GCTH Lecture Series 1: Critical Postmedia
Lecture · zizekpodcast.com ·
2021-01-20 · 1:37:52 · 12,194 words
with Bernard-Henri Lévy
technology-ai-cyberspacecapitalismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticscommunism-socialismfascism-populismdemocracysubjectivityecology-climategeopolitics-warsexuality-genderliberalism-political-correctness
Žižek opens a lecture series by discussing his book 'Hegel in a Wired Brain,' examining what direct brain-machine interfaces and AI would mean for subjectivity, freedom, and the unconscious. He argues that digital mega-capital constitutes a new form of rent-extraction and privatization of public space, and that pandemic conditions reveal the necessity of socialization of key economic domains. The talk ranges across Trump's populism as carnival-farce, the Left's need to reclaim decency and common sense, the paradox of permissive society ending in depression, and the importance of concrete emancipatory victories exemplified by Bolivia and Kerala.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's shorthand for direct brain-machine interfaces that render mental processes digitally transparent, enabling both unprecedented control and new collective consciousness.
Žižek's Maoist-ironic label for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as the four privatized entities that now constitute our public commons and can excommunicate individuals from public life.
as “big Other”
Implicitly operative in the discussion of digital platforms: they function as a new privatized big Other that can excommunicate subjects from public symbolic space.
as “rent (digital rent)”
Žižek identifies the income model of digital mega-capital (e.g. Bill Gates, Amazon) not as exploitation but as rent extracted from ownership of privatized public space.
Žižek's concept drawn from Luther's observation about the Catholic Church selling pardons for future sins, used to think about algorithmic industry pre-shaping future desires and behavior.
as “state of exception”
Agamben's concept that pandemic control measures normalize emergency rule; Žižek agrees on the danger but rejects Agamben's quietist response of returning to daily rituals.
Žižek's diagnosis of the second-wave psychological condition: not panic but a resigned fatalism where people relax restrictions not out of courage but out of 'everything is lost, who cares.'
Žižek's ironic term for the first wave of COVID panic in March-April 2020, characterized by genuine fear and strict compliance, contrasted with the later shift to depression.
Žižek's adaptation of the Chilenean protest slogan 'another world is possible,' reframed to acknowledge catastrophe while insisting on choosing our own form of transformation rather than accepting the existing one.
The paradoxical outcome Žižek predicts from globalized permissivity: to guarantee everyone's freedom, society must regulate behavior ever more precisely, resulting in a new form of terror.
Žižek invokes Agamben's reading of melancholia as preemptive mourning, the object is accessible but desire for it is lost, to characterize the depression of permissive digital society.
as “desire for prohibition”
Freud's insight, cited by Žižek, that the prohibition of desire necessarily turns into a desire for prohibition itself, illustrated by obsessional enjoyment of pandemic rituals.
The predicted psychological outcome of a society of universal permissive satisfaction: not liberation but a loss of desire for what one can freely have, a form of collective melancholia.
as “obscene other”
Žižek's term (developed in his book) for figures like Trump and Elon Musk who operate through the unbinding of drives and transgressive obscenity rather than law and propriety.
Implicitly operative when Žižek argues perverts like Trump are actually the most calculating and self-controlled, not freely enjoying their drives.
Žižek uses the psychoanalytic category to characterize Trump: perverts are not freely liberated but the most compulsive and calculating, nowhere harder to access the unconscious than in perversion.
Žižek argues Freud's unconscious, understood as something that escapes digital registration, may be what resists total transparency in wired-brain scenarios.
Žižek's approving characterization of Lucho Arce's self-description, representing the left's need for ordinary efficient governance rather than spectacular transgression.
Benjamin's thesis, repeatedly cited by Žižek, that fascism (and Trump populism) is always the sign or result of a failed revolution by the left.
as “new world order”
Žižek reclaims this term from its fascist and capitalist appropriations, insisting it should be the Left's motto for a genuinely new social organization post-crisis.
as “universality through particularity”
Žižek's Hegelian formulation that true universality is not abstract but moves from one particularity to another, illustrated by Shakespeare being restaged in radically different cultures.
Stories he reaches for 6
Žižek says he would pay all his money for a film 'V for Vendetta Part 2' showing what the revolutionaries actually DO the morning after they take Parliament, because the Left must think concretely about the post-revolutionary order.
“I would give all the money I have for a movie called 'V for Vendetta Part 2'... what will they do in industry? How will they socialize it?”
Gates became extremely wealthy not by directly exploiting labor but by collecting rent from ownership of a portion of public digital space, a return to pre-capitalist rent logic.
“Bill Gates for example became so wealthy because he is collecting rent from owning part of our public space.”
Hawking reportedly no longer needed his finger to move his wheelchair before his death, he only thought 'forward' and it moved, illustrating the divine-like dimension of direct thought-to-reality links.
“he just thought forward and his wheelchair was moving forward. So it's a magic dimension where you think and your thoughts directly imply reality.”
Kurosawa's version of Hamlet, set in contemporary Japan with Hamlet as a student returning from the US to find his uncle has taken over the family company, shows how a particular work becomes truly universal by being reinvented in a radically different particularity.
“the greatest Shakespeare film is Kurosawa's... version of Hamlet, but set in contemporary Japan, where Hamlet is a student in the United States, he returns home, the uncle killed his father, took over the company”
During a porn shoot, an actor loses his erection with an eager real partner in front of him and asks for his iPhone to browse Pornhub, showing that virtual images are needed to arouse one even in the presence of the 'real thing.'
“the guy steps back and said 'Sorry I am losing erection, could please somebody bring me quickly my iPhone so that I go on Pornhub to get excited again.'”
After Abu Ghraib, some American acquaintances told Žižek: 'We know this goes on, but why make it public? Do it discreetly, we don't want to know.' This illustrates the subject's preference for voluntary ignorance of state violence.
“torture, do whatever you want, just do it discreetly. Do it behind the closed door, we don't want to know about it.”
Works invoked 6
V for Vendetta film
Used positively to illustrate the Left's failure to think beyond the moment of revolution, Žižek would pay all his money for a sequel showing what the revolutionaries actually do the morning after.
Žižek's own book (discussed throughout); uses Hegel to analyze AI, wired-brain technology, singularity, and what direct brain-machine links mean for subjectivity and freedom.
The Idiot (novel) book
Dostoevsky's novel is cited via Kurosawa's Japanese film adaptation as evidence that radically different cultures can reinvent the same work, illustrating universality through particularity.
Goldfinger film
Referenced self-deprecatingly: Žižek asks the moderator Alex to use the famous ejector-seat red button to cut him off when he talks too much.
Žižek calls it possibly the greatest Shakespeare film: Hamlet as a Japanese student returning from the US to find his uncle has killed his father and taken over the company, radical particularity yielding universal resonance.
Mentioned alongside Kurosawa's Hamlet as the best version of Dostoevsky's novel, illustrating universality across Russian and Japanese culture.
People invoked 25
Friedrich Nietzsche / Steve Bannon negative
Steve Bannon is mentioned dismissively as part of the 'usual corrupted gang' pardoned by Trump, contrasted with Assange and Snowden.
Naomi Klein / Fredric Jameson positive
Jameson's concept of 'cognitive mapping' is invoked (by another speaker) as a model for the global situational awareness needed in the pandemic.
Mentioned in context of Nathuram Godse (Gandhi's assassin) now being treated as a Hindu saint, used to illustrate the worrying direction of Hindu nationalist politics in India.
Edward Snowden positive
Mentioned alongside Assange as someone Žižek had hoped Trump would pardon in his final days, disappointed when he was not.
Luis Arce positive
Bolivian finance minister and president, personally brief contact with Žižek; his self-description as 'socialist technocrat' is endorsed as the correct left approach, ordinary decent efficiency.
Jacques Lacan positive
His jargon (e.g. 'master signifier') is used to analyze protest movements; mentioned in passing regarding language structure and possible resistance.
Stephen Hawking positive
Used as a humanizing example of wired-brain technology already in use, thought-controlled wheelchair movement, before discussing the sinister implications.
Cited as a conservative who was nonetheless forced to temporarily nationalize railways during the pandemic, evidence that even right-wing governments adopt quasi-communist measures under pressure.
Donald Trump negative
Repeatedly analyzed as carnival-pervert, compulsive rather than liberated; his banning from social media used to illustrate privatized public space; Capitol mob as farce that could turn tragic.
Jeremy Corbyn positive
Mentioned alongside Bernie Sanders as an example of the politically effective ordinary decent man whose appeal lay in moral authenticity rather than transgression.
Giorgio Agamben negative
Žižek agrees with Agamben's critique of state-of-exception normalization but rejects his later quietism (return to daily rituals); notes alarming convergence of Agamben's position with American right-wing COVID denial.
Elon Musk negative
Described as an 'obscene other' like Trump, a 'trendsetting prophet' who shouldn't be taken too seriously as a scientist; his wired-brain dream of eliminating language is used as a foil for Žižek's arguments about subjectivity.
George Orwell positive
Žižek says he is 'not totally pro-George Orwell' personally, but cites his definition of press freedom ('free to tell people what they don't want to hear') as possibly his greatest saying.
Bernie Sanders positive
Praised as an example of the politically effective ordinary decent man whose appeal to common decency rather than transgression represents the correct Left strategy; contrasted favorably with Trump's perverse carnival.
Julian Assange positive
Invoked as the model of resistance through transparency, making the game visible to all; Žižek is disappointed he was not pardoned by Trump.
Evo Morales positive
His government in Bolivia is cited as an example of orderly, well-organized left governance that succeeded in returning to power even after a right-wing coup.
Bill Gates negative
Used as the exemplary case of digital rent-collection from privatized public space; his technocratic pandemic solution (total control in bubbles) is one of the options Žižek rejects.
Herbert Marcuse positive
Cited for inverting Marx's formula ('first tragedy then farce') to say fascism appears first as farce then tragedy, applied to Trump and the Capitol events.
Walter Benjamin positive
His thesis that fascism is always the result of a failed revolution is repeatedly cited as Žižek's favorite analytical tool for understanding Trump populism.
Akira Kurosawa positive
Žižek says he doesn't like Kurosawa generally, but rates his adaptations of Shakespeare (Hamlet) and Dostoevsky (The Idiot) as among the greatest film versions, illustrating universality through particularity.
Antonio Gramsci positive
Cited for editing the communist journal 'Il Nuovo Ordine,' used to reclaim 'new world order' for the Left rather than ceding it to fascism and capital.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the insight that prohibition of desire turns into desire for prohibition; his clinical notion of the unconscious is deployed as the key limit on digital transparency.
Another speaker invokes his concept of bad faith in connection with the wired-brain scenario; Žižek does not directly engage with Sartre but engages with the argument.
Martin Luther positive
His shock at Rome's practice of selling future-sin pardons is used as the opening anecdote and later returned to as an analog for algorithmic behavior modification.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky positive
His novel 'The Idiot' is mentioned as the source for Kurosawa's film adaptation, used to illustrate universality across radically different cultures (Russian and Japanese).
What it argues
wired brain and the future of subjectivitydigital mega-capital as privatized public space and rentpandemic as permanent state of emergency requiring socializationTrump populism as carnival-farce that can become fascist tragedypermissive society ending in depression rather than liberationthe unconscious as resistance to digital transparencyleft strategy: decency, concrete victories, and post-revolutionary order
Dialectical moves 9
“The most dangerous form of un-freedom is the un-freedom that you experience as freedom, that you don't even experience as un-freedom.”
Algorithmic choice-shaping is more oppressive than overt coercion precisely because subjects believe they are freely choosing.
“You want true permissivity, you end up with a long list of politically correct prohibitions.”
The drive toward total permissiveness dialectically generates its opposite, an ever more regulated terrain of permitted and prohibited acts.
“The prohibition of desire always turns necessarily into a desire for prohibition.”
Freudian insight that repression does not eliminate libido but redirects it onto the prohibiting form itself, as seen in pandemic-ritual enjoyment.
“Too much choice can effectively cancel choice.”
An excess of options produces helplessness and increases susceptibility to external suggestion, negating the freedom that abundance was meant to provide.
“Far from being a liberating pervert, Trump is a deeply compulsive person—nowhere is it more difficult to access the unconscious than in perversion.”
Perverts are not free people but the most calculating and self-controlled; Trump's apparent transgression conceals rigid compulsion.
“Fascism appears first as a farce, then as a tragedy—the reversal of Marx's formula.”
Marcuse's inversion of Marx: what seems laughably carnivalesque (Nazis in the 1920s, Trump's mob) can harden into genuine horror if not taken seriously.
“Another end of the world is possible.”
Rather than resisting catastrophe in the name of the old world, the Left should propose its own transformation of coordinates, a different ending rather than the existing one.
“The true universality is precisely a universality which only moves from one particularity to another particularity.”
Abstract universalism is false; genuine universality emerges when a particular cultural form is taken so seriously that it can be reinvented across different particular contexts.
“What you described as utopia—each having our small desires satisfied—is already what de facto ends in globalized depression.”
The dreamed-of permissive plural society produces not enjoyment but melancholia, because accessible objects lose their desirability.
