Ideology as Augmented Reality
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-05-15 · 1:57:46 · 15,981 words
with Cathy Newman
ideologycapitalismliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracygeopolitics-warpsychoanalysiscommunism-socialismrace-antisemitismreligion-theologyhistoryphilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a lecture on how ideology today operates as anti-ideology: the dominant order masks itself as a pragmatic critique of utopian alternatives, making any vision of social change appear dangerous. He analyzes the 2017 French presidential election (Macron vs. Le Pen) as a case where the 'defeat of fascism' functioned to neutralize genuine left alternatives, then extends the argument through a sustained discussion of refugees, multiculturalism, jouissance, and the problem of universal human rights versus particular ways of life. The talk concludes with a defence of Enlightenment universalism against both Western cultural imperialism and anti-colonialist relativism, arguing that the only way to fight global capitalism is to contest universality from within rather than retreat into particular identities.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “speculative realism / object-oriented ontology”
New tendencies in social thought (Graham Harman, DeLanda's assemblage theory) that Žižek plans to confront systematically, he acknowledges local insights but signals disagreement with the broader orientation.
The habit of applying old ready-made labels (e.g. 'fascist') to new political phenomena instead of analysing what is genuinely new about them.
as “optimism in pessimism”
Žižek's Maoist position: the situation is excellent precisely because there is great disorder, the disintegration of the existing order is the condition of possibility for something new, even if millions suffer on the way.
as “cynical resignation”
The predominant ideological posture today: not a utopian vision but an acceptance of how things are, accompanied by warnings that any desire to change them radically leads to totalitarian horror.
as “ideology as anti-ideology”
The dominant ideological move today is to present itself as a pragmatic critique of ideology, so that any emancipatory vision is immediately denounced as utopian or totalitarian.
Not named explicitly but implied in the discussion of how today's ideological censorship operates not through repressive state apparatus but by crushing hope and interpellating subjects as post-ideological pragmatists.
as “proletarian”
For Marx, not merely the exploited but labour-power reduced to pure subjectivity, disciplined through factory work; Žižek uses this precise definition to argue refugees do not qualify as the new proletariat.
as “human rights as rights of the speaking body”
Following Milner, universal human rights apply not to abstract natural man but to what remains of a citizen stripped of all specific cultural membership, a purely material, bodily remainder (food, water, toilets).
as “jouissance / enjoyment”
The libidinal core of a community's way of life, the specific mode of collective enjoyment that makes integration threatening because it touches what feels most essential to group identity.
A universality that presents itself as neutral and all-encompassing while actually privileging a particular (Western, bourgeois) way of life, but one whose self-inconsistency immediately opens spaces for subordinated groups to claim inclusion.
as “antagonism”
The constitutive conflict that runs through every particular way of life from within, rather than arriving as external pressure, the universal is this internal antagonism, not a neutral container above particulars.
An ideological formula, found from Nazis to contemporary right-wing movements, that is anti-semitic at home ('no Jews here') while supporting the Jewish state abroad, now generalised to 'Islamophobic respect for Islam' in ethnocentric nationalism.
Huntington's clash of civilisations is not the opposite of Fukuyama's liberal-capitalist end of history but its ideological form: peaceful coexistence of culturally distinct blocs all integrated into one global market.
Marx's insight that the market is universality in practice, money speaks a single language regardless of cultural difference, making capitalism more genuinely universal than any ideology of universalism.
Laclau's term for master signifiers of hegemony (e.g. 'the people', 'freedom') that unite heterogeneous groups precisely because each group fills them differently, the content is contested after the movement forms.
In Lacanian terms, a community's organised mode of jouissance, not merely cultural practices like food and music but above all unwritten rules of sexuality, hierarchy, and mating.
Stories he reaches for 8
A twelve-year-old Roma girl fled to Slovenian police to escape a marriage arranged by her father; the Roma community defended the practice as the very core of their way of life, arguing that without it they would disappear in two or three generations. Feminists who normally endorsed multiculturalism were forced to take a universal women's-rights position.
“arranging marriages is the very core of our way of life if you take this from us in two-three generations we disappear”
A listener asks Radio Yerevan whether Rabinovich won a new car in the lottery; the answer is 'in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him.' Applied to the French election: in principle France defeated fascism with an outsider, only the winner embodies the very politics that empowers Le Pen.
“in principle yes it's true only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him”
Before British colonisation, India was in a 'messy' mixed state and the Laws of Manu were largely irrelevant; British colonisers revived and propagated the text because they found that keeping Indians in their caste hierarchy made them easier to dominate than Westernising them.
“they reprinted the book propagated it because they discovered if Indians follow this ancient traditions that's the way to keep them”
What is the difference in sinning between Catholicism and Protestantism? In Catholicism everything is pardoned if you confess; in Protestantism you just have to feel a little bit guilty and then you can do whatever you want.
“in Catholicism everything is pardoned if you admit it in the confession…in Protestantism you just have to feel a little bit guilty then you can do whatever you want”
In 1967 workers in Shanghai took Mao's words literally, declared the Shanghai Commune without army or party, and Mao had to send in the army to crush it, with thousands dying. This was the moment of truth of the Cultural Revolution: the most violent battle was not against class enemies but internal.
“the highest battle with most victims of Cultural Revolution was not against bourgeoisie reactionaries what strictly internal”
Europe kept Syriza in power precisely because a radical left government could impose the harshest austerity without triggering mass mobilisation, whereas a conservative government doing the same would face permanent demonstrations.
“very wisely they decided…they never tried really to overthrow Syriza…by way of keeping Syriza in power they demoralized totally the situation”
On narrow mountain paths in old Tibet, when a peasant and a feudal master met going opposite ways, the peasant had to step off the path, put a sleeve over his shoulder, bow down, look upward, and stick out his tongue, a precise ritual of total abasement. The Chinese eventually intervened to stop this, which was condemned as interference in Tibetan way of life.
“he was obliged to put a sleeve over his shoulder bow down and look with the eyes up and stick his tongue up like the whole ritual of appearing totally stupid”
In correspondence with Saint-Just, Robespierre saw his downfall coming but chose to lose his head rather than violate legality, the Jacobins' ultimate weapon was always public speech in the Assemblée Nationale, not terror, and they were simply voted out.
“I know I will lose my head I prefer to do this than to step outside of the law”
Works invoked 11
Used to illustrate how jouissance attaches to dystopian worlds we consciously reject; viewers enjoy the detailed rules of the society, not just its horror.
The Laws of Manu book
Described as 'the most horrible ideological masterwork' Žižek knows; used to illustrate how British colonisers promoted ancient caste hierarchy to keep Indians manageable, and the general argument that imperialism thrives on local tradition.
Arrival film
Described as 'much more subversive than it may appear', not new age circular-time mysticism but a serious theoretical problem about virtual space and new forms of immortality.
Relire la Révolution book
Žižek says it 'convinced him absolutely' in his love for the Jacobins; cites Milner's redefinition of human rights as rights of the speaking body and the Calais example extensively.
Immaterialism book
Named as the main target in Žižek's planned systematic confrontation with object-oriented ontology.
Described as 'the best text by Assange', demonstrates Google is a 'privately owned NSA corporation' and details the mechanisms of digital control in nominally free societies.
The Discovery film
Recommended alongside Arrival as a theoretical problem about alternate history and circular time.
Both the first episode (prime minister forced to have sex with a pig) and the first episode of season 2 (constant social rating) are cited; the rating episode used to illustrate the reality of digital surveillance and social scoring.
Praised as 'a great Argentinian movie' and the best staging of everyday provincial ideological despair.
MAD Magazine other
Fondly recalled from youth; its four-level fashion hierarchy story is used to analyse how social grading systems exclude both the very bottom and very top.
A questioner asks about this film (a train that passes without visible evidence); Žižek says he has downloaded it but not yet watched it, and describes it as 'excellent'.
People invoked 34
Samuel Huntington negative
Žižek rejects the clash of civilisations as a genuinely alternative framework, arguing it is the ideological form of Fukuyamaist global capitalism rather than its opposite.
Narendra Modi negative
Listed among contemporary ethnonationalist leaders whose model Žižek sees as the new ideological form of global capitalism.
Robert Mugabe negative
Cited for ironically endorsing Trump's 'America First' as 'Zimbabwe First', illustrating how anti-colonialist leaders can embrace the ethnic-particularist logic that serves global capitalism.
Marine Le Pen negative
Žižek acknowledges she is a racist populist but warns that calling her a fascist is leftist laziness; she addresses real popular dissatisfactions in a mystifying neo-fascist way.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked repeatedly: jouissance as the core of ways of life; empty signifiers; the formulation 'don't give me what I'm asking for'; universality of the signifier; Lacanian version of 'way of life'.
Margaret Atwood positive
Author of The Handmaid's Tale, whose TV adaptation Žižek uses to analyse jouissance and the fascination with dystopian worlds.
Francis Fukuyama negative
The 'Fukuyamaist' position, liberal capitalism as end of history, is cited as part of the old universalist ideology that Trump's America First explicitly abandons, but whose global market logic survives under a different cultural superstructure.
Mentioned only as the theorist of performative construction of femininity cited in the American feminist questionnaire sent to Bosnian rape victims, used to illustrate cultural imperialism of theory.
Donald Trump negative
Žižek sarcastically claims satisfaction with Trump because 'America First' signals the end of US global hegemony; but sees the real danger as Trump's model, strong ethnonationalism plus global capital, spreading globally alongside Erdogan, Putin, Modi, Xi.
Briefly mentioned as someone Žižek has met and read; no specific intellectual content attributed.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just positive
Letter exchanges with Robespierre cited to show the Jacobins were lucid about their coming downfall and made a principled choice for legality.
Emmanuel Macron negative
Žižek argues Macron's economic politics (as former French finance minister) is the main cause of the popular discontent that empowers Le Pen; his victory functions to neutralise left alternatives and make global capitalism the protector against fascism.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited approvingly for his formulation that ideological censorship today crushes hope rather than resistance; also criticised for his multicultural vision that elides sexual hierarchy and relations of servitude within ways of life.
Graham Harman negative
Mentioned as the main opponent in a planned systematic confrontation with speculative realism / object-oriented ontology (his 'Immaterialism' book cited).
Cited as evidence that even billionaires at the apex of capitalism acknowledge the system is approaching a limit, Žižek does not support Musk but uses him to show his diagnosis is not eccentric.
Jean-Claude Milner positive
Žižek praises Milner's book 'Relire la Révolution' highly; credits him for redefining human rights as rights of the speaking body stripped of citizenship, using the Calais refugees as illustration.
Julian Assange positive
Žižek defends the charge that WikiLeaks only targets the US by arguing that exposing the illusion of freedom in ostensibly free societies is precisely the point; credits Assange's book on Google as the best text on digital surveillance.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan negative
The Turkish referendum under Erdoğan is Žižek's central example of the new Zionist anti-semitism formula, Islamophobic respect for Islam: 'good, they have their Islam there, we have our Christianity here'.
Yanis Varoufakis negative
Described as a good friend; Žižek found Varoufakis's DiEM (Democracy in Europe Movement) idea 'a little bit stupid' because a more transparent democratic Europe would practically mean getting rid of refugees.
Evo Morales positive
Bolivia is named as the country closest to Žižek politically: 'doing silently their modest job', enforcing progressive measures without screwing up the economy, with no illusions.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Cited as an example of a politician who chose legal principle (staying within the Assemblée Nationale's procedures) over survival; Milner's revisionist reading of Jacobins is endorsed.
Michel Foucault negative
The 'pseudo-Foucaultian' position of marginal resistance to state power is criticised; Žižek urges the left to seize state power instead of finding niches of resistance.
Ernesto Laclau positive
Žižek had 'very bad relations with him at the end' but credits his concept of empty signifiers and hegemony as useful for understanding how heterogeneous political movements coalesce around shared names despite different content.
Cited alongside Musk as evidence that the limits of capitalism are acknowledged even at the highest levels of the system.
Manuel DeLanda negative
Cited alongside Harman as a target of planned critique, specifically his assemblage theory.
Angela Merkel positive
Cited as an example of a real politician who took the risk of acting against the probable democratic majority by admitting refugees without a public vote, hoping for retroactive justification.
Mao Zedong positive
Žižek identifies as 'Maoist' in citing Mao's 'great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent' as the formula for his own pessimistic optimism; the Shanghai Commune episode is used as a historical lesson about revolution's internal enemies.
A quote from Heydrich distinguishing Zionist from assimilationist Jews and expressing Nazi good wishes toward Zionism is read out as the founding document of the 'Zionist anti-semitism' formula.
Mentioned as having split from speculative realism to follow his own path; no further assessment.
Ramesh Srinivasan negative
His book on decolonising digital technology is cited and extensively criticised: his conclusion that digitalisation should start from local cultural wisdom is called 'catastrophic' and 'madness'.
Vladimir Putin negative
Listed among the new ethnocentric nationalist leaders whose model combines ethnic particularism with global market integration.
Hugo Chávez negative
Described as 'Fidel Castro with money' who threw money at problems rather than solving them; his industrial policy is criticised as a failure, factories given to workers invariably collapsed within a year.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek invokes Marx's precise concept of the proletarian to argue against refugees-as-new-proletariat; his theory of real abstraction (market as universality in practice) and critique of universal human rights as bourgeois rights are central throughout.
Tony Blair negative
Cited as an example of post-ideological politics: Blair announced he wants to found a genuinely post-ideological politics, which for Žižek is ideology par excellence.
What it argues
ideology functioning as its own critiquethe French election and the neutralisation of left hoperefugees, multiculturalism, and the limits of tolerancejouissance and the politics of ways of lifeuniversalism vs. cultural relativismglobal capitalism thriving on ethnic particularismself-criticism of the contemporary left
Dialectical moves 10
“You have to be stupid not to see that — today the predominant version of this is: you have to be stupid to see that there is any possibility of change. Ideology now appears precisely as the critique of ideology.”
The classic formula of ideological exposure is inverted: today's ideology is the very gesture that dismisses all alternatives as dangerous illusions.
“Far from Macron representing a defeat of fascism, his victory opens the prospect that global capitalism is now presenting itself as the last protection against fascism.”
The apparent triumph of anti-fascist democracy is really the consolidation of a capitalism that needs fascism as its permanent external threat.
“The true utopians are those who think we just do a little bit of austerity and we can go on indefinitely. Those who propose radical change are the real realists.”
Realism and utopianism are inverted: incremental adjustment within the existing system is the real fantasy.
“It is not that global capitalism destroys local cultures — on the contrary, today's global capitalism thrives on strong ethnic particularism and nationalist identity.”
The apparent opposition between global capital and local tradition dissolves: ethnocentric nationalism is the ideological superstructure of contemporary capitalism.
“Huntington's clash of civilisations is not opposed to Fukuyama's end of history — it is precisely its ideological form. Peaceful coexistence of civilisations is Fukuyamaist global capitalism.”
The apparent alternatives of universalist liberalism and civilisational pluralism turn out to be two faces of the same global capitalist order.
“Universality is not located above particular identities as their neutral container; it is the antagonism that cuts from within each way of life.”
The universal is not a transcendent neutral frame but the immanent conflict that constitutes every particular community.
“Those who proclaim the decolonisation of knowledge and privilege of local wisdom over science appear as partisans of authentic ancient tradition but are effectively the most decadent postmodernists.”
Anti-colonial epistemic relativism, far from defending local cultures, enacts the very postmodern dissolution of all meaning it claims to oppose.
“To be truly anti-racist and for refugees you have to act a little bit non-democratically, because a democratic majority in most European countries would vote against refugees.”
Genuine anti-racism today requires a certain suspension of immediate democratic will, the democratic form is the enemy of the democratic content.
“True freedom is very close to necessity: a true radical free act is always experienced in the sense that I have chosen it because I couldn't have done otherwise.”
Authentic freedom is not the liberal freedom of choosing between options but the necessity of a genuine commitment that forecloses alternatives.
“The more we are actually impotent, dominated by anonymous systems, the more we are treated as free psychological subjects who can choose our fate.”
The ideology of psychological freedom and individual choice is inversely proportional to actual social power.
