Communist Absconditus
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2012 · 1:09:16 · 8,981 words
with Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
capitalismcommunism-socialismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsreligion-theologyliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracyrevolution-violenceeconomicssexuality-gendergeopolitics-warsubjectivityeveryday-lifephilosophy-general
Delivered at the European Graduate School (EGS) in 2012, Žižek offers a political-economic diagnosis of the post-2008 global crisis, arguing that it marks the end of a decades-long cycle built on US deficit-driven global accumulation. He extends Marxist categories of unemployment and exploitation to cover structurally excluded populations, critiques the left's lack of any concrete programme beyond vague Keynesianism, and advocates a non-teleological, Pascalian 'communism absconditus' that reads events like Tahrir Square as fragile signs without ontological guarantee. He concludes by examining the pathological subjectivity of political correctness and the contractualisation of sexuality, proposing a composite sociopathic figure, part Jack Bauer, part Stringer Bell, part Homer Simpson, as the model for today's radical.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 19
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Implicit in Žižek's account of how everyone knows the Greek rescue plans are pure fiction yet they are repeatedly enacted, ideology functioning even when its untruth is universally acknowledged.
Žižek invokes Freud's superego not as a naive moral agency but as a sadistic, perverted agency that bombards subjects with impossible demands, knowing in advance they will fail, used here to characterise EU pressure on Greece.
Illustrated by the Greek rescue plans: how something universally known to be pure fiction is nonetheless repeatedly enacted, the gap between knowledge and belief that sustains social functioning.
as “global Sparta / global minotaur”
Žižek's metaphorical frame for global capitalism: the US as the military-ideological Spartiate class, Europe/Asia as the productive traders, and the underdeveloped world as the helots, an oligarchic world order masked as diversity and equality.
Žižek's characterisation of the post-Nixon US trade deficit as a paradoxically generative imbalance, a 'divine sacrifice' that powered global growth by recycling surplus capital through Wall Street.
as “reserve army of labour”
Classical Marxist category that Žižek explicitly extends beyond its original meaning to encompass populations permanently excluded from the capitalist vortex altogether.
Gramsci's term, invoked by Žižek to warn that the educated unemployed youth being produced by neo-liberal education reform are being 'schooled' by capitalism itself to become the organic intellectuals of future radical movements.
as “structural unemployment as exploitation”
Žižek's extension of the Marxist concept: those who are structurally prevented from even entering the capitalist wage-labour vortex are themselves exploited, not merely excluded.
Invoked as the classical basis of exploitation (labour sells its force, capitalist appropriates the surplus), which Žižek argues must be rethought to include those prevented from entering wage labour at all.
The left-liberal politics of recognising marginalised groups; Žižek argues exploitation is more politically fundamental than recognition.
Žižek's poetic label for 2011, the year of the Arab Spring, Occupy, and other radical awakenings whose fragility and programmatic emptiness he goes on to diagnose.
Žižek's critical label (borrowed from T.J. Clark) for the left's persistent belief in a coming revolutionary 'big moment' that will vindicate patient underground work, a position he urges the left to abandon.
as “deus absconditus / communism absconditus”
Žižek's Pascalian coinage: just as Pascal's hidden God reveals himself only to believers, communism today is a hidden potential visible only to those who are already politically engaged, no ontological guarantee, but still worth acting on.
as “Pascalian miracle / sign from the future”
Events like Tahrir Square are read not as symptoms of past tendencies but as signs that only future developments will confirm; they are miracles only to those who engage with them, a non-teleological political hermeneutic.
Underlies Žižek's account of how the global capitalist order produces subjects fitted to its logic, including the harassed narcissistic subject and the contractual sexual partner.
Žižek's label for the dominant contemporary mode of selfhood organised around the fear of the Other's intrusion, which underlies anti-harassment political correctness.
as “desexualisation of sex”
Under conditions of both political-correctness contractualism and pornographic overabundance, sexuality loses its constitutive asymmetry and becomes a neutral exchange of pleasures, Žižek's term for this process.
Used to describe how contractual sexuality reduces the partner to a mere appendix of sex toys, a composite of partial objects rather than a full person.
as “jouissance / enjoyment”
Implicit in Žižek's discussion of Homer Simpson's 'innocent joy' in annoying the other, the surplus enjoyment that motivates even the most trivial sociopathic acts.
Stories he reaches for 4
Eastern European saying: when someone says 'there is light at the end of the tunnel,' the response is 'of course, it's another train coming toward us.' Žižek uses this against teleological optimism about the crisis resolving into progress.
“there is the light at the end of the tunnel. we say, of course there is. it's another train coming to us.”
Stalin said a good Bolshevik should combine Russian passion/dedication with American pragmatic spirit. Žižek adapts this, replacing it with the trio: Jack Bauer's brutal dedication, Stringer Bell's opportunism, Homer Simpson's evil humour.
“i think we should say that today what we need is a person who unites the brutality, the brutal dedication of jack bauer”
Žižek argues that Tahrir Square was unexpected, drew on no religious or nationalist mobilisation, and remains a fragile sign: to a 'libertarian' (Pascalian atheist) it was merely contingent, but to those who engage politically with it, it is a miracle pointing toward a possible future.
“we had a big rebellion which precisely did not use any of these resources. so miracles happen.”
Žižek cites Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: marriage is a contract for mutual use of sexual organs, and if a husband flees, the wife can have police bring him back because he has absconded with her contractually co-owned body part. Žižek uses this to show that contemporary contractual sexuality is catching up with Kant's apparently absurd thought experiment.
“she ran away. with part of his body, penis, which contractually was also co-owned by her.”
Works invoked 11
Empire book
Hardt and Negri's work; Žižek criticises its eschatological conclusion, the moment when all multitudes converge, backed only by a reference to San Francisco.
New Left Review journal
Žižek refers to T.J. Clark's 'wonderful brutal attack on today's left' published there as a key reference for his own diagnosis.
The Wire tv
Stringer Bell's ruthless pragmatic opportunism ('always finding a way') is another of the three sociopathic qualities Žižek endorses.
24 tv
Jack Bauer's 'brutal dedication' and willingness to risk everything for a cause is one of the three sociopathic qualities Žižek endorses in his model of the radical subject.
Kant's work from which Žižek quotes the contractual definition of marriage and the co-ownership of genitals argument, used to show that contemporary contractual sexuality is catching up with Kantian absurdity.
Drive book
Daniel Pink's popular psychology book on motivation; Žižek uses its experiments as empirical evidence that financial motivation is not natural and that beyond a threshold money is counterproductive.
The Global Minotaur book
Yanis Varoufakis's book on US deficit-driven global accumulation; Žižek quotes it at length and endorses its framework as the best available account of the crisis.
The Simpsons tv
Homer Simpson's 'innocent joy' of annoying others is held up as one of the three redeeming sociopathic qualities Žižek wants to recombine into a radical subject.
House M.D. tv
Identified by Kotsko (endorsed by Žižek) as the 'worst' sociopath, because Dr House risks his private happiness for a higher cause, an extreme version of the Jack Bauer type.
Badiou's book greeting the 2011 uprisings as a return of emancipatory politics; Žižek respectfully but firmly disagrees, arguing it is another instance of eschatological over-reading.
Adam Kotsko's book analysing TV sociopath types (Homer Simpson, Stringer Bell, Jack Bauer); Žižek endorses the typology and uses it to construct his model of the radical subject.
People invoked 25
André Monglond positive
French historian quoted (via Benjamin) for the photosensitive-plate metaphor: past events as images that only the future can develop.
Cited as the president who abandoned the gold standard, initiating the structural shift in global accumulation that Žižek analyses.
Daniel Pink positive
Žižek treats Pink's Drive experiments as empirical evidence (modest but real) that capitalist egotism and financial motivation are not natural once a certain income threshold is reached.
EGS founder and interlocutor; Žižek jokes he chose his political topic precisely 'to annoy our good friend Wolfgang', who prefers to keep politics out of the school.
Adam Kotsko positive
Žižek draws on Kotsko's book 'Why Do We Love Sociopaths?' for the typology of contemporary TV sociopaths and the 'redeeming qualities' Žižek then recombines into a model radical subject.
Blaise Pascal positive
Žižek draws heavily on Pascal's notion of the deus absconditus and miracles visible only to believers to construct his 'communism absconditus' and non-teleological politics of the sign.
Philippe Van Parijs negative
Žižek critiques Van Parijs's basic income proposal as explicitly designed to save capitalism, not transcend it, since Van Parijs's own premise is that capitalism is the only workable system.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek explicitly states he prefers Lacan (and Freud) to Foucault for understanding sexuality because Lacan preserves the asymmetry and excess of desire.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
Dismissed dismissively as 'some idiot' who tells redundant textile workers displaced by modernisation to 'reinvent themselves', embodying the ideological comfort of Third Way liberalism.
Antonio Negri negative
Co-author of Empire; implicated in the same eschatological critique as Hardt.
Žižek describes Badiou as a good friend but gives him a '5% ironic' critique: Badiou's Réveil de l'histoire and his notion of the Event still harbour an eschatological waiting that Žižek wants to move beyond.
Alexis Tsipras negative
Žižek met Tsipras in Athens and found him 'very sympathetic' personally, but says he had 'absolutely no idea' what to do economically, embodying the left's programmatic vacuum.
Fredric Jameson positive
Žižek agrees with Jameson's proposal to expand the category of unemployment to cover populations that have 'dropped out of history'.
Identified as the 'brain behind' Nixon's strategic embrace of deficits; Žižek calls the idea 'creative and ingenious' but without personal approval.
Julian Assange positive
Žižek recently spoke with Assange, who showed him Swedish legal proposals that would criminalise sex obtained by religious deception, used as evidence for contractual sexuality taken to an absurd extreme.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Žižek quotes Varoufakis's 'Global Minotaur' extensively and approvingly as the best framework for understanding US deficit-driven global accumulation.
T. J. Clark positive
Žižek endorses Clark's brutal attack on today's left in New Left Review and his characterisation of the left's dream as a 'partly detached pseudo-nation state with non-financialised capitalism'.
Michel Foucault negative
Žižek explicitly prefers Lacan/Freud over Foucault for analysing sexuality, arguing Foucault's shift from sexuality to pleasures is part of the desexualisation process he critiques.
Christa Wolf positive
Žižek says he doesn't 'even like her very much' personally but uses the blank-map story from her memoir (East Berlin TV tower visit) to illustrate how excluded populations are rendered invisible.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek invokes Benjamin's 'Arcades Project' metaphor, past events as photosensitive images only developed by the future, as the basis for his non-teleological reading of political signs; later makes a ribald joke about Benjamin going to Russia to sleep with Asja Lācis.
Žižek cites Stalin's formula for a good communist (Russian passion + American pragmatism) only to update and replace it with his own sociopathic composite.
Michael Hardt negative
Žižek criticises the conclusion of Empire (Hardt and Negri): its eschatological moment when 'all multitudes will come together' is backed only by a reference to San Francisco, an example of precisely the teleological waiting Žižek rejects.
Sigmund Freud positive
Invoked for the superego analysis of EU demands on Greece and for the classic question 'what does a woman want?', which Žižek asks ironically of Occupy demonstrators.
Simon Critchley negative
Žižek jokes that he denies Critchley's ontological existence, 'ontologically simon critchley doesn't exist', a comic dismissal during post-talk discussion.
Immanuel Kant positive
Žižek invokes Kant's contractual definition of marriage (from Metaphysik der Sitten) as an 'absurd' anticipation of today's contractual desexualised sexuality, using Kant to illuminate rather than endorse contemporary political correctness.
