GTAA Season 3 Episode 29: The Return of Slavoj Zizek
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2022-01-25 · 1:10:19 · 9,349 words
sexuality-genderliberalism-political-correctnesspsychoanalysisideologycapitalismecology-climatedemocracyrace-antisemitismeconomicstechnology-ai-cyberspace
In this wide-ranging interview timed to a book release (OR Books), Žižek discusses sexual consent and political correctness through several case studies, a São Paulo brothel that inverts the usual power dynamic, the Wolfman analysis and money's role in psychoanalysis, and the AOC/Steve Cortes foot-fetish Twitter controversy. He then turns to American politics, arguing that AOC's shift from class-based to race-based analysis of Trump voters represents a regression, and endorsing Bernie Sanders' economic-language approach. The final section addresses the COVID pandemic and ecological crisis as proof that the left must rehabilitate the state, contra Badiou's localism, as the only institution capable of coordinating responses to genuinely global problems.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 11
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “dignity presupposes safety”
Žižek argues that the performance of dignified resistance is a luxury available only to those not in extreme humiliation, from a truly abject position, dirty jokes are more honest than dignity.
Žižek interrogates the liberal-feminist concept of consent, pointing out the multiple pressures, economic, emotional, libidinal, that can structure formally 'free' agreement, and the asymmetry whereby consent discourse casts women only as potential victims rather than desiring agents.
as “sado-masochist contract”
Žižek and his interlocutor identify the consensual sadomasochist contract as the secret model of politically-correct discourse on sex: it is the only sexual encounter that fully satisfies the demand for explicit, negotiated consent.
Implicitly at work in the discussion of foot fetishism and displaced desire in the AOC/Cortes episode, where the object of attention (Riley's foot) substitutes for and displaces the properly sexual/political object.
Žižek invokes enjoyment (jouissance) as constitutive of racism, 'there is no racism without enjoyment,' meaning a deep libidinal satisfaction generated by racist fantasies and practices, not reducible to rational interest.
Žižek distinguishes knowing something in a detached, unengaging way (which permits continuation of the behaviour) from knowledge that personally implicates the subject and compels action, echoing both Freud on symptoms and Marx on ideology.
The classic 'je sais bien mais quand même' (I know very well but nonetheless) structure, which Žižek invokes to contrast with a new mutation where knowledge itself becomes the fetish.
A mutation beyond classic fetishist disavowal: reflexive awareness of one's racist or destructive behaviour is incorporated into the behaviour itself, enabling it, 'I know, I know' becomes the alibi for continuing.
The psychic economy of desire and perverted satisfaction that leads people to vote against their material interests, Žižek deploys it to explain Trump's appeal beyond rational calculation.
The NFT discussion implies this: the virtual/symbolic dimension of money and value was always already 'mad,' with NFTs merely making explicit that financial objects need no material referent.
Žižek uses NFTs to illustrate how capital introduces artificial scarcity into a domain (digital files) where everything could be free, with speculation attaching to a purely virtual object that need not even exist.
Stories he reaches for 4
The iconic image of Bernie Sanders sitting alone in a corner at Trump's inauguration, wearing mittens, overshadowed all the speeches and poetry, for Žižek this defines the era better than any abstract political statement.
“For me, if you ask me for one scene, image even, which defines the last years, was you remember Trump inauguration, Bernie sitting alone there in a corner.”
Žižek imagines an emaciated prisoner tearing off his shirt before a Nazi guard and declaring his freedom, and finds this image ridiculous rather than heroic, because genuine extreme humiliation makes the performance of dignity impossible.
“You are too, too humiliated, in such a horrible position that you cannot afford the spectacle of dignity.”
Žižek cites the 2021 extreme heat event in the Pacific Northwest and simultaneous record heat in Siberia to argue that purely local communities cannot address climate phenomena whose causality is irreducibly global, refuting Badiou's localist politics.
“They may be doing many horrible things, people of there, but they were not responsible for this.”
Ted Kennedy opposed offshore oil drilling; he was then photographed having sex on a boat offshore. A Republican senator quipped he was glad Kennedy had 'changed his position on offshore drilling.' Žižek invokes this as an example of healthy dirty political humour that should be possible in a normal society.
“I'm glad to hear that our esteemed colleague has changed his position of offshore drilling.”
Works invoked 4
Goldfinger film
Žižek uses the Fort Knox radiation plot as a thought-experiment to illustrate the always-already virtual/fictional character of value and money.
Pandemic! book
One of Žižek's previous short political books with OR Books; mentioned as a comparator to the book being discussed.
Against Love book
Cited as a rare engagement with love in the context of sexual politics, Žižek endorses Kipnis for raising the topic that consent discourse systematically ignores.
Žižek attempts to recall this film in which Muriel Gardiner's anti-fascist activities were fictionalised; he confuses some details but recalls Vanessa Redgrave played the Gardiner character.
People invoked 19
Mentioned as an example of sexual harassment cases where the standard feminist victim/perpetrator binary was ambiguous.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Cited twice: on 'there is always trouble with sex,' and for the formulation that 'knowledge itself becomes a fetish', Žižek treats her as a close collaborator whose formulations he endorses.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Cited approvingly for the glass-of-water retort to Kollontai and for the demand for 'concrete analysis of the concrete situation', Žižek endorses both against liberal and anarchist abstraction.
Jacques Lacan positive
Implicitly present in the framework throughout; Žižek describes his interlocutor as speaking 'in the worst Lacanian jargon' and references Lacanian psychoanalysis as a São Paulo brothel worker's speciality.
Alexandra Kollontai negative
Cited via the Lenin joke: her position that sex should be like drinking a glass of water is the foil against which Žižek (via Lenin) argues that sex is existentially shattering and cannot be reduced to neutral need-satisfaction.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Ex-vice-president of Bolivia under Morales, described as 'my good friend' and 'a great theoretician', Žižek quotes and endorses his argument that the COVID pandemic demonstrated the state's indispensable role and that the left must rehabilitate state authority.
Alain Badiou negative
Žižek references Badiou's new book on political disorientation approvingly on the point that consent discourse ignores love, but explicitly disagrees with Badiou's localism regarding Occupy and ecological politics, finding it inadequate for genuinely global crises.
Giorgio Agamben negative
Referenced in contrast to Linera: Žižek rejects Agamben's reading of COVID lockdowns as state terror, pointing out people often demanded harsher measures than states were willing to impose.
George Lakoff negative
Cited as exemplifying the naive Democratic-liberal idea that the left's problem is bad messaging/framing (propaganda), which Žižek rejects as missing the libidinal/ideological depth of right-wing appeal.
Fredric Jameson positive
Žižek endorses Jameson's point that class struggle in the United States cannot be discussed without addressing anti-Black racism, and that racism is a deeper structural phenomenon than surface prejudice.
Bernie Sanders positive
Held up as proof that economic-language politics can achieve broad resonance; Žižek notes media suppression of Sanders' viewership and describes his inauguration-day image as the defining image of the era.
Žižek visited Assange in prison; uses the coffee-lid incident during the visit as a metaphor for biopolitical control.
Adrian Johnston positive
Described as 'my friend,' a Hegelian-Lacanian philosopher, cited for pointing out the strange contemporary situation in which even classic fetishist disavowal has mutated.
Laura Kipnis positive
Cited as a rare exception who engaged seriously with love in the context of feminist sexual politics, referencing her book against love.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez negative
Žižek analyses the foot-fetish Twitter episode critically (she imported sexuality inappropriately) and more seriously criticises her shift from class-based to race-based analysis of Trump voters as a political regression.
American analyst and anti-fascist activist who saved the Wolfman after Freud's experiment with unpaid analysis failed; Žižek describes her as 'heroic.'
Branko Marcetic positive
The interviewer's friend who surfaced the two contrasting AOC quotes (2016 vs. 2020), framing the discussion of her political regression.
Noam Chomsky positive
Žižek sides with Chomsky against Badiou on Occupy Wall Street: failures leave traces in public political memory.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited as the source of insights on money's role in analysis, the Wolfman case, and the failure of early rationalist cure-by-insight, Žižek uses Freud to argue against both naive knowledge-as-liberation and consent-as-neutral.
What it argues
sexual consent and political correctnessthe role of enjoyment in racism and ideologyknowledge as fetish — knowing without actingclass vs. race as political strategyrehabilitation of the state for global crisesvirtuality and artificial scarcity in capitalism (NFTs)money's libidinal function in psychoanalysis
Dialectical moves 6
“Far from dignity being a universal human capacity, dignity presupposes a certain safety — you cannot afford the spectacle of dignity when you are too humiliated.”
Žižek inverts the liberal-humanist elevation of dignity into a dependent, class-conditioned luxury, arguing that in extremis only dirty jokes remain adequate.
“It's not that behind political disagreement there is sexual desire for AOC — it's the reverse: behind the sexual fixation there is political disagreement.”
Žižek reverses AOC's own claim (Republicans attack her because they want to date her) to argue that sexual devaluation is the vehicle for political antagonism, not vice versa.
“Far from knowledge liberating us from symptoms (the early Freudian and Marxist presupposition), knowing something can serve as justification for continuing to do exactly what you were doing.”
Žižek inverts the Enlightenment equation knowledge = liberation: reflexive knowledge of one's bad faith now enables its perpetuation.
“What was from the very beginning a mad virtual dimension in capitalism is now exploding openly — NFTs are not a perversion of money's true function but the truth of what money always was.”
Žižek inverts the 'corruption of authentic capitalism' narrative: the virtual speculative excess is not an aberration but the inherent logic of money made manifest.
“The state is alienated, yes — but in desperate situations we can use it even against itself.”
Žižek reframes the left-anarchist rejection of the state: precisely because the state is the only effective agent in crisis, the left must instrumentalise it even against its own character.
“The only version of sex that fully satisfies the consent demand is the sado-masochist contract.”
Žižek exposes the hidden model of consensualist sexual politics by showing that the demand for total explicit consent can only be met by formalised BDSM, a reductio ad absurdum of the position.
