Lesson from „Airpokalypse“
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-06-30 · 1:49:37 · 13,424 words
ecology-climateideologycapitalismreligion-theologypsychoanalysistechnology-ai-cyberspacesubjectivitypoliticsliberalism-political-correctnesscommunism-socialismhegel-dialecticsdemocracyphilosophy-generalcinema-art-cultureeveryday-life
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture in Madrid covering ecological crisis and the psychological mechanism of renormalization by which catastrophes are rapidly absorbed into everyday life. He critiques individualized guilt as an ideological strategy of capitalism (exemplified by Starbucks), diagnoses the Anthropocene, video games, and Pokémon Go as symptoms of shifting subjectivity, and argues for a radically atheist Christian ethics grounded in unconditional solidarity without divine guarantee. The Q&A extends into discussions of Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin and progress, Gramsci/Laclau/Podemos, Alain Badiou's universalism, and the tragic dimensions of emancipatory political projects.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 25
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's adopted portmanteau for the smog catastrophes in Chinese cities, used as a paradigm case of how impossible events become normalized.
The rapid psychological and social process by which an unprecedented catastrophe is absorbed as an accepted new fact of everyday life, nullifying its shock value.
Naomi Klein's analysis that global capitalism exploits catastrophes to shed social constraints and impose neoliberal agendas; Žižek invokes it to argue ecological disaster will more likely accelerate capitalism than birth a new left.
A business model that resolves the consumer's guilt by building the cost of charity directly into the product price, allowing unlimited consumption while feeling virtuous.
The geological epoch in which human productive activity has become powerful enough to alter the fundamental conditions of life on Earth, creating a paradox in which our greatest power becomes a threat to our own survival.
as “ecological 'small is beautiful' fascism”
Žižek's dismissive label for ecological movements that advocate returning to a simpler, smaller-scale life in harmony with nature, which he rejects because there is no natural balance to return to.
as “politically correct ecology”
An ecological attitude that focuses on individual behavioral compliance and guilt rather than demanding radical systemic change, mirroring the liberal logic of political correctness.
as “surplus enjoyment (in political correctness)”
The perverted pleasure liberals derive from the infinite work of self-examination and guilt over politically incorrect speech, where the supposed pain is itself the source of enjoyment.
Žižek's ironic label for the pre-war Yugoslav practice of nations exchanging dirty jokes primarily about themselves, creating genuine solidarity through shared self-mockery rather than inter-ethnic hostility.
Following new materialists like Jane Bennett, a non-anthropocentric view of a site as an interacting network of human and non-human actants with no privileged human standpoint.
as “vibrant matter / new materialism”
Jane Bennett's framework in which non-human entities are actants with their own agency; Žižek uses it to push toward the 'inhuman view' but ultimately finds it insufficient without a return to the ethical.
The zero-level perspective from which even Auschwitz is described as a quasi-natural assemblage of interacting elements; Žižek argues one must pass through this unbearable vantage point to reach an authentic ethical stance.
Freud's term for the loss of the sense of reality triggered by encountering something too traumatically strong; invoked to explain why augmented/filtered reality is our normal cognitive condition.
A new form of subjectivity exemplified by video games, in which the subject endlessly dies and resurfaces in an infinite cycle, abolishing the finitude that psychoanalysis calls symbolic castration.
Kant's third type of judgment that asserts a non-predicate (e.g. 'he is undead') rather than simply negating a predicate, thereby opening a paradoxical third space between life and death.
The psychoanalytic awareness of basic human finitude and mortality; Žižek notes that video-game subjectivity abolishes this awareness through its infinite-lives logic.
as “augmented reality (ideological)”
Žižek's claim that ideology has always functioned like Pokémon Go, overlaying a virtual supplement onto perceived reality that makes it coherent and desirable, turning neutral environments into meaningful fields of action.
as “freedom as inevitability”
Žižek's thesis that the most radically free choices, joining the resistance, falling in love, are experienced not as open options but as ethical necessities one cannot avoid without self-betrayal.
as “atheist Christian”
Žižek's self-description: one who retains the radical ethical core of Christianity, unconditional solidarity with suffering, without cover of a God who guarantees meaning, precisely by accepting God's absence.
as “death of God the Father”
What dies on the cross for Žižek is not Christ but God the Father, the guarantor of cosmic meaning and good outcome, leaving only the imperative to act ethically in a meaningless world.
as “negative theology (Rowan Williams version)”
God not as a positive entity beyond description but as the name for the experience that the world is out of joint, a gap or dissatisfaction with how things are, irreducible to any fetishized image.
Laclau's concept of linking diverse political demands into a hegemonic bloc; Žižek questions whether the theory is politically neutral and can equally describe fascism.
Gramsci's concept taken up by Laclau/Mouffe: for Žižek the problem is that as formalized by Laclau it becomes a neutral theory applicable to fascist as well as left projects.
The dark, infinite persistence of evil or enjoyment beyond life and death, zombies, vampires, the perpetual pornographic loop, contrasted with the noble immortality of ethical memory.
Freud's concept for radical negativity and compulsive repetition; Žižek notes Badiou has no space for this in his positive dialectics, whereas Žižek sees it as structurally indispensable.
Stories he reaches for 13
Starbucks charges a little more per coffee with a percentage going to Guatemala children or Somalia drought, letting consumers remain unlimited consumerists while feeling absolved, the price of guilt is included in the product.
“those ten cents more for a cappuccino in Starbucks is absolving you of your guilt”
Three theologians tell Job his suffering has a deeper meaning; God himself appears and tells Job he was right and the theologians were talking bullshit, then explains even creation is a meaningless mess.
“God himself comes and says basically, Job in his complaints was totally right, all what these three theologians were claiming is bullshit”
Most 'organic' apples sold at double the price are reportedly the same as regular apples, or the rotten ones, but buying them creates narcissistic satisfaction of doing something for Mother Nature, replacing systemic critique with consumer identity.
“in what sense do we buy ideology? I noticed with my friends how buying organic apples precisely paying more makes you feel good”
Cartoon characters are flattened, cut to pieces, run over by trucks but appear fresh in the next scene, the same logic of Sade's Juliette and video-game infinite lives.
“Tom or Jerry cat, mouse is run over by a truck, flattened, cut into pieces. No problem. In the next scene it's again here”
Haitian slaves rebelled not to return to Africa but to become a modern democratic state like France, immediately endorsed by Jacobins and defeated by Napoleon, for Žižek perhaps the most important revolutionary event ever.
“'we want to be a modern democratic state like France.' And it's big important fact that Jacobins immediately recognized them”
A Montenegro man masturbates by digging a hole, inserting his penis, and waiting for an earthquake because he is too lazy even to move, illustrating Montenegro's stereotype of extreme laziness told as a self-deprecating in-group joke.
“he puts his penis in and he waits for the earthquake because he is even too lazy to...”
Žižek provokes by proposing to view Auschwitz non-ethically as an assemblage, corpses, worms, smoke interacting, arguing one must pass through this zero-point of horror to arrive at a genuine ethical stance.
“why not observe it as an assemblage? We have corpses, worms eating corpses, smoke and so on, all this interaction of elements.”
Syriza won a referendum against austerity on day one, then accepted the Brussels ultimatum one or two days later, for Žižek not a simple betrayal but an objectively tragic predicament exposing the left's lack of an alternative model.
“On day one they proclaim victory referendum against austerity, literally next day or two days later they accept the blackmail”
Workers and students in Shanghai took Mao at his word and established a non-representative commune without state/army/party; Mao ordered Lin Biao to crush it, the greatest battle of the Cultural Revolution was against the most radical revolutionaries.
“Mao got afraid and ordered Lin Biao to send the army... between the army Lin Biao on the orders of Mao and radical revolutionaries themselves”
Žižek saw a CNN report celebrating how global warming allows vegetable growing in Greenland, illustrating how media renormalize climate catastrophe as a lifestyle opportunity.
“okay, global warming, so what, there are some problems but look, in Greenland you can get salad, even some fruits”
Hardcore pornography ignores the post-ejaculation pause (Kleenex, cigarette) and jumps directly to the next scene as if nothing happened, the same structure as video-game infinite lives.
“Sperm goes out, in the next scene which is staged as a continuation of the same scene, sperm magically disappears, it goes on the game.”
Bennett describes a trash site as a living organism involving humans, organic matter, worms, insects, abandoned machines, and chemical poisons, all actants in an assemblage without privileged human perspective.
“what appears as just from our human perspective a trash site, dirty and so on, becomes a living organism where many actors... are actants”
Early Hollywood film White Zombie (Bela Lugosi) features a factory owner who uses zombie workers: no trade unions, no demands, they endure torture and go on working, illustrating the class structure embedded in undead mythology.
“It's wonderful, zombies just work, no trade unions, no demands”
Works invoked 13
Shoah film
Lanzmann's documentary; Žižek endorses Lanzmann's claim that hypothetical footage of gas-chamber deaths should be burned rather than screened, as some images are too strong for our sense of reality.
Žižek's own book referenced for its use of the Benjaminian train metaphor supplemented by 'the light is another train coming toward us'.
After Finitude book
Quentin Meillassoux's philosophical work; cited alongside Laclau as one of a handful of genuinely new contributions in recent philosophy.
The Shock Doctrine book
Žižek endorses Klein's analysis and uses it as the framework for his pessimistic claim that ecological catastrophes will accelerate rather than end capitalism.
Danish crime film by Hans Petter Moland; the final confrontation scene is screened and used as the central illustration of atheist Christian ethics, God appearing in human acts of self-sacrifice and renunciation of revenge.
Vibrant Matter book
Jane Bennett's book on new materialism; used to develop the 'inhuman view' and assemblage concept, despite Bennett being positioned as a theoretical opponent.
Triple-authored book by Žižek, Butler, and Laclau ('the triple orgy book') described as the site where their conflicts over hegemony are visible.
Benjamin's text; used for the train-of-history metaphor and the notion of divine violence; Žižek admires but questions its eschatological redemptive vision.
White Zombie film
Early Bela Lugosi Hollywood film with a factory of zombie workers; used to illustrate the class politics embedded in undead mythology.
Williams's book on Dostoevsky provides Žižek's definition of divine experience as the elementary sense that the world is out of joint.
Pokémon GO other
Described as 'pure game of ideology' that literalizes how ideology functions as augmented reality; Žižek finds its philosophical consequences illuminating.
Co-authored by Laclau and Mouffe; marks the transition from Laclau's first book (still tied to class struggle) to radical democracy where anti-capitalism becomes just one struggle among others.
Laclau's first book in English; Žižek considers it his best, still anchored in class struggle before the shift to pure radical democracy.
People invoked 23
Jane Bennett positive
Invoked for her Vibrant Matter assemblage theory as a useful framework for the 'inhuman view', despite Bennett opposing Žižek on other grounds.
Marquis de Sade positive
Credited as the first to articulate the fantasy of the undead/obscene immortality through the figure of Juliette, who survives endless torture to return fresh in the next chapter.
Edmund Burke positive
Used as a counter-example against simple equations of anti-essentialism with progressivism; Burke criticized the French Revolution from a non-essentialist, historicist position.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Described as Žižek's favorite theologian; his reading of God's speech to Job, that God confesses creation is a meaningless mess, underpins Žižek's atheist Christian argument.
Named as co-author of Contingency, Hegemony, Universality alongside Žižek and Laclau.
Cited as an example of successful Laclauian hegemony-building (chain of equivalences linking impoverished Bible Belt, big capital, fundamentalists) and as an example of ecological ignorance (simple denial strategy).
Chantal Mouffe negative
Critiqued for co-developing radical democracy with Laclau and for anti-essentialism as an automatic marker of progressivism; supported Syriza then had to reckon with its capitulation.
Naomi Klein positive
Žižek endorses her Shock Doctrine analysis of capitalism exploiting catastrophe and uses it to argue ecological crises will accelerate capitalism rather than produce a new left.
Will Self negative
British writer who at a public debate guilt-tripped the audience about Congolese coltan in their phones, exemplifying the false individualization of ecological guilt that Žižek rejects.
Alain Badiou positive
Deeply admired (especially his book on Paul) but critiqued for lacking space for the death drive/radical negativity, for anti-statism, and for overly abstract universalist formulas like 'qui est ici est d'ici'.
Mentioned only as being Slovenian (from Žižek's country), which has spawned Trump-branded cakes in Ljubljana.
Ernesto Laclau positive
Described as an ingenious theoretician, one of a handful to do something genuinely new after French structuralism; yet Žižek rejects his radical democracy model as politically neutral and unable to distinguish left from fascist hegemony.
Rowan Williams positive
His book on Dostoevsky provides the concept of divine experience as negative, the experience that the world is out of joint, which Žižek uses as the basis of his atheist theology.
Claude Lanzmann positive
Žižek partly endorses Lanzmann's position that footage of the actual gas-chamber deaths in Auschwitz should not be shown, some images are too strong for our sense of reality.
Erich Fromm negative
Žižek explicitly dislikes Fromm; rejects his reading of Freud as too superficial and his notion of love as all-encompassing as lacking space for love's absolute, brutal exclusivity.
Seen as having triggered the Cultural Revolution to eliminate party rivals before it ran out of control; ordered Lin Biao to crush the Shanghai Commune.
Walter Benjamin positive
His metaphor of history as a train to ride is endorsed as a critique of naive progressivism; but Žižek questions his eschatological vision of a final redemptive divine-violence act.
Quentin Meillassoux positive
Listed alongside Laclau as one of the very few philosophers after the wave of French structuralism who did something genuinely new.
Antonio Gramsci positive
Noted as originator of hegemony concept but in a form still anchored to class struggle; Žižek distinguishes Gramsci's version from Laclau's formalization.
Mentioned as a political example Laclau was ambivalent about; Žižek notes Chávez was perhaps too focused on anti-capitalism for Laclau's framework.
Sigmund Freud positive
Concepts of Realitätsverlust, the death drive, and the unconscious as non-excuse are central to Žižek's arguments throughout.
Immanuel Kant positive
His distinction of positive, negative, and infinite judgments is used to explain the logical structure of 'the undead', a third space between life and death opened by German idealism.
Defended against Laclau's charge of betrayal: Blair always openly said in economy we are all Thatcherites and never promised socialist revolution.
What it argues
renormalization of catastropheindividualization of ecological guilt vs. systemic critiqueaugmented reality and ideology as Pokémon machineundead subjectivity and video-game temporalityatheist Christianity and ethics without divine guaranteetragic dimension of emancipatory politicspolitical correctness as perverted surplus enjoyment
Dialectical moves 11
“something which was perceived as impossible happens and, in a way, it retroactively creates its own possibility. Through happening, it becomes possible.”
Catastrophes don't merely occur within the possible; their occurrence retroactively produces their own possibility, demonstrating that what we 'know' is possible and what we 'believe' is possible are radically disjoint.
“at the very moment when we become very strong, strong in the sense that we can change conditions of life on Earth, we become a threat to ourselves. Our very power to change natural condition is a threat to ourselves.”
The Anthropocene paradox: maximal human power and maximal human vulnerability coincide, power over nature is simultaneously the threat to the conditions of human survival.
“the only freedom is the freedom gained through alienation”
Genuine freedom is not opposed to alienation but is produced through it, echoing the Hegelian insight that negation and estrangement are the conditions of authentic subjectivity.
“a true free choice is a choice of something which you choose because in an ethical sense you cannot do it otherwise”
The most radical freedom coincides with its opposite, necessity, because the truly free ethical act is experienced as something one could not possibly avoid.
“you never have a moment of choice. It's not now I fall in love. No, it's always now I suddenly discover that I already am in love.”
Love, the paradigmatic free relation, is not chosen but discovered retroactively as always-already having happened, its freedom is inseparable from its inevitability.
“Undead means something different. It doesn't mean he is alive. It means he is alive as dead.”
Kant's infinite judgment opens a third space beyond the positive/negative binary: 'undead' is not the negation of 'dead' but the assertion of a monstrous non-predicate, being alive-as-dead.
“God did appear... First, when Mørck the detective offered himself, 'take me instead,' and point two, when the girl refused to do the stupid revenge.”
Far from God not appearing (as the murderer claims), God appears precisely in atheistic human acts of self-sacrifice and renunciation of revenge, God is the name for the ethical miracle, not a supernatural being.
“for this to be ethical in this way you have to be an atheist”
The ethical miracle requires passing through atheism, the death of the God who guarantees meaning, because only without divine cover can unconditional solidarity with suffering be truly unconditional.
“God's answer means basically, 'You think I screwed it up only with you? Look at the world of creation, all the world that I created is a total meaningless mess.'”
Chesterton's reading of God's speech to Job reverses the standard interpretation of divine arrogance: God is not asserting transcendence but confessing that creation itself is a mess without inherent meaning.
“his theory of hegemony is just a neutral theory in the sense that it accounts also for fascist hegemony... didn't Donald Trump do a wonderful struggle for hegemony?”
Laclau's hegemony theory, intended as a left-democratic tool, is in fact a purely formal description that describes fascist populism equally or better than progressive politics, its apparent radicalism conceals its political neutrality.
