Duel + Duet with Graham Harman
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-03-02 · 2:04:01 · 20,414 words
with Graham Harman
hegel-dialecticspsychoanalysisideologyphilosophy-generalcommunism-socialismscience-physicscinema-art-culturefascism-populismsubjectivityhistoryliberalism-political-correctnessecology-climaterevolution-violence
A public dialogue between Slavoj Žižek and Graham Harman (Object-Oriented Ontology) at an architecture school, moderated and open to audience Q&A. The debate ranges across ontology (realism vs. neo-modern idealism, the thing-in-itself, relations vs. objects), quantum physics as a model for an incomplete reality, the nature of subjectivity, Trump as political symptom, anti-semitism, the Soviet avant-garde and Stalinist socialist realism, architecture as ideology, and communist politics today. Žižek defends a position in which reality is itself incomplete and antagonistic, the subject is a structural deadlock rather than a master agent, and communism remains a necessary horizon for confronting problems of the commons.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “unhintergebar”
Heidegger's term, 'what you cannot step behind', for the always-already historical horizon of being that constitutes our transcendental finitude; Žižek uses it to situate Heidegger as the ultimate transcendental philosopher.
as “reality is in itself incomplete”
Žižek's ontological wager drawn from quantum physics: impenetrability is not our epistemic failure but a feature of reality itself, god built the world 'like a lazy computer designer', leaving it ontologically incomplete.
as “subject as structural deadlock”
Žižek's distinctive formulation: the subject is not a powerful agent but a failure of being, a passivity, an impossibility, the effect of a limitation rather than a constituting force.
Referenced implicitly through the Lacanian framework of social reality and ideology as a symbolic structure that the subject cannot step outside.
The paradoxical object that the subject itself is: for Lacan the subject can never answer the question 'what for an object am I?', and this surplus of not-knowing must be embodied in objet a.
as “truth vs. knowledge”
Žižek distinguishes truth (registered in the gap or failure, e.g. the gap between two conflicting maps of a village reveals social antagonism) from knowledge (a factual check on whether claims are empirically accurate).
Žižek's agreement with Harman that identity precedes activity and cannot be reduced to a flux of relations; contra the 'everything is dynamic' doxa.
Borrowed from Deleuze/Bennett: Trump's political hegemony is an assemblage of relatively independent elements, working-class populism, debt politics, etc., whose inconsistency is its strength.
Žižek uses it to name the dimension of reality that is impenetrable and incomplete in itself, not merely epistemologically inaccessible to us but ontologically antagonistic and flawed.
as “John Stuart syndrome”
Žižek's term for the smug liberal-left posture of making fun of Trump and feeling superior while Trump wins anyway, named after John Stewart / The Daily Show.
Used cautiously: in psychoanalysis the symptom is not merely a sign of something underlying but what holds the subject together, dissolving it risks psychotic breakdown rather than truth.
Touched on implicitly when Žižek argues that abstraction is part of reality, not an exit from it, reality itself can be abstract.
as “Aufhebung (sublation)”
Implicit in Žižek's Hegelian point that the Idea emerges from relations yet has an in-itself that cannot be reduced to them, the emergent entity is the Hegelian Idea.
as “Soviet techno-gnosticism”
Žižek's label for the dominant intellectual fantasy of the 1920s Soviet avant-garde: the project to create a 'new man' by overcoming sexuality and affect through mechanical self-regulation, seeking biological immortality.
A dismissive label for the rhetorical move of escaping a principled debate by particularizing, claiming there are only individual cases, no universals, deployed as a losing-side strategy.
as “problems of the commons”
Žižek's framing of why he remains communist: ecology, refugees, biogenetics, and intellectual property are all problems requiring large-scale collective decision-making that capitalism structurally cannot provide.
as “well-structured alienation”
Žižek's provocative political ideal: not transparent community self-governance but efficient bureaucratic-socialist alienation, where invisible agencies supply water and healthcare and one fights for the right kind of alienation.
Stories he reaches for 5
When a fascist leader is applauded he just receives the applause; a Stalinist leader always stands up and applauds the audience, signaling 'I am just one of you, servant of the people', a performance of false equality masking hierarchy.
“a fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just receives the applaud. a stalinist leader always stands up and applauds himself.”
Even if a pathologically jealous husband's suspicions about his wife are all true, his jealousy remains pathological, the question is not whether the facts are correct but why he needs this jealousy to maintain his identity. Applied directly to anti-semitism: whether Nazi claims about Jews are true is the wrong question.
“if we have a pathologically jealous husband, and even if all his suspicions are true... his jealousy is still pathological.”
Žižek cites Saint-Just's metaphor for the French Revolution: we are on a ship in a wild storm entering uncharted territory, we don't know where we are going, offered as a model for honest left politics that admits ignorance of the future.
“we in the french revolution we are as if on a sheep in a wild storm entering an uncharted territory we don't know where we are going.”
Lévi-Strauss asked members of a Native American village to draw maps of their village and received two completely different drawings, one concentric-hierarchical, one dualist. The truth is not which map fits reality (neither does) but that the gap between them registers the growing social antagonism, the class division at the village's origin.
“the point is not that these two images don't fit reality. their truth is in the way they miss reality.”
Psycho's central tension is architectural: the traditional vertical mother's house (modeled on Hopper's House by the Railroad) versus the horizontal modern motel. Norman Bates is literally a figure caught between two architectural types. Žižek asks: what would a postmodern synthesis, a flat motel decorated with traditional kitsch ornaments, do to Norman's psyche?
“the whole tension of norman b is he's literally a guy caught between the two. traditional architecture mother's house and modern motel.”
Works invoked 11
Vertigo film
Used for Žižek's retroactive teleology argument: San Francisco's only spiritual reason to exist was to enable Hitchcock to shoot Vertigo there.
Philosophy of Right book
Defended against the misreading that it presents an ideal corporate state model; Žižek insists Hegel's own preface (the owl of Minerva) makes clear he is describing something already passing, not prescribing an ideal.
The Parallax View book
Audience member cites Žižek's discussion of Lenin's attraction to abstract art from this book, prompting Žižek's analysis of why avant-garde art and revolutionary politics cannot come together in reality.
Psycho film
Analyzed as one of the great works about architecture: the Norman Bates tension between mother's house (vertical, traditional) and Bates Motel (horizontal, modern) as an implicit formal theology; the second murder of Arbogast discussed for camera movement.
Žižek's 1989 breakthrough book; the anti-semitism argument and the symptom concept are discussed as central contributions; Harman uses it to probe Žižek's relationship to realism.
Heidegger's Being and Time; discussed in relation to the tool analysis (breakdown/proximate failure), Dasein's thrownness, and whether Heidegger's self-conception as transcendental is correct.
Event book
Žižek's book on the concept of event; audience member praises it as a great book about how everything is a sequence of catastrophic events.
Immaterialism book
Harman's book; Žižek jokes he would distribute it in his communist empire and send people to the gulag for not reading it; engages seriously with the Dutch East India Company example and the notion of proximate failures.
Lévi-Strauss's essay 'Do Dual Organizations Exist?', the two village maps example, is Žižek's central illustration of truth as gap between representations.
Patrick Schumacher's two-volume manifesto; discussed by Harman who notes the problem of not knowing where to put doors and windows in a fully relational/gradient architecture, illustrating the dangers of excessive relationality.
A Dangerous Method film
Called 'the disgusting movie' for stopping at the crucial moment in Sabine Spielrein's story, omitting her move to the Soviet Union and the founding of the Freudian kindergarten in the Kremlin.
People invoked 29
Alexander Bogdanov negative
Lenin's great opponent; mentioned as having been seduced by the techno-gnostic idea of creating immortality and a higher level of existence in the 1920s.
Used to illustrate the early Soviet openness to psychoanalysis: Jung's patient, later allied with Freud, moved to the USSR and established the first Freudian kindergarten in the Kremlin in the early 1920s, a fact omitted by A Dangerous Method.
Jane Bennett positive
Žižek says he has 'no problem' with her notion of transhuman assemblage; describes her famous description of a trash site with interacting organic and inorganic elements as 'true productive estrangement'.
Claude Lévi-Strauss positive
His essay 'Do Dual Organizations Exist?' and the two village maps example used as Žižek's central illustration of truth residing in the gap between conflicting representations rather than in either one matching reality.
Mentioned in the context of the great artistic reenactment of the revolution in 1920-21, with the Black Square and other artists participating.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek expresses gratitude that Lenin never fell for Soviet techno-gnosticism / biological new-man ideology, unlike Trotsky and Bogdanov.
Jacques Lacan positive
Repeatedly cited: the subject as object unavailable to itself, the symptom as what holds the subject together, the jealous husband example, truth as gap. Žižek treats Lacan as his primary psychoanalytic framework.
Nancy Pelosi negative
Described as 'the truly dangerous person today' for re-normalizing the Trump situation by comparing him to Reagan and Bush and saying things will return to normal, this normalization is exactly what enables Trump's return.
Analyzed as symptom of liberal-left failure rather than a fascist; described as an escapist who denies political realities (climate, refugees); a catastrophe at the level of public decency for normalizing racism and torture advocacy.
Nicolas Malebranche positive
Called 'my favorite Cartesian philosopher'; cited for the argument that Adam before the Fall had mechanical distance from his body (raising his penis like his hand) and that the Fall was an epistemological mistake of direct contact, anticipating the Soviet techno-gnostic fantasy.
Alain Badiou positive
Called a personal friend; Žižek offers a sympathetic critique: Badiou's mathematical ontology is necessarily inconsistent and gap-ridden (which Žižek approves), but Badiou lacks a good theory connecting pure ontology, phenomenology, and the event, hence his perpetual unfinished sequels.
Graham Harman positive
Žižek's interlocutor in a sustained dialogue; finds unexpected agreements with Harman's insistence on the fixity of identity against relationists, though disagrees on the status of the thing-in-itself and flat ontology.
John D. Caputo negative
Described as 'my good friend, very dignified person, the Catholic Derridean'; criticized for claiming a humane welfare-capitalist Sweden-style system is possible, Žižek rejects this as an illusion.
Leon Trotsky positive
Described sympathetically as an abstract subject who failed because of arrogance, came to Politburo sessions to show off his Flaubert while Stalin built a patronage machine. Also cited for his 1925 text on creating a new biological man.
Bruno Latour negative
Mentioned via Harman's discussion; Žižek identifies with the neo-modern tradition against Latour's 'we were never modern' and his relational ontology, though accepts Latour's description of Trump as an escapist rather than a fascist.
Mark Fisher positive
Mentioned by Harman (not Žižek directly) as endorsing Žižek's position that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, a failure of left imagination.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Called 'my other beloved' despite others hating him as proto-totalitarian; cited for Saint-Just's storm-navigation metaphor as a model of honest radical openness in politics. Žižek also notes Robespierre opposed materialism because he saw it as aristocratic decay ideology.
Michel Foucault positive
Cited approvingly via the Chomsky-Foucault debate: Foucault's admission that he has no idea what the best political system is, a model of honest political unknowing that Žižek endorses.
Ernesto Laclau negative
Called 'my otherwise good friend'; Žižek argues against Laclau's claim that anti-semites face a contradiction between the ideological thesis and the kind Jewish neighbor, a true anti-semite resolves this instantly by saying the kindness is a mask.
Martin Heidegger positive
Described as 'the real thing, one of the great philosophers' despite political abhorrence; valued for Dasein's thrownness into historical horizons, the concept of Unhintergebar, and the admission that objects exist outside the horizon of being as a totally open question.
Moishe Postone positive
Described as a 'Chicago Marxist' with whom Žižek does not often agree, but credited for the important distinction between Nazi anti-semitism (Jews as hidden masters pulling strings from within) and contemporary anti-immigrant discourse (foreigners invading from outside).
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Psycho used as extended example of formalist-yet-ideologically-rich cinema; Vertigo used for the retroactive teleology argument about San Francisco. Žižek treats Hitchcock as a supreme formal artist.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Called 'the ultimate transcendentalist'; Žižek mocks his trick of always retreating to an a priori communicative rationality that cannot itself be objectivized, exemplified by Habermas co-writing with Ratzinger/the Pope against biogenetics.
Sergei Eisenstein positive
Mentioned to illustrate the limited popular reception of Soviet avant-garde cinema: October and The General Line were box-office failures in the USSR, while Battleship Potemkin was a hit abroad but not at home.
Andrei Tarkovsky positive
Called 'so spiritual but at the same time a brutal materialist', used to illustrate how today's idealists emphasize bodily immersion while materialists roam in abstraction. Žižek engages with his cinema formally.
Discussed ambivalently: admired for political cunning (100,000 mid-level nominations) but condemned for crushing the avant-garde. Socialist realism analyzed as genuinely popular, not just imposed. Žižek calls himself 'stalinist' ironically to flag his appreciation of collectivist thinking.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek remains self-described as 'half-Marxist' and communist; criticizes early Marx's metaphysics (only actual people produce) while endorsing the structural diagnosis of capitalism's inability to handle problems of the commons.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek consistently defends Hegel throughout, correcting misreadings: absolute knowing is retrospective, not omniscient; Hegel's Idea is not a Platonic form; Hegel is not a simple progressivist. Calls himself a Hegelian.
Immanuel Kant positive
Discussed at length: Žižek agrees with the transcendental insight but insists the transcendental circle must be overcome; uses Kant's thing-in-itself as a foil to develop the claim that the Real is incomplete in itself.
What it argues
object-oriented ontology vs. neo-modern idealismreality as intrinsically incomplete and antagonisticsubject as structural deadlock and failure of beingTrump as political symptom of the liberal left's failureSoviet avant-garde, Stalinist socialist realism, and popular tasteanti-semitism as pathological identity-forming structurecommunism as horizon for problems of the commons
Dialectical moves 10
“The impenetrability of reality is not our epistemological failure — it is a feature of reality itself; reality is in itself incomplete.”
Žižek inverts the standard epistemological reading: not 'we cannot reach the thing-in-itself' but 'the thing-in-itself is itself incomplete', making ontology rather than epistemology bear the burden.
“The subject is not the opposite of the object or its master — the subject is an object unavailable to itself; to be a subject means radically not to know what for an object I am.”
Subject is not the grand constituting agent opposed to objects but the most radical form of an object, the one that cannot access its own objecthood.
“Truth is not in which representation fits reality; the truth is in the very gap that separates two conflicting representations.”
The two contradictory village maps both falsify reality, yet together they register the social antagonism that is the deepest truth, truth lives in the failure to represent, not in the representation.
“A pathologically jealous husband's jealousy remains pathological even if all his suspicions are true — the point is not whether the claims are correct but why he needs the jealousy to maintain his identity.”
Ideology is not about false beliefs but about the structural necessity of a belief for the subject's identity, the empirical truth of the belief is irrelevant.
“Today idealists emphasize our limitation to the body while materialists have the freedom to move in total immaterial abstraction.”
The classical materialism/idealism polarity has inverted: post-Heidegger idealism stresses bodily finitude, while materialism roams free in pure abstraction.
“Ideology is the obfuscation of antagonism — not a false picture of reality but the projection of antagonism onto an external enemy.”
Ideology's function is not to misrepresent facts but to displace the inherent social contradiction outward, making it appear external.
“Far from being an open lost paradise, the 1920s Soviet avant-garde harbored a techno-gnostic fantasy of overcoming humanity itself — Stalin's imposition of socialist realism was genuinely popular.”
The standard narrative (vibrant avant-garde brutally crushed by Stalin) conceals that ordinary people didn't like the avant-garde and that the 20s were themselves ideologically bizarre.
“To understand elizabethan England you don't need Shakespeare — to understand elizabethan England you need to read Shakespeare: the retroactive spiritual result of the wars was Thucydides's book.”
Historical context does not explain the artwork; the artwork retroactively bestows meaning on the historical context, the spiritual function of elizabethan England was to enable Shakespeare.
“The only reason San Francisco exists was to enable Hitchcock to shoot Vertigo there.”
A playful extreme of the retroactive teleology argument: at the material-causal level nonsense, but spiritually true in the sense that what a historical formation bequeaths defines its significance.
“Hegel's absolute knowing has nothing to do with 'now it's the end of history, I know everything' — when we can conceptualize a social order, it means its time has already passed.”
Absolute knowing is a limit-concept marking the closure of a historical form, not a claim to total knowledge; Hegel's own Philosophy of Right describes something already disappearing.
Claims 15
asserts
Reality is not merely unknowable to us but is itself ontologically incomplete, antagonistic, and flawed — imperfection is a feature of reality, not of our access to it.ontology / nature of the Real
asserts
The subject is not a powerful constituting agent but a structural deadlock, a failure of being, a passivity — an entity available to itself only as an enigma.subjectivity
asserts
Communism has an in-itself: its essence cannot be reduced to the relations and people who instantiate it, and it is legitimate to ask what was already possible — and catastrophic — in the idea from the beginning.communism / essentialism
asserts
Trump is not a fascist but a political escapist — and his success is a symptom of the failure of the liberal-centre and left, not its cause.Trump / contemporary politics
asserts
Anti-semitism is pathological not because its empirical claims about Jews are false but because the subject needs this structure to maintain its identity — factual debunking misses the point.anti-semitism / ideology
asserts
The correct response to Trump is not the 'John Stuart syndrome' of smug mockery but a transformation of the left — without addressing the left's failure, Trump or a successor will simply return.left politics / Trump
rejects
A great work of art is not explained by its historical context; rather, to understand Elizabethan England you need Shakespeare, and the retroactive spiritual function of the historical moment is to make such a work possible.historicism in art interpretation
asserts
Stalinist socialist realism was not simply an imposition on a thriving avant-garde; it was a genuinely popular move because ordinary people disliked futurism and constructivism.Soviet culture / Stalinist realism
rejects
The 1920s Soviet avant-garde harbored a techno-gnostic fantasy of overcoming humanity and creating a new biological man, and we should not romanticize it as a lost paradise.Soviet avant-garde mythology
asserts
Abstraction is not an exit from reality but part of it — reality itself can be abstract, and modern materialism paradoxically gives freedom to move in total immaterial abstraction while idealism emphasises bodily finitude.materialism / abstraction
asserts
Truth is found not in matching claims to facts but in the very gap between conflicting representations — as Lévi-Strauss's two village maps show, the gap registers the social antagonism that is the deepest truth.truth / ideology / social antagonism
rejects
The left's obsession with local democracy, immediate transparency, and non-representational community politics is a mistake; we need large-scale collective decisions and the right kind of alienation.left political theory / participatory democracy
rejects
The transcendental approach (Habermas-style) is insufficient to confront today's problems; the transcendental horizon must be overcome rather than used as a safe refuge.Habermas / transcendental philosophy
asserts
Nancy Pelosi is more dangerous than Trump because she re-normalizes the situation — treating Trump as just another Republican cycle rather than a genuine catastrophe.liberal politics / Trump normalization
asserts
Objects (social causes like communism) can be entirely dependent on relations for their existence yet still have an in-itself that exceeds and is irreducible to those relations.object/relation ontology
Quotes 15
“the secrets of the egyptians were also the secrets for the egyptians themselves.”Slavoj Žižek · reality is incomplete in itself, not merely unknowable to us
“the point is not that these two images don't fit reality. their truth is in the way they miss reality.”Slavoj Žižek · truth lives in the gap between representations, not in correspondence
“if we have a pathologically jealous husband, and even if all his suspicions are true... his jealousy is still pathological. because the true point is not are my obsessions about my wife true or not? the true point is, why do I need this?”Slavoj Žižek · ideology is about structural need, not factual error
“subject is for me rather an effect of limitation. subject means we are in certain horizon we cannot move beyond.”Slavoj Žižek · subject as structural deadlock / failure of being
“to be a subject means radically not to know what for an object i am.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian subject as self-opacity / objet a
“god constructed our world like a lazy computer designer.”Slavoj Žižek · reality is ontologically incomplete — the quantum physics joke
“ideology is for me to obfuscate the antagonism. to project it onto an external enemy.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as displacement of antagonism
“you cannot totally lie. truth is somehow always articulated.”Slavoj Žižek · the Freudian impossibility of complete ideological deception
“a fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just receives the applaud. a stalinist leader always stands up and applauds himself.”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinist ideology of false popular equality
“the only reason for your stupid city, san francisco, to exist was to enable hitchcock to shoot vertigo there.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactive spiritual teleology — artworks bestow meaning on history
“my politics is well-structured alienation in an efficient bureaucratic socialism.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's deliberately provocative political ideal against localist utopianism
“trump is really a catastrophe. not only economic political, but not even moral, a catastrophe at the level of public decency.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump's danger is normalization of what was previously unthinkable
“problems are all the problems that you enumerated — refugees, these are problems of our commons. and it's clear that if we keep just capitalism the way we have it, it reproduces itself and it doesn't allow us to confront ecological.”Slavoj Žižek · communism as horizon for problems of the commons
“today, paradoxically in 19th century still materialism meant brutal, tasteless reality. but today idealists emphasize our limitation to body and so on, while materialists today have this freedom to move in total immaterial abstraction.”Slavoj Žižek · inversion of materialism/idealism polarity in contemporary thought
“what hegel calls absolute knowing is... when we can bring to concept a certain social order, it means its time has passed, it's over.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's absolute knowing as retrospective closure, not omniscience
Transcript 292 turns
Audience Member 6
the microphone can you all hear me fine?
the microphone can you all hear me fine?
Graham Harman
slavoy has insisted tonight that we call him by his first name, and i'm going to try to force myself to do that. usually i call famous authors by their family name because i've always worried about the borrowed glory of a false intimacy of calling somebody by first name, but we'll do as he asks. i used to tell my friends that slavoy was the only philosopher i'd pay $100 to see live. before tonight i had the chance to see him five times, and all of those were free. and this is number six, and imagine my surprise to discover that hernan removed $100 from my paycheck.
slavoy has insisted tonight that we call him by his first name, and i'm going to try to force myself to do that. usually i call famous authors by their family name because i've always worried about the borrowed glory of a false intimacy of calling somebody by first name, but we'll do as he asks. i used to tell my friends that slavoy was the only philosopher i'd pay $100 to see live. before tonight i had the chance to see him five times, and all of those were free. and this is number six, and imagine my surprise to discover that hernan removed $100 from my paycheck.
Audience Member 6
thank you. thank you.
thank you. thank you.
