Dangerous Ideas – In Conversation with Will Self
Discussion · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-05-18 · 1:15:19 · 11,789 words
ideologycapitalismcommunism-socialismhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisrevolution-violenceliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracytechnology-ai-cyberspaceecology-climategeopolitics-warsubjectivity
Žižek presents and defends his book 'The Courage of Hopelessness' in a combative public conversation with Will Self and other interlocutors, addressing accusations of Eurocentrism, racism, celebration of violence, and pro-Trump sympathies. The discussion ranges across ideology, the displaced functioning of belief, systemic violence, the refugee crisis, Brexit, Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, and the dangers of biogenetic/digital technology. Žižek argues that the current moment demands rigorous thinking rather than immediate activist prescriptions, and that capitalism's internal contradictions are approaching catastrophic potential. He defends a Leninist 'learn, learn, learn' orientation and a qualified defence of bureaucratic socialism, while expressing deep skepticism about liberal-democratic electoral politics.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 11
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “displaced belief”
The modern condition in which beliefs function socially without any subject in the first person actually holding them, one goes through rituals 'for the culture' or 'for the children' while no one truly believes.
as “big Other”
Implicit in Žižek's account of displaced belief, the social symbolic order that 'believes for us' when no individual subject does.
as “obscene unwritten rules”
The set of unofficial, often transgressive norms every ideological community requires its members to know and follow in order to belong, the obscene supplement that keeps the explicit rules operative.
as “systemic violence”
The invisible, structural violence embedded in the normal functioning of capitalism and its global order, as opposed to visible direct violence, not a guilt trip for individuals but a name for the violence needed to keep things going as they are.
The paradox that subordination and oppression themselves generate a kind of perverse pleasure that keeps subjects compliant, making liberation psychically difficult.
Žižek reinterprets Freud's death drive not as a Nirvana-wish to disappear but as an obscene immortality compulsion, the undead insistence on repetition modelled by zombies, cartoons, and Sade's indestructible victims.
Žižek's redescription of the Freudian death drive as a compulsion to persist beyond death, an 'undead' existence that keeps returning, illustrated by zombie films and Tom and Jerry.
as “precariat”
Žižek uses it to describe the contemporary fragmented, atomized working class whose mode of existence (isolated, clicking at screens) makes classical solidarity-building difficult.
as “bureaucratic socialism”
Žižek's deliberately provocative term for the form of coordinated, expert-managed political authority needed to handle global crises that exceed local democratic control.
Implied in Žižek's defence of Marx's commodity fetishism as ideology embedded in economic structure, not mere illusion, the abstraction is real in its effects.
Marx's concept invoked to show that ideology is not superstructure but built into the economic structure itself, capitalism operates outside cultural identity precisely because fetishism is immanent to the commodity form.
Stories he reaches for 8
Hawking no longer needs his finger to move his wheelchair, his brain is directly wired to the machine. Žižek uses this as concrete evidence that direct brain-computer connectivity is already happening and poses profound questions for self-identity.
“even Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger to move his wheelchair it's already his brain is directly wired and so on”
Žižek traces his fascination with the death drive to his childhood love of cartoons like Tom and Jerry, where characters are sliced apart and reappear whole in the next scene. This undead indestructibility is his model for the compulsive-repetitive logic of the death drive.
“Tom and Jerry fighting to death slicing each other in the next scene even if Jerry was cut into pieces in the next scene he's already there”
Žižek cites Obamacare as a positive example of making something previously unthinkable in American political culture suddenly real, the value lies in forcing a crack in the ideological common sense, not in the policy's completeness.
“Obamacare — this was such a shock for United States something so unthinkable”
Žižek cites a leftist analysis of the Abu Ghraib scandal: the public outrage was not 'horrors are happening in our name' but 'they should do it discreetly, we don't want to know.' This is his example of operative ideological hypocrisy.
“it wasn't oh my god horrors are happening… it was more they should do it but discreetly we don't want to know about it”
Žižek recounts meeting a distant relative of his ex-wife in Argentina, a doctor who served the military dictatorship by medically examining prisoners to certify how much torture they could withstand. He says he would be ready to poison this man, because doing a 'merely technical' job in the service of evil is morally equivalent to committing it.
“I met a doctor who confessed to me… his job was to examine that prisoner and give a precise analysis you can do this to this guy and he will not suffer consequences”
Žižek argues that de Gaulle's call to armed resistance against Vichy France was entirely illegal and that Pétain had the democratic majority behind him, yet de Gaulle was right. This illustrates that there are situations where supporting an illegal, minority political-military action against a legal, popularly supported government is justified.
“from a legal standpoint Maréchal Pétain was… elected by the majority… but I think de Gaulle did the right thing”
Marquis de Sade's character Juliette is endlessly tortured but always survives, for Žižek this is the literary ur-form of undead immortality, which Lacan also recognised, and it maps onto the digital mode of existence where one erases a failed encounter and starts again.
“the father of this is Marquis de Sade… the victim Juliette — she is endlessly tortured but all the time remains”
Žižek reports that political friends close to Wolfgang Schäuble reveal he actively wanted Greece to exit the Euro, everything was prepared, so the catastrophe would teach the European left a lesson for a generation.
“he actively wanted Grexit everything was set in plan let Greek have their Grexit it would be humanitarian catastrophe chaos maybe military power”
Works invoked 7
Hegel's central work, Žižek references knowing the difference between the first and second editions of Hegel's Logic as a marker of serious philosophical engagement.
Žižek's own book being launched and discussed, he uses the event to defend its positions on violence, ideology, refugees, Brexit, LGBT, and Trump against attacks from left and right.
Childhood love of cartoons, the immortal, endlessly reconstituted characters model his concept of undead repetition and the death drive as obscene immortality.
Freud's text where the death drive is introduced; Žižek holds that Freud immediately misread his own concept by assimilating it to Nirvana/Schopenhauer rather than recognising it as undead immortality.
Seeing (A Lucidez) book
Saramago's novel about a political crisis triggered by mass voter abstention, Žižek's favourite illustration that doing nothing can be the most violent political gesture.
Raoul Vaneigem's situationist work, cited by an interlocutor as a comparison for Žižek's style (advocacy of a certain position of life); Žižek implicitly rejects the comparison.
Žižek's earlier book on violence, referenced to establish that he ends it by saying the most violent act is sometimes abstention.
People invoked 27
José Saramago positive
Žižek cites the novel 'Seeing' (clarifying it is not 'Blindness') as his favourite illustration of abstention as the most radical political act.
Marquis de Sade positive
Identified as the 'father' of the undead immortality motif, Juliette's indestructible survival under endless torture models the death drive as obscene immortality.
Marine Le Pen negative
Cited as an example of genuinely dangerous right-wing reaction to crisis, unlike Farage.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek's Leninism is invoked through the 'learn, learn, learn' motto attributed to Lenin's mistress; he claims a qualified Leninist identity focused on thinking and understanding rather than activist voluntarism.
Žižek reports that Schäuble actively planned Grexit as a trap to punish the European left, the 'German big bad wolf' who would have let Greece collapse to serve an ideological lesson.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek defends Lacan as the best available theorist for understanding contemporary paradoxes of permissivity, sexuality, and ideology; Lacan is invoked throughout as an indispensable analytical toolkit.
Nancy Pelosi negative
Žižek criticises Pelosi for renormalising Trump by comparing him to Reagan/Bush and planning for eight years of opposition rather than fighting him, this he says literally prolongs Trump's career.
Cited as a current example of direct brain-computer interface: Hawking's brain is already wired to control his wheelchair without use of his finger.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek ironically entertains the idea that Fukuyama was right (capitalism won) only to note its ultimate irony: the best managers of capitalism today are ex-communists.
Žižek gave a 'very cynical quasi support' of Trump as an empirical bet that he is dangerous but not as dangerous as the fascism thesis implies; he explicitly denies Trump is fascism and argues this is leftist stupidity, while also saying the Democratic Party's response is prolonging Trump.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Žižek singles out the Bolivian vice president as the wisest left-wing political actor, pursuing rational modest progressive politics.
Jeremy Corbyn negative
Žižek is doubtful about Corbyn, he suspects his programme is mere welfare-state nostalgia and that his pro-Brexit tendencies amount to a misguided national autarky; qualified provisional support conditional on there being something beyond nostalgic social democracy.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Žižek criticises transhumanist thinkers like Kurzweil for 'ontologically cheating', describing the posthuman singularity as if it would retain all humanist properties of free thinking.
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek mentions almost breaking contact with Badiou because his introduction to Mao was too critical, implying Badiou is an important ally who takes Mao more uncritically.
Gregory Bateson positive
Žižek invokes Bateson's systems-thinking to complicate the idea of a tool (the axe, the arm, the man, the earth are all part of the same tool-system) and follows Bateson on consciousness as a collective phenomenon.
Nigel Farage negative
Žižek dismisses Farage as a clown rather than a serious fascist threat, distinguishing him from genuinely dangerous far-right figures like Le Pen.
Bernie Sanders positive
Žižek endorsed Sanders because he uniquely mobilised people who might otherwise vote for Trump, thereby breaking the 'cultural left' monopoly, a unique political achievement within the US context.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Žižek expresses qualified trust in Varoufakis and credits him with clearly seeing that both Syriza capitulation and Grexit were bad options, and that the fight against European capitalism must be pan-European or wider.
Mentioned in passing about Bolivia, where Žižek finds Linera (the vice president) more interesting than Morales.
Angela Merkel positive
Žižek defends Merkel's top-down decision to admit refugees, arguing that a truly democratised Europe responsive to popular opinion would have been much harsher on refugees.
Mao Zedong positive
Žižek cites Mao's 'in the kingdom of heaven everything is in chaos, excellent' to support seizing opportunities in moments of confusion; he says he also criticised Mao in an introduction that nearly broke his relationship with Badiou.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek is a critical but committed Marxist, he praises Marx's theory of commodity fetishism and his diagnosis of capitalism's contradictions, but argues we need to return from Marx to Hegel and that traditional Marxism ontologically cheated.
Sigmund Freud positive
Žižek credits Freud with genuine discoveries but argues he immediately misinterpreted his own death drive concept by assimilating it to Schopenhauerian Nirvana rather than seeing it as undead immortality.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek considers Hegel the culmination of modern philosophy ('between Kant and Hegel everything that had to happen happens') and cites the Owl of Minerva to argue for retroactive understanding over revolutionary prediction.
Simon Critchley negative
Mentioned as having accused Žižek of being 'a weak coward who is dreaming of some revengeful great violence', a characterisation Žižek disputes.
Immanuel Kant positive
Named as the starting point of the Kant-Hegel sequence within which Žižek situates all the genuinely important philosophical developments.
Mentioned in connection with Protestantism's 500th anniversary (2017) as marking the beginning of the modern individual first-person belief.
What it argues
displaced belief and ideology without a believing subjectsystemic versus direct violencethe inadequacy of liberal-democratic electoral politicscapitalism's dynamic self-renovation and internal contradictionsbiogenetics, digitalization, and the threat to human subjectivitythe Leninist imperative to think before actingobscene unwritten rules as ideology's operative core
Dialectical moves 9
“Today's predominant ideology functions as a critique of ideology — cynical distance is ideology's strongest form.”
What appears as stepping outside ideology (not taking things seriously, mocking grand projects) is itself the dominant ideological operation.
“The most violent thing is sometimes to do nothing — abstention can be the most violent act.”
The conventional association of violence with action is inverted: radical inaction (refusing to vote, withdrawal) can be the more destabilising and 'violent' gesture.
“Far from being a Nirvana-wish to disappear, the death drive is really a compulsion toward obscene immortality.”
Freud's death drive is the opposite of what Freud claimed: not a pull toward peace/dissolution but an insistence on undead, repetitive survival.
“The more permissive our societies become, the more frigidity, impotence, and guilt increase.”
Sexual liberation does not produce its stated goal, the superego's command to enjoy generates its own failure, inverting the logic of liberation.
“Don't just do something — sit there.”
A deliberate inversion of the activist 'don't just sit there, do something' imperative: in our confused situation, conceptual clarity must precede action.
“The greatest utopia today is not some communist future but the idea that things can go on as they are.”
Utopia is re-sited: the truly fantastic and unrealisable dream is the conservative one of perpetual continuation, not the radical alternative.
“My pessimism is at the same time a cause of optimism — there will be new crises.”
Pessimism about the present system is dialectically optimistic: only crisis creates the conditions for genuine change.
“A democratised Europe that truly listened to its populations would have been far harsher on refugees — Merkel's top-down decision was the more humane one.”
The inversion: genuine popular democracy would have produced a worse humanitarian outcome than elite technocratic decision-making.
“Capitalism is not ideology in the sense of cultural superstructure — it is outside cultural identity, which is precisely why ex-communists make its best managers.”
Capitalism's universality is the inversion of its apparent cultural-ideological character: it transcends any particular identity, including communist identity.