“you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but this light is usually another train coming towards us”
The left's optimism about seeing progress ahead is inverted: the 'light' is not redemption but the oncoming catastrophe, a pessimistic reframing of the tunnel metaphor.
Claims 23
asserts
The most dangerous feature of catastrophes is not their severity but the speed with which we psychologically renormalize them into acceptable facts of life.renormalization of ecological and political catastrophe
asserts
The individualization of ecological guilt is a reactionary ideological strategy that deflects critique of the capitalist system onto personal consumer behavior.ecological ideology and political correctness
asserts
Starbucks-style ethical consumerism allows people to consume without limit by charging the price of guilt-relief into the product, thereby reproducing rather than challenging the system.capitalism and charity-consumerism
asserts
Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine analysis is correct: ecological catastrophes are more likely to be exploited to impose a new radical stage of global capitalism than to birth a new left.ecology and capitalism
rejects
There is no natural balance to which humanity can return; nature itself is not a harmonious mother but a 'dirty crazy bitch' of permanent catastrophes.ecological 'small is beautiful' narratives
asserts
The Cultural Revolution functioned in its actual social effects as preparation for Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms by destroying traditional structures and leaving people open to a new capitalism.Maoism and capitalism
asserts
Ideology functions as augmented reality: like Pokémon Go, it overlays a virtual supplement (e.g. the figure of the Jew, the immigrant) onto confusing reality to make it legible and coherent.ideology and augmented reality
asserts
Video games inaugurate a new form of undead subjectivity in which symbolic castration — awareness of finitude — is abolished by the logic of infinite lives.video games and subjectivity
asserts
Zombies in popular culture are consistently proletarian while vampires are aristocratic, embodying a class logic within the fantasy of the undead.class struggle and undead figures
asserts
True freedom is not freedom of choice among options but the experience of choosing something because one ethically cannot do otherwise — it coincides with necessity.freedom and ethics
rejects
Transgender identity is not an example of playful free-choice among multiple sexual identities but of an overwhelming, painful inner necessity that overrides biological and social identity.transgender ideology of playful identity construction
asserts
In psychoanalysis one can never use the unconscious as an excuse: even if overdetermined, the subject remains fully responsible for their acts.psychoanalytic ethics and responsibility
asserts
An authentic atheist ethics — unconditional solidarity with suffering without divine guarantee — is the only ethics appropriate to our godless times and uniquely resistant to fundamentalist instrumentalization.atheism, Christianity, and ethics
asserts
The Book of Job is the first serious work of critique of ideology: God himself validates Job's protests and dismisses the theologians' claim that suffering has a deeper meaning.theology, ideology, and the Book of Job
asserts
What dies on the cross is God the Father — the guarantor of cosmic meaning — not Christ; Christ is the impotent witness who identifies unconditionally with suffering.Christianity and the death of God
rejects
Technology is not neutral: it embodies specific social relations of individualism, exploitation, and domination, and cannot solve ecological problems while capitalism remains intact.technological determinism and ecology
asserts
Laclau's theory of hegemony is a formally neutral description that applies equally well to fascist politics as to left-democratic politics, which is a fatal flaw.Laclau's hegemony theory
rejects
Badiou's formula 'qui est ici est d'ici' is too abstract: applied without further distinctions it could be used by West Bank settlers or white Americans against Native peoples.Badiou's immigration universalism
asserts
Badiou's positive dialectics leaves no space for radical negativity and the death drive, which are structurally necessary to account for the obscene immortality of evil.Badiou's philosophy and the death drive
asserts
The left needs a new model of state and economy; without it, even electoral victories (Syriza, hypothetically Podemos) are condemned to accept the existing framework.left politics and the state
rejects
Erich Fromm's reading of Freud is superficially optimistic and lacks the space for the absolute, exclusive violence of passionate love.Erich Fromm
rejects
Polyamory is incompatible with absolute love, which is by its nature brutally exclusive and experienced as an all-consuming necessity that ruins one's previous life.polyamory and love
rejects
Benjamin's eschatological vision of a final act of divine violence that retroactively redeems all previous suffering is no longer tenable; the left must accept the tragic dimension of emancipatory movements.Walter Benjamin and revolutionary progress
Quotes 21
“something which was perceived as impossible happens and, in a way, it retroactively creates its own possibility. Through happening, it becomes possible.”Slavoj Žižek · retroactive creation of possibility by catastrophe
“The gap that makes such paradoxes possible is the one between knowledge and belief. We know that ecological catastrophe is possible, even probable, but we do not believe it can really happen.”Slavoj Žižek · gap between knowledge and belief
“nature is not a good mother. Nature is a dirty crazy bitch.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of harmonious nature myth
“Our very power to change natural condition is a threat to ourselves.”Slavoj Žižek · Anthropocene paradox
“those ten cents more for a cappuccino in Starbucks is absolving you of your guilt”Slavoj Žižek · Starbucks capitalism as guilt-relief commodity
“Undead means something different. It doesn't mean he is alive. It means he is alive as dead.”Slavoj Žižek · infinite judgment and the undead
“It's wonderful, zombies just work, no trade unions, no demands”Slavoj Žižek · class politics of zombie mythology
“the greatest practitioner of Pokémon Go was Adolf Hitler with his antisemitism”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as augmented reality
“a true free choice is a choice of something which you choose because in an ethical sense you cannot do it otherwise”Slavoj Žižek · freedom as ethical necessity
“It's not now I fall in love. No, it's always now I suddenly discover that I already am in love.”Slavoj Žižek · love as retroactive inevitability
“Love is for me precisely passionate sexual love is for me the first form of the absolute.”Slavoj Žižek · love as the absolute
“God did appear... First, when he Mørck the detective offered himself, 'take me instead,' and point two, when the girl refused to do the stupid revenge.”Slavoj Žižek · atheist Christianity: God appears in human ethical acts
“for this to be ethical in this way you have to be an atheist”Slavoj Žižek · atheism as condition of authentic ethics
“God himself comes and says basically, Job in his complaints was totally right, all what these three theologians were claiming is bullshit”Slavoj Žižek · Book of Job as first critique of ideology
“divine experience at its most elementary is not experience of positive divinity but it's a simple elementary experience that this world, our reality is out of joint.”Slavoj Žižek · negative theology as dissatisfaction with the world
“you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but this light is usually another train coming towards us”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism about historical progress
“Love means I love you and fuck off all other reality.”Slavoj Žižek · love's brutal exclusivity
“You will say I didn't experience it, then fuck off, then you are not at the level of love you know.”Slavoj Žižek · absolute love as criterion of authentic experience
“didn't Donald Trump do a wonderful struggle for hegemony? In an ingenious way he established a chain of equivalences”Slavoj Žižek · Laclau's hegemony theory applies equally to fascism
“On day one they proclaim victory referendum against austerity, literally next day or two days later they accept the blackmail”Slavoj Žižek · Syriza's tragic capitulation
“the only freedom is the freedom gained through alienation”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian freedom through alienation
Transcript 21 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I am very glad to be here, I just hope you will not be disappointed because two days ago it was fun, dirty jokes and so on. Today you will get a little bit more theory, even philosophy. So let's go, but at the end I will show a clip from a film to amuse you a little bit more. Okay, so let me begin. Just to say that I'm really glad to be here. This mixture of philosophy and everyday life, this is what we need in our times when our everyday problems, ecology, what is a human being through digitalization, brain sciences, are philosophical problems. Okay, let me begin. In December smog in big Chinese cities became so thick, so dense that thousands of people fled into the countryside, trying to reach a place where one can still see blue sky. This, as they call it, airpocalypse—air and apocalypse—airpocalypse affected half a billion people. For those who remained, moving around began to resemble life in a post-apocalyptic movie. People walking around with large gas masks in a smog where even nearby trees were invisible. A new category was thus added to the long list of refugees. We have refugees from wars, droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes, economic crises, and so on. Now we have smog refugees. But perhaps the most surprising thing about this airpocalypse was its quick renormalization. After the authorities could no longer deny the problem, they simply established new procedures which somehow enabled people to continue their daily life. As if the catastrophic smog is just a new fact of life. For example, on some days you were advised to stay at home as much as possible and, if necessary, walk around with gas masks and so on. Children rejoiced because many days on many days schools were closed, and the saddest thing for me, a new type of tourism developed in Beijing for poor people. One-day many small agencies organized one-day trips to the countryside, and what they promised you is you will see the sky. You will see the blue sky. But the official attitude is important. The message was, don't panic, maintain the appearance that in spite of all troubles, life goes on like normal. And what I want to emphasize is this aspect of renormalization, how we cannot even imagine something, then it happens, and how quickly we accept it as a fact of life. One thing is sure: an extraordinary social and psychological change is taking place right in front of our eyes. The impossible is becoming possible. An event first experienced as impossible but not real, like we say, this cannot really happen, the prospect of a forthcoming catastrophe which, however probable we know it is, we do not believe that it will effectively happen. All of a sudden it really happens, but it is immediately renormalized, perceived as part of the normal run of things. To put it in more philosophical terms, something which was perceived as impossible happens and, in a way, it retroactively creates its own possibility. Through happening, it becomes possible. It's the same in European history as with the Great War, La Grande Guerre, First World War. For, as you probably know if you know a little bit about history, for over twenty years everybody knew that there is the threat of a big all-European war. All European great powers were preparing for it. But nobody really believed that it can happen. And even Social Democrats of all countries were every year endorsing public proclamations promising that in the case of war they will vote against war credits. Then, you know, after the attentat in Sarajevo in war exploded and it was instantly renormalized. All Social Democratic parties in Europe except the Russian and the Serbian one voted for war credits, all became patriots, and so on and so on. The gap that makes such paradoxes possible is the one between knowledge and belief. We know that, for example, ecological catastrophe is possible, even probable, but we do not believe it can really happen. And that's, I think, the true problem: how we deal with catastrophes. Like we know about global warming and so on and so on, but we somehow, I claim most of us, we simply psychologically don't accept it that it really can happen. From the unfortunate history of my own ex-country, Yugoslavia, I remember when there was a civil war in Yugoslavia in early 1990s, the siege of Sarajevo. The fact that a normal European city of almost half a million inhabitants will be encircled, starved, regularly bombed, its citizens terrorized by sniper fire and so on, and that this will go on for almost four years, would have been considered unimaginable before. I remember I had friends in Sarajevo and when shooting began, they told me, "Oh, we will just send our children to the Dalmatian Coast, this will be over in one or two weeks." No, it lasted three, four years. And again, the shock for me was how quickly this extraordinary situation—again, a big European city, and I agree with you if you warn me that I am now treating Sarajevo in a racist way in the sense of okay, European city, but and this is our European racism—it's normal if this happens in an Arab city in Iraq or what, but we were all shocked that this can happen in Europe. Okay, my point is how my friends were telling me, you know when I phoned them to Sarajevo, "You know, I am now going to my office but I have to walk a different way because I was told that if I take my usual street there are snipers there who can kill me" and so on. What shocked me is that something so traumatic as avoiding the snipers who may kill you on your way to your office or job became immediately an accepted way of life. We have again the same passage from impossibility to normalization. And I think it's the same thing today in United States with Trump victory. First it was for liberals unimaginable. It's a bad joke, this cannot happen and so on. Then once it happened, it was instantly renormalized. Like, "we should now take care, fight Trump, don't lose nerves, in four or eight years we will be back in power." This is I think again the most dangerous aspect of catastrophes, not how dangerous they are, but how quickly we renormalize the danger. I remember already in I saw on CNN a report "The Greening of Greenland." Because you know, because of global warming they can already grow vegetables in Greenland and so on. And you see, this was the procedure of renormalization. They claim, "Okay, global warming, so what, there are some problems but look, in Greenland you can get salad, even some fruits" and so on and so on. The situation was renormalized. I think that such phenomena are another example of how right Naomi Klein was when in her Shock Doctrine she described the way global capitalism exploits catastrophes, wars, political crisis, natural disasters, to get rid of old social constraints, rules, and impose its own neoliberal agenda. And I think here I am a pessimist. I don't agree with those leftists who claim that ecological catastrophe will give a birth, maybe will enable a new left. Maybe, but I find unfortunately more probable that in the way described by Naomi Klein, even a terrifying ecological catastrophe, like for example I don't know, the Gulf Stream changing course, which means that all of Western Europe would almost approach a new Ice Age or whatever, they will be simply used as an impetus for a new more radical stage of global capitalism. I mean history is full of surprises here. I annoy very much my Maoist friends, I still have some of them, when I point out to them that, remember Cultural Revolution in 1960s and early 70s. We can say now retroactively what this did, this Cultural Revolution with all its traumas as a shock really serve. It was of course an attempt of installing an authentic proletarian egalitarian culture, to get rid of old traditions, but I think that we can see clearly today how without Cultural Revolution there would have been no Deng Xiaoping reforms. Because the main actual social result of Cultural Revolution was to destroy tradition, family values, ancient rituals and so on, so people find themselves as it were in a barren empty land, suffering terrifying shock and as such open to new capitalism. This is I think a wonderful supreme irony. So, how should we react to it? I think the first thing to do is to analyze clearly how, let's call it in these bombastic terms, the discourse of power, those who are in power, how do they react to it? What strategy they use to achieve what I called renormalization in traumatic circumstances. One strategy is to treat us all as if we are responsible. This individualization of guilt, like you criticize big companies for polluting nature and then people say in big public media, "But who are you to say this? Did you do your duty to save our planet? Did you recycle all your newspapers? Did you put aside all Coca-Cola cans?" and so on and so on. I think that this is typical reactionary strategy, this false individualization of guilt so that instead of asking larger question, criticizing our entire economic system, you all of a sudden feel guilty, "did I do enough for it?" And of course since by definition you never do enough, you are lazy, you throw some Coke cans away and so on, there is always a reason to feel guilty and not to blame those who are really guilty. And here capitalist system is even more ingenious. At the same time, this individualization of guilt which makes a global catastrophe your personal co-responsibility is offering you an easy way out. Basically the system is telling us, you feel guilty about ecological catastrophes, here is what you can do: buy green products, recycle and so on and so on, and you can basically live the way you did live till now, just feel better. And I'm sorry if you know this analysis of mine, I will repeat it. The ideal capitalist company for me, I think I saw some of them here in Madrid, they are like a disease which is infecting you, is Starbucks. They invented this strategy. I don't know how it is now in Madrid, but already years ago in New York I noticed, when you enter a Starbucks coffee place, you have posters which give you this message: "Yes, a cappuccino is a little bit more expensive in our store than in others, but one percent goes for some stupid Guatemala children, another percent for for for the drought in Somalia" and so on and so on. So isn't this an ingenious solution? It overcomes this split between I'm a dirty consumerist and I do something big to help the starving people and so on. No, it's all comprised in the same act. You can be a consumerist, consuming as much as you want, because the system is telling you the price for pollution is included into the price of the product. You know, as if those ten cents more for a cappuccino in Starbucks is absolving you of your guilt. So I think that that this strategy is almost, this false ecological consciousness making us guilty as individuals and then offering us easy way out is maybe the most dangerous attitude. I see it with all my American friends. They tell me, "Of course I'm aware of global warming, but see, we are recycling, we are putting glass one place another" and as if that's it. No, that's not it. Also for example recently I had a public debate with English writer in London, Will Self. And that was his message. He turned to the people and said, "Yes, we are approaching a global catastrophe but what did you do about it?" And pathetically he showed his cell phone and says, "Are you aware that since all of you have cell phones there is Coltan in them, a mineral available only from Congo, so like we should all feel guilty." No, I claim we should not all feel guilty. We should spread this vicious cycle of guilt and the easy way out of guilt. This serves only to individualize the guilt and to again avoid more crucial questions. So we have I think some four, five strategies of mystifying ecological crisis. One is the most stupid one, which means Donald Trump strategy. Although I should love Trump because his wife Melania is Slovene from my country. So you get in Ljubljana already Trump cakes and so on, allegedly Melania's mother was baking them, so and so on. But the first attitude Trump's is simple ignorance, claiming global warming or ecological problems, it's a marginal phenomenon not worthy of our preoccupation. Life of capital goes on, nature will take care of itself. It's still this old typically modern attitude that claiming that nature is such a large overwhelming process that we humans are just small disturbing elements. And it doesn't matter. We disturb it a little bit but nature will find its balance. As you probably know better than me, social theory has a concept which dismisses this myth. It's the so-called concept of Anthropocene. It means a new age of life on Earth where we humans cannot any longer refer to us as a tiny element whose acts doesn't have any consequences for the balance of life. No, we have become such a powerful agent that through our limitless productivity we can ruin the entire balance of the reproduction of life on Earth and in this way destroy the material conditions of our own survival. This is a wonderful dialectical paradox, because at the very moment when we become very strong, strong in the sense that we can change conditions of life on Earth, we are become a threat to ourselves. Our very power to change natural condition is a threat to ourselves. One danger that I see nonetheless in the theory of Anthropocene is to forget that nature before humanity, independently of it, it's not some ideal balanced system which we humanity with our hubris, with our excessive ambition disturbed. No, history of our Earth demonstrate that, if I may put it in these crazy terms, that nature is not a good mother. Nature is a dirty crazy bitch. There were catastrophes all the time. You don't believe me? Just think about oil reserves. Do you even imagine, try to imagine what mega catastrophes must have happened in the history of our