What it argues
end of the US-deficit-driven global economic cycleexpanding Marxist concepts of unemployment and exploitation to structurally excluded populationsleft's programmatic bankruptcy and eschatological waitingnon-teleological Pascalian politics: communism abscondituscontractualisation and desexualisation of sexuality under political correctnessthe superego logic of EU austerity demands on Greecesociopathic subjectivity as model for radical political engagement
Dialectical moves 10
“The EU's impossible demands on Greece are not a moral agency but a sadistic superego that bombards Greece knowing in advance it will fail, precisely to enjoy its failure.”
What appears as a moral rescue operation is actually a perverted sadistic enjoyment of the debtor's inevitable failure, Freudian superego displaces naive morality.
“The true tragedy today is not that you are exploited, but that you are lucky to be exploited—permanent employment is a privilege.”
Classical Marxist exploitation is inverted: the exploited wage worker is the enviable one, while the truly dispossessed are those who cannot even achieve the 'dignity' of being exploited.
“The United States, self-declared opponent of Keynesianism, is Keynesian economics embodied—the universal consumer that keeps the world economy running through its deficits.”
The country that ideologically repudiates Keynesianism is in structural terms the very incarnation of Keynesian demand management at a global scale.
“Congo is not naturally a heart of darkness; it is precisely as such—as apparent primordial chaos—that it is fully included into global capitalism.”
The appearance of pre-modern barbarism is itself the form through which Congo is integrated into the global capitalist system of mineral extraction.
“Now that there finally is a crisis, the left—which spent decades waiting for one—has no idea what to do; the crisis reveals the left's bankruptcy rather than its opportunity.”
The long-awaited revolutionary situation arrives, but exposes precisely the absence of any coherent left project, inverting the left's own eschatological narrative.
“The basic income proposal, apparently the left's only concrete idea, is explicitly designed by its author to save capitalism, not overcome it.”
The left's one concrete economic proposal turns out to be a device for capitalism's self-preservation, turning the apparent radical alternative into its opposite.
“Far from representing a new historical awakening, the unrests of 2011 have so far produced only one concrete result: the replacement of left-wing governments by right-wing ones.”
The 'awakening of history' (Badiou) when measured by its actual outcomes amounts to a rightward political shift, the revolutionary signs point in the opposite direction.
“The more pornography promises and delivers sex, the more sex gets desexualised.”
The excess of sexual availability paradoxically destroys sexuality's constitutive charge, so that the maximum of sex equals the minimum of sexuality.
“Political correctness's anti-harassment model, which aims to protect the subject from asymmetry, ends up reducing the sexual partner to a mere composite of sex toys.”
The attempt to eliminate domination and asymmetry from sexuality produces its apparent opposite: the complete objectification of the partner.
“We should pass ironically from revealed communism to communism absconditus—a hidden communism visible only to those who already believe and act.”
Communism cannot be grounded in historical necessity (revealed communism); instead, it is a hidden potentiality confirmed only by the act of political engagement itself, a Pascalian hermeneutic circle.
Claims 16
asserts
The ongoing economic crisis is not about greed or bad bank regulation but marks the structural end of a global economic cycle that began when Nixon abandoned the gold standard and the US shifted from surplus to deficit.global financial crisis / economic structure
asserts
The Marxist category of unemployment must be expanded beyond the reserve army of labour to include populations permanently excluded from the global capitalist process—rogue states, slum dwellers, famine victims, the informally enslaved.Marxist political economy / unemployment
asserts
Structural unemployment itself must be reconceived as a form of exploitation, not merely exclusion, because those prevented from entering wage labour are still produced and required by the capitalist system.exploitation / political economy
rejects
The left's dominant strategy of recognition politics is less important than the category of exploitation, which should be the primary organising frame.left-liberal recognition politics
asserts
The left in 2012 has no concrete political-economic programme beyond confused Keynesianism; events like Occupy and the Arab Spring expose this programmatic emptiness rather than signalling a left revival.left politics / Occupy Wall Street / Arab Spring
rejects
The left's eschatological attitude—waiting for a 'big moment' when all radical forces converge—must be definitively abandoned; there will be no such moment.Marxist teleology / revolutionary eschatology
rejects
Basic income (renda básica) as proposed by Philippe Van Parijs is paradoxically a device to save capitalism, not overcome it, since its explicit premise is that capitalism is the only workable system.basic income / Van Parijs
asserts
Events like Tahrir Square should be read as Pascalian miracles—signs from the future with no ontological guarantee—rather than as symptoms of historical necessity.political events / revolutionary politics / teleology
rejects
Congo is not a 'heart of darkness' of pre-modern ethnic chaos but is fully integrated into global capitalism through corporate mineral extraction mediated by warlords.Congo / Africa / global capitalism / racism
asserts
The US functions as a universal Keynesian consumer whose hegemony rests not on economic productivity but on military-ideological trust, requiring a permanent state of war to sustain itself.US empire / global capitalism / war on terror
asserts
Anti-harassment political correctness's real hidden model is contractual, desexualised sex in which the partner is reduced to a set of partial objects—a sex toy composite.political correctness / sexuality / harassment
asserts
The expansion of pornography exemplifies the desexualisation of sex: the more sex is promised and displayed, the more it loses its constitutive asymmetry and explosive quality.pornography / desexualisation
asserts
Psychoanalysis (Lacan/Freud) is more useful than Foucault for understanding contemporary sexuality because it keeps the asymmetry and excess of desire in view rather than reducing sex to pleasures.Lacan vs Foucault / psychoanalysis / sexuality
asserts
Research from Daniel Pink's experiments shows that financial motivation becomes counterproductive for intellectually engaging work, providing empirical evidence that capitalist egotism is not natural.capitalism / motivation / human nature
asserts
What we need today is a composite subject combining Jack Bauer's brutal dedication, Stringer Bell's ruthless pragmatic opportunism, and Homer Simpson's evil humour.revolutionary subjectivity / political agency
asserts
If the left allows things to continue as they are, society will drift toward new forms of authoritarianism.authoritarianism / political crisis
Quotes 12
“the true tragedy is when, and i'm not saying this as an old-fashioned marxist... you have to be almost lucky to be able to be permanently exploited, you know, that is to say, to have a permanent job.”Slavoj Žižek · structural unemployment reverses the luck of exploitation
“now we have crisis and we have unrest but the man who really doesn't have any consistent project what to do is precisely the left.”Slavoj Žižek · left's programmatic bankruptcy revealed by the crisis
“we want a just society where money serves people not people serve money. well my god my answer was hitler would have fully agreed with it.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of Occupy's abstract moralism
“there is the light at the end of the tunnel. we say, of course there is. it's another train coming to us.”Slavoj Žižek · Eastern European anti-teleological pessimism
“we should pass ironically from revealed communism to communism absconditus... there are signs wonderful things are happening here and there but we have absolutely no ontological guarantee.”Slavoj Žižek · communism absconditus: non-teleological politics of the sign
“if you pay them too much... they will do it worse. isn't this almost like... communism.”Slavoj Žižek · empirical evidence against capitalist motivation as natural
“superego in an authentic freudian sense is not a naive moral agency. it's a sadistic perverted agency which bombards you with impossible demands taking into account in advance that you will fail.”Slavoj Žižek · superego as sadistic agency, applied to EU austerity
“it's not only that money doesn't matter. the beauty is that money is even counterproductive.”Slavoj Žižek · intrinsic motivation defeats financial incentive
“the more you get it, the more it gets... desexualized. what is effectively happening... in this politically correct mutual contract sexuality”Slavoj Žižek · pornography and political correctness both desexualise sex
“i deny ontologically he may exist and you didn't get it empirically, but ontologically simon critchley doesn't exist.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's comic dismissal of Simon Critchley
“benjamin is the guy who went to russia to have sex with asja lācis but failed.”Slavoj Žižek · irreverent biographical reduction of Walter Benjamin
“i don't drink whiskey, you know, why not? because i'm a stalinist psychologically. if you drink whiskey, you become friendly, you smile, and then the enemy attacks and you are not ready.”Slavoj Žižek · self-ironic 'private Stalinism' as perpetual vigilance
Transcript 73 turns
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
you don't know him you don't live in obviously, he is the best known philosopher in the world. not the best maybe, but the best known. the most dangerous one,. and he has already threatened us with his last 1000 pages book. hegel is kind... towards us in my form, you know, i will write all about the entire world and that he has already started. and he does it in such a fast way that he has to sleep long, long hours in order to get up again to the level of his own thinking. i'm very happy to... welcome. one of the founding professors of our program, jacques lacan professor of egs, slavoj žižek.
you don't know him you don't live in obviously, he is the best known philosopher in the world. not the best maybe, but the best known. the most dangerous one,. and he has already threatened us with his last 1000 pages book. hegel is kind... towards us in my form, you know, i will write all about the entire world and that he has already started. and he does it in such a fast way that he has to sleep long, long hours in order to get up again to the level of his own thinking. i'm very happy to... welcome. one of the founding professors of our program, jacques lacan professor of egs, slavoj žižek.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much. just to begin with, are you paid by gaddafi money or what? because i noticed how here i was told the free day is friday. isn't it in islam that? friday is their sunday. no so and then if you connect this with the fact that do you know it's not a joke. there the guy zurbriggen told me that you know that the name allalin comes from arab when there were in early medieval times arab invasions of europe, they come. so i'm just putting all this together now and okay.
thank you very much. just to begin with, are you paid by gaddafi money or what? because i noticed how here i was told the free day is friday. isn't it in islam that? friday is their sunday. no so and then if you connect this with the fact that do you know it's not a joke. there the guy zurbriggen told me that you know that the name allalin comes from arab when there were in early medieval times arab invasions of europe, they come. so i'm just putting all this together now and okay.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
about some money, gaddafi is dead.
about some money, gaddafi is dead.
