižek okay, first of all I’m very happy that you mentioned Buddhism. But when you briefly okay straight, I see already you Buddhism. So the fact that um people can in their individual selves overcome um ideological constraints on themselves. But the point that I wanted to raise was that we have a—a movement um like getting back to the land but not perhaps what that means typically, I don't know if you’ve heard of permaculture before? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Oh sorry, no I’m just wondering. Because there—first I’m not sure Buddhism there. I’m very critical of Buddhism, but that’s another story, okay. But you know there’s all aspects to—to all things. Yeah. You can be critical of or not critical of... but anyway. So um—yeah, so with permaculture, I guess the idea is that people are working toward sustainability, working with the land, uh and living in community at the same time and attempting to create um what I would loosely call a communist sort of um society, but on a small scale. And that’s happening all around the world in little pockets. And I feel like that—you know it’s a matter of—can you specify these pockets, where do you see them for example? For example in India and China. I’m not aware of any of this type of pockets. Yeah there are definitely communities of people living off the land and actually living in community as well. Um, if you go on the WWOOFing website you can find them. But anyway, um, the thing is what I think is important is that we get back to producing culture and becoming producers instead of consumers. Um, I think one of the most important things to like—to getting in touch with um our sense of change and what we can do is actually making things and creating what—what we want. And I don’t mean like manifesting our reality necessarily, but just actually engaging in things that—that we consume on a production level, which I think is a Marxist principle. Yeah. But nonetheless, you know what's my problem here? I see what you are talking about no, because what I meant is that—because it may surprise you but I know situation in India pretty well. Um, you have there a big movement which is more or less totally ignored by our media, is the Naxalite Communist Maoist Rebellion. It's the greatest rebellion today. There are over or at least around one million armed people which are suppressed by the army in an incredibly brutal way. And it's simply—it’s incredible how it's simply ignored by the media and so on, no? It's absolutely breathtaking what's happening there.
you know the problem today is precisely the complexity of social organization where you cannot play with all these transparent local communities no. Like then they always tell me what about Zapatistas in Mexico? Oh I love them because they are cynically realist, like you know they very well organized the progressive tourism no? You come to their liberated region no, but I spoke with one of them and they told me, and this is not cynical what I will tell you now, that's why I admire them. There is a problem, namely in the Zapatista territory there is no prostitution and no alcohol. But of course all the leftist professors who come there want both. So they organize every evening a bus just outside where you have a brothel, tequila and so on and so on. I mean I—how to put it? I'm sick and tired of this big enthusiastic moments where we all cry together there. I'm more and more in love with this difficult, concrete, boring work how you really change daily life. And here I don't think the situation is as hopeless as it may—as it may appear. But I know I didn't answer you and I'm not bluffing you know. Yes please. No, that lady, leave both ladies yeah. Like two of those knights of the round table, the green lady and the great lady. Gray lady, I don't know who is the good one or... sorry. Yeah but Žižek okay, first of all I’m very happy that you mentioned Buddhism. But when you briefly okay straight, I see already you Buddhism. So the fact that um people can in their individual selves overcome um ideological constraints on themselves. But the point that I wanted to raise was that we have a—a movement um like getting back to the land but not perhaps what that means typically, I don't know if you’ve heard of permaculture before? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Oh sorry, no I’m just wondering. Because there—first I’m not sure Buddhism there. I’m very critical of Buddhism, but that’s another story, okay. But you know there’s all aspects to—to all things. Yeah. You can be critical of or not critical of... but anyway. So um—yeah, so with permaculture, I guess the idea is that people are working toward sustainability, working with the land, uh and living in community at the same time and attempting to create um what I would loosely call a communist sort of um society, but on a small scale. And that’s happening all around the world in little pockets. And I feel like that—you know it’s a matter of—can you specify these pockets, where do you see them for example? For example in India and China. I’m not aware of any of this type of pockets. Yeah there are definitely communities of people living off the land and actually living in community as well. Um, if you go on the WWOOFing website you can find them. But anyway, um, the thing is what I think is important is that we get back to producing culture and becoming producers instead of consumers. Um, I think one of the most important things to like—to getting in touch with um our sense of change and what we can do is actually making things and creating what—what we want. And I don’t mean like manifesting our reality necessarily, but just actually engaging in things that—that we consume on a production level, which I think is a Marxist principle. Yeah. But nonetheless, you know what's my problem here? I see what you are talking about no, because what I meant is that—because it may surprise you but I know situation in India pretty well. Um, you have there a big movement which is more or less totally ignored by our media, is the Naxalite Communist Maoist Rebellion. It's the greatest rebellion today. There are over or at least around one million armed people which are suppressed by the army in an incredibly brutal way. And it's simply—it’s incredible how it's simply ignored by the media and so on, no? It's absolutely breathtaking what's happening there.