Claims 16
asserts
Dominant ideology today functions as a critique of ideology: calling any emancipatory vision 'utopian' is itself the supreme ideological move.ideology
asserts
Macron's victory did not defeat the fascist threat but killed hope, opening a future in which we are periodically mobilised against fascism while sleeping in the embrace of global capitalism with a human face.French elections / Macron
asserts
The choice between Macron and Le Pen was not a real choice because Macron's economic politics is the main cause of the popular dissatisfaction that gives Le Pen her strength.French presidential election 2017
rejects
Refugees are not the new proletariat in any Marxist sense: they come to Europe to become proletarians, not to act as a ready-made revolutionary agent.refugees as revolutionary subject
asserts
The solution to the refugee crisis is not humanitarian sympathy but changing the geopolitical and economic conditions that produce refugees.refugee crisis
asserts
Global capitalism does not simply destroy local cultures; it actively thrives on strong ethnic particularism and nation-state identity because this removes universal political constraints on the world market.capitalism and cultural identity
asserts
Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' and Fukuyama's liberal-capitalist end of history are not opposed but the same: peaceful coexistence of culturally distinct blocs is the ideological form of global capitalism.Huntington vs. Fukuyama
rejects
The vision of a multicultural world where every particular way of life contributes positively to a universal whole must be entirely rejected, because universality is not above particulars but the antagonism that cuts through each of them from within.liberal multiculturalism / Badiou's multiculturalist vision
asserts
We should not abandon universalism because of its historical misuse; we should fight for a more authentic universalism, because without it only the free flow of capital and the worst authoritarian aspects of local traditions remain.universalism vs. cultural relativism
rejects
The claim that modern science is just one discourse among others, no more privileged than magic, is the most dangerous form of cultural relativism and ultimately an expression of postmodern decadence rather than authentic indigenous thought.decolonisation of knowledge / epistemic relativism
reframes
The true utopians are those who believe we can continue with minor adjustments; those proposing radical change are the real realists.utopianism vs. realism
asserts
Today only right-wing politicians can enact minimum pro-working-class legislation, while radical left parties like Syriza are the most effective enforcers of austerity.left politics and austerity
asserts
A real politician does not follow the will of the people but risks acting against it in the hope of being retroactively justified—citing Merkel on refugees as an example.democracy and political leadership
asserts
The more we are actually dominated by anonymous systems we cannot control, the more we are treated ideologically as free psychological subjects responsible for our own choices.subjectivity and ideology of psychological freedom
asserts
British colonial powers reprinted and propagated the Laws of Manu not to impose Western values but to fix Indians in traditional hierarchical structures because this made them easier to dominate.imperialism and local tradition
rejects
The left should seize state power rather than find niches of resistance against it; the pseudo-Foucaultian posture of marginal resistance is itself an enjoyable leftist position that avoids the discomfort of actual power.left strategy / Foucauldian resistance
Quotes 16
“You have to be stupid not to see that — today the predominant version of this is: you have to be stupid to see that there is any possibility of change.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as critique of ideology
“Macron's victory opens up the prospect…of a future in which every four years we will be mobilised to defeat the fascist threat and in between we will be able to sleep in the safe embrace of global capitalism with a human face.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism with a human face as anti-fascist alibi
“Global capitalism is now presenting itself as the last protection against fascism.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism appropriating anti-fascism
“The true utopians are those who think we just do a little bit of austerity and we can go on indefinitely the way it is.”Slavoj Žižek · inversion of utopianism and realism
“The main function of ideological censorship today is not to crush actual resistance…but to crush hope, to immediately denounce every critical project as opening a path at the end of which there is something like Gulag.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological function of anti-utopianism
“One gains a glimpse into the real of the rights of the body…in examining what goes on when they are denied to individuals…they are simply there and they live the proof that they live is that sometimes they die.”Slavoj Žižek · human rights as rights of the speaking body (Milner)
“A way of life is ultimately the way of how a certain community organizes its in social form its jouissance its enjoyment.”Slavoj Žižek · way of life as organised jouissance
“Universality is not located above particular identities it is not their neutral container but it is an antagonism that cuts from within each way of life.”Slavoj Žižek · antagonism as the form of universality
“What we should not do is draw a fateful conclusion that forget about universalism each civilization should be allowed its own way of life — the moment we do this we are in world market total domination.”Slavoj Žižek · cultural relativism serves global capital
“The only way paradoxically to retain their particular way of life is to link it to universal struggle of emancipation.”Slavoj Žižek · universalism as condition of authentic particularity
“The epistemological privilege granted to modern science…was also instrumental in suppressing other non-scientific forms — I consider this madness.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of epistemic relativism in decolonisation discourse
“Ideology is not only in this that it's a universality which covers its own historical particular character — capitalism is much more universal than it may appear, market is universality in practice.”Slavoj Žižek · real abstraction / capitalism as practical universality
“True love does not mean I love you — true love is always desperate — I may hate you but I cannot be without you.”Slavoj Žižek · true love as necessity and impossibility
“True freedom for me is not which cake will I have — true freedom is something that you decide for in terrible anxiety and then once you choose it you are convinced that I have chosen it because I couldn't have done it otherwise.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom as experienced necessity
“A real politician does not follow the people. Real politician never follows the will of the people.”Slavoj Žižek · political leadership against democratic will
“The left whose great triumph is always when an emancipatory revolutionary movement goes wrong it's always the greatest pleasure of leftists to write an excellent analysis of why it had to go wrong.”Slavoj Žižek · left enjoyment in failure / false modesty
Transcript 48 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Okay but let’s not lose time I will tell you what’s my plans I will include then I think at the beginning of July I give the full course four talks and then the Friday debate that one I want to how do they call it in TV preview of forthcoming attractions no that one will be pure theory in the sense of there is now it is already for a couple of years a new tendency emerging in social thought philosophy and so on it’s popular under different names it began as speculative realism but now Quentin Meillassoux follows his own path so now it’s not a unified field you have one orientation so-called assemblage theory then you have object-oriented ontology then you have new materialism and so on and so on I’m not saying they should be totally dismissed there are insights here and there but I think they do deserve a systematic confrontation and this I will do it in a very systematic way the main opponents will be Graham Harman his Immaterialism book and DeLanda his assemblage theory and so on it’s worth doing it so that will be July today it will be more politics ideology and so on but don’t be afraid I will always let me put it in this way push it to some philosophical point okay let me begin with the title you have to be stupid not not to see it but to see that I think that this statement this reversal of the usual one which is you have to be stupid not to see that can have two uses one is the let me put it naively correct one which would be that ideology today adds something to reality supplements it with some imagined object which once you do see it makes things clear for you my thousand times repeated old example anti-semitism imagine we are in Germany in 1920s 30s you have to be stupid to see it what the Jew behind all this would be you see too much but recently things took a different turn today’s predominant ideology is precisely masked as anti-ideology the moment you propose any hope any plan for a possible alternate order and so on and so on the idea is you are a dangerous utopian you are stupid to see that to see any chance for social change and so on and so on so that’s what so interesting for me in today’s times how because my God now I will on purpose talk like an old almost Stalinist Marxist because the bourgeois dominant order is so corrupt that it cannot even produce generate a convincing global vision because for me therein resides the true revolution of let us say Trump America First means we don’t screw the world we don’t even pretend to be Fukuyamaists to have a global vision whatever so again ideology today is masked as critique of ideology no wonder that I read in newspapers that two days ago Tony Blair himself made a statement that he wants to ground a politics which would be really post-ideological what do I mean by this I think we got a clear example on this orientation in the recent French election and don’t be afraid I will not read my text from The Independent which brought me so much trouble I was accused by it of being how do the Germans say nützlicher Idiot a useful idiot for Le Pen for that okay let me begin with a joke an old joke of mine don’t worry no black man’s penises nothing problematic in it an old delicious Soviet joke about Radio Yerevan you know that mythic radio station which you asked it a provocative question and always the reply is in principle yes but so a listener asks it’s a joke from Soviet times is it true that Rabinovich a Soviet Jew legendary figure of Soviet jokes is it true that Rabinovich won a new car on lottery and the radio answers in principle yes it’s true only it wasn’t a new car but an old bicycle and he didn’t win it but it was stolen from him I think we should apply this joke to French presidential elections like let’s ask Radio Yerevan is it true that in a great display of anti-fascist unity the people of France elected an outsider and defeated a fascist threat to Europe our answer should be in principle yes it’s true only the victorious Macron embodies Europe out of touch with ordinary people that is to say the very European politics which gives strength to Le Pen and Macron is not an outsider but establishment at its purest let me explain this of course Le Pen and Macron are not the same the difference that separates them is obvious but nonetheless the choice between the two of them was not the real choice what do I mean by this it is enough to focus on the background of each candidate yes Le Pen is a racist populist not that I diminish her threat but even to call her a fascist is I think dangerous not in the sense that oh she is better I’m not trying to humanize her but I think that again this is yet another example of what I call leftist laziness you see something that you and you are justified in this don’t like and instead of thinking what’s new about this oh what’s the easiest thing to do apply an old term but she also addresses of course in a typically neo-fascist mystifying way popular and workers' dissatisfactions Macron presents himself as tolerant human pro-European but the economic policy he stands for is the main cause of the popular dissatisfaction with Europe so as I developed now I refer to it in my text published in The Independent I just want to repeat it if you haven’t read it what interests me if we were to have time to do a deeper analysis is the feminine aspect with both candidates no Le Pen is a kind of a feminized softer version of her father the her father with a human face let us say and Macron also I think in the way his public image is manipulated his older wife which again I have nothing against that that’s almost what makes me what is sympathetic for me about him my God isn’t the dream of all of us when you are in high school to screw your nice high school teacher he did that I mean what more do you want from life but I claim that this also provides a kind of maternal authority behind him and we should never forget what is behind this false of course feminization so the message of Macron’s victory is not the fascist threat awakened us but quite the opposite the nightmare is over we can go to sleep again Macron’s victory opens up the prospect a very sad prospect I think of a future in which every four years we will be mobilized to defeat the fascist threat and in between we will be able to sleep in the safe embrace of global capitalism with a human face the obscenity of the situation is breathtaking global capitalism is now presenting itself as the last protection against fascism and if you try to point out some of Macron’s limitations you are accused of yes of complicity with fascism since as we are told repeatedly by the big and not so big media extreme left and extreme right are coming together today both are we know the story anti-semitic nationalist isolationist anti-globalist and so on and so on this I think was really the point of this whole operation French elections to make left which means any prospect of true alternative disappear Macron doesn’t bring hope his function was to kill hope yes at the beginning of this talk you said that you have a plan plan for the talk I assume do you really have a plan what do I mean by this I mean in terms of like the structure of your talk do you have a plan not just in your talk but an overall kind of plan yes I want to show as I said how ideology functions today on the mode of as the title says you if you you are stupid if you see that so I'm the paradox as I announced and I'm now just illustrating it is and in the next paragraph I'm going to it of how ideology functions today as the very critique of ideology because the moment you go beyond the established order you are accused of a leftist utopianism which ultimately brings Gulag or whatever s-b-and so on and so on and that’s what so there is an established order yes and the objective of this plan is to somehow reverse it or no I'm much more of a pessimist I will be as shameless as I can be so it's impossible it's impossible to reverse the established order is that what you mean no that's not my message my message is that yeah this is my message if you read Will Self but I've read Will Self I've met him okay okay my message is that and I'm not even very original here at different levels even people like I will name them I don't always agree with them I think they are too naive to sometimes too optimistic but my God I will go to the highest level of existing order Elon Musk and then I will go below Elon Musk yeah even he knows that we can see clearly the limits of today's global capitalism but he's a billionaire so but that's the irony even he thinks that can I suggest we just let Zizek no but but no no but this is an important point what I am saying is that and this is my optimism in pessimism
Okay but let’s not lose time I will tell you what’s my plans I will include then I think at the beginning of July I give the full course four talks and then the Friday debate that one I want to how do they call it in TV preview of forthcoming attractions no that one will be pure theory in the sense of there is now it is already for a couple of years a new tendency emerging in social thought philosophy and so on it’s popular under different names it began as speculative realism but now Quentin Meillassoux follows his own path so now it’s not a unified field you have one orientation so-called assemblage theory then you have object-oriented ontology then you have new materialism and so on and so on I’m not saying they should be totally dismissed there are insights here and there but I think they do deserve a systematic confrontation and this I will do it in a very systematic way the main opponents will be Graham Harman his Immaterialism book and DeLanda his assemblage theory and so on it’s worth doing it so that will be July today it will be more politics ideology and so on but don’t be afraid I will always let me put it in this way push it to some philosophical point okay let me begin with the title you have to be stupid not not to see it but to see that I think that this statement this reversal of the usual one which is you have to be stupid not to see that can have two uses one is the let me put it naively correct one which would be that ideology today adds something to reality supplements it with some imagined object which once you do see it makes things clear for you my thousand times repeated old example anti-semitism imagine we are in Germany in 1920s 30s you have to be stupid to see it what the Jew behind all this would be you see too much but recently things took a different turn today’s predominant ideology is precisely masked as anti-ideology the moment you propose any hope any plan for a possible alternate order and so on and so on the idea is you are a dangerous utopian you are stupid to see that to see any chance for social change and so on and so on so that’s what so interesting for me in today’s times how because my God now I will on purpose talk like an old almost Stalinist Marxist because the bourgeois dominant order is so corrupt that it cannot even produce generate a convincing global vision because for me therein resides the true revolution of let us say Trump America First means we don’t screw the world we don’t even pretend to be Fukuyamaists to have a global vision whatever so again ideology today is masked as critique of ideology no wonder that I read in newspapers that two days ago Tony Blair himself made a statement that he wants to ground a politics which would be really post-ideological what do I mean by this I think we got a clear example on this orientation in the recent French election and don’t be afraid I will not read my text from The Independent which brought me so much trouble I was accused by it of being how do the Germans say nützlicher Idiot a useful idiot for Le Pen for that okay let me begin with a joke an old joke of mine don’t worry no black man’s penises nothing problematic in it an old delicious Soviet joke about Radio Yerevan you know that mythic radio station which you asked it a provocative question and always the reply is in principle yes but so a listener asks it’s a joke from Soviet times is it true that Rabinovich a Soviet Jew legendary figure of Soviet jokes is it true that Rabinovich won a new car on lottery and the radio answers in principle yes it’s true only it wasn’t a new car but an old bicycle and he didn’t win it but it was stolen from him I think we should apply this joke to French presidential elections like let’s ask Radio Yerevan is it true that in a great display of anti-fascist unity the people of France elected an outsider and defeated a fascist threat to Europe our answer should be in principle yes it’s true only the victorious Macron embodies Europe out of touch with ordinary people that is to say the very European politics which gives strength to Le Pen and Macron is not an outsider but establishment at its purest let me explain this of course Le Pen and Macron are not the same the difference that separates them is obvious but nonetheless the choice between the two of them was not the real choice what do I mean by this it is enough to focus on the background of each candidate yes Le Pen is a racist populist not that I diminish her threat but even to call her a fascist is I think dangerous not in the sense that oh she is better I’m not trying to humanize her but I think that again this is yet another example of what I call leftist laziness you see something that you and you are justified in this don’t like and instead of thinking what’s new about this oh what’s the easiest thing to do apply an old term but she also addresses of course in a typically neo-fascist mystifying way popular and workers' dissatisfactions Macron presents himself as tolerant human pro-European but the economic policy he stands for is the main cause of the popular dissatisfaction with Europe so as I developed now I refer to it in my text published in The Independent I just want to repeat it if you haven’t read it what interests me if we were to have time to do a deeper analysis is the feminine aspect with both candidates no Le Pen is a kind of a feminized softer version of her father the her father with a human face let us say and Macron also I think in the way his public image is manipulated his older wife which again I have nothing against that that’s almost what makes me what is sympathetic for me about him my God isn’t the dream of all of us when you are in high school to screw your nice high school teacher he did that I mean what more do you want from life but I claim that this also provides a kind of maternal authority behind him and we should never forget what is behind this false of course feminization so the message of Macron’s victory is not the fascist threat awakened us but quite the opposite the nightmare is over we can go to sleep again Macron’s victory opens up the prospect a very sad prospect I think of a future in which every four years we will be mobilized to defeat the fascist threat and in between we will be able to sleep in the safe embrace of global capitalism with a human face the obscenity of the situation is breathtaking global capitalism is now presenting itself as the last protection against fascism and if you try to point out some of Macron’s limitations you are accused of yes of complicity with fascism since as we are told repeatedly by the big and not so big media extreme left and extreme right are coming together today both are we know the story anti-semitic nationalist isolationist anti-globalist and so on and so on this I think was really the point of this whole operation French elections to make left which means any prospect of true alternative disappear Macron doesn’t bring hope his function was to kill hope yes at the beginning of this talk you said that you have a plan plan for the talk I assume do you really have a plan what do I mean by this I mean in terms of like the structure of your talk do you have a plan not just in your talk but an overall kind of plan yes I want to show as I said how ideology functions today on the mode of as the title says you if you you are stupid if you see that so I'm the paradox as I announced and I'm now just illustrating it is and in the next paragraph I'm going to it of how ideology functions today as the very critique of ideology because the moment you go beyond the established order you are accused of a leftist utopianism which ultimately brings Gulag or whatever s-b-and so on and so on and that’s what so there is an established order yes and the objective of this plan is to somehow reverse it or no I'm much more of a pessimist I will be as shameless as I can be so it's impossible it's impossible to reverse the established order is that what you mean no that's not my message my message is that yeah this is my message if you read Will Self but I've read Will Self I've met him okay okay my message is that and I'm not even very original here at different levels even people like I will name them I don't always agree with them I think they are too naive to sometimes too optimistic but my God I will go to the highest level of existing order Elon Musk and then I will go below Elon Musk yeah even he knows that we can see clearly the limits of today's global capitalism but he's a billionaire so but that's the irony even he thinks that can I suggest we just let Zizek no but but no no but this is an important point what I am saying is that and this is my optimism in pessimism
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that capitalism is changing we live in an age of tremendous change capitalism is no longer the capitalism
that capitalism is changing we live in an age of tremendous change capitalism is no longer the capitalism
Slavoj Žižek
as what it's it's simply that not only for big ecological reasons like refugees threat of but that you have a message of optimism and pessimism yes exactly if you had to choose between the two which one would you choose no you can't because I am a Maoist here by Maoist I mean Mao's most famous saying one of have a there is great disorder under heaven so the situation is excellent that sounds like optimism doesn't it yeah but there are millions who may die on the way that’s sorry but what's your problem here am I saying something so paradoxical crazy I'm just saying you have a message but you don't have a plan I think why don't you just shut up no I don't have a plan but