Claims 16
asserts
The unconscious in Freud's specific sense escapes digital registration by wired-brain machines, constituting a limit on total mental transparency.wired brain / digital control of subjectivity
asserts
Digital mega-capital (Twitter, Facebook, Amazon) is not a direct exploiter but a rent-collector that has privatized our public commons, and this must be stopped.digital capitalism and public space
asserts
The most dangerous form of unfreedom is the unfreedom one experiences as freedom—the algorithmic shaping of the very space of choices.digital freedom and manipulation
asserts
We are not returning to normality after the pandemic; we are entering a new permanent state of emergency that requires fundamental changes to life's basic coordinates.pandemic and the new normal
asserts
Market mechanisms must be socialized in basic dimensions; the state or community must direct key economic domains (vaccines, health) rather than relying on market incentives alone.capitalism and pandemic response
rejects
The most dangerous idea is that the emergency situation means there is no time for politics—that we must simply follow science and state administration without emancipatory activity.technocratic response to pandemic / Agamben's quietism
asserts
Agamben's position that we should return to daily life and rituals in the face of catastrophe converges functionally with Trump-right rhetoric, regardless of his leftist intentions.Agamben / pandemic politics
asserts
Global permissivity—everyone having their own fetish satisfied—does not lead to liberation but to globalized depression, the melancholic loss of desire for what one can freely have.permissive society / digital sexuality
rejects
Trump is not a liberating pervert but a deeply compulsive, calculating person; perverts are the most self-controlled people, not those who have broken free.Trump as liberated transgressor
asserts
The Trump Capitol event was a carnival farce, not a real coup; but farce can turn into tragedy, as Nazism shows—first laughed at, then deadly.January 6th / fascism as farce-then-tragedy
asserts
The language of transgression, relativism, and carnival is now part of the discourse of those in power (the right), so the Left must reclaim decency and ordinary morality as resistance.left strategy / populism
asserts
Fascism and Trump populism are always signs of a failed revolution by the Left, not independent phenomena.fascism / populism / left failure
asserts
Too much choice effectively cancels choice, making one more susceptible to algorithmic suggestion rather than less.digital freedom / algorithm / choice
asserts
True universality is not abstract but moves from one particularity to another, as great art (Shakespeare, Kurosawa) demonstrates by being restaged across radically different cultures.universality and particularity
asserts
Even conservatives in power are forced to adopt quasi-communist measures (stimulus checks, nationalization) in response to crisis, showing these ideas' practical necessity.communism / pandemic economic response
asserts
Multiple suspicious choices in life typically obfuscate one real, fundamental choice that is being suppressed.ideology / false choice
Quotes 12
“The most dangerous form of un-freedom is the un-freedom that you experience as freedom, that you don't even experience as un-freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · algorithmic unfreedom experienced as choice
“When I am asked by journalists what do you miss most in this time of lockdowns, my answer is always the same: I miss my loneliness, you know. I want to be more alone.”Slavoj Žižek · pandemic solitude / anti-social impulse
“Freedom of the press really means that you are free to tell the people what they don't want to hear. If you cannot do this then there is no freedom of the press.”Slavoj Žižek · Orwell on press freedom
“Their reply was, 'Another end of the world is possible.' We have to do our own end of the world.”Slavoj Žižek · left response to catastrophe
“I am tired of the leftists who secretly enjoy their failures, you know. We need victories. Not triumphant victories, but victories which show people that we really can change their daily lives.”Slavoj Žižek · left strategy / against failure-enjoyment
“Fascism is always a sign or the result of a failed revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · Benjamin's thesis on fascism and failed revolution
“Nowhere is it more difficult to access the unconscious than in perversion. Perverts are not really free people... perverts are really the most calculating self-controlled people.”Slavoj Žižek · perversion as compulsion not liberation
“Those in power cheap but look even Trump felt obliged to propose the check to every family or whatever, which means a form of universal basic income.”Slavoj Žižek · conservatives forced into quasi-communist measures
“I always suspect that multiple choices are obfuscating one real choice. This is for me the crucial distinction.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology of false choice
“Our program is we don't want to be what we are.”Slavoj Žižek · universalist emancipatory demand against identity politics
“The prohibition of desire always turns necessarily into a desire for prohibition. You in a perverted way start to enjoy the very prohibitions.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectic of desire and prohibition
“We should not forget that fascism appears first as a farce, then as a tragedy—if you read history, till late 20s Nazis were mostly perceived as a fringe right-wing group with their obscene jokes, ridiculous, people laughed at them.”Slavoj Žižek · fascism as carnival becoming tragedy
Transcript 58 turns
Slavoj Žižek
You know, this morning it was known now who are people who will be pardoned by Trump in his last days. And there was a secret hope, crazy, that maybe as a crazy gesture, there were some hints, Julian Assange and Snowden will be on it. They are not on it. It’s just the usual corrupted gang, Steve Bannon and so on. Okay, he also, because he was convinced I heard in the last minute not to do it, he didn’t pardon his family and himself. I would like this paradox, to be able to pardon yourself. Because you know who is here my ideal? I read this, I will be very brief, not take your time too much, in a book on Martin Luther, not King the black fighter but Protestantism religion, no? And do you know what was so shocking for Luther when he visited Rome? Let’s say you are a rich guy, you were not only, it was not only possible if you were wealthy and influential to simply buy off your sin. You did something horrible, you pay a big sum to the church, you were pardoned. But there was a wonderful twist: you could buy off, pay, so that you are nonetheless saved for future sins. Like, I have a rich uncle, I want his money, I want to kill him, but in advance I make it sure that I will be pardoned, you know. Like, I would like to introduce this into, but okay, I talk too much. Who is the boss? I’m gonna be a host,
You know, this morning it was known now who are people who will be pardoned by Trump in his last days. And there was a secret hope, crazy, that maybe as a crazy gesture, there were some hints, Julian Assange and Snowden will be on it. They are not on it. It’s just the usual corrupted gang, Steve Bannon and so on. Okay, he also, because he was convinced I heard in the last minute not to do it, he didn’t pardon his family and himself. I would like this paradox, to be able to pardon yourself. Because you know who is here my ideal? I read this, I will be very brief, not take your time too much, in a book on Martin Luther, not King the black fighter but Protestantism religion, no? And do you know what was so shocking for Luther when he visited Rome? Let’s say you are a rich guy, you were not only, it was not only possible if you were wealthy and influential to simply buy off your sin. You did something horrible, you pay a big sum to the church, you were pardoned. But there was a wonderful twist: you could buy off, pay, so that you are nonetheless saved for future sins. Like, I have a rich uncle, I want his money, I want to kill him, but in advance I make it sure that I will be pardoned, you know. Like, I would like to introduce this into, but okay, I talk too much. Who is the boss? I’m gonna be a host,
unknown
so I’m gonna actually the carry on the whole sequels. So actually the follow, please follow my direction. And so I want to introduce actually my friend Job and Manoj. Manoj from India, Job from Japan. Just say hello to each other. Hello. Hello.
so I’m gonna actually the carry on the whole sequels. So actually the follow, please follow my direction. And so I want to introduce actually my friend Job and Manoj. Manoj from India, Job from Japan. Just say hello to each other. Hello. Hello.
Slavoj Žižek
Okay, okay. You from India, you are from that university which is all the time in trouble?
Okay, okay. You from India, you are from that university which is all the time in trouble?
unknown
Yes, Jamia. Jamia Millia Islamia. Thanks for your message last time. Like, it was around this year, this time last year that we got your message and we were in trouble at that time. Yeah,
Yes, Jamia. Jamia Millia Islamia. Thanks for your message last time. Like, it was around this year, this time last year that we got your message and we were in trouble at that time. Yeah,
Slavoj Žižek
exactly. But how is this going now? Because you know, these things don’t necessarily mean a lot, but symbolically yes. I read in the newspapers that now, I don’t know the name, the guy who killed Mahatma Gandhi, that now he is in some Hindu circles treated as a saint. There is now a sacred place for him and so on. I mean, this is going pretty far politically. I rather, sorry?
exactly. But how is this going now? Because you know, these things don’t necessarily mean a lot, but symbolically yes. I read in the newspapers that now, I don’t know the name, the guy who killed Mahatma Gandhi, that now he is in some Hindu circles treated as a saint. There is now a sacred place for him and so on. I mean, this is going pretty far politically. I rather, sorry?
unknown
Yes, it is, as it is.
Yes, it is, as it is.
Slavoj Žižek
I mean, okay, who cares, it’s just a symbol, but it’s probably behind this there is a lot of horrible political measures, no, actual, not just symbolic acts, no? This protest was all halted
I mean, okay, who cares, it’s just a symbol, but it’s probably behind this there is a lot of horrible political measures, no, actual, not just symbolic acts, no? This protest was all halted
unknown
just because of the pandemic. Right now the protest against CAA and the Citizenship Amendment Act was halted by the pandemic and then it is completely dispersed right now. Now the university is also not functional, so that sort of protest is sort of arrested. But right now at this age as a sort of a repetition there is a farmer protest going on in Delhi, the fringes of Delhi. Farmers are on the street. Farmers against the Modi, Modi government. Yeah, against the Modi government about the ordinance. Okay, let’s not, okay, no, I know this, but okay, we don’t have time if you want to go. Because I was always
just because of the pandemic. Right now the protest against CAA and the Citizenship Amendment Act was halted by the pandemic and then it is completely dispersed right now. Now the university is also not functional, so that sort of protest is sort of arrested. But right now at this age as a sort of a repetition there is a farmer protest going on in Delhi, the fringes of Delhi. Farmers are on the street. Farmers against the Modi, Modi government. Yeah, against the Modi government about the ordinance. Okay, let’s not, okay, no, I know this, but okay, we don’t have time if you want to go. Because I was always
Slavoj Žižek
interested in this situation, for example, already how I knew the situation in a little bit in Kerala and around Kolkata, West Bank. No, West Bengal, not that West Bank, but India. East, sorry, East Bengal, where I heard that communists became there more businessmen and started to sell land and that the result was many, many thousands of small farmers doing suicides, no, and so on.
interested in this situation, for example, already how I knew the situation in a little bit in Kerala and around Kolkata, West Bank. No, West Bengal, not that West Bank, but India. East, sorry, East Bengal, where I heard that communists became there more businessmen and started to sell land and that the result was many, many thousands of small farmers doing suicides, no, and so on.
unknown
Yeah, that was the situation in Bengal. I’m not very much aware of the situation in Bengal. I cannot authentically say about it. But in Kerala it’s not the case. In Kerala, I think the Communist Party is right now in power and they have done a good job. It’s really, that’s good. Yeah, they have done a good job during the pandemic, I guess,
Yeah, that was the situation in Bengal. I’m not very much aware of the situation in Bengal. I cannot authentically say about it. But in Kerala it’s not the case. In Kerala, I think the Communist Party is right now in power and they have done a good job. It’s really, that’s good. Yeah, they have done a good job during the pandemic, I guess,
Slavoj Žižek
yeah. Ah, also this, also this. But also I, it’s a little bit vulgar explanation, but maybe also because I read somewhere that they are relatively well organized and so on, but also many people from Kerala worked in the Arab Emirates and they get some money back. That is also, makes it a little bit easier, no? Yes, yes, and it’s a popular tourist destination, no? Yes, yeah. Wait,
yeah. Ah, also this, also this. But also I, it’s a little bit vulgar explanation, but maybe also because I read somewhere that they are relatively well organized and so on, but also many people from Kerala worked in the Arab Emirates and they get some money back. That is also, makes it a little bit easier, no? Yes, yes, and it’s a popular tourist destination, no? Yes, yeah. Wait,
unknown
wait, you’ve been in Kerala in I guess, right? Sorry? You came here to Kerala in I guess, like as a guest.
wait, you’ve been in Kerala in I guess, right? Sorry? You came here to Kerala in I guess, like as a guest.
Slavoj Žižek
I know, I know. It looks so fast, you know, now I have a different classification of time. You know, I think there will soon be children to whom we will be saying, you remember that time when we just took a plane and went somewhere and so on? This is becoming another universe. Sorry, but we are losing time. I’m very sorry that I talk too much. It’s okay. If Alex is the boss, he gives the directions. Yes. It’s time, it’s time to start. All right.
I know, I know. It looks so fast, you know, now I have a different classification of time. You know, I think there will soon be children to whom we will be saying, you remember that time when we just took a plane and went somewhere and so on? This is becoming another universe. Sorry, but we are losing time. I’m very sorry that I talk too much. It’s okay. If Alex is the boss, he gives the directions. Yes. It’s time, it’s time to start. All right.