planet for us to have such large reserves of oil? So the situation is here I think much more dangerous than we imagine. Why? Because it's easy to say there is natural balance, we humans were too aggressive so let's become more modest. I call this this ecological "small is beautiful" fascist movement, you know. Be more modest, organic, let's reduce ourselves to the level of nature and the new balance will be established. No, there is no natural balance to which we can return. So that's the first attitude, sorry, simple ignorance. The second attitude: science and technology can save us. I don't trust this one, I don't have time to go into it. The third solution: leave it to the market, higher taxation of polluters and so on and so on. It works as far as it works, but when we are dealing with mega catastrophes like Fukushima, it's too late for market solutions. We need more radical measures. Then we have this super-ego pressure on personal responsibility, so you should do your small part instead of demanding large social changes and again, what I already mentioned, maybe the worst of all is advocating a return to natural balance. I think again there is no natural balance to which we can return. Also I think that this treating us as personally guilty, you know like but did you do and everything and so on and so on, this is for me something that I would have called politically correct ecology. And that's also I think a problem with political correctness, one of the problems. This typically liberal infinite self-examination of our guilt. Like with many of our, of my liberal friends in America, they so obviously enjoy this attitude of, you know, I used that word "my black friend." But my God, is it the right word "black"? Isn't black opposite to white like evil opposite to good? Should we say African American? Then you say African American, but my God they are not all from Africa, some are from Cuba from all those islands there. So and they love this. What provides surplus pleasure for them is this infinite guilt, there is always work to be done. Your your speech is never fully politically correct, you know. Or or with women. I say this woman is beautiful. My God, didn't I reduce her to sexual object and so on. Like and you see what's my point, it's that they don't even really want to get rid of their guilt. They enjoy their guilt. It's typical perverted enjoyment where something which you experience your pain is really the center of enjoyment. I had a friend who was talking a lot and then I saw that he felt nervous and then finally he exploded, "Oh wonderful, now I discovered where I was still a racist," you know. He discovered some detail where he wasn't yet politically correct and so on and so on. Let me tell you something horrible and I know what I'm talking about. An ideal non-racist society would be for me not a society where somehow we work through our guilt and all speak pure politically correct language and so on and so on, but a society in which you use all the dirtiest politically incorrect jokes, but the trick is, and it can be done, you use them in such a way that it's absolutely clear that they no longer function in a racist way. I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but this was my greatest experience from my own country Yugoslavia before the civil war in until early 1980s when true nationalism exploded. We each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified by a certain racist feature. We Slovenes were lazy—no, sorry, we Slovenes were thrifty, we didn't want to spend money on others especially. Montenegro people were lazy, Bosnians were sexually obsessed and so on and so on. But you know what was so beautiful, when we met, we were talking like always, an introduction to a nice social evening was who will tell the nicest dirty story. But it was democratic. I call it ironically progressive racism. It was not against the others, but mostly against yourself. Like I'm sorry if you know this joke, a Montenegro guy told me a wonderful vulgar joke about his own country. I use it all the time. Montenegro is also, they're lazy, you remember, and it's a country of earthquakes. How does a Montenegro guy masturbate? He digs a small a small hole in the earth, he puts his penis in and he waits for the earthquake because he is even too lazy to... And you know this created such wonderful spirit of true fraternity. Then a Bosniak a Bosniak guy came and entered his joke, like it will not work because of typical grammar, like there is a legendary there are legendary stories about a couple of Bosniak friends, Muso and Hajo or what. Okay, one meets the other who walks on a field of grass outside Sarajevo, remember there were many mines there in the war, but his wife walks ten yards ahead of him. And the friend tells him, they are Muslims, "Wait a minute, in Quran it says the woman should walk ten yards behind the man. If she walks ahead of you, you lose your dignity." And the friend answers, "Yes, in Quran, but in a minefield it's better that the woman..." And I will not, okay, I will not lose time here. But what I want to tell you is we were dirty like hell talking, but it was an immediate absolutely authentic friendship. So that's my problem with all this politically correct worry and so on. No, we should gladly assume all the filth of dirty talking and so on, but in a non-racist way. That's the problem. But let me go on with my serious line. So Anthropocene, which means at the same time we are more powerful as humanity than ever, we change the face of the Earth, but this power itself makes us aware that we are only one species on the Earth and that if we change our environment too much, we ruin the condition of our life. So what should we do in such a situation theoretically? Here I will refer to my the theoretical work of people who are opposed to me, some of them even criticize me, but I'm a Leninist, we should learn from the enemies always. Maybe you read it, it's a nice book, The Vibrant Life, it's Jane Bennett, a representative of so-called new materialism. The idea is this, that we should learn to look at ourselves as it were with an inhuman eye. Not in this anthropocentric way, but we should look at our environment, processes on Earth, not just from the human standpoint, but—another term which is now emerging as crucial in social theory—as an assemblage of elements where we humans are just one among the elements. Jane Bennett in her book The Vibrant Matter describes in a wonderful way a trash site. And she describes this as a living organism where humans deposit the trash, then we have trash itself with many organic forms, worms, insects, abandoned machines, chemical poisons and so on, all of them playing a role. So that what appears as just from our human perspective a trash site, dirty and so on, becomes a living organism where many actors, or the fashionable term in this circles is actants—it was a term I think created by by created by not Manuel DeLanda but another guy, doesn't matter. So again, sorry. The point is that you know we should adopt this new vision where we are just among the one among the elements interacting. Now I propose to do, not in any cynical way, I propose to do something crazy. What if we apply the same analysis to a really horrible place like Auschwitz? Let's say why to observe it only as a site of a horrible crime, Germans killing the Jews and others, why not observe it as an assemblage? We have corpses, worms eating corpses, smoke and so on, all this interaction of elements. Now I know what you will say now. You will say but this is terrifying. Isn't it horrible to adopt this inhuman view erasing all human ethical interests, like millions being gassed, burned, killed there, and to observe it just as a quasi-natural process of interacting elements? But I think that only through this horror, horror in the sense that when you describe Auschwitz in this way it's madness ethically, can we return to a proper ethical attitude. You have to go through this zero point, this inhuman view. Only you have to go through this radically non-ethical point. Let's forget about our concerns, let's observe it as a natural process where even the most horrible acts like burning, killing millions is just part of a natural reproduction. Only by way of going through it can we reach a zero level as it were of ethical position. Of course such an inhuman view is in a way impossible. But that's my point, no minimally ethical human person can really do it. It's the same problem as the one of seeing, and that's my philosophical point, witnessing something which is so strong and traumatic that it disturbs the balance of our daily life. Let's say imagine, it's difficult for me to imagine but try, witnessing a terrifying torture. I mean it really, like what they were doing I heard from some journalists in Yugoslav civil war, some sides to others. Like they occupy a village, then first they rape the girls in front of their fathers. That was the catch, because they know that in this way even if the victims survive it, the family relation is ruined forever. You cannot ever pardon your father to just standing there and watching how you are raped although you know very well that he couldn't have done anything, but the guilt is here and vice versa. Then the standard procedure was to cut off the father's testicles and make them make him eat them, and let's not go into it. But what I want to say is that so such things are too strong. You experience something that Freud would have called Realitätsverlust, loss of reality. This is the ontological point here. What we experience as reality, ordinary reality here around us, is not simply reality out there. It's already a reality censored. Censored in the sense that some things are excluded. If you see things which are too strong in this traumatic sense, your sense of reality disintegrates. Maybe you can accommodate yourself to this new reality, but then you lose contact with the old normal reality. This is again an important philosophical point, that the reality in which we live is not just things are out there, I am among them. It's already filtered through certain ideological symbolic presuppositions and so on. Here Claude Lanzmann, you know the one who did the long documentary Shoah. I don't agree always with him, but one point is very important that he made. He said that let us say that he were to discover by some chance some films shot by some German officers of the most painful moments in Auschwitz, like the scene of people there dying in gas chambers and so on. And Lanzmann says he would not use it in his documentary, he would immediately burn these films. In a way, in some way he was right. It's too strong for our sense of reality. You know when you like another thing, I even heard some rumors from my friends in America that when the Twin Towers—but this is much more modest example—when the Twin Towers were hit, there were some people in there with video cameras and so on and that they discovered in the ruins some of these shots which magically survived. Like people filming themselves when you see that they are dying and so on. And the rumor I heard is that American authorities are keeping them as secret as possible. It's, you know, like you see something that you should not have seen. So this inhuman view is something like that. And this is this inhuman view is what we try to obliterate, not to confront it. How? Ah, my next point. To cope with this problem, a new form of subjectivity is emerging today that I find fascinating. The subjectivity whose most visible effect are video games. Don't underestimate video games. I think that first we have 20th century cinema, now we are in an era of maybe TV series as typical. I maybe I claim next decades will be of video games. Are you aware how important they are? Are you aware that already for three years video games turn around more money worldwide than cinema and TV series combined? What interests me here is how they affect our sense of subjectivity. If you played them—I didn't, I'm too stupid, you have to press fast, but my son does and I observed him often. This new form of subjectivity is something very interesting. It's an undead subjectivity. A subject which is open to the unending cycle of dying, resurfacing and so on and so on. Just think about cartoons, you remember Tom and Jerry and those. It's the same magic universe. You remember like Tom or Jerry cat, mouse is run over by a truck, flattened, cut into pieces. No problem. In the next scene it's again here, you can begin again and again. You know who was the author of this, the first who articulated this fantasy? As far as I know, it was Marquis de Sade. This is how victims like Juliette in his novels function. They are endlessly tortured in multiple ways, but magically they survive their ordeal and in the next chapter they return fresh and so on. It's something similar if you noticed—aha, if you admit that you watch them at some point—in hardcore pornography. It's endless. You have orgasm, you see sperm out getting out ejaculation, and then did you notice the obvious thing after that with us normal people is you need some Kleenex to wash the sperm, you smoke a cigarette, a drink. Never this. You just go on and again and again. Sperm goes out, in the next scene which is staged as a continuation of the same scene, sperm magically disappears, it goes on the game. So my point is that this also explains another aspect of video games of our civilization which is, and it's a very important phenomenon I claim, I don't have time to develop it how it began with Kant, Kantian Immanuel Kant, idealism opened up the space for it. Something which we call today undeadness. You know all these phenomena, I call it obscene immortality. All these figures of persons whose tragedy is not that they die, but that they cannot die. They always return. Vampires, undead and so on. And in one of my texts I even tried to prove how class struggle is already at work here. Did you notice how zombies as the model of undead people are always proletarian? This poor clumsy, oh they just walk. Vampires are among us, they are rich, they are rich, they are proletarians and you know in early Hollywood there is White Zombie or what with Bela Lugosi, a wonderful Hollywood movie which directly plays on this card. Some foreigners get lost in a storm in Louisiana and they enter a strange factory where the owner explains to them that his factory brings him big profit because the workers there are zombies. And he says, "It's wonderful, zombies just work, no trade unions, no demands" and so on. You can torture them, they always survive, they go on working. So ah, to amuse you with an important philosophical reflection, let's risk a little bit of philosophy. You know why Kant Immanuel Kant opened up the space for it? It's a very simple element but crucial. In his theory of judgment, Kant distinguishes three types of judgment: positive affirmative judgment, negative judgment, and infinite judgment. In a positive judgment, you assert a predicate. In a negative judgment, you deny a predicate. But in what Kant calls infinite judgment, you don't deny a predicate, but you assert a non-predicate. Now you will say bullshit, it's the same. It's not, I will prove it to you. And I refer here to your knowledge of Stephen King and all those authors. Let's say he is dead. No ambiguity here, he is dead. You assert a predicate. Let's negate the predicate: he isn't dead. It means he is alive, no problem. But let's not negate the predicate, let's assert a non-predicate. Instead of saying he isn't dead, let's say he is undead. Undead means something different. It doesn't mean he is alive. It means he is alive as dead. He is a living dead. This third space is open which is precisely the space of evil ghosts, zombies which haunt you and so on. It's the space of something that I like to call obscene immortality. We have this good ethical immortality: in your works you will live forever forever, goodness cannot die. But we tend to forget that we also have this obscene immortality, like that of zombies and so on, where evil persists beyond life and death. It cannot die, it returns forever. And my point being, isn't this situation exactly the situation of video games? You know, you get engaged into a fight, you drop dead, usually you have five, ten lives or in some games infinite lives, no problem, you drop dead, you just begin again this infinity. Now you will say but this is fiction. It's more complex. It's a certain attitude of, I can run back in time and return to the starting point and begin again and again, which I claim more and more determines our daily experience. Like some of my friends, I caught them treating their life game as a video—sorry, their love life as a video game. Like, I try with this girl or man or whatever, it didn't work, let's return back, let's start again with another one or whatever or whatever. So this type of subjectivity is a very obscene one because it's undeadness, but again not the noble immortality but an obscene immortality where what in psychoanalysis we would have called symbolic castration, the awareness of our basic finitude, mortality, is abolished. Now okay, let's go to the next step now. I hope for some of you things will get a little bit more amusing. Let's now you will probably tell me but wait a minute, this is nonetheless a virtual universe. In reality, it doesn't work like this. Ah, here I would like to complicate things a little bit. I claim that our what we call reality is much more paradoxical in the sense that we cannot clearly distinguish real reality and virtual reality. Our reality that we see around us, for it to have sense, it has to be always supplemented by a virtual element. Which is why maybe some of you know this text of mine, I wrote a text of a wonderful game—not wonderful in the sense that I'm ready to lose one minute playing it, but philosophical consequences I hope you know it, Pokémon Go. I think it's pure game of ideology. You know what happens? It's no longer escape from real world to virtual world. You look through the screen of your apparatus at real world, you see reality the way it is, but you see something more, the Pokémon, and that triggers your desire. That makes reality consistent. You have confused reality, you don't know what goes on there, the Pokémon, the figure added to reality, reality becomes something meaningful and so on. This is why I proposed a thesis that the greatest practitioner of Pokémon Go was Adolf Hitler with his antisemitism. Isn't the figure of the Jew exactly such a Pokémon figure in what sense? You look if you're a German at reality in '32, boring, chaos, blah. Then Hitler comes and says, "But look for the Jew." And it becomes interesting, everything acquires meaning and so on and so on. And I think that this is the future, why? Because my point is that the trick with Pokémon Go is not that it's something new. No, it's precisely it brings out something which was always already here in our ideological life. Ideology always works as augmented reality. You think you see reality, but not a Pokémon digital machine but your ideology. Our ideological apparatus is the big Pokémon machine. Look, again let's say you are a racist. You walk along the street, you see an Arab, a Jew and so on. If you are a racist Pokémon image, you will see the Jew or the Arab as this threatening Pokémon figure, oh is he a rapist, is he whatever and so on and so on. So again we should absolutely be aware that the way we see reality is not a neutral innocent reality. It's always augmented reality. And this is crucial, this is I think the big result for me not only of Pokémon but also of other video games and so on, that the future is no longer just again virtual reality. That's the terrifying but at the same time almost beautiful thing about it. It's not just you escape from real life, you just live on the screen. No, the promise is you remain in real life, and that real experience of real life is already augmented through some imagined elements and this again, this is ideology. Now I don't have too much time so let's go on. First, a philosophical point. If we live in such a universe where we are manipulated through Pokémon machinery, part of a mechanism where that we don't dominate, does this mean that there is no freedom? I think freedom is a much more complex notion and our experience today should make us aware of this complexity. What do I mean by this? The tragedy today is that the predominant notion of freedom which is imposed to us by our ideology is freedom of choice. The model of freedom is I take a vacation where, I don't know, I go to London to Paris to Africa, whatever. Or I go to a patisserie, there is a strawberry cake, chocolate cake, whatever. But I think that freedom at its most radical is something else. It coincides with its opposite. A true free choice is a choice of something which you choose because in an ethical sense you cannot do it otherwise. Let me give you an example. Let's say your country is under—a little bit pathetic example—your country is under occupation, you cannot decide am I courageous enough to join resistance or will I just live my ordinary life. If you decide to join resistance, to do something more heroic, admit it, you don't do it as this simple stupid free choice. You do it because—I'm sorry for using this pathetic terminology—you do it because you would be ashamed of yourself if you don't do it. Like to put it in pathetic terms, you couldn't look in the mirror into your face for not doing it. You do it because you feel that you have to do it. And such acts are truly free. You don't believe me? I will give you another example: love. Love is supposed to be free by definition. If you are told to love someone, it's not love. But isn't true love always experienced as inevitable? Like, I'm sorry for this obscenity, if I look at the beautiful ladies here and say into which I should fall in love. She has nice eyes, she has nice hair, she has nice legs. Not only is this an obscenity, this is not love. When you are in love, you never think like this. You even never have a moment of choice. It's not now I fall in love. No, it's always now I suddenly discover that I already am in love. And this is the most radical free choice, I claim, where you in a way choose something because it's inevitable. And now since you have today tomorrow and the day after I think the big Pride Parade here, I will tell you something here where I don't agree with some transgender ideologists, although I do this