Discussion on Lacan
Discussion · zizekpodcast.com ·
2022-03-23 · 1:12:03 · 8,549 words
psychoanalysisideologygeopolitics-warhegel-dialecticssexuality-genderrace-antisemitismphilosophy-generalreligion-theology
Žižek engages in a roundtable discussion with Todd McGowan and another interlocutor, debating Duane Rousselle's Lacanian claim that we live in a post-Oedipal era of 'generalized foreclosure' and 'islands of jouissance' with no shared symbolic space. Žižek defends the continued relevance of symbolic efficiency, repression, and the 'unknown knowns' against the Millerian drift toward a psychotic-paranoiac universe. The talk ranges from the Russia-Ukraine war as a case study in symbolic communication and MacGuffins to the internal contradictions of late Lacan (seminars vs. Écrits, Kant vs. Hegel, the formulas of sexuation, Joyce and the sinthome). It concludes with analysis of the European right's appropriation of the war to reassert traditional sexual difference, and the racism underlying differential treatment of Ukrainian vs. Middle Eastern refugees.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 19
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “foreclosure”
Psychoanalytic mechanism (Verwerfung) whereby something is excluded from the symbolic entirely rather than repressed, returning in the Real as hallucination; contested as the dominant mechanism of contemporary geopolitics by Žižek.
Rousselle's characterization of the post-Oedipal condition in which subjects no longer communicate within a shared symbolic order but exist as isolated modes of enjoyment, projecting foreclosed threats onto the paranoiac other.
The mechanism by which subjects foreclose threats from their symbolic universe and these return in the Real as persecutory enemy, Rousselle's and Miller's framework for reading contemporary geopolitics, which Žižek disputes in favor of symbolic categories.
as “Name-of-the-Father”
The paternal metaphor and symbolic law whose operative status is at stake in the debate: Miller's late position implies it no longer binds, while Žižek defends its continued relevance in structuring contemporary experience.
Lacan's late concept from Seminar XXIII, taken as evidence by Todd McGowan (and partially endorsed by Žižek) that Lacan conceded we are merely islands of jouissance with the paternal metaphor no longer binding.
Lacan's matrix of Master, Hysteric, University, and Analyst discourses, debated here for whether they are ahistorical or can be given historical articulation, and whether they can absorb the specificity of capitalism.
as “capitalist discourse”
Treated not as a simple fifth discourse but as a tension between hysteric discourse (incessant surplus desire) and university discourse (Foucauldian power-knowledge), a tension Lacan could not fully resolve within the four-discourse matrix.
Žižek's polemical label for Miller's hermeneutic practice of searching for a final hidden mystery in late Lacan, treating the seminars as a sacred text concealing a last theoretical revelation, analogous to Dan Brown's conspiracy plots.
Lacan's logical structures from Seminar XX mapping masculine and feminine positions relative to the phallic function, discussed here in terms of whether they essentialize sex or can be rescued from essentialism.
Feminine jouissance as theorized in Lacan's Seminar XX, contested here: the predominant Millerian reading mystifies it as beyond the symbolic, while Žižek's Ljubljana reading treats woman as more totally within the symbolic, producing the non-all.
as “the non-all”
The feminine logical position (pas-tout) interpreted by Žižek not as mystical outside-the-symbolic but as the universalization of the phallic without exception, undermining phallic logic from within rather than transcending it.
Enjoyment/surplus-enjoyment invoked as the core category in the debate over whether contemporary social antagonism is best described as competing modes of jouissance (Millerian view) or as still structured by symbolic mediation.
Applied to Lacan's reading of Antigone, where an ordinary being is elevated to the dignity of the Thing, the encounter with the real as transgressive, burning, beyond symbolic grasp, contrasted with the Hegelian turn in the Coûfontaine reading.
Žižek's fourth Rumsfeldian category: the things we know but refuse to consciously acknowledge, a form of ideological disavowal that he opposes to Rousselle's reading of Rumsfeld as a case of psychotic foreclosure.
Used in the Hitchcockian sense as a pretext-object (like Iraqi WMDs or Russian bio-weapon labs in Ukraine) that functions as the objet petit a cause of desire, motivating action without any intrinsic content.
The cause of desire deployed here to explain why MacGuffins (WMDs, secret bio-labs) are symbolic rather than psychotic categories, they operate as object-causes that structure desire without being believed in literally.
The operative power of symbolic fictions and absent signifiers, demonstrated by the blank-paper protest example, where even an empty piece of paper can carry meaning because the symbolic order remains functional.
The ultimate symbolic strategy in which one deceives by telling the literal truth, illustrated by Putin's repeated pre-invasion warnings that were dismissed as posturing, and by the classic Jewish joke about Krakow and Lviv.
Early Lacan's definition of symbolic communication: illustrated by the US in Iraq receiving back its own message (intended to liberate, it intensified fundamentalism and Iranian influence), and by Russia's invasion producing the Ukrainian nationalism it claimed to oppose.
Stories he reaches for 1
Lacan's final public seminars culminated in one where he appeared, spoke for one minute, and left; the last or penultimate appearance was simply an admission of failure, used by Žižek against the idea of an approaching final enlightenment.
“the very last one, or one before, of his public appearances was simply the admission of a failure.”
Works invoked 15
What is Sex? book
Alenka Zupančič's book cited alongside Žižek's The Sex and the Failed Absolute as part of the Ljubljana school's non-essentialist reading of Lacanian sexuation.
Anti-Oedipus book
Deleuze and Guattari's work identified as the origin of the post-Oedipal trajectory that Miller later radicalized into generalized foreclosure, presented as the theoretical precursor to a problematic political conservatism.
Écrits book
Lacan's written formulas presented as distinct from the seminars, not self-transparent teachings but formulas whose meaning Lacan himself did not know and left to readers to work out.
Encore (Seminar XX) book
Identified (along with one or two seminars before and after) as Lacan's final consistent position before he entered a deadlock; the formulas of sexuation discussed here as the crucial text for the sex/gender debate.
Don't Look Up film
Mentioned as the subject of Alenka Zupančič's good reading in connection with conspiracy theories.
Žižek's own book cited alongside Alenka Zupančič's What IS Sex? as rescuing Lacanian sex/gender theory from essentialism.
Moonfall film
Roland Emmerich film; Žižek 'almost liked' its idea that the moon is an artificial object but confesses to not liking the movie, used as a tangent before pivoting to his main masculine/feminine comparison.
Althusser's collaborative work cited as the locus where he initially placed the epistemological cut in The German Ideology, the starting point of a decades-long postponement.
Le Pas-Tout de Lacan book
Guy Le Gaufey's book on Lacan's non-all, praised as investing seriously in Seminar XX and raising the problem of whether Lacan's formulas of sexuation fall into essentialism.
Lacan's Rome Discourse / first major Écrits text, criticized for ending with a stupid mystical Buddhist quote, exemplifying Lacan's worst anti-philosophical tendency to reach for a final mystical wisdom.
Fiction series based on Anna Delvey's real case; Žižek is 'fascinated' by it and uses it to illustrate a feminine subjective position, full identification with one's fake identity to the point of sincerity.
The seminar on jokes where Žižek claims Lacan fails to draw the Lacanian conclusion from the matchmaker joke, writing 'and so on indefinitely' and missing the essential punchline structure.
Todd McGowan identifies this as where Lacan first introduces surplus jouissance (plus-de-jouir), the moment where he could have developed an original theory of capitalism but abandoned it for the four discourses.
Lacan's Joyce seminar judged by Žižek a failure, it ignores the detailed texture of Joyce's work and uses it merely as pretext to deploy categories, representing the worst of late Lacan's experimental attempts.
The Tinder Swindler film
Documentary about Israeli fraudster contrasted with Inventing Anna to illustrate the masculine position: simple manipulation with a secret intact ego, never genuinely identifying with the fake.
People invoked 29
Pius XII negative
Mentioned as the model for Pope Francis's refusal to name Putin, Pius refused to name Hitler, and Francis refuses to name Putin to protect Catholic-Orthodox relations.
Yuri Andropov positive
Former KGB head who promoted Gorbachev, part of the argument that secret police know the truth and can enable reform.
Matteo Salvini negative
Italian right-winger grouped with Le Pen as switching from initial Putin sympathy to anti-Russian stance while selectively welcoming only Ukrainian refugees.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Co-thinker from the Ljubljana school; her book What IS Sex? is cited alongside Žižek's The Sex and the Failed Absolute for rescuing sex/gender from Lacanian essentialism; also noted for a good reading of Don't Look Up and analysis of the right's 'military joy.'
Marine Le Pen negative
One of the European right-wingers who switched from pro-Russian sympathy to anti-Putin stance and opened up only to Ukrainian (not Middle Eastern) refugees, used to illustrate how the right exploits the war to reassert traditional gender and racial hierarchies.
Referenced as the target of the WMD MacGuffin, under whose rule women were less oppressed and Iran less influential than after the US intervention.
Lavrentiy Beria positive
Stalin's secret police chief cited as an example of how the biggest reforms in the Soviet Union came from inside the security apparatus, because secret police know the real situation.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical authority throughout, but treated as inconsistent and often 'not Lacanian enough', Žižek defends classical Lacan (Seminars I-XX range) while criticizing late experiments and mystical tendencies.
Teresa of Ávila positive
Lacan's example from Seminar XX deployed by Žižek against mystical readings: Teresa's incessant writing shows she was fully in the symbolic rather than beyond it.
Used as a cautionary example of the fallacy that a thinker approaches a final clarifying insight, Althusser spent decades postponing his epistemological cut until locating it in a single sentence in a late Marx letter.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Invoked as the origin of the post-Oedipal, Anti-Oedipal trajectory that Miller later radicalized into generalized foreclosure, Žižek sees Miller as more Deleuzian than Deleuze ever dared.
Donald Rumsfeld positive
Called 'the greatest American philosopher of his time' ironically, his known-unknowns/unknown-knowns framework is deployed as a genuine analytical tool; Žižek defends his 'unknown knowns' category against Rousselle's Millerian reinterpretation.
Mentioned as Lacan's last official mistress, around whom a myth grew that Lacan had whispered a final theoretical mystery to her on his deathbed, Žižek uses this to critique the Da Vinci Code approach to Lacan, noting she is 'not stupid.'
Oxana Timofeeva positive
Russian philosopher personally known to Žižek, who was arrested and beaten protesting in Petersburg, escaped to Germany, and then had a Western fellowship canceled for being Russian, cited as a hero and victim of the racist conflation of 'Russian' with 'pro-Putin.'
Ernest Jones negative
His line 'God did make them man and woman' is cited (via Le Gaufey) as the essentialist trap that Lacan fell into by tying the formulas of sexuation to actual sexes.
Donald Trump negative
Mentioned sarcastically as 'your greatest president' for having called Putin a genius and praising the invasion as an intelligent move.
Mikhail Gorbachev positive
Cited as another example of reform coming from inside the security state (promoted by KGB chief Andropov), supporting Žižek's paradoxical thesis about army and secret police as potential agents of peace.
Alain Badiou positive
His concept of 'disorientation' is invoked to characterize the Ukraine war as the greatest disorientation rather than a moment of truth.
Noted as a Russian native speaker who nonetheless knew the invasion was coming and warned against over-publicizing it, presented as not merely demagogic.
Guy Le Gaufey positive
Praised as a really smart Lacanian who wrote on Le pas-tout de Lacan and argues that by tying formulas to sexuation Lacan falls for Ernest Jones's essentialism ('God did make them man and woman').
Alexander Dugin negative
Putin's philosopher cited for his 'there is a Russian truth, there is a European truth' framework, used by Žižek to argue that Western civilizational discrimination in refugee policy reproduces Dugin's own clash-of-cultures logic.
Kirill I of Moscow negative
Head of the Russian Orthodox Church who praised Putin and called the military intervention in Ukraine 'the highest act of loving your neighbor', cited as a horrifying example of religious ideological sanction of violence.
Pope Francis negative
Noted as unwilling to name Putin publicly, acting like Pius XII with Hitler, because he fears offending Kirill and does not want to damage Catholic-Orthodox ecumenism.
Jacques-Alain Miller negative
Criticized for leading late Lacanian thought toward a 'generalized foreclosure' / post-Oedipal position more Deleuzian than Deleuze, for making a Da Vinci Code out of Lacan's late work, and for producing a politically conservative position despite theoretical radicalism.