Claims 13
asserts
The politically correct discourse on consent systematically erases female desire and positions women only as potential victims of male predation, never as desiring subjects who can initiate or negotiate.political correctness / feminist consent discourse
asserts
Dignity is not a universal human capacity but presupposes a minimum of safety — in truly extreme humiliation, dirty jokes are more honest and adequate than the performance of dignified resistance.dignity / political resistance
asserts
AOC's shift from a class-based analysis of Trump voters (2016) to a race-based anti-racist canvassing strategy (2020) represents a political regression toward liberal identity politics.AOC's political evolution / left electoral strategy
asserts
Racism cannot be fought through argumentation or propaganda alone because it operates at the level of enjoyment — libidinal satisfaction in racist fantasy — which rational knowledge does not reach.anti-racism / ideology critique
asserts
Knowledge of a problem (racism, ecological destruction) can itself function as a fetish that enables continuation of the problematic behaviour rather than prompting change.knowledge / fetishism / ideology
asserts
Trump's obscene humor and dirty jokes were not a secondary mask over his political programme but a constitutive element of his appeal that also preemptively neutralised critique.Trump / ideology / populism
asserts
The left must rehabilitate the nation-state and trans-national public authority as the indispensable instrument for managing genuinely global crises such as pandemics and climate change.the state / left politics / ecology
rejects
Badiou's localist position — that local communities self-organizing outside the state is the authentic political response to ecological crisis — is inadequate because the causality of climate phenomena is irreducibly global.Badiou / anarchist localism / ecology
asserts
NFTs reveal that a mad virtual dimension was always already present in capitalism, where speculation can attach to objects that need not materially exist, making explicit a logic inherent to money from the start.NFTs / capitalism / virtual economy
asserts
Short-term rational thinking among voters is not merely a psychological failure but is itself a symptom of a broader ideological situation in which people no longer believe in any large-scale political cause.ideology / political disengagement
asserts
Money in psychoanalysis functions not primarily as payment but as a structural device for maintaining psychic distance between analyst and patient, and the Wolfman fiasco proves this by negative example.psychoanalysis / money / transference
asserts
The COVID pandemic demonstrated that in genuine global crises people look automatically to the state, which is the de facto big agent — the left should gather the courage to use this rather than dismiss the state as inherently alienated.COVID / the state / left politics
asserts
Formally consensual transactions — sex work, market exchange — can involve profound coercion through economic necessity or emotional pressure, so the liberal-neutral use of 'consent' is ideologically suspect.consent / sex work / Marxist critique of market freedom
Quotes 14
“This is for me a simplified but perfect metaphor of where we are today. Even the way we are controlled...everything is done for our health, safety, profit, and so on.”Slavoj Žižek · biopolitical control masked as care
“When you are really in deep shit, you cannot afford what is usually called dignity. Dignity presupposes a certain safety.”Slavoj Žižek · dignity as a luxury contingent on safety
“I more and more believe the only thing when you are really in danger are dirty jokes.”Slavoj Žižek · dirty jokes as authentic response to extremity
“What if women are not just victims of male predators? What if they also can subtly or not so subtly provoke men? And why shouldn't they do this?”Slavoj Žižek · feminist consent discourse erases female desire
“There is no racism without enjoyment, where by enjoyment I don't mean sexual enjoyment. I mean this deep satisfaction brought about by racist and sexual fantasies.”Slavoj Žižek · enjoyment as constitutive of racism
“Knowledge itself becomes a fetish...where you include into being a racist or sexist a reflexive awareness of what you are doing. 'Yes, I know, I know, I know what I am doing.'”Slavoj Žižek · knowledge as fetish enabling continued bad faith
“It was AOC who brought sex into a situation which was, at least explicitly, not sexualized.”Slavoj Žižek · AOC's move sexualised a political dispute
“Trump's disgusting humor is not secondary to his success. It's part of it. So you cannot say that his obscenities, dirty humor, is just a secondary mask.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump's obscene humor as constitutive of ideological appeal
“NFT is a crazy attempt to introduce artificial scarcity into a domain where everything in principle could have been for free, free-floating.”Slavoj Žižek · NFTs as artificial scarcity
“Some mad dimension which was from the beginning there is now exploding openly.”Slavoj Žižek · virtual financial excess as always-already inherent to capitalism
“We the left shouldn't wait for some authentic anti-state revolution, but we should gather the courage to admit that in future critical situations, public authority is the big agent which can really do it.”Slavoj Žižek · left rehabilitation of the state in crisis
“Being fully aware of all the problems with state and so on, alienated blah-blah, we shouldn't be afraid to use it as an instrument maybe even against itself.”Slavoj Žižek · using the state against itself
“Knowing something doesn't in itself mean liberation. Knowing something can also serve as justifying the way what you were doing before.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of Enlightenment equation of knowledge and liberation
“This short-term thinking is itself part of the situation...It's not just a psychological failure or whatever.”Slavoj Žižek · short-termism as ideological symptom not individual failing
Transcript 58 turns
unknown
I will be
I will be
Slavoj Žižek
frank. Usually I, sometimes I wouldn't say lie, but creatively enhance reality to make it more plastic so that it expresses an idea. But you know what shocked even me, an old trifler, that there I didn't lie. It's true. Let's, okay, briefly renew it because... So, so yeah, so you were, you were visiting
frank. Usually I, sometimes I wouldn't say lie, but creatively enhance reality to make it more plastic so that it expresses an idea. But you know what shocked even me, an old trifler, that there I didn't lie. It's true. Let's, okay, briefly renew it because... So, so yeah, so you were, you were visiting
unknown
Assange in prison and, uh, the, the guard brought you a cup of coffee and you took off the lid and, you know, then put it down on the table in front of you. After two sips, yeah. Yeah, you like, yeah, you had a sip and you put it down like you do. And they said, uh, and they made you put the lid back on, like they made a big deal of it and then they... In a very friendly way, I must emphasize this. Sure, sure, but in a very friendly way, you know, they made sure immediately that you put the lid back on. And then the explanation afterwards was that because he was this dangerous prisoner, you know, that you couldn't have, you know, hot coffee in between you or, you know, your safety would be jeopardized. They
Assange in prison and, uh, the, the guard brought you a cup of coffee and you took off the lid and, you know, then put it down on the table in front of you. After two sips, yeah. Yeah, you like, yeah, you had a sip and you put it down like you do. And they said, uh, and they made you put the lid back on, like they made a big deal of it and then they... In a very friendly way, I must emphasize this. Sure, sure, but in a very friendly way, you know, they made sure immediately that you put the lid back on. And then the explanation afterwards was that because he was this dangerous prisoner, you know, that you couldn't have, you know, hot coffee in between you or, you know, your safety would be jeopardized. They
Slavoj Žižek
may throw it into my face, yes. This is for me a simplified but perfect metaphor of where we are today. Even the way we are controlled and so on, of course, everything is done in our, everything is done for our health, safety, profit, and so on and so on. Yes. But may I, uh, add another funny remark? I hope they will not be mad at me at OR Books. No, I also like the book, I think as to content, it has more diversity, is better than my other two of these short political books with OR, Pandemic! and Pandemic But I have problem with the cover. Not only this Maoist identification, you know, but look at the expression of my face. A kind of embittered wisdom, you know, I look with trust and... Sorry, guys, that's not me. I'm not like that. You know what I mean? I more and more believe the only thing when you are really in danger are dirty jokes. Not because of potential racist content and so on, but again, my old point: when you are really in deep shit, you cannot afford what is usually called dignity. Dignity presupposes a certain safety. And I always use this example: imagine in Auschwitz a Nazi wants to beat you and a poor, emaciated, half-dead Jew what, stands up and tears off his shirt and says, "Yes, do whatever you want, but you will never kill my freedom desire." It's ridiculous. You are too, too humiliated, in such a horrible position that you cannot afford the spectacle of dignity. So that's why I, but okay, let's go on. I interrupted you, I'm sorry.
may throw it into my face, yes. This is for me a simplified but perfect metaphor of where we are today. Even the way we are controlled and so on, of course, everything is done in our, everything is done for our health, safety, profit, and so on and so on. Yes. But may I, uh, add another funny remark? I hope they will not be mad at me at OR Books. No, I also like the book, I think as to content, it has more diversity, is better than my other two of these short political books with OR, Pandemic! and Pandemic But I have problem with the cover. Not only this Maoist identification, you know, but look at the expression of my face. A kind of embittered wisdom, you know, I look with trust and... Sorry, guys, that's not me. I'm not like that. You know what I mean? I more and more believe the only thing when you are really in danger are dirty jokes. Not because of potential racist content and so on, but again, my old point: when you are really in deep shit, you cannot afford what is usually called dignity. Dignity presupposes a certain safety. And I always use this example: imagine in Auschwitz a Nazi wants to beat you and a poor, emaciated, half-dead Jew what, stands up and tears off his shirt and says, "Yes, do whatever you want, but you will never kill my freedom desire." It's ridiculous. You are too, too humiliated, in such a horrible position that you cannot afford the spectacle of dignity. So that's why I, but okay, let's go on. I interrupted you, I'm sorry.
unknown
No, no, I... no, that was, that was good. So, uh, I think we should just
No, no, I... no, that was, that was good. So, uh, I think we should just
Slavoj Žižek
follow the book because one line of the book is also, uh, remarks on political correctness, sexual... some people call it revolution, some people call it counter-revolution today, and so on. So, uh, not to improvise because I noticed, you know, when I improvise, when I think I'm thinking freely, and that should be a general lesson, isn't it, the rule? It usually means that I'm repeating myself without knowing it. But the only way not to repeat myself is to look at the text and somehow at least guarantee something new. I noticed a couple of things, a couple of things, uh, happened to me lately which I think are not mega-important, but are an indication of where we are sadly going. First, it's a light one, light remark, but it has something sad about it and I know it's again in my style suicidal, you know, people will claim "oh, he admits he's a sexist." I think the lesson is exactly the opposite one. A philosopher friend of mine, I will not name him, but it's from United States, not even here—I couldn't imagine that things like this still happen today—uh, told me via Zoom what happened to me, to him recently. He was giving a lecture which went pretty well but left some enigmatic point unexplained at the end. And then obviously a fan of him, a nice young lady, told him, approached him after the talk and told him jokingly, "If you explain all this to me at a coffee table afterwards, I will be so fascinated like you can fuck me, you can have sex." Now, the guy did what? He took a restrained stance and explained things to her, but with no sex. He told her that doing it to get sex as a payment would amount to sexual exploitation and so on and so on. He was very correct. Okay, they parted. Nothing happened. Then later, because he knew some other students, friends, and so on, later he learned from this lady's friends that, far from being impressed by his honesty, she was furious at him. What she complained to her friends is that she really wanted sex and she just playfully mentioned the explanation as the price he should pay to avoid the vulgarity of directly asking for sex, you know. It doesn't look so desperate if you propose a deal. And I think such ambiguities, this happens, is what eludes the politically correct stance. What if women are not just victims of male predators? What if they also can subtly or not so subtly provoke men? And why shouldn't they do this? Why should... and this is always repeated in politically correct discourse, discourse, except for cases of rare cases, but even then women are attacked but it's much more ambiguous what happened. Avital Ronell and that gay person and so on, you remember a couple of years ago. Or when... in all this, uh, arch-sins of political correctness, a woman is as a rule always, uh, attacked, molested by a man, and then it's all this problem of consent. It all turns around about what really is consent. But wait a minute. Why should men not give consent? Why should a woman not be the one who demands it? Isn't—you can correct me if I'm wrong—but isn't it practically totally absent as far as I see? Do you know some... I'm sincere now, it's not this arrogant rhetorical question where I'm asking you to confirm what I already know. Did you find any of these, uh, scenes of or descriptions of opposite situation? Why are women always depicted as those who as those who have or have not to give consent? Why shouldn't women also have a desire, if they have it for whomever—women, men, other women, men—and somehow express desire? That's why, you may remember in one of my previous books, I forgot which one... it's not a thief in broad daylight. I describe this scene in a... I've only seen it from outside, but I wouldn't be ashamed to go into it although not for business. You know the cafeteria that really exists in São Paulo. This, uh, sexual work, prostitution place. But it's incredible how it works. I cannot imagine coming closer to not feminism but more justice at least. You are a customer. You go in, sit at a table, and you do nothing. What's the key? Close to this cafeteria there is a university with a large humanities department. And late there are students