Slavoj Žižek
okay, seriously, now i want to do something. it's my moral duty here to annoy our good friend wolfgang. i know that he doesn't like all this communist politics and so on. so this is exactly what i will do. no, seriously. i just want briefly to give you a very elementary outline of what i think is going on in the economy, where do we stand what we can do. okay, we all talk about crisis, greece and so on. but... you may have noticed how suspicious this crisis is. you know the west european uh. racist judgment all those lazy greeks who just spent money clientelism corruption it's true i was in greece they admitted to me so i'm not idealizing greece, but there is one problem. we all know who did this clientelization. the two parties who are exchanging themselves in power for the last 3040 years new democracy and pasok and look the miracle the west who puts pressure on greece to end up with clientelism fully supports exactly these two parties which embody clientelism. it's quite breathtaking. another thing you may have noticed, if you want to understand the psychoanalytic notion of ibich, superego. it's the uh... pressure of. european union on greece why because you know superere ego in an authentic freudian sense is not an authentic let's call it naively moral agency it's a sadistic perverted agency which bombards you with impossible demands taking into account in advance that you will fail and then like statistically making fun of you and so on and so on. and that's the mystery. did you notice the mystery of all these rescue plans for greece? everyone knows that they are pure fiction. but, you know, this is a nice example of the theory of ideology. how something that everybody knows is pure fiction, absolutely destined to fail, is nonetheless repeatedly played, okay, there are different theories why one thing is that, you know, what the west is really doing under the guise of helping greece is really helping saving their own banks. german french and so on but what i want to say is that we i claim we should not focus on greece, you know, the moment you accept this perspective lazy greeks and then spaniards they screwed it up, it's a wrong perspective. i claim that the ongoing crisis is not about spending greed ineffectual bank regulations and so on. my theory is a more basic one. some economists convinced me, not even leftist economists. an economic cycle is coming to an end. a cycle which began in the early 90s. uh. what happened at that point, if you are old enough, only a few of you unfortunately are. in the late 60ties and early ses something very important happened. it wasn't only the time of oil crisis and so-called stagflation, stagnation and inflation. nixon's administration, richard nixon, the president of states. decided to abandon the gold standard for the us dollar but this was part of a much more important economic shift by the end of the 1960s, the us economy was no longer able to continue the recycling of its surpluses to europe and asia. until the late sixties, the united states were up to a point what today china and others are the export machine of the world. all of a sudden. from the mid-60s. surplus is turned into deficits and then the nixon administration, the brain behind it was that chairman whatever paul how to pronounce it volcker or what yeah, yeah.. had an idea which was in a way quite creative and ingenious. he says his strategy was why fight the deficits why not boost the deficits. why not? accommodate to the deficit so that we will profit from them. and from that point on what happens i will quote here a greek economist er. yanis varoufakis, who wrote a nice book called global minotaur, like the greek. monster god this deficit started to operate like i quote like a giant vacuum cleaner absorbing other people's surplus goods and capital while that arrangement was the embodiment of the grossest imbalance imaginable at a planetary scale nonetheless it did give rise to something resembling global balance an international system of rapidly accelerating asymmetric financial and trade flows capable of putting on a semblance of stability and steady growth powered by these deficits, the world's leading surplus economies like germany, japan, later china, kept churning out the goods while america, united states, absorbed them. almost 70% of the profits made globally by these countries were transferred back to the united states in the form of capital flows to wall street. and what did wall street do with it? it turned this capital inflows into direct investments, shares, new financial instruments, new and old form of loans, and so on and so on. so it was a very strange arrangement. the basis was quite literally, as finance tell you dell. from some two and a half decades ago as another i forgot his name ronald reagan financial wizard said let's accept it for the united states to function they need a minimum one billion dollars a day of influx. and again, because the way the united states through dollar as the universal commodity and through other strategies they knew how to... as it were recycle. this growing de. so again these are signs that the united states is as we say it is already a commonplace an empire decline its growing negative trade balance demonstrates that the united states is a non-productive predator as already said, it has to suck up. up to $1 billion daily influx from other nations to buy for its consumption. and it is as such the universal keynesian consumer that keeps the world economy running. so it's quite funny when united states claim, you know, republican administration against keynesianism. but united states are keynesian economy embodied. this influx which is effectively like the teeth paid to rome in antiquity or the gifts sacrificed to minotaur by ancient greeks relies on a complex economic mechanism the united states are trusted as the safe and stable center so that all others from the oil producing arab countries to western europe japan and now even china invest their surplus profits in the united states. since this trust is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the problem for the united states was in the last decades how to justify its imperial role. the united states needed a permanent state of war, so they had to invent the war of terror, offering themselves as the universal protector of all other normal not rogue states so i think the entire globe tends to function as a universal, not so much rome as sparta. you know, you had in sparta three classes. the homoi, the communist top, the military, the traders and the helots, the slaves. we have now us is the military politicalico- ideological power, europe, parts of asia, latin america, the industrial manufacturing region and the undeveloped. rest today's chot in other words, global capitalism brought about a new general trend to oligarchy. masked as the celebration of the diversity of uh. cultures. and... equality and universalism are more and more disappearing as actual political principles in very simple terms, this false balance. based on... radical imbalance of the united states accumulating profits from all around the world this was our situation and it's clear that it cannot go on indefinitely for example. do you know that? two key foreign countries saudi arabia and china each of them the idea is each of them owns around i think five to seven percent of the entire wealth of united states. and i tend to agree that it is this system which is reaching its limit. this balance which again has a precise beginning and end from those n years this as it were world balance based on united states deficit, which in a way it worked. was a productive deficit deficit it was really like some kind of a divine sacrifice which turned the world around which is why i agree with this ancient greek. metaphors and so on and i like it very much how this although of course nobody believes in gods today but did you notice how more and more even in our media very rational economic media use the language of i will now pronounce this wrongly i hate these artificial words how do you say prosopoeia sorry you know when things speak no i mean we may laugh at primitives but turn our media and you say markets express their worry market signals we all the time refer to things speaking how will markets react markets made clear their worry and dissatisfaction and so on and so on. okay. now let me go on one of the consequences of this new situation and here problems begin is i think that unemployment is acquiring a new status today more and more the world market is a space in which everyone has once been a productive labourer. labor has everywhere begun to price itself out of the system that is to say in the ongoing process of globalization. i claim the category of the unemployed acquires a new quality beyond the classical marxist notion of the reserve army of labour. i agree here with frederick json who proposed that one should consider in terms of the category of unemployment also, those massive populations around the world which have as it were they have dropped out of history. they were deliberately excluded from the modernizing projects of the first world capitalism, written off as hopeless or terminal cases, so-called failed or rogue states, congo, somalia, victims of famine and ecological disasters, caught in pseudo-archaic ethnic hatreds, objects of philanthropy and ngos, often the same people and of the war on terror. i mean, here i'm a little bit of a leive paranoiac. i think that these famous ngos, non-government agencies, are usually the other human side of terror. y. the category of the unemployed, i claim, should thus be expanded. to encompass the wide span of population from the temporary unemployed through no longer employable or permanently unemployed up to people living in slums and other types of ghettos and finally the whole areas. populations or states excluded from the global capitalist process like the blank spaces in ancient maps. something like you know, you don't know. she's now forgotten. and i don't even like her very much. the ex is german writer christa wolf but in one of her memoirs she has a wonderful detail. she visited years ago with her daughter that fernseh tv tower in east berlin. from there you can see the west. no wonder it was so popular in berlin. now you must remember this is a wonderful detail that i saw it. the east german map of berlin. it is like normal city map, but the west is just white, a blank spot, you know. and she tells a wonderful story, christa wolf, that her daughter, at that time small girl, looked to the west and said, look, mommy, it's not white. people are also living there and so on, you know. that's where we are today. to this list we should add also, i claim the illegally employed, those who work in black markets and slums even under conditions of different forms of slavery are we aware to what extent? the economic rise of some of. middle east and asian countries basically. sustained by slavery. i mean i saw it first hand i went to a rich hotel in dubai? yeah, i was there, where you will never be in. were you there in burj el arab? that one, you. but i did my marxist duty. i became friendly with an ordinary taxi driver and he explained to me the horrors, what you don't see. like literally okay, not technically slaves, but people from nepal, philippines, indonesia, their passports are taken, they work for 12 hours a day and if they are happy working like slaves, they are able to send home around one hundred and fifty maximum two hundred dollars per month. no. so let me go on. the crucial point is that even those excluded countries, rogue state and so on. are nonetheless include that. into the world market let me mention the case of today's congo beneath the facade of primitive ethnic passions which explode again and again in this heart of darkness. you can, if you look at it closely, see a totally different picture. congo for the last two decades no longer exists as a state especially its eastern part is a multiplicity of territories ruled by local warlords controlling their patch of land by an army which as a rule includes dr children warriors each of the warlords then with business links to a foreign company or corporation exploiting mostly minerals mining wealth in the region. so this fits everyone the corporations get mining rights without taxes the warlords get money and are you aware how crucial this is for our industry that the key minerals for our laptops cell phones and so on come all from congo so it's again absolutely crucial to bear this in mind congo is not naturally heart of darkness. it is precisely as such. that it's fully included into global capitalism then we no longer have the category of formally. employed. you know, with constant modernization, this happens as a rule. like, you know, the standard story, for example, is in textile factories. workers, mostly women unfortunately. doing their job there for thirty years for example and then all of a sudden modernisation they their job, what they can do. there is always some idiot like anthony giddens who comes and tells them you should use this as an opportunity to reinvent yourself to okay, but it's easy to say. then there is another thing. uh not only. people who all of a sudden become unemployable. but... people who are educated but while they are educated, they are fully aware that there is even no chance that they will find employment in. the domain for which they are educated a whole generation of students has almost no chance of finding a corresponding employment which of course leads to. massif. and. and the reaction of the system to this are different reforms of education, like this catastrophe that we call in europe bologna reform, which means that education should be directly subordinated to businesses. if i were to be those in power, i would really worry about these unemployable students. you know why? because they are i mean, let me be frank. you never can have a revolution or radical unrest only with the poor people you need educated and are those in power aware that by creating this whole new strata of middle class highly educated young people who nonetheless cannot find a career they are literally schooling them for the organic intellectuals i mean it's absolutely clear they play a key role in egypt in greece today and so on and so on. next thing i want to add. ich that... uh. this new structural unemployment should be conceived as a form of exploitation. i think we should also expand the standard marxist notion of exploitation, which is, you know, linked to wage labor. you sell your labor force surplus value appropriated by the capitalist. but i claim that we have to say that today exploited are not only workers producing surplus value appropriated by the capital. exploited are also those who are structurally prevented from even getting caught into the capitalist vortex of the exploited wage lababor. so the paradox is that you know as some economists put it nicely in very cynical terms today you have to be almost lucky to be able to be permanently exploited, you know, that is to say, to have a permanent job. the true tragedy is when, and i'm not saying this as an old-fashioned marxist, you will see i claim that to use further in any meaningful sense marxist terms, they have to be rethought radically. these are simply things that marx couldn't predict they don't enter his frame but nonetheless this would be again my first proposal that we have to extend these two key notions unemployment and exploitation to understand what is going on. the third consequence of this is that in our politics we were too obsessed by this liberal notion of anerkung recognition. you know, left liberal politics was basically predominantly politics of recognition. you focus on marginal groups, we should recognize them and so on and so on. i think that exploitation is more crucial than soognition. so okay, after this brief introduction, let me go on. so where do we stand now in 2012? 