Graham Harman
well, in some ways we're opposites. i'm an object-oriented philosopher, and you could call slavoy one of the major subject-oriented philosophers along with his compatriot or his colleague, alain badiou. but there are some things that i really gravitate towards in his writing. first of all, i think philosophers should be funny. too few of them are. and i would have to say that slavoy is probably the first western philosopher since giordano bruno in the 1500s who could probably have made a living as a stand-up comic if he had to. now of course, bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. i doubt that's going to be slavoy's fate, but in a different time perhaps, you can imagine a situation where it could have gone that direction. also simply the animal energy of his writings and his public speaking. when i started graduate school in the early 1990s, there was a certain way of writing that i know he hates also that involves putting everything in parentheses and quotation marks, and this is simply... de-energizing and debilitating and he avoids this wonderfully. he simply takes a stand on everything. and challenges you to disagree. but here are some differences. you could say that slavoy belongs to a modern tradition of philosophy, whereas i would say that i belong to what i call a non-modern tradition of philosophy that's more recent. i'm stealing that term non-modern from brunoour. slav would say that we are seeking a re-enchantment of the world after the alienation of modernity, whereas i would say the world was never disenchanted in the first place. we've always been fascinated by the world. we've always been entangled with it and involved with it. another thing, an issue i have with modern philosophy is that modern philosophy is in many ways a taxonomy. it says there are at least two different kinds of beings, thought and world, or nature and spirits, or human and world. it starts by saying there are two totally different kinds of things and they both need a different ontology. to handle them properly. the human thought needs one kind of ontology. nature needs another ontology. whereas, and by the way, i see this as an extension of the medieval taxonomy, which was between creator and created. there were two also basic kinds of things for medieval ontology. uh... whereas in non-mod philosophy, we start with what we call a flat ontology, which means we start off by assuming that everything has to be treated in the same terms. so we start off by assuming that the human being is simply an object like others. yes, a very interesting object to us, an object that has lots of talents, perhaps, that chairs and tables do not, but an object nonetheless, and that you cannot start off by inscribing what's special about humans into the very foundation of philosophy. that has to come later. so you have to start off, this is why we give long lists a lot in object-oriented ontology. i all say paper, grasshoppers, the planet mars, chemicals, and so forth. you'll find nine or ten of these objects in a row. it's an attempt to create that sense of flattening for the reader. all right, there's also a kind of philosophy that i would call neo-modern philosophy, which i think describes slavo's position a little more accurately. i should say that neo usually is taken as a derogatory prefix. if you call somebody neoomething or other, it often means that you're just accusing them of rehashing the original version. that's not what i mean here. by neo-modern philosophy, i mean the kind that doesn't stay with a simple opposition between subject and object, but that tends to assimilate the object into the subject. in some way. and so this starts with authors like maimon and fichte, the ones immediately after kant, where kant said there is a thing in itself out there that we can think about, but we can never know. these critiques of kant tended to say that that itself is a performative contradiction because if you're thinking a thing outside thought, that itself is a thought, and therefore it makes no sense to talk about this thing in itself that's outside of thought. the thing in itself has to somehow be inscribed in the thought. the circle of thought already. you find a lot of this in slavoy's work, you find it in bieu's, you also find it in ku of my own generation. uh... it also has an inverse, which i would call arch-mod modernism, which is where they're reducing the subject to the object. say it's a cognitive science, a way of trying to minimize the modern difference by letting science be the dominant discourse. and what slavoy tells us in a number of his publications is that the way hegel radicalized kant by getting rid of the thing in itself is also the way that lacan radicalized freud, so that the unconscious in freud is in some sense a real thing, a quasi-biological entity that's there, hidden beneath appearance. for laccon, that's not really true. the unconscious occurs in the gaps and ruptures on the surface. there's not really a hidden place where the unconscious is. now, what i would say is that modern, sorry, neo-modern philosophy radicalizes kant in the wrong way. it tends to say that the problem with kant, this great genius, is that he allowed for finitude, this idea that humans cannot reach the thing in itself because we are only experiencing according to space, time and the12 categories of the understanding, and so we can never get at the thing outside there. and the neo-modern philosophers tend to try to get rid of this finitude which they distrust. i would go the other way. i think the finitude is... insurmountable. i think the problem with kant is that he left the human-world relation at the center of philosophy and it's the only real relation he can talk about. kant doesn't really allow you to talk about the collision of two inanimate entities except insofar as we are talking about it and therefore the conditions of human experience apply to discussing that. so i think what should have happened is people should have said kant is a genius precisely because of the finitude. he just shouldn't have reduced it to the human-world gap so that we poor humans can't reach the in itself. it's a problem of the subject, of the human being. for me, the same problem happens when inanimate objects collide. to take the old example from islamic philosophy, when fire burns cotton, the fire is not making contact with all the properties of the cotton, but only with a caricature. or a translation or a distortion of the cotton. and so there's no direct contact possible in the inanimate world either. and so the same problem that happens in the subject happens in the inanimate world as well. this is one of the central principles of as we. call object-oriented ontology. so if you want to speak about this counterfactually in terms of the history of philosophy, instead of a german idealism, there could have been a german realism at that same moment that took the path i've just sketched. and it was quite plausible because german philosophy at the time was very much under the influence of leibniz, and leibiz also allows for this world of non-human things mirroring each other and reflecting each other. this could have happened. so in a way, is just trying to create german idealism 200 years after it first could have been born. all right, now realism. this is another probable difference between us. i know slavi doesn't like being called an idealist always, but he certainly wouldn't call himself a realist, i don't think. realism is sometimes also called naive realism. as if there were other kinds according to these critics. they think all the realism is naif. and this means, according to them, the idea that there's a reality outside the mind that the mind has nothing to do with constructing. i think that's the wrong way to define naive realism. i think naive realism is the kind of realism that thinks there's a world outside the mind and i can know it. that's the first problem because i think the real is so real that it cannot be known. it can be gotten at indirectly. it's not completely inaccessible, but it's inaccessible only through what i call lure. something is summoning you, something is drawing you, with aesthetics being a very clear case of that. something is summoning you without being directly accessible. that's one problem with what they call naive realism. adrian johnston, who among many other things is one of the best interpreters of slavoy that we have, claims that i will be left with nothing but negative theology if i take this path. but that assumes that there's only two options. you either know something or you don't. whereas this is what is called menoo's paradox. this is what socrates criticizes, the idea that you already know something or you don't. i think the truth is that we are somewhere in between those. and this is the foundation for philosophia and the greek meaning of it, that it's a love of wisdom. you never attain the wisdom. you're always... somewhere in between there. and i think also this is what aesthetics is about. aesthetics is not a kind of knowledge any more than philosophy is. and this holds for architecture as well as the arts. you obviously make use of knowledge in architecture, just as we do in philosophy, but you're not primarily producing knowledge. that's a side effect at most of what you're doing in architecture. you're producing something else. you're producing something that's not ever fully knowable, not ever fully paraphraseable in literal terms, in terms of you can say literally what the 25 qualities of this building are. you can try that, but it was never going to work. so aesthetics is very central for triple o. and how am i doing on time, anna? fine okay. here's another problem i have with naive realism. people always say realism is the view that something exists outside the mind. who says that the mind is the only thing within an outside? there's an outside also when two objects interact. and i say that there's a reality outside of that interaction. when the fire burns the cotton, there's a cotton outside of what the fire interacts with. and so realism is something that affects not just us, something outside our mind. it implies also something outside of objects when they interact. so objects translate each other, just as we translate them. alfred north whitehead got a glimpse of this in his wonderful sort of throwback philosophy in the 1920s, but whitehead for me is too relational. he reduces objects to their relations of other things, whereas o is all about the irreducibility of objects to their relations. so... what is an example where slavoy seems to be an anti-realist? i'll take one of my favorite examples from the sublime object of ideology, which was not his first book, but his breakthrough book. the book that really made him known to a wide audience from 1989. and that is his very interesting remarks on anti-semitism. he makes there a very interesting claim that if somebody just says, jews conspire and manipulate. that's not quite anti-semitism yet. anti-semitism is the next step where you say they conspire and manipulate because they're jews. in other words, there's some hidden essential core that's causing the conspiracies and manipulation. fascinating idea. yeah. but i would put it somewhat differently. it sounds there like he's saying that the mistake is in saying that jewishness is some sort of real entity outside of all the individual cases. now, if an anti-semite were to make anti-semitic remarks, you would, of course, say, you shouldn't generalize, right? jews are individual people, each with their own qualities and traits, and you can't generalize about a whole group. that is something you would and should say. however,, i would take a different tack in responding to the anti-semite. i would say that you cannot know what that essence is. and i'm going to show this by making a parallel critique of edward said. edward said, i could never say anything against him in cairo because he was a kind of saint on campus. and really i was very happy to have a major. person writing in the u.s. media defending the palestinian side, but there's a problem with his major book, orientalism, several problems, but the problem i'm going to talk about here it's at one point in the book, he relies on the argument that you can't generalize about the orient. and of course, orient is too big a term in its colonialist use. refer to the middle east and to the far east and so forth. but leaving that aside, he says at one point in the book that you can't generalize. everybody's an individual, right? there are just a lot of individuals in the middle east. you can't make a sweeping statement about what the orient is. but it occurred to me that that is close to the ontology of margaret thatcher, who says that society doesn't exist. there's only families and individuals. and the fact is, we do try to learn things about culture as a whole. when i went to egypt for the first time in 2000, there were a lot of things i had to learn about middle eastern culture. you can put your foot in your mouth if you don't. you have to learn a lot of things about what can be said, what can't be said. one of my students in cairo who spoke fluent english had a night job telemarketing to the u us. and he had to take a culture course about americans. so i got to see that in reverse, and it was hilarious. they taught him you can't ask americans if they're married, you can't ask them their salary, all things that are very normal for a. taxi driver in cairo to ask you. so... it wouldn't make much sense to say that there's no such thing as egyptian culture or middle eastern culture. you should be able to say something about it. i think the problem with orientalism and the problem with essentialism comes when somebody claims to know it. so in other words, it's not orientalist to say egyptian culture is different in some ways from english culture. the problem comes when you say, we know that the middle eastern peoples are incapable of self-rule and therefore they need a viceroy to come from europe and command them. this is where the anti-semitism, the racism, the bad essentialism come in. i don't think there's a problem with essence as such, and i think one of the problems with recent theory is it's been too suspicious of the notion of essence. it takes away the realist part of theory. because if everything has its own character, then everything has an essence for that very reason. it's a changeable essence maybe. but it's an essence. and in fact, this is how aristotle defines substance. substance another much a beleaguered concept today. in contemporary philosophy. the most interesting definition aristotle gives of substance is it's the thing that can have different qualities at different times. so white is always white and sad is always sad, but socrates can be happy one minute and sad the next. that's what makes him a substance. the most interesting human characters are often capable of different. polarizations of personality at different times. the famous sinner-saint polarity. you've got paul, who's the persecutor of the christians and then becomes the apostle of the christians. and i've always been fascinated by the example of scandinavia, now known for the most humane social democracy in europe, but they were once the marauding vikings. so what's the proper reaction to that? i don't think it would be to say necessarily that there is no essence to scandinavian civilization. it probably means that there is, but it's something deeper than either marauding or social democracy. those are surface properties. and we might get into this if we come to quantum theory lately, which i know slavoy likes a lot. all right, so let me just... if i have time for a few. brief remarks before i wrap it up. okay.
well, in some ways we're opposites. i'm an object-oriented philosopher, and you could call slavoy one of the major subject-oriented philosophers along with his compatriot or his colleague, alain badiou. but there are some things that i really gravitate towards in his writing. first of all, i think philosophers should be funny. too few of them are. and i would have to say that slavoy is probably the first western philosopher since giordano bruno in the 1500s who could probably have made a living as a stand-up comic if he had to. now of course, bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. i doubt that's going to be slavoy's fate, but in a different time perhaps, you can imagine a situation where it could have gone that direction. also simply the animal energy of his writings and his public speaking. when i started graduate school in the early 1990s, there was a certain way of writing that i know he hates also that involves putting everything in parentheses and quotation marks, and this is simply... de-energizing and debilitating and he avoids this wonderfully. he simply takes a stand on everything. and challenges you to disagree. but here are some differences. you could say that slavoy belongs to a modern tradition of philosophy, whereas i would say that i belong to what i call a non-modern tradition of philosophy that's more recent. i'm stealing that term non-modern from brunoour. slav would say that we are seeking a re-enchantment of the world after the alienation of modernity, whereas i would say the world was never disenchanted in the first place. we've always been fascinated by the world. we've always been entangled with it and involved with it. another thing, an issue i have with modern philosophy is that modern philosophy is in many ways a taxonomy. it says there are at least two different kinds of beings, thought and world, or nature and spirits, or human and world. it starts by saying there are two totally different kinds of things and they both need a different ontology. to handle them properly. the human thought needs one kind of ontology. nature needs another ontology. whereas, and by the way, i see this as an extension of the medieval taxonomy, which was between creator and created. there were two also basic kinds of things for medieval ontology. uh... whereas in non-mod philosophy, we start with what we call a flat ontology, which means we start off by assuming that everything has to be treated in the same terms. so we start off by assuming that the human being is simply an object like others. yes, a very interesting object to us, an object that has lots of talents, perhaps, that chairs and tables do not, but an object nonetheless, and that you cannot start off by inscribing what's special about humans into the very foundation of philosophy. that has to come later. so you have to start off, this is why we give long lists a lot in object-oriented ontology. i all say paper, grasshoppers, the planet mars, chemicals, and so forth. you'll find nine or ten of these objects in a row. it's an attempt to create that sense of flattening for the reader. all right, there's also a kind of philosophy that i would call neo-modern philosophy, which i think describes slavo's position a little more accurately. i should say that neo usually is taken as a derogatory prefix. if you call somebody neoomething or other, it often means that you're just accusing them of rehashing the original version. that's not what i mean here. by neo-modern philosophy, i mean the kind that doesn't stay with a simple opposition between subject and object, but that tends to assimilate the object into the subject. in some way. and so this starts with authors like maimon and fichte, the ones immediately after kant, where kant said there is a thing in itself out there that we can think about, but we can never know. these critiques of kant tended to say that that itself is a performative contradiction because if you're thinking a thing outside thought, that itself is a thought, and therefore it makes no sense to talk about this thing in itself that's outside of thought. the thing in itself has to somehow be inscribed in the thought. the circle of thought already. you find a lot of this in slavoy's work, you find it in bieu's, you also find it in ku of my own generation. uh... it also has an inverse, which i would call arch-mod modernism, which is where they're reducing the subject to the object. say it's a cognitive science, a way of trying to minimize the modern difference by letting science be the dominant discourse. and what slavoy tells us in a number of his publications is that the way hegel radicalized kant by getting rid of the thing in itself is also the way that lacan radicalized freud, so that the unconscious in freud is in some sense a real thing, a quasi-biological entity that's there, hidden beneath appearance. for laccon, that's not really true. the unconscious occurs in the gaps and ruptures on the surface. there's not really a hidden place where the unconscious is. now, what i would say is that modern, sorry, neo-modern philosophy radicalizes kant in the wrong way. it tends to say that the problem with kant, this great genius, is that he allowed for finitude, this idea that humans cannot reach the thing in itself because we are only experiencing according to space, time and the12 categories of the understanding, and so we can never get at the thing outside there. and the neo-modern philosophers tend to try to get rid of this finitude which they distrust. i would go the other way. i think the finitude is... insurmountable. i think the problem with kant is that he left the human-world relation at the center of philosophy and it's the only real relation he can talk about. kant doesn't really allow you to talk about the collision of two inanimate entities except insofar as we are talking about it and therefore the conditions of human experience apply to discussing that. so i think what should have happened is people should have said kant is a genius precisely because of the finitude. he just shouldn't have reduced it to the human-world gap so that we poor humans can't reach the in itself. it's a problem of the subject, of the human being. for me, the same problem happens when inanimate objects collide. to take the old example from islamic philosophy, when fire burns cotton, the fire is not making contact with all the properties of the cotton, but only with a caricature. or a translation or a distortion of the cotton. and so there's no direct contact possible in the inanimate world either. and so the same problem that happens in the subject happens in the inanimate world as well. this is one of the central principles of as we. call object-oriented ontology. so if you want to speak about this counterfactually in terms of the history of philosophy, instead of a german idealism, there could have been a german realism at that same moment that took the path i've just sketched. and it was quite plausible because german philosophy at the time was very much under the influence of leibniz, and leibiz also allows for this world of non-human things mirroring each other and reflecting each other. this could have happened. so in a way, is just trying to create german idealism 200 years after it first could have been born. all right, now realism. this is another probable difference between us. i know slavi doesn't like being called an idealist always, but he certainly wouldn't call himself a realist, i don't think. realism is sometimes also called naive realism. as if there were other kinds according to these critics. they think all the realism is naif. and this means, according to them, the idea that there's a reality outside the mind that the mind has nothing to do with constructing. i think that's the wrong way to define naive realism. i think naive realism is the kind of realism that thinks there's a world outside the mind and i can know it. that's the first problem because i think the real is so real that it cannot be known. it can be gotten at indirectly. it's not completely inaccessible, but it's inaccessible only through what i call lure. something is summoning you, something is drawing you, with aesthetics being a very clear case of that. something is summoning you without being directly accessible. that's one problem with what they call naive realism. adrian johnston, who among many other things is one of the best interpreters of slavoy that we have, claims that i will be left with nothing but negative theology if i take this path. but that assumes that there's only two options. you either know something or you don't. whereas this is what is called menoo's paradox. this is what socrates criticizes, the idea that you already know something or you don't. i think the truth is that we are somewhere in between those. and this is the foundation for philosophia and the greek meaning of it, that it's a love of wisdom. you never attain the wisdom. you're always... somewhere in between there. and i think also this is what aesthetics is about. aesthetics is not a kind of knowledge any more than philosophy is. and this holds for architecture as well as the arts. you obviously make use of knowledge in architecture, just as we do in philosophy, but you're not primarily producing knowledge. that's a side effect at most of what you're doing in architecture. you're producing something else. you're producing something that's not ever fully knowable, not ever fully paraphraseable in literal terms, in terms of you can say literally what the 25 qualities of this building are. you can try that, but it was never going to work. so aesthetics is very central for triple o. and how am i doing on time, anna? fine okay. here's another problem i have with naive realism. people always say realism is the view that something exists outside the mind. who says that the mind is the only thing within an outside? there's an outside also when two objects interact. and i say that there's a reality outside of that interaction. when the fire burns the cotton, there's a cotton outside of what the fire interacts with. and so realism is something that affects not just us, something outside our mind. it implies also something outside of objects when they interact. so objects translate each other, just as we translate them. alfred north whitehead got a glimpse of this in his wonderful sort of throwback philosophy in the 1920s, but whitehead for me is too relational. he reduces objects to their relations of other things, whereas o is all about the irreducibility of objects to their relations. so... what is an example where slavoy seems to be an anti-realist? i'll take one of my favorite examples from the sublime object of ideology, which was not his first book, but his breakthrough book. the book that really made him known to a wide audience from 1989. and that is his very interesting remarks on anti-semitism. he makes there a very interesting claim that if somebody just says, jews conspire and manipulate. that's not quite anti-semitism yet. anti-semitism is the next step where you say they conspire and manipulate because they're jews. in other words, there's some hidden essential core that's causing the conspiracies and manipulation. fascinating idea. yeah. but i would put it somewhat differently. it sounds there like he's saying that the mistake is in saying that jewishness is some sort of real entity outside of all the individual cases. now, if an anti-semite were to make anti-semitic remarks, you would, of course, say, you shouldn't generalize, right? jews are individual people, each with their own qualities and traits, and you can't generalize about a whole group. that is something you would and should say. however,, i would take a different tack in responding to the anti-semite. i would say that you cannot know what that essence is. and i'm going to show this by making a parallel critique of edward said. edward said, i could never say anything against him in cairo because he was a kind of saint on campus. and really i was very happy to have a major. person writing in the u.s. media defending the palestinian side, but there's a problem with his major book, orientalism, several problems, but the problem i'm going to talk about here it's at one point in the book, he relies on the argument that you can't generalize about the orient. and of course, orient is too big a term in its colonialist use. refer to the middle east and to the far east and so forth. but leaving that aside, he says at one point in the book that you can't generalize. everybody's an individual, right? there are just a lot of individuals in the middle east. you can't make a sweeping statement about what the orient is. but it occurred to me that that is close to the ontology of margaret thatcher, who says that society doesn't exist. there's only families and individuals. and the fact is, we do try to learn things about culture as a whole. when i went to egypt for the first time in 2000, there were a lot of things i had to learn about middle eastern culture. you can put your foot in your mouth if you don't. you have to learn a lot of things about what can be said, what can't be said. one of my students in cairo who spoke fluent english had a night job telemarketing to the u us. and he had to take a culture course about americans. so i got to see that in reverse, and it was hilarious. they taught him you can't ask americans if they're married, you can't ask them their salary, all things that are very normal for a. taxi driver in cairo to ask you. so... it wouldn't make much sense to say that there's no such thing as egyptian culture or middle eastern culture. you should be able to say something about it. i think the problem with orientalism and the problem with essentialism comes when somebody claims to know it. so in other words, it's not orientalist to say egyptian culture is different in some ways from english culture. the problem comes when you say, we know that the middle eastern peoples are incapable of self-rule and therefore they need a viceroy to come from europe and command them. this is where the anti-semitism, the racism, the bad essentialism come in. i don't think there's a problem with essence as such, and i think one of the problems with recent theory is it's been too suspicious of the notion of essence. it takes away the realist part of theory. because if everything has its own character, then everything has an essence for that very reason. it's a changeable essence maybe. but it's an essence. and in fact, this is how aristotle defines substance. substance another much a beleaguered concept today. in contemporary philosophy. the most interesting definition aristotle gives of substance is it's the thing that can have different qualities at different times. so white is always white and sad is always sad, but socrates can be happy one minute and sad the next. that's what makes him a substance. the most interesting human characters are often capable of different. polarizations of personality at different times. the famous sinner-saint polarity. you've got paul, who's the persecutor of the christians and then becomes the apostle of the christians. and i've always been fascinated by the example of scandinavia, now known for the most humane social democracy in europe, but they were once the marauding vikings. so what's the proper reaction to that? i don't think it would be to say necessarily that there is no essence to scandinavian civilization. it probably means that there is, but it's something deeper than either marauding or social democracy. those are surface properties. and we might get into this if we come to quantum theory lately, which i know slavoy likes a lot. all right, so let me just... if i have time for a few. brief remarks before i wrap it up. okay.
Slavoj Žižek
i.
i.
Graham Harman
all right, now, one of issue that's going to come up tonight is that objects for me are non-relational, objects of that which resist any reduction to their components or to their outward effects. and so objects for me are non-relational. and i know sometimes slavoy seems to agree with x, as when he was reading my materialism book recently, but sometimes he talks, when he's writing against levi bryant, he said that the subject is nothing but a pure network of relations. so i want to hear what he says about that. architecturally, there is an implication here, and i'll refer to patrick schumacher again in his huge manifesto, two-volume autopoiesis of architecture, which i learned a lot from actually, as a newcomer to architecture. he borrows luhmann's terminology and says that architecture is about framing social communications. i think it cannot be that, or it cannot be just that. you're not creating communication, you're also creating non-communication. you're making discrete things with an inside, and that inside does not completely communicate with the outside. so architecture has to be at least in large part about non-communication. and one of my favorite moments in patrick's book when he says, you every architectural theory has its vices, and i have to admit my vice is i don't know where to put the doors and windows. because everything's supposed to be a gradient and flowing naturally and so it becomes kind of arbitrary way to articulate the building. and i think that's a serious problem. and david rou, in a very nice piece that he wrote in tarp, architectural manual a few years ago, talked about the worry that with the excessive concern with how the building flows into its environments, gradually, gently, without any discernible break off. that architecture could blend into ecology and disappear, that everything could become about the carbon footprint and there could be no autonomy to the discipline. so i would worry about bringing too much relationality into architecture and another way that relationality is usually brought into a lot of fields is to bring the socio-political relationality into it. now, i'm not enough of a formalist to say that an aesthetic work cannot communicate with any of the socio-political circumstances. of course it can, and there are obvious examples like uncle tom's cabin or picasso's guernica. and the list goes on. however, i don't think that they arbitrarily include everything in their environment. it's a very selective process by which an object assimilates influences from its environments, and we have to know more about how that process occurs before we simply shoot the moon and say everything's social and political, there's nothing outside of ideology, there's nothing outside of politics. so i guess i will leave it there. thank you. hope that wasn't too long.
all right, now, one of issue that's going to come up tonight is that objects for me are non-relational, objects of that which resist any reduction to their components or to their outward effects. and so objects for me are non-relational. and i know sometimes slavoy seems to agree with x, as when he was reading my materialism book recently, but sometimes he talks, when he's writing against levi bryant, he said that the subject is nothing but a pure network of relations. so i want to hear what he says about that. architecturally, there is an implication here, and i'll refer to patrick schumacher again in his huge manifesto, two-volume autopoiesis of architecture, which i learned a lot from actually, as a newcomer to architecture. he borrows luhmann's terminology and says that architecture is about framing social communications. i think it cannot be that, or it cannot be just that. you're not creating communication, you're also creating non-communication. you're making discrete things with an inside, and that inside does not completely communicate with the outside. so architecture has to be at least in large part about non-communication. and one of my favorite moments in patrick's book when he says, you every architectural theory has its vices, and i have to admit my vice is i don't know where to put the doors and windows. because everything's supposed to be a gradient and flowing naturally and so it becomes kind of arbitrary way to articulate the building. and i think that's a serious problem. and david rou, in a very nice piece that he wrote in tarp, architectural manual a few years ago, talked about the worry that with the excessive concern with how the building flows into its environments, gradually, gently, without any discernible break off. that architecture could blend into ecology and disappear, that everything could become about the carbon footprint and there could be no autonomy to the discipline. so i would worry about bringing too much relationality into architecture and another way that relationality is usually brought into a lot of fields is to bring the socio-political relationality into it. now, i'm not enough of a formalist to say that an aesthetic work cannot communicate with any of the socio-political circumstances. of course it can, and there are obvious examples like uncle tom's cabin or picasso's guernica. and the list goes on. however, i don't think that they arbitrarily include everything in their environment. it's a very selective process by which an object assimilates influences from its environments, and we have to know more about how that process occurs before we simply shoot the moon and say everything's social and political, there's nothing outside of ideology, there's nothing outside of politics. so i guess i will leave it there. thank you. hope that wasn't too long.
