Is Hegel Dead?
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-10 · 2:14:01 · 18,021 words
hegel-dialecticsideologyrevolution-violencegeopolitics-warliberalism-political-correctnesspsychoanalysisreligion-theologyrace-antisemitismdemocracycommunism-socialismphilosophy-generalcinema-art-culture
Delivered at NYU in a semi-improvised format alongside interlocutors Avital Ronell and others, this talk ranges across the question of Hegel's contemporary relevance, asking whether Hegel is dead or whether we are dead in Hegel's eyes. Žižek attacks Habermasian enlightenment liberalism and its inadequacy before 20th-century catastrophe, defends a radical reading of Benjamin's divine violence, and argues at length about the European refugee crisis, multiculturalism, and what he calls a defensible 'Leitkultur.' He closes with a Hegelian reflection on how to remain faithful to an emancipatory project after it fails, illustrated by jokes and anecdotes, connecting these themes to Beckett, Greek politics (Syriza/Varoufakis), and the aporia of hospitality.
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 “Dialektik der Aufklärung (dialectic of enlightenment)”
Žižek invokes Adorno/Horkheimer's thesis that enlightenment's dark potential is immanent, not a deviation, and argues Stalinism is the true dialectic of enlightenment, more so than fascism.
Žižek's polemical label for fascism, which he uses with 'vicious evil energy': fascism proposes modernity (including capitalism) stripped of its 'bad aspects' (Jews, disorder), presenting the formula 'modernity without Jews'.
as “Beispiel (example as subversion)”
Žižek invokes Hegel's pseudo-etymology of Beispiel (what comes by-play) to argue that examples are never merely illustrations, they always subvert the ideal concept they are supposed to instance.
Žižek cites Benjamin's concept as an instrument without goal or aim, bearing witness to a stance rather than serving a purpose, illustrated by Ferguson riots and Paris banlieue car burnings, not ennobling but an explosion of deadlock.
as “neighbour (Neighbor)”
In the Judeo-Christian sense Žižek endorses via Freud: not the fellow-man who is like us, but the uncanny moment when someone familiar reveals a monstrous excess that shatters our image of them.
Hegel's phrase for the abyss of subjectivity, the dark inner emptiness the subject must pass through, which Žižek links to the moment a person becomes a neighbour to themselves (the Searchers example).
as “progressive dogmatism”
Žižek's preferred alternative to Habermasian rational argumentation: certain ethical prohibitions (e.g. against rape) should be self-evident dogmas requiring no debate, since demanding argument for them is itself a pathology.
as “Leitkultur (leading culture)”
Žižek rehabilitates this contested German concept not as Christian supremacy but as a minimal set of rules governing how different cultures relate to each other, e.g. prohibitions on honour killings and female genital mutilation, that cannot be avoided.
Žižek's term for authoritarian capitalism, not culturally Asian but a global form of capitalism that no longer needs liberal democracy, exemplified by Modi and Erdoğan.
as “immanent utopia”
Žižek's term for the necessary illusion that accompanies every first attempt at emancipation, e.g. Marx imagining communism as capitalism without capitalism, which is structurally unavoidable but must be superseded.
Žižek's characterisation of Marx's original vision of communism as retaining capitalist dynamism and expanded reproduction while eliminating the capitalist form, a mirage he argues doesn't work.
Žižek adopts Beckett's phrase as his political formula: after an emancipatory attempt fails, remain faithful to it and repeat it more radically rather than abandoning the goal.
Žižek gives a seduction anecdote a Lacanian reading: when told losing two pounds would make her perfect, he gave two hours on objet petit a, the excess that generates the illusion of a perfectible whole.
Implicitly invoked in the closing joke about the woman told she needs to lose three pounds: the disturbing excess that generates the mirage of perfection, remove it and you don't get perfection, you lose the mirage.
A concept Žižek attributes to Fred Jameson: the need to theorise how those who formally do not work are nonetheless exploited within capitalism.
as “renormalization of Hegel”
Žižek's critical label for attempts (Brandom, Pippin) to domesticate Hegel into a Kantian/Habermasian rationalism by stripping out the paradoxes and dark, irrationalist residues.
Stories he reaches for 3
After being told his films had too many clichés, Goldwyn memo'd his writers to produce 'new original clichés', Žižek takes this literally as the correct political slogan: we need new clichés, not mere originality.
“we urgently need new original clichés it's deeply true because it's easy to be original with just originality the true revolution is to introduce new clichés”
Žižek's Iranian friends say Ahmadinejad's reply about homosexuals was mistranslated: he actually said 'we deal with it differently, we don't talk about it and allow it discreetly,' implicitly citing the Old Testament's 'do it, but not in front of me.'
“he gave effectively a much more refined answer something like we deal with this in a totally different way than you. We don't talk about it and allow you to do it discreetly”
Žižek uses de Gaulle to show that democratic legitimacy is not always on the side of liberation: Pétain was democratically nominated, de Gaulle had zero democratic legitimacy, yet Žižek is on de Gaulle's side.
“General de Gaulle. Every history of France tells you... Pétain was legitimately nominated the ruler of France and undoubtedly communists admit this... what General de Gaulle did absolutely was not democratically legitimized”
Works invoked 17
Žižek references Hegel's analysis of asceticism as an example of the dialectic of Beispiel: the ascetic obsessed with disciplining his body does the opposite of what he intends.
Philosophy of Right book
Žižek reads it against conservative interpretations: Hegel is not prescribing a model but describing something already past; the last text on the British reform bill shows Hegel's anxiety about the new.
Žižek defends this against Habermas's critique (missing a positive normative foundation) as a deliberately Hegelian refusal to supply one.
Tristan und Isolde opera
Žižek reads Tristan against the 'we are one' Romantic fusion reading: they die separately, it's a missed encounter, and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's staging (Isolde as Tristan's hallucination) is the correct interpretation.
The Shining (film) film
Used to illustrate the concept of the neighbour: the horror is a normal family man gradually becoming the uncanny neighbour, but Nicholson was the wrong choice because he already looks menacing.
Écrits book
Žižek cites the cover of Lacan's Écrits where Lacan says 'our battle is the battle of enlightenment.'
An American Utopia essay
Fred Jameson's 'mad text' forthcoming from Verso; argues the only American chance for radical change is militarisation, Žižek invokes it for the refugee crisis.
The Searchers film
Ford's film used (via Pippin) to illustrate the abyss of subjectivity, John Wayne becomes a neighbour to himself rather than killing the kidnapped woman.
Making It Explicit book
Brandom's 500-page free-online Hegel reading; Žižek calls it a manifesto of Kantianised Hegel that strips away the dialectical paradoxes.
Taxi Driver film
Mentioned as basically a remake of The Searchers (via Scorsese as Italian-American archetype).
Žižek references its 'wonderful beginning', Adorno's scathing attack on Benedetto Croce's arrogant title, as a model of what it means to let Hegel read us.
Norma opera
Žižek uses the 'moriamo insieme' finale as an example where even formally dying together each character has a totally different private fantasy, they do not merge.
Žižek's primary Benjamin text in this talk; defends divine violence as horrible and purposeless against liberal sanitisation.
Adorno's 1957 essay attacking Lukács, published in CIA-funded Merkur; Žižek cites Jameson's devastating contextualisation of it against Adorno.
Quasi una Fantasia book
Named as one of Adorno's masterpieces Žižek particularly loves, along with Prisms and Noten zur Literatur.
Žižek recommends a three-hour film about the Zurich-to-Petrograd train journey; Ben Kingsley plays Lenin better than Gandhi; available free to download.
Benedetto Croce's book; Žižek calls its title arrogantly stupid, citing Adorno's demolition of it.
People invoked 40
Avital Ronell positive
Co-host / interlocutor of the talk; Žižek addresses her throughout with affectionate obscenity; calls her his 'favorite braune Frau' (Hölderlin ref); they have a long personal friendship.
Gerhard Richter (philosopher) positive
Chair of German department at Brown; an upcoming book by him relies on Žižek's reversal of the visor (Hegel reading us rather than us reading Hegel).
Sami Khatib positive
Palestinian Benjamin scholar who showed Žižek memoirs recording Benjamin's 1936 private statement about enemies being 'geschlachtet' like oxen; organising the Ramallah Benjamin conference.
Seyla Benhabib negative
Called a 'Turkish Habermasian'; shouted at Žižek at a conference for his critique of Habermas on Stalinism.
Udi Aloni positive
Žižek's 'good friend' co-organising the Ramallah Benjamin conference; brings him examples of Palestinian activism against honour killings.
Narendra Modi negative
Cited alongside Erdoğan as a typical leader of authoritarian capitalism: ultra-neoliberal economics combined with Hindu fundamentalism.
Robert Pippin negative
Described as a friend with whom Žižek is in dialogue; criticised for Kantianising/renormalising Hegel, though praised for his book on Westerns and Henry James essays.
Robert Brandom negative
His 500-page free online reading of Hegel's Phenomenology is called a manifesto of 'Kantianised' Hegel that strips the dialectical paradoxes.
Georg Lukács positive
Žižek is sentimental about Lukács's heroism in joining Imre Nagy's government and being imprisoned; defends him against Adorno's 'enforced reconciliation' polemic and notes the irony of Adorno writing in CIA-funded Merkur.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Žižek aligns with Adorno (and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment) against Habermas, praising Adorno's Drei Studien zu Hegel, Quasi una Fantasia, Prisms, and Noten zur Literatur; critical only of his late systematic books.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced via objet petit a (the seduction joke) and the cover of Écrits on enlightenment; the seduction anecdote turns into a Lacanian lecture.
John Robert Nicholson negative
Žižek (echoing Stephen King) says casting Nicholson in The Shining was a mistake: his inherent menace removes the uncanny surprise of a normal man becoming a neighbour.
Benedetto Croce negative
Žižek calls Croce's 'What Is Living and What Is Dead in Hegel' the most arrogant stupid book title; uses Adorno's attack on it as a foil.
Frank Ruda positive
Described as 'maybe the best young German philosopher'; Žižek jokes about him and his Beckett-specialist girlfriend.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide positive
Named as one of Žižek's heroes: someone who tried to do something in a totally hopeless situation.
Judith Butler positive
Called heroic for refusing a prize in protest against Islamophobic reactions to Muslim attacks on gays.
Ex-close friend/associate of Lukács (not sexual, Žižek emphasises); told him the story of Lukács drawing his pen as his only weapon.
Sam Harris negative
Criticised for being anti-all-religion in theory but exempting Judaism; cited as a fashionable atheist whose neutrality is a pretence.
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek agrees with Badiou that a true concept divides; also agrees on love as encounter with radical otherness; disagrees with Badiou's claim the state should remain neutral on cultural conflicts.
Alexis Tsipras positive
Žižek met Tsipras in Zagreb; says Tsipras privately expressed no illusions about Putin and the Russian offer was a brutal colonial exchange (islands as military base for billions).
Bernard-Henri Lévy negative
Called 'even worse' than Critchley; blamed for the Libya intervention ('his war') that produced a failed state.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha negative
Cited as among those who try to defang Benjamin's divine violence by making it bloodless and non-violent.
Fredric Jameson positive
Žižek credits Jameson with the counter-argument about Lukács/Adorno, the idea of exploiting the unemployed, and references An American Utopia; says he often disagrees with Jameson.
Alain Finkielkraut negative
Žižek recounts debating him on radio and using de Gaulle to challenge his views on democratic legitimacy.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan negative
Cited as exemplar of 'capitalism with Asian values', ultra-neoliberal in economics and religiously fundamentalist; his electoral motto 'shop and pray.'
John Wayne positive
Žižek uses Wayne's character in The Searchers (via Pippin) to illustrate the abyss of subjectivity, the moment of becoming a neighbour to oneself.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Žižek recounts Varoufakis's account of how his closest adviser was informing on Syriza; Varoufakis advised Žižek not to underestimate co-optation of Syriza ministers.
Richard Dawkins negative
Grouped with Sam Harris as fashionable liberal centrist atheists whose anti-religious critique is inconsistently applied.
Noted as marginalized in German academia (Karlsruhe/ZKM) due to Habermasian institutional power; Žižek cites his 'code of discretion' with partial agreement but total theoretical disagreement otherwise.
Ernesto Laclau negative
Noted for shifting from radical democracy rhetoric to endorsing progressive potentials of military coups via Kirchnerism/Chavismo.
Adam Phillips positive
Žižek endorses Phillips's critique of both self-knowledge and suffering-reduction as goals of psychoanalysis, calling his formulation 'wonderfully correct' and 'Hegelian in spirit.'
Andreas Huyssen negative
Habermasian from Columbia; argued Adorno and Horkheimer didn't publicly criticise Stalinism to avoid Cold War manipulation, Žižek rejects this as empirically false.
Žižek notes he wrote an unpublished text on Heidegger's antisemitism (Schwarze Hefte) but argues the anti-Heidegger campaign is really targeting Adorno/Benjamin; uses Heidegger's 'historial' concept via the introduction.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek defends Benjamin's divine violence against liberal sanitisation (Homi Bhabha), insisting it means something horrible; helps organise a Benjamin conference in Ramallah.
Werner Hamacher positive
Cited for his text exposing 'Hegel' as a cryptophore for 'Ekel' (disgust).
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek attacks Habermas's 'modernity as unfinished project' thesis as insufficiently dark to account for Stalinism/fascism as immanent to enlightenment; calls his Dialectic of Enlightenment anniversary text a key text of this failure.
Max Horkheimer positive
Noted alongside Adorno as ally in the dialectic of enlightenment debate; distinguished from Adorno for public political statements endorsing US intervention.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central figure of the talk; Žižek defends a radical, dark Hegel against Kantianisation, and uses the Hegelian owl-of-Minerva and dialectical inversion as his primary frameworks.
Simon Critchley negative
Named as 'Voldemort' (the one whose name shouldn't be pronounced), attacked for a 'typical liberal reading' of divine violence as selective, goal-oriented, exactly what Benjamin opposes.
Referenced via the vulgar pun on 'Kant/cunt' and 'ekelhaft'; also cited for the concept of diabolical evil and as the foil against which Hegel's radicalism is measured.
What it argues
Is Hegel dead or are we dead in Hegel's eyesAdorno/Benjamin vs. Habermasian enlightenment rationalismBenjamin's divine violence and its unpleasant, non-ennobling characterThe European refugee crisis, multiculturalism, and LeitkulturFailing better: Hegelian fidelity to a lost emancipatory causeThe problem with liberal multicultural tolerance and cultural taboosCommunist politics after illusions: Syriza, Varoufakis, penetrating state apparatuses
Dialectical moves 10
“The question is not 'Is Hegel dead?' but 'Are we dead in the eyes of Hegel?' — we should let Hegel read us, not us read Hegel.”
Žižek inverts the standard question of Hegel's relevance: instead of asking what is still living in Hegel, we should ask what in our present moment Hegel would diagnose as dead.
“Far from being a deviation, fascism and Stalinism are immanent potentials belonging to the very core of enlightenment.”
Against Habermas's view that 20th-century atrocities are aberrations, Žižek insists they are immanent to enlightenment's own logic.
“Divine violence is not noble or ennobling — the true divine violence is something horrible.”
Žižek reverses the standard philosophical reading that dignifies divine violence as pure or spiritual; he insists it is brutal and unpleasant, illustrated by car burnings.
“The aim of psychoanalysis is not to know yourself or ease suffering — it is to dedicate yourself to an external cause so that you can finally forget yourself.”
Žižek (via Adam Phillips) inverts the therapeutic cliché: psychoanalytic success is moving out of the categories of suffering/pleasure altogether.
“Disgust is not radical otherness — it is when the thin line separating inside from outside breaks down and the inside comes outside.”
Žižek redefines disgust not as encounter with alien otherness but as the collapse of a boundary that constitutes the self.
“True love is not 'we are one' but the experience of radical otherness in someone who is closest to you.”
Against Wagnerian/romantic fusion, Žižek (via Badiou and Rilke) argues love is precisely encountering the abyss of the other, not merger.
“European values are threatened not by immigrants but by the anti-immigrant movements that claim to defend them.”
Žižek reverses the standard defence-of-Europe argument: Marine Le Pen's Europe would be the end of European values.
“If you remove the disturbing excess, you don't get perfection — you lose the very mirage of perfection the excess generates.”
The surplus/excess is constitutive of the ideal, so eliminating it eliminates the goal rather than achieving it, Žižek's dialectical reading of the seduction joke.
“Hegel was not describing a model for the future in the Philosophy of Right; he was describing something whose time had already passed.”
Žižek inverts conservative readings of Hegel by using Hegel's own owl-of-Minerva principle against his Philosophy of Right as prescription.
“Examples are never just examples — they always subvert the very ideal concept they are supposed to illustrate.”
Žižek's Hegelian anti-Platonism: examples are not mere instances of an idea but materially transform and undercut the concept.
Claims 17
rejects
Habermas's philosophy is insufficiently dark to account for fascism and Stalinism as immanent products of enlightenment, not mere deviations from it.Habermasian enlightenment rationalism
reframes
The true target of the anti-Heidegger campaign is not Heidegger himself but a broader fundamental doubt in enlightenment shared by Adorno and Benjamin.Heidegger and the Schwarze Hefte debate
asserts
Stalinism is the true dialectic of enlightenment, more so than fascism, because fascism is structurally simpler as an 'alternate modernity'.fascism vs. Stalinism as tests of enlightenment
reframes
Benjamin's divine violence is not ennobling or noble — it is something horrible and unpleasant, exemplified by the Paris banlieue car burnings and Ferguson riots.Walter Benjamin's divine violence
rejects
Liberal multicultural rereadings of Benjamin's divine violence that strip it of blood and real violence are politically false.liberal appropriations of Benjamin
reframes
The aim of psychoanalysis is not self-knowledge or relief from suffering, but enabling the subject to dedicate themselves to an external cause and forget themselves.the goal of psychoanalysis
asserts
European and Western economic neocolonialism is the main structural cause of the refugee crisis, but this acknowledgement does not resolve how to respond to it.the European refugee crisis
rejects
Multiculturalism's liberal legalist dream of parallel cultural communities coexisting under a neutral state simply does not work because every culture's identity involves relations to others and internal antagonisms.liberal multiculturalism
asserts
A minimal Leitkultur — rules governing how cultures relate to each other, not privileging Christianity — must be defensible and enforced, particularly around honour violence and female genital mutilation.Leitkultur and cultural coexistence
rejects
Hegel's Philosophy of Right does not describe a positive model for the future; Hegel himself was aware that conceptually describing a social edifice means its time has already passed.conservative readings of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
asserts
Any emancipatory formula will necessarily be caught in illusions at the start — the task is to remain faithful and repeat it better, not to find a formula free of illusions.emancipatory politics and Hegelian fidelity
rejects
The American invasion of Iraq produced less secularism, near-elimination of Iraqi Christians, and worsened conditions for women — the opposite of its stated humanitarian goals.American military intervention in Iraq
asserts
Saudi Arabia's refusal to accept refugees is more culpable than Europe's hesitation because Saudi Arabia (with Turkey) helped create the Syrian crisis.Gulf states and the refugee crisis
rejects
The Kantianisation of Hegel by Brandom and Pippin strips out the very paradoxes and dialectical darkness that make Hegel philosophically significant.Robert Brandom and Robert Pippin's Hegel readings
rejects
The term 'radical democracy' is too empty and insufficiently specific to serve as a political orientation.radical democracy as political concept
rejects
Syriza's left platform (Grexit faction) had a programme of old-fashioned state socialism that would have been catastrophic; it was right to reject them.Syriza left platform and Grexit
asserts
New clichés are more revolutionary than mere originality because clichés are the stuff of everyday life.the politics of originality and cliché
Quotes 14
“the image that we have of him with the big mustache in a stupor is his sister's photoshop.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological fabrication of Nietzsche's image by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
“the true dialectic of enlightenment is Stalinism much more than fascism. Fascism is relatively simple in its elementary structure no? It means conservative revolution... it's an alternate modernity.”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinism as the true dialectic of enlightenment; fascism as alternate modernity
“Adorno always emphasizing even if there is a structural flaw in enlightenment project this absolutely doesn't mean that we abandon enlightenment”Slavoj Žižek · Adorno's position: enlightenment's immanent flaw does not justify abandoning it
“examples subvert always what they are examples of. That's Hegel's dialectical critique.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's anti-Platonist materialism: examples undermine their own concept
“the point of psychoanalysis is not to ease your suffering the point is that a good analytic treatment should enable you to simply move out of this categories do I suffer do I have pleasures am I enjoying life?”Slavoj Žižek · Adam Phillips / Žižek on the real aim of psychoanalysis
“Disgust is basically that moment when inside and you know when the disgust is not radical otherness disgust is when this thin skin or whatever line of separation breaks down and the inside comes outside”Slavoj Žižek · disgust as collapse of inside/outside boundary
“True love is proximity but I'm really close to the other when I discern this radical otherness in the other and that that's true love. True love is not we are one and so on.”Slavoj Žižek · true love as encounter with the other's radical otherness, not merger
“European values are really threatened by those anti-immigrant cons- like imagine Europe where Marine Le Pen is in power... that would have been really the end of Europe I think”Slavoj Žižek · the real threat to European values is the anti-immigrant right, not immigrants
“I would like to live in a society where this is in a good sense simply accepted as a self-evidence so when some guy starts to deploy this tasteless line... you don't have to argue the guy simply immediately appears as an idiot.”Slavoj Žižek · progressive dogmatism: certain ethical prohibitions should be self-evident, not argued
“There is a mirage of perfection but only this mirage is generated by that excess you know. There is a certain disturbing excess which generates the mirage of my God if we just get rid of that excess we have perfection no we don't have.”Slavoj Žižek · the constitutive excess: eliminating the surplus destroys the ideal, not achieves it
“we urgently need new original clichés it's deeply true because it's easy to be original with just originality the true revolution is to introduce new clichés”Slavoj Žižek · new clichés as the true revolutionary task
“Hegel was the ultimate Beckettian you know try again fail again fail better”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel as the political philosopher of failing better after revolutionary defeat
“I remain a communist but a communist absolutely without illusions.”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's communist self-identification stripped of teleological confidence
“whenever you can conceptually describe a certain social edifice it means its time has already passed.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel's owl of Minerva principle: philosophy always comes too late
Transcript 107 turns
Slavoj Žižek
In my infinite mercy I allow you to say some respectful words. Very good. I don’t know what’s with me today am I in such a good mood you know. Well
In my infinite mercy I allow you to say some respectful words. Very good. I don’t know what’s with me today am I in such a good mood you know. Well
unknown
we’ll change that.
we’ll change that.