2011 was what i call poetically the year of dreaming dangerously, the revival of radical politics all around the world. now a year later, every day brings new proofs of how fragile and inconsistent this awakening was. the enthusiasm of the arab spring is over, occupy wall street lost its momentum and so on and so on. but... i am even more a pessimist now than i was because you know, even... our good friend who will be here in august alain badiou wrote a book where he reached these awakenings as it were from wall street to tahrir square and so on else oh didn't he publish a book with precisely the title réveil de l'histoire the awakening of history great emancipatory movements that we thought dead are back here unfortunately i don't unfortunately i don't buy this in what sense uh. sorry in what sense? i think that precisely this new awakening shows more than ever the limit of the left, at least of the traditional left. just think what was the typical image of the left till the last decade. at least in the western countries which were relatively prosperous their strategy was, okay, we know that now there is no revolutionary situation, but you know, they like to play the cassandra. but wait a little bit. there will be crisis, blah, blah, blah. okay, so fuck you. now we have crisis and we have unrest but the man who really doesn't have any consistent project what to do is precisely the left. you know leftists will say, okay, now it's our time, you know but there is only one consistent economic apart from some kind of confused keynesianism. .t clark, the british art historian who published in the last issue of new left review a wonderful brutal attack on today's left. h... wonderful characterization of what the left democratic western left dreams about. a listen, partly detached pseudo-nation state with non-financed capital driven capitalism. that's the basic dream. no? let's not be controlled by international capital. let's have a little bit more of a nation state, but not the old nationalistic nation state with, okay, we have to be in capitalism. let's just limit financial capital and so on and so on. and correct me if i'm wrong, but if you cut all that crap about, no, all this immediate democracy, blah, blah, blah, which means nothing, as far as i know, there is only one concrete. idea. that left has produced, which paradoxically is the idea of how to justify, legitimize capitalism. it's, you know, the belgian guy, van parijs did it, the so-called basic income. i think the more precise term is the way they call it in brazil, renda básica, the basic rent. the idea independently of are you employed or not, blah, blah, all citizens should get a certain minimal income, at least enabling you to survive. the paradox is that as van parijs, i've read him, states it openly. this is how he tries to save capitalism. his premise is fact it capitalism is the only system that works. so, can't we somehow... keep it, but nonetheless make it more just blah, blah, and that's his proposition. now, tj.j clark, when he paints, you see the catastrophe, which really is, i think, a catastrophe. you know, now that there should be the moment of the left. yes, we do have all the unrest demonstrations here and there and so on. but then, and i was doing this, throughout the last year, i was on occupy wall street and i was asking them like crazy a simple freudian question, you know, like, what does a woman want but a real woman, not your avatar? no, you're know sorry, sorry. you expect something like this, you know, i love you. that was my way of saying i love you. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you know... like, what do you want? and it's incredible how apart from either abstract moralism we want a just society where money serves people not people serve money' well my god my answer was hitler would have fully agreed with it and so on or whatever i mean... you don't get! even... correct me if i am wrong i don't think apart from some old-fashioned keynesian ideas of regulation and so on. did you ever encounter any concrete plan of what to do. and i know it firsthand he's a very sympathetic guy to both you can check it on tv. i was this sunday four days ago or five in athens i had a long conversation with alexis tsipras absolutely no idea. you see my problem now that there should have been a in classical marxist terms, a revolutionary situation, no you get more than ever. what you get is. exactly nothing. so i agree with dj clark. that uh... one of the problems is the following one. the left even if it's now a democratic left or whatever, they still maintain what tj.j. clark calls this eschatological attitude of, okay, now. times are tough, no left movement, but we must be patient and work towards some beak magic moment when i don't know. the true working class will arise, all people, all the marginal groups, it doesn't matter. we are slowly like in the underground working digging for the big moment. and... i tend to agree with it we should drop this. there never will be this big moment. you know, all of them are dreaming about this. even hart negri have this. for example, look at the last pages of empire. i'm sorry that when does he come that he is not here. hart,? it's all of a sudden, he says, okay, now we have this multitude resistance, but the moment will come when all the multitudes will got together, take over, and so on and so on. and then the only reference he can give is san francisco's here no other. so i think that this is the limit. and i'm saying this as still some kind of a leftist, but not a naive leftist. leftist in the sense that unfortunately i am a catastrophist. moderate we are approaching deep shit, a critical situation. no, i think that simply it cannot go on indefinitely the way it is now. wait a little bit what will happen maybe even in a couple of months in europe and so on. i'm not saying it will be a big catastrophe. i'm just saying what is obvious now, that you know the crisis we are entering now is not the old crisis of you know. part of what in lion king they call the circle of life. it goes down, this reminds me when i was young, i had a wonderful racist teacher who made fun of roma gypsies and said but he said a wonderful thing that when there is sun, the gypsies are sad because they know that after the sun there will be rain. and when it's raining, the gypsies are glad because they know that after the rain there will be sun. no like this was the usual. attitude. crisis is just a moment of withdrawal to have a new explosion i think even if this is in some sense true we are really entering a long term. crisis who knows what will who knows? it. what will shepen. so again. this is the problem. we have to drop. really drop. the marxist eschatology of, again, this, you know, history moves towards some big awakening. even if it's not a marxist, but this idea that, and i'm here even having a like 5% ironic step at our good friend alain badiou, who also, i think, is basically, if i may put it like this, one of those who wait for the event, you know, it will happen, it will not happen. this is unfortunately for me the lesson of today with all the unrests we have well up till now at least the only concrete result of these unrests is what that left wing governments are replaced by right wing governments now am i saying that this is the end that we should simply accept that the rule of the game is work by global capitalism we can do it. no, this would have been a too easy way out. i think that i'm still a pessimist. i think that. if we allow things to go on the way they go on we are approaching some kind of new authoritarian new authoritarian society and so on and so on so what can we do i would like to quote here uh. uh. walter benjamin in archive project where he develops this he walter benjamin quotes there the french historian andre monglong. you know this everybody knows this metaphor, famous one of, i quote, the past has left images of itself in literary texts, images comparable to those which are imprinted by light on a photosensitive plate. the future alone possesses developers active enough to scan such surfaces perfectly. you know, this idea that we can have events today which are signs, but signs not symptoms from the past, but signs from the future. they point towards so it's as if they are coming from the future only from the future will they be redouble. i would like to have this metaphor. in all its radicality we have to drop direct teleology radically you know this the marxist way would have been yeah of course we have already the germs of communism today well maybe it's true, but we definitely don't know what this communism will be, you know. like my idea is the followingan. y. here, let me... uh. uh. that we should maybe return to be very brief from mark beck. to hegel into this tragic vision yes we live today in science from the future and i am ready in a naive idealized way even to say like what happened in tahrir square it was admitted in a way a miracle aine. of a better future listen nobody expected it possible most of us were usual racists and we thought all the stupid arabs can do is some if you want to arouse the masses there what you need fundamentalism religious fundamentalism antiemitism nationalism whatever sorry we had a big rebellion which precisely did not use any of these resources. so miracles happen. but what we should absolutely reject is the teleology, you know, of ah, we see the tendency of history. there is the light at the end of the tunnel. well, i'm here, i'm coming from eastern europe. and you know what we say when somebody says there is the light at the end of the tunnel. we say, of course there is. it's another train coming to us. no, so to give you, to go further with what i mean by this. do you know that... der... uh. there is a, okay, i will slowly come to an end, but nonetheless, i want to develop this way. i think we should use... let's do a little bit of theology, materialist theology. blaise pascal pascal, you know his idea of miracles ed how do you call this sheet i always have problem to pronounce this pronounce this words deus absconditus you know the hidden god. he has a wonderful notion of a miracle. he says that god had a choice of either openly revealing himself through miracles. which are here to all but he says. in this way. it wouldn't be productive good for our ethical attitude because then you know, any idiot, if you see the definitive proof of god you will follow it. on the other hand, if god is too hidden, then... it's nothing. so he proposes a wonderful idea of miracles which are miracles visible as such as miracles only to those who believe it's kind of a hermeneutic circle, you know. like, things happen. if you can be what pascal calls a libertine. and it's very interesting incidentally a short historical note here we are here in 17th century. where... libertinage meant something totally different than in 18th century. it's a wonderful shift. 17th century libertinage meant an atheist simply, the one who doesn't believe. but nothing to do with some sexual promiscuity or whatever. it's only in 18th century that it acquired this sexual, whatever decadence connotation. so again, pascal's idea is that this is how god is testing us. there is something which happens. if you are a libertarian. of course you will say this is just a coincidence result of only blah blah only if you believe in it do you see it. as a miracle and i think this exactly is the status, the way to read them in a non-teleological way. we should pass ironically from revealed communism too maybe not god but communism absconditus you know what i mean like that there are signs wonderful things are happening here and there but we have absolutely no ontological guarantee no historical necessity will make if we believe in it it's a miracle if we believe in it which means if we will do something out of it it's absolutely crucial not to fall and marx did fall into this ontological trap we have fragile signs here and there if i can give you a wonderful example i will try to be as short as possible to conclude on time not only in politics this is how i propose to read for example tahrir square even occupy wall street it's maybe a sign of something. of what? what the fact do i know? will something come out of it? maybe maybe not. just... but we nonetheless should treat them as miracles. for example, a pascalian libertarian would say, so what? people demonstrated on tahrir square, it was just the result of historical situation there, contingent and even. now they got what they deserved, a new muslim brotherhood government. that's the cynical reading. i think we should be a little bit more naive. it's a sign. but a sign of a possible future but i read this sign of course a miracle in a totally. non-theological way. a sign only that if you believe, i don't even like the term belief here, if you are politically engaged in this way no it shows some maybe potential without any guarantee. i would now to conclude just want to give you for example uh. a domain where i found such a wonderful sign which i think we should read with all naivete. a guy called... maybe some of you know him. daniel pink wrote a book, drive. it is a book of a very naive psychological social experiment. they took a group of american students, listen carefully, so it's very simple. give them different jobs and compare how they do. when you are differently paid, low payment, mid payment, high payment. and they made a wonderful strange discovery that if if the job is stupid, non-satisfactory, you just do it for money. then money matters like you pay people little they will do it so-so you pay them more they will do it better. but they made a wonderful discovery that if a job is intellectually challenging satisfying whatever you want like a true enigma which engages you then no that's the beauty listen carefully then it's not only that money doesn't matter. the beauty is that money is even counterproductive. if you pay them a little bit, they will do it so-so. if you pay them a little bit more, they will do it maybe a little bit better. but if you pay them too much... they will do it worse. and and then they thought this must be some american perversion. so they did something wonderful they repeated the same experiment in poorest indian villages in indonesia and the same. and the result was the same. isn't this almost like... communism. you know what i mean that you can prove that. not only that. not only that money doesn't matter but if you have some like for example maybe there is something of this charm i read a wonderful sociological text of. they analyze how close to here, you know, sharon, those where they will ruin us all, reproduce the big bang and as we know, it will be the end of the world, that this is how they are there. you know, you are well enough paid to leave. moderately well but the job is so engaging that if you were to introduce, oh, but if you are the first one to discover higgs particle, you get one million or whatever, it wouldn't make it better. it would made it worse. now we should not overestimate this type of stuff but nonetheless admit it very modestly it proves at least something that capitalist egotism is not natural that you can! when you are part of a creative process, and again, i'm not saying money doesn't matter, i'm here very cynical. in order to save money doesn't matter. you have to have enough money. to say this what i am nonetheless saying that after a certain level does does function. just this sense of as a motivation and that financial motivation can even be counterproductive so again, these are, i think... the science as it were the science we should be i will now make it much faster the science we should be looking for. now if you just allow me to conclude to make a total jump to a different domain so. as you see, my vision is a very modest one. we are approaching a deadlock. i'm not a catastrophist. i'm not saying the deadlock is that at the end of this year, following some stupid mayan calendar, i don't know whatever. no no, i'm only saying that that... well, we are approaching critical points. we can postpone them, but we are getting close. and that we don't have any, in the good old marxist sense, ontological guarantee that there is a way out. it's just... you know, we should be like pascalian theologologists. there are signs if we do something, we can make something out of it or not. now, just if you allow me two short points. the first one what subjective. attitude would fit. today's well. the first thing, i mean to become engaged, i think the most important thing to do is to. break out off. the what i naively call predominant form of subjectivity today which is the. subjectivity focused on the notion of harassment, this how do call it narcissistic subjectivity where the other threatens you and so on and so on. what do i mean by this? what is the inner logic of what is perceived or experienced as sexual harassment? it is the very asymmetry of seduction, the imbalance between desire and its object. at every way of an erotic relation. this is what i'm afraid of in politically correct fight against harassment. of course i'm against harassment i'm well aware of the brutality of harassment. i'm just saying that this notion in its actual use covers something much more and with that i don't agree the basic idea of this type of left bourgeois, whatever radicalized political correctness is that this imbalance in the process of seduction, but i think this imbalance is constitutive, should be abolished so that only contractual reciprocity with mutual agreement is allowed. and there are even