Slavoj Žižek
does it work? i hope it works also.
does it work? i hope it works also.
Graham Harman
works.
works.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, okay. ugh. i see a problem today.'t i mean the topic. you indicated is so fundamental that i have no illusions that we will arrive. it would be a great success if we just somehow clarify where the difference really is. because i think the biggest problem in so-called philosophical dialogues, it's not who is right, but in what does the difference reside in the first place. and here i'm pretty much a pessimist. i think the entire history philosophy is a history of one guy allegedly superseding the other but really misreading him. for example, as an old plato admirer, i claim it's clear how aristotle misread plato. or to go later, it's clear that kant misread leibniz and the previous philosophers. fichte schelling misread kant, hegel misread all of them. my favorite example, if any guy didn't understand hegel, it was marx and so on and so on. so let's just be modest and i will just try to mark some differences. there are so many things to say. first, already beginning with that latour thesis, we were never modern and so on. i'm here a naive, i admit it openly, a naive believer in modernity. i claim that big with modernity, something happens at the level of science, modern science, at the level of politics, at the level of subjectivity and so on and so on, which simply cannot be dismissed as just another form of enchantment and so on and so on. just look at politics, whatever doubts we do have, but the whole political vision of revolution is something radically new. that's just one point on which i would insist. then let's go on. maybe one of the differences that we have is, although you have some sympathy for heidegger, but if there ever was a thinker, i claim, who is radically historicist and transcendental, it's heidegger. here i never got your reference to quadruple obviously how you link it with heidegger because when heidegger speaks about das geviert, the quadruple, his point is, of course, not in the usual kantian sense, but in more radical sense transcendental. what do i mean by transcendental? it's simply the idea that because of our finitude, we never speak from a void. we are always thrown into certain pre-understanding of the world. which is always, they like transcendental thinkers did phrase, always already here. you cannot, you never encounter, as you know very well, you never encounter simply things the way they are. you always approach them from a certain historically specific horizon. and for heidegger, this germans have this beautiful term, unhintergebar, what you cannot step behind. for example, for heidegger, each epoch is characterized by a certain disclosure of being. in modernity, objects, what is really objective is just object of science, quantifiable, all other things are subjective expressions and so on and so on. in medieval times, reality appeared in a different way and so on and so on. now i where i do agree with you is that we should step beyond the transcendental, the transcendental circle, this circle of always already, simply. is not strong enough to confront us with today's problems. let me take the one who is for me the ultimate transcendentalist, jürgen habermas. when we have the threat that biogenetics will objectivize us, he pulls a simple habas a simple transcendental trick. his reasoning is that even if i objectify you as a neuronal mechanism, in doing this i already presuppose certain rational argumentation and so on and so on, which is a priori here which cannot be. itself objectivized in this way. so, whichever way we approach reality, a transcendental horizon is here. and to be slightly sarcastic, that's how habermas ended up doing a book together with ratzinger, with the pope, you know, rejecting biogen. so, again, i think that transcendental approach is something very harsh and one can even read you in a loving way, not critically. your works are transcendental in the sense that, for example, you're wonderful and your ontology is very powerful. description of reality it a certain vision that is simply here and you describe. it's a kind of a priori. it's not that you just look at the world and, oh my god, you discovered it is like this. and i agree with you here we also agree that and here we are all followers of kente may, that the transcendental method shouldn't be the last horizon, because then you end in this heideggerarian deadlock. we just have a succession of different transcendental and so on and so on. so here i would say the transcendental problem is much stronger. but let's go on. more interesting topics. i you said, it's a wonderful formulation about how it's not only either subjectivism we constitute reality or realities is either unknowable or realities out there, we can know it. my position would have been here, the fourth one, maybe more subtle, yes, i agree with you. reality is out there impenetrable. we cannot ever fully get at it. what i would have done, and probably you would disagree, is to add an additional, sorry for the implicit obscenity, turn of the screw, and to add that i always was fascinated by this wonderful saying of hegel, it's not literally like this, but he says it that the secrets of the egyptians were also the secrets for the egyptians themselves. that is to say, i don't think there is a reality in itself which is just impenetrable to us. what if, and that's how in my naive way i read one of the lessons of quantum physics, what if this impenetrability is, and i mean this in the most radical sense imaginable, a feature of reality. reself reality is not just out there we cannot get at it. reality is in itself flawed, imperfect, antagonistic, it's incomplete in itself. that's why, if i can tell another story, probably you know it, which i love it, the best quantum physics joke. i read this in some simple introduction to philosophy. it's my favorite philosophical narrative. the idea is this one, to understand, and this is the big conflict in philosophy, what are the ontological consequences of quantum physics, they claim, imagine a video game. you move in it and you see some trees in the background, a forest. you cannot! go there and see the forest. the trees from close up because simply the game is not programmed in this way. if you come too close to the... please, you just see some vague dots, contours. why? because it's not part of the game. universe du constructed that you can go there. so in this wonderful reading that i like, it goes on like this, that the lesson of quantum physics is that. god constructed our world like a lazy computer designer. he said, oh, in the same way that in a computer game, you know, it happens on a certain field where you kill pokmons, fight, whatever. but you are not meant to go back close to that door. or the house, just the outside is constructed. so why should god lose time constructing the inside? and the idea, it's a wonderful ironic idea, it's a good feeling, is that we, as it were, caught god with his pants down. god thought that's this ironic reading of quantum physics. god thought, oh, these stupid humans will never go beyond the structure of atom. so we can leave it ontologically incomplete. why should i lose time constructing? but we were a little bit too bright for god. you know, we went there and we found indeterminacy and so on and so on. and that's the big difference between heisenberg and bohr. heisenberg still thought that indeterminacy is just epistemological. we cannot have it both ways, velocity and position, but in themselves, particles have both properties. bor goes further, they don't have. so that's that would be my, as it were, addition that this imperfection is part of reality itself. reality in itself is in this sense imperfect. it's not that there is full reality out there, we just don't get it. i mean, i'm not denying that there are aspects which are unknown to us and so on, but that, again, imperfection is out there. the second thing i would add here, i mean, i'm so sorry, stop me when i speak too because i have so many things to say. okay, let's not get lost here. let's go to the topic of subject. i always think, maybe i am wrong, that that the problem with o is for me that, okay, it's easy to say subject is ultimately just another object. in a certain way, of course it is. i mean, we don't exist without bodily substance and so on and so on. but what i would have said is that modern subjectivity. is not simply a... meta-actant, meta-agent, like an object which or who doesn't want to be just an object but wants to posit the entire world and so on and so on. subject is for me i don't have time to go into it it's a complex topic. something much more paradoxically it's more an impassive entity it in a way. this failure, lack of being, in a way, coming out to be existing, which is why subject for me is not an all-powerful agent. it's just a certain, at its most fundamental, subject is for me a certain... if you want to structural deadlock, impossibility, passivity, what do i mean by this? let me go on here. for laccon, subject does have always an object that it is. it's just that the paradox of subject is that. the subject is an... object sorry sorry. inavailable to itself. to be a subject means radically not to know what for an object i am. and it's not just this. it's that this surplus of not knowing has to be embodied in an additional paradoxical object called by laccon object m, the object called of desire and so on and so on. which is why i i will talk too much, i'm afraid. which is why for laccon, you know, when people think, oh for psychoanalysis, object of desire is forever eluding, yes, but that object is not out there, i cannot ever reach it. that object is myself. subject. which is why for laccon the ultimate subject in sex terms is a woman with this eternal hysterical question tell me why you love me it means tell me what for an object i am but of course you cannot ever answer it. object the true enigma psychoanalysis has here a wonderful theory of subjectivity the true enigma is a small child he or she sees that he or she is manipulated by parents they want something from you they play their traumas through you but it's never clear to you what they want from you what you are for them this abyss defines the subject. so subject is not mega strong. subject is i agree with you. this is my sin for you. not one among the objects, but not in the sense of we have an objective world and look, look, that crappy human being wants to be everything. no, subject is for me rather an effect of limitation. subject means we are in certain horizon we cannot move beyond. now i come to another crucial point. i wonder if you would agree. reality real. here. i find an echo in what you were saying about this how the thing in itself it's not that it's out there and then all this naive in the bad sense topic can we grab it or not we can but not directly we can grab it through the very structure of failures to get at it and if you allow me to conclude slowly, then i have just one more remark. to give you an example which i used maybe about ten times in my books, but i think it's a perfect one. from levi strauss, in one of his best essays in his structural anthropology, do dual organizations exist? levi struss reports of his experience with some, i think it's even north american, indian, native american, i. the term it's more racist, i think, than indian. i spoke with my indian friends, they all tell me the same thing. i much prefer to be called indian than native american. if i'm native american means what and you are cultural american, same nature. if i'm indian called at least my name is a monument to white men's stupidity. so who thought they are in india? so what i'm saying is that this is what he lewis stro reported he went to a certain village and asked the people there, inhabit tribal will. draw me the map of your village and he noticed that he got. two totally different drawings. one was a kind of hierarch concentric, the sanctuary with all the rich people's huts and so on in center and ordinary members around. the other one was more dualist, rich ruling priests on the one side, the other but then his idea was that it's simple to establish what is reality. you take a helicopter, you took a photo and you see how houses are really disposed. so in this sense, you can compare these wrong images with reality and you can get at it that. none of them fits. but then levi struss says something wonderful. he says, the point is not that these two images don't fit reality. their truth is in the way they miss reality. because in the gap that separates these two images, you, this very gap, this failure to represent properly social reality, tells you the deepest truth about social reality, that it was class society at its beginning, these two drawings, which both falsify social edifice, register the growing social antagonism so you see how although none of them fits reality the truth is the social antagonism which is registered in this very failure. and coming back to anti-seemitism, that's why i love laccon's saying, i again often use it that i'm sorry, it's a little bit male chauvinist, i could provide to you another version that if we have a pathologically jealous husband, and even if all his suspicions are true. his wife is sleeping around, blah, blah. his jealousy is still pathological. because the true point is not are my obsessions about my wife true or not? the true point is, why do i need this pathological jealousy to maintain my identity? and i claim that would be my approach. exactly the same with anti-seemitism. if let's say i'm in germany in 1935, i want to debate with a, okay, not nazi friend of mine, nazi guy, the truth about anti-seemitism. the moment i limit the debate to, are you really like that, the way you claim, i'm lost. because if you approach it in this way, the result would be a compromise. yes, maybe you anti-semites exaggerate a little bit, but you have a point. like anti-semites claim jews exploit us germans. well, up to a point, this was definitely true. many jews were rich. in a formal sense, they did it. jews seduced our girls. well, i hope they did, and i hope the other way around. you know what i mean? what makes nazi? anti-seemitism pathological is not is it true or not what they claim about the jews. it is why do they need anti-semitism to assert their identity, their political vision and so on and so on. and here i would define truth as opposed to simple knowledge. at the level of simple knowledge you ask, anti-semitism claims this, that, is it true or not? but okay, that's the next. point to conclude immediately just one more point because i have many others. surprisingly where we do agree as we already established is that i'm also like you and it may be surprising to some of you totally on your side against this absolutely predominant dosha today whenever you have a debate. i agree with you on the one hand as you pointed out about egypt i mean this cheap historicicism in the sense of, you know, whenever that's one safe strategy in today's thinking. whenever you have a principled debate and you are losing, if you take recourse to this cheap historicicism, like i've been to many feminist debates where the side which was losing said, but wait a minute, women doesn't exist, there are only prostitutes, wives, single mothers, which, you know, this cheap relativization, particularization. i totally agree with you. universality has a certain actuality and so on. second point where i agree with you is this immobilism because the other dog of today is things are dynamic, every fixation, every fixed identity is something which is just a temporary reification fixation. no, i agree with your wonderful formulas where you claim that in a way identity precedes activity. i just would give to it maybe a double, a further twist so that i don't lose time. now, let's go to your key point. reduction of objects to relations. would you go as far, maybe here is the understanding. i agree with you, objects cannot be reduced to a set of relations, especially actual relations. there is always an excess. but i claim, nonetheless, this excess can be generated through relations. let me take an example similar to your east india company. let's take communism.
yeah, okay. ugh. i see a problem today.'t i mean the topic. you indicated is so fundamental that i have no illusions that we will arrive. it would be a great success if we just somehow clarify where the difference really is. because i think the biggest problem in so-called philosophical dialogues, it's not who is right, but in what does the difference reside in the first place. and here i'm pretty much a pessimist. i think the entire history philosophy is a history of one guy allegedly superseding the other but really misreading him. for example, as an old plato admirer, i claim it's clear how aristotle misread plato. or to go later, it's clear that kant misread leibniz and the previous philosophers. fichte schelling misread kant, hegel misread all of them. my favorite example, if any guy didn't understand hegel, it was marx and so on and so on. so let's just be modest and i will just try to mark some differences. there are so many things to say. first, already beginning with that latour thesis, we were never modern and so on. i'm here a naive, i admit it openly, a naive believer in modernity. i claim that big with modernity, something happens at the level of science, modern science, at the level of politics, at the level of subjectivity and so on and so on, which simply cannot be dismissed as just another form of enchantment and so on and so on. just look at politics, whatever doubts we do have, but the whole political vision of revolution is something radically new. that's just one point on which i would insist. then let's go on. maybe one of the differences that we have is, although you have some sympathy for heidegger, but if there ever was a thinker, i claim, who is radically historicist and transcendental, it's heidegger. here i never got your reference to quadruple obviously how you link it with heidegger because when heidegger speaks about das geviert, the quadruple, his point is, of course, not in the usual kantian sense, but in more radical sense transcendental. what do i mean by transcendental? it's simply the idea that because of our finitude, we never speak from a void. we are always thrown into certain pre-understanding of the world. which is always, they like transcendental thinkers did phrase, always already here. you cannot, you never encounter, as you know very well, you never encounter simply things the way they are. you always approach them from a certain historically specific horizon. and for heidegger, this germans have this beautiful term, unhintergebar, what you cannot step behind. for example, for heidegger, each epoch is characterized by a certain disclosure of being. in modernity, objects, what is really objective is just object of science, quantifiable, all other things are subjective expressions and so on and so on. in medieval times, reality appeared in a different way and so on and so on. now i where i do agree with you is that we should step beyond the transcendental, the transcendental circle, this circle of always already, simply. is not strong enough to confront us with today's problems. let me take the one who is for me the ultimate transcendentalist, jürgen habermas. when we have the threat that biogenetics will objectivize us, he pulls a simple habas a simple transcendental trick. his reasoning is that even if i objectify you as a neuronal mechanism, in doing this i already presuppose certain rational argumentation and so on and so on, which is a priori here which cannot be. itself objectivized in this way. so, whichever way we approach reality, a transcendental horizon is here. and to be slightly sarcastic, that's how habermas ended up doing a book together with ratzinger, with the pope, you know, rejecting biogen. so, again, i think that transcendental approach is something very harsh and one can even read you in a loving way, not critically. your works are transcendental in the sense that, for example, you're wonderful and your ontology is very powerful. description of reality it a certain vision that is simply here and you describe. it's a kind of a priori. it's not that you just look at the world and, oh my god, you discovered it is like this. and i agree with you here we also agree that and here we are all followers of kente may, that the transcendental method shouldn't be the last horizon, because then you end in this heideggerarian deadlock. we just have a succession of different transcendental and so on and so on. so here i would say the transcendental problem is much stronger. but let's go on. more interesting topics. i you said, it's a wonderful formulation about how it's not only either subjectivism we constitute reality or realities is either unknowable or realities out there, we can know it. my position would have been here, the fourth one, maybe more subtle, yes, i agree with you. reality is out there impenetrable. we cannot ever fully get at it. what i would have done, and probably you would disagree, is to add an additional, sorry for the implicit obscenity, turn of the screw, and to add that i always was fascinated by this wonderful saying of hegel, it's not literally like this, but he says it that the secrets of the egyptians were also the secrets for the egyptians themselves. that is to say, i don't think there is a reality in itself which is just impenetrable to us. what if, and that's how in my naive way i read one of the lessons of quantum physics, what if this impenetrability is, and i mean this in the most radical sense imaginable, a feature of reality. reself reality is not just out there we cannot get at it. reality is in itself flawed, imperfect, antagonistic, it's incomplete in itself. that's why, if i can tell another story, probably you know it, which i love it, the best quantum physics joke. i read this in some simple introduction to philosophy. it's my favorite philosophical narrative. the idea is this one, to understand, and this is the big conflict in philosophy, what are the ontological consequences of quantum physics, they claim, imagine a video game. you move in it and you see some trees in the background, a forest. you cannot! go there and see the forest. the trees from close up because simply the game is not programmed in this way. if you come too close to the... please, you just see some vague dots, contours. why? because it's not part of the game. universe du constructed that you can go there. so in this wonderful reading that i like, it goes on like this, that the lesson of quantum physics is that. god constructed our world like a lazy computer designer. he said, oh, in the same way that in a computer game, you know, it happens on a certain field where you kill pokmons, fight, whatever. but you are not meant to go back close to that door. or the house, just the outside is constructed. so why should god lose time constructing the inside? and the idea, it's a wonderful ironic idea, it's a good feeling, is that we, as it were, caught god with his pants down. god thought that's this ironic reading of quantum physics. god thought, oh, these stupid humans will never go beyond the structure of atom. so we can leave it ontologically incomplete. why should i lose time constructing? but we were a little bit too bright for god. you know, we went there and we found indeterminacy and so on and so on. and that's the big difference between heisenberg and bohr. heisenberg still thought that indeterminacy is just epistemological. we cannot have it both ways, velocity and position, but in themselves, particles have both properties. bor goes further, they don't have. so that's that would be my, as it were, addition that this imperfection is part of reality itself. reality in itself is in this sense imperfect. it's not that there is full reality out there, we just don't get it. i mean, i'm not denying that there are aspects which are unknown to us and so on, but that, again, imperfection is out there. the second thing i would add here, i mean, i'm so sorry, stop me when i speak too because i have so many things to say. okay, let's not get lost here. let's go to the topic of subject. i always think, maybe i am wrong, that that the problem with o is for me that, okay, it's easy to say subject is ultimately just another object. in a certain way, of course it is. i mean, we don't exist without bodily substance and so on and so on. but what i would have said is that modern subjectivity. is not simply a... meta-actant, meta-agent, like an object which or who doesn't want to be just an object but wants to posit the entire world and so on and so on. subject is for me i don't have time to go into it it's a complex topic. something much more paradoxically it's more an impassive entity it in a way. this failure, lack of being, in a way, coming out to be existing, which is why subject for me is not an all-powerful agent. it's just a certain, at its most fundamental, subject is for me a certain... if you want to structural deadlock, impossibility, passivity, what do i mean by this? let me go on here. for laccon, subject does have always an object that it is. it's just that the paradox of subject is that. the subject is an... object sorry sorry. inavailable to itself. to be a subject means radically not to know what for an object i am. and it's not just this. it's that this surplus of not knowing has to be embodied in an additional paradoxical object called by laccon object m, the object called of desire and so on and so on. which is why i i will talk too much, i'm afraid. which is why for laccon, you know, when people think, oh for psychoanalysis, object of desire is forever eluding, yes, but that object is not out there, i cannot ever reach it. that object is myself. subject. which is why for laccon the ultimate subject in sex terms is a woman with this eternal hysterical question tell me why you love me it means tell me what for an object i am but of course you cannot ever answer it. object the true enigma psychoanalysis has here a wonderful theory of subjectivity the true enigma is a small child he or she sees that he or she is manipulated by parents they want something from you they play their traumas through you but it's never clear to you what they want from you what you are for them this abyss defines the subject. so subject is not mega strong. subject is i agree with you. this is my sin for you. not one among the objects, but not in the sense of we have an objective world and look, look, that crappy human being wants to be everything. no, subject is for me rather an effect of limitation. subject means we are in certain horizon we cannot move beyond. now i come to another crucial point. i wonder if you would agree. reality real. here. i find an echo in what you were saying about this how the thing in itself it's not that it's out there and then all this naive in the bad sense topic can we grab it or not we can but not directly we can grab it through the very structure of failures to get at it and if you allow me to conclude slowly, then i have just one more remark. to give you an example which i used maybe about ten times in my books, but i think it's a perfect one. from levi strauss, in one of his best essays in his structural anthropology, do dual organizations exist? levi struss reports of his experience with some, i think it's even north american, indian, native american, i. the term it's more racist, i think, than indian. i spoke with my indian friends, they all tell me the same thing. i much prefer to be called indian than native american. if i'm native american means what and you are cultural american, same nature. if i'm indian called at least my name is a monument to white men's stupidity. so who thought they are in india? so what i'm saying is that this is what he lewis stro reported he went to a certain village and asked the people there, inhabit tribal will. draw me the map of your village and he noticed that he got. two totally different drawings. one was a kind of hierarch concentric, the sanctuary with all the rich people's huts and so on in center and ordinary members around. the other one was more dualist, rich ruling priests on the one side, the other but then his idea was that it's simple to establish what is reality. you take a helicopter, you took a photo and you see how houses are really disposed. so in this sense, you can compare these wrong images with reality and you can get at it that. none of them fits. but then levi struss says something wonderful. he says, the point is not that these two images don't fit reality. their truth is in the way they miss reality. because in the gap that separates these two images, you, this very gap, this failure to represent properly social reality, tells you the deepest truth about social reality, that it was class society at its beginning, these two drawings, which both falsify social edifice, register the growing social antagonism so you see how although none of them fits reality the truth is the social antagonism which is registered in this very failure. and coming back to anti-seemitism, that's why i love laccon's saying, i again often use it that i'm sorry, it's a little bit male chauvinist, i could provide to you another version that if we have a pathologically jealous husband, and even if all his suspicions are true. his wife is sleeping around, blah, blah. his jealousy is still pathological. because the true point is not are my obsessions about my wife true or not? the true point is, why do i need this pathological jealousy to maintain my identity? and i claim that would be my approach. exactly the same with anti-seemitism. if let's say i'm in germany in 1935, i want to debate with a, okay, not nazi friend of mine, nazi guy, the truth about anti-seemitism. the moment i limit the debate to, are you really like that, the way you claim, i'm lost. because if you approach it in this way, the result would be a compromise. yes, maybe you anti-semites exaggerate a little bit, but you have a point. like anti-semites claim jews exploit us germans. well, up to a point, this was definitely true. many jews were rich. in a formal sense, they did it. jews seduced our girls. well, i hope they did, and i hope the other way around. you know what i mean? what makes nazi? anti-seemitism pathological is not is it true or not what they claim about the jews. it is why do they need anti-semitism to assert their identity, their political vision and so on and so on. and here i would define truth as opposed to simple knowledge. at the level of simple knowledge you ask, anti-semitism claims this, that, is it true or not? but okay, that's the next. point to conclude immediately just one more point because i have many others. surprisingly where we do agree as we already established is that i'm also like you and it may be surprising to some of you totally on your side against this absolutely predominant dosha today whenever you have a debate. i agree with you on the one hand as you pointed out about egypt i mean this cheap historicicism in the sense of, you know, whenever that's one safe strategy in today's thinking. whenever you have a principled debate and you are losing, if you take recourse to this cheap historicicism, like i've been to many feminist debates where the side which was losing said, but wait a minute, women doesn't exist, there are only prostitutes, wives, single mothers, which, you know, this cheap relativization, particularization. i totally agree with you. universality has a certain actuality and so on. second point where i agree with you is this immobilism because the other dog of today is things are dynamic, every fixation, every fixed identity is something which is just a temporary reification fixation. no, i agree with your wonderful formulas where you claim that in a way identity precedes activity. i just would give to it maybe a double, a further twist so that i don't lose time. now, let's go to your key point. reduction of objects to relations. would you go as far, maybe here is the understanding. i agree with you, objects cannot be reduced to a set of relations, especially actual relations. there is always an excess. but i claim, nonetheless, this excess can be generated through relations. let me take an example similar to your east india company. let's take communism.