Viktor Orbán negative
The 'arch-counter-revolutionary conservative' Hungarian leader who refuses to break with Putin and claims NATO is more guilty, noted as an outlier in the European right's pivot, ironically making him a minor stabilizing factor.
Joe Biden positive
Presented as 'almost a rational guy' who correctly tried to balance helping Ukraine with avoiding a world war, though criticized for making a public misstep about 'smaller invasion, lower sanctions.'
Dan Brown negative
Sarcastically introduced as 'one of the greatest writers today, much higher than Joyce and Kafka', his Da Vinci Code plot of hidden manuscripts and final mysteries is used as the analogy for Millerian late-Lacan hermeneutics.
Analyzed as an actor using symbolic strategy (lying through truth, MacGuffin justifications) who drew the wrong lesson from Afghanistan and whose invasion paradoxically produced the Ukrainian nationalism he sought to prevent.
Duane Rousselle negative
A friendly interlocutor whose critical review is the starting point; Žižek finds the writing nice but contests his thesis of generalized foreclosure, his reading of Rumsfeld, and his identification of today's geopolitics as psychotic rather than symbolic.
What it argues
generalized foreclosure vs. symbolic efficiencylate Lacan's deadlocks and inconsistenciesthe Ukraine war as a case study in Lacanian symbolic communicationMacGuffin / objet petit a as political categoryunknown knowns and ideological self-deceptionEuropean racism and differential refugee sympathythe formulas of sexuation and the Kant/Hegel split in Lacan
Dialectical moves 9
“Miller moved in theory into an ultra-radical dimension—islands of jouissance, no communication—but the social implication is not anarchism but a moderately conservative position, a fear of any change.”
The most radical theoretical position (total post-symbolic jouissance) inverts into political conservatism.
“Putin deceived us by telling the truth all the time. He told us he planned military intervention—and we were sure he was lying.”
The most transparent declaration of intent functions as the most effective deception, truth becomes the medium of the lie.
“Russia went in to prevent Ukrainian nationalism, claiming Ukrainians and Russians are one people—and the result is that Ukrainians now really hate Russians.”
The intervention designed to annihilate Ukrainian identity produced precisely the Ukrainian national consciousness it sought to prevent.
“The US went to Iraq to save civilization, help women, secularize—the result is Iraq is now under greater influence of Iran than ever, fundamentalism much stronger than under Saddam, women more oppressed.”
The emancipatory intervention produced its exact opposite, delivering to the intervener their own message in inverted, true form.
“The absence of the words can be the words. A blank piece of paper was enough to get a woman arrested—this is symbolic efficiency at its purest.”
The very erasure of the signifier confirms its operative power: nothing is still something within the symbolic order.
“The capitalist itself at its purest already is a saint—someone who gives up their life for capital.”
Lacan's proposed outside of capitalism (the saint) is already realized within capitalism as the devoted capitalist subject.
“Antigone is still sublime—an ordinary shitty lady elevated to the dignity of the Thing. Sygne de Coûfontaine is definitely not sublime: it's the moment when the sublime turns into a piece of shit. It's much more authentic tragic.”
The move from Kantian sublime (elevation of the ordinary to the Thing) to Hegelian tragedy (the Thing collapsing into sheer contingency) marks a deeper authenticity.
“If you want peace, support the army and secret police.”
The agents of authoritarian power are the ones who know the real situation and have historically initiated the most significant reforms, the apparent paradox inverts liberal intuitions about who enables change.
“Woman is not after some mystical experience—the idea of femininity as some elusive point of mystical real which always eludes the symbolic grasp is precisely a male fantasy.”
The mystification of feminine jouissance as beyond the symbolic is itself a symptom of the masculine (phallic) position, not an insight into femininity.
Claims 20
rejects
The Millerian thesis of generalized foreclosure—that we live as islands of jouissance with no shared symbolic space—is wrong; symbolic efficiency remains operative, as demonstrated by the blank-paper protest arrests in Russia.generalized foreclosure / Millerian post-Oedipal universe
asserts
Rumsfeld and the Bush administration did not sincerely believe in Iraqi WMDs but positively knew they did not exist—making it a case of 'unknown knowns' (ideological disavowal) rather than psychotic foreclosure.unknown knowns / Iraq WMD / Rumsfeld
asserts
Putin similarly knew his stated justifications (neo-Nazi drugged Ukrainians, secret bio-weapons labs) were false, as proven by the non-targeted, non-surgical nature of the military operation.Russian justifications for the Ukraine invasion as MacGuffins
asserts
Putin deceived the West not by hiding his intentions but by telling the truth openly about his planned invasion—illustrating Lacan's formula of 'lying in the guise of truth.'symbolic communication / truth and deception / Ukraine war
asserts
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a perfect case of Lacanian symbolic communication: Russia received its own message back in inverted, true form—it wanted to prevent Ukrainian nationalism and instead created it.symbolic communication / Ukraine war
rejects
Late Lacan (post-Seminar XX) was not approaching a final enlightenment but experimenting to resolve a deadlock he himself admitted; the search for a last mystery in his late work is a theoretical mistake.the idea of a final truth in late Lacan
rejects
Lacan's Joyce/sinthome seminar is a failure because it ignores the detailed texture of Joyce and uses the literary work as a mere pretext to deploy categories.Lacan's Seminar XXIII / Joyce and the sinthome
asserts
Lacan is often 'not Lacanian enough'—he misses the Lacanian conclusion from his own examples, as illustrated by his failure to draw the proper lesson from the matchmaker joke in the seminar on jokes.Lacan's internal inconsistency
asserts
The Ljubljana reading of Lacan's formulas of sexuation is correct: woman is not a mystical beyond-the-symbolic but is more totally within the symbolic, with no exception, producing the non-all.formulas of sexuation / feminine jouissance / non-all
rejects
The idea that femininity is some elusive mystical real beyond symbolic grasp is itself a male fantasy and the worst kind of anti-feminism.mystical readings of feminine jouissance
asserts
Lacan's move from Antigone to Sygne de Coûfontaine represents a shift from a Kantian to a Hegelian sensibility—from the sublime elevation of an ordinary being to the Thing, to the moment when the sublime turns into a piece of shit.Lacan's literary interpretations / Kant vs. Hegel
asserts
Capitalism is already structured by a tension between hysteric surplus-desire and university-style disciplinary domination that Lacan recognized but could not fully articulate within the four-discourse matrix.capitalist discourse / four discourses
rejects
The right wing's mobilization of the Ukraine war as a 'moment of truth' that vindicates traditional sexual difference against transgender politics is tragic and constitutes the greatest disorientation, not a moment of clarity.right-wing appropriation of the Ukraine war
rejects
The differential European welcome for Ukrainian vs. Middle Eastern or Afghan refugees is open racism, and responding to the Ukraine war along a clash-of-civilizations logic mirrors Alexander Dugin's framework.European racism / refugee policy / civilizational discourse
asserts
Even if the West stops Putin militarily in the short term, allowing the war to boost European racism means Putin will have won in a deeper ideological sense.ideological stakes of the Ukraine war
asserts
Miller's late theoretical move toward radical post-Oedipal theory paradoxically produced not a radical political stance but a moderately conservative fear of any change.Miller's political conservatism despite theoretical radicalism
asserts
To be a true Lacanian today means not searching for a final secret mystery in late Lacan but treating his inconsistencies as productive deadlocks.proper Lacanian method
asserts
Lacan's seminars function as theoretical free association (the analysand) while his Écrits give formulas whose meaning Lacan himself did not know—it is the reader's task to work out that meaning.the seminars vs. Écrits / Lacan's method
asserts
The best explanation of Putin's invasion is that he drew the wrong lesson from the US withdrawal from Afghanistan—reading Western weakness where there was strategic calculation.Putin's miscalculation / Afghanistan
asserts
Russia's WMD-lab MacGuffin and the Iraqi WMD MacGuffin prove that even today's geopolitical conflicts operate with symbolic categories (objet petit a), not psychotic foreclosure.symbolic vs. psychotic structure of contemporary politics
Quotes 14
“The absence of the words can be the words. This is symbolic efficiency at its purest.”Slavoj Žižek · symbolic efficiency / the blank paper protest
“Putin deceived us by telling the truth all the time.”Slavoj Žižek · lying in the guise of truth / Ukraine war
“If you want peace, support army and secret police.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical reversal / reform comes from inside the security state
“I would accuse Miller and all those guys of making another Da Vinci Code out of Lacan.”Slavoj Žižek · polemic against the search for final mystery in late Lacan
“The capitalist itself at its purest already is a saint, somebody who gives up their life for capital.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical reversal / the saint outside capitalism is already the capitalist
“Lacan often is not Lacanian enough. He gives an example but then he fails to draw the ultimate Lacanian conclusion from it.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's internal inconsistency
“She cheats because she herself falls for her false image.”Slavoj Žižek · Inventing Anna / full identification with the fake / feminine subjective position
“This war is not the moment of truth, it's the moment of the greatest disorientation.”Slavoj Žižek · against right-wing appropriation of the Ukraine war
“Even if in the short term we stop Putin, Putin will win if we allow this war to boost European racism.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological stakes of the Ukraine war beyond the military
“If we say 'Yes to Ukrainian refugees because they are our European culture,' we are talking like Dugin. We are interpreting this war as a clash of cultures.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-civilizational racism / Dugin's framework internalized by liberals
“didn't blonde people with blue eyes do something not very civilized in Germany in the late 1930s?”Slavoj Žižek · ironic exposure of racial logic in pro-Ukrainian refugee sympathy
“The real is lawless. It relates to a mode of jouissance outside of any scope of truth or meaningful fiction.”Slavoj Žižek · Miller's late position on the Real and jouissance (quoted/attributed to Rousselle)
“These formulas, Lacan gives them with the hope that we his careful readers will discern the meaning. That he himself doesn't know.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's Écrits as formulas whose meaning the author did not know
“Antigone is still sublime in this sense: an ordinary shitty being lady elevated to the dignity of the thing. Sygne de Coûfontaine is definitely not sublime—it's the moment when sublime turns into a piece of shit.”Slavoj Žižek · Kant to Hegel in Lacan's literary interpretations
Transcript 40 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Some of those who follow us may know that I am involved in a friendly critical debate from time to time with Duane Rousselle from Canada who now found himself in exile. He had to escape from Russia in one of those Azerbaijan, I think, crazy republics or Kazakhstan. And he wrote a critical review which is very nicely written and it concerns, that's why I'm mentioning it, basic Lacanian notions of what is going on today. And I will try to make some counter-arguments. It's not about directly war in Ukraine, it is about what is going on today. I mean in our global world, how this world is structured. Because the interesting thing is that some Lacanians, with Jacques-Alain Miller on the top, moved into a direction which was already indicated half a century ago by Deleuze. This idea of a post-Oedipal universe and so on. They gave it a paranoiac twist, these Lacanians. The main notion is generalized foreclosure, which means we no longer live in a world where we have conflicts, debates, even wars, but within a shared symbolic space. That it's simply we are all singularities. Singularities in the sense that I don't me as a social entity, a state, a nation we don't really communicate, we just project onto the other what we foreclose, not just repress, from our universe. So we live as islands of *jouissance* and we no longer even need... Truth is out of the game, doesn't function. Even meaningful symbolic fictions don't work. It's just we, again, not repress but foreclose what we feel as a threat and then this foreclosed, since we are in a psychotic universe where symbolic castration is inoperative, where lack itself is lacking, this then returns with a vengeance in the real as the paranoiac projection of our enemy. My... okay, may I make a short quote because it describes nicely Rousselle's position? We are now in an era of foreclosure so that traditional notions of political uprising, civil wars, and revolutions, insofar as they operate within a shared social world, seem increasingly impotent in a time of total war. An era that I elsewhere refer to as the era of singularities. Civil war and political revolutions are impossible. The idea is that if you have dissidents, protesters, and so on, it is still the situation of repression, return of the repressed, where you share some kind of social space and then you have conflicts but within a shared social world. But that today there is no longer this shared social space. And a quote from Rousselle: the real, this is late Miller at its purest, the real is lawless. It relates to a mode of *jouissance* outside of any scope of truth or meaningful fiction. I think the mistake is here something that Miller was slowly approaching for decades when first *Anti-Oedipus* and then feminism and so on emerged. His first reaction was they don't get it. They think patriarchy in a vulgar way, imaginary identification, father. They don't know what the Name-of-the-Father symbolic law is. Then all of a sudden when he saw that this doesn't function, he turned his position around into the other extreme. He is now in some sense more Deleuzian than Deleuze ever dared to be. No social link, just modes of *jouissance*, of enjoyment, and the only relation within them are wars. So, may I jump in quickly? Yes. Do you think that Lacan himself in a way paves the way for this when he himself moves from paternal metaphor to *sinthome*? Like, isn't a *sinthome*—and it's interesting because you have evoked *sinthome* in your own thought I think as an important idea—but I almost think that once you make that move to the *sinthome*, you have confessed that all we are are islands of *jouissance* and the paternal metaphor no longer holds or bonds us together, right? I mean, isn't that already in Seminar Isn't there already that misstep? Retroactively now. It wasn't clear to me, but retroactively now I tend to agree with you, Todd. Because I think that Lacan in the last years was experimenting all the time. Okay, I'll put it like this. This is my classical position. Seminar and one or two earlier, one or two later, are his final consistent position. But there he gets into a deadlock. And then he is trying for ways out. That's why, to confirm you Todd, I think that in contrast to Lacan's earlier big literary interpretations—*Antigone*, *Hamlet*, Claudel *Coûfontaine* trilogy, and so on—I never liked his Joyce the *sinthome*. I think it's a failure. It basically ignores... it is like ignores the detailed texture of Joyce. I think it's a little bit like what I do often. I use a literary work or whatever but clearly just as a pretext to deploy certain categories. And even here, Lacan