on behalf of fully supporting my transgender friends. They claim, some of these ideologists, that look our sexual identities are arbitrary, culturally constructed and so on and so on, we can be we can have multiple sexual identities playfully shifting among them. I'm sorry to tell you but my transgender friends do not think like that. Their problem is precisely that they are stuck with one socially and biologically constructed identity, but they cannot live with it. They feel experience another identity, whatever that one is. In classical transgender, a man biologically socially experiences himself as feminine, and it's not I want to play a game or whatever. No, it's an extremely painful situation. He feels the pressure of his intimate identity as such a strong pressure that he or she is or it whatever is ready to go through all the painful operations just to win over his social biological identity and adopt his authentic subjective identity. So you see what I'm opposed to. I wouldn't allow transgender topic to be kidnapped by this bourgeois free choice ideology. It's all playfulness, today I'm a man tomorrow I'm a woman, then bisexual, whatever. Okay, do it if you want it. But basically the situation is much more tragic not because we are biologically predetermined, but because the choice of your sexual identity is a free choice, but as such it is experienced as such a tremendous urge necessity which overruns even your what is perceived as your biological identity. And incidentally this is the point of psychoanalysis. It's a very refined ethical point. Psychoanalysis on the one hand teaches us we are not simply free subjects, we are overdetermined by unconscious complexes and so on and so on. Yes but, it doesn't mean—this is strictly prohibited in psychoanalysis—to then adopt the position "Okay, sorry, I raped a couple of children but it's not my responsibility, the Big Other spoke through me, I was overdetermined." No, even if you are overdetermined, you are still fully responsible for it. You can never evoke in psychoanalysis your unconscious as an excuse, "Sorry it wasn't me, it was my unconscious." You are never allowed, you are never allowed to do to do this. So now I don't want to go on too long and now I would love to do my final part which will be a very naive one. In this weird universe where we are at the same time decentered out of our center like we can be described through an inhuman view like Auschwitz corpses assemblage things happen meaninglessly, but at the same time with radical responsibility. It's a godless world but where nonetheless I will try to prove the divine dimension survives. Not in the theological sense. So I will try to explain you through one example what do I mean by the weird term that I like to use when people ask me "What are you?" I say I'm an atheist Christian. What do I mean by this? It's serious, it's not one of those postmodern stupid jokes. Okay, I will just show you one scene from a pretty good Danish crime story, I wonder if it was shown also on your TV, A Conspiracy of Faith, original title is Flaskepost, which means message in a bottle, from directed by Hans Petter Moland. It's a pretty good very dark detective story. Okay, just the final scene matters so I will not bore you with the whole narrative. If you want to see it afterwards, I will give you an illegal advice for which I will be arrested when I exit this building: go to Pirate Bay and if it's not yet blocked in your country—in my country it's not—you download it. It's towards the end of the film the hero, a detective Carl Mørck. He is a burnt out as he characterizes himself terminally depressed detective, confronts Johannes who is a handsome blond serial killer of children, and as Johannes explains, you will see, his point is not just to kill children but to destroy the faith of children and of parents, to confront them with something so shocking that they will lose their faith, like where was God to allow this. So in the final scene that you will see, we are in a small cottage on a wharf close to the sea on a sea coast where we have Mørck detective chained lying down, then two children, a young boy his slightly elder sister who are there half unconscious, and the murderer. And please watch for some four or five minutes this confrontation and then there will be my final point. So, up there push the stupid button. [Transcribing dialogue from film clip:] "Potalina! Potalina! Carl! Potalina! Carl! Carl!" "Befri os!" "Carl! Carl!" [Danish dialogue continues during violent confrontation] "Nu dør du! Nu dør du!" [Film clip ends]. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for that mistake. You see even in the best planned Stalinist economy mistakes happen. It's very naive of course this scene, forget about all that devil's son and so on. But the reason I like this is I think short scene is that it has to be taken literally. The murderer is wrong. God did appear in a pathetic sense two times. He says God did not show up. First, when he Mørck the detective offered himself, "take me instead," and point two, when the girl refused to do the stupid revenge. And I think that in my Christian atheist sense, this is an ethical act at its most simplest, and now comes my provocation: for this to be ethical in this way you have to be an atheist. It's not just you can also be an atheist. That is, by have to be an atheist I mean you have to go through this zero point of you see God did not appear. That type of God, our primitive idea of God, you know, an old man up there or we can put it in more complex way, who somehow takes care of it and we can trust whatever we do, we may appear to be in trouble but it all has a higher meaning, God will take care of it. I think this is something which is totally foreign to the most radical Christian spirit. For me the best thing here to begin with is, for me at least, is the the first great book in the Bible, read it, the Book of Job—He-ob, Job, the guy who got screwed up by God and so on. Why do I like that? I think it's the first serious work of critique of ideology. You know what happens? Everything goes wrong for Job and he loses his family, goats, cows, wives, whatever. It's in this order in the Bible incidentally. And then you know what then happens? Three theological friends come, each of them has the basic message of ideology: what happened to you has a deeper meaning. The first friend says, "You think you are innocent, you didn't deserve this calamity, but since God punished you, think in a deeper way, you must have done something wrong." The second one says something like God is testing you and so on. Doesn't matter. The message of these ideologists is your suffering has a deeper meaning. It's not just meaningless suffering. And then the miracle happens in the Bible, the text, the first miracle. Then Jehovah God himself comes and says basically, Job in his complaints was totally right, all what these three theologians were claiming is bullshit, like suffering has no meaning. And then comes even more of a miracle. Then Job asks God, I simplify the story of course, but then "Why did you do it? Why did you condemn me to all this suffering and so on?" And then God gives this strange speech, "Where were you when I created these monsters, that, whatever." Usually this is read as the as divine utter arrogance, you know, in the sense of who are you shitty human to even talk to me like this, you are not at my level. But my favorite theologian, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, proposes a totally opposite reading. That God's answer means basically, "You think I screwed it up only with you? Look at the world of creation, all the world that I created is a total meaningless mess." Like in this sense what dies on the cross—now I jump to proper reading of Christianity—is precisely God the Father, this God which somehow guarantees the good outcome. God of fate. And I think that the gesture of Christ is precisely this one of that you do this ethical miracle when you are not as it were covered up by a God. Or to put it in another way, the most obscene argument for God for me is that comparison of reality with a painting. You know the idea is that when we see a painting from too close it appears just as formless stains, if you go at a proper distance you see that those stains are really part of a larger harmony. So the idea is that what appears to us as contingent evil, horror, in the divine harmony of the created world it has a deeper meaning. But I think the basic message of Christianity is precisely no. This God who guarantees this dies. Or to put it a pathetic example: isn't it an obscenity to tell to a Jew dying in Auschwitz, or or a good Communist or whoever dying in Gulag, or or women serially raped in today's Congo, whatever, "Don't worry, this may appear to you as evil but in a larger divine plan this contributes to the harmony of the God." I see Christ's gesture precisely as this absolute sympathy identification with our particularity. The world is a horror, a mess like Auschwitz, assemblage, things happen meaninglessly. But it's only against this background that the true ethical miracle emerges. Again, you see my and so again now you will maybe tell me something, but why to talk about God at all? Why not simply say this is consequent atheist ethics, reality is meaningless out there, we do what we can. Ah, here I use the term divine dimension in a very specific way, elaborated in his wonderful book on Dostoevsky by ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who said that divine experience at its most elementary is not experience of positive divinity but it's a simple elementary experience that this world, our reality is out of joint. Something is terribly wrong with it. So we have here negative theology but not in the usual sense of God is beyond all our descriptions but in sense that God is just a name of this gap. The world is out of joint, it's a mess, it is not as it should be, this terrifying dissatisfaction. And all positive forms to fill in dissatisfaction, already fetishized images of God, we don't need that. In this sense for me, I don't have time to develop it now but I hope you got the point, that in this sense I think the properly Christian gesture is this one. Again Mørck when he says "take me instead." That's Christ. Christ is not an all-powerful figure. Christ is precisely this impotent witness of pain who absolutely unconditionally identifies with suffering precisely insofar as he accepts the meaningless of existence. And I think that in view of our horrors that we are witnessing, that we were witnessing in the 20th century and that I am sure we will witness more of them in the 21st century, I think that this type of radically atheist ethics which I hope you also noticed this, this ethics of detective here, it cannot be instrumentalized in any fundamentalist way. It doesn't just it doesn't legitimize you to do anything by seeking for cover in God like "it's horrible what I do to you but sorry, it's divine mission" and so on. No, you are totally free, you are not covered by any higher authority. That's what makes an authentic ethical miracle. That's what constitutes it. And this type of ethics I think it's the only one appropriate to our let's call them godless times. I'm sorry if I was too long. I'm grateful to your patience. I'm infinitely grateful to Raúl and Marta, the two translators who have a miraculous they are the other Christian couple in the sense that they displayed miraculous mercy to tolerate a madman like me and translate him. Thank you very much. [Applause]. Hi, thank you for your conference. You talk about freedom and love and I would like to know what is your opinion of Erich Fromm and
I am very glad to be here, I just hope you will not be disappointed because two days ago it was fun, dirty jokes and so on. Today you will get a little bit more theory, even philosophy. So let's go, but at the end I will show a clip from a film to amuse you a little bit more. Okay, so let me begin. Just to say that I'm really glad to be here. This mixture of philosophy and everyday life, this is what we need in our times when our everyday problems, ecology, what is a human being through digitalization, brain sciences, are philosophical problems. Okay, let me begin. In December smog in big Chinese cities became so thick, so dense that thousands of people fled into the countryside, trying to reach a place where one can still see blue sky. This, as they call it, airpocalypse—air and apocalypse—airpocalypse affected half a billion people. For those who remained, moving around began to resemble life in a post-apocalyptic movie. People walking around with large gas masks in a smog where even nearby trees were invisible. A new category was thus added to the long list of refugees. We have refugees from wars, droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes, economic crises, and so on. Now we have smog refugees. But perhaps the most surprising thing about this airpocalypse was its quick renormalization. After the authorities could no longer deny the problem, they simply established new procedures which somehow enabled people to continue their daily life. As if the catastrophic smog is just a new fact of life. For example, on some days you were advised to stay at home as much as possible and, if necessary, walk around with gas masks and so on. Children rejoiced because many days on many days schools were closed, and the saddest thing for me, a new type of tourism developed in Beijing for poor people. One-day many small agencies organized one-day trips to the countryside, and what they promised you is you will see the sky. You will see the blue sky. But the official attitude is important. The message was, don't panic, maintain the appearance that in spite of all troubles, life goes on like normal. And what I want to emphasize is this aspect of renormalization, how we cannot even imagine something, then it happens, and how quickly we accept it as a fact of life. One thing is sure: an extraordinary social and psychological change is taking place right in front of our eyes. The impossible is becoming possible. An event first experienced as impossible but not real, like we say, this cannot really happen, the prospect of a forthcoming catastrophe which, however probable we know it is, we do not believe that it will effectively happen. All of a sudden it really happens, but it is immediately renormalized, perceived as part of the normal run of things. To put it in more philosophical terms, something which was perceived as impossible happens and, in a way, it retroactively creates its own possibility. Through happening, it becomes possible. It's the same in European history as with the Great War, La Grande Guerre, First World War. For, as you probably know if you know a little bit about history, for over twenty years everybody knew that there is the threat of a big all-European war. All European great powers were preparing for it. But nobody really believed that it can happen. And even Social Democrats of all countries were every year endorsing public proclamations promising that in the case of war they will vote against war credits. Then, you know, after the attentat in Sarajevo in war exploded and it was instantly renormalized. All Social Democratic parties in Europe except the Russian and the Serbian one voted for war credits, all became patriots, and so on and so on. The gap that makes such paradoxes possible is the one between knowledge and belief. We know that, for example, ecological catastrophe is possible, even probable, but we do not believe it can really happen. And that's, I think, the true problem: how we deal with catastrophes. Like we know about global warming and so on and so on, but we somehow, I claim most of us, we simply psychologically don't accept it that it really can happen. From the unfortunate history of my own ex-country, Yugoslavia, I remember when there was a civil war in Yugoslavia in early 1990s, the siege of Sarajevo. The fact that a normal European city of almost half a million inhabitants will be encircled, starved, regularly bombed, its citizens terrorized by sniper fire and so on, and that this will go on for almost four years, would have been considered unimaginable before. I remember I had friends in Sarajevo and when shooting began, they told me, "Oh, we will just send our children to the Dalmatian Coast, this will be over in one or two weeks." No, it lasted three, four years. And again, the shock for me was how quickly this extraordinary situation—again, a big European city, and I agree with you if you warn me that I am now treating Sarajevo in a racist way in the sense of okay, European city, but and this is our European racism—it's normal if this happens in an Arab city in Iraq or what, but we were all shocked that this can happen in Europe. Okay, my point is how my friends were telling me, you know when I phoned them to Sarajevo, "You know, I am now going to my office but I have to walk a different way because I was told that if I take my usual street there are snipers there who can kill me" and so on. What shocked me is that something so traumatic as avoiding the snipers who may kill you on your way to your office or job became immediately an accepted way of life. We have again the same passage from impossibility to normalization. And I think it's the same thing today in United States with Trump victory. First it was for liberals unimaginable. It's a bad joke, this cannot happen and so on. Then once it happened, it was instantly renormalized. Like, "we should now take care, fight Trump, don't lose nerves, in four or eight years we will be back in power." This is I think again the most dangerous aspect of catastrophes, not how dangerous they are, but how quickly we renormalize the danger. I remember already in I saw on CNN a report "The Greening of Greenland." Because you know, because of global warming they can already grow vegetables in Greenland and so on. And you see, this was the procedure of renormalization. They claim, "Okay, global warming, so what, there are some problems but look, in Greenland you can get salad, even some fruits" and so on and so on. The situation was renormalized. I think that such phenomena are another example of how right Naomi Klein was when in her Shock Doctrine she described the way global capitalism exploits catastrophes, wars, political crisis, natural disasters, to get rid of old social constraints, rules, and impose its own neoliberal agenda. And I think here I am a pessimist. I don't agree with those leftists who claim that ecological catastrophe will give a birth, maybe will enable a new left. Maybe, but I find unfortunately more probable that in the way described by Naomi Klein, even a terrifying ecological catastrophe, like for example I don't know, the Gulf Stream changing course, which means that all of Western Europe would almost approach a new Ice Age or whatever, they will be simply used as an impetus for a new more radical stage of global capitalism. I mean history is full of surprises here. I annoy very much my Maoist friends, I still have some of them, when I point out to them that, remember Cultural Revolution in 1960s and early 70s. We can say now retroactively what this did, this Cultural Revolution with all its traumas as a shock really serve. It was of course an attempt of installing an authentic proletarian egalitarian culture, to get rid of old traditions, but I think that we can see clearly today how without Cultural Revolution there would have been no Deng Xiaoping reforms. Because the main actual social result of Cultural Revolution was to destroy tradition, family values, ancient rituals and so on, so people find themselves as it were in a barren empty land, suffering terrifying shock and as such open to new capitalism. This is I think a wonderful supreme irony. So, how should we react to it? I think the first thing to do is to analyze clearly how, let's call it in these bombastic terms, the discourse of power, those who are in power, how do they react to it? What strategy they use to achieve what I called renormalization in traumatic circumstances. One strategy is to treat us all as if we are responsible. This individualization of guilt, like you criticize big companies for polluting nature and then people say in big public media, "But who are you to say this? Did you do your duty to save our planet? Did you recycle all your newspapers? Did you put aside all Coca-Cola cans?" and so on and so on. I think that this is typical reactionary strategy, this false individualization of guilt so that instead of asking larger question, criticizing our entire economic system, you all of a sudden feel guilty, "did I do enough for it?" And of course since by definition you never do enough, you are lazy, you throw some Coke cans away and so on, there is always a reason to feel guilty and not to blame those who are really guilty. And here capitalist system is even more ingenious. At the same time, this individualization of guilt which makes a global catastrophe your personal co-responsibility is offering you an easy way out. Basically the system is telling us, you feel guilty about ecological catastrophes, here is what you can do: buy green products, recycle and so on and so on, and you can basically live the way you did live till now, just feel better. And I'm sorry if you know this analysis of mine, I will repeat it. The ideal capitalist company for me, I think I saw some of them here in Madrid, they are like a disease which is infecting you, is Starbucks. They invented this strategy. I don't know how it is now in Madrid, but already years ago in New York I noticed, when you enter a Starbucks coffee place, you have posters which give you this message: "Yes, a cappuccino is a little bit more expensive in our store than in others, but one percent goes for some stupid Guatemala children, another percent for for for the drought in Somalia" and so on and so on. So isn't this an ingenious solution? It overcomes this split between I'm a dirty consumerist and I do something big to help the starving people and so on. No, it's all comprised in the same act. You can be a consumerist, consuming as much as you want, because the system is telling you the price for pollution is included into the price of the product. You know, as if those ten cents more for a cappuccino in Starbucks is absolving you of your guilt. So I think that that this strategy is almost, this false ecological consciousness making us guilty as individuals and then offering