as what it's it's simply that not only for big ecological reasons like refugees threat of but that you have a message of optimism and pessimism yes exactly if you had to choose between the two which one would you choose no you can't because I am a Maoist here by Maoist I mean Mao's most famous saying one of have a there is great disorder under heaven so the situation is excellent that sounds like optimism doesn't it yeah but there are millions who may die on the way that’s sorry but what's your problem here am I saying something so paradoxical crazy I'm just saying you have a message but you don't have a plan I think why don't you just shut up no I don't have a plan but
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I'm in order to get a plan we should see that we don't live in a stable order and
I'm in order to get a plan we should see that we don't live in a stable order and
Slavoj Žižek
only idiots have a plan and so on this order is gradually disintegrating in front of our eyes that’s what I’m saying so it's disintegrating but once it's fully disintegrated what will happen what will happen that depends on us I'm not a traditional Marxist I'm not saying now I come to that metaphor the train and so on there is no historical necessity and so on and so on but I don't see even anything very eccentric in what I'm saying my God Elon Musk Bill Gates at some abstract level agree with me it can't when people accuse me you are a crazy optimist you're a Maoist and you support Elon Musk and Bill Gates no I don't support him I just say even he sees that capitalism the way we know it is approaching a limit this is for me the ABC
only idiots have a plan and so on this order is gradually disintegrating in front of our eyes that’s what I’m saying so it's disintegrating but once it's fully disintegrated what will happen what will happen that depends on us I'm not a traditional Marxist I'm not saying now I come to that metaphor the train and so on there is no historical necessity and so on and so on but I don't see even anything very eccentric in what I'm saying my God Elon Musk Bill Gates at some abstract level agree with me it can't when people accuse me you are a crazy optimist you're a Maoist and you support Elon Musk and Bill Gates no I don't support him I just say even he sees that capitalism the way we know it is approaching a limit this is for me the ABC
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evidence
evidence
Slavoj Žižek
and I don't again I don't see anything eccentric about it I claim that when people approach me with but you are still a utopian you no the true utopians are those who think we just do a little bit of austerity and we can go on indefinitely the way it is no we cannot what’s I don't even see what's so eccentric in what in what I'm saying here so if I may go on we here the point of my mentioning Macron we reach the supreme irony of how ideology functions today as I already said it
and I don't again I don't see anything eccentric about it I claim that when people approach me with but you are still a utopian you no the true utopians are those who think we just do a little bit of austerity and we can go on indefinitely the way it is no we cannot what’s I don't even see what's so eccentric in what in what I'm saying here so if I may go on we here the point of my mentioning Macron we reach the supreme irony of how ideology functions today as I already said it
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appears precisely as its opposite
appears precisely as its opposite
Slavoj Žižek
as a radical critique of ideological utopias the predominant ideology today is not a positive vision of some utopian future but a cynical resignation an
as a radical critique of ideological utopias the predominant ideology today is not a positive vision of some utopian future but a cynical resignation an
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acceptance
acceptance
Slavoj Žižek
of how the world really is accompanied by a warning that if we want to
of how the world really is accompanied by a warning that if we want to
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change it too much
change it too much
Slavoj Žižek
only a totalitarian horror can ensue just going for a smoke okay well my wife
only a totalitarian horror can ensue just going for a smoke okay well my wife
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smokes
smokes
Slavoj Žižek
so I have nothing against smoking I think that obsession with prohibition of smoking is crucial part of today’s healthcare ideology and so on but that’s another story that’s not my problem but you see the guy who went out you see this is okay I’m so sad he went out because now it came to me this is ideology at its purest you know oh you are bullshitting what do you want you don’t have a plan you see now not only we shouldn’t have a plan but even if you make the appearance of the very idea like the wor... I think the guy said towards the end that’s how the world is but I don’t think this is... I don’t first I don’t think that the world simply is today in the sense that we have a stable order and so on and so on let me give you one prediction which precisely if you are a Western liberal it should worry you it’s
so I have nothing against smoking I think that obsession with prohibition of smoking is crucial part of today’s healthcare ideology and so on but that’s another story that’s not my problem but you see the guy who went out you see this is okay I’m so sad he went out because now it came to me this is ideology at its purest you know oh you are bullshitting what do you want you don’t have a plan you see now not only we shouldn’t have a plan but even if you make the appearance of the very idea like the wor... I think the guy said towards the end that’s how the world is but I don’t think this is... I don’t first I don’t think that the world simply is today in the sense that we have a stable order and so on and so on let me give you one prediction which precisely if you are a Western liberal it should worry you it’s
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extremely
extremely
Slavoj Žižek
important what is going on now at the level of global geopolitics with its latest initiatives China and maybe this is not better I’m not making a judgment China is establishing itself more and more as and this is a beautiful irony a country with still some kind of formally Marxist communist government is establishing itself as the center of new global market because Trump is screwing things up I’m more and more satisfied with Trump I think four five years of Trump and United States will be a stupid local power there and there will be a totally new geopolitical constellation and so on and so on because America First you know this is a very sad statement which means we no longer can be a global superpower and so on and so on but okay let me go on so every vision of another world is dismissed as ideology Alain Badiou put it in a wonderful and precise way the main function of ideological censorship today is not to crush actual resistance this is the job of repressive state apparatuses but to crush hope to immediately denounce every critical project as
important what is going on now at the level of global geopolitics with its latest initiatives China and maybe this is not better I’m not making a judgment China is establishing itself more and more as and this is a beautiful irony a country with still some kind of formally Marxist communist government is establishing itself as the center of new global market because Trump is screwing things up I’m more and more satisfied with Trump I think four five years of Trump and United States will be a stupid local power there and there will be a totally new geopolitical constellation and so on and so on because America First you know this is a very sad statement which means we no longer can be a global superpower and so on and so on but okay let me go on so every vision of another world is dismissed as ideology Alain Badiou put it in a wonderful and precise way the main function of ideological censorship today is not to crush actual resistance this is the job of repressive state apparatuses but to crush hope to immediately denounce every critical project as
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opening
opening
Slavoj Žižek
a path at the end of which there is something like Gulag so to address in this way another problem because what has all to do this for example with refugees to put it briefly Macron’s politics the politics he embodies with his previous role as French finance minister and so on Macron’s politics created them and Le Pen promises to defend us from them that’s why and that’s my point all my sympathy with refugees incidentally three days ago I was with them the only intelligent thing that happened in Venice at Venice Biennale was that crazy Slovene group Laibach Neue Slowenische Kunst established their own pavilion but with their own imaginary state where the show was curated by refugees and so on and so on and what I liked there is that their attitude is not the first thing should be to to reject easy simplifications the first one is and some of my friends advocate this line I’m totally opposed to it refugees are the new nomadic proletariat first there is a very decadent typically Eurocentric dream is it the dream is this one we in Europe we have the right leftist theory but we lack a revolutionary agent so I will be cynical now why don’t we outsource it and import the revolutionary agent and so on and so on but with all my sympathy but not humanitarian sympathy because I think sympathy means let's help them no we should do much more we should intervene in the situation geopolitical economic so that it will no longer produce refugees the important thing is to change the way Europe United States even China and so on deal with third-world countries and so on it’s stupid to think that the problem of refugees will be solved if we open up our hearts and what invite all of them to Europe or whatever in this way you either abolish democracy in Europe or or you give we can as well immediately give power to Marine Le Pen or whatever so again let me go on we should not treat them as victims we should not play that humanist card oh why don’t we listen to your story and so on what then we will discover that that they are also human like us of course they are there is nothing to discover here the discovery is to make is what are they do is what made them refugees second point this simplification refugees are the new proletarians look Marx was not simply bluffing if I may put it in this way for him a proletarian meant something very precise labor force reducing to pure subjectivity without substantial content that is to say workers just the only thing they have is working force they are selling it and in this way they create wealth but in the very process of creating wealth it’s taken away from them and so on and so on which is why Marx always emphasized that being a proletarian is not just in some abstract sense being exploited but it’s at the same time being trained disciplined through factory work and so on and so on I don’t see how refugees in any meaningful way can play this role if anything they come to Europe at least many of them in search of becoming a proletarian like isn’t their goal to get a stable job which precisely refugees are supposed not to be here now I’m not saying so if you are a Marxist revolutionary forget about refugees I’m just saying that this type of direct simplification oh nice we have a new proletariat to act as a revolutionary agent no it doesn’t work in this way the tragedy is that refugees that almost the main tensions in Europe are almost between refugees and the lower middle class existing old-fashioned working class and what where I am really mad at today’s left is that they bypass this problem oh it’s just because workers in Europe are manipulated we should bring solidarity okay bring this solidarity how there is no there is no easy way here so how then should we deal with this problem now I will try I'm jumping to another topic but it's strictly in the same line of proletarian position today how to deal with refugees to Jean-Claude Milner not Miller Milner his new book I mean you know Milner is in no way a radical leftist he is I would say some kind of a Zionist liberal but he is not stupid and this means a lot to me in his new book Relire la Révolution I mean if you read French I don't know did he tell you will it be translated it's a wonderful book he convinced me absolutely again in my love for Jacobins and so on you know we usually treat Jacobins as forerunners of crazy Stalinist purge trials and so on wait a minute just some data in Jacobins' purges so-called you know that when they had all those mock trials as they appear to us people were pardoned so they were not this type of Stalinist trials with all functions part two I love this this is a recent discovery it's wonderful do you know that for example usually liberals claim as the ultimate horror oh my God Danton they just wanted to get rid of one of them sorry to tell you now in some British archives they found proofs they were right Danton was paid by the British so it's but okay in the French revolutionary Jacobins and again they functioned in a totally different way from a Stalinist dictatorship never forget their their their weapon was to the end their main weapon was public speech speeches in Assemblée Nationale that’s why they were simply overthrown by by by the vote in Assemblée Nationale and if you read some of the latest letter exchanges between Saint-Just and Robespierre it’s extraordinary they were not idiots they saw it coming but Robespierre made a choice I know I will lose my head I prefer to do this than to step outside of the law okay let me not lose time let me go on their big revolutionary ideological revolution was the notion of human rights the distinction between human rights and citizen’s rights Milner and I think he is right here he rejects the Marxist critical notion of human rights as the rights of the member of a bourgeois civil society you know for Marx the distinction between human rights and citizen’s rights simply echoes the distinction between me as an egotist individual member of bourgeois civil society following my particular interests and me as a universal citizen for Milner citizen is the member of a community sharing its specific culture while a human being is what remains of a citizen when he or she is deprived of his/her citizenship human rights are natural only in this sense of the externality to a particular culture they have nothing to do with eternal nature since they apply simply to what remains of a citizen after he or she is subtracted from a specific polis community in this sense their nature the nature natural character of human rights is a retroactive effect of culture you know you imagine member of a community you erase subtract all historically specific features and what remains is why did they call it nature they simply didn’t have another term because the only alternative to nature was God like we are all children of God but they specifically wanted to avoid this so here is a wonderful quote from Milner one gains a glimpse into the real of the rights of the body in the sense that human rights refer to humans reduced to a speaking body in examining what goes on when they are denied to individuals every day brings a new example I do not have to think about bombs and poisonous gases I think about Calais Calais the French city those who are assembled there from the year of but now it was dismantled I think the Calais camp no are not guilty of anything they are not accused even of anything they do not infringe upon any part of the law they are simply there and they live the proof that they live is that sometimes they die nobody knows what language they are speaking and anyway one doesn’t listen to them one only knows that they speak they are therefore reduced to the status of speaking bodies by the settlement to which they are submitted they literally render visible in a negative way the real of the rights of men or woman these rights are openly distinguished from the rights of a citizen since refugees are precisely not the citizens of Calais and mostly they even do not want to become that end of quote Milner insists and he is very close to authentic materialism on the vulgar materiality of these rights human rights are more basic than the rights to reunion free speech opinion and so on before that comes the material base of a body water food hygiene toilets minimal space for privacy and so on if individuals are deprived of this the higher human rights free speech and so on disappear human rights are first such basic material rights toilets kitchen healthcare rights begin with the space for secretion this is I think the set base of my story that I repeated at least times about you know the distinction between German French and Anglo-Saxon toilets insofar as human rights proclaimed in the French Revolution were first proclaimed in the French Revolution one should note the irony that Calais is a French city and of course different political orientations give them different accent to these rights for Marxists they emphasize more this material rights to safety food and so on so-called capitalists emphasize more these intellectual rights but is but again what what one should make clear is that precisely as universal human rights again are not simply natural what counts as a human right is always overdetermined by a specific historical constellation already the fact that Milner renames them the rights of man/woman e-echoes contemporary feminist struggles we should also bear in mind that although humans are covered by these who are covered by these rights are proletarian in the sense of being deprived of citizenship they are nonetheless not abstract Cartesian cogitos they come as individuals embedded in a specific way of life often in conflict with the way of life of the country in which they dwell as refugees so here problems begin not in the sense that we Europeans should watch over them because their way of life is primitive or whatever I’m far from saying that I’m just saying and this is what brought me so many problems and so on I’m just saying that there is a problem here where is the problem again when we are dealing with the difficult problem of how to relate universal struggle for emancipation to the plurality of ways of life nothing should be left to chance not even the most self-evident general notions left liberals view the very notion of way of life with suspicion as if if it doesn't apply to marginal minorities it conceals a proto-fascist poison as if you mention a way of life oh my God I already see brown shirt in your cellar hidden or getting ready to wear against this suspicion one should accept this term a way of life I claim in its Lacanian version as something that points beyond all cultural features towards what in my Lacanian jargon I call a core of the real of enjoyment jouissance a way of life is ultimately the way of how a certain community organizes its in social form its jouissance its enjoyment this is why integration is such a sensitive issue when a group is under pressure to integrate into a wider community it often resists out of fear that it will lose its mode of jouissance a way of life does not encompass just rituals of food music dance social life and so on but also and above all habits written and unwritten rules of sexual life including inclusive of rules of mating and marriage and of social hierarchy respect of elders and so on in India for example and I'm telling this from my personal experience some post-colonial theorists defend even the caste system as part of a specific way of life which again should be defended against the global onslaught of global individualism so what do I mean by jouissance here let me give you just a brief detour which I hope will make at least vaguely the orientation clear are you watching it’s now on TV I claim and if you don’t you can easily copy it from Pirate Bay this the new TV version of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale okay ask yourself a simple question why do you enjoy watching it don’t give me the bullshit that it’s just oh it’s horror it depicts a serious threat of fundamentalists taking it over and so on and so on no that’s not why you enjoy watching it you enjoy watching it because and I claim this as a self-evident fact even if you deny it now because you are absolutely fascinated by the reality depicted there and the I spoke with my friends feminists and so on and they like this when you discover more and more concrete rules you know but if women are not allowed to read how do you how do they shop yes because you go tablets with images of fruits all these details I claim that this this it’s a very strange lesson the one of Handmaid’s Tale that it’s not as innocent as it appears yes it depicts a danger of alternate reality where fundamentalists can take over but it’s also absolutely our dis-about enjoyment in imagining this world and with enjoyment things turn strange for example another example then we return to the main line recently there was a legal case in Mexico and this is what happened a man was cleared in was pardoned by a court maybe you read it Guardian and others reported it there was a case of sexual assault on a young schoolgirl and the man who was still a young man but in his mid-20s from a rich family he was cleared proclaimed not guilty and no facts were disputed yes he did squeeze to be vulgar I’m sorry squeeze the girl’s breasts entered her vagina with his fingers and so on but his defense was that while he was doing it he did not enjoy himself and the judge his name is Anuar González found that although Diego Cruz the young guy who did this was accused of touching the victim’s breasts penetrating her with his fingers he had acted without carnal intent and so he was not guilty of the assault this logic is weird would it not be more obvious to claim the opposite if the man’s motivation I mean I’m not following this line I’m just stating what is for me pure common sense in no way would I justify this but if you push me at the end if the guy was in middle of some absolute erotic passion and doing it it would be for me one millimeter better than just brutally doing it just in a cold way so why this weird logic that since he didn’t enjoy he is not guilty the only way to explain this is to presuppose the underlying premise experiencing pleasure as such makes are guilty so that without pleasure there is no guilt we with all the Protestant complications that there is no not only no without guilt there is no pleasure but that there is also no pleasure without guilt you know there is an old joke which is pretty accurate I think and should be always remembered today when this year where as you know like I love this metaphor you know new-agers like this idea that when three planets are on the same line then something fateful will happen the whole universe will lose balance okay we are in such a year this year years of the publication of Capital of October Revolution and don’t forget years in of the key event of the Chinese Cultural Revolution it was the moment of truth when people in Shanghai Shanghai Commune took what Mao was saying seriously and said okay we don’t need army we don’t need party we will do it and then Mao had to send in the army thousands died so this is crucial point the highest battle with most victims of Cultural Revolution was not against bourgeoisie reactionaries what strictly internal but okay and also people tend to forget that the situation is even worse in the sense of this cosmic balance years of Luther you know posting those theses or whatever okay coming back to my point the joke is this one what’s the difference in sinning between Catholicism and Protestantism in Catholicism everything is pardoned if you admit it in the confession at the end of the week and in Protestantism you just have to feel a little bit guilty then you can do whatever you want so I think again this is the logic behind it guilt and pleasure go together in in both ways and precisely this collective this what Lacanians call jouissance enjoyment invested into collective way of life is what those who preach simple multicultural coexistence of different ways of life where they cheat I think even and with all my love for him for example my good friend Alain Badiou recently published a text on multiculturalism blah-blah and he claims each group in France should have the right to stick to its way of life and then he specifies what is this way of life and said their kitchen their traditional dresses their their music blah-blah-blah their dances their poetry well and then uh-uh-uh I was wait it’s typically for his argument to work he has to leave out relations of servitude and sexual arrangements you know because there problems begin namely again the problem is this one when we are dealing with the difficult problem of how to relate universal struggle for emancipation to the plurality of ways of life as I already said we should be very careful to deal with this problem the preferred vision this is Badiou’s vision is that of a united global world with all particular ways of life thriving each of them asserting its difference from others not as an antagonistic relationship not at the expense of others but as a positive