attempts to codify this. i learned up that in some of those mysterious politically correct campuses in northeast. northeast is the ideologically most interesting part, northwest, sorry, of the. united states. there you had either madness of political correctness or madness of fundamentalism. that they even wrote the exact rules of it. like for example, it's quite comical that at every state you should ask for permission. let's say, sorry about this for this bad taste example. let's say i'm trying to seduce a girl. i said, could i please put my hand on your breast? okay. could i please now unbutton one of your buttons? could i slowly go down and so on and so on. but the result is interesting. i was in this campus where they did it and they told me it works. but you know why? because it's applied with wonderful self-irony and so on you know this is the only reason that it works. okay, but let me go on. are you aware that the secret model of... political correctness, anti-h harassmentassment attitude is... that sexual intercourse gets basically dessexualized, becomes a deal precisely in the sense of the equivalent market exchange between equal free partners where the staff exchange it. play. i think that this is the reason why i'm still more for lacon or freud than for michel foucault. we are. shifting from sexuality? do pleasures. and i claim that uh. that part of this process. ich... precisely the extreme of the real, the explosive expansion of pornography in the digital media is, i think, exemplary of this process of dessexualization of sex. you are promised always more sex, you will see everything and so on and so on. but the more you get it, the more it gets... desexualized. what is effectively happening, i claim, in this politically correct mutual contract sexuality and it is acquiring, okay, i know these are only signs from the future, but dark signs, quite crazy forms. for example, i spoke recently, just before he knows where his next trip will be to julian assange. and he told me about the madness in blah blah and he told me a wonderful thing. he showed me the model that sweden is now. he's now moving. is this extreme political correctness. you know? sorry. the situation there now, according to assange, and i checked with some of my friends, there left, and they confirmed this to me, is that sorry for being personal vulgar let's say i'm flirting with a woman we both want to do it but let us say that at a certain point i discovered the ch catholics. so i lied to her that i'm not a catholic but a protestant. and then seduction goes on no problem she wants it i want it we do it passionately three weeks later she learns that i am a catholic. not only can she prosecute me, but... technically, our sex becomes rape. i become a rapist. so now comes a madness contractual which i like assan showed it to me it's not yet legal but they are already circulating among the legislating bodies. a kind of a contractual paper. like the idea is this one let's say again the same situation i'm flirting with a woman we both want to do it but just so that we can be sure we say okay we want to do it so let's first do this so we both fill the contract name we sign i had these illnesses this is my religion this is that we both date it sign it and then we can happily jump into bed like you know we are nobody did it and so on. what i claim. ichette. de what is really happening here, de facto, is that the partner is no longer a partner. in this, you know, we are coming back to immanuel kant. kant as philosopher, not the dirty word. namely, you know how kant defines marriage in a very contractual way. the famous passage from not grundlegung, but just metaphysik der siten, two volumes. he said, marriage is a contract among two adults for the mutual use of sexual organs for pleasure. and can't miss it quite seriously you may think he's kidding but then look at the next page where he. debates what happens if let's say a woman is married with a man and the man runs away does the woman wife have the right to bring him back by police? council yes, why? because... she ran away. with part of his body, penis, which contractually was also co-owned by her. so it's none of the... but i claim that what card was. like just dreaming about in a comical way is more or less in this sense. becoming truths i claim that the ultimate. point of this mutually contractual non-harassing sexuality, the ultimate point are two things. a that. the partner is ultimately reduced to a. appendix. to his the partner becomes a composite of sex toys if you want like this like we marry, we make a contract but it really just means i will use part of your body and so on. how does this work? i used this story years ago and now i will again. 20 years ago, but i'm so sad i didn't put it on usb. i can show it to. there was a wonderful british publicity for a beer. sorry, australian, they are the best. for a beer. you know that fairy tale where a woman sees a frog, kisses the frog, and the frog changes into a nice prince. okay, this is how the publicity begins. woman sees a frog, kisses sees, the frog is a nice young guy. but you know what happens then? the guy kisses the woman and she changes into a bottle of beer. and it's... we are moving from you kiss a frog you get a although here i'm a good pessimist i agree if you tell me that for most of the womb women mean the practical experience is probably the opposite one, no that you kiss a man and then when it's too late, you discover that he is a frog but okay. what i want to say is that more and more, you know, from this more masculine perspective, you reduce... the partner to your. precisely to a bottle of beer, to a partial object. okay, let me now really stop very soon just two three minutes first! which is why i think that what they are doing in some radical gay movements in the united states, where this contractual relationship even includes masochist practices of, you know, mutual torture, slavery and so on, it's part of the concept. that's where we are. but... how to break out of this? okay, i will not go now. i have to finish so i will just tell you something i hope to conclude with a maybe comical detail but i take it very seriously. a good friend of mine wrote the book adam kotsko on. why do we like social paths? i think i even't use this already in my class here, but it's a wonderful story. i want to repeat it. and he noticed how. today we have more and more sociopaths as heroes of our tv series. different types of sociopaths. either simple pathological fathers who are brutal, just enjoy annoying others like simpsons and so on, or socialopaths like like brutal achievers who are ready to kill steel to succeed or this. avengers, sociopaths like jack bauer and so on who for some higher cause are ready to kill, to torture and so on and so on. i think that, and then kotsko does a wonderful thing. he says, nonetheless, in each of these three types, there is some good redemptive quality that we should stick to with. this cheapest, lowest sociopaths like homer simpson is this, you know, innocent joy like, you know, when homer simpson with his evil, i don't know, lays a trap for his friend, he's so glad, o sucker, i got him, whatever. this simple joy of annoying the other. then he says, with these climbers, achievers, it's this ruthless ingenuity, how, you know, they always find the way to do and tweet. people like jack bauer or, and that's what i like in this book, that the worst sociopath is for him dr. house you know there you have this idea that you risk your... private life happiness for some cause. so i think that we should correct stalin. you know, stalin said in his famous answer to a question of a journalist in 29, what's the image of a good communist? stalin says a good bolshevik should combine russian passion, dedication with american pragmatic practical spirit. i think we should say that today what we need is a person who unites the brutality, the brutal dedication of jack bauer. d. brutal spirit of somebody, brutal opportunism finding your way of someone like stringer bell from the wire and this evil humor of homer simpson, something like that. our only hope are people who unite these three features. well, thank you very much. okay. jetzt kommt... i's kind of going at.
okay, seriously, now i want to do something. it's my moral duty here to annoy our good friend wolfgang. i know that he doesn't like all this communist politics and so on. so this is exactly what i will do. no, seriously. i just want briefly to give you a very elementary outline of what i think is going on in the economy, where do we stand what we can do. okay, we all talk about crisis, greece and so on. but... you may have noticed how suspicious this crisis is. you know the west european uh. racist judgment all those lazy greeks who just spent money clientelism corruption it's true i was in greece they admitted to me so i'm not idealizing greece, but there is one problem. we all know who did this clientelization. the two parties who are exchanging themselves in power for the last 3040 years new democracy and pasok and look the miracle the west who puts pressure on greece to end up with clientelism fully supports exactly these two parties which embody clientelism. it's quite breathtaking. another thing you may have noticed, if you want to understand the psychoanalytic notion of ibich, superego. it's the uh... pressure of. european union on greece why because you know superere ego in an authentic freudian sense is not an authentic let's call it naively moral agency it's a sadistic perverted agency which bombards you with impossible demands taking into account in advance that you will fail and then like statistically making fun of you and so on and so on. and that's the mystery. did you notice the mystery of all these rescue plans for greece? everyone knows that they are pure fiction. but, you know, this is a nice example of the theory of ideology. how something that everybody knows is pure fiction, absolutely destined to fail, is nonetheless repeatedly played, okay, there are different theories why one thing is that, you know, what the west is really doing under the guise of helping greece is really helping saving their own banks. german french and so on but what i want to say is that we i claim we should not focus on greece, you know, the moment you accept this perspective lazy greeks and then spaniards they screwed it up, it's a wrong perspective. i claim that the ongoing crisis is not about spending greed ineffectual bank regulations and so on. my theory is a more basic one. some economists convinced me, not even leftist economists. an economic cycle is coming to an end. a cycle which began in the early 90s. uh. what happened at that point, if you are old enough, only a few of you unfortunately are. in the late 60ties and early ses something very important happened. it wasn't only the time of oil crisis and so-called stagflation, stagnation and inflation. nixon's administration, richard nixon, the president of states. decided to abandon the gold standard for the us dollar but this was part of a much more important economic shift by the end of the 1960s, the us economy was no longer able to continue the recycling of its surpluses to europe and asia. until the late sixties, the united states were up to a point what today china and others are the export machine of the world. all of a sudden. from the mid-60s. surplus is turned into deficits and then the nixon administration, the brain behind it was that chairman whatever paul how to pronounce it volcker or what yeah, yeah.. had an idea which was in a way quite creative and ingenious. he says his strategy was why fight the deficits why not boost the deficits. why not? accommodate to the deficit so that we will profit from them. and from that point on what happens i will quote here a greek economist er. yanis varoufakis, who wrote a nice book called global minotaur, like the greek. monster god this deficit started to operate like i quote like a giant vacuum cleaner absorbing other people's surplus goods and capital while that arrangement was the embodiment of the grossest imbalance imaginable at a planetary scale nonetheless it did give rise to something resembling global balance an international system of rapidly accelerating asymmetric financial and trade flows capable of putting on a semblance of stability and steady growth powered by these deficits, the world's leading surplus economies like germany, japan, later china, kept churning out the goods while america, united states, absorbed them. almost 70% of the profits made globally by these countries were transferred back to the united states in the form of capital flows to wall street. and what did wall street do with it? it turned this capital inflows into direct investments, shares, new financial instruments, new and old form of loans, and so on and so on. so it was a very strange arrangement. the basis was quite literally, as finance tell you dell. from some two and a half decades ago as another i forgot his name ronald reagan financial wizard said let's accept it for the united states to function they need a minimum one billion dollars a day of influx. and again, because the way the united states through dollar as the universal commodity and through other strategies they knew how to... as it were recycle. this growing de. so again these are signs that the united states is as we say it is already a commonplace an empire decline its growing negative trade balance demonstrates that the united states is a non-productive predator as already said, it has to suck up. up to $1 billion daily influx from other nations to buy for its consumption. and it is as such the universal keynesian consumer that keeps the world economy running. so it's quite funny when united states claim, you know, republican administration against keynesianism. but united states are keynesian economy embodied. this influx which is effectively like the teeth paid to rome in antiquity or the gifts sacrificed to minotaur by ancient greeks relies on a complex economic mechanism the united states are trusted as the safe and stable center so that all others from the oil producing arab countries to western europe japan and now even china invest their surplus profits in the united states. since this trust is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the problem for the united states was in the last decades how to justify its imperial role. the united states needed a permanent state of war, so they had to invent the war of terror, offering themselves as the universal protector of all other normal not rogue states so i think the entire globe tends to function as a universal, not so much rome as sparta. you know, you had in sparta three classes. the homoi, the communist top, the military, the traders and the helots, the slaves. we have now us is the military politicalico- ideological power, europe, parts of asia, latin america, the industrial manufacturing region and the undeveloped. rest today's chot in other words, global capitalism brought about a new general trend to oligarchy. masked as the celebration of the diversity of uh. cultures. and... equality and universalism are more and more disappearing as actual political principles in very simple terms, this false balance. based on... radical imbalance of the united states accumulating profits from all around the world this was our situation and it's clear that it cannot go on indefinitely for example. do you know that? two key foreign countries saudi arabia and china each of them the idea is each of them owns around i think five to seven percent of the entire wealth of united states. and i tend to agree that it is this system which is reaching its limit. this balance which again has a precise beginning and end from those n years this as it were world balance based on united states deficit, which in a way it worked. was a productive deficit deficit it was really like some kind of a divine sacrifice which turned the world around which is why i agree with this ancient greek. metaphors and so on and i like it very much how this although of course nobody believes in gods today but did you notice how more and more even in our media very rational economic media use the language of i will now pronounce this wrongly i hate these artificial words how do you say prosopoeia sorry you know when things speak no i mean we may laugh at primitives but turn our media and you say markets express their worry market signals we all the time refer to things speaking how will markets react markets made clear their worry and dissatisfaction and so on and so on. okay. now let me go on one of the consequences of this new situation and here problems begin is i think that unemployment is acquiring a new status today more and more the world market is a space in