us easy way out is maybe the most dangerous attitude. I see it with all my American friends. They tell me, "Of course I'm aware of global warming, but see, we are recycling, we are putting glass one place another" and as if that's it. No, that's not it. Also for example recently I had a public debate with English writer in London, Will Self. And that was his message. He turned to the people and said, "Yes, we are approaching a global catastrophe but what did you do about it?" And pathetically he showed his cell phone and says, "Are you aware that since all of you have cell phones there is Coltan in them, a mineral available only from Congo, so like we should all feel guilty." No, I claim we should not all feel guilty. We should spread this vicious cycle of guilt and the easy way out of guilt. This serves only to individualize the guilt and to again avoid more crucial questions. So we have I think some four, five strategies of mystifying ecological crisis. One is the most stupid one, which means Donald Trump strategy. Although I should love Trump because his wife Melania is Slovene from my country. So you get in Ljubljana already Trump cakes and so on, allegedly Melania's mother was baking them, so and so on. But the first attitude Trump's is simple ignorance, claiming global warming or ecological problems, it's a marginal phenomenon not worthy of our preoccupation. Life of capital goes on, nature will take care of itself. It's still this old typically modern attitude that claiming that nature is such a large overwhelming process that we humans are just small disturbing elements. And it doesn't matter. We disturb it a little bit but nature will find its balance. As you probably know better than me, social theory has a concept which dismisses this myth. It's the so-called concept of Anthropocene. It means a new age of life on Earth where we humans cannot any longer refer to us as a tiny element whose acts doesn't have any consequences for the balance of life. No, we have become such a powerful agent that through our limitless productivity we can ruin the entire balance of the reproduction of life on Earth and in this way destroy the material conditions of our own survival. This is a wonderful dialectical paradox, because at the very moment when we become very strong, strong in the sense that we can change conditions of life on Earth, we are become a threat to ourselves. Our very power to change natural condition is a threat to ourselves. One danger that I see nonetheless in the theory of Anthropocene is to forget that nature before humanity, independently of it, it's not some ideal balanced system which we humanity with our hubris, with our excessive ambition disturbed. No, history of our Earth demonstrate that, if I may put it in these crazy terms, that nature is not a good mother. Nature is a dirty crazy bitch. There were catastrophes all the time. You don't believe me? Just think about oil reserves. Do you even imagine, try to imagine what mega catastrophes must have happened in the history of our planet for us to have such large reserves of oil? So the situation is here I think much more dangerous than we imagine. Why? Because it's easy to say there is natural balance, we humans were too aggressive so let's become more modest. I call this this ecological "small is beautiful" fascist movement, you know. Be more modest, organic, let's reduce ourselves to the level of nature and the new balance will be established. No, there is no natural balance to which we can return. So that's the first attitude, sorry, simple ignorance. The second attitude: science and technology can save us. I don't trust this one, I don't have time to go into it. The third solution: leave it to the market, higher taxation of polluters and so on and so on. It works as far as it works, but when we are dealing with mega catastrophes like Fukushima, it's too late for market solutions. We need more radical measures. Then we have this super-ego pressure on personal responsibility, so you should do your small part instead of demanding large social changes and again, what I already mentioned, maybe the worst of all is advocating a return to natural balance. I think again there is no natural balance to which we can return. Also I think that this treating us as personally guilty, you know like but did you do and everything and so on and so on, this is for me something that I would have called politically correct ecology. And that's also I think a problem with political correctness, one of the problems. This typically liberal infinite self-examination of our guilt. Like with many of our, of my liberal friends in America, they so obviously enjoy this attitude of, you know, I used that word "my black friend." But my God, is it the right word "black"? Isn't black opposite to white like evil opposite to good? Should we say African American? Then you say African American, but my God they are not all from Africa, some are from Cuba from all those islands there. So and they love this. What provides surplus pleasure for them is this infinite guilt, there is always work to be done. Your your speech is never fully politically correct, you know. Or or with women. I say this woman is beautiful. My God, didn't I reduce her to sexual object and so on. Like and you see what's my point, it's that they don't even really want to get rid of their guilt. They enjoy their guilt. It's typical perverted enjoyment where something which you experience your pain is really the center of enjoyment. I had a friend who was talking a lot and then I saw that he felt nervous and then finally he exploded, "Oh wonderful, now I discovered where I was still a racist," you know. He discovered some detail where he wasn't yet politically correct and so on and so on. Let me tell you something horrible and I know what I'm talking about. An ideal non-racist society would be for me not a society where somehow we work through our guilt and all speak pure politically correct language and so on and so on, but a society in which you use all the dirtiest politically incorrect jokes, but the trick is, and it can be done, you use them in such a way that it's absolutely clear that they no longer function in a racist way. I'm sorry if I repeat myself, but this was my greatest experience from my own country Yugoslavia before the civil war in until early 1980s when true nationalism exploded. We each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified by a certain racist feature. We Slovenes were lazy—no, sorry, we Slovenes were thrifty, we didn't want to spend money on others especially. Montenegro people were lazy, Bosnians were sexually obsessed and so on and so on. But you know what was so beautiful, when we met, we were talking like always, an introduction to a nice social evening was who will tell the nicest dirty story. But it was democratic. I call it ironically progressive racism. It was not against the others, but mostly against yourself. Like I'm sorry if you know this joke, a Montenegro guy told me a wonderful vulgar joke about his own country. I use it all the time. Montenegro is also, they're lazy, you remember, and it's a country of earthquakes. How does a Montenegro guy masturbate? He digs a small a small hole in the earth, he puts his penis in and he waits for the earthquake because he is even too lazy to... And you know this created such wonderful spirit of true fraternity. Then a Bosniak a Bosniak guy came and entered his joke, like it will not work because of typical grammar, like there is a legendary there are legendary stories about a couple of Bosniak friends, Muso and Hajo or what. Okay, one meets the other who walks on a field of grass outside Sarajevo, remember there were many mines there in the war, but his wife walks ten yards ahead of him. And the friend tells him, they are Muslims, "Wait a minute, in Quran it says the woman should walk ten yards behind the man. If she walks ahead of you, you lose your dignity." And the friend answers, "Yes, in Quran, but in a minefield it's better that the woman..." And I will not, okay, I will not lose time here. But what I want to tell you is we were dirty like hell talking, but it was an immediate absolutely authentic friendship. So that's my problem with all this politically correct worry and so on. No, we should gladly assume all the filth of dirty talking and so on, but in a non-racist way. That's the problem. But let me go on with my serious line. So Anthropocene, which means at the same time we are more powerful as humanity than ever, we change the face of the Earth, but this power itself makes us aware that we are only one species on the Earth and that if we change our environment too much, we ruin the condition of our life. So what should we do in such a situation theoretically? Here I will refer to my the theoretical work of people who are opposed to me, some of them even criticize me, but I'm a Leninist, we should learn from the enemies always. Maybe you read it, it's a nice book, The Vibrant Life, it's Jane Bennett, a representative of so-called new materialism. The idea is this, that we should learn to look at ourselves as it were with an inhuman eye. Not in this anthropocentric way, but we should look at our environment, processes on Earth, not just from the human standpoint, but—another term which is now emerging as crucial in social theory—as an assemblage of elements where we humans are just one among the elements. Jane Bennett in her book The Vibrant Matter describes in a wonderful way a trash site. And she describes this as a living organism where humans deposit the trash, then we have trash itself with many organic forms, worms, insects, abandoned machines, chemical poisons and so on, all of them playing a role. So that what appears as just from our human perspective a trash site, dirty and so on, becomes a living organism where many actors, or the fashionable term in this circles is actants—it was a term I think created by by created by not Manuel DeLanda but another guy, doesn't matter. So again, sorry. The point is that you know we should adopt this new vision where we are just among the one among the elements interacting. Now I propose to do, not in any cynical way, I propose to do something crazy. What if we apply the same analysis to a really horrible place like Auschwitz? Let's say why to observe it only as a site of a horrible crime, Germans killing the Jews and others, why not observe it as an assemblage? We have corpses, worms eating corpses, smoke and so on, all this interaction of elements. Now I know what you will say now. You will say but this is terrifying. Isn't it horrible to adopt this inhuman view erasing all human ethical interests, like millions being gassed, burned, killed there, and to observe it just as a quasi-natural process of interacting elements? But I think that only through this horror, horror in the sense that when you describe Auschwitz in this way it's madness ethically, can we return to a proper ethical attitude. You have to go through this zero point, this inhuman view. Only you have to go through this radically non-ethical point. Let's forget about our concerns, let's observe it as a natural process where even the most horrible acts like burning, killing millions is just part of a natural reproduction. Only by way of going through it can we reach a zero level as it were of ethical position. Of course such an inhuman view is in a way impossible. But that's my point, no minimally ethical human person can really do it. It's the same problem as the one of seeing, and that's my philosophical point, witnessing something which is so strong and traumatic that it disturbs the balance of our daily life. Let's say imagine, it's difficult for me to imagine but try, witnessing a terrifying torture. I mean it really, like what they were doing I heard from some journalists in Yugoslav civil war, some sides to others. Like they occupy a village, then first they rape the girls in front of their fathers. That was the catch, because they know that in this way even if the victims survive it, the family relation is ruined forever. You cannot ever pardon your father to just standing there and watching how you are raped although you know very well that he couldn't have done anything, but the guilt is here and vice versa. Then the standard procedure was to cut off the father's testicles and make them make him eat them, and let's not go into it. But what I want to say is that so such things are too strong. You experience something that Freud would have called Realitätsverlust, loss of reality. This is the ontological point here. What we experience as reality, ordinary reality here around us, is not simply reality out there. It's already a reality censored. Censored in the sense that some things are excluded. If you see things which are too strong in this traumatic sense, your sense of reality disintegrates. Maybe you can accommodate yourself to this new reality, but then you lose contact with the old normal reality. This is again an important philosophical point, that the reality in which we live is not just things are out there, I am among them. It's already filtered through certain ideological symbolic presuppositions and so on. Here Claude Lanzmann, you know the one who did the long documentary Shoah. I don't agree always with him, but one point is very important that he made. He said that let us say that he were to discover by some chance some films shot by some German officers of the most painful moments in Auschwitz, like the scene of people there dying in gas chambers and so on. And Lanzmann says he would not use it in his documentary, he would immediately burn these films. In a way, in some way he was right. It's too strong for our sense of reality. You know when you like another thing, I even heard some rumors from my friends in America that when the Twin Towers—but this is much more modest example—when the Twin Towers were hit, there were some people in there with video cameras and so on and that they discovered in the ruins some of these shots which magically survived. Like people filming themselves when you see that they are dying and so on. And the rumor I heard is that American authorities are keeping them as secret as possible. It's, you know, like you see something that you should not have seen. So this inhuman view is something like that. And this is this inhuman view is what we try to obliterate, not to confront it. How? Ah, my next point. To cope with this problem, a new form of subjectivity is emerging today that I find fascinating. The subjectivity whose most visible effect are video games. Don't underestimate video games. I think that first we have 20th century cinema, now we are in an era of maybe TV series as typical. I maybe I claim next decades will be of video games. Are you aware how important they are? Are you aware that already for three years video games turn around more money worldwide than cinema and TV series combined? What interests me here is how they affect our sense of subjectivity. If you played them—I didn't, I'm too stupid, you have to press fast, but my son does and I observed him often. This new form of subjectivity is something very interesting. It's an undead subjectivity. A subject which is open to the unending cycle of dying, resurfacing and so on and so on. Just think about cartoons, you remember Tom and Jerry and those. It's the same magic universe. You remember like Tom or Jerry cat, mouse is run over by a truck, flattened, cut into pieces. No problem. In the next scene it's again here, you can begin again and again. You know who was the author of this, the first who articulated this fantasy? As far as I know, it was Marquis de Sade. This is how victims like Juliette in his novels function. They are endlessly tortured in multiple ways, but magically they survive their ordeal and in the next chapter they return fresh and so on. It's something similar if you noticed—aha, if you admit that you watch them at some point—in hardcore pornography. It's endless. You have orgasm, you see sperm out getting out ejaculation, and then did you notice the obvious thing after that with us normal people is you need some Kleenex to wash the sperm, you smoke a cigarette, a drink. Never this. You just go on and again and again. Sperm goes out, in the next scene which is staged as a continuation of the same scene, sperm magically disappears, it goes on the game. So my point is that this also explains another aspect of video games of our civilization which is, and it's a very important phenomenon I claim, I don't have time to develop it how it began with Kant, Kantian Immanuel Kant, idealism opened up the space for it. Something which we call today undeadness. You know all these phenomena, I call it obscene immortality. All these figures of persons whose tragedy is not that they die, but that they cannot die. They always return. Vampires, undead and so on. And in one of my texts I even tried to prove how class struggle is already at work here. Did you notice how zombies as the model of undead people are always proletarian? This poor clumsy, oh they just walk. Vampires are among us, they are rich, they are rich, they are proletarians and you know in early Hollywood there is White Zombie or what with Bela Lugosi, a wonderful Hollywood movie which directly plays on this card. Some foreigners get lost in a storm in Louisiana and they enter a strange factory where the owner explains to them that his factory brings him big profit because the workers there are zombies. And he says, "It's wonderful, zombies just work, no trade unions, no demands" and so on. You can torture them, they always survive, they go on working. So ah, to amuse you with an important philosophical reflection, let's risk a little bit of philosophy. You know why Kant Immanuel Kant opened up the space for it? It's a very simple element but crucial. In his theory of judgment, Kant distinguishes three types of judgment: positive affirmative judgment, negative judgment, and infinite judgment. In a positive judgment, you assert a predicate. In a negative judgment, you deny a predicate. But in what Kant calls infinite judgment, you don't deny a predicate, but you assert a non-predicate. Now you will say bullshit, it's the same. It's not, I will prove it to you. And I refer here to your knowledge of Stephen King and all those authors. Let's say he is dead. No ambiguity here, he is dead. You assert a predicate. Let's negate the predicate: he isn't dead. It means he is alive, no problem. But let's not negate the predicate, let's assert a non-predicate. Instead of saying he isn't dead, let's say he is undead. Undead means something different. It doesn't mean he is alive. It means he is alive as dead. He is a living dead. This third space is open which is precisely the space of evil ghosts, zombies which haunt you and so on. It's the space of something that I like to call obscene immortality. We have this good ethical immortality: in your works you will live forever forever, goodness cannot die. But we tend to forget that we also have this obscene immortality, like that of zombies and so on, where evil persists beyond life and death. It cannot die, it returns forever. And my point being, isn't this situation exactly the situation of video games? You know, you get engaged into a fight, you drop dead, usually you have five, ten lives or in some games infinite lives, no problem, you drop dead, you just begin again this infinity. Now you will say but this is fiction. It's more complex. It's a certain attitude of, I can run back in time and return to the starting point and begin again and again, which I claim more and more determines our daily experience. Like some of my friends, I caught them treating their life game as a video—sorry, their love life as a video game. Like, I try with this girl or man or whatever, it didn't work, let's return back, let's start again with another one or whatever or whatever. So this type of subjectivity is a very obscene one because it's undeadness, but again not the noble immortality but an obscene immortality where what in psychoanalysis we would have called symbolic castration, the awareness of our basic finitude, mortality, is abolished. Now okay, let's go to the next step now. I hope for some of you things will get a little bit more amusing. Let's now you will probably tell me but wait a minute, this is nonetheless a virtual universe. In reality, it doesn't work like this. Ah, here I would like to complicate things a little bit. I claim that our what we call reality is much more paradoxical in the sense that we cannot clearly distinguish real reality and virtual reality. Our reality that we see around us, for it to have sense, it has to be always supplemented by a virtual element. Which is why maybe some of you know this text of mine, I wrote a text of a wonderful game—not wonderful in the sense that I'm ready to lose one minute playing it, but philosophical consequences I hope you know it, Pokémon Go. I think it's pure game of ideology. You know what happens? It's no longer escape from real world to virtual world. You look through the screen of your apparatus at real world, you see reality the way it is, but you see something more, the Pokémon, and that triggers your desire. That makes reality consistent. You have confused reality, you don't know what goes on there, the Pokémon, the figure added to reality, reality becomes something meaningful and so on. This is why I proposed a thesis that the greatest practitioner of Pokémon Go was Adolf Hitler with his antisemitism. Isn't the figure of the Jew exactly such a Pokémon figure in what sense? You look if you're a German at reality in '32, boring, chaos, blah. Then Hitler comes and says, "But look for the Jew." And it becomes interesting, everything acquires meaning and so on and so on. And I think that this is the future, why? Because my point is that the trick with Pokémon Go is not that it's something new. No, it's precisely it brings out something which was always already here in our ideological life. Ideology always works as augmented reality. You think you see reality, but not a Pokémon digital machine but your ideology. Our ideological apparatus is the big Pokémon machine. Look, again let's say you are a racist. You walk along the street, you see an Arab, a Jew and so on. If you are a racist Pokémon image, you will see the Jew or the Arab as this threatening Pokémon figure, oh is he a rapist, is he whatever and so on and so on. So again we should absolutely be aware that the way we see reality is not a