unknown
It’s time to start. Actually, people started joining us. Welcome to this event, actually this kind of the lecture series. Today is actually the first episode we actually gonna open. So we have two channels in Zoom as well as actually YouTube Live, so anybody could watch what we are doing on the YouTube. And then if you have kind of question after this session or in the middle of our talk, please actually put down on the chat, the live chat, you know. We can read it and then just, you know, try to actually answer to your question. Okay, just let’s start. Let’s kick off to actually this event. I’m very glad and honored to have Slavoj Žižek, my friend and comrade. And then also my colleagues, Manoj and Job here. This lecture series launched to help connect critical post-media studies to a broader audience. I made this new field, we actually try to make this new field, and then that’s why just it is very noteworthy, you know, we can begin this meaningful event with Slavoj Žižek. Undoubtedly, he is one of the very eminent, you know, the intellectual and philosopher who have participated in many practical events. And his new book about Hegel raises urgent and timely issues, preserving further intervention into the link between technology and capitalism in the pandemic situation we experience today. Slavoj already wrote several books and about Hegel and then applied his interpretation of Hegelianism for analyzing current situation and issues. He is one of the most prolific writers today, and does not stop
It’s time to start. Actually, people started joining us. Welcome to this event, actually this kind of the lecture series. Today is actually the first episode we actually gonna open. So we have two channels in Zoom as well as actually YouTube Live, so anybody could watch what we are doing on the YouTube. And then if you have kind of question after this session or in the middle of our talk, please actually put down on the chat, the live chat, you know. We can read it and then just, you know, try to actually answer to your question. Okay, just let’s start. Let’s kick off to actually this event. I’m very glad and honored to have Slavoj Žižek, my friend and comrade. And then also my colleagues, Manoj and Job here. This lecture series launched to help connect critical post-media studies to a broader audience. I made this new field, we actually try to make this new field, and then that’s why just it is very noteworthy, you know, we can begin this meaningful event with Slavoj Žižek. Undoubtedly, he is one of the very eminent, you know, the intellectual and philosopher who have participated in many practical events. And his new book about Hegel raises urgent and timely issues, preserving further intervention into the link between technology and capitalism in the pandemic situation we experience today. Slavoj already wrote several books and about Hegel and then applied his interpretation of Hegelianism for analyzing current situation and issues. He is one of the most prolific writers today, and does not stop
unknown
writing day and night, you know. Slavoj published two books about COVID-19 pandemic last year already, and many articles about global politics, including United States elections and Trump and then actually, you know, the Brexit and the Russian agendas. Above all, his appeal to the reinvention of communism in particular brings out the various resonances across the world, and in particular actually Global South, you know. He is actually, he has huge influence on Global South activism. Above all, his appeal to communism is actually produced lots of effect, you know. And then as much as his previous works by which he could gain international influences, controversy, and substantial audiences, his recent works of Hegel also embrace various spectrums around the Marxism, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism. In his new book, and we’re gonna actually deal with this new book today, "Hegel in a Wired Brain," quite a sexy title, "Hegel in a Wired Brain," Slavoj seems to continue his project by taking technological advancement such as AI and algorithm and the so-called these days actually the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And this book does not reject assumption of singularity, but actually in the AI science, but philosophize it properly. So he does not want actually reject technological advancement but try to philosophize it. I think this actually retained kind of continuity from the philosophy project since the Bergson try to produce kind of metaphysic of science and technology. So that’s why just we choose this book. This book is quite timely and urgent. The Slavoj wants to know how to direct link of brain to the machine could handle the unconscious. As far as I understand, this book deals with this problem directly. In his terms, the unconscious is the locus where the Hegelian dialectic works out in full swing, a mode of subjectivity retroactively inventing a point of origin. For instance, his explanation of Hegel’s concept of Unzu. So that is very fantastic. And then also it could reach out at many different fields. So this creation only happens after it effects human mind and behavior. A central credo of this book is the void that makes human beings as subject and its consequences for singularity in technological development such as AI. So he uses Hegel to let us understand what is happening around in terms of technology these days, in particular actually this kind of tele-technological situation by which the global capitalism still survives. So we actually gonna talk about aftermath, when he finished this book. That means we already had quite different experience from what he actually discussed in this book. So that’s why just we prepared this debate. And then we gonna actually give some kind of question to him. Yeah, please, a big applaud to him and then just welcome him to join our event. Thank you for coming, Slavoj. I am grateful to be here, thank you very much. But I don’t like this remains of bourgeois cult of celebrities and individualism in you that you focus on me. I warn you technologically, I from the standpoint of science and so on, I don’t know a lot about this project of the so-called wired brain. I don’t know in what sense it can happen, probably in a very limited way. What I am trying to guess is if it will happen, what will this mean for our everyday life, for our freedom? Is this as some pessimists think the end of human freedom, that we can be totally transparent to some digital
writing day and night, you know. Slavoj published two books about COVID-19 pandemic last year already, and many articles about global politics, including United States elections and Trump and then actually, you know, the Brexit and the Russian agendas. Above all, his appeal to the reinvention of communism in particular brings out the various resonances across the world, and in particular actually Global South, you know. He is actually, he has huge influence on Global South activism. Above all, his appeal to communism is actually produced lots of effect, you know. And then as much as his previous works by which he could gain international influences, controversy, and substantial audiences, his recent works of Hegel also embrace various spectrums around the Marxism, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism. In his new book, and we’re gonna actually deal with this new book today, "Hegel in a Wired Brain," quite a sexy title, "Hegel in a Wired Brain," Slavoj seems to continue his project by taking technological advancement such as AI and algorithm and the so-called these days actually the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And this book does not reject assumption of singularity, but actually in the AI science, but philosophize it properly. So he does not want actually reject technological advancement but try to philosophize it. I think this actually retained kind of continuity from the philosophy project since the Bergson try to produce kind of metaphysic of science and technology. So that’s why just we choose this book. This book is quite timely and urgent. The Slavoj wants to know how to direct link of brain to the machine could handle the unconscious. As far as I understand, this book deals with this problem directly. In his terms, the unconscious is the locus where the Hegelian dialectic works out in full swing, a mode of subjectivity retroactively inventing a point of origin. For instance, his explanation of Hegel’s concept of Unzu. So that is very fantastic. And then also it could reach out at many different fields. So this creation only happens after it effects human mind and behavior. A central credo of this book is the void that makes human beings as subject and its consequences for singularity in technological development such as AI. So he uses Hegel to let us understand what is happening around in terms of technology these days, in particular actually this kind of tele-technological situation by which the global capitalism still survives. So we actually gonna talk about aftermath, when he finished this book. That means we already had quite different experience from what he actually discussed in this book. So that’s why just we prepared this debate. And then we gonna actually give some kind of question to him. Yeah, please, a big applaud to him and then just welcome him to join our event. Thank you for coming, Slavoj. I am grateful to be here, thank you very much. But I don’t like this remains of bourgeois cult of celebrities and individualism in you that you focus on me. I warn you technologically, I from the standpoint of science and so on, I don’t know a lot about this project of the so-called wired brain. I don’t know in what sense it can happen, probably in a very limited way. What I am trying to guess is if it will happen, what will this mean for our everyday life, for our freedom? Is this as some pessimists think the end of human freedom, that we can be totally transparent to some digital
unknown
machine and especially to those who control this digital machine? Or as some others think, are we entering a new post-human collective awareness
machine and especially to those who control this digital machine? Or as some others think, are we entering a new post-human collective awareness
Slavoj Žižek
where some even speak theological language where we will be in immediate spiritual contact not only with each other but that through this millions of individuals united in the same mental space we will create a new form of divinity? Now which view what will happen and especially which part of the human being the way we know it now will survive? Another thing that I find and then I will stop, I’ll try to be short, another thing that I find interesting is the combination of this technological trend of wired brain, to put it in a very simple way wired brain simply means that your mental processes could be, and it’s already happening although in a very limited primitive way, directly registered, perceived by some digital machine. And if another person is linked, also attached to that machine, this means that and Elon Musk who shouldn’t be taken too seriously as a scientist but he is a kind of a trendsetting prophet, the dream is that language will no longer be needed, human language in this case. Because when I think something it will be immediately transparent to you, language is not needed. Now my point is what does this mean for the structure of subjectivity, what does it mean for the structures of domination? Should we be pessimists in the sense that either machine itself or those who control the machine are controlling us not in the old totalitarian way where police is observing you and so on? And this is even a step further from our usual idea of mental, sorry, of digital control where we know this: machines now register practically everything, all the data, all that we do, if you read through Google what do you buy, all financial transactions, even your emotions and so on. But here we go a step further. In the usual forms of digital control your acts, mental decisions, I buy this, I watch that TV program, are registered. But here the idea is that directly your lived self-experience can be. Of course as usual when those in power present this idea they do the humanitarian trick. They always evoke extreme medical cases when this could be of some use, you know. Like they say for example there is a guy who is totally crippled but if you attach him to a computer which can identify his basic ideas and so on you make life much easier for him. For example we already have, I always mention the example of Stephen Hawking. I was told that before he died he no longer needed his finger, the only part that he was able to move, but he just thought forward and his wheelchair was moving forward. So it’s a magic dimension where you think and your thoughts, this is divine-like in the usual sense of the divine, directly imply reality. But the problem is of course that it also goes the other way around: the machine or those who are behind the machine control you. And so what will all this mean to capitalism? Here okay I will stop, just two points, questions I want to raise, in a way I’m trying to speak as naively and plainly as possible. First, how will this change our self-understanding as human beings? Because all our interaction is based on language. And all our communication is based on the ambiguities of language, how you say something but you really mean another thing and so on, all these paradoxes of communication. Will the digital machine be able to read all this or will there be some complications? My thesis is maybe a little bit too optimistic that what Freud called the unconscious escapes the digital machine. But it’s a very specific notion of the unconscious. Second thing is that this new possibilities of social control opened up by different forms of directly attaching machines to our mind gain special importance with not only the ongoing pandemic. And since you are here from India, I want to tell you that I’m quite fascinated how comparatively India is not doing so bad per capita, you know. Everybody thought oh India, dirty country, big chaos and so on, it will be a catastrophe, no? No, you have, if one can trust I don’t know your numbers in India, then you are doing much better than an average West European, much more in superficial technological sense, but you are developed now, top consumerist developed state. But what I want to say is that as a reaction of pandemic, you know, here I see this idea of a wired brain where also you can have then viruses implanted, now I’m talking about digital viruses and real life biological viruses. I see a certain echo in this too. Why? Because as we usually say, lockdowns and so on as a consequence of pandemic limited our social contacts. I repeatedly said that I don’t think our social contacts are limited, just our bodily contact, bodily proximities are limited. I, when I am asked by journalists what do you miss most in this time of lockdowns, my answer is always the same: I miss my loneliness, you know. I want to be more alone. You know why? It’s not just a cheap paradox but our everyday state is trying to control us now more than ever. They say and they are maybe right because to prevent the virus to spread and so on. But those in power use this to expand even more the control of all our means of communication. And just to conclude, please allow me this then I give you all the time, this is for example, now I will speak as an old-fashioned Marxist, one of the points when I felt, no I cannot feel sympathy for Donald Trump you know, but that something unjust happened to him when he, you remember when two weeks ago or when, when he was excluded excommunicated by, I call them like we called them in Maoist times, the Gang of Four of our digital space: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and okay YouTube. Now in the case of Trump I said good, why not exclude him. But the problem is this one as we all know. A guy, they said by example Twitter or Facebook cancelled his account, excluded Trump. Who did this exactly? Do they have some ethical committee? Who did this decision? You know why this is important? Because de facto these four entities which form the Gang of Four, Twitter and so on, are today our public space, our commons. Even what we do now is mediated through this technology. And they are all privatized. So it means this is not like going to another restaurant and so on. If you buy books you almost have to do it in many countries with Amazon and so on and so on. So we have now a new type of mega-capital which doesn’t exploit you directly. That’s a quite important point. It’s getting the rent, it’s rent. I think we are returning to rent. Bill Gates for example became so wealthy because he is collecting rent from owning part of our public space. And this I think has to be in some sense stopped. This is the destruction of our public space when a private company, which then of course can be connected with secret police other agencies and so on, is controlling our public space and can cut us off whenever it wants and so on and so on. I talk too much I’m sorry, please. Yeah actually you already raised a very important point, you know. Actually people seem quite confused, you know, with that kind of transparency. You know actually some liberal and individualists try to insist that kind of big data would, you know, take over the our privacy, our private, you know, life, something like that. But you actually raised some different question, you know. Actually this big company will use, you know, this kind of data, you know, without permission. And then I think that actually the the example you actually took, you know, the Trump case, you know. Actually somebody, you know, decided, one guy would, you know, one or two guy. We don’t know who, what mechanism. Exactly. That is actually something behind this scene, you know. Something behind this thin. So that is so important point in my opinion, no. So it’s not the kind of state power, you know, it’s not kind of Big Brother. It’s that is a real big brother, you know, behind this scene. But it actually those people are behave like a good, you know, the guy and then like a Superman, you know, try to the save the world, you know, the prohibiting, ban, you know, actually the the billions, you know, Twitter, something like that. So that is very interesting point. But can I just say and then you will pardon me, I will shut up. Okay. Do the others also know Alex your text that you’ve sent me about your experience of watching the two movies? How it was suggested by some algorithm and so on. You know, so again what makes me sad in such experiences, I’m not a paranoiac, I don’t mind if they try to guess based on my past choices what I would like to watch next. What just annoys me is that, now this is a comical interlude, that in my case they are usually totally inefficient. All this from on Amazon, on Netflix, suggestions what should I want and so on, they always miss it, never never again. But what I want to say is that you see they are not just controlling us, they are suggesting choices, they are actively, actively trying to manipulate us to to define, they are doing something much more dangerous, dangerous than just choosing. Like in North Korea probably, sorry to mention the country, in North Korea you don’t have this choice, you are simply expected or told to to watch when the leader has a speech or whatever, no freedom. But I find our type of freedom maybe even more dangerous, where you think that you are still acting as a free individual. You browse around, you look, but the very space of possible choices is is determined by some algorithms and by people who can manipulate these algorithms and and so on and so on. That’s why I think your example Alex is very important. How in this case it even had a relatively good result, because you made a nice comparative study between the same melodramatic topic but but the two films, you know. But so you were well manipulated, a friend, no in this case a friend, good friend could have done something of the same order to you. An American friend could have told you, because you first watched the the Bollywood film, no? Could have told you, "But my God, there is a Hollywood film which is a similar story but with