display of creativity that contributes to the wealth of entire society that’s his vision each group should be free to assert its way of life not at the expense of others but it should be perceived the plurality of ways of life precisely as contributing to general wealth of humanity and so on when an ethnic group is prevented from expressing this identity in a creative way since it is under pressure to renounce it and to integrate itself into the predominant usually Western culture and way of life then it cannot but react so that it withdraws into negative difference a regressive purist fundamentalism that fights the predominant culture and even resorts to violent means in short fundamentalist violence is a reaction for which predominant culture is responsible or applied to immigrants and so on if they are violent it’s because our integration was constraining their creative way of life now I think that this entire vision of particular identities contributing to an united world and threatened by the violent pressure on minorities to integrate in other words by the false universality of the Western way of life which imposes itself as a standard for all this entire vision is to be rejected entirely I claim why the world we live in is one but it is one because it is traversed and in a way even held together by the same antagonism the one inscribed into the very heart of global capitalism universality is not located above particular identities it is not their neutral container but it is an antagonism that cuts from within each way of life this antagonism overdetermines all particular emancipatory struggles and cuts from within each way again of life explicit and unwritten rules of hierarchy homophobia male domination and so on are key constituents of a way of life in which they occur let me give you an example for which I I already used it here and I like to repeat it because I was ferociously attacked for it as again European racist preparing a pogrom and so on a story probably you know what happened in my own country with Roma so-called gypsies a lady a young Roma girl escaped to Slovene police some years ago claimed that 12-year-old that her father married her to his friend blah-blah-blah and that she doesn't want to be married at that age and then there was a big debate what to do feminists protected her and the irony was the same feminists who otherwise were totally for multiculturalist tolerance and so on they said no women’s rights we shouldn’t allow it but the interesting is how the Roma community reacted they say and in a way they were right they said sorry but arranging marriages is the very core of our way of life if you take this from us in two-three generations we disappear so again what would you have done I’m not saying there is an easy way out I’m just saying it is a problems or let’s take the very sensitive case of China and Tibet the brutal Chinese colonization of Tibet is a fact but this fact should not make us blind for what kind of country Tibet was before and even before an extremely harsh feudal society with extreme hierarchy regulated in details in the late 1950s when the Chinese authorities still more or less tolerated the Tibetan way of life they just controlled foreign policy and so on borders a villager visited his relatives in a neighboring village without asking his feudal master for permission when he was caught and threatened with severe punishment he took refugee in a nearby Chinese military garrison but when his master feudal master learned this he complained that the Chinese are brutally meddling into Tibetan way of life and he was right so what should the Chinese do another similar example is that of a traditional Chinese caste sorry Tibetan caste you know Tibet many mountains and so only narrow path and there was a precise rule when people of unequal social status let’s say a feudal master or a high Lama and an ordinary farmer meet walking in the opposite direction the guy the poor guy the lower had to step out of the path not just this but there was a precise ritual he was obliged to put a sleeve over his shoulder bow down and look with the eyes up and stick his tongue up like the whole ritual of appearing totally stupid and this was definitely part of their way of life and then as they say the Chinese brutally intervened into this and so on and so on so you see what’s my solution here first I don’t have any sympathies for what the Beijing government is doing generally and so on and so on I’m just claiming that this is this is a serious conflict and I agree with those who defend Tibetan way of life and say the Chinese have no right to intervene brutally from outside imposing their measures their customs and so on and so on but obviously and on this I’m putting my bets as it were obviously this Chinese ancient way of life was you know that’s crucial to see it was not a unified stable harmonious tradition then evil communists come and destroy it it was full of extreme tensions violences and so on and so on and the way to do is to not just to intervene from outside and send some enlightened feminists to teach them this is ridiculous if I may repeat another old joke which some of you know but it’s such a delicious story that I like to repeat it a nice example of this external colonialist intervention when there was the civil war in Bosnia some and women were raped blah-blah at some point American feminists ah they wanted to play this card yes we sympathize with raped women so they established a contact with a Bosnian organization women’s organization of victims of rape and to clarify their position they sent them a questionnaire which was then for years a laughing matter in Bosnia because like you know it’s simply in a totally let’s call it culturally colonizing racist way it projected onto Bosnian American theoretical even concerns of that time like the first question in this questionnaire was do you think that a woman has an eternal essence or do you think that femininity is performatively constructed through imitation like Judith Butler you know and they just laughed like wait a minute what’s going on so I know well what is cultural imperialism here but nonetheless again the crucial thing is nonetheless not to mystify these traditional communities this is why now I come to my crucial point all those who claim the fact today is that aboriginal wherever they are or pre-modern communities are terrorized by Western universality whose ideology human rights is just a tool of global financial imperialism and so on and so on I this is happening of course but what I’m claiming is a much nicer thing is that first I absolutely disagree with the claim that the basic let's call it bombastically global imperialist strategy is to destroy local communities no it never was the case it’s not today the case for example I’m sorry if you know this example again I know the situation in India here the most horrible maybe the most horrible ideological masterwork that I know the laws of Manu an ancient text pages you can get in Penguin which describes the logic of caste system and a perverse old man as I am I immediately went into sexual part no my God it’s wonderful you know it describes if after sex man does not wanting the woman to get pregnant how do you call it if you pull out the penis before no in what sense in what precise way should he then wipe his penis you know how you should turn around it's wondrous but what I’m saying is that it’s extremely interesting the book has an excellent introduction where it explains the basic paradox it’s not ancient Indian tradition before British colonization India was in a messy state Muslim influence and so on and this book became almost irrelevant it got a big revival in early 19th century when British colonizers got it in a very nice way that no-no we don’t want Indians to lose their tradition and to become individuals like us in this way they will be much harsher much more difficult it would be to dominate them no so they reprinted the book propagated it because they discovered if Indians follow this ancient traditions oh that’s the way to keep them no and even today for example some of my friends told me that Palestinian and progressive Israeli friends that on the West Bank in a refined way Israeli occupiers are playing the same game when there is a so-called honor killing or whatever they as a rule don’t prosecute it because they got it that it’s in what they should fear is not Palestinians who remain Islamic fundamentalists no Palestinians who want to modernize themselves and so on you know so they are playing these games so again my point is here that it’s not simply imperialists destroying local traditions is that a pact between let’s call it imperialism and the reactionary whatever you call it aspect of local traditions local society are always traversed by inner antagonisms and so on and so on so I agree our fight should not be we Western universalist impose our value but to find a contact to work to connect our struggle with their struggle there that’s the only that’s the only way and this is happening even in the case of China and Tibet incidentally so that you will not accuse me of Chinese state propaganda all the data that I gave you about China they are not from that foreign languages official Chinese press I got them from anti-Chinese histories of Tibet and so on you know so again this is an interesting fact that you learn you know in Cultural Revolution they destroyed many monasteries in Tibet and so on so the official story was Chinese imported thousands of Red Guards from main China uh-uh now we know the data you know how many Red Guards came from China to Tibet five-zero so all those thousands young people it was going on horrible destroying monasteries no-no they were their own disaffected youth the time of Tibetan ancient regime the time was over so you see if you want to fight for Tibet do it but don’t play the game of oh this sacred ancient Tibetan tradition and so on and so on you know where is for me here the biggest irony I love it American Indians some people call them Native Americans I hate the term I mean I I will not repeat my joke it’s more reactionary than Indians to call them Native Americans I read a very tragic analysis a Native American Indian friend gave it to me you know they're saying they have some ancient holistic wisdom blah-blah they should develop it but you know which tribes only succeed doing it those who have mineral or oil in their land so that they can earn money to organize the life reproduction of their tradition so it’s not simply oh we should stick to our tradition yes but we can only stick to our tradition by at the same time fully including ourselves into global capital and so on and so on so where are we today I think that first I do oppose of course that Western racism even if it’s feminist or whatever of we have universal human values and so on and I did my homework I know in what way for example what we call individual freedoms and so on reflect a certain way of life they are not neutral but I think we should nonetheless save universalism we should not draw a fateful conclusion that forget about universalism each civilization should be allowed its own way of life the moment we do this we are in world market total total domination of world market I know that universal human rights I know the story they were directed by United States to screw third-world countries and so on and so on but we should not because of this abandon universalism but simply fight for a more authentic universalism and the sad thing about Trump what people like Trump Putin Erdogan in Turkey China stand for is precisely this they got something very important that universal global market not only does not need a universal political structure of human rights and so on but functions much more efficiently with each state nation allowed its particular way of life because in this way there are no universal rules constraining world market which is why I see no paradox in the fact that as I already mentioned it I think and this is a wonderful crazy fact how today after the stupidities of Trump it’s China which is emerging as the main organizer of a new global market they are doing this really very intelligently precisely China which all the time emphasizes their own Confucian tradition and so on and so on so we have now a new I mean we were right to criticize this Western imperialism of human rights and so on but now I think we are gradually shifting to something different again think about the names of Modi in India China Erdogan Turkey Putin and so on strong ethnocentric nationalism or America First Trump as much more appropriate ideological form of global capitalism what is happening here you know I developed this already in my books this formula of Zionist anti-semitism which you find already in Nazis you know I will not bore you here with this but my favorite quote is ah I have it here it’s so nice I will read it to you Reinhard Heydrich you know the Holocaust guy you know what he wrote in you will not believe it a quote we must separate the Jews into two categories the Zionists and the partisans of assimilation the Zionists profess a strictly racial concept and through emigration to Palestine they help to build their own Jewish state our good wishes and our original goodwill go with them and so on this is the first formula of then later you find it in all modern right up to those obscure guys around Trump Zionist anti-semitism anti-semitism in the sense of no Jews here they are dangerous invisible but Jewish state wonderful we support them and so on what I’m claiming is if you followed closely you know Erdogan they had this stupid referendum in Turkey where Erdogan won although with a little bit of cheating properly but it was again a vote for this time type of ethnocentric authoritarian more on Islam founded state the end of Kemalist Turkey to cut a long story short I claim that what we are getting now is a new version of this Zionist anti-semitism it is Islamophobic respect for Islam it’s Islam is good if it’s there no wonder Trump Putin they all immediately congratulated Erdogan and even those Europeans who were superficially critical of Erdogan silently said okay now they have their own way we will have here our own our own way but again not here here we don’t need them you know like what’s going on here I think it’s you remember Huntington the guy he was more popular years ago the clash of civilizations you know I think this is the lesson of it today there is no opposition between Fukuyama and Huntington Huntington clash of civilizations is precisely the ideological form of Fukuyamaist global capitalism and so on they were wrong to think that they are opposed the formula is what is emerging today is instead of clash of civilizations peaceful coexistence of civilizations in the sense of each of us this is the new world that is emerging each of us should have the right to organize their own its own way of life this was already the old strategy of British Empire and so on but you should respect this is why for example the United Kingdom you know they never went to war to protect women in India or there or in China but they went to war against the minimal limitation of opium trade that one of the most shameful wars of all time when Western allies attacked China in 1840s I think you know that’s the world I think with Trump and so on that we are approaching and what really worries me is how some so-called anti-colonialist leaders who present themselves as progressive accept this game for example I was shocked a couple of weeks one month ago something like this a couple of weeks Robert Mugabe even called you should follow this no called Trump ironically of course but nonetheless comrade and said comrade Trump said America First we accept this for Americans America first for us Zimbabwe first and so on which means you can screw up your people just please allow us to to screw our people so again this is I think this is I think the danger and the problem with Trump is just how far he will go in this direction he still has some tendencies towards America as a global policeman for example did you notice how United States protested a couple of weeks ago claiming that you know of Russian government meddling through hacking and so on into American elections but my God Americans do this all the time they even don't don't do it secretly they openly for example and I'm all for Ukraine blah-blah against Russia but nonetheless you should know that American openly admitted there are dozens of so-called NGOs and so on the problem is if Americans do it it's for universal human rights if Russians do it it's a dark plot or whatever but they will find the shared language I think Trump is moving in the right way I mean this in a very pessimistic way and so again we should absolutely reject the idea that there is an anti-colonialist opening in this no because you know what’s the problem as long as the West tried to impose its universal human rights you could still do very efficiently and that's how anti-colonialist movements developed an immanent critique of ideology you could say wait a minute you propose universal human rights but you are cheating you don’t apply it fully you privilege certain people and there is a great space in this like as I always repeat I'm sorry if I repeat myself again that's why I never accepted that simple pseudo-Marxist critique of universal human rights yes at the beginning they were exclusively human rights were basically privileging they were the rights of rich male Western whatever man but as you know probably better than me it exploded immediately first women Mary Wollstonecraft joined then the ultimate event Haiti black revolution why not us even workers' movement developed you see that’s what is so good about universalist ideology it is false but it opens up immediately its self-inconsistency no while if we regress to this level to each of us its her hers their own culture then what remains as a global order are just some some some legal limits which regulate the free flow of capital and it’s much better for capitalism and so on that’s why I think I don’t have time to develop it now fully but that’s why I think it’s extremely dangerous to accept this logic even popular in some leftist circles of leftist nation state patriotism as the idea is this one universal order even European Union is the ultimate tool of international capital so the only way to constrain global capitalist logic is to have a strong nation state which can somehow contain it take more care of workers' rights and so on and so on maybe in some situations this will be good although don’t forget that Syriza began like that and now it’s the saddest example of what I would have said I like to use this sarcastic comparison it looks again that if you want to enact a minimum of pro-working class legislation only right-wingers can do it today this is what Marine Le Pen promised this is what the conservative whatever Justice and Order Party in Poland did it they did crazy things half a year ago the Polish government under the influence of Kaczyński the founding father you know they enacted crazy legislation lowering the age of retirement raising the raising the unemployed benefits healthcare and so on and so on and the opposite if you want to enact the toughest austerity the best is to leave it to radical left to do it Syriza this was such an ingenious move by Europe because imagine conservatives in power doing it we would have demonstrations all the time and so on but very wisely they decided this is why they never tried I learned all this from my friend Varoufakis they never tried really to to overthrow Syriza they wanted to get rid of him Varoufakis but no no Tsipras was untouchable why because they knew if Syriza loses power all its mobilizatory strength would remain and they would protest and so on but by way of keeping Syriza in power they demoralized totally more or less the situation you have now some marginal protests and so on and nothing where am I now with question of time well there's minutes left in the session so maybe turn it to the audience who would be maybe although it will be okay no just okay no just because I wanted to go but I will not now I wanted to go further just I will if you give me five minutes to conclude what I wanted to add is a guy who wrote an interesting book he is not an idiot I met him I think in LA Ramesh Srinivasan he wrote a book on decolonizing digital technology claiming that the way Google and all these are structured is implicitly privileging the Western individualist notions so the idea is that and I find catastrophic his conclusion his conclusion is that the starting point of every digitalization should be a local culture all the local wisdoms and so on how to accept how to articulate them and that wider communication comes as secondary but again and I I find this so problematic because he in his great struggle against Western colonization and so on not even once he mentions the option that what if these original communities Indian African or whoever Palestinian are somehow also traversed by antagonisms the rhetoric is strictly what I mentioned they are harmonious happy then this brutal universalists come and so on and so on again what he doesn’t get it is the whole full dialectics of it that in today’s world civilization the very fact of still surviving as an isolated community is already in some way mediated by global market you are either excluded from it or tolerated or whatever and so on and so on again if we don't understand how there are of course there are global communities threatened by sorry authentic local communities threatened by global market and so on and so on but the solution is in no way to find some core of resistance in this in these local communal traditions and so on and so on of course they shouldn't simply dissolve in global market but here I’m an old-fashioned European universalist of enlightenment the only way paradoxically to retain their particular way of life is to link it to universal struggle of emancipation there is no opposition here if you want to keep your authentic way of life outside universalism of the struggle of of emancipation you will get the worst authoritarian aspect of your of your local traditions and that’s why to conclude what I already said oh sorry let me read you to conclude just a passage from this Srinivasan or whatever which tells it all a quote from his book while it is important to learn about other people cultures and communities on their terms we must respect the power and importance of local cultural indigenous and community-based creative uses of technology conversations that surpass the bounds of community can and should emerge but only when the voices of their participants are truly respected from this perspective the global village is the problem rather than the solution we must reject assumptions about technology and culture that are dictated by Western concepts of cosmopolitanism okay I agree with it but my option would be why not another type of cosmopolitanism and so on and so on the only way again my problem with global capitalism is not that it corrodes local cultures the examples that I offered to you of Turkey and so on is that precisely it thrives on on them today's global capitalism its ideological superstructure is more and more strong local ethnic tradition for reasons that I will not go into today so the whole problem for me ah yes and then sorry just another quote from this guy where you end up if you follow this pass he claims that quote the epistemological privilege granted to modern science from the 17th century onwards which made possible the technological revolutions that consolidated Western supremacy was also instrumental in suppressing other non-scientific forms and knowledges it is now time to build a more democratic and just society and decolonize knowledge and power I consider this madness you know why because again beneath it is this idea also proposed by some pseudo-Foucaultians and so on science is just another discourse why privilege over magic thinking and so on and so on but you know what I find so ironic here that those who claim this today are not really partisans of authentic ancient tradition they appear as partisans of authentic local traditions but they are effectively the most decadent postmodernists who claim you know they're just different discourses everything is a play of discourse and so on and so on and don't have any illusions here we were too much obsessed with this idea objectivity of science is so Western domination and so on and so on no it can be easily universalized appropriated by others and so on and so on I think that the greatest threat is precisely this type of cultural relativization we are all in our cultures basically the message is again no universality and that’s the name of the catastrophe today because why because we live in a world which is a world of universality that’s and with this I will conclude don’t be afraid that’s the big lesson of Marx idiots think that the big lesson of Marx is historicist relativization of every universality you know like no there is no I don't know art as such it's always historically specific and so on or as some false feminists like to say there is no woman of such there are only white black lesbian women and so on and so on this sounds very deep and it’s even I advise you to take this road if you are engaged in a theoretical discussion and you are losing don’t know the way out one rhetorical way out is always this false nominalism like I’m Maria with you I talk I’m losing and let’s say we talk about capitalism and I’m an idiot I’m losing then I will say but there is no capitalism as such what are we talking about there is only this that capitalism and so on the thesis of Marx is that capitalism is universal let let's say I trade with a Chinese or African or whoever Palestinian guy of course we have all different cultures and we can play this hermeneutic game when I say wealth maybe in Europe of course it means another thing then in in China or wherever but the language of money is the same the truth is that I am that market commodities speak a universal language today we live in a so as Marx put it very nicely ideology is not only in this that it’s a universality but which covers its own historical particular character it’s also that capitalism is much more universal than it may appear market is universality in practice you know it’s something that can be also developed nicely based on Lacan when he speaks about universality of signifier and so on let’s say we talk about freedom and let’s say I collaborate with another group or sex or race or whatever of course we can play this boring deconstructionist multiculturalist way but how do I know that you mean the same with freedom as I do what if I mean more one thing you more another you know what’s my solution I don’t care let’s make a political program it works and I claim all successful political programs work like this you can always destroy them by claiming but they don’t mean the same thing as you maybe they don’t but you can do things we all fight for the same name I believe in power of names here even if at a certain point this can lead to new conflicts and so on and so on of course and Ernesto Laclau I had very bad relations with him at the end but he made this nicely how the master signifiers of hegemony are in this sense always empty signifiers you know it's like all power to the people it was clear in Egypt for example that Muslim Brotherhood didn’t mean the same thing as as all those young educated people and so on but you can start a movement in this way and then there is a struggle for hegemony who will win and so on and so on so again of course we shouldn’t accept Western universality the way it is but what we should accept is the idea it’s more than ever needed today the idea of political ideological universality as such and we should not get lost in this multicultural debates how do we know that we think the same thing as I already said okay we don't but so what let's work it works things work even if we don't think it's the same thing because now you will say this is a cynical solution no it's not because there is a beauty of political creativity which is let’s say that I am a conservative and I participate in a revolution although I have a very specific idea of freedom but you should not underestimate how once you engage yourself in a movement the very background of what you understand by it will change you know it’s not just that let’s say I have one notion of freedom you have another and we fight but it’s really different notions no the fight itself will change our notions okay maybe I thank you yeah thank you those when I was very young Germans were making this Karl May Winnetou Indian movies no and the Indian chief said at the end ich habe gesprochen like in nice Indians so ich habe gesprochen I have spoken thank you let's go over to questions whoever wants yes we have the mic so please wait for the microphone when you wrote about the train in