Slavoj Žižek
Okay. Oh you see that’s why I love her you see yes.
Okay. Oh you see that’s why I love her you see yes.
unknown
So welcome everyone on the eve of Nietzsche’s birthday and the eternal
So welcome everyone on the eve of Nietzsche’s birthday and the eternal
unknown
return. Seriously? Yeah tomorrow’s the day. So
return. Seriously? Yeah tomorrow’s the day. So
unknown
let us
let us
Slavoj Žižek
my dates are rather I like the 3rd or 5th of April you know what happens then Stalin’s death and so on. Yeah.
my dates are rather I like the 3rd or 5th of April you know what happens then Stalin’s death and so on. Yeah.
unknown
15th of October Nietzsche’s birthday. So many introductions inadvertently establish firewalls but I on the contrary intend to open essential dossiers and inescapable trajectories.
15th of October Nietzsche’s birthday. So many introductions inadvertently establish firewalls but I on the contrary intend to open essential dossiers and inescapable trajectories.
Slavoj Žižek
Is this your Nietzsche quote from Nietzsche or you
Is this your Nietzsche quote from Nietzsche or you
unknown
no I’m honored that you can’t tell. It’s me. It’s Avital Friedrich Ronell.
no I’m honored that you can’t tell. It’s me. It’s Avital Friedrich Ronell.
Slavoj Žižek
I know what you are you are the new reincarnated version of I’m sorry to do this but you know I love that pseudo-feminist bullshit where they say behind every creative man there is really a woman whom he appropriates like you know like usually they are you know like James Joyce has stolen all free association stuff from Nora’s notebooks and so on but I always challenge them you know go to the end rehabilitate Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche you know who was we know what you know didn’t he give Nietzsche’s walking stick to a certain democratically elected politician? Sorry I talk too much I promise
I know what you are you are the new reincarnated version of I’m sorry to do this but you know I love that pseudo-feminist bullshit where they say behind every creative man there is really a woman whom he appropriates like you know like usually they are you know like James Joyce has stolen all free association stuff from Nora’s notebooks and so on but I always challenge them you know go to the end rehabilitate Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche you know who was we know what you know didn’t he give Nietzsche’s walking stick to a certain democratically elected politician? Sorry I talk too much I promise
unknown
now. No you’re great I just want does everyone know who Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche is?
now. No you’re great I just want does everyone know who Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche is?
Slavoj Žižek
Oh yeah yeah you know she’s the well the only good thing is that she was played in a movie by Dominique Sanda the actress when she was young she was beautiful sorry for this sexist note and in another movie don’t underestimate it it’s called The Train you can download it for free three hours you know which train from Zurich to to Petersburg it’s that journey she plays Inessa Armand and it’s pro and you know who plays Lenin? Ben Kingsley much better than than Gandhi you know much better. No I’m not kidding it’s a nicely done movie you can download it for free now believe me or not I will infinitely surprise you and shut up did you?
Oh yeah yeah you know she’s the well the only good thing is that she was played in a movie by Dominique Sanda the actress when she was young she was beautiful sorry for this sexist note and in another movie don’t underestimate it it’s called The Train you can download it for free three hours you know which train from Zurich to to Petersburg it’s that journey she plays Inessa Armand and it’s pro and you know who plays Lenin? Ben Kingsley much better than than Gandhi you know much better. No I’m not kidding it’s a nicely done movie you can download it for free now believe me or not I will infinitely surprise you and shut up did you?
unknown
Let’s see how long that promissory note lasts but Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche was Nietzsche’s pernicious fascist sister really pernicious and his DJ she she created his so-called oeuvre and so it’s not a compliment.
Let’s see how long that promissory note lasts but Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche was Nietzsche’s pernicious fascist sister really pernicious and his DJ she she created his so-called oeuvre and so it’s not a compliment.
Slavoj Žižek
And sorry I broke my you know what I know I was in Nietzsche’s house in Weimar maybe you were also. Yes of course. And no this is really disgusting from her you know when in the last years of Nietzsche when he was practically immobile mad she pulled like a kind of a with elephant man horror show you know guests they were shown Nietzsche there she was disgusting I mean no and and literally used him to yeah she propped him up in Goethe’s library and the image that we have of him with the big mustache in a stupor is his sister’s photoshop. I didn’t know this really. Yeah no you don’t do Nietzsche mostly do you? Sorry? You don’t do much Nietzsche. No you know what’s the problem yeah I do there are authors whom I know they are great key philosophers but and I don’t mean it I’m sorry this will be absolutely it’s not meant to be sexualized in a dirty way but I’m ashamed I cannot penetrate them you know I cannot really I know that I miss something there a
And sorry I broke my you know what I know I was in Nietzsche’s house in Weimar maybe you were also. Yes of course. And no this is really disgusting from her you know when in the last years of Nietzsche when he was practically immobile mad she pulled like a kind of a with elephant man horror show you know guests they were shown Nietzsche there she was disgusting I mean no and and literally used him to yeah she propped him up in Goethe’s library and the image that we have of him with the big mustache in a stupor is his sister’s photoshop. I didn’t know this really. Yeah no you don’t do Nietzsche mostly do you? Sorry? You don’t do much Nietzsche. No you know what’s the problem yeah I do there are authors whom I know they are great key philosophers but and I don’t mean it I’m sorry this will be absolutely it’s not meant to be sexualized in a dirty way but I’m ashamed I cannot penetrate them you know I cannot really I know that I miss something there a
unknown
great thing but I cannot. Did you try? Sorry? Did you try? With Viagra with everything and it didn’t work. Okay alright so we haven’t penetrated Nietzsche but happy birthday anyway.
great thing but I cannot. Did you try? Sorry? Did you try? With Viagra with everything and it didn’t work. Okay alright so we haven’t penetrated Nietzsche but happy birthday anyway.
Slavoj Žižek
Now you want me to sing happy birthday to you happy birthday dear Friedrich
Now you want me to sing happy birthday to you happy birthday dear Friedrich
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or what? Okay that’s
or what? Okay that’s
Slavoj Žižek
an idea.
an idea.
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So it gives me pleasure maybe a dose of sadistic pleasure to display my slave Slav Slavoj my pup my drug of choice in terms of emetics who has as you will see and already know his way of doing and undoing things his own rebranding of destructive jouissance and driving us beyond any pleasure principle. In Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs this is the name that headlines and donates the concept and behaviors of masochism to our culture Sacher-Masoch urges that it is up to the Slavs once a jewel of the Austrian empire to revolutionize the world and the lead sentence goes one more round Slavs uttered by a newly emergent ruthlessly on point and intellectually brutal tsarina this is not an allegory. Well Slavoj and I go back a long way and confound the more delicate and sensitive souls around us who cannot understand why against all odds and oddballs we are built to last. No if we are
So it gives me pleasure maybe a dose of sadistic pleasure to display my slave Slav Slavoj my pup my drug of choice in terms of emetics who has as you will see and already know his way of doing and undoing things his own rebranding of destructive jouissance and driving us beyond any pleasure principle. In Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs this is the name that headlines and donates the concept and behaviors of masochism to our culture Sacher-Masoch urges that it is up to the Slavs once a jewel of the Austrian empire to revolutionize the world and the lead sentence goes one more round Slavs uttered by a newly emergent ruthlessly on point and intellectually brutal tsarina this is not an allegory. Well Slavoj and I go back a long way and confound the more delicate and sensitive souls around us who cannot understand why against all odds and oddballs we are built to last. No if we are
Slavoj Žižek
religious I’d admit it when God created the world we were meant to be in contact or whatever it is just a simple fact of theology yeah absolutely. So we’re locked in an embrace of friendship we are like pigs in shit. You’re a pig. You are. Okay okay that’s a democratic debate we can have. Okay. Part of the Nietzschean project of a fröhliche Wissenschaft joyfully disturbing all sorts of protocols of serene and sanctioned collegiality. Slavoj for his part can be obscene and I in other ways do not appease but we hardly match the obscenity of our time. That’s unfortunately true.
religious I’d admit it when God created the world we were meant to be in contact or whatever it is just a simple fact of theology yeah absolutely. So we’re locked in an embrace of friendship we are like pigs in shit. You’re a pig. You are. Okay okay that’s a democratic debate we can have. Okay. Part of the Nietzschean project of a fröhliche Wissenschaft joyfully disturbing all sorts of protocols of serene and sanctioned collegiality. Slavoj for his part can be obscene and I in other ways do not appease but we hardly match the obscenity of our time. That’s unfortunately true.
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Right? Compared to to them we’re just innocents and hardly capable of indecency. So again he’s a joy. We’re like pigs in shit. Don’t push it too far you know. Life affirming. Still it remains a theological mystery that I routinely lower myself to his level even if only to command some of his more compelling and indeed compelled moves.
Right? Compared to to them we’re just innocents and hardly capable of indecency. So again he’s a joy. We’re like pigs in shit. Don’t push it too far you know. Life affirming. Still it remains a theological mystery that I routinely lower myself to his level even if only to command some of his more compelling and indeed compelled moves.
Slavoj Žižek
He remains live feed for my sadistic impulses normally alas
He remains live feed for my sadistic impulses normally alas
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redirected toward myself. I dare say that the intensities of our singular experience of
redirected toward myself. I dare say that the intensities of our singular experience of
Slavoj Žižek
abjection have found a refuge in each other and thus the German department with a paradoxical pump of pride seriously presents our
abjection have found a refuge in each other and thus the German department with a paradoxical pump of pride seriously presents our
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Žižek on a yearly basis like an annual shot of immunity and guarantor of strength he bears the dignified title of Global Distinguished Professor. I never got this if you are global distinguished is narrow global is everywhere like you know what I mean? No. Like it’s like exclusively average you know like something I don’t mean. Yeah it’s very NYU. Yeah but now I’m serious but don’t be too masochist I mean we’re not as pretentious. NYU is still much better absolutely than let’s say those who think they are the center of the world like Harvard Princeton and so on. Absolutely I hope I didn’t misrepresent myself here. No I’m a Stalinist you can hope but the party will
Žižek on a yearly basis like an annual shot of immunity and guarantor of strength he bears the dignified title of Global Distinguished Professor. I never got this if you are global distinguished is narrow global is everywhere like you know what I mean? No. Like it’s like exclusively average you know like something I don’t mean. Yeah it’s very NYU. Yeah but now I’m serious but don’t be too masochist I mean we’re not as pretentious. NYU is still much better absolutely than let’s say those who think they are the center of the world like Harvard Princeton and so on. Absolutely I hope I didn’t misrepresent myself here. No I’m a Stalinist you can hope but the party will
Slavoj Žižek
decide you know like and you will be properly informed like. Alright let me know. So Slavoj whose abundant work has induced new mappings this is the
decide you know like and you will be properly informed like. Alright let me know. So Slavoj whose abundant work has induced new mappings this is the
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nice part where I had to throw up a few times new mappings and disjunctive complicities among decisive thinkers will speak to us about Hegel this evening. What? No I will I will but like in a mediated way but okay yeah. Okay in a mediated way how else does one speak of Hegel? Yeah that’s true that’s true. Touché. On your knees. Okay about Hegel this evening from a
nice part where I had to throw up a few times new mappings and disjunctive complicities among decisive thinkers will speak to us about Hegel this evening. What? No I will I will but like in a mediated way but okay yeah. Okay in a mediated way how else does one speak of Hegel? Yeah that’s true that’s true. Touché. On your knees. Okay about Hegel this evening from a
Slavoj Žižek
particular point of view a mediated
particular point of view a mediated
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point of view who is Hegel to us but also who are we to Hegel and his phantomic residue? Don’t you
point of view who is Hegel to us but also who are we to Hegel and his phantomic residue? Don’t you
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think I have a lot of nerve to pretend I know what you’re going to talk about? No I’m used to it do you say what do you think that I know what I will talk about? Okay good. I gave in the last three days three talks and in each of them I got caught in introductory improvisation and at the end I didn’t even reach the beginning. Okay I’m going to move it I’m going to move it but today I will try to yes. Yeah okay I just have a few more points to score to help everyone elevate what they’re about to hear and dialectize what you’re going to present. So
think I have a lot of nerve to pretend I know what you’re going to talk about? No I’m used to it do you say what do you think that I know what I will talk about? Okay good. I gave in the last three days three talks and in each of them I got caught in introductory improvisation and at the end I didn’t even reach the beginning. Okay I’m going to move it I’m going to move it but today I will try to yes. Yeah okay I just have a few more points to score to help everyone elevate what they’re about to hear and dialectize what you’re going to present. So
Slavoj Žižek
in a premiere text of Werner Hamacher the name Hegel was exposed as more or less a cryptophore shown to be in avoidance and simultaneous embrace of Ekel the German word for disgust the way. Did you know that? No but I know what Ekel is yeah I mean yeah be to be part of it yeah yeah. So
in a premiere text of Werner Hamacher the name Hegel was exposed as more or less a cryptophore shown to be in avoidance and simultaneous embrace of Ekel the German word for disgust the way. Did you know that? No but I know what Ekel is yeah I mean yeah be to be part of it yeah yeah. So
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do I. And Hegel and Kant battled disgust in matters of judgment of taste
do I. And Hegel and Kant battled disgust in matters of judgment of taste
Slavoj Žižek
aesthetics. Now I will be really nasty but don’t you think that if we take the very vulgar everyday meaning in English of
aesthetics. Now I will be really nasty but don’t you think that if we take the very vulgar everyday meaning in English of
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the term which is the name of that philosopher that you just mentioned I will not repeat it that
the term which is the name of that philosopher that you just mentioned I will not repeat it that
Slavoj Žižek
for some anti-feminist that is ekelhaft no? So this is maybe the deeper unity of Kant and Ekel you know but okay. Oh I see ah you see she is a little bit retarded
for some anti-feminist that is ekelhaft no? So this is maybe the deeper unity of Kant and Ekel you know but okay. Oh I see ah you see she is a little bit retarded
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you know she needs some time to get it. I’m retarded for whom is it ekelhaft what kind of a statement is that? What? Kant. No wait a minute I hope you got the point I was extremely vulgar. Yeah no you said it’s ekelhaft. No but Kant is ekelhaft. Yeah how dare you? Kant
you know she needs some time to get it. I’m retarded for whom is it ekelhaft what kind of a statement is that? What? Kant. No wait a minute I hope you got the point I was extremely vulgar. Yeah no you said it’s ekelhaft. No but Kant is ekelhaft. Yeah how dare you? Kant
Slavoj Žižek
in the sense of yeah. I got it believe me I got it. Oh you got it
in the sense of yeah. I got it believe me I got it. Oh you got it
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okay I was just playing. Okay you’re gonna get it. Yeah okay.
okay I was just playing. Okay you’re gonna get it. Yeah okay.
Slavoj Žižek
What’s not to get? Sorry? What’s
What’s not to get? Sorry? What’s
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not to get? No I could have go on but even for me I have some limits if I were to go now into the associations don’t go lines it would have been they would have been too much even for me so let’s go on. Wow. So Ekel disgust in the question of taste aesthetics and beyond some pleasure
not to get? No I could have go on but even for me I have some limits if I were to go now into the associations don’t go lines it would have been they would have been too much even for me so let’s go on. Wow. So Ekel disgust in the question of taste aesthetics and beyond some pleasure
Slavoj Žižek
principles historically traverses Žižek and gets recycled in ways we still need to consider. See that’s a big compliment that we still need to consider what you do. But isn’t this the ultimate academic empty phrase? The meaning of this we still need to consider is there should
principles historically traverses Žižek and gets recycled in ways we still need to consider. See that’s a big compliment that we still need to consider what you do. But isn’t this the ultimate academic empty phrase? The meaning of this we still need to consider is there should
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always be money we must make sure you know I read once. It’s a deconstructive compliment that you have futurity. No what I mean is that I read a wonderful vulgar analysis of why professors of literature like this idea of you know no interpretation can exhaust a work of art. It means we will always we can always justify keeping our job you know like can you imagine you are professor of Goethe and then you say now we know what he wanted what do you you know? I’ve been saying it for years. So what does it mean to be disgusting disgusted lacking
always be money we must make sure you know I read once. It’s a deconstructive compliment that you have futurity. No what I mean is that I read a wonderful vulgar analysis of why professors of literature like this idea of you know no interpretation can exhaust a work of art. It means we will always we can always justify keeping our job you know like can you imagine you are professor of Goethe and then you say now we know what he wanted what do you you know? I’ve been saying it for years. So what does it mean to be disgusting disgusted lacking
Slavoj Žižek
in good taste politically and ethically?
in good taste politically and ethically?
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We look to Slavoj to understand the relevant vicissitudes. I thought I had the monopoly of disgust okay. Before turning the podium
We look to Slavoj to understand the relevant vicissitudes. I thought I had the monopoly of disgust okay. Before turning the podium
Slavoj Žižek
over let me say a word about the title of tonight’s talk Is Hegel dead or are we dead in the eyes of Hegel a Hegelian view of the present age. So I’d like to offer some nano pointers to help you with the trek so you can climb every mountain remember your talk on climb every mountain. The greatest movie of all times yeah I know. Žižek asks us to reflect on a reverting hinge of historicity how we constitute a legacy and where the crucial facets of inheritance mark us to this day in
over let me say a word about the title of tonight’s talk Is Hegel dead or are we dead in the eyes of Hegel a Hegelian view of the present age. So I’d like to offer some nano pointers to help you with the trek so you can climb every mountain remember your talk on climb every mountain. The greatest movie of all times yeah I know. Žižek asks us to reflect on a reverting hinge of historicity how we constitute a legacy and where the crucial facets of inheritance mark us to this day in
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what Heidegger would call a historial way. Gerhard Richter in a book soon to appear surprisingly relies on Žižek’s
what Heidegger would call a historial way. Gerhard Richter in a book soon to appear surprisingly relies on Žižek’s
Slavoj Žižek
way of reversing the visor did you know this? No but you mean like not literally?
way of reversing the visor did you know this? No but you mean like not literally?