neutral innocent reality. It's always augmented reality. And this is crucial, this is I think the big result for me not only of Pokémon but also of other video games and so on, that the future is no longer just again virtual reality. That's the terrifying but at the same time almost beautiful thing about it. It's not just you escape from real life, you just live on the screen. No, the promise is you remain in real life, and that real experience of real life is already augmented through some imagined elements and this again, this is ideology. Now I don't have too much time so let's go on. First, a philosophical point. If we live in such a universe where we are manipulated through Pokémon machinery, part of a mechanism where that we don't dominate, does this mean that there is no freedom? I think freedom is a much more complex notion and our experience today should make us aware of this complexity. What do I mean by this? The tragedy today is that the predominant notion of freedom which is imposed to us by our ideology is freedom of choice. The model of freedom is I take a vacation where, I don't know, I go to London to Paris to Africa, whatever. Or I go to a patisserie, there is a strawberry cake, chocolate cake, whatever. But I think that freedom at its most radical is something else. It coincides with its opposite. A true free choice is a choice of something which you choose because in an ethical sense you cannot do it otherwise. Let me give you an example. Let's say your country is under—a little bit pathetic example—your country is under occupation, you cannot decide am I courageous enough to join resistance or will I just live my ordinary life. If you decide to join resistance, to do something more heroic, admit it, you don't do it as this simple stupid free choice. You do it because—I'm sorry for using this pathetic terminology—you do it because you would be ashamed of yourself if you don't do it. Like to put it in pathetic terms, you couldn't look in the mirror into your face for not doing it. You do it because you feel that you have to do it. And such acts are truly free. You don't believe me? I will give you another example: love. Love is supposed to be free by definition. If you are told to love someone, it's not love. But isn't true love always experienced as inevitable? Like, I'm sorry for this obscenity, if I look at the beautiful ladies here and say into which I should fall in love. She has nice eyes, she has nice hair, she has nice legs. Not only is this an obscenity, this is not love. When you are in love, you never think like this. You even never have a moment of choice. It's not now I fall in love. No, it's always now I suddenly discover that I already am in love. And this is the most radical free choice, I claim, where you in a way choose something because it's inevitable. And now since you have today tomorrow and the day after I think the big Pride Parade here, I will tell you something here where I don't agree with some transgender ideologists, although I do this on behalf of fully supporting my transgender friends. They claim, some of these ideologists, that look our sexual identities are arbitrary, culturally constructed and so on and so on, we can be we can have multiple sexual identities playfully shifting among them. I'm sorry to tell you but my transgender friends do not think like that. Their problem is precisely that they are stuck with one socially and biologically constructed identity, but they cannot live with it. They feel experience another identity, whatever that one is. In classical transgender, a man biologically socially experiences himself as feminine, and it's not I want to play a game or whatever. No, it's an extremely painful situation. He feels the pressure of his intimate identity as such a strong pressure that he or she is or it whatever is ready to go through all the painful operations just to win over his social biological identity and adopt his authentic subjective identity. So you see what I'm opposed to. I wouldn't allow transgender topic to be kidnapped by this bourgeois free choice ideology. It's all playfulness, today I'm a man tomorrow I'm a woman, then bisexual, whatever. Okay, do it if you want it. But basically the situation is much more tragic not because we are biologically predetermined, but because the choice of your sexual identity is a free choice, but as such it is experienced as such a tremendous urge necessity which overruns even your what is perceived as your biological identity. And incidentally this is the point of psychoanalysis. It's a very refined ethical point. Psychoanalysis on the one hand teaches us we are not simply free subjects, we are overdetermined by unconscious complexes and so on and so on. Yes but, it doesn't mean—this is strictly prohibited in psychoanalysis—to then adopt the position "Okay, sorry, I raped a couple of children but it's not my responsibility, the Big Other spoke through me, I was overdetermined." No, even if you are overdetermined, you are still fully responsible for it. You can never evoke in psychoanalysis your unconscious as an excuse, "Sorry it wasn't me, it was my unconscious." You are never allowed, you are never allowed to do to do this. So now I don't want to go on too long and now I would love to do my final part which will be a very naive one. In this weird universe where we are at the same time decentered out of our center like we can be described through an inhuman view like Auschwitz corpses assemblage things happen meaninglessly, but at the same time with radical responsibility. It's a godless world but where nonetheless I will try to prove the divine dimension survives. Not in the theological sense. So I will try to explain you through one example what do I mean by the weird term that I like to use when people ask me "What are you?" I say I'm an atheist Christian. What do I mean by this? It's serious, it's not one of those postmodern stupid jokes. Okay, I will just show you one scene from a pretty good Danish crime story, I wonder if it was shown also on your TV, A Conspiracy of Faith, original title is Flaskepost, which means message in a bottle, from directed by Hans Petter Moland. It's a pretty good very dark detective story. Okay, just the final scene matters so I will not bore you with the whole narrative. If you want to see it afterwards, I will give you an illegal advice for which I will be arrested when I exit this building: go to Pirate Bay and if it's not yet blocked in your country—in my country it's not—you download it. It's towards the end of the film the hero, a detective Carl Mørck. He is a burnt out as he characterizes himself terminally depressed detective, confronts Johannes who is a handsome blond serial killer of children, and as Johannes explains, you will see, his point is not just to kill children but to destroy the faith of children and of parents, to confront them with something so shocking that they will lose their faith, like where was God to allow this. So in the final scene that you will see, we are in a small cottage on a wharf close to the sea on a sea coast where we have Mørck detective chained lying down, then two children, a young boy his slightly elder sister who are there half unconscious, and the murderer. And please watch for some four or five minutes this confrontation and then there will be my final point. So, up there push the stupid button. [Transcribing dialogue from film clip:] "Potalina! Potalina! Carl! Potalina! Carl! Carl!" "Befri os!" "Carl! Carl!" [Danish dialogue continues during violent confrontation] "Nu dør du! Nu dør du!" [Film clip ends]. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for that mistake. You see even in the best planned Stalinist economy mistakes happen. It's very naive of course this scene, forget about all that devil's son and so on. But the reason I like this is I think short scene is that it has to be taken literally. The murderer is wrong. God did appear in a pathetic sense two times. He says God did not show up. First, when he Mørck the detective offered himself, "take me instead," and point two, when the girl refused to do the stupid revenge. And I think that in my Christian atheist sense, this is an ethical act at its most simplest, and now comes my provocation: for this to be ethical in this way you have to be an atheist. It's not just you can also be an atheist. That is, by have to be an atheist I mean you have to go through this zero point of you see God did not appear. That type of God, our primitive idea of God, you know, an old man up there or we can put it in more complex way, who somehow takes care of it and we can trust whatever we do, we may appear to be in trouble but it all has a higher meaning, God will take care of it. I think this is something which is totally foreign to the most radical Christian spirit. For me the best thing here to begin with is, for me at least, is the the first great book in the Bible, read it, the Book of Job—He-ob, Job, the guy who got screwed up by God and so on. Why do I like that? I think it's the first serious work of critique of ideology. You know what happens? Everything goes wrong for Job and he loses his family, goats, cows, wives, whatever. It's in this order in the Bible incidentally. And then you know what then happens? Three theological friends come, each of them has the basic message of ideology: what happened to you has a deeper meaning. The first friend says, "You think you are innocent, you didn't deserve this calamity, but since God punished you, think in a deeper way, you must have done something wrong." The second one says something like God is testing you and so on. Doesn't matter. The message of these ideologists is your suffering has a deeper meaning. It's not just meaningless suffering. And then the miracle happens in the Bible, the text, the first miracle. Then Jehovah God himself comes and says basically, Job in his complaints was totally right, all what these three theologians were claiming is bullshit, like suffering has no meaning. And then comes even more of a miracle. Then Job asks God, I simplify the story of course, but then "Why did you do it? Why did you condemn me to all this suffering and so on?" And then God gives this strange speech, "Where were you when I created these monsters, that, whatever." Usually this is read as the as divine utter arrogance, you know, in the sense of who are you shitty human to even talk to me like this, you are not at my level. But my favorite theologian, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, proposes a totally opposite reading. That God's answer means basically, "You think I screwed it up only with you? Look at the world of creation, all the world that I created is a total meaningless mess." Like in this sense what dies on the cross—now I jump to proper reading of Christianity—is precisely God the Father, this God which somehow guarantees the good outcome. God of fate. And I think that the gesture of Christ is precisely this one of that you do this ethical miracle when you are not as it were covered up by a God. Or to put it in another way, the most obscene argument for God for me is that comparison of reality with a painting. You know the idea is that when we see a painting from too close it appears just as formless stains, if you go at a proper distance you see that those stains are really part of a larger harmony. So the idea is that what appears to us as contingent evil, horror, in the divine harmony of the created world it has a deeper meaning. But I think the basic message of Christianity is precisely no. This God who guarantees this dies. Or to put it a pathetic example: isn't it an obscenity to tell to a Jew dying in Auschwitz, or or a good Communist or whoever dying in Gulag, or or women serially raped in today's Congo, whatever, "Don't worry, this may appear to you as evil but in a larger divine plan this contributes to the harmony of the God." I see Christ's gesture precisely as this absolute sympathy identification with our particularity. The world is a horror, a mess like Auschwitz, assemblage, things happen meaninglessly. But it's only against this background that the true ethical miracle emerges. Again, you see my and so again now you will maybe tell me something, but why to talk about God at all? Why not simply say this is consequent atheist ethics, reality is meaningless out there, we do what we can. Ah, here I use the term divine dimension in a very specific way, elaborated in his wonderful book on Dostoevsky by ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who said that divine experience at its most elementary is not experience of positive divinity but it's a simple elementary experience that this world, our reality is out of joint. Something is terribly wrong with it. So we have here negative theology but not in the usual sense of God is beyond all our descriptions but in sense that God is just a name of this gap. The world is out of joint, it's a mess, it is not as it should be, this terrifying dissatisfaction. And all positive forms to fill in dissatisfaction, already fetishized images of God, we don't need that. In this sense for me, I don't have time to develop it now but I hope you got the point, that in this sense I think the properly Christian gesture is this one. Again Mørck when he says "take me instead." That's Christ. Christ is not an all-powerful figure. Christ is precisely this impotent witness of pain who absolutely unconditionally identifies with suffering precisely insofar as he accepts the meaningless of existence. And I think that in view of our horrors that we are witnessing, that we were witnessing in the 20th century and that I am sure we will witness more of them in the 21st century, I think that this type of radically atheist ethics which I hope you also noticed this, this ethics of detective here, it cannot be instrumentalized in any fundamentalist way. It doesn't just it doesn't legitimize you to do anything by seeking for cover in God like "it's horrible what I do to you but sorry, it's divine mission" and so on. No, you are totally free, you are not covered by any higher authority. That's what makes an authentic ethical miracle. That's what constitutes it. And this type of ethics I think it's the only one appropriate to our let's call them godless times. I'm sorry if I was too long. I'm grateful to your patience. I'm infinitely grateful to Raúl and Marta, the two translators who have a miraculous they are the other Christian couple in the sense that they displayed miraculous mercy to tolerate a madman like me and translate him. Thank you very much. [Applause]. Hi, thank you for your conference. You talk about freedom and love and I would like to know what is your opinion of Erich Fromm and
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his books like Fear on Freedom and so on. You will not be
his books like Fear on Freedom and so on. You will not be
Slavoj Žižek
satisfied by my answer because my position is much harsher. I'm sorry if this hurts you, I
satisfied by my answer because my position is much harsher. I'm sorry if this hurts you, I
unknown
don't accept, I don't like Erich Fromm. I think his reading
don't accept, I don't like Erich Fromm. I think his reading
Slavoj Žižek
of Freud is way too superficial the way he tries to to over overcome Freud. Also his big bestseller, something on love or what, no? There I have a real problem because I think and maybe I'm a madman here, but I think here we should be absolutely opposed—I'm not saying Fromm is advocating this—but this notion of love as an all-encompassing big movement, we love all. No, love is the most violent thing you can imagine. It's something brutally exclusive. Love means I love you and fuck off all other reality. Love, imagine yourself leading a wonderful life. You help undeveloped, you go to drink your Starbucks and pay the higher price, you have friendly relations have a nice love, then you passionately fall in love. Your life is over, it's ruined. Everything is focused on that, you lose your concentration in your job and so on and so on. Love is for me precisely passionate sexual love is for me the first form of the absolute. What is absolute? Absolute is this: I live a stupid life of small pleasures then a magic encounter of the absolute happens, everything is turned around. So I don't think that, this is a very general point, that in Fromm there is a space for this absolute violence of love. And I think this is precisely what makes love great. That's why as already mentioned it two days ago I think, that's why I'm totally opposed to this now fashionable notion of polyamory, you know, I can be in love with more people, they satisfy different needs. No, this is not the absolute love. I'm very romantic here. Absolute love exists. You will say I didn't experience it, then fuck off, then you are not at the level of love you know. You know very well when you experience it. You seem to believe in human being and you seem to believe that we have a capacity of destroying the world, but you don't seem to believe in the capacity of technology to say so—technology and science—to, you know, manage to arrange the problem with the ecology. So you say so, you say something like that. I would like to know why, why you don't believe it. Because in a very classic Marxist way I don't believe even with all the new developments now that technology is neutral. No, no, I mean I'm not in any way anti-technological. I tremendously admire not so much technology as science, what it will discover and so on. I'm just saying that the way we develop technology—that's why I don't believe in technological determinism—it's not neutral. Technology the way we know it embodies certain type of social relations of individualism, exploitation, domination, whatever you want. In this sense only I don't trust it. And I will give you a concrete example. Now we have perspectives of digitalization of life, of of direct connecting of our brain with computers and so on and so on. What will this mean? I don't think that we can look for an answer simply in technology. It's open. It can mean new hell where we will be totally dominated, it can mean a wonderful new world. It still depends on the type of social relations within which this happens. It's wrong to look for the effects of these new technologies in technology itself. It's only in this sense that I don't trust technology. But when I said I don't trust technology, it was meant in a very simple sense: those who put faith in technology, their basic idea is we can leave capitalism the way it is and just focus on technology. No, I think that and I'm not I'm here very open, I'm not a stupid dogmatic who is simply against capitalism, I'm a Marxist. Read Marx, he is deeply ambiguous towards capitalism. He is full aware that capitalism is the most dynamic incredibly productive system in the history of humanity. We must go through it. The only freedom is the freedom gained through alienation. But at the same time he is aware that capitalism has its limit, antagonism and so on. So that's simply still my classical Marxist point, without demonizing global capitalism. All the problems we have today, ecology, refugees, biogenetics, are part of the global the dynamic political, ideological, and above all economic of global capitalism. Refugees, they are obviously the result of effects of global capitalism on the third world and so on and so on. So without demonizing it, if anything I'm full aware of the ridiculous failures of the 20th century left, I still think our big problem is the way global capitalism functions. Siguiendo con esto que hablabas de Marx, ¿qué piensas de la crítica que hace Benjamin sobre el concepto de progreso dentro del marxismo y qué papel crees que tiene esta fe en el progreso hoy en día en la izquierda hoy en día? It's a very nice point. First, of course I love Walter Benjamin's idea, metaphor, that today our task is no longer as in certain kind of traditional Marxism to ride the train of history in the sense that history moves towards progress and we just have to be on the right side of riding with the train. So in this sense yes I am against progress. But it's more complex, I cannot give you now a systematic answer. But at the same time sorry, I'm often accused of being Eurocentric here or whatever, but I claim that with French Revolution with the notions of equality, freedom, which are part of European modernity, something tremendous happened. And it set new standards. Sorry if I sound Eurocentric, I think something happened here which has world-historical significance. This is why I think that for example French Revolution immediately found echo where, with for me maybe one of the biggest revolutionary events of all times, the slave rebellion in Haiti. It was I think maybe even more important than French Revolution itself. It immediately demonstrated the universal scope of the ideas of French Revolution. It's a wonderful event. Slaves rebelled against France and not in the usual conservative way "we want to return to our home to Africa," no, "we want to be a modern democratic state like France." And it's big important fact that Jacobins immediately recognized them, Napoleon the bad guy sent the army to reoccupy them, good thing Napoleon lost. It was the first before Russia, the first before Russia and you here made some trouble to Napoleon also I think in Spain. That's what I learned from some Hollywood films, but that's another point. No, but what I want to say is that in this sense I believe in a very conditional way in progress. Now you will say but what about all the catastrophes, colonialism, Gulag, brought by Europe. Yes but at the same time European Enlightenment gives us still the best mechanisms to criticize. What I like in European tradition is that it always includes radical self-criticism into it. So in this sense I would say yes we should abandon this naive progressivism. If you pardon me of repeating myself, in my new book Courage of Hopelessness I also use this Benjaminian metaphor of the train and I supplement it, because you know old-fashioned leftist progressives like to say even when the situation is very dark, "you can see always the light at the end of the tunnel." You know