follow the book because one line of the book is also, uh, remarks on political correctness, sexual... some people call it revolution, some people call it counter-revolution today, and so on. So, uh, not to improvise because I noticed, you know, when I improvise, when I think I'm thinking freely, and that should be a general lesson, isn't it, the rule? It usually means that I'm repeating myself without knowing it. But the only way not to repeat myself is to look at the text and somehow at least guarantee something new. I noticed a couple of things, a couple of things, uh, happened to me lately which I think are not mega-important, but are an indication of where we are sadly going. First, it's a light one, light remark, but it has something sad about it and I know it's again in my style suicidal, you know, people will claim "oh, he admits he's a sexist." I think the lesson is exactly the opposite one. A philosopher friend of mine, I will not name him, but it's from United States, not even here—I couldn't imagine that things like this still happen today—uh, told me via Zoom what happened to me, to him recently. He was giving a lecture which went pretty well but left some enigmatic point unexplained at the end. And then obviously a fan of him, a nice young lady, told him, approached him after the talk and told him jokingly, "If you explain all this to me at a coffee table afterwards, I will be so fascinated like you can fuck me, you can have sex." Now, the guy did what? He took a restrained stance and explained things to her, but with no sex. He told her that doing it to get sex as a payment would amount to sexual exploitation and so on and so on. He was very correct. Okay, they parted. Nothing happened. Then later, because he knew some other students, friends, and so on, later he learned from this lady's friends that, far from being impressed by his honesty, she was furious at him. What she complained to her friends is that she really wanted sex and she just playfully mentioned the explanation as the price he should pay to avoid the vulgarity of directly asking for sex, you know. It doesn't look so desperate if you propose a deal. And I think such ambiguities, this happens, is what eludes the politically correct stance. What if women are not just victims of male predators? What if they also can subtly or not so subtly provoke men? And why shouldn't they do this? Why should... and this is always repeated in politically correct discourse, discourse, except for cases of rare cases, but even then women are attacked but it's much more ambiguous what happened. Avital Ronell and that gay person and so on, you remember a couple of years ago. Or when... in all this, uh, arch-sins of political correctness, a woman is as a rule always, uh, attacked, molested by a man, and then it's all this problem of consent. It all turns around about what really is consent. But wait a minute. Why should men not give consent? Why should a woman not be the one who demands it? Isn't—you can correct me if I'm wrong—but isn't it practically totally absent as far as I see? Do you know some... I'm sincere now, it's not this arrogant rhetorical question where I'm asking you to confirm what I already know. Did you find any of these, uh, scenes of or descriptions of opposite situation? Why are women always depicted as those who as those who have or have not to give consent? Why shouldn't women also have a desire, if they have it for whomever—women, men, other women, men—and somehow express desire? That's why, you may remember in one of my previous books, I forgot which one... it's not a thief in broad daylight. I describe this scene in a... I've only seen it from outside, but I wouldn't be ashamed to go into it although not for business. You know the cafeteria that really exists in São Paulo. This, uh, sexual work, prostitution place. But it's incredible how it works. I cannot imagine coming closer to not feminism but more justice at least. You are a customer. You go in, sit at a table, and you do nothing. What's the key? Close to this cafeteria there is a university with a large humanities department. And late there are students
unknown
who need money. They
who need money. They
Slavoj Žižek
sit behind the bar and they look at you. Obviously, if you sit there at a table, you want sex. They observe you. If they find you attractive enough, they come to you and, ah-ah, not directly "what's your price," they start to... they start a conversation with you, usually about humanities. Do you know that there were, so I was told, even one or two who specialized in Lacanian psychoanalysis? And, uh, one of them mentioned me, I was told. How, it was... she told this to her friends, who told to other friends,
sit behind the bar and they look at you. Obviously, if you sit there at a table, you want sex. They observe you. If they find you attractive enough, they come to you and, ah-ah, not directly "what's your price," they start to... they start a conversation with you, usually about humanities. Do you know that there were, so I was told, even one or two who specialized in Lacanian psychoanalysis? And, uh, one of them mentioned me, I was told. How, it was... she told this to her friends, who told to other friends,
unknown
who told me. And
who told me. And
Slavoj Žižek
then if they see that you are also like educated, not an idiot, then the woman, not you, says, "Okay, we can do it, this is my price." I mean, within this alienated institution of sexual work, isn't this pretty good? How should I put it? I mean... Yeah, as prostitution goes, that does sound like one of the... Yeah, I mean, let's not avoid a misunderstanding. I'm here very romantically sentimental. Uh, I am against prostitution. I may tolerate the idea—and there are persons like that, men and women—who want sex, real sex, blah-blah with all the fantasies and so on, but with no emotional involvement. Sure. And the idea... and here then money is not so much a payment. It plays a role similar to the role money plays in psychoanalysis. If you pay the analyst, the function is to maintain a psychic distance. You know, you don't become friends, you don't chat and so on and so on. And if I may repeat another old story, my favorite, Freud's big example, Wolfman, his most famous patient. This is a kind of a negative proof of Freud's thesis. You know that Freud was right when he said that money has a role, namely after the October Revolution, Wolfman, who was a Russian citizen, because of October Revolution, his family lost all money and he was all of a sudden in Vienna with Freud poor, with no money. Freud, being basically a decent good guy, started to support him financially. The result was the fiasco of the analysis. Because, as it is expected, Wolfman became paranoiac. Like, "My God, why is the analyst paying me? Why? What is it in me? Does he have any plans with me?" And like Freud then learned what were these plans—sorry, these
then if they see that you are also like educated, not an idiot, then the woman, not you, says, "Okay, we can do it, this is my price." I mean, within this alienated institution of sexual work, isn't this pretty good? How should I put it? I mean... Yeah, as prostitution goes, that does sound like one of the... Yeah, I mean, let's not avoid a misunderstanding. I'm here very romantically sentimental. Uh, I am against prostitution. I may tolerate the idea—and there are persons like that, men and women—who want sex, real sex, blah-blah with all the fantasies and so on, but with no emotional involvement. Sure. And the idea... and here then money is not so much a payment. It plays a role similar to the role money plays in psychoanalysis. If you pay the analyst, the function is to maintain a psychic distance. You know, you don't become friends, you don't chat and so on and so on. And if I may repeat another old story, my favorite, Freud's big example, Wolfman, his most famous patient. This is a kind of a negative proof of Freud's thesis. You know that Freud was right when he said that money has a role, namely after the October Revolution, Wolfman, who was a Russian citizen, because of October Revolution, his family lost all money and he was all of a sudden in Vienna with Freud poor, with no money. Freud, being basically a decent good guy, started to support him financially. The result was the fiasco of the analysis. Because, as it is expected, Wolfman became paranoiac. Like, "My God, why is the analyst paying me? Why? What is it in me? Does he have any plans with me?" And like Freud then learned what were these plans—sorry, these
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paranoiac imagination what projected into
paranoiac imagination what projected into
Slavoj Žižek
him. A couple of times Wolfman met Anna Freud—the young, she was still young then—Freud's daughter, on the staircase. So his paranoia was it's almost a beautiful one that it's all part of big Freud's plan for him to become sexual partner of his daughter. Like he wants me through his daughter so that it will be somebody whom he, Freud father, controls through psychoanalysis so that he will control the entire situation and so on. But you see? And now comes a nicer part. Uh, you know who saved Wolfman? I've forgotten
him. A couple of times Wolfman met Anna Freud—the young, she was still young then—Freud's daughter, on the staircase. So his paranoia was it's almost a beautiful one that it's all part of big Freud's plan for him to become sexual partner of his daughter. Like he wants me through his daughter so that it will be somebody whom he, Freud father, controls through psychoanalysis so that he will control the entire situation and so on. But you see? And now comes a nicer part. Uh, you know who saved Wolfman? I've forgotten
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her name... Muriel Gardiner was a very progressive
her name... Muriel Gardiner was a very progressive
Slavoj Žižek
American woman who worked with Freud and was in Vienna and then later was actively involved risking her life in anti-fascist struggle. I don't know if you saw the movie, uh, uh... she was played by Vanessa Redgrave in a movie, I forgot her name, who was the wife or the partner... So, sorry, what movie are you talking about? Uh, I'm trying to remember it. Uh, uh... I think it was Jane Fonda who was, who was that writer, my God, American writer, Dashiell Hammett. Okay. And who was the writer, I had it on the tip of the tongue, who was his partner. And she was involved in smuggling something through Germany. And in Vienna or later she moved to Berlin, which was already Nazi Berlin. This character, Muriel Gardiner, helped her smuggle it and so on. She was a heroic leftist and very good analyst. She saved the guy, the Wolfman. She saved him. So again, the result is uh no goodness. Another thing, if we are here with all this stuff, consent, sex and so on. This I found good in new Badiou's book with which, however, I have many problems about today's disorientation in politics, where he says that isn't the big problem of this new feminist discourse of, uh, consent and so on, that it's all about sex, very rarely, if at all, more in a negative way, very rarely they touch the topic of love. I mean, and Badiou and especially I would be here very open—this doesn't mean kind of a cheap religious way, "love brings us to another sacred dimension, no exploitation, no violence." No, love also can imply quite a lot of emotional exploitation, brutality and so on, but it's another dimension. And I find it so strange that more or less, with the exception of Laura Kipnis, who already years ago or when, wrote a book against love... They, they ignore this topic. Okay, this is my... Yeah, so, so I, I mean, I think the, I mean the discussion, um, you know, about, uh, you know, about prostitution and, uh, and all of that, I mean, does, does make me think, right? I mean, like, 'cause, 'cause the version, you know, like, like some of what you're describing was, okay, here is like kind of the, you know, maybe, uh, one of the most civilized versions of it that exists or, you know, here's, here's a role... Which I'm still against, to avoid a misunderstanding. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, 'cause I, I think this is interesting because it, it seems to me, maybe you disagree, that, uh, the, that a lot of the left right now has, uh, gotten a little strange on this topic. That the, that like, that... How? Tell me, I'm not informed enough. Maybe I don't mis... So, so people, um, I see a lot of, in, like, people insisting that, like, uh, that you know, like, they'll only refer to it as sex work and, like, you know, that there's this sort of strange insistence that it's no more exploitative than, than anything, you know, that, that, that there's, that there's just no difference, you know, between, you know, between that and, and other jobs. And, and I, I guess I, I guess I do wonder if, uh, if there's a kind of strange, um, there's a kind of strange tension here between, like, the way that, uh, the way that a lot of leftists, uh, have gotten just very, very libertarian on this, this topic and, uh, and that, you know, kind of more general, um, you know, concern about consent that you're talking, you know, that you're talking about because, because after all, right, I mean, if you, I mean, certainly, you know, certainly if you're anything like a Marxist, you know, you understand that economics can, can take away meaningful consent as, as much as anything can, right? You know, just, just... This is my first problem, yes. Because as Marx emphasized, you know the famous quote from Capital that market exchange is the realm of freedom, equality, and so on and so on. Yes, the first thing is this problematic neutral use of the term consent. There can be so much pressure in consent and not just the obvious one like "I need money" and formally consent. It can be other emotionally much more tricky ways to enforce, uh, consent. But again, let me repeat Lenin again. You know that joke probably in one of my past encounters with you I used it already. That, uh, joke, the idea was that it was a conversation between the sexually liberated feminist Alexandra Kollontai and Lenin, where she said, in a among us emancipated people, sexual act should be no more than drinking a glass of water. You have a need, you satisfy it immediately. And you probably know what Lenin's answer was. "Yes, but nonetheless, I wouldn't like to drink water from a glass from which another person just before me drank water." Okay, it can be taken even a little bit conservative, but where I agree with Lenin is it's not this "no, I want to screw my