unknown
Okay, but to go back to your point, you know what's my problem here? Okay, but what you are saying, I would have said it may appear a theoretical problem but I think it's also very practical. Like
Okay, but to go back to your point, you know what's my problem here? Okay, but what you are saying, I would have said it may appear a theoretical problem but I think it's also very practical. Like
Slavoj Žižek
most of these local communal communities—if I
most of these local communal communities—if I
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shall call them—do you think they have a—they have a universal potential? In the sense that these are the germs of something that it will... I claim that no, that something else not their own logic will have to come to provide the proper background for them. Because the first thing as you probably know is that they are not something new. You have especially in the United States, and Canada here, you know you have for already over years this. They are all the time here, these small
shall call them—do you think they have a—they have a universal potential? In the sense that these are the germs of something that it will... I claim that no, that something else not their own logic will have to come to provide the proper background for them. Because the first thing as you probably know is that they are not something new. You have especially in the United States, and Canada here, you know you have for already over years this. They are all the time here, these small
Slavoj Žižek
communities and so on and so on. But what makes me a pessimist is this. For example, I have maybe you have there better connections. I have friends in Venezuela who all the time keep me informed. And they are getting pretty pessimist. You know from time to time you get this triumphant news oh workers took over that factory and it's in the media and I have a leftist, leftist friends there who does something very evil. He goes there to this same factory a year after. And it's—yeah, it’s either bankrupt or taken over by the state or reprivatized or whatever whatever. So um what I'm saying is that um... for example, I had the same problem in Greece where they constituted these small communities and so on and so on. And then I asked them,
communities and so on and so on. But what makes me a pessimist is this. For example, I have maybe you have there better connections. I have friends in Venezuela who all the time keep me informed. And they are getting pretty pessimist. You know from time to time you get this triumphant news oh workers took over that factory and it's in the media and I have a leftist, leftist friends there who does something very evil. He goes there to this same factory a year after. And it's—yeah, it’s either bankrupt or taken over by the state or reprivatized or whatever whatever. So um what I'm saying is that um... for example, I had the same problem in Greece where they constituted these small communities and so on and so on. And then I asked them,
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okay, imagine you taking power. Yes, they
okay, imagine you taking power. Yes, they
Slavoj Žižek
told me with such pride in Greece. They told me we have a totally new form of society. We gather and each of us can speak, but it's allowed to speak no longer than five minutes so that they are all equal. Then I told them okay, imagine Syriza wins and imagine capitalists boycotting you, fleeing the country, blah blah. What will you do? Convoke a great meeting where each of you will talk for five minutes or what? No, you will need an extremely brutally efficient force. This is what I would like to think: how to do it without simply... you know what I mean? Like I totally agree with you, I admire these communities, but what kind of a global network can we imagine? I don't think they will do it. Here I'm maybe a little bit more pessimist than you. I—I think it’s just interesting to question why we need money if we can produce things ourselves. And I think the question comes down to land. What do you mean if we produce the things myself? Where did you buy your watch, where did you buy your PC? What do you produce yourselves? No, I mean what do we REALLY need. I think Gandhi was a really wonderful example of—of that. Gandhi is my problem, you know. They—you know, you should visit India. This was the discovery of my lifetime there. I visit the untouchables. You cannot imagine how they hate Gandhi. Gandhi is strictly upper and upper-middle class phenomenon. The untouchables never forgave Gandhi the way he approached the topic of the castes. It was to put it brutally the proto-fascist solution. Gandhi's solution was not abolish castes, but each caste has its proper place, each caste has its own dignity, they should all be celebrated blah blah. And then the good guy for me is an untouchable called Ambedkar who is now more and more elevated in India as more... he proposed, I quoted somewhere, a wonderful formula: no castes without outcasts, you know, like you never will based on caste principle construct a harmonious... so again, what I'm saying is that precisely Gandhi, although I agree with you, you know which is for me where he did one—first, oh no, let me be very clear: I do admire nonetheless Gandhi. He was an extremely honest person. He was far from sane. Did you read his book Experiments with Truth or what? Where he is not faking, he reports—he was no saint—how he was all the time troubled with sexuality and how he made all these stupid experiments, he was pay young girls to sleep