Claims 26
asserts
Today's predominant ideology is not religious fundamentalism but a cynical 'don't take things too seriously, don't trust big projects' attitude — a mode of critique that is ideology's strongest form.contemporary ideology
asserts
We live in an era of displaced belief: beliefs function socially without any subject in the first person actually holding them, so we may believe more than ever but in a radically mediated way.belief and ideology
asserts
Every ideological edifice requires a set of obscene unwritten rules — knowing how to transgress the explicit rules is what it means to belong to a community.ideology
asserts
Apparent transgression and 'sites of resistance' are often ideology's strongest constitutive part, not its outside.transgression and resistance
asserts
The systemic violence required to keep things as they are massively exceeds and underreports the episodic direct violence we perceive as violence.systemic violence
asserts
Sometimes the most violent act is to do nothing — abstention can be more radical than action.violence and political action
reframes
The Freudian death drive is not a Nirvana-wish to disappear but an obscene compulsion to immortality — an undead insistence on repetition.death drive
asserts
Freud immediately misread his own concept of the death drive by assimilating it to Schopenhauerian will and the Nirvana principle.Freud's death drive
asserts
Marx's commodity fetishism shows that ideology is not superstructure but is embedded in the very economic structure of capitalism — capitalism functions outside cultural identity.Marx and ideology
asserts
The contemporary situation demands thinking rather than immediate action — 'don't just do something, sit there' — because without conceptual clarity we don't know what we are doing.theory vs. practice
asserts
Capitalism is not approaching its end through simple resource exhaustion; it has an extraordinary capacity to convert obstacles into new opportunities for expansion.capitalism's resilience
asserts
The greatest utopia today is the belief that things can simply continue as they are.status quo and utopianism
asserts
The correct response to ecological crisis, biogenetics, and digitalization requires strong supranational authority, not local participatory democracy alone.global governance
asserts
Democratized Europe — one that truly listened to its populations — would have been harsher on refugees, not more welcoming, which is why Angela Merkel's top-down decision was defensible.democracy and the refugee crisis
asserts
The Democratic Party's strategy of renormalizing Trump (à la Pelosi) and crushing the Sanders movement literally prolongs Trump's career.US Democratic Party politics
rejects
Trump's America is not fascism — calling it fascism is typical leftist stupidity.Trump as fascism
asserts
Psychoanalysis, specifically Lacanian, provides the best conceptual instruments for understanding contemporary paradoxes of permissivity, frigidity, and perverse enjoyment.psychoanalysis and contemporary culture
asserts
Brain-computer interface technology and biogenetics pose a fundamental threat to the minimum of personal self-identity on which human dignity rests.biogenetics and subjectivity
asserts
The dominant guilt feeling in permissive societies has shifted from 'I have illicit desires' to 'I don't enjoy enough' — the superego now commands enjoyment.permissivity and guilt
asserts
We must return from Marx to Hegel — Marx already marks a step downward from Hegel's more radical dialectics.Hegel versus Marx
asserts
Progressive political change always begins with a minority — historical revolutions required only a few percent with silent passive sympathy from the majority.revolutionary change and elites
asserts
Traditional Marxism ontologically cheated by wanting to rid the world of capital while retaining the dynamic of perpetual overcoming that is itself deeply capitalist.Marxist self-contradiction
rejects
Individual ethical gestures (not buying coltan phones, separating coke cans) are naive as political strategies because they obfuscate the need for systemic change.individual ethics and politics
asserts
Democracy's foundational achievement is normalising the empty throne — making the vacancy of power an opening rather than a catastrophe.democracy
asserts
Grexit would have been a humanitarian catastrophe deliberately engineered by Schäuble to teach the European left a lesson for a generation.Syriza and Greek crisis
asserts
The only viable response to European capitalism is a new pan-European or even wider globalism — national autarky is the wrong answer.Brexit and nationalism
Quotes 12
“The greatest utopia today is that things can go on just go on the way they are.”Slavoj Žižek · status quo as the real utopia
“Don't just do something, sit there.”Slavoj Žižek · thinking before acting
“My pessimism is at the same time a cause of optimism — don't worry there will be new crisis.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical optimism through crisis
“The dominant guilt feeling is no longer I have illicit desires and I feel guilty but I don't enjoy sex enough I feel guilty for that.”Slavoj Žižek · superego commands enjoyment in permissive society
“I am a sincere misanthrope.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's self-description
“It is not enough to know the rules — you have to know how to violate the rules.”Slavoj Žižek · obscene unwritten rules as ideology's operative core
“The light at the end of the tunnel is the approaching train.”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism about the current civilisational trajectory
“Today's ideology functions as a weird mode of critique of ideology — its mystifying power is even stronger.”Slavoj Žižek · cynical distance as ideology
“We believe more than ever but in a displaced way — beliefs function socially without any subject in the first person believing in them.”Slavoj Žižek · displaced belief
“The Owl of Minerva flies off at night — none of this revolutionary prediction; we can only retroactively explain what is going on. Hegel was here anti-Marx.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's epistemological pessimism against predictive Marxism
“In the 20th century we were trying to do too many things.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of activist voluntarism
“Capitalism has an incredible capacity to change any obstacle to its expansion into a new opportunity.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism's resilience
Transcript 184 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I will really try to be short because a lively debate is much better than boring introductions so I will just say introduce my new book what I you may have noticed some of you that I don't really care about it but that lately I'm in big trouble by the attacked by the right-wingers even by the left-wingers and we can see exactly we can isolate six seven points where I am in trouble first there is my Eurocentrism because of it I'm was even accused of being close to Le Pen or whatever and so on my racism then my my celebration of violence I am as Simon Critchley put it a weak coward who is dreaming of some revengeful great violence and so on then I was wrong about Greece that I didn't support Grexit then I was wrong about refugees again my brutal Eurocentric racism came out then I was wrong about LGBT my again my fascism but especially my homophobia and so on came out there and finally I've shown my cards openly by supporting Donald Trump now things are clear in this book I simply try to but I didn't want to do this retroactively I noticed I try to elaborate my position on all these points so buy the book I will not talk about this but just briefly about what preoccupies me first okay what really preoccupies me is Hegel Lacan ideology and so on and I'm even very conservative here people always dismiss me as some kind of crazy postmodernist no I think somewhere between Kant and Hegel everything that had to happen happens and now with Marx things go already with Marx things go just down so we have to return from Marx to Hegel and so on but what fascinates me is first ideology today I think we live in an extremely interesting area where ideology more and more functions and in this way its mystifying power is even stronger it functions as a weird mode of critique of ideology today's predominant ideology I claim is not is no longer except with fundamentalists but it's another question so-called religious fundamentalists how they work it's something like if I try to describe it don't take things too seriously don't trust big projects it's all just a vague dream try to get out of your life what you can don't engage yourself too much and so on and so on what this brings us to is and this always intrigued me two things first first the strange status of beliefs today as I developed widely in most of my books more and more we believe through others if you ask a typical even in working class not only in so-called middle classes guy today or a lady do you believe in God you would get something like not really but I go to the ritual and then you have different out of respect for my culture not to offend my children or whatever and so on and so on and you can develop this to the end if you ask children do you really believe they would of course have told you I just pretend for the sake of my parents to get the presents so we really have this paradox of beliefs which function socially without any subject in the first person believing in them so in a way I'm not saying we are a godless atheist live in a godless atheist era maybe we believe more than ever but in this displaced way and this always fascinated me how beliefs actually function maybe the very idea of this heroic first person belief I believe is something modern I think it begins only with we are celebrating years this year Luther with Protestantism I don't think in medieval times they really believed in any literal sense okay first point second point about ideology that fascinates me is how every ideological edifice in order to be operative needs a set of unwritten usually obscene rules ideology is not just what it says ideology is always a set of rules which regulate not only how you can but how you are even expected to violate the explicit rules to be a member of a community it's not enough to know the rules it's to know how to violate the rules my first experience of this was of course the socialist Yugoslavia my youth and then I noticed everywhere around the world you have it and this is always was so fascinating for me how what appears to be a transgression as postmodernists would have put it sites of resistance to ruling ideology it's really its stronger strongest constitutive part this obscene rituals it can be sexual power play humiliating but I don't have to teach you about this I think your English this how do you call them schools boarding schools aren't they a kingdom of this yes it explains everything about it everything yes second topic that interests me is violence I'm here usually accused of some fascination with violence no I just like to point out a couple of thing first is that you know violence for me is not just what we perceive as direct violence usually we associate violence with change and then the topic is we need change but should we do it in violent way or not and so on and so on well my first thing would be but are we aware how much violence is needed and is done practiced just for the things to go on the way they are that's why I find it so hypocritical the way our media report on violence for example it is reported but underreported take Yemen today it's constantly bombarded by Saudi Arabia with Americans agreement my god the country is practically take Democratic Republic of Congo and so on I told my Palestinian friends when I was in Ramallah you live in a paradise compared with Congo so how much violence is going on second thing you now I will do it to provoke you I at a certain level which violence we can go later into it I'm ready to condone okay to provoke you I'm ready under certain conditions which I will precisely describe to kill a man who did never kill another person but was just doing his job and I met such a man years ago in Argentina relative of my ex-wife blah blah I met a doctor who confessed to me and I was so disgusted that when there was military dictatorship there he worked for the secret police they had a prisoner whom they wanted to torture and his job of that doctor relative of distant relative of my wife was to examine that prisoner and then give a precise analysis you can do this to this guy and he will not suffer consequences if you then don't care if he suffocates a little bit over a couple of bones broken you can do this but don't torture him too much in that way because his lungs are weak and so on and so on I find this so disgusting because he at the same time emphasized listen I just gave my opinion I didn't do anything if I were to be sitting at a table with him and somehow magically a little capsule of poison in my hand and I look around there is nobody looking it I would be ready to poison him one another example can you imagine supporting a call to military resistance against a legal government which undoubtedly has the support of the majority of population I can and you would even agree when I tell you whom Charles de Gaulle in are you aware that from a legal standpoint Maréchal Pétain was the Assemblée Nationale moved to the south when German and he was elected by the majority not only this all agree even communists that if there were to be free elections in France till Pétain would have been re-elected with percent but I think de Gaulle did the right thing it was totally illegal he called to resistance and so on so there are examples where I am ready Slavoj they're not very good examples are they sorry and I mean they're not the sort of violence that your critics accuse you of endorsing nobody's accused you of ah that's nice so we begin okay let's go here yeah yeah yeah yeah because I hope that I will provoke you here yes okay come back I'm not that I'm not that provoked I mean I'm not raised to violence but your examples aren't very good I mean there are a kind of knocking off a kind of Argentinian torturer with a secret vial of poison or historically counterfactually censuring de Gaulle and supporting Pétain this is not the kind of violence you're accused your accusers say you condone then tell me what I'm accused of the kind of violence your your accusers hold you guilty of in a numinous way supporting is the idea that the revolutionary moment needs to be seized and possibly pressed home by violent means and the ghost of this does kind of lurk around the courage of hopelessness I mean perhaps you can take us wait because I claim okay maybe I'm wrong and it's I agree with you let's be British empiricists this is a question which can be decided with concrete textual references or to point so give me an example oh well I mean you quote there's an argument I would say in the courage of hopelessness that goes from for example a quote very late on where you quote Mao where saying in the Kingdom of Heaven everything is in chaos excellent or something like that yeah so conditions of chaos of of social disintegration ideological complexity represent to you a break point this is a point where we should carpe diem we must seize the day yes where do you see here any first we don't do it situation is chaotic yes why not seize the opportunity to do something good there yes but but at each point in the text which is I enjoyed the book very much by the way and found it a rollicking good read give me this in one sentence so that we reprint it Will Self I enjoyed the book very much yeah no I think I actually think the cover blurb on the paperback will be a rollicking good read and then unstoppable undownputable what are these strange words yes yes but the book is really a sustained critique of a kind of left-liberal position that still wishes to reside in a kind of democratic formula where power is transferred without regime change of any kind now I'm not saying at any point in the book do you actively advocate violence but it's always on the table it's always there as a possibility and you
I will really try to be short because a lively debate is much better than boring introductions so I will just say introduce my new book what I you may have noticed some of you that I don't really care about it but that lately I'm in big trouble by the attacked by the right-wingers even by the left-wingers and we can see exactly we can isolate six seven points where I am in trouble first there is my Eurocentrism because of it I'm was even accused of being close to Le Pen or whatever and so on my racism then my my celebration of violence I am as Simon Critchley put it a weak coward who is dreaming of some revengeful great violence and so on then I was wrong about Greece that I didn't support Grexit then I was wrong about refugees again my brutal Eurocentric racism came out then I was wrong about LGBT my again my fascism but especially my homophobia and so on came out there and finally I've shown my cards openly by supporting Donald Trump now things are clear in this book I simply try to but I didn't want to do this retroactively I noticed I try to elaborate my position on all these points so buy the book I will not talk about this but just briefly about what preoccupies me first okay what really preoccupies me is Hegel Lacan ideology and so on and I'm even very conservative here people always dismiss me as some kind of crazy postmodernist no I think somewhere between Kant and Hegel everything that had to happen happens and now with Marx things go already with Marx things go just down so we have to return from Marx to Hegel and so on but what fascinates me is first ideology today I think we live in an extremely interesting area where ideology more and more functions and in this way its mystifying power is even stronger it functions as a weird mode of critique of ideology today's predominant ideology I claim is not is no longer except with fundamentalists but it's another question so-called religious fundamentalists how they work it's something like if I try to describe it don't take things too seriously don't trust big projects it's all just a vague dream try to get out of your life what you can don't engage yourself too much and so on and so on what this brings us to is and this always intrigued me two things first first the strange status of beliefs today as I developed widely in most of my books more and more we believe through others if you ask a typical even in working class not only in so-called middle classes guy today or a lady do you believe in God you would get something like not really but I go to the ritual and then you have different out of respect for my culture not to offend my children or whatever and so on and so on and you can develop this to the end if you ask children do you really believe they would of course have told you I just pretend for the sake of my parents to get the presents so we really have this paradox of beliefs which function socially without any subject in the first person believing in them so in a way I'm not saying we are a godless atheist live in a godless atheist era maybe we believe more than ever but in this displaced way and this always fascinated me how beliefs actually function maybe the very idea of this heroic first person belief I believe is something modern I think it begins only with we are celebrating years this year Luther with