where some even speak theological language where we will be in immediate spiritual contact not only with each other but that through this millions of individuals united in the same mental space we will create a new form of divinity? Now which view what will happen and especially which part of the human being the way we know it now will survive? Another thing that I find and then I will stop, I’ll try to be short, another thing that I find interesting is the combination of this technological trend of wired brain, to put it in a very simple way wired brain simply means that your mental processes could be, and it’s already happening although in a very limited primitive way, directly registered, perceived by some digital machine. And if another person is linked, also attached to that machine, this means that and Elon Musk who shouldn’t be taken too seriously as a scientist but he is a kind of a trendsetting prophet, the dream is that language will no longer be needed, human language in this case. Because when I think something it will be immediately transparent to you, language is not needed. Now my point is what does this mean for the structure of subjectivity, what does it mean for the structures of domination? Should we be pessimists in the sense that either machine itself or those who control the machine are controlling us not in the old totalitarian way where police is observing you and so on? And this is even a step further from our usual idea of mental, sorry, of digital control where we know this: machines now register practically everything, all the data, all that we do, if you read through Google what do you buy, all financial transactions, even your emotions and so on. But here we go a step further. In the usual forms of digital control your acts, mental decisions, I buy this, I watch that TV program, are registered. But here the idea is that directly your lived self-experience can be. Of course as usual when those in power present this idea they do the humanitarian trick. They always evoke extreme medical cases when this could be of some use, you know. Like they say for example there is a guy who is totally crippled but if you attach him to a computer which can identify his basic ideas and so on you make life much easier for him. For example we already have, I always mention the example of Stephen Hawking. I was told that before he died he no longer needed his finger, the only part that he was able to move, but he just thought forward and his wheelchair was moving forward. So it’s a magic dimension where you think and your thoughts, this is divine-like in the usual sense of the divine, directly imply reality. But the problem is of course that it also goes the other way around: the machine or those who are behind the machine control you. And so what will all this mean to capitalism? Here okay I will stop, just two points, questions I want to raise, in a way I’m trying to speak as naively and plainly as possible. First, how will this change our self-understanding as human beings? Because all our interaction is based on language. And all our communication is based on the ambiguities of language, how you say something but you really mean another thing and so on, all these paradoxes of communication. Will the digital machine be able to read all this or will there be some complications? My thesis is maybe a little bit too optimistic that what Freud called the unconscious escapes the digital machine. But it’s a very specific notion of the unconscious. Second thing is that this new possibilities of social control opened up by different forms of directly attaching machines to our mind gain special importance with not only the ongoing pandemic. And since you are here from India, I want to tell you that I’m quite fascinated how comparatively India is not doing so bad per capita, you know. Everybody thought oh India, dirty country, big chaos and so on, it will be a catastrophe, no? No, you have, if one can trust I don’t know your numbers in India, then you are doing much better than an average West European, much more in superficial technological sense, but you are developed now, top consumerist developed state. But what I want to say is that as a reaction of pandemic, you know, here I see this idea of a wired brain where also you can have then viruses implanted, now I’m talking about digital viruses and real life biological viruses. I see a certain echo in this too. Why? Because as we usually say, lockdowns and so on as a consequence of pandemic limited our social contacts. I repeatedly said that I don’t think our social contacts are limited, just our bodily contact, bodily proximities are limited. I, when I am asked by journalists what do you miss most in this time of lockdowns, my answer is always the same: I miss my loneliness, you know. I want to be more alone. You know why? It’s not just a cheap paradox but our everyday state is trying to control us now more than ever. They say and they are maybe right because to prevent the virus to spread and so on. But those in power use this to expand even more the control of all our means of communication. And just to conclude, please allow me this then I give you all the time, this is for example, now I will speak as an old-fashioned Marxist, one of the points when I felt, no I cannot feel sympathy for Donald Trump you know, but that something unjust happened to him when he, you remember when two weeks ago or when, when he was excluded excommunicated by, I call them like we called them in Maoist times, the Gang of Four of our digital space: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and okay YouTube. Now in the case of Trump I said good, why not exclude him. But the problem is this one as we all know. A guy, they said by example Twitter or Facebook cancelled his account, excluded Trump. Who did this exactly? Do they have some ethical committee? Who did this decision? You know why this is important? Because de facto these four entities which form the Gang of Four, Twitter and so on, are today our public space, our commons. Even what we do now is mediated through this technology. And they are all privatized. So it means this is not like going to another restaurant and so on. If you buy books you almost have to do it in many countries with Amazon and so on and so on. So we have now a new type of mega-capital which doesn’t exploit you directly. That’s a quite important point. It’s getting the rent, it’s rent. I think we are returning to rent. Bill Gates for example became so wealthy because he is collecting rent from owning part of our public space. And this I think has to be in some sense stopped. This is the destruction of our public space when a private company, which then of course can be connected with secret police other agencies and so on, is controlling our public space and can cut us off whenever it wants and so on and so on. I talk too much I’m sorry, please. Yeah actually you already raised a very important point, you know. Actually people seem quite confused, you know, with that kind of transparency. You know actually some liberal and individualists try to insist that kind of big data would, you know, take over the our privacy, our private, you know, life, something like that. But you actually raised some different question, you know. Actually this big company will use, you know, this kind of data, you know, without permission. And then I think that actually the the example you actually took, you know, the Trump case, you know. Actually somebody, you know, decided, one guy would, you know, one or two guy. We don’t know who, what mechanism. Exactly. That is actually something behind this scene, you know. Something behind this thin. So that is so important point in my opinion, no. So it’s not the kind of state power, you know, it’s not kind of Big Brother. It’s that is a real big brother, you know, behind this scene. But it actually those people are behave like a good, you know, the guy and then like a Superman, you know, try to the save the world, you know, the prohibiting, ban, you know, actually the the billions, you know, Twitter, something like that. So that is very interesting point. But can I just say and then you will pardon me, I will shut up. Okay. Do the others also know Alex your text that you’ve sent me about your experience of watching the two movies? How it was suggested by some algorithm and so on. You know, so again what makes me sad in such experiences, I’m not a paranoiac, I don’t mind if they try to guess based on my past choices what I would like to watch next. What just annoys me is that, now this is a comical interlude, that in my case they are usually totally inefficient. All this from on Amazon, on Netflix, suggestions what should I want and so on, they always miss it, never never again. But what I want to say is that you see they are not just controlling us, they are suggesting choices, they are actively, actively trying to manipulate us to to define, they are doing something much more dangerous, dangerous than just choosing. Like in North Korea probably, sorry to mention the country, in North Korea you don’t have this choice, you are simply expected or told to to watch when the leader has a speech or whatever, no freedom. But I find our type of freedom maybe even more dangerous, where you think that you are still acting as a free individual. You browse around, you look, but the very space of possible choices is is determined by some algorithms and by people who can manipulate these algorithms and and so on and so on. That’s why I think your example Alex is very important. How in this case it even had a relatively good result, because you made a nice comparative study between the same melodramatic topic but but the two films, you know. But so you were well manipulated, a friend, no in this case a friend, good friend could have done something of the same order to you. An American friend could have told you, because you first watched the the Bollywood film, no? Could have told you, "But my God, there is a Hollywood film which is a similar story but with
unknown
another twist." So it was not so, whenever. But the point I want to make is that excessive choice, and it’s an impossible position almost, you know, like you want to watch a movie if you are corrupted like me and I have on my big screen TV everything, that is to say HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video. It’s simply too much choice and how this is a nice dialectical phenomenon how too much choice can effectively cancel choice. Means you are if there are hundreds of films there you are helpless and all the more open to suggestions, you know. So I think that this type of mental control, steering, domination is, sorry to repeat my old mantra mantra, is important because our usual definition of freedom is precisely what we are doing in front of a of a screen when we want to watch a movie. My God, you are free to choose, you just do whatever you want, you can even make risks and watch some secret data, some hardcore pornography, you are free. But for this reason the most dangerous form of un-freedom is the un-freedom that you experience as freedom, that you don’t even experience as un-freedom. And second thing let’s not forget that whenever there are multiple
another twist." So it was not so, whenever. But the point I want to make is that excessive choice, and it’s an impossible position almost, you know, like you want to watch a movie if you are corrupted like me and I have on my big screen TV everything, that is to say HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video. It’s simply too much choice and how this is a nice dialectical phenomenon how too much choice can effectively cancel choice. Means you are if there are hundreds of films there you are helpless and all the more open to suggestions, you know. So I think that this type of mental control, steering, domination is, sorry to repeat my old mantra mantra, is important because our usual definition of freedom is precisely what we are doing in front of a of a screen when we want to watch a movie. My God, you are free to choose, you just do whatever you want, you can even make risks and watch some secret data, some hardcore pornography, you are free. But for this reason the most dangerous form of un-freedom is the un-freedom that you experience as freedom, that you don’t even experience as un-freedom. And second thing let’s not forget that whenever there are multiple
Slavoj Žižek
choices I always suspect that they are obfuscating one real choice. This is for me the crucial distinction. I’m always suspicious when people say you can choose from movies, okay but where is the real choice? Sorry I talk too much. Alright so I think actually that is very interesting, we actually getting to the very interesting topic you know actually the how the kind of algorithm would you know influence the actually our behavior. But actually I want to get back to your actually mention of Luther, Martin Luther’s book is he actually criticized the church you know to sell actually that kind of future sin you know sin actually not yet happened. I think this kind of algorithm industry would you know sell the that kind of our future behavior. They try to sell kind of possibility of our modification you know of our behavior. That means they actually try to actually change our behavior not you know control us. They try to guide our desire you know just like actually the church's you know the certificate you know actually you pay this certificate and you actually future sin gonna be a forgiven, something like that. So that means if you buy this you know the the the commodity, I mean the cultural commodity, you would actually enjoy your life better, something like that. It’s a better life, they promised us you know kind of better life. So this is in my opinion you know. Wait a minute. Uh, first all my sympathy to the other three guys I see, no, one, two, three, four, five, six, to the other four guys. I’m just afraid that that the two of us, but by this I mean me especially, are simply monopolizing, are simply monopolizing the space too much. Couldn't we include a little bit what the other four expect expect to hear? Yeah I have a question Slavoj, actually. You were talking too much about, you talking about this world brain and like you know the apparatus of captures that that we are surrounded with. In this context I want to, I want to ask you one, course, one question. Do you still hold your disagreement with Agamben, a proposed surveillance and control measures adopted by the state machines across the globe normalizing the state of exception as you pointed out in your COVID book, like? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good question, yes, I I do stick, I do stick to it absolutely and okay this will be a kind of a low blow, you know. But what put me into a panic is how do you know that many American right wing, the populist new right say the same thing or even directly refer to Agamben? What, I know Agamben is a radical leftist politically, I mean I know his politics. But what I fear is, did you read he published now in Italian and I saw, I don’t know if it was legal an English translation, where it sounds really tragic what he is saying. He is no longer denying COVID. His idea is no longer that old naive one, you know, that it’s just a form of flu, it’s exaggerated and so on. No, he even accepts that maybe it’s the end of the world, it’s the end of us. But he then quotes old traditions where saying when your house is burning, is his metaphor, the only decent thing to do is to go on with your daily life as far as possible in a normal way, to stick to old rituals and so on and so on. And I think without implying a dirty false thing that he is somehow connected with the the Trump mob and so on, but if you look, if you abstract from the excesses, and they are not marginal, of what Trump followers are doing, we should not forget my God that there the basic their basic reaction is, our usual daily way of life is threatened. And although what they understand by way of life is not just meeting friends, having a drink, it’s basically the way
choices I always suspect that they are obfuscating one real choice. This is for me the crucial distinction. I’m always suspicious when people say you can choose from movies, okay but where is the real choice? Sorry I talk too much. Alright so I think actually that is very interesting, we actually getting to the very interesting topic you know actually the how the kind of algorithm would you know influence the actually our behavior. But actually I want to get back to your actually mention of Luther, Martin Luther’s book is he actually criticized the church you know to sell actually that kind of future sin you know sin actually not yet happened. I think this kind of algorithm industry would you know sell the that kind of our future behavior. They try to sell kind of possibility of our modification you know of our behavior. That means they actually try to actually change our behavior not you know control us. They try to guide our desire you know just like actually the church's you know the certificate you know actually you pay this certificate and you actually future sin gonna be a forgiven, something like that. So that means if you buy this you know the the the commodity, I mean the cultural commodity, you would actually enjoy your life better, something like that. It’s a better life, they promised us you know kind of better life. So this is in my opinion you know. Wait a minute. Uh, first all my sympathy to the other three guys I see, no, one, two, three, four, five, six, to the other four guys. I’m just afraid that that the two of us, but by this I mean me especially, are simply monopolizing, are simply monopolizing the space too much. Couldn't we include a little bit what the other four expect expect to hear? Yeah I have a question Slavoj, actually. You were talking too much about, you talking about this world brain and like you know the apparatus of captures that that we are surrounded with. In this context I want to, I want to ask you one, course, one question. Do you still hold your disagreement with Agamben, a proposed surveillance and control measures adopted by the state machines across the globe normalizing the state of exception as you pointed out in your COVID book, like? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good question, yes, I I do stick, I do stick to it absolutely and okay this will be a kind of a low blow, you know. But what put me into a panic is how do you know that many American right wing, the populist new right say the same thing or even directly refer to Agamben? What, I know Agamben is a radical leftist politically, I mean I know his politics. But what I fear is, did you read he published now in Italian and I saw, I don’t know if it was legal an English translation, where it sounds really tragic what he is saying. He is no longer denying COVID. His idea is no longer that old naive one, you know, that it’s just a form of flu, it’s exaggerated and so on. No, he even accepts that maybe it’s the end of the world, it’s the end of us. But he then quotes old traditions where saying when your house is burning, is his metaphor, the only decent thing to do is to go on with your daily life as far as possible in a normal way, to stick to old rituals and so on and so on. And I think without implying a dirty false thing that he is somehow connected with the the Trump mob and so on, but if you look, if you abstract from the excesses, and they are not marginal, of what Trump followers are doing, we should not forget my God that there the basic their basic reaction is, our usual daily way of life is threatened. And although what they understand by way of life is not just meeting friends, having a drink, it’s basically the way
unknown
of life of white middle classes. They feel a whole series of threats. You have the threat of others, other races penetrating the the United States, posing a danger, rapists whatever you want, killers, drug dealers. Then you have things like pandemic and so on, medical crisis. You have economic crisis because of outsourcing of industries, whatever. They see a whole and also global warming, for them this is a a plot. It doesn’t exist. So
of life of white middle classes. They feel a whole series of threats. You have the threat of others, other races penetrating the the United States, posing a danger, rapists whatever you want, killers, drug dealers. Then you have things like pandemic and so on, medical crisis. You have economic crisis because of outsourcing of industries, whatever. They see a whole and also global warming, for them this is a a plot. It doesn’t exist. So
unknown