Moderator
all right.
all right.
Slavoj Žižek
it's a cause which it is totally clear that communism as a cause, and i'm very critical towards it, although i still consider myself a communist. communism as a cause exists only insofar as it is practiced, actualized, debated among humans. this paradoxical entity or all social causes are like this. date. exist only through incessant activity of individuals. but nonetheless, i agree with you, they cannot be reduced to it. that would be my paradox. they can totally depend on relations, but they have an access. for example, where would be the inself of communism? although communism began as the idea of equality, transparency and so on, it's totally legitimate to ask the question, but isn't there another hidden side of communism? was stalin's deviation really just a secondary mistake or was it an actualization of something that was already originally possible in the idea of communism and so on and so on? so i don't get it. for example, let's take a case of communism. isn't it something that although it is fully rooted in relations. it is alive as an idea only insofar as people debate it, fight for it and so on. it still has an in itself. but it's a paradoxical in itself which, again, that's the paradox i would insist on. it doesn't exist outside relations, but it's posited by relations themselves as there in itself, as something transcendent, getting over them and so on and so on. okay, i have many other things to say. i will not now lose time. for example, when you mentioned objectivity and the words,
it's a cause which it is totally clear that communism as a cause, and i'm very critical towards it, although i still consider myself a communist. communism as a cause exists only insofar as it is practiced, actualized, debated among humans. this paradoxical entity or all social causes are like this. date. exist only through incessant activity of individuals. but nonetheless, i agree with you, they cannot be reduced to it. that would be my paradox. they can totally depend on relations, but they have an access. for example, where would be the inself of communism? although communism began as the idea of equality, transparency and so on, it's totally legitimate to ask the question, but isn't there another hidden side of communism? was stalin's deviation really just a secondary mistake or was it an actualization of something that was already originally possible in the idea of communism and so on and so on? so i don't get it. for example, let's take a case of communism. isn't it something that although it is fully rooted in relations. it is alive as an idea only insofar as people debate it, fight for it and so on. it still has an in itself. but it's a paradoxical in itself which, again, that's the paradox i would insist on. it doesn't exist outside relations, but it's posited by relations themselves as there in itself, as something transcendent, getting over them and so on and so on. okay, i have many other things to say. i will not now lose time. for example, when you mentioned objectivity and the words,
Moderator
iavo, i'm going to interrupt.
iavo, i'm going to interrupt.
Slavoj Žižek
i already told her before that he should act as if he is a domina with
i already told her before that he should act as if he is a domina with
Moderator
i've.
i've.
Slavoj Žižek
and you are now whipping me.
and you are now whipping me.
Moderator
ent.
ent.
Slavoj Žižek
i agree. okay, i stop. sorry.
i agree. okay, i stop. sorry.
Moderator
i will be stalin tonight and i will try.
i will be stalin tonight and i will try.
Slavoj Žižek
and what are we? who is buharin, who is trotsky, who is? .
and what are we? who is buharin, who is trotsky, who is? .
Moderator
actually, i mean, if somebody were trotsky, we would have to erase him. because in all of the images, as we know, he was in fact erased from history, from all the photographs. so there must be something there to talk about.
actually, i mean, if somebody were trotsky, we would have to erase him. because in all of the images, as we know, he was in fact erased from history, from all the photographs. so there must be something there to talk about.
Slavoj Žižek
can i make a brief remark? you will love it. precisely with the case of trotsky, i agree with you. you know what was trotsky's mistake in the early and mid-20s? no. he was too much abstract in the best sense, not in essentialist. he did not see how to gain power, you know, stalin was very bright. you know, just in 23, he nominated over 100,000 of mid-level bureaucrats and so on. he knew that power. and trotsky was extremely arrogant. trotsky came to politburo session to boast with flaubert in french. he was like, i don't care. and then all of a sudden, in late 20s, trotsky discovered he's like that cat above the precipice, you know. he looked down, there is nothing. he fell down. so this i deeply appreciate in contrast to what you think. i think that... with regard to what i think subject, which is precisely an inhuman abstract subject, i cannot find anything that would more fit to my notion of subject than what for example somebody like although i know your differences with her jane bennett describes as this a transhuman assemblage and so on. i have no problem with totally asserting that i have no problem. i am not human.
can i make a brief remark? you will love it. precisely with the case of trotsky, i agree with you. you know what was trotsky's mistake in the early and mid-20s? no. he was too much abstract in the best sense, not in essentialist. he did not see how to gain power, you know, stalin was very bright. you know, just in 23, he nominated over 100,000 of mid-level bureaucrats and so on. he knew that power. and trotsky was extremely arrogant. trotsky came to politburo session to boast with flaubert in french. he was like, i don't care. and then all of a sudden, in late 20s, trotsky discovered he's like that cat above the precipice, you know. he looked down, there is nothing. he fell down. so this i deeply appreciate in contrast to what you think. i think that... with regard to what i think subject, which is precisely an inhuman abstract subject, i cannot find anything that would more fit to my notion of subject than what for example somebody like although i know your differences with her jane bennett describes as this a transhuman assemblage and so on. i have no problem with totally asserting that i have no problem. i am not human.
Moderator
can you what is assemblage? can you speak to this? maybe some of...
can you what is assemblage? can you speak to this? maybe some of...
Graham Harman
yes, this is the theory that things are built together out of many components to form one thing. which are relatively.
yes, this is the theory that things are built together out of many components to form one thing. which are relatively.
Slavoj Žižek
independent.
independent.
Graham Harman
yes.
yes.
Slavoj Žižek
that's right. like as we already talked before trump is an assemblage. it's crucial to understand him in the sense that he built his relative hegemony through assembling elements which have relative independence, a certain working class populism, a certain certain debt and so on. and it's inconsistent, obviously. but beware, this inconsistency is his.
that's right. like as we already talked before trump is an assemblage. it's crucial to understand him in the sense that he built his relative hegemony through assembling elements which have relative independence, a certain working class populism, a certain certain debt and so on. and it's inconsistent, obviously. but beware, this inconsistency is his.
Graham Harman
stre. before we get into trump, can i answer some of the points from your? there were so many interesting things there. i was going to maybe address three if i can. the first one... respond to the one about the essence of communism. first of all, there's... the question is to whether there is such a thing as an essence of communism or whether we're talking about different phases.
stre. before we get into trump, can i answer some of the points from your? there were so many interesting things there. i was going to maybe address three if i can. the first one... respond to the one about the essence of communism. first of all, there's... the question is to whether there is such a thing as an essence of communism or whether we're talking about different phases.
Slavoj Žižek
good. you are no historicrella.
good. you are no historicrella.
Graham Harman
no, no, not at all, not at all.
no, no, not at all, not at all.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Graham Harman
remember, in the book of immism about the dutch east india company, i at least considered the possibility that there wasn't just one company, that it went through several different companies under the same name. i determined that, in fact, there was just one company, it was one thing. i absolutely agree with.
remember, in the book of immism about the dutch east india company, i at least considered the possibility that there wasn't just one company, that it went through several different companies under the same name. i determined that, in fact, there was just one company, it was one thing. i absolutely agree with.
Slavoj Žižek
i think there is one communism.
i think there is one communism.
Graham Harman
okay, all alright, there might be.
okay, all alright, there might be.
Slavoj Žižek
stalin falsified it or?
stalin falsified it or?
Graham Harman
yes, that's right. also, essences for me don't necessarily have to stay the same over time. they can develop. absolutely develop with you. so it does agree with you. it's not bad essentialism that there's one platonic form that everything copies forever. i also talk about symbioses in my book, which are kind of in between detailed changes and developmental. changes. so i think you'd have to look empirically at an individual case like communism. you'd have to be a historian working from a trip.
yes, that's right. also, essences for me don't necessarily have to stay the same over time. they can develop. absolutely develop with you. so it does agree with you. it's not bad essentialism that there's one platonic form that everything copies forever. i also talk about symbioses in my book, which are kind of in between detailed changes and developmental. changes. so i think you'd have to look empirically at an individual case like communism. you'd have to be a historian working from a trip.
Slavoj Žižek
no, would you nonetheless agree, my central point was exactly in your sense, communism, precisely as a universal movement notion, has an in itself. yes? it's legitimate to ask where it was impenetrable to itself, what potential.
no, would you nonetheless agree, my central point was exactly in your sense, communism, precisely as a universal movement notion, has an in itself. yes? it's legitimate to ask where it was impenetrable to itself, what potential.
Graham Harman
it didn't actualize. it's not a meaningless question. some people treat it as if it were and it's not to ask what could it have been? what is it really about? and of course, every object has multiple objects that make it up. so communism has parts too, just like any other object.
it didn't actualize. it's not a meaningless question. some people treat it as if it were and it's not to ask what could it have been? what is it really about? and of course, every object has multiple objects that make it up. so communism has parts too, just like any other object.
Slavoj Žižek
but here again i deeply agree with you. i would link this to that your wonderful notion of proximate failures. you wanted to say something.
but here again i deeply agree with you. i would link this to that your wonderful notion of proximate failures. you wanted to say something.
Graham Harman
no, i want to talk about that. approximate failure. i have the idea in the book of materialism that one of the ways you recognize real objects is by looking for failures, not successes. absolutely. because if something succeeds too easily, it's probably just part of the environment. it's probably just sp in.
no, i want to talk about that. approximate failure. i have the idea in the book of materialism that one of the ways you recognize real objects is by looking for failures, not successes. absolutely. because if something succeeds too easily, it's probably just part of the environment. it's probably just sp in.
Moderator
yeah.
yeah.
Graham Harman
when something fails, you know that it's a bit out of sync with the environment. and so i talked about that in a few cases of the dutch east india company. and the book i just finished the other day for penguin, an introduction to for pelican, actually, i used the u.s. civil war as an example. and when i'm talking about grant and lee as the two great generals of that war, i was looking at their failures, of which there were many prior to their successes, which i think was a proof of their greatness. the fact that they had these failures theory
when something fails, you know that it's a bit out of sync with the environment. and so i talked about that in a few cases of the dutch east india company. and the book i just finished the other day for penguin, an introduction to for pelican, actually, i used the u.s. civil war as an example. and when i'm talking about grant and lee as the two great generals of that war, i was looking at their failures, of which there were many prior to their successes, which i think was a proof of their greatness. the fact that they had these failures theory
Slavoj Žižek
it me i sorry, but it's such a nice conversation. do you buy the theory that at gettysburg... it could have turned otherwise. just grant forgot to put artillery on some hill there. it was me
it me i sorry, but it's such a nice conversation. do you buy the theory that at gettysburg... it could have turned otherwise. just grant forgot to put artillery on some hill there. it was me
Graham Harman
east grant was still at west, but me. it put the could have turned. the south could have won if pickett's charge had succeeded and meade could have also chased down lee and destroyed his army and ended the war. so there were several things that could have gone differently. it was a very contingent battle. however, i think the other battles, two of them were more important in particular, but that's another issue.'ll a civil war.
east grant was still at west, but me. it put the could have turned. the south could have won if pickett's charge had succeeded and meade could have also chased down lee and destroyed his army and ended the war. so there were several things that could have gone differently. it was a very contingent battle. however, i think the other battles, two of them were more important in particular, but that's another issue.'ll a civil war.
Slavoj Žižek
you know what ask
you know what ask
Graham Harman
sorry.
sorry.
Slavoj Žižek
no, no,. precise question concerning this. i think what interests me especially are not only this apocalypse failure in the sense of alternate history, and i'm also like you addicted to them, you know, all the bullshit that we get now, men in the high castle, ss great britain, i'm an avid viewer of that. isn't it also the other way around that often we get... false opening in the sense of we think that something is possible and it was just an accident that it didn't happen, but it was a deeper necessity. for example, here i remain an old-fashioned half-marxist opposed to what my good friend, very dignified person, the catholic deridean john caputo, he claimed, why be against capitalism if you imagine a capitalism which, like sweden in the does welfare, this, that, and so on, that all this would be possible. well, i doubt if this is possible. i think one of the tricks of politics is that something that appears as mere contingent failure. oh my god, we could have done that, but we didn't. a deeper analysis of what you would call in itself can also discover not only that there was an option to do something else, but that what appeared to us as an opening really was none, that it couldn't have happened. so we.
no, no,. precise question concerning this. i think what interests me especially are not only this apocalypse failure in the sense of alternate history, and i'm also like you addicted to them, you know, all the bullshit that we get now, men in the high castle, ss great britain, i'm an avid viewer of that. isn't it also the other way around that often we get... false opening in the sense of we think that something is possible and it was just an accident that it didn't happen, but it was a deeper necessity. for example, here i remain an old-fashioned half-marxist opposed to what my good friend, very dignified person, the catholic deridean john caputo, he claimed, why be against capitalism if you imagine a capitalism which, like sweden in the does welfare, this, that, and so on, that all this would be possible. well, i doubt if this is possible. i think one of the tricks of politics is that something that appears as mere contingent failure. oh my god, we could have done that, but we didn't. a deeper analysis of what you would call in itself can also discover not only that there was an option to do something else, but that what appeared to us as an opening really was none, that it couldn't have happened. so we.
Graham Harman
here.
here.
Slavoj Žižek
we should...
we should...
Graham Harman
complex analysis. you agree no we should it. in the dutch east india company case, it was the geographical points that were inevitable. there were two straits in indonesia that had to be captured by somebody. so that's one example.
complex analysis. you agree no we should it. in the dutch east india company case, it was the geographical points that were inevitable. there were two straits in indonesia that had to be captured by somebody. so that's one example.
Slavoj Žižek
can i ask?
can i ask?
Graham Harman
que
que
Slavoj Žižek
and deep psychoanalytic, psychological question because i love that book. i even told him before that, you know, in my communist universe where you don't have free reading, these official gray brochures are distributed to you, printed like mao's red book in 10 million copies. in my communist empire, your immaterialism would be distributed from elementary and people would be sent to gulag if they forgot to read your book. no, but what i want to ask, like what attracted you to that stupid is that company? what was the particular cause of desire?
and deep psychoanalytic, psychological question because i love that book. i even told him before that, you know, in my communist universe where you don't have free reading, these official gray brochures are distributed to you, printed like mao's red book in 10 million copies. in my communist empire, your immaterialism would be distributed from elementary and people would be sent to gulag if they forgot to read your book. no, but what i want to ask, like what attracted you to that stupid is that company? what was the particular cause of desire?
Graham Harman
the particular cause is that leibniz makes fun of it and says that it's a pseudo-object because it's just a bunch of different parts together, right? he says that in the letters to our no. so i wanted to say no, the dutch east india company is. an object. and this is one thing i don't like about the whole aristotelian tradition is that they use nature as the criterion of reality. if something's natural or simple, then it's going to be real. whereas we need to be able to talk about airplanes and universities and societies as objects.
the particular cause is that leibniz makes fun of it and says that it's a pseudo-object because it's just a bunch of different parts together, right? he says that in the letters to our no. so i wanted to say no, the dutch east india company is. an object. and this is one thing i don't like about the whole aristotelian tradition is that they use nature as the criterion of reality. if something's natural or simple, then it's going to be real. whereas we need to be able to talk about airplanes and universities and societies as objects.
Slavoj Žižek
think at least in a way i think don't you think that not only is their approximate failure, but something that did not happen but could have happened can as such as failure exert a terrifying influence? so i would go even further here than you. like the whole generation could be ruined by something that they should have done but they didn't do it. sure. yeah, there can be failed historical
think at least in a way i think don't you think that not only is their approximate failure, but something that did not happen but could have happened can as such as failure exert a terrifying influence? so i would go even further here than you. like the whole generation could be ruined by something that they should have done but they didn't do it. sure. yeah, there can be failed historical
Graham Harman
fast.
fast.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah,, and they can ruin your life for decades and so on. biographically too, right? individuals.. so again, here, you know, my problem with your immaterialism is that, to be very brutal and cynical, what you call immaterialism, i'm almost tempted to call materialism. you know, i'm not that primitive materialist who thinks to be materialism, it must be something that you grasp and so on. what i call is that it has to be in some sense contingent open until deck enough for me
yeah,, and they can ruin your life for decades and so on. biographically too, right? individuals.. so again, here, you know, my problem with your immaterialism is that, to be very brutal and cynical, what you call immaterialism, i'm almost tempted to call materialism. you know, i'm not that primitive materialist who thinks to be materialism, it must be something that you grasp and so on. what i call is that it has to be in some sense contingent open until deck enough for me
Graham Harman
has nothing to do with matter for me. right, but remember i quoted levi bryant asking them why do you call it materialism? he was asking that about you in particular. what's the point of calling it materialism if it involves nothing material? youbecause because again,
has nothing to do with matter for me. right, but remember i quoted levi bryant asking them why do you call it materialism? he was asking that about you in particular. what's the point of calling it materialism if it involves nothing material? youbecause because again,
Slavoj Žižek
for example... again, look at quantum physics.
for example... again, look at quantum physics.
Graham Harman
okay.
okay.
Slavoj Žižek
it's in a way matter without matter there. are they material in what sense, and so on. and i don't have, i'm not why is it materialism? because it's a certain contingency, openness, and so on. it's a certain purely formal structure, non-teleological, whatever, contingent that defines materialism for me. it doesn't have to be some hard would you agree with this beautiful idea that came to me that paradoxically in 19th century still materialism meant brutal, tasteless reality. but today, and that's why i have here, you will kill me, you will hire a guy to break my fingers, some mafia friend, because that's my problem with tarkovsky, the director. he's so spiritual, but at the same time a brutal materialist, you know, for him tarkovsky, spiritual experiences when you even put your head into mud and so on and so. so on. so today, and it all began with heidegger and finitude, is that idealists emphasize our limitation to body and so on, while materialists today have this freedom to move in total immaterial abstraction. but okay, let's get away. strike back.
it's in a way matter without matter there. are they material in what sense, and so on. and i don't have, i'm not why is it materialism? because it's a certain contingency, openness, and so on. it's a certain purely formal structure, non-teleological, whatever, contingent that defines materialism for me. it doesn't have to be some hard would you agree with this beautiful idea that came to me that paradoxically in 19th century still materialism meant brutal, tasteless reality. but today, and that's why i have here, you will kill me, you will hire a guy to break my fingers, some mafia friend, because that's my problem with tarkovsky, the director. he's so spiritual, but at the same time a brutal materialist, you know, for him tarkovsky, spiritual experiences when you even put your head into mud and so on and so. so on. so today, and it all began with heidegger and finitude, is that idealists emphasize our limitation to body and so on, while materialists today have this freedom to move in total immaterial abstraction. but okay, let's get away. strike back.
Graham Harman
all right, materialism. the point for me is that matter, of course, means the unshaped material, the mother etymologically, and i don't think there is such a thing. there are forms. so what would be the value of using materialism? i think usually the value is that it has a kind of leftist political cachet, that it has to do with the enlightenment, and it has to do with critically tearing things down. the.
all right, materialism. the point for me is that matter, of course, means the unshaped material, the mother etymologically, and i don't think there is such a thing. there are forms. so what would be the value of using materialism? i think usually the value is that it has a kind of leftist political cachet, that it has to do with the enlightenment, and it has to do with critically tearing things down. the.
Slavoj Žižek
and and you will agree with it. even here, and you will agree with it. things are more complex. for example, my other beloved, you see the depth of my stalinist taste, robespierre. he opposed materialism. you know why? because for him it didn't have this leftist connotation. for him, and he was right, i claim, materialism was a brutal ideology of aristocracy in decay. hmm. so even this, you are too close, you buy too quickly this idea that materialism is always necessarily associated with the left. it's not necessary.
and and you will agree with it. even here, and you will agree with it. things are more complex. for example, my other beloved, you see the depth of my stalinist taste, robespierre. he opposed materialism. you know why? because for him it didn't have this leftist connotation. for him, and he was right, i claim, materialism was a brutal ideology of aristocracy in decay. hmm. so even this, you are too close, you buy too quickly this idea that materialism is always necessarily associated with the left. it's not necessary.
Graham Harman
no, it just has often been, you have to admit. and i do, yeah.. there are two kinds of materialism. the traditional kind is you're reducing a thing to the ultimate matter of which it's made, and it generally was particles moving through a void. there's other variants of that. but when people talk about materialism today, they're talking about the other reduction, the upward reduction, that everything is contingent, socially constructed, that involves our practices rather than ideas. and i don't really see the point of either of those because they both distract from the object, which is in between those two extremes. right yeah bit.
no, it just has often been, you have to admit. and i do, yeah.. there are two kinds of materialism. the traditional kind is you're reducing a thing to the ultimate matter of which it's made, and it generally was particles moving through a void. there's other variants of that. but when people talk about materialism today, they're talking about the other reduction, the upward reduction, that everything is contingent, socially constructed, that involves our practices rather than ideas. and i don't really see the point of either of those because they both distract from the object, which is in between those two extremes. right yeah bit.
Slavoj Žižek
the have no problem.
the have no problem.
Graham Harman
if you go if you will go
if you go if you will go
Slavoj Žižek
to gak, it will not be for this place. all right.
to gak, it will not be for this place. all right.
Graham Harman
i wanted to say something about heidegger also. and then something about quantum theory, maybe.
i wanted to say something about heidegger also. and then something about quantum theory, maybe.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Graham Harman
it was very interesting that you were making a criticism based on heidegger, because i always wonder about you, how heidegger fits into your narrative of the history of philosophy, because you are in many ways a hegelian, and many hegelians will say that heidegger is just a neo-kantian relapse into transcendental philosophy. it's much more complex. no matter how we hate him politically. yes.
it was very interesting that you were making a criticism based on heidegger, because i always wonder about you, how heidegger fits into your narrative of the history of philosophy, because you are in many ways a hegelian, and many hegelians will say that heidegger is just a neo-kantian relapse into transcendental philosophy. it's much more complex. no matter how we hate him politically. yes.
Slavoj Žižek
fortunately, he is the real thing. he is one of the great philosophers.
fortunately, he is the real thing. he is one of the great philosophers.
Graham Harman
you get in him that you don't get out of hegel. s what do you get from heidegger that you don't get from hegel, since you find so much in hegel compared to many people? well, i'm here pretty much open.
you get in him that you don't get out of hegel. s what do you get from heidegger that you don't get from hegel, since you find so much in hegel compared to many people? well, i'm here pretty much open.
Slavoj Žižek
do you get everything from hegel? hegel has certain limits. i'm very open here. for me, you know what interests me so much in heidegger, and you should be interested in it. the proof that he is the ultimate, for me, transcendental philosopher, not in the kantian sense, but in the sense that we are condemned to. constrained to a certain historical horizon meaning of being. and all we can do is hope for or await, lay the foundation for another. and he, you know that. in some of his works, from early ones in late 20s. do his last seminar of heraclitos. he simply admits, he says, okay, we have material objects. it's clear that the horizon of being, the way the meaning of reality is open to us, doesn't create these objects. so, and then he asked this naive question, so how do objects exist? outside the horizon of being which is our way to apprehend them. and he admits it's a totally open question. he doesn't have anything to say about it.
do you get everything from hegel? hegel has certain limits. i'm very open here. for me, you know what interests me so much in heidegger, and you should be interested in it. the proof that he is the ultimate, for me, transcendental philosopher, not in the kantian sense, but in the sense that we are condemned to. constrained to a certain historical horizon meaning of being. and all we can do is hope for or await, lay the foundation for another. and he, you know that. in some of his works, from early ones in late 20s. do his last seminar of heraclitos. he simply admits, he says, okay, we have material objects. it's clear that the horizon of being, the way the meaning of reality is open to us, doesn't create these objects. so, and then he asked this naive question, so how do objects exist? outside the horizon of being which is our way to apprehend them. and he admits it's a totally open question. he doesn't have anything to say about it.
Graham Harman
yes, and that's the problem that he and husserl shared, is they both considered the reality as a kind of pseudo-question, right? because it was already outside of itself.
yes, and that's the problem that he and husserl shared, is they both considered the reality as a kind of pseudo-question, right? because it was already outside of itself.
Slavoj Žižek
you admitted admit it.
you admitted admit it.
Graham Harman
yes, he did.
yes, he did.