Protestantism I don't think in medieval times they really believed in any literal sense okay first point second point about ideology that fascinates me is how every ideological edifice in order to be operative needs a set of unwritten usually obscene rules ideology is not just what it says ideology is always a set of rules which regulate not only how you can but how you are even expected to violate the explicit rules to be a member of a community it's not enough to know the rules it's to know how to violate the rules my first experience of this was of course the socialist Yugoslavia my youth and then I noticed everywhere around the world you have it and this is always was so fascinating for me how what appears to be a transgression as postmodernists would have put it sites of resistance to ruling ideology it's really its stronger strongest constitutive part this obscene rituals it can be sexual power play humiliating but I don't have to teach you about this I think your English this how do you call them schools boarding schools aren't they a kingdom of this yes it explains everything about it everything yes second topic that interests me is violence I'm here usually accused of some fascination with violence no I just like to point out a couple of thing first is that you know violence for me is not just what we perceive as direct violence usually we associate violence with change and then the topic is we need change but should we do it in violent way or not and so on and so on well my first thing would be but are we aware how much violence is needed and is done practiced just for the things to go on the way they are that's why I find it so hypocritical the way our media report on violence for example it is reported but underreported take Yemen today it's constantly bombarded by Saudi Arabia with Americans agreement my god the country is practically take Democratic Republic of Congo and so on I told my Palestinian friends when I was in Ramallah you live in a paradise compared with Congo so how much violence is going on second thing you now I will do it to provoke you I at a certain level which violence we can go later into it I'm ready to condone okay to provoke you I'm ready under certain conditions which I will precisely describe to kill a man who did never kill another person but was just doing his job and I met such a man years ago in Argentina relative of my ex-wife blah blah I met a doctor who confessed to me and I was so disgusted that when there was military dictatorship there he worked for the secret police they had a prisoner whom they wanted to torture and his job of that doctor relative of distant relative of my wife was to examine that prisoner and then give a precise analysis you can do this to this guy and he will not suffer consequences if you then don't care if he suffocates a little bit over a couple of bones broken you can do this but don't torture him too much in that way because his lungs are weak and so on and so on I find this so disgusting because he at the same time emphasized listen I just gave my opinion I didn't do anything if I were to be sitting at a table with him and somehow magically a little capsule of poison in my hand and I look around there is nobody looking it I would be ready to poison him one another example can you imagine supporting a call to military resistance against a legal government which undoubtedly has the support of the majority of population I can and you would even agree when I tell you whom Charles de Gaulle in are you aware that from a legal standpoint Maréchal Pétain was the Assemblée Nationale moved to the south when German and he was elected by the majority not only this all agree even communists that if there were to be free elections in France till Pétain would have been re-elected with percent but I think de Gaulle did the right thing it was totally illegal he called to resistance and so on so there are examples where I am ready Slavoj they're not very good examples are they sorry and I mean they're not the sort of violence that your critics accuse you of endorsing nobody's accused you of ah that's nice so we begin okay let's go here yeah yeah yeah yeah because I hope that I will provoke you here yes okay come back I'm not that I'm not that provoked I mean I'm not raised to violence but your examples aren't very good I mean there are a kind of knocking off a kind of Argentinian torturer with a secret vial of poison or historically counterfactually censuring de Gaulle and supporting Pétain this is not the kind of violence you're accused your accusers say you condone then tell me what I'm accused of the kind of violence your your accusers hold you guilty of in a numinous way supporting is the idea that the revolutionary moment needs to be seized and possibly pressed home by violent means and the ghost of this does kind of lurk around the courage of hopelessness I mean perhaps you can take us wait because I claim okay maybe I'm wrong and it's I agree with you let's be British empiricists this is a question which can be decided with concrete textual references or to point so give me an example oh well I mean you quote there's an argument I would say in the courage of hopelessness that goes from for example a quote very late on where you quote Mao where saying in the Kingdom of Heaven everything is in chaos excellent or something like that yeah so conditions of chaos of of social disintegration ideological complexity represent to you a break point this is a point where we should carpe diem we must seize the day yes where do you see here any first we don't do it situation is chaotic yes why not seize the opportunity to do something good there yes but but at each point in the text which is I enjoyed the book very much by the way and found it a rollicking good read give me this in one sentence so that we reprint it Will Self I enjoyed the book very much yeah no I think I actually think the cover blurb on the paperback will be a rollicking good read and then unstoppable undownputable what are these strange words yes yes but the book is really a sustained critique of a kind of left-liberal position that still wishes to reside in a kind of democratic formula where power is transferred without regime change of any kind now I'm not saying at any point in the book do you actively advocate violence but it's always on the table it's always there as a possibility and you
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very strongly adjure and I'd say that the left liberals are your main thing that you're attacking you're not expecting your book to
very strongly adjure and I'd say that the left liberals are your main thing that you're attacking you're not expecting your book to
Slavoj Žižek
be read by right-wingers who are going to throw up their hands and go oh Slavoj is right after all don't you know that one of the mean guys around Trump was it Richard Bannon of who did say that I'm his
be read by right-wingers who are going to throw up their hands and go oh Slavoj is right after all don't you know that one of the mean guys around Trump was it Richard Bannon of who did say that I'm his
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favorite Marxist but that's another story his favorite Marxist so he's got more than one right but you wouldn't deny that you I'm not saying you condone violence but it's on the table absolutely and why not I'm not calling for whatever violence and so on don't forget it in my book on violence I end up with saying that sometimes the most violent thing is to do nothing to abstain and I quote I still love that example I love it even more than your book of days that Saramago novel is it Blindness or no Seeing The Art of Seeing where a total crisis explodes when people simply refuse to vote and so no you know what's my view here I will tell you it's not celebration of violence
favorite Marxist but that's another story his favorite Marxist so he's got more than one right but you wouldn't deny that you I'm not saying you condone violence but it's on the table absolutely and why not I'm not calling for whatever violence and so on don't forget it in my book on violence I end up with saying that sometimes the most violent thing is to do nothing to abstain and I quote I still love that example I love it even more than your book of days that Saramago novel is it Blindness or no Seeing The Art of Seeing where a total crisis explodes when people simply refuse to vote and so no you know what's my view here I will tell you it's not celebration of violence
Slavoj Žižek
is this one when things go and that's how I read Mao when and incidentally with Mao I'm far from celebrating it like Alain Badiou almost broke all contacts with me because of that introduction to Mao where I also praise Mao but also show some but okay my point is this one when there is an open difficult
is this one when things go and that's how I read Mao when and incidentally with Mao I'm far from celebrating it like Alain Badiou almost broke all contacts with me because of that introduction to Mao where I also praise Mao but also show some but okay my point is this one when there is an open difficult
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situation confusion and so
situation confusion and so
Slavoj Žižek
on the point is not to lose nerves but to grab a chance
on the point is not to lose nerves but to grab a chance
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there and I'm not celebrating it I know it listen I don't know if you did and still now wait a minute Slavoj before you before you even get there right at the beginning in your last book
there and I'm not celebrating it I know it listen I don't know if you did and still now wait a minute Slavoj before you before you even get there right at the beginning in your last book
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actually before this on violence you talk about this idea and you mentioned it before of what we we call systemic violence okay so everybody in this hall for example you would surely say is guilty of participating in that systemic violence
actually before this on violence you talk about this idea and you mentioned it before of what we we call systemic violence okay so everybody in this hall for example you would surely say is guilty of participating in that systemic violence
Slavoj Žižek
everybody's got a mobile phone in their pocket with a bit of coltan no wait a minute I don't say this and precisely wait a minute if I say systemic I don't mean we are all guilty because now you talk like like those ideologists
everybody's got a mobile phone in their pocket with a bit of coltan no wait a minute I don't say this and precisely wait a minute if I say systemic I don't mean we are all guilty because now you talk like like those ideologists
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of ecology who instead of demanding for the systemic change I hope we will agree here try to obfuscate the situation by treating us individually like you know who are you to criticize the system what did you do did you put aside all coke cans did you separate so I'm not trying to make people feel guilty absolutely like we are all part of it no we are not all part of it and you'd see that as a liberal cri de cœur we're all to blame one to be pushed to one side but nonetheless everybody's got a bit of coltan in their pocket everybody is paying their taxes to the British government who dealt with the Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia I'm paying my taxes no problem you mentioned the current bombing in Saudi Arabia everybody in this auditorium is contributing to the Saudis being able to undertake that bombing so I don't understand why you don't see us not individually but collectively as being responsible for this systemic violence we are responsible just more in this active passive sense of tolerating it yeah we know it fine we know it but we nonetheless you know what ah here hypocrisy enters and I expect you even to it's the native land of the hypocrite so you know
of ecology who instead of demanding for the systemic change I hope we will agree here try to obfuscate the situation by treating us individually like you know who are you to criticize the system what did you do did you put aside all coke cans did you separate so I'm not trying to make people feel guilty absolutely like we are all part of it no we are not all part of it and you'd see that as a liberal cri de cœur we're all to blame one to be pushed to one side but nonetheless everybody's got a bit of coltan in their pocket everybody is paying their taxes to the British government who dealt with the Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia I'm paying my taxes no problem you mentioned the current bombing in Saudi Arabia everybody in this auditorium is contributing to the Saudis being able to undertake that bombing so I don't understand why you don't see us not individually but collectively as being responsible for this systemic violence we are responsible just more in this active passive sense of tolerating it yeah we know it fine we know it but we nonetheless you know what ah here hypocrisy enters and I expect you even to it's the native land of the hypocrite so you know
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah yeah no even to I expect you even to agree with it you know when there were all those disclosures what were that prison Abu Ghraib or whatever all that stuff I read a very good leftist analysis
yeah yeah yeah no even to I expect you even to agree with it you know when there were all those disclosures what were that prison Abu Ghraib or whatever all that stuff I read a very good leftist analysis
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in American press where they say people were shocked but it wasn't oh my god horrors are happening there on behalf of democracy it was more they should do it but discreetly we don't want to
in American press where they say people were shocked but it wasn't oh my god horrors are happening there on behalf of democracy it was more they should do it but discreetly we don't want to
Slavoj Žižek
know about it that's our predominant hypocrisy and I don't have any great you know that's bring me with trouble into trouble with some leftists where I said okay I don't trust in experts there is no expert ruling class elite which knows what is happening but I also don't trust ordinary people the thing is when I read your stuff do you trust them trust ordinary people I believe in the wisdom of whores but your work looks to me often like you know Traité de savoir-vivre pour les jeunes générations I mean it looks to me like Raoul Vaneigem it looks to me like an advocacy of a certain position and I think there are young people here I can see them in the audience young people with coltan in their pocket who do look to you as somebody to propose positive actions that people could undertake now but I don't tell me one very rarely did I express admiration or engagement myself I did it up to a point with Syriza already with Podemos uh uh I have in Latin America I never fell into Chavez things I have still
know about it that's our predominant hypocrisy and I don't have any great you know that's bring me with trouble into trouble with some leftists where I said okay I don't trust in experts there is no expert ruling class elite which knows what is happening but I also don't trust ordinary people the thing is when I read your stuff do you trust them trust ordinary people I believe in the wisdom of whores but your work looks to me often like you know Traité de savoir-vivre pour les jeunes générations I mean it looks to me like Raoul Vaneigem it looks to me like an advocacy of a certain position and I think there are young people here I can see them in the audience young people with coltan in their pocket who do look to you as somebody to propose positive actions that people could undertake now but I don't tell me one very rarely did I express admiration or engagement myself I did it up to a point with Syriza already with Podemos uh uh I have in Latin America I never fell into Chavez things I have still
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now a certain sympathy I think they are the wisest for Bolivia not so much Morales as Linera his vice president as you can see they do a very reasonable politics rationally it's the best rational left there was modest progress and so on so wait a minute I'm very careful here well this is bad for example incidentally many people are frustrated by me they said all the criticism but where is the active plan I'm not talking about a partisan program I'm talking about the thrust of your
now a certain sympathy I think they are the wisest for Bolivia not so much Morales as Linera his vice president as you can see they do a very reasonable politics rationally it's the best rational left there was modest progress and so on so wait a minute I'm very careful here well this is bad for example incidentally many people are frustrated by me they said all the criticism but where is the active plan I'm not talking about a partisan program I'm talking about the thrust of your
Slavoj Žižek
critique of the liberal humanists the liberal bourgeois position suggests that you should offer some course of action for people to take what we have in the courage of hopelessness is kind of don't just do something sit there and and the quote about Lenin and his mistress learn learn learn I love it learn learn and learn okay in that sense when people ask me in what sense I am a Leninist I say in no but you know where I think so is that what we should do just learn learn
critique of the liberal humanists the liberal bourgeois position suggests that you should offer some course of action for people to take what we have in the courage of hopelessness is kind of don't just do something sit there and and the quote about Lenin and his mistress learn learn learn I love it learn learn and learn okay in that sense when people ask me in what sense I am a Leninist I say in no but you know where I think so is that what we should do just learn learn
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and learn not get rid of the coltan why why are you so ironic here I think yes well we are in England right no what I mean sorry is this you know I hate these proverbs and I hope we agree that proverbs are one of the greatest domains of stupidity no I mean in the sense of whatever you do you can cover it up with a proverb let's say I make a risky
and learn not get rid of the coltan why why are you so ironic here I think yes well we are in England right no what I mean sorry is this you know I hate these proverbs and I hope we agree that proverbs are one of the greatest domains of stupidity no I mean in the sense of whatever you do you can cover it up with a proverb let's say I make a risky
Slavoj Žižek
move well all's well that ends well yeah
move well all's well that ends well yeah
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that's one way or or for example I'm in a risky position I take a risk I succeed then I don't know what you have in England in my language we have a proverb which vaguely translated says only those who risk can succeed yeah yeah yeah but I take a risk and fail ah
that's one way or or for example I'm in a risky position I take a risk I succeed then I don't know what you have in England in my language we have a proverb which vaguely translated says only those who risk can succeed yeah yeah yeah but I take a risk and fail ah
Slavoj Žižek