Some of those who follow us may know that I am involved in a friendly critical debate from time to time with Duane Rousselle from Canada who now found himself in exile. He had to escape from Russia in one of those Azerbaijan, I think, crazy republics or Kazakhstan. And he wrote a critical review which is very nicely written and it concerns, that's why I'm mentioning it, basic Lacanian notions of what is going on today. And I will try to make some counter-arguments. It's not about directly war in Ukraine, it is about what is going on today. I mean in our global world, how this world is structured. Because the interesting thing is that some Lacanians, with Jacques-Alain Miller on the top, moved into a direction which was already indicated half a century ago by Deleuze. This idea of a post-Oedipal universe and so on. They gave it a paranoiac twist, these Lacanians. The main notion is generalized foreclosure, which means we no longer live in a world where we have conflicts, debates, even wars, but within a shared symbolic space. That it's simply we are all singularities. Singularities in the sense that I don't me as a social entity, a state, a nation we don't really communicate, we just project onto the other what we foreclose, not just repress, from our universe. So we live as islands of *jouissance* and we no longer even need... Truth is out of the game, doesn't function. Even meaningful symbolic fictions don't work. It's just we, again, not repress but foreclose what we feel as a threat and then this foreclosed, since we are in a psychotic universe where symbolic castration is inoperative, where lack itself is lacking, this then returns with a vengeance in the real as the paranoiac projection of our enemy. My... okay, may I make a short quote because it describes nicely Rousselle's position? We are now in an era of foreclosure so that traditional notions of political uprising, civil wars, and revolutions, insofar as they operate within a shared social world, seem increasingly impotent in a time of total war. An era that I elsewhere refer to as the era of singularities. Civil war and political revolutions are impossible. The idea is that if you have dissidents, protesters, and so on, it is still the situation of repression, return of the repressed, where you share some kind of social space and then you have conflicts but within a shared social world. But that today there is no longer this shared social space. And a quote from Rousselle: the real, this is late Miller at its purest, the real is lawless. It relates to a mode of *jouissance* outside of any scope of truth or meaningful fiction. I think the mistake is here something that Miller was slowly approaching for decades when first *Anti-Oedipus* and then feminism and so on emerged. His first reaction was they don't get it. They think patriarchy in a vulgar way, imaginary identification, father. They don't know what the Name-of-the-Father symbolic law is. Then all of a sudden when he saw that this doesn't function, he turned his position around into the other extreme. He is now in some sense more Deleuzian than Deleuze ever dared to be. No social link, just modes of *jouissance*, of enjoyment, and the only relation within them are wars. So, may I jump in quickly? Yes. Do you think that Lacan himself in a way paves the way for this when he himself moves from paternal metaphor to *sinthome*? Like, isn't a *sinthome*—and it's interesting because you have evoked *sinthome* in your own thought I think as an important idea—but I almost think that once you make that move to the *sinthome*, you have confessed that all we are are islands of *jouissance* and the paternal metaphor no longer holds or bonds us together, right? I mean, isn't that already in Seminar Isn't there already that misstep? Retroactively now. It wasn't clear to me, but retroactively now I tend to agree with you, Todd. Because I think that Lacan in the last years was experimenting all the time. Okay, I'll put it like this. This is my classical position. Seminar and one or two earlier, one or two later, are his final consistent position. But there he gets into a deadlock. And then he is trying for ways out. That's why, to confirm you Todd, I think that in contrast to Lacan's earlier big literary interpretations—*Antigone*, *Hamlet*, Claudel *Coûfontaine* trilogy, and so on—I never liked his Joyce the *sinthome*. I think it's a failure. It basically ignores... it is like ignores the detailed texture of Joyce. I think it's a little bit like what I do often. I use a literary work or whatever but clearly just as a pretext to deploy certain categories. And even here, Lacan
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oscillates. You know how Todd, to confirm you. You mentioned when we were in conversation before going public, this paradox of Miller going in theory in an ultra-radical dimension. We are islands of *jouissance*, no communication, post-blah blah blah, post-patriarchal. But the social implication of this is not some crazy radical, I don't know, anarchist theory, you know. But on the contrary, a move towards not even liberal centrists, but I would have put it moderately conservative position. A fear of any change and so on. And isn't it also—just to return—so yes, so I think all this after Seminar all these later attempts are of Lacan,
oscillates. You know how Todd, to confirm you. You mentioned when we were in conversation before going public, this paradox of Miller going in theory in an ultra-radical dimension. We are islands of *jouissance*, no communication, post-blah blah blah, post-patriarchal. But the social implication of this is not some crazy radical, I don't know, anarchist theory, you know. But on the contrary, a move towards not even liberal centrists, but I would have put it moderately conservative position. A fear of any change and so on. And isn't it also—just to return—so yes, so I think all this after Seminar all these later attempts are of Lacan,
Slavoj Žižek
are for me attempts to resolve a certain deadlock which as Lacan openly admitted at the very end. It's a tragic text. You know his last seminar is like he came there, people in the hall, and he talked for one minute and he left. And that was it. And the very last one, or one before, of his public appearances was simply the admission of a failure. So you know why this is important? I've written, I forgot where about this, how wrong not only of Lacan but of other thinkers this idea is that they were approaching some final point where they finally saw the light. That's it. And I have nothing against her, she is not stupid, but you know Catherine Millot. Not Miller, not that group sex lady, but Catherine Millot, Lacan's last official mistress. You know that I remember I was there after Lacan died, her status was elevated into a kind of a mystical level. She knows the truth because the idea, it was a wonderful myth, I also like almost liked it. The idea was that when Lacan was dying, she was with him and he whispered to her some final theoretical mystery. And I am more and more opposed to this idea that at the end there is the final enlightenment, truth. You know how badly it ended with Louis Althusser. In *Lire le Capital* he put the epistemological cut into *The German Ideology*. Then he postponed it, postponed it, then towards the end he found one passage in a letter by Marx on a German economist he criticized, Adolf Wagner I think. And Althusser, it's quite tragically you know, claims that only there in one sentence Marx really saw it and so on. So I think it's not simply that at the end you approach the light. No, I think... Sorry, I would just say, yeah, like I think that to me, I—this is something I've been thinking about—like it seems like in Seminar *From an Other to the other*, right, where he comes up with this notion of surplus *jouissance* for the first time, *plus-de-jouir*, for the first time, right? And then it's like he's on the edge of thinking about capitalism differently, like writing his own different theory of capital, like writing his own version of capital almost. And then—and then he breaks it off in And then comes up with the four discourses and it completely—he abandons basically the *plus-de-jouir* and sticks it in a different discourse. But I think he doesn't really—I think that to me, that's the decisive point where he could have gone in this one direction. I think there are even more such points but I tend to agree with you that this is the big one. You know why? Because now I will say something terribly naive, but I think it's basically true. I think that there is an unresolved problem with Lacan. The four discourses, are they just a totally ahistorical matrix, valuable for all times, blah blah blah? Or is there a certain historicity in them? Like pre-modern societies, Master's discourse, then modernity in its two aspects, hysteria and university discourse. And then—now this is a big question—can we politicize the analytic discourse? But basically if we read capitalist discourse not as simply a fifth discourse or which of these but as precisely branded by this tension between hysteria—that's everyday capitalist hysteria, always more surplus, surplus—and university is the power structure described by Foucault and so on. And Lacan somehow saw this tension in capitalism. You have this incessant surplus, at the same time you have the logic of university style of domination. And then at a certain point Lacan saw that he cannot simply squeeze what you Todd pointed out correctly, the entire topic of surplus enjoyment and so on, he cannot squeeze it simply into four discourses. There is something more radical going on here because obviously as you Todd pointed out in your book about *Capitalist Desire* or whatever that bullshit is the title—that capitalism in some sense a structure of surplus desire which is all the time here, comes out as such only with capitalism. So in some sense Lacan ended here at a deadlock, which is why also people don't notice this, how Lacan oscillates also between different political positions. Sometimes he sounds like a liberal. That was then Miller's reading. Tolerate others' *jouissance*, blah blah, against any totalitarian. Sometimes he even sounds a little bit conservative. This is also an aspect taken over by Miller where he says it's this
are for me attempts to resolve a certain deadlock which as Lacan openly admitted at the very end. It's a tragic text. You know his last seminar is like he came there, people in the hall, and he talked for one minute and he left. And that was it. And the very last one, or one before, of his public appearances was simply the admission of a failure. So you know why this is important? I've written, I forgot where about this, how wrong not only of Lacan but of other thinkers this idea is that they were approaching some final point where they finally saw the light. That's it. And I have nothing against her, she is not stupid, but you know Catherine Millot. Not Miller, not that group sex lady, but Catherine Millot, Lacan's last official mistress. You know that I remember I was there after Lacan died, her status was elevated into a kind of a mystical level. She knows the truth because the idea, it was a wonderful myth, I also like almost liked it. The idea was that when Lacan was dying, she was with him and he whispered to her some final theoretical mystery. And I am more and more opposed to this idea that at the end there is the final enlightenment, truth. You know how badly it ended with Louis Althusser. In *Lire le Capital* he put the epistemological cut into *The German Ideology*. Then he postponed it, postponed it, then towards the end he found one passage in a letter by Marx on a German economist he criticized, Adolf Wagner I think. And Althusser, it's quite tragically you know, claims that only there in one sentence Marx really saw it and so on. So I think it's not simply that at the end you approach the light. No, I think... Sorry, I would just say, yeah, like I think that to me, I—this is something I've been thinking about—like it seems like in Seminar *From an Other to the other*, right, where he comes up with this notion of surplus *jouissance* for the first time, *plus-de-jouir*, for the first time, right? And then it's like he's on the edge of thinking about capitalism differently, like writing his own different theory of capital, like writing his own version of capital almost. And then—and then he breaks it off in And then comes up with the four discourses and it completely—he abandons basically the *plus-de-jouir* and sticks it in a different discourse. But I think he doesn't really—I think that to me, that's the decisive point where he could have gone in this one direction. I think there are even more such points but I tend to agree with you that this is the big one. You know why? Because now I will say something terribly naive, but I think it's basically true. I think that there is an unresolved problem with Lacan. The four discourses, are they just a totally ahistorical matrix, valuable for all times, blah blah blah? Or is there a certain historicity in them? Like pre-modern societies, Master's discourse, then modernity in its two aspects, hysteria and university discourse. And then—now this is a big question—can we politicize the analytic discourse? But basically if we read capitalist discourse not as simply a fifth discourse or which of these but as precisely branded by this tension between hysteria—that's everyday capitalist hysteria, always more surplus, surplus—and university is the power structure described by Foucault and so on. And Lacan somehow saw this tension in capitalism. You have this incessant surplus, at the same time you have the logic of university style of domination. And then at a certain point Lacan saw that he cannot simply squeeze what you Todd pointed out correctly, the entire topic of surplus enjoyment and so on, he cannot squeeze it simply into four discourses. There is something more radical going on here because obviously as you Todd pointed out in your book about *Capitalist Desire* or whatever that bullshit is the title—that capitalism in some sense a structure of surplus desire which is all the time here, comes out as such only with capitalism. So in some sense Lacan ended here at a deadlock, which is why also people don't notice this, how Lacan oscillates also between different political positions. Sometimes he sounds like a liberal. That was then Miller's reading. Tolerate others' *jouissance*, blah blah, against any totalitarian. Sometimes he even sounds a little bit conservative. This is also an aspect taken over by Miller where he says it's this