American woman who worked with Freud and was in Vienna and then later was actively involved risking her life in anti-fascist struggle. I don't know if you saw the movie, uh, uh... she was played by Vanessa Redgrave in a movie, I forgot her name, who was the wife or the partner... So, sorry, what movie are you talking about? Uh, I'm trying to remember it. Uh, uh... I think it was Jane Fonda who was, who was that writer, my God, American writer, Dashiell Hammett. Okay. And who was the writer, I had it on the tip of the tongue, who was his partner. And she was involved in smuggling something through Germany. And in Vienna or later she moved to Berlin, which was already Nazi Berlin. This character, Muriel Gardiner, helped her smuggle it and so on. She was a heroic leftist and very good analyst. She saved the guy, the Wolfman. She saved him. So again, the result is uh no goodness. Another thing, if we are here with all this stuff, consent, sex and so on. This I found good in new Badiou's book with which, however, I have many problems about today's disorientation in politics, where he says that isn't the big problem of this new feminist discourse of, uh, consent and so on, that it's all about sex, very rarely, if at all, more in a negative way, very rarely they touch the topic of love. I mean, and Badiou and especially I would be here very open—this doesn't mean kind of a cheap religious way, "love brings us to another sacred dimension, no exploitation, no violence." No, love also can imply quite a lot of emotional exploitation, brutality and so on, but it's another dimension. And I find it so strange that more or less, with the exception of Laura Kipnis, who already years ago or when, wrote a book against love... They, they ignore this topic. Okay, this is my... Yeah, so, so I, I mean, I think the, I mean the discussion, um, you know, about, uh, you know, about prostitution and, uh, and all of that, I mean, does, does make me think, right? I mean, like, 'cause, 'cause the version, you know, like, like some of what you're describing was, okay, here is like kind of the, you know, maybe, uh, one of the most civilized versions of it that exists or, you know, here's, here's a role... Which I'm still against, to avoid a misunderstanding. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, 'cause I, I think this is interesting because it, it seems to me, maybe you disagree, that, uh, the, that a lot of the left right now has, uh, gotten a little strange on this topic. That the, that like, that... How? Tell me, I'm not informed enough. Maybe I don't mis... So, so people, um, I see a lot of, in, like, people insisting that, like, uh, that you know, like, they'll only refer to it as sex work and, like, you know, that there's this sort of strange insistence that it's no more exploitative than, than anything, you know, that, that, that there's, that there's just no difference, you know, between, you know, between that and, and other jobs. And, and I, I guess I, I guess I do wonder if, uh, if there's a kind of strange, um, there's a kind of strange tension here between, like, the way that, uh, the way that a lot of leftists, uh, have gotten just very, very libertarian on this, this topic and, uh, and that, you know, kind of more general, um, you know, concern about consent that you're talking, you know, that you're talking about because, because after all, right, I mean, if you, I mean, certainly, you know, certainly if you're anything like a Marxist, you know, you understand that economics can, can take away meaningful consent as, as much as anything can, right? You know, just, just... This is my first problem, yes. Because as Marx emphasized, you know the famous quote from Capital that market exchange is the realm of freedom, equality, and so on and so on. Yes, the first thing is this problematic neutral use of the term consent. There can be so much pressure in consent and not just the obvious one like "I need money" and formally consent. It can be other emotionally much more tricky ways to enforce, uh, consent. But again, let me repeat Lenin again. You know that joke probably in one of my past encounters with you I used it already. That, uh, joke, the idea was that it was a conversation between the sexually liberated feminist Alexandra Kollontai and Lenin, where she said, in a among us emancipated people, sexual act should be no more than drinking a glass of water. You have a need, you satisfy it immediately. And you probably know what Lenin's answer was. "Yes, but nonetheless, I wouldn't like to drink water from a glass from which another person just before me drank water." Okay, it can be taken even a little bit conservative, but where I agree with Lenin is it's not this "no, I want to screw my
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wife, not a lady only if others are not screwing her." No, it's simply an awareness that even if you can describe it as an consensual exchange or whatever, sex shatters you too immediately. You are existentially too open. It never really worked like that, or if... Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, it might just be too unrealistic
wife, not a lady only if others are not screwing her." No, it's simply an awareness that even if you can describe it as an consensual exchange or whatever, sex shatters you too immediately. You are existentially too open. It never really worked like that, or if... Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, it might just be too unrealistic
Slavoj Žižek
to think that human beings
to think that human beings
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are ever going to like not read anything into this beyond any other interaction. Yeah, but as Alenka Zupančič, who was asked the same question, she told me at a recent debate, also pointed out: there is always troubles with sex. And the desire of this consent version is again to construct a kind of a neutral sex. And my result, I know we already talked about it, is that, and I think this is the secret model of this consensual, consensual notions of sex, "it's good just if it's consensual," is that there is only one version of sex which fully fits it: it's called sado-masochist contract. Now I come to, uh, a thing probably known to all Americans. It's interesting how here it was ignored. Probably it's already dying out in the States. You remember, the last days of December, uh, the nationalist rightist Steve Cortes—not my kind of a guy—tweeted a photo of AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with her boyfriend Riley Roberts... how they are enjoying their Christmas break in Florida. And his comment was: "Her guy is showing his gross, pale male feet in public, not at the pool or beach, with hideous sandals." That was his comment. Now, AOC tweeted back on the last day of the last year, on December 31st. I quote her: "If Republicans are mad they can't date me, they can just say that instead of
are ever going to like not read anything into this beyond any other interaction. Yeah, but as Alenka Zupančič, who was asked the same question, she told me at a recent debate, also pointed out: there is always troubles with sex. And the desire of this consent version is again to construct a kind of a neutral sex. And my result, I know we already talked about it, is that, and I think this is the secret model of this consensual, consensual notions of sex, "it's good just if it's consensual," is that there is only one version of sex which fully fits it: it's called sado-masochist contract. Now I come to, uh, a thing probably known to all Americans. It's interesting how here it was ignored. Probably it's already dying out in the States. You remember, the last days of December, uh, the nationalist rightist Steve Cortes—not my kind of a guy—tweeted a photo of AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with her boyfriend Riley Roberts... how they are enjoying their Christmas break in Florida. And his comment was: "Her guy is showing his gross, pale male feet in public, not at the pool or beach, with hideous sandals." That was his comment. Now, AOC tweeted back on the last day of the last year, on December 31st. I quote her: "If Republicans are mad they can't date me, they can just say that instead of
Slavoj Žižek
projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend's feet. You creepy weirdos." End of quote. Now, as one can expect, her reply triggered mixed reactions. One user responded—and I think there is a moment of truth in it, reactionary of course... Yeah, I agree. "Bold move. When people disagree with, uh, my policy positions or call me a hypocrite, I tell them they just want to fuck me as well." End of quote. Then another responded... this is more tricky, another probably Republican conservative, but there is a moment of truth. "Why did your mind automatically go to dating you and sex? That's very conceited." End of quote. I think at some level we must admit it, this is true. It was AOC who brought sex into a situation which was, at least explicitly, not sexualized. Reading Republican attacks on her policy positions as the expression of their frustration that they cannot, uh, date her. And incidentally, now comes my first comment. I need your open reaction here. I think that even if he may be right, I think she is, she's an attractive woman, so fuck it, we are made of red flesh, we have desires when... sure... I think her reasoning was not correct. Don't you agree that there is another more probable version I try to imagine? Her Republican critics primarily disagree with her policies. But as most of men, they notice her sexual attractiveness. So they implicitly at least bring in sexuality to devalue her argumentation, in accordance with the standard male chauvinist wisdom that women are stupid. Something like: "Stick to sex, you are nice there, avoid argumentation which is beyond your league." So I think it's not, it's not that behind political disagreement it's sex, "I would like to screw her, I cannot
projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend's feet. You creepy weirdos." End of quote. Now, as one can expect, her reply triggered mixed reactions. One user responded—and I think there is a moment of truth in it, reactionary of course... Yeah, I agree. "Bold move. When people disagree with, uh, my policy positions or call me a hypocrite, I tell them they just want to fuck me as well." End of quote. Then another responded... this is more tricky, another probably Republican conservative, but there is a moment of truth. "Why did your mind automatically go to dating you and sex? That's very conceited." End of quote. I think at some level we must admit it, this is true. It was AOC who brought sex into a situation which was, at least explicitly, not sexualized. Reading Republican attacks on her policy positions as the expression of their frustration that they cannot, uh, date her. And incidentally, now comes my first comment. I need your open reaction here. I think that even if he may be right, I think she is, she's an attractive woman, so fuck it, we are made of red flesh, we have desires when... sure... I think her reasoning was not correct. Don't you agree that there is another more probable version I try to imagine? Her Republican critics primarily disagree with her policies. But as most of men, they notice her sexual attractiveness. So they implicitly at least bring in sexuality to devalue her argumentation, in accordance with the standard male chauvinist wisdom that women are stupid. Something like: "Stick to sex, you are nice there, avoid argumentation which is beyond your league." So I think it's not, it's not that behind political disagreement it's sex, "I would like to screw her, I cannot
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get a chance so..." It's behind the sex there's political disagreement. Behind, yeah. What do you think? Please be open here. It's not against her.
get a chance so..." It's behind the sex there's political disagreement. Behind, yeah. What do you think? Please be open here. It's not against her.
Slavoj Žižek
Yeah, no, I, I think there's truth to that. I, I think that I would say that I do, I mean, look, I think that there's a reason why and, and I, you know, definitely have some criticisms of AOC, we can get into that, but I also do think the reason why so many, um, you know, so many people who disagree with her fixate on her. I mean, why, why aren't they talking about, uh, you know, Rashida Tlaib, or why aren't they talking about, you know, other people who, uh, who have all the same positions that, that she has? You know, I think part of it is that, I mean, I think, I think a sexual fixation probably is part of it. I mean, that seems realistic to me. That said, I do agree with you, right, that the probably, um, you know, that probably a lot of it is, you know, that she's a prominent figure, they hate her politics, this is something they reached for, you know, to, to respond to that. And I'm not sure how serious she was about the thing about her boyfriend's feet. I think that... Okay, so, uh, another, here I have another problem
Yeah, no, I, I think there's truth to that. I, I think that I would say that I do, I mean, look, I think that there's a reason why and, and I, you know, definitely have some criticisms of AOC, we can get into that, but I also do think the reason why so many, um, you know, so many people who disagree with her fixate on her. I mean, why, why aren't they talking about, uh, you know, Rashida Tlaib, or why aren't they talking about, you know, other people who, uh, who have all the same positions that, that she has? You know, I think part of it is that, I mean, I think, I think a sexual fixation probably is part of it. I mean, that seems realistic to me. That said, I do agree with you, right, that the probably, um, you know, that probably a lot of it is, you know, that she's a prominent figure, they hate her politics, this is something they reached for, you know, to, to respond to that. And I'm not sure how serious she was about the thing about her boyfriend's feet. I think that... Okay, so, uh, another, here I have another problem
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with
with
Slavoj Žižek
her. Uh, I agree with you, the enigma is: did she make this move towards sex in an ironic way, kind of a political PR manipulation, or did she really think what she wrote sincerely? My answer is: I hope she was just faking it, because if she really meant it she is in trouble, you know. Like, you know... I think she, I think she probably thought that there's a, there's a germ of truth but she's also having fun with it, that like, in other words, like she might think that in general there is something a little bit, you know, sexual about Republicans' fixation with her, and so that's like what she's, she's riffing off of for the joke, but she also, you know, but that and like because the feet thing is a little bit too perfect as a setup... I will go to that, that's the true mystery, yes. No, you know, what I find problematic is that again she brought sex into it. And that's always a dangerous move because one of the Republicans answered her very brutally: "Sorry, AOC, I absolutely don't want to date you." Now what could she have answered to this? "No, deep in your unconscious you want to really" or whatever. But now, you, when you came to the crucial point, this Riley's foot. Really, I saw the photo—you can get it—really protrudes, sticks out a little bit excessively in the photo which was tweeted. Kind of a reference to foot fetishism. But here, uh, I find things nicely ambiguous. Cortes—not she, Cortes, that Steve, the bad guy, the Republican—who made this move from AOC to Riley's foot, she did... he didn't notice her, he noticed his foot protruding. Uh, could should have made AOC mad for another unexpected reason. I like this cynical manipulative reasoning, I hope it was her: that she was really mad at him for not focusing on her beauty. He sees me there, and look at what the guy thinks: that stupid foot. That's the attraction of the image, you know, like... that, uh, the implicit sense of her surprise why the foot could be: "I'm the real beauty if in the image, so why do you even mention that stupid naked foot of my lover?" and so on and so on. And I think this I would focus on this. You know, this is very suspicious how