I have another proverb I like it vulgar you cannot urinate against the wind which means don't you know that so no I think I hate this proverb enough talk do something maybe
I have another proverb I like it vulgar you cannot urinate against the wind which means don't you know that so no I think I hate this proverb enough talk do something maybe
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as I always
as I always
Slavoj Žižek
repeat it in the 20th century we were trying to do too many things yeah but
repeat it in the 20th century we were trying to do too many things yeah but
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that's what I'm saying yours
that's what I'm saying yours
Slavoj Žižek
is an inverted homily it's don't just do something sit there sit there and think and stop with because without this we don't know what we are doing right well now I want to ask you about the sort of thinking we should be doing now for example in the courage of hopelessness as in much of your other work there are frequent references to Lacan and and I want to know I want to understand a little bit better I mean for example should everybody here I mean I assume everybody here is deeply familiar with Lacan right just as you're deeply familiar with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that's not enough for me common people taxi drivers like the
is an inverted homily it's don't just do something sit there sit there and think and stop with because without this we don't know what we are doing right well now I want to ask you about the sort of thinking we should be doing now for example in the courage of hopelessness as in much of your other work there are frequent references to Lacan and and I want to know I want to understand a little bit better I mean for example should everybody here I mean I assume everybody here is deeply familiar with Lacan right just as you're deeply familiar with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that's not enough for me common people taxi drivers like the
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one in your book of days read phenomenology yeah but my types know the difference between first and second edition of Hegel's Logic okay but that's another you will not get me so easily you know but I know what you wanted to say they are applauding do you know the difference between the first and the second edition of Hegel's Phenomenology oh he's a good communist you know it's like Comrade Stalin say something says something you applaud you don't ask questions no but sorry let me be quite serious it's looking that way no let me
one in your book of days read phenomenology yeah but my types know the difference between first and second edition of Hegel's Logic okay but that's another you will not get me so easily you know but I know what you wanted to say they are applauding do you know the difference between the first and the second edition of Hegel's Phenomenology oh he's a good communist you know it's like Comrade Stalin say something says something you applaud you don't ask questions no but sorry let me be quite serious it's looking that way no let me
Slavoj Žižek
be quite serious wouldn't you say that today with what is happening ecological crisis refugees global crisis and but at the same time we have economic progress on the top of it biogenetics what will this mean we are entering a space where we don't really know what is happening where we are going it's time to think don't you agree I do agree a lot but why would one want to necessarily refer to a French psychoanalytic theorist whose main contribution was to vary the length of analytic sessions maybe the main clinical in order that he could make more cash presumably no I was spreading stories about Lacan and we can go on here I love them like no but seriously Slavoj should these people really understand Lacan to this very very high level okay I will give you I mean in order that their their actual
be quite serious wouldn't you say that today with what is happening ecological crisis refugees global crisis and but at the same time we have economic progress on the top of it biogenetics what will this mean we are entering a space where we don't really know what is happening where we are going it's time to think don't you agree I do agree a lot but why would one want to necessarily refer to a French psychoanalytic theorist whose main contribution was to vary the length of analytic sessions maybe the main clinical in order that he could make more cash presumably no I was spreading stories about Lacan and we can go on here I love them like no but seriously Slavoj should these people really understand Lacan to this very very high level okay I will give you I mean in order that their their actual
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thinking about the predicament we're in should be informed by Lacanian ideas I will give you a precise answer of course who has time to read all of Lacan and so on either don't so what we just look at you to produce your philosophical grab bag no no no what I'm saying is but let's be frank let's go concretely into it you know that it's clear from recent biographies that Mao didn't read not even
thinking about the predicament we're in should be informed by Lacanian ideas I will give you a precise answer of course who has time to read all of Lacan and so on either don't so what we just look at you to produce your philosophical grab bag no no no what I'm saying is but let's be frank let's go concretely into it you know that it's clear from recent biographies that Mao didn't read not even
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one book by Marx and so on no Stalin didn't read anything so don't be afraid what I want to say to be very precise why Lacan I think
one book by Marx and so on no Stalin didn't read anything so don't be afraid what I want to say to be very precise why Lacan I think
Slavoj Žižek
that we are witnessing today many paradoxes in our love lives even for example it's a beautiful paradox that with all the permissivity you can do today this way that way with dogs whatever you want the more our societies are permissive the more there is frigidity impotence feeling of guilt and so on and so on as many friends who are real psychoanalysts tell me today the main guilt feeling is no longer I have illicit desires and I feel guilty but I don't enjoy sex enough I feel guilty for that and so on so where does this paradox come from that people in some sense counteract their liberation they are not able to enjoy or politically it's obvious that subordination itself brings some perverse pleasure and so on for all this I think that still psychoanalysis gives the best instruments that we have yeah but you could just read
that we are witnessing today many paradoxes in our love lives even for example it's a beautiful paradox that with all the permissivity you can do today this way that way with dogs whatever you want the more our societies are permissive the more there is frigidity impotence feeling of guilt and so on and so on as many friends who are real psychoanalysts tell me today the main guilt feeling is no longer I have illicit desires and I feel guilty but I don't enjoy sex enough I feel guilty for that and so on so where does this paradox come from that people in some sense counteract their liberation they are not able to enjoy or politically it's obvious that subordination itself brings some perverse pleasure and so on for all this I think that still psychoanalysis gives the best instruments that we have yeah but you could just read
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a couple of essays by Freud couldn't you you could just read Beyond the Pleasure Principle no because he often didn't know what he is saying and this is not a critique of Freud it's with all great inventors that in the first act you think you see something but then you immediately for example my big example death drive Freud immediately regresses because he brings it back to that pseudo-Oriental stupidity Nirvana the wish to disappear but I think it can be so brilliantly shown I did it in my book I will not now no not brilliantly but simply that what Freud calls a death drive is really some kind of
a couple of essays by Freud couldn't you you could just read Beyond the Pleasure Principle no because he often didn't know what he is saying and this is not a critique of Freud it's with all great inventors that in the first act you think you see something but then you immediately for example my big example death drive Freud immediately regresses because he brings it back to that pseudo-Oriental stupidity Nirvana the wish to disappear but I think it can be so brilliantly shown I did it in my book I will not now no not brilliantly but simply that what Freud calls a death drive is really some kind of
Slavoj Žižek
obscene immortality my model for death drive is I hope no you don't have you are too intellectual for me the same dirty pleasures of for example undead zombie movies or video games this is it you
obscene immortality my model for death drive is I hope no you don't have you are too intellectual for me the same dirty pleasures of for example undead zombie movies or video games this is it you
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know you are dead but you are not dead an obscene undeadness that exists and so on and this is part fundamental part of our
know you are dead but you are not dead an obscene undeadness that exists and so on and this is part fundamental part of our
Slavoj Žižek
culture today we are obsessed with zombies and so on this is a side question I mean this is not it's not because this is how Freud produced a notion death drive and immediately misinterpreted it the Freudian death drive mon avis is is the Schopenhauerian you know will to power that was the greatest mistake Freud was really anti-Schopenhauer okay but that's not what really I'm asking you what I want to
culture today we are obsessed with zombies and so on this is a side question I mean this is not it's not because this is how Freud produced a notion death drive and immediately misinterpreted it the Freudian death drive mon avis is is the Schopenhauerian you know will to power that was the greatest mistake Freud was really anti-Schopenhauer okay but that's not what really I'm asking you what I want to
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understand because we're meant to go away and learn learn learn I want to understand how I am to fit your favored theorists Hegel Lacan Marx to some extent Freud to some extent how I am to fit them into my learning so that I'm going to understand what the fuck I should do about the
understand because we're meant to go away and learn learn learn I want to understand how I am to fit your favored theorists Hegel Lacan Marx to some extent Freud to some extent how I am to fit them into my learning so that I'm going to understand what the fuck I should do about the
Slavoj Žižek
shit we're
shit we're
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in and that's what I'm not quite getting from you man no but I okay if you again
in and that's what I'm not quite getting from you man no but I okay if you again
Slavoj Žižek
it depends on what you will expect I think again I mean you know I mean I may not be helping
it depends on what you will expect I think again I mean you know I mean I may not be helping
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why do you want to act immediately why are you afraid to just try to understand what's going on okay so so we're clear that we're not going to act so for example on June 8th no we can on June 8th we shouldn't vote at all no if you ask me I would say either abstain or Corbyn but with Corbyn you know what makes me afraid no no no wait a minute I did engage myself like Bernie Sanders you you endorse
why do you want to act immediately why are you afraid to just try to understand what's going on okay so so we're clear that we're not going to act so for example on June 8th no we can on June 8th we shouldn't vote at all no if you ask me I would say either abstain or Corbyn but with Corbyn you know what makes me afraid no no no wait a minute I did engage myself like Bernie Sanders you you endorse
Slavoj Žižek
Sanders in the courage of hopelessness yeah but you know why for a very precise reason because he did something unique I hope we agree here
Sanders in the courage of hopelessness yeah but you know why for a very precise reason because he did something unique I hope we agree here
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in United States this cultural
in United States this cultural
Slavoj Žižek
left screwed it up with their obsessions and maybe this is a mythic category maybe there is some truth in it so-called ordinary working people the only way for them to vent out to express their frustration was offered by Trump to that kind of people and Bernie Sanders brought some fresh air here he it was a unique achievement he succeeded in mobilizing those who would have otherwise voted for Trump and the great tragedy of Democratic Party not only even now after elections was my god instead of planning how to beat Trump you know what they are doing now they are renormalizing Trump Nancy Pelosi said recently oh Trump is like Reagan Bush don't worry for eight years we have him then we will be we will be our turn again and they spend their energy crushing whatever remains of Bernie Sanders there in this way they are literally prolonging the career of Trump I claim and that was my very cynical reasoning in that quasi support of Trump or whatever I judged maybe I was wrong on all accounts it was an empirical judgment I according to my judgment he is dangerous but not really as dangerous you know some of my leftist friends claim it's fascism now in power no this is typical leftist stupidity Slavoj you're wavering off the point we want to know
left screwed it up with their obsessions and maybe this is a mythic category maybe there is some truth in it so-called ordinary working people the only way for them to vent out to express their frustration was offered by Trump to that kind of people and Bernie Sanders brought some fresh air here he it was a unique achievement he succeeded in mobilizing those who would have otherwise voted for Trump and the great tragedy of Democratic Party not only even now after elections was my god instead of planning how to beat Trump you know what they are doing now they are renormalizing Trump Nancy Pelosi said recently oh Trump is like Reagan Bush don't worry for eight years we have him then we will be we will be our turn again and they spend their energy crushing whatever remains of Bernie Sanders there in this way they are literally prolonging the career of Trump I claim and that was my very cynical reasoning in that quasi support of Trump or whatever I judged maybe I was wrong on all accounts it was an empirical judgment I according to my judgment he is dangerous but not really as dangerous you know some of my leftist friends claim it's fascism now in power no this is typical leftist stupidity Slavoj you're wavering off the point we want to know
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about your support for Jeremy Corbyn whose manifesto no ah okay sorry would seem
about your support for Jeremy Corbyn whose manifesto no ah okay sorry would seem
Slavoj Žižek
to be exactly an example of the kind of nostalgic welfare socialism that you've got no time for his program is a rather sort of tawdry gallimaufry he's probably super keen on LGBT+ you know what is it why why are you putting your shoulder to the Corbyn wheel here tell us why because because nonetheless even if we don't know as it were the final result with what to replace that's my advice the system we should use every opportunity to start battles for example and I'm here very open none of secret Leninist totalitarian dreams for example I still think that among a couple of good things that Obama did was Obamacare this was such a shock for United States something so unthinkable that you may remember they dragged him up to you're back in America again Slavoj we have socialized medicine here and indeed our elections are almost all about it no you're in England could you address our this audience please okay I will say it like this my doubt about Corbyn is double as far as I know but I don't know I must admit it a lot about it first is there in it anything beyond what you just characterized as this old welfare state nostalgia no I mean I would bring
to be exactly an example of the kind of nostalgic welfare socialism that you've got no time for his program is a rather sort of tawdry gallimaufry he's probably super keen on LGBT+ you know what is it why why are you putting your shoulder to the Corbyn wheel here tell us why because because nonetheless even if we don't know as it were the final result with what to replace that's my advice the system we should use every opportunity to start battles for example and I'm here very open none of secret Leninist totalitarian dreams for example I still think that among a couple of good things that Obama did was Obamacare this was such a shock for United States something so unthinkable that you may remember they dragged him up to you're back in America again Slavoj we have socialized medicine here and indeed our elections are almost all about it no you're in England could you address our this audience please okay I will say it like this my doubt about Corbyn is double as far as I know but I don't know I must admit it a lot about it first is there in it anything beyond what you just characterized as this old welfare state nostalgia no I mean I would bring
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your characterization on it I mean for my own feeling my problem with Corbyn is uh that uh he should state his truth which is if we wish to try and pull Britain out of the neoliberal globalized economy that it's going to have to be an autarchist economy pretty much and uh it's fine guys you can have Jeremy in power and you can have everything in his program and more but you must accept that foreign capital is going to disappear out of the city like water out of a bathtub you've chucked a grenade in that's it no this exactly was my problem was my problem with him like
your characterization on it I mean for my own feeling my problem with Corbyn is uh that uh he should state his truth which is if we wish to try and pull Britain out of the neoliberal globalized economy that it's going to have to be an autarchist economy pretty much and uh it's fine guys you can have Jeremy in power and you can have everything in his program and more but you must accept that foreign capital is going to disappear out of the city like water out of a bathtub you've chucked a grenade in that's it no this exactly was my problem was my problem with him like
Slavoj Žižek
something in abstract higher taxes and so on may sound good and under certain conditions it can function it's not a priori excluded by capitalism sorry just a brief detour to United States don't forget that when capitalism was most successful in United States the taxes went up to percent but in today's global capitalism it's precisely the problem that you
something in abstract higher taxes and so on may sound good and under certain conditions it can function it's not a priori excluded by capitalism sorry just a brief detour to United States don't forget that when capitalism was most successful in United States the taxes went up to percent but in today's global capitalism it's precisely the problem that you