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cynical conservatism. You know, it's—we know it's all a fake, but we know it's a symbolic fiction, but if you disturb the fiction too much, there is violence, there is
cynical conservatism. You know, it's—we know it's all a fake, but we know it's a symbolic fiction, but if you disturb the fiction too much, there is violence, there is
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riot, and so on and so on. So this kind of conservative cynicism with some hints about post-possible post-capitalist modes. But there Lacan again then has this tendency to offer a solution which I don't think it works. Like remember his mysterious hints that a saint is—saint is the outside capitalist discourse. I know what he wants to say but I doubt it if anything I'm almost tempted to say the capitalist itself at its purest already is a saint, somebody who... Right, like they give up their lives for capital, right? Like that... Yes, yes. That's right. That's right. So we should—the first thing, gesture, I hope we all agree here to be really a Lacanian today is not to search for a last secret mystery in late Lacan. Because these readers—now I'll
riot, and so on and so on. So this kind of conservative cynicism with some hints about post-possible post-capitalist modes. But there Lacan again then has this tendency to offer a solution which I don't think it works. Like remember his mysterious hints that a saint is—saint is the outside capitalist discourse. I know what he wants to say but I doubt it if anything I'm almost tempted to say the capitalist itself at its purest already is a saint, somebody who... Right, like they give up their lives for capital, right? Like that... Yes, yes. That's right. That's right. So we should—the first thing, gesture, I hope we all agree here to be really a Lacanian today is not to search for a last secret mystery in late Lacan. Because these readers—now I'll
Slavoj Žižek
be really evil—who is this irony in this, of course, one of the greatest writers today, much higher than Joyce and Kafka, Dan Brown, you know? In his work they always look for some last symbol, mystery, hidden manuscript. So I would accuse Miller and all those guys like kind of making another *Da Vinci Code* out of Lacan, you know. Look... yeah, please, now you, we totally overshadowed you, which we nonetheless please go on. No, it's related—it's related to what we were talking about because you know we're talking about the later Lacan seminars and I mean maybe we can go back to politics and *jouissance* later because I think that that's today, that's—I mean it's been this way for a long time but especially today Lacan's theory of *jouissance* is indispensable to any sort of political ideological analysis. But I'm thinking along the lines of this—I still have the image of like you know somebody leaning in and Lacan's going to say "Rosebud" at the last minute. It's going to be some sort of *Citizen Kane* thing. For "Rosebud," yeah. Yeah. But the way in which, and I think that this is true more of a certain type of like clinical or clinician approach to Lacan, that where the text itself is treated as sort of you know a sacred font of wisdom. And I just was thinking about Seminar and the directions in which Lacan went and now I'm thinking about sex and gender and the formulas of sexuation in Seminar And how I've noticed that there's—I mean this is not just, I think it's particularly among sort of Millerians but the insistence on maintaining the notion of sex as though you know masculine and feminine are some sort of essential quality, as opposed to I think that what you and in *The Sex and the Failed Absolute* book, Alenka in her book *What IS Sex?*, kind of rescue... I guess the question is to what degree is this already in Lacan or to what degree are like you know you, the Ljubljana school more generally, teasing this out where sex is according to your... like sex is the fundamental cut and then gender is a second-order, it's an epi- it's a symbolic way of trying to deal with that cut that is the real. And so you've been you know, Slavoj, you've said for a long time now right like there isn't really a mass—is there really a masculine subject position? Masculinity as such is a fake. The pure subject position is femininity. And so I'm wondering you know is that a—to go back to how Lacan treats that in 20—do we have to update Lacan for like in order to sort of save it from a sort of essentialism with regard to you know gender or sex, or is that the only proper way to read Lacan is like it's there we just have to read him this way? Can I—you know Slavoj, before you answer—can I just want to add to the question? I just want to add to the question because I was talking to Guy Le Gaufey who I think is a really smart guy. Guy Le Gaufey. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a really smart guy. What is he doing now? For years I haven't heard. Did he publish something? Yeah, he's still publishing books, they don't get translated, but he's still publishing books in French and they're— he's very good I think. And he speaks English, he's... his English is very good. For some reason no one invites him here but he's really—I guess because his books haven't appeared in English but his English is fine. Anyway it's great, it's better than mine. But he said to me, he said that he thought that you know he wrote a book on *Le pas-tout de Lacan* so he's very invested in... Seminar right. But he thinks that by making it—by tying the formulas to sexuation that Lacan in a way falls for you know that line by Ernest Jones, "God did make them man and woman." That he thinks that—and he thinks the notion of feminine *jouissance* is already going over to mysticism and... Now you touched something absolutely crucial.
be really evil—who is this irony in this, of course, one of the greatest writers today, much higher than Joyce and Kafka, Dan Brown, you know? In his work they always look for some last symbol, mystery, hidden manuscript. So I would accuse Miller and all those guys like kind of making another *Da Vinci Code* out of Lacan, you know. Look... yeah, please, now you, we totally overshadowed you, which we nonetheless please go on. No, it's related—it's related to what we were talking about because you know we're talking about the later Lacan seminars and I mean maybe we can go back to politics and *jouissance* later because I think that that's today, that's—I mean it's been this way for a long time but especially today Lacan's theory of *jouissance* is indispensable to any sort of political ideological analysis. But I'm thinking along the lines of this—I still have the image of like you know somebody leaning in and Lacan's going to say "Rosebud" at the last minute. It's going to be some sort of *Citizen Kane* thing. For "Rosebud," yeah. Yeah. But the way in which, and I think that this is true more of a certain type of like clinical or clinician approach to Lacan, that where the text itself is treated as sort of you know a sacred font of wisdom. And I just was thinking about Seminar and the directions in which Lacan went and now I'm thinking about sex and gender and the formulas of sexuation in Seminar And how I've noticed that there's—I mean this is not just, I think it's particularly among sort of Millerians but the insistence on maintaining the notion of sex as though you know masculine and feminine are some sort of essential quality, as opposed to I think that what you and in *The Sex and the Failed Absolute* book, Alenka in her book *What IS Sex?*, kind of rescue... I guess the question is to what degree is this already in Lacan or to what degree are like you know you, the Ljubljana school more generally, teasing this out where sex is according to your... like sex is the fundamental cut and then gender is a second-order, it's an epi- it's a symbolic way of trying to deal with that cut that is the real. And so you've been you know, Slavoj, you've said for a long time now right like there isn't really a mass—is there really a masculine subject position? Masculinity as such is a fake. The pure subject position is femininity. And so I'm wondering you know is that a—to go back to how Lacan treats that in 20—do we have to update Lacan for like in order to sort of save it from a sort of essentialism with regard to you know gender or sex, or is that the only proper way to read Lacan is like it's there we just have to read him this way? Can I—you know Slavoj, before you answer—can I just want to add to the question? I just want to add to the question because I was talking to Guy Le Gaufey who I think is a really smart guy. Guy Le Gaufey. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a really smart guy. What is he doing now? For years I haven't heard. Did he publish something? Yeah, he's still publishing books, they don't get translated, but he's still publishing books in French and they're— he's very good I think. And he speaks English, he's... his English is very good. For some reason no one invites him here but he's really—I guess because his books haven't appeared in English but his English is fine. Anyway it's great, it's better than mine. But he said to me, he said that he thought that you know he wrote a book on *Le pas-tout de Lacan* so he's very invested in... Seminar right. But he thinks that by making it—by tying the formulas to sexuation that Lacan in a way falls for you know that line by Ernest Jones, "God did make them man and woman." That he thinks that—and he thinks the notion of feminine *jouissance* is already going over to mysticism and... Now you touched something absolutely crucial.
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Okay. I didn't succeed in convincing many people but I thought there in Lacan, you may know this, the big conflict between my reading and after point Todd McGowan's of formulas of sexuation and the predominant one is that the predominant reading does precisely what you critically pointed at Todd now. They not so much essentialize as elevate *jouissance féminine* in some untouchable beyond. You enjoy but you cannot even name it, it's outside symbolic. While I took formulas of *jouissance* much more literally and claim no, if anything, woman is more totally in the symbolic order. There is nothing which is outside. And that's why you get to the non-all. And my ultimate
Okay. I didn't succeed in convincing many people but I thought there in Lacan, you may know this, the big conflict between my reading and after point Todd McGowan's of formulas of sexuation and the predominant one is that the predominant reading does precisely what you critically pointed at Todd now. They not so much essentialize as elevate *jouissance féminine* in some untouchable beyond. You enjoy but you cannot even name it, it's outside symbolic. While I took formulas of *jouissance* much more literally and claim no, if anything, woman is more totally in the symbolic order. There is nothing which is outside. And that's why you get to the non-all. And my ultimate
Slavoj Žižek
example is Lacan's great case that Saint Teresa. It's not just that statue on the cover of Seminar but you know
example is Lacan's great case that Saint Teresa. It's not just that statue on the cover of Seminar but you know
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that she was writing like crazy. If there ever was a writer who... she is not after some mystical experience where you... I think that precisely this idea of femininity as some elusive point of a mystical real which always eludes the symbolic grasp and so on is precisely, maybe even I would say, male fantasy of... Right, I think that's right. I mean it's the worst kind of anti-feminism and I would also say the only thing I would say is I think Lacan himself is ambiguous about this, right? Like... That's my point. Okay. He on the one hand he insists that these are—he insists that the feminine non-all means precisely no
that she was writing like crazy. If there ever was a writer who... she is not after some mystical experience where you... I think that precisely this idea of femininity as some elusive point of a mystical real which always eludes the symbolic grasp and so on is precisely, maybe even I would say, male fantasy of... Right, I think that's right. I mean it's the worst kind of anti-feminism and I would also say the only thing I would say is I think Lacan himself is ambiguous about this, right? Like... That's my point. Okay. He on the one hand he insists that these are—he insists that the feminine non-all means precisely no
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exception. There is nothing which is outside the phallic dimension. So as it were you undermine phallic logic from within by universalizing it. Universalizing in the sense of precisely no exception. But I agree with you, Todd, at some point Lacan already as if I think he didn't think things to the end there. You already have this mystical tendency of, you know. But remember that this was, and I think it's theoretically a fake, a tendency in Lacan even from his early days and here I don't like Lacan who celebrates his standing up against philosophy. Like I stand up against philosophy. Don't you remember, it's usually not often commented, his first big *Écrit*, "Function and field of the word," blah blah, his so-called Rome Manifesto, Rome Discourse, ends up with some stupid quote from some early Buddhism or whatever. The last words of wisdom, he