which everyone has once been a productive labourer. labor has everywhere begun to price itself out of the system that is to say in the ongoing process of globalization. i claim the category of the unemployed acquires a new quality beyond the classical marxist notion of the reserve army of labour. i agree here with frederick json who proposed that one should consider in terms of the category of unemployment also, those massive populations around the world which have as it were they have dropped out of history. they were deliberately excluded from the modernizing projects of the first world capitalism, written off as hopeless or terminal cases, so-called failed or rogue states, congo, somalia, victims of famine and ecological disasters, caught in pseudo-archaic ethnic hatreds, objects of philanthropy and ngos, often the same people and of the war on terror. i mean, here i'm a little bit of a leive paranoiac. i think that these famous ngos, non-government agencies, are usually the other human side of terror. y. the category of the unemployed, i claim, should thus be expanded. to encompass the wide span of population from the temporary unemployed through no longer employable or permanently unemployed up to people living in slums and other types of ghettos and finally the whole areas. populations or states excluded from the global capitalist process like the blank spaces in ancient maps. something like you know, you don't know. she's now forgotten. and i don't even like her very much. the ex is german writer christa wolf but in one of her memoirs she has a wonderful detail. she visited years ago with her daughter that fernseh tv tower in east berlin. from there you can see the west. no wonder it was so popular in berlin. now you must remember this is a wonderful detail that i saw it. the east german map of berlin. it is like normal city map, but the west is just white, a blank spot, you know. and she tells a wonderful story, christa wolf, that her daughter, at that time small girl, looked to the west and said, look, mommy, it's not white. people are also living there and so on, you know. that's where we are today. to this list we should add also, i claim the illegally employed, those who work in black markets and slums even under conditions of different forms of slavery are we aware to what extent? the economic rise of some of. middle east and asian countries basically. sustained by slavery. i mean i saw it first hand i went to a rich hotel in dubai? yeah, i was there, where you will never be in. were you there in burj el arab? that one, you. but i did my marxist duty. i became friendly with an ordinary taxi driver and he explained to me the horrors, what you don't see. like literally okay, not technically slaves, but people from nepal, philippines, indonesia, their passports are taken, they work for 12 hours a day and if they are happy working like slaves, they are able to send home around one hundred and fifty maximum two hundred dollars per month. no. so let me go on. the crucial point is that even those excluded countries, rogue state and so on. are nonetheless include that. into the world market let me mention the case of today's congo beneath the facade of primitive ethnic passions which explode again and again in this heart of darkness. you can, if you look at it closely, see a totally different picture. congo for the last two decades no longer exists as a state especially its eastern part is a multiplicity of territories ruled by local warlords controlling their patch of land by an army which as a rule includes dr children warriors each of the warlords then with business links to a foreign company or corporation exploiting mostly minerals mining wealth in the region. so this fits everyone the corporations get mining rights without taxes the warlords get money and are you aware how crucial this is for our industry that the key minerals for our laptops cell phones and so on come all from congo so it's again absolutely crucial to bear this in mind congo is not naturally heart of darkness. it is precisely as such. that it's fully included into global capitalism then we no longer have the category of formally. employed. you know, with constant modernization, this happens as a rule. like, you know, the standard story, for example, is in textile factories. workers, mostly women unfortunately. doing their job there for thirty years for example and then all of a sudden modernisation they their job, what they can do. there is always some idiot like anthony giddens who comes and tells them you should use this as an opportunity to reinvent yourself to okay, but it's easy to say. then there is another thing. uh not only. people who all of a sudden become unemployable. but... people who are educated but while they are educated, they are fully aware that there is even no chance that they will find employment in. the domain for which they are educated a whole generation of students has almost no chance of finding a corresponding employment which of course leads to. massif. and. and the reaction of the system to this are different reforms of education, like this catastrophe that we call in europe bologna reform, which means that education should be directly subordinated to businesses. if i were to be those in power, i would really worry about these unemployable students. you know why? because they are i mean, let me be frank. you never can have a revolution or radical unrest only with the poor people you need educated and are those in power aware that by creating this whole new strata of middle class highly educated young people who nonetheless cannot find a career they are literally schooling them for the organic intellectuals i mean it's absolutely clear they play a key role in egypt in greece today and so on and so on. next thing i want to add. ich that... uh. this new structural unemployment should be conceived as a form of exploitation. i think we should also expand the standard marxist notion of exploitation, which is, you know, linked to wage labor. you sell your labor force surplus value appropriated by the capitalist. but i claim that we have to say that today exploited are not only workers producing surplus value appropriated by the capital. exploited are also those who are structurally prevented from even getting caught into the capitalist vortex of the exploited wage lababor. so the paradox is that you know as some economists put it nicely in very cynical terms today you have to be almost lucky to be able to be permanently exploited, you know, that is to say, to have a permanent job. the true tragedy is when, and i'm not saying this as an old-fashioned marxist, you will see i claim that to use further in any meaningful sense marxist terms, they have to be rethought radically. these are simply things that marx couldn't predict they don't enter his frame but nonetheless this would be again my first proposal that we have to extend these two key notions unemployment and exploitation to understand what is going on. the third consequence of this is that in our politics we were too obsessed by this liberal notion of anerkung recognition. you know, left liberal politics was basically predominantly politics of recognition. you focus on marginal groups, we should recognize them and so on and so on. i think that exploitation is more crucial than soognition. so okay, after this brief introduction, let me go on. so where do we stand now in 2012? 2011 was what i call poetically the year of dreaming dangerously, the revival of radical politics all around the world. now a year later, every day brings new proofs of how fragile and inconsistent this awakening was. the enthusiasm of the arab spring is over, occupy wall street lost its momentum and so on and so on. but... i am even more a pessimist now than i was because you know, even... our good friend who will be here in august alain badiou wrote a book where he reached these awakenings as it were from wall street to tahrir square and so on else oh didn't he publish a book with precisely the title réveil de l'histoire the awakening of history great emancipatory movements that we thought dead are back here unfortunately i don't unfortunately i don't buy this in what sense uh. sorry in what sense? i think that precisely this new awakening shows more than ever the limit of the left, at least of the traditional left. just think what was the typical image of the left till the last decade. at least in the western countries which were relatively prosperous their strategy was, okay, we know that now there is no revolutionary situation, but you know, they like to play the cassandra. but wait a little bit. there will be crisis, blah, blah, blah. okay, so fuck you. now we have crisis and we have unrest but the man who really doesn't have any consistent project what to do is precisely the left. you know leftists will say, okay, now it's our time, you know but there is only one consistent economic apart from some kind of confused keynesianism. .t clark, the british art historian who published in the last issue of new left review a wonderful brutal attack on today's left. h... wonderful characterization of what the left democratic western left dreams about. a listen, partly detached pseudo-nation state with non-financed capital driven capitalism. that's the basic dream. no? let's not be controlled by international capital. let's have a little bit more of a nation state, but not the old nationalistic nation state with, okay, we have to be in capitalism. let's just limit financial capital and so on and so on. and correct me if i'm wrong, but if you cut all that crap about, no, all this immediate democracy, blah, blah, blah, which means nothing, as far as i know, there is only one concrete. idea. that left has produced, which paradoxically is the idea of how to justify, legitimize capitalism. it's, you know, the belgian guy, van parijs did it, the so-called basic income. i think the more precise term is the way they call it in brazil, renda básica, the basic rent. the idea independently of are you employed or not, blah, blah, all citizens should get a certain minimal income, at least enabling you to survive. the paradox is that as van parijs, i've read him, states it openly. this is how he tries to save capitalism. his premise is fact it capitalism is the only system that works. so, can't we somehow... keep it, but nonetheless make it more just blah, blah, and that's his proposition. now, tj.j clark, when he paints, you see the catastrophe, which really is, i think, a catastrophe. you know, now that there should be the moment of the left. yes, we do have all the unrest demonstrations here and there and so on. but then, and i was doing this, throughout the last year, i was on occupy wall street and i was asking them like crazy a simple freudian question, you know, like, what does a woman want but a real woman, not your avatar? no, you're know sorry, sorry. you expect something like this, you know, i love you. that was my way of saying i love you. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you know... like, what do you want? and it's incredible how apart from either abstract moralism we want a just society where money serves people not people serve money' well my god my answer was hitler would have fully agreed with it and so on or whatever i mean... you don't get! even... correct me if i am wrong i don't think apart from some old-fashioned keynesian ideas of regulation and so on. did you ever encounter any concrete plan of what to do. and i know it firsthand he's a very sympathetic guy to both you can check it on tv. i was this sunday four days ago or five in athens i had a long conversation with alexis tsipras absolutely no idea. you see my problem now that there should have been a in classical marxist terms, a revolutionary situation, no you get more than ever. what you get is. exactly nothing. so i agree with dj clark. that uh... one of the problems is the following one. the left even if it's now a democratic left or whatever, they still maintain what tj.j. clark calls this eschatological attitude of, okay, now. times are tough, no left movement, but we must be patient and work towards some beak magic moment when i don't know. the true working class will arise, all people, all the marginal groups, it doesn't matter. we are slowly like in the underground working digging for the big moment. and... i tend to agree with it we should drop this. there never will be this big moment. you know, all of them are dreaming about this. even hart negri have this. for example, look at the last pages of empire. i'm sorry that when does he come that he is not here. hart,? it's all of a sudden, he says, okay, now we have this multitude resistance, but the moment will come when all the multitudes will got together, take over, and so on and so on. and then the only reference he can give is san francisco's here no other. so i think that this is the limit. and i'm saying this as still some kind of a leftist, but not a naive leftist. leftist in the sense that unfortunately i am a catastrophist. moderate we are approaching deep shit, a critical situation. no, i think that simply it cannot go on indefinitely the way it is now. wait a little bit what will happen maybe even in a couple of months in europe and so on. i'm not saying it will be a big catastrophe. i'm just saying what is obvious now, that you know the crisis we are entering now is not the old crisis of you know. part of what in lion king they call the circle of life. it goes down, this reminds me when i was young, i had a wonderful racist teacher who made fun of roma gypsies and said but he said a wonderful thing that when there is sun, the gypsies are sad because they know that after the sun there will be rain. and when it's raining, the gypsies are glad because they know that after the rain there will be sun. no like this was the usual. attitude. crisis is just a moment of withdrawal to have a new explosion i think even if this is in some sense true we are really entering a long term. crisis who knows what will who knows? it. what will shepen. so again. this is the problem. we have to drop. really drop. the marxist eschatology of, again, this, you know, history moves towards some big awakening. even if it's not a marxist, but this idea that, and i'm here even having a like 5% ironic step at our good friend alain badiou, who also, i think, is basically, if i may put it like this, one of those who wait for the event, you know, it will happen, it will not happen. this is unfortunately for me the lesson of today with all the unrests we have well up till now at least the only concrete result of these unrests is what that left wing governments are replaced by right wing governments now am i saying that this is the end that we should simply accept that the rule of the game is work by global capitalism we can do it. no, this would have been a too easy way out. i think that i'm still a pessimist. i think that. if we allow things to go on the way they go on we are approaching some kind of new authoritarian new authoritarian society and so on and so on so what can we do i would like to quote here uh. uh. walter benjamin in archive project where he develops this he walter benjamin quotes there the french historian andre monglong. you know this everybody knows this metaphor, famous one of, i quote, the past has left images of itself in literary texts, images comparable to those which are imprinted by light on a photosensitive plate. the future alone possesses developers active enough to scan such surfaces perfectly. you know, this idea that we can have events today which are signs, but signs not symptoms from the past, but signs from the future. they point towards so it's as if they are coming from the future only from the future will they be redouble. i would like to have this metaphor. in all its radicality we have to drop direct teleology radically you know this the marxist way would have been yeah of course we have already the germs of communism today well maybe it's true, but we definitely don't know what this communism will be, you know. like my idea is the followingan. y. here, let me... uh. uh. that we should maybe return to be very brief from mark beck. to hegel into this tragic vision yes we live today in science from the future and i am ready in a naive idealized way even to say like what happened in tahrir square it was admitted in a way a miracle aine. of a better future listen nobody expected it possible most of us were usual racists and we thought all the stupid arabs can do is some if you want to arouse the masses there what you need fundamentalism religious fundamentalism antiemitism nationalism whatever sorry we had a big rebellion which precisely did not use any of these resources. so miracles happen. but what we should absolutely reject is the teleology, you know, of ah, we see the tendency of history. there is the light at the end of the tunnel. well, i'm here, i'm coming from eastern europe. and you know what we say when somebody says there is the light at the end of the tunnel. we say, of course there is. it's another train coming to us. no, so to give you, to go further with what i mean by this. do you know that... der... uh. there is a, okay, i will slowly come to an end, but nonetheless, i want to develop this way. i think we should use... let's do a little bit of theology, materialist theology. blaise pascal pascal, you know his idea of miracles ed how do you call this sheet i always have problem to pronounce this pronounce this words deus absconditus you know the hidden god. he has a wonderful notion of a miracle. he says that god had a choice of either openly revealing himself through miracles. which are here to all but he says. in this way. it wouldn't be productive good for our ethical attitude because then you know, any idiot, if you see the definitive proof of god you will follow it. on the other hand, if god is too hidden, then... it's nothing. so he proposes a wonderful idea of miracles which are miracles visible as such as miracles only to those who believe it's kind of a hermeneutic circle, you know. like, things happen. if you can be what pascal calls a libertine. and it's very interesting incidentally a short historical note here we are here in 17th century. where... libertinage meant something totally different than in 18th century. it's a wonderful shift. 