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pointed out it's not only autarky it's this behind Brexit and so on this leftist idea of even European Union is an instrument of international capital and so on so the only way to protect workers rights and so on is to withdraw
pointed out it's not only autarky it's this behind Brexit and so on this leftist idea of even European Union is an instrument of international capital and so on so the only way to protect workers rights and so on is to withdraw
Slavoj Žižek
into a stronger nation state I'm totally opposed to it but but uh let's let's nail you on the the dreaded and hate-feared Eurocentrism your love of the of the Logos you know you feel reading you I feel that my head is thrust between Socrates' thighs you're so in love with the Logos what's so bad about it nothing wrong with it at all nothing along with it that you know although ask why go to although okay go to although yeah but you would seem then to be in despair about Brexit and about the way that that Britain is retreating into a kind of keep calm and carry on nostalgic you see here you caught me in my ignorance if Corbyn really stands for this then I don't agree with him well the point was he appeared because some friends are telling me that he doesn't really I don't know no he was basically pro-Brexit but wouldn't admit it and he was pro-Brexit on that autarchist yes welfare socialism nostalgia no question about it no my position is here so you're anti-Corbyn now you're with Corbyn in this sense no no wait a minute here I'm more of a Stalinist in the sense that it doesn't matter what he thinks what can he do if he but he will not win if he triggers some because you know I think we should improvise and try like for example my line who whom in whom would I put a little bit of trust today a little bit not quite in the guy who was here I think a couple of weeks ago Yanis Varoufakis I have many doubts if his idea of democratizing Europe has any serious meaning at all the point that I always repeat and I asked him a couple of times I didn't get a good question is he aware that concerning Syriza government and concerning refugees a democratized Europe in the simple sense of Europe where representatives really
into a stronger nation state I'm totally opposed to it but but uh let's let's nail you on the the dreaded and hate-feared Eurocentrism your love of the of the Logos you know you feel reading you I feel that my head is thrust between Socrates' thighs you're so in love with the Logos what's so bad about it nothing wrong with it at all nothing along with it that you know although ask why go to although okay go to although yeah but you would seem then to be in despair about Brexit and about the way that that Britain is retreating into a kind of keep calm and carry on nostalgic you see here you caught me in my ignorance if Corbyn really stands for this then I don't agree with him well the point was he appeared because some friends are telling me that he doesn't really I don't know no he was basically pro-Brexit but wouldn't admit it and he was pro-Brexit on that autarchist yes welfare socialism nostalgia no question about it no my position is here so you're anti-Corbyn now you're with Corbyn in this sense no no wait a minute here I'm more of a Stalinist in the sense that it doesn't matter what he thinks what can he do if he but he will not win if he triggers some because you know I think we should improvise and try like for example my line who whom in whom would I put a little bit of trust today a little bit not quite in the guy who was here I think a couple of weeks ago Yanis Varoufakis I have many doubts if his idea of democratizing Europe has any serious meaning at all the point that I always repeat and I asked him a couple of times I didn't get a good question is he aware that concerning Syriza government and concerning refugees a democratized Europe in the simple sense of Europe where representatives really
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listen to the voice of the people would have been much more rough against the refugees like if Angela Merkel were to say let's consult the German people should I invite them out with them and so on and I'm here for Angela Merkel so what I'm saying is that but what Yanis Varoufakis saw clearly is that both choices capitulation what Syriza later did or Grexit Grexit would have been madness you know I
listen to the voice of the people would have been much more rough against the refugees like if Angela Merkel were to say let's consult the German people should I invite them out with them and so on and I'm here for Angela Merkel so what I'm saying is that but what Yanis Varoufakis saw clearly is that both choices capitulation what Syriza later did or Grexit Grexit would have been madness you know I
Slavoj Žižek
learned from my political friends who knew
learned from my political friends who knew
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Schäuble Wolfgang the German big bad wolf that
Schäuble Wolfgang the German big bad wolf that
Slavoj Žižek
he actively wanted Grexit everything was set in plan let Greek have their Grexit it would be humanitarian catastrophe chaos maybe military power but the left would be learned a lesson for a long time and what Varoufakis always saw so clearly is that the only way to fight what we all hate about Europe it's through new pan-European or even wider globalism that's my point we have to do something it's clear that there is something wrong with global capitalism but the way to fight it is not national autarky right so so we're just stuffed here in our little island off the
he actively wanted Grexit everything was set in plan let Greek have their Grexit it would be humanitarian catastrophe chaos maybe military power but the left would be learned a lesson for a long time and what Varoufakis always saw so clearly is that the only way to fight what we all hate about Europe it's through new pan-European or even wider globalism that's my point we have to do something it's clear that there is something wrong with global capitalism but the way to fight it is not national autarky right so so we're just stuffed here in our little island off the
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coast of Europe then we can have no impact because what I get from the courage of hopelessness on the positive side of action is you I'm not saying you dream but you still hope the courage of
coast of Europe then we can have no impact because what I get from the courage of hopelessness on the positive side of action is you I'm not saying you dream but you still hope the courage of
Slavoj Žižek
hopelessness you still hope for uh a wide popular movement to get going in Europe I never said wide popular movement I'm very careful here well you you talk about things like I believe in elites you believe in elites absolutely yes but this wait a minute all popular movements effectively work like this you have an elite let's not bullshit here that's your Leninist side yeah yes but you
hopelessness you still hope for uh a wide popular movement to get going in Europe I never said wide popular movement I'm very careful here well you you talk about things like I believe in elites you believe in elites absolutely yes but this wait a minute all popular movements effectively work like this you have an elite let's not bullshit here that's your Leninist side yeah yes but you
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you can you can be also a more open the vanguard of the revolution yeah but not avant-garde which then introduces Gulag but like you always but these people should they be in the vanguard of the revolution it's their problem not mine I mean it's their problem yeah no no sorry but what are we isn't your problem their problem sorry isn't your problem their problem no my problem is I just have a theoretical position and why why don't you accept it I'm not you see I'm not saying anything great in every revolution till now or even progressive movement it was always
you can you can be also a more open the vanguard of the revolution yeah but not avant-garde which then introduces Gulag but like you always but these people should they be in the vanguard of the revolution it's their problem not mine I mean it's their problem yeah no no sorry but what are we isn't your problem their problem sorry isn't your problem their problem no my problem is I just have a theoretical position and why why don't you accept it I'm not you see I'm not saying anything great in every revolution till now or even progressive movement it was always
Slavoj Žižek
a narrow maybe
a narrow maybe
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not elite but maximum percent and in the luckiest moment you
not elite but maximum percent and in the luckiest moment you
Slavoj Žižek
get a kind of a silent passive sympathy of the majority and I'm ready to accept it so that's that's all that these people are required to do be a silent passive no they are more than welcome to be active why do you read prescription into everything that I say do you agree with my statement because if I read your stuff as descriptive it doesn't really take me anywhere it's the ghost of prescriptivism lingering around your prose that draws people to it I think people do want to hear what your prescriptions are they don't just want to hear your descriptions or we'd just read you as a cultural critic and you would have no tension or significance
get a kind of a silent passive sympathy of the majority and I'm ready to accept it so that's that's all that these people are required to do be a silent passive no they are more than welcome to be active why do you read prescription into everything that I say do you agree with my statement because if I read your stuff as descriptive it doesn't really take me anywhere it's the ghost of prescriptivism lingering around your prose that draws people to it I think people do want to hear what your prescriptions are they don't just want to hear your descriptions or we'd just read you as a cultural critic and you would have no tension or significance
unknown
no no no you think here we maybe if perhaps as well how you'd like to be read in which case fine you're a cultural critic and we can just kick it all around and you know let's watch some movies that's a good point that you make but let me draw a couple of other distinctions let's not worry about the
no no no you think here we maybe if perhaps as well how you'd like to be read in which case fine you're a cultural critic and we can just kick it all around and you know let's watch some movies that's a good point that you make but let me draw a couple of other distinctions let's not worry about the
Slavoj Žižek
election fuck art
election fuck art
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let's dance ah incidentally about this now next month election but wait a minute we're all participating in that systemic violence that you don't like so you know what are we going to do about this Slavoj first this forthcoming elections since even Corbyn doesn't have a serious
let's dance ah incidentally about this now next month election but wait a minute we're all participating in that systemic violence that you don't like so you know what are we going to do about this Slavoj first this forthcoming elections since even Corbyn doesn't have a serious
Slavoj Žižek
chance to win I think one should openly say they are pseudo-elections they have no importance for me it's not worth your time so should we be participating in
chance to win I think one should openly say they are pseudo-elections they have no importance for me it's not worth your time so should we be participating in
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some other sort of popular movement or should we be seeking
some other sort of popular movement or should we be seeking
Slavoj Žižek
out the or percent who will constitute
out the or percent who will constitute
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the elite who will then form the revolutionary vanguard
the elite who will then form the revolutionary vanguard
Slavoj Žižek
wait a minute but you see here you are fake with
wait a minute but you see here you are fake with
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this irony of elite and so on perhaps
this irony of elite and so on perhaps
Slavoj Žižek
you could advertise in Guardian Soulmates no sorry advertise but perhaps they should advertise in lonely hearts columns I'm a future member of the Leninist elite will you meet me outside the Emmanuel Centre for for good fucking but okay but listen here you are wrong you know why I think because but all political movements work like this what do you want a really authentic movement where millions would gather and so on they don't exist I want you to address the predicament of a nation in which quite clearly the most and you write very well on this in the courage of hopelessness you write about how democracy is necessarily a kind of shadow play it exists in order to facilitate regime change without violence the important thing you say about democracy is that that we know that we aren't electing the people who are most suited to do the job and it's why the ancient Greek system of selecting leaders by lot is in a sense and these points are all very very well made but how do they speak to people who are actually living in this democracy at this moment and who feel that the democracy is simply not fit for purpose for example the Brexit remain declivity cuts completely across traditional right-left uh a traditional right-left axis so people are confused I think you are again too activist here there are first now I will say something horrible for a left man I've been at home all day smoking dope and wanking like everybody else no no no but yes because you accept what like uh you know what's the mistake do you know what is happening today do I know what is happening today I agree with you I think the light at the end of the tunnel is the approaching train I agree with you I and I assume you agree with the International Panel on Climate Change that if there is a percent or percent rise in global temperatures by the end of this century we're all toast and I don't mean that metaphorically yeah you agree with me on that as well and
you could advertise in Guardian Soulmates no sorry advertise but perhaps they should advertise in lonely hearts columns I'm a future member of the Leninist elite will you meet me outside the Emmanuel Centre for for good fucking but okay but listen here you are wrong you know why I think because but all political movements work like this what do you want a really authentic movement where millions would gather and so on they don't exist I want you to address the predicament of a nation in which quite clearly the most and you write very well on this in the courage of hopelessness you write about how democracy is necessarily a kind of shadow play it exists in order to facilitate regime change without violence the important thing you say about democracy is that that we know that we aren't electing the people who are most suited to do the job and it's why the ancient Greek system of selecting leaders by lot is in a sense and these points are all very very well made but how do they speak to people who are actually living in this democracy at this moment and who feel that the democracy is simply not fit for purpose for example the Brexit remain declivity cuts completely across traditional right-left uh a traditional right-left axis so people are confused I think you are again too activist here there are first now I will say something horrible for a left man I've been at home all day smoking dope and wanking like everybody else no no no but yes because you accept what like uh you know what's the mistake do you know what is happening today do I know what is happening today I agree with you I think the light at the end of the tunnel is the approaching train I agree with you I and I assume you agree with the International Panel on Climate Change that if there is a percent or percent rise in global temperatures by the end of this century we're all toast and I don't mean that metaphorically yeah you agree with me on that as well and
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but you still seem to be your great belief in the Logos your great belief in Hegel leads you no Hegel was here a total pessimist wait a minute absolutely listen you know what Hegel says just take him literally the owl of Minerva
but you still seem to be your great belief in the Logos your great belief in Hegel leads you no Hegel was here a total pessimist wait a minute absolutely listen you know what Hegel says just take him literally the owl of Minerva
Slavoj Žižek
wisdom flies off at night at night which means none of
wisdom flies off at night at night which means none of
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this
this
Slavoj Žižek
revolutionary prediction we can only retroactively explain what is going on Hegel was here anti-Marx nonetheless you
revolutionary prediction we can only retroactively explain what is going on Hegel was here anti-Marx nonetheless you
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you're enough of a Hegelian to evoke the idea
you're enough of a Hegelian to evoke the idea
Slavoj Žižek
of human history as a process that is
of human history as a process that is
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part of a self-organizing and generating principle
part of a self-organizing and generating principle
Slavoj Žižek
that is operating I wouldn't say this what I would say is that there is some kind of a progress and in some of my books I give as an example I'm very naive here take the idea of democracy not in that as Chinese they propagate it now substantial deliberative sense which means you debate the party keeps all the power but this in this radical European sense this was an incredible progress something really new emerged for the first time in the history of humanity what in usual state regimes is perceived as a moment of crisis my god the throne empty is empty here is the basic presupposition so the fact
that is operating I wouldn't say this what I would say is that there is some kind of a progress and in some of my books I give as an example I'm very naive here take the idea of democracy not in that as Chinese they propagate it now substantial deliberative sense which means you debate the party keeps all the power but this in this radical European sense this was an incredible progress something really new emerged for the first time in the history of humanity what in usual state regimes is perceived as a moment of crisis my god the throne empty is empty here is the basic presupposition so the fact
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that the throne is empty is no longer perceived as nightmare
that the throne is empty is no longer perceived as nightmare
Slavoj Žižek
nightmare but it's an opening it means nobody has the full right to I I think this or even with all my mocking human rights and so on but listen
nightmare but it's an opening it means nobody has the full right to I I think this or even with all my mocking human rights and so on but listen