their answer is a paranoic one. It is, behind this there must be one big plot. But nonetheless their basic experience inside, their basic insight that our way of life, the way we knew it till now with all our individual freedoms like having a gun, free access to arms. You know that there was one industry in United States which in the last year profited even more than health industry, comparatively, it’s the arms industry. Now everybody wants to be armed and so on. But what I’m saying is that not only because of COVID pandemic, but if you add first other not only the variations, mutations of the virus but other pandemics which are threatening. Then what is happening at the level of global warming and other catastrophes. Didn’t you in India you just barely avoided it I think a mega invasion by locusts from from from Eastern Africa, no? It crossed the Arab countries then it stopped somewhere in India. These are these are gigantic catastrophes. Or for example forget about people, you know how
their answer is a paranoic one. It is, behind this there must be one big plot. But nonetheless their basic experience inside, their basic insight that our way of life, the way we knew it till now with all our individual freedoms like having a gun, free access to arms. You know that there was one industry in United States which in the last year profited even more than health industry, comparatively, it’s the arms industry. Now everybody wants to be armed and so on. But what I’m saying is that not only because of COVID pandemic, but if you add first other not only the variations, mutations of the virus but other pandemics which are threatening. Then what is happening at the level of global warming and other catastrophes. Didn’t you in India you just barely avoided it I think a mega invasion by locusts from from from Eastern Africa, no? It crossed the Arab countries then it stopped somewhere in India. These are these are gigantic catastrophes. Or for example forget about people, you know how
Slavoj Žižek
many hundreds of millions of pigs they had to, okay if you are from a Muslim university you don’t care about this but hundreds of millions of pigs were killed there. So and how what crazy things are happening we see in temperatures. In temperatures for example we were shocked a week ago, okay it’s from our perspective but the same thing must be happening elsewhere. In Spain
many hundreds of millions of pigs they had to, okay if you are from a Muslim university you don’t care about this but hundreds of millions of pigs were killed there. So and how what crazy things are happening we see in temperatures. In temperatures for example we were shocked a week ago, okay it’s from our perspective but the same thing must be happening elsewhere. In Spain
unknown
they had centimeters of snow, freezing. In Greece in Athens it was degrees and so on, people could swim. So what I’m saying is that unfortunately I think we are entering a new era. We will have to change the basic coordinates of our life. I don’t, I think we should drop this perspective of oh just that we now we will be all vaccinated and then we return to normality. No, this is my first premise. It’s the beginning of a very difficult state of emergency. And I, my answer to Agamben would be here,
they had centimeters of snow, freezing. In Greece in Athens it was degrees and so on, people could swim. So what I’m saying is that unfortunately I think we are entering a new era. We will have to change the basic coordinates of our life. I don’t, I think we should drop this perspective of oh just that we now we will be all vaccinated and then we return to normality. No, this is my first premise. It’s the beginning of a very difficult state of emergency. And I, my answer to Agamben would be here,
Slavoj Žižek
yes, it’s even worse than you think. And I don’t think this state of emergency could be accounted for as the the way of a state to control us more, to establish more authority. Yes, this is true but you know what is much more frustrating? It’s that especially in many highly developed countries, in spite of this new mode of control, controlling our movements and so on, as the latest numbers show, the state even cannot do this, how limited is the state in what it can do. They cannot, they cannot control. They cannot control because I think that what is so, I would like to draw a contrast between the first wave of pandemic and now. This sounds Eurocentric, by first wave I simply mean the first step because other parts of the world didn’t have the same two waves, you know, this is really very Eurocentric. But what I want to say is this: in March-April it was what I ironically called a normal panic. We were in a panic you know. Now it’s no longer just panic. Now it’s, I call it simply depression. People act in a much more relaxed way, they even go on the streets with no mask and so on. But not because they are courageous, it’s a form of, I call it a relief, the worst is over, it’s everything is lost, who knows what will happen and so on, so so who cares what we do. In Slovenia in my country we have now times more cases per day than in March-April when we were in total lockdown. But life is much more relaxed, people simply accepted this as our fate and so on and so on. So what gives me, I wouldn’t say hope but some opening is precisely that, and now I come to the unfortunate word communism, no? I am not an idiot, I don’t think now all of a sudden a big new Communist Party will emerge, democratic, open, progressive and will save us. No, I’m just saying this that that it’s in a way generally accepted, basically a couple of things which are crucial, incredible. That first market mechanisms, I’m not saying we should directly move into some kind of a state-run economy, but should be in some sense socialized. The state or community, I don’t know precisely in what way, for example, should decide we need vaccines, we need this, we need that, and it’s not enough to say we will use market mechanisms, print money, solicit companies, it has to be done fast. Economy in some basic dimensions should be socialized. There are tremendous challenges ahead of us here. The first thing. The second thing, a kind of universal egalitarianism. Of course rich states already are cheating like crazy. The world record in vaccinations is Israel now, you know. But the way I read, they mostly ignore the West Bank which is under their control. But what I want to say is that nonetheless everybody agrees in principle that the pandemic should only, could only be fought through this, let’s through some kind of egalitarianism and so on and so on. So I think that are we aware what is already happening with capitalism? Yes, on the one hand COVID meant a much stronger social separation, the few rich got much more rich, middle class disappearing, we know the story, the poor even more and so on. And I think that I think that again this cannot be left to the market. Some kind of social action is needed. And it can be done. I don’t think the Chinese have a monopoly on it, you know. Then I’m immediately accused, "Oh you want us to to act like a Chinese Communist Party." No, then I take one example which many people don’t like. But my God, listen, Taiwan did it even more efficiently than China, you know. Take the case of Taiwan, which precisely resists being part of China. And there numbers are even better than in China. Or take Vietnam and so on. So it’s not enough just to have a state bureaucracy. Some kind of community will have to be re-emerged. And just to finish, this seems to me important, now when people tell me, "But listen, you dream about this, this is just rhetoric, in reality what is happening is just that capital is taking over more than ever and so on and so on." I say yes, but this is already a reaction to the threat that they feel. Because on the one hand, look what even Trump and Boris Johnson had to do. Because for our ideological, in our ideological situation, you cannot openly allow too many people to starve. There is a limit in our liberal sensitivity, which is not bad because for example when there was more than years ago or more in India and in other places a big starvation, the British simply, as they did in Ireland before, isolated that part of the country and left millions to die. That’s at least one small sign of progress: today when there is big hunger somewhere it somehow makes it to the to the media. So so my point is that yes those in power cheap but look even Trump felt obliged to propose the check of to every family or whatever, which means a form of universal basic income. Boris Johnson nationalized temporarily railways to organize them and so on. So even conservatives in power have to do some under quotation marks communist measures. Now friends tell me, "But of course you do this when there is war, and this is comparable to war." So but later, when things will come back to normal, all this will be forgotten. Well, I don’t think there will be a later. Later in the sense of you know somewhere maybe even in one year from now we will just forget about this, you know, and return to normal life. I think we are entering a new period of permanent emergency and my formula here, I repeat it for the tenth time, my most favorite one is the one that I heard in Chile, you know, when how did the popular movement react to this general catastrophic perspective, "The end of the world is coming," you know. Their their reply was not no, "If we take over there will be no crisis blah blah." No, their reply was, "Another end of the world is possible." You know we have to do our own end of the world. Because just to conclude, I hope we all agree in this what I say now. There are different strategies of how our enemies are trying to counteract this obvious push towards some kind of socialization, communism and so on. One is the Trumpian populist one, denying you silently went over how many people died just to retain normal life. The other is the technocratic solution, most of us living in bubbles under total state control and so on and so on, this is the Bill Gates solution. We also should decline it. And now it’s our chance. What I reject, the most dangerous idea for me, much more dangerous than Trumpian populism, is this idea: now we are in a time of emergency which, and here I agree with Agamben if you read him in this way, now we are live in a time of emergency which means that that that there is no time for politics. Like in a battle you cannot debate with your officer, you know. We have to follow all rules, science and state and health administration will tell us what to do, forget about emancipatory political activity. I’m against. Okay may I jump in? Please. Is it is it okay to you know, a pleasure to to be with you Slavoj and let me play devil’s advocate a little bit because you talk who is the devil in this case? well let me get to that, I will be okay? okay because let me just let me turn to your book because in your book there is no mention whatsoever of resistance, not one word regarding resistance. So I would like to hear something about what you feel might be a way to somehow somehow to plug in or plug plug out of the wired brain. So in for me when we think about someone like Elon Musk, I’m always thinking like he’s a bit like Trump, like the as you call Trump the obscene other. Yeah. and when I was thinking about this idea of okay so how would Slavoj think about some kind of resistance? well maybe he would invoke Hegel’s idea of a shift in perspective perhaps? okay in terms of the wound and how how that concept might might work in this kind of wired brain this collective intelligence. But then the other side of it, this concern with freedom and whether we would be we would be aware that we’re being somehow somehow kind of directed artificially. Well that brought to me the idea of of bad faith, something like the Sartrean idea of bad faith where as you know in Sartre this idea of a unification of freedom the for-itself with the in-itself and that would be Elon Musk’s idea of God, this kind of absolute spirit as you argument I think seems to me is working out. But then it seems to me from that then like why not, why not dispense with desire, with individual desires? why because it’s so much work to to desire. So why not give yourself over to the collective algorithmic unconscious? why not be directed by these obscene others like Trump or like Elon Musk? Or why not have a bespoke pornography tailored to you artificially? why not have that? why not why not embrace virtual reality, a better than life reality? why not have direct access to that? why not why not why do we need to be concerned with language? why why we can dispense with language? why not have this artificial language given to us? It seems that we could have whatever fetish you want, you know we could every minor fetish could be given over to ourselves and then we could be unified in this in this perverse collective algorithmic unconscious. And but the other side to that is is language. I mean it’s not just the one universal language, there are languages which you could say would resist this kind of this this invasion by people like Elon Musk. I mean if Lacan said about what Lacan said about the Japanese language or maybe what Freud said about about the the unconscious of the Irish, maybe that is the means where we resist somehow. Maybe there is a structural structural part of concrete languages which which might offer a way to to to resist in some way. So I guess my frustration with your idea of the wire brain is that is that there is no there is no question of what what the world brain might be. And then you have a rich resource in the 20th century of people like Vladimir Vernadsky or then Teilhard de Chardin and even H.G. Wells who would give us a way to think about the kind of as you said this kind of horrific organization of the internet as we have now and that would be a kind of a means to resist I think, using that kind of particular language. So yeah, so I’ll leave it there if you have a response. Thanks very much, a very precise, I appreciated good, brutal but brutal in a good sense, clear question. You know, first, what I fear is the crucial the most interesting part in what you said for me were desire, let’s let’s just enjoy it, let’s our immersion into it, let’s abandon desire and so on and so on. It’s that I am generally a pessimist here. I think that if we do this the result judge I’m not a professionally a psychoanalyst, it’s obvious look at me I’m half crazy if anybody would like to be my patient he definitely is crazy then I don’t but I know enough about even clinic where they told me that today the typical problem for psychoanalysts is no longer oppression and how to restore your desire. It’s that you feel like in this what you said what you described as your utopia, we all of us are with our fetishes and so on and so on. I claim that even before the pandemic, even before the the this prospect of the wired universe and so on, this was already happening. My pessimism is in this: what you described as a utopia, each of us out small again our small desires and so on and so on. Where I can easily imagine this multiple perverse universe where everything will be permitted to each of us, he/she/it, his/her/its own small fantasy. But I think that precisely this kind of global permissivity, here I am an insupportable Hegelian dialectician, would have and is already ending in I call it, I know I will provoke many people by this, politically correct terror. Because you know there is always this trick. Yes everything should be permitted but to make sure that everything is permitted, that there are no double game secret orders, we should we should regulate very well what can you do so that you are really free. So I think that first the state that you are describing fits perfectly what friends are telling me today, friends in the clinic. We are entering a period where sexuality
yes, it’s even worse than you think. And I don’t think this state of emergency could be accounted for as the the way of a state to control us more, to establish more authority. Yes, this is true but you know what is much more frustrating? It’s that especially in many highly developed countries, in spite of this new mode of control, controlling our movements and so on, as the latest numbers show, the state even cannot do this, how limited is the state in what it can do. They cannot, they cannot control. They cannot control because I think that what is so, I would like to draw a contrast between the first wave of pandemic and now. This sounds Eurocentric, by first wave I simply mean the first step because other parts of the world didn’t have the same two waves, you know, this is really very Eurocentric. But what I want to say is this: in March-April it was what I ironically called a normal panic. We were in a panic you know. Now it’s no longer just panic. Now it’s, I call it simply depression. People act in a much more relaxed way, they even go on the streets with no mask and so on. But not because they are courageous, it’s a form of, I call it a relief, the worst is over, it’s everything is lost, who knows what will happen and so on, so so who cares what we do. In Slovenia in my country we have now times more cases per day than in March-April when we were in total lockdown. But life is much more relaxed, people simply accepted this as our fate and so on and so on. So what gives me, I wouldn’t say hope but some opening is precisely that, and now I come to the unfortunate word communism, no? I am not an idiot, I don’t think now all of a sudden a big new Communist Party will emerge, democratic, open, progressive and will save us. No, I’m just saying this that that it’s in a way generally accepted, basically a couple of things which are crucial, incredible. That first market mechanisms, I’m not saying we should directly move into some kind of a state-run economy, but should be in some sense socialized. The state or community, I don’t know precisely in what way, for example, should decide we need vaccines, we need this, we need that, and it’s not enough to say we will use market mechanisms, print money, solicit companies, it has to be done fast. Economy in some basic dimensions should be socialized. There are tremendous challenges ahead of us here. The first thing. The second thing, a kind of universal egalitarianism. Of course rich states already are cheating like crazy. The world record in vaccinations is Israel now, you know. But the way I read, they mostly ignore the West Bank which is under their control. But what I want to say is that nonetheless everybody agrees in principle that the pandemic should only, could only be fought through this, let’s through some kind of egalitarianism and so on and so on. So I think that are we aware what is already happening with capitalism? Yes, on the one hand COVID meant a much stronger social separation, the few rich got much more rich, middle class disappearing, we know the story, the poor even more and so on. And I think that I think that again this cannot be left to the market. Some kind of social action is needed. And it can be done. I don’t think the Chinese have a monopoly on it, you know. Then I’m immediately accused, "Oh you want us to to act like a Chinese Communist Party." No, then I take one example which many people don’t like. But my God, listen, Taiwan did it even more efficiently than China, you know. Take the case of Taiwan, which precisely resists being part of China. And there numbers are even better than in China. Or take Vietnam and so on. So it’s not enough just to have a state bureaucracy. Some kind of community will have to be re-emerged. And just to finish, this seems to me important, now when people tell me, "But listen, you dream about this, this is just rhetoric, in reality what is happening is just that capital is taking over more than ever and so on and so on." I say yes, but this is already a reaction to the threat that they feel. Because on the one hand, look what even Trump and Boris Johnson had to do. Because for our ideological, in our ideological situation, you cannot openly allow too many people to starve. There is a limit in our liberal sensitivity, which is not bad because for example when there was more than years ago or more in India and in other places a big starvation, the British simply, as they did in Ireland before, isolated that part of the country and left millions to die. That’s at least one small sign of progress: today when there is big hunger somewhere it somehow makes it to the to the