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Yeah literally. No I’m here
Yeah literally. No I’m here
Slavoj Žižek
for a brief
for a brief
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moment
moment
Slavoj Žižek
I’m serious and not
I’m serious and not
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arrogant does he even know
arrogant does he even know
Slavoj Žižek
that I exist? Oh no this is Gerhard Richter. Yeah no not the
that I exist? Oh no this is Gerhard Richter. Yeah no not the
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painter. Not the painter ah then
painter. Not the painter ah then
Slavoj Žižek
okay okay. But he does even the painter knows you exist. Maybe yeah yeah. So um there’s there’s the chair of the German department at Brown University his name is Gerhard Richter and he actually um interviewed Gerhard Richter the painter as well. Well it’s like in some
okay okay. But he does even the painter knows you exist. Maybe yeah yeah. So um there’s there’s the chair of the German department at Brown University his name is Gerhard Richter and he actually um interviewed Gerhard Richter the painter as well. Well it’s like in some
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Woody Allen movie you know he was there asking himself a question then he ran to the other side and pretended to be surprised. So his way of reversing the visor according to a a logic that I suppose in this case would have Hegel be visor and supervisor reading and powering through our own
Woody Allen movie you know he was there asking himself a question then he ran to the other side and pretended to be surprised. So his way of reversing the visor according to a a logic that I suppose in this case would have Hegel be visor and supervisor reading and powering through our own
Slavoj Žižek
unintelligibilities and superstructures of note. Žižek thus shifts the key movers in the very concept of transmissibility by having Hegel read us and our particular maneuvers in the constellation. To be fair you know that Adorno I am
unintelligibilities and superstructures of note. Žižek thus shifts the key movers in the very concept of transmissibility by having Hegel read us and our particular maneuvers in the constellation. To be fair you know that Adorno I am
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plagiarizing Adorno here. I know
plagiarizing Adorno here. I know
Slavoj Žižek
but I am you’re the one. This is the wonderful beginning of Adorno’s Drei Studien zu Hegel no? A scathing attack on the most stupid title of a book Benedetto Croce’s what is alive and what is dead like who are we to adopt that arrogant attitude no? And Adorno says we have to I mean when I read about people like Benedetto Croce his book I’m I’m tempted to say my God maybe Goebbels not your Goebbels without
but I am you’re the one. This is the wonderful beginning of Adorno’s Drei Studien zu Hegel no? A scathing attack on the most stupid title of a book Benedetto Croce’s what is alive and what is dead like who are we to adopt that arrogant attitude no? And Adorno says we have to I mean when I read about people like Benedetto Croce his book I’m I’m tempted to say my God maybe Goebbels not your Goebbels without
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s who is now back in Germany but the real one you know that when he said he was you know burning books and so on when I hear about books like Croce’s my temptation is to say but maybe there was a same principle
s who is now back in Germany but the real one you know that when he said he was you know burning books and so on when I hear about books like Croce’s my temptation is to say but maybe there was a same principle
Slavoj Žižek
in Goebbels he was just burning the wrong books like you could burn books like Croce’s book you know. Do you consider
in Goebbels he was just burning the wrong books like you could burn books like Croce’s book you know. Do you consider
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Adorno a philosopher? That’s a very good question I would say almost a philosopher and crucial I hope here we agree I’m not this postmodern lover of fragments and so on but for Adorno wouldn’t you agree I think Adorno is much the masterpieces of Adorno are for me Quasi una Fantasia, Prisms, Noten zur Literatur and I think his last systematic late systematic books don’t really work if you ask me. No. So in this sense in this sense Adorno Adorno was so-so on the to use this fashionable Derridean title and it doesn’t mean this ironically like more on the margins of philosophy. I’m not a total total Adornian in this sense. So by having Hegel read us and our particular maneuvers in the constellation of world
Adorno a philosopher? That’s a very good question I would say almost a philosopher and crucial I hope here we agree I’m not this postmodern lover of fragments and so on but for Adorno wouldn’t you agree I think Adorno is much the masterpieces of Adorno are for me Quasi una Fantasia, Prisms, Noten zur Literatur and I think his last systematic late systematic books don’t really work if you ask me. No. So in this sense in this sense Adorno Adorno was so-so on the to use this fashionable Derridean title and it doesn’t mean this ironically like more on the margins of philosophy. I’m not a total total Adornian in this sense. So by having Hegel read us and our particular maneuvers in the constellation of world
Slavoj Žižek
and embodiment whether
and embodiment whether
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Oedipalized
Oedipalized
Slavoj Žižek
or anti-Oedipalized let me now offer our one unending trigger warning as my best fiend Slavoj Žižek reads
or anti-Oedipalized let me now offer our one unending trigger warning as my best fiend Slavoj Žižek reads
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Hegel reading us. Thank you. I am grateful to
Hegel reading us. Thank you. I am grateful to
Slavoj Žižek
you thank you very much and don’t be too afraid after a just a couple
you thank you very much and don’t be too afraid after a just a couple
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of tasteless introductory remarks we will
of tasteless introductory remarks we will
Slavoj Žižek
do some let’s call it naively serious
do some let’s call it naively serious
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work. First and those of you who know certain troubles that Avital got caught
work. First and those of you who know certain troubles that Avital got caught
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into I think it was already two years ago the most beautiful
into I think it was already two years ago the most beautiful
Slavoj Žižek
characterization that I can give of you is you are my favorite braune Frau you know from Hölderlin. Thank you thank you. I hope some of you know
characterization that I can give of you is you are my favorite braune Frau you know from Hölderlin. Thank you thank you. I hope some of you know
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what I’m referring to the problem. Next point I’m so sad because you mentioned Heidegger and so on you know this big debate now Schwarze Hefte here there and so on. Yeah. I wrote a text haven’t even published it where I go I try to do the impossible on the one hand yes bring out the logic of Heidegger’s antisemitism and so on but nonetheless I claim that there is in this attacks of Habermasian
what I’m referring to the problem. Next point I’m so sad because you mentioned Heidegger and so on you know this big debate now Schwarze Hefte here there and so on. Yeah. I wrote a text haven’t even published it where I go I try to do the impossible on the one hand yes bring out the logic of Heidegger’s antisemitism and so on but nonetheless I claim that there is in this attacks of Habermasian
Slavoj Žižek
rationalists and so on on Heidegger in this to put it bluntly their attempt to criminalize Heidegger. There is something much more ominous going on I claim that if you really look at it in detail you discover that the true enemy is not even so much Heidegger what they want to criminalize is a certain fundamental doubt in enlightenment which you find even in in Adorno and Benjamin. I’m even tempted to go to the end and claim that at a certain level you know the true target is Adorno Benjamin. One should reread I have all the respect for Habermas but here I don’t agree with him the key text of Habermas I think is the one he wrote when there was the anniversary some ten years ago of Dialektik der Aufklärung and it’s something like einige Bemerkungen whatever on rereading of and it’s clear what his line
rationalists and so on on Heidegger in this to put it bluntly their attempt to criminalize Heidegger. There is something much more ominous going on I claim that if you really look at it in detail you discover that the true enemy is not even so much Heidegger what they want to criminalize is a certain fundamental doubt in enlightenment which you find even in in Adorno and Benjamin. I’m even tempted to go to the end and claim that at a certain level you know the true target is Adorno Benjamin. One should reread I have all the respect for Habermas but here I don’t agree with him the key text of Habermas I think is the one he wrote when there was the anniversary some ten years ago of Dialektik der Aufklärung and it’s something like einige Bemerkungen whatever on rereading of and it’s clear what his line
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of argumentation is there
of argumentation is there
Slavoj Žižek
what bothers him. To cut a long story short the problem is this one. There were to put it mildly in the underestimation of the century some slightly unpleasant things in the 20th century going on in Europe and the point is to put it very simply is this just a deviation historical distortion of the project of enlightenment or is it an immanent potential which somehow belong to the very core of enlightenment? I’m here on the side of Adorno and so on against Habermas because why? Because the greatness of Adorno and Benjamin and others is that Lacan says the same on the very cover of Écrits he says our battle is the battle of enlightenment going on. Adorno always emphasizing even if there is a structural flaw in enlightenment project this absolutely doesn’t mean that we abandon enlightenment
what bothers him. To cut a long story short the problem is this one. There were to put it mildly in the underestimation of the century some slightly unpleasant things in the 20th century going on in Europe and the point is to put it very simply is this just a deviation historical distortion of the project of enlightenment or is it an immanent potential which somehow belong to the very core of enlightenment? I’m here on the side of Adorno and so on against Habermas because why? Because the greatness of Adorno and Benjamin and others is that Lacan says the same on the very cover of Écrits he says our battle is the battle of enlightenment going on. Adorno always emphasizing even if there is a structural flaw in enlightenment project this absolutely doesn’t mean that we abandon enlightenment
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you know with all that absolutely disgusting metaphorics of oh our mind reason is just like the top of the iceberg and there are some deep passions below or whatever. You know the point and here I think and this I’m saying this almost out of some sympathy for Habermas I think he is in a tragic position in the sense that now that we again have phenomena
you know with all that absolutely disgusting metaphorics of oh our mind reason is just like the top of the iceberg and there are some deep passions below or whatever. You know the point and here I think and this I’m saying this almost out of some sympathy for Habermas I think he is in a tragic position in the sense that now that we again have phenomena
Slavoj Žižek
which are returning again and again you know all the racisms anti-feminisms exploding here and there and so on I don’t think his philosophy is how should I call it dark strong enough to confront this phenomena. He wants to see it as a slight aberration. Yeah yeah the title it all says the title of his book what is modernity Modernität which means of course the same as enlightenment als unvollendetes as unfinished project like no we have just to go further and again this is why with all my respect for them but isn’t this a strange
which are returning again and again you know all the racisms anti-feminisms exploding here and there and so on I don’t think his philosophy is how should I call it dark strong enough to confront this phenomena. He wants to see it as a slight aberration. Yeah yeah the title it all says the title of his book what is modernity Modernität which means of course the same as enlightenment als unvollendetes as unfinished project like no we have just to go further and again this is why with all my respect for them but isn’t this a strange
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fact? And
fact? And
Slavoj Žižek
I spoke about this with some Habermasians I won’t don’t want to compromise them here now by mentioning them and they agreed with me namely if some of you know Habermas okay I challenge you do a simple test how should I put it experiment. If let’s say you live in the second half of the 20th century and you read all of Habermas would you but somehow you are isolated from international politics would you ever have guessed from his texts that there were two Germanys? That there was East Germany? Or maybe in some journalistic text but what to do with Stalinism? I sorry you can correct me immediately I don’t mean this as a rhetorical offer but and again once at the conference here years ago that Turkish Habermasian no irony meant Seyla Benhabib started to shout and whatever no but I didn’t mean it as it’s a much more tragic thing why this almost total silence not on the facts but on theoretical analysis of Stalinism when if you come to think about it the true dialectic of enlightenment is Stalinism much more than fascism. Fascism is relatively simple in its elementary structure no? It means conservative revolution or to use the term I use it with all vicious evil energy that I can imagine it’s an alternate modernity. Precisely that’s why I’m radically opposed to this term unfortunately adopted by some so-called postcolonial and so on precisely what they want we want to have modernity which means always capitalism let’s not bullshit but without its bad aspects no? I mean fascism proposed the first great formula of this modernity without Jews no? You know what I mean? So in this sense again going back to it for me the trag- the point is not that they were lying or cheating politically. For example the counter-argument some Habermasians gave to me also that guy I think it was him I’m sorry Andreas Huyssen from Columbia is that of course they were they wanted to criticize Stalinism but they were afraid that if they do it publicly it would have been incorporated used manipulated by cold warriors no? I don’t think this holds for simple empirical reasons that in their public political statements Adorno Horkheimer even more didn’t have any problems condemning in the most ruthless open way what they perceived as Soviet totalitarianism. To give you an extreme example and I think this is also a nice characteristic of the psychological difference between Adorno and Horkheimer I remember I’m old enough unfortunately sixty-seven eight some American general visited Germany and it was already the beginning of Studentenbewegung movement there were demonstrations and they called on Horkheimer like will you join the anti-American I mean it was anti-Vietnam war already no? Right. You know what Horkheimer wrote publicly he said no whenever United States intervenes World War II Korea they do it for the cause of freedom and the same holds today in Vietnam. Now don’t misunderstand me I’m not making fun of I mean there are even frankly maybe up to a point it was even true because that type of Vietnamese communism was historically a deadlock my point is not that my point is simply that you cannot accuse them of being afraid of manipulated by cold war and so on and so on if anything I often don’t agree with Fred Jameson but read his text his reply to one of Adorno’s
I spoke about this with some Habermasians I won’t don’t want to compromise them here now by mentioning them and they agreed with me namely if some of you know Habermas okay I challenge you do a simple test how should I put it experiment. If let’s say you live in the second half of the 20th century and you read all of Habermas would you but somehow you are isolated from international politics would you ever have guessed from his texts that there were two Germanys? That there was East Germany? Or maybe in some journalistic text but what to do with Stalinism? I sorry you can correct me immediately I don’t mean this as a rhetorical offer but and again once at the conference here years ago that Turkish Habermasian no irony meant Seyla Benhabib started to shout and whatever no but I didn’t mean it as it’s a much more tragic thing why this almost total silence not on the facts but on theoretical analysis of Stalinism when if you come to think about it the true dialectic of enlightenment is Stalinism much more than fascism. Fascism is relatively simple in its elementary structure no? It means conservative revolution or to use the term I use it with all vicious evil energy that I can imagine it’s an alternate modernity. Precisely that’s why I’m radically opposed to this term unfortunately adopted by some so-called postcolonial and so on precisely what they want we want to have modernity which means always capitalism let’s not bullshit but without its bad aspects no? I mean fascism proposed the first great formula of this modernity without Jews no? You know what I mean? So in this sense again going back to it for me the trag- the point is not that they were lying or cheating politically. For example the counter-argument some Habermasians gave to me also that guy I think it was him I’m sorry Andreas Huyssen from Columbia is that of course they were they wanted to criticize Stalinism but they were afraid that if they do it publicly it would have been incorporated used manipulated by cold warriors no? I don’t think this holds for simple empirical reasons that in their public political statements Adorno Horkheimer even more didn’t have any problems condemning in the most ruthless open way what they perceived as Soviet totalitarianism. To give you an extreme example and I think this is also a nice characteristic of the psychological difference between Adorno and Horkheimer I remember I’m old enough unfortunately sixty-seven eight some American general visited Germany and it was already the beginning of Studentenbewegung movement there were demonstrations and they called on Horkheimer like will you join the anti-American I mean it was anti-Vietnam war already no? Right. You know what Horkheimer wrote publicly he said no whenever United States intervenes World War II Korea they do it for the cause of freedom and the same holds today in Vietnam. Now don’t misunderstand me I’m not making fun of I mean there are even frankly maybe up to a point it was even true because that type of Vietnamese communism was historically a deadlock my point is not that my point is simply that you cannot accuse them of being afraid of manipulated by cold war and so on and so on if anything I often don’t agree with Fred Jameson but read his text his reply to one of Adorno’s
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beautiful texts but I think
beautiful texts but I think
Slavoj Žižek
it’s a misplaced critique of George Lukács maybe you know it die erpresste Versöhnung the enforced reconciliation. It has maybe you know this the most beautiful sarcastic ending that the problem of Lukács is that he confused the sound of his chains with the voice of Weltgeist or world. But then Jameson made a wonderful counter-argument Adorno wrote this text in fifty-seven and published it in Merkur which as we know today was financed by CIA as part of the anti-communist cultural warfare while on the other hand you know where was if you know a little bit of history Lukács at that point literally in chains in Bucharest because he was heroic enough to join Imre Nagy anti-Soviet government and he was of course immediately arrested. Yeah. Sorry? Budapest? No no no in Budapest he was arrested but then they were all put into a castle for a year to to Bucharest and there is a wonderful legend that when they were there it was a castle Schloss Kafka and that Lukács’s reaction was maybe Kafka was right this is his castle there and my God you know he was naive but there is a certain naive central European beauty in Lukács there is a myth which his ex-mistress I don’t mean this in any dirty way just that she was really close to him she was teaching around the corner at some point no Agnes Heller told me a wonderful story which is then repeated in some biographies that you know when after immediately when the Russian tanks took over Budapest of course they came to arrest him and everyone and then they broke into his apartment KGB whatever Russian policemen and an officer stepped towards Lukács and told him please give me all your weapons you must know the story it’s beautiful what Lukács did he pulled out his pen and said sorry that’s the only weapon I have. I mean fuck it I’m sentimental here I like it you know so but let’s go on because this debate is crucial you know like I think that Habermas himself once draws this comparison that that today the debate between this Habermasian enlightenment people and what people like Richard Wolin and so on dismiss as these French irrationalists half proto-fascist whatever stuff you know that that it’s a repetition of the famous dialogue was it twenty-nine Davos you remember there was a book with a wonderful title I admit it Continental Divide about you still can get it I think about that big debate there Heidegger and and Cassirer and again Habermas once made the problem like maybe we should reverse our judgment because it became part of philosophical doxa that Heidegger won not in the cheap rhetorical sense but that the result of the debate was a defeat of a certain naive enlightenment and I think this ah I will even go a step further here and here we come with all that rhetorical bullshit of mine you know like Hegel are we dead who is dead my conclusion is we are all dead so let’s stop this debate that already with Habermas it’s clear and I’m so sorry this is the topic which really interests me philosophically that’s my forthcoming debate I’m now in dialogue I mean friendly we exchange emails sometimes he attacked me but respectfully I answer Robert Pippin you know for me he is too close to Habermas in this sense that he wants to Kantianize Hegel to make him too much of a simple enlightenment guy although didn’t you write book on Kant or whatever no sorry I’m confusing you with with you yeah yeah now I will be a white male chauvinist racist who cares you are all the same you know and so on who cares yeah now sorry seriously the important thing here is the following one that that even if you want to see the state of Hegel debate today I advise you to read you can get it for free on on the web and I like this gesture Bob Robert Brandom offered it there his detailed five hundred pages reading of Hegel’s phenomenology it’s a kind of a manifesto of this let’s call it I don’t know Kantianized Habermas he tries to renormalize Hegel take away all these paradoxes which sounds too suspicious irrationalist and and I think it’s so tragically clear that what already Adorno is doing is that how should I put it this is what no sorry Adorno I’m sorry Habermas you know his basic reproach to Dialektik der Aufklärung is what is missing there is a positive normative foundation but as a good Hegelian Adorno knew it that precisely this you cannot do because precisely and this is what if we will have time today which I more and more doubt towards the end I wanted to return to the vision of a revolution or social change in Hegel it’s a much more refined than it may appear let’s specia- ah yeah with Pippin I cannot resist a friendly joke he laughed when I told it to him. I thought I am dreaming when I opened up some New York Times issue and saw do you know that these days isn’t there a new musical on Broadway called Pippin? Literally the same name it’s a big production it’s not off-off Broadway it’s the real Broadway and I couldn’t resist when you mentioned Sound of Music telling him that I can imagine at the beginning you know you know somebody dressed like Pippin runs across and said the hills are alive by the sound of rational argumentation or whatever discursive argumentation no? So again I think that we need here a return to a more radical Hegel. What do we find in Hegel? So you don’t need me anymore? Sorry? Did you live under the illusion that I ever needed you? I thought I would yes yes I have documents to prove it. I’m so sorry but you know like click click awake from hypnotic dream and accept reality. All right good. No but okay so so that I deal with you in a extremely friendly way I will say now something that for me and I’m sincere when you say this to a person you are either extremely aggressive or you can say this only to a true friend. You know once we have a debate here I don’t know if you remember and then I went to a cafeteria and you were there. So I say let’s get rid of that bitch so I went with friends to another cafeteria here you were again there and it happens two more times and you know what I told her then? You remind me of that toilet you know no matter how often you flush the water the shit always and then we embrace this was love you know that you accept this it’s a true love no? I mean then you went to my favorite topos. Okay I’m sorry but no but quite seriously don’t you see it’s the same with Benjamin that’s another so you see my point I don’t accept the defense line of Heideggerians which is to put it simply yes it’s disgusting Heidegger’s antisemitic remarks but if you erase them ignore them the whole edifice remains. Well as a good Hegelian and you know what Hegel says how wonderful he plays with the literal pseudo-etymological probably meaning of the word Beispiel what comes by play like the whole Hegelian point and this is Hegel’s materialism anti-platonism is that examples are never just examples in the sense of you have a certain ideal purity and then you know our finite vulgar examples never can reach to it. No examples subvert always what they are examples of. That’s Hegel’s dialectical critique. Examples mean you have a certain notion and you just stage it in an example that’s what Hegel does for example in the most elementary way when he criticizes or analyzes asceticism in Phänomenologie des Geistes you know he looks at the bodily practice of as an ascetic person and claims but he in his obsession with his body how to discipline and so on he does the exact opposite of what. Now next point that you should know and I agree I read your it’s not only Kant against Hegel the the gap is already in Kant himself. Kant is a much more you know almost it sounds sometimes when you read this naive enlightenment guys as if Kant was still a good guy clear benevolent enlightenment and then this crazy dark obscure metaphysician Schelling Hegel comment. No no with Kant already but I don’t have time to do this of course today things are much more complex. Another example of this renormalization of critical tradition is for me the ongoing but it’s a little bit disappearing today it was more actual some five ten fifteen years ago ten the debate with Walter Benjamin. Those politically correct bullshitters have one problem Benjamin is sacred no? He must be right. So what to do with divine violence you know? So you have all the effort from Homi Bhabha here and there to somehow reread divine violence as you know he didn’t really mean it there is no blood in it just some kind of inner radical shift where nobody is hurt and so on. I’m sorry to tell you no. My good friend Palestinian from from Israel these how do you call them forty-nine Palestinians who remained his family there Sami Khatib I think he is now organizing it’s a historical event that’s how you find fight both antisemitism and and bad Zionism today it’s an ingenious idea. We are organizing around the 10th of December a big Benjamin conference in Ramallah and the beauty is that me and my friend Udi Aloni put great effort into it not to turn it into just another free Palestine bullshit you know because in this way you humiliate also Palestinians. The whole point is to treat all also Palestinians like no like why not do a purely academic event there? Okay this guy Sami Khatib showed me some memoirs on Benjamin when they kind of ruin this sublime reading you know of divine violence. Somebody asked and he has detailed records in a debate a friend of Benjamin in thirty-six like how would you today because you know zur Kritik der Gewalt is an early text I think early twenties no like now fifteen years later how would you how would you reconsider today divine violence no? What it is? And I’m sorry to tell you okay this was private conversation he probably wouldn’t have he said he uses this term how do you call them ox what is a castrated bull? Ox. Ox yes. He said geschlachtet it means the enemy should be be geschlachtet like an ox in a slaughterhouse and so on. So what does this mean? Is Benjamin there advocating some purges and so on? No I think it’s a risky move I wonder if those and no no cynical ambiguity intended here I mean it literally there are in this room I’m sure people who know Benjamin better than me I wonder if they would agree. What if the mistake is to consider that since it’s divine violence it must be something noble or ennobling pure?