Slavoj Žižek
which
which
Graham Harman
per.
per.
Slavoj Žižek
.
.
Graham Harman
right. now, you asked what i'm getting out of heidegger. now, i admit that he's a transcendental philosopher, and in terms of his self-conception, i think he sees himself that way, especially in sein und zeit. but what i think happens is something in the tool analysis that he doesn't quite realize takes us in another place. you've got the tool analysis, everything's working flawlessly, and then something breaks. and so you notice for the first time the floor that i was relying on had collapsed.
right. now, you asked what i'm getting out of heidegger. now, i admit that he's a transcendental philosopher, and in terms of his self-conception, i think he sees himself that way, especially in sein und zeit. but what i think happens is something in the tool analysis that he doesn't quite realize takes us in another place. you've got the tool analysis, everything's working flawlessly, and then something breaks. and so you notice for the first time the floor that i was relying on had collapsed.
Slavoj Žižek
again, your stupid proximate failure.
again, your stupid proximate failure.
Graham Harman
yes,'s right. that's right. now the usual reading of this is that praxis comes before theory. first we were using it practically, and therefore it's connected to all these other things, and now it's theoretical because it broke. the problem is that theory and praxis aren't different enough as i see it. both theory and praxis are translating the object into their own terms. one is conscious, one is not conscious, but it doesn't really make a big difference, i don't think. and too many heidegger scholars have read that as being the key difference. praxis comes before theory. i think what's actually happening is...
yes,'s right. that's right. now the usual reading of this is that praxis comes before theory. first we were using it practically, and therefore it's connected to all these other things, and now it's theoretical because it broke. the problem is that theory and praxis aren't different enough as i see it. both theory and praxis are translating the object into their own terms. one is conscious, one is not conscious, but it doesn't really make a big difference, i don't think. and too many heidegger scholars have read that as being the key difference. praxis comes before theory. i think what's actually happening is...
Slavoj Žižek
why do you also oppose, although he's a nice guy, dreyfus's being in the world? the ultimate, almost pseudo-marxist practice interpretation of heidegger.
why do you also oppose, although he's a nice guy, dreyfus's being in the world? the ultimate, almost pseudo-marxist practice interpretation of heidegger.
Graham Harman
yes, he says that the background is something like a sociological understanding, so that japanese babies are raised differently from american babies. that doesn't go far enough.. what's going on there is that there's something deeper than theory and praxis, and i think heidegger could have been talked into that. what he probably wouldn't have agreed with, of course, is the idea that i have that there's something deeper even in inanimate causation, because he had no way to think about that at all. two things smashing into each other where dasesein was not there at all. heidegger has nothing really to tell us about that. he's enough of a kantian that he's talking about...
yes, he says that the background is something like a sociological understanding, so that japanese babies are raised differently from american babies. that doesn't go far enough.. what's going on there is that there's something deeper than theory and praxis, and i think heidegger could have been talked into that. what he probably wouldn't have agreed with, of course, is the idea that i have that there's something deeper even in inanimate causation, because he had no way to think about that at all. two things smashing into each other where dasesein was not there at all. heidegger has nothing really to tell us about that. he's enough of a kantian that he's talking about...
Slavoj Žižek
what he would said, i agree with you, is that, okay, two things of course can crash out there, but the only way for us to make sense of it is to read it within our hermeneutic horizon and so on and so on. but i don't think that.
what he would said, i agree with you, is that, okay, two things of course can crash out there, but the only way for us to make sense of it is to read it within our hermeneutic horizon and so on and so on. but i don't think that.
Moderator
can i ask you a question about that? because i think, graham, you... you bring up the story of two. stars or two asteroids colliding near a distant star and there is an astronomer who captures the image in a photograph.
can i ask you a question about that? because i think, graham, you... you bring up the story of two. stars or two asteroids colliding near a distant star and there is an astronomer who captures the image in a photograph.
Graham Harman
mm-hmm
mm-hmm
Moderator
um... how would you describe these different, you would call them objects, different relations? can we insert another kind of... um another kind of participant, let's say. so here, to kind of bring a fourth, maybe a fourth in and this is where i would like to maybe transition us back a little bit to earth. to say that there is not only an astronomer with a camera out there in space but also let's say the eye of. somebody, an i of a subject, an i of somebody, let's say like trump.
um... how would you describe these different, you would call them objects, different relations? can we insert another kind of... um another kind of participant, let's say. so here, to kind of bring a fourth, maybe a fourth in and this is where i would like to maybe transition us back a little bit to earth. to say that there is not only an astronomer with a camera out there in space but also let's say the eye of. somebody, an i of a subject, an i of somebody, let's say like trump.
Graham Harman
watch.
watch.
Moderator
you know, trump is watching. let's say trump. at, the french would say loi, a trump loi. out there and producing a kind of another kind of narrative, let's say, about this event, an alternative perhaps reality. how would you begin to describe now this quadruple looking at each other?
you know, trump is watching. let's say trump. at, the french would say loi, a trump loi. out there and producing a kind of another kind of narrative, let's say, about this event, an alternative perhaps reality. how would you begin to describe now this quadruple looking at each other?
Graham Harman
i'm trying to avoid the temptation to unload on trump right now. but trump would have probably read it as, you know, something sexy.
i'm trying to avoid the temptation to unload on trump right now. but trump would have probably read it as, you know, something sexy.
Slavoj Žižek
two bodies hitting each other.
two bodies hitting each other.
Moderator
well, it comes back to a couple of concerns that were already brought up. one concern is, is there such a thing as a subject without, let's say, an object? or is there such a thing as a subject who is a kind of, what did you call it, a kind of collage, not collage, but... assemblage of things and how do we produce a sense of reality? what does it mean to
well, it comes back to a couple of concerns that were already brought up. one concern is, is there such a thing as a subject without, let's say, an object? or is there such a thing as a subject who is a kind of, what did you call it, a kind of collage, not collage, but... assemblage of things and how do we produce a sense of reality? what does it mean to
Graham Harman
interesting. and for me, reality is a more important word than truth, because truth to me implies that somebody thinks they can get it. it's not just out there, but they can get it. whereas reality for me means that you're doing something and then there's the proximate failure that's alerting you to something that you're doing wrong. and i think that's why i wasn't so happy with the narrative about post-truth politics. because who really had the political truth to begin with? but i think we're in a phase of post-reality politics. and bruno latour wrote an interesting article about trump that you can read in the los angeles review of books online for free. he made an interesting case. he said trump is not a fascist because at least as latour reads fascism, it's a kind of... fake attempt to bring back the greek and roman pol combined with technology. you agree? oh, good. and he said, what trump really is is an escapist. because what are really the political issues? climate change, refugees. and he's simply pretending they don't exist. and so it's a denial of reality more than an attempt to say an untruth. not making contact with political realities that we need to be dealing with right now. so that's probably a better way to, i think i'm persuaded by that.
interesting. and for me, reality is a more important word than truth, because truth to me implies that somebody thinks they can get it. it's not just out there, but they can get it. whereas reality for me means that you're doing something and then there's the proximate failure that's alerting you to something that you're doing wrong. and i think that's why i wasn't so happy with the narrative about post-truth politics. because who really had the political truth to begin with? but i think we're in a phase of post-reality politics. and bruno latour wrote an interesting article about trump that you can read in the los angeles review of books online for free. he made an interesting case. he said trump is not a fascist because at least as latour reads fascism, it's a kind of... fake attempt to bring back the greek and roman pol combined with technology. you agree? oh, good. and he said, what trump really is is an escapist. because what are really the political issues? climate change, refugees. and he's simply pretending they don't exist. and so it's a denial of reality more than an attempt to say an untruth. not making contact with political realities that we need to be dealing with right now. so that's probably a better way to, i think i'm persuaded by that.
Moderator
perhaps that's the mode of operation, but then there is a kind of audience on the other side. who might not be able to distinguish between let's say the photograph and the fiction.
perhaps that's the mode of operation, but then there is a kind of audience on the other side. who might not be able to distinguish between let's say the photograph and the fiction.
Slavoj Žižek
back to trump, sorry. i agree with this description and i also agree that trump is not a fascist. you know why? because would you agree with this? the majority of leftists are... i agree'm here very critical of most of them are often lazy, which means when there is something new emerging and... they see it's bad, but they are too lazy to really think what is happening. the easiest thing is to apply a non-term. oh, it's neo-fascism, fascism, and so on. it's not. even i claim, look, we have to analyze all this. like they claim, oh, trump dismissing immigrants or european new right is the same as nazi anti-semitism. no, it's not. moishe poston, the chicago marxist, otherwise i don't often agree with him, pointed out nicely the difference for the nazis jews were not simply out there invading us. jews were already here in germany the secret mass pulling the strings. while nobody claims immigrants invading. i don't like this term. i sympathize with them. europe are secret masters and so on. it's a totally different logic. so again, here i read your point about failures and so on. what i'm afraid of is again, escapism can be very effective politically, even if trump is an escapist. it can work for a couple of years. couple of years? even more, even more.., so my point is, don't be like, don't try to avoid what i call, although i love him, i often watch him, john stuart syndrome, you know, or we are so much wiser, we make fun of trump and so on and so on. well, we make fun of him, but he makes we have the last laughter, at least for a couple of years.
back to trump, sorry. i agree with this description and i also agree that trump is not a fascist. you know why? because would you agree with this? the majority of leftists are... i agree'm here very critical of most of them are often lazy, which means when there is something new emerging and... they see it's bad, but they are too lazy to really think what is happening. the easiest thing is to apply a non-term. oh, it's neo-fascism, fascism, and so on. it's not. even i claim, look, we have to analyze all this. like they claim, oh, trump dismissing immigrants or european new right is the same as nazi anti-semitism. no, it's not. moishe poston, the chicago marxist, otherwise i don't often agree with him, pointed out nicely the difference for the nazis jews were not simply out there invading us. jews were already here in germany the secret mass pulling the strings. while nobody claims immigrants invading. i don't like this term. i sympathize with them. europe are secret masters and so on. it's a totally different logic. so again, here i read your point about failures and so on. what i'm afraid of is again, escapism can be very effective politically, even if trump is an escapist. it can work for a couple of years. couple of years? even more, even more.., so my point is, don't be like, don't try to avoid what i call, although i love him, i often watch him, john stuart syndrome, you know, or we are so much wiser, we make fun of trump and so on and so on. well, we make fun of him, but he makes we have the last laughter, at least for a couple of years.
Moderator
maybe a question is then if he's...
maybe a question is then if he's...
Slavoj Žižek
trump.
trump.
Moderator
if trump is so good at making reality unfamiliar to us, and i'm here now. coming back to some of the terms that maybe come up in in conversation. there is a kind of defamiliarization and this is something that gram, we've talked a little bit about schlovsky's term astrenie. um... if this is already.
if trump is so good at making reality unfamiliar to us, and i'm here now. coming back to some of the terms that maybe come up in in conversation. there is a kind of defamiliarization and this is something that gram, we've talked a little bit about schlovsky's term astrenie. um... if this is already.
Slavoj Žižek
the translate sorry extraniation, i think.
the translate sorry extraniation, i think.
Moderator
extra niche as opposed.
extra niche as opposed.
Slavoj Žižek
al alienation.
al alienation.
Graham Harman
right, but estrangement might work.
right, but estrangement might work.
Moderator
letangement's estr. if this is, let's say, happening at the level of a kind of political message, isn't life today appearing more like art? if that is a technique of art and all of a sudden it is in life, what are we to do with this?
letangement's estr. if this is, let's say, happening at the level of a kind of political message, isn't life today appearing more like art? if that is a technique of art and all of a sudden it is in life, what are we to do with this?
Graham Harman
i've always been really moved by a remark by the novelist j.g. ballard, who said that the role of the artist has reversed in our time. he said, in the past, the artist produced fictions. now we're surrounded by fictions. the artist has to produce the reality.
i've always been really moved by a remark by the novelist j.g. ballard, who said that the role of the artist has reversed in our time. he said, in the past, the artist produced fictions. now we're surrounded by fictions. the artist has to produce the reality.
Moderator
mm.
mm.
Graham Harman
and so i think it's easy for trump's people to produce all these alternative narratives, alternative facts. but ultimately, you have to have a politics that's believable because it's grounded in some reality. so the fiction
and so i think it's easy for trump's people to produce all these alternative narratives, alternative facts. but ultimately, you have to have a politics that's believable because it's grounded in some reality. so the fiction
Moderator
what is then the representation of reality? because if... if reality has a certain modality, let's say certain kinds of formats, and let's say we're meant to produce now reality instead of fiction, what are the techniques for doing that?
what is then the representation of reality? because if... if reality has a certain modality, let's say certain kinds of formats, and let's say we're meant to produce now reality instead of fiction, what are the techniques for doing that?
Slavoj Žižek
haha. that's. yeah. i graciously allow you to answer this man.
haha. that's. yeah. i graciously allow you to answer this man.
Graham Harman
one of them is looking for places where things are failing. absolutely.
one of them is looking for places where things are failing. absolutely.
Slavoj Žižek
i would have called follow the antagonism ideology is for me to obfuscate the antagonism. yes, to project it onto an external enemy and so on and so on. sorry, go on. no, no, that's my best answer. no, where we should agree again is, i hope we do that. although, as you would have put it, i agree with you here, there is no direct access to reality. so we shouldn't play simply the game that's ideology, we have a direct access. but nonetheless, not everything is simply ideology. that's right. it matters how much you register the very inconsistencies, cracks, failures, and so on and so on.
i would have called follow the antagonism ideology is for me to obfuscate the antagonism. yes, to project it onto an external enemy and so on and so on. sorry, go on. no, no, that's my best answer. no, where we should agree again is, i hope we do that. although, as you would have put it, i agree with you here, there is no direct access to reality. so we shouldn't play simply the game that's ideology, we have a direct access. but nonetheless, not everything is simply ideology. that's right. it matters how much you register the very inconsistencies, cracks, failures, and so on and so on.
Graham Harman
do you think i was fair in worrying that you are identifying ideology with realism? is it more complicated than that? i made the remarks about.
do you think i was fair in worrying that you are identifying ideology with realism? is it more complicated than that? i made the remarks about.
Slavoj Žižek
real here.
real here.
Graham Harman
well, it seems in sublime object of ideology like you're ascribing to the anti-semite a realist's metaphysical position, that the problem is they're saying there really is jews out there that have an essence, and that's where anti-semitism comes from. and what makes me worry about that is it makes it seem like you're blaming realism for being a form of ideology.
well, it seems in sublime object of ideology like you're ascribing to the anti-semite a realist's metaphysical position, that the problem is they're saying there really is jews out there that have an essence, and that's where anti-semitism comes from. and what makes me worry about that is it makes it seem like you're blaming realism for being a form of ideology.
Slavoj Žižek
i see, okay, i would have to go more in detail, but i share your fear.
i see, okay, i would have to go more in detail, but i share your fear.
Moderator
i i have a follow-up after.
i i have a follow-up after.
Slavoj Žižek
i sorry you know where i share your fear but i will complicate things. what i mean by criticizing realism is this. and that's where comes what i mentioned there, this secret essence of the jew. look, ernesto laclau, my otherwise good friend for some time at least, claimed that. an anti-semitic subject always gets caught in a paradoxical tension. you cling to anti-semitism, jews are evil and so on and so on. but then you happen to live close to a neighbor who is a kind old jew, and then you cannot bring the two together. your ideological thesis jews are evil, and the kind old jewish gentleman who is there.
i sorry you know where i share your fear but i will complicate things. what i mean by criticizing realism is this. and that's where comes what i mentioned there, this secret essence of the jew. look, ernesto laclau, my otherwise good friend for some time at least, claimed that. an anti-semitic subject always gets caught in a paradoxical tension. you cling to anti-semitism, jews are evil and so on and so on. but then you happen to live close to a neighbor who is a kind old jew, and then you cannot bring the two together. your ideological thesis jews are evil, and the kind old jewish gentleman who is there.
Graham Harman
mm-hmm.
mm-hmm.
Slavoj Žižek
i told once ernesto, wait a minute, look at me, old european fascists. don't you know what is anti-semitism? it's easy to bring them together. a true anti-semite would instantly answer, you see, that's why jews are dangerous. they are really evil, but they mask this through their kind appearance, you know. the magic of anti-semitism is that all the facts are reinterpreted as showing their opposite. i want to say sorry very briefly another thing about this ostranje rendering strange i think nonetheless we should not confuse two things one is ostranje and here i see the danger of trump it's more that. austr, sorry, this estrangement in the sense that things that were unthinkable ten years ago, to be openly racist, to advocate torture and so on, are now all of a sudden acceptable. they no longer even surprise. that's the tragic sign of regression for me. trump is for me not only economic political, but not even moral, a catastrophe at the level of public decency.
i told once ernesto, wait a minute, look at me, old european fascists. don't you know what is anti-semitism? it's easy to bring them together. a true anti-semite would instantly answer, you see, that's why jews are dangerous. they are really evil, but they mask this through their kind appearance, you know. the magic of anti-semitism is that all the facts are reinterpreted as showing their opposite. i want to say sorry very briefly another thing about this ostranje rendering strange i think nonetheless we should not confuse two things one is ostranje and here i see the danger of trump it's more that. austr, sorry, this estrangement in the sense that things that were unthinkable ten years ago, to be openly racist, to advocate torture and so on, are now all of a sudden acceptable. they no longer even surprise. that's the tragic sign of regression for me. trump is for me not only economic political, but not even moral, a catastrophe at the level of public decency.
Graham Harman
reg regrets having seemed to have supported him over hillary clinton? no, you don't. why not? because i will tell you. it's
reg regrets having seemed to have supported him over hillary clinton? no, you don't. why not? because i will tell you. it's
Slavoj Žižek
my very simple party line i think that we should never forget and i may be wrong i'm not dogmatically clinging to it that trump's success is a symptom symptom, not in any deep psychanalytic sense, the result of the failure of the liberal center and left. and if we don't address that problem of this leftist hegemony which failed, which is failing not only in the united states but also in europe and so on, we will not get rid of trump. so the crucial task for me is to change something in this left liberal field to move it maybe a little little more to should we even call it left i have the same doubts as you about left right and so on otherwise trump will just return that's not the key so my crazy hope was that it's maybe worth to take the risk trump to mobilize to bring something like more bernie sanders, whatever, and so on and so on. this is why the truly dangerous person today, for me, for example, is nancy pelosi, because she is precisely renormalizing the situation. she made recently an interview where she said, don't worry, we had reagan for eight years, we had bush, we will have trump, things go normal, and so on. no, trump is really a catastrophe.
my very simple party line i think that we should never forget and i may be wrong i'm not dogmatically clinging to it that trump's success is a symptom symptom, not in any deep psychanalytic sense, the result of the failure of the liberal center and left. and if we don't address that problem of this leftist hegemony which failed, which is failing not only in the united states but also in europe and so on, we will not get rid of trump. so the crucial task for me is to change something in this left liberal field to move it maybe a little little more to should we even call it left i have the same doubts as you about left right and so on otherwise trump will just return that's not the key so my crazy hope was that it's maybe worth to take the risk trump to mobilize to bring something like more bernie sanders, whatever, and so on and so on. this is why the truly dangerous person today, for me, for example, is nancy pelosi, because she is precisely renormalizing the situation. she made recently an interview where she said, don't worry, we had reagan for eight years, we had bush, we will have trump, things go normal, and so on. no, trump is really a catastrophe.
Moderator
can, can i pick up the term? symptom that you brought up because i think and this is from the sublime object of ideology. so we come back a few years, a couple of decades back. if the symptom is something that we can kind of borrow from psychoanalysis, but originally you trace it quite beautifully back to marx. la con.
can, can i pick up the term? symptom that you brought up because i think and this is from the sublime object of ideology. so we come back a few years, a couple of decades back. if the symptom is something that we can kind of borrow from psychoanalysis, but originally you trace it quite beautifully back to marx. la con.
Slavoj Žižek
says this.
says this.
Moderator
lacon says marx kind of brings up the idea of symptom as the kind of excess of ideology. so would it be possible to bring this into architecture in the following way? that, let's say, buildings are a sort of symptom of ideology, that they are exactly at the intersection of capitalist desire and also they produce a kind of well let's say a problem, but also in visualization of authorship. how do we see these how do we? understand buildings as symptoms of both capitalism and authorship as a kind of.
lacon says marx kind of brings up the idea of symptom as the kind of excess of ideology. so would it be possible to bring this into architecture in the following way? that, let's say, buildings are a sort of symptom of ideology, that they are exactly at the intersection of capitalist desire and also they produce a kind of well let's say a problem, but also in visualization of authorship. how do we see these how do we? understand buildings as symptoms of both capitalism and authorship as a kind of.
Slavoj Žižek
like me
like me
Moderator
e between.
e between.
Slavoj Žižek
a brief improvisation to provoke you, then you should take over. can i just add something to that ostran estrangement stuff? that would be the simple, this simple ideological regression. but i think we should not confuse this, like what in the way trump estranged us from old liberal certainty with another, like here. it may surprise you, but although i know you don't agree with her, for example, the way jane bennett describes that famous trash site with all the interacting, that's for me the true productive estrangement. something that you consider simply an affair of human desires, when you posit humans as interacting with biological processes, organic, inorganic, you get a certain inhhuman view of the situation and that fascinates me absolutely. it's more complex. but to go back to symptom, you know, i prefer not to use this term too much because in psychoanalysis it has a very precise meaning. it's especially symptom is never just a symptom. la with this term symptom like a not, symptom is really what... holds the subject together. if you dissolve the symptom, it's not you get the truth. usually you get a psychotic breakdown and so on. symptom is precisely not just a in the sense of a sign of some real thing going on for example to refer to.
a brief improvisation to provoke you, then you should take over. can i just add something to that ostran estrangement stuff? that would be the simple, this simple ideological regression. but i think we should not confuse this, like what in the way trump estranged us from old liberal certainty with another, like here. it may surprise you, but although i know you don't agree with her, for example, the way jane bennett describes that famous trash site with all the interacting, that's for me the true productive estrangement. something that you consider simply an affair of human desires, when you posit humans as interacting with biological processes, organic, inorganic, you get a certain inhhuman view of the situation and that fascinates me absolutely. it's more complex. but to go back to symptom, you know, i prefer not to use this term too much because in psychoanalysis it has a very precise meaning. it's especially symptom is never just a symptom. la with this term symptom like a not, symptom is really what... holds the subject together. if you dissolve the symptom, it's not you get the truth. usually you get a psychotic breakdown and so on. symptom is precisely not just a in the sense of a sign of some real thing going on for example to refer to.
Moderator
can you relate it to?
can you relate it to?
Slavoj Žižek
you said.
you said.
Moderator
authorship
authorship
Slavoj Žižek
sorry too.
sorry too.
Moderator
can you relate it to authorship? let's say all buildings by frank gehary are symptoms of his, i don't know, author function.
can you relate it to authorship? let's say all buildings by frank gehary are symptoms of his, i don't know, author function.