of Freud is way too superficial the way he tries to to over overcome Freud. Also his big bestseller, something on love or what, no? There I have a real problem because I think and maybe I'm a madman here, but I think here we should be absolutely opposed—I'm not saying Fromm is advocating this—but this notion of love as an all-encompassing big movement, we love all. No, love is the most violent thing you can imagine. It's something brutally exclusive. Love means I love you and fuck off all other reality. Love, imagine yourself leading a wonderful life. You help undeveloped, you go to drink your Starbucks and pay the higher price, you have friendly relations have a nice love, then you passionately fall in love. Your life is over, it's ruined. Everything is focused on that, you lose your concentration in your job and so on and so on. Love is for me precisely passionate sexual love is for me the first form of the absolute. What is absolute? Absolute is this: I live a stupid life of small pleasures then a magic encounter of the absolute happens, everything is turned around. So I don't think that, this is a very general point, that in Fromm there is a space for this absolute violence of love. And I think this is precisely what makes love great. That's why as already mentioned it two days ago I think, that's why I'm totally opposed to this now fashionable notion of polyamory, you know, I can be in love with more people, they satisfy different needs. No, this is not the absolute love. I'm very romantic here. Absolute love exists. You will say I didn't experience it, then fuck off, then you are not at the level of love you know. You know very well when you experience it. You seem to believe in human being and you seem to believe that we have a capacity of destroying the world, but you don't seem to believe in the capacity of technology to say so—technology and science—to, you know, manage to arrange the problem with the ecology. So you say so, you say something like that. I would like to know why, why you don't believe it. Because in a very classic Marxist way I don't believe even with all the new developments now that technology is neutral. No, no, I mean I'm not in any way anti-technological. I tremendously admire not so much technology as science, what it will discover and so on. I'm just saying that the way we develop technology—that's why I don't believe in technological determinism—it's not neutral. Technology the way we know it embodies certain type of social relations of individualism, exploitation, domination, whatever you want. In this sense only I don't trust it. And I will give you a concrete example. Now we have perspectives of digitalization of life, of of direct connecting of our brain with computers and so on and so on. What will this mean? I don't think that we can look for an answer simply in technology. It's open. It can mean new hell where we will be totally dominated, it can mean a wonderful new world. It still depends on the type of social relations within which this happens. It's wrong to look for the effects of these new technologies in technology itself. It's only in this sense that I don't trust technology. But when I said I don't trust technology, it was meant in a very simple sense: those who put faith in technology, their basic idea is we can leave capitalism the way it is and just focus on technology. No, I think that and I'm not I'm here very open, I'm not a stupid dogmatic who is simply against capitalism, I'm a Marxist. Read Marx, he is deeply ambiguous towards capitalism. He is full aware that capitalism is the most dynamic incredibly productive system in the history of humanity. We must go through it. The only freedom is the freedom gained through alienation. But at the same time he is aware that capitalism has its limit, antagonism and so on. So that's simply still my classical Marxist point, without demonizing global capitalism. All the problems we have today, ecology, refugees, biogenetics, are part of the global the dynamic political, ideological, and above all economic of global capitalism. Refugees, they are obviously the result of effects of global capitalism on the third world and so on and so on. So without demonizing it, if anything I'm full aware of the ridiculous failures of the 20th century left, I still think our big problem is the way global capitalism functions. Siguiendo con esto que hablabas de Marx, ¿qué piensas de la crítica que hace Benjamin sobre el concepto de progreso dentro del marxismo y qué papel crees que tiene esta fe en el progreso hoy en día en la izquierda hoy en día? It's a very nice point. First, of course I love Walter Benjamin's idea, metaphor, that today our task is no longer as in certain kind of traditional Marxism to ride the train of history in the sense that history moves towards progress and we just have to be on the right side of riding with the train. So in this sense yes I am against progress. But it's more complex, I cannot give you now a systematic answer. But at the same time sorry, I'm often accused of being Eurocentric here or whatever, but I claim that with French Revolution with the notions of equality, freedom, which are part of European modernity, something tremendous happened. And it set new standards. Sorry if I sound Eurocentric, I think something happened here which has world-historical significance. This is why I think that for example French Revolution immediately found echo where, with for me maybe one of the biggest revolutionary events of all times, the slave rebellion in Haiti. It was I think maybe even more important than French Revolution itself. It immediately demonstrated the universal scope of the ideas of French Revolution. It's a wonderful event. Slaves rebelled against France and not in the usual conservative way "we want to return to our home to Africa," no, "we want to be a modern democratic state like France." And it's big important fact that Jacobins immediately recognized them, Napoleon the bad guy sent the army to reoccupy them, good thing Napoleon lost. It was the first before Russia, the first before Russia and you here made some trouble to Napoleon also I think in Spain. That's what I learned from some Hollywood films, but that's another point. No, but what I want to say is that in this sense I believe in a very conditional way in progress. Now you will say but what about all the catastrophes, colonialism, Gulag, brought by Europe. Yes but at the same time European Enlightenment gives us still the best mechanisms to criticize. What I like in European tradition is that it always includes radical self-criticism into it. So in this sense I would say yes we should abandon this naive progressivism. If you pardon me of repeating myself, in my new book Courage of Hopelessness I also use this Benjaminian metaphor of the train and I supplement it, because you know old-fashioned leftist progressives like to say even when the situation is very dark, "you can see always the light at the end of the tunnel." You know
unknown
what my answer is? Yes we can always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but this light is usually another train coming towards us. You know? So I just wouldn't I wouldn't talk even about progress. I would just say in Alain Badiou's sense
what my answer is? Yes we can always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but this light is usually another train coming towards us. You know? So I just wouldn't I wouldn't talk even about progress. I would just say in Alain Badiou's sense
unknown
that there are events when something tremendous happens, new with a universal significance. Maybe even with all his pessimism Benjamin would have agreed with it, because nonetheless he was a Communist. Sorry but Communism is an European invention and so on.
that there are events when something tremendous happens, new with a universal significance. Maybe even with all his pessimism Benjamin would have agreed with it, because nonetheless he was a Communist. Sorry but Communism is an European invention and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
But I want to say another thing here about all this Communism progress and so on. Where I have trouble with Benjamin is, isn't it that he still has a certain eschatological vision in his greatest fragment on theses on the history of philosophy, that all points towards a final emancipatory act, revolution, which in a gesture of divine violence will retroactively redeem all previous ones. I no longer count on that. I'm more of a pessimist here in what sense. I think that we have to accept that the same dynamic that Marx wonderfully described about French classic bourgeois revolutions, that they are caught in this tragic turn, "you want democracy, you end up in terror in its opposite." Well, the 20th century proves that the same holds for proletarian or whatever we call them post-capitalist emancipatory movements. They have their own tragic deeply inscribed. Take October Revolution that we celebrate this year. Big event, it ended up in Stalinism. And I don't believe in these simplistic tales, you know like "only if Lenin were to survive three years more and made the pact with Trotsky it would be all different." Probably it would have been different, but who knows how. So what I want to emphasize is the tragic dimension, tragic in the sense that you want something you fail it turns into a horror, you have to do it again, also for the radical proletarian whatever you call it emancipatory event. Me gustaría saber cuál es su opinión al respecto de Antonio Gramsci y de la recuperación y la aplicación que ahora se está dando de Antonio Gramsci sobre todo a través de la figura de Ernesto Laclau con el que con el que tuvo usted pues ciertos enfrentamientos teóricos y su utilización bueno la lectura que ha sucedido en América Latina a través de Ernesto Laclau y Gramsci y el fenómeno europeo y cómo se está entendiendo
But I want to say another thing here about all this Communism progress and so on. Where I have trouble with Benjamin is, isn't it that he still has a certain eschatological vision in his greatest fragment on theses on the history of philosophy, that all points towards a final emancipatory act, revolution, which in a gesture of divine violence will retroactively redeem all previous ones. I no longer count on that. I'm more of a pessimist here in what sense. I think that we have to accept that the same dynamic that Marx wonderfully described about French classic bourgeois revolutions, that they are caught in this tragic turn, "you want democracy, you end up in terror in its opposite." Well, the 20th century proves that the same holds for proletarian or whatever we call them post-capitalist emancipatory movements. They have their own tragic deeply inscribed. Take October Revolution that we celebrate this year. Big event, it ended up in Stalinism. And I don't believe in these simplistic tales, you know like "only if Lenin were to survive three years more and made the pact with Trotsky it would be all different." Probably it would have been different, but who knows how. So what I want to emphasize is the tragic dimension, tragic in the sense that you want something you fail it turns into a horror, you have to do it again, also for the radical proletarian whatever you call it emancipatory event. Me gustaría saber cuál es su opinión al respecto de Antonio Gramsci y de la recuperación y la aplicación que ahora se está dando de Antonio Gramsci sobre todo a través de la figura de Ernesto Laclau con el que con el que tuvo usted pues ciertos enfrentamientos teóricos y su utilización bueno la lectura que ha sucedido en América Latina a través de Ernesto Laclau y Gramsci y el fenómeno europeo y cómo se está entendiendo
unknown
esto en con sus conceptos pues ya puede ser con Podemos con en Francia con Mélenchon o con Tsipras. Gracias. Yeah, this is a very complex question I know. But beware, you probably know better than me that Ernesto Laclau took hegemony from Gramsci, but with Gramsci hegemony is still a moment of class struggle. Gramsci never abandoned the
esto en con sus conceptos pues ya puede ser con Podemos con en Francia con Mélenchon o con Tsipras. Gracias. Yeah, this is a very complex question I know. But beware, you probably know better than me that Ernesto Laclau took hegemony from Gramsci, but with Gramsci hegemony is still a moment of class struggle. Gramsci never abandoned the
Slavoj Žižek
ultimate horizon of class struggle. While Laclau, not in his first book which I think is still his best book, the first book in English, okay accessible to me, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory and okay the first by Laclau, yeah it's his first book. I think that he made a crucial move in his second book co-written with Chantal Mouffe and they ended up at least Chantal in the idea of radical democracy where anti-capitalist struggle becomes just one of the struggle in the series of struggles. And then the art is in this chain of equivalences how to build a chain of equivalences and so on. So here, read the triple I call it the triple orgy book, the one Hegemony and Socialist Strategy co-written by me, Judith Butler and Ernesto. There you can see the conflict and as to political efficiency, it's clear how Ernesto was looking for long time for a political example or movement which would come closest to his ideas. He began with as Left Peronist, nothing dishonorable in it. Then I can prove it with tests, he had a brief it lasted almost a year infatuation with Tony Blair when he won the first elections. I remember Ernesto phoning me from London telling me, "imagine life on everyday life on street it's different, people look more merry, a miracle has happened" and so on and so on. So when later he was disappointed by Tony Blair, in a typical way of him—I don't follow him here—he interpreted this as a betrayal, disappointment. I think no, whatever you accuse Tony Blair of, he was honest to the end. He never promised any socialist revolution. He said openly in economy we are all Thatcherites, no game there, we just can do better things in social struggles and so on and so on. So he had first this, then he had an attempt with Chavez, no, where also it was this very ambiguous relationship. For some time he wanted even flirted with the idea of becoming kind of a king philosopher, philosopher of the King Chavez, and there also things got complicated because whatever you say about Chavez, he was maybe even too much focused on anti-capitalism. And I never got it how Ernesto would have dealt with it. Then you have Podemos and it's a wonderful thing that Ernesto did here. I just asked my question and I
ultimate horizon of class struggle. While Laclau, not in his first book which I think is still his best book, the first book in English, okay accessible to me, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory and okay the first by Laclau, yeah it's his first book. I think that he made a crucial move in his second book co-written with Chantal Mouffe and they ended up at least Chantal in the idea of radical democracy where anti-capitalist struggle becomes just one of the struggle in the series of struggles. And then the art is in this chain of equivalences how to build a chain of equivalences and so on. So here, read the triple I call it the triple orgy book, the one Hegemony and Socialist Strategy co-written by me, Judith Butler and Ernesto. There you can see the conflict and as to political efficiency, it's clear how Ernesto was looking for long time for a political example or movement which would come closest to his ideas. He began with as Left Peronist, nothing dishonorable in it. Then I can prove it with tests, he had a brief it lasted almost a year infatuation with Tony Blair when he won the first elections. I remember Ernesto phoning me from London telling me, "imagine life on everyday life on street it's different, people look more merry, a miracle has happened" and so on and so on. So when later he was disappointed by Tony Blair, in a typical way of him—I don't follow him here—he interpreted this as a betrayal, disappointment. I think no, whatever you accuse Tony Blair of, he was honest to the end. He never promised any socialist revolution. He said openly in economy we are all Thatcherites, no game there, we just can do better things in social struggles and so on and so on. So he had first this, then he had an attempt with Chavez, no, where also it was this very ambiguous relationship. For some time he wanted even flirted with the idea of becoming kind of a king philosopher, philosopher of the King Chavez, and there also things got complicated because whatever you say about Chavez, he was maybe even too much focused on anti-capitalism. And I never got it how Ernesto would have dealt with it. Then you have Podemos and it's a wonderful thing that Ernesto did here. I just asked my question and I
unknown
support Podemos, but I still raise this simple questions like what do they want in the sense of do they want power or not, what's their vision of society or not. And my, you know, it's wonderful thing they did
support Podemos, but I still raise this simple questions like what do they want in the sense of do they want power or not, what's their vision of society or not. And my, you know, it's wonderful thing they did
Slavoj Žižek
with this organization local of civil society and so on and so on. But what are the long-term consequences, what is their vision? Should we get in the long term rid of the state, should we just exert democratic control of the state, should we aim for power which would be my option of course no? So you see what I mean. I think that all the things that I find, although I found him Ernesto again an ingenious theoretician, one of the few in the last years after that big wave of French structuralism Deleuze Lacan, he is one of the three, four maybe five not five figures who really did something new. It's Ernesto then another one would be in pure philosophy Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude and so on. But still you know this idea of radical democracy, I think that it simply it's a too formal model which doesn't account—okay, I will give you another example, some critics of Ernesto already pointed this out and I always had this problem with him. His theory of hegemony is just a neutral theory in the sense that it accounts also for fascist hegemony and so on. So I often asked him the same question and maybe I'm wrong, but I never got I think I didn't get an answer from him. Fully accepting your theory, why can't you be a fascist? You know what I mean, like struggle for hegemony is and then chain of equivalences and so on like didn't Donald Trump do a wonderful struggle for hegemony? In an ingenious way he established a chain of equivalences between this impoverished Bible Belt, poor workers, big capital, fundamentalists and so on. He worked as a model Laclauian. What will you put against him? Now you will say but equality, democracy. Okay but I don't see the link between his leftist project and his theory. His theory is a neutral description which describes I'm tempted to say fascism even better than democracy because you know where I have a problem also? I had polemics years ago very friendly with Chantal Mouffe at this level. This idea of anti-essentialism, like if you essentialize elevate something it's bad, authoritarian, if you emphasize contingency it's good. Not necessarily. Take French Revolution. The conservative ideology of enlightened conservatives was not essentialist. Think about Edmund Burke, the great British conservative liberal critic of French Revolution. He was accusing French revolutionaries of essentialism. His idea was he didn't essentialize traditions, he just said we are not cannot reconstruct society from zero point. We have certain cultural background within which we work, we have to respect it, we can gradually change it and so on and so on. He was afraid of this radical idea erasing the past beginning with zero point. Because he Edmund Burke saw it correctly that if you do this radical point, a break, then on what you refer? The solution of the French Revolution was on human nature. Which is obviously essentialist and so on. So all I'm saying, I'm not for essentialism, is that I can well imagine situations where crazy radical essentialism is much more progressive than this historicist relativism, everything is the result of discursive games and so on and so on. So you see again while I still find Ernesto's theory of hegemony, antagonism and so on something of breathtaking beauty, I I I don't follow him politically. And again I still wonder, okay I will ask you another question, you don't have to answer it now but just rhetorically which I mentioned already two days ago I think: imagine in the last elections, okay it's difficult to imagine but maybe, Podemos winning and with some other left parties taking power. What would they have done? Would would they be able to do anything more than a very very modest a little bit of social democratic measures, you know? Now you will say yes but the power would structure in a totally different way with more popular appeal. Okay okay but what would have