her. Uh, I agree with you, the enigma is: did she make this move towards sex in an ironic way, kind of a political PR manipulation, or did she really think what she wrote sincerely? My answer is: I hope she was just faking it, because if she really meant it she is in trouble, you know. Like, you know... I think she, I think she probably thought that there's a, there's a germ of truth but she's also having fun with it, that like, in other words, like she might think that in general there is something a little bit, you know, sexual about Republicans' fixation with her, and so that's like what she's, she's riffing off of for the joke, but she also, you know, but that and like because the feet thing is a little bit too perfect as a setup... I will go to that, that's the true mystery, yes. No, you know, what I find problematic is that again she brought sex into it. And that's always a dangerous move because one of the Republicans answered her very brutally: "Sorry, AOC, I absolutely don't want to date you." Now what could she have answered to this? "No, deep in your unconscious you want to really" or whatever. But now, you, when you came to the crucial point, this Riley's foot. Really, I saw the photo—you can get it—really protrudes, sticks out a little bit excessively in the photo which was tweeted. Kind of a reference to foot fetishism. But here, uh, I find things nicely ambiguous. Cortes—not she, Cortes, that Steve, the bad guy, the Republican—who made this move from AOC to Riley's foot, she did... he didn't notice her, he noticed his foot protruding. Uh, could should have made AOC mad for another unexpected reason. I like this cynical manipulative reasoning, I hope it was her: that she was really mad at him for not focusing on her beauty. He sees me there, and look at what the guy thinks: that stupid foot. That's the attraction of the image, you know, like... that, uh, the implicit sense of her surprise why the foot could be: "I'm the real beauty if in the image, so why do you even mention that stupid naked foot of my lover?" and so on and so on. And I think this I would focus on this. You know, this is very suspicious how
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the guy all of a sudden obviously talking about
the guy all of a sudden obviously talking about
Slavoj Žižek
sex
sex
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goes to the image. But I agree with you, it is part of my non-politically correct stance that I absolutely don't disagree with such gentle manipulations and so on and so on. I'm just saying you have to be a little bit careful, no? Because you never know you are, you are... I wonder, do you know, were there or not some politically correct reactions to her? I haven't followed it so much in depth. What, what do you mean by politically correct? Like what kind of... Politically correct, it means some critical comments... Uh-huh. ...towards her also. Oh, uh, not that I've, not that I've seen. Um, you know, yeah, like nobody, nobody wanted was trying to, uh, you know, say that she was kink-shaming this Republican for, uh, you know, for, for loving her boyfriend's feet. Uh, yeah, no, I haven't heard that. Not updated but generally about that incident she was not criticized because again, avoided... I will put it like this: in a normal society, without
goes to the image. But I agree with you, it is part of my non-politically correct stance that I absolutely don't disagree with such gentle manipulations and so on and so on. I'm just saying you have to be a little bit careful, no? Because you never know you are, you are... I wonder, do you know, were there or not some politically correct reactions to her? I haven't followed it so much in depth. What, what do you mean by politically correct? Like what kind of... Politically correct, it means some critical comments... Uh-huh. ...towards her also. Oh, uh, not that I've, not that I've seen. Um, you know, yeah, like nobody, nobody wanted was trying to, uh, you know, say that she was kink-shaming this Republican for, uh, you know, for, for loving her boyfriend's feet. Uh, yeah, no, I haven't heard that. Not updated but generally about that incident she was not criticized because again, avoided... I will put it like this: in a normal society, without
Slavoj Žižek
this twisted political correctness, such a reaction as hers should have would have been normal, I think. Nice. Of course you include this type of irony and so on. And there is a great tradition of this dirty jokes even nice ones made in American politics. I think I didn't use this one with you. You remember, no you're too young maybe, when he, he Edward Kennedy, Ted, the last one. Before he died he was very promiscuous, sexually active. So his position was of course at that point, years ago already, uh, more or less ecological. For example, he was strictly
this twisted political correctness, such a reaction as hers should have would have been normal, I think. Nice. Of course you include this type of irony and so on. And there is a great tradition of this dirty jokes even nice ones made in American politics. I think I didn't use this one with you. You remember, no you're too young maybe, when he, he Edward Kennedy, Ted, the last one. Before he died he was very promiscuous, sexually active. So his position was of course at that point, years ago already, uh, more or less ecological. For example, he was strictly
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opposed to offshore drilling in Louisiana. Yes. You know the story, for oil, deep sea oil, no? You know what then happened? He was caught by a paparazzi on camera sitting on a boat, ice out New Orleans in deep water, screwing a lady, unambiguously. Her, he lying on her, her legs around him. A couple of days later he had a appearance in Senate. And in a reaction, you know what a Republican said? I laughed, it was... a Republican senator said, "I'm glad to hear that our esteemed colleague has changed his position of offshore
opposed to offshore drilling in Louisiana. Yes. You know the story, for oil, deep sea oil, no? You know what then happened? He was caught by a paparazzi on camera sitting on a boat, ice out New Orleans in deep water, screwing a lady, unambiguously. Her, he lying on her, her legs around him. A couple of days later he had a appearance in Senate. And in a reaction, you know what a Republican said? I laughed, it was... a Republican senator said, "I'm glad to hear that our esteemed colleague has changed his position of offshore
Slavoj Žižek
drilling." Sorry, I mean, don't you agree in a normal society this should be possible? Yeah. But you know what really worries me? Let's now drop sex a little bit... Yeah, but before, before we do that, I, I just, I just, uh, you know, you were talking about AOC and, and I, I am curious, uh, what you think these days about, you know, AOC and the Squad and all of that, because, because it, it does seem to me, right, I think that there are, I think that there are many sort of, uh, ultra-left criticisms of AOC and the Squad that are just kind of stupid, that, that people are, you know, like people are angry at them for not doing things they really don't have the power to do and all that. But I do think that there is kind of a disturbing, um, shift, uh, maybe politically. So my friend, uh, Branko Marcetic, had this, um, uh, pointed out, you know, these, these two quotes to me, uh, this was an old tweet, but you know, he, he brought it up in a conversation the other day. AOC quote. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, uh, so he, so the first of these two
drilling." Sorry, I mean, don't you agree in a normal society this should be possible? Yeah. But you know what really worries me? Let's now drop sex a little bit... Yeah, but before, before we do that, I, I just, I just, uh, you know, you were talking about AOC and, and I, I am curious, uh, what you think these days about, you know, AOC and the Squad and all of that, because, because it, it does seem to me, right, I think that there are, I think that there are many sort of, uh, ultra-left criticisms of AOC and the Squad that are just kind of stupid, that, that people are, you know, like people are angry at them for not doing things they really don't have the power to do and all that. But I do think that there is kind of a disturbing, um, shift, uh, maybe politically. So my friend, uh, Branko Marcetic, had this, um, uh, pointed out, you know, these, these two quotes to me, uh, this was an old tweet, but you know, he, he brought it up in a conversation the other day. AOC quote. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, uh, so he, so the first of these two
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quotes I want to read you
quotes I want to read you
Slavoj Žižek
is, uh, is from AOC answering a question about the election, about Trump winning in and in And here's what she said then: "Social instability is a direct
is, uh, is from AOC answering a question about the election, about Trump winning in and in And here's what she said then: "Social instability is a direct
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result of wealth
result of wealth
Slavoj Žižek
inequality and bigotry is largely result of poverty and scarcity. I know it may, this may be hard to believe, but take refuge in the fact that sexism, racism, and xenophobia did not win last night." She was talking about Trump's victory in "They were attendants to a larger stage. What won was the," uh, if, you know, etc., etc., etc., right? So, like, so she was making this, like, very traditional leftist point about, um, about bigotry and demagoguery ultimately being a result of, of sort of misdirected anger about pow-wealth inequality. This is traditional, yeah. Sure, sure. Okay, now the second quote is, uh, is from AOC, uh, talking about the, uh, the Trump vote... I mean, obviously he lost the election, but like the larger vote for Trump in Right? So this is four years later. And she says, um, uh, "but, um, we
inequality and bigotry is largely result of poverty and scarcity. I know it may, this may be hard to believe, but take refuge in the fact that sexism, racism, and xenophobia did not win last night." She was talking about Trump's victory in "They were attendants to a larger stage. What won was the," uh, if, you know, etc., etc., etc., right? So, like, so she was making this, like, very traditional leftist point about, um, about bigotry and demagoguery ultimately being a result of, of sort of misdirected anger about pow-wealth inequality. This is traditional, yeah. Sure, sure. Okay, now the second quote is, uh, is from AOC, uh, talking about the, uh, the Trump vote... I mean, obviously he lost the election, but like the larger vote for Trump in Right? So this is four years later. And she says, um, uh, "but, um, we
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know that race is a problem and, uh, avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence
know that race is a problem and, uh, avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence
Slavoj Žižek
of racism at the polls." Uh, and the interviewer asks her, "Is there anything from Tuesday that surprised you?" and she says, "The share of white support for Trump. I thought the polling was off, but just
of racism at the polls." Uh, and the interviewer asks her, "Is there anything from Tuesday that surprised you?" and she says, "The share of white support for Trump. I thought the polling was off, but just
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seeing it, there was the feeling of realizing what work we have to do. We need to do a lot of anti-racist deep canvassing in this country, uh, because if we just keep losing white shares and just allowing Facebook to radicalize more and more elements of white voters and the white electorate, uh, there's, you know, etc." And
seeing it, there was the feeling of realizing what work we have to do. We need to do a lot of anti-racist deep canvassing in this country, uh, because if we just keep losing white shares and just allowing Facebook to radicalize more and more elements of white voters and the white electorate, uh, there's, you know, etc." And
Slavoj Žižek
all I can think reading all this is, um, is that this is, this seems like a disturbing to me, uh, regression in her politics. That, that like in the first quote... look, you can say the first quote is a little bit of an oversimplification of what happened and there's some legitimate criticisms you could make, but, uh, but I think the politics of it are so much more useful, right? Because it's, it's staying focused on economic inequality that affects the majority of people and that there are, you know, sort of good socialist, uh, you know, solutions to. And the second one is all about how, um, you know, people are just voting for Trump, uh, because they're too racist and, and we need to, and we need to just somehow or another, you know, like make, uh, you know, work on the racism in their heads, you know, like, like in other words, like the first quote suggests that the solution is to appeal to the economic interests of a majority of people and the second quote suggests that the, that the problem is just that like people have, you know, too many thought-problematic thoughts in their heads and you know you need to fix that first. And that does seem like a big shift in her politics and it does seem like one, from my perspective at least, in the wrong direction. I totally agree with you and, uh, it's also a strangely naive view. It's the old liberal democratic view that, uh... and also,
all I can think reading all this is, um, is that this is, this seems like a disturbing to me, uh, regression in her politics. That, that like in the first quote... look, you can say the first quote is a little bit of an oversimplification of what happened and there's some legitimate criticisms you could make, but, uh, but I think the politics of it are so much more useful, right? Because it's, it's staying focused on economic inequality that affects the majority of people and that there are, you know, sort of good socialist, uh, you know, solutions to. And the second one is all about how, um, you know, people are just voting for Trump, uh, because they're too racist and, and we need to, and we need to just somehow or another, you know, like make, uh, you know, work on the racism in their heads, you know, like, like in other words, like the first quote suggests that the solution is to appeal to the economic interests of a majority of people and the second quote suggests that the, that the problem is just that like people have, you know, too many thought-problematic thoughts in their heads and you know you need to fix that first. And that does seem like a big shift in her politics and it does seem like one, from my perspective at least, in the wrong direction. I totally agree with you and, uh, it's also a strangely naive view. It's the old liberal democratic view that, uh... and also,
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sorry, before I get confused, uh, the tragedy is this. It's even maybe more tragic than you think that, that if we were to ask her, AOC, directly, she probably wouldn't have even seen the contradiction. For her it would simply be: "Yes, white people are economically poor white frustrated, uh, racism is giving them an easy way out and so on. So okay, let's work on them, let's re-convince them and so on and so on." I think first I totally agree with you that, sorry, I will now speak in the worst Lacanian jargon, but that she passes from this, I agree with you, simplified but nonetheless fundamental Marxist insight—which I think doesn't mean that you put racism into secondary role. As my friend Fredric Jameson developed it nicely, you cannot talk about class struggle today in the United States without mentioning at least anti-black racism. And it's not this superficial racism of how you treat blacks. Afropessimists see this very well. It's a much deeper ground-level racism practiced even by well-meaning liberals in the very way they treat blacks, in even if they are well, they are friendly, they are patronizingly friendly and so on and so on. So, uh, but then in the second part she changes into—sorry for this jargon—a totally different discourse. She almost speaks as a electoral campaign organizer, you know: "We have a problem here, we should put more effort in this," and so on and so on. And, uh, it's not so much that I want to brutally oppose, uh, focus on class struggle and convincing people about their racism and so on and so on. But, uh, racism itself is a much more serious thing which, uh, you cannot simply do it by—and that's what worries me in her case—it's simply "we need better propaganda." And this is an old democratic problem. It started with Reagan, where this big shock: "How comes that even poor white people or even some blacks and so on, uh, are that we are losing them, that they are going to Republicans?" And even, I forgot his name, some well-known semiotic linguist even followed this line, even... sorry I forgot, I'm getting old and senile... George Lakoff! Yeah, yeah. Sorry, you're better. You know this naive idea, the problem will be solved if you will be solved if you follow my proposal on how to better do the propaganda and so on and so on. Now as nonetheless a psychoanalyst, I would say that there is so much