told me with such pride in Greece. They told me we have a totally new form of society. We gather and each of us can speak, but it's allowed to speak no longer than five minutes so that they are all equal. Then I told them okay, imagine Syriza wins and imagine capitalists boycotting you, fleeing the country, blah blah. What will you do? Convoke a great meeting where each of you will talk for five minutes or what? No, you will need an extremely brutally efficient force. This is what I would like to think: how to do it without simply... you know what I mean? Like I totally agree with you, I admire these communities, but what kind of a global network can we imagine? I don't think they will do it. Here I'm maybe a little bit more pessimist than you. I—I think it’s just interesting to question why we need money if we can produce things ourselves. And I think the question comes down to land. What do you mean if we produce the things myself? Where did you buy your watch, where did you buy your PC? What do you produce yourselves? No, I mean what do we REALLY need. I think Gandhi was a really wonderful example of—of that. Gandhi is my problem, you know. They—you know, you should visit India. This was the discovery of my lifetime there. I visit the untouchables. You cannot imagine how they hate Gandhi. Gandhi is strictly upper and upper-middle class phenomenon. The untouchables never forgave Gandhi the way he approached the topic of the castes. It was to put it brutally the proto-fascist solution. Gandhi's solution was not abolish castes, but each caste has its proper place, each caste has its own dignity, they should all be celebrated blah blah. And then the good guy for me is an untouchable called Ambedkar who is now more and more elevated in India as more... he proposed, I quoted somewhere, a wonderful formula: no castes without outcasts, you know, like you never will based on caste principle construct a harmonious... so again, what I'm saying is that precisely Gandhi, although I agree with you, you know which is for me where he did one—first, oh no, let me be very clear: I do admire nonetheless Gandhi. He was an extremely honest person. He was far from sane. Did you read his book Experiments with Truth or what? Where he is not faking, he reports—he was no saint—how he was all the time troubled with sexuality and how he made all these stupid experiments, he was pay young girls to sleep
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with
with
Slavoj Žižek
him, but promised
him, but promised
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to himself that he will not touch them and so on. You know this—I it is comical, but at the same time it shows his absolute honesty, he wasn't saying I'm a saint or what, you know? And all that I and yes, Indian friend sent me a wonderful text by Gandhi:
to himself that he will not touch them and so on. You know this—I it is comical, but at the same time it shows his absolute honesty, he wasn't saying I'm a saint or what, you know? And all that I and yes, Indian friend sent me a wonderful text by Gandhi:
Slavoj Žižek
how can we do our own secret police? Which is a wonderful text or like: we need it,
how can we do our own secret police? Which is a wonderful text or like: we need it,
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but can we avoid all the horrible things that we... that Gandhi
but can we avoid all the horrible things that we... that Gandhi
Slavoj Žižek
I would like to
I would like to
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follow, you know? No, no, again I agree with you, but you know maybe there is one solution, maybe I'm too utopian. What I do admire is how these local communities often succeed in directly through digital media become
follow, you know? No, no, again I agree with you, but you know maybe there is one solution, maybe I'm too utopian. What I do admire is how these local communities often succeed in directly through digital media become
Slavoj Žižek
universalized, you know? What interests me is how maybe this is one of
universalized, you know? What interests me is how maybe this is one of
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the ways to overcome this limit of local communities that you don't define them in this old-fashioned way and so on. But you can—to combine them then with the—the most modern technology and so on and so on which can change everything and so on and so on. I would have—but you know the only problem—now when
the ways to overcome this limit of local communities that you don't define them in this old-fashioned way and so on. But you can—to combine them then with the—the most modern technology and so on and so on which can change everything and so on and so on. I would have—but you know the only problem—now when
Slavoj Žižek