Slavoj Žižek
why i would prefer even not to use the term symptom. you know, if we go to, and my god, i talk too much, you should counter-attack. you know what fascinates me in architecture? it was already quoted today. in what sense? at least certain, maybe i'm universalizing too much, modern architecture, all these great projects, courbusier and so on, it's clear that they not only react to certain social problems, antagonisms, but they propose, for example, the new urban design and so on, separating place to sleep, place to work, place to have fun, as as a solution to these problems. and second, this is why my arch-enemy, if you ask me, and here frank gary is not totally innocent, are, i think one thing to bomb today are these public performative venues. you know, the idea is operas, concert halls, shouldn't be just elitist operas. you should have there amusement parks, cafeterias, open public space. it's pure, absolute lie. these are open spaces which are themselves isolated under the cupola and so on. but another thing, so in this sense, you cannot understand architecture, and i'm not saying the ultimate truth about architecture here. you can argue in a more formalist way, but what fascinated me another thing about, for example, this is my true love, i must admit it, the classical stalinist architecture, wedding cake, and so on. you know what fascinated me there so much? something that in ideology you were absolutely prohibited to say. that soviet union claimed to be an egalitarian worker state, it was in reality an extremely almost neo-feudal hierarchic state. you just look at the buildings and you see it. and this is the beautiful paradox. it's not as a kind of a dissident act. you had to do it like this. it like if you wanted to undermine stalinism, you didn't to go, you just looked at the building. stalinist official being and you see the lie of official ideology. it confirms this idea to me, deep freudian idea that you cannot totally lie. truth is somehow always articulated
why i would prefer even not to use the term symptom. you know, if we go to, and my god, i talk too much, you should counter-attack. you know what fascinates me in architecture? it was already quoted today. in what sense? at least certain, maybe i'm universalizing too much, modern architecture, all these great projects, courbusier and so on, it's clear that they not only react to certain social problems, antagonisms, but they propose, for example, the new urban design and so on, separating place to sleep, place to work, place to have fun, as as a solution to these problems. and second, this is why my arch-enemy, if you ask me, and here frank gary is not totally innocent, are, i think one thing to bomb today are these public performative venues. you know, the idea is operas, concert halls, shouldn't be just elitist operas. you should have there amusement parks, cafeterias, open public space. it's pure, absolute lie. these are open spaces which are themselves isolated under the cupola and so on. but another thing, so in this sense, you cannot understand architecture, and i'm not saying the ultimate truth about architecture here. you can argue in a more formalist way, but what fascinated me another thing about, for example, this is my true love, i must admit it, the classical stalinist architecture, wedding cake, and so on. you know what fascinated me there so much? something that in ideology you were absolutely prohibited to say. that soviet union claimed to be an egalitarian worker state, it was in reality an extremely almost neo-feudal hierarchic state. you just look at the buildings and you see it. and this is the beautiful paradox. it's not as a kind of a dissident act. you had to do it like this. it like if you wanted to undermine stalinism, you didn't to go, you just looked at the building. stalinist official being and you see the lie of official ideology. it confirms this idea to me, deep freudian idea that you cannot totally lie. truth is somehow always articulated
Moderator
what do we say about the same exact please. um... maybe only 15 years earlier. um having a kind of formalist moment of abstraction. and then... somehow killing it.
what do we say about the same exact please. um... maybe only 15 years earlier. um having a kind of formalist moment of abstraction. and then... somehow killing it.
Slavoj Žižek
you may
you may
Moderator
i think this is something that we can relate.
i think this is something that we can relate.
Slavoj Žižek
i know what you mean.
i know what you mean.
Moderator
can relate it to today because if khimas closes in the 20 if bauhaus closes in the 30s, if we're now entering a difficult time period. we're not quite sure where we are chronologically. the question on the one hand is what are we to do? we're here in a
can relate it to today because if khimas closes in the 20 if bauhaus closes in the 30s, if we're now entering a difficult time period. we're not quite sure where we are chronologically. the question on the one hand is what are we to do? we're here in a
Slavoj Žižek
i asking an architectural question or a general?
i asking an architectural question or a general?
Moderator
i it's an institutional question of knowledge. so let's say it's an architecture question on the one hand, but it can be broader than that. what are we to do as those who produce knowledge? have we entered the 21st century? are we repeating the 20th? and you here at syk, i yes. well...
i it's an institutional question of knowledge. so let's say it's an architecture question on the one hand, but it can be broader than that. what are we to do as those who produce knowledge? have we entered the 21st century? are we repeating the 20th? and you here at syk, i yes. well...
Slavoj Žižek
i think we are, but my god, i talk too much. you want to do.
i think we are, but my god, i talk too much. you want to do.
Moderator
actually, i'm curious to hear from you because...
actually, i'm curious to hear from you because...
Graham Harman
you is, both of us here.
you is, both of us here.
Moderator
i'm curious to hear from graham first because
i'm curious to hear from graham first because
Graham Harman
can i answer first the question about buildings as symptoms of capitalism or neoliberalism, which people because this is a flat. i think you'll learn a lot. you don't. and what i'm worried about is that usually that statement is a way of gaining the moral high ground in a debate. so then you can talk down to everyone. triple o says all objects are equal and alexander galloway writes an article saying we think humans are garbage because we're the equal of garbage. i mean, come on. there's no intellectual content in that claim. he's simply trying to look down on us from above. and this is what i worry about.
can i answer first the question about buildings as symptoms of capitalism or neoliberalism, which people because this is a flat. i think you'll learn a lot. you don't. and what i'm worried about is that usually that statement is a way of gaining the moral high ground in a debate. so then you can talk down to everyone. triple o says all objects are equal and alexander galloway writes an article saying we think humans are garbage because we're the equal of garbage. i mean, come on. there's no intellectual content in that claim. he's simply trying to look down on us from above. and this is what i worry about.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm a bit political correct.
i'm a bit political correct.
Graham Harman
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
for for me.
for for me.
Graham Harman
the more white people
the more white people
Slavoj Žižek
who act politically correct, the more they apparently humiliate themselves, the more they gain in this pleasure of. but by humiliating ourselves, by assuming guilt for everything, we assume the high moral ground and so on.
who act politically correct, the more they apparently humiliate themselves, the more they gain in this pleasure of. but by humiliating ourselves, by assuming guilt for everything, we assume the high moral ground and so on.
Moderator
slama, i'm cutting you off for one minute, g.
slama, i'm cutting you off for one minute, g.
Slavoj Žižek
one minute.
one minute.
Moderator
five minutes..
five minutes..
Graham Harman
one minute it's fine.
one minute it's fine.
Slavoj Žižek
let's
let's
Graham Harman
deal tree and half. so yes, there's obviously a sense in which buildings can be read as symptoms of whatever period they're in, but i'm not sure that's the right move to make right now. i think we need a formalist move at the moment, as unfashionable as it is. we need to look at the building as cut off from its surroundings, just like we need to do with the artwork, but without the drawback of the earlier formalism, which is that it tried to exclude anything outside the work itself. that isn't always the case. sometimes the work does let other influences permeate. and so in art criticism, for example, you had clement greenberg's formalism, which i have some sympathies with. but he ends up too much against performance art, conceptual art, installations, these things. but you can have those things and still have it be an autonomous formal unit. so you can have performers. what do you mean exactly by formalism? i suppose the way you could define formalism is that a thing is autonomous from its surroundings. that'd be the first step. i think in modernity it also takes on a second meaning, which i don't like, which is that... the cutting off of the subject from the object. so in kant's aesthetics, for example, aesthetics is all going on here. it's not going on out there.
deal tree and half. so yes, there's obviously a sense in which buildings can be read as symptoms of whatever period they're in, but i'm not sure that's the right move to make right now. i think we need a formalist move at the moment, as unfashionable as it is. we need to look at the building as cut off from its surroundings, just like we need to do with the artwork, but without the drawback of the earlier formalism, which is that it tried to exclude anything outside the work itself. that isn't always the case. sometimes the work does let other influences permeate. and so in art criticism, for example, you had clement greenberg's formalism, which i have some sympathies with. but he ends up too much against performance art, conceptual art, installations, these things. but you can have those things and still have it be an autonomous formal unit. so you can have performers. what do you mean exactly by formalism? i suppose the way you could define formalism is that a thing is autonomous from its surroundings. that'd be the first step. i think in modernity it also takes on a second meaning, which i don't like, which is that... the cutting off of the subject from the object. so in kant's aesthetics, for example, aesthetics is all going on here. it's not going on out there.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Graham Harman
and then in fried and greenberg, i think it reverses. it's all out there. it's not here. and that's why fried hates theatrical aesthetics. anything theatrical is bad. and in formal ethics, of course, in kant's, i think it's the only place he uses the term formalism is in his ethics, not in the other parts. formism in ethics, of course, is the idea that it has nothing to do with the consequences or the content of the acts. it has to do with following the pure formula of duty. and i think we would do well to get over that. i mean, the most powerful critique of kant's ethics still was probably max schler's. i know you like hegel's, but max schler's critique is that ethics has to do with our love for something, something that we're passionate about, something that we are drawn to and that we make. a major topic of our lives. and so in a sense, the basic ethical unit is not us. the basic ethical unit is us plus what we love. this will be shaylor's position. and i tried to show this through a reading of dante in my last book. this is what dante is about as well. dante is about an ethics of love. it's about your attachment to things. and what's the lowest sin in dante? it's fraud, which is a false attachment. it's pretending to be attached to something that you're not, such as family or country or friends that you then betray. so trump, no, trump.
and then in fried and greenberg, i think it reverses. it's all out there. it's not here. and that's why fried hates theatrical aesthetics. anything theatrical is bad. and in formal ethics, of course, in kant's, i think it's the only place he uses the term formalism is in his ethics, not in the other parts. formism in ethics, of course, is the idea that it has nothing to do with the consequences or the content of the acts. it has to do with following the pure formula of duty. and i think we would do well to get over that. i mean, the most powerful critique of kant's ethics still was probably max schler's. i know you like hegel's, but max schler's critique is that ethics has to do with our love for something, something that we're passionate about, something that we are drawn to and that we make. a major topic of our lives. and so in a sense, the basic ethical unit is not us. the basic ethical unit is us plus what we love. this will be shaylor's position. and i tried to show this through a reading of dante in my last book. this is what dante is about as well. dante is about an ethics of love. it's about your attachment to things. and what's the lowest sin in dante? it's fraud, which is a false attachment. it's pretending to be attached to something that you're not, such as family or country or friends that you then betray. so trump, no, trump.
Slavoj Žižek
would be the thinner for. where would you put trump? but isn't he a fraud exactly in this sense? he pretends america first and so on. he's yeah,.
would be the thinner for. where would you put trump? but isn't he a fraud exactly in this sense? he pretends america first and so on. he's yeah,.
Graham Harman
a fraud in almost every sense. and what really, maybe i'll go off topic here, but i really need to say this to get it out of my system. we've known this guy for 30-some years, and we knew. what a clown he is, and yet we elect him anyway after all this time. i could see the american public going through a phase of thinking we need a businessman to fix everything. we had per in the early 90s. there was this kind of phenomenon. but he's not even a good businessman. he's made his business out of cheating people out of... shaing contractors and employees.
a fraud in almost every sense. and what really, maybe i'll go off topic here, but i really need to say this to get it out of my system. we've known this guy for 30-some years, and we knew. what a clown he is, and yet we elect him anyway after all this time. i could see the american public going through a phase of thinking we need a businessman to fix everything. we had per in the early 90s. there was this kind of phenomenon. but he's not even a good businessman. he's made his business out of cheating people out of... shaing contractors and employees.
Moderator
he seems to be a real. developers so maybe yeah, i agree with you.
he seems to be a real. developers so maybe yeah, i agree with you.
Slavoj Žižek
maybe we can...
maybe we can...
Moderator
how do you feel about opening it up to the audience?
how do you feel about opening it up to the audience?
Slavoj Žižek
but listen, what he was doing was going from one bankruptcy to another and somehow making the taxpayers pay for his debts and squeezing out. he is not what he pretends to be, a successful.
but listen, what he was doing was going from one bankruptcy to another and somehow making the taxpayers pay for his debts and squeezing out. he is not what he pretends to be, a successful.
Graham Harman
individual big capitalist and so on and so on. and unlike you, i'm not optimistic that something good will come of this. i think so much damage could be done that there's not going to be a chance to do anything better. i think we're losing too many basic things and that's why i went for hillary. despite... yeah.
individual big capitalist and so on and so on. and unlike you, i'm not optimistic that something good will come of this. i think so much damage could be done that there's not going to be a chance to do anything better. i think we're losing too many basic things and that's why i went for hillary. despite... yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
for me, is such a tragedy. okay, but could i preserve something maybe, maybe, maybe let's drop. no, but sorry, just what you mentioned about what were you talking about just before these symptoms
for me, is such a tragedy. okay, but could i preserve something maybe, maybe, maybe let's drop. no, but sorry, just what you mentioned about what were you talking about just before these symptoms
Graham Harman
yes.
yes.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, formalism and so on. but you know, i try to be also a formalist. i think all good marxists are formalists in the sense that you don't project some socialismism onto it. i think that for example, that's how, at my best, which is not always the case, i dismiss many of my cinema analyses as just, i use brutally examples to make a theoretical point, nothing to do with films. sometimes when i write about tarkovsky, about hitchcock and so on, i try to be a formalist. i think that to get even at social context of hitchcock, for example, for me, the supreme scene, the second murder of detective arbogast in psycho, the way camera moves up and so on, you have an entire implicit theology and so on there. i think that for me, formalism and social analyses do not exclude themselves. social analysis does not mean immediate content analysis is a bourgeois, a hero or whatever. and even with architecture. my god, you should like, do psycho is for me one of the great works about architecture because the basic tension of the film is precisely horizontal, vertical, mother's house modeled on edward, on i think it was on on or what that mother's house and all those mot against it's against two types of traditional mother's house and modern flat motel bates motel. so ironically in my analysis of psycho i ask myself because the whole tension of norman b is he's literally a guy caught between the two. traditional architecture mother's house and modern motel but but what if... because this is still a modernist opposition. what if we move into what in popular terms is is called post-modernism and imagine a motel which is itself flat but done with all the traditional kitsch ornaments that you don't need mother's house up there. mother's house would be put as a mask on the motel itself. what would happen in that case with norman b, you know? rather don't think about it, you know. so just to avoid this, i deeply sympathize with your idea of formalism that i am absolutely opposed to this vulgar reading of projecting some social content and so on and so on. great formal.
yeah, formalism and so on. but you know, i try to be also a formalist. i think all good marxists are formalists in the sense that you don't project some socialismism onto it. i think that for example, that's how, at my best, which is not always the case, i dismiss many of my cinema analyses as just, i use brutally examples to make a theoretical point, nothing to do with films. sometimes when i write about tarkovsky, about hitchcock and so on, i try to be a formalist. i think that to get even at social context of hitchcock, for example, for me, the supreme scene, the second murder of detective arbogast in psycho, the way camera moves up and so on, you have an entire implicit theology and so on there. i think that for me, formalism and social analyses do not exclude themselves. social analysis does not mean immediate content analysis is a bourgeois, a hero or whatever. and even with architecture. my god, you should like, do psycho is for me one of the great works about architecture because the basic tension of the film is precisely horizontal, vertical, mother's house modeled on edward, on i think it was on on or what that mother's house and all those mot against it's against two types of traditional mother's house and modern flat motel bates motel. so ironically in my analysis of psycho i ask myself because the whole tension of norman b is he's literally a guy caught between the two. traditional architecture mother's house and modern motel but but what if... because this is still a modernist opposition. what if we move into what in popular terms is is called post-modernism and imagine a motel which is itself flat but done with all the traditional kitsch ornaments that you don't need mother's house up there. mother's house would be put as a mask on the motel itself. what would happen in that case with norman b, you know? rather don't think about it, you know. so just to avoid this, i deeply sympathize with your idea of formalism that i am absolutely opposed to this vulgar reading of projecting some social content and so on and so on. great formal.
Moderator
your analysis of tarkovsky, the slowing down. of the frame completely slowing down to.
your analysis of tarkovsky, the slowing down. of the frame completely slowing down to.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Moderator
beyond, it's a kind of slowing down of reality. which becomes its own mode of abstraction. that to me.
beyond, it's a kind of slowing down of reality. which becomes its own mode of abstraction. that to me.
Slavoj Žižek
ah, that's a beautiful reading. i agree with you. we talked before that. thank.
ah, that's a beautiful reading. i agree with you. we talked before that. thank.
Moderator
is it okay if we open it up to the audience??
is it okay if we open it up to the audience??
Slavoj Žižek
no, can i just add another thing? very briefly, the way i would have answered you when you said reality and so on, nonetheless, maybe this is our misunderstanding, reality is constructed in the simple sense that what we perceive as social reality is different from but i'm not a social constructivist.
no, can i just add another thing? very briefly, the way i would have answered you when you said reality and so on, nonetheless, maybe this is our misunderstanding, reality is constructed in the simple sense that what we perceive as social reality is different from but i'm not a social constructivist.
Moderator
is
is
Slavoj Žižek
real there are traumas and so on. so i am my ultimate enemy even is this cheap deconstructionism like everything is so.
real there are traumas and so on. so i am my ultimate enemy even is this cheap deconstructionism like everything is so.
Graham Harman
social
social
Slavoj Žižek
construct
construct
Graham Harman
we share this. except that the real is not reality and the obj is not my object. so we still have those differences. well, i will put it in this way to.
we share this. except that the real is not reality and the obj is not my object. so we still have those differences. well, i will put it in this way to.
Slavoj Žižek
end up in a comical way. leave this to the kgb unit that will investigate you to say what is your object. the party will look into it and inform you about it. sorry, let's go. but you get the point how the two of us, we may appear totally opposed. and that's what i found. and all of a sudden there are these... unexpected interconnections and so on which is why i agree with him precisely where he doesn't even agree with his own guys like how you criticize latour and all those relationists and insist on fixity identity. that's absolutely crucial for me. and here you are, although you would kill me for saying this, a good hegelian, as good readers of hegel like the friend verard leblun demonstrated. hegel is absolutely not this kind of universal mobist. everything develops and so.
end up in a comical way. leave this to the kgb unit that will investigate you to say what is your object. the party will look into it and inform you about it. sorry, let's go. but you get the point how the two of us, we may appear totally opposed. and that's what i found. and all of a sudden there are these... unexpected interconnections and so on which is why i agree with him precisely where he doesn't even agree with his own guys like how you criticize latour and all those relationists and insist on fixity identity. that's absolutely crucial for me. and here you are, although you would kill me for saying this, a good hegelian, as good readers of hegel like the friend verard leblun demonstrated. hegel is absolutely not this kind of universal mobist. everything develops and so.
Graham Harman
on and so on. okay, stop. but i still like the thing in itself and you don't. that's a big difference. i do, but i would redefine it.
on and so on. okay, stop. but i still like the thing in itself and you don't. that's a big difference. i do, but i would redefine it.
Slavoj Žižek
think in itself as you said, my god. it's not simply out there. it's in the cracks here and so on. you said this. you provided a wonderful formulation. why also you are totally right criticized mayor sch we don't arrive and think in itself by
think in itself as you said, my god. it's not simply out there. it's in the cracks here and so on. you said this. you provided a wonderful formulation. why also you are totally right criticized mayor sch we don't arrive and think in itself by
Graham Harman
pro.
pro.
Slavoj Žižek
by abstracting and then trying to power things independently. i totally agree with you that the problem is that we are part of the thing itself. we are not here and thing itself is out there.
by abstracting and then trying to power things independently. i totally agree with you that the problem is that we are part of the thing itself. we are not here and thing itself is out there.
Moderator
are you talking about a kind of death of abstraction? i mean, is this...
are you talking about a kind of death of abstraction? i mean, is this...
Slavoj Žižek
no, we are all for abstraction.. and for me, asian, again, abstraction is part of reality. abstraction is not you move out of reality. that's the whole paradox. reality can be abstract.
no, we are all for abstraction.. and for me, asian, again, abstraction is part of reality. abstraction is not you move out of reality. that's the whole paradox. reality can be abstract.
Moderator
on stage. okay.
on stage. okay.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry?
sorry?
Moderator
then i will stay on stage.
then i will stay on stage.
Slavoj Žižek
let it be. for some time central committee allows you to... now, you know, this is stalinist opportunism. you are left-wing deviation, you are right-wing deviation, and i'm the party line, making tactical alliances with buharin, with the bureaucracy., with bureaucracy. sorry, let's go on. but i cut you off. i think you think have some final thought.
let it be. for some time central committee allows you to... now, you know, this is stalinist opportunism. you are left-wing deviation, you are right-wing deviation, and i'm the party line, making tactical alliances with buharin, with the bureaucracy., with bureaucracy. sorry, let's go on. but i cut you off. i think you think have some final thought.
Graham Harman
that i'm still more willing to, i do think the thing in itself is out there, i just don't think it's knowable. so we do still disagree on that.
that i'm still more willing to, i do think the thing in itself is out there, i just don't think it's knowable. so we do still disagree on that.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, but again, the problem for me is that precisely as such, for example, let's take communism. at what level is for you communism a thing in itself?
yes, but again, the problem for me is that precisely as such, for example, let's take communism. at what level is for you communism a thing in itself?
Graham Harman
the fact that communism is not completely actualized in any of its effects or in.
the fact that communism is not completely actualized in any of its effects or in.
Slavoj Žižek
or in any of the components.
or in any of the components.
Graham Harman
it's the.
it's the.
Slavoj Žižek
it up but isn't it that it is a thing in itself, but as such it is in some sense the effect of people interacting? sure, every object is. i
it up but isn't it that it is a thing in itself, but as such it is in some sense the effect of people interacting? sure, every object is. i
Graham Harman
then we agree that but but go to back. the but is that the object is emergent, it isn't reducible to those pieces. it has.
then we agree that but but go to back. the but is that the object is emergent, it isn't reducible to those pieces. it has.
Slavoj Žižek
as a good hegelian, i absolutely agree. no, no, that's what hegel calls idea. for hegel, idea is not something, it's not a platonic idea out there. and that's what hegel makes it clear. i agree with you here. nonetheless, we cannot simply say it's just a fetishized effect. all that really exists are human people, actual people. all this, i really dislike it, early marx metaphics of the only actual things are real people producing. no, in itself, although it doesn't exist as this concrete object, it also exists, it exerts causality, efficiency. i totally agree with you here.
as a good hegelian, i absolutely agree. no, no, that's what hegel calls idea. for hegel, idea is not something, it's not a platonic idea out there. and that's what hegel makes it clear. i agree with you here. nonetheless, we cannot simply say it's just a fetishized effect. all that really exists are human people, actual people. all this, i really dislike it, early marx metaphics of the only actual things are real people producing. no, in itself, although it doesn't exist as this concrete object, it also exists, it exerts causality, efficiency. i totally agree with you here.
Moderator
you wanted to say
you wanted to say
Slavoj Žižek
something
something
Moderator
i'm done.
i'm done.
Slavoj Žižek
we are so merciful, we even allow... no, sorry, but didn't you want to play democracy?
we are so merciful, we even allow... no, sorry, but didn't you want to play democracy?
Moderator
didn't we do it? did we not do this?
didn't we do it? did we not do this?
Slavoj Žižek
no, by democracy i mean... that.
no, by democracy i mean... that.
Moderator
yes, yes, yes. does anybody want to ask a question?
yes, yes, yes. does anybody want to ask a question?
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Moderator
i think there must be a microphone somewhere.
i think there must be a microphone somewhere.
Slavoj Žižek
i already criticized her before that she didn't organize it in a proper communist way, free debate, but you must distribute the questions in advance to prevent fascist provocations..
i already criticized her before that she didn't organize it in a proper communist way, free debate, but you must distribute the questions in advance to prevent fascist provocations..