17th century libertinage meant an atheist simply, the one who doesn't believe. but nothing to do with some sexual promiscuity or whatever. it's only in 18th century that it acquired this sexual, whatever decadence connotation. so again, pascal's idea is that this is how god is testing us. there is something which happens. if you are a libertarian. of course you will say this is just a coincidence result of only blah blah only if you believe in it do you see it. as a miracle and i think this exactly is the status, the way to read them in a non-teleological way. we should pass ironically from revealed communism too maybe not god but communism absconditus you know what i mean like that there are signs wonderful things are happening here and there but we have absolutely no ontological guarantee no historical necessity will make if we believe in it it's a miracle if we believe in it which means if we will do something out of it it's absolutely crucial not to fall and marx did fall into this ontological trap we have fragile signs here and there if i can give you a wonderful example i will try to be as short as possible to conclude on time not only in politics this is how i propose to read for example tahrir square even occupy wall street it's maybe a sign of something. of what? what the fact do i know? will something come out of it? maybe maybe not. just... but we nonetheless should treat them as miracles. for example, a pascalian libertarian would say, so what? people demonstrated on tahrir square, it was just the result of historical situation there, contingent and even. now they got what they deserved, a new muslim brotherhood government. that's the cynical reading. i think we should be a little bit more naive. it's a sign. but a sign of a possible future but i read this sign of course a miracle in a totally. non-theological way. a sign only that if you believe, i don't even like the term belief here, if you are politically engaged in this way no it shows some maybe potential without any guarantee. i would now to conclude just want to give you for example uh. a domain where i found such a wonderful sign which i think we should read with all naivete. a guy called... maybe some of you know him. daniel pink wrote a book, drive. it is a book of a very naive psychological social experiment. they took a group of american students, listen carefully, so it's very simple. give them different jobs and compare how they do. when you are differently paid, low payment, mid payment, high payment. and they made a wonderful strange discovery that if if the job is stupid, non-satisfactory, you just do it for money. then money matters like you pay people little they will do it so-so you pay them more they will do it better. but they made a wonderful discovery that if a job is intellectually challenging satisfying whatever you want like a true enigma which engages you then no that's the beauty listen carefully then it's not only that money doesn't matter. the beauty is that money is even counterproductive. if you pay them a little bit, they will do it so-so. if you pay them a little bit more, they will do it maybe a little bit better. but if you pay them too much... they will do it worse. and and then they thought this must be some american perversion. so they did something wonderful they repeated the same experiment in poorest indian villages in indonesia and the same. and the result was the same. isn't this almost like... communism. you know what i mean that you can prove that. not only that. not only that money doesn't matter but if you have some like for example maybe there is something of this charm i read a wonderful sociological text of. they analyze how close to here, you know, sharon, those where they will ruin us all, reproduce the big bang and as we know, it will be the end of the world, that this is how they are there. you know, you are well enough paid to leave. moderately well but the job is so engaging that if you were to introduce, oh, but if you are the first one to discover higgs particle, you get one million or whatever, it wouldn't make it better. it would made it worse. now we should not overestimate this type of stuff but nonetheless admit it very modestly it proves at least something that capitalist egotism is not natural that you can! when you are part of a creative process, and again, i'm not saying money doesn't matter, i'm here very cynical. in order to save money doesn't matter. you have to have enough money. to say this what i am nonetheless saying that after a certain level does does function. just this sense of as a motivation and that financial motivation can even be counterproductive so again, these are, i think... the science as it were the science we should be i will now make it much faster the science we should be looking for. now if you just allow me to conclude to make a total jump to a different domain so. as you see, my vision is a very modest one. we are approaching a deadlock. i'm not a catastrophist. i'm not saying the deadlock is that at the end of this year, following some stupid mayan calendar, i don't know whatever. no no, i'm only saying that that... well, we are approaching critical points. we can postpone them, but we are getting close. and that we don't have any, in the good old marxist sense, ontological guarantee that there is a way out. it's just... you know, we should be like pascalian theologologists. there are signs if we do something, we can make something out of it or not. now, just if you allow me two short points. the first one what subjective. attitude would fit. today's well. the first thing, i mean to become engaged, i think the most important thing to do is to. break out off. the what i naively call predominant form of subjectivity today which is the. subjectivity focused on the notion of harassment, this how do call it narcissistic subjectivity where the other threatens you and so on and so on. what do i mean by this? what is the inner logic of what is perceived or experienced as sexual harassment? it is the very asymmetry of seduction, the imbalance between desire and its object. at every way of an erotic relation. this is what i'm afraid of in politically correct fight against harassment. of course i'm against harassment i'm well aware of the brutality of harassment. i'm just saying that this notion in its actual use covers something much more and with that i don't agree the basic idea of this type of left bourgeois, whatever radicalized political correctness is that this imbalance in the process of seduction, but i think this imbalance is constitutive, should be abolished so that only contractual reciprocity with mutual agreement is allowed. and there are even attempts to codify this. i learned up that in some of those mysterious politically correct campuses in northeast. northeast is the ideologically most interesting part, northwest, sorry, of the. united states. there you had either madness of political correctness or madness of fundamentalism. that they even wrote the exact rules of it. like for example, it's quite comical that at every state you should ask for permission. let's say, sorry about this for this bad taste example. let's say i'm trying to seduce a girl. i said, could i please put my hand on your breast? okay. could i please now unbutton one of your buttons? could i slowly go down and so on and so on. but the result is interesting. i was in this campus where they did it and they told me it works. but you know why? because it's applied with wonderful self-irony and so on you know this is the only reason that it works. okay, but let me go on. are you aware that the secret model of... political correctness, anti-h harassmentassment attitude is... that sexual intercourse gets basically dessexualized, becomes a deal precisely in the sense of the equivalent market exchange between equal free partners where the staff exchange it. play. i think that this is the reason why i'm still more for lacon or freud than for michel foucault. we are. shifting from sexuality? do pleasures. and i claim that uh. that part of this process. ich... precisely the extreme of the real, the explosive expansion of pornography in the digital media is, i think, exemplary of this process of dessexualization of sex. you are promised always more sex, you will see everything and so on and so on. but the more you get it, the more it gets... desexualized. what is effectively happening, i claim, in this politically correct mutual contract sexuality and it is acquiring, okay, i know these are only signs from the future, but dark signs, quite crazy forms. for example, i spoke recently, just before he knows where his next trip will be to julian assange. and he told me about the madness in blah blah and he told me a wonderful thing. he showed me the model that sweden is now. he's now moving. is this extreme political correctness. you know? sorry. the situation there now, according to assange, and i checked with some of my friends, there left, and they confirmed this to me, is that sorry for being personal vulgar let's say i'm flirting with a woman we both want to do it but let us say that at a certain point i discovered the ch catholics. so i lied to her that i'm not a catholic but a protestant. and then seduction goes on no problem she wants it i want it we do it passionately three weeks later she learns that i am a catholic. not only can she prosecute me, but... technically, our sex becomes rape. i become a rapist. so now comes a madness contractual which i like assan showed it to me it's not yet legal but they are already circulating among the legislating bodies. a kind of a contractual paper. like the idea is this one let's say again the same situation i'm flirting with a woman we both want to do it but just so that we can be sure we say okay we want to do it so let's first do this so we both fill the contract name we sign i had these illnesses this is my religion this is that we both date it sign it and then we can happily jump into bed like you know we are nobody did it and so on. what i claim. ichette. de what is really happening here, de facto, is that the partner is no longer a partner. in this, you know, we are coming back to immanuel kant. kant as philosopher, not the dirty word. namely, you know how kant defines marriage in a very contractual way. the famous passage from not grundlegung, but just metaphysik der siten, two volumes. he said, marriage is a contract among two adults for the mutual use of sexual organs for pleasure. and can't miss it quite seriously you may think he's kidding but then look at the next page where he. debates what happens if let's say a woman is married with a man and the man runs away does the woman wife have the right to bring him back by police? council yes, why? because... she ran away. with part of his body, penis, which contractually was also co-owned by her. so it's none of the... but i claim that what card was. like just dreaming about in a comical way is more or less in this sense. becoming truths i claim that the ultimate. point of this mutually contractual non-harassing sexuality, the ultimate point are two things. a that. the partner is ultimately reduced to a. appendix. to his the partner becomes a composite of sex toys if you want like this like we marry, we make a contract but it really just means i will use part of your body and so on. how does this work? i used this story years ago and now i will again. 20 years ago, but i'm so sad i didn't put it on usb. i can show it to. there was a wonderful british publicity for a beer. sorry, australian, they are the best. for a beer. you know that fairy tale where a woman sees a frog, kisses the frog, and the frog changes into a nice prince. okay, this is how the publicity begins. woman sees a frog, kisses sees, the frog is a nice young guy. but you know what happens then? the guy kisses the woman and she changes into a bottle of beer. and it's... we are moving from you kiss a frog you get a although here i'm a good pessimist i agree if you tell me that for most of the womb women mean the practical experience is probably the opposite one, no that you kiss a man and then when it's too late, you discover that he is a frog but okay. what i want to say is that more and more, you know, from this more masculine perspective, you reduce... the partner to your. precisely to a bottle of beer, to a partial object. okay, let me now really stop very soon just two three minutes first! which is why i think that what they are doing in some radical gay movements in the united states, where this contractual relationship even includes masochist practices of, you know, mutual torture, slavery and so on, it's part of the concept. that's where we are. but... how to break out of this? okay, i will not go now. i have to finish so i will just tell you something i hope to conclude with a maybe comical detail but i take it very seriously. a good friend of mine wrote the book adam kotsko on. why do we like social paths? i think i even't use this already in my class here, but it's a wonderful story. i want to repeat it. and he noticed how. today we have more and more sociopaths as heroes of our tv series. different types of sociopaths. either simple pathological fathers who are brutal, just enjoy annoying others like simpsons and so on, or socialopaths like like brutal achievers who are ready to kill steel to succeed or this. avengers, sociopaths like jack bauer and so on who for some higher cause are ready to kill, to torture and so on and so on. i think that, and then kotsko does a wonderful thing. he says, nonetheless, in each of these three types, there is some good redemptive quality that we should stick to with. this cheapest, lowest sociopaths like homer simpson is this, you know, innocent joy like, you know, when homer simpson with his evil, i don't know, lays a trap for his friend, he's so glad, o sucker, i got him, whatever. this simple joy of annoying the other. then he says, with these climbers, achievers, it's this ruthless ingenuity, how, you know, they always find the way to do and tweet. people like jack bauer or, and that's what i like in this book, that the worst sociopath is for him dr. house you know there you have this idea that you risk your... private life happiness for some cause. so i think that we should correct stalin. you know, stalin said in his famous answer to a question of a journalist in 29, what's the image of a good communist? stalin says a good bolshevik should combine russian passion, dedication with american pragmatic practical spirit. i think we should say that today what we need is a person who unites the brutality, the brutal dedication of jack bauer. d. brutal spirit of somebody, brutal opportunism finding your way of someone like stringer bell from the wire and this evil humor of homer simpson, something like that. our only hope are people who unite these three features. well, thank you very much. okay. jetzt kommt... i's kind of going at.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
with a discussion we had in all the e. like. simpson, that was krish's example of to whom you have to speak in order to get a...
with a discussion we had in all the e. like. simpson, that was krish's example of to whom you have to speak in order to get a...