you said we—the other problem is what you said, things that we need, things that we don't need. I'm well aware that desires are basically perverse, we mostly buy things we don't need and so on and so on. But on the other hand, like how would you establish through pedagogy or what, how would you bring people to—to demand only what they really need? I don't know if we can do it on a universal level. It’s like... what? It’s something... No, you see always you get that. But uh, we’re—we’re out of time I’m afraid, so uh let’s thank Žižek. I’m sorry, but we should... no because again, these are naive questions, but naive questions are the most difficult ones and the crucial ones of course. Of course. No, I claim the answer is a simple one there when you say, because it's not some psychological propensity in ourselves, it's the whole market capitalist system which makes us to do this. So the first thing I hope we agree is let’s not approach this way how we demand only what we really want as an individual psychological problem. And then you get all this psychological... no, change the system and people will desire in a different way. Don't focus on people and terrorize them, you know? Because do you know that there is also a very racist way of playing this game? Like when I was in—in New Zealand, I met some natives there. I loved them. The most corrupted but in an honest way people. New Zealand. They have their authentic popular
you said we—the other problem is what you said, things that we need, things that we don't need. I'm well aware that desires are basically perverse, we mostly buy things we don't need and so on and so on. But on the other hand, like how would you establish through pedagogy or what, how would you bring people to—to demand only what they really need? I don't know if we can do it on a universal level. It’s like... what? It’s something... No, you see always you get that. But uh, we’re—we’re out of time I’m afraid, so uh let’s thank Žižek. I’m sorry, but we should... no because again, these are naive questions, but naive questions are the most difficult ones and the crucial ones of course. Of course. No, I claim the answer is a simple one there when you say, because it's not some psychological propensity in ourselves, it's the whole market capitalist system which makes us to do this. So the first thing I hope we agree is let’s not approach this way how we demand only what we really want as an individual psychological problem. And then you get all this psychological... no, change the system and people will desire in a different way. Don't focus on people and terrorize them, you know? Because do you know that there is also a very racist way of playing this game? Like when I was in—in New Zealand, I met some natives there. I loved them. The most corrupted but in an honest way people. New Zealand. They have their authentic popular
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artists who prolong authentic
artists who prolong authentic
Slavoj Žižek
tribal art. But you know how? They told us: they have
tribal art. But you know how? They told us: they have
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an agent
an agent
Slavoj Žižek
in New York who tells them what’s the latest fashion. Then they quickly discover authentic art, which magically... and I love them, you know, because—and what they say, they are furious when somebody says them you live authentically, why do you want to become consumerist? And they tell you quite frankly: why don't you become and live like us and we become consumerists like you, let's change. You know what I mean, like... I—I despise this liberal false admiration of so-called primitive people. I will never, just because you are allowed to go, I will never forget what I learned from South Africa, the last years of apartheid. A friend from there sent me the official white apartheid justification. It wasn't blacks are less. It was saying: if we abolish apartheid and give blacks the same rights, are we aware that an incredibly rich authentic culture will get lost in our consumerist society? There will no longer be Bushmans or whatever, there will just be all the same consumerists and so on and so on. I never forgot this, that the last defense of apartheid in South Africa was authentic black values. Which is why, I know you’re
in New York who tells them what’s the latest fashion. Then they quickly discover authentic art, which magically... and I love them, you know, because—and what they say, they are furious when somebody says them you live authentically, why do you want to become consumerist? And they tell you quite frankly: why don't you become and live like us and we become consumerists like you, let's change. You know what I mean, like... I—I despise this liberal false admiration of so-called primitive people. I will never, just because you are allowed to go, I will never forget what I learned from South Africa, the last years of apartheid. A friend from there sent me the official white apartheid justification. It wasn't blacks are less. It was saying: if we abolish apartheid and give blacks the same rights, are we aware that an incredibly rich authentic culture will get lost in our consumerist society? There will no longer be Bushmans or whatever, there will just be all the same consumerists and so on and so on. I never forgot this, that the last defense of apartheid in South Africa was authentic black values. Which is why, I know you’re
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too
too
Slavoj Žižek
young to remember this, but Mandela was always for citizens' equality. The one who was for separate way, we need our black culture, was King Buthelezi on a minority, and as it became clear later he was on the payroll, on—of the white and so on. Okay, sorry. [Applause]
young to remember this, but Mandela was always for citizens' equality. The one who was for separate way, we need our black culture, was King Buthelezi on a minority, and as it became clear later he was on the payroll, on—of the white and so on. Okay, sorry. [Applause]