sorry, before I get confused, uh, the tragedy is this. It's even maybe more tragic than you think that, that if we were to ask her, AOC, directly, she probably wouldn't have even seen the contradiction. For her it would simply be: "Yes, white people are economically poor white frustrated, uh, racism is giving them an easy way out and so on. So okay, let's work on them, let's re-convince them and so on and so on." I think first I totally agree with you that, sorry, I will now speak in the worst Lacanian jargon, but that she passes from this, I agree with you, simplified but nonetheless fundamental Marxist insight—which I think doesn't mean that you put racism into secondary role. As my friend Fredric Jameson developed it nicely, you cannot talk about class struggle today in the United States without mentioning at least anti-black racism. And it's not this superficial racism of how you treat blacks. Afropessimists see this very well. It's a much deeper ground-level racism practiced even by well-meaning liberals in the very way they treat blacks, in even if they are well, they are friendly, they are patronizingly friendly and so on and so on. So, uh, but then in the second part she changes into—sorry for this jargon—a totally different discourse. She almost speaks as a electoral campaign organizer, you know: "We have a problem here, we should put more effort in this," and so on and so on. And, uh, it's not so much that I want to brutally oppose, uh, focus on class struggle and convincing people about their racism and so on and so on. But, uh, racism itself is a much more serious thing which, uh, you cannot simply do it by—and that's what worries me in her case—it's simply "we need better propaganda." And this is an old democratic problem. It started with Reagan, where this big shock: "How comes that even poor white people or even some blacks and so on, uh, are that we are losing them, that they are going to Republicans?" And even, I forgot his name, some well-known semiotic linguist even followed this line, even... sorry I forgot, I'm getting old and senile... George Lakoff! Yeah, yeah. Sorry, you're better. You know this naive idea, the problem will be solved if you will be solved if you follow my proposal on how to better do the propaganda and so on and so on. Now as nonetheless a psychoanalyst, I would say that there is so much
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more argument—than than just argumentation and so on in racism. Racism is not something that you can directly fight through argumentation. Arguments are very ambiguous, a very ambiguous thing here, because as psychoanalyst again, I would immediately add the point of enjoyment. At everyday level, racism is about stealing: "Others want to steal our enjoyment," you call it these days our way of life, either as a threat, or the others enjoy in perverted ways and so on and so on. There is no racism without enjoyment, where by enjoyment I don't mean mean sexual enjoyment. I mean this deep satisfaction brought about by racist and sexual fantasies and racist and, uh, uh, and sexual ritualistic practices and so on and so on. And if you combine this with, of course, economic interests and so on, you get something which is much harder to do than through mere electoral rhetoric. We have to move to this level because my friend Adrian Johnston, otherwise Hegelian-Lacanian philosopher, pointed out nicely in what strange situation we are today. So often, I will not get lost but this is my old motive: it's not even any longer the fetishism,
more argument—than than just argumentation and so on in racism. Racism is not something that you can directly fight through argumentation. Arguments are very ambiguous, a very ambiguous thing here, because as psychoanalyst again, I would immediately add the point of enjoyment. At everyday level, racism is about stealing: "Others want to steal our enjoyment," you call it these days our way of life, either as a threat, or the others enjoy in perverted ways and so on and so on. There is no racism without enjoyment, where by enjoyment I don't mean mean sexual enjoyment. I mean this deep satisfaction brought about by racist and sexual fantasies and racist and, uh, uh, and sexual ritualistic practices and so on and so on. And if you combine this with, of course, economic interests and so on, you get something which is much harder to do than through mere electoral rhetoric. We have to move to this level because my friend Adrian Johnston, otherwise Hegelian-Lacanian philosopher, pointed out nicely in what strange situation we are today. So often, I will not get lost but this is my old motive: it's not even any longer the fetishism,
Slavoj Žižek
fetishist disavowal, in the sense of *je sais bien mais quand même*, I know very well but. It's a kind of a—I quote Alenka Zupančič here—knowledge itself becomes a fetish. Let's, you know, where you include into being a racist or sexist a reflexive awareness of what you are doing. Let's say I'm doing something which is clearly triggered by some repressed mechanisms, and then you attack me for it. And then my answer is simply: "Yes, I know, I know, I know what I am doing. I know I'm not doing what I should have done. I know, I know." And this knowing it serves as something that enables you nonetheless to do it. I think there is a weird mechanism here of how directly against the early Marxist and Freud-Freudian presuppositions, knowledge... we have to return to this old distinction, Freudian and Marxist, between abstract knowledge—knowing something doesn't in itself mean liberation. Knowing something can also serve as justifying the way what you were doing before. Just you can say, "No, you're not telling me anything new. I know it." Ah, and then you go on knowing it, you know. The same problem was already detected by Freud relatively quickly, because the early Freud's idea was: I have a symptom, when you explain the meaning of the symptom to me, symptom will disappear. Then Freud noticed it doesn't work like that. You rationally accept the meaning of the symptom but the symptom persists simply, you know. So I'm not becoming here an irrationalist in the sense of deep mystical psychic depths. I'm just saying there are different types of knowledge. There is knowledge where you know something very well but it doesn't engage you personally in the sense of acting upon it. And that's I think the big problem today even with ecology and so on and so on. We obviously all know it, you know, there will be global warming, blah-blah-blah. But in some paradoxical sense, knowing it enables us to go on like before. Because then you criticize me and I say, "Yeah, yeah, I know it, I know it," and so on and so on. It's a situation which is very worrying, I think. Yeah, so, so I mean, I think that in the case of racism and, you know, and Trump voters—which, you know, to be absolutely clear, like, of, of course, um, you know, I mean of course Trump was appealing to, to racism quite a bit, you know, in the... Yeah, but at the same time he mixed knowledge... Did you, somebody else sent me a comment, a liberal standard comment, but it, but it in a very naive way
fetishist disavowal, in the sense of *je sais bien mais quand même*, I know very well but. It's a kind of a—I quote Alenka Zupančič here—knowledge itself becomes a fetish. Let's, you know, where you include into being a racist or sexist a reflexive awareness of what you are doing. Let's say I'm doing something which is clearly triggered by some repressed mechanisms, and then you attack me for it. And then my answer is simply: "Yes, I know, I know, I know what I am doing. I know I'm not doing what I should have done. I know, I know." And this knowing it serves as something that enables you nonetheless to do it. I think there is a weird mechanism here of how directly against the early Marxist and Freud-Freudian presuppositions, knowledge... we have to return to this old distinction, Freudian and Marxist, between abstract knowledge—knowing something doesn't in itself mean liberation. Knowing something can also serve as justifying the way what you were doing before. Just you can say, "No, you're not telling me anything new. I know it." Ah, and then you go on knowing it, you know. The same problem was already detected by Freud relatively quickly, because the early Freud's idea was: I have a symptom, when you explain the meaning of the symptom to me, symptom will disappear. Then Freud noticed it doesn't work like that. You rationally accept the meaning of the symptom but the symptom persists simply, you know. So I'm not becoming here an irrationalist in the sense of deep mystical psychic depths. I'm just saying there are different types of knowledge. There is knowledge where you know something very well but it doesn't engage you personally in the sense of acting upon it. And that's I think the big problem today even with ecology and so on and so on. We obviously all know it, you know, there will be global warming, blah-blah-blah. But in some paradoxical sense, knowing it enables us to go on like before. Because then you criticize me and I say, "Yeah, yeah, I know it, I know it," and so on and so on. It's a situation which is very worrying, I think. Yeah, so, so I mean, I think that in the case of racism and, you know, and Trump voters—which, you know, to be absolutely clear, like, of, of course, um, you know, I mean of course Trump was appealing to, to racism quite a bit, you know, in the... Yeah, but at the same time he mixed knowledge... Did you, somebody else sent me a comment, a liberal standard comment, but it, but it in a very naive way
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mostly through quotes... I forgot the
mostly through quotes... I forgot the
Slavoj Žižek
guy's name, sorry... He pointed out very nicely how if you translate Trump into his basic, not rational but whatever argument, racism and so on, you lose his attraction. And his attraction was not just in masking it, but in playing a joker, making fun of himself, dirty jokes... that Trump's disgusting humor is not secondary to his success. It's part of it. So you cannot say that his obscenities, dirty humor, is just a secondary mask. No, it is here as a crucial moment, which also in some sense demobilizes possible critique. Because Trump goes pretty far here, you know, like he says something as a joke which is racist, and then a couple of times you remember he did it then, when he was attacked for racism he said, "But don't you see I was joking," blah-blah-blah and so on. He is totally, he was totally sleazy here, Trump, you know. So what I'm saying, what I'm saying is that, is that I, uh, I, uh, I don't think that this direct appeal to real interests works. Because you know the paradox of our libidinal economy desire is that we are ready to swallow quite a lot to get libidinal perverted satisfaction even if it goes clearly, and we are aware of it, against our interest. Isn't an old left-wing thesis that the triumph of ideology is that this famous middle, lower-mid lower classes whatever, they by voting Trump they are systematically voting against their interests. At the end they, they are the big losers of the transformation of the last decade and so on. And the paradox is that you even cannot say that they are not aware of it. It's at a different level. So here I would complicate things. But, uh, can I go to... sorry, can I go to another point so that we don't run out of time? Uh, yeah, no, I just wanted to say, like, uh, to just to wrap up the, the other point, that like I think that, um, yeah, and I mean the point about ideology and self-interest is probably too interesting to get into now because it'd be too long a discussion. But I think that the, but I, I, I do, I do think, um, I do wonder if we often overestimate the role of, of ideology as opposed to people just making, like, short-term rational decisions about like how they they have no particular reason to think that more radical change is possible, and so, you know, in, you know, because of, you know, it's a collective action problem and, and so, um, you know, it's all kind of, you know, like, you know, whatever, the Prisoners—the Prisoner's Dilemma, right, they're not being irrational, it just ends up going against their self-interest. But as I said, that'd be a much longer discussion. I, I, again, sorry, allow me a little, very short... I agree, I agree with you, the only thing, and I hope we agree here, I would like to add is that it's not, this is not just a psychological phenomenon, but this short-term reasoning is in itself a signal of a certain global ideological situation where people simply no longer believe or take seriously any big cause, you think in short terms. This short-term thinking is itself part of the situation, you know. It's not, it's not just a psychological failure or whatever and so on and so on. But what really, now I will conclude with an anecdote which is embarrassing to me, I mean, to tell, I will... So, so, so, so, sorry before we get the anecdote, Slavoj, could I just say, I wanted to, uh, you know, on the point about the Trump voters, uh, all I was going to say is, is that I think the problem with, uh, you know, with focusing on, you know, the bigotry is not that it's not there, it's that the, it's that what that feels like—you know, saying like that AOC quote, the "anti-racist deep canvassing"—you know, that like what that feels like is, I think from the perspective of the