media. So so my point is that yes those in power cheap but look even Trump felt obliged to propose the check of to every family or whatever, which means a form of universal basic income. Boris Johnson nationalized temporarily railways to organize them and so on. So even conservatives in power have to do some under quotation marks communist measures. Now friends tell me, "But of course you do this when there is war, and this is comparable to war." So but later, when things will come back to normal, all this will be forgotten. Well, I don’t think there will be a later. Later in the sense of you know somewhere maybe even in one year from now we will just forget about this, you know, and return to normal life. I think we are entering a new period of permanent emergency and my formula here, I repeat it for the tenth time, my most favorite one is the one that I heard in Chile, you know, when how did the popular movement react to this general catastrophic perspective, "The end of the world is coming," you know. Their their reply was not no, "If we take over there will be no crisis blah blah." No, their reply was, "Another end of the world is possible." You know we have to do our own end of the world. Because just to conclude, I hope we all agree in this what I say now. There are different strategies of how our enemies are trying to counteract this obvious push towards some kind of socialization, communism and so on. One is the Trumpian populist one, denying you silently went over how many people died just to retain normal life. The other is the technocratic solution, most of us living in bubbles under total state control and so on and so on, this is the Bill Gates solution. We also should decline it. And now it’s our chance. What I reject, the most dangerous idea for me, much more dangerous than Trumpian populism, is this idea: now we are in a time of emergency which, and here I agree with Agamben if you read him in this way, now we are live in a time of emergency which means that that that there is no time for politics. Like in a battle you cannot debate with your officer, you know. We have to follow all rules, science and state and health administration will tell us what to do, forget about emancipatory political activity. I’m against. Okay may I jump in? Please. Is it is it okay to you know, a pleasure to to be with you Slavoj and let me play devil’s advocate a little bit because you talk who is the devil in this case? well let me get to that, I will be okay? okay because let me just let me turn to your book because in your book there is no mention whatsoever of resistance, not one word regarding resistance. So I would like to hear something about what you feel might be a way to somehow somehow to plug in or plug plug out of the wired brain. So in for me when we think about someone like Elon Musk, I’m always thinking like he’s a bit like Trump, like the as you call Trump the obscene other. Yeah. and when I was thinking about this idea of okay so how would Slavoj think about some kind of resistance? well maybe he would invoke Hegel’s idea of a shift in perspective perhaps? okay in terms of the wound and how how that concept might might work in this kind of wired brain this collective intelligence. But then the other side of it, this concern with freedom and whether we would be we would be aware that we’re being somehow somehow kind of directed artificially. Well that brought to me the idea of of bad faith, something like the Sartrean idea of bad faith where as you know in Sartre this idea of a unification of freedom the for-itself with the in-itself and that would be Elon Musk’s idea of God, this kind of absolute spirit as you argument I think seems to me is working out. But then it seems to me from that then like why not, why not dispense with desire, with individual desires? why because it’s so much work to to desire. So why not give yourself over to the collective algorithmic unconscious? why not be directed by these obscene others like Trump or like Elon Musk? Or why not have a bespoke pornography tailored to you artificially? why not have that? why not why not embrace virtual reality, a better than life reality? why not have direct access to that? why not why not why do we need to be concerned with language? why why we can dispense with language? why not have this artificial language given to us? It seems that we could have whatever fetish you want, you know we could every minor fetish could be given over to ourselves and then we could be unified in this in this perverse collective algorithmic unconscious. And but the other side to that is is language. I mean it’s not just the one universal language, there are languages which you could say would resist this kind of this this invasion by people like Elon Musk. I mean if Lacan said about what Lacan said about the Japanese language or maybe what Freud said about about the the unconscious of the Irish, maybe that is the means where we resist somehow. Maybe there is a structural structural part of concrete languages which which might offer a way to to to resist in some way. So I guess my frustration with your idea of the wire brain is that is that there is no there is no question of what what the world brain might be. And then you have a rich resource in the 20th century of people like Vladimir Vernadsky or then Teilhard de Chardin and even H.G. Wells who would give us a way to think about the kind of as you said this kind of horrific organization of the internet as we have now and that would be a kind of a means to resist I think, using that kind of particular language. So yeah, so I’ll leave it there if you have a response. Thanks very much, a very precise, I appreciated good, brutal but brutal in a good sense, clear question. You know, first, what I fear is the crucial the most interesting part in what you said for me were desire, let’s let’s just enjoy it, let’s our immersion into it, let’s abandon desire and so on and so on. It’s that I am generally a pessimist here. I think that if we do this the result judge I’m not a professionally a psychoanalyst, it’s obvious look at me I’m half crazy if anybody would like to be my patient he definitely is crazy then I don’t but I know enough about even clinic where they told me that today the typical problem for psychoanalysts is no longer oppression and how to restore your desire. It’s that you feel like in this what you said what you described as your utopia, we all of us are with our fetishes and so on and so on. I claim that even before the pandemic, even before the the this prospect of the wired universe and so on, this was already happening. My pessimism is in this: what you described as a utopia, each of us out small again our small desires and so on and so on. Where I can easily imagine this multiple perverse universe where everything will be permitted to each of us, he/she/it, his/her/its own small fantasy. But I think that precisely this kind of global permissivity, here I am an insupportable Hegelian dialectician, would have and is already ending in I call it, I know I will provoke many people by this, politically correct terror. Because you know there is always this trick. Yes everything should be permitted but to make sure that everything is permitted, that there are no double game secret orders, we should we should regulate very well what can you do so that you are really free. So I think that first the state that you are describing fits perfectly what friends are telling me today, friends in the clinic. We are entering a period where sexuality
unknown
is disappearing. You know that people less and less engage in sexuality actively at least in the so-called, I’m sorry for the term, developed Western countries. And if they do, quite a lot of it is virtual sex. So this to answer properly I think that what you described as this universe of shared consciousness where each to us has its own perversions and
is disappearing. You know that people less and less engage in sexuality actively at least in the so-called, I’m sorry for the term, developed Western countries. And if they do, quite a lot of it is virtual sex. So this to answer properly I think that what you described as this universe of shared consciousness where each to us has its own perversions and
unknown
so on and so on, well first the first question I ask is if we are immersed into this collective self-awareness will we still have each of us our own small fantasies? This is what always interested me interested me. Here this type of collective enjoyment I am afraid that de facto it will end in not a new form of oppression but I use the term here depression, you know. As Agamben himself in his big book on melancholia or whatever demonstrated very nicely, melancholic depression is not that you lose something but you cannot abandon it. Melancholia is a kind of preemptive mourning. The object is here accessible to you but you lose the desire for that object. And this is depression. Depression is yes I can have it but I lose the interest for it. So the second thing that I would add here instantly is can we even imagine the sexuality we have now without the so-called even straight sexuality without all its its its its its brutal aspects, ambiguities. For example Freud showed it in a very convincing way today more than ever I claim today that the prohibition of desire always turns necessarily into a desire for prohibition. You in a perverted way start to enjoy the very the very prohibitions. And I know this how this happens in pandemic. Many of my obsessional neurotic compulsive neurotic friends and here I am my own friend I am doing it, is that all this you know don’t shake hands with you leave a distance, I began to enjoy these as new rituals. I no longer even take them as an as an oppression, as something that that I don’t enjoy, I openly enjoy these rituals. So again what I am afraid is that this new state without of globalized perversion de facto could mean globalized depression. Because you know sex, I will repeat a story most of you know it but it’s my favorite from that I found I think even with some stupid comment in The Guardian, Eva Wiseman I think, a lady commentator there, was shocked. She watched something which I think it’s very instructive to watch, I know irony here, not hardcore pornography but movies about the making of hardcore pornography, you know, like the camera is yards behind all it and you see the whole scene. And there is an example there she was shocked by it which tells everything to me. It shows standard heterosexual act, the guy woman on the bed, the guy is doing it. Then in the middle of the scene while they are shooting it the guy steps back and said "Sorry I am losing erection, could please somebody bring me quickly my iPhone so that I go on Pornhub to get excited again." Now there is open absurdity in this. You had there the ultimate object itself, wet excited woman. But isn’t this what more do you want? Ah no, you need fiction, you need virtual images to arouse you in reality. And I
so on and so on, well first the first question I ask is if we are immersed into this collective self-awareness will we still have each of us our own small fantasies? This is what always interested me interested me. Here this type of collective enjoyment I am afraid that de facto it will end in not a new form of oppression but I use the term here depression, you know. As Agamben himself in his big book on melancholia or whatever demonstrated very nicely, melancholic depression is not that you lose something but you cannot abandon it. Melancholia is a kind of preemptive mourning. The object is here accessible to you but you lose the desire for that object. And this is depression. Depression is yes I can have it but I lose the interest for it. So the second thing that I would add here instantly is can we even imagine the sexuality we have now without the so-called even straight sexuality without all its its its its its brutal aspects, ambiguities. For example Freud showed it in a very convincing way today more than ever I claim today that the prohibition of desire always turns necessarily into a desire for prohibition. You in a perverted way start to enjoy the very the very prohibitions. And I know this how this happens in pandemic. Many of my obsessional neurotic compulsive neurotic friends and here I am my own friend I am doing it, is that all this you know don’t shake hands with you leave a distance, I began to enjoy these as new rituals. I no longer even take them as an as an oppression, as something that that I don’t enjoy, I openly enjoy these rituals. So again what I am afraid is that this new state without of globalized perversion de facto could mean globalized depression. Because you know sex, I will repeat a story most of you know it but it’s my favorite from that I found I think even with some stupid comment in The Guardian, Eva Wiseman I think, a lady commentator there, was shocked. She watched something which I think it’s very instructive to watch, I know irony here, not hardcore pornography but movies about the making of hardcore pornography, you know, like the camera is yards behind all it and you see the whole scene. And there is an example there she was shocked by it which tells everything to me. It shows standard heterosexual act, the guy woman on the bed, the guy is doing it. Then in the middle of the scene while they are shooting it the guy steps back and said "Sorry I am losing erection, could please somebody bring me quickly my iPhone so that I go on Pornhub to get excited again." Now there is open absurdity in this. You had there the ultimate object itself, wet excited woman. But isn’t this what more do you want? Ah no, you need fiction, you need virtual images to arouse you in reality. And I
Slavoj Žižek
think this is the nature at its most elementary of our sexuality. Slavoj, Slavoj, Slavoj, I think actually Job would have another, you know, comment on the Please, I’m sorry I just talk, you you Alex should be more the dominatrix, cut interrupt me more. No worries. Well, thanks thanks for that, it makes it makes a lot of sense and but then you know it’s perfect that we are talking about your book today because of Trump and the impeachment and you mention it in your book. So I just picked up on your concept of the obscene other and as you referred to Trump and then I was thinking about the current iteration of the world wide web and you know as you know the flows of data across the planet are are like stupid Netflix or Amazon or two thirds of the the internet flows are pornography in some form. So then in some way then you know it’s not a question of desire anymore, it’s a question of the drives being uncoupled and being and you know having free rain. And that is precisely the point where we begin we should begin to form a a critique of of people like these obscene others like like Elon Musk. Because those guys you know if Trump you know and his ridiculous TV shows and things like this, this is the pure unbinding of of the of the drives and then we have all kinds of mental implosion as a consequence. Now that to me is a way to offer some perspective on on to some perspective on resistance. And as you say in your book this is a question of the shifting perspective what we need. So then for for me asking you know someone of great eminence like you, I am demanding some idea of resistance. Well now my answer may disappoint you here but I it will maybe I do it as a provocation, I’m convinced by my own argument not all the way. Yes I agree with you but the true miracle for me is still, although he was side-stepped it looked bad whatsoever but okay let me begin with Trump and then pass on to Bernie Sanders. I don’t have any big illusions about Bernie Sanders but I want to focus on another dimension here. Whenever I get to debate Trump I got this argument, he just says what he thinks, he is totally unleashed and so on. No, he is a pervert. But you know what Freud says: nowhere is it more difficult to access the unconscious than in perversion. Perverts are not really free people, "Oh I want to screw you in this way I can do whatever I want" and so on. No, perverts are really the most calculating self-controlled people. So I think that all this Trump’s openness and so on, no he is a deeply compulsive person. If Trump is not something he is not a really liberating pervert. And also another thing, a term that I that I’m now writing a text on it that I would like to introduce. What happened in Capitol, incidentally I don’t think it was a real coup, it was a farce, the carnival. But you know how in my youth Herbert Marcuse turned around Marx. He said he said that you know Marx said first as a tragedy then as a farce, and Marcuse said apropos fascism it’s first a farce then as a tragedy. Fascism appears first as a farce. And this was a big carnivalesque farce. For me, sorry to lose time with this but I find it a wonderful detail. For me the the image of Capitol and the mob entering it is you know I don’t know his name that idiot with a kind of a Viking-like helmet with horns, you know. But do you know I’m a specialist in this, this is my private right-wing dream I liked Vikings when I was young. Do you know that historically Vikings never had helmets with horns? Horns were invented in early 19th century late romantic imagination, some people think that even during the staging of first Wagner operas. So what I’m saying here is that my answer to conservatives, these neo-conservatives who support Trump, would be maybe crazy paradoxical for you. It would have been, you are afraid of this multiculturalism, historicist relativism and so on of postmodern culture. Why are you then for Trump? If there ever was a postmodern relativist historicist pervert cynical president, it was Trump. And the way Bernie enters the show for me, and politically I think we should shamelessly appropriate this approach. Bernie measured by the most strict classical moralistic standard, Bernie is basically a pretty decent as far as we can say simple ordinary man. It was the same with Jeremy Corbyn. What fascinated people then was I don’t know what’s the reality behind, but I think so I think it’s time for us who still want to resist be the left to get the lesson which many people resist to, that a certain type of language of transgression, "Don’t identify carnival play a game everything is relative" and so on, it’s more and more part of the of the discourse of those in power today. And that that to resist this ordinary naive call to decency is very important and I to even in the most moralistic normal sense. Do you know first I thought this is my crazy idea but then in so many countries that I visited they I got the same message. In I was even involved, I did some video supporting Lucho Arce, the finance minister who now returned to power in Bolivia. He was already economy minister. And I have even a brief contact with him and he told me, "I consider myself as as a socialist technocrat," you know like ordinary decent efficiency. In Chile where they have those gigantic protests you know it was, sorry to use this Lacanian jargon word, the master signifier, the main symbol of the rebellion. Not abolish capitalism, socialize but decency. People feel robbed of their decency. The same was in Turkey. In Turkey, yeah. Yeah when there were two-three years ago the big demonstration there. So I think that I think that I think that the way to break out of this vicious cycle of on the one