Moderator
all right, i know graham, we met in new york a while back. and i've been to aj quite a few times. but here, we need to clarify what is at stake in this conversation between two philosophers, the audience is primarily architects. so i've been reading on speculative real and mir for quite some time. and the basic moral, if you can call it moral, is that we are working towards an alien ontology of architecture such that architecture since it's in, except with the babylonian and the greeks. is a massive project of humanity. so that architecture is man will large, so to speak and we project our image onto the landscape such that that kind of a man-sub subject world. the relationship between man and world is such a correlation structure that we cannot see it. so then you come. you have myasu with the. bring up the correlation structure. and then you have graham that that break such that so radical that the object in itself, which is can't thing in itself, is unknowable. and this is just your assertion because modern science tell us that objects have varying degrees of knowability, accessibility. so it's not that we are completely asserting ignorance, so to speak. now, in that this very complex structure, so the two characters are like, that i've managed to synthesize this. kant notion of synthetic a priori judgment from which out of which the transcendental imagination springs forth and according to catherine malibu's assessment is that the difference between hegel and heidegger is that hegel manages to christianize. the notion of the transcendental. but in the case of heidegger, he re-injected temporality from a phenomenological standpoint. so there's no temporality, even though there's an end of history in hegel, but you don't have the kind of a gross, overarching fin of time in heidegger. so you insert temporality so that there's a time past, time present, and time future, and that you reinsert finitude as opposed to infinit of the absolute in hegel. now, okay, so that's first connection. the second connection is... zu leibniz. and leibniz is a grossly underestimated philosopher so that we completely miss out on leibiz, because he was the first person who came out with the... concept of computation. so the reason i'm mentioning is this, that we need a computational ontology of architecture such that computation has its own object in itself. so we don't have the kind of linkages. because the modern notion of computation... for architects, we use computation from representational notion of computation as opposed to non-representational use of computation. so we have to go to a non non-rerepresentational user of computation. and if you look at cellular automata, right, one-dimensional cellular automata has 256 rule sets, and those rules sets are autonomous. and that is the equivalent, the formal axiomatic equivalent of the thinking itself. so if you instantiate the touring machine. with the mother, the she behaved on its own beam. so. you no longer needs architecture. so we need that kind of a synthesis of leibniz. let. transatlonal subjectivity with with the formalism of the synthesis of formalism of leibniz benef effects of leibniz with... the hegelian synthetic a priori. just right now you begin.
all right, i know graham, we met in new york a while back. and i've been to aj quite a few times. but here, we need to clarify what is at stake in this conversation between two philosophers, the audience is primarily architects. so i've been reading on speculative real and mir for quite some time. and the basic moral, if you can call it moral, is that we are working towards an alien ontology of architecture such that architecture since it's in, except with the babylonian and the greeks. is a massive project of humanity. so that architecture is man will large, so to speak and we project our image onto the landscape such that that kind of a man-sub subject world. the relationship between man and world is such a correlation structure that we cannot see it. so then you come. you have myasu with the. bring up the correlation structure. and then you have graham that that break such that so radical that the object in itself, which is can't thing in itself, is unknowable. and this is just your assertion because modern science tell us that objects have varying degrees of knowability, accessibility. so it's not that we are completely asserting ignorance, so to speak. now, in that this very complex structure, so the two characters are like, that i've managed to synthesize this. kant notion of synthetic a priori judgment from which out of which the transcendental imagination springs forth and according to catherine malibu's assessment is that the difference between hegel and heidegger is that hegel manages to christianize. the notion of the transcendental. but in the case of heidegger, he re-injected temporality from a phenomenological standpoint. so there's no temporality, even though there's an end of history in hegel, but you don't have the kind of a gross, overarching fin of time in heidegger. so you insert temporality so that there's a time past, time present, and time future, and that you reinsert finitude as opposed to infinit of the absolute in hegel. now, okay, so that's first connection. the second connection is... zu leibniz. and leibniz is a grossly underestimated philosopher so that we completely miss out on leibiz, because he was the first person who came out with the... concept of computation. so the reason i'm mentioning is this, that we need a computational ontology of architecture such that computation has its own object in itself. so we don't have the kind of linkages. because the modern notion of computation... for architects, we use computation from representational notion of computation as opposed to non-representational use of computation. so we have to go to a non non-rerepresentational user of computation. and if you look at cellular automata, right, one-dimensional cellular automata has 256 rule sets, and those rules sets are autonomous. and that is the equivalent, the formal axiomatic equivalent of the thinking itself. so if you instantiate the touring machine. with the mother, the she behaved on its own beam. so. you no longer needs architecture. so we need that kind of a synthesis of leibniz. let. transatlonal subjectivity with with the formalism of the synthesis of formalism of leibniz benef effects of leibniz with... the hegelian synthetic a priori. just right now you begin.
Audience Member 1
thank you. .
thank you. .
Graham Harman
my knowledge of your background is that you're very sympathetic to mayu's position. i.
my knowledge of your background is that you're very sympathetic to mayu's position. i.
Moderator
specifically about you.
specifically about you.
Graham Harman
but you, okay. i'm not sure what you think the merit of computational architecture would be in terms of getting at the thing in itself. i can see other merits. i can see. procedural merits and having all this parametric software and things like this, but in what sense is computational architecture going to get us the thing itself? that's what i don't get. because i don't agree with i don't agree with this mathematical line about you and ma. so i'm not sure.
but you, okay. i'm not sure what you think the merit of computational architecture would be in terms of getting at the thing in itself. i can see other merits. i can see. procedural merits and having all this parametric software and things like this, but in what sense is computational architecture going to get us the thing itself? that's what i don't get. because i don't agree with i don't agree with this mathematical line about you and ma. so i'm not sure.
Moderator
so that's ideal of subject. see, what i'm saying is that if you take one cell of matter, that is an object in itself. it's not our invention.
so that's ideal of subject. see, what i'm saying is that if you take one cell of matter, that is an object in itself. it's not our invention.
Graham Harman
sorry yes. okay, maybe. no sorry maybe simple as that. i think it's too reductive, but i think we should move on because it sounds like you have a wider.
sorry yes. okay, maybe. no sorry maybe simple as that. i think it's too reductive, but i think we should move on because it sounds like you have a wider.
Moderator
thank.
thank.
Graham Harman
archural you don't separate
archural you don't separate
Moderator
confidence ontology, then you can move this the subject and object so you can do.
confidence ontology, then you can move this the subject and object so you can do.
Graham Harman
i'm not sure i followed that, but... maybe we should talk about this later. maybe we should, if somebody has a short question, it might be easier to deal with that.
i'm not sure i followed that, but... maybe we should talk about this later. maybe we should, if somebody has a short question, it might be easier to deal with that.
Slavoj Žižek
can i just briefly make a short point? as always in defense of hegel, you know, it's for me, if i understood you correctly, way too simple to dismiss hegel as reducing temporality and so on and so on. first, hegel, what hegel calls absolute vision, absolute knowing, has nothing to do with now it's the end of history, i know everything.
can i just briefly make a short point? as always in defense of hegel, you know, it's for me, if i understood you correctly, way too simple to dismiss hegel as reducing temporality and so on and so on. first, hegel, what hegel calls absolute vision, absolute knowing, has nothing to do with now it's the end of history, i know everything.
Moderator
right.
right.
Slavoj Žižek
hegel is so interesting to, for example, hegel's philosophy of right is often misread, you know, that corporate vision of state developed there, as if he's presenting the ultimate model of how society should be. but how can we forget what hegel says in the famous forwardword to philosophy of right, where he says, you know, the whole of minerva takes off in the, which means... he says, when we can bring to concept, conceptualize, a certain social order, it means its time has passed, it's over. was hegel really such an idiot that he didn't know that the same must held for his own philosophy of right. so he's not describing a kind of ideal corporate model. he's describing something that is already disappearing and going on. hegel is much more open. read his philosophy of history. he was not an empirical idiot in his philosophy of history, in the introduction. apro propos, it's not bad if you consider it was not written but recorded, registered by his people 1820, when he approaches the united states and russia, he says, it's too early to say what these countries are spiritually, theirs will be the next century. now it's not so stupid. so what i mean is that what hegel calls absolute knowing is a kind of a limit sorry, yes. i
hegel is so interesting to, for example, hegel's philosophy of right is often misread, you know, that corporate vision of state developed there, as if he's presenting the ultimate model of how society should be. but how can we forget what hegel says in the famous forwardword to philosophy of right, where he says, you know, the whole of minerva takes off in the, which means... he says, when we can bring to concept, conceptualize, a certain social order, it means its time has passed, it's over. was hegel really such an idiot that he didn't know that the same must held for his own philosophy of right. so he's not describing a kind of ideal corporate model. he's describing something that is already disappearing and going on. hegel is much more open. read his philosophy of history. he was not an empirical idiot in his philosophy of history, in the introduction. apro propos, it's not bad if you consider it was not written but recorded, registered by his people 1820, when he approaches the united states and russia, he says, it's too early to say what these countries are spiritually, theirs will be the next century. now it's not so stupid. so what i mean is that what hegel calls absolute knowing is a kind of a limit sorry, yes. i
Audience Member 1
carl's question, because i think it was an important question and maybe got missed. he wasn't asking you about digital architecture. he was painting the proposition of a digital oncology which begins in turin and is gone all the way today to ted. argument argument is that computational methods are an adequate ontology for all actions of matter. you and your book. also acknowledge that that is a position that you uh do not subscribescribed it. his argument about representation is when you speak of objects and things, to a computational ontologist, you're looking at representations of a computational ontology. so he's simply asking you to address the issue that you mention in your book, but you don't actually.
carl's question, because i think it was an important question and maybe got missed. he wasn't asking you about digital architecture. he was painting the proposition of a digital oncology which begins in turin and is gone all the way today to ted. argument argument is that computational methods are an adequate ontology for all actions of matter. you and your book. also acknowledge that that is a position that you uh do not subscribescribed it. his argument about representation is when you speak of objects and things, to a computational ontologist, you're looking at representations of a computational ontology. so he's simply asking you to address the issue that you mention in your book, but you don't actually.
Graham Harman
which book? which book was this?
which book? which book was this?
Audience Member 1
in immaterialism, you mentioned a philosopher and several people that are working in the new materialism that would like to use physics and science. as a reductive ontology, and one version of that is computational methods. for example, turingne's argument that all mathematical behavior can be made can be worked out through turing's method. and now we think, and most scientists, teg mark is the one most recently who argued, that there is no process in the universe that cannot be mathematically described. meaning every material process, whether animate or inanimate, can be mathematically in principle described. that constitutes a fundamental ontology. if that is a fundamental ontology and a flat ontology, it also connects bodies to glass. but if you talk about bodies and glasses, you're talking about representations of that. ontology and all carl is asking you is what
in immaterialism, you mentioned a philosopher and several people that are working in the new materialism that would like to use physics and science. as a reductive ontology, and one version of that is computational methods. for example, turingne's argument that all mathematical behavior can be made can be worked out through turing's method. and now we think, and most scientists, teg mark is the one most recently who argued, that there is no process in the universe that cannot be mathematically described. meaning every material process, whether animate or inanimate, can be mathematically in principle described. that constitutes a fundamental ontology. if that is a fundamental ontology and a flat ontology, it also connects bodies to glass. but if you talk about bodies and glasses, you're talking about representations of that. ontology and all carl is asking you is what
Graham Harman
your position on that. it wouldn't be a flat ontology for one thing, because then you'd be saying that the lowest level is the real level and everything else is simply made up out of these computations.
your position on that. it wouldn't be a flat ontology for one thing, because then you'd be saying that the lowest level is the real level and everything else is simply made up out of these computations.
Audience Member 1
i was paraphrasing his question. i don't actually agree with it. oh.
i was paraphrasing his question. i don't actually agree with it. oh.
Graham Harman
so that would be what i call undermining, where you're simply trying to go to the smallest level, the most basic level, and using that to explain everything else. and one of the problems with that is it does not explain what we call emergence. and meaning that certain qualities and certain properties appear at levels above the most basic one. and it's not really so much a question of whether the higher level properties can be predicted, because in a lot of cases they can. a lot of times you bring two people together, you know exactly what's going to happen. it doesn't matter. the fact that what happens is different from the two individuals. you, marriage, you might know exactly this marriage is going to be a disaster. those two people never should have gotten married. the fact that you were right about it doesn't change the fact that the marriage is different than either of the individuals. and a flat ontology would have to include a reference to all those different scales of individuals, not just cellular automata. not just mathematical descriptions. and even if it's true that you could do a mathematical description of everything in the universe, you could also do a description in language of everything in the universe. it doesn't mean everything's just language. so... the universal applicability of a method does not mean that... you can do an ontology that exhausts everything in that way.
so that would be what i call undermining, where you're simply trying to go to the smallest level, the most basic level, and using that to explain everything else. and one of the problems with that is it does not explain what we call emergence. and meaning that certain qualities and certain properties appear at levels above the most basic one. and it's not really so much a question of whether the higher level properties can be predicted, because in a lot of cases they can. a lot of times you bring two people together, you know exactly what's going to happen. it doesn't matter. the fact that what happens is different from the two individuals. you, marriage, you might know exactly this marriage is going to be a disaster. those two people never should have gotten married. the fact that you were right about it doesn't change the fact that the marriage is different than either of the individuals. and a flat ontology would have to include a reference to all those different scales of individuals, not just cellular automata. not just mathematical descriptions. and even if it's true that you could do a mathematical description of everything in the universe, you could also do a description in language of everything in the universe. it doesn't mean everything's just language. so... the universal applicability of a method does not mean that... you can do an ontology that exhausts everything in that way.
Moderator
i, but yes solution. but. recently, if you look at google's translating engine. they invented their own language, internal language of our machines, that we don't even know what they're talking about. and that contains. internal principle
i, but yes solution. but. recently, if you look at google's translating engine. they invented their own language, internal language of our machines, that we don't even know what they're talking about. and that contains. internal principle
Slavoj Žižek
oh, there it goes. can i maybe add something here, maybe to help you? you know, going to batu, and i know batu very well, my god, we are friends. i don't think he would agree with your description. the key feature of his mathematical ontology, the idea is mathematics-based ontology, is that this ontology is not a kind of a turing-style flat description. it is inconsistent, necessarily inconsistent, full of gaps and so on. and there he sees the opening. in spite of this, my very friendly critique of bieu would have been that okay, he has this ontology of mathematics, multiplicity of multiplicities, and then i don't think, and he has basically three levels. this pure ontology, then he has his phenomenology, which means the world, and then he has the event. how does a world emerge of this pure mathematical ontology? how does an event explode in a world? i don't think he has a good theory. that's why, incidentally, being aware of this problem, he's always writing another book. now he's writing the third book.
oh, there it goes. can i maybe add something here, maybe to help you? you know, going to batu, and i know batu very well, my god, we are friends. i don't think he would agree with your description. the key feature of his mathematical ontology, the idea is mathematics-based ontology, is that this ontology is not a kind of a turing-style flat description. it is inconsistent, necessarily inconsistent, full of gaps and so on. and there he sees the opening. in spite of this, my very friendly critique of bieu would have been that okay, he has this ontology of mathematics, multiplicity of multiplicities, and then i don't think, and he has basically three levels. this pure ontology, then he has his phenomenology, which means the world, and then he has the event. how does a world emerge of this pure mathematical ontology? how does an event explode in a world? i don't think he has a good theory. that's why, incidentally, being aware of this problem, he's always writing another book. now he's writing the third book.
Moderator
it.
it.
Slavoj Žižek
so again, i think.
so again, i think.
Moderator
carl, maybe we can invite you to dinner and you can join us
carl, maybe we can invite you to dinner and you can join us
Audience Member 2
what event is a great book. everyone should buy. sorry i love event, your book about how everything is a sequence of events and everything's sort of a catastrophe. my question for you. who is you? sort of short. my name's elliot rose. no, no, no. no, who's you? itavo easy.
what event is a great book. everyone should buy. sorry i love event, your book about how everything is a sequence of events and everything's sort of a catastrophe. my question for you. who is you? sort of short. my name's elliot rose. no, no, no. no, who's you? itavo easy.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Audience Member 2
you yeah. so you describe in the parallax view lenin's sort of attraction to abstract art, sort of unrelated. i was wondering if you see any sort of similar attractions from today's leader into something sort of that seems unrelated because you describe it as... um... there's no relation between these fascist abstract art makers and lenin's political views, but in a way they're both.
you yeah. so you describe in the parallax view lenin's sort of attraction to abstract art, sort of unrelated. i was wondering if you see any sort of similar attractions from today's leader into something sort of that seems unrelated because you describe it as... um... there's no relation between these fascist abstract art makers and lenin's political views, but in a way they're both.
Slavoj Žižek
factory, sorry why?
factory, sorry why?
Audience Member 2
i believe that how believe that's how you wrote it. i think it was like they were part of supporters of fascist regimes or, if not supporters, members, etc.
i believe that how believe that's how you wrote it. i think it was like they were part of supporters of fascist regimes or, if not supporters, members, etc.
Graham Harman
this was about the torture chambers at the beginning of
this was about the torture chambers at the beginning of
Audience Member 2
yeah, that was a great. i love that.
yeah, that was a great. i love that.
Graham Harman
but that was...
but that was...
Slavoj Žižek
but.
but.
Audience Member 2
but the question is, that seems, i've been talking with people about it and they say, well, the similarity where it comes together is revolution. so there's sort of revolt in art, he sort of revolts in politics. so there is sort of, even if not immediately apparent, a sort of, there is a connecting factor. so i was wondering maybe if you see any parallaxes in today's leaders with similar.
but the question is, that seems, i've been talking with people about it and they say, well, the similarity where it comes together is revolution. so there's sort of revolt in art, he sort of revolts in politics. so there is sort of, even if not immediately apparent, a sort of, there is a connecting factor. so i was wondering maybe if you see any parallaxes in today's leaders with similar.
Slavoj Žižek
no what fascinated me at that point that it's so popular, that was the avant-garde dream. what bolsheviks did in politics, we are doing in art. but what fascinates me is how nowadays these two levels for some structural reason cannot ever come together in the sense that you will never get. a politician who would you know, i think it's a deep necessity that all big bolshevik leaders were in their art tastes pretty traditional and so on. so this is what interests me how i agree that they are in some way parallel, but nonetheless they cannot come together. the illusion of constructists and so on was that they will come together. they will basically, it's a very vicious reading, expecting the bolshevik state to recognize them. like we are in art what you are doing in politics. and although bolsheviks were pretty progressive here, for example, people don't take this into account. did you see the disgusting movie dangerous method? kira knight that sabine spielrein who, the patient of jung who turned to freud. but the movie stops at the crucial moment. you know what happens with her afterwards. she moved to soviet union. she established in early 20s the first psychoanalytic freudian kindergarten where in kremlin. you know that okay, i don't want to get rid. so what fascinates me in this that, sometimes phenomena which move this which are really... the same tendency in a different level in politics in art for this very reason. cannot connect in reality h tu! remain disparate. here also we should be very brutal. i wonder if you would agree and reread stalin's imposition of socialist realism. it wasn't there was thriving multiplicity in the 20s and then brutal stalin came imposed imposed-socialist realism. in all histories that i've read, stalin's introduction of socialist realism was an extremely popular move because ordinary people were
no what fascinated me at that point that it's so popular, that was the avant-garde dream. what bolsheviks did in politics, we are doing in art. but what fascinates me is how nowadays these two levels for some structural reason cannot ever come together in the sense that you will never get. a politician who would you know, i think it's a deep necessity that all big bolshevik leaders were in their art tastes pretty traditional and so on. so this is what interests me how i agree that they are in some way parallel, but nonetheless they cannot come together. the illusion of constructists and so on was that they will come together. they will basically, it's a very vicious reading, expecting the bolshevik state to recognize them. like we are in art what you are doing in politics. and although bolsheviks were pretty progressive here, for example, people don't take this into account. did you see the disgusting movie dangerous method? kira knight that sabine spielrein who, the patient of jung who turned to freud. but the movie stops at the crucial moment. you know what happens with her afterwards. she moved to soviet union. she established in early 20s the first psychoanalytic freudian kindergarten where in kremlin. you know that okay, i don't want to get rid. so what fascinates me in this that, sometimes phenomena which move this which are really... the same tendency in a different level in politics in art for this very reason. cannot connect in reality h tu! remain disparate. here also we should be very brutal. i wonder if you would agree and reread stalin's imposition of socialist realism. it wasn't there was thriving multiplicity in the 20s and then brutal stalin came imposed imposed-socialist realism. in all histories that i've read, stalin's introduction of socialist realism was an extremely popular move because ordinary people were
Moderator
popular popular for whom? i mean?
popular popular for whom? i mean?
Slavoj Žižek
for ordinary people who were sick and tired of, i am for them, but of those, are we aware how unpopular among broad population futurists, constructivists were and so on and so on? do you know that eisenstein's, those late movies, october, the old and the new, they were a total fiasco. they played for two weeks in a suburban movie movie theater in moscow. so what stalin offered to people? it wasn.
for ordinary people who were sick and tired of, i am for them, but of those, are we aware how unpopular among broad population futurists, constructivists were and so on and so on? do you know that eisenstein's, those late movies, october, the old and the new, they were a total fiasco. they played for two weeks in a suburban movie movie theater in moscow. so what stalin offered to people? it wasn.
Moderator
wasn't eisenstein-pomkin completely enacted by the people? or at least
wasn't eisenstein-pomkin completely enacted by the people? or at least
Slavoj Žižek
no, it was the other way around. i know what you are referring to. when they were celebrating, i don't know which anniversary of the revolution.
no, it was the other way around. i know what you are referring to. when they were celebrating, i don't know which anniversary of the revolution.
Moderator
and they paraded the nation.
and they paraded the nation.
Slavoj Žižek
referring to that famous where all of them participated, all the artists how called the one black square, my god, malevich and so on, that big reenactment revolution in 1920-21. but already potemkin, i read analysis here. it was a hit abroad, my god, soviet cinema. it wasn't a big success in soviet union itself. what they like there was chlin, mary pickford and so on.
referring to that famous where all of them participated, all the artists how called the one black square, my god, malevich and so on, that big reenactment revolution in 1920-21. but already potemkin, i read analysis here. it was a hit abroad, my god, soviet cinema. it wasn't a big success in soviet union itself. what they like there was chlin, mary pickford and so on.
Moderator
i don't think they had very many cinemas to actually...
i don't think they had very many cinemas to actually...
Slavoj Žižek
oh, it's a miracle they did in the 20s, there was a free import of films. my god, i saw douglas fairbanks and mary pitford visited the soviet union. it was thousands of people gathering them and so on and so on.
oh, it's a miracle they did in the 20s, there was a free import of films. my god, i saw douglas fairbanks and mary pitford visited the soviet union. it was thousands of people gathering them and so on and so on.
Moderator
the question i think also has to do with... moving into the 30s where schski, whose brother was sent to the gulag in order to bring him up into the construction sites of the canals. along with rocheno, who then... produce the propaganda machine for ussr reconstruction, which becomes a kind of western version of this social socialist realism where they actually produce rendered photography as vehicle.
the question i think also has to do with... moving into the 30s where schski, whose brother was sent to the gulag in order to bring him up into the construction sites of the canals. along with rocheno, who then... produce the propaganda machine for ussr reconstruction, which becomes a kind of western version of this social socialist realism where they actually produce rendered photography as vehicle.
Slavoj Žižek
i agree with you. it was a threat with the horror, the way stalin crushed avant-garde. i just think we should see the 20s in a much more problematic way. they were not a lost paradise. for example, i've written about it and boris groz edited the documents with zurkamp, two times 1000 book on. you know what was almost the predominant popular view, not among ordinary people, but among the intellectuals? actually the 20s, a kind of soviet version of tech gnosticism. they did it the first was re while and others are doing it today. trotsky even was part of it. i quoted sab trotsky wrote in 19225. the big test of communism is not just destroying capitalism and so on. we should move forward and create a new man. and he means it literally, in the biological sense. homo sapiens, we should say, goodbye, homo sapiens, you did his work, you are too primitive and so on. and they had a very precise metaphysical view. they claim that sexuality is the enemy, the ultimate enemy, because now we conquered political power, economic power, but sexuality is still too spontaneous. so their idea is this one, a very precise one, that our feelings, sentiment, should work like in a machine, how do you call it, where you read what is the temperature and so on. sorry?. yeah, yeah, that we should acquire this distance towards reality that, you know, you don't feel heat, fear, pleasure, you just register it and then you regulate your life and so on. it was all this idea which is, i found, wonderful predecessors to this idea. my favorite cartesian philosopher, mal brow. he had this idea that for him the origin position of adam was like this. before the fall, adam had this type of distance. and he says clearly they were having sex like crazy in paradise. but it was totally mechanic sex. for adam, raising his penis was exactly the same as raising his hand. he did it as hard work. then comes fall. you know what is fall? fall happens when you lose this distance and are immediately affected by reality. and the origin of the fall for malbron is naked eve. when adam saw naked eve, he made an epistemological mistake. he thought, oh, now i'm in direct contact with objects, and then he gets a wonderful theological idea that god, punished man because adam and said, okay, you think you will be like me a master i will punish you so that i will make it so that part of your body will be not uncontrollable by you. and you have a long theory in augustine on this, how the true punishment for sin is erection. you know, you cannot control it. it happens when you don't want it. when you want it, it doesn't happen, and so on. so and all this re-emerged surprisingly in this is the most interesting phenomenon of the 20s, i think. and they were all in it. even trotsky was tempted by it. it goes. it's my gratitude to lenin that he never fell for it. bogdanov, great lenin's opponent, was into it. this idea of creating immortality, we should all move to a higher level of existence and so on and so on. so all i'm just saying is the 20s are not just the simple avant-garde phenomenon very weird things happened in the 20s.
i agree with you. it was a threat with the horror, the way stalin crushed avant-garde. i just think we should see the 20s in a much more problematic way. they were not a lost paradise. for example, i've written about it and boris groz edited the documents with zurkamp, two times 1000 book on. you know what was almost the predominant popular view, not among ordinary people, but among the intellectuals? actually the 20s, a kind of soviet version of tech gnosticism. they did it the first was re while and others are doing it today. trotsky even was part of it. i quoted sab trotsky wrote in 19225. the big test of communism is not just destroying capitalism and so on. we should move forward and create a new man. and he means it literally, in the biological sense. homo sapiens, we should say, goodbye, homo sapiens, you did his work, you are too primitive and so on. and they had a very precise metaphysical view. they claim that sexuality is the enemy, the ultimate enemy, because now we conquered political power, economic power, but sexuality is still too spontaneous. so their idea is this one, a very precise one, that our feelings, sentiment, should work like in a machine, how do you call it, where you read what is the temperature and so on. sorry?. yeah, yeah, that we should acquire this distance towards reality that, you know, you don't feel heat, fear, pleasure, you just register it and then you regulate your life and so on. it was all this idea which is, i found, wonderful predecessors to this idea. my favorite cartesian philosopher, mal brow. he had this idea that for him the origin position of adam was like this. before the fall, adam had this type of distance. and he says clearly they were having sex like crazy in paradise. but it was totally mechanic sex. for adam, raising his penis was exactly the same as raising his hand. he did it as hard work. then comes fall. you know what is fall? fall happens when you lose this distance and are immediately affected by reality. and the origin of the fall for malbron is naked eve. when adam saw naked eve, he made an epistemological mistake. he thought, oh, now i'm in direct contact with objects, and then he gets a wonderful theological idea that god, punished man because adam and said, okay, you think you will be like me a master i will punish you so that i will make it so that part of your body will be not uncontrollable by you. and you have a long theory in augustine on this, how the true punishment for sin is erection. you know, you cannot control it. it happens when you don't want it. when you want it, it doesn't happen, and so on. so and all this re-emerged surprisingly in this is the most interesting phenomenon of the 20s, i think. and they were all in it. even trotsky was tempted by it. it goes. it's my gratitude to lenin that he never fell for it. bogdanov, great lenin's opponent, was into it. this idea of creating immortality, we should all move to a higher level of existence and so on and so on. so all i'm just saying is the 20s are not just the simple avant-garde phenomenon very weird things happened in the 20s.