Slavoj Žižek
i don't know who simon critchley is.
i don't know who simon critchley is.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
i
i
Slavoj Žižek
no.
no.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
i was mitchell. m you.
i was mitchell. m you.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because... i deny ontologically he may exist and you didn't get it empirically, but ontologically simon critchley doesn't exist.
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because... i deny ontologically he may exist and you didn't get it empirically, but ontologically simon critchley doesn't exist.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
no it's okay. hammer.
no it's okay. hammer.
Slavoj Žižek
that's better. he exists.
that's better. he exists.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
he told us that the messiah is only coming by not coming.
he told us that the messiah is only coming by not coming.
Slavoj Žižek
you mean he probably a reference to kafka, no?
you mean he probably a reference to kafka, no?
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
it's... a day.
it's... a day.
Slavoj Žižek
after, yeah, yeah.
after, yeah, yeah.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
part of that too but it was also the same thing your miracle
part of that too but it was also the same thing your miracle
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
idea you know only if you are not taking it as a serious event but a miracle you could not expect then it has a power
idea you know only if you are not taking it as a serious event but a miracle you could not expect then it has a power
Slavoj Žižek
maybe, maybe.
maybe, maybe.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
maybe's a maybe part you got yesterday night from abit and benjamin was tired, you were sleeping and benjamin was awake. . spazier.
maybe's a maybe part you got yesterday night from abit and benjamin was tired, you were sleeping and benjamin was awake. . spazier.
Slavoj Žižek
benjamin is the guy who went to russia to have sex with asja lācis but failed.
benjamin is the guy who went to russia to have sex with asja lācis but failed.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
okay.
okay.
Slavoj Žižek
i identity.
i identity.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
it.
it.
Slavoj Žižek
ben ben.
ben ben.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
walking guy who is walking stronger like johnny walker stronger every day benjamin.
walking guy who is walking stronger like johnny walker stronger every day benjamin.
Slavoj Žižek
no, seriously, was he a walker? no, he even couldn't walk across the spanish border, i mean.
no, seriously, was he a walker? no, he even couldn't walk across the spanish border, i mean.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
johnny walker, you don't know johnny walker?
johnny walker, you don't know johnny walker?
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, i know whiskey, yes, and so yeah. but i don't drink whiskey, you know, why not? because i'm a stalinist psychologically. if you drink whiskey, you become friendly, you smile, and then the enemy attacks and you are not ready, you know. okay, but that's my private stalinism. no.
yeah, i know whiskey, yes, and so yeah. but i don't drink whiskey, you know, why not? because i'm a stalinist psychologically. if you drink whiskey, you become friendly, you smile, and then the enemy attacks and you are not ready, you know. okay, but that's my private stalinism. no.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
you are a pessimist now. there are no enemies, you know, there are no friends and there are no enemies either, you's only...
you are a pessimist now. there are no enemies, you know, there are no friends and there are no enemies either, you's only...
Slavoj Žižek
'm now at one so let's okay.
'm now at one so let's okay.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
i no. because if i would be enemy, i would take you seriously and cut the salaries of all the professors in half because only then i can be sure that they like what they do here at mb. yeah.
i no. because if i would be enemy, i would take you seriously and cut the salaries of all the professors in half because only then i can be sure that they like what they do here at mb. yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
then you should learn from bre.
then you should learn from bre.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
because in our school, 80% of the students tuition go to the salary of the professors means i can cut your tuition in half too.
because in our school, 80% of the students tuition go to the salary of the professors means i can cut your tuition in half too.
Slavoj Žižek
only 80%. only
only 80%. only
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
oh you.
oh you.
Slavoj Žižek
let's make it we liquidate you and let's make a direct deal 100%.
let's make it we liquidate you and let's make a direct deal 100%.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
we cannot liquidate.
we cannot liquidate.
Slavoj Žižek
but i can try, you know.
but i can try, you know.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
god. so. it's a... it's a very good point against this metaphysical making out of everything a theory and promising ontologies, trust and security. and that is certainly something we were raised in, we were also raised to resist.
god. so. it's a... it's a very good point against this metaphysical making out of everything a theory and promising ontologies, trust and security. and that is certainly something we were raised in, we were also raised to resist.
Slavoj Žižek
hey?
hey?
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
event event ereignis is one-off, happening. but we are open for this. the first time you hear it, you say something critical. usually usually you are very much on his side i will tell him.
event event ereignis is one-off, happening. but we are open for this. the first time you hear it, you say something critical. usually usually you are very much on his side i will tell him.
Slavoj Žižek
and this will be the last thing that you will say.
and this will be the last thing that you will say.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
i will tell him you said 5%. 5% you disagree. okay and i'm sure will be graceful enough to say, oh,. he's wrong, but okay. yes, yeah, i see... it is a strange situation.
i will tell him you said 5%. 5% you disagree. okay and i'm sure will be graceful enough to say, oh,. he's wrong, but okay. yes, yeah, i see... it is a strange situation.
Slavoj Žižek
no, but quite seriously, can i ask you something and then you answer? do you agree with this basic attitude that nonetheless i think really that we are approaching potentially dangerous times?
no, but quite seriously, can i ask you something and then you answer? do you agree with this basic attitude that nonetheless i think really that we are approaching potentially dangerous times?
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
it's no question.
it's no question.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, i mean...
yeah, i mean...
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
about it and it you always have a parallax view on it, you see that and you are astonished like every good philosopher should be how come we have a revolutionary situation we are there waiting for and nothing know say they all lie like they always do you know but this is also the answer. in this liar game. there are so many people involved.
about it and it you always have a parallax view on it, you see that and you are astonished like every good philosopher should be how come we have a revolutionary situation we are there waiting for and nothing know say they all lie like they always do you know but this is also the answer. in this liar game. there are so many people involved.
Slavoj Žižek
hey
hey
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
they cannot. they are too big. to fear. yeah. some... what that... yeah. opfer,.
they cannot. they are too big. to fear. yeah. some... what that... yeah. opfer,.
Slavoj Žižek
pretty.
pretty.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
sub okay, and greece is a good place, you know, the first place of philosophy, you know, people have always been free. and i have seen on a greece gas station, people smoking cigarettes next to the gas your bicycle. wonderful against von we, so you should never trust do and they never wear a helmet when they drive them. motorcycles. it first for my kind of people. but they are also the perfect . what's it?
sub okay, and greece is a good place, you know, the first place of philosophy, you know, people have always been free. and i have seen on a greece gas station, people smoking cigarettes next to the gas your bicycle. wonderful against von we, so you should never trust do and they never wear a helmet when they drive them. motorcycles. it first for my kind of people. but they are also the perfect . what's it?
Slavoj Žižek
jeche.
jeche.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
they are victims when you make another person scapegoat there typical
they are victims when you make another person scapegoat there typical
Slavoj Žižek
yes,.
yes,.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
w your friend, communist.
w your friend, communist.
Slavoj Žižek
no, he's not you know what happened steve? okay, i will tell later.
no, he's not you know what happened steve? okay, i will tell later.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
so young men in greece who made a name in a crisis because that's how you can still make a name. you have to involve yourself in such a crisis. but he is... yeah... he has to... theory you only knows that if you hurt the germans and the french if thereek greek people really would go out of the euro. system. because there is a kind of potential to merkel's not want to do that. you know because nobody knows lehman is the best example. if they had saved leman in new york, the whole mess would not have happened. so they would still lie in your face and say everything is fine, this is a great financial instrument. they would still mad off us on a great scale. and as long as the people play with it and on the other hand look at society as such, without the lies, there is no society. you have to lie to each other in order to live with each other.
so young men in greece who made a name in a crisis because that's how you can still make a name. you have to involve yourself in such a crisis. but he is... yeah... he has to... theory you only knows that if you hurt the germans and the french if thereek greek people really would go out of the euro. system. because there is a kind of potential to merkel's not want to do that. you know because nobody knows lehman is the best example. if they had saved leman in new york, the whole mess would not have happened. so they would still lie in your face and say everything is fine, this is a great financial instrument. they would still mad off us on a great scale. and as long as the people play with it and on the other hand look at society as such, without the lies, there is no society. you have to lie to each other in order to live with each other.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, but there are lies and lies.
yeah, but there are lies and lies.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
they certainly. there are bigger and smaller, the white lies and lies and so on and so on. but there are always fine lines here, you know, in situation, context and you are the best example.
they certainly. there are bigger and smaller, the white lies and lies and so on and so on. but there are always fine lines here, you know, in situation, context and you are the best example.
Slavoj Žižek
it's. .
it's. .
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
big.
big.
Slavoj Žižek
or small.
or small.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
it's a small test example. still. what i don't like about your talk.
it's a small test example. still. what i don't like about your talk.
Slavoj Žižek
no, finally we have.
no, finally we have.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
it's not that you kind of violate my rule, my vision here, let these idiots, the politics that out of my school. you know we know.
it's not that you kind of violate my rule, my vision here, let these idiots, the politics that out of my school. you know we know.
Slavoj Žižek
but that's why i chose this topic, to violate this rule. they said yeah.
but that's why i chose this topic, to violate this rule. they said yeah.
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
it no, it is ya. i places to do research, you know i'm not saying.
it no, it is ya. i places to do research, you know i'm not saying.
Slavoj Žižek
so we can throw you out and establish ourselves as a political
so we can throw you out and establish ourselves as a political
Wolfgang Schirmacher (EGS founder)
this is exactly what you cannot do. you should be very careful that i'm still alive. otherwise you will not be able to come here. also i your protector, not your enemy. and it is a way, i think, which if you bring it into the philosophical realm, my only aversion is taste. tasteless politicians. politics is a technique which brings together garbage with sending people to die in the war. and i think it's so old-fashioned we should have destroyed it and done something else.
this is exactly what you cannot do. you should be very careful that i'm still alive. otherwise you will not be able to come here. also i your protector, not your enemy. and it is a way, i think, which if you bring it into the philosophical realm, my only aversion is taste. tasteless politicians. politics is a technique which brings together garbage with sending people to die in the war. and i think it's so old-fashioned we should have destroyed it and done something else.