it’s a misplaced critique of George Lukács maybe you know it die erpresste Versöhnung the enforced reconciliation. It has maybe you know this the most beautiful sarcastic ending that the problem of Lukács is that he confused the sound of his chains with the voice of Weltgeist or world. But then Jameson made a wonderful counter-argument Adorno wrote this text in fifty-seven and published it in Merkur which as we know today was financed by CIA as part of the anti-communist cultural warfare while on the other hand you know where was if you know a little bit of history Lukács at that point literally in chains in Bucharest because he was heroic enough to join Imre Nagy anti-Soviet government and he was of course immediately arrested. Yeah. Sorry? Budapest? No no no in Budapest he was arrested but then they were all put into a castle for a year to to Bucharest and there is a wonderful legend that when they were there it was a castle Schloss Kafka and that Lukács’s reaction was maybe Kafka was right this is his castle there and my God you know he was naive but there is a certain naive central European beauty in Lukács there is a myth which his ex-mistress I don’t mean this in any dirty way just that she was really close to him she was teaching around the corner at some point no Agnes Heller told me a wonderful story which is then repeated in some biographies that you know when after immediately when the Russian tanks took over Budapest of course they came to arrest him and everyone and then they broke into his apartment KGB whatever Russian policemen and an officer stepped towards Lukács and told him please give me all your weapons you must know the story it’s beautiful what Lukács did he pulled out his pen and said sorry that’s the only weapon I have. I mean fuck it I’m sentimental here I like it you know so but let’s go on because this debate is crucial you know like I think that Habermas himself once draws this comparison that that today the debate between this Habermasian enlightenment people and what people like Richard Wolin and so on dismiss as these French irrationalists half proto-fascist whatever stuff you know that that it’s a repetition of the famous dialogue was it twenty-nine Davos you remember there was a book with a wonderful title I admit it Continental Divide about you still can get it I think about that big debate there Heidegger and and Cassirer and again Habermas once made the problem like maybe we should reverse our judgment because it became part of philosophical doxa that Heidegger won not in the cheap rhetorical sense but that the result of the debate was a defeat of a certain naive enlightenment and I think this ah I will even go a step further here and here we come with all that rhetorical bullshit of mine you know like Hegel are we dead who is dead my conclusion is we are all dead so let’s stop this debate that already with Habermas it’s clear and I’m so sorry this is the topic which really interests me philosophically that’s my forthcoming debate I’m now in dialogue I mean friendly we exchange emails sometimes he attacked me but respectfully I answer Robert Pippin you know for me he is too close to Habermas in this sense that he wants to Kantianize Hegel to make him too much of a simple enlightenment guy although didn’t you write book on Kant or whatever no sorry I’m confusing you with with you yeah yeah now I will be a white male chauvinist racist who cares you are all the same you know and so on who cares yeah now sorry seriously the important thing here is the following one that that even if you want to see the state of Hegel debate today I advise you to read you can get it for free on on the web and I like this gesture Bob Robert Brandom offered it there his detailed five hundred pages reading of Hegel’s phenomenology it’s a kind of a manifesto of this let’s call it I don’t know Kantianized Habermas he tries to renormalize Hegel take away all these paradoxes which sounds too suspicious irrationalist and and I think it’s so tragically clear that what already Adorno is doing is that how should I put it this is what no sorry Adorno I’m sorry Habermas you know his basic reproach to Dialektik der Aufklärung is what is missing there is a positive normative foundation but as a good Hegelian Adorno knew it that precisely this you cannot do because precisely and this is what if we will have time today which I more and more doubt towards the end I wanted to return to the vision of a revolution or social change in Hegel it’s a much more refined than it may appear let’s specia- ah yeah with Pippin I cannot resist a friendly joke he laughed when I told it to him. I thought I am dreaming when I opened up some New York Times issue and saw do you know that these days isn’t there a new musical on Broadway called Pippin? Literally the same name it’s a big production it’s not off-off Broadway it’s the real Broadway and I couldn’t resist when you mentioned Sound of Music telling him that I can imagine at the beginning you know you know somebody dressed like Pippin runs across and said the hills are alive by the sound of rational argumentation or whatever discursive argumentation no? So again I think that we need here a return to a more radical Hegel. What do we find in Hegel? So you don’t need me anymore? Sorry? Did you live under the illusion that I ever needed you? I thought I would yes yes I have documents to prove it. I’m so sorry but you know like click click awake from hypnotic dream and accept reality. All right good. No but okay so so that I deal with you in a extremely friendly way I will say now something that for me and I’m sincere when you say this to a person you are either extremely aggressive or you can say this only to a true friend. You know once we have a debate here I don’t know if you remember and then I went to a cafeteria and you were there. So I say let’s get rid of that bitch so I went with friends to another cafeteria here you were again there and it happens two more times and you know what I told her then? You remind me of that toilet you know no matter how often you flush the water the shit always and then we embrace this was love you know that you accept this it’s a true love no? I mean then you went to my favorite topos. Okay I’m sorry but no but quite seriously don’t you see it’s the same with Benjamin that’s another so you see my point I don’t accept the defense line of Heideggerians which is to put it simply yes it’s disgusting Heidegger’s antisemitic remarks but if you erase them ignore them the whole edifice remains. Well as a good Hegelian and you know what Hegel says how wonderful he plays with the literal pseudo-etymological probably meaning of the word Beispiel what comes by play like the whole Hegelian point and this is Hegel’s materialism anti-platonism is that examples are never just examples in the sense of you have a certain ideal purity and then you know our finite vulgar examples never can reach to it. No examples subvert always what they are examples of. That’s Hegel’s dialectical critique. Examples mean you have a certain notion and you just stage it in an example that’s what Hegel does for example in the most elementary way when he criticizes or analyzes asceticism in Phänomenologie des Geistes you know he looks at the bodily practice of as an ascetic person and claims but he in his obsession with his body how to discipline and so on he does the exact opposite of what. Now next point that you should know and I agree I read your it’s not only Kant against Hegel the the gap is already in Kant himself. Kant is a much more you know almost it sounds sometimes when you read this naive enlightenment guys as if Kant was still a good guy clear benevolent enlightenment and then this crazy dark obscure metaphysician Schelling Hegel comment. No no with Kant already but I don’t have time to do this of course today things are much more complex. Another example of this renormalization of critical tradition is for me the ongoing but it’s a little bit disappearing today it was more actual some five ten fifteen years ago ten the debate with Walter Benjamin. Those politically correct bullshitters have one problem Benjamin is sacred no? He must be right. So what to do with divine violence you know? So you have all the effort from Homi Bhabha here and there to somehow reread divine violence as you know he didn’t really mean it there is no blood in it just some kind of inner radical shift where nobody is hurt and so on. I’m sorry to tell you no. My good friend Palestinian from from Israel these how do you call them forty-nine Palestinians who remained his family there Sami Khatib I think he is now organizing it’s a historical event that’s how you find fight both antisemitism and and bad Zionism today it’s an ingenious idea. We are organizing around the 10th of December a big Benjamin conference in Ramallah and the beauty is that me and my friend Udi Aloni put great effort into it not to turn it into just another free Palestine bullshit you know because in this way you humiliate also Palestinians. The whole point is to treat all also Palestinians like no like why not do a purely academic event there? Okay this guy Sami Khatib showed me some memoirs on Benjamin when they kind of ruin this sublime reading you know of divine violence. Somebody asked and he has detailed records in a debate a friend of Benjamin in thirty-six like how would you today because you know zur Kritik der Gewalt is an early text I think early twenties no like now fifteen years later how would you how would you reconsider today divine violence no? What it is? And I’m sorry to tell you okay this was private conversation he probably wouldn’t have he said he uses this term how do you call them ox what is a castrated bull? Ox. Ox yes. He said geschlachtet it means the enemy should be be geschlachtet like an ox in a slaughterhouse and so on. So what does this mean? Is Benjamin there advocating some purges and so on? No I think it’s a risky move I wonder if those and no no cynical ambiguity intended here I mean it literally there are in this room I’m sure people who know Benjamin better than me I wonder if they would agree. What if the mistake is to consider that since it’s divine violence it must be something noble or ennobling pure?
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What if Benjamin
What if Benjamin
Slavoj Žižek
meant something horrible something that’s not pleasant? You know what I mean by this? For example the idea came to me recently all those because Benjamin says something very precise he says you know two key definitions first divine violence is means instrument without goal you know it’s not instrumental in the sense that which is why I think in his polemic against me brutal the guy whom whom whose name I will not mention because for me he falls into the category of you know in Harry Potter Voldemort how he is called the one whose name shouldn’t be pronounced okay quickly Simon Critchley no? He attacks me there claiming that the usual reproach I want some brutal violence but I don’t see that he gives and then he gives the exactly wrong his idea is it’s a typical liberal reading it
meant something horrible something that’s not pleasant? You know what I mean by this? For example the idea came to me recently all those because Benjamin says something very precise he says you know two key definitions first divine violence is means instrument without goal you know it’s not instrumental in the sense that which is why I think in his polemic against me brutal the guy whom whom whose name I will not mention because for me he falls into the category of you know in Harry Potter Voldemort how he is called the one whose name shouldn’t be pronounced okay quickly Simon Critchley no? He attacks me there claiming that the usual reproach I want some brutal violence but I don’t see that he gives and then he gives the exactly wrong his idea is it’s a typical liberal reading it
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means you have to think heavily and if
means you have to think heavily and if
Slavoj Žižek
there is really no other way to achieve your goal then selectively you can be a little bit violent or whatever but my God this is precisely what Benjamin explicitly opposes. He says first it’s an instrument without aim goal second point he says that it’s not again a means to do something but it just displays some attitude some it’s not a good term what I use but kind of a bears witness of some stance and I think that if we are looking for examples of this today let’s say all those mostly they were civilized debate sorry demonstration but you remember Ferguson and all those other places when blacks demonstrated? Sometime it did become violent. I think it was exactly this it was not okay mostly it was with a certain goal you know like justice no more cop killings I mean cops doing the killing but there was also an element of this explosion like just you display your rage and an even better example I claim would have been do you remember my God time passes it’s already some five-six years ago I think those car burnings in the suburbs of Paris. This is I think divine violence at its purest. I was there even I studied them. First liberal fanatics claimed oh Islam fundamentalism then they were shocked to learn that the first thing that they burned were mosques and schools for themselves so it was a kind of an explosion of violence without any program not even the Muslim fundamentalist program without so what’s my point here? It’s not there is nothing pleasant in it like if I would have been there I would probably run away like a rabbit you know like it was dangerous to be there my point is just a more refined one. I’m not saying now we should celebrate them why not fuck it maybe police should intervene there but at the same time it’s a refined point we cannot just simply condemn it of course we should like try to limit it and so on but we have to recognize in it a certain the violent explosion of a certain deadlock if I may put it like this and I think along those lines I’m tempted to rehabilitate even Benjamin and Benjamin is also a big problem for this Habermasian tradition. So again this is the crucial thing I think that the problem is not really Heidegger it’s even I don’t know how it is here in the States but I can tell you I know it’s like this in England and in Germany it’s really this anti-Heidegger campaign now it’s really an extremely disgusting brutal power struggle for who will control one third of the academia why do we mean by this? So my friends told me maybe I’m wrong that vaguely in Germany philosophy departments two thirds are cognitivists brain scientists no? Okay they are what they are you can’t prevent that now the problem is who will control that remaining third no? And mostly some not only Habermas this vagues Habermasian progressivism they are terribly afraid that what they call this French irrationalism and so on will invade. That’s why take a philosopher like okay sometimes I like him but I totally disagree with him Peter Sloterdijk. Do you know how marginalized he is? I think he still teaches in in Karlsruhe at the ZKM he simply cannot penetrate a serious big institution and it’s the same story in France for decades look at them okay Foucault was lucky at the end and interestingly Alain Badiou also got to École Normale Supérieure but look at for example I don’t know Deleuze Vincennes and then Saint-Denis totally marginalized and so on. You know we tend to forget what is philosophy as a state apparatus? Philosophy and that’s the tragic split in France you maybe find find it at its purest you have these you may agree with them or not these big names public intellectuals Lacan I don’t know Lacan Deleuze and so on but they were extremely marginalized practically totally excluded from academic and here to return to you we should recall that it was similar with Nietzsche you know the react- although Nietzsche was fashionable in some reactionary circles but the neo-Kantian establishment treated Nietzsche as a worthless cultural critic fashionable phenomenon well I’m sorry to tell you maybe but Nietzsche is today still fashionable and who who knows about those neo-Kantians and so on? So again this is for me the big problem today that’s why I’m saying back to Hegel because okay I will jump up and down now I’ll rather improvise elaborate this point as already did it in some of my books. I claim that I still remain in some sense in what sense fuck you read my books I will not lose time now a communist but a communist absolutely without illusions. I think the first task of being a communist the main reason I stick to the term communism is to avoid the term socialism because here at least I still agree with my good friend Badiou who claims and he is not original here every radical leftist thinker would agree with this that a true concept divides it allows you to draw a line of division this is our side we are fighting them and this is why I have there is in my heart a special hatred apart from hatred to you too against the term like many ex-communist countries parties now like to rename themselves as in Germany PDS Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus no democratic socialism. I can understand this maybe even support it as a moment of political opportunism but I think theoretically it’s exactly the wrong thing to do. First because none of the terms distinguishes this doesn’t mean that I’m some kind of secretly totalitarian anti-democrat I’m just saying and this is for me an obvious fact to say I fight for democracy is meaningless today if you don’t add quite many further specifications like you Americans but we Europeans were even more guilty in this you invaded Iraq no I’m here extremely brutal realist why not if it would have worked like you get rid of a dictator there I have no illusions about Saddam. But what’s the result? Are you aware what you did there? First are you aware that Syria and Iraq are the correct me if I’m wrong but I think I’m right at least according to Wikipedia where I check it the only two Middle East Arab countries with Muslim majority which were at least nominally but this wasn’t totally meaningless secular secular in the sense that Islam was not official religion and for example in Iraq maybe if you are old enough you remember the guy Tariq Aziz the public speaker as it were foreign minister of Saddam he was a Christian did you know this and it was similar with with Assad regime. I have no mercy neither for Assad nor for of course Saddam but I just want to make you realize this. Okay so ironically but you are a Christian country in some sense majority so a Christian country intervenes into Iraq to get the people there rid of evil dictator and to bring freedom greater secularism and greater rights to women many American feminists this is a dark chapter of American feminism supported intervention on this account. My answer is if you really want this then intervene into Saudi Arabia you know because today’s Iran is a feminist paradise compared to Saudi Arabia. But the point is this one now what’s the result? When America United States occupied Iraq they disbanded Saddam’s army and then the whole public law and order structure vacillated didn’t function who took over mostly Islamic militias and the result is you know what there were at that point correct me if I’m wrong but again according to a well-known scientific source called Wikipedia I should be at least there were around two million Christians in Saddam’s Iraq which survived all the tribulations of thousands of years now there is only a tiny percentage of them like at least three quarters of them left left the country. B because Saddam nonetheless I’m not saying this in any way justified him but he before he become crazy he somehow played a secular card women were emancipated public post this the situation of women is regressed terribly. So isn’t this a nice moment of irony? A freedom-loving Christian country you invade Iraq to bring freedom the main political result is that much less secularism Christians almost disappeared much less rights to women and so on and so on and that’s my problem with for example also Libya when another philosopher who is for me even worse than the above-mentioned the one whose name shouldn’t be mentioned Bernard-Henri Lévy you know this was his war he called Sarkozy blah blah and it’s not that now I’m a wise as we say in Europe after the battle everyone can play a wise general. No many of my friend friends draw attention to this are we aware what will happen? And they were right I mean Libya is now a how do you call it rogue failed state and so on you know. So again okay let me now go develop this yes violence and so on now I’m a little bit okay let let me go in this direction maybe this is more interesting than all the other bullshit. You ah yes just to finish the introduction one hour into the talk no rather conclusion the the point that I wanted to make with this what Hegel and so on is first I wanted to as someone who is nonetheless influenced by psychoanalysis and so on I think that in order to really use productively psychoanalysis today in order to understand ideological phenomena one has to get rid of many many stupid clichés about psychoanalysis. The main are two one and I rely here on a I don’t like him otherwise but Adam Phillips to be a male chauvinist racist the ex-boyfriend of Jacqueline Rose if this gives you some coordinates in some journal I think it’s that Paris Review or whatever recently it appeared a long interview of him done by Paul Holdengräber the New York Public Library guy and there nonetheless Adam Phillips says something wonderful about psychoanalytic practice. He said there are two clichés about psychoanalysis which should be dropped. One is psychoanalysis is a form of self-knowledge that it’s the radical version of this ancient Greek bullshit know yourself and so on. And second point that the aim of psychoanalysis is to ease diminish your suffering. I mean this seems absolutely obvious you suffer traumas symptoms whatever psychoanalysis gives you a deeper understanding of yourself and once you understand the causes as Freud put it at least if there still is suffering it’s just simple banal suffering not suffering caused by ignorance and so on and so on. Adam Phillips in a wonderfully correct formulation I think that Adorno would have loved this reject both he said no this obsessive desire to know yourself is in itself a pathology but wait a minute he is not a new-ager he’s not this pseudo-Buddhist bullshit like you know don’t think just do it spontaneously and so on. No for him the opposition of knowing yourself is not just act intuitively it’s something different his point is instead of probing into yourself dedicate yourself to an external cause you are not cured when you are satisfied oh my God now I can tell a complete story about myself I know it but when you simply you don’t matter to yourself you fight for something it can be progressive politics you are a fanatic artist scientist politician inventor lover whatever you want but this is the point that the goal of psychoanalysis is precisely to bring you to the point where you can finally forget about that piece of bullshit that is yourself or myself and finally work for a cause. And second thing here Adam Phillips is even more refined he says a wonderful thing my God that’s Hegelian spirit he says that because he is also a practicing analyst and he says that when a patient obviously feels better relaxed that he as analyst Adam Phillips gets into total panic oh my God what did I do wrong and so on as if and then but no it’s not the patient should suffer but he provides a wonderfully correct formulation Adam Phillips when he says and it’s basically a restatement of that previous point about dedicating yourself to some cause he says that the point is not to ease your suffering the point is that a good analytic treatment should enable you to simply move out of this categories do I suffer do I have pleasures am I enjoying life? And to discover that there are things noble things quite naively like I don’t know great scientific work love whatever which are much more important than your suffering or pleasure you know and I think this is the correct reading of psychoanalysis it’s absolutely not this spiritual self-examination which is why I hate life. I’m sorry I will turn it off I wanted to blame somebody else but you know I have to blame the other in me the foreigner in me whatever okay so let’s go on. This is why now comes the last dirty part but don’t be afraid it’s I am the butt of the joke my my mother and maternal grandfather maternal yes grandfather all died of colonos- cancer so I have to do that misfortune thing of every three-four years to do colonoscopy to blah blah. Okay the point is this one I will not go don’t be afraid I will not show you some clips but that will be my point because I was so shocked probably it happens here the same this is called the modern medicine at the end the doctor gave me you know a small DVD like you know and I ask him why is he giving this to me? Does he think that I will invite friends forget about a nice blockbuster why don’t we look the inside of my ass or whatever you know? That’s what’s wrong about it I don’t want to know the inside of myself I don’t want to know it psychologically and bodily even less. And it’s wonderful when you spoke about disgust. Disgust is basically that moment when inside and you know when the disgust is not radical otherness disgust is when this thin skin or whatever line of separation breaks down and the inside comes outside that’s the moment of disgust. Which is and now let’s go further let’s do some problematic but very benevolent political thinking. You know what I will do if some of you are here somehow connected what I already promised to my students with Lindsay or Das Biest or Avital I feel bad because I wanted to deliver something but obviously I will not have time so again already I promised to my students and I promise it here Lindsay or Avital I will send them a file with what I wanted to say but obviously that’s life so you will get it if you want of course. Sorry? You mean that CD? If you give me yours but from both sides not just anal but okay let’s not go let’s not go haha I beat you I was more vulgar than you. Sorry now quite seriously here I am a partisan of Judeo-Christian tradition don’t be afraid I mean I’m radically atheist and so on but I was always intrigued by the notion of neighbor and I think Freud was deeply right that the great thing about Judeo-Christian tradition is that neighbor is not what we usually refer to as the fellow-man you know like the guy who is like a. No the most elementary experience of a neighbor is there is a guy maybe even very close to you wife son mother and you think you know him or her and all of a sudden he or she or it some monster they are called children and I have more and more from my own experience the idea that children between four and six are the closest we can come to Kantian notion of diabolical evil but that’s another point. No seriously you encounter a neighbor when all of a sudden you discover that person whom you think you know does something it may be a tiny thing but something terrifying that totally ruins your familiar image of him or her you know like I don’t know you see there sentimental examples I’m sorry a small kid and he just when nobody is looking kicks that kid almost or whatever something absolute at that point when you ask yourself my God did I know that person at all or not? At that point you discover the neighbor. Which is why I’m sorry if I repeat this example and some of you know it which is why there is some popular novel and movie about a neighbor it is Stephen King’s novel I didn’t even like it but as an example Shining. The whole point is that it’s a normal family fellow men and the whole point is how father gradually turns into a neighbor as it were. This is why incidentally Stephen King was right when he he says okay it’s a well-made movie but there is one mega mistake they never should have given the leading role to Jack Nicholson. You know why? They were right because the whole point is that you have a kind normal guy who gradually becomes a neighbor but let’s be serious the moment Jack Nicholson enters the stage it’s there there is no surprise you know. You just wait when will he finally draw the knife and whatever you know or whatever. Even with children you discover this like my son younger one the older also is definitely a neighbor to me like once I was mad at him in a friendly way and I shouted at him a Serbo-Croat Serb-Serb brother vulgar how do you call it Schimpfwort because we Slovenians are a nasty nation I mean this is very dangerous we don’t have our own dirty words we have to borrow them. So I shouted at him jeboti pas mater which means if I translate it let the dog fuck your mother. It’s ordinary. But then my son become a neighbor you know