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feminism against slavery and so on and so on I'm very Eurocentric in a naive sense here with all the ideological mystifications and so on this is some progress and you know where I have just allow me this the problem with you you say what no no the point is what do you expect you know I'm sorry I don't like I mean can you imagine me people wanted me I got offers to psychoanalyze to be their analyst you know remember the famous story about William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg Burroughs told Ginsberg I'm being psychoanalyzed already so I'll psychoanalyze you for free no but my
feminism against slavery and so on and so on I'm very Eurocentric in a naive sense here with all the ideological mystifications and so on this is some progress and you know where I have just allow me this the problem with you you say what no no the point is what do you expect you know I'm sorry I don't like I mean can you imagine me people wanted me I got offers to psychoanalyze to be their analyst you know remember the famous story about William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg Burroughs told Ginsberg I'm being psychoanalyzed already so I'll psychoanalyze you for free no but my
Slavoj Žižek
point is much more evil let's say you were to have trouble and ask me to be your psychoanalyst I I would like that yeah yes no you know
point is much more evil let's say you were to have trouble and ask me to be your psychoanalyst I I would like that yeah yes no you know
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why because like can you really imagine me listening to you and your stupid associations for more than seconds you know
why because like can you really imagine me listening to you and your stupid associations for more than seconds you know
Slavoj Žižek
so I'm not to be your analyst I'm not interested in like I am a sincere misanthrope why are you applauding because shit for brains no no no but let's go back to the
so I'm not to be your analyst I'm not interested in like I am a sincere misanthrope why are you applauding because shit for brains no no no but let's go back to the
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point you know uh my position is very modest yes I agree with you we are in a shitty situation there is nothing great to do now but my pessimism is at the same time
point you know uh my position is very modest yes I agree with you we are in a shitty situation there is nothing great to do now but my pessimism is at the same time
Slavoj Žižek
a cause of optimism don't worry there will be new crisis okay but you talk about things like you Slavoj you got to do better than this man you got to do better than these bathetic one-liners you've got to
a cause of optimism don't worry there will be new crisis okay but you talk about things like you Slavoj you got to do better than this man you got to do better than these bathetic one-liners you've got to
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address things that you say in your book you say that that political change comes from elites we're not looking to the mass you talk about international agreements
address things that you say in your book you say that that political change comes from elites we're not looking to the mass you talk about international agreements
Slavoj Žižek
in order to to no this is pure logical deduction in the sense of don't you think that like problems that we are facing today even let's take ecology and so on this local democracy
in order to to no this is pure logical deduction in the sense of don't you think that like problems that we are facing today even let's take ecology and so on this local democracy
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non-representative stuff locally we share what blah blah blah it's not enough it's crucial for or the true horror problem today the impact of biogenetics of brain sciences who will control that and so on for this we need even larger than state strong mechanisms with authority and so on world government world communist government no you see what
non-representative stuff locally we share what blah blah blah it's not enough it's crucial for or the true horror problem today the impact of biogenetics of brain sciences who will control that and so on for this we need even larger than state strong mechanisms with authority and so on world government world communist government no you see what
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but you're an imaginative guy point you're an imaginative guy paint us a little picture of that future which you do wave in a diaphanous way around the edges of your text no okay but now let me return back to you because you are avoiding it's so easy or I'm claiming that's my basic premise things have terrifying potentials what is going on today and it's so easy to say for you elite but I don't mean elite in the sense of some stupid students meeting halfway between Cambridge and Oxford and so on and whoever I mean changes always
but you're an imaginative guy point you're an imaginative guy paint us a little picture of that future which you do wave in a diaphanous way around the edges of your text no okay but now let me return back to you because you are avoiding it's so easy or I'm claiming that's my basic premise things have terrifying potentials what is going on today and it's so easy to say for you elite but I don't mean elite in the sense of some stupid students meeting halfway between Cambridge and Oxford and so on and whoever I mean changes always
Slavoj Žižek
begin with a minority even French Revolution all popular revolutions began
begin with a minority even French Revolution all popular revolutions began
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with a minority yeah but is it gonna begin with a minority of people who really know their Lacan is that where the revolution's gonna
with a minority yeah but is it gonna begin with a minority of people who really know their Lacan is that where the revolution's gonna
Slavoj Žižek
begin well uh it's not necessary like this I never implied this but why do you have this you know my reading of Lacan says this strange things are happening today in sexual mores here and there the way people relate to authority and so on which theory can explain this why
begin well uh it's not necessary like this I never implied this but why do you have this you know my reading of Lacan says this strange things are happening today in sexual mores here and there the way people relate to authority and so on which theory can explain this why
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are you blaming me for this I claim the best that I know is Lacan because I can strip out all of the references to Lacan to Hegel to Marx and to Freud in your book The Courage of Hopelessness and it reads as a series of declarative statements that are your opinions and I don't find that the theory helps to explain your opinions justify your opinions to me or make them frankly any more palatable so
are you blaming me for this I claim the best that I know is Lacan because I can strip out all of the references to Lacan to Hegel to Marx and to Freud in your book The Courage of Hopelessness and it reads as a series of declarative statements that are your opinions and I don't find that the theory helps to explain your opinions justify your opinions to me or make them frankly any more palatable so
Slavoj Žižek
what's it there for apart from intellectual grandstanding I you okay we cannot go in detail into it no really what is it there for apart from intellectual grandstanding you say you don't believe in the Hegelian idea that that the world spirit is evolving towards some kind of end state you take a pop at Marx you no longer believe in dialectical materialism
what's it there for apart from intellectual grandstanding I you okay we cannot go in detail into it no really what is it there for apart from intellectual grandstanding you say you don't believe in the Hegelian idea that that the world spirit is evolving towards some kind of end state you take a pop at Marx you no longer believe in dialectical materialism
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what exactly do you believe in I believe you said you had a problem with belief I like Lautréamont's line beliefs are ideas going bald maybe you just have ideas no beliefs at all no ideas go okay I put it like this allow me to finish what I
what exactly do you believe in I believe you said you had a problem with belief I like Lautréamont's line beliefs are ideas going bald maybe you just have ideas no beliefs at all no ideas go okay I put it like this allow me to finish what I
Slavoj Žižek
believe in is that the global system we are in is approaching some kind of catastrophe catastrophic potential okay and we should we understand that in Marxist terms is that a series of internal contradictions in the capitalist mode of production basically yes yes yes so he's right Marx is right about that about this but not in the way he meant it for example who would be the working class today the problem is that refugees are not authentic proletariat but don't you really think that capitalism is hitting the buffers because we're running out of the earth that we need to exploit no no no too naive I think that capitalism has an incredible capacity to change any obstacle to its expansion into a but overall growth rates for example uh in in economies have been under percent for many many years now but these big Western economies were built on percent percent here I will be a pro-capitalist and disagree with you when I developed this crisis of capitalism two years ago in Korea they started to laugh at me and they said no you Western Europe
believe in is that the global system we are in is approaching some kind of catastrophe catastrophic potential okay and we should we understand that in Marxist terms is that a series of internal contradictions in the capitalist mode of production basically yes yes yes so he's right Marx is right about that about this but not in the way he meant it for example who would be the working class today the problem is that refugees are not authentic proletariat but don't you really think that capitalism is hitting the buffers because we're running out of the earth that we need to exploit no no no too naive I think that capitalism has an incredible capacity to change any obstacle to its expansion into a but overall growth rates for example uh in in economies have been under percent for many many years now but these big Western economies were built on percent percent here I will be a pro-capitalist and disagree with you when I developed this crisis of capitalism two years ago in Korea they started to laugh at me and they said no you Western Europe
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are in crisis even America is doing better we are doing better and so on and so on so but no you know what I'm trying
are in crisis even America is doing better we are doing better and so on and so on so but no you know what I'm trying
Slavoj Žižek
to tell you do you agree or not that for me the greatest utopia is that things can go on just go on the way they are I couldn't agree with you more in is when it became clear that that is a delusion that is blowing away from people yeah okay so what would you do what would I do just masturbate as you said and sit there no I think we should slowly at least prepare organize think about solutions and precisely become aware of the crisis we are in yes but the basic problem you know you know a transnational agreement between elites to limit the construction of coal-fired power stations you really think that the Chinese are going to play ball with that uh no I of course I don't but why so the Chinese are going to do what the Chinese are going to do but wait a minute now
to tell you do you agree or not that for me the greatest utopia is that things can go on just go on the way they are I couldn't agree with you more in is when it became clear that that is a delusion that is blowing away from people yeah okay so what would you do what would I do just masturbate as you said and sit there no I think we should slowly at least prepare organize think about solutions and precisely become aware of the crisis we are in yes but the basic problem you know you know a transnational agreement between elites to limit the construction of coal-fired power stations you really think that the Chinese are going to play ball with that uh no I of course I don't but why so the Chinese are going to do what the Chinese are going to do but wait a minute now
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you're confusing I think so two types of elites elites in the usual sense of our power elites and if anything now I will shock you with my authoritarian approach if anything we are lacking efficient elites today I have more and more the impression that Western Europe and United Kingdom it's not this
you're confusing I think so two types of elites elites in the usual sense of our power elites and if anything now I will shock you with my authoritarian approach if anything we are lacking efficient elites today I have more and more the impression that Western Europe and United Kingdom it's not this
Slavoj Žižek
old Marxist paranoia dream so where do we find these elites Slavoj the problem for these Western economies is that their own power is bleeding away you you you used in a narrow way this term elites where did where did communism come from where does it come from and with all the horrors that it produced it will emerge critical opinion it emerges maybe it will not emerge you say it yourself in the courage of hopelessness that in a large part socialism was an ideology that grew out of the mode of capitalist production in which it found itself which was
old Marxist paranoia dream so where do we find these elites Slavoj the problem for these Western economies is that their own power is bleeding away you you you used in a narrow way this term elites where did where did communism come from where does it come from and with all the horrors that it produced it will emerge critical opinion it emerges maybe it will not emerge you say it yourself in the courage of hopelessness that in a large part socialism was an ideology that grew out of the mode of capitalist production in which it found itself which was
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a manufacturing economy yeah but nonetheless nonetheless how are
a manufacturing economy yeah but nonetheless nonetheless how are
Slavoj Žižek
today's alienated precariat at home in their little cells clicking away when
today's alienated precariat at home in their little cells clicking away when
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they're not wanking and smoking dope and the rest of it how are they actually going to form the kind of solidarity or the kind of
they're not wanking and smoking dope and the rest of it how are they actually going to form the kind of solidarity or the kind of
Slavoj Žižek
networks you know that are going to enable them to produce this elite because now even with all the talk about crisis and so on in most of Western European countries we still don't have even an idea what is crisis crisis is not if your standard falls for half a percent crisis is what happens in Greece when it fell for percent and so on and I'm saying don't you agree that if we both agree with this prediction we are approaching shit and so on then that some crisis will explode what will happen then let's begin thinking about
networks you know that are going to enable them to produce this elite because now even with all the talk about crisis and so on in most of Western European countries we still don't have even an idea what is crisis crisis is not if your standard falls for half a percent crisis is what happens in Greece when it fell for percent and so on and I'm saying don't you agree that if we both agree with this prediction we are approaching shit and so on then that some crisis will explode what will happen then let's begin thinking about
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that well I think that what will happen then is what always happens which is that people who are practical and as we say the English idiom would be handy will really uh start to take control at that point that's right
that well I think that what will happen then is what always happens which is that people who are practical and as we say the English idiom would be handy will really uh start to take control at that point that's right
Slavoj Žižek
it's not so necessary and and the people who've been sitting at home reading Lacan are gonna be slaughtered in their beds no no no no no you are wrong here I think that the danger is of another type in these difficult situations it's precisely very non-practical in the sense of efficient solutions but brutal pragmatic idealists who can take over mhm you know yeah it's not that some reasonable
it's not so necessary and and the people who've been sitting at home reading Lacan are gonna be slaughtered in their beds no no no no no you are wrong here I think that the danger is of another type in these difficult situations it's precisely very non-practical in the sense of efficient solutions but brutal pragmatic idealists who can take over mhm you know yeah it's not that some reasonable
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British practical people will take over right so so I return to the to the idea that's always resisted by people who are utopian which is you know what is the ideal that the brutal pragmatist will be working towards what does this future communist society given our the way our relationship with technology
British practical people will take over right so so I return to the to the idea that's always resisted by people who are utopian which is you know what is the ideal that the brutal pragmatist will be working towards what does this future communist society given our the way our relationship with technology
Slavoj Žižek
our relationship with our own
our relationship with our own
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sexualities and to be fair to you Slavoj I think your analysis and discussion of LGBT+ is extremely perspicacious so how are these polymorphously perverse Lacanians going
sexualities and to be fair to you Slavoj I think your analysis and discussion of LGBT+ is extremely perspicacious so how are these polymorphously perverse Lacanians going
Slavoj Žižek
to how what are they going to
to how what are they going to
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do in this future society what will its mode of production be uh again how
do in this future society what will its mode of production be uh again how
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will it be governed is the state going to wither away or you know or is this brutally
will it be governed is the state going to wither away or you know or is this brutally
Slavoj Žižek
pragmatic elite going to govern us no no no don't forget that the title of my last sub-chapter in the second chapter of
pragmatic elite going to govern us no no no don't forget that the title of my last sub-chapter in the second chapter of
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a book about Syriza a plea for bureaucratic socialism yes yes you're keen on bureaucratic socialism and you have the
a book about Syriza a plea for bureaucratic socialism yes yes you're keen on bureaucratic socialism and you have the
Slavoj Žižek
lovely line about Kafka and and bureaucracy and all of that stuff but what's that going to look like is it I mean a lot more office work no no no no listen uh I still claim that