exception. There is nothing which is outside the phallic dimension. So as it were you undermine phallic logic from within by universalizing it. Universalizing in the sense of precisely no exception. But I agree with you, Todd, at some point Lacan already as if I think he didn't think things to the end there. You already have this mystical tendency of, you know. But remember that this was, and I think it's theoretically a fake, a tendency in Lacan even from his early days and here I don't like Lacan who celebrates his standing up against philosophy. Like I stand up against philosophy. Don't you remember, it's usually not often commented, his first big *Écrit*, "Function and field of the word," blah blah, his so-called Rome Manifesto, Rome Discourse, ends up with some stupid quote from some early Buddhism or whatever. The last words of wisdom, he
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refers to this positively you know as there is some last mystical insight. And I think this is the worst operation possible. Instead of admitting failure, you construct
refers to this positively you know as there is some last mystical insight. And I think this is the worst operation possible. Instead of admitting failure, you construct
Slavoj Žižek
some mystical point of reference which we cannot even approach
some mystical point of reference which we cannot even approach
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it but it's there. You have a couple of references like this in Lacan, like at some other point, is it in *Encore* or somewhere else, Lacan even says that mystical texts are the best that there is. And then of course in his arrogant way he says but you must and also *Écrits* of Lacan and also his *Écrits*. Without this I think again this way of how he wants to get over philosophy, that you know we philosophers want to conceptualize everything but there is some mystical elusive point and so on, again this is the worst of Lacan. You know also in what sense. Did you notice how Lacan often—I am tempted but I am getting old and senile I would have to go through
it but it's there. You have a couple of references like this in Lacan, like at some other point, is it in *Encore* or somewhere else, Lacan even says that mystical texts are the best that there is. And then of course in his arrogant way he says but you must and also *Écrits* of Lacan and also his *Écrits*. Without this I think again this way of how he wants to get over philosophy, that you know we philosophers want to conceptualize everything but there is some mystical elusive point and so on, again this is the worst of Lacan. You know also in what sense. Did you notice how Lacan often—I am tempted but I am getting old and senile I would have to go through
Slavoj Žižek
it—I noticed how Lacan often like is not Lacanian enough. He gives an example but then he fails to draw the ultimate Lacanian conclusion from it. I think something like this happened when he tried to deal with surplus *jouissance* in connecting it to surplus value. You know he failed, not in the sense of there was a dimension there which eluded him, no, he missed the Lacanian dimension of it. And if I may amuse our readers and you briefly, you know where I first noticed these failures of Lacan already. Which is the seminar, is it I think, *Formations of the Unconscious*, where he talks a lot about jokes. Five, yeah. About jokes. Yeah. He—I mentioned this in one of my books, I hope readers don't know it—he of course quotes there that classical Jewish joke of a how do you call the guy who tries to sell you a bride, matchmaker or what? And you know at the end for every bad feature he finds an excuse. Like I don't know, I don't know, she is ugly, oh at least you will not have to worry that she will—that she will deceive you, blah blah. And Lacan then writes, I couldn't believe, I was like Tom or Jerry in the cartoon when they see something wrong, the eyes jump out and... I couldn't believe it that Lacan just says oh and so and so on indefinitely. No, it's not indefinitely. Right. The whole point of a joke is that at a certain point you arrive at a feature which this matchmaker or whatever mediator cannot explain away and then he says what do you want her to be, perfect or what? You
it—I noticed how Lacan often like is not Lacanian enough. He gives an example but then he fails to draw the ultimate Lacanian conclusion from it. I think something like this happened when he tried to deal with surplus *jouissance* in connecting it to surplus value. You know he failed, not in the sense of there was a dimension there which eluded him, no, he missed the Lacanian dimension of it. And if I may amuse our readers and you briefly, you know where I first noticed these failures of Lacan already. Which is the seminar, is it I think, *Formations of the Unconscious*, where he talks a lot about jokes. Five, yeah. About jokes. Yeah. He—I mentioned this in one of my books, I hope readers don't know it—he of course quotes there that classical Jewish joke of a how do you call the guy who tries to sell you a bride, matchmaker or what? And you know at the end for every bad feature he finds an excuse. Like I don't know, I don't know, she is ugly, oh at least you will not have to worry that she will—that she will deceive you, blah blah. And Lacan then writes, I couldn't believe, I was like Tom or Jerry in the cartoon when they see something wrong, the eyes jump out and... I couldn't believe it that Lacan just says oh and so and so on indefinitely. No, it's not indefinitely. Right. The whole point of a joke is that at a certain point you arrive at a feature which this matchmaker or whatever mediator cannot explain away and then he says what do you want her to be, perfect or what? You
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know. And I was just shocked that literally again Lacan doesn't get the Lacanian point of the story. So that's why I look at Lacan as an author who is much more inconsistent, trying new possibilities. It's also what I tried to develop, I forgot in which of my books,
know. And I was just shocked that literally again Lacan doesn't get the Lacanian point of the story. So that's why I look at Lacan as an author who is much more inconsistent, trying new possibilities. It's also what I tried to develop, I forgot in which of my books,
Slavoj Žižek
how the game Lacan plays with his seminars and *Écrits*. As he emphasizes, this is what I like in Lacan. In seminars he is not teaching. He is himself analysand. He is improvising, it's theoretical free associations. In *Écrits* he is then an analyst giving formulas. But—and that's his whole game—these formulas, Miller once decades ago explained this nicely to us. Lacan gives these formulas with the hope that we his careful readers will discern the meaning of these formulas. That he himself doesn't know. Yeah, he himself doesn't know. Yes, that's crucial. His *Écrits* are not just... no, literally we have to work out the meaning and again Lacan doesn't know. This is absolutely crucial to read him. I think Lacan very nicely in this very duality of seminars and *Écrits* undermines the temptation which is great in him to play very ruthlessly the role of a master, you know. Yeah. I mean my reading of the four discourses is that he's trying to disavow his own mastery. I mean that's just that's what I mean. I think he creates—he carves out this space of the analyst's discourse where he can do what he does without being a master. And I think that's a problem. But I here's what I want to ask you, like do you think—I wonder if you would accept this—that there's like it's almost like there's a struggle between Kant and Hegel for Lacan's soul. And that when he becomes—when he gives into the mysticism, he's the Kantian, there's a thing beyond what we can know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's this Hegelian other side where he's being a dialectical... which we see this at its purest with how Lacan deals with femininity. Yes. You have the Kantian notion: femininity is *Das Ding*, the thing in itself. And it's the Hegelian notion: no, femininity is the very inconsistency, contradiction, all that bullshit and so on. You know. That's why again another point. I think that, we don't have time now to develop it fully, I think that Lacan's move from *Antigone* to Sygne de Coûfontaine is precisely in my view, I exaggerate a little bit, a move from Kant to Hegel. Yeah. His reading of *Antigone* is that you have these moments of approaching the real but it's too strong, it burns you, you know. This idea of encountering the real as a transgressive experience. Entering some mysterious domain between the two deaths and so on and so on. In other words *Antigone* is still sublime in this sense. An ordinary shitty being lady elevated to the dignity of the thing and so on. The Kantian sublime, right? Not a Hegelian... a Kantian sublime. Sygne de Coûfontaine is definitely not sublime. Right. It's really this when the moment when sublime turns into a piece of shit. It's much more authentic tragic and so on. And can I finish... yeah, if you or some readers saw the movies, and in this way I will also confess to you the breathtaking depths of my taste, namely one movie I will just mention it because if I talk about it you will immediately cut the connection and send me a message, nice to meet you, maybe in the next decade or two we meet again. I didn't like the movie but somehow I almost liked the idea of, trigger warning, it's really low, Roland Emmerich *Moonfall*. Oh. You know this idea that the moon is an artificial object. It's not natural, there is machinery but what I wanted to say is that a more correct theory, there I'm nonetheless tempted to distinguish in an almost old-fashioned position masculine/feminine stance is. Did you see the two movies? It's already important one is documentary, the other is fiction, which are both based on a real case. It's easy to get them on YouTube whatever. The masculine one is *Tinder Swindler*. Documentary and oh here in Europe it's a legend of an Israeli guy who cheated women claiming like exploiting them claiming he is mega rich, just his credit card doesn't work, stealing money from one moving to the next one but it's simple cheating. Then another one I was fascinated by it, *Inventing Anna*. It's fiction also based on a real case about a woman who was doing something similar. She appeared from nowhere in New York claiming that she has a father who is a billionaire but has a small conflict with him and borrowed money blah blah. But she wasn't simply cheating, she was so deeply in her cheating that it was sincere. She was ready to risk everything. That's why she was a true hero like even when she was caught red-handed she never admitted defeat. She got so identified with her fake that's here I'm tempted to say it's important that she is a woman and he the ordinary cheat because he the Jewish guy he simply cheats and he is a manipulator. He has a secret ego where he blah blah. But she doesn't cheat in this sense. She cheats because she herself falls for her false image. No? And so okay I should. I wonder can—Slavoj, do you think that I mean in a way this kind of brings it back to what you were talking about the Duane Rousselle, you know, his the notion of the islands of *jouissance*? Like in a way like aren't you talking about an effective symbolic fiction that still functioning today, right? Like that's the point of that I think that's the point of that film, right? Yeah, no. No, you know where... okay, let's now go maybe
how the game Lacan plays with his seminars and *Écrits*. As he emphasizes, this is what I like in Lacan. In seminars he is not teaching. He is himself analysand. He is improvising, it's theoretical free associations. In *Écrits* he is then an analyst giving formulas. But—and that's his whole game—these formulas, Miller once decades ago explained this nicely to us. Lacan gives these formulas with the hope that we his careful readers will discern the meaning of these formulas. That he himself doesn't know. Yeah, he himself doesn't know. Yes, that's crucial. His *Écrits* are not just... no, literally we have to work out the meaning and again Lacan doesn't know. This is absolutely crucial to read him. I think Lacan very nicely in this very duality of seminars and *Écrits* undermines the temptation which is great in him to play very ruthlessly the role of a master, you know. Yeah. I mean my reading of the four discourses is that he's trying to disavow his own mastery. I mean that's just that's what I mean. I think he creates—he carves out this space of the analyst's discourse where he can do what he does without being a master. And I think that's a problem. But I here's what I want to ask you, like do you think—I wonder if you would accept this—that there's like it's almost like there's a struggle between Kant and Hegel for Lacan's soul. And that when he becomes—when he gives into the mysticism, he's the Kantian, there's a thing beyond what we can know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's this Hegelian other side where he's being a dialectical... which we see this at its purest with how Lacan deals with femininity. Yes. You have the Kantian notion: femininity is *Das Ding*, the thing in itself. And it's the Hegelian notion: no, femininity is the very inconsistency, contradiction, all that bullshit and so on. You know. That's why again another point. I think that, we don't have time now to develop it fully, I think that Lacan's move from *Antigone* to Sygne de Coûfontaine is precisely in my view, I exaggerate a little bit, a move from Kant to Hegel. Yeah. His reading of *Antigone* is that you have these moments of approaching the real but it's too strong, it burns you, you know. This idea of encountering the real as a transgressive experience. Entering some mysterious domain between the two deaths and so on and so on. In other words *Antigone* is still sublime in this sense. An ordinary shitty being lady elevated to the dignity of the thing and so on. The Kantian sublime, right? Not a Hegelian... a Kantian sublime. Sygne de Coûfontaine is definitely not sublime. Right. It's really this when the moment when sublime turns into a piece of shit. It's much more authentic tragic and so on. And can I finish... yeah, if you or some readers saw the movies, and in this way I will also confess to you the breathtaking depths of my taste, namely one movie I will just mention it because if I talk about it you will immediately cut the connection and