what was his answer it’s important you will see why at that point he was fourteen years old instantly without reflection he told me but it already happened that’s how I was born like I was the dog you know. I mean I admired him because it wasn’t like oh my God what should I say? Instant answer okay then he did something which was very flattering for me but somehow ruined the effect and made me because immediately after that he look at me with a smile of complicity and said father did I say this well? You know it was so tragic you know like he really wanted to and I almost cried like I thought for a moment you were a true neighbor evil and so on and now you are just another good guy and so on. But no now let’s go serious into this back to Pippin he wrote an interesting book on Western and I often disagree with his you know what Pippin shares this feature up to a point I claim with Adorno when he does his big long books on Hegel they are so-so but some of his shorter collection of essays especially dealing with cultural topic are very for example I absolutely love his book on Henry James his reading on Henry James and then he did a book I forgot the title how can you not admire this Hegelian reading of great Westerns it’s Searchers Red River and so on and there he does a wonderful reading of the one who is again the category of he it was now voted among the ten greatest films of all time Sight and Sound if this means anything but you know the story I will not bore you with because it’s one of the American archetypes you know that basically he knows it this is not a criticism that Scorsese Scorsese yes Scorsese it remind how yeah Italian or American or whatever but that the Taxi Driver is basically a remake of Searchers no basically the violent hero trying to redeem save the endangered girl but you the problem you know what Indians Native Americans I call them Indians for well-known reasons they convinced me you know my joke I always repeat it they hate all that I know American Native Americans hate to be called Native Americans because they told me what does it mean? We are Native Americans and you are what cultural Americans or what? And okay I repeat my old joke maybe you know what was their answer then they said we much prefer to be called Indians because in this way at least our name is a monument to white man stupidity you know who thought they are in India. Okay let me go on Indians Native Americans kill his family or whatever kidnap the girl and for years Searchers the two of them he and his younger friend nephew whatever are looking for a girl who growing older becomes Natalie Wood this is one of her early roles and then till the end of the movie I think he is called Nathan in the film John Wayne is just a brutal avenger he wants to not so much to save her as to kill her he says this like she now he she was living with with that Native American tribe for years and then he gives a wonderful analysis here Pippin what happens at the end and their film is more progressive the film Searchers when the army attacks the camp kills almost all of them you see John Wayne character is beginning to doubt then the girl runs away he runs on a horse after her catches her and at that point the miracle happens instead of killing her he takes her up and takes her home what is miracle? That’s the beauty. It’s not that all of a sudden it’s not this multicultural bullshit we are all humans you know like he suddenly discovers that my God she is nonetheless a warm human being or whatever Pippin focused and if you have the movie on CD or download it or whatever you can check this when he approaches her just before grabbing her up you see and this almost convinced me that maybe John Wayne here and there was a real actor you know you see a strange perplexity perplection in his face like till that he thought he knew who he is just brutal avenger at that point so the point is not that he becomes a good guy oh no we are all human but he becomes a neighbor to himself he is no longer a trans- he discovers as it were the abyss of subjectivity in himself and that’s what makes him keeping the girl alive and that’s I think a wonderful not reading which avoids this standard humanist approach and now I want to propose this maybe as a general formula of how to fight racism today. I’m tired of this we are all humans let’s respect each other’s culture and so on to quote my personal half friend theoretical of course philosophical enemy but nonetheless from time to time he has something interesting Peter Sloterdijk he said we don’t need today more understanding mutual we need a new code of discretion which doesn’t mean this cold regulation and so on but like that’s my formula probably thousands of other people already so produced it like how can we understand others when we don’t even understand ourselves? You know what I mean? Like we have to do what my God if that idiot John Wayne can do it I hope we could you know to to experience this abyss in ourselves and this is what Hegel calls the the night of the world abyss of subjectivity and also with the other ethnic other even in love Alain Badiou at least here we should agree with him when he explodes against this cheap even with Wagner it’s much more complex pseudo-Wagnerian idea Tristan und Isolde the ultimate love we are no longer two we are one we I don’t know what immerse ourselves I mean if you believe this bullshit then you should read some good interpretations and I don’t mean my interpretation I plagiarized others of Wagner and other operas where you can see how just listen carefully to music and to words of Tristan Wagner’s Tristan and you will see this is not what happens at all at the end of Tristan. They don’t die together. It’s first Tristan then Isolde it’s a totally missed encounter and I think the correct reading is that of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle his staging where he reads the appearance of Isolde as just a hallucination of the dying Tristan. And a friend of mine criticized me in Slovene unfortunately only claiming because I read Tristan in my second death of opera with Mladen Dolar book I criticize Tristan I sorry I read in this way Tristan against what I claim is nonetheless this standard let’s die together and I give as an example the finale of Norma where the final duo is moriam insieme. A young Slovene aggressive philosopher I love him because his point was to ruin me theoretically we are friends developed in a wonderful way how if you look at it really closely musically and at the words you see that okay formally they do die together but each has his her own fantasy which is totally different. Absolutely this doesn’t happen that like oh we are immersed into the same primordial abyss together and here we come back to Badiou and although I have problem with certain type of poets but you will know this better didn’t even Rilke said something similar like in true love you precisely only in true love even you experience this abyssal otherness of the other. True love is proximity but I’m really close to the other when I discern this radical otherness in the other and that that’s true love. True love is not we are one and so on. So what I’m saying back to all these problems with racism that we have today you know that we have today and this brought me into a lot of trouble when I check the internet I don’t do it regularly but from time to time my friends draw my attention to the fact how oh you are again attacked as now in late time once I was attacked as antisemite then I was attacked at justifying Arab terrorism then I was attacked I loved this for the same book of the most perfidious Zionist propaganda now the last attacks are that that I am a fascist European nationalist anti-immigrant and so on and so on. Maybe it’s true but I’m tempted to defend myself here as a Hegelian why? Let me go into it you know it’s in Europe now we have and I developed this in that article in these times we have this on the one hand of course anti-immigrants who claim all these immigrants are a threat to European Christian identity blah blah and all those paranoiac theories it’s not an spontaneous event it’s all planned by enemies of Europe and so on and so on. Well frankly even in this there is a moment of truth I claim don’t kill me I’m not now a European ah you know in what sense? Isn’t there something strange happening with these refugees? Look we have poor Middle East countries relatively poor Egypt Turkey Iran each of them received one to two million immigrants. We have Europe which is definitely more wealthy and it’s so-so relatively open. Then we have the really rich countries Saudi Arabia Qatar Kuwait Emirates you know how many refugees they received? Zero. Zero. And it’s absolutely disgusting I claim because first they are culturally much closer you know like Saudi Arabia even cannot claim oh it’s a civil war there we want to remain a conservative country or whatever first Saudi Arabia is not a conservative country maybe they play this game theologically but socially it’s a kind of a big capital mafia gangster family it’s all about American money oil reinvesting it it’s the most speculative capital modern country. So they or all those rich countries their official politics is not even one although not only most of the refugees are Sunnis more than Shiites so religiously they’re the same even worse at least in Syria it’s clear that it’s not even a secret that Saudi Arabia together with Turkey is supporting the rebels and so on so you cannot say sorry this wasn’t our problem why should we take the refugees? No they play a key role in creating the crisis in Syria. So but my point is not so much this my point is and this brought me all the trouble opposed to those whom of course I oppose those European cultural jerks you know like oh threat to Christian identity and so on and so on the formula to which I stick all the time here for decades is of course I am for European values but they are really threatened by those anti-immigrant cons- like imagine Europe where Marine Le Pen is in power in England where I don’t know who UKIP in England sorry in France UKIP in England and so on that would have been really the end of Europe I think no? But there is another point here then we get this left liberals and those I oppose because I think it’s a politically false hypocritical position. Their attitude is first they accept this infinite self-flagellation how do you call it European masochist criticism we are guilty totally so we should totally open our borders and so on and so on. I claim that yes I developed this in a very traditional Marxist way not not Europe but let’s say today’s economic mostly economic neocolonialism is clearly the main cause of this great flow of refugees because again without American intervention in Iraq no ISIS because ISIS is a reaction to you know one of the beautiful things that United States did in Iraq is the result of their intervention was that the pro-Iranian Shiites are now the predominating force another big success of American politics why don’t we give as as a present to our Iranian friends Iraq another country no? But and incidentally I don’t have time to go into it but I’m so unsure what is this ISIS. I don’t want to be usually I try to avoid this stupid paranoia you know like September 11th was really an is- you know this total racism antisemitism in the sense of you know this stupid like all the Jews got a message two days before don’t go on 11th of September to Twin Towers and so on all that bullshit but with ISIS things are the least one can say extremely obscure. I’m not sure who what is behind it but what I want to say is this yes I totally accept this argumentation either it’s this warfare interventions there in Libya or it’s simply economic neocolonialism like what’s going on for example in Central African Republic Alain Badiou drew my attention to it. The official story is this one another ethnic warfare between the Christian majority and on northeast of the country Muslim minority and again wild locals we Europeans should we intervene or not? Haha we know the story now but it’s totally ignored in our media but I believe the story for the simple reason Alain Badiou told me this and showed me the clips you know he learned the story from from Le Figaro which is the right-wing daily but they reported a small item. Yeah unfortunately they discovered oil in the Muslim northeast of the country the whole of country was being gradually colonized by the Chinese so this explosion of old ethnic passions fuck you it was simply it was strictly triggered by the conflict of economic neocolonial interest between China and France. Even you United States I don’t always blame you you know we really live in multicentric world today which is as much as this is difficult to accept for some leftists but when there is some horrible thing going on in the world you are not automatically the guilty part you know what I like I wish all the best to the Chinese but unfortunately I must tell you what Chinese are doing in many African countries or in Myanmar ex-Burma and so on. Well if the term economic colonialism has any meaning this is what they are doing there. Even I remember I don’t know sorry if I repeat myself I was at some subversive festival in Zagreb capital of Croatia a couple of years ago two years ago just before Varoufakis wasn’t yet a minister and there was some crazy guy leftist sociologist who claimed that European poor countries who are now screwed by Germany they should delink from Europe and open up to like he advised this to Greeks no? If Syriza win step out of European Union open yourself to Russia and China. Yeah good luck yeah yeah because they said he said okay they are not maybe democratic but at least they will not force upon you your ideology which means basically they like local dictators with with whom it’s easy but then there were some fifty-one hundred Greeks in the hall who just started to laugh like crazy and then they told me you know that the Chinese tried to buy the port of Piraeus and they did something there that no Western colonialist imperialist dare to do it today they did it so brutally they fired half of the people they find some legal loophole to prevent any trade union so just don’t mention to Syriza progressive Chinese. As to the Russians yes Tsipras did play this game a little bit but again privately when I met him in Zagreb he told me no illusions about Putin he told me Russians did send a delegation no? And they told him okay if you do Grexit we can give you tens of billions to survive but and but was a pretty brutal but first you should allow us to buy all those remaining state companies like Telecom which still somehow work and B a big nice juicy Greek island for one hundred years as our military base and so on you know so no illusions here. So again let’s make this first point clear. I’m not claiming we Europeans are clean here we are absolutely but not only us we Chinese United States are absolutely responsible for this wave of refugees. The problem is no there is no problem this simply is a fact. The problem is this one how to react to it. When I was so attacked as a racist when I noticed that and in Slovenia I met them the refugees and I respect this I don’t blame them for this but it’s almost tragic how they are possessed with a certain vision how should I put it for example we Slovenians are not a rich country but also not terribly poor like our per capita is now around well this is not ultra poverty no? And you know dozens of refugees interviewed by our TV cameras said we don’t like this country it’s too poor Norway Norway we want Norway and at the same time all of them repeated the same formula like I know what I want Norway government will give me a big apartment they will provide university education for my children I know one of my sons should become a surgeon the other one should become whatever and so on and so on. Well my cynical answer was three quarters of Slovenians would like the same no? But I don’t blame them for that but the tragedy is that they don’t get it that their dream is for strictly formal reasons impossible. Impossible in this sense. At the same time for yeah that’s the irony whenever authorities in Slovenia-Croatia whenever try to often they do it in a brutal way and I protested against it but often they just said okay we allow you to enter just please to organize provisions food medical help my God we have to register you no? And then they shout no we are not cattle we are humans we want freedom. But fuck you you want this freedom and then you want to go to Norway. I don’t think there is a country in the world because I’m sorry to tell you but that’s how modern if it still works welfare state functions everyone is totally registered with all your problems and so on because that’s how the state takes care of you. So to go back to this what am I saying? Should we not allow them to enter? No my problem is along the lines of Fred Jameson’s wonderful text this mad text now it’s already being in the process it will appear soon by Verso a volume of Fred Jameson replies to him and then his short reply an American utopia where he claims that the only American chance of its madness of radical change communism is militarization. And I claim maybe this would be a solution to the shock of my leftist friends I claim a military solution would have worked. Not in this bad sense you know you but the only way to resolve the crisis is to establish some refugee how should we call them reception camps in the places where you still can do it on the coast of Syria Lebanon Turkey and so on and then to somehow organize the movement no? I mean I don’t see any first I don’t see Europe should fully admit its duty I pose no doubt here I just emphasize and here I agree with Habermas who said that he is sick and tired with this false how should I call it sentimentalization where is our humanity where is our empathy no? To provoke things one TV station they stopped me on the street I otherwise boycott them in Slovenia they asked me would you accept a refugee family into your apartment? I told them no I hate people are in my apartment I even wouldn’t like to have my own family in my apartment but I said I know we are the problem is not to love them the problem is simple full ethical responsibility. If you take half of my money that I earn and I don’t earn as much as maybe it appears and I immediately accept that don’t sentimentalize. And Habermas was right when he says this Europe is deeply responsible for this. This is and this is why it’s Europe’s duty but to do it but I think without this bullshit you know open the borders and so on yes open the borders but in an organized way. There are now comes the really evil part. The problem is this one which they embody it the refugees again they want and it’s a legitimate dream but that’s the problem all dreams of emancipation are inconsistent and you have to move further. First step they want to maintain their cultural identity and fully participate in a European welfare state. I claim for theoretical reasons this doesn’t work. That’s where I don’t believe in multiculturalism not in the sense because our culture is higher and so on. My problem is this one and for this I’m now proclaimed I don’t know secret fascist right-winger. You know the problem with multiculturalism is that it relies on a certain liberal legalistic dream which simply doesn’t work. The idea is each community can maintain if it wants of course it can also mix with others its own way of life the state just has to guarantee the how should I call it peaceful coexistence without violence and so on. I claim this absolutely doesn’t and cannot work. For the simple reason that every cultural identity is never just about yourself of ourselves it involves the notion of how you relate to others plus there is another mega problem every culture has its own inherent antagonisms conflicts and so on. For example my good friend Udi Aloni who is sometimes even more crazy than you or me which is quite an achievement for them he told me a wonderful story. There is a Palestinian rapper I forgot his name I’m sorry who recently visited United States and about a year ago I think he gave a concert at UCLA and you know what happened there? After the and one of his songs was against honor killings he also protests of course Zionist oppression blah blah but he and he was immediately attacked there by some fanatical anti-Zionist but wrong ones I think that why do you mention this don’t you know that this serves the purposes of Zionism and so on. Basically they accused him of being a Zionist spy slave or whatever and he gave a wonderful dignified answer to this of course wealthy student he said the difference between you and me is that you study in one of the richest universities in the world and you talk in this way to guarantee your career to become popular with your wealthy pseudo-radical professors in English while I in my country sing in Hebrew and Arab to help women who really suffer there. So you see this hypocrisy instead of being glad we don’t have to patronize the Palestinians we just have to join their own struggle and they are not so marginal. There’s a whole still minority but a very strong movement on the West Bank which says okay okay anti-Zionist struggle but at the same time my God we have many problems of our own like honor killings and so on and to give you an example they even have wonderful sense of humor they absolutely don’t fit this ridiculous idea of you know fanatical Palestinians like I’m sorry if you know this story it’s not a dirty one it’s a wonderful one it’s based on that mistranslation. Every good so I was told scientist who historian of Quran knows that you know that stupid idea if you are a martyr and go to heaven you get seventy virgins and so on. Everybody knows that this is a translation mistake. The term used in Quran designates the top quality white grape raisins and the expression you will get seventy it’s not virgins this was at that time six-seven century the standard phrase for hospitality it means I give you a whole fist of raisins it means you are a welcome guest. And Palestinians told me this wonderful joke. There is an ugly Palestinian guy who wants to screw girls he is ugly no girl wants him so he says my God I will become a martyr I kill myself I go up and I will get it there. Okay he does it he awakens in paradise and gets the raisins and then he says sorry me translation mistake translation can I go back please it was all a linguistic misunderstanding for what I mean they so you know what I’m saying here. This is the uni- like you I hate all those liberal centrist atheists which are now fashionable in the United States let’s name them Sam Harris Richard Dawkins and so on you know why? First they are not really neutral I strategically agree with them when they criticize some type of radical left for you are allowed to mock everyone except Islam like we should be tender there you are immediately accused of Islamophobia. I agree with this. I absolutely think we should be ruthless also towards Islam. But the problem I have is that then let’s be ruthless towards everyone. You know my problem with you remember that Charlie Hebdo murders you know. I always explode when I hear the story oh my God how open we are in Europe you see it’s our spirit that you can make fun of everything those stupid Arabs things some topics Muslims are out unmentionable but it’s not like this and I think it’s even good that it’s not like this. Every culture has its unmentionable points like okay in Europe you can make fun of Muhammad but can you make fun of Holocaust? Try to do this and you will see how you will also be immediately excommunicated. Now wait a minute my point is not so lot’s allow this also. My point is simply that to prohibit some things ethically is not in itself a bad thing now to provoke you I will say it’s even a sign of progress I’m for progressive dogmatism maybe you know the story I will repeat it. Would you really like to live in a society where you would have to argue like Habermasians rational argumentation why women should not be raped you know? No I would like to live in a society where this is in a good sense simply accepted as a self-evidence so when some guy starts to deploy this tasteless line you know oh but don’t you think she secretly enjoyed it and so on you don’t have to argue the guy simply immediately appears as an idiot. You know in this sense I claim the first thing to accept is that of course it’s not the same I’m not saying our taboos are the same as their taboos I’m just saying the first clear point every culture has its taboos don’t have any illusions here at certain level we are more tolerant but things are much more ambiguous. Let me tell you a story this time I think I don’t repeat myself at least not here I used this yesterday in Brown Providence but not here you remember when some three-four years ago when he was still president Ahmadinejad while he was at UN visited Columbia and there was a big public debate there. Now I don’t know if this is true but I spoke with two Iranian friends of mine who told me something very interesting what? They were there and they told and again they were no friend of no friend of Ahmadinejad my God they were emigrants escaping Islamic revolution. But they said that the translation was totally misleading namely as you could have expected some guy provocatively asked Ahmadinejad how about homosexuals how do you deal with them in Iran? And Ahmadinejad’s reply was translated as we don’t have these problems there are no homosexuals in Iran. Then of course everyone laughed and so on. Eh but my friend told me no he gave effectively a much more refined answer something like we deal with this in a totally different way than you. We don’t talk about it and allow you to do it discreetly and my friend told me that basically the implicit reference because Ahmadinejad wasn’t an idiot but he knew you know for them it’s also the sacred book the Old Testament. You know is it sorry now comes my barbarism is it the first or the second no? Christ. No fuck off Christ it’s the first of the second commandment you should celebrate no other gods but you know that second but you know how it says completely in front of me you shouldn’t do it in front of me. It it doesn’t mean in front of me of course God is boss so the idea is do it discreetly but out of my sight. You have it even there and you see here we encounter all these ambiguities of the notion of neighbor how to regulate it and so on this is why but already talked about this in my classes I don’t to take no you know what I’ve spoken already way too long so let me nonetheless conclude. So my idea is this one and whenever I hear this people who claim oh Islamophobia you shouldn’t criticize the refugees I say tell them first I absolutely admit European responsibility we should even give I don’t know like of our budget my God fully open but there is a but. My but is this one. For example I recently saw you can copy it on I mean look it on YouTube the ZDF and ZDF Zweites Deutsches Rundfunk remember is the relatively social democratic leftist one a report on honor killings and this in Muslim community in West Germany and it’s terrifying what you learn there it’s not a marginal phenomenon you know because people usually always name this example it’s easy to agree with them isn’t it horrible that in France the state prohibited wearing the burka how do you call it here the veil whatever? I agree with it but the problem is not this one the problem is not the girl wants to wear it the state prohibits it here I agree but what if the girl doesn’t want to wear it and her family threatens her? Now my friend anti-Islamophobic tell me oh you are a victim of Zionist Western propaganda these are just marginal cases. No to per year in Germany such strong cases that the girls have to escape and then they have already twenty-five around how do you call it exile asylum home when where these girls are treated like how do you call them protected victims you know given anonymity new identity and so on and so on. And then Islam community says and in a way they are right but you are here privileging your ethics which your ethical substance which gives greater accent to individual freedom to our where community collaboration mutual help has greater predominance. So here I’m brutal I wonder I’m trying really to provoke you now although hopefully you will say and then I will love you again Avital that that there is no time for debate or whatever no no. No sorry but seriously now I always ask my friends who accuse me of Eurocentrism and so on okay what about a thing that happened two years ago in Slovenia Roma gypsy girl escaped from her family seek refuge in police because her father when she was eleven already married her arranged marriage to blah blah and she didn’t want to. And then of course all the feminists supported her but the irony was that