a path at the end of which there is something like Gulag so to address in this way another problem because what has all to do this for example with refugees to put it briefly Macron’s politics the politics he embodies with his previous role as French finance minister and so on Macron’s politics created them and Le Pen promises to defend us from them that’s why and that’s my point all my sympathy with refugees incidentally three days ago I was with them the only intelligent thing that happened in Venice at Venice Biennale was that crazy Slovene group Laibach Neue Slowenische Kunst established their own pavilion but with their own imaginary state where the show was curated by refugees and so on and so on and what I liked there is that their attitude is not the first thing should be to to reject easy simplifications the first one is and some of my friends advocate this line I’m totally opposed to it refugees are the new nomadic proletariat first there is a very decadent typically Eurocentric dream is it the dream is this one we in Europe we have the right leftist theory but we lack a revolutionary agent so I will be cynical now why don’t we outsource it and import the revolutionary agent and so on and so on but with all my sympathy but not humanitarian sympathy because I think sympathy means let's help them no we should do much more we should intervene in the situation geopolitical economic so that it will no longer produce refugees the important thing is to change the way Europe United States even China and so on deal with third-world countries and so on it’s stupid to think that the problem of refugees will be solved if we open up our hearts and what invite all of them to Europe or whatever in this way you either abolish democracy in Europe or or you give we can as well immediately give power to Marine Le Pen or whatever so again let me go on we should not treat them as victims we should not play that humanist card oh why don’t we listen to your story and so on what then we will discover that that they are also human like us of course they are there is nothing to discover here the discovery is to make is what are they do is what made them refugees second point this simplification refugees are the new proletarians look Marx was not simply bluffing if I may put it in this way for him a proletarian meant something very precise labor force reducing to pure subjectivity without substantial content that is to say workers just the only thing they have is working force they are selling it and in this way they create wealth but in the very process of creating wealth it’s taken away from them and so on and so on which is why Marx always emphasized that being a proletarian is not just in some abstract sense being exploited but it’s at the same time being trained disciplined through factory work and so on and so on I don’t see how refugees in any meaningful way can play this role if anything they come to Europe at least many of them in search of becoming a proletarian like isn’t their goal to get a stable job which precisely refugees are supposed not to be here now I’m not saying so if you are a Marxist revolutionary forget about refugees I’m just saying that this type of direct simplification oh nice we have a new proletariat to act as a revolutionary agent no it doesn’t work in this way the tragedy is that refugees that almost the main tensions in Europe are almost between refugees and the lower middle class existing old-fashioned working class and what where I am really mad at today’s left is that they bypass this problem oh it’s just because workers in Europe are manipulated we should bring solidarity okay bring this solidarity how there is no there is no easy way here so how then should we deal with this problem now I will try I'm jumping to another topic but it's strictly in the same line of proletarian position today how to deal with refugees to Jean-Claude Milner not Miller Milner his new book I mean you know Milner is in no way a radical leftist he is I would say some kind of a Zionist liberal but he is not stupid and this means a lot to me in his new book Relire la Révolution I mean if you read French I don't know did he tell you will it be translated it's a wonderful book he convinced me absolutely again in my love for Jacobins and so on you know we usually treat Jacobins as forerunners of crazy Stalinist purge trials and so on wait a minute just some data in Jacobins' purges so-called you know that when they had all those mock trials as they appear to us people were pardoned so they were not this type of Stalinist trials with all functions part two I love this this is a recent discovery it's wonderful do you know that for example usually liberals claim as the ultimate horror oh my God Danton they just wanted to get rid of one of them sorry to tell you now in some British archives they found proofs they were right Danton was paid by the British so it's but okay in the French revolutionary Jacobins and again they functioned in a totally different way from a Stalinist dictatorship never forget their their their weapon was to the end their main weapon was public speech speeches in Assemblée Nationale that’s why they were simply overthrown by by by the vote in Assemblée Nationale and if you read some of the latest letter exchanges between Saint-Just and Robespierre it’s extraordinary they were not idiots they saw it coming but Robespierre made a choice I know I will lose my head I prefer to do this than to step outside of the law okay let me not lose time let me go on their big revolutionary ideological revolution was the notion of human rights the distinction between human rights and citizen’s rights Milner and I think he is right here he rejects the Marxist critical notion of human rights as the rights of the member of a bourgeois civil society you know for Marx the distinction between human rights and citizen’s rights simply echoes the distinction between me as an egotist individual member of bourgeois civil society following my particular interests and me as a universal citizen for Milner citizen is the member of a community sharing its specific culture while a human being is what remains of a citizen when he or she is deprived of his/her citizenship human rights are natural only in this sense of the externality to a particular culture they have nothing to do with eternal nature since they apply simply to what remains of a citizen after he or she is subtracted from a specific polis community in this sense their nature the nature natural character of human rights is a retroactive effect of culture you know you imagine member of a community you erase subtract all historically specific features and what remains is why did they call it nature they simply didn’t have another term because the only alternative to nature was God like we are all children of God but they specifically wanted to avoid this so here is a wonderful quote from Milner one gains a glimpse into the real of the rights of the body in the sense that human rights refer to humans reduced to a speaking body in examining what goes on when they are denied to individuals every day brings a new example I do not have to think about bombs and poisonous gases I think about Calais Calais the French city those who are assembled there from the year of but now it was dismantled I think the Calais camp no are not guilty of anything they are not accused even of anything they do not infringe upon any part of the law they are simply there and they live the proof that they live is that sometimes they die nobody knows what language they are speaking and anyway one doesn’t listen to them one only knows that they speak they are therefore reduced to the status of speaking bodies by the settlement to which they are submitted they literally render visible in a negative way the real of the rights of men or woman these rights are openly distinguished from the rights of a citizen since refugees are precisely not the citizens of Calais and mostly they even do not want to become that end of quote Milner insists and he is very close to authentic materialism on the vulgar materiality of these rights human rights are more basic than the rights to reunion free speech opinion and so on before that comes the material base of a body water food hygiene toilets minimal space for privacy and so on if individuals are deprived of this the higher human rights free speech and so on disappear human rights are first such basic material rights toilets kitchen healthcare rights begin with the space for secretion this is I think the set base of my story that I repeated at least times about you know the distinction between German French and Anglo-Saxon toilets insofar as human rights proclaimed in the French Revolution were first proclaimed in the French Revolution one should note the irony that Calais is a French city and of course different political orientations give them different accent to these rights for Marxists they emphasize more this material rights to safety food and so on so-called capitalists emphasize more these intellectual rights but is but again what what one should make clear is that precisely as universal human rights again are not simply natural what counts as a human right is always overdetermined by a specific historical constellation already the fact that Milner renames them the rights of man/woman e-echoes contemporary feminist struggles we should also bear in mind that although humans are covered by these who are covered by these rights are proletarian in the sense of being deprived of citizenship they are nonetheless not abstract Cartesian cogitos they come as individuals embedded in a specific way of life often in conflict with the way of life of the country in which they dwell as refugees so here problems begin not in the sense that we Europeans should watch over them because their way of life is primitive or whatever I’m far from saying that I’m just saying and this is what brought me so many problems and so on I’m just saying that there is a problem here where is the problem again when we are dealing with the difficult problem of how to relate universal struggle for emancipation to the plurality of ways of life nothing should be left to chance not even the most self-evident general notions left liberals view the very notion of way of life with suspicion as if if it doesn't apply to marginal minorities it conceals a proto-fascist poison as if you mention a way of life oh my God I already see brown shirt in your cellar hidden or getting ready to wear against this suspicion one should accept this term a way of life I claim in its Lacanian version as something that points beyond all cultural features towards what in my Lacanian jargon I call a core of the real of enjoyment jouissance a way of life is ultimately the way of how a certain community organizes its in social form its jouissance its enjoyment this is why integration is such a sensitive issue when a group is under pressure to integrate into a wider community it often resists out of fear that it will lose its mode of jouissance a way of life does not encompass just rituals of food music dance social life and so on but also and above all habits written and unwritten rules of sexual life including inclusive of rules of mating and marriage and of social hierarchy respect of elders and so on in India for example and I'm telling this from my personal experience some post-colonial theorists defend even the caste system as part of a specific way of life which again should be defended against the global onslaught of global individualism so what do I mean by jouissance here let me give you just a brief detour which I hope will make at least vaguely the orientation clear are you watching it’s now on TV I claim and if you don’t you can easily copy it from Pirate Bay this the new TV version of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale okay ask yourself a simple question why do you enjoy watching it don’t give me the bullshit that it’s just oh it’s horror it depicts a serious threat of fundamentalists taking it over and so on and so on no that’s not why you enjoy watching it you enjoy watching it because and I claim this as a self-evident fact even if you deny it now because you are absolutely fascinated by the reality depicted there and the I spoke with my friends feminists and so on and they like this when you discover more and more concrete rules you know but if women are not allowed to read how do you how do they shop yes because you go tablets with images of fruits all these details I claim that this this it’s a very strange lesson the one of Handmaid’s Tale that it’s not as innocent as it appears yes it depicts a danger of alternate reality where fundamentalists can take over but it’s also absolutely our dis-about enjoyment in imagining this world and with enjoyment things turn strange for example another example then we return to the main line recently there was a legal case in Mexico and this is what happened a man was cleared in was pardoned by a court maybe you read it Guardian and others reported it there was a case of sexual assault on a young schoolgirl and the man who was still a young man but in his mid-20s from a rich family he was cleared proclaimed not guilty and no facts were disputed yes he did squeeze to be vulgar I’m sorry squeeze the girl’s breasts entered her vagina with his fingers and so on but his defense was that while he was doing it he did not enjoy himself and the judge his name is Anuar González found that although Diego Cruz the young guy who did this was accused of touching the victim’s breasts penetrating her with his fingers he had acted without carnal intent and so he was not guilty of the assault this logic is weird would it not be more obvious to claim the opposite if the man’s motivation I mean I’m not following this line I’m just stating what is for me pure common sense in no way would I justify this but if you push me at the end if the guy was in middle of some absolute erotic passion and doing it it would be for me one millimeter better than just brutally doing it just in a cold way so why this weird logic that since he didn’t enjoy he is not guilty the only way to explain this is to presuppose the underlying premise experiencing pleasure as such makes are guilty so that without pleasure there is no guilt we with all the Protestant complications that there is no not only no without guilt there is no pleasure but that there is also no pleasure without guilt you know there is an old joke which is pretty accurate I think and should be always remembered today when this year where as you know like I love this metaphor you know new-agers like this idea that when three planets are on the same line then something fateful will happen the whole universe will lose balance okay we are in such a year this year years of the publication of Capital of October Revolution and don’t forget years in of the key event of the Chinese Cultural Revolution it was the moment of truth when people in Shanghai Shanghai Commune took what Mao was saying seriously and said okay we don’t need army we don’t need party we will do it and then Mao had to send in the army thousands died so this is crucial point the highest battle with most victims of Cultural Revolution was not against bourgeoisie reactionaries what strictly internal but okay and also people tend to forget that the situation is even worse in the sense of this cosmic balance years of Luther you know posting those theses or whatever okay coming back to my point the joke is this one what’s the difference in sinning between Catholicism and Protestantism in Catholicism everything is pardoned if you admit it in the confession at the end of the week and in Protestantism you just have to feel a little bit guilty then you can do whatever you want so I think again this is the logic behind it guilt and pleasure go together in in both ways and precisely this collective this what Lacanians call jouissance enjoyment invested into collective way of life is what those who preach simple multicultural coexistence of different ways of life where they cheat I think even and with all my love for him for example my good friend Alain Badiou recently published a text on multiculturalism blah-blah and he claims each group in France should have the right to stick to its way of life and then he specifies what is this way of life and said their kitchen their traditional dresses their their music blah-blah-blah their dances their poetry well and then uh-uh-uh I was wait it’s typically for his argument to work he has to leave out relations of servitude and sexual arrangements you know because there problems begin namely again the problem is this one when we are dealing with the difficult problem of how to relate universal struggle for emancipation to the plurality of ways of life as I already said we should be very careful to deal with this problem the preferred vision this is Badiou’s vision is that of a united global world with all particular ways of life thriving each of them asserting its difference from others not as an antagonistic relationship not at the expense of others but as a positive display of creativity that contributes to the wealth of entire society that’s his vision each group should be free to assert its way of life not at the expense of others but it should be perceived the plurality of ways of life precisely as contributing to general wealth of humanity and so on when an ethnic group is prevented from expressing this identity in a creative way since it is under pressure to renounce it and to integrate itself into the predominant usually Western culture and way of life then it cannot but react so that it withdraws into negative difference a regressive purist fundamentalism that fights the predominant culture and even resorts to violent means in short fundamentalist violence is a reaction for which predominant culture is responsible or applied to immigrants and so on if they are violent it’s because our integration was constraining their creative way of life now I think that this entire vision of particular identities contributing to an united world and threatened by the violent pressure on minorities to integrate in other words by the false universality of the Western way of life which imposes itself as a standard for all this entire vision is to be rejected entirely I claim why the world we live in is one but it is one because it is traversed and in a way even held together by the same antagonism the one inscribed into the very heart of global capitalism universality is not located above particular identities it is not their neutral container but it is an antagonism that cuts from within each way of life this antagonism overdetermines all particular emancipatory struggles and cuts from within each way again of life explicit and unwritten rules of hierarchy homophobia male domination and so on are key constituents of a way of life in which they occur let me give you an example for which I I already used it here and I like to repeat it because I was ferociously attacked for it as again European racist preparing a pogrom and so on a story probably you know what happened in my own country with Roma so-called gypsies a lady a young Roma girl escaped to Slovene police some years ago claimed that 12-year-old that her father married her to his friend blah-blah-blah and that she doesn't want to be married at that age and then there was a big debate what to do feminists protected her and the irony was the same feminists who otherwise were totally for multiculturalist tolerance and so on they said no women’s rights we shouldn’t allow it but the interesting is how the Roma community reacted they say and in a way they were right they said sorry but arranging marriages is the very core of our way of life if you take this from us in two-three generations we disappear so again what would you have done I’m not saying there is an easy way out I’m just saying it is a problems or let’s take the very sensitive case of China and Tibet the brutal Chinese colonization of Tibet is a fact but this fact should not make us blind for what kind of country Tibet was before and even before an extremely harsh feudal society with extreme hierarchy regulated in details in the late 1950s when the Chinese authorities still more or less tolerated the Tibetan way of life they just controlled foreign policy and so on borders a villager visited his relatives in a neighboring village without asking his feudal master for permission when he was caught and threatened with severe punishment he took refugee in a nearby Chinese military garrison but when his master feudal master learned this he complained that the Chinese are brutally meddling into Tibetan way of life and he was right so what should the Chinese do another similar example is that of a traditional Chinese caste sorry Tibetan caste you know Tibet many mountains and so only narrow path and there was a precise rule when people of unequal social status let’s say a feudal master or a high Lama and an ordinary farmer meet walking in the opposite direction the guy the poor guy the lower had to step out of the path not just this but there was a precise ritual he was obliged to put a sleeve over his shoulder bow down and look with the eyes up and stick his tongue up like the whole ritual of appearing totally stupid and this was definitely part of their way of life and then as they say the Chinese brutally intervened into this and so on and so on so you see what’s my solution here first I don’t have any sympathies for what the Beijing government is doing generally and so on and so on I’m just claiming that this is this is a serious conflict and I agree with those who defend Tibetan way of life and say the Chinese have no right to intervene brutally from outside imposing their measures their customs and so on and so on but obviously and on this I’m putting my bets as it were obviously this Chinese ancient way of life was you know that’s crucial to see it was not a unified stable harmonious tradition then evil communists come and destroy it it was full of extreme tensions violences and