with this organization local of civil society and so on and so on. But what are the long-term consequences, what is their vision? Should we get in the long term rid of the state, should we just exert democratic control of the state, should we aim for power which would be my option of course no? So you see what I mean. I think that all the things that I find, although I found him Ernesto again an ingenious theoretician, one of the few in the last years after that big wave of French structuralism Deleuze Lacan, he is one of the three, four maybe five not five figures who really did something new. It's Ernesto then another one would be in pure philosophy Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude and so on. But still you know this idea of radical democracy, I think that it simply it's a too formal model which doesn't account—okay, I will give you another example, some critics of Ernesto already pointed this out and I always had this problem with him. His theory of hegemony is just a neutral theory in the sense that it accounts also for fascist hegemony and so on. So I often asked him the same question and maybe I'm wrong, but I never got I think I didn't get an answer from him. Fully accepting your theory, why can't you be a fascist? You know what I mean, like struggle for hegemony is and then chain of equivalences and so on like didn't Donald Trump do a wonderful struggle for hegemony? In an ingenious way he established a chain of equivalences between this impoverished Bible Belt, poor workers, big capital, fundamentalists and so on. He worked as a model Laclauian. What will you put against him? Now you will say but equality, democracy. Okay but I don't see the link between his leftist project and his theory. His theory is a neutral description which describes I'm tempted to say fascism even better than democracy because you know where I have a problem also? I had polemics years ago very friendly with Chantal Mouffe at this level. This idea of anti-essentialism, like if you essentialize elevate something it's bad, authoritarian, if you emphasize contingency it's good. Not necessarily. Take French Revolution. The conservative ideology of enlightened conservatives was not essentialist. Think about Edmund Burke, the great British conservative liberal critic of French Revolution. He was accusing French revolutionaries of essentialism. His idea was he didn't essentialize traditions, he just said we are not cannot reconstruct society from zero point. We have certain cultural background within which we work, we have to respect it, we can gradually change it and so on and so on. He was afraid of this radical idea erasing the past beginning with zero point. Because he Edmund Burke saw it correctly that if you do this radical point, a break, then on what you refer? The solution of the French Revolution was on human nature. Which is obviously essentialist and so on. So all I'm saying, I'm not for essentialism, is that I can well imagine situations where crazy radical essentialism is much more progressive than this historicist relativism, everything is the result of discursive games and so on and so on. So you see again while I still find Ernesto's theory of hegemony, antagonism and so on something of breathtaking beauty, I I I don't follow him politically. And again I still wonder, okay I will ask you another question, you don't have to answer it now but just rhetorically which I mentioned already two days ago I think: imagine in the last elections, okay it's difficult to imagine but maybe, Podemos winning and with some other left parties taking power. What would they have done? Would would they be able to do anything more than a very very modest a little bit of social democratic measures, you know? Now you will say yes but the power would structure in a totally different way with more popular appeal. Okay okay but what would have
unknown
meant at this level the victory of Podemos? What would they do with the entire state apparatus? Just don't tell me it would be controlled by people and so on. How? How concretely would they have done it and so on. I mean the the big tragedy here for me is Syriza where also first Ernesto and especially Chantal went there when Syriza was still glorious, supporting it. And then we
meant at this level the victory of Podemos? What would they do with the entire state apparatus? Just don't tell me it would be controlled by people and so on. How? How concretely would they have done it and so on. I mean the the big tragedy here for me is Syriza where also first Ernesto and especially Chantal went there when Syriza was still glorious, supporting it. And then we
unknown
know what it happened. I think it's the mega tragedy. You remember this madness, it was
know what it happened. I think it's the mega tragedy. You remember this madness, it was
Slavoj Žižek
like surrealist comedy, not even tragedy. On day one they proclaim victory referendum against austerity, literally next day or two days later they accept the blackmail, the ultimatum from Brussels. And I think we cannot dismiss them simply as traitors and so on and so on. Their predicament was objectively tragic. The big task of the left to be would be to invent a new model of state of economy to function. I don't see that model. But we need it, otherwise we are in hell. You've mentioned Badiou, Alain Badiou, and I'd like to know how is it that your atheist rereading of the cross might eventually relate to Badiou's atheist rereading of Paul's universalism? Ah, it's a nice, very nice question because of course my reading of Christianity was originally inspired by his book on Paul and universalism. I tremendously admire him here. You know what's just the problem, you know where I had a gentle, not even critique, but supplementing Badiou. What I improvised today, this was very short, I will have it in my next book more in detail, this idea of another obscene immortality. Or to put it in Freudian terms, now I'm at the philosophical level, what Freud calls death drive. I always found it surprising how there is simply no space in Badiou's edifice for this line of thought, which in German idealism is called radical negativity, death drive and so on. In Badiou, even now tries to develop a kind of a positive dialectic. His analysis, I simplify it very much, is that 20th century's revolutions were too destructive. They wanted to ruin the old and they expected that the new will emerge automatically through the process of destroying the old. His idea is that we should focus on positive local project: we want this, and then all violence should be just reactive. Like at a certain level he sympathized even with Zapatistas, "we want this, our free enclave, and we just defend it." We don't do it in a more in a more aggressive way. The second problem, it's not a problem with Badiou is, he simply for me still remains too—I will not go now into philosophical problems—anti-statist. In the sense that his idea is still ultimately we should aim at politics of presence and all modes of representation, statal politics, state which represents society, are something we can tolerate, collaborate with, but it's not it, or his famous formula is that all authentic politics is anti-state, it's outside the state. For me this is a way too easy way out. Because you know it's a very comfortable position: you ignore state, but which in my Hegelian view of totality means you tolerate it out there. No, we have to directly address this problem, address this problem not to leave it to some future. No, this where here it's where I have problems with some Badiou's universal statements. They have limits, for example: he proposed this wonderful pro-immigrant pro-refugee formula, in French it sounds nice, "qui est ici est d'ici" (the one who are here are from here). So absolutely refusing these distinctions, "we are original here, immigrants are not from here, they should be secondary" ne? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what's my evil problem? He laughed very much when I told him this, that it really happened to me. I gave a talk in Israel quoting Badiou and some people ironically started to applaud me. You know who were they? West Bank settlers. They say, "Why doesn't it hold also for us? Doesn't it matter that we moved here, we are here so we are from here so fuck off Palestinians, why should you be more than us" and so on. So you know what I mean like it's I don't like these abstract apparently radical statements which the moment you try to operationalize them, they force you then to introduce additional distinctions like "yes but they are colonizing it, ah" settlers, "ah, wait a minute." So already you have to complicate it. "Those who are here are from here if they come as authentic refugees and not as as colonizing settlers" and so on and so on. Imagine also white Americans, they could tell Indians, "fuck off, qui est ici est d'ici, we are here so we are from here so fuck off your First Nation" or whatever, you know. Like like I always like and this is the source of some very friendly tensions I claim between me and Alain, I always like to complicate things you know. I have this evil thinking. "Yes, it's nice as a principle but what if, but what if" and so on, you know. Life is so complex. I'm here much more open in certain conditions of anti-colonialism and so on. The point is precisely to advocate "Blut und Boden" roots and so on and to say "sorry, we are authentically here, you are secondary" here and so on. It all depends on the on the on the context and so on. I also have in this sense problem like he still is in a Maoist way for the Cultural Revolution. I'm also basically for it. I think it did have an emancipatory potential, although my view is a little bit more cynical. I claim that it's clear that Mao triggered it to gain hold to get rid of his opponents in the party, but then it ran out of control. And the truly tragic thing for me—I learned this from Alain Badiou—is that you know which was the biggest battle of the Cultural Revolution? Not crushing the revisionist old forces, but the Shanghai Commune, when workers and students in Shanghai decided to take Mao more literally than he that he himself meant. He said, "Okay, Mao said screw the army, attack the party, we did it, we will have our community non-representative without state, without army, without party," and Mao got afraid and ordered Lin Biao to send the army. This was the greatest battle of the Cultural Revolution, not fighting the revisionist old forces but between the army Lin Biao on the orders of Mao and radical revolutionaries themselves. So Alain's view is still we have to pursue that path of immediate democracy and so on. I unfortunately I'm more of a statist. Not the state we have it now but some type of strong large organization. Sorry we cannot
like surrealist comedy, not even tragedy. On day one they proclaim victory referendum against austerity, literally next day or two days later they accept the blackmail, the ultimatum from Brussels. And I think we cannot dismiss them simply as traitors and so on and so on. Their predicament was objectively tragic. The big task of the left to be would be to invent a new model of state of economy to function. I don't see that model. But we need it, otherwise we are in hell. You've mentioned Badiou, Alain Badiou, and I'd like to know how is it that your atheist rereading of the cross might eventually relate to Badiou's atheist rereading of Paul's universalism? Ah, it's a nice, very nice question because of course my reading of Christianity was originally inspired by his book on Paul and universalism. I tremendously admire him here. You know what's just the problem, you know where I had a gentle, not even critique, but supplementing Badiou. What I improvised today, this was very short, I will have it in my next book more in detail, this idea of another obscene immortality. Or to put it in Freudian terms, now I'm at the philosophical level, what Freud calls death drive. I always found it surprising how there is simply no space in Badiou's edifice for this line of thought, which in German idealism is called radical negativity, death drive and so on. In Badiou, even now tries to develop a kind of a positive dialectic. His analysis, I simplify it very much, is that 20th century's revolutions were too destructive. They wanted to ruin the old and they expected that the new will emerge automatically through the process of destroying the old. His idea is that we should focus on positive local project: we want this, and then all violence should be just reactive. Like at a certain level he sympathized even with Zapatistas, "we want this, our free enclave, and we just defend it." We don't do it in a more in a more aggressive way. The second problem, it's not a problem with Badiou is, he simply for me still remains too—I will not go now into philosophical problems—anti-statist. In the sense that his idea is still ultimately we should aim at politics of presence and all modes of representation, statal politics, state which represents society, are something we can tolerate, collaborate with, but it's not it, or his famous formula is that all authentic politics is anti-state, it's outside the state. For me this is a way too easy way out. Because you know it's a very comfortable position: you ignore state, but which in my Hegelian view of totality means you tolerate it out there. No, we have to directly address this problem, address this problem not to leave it to some future. No, this where here it's where I have problems with some Badiou's universal statements. They have limits, for example: he proposed this wonderful pro-immigrant pro-refugee formula, in French it sounds nice, "qui est ici est d'ici" (the one who are here are from here). So absolutely refusing these distinctions, "we are original here, immigrants are not from here, they should be secondary" ne? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what's my evil problem? He laughed very much when I told him this, that it really happened to me. I gave a talk in Israel quoting Badiou and some people ironically started to applaud me. You know who were they? West Bank settlers. They say, "Why doesn't it hold also for us? Doesn't it matter that we moved here, we are here so we are from here so fuck off Palestinians, why should you be more than us" and so on. So you know what I mean like it's I don't like these abstract apparently radical statements which the moment you try to operationalize them, they force you then to introduce additional distinctions like "yes but they are colonizing it, ah" settlers, "ah, wait a minute." So already you have to complicate it. "Those who are here are from here if they come as authentic refugees and not as as colonizing settlers" and so on and so on. Imagine also white Americans, they could tell Indians, "fuck off, qui est ici est d'ici, we are here so we are from here so fuck off your First Nation" or whatever, you know. Like like I always like and this is the source of some very friendly tensions I claim between me and Alain, I always like to complicate things you know. I have this evil thinking. "Yes, it's nice as a principle but what if, but what if" and so on, you know. Life is so complex. I'm here much more open in certain conditions of anti-colonialism and so on. The point is precisely to advocate "Blut und Boden" roots and so on and to say "sorry, we are authentically here, you are secondary" here and so on. It all depends on the on the on the context and so on. I also have in this sense problem like he still is in a Maoist way for the Cultural Revolution. I'm also basically for it. I think it did have an emancipatory potential, although my view is a little bit more cynical. I claim that it's clear that Mao triggered it to gain hold to get rid of his opponents in the party, but then it ran out of control. And the truly tragic thing for me—I learned this from Alain Badiou—is that you know which was the biggest battle of the Cultural Revolution? Not crushing the revisionist old forces, but the Shanghai Commune, when workers and students in Shanghai decided to take Mao more literally than he that he himself meant. He said, "Okay, Mao said screw the army, attack the party, we did it, we will have our community non-representative without state, without army, without party," and Mao got afraid and ordered Lin Biao to send the army. This was the greatest battle of the Cultural Revolution, not fighting the revisionist old forces but between the army Lin Biao on the orders of Mao and radical revolutionaries themselves. So Alain's view is still we have to pursue that path of immediate democracy and so on. I unfortunately I'm more of a statist. Not the state we have it now but some type of strong large organization. Sorry we cannot
unknown
go on because we don't. One last question. Revisionist! You notice how before we had class
go on because we don't. One last question. Revisionist! You notice how before we had class
Slavoj Žižek
struggle, questions from the left from the right, now you move to center compromise. You have a name in my black book now you know. Please. Hello Slavoj. I want to know, I want to ask you, you talk about you make a critique on this political correctness ideology that tries to individualize the responsibility for a catastrophe or something like that. And this speech that works very well on the philosophical level, but when you have to translate it to the level of active politics of like dealing I'm thinking on the problem of environment concretely that we have to give an answer on the on the near future, which way of this this way of distributing of considering this responsibility could be better or could allow to to make the changes that we have to do in the in the time we have to do them and not talking in... I don't, I see your point of your question, but I don't see any problem. Isn't it factually clear that this type of individual responsibility doesn't really work? I am not against it, my God, I recycle and all that bullshit. But what I'm saying is that it has to be supplemented by much stronger big measures, strictly legality, ecological rule, controlling big companies and so on and so on. And what I'm claiming is that this individual responsibility is offered to us precisely so that we forget those big necessary what is necessary is not that we all recycle, but that we basically change our economy how we deal and this has to be done as a much more radical reorganization. That's that's my point. And I don't see it even as so utopian with the stronger—okay I will be now a cynical pessimist optimist. With with some—by pessimist I mean things can go worse, by optimist I mean maybe out of these catastrophes something good can come. After a couple of look how Germany reacted to Fukushima. It abandoned nuclear power and so on. These large measures are needed. When a country limits the use of gray of of coal, when they abandon nuclear power and so on and so on, this is for me infinitely more infinitely more important than all this emphasis on individual responsibility. This is what worries me, you know it's the same as with this small things like many of my American friends are buying organically grown apples and fruits and so on. I tell them always, aren't you aware that you are buying ideology? Now I will be very cynical, I will use an old joke of mine. I claim that most of those apples—I read an analysis where they prove it—sold as organic are basically the same shit as others. It's just they covered discovered a couple of companies in America who all the beautiful apples they sell them as what they are, nice genetically modified, the apples who got rotten, who are not good enough, they sell them—it's an ingenious business move—for double the price as organic because organic must look bad and so on. So what I'm saying is that in what sense do we buy ideology? I noticed with my friends how buying organic apples precisely paying more makes you feel good, "you see, I'm doing something for Mother Nature, I." And this idea of doing something for it, this satisfaction is more important, it's a narcissistic operation. So again I'm not saying forget about
struggle, questions from the left from the right, now you move to center compromise. You have a name in my black book now you know. Please. Hello Slavoj. I want to know, I want to ask you, you talk about you make a critique on this political correctness ideology that tries to individualize the responsibility for a catastrophe or something like that. And this speech that works very well on the philosophical level, but when you have to translate it to the level of active politics of like dealing I'm thinking on the problem of environment concretely that we have to give an answer on the on the near future, which way of this this way of distributing of considering this responsibility could be better or could allow to to make the changes that we have to do in the in the time we have to do them and not talking in... I don't, I see your point of your question, but I don't see any problem. Isn't it factually clear that this type of individual responsibility doesn't really work? I am not against it, my God, I recycle and all that bullshit. But what I'm saying is that it has to be supplemented by much stronger big measures, strictly legality, ecological rule, controlling big companies and so on and so on. And what I'm claiming is that this individual responsibility is offered to us precisely so that we forget those big necessary what is necessary is not that we all recycle, but that we basically change our economy how we deal and this has to be done as a much more radical reorganization. That's that's my point. And I don't see it even as so utopian with the stronger—okay I will be now a cynical pessimist optimist. With with some—by pessimist I mean things can go worse, by optimist I mean maybe out of these catastrophes something good can come. After a couple of look how Germany reacted to Fukushima. It abandoned nuclear power and so on. These large measures are needed. When a country limits the use of gray of of coal, when they abandon nuclear power and so on and so on, this is for me infinitely more infinitely more important than all this emphasis on individual responsibility. This is what worries me, you know it's the same as with this small things like many of my American friends are buying organically grown apples and fruits and so on. I tell them always, aren't you aware that you are buying ideology? Now I will be very cynical, I will use an old joke of mine. I claim that most of those apples—I read an analysis where they prove it—sold as organic are basically the same shit as others. It's just they covered discovered a couple of companies in America who all the beautiful apples they sell them as what they are, nice genetically modified, the apples who got rotten, who are not good enough, they sell them—it's an ingenious business move—for double the price as organic because organic must look bad and so on. So what I'm saying is that in what sense do we buy ideology? I noticed with my friends how buying organic apples precisely paying more makes you feel good, "you see, I'm doing something for Mother Nature, I." And this idea of doing something for it, this satisfaction is more important, it's a narcissistic operation. So again I'm not saying forget about
unknown
recycling
recycling
Slavoj Žižek
and so on, I'm just saying let's not focus on this. We have to focus on what oil
and so on, I'm just saying let's not focus on this. We have to focus on what oil
unknown
companies do destroying the oceans and so on and for example do you know what is happening there mega catastrophe in the north of Australia, those coral reefs disappearing. Sorry, you
companies do destroying the oceans and so on and for example do you know what is happening there mega catastrophe in the north of Australia, those coral reefs disappearing. Sorry, you
Slavoj Žižek
cannot solve that with recycling. You can resolve that only by strong concentrated large scale, not even state but international measures. This is all I mean.
cannot solve that with recycling. You can resolve that only by strong concentrated large scale, not even state but international measures. This is all I mean.