send me a message, nice to meet you, maybe in the next decade or two we meet again. I didn't like the movie but somehow I almost liked the idea of, trigger warning, it's really low, Roland Emmerich *Moonfall*. Oh. You know this idea that the moon is an artificial object. It's not natural, there is machinery but what I wanted to say is that a more correct theory, there I'm nonetheless tempted to distinguish in an almost old-fashioned position masculine/feminine stance is. Did you see the two movies? It's already important one is documentary, the other is fiction, which are both based on a real case. It's easy to get them on YouTube whatever. The masculine one is *Tinder Swindler*. Documentary and oh here in Europe it's a legend of an Israeli guy who cheated women claiming like exploiting them claiming he is mega rich, just his credit card doesn't work, stealing money from one moving to the next one but it's simple cheating. Then another one I was fascinated by it, *Inventing Anna*. It's fiction also based on a real case about a woman who was doing something similar. She appeared from nowhere in New York claiming that she has a father who is a billionaire but has a small conflict with him and borrowed money blah blah. But she wasn't simply cheating, she was so deeply in her cheating that it was sincere. She was ready to risk everything. That's why she was a true hero like even when she was caught red-handed she never admitted defeat. She got so identified with her fake that's here I'm tempted to say it's important that she is a woman and he the ordinary cheat because he the Jewish guy he simply cheats and he is a manipulator. He has a secret ego where he blah blah. But she doesn't cheat in this sense. She cheats because she herself falls for her false image. No? And so okay I should. I wonder can—Slavoj, do you think that I mean in a way this kind of brings it back to what you were talking about the Duane Rousselle, you know, his the notion of the islands of *jouissance*? Like in a way like aren't you talking about an effective symbolic fiction that still functioning today, right? Like that's the point of that I think that's the point of that film, right? Yeah, no. No, you know where... okay, let's now go maybe
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quickly to Ukraine, no? Okay. Where do I see in today's crazy world still symbolic fictions, even the dimension of truth and so on and so on? One of the lines of attack, very nice, intelligent of Duane Rousselle is that he opposes my reading of the greatest American philosopher of his time, now he's dead, Donald Rumsfeld. You know my notion of the "unknown knowns." Right, yeah. And predictably Rousselle says this is still the notion of repression, not yet foreclosure. You have a tension, you have an unconscious, you don't know what you
quickly to Ukraine, no? Okay. Where do I see in today's crazy world still symbolic fictions, even the dimension of truth and so on and so on? One of the lines of attack, very nice, intelligent of Duane Rousselle is that he opposes my reading of the greatest American philosopher of his time, now he's dead, Donald Rumsfeld. You know my notion of the "unknown knowns." Right, yeah. And predictably Rousselle says this is still the notion of repression, not yet foreclosure. You have a tension, you have an unconscious, you don't know what you
Slavoj Žižek
know. And then he said I
know. And then he said I
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misread Rumsfeld. It's not that
misread Rumsfeld. It's not that
Slavoj Žižek
in his dealing with weapons of mass destruction, it's not that Rumsfeld was determined by unknown knowns. No, that Rumsfeld was in a psychotic way fully identified with what he thought that he knew, with known knowns. That that was his psychosis. Foreclosing, excluding every reality, he sincerely thought there are weapons of mass destruction there. To this, we don't have time to go into too much, I would say that I still stick to my interpretation. Not only—not only was Rumsfeld and generally Bush administration, not only were they not really sure if Saddam has them, I think they positively knew that Saddam does not have them. And you know why? Because I read wonderful analysis, not leftist stuff, even centrist-rightist stuff. If they were to be really sure that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or some really poisonous gases or whatever, they wouldn't attack Iraq the way they did. That's right. That's why we don't attack North Korea right now, right? Like that's... Yeah, but yeah, because they have them. They have them. Right. Yeah. But another thing. I think that I already that weapons of mass destruction, I gave a Hitchcockian reading somewhere now in a not yet published text where—where—where Donald Rumsfeld's MacGuffin, you know, something you know it's a pretext, you needed it, no? And and I think now in Ukraine war we again have a MacGuffin, which is this mysterious Ukrainian funded by US secret bio-weapon labs. They are now officially evoked, a couple of days ago even Putin mentioned them when the obvious question was asked it, I think somewhere like by persons who were not even not even against—against Russia. They even said okay, we would have understood if you apart from Crimea, half island whatever, if you were to occupy only that Donbas region, Lugansk or whatever I don't know, that part where really the majority are Russians. But why occupy all of Ukraine? Okay, the first official story was because they are neo-Nazi drug addicts, you know. But now he came out with a crazy story that because precisely in the west of Ukraine, around Lviv, Lemberg and so on, there are these secret labs which pose a threat and so on and so on. And again, like with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, I claim that Russians know, not only they are not sure, not only are they bluffing, they know this is not true. Because if it were true, they would probably acted in a totally different way. What I would have done is locate the places and simply, I don't know, with special paratrooper units, like treat it as a major danger. They are not—they are not doing this. Yeah. And you see, this proves that MacGuffin or *objet petit a* cause blah blah, this is a symbolic category, this is not psychotic category. Another thing, if I may just go on briefly, which I love, love in a sad way, is that you know that I have friends there, for me it's very personal, in Russia. The true heroes of this story are also Russians who losing their job, beaten by the police and so on, who protest. They're going to jail, right? They're going to jail. Yeah. Yeah but not just—and your life is ruined afterwards. You are designated, they have the official title now for this, "foreign agent." This doesn't mean you are necessarily arrested, it means you are forever excluded from any public space
in his dealing with weapons of mass destruction, it's not that Rumsfeld was determined by unknown knowns. No, that Rumsfeld was in a psychotic way fully identified with what he thought that he knew, with known knowns. That that was his psychosis. Foreclosing, excluding every reality, he sincerely thought there are weapons of mass destruction there. To this, we don't have time to go into too much, I would say that I still stick to my interpretation. Not only—not only was Rumsfeld and generally Bush administration, not only were they not really sure if Saddam has them, I think they positively knew that Saddam does not have them. And you know why? Because I read wonderful analysis, not leftist stuff, even centrist-rightist stuff. If they were to be really sure that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or some really poisonous gases or whatever, they wouldn't attack Iraq the way they did. That's right. That's why we don't attack North Korea right now, right? Like that's... Yeah, but yeah, because they have them. They have them. Right. Yeah. But another thing. I think that I already that weapons of mass destruction, I gave a Hitchcockian reading somewhere now in a not yet published text where—where—where Donald Rumsfeld's MacGuffin, you know, something you know it's a pretext, you needed it, no? And and I think now in Ukraine war we again have a MacGuffin, which is this mysterious Ukrainian funded by US secret bio-weapon labs. They are now officially evoked, a couple of days ago even Putin mentioned them when the obvious question was asked it, I think somewhere like by persons who were not even not even against—against Russia. They even said okay, we would have understood if you apart from Crimea, half island whatever, if you were to occupy only that Donbas region, Lugansk or whatever I don't know, that part where really the majority are Russians. But why occupy all of Ukraine? Okay, the first official story was because they are neo-Nazi drug addicts, you know. But now he came out with a crazy story that because precisely in the west of Ukraine, around Lviv, Lemberg and so on, there are these secret labs which pose a threat and so on and so on. And again, like with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, I claim that Russians know, not only they are not sure, not only are they bluffing, they know this is not true. Because if it were true, they would probably acted in a totally different way. What I would have done is locate the places and simply, I don't know, with special paratrooper units, like treat it as a major danger. They are not—they are not doing this. Yeah. And you see, this proves that MacGuffin or *objet petit a* cause blah blah, this is a symbolic category, this is not psychotic category. Another thing, if I may just go on briefly, which I love, love in a sad way, is that you know that I have friends there, for me it's very personal, in Russia. The true heroes of this story are also Russians who losing their job, beaten by the police and so on, who protest. They're going to jail, right? They're going to jail. Yeah. Yeah but not just—and your life is ruined afterwards. You are designated, they have the official title now for this, "foreign agent." This doesn't mean you are necessarily arrested, it means you are forever excluded from any public space
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which is mediated by state. Like no university, no public appearances. But what I want to say is that the way the struggle goes on in Russia, it's not a psychotic foreclosure exclusion. It's a very nice dialectical struggle. You know, for example, this is for me very Lacanian: what is the freedom of language? That you mediate statements with their unspoken background
which is mediated by state. Like no university, no public appearances. But what I want to say is that the way the struggle goes on in Russia, it's not a psychotic foreclosure exclusion. It's a very nice dialectical struggle. You know, for example, this is for me very Lacanian: what is the freedom of language? That you mediate statements with their unspoken background
Slavoj Žižek
in such a way that a thing can mean almost everything. The absence of a thing means like did you notice there were millions of views on... I mean Putin must be a little bit like those American racists who are furious when the police kills a black guy. There is always some stupid other black guy with the iPhone who records it, you know. Unfortunately in Russia it's the same. So, did you notice that because two words are now prohibited. You are not allowed to say "No to war." In Russian it's *nyet voine*. It's "no to war." In Russian there are two words. So if you have this on a piece of paper, you get arrested. But you know did you see it on YouTube, news what happened? A certain old lady demonstrated with a paper, you know what was written on it? "Two words." Not "No to war" but literally "Two words." And she was still arrested. She was still arrested. Yeah as if you know then probably she said but wait a minute, what if these two words were I don't know, "love Putin" or what? No, no, no, she said we all know what these two words are. And then this went to the Hegelian-Lacanian extreme. You can see video clips where—where a lady has a paper on which, you know what it is? Nothing. Nothing, right. Right. Nothing. She was still arrested. Still. As if to say okay, sorry, what... no, no, we knew what you wanted to say with this. But you know what I want to say? That the absence of the words can be the words, right? Like that's symbolic efficiency. Yeah, yeah. This is not—this is symbolic efficiency at its—this is symbolic efficiency at its purest. This is another thing where we have pure symbolic strategy. Do you remember how this joke, which is now very actual, that we all know it, I'm sorry, old Freud's joke—not Freud's, Jewish joke about this lying in the guise of truth. You know, a friend telling—telling his friend "Why are you telling me that you go to Lviv and not to Krakow when you are really going to Lviv?" You know. But this is what Putin was doing. He was—the irony is today Lviv, Lemberg is the western capital of Ukraine, is really the target. So our—but you know Putin had very nice intelligent symbolic strategy. He was telling all the time that he plans military intervention into Ukraine. Right. But I know, I spoke with politicians here in Germany, I'm in contact, and even two, three days before the intervention, you know that they all repeated to me the same story: don't be in panic, Putin is not crazy, this is just, you know, he is lying to us. I know, it's interesting because it's the same. But no, he was—he duped us, we were thinking for some strategic discourse. No, he deceived us by telling the truth all the time. And again, this is for Lacan, lying in the guise of truth is—it's exactly it's the ultimate—it's the ultimate symbolic strategy, right? The last one then I will finish, I've taken too much time. Duane Rousselle's final notion is that again this is just paranoiac projection, put Putin and Biden projecting into another their own fears, blah blah blah. No, I think it's what is going on now and what went on already with American weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it's more an example of what already the early Lacan defines as symbolic communication, where you get from the other your own message in its inverted, that is to say true form. Didn't this happen to the United States in Iraq? Yeah. They went there to save civilization, help women, secularize Iraq. The result is now Iraq is under greater influence of Iran than ever. Fundamentalism is much stronger than under Saddam. Women are much more oppressed and so on. They got their message back and, this is really tragically, friends who don't want to hate Russians—I have colleagues in Kyiv and elsewhere—are telling me. You know what was Russian justification? That we are