so on and so on and the way to do is to not just to intervene from outside and send some enlightened feminists to teach them this is ridiculous if I may repeat another old joke which some of you know but it’s such a delicious story that I like to repeat it a nice example of this external colonialist intervention when there was the civil war in Bosnia some and women were raped blah-blah at some point American feminists ah they wanted to play this card yes we sympathize with raped women so they established a contact with a Bosnian organization women’s organization of victims of rape and to clarify their position they sent them a questionnaire which was then for years a laughing matter in Bosnia because like you know it’s simply in a totally let’s call it culturally colonizing racist way it projected onto Bosnian American theoretical even concerns of that time like the first question in this questionnaire was do you think that a woman has an eternal essence or do you think that femininity is performatively constructed through imitation like Judith Butler you know and they just laughed like wait a minute what’s going on so I know well what is cultural imperialism here but nonetheless again the crucial thing is nonetheless not to mystify these traditional communities this is why now I come to my crucial point all those who claim the fact today is that aboriginal wherever they are or pre-modern communities are terrorized by Western universality whose ideology human rights is just a tool of global financial imperialism and so on and so on I this is happening of course but what I’m claiming is a much nicer thing is that first I absolutely disagree with the claim that the basic let's call it bombastically global imperialist strategy is to destroy local communities no it never was the case it’s not today the case for example I’m sorry if you know this example again I know the situation in India here the most horrible maybe the most horrible ideological masterwork that I know the laws of Manu an ancient text pages you can get in Penguin which describes the logic of caste system and a perverse old man as I am I immediately went into sexual part no my God it’s wonderful you know it describes if after sex man does not wanting the woman to get pregnant how do you call it if you pull out the penis before no in what sense in what precise way should he then wipe his penis you know how you should turn around it's wondrous but what I’m saying is that it’s extremely interesting the book has an excellent introduction where it explains the basic paradox it’s not ancient Indian tradition before British colonization India was in a messy state Muslim influence and so on and this book became almost irrelevant it got a big revival in early 19th century when British colonizers got it in a very nice way that no-no we don’t want Indians to lose their tradition and to become individuals like us in this way they will be much harsher much more difficult it would be to dominate them no so they reprinted the book propagated it because they discovered if Indians follow this ancient traditions oh that’s the way to keep them no and even today for example some of my friends told me that Palestinian and progressive Israeli friends that on the West Bank in a refined way Israeli occupiers are playing the same game when there is a so-called honor killing or whatever they as a rule don’t prosecute it because they got it that it’s in what they should fear is not Palestinians who remain Islamic fundamentalists no Palestinians who want to modernize themselves and so on you know so they are playing these games so again my point is here that it’s not simply imperialists destroying local traditions is that a pact between let’s call it imperialism and the reactionary whatever you call it aspect of local traditions local society are always traversed by inner antagonisms and so on and so on so I agree our fight should not be we Western universalist impose our value but to find a contact to work to connect our struggle with their struggle there that’s the only that’s the only way and this is happening even in the case of China and Tibet incidentally so that you will not accuse me of Chinese state propaganda all the data that I gave you about China they are not from that foreign languages official Chinese press I got them from anti-Chinese histories of Tibet and so on you know so again this is an interesting fact that you learn you know in Cultural Revolution they destroyed many monasteries in Tibet and so on so the official story was Chinese imported thousands of Red Guards from main China uh-uh now we know the data you know how many Red Guards came from China to Tibet five-zero so all those thousands young people it was going on horrible destroying monasteries no-no they were their own disaffected youth the time of Tibetan ancient regime the time was over so you see if you want to fight for Tibet do it but don’t play the game of oh this sacred ancient Tibetan tradition and so on and so on you know where is for me here the biggest irony I love it American Indians some people call them Native Americans I hate the term I mean I I will not repeat my joke it’s more reactionary than Indians to call them Native Americans I read a very tragic analysis a Native American Indian friend gave it to me you know they're saying they have some ancient holistic wisdom blah-blah they should develop it but you know which tribes only succeed doing it those who have mineral or oil in their land so that they can earn money to organize the life reproduction of their tradition so it’s not simply oh we should stick to our tradition yes but we can only stick to our tradition by at the same time fully including ourselves into global capital and so on and so on so where are we today I think that first I do oppose of course that Western racism even if it’s feminist or whatever of we have universal human values and so on and I did my homework I know in what way for example what we call individual freedoms and so on reflect a certain way of life they are not neutral but I think we should nonetheless save universalism we should not draw a fateful conclusion that forget about universalism each civilization should be allowed its own way of life the moment we do this we are in world market total total domination of world market I know that universal human rights I know the story they were directed by United States to screw third-world countries and so on and so on but we should not because of this abandon universalism but simply fight for a more authentic universalism and the sad thing about Trump what people like Trump Putin Erdogan in Turkey China stand for is precisely this they got something very important that universal global market not only does not need a universal political structure of human rights and so on but functions much more efficiently with each state nation allowed its particular way of life because in this way there are no universal rules constraining world market which is why I see no paradox in the fact that as I already mentioned it I think and this is a wonderful crazy fact how today after the stupidities of Trump it’s China which is emerging as the main organizer of a new global market they are doing this really very intelligently precisely China which all the time emphasizes their own Confucian tradition and so on and so on so we have now a new I mean we were right to criticize this Western imperialism of human rights and so on but now I think we are gradually shifting to something different again think about the names of Modi in India China Erdogan Turkey Putin and so on strong ethnocentric nationalism or America First Trump as much more appropriate ideological form of global capitalism what is happening here you know I developed this already in my books this formula of Zionist anti-semitism which you find already in Nazis you know I will not bore you here with this but my favorite quote is ah I have it here it’s so nice I will read it to you Reinhard Heydrich you know the Holocaust guy you know what he wrote in you will not believe it a quote we must separate the Jews into two categories the Zionists and the partisans of assimilation the Zionists profess a strictly racial concept and through emigration to Palestine they help to build their own Jewish state our good wishes and our original goodwill go with them and so on this is the first formula of then later you find it in all modern right up to those obscure guys around Trump Zionist anti-semitism anti-semitism in the sense of no Jews here they are dangerous invisible but Jewish state wonderful we support them and so on what I’m claiming is if you followed closely you know Erdogan they had this stupid referendum in Turkey where Erdogan won although with a little bit of cheating properly but it was again a vote for this time type of ethnocentric authoritarian more on Islam founded state the end of Kemalist Turkey to cut a long story short I claim that what we are getting now is a new version of this Zionist anti-semitism it is Islamophobic respect for Islam it’s Islam is good if it’s there no wonder Trump Putin they all immediately congratulated Erdogan and even those Europeans who were superficially critical of Erdogan silently said okay now they have their own way we will have here our own our own way but again not here here we don’t need them you know like what’s going on here I think it’s you remember Huntington the guy he was more popular years ago the clash of civilizations you know I think this is the lesson of it today there is no opposition between Fukuyama and Huntington Huntington clash of civilizations is precisely the ideological form of Fukuyamaist global capitalism and so on they were wrong to think that they are opposed the formula is what is emerging today is instead of clash of civilizations peaceful coexistence of civilizations in the sense of each of us this is the new world that is emerging each of us should have the right to organize their own its own way of life this was already the old strategy of British Empire and so on but you should respect this is why for example the United Kingdom you know they never went to war to protect women in India or there or in China but they went to war against the minimal limitation of opium trade that one of the most shameful wars of all time when Western allies attacked China in 1840s I think you know that’s the world I think with Trump and so on that we are approaching and what really worries me is how some so-called anti-colonialist leaders who present themselves as progressive accept this game for example I was shocked a couple of weeks one month ago something like this a couple of weeks Robert Mugabe even called you should follow this no called Trump ironically of course but nonetheless comrade and said comrade Trump said America First we accept this for Americans America first for us Zimbabwe first and so on which means you can screw up your people just please allow us to to screw our people so again this is I think this is I think the danger and the problem with Trump is just how far he will go in this direction he still has some tendencies towards America as a global policeman for example did you notice how United States protested a couple of weeks ago claiming that you know of Russian government meddling through hacking and so on into American elections but my God Americans do this all the time they even don't don't do it secretly they openly for example and I'm all for Ukraine blah-blah against Russia but nonetheless you should know that American openly admitted there are dozens of so-called NGOs and so on the problem is if Americans do it it's for universal human rights if Russians do it it's a dark plot or whatever but they will find the shared language I think Trump is moving in the right way I mean this in a very pessimistic way and so again we should absolutely reject the idea that there is an anti-colonialist opening in this no because you know what’s the problem as long as the West tried to impose its universal human rights you could still do very efficiently and that's how anti-colonialist movements developed an immanent critique of ideology you could say wait a minute you propose universal human rights but you are cheating you don’t apply it fully you privilege certain people and there is a great space in this like as I always repeat I'm sorry if I repeat myself again that's why I never accepted that simple pseudo-Marxist critique of universal human rights yes at the beginning they were exclusively human rights were basically privileging they were the rights of rich male Western whatever man but as you know probably better than me it exploded immediately first women Mary Wollstonecraft joined then the ultimate event Haiti black revolution why not us even workers' movement developed you see that’s what is so good about universalist ideology it is false but it opens up immediately its self-inconsistency no while if we regress to this level to each of us its her hers their own culture then what remains as a global order are just some some some legal limits which regulate the free flow of capital and it’s much better for capitalism and so on that’s why I think I don’t have time to develop it now fully but that’s why I think it’s extremely dangerous to accept this logic even popular in some leftist circles of leftist nation state patriotism as the idea is this one universal order even European Union is the ultimate tool of international capital so the only way to constrain global capitalist logic is to have a strong nation state which can somehow contain it take more care of workers' rights and so on and so on maybe in some situations this will be good although don’t forget that Syriza began like that and now it’s the saddest example of what I would have said I like to use this sarcastic comparison it looks again that if you want to enact a minimum of pro-working class legislation only right-wingers can do it today this is what Marine Le Pen promised this is what the conservative whatever Justice and Order Party in Poland did it they did crazy things half a year ago the Polish government under the influence of Kaczyński the founding father you know they enacted crazy legislation lowering the age of retirement raising the raising the unemployed benefits healthcare and so on and so on and the opposite if you want to enact the toughest austerity the best is to leave it to radical left to do it Syriza this was such an ingenious move by Europe because imagine conservatives in power doing it we would have demonstrations all the time and so on but very wisely they decided this is why they never tried I learned all this from my friend Varoufakis they never tried really to to overthrow Syriza they wanted to get rid of him Varoufakis but no no Tsipras was untouchable why because they knew if Syriza loses power all its mobilizatory strength would remain and they would protest and so on but by way of keeping Syriza in power they demoralized totally more or less the situation you have now some marginal protests and so on and nothing where am I now with question of time well there's minutes left in the session so maybe turn it to the audience who would be maybe although it will be okay no just okay no just because I wanted to go but I will not now I wanted to go further just I will if you give me five minutes to conclude what I wanted to add is a guy who wrote an interesting book he is not an idiot I met him I think in LA Ramesh Srinivasan he wrote a book on decolonizing digital technology claiming that the way Google and all these are structured is implicitly privileging the Western individualist notions so the idea is that and I find catastrophic his conclusion his conclusion is that the starting point of every digitalization should be a local culture all the local wisdoms and so on how to accept how to articulate them and that wider communication comes as secondary but again and I I find this so problematic because he in his great struggle against Western colonization and so on not even once he mentions the option that what if these original communities Indian African or whoever Palestinian are somehow also traversed by antagonisms the rhetoric is strictly what I mentioned they are harmonious happy then this brutal universalists come and so on and so on again what he doesn’t get it is the whole full dialectics of it that in today’s world civilization the very fact of still surviving as an isolated community is already in some way mediated by global market you are either excluded from it or tolerated or whatever and so on and so on again if we don't understand how there are of course there are global communities threatened by sorry authentic local communities threatened by global market and so on and so on but the solution is in no way to find some core of resistance in this in these local communal traditions and so on and so on of course they shouldn't simply dissolve in global market but here I’m an old-fashioned European universalist of enlightenment the only way paradoxically to retain their particular way of life is to link it to universal struggle of emancipation there is no opposition here if you want to keep your authentic way of life outside universalism of the struggle of of emancipation you will get the worst authoritarian aspect of your of your local traditions and that’s why to conclude what I already said oh sorry let me read you to conclude just a passage from this Srinivasan or whatever which tells it all a quote from his book while it is important to learn about other people cultures and communities on their terms we must respect the power and importance of local cultural indigenous and community-based creative uses of technology conversations that surpass the bounds of community can and should emerge but only when the voices of their participants are truly respected from this perspective the global village is the problem rather than the solution we must reject assumptions about technology and culture that are dictated by Western concepts of cosmopolitanism okay I agree with it but my option would be why not another type of cosmopolitanism and so on and so on the only way again my problem with global capitalism is not that it corrodes local cultures the examples that I offered to you of Turkey and so on is that precisely it thrives on on them today's global capitalism its ideological superstructure is more and more strong local ethnic tradition for reasons that I will not go into today so the whole problem for me ah yes and then sorry just another quote from this guy where you end up if you follow this pass he claims that quote the epistemological privilege granted to modern science from the 17th century onwards which made possible the technological revolutions that consolidated Western supremacy was also instrumental in suppressing other non-scientific forms and knowledges it is now time to build a more democratic and just society and decolonize knowledge and power I consider this madness you know why because again beneath it is this idea also proposed by some pseudo-Foucaultians and so on science is just another discourse why privilege over magic thinking and so on and so on but you know what I find so ironic here that those who claim this today are not really partisans of authentic ancient tradition they appear as partisans of authentic local traditions but they are effectively the most decadent postmodernists who claim you know they're just different discourses everything is a play of discourse and so on and so on and don't have any illusions here we were too much obsessed with this idea objectivity of science is so Western domination and so on and so on no it can be easily universalized appropriated by others and so on and so on I think that the greatest threat is precisely this type of cultural relativization we are all in our cultures basically the message is again no universality and that’s the name of the catastrophe today because why because we live in a world which is a world of universality that’s and with this I will conclude don’t be afraid that’s the big lesson of Marx idiots think that the big lesson of Marx is historicist relativization of every universality you know like no there is no I don't know art as such it's always historically specific and so on or as some false feminists like to say there is no woman of such there are only white black lesbian women and so on and so on this sounds very deep and it’s even I advise you to take this road if you are engaged in a theoretical discussion and you are losing don’t know the way out one rhetorical way out is always this false nominalism like I’m Maria with you I talk I’m losing and let’s say we talk about capitalism and I’m an idiot I’m losing then I will say but there is no capitalism as such what are we talking about there is only this that capitalism and so on the thesis of Marx is that capitalism is universal let let's say I trade with a Chinese or African or whoever Palestinian guy of course we have all different cultures and we can play this hermeneutic game when I say wealth maybe in Europe of course it means another thing then in in China or wherever but the language of money is the same the truth is that I am that market commodities speak a universal language today we live in a so as Marx put it very nicely ideology is not only in this that it’s a universality but which covers its own historical particular character it’s also that capitalism is much more universal than it may appear market is universality in practice you know it’s something that can be also developed nicely based on Lacan when he speaks about universality of signifier and so on let’s say we talk about freedom and let’s say I collaborate with another group or sex or race or whatever of course we can play this boring deconstructionist multiculturalist way but how do I know that you mean the same with freedom as I do what if I mean more one thing you more another you know what’s my solution I don’t care let’s make a political program it works and I claim all successful political programs work like this you can always destroy them by claiming but they don’t mean the same thing as you maybe they don’t but you can do things we all fight for the same name I believe in power of names here even if at a certain point this can lead to new conflicts and so on and so on of course and Ernesto Laclau I had very bad relations with him at the end but he made this nicely how the master signifiers of hegemony are in this sense always empty signifiers you know it's like all power to the people it was clear in Egypt for example that Muslim Brotherhood didn’t mean the same thing as as all those young educated people and so on but you can start a movement in this way and then there is a struggle for hegemony who will win and so on and so on so again of course we shouldn’t accept Western universality the way it is but what we should accept is the idea it’s more than ever needed today the idea of political ideological universality as such and we should not get lost in this multicultural debates how do we know that we think the same thing as I already said okay we don't but so what let's work it works things work even if we don't think it's the same thing because now you will say this is a cynical solution no it's not because there is a beauty of political creativity which is let’s say that I am a conservative and I participate in a revolution although I have a very specific idea of freedom but you should not underestimate how once you engage yourself in a movement the very background of what you understand by it will change you know it’s not just that let’s say I have one notion of freedom you have another and we fight but it’s really different notions no the fight itself will change our notions okay maybe I thank you yeah thank you those when I was very young Germans were making this Karl May Winnetou Indian movies no and the Indian chief said at the end ich habe gesprochen like in nice Indians so ich habe gesprochen I have spoken thank you let's go over to questions whoever wants yes we have the mic so please wait for the microphone when you wrote about the train in
Cathy Newman
the
the
Slavoj Žižek