Moderator
yeah, i think are we...
yeah, i think are we...
Slavoj Žižek
what?
what?
Moderator
are we done?
are we done?
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, but there is another typical of you look.
yeah, but there is another typical of you look.
Moderator
any questions?
any questions?
Slavoj Žižek
no, no no no, you were a centry, but you ignored the left and the right.
no, no no no, you were a centry, but you ignored the left and the right.
Moderator
okay.
okay.
Slavoj Žižek
mont.
mont.
Moderator
daniel.
daniel.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah, but there is also...
yeah, but there is also...
Moderator
so then... i don't know you, but you...
so then... i don't know you, but you...
Audience Member 3
i. i'm the only. so i'm not really a philosophy expert, so i apologize if this comes across a little naive, but graham, you specifically talked about the idea of buildings as symptoms and talked about how we need to take a more formalist approach that makes it more of a closed system and to do the same with art. and again, i'm not a philosophy expert, but in my undergrad, i read some david hume, and he talks in his writings on imagination. that any process of creativity is essentially taking from quotidian experience and either augmenting, compounding, dividing, or multiplying, whatever. i just want to open up the question of whether or not either of you agrees or disagrees with this idea that david hume has about creativity, and if you do agree, if it's possible at all to actually produce any
i. i'm the only. so i'm not really a philosophy expert, so i apologize if this comes across a little naive, but graham, you specifically talked about the idea of buildings as symptoms and talked about how we need to take a more formalist approach that makes it more of a closed system and to do the same with art. and again, i'm not a philosophy expert, but in my undergrad, i read some david hume, and he talks in his writings on imagination. that any process of creativity is essentially taking from quotidian experience and either augmenting, compounding, dividing, or multiplying, whatever. i just want to open up the question of whether or not either of you agrees or disagrees with this idea that david hume has about creativity, and if you do agree, if it's possible at all to actually produce any
Audience Member 4
thing
thing
Slavoj Žižek
building smart
building smart
Audience Member 4
or anything in a completely closed system.
or anything in a completely closed system.
Graham Harman
d humume. well, you can't build it in a completely closed system, but that doesn't mean it can't be a closed system by the end. so, for example, my body is made of all kinds of subatomic stuff and veins and veins and things. it doesn't follow that my body is just a collection of all those things assembled together. there's something more, the way they're arranged. this body has more to it than all those individual parts. and i would say, yeah, i don't believe we're born with innate ideas about how to create art. i think we have to draw from our experience. it doesn't follow that an artwork simply dissolves into its surroundings, its social political, environmental surroundings. there's a point at which creation is cut off from its and in the crudest sense, all authors and all artists die someday. their works are left behind and their works can be understood in different cultures. they can be understood under from different standpoints. and so there's a certain innate formalism at work in any object. and where i would disagree with the classical formalists in various fields is simply, as i already said about kant, that kant tries to separate the subject and the object in all thisism so that there's... ethics is all here. art is all here. ontology is all here. um... you can have a formal thing that's made of a human, non-human. compound, right? so like an ethics. the human mind is not necessarily the unit of ethics. i think the unit of ethics is the human mind plus something. that it takes seriously. in the arts, i happen to think that there is no art without a beholder, even if fried thinks that if an artwork exists only for a beholder, then it's too theatrical. i think theater is of the essence of art and of architecture, by the way. i think there needs to be a person there appreciating it or it's not a work. i don't think after nuclear holocaust there's any art or architecture left. and so in that sense, the works close off, but they might close off with an observer, or they might close off with a sociopolitical effect in some cases, like gonika or uncle tom's cabin or other works that are impossible to understand without the we eventually gave rise to them. but
d humume. well, you can't build it in a completely closed system, but that doesn't mean it can't be a closed system by the end. so, for example, my body is made of all kinds of subatomic stuff and veins and veins and things. it doesn't follow that my body is just a collection of all those things assembled together. there's something more, the way they're arranged. this body has more to it than all those individual parts. and i would say, yeah, i don't believe we're born with innate ideas about how to create art. i think we have to draw from our experience. it doesn't follow that an artwork simply dissolves into its surroundings, its social political, environmental surroundings. there's a point at which creation is cut off from its and in the crudest sense, all authors and all artists die someday. their works are left behind and their works can be understood in different cultures. they can be understood under from different standpoints. and so there's a certain innate formalism at work in any object. and where i would disagree with the classical formalists in various fields is simply, as i already said about kant, that kant tries to separate the subject and the object in all thisism so that there's... ethics is all here. art is all here. ontology is all here. um... you can have a formal thing that's made of a human, non-human. compound, right? so like an ethics. the human mind is not necessarily the unit of ethics. i think the unit of ethics is the human mind plus something. that it takes seriously. in the arts, i happen to think that there is no art without a beholder, even if fried thinks that if an artwork exists only for a beholder, then it's too theatrical. i think theater is of the essence of art and of architecture, by the way. i think there needs to be a person there appreciating it or it's not a work. i don't think after nuclear holocaust there's any art or architecture left. and so in that sense, the works close off, but they might close off with an observer, or they might close off with a sociopolitical effect in some cases, like gonika or uncle tom's cabin or other works that are impossible to understand without the we eventually gave rise to them. but
Slavoj Žižek
you know what, would you go as far here, i support you, you know also in what sense? historicists like to say to understand a great work of art, you have to know the entire historical context. i claim no exactly the opposite. a great, truly great work of art is the one which, a, precisely can be understood and sometimes works even better when torn out of its context and retroactively. look, i think here i'm a radical, okay, idealist if you want. it's wrong to say to understand shakespeare you have to know elizabethan england. no. to understand today elizabethan england you have to reject. if you directly were to find yourself, for example, even some friend from iran told me. don't just go to iran and look around you will understand nothing look some good movies and so on. and that's for me, although this is very traditional to say, the miracle of shakespeare. how he survives this metamorphosis. and it's not just there is an original shakespeare what he really meant. i don't care what he really meant. it's wonderful how each epoch reinvents shakespeare. and that's for me the true miracle to keep it alive. look, that's why i'm a wagnerian. he may be a very bad guy, vulgar anti-semite, but isn't it wonderful that today great stagings of wagner are almost an exclusive domain of left-wing jewish directors you know. wagner was this is the great ideological triumph. wagner was totally re-appropriated by jewish progressives and so on. here i see your notion of in itself. it's wrong to be historists and say but wagner didn't mean this. he didn't produce a finished work. what later interpretations are not just later interpretation. they affect in itself the identity of the very work of art. and that's the only true historical approach, not the cheap historicism you have to look at the. this is why, sorry, just to finish, in my crazy idealism, haha, you wouldn't go so far, i love what hegel writes about peloponnesian wars. a crazy he says that. the spiritual result of peloponnesian wars was toides's book about them. like, to put it in vulgar terms, wonderful idea that real war had to be fought so that in order to enable a book being written about it. and in some spiritual sense, this is true. the objective function, now we can say retroactively, of elizabethan england was to enable shakespeare to write his place. and i was once in san francisco and i humiliated them, they started to shout people. i said, you know that in the same way, the only reason for your stupid city, san francisco, to exist was to enable hitchcock to shoot vertigo there i mean, of course this is nonsense at the material causal level, but in some spiritual sense of spiritual inheritance, it is true. elizabeth is the one who lived in the period of shakespeare and so on.
you know what, would you go as far here, i support you, you know also in what sense? historicists like to say to understand a great work of art, you have to know the entire historical context. i claim no exactly the opposite. a great, truly great work of art is the one which, a, precisely can be understood and sometimes works even better when torn out of its context and retroactively. look, i think here i'm a radical, okay, idealist if you want. it's wrong to say to understand shakespeare you have to know elizabethan england. no. to understand today elizabethan england you have to reject. if you directly were to find yourself, for example, even some friend from iran told me. don't just go to iran and look around you will understand nothing look some good movies and so on. and that's for me, although this is very traditional to say, the miracle of shakespeare. how he survives this metamorphosis. and it's not just there is an original shakespeare what he really meant. i don't care what he really meant. it's wonderful how each epoch reinvents shakespeare. and that's for me the true miracle to keep it alive. look, that's why i'm a wagnerian. he may be a very bad guy, vulgar anti-semite, but isn't it wonderful that today great stagings of wagner are almost an exclusive domain of left-wing jewish directors you know. wagner was this is the great ideological triumph. wagner was totally re-appropriated by jewish progressives and so on. here i see your notion of in itself. it's wrong to be historists and say but wagner didn't mean this. he didn't produce a finished work. what later interpretations are not just later interpretation. they affect in itself the identity of the very work of art. and that's the only true historical approach, not the cheap historicism you have to look at the. this is why, sorry, just to finish, in my crazy idealism, haha, you wouldn't go so far, i love what hegel writes about peloponnesian wars. a crazy he says that. the spiritual result of peloponnesian wars was toides's book about them. like, to put it in vulgar terms, wonderful idea that real war had to be fought so that in order to enable a book being written about it. and in some spiritual sense, this is true. the objective function, now we can say retroactively, of elizabethan england was to enable shakespeare to write his place. and i was once in san francisco and i humiliated them, they started to shout people. i said, you know that in the same way, the only reason for your stupid city, san francisco, to exist was to enable hitchcock to shoot vertigo there i mean, of course this is nonsense at the material causal level, but in some spiritual sense of spiritual inheritance, it is true. elizabeth is the one who lived in the period of shakespeare and so on.
Moderator
i promised one question from the right. so maybe this is the final question.
i promised one question from the right. so maybe this is the final question.
Slavoj Žižek
that's where your heart is.
that's where your heart is.
Moderator
young ladies.
young ladies.
Slavoj Žižek
okay.
okay.
Moderator
seven
seven
Slavoj Žižek
make a choice, the lady or the man.
make a choice, the lady or the man.
Audience Member 4
the lady.
the lady.
Slavoj Žižek
wait.
wait.
Audience Member 4
next to the column. i. graham, this question is directed at you. you said that reality is a more important word than truth. and that truth is out there, but it is unknowable, which i agree with. but i have a nagging thought that this attitude is exemplary of the position that the left is so guilty of taking, the position of taking a higher moral ground. and so how can you speak to how this attitude, how you see it functioning in the project of renewing the left, the project of the left, or whatever you might want to call it.
next to the column. i. graham, this question is directed at you. you said that reality is a more important word than truth. and that truth is out there, but it is unknowable, which i agree with. but i have a nagging thought that this attitude is exemplary of the position that the left is so guilty of taking, the position of taking a higher moral ground. and so how can you speak to how this attitude, how you see it functioning in the project of renewing the left, the project of the left, or whatever you might want to call it.
Slavoj Žižek
but is this your project at all to renew the letter? it's not.
but is this your project at all to renew the letter? it's not.
Moderator
she agrees with him, but she wants your...
she agrees with him, but she wants your...
Graham Harman
maybe i should first say this. i cherish many of the goals of the left, but i would never call myself a leftist. i was going to say why. two reasons. there are two things for me that are crucial to political theory, and i think the left misses both of them. one of them for me is that... there is no political knowledge. rightand and on the left, you have this idea that we know what the diagnosis is from a marxist standpoint, a roousseian standpoint. i don't think we have any political knowledge. that's the first thing. the second thing is i think non-human actors are a very important part of politics, and the left tends to be very humanist, very human-centered. i know marx gives a lot of analyses of... but things but i think we need to start bringing non-human actors into politics. and also, i think we need to be willing to be more surprised than the left is often willing to be. i had a nice discussion with the late mark fisher about this. mark fisher took your line that we've had a total failure of imagination. it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. but my answer to that was, is frederick jameson really more imaginative than steve jobs? i'm not sure that he is. in some cases, the left keeps recycling the same discourse and the same complaints about everything. sometimes the imagination comes from elsewhere, from what the left denounces. a complaint about your friend bieu. all of the events that he counts as political events, none of them are going to surprise baudieu because they're all based on the communist invariant, as he says. nothing's going to happen that makes baudieu say, oh, maybe i was wrong, maybe the left is wrong here or there. it communism is going to prevail in every one of his events. whereas in the other events, he's more open-minded, right? you're not sure what the next scientific event is going to be, or the next amorous event, or the next artistic event. so i worry that there's this idea that we already know what the truth is. i don't think we have any idea what the best political system is going to be. this is what foucault said to chomsky, by the way, in their famous debates. chomsky said the best social system would be this. foucault kind of ironically said, i'm not as advanced as chomsky. i have no idea what the best political system is. and i'm with foucault on that point. i don't know. um but i think renewing politics in general, means coming into contact with reality, and so i think the coming politics probably has to be based in some way on the climate issues. as well as the refugee issues. to that extent, i agree with latour that you need to not be an escapist. you need to face up to what the problems are. and some of those problems may lead to solutions that you might have previously rejected. maybe, for example, we should stop whining about capitalism only all the time, or neoliberalism, as people call it now. maybe there are some things from capitalism that we're going to need to preserve and that can be beneficial in ways that we didn't foresee. so i want, i'd like to approach politics with a... not radical openness, because i hate that phrase, but radical attentiveness to reality. and i think what we have here is we have a president with no sense of reality whatsoever. if anything characterizes him. it's not just that he's beyond truth because politicians have always lied, right? it's that this one seems to have no sense of reality whatsoever. i don't even think he... i think he believes. half to three quarters of what he says, even when it's easily contradicted by video footage or polls. i think we have somebody who's radically lived his life not in contact with reality, and his wealthy upbringing and all these other factors have enabled that to happen. and it's very dangerous for all of us. i tend to surprisingly, if i may.
maybe i should first say this. i cherish many of the goals of the left, but i would never call myself a leftist. i was going to say why. two reasons. there are two things for me that are crucial to political theory, and i think the left misses both of them. one of them for me is that... there is no political knowledge. rightand and on the left, you have this idea that we know what the diagnosis is from a marxist standpoint, a roousseian standpoint. i don't think we have any political knowledge. that's the first thing. the second thing is i think non-human actors are a very important part of politics, and the left tends to be very humanist, very human-centered. i know marx gives a lot of analyses of... but things but i think we need to start bringing non-human actors into politics. and also, i think we need to be willing to be more surprised than the left is often willing to be. i had a nice discussion with the late mark fisher about this. mark fisher took your line that we've had a total failure of imagination. it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. but my answer to that was, is frederick jameson really more imaginative than steve jobs? i'm not sure that he is. in some cases, the left keeps recycling the same discourse and the same complaints about everything. sometimes the imagination comes from elsewhere, from what the left denounces. a complaint about your friend bieu. all of the events that he counts as political events, none of them are going to surprise baudieu because they're all based on the communist invariant, as he says. nothing's going to happen that makes baudieu say, oh, maybe i was wrong, maybe the left is wrong here or there. it communism is going to prevail in every one of his events. whereas in the other events, he's more open-minded, right? you're not sure what the next scientific event is going to be, or the next amorous event, or the next artistic event. so i worry that there's this idea that we already know what the truth is. i don't think we have any idea what the best political system is going to be. this is what foucault said to chomsky, by the way, in their famous debates. chomsky said the best social system would be this. foucault kind of ironically said, i'm not as advanced as chomsky. i have no idea what the best political system is. and i'm with foucault on that point. i don't know. um but i think renewing politics in general, means coming into contact with reality, and so i think the coming politics probably has to be based in some way on the climate issues. as well as the refugee issues. to that extent, i agree with latour that you need to not be an escapist. you need to face up to what the problems are. and some of those problems may lead to solutions that you might have previously rejected. maybe, for example, we should stop whining about capitalism only all the time, or neoliberalism, as people call it now. maybe there are some things from capitalism that we're going to need to preserve and that can be beneficial in ways that we didn't foresee. so i want, i'd like to approach politics with a... not radical openness, because i hate that phrase, but radical attentiveness to reality. and i think what we have here is we have a president with no sense of reality whatsoever. if anything characterizes him. it's not just that he's beyond truth because politicians have always lied, right? it's that this one seems to have no sense of reality whatsoever. i don't even think he... i think he believes. half to three quarters of what he says, even when it's easily contradicted by video footage or polls. i think we have somebody who's radically lived his life not in contact with reality, and his wealthy upbringing and all these other factors have enabled that to happen. and it's very dangerous for all of us. i tend to surprisingly, if i may.
Slavoj Žižek
i agree with you, but first... i agree with you that all that knowledge of the future in politics the unfortunate some marxist metaphor of riding the train towards the future and so on no but you have another letter for example recently i was rereading who some people hate him as a proto-totalitarian sans juste and he uses a wonderful metaphor he said we in the french revolution we are as if on a sheep in a wild storm entering an uncharted territory we don't know where we are going. i mean he was extremely. open here on the other hand i agree with marcharge that you said like and that's i agree with you, the left has to admit this. like that was when i was talking with people on occupy wall street. i was just asking them, but what do you want? what's your project? they didn't have an idea. so we have to admit this. we don't have an idea. even people who are critical of capitalism, what do they want? it's just what i ironically refer to as left fukoyamaism. we accept the system it is with a little bit more justice, something more radical. but you know where i am., why do i nonetheless remain in some sense a communist? i claim that precisely what you mentioned, refugees, ecology, i would add intellectual property, biogenetics and so on, these are problems of commons. and we will have to reinvent some kind of large-scale collective decision. i have no idea how will it look. in in this very vague sense, i remain a communist. our problems are problems of commons, and it's clear that for me that if we keep just capitalism the way we have it, it reproduces itself and it doesn't allow us, for example, to confront ecological.
i agree with you, but first... i agree with you that all that knowledge of the future in politics the unfortunate some marxist metaphor of riding the train towards the future and so on no but you have another letter for example recently i was rereading who some people hate him as a proto-totalitarian sans juste and he uses a wonderful metaphor he said we in the french revolution we are as if on a sheep in a wild storm entering an uncharted territory we don't know where we are going. i mean he was extremely. open here on the other hand i agree with marcharge that you said like and that's i agree with you, the left has to admit this. like that was when i was talking with people on occupy wall street. i was just asking them, but what do you want? what's your project? they didn't have an idea. so we have to admit this. we don't have an idea. even people who are critical of capitalism, what do they want? it's just what i ironically refer to as left fukoyamaism. we accept the system it is with a little bit more justice, something more radical. but you know where i am., why do i nonetheless remain in some sense a communist? i claim that precisely what you mentioned, refugees, ecology, i would add intellectual property, biogenetics and so on, these are problems of commons. and we will have to reinvent some kind of large-scale collective decision. i have no idea how will it look. in in this very vague sense, i remain a communist. our problems are problems of commons, and it's clear that for me that if we keep just capitalism the way we have it, it reproduces itself and it doesn't allow us, for example, to confront ecological.
Audience Member 5
cycle.
cycle.
Slavoj Žižek
i agree that with proper taxation and so on you can do things, but they are not enough. so again i agree with your diagnosis but i think. we should think, of course, nothing to do with 20th century communism that was our ultimate failure and so on. but my god, problems are all the problems that you enumerated. refugees, these are problems of our commons. are we segregated? how to bring us together, ec, the problem of our natural commons and so on and so on. but it's a very open idea. and would you agree with me to go even further here? i claim that the last myth to be dropped is this leftist obsession with, after the left abandoned welfare state, radical left and state communism. i don't like this obsession with, you know, local democracy, immediate transparency, and so on. i don't think this works. we need large-scale decisions and so on. and even concretely, i know i repeat this, but i like it. imagine a society described by these partisans of local democracy, community non-representational politics it would be a nightmare.
i agree that with proper taxation and so on you can do things, but they are not enough. so again i agree with your diagnosis but i think. we should think, of course, nothing to do with 20th century communism that was our ultimate failure and so on. but my god, problems are all the problems that you enumerated. refugees, these are problems of our commons. are we segregated? how to bring us together, ec, the problem of our natural commons and so on and so on. but it's a very open idea. and would you agree with me to go even further here? i claim that the last myth to be dropped is this leftist obsession with, after the left abandoned welfare state, radical left and state communism. i don't like this obsession with, you know, local democracy, immediate transparency, and so on. i don't think this works. we need large-scale decisions and so on. and even concretely, i know i repeat this, but i like it. imagine a society described by these partisans of local democracy, community non-representational politics it would be a nightmare.
Audience Member 5
every afternoon.
every afternoon.
Slavoj Žižek
you have meetings, how do we educate our children, how to... no, i want to live in a properly, nicely alienated society. some. invisible agencies provide water, health care, and so on. and the point is to fight for the right kind of alienation. my politics is, once i shocked my german friends, i gave an interview, they told me, you are critical of this or that, what's your model? well-structured alienation in an efficient bureaucratic socialism and they didn't like it, as you can imagine. you see, we are stalin leaders. you remember my analysis and you can check it up. i was right that a fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just receives the applaud. a stalinist leader always stands up and applauds himself.
you have meetings, how do we educate our children, how to... no, i want to live in a properly, nicely alienated society. some. invisible agencies provide water, health care, and so on. and the point is to fight for the right kind of alienation. my politics is, once i shocked my german friends, i gave an interview, they told me, you are critical of this or that, what's your model? well-structured alienation in an efficient bureaucratic socialism and they didn't like it, as you can imagine. you see, we are stalin leaders. you remember my analysis and you can check it up. i was right that a fascist leader, when he is applauded, he just receives the applaud. a stalinist leader always stands up and applauds himself.
Audience Member 5
thank.
thank.
Slavoj Žižek
you know the meaning being i'm just one of you, servant of the people. did you notice that we... iaud. i applauded you. i thought you were applauding me.
you know the meaning being i'm just one of you, servant of the people. did you notice that we... iaud. i applauded you. i thought you were applauding me.
Audience Member 5
i thought about.
i thought about.
Slavoj Žižek
i applaud myself. fuck you. i was applaud.
i applaud myself. fuck you. i was applaud.
Audience Member 5
thank you, graham. thank you, slavo. thank you to the audience.
thank you, graham. thank you, slavo. thank you to the audience.