these same feminists who supported her were at the same time officially the greatest protectors of multiculturalism you know like respect and then one of the leaders of Roma community appeared on Slovene TV and said something which was obviously true. He says are you aware that arranged marriages are one of the absolutely crucial mechanisms of the reproduction of our society? You take this from us and then we will survive but a kind of a tourist spectacle people you know you come to listen to to our songs our food but effectively as a society we will disappear. So what’s my lesson here? The first it’s not that I’m offering any easy solution but the first thing is to establish that you have to make a choice here. You cannot say no even with Alain Badiou I had a small conflict here because he said no the state should be become should remain above all this. Okay but I told him let’s say a girl comes to the police or a more extreme example and they are more rare here there is definitely a lot of Western propaganda but nonetheless girl comes and says okay I want to avoid cliterodectomy so what will you say? No it’s their cultural problem let’s not do it and so on and so on. I mean I’m claiming that you know this is why just to shock and provoke my friends I tried to rehabilitate the notion of Leitkultur leading culture not in the sense of our Christianity but what I think we should not be ashamed to impose is certain rules which regulate how different cultures relate to each other. For example this is not a marginal problem my friends told me from Malmö Berlin and Amsterdam that gay communities were first well disposed towards Muslims but then Muslims start to attack gays publicly okay Judith Butler I admire her for this did the heroic thing because as a reaction to this gay community made some Islamophobic not homophobic that would be too much statements she rejected refused to accept a big price offered by her there but nonetheless you see what I mean? At a certain level you have to impose some rules you cannot escape it. And this is for me Leitkultur and I’m here moderately Eurocentric and I will tell you why because it’s so suspicious for me today why is it all of a sudden so acceptable to be anti-Eurocentric? I think this is not a good sign of victory of anticolonial struggle on the contrary it’s one of the signs of the dark times we are approaching when as I always emphasize capitalism no longer needs democracy and so on because the message is and that’s what so-called capitalism with Asian values which of course has nothing to do with Asia but all with modern form of capitalism more and more functions as authoritarian capitalism. Who are for me typical leaders of today like Modi in India at the same time ultra neoliberal in economy and Hindu fundamentalist or Turkey Erdoğan nightmare you know what is the official electoral motto not in this elections I think in previous elections shop and pray not even work and pray or whatever alright I will stop now. Okay but just my Hegelian point that I finish my pessimism is this one that we have against this standard Marxist progressive teleology we have a unique chance revolution we know accept a more radical openness of the historical process. We have problems today it’s obvious I will not even enumerate them. But we have to accept that when we start to fight for freedom whatever that the beginning of the struggle is always by definition caught into illusions because your first in your first reaction you formulate what I call in some of my books the immanent utopia that’s why I even go so far as to mention how Marx’s idea of communism is basically capitalism without capitalism. His dream is to retain all the capitalist dynamics expanded self-reproduction and so on but without the form of capitalism I claim this doesn’t work. And to conclude with a joke which I maybe even used here but I don’t think so my last obscenity but a friendly one that’s the lesson of Hegel he was aware of this. Ah yeah sorry just this that’s why this was my final point we have to be Hegelians. Hegel’s position was unique and I claim it’s our position today. Hegel’s position was this one there was the first attempt at liberation French Revolution and in Hegel’s view I don’t agree with him here but that doesn’t matter it ended catastrophically with terror self-destructive terror but Hegel’s problem is how precisely at this point when the first attempt fails how to keep the emancipatory motif alive? How to remain faithful to it? How to do it again better? In this sense Hegel was I think the ultimate Beckettian you know try again fail again fail better you know and I know how to use this term my good friend Frank Ruda the best maybe young German philosopher recently got a new girlfriend who is a specialist in Beckett and I told Frank Ruda I know what your girlfriend told you after you spent the first night together try again fail again fail better or whatever we are still friends. No but quite seriously isn’t this our situation today? There was a big attempt of liberation 20th century communism. It failed in that form. How to remain faithful how to repeat that and make it better? Which means not being less radical but even more and that’s the final joke I’m sorry if you know it with which I will believe me or not really conclude. You know what happened to me I’m sorry if you know the joke about two years ago I will not say where I don’t want to compromise but a lady in her early forties flirted with me and obviously wanted to seduce me which is again here I look like John Wayne what did she see in me how beyond my scope why would she want to do this but the point is this one that to seduce me she told me you know when my last lover saw me naked he told me if you were to lose two three pounds your body would have been perfect. Poor lady instead of sex she got from me two hours lesson of on Lacanian object small a you know because my point was this one that and you will see connection with our situation a profoundly Hegelian point Hegel was always aware of it. Now common sense tells you okay then I’m sorry for this sexist example but it can be done with a different level okay then let me lose three pounds and I will be perfect my answer is no and that’s dialectic. There is a mirage of perfection but only this mirage is generated by that excess you know. There is a certain disturbing excess which generates the mirage of my God if we just get rid of that excess we have perfection no we don’t have. That’s the most and this is a similar mirage is of refugees and so on and so on which is why again we live in difficult times and we precisely I remain a Marxist communist in the sense of I don’t think that in the long term today’s global capitalism will be able to deal with not even to resolve them but even to cope with its antagonisms. But I don’t dare to propose a simple positive formula that’s it I think and this is the Hegelian view any formula that we propose will have to be redefined remain caught will have to remain caught in the process. Now just the last reply you will tell me but what am I bullshitting here? But didn’t Hegel propose his formula which is the corporate state described in his philosophy of right? I claim emphatically no and Robert Pippin draw my attention to a fact here. You know the most famous almost passage from forward forward to Hegel’s philosophy of right where you know that famous passage the stupid bird whatever owl takes off its flight in the evening and then Hegel says explicitly it’s not the duty of philosophy to describe the way the world should ideally be because he says whenever you can conceptually describe a certain social edifice it means its time has already passed. Now I claim it’s reasonable to conclude that Hegel was not a complete idiot which means he was aware that exactly the same holds for his philosophy of right. He is not describing there model as he is usually read as model conservative like French Revolution went too far but we so a kind of a compromise between traditional authority king and freedom somewhere in between absolutely not if anything Hegel it’s so interesting to read last Hegel the last text that Hegel wrote is that comments on the British reform bill that electoral change which was for Hegel already too much like too much equality free elections but that not matter what matters is that you can feel there Hegel’s anxiety he felt that something new is emerging and he was totally at a loss what is this what is emerging? Maybe this is how we should proceed today. I’m sorry if I was too long but on the other hand fuck you I’m not really sorry thank you very much. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. Where are we? I don’t even know do you have something which shows time? Because I where are we? We’re supposed to go. Ah but just don’t tell me you know there is a deeply conservative right-wing bureaucratic reasoning that I hate which manipulates with working class whenever organizers and I’m not blaming you you’re a good girl here okay not girl just go whatever yeah. This happens regularly especially in London they say professor we would love to debate for hours but you know poor cleaning girls cleaning ladies are waiting there and they are paid and we this is the usual excuse it’s a manipulation no but whatever where are we now? We’re here. We are here yes no I meant not in this sense as Hegel famously said yeah yeah. Okay should we nonetheless save democracy with one question or what? Well what we could do perhaps is does does anyone want to make an urgent claim counter-claim dance sing a song of praise? I really mean it. This is not a phrase or a bad joke what I would like to do to give you this type of oriental Zen Buddhism bullshit answer like clap with one hand or whatever good good no but seriously I would love to hear this is not an empty offer like is there anyone here who brutally disagrees with me about precisely that problematic point towards the end? For example I have some friends in London who claim no there are certain third world local traditions which can effectively serve as to use the fashionable Derridean term sites of resistance against global capitalism. The last story I loved was from my Spanish-Latino American friend Oscar Guardiola yes in London who told me ancient Latin Am- I mean pre- Okay you were going to ask see if anyone had a question. No no okay I will not do this but my usual joke would be to start the debate by asking myself professor what did you want to say in the remaining part of your talk and then Answer oh that yeah like someone’s going to ask. Seriously please I I’m not bluffing briefly but I would be really interested because I know I’m fully aware of the problematic nature of what I claim here. Do you have some serious brutal attack please? Oh you’re the guy please. Uh sure no I mean my question is are don’t you think that you’re staying in a determinism of historical materialism like this? In what sense? Because you’re just saying that we’re gonna have to wait for another great Hegelian leap and you’re saying that we shouldn’t fantasize any radical positive organizational strategies just wait No I didn’t say this I said like Beckett we should do it but we should be aware that it’s open that we don’t know where we are going. Marx was for me way too much a determinist. Okay he didn’t want to give specifics of communism but he had this basic vision of history today opens a unique perspective of global emancipation and so on and so on I don’t buy that. I totally buy Marxist analysis it’s still not only the best but only almost the only one of how capitalism reproduces itself antagonisms and so on but already with proletarian working class I have problems. I think like for example who is today a proletarian? It’s already the problem with intellectual workers I disagree with both standard versions one is the Negri version screw the ordinary working class intellectual workers are the only proletarian there is the opposite version and so on. Then Fred Jameson drew attention to it it’s Fred Jameson made a wonderful proposal although it’s not sure to me how to formulate it in economic terms that somehow we should devise a conceptual apparatus to talk also about the exploitation of the unemployed although in the formal terms of course they don’t work they you know what I mean like we need to think that’s the only that’s my only message and I’m not only abstractly not saying let’s do nothing and wait if anything my formula is you know this is the way to make it sure that nothing will happen that’s why I for example admire although temporarily they lost what Syriza did and so on they tried to do it and you know here I’m an enemy I know what you will say now maybe. I claim that for example not because they were too leftist some of my leftist friends what about left platform Grexit and so on? Precisely their program was nothing new I read it in detail I debated with them the you know that left platform the minority I think it’s a great wisdom of Greek voters that they fucked them off because if you read closely their program Grexit nationalize banks invest is just the old radical social democratic state socialism it would have been a total catastrophe I claim. But nonetheless that’s why no I’m not just sitting and waiting for a Hegelian moment I’m just saying take risks here and there do whatever my heroes are like till now it’s open what will happen now Syriza I have greater doubts with Podemos I think they are too much caught in certain apolitical rhetorics like left right don’t matter just that people really rule my problem with them is always I told them they really hated me I was recently in Spain I told them are you aware that what you are saying I told them I know you don’t mean it this way but abstractly if you just take what you are saying every honest fascist would totally subscribe it yes capital shouldn’t dominate us it should serve people blah blah you know my heroes are also people like I don’t know Aristide in Haiti it was a totally hopeless situation but he simply tried to do whatever the only element of what you are indicated let’s wait it’s not that there will be a great Hegelian positive chance of a new revolution no I’m much more pessimist what I’m sure of is that new crisis will explode. For example it’s clear that what they did now with Greece no the result is that in five years from now instead of billions the Greek debt will be half a how do you call it at least billions and my idea is although I’m much more pessimist here because Varoufakis told me that I should not underestimate
there is really no other way to achieve your goal then selectively you can be a little bit violent or whatever but my God this is precisely what Benjamin explicitly opposes. He says first it’s an instrument without aim goal second point he says that it’s not again a means to do something but it just displays some attitude some it’s not a good term what I use but kind of a bears witness of some stance and I think that if we are looking for examples of this today let’s say all those mostly they were civilized debate sorry demonstration but you remember Ferguson and all those other places when blacks demonstrated? Sometime it did become violent. I think it was exactly this it was not okay mostly it was with a certain goal you know like justice no more cop killings I mean cops doing the killing but there was also an element of this explosion like just you display your rage and an even better example I claim would have been do you remember my God time passes it’s already some five-six years ago I think those car burnings in the suburbs of Paris. This is I think divine violence at its purest. I was there even I studied them. First liberal fanatics claimed oh Islam fundamentalism then they were shocked to learn that the first thing that they burned were mosques and schools for themselves so it was a kind of an explosion of violence without any program not even the Muslim fundamentalist program without so what’s my point here? It’s not there is nothing pleasant in it like if I would have been there I would probably run away like a rabbit you know like it was dangerous to be there my point is just a more refined one. I’m not saying now we should celebrate them why not fuck it maybe police should intervene there but at the same time it’s a refined point we cannot just simply condemn it of course we should like try to limit it and so on but we have to recognize in it a certain the violent explosion of a certain deadlock if I may put it like this and I think along those lines I’m tempted to rehabilitate even Benjamin and Benjamin is also a big problem for this Habermasian tradition. So again this is the crucial thing I think that the problem is not really Heidegger it’s even I don’t know how it is here in the States but I can tell you I know it’s like this in England and in Germany it’s really this anti-Heidegger campaign now it’s really an extremely disgusting brutal power struggle for who will control one third of the academia why do we mean by this? So my friends told me maybe I’m wrong that vaguely in Germany philosophy departments two thirds are cognitivists brain scientists no? Okay they are what they are you can’t prevent that now the problem is who will control that remaining third no? And mostly some not only Habermas this vagues Habermasian progressivism they are terribly afraid that what they call this French irrationalism and so on will invade. That’s why take a philosopher like okay sometimes I like him but I totally disagree with him Peter Sloterdijk. Do you know how marginalized he is? I think he still teaches in in Karlsruhe at the ZKM he simply cannot penetrate a serious big institution and it’s the same story in France for decades look at them okay Foucault was lucky at the end and interestingly Alain Badiou also got to École Normale Supérieure but look at for example I don’t know Deleuze Vincennes and then Saint-Denis totally marginalized and so on. You know we tend to forget what is philosophy as a state apparatus? Philosophy and that’s the tragic split in France you maybe find find it at its purest you have these you may agree with them or not these big names public intellectuals Lacan I don’t know Lacan Deleuze and so on but they were extremely marginalized practically totally excluded from academic and here to return to you we should recall that it was similar with Nietzsche you know the react- although Nietzsche was fashionable in some reactionary circles but the neo-Kantian establishment treated Nietzsche as a worthless cultural critic fashionable phenomenon well I’m sorry to tell you maybe but Nietzsche is today still fashionable and who who knows about those neo-Kantians and so on? So again this is for me the big problem today that’s why I’m saying back to Hegel because okay I will jump up and down now I’ll rather improvise elaborate this point as already did it in some of my books. I claim that I still remain in some sense in what sense fuck you read my books I will not lose time now a communist but a communist absolutely without illusions. I think the first task of being a communist the main reason I stick to the term communism is to avoid the term socialism because here at least I still agree with my good friend Badiou who claims and he is not original here every radical leftist thinker would agree with this that a true concept divides it allows you to draw a line of division this is our side we are fighting them and this is why I have there is in my heart a special hatred apart from hatred to you too against the term like many ex-communist countries parties now like to rename themselves as in Germany PDS Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus no democratic socialism. I can understand this maybe even support it as a moment of political opportunism but I think theoretically it’s exactly the wrong thing to do. First because none of the terms distinguishes this doesn’t mean that I’m some kind of secretly totalitarian anti-democrat I’m just saying and this is for me an obvious fact to say I fight for democracy is meaningless today if you don’t add quite many further specifications like you Americans but we Europeans were even more guilty in this you invaded Iraq no I’m here extremely brutal realist why not if it would have worked like you get rid of a dictator there I have no illusions about Saddam. But what’s the result? Are you aware what you did there? First are you aware that Syria and Iraq are the correct me if I’m wrong but I think I’m right at least according to Wikipedia where I check it the only two Middle East Arab countries with Muslim majority which were at least nominally but this wasn’t totally meaningless secular secular in the sense that Islam was not official religion and for example in Iraq maybe if you are old enough you remember the guy Tariq Aziz the public speaker as it were foreign minister of Saddam he was a Christian did you know this and it was similar with with Assad regime. I have no mercy neither for Assad nor for of course Saddam but I just want to make you realize this. Okay so ironically but you are a Christian country in some sense majority so a Christian country intervenes into Iraq to get the people there rid of evil dictator and to bring freedom greater secularism and greater rights to women many American feminists this is a dark chapter of American feminism supported intervention on this account. My answer is if you really want this then intervene into Saudi Arabia you know because today’s Iran is a feminist paradise compared to Saudi Arabia. But the point is this one now what’s the result? When America United States occupied Iraq they disbanded Saddam’s army and then the whole public law and order structure vacillated didn’t function who took over mostly Islamic militias and the result is you know what there were at that point correct me if I’m wrong but again according to a well-known scientific source called Wikipedia I should be at least there were around two million Christians in Saddam’s Iraq which survived all the tribulations of thousands of years now there is only a tiny percentage of them like at least three quarters of them left left the country. B because Saddam nonetheless I’m not saying this in any way justified him but he before he become crazy he somehow played a secular card women were emancipated public post this the situation of women is regressed terribly. So isn’t this a nice moment of irony? A freedom-loving Christian country you invade Iraq to bring freedom the main political result is that much less secularism Christians almost disappeared much less rights to women and so on and so on and that’s my problem with for example also Libya when another philosopher who is for me even worse than the above-mentioned the one whose name shouldn’t be mentioned Bernard-Henri Lévy you know this was his war he called Sarkozy blah blah and it’s not that now I’m a wise as we say in Europe after the battle everyone can play a wise general. No many of my friend friends draw attention to this are we aware what will happen? And they were right I mean Libya is now a how do you call it rogue failed state and so on you know. So again okay let me now go develop this yes violence and so on now I’m a little bit okay let let me go in this direction maybe this is more interesting than all the other bullshit. You ah yes just to finish the introduction one hour into the talk no rather conclusion the the point that I wanted to make with this what Hegel and so on is first I wanted to as someone who is nonetheless influenced by psychoanalysis and so on I think that in order to really use productively psychoanalysis today in order to understand ideological phenomena one has to get rid of many many stupid clichés about psychoanalysis. The main are two one and I rely here on a I don’t like him otherwise but Adam Phillips to be a male chauvinist racist the ex-boyfriend of Jacqueline Rose if this gives you some coordinates in some journal I think it’s that Paris Review or whatever recently it appeared a long interview of him done by Paul Holdengräber the New York Public Library guy and there nonetheless Adam Phillips says something wonderful about psychoanalytic practice. He said there are two clichés about psychoanalysis which should be dropped. One is psychoanalysis is a form of self-knowledge that it’s the radical version of this ancient Greek bullshit know yourself and so on. And second point that the aim of psychoanalysis is to ease diminish your suffering. I mean this seems absolutely obvious you suffer traumas symptoms whatever psychoanalysis gives you a deeper understanding of yourself and once you understand the causes as Freud put it at least if there still is suffering it’s just simple banal suffering not suffering caused by ignorance and so on and so on. Adam Phillips in a wonderfully correct formulation I think that Adorno would have loved this reject both he said no this obsessive desire to know yourself is in itself a pathology but wait a minute he is not a new-ager he’s not this pseudo-Buddhist bullshit like you know don’t think just do it spontaneously and so on. No for him the opposition of knowing yourself is not just act intuitively it’s something different his point is instead of probing into yourself dedicate yourself to an external cause you are not cured when you are satisfied oh my God now I can tell a complete story about myself I know it but when you simply you don’t matter to yourself you fight for something it can be progressive politics you are a fanatic artist scientist politician inventor lover whatever you want but this is the point that the goal of psychoanalysis is precisely to bring you to the point where you can finally forget about that piece of bullshit that is yourself or myself and finally work for a cause. And second thing here Adam Phillips is even more refined he says a wonderful thing my God that’s Hegelian spirit he says that because he is also a practicing analyst and he says that when a patient obviously feels better relaxed that he as analyst Adam Phillips gets into total panic oh my God what did I do wrong and so on as if and then but no it’s not the patient should suffer but he provides a wonderfully correct formulation Adam Phillips when he says and it’s basically a restatement of that previous point about dedicating yourself to some cause he says that the point is not to ease your suffering the point is that a good analytic treatment should enable you to simply move out of this categories do I suffer do I have pleasures am I enjoying life? And to discover that there are things noble things quite naively like I don’t know great scientific work love whatever which are much more important than your suffering or pleasure you know and I think this is the correct reading of psychoanalysis it’s absolutely not this spiritual self-examination which is why I hate life. I’m sorry I will turn it off I wanted to blame somebody else but you know I have to blame the other in me the foreigner in me whatever okay so let’s go on. This is why now comes the last dirty part but don’t be afraid it’s I am the butt of the joke my my mother and maternal grandfather maternal yes grandfather all died of colonos- cancer so I have to do that misfortune thing of every three-four years to do colonoscopy to blah blah. Okay the point is this one I will not go don’t be afraid I will not show you some clips but that will be my point because I was so shocked probably it happens here the same this is called the modern medicine at the end the doctor gave me you know a small DVD like you know and I ask him why is he giving this to me? Does he think that I will invite friends forget about a nice blockbuster why don’t we look the inside of my ass or whatever you know? That’s what’s wrong about it I don’t want to know the inside of myself I don’t want to know it psychologically and bodily even less. And it’s wonderful when you spoke about disgust. Disgust is basically that moment when inside and you know when the disgust is not radical otherness disgust is when this thin skin or whatever line of separation breaks down and the inside comes outside that’s the moment of disgust. Which is and now let’s go further let’s do some problematic but very benevolent political thinking. You know what I will do if some of you are here somehow connected what I already promised to my students with Lindsay or Das Biest or Avital I feel bad because I wanted to deliver something but obviously I will not have time so again already I promised to my students and I promise it here Lindsay or Avital I will send them a file with what I wanted to say but obviously that’s life so you will get it if you want of course. Sorry? You mean that CD? If you give me yours but from both sides not just anal but okay let’s not go let’s not go haha I beat you I was more vulgar than you. Sorry now quite seriously here I am a partisan of Judeo-Christian tradition don’t be afraid I mean I’m radically atheist and so