think this is the nature at its most elementary of our sexuality. Slavoj, Slavoj, Slavoj, I think actually Job would have another, you know, comment on the Please, I’m sorry I just talk, you you Alex should be more the dominatrix, cut interrupt me more. No worries. Well, thanks thanks for that, it makes it makes a lot of sense and but then you know it’s perfect that we are talking about your book today because of Trump and the impeachment and you mention it in your book. So I just picked up on your concept of the obscene other and as you referred to Trump and then I was thinking about the current iteration of the world wide web and you know as you know the flows of data across the planet are are like stupid Netflix or Amazon or two thirds of the the internet flows are pornography in some form. So then in some way then you know it’s not a question of desire anymore, it’s a question of the drives being uncoupled and being and you know having free rain. And that is precisely the point where we begin we should begin to form a a critique of of people like these obscene others like like Elon Musk. Because those guys you know if Trump you know and his ridiculous TV shows and things like this, this is the pure unbinding of of the of the drives and then we have all kinds of mental implosion as a consequence. Now that to me is a way to offer some perspective on on to some perspective on resistance. And as you say in your book this is a question of the shifting perspective what we need. So then for for me asking you know someone of great eminence like you, I am demanding some idea of resistance. Well now my answer may disappoint you here but I it will maybe I do it as a provocation, I’m convinced by my own argument not all the way. Yes I agree with you but the true miracle for me is still, although he was side-stepped it looked bad whatsoever but okay let me begin with Trump and then pass on to Bernie Sanders. I don’t have any big illusions about Bernie Sanders but I want to focus on another dimension here. Whenever I get to debate Trump I got this argument, he just says what he thinks, he is totally unleashed and so on. No, he is a pervert. But you know what Freud says: nowhere is it more difficult to access the unconscious than in perversion. Perverts are not really free people, "Oh I want to screw you in this way I can do whatever I want" and so on. No, perverts are really the most calculating self-controlled people. So I think that all this Trump’s openness and so on, no he is a deeply compulsive person. If Trump is not something he is not a really liberating pervert. And also another thing, a term that I that I’m now writing a text on it that I would like to introduce. What happened in Capitol, incidentally I don’t think it was a real coup, it was a farce, the carnival. But you know how in my youth Herbert Marcuse turned around Marx. He said he said that you know Marx said first as a tragedy then as a farce, and Marcuse said apropos fascism it’s first a farce then as a tragedy. Fascism appears first as a farce. And this was a big carnivalesque farce. For me, sorry to lose time with this but I find it a wonderful detail. For me the the image of Capitol and the mob entering it is you know I don’t know his name that idiot with a kind of a Viking-like helmet with horns, you know. But do you know I’m a specialist in this, this is my private right-wing dream I liked Vikings when I was young. Do you know that historically Vikings never had helmets with horns? Horns were invented in early 19th century late romantic imagination, some people think that even during the staging of first Wagner operas. So what I’m saying here is that my answer to conservatives, these neo-conservatives who support Trump, would be maybe crazy paradoxical for you. It would have been, you are afraid of this multiculturalism, historicist relativism and so on of postmodern culture. Why are you then for Trump? If there ever was a postmodern relativist historicist pervert cynical president, it was Trump. And the way Bernie enters the show for me, and politically I think we should shamelessly appropriate this approach. Bernie measured by the most strict classical moralistic standard, Bernie is basically a pretty decent as far as we can say simple ordinary man. It was the same with Jeremy Corbyn. What fascinated people then was I don’t know what’s the reality behind, but I think so I think it’s time for us who still want to resist be the left to get the lesson which many people resist to, that a certain type of language of transgression, "Don’t identify carnival play a game everything is relative" and so on, it’s more and more part of the of the discourse of those in power today. And that that to resist this ordinary naive call to decency is very important and I to even in the most moralistic normal sense. Do you know first I thought this is my crazy idea but then in so many countries that I visited they I got the same message. In I was even involved, I did some video supporting Lucho Arce, the finance minister who now returned to power in Bolivia. He was already economy minister. And I have even a brief contact with him and he told me, "I consider myself as as a socialist technocrat," you know like ordinary decent efficiency. In Chile where they have those gigantic protests you know it was, sorry to use this Lacanian jargon word, the master signifier, the main symbol of the rebellion. Not abolish capitalism, socialize but decency. People feel robbed of their decency. The same was in Turkey. In Turkey, yeah. Yeah when there were two-three years ago the big demonstration there. So I think that I think that I think that the way to break out of this vicious cycle of on the one
unknown
hand this New Right obscenity which is a carnival, a mode of carnival, which again doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken
hand this New Right obscenity which is a carnival, a mode of carnival, which again doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken
Slavoj Žižek
seriously. It begins as a carnival then give it a couple of
seriously. It begins as a carnival then give it a couple of
unknown
years it can turn into another thing. Don’t remember that Nazis were also in Germany, if you read history, till late 20s they were mostly perceived as a fringe right-wing group with their obscene jokes, ridiculous, people laughed at them and so on and so on. No, it’s first it’s a farce then it’s a tragedy. And I think how to prevent this, I think to really resist we should mobilize what too many people today dismiss as even a neo-conservative thing, like common decency, morality and so on. And that is for me, you may disagree, the genius of Bernie Sanders. He said once that we should not get caught into this liberal democratic centrist wish of just remaining in the center, not moving too much to the left so that we don’t lose the middle voices. No, we should follow Trump here. The more Trump went to the extreme the more votes he got. And we should do the same in the sense that as Bernie said, our target should be disappointed Trump voters. All those ordinary people although who feel threatened. Although the situation I know is more complex because we now know that all those ordinary people in the Capitol first most of them were middle class, even upper middle class, and second they were supported financially by
years it can turn into another thing. Don’t remember that Nazis were also in Germany, if you read history, till late 20s they were mostly perceived as a fringe right-wing group with their obscene jokes, ridiculous, people laughed at them and so on and so on. No, it’s first it’s a farce then it’s a tragedy. And I think how to prevent this, I think to really resist we should mobilize what too many people today dismiss as even a neo-conservative thing, like common decency, morality and so on. And that is for me, you may disagree, the genius of Bernie Sanders. He said once that we should not get caught into this liberal democratic centrist wish of just remaining in the center, not moving too much to the left so that we don’t lose the middle voices. No, we should follow Trump here. The more Trump went to the extreme the more votes he got. And we should do the same in the sense that as Bernie said, our target should be disappointed Trump voters. All those ordinary people although who feel threatened. Although the situation I know is more complex because we now know that all those ordinary people in the Capitol first most of them were middle class, even upper middle class, and second they were supported financially by
Slavoj Žižek
billionaires and so on and so on. But my I think that one thing maybe it’s too modest that we have to do is to is to do what Julian Assange was doing: to make the game transparent. In the sense that people should know as much as possible on how they’re controlled and so on and so on. Here again I have a paradoxical conclusion or implication. I don’t think people really don’t know. Quite many of us are these compromising guys who prefer not to know. You know I met some ordinary middle-class Americans after how is it called that was it Abu Ghraib in in Iraq, that prison where all those photos came out how American soldiers were torturing humiliating, yeah yeah. You know that many of my friends, they are no longer my friends of course because of this, the reaction was "We know this is going on but why why to render this public? Like torture, do whatever you want, just do it discreetly. Do it behind the closed door, we don’t want to know about it." No, people should be forced to know about it. That’s why we need Assange. And here, although I’m not totally pro-George Orwell, I always repeat maybe the greatest for me saying of Orwell. Not all that stuff Brave New World, war is peace whatever, but when he said that freedom of the press really means that you are free to tell the people what they don’t want to hear. If you cannot do this then there is no freedom of the press. So I wouldn’t when you say resistance I will just conclude with another endlessly repeated by me Benjamin's thought that fascism is always a sign or the result of a failed revolution. For me precisely this populist Trump rebellions is an eternal reminder that we the left lost our chance. And I think that unfortunately through more catastrophes and so on, things are not so bad for us. Look what happened in the last years in the United States. It’s a tremendous achievement: the term socialism was publicly rehabilitated. You can use it as a legitimate orientation and even get elected to the Congress and so on and so on. Things are coming, there are rebellions here and there. I’m not too optimistic here. I so I don’t worry about will be able to resist it or not. I worry much more about ways of the establishment, the populist New Right to to re-appropriate those forms of rebellion. All right. So Slavoj, actually we have two questions from audiences, you know. One is actually already answered by you actually discussed the kind of resistance. And the other one is Tashik Baroil. Tashik Baroil question here: "Data appropriation goes unquestioned in most of our society. Is this a result of desensitization?" Of, the result of, last word I didn’t understand. Desensitization. Desensitization, sensitization. Yeah. Ah, that’s a very interesting point if I understood the question correctly. Because you know we speak about this again permissive society, everything public and so on and so on. But to focus about how in all this freedoms and so on new taboos emerge all the time. And so yes I think that that the era we are entering now, at least at the level of pleasures, sexual life and so on, is a kind of a not it’s not just maybe I didn’t understand the question. It’s not just not enough sanitization, older things can be brought out and so on and so on. No, behind all this there are still some fundamental prohibitions on both sides. I don’t think that in contrast to left liberal politically correct fanatics, although they also have their own unspoken rules secrets. I don’t think that the new populist right is really this type of outspoken exploiting, you know exploding freedom. No, they are even more self-controlled, they know very well whom to attack, what to do in what sense and so on and so on. So we are so so so this is for me again the fundamental paradox today. That’s why I feel alive as a Hegelian today. How things turn into their opposite, you know. You want true permissivity, you end up with a long list of politically correct prohibitions. You get you again, you want to be this free, pseudo-free of course, alternative right obscene guy, we can use dirty words, look what Trump was doing and so on and so on. But you end in a much more oppressive society. You end in oppression combination of oppression and depression. So I think that you know how in history the term order, new order was mostly re-appropriated by fascists even, no? Fascists said too much chaos, we need a new order. But it wasn’t always so. Antonio Gramsci when he was still in freedom, you know that he was editing a communist journal whose title was "Il Nuovo Ordine," the New Order. And I think we should approach it in the same way. The new world order is the right motto, is just totally re-appropriated by the new capital. The new world order is something very interesting. Global capital, I’m not paranoiac but like the predominant spontaneous opinion of them is that capitalism as we know it is in a crisis, it had to be reset. Our answer should be yes, but not on your capitalist terms. We really need a new order. And we should think in these terms. I’m here maybe a leftist fascist, I don’t care. But my point is I don’t like this leftist dreaming of, even some of my leftist friends were fascinated by Capitol events. They said, "Look, we the real people should be doing this, not just the Trump mob." They almost cried like, "My God, isn’t it nonetheless nice, people penetrated the..." No, I told him yes, this is a momentary carnival. We leftists should do something else, ask what will happen the day later. Let’s say that the upheaval, the revolution, whatever wins. What new order will we establish the the morning after? When you get sober, how will ordinary people feel the difference? That’s why you all know probably the movie "V for Vendetta," where at the end popular movement wins, enters the parliament, people take over, and it’s the end of the movie. And my point is always, I use it in my books, that I would give all the money I have for a movie called "V for Vendetta Part Okay, they take over, what will they do then? What will they do in industry? How will they socialize it and so on? And I don’t think it’s it’s a totally hopeless situation here. Like what you my Indian friend told me Kerala, no? Communists doing there a modest job, but they are doing something. Or my favorite example, Bolivia. Bolivia, the carnival was there from the right. The right wing organized a coup against Morales and his regime, which was very orderly, well-organized, knew they were doing, they
billionaires and so on and so on. But my I think that one thing maybe it’s too modest that we have to do is to is to do what Julian Assange was doing: to make the game transparent. In the sense that people should know as much as possible on how they’re controlled and so on and so on. Here again I have a paradoxical conclusion or implication. I don’t think people really don’t know. Quite many of us are these compromising guys who prefer not to know. You know I met some ordinary middle-class Americans after how is it called that was it Abu Ghraib in in Iraq, that prison where all those photos came out how American soldiers were torturing humiliating, yeah yeah. You know that many of my friends, they are no longer my friends of course because of this, the reaction was "We know this is going on but why why to render this public? Like torture, do whatever you want, just do it discreetly. Do it behind the closed door, we don’t want to know about it." No, people should be forced to know about it. That’s why we need Assange. And here, although I’m not totally pro-George Orwell, I always repeat maybe the greatest for me saying of Orwell. Not all that stuff Brave New World, war is peace whatever, but when he said that freedom of the press really means that you are free to tell the people what they don’t want to hear. If you cannot do this then there is no freedom of the press. So I wouldn’t when you say resistance I will just conclude with another endlessly repeated by me Benjamin's thought that fascism is always a sign or the result of a failed revolution. For me precisely this populist Trump rebellions is an eternal reminder that we the left lost our chance. And I think that unfortunately through more catastrophes and so on, things are not so bad for us. Look what happened in the last years in the United States. It’s a tremendous achievement: the term socialism was publicly rehabilitated. You can use it as a legitimate orientation and even get elected to the Congress and so on and so on. Things are coming, there are rebellions here and there. I’m not too optimistic here. I so I don’t worry about will be able to resist it or not. I worry much more about ways of the establishment, the populist New Right to to re-appropriate those forms of rebellion. All right. So Slavoj, actually we have two questions from audiences, you know. One is actually already answered by you actually discussed the kind of resistance. And the other one is Tashik Baroil. Tashik Baroil question here: "Data appropriation goes unquestioned in most of our society. Is this a result of desensitization?" Of, the result of, last word I didn’t understand. Desensitization. Desensitization, sensitization. Yeah. Ah, that’s a very interesting point if I understood the question correctly. Because you know we speak about this again permissive society, everything public and so on and so on. But to focus about how in all this freedoms and so on new taboos emerge all the time. And so yes I think that that the era we are entering now, at least at the level of pleasures, sexual life and so on, is a kind of a not it’s not just maybe I didn’t understand the question. It’s not just not enough sanitization, older things can be brought out and so on and so on. No, behind all this there are still some fundamental prohibitions on both sides. I don’t think that in contrast to left liberal politically correct fanatics, although they also have their own unspoken rules secrets. I don’t think that the new populist right is really this type of outspoken exploiting, you know exploding freedom. No, they are even more self-controlled, they know very well whom to attack, what to do in what sense and so on and so on. So we are so so so this is for me again the fundamental paradox today. That’s why I feel alive as a Hegelian today. How things turn into their opposite, you know. You want true permissivity, you end up with a long list of politically correct prohibitions. You get you again, you want to be this free, pseudo-free of course, alternative right obscene guy, we can use dirty words, look what Trump was doing and so on and so on. But you end in a much more oppressive society. You end in oppression combination of oppression and depression. So I think that you know how in history the term order, new order was mostly re-appropriated by fascists even, no? Fascists said too much chaos, we need a new order. But it wasn’t always so. Antonio Gramsci when he was still in freedom, you know that he was editing a communist journal whose title was "Il Nuovo Ordine," the New Order. And I think we should approach it in the same way. The new world order is the right motto, is just totally re-appropriated by the new capital. The new world order is something very interesting. Global capital, I’m not paranoiac but like the predominant spontaneous opinion of them is that capitalism as we know it is in a crisis, it had to be reset. Our answer should be yes, but not on your capitalist terms. We really need a new order. And we should think in these terms. I’m here maybe a leftist fascist, I don’t care. But my point is I don’t like this leftist dreaming of, even some of my leftist friends were fascinated by Capitol events. They said, "Look, we the real people should be doing this, not just the Trump mob." They almost cried like, "My God, isn’t it nonetheless nice, people penetrated the..." No, I told him yes, this is a momentary carnival. We leftists should do something else, ask what will happen the day later. Let’s say that the upheaval, the revolution, whatever wins. What new order will we establish the the morning after? When you get sober, how will ordinary people feel the difference? That’s why you all know probably the movie "V for Vendetta," where at the end popular movement wins, enters the parliament, people take over, and it’s the end of the movie. And my point is always, I use it in my books, that I would give all the money I have for a movie called "V for Vendetta Part Okay, they take over, what will they do then? What will they do in industry? How will they socialize it and so on? And I don’t think it’s it’s a totally hopeless situation here. Like what you my Indian friend told me Kerala, no? Communists doing there a modest job, but they are doing something. Or my favorite example, Bolivia. Bolivia, the carnival was there from the right. The right wing organized a coup against Morales and his regime, which was very orderly, well-organized, knew they were doing, they
Bernard-Henri Lévy
didn’t screw
didn’t screw
Slavoj Žižek