end of the tunnel and we see the light to be against us I had a feeling that you were writing for us Brazilians at this specific moment you probably know what’s going on there even better than myself so what I’d like to know if have you ever seen the Argentinian film called Moebius if I’m not mistaken from no I have it just to interrupt then I give you immediately the word that’s my tragedy I downloaded it with the idea now I can see whenever I want which means I will probably never see it but I have it downloaded the movie yeah so quickly for the ones who didn't watch it I don't want to spoil it but it's about a train that passes now you have to see the film to realize how it happens but it passes and we actually don't see it passing how do you know then that it passes well you have to see the film I don't want to spoil it because it's a one it's an excellent film excellent and well what I ask you is what if the train has passed and didn't even bother to destroy us or to leave tangible evidence of the destroy of having destroyed us or whatever what’s your implication here that in reality it did destroy us we just didn’t even feel it or that it really didn’t destroy us this is maybe that there is not even a light we are not even seeing the light because it has passed already and we can feel it destroyed us but we don't know how it happened and we have no idea where it's actually taken us you know what's okay we don't have time to go into this because I would like my way would be to elaborate in detail your metaphor if you don’t know you don’t see and so on what’s the name of this train how do you know that the train exists at all what do you mean by train capitalism or what I mean you know what I mean like how do you know what if somebody comes and says there is no train train is like God it’s just your illusion and so on I would like to know what a very stupid question a metaphor for what is your fucking train sorry if we turn into the end of your talk you were talking about universality yeah could we think that the three powers justice legislation and executive are a universe a universality so to speak that is actually destroying us I'm speaking about Brazil but maybe you can yeah no it’s specifically Brazilian I think it’s a concrete question of concrete circumstance I’m here very pragmatic in this empirical question in some political situations the distinction how do you call this Montesquieu distinction of powers between legal can play a good role in some cases it can play a very reactionary role and so on I don’t know I’m here very open I can be corrected but I’m not ready to commit myself to an abstract principle like the distinction of three powers is a priori good or bad I can well imagine a situation where you have to play a little bit with democracy and go absolutely consciously against the will of the people now you will say I’m crazy and I’m sorry if I repeat myself I will give you immediately an example Angela Merkel two years ago or when it was deciding to invite count million people refugees are we aware that in some sense what she did and through my friends who have some connection with German government I learned the truth she knew it that’s why it was nonetheless a nice almost heroic act she was well aware that if she were to say no-no we should vote is the majority for it would have meant fuck off refugees so she did something that a true politician does you risk it and you hope that through the result of your gesture you will be retroactively justified that’s what a real politician does not follow the people real politician never follows the will of the people this no I don't here I'm progressively conservative how should I put it you know because I don't think that the majority except in and I don't despise majority you know I'm a realist these are poor people living in fear all the time and so on but that’s also my problem as I already said here the last time with somebody like Varoufakis my good friend but I found this DiEM idea a little bit stupid and I told him this you want a more transparent democratic Europe this for me equals for let's fuckingly get rid of refugees because practically in all countries I claim if you were to do a referendum today they would have been against so we have this paradox it’s a beautiful for a dialectician beautiful crazy situation that to be truly anti-racist and for to help refugees you have to act a little bit non-democratically playing with public opinion and so on and so on these are the paradox I mean we have to accept it that how should I put it my God isn't it that whole Lacanian good thing of don't give me what I'm asking for because it's not this yes but it’s difficult to apply this directly because the problem is how far do you go in this you know I mean I would be tempted to apply this literally which means let's organize elections and then when we get the result the opposite you know like if you don’t want it you know I like to do this all the time for example I annoyed my good friend Alain Badiou who proposed that formula which is beautiful in the West it’s work against this idea of immigrants are destroying our roots you know his formula was qui est ici est d'ici those who are here are from here so none of those distinctions but you are not from here you know and I told them well that’s certainly something that that Jewish settlers on the West Bank would fully support you know like sorry we are here so we are from here so fuck off Palestinians you see I like to complicate but the lesson is a very sad one you know politics is basically risky there is no simple way like oh we make a democratic vote and so on and we decide you have I'm not saying it's a postmodern game I still believe in democracy universality all that but about Brazil specifically I don't know enough all I know is that the country which is at this moment closest to me politically is if you ask me Bolivia they are doing silently their modest job they didn't screw up economy although they are enforcing progressive measures and so on they have no illusions and so on and now they are even on the verge of of luck I read somewhere that they now discovered tremendous reserves of lithium there and this may make them a new Saudi Arabia almost like tre-men they they deserved it I think you know they didn't go because the tragedy of Chavez let's forget about Maduro now is for me that as I always repeat he was Fidel Castro with money he was not really solving problem he was throwing money at problems but if you look closely at the effects of his economic politics I'm not playing any liberal democratic games I'm simply saying what did he do with industry how did it work his for example I'm sorry I will stop now because I talk too much but nonetheless friends from Venezuela I have a good friend there who is a cynical leftist and whenever in the last years they gave a factory to workers he just noted it and then a year later he went to check what happened with that factory hundreds of cases not one was a success no so you know that's why we leftists who are critical of this situation Macron Le Pen and so on should never forget to be also self-critical I the tragedy of the left today is that a world is coming to an end something new will have to emerge but do we really know what so people often ask me why do you then dream at all why don’t we simply accept it no it will be a catastrophe it will be either a catastrophe but or something a little bit better but it cannot go on the way it is now but speaking about Brazil and so on Argentinian do you know that movie Lucrecia Martel La ciénaga and so on oh my God it’s a great Argentinian movie which is the best staging of this despair of everyday life in province this type of everyday of everyday ideology no and of course speaking of Brazil I’m a great admirer of Canudos of course yeah sorry I talk too much there were there there were well there was this guy first and then I've got two questions if I may I don't know if you find them as being related I think they might be the first one you just mentioned Bolivia and the Latin American case in general so the first one has to do with market and state and the self-criticism that as you said is needed by the left so I'm thinking for example in the case of Ecuador but also Bolivia so Ecuador is the state where the leader’s new name is Lenin no yes yes exactly my point goes also yeah yeah yeah so the thing with cases like Ecuador or I would argue Bolivia I don't know Venezuela is a different type of species is that it's a republic self-proclaimed as socialist with a lot of policies
end of the tunnel and we see the light to be against us I had a feeling that you were writing for us Brazilians at this specific moment you probably know what’s going on there even better than myself so what I’d like to know if have you ever seen the Argentinian film called Moebius if I’m not mistaken from no I have it just to interrupt then I give you immediately the word that’s my tragedy I downloaded it with the idea now I can see whenever I want which means I will probably never see it but I have it downloaded the movie yeah so quickly for the ones who didn't watch it I don't want to spoil it but it's about a train that passes now you have to see the film to realize how it happens but it passes and we actually don't see it passing how do you know then that it passes well you have to see the film I don't want to spoil it because it's a one it's an excellent film excellent and well what I ask you is what if the train has passed and didn't even bother to destroy us or to leave tangible evidence of the destroy of having destroyed us or whatever what’s your implication here that in reality it did destroy us we just didn’t even feel it or that it really didn’t destroy us this is maybe that there is not even a light we are not even seeing the light because it has passed already and we can feel it destroyed us but we don't know how it happened and we have no idea where it's actually taken us you know what's okay we don't have time to go into this because I would like my way would be to elaborate in detail your metaphor if you don’t know you don’t see and so on what’s the name of this train how do you know that the train exists at all what do you mean by train capitalism or what I mean you know what I mean like how do you know what if somebody comes and says there is no train train is like God it’s just your illusion and so on I would like to know what a very stupid question a metaphor for what is your fucking train sorry if we turn into the end of your talk you were talking about universality yeah could we think that the three powers justice legislation and executive are a universe a universality so to speak that is actually destroying us I'm speaking about Brazil but maybe you can yeah no it’s specifically Brazilian I think it’s a concrete question of concrete circumstance I’m here very pragmatic in this empirical question in some political situations the distinction how do you call this Montesquieu distinction of powers between legal can play a good role in some cases it can play a very reactionary role and so on I don’t know I’m here very open I can be corrected but I’m not ready to commit myself to an abstract principle like the distinction of three powers is a priori good or bad I can well imagine a situation where you have to play a little bit with democracy and go absolutely consciously against the will of the people now you will say I’m crazy and I’m sorry if I repeat myself I will give you immediately an example Angela Merkel two years ago or when it was deciding to invite count million people refugees are we aware that in some sense what she did and through my friends who have some connection with German government I learned the truth she knew it that’s why it was nonetheless a nice almost heroic act she was well aware that if she were to say no-no we should vote is the majority for it would have meant fuck off refugees so she did something that a true politician does you risk it and you hope that through the result of your gesture you will be retroactively justified that’s what a real politician does not follow the people real politician never follows the will of the people this no I don't here I'm progressively conservative how should I put it you know because I don't think that the majority except in and I don't despise majority you know I'm a realist these are poor people living in fear all the time and so on but that’s also my problem as I already said here the last time with somebody like Varoufakis my good friend but I found this DiEM idea a little bit stupid and I told him this you want a more transparent democratic Europe this for me equals for let's fuckingly get rid of refugees because practically in all countries I claim if you were to do a referendum today they would have been against so we have this paradox it’s a beautiful for a dialectician beautiful crazy situation that to be truly anti-racist and for to help refugees you have to act a little bit non-democratically playing with public opinion and so on and so on these are the paradox I mean we have to accept it that how should I put it my God isn't it that whole Lacanian good thing of don't give me what I'm asking for because it's not this yes but it’s difficult to apply this directly because the problem is how far do you go in this you know I mean I would be tempted to apply this literally which means let's organize elections and then when we get the result the opposite you know like if you don’t want it you know I like to do this all the time for example I annoyed my good friend Alain Badiou who proposed that formula which is beautiful in the West it’s work against this idea of immigrants are destroying our roots you know his formula was qui est ici est d'ici those who are here are from here so none of those distinctions but you are not from here you know and I told them well that’s certainly something that that Jewish settlers on the West Bank would fully support you know like sorry we are here so we are from here so fuck off Palestinians you see I like to complicate but the lesson is a very sad one you know politics is basically risky there is no simple way like oh we make a democratic vote and so on and we decide you have I'm not saying it's a postmodern game I still believe in democracy universality all that but about Brazil specifically I don't know enough all I know is that the country which is at this moment closest to me politically is if you ask me Bolivia they are doing silently their modest job they didn't screw up economy although they are enforcing progressive measures and so on they have no illusions and so on and now they are even on the verge of of luck I read somewhere that they now discovered tremendous reserves of lithium there and this may make them a new Saudi Arabia almost like tre-men they they deserved it I think you know they didn't go because the tragedy of Chavez let's forget about Maduro now is for me that as I always repeat he was Fidel Castro with money he was not really solving problem he was throwing money at problems but if you look closely at the effects of his economic politics I'm not playing any liberal democratic games I'm simply saying what did he do with industry how did it work his for example I'm sorry I will stop now because I talk too much but nonetheless friends from Venezuela I have a good friend there who is a cynical leftist and whenever in the last years they gave a factory to workers he just noted it and then a year later he went to check what happened with that factory hundreds of cases not one was a success no so you know that's why we leftists who are critical of this situation Macron Le Pen and so on should never forget to be also self-critical I the tragedy of the left today is that a world is coming to an end something new will have to emerge but do we really know what so people often ask me why do you then dream at all why don’t we simply accept it no it will be a catastrophe it will be either a catastrophe but or something a little bit better but it cannot go on the way it is now but speaking about Brazil and so on Argentinian do you know that movie Lucrecia Martel La ciénaga and so on oh my God it’s a great Argentinian movie which is the best staging of this despair of everyday life in province this type of everyday of everyday ideology no and of course speaking of Brazil I’m a great admirer of Canudos of course yeah sorry I talk too much there were there there were well there was this guy first and then I've got two questions if I may I don't know if you find them as being related I think they might be the first one you just mentioned Bolivia and the Latin American case in general so the first one has to do with market and state and the self-criticism that as you said is needed by the left so I'm thinking for example in the case of Ecuador but also Bolivia so Ecuador is the state where the leader’s new name is Lenin no yes yes exactly my point goes also yeah yeah yeah so the thing with cases like Ecuador or I would argue Bolivia I don't know Venezuela is a different type of species is that it's a republic self-proclaimed as socialist with a lot of policies
unknown
that
that
Slavoj Žižek
we
we
unknown
believe in towards the left and so on and I'm very into it too but capitalism is thriving too in my view so what I mean by this you know oil companies from Canada USA and so on and China do you know that problem in Ecuador yeah yeah so my question is
believe in towards the left and so on and I'm very into it too but capitalism is thriving too in my view so what I mean by this you know oil companies from Canada USA and so on and China do you know that problem in Ecuador yeah yeah so my question is
Slavoj Žižek
there pragmatically in this sense as a what can the left do because at the moment the hegemonic power is the left at least rhetorically in Ecuador so those of us who are part of or identify so or self-ideologically with the left we have a very hard time being critical and what's the intellectual position and political position that you would argue in this
there pragmatically in this sense as a what can the left do because at the moment the hegemonic power is the left at least rhetorically in Ecuador so those of us who are part of or identify so or self-ideologically with the left we have a very hard time being critical and what's the intellectual position and political position that you would argue in this
unknown
complex scenario and
complex scenario and
Slavoj Žižek
the second one goes into the other direction the question of subjectivity you
the second one goes into the other direction the question of subjectivity you
unknown
mentioned the case of sorry yeah you mentioned the case of Bosnia with the feminists bringing this psychological or pseudo-psychological questionnaire about or anthropological
mentioned the case of sorry yeah you mentioned the case of Bosnia with the feminists bringing this psychological or pseudo-psychological questionnaire about or anthropological
Slavoj Žižek
questionnaire about so the question concretely is about the psychological discourse in the ideolo in the ideological globalization of of psychology as a
questionnaire about so the question concretely is about the psychological discourse in the ideolo in the ideological globalization of of psychology as a
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way of looking at at subjectivity instead of a politicized social way of looking at it and if you think again pragmatically is there any way we can escape language we can escape psychological even
way of looking at at subjectivity instead of a politicized social way of looking at it and if you think again pragmatically is there any way we can escape language we can escape psychological even
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalytical language to think about ourselves and others is is there an alternative for this so those are my two questions okay I will try to be brief not too first market state frankly I don't know and I don't have a clear answer to this I think that still we are not again it will be very pessimistic what I'm saying but catastrophe is approaching by catastrophe I think
psychoanalytical language to think about ourselves and others is is there an alternative for this so those are my two questions okay I will try to be brief not too first market state frankly I don't know and I don't have a clear answer to this I think that still we are not again it will be very pessimistic what I'm saying but catastrophe is approaching by catastrophe I think
unknown
some new crisis or whatever and what we should do is my God many
some new crisis or whatever and what we should do is my God many
Slavoj Žižek
people would accuse me of being some kind of abstract mystic but we should occupy positions and get ready for we don't yet know what that would be very pessimistic position because everybody who says but I know what we should do I ask them okay tell me what nationalize give factories to the workers and so on especially those who are partisans of local democracy communities tell me one example of local local how do you call this pre-representative democracy which works without a charismatic leader no I don't have problem with charismatic leaders just that to make this clear so the my main point would have been this one which is much more interesting and it opens up a space for acting today it's not simply market versus state for market to function at all we need more and more state regulation look at United States it's not true that states are disappearing big companies rule no strong regulatory state is more and more needed and look at the most dynamic countries today Korea Singapore China it's market with an extremely strong state which intervenes of the into the market all the time and so on and so on and this would be my only general note more trust into the state we should take over the state we should absolutely stop with this pseudo-Foucaultian I refer to Michel Foucault idea state apparatus control manipulation and then the leftist position as that of resisting finding the niches of resistance against no grab power wherever whenever you can don't be afraid to use police to use I will not go to the end here what but but I never liked with the left this false modesty you know which betrays this enjoyment it's nice to be in a marginal position on the edge in this way you can analyze critically everything this is the left whose great triumph is always when an emancipatory revolutionary movement goes wrong it's always the greatest pleasure of leftists to write an excellent analysis of why it had to go wrong you know no I think that like what we can do in this situation we can change the terrain open spaces here and there push the limit of possible impossible for example I'm sorry the example that I use every year here even with Obama what he did with Obamacare healthcare was something which was almost revolutionary for the United States because for the United States this was because of their ideology of personal freedom choice and so on this was almost pushing it to the impossible so I would say it's not simply an idea big revolution or gradual reforms I like reforms but this type of reforms which appear modest but they have a devil hidden in them you know you say oh we will just change that we will just change that small law subsection of a law but you know how this will trigger all of it but again the crisis the crisis is serious like when leftists say okay planned this Stalinist state-controlled socialism doesn't work okay but my question is what works then they say we need a democratic socialism okay show me how it works what do we have outside social democracy a again I repeat but okay sorry I will not get lost here but I will go to your second question because it hides a very good point psychology and all that I totally agree with you and it all began already in Marxism this misuse of psychology contrary to the usual predominant opinion Marxist always basically liked psychoanalysis why because from 1920s onwards the problem of Marxist was according to our analysis there should be a revolutionary working class and revolution it didn’t happen and then they like it sorry to explain that look to Freud through this unconscious manipulations blah-blah-blah they used psychoanalysis to mystify to obfuscate the failure of their own immanent analysis but at another level you know where psychology is important look the more anonymous systems rule us the more we are treated as psychological subject our fate depends of us choice this is the big paradox today again that the more we live we are totally dominated by anonymous systems anonymous in the sense that nobody controls them and this is clear just remember the the crash the crisis of nobody at least most of the economists didn't see it coming and so on and so on but again the predominant discourse is that of advising us individual choice how to meet how to win in competition how to present yourself and so on and so on so this is a nice paradox that it’s not that psychology is needed when we are strong individuals who can influence our fate and so on but the more we are actually impotent the more we are treated like free psychological subjects who can you know choose our fate and so on and so on and again this for me is the crucial point that’s why I still like in spite of some stupidities he is saying doing Assange as I always emphasize when Assange was reproached for but why do you attack only United States why not Putin and others no the way I see it is but look nobody has the illusion that there is serious freedom in Russia you don’t need WikiLeaks in Russia you have to go around and look at you know what