on but I was always intrigued by the notion of neighbor and I think Freud was deeply right that the great thing about Judeo-Christian tradition is that neighbor is not what we usually refer to as the fellow-man you know like the guy who is like a. No the most elementary experience of a neighbor is there is a guy maybe even very close to you wife son mother and you think you know him or her and all of a sudden he or she or it some monster they are called children and I have more and more from my own experience the idea that children between four and six are the closest we can come to Kantian notion of diabolical evil but that’s another point. No seriously you encounter a neighbor when all of a sudden you discover that person whom you think you know does something it may be a tiny thing but something terrifying that totally ruins your familiar image of him or her you know like I don’t know you see there sentimental examples I’m sorry a small kid and he just when nobody is looking kicks that kid almost or whatever something absolute at that point when you ask yourself my God did I know that person at all or not? At that point you discover the neighbor. Which is why I’m sorry if I repeat this example and some of you know it which is why there is some popular novel and movie about a neighbor it is Stephen King’s novel I didn’t even like it but as an example Shining. The whole point is that it’s a normal family fellow men and the whole point is how father gradually turns into a neighbor as it were. This is why incidentally Stephen King was right when he he says okay it’s a well-made movie but there is one mega mistake they never should have given the leading role to Jack Nicholson. You know why? They were right because the whole point is that you have a kind normal guy who gradually becomes a neighbor but let’s be serious the moment Jack Nicholson enters the stage it’s there there is no surprise you know. You just wait when will he finally draw the knife and whatever you know or whatever. Even with children you discover this like my son younger one the older also is definitely a neighbor to me like once I was mad at him in a friendly way and I shouted at him a Serbo-Croat Serb-Serb brother vulgar how do you call it Schimpfwort because we Slovenians are a nasty nation I mean this is very dangerous we don’t have our own dirty words we have to borrow them. So I shouted at him jeboti pas mater which means if I translate it let the dog fuck your mother. It’s ordinary. But then my son become a neighbor you know what was his answer it’s important you will see why at that point he was fourteen years old instantly without reflection he told me but it already happened that’s how I was born like I was the dog you know. I mean I admired him because it wasn’t like oh my God what should I say? Instant answer okay then he did something which was very flattering for me but somehow ruined the effect and made me because immediately after that he look at me with a smile of complicity and said father did I say this well? You know it was so tragic you know like he really wanted to and I almost cried like I thought for a moment you were a true neighbor evil and so on and now you are just another good guy and so on. But no now let’s go serious into this back to Pippin he wrote an interesting book on Western and I often disagree with his you know what Pippin shares this feature up to a point I claim with Adorno when he does his big long books on Hegel they are so-so but some of his shorter collection of essays especially dealing with cultural topic are very for example I absolutely love his book on Henry James his reading on Henry James and then he did a book I forgot the title how can you not admire this Hegelian reading of great Westerns it’s Searchers Red River and so on and there he does a wonderful reading of the one who is again the category of he it was now voted among the ten greatest films of all time Sight and Sound if this means anything but you know the story I will not bore you with because it’s one of the American archetypes you know that basically he knows it this is not a criticism that Scorsese Scorsese yes Scorsese it remind how yeah Italian or American or whatever but that the Taxi Driver is basically a remake of Searchers no basically the violent hero trying to redeem save the endangered girl but you the problem you know what Indians Native Americans I call them Indians for well-known reasons they convinced me you know my joke I always repeat it they hate all that I know American Native Americans hate to be called Native Americans because they told me what does it mean? We are Native Americans and you are what cultural Americans or what? And okay I repeat my old joke maybe you know what was their answer then they said we much prefer to be called Indians because in this way at least our name is a monument to white man stupidity you know who thought they are in India. Okay let me go on Indians Native Americans kill his family or whatever kidnap the girl and for years Searchers the two of them he and his younger friend nephew whatever are looking for a girl who growing older becomes Natalie Wood this is one of her early roles and then till the end of the movie I think he is called Nathan in the film John Wayne is just a brutal avenger he wants to not so much to save her as to kill her he says this like she now he she was living with with that Native American tribe for years and then he gives a wonderful analysis here Pippin what happens at the end and their film is more progressive the film Searchers when the army attacks the camp kills almost all of them you see John Wayne character is beginning to doubt then the girl runs away he runs on a horse after her catches her and at that point the miracle happens instead of killing her he takes her up and takes her home what is miracle? That’s the beauty. It’s not that all of a sudden it’s not this multicultural bullshit we are all humans you know like he suddenly discovers that my God she is nonetheless a warm human being or whatever Pippin focused and if you have the movie on CD or download it or whatever you can check this when he approaches her just before grabbing her up you see and this almost convinced me that maybe John Wayne here and there was a real actor you know you see a strange perplexity perplection in his face like till that he thought he knew who he is just brutal avenger at that point so the point is not that he becomes a good guy oh no we are all human but he becomes a neighbor to himself he is no longer a trans- he discovers as it were the abyss of subjectivity in himself and that’s what makes him keeping the girl alive and that’s I think a wonderful not reading which avoids this standard humanist approach and now I want to propose this maybe as a general formula of how to fight racism today. I’m tired of this we are all humans let’s respect each other’s culture and so on to quote my personal half friend theoretical of course philosophical enemy but nonetheless from time to time he has something interesting Peter Sloterdijk he said we don’t need today more understanding mutual we need a new code of discretion which doesn’t mean this cold regulation and so on but like that’s my formula probably thousands of other people already so produced it like how can we understand others when we don’t even understand ourselves? You know what I mean? Like we have to do what my God if that idiot John Wayne can do it I hope we could you know to to experience this abyss in ourselves and this is what Hegel calls the the night of the world abyss of subjectivity and also with the other ethnic other even in love Alain Badiou at least here we should agree with him when he explodes against this cheap even with Wagner it’s much more complex pseudo-Wagnerian idea Tristan und Isolde the ultimate love we are no longer two we are one we I don’t know what immerse ourselves I mean if you believe this bullshit then you should read some good interpretations and I don’t mean my interpretation I plagiarized others of Wagner and other operas where you can see how just listen carefully to music and to words of Tristan Wagner’s Tristan and you will see this is not what happens at all at the end of Tristan. They don’t die together. It’s first Tristan then Isolde it’s a totally missed encounter and I think the correct reading is that of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle his staging where he reads the appearance of Isolde as just a hallucination of the dying Tristan. And a friend of mine criticized me in Slovene unfortunately only claiming because I read Tristan in my second death of opera with Mladen Dolar book I criticize Tristan I sorry I read in this way Tristan against what I claim is nonetheless this standard let’s die together and I give as an example the finale of Norma where the final duo is moriam insieme. A young Slovene aggressive philosopher I love him because his point was to ruin me theoretically we are friends developed in a wonderful way how if you look at it really closely musically and at the words you see that okay formally they do die together but each has his her own fantasy which is totally different. Absolutely this doesn’t happen that like oh we are immersed into the same primordial abyss together and here we come back to Badiou and although I have problem with certain type of poets but you will know this better didn’t even Rilke said something similar like in true love you precisely only in true love even you experience this abyssal otherness of the other. True love is proximity but I’m really close to the other when I discern this radical otherness in the other and that that’s true love. True love is not we are one and so on. So what I’m saying back to all these problems with racism that we have today you know that we have today and this brought me into a lot of trouble when I check the internet I don’t do it regularly but from time to time my friends draw my attention to the fact how oh you are again attacked as now in late time once I was attacked as antisemite then I was attacked at justifying Arab terrorism then I was attacked I loved this for the same book of the most perfidious Zionist propaganda now the last attacks are that that I am a fascist European nationalist anti-immigrant and so on and so on. Maybe it’s true but I’m tempted to defend myself here as a Hegelian why? Let me go into it you know it’s in Europe now we have and I developed this in that article in these times we have this on the one hand of course anti-immigrants who claim all these immigrants are a threat to European Christian identity blah blah and all those paranoiac theories it’s not an spontaneous event it’s all planned by enemies of Europe and so on and so on. Well frankly even in this there is a moment of truth I claim don’t kill me I’m not now a European ah you know in what sense? Isn’t there something strange happening with these refugees? Look we have poor Middle East countries relatively poor Egypt Turkey Iran each of them received one to two million immigrants. We have Europe which is definitely more wealthy and it’s so-so relatively open. Then we have the really rich countries Saudi Arabia Qatar Kuwait Emirates you know how many refugees they received? Zero. Zero. And it’s absolutely disgusting I claim because first they are culturally much closer you know like Saudi Arabia even cannot claim oh it’s a civil war there we want to remain a conservative country or whatever first Saudi Arabia is not a conservative country maybe they play this game theologically but socially it’s a kind of a big capital mafia gangster family it’s all about American money oil reinvesting it it’s the most speculative capital modern country. So they or all those rich countries their official politics is not even one although not only most of the refugees are Sunnis more than Shiites so religiously they’re the same even worse at least in Syria it’s clear that it’s not even a secret that Saudi Arabia together with Turkey is supporting the rebels and so on so you cannot say sorry this wasn’t our problem why should we take the refugees? No they play a key role in creating the crisis in Syria. So but my point is not so much this my point is and this brought me all the trouble opposed to those whom of course I oppose those European cultural jerks you know like oh threat to Christian identity and so on and so on the formula to which I stick all the time here for decades is of course I am for European values but they are really threatened by those anti-immigrant cons- like imagine Europe where Marine Le Pen is in power in England where I don’t know who UKIP in England sorry in France UKIP in England and so on that would have been really the end of Europe I think no? But there is another point here then we get this left liberals and those I oppose because I think it’s a politically false hypocritical position. Their attitude is first they accept this infinite self-flagellation how do you call it European masochist criticism we are guilty totally so we should totally open our borders and so on and so on. I claim that yes I developed this in a very traditional Marxist way not not Europe but let’s say today’s economic mostly economic neocolonialism is clearly the main cause of this great flow of refugees because again without American intervention in Iraq no ISIS because ISIS is a reaction to you know one of the beautiful things that United States did in Iraq is the result of their intervention was that the pro-Iranian Shiites are now the predominating force another big success of American politics why don’t we give as as a present to our Iranian friends Iraq another country no? But and incidentally I don’t have time to go into it but I’m so unsure what is this ISIS. I don’t want to be usually I try to avoid this stupid paranoia you know like September 11th was really an is- you know this total racism antisemitism in the sense of you know this stupid like all the Jews got a message two days before don’t go on 11th of September to Twin Towers and so on all that bullshit but with ISIS things are the least one can say extremely obscure. I’m not sure who what is behind it but what I want to say is this yes I totally accept this argumentation either it’s this warfare interventions there in Libya or it’s simply economic neocolonialism like what’s going on for example in Central African Republic Alain Badiou drew my attention to it. The official story is this one another ethnic warfare between the Christian majority and on northeast of the country Muslim minority and again wild locals we Europeans should we intervene or not? Haha we know the story now but it’s totally ignored in our media but I believe the story for the simple reason Alain Badiou told me this and showed me the clips you know he learned the story from from Le Figaro which is the right-wing daily but they reported a small item. Yeah unfortunately they discovered oil in the Muslim northeast of the country the whole of country was being gradually colonized by the Chinese so this explosion of old ethnic passions fuck you it was simply it was strictly triggered by the conflict of economic neocolonial interest between China and France. Even you United States I don’t always blame you you know we really live in multicentric world today which is as much as this is difficult to accept for some leftists but when there is some horrible thing going on in the world you are not automatically the guilty part you know what I like I wish all the best to the Chinese but unfortunately I must tell you what Chinese are doing in many African countries or in Myanmar ex-Burma and so on. Well if the term economic colonialism has any meaning this is what they are doing there. Even I remember I don’t know sorry if I repeat myself I was at some subversive festival in Zagreb capital of Croatia a couple of years ago two years ago just before Varoufakis wasn’t yet a minister and there was some crazy guy leftist sociologist who claimed that European poor countries who are now screwed by Germany they should delink from Europe and open up to like he advised this to Greeks no? If Syriza win step out of European Union open yourself to Russia and China. Yeah good luck yeah yeah because they said he said okay they are not maybe democratic but at least they will not force upon you your ideology which means basically they like local dictators with with whom it’s easy but then there were some fifty-one hundred Greeks in the hall who just started to laugh like crazy and then they told me you know that the Chinese tried to buy the port of Piraeus and they did something there that no Western colonialist imperialist dare to do it today they did it so brutally they fired half of the people they find some legal loophole to prevent any trade union so just don’t mention to Syriza progressive Chinese. As to the Russians yes Tsipras did play this game a little bit but again privately when I met him in Zagreb he told me no illusions about Putin he told me Russians did send a delegation no? And they told him okay if you do Grexit we can give you tens of billions to survive but and but was a pretty brutal but first you should allow us to buy all those remaining state companies like Telecom which still somehow work and B a big nice juicy Greek island for one hundred years as our military base and so on you know so no illusions here. So again let’s make this first point clear. I’m not claiming we Europeans are clean here we are absolutely but not only us we Chinese United States are absolutely responsible for this wave of refugees. The problem is no there is no problem this simply is a fact. The problem is this one how to react to it. When I was so attacked as a racist when I noticed that and in Slovenia I met them the refugees and I respect this I don’t blame them for this but it’s almost tragic how they are possessed with a certain vision how should I put it for example we Slovenians are not a rich country but also not terribly poor like our per capita is now around well this is not ultra poverty no? And you know dozens of refugees interviewed by our TV cameras said we don’t like this country it’s too poor Norway Norway we want Norway and at the same time all of them repeated the same formula like I know what I want Norway government will give me a big apartment they will provide university education for my children I know one of my sons should become a surgeon the other one should become whatever and so on and so on. Well my cynical answer was three quarters of Slovenians would like the same no? But I don’t blame them for that but the tragedy is that they don’t get it that their dream is for strictly formal reasons impossible. Impossible in this sense. At the same time for yeah that’s the irony whenever authorities in Slovenia-Croatia whenever try to often they do it in a brutal way and I protested against it but often they just said okay we allow you to enter just please to organize provisions food medical help my God we have to register you no? And then they shout no we are not cattle we are humans we want freedom. But fuck you you want this freedom and then you want to go to Norway. I don’t think there is a country in the world because I’m sorry to tell you but that’s how modern if it still works welfare state functions everyone is totally registered with all your problems and so on because that’s how the state takes care of you. So to go back to this what am I saying? Should we not allow them to enter? No my problem is along the lines of Fred Jameson’s wonderful text this mad text now it’s already being in the process it will appear soon by Verso a volume of Fred Jameson replies to him and then his short reply an American utopia where he claims that the only American chance of its madness of radical change communism is militarization. And I claim maybe this would be a solution to the shock of my leftist friends I claim a military solution would have worked. Not in this bad sense you know you but the only way to resolve the crisis is to establish some refugee how should we call them reception camps in the places where you still can do it on the coast of Syria Lebanon Turkey and so on and then to somehow organize the movement no? I mean I don’t see any first I don’t see Europe should fully admit its duty I pose no doubt here I just emphasize and here I agree with Habermas who said that he is sick and tired with this false how should I call it sentimentalization where is our humanity where is our empathy no? To provoke things one TV station they stopped me on the street I otherwise boycott them in Slovenia they asked me would you accept a refugee family into your apartment? I told them no I hate people are in my apartment I even wouldn’t like to have my own family in my apartment but I said I know we are the problem is not to love them the problem is simple full ethical responsibility. If you take half of my money that I earn and I don’t earn as much as maybe it appears and I immediately accept that don’t sentimentalize. And Habermas was right when he says this Europe is deeply responsible for this. This is and this is why it’s Europe’s duty but to do it but I think without this bullshit you know open the borders and so on yes open the borders but in an organized way. There are now comes the really evil part. The problem is this one which they embody it the refugees again they want and it’s a legitimate dream but that’s the problem all dreams of emancipation are inconsistent and you have to move further. First step they want to maintain their cultural identity and fully participate in a European welfare state. I claim for theoretical reasons this doesn’t work. That’s where I don’t believe in multiculturalism not in the sense because our culture is higher and so on. My problem is this one and for this I’m now proclaimed I don’t know secret fascist right-winger. You know the problem with multiculturalism is that it relies on a certain liberal legalistic dream which simply doesn’t work. The idea is each community can maintain if it wants of course it can also mix with others its own way of life the state just has to guarantee the how should I call it peaceful coexistence without violence and so on. I claim this absolutely doesn’t and cannot work. For the simple reason that every cultural identity is never just about yourself of ourselves it involves the notion of how you relate to others plus there is another mega problem every culture has its own inherent antagonisms conflicts and so on. For example my good friend Udi Aloni who is sometimes even more crazy than you or me which is quite an achievement for them he told me a wonderful story. There is a Palestinian rapper I forgot his name I’m sorry who recently visited United States and about a year ago I think he gave a concert at UCLA and you know what happened there? After the and one of his songs was against honor killings he also protests of course Zionist oppression blah blah but he and he was immediately attacked there by some fanatical anti-Zionist but wrong ones I think that why do you mention this don’t you know that this serves the purposes of Zionism and so on. Basically they accused him of being a Zionist spy slave or whatever and he gave a wonderful dignified answer to this of course wealthy student he said the difference between you and me is that you study in one of the richest universities in the world and you talk in this way to guarantee your career to become popular with your wealthy pseudo-radical professors in English while I in my country sing in Hebrew and Arab to help women who really suffer there. So you see this hypocrisy instead of being glad we don’t have to patronize the Palestinians we just have to join their own struggle and they are not so marginal. There’s a whole still minority but a very strong movement on the West Bank which says okay okay anti-Zionist struggle but at the same time my God we have many problems of our own like honor killings and so on and to give you an example they even have wonderful sense of humor they absolutely don’t fit this ridiculous idea of you know fanatical Palestinians like I’m sorry if you know this story it’s not a dirty one it’s a wonderful one it’s based on that mistranslation. Every good so I was told scientist who historian of Quran knows that you know that stupid idea if you are a martyr and go to heaven you get seventy virgins and so on. Everybody knows that this is a translation mistake. The term used in Quran designates the top quality white grape raisins and the expression you will get seventy it’s not virgins this was at that time six-seven century the standard phrase for hospitality it means I give you a whole fist of raisins it means you are a welcome guest. And Palestinians told me this wonderful joke. There is an ugly Palestinian guy who wants to screw girls he is ugly no girl wants him so he says my God I will become a martyr I kill myself I go up and I will get it there. Okay he does it he awakens in paradise and gets the raisins and then he says sorry me translation mistake translation can I go back please it was all a linguistic misunderstanding for what I mean they so you know what I’m saying here. This is the uni- like you I hate all those liberal centrist atheists which are now fashionable in the United States let’s name them Sam Harris Richard Dawkins and so on you know why? First they are not really neutral I strategically agree with them when they criticize some type of radical left for you are allowed to mock everyone except Islam like we should be tender there you are immediately accused of Islamophobia. I agree with this. I absolutely think we should be ruthless also towards Islam. But the problem I have is that then let’s be ruthless towards everyone. You know my problem with you remember that Charlie Hebdo murders you know. I always explode when I hear the story oh my God how open we are in Europe you see it’s our spirit that you can make fun of everything those stupid Arabs things some topics Muslims are out unmentionable but it’s not like this and I think it’s even good that it’s not like this. Every culture has its unmentionable points like okay in Europe you can make fun of Muhammad but can you make fun of Holocaust? Try to do this and you will see how you will also be immediately excommunicated. Now wait a minute my point is not so lot’s allow this also. My point is simply that to prohibit some things ethically is not in itself a bad thing now to provoke you I will say it’s even a sign of progress I’m for progressive dogmatism maybe you know the story I will repeat it. Would you really like to live in a society where you would have to argue like Habermasians rational argumentation why women should not be raped you know? No I would like to live in a society where this is in a good sense simply accepted as a self-evidence so when some guy starts to deploy this tasteless line you know oh but don’t you think she secretly enjoyed it and so on you don’t have to argue the guy simply immediately appears as an idiot. You know in this sense I claim the first thing to accept is that of course it’s not the same I’m not saying our taboos are the same as their taboos I’m just saying the first clear point every culture has its taboos don’t have any illusions here at certain level we are more tolerant but things are much more ambiguous. Let me tell you a story this time I think I don’t repeat myself at least not here I used this yesterday in Brown Providence but not here you remember when some three-four years ago when he was still president Ahmadinejad while he was at UN visited Columbia and there was a big public debate there. Now I don’t know if this is true but I spoke with two Iranian friends of mine who told me something very interesting what? They were there and they told and again they were no friend of no friend of Ahmadinejad my God they were emigrants escaping Islamic revolution. But they said that the translation was totally misleading namely as you could have expected some guy provocatively asked Ahmadinejad how about homosexuals how do you deal with them in Iran? And Ahmadinejad’s reply was translated as we don’t have these problems there are no homosexuals in Iran. Then of course everyone laughed and so on. Eh but my friend told me no he gave effectively a much more refined answer something like we deal with this in a totally different way than you. We don’t talk about it and allow you to do it discreetly and my friend told me that basically the implicit reference because Ahmadinejad wasn’t an idiot but he knew you know for them it’s also the sacred book the Old Testament. You know is it sorry now comes my barbarism is it the first or the second no? Christ. No fuck off Christ it’s the first of the second commandment you should celebrate no other gods but you know that second but you know how it says completely in front of me you shouldn’t do it in front of me. It it doesn’t mean in front of me of course God is boss so the idea is do it discreetly but out of my sight. You have it even