really not a different nation, we are part of the same ethnic group, blah blah. But and friends are telling me in spite of tensions, it was true till a—till a couple of months ago. Like it was incredible. A Slovene journalist told me, he was a couple of months ago in Kyiv. He went to some cafeterias. People there, it was like two dialects. You spoke with a friend in Ukrainian, then another comes you shifted to Russian. At the everyday level for large majority of people. Now as the result of the Russian intervention, they really hate Ukrainians. Yeah, I know. It's interesting. Like... Russians. Russians, I meant. The Russians. Situation they wanted to avoid. That's right, that they wanted to avoid. I mean it's interesting because Zelenskyy is a Russian native speaker, right? Like so—so yeah I mean your point is exactly right and I I wonder—I wonder what you think about the fact that the U—like you're right totally that that all throughout the world everyone thought Putin was bluffing except the CIA, right? Like Biden for weeks before the invasion was like they're really going to invade, they're really going to invade. And so I think and I think here maybe I think really Zelenskyy is not just this demagoguery and so on, because Zelenskyy also knew it. But do you remember that days before he warned Americans, don't—don't talk too much about certainty of invasion because this automatically raises temperature and so on? On the other hand now the two of you will for sure cut all links with me, I want to say another thing that oh my god what will my leftist friends do? You know some leftists are claiming there—and this is disgusting, I broke with a couple of friendships here. They were not close friendships, but lately. They claim both sides are guilty, United States and NATO a little bit more because blah blah blah. No, no. If anything, don't you remember Biden was almost—he talked too much. First this information that there is—that there will be an invasion. He should precisely not talk about it but mobilize all the diplomatic channels secret. Another thing, I was here more of a hard-liner. But it was a correct position but you shouldn't tell it publicly. Do you remember he said a day or two before the war, he said let's see what kind of invasion will it be. If it will be a smaller invasion, lower sanction, a total occupation. And media went crazy. So I—it I think it was a correct politics to discipline Russia, avoid but he shouldn't say it publicly. Yeah, I... sorry. Just did. What this proves is that I think Biden is here in some sense almost a rational guy. He—he tried to balance helping Ukraine while nonetheless avoiding a new total world war or whatever. Right, I think that he's... so it's absolutely not true that Biden is pushing for a total conflict and so on. And I think even the best probable, you never know, explanation of what's happening is that Putin read the wrong lesson from Afghanistan fiasco. And he thought you see the west is weak, I can do it. But again, a nice example of successful communication. He got the message back now. All European countries now want to enter NATO, even countries which always avoided it, like the great Northern Troika, Finland, Sweden, Norway, you know. You never know what to do. There is one hope people talk about it last days. You remember Putin said two, three days after the war, beginning of invasion, he made an appeal to Ukrainian army: "Why don't you depose the leadership and take over? It will be much easier to talk to you." I think we should now tell this to the Russians. Right, right, right. I think—I always believe in a possible progressive role of an army, of the army. It can... because you know soldiers, secret policemen, they are not all idiots. Especially in authoritarian countries, secret police in these secret intelligence agencies, yes, they manipulate lie, but at the same time they know the truth. They know the real situation. This is why it's very interesting. All the big reforms in Soviet Union came for example Beria. Beria, I was just thinking of Beria. After Stalin and he—he was secret police. But he knew the truth. And again it was the same with Gorbachev. Gorbachev was promoted by Andropov, who was secret police, KGB, yes before. No, so my solution is it's a crazy one. If you want peace, support army and secret police. Sorry! That's good, that's a good ending! We are again oppressing you. Say—say "Rosebud" at least Todd. You know I was actually thinking about because what I'm starting to see in the US, I'm not sure what it's like in Europe, I'm sure that this is the case though where the COVID conspiracies are starting to merge with you know Russia-Ukraine conspiracies. And I'm just wondering about because I've actually one of the I guess one of the saddest things to come to actually happen within the past like two years is that the sort of contingent of of Lacanians who, I think you mentioned this earlier Slavoj in a different context but, this sort of paranoiac direction in which certain amount of Lacanian thought has gone around COVID. On COVID, yeah. On yeah, on COVID in particular. And just what it is—I mean is it—I'm almost tempted to say like it's kind of related to the sort
in such a way that a thing can mean almost everything. The absence of a thing means like did you notice there were millions of views on... I mean Putin must be a little bit like those American racists who are furious when the police kills a black guy. There is always some stupid other black guy with the iPhone who records it, you know. Unfortunately in Russia it's the same. So, did you notice that because two words are now prohibited. You are not allowed to say "No to war." In Russian it's *nyet voine*. It's "no to war." In Russian there are two words. So if you have this on a piece of paper, you get arrested. But you know did you see it on YouTube, news what happened? A certain old lady demonstrated with a paper, you know what was written on it? "Two words." Not "No to war" but literally "Two words." And she was still arrested. She was still arrested. Yeah as if you know then probably she said but wait a minute, what if these two words were I don't know, "love Putin" or what? No, no, no, she said we all know what these two words are. And then this went to the Hegelian-Lacanian extreme. You can see video clips where—where a lady has a paper on which, you know what it is? Nothing. Nothing, right. Right. Nothing. She was still arrested. Still. As if to say okay, sorry, what... no, no, we knew what you wanted to say with this. But you know what I want to say? That the absence of the words can be the words, right? Like that's symbolic efficiency. Yeah, yeah. This is not—this is symbolic efficiency at its—this is symbolic efficiency at its purest. This is another thing where we have pure symbolic strategy. Do you remember how this joke, which is now very actual, that we all know it, I'm sorry, old Freud's joke—not Freud's, Jewish joke about this lying in the guise of truth. You know, a friend telling—telling his friend "Why are you telling me that you go to Lviv and not to Krakow when you are really going to Lviv?" You know. But this is what Putin was doing. He was—the irony is today Lviv, Lemberg is the western capital of Ukraine, is really the target. So our—but you know Putin had very nice intelligent symbolic strategy. He was telling all the time that he plans military intervention into Ukraine. Right. But I know, I spoke with politicians here in Germany, I'm in contact, and even two, three days before the intervention, you know that they all repeated to me the same story: don't be in panic, Putin is not crazy, this is just, you know, he is lying to us. I know, it's interesting because it's the same. But no, he was—he duped us, we were thinking for some strategic discourse. No, he deceived us by telling the truth all the time. And again, this is for Lacan, lying in the guise of truth is—it's exactly it's the ultimate—it's the ultimate symbolic strategy, right? The last one then I will finish, I've taken too much time. Duane Rousselle's final notion is that again this is just paranoiac projection, put Putin and Biden projecting into another their own fears, blah blah blah. No, I think it's what is going on now and what went on already with American weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it's more an example of what already the early Lacan defines as symbolic communication, where you get from the other your own message in its inverted, that is to say true form. Didn't this happen to the United States in Iraq? Yeah. They went there to save civilization, help women, secularize Iraq. The result is now Iraq is under greater influence of Iran than ever. Fundamentalism is much stronger than under Saddam. Women are much more oppressed and so on. They got their message back and, this is really tragically, friends who don't want to hate Russians—I have colleagues in Kyiv and elsewhere—are telling me. You know what was Russian justification? That we are really not a different nation, we are part of the same ethnic group, blah blah. But and friends are telling me in spite of tensions, it was true till a—till a couple of months ago. Like it was incredible. A Slovene journalist told me, he was a couple of months ago in Kyiv. He went to some cafeterias. People there, it was like two dialects. You spoke with a friend in Ukrainian, then another comes you shifted to Russian. At the everyday level for large majority of people. Now as the result of the Russian intervention, they really hate Ukrainians. Yeah, I know. It's interesting. Like... Russians. Russians, I meant. The Russians. Situation they wanted to avoid. That's right, that they wanted to avoid. I mean it's interesting because Zelenskyy is a Russian native speaker, right? Like so—so yeah I mean your point is exactly right and I I wonder—I wonder what you think about the fact that the U—like you're right totally that that all throughout the world everyone thought Putin was bluffing except the CIA, right? Like Biden for weeks before the invasion was like they're really going to invade, they're really going to invade. And so I think and I think here maybe I think really Zelenskyy is not just this demagoguery and so on, because Zelenskyy also knew it. But do you remember that days before he warned Americans, don't—don't talk too much about certainty of invasion because this automatically raises temperature and so on? On the other hand now the two of you will for sure cut all links with me, I want to say another thing that oh my god what will my leftist friends do? You know some leftists are claiming there—and this is disgusting, I broke with a couple of friendships here. They were not close friendships, but lately. They claim both sides are guilty, United States and NATO a little bit more because blah blah blah. No, no. If anything, don't you remember Biden was almost—he talked too much. First this information that there is—that there will be an invasion. He should precisely not talk about it but mobilize all the diplomatic channels secret. Another thing, I was here more of a hard-liner. But it was a correct position but you shouldn't tell it publicly. Do you remember he said a day or two before the war, he said let's see what kind of invasion will it be. If it will be a smaller invasion, lower sanction, a total occupation. And media went crazy. So I—it I think it was a correct politics to discipline Russia, avoid but he shouldn't say it publicly. Yeah, I... sorry. Just did. What this proves is that I think Biden is here in some sense almost a rational guy. He—he tried to balance helping Ukraine while nonetheless avoiding a new total world war or whatever. Right, I think that he's... so it's absolutely not true that Biden is pushing for a total conflict and so on. And I think even the best probable, you never know, explanation of what's happening is that Putin read the wrong lesson from Afghanistan fiasco. And he thought you see the west is weak, I can do it. But again, a nice example of successful communication. He got the message back now. All European countries now want to enter NATO, even countries which always avoided it, like the great Northern Troika, Finland, Sweden, Norway, you know. You never know what to do. There is one hope people talk about it last days. You remember Putin said two, three days after the war, beginning of invasion, he made an appeal to Ukrainian army: "Why don't you depose the leadership and take over? It will be much easier to talk to you." I think we should now tell this to the Russians. Right, right, right. I think—I always believe in a possible progressive role of an army, of the army. It can... because you know soldiers, secret policemen, they are not all idiots. Especially in authoritarian countries, secret police in these secret intelligence agencies, yes, they manipulate lie, but at the same time they know the truth. They know the real situation. This is why it's very interesting. All the big reforms in Soviet Union came for example Beria. Beria, I was just thinking of Beria. After Stalin and he—he was secret police. But he knew the truth. And again it was the same with Gorbachev. Gorbachev was promoted by Andropov, who was secret police, KGB, yes before. No, so my solution is it's a crazy one. If you want peace, support army and secret police. Sorry! That's good, that's a good ending! We are again oppressing you. Say—say "Rosebud" at least Todd. You know I was actually thinking about because what I'm starting to see in the US, I'm not sure what it's like in Europe, I'm sure that this is the case though where the COVID conspiracies are starting to merge with you know Russia-Ukraine conspiracies. And I'm just wondering about because I've actually one of the I guess one of the saddest things to come to actually happen within the past like two years is that the sort of contingent of of Lacanians who, I think you mentioned this earlier Slavoj in a different context but, this sort of paranoiac direction in which certain amount of Lacanian thought has gone around COVID. On COVID, yeah. On yeah, on COVID in particular. And just what it is—I mean is it—I'm almost tempted to say like it's kind of related to the sort
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of mystical moments in in Lacan. But um, you know you—you wrote a piece about five or six months ago—I know Alenka has something on on conspiracy theories too but it's so— She's a very good reading of *Don't Look Up*. Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah.
of mystical moments in in Lacan. But um, you know you—you wrote a piece about five or six months ago—I know Alenka has something on on conspiracy theories too but it's so— She's a very good reading of *Don't Look Up*. Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah.