lovely line about Kafka and and bureaucracy and all of that stuff but what's that going to look like is it I mean a lot more office work no no no no listen uh I still claim that
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with new exploding crisis why are you so ironic here and don't allow that yes there will be
with new exploding crisis why are you so ironic here and don't allow that yes there will be
Slavoj Žižek
pragmatists there will be fascists already Le Pen and so on are a reaction to crisis not your Nigel Farage I met him once by mistake at BBC he
pragmatists there will be fascists already Le Pen and so on are a reaction to crisis not your Nigel Farage I met him once by mistake at BBC he
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is not your future Führer he is a clown and so on so don't be afraid of them but not of Nigel Farage you know but what I am saying is that why do you a priori exclude that
is not your future Führer he is a clown and so on so don't be afraid of them but not of Nigel Farage you know but what I am saying is that why do you a priori exclude that
Slavoj Žižek
in the same way it happened in Spain and so on when people will feel the pressure without reading too much Lacan some some kind of solution some kind of radical more reasonable movement of the left will arrive right but but one of the arguments against Corbyn is that he has been brought to power by kind of clicktivists people who just paid three quid and voted for him in that way one of the problems that it seems to me with the socialist
in the same way it happened in Spain and so on when people will feel the pressure without reading too much Lacan some some kind of solution some kind of radical more reasonable movement of the left will arrive right but but one of the arguments against Corbyn is that he has been brought to power by kind of clicktivists people who just paid three quid and voted for him in that way one of the problems that it seems to me with the socialist
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project as I've already said is that people are not engaged in social modes of production
project as I've already said is that people are not engaged in social modes of production
Slavoj Žižek
so how are you mean precariat and so on yeah exactly so how are these people to find each other how are they to join in a popular in a movement of some kind all that seems startlingly absent from your thinking to me I'm not looking
so how are you mean precariat and so on yeah exactly so how are these people to find each other how are they to join in a popular in a movement of some kind all that seems startlingly absent from your thinking to me I'm not looking
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just for you to advocate somebody we should get behind or something like that I'm looking to you for more as a philosopher I want you to tell me how to live I want you to tell me whether I should chuck away my mobile
just for you to advocate somebody we should get behind or something like that I'm looking to you for more as a philosopher I want you to tell me how to live I want you to tell me whether I should chuck away my mobile
Slavoj Žižek
phone because it contains coltan that was obtained in you know million people have died in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last or years so that you can all have your little mobile phones and look at Grindr so you can get bummed later on you know I mean okay okay now I
phone because it contains coltan that was obtained in you know million people have died in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last or years so that you can all have your little mobile phones and look at Grindr so you can get bummed later on you know I mean okay okay now I
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see all you are saying but I think these ethical ethical dilemmas are I think too naive why are
see all you are saying but I think these ethical ethical dilemmas are I think too naive why are
Slavoj Žižek
ethical dilemmas naive sorry how can an ethical dilemma be naive things are right and things are wrong
ethical dilemmas naive sorry how can an ethical dilemma be naive things are right and things are wrong
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naive naive in the sense that you can always isolate for this for coltan and so on but you prefer to dance above that do you not bother with the messy business of saying this is right and this is wrong no no you didn't answer to my what did you mean exactly by some pragmatist with look we are let's say approaching some kind of shitty situation yeah and why don't you exclude that with growing tensions and so on maybe even precarious people will somehow I wouldn't exclude it
naive naive in the sense that you can always isolate for this for coltan and so on but you prefer to dance above that do you not bother with the messy business of saying this is right and this is wrong no no you didn't answer to my what did you mean exactly by some pragmatist with look we are let's say approaching some kind of shitty situation yeah and why don't you exclude that with growing tensions and so on maybe even precarious people will somehow I wouldn't exclude it
Slavoj Žižek
connect because remember who would miracles do happen in what sense who would have predicted years ago something like Syriza which screwed it up but won and so on well I don't think that would be too wild a guess I think it's a much much wilder prediction to imagine that the precariat in a moment of acute social crisis are somehow going to find the connectivity the sense of
connect because remember who would miracles do happen in what sense who would have predicted years ago something like Syriza which screwed it up but won and so on well I don't think that would be too wild a guess I think it's a much much wilder prediction to imagine that the precariat in a moment of acute social crisis are somehow going to find the connectivity the sense of
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solidarity that is necessary to form a progressive leftist union just on the spin of a of a moment when other forces are in play and it seems to me that people who are advocating and believing in some idea of social
solidarity that is necessary to form a progressive leftist union just on the spin of a of a moment when other forces are in play and it seems to me that people who are advocating and believing in some idea of social
Slavoj Žižek
and political progress and who see this crisis coming should be advocating you know practical measures ways of organizing platforms people can consolidate around and what sort of ethical attitude they should take towards paying their taxes contributing to British Aerospace's
and political progress and who see this crisis coming should be advocating you know practical measures ways of organizing platforms people can consolidate around and what sort of ethical attitude they should take towards paying their taxes contributing to British Aerospace's
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ability to trade arms to the Saudi Arabians or the coltan in your pocket that comes from killing people in the Congo I agree you should advocate positions on all of that because that's what you set yourself up to be but wait a minute why do you think that I exclude this for example I was for Obamacare for all others and I agree with all you said now fine you said it you've got socialized medicine here but we're still helping the Saudis drop bombs in Yemen we've got fantastic health care yeah but the contradiction is here antagonism even stronger like what if the money for your NHS system
ability to trade arms to the Saudi Arabians or the coltan in your pocket that comes from killing people in the Congo I agree you should advocate positions on all of that because that's what you set yourself up to be but wait a minute why do you think that I exclude this for example I was for Obamacare for all others and I agree with all you said now fine you said it you've got socialized medicine here but we're still helping the Saudis drop bombs in Yemen we've got fantastic health care yeah but the contradiction is here antagonism even stronger like what if the money for your NHS system
Slavoj Žižek
that you still have partially comes precisely from selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the Congo it does it absolutely does so what should we do about that ethical
that you still have partially comes precisely from selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the Congo it does it absolutely does so what should we do about that ethical
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dilemma what should be what is your answer here well I'm not personally I'd go private sorry you would go I'd go private go to private medicine no I you know what's the problem for me what what's my position is always been the same I made a program on the Al-Yamamah deal years ago I have consistently opposed the arms trade in this country I think it's
dilemma what should be what is your answer here well I'm not personally I'd go private sorry you would go I'd go private go to private medicine no I you know what's the problem for me what what's my position is always been the same I made a program on the Al-Yamamah deal years ago I have consistently opposed the arms trade in this country I think it's
Slavoj Žižek
a pile of shit and we shouldn't be in it at all I think that's an indication that a woman is walking around with a microphone which means it's time for questions Slavoj um actually I can't really see into the house if there were any way to bring the lights up so so we could actually see everybody that would be a real help in terms of taking questions no anyway questions please for Slavoj the microphone is up I think we'll take them in groups of three if we could microphone person hello can you hear me we can hear you now Slavoj you were you were talking about genetics you've mentioned that quite a bit recently biogenetics yeah biogenetics could you maybe expand on what your thoughts are around that area okay I repeated
a pile of shit and we shouldn't be in it at all I think that's an indication that a woman is walking around with a microphone which means it's time for questions Slavoj um actually I can't really see into the house if there were any way to bring the lights up so so we could actually see everybody that would be a real help in terms of taking questions no anyway questions please for Slavoj the microphone is up I think we'll take them in groups of three if we could microphone person hello can you hear me we can hear you now Slavoj you were you were talking about genetics you've mentioned that quite a bit recently biogenetics yeah biogenetics could you maybe expand on what your thoughts are around that area okay I repeated
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this much so that I don't want to speak too much but it's very simple from what I know and I have connections even in China not high connections but some scientists that I met in United States and so on well we should be aware what is already happening for example I hope you've read about this that even Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger to move his wheelchair it's already his brain is directly wired and so on so this prospect of directly connecting our brain to computers is near it's something that can be done but are we aware what this means for our let's call it naively self-identity all our minimum of personal dignity and
this much so that I don't want to speak too much but it's very simple from what I know and I have connections even in China not high connections but some scientists that I met in United States and so on well we should be aware what is already happening for example I hope you've read about this that even Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger to move his wheelchair it's already his brain is directly wired and so on so this prospect of directly connecting our brain to computers is near it's something that can be done but are we aware what this means for our let's call it naively self-identity all our minimum of personal dignity and
Slavoj Žižek
self-identity is based on this I am here you are
self-identity is based on this I am here you are
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out there I have my space to think when this falls it's not only that I
out there I have my space to think when this falls it's not only that I
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become a little bit like God like I think about something it happens it goes also the other way around the new ways we can be controlled and so on and China is for me always the future here a friend gave me a
become a little bit like God like I think about something it happens it goes also the other way around the new ways we can be controlled and so on and China is for me always the future here a friend gave me a
Slavoj Žižek
program of the
program of the
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brain sciences division of Chinese Academy of Sciences it's a beautiful text because
brain sciences division of Chinese Academy of Sciences it's a beautiful text because
Slavoj Žižek
it says there that the task of biogenetics in China is to regulate physical and psychic
it says there that the task of biogenetics in China is to regulate physical and psychic
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welfare of Chinese citizens and so on so I'm just saying
welfare of Chinese citizens and so on so I'm just saying
Slavoj Žižek
that something tremendous potentially at least is happening here and if it's left simply to private companies or to the state or to any combination of both well I prefer not to think what can happen but you think it's fundamentally destructive of of a key notion of human subjectivity yeah but nonetheless I'm not simply a pessimist we will be robots or whatever I think who knows what will
that something tremendous potentially at least is happening here and if it's left simply to private companies or to the state or to any combination of both well I prefer not to think what can happen but you think it's fundamentally destructive of of a key notion of human subjectivity yeah but nonetheless I'm not simply a pessimist we will be robots or whatever I think who knows what will
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happen do you not think that our engagement with the web is already altering the ontologic character of human awareness yeah but not quite so much although again I agree with you here but it's almost it fascinates me because we were talking before about death drive and I interpreted it as death drive is really immortality compulsion to repeat that's what fascinates me I can draw very briefly a line here you know it all began when I was very young with my love for cartoons you know the immortality you find there Tom and Jerry fighting to death slicing each other in the next scene even if Jerry was cut into pieces in the next scene he's already there the first one too and do you think that's what revolutionary violence will be like no and then it'll all just get together again and be no no no no no what I'm saying is that this type of in a way even primitive undead subjectivity it's all again things go wrong
happen do you not think that our engagement with the web is already altering the ontologic character of human awareness yeah but not quite so much although again I agree with you here but it's almost it fascinates me because we were talking before about death drive and I interpreted it as death drive is really immortality compulsion to repeat that's what fascinates me I can draw very briefly a line here you know it all began when I was very young with my love for cartoons you know the immortality you find there Tom and Jerry fighting to death slicing each other in the next scene even if Jerry was cut into pieces in the next scene he's already there the first one too and do you think that's what revolutionary violence will be like no and then it'll all just get together again and be no no no no no what I'm saying is that this type of in a way even primitive undead subjectivity it's all again things go wrong
Slavoj Žižek
I can begin again the father of this is Marquis de Sade that's the mystery Lacan saw it clearly of the victim Juliette
I can begin again the father of this is Marquis de Sade that's the mystery Lacan saw it clearly of the victim Juliette
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she is endlessly tortured but all the time remains and this is this is how our immersion into digital universe works like you know as in a game and I will say but these are games no love lives I was told begin to function in a same way let's be open I try
she is endlessly tortured but all the time remains and this is this is how our immersion into digital universe works like you know as in a game and I will say but these are games no love lives I was told begin to function in a same way let's be open I try
Slavoj Žižek
with one woman or man it doesn't work I erase it I start again and so on and so on this all this and also the new modes of control that we have with
with one woman or man it doesn't work I erase it I start again and so on and so on this all this and also the new modes of control that we have with
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digitalization our Chinese friends again are breaking you know that I read now that in China they already have a plan which is also happening in a subtle way in
digitalization our Chinese friends again are breaking you know that I read now that in China they already have a plan which is also happening in a subtle way in
Slavoj Žižek
our countries the idea is this
our countries the idea is this
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all citizens will be registered in some mega computers which will simply collect data did they commit any small crimes any political crimes do they regularly pay taxes any small criminal acts do they read dissident literature did they visit Tibet or whatever and based on this you will each one will get in a numeric way a kind of a level of social trust they call it in this Confucian way and in a more refined way we are doing it so who will control all who will control all this and
all citizens will be registered in some mega computers which will simply collect data did they commit any small crimes any political crimes do they regularly pay taxes any small criminal acts do they read dissident literature did they visit Tibet or whatever and based on this you will each one will get in a numeric way a kind of a level of social trust they call it in this Confucian way and in a more refined way we are doing it so who will control all who will control all this and
Slavoj Žižek
so
so
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on I think
on I think
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that I think that and again I
that I think that and again I
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refuse to be simply an old-fashioned humanist here you know everything is lost we will lose our individuality no we have to admit that we don't know what is here but we should follow it closely so what's your position here what would you have
refuse to be simply an old-fashioned humanist here you know everything is lost we will lose our individuality no we have to admit that we don't know what is here but we should follow it closely so what's your position here what would you have