there and you see here we encounter all these ambiguities of the notion of neighbor how to regulate it and so on this is why but already talked about this in my classes I don’t to take no you know what I’ve spoken already way too long so let me nonetheless conclude. So my idea is this one and whenever I hear this people who claim oh Islamophobia you shouldn’t criticize the refugees I say tell them first I absolutely admit European responsibility we should even give I don’t know like of our budget my God fully open but there is a but. My but is this one. For example I recently saw you can copy it on I mean look it on YouTube the ZDF and ZDF Zweites Deutsches Rundfunk remember is the relatively social democratic leftist one a report on honor killings and this in Muslim community in West Germany and it’s terrifying what you learn there it’s not a marginal phenomenon you know because people usually always name this example it’s easy to agree with them isn’t it horrible that in France the state prohibited wearing the burka how do you call it here the veil whatever? I agree with it but the problem is not this one the problem is not the girl wants to wear it the state prohibits it here I agree but what if the girl doesn’t want to wear it and her family threatens her? Now my friend anti-Islamophobic tell me oh you are a victim of Zionist Western propaganda these are just marginal cases. No to per year in Germany such strong cases that the girls have to escape and then they have already twenty-five around how do you call it exile asylum home when where these girls are treated like how do you call them protected victims you know given anonymity new identity and so on and so on. And then Islam community says and in a way they are right but you are here privileging your ethics which your ethical substance which gives greater accent to individual freedom to our where community collaboration mutual help has greater predominance. So here I’m brutal I wonder I’m trying really to provoke you now although hopefully you will say and then I will love you again Avital that that there is no time for debate or whatever no no. No sorry but seriously now I always ask my friends who accuse me of Eurocentrism and so on okay what about a thing that happened two years ago in Slovenia Roma gypsy girl escaped from her family seek refuge in police because her father when she was eleven already married her arranged marriage to blah blah and she didn’t want to. And then of course all the feminists supported her but the irony was that these same feminists who supported her were at the same time officially the greatest protectors of multiculturalism you know like respect and then one of the leaders of Roma community appeared on Slovene TV and said something which was obviously true. He says are you aware that arranged marriages are one of the absolutely crucial mechanisms of the reproduction of our society? You take this from us and then we will survive but a kind of a tourist spectacle people you know you come to listen to to our songs our food but effectively as a society we will disappear. So what’s my lesson here? The first it’s not that I’m offering any easy solution but the first thing is to establish that you have to make a choice here. You cannot say no even with Alain Badiou I had a small conflict here because he said no the state should be become should remain above all this. Okay but I told him let’s say a girl comes to the police or a more extreme example and they are more rare here there is definitely a lot of Western propaganda but nonetheless girl comes and says okay I want to avoid cliterodectomy so what will you say? No it’s their cultural problem let’s not do it and so on and so on. I mean I’m claiming that you know this is why just to shock and provoke my friends I tried to rehabilitate the notion of Leitkultur leading culture not in the sense of our Christianity but what I think we should not be ashamed to impose is certain rules which regulate how different cultures relate to each other. For example this is not a marginal problem my friends told me from Malmö Berlin and Amsterdam that gay communities were first well disposed towards Muslims but then Muslims start to attack gays publicly okay Judith Butler I admire her for this did the heroic thing because as a reaction to this gay community made some Islamophobic not homophobic that would be too much statements she rejected refused to accept a big price offered by her there but nonetheless you see what I mean? At a certain level you have to impose some rules you cannot escape it. And this is for me Leitkultur and I’m here moderately Eurocentric and I will tell you why because it’s so suspicious for me today why is it all of a sudden so acceptable to be anti-Eurocentric? I think this is not a good sign of victory of anticolonial struggle on the contrary it’s one of the signs of the dark times we are approaching when as I always emphasize capitalism no longer needs democracy and so on because the message is and that’s what so-called capitalism with Asian values which of course has nothing to do with Asia but all with modern form of capitalism more and more functions as authoritarian capitalism. Who are for me typical leaders of today like Modi in India at the same time ultra neoliberal in economy and Hindu fundamentalist or Turkey Erdoğan nightmare you know what is the official electoral motto not in this elections I think in previous elections shop and pray not even work and pray or whatever alright I will stop now. Okay but just my Hegelian point that I finish my pessimism is this one that we have against this standard Marxist progressive teleology we have a unique chance revolution we know accept a more radical openness of the historical process. We have problems today it’s obvious I will not even enumerate them. But we have to accept that when we start to fight for freedom whatever that the beginning of the struggle is always by definition caught into illusions because your first in your first reaction you formulate what I call in some of my books the immanent utopia that’s why I even go so far as to mention how Marx’s idea of communism is basically capitalism without capitalism. His dream is to retain all the capitalist dynamics expanded self-reproduction and so on but without the form of capitalism I claim this doesn’t work. And to conclude with a joke which I maybe even used here but I don’t think so my last obscenity but a friendly one that’s the lesson of Hegel he was aware of this. Ah yeah sorry just this that’s why this was my final point we have to be Hegelians. Hegel’s position was unique and I claim it’s our position today. Hegel’s position was this one there was the first attempt at liberation French Revolution and in Hegel’s view I don’t agree with him here but that doesn’t matter it ended catastrophically with terror self-destructive terror but Hegel’s problem is how precisely at this point when the first attempt fails how to keep the emancipatory motif alive? How to remain faithful to it? How to do it again better? In this sense Hegel was I think the ultimate Beckettian you know try again fail again fail better you know and I know how to use this term my good friend Frank Ruda the best maybe young German philosopher recently got a new girlfriend who is a specialist in Beckett and I told Frank Ruda I know what your girlfriend told you after you spent the first night together try again fail again fail better or whatever we are still friends. No but quite seriously isn’t this our situation today? There was a big attempt of liberation 20th century communism. It failed in that form. How to remain faithful how to repeat that and make it better? Which means not being less radical but even more and that’s the final joke I’m sorry if you know it with which I will believe me or not really conclude. You know what happened to me I’m sorry if you know the joke about two years ago I will not say where I don’t want to compromise but a lady in her early forties flirted with me and obviously wanted to seduce me which is again here I look like John Wayne what did she see in me how beyond my scope why would she want to do this but the point is this one that to seduce me she told me you know when my last lover saw me naked he told me if you were to lose two three pounds your body would have been perfect. Poor lady instead of sex she got from me two hours lesson of on Lacanian object small a you know because my point was this one that and you will see connection with our situation a profoundly Hegelian point Hegel was always aware of it. Now common sense tells you okay then I’m sorry for this sexist example but it can be done with a different level okay then let me lose three pounds and I will be perfect my answer is no and that’s dialectic. There is a mirage of perfection but only this mirage is generated by that excess you know. There is a certain disturbing excess which generates the mirage of my God if we just get rid of that excess we have perfection no we don’t have. That’s the most and this is a similar mirage is of refugees and so on and so on which is why again we live in difficult times and we precisely I remain a Marxist communist in the sense of I don’t think that in the long term today’s global capitalism will be able to deal with not even to resolve them but even to cope with its antagonisms. But I don’t dare to propose a simple positive formula that’s it I think and this is the Hegelian view any formula that we propose will have to be redefined remain caught will have to remain caught in the process. Now just the last reply you will tell me but what am I bullshitting here? But didn’t Hegel propose his formula which is the corporate state described in his philosophy of right? I claim emphatically no and Robert Pippin draw my attention to a fact here. You know the most famous almost passage from forward forward to Hegel’s philosophy of right where you know that famous passage the stupid bird whatever owl takes off its flight in the evening and then Hegel says explicitly it’s not the duty of philosophy to describe the way the world should ideally be because he says whenever you can conceptually describe a certain social edifice it means its time has already passed. Now I claim it’s reasonable to conclude that Hegel was not a complete idiot which means he was aware that exactly the same holds for his philosophy of right. He is not describing there model as he is usually read as model conservative like French Revolution went too far but we so a kind of a compromise between traditional authority king and freedom somewhere in between absolutely not if anything Hegel it’s so interesting to read last Hegel the last text that Hegel wrote is that comments on the British reform bill that electoral change which was for Hegel already too much like too much equality free elections but that not matter what matters is that you can feel there Hegel’s anxiety he felt that something new is emerging and he was totally at a loss what is this what is emerging? Maybe this is how we should proceed today. I’m sorry if I was too long but on the other hand fuck you I’m not really sorry thank you very much. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. Where are we? I don’t even know do you have something which shows time? Because I where are we? We’re supposed to go. Ah but just don’t tell me you know there is a deeply conservative right-wing bureaucratic reasoning that I hate which manipulates with working class whenever organizers and I’m not blaming you you’re a good girl here okay not girl just go whatever yeah. This happens regularly especially in London they say professor we would love to debate for hours but you know poor cleaning girls cleaning ladies are waiting there and they are paid and we this is the usual excuse it’s a manipulation no but whatever where are we now? We’re here. We are here yes no I meant not in this sense as Hegel famously said yeah yeah. Okay should we nonetheless save democracy with one question or what? Well what we could do perhaps is does does anyone want to make an urgent claim counter-claim dance sing a song of praise? I really mean it. This is not a phrase or a bad joke what I would like to do to give you this type of oriental Zen Buddhism bullshit answer like clap with one hand or whatever good good no but seriously I would love to hear this is not an empty offer like is there anyone here who brutally disagrees with me about precisely that problematic point towards the end? For example I have some friends in London who claim no there are certain third world local traditions which can effectively serve as to use the fashionable Derridean term sites of resistance against global capitalism. The last story I loved was from my Spanish-Latino American friend Oscar Guardiola yes in London who told me ancient Latin Am- I mean pre- Okay you were going to ask see if anyone had a question. No no okay I will not do this but my usual joke would be to start the debate by asking myself professor what did you want to say in the remaining part of your talk and then Answer oh that yeah like someone’s going to ask. Seriously please I I’m not bluffing briefly but I would be really interested because I know I’m fully aware of the problematic nature of what I claim here. Do you have some serious brutal attack please? Oh you’re the guy please. Uh sure no I mean my question is are don’t you think that you’re staying in a determinism of historical materialism like this? In what sense? Because you’re just saying that we’re gonna have to wait for another great Hegelian leap and you’re saying that we shouldn’t fantasize any radical positive organizational strategies just wait No I didn’t say this I said like Beckett we should do it but we should be aware that it’s open that we don’t know where we are going. Marx was for me way too much a determinist. Okay he didn’t want to give specifics of communism but he had this basic vision of history today opens a unique perspective of global emancipation and so on and so on I don’t buy that. I totally buy Marxist analysis it’s still not only the best but only almost the only one of how capitalism reproduces itself antagonisms and so on but already with proletarian working class I have problems. I think like for example who is today a proletarian? It’s already the problem with intellectual workers I disagree with both standard versions one is the Negri version screw the ordinary working class intellectual workers are the only proletarian there is the opposite version and so on. Then Fred Jameson drew attention to it it’s Fred Jameson made a wonderful proposal although it’s not sure to me how to formulate it in economic terms that somehow we should devise a conceptual apparatus to talk also about the exploitation of the unemployed although in the formal terms of course they don’t work they you know what I mean like we need to think that’s the only that’s my only message and I’m not only abstractly not saying let’s do nothing and wait if anything my formula is you know this is the way to make it sure that nothing will happen that’s why I for example admire although temporarily they lost what Syriza did and so on they tried to do it and you know here I’m an enemy I know what you will say now maybe. I claim that for example not because they were too leftist some of my leftist friends what about left platform Grexit and so on? Precisely their program was nothing new I read it in detail I debated with them the you know that left platform the minority I think it’s a great wisdom of Greek voters that they fucked them off because if you read closely their program Grexit nationalize banks invest is just the old radical social democratic state socialism it would have been a total catastrophe I claim. But nonetheless that’s why no I’m not just sitting and waiting for a Hegelian moment I’m just saying take risks here and there do whatever my heroes are like till now it’s open what will happen now Syriza I have greater doubts with Podemos I think they are too much caught in certain apolitical rhetorics like left right don’t matter just that people really rule my problem with them is always I told them they really hated me I was recently in Spain I told them are you aware that what you are saying I told them I know you don’t mean it this way but abstractly if you just take what you are saying every honest fascist would totally subscribe it yes capital shouldn’t dominate us it should serve people blah blah you know my heroes are also people like I don’t know Aristide in Haiti it was a totally hopeless situation but he simply tried to do whatever the only element of what you are indicated let’s wait it’s not that there will be a great Hegelian positive chance of a new revolution no I’m much more pessimist what I’m sure of is that new crisis will explode. For example it’s clear that what they did now with Greece no the result is that in five years from now instead of billions the Greek debt will be half a how do you call it at least billions and my idea is although I’m much more pessimist here because Varoufakis told me that I should not underestimate
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the extent
the extent
Slavoj Žižek
to which even Syriza ministers and administrators are already co-opted into European Union mechanisms but I claim maybe there is a minor chance I basically gave them a Stalinist but in a good sense advice don’t just dream about change penetrate the state apparatuses police even secret police legal you know get ready because the tragedy was now that was the message of Varoufakis to me they thought we are in power and we can do fuck you no they cannot Varoufakis told me horrible stories he had a confidential meeting with two of his closest advisers before he
to which even Syriza ministers and administrators are already co-opted into European Union mechanisms but I claim maybe there is a minor chance I basically gave them a Stalinist but in a good sense advice don’t just dream about change penetrate the state apparatuses police even secret police legal you know get ready because the tragedy was now that was the message of Varoufakis to me they thought we are in power and we can do fuck you no they cannot Varoufakis told me horrible stories he had a confidential meeting with two of his closest advisers before he
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took a flight to Brussels then he learned there that the same evening his closest
took a flight to Brussels then he learned there that the same evening his closest
Slavoj Žižek
adviser picked from
adviser picked from
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Syriza by
Syriza by
Slavoj Žižek
him already informed the they knew sometimes better than Syriza what Syriza’s politics is so I told them organize themselves slowly penetrate the state apparatus and get ready for the next crisis. When’s your next class? Sorry? Your next class here at NYU on Friday? No tomorrow. Tomorrow. So But tomorrow I will warn you it’s serious stuff we will go in detail through that Brandom book on Hegel the subtitle could have been this Kantian renormalization of Hegel what does it miss in Hegel. Right and we might consider reading in in in tandem with what
him already informed the they knew sometimes better than Syriza what Syriza’s politics is so I told them organize themselves slowly penetrate the state apparatus and get ready for the next crisis. When’s your next class? Sorry? Your next class here at NYU on Friday? No tomorrow. Tomorrow. So But tomorrow I will warn you it’s serious stuff we will go in detail through that Brandom book on Hegel the subtitle could have been this Kantian renormalization of Hegel what does it miss in Hegel. Right and we might consider reading in in in tandem with what
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you’ve proposed tonight also
you’ve proposed tonight also
Slavoj Žižek
Derrida on unconditional hospitality and hostility and immigration. I combined with hostility and not this
Derrida on unconditional hospitality and hostility and immigration. I combined with hostility and not this
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sentimental
sentimental
Slavoj Žižek
hospitality that’s so crucial you know. But also the aporias because Aporias that’s crucial yeah. That’s my message not screw the refugees
hospitality that’s so crucial you know. But also the aporias because Aporias that’s crucial yeah. That’s my message not screw the refugees
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but don’t
but don’t
Slavoj Žižek
behave as we just have to open ourselves you know and Yeah yeah you’re letting yourself be misunderstood. No no. Yeah it’s very important that you not be misunderstood. Because if we ignore these tough problems if we ignore with this you know I’m saying I’m against of course we should criticize Islam but at the same time everyone should be criticized like that’s my point even Buddhism because you know those anti-Islamist let’s call them atheists Sam Harris and so on if you read them closely you always notice that they pretend to be against every religion but they have their own exception there are two main exception for them either Judaism or Buddhism oriental for example Sam Harris says Judaism is different. Well maybe but you find shit everywhere like you know everybody knows that passage you know Moses on the mountain that when Moses quotes Martin Luther King or the other way around you know oh I’ve seen it down the valley fuck you let’s see what happens after you died and Joshua down you have the first explicit brutal example of ethnic cleansing you know the promised land was not empty all those Canaanites or whatever were there and Moses said kill them all. The same is with Buddhism there are wonderful books people usually say but nonetheless there is no Buddhist terrorism like with Islam fuck you there is I will give you examples Thailand Thailand Sri Lanka Ceylon. Absolutely. Absolutely. Sorry? Critical democracy? What does it mean? I don’t know Hegelian negativism criticizing everything basically. No I’m extremely engaged concretely here and there radical democracy if you ask I’m first I’m not a fetishist of democracy I can well imagine examples even bourgeois ones acceptable to people look this is my usual provocation once I was with Finkielkraut in that stupid radio talk now you’re really going no no but I will very short sorry this interesting and I told him can you imagine a situation where you have a legitimate government undoubtedly democratically elected and then a tiny minority calls for fighting against this government and brutally starts killing it he says no I told him General de Gaulle. Every history of France tells you that first this is the oppressed part Pétain was you know when Germans were advancing to somewhere down there to Bordeaux or I don’t know to Toulouse the French Assemblée Nationale withdrew there and Pétain was legitimately nominated legitimately in a formal democratic sense of course nominated the ruler of France and undoubtedly communists admit this somewhere till forty-two if there were to be so-called free elections Pétain would have probably won with what General de Gaulle did absolutely was not democratically legitimized his idea was no we don’t recognize this government and armed struggle we start killing them and so on I’m here on de Gaulle’s side so you know but even Ernesto Laclau is more ambiguous here for some time he was more for democracy in the sense of you know blah blah the- then all of a sudden through his he
behave as we just have to open ourselves you know and Yeah yeah you’re letting yourself be misunderstood. No no. Yeah it’s very important that you not be misunderstood. Because if we ignore these tough problems if we ignore with this you know I’m saying I’m against of course we should criticize Islam but at the same time everyone should be criticized like that’s my point even Buddhism because you know those anti-Islamist let’s call them atheists Sam Harris and so on if you read them closely you always notice that they pretend to be against every religion but they have their own exception there are two main exception for them either Judaism or Buddhism oriental for example Sam Harris says Judaism is different. Well maybe but you find shit everywhere like you know everybody knows that passage you know Moses on the mountain that when Moses quotes Martin Luther King or the other way around you know oh I’ve seen it down the valley fuck you let’s see what happens after you died and Joshua down you have the first explicit brutal example of ethnic cleansing you know the promised land was not empty all those Canaanites or whatever were there and Moses said kill them all. The same is with Buddhism there are wonderful books people usually say but nonetheless there is no Buddhist terrorism like with Islam fuck you there is I will give you examples Thailand Thailand Sri Lanka Ceylon. Absolutely. Absolutely. Sorry? Critical democracy? What does it mean? I don’t know Hegelian negativism criticizing everything basically. No I’m extremely engaged concretely here and there radical democracy if you ask I’m first I’m not a fetishist of democracy I can well imagine examples even bourgeois ones acceptable to people look this is my usual provocation once I was with Finkielkraut in that stupid radio talk now you’re really going no no but I will very short sorry this interesting and I told him can you imagine a situation where you have a legitimate government undoubtedly democratically elected and then a tiny minority calls for fighting against this government and brutally starts killing it he says no I told him General de Gaulle. Every history of France tells you that first this is the oppressed part Pétain was you know when Germans were advancing to somewhere down there to Bordeaux or I don’t know to Toulouse the French Assemblée Nationale withdrew there and Pétain was legitimately nominated legitimately in a formal democratic sense of course nominated the ruler of France and undoubtedly communists admit this somewhere till forty-two if there were to be so-called free elections Pétain would have probably won with what General de Gaulle did absolutely was not democratically legitimized his idea was no we don’t recognize this government and armed struggle we start killing them and so on I’m here on de Gaulle’s side so you know but even Ernesto Laclau is more ambiguous here for some time he was more for democracy in the sense of you know blah blah the- then all of a sudden through his he
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had hopes that he will
had hopes that he will
Slavoj Žižek
become what he later half become in Argentina that is to say state philosopher of Chavez ne and all of a sudden he
become what he later half become in Argentina that is to say state philosopher of Chavez ne and all of a sudden he
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started to talk about progressive potentials of military coups d’etat no and so on you know what I mean? I’m radical democracy
started to talk about progressive potentials of military coups d’etat no and so on you know what I mean? I’m radical democracy
Slavoj Žižek
is for me again it doesn’t tell enough it’s too empty
is for me again it doesn’t tell enough it’s too empty
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too empty a word
too empty a word
Slavoj Žižek
for me. Thank you very much for emptying out some of these clichés and and let’s continue wait a minute now I miscriticize you yes here I protest against you the best line of Sam Goldwyn is you know the legend when some studio his studio was criticized by some journalist there are too many old clichés in your movies you know he wrote a memo then to his scenario department we urgently need new original clichés it’s deeply true because it’s easy to be original with just originality the true revolution is to introduce new clichés clichés are the stuff of everyday life we need new clichés and I’m afraid if you pursue this revisionist lines line I wonder if there will be a place for you in this society of new clichés. Honestly. Well let’s
for me. Thank you very much for emptying out some of these clichés and and let’s continue wait a minute now I miscriticize you yes here I protest against you the best line of Sam Goldwyn is you know the legend when some studio his studio was criticized by some journalist there are too many old clichés in your movies you know he wrote a memo then to his scenario department we urgently need new original clichés it’s deeply true because it’s easy to be original with just originality the true revolution is to introduce new clichés clichés are the stuff of everyday life we need new clichés and I’m afraid if you pursue this revisionist lines line I wonder if there will be a place for you in this society of new clichés. Honestly. Well let’s
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thank you very
thank you very
Slavoj Žižek
much.
much.