guy's name, sorry... He pointed out very nicely how if you translate Trump into his basic, not rational but whatever argument, racism and so on, you lose his attraction. And his attraction was not just in masking it, but in playing a joker, making fun of himself, dirty jokes... that Trump's disgusting humor is not secondary to his success. It's part of it. So you cannot say that his obscenities, dirty humor, is just a secondary mask. No, it is here as a crucial moment, which also in some sense demobilizes possible critique. Because Trump goes pretty far here, you know, like he says something as a joke which is racist, and then a couple of times you remember he did it then, when he was attacked for racism he said, "But don't you see I was joking," blah-blah-blah and so on. He is totally, he was totally sleazy here, Trump, you know. So what I'm saying, what I'm saying is that, is that I, uh, I, uh, I don't think that this direct appeal to real interests works. Because you know the paradox of our libidinal economy desire is that we are ready to swallow quite a lot to get libidinal perverted satisfaction even if it goes clearly, and we are aware of it, against our interest. Isn't an old left-wing thesis that the triumph of ideology is that this famous middle, lower-mid lower classes whatever, they by voting Trump they are systematically voting against their interests. At the end they, they are the big losers of the transformation of the last decade and so on. And the paradox is that you even cannot say that they are not aware of it. It's at a different level. So here I would complicate things. But, uh, can I go to... sorry, can I go to another point so that we don't run out of time? Uh, yeah, no, I just wanted to say, like, uh, to just to wrap up the, the other point, that like I think that, um, yeah, and I mean the point about ideology and self-interest is probably too interesting to get into now because it'd be too long a discussion. But I think that the, but I, I, I do, I do think, um, I do wonder if we often overestimate the role of, of ideology as opposed to people just making, like, short-term rational decisions about like how they they have no particular reason to think that more radical change is possible, and so, you know, in, you know, because of, you know, it's a collective action problem and, and so, um, you know, it's all kind of, you know, like, you know, whatever, the Prisoners—the Prisoner's Dilemma, right, they're not being irrational, it just ends up going against their self-interest. But as I said, that'd be a much longer discussion. I, I, again, sorry, allow me a little, very short... I agree, I agree with you, the only thing, and I hope we agree here, I would like to add is that it's not, this is not just a psychological phenomenon, but this short-term reasoning is in itself a signal of a certain global ideological situation where people simply no longer believe or take seriously any big cause, you think in short terms. This short-term thinking is itself part of the situation, you know. It's not, it's not just a psychological failure or whatever and so on and so on. But what really, now I will conclude with an anecdote which is embarrassing to me, I mean, to tell, I will... So, so, so, so, sorry before we get the anecdote, Slavoj, could I just say, I wanted to, uh, you know, on the point about the Trump voters, uh, all I was going to say is, is that I think the problem with, uh, you know, with focusing on, you know, the bigotry is not that it's not there, it's that the, it's that what that feels like—you know, saying like that AOC quote, the "anti-racist deep canvassing"—you know, that like what that feels like is, I think from the perspective of the
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voters you're trying to reach out to, is just kind of a moral attack, you know, that you're telling them that they're bad people and even if they can see your point or whatever, you know, like that's, that's they're just not going to be very receptive to that. Uh, whereas if you, if you appeal, you know, if you, if you make
voters you're trying to reach out to, is just kind of a moral attack, you know, that you're telling them that they're bad people and even if they can see your point or whatever, you know, like that's, that's they're just not going to be very receptive to that. Uh, whereas if you, if you appeal, you know, if you, if you make
Slavoj Žižek
the economic appeal, which don't get me wrong, it's not going to work for everyone, it's not
the economic appeal, which don't get me wrong, it's not going to work for everyone, it's not
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going to work for a ton of people, but they have a, but if you make that, I think that that has a much better chance of being packaged together with
going to work for a ton of people, but they have a, but if you make that, I think that that has a much better chance of being packaged together with
Slavoj Žižek
better, you know, racial attitudes because instead of just like morally attacking somebody, you know, you're presenting, you know, just a more appealing vision of what politics should, you know, should be about, and that just seems like it's going to be much more likely to entice whoever's capable of being enticed. I totally agree with you here and I'll give you a proof. Isn't this, when he was more active, isn't this the formula of Bernie Sanders' success? He was talking this economic language very concretely and it's incredible what wide resonance he found. My son, younger one, who followed this closely, uh, debates four years ago and so on, said that how, how big TV stations downplayed him. Like often when he was on the show, it got much more viewers but they tried to sidetrack him, you know, to put him as a... It's not so... I totally agree with you, it's not that Trumpian jokes work and then who wants to listen to this boring document, boring numbers and so on? No, I agree with you, Bernie did it in a way. For me, if you ask me for one scene, image even, which defines the last years, was you remember Trump inauguration, Bernie sitting alone there in a corner. Yes. I bet that this became the iconic image, overshadowing all those stupid poetry and songs or whatever, you know. Yeah, no, absolutely. I, I, I should say I really loved the, from the, the introduction to your book, uh, at the end of the
better, you know, racial attitudes because instead of just like morally attacking somebody, you know, you're presenting, you know, just a more appealing vision of what politics should, you know, should be about, and that just seems like it's going to be much more likely to entice whoever's capable of being enticed. I totally agree with you here and I'll give you a proof. Isn't this, when he was more active, isn't this the formula of Bernie Sanders' success? He was talking this economic language very concretely and it's incredible what wide resonance he found. My son, younger one, who followed this closely, uh, debates four years ago and so on, said that how, how big TV stations downplayed him. Like often when he was on the show, it got much more viewers but they tried to sidetrack him, you know, to put him as a... It's not so... I totally agree with you, it's not that Trumpian jokes work and then who wants to listen to this boring document, boring numbers and so on? No, I agree with you, Bernie did it in a way. For me, if you ask me for one scene, image even, which defines the last years, was you remember Trump inauguration, Bernie sitting alone there in a corner. Yes. I bet that this became the iconic image, overshadowing all those stupid poetry and songs or whatever, you know. Yeah, no, absolutely. I, I, I should say I really loved the, from the, the introduction to your book, uh, at the end of the
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introduction you say, uh, "what then is to be done? Lenin's demand for concrete analysis of the concrete situation is today more actual than ever. No simple universal formula could provide the answer. There are moments in which pragmatic support for modest progressive measures is needed. There are moments when a radical confrontation is the only way, and there are moments when a sober silence and a cute pair of mittens speak more than a thousand words." So. Yeah, but it's really a concrete situation. This is why I agree with you. I'm not dismissing, in the direction of like what some radical leftists are doing, AOC. Basically her judgment was the right one, without
introduction you say, uh, "what then is to be done? Lenin's demand for concrete analysis of the concrete situation is today more actual than ever. No simple universal formula could provide the answer. There are moments in which pragmatic support for modest progressive measures is needed. There are moments when a radical confrontation is the only way, and there are moments when a sober silence and a cute pair of mittens speak more than a thousand words." So. Yeah, but it's really a concrete situation. This is why I agree with you. I'm not dismissing, in the direction of like what some radical leftists are doing, AOC. Basically her judgment was the right one, without
Slavoj Žižek
naivety. We know, and now it's becoming clear how Biden will not be able to do it. But this was a mega-pedagogical experience we had to go through it. It would have been a catastrophe to say at the beginning, "No, Biden will fail, let's just oppose him," and so on and so on. Because, you know, these failures are never pure, simple failures. Failures leave traces. Here I disagreed years ago with Badiou when there was Occupy Wall Street, he said, "oh, it was just they were the true just a couple of relatively
naivety. We know, and now it's becoming clear how Biden will not be able to do it. But this was a mega-pedagogical experience we had to go through it. It would have been a catastrophe to say at the beginning, "No, Biden will fail, let's just oppose him," and so on and so on. Because, you know, these failures are never pure, simple failures. Failures leave traces. Here I disagreed years ago with Badiou when there was Occupy Wall Street, he said, "oh, it was just they were the true just a couple of relatively
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rich educated sons." But I agree here, haha, with Chomsky, who said, "Yeah, they failed, it dissipated, disappeared. But it left a trace," you know. Somewhere in—I will not use this obscurantist term—public unconscious, but there is a kind of a deep working public political memory. All this remains. So I'm not... so can I just to conclude, you can then cut it... Yeah, yeah, please do. Now comes the, the disgusting thing. And while I say disgusting, I really mean, uh, sorry, I just have to find it... ah-ha. I really mean disgusting. Uh, where are we today? But it's a necessary part against this poverty, new poverty and so on. Uh, on January 8th, now less than a week ago, Yahoo reported that a reality star, I wonder if you noticed this, that a reality star made from... should I use the F-word, the other one, not fuck... fart... from selling her farts in Mason jars. Now she was taking, eating so much beans and so on to produce enough farts, so now it hurt her body, so now she is selling it through
rich educated sons." But I agree here, haha, with Chomsky, who said, "Yeah, they failed, it dissipated, disappeared. But it left a trace," you know. Somewhere in—I will not use this obscurantist term—public unconscious, but there is a kind of a deep working public political memory. All this remains. So I'm not... so can I just to conclude, you can then cut it... Yeah, yeah, please do. Now comes the, the disgusting thing. And while I say disgusting, I really mean, uh, sorry, I just have to find it... ah-ha. I really mean disgusting. Uh, where are we today? But it's a necessary part against this poverty, new poverty and so on. Uh, on January 8th, now less than a week ago, Yahoo reported that a reality star, I wonder if you noticed this, that a reality star made from... should I use the F-word, the other one, not fuck... fart... from selling her farts in Mason jars. Now she was taking, eating so much beans and so on to produce enough farts, so now it hurt her body, so now she is selling it through
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NFTs as... as NFTs. You, that is to say, you just buy it as a so that you symbolically own a unique her, unique fart art. Now what I find so fascinating, this is for me almost the truth of NFT, how, you know, how millions—even if you take all of NFT, it's already billions of dollars are being spent, but in
NFTs as... as NFTs. You, that is to say, you just buy it as a so that you symbolically own a unique her, unique fart art. Now what I find so fascinating, this is for me almost the truth of NFT, how, you know, how millions—even if you take all of NFT, it's already billions of dollars are being spent, but in
Slavoj Žižek
a way which, my God, we would have to think about it, what property means and so on. Because as some analysts pointed out, uh, NFT is a crazy attempt to introduce artificial scarcity into a domain where everything in principle could have been for free, free-floating. And the madness, the paradox, is that it doesn't even mean real scarcity, like documents still circulate freely and so on. And you can even make an NFT of an object which doesn't, you even don't have to prove that this object really exists. So it's really a point of madness of how it's not only financial speculation, but the object of speculation itself becomes purely virtual, it's not necessary to be there. Now, I'm, I'm not saying this is a perversion of a true function of money. I read somewhere a
a way which, my God, we would have to think about it, what property means and so on. Because as some analysts pointed out, uh, NFT is a crazy attempt to introduce artificial scarcity into a domain where everything in principle could have been for free, free-floating. And the madness, the paradox, is that it doesn't even mean real scarcity, like documents still circulate freely and so on. And you can even make an NFT of an object which doesn't, you even don't have to prove that this object really exists. So it's really a point of madness of how it's not only financial speculation, but the object of speculation itself becomes purely virtual, it's not necessary to be there. Now, I'm, I'm not saying this is a perversion of a true function of money. I read somewhere a
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wonderful analysis
wonderful analysis
Slavoj Žižek
arguing against... you saw, of course, you are civilized men, you saw the movie or the novel
arguing against... you saw, of course, you are civilized men, you saw the movie or the novel
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Goldfinger, James Bond. Yeah, I've seen Goldfinger. The idea of bombing the gold reserves. The idea is if they are, if they are bombed by a nuclear bomb, they are radiated, they cannot be used, so, uh, those who have real gold, their gold will be times more, uh, gain in value, times more expensive and so on and so on. But I read a nice analysis which says: but why? I mean, the
Goldfinger, James Bond. Yeah, I've seen Goldfinger. The idea of bombing the gold reserves. The idea is if they are, if they are bombed by a nuclear bomb, they are radiated, they cannot be used, so, uh, those who have real gold, their gold will be times more, uh, gain in value, times more expensive and so on and so on. But I read a nice analysis which says: but why? I mean, the
Slavoj Žižek