Slavoj Žižek
done do you know something more what would what would I have done not you but like what's your opinion about I think technology is something that happens to humans it's not something that humans do it's a complete misconstruct and and what will be will be but without the collapse without a major collapse in our civilization it seems to me indisputable that the beginning of human machine transhuman existence is already underway it's underway and it's ineluctable and I follow people like Gregory Bateson yes but you know what's my problem after reading people all these transhumanist idealists like Ray Kurzweil and so on is that they ontologically cheat because they describe this new superhuman singularity but as if they imply they don't say it at the same time it keeps all our properties free thinking and so on yeah but they project onto it their own humanist delusions about what it might be yeah but on the other hand I don't want to be in a too abstract way a pessimist but at some point I agree with you we should become aware to what extent what appears as our human limitations mortality ambiguity of language and so on is not simply imperfection but sustains the space of our whatever you call it creativity and so on and so on also I think we're much too hung up on uh on autonomy and on the idea of the discrete psyche
done do you know something more what would what would I have done not you but like what's your opinion about I think technology is something that happens to humans it's not something that humans do it's a complete misconstruct and and what will be will be but without the collapse without a major collapse in our civilization it seems to me indisputable that the beginning of human machine transhuman existence is already underway it's underway and it's ineluctable and I follow people like Gregory Bateson yes but you know what's my problem after reading people all these transhumanist idealists like Ray Kurzweil and so on is that they ontologically cheat because they describe this new superhuman singularity but as if they imply they don't say it at the same time it keeps all our properties free thinking and so on yeah but they project onto it their own humanist delusions about what it might be yeah but on the other hand I don't want to be in a too abstract way a pessimist but at some point I agree with you we should become aware to what extent what appears as our human limitations mortality ambiguity of language and so on is not simply imperfection but sustains the space of our whatever you call it creativity and so on and so on also I think we're much too hung up on uh on autonomy and on the idea of the discrete psyche
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anyway it has always struck me that consciousness is much more
anyway it has always struck me that consciousness is much more
Slavoj Žižek
of a collective phenomenon than we dare allow here I know exactly
of a collective phenomenon than we dare allow here I know exactly
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what you're thinking all right could we take another question you cannot because you
what you're thinking all right could we take another question you cannot because you
Slavoj Žižek
know to bring out what I'm thinking you would need not three axes of hardcore but five axes okay just because you've written so many bloody books all right could we have another question please hello thanks for listening this question is for everybody and both of you I'm over here on your left so ah ah sorry yeah it's not unrelated so do you agree that a political system like capitalism is a data processing system style like sorry is a do you believe that and
know to bring out what I'm thinking you would need not three axes of hardcore but five axes okay just because you've written so many bloody books all right could we have another question please hello thanks for listening this question is for everybody and both of you I'm over here on your left so ah ah sorry yeah it's not unrelated so do you agree that a political system like capitalism is a data processing system style like sorry is a do you believe that and
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if so do you think that the next changes in data processing that
if so do you think that the next changes in data processing that
Slavoj Žižek
are so huge will be more of a centralized political system with everybody's data much because technology is moving much faster than politics it will continue to do so so much more so glad you started talking about it already here I'm more skeptical you know in what sense that i still believe maybe here I'm old-fashioned even humanist or what that technology doesn't stand of its own it always relies on implies certain social relations of power and so on and so on today's digital system is not simply a natural property of a certain technology it's always embedded in set of capitalist relations and so on and so on what do you think capitalism is Slavoj oh here I'm a good Marxist which means although I'm critical of it I think it's a miracle it's absolutely the most dynamic economic system that humanity ever knew because the genius of capitalism is this one you must know this that how you know Marxists are always expecting you know like Mao said late sorry Marx late 19th century capitalism is approaching its final crisis then Lenin said imperialism the final stage of capitalism then Mao said years later American imperialism this rotting class stage is getting even more rotten and so on okay it's rotting rotting and the more it's rotting the better it's functioning in some sense so what I'm saying is that never forget and this would have been my criticism of generally Heideggerian approach when we talk about technology today it's
are so huge will be more of a centralized political system with everybody's data much because technology is moving much faster than politics it will continue to do so so much more so glad you started talking about it already here I'm more skeptical you know in what sense that i still believe maybe here I'm old-fashioned even humanist or what that technology doesn't stand of its own it always relies on implies certain social relations of power and so on and so on today's digital system is not simply a natural property of a certain technology it's always embedded in set of capitalist relations and so on and so on what do you think capitalism is Slavoj oh here I'm a good Marxist which means although I'm critical of it I think it's a miracle it's absolutely the most dynamic economic system that humanity ever knew because the genius of capitalism is this one you must know this that how you know Marxists are always expecting you know like Mao said late sorry Marx late 19th century capitalism is approaching its final crisis then Lenin said imperialism the final stage of capitalism then Mao said years later American imperialism this rotting class stage is getting even more rotten and so on okay it's rotting rotting and the more it's rotting the better it's functioning in some sense so what I'm saying is that never forget and this would have been my criticism of generally Heideggerian approach when we talk about technology today it's
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not abstract technology it's technology the way it was generated and sustained by capitalism and as you pointed out my critique of traditional Marxism is that it cheated ontologically it wanted to get rid of capital but to retain all the dynamics of always overcoming getting over which for me is deeply
not abstract technology it's technology the way it was generated and sustained by capitalism and as you pointed out my critique of traditional Marxism is that it cheated ontologically it wanted to get rid of capital but to retain all the dynamics of always overcoming getting over which for me is deeply
Slavoj Žižek
embedded precisely in capitalist dynamics you know but here i see the paradoxes today my reason of my pessimism isn't it the ultimate irony that okay even if Fukuyama was right no like capitalism won that today almost I am tempted to say the one among at least the best managers of capitalism are ex-communists
embedded precisely in capitalist dynamics you know but here i see the paradoxes today my reason of my pessimism isn't it the ultimate irony that okay even if Fukuyama was right no like capitalism won that today almost I am tempted to say the one among at least the best managers of capitalism are ex-communists
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where they're still in power
where they're still in power
Slavoj Žižek
I always think though you you conflate two things and and people who are influenced by Marxist philosophy tend to conflate two things when they look at capitalism which is well capitalism isn't an ideology it has ideologies associated with it nor exactly is it a mode of production but it's a tool it's a tool it's a tool capitalism is a tool what do we mean by this it's a way of effecting
I always think though you you conflate two things and and people who are influenced by Marxist philosophy tend to conflate two things when they look at capitalism which is well capitalism isn't an ideology it has ideologies associated with it nor exactly is it a mode of production but it's a tool it's a tool it's a tool capitalism is a tool what do we mean by this it's a way of effecting
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change at a distance like any other tool yeah but nonetheless i would say it's not a tool in the sense we usually understand a tool like now if we have to be hammer i will chop your head it's not no
change at a distance like any other tool yeah but nonetheless i would say it's not a tool in the sense we usually understand a tool like now if we have to be hammer i will chop your head it's not no
Slavoj Žižek
no no no it's a certain thing think of what Gregory Bateson says you know if if the axe is the tool then the man's arm is the tool and if the man's arm is the
no no no it's a certain thing think of what Gregory Bateson says you know if if the axe is the tool then the man's arm is the tool and if the man's arm is the
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tool then the man standing on the earth is part of the
tool then the man standing on the earth is part of the
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tool and so is the tree that he's chopping off the tool mhm I don't have but i think nonetheless all this complex can be part of a certain mechanism yeah but I think the problem for you Marxists is you're always identifying capitalism as if it were an ideology it's not an ideology it's just what people do which is why all these good leftists have their mobile phones and their
tool and so is the tree that he's chopping off the tool mhm I don't have but i think nonetheless all this complex can be part of a certain mechanism yeah but I think the problem for you Marxists is you're always identifying capitalism as if it were an ideology it's not an ideology it's just what people do which is why all these good leftists have their mobile phones and their
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coltan in their pocket oh oh here I'm so sad I'm so sad we disagree here because here i
coltan in their pocket oh oh here I'm so sad I'm so sad we disagree here because here i
Slavoj Žižek
claim that precisely the greatness of Marx was that he wasn't a simple vulgar materialist you know ideology is just a mirror real things happen no he's a materialist monist sorry he's a materialist monist not just monist but he saw so clearly that and that's why we don't have time to go now into it when he developed his notion of commodity fetishism it's clearly that he speaks about an ideology but he never calls it ideology because it's not superstructure it's in the very heart of economic structure of capitalism and capitalism is outside ideology in the sense of outside all cultural identity that's the miracle of capitalism today you can get a you can get I don't know a Tibetan a Chinese a Latino American that's because it's just what people do Slavoj okay do we have time for yeah but what people do is structured through fantasies and fictions that i would insist let's have another question before we all die hey first first I'd like to say something to Will Self and I will give a question for Professor Žižek no you can question him a little bit no problem okay okay so the thing is like you question about like Žižek's position on like we should think but the point is let me give a Marx quote from Karl Marx the point of to know about the world is to change it because while we were knowing it we already made we are already making the change and this is a dialectic
claim that precisely the greatness of Marx was that he wasn't a simple vulgar materialist you know ideology is just a mirror real things happen no he's a materialist monist sorry he's a materialist monist not just monist but he saw so clearly that and that's why we don't have time to go now into it when he developed his notion of commodity fetishism it's clearly that he speaks about an ideology but he never calls it ideology because it's not superstructure it's in the very heart of economic structure of capitalism and capitalism is outside ideology in the sense of outside all cultural identity that's the miracle of capitalism today you can get a you can get I don't know a Tibetan a Chinese a Latino American that's because it's just what people do Slavoj okay do we have time for yeah but what people do is structured through fantasies and fictions that i would insist let's have another question before we all die hey first first I'd like to say something to Will Self and I will give a question for Professor Žižek no you can question him a little bit no problem okay okay so the thing is like you question about like Žižek's position on like we should think but the point is let me give a Marx quote from Karl Marx the point of to know about the world is to change it because while we were knowing it we already made we are already making the change and this is a dialectic
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so i think the problem like that from the Žižek's position is that people really have is
so i think the problem like that from the Žižek's position is that people really have is
Slavoj Žižek
we should be uh confused but we're not
we should be uh confused but we're not
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and this is in my opinion the catastrophe so I think Žižek's also at this book is very authentic here because the point in my the way i understand it is like the confusion itself
and this is in my opinion the catastrophe so I think Žižek's also at this book is very authentic here because the point in my the way i understand it is like the confusion itself
Slavoj Žižek
is a stage of transformation well yes so the question for Žižek is that what like we you talk about we should sit and think and i'm thinking about
is a stage of transformation well yes so the question for Žižek is that what like we you talk about we should sit and think and i'm thinking about
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like a very daring proposition that maybe are we going to move on to a new age another age of philosophy in the future because
like a very daring proposition that maybe are we going to move on to a new age another age of philosophy in the future because
Slavoj Žižek
from my personal empirical experience i think it is quite demanding
from my personal empirical experience i think it is quite demanding
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but is it really i mean what is in your opinion the biggest resistance for it okay sorry resistance of whom against what yeah I know that was
but is it really i mean what is in your opinion the biggest resistance for it okay sorry resistance of whom against what yeah I know that was
Slavoj Žižek
a bit of a sort of strange cutoff point there but but i think i think what he was driving at is is what is the resistance
a bit of a sort of strange cutoff point there but but i think i think what he was driving at is is what is the resistance
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to this
to this
Slavoj Žižek
new point of change
new point of change
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what
what
Slavoj Žižek
are the forces that are arranged is that what you were driving at yes something like that which new point the point where capitalism is moving or well what is what is resisting the point at which we're going to get some
are the forces that are arranged is that what you were driving at yes something like that which new point the point where capitalism is moving or well what is what is resisting the point at which we're going to get some
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clarity of thought on these issues you know what is
clarity of thought on these issues you know what is
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resisting ah no here my god i am a Marxist in the sense that you know the problem is this one is not simply knowing but because the greatness of Marx's implicit not what he often said theory of ideology is that like we can know something that's for me as i repeatedly wrote in my books the problem of ideology today you can know like most of the people know at least rationally about ecological threat but they don't take it seriously they don't believe it really I don't think that we really believe there is a threat and so on so my point is this one that in a way knowing i'm not simply preaching sit and learn because knowing about things is also a way of not
resisting ah no here my god i am a Marxist in the sense that you know the problem is this one is not simply knowing but because the greatness of Marx's implicit not what he often said theory of ideology is that like we can know something that's for me as i repeatedly wrote in my books the problem of ideology today you can know like most of the people know at least rationally about ecological threat but they don't take it seriously they don't believe it really I don't think that we really believe there is a threat and so on so my point is this one that in a way knowing i'm not simply preaching sit and learn because knowing about things is also a way of not
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doing it of you know like i know it and so on there is wrong and false knowledge not at the simple level of it reflects truth or not but how it practically engages you what you said about philosophy and so on here very naively yes I I
doing it of you know like i know it and so on there is wrong and false knowledge not at the simple level of it reflects truth or not but how it practically engages you what you said about philosophy and so on here very naively yes I I
Slavoj Žižek
agree with you in the sense that i think that in this new age ecological threats biogenetics digitalization and so on the very basic definitions of what is a human being will change that's it that's it that's the cutoff line Stalinist Stalinist there's a woman at the side of the stage going like this thank you so much Slavoj thank you
agree with you in the sense that i think that in this new age ecological threats biogenetics digitalization and so on the very basic definitions of what is a human being will change that's it that's it that's the cutoff line Stalinist Stalinist there's a woman at the side of the stage going like this thank you so much Slavoj thank you