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But it just strikes me you know as a Lacanian that and I told you this and I think that
But it just strikes me you know as a Lacanian that and I told you this and I think that
Slavoj Žižek
was the name of the piece that you gave it, but like the principle of you know *Le Nom-du-Père* was entirely you know forgotten and I think that that's um it—it's related to this I think in a way to this you know Rousselle's claim that you were sort of misreading uh Rumsfeld and the unknown you know the known unknowns. But yeah I just so I guess I'm just that's just more of a of a of a remark like what what to make of the direction in which Lacanians, certain Lacanians have gone uh in this sort of paranoiac conspiracy theory um you know route. Yeah but but the horrible thing is this one, that they don't... no I will sound like an old progressive socialist-communist. They it's this perverted theoretical enjoyment. They just like to prove how everything went wrong. We are in paranoia and the solution they offer is just utter cynicism. We have to keep the appearances of paranoia even just don't take them too seriously you know. But you know if I may say for conclusion something sorry one really important point to me intellectually the point. I don't know how it is in the states but uh the right-wingers in Europe, those who for the first week or two of the war were almost pro-Russian. You know what your greatest president Trump said: Putin is a genius, intelligent move, blah blah all that. Who had a great sympathy for it. Then all of a sudden, like in Europe, Marine Le Pen, Salvini in Italy and so on, open up to refugees, change their line, only to Ukrainian refugees. Not to dirty Palestinian
was the name of the piece that you gave it, but like the principle of you know *Le Nom-du-Père* was entirely you know forgotten and I think that that's um it—it's related to this I think in a way to this you know Rousselle's claim that you were sort of misreading uh Rumsfeld and the unknown you know the known unknowns. But yeah I just so I guess I'm just that's just more of a of a of a remark like what what to make of the direction in which Lacanians, certain Lacanians have gone uh in this sort of paranoiac conspiracy theory um you know route. Yeah but but the horrible thing is this one, that they don't... no I will sound like an old progressive socialist-communist. They it's this perverted theoretical enjoyment. They just like to prove how everything went wrong. We are in paranoia and the solution they offer is just utter cynicism. We have to keep the appearances of paranoia even just don't take them too seriously you know. But you know if I may say for conclusion something sorry one really important point to me intellectually the point. I don't know how it is in the states but uh the right-wingers in Europe, those who for the first week or two of the war were almost pro-Russian. You know what your greatest president Trump said: Putin is a genius, intelligent move, blah blah all that. Who had a great sympathy for it. Then all of a sudden, like in Europe, Marine Le Pen, Salvini in Italy and so on, open up to refugees, change their line, only to Ukrainian refugees. Not to dirty Palestinian
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or those who are—they are racists. I mean the right wing, they don't want them. But the horrible—I don't know—that's what I wanted to ask both of you if it's happening also with you there. Something so utterly depressing and sad. Uh now that the right-wingers became anti-Putin, they—they have a certain—Alenka also has this line of thought, we will wait—there is they have a certain military joy now, which
or those who are—they are racists. I mean the right wing, they don't want them. But the horrible—I don't know—that's what I wanted to ask both of you if it's happening also with you there. Something so utterly depressing and sad. Uh now that the right-wingers became anti-Putin, they—they have a certain—Alenka also has this line of thought, we will wait—there is they have a certain military joy now, which
Slavoj Žižek
is directly against—directly which is directly targeting LGBT, sexual oppression, global warming, whatever. Their vision is this one. Now reality is here. Forget about all those bullshitting pseudo problems, global warming, feminism, political correctness which terms to use. Now we have a conflict, it's the moment of truth. Right. And they immediately give to it sexualized meaning in the most traditional sense. They like to emphasize how in—in contrast to corrupted haha Arabs from Syria and so on that here those who escape to the West, Poland and so on, are mostly women and children while men even return to Ukraine to fight. And they say here you have your answer to transgender and so on. It's pure good old-fashioned normal sexual difference. Women are there at that place taking care of children, men are at their proper place fighting. They really feel it like a liberation. Finally this war will... and this is I think something very tragic. That's why I repeat all the time, no, this war is not the moment of truth, it's the moment of as Alain Badiou would have put it, the greatest
is directly against—directly which is directly targeting LGBT, sexual oppression, global warming, whatever. Their vision is this one. Now reality is here. Forget about all those bullshitting pseudo problems, global warming, feminism, political correctness which terms to use. Now we have a conflict, it's the moment of truth. Right. And they immediately give to it sexualized meaning in the most traditional sense. They like to emphasize how in—in contrast to corrupted haha Arabs from Syria and so on that here those who escape to the West, Poland and so on, are mostly women and children while men even return to Ukraine to fight. And they say here you have your answer to transgender and so on. It's pure good old-fashioned normal sexual difference. Women are there at that place taking care of children, men are at their proper place fighting. They really feel it like a liberation. Finally this war will... and this is I think something very tragic. That's why I repeat all the time, no, this war is not the moment of truth, it's the moment of as Alain Badiou would have put it, the greatest
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disorientation
disorientation
Slavoj Žižek
in this sense, you know. It's very tragic how not only COVID practically disappeared, but you know I have contacts—then I conclude I hope it will amuse you if I add this—I have contacts with some friendly—we still have contacts—conspiracy theorists and now they have a whole theory. They claim it began with global warming, this is for them conspiracy theory you know. Then we have COVID, now that COVID diluted and people were tired of global warming, they—and some of them go even so far as to say this is not a serious war, it's all arranged between Putin and big corporate capital. Now there is war and then, I like this, they claim there already is a next step. Guess which one? Aliens. They claim—you even noticed in newspapers
in this sense, you know. It's very tragic how not only COVID practically disappeared, but you know I have contacts—then I conclude I hope it will amuse you if I add this—I have contacts with some friendly—we still have contacts—conspiracy theorists and now they have a whole theory. They claim it began with global warming, this is for them conspiracy theory you know. Then we have COVID, now that COVID diluted and people were tired of global warming, they—and some of them go even so far as to say this is not a serious war, it's all arranged between Putin and big corporate capital. Now there is war and then, I like this, they claim there already is a next step. Guess which one? Aliens. They claim—you even noticed in newspapers
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there was a notice that we are getting regularly every minutes some signal from the space. The idea is that they are already preparing the terrain to keep us in shock and subordinate position that they will evoke even aliens. No? Yeah. We'll get it. Yeah. That's what makes me so sad. Yeah. And really really quickly yeah well Slavoj yeah quickly to one of to one of your points. Um, I don't know, Todd, you know I'm interested what Todd has has experienced by this but I do know to your question about you know how refugee you know Ukrainian refugees are viewed here. I mean it's it's a complete—and this is pretty obvious—but it's it's a complete from you know Middle Eastern refugees, right? I mean there's compilations now where you can find of actual anchors from like you know CBS News, CNN, you know just
there was a notice that we are getting regularly every minutes some signal from the space. The idea is that they are already preparing the terrain to keep us in shock and subordinate position that they will evoke even aliens. No? Yeah. We'll get it. Yeah. That's what makes me so sad. Yeah. And really really quickly yeah well Slavoj yeah quickly to one of to one of your points. Um, I don't know, Todd, you know I'm interested what Todd has has experienced by this but I do know to your question about you know how refugee you know Ukrainian refugees are viewed here. I mean it's it's a complete—and this is pretty obvious—but it's it's a complete from you know Middle Eastern refugees, right? I mean there's compilations now where you can find of actual anchors from like you know CBS News, CNN, you know just
Slavoj Žižek
saying on
saying on
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air like um accompanying the video of you know the Ukrainians, "You know these are these are these are
air like um accompanying the video of you know the Ukrainians, "You know these are these are these are
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not—these are middle-class people, this you know" as like you know there weren't any middle-class doctors or anything in Iraq when we decided to go into Iraq. No, no. The sympathy level is entirely different. You know what one of them said? But—but these are civilized people, these are—one of them said "These are blonde people
not—these are middle-class people, this you know" as like you know there weren't any middle-class doctors or anything in Iraq when we decided to go into Iraq. No, no. The sympathy level is entirely different. You know what one of them said? But—but these are civilized people, these are—one of them said "These are blonde people
Slavoj Žižek
with blue eyes." Blue eyes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah and this my god my answer is sorry but didn't blonde people with blue eyes do something not very civilized in Germany in the late 1930s you know? Oh. No, no, it's absolute. But I told you already this at the beginning I think or before we went on, that almost the lowest degree was here the one of Slovene government where we Slovenes accepted—accepted only five refugees from Afghanistan claiming this is a different culture blah blah and even our Prime Minister wrote a tweet where he said, "These are men with whom we collaborated there. Why don't they remain there and fight the Taliban?" and so on. But Slovenia, shitty country, two million people, when the Ukrainian problem problem exploded they said we can accept up to Wow. So you know what this mean like one Ukrainian is worth I mean it's such an open racism that it's incredible. They really—and my argument against them, you know in my last text I quote a lot that nightmarish guy Putin's philosopher Alexander Dugin who said there is a Russian truth, there is European truth. But if we talk like this: "Yes to Ukrainian refugees because they are our European culture," we are talking like Dugin. Right. We are interpreting this war as a war of as a clash of cultures. If nothing else, what about thousands of people who protest as you said in Russia? You know who is one among them? I was in contact with her. Did you meet her of some of this thing with that Russian lady from, I say Leningrad, I don't acknowledge Petersburg, Oksana Timofeeva. Oh yeah I know her, yeah. Yeah. You know what happened to her a week ago? She is risking her life, now she escaped to Germany, she managed, she was arrested, beaten protesting in Petersburg and so on. But then she got already half a year ago, I don't know some invitation to a symposium or fellowship short, everything paid. And now it was canceled because she is Russian. Oh my god. She—she who is a hero there. Are we crazy? I mean are we crazy? But that's a racist response, right? I mean that's the... yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's that's the problem. That's the problem that this war will give such a boost to European racism and it's crucial to prevent this. Because if we do this, even if in the short term we stop Putin, Putin will win. You know who is now my favorite Putin character? Did you read what that Metropolitan, how they called, okay the boss of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill. You know what he said? He not only praised Putin as the greatest Russian patriot but, I love this in a horrified way, he
with blue eyes." Blue eyes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah and this my god my answer is sorry but didn't blonde people with blue eyes do something not very civilized in Germany in the late 1930s you know? Oh. No, no, it's absolute. But I told you already this at the beginning I think or before we went on, that almost the lowest degree was here the one of Slovene government where we Slovenes accepted—accepted only five refugees from Afghanistan claiming this is a different culture blah blah and even our Prime Minister wrote a tweet where he said, "These are men with whom we collaborated there. Why don't they remain there and fight the Taliban?" and so on. But Slovenia, shitty country, two million people, when the Ukrainian problem problem exploded they said we can accept up to Wow. So you know what this mean like one Ukrainian is worth I mean it's such an open racism that it's incredible. They really—and my argument against them, you know in my last text I quote a lot that nightmarish guy Putin's philosopher Alexander Dugin who said there is a Russian truth, there is European truth. But if we talk like this: "Yes to Ukrainian refugees because they are our European culture," we are talking like Dugin. Right. We are interpreting this war as a war of as a clash of cultures. If nothing else, what about thousands of people who protest as you said in Russia? You know who is one among them? I was in contact with her. Did you meet her of some of this thing with that Russian lady from, I say Leningrad, I don't acknowledge Petersburg, Oksana Timofeeva. Oh yeah I know her, yeah. Yeah. You know what happened to her a week ago? She is risking her life, now she escaped to Germany, she managed, she was arrested, beaten protesting in Petersburg and so on. But then she got already half a year ago, I don't know some invitation to a symposium or fellowship short, everything paid. And now it was canceled because she is Russian. Oh my god. She—she who is a hero there. Are we crazy? I mean are we crazy? But that's a racist response, right? I mean that's the... yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's that's the problem. That's the problem that this war will give such a boost to European racism and it's crucial to prevent this. Because if we do this, even if in the short term we stop Putin, Putin will win. You know who is now my favorite Putin character? Did you read what that Metropolitan, how they called, okay the boss of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill. You know what he said? He not only praised Putin as the greatest Russian patriot but, I love this in a horrified way, he
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said that Russian military intervention into Ukraine is the highest act of loving your neighbor. I know, I saw that. You can always rely on priests to say this. I know. And you know that Francis will not name Putin, he will not name Putin because he's afraid of precisely that guy. He doesn't want to offend him because he's trying to heal this this you know split between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
said that Russian military intervention into Ukraine is the highest act of loving your neighbor. I know, I saw that. You can always rely on priests to say this. I know. And you know that Francis will not name Putin, he will not name Putin because he's afraid of precisely that guy. He doesn't want to offend him because he's trying to heal this this you know split between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, yeah. Not only... you know he's acting just like Pius, right? Like it's just like Pius who wouldn't say Hitler's name. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. But you know what also happened? It horrified me. Of how—this was also racism—you know suddenly they discovered when he bombed, I don't know if it was already Kharkiv or now that Mariupol or what, that Putin is a war criminal. Sorry. But when Russians to save Assad regime bombed Aleppo, the largest city, bigger than Damascus in Syria, the bombing was absolutely more brutal. It was a real total bombing. Ah, we just mildly protested there, you know. Like we in Europe and the Western civilization we will have to confront this problem otherwise we will be losing the battle in, I don't like the name, the third world. You know, Russia is not losing there. Even if the government like Indonesia, the government is a little bit more pro-Ukraine but ordinary people are
Yeah, yeah. Not only... you know he's acting just like Pius, right? Like it's just like Pius who wouldn't say Hitler's name. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. But you know what also happened? It horrified me. Of how—this was also racism—you know suddenly they discovered when he bombed, I don't know if it was already Kharkiv or now that Mariupol or what, that Putin is a war criminal. Sorry. But when Russians to save Assad regime bombed Aleppo, the largest city, bigger than Damascus in Syria, the bombing was absolutely more brutal. It was a real total bombing. Ah, we just mildly protested there, you know. Like we in Europe and the Western civilization we will have to confront this problem otherwise we will be losing the battle in, I don't like the name, the third world. You know, Russia is not losing there. Even if the government like Indonesia, the government is a little bit more pro-Ukraine but ordinary people are
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for Russia. In some in
for Russia. In some in
Slavoj Žižek
some Arab countries, in the Middle East it's the same. Israel incidentally is playing the same game, ambiguous. And you know what's the irony that gives you hope? The one who is the arch-counter-revolutionary conservative European Viktor
some Arab countries, in the Middle East it's the same. Israel incidentally is playing the same game, ambiguous. And you know what's the irony that gives you hope? The one who is the arch-counter-revolutionary conservative European Viktor
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Orbán of Hungary. Yeah. He doesn't want to break with Putin. His position is NATO is more
Orbán of Hungary. Yeah. He doesn't want to break with Putin. His position is NATO is more
Slavoj Žižek
guilty, Hungary should stay out of it and so on. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. I mean you have this split. Listen... okay let's stop Slavoj. Yeah let's collect things but it was so nice, you know it's now I'm returning to this shit called ordinary reality here.
guilty, Hungary should stay out of it and so on. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. I mean you have this split. Listen... okay let's stop Slavoj. Yeah let's collect things but it was so nice, you know it's now I'm returning to this shit called ordinary reality here.