up the economy. And my God, in elections which were probably really free, not too controlled, they came back again to power. We should follow guys like that. I think I am tired of the leftists who secretly enjoy their failures, you know. Like there was an element of this with some people in Syriza. "We lost, oh now we can retire to our tenured university posts and write thick books about why we had to lose." We need victories. Not triumphant victories, but victories which show people that we really can change their daily lives. It can be done. Yeah, that’s very actually the good conclusion of your talk. Any more question or comment? But I would like to do it again, but where you Alex or who is the leader has you did you see all of you I repeat all this joke the the James Bond movie "Goldfinger," where you have that famous car with a red button. You press it and the guy sitting next to you is thrown
up the economy. And my God, in elections which were probably really free, not too controlled, they came back again to power. We should follow guys like that. I think I am tired of the leftists who secretly enjoy their failures, you know. Like there was an element of this with some people in Syriza. "We lost, oh now we can retire to our tenured university posts and write thick books about why we had to lose." We need victories. Not triumphant victories, but victories which show people that we really can change their daily lives. It can be done. Yeah, that’s very actually the good conclusion of your talk. Any more question or comment? But I would like to do it again, but where you Alex or who is the leader has you did you see all of you I repeat all this joke the the James Bond movie "Goldfinger," where you have that famous car with a red button. You press it and the guy sitting next to you is thrown
Bernard-Henri Lévy
out. So that you will have Alex that red button, if I get to talk too much you press it. So why don’t we do it again but without focusing on me. I’m genuinely interested in your perspective. How are things how are things there? I’m not against universalism. I don’t believe in this bullshit, you know, each of us is no. In some sense we are all universal. And
out. So that you will have Alex that red button, if I get to talk too much you press it. So why don’t we do it again but without focusing on me. I’m genuinely interested in your perspective. How are things how are things there? I’m not against universalism. I don’t believe in this bullshit, you know, each of us is no. In some sense we are all universal. And
Slavoj Žižek
the true but the true
the true but the true
Bernard-Henri Lévy
universality is precisely a
universality is precisely a
Slavoj Žižek
universality which only moves from one particularity to another particularity. Like my idea, sorry to finish with boring idea. Why is Shakespeare great? Because on the one hand yes, it’s typical product of his time. But it’s not just that he has some universal message. What is so beautiful in Shakespeare is how that his big plays can be reinvented, restaged in totally different cultures. Like we have a Japanese friend there. Do you know that I think that the greatest the for me maybe the greatest Shakespeare film is Kurosawa’s, not his version of Macbeth, but you know that Kurosawa did in late 50s, I think, his version of Hamlet, but set in contemporary Japan, where Hamlet is a student in the United States, he returns home, the uncle killed his father, took over the company and so on. It’s totally set in contemporary Japan. Or again Kurosawa, although I don’t like him too much generally, but take Kurosawa’s, I don’t know what’s the term, Kurosawa made also after the war the best version that I know of of "Idiot," of Dostoevsky’s "Idiot." Can you imagine a more different culture than Russian and Japanese? You can do it. And that’s what I would like to to get from you, you know. Not your particular shit, I don’t care about that. But the universal dimension that will be in it precisely when you are totally faithful to it. For example my visit in India years ago. I loved if nothing else my meeting with a group of of those who are the lowest the lowest caste who are cleaning toilets. Yeah. And you know they gave me the best lesson against fake liberal identity politics. I asked them what’s your program? The answer was to put it very simply, "Our program is we don’t want to be what we are," you know. It’s none of it "We want to retain our unique experience" or whatever, no. So please Alex, if you are the secret boss, do it so that course yes each of us will be in line to to to war and I yeah. Our plan is our plan is organize a kind of series lecture and then not focus on the your you know own the personality but kind of topic centered. So we want to actually bring in more debate you know about actually the series of topics and then which actually would be related to the current issues and or some philosophical issues we gonna actually if you published or the we would actually talk about more things you know the related to the urgent issue. But the purpose of our series definitely create kind of fiction you know as you said you know we need to fiction you know after the revolution something like that actual revolution would come or whatever you know just people try to bring in you know the kind of impressive you know movement but we should give them kind of narrative, give them idea, whatever called is a fiction. So so that’s why actually the important thing is we need to reinvent you know the communism and we need to the rethink rethink you know the such a historical issue. Yeah but don’t you agree, sorry to interrupt the last time, with my basic idea that we are in a unique situation where many ideas which if you were to mention them a year ago a year and a half ago you would be accused of crazy leftist impossible: like universal health care, centralization of health care, worldwide coordination, all that stuff is now obligatory. Even conservatives in power are forced to practice it. Exactly. That’s why I feel well in some strange sense that for the first time we with our radical ideas are not talking into empty space. Exactly. The situation is calling for our measures, and those in power are desperately trying to block this progressive potential opened up by the ongoing crisis, no? Exactly. Exactly. So so we actually the should intervene the many in situation,
universality which only moves from one particularity to another particularity. Like my idea, sorry to finish with boring idea. Why is Shakespeare great? Because on the one hand yes, it’s typical product of his time. But it’s not just that he has some universal message. What is so beautiful in Shakespeare is how that his big plays can be reinvented, restaged in totally different cultures. Like we have a Japanese friend there. Do you know that I think that the greatest the for me maybe the greatest Shakespeare film is Kurosawa’s, not his version of Macbeth, but you know that Kurosawa did in late 50s, I think, his version of Hamlet, but set in contemporary Japan, where Hamlet is a student in the United States, he returns home, the uncle killed his father, took over the company and so on. It’s totally set in contemporary Japan. Or again Kurosawa, although I don’t like him too much generally, but take Kurosawa’s, I don’t know what’s the term, Kurosawa made also after the war the best version that I know of of "Idiot," of Dostoevsky’s "Idiot." Can you imagine a more different culture than Russian and Japanese? You can do it. And that’s what I would like to to get from you, you know. Not your particular shit, I don’t care about that. But the universal dimension that will be in it precisely when you are totally faithful to it. For example my visit in India years ago. I loved if nothing else my meeting with a group of of those who are the lowest the lowest caste who are cleaning toilets. Yeah. And you know they gave me the best lesson against fake liberal identity politics. I asked them what’s your program? The answer was to put it very simply, "Our program is we don’t want to be what we are," you know. It’s none of it "We want to retain our unique experience" or whatever, no. So please Alex, if you are the secret boss, do it so that course yes each of us will be in line to to to war and I yeah. Our plan is our plan is organize a kind of series lecture and then not focus on the your you know own the personality but kind of topic centered. So we want to actually bring in more debate you know about actually the series of topics and then which actually would be related to the current issues and or some philosophical issues we gonna actually if you published or the we would actually talk about more things you know the related to the urgent issue. But the purpose of our series definitely create kind of fiction you know as you said you know we need to fiction you know after the revolution something like that actual revolution would come or whatever you know just people try to bring in you know the kind of impressive you know movement but we should give them kind of narrative, give them idea, whatever called is a fiction. So so that’s why actually the important thing is we need to reinvent you know the communism and we need to the rethink rethink you know the such a historical issue. Yeah but don’t you agree, sorry to interrupt the last time, with my basic idea that we are in a unique situation where many ideas which if you were to mention them a year ago a year and a half ago you would be accused of crazy leftist impossible: like universal health care, centralization of health care, worldwide coordination, all that stuff is now obligatory. Even conservatives in power are forced to practice it. Exactly. That’s why I feel well in some strange sense that for the first time we with our radical ideas are not talking into empty space. Exactly. The situation is calling for our measures, and those in power are desperately trying to block this progressive potential opened up by the ongoing crisis, no? Exactly. Exactly. So so we actually the should intervene the many in situation,
unknown
including COVID-19 as you actually mentioned vaccine problem, you know actually the disparity you know of
including COVID-19 as you actually mentioned vaccine problem, you know actually the disparity you know of
Slavoj Žižek
the distribution of the vaccine you know actually poor country haven’t got you know the vaccine enough but you know those in those countries belong to Global South you know it’s the took part of that kind of necessary work. That means necessary workers mostly in actually the Global South, but they need a vaccine you know to support or some sustain this system. But think about it, there is one good thing, there was a divine justice. Nonetheless globally in many
the distribution of the vaccine you know actually poor country haven’t got you know the vaccine enough but you know those in those countries belong to Global South you know it’s the took part of that kind of necessary work. That means necessary workers mostly in actually the Global South, but they need a vaccine you know to support or some sustain this system. But think about it, there is one good thing, there was a divine justice. Nonetheless globally in many
unknown
poor countries the numbers are nonetheless per capita lower.
poor countries the numbers are nonetheless per capita lower.
Slavoj Žižek
Like how did you Indians do it? Do you have some theory? Let’s say that your statistics, or do your statistics cheat or what? But
Like how did you Indians do it? Do you have some theory? Let’s say that your statistics, or do your statistics cheat or what? But
unknown
it’s wonderful,
it’s wonderful,
Slavoj Žižek
you get now lower numbers even absolute numbers of new infections than France, Spain, England and so on. We don’t trust the numbers. I think the numbers are just like giving as a like you know sort of a reality but that is not the real real. Ah so you think that simply numbers are are false. Mm. But nonetheless there are some mysterious things here. For example you know those big refugee camps in Northern Syria and so on. Syria, now talking about Syria. Yeah. Yeah everybody was afraid that since they live in such crowded non-hygienic conditions there, if there will be a case of COVID there it will explode. It didn’t. It didn’t. There is like, sorry for the ironically obscene way of putting it, maybe this is a God who said you in the developed West had enough of fun, it’s time to punish you a little bit, you know. Because you know what’s so frustrating for us, not that we are very developed, Slovenia, but generally. How little we know about it. Again and again we think this country controlled it and then it exploded. Now the latest horrors are Czech Republic and Portugal. So it’s we don’t not only know a lot, but we know more and more how much we don’t know. It’s not a we are far from controlling it. Sorry but you see this is what I would like to know, things things like this, you know. I’m very glad that in Kerala communists are still, because I heard that precisely because of this shitty politics with farmers that in Kolkata, West Bengal that they they lost, no? Power, or are they again in power?
you get now lower numbers even absolute numbers of new infections than France, Spain, England and so on. We don’t trust the numbers. I think the numbers are just like giving as a like you know sort of a reality but that is not the real real. Ah so you think that simply numbers are are false. Mm. But nonetheless there are some mysterious things here. For example you know those big refugee camps in Northern Syria and so on. Syria, now talking about Syria. Yeah. Yeah everybody was afraid that since they live in such crowded non-hygienic conditions there, if there will be a case of COVID there it will explode. It didn’t. It didn’t. There is like, sorry for the ironically obscene way of putting it, maybe this is a God who said you in the developed West had enough of fun, it’s time to punish you a little bit, you know. Because you know what’s so frustrating for us, not that we are very developed, Slovenia, but generally. How little we know about it. Again and again we think this country controlled it and then it exploded. Now the latest horrors are Czech Republic and Portugal. So it’s we don’t not only know a lot, but we know more and more how much we don’t know. It’s not a we are far from controlling it. Sorry but you see this is what I would like to know, things things like this, you know. I’m very glad that in Kerala communists are still, because I heard that precisely because of this shitty politics with farmers that in Kolkata, West Bengal that they they lost, no? Power, or are they again in power?
unknown
No, no. They lost
No, no. They lost
Slavoj Žižek
no. Yeah, but I think in the Indian context, I think yeah it was it was not as bad as we expected, like in the first phase. Like the the tragic situation that we witnessed in Italy and all, that didn't hap-,
no. Yeah, but I think in the Indian context, I think yeah it was it was not as bad as we expected, like in the first phase. Like the the tragic situation that we witnessed in Italy and all, that didn't hap-,
unknown
at that time we were expecting, like I was in personally I thought like what would be the Indian situation, but that way yeah we didn't go into that sort of a mess. Like yeah, that is right. But I don't really trust the numbers coming out. This is also maybe one of the reasons because the rumor is that some of the Western European countries like Belgium, for commercial reasons they report higher numbers. Anybody who dies and had COVID, even if he died of totally different reasons, they count it as a COVID death. You know why? Because COVID is considered dangerous and the hospital
at that time we were expecting, like I was in personally I thought like what would be the Indian situation, but that way yeah we didn't go into that sort of a mess. Like yeah, that is right. But I don't really trust the numbers coming out. This is also maybe one of the reasons because the rumor is that some of the Western European countries like Belgium, for commercial reasons they report higher numbers. Anybody who dies and had COVID, even if he died of totally different reasons, they count it as a COVID death. You know why? Because COVID is considered dangerous and the hospital
Slavoj Žižek
gets more money from the state and so on. So we have all these paradoxes. Some countries exaggerate it, other countries are cheating in the opposite direction. For example I know of a friend of mine, his mother was Russian and she died and it was clear that it was from COVID and you know what was the official listed reason of death? That I like it. Her heart stopped working.
gets more money from the state and so on. So we have all these paradoxes. Some countries exaggerate it, other countries are cheating in the opposite direction. For example I know of a friend of mine, his mother was Russian and she died and it was clear that it was from COVID and you know what was the official listed reason of death? That I like it. Her heart stopped working.
unknown
Well this is the definition of death, you know, everybody dies of this. So I really think that this is so important that we get a kind of a what Fred Jameson would have called global general mapping of the situation. So I really am sincerely tired of talking too much. Please treat me as your slave next time and you speak and and
Well this is the definition of death, you know, everybody dies of this. So I really think that this is so important that we get a kind of a what Fred Jameson would have called global general mapping of the situation. So I really am sincerely tired of talking too much. Please treat me as your slave next time and you speak and and
Slavoj Žižek
you should do the other thing to me, not another James Bond feature that some kind of digital control in Chinese schools they already have it. They put in some elementary schools some kind of ring
you should do the other thing to me, not another James Bond feature that some kind of digital control in Chinese schools they already have it. They put in some elementary schools some kind of ring
unknown
which measures the brain activity and if the child
which measures the brain activity and if the child
Slavoj Žižek
falls asleep my proposal is you should put this on me, if you see that I am non-attentive then Alex or whoever pushes a button which presses a button which gives me an electric shock to awake me so that I will follow actively. Thanks I’m really grateful and Alex more terror on me, more terror on me. All right just I will invite you again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Yeah thank you very much today. Bye. And how’s the situation with in Korea? You are getting a little bit better? No, actually we successfully I told you that actually we actually gonna successfully actually settle down. So the situation settle down, we re-opened the shop, re-opened the restaurant today. No because you are now no longer at you are around per day
falls asleep my proposal is you should put this on me, if you see that I am non-attentive then Alex or whoever pushes a button which presses a button which gives me an electric shock to awake me so that I will follow actively. Thanks I’m really grateful and Alex more terror on me, more terror on me. All right just I will invite you again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Yeah thank you very much today. Bye. And how’s the situation with in Korea? You are getting a little bit better? No, actually we successfully I told you that actually we actually gonna successfully actually settle down. So the situation settle down, we re-opened the shop, re-opened the restaurant today. No because you are now no longer at you are around per day
unknown
now, no? Yeah
now, no? Yeah
Slavoj Žižek
now actually the today My God! You know that we, Slovenia, a country of million, we are around a day. Really? Yeah. We are
now actually the today My God! You know that we, Slovenia, a country of million, we are around a day. Really? Yeah. We are
unknown
the
the
Slavoj Žižek
worst. Now it’s falling to
worst. Now it’s falling to
unknown
Let’s not
Let’s not
Slavoj Žižek
lose time. Alex, take care of yourself, my best greetings to all of you. And now now I will be cynical, now I have to prepare breakfast for my wife.
lose time. Alex, take care of yourself, my best greetings to all of you. And now now I will be cynical, now I have to prepare breakfast for my wife.
unknown
Stay safe. Stay safe. At his job.
Stay safe. Stay safe. At his job.