people would accuse me of being some kind of abstract mystic but we should occupy positions and get ready for we don't yet know what that would be very pessimistic position because everybody who says but I know what we should do I ask them okay tell me what nationalize give factories to the workers and so on especially those who are partisans of local democracy communities tell me one example of local local how do you call this pre-representative democracy which works without a charismatic leader no I don't have problem with charismatic leaders just that to make this clear so the my main point would have been this one which is much more interesting and it opens up a space for acting today it's not simply market versus state for market to function at all we need more and more state regulation look at United States it's not true that states are disappearing big companies rule no strong regulatory state is more and more needed and look at the most dynamic countries today Korea Singapore China it's market with an extremely strong state which intervenes of the into the market all the time and so on and so on and this would be my only general note more trust into the state we should take over the state we should absolutely stop with this pseudo-Foucaultian I refer to Michel Foucault idea state apparatus control manipulation and then the leftist position as that of resisting finding the niches of resistance against no grab power wherever whenever you can don't be afraid to use police to use I will not go to the end here what but but I never liked with the left this false modesty you know which betrays this enjoyment it's nice to be in a marginal position on the edge in this way you can analyze critically everything this is the left whose great triumph is always when an emancipatory revolutionary movement goes wrong it's always the greatest pleasure of leftists to write an excellent analysis of why it had to go wrong you know no I think that like what we can do in this situation we can change the terrain open spaces here and there push the limit of possible impossible for example I'm sorry the example that I use every year here even with Obama what he did with Obamacare healthcare was something which was almost revolutionary for the United States because for the United States this was because of their ideology of personal freedom choice and so on this was almost pushing it to the impossible so I would say it's not simply an idea big revolution or gradual reforms I like reforms but this type of reforms which appear modest but they have a devil hidden in them you know you say oh we will just change that we will just change that small law subsection of a law but you know how this will trigger all of it but again the crisis the crisis is serious like when leftists say okay planned this Stalinist state-controlled socialism doesn't work okay but my question is what works then they say we need a democratic socialism okay show me how it works what do we have outside social democracy a again I repeat but okay sorry I will not get lost here but I will go to your second question because it hides a very good point psychology and all that I totally agree with you and it all began already in Marxism this misuse of psychology contrary to the usual predominant opinion Marxist always basically liked psychoanalysis why because from 1920s onwards the problem of Marxist was according to our analysis there should be a revolutionary working class and revolution it didn’t happen and then they like it sorry to explain that look to Freud through this unconscious manipulations blah-blah-blah they used psychoanalysis to mystify to obfuscate the failure of their own immanent analysis but at another level you know where psychology is important look the more anonymous systems rule us the more we are treated as psychological subject our fate depends of us choice this is the big paradox today again that the more we live we are totally dominated by anonymous systems anonymous in the sense that nobody controls them and this is clear just remember the the crash the crisis of nobody at least most of the economists didn't see it coming and so on and so on but again the predominant discourse is that of advising us individual choice how to meet how to win in competition how to present yourself and so on and so on so this is a nice paradox that it’s not that psychology is needed when we are strong individuals who can influence our fate and so on but the more we are actually impotent the more we are treated like free psychological subjects who can you know choose our fate and so on and so on and again this for me is the crucial point that’s why I still like in spite of some stupidities he is saying doing Assange as I always emphasize when Assange was reproached for but why do you attack only United States why not Putin and others no the way I see it is but look nobody has the illusion that there is serious freedom in Russia you don’t need WikiLeaks in Russia you have to go around and look at you know what
unknown
what where
what where
unknown
I like WikiLeaks is they tell you how even in a country where people still basically experience themselves as free how you can be regulated controlled and so on and so on for example everyone is
I like WikiLeaks is they tell you how even in a country where people still basically experience themselves as free how you can be regulated controlled and so on and so on for example everyone is
Slavoj Žižek
forgetting this but for me the best text by Assange is
forgetting this but for me the best text by Assange is
unknown
his book strangely overlooked ignored on Google well he demonstrates in detail not only the connection of Google as organization with NSA he defines Google as privately owned NSA corporation but in what way we are controlled did you see no that wonderful British miniseries I think it went into second third year Black Mirror where it began with your Tony Blair-like prime minister has to fuck no I have to say it to be vulgar sorry it's my duty has to fuck a pig to save Princess Diana or whatever where but you know the beginning of second season the first installment is even more interesting it depicts a society where we are all constantly rated graduated on phone whenever you speak with someone they click they put you at a certain level and then you get an objective
his book strangely overlooked ignored on Google well he demonstrates in detail not only the connection of Google as organization with NSA he defines Google as privately owned NSA corporation but in what way we are controlled did you see no that wonderful British miniseries I think it went into second third year Black Mirror where it began with your Tony Blair-like prime minister has to fuck no I have to say it to be vulgar sorry it's my duty has to fuck a pig to save Princess Diana or whatever where but you know the beginning of second season the first installment is even more interesting it depicts a society where we are all constantly rated graduated on phone whenever you speak with someone they click they put you at a certain level and then you get an objective
unknown
grading
grading
unknown
but then to get things to I don't know get a certain ticket acceptance here there your grades matter and you are graded all the time and this is no longer an illusion it already functions like this through Google and so on all companies know things about you your credit standing did you break the law whatever and you are graded all the time and in China I love them I read they already have plans to formalize
but then to get things to I don't know get a certain ticket acceptance here there your grades matter and you are graded all the time and this is no longer an illusion it already functions like this through Google and so on all companies know things about you your credit standing did you break the law whatever and you are graded all the time and in China I love them I read they already have plans to formalize
Slavoj Žižek
it to establish it's totally computerized for all people who have are connected to digital universe practically all they found a nicer more Confucian sounding name Citizens' Trust or something like this trust status they simply follow do you have any did you break the law in any way do you have any troubles with banks credit traffic violations whatever and then more subtle stuff like are you member of the party or are you known for buying dissident literature whatever and the idea is that each individual would be graded and they already have a concrete proposals like if you want to get a passport abroad you must reach a certain grade and so on and so on but I wouldn't again blame the Chinese we are all doing it doing it in a certain way and you know what interests me in this categorization grading not where I am but there are always two categories who are out those at the bottom who simply don't care and those on the top you know like sorry if I repeat an old story I remember when I was young it was more popular than now that crazy American comical magazine MAD and they have a nice story series of how four levels of where we can stand with any topic sexuality fashion and I remember how the fashion worked those who are the lowest they simply don't care how they are dressed like look at me and so on I would say no then you have one level up those who try to catch up with fashion but are late then there are those who can afford to to follow the fashion to be up but then on the top you have those who like the lowest one don't care about fashion because they are trendsetters what they wear is the fashion you know so they don't and I think it's something of the same with this grading you know those at the bottom and those on the top are out but the true struggle is between the two of them and I think that the first installment of second year of that story it ends like this that the girl heroine simply decides to step out I don't care out of grading and so on you know so again this basic paradox interests me so much how less we are effectively socially free the more we are treated as free now the first thing of course to ask here is what concept of freedom is at work here it's usually the freedom of choice like I can do this but you know what's my solution here that again as I always repeat this is not the true notion of freedom I claim here I'm a kind of a more dialectician that true freedom is very close to necessity like true freedom for me is not I go to patisserie you have here in London Valerie no but I'm an old conservative years earlier Valerie was better than it's now okay forget that and which cake will I have no isn't true freedom something that you decide for it in terrible in terrible anxiety and then once you choose it you are convinced that I have chosen it because I couldn't have done it otherwise true radical free act is always an act which experience itself in this way that's why I wonder if you agree with me here you know that maybe it's conservatism me but now the latest trend in this new sexual liberation stuff is I think they call it polyamory no like why with one partner you can be with many partners and so on sorry I'm a metaphysician here I believe in true love only one you know why I will tell you because the moment you go to the level of this polyamory it's not true love it's already pragmatic you know I love you for this I love you for that and so on but I'm very romantic here true love does not mean I love you that's why true love is always desperate is I may hate you but I cannot be without you like I... you know it's always this radical impossibility of I simply cannot be without you and this works only with one I claim you already cheat if you say I cannot be without you I cannot be without you I cannot be without you you know so we have to be very careful here how it appears liberating yes polyamory and so on and so on but what happens with love here does it still have this desperate attitude of you know this precisely this impossibility you don't true love means I freely chosen in some sense it's my love but it means exactly I have chosen not to have a choice this is true love for me I talk too much I know I didn't answer but fuck you fuck you you have to say yes no professor you gave me a nice answer haha okay thank you that guy who began with sorry you if you okay so thank you for your talk professor Zizek oh my God and also I'd like to apologize for my earlier intervention that was but I thought you'd said that we could interrupt and I so I do apologize for that why so as a as a Marxist theoretician you've spoken about a few kind of practical solutions about the way forward now one one point I'd like to take you maybe take you on but is the fight you mentioned the fight for Tibet yeah now do you what kind of political program do you propose like when when you mentioned fight what what can be done in Tibet what what can be done in terms of that fight no here I will maybe disappoint you but you know I less and less consider myself a political thinker in the sense of I just bring problems I like to point out deadlocks and so on so going back to Tibet because everyone has such a sympathy for Tibet and I have it I mean I know the horrors the Chinese were doing there I think it's nonetheless our duty to show how Tibet was not a lost paradise before Chinese intervention that it was a country whatever Chinese did the fact is that in the average lifespan in Tibet was years and today it's whatever this means it means something on the other hand I know what the Chinese are doing like they are developing Tibet but with Chinese immigration in Lhasa and so on Tibetans are already a minority and so on so what I'm saying is simply that I don't see then there is another thing which is almost you shouldn’t say this in China but my Chinese friends admitted this to me even some who are close to official politics you know that Chinese society is pretty racist I noticed de facto at everyday level how they treat so just on Tibet I mean the Chinese have built a railway that goes all the way from yeah but it's ambiguous I love it I would like to take it but of course it's part of a colonization and so on but what would you have done I think that the only way is to accept this modernization because I think that it's not enough for Tibetans to play the game of we want to keep to maintain our old way of life and so on and so on I the only way I see is building a certain strategic alliances because for example I learned that in Chinese Communist Party even there there are strong tendencies to build a better relations with Tibet they are even not that they are revolutionaries but they simply see how more intelligent tolerant politics in Tibet could even help the Chinese interest there and so on and so on although even some Tibetans that I met admitted one thing to me the Western hypocrisy namely you know that till the American politics was strictly Tibet is part of China only at that point when it became communist they suddenly discovered Tibetan independence and so on and so on do you agree that Tibet is part of China sorry would you agree that Tibet is part of China first I think this is a contingent historical stuff in the sense of I don't think that any I'm here pretty liberal in my spontaneous attitude I don care if countries fall apart I don't care if countries unite I don't think you know this is a legal historical question one thing is true the very term Lama Dalai Lama comes from Mongolia so do you know that's the most beautiful paradox that the unity of Tibet was created through foreign intervention not Chinese but Mongolian Lama is a Mongolian term and so on so I'm saying one should be here pretty liberal in the sense of when you say is Tibet part of China what the hell do I know how do you measure it I don't think there is some eternal natural right where you I only know this and again I read this in a
it to establish it's totally computerized for all people who have are connected to digital universe practically all they found a nicer more Confucian sounding name Citizens' Trust or something like this trust status they simply follow do you have any did you break the law in any way do you have any troubles with banks credit traffic violations whatever and then more subtle stuff like are you member of the party or are you known for buying dissident literature whatever and the idea is that each individual would be graded and they already have a concrete proposals like if you want to get a passport abroad you must reach a certain grade and so on and so on but I wouldn't again blame the Chinese we are all doing it doing it in a certain way and you know what interests me in this categorization grading not where I am but there are always two categories who are out those at the bottom who simply don't care and those on the top you know like sorry if I repeat an old story I remember when I was young it was more popular than now that crazy American comical magazine MAD and they have a nice story series of how four levels of where we can stand with any topic sexuality fashion and I remember how the fashion worked those who are the lowest they simply don't care how they are dressed like look at me and so on I would say no then you have one level up those who try to catch up with fashion but are late then there are those who can afford to to follow the fashion to be up but then on the top you have those who like the lowest one don't care about fashion because they are trendsetters what they wear is the fashion you know so they don't and I think it's something of the same with this grading you know those at the bottom and those on the top are out but the true struggle is between the two of them and I think that the first installment of second year of that story it ends like this that the girl heroine simply decides to step out I don't care out of grading and so on you know so again this basic paradox interests me so much how less we are effectively socially free the more we are treated as free now the first thing of course to ask here is what concept of freedom is at work here it's usually the freedom of choice like I can do this but you know what's my solution here that again as I always repeat this is not the true notion of freedom I claim here I'm a kind of a more dialectician that true freedom is very close to necessity like true freedom for me is not I go to patisserie you have here in London Valerie no but I'm an old conservative years earlier Valerie was better than it's now okay forget that and which cake will I have no isn't true freedom something that you decide for it in terrible in terrible anxiety and then once you choose it you are convinced that I have chosen it because I couldn't have done it otherwise true radical free act is always an act which experience itself in this way that's why I wonder if you agree with me here you know that maybe it's conservatism me but now the latest trend in this new sexual liberation stuff is I think they call it polyamory no like why with one partner you can be with many partners and so on sorry I'm a metaphysician here I believe in true love only one you know why I will tell you because the moment you go to the level of this polyamory it's not true love it's already pragmatic you know I love you for this I love you for that and so on but I'm very romantic here true love does not mean I love you that's why true love is always desperate is I may hate you but I cannot be without you like I... you know it's always this radical impossibility of I simply cannot be without you and this works only with one I claim you already cheat if you say I cannot be without you I cannot be without you I cannot be without you you know so we have to be very careful here how it appears liberating yes polyamory and so on and so on but what happens with love here does it still have this desperate attitude of you know this precisely this impossibility you don't true love means I freely chosen in some sense it's my love but it means exactly I have chosen not to have a choice this is true love for me I talk too much I know I didn't answer but fuck you fuck you you have to say yes no professor you gave me a nice answer haha okay thank you that guy who began with sorry you if you okay so thank you for your talk professor Zizek oh my God and also I'd like to apologize for my earlier intervention that was but I thought you'd said that we could interrupt and I so I do apologize for that why so as a as a Marxist theoretician you've spoken about a few kind of practical solutions about the way forward now one one point I'd like to take you maybe take you on but is the fight you mentioned the fight for Tibet yeah now do you what kind of political program do you propose like when when you mentioned fight what what can be done in Tibet what what can be done in terms of that fight no here I will maybe disappoint you but you know I less and less consider myself a political thinker in the sense of I just bring problems I like to point out deadlocks and so on so going back to Tibet because everyone has such a sympathy for Tibet and I have it I mean I know the horrors the Chinese were doing there I think it's nonetheless our duty to show how Tibet was not a lost paradise before Chinese intervention that it was a country whatever Chinese did the fact is that in the average lifespan in Tibet was years and today it's whatever this means it means something on the other hand I know what the Chinese are doing like they are developing Tibet but with Chinese immigration in Lhasa and so on Tibetans are already a minority and so on so what I'm saying is simply that I don't see then there is another thing which is almost you shouldn’t say this in China but my Chinese friends admitted this to me even some who are close to official politics you know that Chinese society is pretty racist I noticed de facto at everyday level how they treat so just on Tibet I mean the Chinese have built a railway that goes all the way from yeah but it's ambiguous I love it I would like to take it but of course it's part of a colonization and so on but what would you have done I think that the only way is to accept this modernization because I think that it's not enough for Tibetans to play the game of we want to keep to maintain our old way of life and so on and so on I the only way I see is building a certain strategic alliances because for example I learned that in Chinese Communist Party even there there are strong tendencies to build a better relations with Tibet they are even not that they are revolutionaries but they simply see how more intelligent tolerant politics in Tibet could even help the Chinese interest there and so on and so on although even some Tibetans that I met admitted one thing to me the Western hypocrisy namely you know that till the American politics was strictly Tibet is part of China only at that point when it became communist they suddenly discovered Tibetan independence and so on and so on do you agree that Tibet is part of China sorry would you agree that Tibet is part of China first I think this is a contingent historical stuff in the sense of I don't think that any I'm here pretty liberal in my spontaneous attitude I don care if countries fall apart I don't care if countries unite I don't think you know this is a legal historical question one thing is true the very term Lama Dalai Lama comes from Mongolia so do you know that's the most beautiful paradox that the unity of Tibet was created through foreign intervention not Chinese but Mongolian Lama is a Mongolian term and so on so I'm saying one should be here pretty liberal in the sense of when you say is Tibet part of China what the hell do I know how do you measure it I don't think there is some eternal natural right where you I only know this and again I read this in a
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pro-Tibetan book you know that till the Tibetan theocracy aristocracy on purpose prevented any development of iron factories heavy industry because they knew well that this would bring modernization potential workers' movement so every piece of metal had to be imported from China sorry from from India one more one more question no we have to
pro-Tibetan book you know that till the Tibetan theocracy aristocracy on purpose prevented any development of iron factories heavy industry because they knew well that this would bring modernization potential workers' movement so every piece of metal had to be imported from China sorry from from India one more one more question no we have to
Slavoj Žižek
close well we're out of time now so we're back okay I can stop a little bit earlier you know what you can do ah wonderful I'm sorry no no another thing did you see any of these two science fiction movies which I find quite interesting as theoretical problems no the two of these alternate history circular time The Arrival and The Discovery Arrival is much more subversive than it may appear it's not this new age bullshit she the lady discovers circular time this higher civilization and I want maybe I want to connect virtual space and so on this new forms
close well we're out of time now so we're back okay I can stop a little bit earlier you know what you can do ah wonderful I'm sorry no no another thing did you see any of these two science fiction movies which I find quite interesting as theoretical problems no the two of these alternate history circular time The Arrival and The Discovery Arrival is much more subversive than it may appear it's not this new age bullshit she the lady discovers circular time this higher civilization and I want maybe I want to connect virtual space and so on this new forms
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of immortality
of immortality
Slavoj Žižek
with this so if you have time download I'm now making illegal propaganda Pirate Bay and so on Arrival and on the top of it if you want The Discovery where Paul Newman plays an old
with this so if you have time download I'm now making illegal propaganda Pirate Bay and so on Arrival and on the top of it if you want The Discovery where Paul Newman plays an old
unknown
scientist
scientist
Slavoj Žižek
who I will not go into it but so maybe we do this and I will try to be a little bit shorter so we can do it a little bit more on Wednesday although after my talk I will have to finish at four I have the nightmare no I have to meet a person who I will not mention his name I will just say that he is not
who I will not go into it but so maybe we do this and I will try to be a little bit shorter so we can do it a little bit more on Wednesday although after my talk I will have to finish at four I have the nightmare no I have to meet a person who I will not mention his name I will just say that he is not
unknown
impersonal
impersonal
Slavoj Žižek
but has a self and as a self he has a free will that's all I say who I will meet.
but has a self and as a self he has a free will that's all I say who I will meet.