way, the way, the way, where is it, in Kentucky somewhere, my God, where is all the gold stored now? Most of the gold in, uh, how's that place called? Sorry, I'm getting old and senile. Uh, Fort Knox? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, Fort Knox! Sorry, I'm getting old and senile. But okay, but it doesn't really matter. You know what those in, in power should have done? What if they succeeded in blocking the news that Fort Knox is radioactive, we don't have access to gold there? And nothing would have happened, because we don't use that gold. It just has to be there, presupposed as something, you know. You have from the very beginning this virtual dimension where basically you can cheat. Even rich people are doing this, I was always fascinated by this. You know that many stars who have, let's say, a ultra-expensive diamond necklace. You make a perfect copy and then you have the real necklace in the bank or in a safe. But you know like you can cheat in principle. What I'm saying is that, is that some mad dimension which was from the beginning there is now exploding openly. And what fascinates me is that on the one hand we have real needs, hunger, global warming, but on the other hand we have these explosions. It's no longer marginal. It's billions of dollars already in this virtuality. It makes me really sad. Now, the last thing, just to conclude. Mm-hmm. This brings us to the role of the state. Again, it's so fashionable to say again and again how, you know, state is just a puppet and so on and so on. But my good friend, I mentioned him already, Álvaro García Linera, the ex-vice-president of under Morales of Bolivia, who is also a great theoretician. He, as a Marxist, he emphasizes this, drew attention to how surprising a thing, at least in the first couple of months, the COVID pandemic was, that something unheard of happened. Can I read this quote? It's long but it's wonderful. "For the first time in human history, vast numbers of people across the world have agreed to abandon their paid activities, to stop attending public, uh, nation-state and so on. One should be here absolutely without any prejudice... okay, sorry, I don't want to... sorry, yeah... to stop attending public gatherings and confine themselves in their homes for weeks and months. We are living in a kind of general planetary strike which has paralyzed most of the transport, commerce, production, services. People have accepted confinement when asked to do so by the state institution, which justify the measure as a way to stop the spread of coronavirus and so on and so on." And Linera then points out that it wasn't, as Agamben thinks, the terror of the state. In many cases, in my own country, in UK I remember, people wanted harsher measures. Bearing in mind the interest of economy, state didn't want to do it. But what Linera is right to point out: it is that, at least in the first you remember
way, the way, the way, where is it, in Kentucky somewhere, my God, where is all the gold stored now? Most of the gold in, uh, how's that place called? Sorry, I'm getting old and senile. Uh, Fort Knox? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, Fort Knox! Sorry, I'm getting old and senile. But okay, but it doesn't really matter. You know what those in, in power should have done? What if they succeeded in blocking the news that Fort Knox is radioactive, we don't have access to gold there? And nothing would have happened, because we don't use that gold. It just has to be there, presupposed as something, you know. You have from the very beginning this virtual dimension where basically you can cheat. Even rich people are doing this, I was always fascinated by this. You know that many stars who have, let's say, a ultra-expensive diamond necklace. You make a perfect copy and then you have the real necklace in the bank or in a safe. But you know like you can cheat in principle. What I'm saying is that, is that some mad dimension which was from the beginning there is now exploding openly. And what fascinates me is that on the one hand we have real needs, hunger, global warming, but on the other hand we have these explosions. It's no longer marginal. It's billions of dollars already in this virtuality. It makes me really sad. Now, the last thing, just to conclude. Mm-hmm. This brings us to the role of the state. Again, it's so fashionable to say again and again how, you know, state is just a puppet and so on and so on. But my good friend, I mentioned him already, Álvaro García Linera, the ex-vice-president of under Morales of Bolivia, who is also a great theoretician. He, as a Marxist, he emphasizes this, drew attention to how surprising a thing, at least in the first couple of months, the COVID pandemic was, that something unheard of happened. Can I read this quote? It's long but it's wonderful. "For the first time in human history, vast numbers of people across the world have agreed to abandon their paid activities, to stop attending public, uh, nation-state and so on. One should be here absolutely without any prejudice... okay, sorry, I don't want to... sorry, yeah... to stop attending public gatherings and confine themselves in their homes for weeks and months. We are living in a kind of general planetary strike which has paralyzed most of the transport, commerce, production, services. People have accepted confinement when asked to do so by the state institution, which justify the measure as a way to stop the spread of coronavirus and so on and so on." And Linera then points out that it wasn't, as Agamben thinks, the terror of the state. In many cases, in my own country, in UK I remember, people wanted harsher measures. Bearing in mind the interest of economy, state didn't want to do it. But what Linera is right to point out: it is that, at least in the first you remember
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months
months
Slavoj Žižek
of panic, on the one hand, uh, society down there was in a panic—people, millions losing jobs, uh, companies, especially small companies disappearing and so on—there was a confusion. Internationally, states behaved in an egotistic way, international cooperation didn't work, blah. So wasn't this a kind of a the greatest moment of state power? Weren't we all looking automatically towards state that, my God, society is a mess, only the state can do
of panic, on the one hand, uh, society down there was in a panic—people, millions losing jobs, uh, companies, especially small companies disappearing and so on—there was a confusion. Internationally, states behaved in an egotistic way, international cooperation didn't work, blah. So wasn't this a kind of a the greatest moment of state power? Weren't we all looking automatically towards state that, my God, society is a mess, only the state can do
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it?
it?
Slavoj Žižek
And Linera's conclusion, I love it as an old totalitarian, is not just this was an illusion and so on. But no, of course what the state then effectively did was they did meet some of these demands, a little bit of money to people, they also did the work for capital and so on and so on. But Linera's conclusion is that we the left shouldn't wait for some authentic anti-state revolution, but we should gather, we should gather the courage to admit that in future critical situations—new pandemic or global warming, panic, fires—public authority is the, is for us now at least, the big agent which can really do it. Some friends of mine like Badiou again, is here against state and for local communities. He said the solution to, uh, to global warming and this ecological problem is that local communities take care, independent committees of local "what are we doing, are we polluting" and so on and so on. I don't think this works. For a simple reason, we already talked about it I think. Remember that ultra-heat in, uh, southern southwest Canada, northwest United States, Seattle to Vancouver, uh, uh, last summer. Almost degrees Celsius. You cannot deal with this locally because it was absolutely clear, demonstrated by science, that this was a local effect, but this effect was the result of global disturbance of air currents and so on and so on. They may be doing many horrible things, people of there, but they were not responsible for this. They even established a nice model of how a global disturbance could then, when something is, when something is, blocks the normal air large mass of air movement, then brings, gives birth to this extreme local heat. So again, I don't think local, local, local self-control, local communities controlling themselves is a solution. No, because the phenomenon is global, the, the, the causality is global. In this book I think or somewhere else I take another example. In southern Chile they have for a couple of years now terrible drought. But they are not doing anything there, a little bit of agriculture. And scientists established a model, again also in the southern hemisphere, how air currents and, and the temperature of the ocean, all this led to, to drought there. So again, I am not, uh, magnifying the state or or naively believing in state. I'm just saying in situations of crisis, really global crisis when really scared—imagine for example even worse temperatures and so on, like I don't know terrible heat up to over degrees and so on. Now when people will be in a panic, in today's situation, who can do it but the state? Maybe we will afterwards have another solution. But that's why, and that's Linera's point, being fully aware of all the problems with state and so on, alienated blah-blah, we shouldn't be afraid to use it as an instrument maybe even against itself. It would be madness to pursue in this Badiou line of "the authentic politics takes place outside of the state, the state is alienated." Yes, it is, but in desperate situation we can use every as Linera points out nicely. Nonetheless, in some countries with popular pressure, the state did some good things and so on and so on. So we should here I think the crisis to come will for will force will force us to change this paradigm of, of of what is authentic politics and to well in some sense rehabilitate nation-states or even trans-national authority as the only way to cope with the problems we are approaching. And definitely, and here I wanted to speak with Albert, your friend. Like what would his answer be here? Like he has more this anarchist local approach. Okay, what would he advise to do to the people... there are other worse examples, but let's say to the people in Seattle and Vancouver last summer. This is not their problem. It didn't come from space, from... no, it came as a global result of this great perturb... which is now happening everywhere. Do you know that we talked about it already that at the same time in northern Siberia, in a city close to Arctic Ocean there, where winter temp temperatures are usually record low up to minus degrees Celsius... mm-hmm... in June or last summer they had No, I'm not don't want to raise panic, nobody knows what is happening. But the absolutely only solution I see here is science, global cooperation and so on and so on. And when people say science is dogmatic with regard to pandemic, no, science is now openly admitting, admitting... this is what I like now, all the confusion with Omicron. Isn't science, the official science, more or less openly saying, "sorry guys there is, we are more and more discovering how many things we don't know"? So I would like to have a science which would be able to be more dogmatic. No, everybody knows science cannot do it. I mean they are saying now. And I don't think this can be back-translated into "yes, because they are slaves to big pharmaceutical companies who would like to, to vaccinate us again and again." No, it's not as simple as that. There are signs of genuine panic. We did whatever we wanted, please I hope I was not too bad again. I repeat to you: be a good censor.
And Linera's conclusion, I love it as an old totalitarian, is not just this was an illusion and so on. But no, of course what the state then effectively did was they did meet some of these demands, a little bit of money to people, they also did the work for capital and so on and so on. But Linera's conclusion is that we the left shouldn't wait for some authentic anti-state revolution, but we should gather, we should gather the courage to admit that in future critical situations—new pandemic or global warming, panic, fires—public authority is the, is for us now at least, the big agent which can really do it. Some friends of mine like Badiou again, is here against state and for local communities. He said the solution to, uh, to global warming and this ecological problem is that local communities take care, independent committees of local "what are we doing, are we polluting" and so on and so on. I don't think this works. For a simple reason, we already talked about it I think. Remember that ultra-heat in, uh, southern southwest Canada, northwest United States, Seattle to Vancouver, uh, uh, last summer. Almost degrees Celsius. You cannot deal with this locally because it was absolutely clear, demonstrated by science, that this was a local effect, but this effect was the result of global disturbance of air currents and so on and so on. They may be doing many horrible things, people of there, but they were not responsible for this. They even established a nice model of how a global disturbance could then, when something is, when something is, blocks the normal air large mass of air movement, then brings, gives birth to this extreme local heat. So again, I don't think local, local, local self-control, local communities controlling themselves is a solution. No, because the phenomenon is global, the, the, the causality is global. In this book I think or somewhere else I take another example. In southern Chile they have for a couple of years now terrible drought. But they are not doing anything there, a little bit of agriculture. And scientists established a model, again also in the southern hemisphere, how air currents and, and the temperature of the ocean, all this led to, to drought there. So again, I am not, uh, magnifying the state or or naively believing in state. I'm just saying in situations of crisis, really global crisis when really scared—imagine for example even worse temperatures and so on, like I don't know terrible heat up to over degrees and so on. Now when people will be in a panic, in today's situation, who can do it but the state? Maybe we will afterwards have another solution. But that's why, and that's Linera's point, being fully aware of all the problems with state and so on, alienated blah-blah, we shouldn't be afraid to use it as an instrument maybe even against itself. It would be madness to pursue in this Badiou line of "the authentic politics takes place outside of the state, the state is alienated." Yes, it is, but in desperate situation we can use every as Linera points out nicely. Nonetheless, in some countries with popular pressure, the state did some good things and so on and so on. So we should here I think the crisis to come will for will force will force us to change this paradigm of, of of what is authentic politics and to well in some sense rehabilitate nation-states or even trans-national authority as the only way to cope with the problems we are approaching. And definitely, and here I wanted to speak with Albert, your friend. Like what would his answer be here? Like he has more this anarchist local approach. Okay, what would he advise to do to the people... there are other worse examples, but let's say to the people in Seattle and Vancouver last summer. This is not their problem. It didn't come from space, from... no, it came as a global result of this great perturb... which is now happening everywhere. Do you know that we talked about it already that at the same time in northern Siberia, in a city close to Arctic Ocean there, where winter temp temperatures are usually record low up to minus degrees Celsius... mm-hmm... in June or last summer they had No, I'm not don't want to raise panic, nobody knows what is happening. But the absolutely only solution I see here is science, global cooperation and so on and so on. And when people say science is dogmatic with regard to pandemic, no, science is now openly admitting, admitting... this is what I like now, all the confusion with Omicron. Isn't science, the official science, more or less openly saying, "sorry guys there is, we are more and more discovering how many things we don't know"? So I would like to have a science which would be able to be more dogmatic. No, everybody knows science cannot do it. I mean they are saying now. And I don't think this can be back-translated into "yes, because they are slaves to big pharmaceutical companies who would like to, to vaccinate us again and again." No, it's not as simple as that. There are signs of genuine panic. We did whatever we wanted, please I hope I was not too bad again. I repeat to you: be a good censor.